"Knives Out" is a supremely entertaining movie, though it's not hard to discern what it's all about: poking fun at the conventions of the Agatha Christie-style murder/mystery while wantonly indulging in every single trope inherent to the drama.
It ended up earning writer/director Rian Johnson, late of the much-maligned "The Last Jedi" entry in the Star Wars saga, an Academy Award for his original screenplay. It is indeed an intricate instrument of misdirection and humor, pointing the audience this way and yanking them that way, while forcing us to look here when we should be looking there.
It's a fun movie with a "big twist" that you know is coming, though still devilishly difficult to guess. It's the sort of flick you walk out of theater overhearing somebody loudly proclaim, "I saw it coming all along!", and know he's a dirty liar.
It's the prototypical "mansion with a dead guy and a bunch of suspects" setup. The uber-wealthy Thrombey clan has just encountered the death of patriarch Harlan (Christopher Plummer), a famous mystery novelist, under suspicious circumstances. It appears he took his own life, but is this really true?
Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is the Southern-fried private investigator on the case. Certainly there is not shortage of people with sufficient motive to see Harlan dead. This includes:
Walt (Michael Shannon), who oversees his dad's publishing company and has tried for years to get him to sell his work for movies and whatnot
Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), the hard-bitten daughter who insists she's an independent success but is burdened with a lout husband, Richard (Don Johnson) and a peculiar son with Nazi-ish tendencies.
Joni (Toni Collette), the New Age-y daughter-in-law who puts off an aura of self-confidence but is always hard up for cash
Hugh (Chris Evans), the cad playboy grandson who recently had a loud falling out with Harlan, and seems to always be disappearing and reappearing at opportune moments
Other characters floating around the story are the police detective (Lakeith Stanfield) who outsources most of the detecting to Blanc; Katherine Langford as one of the nicer grandchildren; and Marta (Ana de Armas), Harlan's caretaker who was much closer to him than any of his own children.
Far be it from me to give anything away. All I will say is that "Knives Out" is that rare movie that seems to dare the audience to guess where it's going, but always manages to stay a few steps ahead.
I wouldn't call this one of the best movies of 2019, as some have. In the end it's a fun, clever movie that exists to be fun and clever. Is that really such a bad thing?
Video extras are quite comprehensive. Johnson provides a feature-length commentary track along with his director of photography, Steve Yedlin, and actor Noah Segan, who has a rather small part. Johnson also provides his own "In-Theatre" commentary and stars in his own featurette, "Planning the Perfect Murder."
Additionally there are two deleted scenes with commentary, a Q&A with director and cast, some marketing photos and "Meet the Thrombeys" viral ads, and "Making a Murder," an eight-part making-of documentary.
There really isn't much acting per se in "Battle of Britain," the big-budget recreation of the war in the skies over the U.K. in the summer and fall of 1940, which historians regard as a turning point in World War II.
If Hitler had pressed the attack after Dunkirk instead of relying on the German superior air power to soften up the Brits, the thinking goes, the United Kingdom almost certainly would have fallen, and they'd be eating sauerkraut in the Bronx these days.
The aerial spectacle is the real star of this show, despite the presence of luminaries like Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine, Edward Fox, Christopher Plummer, Trevor Howard, Susannah York, Robert Shaw, Ralph Richardson, Harry Andrews, Michael Redgrave and even a young and off-puttingly smooth-faced Ian McShane.
Unlike most war pictures of this era that make extensive use of stock footage and terrible models, director Guy Hamilton and his crew assembled an impressive armada of vintage aircraft (or contemporaneous lookalikes) and deployed them in the skies, using real WWII pilots as consultants. They did use models for some of the scenes where planes blow up in the sky, and life-size replicas on the ground for similar pyrotechnic mayhem.
At the time, the producers boasted of having the "35th largest air force in the world." And it pays off: I couldn't spot a single instance of canned footage in the movie.
The final result is a film of impressive verisimilitude. One really gets a taste for what it must have been luck to be a British RAF pilot in those days, where they might fly five missions in a single day and new recruits might last a week. The sound design is quite impressive for its time, often the only audio we hear except for occasional radio chatter.
You might lament the lack of anything more than superficial characterization of any of the figures. McShane gets a surprisingly large amount of the non-flying screen time, playing a young pilot whose entire family is wiped out while hiding in an air raid shelter.
Shaw -- still sporting that blond dye job he used while fighting James Bond -- also gets a few moments on the homestead as Skipper (his name, not title), a demanding squadron leader known for rattling newbies with his aggressive in-air dogfighting simulations.
When one of the green pilots is ordered up for a one-on-one session, the veterans give him a teasing prelude, mimicking the commanders' radio simulation of machine-gun fire: "Attackattackattackattackattacka…"
Plummer and York probably have the most depth as a married couple both in the military. He plays squadron leader Colin Harvey, and she is Maggie, an officer in the women's air support unit. He repeatedly presses her -- demands angrily, really -- that she transfer to a closer station so they can be together. But she desires an identity of her own and keeps putting him off, which sours their infrequent liaisons in pubs or hotels.
At one point she is introduced to another flight officer with severe burn scars, which serves as an obvious premonition to Colin's own bout with being trapped in a flaming Spitfire. Lamentably, the screenplay by James Kennaway and Wilfred Greatorex simply drops their story after the revelation of his injuries, so we don't get to see the impact on their already tenuous relationship.
I rather liked Olivier as RAF chief Hugh Dowding, who is analytical and outspoken, eschewing the usual sort of military bluster. He writes a letter to his superior advocating for abandoning air support of the remaining French forces, knowing it will be controversial and go straight to the desk of Winston Churchill.
Later, after a rare victory in which the British fighters take out a horde of German bombers without a single loss, Dowding is called by a press official looking for confirmation and a quote so he can flog the story. "I don't care for propaganda," he responds, simply hanging up the phone on the man.
Most of the 2¼-hour running time is taken up with the air show, which surprisingly doesn't grow tiresome. My dad was in the Air Force (navigator/bombardier) during the Korean War and there are a number of pilots on my wife's side of the family, so I have a bit of an affinity for this stuff.
Director Hamilton doesn't even use the usual trick of constantly focusing on the pilots' faces to emphasize the human element. There are some cuts to the cockpit, but since it's difficult to even tell which actor is which with their goggles, mask and flight cap, there really isn't much point.
I was joking to myself that Caine's role was more voiceover than lives shots. He could've literally phoned it in, though I don't think he does. He plays another squadron leader, Canfield, who's vexed by how his unit is constantly being moved around. He doesn't seem to have any family or friends, just a dog as his companion/totem.
Interestingly, "Battle of Britain" has two completely different sets of musical score. Sir William Walton's music was rejected by the United Artists chief, who tried to get John Barry to do one, but he declined. Ron Goodwin was finally tapped to do the replacement score.
Olivier got wind of this and threatened to take his name off the credits, so the bigwigs relented and incorporated some of Walton's music into the final film. His complete score was later discovered, recorded and released.
The scenario reminds me of what happened to Bernard Hermann's score for "Torn Curtain," which was rejected by Alfred Hitchcock and ended their long and storied collaboration. To my ear, Goodwin's music is fairly standard-issue military march stuff.
