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Review
Given the inherent three-dimensional quality evident in Pixar's cutting-edge output, the fact that the studio's 10th animated film is the first to be presented in digital 3-D wouldn't seem to be particularly groundbreaking in and of itself.
But what gives "Up" such a joyously buoyant lift is the refreshingly nongimmicky way in which the process has been incorporated into the big picture -- and what a wonderful big picture it is.
Winsome, touching and arguably the funniest Pixar effort ever, the gorgeously rendered, high-flying adventure is a tidy 90-minute distillation of all the signature touches that came before it.
It's also the ideal choice to serve as the first animated feature ever to open the Festival de Cannes, considering the way it also pays fond homage to cinema's past, touching upon the works of Chaplin and Hitchcock, not to mention aspects of "It's a Wonderful Life" "The Wizard of Oz" and, more recently, "About Schmidt."
Boxoffice-wise, the sky's the limit for "Up."
Even with its PG rating (the first non-G-rated Pixar picture since "The Incredibles"), there really is no demographic that won't respond to its many charms.
The Chaplin-esque influence is certainly felt in the stirring prelude, tracing the formative years of the film's 78-year-old protagonist, recent widower Carl Fredricksen (terrifically voiced by Ed Asner).
Borrowing "WALL-E's" poetic, economy of dialogue and backed by composer Michael Giacchino's plaintive score, the nostalgic waltz between Carl and the love of his life, Ellie, effectively lays all the groundwork for the fun stuff to follow.
Deciding it's better late than never, the retired balloon salesman depletes his entire inventory and takes to the skies (house included), determined to finally follow the path taken by his childhood hero, discredited world adventurer Charles F. Muntz (Christopher Plummer).
But he soon discovers there's a stowaway hiding in his South America-bound home in the form of Russell, a persistent eight-year-old boy scout (scene-stealing young newcomer Jordan Nagai), and the pair prove to be one irresistible odd couple.
Despite the innate sentimentality, director Pete Docter ("Monsters, Inc.") and co- director-writer Bob Peterson keep the laughs coming at an agreeably ticklish pace.
Between that Carl/Russell dynamic and Muntz's pack of hunting dogs equipped with multilingual thought translation collars, "Up" ups the Pixar comedy ante considerably.
Meanwhile, those attending theaters equipped with the Disney Digital 3-D technology will have the added bonus of experiencing a three-dimensional process that is less concerned with the usual "comin' at ya" razzle-dazzle than it is with creating exquisitely detailed textures and appropriately expansive depths of field.
Description
Drag Me to Hell, Sam Raimi's delirious psych-out of a horror film, is a candy-colored ghouls-gone-wild nightmare that treats every shock as a joke — or, at least, as an invitation to crack up at your own gullibility. Raimi, like Roman Polanski in his classic Repulsion (1965), surrounds a comely blond lass (Alison Lohman) with demons that seem to be erupting right out of her head. He gets into our heads, too; he scares the unholy living bejesus out of you. Raimi's operating model is the fun house, with its jack-in-the-box terrors, but he doesn't just toy with the audience. He plays it, like a maestro. He orchestrates a tongue-in-cheek symphony of fear.
Lohman, with her slightly dazed, rabbit-toothed sensuality, plays a bank worker who refuses to renew the mortgage of a one-eyed, rotten-toothed old gypsy woman (Lorna Raver). Lohman then spends the rest of the film fighting off the curse the gypsy has placed on her. She's assaulted by flash-cut visions of baroquely grotesque and evil things, starting with the gypsy herself, a hideous crone
who has a way of taking out her false teeth and, well, doing stuff without them. Their first encounter in a parking garage is like
a slasher showdown crossed with a wrestling blowout; it unites the audience in a collective moan-laugh-shriek. The bedroom nightmare that follows is so gross it redefines the phrase in your face, and from then on we're clamped into a state of tingly anticipatory anxiety.
Raimi directed all three Spider-Man films, but in the '80s, before he went Hollywood, he made The Evil Dead and its sequel — splendid exercises in slapstick mutilation and whooshing-camera dread. Drag Me to Hell marks a return to their spirit — even if it's only PG-13! — but it's also a deftly unified freak show that keeps intensifying as its wormy-devil images keep spewing. Going back to his roots, Raimi has made the most crazy, fun, and terrifying horror movie in years. A
Review
Death is for the living and not for the dead so much.
That observation from the mourner of a dead dog in Errol Morris' "Gates of Heaven" strikes me as simple but profound. It is the insight inspiring "Departures," the lovely Japanese movie that won this year's Oscar for best foreign film.
The story involves a young man who apprentices to the trade of "encoffinment," the preparation of corpses before their cremation. As nearly as I can recall, there is no discussion of an afterlife. It is all about the living. There is an elaborate, tender ceremony carried out before the family and friends of the deceased, with an elegance and care that is rather fascinating.
The hero is a man who feels he is owed a death. The father of Daigo (Masahiro Motoki) walked out on his mother when the boy was 6 years old, and ever since Daigo has hated him for that abandonment. Now about 30, Daigo is a cellist in a small classical orchestra that goes broke. He and Mika (Ryoko Hirosue), his wife, decide to move back to a town in the north of Japan and live in his childhood home, willed to him by his recently departed mother. He finds no work. He answers a want ad for "departures," which he thinks perhaps is from a travel agency.
The company serves clients making their final trip. Daigo is shocked to discover what the owner (Tsutomu Yamazaki) does; he cleans and prepares bodies and painstakingly makes them up to look their best. The ritual involves undressing them in behind artfully manipulated shrouds in front of the witnesses. The owner is a quiet, kind man, who talks little but exudes genuine respect for the dead.
Daigo doesn't tell his wife what he does. They need the money. His job is so low caste that an old friend learns of it and snubs him. The clients are generally grateful; one father confesses cheerfully that the process freed him to accept the true nature of his child.
A lot is said about the casting process for a movie. Director Yojiro Takita and his casting director, Takefumi Yoshikawa, have surpassed themselves. In a film with four principal roles, they've found actors whose faces, so very human, embody what "Departures" wants to say about them. The earnest, insecure young man. His wife who loves him but is repulsed by the notion of him working with the dead. The boss, oracular, wise, kind. His office manager, inspirational but with an inner sadness. All of these faces are beautiful in a realistic human way.
The enterprise of undertaking is deadly serious, but has always inspired a certain humor, perhaps to mask our fears. The film is sometimes humorous, but not in a way to break the mood. The plot involves some developments we can see coming, but they seem natural, inevitable. The music is lush and sentimental in a subdued way, the cinematography is perfectly framed and evocative, and the movie is uncommonly absorbing. There is a scene of discovery toward the end with tremendous emotional impact. You can't say it wasn't prepared for, but it comes as a devastating surprise, a poetic resolution.
Some of the visual choices are striking. Observe the way Takita handles it when the couple is given an octopus for their dinner and are surprised to find it still alive. See how vividly Daigo recalls a time on the beach with his dad when he was 5 or 6, but how in his memory his father's face is a blur. And how certain compositions suggest that we are all in waiting to be encoffined.
In this film, Kore-eda's "After Life" and of course Kurosawa's great "Ikiru," the Japanese reveal a deep and unsensational acceptance of death. It is not a time for weeping and the gnashing of teeth. It is an observation that a life has been left for the contemplation of the survivors.
Review
Part of the problem with the movie version of The Da Vinci Code was that it took itself too seriously. You had these people dashing around Europe, investigating obscure clues and uncovering outrageous conspiracies, but the only person who seemed to be having any fun with it was Ian McKellen. "Tom Hanks has never seemed so dull," I wrote in my review.
Well, say what you will about Ron Howard as a director, but at least he's consistent. Angels & Demons, the Da Vinci Code sequel, is as overly serious as its predecessor, and poor Mr. Hanks -- the world's most likable man, for crying out loud! -- is still dour and intense. I get that saving the world from disaster is important business, and the characters may not have time to smile and joke and enjoy themselves. But is it too much to ask for it to be fun for the audience?
Not having read Dan Brown's Angels & Demons novel (which actually came before Da Vinci, not after), I was able to find some entertainment in the mechanics of the plot -- not knowing how the mystery would be unraveled, curious to see what the clues would mean. The screenplay, by veteran action writer David Koepp (Panic Room) and Ron Howard regular Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind), basically adheres to a limited point of view -- we don't know any more than the Hanks character, Robert Langdon, does. For viewers who already know where things are going, there may not be much pleasure in watching Langdon figure it out, unless the movie has deviated significantly from the book.
