Joaquin Phoenix Is Smitten With His Operating System In Spike Jonze’s HER

HER (Dir. Spike Jonze, 2013) 

This is way too lovely and poetic a film to find mixed in with the formulaic fodder at your local multiplex. Yet that’s where it’s playing in my area having bypassed the independent theater circuit because of awards season buzz.

Set in a shiny clean Los Angeles in the near future, where everyone wears beltless high-waisted pants, the film concerns a love story between a meek mustached Joaquin Phoenix and his phone’s sentient operating system voiced by the sultry Scarlett Johansson.

Having weathered a painful breakup (we catch fleeting glimpses in flashbacks of Phoenix in an extremely emotional relationship with Rooney Mara, best known for the American version of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO), our soft spoken protagonist purchases said OS1, which is billed as the first artificially intelligent operating system, and is immediately taken with the disembodied voice of Johansson.

Johansson, names herself Samantha after reading the book “How To Name Your Baby” in two one hundredths of a second, and goes about sorting through all of Phoenix’s files on his hard drive.

Phoenix writes for a company that produces custom made greeting cards (Beautiful Handwritten Letters Dot Com), so his sentimental “sad and mopey” (as Amy Adams, his documentary film maker friend, puts it) nature comes in handy.



After Adams sets him up on a blind date (played by Olivia Wilde in a small but crucial cameo) that at first goes well but ends badly when commitment comes up, Phoenix finds himself falling hard for Samantha. What’s freaky is that Samantha feels the same and even hires a surrogate (Portia Doubleday) to act as her body so they can have sex.

Phoenix’s predicament isn’t an anomaly as many others are having relationships with their OS’s including Adams since her marriage (to a jaded Matt Letscher) went south. The film’s take on a future world in which isolationism is a lifestyle choice, isn’t so farfetched as anybody who’s been in a public place filled with folks with their faces buried in the screens of their devices can attest.

Jonze first solo screenplay, which won Best Screenplay at Sunday’s Golden Globes Awards), shows that he learned much from Charlie Kaufman, who wrote the director’s first few films (BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and ADAPTATION).

There’s a lot of emotional material that’s hard to pull off on display here, but Jonze handles it with endearing delicacy and a pure sense of purpose. He’s greatly aided by Phoenix putting in one of his most fully realized performances as the supremely sympathetic lead – a man who looks like he’s aching inside even when he’s smiling. 



Factor in Johansson conveying the OS’s evolving vulnerability with poise, and Adams making a stunning transition from being a ‘70s glamour puss con woman in AMERICAN HUSTLE to embodying the mousy insecure frizzy-haired could-be love interest and you’ve got a cast as charming as the film itself.

HER’s soundtrack doesn’t expand much on the musical palette of Jonze’s previous film, his and David Egger’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, as both Arcade Fire and Karen O. both return to provide songs, but this is so not a complaint as their music, especially when matched with Hoyte van Hoytema’s incredible cinematography effectively fits the highs and lows of the lightly surreal scenario.

The concept of having cyber sex with Siri aside, I can’t think of another recent film dealing with romance that better captures the way it feels to first fall in love; how wonderfully intense and scary it can be. It also nails how painfully fleeing the losing of love can be as well. HER is an immersive and beautiful cinematic conversation about what our real wants and needs are.

 
But it may not be for everybody – just those with two eyes, two ears, and a heart.

More later...

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Directorial Debut Deals With The Porn Addicted DON JON

Opening today at most multiplexes:



DON JON (Dir. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 2013) 

Things have been going good in movieland for Joseph Gordon-Levitt the last several years. Since his breakthrough role in Marc Webb's (500) DAYS OF SUMMER, he's put in solid performances in a stretch of A-list work including being part of high-profile ensembles in Christopher Nolan (INCEPTION, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES), and Steven Spielberg (LINCOLN) films, as well as heading choice action thrillers such as David Koepp's PREMIUM RUSH and LOOPER. Not to forget his touching and funny turn in 50/50. Yup, pretty good indeed.



The ultra-talented 32-year old's winning streak continues with his debut as writer/director: DON JON, about a womanizing New Jersey boy who prefers porn to real sex as we learn by getting the inside beat on his daily routines.



