THE LOVELY BONES: love, death and too much cgi

Cinema's Serial Killer Hall of Fame has a new inductee. 
His name is George Harvey. 
As played to perfection by a justly Oscar nominated Stanley Tucci, George is the most genuinely creepy and disturbing movie bad guy I've seen in a long time.
It gives nothing away to reveal that early on he murders 14 year old Suzie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan). THE LOVELY BONES is not a whodunit, a why-he-dunit or even a will-he-get-away-with-it. There is, to be sure, an element of the latter but the real focus is on the impact on the murder victim and her family.
Rather disconcertingly the story is told by Suzie, looking back on the events from her vantage point in a spectacularly lush and beautiful way-station on the road to heaven. She watches George going on with his everyday life as her heartbroken family struggle to pick up the pieces of theirs.
Dad Jack's (Mark Wahlberg) obsession with finding Suzie's killer places intolerable strains on his marriage to Abigail (Rachel Weisz), preventing them from giving Suzie's younger sister and brother the support that they need. The healing proves to be long, painful and incomplete.
It's a story with huge potential for cloying sentimentality and gratuitous tugging of the heartstrings and while it does stray into that territory on occasion it manages to avoid feeling cloying or sappy. Much of the credit for that belongs to the mature and assured performance by 15 year old Ronan as the murder victim who discovers there's life after death.  
THE LOVELY BONES is a considerable change of scale for director Peter Jackson after "King Kong" and "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy but he hasn't abandoned his attachment to computer generated imagery. There's loads of it on show, most obviously in the creation of the aforementioned way station which ressembles a collection of photo-shopped screensavers for the most idyllic places minus the couple walking hand in hand on the sand.  
This surfeit of cgi is a big minus which offsets some of the pluses offered by Tucci and Ronan. The end result is that - despite being disturbing, moving and emotionally engaging - THE LOVELY BONES is too uneven to be a truly great movie.

AMERICAN GRAFFITI: magical movie making

AMERICAN GRAFFITI is mandatory viewing for anyone who was ever 17 or 18 years old and on the brink of making that huge transition from high school to the grown-up world of university.
It doesn't matter if your experience didn't include hot rods, Mel's Diner, and cruising Main Street in a small Californian town in a pristine Thunderbird with the car radio tuned to Wolfman Jack playing the big hits of 1962. This film isn't so much about the place as capturing the moment and the emotion.
AMERICAN GRAFITTI follows Steve (Ron Howard) and Curt (Richard Dreyfuss) through the final night of summer before they leave for college three thousand miles away. Both are acutely aware that their lives will never be the same and they want to make the most of these last twelve hours with their friends.
There's no big party, no group hugs and pledges of undying friendship. It's another night just like hundreds they've experienced before, doing the things they've done a hundred times before, but director George Lucas imbues it all with an unseen magic that makes the night unforgettable.
This is a story that will stay with you long after the final credits have rolled.

GOODBYE MY FANCY: Joan Crawford as a premature anti anti-communist

GOODBYE MY FANCY offers many guilty pleasures, and most of them are clearly visible on the surface.  
There's Joan Crawford emoting with the intensity of an open fire hydrant on a hot summer's day, and the corny dialogue breathlessly delivered by an overacting supporting cast in what may simply be a defence mechanism to avoid being blown off-screen by their leading actress.
It's second rate melodrama at it's finest. Scenery-chewing, predictable and fun.
What's surprising is the story's politically subversive undertones.
Crawford stars as the improbably named Agatha Reed, a hard charging US Congresswoman with bigger balls than all of her male colleagues put together. Invited back to her alma mater to be awarded an honorary degree she stirs up a hornet's nest by insisting that the school screen a film of her speech warning of the dangers of imposing limits on the right to free speech.
Having (equally improbably) witnessed the horrors of Naziism at firsthand while serving as a war correspondent on the frontlines of the battle to liberate Europe, it's a subject she's passionate about. 
But the film's message doesn't sit well with Claude Griswold, the domineering chair of the school's board of trustees. He doesn't believe the all-female undergraduate body should be exposed to such depressing and disagreeable ideas and images as book-burning,  the enslavement of educators, and the murder of opponents to the Nazi philosophy. He orders the college president, James Merrill (Robert Young) to cancel the screening or risk of losing his job.
Young just happens to be Agatha's college boyfriend, and while the flame still burns bright within his heart, it's no match for his sense of self-preservation. She's appalled to discover the love of her life has traded his principles for appeasement. By conceding to Griswold over the film he believes he'll be better placed to win other battles over the school's future, and is deaf to the Congresswoman's argument that his stance is indefensible at a time when the USA is fighting for freedom from tyranny abroad.

