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.

A Wildly Adventerous 'Sherlock'

by Brett Parker

You can imagine Sherlock Holmes purists being enraged by the latest cinematic incarnation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's beloved hero and perhaps they have good reason to be. Hollywood producers have blown the doors off the character's Britannia formalities and traditions in trying to display him as the latest Blockbuster action hero. The latest Holmes tale is pumped up with CGI-effects, elaborate actions sequences, and movie stars who physically betray the traditional look of the characters. To literary enthusiasts, this truly could be a nightmare.

I'm happy to report that the new Sherlock Holmes is far from being a train wreck and is one of the most thrilling adventure films of the year. Here is a big-budget action vehicle where the effects shots are technically marvelous and the action scenes are dazzlingly creative. And even though the great detective is wildly re-imagined to swim Hollywood waters, a surprising justice is done to the founding ideals of the character and even pushes him to new and brilliant depths. The film brings a clever attention to the Holmes legend, not only creating a thrill-a-minute rollercoaster ride but an ingenious detective story as well.

The film opens with a more athletic and scrappy Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey, JR.) racing through the streets of London. He has the appearance of a shabby bohemian yet the fighting skills of a super ninja. Joining him is his proper-looking sidekick Watson (Jude Law) who is more reserved than Holmes, but also possesses a strong intellect, taste for adventure, and set of fighting techniques. The two are attempting to stop a shadowy villain named Blackwood (Mark Strong) from carrying out a dark arts ritual of murder. Blackwood is a spooky magician who carries out crimes shrouded in haunting spells. After fighting off henchmen and devising a method to disarm him, Holmes captures Blackwood and he is jailed by Scotland Yard. Another case solved by the brilliant Holmes.

Time passes and Holmes discovers there are hardly any elaborate cases left to solve. He spends his days conducting wacky experiments in his messy quarters at 221B Baker Street and wrestling with the fact that Watson plans to leave his detective days behind him to settle down with a good woman named Mary (Kelly Reily). They are called back into action, however, the day when it is revealed that the deceased Blackwood may have risen from his grave and plots to destroy all of England. A far-fetched theory, one Holmes promises to get to the bottom of! By taking on the case, Holmes and Watson get caught up in a breathtaking adventure in which the duo faces off with intimidating henchman, deadly traps, government conspiracies, and an American thief named Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) who may not only be part of Blackwood's elaborate plot but may also be the only woman who has ever touched the heart of Sherlock Holmes.

So the new (and considerably improved) Holmes is a master brawler, a heavy boozer, a wacky bohemian, and a quick-thinking man of action. If you were to look into Conan Doyle's original tales, you'll find these traits to not be entirely betraying of Holmes' persona. It makes sense that a man of Holmes' skills and experience would have such an outsized arsenal of talents and quirks. Surely a man of such studied intelligence would have a fine knowledge of self-defense tactics. A man of his grand intellect could surely be hopelessly wrapped in an array of eccentric habits. Director Guy Ritchie (Snatch, Rocknrolla) has a gifted eye for colorful eccentrics who inhabit a slapstick cockney underworld of crime. It's both logical and liberating to find Holmes in such a zany criminal landscape, for a great crime solver would have to immerse himself within the criminal community to understand their motives better.

When finding an actor to play the legendary detective, the last actor you'd probably think of is the American Robert Downey, Jr. Yet his colorful tics and breathless musings fit wonderfully within the Holmes persona. Like some of his more memorable performances, Downey makes his Holmes an energetic quirkster who grows weary of the simpletons around him. It seems like only Downey can employ his sharp wit and erratic nature to make his Holmes both time-honoring and refreshingly original at the same time. This is strongly demonstrated in a fascinating sequence where Holmes can't help but analyze a roomful of people and Watson's fiance at a fancy restaurant.

With his height and proper British demeanor, you'd almost expect Jude Law to play Holmes. Well here he is as trusty sidekick Watson, his strong-headed and adventurous poise wildly contradicting the pudgy oaf we've come to expect from this character. Nonetheless, we welcome the performance with open arms. Both Downey and Law have an unlikely and winning chemistry together. One of the script's pleasures is the cheerful acknowledgement of the famous duo's homoerotic tendencies. Downey and Law knowingly bicker like an old married couple, wearing timeless suspicions about the characters right on their sleeves. It makes for a hilarious bromance, maybe even a tad touching.

