We Need to Talk About Kevin (Wednesday, November 30, 2011) (108)

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a movie by Lynne Ramsey based on a novel by Lionel Schriver. I haven't read the book, and that might have been a problem for my appreciation and understanding of the emotional and psychological narrative of the film. Boiled down to it's core, the movie is about a cold, clinical woman, Eva (Tilda Swinton), for whom motherhood is probably a bit of a stretch. When she and her husband, Franklin (John C. Reilly), have a son, Kevin, and move to the suburbs, she has a tremendous difficulty connecting with the child.

It seems that baby Kevin is very willful and very hard to control. Eva spends her days with the baby constantly trying to engage and connect with him, but to no avail. At a point she thinks (we think) he might be autistic, though the doctors say he's totally healthy. As he grows up to be a young child, he becomes more and more willful and self-possessed, being a total terror for his mother and an angel for his father. The story continues to unwind as we see Eva struggle more and more with her son with whom she doesn't connect.

This is basically an update of The Bad Seed (which is a fun, but terrible film), or any of the dozens of books and films that continued that idea (Orphan, Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child). With all of those works, there's always a question of "nature vs. nurture". Is it that the kid is just rotten to his core and a hopeless case or is he a product of his cold upbringing? Ramsey deals with that dilemma here, though I don't think there is anything more than that chestnut.

It is a very beautiful film to watch. Ramsey does a masterful job creating an incredibly cold tone to the story and atmosphere. The modern suburban house the family moves into has few decorations and is mostly white and angular. The camera doesn't move much and, when it does, it is very slow, so everything feels restrained and uncomfortable. Ramsey does use lots and lots (and lots and lots and lots) of red in the film. Clearly this is a visual clue into the the bloodiness the boy (or the mother) has in him, but it's a bit too obtuse for me. Still, there are some lovely images that come out of this icy setting with bolts of passionate color.

Ramsey also seems very interested with sound effects, soundtrack and score. Scenes transition with sound effects that lead us from one moment to another, frequently featuring uncomfortable sounds like scratching and sirens. I think this is an interesting way of creating a world in our minds of unexpectedness and discomfort that never lets us rest in the back of our seats. (I was very disappointed with one scene involving a guinea pig where Ramsey pulled her punches and didn't use the aural as well as she could have. Alas.)

I think the biggest problem for me is that I had trouble understanding the psychology of Eva, which, I would imagine, is better spelled out in the book. I worry that Ramsey and co-adapter Rory Kinnear are very familiar with the anguish of Eva from the novel, but just didn't put much of it on screen, or simply used a shorthand for big swaths of background. It's clear that Eva is a cold person, but not clear why or how she transfers that to her son. Considering this would normally be thought of as a "psychodrama," without the psychological aspect shining through more clearly, it really is just reduced to a campy melodrama (not that there's anything wrong with melodrama - they're just less psychologically engaging for the audience... by design).

Ramsey is clearly a talented director, though I would be interested to see her direct this film with a different script. I appreciate the offensive and brutal sense of humor peppered throughout the work, such as Kevin eating a lychee right after his sister is fitted with a glass eye or him barely flinching and then staring at his mother after she accidentally walks in on him while he's masturbating. This is a good movie buried in a tired story. I don't really need to see another Bad Seed and that's really all that this movie is. It's a very pretty and clever version of the story, but it's not much more than that story.

Stars: 2 of 4

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (Friday, November 25, 2011) (107)

What is there to say about Twilight Part 4 Part 1? It's a movie about vampyres who fuck teens, but only after their married in special Mormon ways. Then it's about how those teens get preggers with monster babies (hello, Rosemary!) who eat them from the inside out. Then there are some werewolves who want to kill the vampyre family because they're really a cult (they are!) and broke the hymen of that teeny girl. Then the teen girl gets all rexy and gray-green-toned. Then one of the wolves decides to fight his brother dawgs because he really likes skinny girls, even tho she's a fang-banger.

Somewhere in there there's a lot of really bad acting. I don't know what you call what K-Stew, R-Patz and Tay-Lau are doing onscreen, but it's ain't acting. They each have reach the bottom of their tanks and are just saying words and looking sweaty. I hope none of them is still doing that stuff in ten years.

Bill Condon has a great inside joke in one scene where people are watching the Bride of Frankenstein, which is a film directed by James Whale, a homosexual and the subject of a biopic he made a few years ago. That split-second moment was the best part of this movie.