That 'time' was 1951 and when Warner Bros released GOODBYE MY FANCY in May of that year the Cold War with communism was in the deep freeze. UN troops, under American command, were engaged in heavy fighting with communist forces in Korea, the Rosenbergs were on trial for passing atomic secrets to the Soviets, and Senator Joseph McCarthy was whipping up anti-communist hysteria with his wild claims of reds under every American bed. It was a time when patriotism was measured by a willingness to denounce friends, colleagues and neighbours who displayed liberal tendencies, or who had supported anti-fascist causes two decades earlier when the left wing was the only wing warning of the danger of Naziism.
In this light it seems incredible that a Stars and Stripes hugging studio like Warner Bros would risk incurring the wrath of the right by challenging the prevailing philosophy so blatantly. Studio boss Jack Warner was a bully who liked to think of himself as a scrappy fighter who stood up to bullies but he was no friend of those accused of attempting to undermine the United States from within. 
Careers had already been ruined on less evidence of liberalism than this Warner Bros production was offering up in the guise of overheated melodrama.
Brave, brash and bad, GOODBYE MY FANCY has something for everyone from drag queens to Cold war scholars.

THE MESSENGER: bringing the war back home to New Jersey

Give me a character driven story over an action adventure blockbuster any day.
I like films where the characters are the stars not the special effects or explosions. And I'm particularly partial to interesting characters in everyday situations dealing with whatever life (and the scriptwriter) has to throw at them.
Making the ordinary extraordinary trumps making the extraordinary even larger than life everytime.
Which is a roundabout way of saying I really enjoyed THE MESSENGER.
The film examines the consequences of the US involvement in Iraq through the eyes of two soldiers whose job it is to break the news to husbands, wives, mothers and fathers, that their loved one has been killed in action.

Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is three months away from leaving the Army when he's assigned to work with Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), driving out to families in  suburban New Jersey to deliver the terrible news in person before they hear it from the media. It's not Will's dream job. He's had no training in grief counselling and he's not religious, but he's told that's not the point. He's given a script to learn and instructed that under no circumstances is he to offer consolation to the NoK (next of kin) by touching or hugging them.
Both Will and Tony are men's men, not given to expressing emotion in public or discussing their respective military experiences, although Will has clearly been through a lot. He's still recovering from wounds received in action in Iraq, and now lives a rather isolated existence in a sparsely furnished, impersonally decorated apartment off-base. Tony's given his life to the military and looks to have it altogether, but as the story unfolds it becomes obvious that both men have many problems in common.
Harrelson is the one who's been lauded with award nominations (including one for Best Supporting Actor Oscar) but it's relative unknown Foster who's at the heart of this drama. Initially reluctant to accept the assignment he finds himself unexpectedly affected by the distressing reactions of those to whom he delivers his life-changing message, and inexplicably drawn to one young widow (played by Samantha Morton) in particular.
Despite their outward show of bravado, neither man is who they appear to be and certainly not the kind of figures we've come to expect from cinematic portrayals of cynical, battlehardened vets.The refusal to play up to that stereotype is just one of the rewarding elements to this story.
Another is it's languid pace. First time director Oren Moverman has created an experience which refuses to be rushed yet never outstays it's welcome. The film feels longer than it's sub 2 hour running time but that's not a complaint. Between his direction, his Oscar nominated screenplay and the performances of Foster, Harrelson and Morton, I felt so immersed in their world I would happily have stayed living in it for another hour.
In reviewing Zombieland and 2012 for this blog I expressed my dislike of Woody Harrelson as an actor. That still stands but I have to admit he is good here. The understated way in which he plays Tony Stone makes him considerably less objectionable and I certainly wouldn't begrudge him the Oscar in the unlikely event that it's his name in the envelope.
THE MESSENGER has received just a fraction of the attention paid to The Hurt Locker but for my money it's the superior film.
 

NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU: I like you but not in that way

There are eight million stories in the Naked City, and NEW YORK, I LOVE YOU tries to cram at least half of them into it's 1 hour 45 minute running time.

This compilation of vignettes, eavesdropping on life in the Big Apple, aims to do for NYC what 2006's "Paris, Je T'aime" did for the French capital. That film presented twenty short self-contained stories revolving around characters falling in and out of love. Each had it's own cast of famous actors, directed by a different famous film director. 
The stories were charming, amusing and light, and Paris looked absolutely ravishing.
In the hands of a different, slightly less famous, collection of actors and directors that magic has somehow been lost during the journey across the Atlantic. They've created an image of New York that's soft and inviting but doesn't succeed in exuding genuine allure. In their efforts to capture the "real" New York the directors have studiously avoided the most famous landmarks leaving me with the feeling of having consumed a Sunday lunch which is all vegetables and no meat. I wanted more from the experience.
Some of the stories are incredibly short (giving the impression that I'd missed something) while some others are incredibly confusing (again giving me the impression I'd missed something). One vignette, featuring Julie Christie, Shia LaBeouf and John Hurt is particularly baffling, and the effort involved in trying to figure out what it meant distracted me from the subsequent installment.  

Chris Cooper and Ethan Hawke star in two of the more rewarding stories, but for pure, put-a-big-smile-on-your-face pleasure it's hard to beat veteran actors Eli Wallach and Cloris Leachman as an elderly, bickering Jewish couple shuffling to the boardwalk on Brighton Beach for a breath of fresh air.
Ultimately the film is too busy for it's own good. There's too much going on to keep track of it all. 
In addition to the confusion described above, some characters have a habit of popping up out of context, Are they in this other story too, or are we cutting back to their story which is still going on even though it apparently finished? Perhaps the intention is to replicate the rhythms of the city but it feels messy and, at times, a little disjointed.
The heart's undoubtedly in the right place but as a love letter to one of the most incredible, exciting, and wonderful cities on Earth NEW YORK I LOVE YOU is an airport novel by Jeffrey Archer compared to the Shakespearean poetry of Woody Allen's "Manhattan."

NINE: this judge awards zero point zero for entertainment

It's official. I do not like films directed by Rob Marshall. 
"Chicago" was a boring stage-bound adaptation of a musical offering just one memorable song; "Memoirs of a Geisha" was a chick-flick with not one single solitary point of interest for male viewers; and NINE is simply boring.

Not being a Broadway aficionado, I didn't realise the film's based on a hit show though I should have guessed. The action has been opened up more than it was in the film version of "Chicago"  but it's still largely stage bound, with characters that are more at home under the proscenium arch than on the big screen.
The biggest clue though is the collection of tuneless songs which repeatedly interrupt the flow of the story. Each of the film's many stars gets their own big production number, allowing them to express at great length their feelings towards the central character Guido Contini, played by Daniel Day Lewis. And it's here that NINE goes one better than "Chicago" because there's not even one memorable, hummable song among them.
Contini is a thinly disguised version of celebrated Italian film director Federico Fellini. His movies have come to define 1960s Rome to the world, but the maestro's struggling for inspiration for his new movie. He has a title, "Italia" and a star in Claudia Jenssen (Nicole Kidman) but with the start of shooting just ten days away he still doesn't have a script. With two flops behind him, the weight of expectation on him to create a hit is so heavy he's literally finding it hard to breath. 

