Review: "The Illusionist"

Sweet and sad, "The Illusionist" is a cartoon for grown-ups.

Not that this animated French film from writer/director Sylvain Chomet, who made the wonderful "The Triplets of Belleville," wouldn't be suitable for the smallest of children. It's rated PG, and the only reason the MPAA failed to give it a G is because the main character occasionally puffs a cigarette.

(He and other characters also appear stumbling drunk, which apparently doesn't bother the ratings board.)

The real reason little ones might not enjoy "The Illusionist" is that it's simply not intended for them. There are no big, colorful animals, goofy gastrointestinal noises or enchanted princesses. It's a poignant tale about regret, generosity and ungratefulness.

The film is based on an original screenplay written by the late Jacques Tati a half-century ago. In the tradition of its mime author, it is virtually dialogue-free -- the characters speak, but in gibberish with a recognizable word in French or English here and there. The gorgeous, largely hand-drawn animation looks like a 19th-century painting of 1930s Paris and London.

Tati reputedly wrote the screenplay intending to make a live-action movie with his daughter, Sophie Tatischeff. The name they share becomes that of the protagonist.

Tatischeff (voice by Jean-Claude Donda) is an itinerant magician who plies his trade in venues grand and squalid. An older gentleman, he carries a quiet dignity to his act, whether the audience is few and indifferent (which is often) or large and rapturous. He seems to have no friends beyond the plump rabbit that's part of his act -- and even it nips at his fingers whenever they're presented.

Performing at a ritzy outdoor party, he's offered a gig at a remote Scottish pub by a stumblebum drunk in a kilt. It requires undertaking a major journey, but turns out to be one of his most receptive audiences in years. Tatischeff also befriends the young servant girl who irons his shirts. Seeing her distressed boots, he buys a pair of red shoes for her with his earnings.

Soon the girl has tagged along on his journey, becoming his surrogate daughter and companion. Permission is not asked or given; they simply find an arrangement that suits both of them, and acquiesce to circumstance.

Tatischeff and Alice (Eilidh Rankin) -- for that is her name, though we never hear it -- come to live in a seedy London hotel whose denizens all seem to be struggling entertainers. There's a clown who doesn't need makeup to look sad, a triplet of acrobats and even a ventriloquist with a funny, red-headed puppet that both resembles and channels himself.

Their relationship grows, deepens ... and sours. Neither is a bad person, but inevitably the things they desire out of life diverge. Tatischeff merely wants to perform his craft for a grateful audience, while Alice is entranced by the dazzling trappings of a big city: Bright lights, fancy restaurants and fashionable clothes.

Tatischeff compromises his principles to give Alice the things she wants, but it's still not enough.

The tone of "The Illusionist" is reminiscent of "Limelight," one of Charlie Chaplin's last films. Both are about an aging vaudevillian whose audiences have mostly drifted away, and then a girl enters his lonely life and changes it.

The outcomes are different, though. "Limelight" was about the old stepping aside for the young. "The Illusionist" has a more mournful lesson: Sometimes we do not appreciate what is given to us, and that lack exacts a toll on bother the giver and the gifted.

3.5 stars out of four

Video review: "You Again"

I love the cast of "You Again." And I enjoyed the slapsticky humor, of which there is plenty. Pretty much everything else about this Disney comedy is take it or leave it, though.

Kristen Bell plays Marni, a high-school ugly duckling who got her swan on in her 20s. Now a successful public relations executive, Marni uses the story of her loser days to inspire eager young interns: 'Believe in yourself, face your problems, and you too can blah blah blah blah…'

Disaster strikes when Marni realizes the woman her big brother Will (James Wolk) is marrying is none other than Joanna (Odette Yustman), the girl who tormented her back at Ridgefield High. Joanna was captain of the cheerleading squad, and ruled the school with a bitchy fist.

These flashback scenes are a laugh riot, due in large part to the convincing physical transformation of button-cute Bell into a nerd with droopy bangs, a face full of brace, and skin erupting with a bounty of zits.

Joanna acts as if she doesn’t even remember Marni, and proceeds to subtly make her feel like dirt all over again. Marni, though, is determined to extract an apology for the many wrongs done her. If she doesn’t get it, she’s prepared to extract her revenge by sending the marriage down in flames.

