Review: "The Father"

I confess I went into “The Father” without much enthusiasm. Dementia is a subject that’s been pretty well explored in cinema -- “Supernova” is just one recent example -- and I wondered how much familiar ground this film would tread all over again, even with Oscar winners Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman leading the way.

It took but a few minutes to replace my anxiety with astonishment. Director Florian Zeller, who adapted the screenplay (along with Christopher Hampton) from his own play, gives us a gripping tale that puts us right inside the mind of Anthony (Hopkins), an 83-year-old Londoner.

I don’t think I’ve seen a better cinematic depiction of mental illness since “A Beautiful Mind.”

The trick here is that we’re not witnessing Anthony from without, but seeing things through his eyes. To him, everyday life is a confusing journey in which strangers suddenly appear in your apartment, claiming to have known you for years, or strangers seem as old friends.

He also experiences agonizing time slips, so he’ll think it’s still morning when it’s suppertime -- or even that he believes an hour has gone by when it’s been more than a month.

Colman plays his daughter, Anna, who has come to live with Anthony in his marvelous flat… or he has moved into her place, depending on his current mindset. Shockingly, Anna is sometimes played by another actress, Olivia Williams, and the pain on both their faces when he angrily denies her identity is a sight to behold.

This is a masterwork in acting by Hopkins, playing a proud man who’s desperately trying to put up a front of still being in charge of his own life. He’ll make a joke of his forgetfulness, charm the pants off whoever he’s talking to, then teeter off into a canyon of anger and despair the next moment. It’s an incredibly vulnerable performance.

Colman is solid too, playing a woman of middle years who has watched her own life flash by as she’s tended to her father in his decline. She lets us feel the mixture of shame, guilt, resentment and affection when she sees her father. Part of her knows a time is coming when he’ll need more care than she can give, but she’s not yet ready to let go of the responsibility.

At various times (from Anthony’s perspective) Anna is currently married, or divorced, or recently met someone and decided to move away to Paris. Rufus Sewell and Mark Gatiss play her lover alternately, whose patience for Anthony varies quite a deal, from kindly tolerance to outright abuse.

Imogen Poots turns up as Laura, a young caregiver who Anna has hired to look after Anthony while she goes away. He’s gone through a slew of such women who couldn’t take his abuse -- for example, he’s constantly misplacing his watch but accuses his caregivers of stealing it. He’s immediately taken with Laura, who reminds him of his younger, favorite daughter: another reservoir of pain for Anna.

“The Father” falls into that small category films that can be painful to watch, but is extraordinarily rewarding for those that do. Such a beautiful, and very human, story.

Video review: "Judy"

"What’s ‘Judy’ about?” someone asked me when the film was hitting theaters.

“It’s about Renée Zellweger making her big comeback and giving an Oscar-bait performance,” I responded.

“No, no, I mean the story. What’s the movie about?” they said.

“It’s a movie about getting Renée Zellweger her big comeback performance and maybe winning an Oscar.”

A bit flip, but true. “Judy” is one of those movies that isn’t just built around a leading performance, it is the film in its entirety. Zellweger plays Judy Garland during her last bitter years, her star faded but her voice still strong.

It’s a great role for an actress whose career hit a slump around age 40, as so many sadly do. Hollywood loves the ingénue and seems to have little room for women in their middle years. It happened to Susan Sarandon, Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep, too.

They managed to turn it around and cruise into their “grand dame” years, and that’s what Zellweger’s turn here is trying to do.

I liked the film without really falling in love. I often find that biopics containing a single overpowering performance – “Ray,” “Capote,” etc. – tend to have an innate ceiling below greatness. Stories and secondary characters are shunted aside in the bid to keep the spotlight burning bright on the star.

Set in the late 1960s, the story follows Garland when she was booked to play an extended engagement at a London theater. She was long sick of showbiz, but with bills to pay and an ongoing custody battle for kids, Garland didn’t have much choice.

Jessie Buckley plays Rosalyn, the handler assigned to watch over Garland and make sure she shows up for her performances and not get too drunk. Some flashback scenes feature Darci Shaw as a teen Garland first getting a harsh introduction to Hollywood via a creepy Louis B. Mayer.

“Judy” is a solid biopic, but once you get past Zellweger’s snappy performance as a self-loathing faded star, there’s not much fairy dust to speak of.

Bonus features are fairly skimpy. There’s just an image gallery from the set and a documentary, “From the Heart: The Making of Judy.”

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Review: "Judy"

“I still believe in it, y’know -- the love you find with an audience.”

Judy Garland was known for having more career comebacks than you could count. Really, her entire adult career was one long comeback from the Golden Age stardom of her child/ingenue years. She was the studio’s hand-picked “America’s sweetheart” -- until she become a grown woman who stumbled through addiction, financial instability and one bad marriage after another.

