Month: June 2011

Hanna

Joe Wright’s trippy little “action film” seems to have begun as a straightforward high-concept no-brainer — teen girl, raised by father just inside the Arctic circle, is a survivalist wunderkind with a backstory just waiting to be booted up. And, sure enough, a few minutes in dad (Eric Bana, with a German accent) digs up a transponder, asks his daughter if she’s really ready, and she flips the switch to transmit.

Cue their rapid departure, the arrival of secret super-spy teams led by twisty clearly-evil Marissa (Cate Blanchett, with an American-Southern accent), and set things running. There’s an awful lot of running, which even the Chemical Brothers can’t fully justify. Hanna (Saiorse Ronan, playing in a bunch of languages) is Candide via Jason Bourne. There are some great action set-pieces–many pastiches of various of Wright’s influences, but all filmed with joy and wit and aforementioned thumping techno soundtrack, even if it’s a bit long, not terribly tight.

Wright gave the genetic blueprint for this story–all too familiar–some great goosing from Grimms’ fairy tales, and it’s filmed with all kinds of digressive style, too. I loved Ronan, loved the energy of the film, enjoyed its willingness to play by the rules and its equally firm commitment to perverse dislocations. It’s a bit too quilted–there’s a Kubrick fetish I kind of dig, but you can see a lot of the stitching, and the film could probably have used another script revision, or even better a willingness to go a lot more strange. (There’s an aggravating subtext about the evils of the childless witchy Marissa that could go away. Let her be the wolf; Blanchett doesn’t need to be saddled with the tired trope of the barren feminine.) But mostly the film is a sign of filmmakers in love with all kinds of genre films, and it’s definitely worth a look.

Super 8


A spirited, infectiously engrossing homage to Cold War-era creature features, Steven Spielberg, and assorted Amblin Entertainment films from the 1980s, J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 generates a crackerjack narrative kick and could very well be the most entertaining popcorn movie of the summer (though I suspect Cowboys and Aliens will give it a good run for it’s money). Much like the creature at it’s center, Abrams has concocted a plot made up of spare parts, skillfully blending elements from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, * batteries not included, The Goonies, and Jaws into a movie which feels organically whole. There is certainly a kind of self-reflexive glee in the way the pieces all come together, which should amuse anyone who grew up in the seventies and eighties, but Super 8 is more than a nostalgia trip. The actors fully commit to the material (the kids are really great), the camera work is nimble and the editing sharp and propulsive, the special-effects are top-notch, and the big emotional moments are well-earned. Trading Spielberg’s SoCal suburbia for a more lived-in, mid-western, rust-belt milieu, Abrams amps up the suspense with each turn of the plot. Stick around for the credits (which includes, I think, a humorous nod to the recent indie hit Paranormal Activity).

The Tree of Life


First, three moments. After jumping back and forth between three distinct periods of time (evoked primarily through architectural signifiers), in which the off-screen death of a secondary character reverberates with a transcendental solemnity, Terence Malick steers the viewer way, way, way back in time, delivering a visually stunning, ontological investigation into the beginnings of life on Earth. After much fire, fluid, flora and fauna, we come across two dinosaurs: one in the foreground collapsed, perhaps dying or maybe only sick; the other towering above in the background, eyeing the vulnerable creature with some interest. The latter approaches and suddenly I’m on the lookout for an objective correlative – maybe one openly referencing Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. I mean, the guiding principle of the film arrives in voice-over (and has been on a constant media loop since the emergence of what must certainly be the greatest trailer ever made): “There are two ways through life: the way of nature, and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow.” And so I sat and watched, and I waited, and yet . . . Continue reading The Tree of Life

Drive Angry

There’s not a lot of driving, and the anger tends toward the pissy, snotty, glowering. Obviously I didn’t expect this to be good, but so unrelentingly dull? Why did Nic Cage play it muted? Why don’t more people hire William Fichtner? Why am I posting on this? This film needed more bee-cages, iguanas, and/or crack pipes.