I guess I’m just Mr. Contrarian. I despised 2010’s “Alice in Wonderland,” starring Johnny Depp as a decidedly off-kilter Mad Hatter. But the sequel is a charming romp that uses Lewis Carroll’s second novel as a mere jumping-off point for its own series of crazy, colorful adventures.
Of course, the first movie was a huge hit and the second died a quick death at the box office. Apparently, the majority of moviegoers like what I hate and hate what I like.
(Considering that for my epitaph.)
Perhaps give “Alice Through the Looking Glass” a chance on video, and maybe we’ll find we’re not so far apart after all.
This story (screenplay by Linda Woolverton) digs deeper into the Hatter’s past, using a kooky time-traveling device to see how he became so delightfully dinghy. Three years after the events in the last movie, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) returns to Underland to find Hatter has taken deathly ill.
In a delirium -- I know, hard to tell the difference with this one -- Hatter insists that his family, long thought killed by the Jaberwocky, is somehow alive and waiting for him. They track down Time himself (Sacha Baron Cohen) and steal his Chronosphere to jump back to years past.
Of course, the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), she of the outsized head and aggressiveness, returns to muck up their quest. Anne Hathaway also shows up as the White Queen, and we find out a little more about the sisters’ long-ago divergence.
James Bobin, taking over the directing chair from Tim Burton, keeps the story more or less on an even keel. It turns out that when you have characters and creatures straight out of pure imagination, it helps to arrange them in a methodical way, rather than splaying them out randomly as the previous film did.
But don’t just take my word for it.
Bonus features are quite good, though you’ll have to buy the Blu-ray version to get the vast majority of them. The DVD comes only with one featurette about the making of the costumes.
The Blu-ray includes several more making-of mini-documenatires, the music video for “Just Like Fire” with P!nk, side-by-side comparisons of raw footage and final scenes, profiles of minor characters, deleted scenes and a feature-length commentary track with Bobin.
I quite loathed 2010’s “Alice in Wonderland,” but here’s a pretty penny.
This sequel with only a tertiary connection to Lewis Carroll’s second Alice novel manages the rare feat of significantly outshining its predecessor. If the first film was “an exercise in cynical regurgitation,” to quote some meanie critic (*ahem*), then this movie gleefully tosses the books aside for its own freewheeling cogitation on the characters and dizzying world Carroll created.
“Alice Through the Looking Glass” is, dare I say, an exercise in audacious originality.
Screenwriter Linda Woolverton is back while director Tim Burton is not, and it pains me to say that his shifting to a producer role is undoubtedly for the best. Burton has worked with star Johnny Depp so much that he seems to have lost the ability to reign in the actor’s kookiest impulses, ceding the storytelling process to his latest costume-and-accent fetish.
In the last movie, Depp’s Mad Hatter character was a discombobulated mashup of emotions and loony behavior, a coy nincompoop one moment and a sword-wielding war machine the next. Even nonsense needs a consistent sensibility.
James Bobin, an accomplished television writer/director with only one other feature film to his credit (“Muppets Most Wanted”), gets the call and wisely keeps the Hatter in check.
Set three years after the last movie, “Glass” finds Alice (Mia Wasikowska) the captain of her late father’s shop “Wonder,” just returned from a long excursion to the Far East. Alas, upon sailing home to London she finds the family fortune raided by the local lord, whose marital advances she rejected before her deep dive down the rabbit hole into Underland.
Alice rejects the insistence of her mother (Lindsay Duncan) that she must sell the ship and give up her adventures. “I want to believe I can do as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” she stamps.
After stepping through a looking-glass portal, she finds herself returned to Underland just as Hatter has taken ill. He believes that his family, whom he long believed killed by the Jaberwocky serpent at the behest of the evil Red Queen, is waiting to be found. Alice must travel through time to save them.
The only way to do this is by stealing the Chronosphere from Time himself, here represented by Sacha Baron Cohen as a stern-yet-comical figure who oversees the great clock controlling the universe – both Underland and our world. “You cannot change the past, but you can learn from it,” he warns.
Thus sets off a jaunty trip through multiple time frames of Underland, so we get to visit with Hatter, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and their critter friends when they were younger, and then as pups. I should mention that the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), with her outsized head and matching rage, returns as well, wooing Time to get her own hands on the Chronosphere.
As before, this is a CGI-heavy romp of bright colors and wondrous backgrounds, somewhere between medieval and Dickensian in setting, pure whimsy in tone. We learn a little more about Hatter – including his real name, Tarrant Hightopp – though not the exact origin of his… specialness.
“Alice Through the Looking Glass” is an unexpected surprise: a movie you thought you were going to hate that turns out to be quite a gem.
In America we think of the suffragette movement in glowing, benevolent terms. Our public consciousness invokes halcyon memories of a non-violent, high-minded debate in which brave women who advocated for the right to vote were subjected to little more than frowning disapproval and comments about their diminished prospects for marriage, with jail time for a hardened few.
In actuality the movement took decades and included police brutality, mass arrests, hunger strikes, forced feedings and the separation of mothers from children. “Suffragette” is an attempt to shine a light on the darker, grittier side of the crusade, focusing specifically on a small group of working-class British women who kicked the push for the vote into high gear in their country.
