127 Hours

December 24, 2010

127 Hours (2010) *****
Directed by Danny Boyle

My tweet:

127 Hours (2010)- Pretty damn amazing. Maybe the most intense film I've seen in the last few years. ***** out of 5

Other thoughts:

Without a doubt, had anyone else other than Danny Boyle directed 127 Hours, it would be a vastly different film. One of the most visceral filmgoing experiences I've ever had, we see the true story of Aron Ralston, a fearless and arguably stupid outdoor adventure junkie who is so confident in his own skills that he doesn't tell anyone where he's going despite the fact that he will be all alone, with no one around him for miles. After a flirtatious tryst with some young women, Ralston falls into a crevasse where a boulder lodges itself on top of his arm. Thus begins an excruciating couple of days that has Aron try and fail to move the rock, then figure out how to continue to survive with a rapidly depleting water supply, and finally come to terms with what he must do in order to have a chance to live the life he sees in front of him. All the while, Aron retreats into his mind, taking stock of his life so far while also imagining going to a party he was invited to by the young women mentioned above. He has one hour worth of battery life in his camcorder, and he uses it not only to watch previously recorded material, but also to record a message of love to his parents. As things get really dire, Aron also interviews himself on camera in a dual personality exchange containing more pathos than you'd ever see on Letterman or Leno.

For well over an hour, we're trapped along with James Franco who plays Ralston, and knowing that the character is ultimately going to cut off his own arm, Boyle teases us with serious suspense. The film brings to mind the old Hitchcock axiom--if you see a bomb explode, it's not scary, but if you know there's a bomb hidden under the table which could go off at any moment, then that's scary. At the same time, Boyle strikes the right balance between ratcheting up tension and not getting too manipulative. So much of the film could have pandered to the sort of filmgoer who loves to see disturbing images on screen like a man forced to cut off his own arm. Instead, 127 Hours is refreshingly often meditative and quiet instead of being uncompromisingly nasty and gratuitous.

Beyond Boyle's direction, another key to the film's success is James Franco who gives perhaps the performance of the year. Franco is one of those actors that seems a bit odd in real life. I remember him best for his hilarious guest starring role on 30 Rock where he plays himself having a love affair with a body sized pillow with a Japanese anime woman in a bikini drawn on the outside. Match that with his peculiar desire to play an over-the-top serial killer on soap operas, and it's perhaps expected that Franco would ham up a performance that requires him to be on screen alone for almost an entire film. Also add Ralston's real life confidence and ability into the equation, and Franco seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Instead, he's so perfectly balanced as a relatively socially awkward jock. Franco's Ralston isn't the sort of person that's going to be the life of the party, but he would be the sort who would be all too eager to jump off the roof of a house onto mattresses below if someone dares him to do so. If anything, Franco teeters just a bit towards underplaying the role, but, considering that you can't take your eyes off of him on screen and considering that every single thought and plan registers to us so clearly often without any words spoken at all, it's safe to say that he rises up to the challenges of an unconventional role and elevates the success of 127 Hours as a result.

The last five minutes or so don't quite match the consistent novelty of the previous ninety, with imagery involving a couch sitting next to a pool that's just a bit trite, but, by that point, the viewer has experienced everything necessary concerning the exposition, climax and catharsis of Aron Ralston's unimaginably difficult and impressive experience. 127 Hours is at times difficult to watch, but thanks to Boyle and Franco particularly, it's one that left me completely satisfied. I'm sure that Ralston's ordeal was much more onerous than mine was simply watching a movie, but I'd like to think that, witnessing nerves being sliced, I might have gotten at least a glimpse into the suffering and ultimate triumph of an especially resourceful and determined young man.

The Fighter

December 22, 2010

The Fighter (2010) ***
Directed by David O. Russell

My tweet:

The Fighter (2010)- Story about as generic as the film's title. Russel's direction doesn't live up to the talent on screen. Good film. ***/5

Other thoughts:

Yes, The Fighter is a good film; yes, it's well made; absolutely, it has some of the best performances of the year. Overall, though, I have little respect for the film. There's little that distinguishes The Fighter from any number of formulaic sports movies like Rocky, Hoosiers or even something silly like The Mighty Ducks. The ending especially feels recycled almost verbatim from a Rocky movie with some number after its title. The final boxer is a jerk, refusing to even shake hands (or fist bump gloves) with Mark Wahlberg's Micky Ward. He's written with such animosity for absolutely no narrative reason except the audience has to want the guy to be beaten to a pulp. We don't know him, and if he wasn't such a brute, we would feel bad with each punch thrown in his general direction.

