Charlie Wilson's War & Atonement

As is the tradition with a long holiday weekend, I made it out to a few films. And with Oscar nominations due to be announced in less than three weeks, the theaters are filled with good stuff (sprinkled among the usual crap).

Charlie Wilson’s War was setup to be a very good film from the start. With Mike Nichols directing, Aaron Sorkin writing the screenplay, Tom Hanks producing and starring alongside Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman, the names were enough to get some people in the theater. The star power along with the as-to-be-expected world-class writing and directing made a story that should be a difficult pill to swallow—a historical account of the United States’ covert involvement in the mid-1980’s Soviet-Afghan war—much more accessible.

Hank’s and Hoffman’s characters (Congressmen Charlie Wilson and CIA Agent Gust Avrakotos, respectively) are based on very eccentric men which comes through—often amusingly—in Sorkin’s script and their performances. However, as noted by Cinematical’s James Rocchi, “[the movie] stops being funny when you realize we're living in the sequel.” Subtle foreshadowing, capped by a final quote from the real Congressman, reminds us of the role Afghanistan plays in the post Cold-War world.

Less than 24-hours after seeing Charlie Wilson’s War, I made a complete one-eighty and went to see Joe Wright’s Atonement.

Atonement was some great storytelling to be sure, but definitely calculated and tedious. This, depending on your demeanor, can either add or detract from the experience.

True to form for a purely literary work that was later adapted to film, the story started out slow, heavy with texture and foreshadowing, before finally arriving at well-conceived conflict. Then, again, the second act crawled for a little while. However, with only a few minutes remaining the story went somewhere I did not expect. I’m not in the habit of ruining spoilers, especially in films I genuinely enjoyed, so I’m just going to say that the last 15 minutes turn entire the entire story on its head. Fortunately (and quite by design) the slow build-up keeps the audience very empathetic to the characters.

It’s hard to talk about Atonement without mentioning the exceptional performance of James McAvoy. I was floored by his Golden Globe Nominated performance in The Last King of Scotland last year; and Atonement was definitely an equal accomplishment.

Charlie Wilson's War
(4/5)

Atonement

(4/5)

I Am Legend & Juno

Among all the cheery crap of the holiday weekend, I finally made it to a few other movies. First, the overblown The Omega Man remake: I Am Legend and second, the wickedly funny coming-of-age story: Juno.

I, like millions of American movie junkies, was initially impressed by the sleek marking of I Am Legend. (Remeber the tagline: "The last man on earth is not alone".) The trailer consisted of 29.9 seconds of setup: Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith) is the last man on earth. He’s hunting in an abandoned Times Square, etc. Then night falls, and for a tenth of a second we see a monster dash across the screen and hear a creepy howl. Now that sounds like a movie I want to see! Right?

Well, get to the movie and get one look at the “monsters” (which, incidentally happens way too early in the story) and suddenly it’s not so exciting anymore. It’s the classic “fear of the unknown” affect. Once you know what’s there, the fear is cut in half. And like the trailer, 99% of the movie’s runtime is devoted to exposition and only in the final minutes do we dispense with pesky things like plot.

Juno, on the other hand, was quite a refreshing change of pace. As I may have predicted, I was already exposed to some of the best jokes from the 30 or 40 times I watched the trailer online. However, the rest of the film kept up pretty well. Director Jason Reitman worked some world-class talent and Diablo Cody’s a witty back-and-forth dialog, littered with pop-culture references, into a very unlikely contender for major awards.

Ellen Page (Juno MacGuff) really deserves all of the credit she’s already gotten for her slice-of-life portrayal of a teenager who uses a smart-ass attitude to detract attention from the very real difficult decisions she is faced with. Not to mention, she not only held her own but sustained subtle onscreen chemistry in scenes with her co-star and rising comic-heavyweight Jason Bateman. And probably a less-mentioned, but equally endearing performance was delivered by Allison Janney as Juno’s step-mom, Bren. OK, so I might be a bit biased because: Damn I love Allision Janney! Juno makes me wish she was my mom.

But, by all accounts, this is a hell of the weekend to get to the movies.

I Am Legend

(2/5)

Juno

(4.5/5)

From the 50 Yard Line

The Columbus International Film Festival is taking place this week. Somehow, I’ve never made it to the festival before; so this year I made every effort to get there. It probably helped that I have a personal interest in one of the screening films, a documentary called From the 50 Yard Line.

From the 50 Yard Line is a documentary on marching band. Primarily, it follows The Centerville Jazz Band (the marching band for Centerville High School in Centerville, OH) through their competitive season. Because, I grew up in Columbus and was very involved in marching band (and its big brother Drum Corps), I actually marched with/was instructed by several of the subjects of the film. That being said, I could go on and on about it, but I’ll try to be brief and objective.