It’s a well-intentioned film, which jumps through the tropes of the ‘inspiring historical drama’ genre 1-2-3. It takes miserly few chances with its story and characters. The actors are an impressive lot and the production values are fine, but it’s a rather dour affair with a scarcity of surprises.
Carey Mulligan plays a familiar type of protagonist: the indifferent youngster who falls in with the rebellious crowd, gets caught up by circumstance and ends up as hardest of the hardcore.
Her character is entirely made up, as are all the others but two: Meryl Streep has a bit role (two or three scenes) as Emmeline Pankhurst, the real-life founder of the Women’s Social and Political Union, who essentially operates as the leader-in-exile, flitting from place to place in secrecy for fear of arrest. And Natalie Press plays Emily Davison, a tertiary figure who only becomes important late in the proceedings.
Mulligan is Maud Watts, a 24-year-laundress who keeps her head down in 1912 London. She started working at 12 and was made forewoman at 20. Her factory is a brutish sweat shop, complete with a piggish manager (Geoff Bell) who sees taking liberties with the young girls as a perk of the job. Her husband Sonny (Ben Whishaw) is a kindly but sheepish fellow who also works there. They have an adorable scamp of a son, are desperately poor but essentially happy.
The government is taking testimony from working women about getting the vote, and Maud is conscripted at the last minute to fill in for a fiery co-worker (Anne-Marie Duff) who has to demur. Her plain-spoken words seemingly move the chief official, but needless to say more challenges await.
She makes the rounds befriending the suffragette crew, including a wealthy benefactor (Romola Garai) and Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter), a female doctor who’s been jailed nine times and repeatedly urges more militant action, including breaking shop windows and blowing up mail boxes.
(Fun fact: Bonham Carter is the great-granddaughter of H. H. Asquith, who was Prime Minister during this time and a noted opponent of voting rights for women. Take that, great-grandpa!)
Brendan Gleeson has a nice turn as Steed, a cunning police inspector who outfoxes the suffragettes for a time. He views Maud as just an impressionable young woman and targets her for recruitment as an informer.
Things go on as you might expect. Maud is shocked when peaceful channels prove fruitless, agrees to more strident acts, is jailed and disgraced, her husband is mortified and warns her not to defy him again, the heroines make quotable pronouncements off the cuff, etc.
“You want me to respect the law? Then make the law respectable!” goes a typical refrain.
I didn’t dislike “Suffragette,” but it feels so workmanlike and even drab at times. Director Sarah Gavron and screenwriter Abi Morgan (“The Iron Lady”) might have been better served by focusing on actual historical figures instead of concocting a bunch of make-believe folks. These characters feel less like people and more conduits for a message, however noble it might be.
Taking classic Disney cartoons and turning them into live-action picture is a recent and largely wasted effort. Most of the resulting films have been silly and swollen. (See – or rather, don’t – the two competing Snow White adaptations.)
“Cinderella” is the remarkable exception, a smart and heartwise movie with plenty of pluck.
Lily James plays the titular Ella, who is given the “Cinder” affixation by her nasty stepsisters (Holliday Grainger and Sophie McShera) because she sleeps by the sooty hearth for warmth. Ella’s days and nights are a ceaseless march of work and disdain, but she retains her sense of joy. Her wondrous childhood was taken from her, first by the death of her mother and then her father’s marriage to the harsh, vain Lady Tremaine and subsequent orphaning.
One of the film’s triumphs is treating its characters as complex human beings, so the “cruel stepmother,” ably played by Cate Blanchett, is a bundle of neuroses and bad karma rather than the personification of evil. The prince (Richard Madden) even gets something to do other than be handsome. Helena Bonham Carter, who we normally expect in the dark roles, shines as the fairy godmother.
The CGI is astounding without overshadowing the story, a gentle fable about how appearances can be deceiving. It’s a great-looking film that builds on the animated tale rather than simply regurgitating it.
“Cinderella” comes with a good variety of bonus features, though you’ll need to buy the blu-ray combo pack to get most of them.
The DVD comes with “Frozen Fever,” a new animated short starring Elsa and Anna, plus “Ella’s Furry Friends,” a featurette on the animal actors.
With the combo pack you add five deleted scenes, an alternate opening sequence and three more featurettes: “A Fairy Tale Comes to Life,” “Costume Test Fun” and “Staging the Ball.”
I've not been a fan of this recent trend of turning old fairy tales and/or animated classics into live-action spectacles. The competing Snow White flicks were exercises in excess, and while visually sumptuous "Maleficent" suffered from serious storytelling issues. The less said about "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters," the better.
But "Cinderella" finds the spark of magic missing from those other films.
It's heartfelt and wise, paying homage to the Disney cartoon while smartly inserting more modernistic sensibilities into an ancient tale. Director Kenneth Branagh and screenwriter Chris Weitz craft something that is at once old-fashioned and newfangled, and is sure to delight little princesses everywhere -- and many of their kings and queens, and possibly even some princeling brothers, too.
They even manage to render the wicked stepmother... well, sympathetic's not the right word -- let's say more relatable as a flesh-and-blood character, as opposed to simply representing a stereotype.
