From My Collection: Brokeback Mountain Movie Review

I read “The New Yorker” magazine with some regularity. Each issue has a short story included that I usually start, but don’t finish. They rarely grab hold of me. But I went back and took a look at E. Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” which first appeared in October 1997. It is an absolutely brilliant example of economy of story and character development. She squeezes more information into a single line of dialogue than other writers can get onto a page and fifty times the words. She won an O. Henry award for the story.

Les Miserables Movie Review

I saw Les Miserables on Broadway as part of a class trip in sixth grade. There are three observations I’d like to make after seeing Tom Hooper’s new film adaptation, with a screenplay by William Nicholson, of the stage musical. The first is that I’m surprised a public school took eleven-year olds to a play that features prostitution, suicide as a means of atoning for lack of mercy, and the innuendo-laced number “Master of the House.” The second is that the show must have made quite an impression on me because, although I only saw it that once, I have several vivid memories of the staging of certain scenes. The final observation, and the most noteworthy, is that it is a damn fine musical. It’s got some riveting numbers, many of them as emotionally moving as anything in the history of great musicals. Yes, it occasionally suffers from one of my biggest pet peeves about some musicals: lyrics that narrate action. But as in the great tradition of opera, Les Miserables is a sung-through show with hardly any spoken dialogue. When it’s on point, however, as in the songs that focus on the expression of deep emotion, it is thrilling and moving.

The Dark Knight Rises Movie Review

I’m not ready to jump on the bandwagon of The Dark Knight Rises. Before I get labeled a hater or someone who badmouths Hollywood movies for the sake of it, let me point out I was a big fan of both Inception and The Dark Knight. It is true I dislike most big budget action films, but not for the sake of setting myself apart from the masses. It’s because they are so often so bad. The world was geared up to love The Dark Knight Rises. It’s been built up immensely. Everyone – not just Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. – has significant investment in its success. If you hate the third part, what does that say about your love for the first two? We are primed to enjoy this final chapter in the trilogy. I’m afraid my primer didn’t take.

Rio Movie Review

Several studios have tried to horn in on Disney’s virtual monopoly on feature animation, usually by trying to do things that Disney does not do. DreamWorks has created more grown-up oriented fare in the Shrek series and the little remembered Antz while Blue Sky Studios, best known for its Ice Age series, has tried to build its reputation around lovable animal characters. With Rio they’ve tried to branch out a little bit by including several prominent human characters in the story and by giving the film a rollicking musical score by John Powell (who also provided the wonderful score for How to Train Your Dragon) and some big musical numbers featuring singing characters and animated dance sequences.

Love and Other Drugs Movie Review

Edward Zwick, who has specialized in Hollywood action movies with a message (The Siege, Glory, Blood Diamond) has returned to the genre that got him started in feature films – the romantic comedy. It’s been 24 years since About Last Night… starring Rob Lowe and Demi Moore, both young and sexy, and depicted in the flesh in several perfectly lit scenes. But Zwick has not lost his touch for the ups and downs (including those in the bed) of a relationship. The actors have been updated to two sexy stars of the moment – Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. The movie is Love and Other Drugs, adapted from Jamie Reidy’s book Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman by Zwick, Charles Randolph and Marshall Herskovitz.

The Devil Wears Prada Movie Review

The Devil Wears Prada is one of those Hollywood productions based on a best-selling novel, cast with big name movie stars, filled out with great production values, all in service to a lifeless script.

The screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna is based on the novel (unread by me) by Lauren Weisberger. The basic plot is thus: fresh-faced college graduate Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathaway) seeks idealized position writing articles for a publication such as The New Yorker (it seems no one told Andy that in 2006, print publications were going the way of crank-start cars and anyway, big-time magazines generally don’t hire inexperienced 22-year olds as writers). She gets a (sort-of) lucky break getting hired as the junior assistant to Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep), a fashion maven and editor-in-chief of Runway fashion magazine. It’s a job “a million girls would kill for” and if Andy can last a year she’ll have her pick of great magazine jobs.

Alice in Wonderland Movie Review: Tim Burton's Hit and Miss streak Continues with Another Dud

I should admit up front that somehow I’ve managed to get through more than 30 years of life without ever having seen any adaptation of or read either of Lewis Carroll’s books Alices Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass, both of which provide the source material for Tim Burton’s latest, Alice in Wonderland. A little bit of nosing around the Internet led me to discover that both books generally form the basis for most iterations of the story, that they are deemed members of the genre of literary nonsense, and that Burton wanted to imbue the story with a narrative thread that would make it easier to connect with Alice and other characters.

