Pirate Radio

“Pirate Radio” (my 0-10 rating: 5)

Genre: Comedy

Director: Richard Curtis

Screenplay: Richard Curtis

Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Darby, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Sturridge, Talulah Riley, January Jones

Time: 2 hrs., 15 min.

Rating: R (for language, and some sexual content including brief nudity)

What to expect? Nostalgia, that’s what.

Hey, having been a part of the ’60s, I can love it. But only for the music memories, nothing else. What we’ve got here in “Pirate Radio” (originally “The Boat That Rocked” in its openings abroad) is mindless, disorganized comic rambling amid colorful characters, well-performed, but with a hopelessly lame plot. God, the memories are sure there. But that’s all.

Loaded with solid Brit performers and one terrific Yank, flowing with major energy on a course to nowhere, the film just hands all responsibility for audience communication to its great pop songs of the day. It sports an effervescent, boundlessly charming impudence with in-your-face jokes, avoiding even a mild attempt at a dicey relationship. It’s good beatin’ feet for those who were 60s teenagers, with a fair share of potty humor.

The film also has a burdensome amount of screen time, overestimating its primary value as a partyin’ movie. There is no consistent tone. It is aimless except as a portrayal of youth turning against a pretentious, pompous world of adults by integrating a new form of music that not only defined, but was their very being.

Writer-director Richard Curtis fabricates a tale of desperate youth yearning for the free expression of Rock in a battle with stuffy, unyielding, entrenched reactionaries. Except that it never gets to be a story.

Here we are in 1966 to see Carl (Tom Sturridge), recently expelled from school, now shipped off by his mum (Emma Thompson) to go out and find himself. He’s to stay with his godfather, Quentin (Bill Nighy), who operates a (fictional) pirate radio station in the North Sea named Radio Rock beyond official British waters. Carl will learn that actually one of the outrageous individuals aboard is his dad, his job to figure out which.

Carl, who has never seen, nor known the identity of, his father, now finds himself in a new school of life, one populated by eccentric deejays, the top dog of which is The Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman). This guy airs daily to 25 million Brit youths who feel deprived of rock in Britain’s greatest era of that music. (In actuality pirate radio stations were quite legal. By technical means, the government just jammed them, but later, seeing the money to be made, the BBC, with the best DJs going, co-opted rock and made it legit.)

In the film, when the government views the broadcasts as threats to English morality, Minister Darmody (Kenneth Branagh) makes it his personal mission to legally annihilate Radio Rock and everybody involved. Darmody, to make things more dicey, is young Carl’s unknown father. The BBC was under contract to produce solely live music, thus leaving only 45 minutes a day to playtime for rock.

The ship of quirky fanatics is run by slick-suited, shaded Quentin (Bill Nighy) who sees his job as maintaining order. But of course it’s a world of rock aboard this vessel and zany capers are the order. Quentin first loves freedom over what he sees as the soul-less British establishment.

Bill Nighy is a gem of cool and Philip Seymore Hoffman is amazing in the way he always chooses the most pitch perfect roles for himself.

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2012

“2012″ (my 0-10 rating: 7)

Genre: Action

Director: Roland Emmerich

Screenplay: Roland Emmerich. Harald Kloser

Cast: John Cusack, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt,

Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Woody Harrelson, George Segal

Time: 2 hrs., 38 min.

Rating: PG-13 (for intense disaster sequences and some vulgarity)

I d’no. Is there really any room to criticize a movie when it’s so much illuminating fun?

Take the words Gargantuan Colossus, upgrade them into outer orbit beyond the capabilities of mere words, and you’ve got “2012.” But it’s so big, SO big, that its attempts to introduce the human element fall well into the realm of pitiful. The spectacle is so humongous, so plausible, that in itself it is terrifying. Then come the attempts at human relationships and how they deal with the impending catastrophe, and that effort is pure silliness. At times embarrassingly so.

Director Roland Emmerich, who did “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” now raises the ante, daring all other filmmakers in the known universe to ever approach this new level of motion picture cataclysmic fury.

Emmerich maintains the everlasting Hollywood tradition of keeping mature, intelligent plot design out of films about mighty natural disasters and just having a grand time with what the most expensive special effects can do. (That tradition’s exception was the 1997 “Titanic” but that focused not on the disaster itself but the actual historical human element.)

“2012″ dares you to even raise the question about quality of plot. It makes certain you don’t even have a second for such trivia amid his Ultimate Spectacular. You’ve gathered from all the publicity, of course, that it’s based on what a few say is a Mayan prediction that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012. With that as a basis, how can you trouble yourself with li’l ol’ things like plot?

Still, going very powerfully for the film, is the simple fact that creativity has always deserved front-and-center commendation in the motion picture arts, and this film has a real lot of that, regardless of the fact that the creativity is based on special effects.

