Review: "My Zoe"

 

I remember screening "Funny People" some years ago and 80 minutes in I was thinking, "This is one of the best movies I've seen this year." And then the film systematically flushed itself down a toilet in a way I'd never seen.

"My Zoe" doesn't start quite that high or end that low. But still, I was so incredibly engaged by this heartrending drama from writer/director/star Julie Delpy, a look at a fractured marriage that reaches crisis when their young daughter is injured. Then it becomes something completely else. Something that, while it has merits on its own, doesn't belong to the first part.

I'm in a bit of a conundrum on how to review "My Zoe," since I think hearing exactly what the second part is might push people away from giving it a chance, people who maybe won't find the disconnect as jarring as I did.

So the best course seems to write two halves of a review, and give you the option of reading just the first, or the second, or both. Ready? Here goes.

A ravishingly poignant family drama

Julie Delpy has been in a lot of movies about relationships, and started making her own some years ago. The French actress is best known in American circles for "Before Sunrise" and its sequels with director Richard Linklater and co-star Ethan Hawke, in which a couple flirt with the beginnings of a relationship.

Now she gives us "My Zoe," a wrenching family drama about a man and wife who are ending their marriage, and their titular daughter becomes another piece of collateral in the acrimonious split.

Isabelle (Delpy) and James (Richard Armitage) are middle-aged and well-to-do, living in Berlin despite coming from France and England, respectively. As the story opens they have recently separated and are working out a joint custody arrangement. 

Zoe, played by Sophia Ally, is a bright bundle of 7-year-old joy. She seems not to notice the way her parents subtlety dig at each other during their hand-offs. They constantly talk about "my time" with Zoe as if it is a fungible commodity to be bickered and bartered over. For example, Isabelle insists on accompanying James and Zoe to her soccer game, even though she must soon leave it for work, just because she doesn't want to surrender an allotted hour.

Armitage and Delpy are fantastic together, even though their scenes are hard to watch. We see the years of faded joy and pain etched in their every word and expression. Everything is an exchange of guilt and blame. We might first look unkindly upon her because Isabelle cheated on James with another man (Saleh Bakri), whom she sneaks into her apartment while Zoe is asleep.

But James has major creeper vibes. He's controlling and manipulative, seems incapable of accepting blame, and there's a hint of physical abuse in the past. At one point he refused intimacy for three years, which would drive any person into another's arms. James has a way of encompassing someone in a warm embrace, but we can't help notice his strong hand wrapping the back of their neck.

Things come to a fore when Zoe comes down with a strange malady. Isabelle thinks it's just a simple cold at first, but in the morning the girl won't wake. At the hospital the diagnosis quickly becomes more severe, and there are haunting questions about injuries and harm.

Sitting in the waiting room, James and Isabelle circle each other like wounded animals. They spit insults and question the foundations of their relationship. It seems James wants her back despite all this, but Isabelle has gained strength with her scars.

As Zoe's life hangs in the balance, can her parents ever put aside their hatred for each other to be a family again?

A disconcerting look at the quandaries of science

What would you do if your child was lying brain dead in a hospital, with no hope of recovery? What if you were a scientist who saw a slim but hopeful chance of bringing them back, even if it meant setting aside every ethical standard you'd ever striven for?

That's the quandary of Isabelle (July Delpy), a French immunologist whose life is upturned when her 7-year-old daughter, Zoe (Sophia Ally), suffers a freak accident that results in a brain hematoma. The doctors operate and are optimistic at first, but it soon becomes clear she will never recover. They bring up the aching question of donating her organs so other children in that same hospital will live. What do you do?

Compounding the situation is that her estranged husband, James (Richard Armitage), wants to let Zoe pass. Despite the poisonous end to their relationship, he insists they should reunite in their daughter's memory. But Isabelle won't let go of her daughter -- ever.

She travels to Moscow to consult with a controversial doctor, Thomas Fischer (Daniel Brüh). He's found a way to impregnate women well past the age previously thought possible, and is catering to an international clientele of well-heeled types. But can he clone Zoe?

He refuses, at first. Fischer has been hounded by the scientific community, setting up in Russia to avoid censure and even prosecution. But he's intrigued by the possibility of Isabelle's case, or should I say Zoe's. They initiate a quiet experiment, knowing the chances are low and the risks are high. As scientists, they develop a shorthand of communicating and something like a friendship begins to develop between them.