These professional pressures are compounded by his complicated personal life. He's trying to placate an unhappy mistress (Penelope Cruz) and an even more unhappy wife (Marion Cotillard) while also living up to the expectations of his dear departed mama (Sophia Loren).
On paper this all looks like an interesting premise for a film but it transfers to the screen as dull, self indulgent and directionless. It requires an iron will to stay with the film through it's first fifty shapeless minutes when there's little discernable forward motion to the plot. 
Director Marshall tries to recreate the look and the feel of a Fellini movie but the result is a pastiche which totally misses the point. It's like recreating the Mona Lisa using paint by numbers. The end product looks the same (the visuals are impressive and the sequences in black and white are particularly effective) but it's obviously not the Mona Lisa, and in Marshall's case, having a cast of Irish (Day Lewis), British (Judi Dench), French (Cotillard), Spanish (Cruz) and Australian (Kidman) actors speaking in faux Italian accents really doesn't help.
NINE should have been released on Thanksgiving. It has turkey written all over it. 

AVATAR: not quite the end of cinema as we know it

So I finally gave in and went to see what all the hoopla's about.
I was prepared to be bored rigid by AVATAR but I was pleasantly surprised. I guess that's the big plus point about low expectations.

The film is undeniably a visual treat. The 3-D takes a little while to get used to but by the film's midpoint it felt entirely natural. Director James Cameron has obviously made a conscious decision not to treat 3D as a gimmick by using it solely to throw things into the audience. The technique serves the story rather than the other way around, so while stuff does appear to come out of the screen and into the auditorium it does so organically. 
But while the film deserves praise for it's cutting edge use of computer technology to create a plausible alien world on the planet Pandora, it's also true that without the hi-tec visuals AVATAR would be an overlong sci-fi epic with far more limited appeal. It's the visuals which breathe new life into the rather familiar story of conflict between technologically superior, arrogant humans, and a community of peace-loving primitive aliens living at one with nature. 
Cameron, who also wrote, produced and edited the movie, has his cake and eats it too, using AVATAR to condemn man's use of technology in pursuit of financial reward at the expense of those who value the natural order, while using advanced technology to make the telling of the story possible.
Granted he's not destroying civilisations and massacring hundreds in the process but - if some of the film's loudest supporters are to be believed - the release of AVATAR marks a seismic change in the way that films are made. The film's impact on cinema is the 21st century equivalent, they claim, of the introduction of sound to films in 1927.
I think that's overstating it's significance. Cinema has been making increasing use of computer generated imagery in the last 15 years (remember your initial reaction to seeing 'real' dinosaurs in 'Jurassic Park'?) but cgi has not replaced traditional methods of film making. AVATAR does mark a big step forward in this process but I'm not convinced it will sweep away all that came before it in the same way that sound destroyed practically all the techniques and practices involved in making silent movies.

Cameron's brand of hi-tec 3D works for action/fantasy stories but is much less relevant to other genres. Comedies and dramas for example, have little need for such effects. It's difficult to figure out how 3D would enhance the storytelling process there. 
The other factor limiting 3D's take-over of existing film-making processes is on the customer end. I saw AVATAR at a typical American multiplex - the kind of place where most people go to see films - and the screen wasn't big enough to do full justice to the technology. 3D emphasised the relative smallness of the screen by highlighting it's edges, which cut off the picture everytime it came out of the screen. Similarly the 3D glasses with their solid black frames constrained my field of vision.
I'm glad I went to see it. It was my first experience of a real 3D movie and I liked what I saw. AVATAR is an impressive achievement and there's much to admire. However I'll still be rooting for "Up in the Air" on Oscar night.

VALLEY OF THE DOLLS: trashier than the municipal dump

I'd always imagined that VALLEY OF THE DOLLS would be trashy. I'd read enough about the film in books on the history of 1960s cinema to expect airport novel junk with a high Hollywood gloss but I didn't realise quite what a soap opera it would be as well.

