“Greed” is the sort of sharp-clawed satire that ends up scratching its target more than goring it. It’s a send-up of the billionaire class, the ultra-wealthy who make piles of dough by cheating other people, then cheating the government out of their taxes.
Steve Coogan plays Sir Richard “Greedy” McGreadie, who made his fortune in the high-fashion world of High Street, where all the tony British labels make their way. He’s a classic climber who came from good stock but poor finances, and quickly learned that you have to take chances and twist some elbows if you’re going to make it.
Written and directed by Michael Winterbottom, the story is framed around Richard preparing for a lavish 60th birthday party for himself. It’s to be held on a remote Mediterranean tax shelter, a land of yachts and self-entitlement.
Richard is divorced from Samantha (Isla Fisher), though they’re still very connected in a business sense and their spoiled children, Lily (Sophie Cookson) and Finn (Asa Butterfield). Also tagging along for the party are Richard’s hired biographer, Nick (David Mitchell), a meek sort who acts as the audience’s eyes and ears, and Amanda (Dinita Gohil), who’s organizing the party but has family back in India working in the very sweat shops Richard benefits from.
There’s a lot of funny stuff in the movie, from Richard’s orange-hued fake tan and blindingly white teeth veneers to the overstuffed way he’s constantly moving about, yelling at everyone and expecting the world to cater to his whims.
Unfortunately, the film takes a turn toward the serious in the last act that doesn’t really work. You can’t spend an hour-plus laughing at the buffoonish rich man and then suddenly turn him into a credible villain.
Trying to provoke your audience to both laughter and anger is just, well… greedy.
Not much extra in terms of bonus features. There’s a single deleted scene and a making-of documentary short. That’s it.
Tonally “Greed” is a sticky wicket. It seems very much to be a satirical send-up of the billionaire class from writer/director Michael Winterbottom starring his frequent muse, Steve Coogan, who have made the “Trip” series of movies and TV show together.
Wearing a gloriously saturated spray tan and glaringly white fake teeth, Coogan’s Sir Richard “Greedy” McCreadie is a buffoonish figure with a hint of steel underneath. A wheeler-dealer extraordinaire, McCreadie is the self-proclaimed master of High Street, the center of the British fashion world.
His MO is famous: he swoops in and buys up a clothing brand, strips it of all its key assets to line his own pockets, then washes his hands when the enterprise topples. He uses the nefarious but perfectly legal levers of finance to essentially use a company’s own value to buy itself, passing off one debt to cover another.
The story centers on preparations for McCreadie’s massive 60th birthday party in Monaco. It’s a Mediterranean mecca of wealth where the rich and famous park their yachts and their assets in its tax-free haven.
The shindig promises to be a bacchanalian feast of delights and pomposity. Everyone is to dress in ancient Greek clothing – Sir Richard is a big fan of the film “Gladiator” -- and they’re even building a Parthenon to witness staged fights with a real lion. Alas, the lion seems old and meek and the cut-rate Bulgarians brought in to do the job are mucking it up.
Isla Fisher plays Samantha, McCreadie’s ex-wife. She’s the very picture of unearned privilege. Despite their divorce they remain quite close, in no small part because his business enterprise uses her as the primary stakeholder for those aforementioned tax cheats.
And it’s clear the old fires still burn, despite the fact each has hooked up with a younger, hot companion.
A couple of other framing stores mix in: flashbacks to an interrogation before a British Parliament committee, during which McCreadie flashes his famous contempt for his perceived lessers (which is everybody). And a mild-mannered writer, Nick (David Mitchell), has been hired to write McCreadie’s “official biography, so he hangs around in the background acting as the audience’s eyes and ears.
Dinita Gohil plays Amanda, an Indian-Brit who acts as the tycoon’s majordomo, trying to handle a thousand details for the impending party. Shirley Henderson is McCreadie’s mother, who carefully isntalled the chip on his shoulder long ago. Asa Butterfield plays Finn, the son who openly despises his dad, musing about his affinity for Oedipus.