And give Emmerich a big break: Within each spectacular sequence he lays in the monumental details for a crafted sense of audience impact. In a word, the colossal events are shaped for megapower. Forget plot, dialogue and acting. Those are not what this movie is about. Indeed, make it a point to forget them.

However, amid the total wipe-out, we do get to worry about a Russian prostitute, a divorced sci-fi novelist now limo driver Jackson Curtis (Cusack) and a puppy dog. More significantly, we’re looking at a warning by an astrophysicist in India presented to U.S. science adviser Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) that sunspot activity is perilously heating the earth’s core to catastrophe levels. The entire planet’s surface and its oceans are about to re-order themselves. That being certainly worthy of attention at the highest level, Helmsley gets the info to the president’s Chief of Staff (Oliver Platt) who gets it to the prez (Danny Glover).

Meantime, the word being out among the rich and powerful, they plan their escape while the everyday guy is left without a clue, although many are wondering at the recent huge number of earthquakes happening, splitting up streets into cavernous fissures. And the army is hovering over a mysterious sinkhole. Don’t worry about it, exclaims California’s governor, everything’s fine.

Also meantime, Curtis, the limo driver, picks up a broadcast warning from a certain conspiracy freak, Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson). Curtis takes it seriously and hurries to pick up his ex-wife (Amanda Peet) and her dim-bulb, boorish boyfriend. Somehow (and, hey guys, here’s a doozy of a Somehow) they drive untouched in their limo through the besieged boulevards of Los Angeles, then on to a plane for a sojourn through the disintegrating Las Vegas. He follows his Russian billionaire boss to a base in Tibet. Why there? Why, because colossal steel arks have been prepared in anticipation of the great flood. Built by whom? Why, the Chinese, of course. And how ’bout it — they’re airlifting animals two-by-two into it — probably the film’s most absurd presumption.

Now comes the total destruction or mangling of immense areas of the planet as solar storms boil the Earth’s core, causing earth-quaking calamity everywhere. A 40-story high tsunami lifts an aircraft carrier up and plops it onto the White House. Later on, when the oceans have risen three miles high, anything and everything is lifted.

If you’re interested, well, it’s only a few students of Mayan history, happily, who are calling for Armageddon on 12-21-2012. The highest present-day Mayan authorities and scholars of the years 250 – 900 A.D., when Mesoamerica was in full swing, state with resounding fervor that, all modern sensationalism aside, the Mayans never made any predictions about any apocalypse. Makes good press, though, and probably good marketing. What they said was, actually, that after that date life on earth will no longer be the same. Economically? Socially? Politically?

The only thing remarkable in Mayan predictions, however, was that on that date in 2012, for the first time in 26,000 years our sun will drift into perfect alignment with the center of the Milky Way galaxy with us on the opposite side. So what’s that mean? Well, astronomers tell us that we normally get a lot of energy from that Milky Way center and that’s going to be interrupted. So what’ll that mean? Details at eleven.

Or, rather, at 12-21-2012.

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The Men Who Stare at Goats

“The Men Who Stare at Goats” (my 0-10 quality rating: 6)
Genre: Comedy
Director: Grant Heslov
Screenplay: Peter Straughan, based on the 2004 Jon Ronson nonfiction bestseller
Cast: George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey
Time: 1 hr., 33 min.
Rating: R (vulgarity, some drug content, brief nudity)

OK, yeah,… I can see the creative poker-faced comedy it’s shooting for, but it most definitely does not have the plot energy or momentum to sustain itself. It’s a bore.

“The Men Who Stare at Goats” is all George Clooney, who does a marvelous comedic effort with a film that courts yawns all over the place. Aggravated by the continuing Ewan McGregor narration throughout, the humor comes off heavy and unfocused. The true story upon which the film is based surely had its potential for lampoon of the military, being about the real life history of military mind control, and the Jon Ronson nonfiction book sure made it a lot creepier. In that, the U.S. government had its lab technicians spike some unwitting agents with LSD. In the book, this experiment resulted in its leader committing suicide.

This current attempt at satirizing the story sure had fertile material there but it has its problems setting up the necessary comedy undertone that fuels a well-driven laughfest. Clooney’s good, his track record for deadpan well established, but the constant subtle ironies so necessary for this kind of sophisticated high-level wit are there only sporadically. The culprit, actually, is the weight and breadth of the story itself; it distractingly weighs the wannabe comedy off-balance. I wait and wait and wait for a sustained laughs interval, all in vain.

Seems a reporter stranded in Kuwait, Bob Wilson (Ewan McGregor), looking for a big story, happens upon a quirky trash-can salesman who claims to be a Special Forces operator who’s on a mission too far out to even imagine. The man is Lyn Cassady (George Clooney). He says he’s part of an experimental U.S. military unit. This organization, he explains, is on its way to actually changing the ways in which war is accomplished. The unit is a legion of “Warrior Monks” a.k.a. Jedi Warriors, who have actual psychic powers. They can read the enemy’s thoughts, pass through solid walls, and, yes, kill a goat simply by staring at it.

