Author Archives: natezoebl
Cloverfield (2008)
I can think of no movie that has come out of virtually nowhere to build tremendous hype like Cloverfield. Before the summer of 2007 this movie didn’t appear on anyone’s radar whatsoever, and then came a teaser trailer before Transformers. The tease was nothing but party footage of well-wishers when, all of a sudden, explosions are in the distance, people are fleeing, and the Statue of Liberty’s severed head rolls to a stop in a street. Bam. Release date. Nothing else, not even a title. All of a sudden the world had an insatiable appetite for everything Cloverfield. Mega-producer J.J. Abrams had done it again. In one fell swoop he took control of geek nation. I never expected Cloverfield to live up to the massive hype, but this modern monster movie delivers more bangs than whimpers.
The first twenty minutes of the film introduce us to our cadre of yuppy characters. Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David) is leaving for Japan to take a business promotion. His friends throw him a surprise going away party to celebrate and wish him the best. Rob’s brother Jason (Mike Vogel) and his girlfriend, Lily (Jessica Lucas), start videotaping the party. Jason hands off the taping duties to Hud (T.J. Miller) who, thankfully, has a much steadier hand. Hud walks around the party gathering interviews and he zeroes in on Marlena (Lizzy Caplan), a gal he’s been nursing a crush on. Rob is nervous to see if Beth (Odette Yustman) will come to the party. Beth and Rob are long-standing friends that took the plunge and had sex a couple weeks prior. Now Rob is hoping for something more but Beth isn’t on the same page; she brings a date to the party. Interrupting all this twenty-something relationship drama is a giant monster attacking New York City and dropping little baby monsters to scurry the streets and feed.
While not entirely unique, Cloverfield is certainly a reinvention of the dormant monster movie. By seeing its gimmick through to the very end, the film gives a perspective rarely seen in movies that involve cataclysmic disasters. Usually films that involve space aliens, monsters, or some form of incredible destruction follow the people in power, the Army generals, the politicians, the President of the United States as he solemnly looks out his office window and says “God help us,” under his presidential breath. Cloverfield, however, eschews all of that. This movie is all about people caught on the peripheral of a disaster and just trying to survive. They have no idea what’s happening, they have no idea when they will be in danger, they have no idea where to go, they have no idea how long they have, and they definitely have no idea what it is that’s obliterating the city. The film dares to place us in the shoes of ordinary civilians as they document the fantastic. The “found footage” concept and the ordinary perspective are interesting though some will quibble that staying inside one point of view is too limiting for the scale of Cloverfield. This film is more than The Blair Witch Project meets Godzilla; this movie is a collective manifestation of the nation’s 9/11 anxieties. Cloverfield is the first 9/11 disaster movie. The shock and confusion of the situation take on even more resonance by triggering some of the same emotions many experienced on that fateful day in 2001. And yet Cloverfield doesn’t feel exploitative or disrespectful as it draws upon our 9/11 memories and fears, which is saying something substantial about the filmmakers’ skill and the remarkable healing power of time. Some images are unmistakable, like a white cloud of dust that blows through the city and also helps to shroud the monster. People scamper around the city yelling for some kind of explanation when some character, offhandedly, says, “Do you think it’s another terrorist attack?”
The film is also got some fabulously frightening moments that are not related to 9/11 anxiety. Cloverfield is a great, old school horror movie on top of a subversive social experiment. Talented writer Drew Goddard has had experience building tension on some of TV’s finest shows, like Buffy, Angel, and Lost. Now with his debut screenplay, Goddard cranks up the suspense and creepiness to maximum effect. Part of the horror is trying to find meaning in the madness but another equally enjoyable part is walking into perfectly executed classic horror moments. You will be on edge about what could possibly be around a corner. Our band of survivors decide to walk through the subway tunnels and discover that Hud’s camcorder has night vision; sure enough, you are waiting with baited breath for the second that night vision is shifted on and something pops out in view. There’s a distinct difference between cheap jump scares and spooks that, as I say, earn their boo. This tunnel scare is catapulted to frightening from the ominous buildup that comes from seeing hundreds of rats running away. When I saw the fleeing rats, I knew something very bad was coming from behind. The structure is clever as Goddard gives us back-story on Beth and Rob via the original footage of them canoodling that cuts in here and there. Goddard earns his stripes with a script swiftly paced, filled with genuine scares, and smart enough to keep an audience laughing with gallows humor at key moments (“Okay, so our options are… die here, die in the tunnels, or die in the streets.”).
You the viewer are in the middle of the action with this film and there’s no getting out, no distancing yourself from the chaos, no watching men in lab coats and military uniforms dissect the situation over large boards. The gimmick of Cloverfield is flawlessly executed thanks to director Matt Reeves, who spectacularly resurfaces from movie jail after writing duds like The Pallbearer and Under Siege 2: Dark Territory. Reeves explores some dark territory of his own but never breaks the tenuous tone needed for the movie to succeed. The movie is constructed with many long takes and it never exposes its secrets. I watched spellbound by the artistry of maintaining the illusion from beginning to end. Watching the Brooklyn bridge collapse from the inside is exciting and terrifyingly real. Reeves and Goddard smartly decide not to show their monster for as long as possible. Catching glimpses of a shadow or the flash of a tentacle-like appendage are enough to register goose bumps; the human imagination will always be more capable of engineering horror. Eventually the film does give its monster the proverbial close-up and the giant, skyscraper-sized beast looks a little familiar in design (think Vin Diesel sci-fi movie).
