A 'Lovely' Mess

by Brett Parker

I’m all for movies that try to put a sunny, positive spin on something dark and tragic. The key to pulling this off is to bring an authentic, substantial weight to the darkness. If this fails to happen, then the whole enterprise could likely be revealed as a shallow cartoon. Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones attempts to take an incredibly tragic premise, one that regards the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl, and brings it a glossy, almost Spielbergian sense of optimism. That Jackson’s vision never really grossly alienates us and sustains our attention throughout an uneven movie is perhaps the strongest thing this film does right.

The film takes place in early 1970s Pennsylvania and we meet a sweet 14-year-old girl named Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan). Susie is a happy child leading a simple suburban life with her loving family. She spends her days indulging in her love for photography and pining for an older boy (Reece Ritchie) at her school. Life is very pleasant for the pre-teen, until the fateful day she takes a shortcut home from school in a cornfield and encounters George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), an unsettling creepster from her neighborhood. George tricks Susie into entering a hidden ditch below the cornfield and it is there in which he rapes and murders Susie, covering his tracks and disposing the body in an expert manner.

We then follow Susie as her spirit enters into an “in-between,” a dreamlike universe in the afterlife in which Susie is able to live in a heaven-like existence while also keeping track of her loved ones on Earth. The in-between is a world of infinite beauty, ranging from exquisite beach, forest, and city landscapes, ones that can be magically altered by Susie’s mood. As she turns her attention back to Earth, she must watch helplessly as her father Jack (Mark Walberg) and mother Abigail (Rachel Weisz) battle their grief while her alcoholic grandmother (Susan Sarandon) tries to help out with domestic life. Also concerning Susie is the fact that her sister Lindsey (Rose McIver) tries to solve her disappearance and draws dangerously closer into George Harvey’s realm.

The Lovely Bones wants both to be an achingly revealing portrait of family mourning and a thoughtful meditation on what the afterlife might be like. The problem is that these two plot threads often interfere with each other instead of complimenting each other’s objectives. The film bounces so frantically between its two plots that neither one slows down to develop its ideas. This proves dangerous, for the film obviously has big emotional things to say, but the zippy pacing never allows them to be said. More patient and observant scenes of emotional revelations are desperately needed. When Susie eventually speaks of strong, beautiful relationships (which she refers to as “lovely bones”) being formed in the aftermath of her death, we have no idea what she’s talking about because no relationship we’ve witnessed on screen strongly supports her theory.

Whenever I take in an artistic work regarding the afterlife, I almost instinctively compare it to Richard Matheson’s What Dreams May Come, which is, in my opinion, the single greatest fictional work ever created regarding life after death. Matheson did an extensive amount of research regarding afterlife studies and produced a story that surprisingly provided plausible answers to every question we’ve ever had about existence and death. Filmmaker Vincent Ward adapted the novel into a superb 1998 film starring Robin Williams, but the movie understandably contained only a fraction of the novel’s wisdom (for mainly the usual reasons most movie adaptations don’t live up to their source novels). So awesomely detailed and alluringly drawn is Matheson’s vision that it exposes most heavenly works as preposterous.

In the face of Matheson’s brilliant work, The Lovely Bones does present a halfway-convincing, mostly-intriguing spiritual universe. Of course it’s not as exquisite as Matheson’s vision, but it’s not without its strengths. It supports the Vanilla Sky ideal that if we were to construct our own private world, it would be heavily basked in our pop sensibilities. As a pre-teen girl murdered in the early 1970s, Susie’s world is painted in post-Flower Power, pre-Disco flourishes. Giant beach balls, rainbow colors, hippie-tinged fields, and a Studio 54-flavored cityscape surround Susie’s new world and the visuals surprisingly engage us.

When people pass away, we are often told they are “looking down on us from heaven.” I’ve always wondered how a spirit, now free to roam the endless landscape of the infinite universe, would still be able to concern themselves with Earthly matters. The biggest delight of this film is that it presents a fascinating solution to that dilemma. Susie’s heaven is often infiltrated with symbols and undercurrents representing the emotional state of her loved ones on Earth. When one of her family members faces despair, for example, her sunny landscape instantly turns shadowy and chilly. The film’s best scene shows a beach in Susie’s world becoming surrounded by giant ships encased in gigantic glass bottles. These represent the model ships Susie’s Dad collected as a hobby. In a fit of emotional rage back on Earth, he smashes every one of these ships in his study, causing the ships near Susie’s beach to smash and crash all around her. Through this magnificent destruction, Susie is able to connect with her father’s emotional anguish as it is on Earth.

