21st Century Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Dir: Baz Luhrmann

****

This 5^th film adaptation (including a lost silent one) of F. Scott Fitzgerald's seminal novel is an expansive, gaudy, and beautiful movie that captures the extravagance of the Roaring Twenties. Baz Luhrmann's huge production brings the world of the novel to stunning life, while never losing track of the core soul that makes up the story.

Nick Carraway is a young man from the Midwest, who has come to New York City to be a part of the fevered dream of life that city promises. He rents a small cottage by the bay on long island, situated in between the huge mansions of the insanely wealthy. Across the bay lives his cousin Daisy with her husband Tom. And Nick's neighbor is none other than they mysterious Jay Gatsby, who's mansion is host to the largest parties in all of New York.

Either you've read the book or you haven't, and either way there is no point in describing more of the plot. The film is extremely faithful to the book in it's plot, dialogue, and narration. The frame story consists of Nick talking with a psychiatrist about the events of that summer he spent in New York, and he begins to write about his experiences, becoming a vessel for Fitzgerald's soulful aesthetic to make its way into the film.

The performances are all stellar, bringing the characters depth; and the film does a wonderful job of getting us inside each of their heads. Tobey Maguire is great as Carraway. He brings a boy scout quality to the idealist character, and as the high life of decadence slowly consumes him, he loses his childish aura and essentially becomes Fitzgerald himself. Leonardo DiCaprio is perfectly cast as the mysterious Gatsby, with that unstoppable smile, and secrets that seem only not to slip out because of the smoothness of his speech. Carey Mulligan gives the difficult role of Daisy a sincerity that makes her character much more sympathetic than in any other film version.

Baz Luhrmann directs the movie with marvelous spectacle. The party scenes at Gatsby's are breathtaking in their fullness and extravagance. Luhrmann has always had an eye for flare, and that comes to dizzying heights in this film. The soul of the movie, however, is not at all lost in the glitz and glamor of the Jazz Age. Luhrmann creates scenes that are intensely personal and dramatic. The climactic scene in a New York hotel room is devastating.

In watching this film version, I was struck for the first time at how sad the story truly is. All of these people have the potential to be good right in front of them, but they are all so blind they can't help but hurt everyone that surrounds them.

Perhaps the most noticeably interesting thing about this film is its soundtrack. Consisting of all modern music, including rock & roll, rap, and electronica, the score at first seems to be a strange, if not bad, fit. However, the music seems to bring the Jazz Age alive in a way that connects it to our modern age of glitz, glamor, and fun times.

Gatsby is a wonderful movie. The film is a marvel to look at, and its wholehearted embrace of the story is moving and entertaining in the most Hollywood of ways. And that plays out quite well for a movie like this. It's characters hide their true feelings and thoughts behind the cloud of booze and lies, and the movie guards its honesty behind the production and sets, but it heart is there, and boy can it sting.

NOTE: I rate movies 1-5 stars and never use half stars because they are pointless.

Kind of a Bad Trip

Trance (2013)

Dir: Danny Boyle

**

Danny Boyle, the director of such movies as Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, and 127 Hours, stumbles hard on his most recent project; an overwhelming, convoluted film that aims to a mind bending thriller but only achieves the rank of an entertaining failure.

It starts out interesting enough—Simon is a security guard for high priced paintings at auctions, and he walks us through the rigorous steps of protecting a painting if a robbery should occur, setting us up for what may be a rather trippy heist movie. However, the only heist that happens is over rather quickly, and Simon is hit on the head, suffering from amnesia. When he awakes, it is revealed that he was in on the robbery, but hid the painting for himself. Unfortunately for him he cannot remember where he hid it, so his former partners take him to a hypnotist to try and remember.

The script is the movie's biggest problem. Explanations are given after the fact, as if they are just making excuses for the plot. As Simon becomes more and more susceptible to the hypnotism, it becomes impossible to tell which scenes are real and which are fantasies. This seems like a good load of fun, but as the movie drags on (and believe me, it drags) it becomes prevalent that the film cannot make the characters or story interesting enough for it to matter. And when all is revealed in the climax, nothing seems to add up satisfyingly; the movie seems like it couldn't even figure out what was supposed to have happened.