First time director Doug Lantz, himself an alumnus of the Centerville Band program, was on hand to introduce the film. The film began with the marching band auditions at Easter and followed the band all the way through their culminating performance at the Bands of America Grand National Championships. The primary intent was to expose the often unrecognized impact of instrumental music education on the development of American high school students.

Stand out segments included deliberately understated interviews with politicians and academics on the unintended effects of “No Child Left Behind” on education, and a recurring man-on-the-street segment called “Bandology 101” which tested average people on their knowledge of marching band lingo. In what seemed like an attempt to even out the piece, the filmmakers spent some time with the Fairfax High School Marching Band (Hollywood, CA) which was restarted this year from an anonymous donation after an 18-year hiatus from instrumental music at the school. Perhaps analogous to the disparities in the programs’ budgets and community support, Centerville dominated the screen time 10:1.

During the Q&A following the film, Lantz acknowledged that “there is drama that happens in high school…but we made the decision that we really wanted to focus on the band experience.” By choosing to include several students (rather than following the more personal stories of one or two members) the film really does emphasize the communal experience. However, at some points these efforts were taken to the extreme: scenes from the “share session” at the end of band camp (in which each band member was given an opportunity to address the entire group) felt more like a lengthy emotional montage than an image of a group united by their goals. However, the film is still being edited giving it a chance to work out some of the “thematic sticking points”.

Most of all, I was impressed by the progress you could see in individuals. A rookie tuba player was featured at the beginning and end of the film with not only a noticeable improvement in his marching and playing skills, but a real transformation from an insecure high school freshman to a confident and coordinated young adult.

Aaron’s Pick:

From the 50 Yard Line

(4/5)

Wristcutters: A Love Story

I just got back from seeing Wristcutters: A Love Story at the Drexel Gateway with Brett. I was really looking forward to seeing this because ever since I saw Brick last year, I’ve been waiting for another quirky film to explode out of Sundance. And this year Wristcutters: A Love Story and Teeth seemed like the most likely candidates.

Wristcutters definitely had its share of quirk, but I have a feeling it’s not going to find the cult following that fuels an indie hit. I just don’t think it’s accessible enough.

The story follows Zia (Patrick Fugit) in his quest through a bizarre afterlife occupied only by suicides to find his ex-girlfriend, Desiree (Leslie Bibb). This was obviously a difficult and controversial premise to approach, and that may have been why I had such high hopes for it. To deal with the dark subject matter, director Goran Dukic necessarily took a comic approach. However, the humor imitated the stale ambience of the film’s setting. Although it had its moments, the audience I saw it with seemed to reach only sharp chuckles rather than roll-on-the-ground laughter.

It was difficult to judge performance when, as part of the films premise, the characters don’t smile. But I was impressed by newcomer Shannyn Sossamon who plays Mikal, a hitchhiker who joins Zia and his “sidekick” Eugene (Shea Whigham) on their odyssey.

Overall I did enjoy Wristcutters. I can’t say it was all that I hoped for though: as the story progressed it just got more bizarre where I thought it should grow funnier. The ending, however, was stellar. I don’t want to give it away, but I’ll just say that somehow in the last scene two characters poured out their souls without ever saying a word. If you can do this, as a filmmaker you must be doing something right.

Wristcutters: Not the breakout indie I was hoping for, but one of the most original films I’ve seen lately.

Aaron’s Pick:

Wristcutters: A Love Story
(3.5/5)

Gone Baby Gone

I was excited to see Ben Affleck’s first crack at being behind the camera and finally got around to seeing Gone Baby Gone on Friday. He made some smart decisions that led to a very fine first film: (1) He stayed behind the camera (2) He worked with a veteran writer and chose source material that was not only great but he had a personal connection to (Boston). Dennis Lehane wrote the novel on which the film was based and I’m a big fan of one of his previous adaptations: Mystic River (directed by Clint Eastwood). Based on this and my understanding of the plot from the trailer and reviews, I was expecting something similar to Mystic River. In some ways the films are similar, but they differed more than I expected. Gone Baby Gone was much more personal and much less stylized as compared to Eastwood's neo-mobster thriller.

Just a note: the marketing for this movie was very interesting. The trailer (see below) made the story seem much more straightforward than it actually was. The film revolves around the abduction of Amanda, the three year old daughter of coke-addict Helene (Amy Ryan), and the private investigators hired to augment the police investigation: Patrick (Casey Affleck) and his girlfriend/business partner Angie (Michelle Monaghan). For the first half of the movie, it was a simple whodunit that had a sudden and premature “fake-out” ending. At this point, the story slipped into a strange purgatory focusing mostly on the dectective, Patrick. Then suddenly, it came back to Amanda’s case and we started to see that all the facts weren’t as they first seemed. There was a potential for losing the audience with the unconventional structure (and I should probably go see it again), but it paid off in the end.