The inconsistencies within the script are skillfully smoothed over by the talented cast, especially Ronan. She plays Susie as a wise and thoughtful girl, helping us to deal with the fact that perhaps the film isn’t as wise and thoughtful as it sets out to be. After her performances in Atonement and now The Lovely Bones, Ronan is proving to be one of the finest child stars we’ve ever had. She holds an astonishing control of character and there are moments where her inner-tenderness flows so strongly through her face that it truly levels you. Elsewhere, Walberg and Weisz prove to be subtle and convincing in the face of diminished screen time while Sarandon is convincing as a comic caricature. Tucci is convincing as a serial killer who is less a tragic figure and more of a horror movie monster. The film has little empathy for him, yet Tucci is still able to convey his character’s unspeakable impulses. For what the role requires, Tucci is creepily effective.

I have not read the best-selling Alice Sebold novel on which the film is based, but faithful fans have informed me that it is more uncompromising and realized than Jackson’s adaptation. The film itself may be something of a mess, but I truly appreciated its sense of creativity and ambition. This is not an easy subject to tackle, and it’s kind of interesting how Jackson tries to bring a zestful cinematic energy to it. Jackson is a filmmaker always pushing for a unique aesthetic spirit, one that is defiant of traditional structures and aims for heart-tugging emotions. I still wonder if a more subtle director would’ve been more appropriate for this material (I think Brad Silberling, a maestro of death and mourning, could’ve done this story justice) but I found myself entertained and appreciative of Jackson’s bold creative strokes. It spares the film from being a solemn downer. The problem, however, is that this material just might demand such a tone.

A Mediocre 'Book'

by Brett Parker

The Book of Eli is a clunky religious allegory masquerading as a limp post-apocalyptic Western. Thrown into the mix is a twist ending too preposterous to have the impact it desperately desires. The film follows a machete-wielding warrior who tries to spread the word of god in a hostile landscape; its biblical law as grindhouse theatrics. It’s difficult to buy a Christ figure as a violent action figure and even harder to buy a film that surrounds this character with heavy-handed self-importance.

The film takes place in the unspecified future, where a nuclear holocaust has turned the entire world into a grimy wasteland a’ la Mad Max (the cinematography is so skewered by solemn gray hues that it might as well be in black-and-white). A lone wanderer named Eli (Denzel Washington) roams this landscape packing a large machete and a mysterious leather book. It’s really no secret that this book turns out to be a King James Bible and Eli has a mysterious plot to use the book’s teachings to re-establish humanity, somehow. Eli’s days consist of scraping abandoned buildings for food and water while fending off thieving gangs who wish to rob and eat him. This doesn’t prove to be a difficult task, for Eli is a highly skilled fighter who can lay waste to vicious gangs in mere seconds.

Things heat up the day Eli comes across a sinister town gripped by a slimy ruler named Carnegie (Gary Oldman). Through a series of events, Carnegie comes to realize that Eli is in possession of the sacred bible that could salvage mankind. Carnegie tries to take the book from him, but Eli violently stands his ground and refuses to let anyone touch the book. This causes a chase to ensue between Carnegie’s vicious road army and Eli, who has teamed up with an eager young woman (Mila Kunis) to help protect the book at all costs.

With their fifth film, Albert and Allen Hughes continue their theme of unearthing decaying morals in dark and nightmarish environments. The Hughes’ earlier films benefited strongly from the fact that they were rooted in real-life environments, causing their tragic underpinnings to strike us in an achingly real place. Whether it’s the California Ghetto (Menace II Society), Post-Vietnam America (Dead Presidents), or Victorian Era London (From Hell), the Hughes Brothers use dark chapters of history to unearth startling truths and nihilistic ideals within human nature. We feel the brothers falter this time because it’s hard to find human depths in such a shallow fantasy environment. We can feel the brothers trying to harp on the message that a lack of faith (literally) can lead society straight into maddening chaos, but this idea lacks the conviction from the Hughes’ earlier work. How can you pull strong human truths from an environment that’s assembled out of clichés from the post-apocalypse genre?

End-of-the-world movies can be a very sturdy form of cinema, for scenes of disaster and despair can be used to reflect the current anxieties of the contemporary culture. Indeed, The Book of Eli’s collapsed society could very well be seen to represent our current economic and health care state. A good film from this genre offers helpful and insightful messages throughout the bleakness. The Road, for example, was touching in the way it suggested that a strong family bond can help overcome whatever hazards society produces. The Book of Eli tries to pedal faith in God as a survival tactic, but the message comes across as too hokey. The film never explains to us how the Bible can help humanity nor does it go to great lengths to explain why it’s so important. God is God and, like Eli, you’re supposed to accept it point blank. The movie thinks there’s a dramatic weight to its themes that aren’t really there. At one point, Eli recites Biblical verses before battle, and we almost want to laugh at the hollowness of it all.