Cloverfield is a well-executed genre movie with a clever concept that is fully realized. The constantly bouncing and roving handheld camera might make an audience queasy, but the perspective of the end of New York City as brought to you via YouTube is stimulating and a comment on our self-absorbed culture. The film works as a finely tuned fright film elevated by its stylistic concept and the filmmaking skill to pull it off. Cloverfield being “found footage” and evidence from the Department of Defense doesn’t exactly bode well for the characters onscreen, and the film dispatches them with cool malice. No one is safe and no one can stop what’s coming. If that doesn’t sound like the perfect summation of 9/11 fears, then I don’t know what else is.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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There Will Be Blood (2007)
Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the most gifted filmmakers working today, bar none. There Will Be Blood is only his fifth film and marks a radical departure from his intimate, inter-laced character dramas. Blood is an epic in size and scope and has been blessed with numerous awards and vehement praise. Critics say this film is one for the ages. My anticipation was fed to unhealthy proportions thanks to the hyperbolic praise and Anderson’s track record of audacious visionary cinema. There Will Be Blood is certainly audacious, and not just with its bladder-testing running length. This lethargic throwback to 1970 filmmaking exists for the purpose of a single performance and neglects other important tenets of storytelling. At 158 minutes, I can safely assume for many that there will be boredom with There Will Be Blood.
Our first glimpse of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is in the pit of a hole. It’s 1898 and Plainview is chipping away at the earth looking for scraps of silver. His meager beginnings set the stage for other mining prospects when, on the hunt for silver, he discovers even bigger riches – oil. Thanks to the advancing automobile age, the world has a thirst for oil that knows no bounds and makes Plainview a wealthy man. He’s an unscrupulous business figure that trots around his “son” HW (Dillion Freasier) as one more angle to fleece gullible townsfolk out of their property rights. HW’s father died in a drilling accident when he was a baby and Plainview has looked after him since.
One day Paul Sunday (Paul Dano) enters Plainview’s office and is willing to name a prime piece of land that oozes oil. Plainview agrees to pay Paul his sum and heads out with crew to Little Boston, California. The small town is easily enamored by Plainview’s promises of riches and prosperity. He purchases as much tracts of land as he can and begins drilling for that valuable black liquid. Eli Sunday (also Dano) is Paul’s twin brother; he wishes to build a church and become a prominent religious figure for his town. He sees the oil as his ticket to a throng of adoring congregants that will do his bidding. Oil is struck and several parties vie for dominance.
I fear that Blood may be too languid for its own good. I’m all about allowing a film to take its time to establish a world and the people that inhabit it, and to its credit Blood spectacularly recreates turn-of-the-century America and the craze for oil. The cinematography and production design are stunning in gorgeously recreating a bygone era with such dusty detail. The film is packed with evocative imagery that will linger in your memory, like a burning oil derrick that feels like someone just drilled down to hell. The mixture of smoke, fire, and oil set amidst the hazy twilight is a remarkable sight. Visually speaking, this movie is close to flawless.
The nascent plot is what hampers Anderson’s Blood from reaching masterwork territory. The focus is on a misanthropic man who despises people and wants only to seclude himself, and yet he has genuine affection for his son until Daniel feels betrayed by his ambitions. I understand that the movie is a far-reaching character study, and Daniel Plainview is a fascinating and ferocious character, a perfect yet perplexing combination of greed and ambition, but I feel like Anderson has spent so much thought on his characters and forgotten to write a story around them. The silent, early portion of Blood gives us a quick summation of how Plainview rose to fortune and power and it’s rather compelling how much story comes across with no words of dialogue. This wordless pattern seeps into [i]Blood[/i] and there are stretches here and there where you may not hear a wisp of dialogue for, oh, 15 minutes, but by this point the movie is beyond setting up its storytelling universe. Again, I have no issues with the use of silence to convey meaning and metaphor, but it feels downright neglectful for Anderson to have concocted such intense, lively portraits of people and then to encase them in a void of speech.
Significant human interaction is kept to a minimum and I couldn’t help but feel that the movie was uncomfortably coasting without conflict for too long. Blood sets up Eli Sunday and Daniel Plainview as rivals, two men intent on grabbing power and the upper hand. The film takes a winding path to set these players in motion but I was encouraged that now, finally with two adversaries pitted together, the film would kick into another level and showcase a violent struggle worthy of a titan like Plainview. I recall every summary I read of There Will Be Blood noting that Eli is the thorn in Plainview’s side for many years and that their feud took up the bulk of the labored running time. This does not happen at all. Eli drops out for long stretches of plot and is forgotten unless Anderson feels that the character needs to be shoehorned back into the central drama at arbitrary points. This is no battle either, it’s all one-sided; Plainview handles Eli without breaking a sweat. With this in mind, I’m puzzled at how the conflict between Eli and Plainview was supposed to take center stage. Anderson had such wonderful potential to paint a doomed rivalry that eclipsed both men, but instead the external conflict only appears whenever Anderson desires some new sounding board for Plainview. That means that Blood can go for what feel like entire acts before it appears that conflict will be introduced or elaborated upon. There is a vacuum of story here and Eli Sunday, as written and performed, is far too submissive and easily beaten to present any formidable challenge.