The film is wall-to-wall with action yet Ritchie labors to keep things visually creative and within the excitement of Holmes' crime solving. A brilliant stroke occurs when we see Holmes intellectually mapping out fighting methods to attack his enemies with. There's a dazzling slow-motion sequence where Holmes tries to dodge a series of deadly explosions. The film's exciting climax treats us to both a dazzling fight sequence atop the under-construction Tower Bridge and Holmes' brilliant summary of the entire case. All of these sequences are tied together by the marvelously Victorian-tinged musical score by Hans Zimmer, a score that truly deserves an Oscar nomination.

For all its creative strokes, Sherlock Holmes is still, essentially, a Hollywood thrill ride. Certain action sequences are prolonged for filler as the plot steams relentlessly towards an obvious sequel set-up. But the film doesn't insult the foundation of Conan Doyle's creation. For the film truly comes alive when it connects strongly and creatively with the traditions of the Sherlock Holmes myth. The original stories are often regarded as gems of simple pleasures, and the same can be said of this film.

'Nine': Misguided Love Letter to Fellini

by Brett Parker

Nine is a musical that plays all the notes but never gets a firm grasp on the music. The material itself is based on Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, one of the greatest films ever made, although this adaptation fails to realize what made the earlier film so significant. It doesn't disrespect the earlier material, or even really try to outdo it, but it never really brings anything substantial to the table. Not even the addition of show tunes, cheerfully mediocre at best, adds anything to the aesthetic value of the film. It's a testament to the art of Federico Fellini that the flash and pizazz of this film, obviously inspired by his talents, may just be enough to salvage this enterprise.

Nine is a big screen adaptation of a 1982 Broadway musical by Arthur Kopit and Maury Yeston that, in itself, reimagined Fellini's 8 1/2 for the stage. The story follows a famous Italian filmmaker named Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) at a crisis in his life. He has no idea what his ninth film is to be about, although anxious producers push forward relentlessly with this unknown project. All he really knows about it is the title ("Italia") and that it will star his actress muse, Claudia Jenssen (Nicole Kidman).

While wrestling with ideas for this troubled film, Guido also must deal with the complexities of all the females in his life. His wife Luisa (Marion Cotillard) is fed up with his lying and womanizing, his mistress Carla (Penelope Cruz) grows an unhealthy love for him, a flirty journalist named Stephanie (Kate Hudson) dispenses shallow interpretations of his films. Always looming in his memory is the ghost of his Mamma (Sophia Loren) and Saraghina (Fergie), a whore from his childhood who represents his guilt towards women.

8 1/2 is at once both a vivid and surreal masterpiece regarding filmmaking and womanizing. It presented a wonderfully sympathetic Marcello Mastroianni in the role of Guido, who agonized helplessly over the realization that his film career and love life were weighing down heavily on each other. The film itself is a masterstroke of self-reflexivity, as Fellini used his conflicts and frustrations with the project as an active aspect of the plot. The hidden theme within the film is finding something real in something superficial, whether it be truth within filmmaking or love within womanizing.

Nine more or less pretends to represent the same thing, but it never really penetrates beneath the superficial. It's all surface, making clunky efforts to unearth the thoughtful meditations Fellini displayed so wonderfully and effortlessly. Director Rob Marshall (Chicago) plays everything for a Stanley Donen-like gloss and this leaves scenes of spiritual anguish and romantic brusings looking plastic. Perhaps if Marshall employed Fellini's tactic for allowing free-flowing human drama to infuse a grand premise, the film would be more grabbing. Nine is only Marshall's third film as a feature director, so maybe he needed five more on his resume before he could understand Fellini's point-of-view on this material.

Perhaps this musical is tough to engage because you really don't know what to make of Day-Lewis' Guido. Of course Mastroianni in the original role was unforgettable, for he was one of the most masculine, stylish, and natural actors in cinematic history. So wonderfully laid-back and exquisitely realized was his performance that it seems like no one can fill his shoes. Day-Lewis, the great multi-Oscar winning method actor, is completely game for the challenge. He has a notable singing voice and a surprisingly-convincing Italian accent, yet we never feel a strong sense of anguish and exhaustion from him. He makes Guido a tad too bouncy and eccentric, while Guido is essentially a man too weary and worn-out to be such things anymore. It's amusing to watch a skilled method actor labor extensively to pull off something Mastroianni did so effortlessly.

It's such a grand disappointment to me that Javier Bardem, the original choice to play Guido, pulled out of the role in pre-production. Marshall had him selected to play Guido, but Bardem wanted to take some time off to recover from exhaustion (having just made the award rounds for No Country for Old Men). I think the Oscar-Winner would've scored an absolute touchdown. His performance in Vicky Cristina Barcelona is proof alone that Bardem has what it takes to be a modern day Mastroianni, for he masterfully displayed the same kind of casual masculinity and passionate romantic appetites. I suspect its a great loss to modern cinema that we'll never see Bardem's Guido.