Herein lies a problem with most boxing movies. The sport too easily allows for "revenge" tropes within film narratives, and as such, the motivation isn't to win the sport. Instead, the bad guy is motivated to "hurt" the good guy. This has become cliched, and it's disingenuous to the fundamental virtue of the sport of boxing. If boxing is this destructive, then a documentary like Boxing Gym about saving kids from the streets through boxing would turn into an entirely different kind of film completely.

The Fighter is more consistently successful than a film like Black Swan, which is so ambitious that its failures are epic. Yet, Black Swan is a film that receives my favor because it's not simply presenting an archetype in a slick way using talented actors to elevate tired material to awards level consideration. Black Swan is trying desperately to be different. The Fighter, on the other hand, is trying desperately to be a good version of something all-too-familiar.

The Bah-ston accents fly in this "based on true life" tale of Micky Ward, a second tier boxer who is being held back by the coaching of his troubled brother Dicky (Christian Bale), a one-time A-lister who holds the distinction of being the only fighter to knock down Sugar Ray Leonard in the late 1970's. Dicky's not thinking straight for many reasons, but Micky feels obligated to keep him and their mother Alice (Melissa Leo) in charge of his career because they're family. After Micky is pulverized in a match in which he should never have taken part, he begins to rethink his future. His new girlfriend, a sassy bartender named Charlene, aggressively pushes Micky towards new coaching and management. Meanwhile, Dicky is arrested and jailed, allowing Micky to start with his new coach without really having to cut off his ties with his family. Upon release, when Dicky returns to Micky in a better condition than he was before, he expects to continue as his brother's manager. Charlene is pulling Micky in one direction while Dicky and Alice are pulling him in another. At that point, for the first time, Micky makes his own decision which might just alienate everyone in his life--or perhaps just the opposite.

Russell's direction is a real problem. There are way too many styles at play which don't effortlessly work together. At times, we're actually seeing an HBO documentary being filmed about Dicky, providing an almost mumblecore/neo-realist style which still hangs around even after the documentary filming ceases. Many scenes have Micky's family, which consists of about seven ridiculous looking sisters in their 20's and 30's who are pretty much indistinguishable from each other as characters, improvising dialogue, shrilly yelling continuously in a cacophony of tedium until a scripted line must be said. At that point, everyone suddenly stops talking, and, as a result, too many sloppy scenes clutter the narrative, ultimately exhausting the audience.

Once again, this is not a dull story, and a handful of excellent performances thankfully give The Fighter its heft. Wahlberg has never been a scene-chewing kind of an actor, and this time around, he's perfectly cast as the son/brother who allows others to take control of his life. His character can throw a punch, but inside he's a gentle soul, and Wahlberg wisely allows his natural acting style to match Mickey's passive personality. Thankfully, Wahlberg never chooses to play at Mickey's weaknesses. As such, Mark Wahlberg gives one of the quietest and best performances of his career.

Amy Adams seems like the sort of mousy actress who can only play mousy characters like the mousy nun she played in Doubt. Here, Adams plays against type as an aggressive, tough-as-nails Boston barmaid who won't take crap from anyone. Believe it or not, Adams rises up to the challenge. Charlene isn't the most pleasant or even likable character in the world, and Adams is more than willing to allow her character's gaudiness to show through. On paper, Charlene is a bit one note, and Adams' performance is similarly somewhat limited, but I think many have been or will be surprised that Adams can hit this note so well. In a million years, I never would have thought of Amy Adams in this role. Similarly, Melissa Leo is a lot of fun to watch as Alice. She gives the sort of over the top performance that this material needs. Alice is an exaggeration of a character, and Leo, who was excellent in Frozen River, nails the sort of role that many more established actresses in Hollywood would have killed to play.