I wanted to like Trance. Danny Boyle's direction is intense, thrilling, and fun to watch. There are several scenes that are brilliantly crafted, but the movie just can't hold itself together. The acting, too, is at times quite good, with James McAvoy's performance as Simon being a standout. At times though, the acting seems insincere in their dialogue, as if the actors cannot fully commit to the bit.

None of this is helped by Rick Smith's score, which is gaudy and overbearing trance music that only serves to distract from the movie. It desperately tries to create a sense of uncertainty or insanity, or something, but it just doesn't work.

Trance is a clusterfuck of a film, and the more I think about it the less it works, and the more I resent it. Unless you feel like being disappointed and leaving the theater with an empty feeling in your gut, avoid this one.

NOTE: I rate movies 1-5 stars and never use half stars because they are pointless.

The Dead Rise Again

Evil Dead (2013)

Dir: Fede Alvarez

***

The original Evil Dead from 1981 is a classic, grotesque, and visceral movie experience that very few other horror movies have achieved. Creating a remake of Sam Raimi's twisted film seems folly from the beginning, like the remakes of Halloween or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. However, as things turn out, I found myself truly enjoying this version, both for its call backs to the first film, and its pleasantly surprising originality.

The story focuses on the archetypal characters that usually go to a remote cabin in the woods to awaken an ungodly horror. We have a lead male David, a dumb blonde, a nurse, a long haired guy, and Mia—David's little sister—who must suffer through the worst of it. This version of Evil Dead gives up some of the absurd humor of the original in favor of creating characters we are supposed to care about before they are all brutally destroyed.

Sometimes the movie succeeds in making us care for these doomed characters, but at certain crucial moments it come off as cheesy and forced. The acting by most of the cast is somewhat lackluster, with David often proclaiming “This is insane!” and the blonde stammering her lines awkwardly until she meets her inevitable demise. But Jane Levy gives an enjoyable performance of Mia, creating an admirable character that can at least somewhat see what is going to happen next.

Like last year's Cabin in the Woods, this film is a nice toss up of the predictable slasher genre, and although it is certainly not as good as the original, it brings a level of creativity that is often seriously lacking in remakes. There is a significant less amount of grotesque monsters; instead the characters still have pretty faces even though they have been possessed, but this aesthetic is made up for with gallons and gallons of blood that pour throughout the movie.

Obviously this movie is extremely gory, and as a result some people will hate it. However, the movie is entertaining and unlike almost every other horror movie that comes out these days, is actually a little bit scary and unsettling. The film does a good job of treading that line of being violent and bloody while not entering the overused and dull realm of torture porn. Having said that, the movie is a bloody, brutal mess.

NOTE: I rate movies 1-5 stars and never use half stars because they are pointless.

Garbage Like You've Never Seen Before!

Gangster Squad (2013)

Dir: Ruben Fleischer

**

Gangster Squad, a movie based on the events surrounding the fall of Los Angeles mobster Mickey Cohen, begins by touting that “This Is a True Story”. The movie's confidence in itself only seems to grow from that point, even though it is marred significantly by its juvenile script, clunky direction, and at best hammy acting.

The movie is an embarrassing mess of clichés that are so painfully obvious and awkward that it seems to have literally been written by a child no older than 14. Josh Brolin plays a cop in the late 1940s who is assigned to take down Cohen with his elite team of “misfits”. Ryan Gosling plays the designated loner of the bunch, and I guess we are supposed to care about him, even when his voice sounds like a cartoon character. Gosling and Emma Stone pair up again in this movie, but unlike Crazy Stupid Love there is no chemistry between them, just a lot of dead air and laughable lines. The rest of Brolin's team is filled with equally good actors forced into roles that are as shallow as they are useless. Sean Penn overacts as if this were supposed to be a comedy in the role of Cohen, but at least his performance is fun to watch.

The film's downfall comes mostly from the wretched script, written by some hack by the name of Will Beal. With lines like “I don't just want to get out of town, I want to get out of this life!” and “The war is over, we don't have to fight anymore”, Beal seems to have taken the most obvious lines from the most obvious movies and compiled them all here in one package for us to shake our heads and laugh and the gaudiness of it all. Beal tries to make his characters seem “cool”, which means good at killing people, shooting off guns wildly, and making wisecracks that were stale even in the 40s. The plot is thin as paper and utterly uninteresting. Brolin is supposed to take down Cohen by meticulously shutting down all of his operations, but there is never a plan, never even an idea other than 'lets go in here and shoot at people that may or may not be the guys we want to kill'. I could go on ripping into the pathetic script, but the more I think about it, the more it makes me sick.