Yup, that's the subject matter Gordon-Levitt chose, but he handles it in an often hilarious and oddly touching manner. It's a comic yet thoughtful examination of an addicted everyman, that most people should relate to, that is, if they're not a prude about porn.



Gordon-Levitt's narration breaks down his character's life from Sunday confessions to family dinners to gym workouts to hitting on women at the bar most weeknights. Being a slick good lookin' guy, he scores often with girls he brags about being high on the 1-10 scale, but at the end of the night, after his newest conquest is passed out in bed, he's back on his computer.



This changes when he meets Scarlet Johansson at a club, who he definitely considers a "10," but she's not as easy as the girls he regularly takes home.



She makes him wait for it; work for it - through weeks of dates seeing movies he couldn't care less about - there's a funny fictitious chick flick they go to see featuring Channing Tatum and Anne Hathaway going through the predictable rom com storybeats. It reminded me of the fake film in the Coen Brother's BURN AFTER READING, "Coming Up Daisy," with Delmot Mulroney and Claire Danes that Frances McDormand would drag her dates to, but I digress.



Things get edgy when Johansson (with an accent that reminds me of a commercial parody she did on SNL several years ago where she was a Long Island pitch-woman hawking "Marble Columns") catches Gordon-Levitt watching porn, and makes him swear he'll never do it again.



This forces him to catch it when he can on the go on his phone in the car or in night class, a classmate, Julianne Moore, also catches him ("Excuse me, are you watching people fucking on your phone?") but she's so not as judgemental.



Some of the funniest scenes are set around the dinner table with the great casting of Tony Danza and Glenne Headly as Jon's parents (Don is an obvious nickname), and Brie Larson (recently seen in THE SPECTACULAR NOW) as his always texting sister. Though not as one-liner heavy, there's Neil Simon-esque sensibility present.



With her face forever in her phone, Larson is as quiet as Silent Bob throughout the film, but just like that Kevin Smith character, when she speaks it's something that's supposed to be a necessary insight.



The widowed pot-smoking Moore, who obviously has a lot more mileage in the sex/relationship department serves as sort of a Yoda to Gordon-Levitt, helping guide him to a better, less XXX-rated fantasy-filled, level of existence.



Gordon-Levitt's direction is as confident as his character - he gets flawless acting out of his co-stars (Danza is particularly "on"), there are few wasted shots (though some shaky framing), and a pleasing fluidity to the narrative that you know he cribbed from working with Nolan and Johnson (I'm sure Spielberg and rubbed off on him too).



DON JON is no mind-blowing masterpiece, but it's a Hell of a writing/directing debut for Gordon-Levitt. I laughed a lot, and enjoyed spending time his characters. Its takes cojones to make one's first film about a smut addicted chronic masturbator, but it takes something more to be able to make the guy, via such strong charm and wit, somebody we care about seeing find his footing, away from the clutches of internet porn.



More later...

HITCHCOCK Has The Chops, Yet Doesn’t Quite Cut It

Opening today at a motion picture palace near you:

HITCHCOCK (Dir. Sacha Gervasi, 2012)

Anthony Hopkins’ impersonation of Alfred Hitchcock is effective in small doses, like, say in this “Turn Your Phones Off” PSA, and in some short scenes early on in Sacha Gervasi’s new biopic HITCHCOCK, but the longer the camera lingers on him, the more he’s just Hopkins in a fat suit with prosthetic make-up.

The makeup, mainly by Howard Berger, is good, some of the best I’ve seen in a recent movie, but I could never forget that it was Hopkins; he doesn’t disappear into the part like, say, Daniel Day Lewis does in LINCOLN, he just does a good but far from pitch perfect impression of the master of suspense, and the best I can say is that it’s slightly better than Toby Jones’ in the HBO movie THE GIRL, which premiered on the channel to little fanfare last month.

But Hopkins’ close-but-no-banana approximation of the movie-making legend isn’t one of the factors that makes this movie an often deadly dull melodrama.

Director Gervasi, who co-wrote one of Steven Spielberg’s worst films THE TERMINAL, yet made the excellent band bio-doc ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL, working from a screenplay by John J. McLaughlin focuses on Hitch’s (hold the cock as he says it), relationship with his wife Alma Reville, splendidly portrayed by a sly Helen Mirren, during the making of his controversial masterpiece PSYCHO in 1959-60.