That’s all well and good, but somehow Burton has directed a film completely absent any sense of joy or wonder, the latter of which I would say is a necessary component to a story entitled Alice in Wonderland. The screenplay (competently written by Linda Woolverton) seems to be capitalizing on the previous decade’s fascination with fantasy/adventure stories featuring a Chosen One tasked to save the world (a trend started by The Lord of the Rings). Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is prophesied to wield the sword of destiny (or some such hooey) to kill the dreaded Jabberwocky (voiced all too briefly by Christopher Lee) in order to save Underland (turns out Alice misunderstood the name once upon a time) from the clutches of the Red Queen.

One of the major changes to the original stories is the much expanded role of the Mad Hatter, which gives Johnny Depp the space to create yet another bizarre character to add to his growing pantheon. He does a fine job, switching emotions and vocal characterizations at the drop of a hat (ha ha!) to illuminate the sheer insanity of the character. However, the real centerpiece of acting is Helena Bonham Carter, perhaps by virtue of the fact that there’s so much to relish in the character of the Red Queen. Every time she shouts, “Off with the head!” she seems to find a new way to express the joy she feels at her power and the frustration at being nothing more than a feared tyrant. Crispin Glover also makes a notable appearance as the Red Queen’s dastardly and obedient enforcer.

In an attempt to provide pathos to the narrative and a protagonist we care about, the story opens with six-year-old Alice waking in the night to another bad dream featuring a white rabbit and blue caterpillar. Her loving father indulges these fantasies and helps her return to restful slumber. Flash forward 13 years. Alice’s father is dead, and her mother has all but arranged her marriage to a sniveling bore of a creature. And in case you didn’t pick up on Alice’s predominant character trait during the intro, Woolverton’s script hammers the point home with as much nuance as a sledgehammer to the skull: Alice refuses to wear a corset and stockings; during a staid dance routine she bumps into others because she was contemplating the clouds; she is too distracted by a rabbit in the garden to pay attention to a lecture from her future mother-in-law. Do you get it? Alice is a dreamer NOT MEANT FOR THIS WORLD of stuffy British attitudes and rules.

Perhaps the story will enthrall you in ways it failed to for me. That being the case, I will turn my attention to what I believe is the film’s most glaring misstep which is the visual scheme. Burton has always been a master at creating an on-screen feast for the eyes and he certainly earns his pay in that respect here. But his overreliance on CG effects to create about 75 percent of what you see is the biggest failure. Much of the effects work looks cheap. There is nothing here on the level of what Peter Jackson achieved with The Lord of the Rings or King Kong or James Cameron with Avatar.

With the exception of Alice and the White Queen (Anne Hathaway), incidentally the least interesting characters in the film, everything that moves is at least partially altered by CGI. This includes the Mad Hatter whose eyes have been enlarged and Glover’s legs have been abnormally stretched to make Stayne taller, giving him an unnatural gait as he walks and mounts his horse. With so much CG on the screen I’m left asking myself why the film wasn’t simply made as an animated film. The answer is perhaps because Disney (which financed and distributed the film) has been there and done that. But if it had been made as a CG animated film, which is essentially what it is anyway with a few live actors thrown in for good measure, or even better as stop-motion it might have been much better. Imagine what this film could have been given the gothic vision Burton brought to A Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride.

As it is the CG characters are not meant to be animated as far as the story is concerned, in the sense of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but to replace the difficult to render physical characters. But then we end up with a muddled mash of animation that doesn’t look real and live actors interacting with things I kept recognizing were not actually there on set.

I must say that the one exception is the Red Queen, who I think has a great look to her. With her oversized head and small body she’s been made to resemble a toddler – a perfect fit for her petulant personality. And the effects rendered on Carter don’t distract from the performance or the character, but rather enhance it, unlike most of the others.

Burton might be better off sticking with what he has always been quite successful at in the past: traditional effects used in more original stories that allow him the freedom to impress his unique vision onto the story. I’m thinking of films like Big Fish and Edward Scissorhands. His least successful films (from this critical standpoint) have been those drawn from established works of fiction such as Charlie and the Cocolate Factory, Planet of the Apes and this newest offering. When you see this white rabbit disappear, I advise you not to follow it down the hole.