In one of the more amusing side bits, Sophie Cookson plays the pampered daughter, Lily, who is trying desperately to launch her own “famous for being famous” brand a la the Kardashians. (McCreadie is vexed to learn Kim is richer than he is.) She has a reality TV crew following her around to film staged turmoil with her boyfriend.
That’s the world of the McCreadies: faked and overpriced.
It’s a typically on-point performance for Coogan, but the story tends to go into respective cycles where he’s constantly raining verbal abuse upon his staff (without ever actually firing anyone, strangely) or twisting elbows making deals.
“Say four and shake my hand,” is his go-to move for lowball offers.
Toward the last third “Greed” grows much angrier and sadder, as we’re asked not just to resent McCreadie and giggle at his excesses but condemn him for the way he leaves a wake of ruined prospects behind him. Problem is, we’ve spent 70 minutes or so laughing at him so it’s hard to suddenly take him seriously as a villain.
The movie ends with what must be the longest string of title cards I’ve ever seen, with all sorts of facts and figures about how big-name fashion brands exploit workers in developing countries, paying them a few quid a day to make clothes that sell for a hundred times that.
Mixing rage and laughter is a very tough amalgamation, and not one “Greed” pulls off very well. Despite plenty of nice pieces, this movie is less than the sum of its parts.
Part science fiction, part road movie, a whole lot angst-y teenage romance, “The Space Between Us” shows the limits of what you can do with a good cast of actors.
Asa Butterfield is a talented young thespian (“Hugo,” “Ender’s Game”), Britt Robertson has stood out in some not-so-great flicks (“The Longest Yard”), and Gary Oldman is, of course, Gary Frickin’ Oldman. Toss in Carla Gugino as a supporting figure, and that’s more talent than most movies can muster.
Alas, the story (screenplay by Allan Loeb) is a mish-mash of random themes and plot threads that don’t weave themselves together in any sort of coherent way. It ends up feeling like a combination of the old David-Bowie-as-space-alien movie, “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” with a human boy standing in for the cute outworlder being chased by a small army of scientists and law enforcement.
The set-up is that Gardner Elliott (Butterfield) is the first human born on Mars – an accident, as his mother and the leader of the astronaut expedition got herself pregnant shortly before takeoff. Now 16, he’s a super-smart kid with obvious impulse issues and a clinging longing for a chance to walk on Earth -- preferably in the company of a cute teen girl.
Tulsa (Robertson) is the gal in question. They’ve been communicating via video chat and messages for a while. She’s a tough outcast sort, so they share a sense of loneliness.
Through a lot of high-tech hi jinks, Gardner manages to get himself to Earth and, eventually, hook up with Tulsa. Unfortunately, after growing up in a low-gravity atmosphere, his body isn’t very suited to Earth’s weight. Ignoring the advice from the NASA eggheads, he and Tulsa run off together for an adventure.
After landing the girl, tops on his list is finding out who is father is. All Gardner has to go by is a photo he found in his mother’s stuff. (She died, of course, because otherwise we wouldn’t have a movie.)
Leading the chase for them is Nathaniel Shepherd (Oldman), a super-rich entrepreneur who dreamt up the Mars colony years ago, but has become something of a recluse ever since. He’s very fidgety and prone to neurotic outbursts, and seems able to command government troops and resources with a phone call, for some reason.
Director Peter Chelsom (“Hannah Montana: The Movie”) can’t manage to sustain a consistent tone to the movie or a steady emotional keel from his actors, so it’s not surprising that they seem to go off in different directions from each other. For Butterfield, that means coming across rather flat, while Oldman is a whirligig of haphazard behavior. Robertson tries to break out of the teen romcom prison bars the movie puts her behind.
“The Space Between Us” is a stellar idea for a film that never achieves liftoff.
Bonus features include five deleted scenes and an alternate ending. There is also a feature-length commentary by Chelsome and a 4-minute featurette, “Love.”
“The Space Between Us” is a cosmically flawed science
fiction love story filled with talented actors striving mightily against bad
material.
Some of the scenarios and dialogue ring so false, even the
talents of Gary Oldman can’t save him from seeming preposterous at times. Asa
Butterfield, who anchors the movie as the first human born on Mars who years to
travel to Earth, has been terrific in fare like “Hugo” and the underrated “Ender’s
Game.” Here he's a bit stiff and remote.