Why present characters at odds if you’re not going to push them further? Why write such vivid and amoral characters if you’re going to have them sit out or stay still? Plainview is the star of the show, I get that, but that isn’t an excuse for underwriting every single other character in an entire 158-minute movie. There are no intriguing character dynamics in this movie. Eli Sunday is forgotten. HW presents the closest insight into the humanity (what’s left) of Plainview, but the character is treated like a mute doll and when HW unexpectedly leaves the story so too does the only significantly interesting emotional relationship. Anderson establishes that greed comes in all shapes and sizes, be it an oil tycoon or a false prophet feasting on the coffers of his congregation. There is great thematic tension between the spiritual and the material but it never comes to a head. I kept waiting for confrontation but what Blood kept dishing out time and again was willful stagnation.
The extended ending forces a marginally contrived final reunion between Eli and Plainview but it doesn’t feel like any sort of payoff. The brutish and abrupt finale will cause many to scratch their heads and say, “That’s it?” until their scalps bleed. It’s a rather unsatisfying end for a film that boasted such grand ambitions.
The musical score by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood certainly wasn’t bad but it definitely did not mesh with the movie. Greenwood’s score consists mostly of a cacophony of violin strings buzzing about like a swarm of angry bees. The score seems to have a life of its own, intruding upon the scene at whim and upstaging character dialogue at times. The mixture of shrieking violins and some heavy percussion makes the movie feel less like a costume drama and more like a horror movie. The score seems to percolate and signify approaching danger. The score is also overly redundant and feels unnaturally paired to There Will Be Blood. It’s a marriage that doesn’t ever match.
Day-Lewis doesn’t act often in movies and when he does it’s usually something special. His performance in Blood is outstanding, and it better be, because the film is built exclusively around his performance. He is an angry man bent on crushing opponents and making sure no one else gets sight of success. Day-Lewis is an immense talent and can dabble with multiple emotions with sheer, sightless subtlety. His distinct manner of speaking is finely attuned, though sometimes I felt like I was watching the world’s longest, and best, Jack Palence impersonation.
The other actors fall victim to the one-man show nature of the narrative. Dano comes across as miscast. He seems too youthful and ineffectual for the role. When he’s beaten and bullied his voice goes into a high-pitch squeal that is not becoming for the character. Dano’s acting takes the empty characterization one step further and removes any audience empathy.
Going by the repeated slam that Anderson is less a visionary and more a regurgitation of homage, if Boogie Nights was his Scorsese movie, Magnolia his Altman movie, Punch-Drunk Love his French New Wave movie, then There Will Be Blood is his Kubrick movie. It’s a plodding, challenging, and idiosyncratic movie that hits universal themes like family, greed, desire, and vengeance but does so in a small-scale story that feels intimate and epic simultaneously. The movie is dripping with artistic integrity and breathtaking filmmaking ability; however, it’s also a crushing disappointment. Anderson is a gifted writer/director with few contemporary peers, but he strands such vivid characters in a dessert of storytelling. There is little external conflict and the characters feel neglected or too easily forgotten. The focus is one misanthropic man but the film shortchanges him by not supplying additional substantial characters or conflict. Perhaps There Will Be Blood will stand the test of time and be the classic or landmark that critics are wetting themselves to declare it. It’s just simple economics in my mind: a character study cannot fully resonate without a strong network of supporting characters and/or lasting conflict. I have never been let down by a Paul Thomas Anderson film yet but I suppose there’s a first for everything.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Atonement (2007)
No film this awards season seems to have been kicked and beaten more than the sweeping period romance, Atonement. This poor movie has a strong stable of well-respected British thespians, a red-hot young director in Joe Wright (2005’s Pride and Prejudice), plenty of lofty, top-notch production values, and the whole enterprise is based off a highly acclaimed novel by author Ian McEwan. Where did all the hate come from? I think it has something to do with the fact that somewhere along the line Atonement became, on paper, the presumptive favorite to win Best Picture. Then reality hit and it hit hard. Atonement wasn’t even nominated by the Writer’s Guild, the Producer’s Guild, or the Director’s Guild and yet the film still managed to eek out a Best Picture nomination for 2007. I became suspicious that Atonement would turn out to be this year’s Dreamgirls, namely a presumptive front-runner that was too calculating and self-conscious and ultimately free of substance to make its mark. While Atonement is perfunctory and nothing altogether special, the film still succeeds as a worthy piece of entertainment that doesn’t deserve to be dragged through the mud.
In the mid 1930s, Robbie (James McAvoy) works as a housekeeper’s son on a lovely English estate. He has his eye on Celia (Keira Knightley) and puts his burning passion to paper, typing two very different notes. The first one is blunt (and features a naughty word that rhymes with “blunt”) and the second one is more of a poetic declaration of his affections. Robbie has instructed Celia’s younger sister, Briony (Saoirse Ronan), to pass his love letter to the rightful party. He realizes too late that he sent her off with the wrong letter and Briony reads it herself, dumbfounded at the message and terminology. Briony is a bright child that fancies herself a playwright, but she’s still a child that cannot fully grasp the meaning of Robbie’s advancements. When she intrudes on Robbie and Celia having spontaneous sex against a library wall, she can only assume that Robbie is attacking her older sister (stupidly, neither says anything to clear up the awkwardness and just leaves the scene wordless). That same night Briony discovers her cousin being attacked and she’s certain that Robbie is the culprit, or is she? Her false confession sends Robbie to jail and alters lives forever.