Stars: 1 of 4

My Week with Marilyn (Friday, November 25, 2011) (106)

My Week with Marilyn is about the 1956 shoot of the film The Prince and the Showgirl with Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams) and Lawrence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh). While in London during the shoot she meets the story's narrator Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne) who is an assistant director trying to break into the film industry. The two work on the film for several weeks and develop a friendship as she proves to be a fish out of water in London with actors who are not movie stars. She brings with her an acting coach, her husband Arthur Miller and her manager who try to help her at every moment not freak out.

At some point the stress gets to be too much and she panics. The only person who can help her is Colin, who proceeds to have a week-long romantic interlude with her, despite her husband and management team's wishes.

This is a movie about falling in love with actors and actresses and falling in love with movies. This is a nice little idea - that we fall for celebrities who don't really know us and can't ever love us back and that the relationships they have with us is as fabricated as the characters they play onscreen.

Clearly the biggest performance here is Williams as Marilyn - and she does a very good impersonation of her. The problem that I had is that the character is so annoying that it's hard to like her at all. She's such a moron at all times and totally unable to even pretend to act. It's clear that Marilyn was a movie star because she knew how to play to the camera, but it's infuriating to watch her here barely able to chew gum and walk at the same time. It's impossible to align with her, and I think that hurts the dynamic of the film. If we can't fall in love with this Marilyn the way Colin does, there is no magic. Branagh actually does a great job as the pompous and irritated Olivier, though he's not getting much attention for his performance.

This is an OK movie, but is not brilliant. I love movies about movies (though this one is in London, not Hollywood) and this is a decent one, but not as wonderful as some from the past.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

A Dangerous Method (Thursday, November 24, 2011) (105)

David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method tells the story of Carl Jung's early relationship with Sigmund Freud, from around 1904 until 1914. These are the early days of psychoanalysis when many of the Freudian methods that we take for granted were being established. Jung (Michael Fassbender) is a psychologist working in a hospital in Zurich. He has read all of Freud's writings and has started employing his "talking cure". Once they meet, Freud (Viggo Mortensen) expresses to Jung that he could be the "gentile savior" of psychoanalysis, putting a protestant face on the method that is largely practiced by Jews.

One of Jung's patients, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), has massive troubles with her sexuality and sanity. Over time Jung heals her through talking therapy and she begins to fall in love with him, or at least she becomes erotically interested in him. They have an affair, which is totally unsanctioned by the medical world and by his strict protestant background. The two doctors come into conflict over Jung's handing of the affair and what it means for his place in Freud's world.

I think this is a very well-made film (Cronenberg really doesn't make bad movies), but it's a bit cold in its tone and uninteresting beyond the depiction of obscure history. The parts of the story that deal with the two doctors' diverging beliefs is hard to establish as Jung had not yet written much of what he would become known for by this point in history. In other words, Jung is just a doctor trying to practice Freudian psychology, he could be anyone really. The film seems to be presented as an "either/or" between the two philosophies, but only Freud's ideas are presented.

The thematic structure seems to fall apart further when you engage in the father-son story. Clearly there are the suggestions of a Freudian Oedipal relationship going on (that Jung wants to bring down his father... though not to sleep with the mother, per se, rather to take control of the movement and establish himself as king). This is only briefly interesting, though, as any analysis of the film from this point of view underlines the relevance and durability of Freud's ideas. The conflict in the film is resolved entirely by analyzing it. A snake that eats its own tail.

Fassbender gives another great performance here, as a stiff and tortured Swiss man, dealing with more emotional issues that he seems ill-suited to deal with. Knightley's performance is good, but a bit showy. I guess it's easy to say playing a crazy person is easy, but it's really hard to do it convincingly. I think her performance is more affectation than virtuosity.

I actually like this film, but there's something in it that's missing for me. It seems like it's trying to be more than merely a historical drama, but I don't know what that "more" is. I want it to like it more, but in the end, it leaves me a bit cold. I wonder what Freud would say about that...

Stars: 3 of 4

In Time (Tuesday, November 22, 2011) (104)

In Time is a dystopian sci-fi movie that is totally silly and terrible, but actually really fun and very close to being interesting. The film is a straight-up Marxist polemic about a future world (of downtown LA) where all money has been turned into time. In this world, humans are genetically modified to live until they're 25 and then stop aging. At this point, a digital clock on their arm (genetically built into them, you see) turns on and begins to tick off one year, after which they're supposed to die.