This set-up would be sufficient for most comedies, but "You Again" doubles down by replicating the dilemma one generation upward. Turns out Marni’s mom Gail (Jamie Lee Curtis, in a hoot of a performance) had a very similar experience in her school days with Ramona (Sigourney Weaver), who is revealed as Joanna’s aunt.

No one is going to confuse “You Again” with great filmmaking. But if you can stand the slow stretches, you’ll find an agreeably entertaining family-friendly comedy with a little bit of bite.

Extras are good in both DVD and Blu-ray/DVD combo format, with deleted scenes, a spoof interview with the cast that turns into a catfight, photo stills and a featurette following director Andy Fickman around.

Movie: 2.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3 stars

Reeling Backward: "Night of the Living Dead" (1968)

"Night of the Living Dead" became a seminal film without being a particularly good one. I've never been a fan of George A. Romero's filmmaking skills -- I think pretty much any UCLA or NYU film senior with a similar budget could do the same, or better -- but there's no denying the incredible imagination and originality of the 1968 movie.

It essentially launched the zombie movie genre as we know it today, and nudged horror movies out of creepy-but-family-friendly into adult films featuring gruesome violence and nihilistic overtones about the end of mankind, or at least a certain section of it.

Yes, there were zombie movies before 1968. But they tended to only have one or two or, at most, a handful of undead walking around, and voodoo or some other black magic usually played a role. Romero's film, which he co-wrote with John A. Russo, was the first to portray massive hordes of the creatures threatening to overtake all of humanity, with victims falling into their clutches turning into zombies themselves.

The fact that the zombies in this movie, and pretty much all subsequent zombie flicks, were cannibals added to the cloud of paranoia that hangs over all of the undead oeuvre. It's notable that it's usually some technological man-made disaster that causes the dead to rise -- nuclear waste, scientific experiments or, in this film, radiation brought back from space by an American satellite -- which adds a layer of parable to the proceedings: Humanity brought this on themselves.

It's the Icarus tale, with brain-munching.

This combination of the scientific and the religious, end times brought about by mankind's folly, is a double dose of misanthropy.

It's interesting to note that the word "zombie" does not appear anywhere in the movie. The walking dead are referred to as "ghouls" in the newscasts or official pronouncements of government officials, or more commonly as just "those things" by the people being stalked by them.

"Night" also started a commonality of the genre that has become a cliche: The small band of survivors holing up somewhere to wait out the attack. Almost invariably, resources run low or they decide they'd rather die fighting than cooped up, so some plan is hatched to escape, leading to the death of most of the cast.

The selfish guy who thinks of himself first is epitomized by Harry Cooper (Karl Hardman), a middle-aged white collar guy (he wears a shirt and tie throughout the entire ordeal) who wants to hide in the basement of the lonely farmhouse where all the major characters converge. We quickly sense that power is what Cooper craves more than security, and he resents the fact that Ben (Duane Jones) runs the show. "You can be boss downstairs, but up here I'm the boss!" Ben warns.

Much hay has been made of the fact that the main character is African-American, but Romero has insisted that Jones simply gave the best audition. The rest of the cast is all white, but no mention of Ben's race, implicit or otherwise, is made. Even a potentially racially charged bit where he knocks the hysterical white girl Barbra (Judity O'Dea) out cold is depicted as the harsh but sensible actions of a guy who keeps his head screwed on straight in a crisis.

In 1968, the fact a movie would present a black hero without comment is notable in of itself.

The creature effects range from non-existent to decent. There are a few close-up "money" shots of a gruesome zombie doing something especially gross -- swallowing a live insect or feasting on pig's innards doubling as human ones. The make-up effects are relatively crude, looking like their faces have been slathered in plaster that is now cracking and flaking off. Considering the film's budget -- a little over $100k, peanuts even 40-plus years ago -- it's not terrible.

But at least in the early going, the zombies look like regular people stumbling around as if from a bad hangover. The first encounter, between Barbra and her brother Johnny with a ghoul in the cemetery, is punctuated by Johnny making fun of him for his strange walk. Later, many of the supposedly recent corpses look incongruently well-fed, and there's even two brief shots of a nude female zombie.

