"Testament of Youth" is a memoir of the dead; like the ghosts it chases the film is haunting, beautiful, and transparent.
At the time of its publication nearly a century ago, the book by Vera Brittain was a very big deal, launching her writing career and status as a leading 20th century pacifist. She followed it up with other "Testament" memoirs, but the first one covering her young life and the horrors of World War I was the most indelible.
It's a well-crafted film -- director James Kent has a painterly eye for landscapes, and knows how to juxtapose backgrounds with inner turmoil of the characters. His career has been spent entirely in British television, but he seems to appreciate the scale of the big screen and uses it to strong effect.
The screenplay by Juliette Towhidi attempts to pack years of Vera's life into two hours, including a young proto-feminist convincing the world she deserves to study at Oxford, the strains of romantic and familial love, and the sweeping terror of the war ripping through it all.
The result is a film that feels both hurried and languorous.
The best thing about it is Alicia Vikander as Vera. You may remember her playing a self-aware robot in "Ex Machina," and she shows a similar mix of vulnerability and sturdy determination in this role. Her Vera is fully-formed, with shadings and subtleties.
The rest of the roster doesn't fare so well. Other figures slide in and out of Vera's picture frame, catching our attention for a while but moving on without much visceral impact.
I admired the romantic imagery and themes of the early going. In an early pivotal scene, Vera walks down a country road with three beautiful boys to keep her company. They are young, vibrant, full of life and the cockiness of English upper-class privilege. We know instantly that their flesh will become gruel for the machinery of war.
The primary relationship is with Roland Leighton (Kit Harington from "Game of Thrones"), a budding writer like Vera. He takes an instant shine to her fiery sense of independence and prodigious talents, though she has to be convinced he's not a commonplace cad.
Her brother Edward (Taron Egerton) is a scamp with a noble streak, arguing to their parents (Dominic West and Emily Watson) that Vera deserves a chance to study at Oxford, too. Victor Richardson (Colin Morgan) is the quiet, well-meaning friend Edward would like to set her up with.
The story follows Vera's journey to college -- Miranda Richardson turns up as a demanding headmistress. But the grim tide of warfare rolls in, and everything becomes predictably tragic.
I appreciated what this film was trying to do more than how it went about doing it. The story held few surprises for me; it always seemed like the next steps of Vera's dark journey are telegraphed, so we know which way she will turn even before she realizes it herself.
Alicia Vikander is young actress to watch, a fierce emotional and intellectual presence onscreen. Her lush portrayal, though, does not negate the fact that this paean to the dead is too often lifeless and insensible.
“Ex Machina” is an ambitious science fiction drama that focuses on an aspect of human nature you rarely see explored in the genre: lust.
Ostensibly, writer/director Alex Garland’s film is about a robot that seems to have crossed the threshold into human-like sentience. But really, it’s a tale of sexual attraction between man and machine, and all the troubling consequences that entails.
Domhnall Gleeson plays Caleb, a young programmer who has won a contest to spend a week at the remote domicile of his company’s super-rich founder, Nathan (Oscar Isaac). A wunderkind billionaire, Nathan lives virtually alone in an antiseptic research facility with only his creation, Ava (Alicia Vikander), a robot that he thinks could be the world’s first man-made person.
Ava cannot physically pass for human: except for a fleshy face and appendages, she’s an elegant mix of metal parts. But during their long interview sessions Caleb begins to develop feelings for her, which Ava seems to return.
All the time, Nathan is watching, studying, judging. He needles Caleb with the information that Ava has been outfitted with parts to accommodate coupling with a human. Nathan can be charming one minute and bullying the next. His relationship to Ava is somewhat akin to a zookeeper who considers whether the animals were better left in the wild.
It’s an extremely engaging film, though I felt Garland avoided too many risks in his storytelling that could have led to more interesting places, plot-wise. For instance, it’s implied at one point that maybe it’s Caleb himself who is the robot, and this exercise has been his own Turing Test. That would have been a twist, but it becomes the road not taken.