I did, in fact, try to absorb this movie in its own right as a musical, seeing if I would still enjoy it had I never seen 8 1/2. In doing this, I run into the problem that the musical numbers are not very particularly good. They mostly sound like watered-down generic show tunes, failing to excite or resonate (not even "Cinema Italiano" an original tune created to spice up the soundtrack, fails to stir things up). "Be Italian" is the only song that can easily be evoked in the memory, and even that one never reaches it's fullest potential. A great show tune isn't bound by plot and generics but can stand on its own with a distinct energy and rhythm (Dreamgirls delivered such great songs in waves).

If there's one area in which Nine outdoes 8 1/2, it's in the women. For the female characters, Fellini employed undeniable beauties of their era, but Marshall dishes out glamour goddesses that can melt any man's heart. The actresses here hit on full full sexiness yet never skewer their character's inner-complexities. You'll turn to absolute putty watching Cruz perform "A Call From the Vatican" or Fergie doing "Be Italian," both in skimpy attire. Cotillard is both simultaneously lovely and heartbreaking while Hudson cannily evokes the ideal of 1960s Superblonde glam.

So the soundtrack is a dud and the deeper themes meander hopelessly, yet I strangely find myself recommending the film. I think I was seduced not only by the women, but also the Italian exoticness, the immaculate styles, and the film world musings. It's hard for me to resist that packs such traits in even the shakiest of packages. Perhaps I'm just excited to see a contemporary film being so proudly and openly Felliniesque. A misguided love letter to Fellini is better than no love letter at all, I think.

So the question remains: is this movie for you? If you're a fan of Fellini and 8 1/2, then you'll find it to be a slightly-amusing cartoon. If you're a fan of Broadway musicals, then these bland show tunes just might work for you. If you're a fan of gorgeous women, exotic locations, and the world of cinema, then you certainly won't be bored. I wasn't bored here, but I wasn't elevated either.

A 'Fantastic' Display of Wes Anderson's Themes

by Brett Parker

For as visionary as most contemporary auteurs can be, it seems the one form of cinema they tend to avoid is animation, which can periodically prove to be the most visually arresting aspect of the medium. Perhaps this is because most serious filmmakers feel that a strong sense of humanity and drama can be skewered in translating a heartfelt story into cartoon form. That’s what makes Wes Anderson’s adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, so significant. While the film’s use of traditional stop-motion animation may give the film the look of cutesy children’s fare, Anderson has used this genre to deliver the very essence of his trademark themes with very little compromise. He’s not churning out a sanitized children’s tale as a fun, cinematic exercise but is using animation to unearth his usual ideals of family, melancholy, and sneaky exuberance in a newly expressive light.

In a stop-motion universe in which animals talk and exist like human suburbanites, we meet the Fantastic Mr. Fox (George Clooney), a sly and cheerful thrill-seeker who specializes in stealing chickens from dangerous human farmers. Mr. Fox lives for the thrill of the hunt and finds he’s most alive when he’s acting out elaborate chicken heists like the wild animal he is. He proudly fancies his live of cunning thievery until the fateful day when his loving wife, Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep) announces she’s pregnant and wants to start a family with him. This causes Mr. Fox to give up on his dangerous adventures and embark on a simpler life.

Years pass and Mr. Fox has uneasily settled into the role of a family man. He writes a column for a local newspaper and has moved his family into a beautiful tree that resembles a typical suburban home. Both he and Mrs. Fox are raising a strange son named Ash (Jason Schwartzman) who Mr. Fox sort of wishes were a little more like Kristofferson (Eric Anderson), his athletic nephew. While most would find this quiet, family life more than satisfying, Mr. Fox is gnawed at by his animal instincts and yearns for the excitement he once found in stealing chickens. As his eyes wander towards the chicken farms of his sinister neighbors, Bean (Michael Gambon), Boggis (Robin Hurlstone), and Bunce (Hugo Guiness), Fox can’t resist staging secret heists to steal from these evil farmers and satisfy his thieving impulses.

Behind Mrs. Fox’s back, Mr. Fox begins penetrating the carefully guarded farms of his neighboring targets, all with the assistance of the dim-witted Kylie (Wallace Wolodarsky). Pretty soon, the evil farmers grow wise to Mr. Fox’s swindling and wage war on the entire Fox family. They begin an attack of terror which starts with gunfire and progresses towards scary bulldozers that threaten the Fox’s underground lifestyle. Realizing the weight of his actions, Mr. Fox must face his flaws and come up with a scheme to save himself and the rest of his furry friends from these scary humans out for animal blood.