Now, the program’s founder, Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), is missing and Cassady is assigned a mission to find him. Wilson, taken in by Cassady’s wild and woolly tales, decides to go along with him in quest of a major story. Soon enough, their clues lead to Django who’s at a secret training camp run by rogue psychic Larry Hooper (Kevin Spacey). Wilson now finds himself in the midst of a grudge contest between Django’s New Earth Army and Hooper’s super soldiers militia. Wilson is going to be in a position where he’ll have to deal with an absolutely impossible client.

The comedy, when it works, turns mostly on the government’s efforts at a new kind of warfare based upon paranormal abilities.

This natural material for comedy should have been right down George Clooney’s alley, but the film doesn’t supply him with that alley.

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Amelia

“Amelia” (my 0-10 rating: 8 )
Genre: Biography, Drama.
Director: Mira Nair.
Screenplay: Ronald Bass, Anna Hamilton Phelan, based on the books “East to the Dawn” by Susan Butler and “The Sound of Wings” by Mary S. Lovell.
Cast: Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor, Christopher Eccleston
Time: 1 hr., 51 min.
Rating: PG (some sexuality, vulgarity)

A fine and continuously entertaining, if not inspirational, life story, depicted with superb and measured visual design. “Amelia,” about the incomparably courageous “lady of the air” Amelia Earhart (July 24, 1897 – missing July 2, 1937) is a film which, from a historical biography viewpoint, is illuminating enough, but from an involving director’s grip on the most absorbing methods of film audience engagement, it’s outstanding.

For sure, it doesn’t allow itself the time to go in-depth with Amelia. But events in themselves are so impressive in the woman’s life that her magnificent human drive toward destiny is fuel for most of the film’s life force. It moves at a lively, flawlessly paced clip with a superb sense of its own rhythm, with director Mira Nair exerting a precisely timed gait into a carefully crafted finale.

It was the most daring mission ever for the great lady of the air on that summer day in 1937. Creating an inspiration for women everywhere in the world, she had already done what were considered unimaginable flight feats for women. Amelia Earhart (July 24, 1897 – missing July 2, 1937), the outspoken, legendary “goddess of light” had thrilled the hearts of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as well as the men who had held faith in her; her husband, promoter and publishing magnate George P. Putnam and her long time friend and lover, pilot and West Point instructor Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor).

In 1928, having made her amazing flight as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, she was now America’s sweetheart, her personal charisma and driving boldness in courting danger fascinating the public. Her promoter will soon be George Putnam (Richard Gere), the New York publisher who vaulted Charles Lindbergh into bestselling status and now angles to make a mint on this very media-attractive female flyer.

Even as George admonishes Amelia not to court frustration by this male-cynical public, her indomitable resolve will lead her to become the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, although it was as a passenger assistant-pilot, propelling her to star status as “Lady Lindy.”

She hits the lecture circuit before adoring young women and teenagers, and then in advertising, all of which fund her next adventures. George will be her love, but his marriage proposal is accepted with deep doubts arising over the fear that marriage will interfere with her flying career (she insists that the preacher’s line “… love, honor and obey…” be spoken without the “obey”).

Not helping along the way is her romantic interest in aeronautics professor Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor), the father of a 5-year-old Gore Vidal. The film sadly avoids any real depth to this relationship. Invigorating electricity in this love triangle never really surfaces.

Hilary Swank does a reasonably serviceable performance with a Kansas-affected accent, with acceptably inspiring words (about the broad expanses of ocean: “A beautiful place where everything is comprehensible”) and many assertions of the primacy of freedom in a woman’s life. The film’s spectacular panoramas of the great skies, seas and mountains let it pulsate with Amelia’s feeling of unity with them.

Boozy Fred Noonan (Christopher Eccleston), the otherwise skillful navigator who, on that final solo flight in Amelia’s flight around the world, was fated to disappear forever along with her, is played with a canny subtlety in which there is chemistry but no sizzle.

In that Lockheed L-10 Electra, Earhart disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island when radio contact from the base proved faulty, depriving her of critical location data. The final tense moments offer ample portrayal of Amelia Earhart’s mighty claim to immortality. Come and enjoy this, then later you can nit-pick.

