Review: "Fallen"

“Fallen” has formula written all over it.

It’s a supernatural teen romance/adventure flick based on a (they tell me) popular YA novel by Lauren Kate. The main character is a teen girl who’s new to town and uncertain of herself, falling hard for a mysterious golden boy who turns out to be Much More Than He Seems.

There’s even a darkling competitor for her affections, who’s dreamy but not quite as dreamy as Much More boy.

You can criticize the “Twilight” movies, but at least the main actors were all within hopping distance of the ages of their characters, at least when the first movie came out. “Fallen” has Hollywood’s usual cast of 25- to almost-30-year-olds playing 16 and 17.

The film’s production and release has been troubled. It originally was supposed to come out almost two years ago, finally got dribbled out in places like Singapore and the Philippines last year, the United Kingdom this spring and is now being given a brief U.S. release before coming out on video 3½ weeks later.

Despite the tragic birthing process, I have to admit the movie isn’t bad. It’s got a solid cast, including Addison Timlin, Jeremy Irvine (“War Horse”), Joely Richardson and Lola Kirke, who was wonderful in the little-seen “Mistress America.”

Director Scott Hicks is no slouch, nominated for two Oscars for “Shine.” Screenwriting trio Kathryn Price, Nichole Millard and Michael Arlen Ross do a decent job of adapting Kate’s very derivative fiction into a passable screenplay.

Timlin plays Lucinda Price, a smart girl who’s been tormented by shadowy visions that have left her enrolled by court order in the Sword and Cross reform school. It’s housed in a massive castle where it’s always autumn and the gardeners never seem to keep up with the leaf-raking. She quickly runs afoul of the resident goth girl/bully (Sianoa Smit-McPhee), but befriends nerdy nonstop-talker Penn (Kirke).

Luce is immediately smitten with Daniel (Irvine), the handsome boy who spends all his time doing charcoal drawings in class. He pretends to ignore her or is even outright hostile, but their spark can’t be denied.

(I, for one, am happy to see a movie in which a fair-haired lad is the object of affection. Us blond boys have had a rough romantic run at the movies as of late.)

Harrison Gilbertson plays Cam, the long-haired (brunette!) bad boy who always seems to be in trouble with the law or teachers. He makes his own play for Luce and she responds, if for no other reason than the contrast with Daniel’s indifference.

Richardson plays the philosophy and religion teacher, whose curriculum seems to center entirely on biblical stories about the “Fallen” -- angels who chose neither God or Lucifer’s side in the great battle of heaven. Preferring the sanctity of human love, they’re cursed to roam the Earth in human form.

It’s not often you see a movie actually lay out its entire metaphysical blueprint -- in a classroom, no less -- so there is no confusion about who’s playing what role in the larger story.

Even though it contains few surprises, “Fallen” really isn’t that awful as teen romances go. Nobody sucks any blood or turns into a wolf, though don’t be surprised if some celestial CGI wings make an appearance near the end. It ain’t heaven, but it’s a long ways from hellish filmmaking.

Video review: "Great Expectations"

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.

Movie:

Extras:

 

Review: "Great Expectations"

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.

Video review: "War Horse"

"War Horse" got an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture -- plus five other nods -- but little real love. Box office receipts were respectable but hardly stratospheric. The film won virtually none of the various awards for which it was nominated.

The best way to describe the reception given to "War Horse" was one of respectful indifference.

While hardly one of Steven Spielberg's best directorial efforts, "War Horse" certainly deserves better than the miserly regard it's been afforded. It's a lush family drama, sad but redemptive, the sort of ambitious old-fashioned movie-making not seen in great quantities for at least half a century.

As a bonus, the musical score, by constant Spielberg companion John Williams, is one of his best in years.

The star of the story is Joey, a brilliantly fast and spirited horse from England who becomes the object of affection for a variety of people leading up to and during World War I. At first he's the ward of Albert (Jeremy Irvine), a poor farm boy, but then Joey is conscripted into the British cavalry.

As the years roll by and the horrors mount up, Joey's fortunes change as often as the landscape, from rolling French countryside to the nightmarish labyrinth of trench warfare.