And Britt Robertson has often been the best thing about some
not very good movies like “Tomorrowland” and “The Longest Ride.” She tries hardest of all, attempting to craft a character out of meet-cute tropes and puppy-love-on-the-run contretemps.
(Though
somebody needs to tell her people that her days of passing as a teen are
behind.)
I didn’t buy this movie for a minute. I didn’t swallow the
premise, I didn’t believe in the characters, I wasn’t engaged in the plot the
film puts them through. The whole affair is just tiresome and often ridiculous.
It plays like a combination of “The Man Who Fell to Earth”
and any one of a dozen teenybopper romances.
Butterfield plays Gardner Elliot. In a long, tedious and
largely unnecessary exposition, we learn about how his mother (Janet Montgomery) was the lead
astronaut on the mission in 2018 to permanently colonize the red planet. Except
she made a little mistake and got pregnant right before the launch. (Apparently
none of the 8,500 physical tests they put astronauts through detected this.)
The heads of NASA and the Genesis company that conceived the Mars mission decide to cover up the baby's existence as a potential PR disaster, especially after Gardner's mom dies during child birth. Oldman plays Nathaniel Shepherd, the Steve Jobs-like head honcho who's always flinging his hands in the air and shouting in an exasperated manner.
Flash forward 16 years, and Gardner is now a hyper-smart, mischievous kid who longs to go back to Earth -- in no small part because he's got a gal pal with whom he exchanges text and video messages. (Despite taking nearly a year to travel between the planets, apparently by 2034 data can ping back and forth without even any buffering.)
Tulsa (Robertson) is a typical tough, alienated girl struggling through high school. She takes her nickname from her hometown, because here she has absolutely no friends. There's this weird scene where she wanders into the band room and starts noodling on an electric piano, and some boys peer over the edge of the window outside to laugh at her. Then they literally chase her out of the school as she tears off angrily on her motorcycle.
Haven't these boys ever seen someone playing a piano before. (Especially in the band room.) Or don't they just have better things to do? It plays out like a fourth-grader's conception of what high school must be like.
Let's skip ahead. Gardner manages to get himself to Earth, but his body isn't suited for the heavier gravity. He skips out from the NASA facility to hunt down Tulsa, and pretty soon they're on the lam while the science guys and lawmen are on their tail. Tagging along with the chasers is Carla Gugino as Kendra, a scientist who acted as Gardner's surrogate mom while they were on Mars.
The second half of the movie is one big chase, interrupted by smooches and the sort of deep, abiding love that normally forms over the course of two days. Gardner and Tulsas commit an astonishing number of crimes along the way, including stealing innumerable cars.
This is low-budget science fiction, so the world of 2034 looks astonishing similar to the one we have right now. The cars, the clothes, the smartphones and tablets -- they didn't even dress it up a little bit. Heck, the astronauts even ride in rockets that wouldn't look out of place in "Apollo 13." The one concession is laptops with clear cases, which are kinda cool.
After hooking up with Tulsa, Gardner's big quest is to find his father. The only evidence he has is a photo of his mom with him at a beach house. I won't say more, other than if you haven't figured out the ending by the midway point, you need some lessons on Screenwriting 101. (Allan Loeb gets the blame... er, the credit, for the script.)
"The Space Between Us" contains a few nice moments, mostly intimate little cues where Butterfield and Robertson are allowed to behave like real people rather than characters in a movie. Most of the rest is otherworldly bad.
Asa Butterfield shines in this earnest drama about a super-smart British kid whose math skills far outpace his social ones. Nathan is an autistic lad who gets a chance to join his country’s team on the international math Olympiad. It’s an opportunity of a lifetime, perhaps the entryway to the highest tiers of academia, but his shy manner and trouble relating with other teens also makes it a forbidding challenge.
First-time feature film director Morgan Matthews and screenwriter James Graham show their inexperience, layering in too many supporting characters and tertiary storylines. It’s not these background players are uninteresting – exactly the opposite, in fact.