Ruben Fleischer, who directed the fantastic Zombieland in 2009, seems to have phoned it in when it comes to making anything look remotely interesting. Fleischer tells the entire story in a bland series of close ups. There is not a single moment of excitement in the whole damn movie, no matter how many bullets were fired. So, with an extremely flimsy plot, dull acting, and painful dialogue, the only thing that is appealing in this movie is too look at Sean Penn's face covered in makeup to make him look more like a baseball mitt than a human being.

Gangster Squad is terrible. It is as obnoxious, ill spoken and desensitized as a 7^th grader, as entertaining as watching paint dry, and about as pleasing as stepping on a nail.

NOTE: I rate movies 1-5 stars and never use half stars because they are pointless.

The Best Films of 2012

Well, we made it through another year. As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy my reviews.

This year was pretty damn good for movies, and there are still some that I haven't seen that I wanted to, so just because I didn't mention it on here doesn't mean I won't think it is great. Except The Avengers, I didn't think that was that great.

2012 wasn't without its stinkers, though. We had garbage like Wrath of the Titans to insult our intelligence, Battleship to give us headaches and remind us how bad Transformers 4 will be, a bloodless remake of Total Recall, and don't even get me started on anything Adam Sandler was fucking in this year. But, on the plus side, most of those movies didn't make much money.

So, here is a list of my 10 favorite films of the year, in ascending order. Plus a few other good movies.

10. THE MASTER

This is a thought provoking character study with two of the best performances of the year. Joaquin Phoenix is phenomenal as the alcoholic war veteran that becomes consumed with Phillip Seymour Hoffman's cult. The two actors create a hypnotic connection that permeates throughout the entire film. Paul Thomas Anderson's film about Scientology is as bold as it is disturbing, capturing the essence of cult mentality, and the desperation of undiagnosed mental illness and shell shock.

9. JEFF, WHO LIVES AT HOME / SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED

Okay so, I guess it is cheating to put two different movies here. However, they are both fantastic comedies that are down to earth in their strange, ridiculous ways. Not to mention that they are at the very least semi unintentional companion pieces. The Duplass brothers directed Jeff, starring Jason Segel as the title slacker, and Ed Helms as his stressed out and self involved older brother. Jeff is a touching and humanist film that really understands and loves its characters and their universal problems. Safety stars Mark Duplass, as well as Aubrey Plaza of Parks and Rec and the hilarious Jake Johnson of New Girl. The plot of this movie is slightly more fantastical and predictable than Jeff, but the two movies understand their characters and connect with the audience in such similar and fulfilling ways that it is impossible to not feel the bond between them.

8. LOOPER

Writer-director Rian Johnson crafts an excellent film about the self defeating circle of violence with this smart, disturbing, and cynical look at the future. The film takes place in the near future, in an economically crumbled America, where the preferred form of currency is Chinese money. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is fantastic as a killer for the mob that gets rid of the bodies they send back in time. Through a series of complicated events, his older self appears in his time, played with style and coldness by Bruce Willis.

7. CLOUD ATLAS

Here we have a movie that is at times silly and obvious, but without a doubt it creates a true sense of wonder. Directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, it is a great achievement of cinematic experience. The intertwining stories that span across centuries connect with a dizzying clarity. The two stories set in the distant future are probably the best, creating both great characters and phenomenal worlds that are dazzling to behold.

6. PROMETHEUS

This sortof-prequel to Alien combines horror and sci-fi perfectly. Co-written by Damon Lindelof, and directed by Ridley Scott, Prometheus is a phenomenally well crafted film. Weirder, stranger, and darker than most any Hollywood movie, this film gets the benefit of both a huge budget and competence. Michael Fassbender's role as the android is mind blowingly intense, and the bleak cinematography makes the entire movie unsettling.

5. ZERO DARK THIRTY

Zero Dark Thirty is really fucking good. Jessica Chastain is powerful and beautiful as the main character, obsessively searching for Osama bin Laden. Kathryn Bigelow's exciting thriller is amazingly well done. The scenes of torture are brutal, and the climax is powerful and disturbing. The film is an unflinching look at the state of the world and America's messy and morally ambiguous role in it.

