Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris

You probably either *are* a Woody Allen person or you're *not*. His films, for the most part, have a very distinct voice and a distinct style. The opening credits are all in the same familiar font, perfectly and simply underscoring this fact. I consider myself on his side of the fence, even though I tend to admire his films more than I love them. I love pieces of Annie Hall (Marshall McLuhan, FTW!), I love the look and the sound of Manhattan (because it's such a travelogue of New York), and I love the themes in Crimes and Misdemeanors. But his films have largely left me cold, emotionally, with the glaring exception of Sweet and Lowdown.

Midnight in Paris feels both like an atypical Woody Allen film and at the same time is very typical of his work. There is the central character, a neurotic writer, who would have been played by Woody himself twenty or thirty years ago. The central character clashes intellectually with the mundane and pedantic people whose company he is forced to endure. And the whole story takes place in a great city and is as much a love song to that city as a story in its own right. That city used to be New York in all his films, but he has branched out lately. I don't think he quite *got* London well enough to pull this off in Match Point, but he certainly seems to *get* Paris (at least, from what I understand - I've never been *sniff*). But there is an optimism and sentimentality in Midnight that I have never really associated with Woody's films, and it's kind of refreshing.

Owen Wilson plays Gil, a successful screenwriter in Hollywood who is vacationing in Paris with his fiancee, Inez (played by the flawless Rachel McAdams). The two of them and Inez's mother are pretty much piggybacking on her father's business trip, and we see instantly that Inez and her family are not where Gil needs to be, for the sake of his sanity, not to mention his creative impulses. They are frequently joined on their tourist ramblings by an old college professor of Inez's, Paul (Michael Sheen) and his wife Carol, because Paul is in town getting ready to start lecturing at La Sorbonne. Paul is an "expert" on everything, frequently corrects tour guides, and is the kind of person that we all have known and have frequently wanted to throttle into non-existence. Old HP ship debaters will no doubt call to mind at least one or two names among our former opponents that fit this bill.

Though Gil makes a respectable living churning out movie scripts and this is something he's quite good at, he's dissatisfied. He's written a novel, but he's afraid to show it to anyone. Inez suggests he show it to Paul, but obviously Gil would rather spork his own eyes out than let Paul anywhere near it. Inez sort of pokes fun at the book, making Gil tell everyone about the main character who works in a nostalgia shop, which everyone but Gil thinks is trite and hilarious. This kind of stings Gil, on whom the book character is quite obviously based.

One evening after dinner, Gil goes for a walk on his own and gets a bit lost. He sits on some steps and after a while a car pulls up. Not just any car - a 1920s model Peugeot. Several people are inside and a man beckons him to come along with them. Gil is reluctant, because who are these people?, but goes along for the ride. They soon arrive at a party and a woman introduces herself to Gil as Zelda. They are soon joined by her husband, Scott Fitzgerald. At this point, I'm thinking (and perhaps so is Gil) that this is a rich people theme party, where everyone has come dressed as their favorite writer or something and for some reason everyone is staying in character. But no. This is actually Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. And Cole Porter is playing the piano. They go to a bat and Gil meets Ernest Hemingway. Gil has somehow traveled back in time to 1920s Paris, his idea of Paris's Golden Age and the place and time where he would have most loved to live, and is hobnobbing with the artistic giants who have inspired him. But when he leaves a place by himself, he leaves the 1920s behind and goes back to his own world.

He tries to show all this to Inez the next night, but he doesn't quite understand how the magic works yet, so she doesn't see anything special. She leaves, rolling her eyes madly at him, and the clock strikes midnight, which Gil realizes is the key. The car comes along again and takes him to meet Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates). Ernest Hemingway, who he'd met the night before, promised to introduce him to her and ask her to read his manuscript and give him feedback. Hemingway wouldn't read the book himself, telling Gil "I hate it ... If it's bad I'll hate it because it's bad. If it's good, I'll hate it because I'm jealous." Stein is going to read the book later, but she reads the first sentence or two aloud, and we see that Gil is a gifted writer. His talent catches the attention of a woman named Adriana (Marion Cotillard), who is having an affair with Pablo Picasso. Gil and Adriana talk and there is an obvious connection between them, and over the course of several more visits to the past, Gil realizes that he's falling in love with her and she with him.