The real standout performance belongs to Christian Bale as Dicky. Bale is one of those actors who takes his craft so seriously that he has been known to give some pretty awful performances in films like Public Enemies and Terminator: Salvation. Even his performances as Batman could have registered more. That being said, everyone knows that Bale has it in him to be better than anyone else working in film today. His role as Dicky in The Fighter is perhaps the first performance since Rescue Dawn or even American Psycho that signifies itself as solid evidence for Bale's almost unmatched abilities. He's an electric presence on screen, and yet, his none-too-subtle turn as Dicky feels completely real from beginning to end. Bale has never looked so comfortable on screen. This could be the role that gives Bale his first Oscar, and with Bale's abilities, I wouldn't be surprised if there are many more in his future. I do think Geoffrey Rush is just as good (if not better) in The King's Speech, but if Bale wins on Oscar night, I won't be upset one bit. Without Christian Bale, The Fighter would probably not be worth your time.

The Fighter is a movie that should give its casting director a bonus check for its success. The performances elevate a trite script and pedestrian direction into something quite respectable. I think I would have responded to this movie even more had I felt like screenwriters Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson and director Russell didn't find their film by rummaging through overused boxing movie bromides. A movie with this much awards consideration ought to push the envelope even an inch.

The King's Speech

December 21, 2010

The King's Speech (2010) ****
Directed by Tom Hooper

My tweet:

The King's Speech (2010)- Flawed, but a refreshingly humble telling of importance & accomplishment. Solid acting. **** out of 5

Other thoughts:

The King's Speech plays out like a formula sports movie, with an under-performer working with a coach not living up to his potential to improve his level of play culminating in a tense match up where the audience roots almost beyond hope for the victory of the underdog. Not to spoil anything, but like your average sports movie, there's little surprise at the end of The King's Speech. Yet, Colin Firth's stuttering Duke of York, who later becomes King George VI of England, the father of the present Queen Elizabeth, is not engaging in anything as ultimately inconsequential as a sporting event. He's tasked to deliver a proclamation of the beginning of World War II to his subjects over the radio, and thus, this time around, the painful self-importance of most sports movies is placed aside for legitimate stakes that merit such tension and sentimentality.

We root for the King, who is known affectionately as Bertie by his eccentric vocal coach Lionel (Geoffrey Rush). Lionel's philosophy is that he can cure one's stutter by creating a safe environment at his own home office, thus insisting that Bertie must come to him. This is one of many rules of royal etiquette that Lionel finds superfluous and perhaps even harmful. The pressure to be a member of royalty must be especially hard for a stutterer considering that the Royal Family's primary function is to act as a voice to the people. With walls and heirs built up between Lionel and Bertie, there's no way for Lionel to help Bertie get to the root cause of why he stutters in the first place.

Thus, the two become not only teacher and pupil, but also close and trusted friends, and they get into some serious personal disagreements as friends do. Lionel and Bertie work on the mechanics with (sports-like) montages of repeating sounds, loosening the jaw, singing, dancing and cursing, all of which are meant to help Bertie find the rhythm to his speech. He also forces Bertie to come to terms with his own past, wrought, as one might expect, with ridicule by those he loves the most.

Lionel plays an even more important role once Bertie's father, King George V, dies, and his playboy older brother, played by Guy Pierce, becomes King Edward VIII. Until Edward has an heir, Bertie is next in line to the throne. Due to his love for a married American woman from Baltimore, Edward abdicates the throne to Bertie in order to marry a woman of divorce, which at the time was not permitted for royalty. Thus, Bertie becomes King George VI at the precise moment Hitler becomes an unparalleled European threat.

From this synopsis, it might seem like The King's Speech is a stuffy, serious historical drama, when in reality, it's so light and airy that it almost floats away completely. We could have been given a film that emphasizes the grandiosity of royal living, much like The Young Victoria, but instead, much of the film takes place inside the home of Lionel. This is a humble film telling an intimate story about a truly important event. Ultimately, it does make sense to tell this story in this way considering that we're dealing with a man overcoming a personal lifelong struggle. No matter who is attempting to jump a hurdle, the training and perseverance necessary to do so must be done by the individual with the most support given by maybe one or two people that surround him. Anything beyond that and things get complicated thereby lessening the chances of success. Look at weight loss as an example.