This always brings up ruminations about how the zombies keep multiplying. If they're eating their victims, what's left to rise up again and become new zombies? You'd at least expect the undead to be a lot more torn up -- missing limbs, disemboweled, etc.

The acting, other than Jones, is not particularly good and occasionally amateurish. It's not surprising that many of the cast members never appeared in another movie, or just one or two more. Keith Wayne and Judith Ridley, as a hippie-ish young couple, list this film as their sole credit. The same for Kyra Schon, who had a small but memorable role as Harry Cooper's daughter, who rises as a zombie and kills her mother (Marilyn Eastman) with a garden spade. (This sequence, clearly inspired by the "Psycho" shower scene, is actually one of Romero's best.)

Zombies have experienced a pop-culture resurgence in recent years, and even spawned a tongue-in-cheek new literary genre -- "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies." And really, it all traces back to this 1968 film. It may have been a low-rent B-movie of questionable technical accomplishment, but its influence is deep and enduring.

3 stars out of four

Review: "The Company Men"

Something has gone seriously askew in America.

There was a time, not so long ago, when the heads of a company would be ashamed to show their faces if it performed so poorly they were forced to let workers go. CEOs were well paid, but did not earn 700 times his or her average employee. When times were lean, sacrifices were shared around -- as were the fruits when money rolled in.

Now, companies still making a decent profit  lay off 30-year employees to jigger the stock price a little bit higher. The top dogs demand and receive bonuses that could've paid the salaries of hundreds of people let go. Executives decorate their offices in mahogany and Degas paintings, while working stiffs watch as their houses are foreclosed.

"The Company Men" is about the big and the little guys. It's a searing portrait of a corporate culture utterly lacking in human values and the people who are rolled over by it. It's an effective drama, even if writer/director John Wells is occasionally a bit heavy-handed with his us-versus-them shtick.

But in these dark times a lot of people who have lost jobs will see this movie, and recognize those feelings of resentfulness, anger and -- most excruciatingly -- sudden anonymity.

"You know the worst part? The world didn't stop," one canned veteran wails. "My life ended and nobody noticed."

Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck) is a rising star, the regional sales director for GTX, a former shipbuilding company that has diversified into a behemoth. He is 37 years old, makes $160,000 a year, drives a Porsche, has the prototypical mini-mansion in the Boston suburbs and a wife and two kids.

Bobby thought he'd be safe from the latest round of cuts, after having been given the personal assurance of a patron high up in the company. But he gets pink-slipped, and the scene where he carries his belongings to the parking lot, and sees a dozen others holding the same cardboard boxes, is a punch in the gut.

At first, Bobby is in denial about his situation. He thinks he'll have another job lined up long before his severance runs out. He insists on paying exorbitant golf club fees and dry cleaning bills while the mortgage teeters because, as he tells his wife Maggie (Rosemarie DeWitt), "I need to look successful."

But the hiring market is a bleak slog of unreturned phone calls, long waits in waiting rooms, and interviewers who don't even bother to stop eating while they talk to you.

"The Company Men" is sprinkled with a raft of strong supporting performances. Tommy Lee Jones give an Oscar-worthy turn as Gene McClary, who helped built GTX from the ground up but has become disillusioned by its dehumanizing slide. His partner, James Salinger (Craig T. Nelson), insists they're not responsible for employees losing their jobs because the market demands it.

"We work for the stockholders now!" he thunders.

Chris Cooper has an almost feral energy as an upper-level exec who clawed his way up from the factory floor, only to face professional extinction. A job placement consultant coldly advises him to dye his gray hair and omit any mention of his Vietnam military service from his resume.

Maria Bello plays the seemingly heartless human resources chief, who main job seems to be telling people theirs no longer exists.

I especially liked Kevin Costner as Jack, Bobby's brother-in-law. A blue-collar contractor who used to needle Bobby about assisting in the corporate migration of jobs overseas, it's the sort of small, un-showy role that forms the connective tissue of movies like this, and which stars usually take a pass on.

