The thirteen films mentioned here each had at least one
theatrical screening in the Milwaukee area in 2012, although I only caught up
with them in the early months of this year.
Anna Karenina (Joe Wright, UK, 129 min.)
Director Joe Wright brought a welcome stylistic flamboyance to
the usually stuffy period drama genre with his adaptations of Pride and Prejudice (2005) and Atonement (2007), but those films seem
like mere warm-ups for his wildly extravagant new take on Anna Karenina. Anna (Keira
Knightley) and those in her social circle behave as if life is a stage, so
Wright cleverly frames the story by showing that the actors playing the roles
are literally on a stage, with occasional appearances by stagehands moving
props in front of obviously artificial backgrounds. The director’s stylistic conceit is
interesting, and certainly makes the film a notable formal exercise, but the deliberate
abstraction also distances the viewer from the story’s emotional content, to
the point that key character motivations – including even Anna’s extra-marital
passions - often seem inexplicable. B-
Casa de mi Padre
(Matt Piedmont, USA, 84 min.)
This straight-faced, Spanish-language parody of Mexican
melodramas finds Will Ferrell playing a young man who must save his father’s
ranch from drug lords, with the incongruity of the star’s age and race in this
context being pretty much the whole joke.
The movie’s sheer level of commitment to its one-note premise is
impressive, but it probably would’ve worked better as a five-minute Funny or
Die short than it does as a feature-length film. C
Damsels in Distress
(Whit Stillman, USA, 99 min.)
Whit Stillman’s return to filmmaking after an extended
absence (his last directorial credit had been for 1998’s The Last Days of Disco) is certainly distinctive. Unfortunately it doesn’t have much to offer
beyond novelty. A group of preppy
college students (headed by Greta Gerwig) lead a crusade to “rescue” other
people on campus from slovenliness, poor hygiene, and depression. The inversion of usual college movie
priorities (with the snobs rather than the slobs being the protagonists this
time around) is unique, but it doesn’t seem that Stillman is even attempting to
make any sort of point with it. C
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Peter Jackson, New
Zealand, 169 min.)
Peter Jackson has caught a lot of flak for splitting up J.R.R.
Tolkien’s slim novel over three films, but it’s clear from part one that his
devotion to capturing every minor element of the book (and imagining events
that happen in between chapters) is less a cynical cash grab than a product of
his passion for the text. But by vividly
imagining every battle that is mentioned in passing in Tolkien’s writing,
Jackson loses the light comic feel of the novel and replaces it with a much
less charming and more generic epic fantasy tone. Ironically, the emphasis on action
contradicts the book’s brains-over-brawn message, as even Bilbo Baggins (played
well by Martin Freeman) turns into a standard sword-wielding hero during the
many drawn-out melees. This is still an
above-average blockbuster film, but it’s hard to get too excited for the next
two installments knowing that Gollum’s one scene from the book has already been
realized. C+
Killer Joe
(William Friedkin, USA, 102 min.)
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a movie as delighted with
its own perversity as Killer Joe. The second warped collaboration between
playwright Tracy Letts (adapting his own play) and director William Friedkin –
they’d previously worked together on 2006’s memorable Bug – is an aggressively scuzzy redneck variation on standard noir
tropes, with the classy suggestiveness of classics like Double Indemnity (1946) replaced with colorful profanity, graphic
violence, and what has to be the oddest sexual assault in narrative cinema
since the tree rape in The Evil Dead
(1981). Killer Joe may be hard to justify morally, but there’s no denying
the skill with which Letts and Friedkin simultaneously amp up the tension of
the plotting and the insane raunchiness of the content, and Matthew
McConaughey’s sinister portrayal of the titular hitman is one of the best
performances of recent years. B
Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominik, USA, 97 min.)
It isn’t hard to see why mainstream audiences (and many critics)
rejected Andrew Dominik’s follow-up to 2007’s highly regarded The Assassination of Jesse James by the
Coward Robert Ford. While the
heist-gone-wrong plot is thoroughly straightforward, the movie consists almost
entirely of strange digressions set against a somewhat overstated political
backdrop (the action is set around the time of the 2008 U.S. presidential
election). Fortunately the rambling
narrative allows for plenty of colorful dialogue delivered by a top-notch cast
(James Gandolfini is particularly amusing as a highly ornery washed-up contract
killer), and the unsubtle social commentary leads to a hilariously cynical
abrupt ending. The film is riveting
almost in spite of its heist movie mechanics.
B
Klown (Mikkel
Norgaard, Denmark, 89 min.)