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THE GOOD: There is much to praise in this film by young upcoming director Neil Blomkamp. With oscar-winner Peter Jackson in his producing corner, Blomkamp has been able to turn a $30 million film in to one that rivals films with three times that budget. He has also been given free reign to execute the film in whatever manner he saw fit, which is again, quite rare in Hollywood filmmaking unless you are one of the top directors, least of all on one of your first features. “District 9″ tells its story through a combination of documentary and hand-held action techniques, and coupled with the film’s risky story which sees alien refugees trying to co-exist with humans in a very apartheid-like society in South Africa, you have in effect an arthouse film pitched for the mainstream market. The film is not afraid to use its science-fiction context to discuss racial issues, delving in to the darker aspects of human behaviour. The apartheid motif is about as subtle as a sledge-hammer, with the aliens taking the place of blacks (the aliens are referred to as “prawns” by the human characters), although it does allow many moments of social and political commentary that give food for thought. This is borne out in the character of Wikus (Sharlto Copley) who is in charge of moving the aliens out of District 9 and away from the human population who have grown fed up with their presence. When he is exposed to a piece of alien biotechnology, he suddenly finds himself transforming in to one of the aliens and is forced to seek refuge in District 9; he tries to find a way to transform himself back in to a human while the agency he used to be in charge of hunts him down in order to conduct their own experiments on him. The cast is filled with unknowns who do a particularly good job with their performances, particularly Sharlto Copley who not only sees his character transform from human to alien, but also from a coward to a reluctant hero. Although this is a film with aliens and is set within the realm of science-fiction, “District 9″ is really a commentary about how ugly humans can be. The filmmakers deserve their kudos for making such a risky story within the realms of mainstream filmmaking. Neil Blomkamp in particular has shown a remarkable amount of skill as director in bringing to life this rather unusual story.

THE BAD: Despite its unique approach, “District 9″ does manage to stumble in to typical conventions, particularly in its second hour. By this point, there is so much noise, explosions, bullets and people being blasted by alien weapons that it all becomes tedious and over the top. The conventions are a plenty, including the smart and cute alien kid, the object of pursuit (ie The MacGuffin) which is the alien biotechnology, the fish out of water story where an oppressor comes to sympathise with those he oppressed, and a flimsy fugitive-esque chase story. All of these elements are not new and stand out as a little disappointing in an otherwise unique genre film that manages to all but exceed its origins. The character of Wikus is difficult to follow; he is such a coward in the first hour that you do not feel that much sympathy for him. Even in the second hour when he has that moment where he does not think of himself but he puts the fate of his new alien friend ahead of his own, there is still not much to sympathise with, even when we get to the last shot of Wikus, now fully transformed in to alien, constructing a flower which he sends to his wife. In the end, “District 9″ manages to overstay its welcome by about twenty minutes, and largely that is due to too many action sequences in the climax which make the whole endeavour tedious rather than engaging and thrilling.

For the original review, follow this link: http://www.allaboutmovies.net/filmreviewdistrict9.htm

Todd Murphy is a staff reviewer at the film/DVD review web site, http://www.allaboutmovies.net- for all the latest reviews on the newest releases.

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Inglourious Basterds

This weekend I was one of the many who went to see Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds.”

The movie begins in the idyllic French countryside at the home of a dairy farmer and his three daughters. Down the country road rumble the Nazi soldiers led by the much dreaded Col. Hans ‘Jew Hunter’ Landa (a terrific Christoph Waltz). Landa believes the farmer is illegally harboring the Jewish Dreyfus family.

After a most menacing interview, the poor farmer tearfully points to the floor where the family is hiding. The Nazi soldiers riddle the floor with bullets, but the young daughter, Shosanna Dreyfus, crawls out from under the house and begins to run. The startled girl is shaken and covered in blood, but she runs for her life across the countryside. Landa runs out of the house and looks like he has a shot at her, but lets her go with a smirk and a smile.

The antithesis to the Nazis, are the “Basterds,” a group of Nazi-scalping soldiers led by the charismatic Lt. Aldo Raine (a very funny Brad Pitt). The “Basterds” were assembled to create an atmosphere of terror throughout the Third Reich. They scalp all of their kills and carve a swastika in the head of the few they let free. Basically, a violent group of warriors that take tremendous pride in, and receive tremendous pleasure from, their work.

Through a magical twist of fate the “Basterds,” a now adult Shosanna Dreyfus, and every major Nazi officer-including Hitler and the dreaded ‘Jew Hunter’-cross paths at an illustrious movie premiere. The events that unfold are truly explosive and surprising.

This movie is typical Tarantino with a lot of humor, bloodshed and jaw-dropping shockers. To me, it isn’t as brilliant as “Pulp Fiction,” but it’s pretty damn close.

There are many parts that are astonishingly wonderful and they all contain either Brad Pitt or Christoph Waltz. These two actors carry this movie and the excellent part is they have very little screen time together. When they finally do, the payoff is a feast for the eyes. I’m not usually a fan of Brad Pitt, but I honestly believe this to be some of his best work. He really embodies the role, which makes it a joy to watch.

Unfortunately, along with the positives of typical Tarantino, there are also the negatives. Many scenes drag on far too long, which wreaked havoc on my two-second attention span. If Mr. Tarantino could’ve cut down on the grandiose prose just a tiny bit, the movie would have been that much tighter and that much more pleasurable to watch. In addition, the majority of the movie is spoken in French or German, which means you have to read over 50% of the film. My eyes were exhausted by the ending credits.