This time around, Langdon, relived of his absurd haircut and back at Harvard University, is summoned by the Vatican after four high-ranking cardinals are kidnapped. The Vatican, in a state of high alert anyway due to the pope having just died, believes the evildoers are members of the super-secret group known as the Illuminati. The reason they believe this is that whoever abducted the cardinals left behind a piece of paper that says "ILLUMINATI" on it.
Langdon's expertise is needed because this "ILLUMINATI" symbol is written in the form of an ambigram, i.e., it reads the same right-side-up and upside-down. (Look at how Angels & Demons appears on the cover of the novel.) Allegedly, this is an ancient secret, the sudden appearance of which can ONLY mean the Illuminati have come out of hiding, because surely no one else could have figured out how to design an ambigram out of "Illuminati."
The kidnappers have also swiped a canister of anti-matter from a Vatican-funded lab in Switzerland, with the apparent goal of using it to blow up Vatican City. In the meantime, they've left a video message for the Vatican in which their language sounds normal but is actually densely packed with clues about their plans and whereabouts. Langdon deciphers these clues and, with a scientist named Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) at his side, dashes all over Rome in an effort to thwart the evildoers. It kind of makes you wonder why the evildoers went to the trouble of hiding clues in their message, unless they wanted to be thwarted. Maybe it was a cry for help?
Assisting Langdon is Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor), chamberlain to the late pope and current acting head of state of Vatican City (something of a placeholder until the college of cardinals chooses a new pontiff). An orphan, Patrick is devout and humble, and unafraid of uncovering the truth, no matter what it may be. Somewhat fussier and more old-fashioned is Commander Richter (Stellan Skarsgard), the head of Vatican City's police force, who scoffs at Langdon's code-breaking and old-sculpture-interpreting.
As I said, there's a certain rote enjoyment to be had in seeing the elaborate story unfold, a basic thrill in wondering what's going to happen next. What it lacks is a human touch. Vittoria Vetra is a total blank who might as well have been played by a pile of socks for all the personality she brings. Patrick and Richter are generic types, a Sympathizer and Antagonist, respectively, whose characters never get fully fleshed out. Even Langdon -- being played by the world's most likable man, for crying out loud! -- seems like nothing more than a perturbed academic who must hastily solve riddles and save Rome. He's busy and frantic, but that is not the same as being interesting.
The film also lacks a crisis that can measure up to the one in The Da Vinci Code. That story was ultimately about the divinity of Jesus Christ, with secrets emerging that threatened to shake the Roman Catholic Church at its very foundation! Angels & Demons is about imperiled clergymen and a terrorist plot to destroy Rome -- big deals, sure, but hardly on a par with what sequel-goers are expecting. As a means of dealing with that shortcoming, Angels & Demons flirts with bigger issues, including science vs. religion, and briefly claims that the anti-matter relates to "the creation of life." But this is merely bluster, an effort to make us think the film is deeper than it is. It's ultimately just a 24-style murder-and-mayhem thriller -- which is a fine thing to be. Why take it so seriously, though?
Review
Long awaited in the wake of his 2005 debut Brick, Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom is a magic trick of a film; the second it's over, you want to see it again so you can try to catch how you were tricked, but you also want to see it again so you can return to the joy and wonder of being wrapped up in the nimble, deck-shuffling hands of a born showman. Watching it at first, some of The Brothers Bloom's creative and thematic elements seem like they're on loan from Paul Thomas Anderson (opening narration by Ricky Jay, pop-whiz-bang camera work, the troubled-but-tender relationship between the two brothers) while others feel as if they've been cribbed from Wes Anderson (deadpan confessions, whimsical set design, a parallel-universe setting where people still travel to Europe by steamship). The truth is, as much as The Brothers Bloom may feel like it's cribbing from other films at first, this is Rian Johnson's movie, and even if my more dreary and discerning critical faculties told me the final act goes on, perhaps, a beat too long, my inner moviegoer was sitting bolt upright, smiling, bright-eyed and carried away.
