War Horse - Movie Reviews

World War I, known then only as the Great War or World War, was one of the most brutal and utterly miserable periods in mankind’s history. In War Horse director Steven Spielberg, because the script is based on a children’s book, sets out to make war a family friendly affair. You won’t see a single battle wound in this war movie. The worst horrors of war are largely hidden by a camera that cuts away at all the right moments, and by focusing instead on the life of a horse.

After an interminably slow start in a quaint village populated by people who seem more like hobbits then men, eventually we end up following a horse named Joey as he’s sent off into battle carrying a British officer into the war against Germany. Seen through the eyes of a cavalry mount, it’s the story of how horses became utterly obsolete. The course of the war gradually changes around Joey, as for the first time in man’s history machines come into play to be used as engines of destruction. Glorious cavalry charges in the sun gradually turn into men hiding in muddy trenches clutching machine guns and massive metal tanks rolling down barbed-wire choked ditches.

Joey’s journey through war-torn Europe is really just an excuse to tell a series of short stories set during the Great War. War Horse soon settles in to a predictable formula of Joey meeting a new group of people, spending time with them, and being torn away to spend time with the next. Some of these stories are more successful than others. The nervousness of Joey’s rider as he charges in to battle the first time rings eerily true. The story of a sickly little French girl living with her Grandpa, as the booming sound of guns approaches, will break your heart.

But this isn’t Saving Private Ryan. It’s history seen through a lens that children can understand and, if you’re looking for a way to teach your kids about one of the darkest periods in human history, War Horse is the perfect way to do it. If you’re looking for something more than a few interesting stories in an overlong movie, you’ll walk away from War Horse disappointed. Spielberg’s film, despite a great deal of effort, feels like a good stage play that never quite makes a full transition into the world of movies. 
CLICK HERE FREE DOWNLOAD WAR HORSE 

Read More

CONTRABAND - MOVIE REVIEWS

You've got to give it to Mark Wahlberg, who seems to have stumbled into one of the steadiest careers in Hollywood through sheer force of will. He managed to leave his underwear model and rapper days behind through a tight friendship with David O. Russell, which led him to awards season successes like The Fighter, paved the way for his Oscar-nominated role in The Departed, and also gave him the ability to headline a series of disposable thrillers tailor-made to prove he's still a man's man. Contraband, if you couldn't tell from the poster in which he duct tapes wads of money to his abs, is another one of those, long and loopy and completely absent dramatic stakes.

It's not too surprising that Wahlberg would sign on for something like this, or that he could put together a supporting cast-- among them Ben Foster, Giovanni Ribisi, J.K. Simmons-- who seem equally half-asleep as he is. But Contraband marks the directorial debut of Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur, who made a splash there with similarly themed thrillers, and who starred in the original Icelandic version of this story, Reykjavik-Rotterdam. With so much invested, why on earth would he turn in a movie so plodding, so unconcerned with the basic cause and effect beats of storytelling, or so convinced of its own grittiness while also lacking any real-world logic? There is a Mark Wahlberg movie about counterfeit money smuggling we would all fall over ourselves to see, but Contraband scratches the surface of that idea just enough that you badly wish you were seeing the better version.

As described in some flatfooted expository dialogue at the beginning of the film, Wahlberg's Chris Farraday and his BFF Seabastian (Foster) "were the Lennon and McCartney of smuggling" before they gave up the game, but of course, Chris is called in for "one last job" when his brother-in-law runs afoul of some drug dealers. Chris sneaks on to a container ship and marshals some of his buddies from the old days to help him pick up crates counterfeit cash of Panama City, sell it off back home in New Orleans and repay his brother-in-law's debt, all while leaving his wife (Kate Beckinsale) and two sons back at home in the same town where those angry drug dealers live. Wahlberg moves through the film with almost enough confidence to brush off this sort of giant logic problems, but the more complications and violence Contraband throws your way, the harder it is to believe the movie has any idea what it's doing.

Kormakur wrings some tension out of a few scenes that rely on a ticking clock, like Chris racing to hide the loot on board the ship before the captain notices, or even when Chris's wife is put in an especially preposterous sort of mortal danger. But stretching out nearly two hours, Contraband squanders its tiny bit of goodwill with a hotdogging, "gritty" attitude that's never reflected in the actual story. With Wahlberg in dull leading man mode and even the usually reliable Foster failing to cut loose, Contraband is not nearly as fun as it could have been, but not dramatic or realistic enough to get by as an honest thriller either. If this is the kind of filmmaking Kormakur is trying to sell to America, he can keep it-- we've got plenty of it anyway
 CLICK HERE FREE DONWLOAD MOVIE CONTRABAND

Read More

Hugo - Movie Reviews

 
"I would recognise the sound of a movie projector anywhere!" says one of cinema's greatest pioneers, hearing that mechanical, sprockety whirr. It's a climactic moment in Martin Scorsese's new film: a family fantasy adventure in 3D which turns out to be a hi-tech magic lantern presentation on the wonder of early cinema, and its origins in the world of clockwork craftsmanship: toys, games, illusions.