Lily James plays young Ella, a country girl raised at a modest estate by loving parents, who alas soon depart the scene. They're played by Hayley Atwell and Ben Chaplin, both emotionally resonant presences despite limited screen time. They teach her to "have courage and be kind," something that becomes harder when the socially climbing Lady Tremaine (an icy Cate Blanchett) comes into Ella's life, along with her spoiled daughters Anastasia (Holliday Grainger) and Drizella (Sophie McShera).
She's relegated to the role of servant, living in the attic and toiling all day with only a few mice and other creatures as her companions. She is sneeringly dubbed "Cinderella" by her betters because of her penchant for sleeping by the kitchen hearth for warmth, which usually results in a sooty complexion.
In one of the movie's more sensible alterations, the stepsisters and stepmother are no longer horrid hags; ugliness is no longer the calling card for depravity within. Indeed, Ella spends much of the story in frump mode, with only a toothy smile and a warm heart to recommend her. Her transformation for the royal ball at the hands of her fairy godmother (Helena Bonham Carter, who we'd normally expect to see in the stepmother role) is just that -- a welcome respite from the soon-to-return drudgery.
The CG effects for her change are quite wondrous, with the pumpkin, mice and goose -- aided by a couple of garden lizards -- making for a dazzling coach and company.
Richard Madden ("Game of Thrones") plays the prince, who also gets an upgrade beyond Generic Handsome Dude in a Tux. He wants to marry for love, while his ailing father (Derek Jacobi) urges him to wed for advantage -- egged on by the smarmy Grand Duke (Stellan Skarsgård). He's smitten by Ella when they run into each other in the forest, each mistaking the other for something other than what they are.
Of course, all that gets sorted out in the end. "To be seen as we truly are" is the lesson here, with gowns and glass slippers as simply the enchantment that helps things move along.
It's the little touches that make "Cinderella" an unexpected delight. I adored the use of "Lavender's Blue," an old British nursery song, as both a musical and narrative theme. ("When I am king, dilly, dilly, you shall be queen.") Lily James makes for a sweet and self-assured Cinderella, who doesn't need a princess' crown to be noble and true.
Note: The film is preceded by "Frozen Forever," an animated short that's a follow-up to the hit feature of 2013. It gathers all the old gang together for another go-round that's fun and sweet, though the song isn't on par with the original music.
I know, I know … you’re thinking to yourself, why should I care about the (seemingly) 3,074th version they’ve made of “Great Expectations” for film or television?
Short answer: because the new version that came out at the end of last year is one of the most emotionally engaging adaptations of a Charles Dickens’ novel I’ve ever seen.
You may not even be aware of this iteration, directed by Pete Newell (“Four Weddings and a Funeral”) and starring an impressive cast, including Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, Jeremy Irvine, Robbie Coltrane and Holliday Grainger. It didn’t get much traction, barely making it into U.S. theaters.
But this may just be the best film of 2013 that nobody saw. Fiennes and Bonham Carter both deserved Oscar nominations for their fine, vibrant performances.
You know the story: a young penniless orphan (Irvine) is given an inheritance and an introduction into London society by an anonymous benefactor. He makes a mush of it, squandering his fortune and falling for a chilly, distant girl protected by her brittle ward, Miss Havisham (Bonham Carter).
Dickens himself felt that “Great Expectations” was his greatest work, but previous movie versions have tended to be stilted and unapproachable. Give this one a chance, and you won’t find yourself disappointed.
Extra features include deleted scenes, a making-of featurettes, photo gallery and more.
Film adaptations of 19th century British and American literature have a tendency to be stiff and remote. The characters in those books were often more like archetypes than flesh-and-blood creatures. They spoke in lilted sentences adored in upper-class salons of the day, but which were unlikely to actually spill out of anyone’s mouth extemporaneously. Movie versions tend to translate this distance between author and audience.
At first I thought “Great Expectations” was falling into this fold, based on Charles Dickens’ classic tale of a blacksmith’s apprentice transformed into a young gentleman. The early section where we’re introduced to the main players and set the plot in motion drags rather badly. Pip is plucked out of obscurity and given a sizeable fortune by a mysterious benefactor.
But something happens along the way. The actors grow comfortable in their roles, director Mike Newell and screenwriter David Nicholls trim away some of the book’s extraneous subplots and characters, and the movie actually grows deeper and richer the further we travel along with it.
By the end, I was fully caught up in the emotional journey of Pip (Jeremy Irvine) and his long-estranged lady love, Estella (Holliday Grainger). Their on-again, off-again affair is somehow both restrained and ravishing.
The cast is just spectacular, with the characters really popping off the screen despite many of them having limited screen time. Jason Felmyng has sort of shy, proud grace as Joe, Pip’s brother-in-law and passive protector. Robbie Coltrone is a fearsome, fulsome presence as Jaggers, the mercenary lawyer put in charge of introducing Pip into society. Ewen Bremner, Sally Hawkins and Olly Alexander are spot-on as, respectively, Jaggers’ assistant Wemmick, Pip’s abusive older sister and best chum Herbert Pocket.
The real standouts are Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes, both of whom deserve consideration when the award season rolls in.
As Miss Havisham, the wealthy spinster who takes young Pip under her wing, Carter is an eerie presence, a victim and victimizer who has shut herself away from life. Abandoned at the altar by a conniving embezzler, she still wears her wedding dress, now reduced to ragged strips, while the mice make a feast on her never-served banquet dinner. She’s both vile and pitiable.