Wes Anderson is a filmmaker known for painting his frames with landscapes of cartoon colors and offbeat mannerisms. What we remember most strongly about his films is the peculiar details he pours into creating his characters’ personal styles and colorful surroundings, usually reflecting the predominantly quirky nature of their mindset. In this sense, the relationship between stop-motion animation and Wes Anderson makes for a perfect marriage, for the attention-to-detail that undoubtedly goes into creating a stop-motion world deeply satisfies Anderson’s need to pour his own personality into every frame. Through the animation direction of Mark Gustafson, Anderson is able to employ the oldest form of stop-motion art, the kind used in the old Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV movie. This not only displays Anderson’s love for vintage cinematic techniques but allows him to put his offbeat touch into every minute detail within the frame. Every time we see a character or see a location, we feel like we can almost reach out and touch them. There’s a vivid texture and tangible feel to everything in the foreground, made more effective by Anderson’s whimsical touch.

Even though we’re in territory surrounded by talking animals, the characters of The Fantastic Mr. Fox share just about everything in common with Anderson’s human characters. Through Mr. Fox, we can see Anderson’s trademark archetype of the relentless yet optimistic schemer. Like Dignan plotting a heist or Steve Zissou out to kill a Jaguar Shark, Mr. Fox is driven by a tunnel-vision goal that he feels will bring personal fulfillment at long last. Mr. Fox is also an obvious soul brother of Royal Tenenbaum, a wily rogue who tries cheerfully to turn his family unit onto his hedonistic and compulsive idealism. An important Anderson theme that pulsates throughout this adaptation is that of dysfunctional family stress. Like the Tenenbaum children or the Whitman Brothers, the foundation of the Fox family is threatened by each member’s personal flaws and the reservations each member holds towards each other. Ash feels isolated by his father’s favoritism of Kristofferson over him and Mrs. Fox deeply despairs of her husbands self-absorbed impulses. Yet in the end, Anderson employs his usual ideal that faith in the family unit may provide the perfect solace from personal inadequacy and existential dread.

Perhaps the strongest Anderson trademark felt within this outing is a sense of loss and acceptance. Anderson’s characters tend to find themselves crippled by a significant personal loss and try to curb the internal damage in the best way they know how. Whether you follow Max Fischer as he struggles to regain his Rushmore lifestyle or Steve Zissou as he seeks revenge on an exotic shark, Anderson consistently paints a picture of bruised characters seeking ways to heal their wounds. What eats away at the characters in The Fantastic Mr. Fox are repressed feelings of animal instincts. Ash feels he can’t live up to them while Mr. Fox feels he needs to surrender to them. There’s a fascinating scene in which Mr. Fox tries to rally his critter pals against the evil farmers by highlighting each of their basic animal characteristics. Yet Anderson usually shows his characters finding acceptance in their flawed states. They may not reach their original goals, but they grow a deeper appreciation for what they do have. There’s a beautiful scene towards the end where Mr. Fox regards a Wolf in the wild. The Wolf is an obvious symbol for the Wild Animal ideal Mr. Fox once celebrated but must now abandon in order to preserve the family unit he cherishes. After failing to make verbal communication, the Wolf just simply waves to him and runs away. Mr. Fox waves back, finally saying goodbye to his wild animal lifestyle.

What’s most interesting about the film’s ending is the way it may offer a bit of hope to struggling families out there in these tough economic times. The ending finds Mr. Fox and his family forced out of their dream home and forced to rebuild their life in a smaller, more urban-like setting. In order to survive, the Foxes look to a local supermarket and realize they must ride the waves of consumer culture if they want to stay afloat in their current world. While an ending like this could seem rather bittersweet, Anderson injects a cheerful optimism into it by enforcing his ideals of strong family bonding. The Foxes realize as long as they have each other and continue to love to the fullest, they can overcome any hardship. Perhaps this is Anderson slyly trying to ease contemporary anxieties over societal issues by enforcing important humanist values. For if Anderson’s dysfunctional characters can find true happiness in their world and in each other, then there’s hope for the rest of us!

The Fantastic Mr. Fox is an offbeat family film that can be satisfied on many different levels. Parents wanting to take their kids to a satisfying family film will be delighted by the whimsical energy and creative flourishes this one dispenses while also being surprised by its hidden wisdom. More thoughtful moviegoers will be satisfied by the film’s subtle sense of character depth and humanist musings usually unconventional to most family outings. And of course, devoted Wes Anderson fans will be deeply satisfied to discover that he powerfully serves up each of his auteurist ideals in an animated gem that can stand with his most thoughtful of works.