“Ex Machina” is a movie that starts out with boldness and then travels too straight a line for its own good.
Video extras are a bit underwhelming. There’s a making-of featurette, footage of a Q&A with the cast and crew from South by Southwest Festival and eight behind-the-scenes vignettes.
I don't think there was a soul alive who watched the original "Despicable Me" and didn't think to themselves, "Man, they should give those goofy little yellow sidekicks their own movie."
So now they have, and "Minions" is exactly what it's cracked up to be: 91 minutes of CGI slapstack, sufferable cuteness and incomprehensible minion-babble. Though it might try the patience of parents here and there, it's colorful, fast-paced and amusing. It's got the formula for keeping kiddies entertained on a hot summer day down pat: three parts cartoonish violence, one part gratuitous adorableness, one and a half parts making fun of grownups, and a scoop of gastrointestinal humor.
Frankly, if your little kid isn't left giddy by this flick, you might want to keep an eye on him.
This is essentially the minions' origin story, aka the tale of their life pre-Gru, the nefarious, redeemable villain with the long schnoz and inexplicable Slavic accent voiced by Steve Carell in the "Despicable" movies. We learn that they are not, in fact, the laboratory concoction of a mad scientist, Gru or otherwise, but a natural life form that evolved long before man and whose entire evolutionary purpose is to find the biggest villain available and serve him/her/it.
A witty opening credit scroll shows them evolving from single cells to amoebas to sea critters and so forth, always latching on to something bigger and toothier to fawn over. Alas, their bumbling assistance tends to lead to the demise of whatever "big boss" they're currently serving, a fate that eventually leads them to a long, lonely existence languishing in a frozen cave.
Eventually, hero-myth candidate Kevin resolves to go out in the world and seek a new villain. He's joined by Bob, a young minion -- he still carries a teddy bear -- with more determination than skills, and Stuart, the resident guitar player and cool dude.
The running joke with the minions is that they're virtual carbon copies of each, with a pill-shaped yellow body, no detectible noses, ears or reproductive organs, a scattering of coarse black hair and one or more googly, goggled eyes. There's not a huge range in personality or intelligence, either, though they seem to have no trouble telling each other apart.
Anyway, the trio make their way to Orlando, Fla., for Villain-Con, an annual gathering of baddies, and encounter Scarlet Overkill, the greatest of them all, and become her henchmen on a trial basis. They're assigned to steal the crown of Queen Elizabeth, and various hijinks ensue.
I should mention this takes place in 1968 London, so everything's very Mod with tight pants, period rock music and an Austin Powers vibe.
Co-director Pierre Coffin helmed the "Despicable" films with Chris Renaud, who opted to go his own way with the forthcoming "The Secret Lives of Pets." Here Coffin is joined by apprentice Kyle Balda, with a screenplay by Brian Lynch.
Coffin also provides all the chirpy voices for the minions, with the help of some intricate sound mixing. As you'll recall they speak in their own distinctive, nonsensical language with a smattering of recognizable words in English, Spanish and French. This results in one scene where Bob, having been temporarily granted an auspicious perch, delivers a rousing speech to a huge crowd of Brits, who are completely bewildered, but pleased.
The rest of the voice cast is quite good, led by Sandra Bullock as Scarlett, who really stretches vocally to capture her character's high highs and dastardly lows. Jon Hamm plays her lackadaisical husband/hanger-on/gadget guy, Michael Keaton and Allison Janney voice a pair of familial robbers, Jennifer Saunders is the queen and Geoffrey Rush is our helpful narrator.
"Minions" isn't a particularly ambitious animated film, especially compared with superior fare like "Inside Out." It's forgettable, but fun, and I can think of worse ways to spend a little time and money.
"1900" is a movie that is at once very large and very small.