It’s no secret Fiennes can be utterly unnerving onscreen, so his early scenes as escaped convict Abel Magwitch are fraught with terror. Later, while never losing his hard edges -- he’s a willing murderer who sleeps with a blade in his hand -- Magwitch is also exposed as more human than we might have supposed.
Irvine is fine in the lead role, though it’s more of a reactive part where the actor is required to play off of the other, more interesting people around him. Grainger has a nice feel for the coldness inside the heart of Estella, Miss Havisham’s adoptive daughter.
She delivers perhaps the most memorable line of the book and movie: “I have been bent and broken, but -- I hope -- into a better shape.” This surprisingly touching version of “Great Expectations” certainly breaks the mold for this sort of literary adaptation, breathing life into those dusty pages.
So what’s up with a Lone Ranger movie where Tonto is the chief character? Who wears an expired crow on his noggin and death-head war paint? And the titular Ranger is a whiny, kvetching, annoying ball of tics who saps the film of energy every time he’s onscreen?
What it is really is “Pirates of the Caribbean 5,” with Johnny Depp morphing his doofy Jack Sparrow character into a loopy, reimagined Tonto impression.
“Pirates” director Gore Verbinski returns with screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio (plus Justin Haythe) for a redo of the same formula: big action set pieces, cackling villains, a bevy of bizarre secondary characters and plot twists, a tone that veers between slapstick and ominous, and Depp pulling out another one of his precious, strange-for-strange’s-sake performances.
The result is a swollen mess, alternately inane and dull. There are a few crumbs of entertaining bits, like the birdseed Tonto keeps trying to feed to his bird-helmet. But they get buried under an avalanche of ill-conceived story concepts.
Here the Lone Ranger isn’t even a ranger; rather, he’s freshly-minted district attorney John Reid (Armie Hammer) returning to his Texas hometown in 1869. His train is hijacked by confederates of notorious outlaw Butch Cavendish, who’s being transported to his hanging.
(William Fichtner terrifically embodies the sun-creased blackheart, who has a silver tooth, wicked lip scar and a tendency to eat portions of his dead enemies. Cavendish is so good, in fact, the character feels wasted in the movie around him.)
John’s brother Dan (James Badge Dale) is the local Texas Ranger captain, and puts together a posse to go after Cavendish. He reluctantly includes John, whom everyone dismisses as a city dandy.
You know what happens next: the posse is trapped and cut to pieces, with only John surviving. He’s revived from death’s door by Tonto, who dubs him a “spirit walker” who can’t be killed in battle.
The running joke of the movie is how unfit John is to don the Lone Ranger’s domino mask. He can’t shoot, hates guns even, and is indifferent at the standard cowboy skill set. In fact, Tonto would have much preferred his brother Dan be the one brought back to life. He calls John “kemosabe,” which here means “wrong brother.”
Depp is clearly having a ball with the Tonto character, who speaks in the familiar broken English from the TV show and has an imperturbable mien. He is constantly stealing from dead bodies, replacing valuables with odd bits of junk, a practice he refers to as trading.
Tonto’s worst trade was one he made as a boy, which has an elaborate backstory involving two conniving white men, a river full of silver, a heavy-chained pocket watch and that crow.
All this might seem enough plot for a decent Western action/comedy. But then Verbinski & Co. pile on layer after layer of material, junking up the works.
There’s a paltry romantic triangle between Dan and John, with Dan’s wife (Ruth Wilson) and young son (Bryan Prince) caught in the crossfire. Tom Wilkinson shows up as the enterprising head of the railroad company connecting East to West. Barry Pepper is a preening, Custer-esque cavalryman.
Then things really get out there. Helena Bonham Carter plays a brothel madam with a past, plus an ivory leg with a shotgun hidden inside. And there are border wars with the Comanche – ostensibly Tonto’s people, though they are quick to disavow him as a loon.
And a mystical quest in search of an evil “wendingo” spirit. And a pale horse with seemingly supernatural powers. And corporate power struggles. And cannibal rabbits.
Oh, and the whole thing’s wrapped in a mournful framing device set in 1933, when a century-old Tonto, now relegated to circus sideshow, recounts his tale to a curious lad.
The absolute low point is when John and Tonto walk into a dangerous den and pull the old "we're the health inspectors" shtick, something used in every buddy cop movie, ever. Except it's 1869, when there were no such thing as health inspectors. When they complain the pickles in the bar are not refrigerated, I waited for someone to respond, "What's refrigeration?"
At a tick under 2½ hours, “The Lone Ranger” goes all in on “more is more,” until the audience wishes there was just less.
Or as Tonto might say, “Ten dollar for ticket to movie … not good trade.”
“Les Misérables” did not get the love it deserved.
Critics were respectful but not swooning. Audiences showed up but did not stampede the box office. It won Oscars in a couple of technical areas, but Anne Hathaway’s transcendent performance as Fantine is the only aspect of the film to win universal praise.
For me, it was the most emotionally transporting cinematic journey I took in 2012. This crusty old critic actually welled up several times watching it.
