Sucker Punch

Sucker Punch

I should have hated this movie. I saw it under not the best circumstances. I decided to see it at the 34th Street AMC, mostly because it had the most convenient showtime and partly because it's across the street from one of my favorite breakfast places (one of the few places in NYC that serves grits). I was going to go all out and see it in IMAX. It was a matinee, so it wasn't ridonkulously expensive. But the theater turned out to be one of an alarming number of "fake" IMAX theaters, i.e., theaters with slightly-larger-than-normal screens that for some reason are allowed to use the IMAX brand name. Also, they gave us 3D glasses, and I spent the first 40 minutes of the movie trying to keep them on my face before discovering that THE MOVIE IS NOT IN 3D. Shame on you, AMC 34th Street.

This movie is, by all empirical standards, not a good movie. It has huge, HUGE narrative issues. Other folks will find many other flaws, but I think at least some of those are clever subversions. Nordling of Ain't It Cool News calls this a "kitchen sink" movie, wherein a filmmaker throws all of his passion and resources into a project in the hopes that this will be his/her definitive work. Those movies rarely turn out to be anything but hot messes, and Sucker Punch is no exception. This is a movie with big ideas, ideas that are tragically too big for the story in its current form. I think it might have fared better as a two-parter. Preferably with a different writer.

The basic setup is fairly simple. Our heroine, played by Lemony Snicket's Emily Browning, has just lost her mother, and her conniving stepfather is furious that the mother left all her money to the girl and her sister. After a sequence of events that's a tad confusing but culminates in the murder of the younger sister, the stepfather has our heroine committed to an asylum and arranges for her to be lobotomized. The rest of the movie consists of her attempts to escape, both figuratively and literally.

Almost as soon as she arrives, her mind constructs an alternate reality, though only slightly less bleak than her current one. Part of the inmates' therapy is to act out their issues, quite literally, on a stage. So "Baby Doll," as she comes to be called, imagines the asylum as a burlesque theater where she and the other girls dance for "clients." The asylum orderly who abuses the girls becomes a cruel boss figure, and the psychiatrist (Carla Gugino) becomes an artistic director of some sort. (Just a note, while we're here and while you may or may not be frozen with a "huh?" expression on your face at what you've read so far ... if suspending disbelief is not your thing and you demand logic from your stories, stay far away from this movie.)

Baby Doll is asked to dance. The music starts and eventually she starts to (barely) move, but suddenly we zoom in on her eye and we enter a third level of reality. Baby Doll is now in a completely different place and time within her own mind, and she meets The Wiseman (Scott Glenn), who tells her how to escape. She needs five things - a map, fire, a knife, a key, and a fifth item that is a mystery. She defeats three giant mecha-monsters in a sequence that at first might seem frivolous and lacking in risk and emotional connection, but which I think merely serve to show Baby Doll the rules of this reality and what she is capable of. After this initial battle, Baby Doll is back in the dance studio and has finished her dance, and she has apparently impressed everyone so much that she's going to use her dancing as part of the plot to get the items she needs for escape. But first she needs help from the other girls - Rocket (Jena Malone), Sweet Pea (Abby Cornish), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgins), and Amber (Jamie Chung).

We see the girls fight to secure the needed items, both in the dance hall reality and in the third reality. Baby Doll uses her dancing in the second reality to distract people while the other girls get the tokens. And, just as before, whenever the music starts, we enter that third and much more heightened reality, and the girls are on missions (led by The Wiseman) to capture items that are analogous to the escape tools. They fight Nazi zombies to steal a map, they slay a baby dragon and steal the fire from its throat, etc. One of many things I felt should have been different is that I wish the movie had cut back to the *actual* reality of the asylum at least once or twice. Maybe Snyder was trying to make the ending more surprising, when you see that she was in the asylum all along and - aha! - she really did do the things she did in those other realities, just more mundane versions of them.

As I said, there are huge story problems with this movie. It feels a lot like it was meant to be longer and just got chopped to pieces, with the action setpieces getting priority in the editing process and the actual storytelling and characterization stuck on the cutting room floor, or perhaps merely ghosts from earlier drafts of the script.