I don't mean those self-perpetuating daytime tv soaps with their cardboard sets and wooden acting. VALLEY OF THE DOLLS is Dynasty style soap, right down to the casting of a Hollywood star who's seen better days.
That actress on the slide is Susan Hayward, playing Helen Lawson, a Broadway legend who's attained her mythic status by clambering over the bodies of those who were more talented but less determined. It's a part that would have also suited the late 60s-era Bette Davis or Joan Crawford, although it's doubtful whether anything or anyone would have remained standing had either of those ladies been cast in the role.
It's a shame that Hayward's part isn't bigger. Lawson is an enjoyable and much needed counterpoint to the shrieking, wailing and immature suffering of the three interchangeable young women at the heart of the story.
I had the hardest time telling Barbara Parkins (Anne) from Patty Duke (Neely). They both look so similar that it took me the first thirty seconds of any scene either of them was in to figure out which one I was watching. It didn't help that the same guys got involved with both of them.
The third of the trio is Sharon Tate as Jennifer. Although beset by the same personal and career setbacks as Anne and Neely in her climb up the greasy pole of showbusiness, with her striking looks, long blonde hair and fixation on her breasts, I had no problem identifying her.
It's the myriad of misfortunes which inject the element of soap opera into the proceedings. Between the three of them they rack up more adultery, mental illness, drug addiction, abortions, fatal diseases, alcoholism, attempted suicides, one-night stands, and ex-boyfriends/husbands in just a few short years than any trio of real-life famous-for-being-famous paparazzi-addicted socialites could manage in a lifetime.

Watching the multiple miseries which afflict them as they drag themselves painfully up that pole, it's impossible to avoid reaching the conclusion that fame and fortune are not worth the price they extract. The drama is so overheated that it's also easy to forget that it's not actually so far removed from reality. The history of Hollywood is littered with stars and wannabes who cracked under the pressure, from Peg Entwistle to Judy Garland. Ironically, Garland, who's own life bore many similarities to Neely's,  was hired and fired from the part of Helen Lawson because of her drinking and unpredictable behaviour.
VALLEY OF THE DOLLS is considerably less scandalous now than it was on it's original release in 1967. Thanks to the tabloids, kiss and tell memoirs, and websites like TMZ, there's little we don't know about what happens behind the scenes in showbusiness and the lengths to which some people are prepared to go to find fame and then hang on to it. 
There's something rather endearing about three young ladies quite prepared to trample the ten commandments in their drive to succeed, but unwilling to speak in anything less than perfectly formed sentences while they're doing it.
But even though it's power to shock is much diminished the film survives as an enjoyable example of ludicrous, overblown, implausible camp trash. 

BEDTIME STORY: I've heard this one before

The most extraordinary thing about BEDTIME STORY is the performance of Marlon Brando.
This is not the tortured, angry, mumbling, method acting Brando of the 1950s, nor is it the increasingly fat, middle aged, mumbling, method acting Brando of the 70s.