The storyline is largely a behind every great man there’s a woman scenario as Mirren’s Alma provides Hopkins’ Hitch with every great idea that he needs to make his classic, right down to the idea to kill off the leading lady after the first 30 minutes. The leading lady is Janet Leigh, played by Scarlett Johansson, who doesn’t strongly resemble Leigh, but still captures her iconic image. James D’Arcy has a more accurate depiction of Anthony Perkins going on, but we spend so little time with him that it doesn’t make much impact.

Hitch has to deal with resistance from the studio, because of, you know, “Oh, God, Mother! Blood! Blood!” in the form of evil caricatures of Paramount studio heads (played by Richard Portnow and Kurtwood Smith sneering with all their might), which forces him to have to fund the film out of his own pocket.



This, plus Mirren’s flirtation with writer Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston), strains the marriage, but the stakes never feel very high here.



We don’t believe that Mirren is actually going to cheat on Hopkins, and we don’t think his fantasies about his blond leading ladies is going to be anything but fantasies, so, despite both brilliant British actor’s ace acting chops, neither story-line has much pull.



Only in a scene set during PSYCHO’s premiere, in which Hitch from the theater’s lobby, mimes conducting the audience’s screams along with Bernard Herrmann’s score in the film’s famous shower murder scene, does HITCHCOCK have fun with its material.



Otherwise, it feels like a standard movie made for TV (just a notch above the HBO biopic I previously mentioned), with very little cinematic oomph. 

This is extremely evident in the film’s framing device involving Hitch breaking the fourth wall and addressing the camera like on his  Alfred Hitchcock Presents to open and close the film, and in a running thread that has Hitch being haunted by Michael Wilcott as serial killer Ed Gein, the inspiration for PSYCHO’s Norman Bates. These are nice ideas, but like everything else here, they never go anywhere.


You don’t need to have seen PSYCHO in order to follow what’s happening in HITCHCOCK, but if you haven’t seen PSYCHO, then what are you doing considering going to see this mediocre movie, this glorified dramatization of a “making of” featurette? Go watch PSYCHO!

More later…

THE AVENGERS Starts The Summer Movie Season Off Right

THE AVENGERS (Dir. Joss Whedon, 2012)

After years of baiting fans with cameos, visual nods, and Easter Eggs embedded in their movies, Marvel Studios puts them all together in this masterful smash-up/mash-up assemblage of their major comic book characters, which starts the summer movie season off right.

Joss Whedon's snappy screenplay and energetic direction really delivers the goods, with a cast and special effects crew that never stops trying to entertain, right up to the after-credits bonus material.

For those who haven't been paying attention, we've got returning champ Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), along with Captain America/Steve Rodgers (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth); both fresh from their summer hero hits last year, Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), and The Hulk/Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo; the only actor here who hasn't previously played their character).

Samuel L. Jackson as S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury, and Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow are also on hand to provide extra fire-power against the film’s villain Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who was also the antagonist in “Thor” (maybe my least favorite of the Marvel movies), as he’s Thor’s adoptive brother and rival.

Loki, with the help of something called a Tesseract and an alien army, is trying to take over the world (of course), but those pesky Avengers keep getting in the way.

You know the plot isn’t what folks are coming to see here, but this movie’s not just about breathtaking bombast, furious fight-scenes, and spectacular sequences stuffed with eye-popping CGI – although there’s lots of that.

What elevates it is that the film actually cares about how its characters interact and clash with one another. Evan’s Captain America is rubbed wrong by Downey Jr.’s snarky arrogance (Whedon gives Downey Jr. the sharpest funniest lines, as expected), and everyone is on edge about just what Ruffalo’s Hulk will do when his rage famously takes hold.

Ruffalo’s take on Banner is one of many strong elements on display in “The Avengers.” It’s a more nuanced and edgy performance than what Eric Bana and Ed Norton brought in their respective portrayals. Now I’m looking forward to seeing Ruffalo own his own Hulk movie.