However, there are some subversive elements that I quite liked and wish had been in a better movie. I cringed like hell at the trailers and what I saw as Scott Glenn's dumb hero lines, notably "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything" (the origin of which has been credited to many historical figures, including Malcolm X, General Patton, and Alexander Hamilton). But I think they're *intended* to be awkward and somewhat meaningless. If you watch the film, you'll notice that his mentor advice is always two-fold. The first bit is the dumb hero line, the second (preceded by "oh, and one more thing") is actually useful information for whatever task the girls are trying to accomplish. I thought it was kind of poking fun at other movies/stories that use that kind of dialogue much more earnestly.

Mr. Beaks of AICN wrote a fairly thoughtful (though still very critical) review in which he proposes the idea that Snyder is criticizing the fetishization of sexy, scantily clad, fighting female badasses. I'm not sure how confident I am about it being a critique, but I don't think it's an accident that Baby Doll is made up to look eerily like Sailor Moon.



Nor do I think it's an accident that the logos for the two works are so similar.



As disappointing as the movie is on so many levels, though, I still really dug it. I'd much rather see an ambitious failure, where I'm certain that everyone involved believes in the story they're telling and are having a good time telling it, than a lazy cash grab. Perhaps this is why I have an unusually rosy response to the Harry Potter films (not that I think those are failures AT ALL, though some of you may). It puts a grin on my face to see David Heyman and his posse trying (and yes, usually failing) to do Rowling one better. They REALLY want those movies to be good. You can feel it (or at least I can), and that's pretty intoxicating to watch (again, for me, at least). And I can tell how much Zack Snyder wants Sucker Punch to be good, which is why, even though it's mostly a mess, I respect it and I respect the effort. [NOTE: I hope no one thinks I'm comparing this movie to the HP films, by the way. I AM NOT, BY ANY MEANS.]

If you're wondering whether you should check this out ... I honestly don't know what to tell you. If you're intrigued by what I described of the plot above, I'd say it's at least worth a matinee. I personally think it's worth seeing for the pretty stunning visuals of the "third reality" alone, especially (OMG!) the "bomb on the train" sequence. There's some good music on display, too, but it's kind of wasted. But if you decide to see it, don't make the mistake I did. This is NOT a 3D movie, and there are theaters posing as IMAXes that are NOT IMAX. It probably looks great on an IMAX screen, but it looks good on a regular (or slightly larger) screen too.

Black Swan

I'm still working out exactly how I feel about this movie - meaning that I'm trying to figure out if I merely love it or OMG LOVE it. I'm leaning toward the latter. There was something about the very end that was ... I don't want to say unsatisfactory, but it wasn't quite the "woaaaah" I was expecting after the twenty minutes that immediately preceded it. Twenty minutes which, I must say, make up perhaps the most perfect movie climax I've seen on a movie screen this year. Period.



Natalie Portman plays Nina, a professional ballet dancer in New York. She's been with the company for a long time, and you get the impression that if she were going to break out and get lead roles it would have happened by now. It's not that she's not a good dancer - she has great skill and technique - but she's not a Star. Still, when the company's prima ballerina, Beth (Winona Ryder) is pressured into retirement, the director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassell) needs a new face. He picks out a few girls to audition for his reimagining of Swan Lake, and he is going to pick one girl to play the dual role of the White Swan and the Black Swan. He tells Nina, in as many words, that if he were only casting the White Swan it would be hers. But the Black Swan is supposed to seduce the Prince, and he doesn't see the seductress in her at all. She manages to persuade him, however, during a private moment in his office, and she gets the one role every ballet dancer dreams of.

The problem, though, is that her persuasive moment in Thomas's office, was just that - a moment. She knows the steps, but she can't find the inner siren, no matter how impatient Thomas gets with her (or how many times he tries to kiss and grope her and bring that out of her again). Meanwhile, there's a new girl in the company named Lily (played by Mila Kunis). She's everything that Nina is not - she's confident and sexy but lacking in technique, she's got an attitude, she smokes, she eats hamburgers, she's frequently late for rehearsal, etc. Thomas points Lily out to Nina, though, as an example of the passion he wants to see in her Black Swan. Nina becomes paranoid that Lily is trying to steal her role, and the two of them have quite an uneasy relationship, but she's also kind of drawn to her (though not exactly in the way you might be thinking). The stress of trying to develop the dual role of the White Swan and the Black Swan drives Nina to the brink (beyond it, actually) of psychosis and self loathing, pushing her to an opening night performance that starts as a failure and becomes an utter revelation. And that's where I'd better stop with regard to story.