4. MOONRISE KINGDOM

This is writer-director Wes Anderson's most personal film, and as a result probably his best. Filled with romance, sentiment, melancholy, and humor, Anderson creates a stylized look at childhood and the 1960s. The Romeo and Juliet style romance between the two kids is touching and beautiful, and the two actors are excellent at being funny and honest. The likes of Bill Murray, Francis McDormand, Edward Norton, and Bruce Willis populate this movie, and they all bring their ingenious characters to life. Anderson's movie laughs in the face of modern cynicism, and brings us a refreshingly sentimental and sweet look at love and youth.

3. BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

First time director Benh Zeitlin creates a mesmerizing film about life in the flooded remains of Southern Louisiana in the near future. Hushpuppy, a young girl who lives in the small, almost aboriginal community, must deal with living with people who have given up on the world. Her mother left long ago, and her father his an angry, self interested alcoholic who cannot take care of her. The sad, melancholy of this situation is not always present, as Hushpuppy takes joy in her surroundings and her carefree life. The film is very sad, but it also breathtakingly beautiful, as it rises above the depressing idea of rising sea levels to create a movie that connects to the soul.

2. LAWLESS

Who would of thought that a movie with Shia LaBeouf in it could be so great? Based on a true story, this film is a brutal look at bootleggers in the backwoods of Virginia during the Prohibition. The screenplay by Nick Cave is violent and old school, inspired by tall tales of outlaws and criminals of that old, weird America. Tom Hardy, who also gave an excellent performance as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, plays the eldest of three brothers, and he is a walking legend. Guy Pearce is pure evil as the corrupt federal agent looking for a piece of the bootlegging business. Director John Hillcoat paints a stunning picture of these characters and their lives in the wilderness of America.

1. LIFE OF PI

This is a movie that takes the art of cinema to its incomparable heights. Ang Lee's majestic adventure movie about a 16 year old Indian boy and a Bengal tiger engulfs the viewer into its cosmic world. As a boy names Pi travels with his family and their zoo animals to America, their ship sinks. Miraculously Pi survives on a lifeboat, only to be accompanied by the tiger. Pi learns to live with it, and eventually he and the tiger's destinies become inseparably intertwined. The film pierces into the soul, connecting inner space with outer, and delivering literally breathtaking images. Without a doubt, this is one of the greatest movies I have seen in a very long time.

Now, here are some movies that were also really good, but didn't quite make the list: Haywire, for being a kick ass movie staring Gina Carano who delivers the coolest fight scenes of the year; Bernie for being hilariously dark and featuring Jack Black in one of his best roles; The Pirates! Band of Misfits was the year's best kid's movie, with fantastic stop motion animation and smart, clever humor; Lincoln for delivering a classic look at one of histories most important people; Men in Black 3 for its absolutely unexpected goodness, and Josh Brolin's role as the young Tommy Lee Jones; Skyfall for being the best James Bond movie; The Dark Knight Rises was fantastic, delivering a satisfying end to the series and thankfully not sacrificing its story for action; Cabin in the Woods for making horror movies smart again; Frankenweenie, for letting us know that Tim Burton's creative juices aren't entirely gone; Premium Rush was a fun and exciting movie that was reminiscent of days when blockbusters weren't all 2 and a half hours; and The Man with the Iron Fists, for obvious reasons.

Thanks for reading, as always, and let's look forward to the first year since 2007 without a Twilight movie!

If You Lie to Me, I Will Hurt You

Zero Dark Thirty

Dir: Kathryn Bigelow

*****

Zero Dark Thirty is a movie that forces its viewers to confront the modern history of our country head on. Like 1976's All the President's Men, this movie deals with the politics of our time in an intelligent, unflinching way.

The brutal, obsessive post-9/11 hunt for Osama bin Laden lasted ten long years. The film guides us through the ups and downs, leads and dead ends, and the torturing of prisoners that went on to find him. The majority of the operation is seen through the eyes of Maya, an antisocial loner who becomes consumed with finding bin Laden, and will hunt him down no matter what. The lack of morality and the brutality of the War on Terrorism is seen in all of its disturbing glory; we see the CIA essentially do whatever they want to get information out of people, at least in the early years. But as news of this “enhanced interrogation” sort of upset the apathetic American people, the tactics changed.