Bottom line: Not as great as “Pulp Fiction,” but pretty damn close. Excellent performances by Christoph Waltz and Brad Pitt.

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Julie & Julia

“Julie & Julia” (my 0-10 rating: 7 )
Director: Nora Ephron
Screenplay: Nora Ephron, Julie Powell
Cast: Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stanley Tucci, Chris Messina
Time: 2 hrs., 13 min.
Rating: PG-13 (brief strong language and some sensuality)

One of the chick-flickiest of chick flicks, with superb intelligence and refreshing respect for its audience’s intelligence. Expect to be surprised that you could ever, after the very, very dramatically soft opening sequences, get caught up in this. Effortlessly and unassumingly, leisurely rather than reaching for flash and witty dialogue, “Julie & Julia” disarmingly eases its way into your interest, then into your beguilement.

Writer-director Nora Ephron, adept and canny creator of “When Harry Met Sally …,” “Sleepless in Seattle” “You’ve Got Mail” and other insightful gems, now dares to go extremely understated as she unfolds two true stories in parallel fashion, neither of them of overtly strong initial appeal except that the immortal Meryl Streep is in one of them. The other story, featuring only the fetchingly pretty and sympathetic personality of the Amy Adams character, is too commonplace and gentle to matter for a bit.

But then, with charming development, the two plots unfold with amazingly catchy confidence. The basic tale, around the great Julia Child and her achievement in the world of cooking, takes off from a familiar train of frustrations for aspiring writers.

The true story bounces back and forth from 1948 to modern times. The early date follows the intrepid, persevering career of Julia Childs (1912 – 2004), the six-foot-two-inch-tall wife of Paul Child (Stanley Tucci), an OSS cartographer-diplomat, as they are posted now in Paris. Her struggle to get her new 700-page cook book, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” published (initially rejected by a major U.S. publisher with a curt “We aren’t looking for an encyclopedia”) is traced as Paul, with supportive savvy, encourages her. Her eventual well-known success worldwide, attaining an immortality which eventually put some of her pots and pans into the Smithsonian, is the famously known ending.

The film runs a parallel true story of the modern day New York City resident Julie Powell (Amy Adams) as she nears her 30th birthday. Although has a great marriage to a great guy, Eric (Chris Messina), she’s very unhappy with their new apartment in Queens and her dead-end job at a government real estate development office fielding irate phone calls.

But she has found an inspiring uplift in cooking, with enormous inspiration by the accomplishments of Julia Childs. Already an adept, imaginative home cook who finds assured success in everything she puts together, her ambition vaults when she looks over the great Julia Childs cookbook. Her husband, noting that a friend of hers has started a successful blog, urges her to create her own on the subject of cooking. She does, but is stalled in following through with it. He’s going to have to keep pushing, and he does. Eventually, she decides to create her own plan to cook all of the great Julia Child’s 524 recipes in 365 days.

The male characters, typical in the films of most female directors, are rather neglected, especially that of the very underwritten Stanley Tucci. You’re expected to like them, and I did. But, especially in the case of Tucci’s “Paul,” who is portrayed as having little more effect in Childs’ life than a good easy chair, there are no hooks to their personalities. Streep, as ever, masterfully executing the quirks and accents of her character, has become an incomparably mesmerizing movie star.

A movie about the undying perseverance of the human spirit in the face of incessant obstacles, this deliberative, quietly ascending treatment will be a fascination for women, perhaps mildly, with begrudging merit, for men.

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The Proposal

“The Proposal” (my 0-10 rating: 6)
Director: Anne Fletcher
Screenplay: Pete Chiarelli.
Cast: Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. Nelson, Betty White
Time: 1 hr., 47 min.
Rating: PG-13 (sexual content, nudity and vulgarity)

Yes, it’s old, old material but as always, it ain’t the joke, it’s the way it’s delivered. “The Proposal” is solid entertainment, well-romanced by reasonable but not sizzling chemistry between Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. I can’t, however, really give it a “good” rating because it’s fairly devoid of any romance-comedy imagination and a bit loaded with shaky contrivances.

A lot of reliable charm pervades this movie, with intimacies — like nude scenes — delivered cautiously to avoid the R rating. Director Anne Fletcher seems to hold a cannily calculated grip on the intrinsic appeal of each scene, that built-in essence that attracts you at subliminal levels regardless of quality of substance or total predictability of plot direction. Going to this film is like going home, taking yourself back into the warmth of your heart where you are reassured that love can work even if details are missing.

Unquestionably, there’s a significant problem is having Sandra Bullock in there as a witchy type. She’s just not that. But early on, you get it: this is not a film to be picked apart. It’s just good old honest fun. Fact is, she and Reynolds leave little more to be desired in every interaction, clicking flawlessly, if not inspirationally.