The film's crowning jewel, without a doubt, is the last approximately twenty minutes, which involve the opening night performance. And I'll have to be vague as heck because this is spoiler territory. Most of these "backstage melodrama" films have the big performance scene or sequence and they can occasionally be thrilling but usually only serve to weigh a film down. Not here. Oh no. The whole film has been building to this climax of Nina's inner demons and watching what she goes through to be what she needs to be for each act of the ballet took my breath away.



For some reason, although I'm usually quite the spoiler whore, I was quite scrupulous about spoilers for this movie. I watched the trailer once, then immediately watched it again, and was so intrigued that I decided then and there that that was all I wanted to know about the movie until I saw the whole thing for myself. I'm still not sure whether that really made any difference or not. Possibly the thing I love best about this movie is that it's not a "Gotcha!" kind of movie. It's not a movie built on twists. There are reveals, to be sure, but they're not of that nature. There are clear indications early on that things aren't what they seem and that Aronofsky is engaging in some metaphor. I was reminded a bit of movies like Jacob's Ladder and The Shining, where you're never entirely sure what's real and what's not. And maybe the greatest thing is that a lot of the time there's not really a right answer to that.

This is, at its most basic, a horror movie. It's been compared to David Cronenberg's work (I think The Fly and The Brood are the most comparable), but there's a lot more going on here than a body horror comparison will cover. It's been compared to Dario Argento's work, but while it's about people in the arts (specifically, about ballet dancers, as Argento's Suspiria was), it's still more than that. Nina isn't just a ballerina dealing with the pressure of her first major role and the other struggles that accompany her career in general. She's a woman trying to claim her identity, and while we may not all be ballet dancers, that is something at least that we can all relate to. And I think we can all agree that it can often be scary as hell. Okay, maybe not quite as scary as Nina's experiences, but frightening nonetheless.

I'd love to talk about Barbara Hershey, Vincent Cassell, and Mila Kunis, because the acting across the board is superb, but I'm afraid of making this even longer than it already is. So I'll leave it with a "These guys totally own!" and move on, because I have to say a bit about casting, particularly the casting of Winona Ryder and Natalie Portman.

Darren Aronofsky's casting choices can be downright uncanny commentaries on the actors themselves, perhaps none of them more so than Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. It's almost as if he wants an actor's baggage to add an extra layer to the character they're playing. I was especially intrigued by the choice of WInona Ryder to play the involuntarily retiring ballet dancer. She's not someone I can really imagine as a dancer, but that doesn't matter as we never see her dance in the film. What we do see are a few choice meltdowns. Ryder's real life drama a few years ago can't help but affect how you view her in the film, and I think this is at least half the reason she was cast. And having her play the fading star while Portman's character rises to take her place was kind of genius. Because in many ways Natalie Portman is, for her generation, what Winona Ryder was for hers when she was that age. And speaking of Natalie...

I don't think I'm alone in having found Natalie Portman's transition from child star to adult actor a trifle disappointing. She had a maturity beyond her years as a young girl. When she was in Beautiful Girls alongside Timothy Hutton, his character told hers that he was sure that when she grew up whatever she ended up doing with her life was going to be amazing. Audiences had a similar expectation for Natalie herself, I think, but her adult roles have been frequently flat (with a couple of exceptions). So it was only fitting for her to play this dancer who has skill but can't quite sell herself in a grown-up role. Any doubts on that score should be put to bed with this film. And yet what I love is that she isn't wildly different. She's not made up to look different, her voice is not suddenly more sultry or aggressive. She's not all of a sudden hardcore, like this gangster rapping self-parody she did on SNL.


WHAAAT!