Renée Zellweger hasn’t been the star of a mainstream movie since 2009’s “New in Town,” so people are calling “Judy” her comeback picture. She’s 50 now, an age when many Hollywood many actresses find themselves lonely for projects. So there’s a certain synergy in her playing an over-the-hill flameout trying to make one last go at stardom.

(It should be noted, she’s already older than Garland was at her death, though they have to use aging makeup to make her sufficiently haggard.)

She is indeed a knockout playing Garland during the last months of her life, a faded star who’s sick of showbiz but is forced to suck at the only teat available to her. Unable to get booked anywhere else, she just wants the financial means to support her two younger children, over whose custody she is fighting a long-game war with ex-hubby Sidney Luft (Rufus Sewell).

Zellweger nails the mannerisms and singing of Garland, including that strange head-shaking, humped-posture thing she acquired later in her career. The looks aren’t exactly spot-on, but the hair, makeup and lighting are close enough that after a while you don’t think about it much.

The actress will almost certainly get an Academy Award nomination out of this, and deserves to.
But I can’t help but put “Judy” in a pile with other similar Oscar-bait biopics like “Ray” and “Capote.” The central performance so dominates the film as to overpower the narrative function. The acting is the story.

So side characters are not given space to live and breathe, and the narrative tends to hover in place rather than go anywhere.

It’s quite literally all Judy, Judy, Judy.

I confess the iconography Garland holds in certain communities, particularly among gay men, is bewildering to me. Garland was a talented singer, though more as a crooner-for-hire than as someone who made indelible music of her own. By my lights she was a middling actress at best.

The screenplay by Tom Edge, based on a play by Peter Quilter, focuses on a period of a few months in the late 1960s when Garland sang at a big London theater. Director Rupert Goold (“True Story”) stages the many musical numbers with appreciable skill and flair, and they are the highlight of the experience.

The wonderful Jessie Buckley is largely wasted as Rosalyn, the British handler assigned to take care of her during her London stay. This mostly involves making sure she shows up in the right places at the right times at an acceptable level of inebriation.

I kept hoping the two characters would forge some kind of bond or even an All-About-Eve-ish antagonism, but their interactions skim the surface.

Michael Gambon plays the theater owner, standing in the wings and fretting about Judy’s erratic performances on his stage. Royce Pierreson is Burt, the band leader who craves collaboration but is dismissed to the background.

Darci Shaw plays Judy as a teen in flashback scenes, where she is controlled by Louis B. Mayer, who sees her as his personal creation, and pet. (I can’t find a credit for the actor who plays Mayer, but he’s terrific.) Their insistence that she starve herself began a lifelong habit of pill-popping and insomnia.

Finn Wittrock plays Mickey Deans, an agreeably scruffy young admirer who presses himself upon Garland at a party thrown by her daughter, Liza Minnelli, already a big star on her own. That mother-daughter relationship is left almost completely unexplored, though we traipse through the tiresome infatuation/ingratiation/dissolution journey with Mickey.

The time elapse from their marriage to breakup scene must set some kind of filmmaking record.

I enjoyed a lot of things about “Judy,” but it’s one of those movies that is good bordering on very good without ever finding true greatness. People will go see it to witness one Hollywood legend playing the hell out of another bygone one.

That’s fine, but I wish there was more story to tell beyond the spotlight.

Video review: "Gods of Egypt"

“Gods of Egypt” is kind of a junky movie, but not an unenjoyable one. It’s a sword-and-sandals fantasy epic that tries to follow on the financial success of the “Clash of the Titans” and “Thor” movies, but without the A-list stars or first-rate CGI. Despite its schlocky aspects, I couldn’t bring myself to hate the film and even enjoyed it on some puckish level.

Frankly, this is the sort of flick that would’ve made a prime pick for “Mystery Science Theater 3000” ridicule back in the day.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (“Game of Thrones”) plays Horus, the god of air, who’s about to be crowned king of all Egypt after his father Ra decides to step down. In this postulation, the gods are 8-foot-tall super-powered beings who dwell among the humans and rule them, but are still flawed and mortal.

Then his uncle, the power-mad Set (Gerard Butler), usurps the throne and kills Ra and a bunch of others. Horus has his eyes plucked out, robbing him of his unerring aim, and is banished. Then a young human thief named Bek (Brenton Thwaites) steals an eye from Set, kicking off a series of events that includes full-scale war between the gods.

This is essentially another superhero movie, with many of the same dynamics at play. Horus is a good but vain god, and must learn to lead humans instead of lording it over them.

Director Alex Proyas (“Dark City”) and screenwriters liberally borrow elements from other movies and insert them here, including sand snakes straight from “Dune” and gods who transform into metallic form for battle a la Iron Man. If you’re looking for originality, look elsewhere.

