The Adjustment Bureau (Sunday, March 6, 2011) (13)

Ugh. Where to start with The Adjustment Bureau, I dunno. This is a much too complicated actiony sci-fi-ish movie about angels, fate and love. It's so banal there are no words to properly describe it. It does make me interested in reading the Philip K. Dick story it's based on, because I can't imagine that's as bad as this and I'd be interested to see how writer/director George Nolfi screwed this up so much.

There really isn't much of a plot to this movie, but rather just some stuff that happens. David Norris (Matt Damon) is a rising political star who has a reputation for being a bad-boy. He loses a Senate election but meets his dream girl Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt)in the process. They lose contact and he goes on with his life. There are a bunch of weird guys in Mad-Men-looking suits who wear fedoras and all look at these iPad-like things with maps on them. It seems they have some way of following people on their special devices and have directions they're looking for the people to move in.

For them it's very important that David and Elise don't meet again of fall in love, but they're the gang that can't shoot straight and mess up all sorts of things. Ultimately they're exposed to David and it becomes clear that they work for God and they're angels, but they use business-like words, so they're working for the Chairman and work in an office in Manhattan (the Credit Suisse building, for what it's worth). The next hour is spent with David trying to find Elise, then finding her and then the dudes in suits and hats showing up to tell him they can't be together - but nobody knows why this is.

This film is basically Inception meets Defending Your Life, although unlike both of those films, it's never totally clear what the goal of the film is or when or at what point it would end. We see a bunch of chases and a bunch of guys in nice hats, but we never really care about anything that's going on because we don't really understand what's going on. Basically it's just a movie about a couple who want to be together, but are not allowed to for no particular reason. This might work for an act or two of a film, but is not really a full story.

There are a lot of questions that come up that don't make any sense. It seems that God and the angels are working against fate and chance and that humans have no free-will. I can take that last part, but in a world with God, why can't God control everything? How is it that God is just as much at the mercy of fate as humans are at God's mercy? I don't want to give away the ending, but I will say it's one of the dullest and most recycled things I've seen in a long time.

This movie sucks. What's worse, I think the whole point for the "men-in-nice-suits" aesthetic is clearly pulled straight from Mad Men (as is the casting of John Slattery as one of the main guys). I worry that the only reason to have the fedoras integral to the plot is to influence people to start wearing fedoras again... like Men in Black did for black sunglasses. Ooof.

Stars: .5 of 4

CASINO JACK: The Film Babble Blog Review

CASINO JACK (Dir. George Hickenloper, 2011)

In his portrayal of lobbyist/businessman/sleazebag Jack Abramoff, Kevin Spacey busts out a lot of celebrity impressions. He does Walter Matthau, Al Pacino, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton among others, but while his mimicry is dead on, his performance as Abramoff never quite convinces.

Especially if you’ve seen last year’s Alex Gibney directed documentary CASINO JACK AND THE UNITED STATES OF MONEY which this film is based on.

Also since Spacey has played incredibly similar slick-talking salesman types roles in films like SWIMMING WITH SHARKS, THE BIG KAHUNA, and HURLYBURLY, he is unable to capture a distinct characterization here.

But it simply may be because Spacey is miscast.

An actor doesn’t have to resemble the real life person they are cast as in order to inhabit the part (witness Anthony Hopkins as Nixon, Johnny Depp as Ed Wood, or Warren Beatty as Bugsy Siegel to name a few), but Spacey is so far off that the whole project never gels.

Incidentally from much of the footage and photos in the documentary, it looks like Bob Saget would’ve been a better match.

CASINO JACK glosses over a lot of juicy information in charting the downfall of the man that Time Magazine called “the man who bought Washington D.C.” Abramoff’s shady dealings involving Chinese chop shops, Native-American casinos, cruise ships, and political fraud on a massive level are best covered by Gibney’s film, as crammed with unnecessary graphics as it is.

Here with Spacey living it up on the way down joined by a wonderfully scummy Jon Lovitz (one of the movie’s highlights) as a disbarred lawyer with mob connections, and Barry Pepper as Spacey’s associate partner-in-crime, there’s a creepy feeling that the film wants us to be on Abramoff’s side.

It’s well known that Abramoff was movie obsessed and often quoted classic films, but when Spacey delivers his impeccable impressions (that you just know that Abramoff could never come close to) it makes the man too likable and distracts from the seriousness of the man’s corrupt actions.

So in conclusion, if you want to see the story of the real Jack Abramoff – see Gibney’s dense yet fascinating doc CASINO JACK AND THE UNITED STATES OF MONEY (available on Netflix Instant by the way).

But if you want a flashy Kevin Spacey showcase that over simplifies the historical record for the sake of cheap laughs then CASINO JACK is the one for you.

More later...