And then comes the most perfect scene in the film. Gil tries to engineer things with Adriana that ought to have happened (and probably would have) naturally, but as they pause on the street, a carriage approaches and stops, beckoning them to come along, much like the Peugeot has stopped for Gil each night. It drops them off at Maxim's restaurant. In the 19th century, Belle Epoque. Adriana's idea of Paris's Golden Age. You guys, I seriously cried from the magic.

I won't spoil the rest of it - I've gone on quite long enough already - but it ends fairly happily, in a way that many will probably expect. This has been out a while, and I was a bit surprised it was still in theaters this past weekend when I went. I don't know whether this will be your cup of tea or not - lately I haven't been too confident in my radar. But if you have a warm sigh in your heart for Paris or are a nostalgic or romantic person, I could not recommend this more highly.

The Future

The Future

I fell deeply and truly for Miranda July as a filmmaker with her 2005 debut, Me and You and Everyone We Know, so it was with a certain amount of expectation (and maybe a little anxiety) that I approached her latest film, The Future.

July and her costar Hamish Linklater (a perennial favorite at Shakespeare in the Park here in NYC) play a couple, Sophie and Jason, who are about to adopt a cat. They can't bring it home for another month, because it has a broken leg that has to heal, and it's already a sick cat, requiring a strict regimen of medication. Sophie and Jason realize that, once they bring the cat home, they won't be able to make any drastic life changes until it dies, which (best case scenario) will be about five years from now. They'll both be forty at that point, and Jason states that "forty is basically fifty" and that everything after fifty is "loose change." That's harsh, especially to my nearly 36 year old ears, but it's an interesting observation about most people's life patterns. These characters are at that age - and I am too, I guess - where we start to realize that there are only a finite number of things we're going to be able to do before we die. They decide to live this final cat-free month as if it's the last month of their lives. Jason decides to quit his tech support job and follow wherever fate leads. Sophie quits her job as a children's dance teacher and tries to start a YouTube project. Each of them deals with this life experiment in different and inept ways, and their lives basically fall apart.

Threading the whole thing together is narration by Paw Paw, the cat, who is voiced by and whose front paws are animated by July herself. These bits of narration serve much the same purpose as the video art segments do in Me and You and Everyone We Know. They give the film its voice and unique language.

There are several great scenes that could almost be short films by themselves. One of my favorites is when Sophie has called to have the internet turned off - part of their re-prioritizing - and rushes Jason home so that they can look up whatever they need to look up in the hour they have left. Jason thinks it's crazy to turn the internet off and asks what they're going to do if they want to know something, and Sophie says they'll just have to ask someone or ... not know. Which I couldn't help thinking is EXACTLY what the entire world had to do before we had the internet at our disposal (which was not really all that long ago). After looking up some not-terribly-important stuff for a minute or so, Sophie and Jason soon seem to realize this fact as well and calmly close their twin laptops.

The two of them each strike up unexpected relationships with strangers. Jason befriends an elderly gentleman who gives him some perspective on his relationship with Sophie, telling him that after four years with her, he's still in the beginning part. That those are the hardest times and they're both going to do horrible things and they'll just have to work through it. Sophie cold calls a single dad who drew a picture of his daughter that Jason bought from the animal shelter in the beginning of the film, and what starts as a bizarre phone conversation becomes a full-fledged sexual affair (speaking of doing horrible things).

Miranda July's films are devilishly hard to describe. This film in particular has some great magical elements - Jason, for example, can stop time with his mind, and has a conversation with the moon. Sophie has a shirt that follows her and that she ultimately has this rather amazing dance with. It's all part of her singular imagination, and it's a big reason why so many people love her films. And why others hate them.