Andrew (Ryan Reynolds), the brow-beaten assistant of aggressive New York book editor Margaret (Sandra Bullock) for the past three years, at last may see the tables turned. Seems she’s Canadian and she’s caught in a sudden unexpected bind. Advised that she’s about to be deported, she has to think fast, coming up with the blatant fiction that Andrew is her fiance and that they’ll forthwith be wed.

Well, . . . OK, he responds, he’ll put on the act but only under certain conditions. She’s to be required to come visit his family in Sitka, Alaska for a weekend. The idea here is that they can use this up close and personal time to get to know a little more of each other’s eccentricities, like, for instance, tattoos, allergies (to pine nuts and a wide variety of emotions) plus lots more.

But the dominating change in their individual lives is that Margaret is now plainly on Andrews’ turf. First of all, his family appears to own most of the town (interiors and almost all locations were shot in Massachusetts). And his family is a mite quirky. Mom, Grace (Mary Steenburgen), is welcoming, but imposing dad, Joe (Craig T. Nelson), who has an abiding bitterness over his son’s rejection of the family business, resents this distraction who Andrew has brought home. Grandma Annie is about to celebrate her 90th birthday and there will be a hastily contrived wedding and, not surprisingly, an immigration official on their trail.

Ryan Reynolds more than fills the screen in most of his scenes, his poker-faced demeanor a decided plus. Sandra Bullock delivers a very professional role, up to every nuance. Bit by bit she exposes the pain in her stridency, the career-contrived surface which she has always projected, in which we can realize her emotional wounds that make her assaults on Andrew, as she sees them, necessary. Andrew and Margaret become totally real.

A pleasant experience, if that works for you.

Marty Meltz was, for 30 years, films critic for the statewide Award-winning Maine Sunday Telegram till his column was terminated in budget-cuts on 12-31-07. His website is at http://www.martymoviereviews.com

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Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

In ‘An Introduction To Film Studies’, Allan Rowe states ‘In normal film viewing we experience simultaneously a number of codes: visual, sound and the codes controlling the linking of one sound or image to another’. These cinematic codes work to produce meaning in a film.

In David Lynch’s 1992 film Twin Peaks : Fire Walk With Me the narrative meaning of the film is more than ambiguous rendering a full understanding of the film difficult. Different perceptions of reality are presented side by side in a wholly non linear plot that not only places a greater emphasis on the cinematic codes contained within to produce meaning, but also makes an analysis of them and their function within the narrative interesting in and of themselves.

Twin Peaks : Fire Walk With Me, the film prequel to the hugely successful television series, is a dystopic and bleak analysis of both the distinction between surface and depth in small town America and of the descent into her personal hell of the central character, Laura Palmer. The cinematic codes at work serve not only the generic purpose of providing the clues for what is essentially a surrealistic thriller, but also to provide meaning to the often disparate sequences of action and also to reinforce the feeling that the audience is not only witnessing but participating in the creeping insanity of the lead character, suggested by the film’s fascination with walking.

This is, however, achieved primarily by the constant use of point of view shots and a distinctive and multi-layered soundtrack that in many ways is more captivating because it works on a subliminal level, that is to say that while we are more aware of the image and the images production, sound passes through in a less scrutinized form.

While even a rudimentary glance at the credits clearly highlights the importance of sound to film, cinematographer Ron Garcia also plays an important role. Changes in the relative view of reality are highlighted and in many ways signposted by subtle changes in the framing of shots and the quality of the image. Indeed, the cinematography is possibly solely responsible for the pervasive sense of voyeurism that links the two separate sections of the film. The mise en scene, especially Lynch’s use of decor and props, takes on a dual purpose of publicly and explicitly rendering meaning not only to the film as a whole but to the plots within.

A good example of this is the early scene involving Lynch himself and Agents Desmond and Stanley and the mysterious Lil. Her costume is quite explicitly highlighted as being important, strong and vibrant reds and illuminated blues standing out from the dark, flat background against which she is placed. This importance is further stressed as the two agents discuss precisely what she was wearing.

In terms of acting, the film is even more clearly divided into two sections, the prologue subtitled ‘Theresa Banks’ and the longer second part chronicling the last seven days of Laura Palmer. In the prologue dialogue is if anything under delivered and very much played down, whereas in the second section the emphasis is placed far more on emotion and action and reaction, helping to create in the audience the nerve jangling sense of fear and desperation. Despite these differences, in terms of cinematography links can strongly be made between the narratively ambiguous prologue and the main drive of the plot in the second section.

Of all Lynch’s feature films FWWM has the most unusual construction. Time and reality are distorted creating a strong sense of chaos and loss that is indicative of the central character’s role. Cinematographer Ron Garcia produces a quality of image that is both deliberately cool and unreassuring. Even the home interiors, generally havens of warmth and safety, are unwelcoming, generally shot from low angles to reinforce the sense of menace and fear that Laura feels towards her home environment. The film, however, concentrates primarily on its many exterior shots, the sequences in the Fat Trout Trailer Park perhaps best highlighting the fact that the prologue is infused with a cold and cutting autumn light.