Somehow this raunchy Danish comedy (touted in some
publications as that nation’s answer to The
Hangover franchise) has gained a cult following despite being utterly
devoid of wit, charm, or interesting filmmaking. A nerdy man (Frank Hvam) brings his
girlfriend’s young nephew (Marcuz Jess Peterson) along on a decadent canoe trip
with his friends in a misguided attempt to prove his potential parenting
skills, leading to all types of misunderstandings as he has to keep an eye on
the child while also attempting to enjoy the hedonism that his friends have
planned. The resulting humor never rises
above the level of someone sticking their finger in another person’s rectum,
and the tone of the film is mean-spirited beyond the misogyny expected of its
subgenre. A scene where the hapless hero
is denied access to a high-class orgy might be the most tone deaf attempt at
comedy in cinema history, but it’s scarcely less funny than anything else that
happens in this piece of shit. F
Magic Mike (Steven Soderbergh, USA, 110 min.)
The world of male strip clubs has rarely provided a backdrop for
movies, so Magic Mike certainly had a
good chance at being an interesting, unique film. Reid Carolin’s script (drawn partially from
the real life experiences of star Channing Tatum, who briefly worked in the
trade) suggests several different potentially interesting routes into the
story. At various points the film comes
off as a sort of backstage musical (with elaborate dance scenes taking the
place of songs), a realistic look at a strange world that few people know
about, or an allegory about America’s current economic problems. But the film never really commits to any one
point of view, and ultimately spends too much time focusing on the most generic
and least interesting aspects of its story – one upstart stripper’s (Alex Pettyfer)
descent into drug addiction, and his sister’s (Olivia Munn) budding romance
with Tatum. Aside from some electrifying
moments of ridiculously athletic dancing, Tatum remains a wooden performer even
when ostensibly playing a version of his younger self. C
The Man with the Iron
Fists (Rza, USA, 96 min.)
It was inevitable that Wu-Tang Clan mastermind Rza would
eventually make a kung-fu film of his own, but it’s a shame that his obvious enthusiasm
for (and deep knowledge of) the genre didn’t translate to a more enjoyable
viewing experience than this sloppy pastiche.
D
The Queen of
Versailles (Lauren Greenfield, USA, 100 min.)
Lauren Greenfield’s richly entertaining documentary follows
a billionaire couple who are forced to deal with the American economic
recession after their real estate empire collapses. At the start of the film the family is
constructing an outrageously expensive mansion modeled after Versailles, but by
the end of the film their current (and already enormous) household, no longer
looked after by a large maid staff, is an unruly trash pile full of discarded purchases, dog
shit, and dead, forgotten pets. Early
on, when Greenfield’s camera is focusing primarily on the family’s ex-beauty
queen matriarch, the film threatens to become a slightly classier variation on
a Real Housewives-style reality show,
but the proceedings becomes more and more morbidly engrossing as the family’s
illusions about their wealth dissolve and they are increasingly forced to adapt
to the circumstances of everyday life. B
Samsara (Ron Fricke, USA, 102 min.)
Cinematographer Ron Fricke was apparently so heavily influenced
by his contributions to the popular New Age documentary Koyaanisqatsi (1982) that he’s spent his entire subsequent career
as a director remaking it, with diminishing returns. His latest film features a lot of
extraordinary visuals, but gets too caught up in earnestly making clumsy social
statements to really capitalize on its beauty.
Sped-up images of animals at slaughterhouses lead to shots of people at
mall food courts stuffing food into their mouths; shots of sex dolls precede an
image of a geisha crying a single tear.
The film only embraces its surreal potential in an uncharacteristically
disturbing sequence where a mime in an office building covers his face with
clay and then spastically rips it apart.
C
Seven Psychopaths (Martin McDonagh, UK, 110 min.)
Meta fiction can seem lazy and obnoxious in the wrong hands, but
writer-director Martin McDonagh’s script for Seven Psychopaths is clever and entertaining enough to feel
fresh. It helps that the absurd story,
involving two dogknappers (Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken) and their
screenwriter friend (Colin Farrell) who get in over their heads when they
kidnap a violent mobster’s (Woody Harrelson) shih tzu, is gripping in its own
right, but the way that McDonagh’s dialogue allows the characters to comment
on the film’s action without realizing that they are doing so provides a
frequently witty extra layer of enjoyment.
There are still limitations to the approach – one character comments
that the female characters in Farrell’s scripts are poorly developed as if
McDonagh thought that this would excuse the one-dimensional female
characterizations in his own film – but overall this is one of the more fun,
smartly structured, and well-cast comedies in recent memory. B
Sinister (Scott
Derrickson, USA, 110 min.)