A Wonderful 'Education'

by Brett Parker

On its surface, An Education has the DNA of a crowd-pleasing coming-of-age tale regarding a young woman, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more intelligent, lively, and entertaining play on such a tale. Here’s a movie that deals with complicated matters of femininity and the human heart, yet it pops with sunniness and has a cheerful affection for all its characters. This film is so many things at once: a romantic celebration of life, a portrait of London on the brink of the swingin’ sixties, a meditation on post-modern thoughts regarding a woman’s appropriate place in the world, and, in Carrey Mulligan’s performance, the birth of a shining star.

It’s the early 1960s, and Jenny Mellor (Mulligan) is a bright-eyed suburban girl from London who is studying with all her efforts to gain acceptance at Oxford. This is a goal put into her head by her strict yet sincere father, Jack (Alfred Molina), who only wants the best for his daughter and wants to see her succeed in ways he never did. Jenny dives head-first into her studies and seems poised for academic greatness, yet lingering within her heart is passions that yearn for a more freeing life. Her love of French culture and classical music certainly hints at dreams of a lifestyle that stretches far beyond Oxford.

One day, Jenny stands on a street corner waiting to get a ride home from her cello practice when she suddenly gets caught in a heavy rainstorm. This grabs the attention of an English gentleman named David (Peter Sarsgaard) who spots her from his sports car and offers her a lift home. David seems like such a stylish and charming lad that Jenny goes along with his offer and is even a tad fascinated by him. Despite the obvious age difference (she’s 16, he’s 35), the two become hopelessly attracted to each other and thus begins a careful courtship in which Jenny is whisked away towards the more fabulous sights of London, seeing things she never thought existed in her section of the world. David is a hip and swingin’ smooth operator who takes Jenny to concerts, jazz clubs, art auctions, and even a breathtaking roam through Paris. Joining them on their adventures is David’s posh friends Danny (Dominic Cooper) and Helen (Rosamund Pike).

Jenny is smitten with her exciting new lifestyle with David, yet obvious complications with this relationship begin to surface before long. Can Jenny’s parents really be accepting of a man like David (the result may surprise you)? Is it wise for Jenny to take her eyes off of her Oxford goals and towards a more uninhibited lifestyle? Can a 17-year-old girl and a 35-year-old man really have a genuine relationship? And what is there to make of David? What’s his backstory? Where does he get all his money? Is he too good to be true?

An older man courting a teenage girl may sound like a creepy and cynical concept, yet An Education refreshingly scans the material for wild romanticism and biting wit without ever smoothing over the complexities of the central relationship. Director Lone Scherfig uses a great technical elegance in basking the film’s gaze with Jenny’s wide-eyed exuberance, so we see the beauty in everything the way Jenny sees it. This makes the film’s central relationship seem more sincere and accepting than it probably really is. It also makes the film’s compositions pop with dazzling juice. The wardrobes are stylish, the set pieces sparkle, and the actor’s charms infatuates. From the Stanley Donen-like opening titles to the vintage hipness of the film’s soundtrack, this film bounces with a stylish joyfulness.

Nick Hornby is one of my all-time favorite authors for the way he sees basic human types in the most sharply funny and startlingly sympathetic light. His most famous novels, High Fidelity and About A Boy are such brilliant portraits of the contemporary male mind that he has been branded a master writer of masculine tales. Yet when his works focus on female characters (How to Be Good, A Long Way Down, Juliet, Naked), he can be just as vivid and alluring in his characterizations. So while An Education seems like an unlikely place for Hornby to take on his second screenplay (after his unsuccessful U.K. adaptation of his very own Fever Pitch), it must be said that it provides a perfect outlet for his uncompromisingly humorous view of human depths. In adapting Lyn Barber’s memoir for the big screen, Hornby uses his trademark hipness and hilarity to show us the beating heart of a teenage girl, and the result is sublime. He masterfully constructs a penetrating and engaging tale of a woman with the same wonderful illumination he brings to his masculine tales.

Carrey Mulligan’s performance as Jenny has garnered her comparisons with Audrey Hepburn, a type of film criticism I’m often weary of. There was a time when countless actors were compared with Marlon Brando, until most critics made the realization that they’ll never really be another Brando, much like there won’t be another Hepburn. Still, it’s not hard to see why such a flattering title is bestowed upon Mulligan; she glows with the same radiant loveliness and British elegance Hepburn used to display so effortlessly. Mulligan pours such a dewy-eyed sincerity and glowing independence into the role that’s its enormously difficult not to fall in love with her. And when it comes to swingin’ hipsters basked in Britannia coolness, the American Peter Sarsgaard is probably the last actor I’d think of to take on such a roll. Yet he so shrewdly and surprisingly nails David’s nuances that the role is rather astonishing. Playing on Michael Caine’s limey slyness, Sarsgaard creates a stunningly convincing English lad in an absolutely dynamite performance. Major awards are due for both performers here.