For instance, Rafe Spall as Nathan’s mentor, a former Olympiad now battling multiple sclerosis, is so compelling that he steals too much of the spotlight from the main character. He almost needs his own movie. Then the filmmakers have the teacher start a romance with Mathan’s mum, played by the great Sally Hawkins, which just comes across as distracting and even creepy.
Still, the film finds its footing once Nathan and his team arrives in China, where they begin a friendly contest of wills with the home team. The boy tries to incorporate himself with his teammates but struggles, especially with the strong-willed Luke (Jake Davies). Meanwhile, Zhang Mei (Jo Yang) of the Chinese team offers her friendship … and perhaps something more, which Nathan is wholly unequipped to deal with.
“A Brilliant Young Mind” is a flawed but worthy cinematic effort. Too many movies nowadays give us lazy stories and unoriginal characters. Here’s a film that tries to do too much.
Alas, the film is being released on video without bonus features of any kind.
"A Brilliant Young Mind" is a sweet and sensitive tale, but it wants to be three sweet and sensitive tales -- maybe more. In exploring the world of an autistic teen boy who's also a math prodigy, the film gives into the temptation to have other figures in his life nudge him out of the frame, which diminishes him as a character.
It's still a lovely film about a troubled genius, along the lines of "A Beautiful Mind" or the more recent "Love & Mercy." I just wish the filmmakers were a little more disciplined in their storytelling choices.
Morgan Matthews is a veteran documentarian making his first foray into feature film directing, and screenwriter James Graham is a relative novice with credits in television. They make the sort of mistakes inexperienced movie-makers make, but show a deft touch toward building believable, relatable characters -- too many, in fact.
The movie's title everywhere but the U.S. is "x+y," which perhaps helps explain the movie's hazy focus. It's based on a documentary called "Beautiful Young Minds," about the International Mathematical Olympiad, also directed by Matthews.
Asa Butterfield plays Nathan Ellis, a Brit lad "on the spectrum" who has trouble connecting emotionally with others. He needs everything to be just so, from his food -- seven prawn balls, not nine! -- to his relationship with his mother (Sally Hawkins), whom he studiously keeps at a distance. His adoring father (Martin McCann) was killed years ago -- Edward Baker-Close plays Nathan as a child -- and he's been essentially floating above human contact since.
Rafe Spall plays Martin Humphreys, a former math prodigy himself, now stricken with MS and a crushing lack of self-worth, who takes Nathan under his wing and begins training him for the math Olympiad. Spall, who resembles a bearded Ryan Reynolds so much I actually thought it was him for the first half-hour or so, is tremendous in the role.
For awhile the film starts following him instead of Nathan, exploring his life away from the boy, and we grow confused. It's obvious Martin sees much of himself in Nathan, and has essentially devoted the entirety of his remaining ambition to seeing him succeed. Do we really need to follow Martin into group therapy sessions, where he lays out his doubts plain as paper? Or a burgeoning, ill-advised romance with Nathan's mom?
Similarly, once Nathan arrives in Taiwan for the math trials, the story sort of scatters into several pieces that, while engaging on their own, don't really fit together.
There is camaraderie and competition amongst the whiz kids, both within the British contingent and against the Chinese team and its adult captain, with whom Nathan's captain (the reliably nervy Eddie Marsan) has an enduring rivalry, barely concealed by convivial joshing.
One of the Brit boys, Luke (Jake Davies), seems to be the smartest and is certainly the boldest, but the others resent him, especially the more socially inclined Alex (Isaac Cooper). The power dynamic shifts this way and that, with Nathan as the neutral party. The team's lone female, Rebecca (Alexa Davies), clearly is attracted to him, but Nathan remains oblivious or unwilling to reciprocate.
Meanwhile, Zhang Mei (Jo Yang) is the Chinese team captain's niece, and makes repeated attempts to ingratiate herself with Nathan. He gradually responds and a friendship forms. Meanwhile, his work on the math team suffers. Has she been conscripted to disorient the British team's top competitor?
So is "A Brilliant Young Mind" a story about math? Or love? Academic rivalries? Second chances? Autism? Father figures? All it once, it would seem.