Fischer's wife, Laura (Gemma Arterton), is ardently opposed to the move. She knows what their family has to lose. But she meets with Isabelle to convey her concerns, and the women end up bonding over their shared experience as mothers. Laura can't help but notice the way Isabelle speaks about Zoe in the present tense. But can a clone really be the same person who was lost?

Eventually, James turns up again for one more try at a reconciliation. He's horrified when he learns what Isabelle is trying to do, seeing it as a theft of his own parenthood. They seem poised to reignite their long war, with their daughter -- or at least her ghost represented as DNA in test tubes -- treated as a prize to be divided.

.......................................

OK, we're back. Depending on which part(s) you read, those both sound like promising premises. But Delpy turns so sharply from one to the other, we feel whiplashed and discombobulated. 

My take is she really wants the movie to be about the second part, but spends the bulk of the movie setting it up so well that she's made another, better story entirely. Like Isabelle and James, the two pieces each have flaws and attributes -- but are utterly incompatible. 

 

Review: "Byzantium"

I think it's pretty clear to most observers that the whole vampires-as-passionate-lovers shtick is about played out. So it's curious to see director Neil Jordan, who helped kick things off with the 1994 film version of "Interview with the Vampire," making a movie that plays out like a high-minded twist on the "Twilight" flicks.

"Byzantium" boasts Jordan's signature stylistic flourishes and sexual undercurrents. A favorite recurring theme of his, the mysterious stranger with a game-changing secret, is here represented by Eleanor. As played by Saoirse Ronan, she's over 200 years old but perpetually caught in adolescence after being turned into an immortal blood-drinker by her own mother, Clara (Gemma Arterton).

Arterton and Ronan are only a few years apart in age, and indeed their characters identify themselves as sisters to avoid suspicion. They've been traveling the world for two centuries, on the run from the brotherhood of vampires that views them as outlaws.

While Eleanor is smart, cultured and finely mannered, Clara is a low-born trollop -- literally. After being turned to prostitution at a young age and giving up her baby to a convent, she's never been able to shake her bent toward sexual exploitation. She makes an itinerant living as a stripper or prostitute, and is always scheming up a new con job.

While Clara kills wantonly and sometimes for pleasure, Eleanor only feasts upon people who know they want to die -- usually the old and lonely, with whom she shares a few intimate moments before exchanging need for need.

Their past catches up to them, and after a gruesome encounter they flee to an unnamed beach resort town, the sort of place populated by cheap carny workers and musty retirement residents. Clara quickly latches onto a sad sack (Daniel Mays) who inherited an old hotel, and soon they've set up shop there.

The story plays out in a mix of high and low concepts. Flashbacks to their origins have a novelistic feel, a tragic tale of woe amid the petticoats and arrogant noblemen. The modern sequences, though, have a moody feel and a sleek visual look. They're joined by a framing device in which Eleanor writes out her forbidden story, longhand of course, and tosses the pages into the wind.

Ronan, whose liquid blue eyes and bland prettiness tend to steer her toward passive roles, displays an impressive range of moods and emotions -- even scaring the wits out of a nosy teacher who asks too many questions. Arterton has a swashbuckling verve as the libidinous Clara.

I quite enjoyed the performance of Caleb Landry Jones as Frank, a shy boy who notices Eleanor and begins to gravitate toward her. A sickly young man, Frank is perpetually hunched and peering, and Jones croaks out all his dialogue as if he's ashamed of the words he has to utter. It's a stylized but affecting performance, and we feel Frank's sense of estrangement from the world around him, and how he would see Eleanor as a kindred soul.

"Byzantium" builds up to some fairly predictable plot turns, so the movie didn't hold many surprises for me story-wise. But it did make the idea of the eternal undead living amongst us seem fresh and even a little sexy again, which I didn't think possible. When you don't treat them as fare for teenybopper fantasies, vampires can actually seem cool.

Review: "Tamara Drewe"

"Tamara Drewe" is a story about writers, and does a lovely job of depicting the interior worlds they inhabit, and the fragile egos that often accompany a lifetime spent mostly inside one's own head.

It's a comedy, but in that distinctly British mode that always involves a generous ladling of misery. It succeeds as a comedy of manners and observation, though it errs in presenting us with a wide array of interesting characters, and then selecting the least compelling among them to drive the story.