This the first time the stage musical version of Victor Hugo’s novel has made it to the screen, and it’s a pageant of songs, gorgeous costumes and sets, and actors pouring out their hearts.
You may have already heard about this aspect of production, but it’s still astonishing: all the singing you hear was recorded live on-set, as opposed to being dubbed in later from a studio (which is standard practice in Hollywood for dialogue, let alone song).
The story follows Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), an escaped criminal who redeems himself through helping others, though it earns him no reprieve from Javert (Russell Crowe), the wolfish lawman who hunts him.
Along his travels he encounters a gallery of characters, some pure and some foul. There’s Fantine (Hathaway), who resorts to prostitution to support her daughter Cosette (Amanda Seyfried). And the slimy opportunists the Thénardiers (Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen). There is Marius (Eddie Redmayne), the brave insurgent who loves Cosette and is in turn secretly loved by street urchin Éponine (Samantha Barks).
All the wondrous music from the stage version is there, along with one or two new songs composed specifically for the movie. The stars generally acquit themselves well in song, with Hathaway the clear standout.
Whether you’re a fan of musicals or not, “Les Misérables” hits a very high note.
The video is being released with an excellent spread of extras. Even the DVD version comes with a healthy serving, including feature commentary by director Tom Hooper and several featurettes focusing on the cast, production design and Hugo’s novel.
Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo and you add several other features, including the locations used during production and the battle scene. The high point is the section focusing on the challenge of delivering live singing performances on set.
Epic yet intimate, "Les Misérables" is an astonishing cinematic feat.
Here is Victor Hugo's sprawling novel, which has been adapted to film numerous times and then turned into a smash Broadway musical, and now returns as the movie version of that stage production. It boasts the same huge cast of characters, dozens of songs and outsized production backdrop of a turbulent 19th century France, building up to the June Rebellion of 1832.
Yet, when Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) or Fantine (Anne Hathaway) or the other figures are pouring out their souls in song, the artifice of the theater melts away and it feels like they're singing not for an audience but for themselves.
Director Tom Hooper, who won an Oscar a couple of years ago for "The King's Speech," and his team have crafted a marvelous rendition of something familiar. This "Les Misérables" is fresh and vibrant, with a populist message about the people of the streets rising up against the ultra-wealthy.
But most importantly, this is the story of people about whom we come to care very deeply. It doesn't hurt that the singing stars are generally tremendous, with Hathaway the clear standout. Jackman, a veteran song-and-dance man, expertly belts his way through some big set pieces. And Russell Crowe surprises us with a resonant and heartfelt baritone.
The thing that's most amazing about the crooning is that the actors were actually recorded live on the set, and that's what we hear. Usually such things are re-dubbed in a looping studio after the fact. The result is thus imperfect in pitch, but intentionally so. Hooper's bold choice only adds to the sense that the music is happening spontaneously in front of the audience, rather than being rendered flawlessly for us.
Hathaway's scene where Fantine wallows in her misery with "I Dreamed a Dream" -- perhaps the best-known song from the musical -- is the encapsulation of this approach. Hathaway sings the entire thing in one uninterrupted take, her face filthy and her hair shorn to a horrid buzz, her voice rising from a whisper to a shout as her emotions boil over from self-pity into anger.
It's an absolutely gobsmacking moment, and one of the most arresting performances of any movie this year.
Hugo's story is so well-known as to be considered iconic: Valjean, hardened by 19 years of imprisonment for stealing bread, has his world turned around when a lonely old priest shows him a tremendous kindness. He becomes a man of supreme altruism and virtue, but ironically must break the law to do so.
Forever pursued by the relentless police inspector Javert (Crowe), who abides by the strict dictates of the law over true justice, Valjean leaves behind his name and identity to become the mayor of his town and the wealthy owner of a factory. Fantine, one of his workers, is discharged for dubious reasons and turns to ever sadder means to support her daughter Cosette (Isabelle Allen).
Valjean eventually learns of her plight, and pledges to care for Cosette, rescuing her from the clutches of the Thénardiers (Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter) -- purported innkeepers who employ every method, legal or otherwise, to get their percentage. He raises her to womanhood (Amanda Seyfried takes over the role) where she falls for an idealistic young rebel named Marius (Eddie Redmayne).
As their student rebellion snowballs into violence, all these disparate forces clash in one dramatic upheaval of love, loyalty and strife.
The soaring songs, the bitter tragedy, the majestic sweep -- "Les Misérables" is a standing-ovation triumph.
I have not always been Harry Potter's best friend. I liked the first two movies in the series well enough. But by the third -- when most observers believed the 10-year, eight-film epic journey really took things to another level -- I felt like I'd seen this movie too many times already. The saga of the boy wizard and Voldemort, his mortal enemy, had become episodic and repetitive to these eyes.
But the last film, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" was the grand payoff that I had been waiting for. No more exposition, no more new characters cluttering up the storyline, no more sense of the filmmakers dawdling -- just the logical, satisfying and sweeping culmination of a long voyage.
The story picks up with Harry, Ron and Hermione returning from exile to challenge Voldemort, who's tightened his death's grasp on the entire wizarding world. There's a climactic assault on Hogwarts School by Death Eaters and their minions, a terrifying chase through a maze of dragons, and of course the epic final showdown between Harry and Voldemort.