Denzel Washington is impressive in his fighting sequences (the 55-year-old proudly performed his own stunts), yet is made to be brooding and solemn throughout his characterization. His character makes for a bland hero, and we barely buy his divinity, especially when he’s slicing heads off with his machete. This doesn’t appear to be a fault of Washington’s, but of the script. Would a man who abides strictly by God’s teachings really be such a violent warrior? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate if Eli knew clever ways to defend and not dismember? Is the film suggesting that a man of God has to lay down with the dirty dogs in order to spread the word of the Bible? That a strong man of faith would be broken down by a violent society and transformed into a violent man? The Hughes Brothers, nor Washington, spend much time trying to answer these questions, but instead just try to march through the action plot.

The film is basically a watered-down trudge through a tired Mad Max scenario, which includes motor gangs and fist fights and gun play, etc. In the end, the film tries to push on us a plot twist that re-defines all that has gone before. This twist is a pretty tough sell. I wanted to accept it, but it seems way too implausible. If the film’s message looked tacky before, then the twist causes it to crumble under its own silliness. Like The Sixth Sense, this twist invites you to view the film all over to see how well the hidden secret bounces off the main plot. In this case, however, it feels like sitting through The Book of Eli again just to spot a cheap gimmick would feel like too much of a chore.

Most people will probably want to see this film simply because they enjoy seeing Denzel Washington in an action thriller. They’re better off watching Inside Man, where Washington was actually allowed to be energetic and creative within a superb thriller plot. Others will probably expect a bleak view of the future containing thoughtful relevance. Children of Men is the one to check out. And almost everything the Hughes Brothers did before this film makes this one look like a pathetic cartoon. I’m usually weary of just firing off alternative DVD gems in a bad movie review, but The Book of Eli is such a surprisingly pointless and empty experience that you truly deserve something of weight and intrigue.

A Very Strange Tale of 'Youth'

by Brett Parker

Youth in Revolt is strangeness for strangeness sake. It puts up a front as a coming-of-age teen comedy, but that’s just a mask for unhinged insanity. It’s as if Wes Anderson got rip-roaring drunk and wrote a teen comedy, only to sober up and grow ashamed of his booze-soaked creation. I think this film just may slightly out-weird Napoleon Dynamite.

The film stars the hopelessly meek Michael Cera as Nick Twisp, a geeky teenager whose main aspirations in life are to be a writer and lose his virginity. Nick’s sexual frustrations are heightened by the fact that his divorced father (Steve Buscemi) is shacking up with a younger hottie (Ari Graynor) while his mother is sexually smitten with a slobbish loser (Zach Galifianakis). Nick grows hopelessly weary of the creeps surrounding him until the day he meets Sheeni (Portia Doubleday), a trailer park beauty who shares his love for literature and foreign films. Sheeni looks like an innocent teen but talks as if she’s a well-cultured sex pot. Through a series of bizarre conversations, Nick realizes he must become a trouble-making bad boy if he wishes to win Sheeni’s heart.

Nick understands the obvious, however: he’s way too nice. He finds the only way he can become a bad boy is if he creates an alter ego of Tyler Durden-like proportions and use him as an avatar to act out his devilish wishes. Nick fashions himself an imaginary antihero out of Francois Dillinger (also Cera), a chain-smoking, mustache sprouting smoothie with zombie-blue eyes and a smoldering meanness. Nick allows Francois to act through him (in a vaguely touched-upon schizophrenic way), and this wily rogue sets off a chain of mayhem that catapults Nick into mind-boggling realms of danger and trouble.

The opening scenes give off the tinge of a quirky virginal awakening but these motives are skewered by the fact that we don’t find the Sheeni Saunders character to be the least bit likeable or plausible. Most awkward virgins of the silver screen typically pursue beauties of endless warmth and sweetness. The lady here is a cold, pretentious twit, over-mannered and over-calculated with not a touch of genuine humanity. The character is like a concoction from a screenwriter who’s been rejected constantly by women and never had a real girlfriend of his own. When Sheeni declares her love for Breathless, I knew I was looking at a film fetishist’s fevered dream girl and not a real person. I’m still not sure if the character is faulted by Portia Doubleday (great name, that would’ve been great in Boogie Nights). The bubbly and sexy Ari Graynor has spent her career thus far making female caricatures feel as if they’re coming from a real place; perhaps she would’ve nailed the unusual nuances of Sheeni.