Despite the profusion of natural light, all the characters present in these scenes are wrapped up against the cold, increasing the feeling of unease that the sequences create with this seemingly unnatural image. The rest of the film juxtaposes different atmospheres suited to the different levels of reality which are presented. The sharp light is mirrored by static shots, seamlessly cut together when conventional reality is dominant. In the more surreal scenes, however, image merge, the focus is softer, giving a more dreamy, unreal quality, and the use of fades and dissolves proliferate. This clearly indicates a shift in perception and a focus more on the subjective responses of the characters, if not for this device the action would border on the incredible. A prime example of this is the sequence of three shots following the revelatory scene between Laura and Harold Smith.

1. C.U. from low angle – the ceiling fan spins
2. M.C.U. Laura – she stands on the stairs looking faint. She is bathed in a red glow.
3. M.S. Red velvet curtains, seen from a high angle, sway in the Red Room.

Firstly, the final shot from the previous scene fades to black. The shots themselves give the impression of being in slow motion, the lighting is now relatively warm and unnatural in opposition to the other scenes and far from being edited neatly together, they dissolve from one shot to the next, the images almost merging. As the final shot merges into the next scene at the FBI offices, one of the visual motifs that is used to highlight these more hallucinatory passages is seen. For the briefest moment, the shot of the curtains is merged with a far fainter shot of television snow.

Visually, the most striking and original aspect of the film is its use of upsetting shooting angles and frames. On many occasions, especially the scenes between Laura and Donna in the Hayward house, shots are taken directly from above. Symmetrical houses, like the Palmer house, are framed slightly off center to distort the symmetry and disorientate the viewer. Both of these elements are used to good effect to generate a sense of imbalance that is presented as a metaphor for Laura’s life and as a visual technique to promote Laura’s point of view.

This overt identification with Laura is reinforced throughout the film with its focus on walking. The first shot we see of Laura is of her walking, with the camera walking with her, which as the title suggests is the idea at the heart of the film, to walk with Laura to the very end. As Michael Chion suggests in his book ‘David Lynch’, FWWM heralds one of the most surprising walking scenes in all cinema. The scene after school in which Laura is confronted by Bobby is not only visually disorientating, perhaps highlighting Laura’s recent use of cocaine, but illustrates Lynch’s original way of subverting the films diegetic and non-diegetic sound to reinforce the overall sense of dislocation and submersion. As Bobby backtracks towards the entrance to the High School, a rhythmic piece of apparently non-diegetic music begins, but in one of the most bizarre shots in the film, begins to develop an impression of being diegetic as not only Bobby but the assorted extras begin to move in over exaggerated gyrations timed perfectly with the soundtrack.

More than ever, Lynch took part in the construction of the soundtrack to the film, being credited not only as sound designer but one of a number of sound re-recorders. Inaugurating a new computerised mixing system, Lynch produced a soundtrack that contains a confusion of stressed sound effects. The themes and intrinsic meaning of the film are not just illuminated by the film sound but reinforced by it. The constant sound, activity, the source and nature of which are often obscure, is one of the films most original aspects and acts as a metaphor for the turmoil that is Laura Palmer. As more and more pressures pull her towards her ultimate demise, the soundtrack and effects disorientate us down the same path. As Chion notes ‘It creates a sense of the screen as a fragile membrane with a multitude of currents pressing on it from behind’.

The setting of the film, familiar to fans of the television series, is used to a much different effect in the film, especially in the framing of particular locations and sets. One visual link between the prologue and the rest of the film, although this device is far more prevalent in the prologue, is that many of the characters are framed against window or doors. In the local Sheriff’s office, Agent Desmond exits, passing by a maze of tightly compacted doors almost identically laid out as the later scene in the Palmer house when Laura, in a disturbing mix of close up and point of view shots, discovers Bob in her bedroom.

The fact that during the opening section many of the characters are framed by doors and windows increases the sense of voyeurism that pervades the film and gives an early indication that these characters are somehow merely onlookers in the story that is to follow, which in reality they are. The sense of danger and closeness (Laura’s killer after all is her father) is also introduced in the prologue through the lighting.

Many of the shots have only one, often very visible, source of light. This serves to create a depth of shadow that is both menacing and disturbing. In the scene in Hap’s Diner, Desmond and Stanley sit drinking coffee, the doorway in darkness behind. Later at the FBI offices, Special Agent Philip Jefferies emerge from the darkness of an unseen lift. In the town of Twin Peaks itself, the danger again is from the darkness of the thick forest that surrounds it on all sides. The prologue again sets up and reinforces this idea; as Gordon Cole (played by Lynch himself) is speaking on the phone with a huge painting of a forest covering the wall behind him, the densest part shrouded in shadows and lurking menacingly over his shoulder.