It was Bernardo Bertolucci's self-conscious attempt to create an epic film about Italy's struggle between fascism and socialism. He framed his tale around two characters, the son of a rich landowner or padrone and the son of a peasant, who were born on the same day and raised together. We watch them from boyhood to middle age to dotage, striving against each other, eternal friends and combatants.
The title is somewhat confusing. In Italian it was known as "Twentieth Century" to indicate the scope and sweep of the story, but perhaps they thought American audiences would confuse it with the studio. So they came up with "1900," which itself is something of a misnomer, since the movie explicitly begins on the day Giuseppe Verdi died, in 1901, when both boys are born.
Released nearly 40 years ago, "1900" is known today for three things.
There is the sexual content, which at one point earned an NC-17 rating during a 1991 re-release. It includes a scene where fully nude stars Robert De Niro and Gérard Depardieu are masturbated by a women simultaneously -- one (obstinately flaccid) cock in each hand.
There are the various edits of the film, all of them long. Bertolucci fought with his financial backers, at one point being literally locked out of the editing room, and different iterations of "1900" have been shown at different times and venues. Traditionally the movie has been exhibited in two parts, though the run time has varied quite a bit. I saw the full director's cut, a hair over 5¼ hours, which places it among the longest narrative films ever released.
(There is no official intermission, and my viewing took place over several days, by necessity.)
Lastly, there is the pretty uniform perception that the film is a dog, a disaster even. Right after "Last Tango in Paris," Bertolucci was being hailed as the new European master. Many people were expecting the Italian equivalent of "The Godfather" parts 1 & 2, and were left sorely disappointed by the shambling narrative.
Roger Ebert put it succinctly in his review: "Bertolucci had his pick of actors, a free run with his budget, the freedom to make a personal film. And he blew it."
I think it's still a worthy cinematic experience, and certainly it is a very beautiful film to gaze upon. Ennio Morricone, one of my favorite film composers, came up with a lush score to back up the visuals of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. The rustic, slightly dreamy look of it reminded me very much of Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven."
The main problem with the film is that it wants to use the two main characters, Alfredo Berlinghieri and Olmo Dalcò (De Niro and Depardieu, respectively), as representatives of the competing aims of fascism and socialism, and neither one is a particularly good fit.
Olmo is a born troublemaker who instinctively identifies with the collectivist agrarian ideas of his large clan, who have worked the Berlinghieri lands for generations, essentially as indentured servants. He has a tendency to provoke conflict but then shy away from the consequences, so he doesn't make for a very heroic leader of the proletariat. When he finally stands up enough to make the fascists respond, he runs away, so their punishment is visited upon his family instead.
Alfredo is even thornier. As played by De Niro, he's a pampered rich boy who takes his wealth and status for granted, but is more sympathetic to the socialist sentiments of his workforce than are his fellow landowners. When we first meet him in young manhood, Alfredo is extremely cocky and hedonistic, preferring parties, booze and cocaine over the dull homestead. Later, after taking his place as padrone, he becomes defined by his indecision. A main character who won't make a choice is rarely a compelling one.
He won't stand up to the local leader of the fascist blackshirts, Attila, even though he is Alfredo's employee. Donald Sutherland plays Attila, a snarling, depraved man who sees the fascist movement as the proper vehicle in which to express his masochism and lust for power. We see him use his forehead to smash the life out of a helpless cat, and later he sodomizes and then kills a young boy in a similar fashion.
Sutherland is arresting in the role, by far the most vivid character in "1900." But narratively he's problematic.
It's much the same issue I had with the Michael Fassbender character in "12 Years a Slave." By making a single person the representation of all evil in a movement that entailed millions of people, you end up making that character a cartoon. And you let the multitudes who embraced fascism/slavery/the Holocaust, etc. -- or were complacent in its atrocities -- off the hook.