I may not be a math genius, but I know a thing or two about movies, and one of the first equations one needs to know is that too much addition to the story always results in a deduction of value from the final result. This film is still a positive cinematic experience, but could've been exponentially better.
Give Hollywood credit for tackling a science fiction novel that contains few of the easy entry points the genre usually provides for cinematic endeavors. In "Ender's Game" there are no cute robot sidekicks, no cool aliens as allies, not even the lightspeed spaceships, laser weapons and other cool hardware that populate the background of such movies.
Instead, it's a grim and bleak look at a future where humanity is facing extinction at the hands of a hive-like race of creatures known as the Formics. Asa Butterfield plays Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, a young boy who is also a brilliant strategist, finding himself being trained to lead Earth's defense against the invaders.
(According to the film's narration, children make for better commanders because their ingenuity is not bogged down by straitlaced adult thinking. It's a storytelling conceit; just swallow it and move on.)
The film, based on the novel by Orson Scott Card, largely plays out as a long game of psychological warfare and simulated combat, with Ender attending the elite off-world Battle School, where he must go up against his fellow child recruits, his gruff and demanding commander, and eventually the aliens himself. He is forced to hone his instincts for warfare while balancing them against his human compassion, exemplified respectively by his psychopath brother and his compassionate sister (Abigail Breslin).
If you think just because the movie stars a cast of mostly kid actors that it's a good fit for young audiences, think again. While the violence is rather tame and there's no swearing, the mental duress placed upon Ender is quite extreme. Audience members under high school age would likely find it dreary.
(Incurious adults, too.)
As a cerebral exercise, though, I found the film challenging and complex, supplying many questions and few easy answers about the morality of waging war. Ender's tactics are genius, but his willingness to sacrifice allies to achieve a win earn him the grudging respect of his teachers and fellow students alike.
(I'm not surprised to learn the book is recommended reading for U.S. Marines officer training.)
As Colonel Graff, Harrison Ford tackles a much darker role than we're used to. Graff sees Ender as his shining star, potentially the savior of humanity, and if that means putting a tender boy through the crucible of harsh lessons, he's more than willing to do it. Viola Davis plays a psychiatrist chartered to nurture Ender's psyche, so naturally she finds herself butting heads with Graff.
Ben Kingsley has a small but vital role as the last of Ender's instructors, a man with a tatooed face and mysterious past. Hailee Steinfeld plays Petra, a fellow cadet who stands up for Ender when he's abused by their team leader.
"Ender's Game" will not suit everyone's tastes. Writer/director Gavin Hood's plotting is sometimes suspect, and the story bogs down a few times. And if you go in expecting a light, action-heavy ripping space yarn, you'll likely walk away disappointed. For me, the moral complexities of the tale were tantalizing and way more ambitious than expected. This is thinking man's sci-fi.
"Hugo" is an often-delightful movie that always kept me guessing. It's got a lot of Charles Dickens mixed with a little steampunk fantasy, layered with a rich frosting of tribute to early 20th century silent filmmaking.
In a world where most movies seem to make the entirety of themselves obvious the moment they begin, it was a pleasurable experience to have a film that took its time establishing itself. There doesn't seem to be much of a coherent story for a great deal of the time, just a sprawling group of characters who don't appear to be behaving for the camera. Slowly, though, themes and urgencies coalesce.
This is perhaps the most uncharacteristic movie Martin Scorsese has made, and not just because it's a children's movie, and contains tons of CGI and was shot in 3-D, no less. For once, the 3-D is not just an add-on to pump up ticket grosses, but actually enhances the cinematic experience by adding layers and textures without spotlighting them for their own sake.
The visuals are gorgeous and lush, almost painterly in their evocation of 1930s Paris in winter. The gently twinkling lights, the crisp white snow, the people who dress up in suits and gowns for a simple trip to the train station -- it's a feast for the eyes.
No, this is a departure for Scorsese because he's not exploring his usual theme, the human savagery hidden by urban society. He has made a paean to the dreamers, magicians and tinkerers who strive to reshape their world into something beautiful. This is a story of hope and striving, not sorrow and loss.