By the time the second half of the film rolls around, you learn to abandon any hopes of a thoughtful meditation on adolescent romance and jump right into the deranged waters of this quirky nightmare. This abandonment of intellectual thought is really the only way to enjoy the picture. When you fine tune yourself to the film’s quirky lunacy, you find yourself relishing small moments of humor. Nick and a comrade named Vijay (a wonderful Adhir Kalyan) have a hilarious misadventure at a French boarding school that milks the most laughs out of the movie. Francois’ vile smugness bounces amusingly off of a macho cop (Ray Liotta) in a few scenes. Justin Long shows up as Sheeni’s older brother, passing on mushrooms that gets everyone around him stoned and more interesting for brief sprits of time. And I can’t remember the last time an actor could be so funny while being so incredibly impassive like Zach Galifianakis.

I guess it makes sense here that Sheeni turns out to be a fan of Breathless, for Youth in Revolt is basically a slapstick reimagining of Godard’s film, perhaps the only update any filmmaker of today has the audacity to try. This film also follows a miscalculated bad boy who tries to impress a coldly ambiguous woman with destructive acts of misplaced masculinity. The joke here is that Michael Cera is clearly not the ideal for a criminal’s id and thus looks foolish in his attempts to dance on the edge. Maybe the film is suggesting that young men of today are too shy and inadequate to recapture Jean-Paul Belmondo’s hulking front. If an actor of today tried to capture the original essence of the Michel Poiccard character, they’d either come across as a brooding caricature or a vulnerable phony. Perhaps the only way one could pull of the ideals of Breathless nowadays is with laughs. Director Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl) certainly thinks so.

Michael Cera is becoming something of a commodity for Hollywood nowadays; his polite mannerisms and overwhelming niceness can lend instant sincerity to even the most plastic of enterprises. There’s a scene towards the end where Nick declares his love for Sheeni and finally wins her in his arms. Considering all that’s gone before, the scene is unbelievable and completely undeserved, yet Cera gives his dialogue such a heartfelt yearning that his romantic anguish doesn’t feel at all fake. He always pours his teddy bear sensibilities into every ounce of his characterizations, allowing yourself to be disarmed by his puppy-dog geek routine. He’s a one-trick pony, but his one-trick is rather impressive. I seriously ponder if Cera has much of a future in movies. Can his repressed nerd shtick last forever? Will he be able to challenge himself in more complex ways? Will this act still play convincingly when he’s a grown-up?

I’m usually suspicious of movies like Youth in Revolt: movies that are cheerfully quirky in an attempt to look way more interesting than it really is. The idea behind successful quirkiness in Cinema is that it has to feel like it comes from a real, lived-in place. The Tenenbaum Family, for example, appeared to be bizarre eccentrics, but they had very specific and very deep reasons for their behavior that came from a human place. The characters in Youth in Revolt are strange simply because it makes them look more amusing in a comedy. It sells, and it’ll probably be a big cult hit among the hipsters. I really didn’t mind the shallow mannerisms though: I laughed a little and found myself actually caring a little about Nick. The way I see it, most teen comedies are painfully unrealistic anyways, at least this one has a mad clown’s glee about it.

A 'Complicated' Comedy for Grown-Ups

by Brett Parker

Romantic comedies produced by Hollywood usually serve as wish fulfillment for a particular kind of moviegoer. Inadequate geeks can imagine themselves winning the love of a sweet-hearted and gorgeous sexpot. Independent females can witness the experience of bagging a studly and successful masculine hunk. With the films of Nancy Meyers, middle-aged women can experience fantasies in which they can win the love of devious men without compromising their ethics. It’s Complicated works this ideal double-time as it presents a strong-willed heroine who manages to both rejuvenate passionate love with her bullish ex-husband while also winning the affections of a sweet and successful architect. That Meyers is herself a middle-aged and divorced working woman adds a certain juice of sincerity to what could’ve been a plastic sitcom.

The film stars the indestructible Meryl Streep as Jane, a successful owner of a popular California bakery and proud mother of three glamorous children. Her business has garnered the kind of West Coast dream house that would be fetishized in a Lifetime TV special. All of her children seem to be flawless in all of their academic, professional, and romantic endeavors. Jane herself overflows with loveliness and optimism. The only flaw in her seemingly perfect life is the fact that she has been long divorced from Jake (Alec Baldwin), a shrewd attorney who left her for a much younger babe (Lake Bell). Jane and Jake are on pleasant speaking terms and are both active in the lives of their children, yet always flustering Jane is the preposterous joy Jake seems to be experiencing in his second marriage.