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU (Dir. George Nolfi, 2011)

As the youngest Congressman ever elected to the House of Representatives, Matt Damon can win over crowds just by flashing his blinding grin as this film’s opening montage of his senate campaign attests. But his bid for office is derailed when photos of an old college prank surface, and he ends up losing even in his home county.

Nevertheless Damon while preparing to deliver his concession still has reason to flash that grin as he has a “meet cute” with Emily Blunt funnily enough in a restroom at the Waldorf Astoria.

Blunt just happened to hiding from security in the men’s room stall because she crashed a wedding in case you are wondering.

They flirt then kiss, but don’t exchange names or phone numbers so when Damon is whisked away by his campaign manager (Michael Kelly), and Blunt is spotted by hotel security, fate seems to separate them.

Or that’s what “they” want Damon to think. Who are “they”, you ask? Why they’re the ones behind the scenes manipulating circumstances to influence human history.

They are men who wear classic suits and sport fedoras who will make you think of Mad Men especially since John Slattery is one of them.

When another member of the “intervention team” (as Slattery calls it), played by Anthony Mackie fails to divert Damon off his course to a meeting, things go askew.

Damon runs into Blunt on a bus and this time gets her digits, but then walks into an office of his frozen-in-time co-workers being scanned (or something) by, yep, the Adjustment Bureau.

In a huge shiny warehouse setting, Damon is told by Slattery and Mackie that he will be reset – that is, his mind will be erased if he tells anybody about them, and more importantly he can never be with Blunt.

Slattery burns the card with her phone number on it right in front of Damon to hammer home the point.

3 years pass and Damon is back on the campaign trail and lo and behold he sees Blunt on the street on the same bus route. The spark is still there as they chitchat while Slattery and crew surround them.

The film then becomes a series of elaborate chase scenes with brief exposition breaks. The men of the Bureau can use any door as a portal to a different place – but, only if they are wearing their fedoras. That and other nonsensical rules of the team tracking Damon are never satisfyingly explained, and the supposed plan they follow appears to be ultimately flexible.

Yet there is some fun to be had here. Damon and Blunt’s performances are top notch and at times it’s a treat to watch them run around through a well shot New York City.

Slattery and second half stealing Terrence Stamp bring gravitas to the convoluted material which is loosely based on a Phillip K. Dick short story from 1954.

The directorial debut of screenwriter George Nolfi (BOURNE ULTIMATUM, OCEAN'S 12, THE SENTINEL), THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU simply isn’t inventive enough to be a memorable mind bender a la INCEPTION. In other words you're not left with anything really to discuss or think about afterwards.

It strives to be a modern surreal take on a classic Hitchcockian thriller, but it’s more on the VANILLA SKY-side.

Stamp tells Damon that he never actually had free will – he only had the illusion of free will. Well, in this film, the illusion of intelligent entertainment is all we get.

More later...

BEASTLY: The Film Babble Blog Review

BEASTLY (Dir. Daniel Barnz, 2011)

A week ago I had no idea who Alex Pettyfer is. Now I’ve seen 2 movies starring the bed headed pretty boy – the first being I AM NUMBER FOUR, and then this modernized take on the ancient fairy tale “Beauty And The Beast” aimed at the TWILIGHT teens – and no one else.

We meet the arrogant Pettyfer as he’s running for his New York city High School’s “Green Committee” on a platform based entirely on his looks.

Pettyfer decides to humiliate one of the uglies – a fellow student (a punk attired Mary-Kate Olsen!) who he calls a “self-mutilated, tattooed Frankenskank” (I only remember this phrase because it’s said more than once) by inviting her to a school dance when he already has a date (Dakota Johnson).

Olsen, who with no background given is a real witch, retaliates by casting a vicious spell on Pettyfer that leaves him bald, tattooed, and scarred beyond recognition. He will remain that way forever unless somebody tells him that they love him by the end of a year.

Pettyfer’s just as vain television anchorman father Peter Krause (Six Feet Under) can’t stand to live (or look at) with his deformed son so he banishes him to a Brooklyn townhouse with their Jamaican maid (Lisa Gay Hamilton) and a blind tutor (Neil Patrick Harris).

Because of the dire charisma less acting, I was so thankful when Harris showed up. He’s intended to be the film’s one-liner spouting comic relief, but he functions as much more than that – he’s the only likable presence here.

So Pettyfer starts pining for a girl – Vanessa Hudgens (HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL) – he thinks can help him out of this predicament by at first stalking her, then implausibly getting her to move in to his townhouse in order to protect her from her junkie father’s dangerous drug dealer.

There is not a single surprise in this cutesy cringe-inducing piece of fluff. There’s no believable chemistry between the leads, and its moralizing is offensive as although Pettyfer is supposedly uglied up (in real life NYC his appearance wouldn’t get a second glance) he’s still an empty jerk with money who gets all that he wants in the end.

If nothing else I can now recognize Alex Pettyfer as a British model (he’s so not being cast for his acting chops) who stars in soon to be forgotten dumping ground movie season fodder.

More later...

The Human Resources Manager (Friday, March 4, 2011) (12)

I've written before that what I really love about contemporary Israeli cinema are the very interesting, small and straightforward stories. Take, for example, Haim Tabakman's Eyes Wide Open, which deals with very deep matters of love and faith, but does it in a very intimate way using a very tight story and style. In the past, director Eran Riklis has done beautiful small movies, like Lemon Tree, but with The Human Resources Manager he sheds the simplicity and embarks on a bigger movie with a much more complicated, banal story.

The script for the film, by Noah Stollman (based on a book by Abraham B. Jehoshua, possibly based on a real event) is a mess and lacks a sensible structure. In the film, the eponymous and nameless manager works in a big bakery in Jerusalem. It seem that a woman who used to work there was killed in a suicide bombing, but her body was never collected from the morgue. The woman was a guest worker from Romania who has no family in the country, and the HR man is brought in when the tabloid press suggests the bakery was being cold-hearted in the situation.

As a face-saving measure the HR manager has to take the woman's body back to her country. Following him in Europe is the tabloid journalist who wrote the articles against the bakery and has a beef against the man (because journalists HATE middle-managers). What follows is a screwballish journey into the middle of nowhere with a casket on the roof of an Eastern Bloc van.

My two main problems with this movie are that, first, it moves at a glacial pace and by the time you're near the end of the film, it's hard to remember how the hell you got there, and second, it's a really boring, hackneyed plot. There's a back story about how the HR manager is having trouble with his family (because his job at the bakery is really hard... really?!) and this trip is creating more friction with his wife - but he has to go on the trip to show her that he's a good man. That's all well and good, but by the time you're stuck in some ex-communist military bunker (where he gets a bad flu for no reason), all that back-story is totally beside the point. And do we really need another movie about a man who goes off into the wilderness (well, rural Romania) to find himself to be a good man? I've seen it a million times before and this does nothing to improve on past efforts.

I also feel that the tone of the film is weird. It would be best described as a "screwball dramedy", where you're never sure if the next moment will be silly or serious and significant. This style doesn't really work for me as I think the comedy elements are not really funny (mostly just crass and cheap) and it would have been more effective if it had been a drama with comedic elements in it. Ugh.

This is not a bad movie, but not a good one. I'm frustrated that a director I liked so much before would make such an unwieldy, rambling movie. In fairness, the best part of the film is Mark Ivanir who plays the lead guy very well. I just think the script here needs some editing or rewriting. As it is now, it's a bit of a jumble.

Stars: 2 of 4

Of Gods and Men (Friday, March 4, 2011) (11)

I heard amazing things about Of Gods and Men before I saw it (one friend said it is a "masterpiece"), so I had high hopes for it. What I got was a nice movie, with some great acting, but nothing super tremendous, really.

The story is apparently based on true events that occurred in the late 1990s in Algeria. There is a monastery of eight old French Catholic monks (the youngest one in his 50s) who lived in poverty and worked to help the people of a small village in the Atlas mountains. They have a very good relationship with the people, all of whom were Muslim, of course. They all study religious texts, including the Qur'an, read Arabic and communicated daily with the village elders on matters of faith and nuts and bolts issues about the area. Most importantly they run a health clinic, where Brother Luc (Michael Lonsdale) provides basic medical services (and even shoes) for hundreds of people in the area a day.

At some point there is a radical terrorist group ravaging the area and killing people, particularly Europeans who are there for development. When the brothers are asked by government officials to leave the monastery, in hopes of avoiding an international incident of a slaughter of monks, their leader, Brother Christian (Lambert Wilson) decides that it was their mission to stay the course. This creates tension in the group and they all have to look within themselves to see if they wish to stay and continue to help the people or if they are too worried about their lives and the wish to go.

The movie is pretty darn slow - which is typical of a movie about monks, who lead slow lives (see also: Andrei Rublev or Into Great Silence). It's not so much that it's boring, but that not a lot of stuff happens. We see their daily routines, from planting in their gardens and cleaning the floors to working in the health clinic, making food and, of course, praying. There are really only two main interactions with the terrorists, and most of the tension is that we expect the radicals will come at any point and we are waiting for them to show up.

There is a very interesting theological discussion here about whether the brothers should leave the monastery so they can be sure to continue to help others elsewhere or whether they should stick it out and not run, because the people they are serving are not able to run. It's not entirely clear which choice is more holy or if they are selfish or proud choices.

The film looks very nice - and is certainly helped by taking places in a totally beautiful part of the world, on mountain tops with amazing views. Director Xavier Beauvois and cinematographer Caroline Champetier do a wonderful job of making the Algerian countryside look lush, warm and plentiful. The acting is very good throughout, particularly the two leads (Wilson and Lonsdale) and Olivier Rabourdin, who plays Brother Christophe, the youngest monk who probably struggles the most with the decision. There is a lot of good stuff in this movie, but it all feels a bit dull and the aggressors (some generic Muslim terrorists) feel a bit un-scary and banal.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thursday, March 3, 2011) (10)

So before I begin, I should say two things about Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives: 1) I have a lot of respect for writer/director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, though I didn't love the only other film of his that I saw, Syndromes and a Century. It was absolutely beautiful to watch, but was basically impossible to understand. Weerasethakul is a darling of the critic and festival worlds, possibly because he's so impenetrable it makes people feel smart to say they love him, even if they don't understand him; 2) I only understand about 60-75% of this film, but parts of it have really stuck with me and I think I really like it.

So what I can glean about the film is that Uncle Boonmee is an old Thai man who is very close to dying. He's living in a remote area in the jungle with his sister-in-law, who has become his life companion, and being taken care of by a male nurse who gives him kidney dialysis. It seems that in Thai culture is is common that just before the time of your death you are visited by spirits of loved ones and characters from your past lives.

At dinner one night, Boonmee's deceased wife, gone for about 30 or 40 years, comes back and sits at the table with them. She's very warm and happy to know her sister and husband have made a life together. She thanks them for the things they gave to her at the Buddhist temple. After a few minutes of conversation, a giant monkey with red light eyes comes into the dining area and sits down. It turns out he is Boonmee's son who disappeared a few years after his mother died. It seems the son met a monkey spirit at some point and mated with it and then became a monkey spirit as well. (Well, he now just looks like a guy in a gorilla costume with red laser eyes.)

From there we start to see some of Boonmee's past lives. We see a sequence where there is a princess being carried through the jungle on a sedan chair. She has some sort of sexual relationship with one of the servants. They go into a cave where there is a small pond inside. She begins to talk to a catfish who lives in the pond and he convinces to her get into the water. From there he begins to give her cunnilingus and thrash about a lot.

Each scene has a dreamy quality with beautiful photography throughout, but they never really have true beginnings and endings (this is very much Weerasethakul's style from what I can tell). What makes matters more interesting, and more uncomfortable, is the many scenes are shot from outside of a point of comfort, outside of a point of intimacy. They are not really long shots where we're looking at people from 50 feet away, but are normally about 15 feet from the action, making everything seem a bit more distant, both emotionally and geographically. Add to this that the dialogue seems to be delivered in a very stilted manner, not as normal flowing conversation, but where people say their lines, then pause for a beat or two and then the other will respond.

This has a very strange effect on what we see. It certainly keeps up outside of the action. Unlike in some scenes around a dinner table, for instance, where you feel like you're sitting with the characters, here you really feel like you're watching the scene from an adjoining space. It also gives an internal structure and rigidity to a film that has very little of both throughout. Each scene rather melts into the next, but within each scene, there is a very defined architecture.

On a more emotional level, though, it definitely pushes us farther away from the action. We don't feel, say, like we are part of Boonmee's family who is taking care of him before his death. We feel like we're observing this happening from somewhere else. I think this has an interesting effect, considering the film is about death and reincarnation - two things we mortals know very little about - and if we were any closer we would have to understand more about those states. We are kept outside of the emotional center of the film because we are not ready to understand the depth of Boonmee's journey.

After seeing the film I am left with many more questions than answers about it. Was Boonmee the princess, the servant or the catfish in the story we saw? Are other animals we see throughout the film also some of his past lives? When we see a montage of still shots of the monkey-spirit man hanging out with men in camo military uniforms and machine guns, is that a pun on the words "gorilla" and "guerrilla"? Is that sequence about the deep spiritual side of men who sometimes kill others? Or that the monkey spirit is a violent one? Is the last act just a long way of saying that "after people die, those who survive move on with their lives"? (I really don't understand the gist of the last act.) Are we all able to separate our spirits from our bodies in everyday life so our bodies can watch TV and our spirits can go out for karaoke?

It's easy to say that some of these questions are more interesting than most films one normally sees.Though it's frustrating that this is such an opaque work, I appreciate that Weerasethakul clearly has a different view of the world than most people (which was also clearly shown in Syndromes and a Century). I'm happy that this film is much more linear a plot than Syndromes was (though, of course, it's not a very linear plot).

At times this film reminded me a lot of Haruki Murakami's Khafka on the Shore and Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. There is something very similar in the way Murakami moves his stories from our physical world to an unseen meta/spiritual one. People exist in this world and can move into the spirit world (or the spirit world can move into ours) in a very normal way. The lyrical idea that there are layers to our world and we only see one of those layers with our eyes is very interesting and a very central to the concepts here.

Stars: 3 of 4