"Battle of Britain" is also interesting for spending a little time on the German side of the fight, as scrappy overconfident pilots slowly become disillusioned with their commanders' tactics.
A festive beachside feast where they look though spyglasses at the white cliffs of Dover across the channel, yearning to conquer those shores, is contrasted with a much more subdued dinner toward the end. Hein Riess plays Hermann Göring, the plump and pompous head of the Luftwaffe, who seems more interested in strutting about in a white uniform that coming up with a winning strategy.
"Battle of Britain" succeeds as a spectacle if not as a human drama. I would contrast it with Christopher Nolan's "Dunkirk," which was all about the people with the hardware in the background. Still, watching all those Stukas and Spitefires duke it out in the sky is an undeniable treat.
Just a short review today; the studio wasn't able to get me a screener until late Thursday afternoon.
I was a bit bored and bewildered by "Boundaries." It features two world-class thespians in Vera Farmiga and Christopher Plummer, playing a daughter and father at cross ends while trying to reconnect during a road trip. It features lots of talking but not much substantive sharing. Characters do things because that's where writer/director Shana Feste wanted a scene to go, not because that's how it would have organically led there.
Farmiga plays Laura, a harried and hectored mother to troublesome teen son Henry (Lewis MacDougall), an ostracized boy who has a penchant for drawing adults in the nude in sexual and unflattering ways. Laura's jerk boyfriend, like most male authority figures, has his male parts, uh, deemphasized.
Her dad is Jack (Plummer), a rapscallion who, at 85, is being kicked out of his retirement community for repeatedly breaking the rules. He was absent during most of Laura's childhood, and they only seem to hook up when someone needs something. Circumstances align that they each have a desperate need: Laura needs money to pay for private school to help Henry with his emotional problems, and Jack needs a ride to Los Angeles.
Jack says he can't fly because of a blood clot in his leg, but Jack says lots of things. Laura has learned not to invest a lot of hope for the truth.
So off they go, driving from Seattle to Los Angeles in Jack's vintage Rolls Royce, the trio of humans along with a few of Laura's collection of castoff dogs. We're not surprised when they pick up more along the way. That's who Laura is: she protects the weak because that's how she's felt herself much of her life.
Things go from there. It turns out Jack got his money from dealing pot, and the trip is largely an excuse to drop off product along the way. Most of customers are old friends, like Stanley, a hippie who never really left the commune. He's played by Christopher Lloyd -- the other one; or rather, I'm the other one -- who gets a hot tub nude scene a la Kathy Bates in "About Schmidt."
(Unlike Farmiga in "Up in the Air," I'm confident my namesake did not use stuntbutt.)
One inevitable stop is to see Laura's ex (Bobby Cavanale), who's sort of a junior version of Jack; he's just a little more honest with himself about his failings.
I should point out that this is one of those movies that stretches out a road trip that should take one long drive into about a week. By my guess, they actually only get about four good hours on the road per day.
"Boundaries" is one of those movies where if people ask you, "What was it about?", you really have no good answer. I was willing to cut this film a lot of slack just because I like the cast so much. But it fumbles at trying to manipulate our emotions, leaving us with a road trip picture that doesn't really go anywhere.
Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I find myself having more patience for movies I didn't care for when I was younger.
I've tried on a couple of occasions before to watch "The Sound of Music," and ended up turning it off after just a few minutes. Too cornball, too "old people movie," that fastidiously unironic tone. It seemed hard to reconcile this movie residing during the tumult of the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam war protests, surge of harder music and bolder films, and other massive cultural shifts of the '60s. It seems more a product of the 1930s-1950s.
It's a stubbornly un-hip movie from an era when "cool" became the indispensable cultural attribute.
So I decided to give it another go, if for no other reason than an effort I started a couple of years ago to watch all the remaining Best Picture winners I hadn't seen before. With Oscar season upon us again as I write this, seeing this movie was given a bit of imperative in what has admittedly been a somewhat lackadaisical project.
I still felt that tug of listlessness during the early scenes -- Julie Andrews' iconic twirling on a mountaintop while warbling "The Hills Are Alive," dour nuns who suddenly start singing with tremulous old-lady timbres. But I held on to the point Andrews' earnest nun-to-be, Maria, joins the von Trapp family at their sprawling mansion in Salzburg, and the movie suddenly took off for me, like a bloated beast that sprouts wings and takes to the air with graceful majesty.
Despite its nearly three-hour run time, "The Sound of Music" has very little fat in it. Even the song and dance scenes move along at a brisk pace and never loiter -- unlike another musical Best Picture winner I could name.
I was also struck by how memorable nearly every song in the film is. An adaption of the 1959 stage musical by Rodgers & Hammerstein, it includes tunes like "Climb Ev'ry Mountain," "Maria," "Sixteen Going on Seventeen," "My Favorite Things," "Do-Re-Mi," "The Lonely Goatherd," "So Long, Farewell," "Edelweiss," "Something Good" and "I Have Confidence." Even though I hadn't seen the movie as a child, I grew up hearing and singing these songs.
There's not much to the storyline. Maria is the rebellious sister at the convent, not of out meanspiritedness but an uncrushable desire to laugh, sing and enjoy life. She's sent to be the nanny to the seven von Trapp children as a way to test her faith. She soon takes the children under a maternal wing, and falls in love with their father, the imperious Captain Georg von Trapp, a retired naval commander and widower who is betrothed to a gold-digging baroness (Eleanor Parker).
Things work out and Maria ends up marrying Georg, but not until right after Austria has agreed to be annexed by Nazi Germany. Pressed into service due to his military experience, Georg sneaks his family over the border to Italy.
It's based on a real family, who eventually made their way to America and gained fame as the Trapp Family Singers. Which was ironic, as Georg refused to let his children sing outside the home, considering it common behavior to perform in public. (Though Austria officially banished the nobility in 1919, many like he still carried their unofficial titles and used "von" before their surnames.)
Quite a lot of historical details were changed for the stage production and movie, the most notable being that Maria and Georg married in the 1920s, not during the rise of Nazism. The family lost most of its wealth during the worldwide depression of the 1930s, and did not live nearly so luxuriously as depicted in the movie, with a gated mansion and servants.
And, if the accounts of the surviving children are accurate, Maria was hardly the angelic mother figure depicted by Andrews, being prone to sudden fits of range and melancholy.
Ultimately, it's the performances of Andrews and Christopher Plummer as Georg that propel the movie forward. I was struck by the fact they are actually close in age -- Andrews was 28 and Plummer was 34 when they began shooting the film. Within the context of the story, Maria would be an ingenue while Georg was a middle-aged father of teenagers -- old enough to have retired from a naval career. (The real Georg was close to 50 when they met.)
Andrews had already played in 1964's "Mary Poppins" when director/producer Robert Wise and screenwriter Ernest Lehman were able to view footage of her prior to that film's release. They immediately locked her into a contract because they knew she would become a major star.
Plummer was harder to get, a theater star who repeatedly refused the role because he thought the father character was underdeveloped. They eventually got their man, and Plummer's film career is still spinning along nicely more than 50 years later. Plummer's singing voice was dubbed by Bill Lee, a legendary "playback singer" who achieves a very naturalistic match with Plummer's speaking voice.
