There's an action sequence in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol that rivals much of what has been done with the genre since it began. I won't reveal much about it, except that it involves the recently constructed Burj Khalifa hotel in Dubai (now the tallest building in the world), Tom Cruise, and a pair of hi-tech climbing gloves that are of questionable working condition.
It's a masterful scene, in its setup and in its delivery, not the least because it uses the increasingly destructible Tom Cruise to its advantage. Excepting Brian De Palma's breathtakingly weird original, this is the first film in the Mission series to consider the physical weaknesses of the characters, most prominently Cruise's Ethan Hunt. Rather like Clint Eastwood in his later work, Cruise (who also produced) doesn't try to avoid the fact that he's no longer an invincible twentysomething hotshot. While the second film (by John Woo) had him dueling with motorcycles and casually scaling mountains, and the third (by J.J. Abrams) had him exploding with furious anger at the kidnapping of his fiancee, this one reminds us that he's no Superman and mines his vulnerability for quite a bit of tension. That Cruise did most of his own stunts only drives that tension further.
Ethan Hunt, just freed from a Russian prison, teams up with the computer whiz Benji (Simon Pegg) and the resourceful agent Jane (Paula Patton) to intercept the theft of Russian nuclear codes by a madman (Michael Nyqvist). As can be expected, things go wrong, and the team finds itself cut off, without any government help; the "Ghost Protocol" of the title refers to the condition under which all agents are disavowed. This leaves the team short of the time and tools they need to finish the job. Their forced improvisation in several tight spots is one of the joys of the film; while many action films are on autopilot, this one is always on its feet.
Jeremy Renner, who turns up at the midpoint as an IMF "analyst," seems to be slumming after his celebrated turn in The Hurt Locker, but has a good chemistry with the other players. He does a good job of appearing to be in over his head, but still able to save the day in a pinch. After many complex, emotionally disturbed roles, this one must be a bit of a break for Renner, and it's good to see him having fun with it.
Director Brad Bird, whose live-action debut this is, proves himself adept at building multifaceted action scenes and seeing them through. He choreographs the film with the same daring glee that he brought to The Incredibles, throwing obstacle after obstacle in the characters' way. His background in animation appears to have influenced his style greatly; there's even one bit of tactical misdirection early on that I swear must have been stolen from Wile E. Coyote.
There's also very limited use of CGI, as far as I can see. Much of the action is done the old-fashioned way: with stuntmen, stunt drivers, and clever editing.
Bird and writers Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec also wisely leave out the insufferable romantic sub-plot that brought down Mission: Impossible II and III. Like the first film, Ghost Protocol knows that the sexiness is in the spy intrigue, not in the romance, and that Ethan Hunt is not a romantic lead but rather Hollywood's sexiest workaholic. Though there is a sufficient emotional background, in order to give the characters depth, for the most part the kissy-kissy stuff is checked at the door.
Pegg is delightful as the kind of agent who can gain complete control of a prison's electronic locks in a few seconds, but still looks awkward firing a gun. Patton is a likable second-gun to Cruise, and has a great scene where she seduces a buffoonish Indian tycoon (the inimitable Anil Kapoor) to try to get the codes to a satellite his company owns. "Lost" alum Josh Holloway turns up as a very Sawyer-esque IMF agent. Nyqvist, of the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, makes for a fairly bland villain, but the movie doesn't depend on his menace particularly heavily.
Still, this is Cruise's show. Though he's supplied with a stronger-than-usual supporting cast (to boost the film's box office after several Cruise-led disappointments), he earns the movie for himself and is on his way to ditching the couch-jumping idiot persona and rediscovering the respectable Tom Cruise, who's a good and hard-working actor. Ghost Protocol is the best American action film in a long time.