Will people be too depressed this winter to go see a movie that depicts what a soul-crushing affair it is to lose your job? If a solid, worthy film like "The Company Men" fails to get hired by audiences, we're all doomed.

3 stars out of four

Review: "Another Year"

It's perhaps no surprise there isn't much in the way of narrative in "Another Year," since it's a movie composed largely by actors.

Yes, Brit director Mike Leigh wrote the screenplay -- even receiving an Oscar nomination for it. But like many of his films, it was written over the course of months with the cast continually improvising dialogue and scenes, which were incorporated into the script when it came time to shoot. Leigh's an auteur of group efforts.

The result is a film of wonderful performances, but few happenings. It's less pure storytelling than a peek inside a small circle of people who feel authentic and three-dimensional. An audience isn't so much watching them do things as visiting with them and observing their conversations and interactions.

I found "Another Year" highly engaging but not entirely satisfying. While never dull, it can't escape a certain sense of cyclical malaise. Even the title and framing device of dividing the tale into the four seasons lend a sense of inevitability and familiarity.

Things revolve around Tom and Gerri, an upper-middle-class London couple of late middle years. He's a geologist, she's a psychiatric counselor, and they enjoy the unspectacular comforts of a nice little home and a gardening plot in the country.

Played marvelously by Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen, they're a happy couple and good people, but not flawless. They take a certain amount of delight in indulging the flaws and vices of their circle of acquaintanceships. They love nothing more than inviting a few of them over, and exchanging knowing looks and half-smiles as their guests make fools of themselves.

Tom and Gerri aren't necessarily taking pleasure in the misfortune of others, but they certainly don't make any grand efforts to guide these so-called friends out of the dead ends of their own making. They've taken "live and let live" and turned it into a source for their own amusement.

Their chief guest and entertainer is Mary (Lesley Manville), a co-worker of Gerri whose love life is a shambles. In her 50s but dressing like a 20-something tart, Mary's need for companionship seems to dominate her entire personality. At the same time, this chatterbox can't stop talking about how great her life is going and how excited she is about the future.

 Perhaps Mary needs her bubble of perpetual optimism, otherwise she'd realize how miserable she is.

Mary even carries on a flirtation with Joe (Oliver Maltman), Tom and Gerri's 30-year-old son. At first her come-ons seem playful and tongue-in-cheek, until he brings home a girlfriend (Karina Fernandez) and we see how crushed she is. Mary probably didn't really aspire to a relationship with Joe, but it's a reminder of her diminishing options.

Ironically, Mary has her own admirer, Ken (Peter Wight), another acquaintance of Tom and Gerri. Divorced and overweight, Ken is a two-fisted drinker -- literally. He's at retirement age, but can't imagine quitting, because what would he do with his life? His existence consists of his job, and drinking so he can forget about his job.

It makes us wonder: Do Tom and Gerri have any real friendships with people they consider their equals? Can they even conceive of the idea that to someone else, they are the Mary and Ken of that social circle? I suspect the answer on both counts is no.

Imelda Staunton has a small role as Janet, a woman suffering from crippling depression who comes to see Gerri for help. She's unresponsive, can't sleep, is irritable and morose. Asked what she would like to improve her life, she dully responds, "Another life." Janet is a woman completely at the end of her rope, her path leading to some kind of major upheaval or tragedy.

In any other movie, Janet's crisis would be a breaking point in the plot. But "Another Year," it's merely decoration. After a couple of scenes, Janet disappears, never to be heard from again, and we wonder why the film bothered introducing her to be dismissed so abruptly.

I enjoyed the time I spent with Tom, Gerri and the gang, but I think the aesthetic of this sort of filmmaking has a built-in set of diminishing returns.

If the goal is not to dramatize real life but depict it in all its untidiness and ungilded, quotidian banality, then the more successful the movie is the less necessary it becomes -- and people realize they don't need to buy a ticket to have the experience.

3 stars out of four

Bonus video review: "Welcome to the Rileys"

A cursory plot summary of "Welcome to the Rileys" -- middle-aged Indianapolis couple tries to turn around a teen stripper in New Orleans -- doesn't do justice to this understated character study. A little gem of a film, "Rileys" boasts a trifecta of solid performances from James Gandolfini, Kristen Stewart and Melissa Leo.