One would be rather obtuse in labeling Jenny’s main conflict as choosing between a man and her career. In weathering the storms of her young heart, Jenny allows us to reflect on feminine complexities most young women face as they ponder their futures. Jenny could have a promising career at Oxford, but couldn’t such a devotion to academics and societal conformity lead to a stuffy life devoid of soulful nourishment and coloring? Should a woman be true to the wild passions of her heart, or should she challenge her intellect and obtain the strongest social role possible? Jenny also presents questions about what is the best kind of social stability for a woman. She is shocked to discover that her parents are content with her abandoning Oxford to settle down with a husband, as long as it’s with an established and accomplished individual such as David. This raises ancient ideals about a woman settling down with a successful husband versus using her own gifts to make her own way in the world. I think most women will be enormously satisfied with, and maybe even enlightened by, the path Jenny ultimately decides for herself. It’s greatly liberating to see a female character on film being free enough to have such perplexing thoughts and being able to take their own independent stance on matters.

With all the things An Education does exceptionally right, it does have its missteps along the way. I found Jenny’s classroom world too extremely immersed in her romantic affairs (would her entire class and Headmistress really be that involved in her personal business at this time in history?) and the film’s conclusion wraps things up a little too cleanly. But these are only minor complaints. It seems like nothing could hold back An Education from being considered a superior coming-of-age tale with more color and heart than most films of this sort could only dream about. For growing up can be a painful thing to endure, but rarely has it looked this enlivening.

'2012': Beautifully Destructive

by Brett Parker

If I absolutely had to choose my least favorite genre of cinema, then I would probably select the disaster film. I know I’m supposed to be dazzled by grandly destructive special effects, but mostly I just see cardboard characters laboring endlessly to escape preposterously hazardous scenarios. While these films are meant to shock us with their displays of destruction and warm us over with a hidden sense of humanity, very rarely do these films shake things up in a shocking way or free their characters into perplexing depths. Of course there has been some exceptional disaster flicks over the years, but nowadays they feel few and far in between.

2012 would more or less be just another disaster flick if it didn’t set out to be the mother of all disaster flicks. In annihilating Planet Earth as we know it, director Roland Emmerich (Stargate, Independence Day) pulls out no stops in throwing every catastrophic force of nature he can think of at our beloved planet. Over the course of this film, we get thumped with lava, earthquakes, tsunamis, meteor-like boulders, the whole works! In watching these elaborate effects sequences, it becomes extremely difficult not to notice the earlier films this one borrows so heavily from. We can easily spot shades of Earthquake, Poseidon, Dante’s Peak, Armageddon, Speed 2, and Waterworld (yes, even Speed 2 and Waterworld!). This makes 2012 feel like a greatest hits album that rounds up all the big gems you want into one satisfying package.

The film opens sometime around 2009 and shows members of Earth in a state of apocalyptic suspicion. A geologist (Chiwetel Ejiofor) notices that the Earth’s core is showing dangerous signs of disruption. The U.S. President (Danny Glover) learns of a recovery plan to protect mankind from some kind of worldwide disaster. The President’s Daughter (Thandie Newton) is part of a plot to store away the world’s most valued artifacts and discovers certain colleagues are being mysteriously killed. Just what is going on here? A crackpot DJ (Woody Harrelson) may just hold the answer: the Mayan prophecy foretelling that the world shall end in the year 2012 is materializing to be true and within a couple of years, the planets will align and Earth as we know it shall crumble into oblivion.

Sure enough, 2012 rolls around and the Earth begins to tear apart violently at the seams. The plates of the Earth begin to break apart and cause devastating Earthquakes across the globe. The lava from the Earth’s core begins to shoot out from underneath and transforms all sorts of landmarks into deadly Volcanoes. The disruption of these land masses cause devastating tsunamis to drown out much of the world. Basically, all hell breaks loose. We see these nightmarish events through the eyes of an author named Jackson Curtis (John Cusack, playing a character that bears 50 Cent’s real name in reverse-ha!), who tries to save his ex-wife, Kate (Amanda Peet), and two children (Liam James & Morgan Lilly) from as many threats as possible. His plan consists of traveling to China, where it is rumored that an enormous shelter of some kind has been destructed to save a fraction of mankind. They achieve this through the help of Kate’s plastic surgeon boyfriend (Tom McCarthy) who is able to fly them around in a stolen plane (a plastic surgeon who knows how to fly a plane…of course!)