*** 1/2 out of ****
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Who is John Galt? Tune in next time. ATLAS SHRUGGED: PART I (2011)
For obvious reasons, I've never read any work by Ayn Rand, short of a few snippets in philosophy class which were enough to give me an idea of her outlook on life. Her philosophy begins with the postulation that no human being ever acts in anything but his or her own interest. It ends with the embrace of every awful conservative laissez-faire economic policy known to man. So many prominent conservatives are avid worshipers of Rand's work that even one current Republican Presidential nominee named his son after her. You know which one.
Now along comes Atlas Shrugged: Part I, a labor of love (and not much else) from conservative businessman John Aglialoro. Mr. Aglialoro, a lover of Rand's work, inherited the project from Albert S. Ruddy, who had tried to get a film of Atlas Shrugged made for over twenty years. In the early 21st century it looked like it was going to happen, with a screenplay by James V. Hart (Contact) and Randall Wallace (Braveheart) and stars as huge as Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie... but it never took off.
Not only did it leave Aglialoro at square one, but his clock was running out. His rights to the novel were set to expire on June 15, 2010, if he did not make a movie from it. So he rushed Part I into production, began principal photography on June 13, 2010, and shot it in five weeks for $10 million. The cast are mostly no-names with their credits mainly in television. The director, Stephen Polk, quit nine days before filming was to begin, and was replaced by the actor Paul Johansson.
This is not the first time a movie was rushed into production for a rights extension. In 1994, producer Bernd Eichinger shot a $1 million Fantastic Four movie that was never intended for release, in order to keep the rights from expiring. He later produced the higher-budgeted 2005 Fantastic 4, which was a financial success. The point, I suppose, is that Aglialoro will get the chance to do the same someday, and that Atlas Shrugged: Part I is just buying him time until he can do it right.
But considering that it's essentially an abandoned child, Atlas Shrugged--and I hope my political compatriots will forgive me for this admission--is not a bad film. Like The Fantastic Four before it, it has a certain charm. It's an endearingly pedestrian film version of a gargantuan novel, like the old gang decided to open up the barn and put on "Hamlet." At a time when many big-studio, big-money films are dead on arrival, here is a movie that was essentially put to death but remains alive, with an engaging story and surprisingly decent acting.
The politics, of course, are abhorrent. The movie's premise is the ultimate straw man that is used by conservatives whenever they wish to combat the slightest regulation from the government. The year is 2016, and the U.S. economy is in the toilet. The poor are getting poorer, and the rich... are also getting poorer. One poor man on the news says, "If it's bad for rich people, think of how bad it must be for us." This is only the first of many phony connections between the welfare of the rich and the welfare of the rest of the country: if the wealthy do well, everyone else naturally will prosper, right?
Dagny Taggart (Taylor Schilling), heiress to a transcontinental rail company, is in the process of collaborating with a steel company, run by the soap-opera-good-looking Hank Rearden (Grant Bowler), to create the nation's fastest and most economical railway system. The trouble is that the pesky government keeps getting in the way; constant regulations stand in the way of innovation, as do shady backdoor dealings between a slimy Congressman (Michael Lerner) and Dagny's brother (Matthew Marsden).
So we know where the movie stands. Corporations are the heroes and the government is the bad guy, and the only thing that will allow our nation to prosper again is if government just gets out of the way and lets the corporations do their thing. With corporations contributing amply to political campaigns, and K Street still running strong, it's not easy to accept the ridiculous premise of the mighty Congress bringing down its fist on capitalism. If only Rand had lived to see the Supreme Court decision on corporate personhood. Oh, if only.
But never mind that the film is completely incongruous, and its premise is easily refuted, and its sociopolitical ideas are horrifying. With this work, Rand appears to aspire to be the John le Carre of the corporate world. Only the intrigue isn't in globetrotting espionage; it's in mergers and acquisitions. The CEO is the James Bond of the future! Does it work? Well, not always, but you can give them points for trying. At the very most, Atlas Shrugged is a brisk piece of corporate soap-opera fluff.