The stakes are high, and many people die. There's a sense of grandiose finality to "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2." This is the end -- and what a glorious one.
Videos extras are decent, though not quite magical. The lack of a commentary track is rather galling.
The DVD has a making-of documentary, deleted scenes, a tour of the Warner Bros. London studio where most of the films were shot, plus three featurettes: "The Goblins of Gringotts with Warwick Davis," "The Women of Harry Potter," and "When Harry Left Hogwarts."
The Blu-ray edition has all those, plus two juicy additions. There's an interactive pop-up collection of behind-the-scenes videos, and a conversation between author J.K. Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe.
Harry Potter's epic journey ends with power and majesty. For 10 years and seven previous films, we've waded through oceans of exposition and endured ever-burgeoning layers of new characters and mythology to absorb. All building to: This.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" does not disappoint. It is easily the best film of the series, mainly because we no longer feel the filmmakers stringing us along to set up yet another movie. People die, many of them central characters, and the audience recognizes the finality of these events.
In the final showdown with the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes, in still-creepy bone-white makeup) there are several sequences that will last with me.
A terrifying chase through a maze with serpents of fire in pursuit. An assault on Hogwarts School by an army of Voldemort's Death Eaters, complete with lumbering trolls and wraith-like Dementors, that approaches the battles of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. A sad but illuminating journey through the mind of Severus Snape (Alan Rickman), the Hogwarts professor of shifting loyalties.
And, of course, Harry's final toe-to-toe magical battle with Voldemort. Daniel Radcliffe has grown so much in this role, and he brings it all together in this last movie, showing us the character's bravery and contradictions, his rage and grief. The Harry Potter of "Deathly Hallows" is no longer a young boy excited by magic, but has turned out much like LoTR's Frodo, aged before his time and regretful of the events in which he's been chosen by fate to play a pivotal role.
There's also an element we haven't seen out of Voldemort before -- fear. Early in the story he realizes that Harry, Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) have stumbled upon the secret to his forbidding dark power. By splitting his soul into hidden objects called Horcruxes, he's given them a chance to destroy him.
For those like me who have not read the series of books by J.K. Rowling, it can be a little difficult at times to keep up with the spinning narrative. At one point Harry pulls out some little golden doohickey that acquired somewhere in his travels, which I could summon no memory of. And then the thing it contains, which we had been told was the secret to Voldemort's downfall, ends up playing no role in their confrontation.
Contrastingly, diehard fans may complain about the film not containing every morsel of detail from the books. Such a thing is impossible -- even when director Peter Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves split the last book into two movies.
In that sense, this final film may be more satisfying to those who are innocent of Rowling's novels than the untold millions who have voraciously consumed them.
("Part 2" is being released in 3-D, and a more worthless and distracting use of that technology I have never seen. It adds little depth to the action, and dims the movie unnecessarily.
Perhaps you can't shoot a basketball, or your spelling is atrocious. I for one have a terrible memory for names. What is universal about these myriad faults is that we all carefully protect our shortcomings by keeping them private, or finding a way to work around them.
(True fact: I keep a chart of my street block so I know what to call neighbors.)
But what if the one thing you were terrible at also happened to be the sole criteria by which everyone judged you? If your inescapable duty was confounded by your greatest disability?
Such was the fate of King George VI of England, who suffered from a crippling stutter. He was helped by an unconventional Australian speech therapist, and was able to serve as an inspiration to his people during the dark days of World War II.
"The King's Speech," the film about his struggle, is straight out of the school of Inspirational Tales from History. What it lacks in novelty it makes up for in executing this type of movie-making about as well as it can be done.
Colin Firth as the king and Geoffrey Rush as his therapist offer a pair of tremendous performances, in roles that pop off the screen notwithstanding the constraints of a slightly staid screenplay (by David Seidler).
Despite being a loving father and husband, dedicated Navy officer and utterly loyal to the monarchy and his nation, Prince Albert (as he was known before his coronation) was belittled by his family simply because he stammered. Public speeches were embarrassing, halting disasters, both for Albert and the people who had to listen to them.
His father (a brief but memorable appearance by Michael Gambon) regrets the new requirements technology forces upon the monarchy, like his annual Christmas speeches over the radio.
"Now we must invade our subjects' home and ingratiate ourselves," the king complains. "We have become actors!"
The second in line for the throne, Albert was safely shunted to minor appearances where he could keep a low profile, which suited him just fine.
It might never have mattered, until his brother Edward (Guy Pearce), after assuming the crown in 1936, abdicated a few months later to marry an American divorcé. It's interesting to see the different portrayals of this event: Americans regard it as a grand romantic gesture, while Albert and his family see it as foolish and mortifying.
At the prodding of his wife (Helena Bonham Carter), the soon-to-be-king seeks help from Lionel Logue (Rush), whose methods are unorthodox, to say the least. He demands the prince come to his office, rather than calling at the palace. On his home turf, Lionel insists they treat each other as equals -- even presuming to call the prince "Bertie," a familial nickname.
There are also strange breathing exercises, tongue twisters, singing his words and, most memorably, spewing a string of expletives that in of itself earned the film an R rating. (It probably would've gotten a G otherwise.)