Roland Emmerich has apparently spent his Hollywood career fashioning himself as some kind of “master of disaster.” He fancies blockbuster tales of simplistic and virtuous people who become threatened or attacked by ominous, dreadful, and hostile forces. His movies try to convey the message that humanist values will always persevere in the face of an overwhelmingly damaging threat. While this can be an effective lesson, his efforts to make it feel heartfelt come across as too plastic. We just don’t feel like there’s any real heart or inspiration in his “human” characters. Emmerich always employs talented actors who labor hard to make catastrophic bystanders convincing, but there’s too little juice present in the characters to make us actually care about them. It’s always more special to see a disaster film favor characters over action sequences (Peter Weir’s Fearless is a wonderful demonstration of this).

In a world that has seen 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq War, and the collapse of the American economy, do people really need to be reminded of a prophecy that states the world will collapse within a few more years? Does Emmerich truly believe that in these bleak times, people want to see images of life as we know it blown to complete smithereens? Perhaps Emmerich suspected his film could work as some sort of release therapy for paranoid and fearful people. After all, moviegoers attend these films to vicariously work out their anxieties and fears over deadly catastrophes striking their very own world. Maybe this was the perfect time to release a 2012 film that can truly strike a chord with audiences.

I suppose, then, that it’s good news that Emmerich allows a heightened yet hopeful optimism to infect the film’s third act. The closing scenes show the leaders of the world trying to preserve humans, animals, plants, and cultural artifacts into gigantic, spaceship-like Arcs that have been built to withhold the force of outsized forces of nature. These gigantic Arcs make for some nifty special effects work and as implausible as this development this may seem, Emmerich brings it conviction and harnesses it towards an exciting final act. This even leads to a Spielbergian ending of mind-blowing sunniness. While a more thoughtful director may have admirably forced us to endure a more complex and uncompromising conclusion, it Emmerich may have slyly put some of our more paranoid anxieties about 2012 at ease and I’m actually rather grateful for that.

2012 is entered next to Stargate, The Patriot, and Independence Day on my list of Roland Emmerich films that are entertaining and effective, as opposed to his hopelessly boring efforts, The Day After Tomorrow and 10,000 B.C. The running time can be taxing and the character developments are rather shameless, but the effects scenes are so epic and mind-blowing that they truly deserve a look on the big screen. For let’s face it, people will be lining up for big time action and not for intelligent dialogue and thoughtful characters. Now if a filmmaker were to come along and put all three of those ingredients into this genre, then we could very well have a masterpiece on our hands!

A 'Carol' Worth Cherishing

by Brett Parker

Of all the various incarnations of A Christmas Carol I’ve seen over the years, no specific one stands out as being visually supreme or aesthetically definitive. Sure, most of them do a considerable justice to Charles Dickens’ classic tale, but that’s usually the sole efficient thing it does right. Most of these adaptations present camera work at a very elemental level and produce competent Ebenezer Scrooges that seem fearful from breaking away from tradition. Most people usually discuss which actor gave the best portrayal of Hamlet, but how many discussions have you ever heard regarding the best portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge? Even the moderate revisionist takes failed to make long-lasting impressions.

The triumph of Robert Zemeckis’ current take on A Christmas Carol is how he honors the images of Dickens’ classic in a film that’s so dazzling, energetic, emotional, and spunky, it’s damn near impossible to think of a past film or future telling that can top it. By employing the same 3-D Motion Capture Animation he employed with The Polar Express and Beowulf, Zemeckis is able to give the story a sublime and mystic look that plays up the magic of the story while still pulling top-notch drama from the characters. And when you bring an A-list level of magic and drama to one of the most imaginative and inspiring literary tales of all time, you can expect a film of unyielding power.

If you happen to be one of those rare creatures who are grossly unfamiliar with this endlessly beloved tale, allow me to detail it for you: Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) is a hopelessly cynical and frighteningly bitter businessman in Victorian-era England. With his frail body and pointy nose, Scrooge has a blackened heart and a miserable outlook to match the unpleasantness of his physical appearance. He constantly scolds and berates his office worker, Bob Cratchit (Gary Oldman), he coldly alienates himself from his only living nephew, Fred (Colin Firth), and he harshly denies any charity to two Portly Gentlemen (Cary Elwes & Julian Holloway) who seek funds to help the poor. What irritates Scrooge the most is the Christmas Holiday, the day in which people act so merry and cheerful that it threatens his bleak and horrid outlook on life. There appears to be no lightness or hope within his troubled spirit.