Because July has plenty of detractors - people who think she's the epitome of everything that is wrong with hipster culture. They call her films "precious" and "twee" - which I can't help feel are insults about her gender as much as her filmmaking. Perhaps worst of all, some feel that the oddball nature of her films and her characters are just a big joke or some ironic comment. July's films are actually the opposite of the hipster chic embodied by films like Napoleon Dynamite. She's not trying to be quirky or offbeat in some ironic way, like someone who's trying to be cool by being uncool. This is really her mind and her imagination. People connect with her films - or at least I do - because there's something in them that makes them think "I thought I was the only person who did that!"

Attack the Block

Attack the Block

Oh, how do I love this movie? Let me count the ways. I'd been hearing about it for months, ever since it played SXSW in March.

So a young woman named Sam is on her way home from work. She's a nurse, and she's had to stay a bit past the usual end of her shift, which makes her nervous walking home because it's kind of late. Sure enough, as she gets to the home stretch, there are five kids blocking her path up ahead. She tries to cross to the other side of the street, but they've clearly marked her and cross to block her again. She gets the typical mugging scenario - give us your phone/wallet/whatever, she tries to plead with them, they pull a knife, etc. Later, taking refuge and consolation in a neighbor's flat, she calls the kids "monsters." Understandable, but she will see much more frightening monsters before the night is out.

Sam was only able to escape her attackers in the confusion of a mysterious something-or-other falling from the sky onto a parked car. The leader of the group, Moses, seeing that the car has been rendered rather easy to rob, investigates to find something of value, only to be attacked by a strange creature (the thing that fell from the sky) which runs away. The other boys laugh and taunt Moses for being attacked by "Dobby the house-elf" (no kidding), and they all go chasing after it. They eventually kill it and boast that no one messes with their block. Moses thinks the creature might be rare and worth a lot of money, so they take it to "Ron's weed room" (it's a big room, full of weed, and it's Ron's, another character explains later), which is supposed to be the safest place in the block. Ron (played by Nick Frost) has no authority ("I just work here"), but his boss, the gangster Hi-Hatz, agrees to let the boys keep the dead creature there. In exchange, though, Moses must start selling cocaine for him (in addition to the weed he already sells).

The boys then see a strange sight out of the window - streams of light falling from the sky, much like the one that delivered their now dead furry companion. Thinking these are the same kinds of aliens, they go to their homes and "tool up" - with machetes, baseball bats, swords, fireworks, etc. - ready to take some more of these creatures on. Two even younger boys - nine-year-olds who insist on being called "Probs" and "Mayhem" - go to the crash site too, to prove how badass they are. These aliens, however, are much bigger. I'm telling you, it takes a lot to freak me out nowadays, but these guys are SCARY! Pitch black, shaped like something between a bear and a wolf, with no eyes, and blue luminescent teeth. And inside their mouths, where a tongue should be, there's just more teeth. The boys wisely run away.

The rest of the movie sees them trying to escape and eventually taking on these creatures, unexpectedly joining forces with the woman they mugged earlier in the evening. Like the better examples of the horror genre, this film too has a bit of social satire. The idea that no one really cares what happens to these kids, because they're poor or they're not white or their music is too loud is touched on, but the crux of the story is Moses's heroism and his learning that he has to take responsibility for his actions. There's also a bit of Scooby-Doo-ing (or Buffy-ing, if you will) going on, as the boys start to figure out what it is that the creatures are specifically drawn to and how to deal with them.

This is a really, really great flick, and a lot of fun. Once again, it's strange to find this so amazing, but here's a genre movie with some great characterization and amazing performances. John Boyega is the obvious stand-out as Moses, but all of the kids (all of them newcomers) are really great. They're not the fresh-faced, perfectly coifed teens of modern horror movies (though I would probably have crushed on Alex Esmail, who plays "Pest," when I was younger), and that's quite a nice change. Thumbs way up for this one, but with a warning - it's pretty bloody, so if you have problems with that, this might not be a good idea for you.

One more thing. If you see it and love it, I would also recommend checking out the soundtrack, which has a great urban pulse - some parts of it remind me of the 1980s classic "Pass the Dutchie" - and a couple of non-score tracks. "Sound of Da Police" by KRS-One is highly dance-worthy, and you can stop laughing at at that mental image of me dancing right now. :P

Cowboys and Aliens

Cowboys and Aliens

I was privileged to see a couple of reels of this at Butt-Numb-A-Thon last year, and I was pleased but not terribly excited about what we saw, to be honest. A lot of the character stuff felt very in media res and awkward. Despite the "meh" reviews, I went in with an open mind, and though I winced at the sight of five screenwriting credits, I was still determined to at least not hate it.