This 1964 release features a still handsome, clearly spoken, non-method acting Marlon Brando making his first foray into comedy, and it really is a weird experience. I just didn't expect to see him being so normal, tossing off punchlines and mugging like Jerry Lewis, in a part which could have been played by any number of good looking, marginally talented light comedians.
He and David Niven play a couple of conmen who earn their living by seducing the ladies. Niven uses his suave English charms to separate older females from their fortune while Brando specialises in luring younger girls into bed with promises of marriage and then abandoning them when he's had his way. 
When Brando horns in on Niven's territory on the French Riviera the two team up at first (with Brando playing Niven's idiot brother) but then fall out over fabulously wealthy "soap queen" Janet Walker (Shirley Jones). To settle their differences the two men agree that whoever is first to get $25,000 out of Ms Walker will become 'king of the mountain' while the loser leaves town.
If the plot sounds vaguely familiar - it is. BEDTIME STORY was remade in 1988 as "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" with Michael Caine and Steve Martin. Brando's interpretation of retarded stupidity is tame compared to Martin's gross-out version, but it's still odd watching a man regarded by many as the greatest movie actor of all time hamming furiously as he pretends to careen downhill in an out-of-control wheelchair.
Brando looks neither convincing nor comfortable in the part, and he would have looked embarrassed too if he could have seen the finished product. The story's set on the French Riviera but Brando and Niven never set foot off the Universal studios lot in Los Angeles. Director Ralph Levy chooses instead to stand them in front of some of the most unconvincing back projected footage I've ever seen. A pair of obvious stand-ins are used for the few shots actually filmed in France. 
This kind of lazy filmmaking insults the audience's intelligence. It assumes we'll be so overawed by the superstar charisma pulsating from the screen that we won't notice the weak script and shoddy production values. Rob Reiner tried the same trick with "The Bucket List" using the star power of Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman to try and distract us from noticing how bad his film was. He should have learned from BEDTIME STORY. Even cinema legends can't polish a turd.   

THE UNKNOWN MAN: anguish 101 for actors

Walter Pidgeon was just starting the slow inevitable slide from leading man status when he made THE UNKNOWN MAN for longtime employers MGM in 1951.
He'd reached the peak of his fame nine years earlier as Mr Miniver to Greer Garson's "Mrs Miniver" but he'd been around since the mid 1920s, working with most of the big names at Metro Goldwyn Mayer, usually as the solid, often stolid reliable, husband type. He occasionally got an action part but mostly he exuded dull dependable integrity.
Imagine a large piece of oak, tall and erect, carved with craggy features and endowed with a beautiful baritone voice and you've got Walter Pidgeon.

The part of business attorney Dwight Bradley Masen in THE UNKNOWN MAN was therefore tailor-made for him. Masen's built a comfortable life for himself on the earnings from his law practice. He knows all the right people and has a reputation for idolising the law. He's thoroughly decent and so dull that he blends in with the solid wood furniture lining his office.
Then he takes on a criminal case, defending a young man (Keefe Brasselle) accused of murder. Masen wins on his first time out in court but afterwards learns that his client was probably guilty. What is Mr Live-by-the-law to do? The young man can't be tried again, but neither can Masen let him get away with it.
To articulate his dilemma Pidgeon digs deep into his memory to recall whatever acting lessons he may have taken as a young man and the result is Anguish 101 for Actors.
Masen paces the floor, up and down, up and down, lapping at the speed of an Olympic race walker as his mind turns over the problem "what to do, what to do." He spins so sharply each time he reaches the edge of the carpet that I fear he might fall over but he continues pacing, oblivious to any dizziness caused by the sudden 180 degree change in direction.
Often when he paces he wrings his hands at the same time, just to make sure we fully comprehend the depth of his anguish.
In those brief moments when he comes to rest he stops wringing his hands for long enough to hold his head with them, almost perceptibly squeezing his skull as if to try and force out a solution.
And let's not forget the copious dabbing of his sweaty brow with a neatly folded handkerchief while preparing to betray the moral foundation of his very being with a carefully considered but hesitantly spoken falsehood.
Believe me, Method Actors have nothing on Walter Pidgeon.
To be fair, his acting's no better or worse than the story, which is nothing more than a B crime movie tinged with a thin patina of MGM gloss.
Masen's unnamed hometown is big, progressive and successful yet has just one judge, one courtroom and a DA who has to investigate and prosecute cases all on his own. The mysterious Mr Big of organised crime is played by an actor who looks so weird (in the immaculate world of Hollywood strange looking characters were rarely good or normal) and makes such a feeble attempt at not being Mr Big that the only real mystery is how Masen failed to realise his friend's true identity ten years earlier.
THE UNKNOWN MAN is the kind of film that TCM schedules for a time of day when the only alternatives are infommercials for Miraclesponges, and no-one with a pulse is watching anyway. 
I've got a pulse but I already own three Miraclesponges.