Richard Haydn plays "Uncle" Max, a conniving music promoter who apparently spends his day scouring the Austrian countryside for regional singing groups, and scrounging off the beneficence of wealthy hosts. He's partnering with the baroness to fleece Georg via marriage, with even the barest of suggestions the two of them are romantically involved. Still, he's portrayed in a positive light as the charming rapscallion.
Likewise, the baroness, who lies about the state of her own wealth to entice Georg, is redeemed by being the one to recognize his feelings for Maria, and initiating the breakup of their engagement herself.
Ben Wright plays Herr Zeller, the only true villain of the piece, a local official of some sort who leads the Nazification effort. Daniel Truhitte is Rolfe, the telegram delivery boy-cum-Hitler Youth recruit, who dallies with the eldest von Trapp daughter for a time.
The kids are played by, from eldest to youngest, Charmian Carr as Liesl, Nicholas Hammond as Friedrich, Heather Menzies as Louisa, Duane Chase as Kurt, Angela Cartwright as Brigitta, Debbie Turner as Marta and Kym Karath as Gretl.
(Carr was 26 when she played 16-year-old Liesel, showing that the Hollywood trend of having much older actors masquerade as teens is hardly a new phenomenon.)
Shot in beautiful, bold colors by Ted D. McCord (who lost the cinematography Oscar to Freddie Young for "Dr. Zhivago"), "The Sound of Music" has been well-preserved with a number of high-quality video additions and theater re-releases as recently as 2000. More than 50,000 people a year still take the official bus tour visiting the various filming locations around Salzburg.
What struck me most was how emotionally involving the characters and stories are. All the children have distinct personalities despite not getting a lot of individual screen time aside from Liesel. Georg's familial reawakening, in which he joins his children in song after a long period of mourning his late wife, is a real heart-grabber.
Sometimes movies just need time to mature before they're fully appreciated; the same goes for movie critics to appreciate them.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was probably not the first to notice it, though maybe he was the one to write it down: Rich people are strange; they're almost like a separate species from us.
I've never been wealthy, but have had the opportunity to observe or interact with a few up close over the years. Being fabulously rich doesn't automatically make you a bad person, but the opportunities and temptation to behave poorly are almost overwhelming.
Even those I would describe as "good rich" were united by a sort of unconscious arrogance, a sense that the people around them exist merely to acquiesce to their whims.
Ever try to disagree with a rich person? They will stare at you with a sort of puzzled detachment, like a wayward chihuahua that growls at them instead of fetching the paper as ordered. They know you can do them no real harm.
(I'm talking the really rich here, not the ordinary well-to-do. The sort
who charter or buy airplanes instead of booking flights on one. They
are innocent of TSA lines and pat-downs.)
A couple of quick anecdotes from my own experience:
I spent a year trying to nail down an interview with an A-list movie star who was improbably building a home in my neck of the woods. Without boring you with the details, I finally managed to get ahold of the person whose job title indicated he handled all of the star's media interviews. After talking with him on the phone, it became clear that his entire role consisted of keeping people like me away from his client. Like, imagine if the door on your office said "Director of Sales," and your actual job description consisted of preventing any sales from occurring.
Another time I oversaw the shooting of a PSA video that featured a billionaire. I'd done a bunch of these, and had taken to the practice of bringing a bottle of water for each of the principles, writing their name on it with a Sharpie. These shoots usually go on for an hour, requiring a couple dozen takes under hot lights. People's mouths get dry and they have trouble getting their lines out right. Anyway, I handed the b-man his water, and rather than thanking me he he looked annoyed. A flurry of activity was suddenly set off, as one of his many handlers present came forward to whisk the offending libation out of sight, to be replaced with a fancier one from the private stock. I've no doubt someone got a "talking to" about keeping peasant water away from the big man.
Alright, I've been going on for some time now without even mentioning the movie I'm supposed to be reviewing, which is "All the Money in the World." It's not among the higher-profile films coming out at Christmastime, and it's possible the only thing you've heard about it is that Kevin Spacey was in it, until he was not, and his scenes were hastily re-shot with Christopher Plummer replacing him.
All I'll say about the switcheroo is: I'm impressed. That it could be pulled off so quickly -- barely a month before the film's release -- or that Plummer's scenes fit so seamlessly into the whole of the piece. Though it's not the lead role, it's a pivotal one with about 15-20 minutes of screen time. A consummate professional and actor's actor, Plummer is evidently the sort you could hand the script to for the first time 30 minutes before shooting, and he'll still nail it on the first take.
The movie in total is good, not great. It's an "inspired by" look at the kidnapping of Paul Getty (Charlie Plummer, no relation to Christopher), a teen heir to the Getty oil fortune that happened during in Italy during the early 1970s. The young Getty was held for months, and suffered some rather nasty treatment, because his grandfather, tycoon J. Paul Getty (the other Plummer), refused to pay the ransom.
The story really centers on Paul's mother, Gail Harris (Michelle Williams), who was estranged from her husband and out of favor in senior Getty's eyes for supposedly taking his beloved grandchildren away from him. (Never mind that he had not even met them until a few years before the film's events.) She spends the movie trying to navigate a delicate balance between her wealthy ex-father-in-law and his cronies, a sympathetic kidnapper (Romain Duris) and the media scrum that ensued.
She's helped by Fletcher Chase, an ex-CIA agent-turned Getty lackey played by Mark Wahlberg who, I strongly suspect, is one of those pure Hollywood bullshit creations. I couldn't find any mention of such a person in historical accounts of the kidnapping, though it's not surprising that Getty might employ someone like that. There's also that name: Fletcher Chase -- sounds like the lead character in a fourth-rate spy novel.
I've been impressed by how much Wahlberg has evolved as an actor since his "Basketball Diaries" days, but he's pretty clearly miscast in this role. He wears three-piece suits and chunky glasses like they were handed to him by a rando costume designer five minutes before the cameras rolled. Ostensibly cool and professional, he comes off as bored and churlish.
Directed by Ridley Scott from a script by David Scarpa (based on a book by John Pearson), "Money" plays out like a standard-issue procedural crime drama, with all the usual twists and setbacks. We know the kid's going to survive -- otherwise the junior Getty wouldn't have gone on to sire actor Balthazar Getty in real life. So it's mostly an exercise in observing the how rather than the what.
Plummer is really the best thing about the movie. All his scenes sing with energy and music, even the stuff where he squares off with Wahlberg. They share a great moment late in the movie where Getty is walking away from Fletcher, who suddenly grabs him by the arm.
Plummer's eyes flare with a cold fire that illuminates the dark, rotting arrogance inside the old man's soul: The. Sheer. Audacity!
J. Paul Getty was a miserable old miser who placed more value on a stock ticker than his own flesh-and-blood. Not all rich men are like that -- hardly any, let's hope -- but "All the Money in the World" is an effective, if not terribly original, portrait of that which corrupts.
“The Exception” is generally a pretty solid war romance/drama, with the exception of the confusion regarding its title.