Brothers Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrian Brody) have grown up on the make, in a world of, as Jay's stage-setting narration puts it, "... grifters, ropers, faro fixers, tales drawn long and tall. ..." Stephen builds cons; Bloom gets close to the marks. Stephen's work on their scams is a weird, lucrative form of self-expression; as Bloom puts it, "My brother writes cons the way Russians write novels. ..." Bloom's work on their schemes is a weird, lucrative form of self-loathing; Bloom learns early on that playing a part means never having to be yourself, that he, when " ... being as he wasn't, could be as he wished to be." Stephen wants more. Bloom wants out.
In any con game film, we expect to hear the phrase " ... one last job," just as we expect to hear a magician cry out " ... nothing up my sleeves." Much like a sleight-of-hand artist's stage gestures, Johnson's work here is broad and bold and sweeping, all the better to hide the careful planning, tight-sprung engineering and thoughtfully considered execution behind the distractions and delights. Along with their comrade-in-cons Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi), an enigmatic hipster with a flair for explosions, the brothers find one last target, a lonely heiress named Penelope Stamp, played by Rachel Weisz; while Bloom and Stephen and Bang Bang commit several felonies and misdemeanors in the course of The Brothers Bloom, it's nothing compared to the act of grand (in every sense of the word) larceny Weisz commits in stealing the film. Penelope's weird and unique, but she's also real and sincere; a montage where Penelope demonstrates how she, in her words, 'collects hobbies' is a minor miracle of comedy that also speaks to a character's lonely heart.
Stephen's concocted a plan to bilk Penelope out of her inheritance, which requires Bloom to get close to her; Bloom, as we expect, gets too close; later, we understand how Stephen may have expected that, too. As Stephen, Ruffalo gets to play a rumpled, roguish conniver, eyes twinkling as they catch a glimpse of the next chance to trick and take; Brody's hangdog looks and deliberate manner mesh perfectly with Bloom's melancholy manipulations. Kikuchi's stylish, silent Bang Bang provides cool, crisp comic relief that somehow still works within the film's context of stakes and risks. In fact, you could say that all of The Brothers Bloom walks a careful, closely-watched line where there's peril and possibility enough to keep the film moving forward and keep us in suspense, even as the tone still feels light-footed and bright.
Some naysayers deride Brick, Johnson's first film, as a gimmick masquerading as a movie; I'm of the opinion they're wrong, but that's another story. The Brothers Bloom demonstrates, however you may feel about Brick, that Johnson's a real storyteller, much like his protagonist antiheroes here; you can feel here how much he loves to make us ask 'What happens next?' and how well he knows that having a good answer to that question matters. The Brothers Bloom is about a con, but it's also about storytelling -- and how all storytelling is, in its way, a con.The production design, costumes and music in The Brothers Bloom are all top-notch, but they never get in the way of the movie; the games and gags in it don't detract from the film's real meaning or the connection between the characters. Bloom says he doesn't want to live "an unwritten life"; he -- and we -- are told "There's no such thing as an unwritten life, just a badly-written one." The Brothers Bloom has immediate, kicky pleasures and laughs, but it also sneaks up on you with how much Bloom and Stephen care for each other, and how much Penelope and Bloom find their true selves through a series of deceptions. The Brothers Bloom may look slight, but as the intricate tricks and twists of it unfold, all of the cunning and cons in it reveal a sincere, beating heart behind the flash and fun.
Review
It takes half an hour — forever in movie time — for this relationship comedy to get going. But when it does, Jennifer Aniston, as a corporate type who buys ghastly motel art, and Steve Zahn, as the night manager at his parents' Arizona motor inn, do quiet wonders. Smarting from her split from a yogurt tycoon (a splendid Woody Harrelson), she lets the nerd touch her butt. Something happens. I can't describe it. But it's not formula and it's not TV. Playwright Stephen Belber (Match), in his directing debut, comes close to the sweet spot. He's not there yet. But he'll be worth watching next time.
Review
The offbeat Norwegian director Bent Hamer (Kitchen Stories, Factotum) has a wonderful eye. This deadpan comedy about a newly-retired train driver (Bård Owe) might be the best-looking film of the week.
Even for Hamer, it’s aimless, though, and you keep hoping the aimlessness is going to crystallise into a point. The film’s frostbitten sense of mortality is something we’re meant to feel in our bones.