Asa Butterfield (who starred in the criminally unappreciated "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas") plays Hugo Cabret, an orphan boy who lives inside the clocks and mechanical guts of the Paris train depot. His uncle, the timekeeper, has long ago disappeared in a drunken fling, and Hugo's clockmaker father died. So he's tragically, achingly alone.
Hugo peers through the clock faces and steam grates at the denizens of the train station, with two figures holding most of his attention. One is the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen, chewing his vowels), an unctuous man with a bad leg supported by a squeaky metal brace, whose specialty is snatching up lost children and shipping them off to the orphanage.
The other is the owner of the toy shop (Ben Kingsley), from whom Hugo has quietly been stealing parts for his own special project. Hugo and his father began repairing a strange automaton, a little metal man who sits at a writing desk. Hugo has become obsessed with getting this creation working again to see what secrets it holds.
As much as I admired "Hugo," I could not give myself over entirely to it. The movie's emotional connections are tenuous -- Scorsese and screenwriter John Logan, working from Brian Selznick's book, never let things get too dark and dreary. Even the villainous station inspector, presented as a buffoon, is allowed redemptive love interest. And the toymaker's bile over his shattered dreams washes away a little too quickly and conveniently.
I also noticed a disturbing artificiality to Moretz' performance -- little gestures and facial expressions that seemed overly theatrical and less than spontaneous. She's been terrific in everything else I've seen her in ("Let Me In," "Kick-Ass"), so I can only fault Scorsese's direction of her.
"Hugo" is gorgeous movie-making that, in end, feels mostly like an homage to itself.
Just a few weeks ago I was reviewing "Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore" and lamenting that movies made for the very youngest children always seem to aim so low. It's almost as if because the intended audience is small, filmmakers feel like their ambitions must likewise be puny.
And then along comes another sequel, "Nanny McPhee Returns," to demonstrate how family films can actually be enjoyable for the entire family.
In case you didn't catch the first movie from five years ago, Emma Thompson wrote both screenplays (based on a series of books by Christianna Brand) and stars as the stern and horrendously ugly titular character. Always sent to the worst families in England, Nanny McPhee goes where she is needed but not wanted, but as soon as she is wanted but not needed, off she goes again.
McPhee is part Mary Poppins, in that her nanny skills are augmented by supernatural powers, but no spoonfuls of sugar to be found here. She doesn't sing either, preferring a stern look and a grunt to get her point across.
If things really get out of hand, she bangs her magic walking stick on the ground, and higgledy-piggledy ensues, usually followed by life lessons. (The film was originally titled "Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang," which is much better.)
The first film took place sometime in the 1800s, and for the sequel the action has moved up to World War II. Young mother Isabel Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal, doing a snappy British lilt) is up to her neck running her husband's farm while he's off fighting in the war, looking after their three children, Vincent, Norman and Megsie (Oscar Steer, Asa Butterfield and Lil Woods).
Things go from chaotic to unmanageable when Isabel's rich niece and nephew, Cyril and Celia, come to stay (played by Eros Vlahos and Rosie Taylor-Ritson). "We're in the land of poo," Cyril observes from their limousine upon surveying the Green farm. Things between the cousins grow worse from there.
Nanny McPhee soon arrives -- ostensibly dispatched by the Army -- to take charge of the situation.
There's a lot of charming antics going on. The prize piglets escape from their pen and must be rounded up, but not before engaging in a little synchronized swimming. Isabel's scheming brother-in-law (Rhys Ifans) is out to sell the farm, because he's got a pair of hitwomen (you read that right) after him for gambling debts.
Maggie Smith shows up as Isabel's forgetful employer, who has a tendency to sit in cow patties and fill up filing cabinets with syrup. And I got a kick out of the helpful manual published by the War Department, "Defusing Your Bomb: Three Simple Steps to an Explosion-Free Day."
The gag is that Nanny McPhee's warts, snaggletooth and other gruesome features disappear as the children learn to behave. There's even a suggestion that she's been at this for some time (watch for Maggie Smith to flash a familiar token).
"Nanny McPhee Returns" may not be the most original material, but director Susanna White pitches the tone just perfectly, a combination of fairy and morality tales. Compared to so much of the dim-bulb rubbish churned out for tots, it practically qualifies as enchanted.