Schilling is tenacious as the unbeatable Ms. Taggart; she has only a small filmography thus far, but she likely has a future. Bowler is not called to be much other than a handsome block of wood, but he does that well. There's nice supporting work from Marsden and Lerner, as well as from Patrick Fischler (recognizable as the man in the diner with the dream, from Mulholland Dr.). As Dagny's personal assistant, Edi Gathegi is wasted (I read that his role is bigger in the novel).
Aglialoro has stated that although Part II is scheduled to begin shooting in early 2012, he will not continue if the first film is not financially successful. The story told by Atlas Shrugged: Part I is that of a noble rich heiress and how her innovation needs to be cultivated so the rest of us poor schlubs can survive. The story behind Atlas Shrugged: Part I is that of a rich man who, in danger of losing his decades-old project, sliced off $10 million to fund a throwaway production which in turn was given life by a bunch of working-class TV actors and a working-class TV director. And if you do not see the irony there, you are probably an Ayn Rand reader.
** out of ****
Sunday, December 18, 2011
MY SOUL TO TAKE (2010): Contents of Wes Craven's sock drawer
Strange that a director as well-established and acclaimed as Wes Craven would decide to slum it and make an unironic slasher flick, but that's what he's done here. My Soul to Take is a return to his roots, a mashup of some themes from A Nightmare on Elm Street with the dead-teenager motif pioneered by Friday the 13th. It's the kind of maddeningly creative, sloppy yet irresistible mess that used to be Craven's forte during the '80s, and it's the most underrated shocker from this director since, well, Shocker.
It has everything. The return of the long-dormant serial killer. The nightmares that blend with real life. The nerd who gets with the popular girl. And this time the killer may have passed his soul into one of the children who was born on the day he died. The "Riverton Ripper" was killed sixteen years ago to the day, coincidentally the day seven Riverton kids were born. Not so coincidentally, the kids all turn sixteen and the killings begin again. No one knows if it's a copycat, or if the Ripper isn't dead, or if it's simply the soul of the killer that's alive. Suspicion falls on Bug (Max Thieriot), a local spaz who's one of the Riverton Seven, and has been acting strange lately.
It has everything. The return of the long-dormant serial killer. The nightmares that blend with real life. The nerd who gets with the popular girl. And this time the killer may have passed his soul into one of the children who was born on the day he died. The "Riverton Ripper" was killed sixteen years ago to the day, coincidentally the day seven Riverton kids were born. Not so coincidentally, the kids all turn sixteen and the killings begin again. No one knows if it's a copycat, or if the Ripper isn't dead, or if it's simply the soul of the killer that's alive. Suspicion falls on Bug (Max Thieriot), a local spaz who's one of the Riverton Seven, and has been acting strange lately.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
SCRE4M (2011): Y4wn.
There's a kind of sequel that's emerged over the past few years that I've come to call the Moving Back Home film. These are the movie equivalent of moving back in with your parents; after failing to make a big splash in the movie business, an actor or filmmaker returns to the series that made him or her famous. The most prominent example is the Fast and the Furious series, which reunited Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez for a blockbuster continuation after Hollywood was less than kind to them otherwise.
Scream 4 brings back Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson, fairly dormant in recent years. Though hardly a failure, Craven's money has manifested itself mainly in remakes of his classic films (The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street). His one outing as director in the past five years, My Soul to Take, was an underrated yet barely noticeable genre entry. Kevin Williamson has stuck mostly to TV, having birthed two successful series (Dawson's Creek and The Vampire Diaries). Both claimed they'd never do another Scream movie, and Williamson even declined to write the 3rd one. But here they are again.
The effect is less a grand re-invigoration of the series than a dull 15-year high school reunion. Though Williamson applies the same tongue-in-cheek approach that he did to the previous films, his work here is more mean-spirited and cynical. In the other Scream films we got the sense that he was lampooning them out of love, but here the screenplay is distant and mocking. Maybe Williamson just doesn't like horror movies these days.
He seems to take issue especially with the "torture porn" of the Saw films. The new addition to horror since the series finished, Williamson says, is that of the killer as hero. In this new leaf, the killer is likelier to take responsibility for the murders himself, and even videotape himself committing them. Not only is the killer the main character; the killer makes the movie and the rules.