One Christmas Eve night, Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Marley (Gary Oldman), Scrooge’s deceased business partner. Marley was just as cold and greedy as Scrooge was in real life and is now condemned to an afterlife of torture and despair for his wicked ways. He warns Scrooge that he is destined for such a horrible fate unless he can turn his life around. He tells Scrooge that he will be visited by three spirits, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future (all played by Carrey, thanks to the animation) who will help him understand the folly of his ways and how he can redeem himself. Throughout the course of the night, Scrooge is haunted by these magical and wise spirits who whisk him away to show him the effects he has on Christmases across time. Through this supernatural intervention, Scrooge is able to better understand how heartbreak and loss has affected him, how Cratchit is coping with a sick son named Tiny Tim (also Oldman, gotta love this stuff!), and what dark and terrifying things await the future is Scrooge does not change his cold ways.

By employing Motion Capture Animation to this tale, Zemeckis is able to make the surface of his film sparkle with remarkable gloss while retaining the plights and depths of the actors’ performances. The technology captures the human performances and transplants the mannerisms into computer effects, allowing their emotions to be transferred to computer-animated avatars. This technology allows an actor’s performance to be manipulated towards any physical look and stature the story demands. That’s how Jim Carrey is able to play both Scrooge and the Three Ghosts interacting with each other while the 51-year-old Gary Oldman is allowed to embody young Tiny Tim. This technology isn’t merely a cinematic stunt, but is used to honor both the mythic look and dramatic undercurrents of the characters themselves. For example, the animation fills in both the bizarre and outsized physiques Dickens envisioned for, say, Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present while being able to retain the human emotions underneath. This easily makes Zemeckis’ Carol the best looking incarnation to ever grace the screen.

Zemeckis has spent his filmmaking career carving out grand adventure tales, yet basking his characters in heartfelt emotions that spare these stories from being disposable exercises. Think about the way Marty McFly despaired of his best friend, Doc Brown, being put in harm’s way. Or how Eddie Valiant was deeply wounded by the death of his brother. Or when Chuck Noland cried helplessly after loosing his imaginary friend, Wilson. Zemeckis has a knack for unearthing startling dramatic depths within seemingly lightweight characters and it’s this very talent that rescues A Christmas Carol from being just another elaborate animation stunt. What’s amazing is how this grand tale clocks in at way under two hours, yet every dramatic base the original story presented is covered and fully realized in this timeframe. As the plot moves from cynicism to heartbreak to despair to redemption and finally to cheerfulness, Zemeckis never shortchanges us on the drama and we feel the full weight of Dickens’ original intentions. Even though some of the adventure sequences drag on for too long and the pace might be a tad too zippy, Zemeckis still dishes out a masterful take on this famous story.

When I first heard that Jim Carrey was cast in the role of Scrooge, I assumed his comic talents would be greatly summoned to make Scrooge a caricature of high comic energy. What’s ultimately surprising and rewarding is how Carrey never plays Scrooge for laughs. This role can seriously be considered as one of his dramatic endeavors. When he’s not doing manic comic vehicles, Carrey has crafted a compelling career out of sincere outsiders who wrestle with their troubled depths. When we think of his more memorable characters, such as Truman Burbank or Andy Kaufman, we are usually looking at troubled outcasts who are perplexed by their isolation and ponder what it would take to fit in with other people. Carrey brings this sense of melancholy weight to this legendary role and crafts what has to be one of the most empathetic Scrooges we’ve ever seen. Of course, his great vocal and facial abilities are put to great use to construct Scrooge’s almost bizarre mannerisms, yet it’s the hurtful sadness in his eyes that make his Scrooge most memorable. Notice the bitterness in his voice when he regards his nephew’s love for his wife, or the way a glimpse into the future makes him startlingly identify with Bob Cratchit’s sense of loss. I truly wasn’t prepared for Carrey to fully discard cheap laughs and revel in the tragic depths of Scrooge’s tortured soul. The performance is rather astonishing.

The Internet Movie Database reports that there are at least 50 cinematic incarnations of the classic Dickens’ tale throughout film history. Since I haven’t seen each and every one, I cannot officially declare Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol the best version I’ve ever seen. Yet I can’t imagine any version possibly outdoing this one. No past Carol could possibly be as visually detailed and exhilarating as this one. No past actor could possibly embody Scrooge with such detail and poignancy as Jim Carrey. And it seems extremely difficult to picture any past adaptation entirely honoring the iconic stature of Dickens’ themes in such a wildly entertaining package.