It would seem to refer to the German army office played by Jai Courtney, who eschews the more brutal aspects of the Reich and was nearly court martialed for beating another officer who murdered women and children on the Polish front. Several times Captain Stefan Brandt is told his outlook is the exception and not the rule for those who serve Adolph Hitler.
Or maybe it’s Mieke, the Dutch woman played by Lily James who is actually a secret agent of the British, who carries on an affair with Brandt. We figure she’s doing it as part of her mission, but soon it becomes clear they share true feelings for each other -- especially after he learns of her identity as a spy and a Jew. She’s the one who keeps telling him how much of an outlier he is, but in truth Mieke is the more exceptional of the two.
The most interesting person in the movie, however, is Christopher Plummer as Kaiser Wilhelm II, the deposed monarch of Germany living in exile in Holland. Aged, proud and rather deluded, he dreams of being returned to the throne with the consent of Hitler. The courtly man takes a grandfather-ish interest in Mieke, even blessing her affair with the German officer charged with guarding him.
Director David Leveaux and screenwriter Simon Burke based the movie upon a novel by Alan Judd, which is a complete historical concoction, at least in terms of the spy intrigue. By all accounts, Wilhelm and his second wife, Hermine (Janet McTeer), lived quietly in luxury, a sort of gilded cage, until his death at age 82.
I should also point out that the spy’s exact purpose never really becomes clear. Is she supposed to kill the Kaiser? That would probably have simply taken an expensive burden off the Reich’s hands. Later, when Heinrich Himmler himself comes to pay a visit -- played unnervingly by Eddie Marsan, who specializes in this sort of thing -- we expect Mieke to set her sights on him instead, but nothing ever comes of it.
A Gestapo agent (Mark Dexter) is sent to go sniffing, using fancy radio technology to track down the signals sent from the nearby village by Mieke’s spy handler, the local priest. It all culminates in familiar scenes of screeching cars, jackbooted men tromping up and down stairs, rooms being clumsily ransacked for evidence.
So in the end, her purpose as a spy is simply to be chased.
Many movies have a MacGuffin, a thing of vague utility other than to be what every character in the movie is directed toward. This is the only film I can think of where the MacGuffin is a person instead of an inanimate object.
The romance between Mieke and Brandt is tender and believable enough. Courtney strikes the part of an arrogant Aryan Nazi who nonetheless bears wounds, physical and otherwise, he’s trying hard to keep hidden. James is affecting, projecting both shining strength and vulnerability as a woman whose emotions run ahead of her judgement.
Also notable is McTeer as the princess, quietly scheming for her husband’s return to power while obviously doing it as much for her own fortunes as his. She gets a great scene where the imperious woman, used to lording it over others, is forced to demur to another. And I liked Ben Daniels as von Ilsemann, the colonel who acts as the Kaiser’s aide-de-camp and confidante, dexterously navigating between several gravitational pulls of influence.
But it’s Plummer’s movie in the end, in another splendid turn for the marvelous thespian. There’s often an aspect of overt theatricality to his performances, but as he’s aged these have rightfully comet to be seen as a feature rather than a bug. He makes every tiny gesture or expression – a narrowing of the eye, a hand smoothing his uniform -- seem ripe with meaning.
“The Exception” never quite gets around to figuring out which is the main character, or finding its narrative focus. Still, it has well-drawn characters and a pervading sense of peril amidst the passion.
"So Jane, what you do here in effect is count boners?"
If there was any better indication that a new Rubicon of filmmaking had been crossed, it was this quote from 1984's "Dreamscape," which was the second movie to be released with a PG-13 rating ("Red Dawn" being the first). It boasted enough gory violence, f-words and sex to earn it an R rating, but slide down to the next category with a few modest trims.
The new rating from the MPAA was designed to address a wave of films in the early 1980s -- "Poltergeist" and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" among them -- that stretched the limits of the amount of blood and violence allowable in a PG movie. Steven Spielberg was actually among those who suggested an intermediate rating between PG and R.
But the studios soon realized the potential to nudge a host of other adult-oriented material into popular mainstream movies, while still selling tickets to kiddies. A new paradigm was established, and since then most big blockbuster films have carried the PG-13 classification.
The 13 part of the rating is simply a guide for parents. As a former assistant manager of a movie theater, I can tell you there was no actual restriction on under-age children buying their way into the movie, despite outraged assertions from any number of grown-ups.
As an almost-15-year-old when "Dreamscape" came out, I can also authoritatively declare that this fantasy/sci-fi/horror hybrid touched a whole lot of erogenous zones for people in my demographic. The story is about the ability of psychics to enter into the dreams of other people, and help or hurt them depending upon their motivations.
As was the case with the "Nightmare on Elm Street" and other cinema of the era, we were made to understand that if you die in your dream, you die in real life, too. Utter hooey, of course, and we all knew it back then, but it's one of those conceits you swallow in the course of a life of mainstream movie-going.
Dennis Quaid was the star, but the person most people remember from the movie is David Patrick Kelly, who steals the entire second half as "dream assassin" Tommy Ray Glatman. (As he also did in the latter portion of "The Warriors," plus other films.)
So intense in his portrayal of the psychopathic psychic, Kelly seems to be practically shivering out of his skin -- something he actually does later, turning into a snake-man for dream combat against his arch-foe, Alex Gardner (Quaid). He also conjures up fingernail blades to tear out the beating heart of a man, a scene that surely would not have passed muster under the banner of a PG film.
Directed by Joseph Ruben, who co-wrote the screenplay with David Loughery and Chuck Russell, "Dreamscape" was reputedly based on a short novel by Roger Zelazny, who sold a story outline to 20th Century Fox but did not receive a screen credit.
The tale is brimming with all sorts of Cold War anxiety about nuclear annihilation, coupled with paranoia that the government is invading our lives and shredding our freedoms. Generally I'm not one to go in much for political interpretations of movies, but the Reaganesque subtext is pretty hard to ignore here.
Eddie Albert plays the President, who is having bad dreams about nuclear war, including being attacked by radiation mutants, and resolves to pursue disarmament talks with the Soviet Union. Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer), an old friend of his who runs a shadowy covert arm of the government -- "They're the guys the CIA is afraid of" -- opposes this, claiming the POTUS wants to "emasculate our nuclear deterrent."
He resolves to nip the problem in the bud by having Tommy Ray enter his mind as part of a secretive "dreamlink" research project housed at a fictitious college. Max von Sydow plays Dr. Novotny, head of the project and an old friend to Alex, whom he recruits to join the mission. Kate Capshaw is Jane, a fellow researcher who takes great pains to keep her relationship with Alex on a professional level.
Quaid, at the height of his brief initial stardom, is a smirky, charismatic presence, playing a guy with the soul of a con artist but who dresses like a preppy (Easter egg-colored cardigan vests aplenty).
George Wendt (Norm!) shows up briefly as Charlie Prince, a best-selling horror author whose vocation somehow gives him insight into the most secretive workings of the U.S. government. He's the one who clues in Alex that Blair is planning to use Tommy Ray to assassinate the president. How the hell does he know this? Unless he's a psychic, too?