So why exactly won't Alfredo simply fire Attila and banish him from his lands, given that the essentially existed in a feudal system with himself as lord? It's never really answered, or even explored.
The best part of the film is the first 90 minutes or so when Olmo and Alfredo are rambunctious boys. Roberto Maccanti and Paolo Pavesi play them as youths of about 12, and are both terrific. (They have their own controversial nude scene in which they compare their foreskins.)
They have all sorts of spats and adventures, such as Olmo lying underneath a passing locomotive. (Alfredo takes up the dare but then balks.) In one of the film's most visually memorable moments, Olmo catches live frogs from the farm's irrigation canals and ties them, alive and wriggling, to his hat.
Two figures who lord over this section with magisterial sweep are the boys' grandfathers. Leo Dalcò is played by the great Sterling Hayden, while Burt Lancaster is Alfredo Berlinghieri the elder. Each man has an intuitive grasp of his place in the world, and their relationship to each other. In some ways it mirrors that of their grandchildren, a strange brew of respect, affection and antagonism.
Leo is initially hostile to the socialist movement, teaching Olmo that he will always be a peasant and to accept his fate. Still, his heart is with the land and the people, so it doesn't take much to convince him to join a strike. Leo is a servant of capitalist tradition, but socialist ideals aren't much of a stretch for him: "If it's yours," he tells young Olmo, "then it belongs to all of us."
The older Berlinghieri has traits of both nobility and venality about him. He sees his workers as chattel, much like the stock in his milking pen, but he's also the sort of man who believes in treating his animals well. His own son, young Alfredo's father, inherits all of the man's pride and entitlement but none of his wisdom. In another seminal moment from the film, when the new padrone tells the workers he's cutting their wages in half, one of the men slices off his own ear and offers it to the master as a symbol of his lost dignity.
"1900" loses focus and momentum in the second half. Much of it is taken up with Alfredo's relationship and marriage with a half-mad Parisian woman, Ada, played by Dominique Sanda. Her face and low, dusky voice reminded me very much of Lauren Bacall. She's one of those women who insists on being the center of attention in any room she occupies, even if she has to act completely batty to force the limelight. Predictably, she becomes resentful of life in the country and turns to drink.
Olmo's own wife, Anita (Stefania Sandrelli), checks out of the movie midway, dying in childbirth. She is actually Olmo's instructor in the ways of socialism, but their relationship doesn't have much spark outside of that.
The other significant character is Regina, Alfredo's cousin and childhood playmate. She clearly expected to become his wife one day, and when he chooses a wan foreigner over her, it drives Regina into the arms of Attila. She becomes his hate-whisperer, urging him on to ever more destructive acts as a way to spite Alfredo.
Regina is played by Laura Betti. About 20 years older than De Niro and Depardieu, with a matronly build and stout face, Betti's presence is an incongruous one, seeming more like the witchy aunt than the third leg of a supposed love triangle.
It's interesting to note that Bertolucci filmed "1900" with actors from America, France, Italy and other nations, and instructed them all to speak in their native language. This was a not uncommon practice with international productions of the 1960s and '70s -- Sergio Leone did so with his spaghetti Westerns. So watching the film on video poses a dilemma.
In general I prefer to view non-English films in their own language with subtitles. But doing so meant watching De Niro, Lancaster and Hayden with obviously dubbed voices -- and not very good ones, either. Meanwhile, Depardieu speaks in French, the Italians in Italian, and so forth.
So I opted to watch mostly in English, but would switch to French for Depardieu's long dialogue scenes and occasionally to Italian. (This revealed that Sanda, with her distinctive low moan, apparently did her English and French lines herself.)
It was somewhat distracting, but not much. I can only imagine how it complicated the give-and-take between actors on a set.
"1900" is a flawed film, but it's certainly a noble failure. Seeing it is obviously not a thing to be undertaken lightly, given the sheer investment in time alone. But I am glad I did so.