The film is based on a comic strip by Posy Simmonds that is essentially a modern take on Thomas Hardy's fourth book, "Far from the Madding Crowd." The screenplay by Moira Buffini even gifts us with a Thomas Hardy scholar, one of a half-dozen or so authors living at Stonefield, a writer's retreat in the idyllic (and fictional) village of Ewedown.

An inside joke is that the Hardy expert, who's been toiling away on a book about him for two years, spends much of his time convincing others that Hardy is not a dreadful bore.
"Tamara Drewe" is anything but dull.

Stonefield is the demesne of Nicholas Hardiment, a successful writer of crime novels all featuring the same hero, and his long-suffering wife Beth (Tamsin Greig), who manages the farm and the writers-in-residence, while bearing his numerous affairs. Nicholas is played by Roger Allam in a spot-on performance as a man who holds nothing but condescension for those around him, including his fans, but is smart enough to conceal it.

Storytellers are really liars and thieves, Nicholas sermonizes, and seems intent on proving his own platitude.

The guest writers are mostly would-be and wannabe authors, and one suspects Nicholas only keeps them around for the extra income. Glen, the Hardy scholar, is the only American in the group, and seems more interested in sticking his nose into Stonefield's ongoing passion plays than finishing his book. Glen is played by Bill Camp in a wondrous turn that lets the audience see him thinking.

Things are shaken up with the arrival of Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton), a local girl who was mostly known for her impish sense of humor and huge nose. She's since had the nose bobbed into a cute lightly-freckled button, and has become a thriving columnist for a London newspaper.
The ostensible purpose of her return is to fix her family's old home up for sale, but there's clearly some puckish pride in showing off to the yokels how luminous she turned out.

All the men at Stonefield are instantly transfixed the moment Tamara climbs over the neighboring fence wearing short-shorts -- none more so than local handyman Andy Cobb (Luke Evans), who had a fling with her when they were teens. She hires Andy to renovate her home -- which used to belong to his family -- and maybe measure her personal drapes.

Things spin sideways when Tamara falls for Ben Sergeant (Dominic Cooper), the drummer and songwriter for a famous rock band, Swipe. Soon the tiny town is atwitter over a famed musician residing in their midst. Andy, meanwhile, can't believe he lost out to a guy who wears makeup.

It's around this point that the plot takes an unexpected, and for me unappreciated, turn. Two 15-year-old girls (Jessica Barden and Charlotte Christie), who had been acting as sort of the local Greek chorus commenting on the comings and goings and trystings of the main characters, suddenly jump into the driver's seat and speed off.

Things eventually get righted, but I kept yearning for the focus to return to the flighty Tamara, the drolly narcissistic Nicholas and the self-deprecating Glen. Instead, we spend an entire reel of film with the screechy, whiny, manipulative brats at the fore.

I don't hold it too much against the film, though, because director Stephen Frears ("The Queen") has such a great touch with his actors, that everything that comes before or after that wrong turn is such a delight. These characters are so vibrant, flawed and alive, I just loved spending time with them.

3 stars out of four

Video review: "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time"

This summer's crop of movies featured a lot of disappointments. But one I think just about everyone saw coming was "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time."

An action/adventure from king of schlock Jerry Bruckheimer? Based on a video game? Set in the ancient deserts of Persia? With no actual Persians among the principal cast?

When one considers the progeny of this sun-baked disaster, the question becomes not where did everything go wrong, but how did anyone ever think it would go right.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Dastan, a street urchin-turned-adopted prince of the realm. While sacking an enemy city he finds a magical dagger that can transport the bearer back in time one minute, so they can change the course of events to their favor. Soon Dastan and the dagger's guardian, Tamina (Gemma Arterton), are on the run with everyone pursuing them.
Alfred Molina is worth a few yucks as a criminally-minded sheik who despises how the government is taxing his ostrich racetrack.

Mostly, though, it's a stupefying sequence of action scenes where Dastan -- or at least Gyllenhaal's obvious stunt double -- acrobatically leaps about the screen, clashing swords and getting his derring-do on.

I like video games. And I love movies. But the two just weren't meant to be together.
Bonus features are rather skimpy in the DVD version, but perk up somewhat in Blu-ray.

The DVD comes only with a making-of documentary that touches on various aspects of production. The single-disc Blu-ray also comes with a single deleted scene: A banquet involving the serving of heads that sounds suspiciously similar to the "monkey brains" scene in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom."