The film's lowish-budget roots shine through during the dream sequences, which involve a lot of bad blue screen effects and herky claymation for the snake man sequences. The conception of Alex and Tommy Ray's psychic abilities is rather spotty, granting them the ability to predict the future -- Alex picks winning horses at the track -- but not much insight into other people's non-dreaming state of mind.
I don't think I had seen "Dreamscape" since its initial theater run 30 years ago (gulp!), but I was surprised at how well the movie remained fixed in my mind. I was struck by how much imagery of trains there is in the movie: Alex and Tommy Ray fight aboard a train, and then chase each other through a bombed-out underground station -- all of it bathed in a harsh red filter.
Alex also enters Jane's mind while she is dreaming and seduces her on board a train -- something they act out in real life in the movie's closing shot. Though it's a little creepy when you consider the act in its full context; it's basically psychic rape.
"Dreamscape" holds up well because it boasts a lot of imagination for what is essentially a summer action flick. And it's got a great villain who used the new MPAA rating to get exponentially more dastardly in his deeds.
Made nearly three decades after the events it depicted, "Battle of Britain" is an exercise in deliberate hagiography. It's a British movie extolling the heroism and and strategic thinking of their own kind during the summer and fall of 1940, when the over-matched Royal Air Force stopped Hitler's planned land invasion of the U.K. long before it even got started.
It's a big-budget spectacle with an all-star cast, including Michael Caine, Laurence Olivier, Trevor Howard, Christopher Plummer, Susannah York, Robert Shaw, Ralph Richardson and Edward Fox. A young Ian McShane even turns up as a novice pilot with a family of young children who are imperiled during the London bombings.
The cast is distinctly subservient to the aircraft, however, with very few characters getting any sort of development. Pretty much the lone exception is Plummer as a Canadian pilot married to a British section officer. He needles her to ask for a transfer so they can be nearer, but bound by a sense of duty, she puts him off.
It's notable that York wears a short pouffy bob haircut and modern makeup, resulting in a look that transposes 1969 for 1940. She could easily be one of Austin Powers' flower-power girls via a quick wardrobe change.
Director Guy Hamilton and screenwriters James Kennaway and Wilfred Greatorex (working from the book "The Narrow Margin" by Derek Dempster and Derek Wood) approached the material with the apparent goal of making the most historically accurate account possible. Much of their efforts went toward recreating the airborne battles, gathering together a sizable air force of actual WWII craft, or close approximations.
They also used a large number of realistic replicas, both life-size ones on the ground and flying models. The special effects are decent enough for 1969, although it isn't too hard to detect the shifts between real and replica aircraft.
Explosions on the ground look too much like rigged effects -- such as how a lone airplane on the ground will be hit dead-on by a single bomb, with no other explosives landing nearby. That's simply not how cluster bombing of that era worked; that tactic involved hordes of bombs being dropped at once, hoping a small percentage would detonate on target.
They also employ not-very-special effects for the flying explosions, which appear to have been hand-drawn directly onto the celluloid. The result looks something like when you successfully hit your target in an early 1980s arcade game.
Coming out a year after "2001: A Spacey Odyssey" and only eight years before "Star Wars," the effects in "Battle of Britain" were already anachronistic.
The film is mostly fair to the German side, though the lack of comparable Teutonic stars as counterparts to the English ones belies the notion of a truly balanced depiction. But we get to see how the cockiness of both sides' pilots soon crumbles into fatigue and despair.
The movie does illustrate how the tides of war, and even human history, can be changed by the smallest of events.
Hitler had expressly decreed that London was not to be bombed, with the Luftwaffe instead concentrating on wiping out the British airfields along the coasts. But during a run a German Heinkel bomber goes off-course, and the pilot decides to dump their payload before heading back. In retaliation for some minor damage near the outskirts of London, the Allies organize a bombing run of their own on Berlin -- something the leaders of the Third Reich had vowed would never happen.
Vexed, Hitler and company shifted the focus of their airborne attacks from the airfields to the British capital. This resulted in terrible loss of life -- but it also gave the RAF a chance to recover sufficiently to start mounting a serious air defense. Most historians regard this blunder as a turning point in the war.
At the start of the movie, Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding (Olivier) had unctuously predicted that they would have to inflict losses on the German attackers in the neighborhood of 4 to 1 to have any hope of winning the air battle. Eventually, the German losses indeed became too high, and the plan to invade Great Britain was scrapped.
I think "Battle of Britain" is one of those movies that recedes as time goes by, rather than its reputation swelling. Seen now, it's an often dull litany of aerial sequences interrupted by talkie exchanges of dialogue on the ground with little impact. The film's only real enduring legacy is the fact that its aerial footage was reused many, many times in other cinematic portrayals -- including "Midway" and "Hope and Glory."
Part of this had to do with the considerable skill with which those sequences were shot (minus the hokey fake explosions). But also with the fact that the airplanes used in 1969 simply weren't available later on.
A serviceable if unremarkable WWII war film, "Battle of Britain" exists mostly as a marker of great deeds rather than truly capturing them.
Time-travel stories journey through the years themselves, waxing and waning in popularity through different eras. During the 1970s and into the '80s, movies of this ilk were exceedingly popular -- "Time After Time," "Back to the Future," "Time Travelers," etc.
"Somewhere in Time" from 1980 is something different from these other pictures, which play up the science fiction element. Here, the journey back through time is decidedly metaphysical, with Christopher Reeve playing a man who wakes up in 1912 simply because he has willed himself to do so. And he's not tripping through the decades for adventure or scientific conquest, but for Love.
"Somewhere in Time" did not make much of a splash during its initial release, but it's become something of a cult favorite in the intervening years -- even spurring fan clubs, a book and special screenings. It doesn't take much guessing based on the gauzy cinematography, syrupy strings-heavy score by John Barry and starched period costumes to realize that this time-hopping tale is aimed more at the readers of Harlequin Romances than H.G. Wells novels.
I have to confess that I put this flick into my Netflix queue thinking it was actually "Time After Time," a sort of multi-dimensional murder/mystery where Jack the Ripper gets transported to the modern world to ply his gruesome trade. I'm not quite sure if I ever had seen the Christopher Reeve/Jane Seymour romance before, though it's probably not the sort of thing I would have sought out as a preadolescent. If I did watch it, it certainly didn't make a lasting impression.
Watching it recently, I can see why. It's a stiff, stolid affair, with the star-crossed couple existing more as romantic ideals than flesh-and-blood characters. It isn't helped by that tried-and-true cinematic folly, the proposition that two people can fall instantly and irrecoverably in love over the course of a 24-hour period.
The problem with this narrative assertion is that because it's impossible show two individuals intertwining themselves over a period of time, so such a depiction is by definition of telling us that they've found True Love. One of the first rules of writing is to show rather than tell your audience what happens; make them feel it rather than just understand what transpires.
The film is based on a book by Richard Matheson, who also wrote the screenplay, and whose writings often formed the basis for movies: "Real Steel," "The Omega Man," "I Am Legend." I would guess the romantic element was already there, since the whole premise is about a Chicago playwright named Richard Collier who becomes obsessed with the photograph of a stage actress, Elise McKenna. With the aid of an old philosophy professor, Richard resolves that if he dresses himself in period clothing and removes any sign of modernity, he can self-hypnotize himself into slipping backward 68 years.