Williamson and Craven aren't having that, even if their killer is. Even if it does have a few new twists, Scream 4 is a traditional guy-with-a-knife movie. The problem is that it's a bad guy-with-a-knife movie, and a lazy one to boot. The other three films took delight in hurling us through their suspenseful contraption, adhering to conventions while at the same time denying them. In Scream 4 there are few surprises and little fun to be had.
Even the returning cast members look like they would rather be anywhere else. Neve Campbell returns as Sidney Prescott, who's just come back to her hometown of Woodsboro as a bestselling author. Little does she know that the Ghostface killer has returned with her, and is offing high schoolers while taunting her all the while. Campbell looks about as thrilled to be in the movie as Sidney must be to be facing the killer again. Her attitude seems about right; the actress has never quite gotten the credit she deserves after delivering some brilliant work in movies like The Company and When Will I Be Loved.
Dewey Reilly (David Arquette) is now the local sheriff, and wife Gale (Courteney Cox) has given up her ambitious journalism career to be a housewife. Arquette, so wonderfully goofy in the previous films, is all business here with no personality. Cox is given little to do but kvetch about how bored she is living the smalltown life. As Sidney's teenaged cousin (and the movie's obvious setup for a final girl), Emma Roberts doesn't make much of an impression.
The movie does have its signs of life. The opening sequence, a staple of the series, plays a few clever point-of-view tricks and is the most fun that Craven and Williamson allow themselves to have with the premise. Without giving too much away, I'll say that it made me wish that the movie had continued in this fashion, as a sort of slasher version of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Hayden Panettiere, as the town's resident smart-aleck hipster high schooler, is always fun to watch, and finds a likable character amid the horror cliches. Erik Knudsen and Rory Culkin are also funny as two nerdy videophiles.
To an extent, we the audience will only have fun if a movie is having fun with itself. The Scream series has always been one to mock conventions and throw us for just the right loop. This time it's just going through the motions. Though Williamson still has his sights set on the usual targets, Scream 4 is as dull and mechanistic as any high-number Saw sequel.
* 1/2 out of ****
Scream 4 brings back Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson, fairly dormant in recent years. Though hardly a failure, Craven's money has manifested itself mainly in remakes of his classic films (The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street). His one outing as director in the past five years, My Soul to Take, was an underrated yet barely noticeable genre entry. Kevin Williamson has stuck mostly to TV, having birthed two successful series (Dawson's Creek and The Vampire Diaries). Both claimed they'd never do another Scream movie, and Williamson even declined to write the 3rd one. But here they are again.
The effect is less a grand re-invigoration of the series than a dull 15-year high school reunion. Though Williamson applies the same tongue-in-cheek approach that he did to the previous films, his work here is more mean-spirited and cynical. In the other Scream films we got the sense that he was lampooning them out of love, but here the screenplay is distant and mocking. Maybe Williamson just doesn't like horror movies these days.
He seems to take issue especially with the "torture porn" of the Saw films. The new addition to horror since the series finished, Williamson says, is that of the killer as hero. In this new leaf, the killer is likelier to take responsibility for the murders himself, and even videotape himself committing them. Not only is the killer the main character; the killer makes the movie and the rules.
Williamson and Craven aren't having that, even if their killer is. Even if it does have a few new twists, Scream 4 is a traditional guy-with-a-knife movie. The problem is that it's a bad guy-with-a-knife movie, and a lazy one to boot. The other three films took delight in hurling us through their suspenseful contraption, adhering to conventions while at the same time denying them. In Scream 4 there are few surprises and little fun to be had.
Even the returning cast members look like they would rather be anywhere else. Neve Campbell returns as Sidney Prescott, who's just come back to her hometown of Woodsboro as a bestselling author. Little does she know that the Ghostface killer has returned with her, and is offing high schoolers while taunting her all the while. Campbell looks about as thrilled to be in the movie as Sidney must be to be facing the killer again. Her attitude seems about right; the actress has never quite gotten the credit she deserves after delivering some brilliant work in movies like The Company and When Will I Be Loved.