She's simply using her instrument in a way that I'm convinced she's just never been asked to before. It's hard to even imagine something like "Hold me like you did on Naboo!" after seeing her in this. Her Nina in is a cut above every single lead female performance I've seen this year. (Yes, even you, Annette Bening. I know losing the Oscar to Swank twice has got to burn, but if you won this year, it would be an apology Oscar.) While still managing to make what she does look easy, Portman's performance is nevertheless a reminder that not everyone with a pretty face can be an actress. There's a fearlessness and a dedication to the role and the world of this film that I think have put her in another league of artistry altogether.

Excellent, excellent movie. Man, I love this time of year!

BNAT 11 - [PREMIERE] Shutter Island

When I first heard that we were seeing The Red Shoes (which I previously posted about here), I glanced ahead on the fake list and had a strong suspicion about what was going to be next. The Red Shoes has perhaps had no greater champion in Hollywood than Martin Scorsese, and I can't help thinking of him whenever I think of that film. And, as it turned out, my suspicion was correct. After trailers for They Call Her One-Eye (with the slowest mo I've ever seen) and Sudden Death (not the Van Damme one, but I'm not sure if it's the 1985 or 1977 one), we saw a not-quite-finished print of...


Shutter Island

Harry had written to Scorsese to see if we could get this film, and this was apparently something of a personal struggle, as writing to one of the gods of film well ought to be. He knew the letter needed to be short, because, as he told us, "[Scorsese's] answer would be." As it turned out, Scorsese loved the idea of what we were doing and loved the lineup that preceded his film, with one exception. He wanted Harry to screen The Red Shoes before his film instead. So, after a couple of exchanges, because the change would add 40 minutes to an already tight program, Harry finally asked himself why he was arguing with Martin Scorsese and stopped. Knowing that Martin Scorsese programmed a film at BNAT fills me with immeasurable joy.

Shutter Island is not what you think it is (unless, of course, you've read the Dennis Lehane novel on which it is based). I was expecting an exploration of psychological horror, along the lines of Scorsese's earlier Cape Fear (which is actually one of my favorites of his). Oh, and with the super-creepy setting of a mental institution. Seriously, there is nothing that frightens me more than insane asylums.

But the movie is very different from what I thought. It starts as a missing patient mystery, and I got some distinct Wicker Man vibes, possibly in part because I'd been thinking about that film recently, hoping (and ultimately failing) to get a post about it up in time for the Final Girl Film Club. I don't even know that I'd call this film a horror film. There are definitely frightening elements, and there's a certain "haunted house" feel to it. But though the island is inhabited by the criminally insane, they don't really pose that much of a threat. There are several twists and turns in the story, much like The Prisoner (as pointed out in his own report), and as such I'm afraid to start explaining what it's about for fear of falling into the wormhole, but I'll try to at least scratch the surface.

Teddy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) are U.S. Marshalls called to Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance of a patient, Rachel Solando, who is in the institution for killing all three of her children. The two of them don't get very far with the other patients and the hospital staff before things start to look incredibly fishy. It turns out that Teddy specifically took the case because he wanted to look into the disturbing medical practices the place was involved with. There are lies on top of lies on top of lies, people are not who they say they are, and you're never really sure who's telling the truth and what's real. All you know is for God's sake don't smoke their cigarettes.

I have to say a word about Leonardo DiCaprio here. I have long been a fan (not to be confused with fangirl) of his, and I've been interested in the choices he's made as an actor, especially in his now fairly long-standing artistic relationship with Martin Scorsese. I'm going to step up and say that I think his work here is a career best so far. At times frighteningly intense, and at others deeply moving. There's a moment near the end where he completely loses it, and I was so afraid that it was going to cause some laughter, because it's one of those moments that, through no fault of the actor, could just hit the audience wrong. Thank goodness it didn't, because it's one of the most heart-shattering things I've ever seen from an actor. Amazing.

I will join the throng of BNAT-ers who've said that if you spoil this movie you should be locked in a cell with Jackie Earle Haley so that he can rip your face off. I hate even saying that it's a highly spoilable movie, because that's a kind of spoiler in and of itself, you know? Now that I've seen it all the way through, though, I can't wait to see it again with the full knowledge of what's going on. Great, great movie, and a wonderful addition to the BNAT lineup.