Well, I loved it, as it turns out. No, it's not as good a sci-fi/western mashup as Firefly was, but what is? (Alan "Wash" Tudyk amusingly Tweeted that it suffered from a painful lack of Chinese.) It's a little more western than sci-fi, and it's the western portions where the movie really shines. Daniel Craig proves more than ever why he's an excellent addition to the Leading Men Club, and while Harrison Ford doesn't have *quite* the spark that he used to, he's still Harrison Ford, which is more awesome than most of us will ever be. Paul Dano, Sam Rockwell, Adam Beach, Clancy Brown, and Keith Carridine are all stellar in supporting roles, and they're the movie's real strength.

The movie is beautifully shot, and I think it has one of the best-written kiss scenes in recent memory (one that actually has a plot purpose and isn't just there to make you all tingly). The alien tech is kind of generic, but then that's how it is in most space movies nowadays. The aliens themselves are duly terrifying (though nowhere near as scary as Attack the Block's aliens). I think the biggest thing that I wish had been better was the music. I know it's tough to find a balance between western themes and sci-fi themes, musically, but this score was pretty bland, in my opinion.

The movie as a whole, though, is very enjoyable.

Super 8

After work yesterday morning, I went to see Super 8, which was one of my most anticipated movies of the summer. I spent the week wallowing in some the movies that inspired it - Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, Alien, Scanners, E.T., etc. - and walked into the theater with a mixture of excitement and trepidation (because it probably was not going to live up to expectations).



The movie is certainly not perfect, but it is EXTREMELY good, worthy to be put next to the awesome geek movies of most of our childhoods, particularly those centered around child characters. I say "most of our" childhoods, because I'm still catching up to movies that everyone else my age saw when they were kids. I don't have the nostalgia to look back on these movies as the Best Ever (I mean, E.T. is quite good, but robbed for Best Picture in 1982? Not really. Yeah, I said it.), but I definitely get warm fuzzies just as if these movies were actually a part of my own childhood.

The less said about the plot of Super 8 the better. The trailer tells you everything you need to know before going in. A group of kids are making a movie, and strange things start happening that turn their little town upside down. There are a bunch of kid actors you've never heard of and one that maybe you have (Elle Fanning, who I vastly prefer to her older sister), plus the Friday Night Lights guy (Kyle Chandler), the guy who used to date Julianna Margulies on E.R. and in real life (Ron Eldard), and the guy who's in every Frank Darabont project except Shawshank (Noah Emmerich).

The mysterious element in the movie is ever so slightly underdeveloped. I think this is mainly because the movie is far more interested in the kids - as well it should be - and their point of view is limited. These are some of the best movie kids I've seen in a long, long time. They are real kids, not actors playing some Hollywood jagoff's idea of what kids are like. They talk like real kids, about topics that kids actually talk about. It's hard for the main character Joe (Joel Courtney) not to be a favorite, but he gets serious competition from Cary (Ryan Lee), the runt who's way too into explosives. Cary is just such an awesome kid, and I want to hang out with him and watch movies. I also really dug Charles (Riley Griffiths), whose family is very reminiscent of the Weasleys of Harry Potter. He's not as awesome as Ron (but then, who is?), and he has kind of an unlikeable streak, but he still manages to be a mostly sympathetic character. Notable small roles are filled by the amazing Dale Dickey (one of the great supporting actors of last year's Winter's Bone) and Dan Castelleneta (the voice of Homer Simpson). I want to see it again so I can spot Abrams regulars Greg Grunberg and Michael Giacchino in cameos as well (Giacchino also composed the wonderful score).

This movie is clearly inspired by the classic "Peter Pan era" Spielberg films, and as one of the film's producers, his stamp on the material is hard to deny. But I feel like Super 8 is very much its own film. In the same spirit as those great early 80s adventures, but it never feels like a copy of any of those films.