This being a hellscape, it's not so simple, though, as one can work and earn more time (as one would earn more money) and the "rich" of this world are able to buy and sell time, as if it was money. Ersatz "billionaires" live wonderful lives, and, because they don't age past 25 and have unlimited resources (time), they lead totally different lives in another "zone" from the poors. Of course they're all hot. (This is complicated.)

At some point, Justin Timberlake gets sick of always being poor, that is, close to being dead, and he is given a century by a rich guy who is sick of living anymore. JT goes into the world of the rich looking only to see how they live, but once he gets there, he finds that he's not trusted and not wanted.

The idea of the film is actually pretty clever, and I totally give writer/director Andrew Niccol credit for making such a blatant and angry Marxist film (it fits in very well with the current Occupy Wall Street movement). Still, the dialogue is totally laughable throughout the film, either totally banal or filled with every "time" and "clock" pun you can imagine ("I'm gonna clean your clock" - literally; "your time is up"). Also, the acting by JT and Amanda Seyfried is really terrible and hard to take seriously. It feels as over-the-top as Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, but it's played as totally serious.

The art direction and costumes are really wonderful here, probably some of the best art direction and production design of any film this year (Gattica looked great too, by the way). Everything is 1960s-70s futuristic. The cars are either '60s Lincoln Continental sedans or '60s Dodge Chargers (or some such Mopar car) but always painted matte black. There is something wonderful about how part of the nightmare of this world is that they went back in time for their future. It's a very clever thing and looks amazing. In spite of this, though, it's a goofy movie that's much more unintentionally funny than serious.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Weekend (Tuesday, November 22, 2011) (103)

Weekend is a wonderful little movie about two guys who meet in a bar and have a weekend of falling in love before one of them has to leave town. It has the romance and sad nostalgia of a Noel Coward story (the bittersweetness of Brief Encounter comes to mind, though neither guy is cheating on anyone) and the freshness, sexual frankness and energy of a mumblecore movie.

This film is written and directed by Andrew Haigh, who has previous worked as an editor on big-budget fare and made one gay documentary, and shows lots of skills in terms of overall look, interesting point-of-view shots and an intense intimacy in the lives of the two guys. I think there are moments when the very slow pace of the film hurts the overall storytelling and perhaps less would be more there. That is, I understand that time, for the two guys, seems to slow down to a standstill because they're so in love, but standstills don't work well for holding audience interest.

The film is really about opposites and unusual juxtapositions. The main guy, Russell, played beautifully by Tom Cullen, is still in the closet and leads a very conservative lifestyle, while Glen, played by Chris New, is out and loves going to clubs and doesn't seem to work. Of course, the biggest "opposite" is that this is a movie that would otherwise be about a man and a woman, but here it's two men. It is a wonderful thing, thematically and theoretically, that this is not really a movie about two gay men being "normal" or "fitting in as a couple in society". This is just a movie about two lovers being lovers, who happen to be men.

This is a good movie and I look forward to other films by Haigh, who clearly knows how to direct.

Stars: 3 of 4

Margin Call (Saturday, November 19, 2011) (102)

I'm not sure you heard, but a few years ago, there were a bunch of banks that sorta fell apart because they were over-leveraged and had too much risk for their asset base. Well, the good news is that if you somehow missed that story, Margin Call is a movie about one such bank and all the good people who work there who didn't mean to cause any harm to people and were really doing their best to stop the damage before it got out of hand.

This is an ensemble piece about the risk management department of a bank, where one of their analysts discovers that the firm is massively over-leveraged and that by the next morning could collapse the whole international banking sector. From late one afternoon until the early morning the next day, the banker people work to stem the tide of destruction that is coming.

As with most ensemble pieces, this is much more about the fact that a certain actor is in the film at all than that he or she actually does a good job acting. Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci, Jeremy Irons, Paul Bettany, Simon Baker and Mary McDonell are just a few of the (small) stars who deliver totally pedestrian performances here. One actor who does a really great job is Zachary Quinto, who plays the young buck analyst who puts all the numbers together. He's cocky about what he knows, but humbled by the size of his revelation. He has one great scene where he's speaking to the chairman of the bank about his C.V. and his background.

I really hate ensemble movies and I also hate movies about recent events. I think we're way too close to the economic troubles of 2008-9 to have anything worthwhile to say about it. I also think such a story functions as shorthand for real storytelling, allowing very average stuff to be presented, rather than something more critical or thematically significant. Still, this movie is really not bad. It's a good movie with a clever, if precious, script and not too much room for grandstanding acting.

Stars: 2.5 of 4