Dewey Reilly (David Arquette) is now the local sheriff, and wife Gale (Courteney Cox) has given up her ambitious journalism career to be a housewife. Arquette, so wonderfully goofy in the previous films, is all business here with no personality. Cox is given little to do but kvetch about how bored she is living the smalltown life. As Sidney's teenaged cousin (and the movie's obvious setup for a final girl), Emma Roberts doesn't make much of an impression.
The movie does have its signs of life. The opening sequence, a staple of the series, plays a few clever point-of-view tricks and is the most fun that Craven and Williamson allow themselves to have with the premise. Without giving too much away, I'll say that it made me wish that the movie had continued in this fashion, as a sort of slasher version of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Hayden Panettiere, as the town's resident smart-aleck hipster high schooler, is always fun to watch, and finds a likable character amid the horror cliches. Erik Knudsen and Rory Culkin are also funny as two nerdy videophiles.
To an extent, we the audience will only have fun if a movie is having fun with itself. The Scream series has always been one to mock conventions and throw us for just the right loop. This time it's just going through the motions. Though Williamson still has his sights set on the usual targets, Scream 4 is as dull and mechanistic as any high-number Saw sequel.
* 1/2 out of ****
Sunday, December 11, 2011
THE LOVELY BONES (2010): Saoirse Ronan is Dead Alive. Peter Jackson's movie leaves a Bad Taste.
There have been many films made about the afterlife, but few have given it such little thought as Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, adapted from Alice Sebold's bestselling novel. I haven't read the book, but I would hope that it is braver and more imaginative than Mr. Jackson's film, which is cold and unsympathetic. Its story of a murdered young girl's journey through purgatory is maddeningly simplistic: not as dumbfounding, mind you, as What Dreams May Come, but close. It looks upon its characters the way an audient at the Republican debates might react to Rick Perry's execution track record: this world doesn't matter, the next is more important, and let God do the sorting out.
I think the first wrong step was commissioning Jackson to direct the film. At first glance he would seem like the ideal choice, as his Heavenly Creatures told a similarly brutal story mixed with elements of fantasy. But that was a painfully honest picture, set in brutal reality rather than the magical world of flowers that The Lovely Bones occupies. His The Frighteners dealt passingly with the concepts of heaven and hell and the mess in between, but only so far as the ghost story needed.
Not that Jackson need be a true believer to direct a movie about heaven. Clint Eastwood, not the most devout believer, was able to pose some honest and interesting questions in his afterlife-themed film, Hereafter. Though that too was a failure, it was an intelligent and ambitious one. The Lovely Bones is only interested in the subject as far as it can manipulate the audience.
Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan, from Atonement) is a normal 14-year-old girl in an idyllic Pennsylvania suburb. She likes her family, likes taking pictures, and has a crush on a local boy who might just like her back. Then one day, she never comes home.
Susie finds herself in a purgatory-like state, somewhere between earth and the Great Beyond, where she can see what happens on earth and affect it in strange ways that are never quite made clear. Like many movie ghosts, she can't come right out and talk to her parents (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz, from better movies), but she seems to affect their moods and send messages through the ether that they can somehow receive.
The movie's earthbound sub-plot is actually quite well-played, and so much more interesting than anything it has to say about metaphysics that we wish the movie had just ditched the whole heaven thing and been a story about a family coping with losing a daughter. Wahlberg and Weisz are very good, as are Susan Sarandon as Susie's alcoholic grandmother and Rose McIver as her suspicious sister.
As the killer, Stanley Tucci easily ambles away with the film. Not content to be a stereotypical movie psycho, he takes an approach similar to The Vanishing: he plays a believable sociopath who kills simply because he can. It's in his scenes that Jackson is most comfortable, and builds suspense quite nicely in one breaking-and-entering sequence, as well as a conversation with a police officer (Michael Imperioli, also very good) that lovingly rips off Shadow of a Doubt.