I don't think you'd get very far out of the theater after the movie before you realized this, but stick around for the credits and you will see Charles's film in its entirety. It is fantastic, and I was very much reminded (not just during their little film, but in the scenes where they were making it as well) of those guys who made their own version of Raiders of the Lost Ark when they were kids. Lots of cool movie geek references are woven into their story, like the fact that Joe learned about makeup from Dick Smith's book (Smith is a legend in film makeup, having most notably created Linda Blair's super-scary demonic look for The Exorcist).

Side note: In watching all those movies in preparation for Super 8, I have discovered that - aside from it being the film Super 8 most closely resembles - I find Close Encounters of the Third Kind to be Spielberg's greatest film, period. The scope of that story is unreal, and the various human perspectives on the mysterious elements are some of the best storytelling I've ever seen. I need to do a proper post on it someday.

X-Men: First Class

Mutant and Proud!

So I went to see X-Men: First Class yesterday, which I thought was mostly excellent. My only big problem was the way they tried to shoehorn in the nicknames. There's actually a scene where the "teen" mutants are sitting around figuring out what they're going to call themselves. "And you should be Professor X! And you should be Magneto!" I mean, really. And don't get me started on the coining of the term "X-Men." I mean, I'm sure the film accurately explains where the term came from, but to have someone actually say it was unbelievably corny.

The rest of it, though, is pretty spectacular. I love the 60s trappings and that Charles says "groovy." There are also two cameos from familiar franchise faces that should please fans (and certainly pleased the audience I saw it with). The most compelling parts of the film, as one might expect, are the scenes with Charles and Erik (later known as Prof. X and Magneto, respectively, of course, but those aren't their names yet). My movie husband, Michael Fassbender, is amazing as usual and he and James McAvoy have pretty great chemistry. I've never read the comics, so I don't know if this is true to the canon or not, but I love the idea that they were friends - and very likely are still quite fond of each other. They just stand on opposite sides of the mutant issue and have very different moral values. My favorite scene by far is the sequence where they are going around the world and contacting fellow mutants, especially when they're recruiting "Angel." I almost wanted one of them to ask "Do I make you horny, baby?"

There's some great action in this movie, too (I would expect no less from the director of Kick-Ass). And I loved the integration of historical events, most notably the Cuban Missile Crisis.

This brings me to one weird thing about my screening, though. About ten minutes before the show started, about 100 children came filing in (seriously). All schools are presumably out by now, so I'm thinking this was a summer camp or something. Some of the kids were 12/13, but many of them could not have been older than about 7, which is TOO YOUNG (in general) to see a movie like this. Seriously, there are Nazis and torture chambers and mothers getting shot in the FIRST TEN MINUTES. In the rest of the movie, there are also exotic dancers, a blue but otherwise quite naked Jennifer Lawrence, and a good deal of violence. And the f-word, though only once. Earth to adults who are responsible for other people's children - just because it's a comic book movie doesn't mean it's for kids. Just, wow.

Overall, I really loved it. I don't remember much about the first two X-Men movies (which are the only ones I've seen), but this one is just as good as those, as I remember them. Maybe my favorite of the lot (if you leave out the cheesy nicknaming scene, of course :P).

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Since this is over a week out from the release date, it's probably too late to urge anyone NOT to see this movie in 3D. Audiences have apparently gone overwhelmingly for the traditional format, so perhaps the warning isn't necessary. It actually was filmed in 3D, so it probably looks better than most, especially some of the beautiful daylight scenes, but a LOT of this movie takes place at night. And since 3D makes the picture dimmer, that means it's REALLY dark. So if you haven't seen it yet, skip the 3D.


Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

So, I guess the cool thing for all the cool kids to do in CoolTown is hate on this new Pirates movie. As such, I guess I'm just uncool.

Because I really enjoyed it. A lot.