There's something of a hole in the plot. The story begins in 1972, when a college-age Richard is confronted by an old woman at the premier of his play. She places a beautiful pocket watch in his hands and begs, "Come back to me!" Of course, it is Elise, now ancient and regretful for her long-lost love. Years later, while tooling around the country in the midst of a bout of writer's block, he stumbles upon the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in Michigan, sees the photograph and becomes obsessed.
Here's the thing: After he does go back in time and spends that magical day (actually, part of two days) falling in love with Elise, at no point does he ever reveal that he's from the future. Other than taking the easy way out of some potentially complicating matters applying to their courtship, it also means that she had no way of knowing what happened when Richard suddenly disappeared. How did she know to seek out Richard's younger self 68 years later?
That's a paradox, wasted.
The method by which Richard is forcibly returned to 1980 is also rather contrived. While emptying the pockets of his suit, he comes across a penny dated 1979. Confronted by physical evidence of his temporal incongruity, he falls down a dark tunnel of perception and wakes up in modern times.
I realize the exact mechanics of time travel aren't the priority for this movie, but this is just ridiculous. Richard would never be able to completely banish from his mind the knowledge that he's from the future. Just because he encounters a token proving what he already knew shouldn't have any effect on his ability to stay where he is.
Also, if he hypnotized himself into the past once, why couldn't he do it again? After a few hours of failed attempts, Richard instead goes into a state of comatose shock and starves himself to death -- where, of course, he is reunited with his beloved Elise. This strengthens the notion that the entire experience was merely a figment of his imagination.
Christopher Plummer has an interesting role as William Robinson, Elise's over-protective and possibly psychotic manager. He hangs around her Svengali-like, whispering instructions in her ear and putting off an and all interference from outsiders.
In the story, Robinson has warned Elise that a man would someday arrive who would change her life forever -- an indication that he somehow had foreknowledge of Richard's time travel. My understanding is in the book the arrival is presaged by a pair of psychics, but it's left up in the air for the movie. I thought it would have been novel if the filmmakers had suggested that Robinson was another time traveler, himself.
Director Jeannot Szwarc, who's still active today, started out and ended up in television, but not before making some truly awful movies: "Jaws II," "Supergirl," "Santa Claus: The Movie." I regret to say I've seen all of those duds, and wish I could go back in time to get that time back.
As regular readers of this space may know, I have a long fascination with World War I aviation. I've continually sought out movies about pilots of that era to watch -- and mostly continue to be disappointed in what I've found. I'm afraid "Aces High," a 1976 film starring Malcolm McDowell that had stirred in me a great deal of anticipation, will be added to the list of less-than-sterling WWI dogfighting flicks.
The source of my interest started in an unlikely venue: video games. I was thrilled with the 1990 game "Red Baron," which offered a historically accurate portrayal of air combat from 1914 to 1918. From there, visits to the Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum and reading several books on the subject only increased my ardor for the derring-do of these 20th century knights jousting in the skies, often with an antiquated notion of chivalry.
A big part of my fascination also likely explains why so many of these films leave me wanting more. I loved researching the airplanes, guns and hardware of WWI air combat. Remember, barely a decade after the Wright brothers first flew, men were using the rickety contraptions in warfare. Technological innovation soars during times of war, as various sides try to gain the strategic upper hand -- in this case, by gaining tactical advantages in the air.
The introduction of a new model of plane could tip the tide of the battle in the skies, as pilots with now-inferior aircraft attempted to take on adversaries with faster or more maneuverable planes.
I liked the fact that in "Aces High" the pilots actually discuss the various airplanes, their capabilities and advantages. Most of the squadron uses R.A.F. S.E.5s, a mainstay of the British flying corp, while one of the older pilot favors the French Nieuport 17.
The combat sequences in the film are generally quite good -- showing the air duels from the perspective of the pilot's cockpit. I also appreciated the fact that director Jack Gold often shot two or more planes together instead of just using special effects. So we can see exactly how close the combatants in a dogfight really were. (Allegedly the film re-used some air combat footage from "The Blue Max" and a Roger Corman movie.)
McDowell plays Maj. John Gresham, commander of a British squadron headquartered in a dilapidated air field 10 miles from the front lines. Gresham is an excellent pilot and stern commander, relying on small core of veterans to see their missions a success. There is a constant stream of inexperienced recruits coming through who quickly die -- 14 days is the current average -- and the stress has driven Gresham to drinking heavily.
His right-hand man is Capt. Sinclair, whom everyone calls "Uncle," due to his being older and less brash than the cocky younger fellows. Sinclair is played by Christopher Plummer, in a subtle turn.
Things change when young Stephen Croft (Peter Firth) is assigned to the squadron. He was Gresham's protege when they were at school together, and his sister is engaged to the commander. Over the course of a week of increasingly dangerous missions, Croft goes from being completely inept in the cockpit to more confident, has his heart broken and sees his admiration of Gresham angrily rejected.
"Aces High" just never really comes together as a human story. Though the air fights are well done and engaging, the on-the-ground action relies on familiar tropes about young men at war. As a glimpse at the early history of aviation combat, it scores well, but as a complete story it's shooting blanks.
I've got a few more WWI aviation flicks in my Netflix queue -- maybe I'll get lucky someday.
"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is extremely well-made, ably acted, beautifully shot and has a plot full of hairpin turns and twists. It is an entirely engaging and occasionally gripping film. It is also completely unnecessary.
This remake of the 2009 Swedish thriller based on the novel by Stieg Larsson contains no surprises for those who have seen the original. The identity of the killer is already known; the final disposition of the brilliant and possibly crazy title character, Lisbeth Salander, drains the character of much of the razor-sharp freshness from when Noomi Rapace played her.
Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig bring a few notes of their own to the roles of Lisbeth and investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist, but ultimately it's the same characters experiencing the same dynamic.
The really is no reason for the existence of this movie. Everything the American version does, the Swedish original already did equally well, or better.
Well, there is one reason I can think of for the remake: so Americans who don't like reading subtitles will buy tickets for it. That may be harsh and cynical, but there it is.
The story (screenplay by Steve Zaillian) wanders deep into the thickets of familial secrets and horrible behavior behind the doors of old-money mansions. So did the Swedish version, as both movies spend way too much time with Lisbeth and Mikael hunched over computer screens, staring at photos and waiting for clues to present themselves.
At just over 2½ hours, "Girl" can feel self-indulgent and sprawling.
The two main characters remain separated for nearly half the film, only joining forces when their objectives align. Recently disgraced after being found guilty of libeling a major industrialist, Mikael is recruited by a rich old magnate, Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer), to track down the killer of his niece Harriet, who disappeared 40 years ago.
Lisbeth is the computer hacker hired to vet Mikael for the Vangers. Decked out in punk leather togs, multiple facial piercings and a dead-eyed stare, everything about Lisbeth screams, "Leave me alone."
(In one medium-ish change from the original movie, Lisbeth is not monitoring the ongoing doings of Mikael, but only becomes involved when he tracks her down and asks for help. This has the effect of making Mikael, who is by far the more passive person in the tale, seem more proactive and assertive.)