You may have heard that “Maggie,” the tiny-budget movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a zombie flick. That’s true but not the whole story. It’s set in an apocalyptic future where the human race is being slowly wiped out by a disease that turns people into man-eating undead.
The difference from most zombie movies is that this transformation doesn’t take seconds, but weeks or even months. Schwarzenegger plays Wade, a tough old farmer whose teen daughter (Abigail Breslin) has become infected. He brings Maggie home to care for her during her final days.
His second wife (Joely Richardson) isn’t happy about the threat Maggie poses to them and their younger children. Meanwhile, the local authorities drop by to warn Wade that they’ll be coming to collect her for quarantine when the time comes … with the strong hint that maybe he should just take care of things himself.
Wade’s an old-school kind of guy, who drives the same truck for decades and believes family takes care of its own, no matter what. Faced with inevitability, he harries and fumes at his dilemma, knowing what he must do but unable to summon the courage.
It’s a great concept, and Schwarzenegger shows that after 40 years on-camera he’s got some dramatic acting chops he never got to display before. But director Henry Hobson and screenwriter John Scott III needed to take the idea further. It feels like the movie is missing a second act, the bridge to an ending we know is coming.
“Maggie” ends up as more a slow character study than a compelling tale.
Bonus features are pretty good. There’s a commentary track with director Hobson. That’s nice, but it would’ve been terrific to have Schwarzenegger on there with him talking about tackling this kind of role at this stage of his career. There are cast and crew interviews, a making-of featurette and a single deleted scene.
"The Overnight" is more an exercise in filmmaking than a fully realized feature, essentially a promising sketch stretched out to 79 minutes. But it's well-done and quite engaging, alternating between goofiness and thoughtfulness with barely any seams showing between the transitions.
It stars Adam Scott, who you probably know from TV's "Parks and Recreations," and Taylor Schilling, who you probably know from "Orange is the New Black," a streaming television show from Netflix. They play Alex and Emily, respectively, a married couple who have just moved to Los Angeles from somewhere cold and boring, and get invited over by another family they've just met for a playdate between their boys.
Alex is a stay-at-home dad and Emily the breadwinner; she's outgoing and he struggles to engage with his new environment. “Am I supposed to just ask other grown-up persons if they want to be friends?” he implores.
The other marrieds, Kurt (Jason Schwartzman) and Charlotte (Judith Godréche), are blend of every cliché about over-involved southern California types. They have lots of money but don't appear to work much; he paints and she acts, both itinerantly; they've got a New Age-y vibe and burn incense to get their kid to sleep.
But they seem amiable enough -- too amiable, actually.
After the boys are slumbering, the grownups break out the liquor and the weed, things get pretty loose, then things get a little weird. Then a lot weird. Sexual hang-ups get exposed, buried desires are unearthed, and we're all in for a bumpy night.
Writer/director Patrick Brice, in his second feature film, shows keen insight for the suffocating life of married people with small kids -- the daily squabbles about unimportant stuff, the growing resentments that get stuffed under the furniture for the sake of familial bliss, or at least the appearance of it.
(In one naughty true-to-life bit, the opening scene has Emily/Alex trying to squeeze in a little amorous time in the morning before their son wakes up. "There's still time for me!" Alex insists, urgently, while trying to complete the task at hand, urgently.)
"The Overnight" is a bit sitcom-y and hammy at times, especially the figure of Kurt, whom Schwartzman plays with a sort of graceful ease in his sliminess. He's a petty, selfish man who's convinced the world -- and himself -- that he's actually a great guy, and spends his life playing that role.
Still, it's a funny, smart and randy flick. And I do mean randy. There's quite a bit of nudity, mostly male. If you're a big Adam Scott fan, let's just say that prosthetics played a role in portraying his character's, uh, deficiencies. Ditto for Schwartzman, but in reverse.
Here's a surefire hint on gauging Terminator movies: Was it directed by James Cameron? If not, then it's not worth your time.