That's not to say it doesn't have problems, and it's certainly my least favorite installment (though I loved 2 and 3, so your mileage may vary). But it's still a Pirates movie. It still feels very in character with that world. Jack is very Jack. Hector is very Hector (except when ... no no, that's spoiler territory). And the biggest new addition, Edward Teach (a.k.a. Blackbeard), is as epic a pirate as the best of them. Oh, and there is a handsome shirtless young man, which no entry in this franchise should EVER be without.

We begin with the Spanish and the start of their quest to find the Fountain of Youth. This was, admittedly, a little hastily conceived and could have been given more weight. We then make for London, where we're reunited with Jack (in the type of reveal we've come to expect) and Gibbs, who is the only crew member left from the old crowd (we shall see in the fullness of time what presumably became of the others).

The main plot is deceptively simple. Everyone and their brother is out to reach the Fountain of Youth. Our major players are Barbossa, who seems to be working as a privateer for the King of England (Richard Griffiths) in his race to beat Spain to the prize; Spain, of course, though we see very little of them; and the famous dread pirate Blackbeard (played to wonderful piratey perfection by Ian McShane, who will always be Judas Iscariot to me, but that's beside the point). Oh, and Captain Jack Sparrow is in the mix, though he actually has little interest in the Fountain (though that's not what everyone else has heard - look, this is the Pirates franchise, it's complicated, okay?).

Add to this the impossibly beautiful Penelope Cruz, playing Angelica - a former flame of Sparrow's who may or may not be Blackbeard's daughter. Daughter or not, she's still his first mate. A lot of people seem to have problems with her (both in this film and in general) but I thought she was fine, neither wonderful nor horrible. She has a good chemistry with Depp, but it's put to better use in another film (2001's Blow, if you're curious). Jack, for his part, may or may not have had ... feelings for her. But make no mistake - Jack's true love is himself, and he even says so at the end of the movie (love that line, but I think a lot of viewers are missing it). Blackbeard, by the way, has some black magic mojo going on, and not just around his eyes - he has powers over his ship (and others, apparently) that seem to emanate from his sword, he's zombified several crew members, and he has dabbled in dopples voodoo. I love the implications of these powers and who they eventually pass to.

Contrary to what most of us have always probably thought, it takes more than simply drinking from the Fountain of Youth to receive its full effects. There is a ritual (I loved Jack's response to being asked if he believed in the supernatural - oh yes, he's seen his share). It takes two special chalices and one tear. A tear from a mermaid, no less. I felt the introduction to mermaids and what they are like in this universe was mishandled. We're given the tease of White Cap Bay first and just expected to accept that mermaids are something to be afraid of, and then in a later scene we get the explanation of why they're scary. The explanation should have come first, in my opinion, because most people don't think of mermaids as terribly scary - even the spear-wielding ones in Harry Potter.

There's no Will and Elizabeth, but there's still a romantic subplot with a missionary and a mermaid. This was actually one of my favorite parts of the film and the chief redeeming portion of the interminable island hike segment. There were a lot of useless or pointless scenes here, perhaps none more so than Blackbeard's attempt at Russian roulette. I kind of hated Jack for playing games about diving off the cliff, just because it led to this. :P

There weren't many truly spectacular set pieces in this movie, and certainly nothing like the more iconic scenes in the other films (the moonlight reveal, the underwater walk, the mill wheel, the Kraken, and the absurd final ship battle in AWE). Jack's chase on top of carriages across London was a bit lackluster, but his sword fight with "himself" wasn't. I really loved Blackbeard hanging the mutineers from the rigging and Jack's escape up the trunk of a palm tree. And most of the third act was pretty incredible, if you ask me. I especially loved how director Rob Marshall envisioned the actual Fountain and the entrance to it. Oh, and LOL at Jack's suggestion that everyone else hang back, have some drinks, and place bets, while Barbossa and Blackbeard duke it out just between the two of them.

This film was less about spectacle and more about character and story, which I thought was a welcome step back from the increasingly ludicrous (though admittedly entertaining) antics of the second and third films. I enjoyed it immensely, and even went back to see it a second time. I feel it's also worthy of a DVD buy and a place on my shelf along with the other three. True, Marshall didn't add anything special to this franchise, but nor did he ruin it (as some people seem to believe, judging from some overemotional responses I've seen).