In studying cinematic codes, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me presents many interesting questions and difficulties. While in the film they do serve to produce a level of meaning that the plot appears to care little for, they perhaps function more to create a level of subjective empathy, identification and the right sorts of feeling to accept what is happening within the film, rather than an objective understanding and explanation of what is taking place.

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By Marty Meltz

“Up” (my 0-10 quality rating: 10) 
(animation) 
Director: Peter Docter, with co-director Bob Peterson 
Screenplay: Bob Peterson 
Voices: Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, Delroy Lindo, Bob Peterson 
Time: 1 hr., 36 min. 
Rating: PG (perilous action)

A masterpiece of adult-level art and craft of animated films, not to say a wonderfully refreshing plot quality exploring seriously the trials and tribulations of our lives. The points of praise for this film cannot be overdone. It’s a landmark.

And no, forget about any necessity of seeing it in 3-D. If anything, that’s distracting.

Pixar, ever the innovator in raising the bar on animated feature films, now presents an artistically and intellectually brilliant movie which amazingly appeals to both kid and grown-up filmgoers, although its sublest points are definitely adult-oriented. No, you don’t have to be accompanied by a child under 9 to be admitted; you can totally love this gem of entertainment all on your own. Yes, it even surpasses the ingenious “Wall-E.”

And no, this is not, as all the previews exploit at juvenile levels, simply about an old gent who has his house and himself lofted away by thousands of balloons to fantastical adventures. That’s got nothing to do with the film’s visceral levels of emotional force. We’re talking timeless, actual emotional values at all ages to the end. Ane guess what, old people are not upstaged by kids and are actually shown as wiser.

For the grand intelligence and sensitivity that went into this movie are based on the simple notion that certain human emotions, dreams and hopes are universal in people of all ages from early childhood to final farewells. In particular, loneliness. Yes, you will cry in some scenes, not because of cartoon characters up there on a big screen but because the feelings they are eliciting exist regardless of the medium and the age of the characters and evoking them, whether by real acting or animated figures.

Package these amazingly created aspects with spellbinding aesthetics, some of ethereal quality, and endlessly playful notions of human interaction, and you’ve come to an experience, not a movie. Through inspired balance of screen color designs and shapes to pace the momentum, craft joins story value to summon forth your deepest values and yearnings.

Here we have the love between an 8-year-old boy and a girl growing to adulthood and marriage, then on to old age and a haunting memory at 78. It’s all told quickly in an exquisite montage.

Now for the fun and the beauty.

The story is essentially that of the delightfully impossible journey of aspiration into unknown geographic territory which brings forth wondrous new emotional energy by an old codger and a young boy scout. Sounds sentimental? The way it’s manifested charmingly and disarmingly here, with minimal fantasy elements, that can be criticized only if you’re an irrevocable cynic for whom feigned indifference has become a religion. Indeed, the film takes admirable risks in being relatively talky and steering well clear of the usual “marketable” kids’ appeal action pieces.

The story begins with 1930s simulted Movietone newsreel in which the story is told of an Explorer named Muntz tried to convince the world of the existence of a giant bird. Widely derided as a hoax, he took himself into self-exile into the South American jungles to find that bird again. Profoundly affected by the film are Carl and Ellie, two children with adventurous ambitions. As they grow older (in a fantastically descriptive brief montage) they hold to their dreams and they marry and look to fulfilling that dream.

But alas, there is fate. Ellie must settle for a contented, loving but perhaps boring life with balloon-seller Carl (voice by Ed Asner). And so tragically, she dies so before her time. She has left a scrapbook. And a cantankerous widowed husband who becomes a virtual hermit. He just wants to be alone. Or so he thinks. His home surrounded by giant construction projects, that will be very depressing for him.

But human ingenuity springs eternal. Faced with eviction, Carl comes up with the mother of all schemes. In a dazzling sequence, he attaches thousands of colored balloons to the house which hoist it to the skies.

So now to fly it to South America, so to live his deceased wife’s dreams. But he has a stowaway aboard. It’s Russell, the little Junior Wilderness Explorer who had tried to get the old man to help him get his Help the Elderly badge award.

At their arrival at the falls, in thick fog on top of a mesa, they have begun an adventure that will feature endless jungle animals, all presented with outstanding imagination and perception, with special appeal in the insightfully treated dogs who greet them. In the finale, there will be a zeppelin piloted by Muntz (the portrayal and treatment of it provide a mighty visual experiencein its elaborate exterior and interior), the idealized explorer over which Carl has modeled his adventure. Muntz has been up there all these years in quest of the bird the world did not believe existed.

So many incidents and so much action, yet the film is forever first-rate in its attempt at probing the depths of human emotion. It is ever a class act, funny, absorbing. Moving.

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