The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack has both these features, plus "The Sands of Time," an interactive feature that links to about 40 featurettes about the making of the film.

Movie: 1.5 stars
Extras: 2 stars

Video review: "Clash of the Titans"

Despite arriving in April, in many ways "Clash of the Titans" was the first big summer movie of 2010.

The remake of the kitschy 1981 fantasy adventure is fast-paced and slick, with Ray Harryhausen's clunky stop-motion animation critters replaced by sleek computer-generated ones.

Perseus has undergone his own transformation, from Harry Hamlin's feathered-hairdo favorite son of Zeus to a snarling Sam Worthington, buzz-cut and seriously P.O.'d at the gods for using humans as their playthings.

Directed by Louis Leterrier, "Titans" is a mash-up of Greek/Roman mythology so addled, Edith Hamilton must be crying somewhere in Olympus. But the story doesn't have an ounce of fat, and captures the over-the-top fun of the original while dumping most of the schlockier elements.

The story: Zeus (Liam Neeson) and the other gods are furious that humans aren't praying to them like they used to, sapping their strength. He taps the original underworld boss, Hades (Ralph Fiennes), to strike terror into their hearts by threatening to unleash the Kraken, a powerful sea titan.

Perseus, the half-human son of Zeus, must find a way to defeat the Kraken by visiting the Stygian Witches, but not before fighting off some oversized scorpions and running afoul of Calibos, cursed into demon form by the gods.

And Medusa is still out there, in need of a close shave.

Video extras -- at least with the Blu-ray version -- are truly top-notch, providing hours worth of entertaining and insightful peeks behind the camera.

The DVD comes only with deleted scenes, but they're pretty hefty: Totaling about 18 minutes, they include much more intrigue between the gods, which I for one loved about the first film.

The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack comes with a host of other features, including an alternate ending that is much angrier in tone than the theatrical one -- not to mention Perseus ends up with a different lady love.

There's also a featurette on Worthington's growing reputation as the go-to action hero of his generation. "He's better than a stuntman," Leterrier says.

The centerpiece is a "Maximum Movie Mode" that combines 11 featurettes about nearly every aspect of production, plus 40 minutes of picture-in-picture commentary.

One takeaway nugget: Originally, the planned to have Hades as a female character!

A digital copy is included.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time"

"Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time" is a big-budget action movie about a magic dagger that can transport its bearer backward in time. I can certainly think of 116 minutes I'd love to have back.

This bewilderingly bad offering from the house of Jerry Bruckheimer is based on a video game. The lineage of movies spawned thusly is not a noble one, and "Prince of Persia" competes for the top spot at the bottom of a deep trough.

How awful do things get? Well, let's start with the fact that star Jake Gyllenhaal does that annoying thing American actors do when they don't want to attempt a foreign accent: A generic English lilt that summons painful aural memories involving Kevin Costner and archery.

I guess Gyllenhaal can't be blamed, since he's the only Yank in an entirely British cast of principles. I'm hardly a disciple of political correctness, but methinks if you're going to have a movie called "Prince of Persia," you might want to have at least one actual Persian.

The video game (actually, a series) involved lots of sword-fighting and acrobatic jumping and tumbling, and director Mike Newell stages his action scenes (clumsily) to look like Gyllenhaal is in the middle of a really challenging level of the game, and we're directing him with our controller.

The intercutting between Gyllenhaal and his stuntmen is pretty obvious, as the professional busts some of those gravity-defying parkour moves, transplanted from an urban setting to pre-Christendom Arabia. Then we cut back to the star touching down.

The plot, courtesy of three screenwriters, is a whirling dervish of pseudo-history and made-up mythology.

Tus (Richard Coyle), the crown prince of Persia, orders his troops to invade the city of Alamut after discovering some trumped-up evidence they're secretly forging weapons. Dastan (Gyllenhaal), the youngest brother whom the king adopted as a street urchin, is the hero of the battle, even though he opposed the attack.

Dastan finds a magic dagger that contains the Sands of Time. When you press a button on the hilt, you travel backward in time one minute, and can prevent bad things from happening. The sands are consumed, but Tamina (Gemma Arterton), the Alamutian princess, is the dagger's guardian and knows how to get more.