Clark Gregg, as S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Coulson, finally gets a more substantial role after his glorified cameos in the previous Marvel movies, and he makes the most of it. A surprising yet fitting addition to the ever expanding universe is Cobie Smulders (Robin on the sitcom How I Met Your Mother) as another Avengers ally, Maria Hill. Smulders gets a considerable amount of screen-time, and like everybody else here, she doesn’t waste it.

The New York City battle finale outdoes the fun destruction of just about every other super hero movie ever (take that Superman, Spiderman, X-Men, etc.!), and it's hilarious to boot.

Whedon does a fantastic job juggling this vast array of characters while arranging mighty action set-pieces (particularly the sequence aboard the ginormous S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier).

So there you have it - the must-see super hero movie event of the summer. That is, until THE DARK KNIGHT RISES comes out.

More later...

IRON MAN 2: The Film Babble Blog Review

IRON MAN 2 (Dir. Jon Favreau, 2010)




Summer sequel season has officially begun with the return of Robert Downey Jr. as Marvel Comics super hero Iron Man. But you not only know that, you've probably already seen it as it had the second-highest May opening of all time grossing $133 million over this last weekend. 

For my two cents, I'll say upfront that IRON MAN 2 is a good time, not the great time that the original was because it's a bit messy. Highly stylized and funny with quite a few sheer thrills, but still a bit messy. 

We catch up with Tony Stark, not long after revealing his identity as Iron Man, enjoying his reign as a global celebrity who claims to have "privatized world peace." He seemingly takes in stride that he's called before a Senate Committee for a hearing led by Garry Shandling as a disapproving Senator who wants Stark to turn over the Iron Man suit to the military.

Our snarky hero is more concerned that the palladium in the arc reactor keeping his heart beating has begun to poison his body so he's trying to live it up since his days are numbered.




Meanwhile villainy toils in the shadows in the form of Mickey Rourke as a crusty Russian who has built his own arc reactor and a suit that has its arms outfitted with cybernetically controlled whips.

Whiplash, as he's dubbed, blames Stark Industries for his father's death, and seeks revenge. He attacks Stark on a racetrack in Monaco, but Stark defeats him after some close calls when he's able to get to his snazzy Iron Man suitcase.

Also meanwhile, and that's one problem with this film - too many meanwhiles, Sam Rockwell as a conniving competing weapons manufacturer plots to take down Stark and sees an ally in Whiplash. 

Gwyneth Paltrow returns as Stark's right hand lady Pepper Pots, who Stark promotes to CEO. Terrence Howard doesn't return as Lt. Colonel James "Randy" Rhoades, for reasons that aren't quite clear he's been replaced by Don Cheadle.

Scarlett Johansson joins the cast as Stark's new assistant who is revealed to be a double agent working with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), introduced in the post credits of the original, of S.H.E.I.L.D. which was co-founded by Stark's father (Mad Men's John Slattery) who appears in an old Stark Expo film that just happens to contain a secret message. Whew!

There's a bunch of other elements I'm not going to go into because, well, you get the picture - it's over stuffed with plot strands. This means a number of payoffs, such as Rourke's placing in the climax, are a bit compromised.

By the way, Rourke's mock Ruskie accent made me keep thinking he was going to say "I'm going to break you" like Dolph Lundren did in ROCKY IV. Johansson doesn't make much of an impression except in one scene where she kicks the ass of a squad of baddies that comes off like an audition for CHARLIE'S ANGELS 3D.

As for the others - Paltrow just hovers around, Cheadle is a bit more engaged yet ultimately just along for the ride, and Rockwell does a decent job but doesn't bring much new to the game.

Director Favreau reprises his part as Stark's bodyguard giving himself more screen time which doesn't detract, but maybe should have been deleted scenes for the later DVD/Blu ray.

As we all know though, it's Downey Jr.'s stage and he makes the most of it. Glib wisecracks aside he has a great interrogation room scene with Rourke. Both actors bring it dramatically for one of the only breaks from the comic action spectacle, and it helps give the movie some needed grounding.

So the fresh feeling of the first one is gone and the plotting is a bit creaky as well and the exposition heavy, but there's enough fun to go around until the next time (stay through the credits to get a glimpse of what's coming). IRON MAN 2 is much better than just passable (as super hero sequels often are), and its heart (or arc reactor) is in the right place. 

More later...