Lionel's lessons intensify as Albert takes up the crown -- even burrowing into his personal life. It is Lionel's professional opinion that no child is born a stutterer: Some kind of trauma compels them to be afraid of their own voice.
Firth is by turns droll, arrogant and sensitive as Albert/George -- the sort of pampered son who has more grit and wry humor than anyone suspects. Asked by his daughter what Hitler is shouting about in a newsreel, there's no hesitation to his comeback: "I don't know. But he seems to be saying it rather well."
Director Tom Hooper, who helmed last year's excellent "The Damned United," recognizes the material for what it is and emphasizes its obvious strengths. "The King's Speech" knows exactly how to get its point across.
The worst thing about sitting through "Alice in Wonderland" is the dawning realization that director Tim Burton, once one of the most original voices in Hollywood, has become king of the crappy remakes.
The movie-going public simply did not need a new version of "Planet of the Apes" or "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and the same goes for "Alice."
Festooned with computer-generated critters and the now-obligatory kooky Johnny Depp performance, "Alice" is essentially a sequel to the original Lewis Carroll books. Alice (Mia Wasikowska), now a willful teen, refuses an arranged marriage to a wealthy suitor for a return trip to Wonderland.
It seems in her absence the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter, her head ballooned by CG puffery) has usurped the throne of the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and is lopping off heads at a record pace.
Depp plays the Mad Hatter, bit player in the Carroll books but now Alice's best friend/muse. It's a performance steeped in its own weird sauce, a spray of sibilant nonsense and rousing Braveheart-esque speeches.
In the unholy and wholly unnecessary matrimony between Tim Burton and "Alice," it's clear that originality doesn't live here anymore.
The film is available as a single DVD or a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. Video extras are OK for the DVD version, and expand considerably with Blu-ray.
The DVD includes a making-of documentary, a featurette about the film's visual effects, and another about how Depp constructed his latest crazy character -- including digitally enhancing his eyes so that he resembled Elijah Wood in drag queen makeup.
In addition, the Blu-ray has featurettes on creating the Red Queen, the White Queen, musical score, sets, stunts and even the Hatter's Futterwhacken Dance.
For myself, I wish Tim Burton would kick all the big-money productions and computer imagery to the curb, and concentrate on small, clever concoctions of his own recipe. These days it feels like he's baking someone else's cakes.
That's my one-word review of Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland." Why does this movie exist? Does it add anything to the Lewis Carroll stories? Does it have a purpose for being beyond dollars-and-cents rationalizing? If it had never been made, would the cinematic world be poorer for it?
I've been a fan of director Tim Burton's comically twisted sensibilities for a long time, but lately he's in a rut. Rather than pursuing original stories ("Edward Scissorhands") or loopy take-offs on reality ("Ed Wood"), he's tackling big-budget revivals of well-known intellectual properties -- "Sweeney Todd," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Planet of the Apes."
Burton's gone from being one of the most vibrant, freshest voices in Hollywood to the king of the remakes. His distinctive style has been packaged and co-opted. You can practically hear the moneymen plotting:
"Hey, no one's made an 'Alice' movie in awhile, let's do it up with a lot of CG for the animals and add in some battle scenes for the teens and slather on some of that Tim Burton kookiness. And we'll get Johnny Depp to do one of his over-the-top nutty characters."
Speaking of which: The eclectic voices that call out to Depp have often aimed true -- his Keith-Richards-meets-Pepe-Le-Pew take on Captain Jack Sparrow made the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" a delectable mash-up of spectacle and spontaneity. But it had gotten old by the second go-round, and his Michael Jackson-inspired Willy Wonka was just strange for the sake of strangeness.
Ditto for his Mad Hatter, who seems to put on his personalities like he does his blue-and-pink makeup. One minute Hatter, as he's nicknamed, is speaking in a rambling, lisping spray of non-sequitors ("How is a raven like a writing desk?"), and then he switches into a strident Scottish brogue.
By the end of the film, he even gets a big ol' Braveheart sword to complete the strange ensemble.
The Hatter, of course, was only a minor player in the original novel by Lewis Carroll, but here he's elevated to sidekick/muse for Alice (Mia Wasikowska).
Carroll actually wrote two Alice books, and most movie versions have simply crammed together characters and story elements from each. This new film (screenplay by Linda Woolverton) goes one further, by essentially positing itself as a sequel.
Alice is now 19 and about to be married off to a haughty young lord, and is plagued by dreams about white rabbits and red queens. Little does she realize these are actually memories from her childhood visit to Wonderland (or Underland, as the natives insist is the correct name).
A quick dash down the rabbit hole, and a few rapid changes in size later, Alice stumbles upon the White Rabbit, Dormouse, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the Blue Caterpillar. It seems in her absence the Red Queen has usurped the crown of the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), and is ordering the lopping off of heads at a prodigious rate.
Computer imagery is incorporated into many of the characters. The animals are all CG, but even the Red Queen (played by Helena Bonham Carter) has her head swelled to watermelon proportions. (Depp's eyes are similarly super-sized.)
Alice sets off on a search for the Vorpal Blade, guarded by a Bandersnatch, to be used against the fearsome serpent Jabberwocky at the climactic battle on Frabjous Day -- all bits, by the way, contained in Carroll's nonsense poetry. Oh, and Hatter will celebrate by doing his Futterwhacken dance.