The king is fatally poisoned, and Dastan catches the blame, forcing he and Tamina to flee for their lives, ratcheting up a standard-issue love/hate relationship. I won't reveal who the real villain is, other than to point out Ben Kingsley is hanging around, playing the uncle and wearing a lot of eyeliner. Just sayin'.

Alfred Molina turns up as a shady sheikh who runs an ostrich-racing operation, has a deadly African knife guy as his best friend, and delivers a lot of angry tirades about the government taking all his money through taxes to spend on stuff he doesn't like. I think the Tea Party just found its Adam.

Anyway, things devolve into a seemingly endless series of battles and acrobatics, with everybody trying to get their hands on the dagger -- and the fate of the entire world hanging in the balance, of course.

And speaking of that dagger: If the wielder goes back in time a minute, wouldn't the dagger also travel backward, and thus still have its sand? So theoretically you could just keep pushing the button over and over. Maybe even ... 116 times?

1.5 stars out of four

Review: "Clash of the Titans"

Has it really been three decades since the original "Clash of the Titans," featuring a mangled mash-up of Greek mythology, herky-jerky stop-motion animated monsters and a really bitchin' Harry Hamlin feathered haircut?

The new "Clash" exists mostly to remind us how much things have changed.

The monsters are now sleek computer-generated beasties, snapping and slithering in all their 3-D glory. The gumbo of Greek legends has been remixed with the addition of wood-skinned sorcerers and some new humanistic themes.

And as Perseus, the half-man half-god hero, Sam Worthington's no-frills buzzcut signals that this is one classical dude with a lot of post-modern 'tude.

This remake is unnecessary but unobjectionable, and generally pretty fun. Fans of the original -- who, like me, regard it with warm nostalgia while chuckling at its hokier aspects -- will find themselves ticking off a checklist of what's been retained, changed or dropped.

I was disappointed that Calibos, the half-demon villain from the original, has been relegated to a walk-on role. Although there's still a nice touch of pathos to him.

And I didn't like the reduced byplay between the Gods of Olympus. I really enjoyed the first film's depiction of scheming, jealous super-beings conniving against each other, with mortals and their own demigod offspring used as chess pieces.

Liam Neeson gets in a few moments of thunder as Zeus, head god and Perseus' father. And Ralph Fiennes shines as crafty Hades, dissolving into mist and turning a human queen into an ancient hag with a touch.

But the rest of the gods are relegated to mere eye candy. Danny Huston, as Poseidon, has about two lines of dialogue. The female gods don't even get that.

At least the earthbound women got meatier roles. Andromeda (Alexa Davalos), the princess of the god-offending city of Argos, is prepared to sacrifice herself if Hades releases the Kraken, a powerful sea titan, as revenge for their arrogance. And Io (Gemma Arterton), an ageless demigod herself, takes on the role of Perseus' protector and companion.

Travis Beacham, Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi deliver a lean, mean script that focuses on the thrill of individual encounters without an ounce of dilly-dally in between. Perseus and a band of Argos' best warriors are sent to find the Stygian Witches -- frightful triplets sharing a single eye -- to learn if the Kraken can be defeated.

Instead of being the anointed, favored son of the gods, in this version Perseus is a poor fisherman resentful of the big boys' meddling in their workaday lives. He even refuses the gift of a magic sword from Zeus because he wants to win as a man, not a god.

(Although I couldn't help noticing he starts accepting these supernatural advantages ... but only after his cadre of comrades has been significantly reduced in headcount, and his own neck is on the line.)

Director Louis Leterrier keeps things moving along at a brisk pace that prevents the audience from dwelling on any incongruent new elements. Like Perseus' djinn companion, who looks like a cross between the "Lord of the Rings" ents and the Tusken Raiders of "Star Wars." Or that the Greek team also includes, for some reason, a pair of Russian hunters. I think someone took a wrong turn at the Caucasus.

One throwaway joke neatly sums up this entire movie. As Perseus and his crew are arming themselves for their journey, he reaches into a pile of equipment and pulls out a certain golden mechanical owl and asks what it is. The gruff captain (Mads Mikkelsen) tells him to leave it behind.

Younger audience members will be bewildered, but fans of the 1981 film will feel their hearts freeze: "Not that frackin' owl!!" Fortunately, the new "Clash of the Titans" has retained enough of the stuff that made the original memorable, and left the goofier ordnance back in the nostalgia bin.

3 stars