"Terminator: Genisys" takes us back to the roots of the iconic killer-robots-from-the-future franchise, and then proceeds to trample all over those roots. It removes all the paranoid dread of the first two movies along with every drop of emotional punch, and replaces them with a loopy retcon narrative that feels pulled straight out of a cheap comic book spinoff.
Suddenly, Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese are jumping through time portals willy-nilly, and are soon joined by their son John Connor, who becomes the future leader of the resistance against the tyranny of machines trying to crush out human existence. Different timelines with different alternate realities run up against each other, and yet somehow the characters have knowledge about the different iterations and use it to their advantage.
At one point they actually get into a testy argument about where they should go next. 1997? 2017? Who's on first?
You could lay out the plot of this movie on one of those big cork boards like you see cinematic detectives using to puzzle out a complex criminal case, with little notes and photographs linking up the different elements, and you still couldn't make sense of it all. Alan Taylor directs, from a screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier.
At times it nearly turns into a full-on spoof, with Sarah and Kyle (Emilia Clarke and Jai Courtney, respectively) bickering like it's a schmaltzy romantic comedy, and classic lines from the first two flicks bantered around back and forth for cheap effect -- "Nice to see you," "I'll be back," etc.
The early going includes exact reenactments of shots from the 1984 sci-fi classic, with similar-looking actors playing the alley bum, the garbage truck driver, and the trio of punk rock hoodlums.
Except, of course, the Terminator himself, who you might have heard is again played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. He gets plenty of help from body doubles and CGI trickery to portray himself as a youngster again in 1984, but reverts to something close to his actual age when the action jumps into the future.
Why would a cyborg get old, you ask? Well, since it's real human tissue surrounding a mean metal skeleton, it ages exactly as a person would. This is all patiently explained for us by various characters, of course, who often seem like they're talking past each other to address expected confusion from the audience.
It's undeniably a hoot to see Arnie back in Terminator mode, speaking monotone and trying to puzzle out human emotions while laying down the badassery. You've probably guessed that he's playing the good guy again in this one, protecting the Connors rather than trying to eliminate them.
If you'll recall, one human and Terminator were sent back to 1984 to protect and kill Sarah, then we learned another pair of antagonists went to 1994 for John as a boy. Now we're told yet another good Terminator showed up in 1973, when Sarah's parents were killed.
Her cyborg savior, whom she dubbed Pops, became her protector/parent figure. Fast forward to the future, and they've got a crotchety Sanford & Son thing going on. In this altered timeline, she's no longer the wilting wallflower when Reese shows up, but a tuned-up leader.
We also get to see a new iteration of the T-1000, the super-advanced Terminator made of liquid metal who can take on various shapes and impersonate humans. And an even newer model, who has the amazing power to... well, wait and see.
There's plenty of good action scenes, and if there's a reason to buy a ticket for this movie, that's it. There are a couple of nifty chases, including one on helicopters and aboard a bus, but the best stuff is saved for when the Terminators go to town on each other. Pops shows he's still got the stuff, despite some parts that aren't functioning quite like they used to. "I'm old, not obsolete," he insists.
J.K. Simmons, fresh off an Oscar win, seems ill-used here as a broken-down cop with a personal connection to the Terminator saga. It's one of those roles that should've been built way up or dumped entirely. Courtney B. Vance plays inventor Miles Dyson, whom you'll recall everyone was trying to kill at one point in these movies, and Dayo Okeniyi plays his son, now grown up.
If you're wondering about the title, it refers to some amazing new software that's about to be launched to link up every computer and device on the planet, but is really nasty ol' Skynet in disguise.
After two great Terminator movies and a pair of lackluster ones, I was really hoping to see something fresh that married the energy of the original films with the high-tech trickery of modern moviemaking. Instead we got something old, a bit of something new, a whole bunch of borrowed quips, and that's left me feeling blue.