Jessica Chastain is magnificent in the main role. She plays Maya as an obsessive, disconnected, and self righteous person that may or may not personify America. As she gets closer to her goal, she becomes more obsessed, with an ever narrowing tunnel vision. Jason Clarke plays a CIA agent that teaches Maya the ropes of how to torture, and for the first twenty or so minutes we see him interrogate and waterboard a prisoner to get any kind of information out of him. Kyle Chandler, Chris Pratt, and Mark Duplass all have small but intricate roles that are all essential to the plot and overall feel of the film.

The script by Mark Boal, who worked with Bigelow for 2009's The Hurt Locker, weaves the tale in a straightforward manner, honestly and tactically revealing the information as Chastain's character discovers it. Kathryn Bigelow directs the movie as if it were a period piece, highlighting the technology, attitudes, and political atmosphere of the past decade.

Zero Dark Thirty is not only a tightly weaved political film about the hunt for and assassination of Osama bin Laden, it is also an indictment of the American government's imperialistic, overbearing and disastrous presence in the Middle East. The film brings to the forefront the blurred lines of what is right to do in the name of justice, as well as the repercussions of blind ideology, on both sides.

NOTE: I rate movies 1-5 stars and never use half stars because they are pointless.

A Troubled Leader

Lincoln (2012)

Dir: Steven Spielberg

****

Steven Spielberg's historical epic of the 16^th president of the United States is a complex and touching look at the last months of both the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln's life. There is a lot to take in upon first viewing of the movie, which focuses almost entirely on the passing of the 13^th amendment while the war is coming to an end.

Unlike 1997's Amistad, Spielberg's last film about the deplorable status of black people in America during the 19^th century, Lincoln deals with the issues in a complicated and intelligent way that is rarely, if ever, seen in Hollywood movies. Honest Abe knows that the only way he can get the Amendment to abolish slavery passed is while the war still continues, even as thousands of Americans continue to kill each other in battle. The attempt to get this amendment through the House of Representatives is shown without sentiment, and reveals as plain as day the blatant racism of the crusty white elites who inhabit the House as well as corrupt double dealings that both sides of the issue contrive. It is unfortunate and sobering to see how little has changed about politics in the past 150 years.

Daniel Day-Lewis gives a stellar performance as the president of the United States, giving Lincoln a fatherly aura that all at once seems to embody the real man and the myth. Day-Lewis portrays Lincoln as a kind, soft spoken man, with a voice that is hardly more than a whisper, but at the same time he is a towering figure, still standing high above all his comrades even as he hunches over with the heavy weight of the death of his own son as well as hundreds of thousands of others on his shoulders. Each member of the star studded cast is wonderful; Tommy Lee Jones gives a great performance as the leader of the Radical Republicans Thaddeus Stevens, who wants sweeping reforms in the US and the equality of all men. Sally Field gives a surprising performance as the manically depressed first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, and actors such as Lee Pace, Joseph Gordon-Levitt (in his fourth film of 2012), James Spader and Micheal Stuhlbarg (to name a few) all give knockout performances.

Spielberg has long stated that Abraham Lincoln is one of his most admired role models, and this really comes through in his direction, usually leading to very good results. Spielberg paints the portrait of a highly moral man who is trying to do good in the face of a world and country filled with so much wrong. Here, Spielberg's flair for sentiment works beautifully, as it only comes in at the right moments. He handles the emotions of the Lincoln family exquisitely, especially when Abe and Mary argue bitterly about their son who died three years previously. Spielberg, however, does not show Lincoln's assassination, supposedly deeming it as exploitative to do so. This is somewhat disappointing, as it is the only moment in the movie that seems white washed and overly sensitive. This, coupled with the surprising absence of vice president Andrew Johnson as a character, are the only flaws in the entire movie.

Lincoln is first and foremost an intense and emotional character study of the 16^th president. Daniel Day-Lewis owns the role; there is never a moment in the movie where is not Lincoln. Towering, kindhearted, and yet untouchable, this character is a man who seems to have been born already in the annals of history.

NOTE: I rate movies 1-5 stars and never use half stars because they are pointless.