Flash ahead to World War II, and Robbie has joined the Army to be released from jail, Celia reunites with him for the first time in years, and a now 18-year-old Briony (Romola Garai) realizes her foolishness as a child and tries expunging her overwhelming feelings of guilt by working as a nurse and tending to the ghastly numbers of wounded soldiers.
Atonement is visually ravishing to watch. The cinematography by Seamus McGarvey is lushly colorful and blends light and shadow to an extraordinarily effective degree, draping the performers in contrasting colors that pop. Wright’s camera always seems to be perfectly located to discover beautiful compositions indoors and out; the movie is just visually pleasing on all fronts, like seeing Knightley in her dark green dress bathed in the glow of police lights at night. At several points, however, the film’s look does get overly soft and glossy, like the cameraman smeared gobs of Vaseline over the lens. The period costumes and production design are agreeably period-y. The musical score has moments of great lyrical poignancy and then it shatters when the score resorts to integrating the sound of a clacking typewriter as a percussive instrument. I wanted to beat my head against a typewriter to make it stop.
There’s a vague mechanical air over the entire two hours, like the filmmakers felt that merely assembling all the right pieces and having the right, awards-friendly pedigree would be enough. The five-minute uninterrupted tracking shot along the Dunkirk beach epitomizes this flawed belief. This superfluous shot wanders around soldiers stationed on a beach, winds around the outskirts of the bombed out city, and finally rests in a pub crawling with Brits, but nothing is added by the shot continuing uninterrupted and the staging fails to illuminate anything remarkable about the expensive set. The shot exists simply to call attention to its self and to serve as another bragging point for the filmmakers. The Dunkirk shot adds little to the atmosphere of the film because the scene barely flirts with giving a bigger picture of what is happening. Instead, that shot, like the movie, while well composed and entertaining, is an exercise in self-congratulation.
The film loses serious momentum as it transitions into war and its period of titular atoning. The movie just isn’t as compelling watching Robbie shuffle around at war. Rarely is he in any danger and he just seems to be biding time. Atonement is a tad too prim, a tad too demure to really go deep enough. The romance is intended to be of the unrequited variety but it feels malnourished even at an unrequited level, which is truly saying something. There is so much more beneath the surface but the film never wants to push too far for whatever reason. Knightley and McAvoy have a nice workable chemistry and that’s part of what makes the first half of Atonement the better half. So much of the story involves internal struggle but the movie doesn’t wish to invest the time needed to explore serious psychological wounds. Atonement never capitalizes on the intriguing if melodramatic opening of the film. This is by no means a love story, no matter what the marketers wish to convince otherwise. The romance between Celia and Robbie has little setup to seem believable or worthwhile. This is a movie about the power of words, which naturally is a topic that functions better in books.
After Kinsey and now Atonement, Vanessa Redgrave seems to have found a contemporary niche or her talents: she shows up in the final minutes to give a monologue that demands that the audience reflect from a fresh perspective. Redgrave plays an older adult Briony who has written several best selling books and is being interviewed for television. The ending is designed to be more devastating in print form, and it wants to call into question the nature of fiction and whether or not one lie and be absolved by another. But in the medium of film, the shockwaves are minimal because the language of film is visual. The stutter-step plot structure, which occasionally bends backwards to replay an event from an alternative perspective, is an extraneous annoyance that’s finally justified by Redgrave’s late appearance. What is the true cost for a “happy” ending?
While Knightley and McAvoy get all the attention and cause teen girls to swoon uncontrollably, the real star of Atonement is 13-year-old Ronan. The young actress is a revelation as a sophisticated girl entering the earliest stages of womanhood. She’s nursing some serious puppy love on Robbie and his disinterest fuels her false confession; she means to punish him. Ronan is eloquently precocious at the start, acting wise beyond her years, but when she steels a glimpse at Robbie’s unfortunate letter, she drops her older pretensions and presents the spirited and unrestrained eagerness of a girl that’s madly curious and madly in love. Ronan effortlessly switches between the two sides of Briony, playing the astute, proper young lady or the nervy, confused girl trying to make sense of her budding sexuality. Kudos to the casting director as well for casting an older actress to play the 18-year-old Briony that genuinely looks like a grown-up Ronan.
Naysayers dismissing Atonement as outdated rubbish are diluted; it’s a well-crafted movie from considerably all angles. Then again, those that champion the film as a testament to bravura filmmaking are also diluted; the film is good, yes, but entirely unexceptional. Atonement is a fine film that takes a reportedly unfilmable novel and gives it a good attempt.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
Famed musician/lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s tale of murderous barbers, cannibalism, and poisoned hearts first debuted on Broadway in 1979. Sondheim has been very protective of his material when it comes to film rights, but it wasn’t until the combination of visionary director Tim Burton and acclaimed actor Johnny Depp that Sondheim allowed his revered musical to be made into a movie. The result is faithful production that expands the scope of the musical while maintaining an intimate, chamber-music feel. Sweeney Todd flirts with being a masterwork but settles for being incredibly damn entertaining.
Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) returns to London after 15 years in prison on a flase charge. Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman, suitably creepy) wanted Barker’s wife for his own and conspired to have the barber sent away. Now under the auspices of Sweeney Todd, Barker has come back to seek his wife and daughter. He sadly learns that his wife is dead and his teenaged daughter, Johanna (Laura Michelle Kelly), is the ward of the Judge. Sweeney reopens his barber business above a flagging pie shop run by the eccentric Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter). Sweeney plots his revenge against the Judge and his henchman, Beadle Bamford (Timothy Spall, suitable rat-like). Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower), who traveled with Sweeney back to London, has set his sights on Johanna and intends to run away with her as soon as she can escape the Judge. Meanwhile, a rival barber named Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen) recognizes Sweeney from the old days and wants his silence paid for. It’s not too long before things get dicey, throats get cut, and people get turned into meat pies.
People unaware of the Sondheim musical are going to be in for a big shock. The film is about 80 percent sung, and the singing never rises to big, show-offery numbers of crescendo power vocals; the songs are more in the variety of speaking and vocals frequently overlap. The movie has greater clarity to the lyrics, and for the first time I as able to actually decipher Joanna’s words in the song “Green Finch and Linnet Bird.” Fans of traditional musicals, the kind that feature songs centered on female deer or large corn exporting states, may be aghast at how adult and violent the musical is. It’s just as much a grand horror movie as it is a musical. No doubt people are not generally accustomed to soaring medleys set to gashed throats and spurting blood. Sweeney Todd is captivating tale where almost all the characters are villains in some sense, and yet you do build sympathies even after innocents are killed and baked into flaky desserts.
Unlike other recent big screen versions of popular Broadway song-and-dance shows, Sweeney Todd is not simply the stage version transported to a bigger stage. This is a movie, through and through, and a perfect marriage. Burton is the perfect visionary to filter the twisted sensibilities of Sondheim’s masterpiece onto the silver screen. As a director, his work has been artistically backsliding since the start of this decade, but Sweeney Todd puts a firm stop to that. The technical aspects of Sweeney Todd are brought to life with great care and imagination. The Gothic sets are gorgeous and the costumes and cinematography are fitfully drab and dour, like everyone is living in a silent movie devoid of color; it takes a lot of hard work to create a near monochromatic playing field for the actors. And so when the blood does splash, and oh does it splash, the film pops with vivid color. Sondheim’s playful lyrics and rapturous music has never sounded better; it practically swoons.
The movie opens up the play in ways that a staged performance never could. Instead of keeping a distance from the bloodletting, usually something symbolic or as graphic as coloring a red line across a victim’s neck, Burton thrusts the audience right into Sweeney’s shop. The blood sprays in bright geysers and the violence is fully realized, fully felt, even if it’s never terribly realistic. The full weight of Sweeney’s vengeance and eventual destructive madness can be felt when the audience is witness to its wrath, and that includes the graphic murders. The medium of film ups the horror elements and transforms Sweeney Todd into a stronger work by amplifying the tension. The last scene with Mrs. Lovett is far more haunting than anything that could have been achieved on a stage. Burton also adds lots of dark humor thanks to his open visual palate, like during the song “By the Sea” where Mrs. Lovett fantasizes about her and Sweeney cozying up together in different scenarios. The film transports the viewer to the different pretend locales all the while Depp remains gruff and indifferent. He maintains the same curmudgeon from fantasy postcard after fantasy postcard. It’s the cheeriest segment in a grimly perverse musical that could rival Hamlet for dead bodies.
In an effort to slice a three-hour musical to a manageable two-hour movie, screenwriter John Logan (The Aviator, Gladiator) has pruned the story down to the essentials, namely everything that impacts Sweeney’s ultimate pursuit of vengeance. Johanna and Anthony, the hopeful lovers, have been pared down the most. Their only scenes now revolve around intruding upon Sweeney or helping him meet his venomous goals. The lecherous songs the Judge sings to himself about his lust for Johanna has also been cut (my wife was severely disappointed by this cut, saying, “You’ve got the Rick, come on!”). The most notable omission is the opening medley “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” that serves as a Greek chorus-like overview of the sordid tale ahead. The song provides a lot of back-story and exposition that can be more easily covered by Burton fashioning visual flashbacks of Sweeney’s former life. The ballad and other absent songs are still used instrumentally throughout the film. Logan has also turned Toby (Ed Sanders), Pirelli’s assistant, into a much younger character, turning him into an urchin boy with fresh memories of life in a workhouse. I’m not entirely sure Toby’s protective song to Mrs. Lovett “Not While I’m Around” becomes an ode to puppy love and loses some believability. Also, normally Toby is played as a man-child who isn’t entirely whole in his mental faculties; however, the movie version turns him into a plucky Oliver extra. It seems less devastating and tragic.
But what about the singing? Depp won’t be knocking down doors on Broadway anytime soon but he delivers a very satisfying baritone that, while lacking in power or refinement, delivers in spades with emotion. His singing is full of great texture. His song “My Friends,” an ode to being reunited with his razors, is full of brio and nuanced longing, but he really shows his talent when Sweeney loses it. He’s a man obsessed with vengeance and when it escapes his grasp he snarls with scary intensity. When he launches into “Epiphany,” where he determines the whole human race is fit to have their throats slit, he barks at strangers on the street and howls at the sky, smiling at his glistening razors in hand. What can be forgotten with musicals is that there is so much more to a performance than simply an adept ability to sing the right notes. With Sweeney, Depp spins an incredibly rich performance that plumbs the dark recesses of a man whose only purpose is vengeance. In the end, when he’s saturated in blood and the full reality of his actions is upon him, Depp goes from remorse to psychosis to horror to acceptance in, like, a minute flat. Seeing such a classic Broadway character done justice by an actor of Depp’s immense talent is thrilling and a bit of a relief to Sweeney fans.