The entire Vanger family occuppies a lonely island in frozen Hedestad, and Mikael settles in to investigate Harriet's disappearance. With the clan filled with drunks, thieves and Nazis, the number of suspects is voluminous. Most want him gone; only Martin (Stellan Skarsgard), Harriet's older brother, is welcoming and helpful.
Lisbeth has her own problems. Formerly institutionalized, she's subject to a state-appointed guardian, who refuses to let her have access to her own money without ... considerations proffered. This extended sequence, while technically distracting from the plot, establishes Lisbeth as both frequent victim and ferocious victimizer.
Eventually, they team up to try to pierce the Vanger mystery. Mikael, the older, deliberate investigator, has a great deal of trouble getting inside Lisbeth's head. She's a bona fide genius, who eschews emotional attachments in all forms of human contact.
Director David Fincher, fresh off the success of last year's brilliant "The Social Network," adds a few wrinkles -- such as the exact way in which the final revelation plays out, and how Lisbeth and Mikael leave things between them. These changes aren't necessarily better or worse, and their only purpose appears to be something Fincher can point to in order to justify such a rote remake.
So why three stars for this movie? I respect the craft with which it was made, and can't deny that somebody unfamiliar with the original film will find it as darkly invigorating as I did the Swedish version.
What I'd really like is for this director, this screenwriter and these two stars to make another, original movie on their own. It'd have been a better use of their time, and mine.
In the last years of his life, the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was the subject of his own religion-slash-cult. He died not at his comfortable rustic home but a remote railway station.
These two historical facts are the jumping-off point for "The Last Station," a fictionalized account of Tolstoy's last months.
It's quite doubtful that Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), the leader of the Tolstoyans, actually sent Valentin, a young disciple (James McAvoy), to spy on the writer's family. Or that Tolstoy's wife, Sofya, was quite the fuming cauldron of anger and self-pity that Helen Mirren portrays her to be.
But as unlikely as writer/director Michael Hoffman's version of events is, it does make for a wonderful setting for this talented cast to rage and weep and otherwise emote expansively.
Tolstoy himself is something of a minor player in his own story. He's played with sly wit and veiled egotism by Christopher Plummer. Late in life, Tolstoy came to reject the comforts his riches had earned his family, and embraced a pastoral philosophy based on love and communal property.
Sofya, though, sees his desire to name the Tolstoyan movement as the main beneficiary in his will as an abandonment of their nearly 50 years of marriage.
Meanwhile, Valentin finds romance with Masha (an enchanting Kerry Condon), a Tolstoyan who especially believes in the movement's attitude regarding free love. He's equally charmed by the attention Tolstoy lavishes upon him, as well as finding Sofya a sympathetic figure.
Giamatti also has an interesting role, positioning Chertkov as a man who built a movement based on love, but doesn't seem to have much of it to express.
Extra features are a pleasing array of deleted scenes, outtakes and a featurette tribute to Christopher Plummer's career. The great actor also teams up with Mirren and Hoffman for a feature-length commentary track.
It's wonderful to see actors participate in these commentaries, which so often are boring recitations by the director working solo.
Extras are identical for Blu-ray and DVD versions.
Movie: 3 stars out of four Extras: 3 stars out of four
"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" is a fitting final bow for star Heath Ledger, who died midway through the shooting of this kooky, wonderful flight of fancy from director Terry Gilliam ("The Fisher King").
Ledger plays Tony, a mysterious figure with amnesia who gets adopted by a traveling theater troupe whose featured act, Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is a (literally) ancient mystic. Living like circus carnies, they put on a show in which people can wander through a dreamscape of Parnassus' creation, where they're tempted by the Devil himself (Tom Waits).
Since reality is unsettled inside the Imaginarium, Tony changes appearance every time he goes inside (Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp lent a hand to stand in for Ledger). Even though it's an ad-hoc necessity, it's still a lovely storytelling device.
Gilliam spins his most Gilliam-esque tale, one full of strange metaphysical themes, computer-generated universes and shadowy motives.
The film died in theaters, but I'm truly hoping audiences will give it a chance on video. I would hate the idea that, like Parnassus, Gilliam is a forgotten old man spinning his odd tales for a world that has stopped listening.
As you might expect, DVD extras on this film wouldn't be complete without an exploration of how the production was affected by the death of Ledger, and "Parnassus" certainly delivers. The most wrenching bits are costume and makeup tests with Ledger, and an audio interview right before shooting started. Gilliam says cast and crew gathered to discuss if it was even possible to complete the movie.
Seven featurettes explore various topics such the CGI creative process and the film's red carpet moments. In an introduction and feature-length commentary, Gilliam is an amusing and illuminating guide -- at one point he confesses that even he's not certain of Dr. Parnassus' exact history and powers.
He says he started out wanting to make something "light and joyful," without the neuroses that he'd been exploring all his career. If that was his aim with "Parnassus," then he certainly failed. But for real Gilliam fans, it's the very irrational nature of his imagination that make him such a compelling filmmaker.
In addition to the aforementioned features, the Blu-ray version also has "The Imaginarium of Terry Gilliam" and remembrances of Ledger by cast and crew.
"The Last Station" is one of those historical dramas that we instinctively want to like because it shows an important figure in a humanistic, fervorous light. Whether or not the events of the film accurately match their actual lives seems less important.
We'd like to think that the last months of the life of the great novelist Leo Tolstoy were filled with such passion, intrigue and romance. I tend to doubt it, but I like imagining so.
Helen Mirren is the star of this passion play as Tolstoy's wife Sofya. After nearly 50 years of marriage, she is resentful of the intrusions her husband's fame brings upon her and her children. Chief among these is Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), the leader of a movement based upon Tolstoy's writings.
The exact philosophy of the Tolstoyans is a little murky. They are pacifists who eschew personal property, and Chertkov seems to want to take things further until all human vices -- including sex -- are forbidden. Chertkov says that love is the central tenet of this faith, but he doesn't hold much of it in his heart.
Chertkov wants Tolstoy to sign away the copyright to "War and Peace," "Anna Karenina" and his other works to the Tolstoyans to support the movement.
Sofya, though, views this as not only impractical -- what will her family live on? -- but as a form of marital abandonment. At one point she muses on how she helped her husband while writing "War and Peace," with not only copying duties but suggestions for the story, and it's clear she views her husband's accomplishments as the result of their partnership.
Chertkov recruits a young Tolstoyan, Valentin (James McAvoy), to work as Tolstoy's secretary and act as his spy. The lad is bowled over by the attention the famous author lavishes upon him, but he also finds himself drawn to Sofya, and develops sympathy for her plight.
A virgin, Valentin also finds romance with Masha, a free-love advocate living at the nearby Tolstoyan commune. Played by Kerry Condon, Masha throws an appraising eye at the nervous young man, framed by some gorgeous laugh crinkles that render him helpless.
Tolstoy himself is something of a tertiary character in his own story. Played by Christopher Plummer, the author is mischievous and mysterious. He tries to be modestly dismissive of the movement that has sprung up around him -- "I'm not a very good Tolstoyan myself," he chuckles to Valentin. But Sofya isn't far off the mark when she accuses him of being seduced by sycophants and flatterers.