But if you’re willing to watch something ironically, I think you’ll find “Gods of Egypt” has a bounty of riches waiting to be tapped.

Bonus features are decent, though you’ll have to get the Blu-ray edition to possess most of them. The DVD comes with only two making-of featurettes, “The Battle for Eternity: Stunts” and “A Window into Another World: Visual Effects.”

With the Blu-ray you add four more featurettes on costumes and makeup, shooting on location in Australia, the cast and the overall vision, plus storyboards.

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Review: "Gods of Egypt"

"Gods of Egypt" is the sort of thing you're tempted to laugh out loud at -- and believe me, I did, several times -- but I can't bring myself to hate it. It's the sort of goofy disposable entertainment that seems self-aware of its nature, embraces it and has fun with it.

We've had big-budget spectacles featuring the Greek/Roman pantheon of deities as well as the Norse ones via the Thor movies, so now it's the Egyptians' turn. Because everyone was demanding a Horus/Set throwdown, right?

Director Alex Proyas is known for this sort of thing -- "Dark City," "The Crow" and similar middle-brow adventures in the fantasy/science fiction wing. At $140 million, it approaches triple the budget of "Deadpool," though the CGI, while extensive, often has that cheap shallow texture endemic to cut-rate/foreign jobs.

I noticed Proyas often cut away from money shots quickly, giving us time to absorb the impact without letting our gaze linger too long to seek imperfections.

The final package is a giddy sandals-and-swords romp that feels like it plucked elements from various other movies. The gods transform into metal warriors, there are sand snakes plucked straight out of "Dune," there's lots of parkour-ish stunts involving flips and contortions that aren't really necessary to get the job done.

Plus the expected quotient of heaving bosoms, comic sidekicks and so on.

The setup here is that in this version ancient Egypt -- script by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless -- the gods literally dwelled among the mortals and ruled them. They're eight feet tall, have amazing powers and live a thousand years, but they can certainly be killed and maimed -- and certainly will be over the course of the next 127 minutes.

They're essentially super heroes, dealing with the same-ol' great powers/great responsibility conundrum.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, best known for portraying the morally conflicted Jamie Lanister on "Game of Thrones," plays Horus, the lord of air, known for his keen sight and true aim. As the story opens he's about to be crowned king of Egypt, as daddy Osiris (an oddly uncredited Brian Brown) has reined over peace and prosperity for an eon and is ready to pass the mantle on.

But Uncle Set (Gerard Butler, in full shout-and-flex mode) isn't happy about being banished by father Ra to the wasted desert, and decides it's his turn to rule. He does some Very Bad Things, including plucking out Horus' eyes and banishing him.

Cut to our adorable human facilitator, a young thief named Bek (Brenton Thwaites) whose gorgeous lady love, Zaya (Courtney Eaton), worshiped Horus before his overthrow. She convinces Bek to steal Horus' eyes -- represented as glowing blue jewels -- from the elaborate maze of traps constructed by Set's chief builder (Proyas favorite Rufus Sewell). He manages to snatch one, but Zaya is killed in retaliation.

Bek revives the self-pitying Horus, but with one eye he's only a half-powered god. They set off on a familiar quest for revenge and true love, as Horus promises to rescue Zaya from Anubis' underworld.

Helping out are Hathor (Elodie Yung), the goddess of love who has been joined to both Horus and Set, depending on her need; and Thoth (Chadwick Boseman), the prissy but good-hearted god of knowledge and wisdom.

It's not a particularly Egyptian-looking cast, but there at least is a decent enough mix of ethnicities to pass muster as a multicultural mashup.

I liked Coster-Waldau in the lead role, even though he isn't given much to do other than fight and seethe. He's got an easygoing charisma and likable screen presence. I was glad to see the depiction of a normal male body that's athletic without the usual veiny/engorged look that's become so prevalent.

The movie takes tons of liberties with traditional Egyptian mythology, whipping up all sorts of side characters and events to fit their purposes, and sweeping anything that doesn't fit under the rug. (Look up the recorded conflict between Horus and Set; it was much more, uh, spunky.)

One of the coolest set pieces is Ra's chariot pulling the sun across the sky each day -- in this depiction, the earth is most definitively flat -- doing nightly battle with Apep, the worm of destruction. Played by Geoffrey Rush, Ra is an ancient, remote god who watches the exploits of his descendants below, silently judging but taking no direct action.

The whole sequence is quite majestic and beautiful, which is an amusing contrast with the squirmy, silly stuff happening in the sand. I think if Ra were to weigh this movie on its celestial worth, he'd probably toss it into the trashbin of the cosmos -- but he'd chortle while doing it.