Lionel is not the only one fiercely loyal to Bertie. His loving wife, played by Helena Bonham Carter, has taken the concrete steps necessary to find help for her husband over and over again with no success. She's willing to sit outside in a waiting room in support of the man she loves unconditionally. Her support not only helps her husband but also helps her country. Though this future queen and future king have an unconventional marriage, they truly love each other, and their familiar love allows us to relate to people living vastly different lives than our own.

The King's Speech is not really a success due to its screenplay or its director, Tom Hooper. If anything, neither matches the considerable talent of the actors who elevate their performances into greatness. Hooper, only 38 years old, directed a good film from 2009 called The Damned United, and in that film, I criticized some of the directing flourishes that seemed too precious and on the nose, including what looked like Power Point scrolling of soccer scores flashing across the screen. In this film, Hooper ratchets up the whimsy with distracting and superfluous framing shots and extreme comic close-ups during training montages. These moments almost unhinge the film altogether, as if Hooper isn't taking his material seriously at all. Rush and Firth are engaging and humorous enough during these sequences that the director doesn't need to step in and provide the kind of quirk we see with Wes Anderson or in a film like Garden State. There's a little too much hipster in Hooper's direction.

That being said, with the exception of Guy Pierce who gives a two-dimensional cardboard cutout of a performance, the acting is top notch all around. Helena Bonham Carter is one of those actress who can't help but be oddly compelling on screen in whatever role she tackles, which was made clear this past year in Alice in Wonderland. On paper, her role couldn't have been very interesting. She doesn't have huge emotional or comic scenes like Firth and Rush, but she's every bit as memorable and commanding, making the most of her limited screen time. There's much talk of an Oscar nomination for Carter, and I think I stand by the belief that, had any other actress at all tackled this role, there probably wouldn't have been any supporting actress nominations for any award at all for The King's Speech.

Firth is quite good, and at times excellent, proving after A Single Man that he's among the greatest actors working today. He may very well win the Oscar, though I'm not sure he's on the same level as James Franco in 127 Hours or Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network. Much like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, the performance is anchored by an acting gimmick. Firth seems like he spent more time perfecting his stutter than really delving into the core of his complicated character. He always delivers what's necessary, but I do think he or another actor could have given a performance with more nuance.

The standout, however, is Geoffrey Rush, who gives one of the best performances of the year as Lionel. Granted, his character is written with a side plot about acting that doesn't really go anywhere, but Rush makes Lionel into the kind of ultra-talented, ultra-intuitive comrade to the future king that makes us understand completely why such an important man like King George VI would want this Australian commoner around him for his entire career. Rush rightly never gives into the pathos that I imagine the screenwriters were going for by emphasizing Lionel's failed acting past. This would have given the character ulterior motivations for the King's success that would have made little sense within the film.

Rush is one of those actors that doesn't get a lot of respect from American audiences. He's an Oscar winner for Shine, a film I haven't seen, and he was nominated for a brave performance as the Marquis de Sade in Quills and for Shakespeare in Love. No other actor that I can think of so reliably does exactly what is necessary in a film without a hint of smugness. Rush burrows so deep into his roles that it's almost impossible to fully grasp his persona outside of his performances. Therefore, our celebrity obsessed American culture most likely doesn't even register Rush as a personage outside of whatever role he is delivering at any given moment. He's spectacular in The King's Speech, giving a grand performance that never once pulls focus from our main character. Rush is funny, charming, fascinating and real, elevating Lionel beyond the cliches that exist in the script into a pivotal congenial anchor for King George VI.

The King's Speech provides the inspirational finale we've all come to expect from a sports film. It also sidesteps the pomposity of most royal costume dramas, giving us the intimate, human story behind one of the great examples of rising up to meet the vital challenges of leadership of the 20th century. Few films that I've seen so wisely avoid misjudging the scope of the subject matter within. The King's Speech could have been many different sorts of films, and I can't imagine how any of them could have been any more apropos.