Considered apart, some of these ornaments are amusing enough in their own right. But taken together, Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" is an exercise in cynical regurgitation.
To me, that is the central question of 1999's "Fight Club," a revolutionary movie about revolutionary men in a time of complacence.
Like a thousand cinematic rebels without causes before them, Edward Norton and Brad Pitt play young men uncertain about their place in the world. Lacking fathers, traditional male role models or even identities beyond what consumer culture dictates for them, they define themselves by rejecting the definition that society has placed upon them.
To wit: Study, work hard, play nice, climb the corporate ladder and you'll be rewarded with a home with nice furniture, a decent wardrobe, lots of cool gadgets and a woman to marry so you can replicate your experience for a new generation of men.
Norton plays Cornelius -- though that name may just be an alias -- who works for a major auto company, calculating whether it's more profitable to fix safety problems discovered in their cars, or cheaper to just let people die. Troubled by insomnia, he finds an outlet in attending therapy groups for troubles he does not have: Testicular cancer, infectious diseases, tuberculosis, etc. Only in the emotional outpouring between the afflicted can he find the release that helps him get by.
He's annoyed by the presence of Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), a chain-smoking fellow "tourist" who is also faking her way into sessions. Cornelius is a faker, but he needs to believe others' pain is real. They come to an understanding not to expose each other by splitting up their groups.
On a business flight soon after Cornelius meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a inexpressible cool guy who looks how he would like to look, fucks the way he would like to fuck, and does things he only dreams of having the balls for. They become friends and roomies when Cornelius' swank condo is blown up in a case of suspected arson, and he moves into the run-down condemned shanty Tyler calls home.
On a whim after a night of drinking, they each reveal that have never been in a fight. How can they call themselves men if they've never experienced the male ritual of combat with fists? They have a bout that's quite bloody but holds no animus. They're not fighting each other, but their status as boys who need this rite to call themselves men.
I'll stop myself right here to explain that near the end of the film it's unveiled that Cornelius and Tyler are actually the same person, halves of a split personality. It was a big reveal in 1999, but after more than a decade I believe the statute of limitations on spoilers has expired.
The film, directed by David Fincher from Jim Uhls' screenplay (based on the book by Chuck Palahniuk) was groundbreaking in that it was the first mainstream Hollywood film in which the reality of everything we'd seen is ultimately revealed to be false, or at least faulty. It was used so much in subsequent, inferior films like "Vanilla Sky" that it soon become tiresome. But back then, audiences hadn't been so gobsmacked by a turn of the plot since "The Crying Game."
This essay's opening quote comes from a brief, seemingly unimportant moment when Tyler and Cornelius board a city bus. Spying an ad for one of those Calvin Klein/Abercrombie type of outfits, Cornelius nods toward the portrait of a mostly nude boy-man, his body impossibly lean and completely hairless, like one of God's angels rendered in marble and put on a pedestal.
Is that what a man looks like? The irony, of course, is that Brad Pitt epitomizes the new standard of male beauty, a denuded figure that seems stuck in the in-between years of adolescence.
But beyond superficial indications, the question goes deeper. Does a man wear a tie and a white dress shirt and go to an office every day? Does he bring home a nice paycheck and drive an expensive car and have sex with lots of beautiful women? Are these the things that make him a man? In an era where it's no longer necessary for a male to prove his worth by strength and deed, these Madison Avenue cues have become their substitute -- and, Tyler argues, unworthy ones.
Tyler starts a movement built around underground fight clubs. There are some professional types like Cornelius, but for the most part their recruits are the disaffected and the downwardly mobile: Waiters, mechanics, bartenders -- the people in service jobs who keep things running to ensure the comfort of the comfortable, and who are looked down upon for their efforts.
The famous first two rules of Fight Club are that you do not talk about Fight Club, but of course people do and they spread all over the country. The combat is not about winning and losing, but the rush of fighting another man, just to say you are capable of doing so. The primal reasons for doing so in a modern society may have vanished, but these wayward souls want to -- literally -- get medieval on each other.
The film's chassis gets looser and looser in the second half, the suspension becomes balky and the steering grows uncertain. The movie (unlike our two anti-heroes) never drives right off the road, but it careens through the breakdown lane at times.
Tyler expands the fight clubs into something called Project Mayhem, with random acts of vandalism against corporate symbols evolving into outright terrorism. The final image, of skyscrapers of industry collapsing upon themselves in a manner shockingly similar to the World Trade Center towers, feels blasphemous now.
At this point in the story, the Tyler/Cornelius split has been revealed, so the audience isn't really sure how much of what we're seeing is real and how much the duo's collective, fermented imagination.
The character of Marla flits in and out as the plot demands. Cornelius can't stand her, but she and Tyler start having lots of wild sex, which of course is actually with him, since it's his alter-ego. It's not really so much of a well-defined character as the connective tissue between scenes where the filmmakers want to go.
"Fight Club" is one of those movies that needs the separation of years for proper perspective. When I first saw it, I thought it was a spectacular failure of a film, ambitious and unwieldy. More than 10 years later, it looks like a truly audacious movie with a lot of important ideas underneath the kooky terrorism plot and spurting blood of the club's arena. Give it another 10 for the true reckoning.