Thinks take a dramatic turn the night of their son’s college graduation in New York. Jane and Jake decide to have a friendly drink together at the bar of the hotel their staying in. One drink leads to too many and a harmless conversation leads to a passionate fling in the bedroom. All it takes is this one time to get Jake love-struck all over again and pretty soon, he’s begging Jane not only for frequent sexual trysts but for her to take him back and start over from scratch. Jake is head-over-heels for Jane and might just be ready to dismantle his second marriage and move back in with her.

Even though Jane finds herself in the incredibly lucky dream of reassembling a once happy marriage, she grows quite skeptical of the situation. Too much time has passed with too many scars to show for it. Can she really jump back into her marriage with Jake? Is his intentions genuine? Can the damage from their first marriage be so easily erased? Complicating matters is the fact that Jane has taken a liking to Adam (Steve Martin), the architect who is helping to put additions on Jane’s luxurious home. Adam is a kind-hearted divorcee who likes Jane for all the right reasons. He appears more genuine than Jake. Should Jane take on a new suitor or try to fully repair her family unit with Jake?

Nancy Meyers is a filmmaker hopelessly in love with the commercial art of the romantic comedy. Most Hollywood rom-coms tread a thin line between shamelessness and sincerity and Meyers cheerfully dances on that line with a delightful affection. Her last film, The Holiday, was one of the most obvious and self-aware rom-coms I’ve ever seen…and I enjoyed every minute of it! She has such a touching passion for the genre’s conventions that her cheerfulness somehow shines through the clichés. Meyers was once married to Charles Shyer and together they produced the Father of the Bride movies. They divorced soon after and Meyers appeared to work out her issues in the rom-com genre, painting portraits of adult women who are fed up with men’s narcissism and irreverence and struggle to find an antidote through either unconventional romance or their own independence (Shyer appeared to work out his divorce issues in his Alfie remake, painting an accurate portrait of the modern male’s emotional detachment and self-isolation).

Romantic comedies are typically so high on their own romanticism that they bask their universes in an almost dreamlike idealism. Meyers can’t help but follow this trend. We’re not looking at a real world but a perfect world. Almost every person we see in It’s Complicated is attractive and everyone in Jane’s life appears to abide strictly by the J.Crew and IKEA catalogs. Even the heartfelt situations Meyers creates can’t help but tread the unrealistic. I would imagine most middle-aged divorces will find this film to be something of a cartoon, for the real world isn’t as generous or as brightly-optimistic as Meyers paints it. But the last thing Meyers strives for is realism; she wants to create cinematic landscapes in which grown-up women can work out their anxieties and dreams. Since Hollywood rom-coms can be fueled by shallow and cynical motivations, we welcome Meyers methodology with a surprising affection.

Of all her films, Something's Gotta Give and It's Complicated appear to be the most representative of Meyer's plights and desires. Something's Gotta Give imagined a female artist who wrestled with her romantic anguish to write a play that provided her with a wonderful anxiety release. It's Complicated allows Meyers to play out the dream of choosing between an ex-husband willing to accept his faults and a successful and single sweetheart. What's refreshing is the way that Meyers essentially handles these plot threads with maturity and emotional logic. Even though the material is obviously a romantic fantasy, Meyers refuses to wrap things up in a tidy and idealistic ending. She allows the complexity of the situation room to breathe. It's a relief to discover that the story turns out to be dictated by the character's damaged hearts and not by plot mechanics.

Streep has achieved a rare stature in her craft in which she can just about play anything. A rom-com heroine is a walk in the park for her. So of course she radiates in the fantastical elements of the plot and shows a strong-headed self-reliance when things grow serious. I'm sure she did Meyers proudly. Steve Martin proves he can be strikingly convincing as an easy-going nice guy. Alec Baldwin probably has the hardest task out of everyone; he has to play a character trotting both buffoonery and sincerity. Baldwin has grown into a fine comic actor over the years and he handles the unlikely nuances of his character with a masterful grace. He's funny when need be, but he's also rather grabbing when he makes heartfelt romantic pleas for Jane's love. There's been talks of a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Baldwin's work here, talk I think he is more than worthy of.

So obviously this film is targeted at middle-aged women, so what did a twenty-something male like myself think? I found it to be a competent dramedy. I found the dialogue to be rather insightful and the performances to be very witty and sympathetic, especially Baldwin’s. I wasn’t as involved as I’d hoped to be, but I suspected strongly that older women will and that’s really what matters here. For there have been complaints throughout the ages that there aren’t enough good movies out there for both grown-ups and women. Nancy Meyers has heard the cries and has delivered a fine answer to those problems.