Carter has the weakest, thinnest voice of the cast. Mrs. Lovett is a larger than life figure that has been played on Broadway by the likes of Angela Lansbury and Patti LuPone. The role is usually played more boisterous, more comically broad. It’s a juicy part and full of brash bravado. Carter stumbles through “The Worst Pies in London” and she seems to step all over her lines, rushing through and losing the comedic flavor. But like I said before, a performance is so much more than singing, and it is here where Carter imbues great complexity to her role. Her unrequited love for Sweeney consumes her and her relationship with Toby places her in an awkward predicament. Carter flashes a wealth of emotions through the power of her eyes. It’s a battle between maternal and sexual urges. Stylistically she resembles a rag doll someone tossed in the trash but it all works.
It’s refreshing and exhilarating to see a perfect marriage of material and artistry. Burton has transported Sweeney Todd into a faithful and jubilantly dark movie that doesn’t shy away from the grotesque. It’s a stirring, wonderfully Gothic rendition of Sondheim’s masterpiece. Sweeney Todd is blissful, spirited entertainment that’s not exactly for the squeamish, but this is one musical that can simultaneously touch the heart while turning the stomach.
Nate’s Grade: A
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A Mighty Heart (2007)
Good intentions and some proficient camerawork can only go so far to make a film worthwhile. Angelina Jolie gives the best performance of her career as kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl’s wife (she’s French and Cuban, making for one really tricky accent). I wanted to like this movie more. The subject matter is serious and timely, the filmmaking has a sturdy docu-drama look, and the acting never comes across as phony, but alas, I think I mentally checked out because much of the film is a detective story that I already know the ending to. Daniel Pearl was infamously beheaded, so watching an hour of his wife, friends, and local police scramble to track down key figures, their allegiances and acquaintances, and the whereabouts of Daniels can come across as fruitless and somewhat cruel. This film doesn’t have the same cathartic feel that United 93 had because that moment was universal, and while I can admire the cinematography and superb acting I can’t ignore the fact that watching people search and fail gives me little emotional reward as a viewer.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Evening (2007)
A chick flick crammed with lots of bona fide stars and A-list talent that manages to squander all talent. It slogs on and on, the back and forth nature of the plot does little to keep an audience alert, and the story it tells in the past is so pedestrian, so minuscule, and ultimately so mundane that you can’t help but wonder why an old woman on her deathbed would be flashing back and remembering it. This high profile weepy never finds the right tone and often settles for maudlin and predictable plot turns. Evening is the kind of movie that kills the chances for a large, female-driven film to get made in Hollywood.
Nate’s Grade: C-
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My Kid Could Paint That (2007)
Prodigy, fraud, normal preschooler? This incisive and captivating documentary looks at a four-year-old who has made thousands of dollars on her modern art paintings. If she is the real deal, what does that say about modern art when a child can compete with serious artists? This intensely interesting story is given as objective a viewpoint as possible even as the filmmaker is forced into his own movie when the family he’s been documenting is looking at his film as a favorable retort to a very critical 60 Minutes segment casting doubt that the paintings are genuine. The filmmaker has his own doubts and explores the nature of journalism and storytelling and objectivity and what is art, and that’s when the documentary transcends its story and becomes about much more. I have no doubt that the child is involved in painting (the question registers with how involved her failed artist father is), but the people that are buying her paintings are buying them because they are also purchasing the story. My Kid Could Paint That, as one interview subject states, is really a story about adults seeking the limelight, because otherwise it would just be a kid having fun painting in the confines of her home. Is she exploited? Is she a genuine talent in a world of paint splashes and squiggly lines? Will she ever just be allowed to be a kid? These are just a few of the tantalizing questions this mature and insightful movie raises.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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The Namesake (2007)
Extremely heartfelt, this cross-generational family drama runs aground on some familiar territory but is boasted by strong acting. Whenever the film’s focus falls to the arranged married couple settling into a new country and a new relationship, that is when The Namesake is the most affecting and interesting. Too much time is spent on Gogol (Kal Penn) as their son who has completely embraced American culture and throws off his Indian roots. Of course he comes around in his opinion but his character never feels fully formed or completely believable, more like a composite of a prodigal son. Director Mira Nair has an obvious personal attachment to this tale of an Indian family trying to make their way in the U.S. of A, and she never misses her mark when dealing with the intensely decent and selfless father and his love for his wife. It’s a shame then that the movie shifts too much focus at the halfway point onto Gogol. The Namesake is touching and entertaining that’s a cut above thanks to sensitive performances.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Kickin’ It Old School (2007)
A moderately surprising comedy that’s really much more fish-out-of–water than tired You Got Served dance parody. Jamie Kennedy busts a move as a kid in a man’s body who wakes up after being in a coma for 20 years. There is an overemphasis on recreating the 80s in the early part, with a crushing amount of catch phrases, name drops, and dated toys and fashions. The rest of the film follows the sports formula closely as Kennedy reassembles his aged Funky Fresh Boys to win a dance competition for standard goals like saving his family and winning the girl of his dreams. Kickin’ It is a simpleton comedy that never aims it sights too high, but every now and then the film connects on a gag or a character that produces some real yuks (my favorite being a homeless man convinced he invented break dancing). Some of the jokes are pretty dusty and the romance is, like most of the conflict, forced and contrived, and yet I cannot hate this movie. I never grew weary watching it even though during the climactic dance-off tournament there is a dearth of even attempted comedy.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Bloodrayne II: Deliverance (2007)
It’s been some time since infamously derided director Uwe Boll reared his head and much has changed. 2006’s Bloodrayne was his last theatrically released movie but that movie was originally shot in 2004 and pushed back. In the meantime Germany revised its tax code closing the loophole that helped finance many of Boll’s cinematic duds thanks to German financiers being able to write off their debts. Boll has finished an additional three movies that are all scheduled for release in 2008, including the star-studded (for Boll) Lord of the Rings rip-off, In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale opening this month. Boll may never get a chance to direct a theatrically released film again, which may explain his decision to helm a direct-to-DVD sequel to Bloodrayne.