As far as the portrayal of Bostonians, Ben Affleck was definitely going for “photo-realism”. It was clear that many of the incidental characters and extras were actually people from “the neighborhood”. My one complaint was for as real as the film felt, looked, and sounded, some of the plot points seemed a little outside of my suspension of disbelief: specifically, a sequence when Patrick executes an unarmed child molester after discovering a child’s body in his home and seems to bear no judicial recourse. Not that I’m defending the rights of child molesters, but I think that if something like that actually happened, the officer (or PI) involved would be looking at criminal charges or at the very least be arrested.


All in all this was a very strong ensemble cast and a tight story with a succinct theme of “black-and-white” morality. Gone Baby Gone was not just a strong start for an emerging filmmaker, but an extremely entertaining movie in general.

Gone Baby Gone

(4.5/5)

"Darjeeling" article in today's USA TODAY

Check out this article in today’s USA Today. It talks about the mysterious people and events in the film and their artistic interpretations.

The inclusion of plot elements open to each viewer’s interpretation is what really convinces me that this film will one day be labeled as one of Anderson’s “classics”. It’s these unformulated details that will make audiences revisit the piece over and over. (Look at Donnie Darko, a film full of open details, and how it still resonates with an audience.)

The Darjeeling Limited & Into The Wild

It was a good weekend for film. I’ve had a hell of a couple weeks at work and it’s been hard to keep caught up with my movie watching. However, because four films that I wanted to see went into wide release on Friday (or at least wide enough for me to see them in Ohio), I made time between work and a short film shoot to see get out to the theaters, twice. On Friday, I saw Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited and then on Saturday I made it to Sean Penn’s Into The Wild. (By the way the other two films I’m saving for later are: Lust Caution & Gone Baby Gone, so expect to see write ups for those coming soon).


I have to say I was very pleased with both films. I’m a big Wes Anderson fan—and like most of his “mainstream” fans I probably relate most to films like The Royal Tenenbaums and even Rushmore. 2004’s The Life Aquatic was a bit lost on me. Althouh, I have to say that I’ve come to enjoy the film more with time, at first it seemed like a cartoony, border-line indulgent sequel to The Royal Tenenbaums. And because of this, I had my doubts about The Darjeeling Limited.

I expected Anderson’s signature emotionally-damaged characters dealing with a complex family of clashing personalities. His characteristic sarcastic, dry humor was even more potent and polished. However, the principle cast of characters—the Whitman brothers, played by Anderson regulars Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson and newcomer Adrien Brody—were a departure when compared to the menagerie of characters in his other films. The simplified bill, simplified plotline and simplified production style really made for a tighter and more accessible film that I suspect will one day be regarded as one of Anderson’s “classics”.


If you do check out the The Darjeeling Limited, go to www.hotelchevalier.com and check out the short film Hotel Chevalier. It is a standalone prequel to Darjeeling. It complements it well and gives necessary insight into one of the Whitman brothers. And oh yeah, it’s one of the finer short films I’ve seen in the past year.


While The Darjeeling Limited deals with the spiritual journey of three characters, Into The Wild follows just one man on his journey of self-discovery. Based on the Jon Krakauer novel by the same name, the film tells the real-life story of Chris McCandless’ (Emile Hirsch) bizarre journey across America and eventually to the Alaskan wilderness. What amazed me most about this film was that while touching on all sorts of heavy philosophical issues like: purpose, achievement, family, love and even religion; and making use of extensive voiceovers and quotations from writers like Tolstoy and Thoreau, it still manages not to be terribly pretentious. (But you’ll have to judge that for yourself.) I attribute this to the excellent writing and direction as well as Hirsch’s engaging performance. The themes (pretentiousness and all) were necessary pieces of the character.

I found as the character flipped between delusional and enlightened (and likewise gained and lost the audience’s sentiment) the story maintained an objective point of view. As you would expect from a story that takes place almost entirely in the wilderness, the cinematography was breathtaking. I was surprised by the spectrum of techniques that Penn and French cinematographer Eric Gautier used: the timbre changed frequently from handheld to steadicam to complex crane and aerial work. Much of the film was designed to feel extremely real, but during some of the more “turbulent” pieces of McCandless’ adventure, a much more impressionistic aesthetic was employed.

Into the Wild did move a bit slow at times, but I felt that the audience was always involved in McCandless’ progress and this kept us in the story. This, along with The Darjeeling Limited, represent two American directors at the top of their game.

The Darjeeling Limited

(4.5/5)

Into The Wild


(4/5)