Though Ronan is very good, she's stuck in the movie's more preposterous storyline. The movie ends up being a victim of its own premise; since there's no real way for Susie to affect what happens on earth in a major way, the two plots remain awkwardly separated. All that connects them is a ridiculous theme of a kind of simple divine providence in which everything happens for a reason and everything is worked out after death. (The way that the Tucci character meets his end is particularly insulting to the intelligence of any thinking person.)
I don't know if the widely praised novel is as shallow as this film or not. Perhaps it isn't, and Jackson has simply misread it. I have a feeling that the book was more about the need for an afterlife than about the actual afterlife. Imagine if the movie were told not from the point of view of the dead girl, but rather from the point of view of her younger sister, who needs to create this image of her sister in heaven in order to cope with her loss. If Jackson had realized that the more captivating story was on earth rather than in heaven, The Lovely Bones would not seem so silly, pretentious, and insulting.
** out of ****
I think the first wrong step was commissioning Jackson to direct the film. At first glance he would seem like the ideal choice, as his Heavenly Creatures told a similarly brutal story mixed with elements of fantasy. But that was a painfully honest picture, set in brutal reality rather than the magical world of flowers that The Lovely Bones occupies. His The Frighteners dealt passingly with the concepts of heaven and hell and the mess in between, but only so far as the ghost story needed.
Not that Jackson need be a true believer to direct a movie about heaven. Clint Eastwood, not the most devout believer, was able to pose some honest and interesting questions in his afterlife-themed film, Hereafter. Though that too was a failure, it was an intelligent and ambitious one. The Lovely Bones is only interested in the subject as far as it can manipulate the audience.
Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan, from Atonement) is a normal 14-year-old girl in an idyllic Pennsylvania suburb. She likes her family, likes taking pictures, and has a crush on a local boy who might just like her back. Then one day, she never comes home.
Susie finds herself in a purgatory-like state, somewhere between earth and the Great Beyond, where she can see what happens on earth and affect it in strange ways that are never quite made clear. Like many movie ghosts, she can't come right out and talk to her parents (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz, from better movies), but she seems to affect their moods and send messages through the ether that they can somehow receive.
The movie's earthbound sub-plot is actually quite well-played, and so much more interesting than anything it has to say about metaphysics that we wish the movie had just ditched the whole heaven thing and been a story about a family coping with losing a daughter. Wahlberg and Weisz are very good, as are Susan Sarandon as Susie's alcoholic grandmother and Rose McIver as her suspicious sister.
As the killer, Stanley Tucci easily ambles away with the film. Not content to be a stereotypical movie psycho, he takes an approach similar to The Vanishing: he plays a believable sociopath who kills simply because he can. It's in his scenes that Jackson is most comfortable, and builds suspense quite nicely in one breaking-and-entering sequence, as well as a conversation with a police officer (Michael Imperioli, also very good) that lovingly rips off Shadow of a Doubt.
Though Ronan is very good, she's stuck in the movie's more preposterous storyline. The movie ends up being a victim of its own premise; since there's no real way for Susie to affect what happens on earth in a major way, the two plots remain awkwardly separated. All that connects them is a ridiculous theme of a kind of simple divine providence in which everything happens for a reason and everything is worked out after death. (The way that the Tucci character meets his end is particularly insulting to the intelligence of any thinking person.)
I don't know if the widely praised novel is as shallow as this film or not. Perhaps it isn't, and Jackson has simply misread it. I have a feeling that the book was more about the need for an afterlife than about the actual afterlife. Imagine if the movie were told not from the point of view of the dead girl, but rather from the point of view of her younger sister, who needs to create this image of her sister in heaven in order to cope with her loss. If Jackson had realized that the more captivating story was on earth rather than in heaven, The Lovely Bones would not seem so silly, pretentious, and insulting.
** out of ****
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