The dusty town of Deliverance, Montana is under assault from the monstrous Billy the Kid (Zack Ward). Except Billy is no ordinary bandit but a powerful vampire intent on keeping his dastardly deeds nice and quiet until the railroad moves in with a nonstop supply of fresh meat and future members of the undead. Newspaper reporter Newton Pyles (Christopher Coppola, no relation to the famous family) has ventured to Deliverance in hopes of witnessing and writing exciting tales of the Wild West, and instead he’s become the man forced to write the cover-up of Billy’s actions. The vampires have kidnapped the town’s children with the idea of feasting off them while they wait. The town’s only hope is half-human, half-vampire Rayne (Natassia Malthe). Under the guidance of rustler Pat Garret (Michael Paré), the pair gather a team to combat Billy the Kid and free Deliverance from evil.
Stylistically, Bloodrayne II: Deliverance is Boll’s desperate attempt to ape the look and feel of HBO’s popular Western series, Deadwood. It really is rather obvious to anyone that has ever seen the show. The costumes in Deliverance look similar, the sets are dressed similarly (though they still come across as too tourist attraction stagy), the gas-lamp lighting and use of darkness seems pretty similar, and the screenplay even manages to sprinkle in a few “cocksuckers,” which any Deadwood fan would know was the term of choice for historic cowpokes. Boll has the directing habit of borrowing liberally from his sources, so I expected nothing less for his attempt at a Western. The mundane cinematography goes to great lengths to declare how handheld the camerawork is. There is a noticeable difference between following the action as it develops for a docu-drama feel and simply shaking and bobbing the camera for a misguided attempt at artistic effect. After a while you feel like the cameraman must be balancing on a unicycle. There’s an over reliance on particular camera shots and close-ups are strictly reserved for the eyes and fingers during buildups to gunfights. The lavish mountain scenery of Canada (er, I mean Montana, yeah, Montana) is probably the visual highlight of a film.
The action is surprisingly decent. The climactic shootout between the forces of good and evil isn’t going to rival anything I saw in the updated 3:10 to Yuma, however, to Boll’s credit, the action is not ineptly constructed. He develops parallel lines of action and separates Rayne’s posse to deal with separate heroic last stands. Gunfights are naturally easier to stage than sword battles (shot 1: bad guy fires, shot 2: good guy ducks then fires, shot 3: bad guy gets hit) and that might explain why Rayne doesn’t break out her signature arm-blades until the very end of the climax. Rhetorical question time: who brings an arm-blade to a gunfight, anyway?
But it is structure that weighs down Bloodrayne II. Boll finally has a handle on crafting some workable action sequences and he just blows it. Bloodrayne II has exactly three action sequences and the first two are rather puny. There is a long drought in between action and in its place are a lot of dull conversations amidst increasingly dull characters. Vampires and the Wild West is a concept that can work; fun can be had with vampire cowboys and high noon (make that midnight) duels, and yet Boll seems uneasy about embracing its supernaturally campy potential. Bloodrayne II has little blood, zero gore, no nudity, no sex, and a pitifully scant amount of action. In other words, it’s missing all of the exploitation elements that make a movie like Bloodrayne II worth watching.
Screenwriters Christopher Donaldson and Neil Every throw in a lot of side characters into the stew but then quickly dispatch them as well, which at least keeps the audience on their guard and wary that anyone that assists Rayne is destined for a sudden end. Most egregiously, they speed through one of the best segments in all of movies: the getting-the-team-together sequence. Rayne and Garret are collecting a posse that includes a con man preacher (Michael Eklund) and a drunk affectionately known as Slime Bag Franson (Michael Teigen). Part of the enjoyment of the Western is following the unifying of a team and watching relationships form, and Bloodrayne II rushes through this process. It collects its gunfighters in brief introductions and then heads right for the finish.
There seems to be little continuity between the two films even ignoring the change at lead vampire slaying lady. The vampires in this entry behave drastically different from the older European ones in the first film. Rayne seems to have lost her healing abilities, which were what the circus folk put on display when she was their money-earning star of their own little freak show (apparently during the 100-plus year gap between films Rayne got a little hammered during Spring Break and got a lower back tattoo). I bring up the healing issue because at one point Rayne is shot several times while escaping via swimming through a river. She’s struggling to regain her strength and confesses to Garret about her true nature and her need for blood. In one of the most curious moments for a movie that pairs vampires and cowboys, Garret slices open his arm and holds it over Rayne, dripping blood all over her face. The characters even seem to catch the weirdness as they both remark how much more useful a simple cup might have been.
It wouldn’t be a Boll movie without an abundance of the bizarre, the ludicrous, and the unintentionally funny. Rayne travels great distances on horseback to Deliverance with the intention of slaying some vampires she knows are responsible for murdering her friends. She finds the reflection-free accomplice (House of the Dead‘s Tyron Leitso) and holds a stool to his windpipe, choking the bastard. Instead of finishing him off Rayne relents and lets him live because, wait for it, he let her participate in his card game. Talk about a strange shift in motivation. During the climax, the townsfolk are stirred to rise up against Billy and his vampire clan thanks to the mayor and Pyles finally growing some spines. They set out to shoot them some vampires, but really what will they accomplish? Bloodrayne II established earlier that the vampires could take being plugged with bullets unless the ammunition is combined with garlic. I doubt the townspeople know they need that key ingredient to their firearms. How do the people in 1880s Montana manage to get a copy of the Chicago newspaper Pyles writes for? The railroad hasn’t made its way to Deliverance so I’m at a loss for the speedy spread of print journalism 1,000 miles away.
But the most unintentionally funny moment comes at the end when Billy has staged an elaborate system of pulleys so that when Rayne opens a door it drops a weight that will raise a series of nooses around the captured children’s necks. The kid on the furthest right is hung to death and the children seem to be arranged according to height, which seems a little OCD even for a vampire. The tallest kid on the far left of this makeshift gallows reacts very differently. While the rest of the child actors are crying, fretting, and acting like the ropes are cutting their breathing, this kid on the far left is just standing stone-faced and still.
The dialogue is expectantly awful, including clunkers like Pyles saying, “I have a question. I came looking for stories of the Wild West,” and then never actually asking a question (what kind of reporter doesn’t know what a question is?). The best/worst example of dialogue is literally the final line spoken and it blindsides the audience like a car crash. Garret says with a glint of wisdom, “Life is like a penis. When it’s hard you get screwed and when it’s soft it can’t be beat.” Wow. Someone alert the motivational poster industry because I have a gut feeling this will rival the perilous “Hang in there” kitty.
The first Rayne, Kristanna Loken, decided she’d rather stick with her Sci-Fi TV show, which has since been cancelled, than don the arm-blades once more for Boll. Malthe (Elektra, Skinwalkers) has the acting prowess you would expect from a former Maxim magazine model. It’s not like the role of Rayne involves much emotional complexity; mostly an actress has to be able to deliver some clunky dialogue and look attractive while swinging a sword. Malthe is certainly a fine looking woman but she is a non-starter when it comes to the world of acting. Whenever she speaks it’s in the same emotionless, dry tone even when she’s supposed to be angry. She comes across like an ineffectual dominatrix who’s studied acting by watching tapes of Shannon Doherty.
Ward is hilariously miscast and completely unconvincing as an evil bloodsucker cowboy. Ward got his start in the classic A Christmas Story and I remember him best playing the goofy, dumb younger brother on comedian Christopher Titus’ hysterical TV show, Titus. Ward tacks on a lousy Eastern European accent that comes in sharp conflict with the setting and material of the film. Are vampires immune from having accents rub off on them, because Rayne seems to have assimilated well into frontier speech patterns? I challenge others not to crack up when he yells, “Now the slaughter begins.” In his defense, Ward isn’t given many scenes to play and the screenwriters have to fall back on the cheap “kids in danger” device to establish his villainy.
The other actors don’t fare much better. Coppola annoys within minutes of appearing onscreen. A helpful bartender (Chris Spencer) is astoundingly bad even for an Uwe Boll movie. He plays the part like Ted Lange in the Wild West. Boll go-to actor Paré actually seems at home with the Western material and his curt, monotone delivery fits well with the material. He’s a good fit for this genre but that doesn’t excuse his poor performances in four previous Boll flicks. The best actor in the movie is the original sheriff-turned-vampire (John Novak) who works an impressive snarl and a natural physically intimidating presence. He would have made for a serviceable lead villain over Ward.
Bloodrayne II: Deliverance is far less fun than the original while being better in some regards and worse in others. There isn’t much artistic growth shown. Boll was naturally meant to transition to the relegated realm of direct-to-DVD movies. It’s more his terrain what with the queasy production values, bad acting, and shoddy, repackaged scripts. In the world of direct-to-DVD a movie can live on into infinity thanks to assembly line sequels. Did anyone realize there are now, thanks to direct-to-DVD releases, seven Children of the Corns, four Bring it Ons, and a whopping 13 Land Before Times. It’s here where Boll’s quick production turnarounds will yield the most gain and where he may even thrive. He’s already planning to direct a Bloodrayne 3 and producing an Alone in the Dark 2 (regrettably there was a 2005 direct-to-DVD sequel to House of the Dead though it had no Boll involvement whatsoever). I think Uwe Boll is finally where he belongs.
Nate’s Grade: D
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