The story sounds ridiculous -- hokey, even. But all three actors inhabit their roles with such an unstudied validity that we don't for a moment think of them as movie characters behaving for the camera.

Gandolfini plays Doug Riley, a plumbing wholesaler in his early 50s who's just going through the motions. He and his wife Lois (Leo) lost their teen daughter in a car crash nearly a decade ago, and have essentially placed their lives on hold since.

I loved all the subtle little details Gandolfini puts into Doug -- the way he unconsciously hikes up his belt over his ample belly, or braces a hand on the roof of his car when climbing in or out. A guy whose indulgences run to poker on Thursdays and late-night waffle runs, Doug isn't the sort to engage in a lot of introspection.

(If I had to pick a nit, I'd point out that the light syrup of twang Gandolfini drizzles over his accent is more Tennessee than Hoosier.)

If Doug has fault lines on the inside, then Lois' are easier to see. She has not even left the house in the ensuing years since her child's death -- when Doug goes away on rare business trips, a neighbor brings their newspaper in from the curb. Her daughter's room remains made up as tidily as Lois keeps her blonde hairdo.

In New Orleans for a convention, Doug ducks into a strip joint to escape the monotony of cocktails and glad-handing, and there he runs into Mallory (Stewart) -- which may or may not be her real name. Mallory says she's 22, looks a lot younger, and tries to trick Doug into buying a trick.

Before long Doug is crashing at her run-down house, and calling Lois to tell her may not be back anytime soon. Without ever being able to put his feelings into words, it's clear that Doug sees Mallory as a stand-in for the daughter he lost.

He starts fixing up her grubby home, in unspoken hopes that it'll help her clean up her life, too. Then Lois, who knows that her hermetically sealed grief has pushed her husband away, makes a bold move of her own.

I'm personally of the opinion that those "Twilight" movies have been a net burden to Stewart's career. Watching her textured work here, in which she shows us Mallory's carefully constructed walls of defensiveness, it's hard to imagine this is the same actress moping around with vampires.

They also do a good job of giving Stewart a skeezy look, with dark-rimmed eyes and flesh that seems perpetually bruised.

Director Jake Scott, working from an original script by Ken Hixon, doesn't aim for any big theatrical moments or dramaturgical contortions. Rather, the filmmakers and actors carefully construct a tidy little world that feels authentic and true.

3.5 stars out of four

Video review: "Let Me In"

"Let Me In" is a better adaptation of the Swedish vampire film "Let the Right One In" than I had any reason to expect. Writer/director Matt Reeves kept the original's creepy atmospherics, although he did punch up the action beats, as one might expect.

The American version, which bombed at the box office, is unnecessary but undeniably well-made. It features two of the best child actors Hollywood has to offer, Chloe Moretz and Kodi Smit-McPhee as, respectively, an ancient blood-sucker trapped in a girl's body and the boy who befriends her.

Nine times out of 10, an American remake would tone down the violence and sexual innuendo of a daring European film. But this time, they preserved everything that made the original such an unnerving, makes-your-feet-itch experience.

Smit-McPhee is Owen, a slight, bullied lad who's intrigued by Abby, the new girl who moves into his snow-straddled apartment complex with (Owen assumes) her father in the dead of winter. She's strange: She only appears at night, doesn't seem bothered walking barefoot in the snow, and bathes infrequently. But soon these two lonely souls cement a connection that grows into the unlikeliest of affections.

It's not all happiness and sunshine, though. Even after he knows he's smitten, events unfold -- particularly those involving Abby's father figure -- forcing Owen to recognize that loving the undead brings ... complications.

If there ever were a romance between a human and a vampire, it would not be the stylized, sanitized Gothic splendor of the "Twilight" series. It would be like this: Disturbing, smelly and increasingly unpleasant as time goes by.

Video extras are quite good in both DVD and Blu-ray versions.

The DVD includes a commentary track by Reeves, a making-of documentary, a step-by-step look at some of the film's special effects, deleted scenes with commentary and a still gallery.

The Blu-ray includes all these features, plus a feature called "Dissecting Let Me In."

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars