I don’t have much to say about this that wasn’t covered by the corresponding episode of ‘How Did This Get Made?’ I did have a favorite moment, however, and it came before the film even started. An ad for THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE came on, and it was nothing more than the title. There was a mother and young daughter sitting behind me. The mother said, “That didn’t show anything.” The daughter, unfazed in her enthusiasm, replied “I know. It’s just a teaser.” This is why I love the internet. It has not only taught a child what to expect from a teaser trailer, it has taught her the proper term, while her mother sits beside her, stymied and frustrated by the very same thing.
THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY
There is nothing really wrong with this movie, but to be perfectly honest, it ultimately felt like watching outtakes from THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. I ended up falling asleep a couple of times, mostly during the layover at the Elvish village. The problem at the root of all of this is obviously hacking one book into three films. I have not read The Hobbit, but having seen this film, I can attest to the fact that there is not enough content to spread over three three-hour films, and when that happens, you end up with a flat installment in the name of more money (see also: THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN - PART 1). Obviously they are saving things like the dragon as a big bad for a future film, but that only feels like a rub after three hours of buildup and a bunch of troll fights. I liked the movie okay, but by the end I was excited for what was coming, which isn’t coming anytime soon. Three hours is more than enough time to tell the story of a single book.
JACK REACHER
Garbage in, garbage out. Movies made from disposable novels can seldom rise above their source material, and JACK REACHER is no exception. It strikes me as the kind of book people buy in an airport because they’re going to be trapped in a metal tube in the sky for six hours and throw away immediately after deboarding. The fact that it was written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie is even more depressing, seeing as how he has written a few crackerjack scripts, and wrote and directed THE WAY OF THE GUN, which is a minor masterpiece. This, however, is mostly a lifeless mush with a few highpoints and some inspired casting, offset by totally forgettable actors (or worse, memorably bad ones). The lead actress is total garbage, and I have no idea how she was deemed appropriate to carry a $60 million picture. I had tried to diagnose her with Sondra Locke Syndrome, assuming that she may either be Mrs. McQuarrie, or the new Mrs. Cruise, but even that proved false. Clint Eastwood may have shoved his wife into a lot of lead characters that she didn’t have the skill to play (and whose roles often required her to be beaten and raped, which is an essay unto itself) but he also made a ton of potboilers that moved quickly and entertainingly. Not that this movie is poorly constructed or devoid of fun (there is a chase scene in the middle that is well done, and the introduction of
THIS IS 40
A very funny movie, but nearly everything I’ve seen this season has well over two hours. This could easily have been a very good 90 minute movie, instead of a good 134 minute one. Even odder, there are good bits that I have seen in ads that do not appear in the finished film. A hardnosed editor could have really made this shine. I have no idea why this needed to be a sequel to KNOCKED UP, outside of the fact that it then seems like Judd Apatow has no choice but to cast his wife and children as the stars of a major motion picture. Why this is a good thing, I have no idea, as it would seem to put your children in a tough spot. I would imagine that as a powerful writer-director, you would want to somehow make your children as ‘normal’ as possible, not to cast them into the public eye and under the scrutiny of bitter internet scolds like myself. It seems sort of like setting them up for failure, as normally they may or may not have decided to act, and then be forced to live or die by that decision. Now they have acted, and while they aren’t bad at it, I can’t imagine them being cast by anyone they weren’t spawned by. I understand putting your children in a film, but in the Oliver Stone fashion. His son is in most all of his films, and if you watch them in succession, you can sort of watch his boy grow up, but he doesn’t give him the co-lead -- he puts him (mostly) in the background. Learn from Coppola’s mistakes. He cast Sophia in THE GODFATHER as the baby being christened and everything was fine. He then cast Sophia as a co-lead in THE GODFATHER: PART III, and the rest is history. Also, I have never understood directors who have their wives appear nude on film, but I guess I’m just a jealous prude. Outside of the women in the family, Paul Rudd is great as always and in many ways is the glue that holds the film together, but he is sort of miscast in that the film is written for a Judd Apatow-type, and many of the complaints Leslie Mann has about him seem out of place, namely that he is fat and needs to stop eating cupcakes. This is even central to her forced shrill manic breakdown at the climax of the film, but since Paul Rudd is a handsome fit actor, it doesn’t play. Add to this the presence of the great Robert Smigel, who seems like a perfect doppelgänger for Judd Apatow, and you further wonder why this had to be a sequel. Write a film about your life. No one is saying you can’t, especially if it is very funny, as this film often is. But if you are a schlubby Jewish guy, don’t cast Paul Rudd in your stead. There are a ton of fantastic supporting players, and sadly many of them are underserved. Michael Ian Black, Lena Dunham and Chris O’Dowd all have fantastic bits (especially O’Dowd, who had me wishing the whole film had been set at Rudd’s failing record company) but get less screen time combined than Megan Fox, who is nice to look at but not funny in the least. In truth, a film starring Paul Rudd, Chris O’Dowd, Lena Dunham, Robert Smigel, Albert Brooks (who is always great to see on the big screen, and overdue to write and direct another jewel soon) and John Lithgow (who gets to play it 99% straight) should be the best thing I’ve seen all year. This is also apparently the year of Melissa McCarthy, who is funny in this, but was the star of nearly every preview preceding this picture.
LES MISÉRABLES
This is an odd one. It seems like common sense to say that familiarity will change how you look at a film -- i.e. if you’ve read the book, you’ll look at the film differently. But with a property that has had so many iterations over the years, and indeed is still a staple of the theater and an ever-changing entity, it seems to hit everyone differently. As someone who has not read the book, not seen any prior film adaptations, nor heard any of the musical, I will say that I liked it. I have heard people say that the staging was off; I did not have a problem with it. I have heard people say that Russell Crowe’s voice isn’t formidable enough to play Javert; I found him to be, after Anne Hathaway, the best of the bunch. Anne Hathaway is fantastic, but, again, having no experience with the material, I didn’t know how small her part would be. And knowing that the singing was done live makes her single take ability that much more moving. Having never heard this renowned musical before (and being a fan of musicals in general) I have to say -- this one has a lot of flat, lifeless songs padding it out. There are a handful of fantastic, moving, catchy tunes that are no doubt what people talk about and remember, but a great deal of it was memorable only for its plodding nature. In the second half of the film, we get Eddie Redmayne, the first real singer out of his depth. It’s not that he’s bad, in fact he’s often quite good, but occasionally his voice dips into a weird Dudley Do-Right glottal-fake-deepness that is distracting to the point of humorousness, especially when he is paired with Amanda Seyfried, whose voice is unreal in its heights, sounding at times like a little bird. Any appearance of Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter serves as a breath of fresh air, injecting humor and a criminal lightness to an overlong film (although the joke about not knowing Cosette’s name could have been retired after two iterations). Length has been a factor to nearly every film I’ve seen this season, and it is a disturbing trend. Outside of a true epic that demands a vast canvas and a sprawling cast, 90 minutes is the number to live and die by. It is said to be the length of dreams, and I really think there’s something to that. I don’t know that anyone has ever said that a movie was too short, and there were damn sure a number of lifeless songs that could have been easily scrapped. As an aside, I have only ever had a few experiences go bad with a movie on film (when seeing BEAN, the film literally melted during the trailer for THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE and they had to abort the screening, and there were technical issues that delayed my viewing of THE LION KING during which I encouraged the theater full of children to scream their displeasure toward the projectionist booth) but both films I saw this Christmas (LES MISÉRABLES and DJANGO UNCHAINED) had technical difficulties. There were two flubs during the opening number alone, which is downright inexcusable when all they have to do is press play. Digital revolution my balls.
DJANGO UNCHAINED
A ton of fun, but a little uneven. DiCaprio is the standout, but really I have to praise anyone who was brave enough to get behind this literal paint-the-walls-red revenge epic. I am going to see it a couple more times before writing an extended review. I will say that it seems like it would pair well with THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS, as they share thematic concerns, a flair for genre blending, and unusual casting that works.