Written and directed by Michael Hoffman from the novel by Jay Parini, "The Last Station" is an enjoyable if unlikely fictional version of Tolstoy's last days. It's an opportunity for actors to fling a lot of big emotions around, raging and cooing and reveling. (A stage version seems an obvious next step.)
I most liked the scenes between Plummer and Mirren. They paint a believable portrait of what happens to love over time. Tolstoy resents a wife who doesn't share his relatively newfound convictions -- he rages that "Our privilege revolts me!" -- while she struggles to claim any identity outside the shadow of the great writer.
Love may make the world go round, but sometimes even the deepest romance suffers dry rot.
To my mind, there really are only two kinds of people in the world: Those who think that Terry Gilliam is a cinematic genius, and those who are mistaken.
The former animator and member of the Monty Python troupe has had his ups and downs -- more down lately. In fact, he seems cursed.
Gilliam's last film, "Tideland," was barely released. The Don Quixote project he spent years trying to make fell apart -- the only tickets sold were for "Lost in La Mancha," a documentary chronicling the fiasco.
Consider his latest, "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus." His star, Heath Ledger, died tragically less than halfway through shooting. One week after wrapping, producer William Vince passed away. During post-production work, Gilliam was hit by a car and broke his back.
It's a minor miracle that "Parnassus" was even finished. That it's Gilliam's best film since 1991's "The Fisher King" should be considered a sign the gods are smiling on him, despite his misfortune.
The subtext of this film couldn't be clearer coming from a 69-year-old director whose battles with the studio system are legendary: It's about an ancient mystic who believes storytelling is what binds the universe together, spinning his tales for a world that has stopped listening.
Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) lives like a sideshow carny, travelling around London in a ramshackle wagon/stage/domicile, using psychic powers to offer passers-by a chance to wander through his mind, where their own imaginations can run wild.
Gilliam uses computer-generated imagery to depict the fantastic worlds conjured inside Parnassus' brain, where ladders rise miles high into the sky, or giant jewels twinkle like celestial stars lassoed and pulled down to earth.
Like James Cameron with "Avatar," Gilliam uses computers to paint his screen with images impossible to render with live action, rather than letting special effects overwhelm his story. It's like watching one of Gilliam's "Monty Python" morphing animations brought to life.
Joining the doctor's troupe are his teen daughter, Valentina (Lily Cole), who yearns to give up vagabond life for hearth and home; Anton (Andrew Garfield), the emcee who secretly adores Valentina; and Percy (Verne Troyer), a pint-sized figure whose supernatural pedigree is at least as complicated as Parnassus'.
Troyer delivers a great line early on, when asked where they are: "Geographically, in the northern hemisphere; socially, on the margins; and narratively, with some way to go."
One night after a typically disastrous performance, they stumble upon a man hanging from a noose under a bridge. Discovering him to be somehow still alive, they soon incorporate the amnesiatic fellow into their stage act.
This man, whose name is eventually found to be Tony, is played by Ledger. The obvious question everyone will have is how much the movie suffers from having its star unable to complete much of his filming. And the truth is, not as much as you'd think.
Gilliam, who co-write the script with Charles McKeown, cleverly uses Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law to play Tony during scenes inside the Imaginarium. Since reality is bendable in there, and Tony's loyalties remain in doubt, it actually seems logical to have his physical likeness in flux.
The plot is driven by a wager between Parnassus and the Devil himself, Mr. Nick (a sly and scrumptious Tom Waits), with Valentina's soul at stake. The doctor will spin tales of light and goodness, and Nick of lust and fulfillment, to see which they choose.
"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" can best be described as Terry Gilliam's most Gilliam-esque movie. It's fun, playful, shocking, silly, and bursting with originality.
"9" is one of the boldest, most original films to come out in 2009. It didn't get much of a box office reception, but now that it's hitting video, audiences have a chance to discover this animation gem.
Director Shane Acker based the feature film on an Oscar-nominated short he made about a dystopian world where all of mankind has perished. About the only living things around are tiny puppet-like creatures made out of burlap and bits of metal, with numbers for names.
The voice cast is especially good, with Elijah Wood as the title character, Christopher Plummer as 1, the authoritarian leader, Jennifer Connelly as the knight-errant 7, and Martin Landau as 2, an old tinkerer.
They must battle a faceless army of machines looking to dominate the post-apocalyptic word -- and capture the strange talisman 9 is carrying around.
The animation is just terrific, with inky pools of darkness and a wonderful tactile feel -- things you don't normally get from computerized animation.
Despite the PG-13 rating, which I feel is misplaced, this movie should be suitable for children above toddler age.
Extra features are good, not great. Neither the DVD or Blu-ray versions come with a digital copy of the film, which at this point should be standard fare.
Both versions come with original 10-minute short by Acker, and the commentary is especially interesting; he talks about working on his UCLA senior thesis film for more than four years while taking leaves of absence to do things like work on the last "Lord of the Rings" films.
There's a 16-minute making-of doc that includes all the principle talent, even producer Tim Burton, who lent his name (but not much hands-on participation, it appears) to the production. There are also two featurettes focusing on the design and animation process, and seven minutes worth of deleted scenes, still in storyboard format.
A commentary track by Acker and several key collaborators adds few new insights, but is still worth a listen.
In addition to these, the Blu-ray comes with a tour of the Starz animation studio hosted by Acker, and interactive features you can turn on and off during the movie.
Only Pixar, the animation studio behind "Finding Nemo" and "Wall·E," could produce a movie about a cranky, lonely old man and make it both an artistic and commercial hit.
Carl Fredricksen (voice by Ed Asner), the protagonist of "Up," has the world's sourest attitude. His beloved wife Ellie passed away some years ago, and all he really cares about in the world is the ramshackle home they shared for decades -- which is about to bulldozed for some high-rise construction.
So Carl hooks a million balloons to his house and floats it away. His goal is to navigate to Paradise Falls, the mysterious land where Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer) -- the famous explorer who was his and Ellie's childhood hero -- disappeared long ago.
But it turns out that Carl has a stowaway: Russell (Jordan Nagai), a young Wilderness Explorer (think Cub Scout) obsessed with getting his last merit badge. Soon after landing in Paradise Falls, Carl and Russell are joined by Dug, a hyper dog with a gizmo collar that allows him to talk.
Director and co-writer Pete Docter ("Monsters, Inc.") layers the goofy antics in with some genuinely touching melodramatic moments. Like many Pixar films, "Up" is best appreciated by grown-ups.
Extra features are pretty good for the DVD version, but really take off in the Blu-ray edition (a combo DVD/Blu-ray pack is available).
The DVD comes with a commentary track by Docter and co-director Bob Peterson, alternate scenarios for the death of Muntz, a documentary on the filmmakers' journey to South America's Tepuis mountains for inspiration, and "Partly Cloudy," the short film that preceded "Up" in its theatrical release.
The Blu-ray has a host of features, including conceptual drawings of the major characters and canine companions, how the animators made Carl's house fly, and even how they carefully designed the interior and exterior of his house. Plus, a digital copy of the film for uploading to a portable device.