Even though the film lacks anything resembling suspense, it's still a fantastically emotional ride.

Video extras are good, though there's a wide chasm between the single-disc DVD edition and the top-of-the-line Blu-ray/DVD combo.

The DVD comes with a single featurette, "War Horse: The Look," which concentrates on how Spielberg and his crew achieved the suffused, painterly look of the film.

Upgrade to the two-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo, and you add two more features. There's a making-of documentary featuring Spielberg and all the cast, and a featurette about the making of the movie from the perspective of an extra.

Go for the four-disc package, and there are four more featurettes. "A Filmmaking Journey" concentrates on Spielberg's artistic journey making the movie. Another focuses on producer and longtime Spielberg collaborator Kathleen Kennedy, including her personal on-set photographs. Two more featurettes focus on editing and scoring, and sound effects.

Movie: B-plus
Extras: B

Review: "War Horse"

For a male weepie, "War Horse" doesn't shy away from what it is. Most such films hide behind a veneer of sports or other manly pursuits in spinning a tale that is designed to reduce every guy watching it to sobs.

But Steven Spielberg's new drama has all the ingredients: fathers and sons struggling to relate, brothers caught up in conflict, soldiers trading kindness amidst the bloodletting, gentle grandfathers and, especially, boys and their beloved animals.

Tears, commence being expertly jerked.

(This is not to imply that women won't weep at it -- I'm sure they will, in bucketfuls. It's just this is the rare weepie specially designed to stimulate Y-chromosome tear ducts.)

What "War Horse" does not have is a romantic component, and for that I am grateful. It's so tiresome to sit through Hollywood movies that seem to throw in a love interest for no reason at all other than brazen demographic appeal (see "Captain America: The First Avenger" for an especially egregious example).

Despite its nearly 2½-hour run time, the movie does not dally unnecessarily, on pitching unneeded woo or anything else.

The titular horse is Joey, the finest thoroughbred in all of England, who was bought for a princely sum by a broken-down old drunk of a farmer (Peter Mullan). Alas, as a result of shelling out 30 guineas for the dappled colt, the farmer does not have the money to pay his sniveling landlord (David Thewlis), who desired the horse for himself.

Of course, wiry thoroughbreds are not terribly useful for plowing fields, but the farmer's headstrong son Albert (Jeremy Irvine) insists he can train Joey to pull a tiller. This sets off the first of many great love affairs, with Joey the perpetual object of affection.

World War I arrives, and Joey is sold off to the British cavalry, breaking Albert's heart. Luckily, the lieutenant who purchases the horse to be his personal mount (Tom Hiddleston) is fine and upstanding, and promises to honor Joey with the same affection Albert did.

Alas, many things go awry during wartime. Over the next four years, Joey finds himself changing masters frequently, with prospects that rise and fall with the capricious whims of war.

For a time he is under the charge of a kindly teenage German soldier (David Kross) and his underage brother. Later, he comes into the embracing arms of a young French girl (Celine Buckens) and her wise, nurturing grandfather (Niels Arestrup).

But Joey also gets conscripted into toting massive cannons, a duty where most horses only last a month or two before collapsing and receiving a merciful bullet. And he becomes trapped in the horrors of the trench war -- a nightmarish landscape of mud, barbed wire and blood.

Based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo, the screenplay by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis -- which also draws inspiration from the Broadway play that won a raft of Tony awards earlier this year -- hits all the expected beats. But despite these rarely arriving without much surprise (one knows exactly how the film will end the entire way), they still hold a rapturous emotional pull -- assisted by John Williams' stirring score of lush strings.

Visually, "War Horse" is quite arresting. Spielberg and his longtime cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, intentionally strike an audacious note, composing scenes of suffused color and almost painterly beauty. The effect is theatrical, with the artifice of the visuals drawing the movie out of the grim reality of war and into something like fairy tale lightness.

Because, ultimately, "War Horse" is a children's movie, or something very much like it. It appeals more to the senses and the heart than the mind. Eventually, one has to choose whether to submit to its blatant, wonderfully sad manipulations. I'm glad I did.

3.5 stars out of four