1. Hugo
2. Production year: 2011
3. Countries: France, USA
4. Cert (UK): U
5. Runtime: 126 mins
6. Directors: Martin Scorsese
7. Cast: Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley, Chloe Grace Moretz, Chloe Moretz, Christopher Lee, Emily Mortimer, Frances de la Tour, Helen McCrory, Jude Law, Ray Winstone, Richard Griffiths, Sacha Baron Cohen, Sir Ben Kingsley
8. More on this film

Hugo is pitched as much to cinephile adults as children, and insists, in a fervent if rather pedagogic way, on that magical quality of cinema which children and grownups generally feel without needing to be told. This is a spectacular and gorgeously created film, with allusions to Harold Lloyd and Fritz Lang, and it's an almost overwhelming assault on the senses from the very first shot: a vision of post-first-world-war Paris which sees the city as one gigantic clockwork contrivance. We are then treated to a terrific camera move, whooshing into a crowded railway station where the action is to commence, and where the audience will feel like rubbernecking in awe at a cathedral of digital detail. Here is where a young boy called Hugo (Asa Butterfield) hides in the station's secret passages and recesses, winding all the station clocks himself: supposedly the job of his drunkard uncle and guardian (Ray Winstone), who has long since vanished.
Hugo has more secrets: he is trying to repair and restore a remarkable automaton which had come into the possession of his late father (Jude Law), a kindly watchmaker. But without Hugo quite realising it, this robot hides within its workings the secret of the 20th century's great new art form. Young Hugo is to come into contact with Isabelle (Chloë Moretz) and her formidable old grandpa, who runs a toy stall on the station platform: he is, in fact, M Georges Méliès, the great film-maker and innovator, now fallen on hard times. Ben Kingsley plays Méliès, and gives him the melancholy air of a deposed and exiled king, or at any rate someone who has been marginalised by great historical forces which he himself has brought into being: a little like Robert Donat's William Friese-Greene, the British cinema pioneer, in John Boulting's 1951 film The Magic Box. The illustrated novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, on which this movie is based, was inspired by the nonfiction study Edison's Eve, by British author Gaby Wood, which discussed Méliès's lost collection of automata.
The movie's opening act makes it actually look more like Spielberg than Scorsese, especially in the appearance of the villain, the station inspector, played by Sacha Baron Cohen, as a moustachioed martinet and stickler for station rules who vows to track down that little urchin Hugo. The inspector has, crucially, a sinister distinguishing feature: a metal clasp around his leg where he was injured in the Great War. Homing in on that feature looks like a Spielbergian tic – but then it becomes something else, a poignant mark of vulnerability and humanity, especially as this mechanism becomes positive, associated with the creativity and ingenuity of Hugo's robot and Méliès's secret career.
The quietly spoken, self-possessed old man reveals himself to be a great imaginative artist, and creator of the legendary adventure A Trip to the Moon. He was first a magician, and early adopter of the cinematograph when he saw the Lumière brothers' legendary 50-second film showing the arrival of a train at Ciotat station. (Here, incidentally, the film playfully repeats the apocryphal story of the audience fleeing from the train in panic. Scorsese's use of 3D for this movie is a clue that he is well aware of film historians' consensus that this tale is likely to have grown from the audience gasping and jumping when the Ciotat film was re-shown in the 1930s in stereoscopic 3D.)
It is when Isabelle and Hugo discover that the point of the story is the movies themselves that this film becomes at once so much more, and yet ever so slightly less, than a story about a homeless frightened boy and the mysterious toy robot which is all that he has left of his dad. Discovering and repairing old automata becomes a fable for film restoration and film history (of course, a great passion of Scorsese's), and the tensions between everyone involved are dissolved in universal reverence for this historical rediscovery of Méliès's genius. And of course, no red-blooded cinema lover could fail to sigh happily at these events, but this is in some ways an earnest and temperamentally conservative film, and I sometimes got the strange feeling that it was something that a really nice teacher might show in the runup to the Christmas holidays.
For all that, it's a deeply felt piece of work, something which only Scorsese could have brought to the screen, which finds a key point when Hugo must use a heart-shaped key to operate his automaton. The heart – that mediator between the head and the hands – is an image which points to the movies as a ghost in the machine: the technology, mass-production and grinding commerce which exploded in the 20th century would also facilitate the growth and vitality of the cinema itself.

Read More

Young Adult - Movie Reviews

 

A Paramount release presented with Mandate Pictures of a Mr. Mudd production in association with Right of Way Films and Denver & Delilah Films. Produced by Lianne Halfon, Russell Smith, Diablo Cody, Mason Novick, Jason Reitman.

Executive producers, Nathan Kahane, John Malkovich, Steven Rales, Helen Estabrook. Co-producers, Kelli Konop, Mary Lee, Beth Kono. Directed by Jason Reitman. Screenplay, Diablo Cody.

Mavis Gary - Charlize Theron
Matt Freehauf - Patton Oswalt
Buddy Slade - Patrick Wilson
Beth Slade - Elizabeth Reaser
Sandra Freehauf - Collette Wolfe
Hedda Gary - Jill Eikenberry
David Gary - Richard Bekins
Jan - Mary Beth Hurt

American comedies have spent the last few years exploring the idea of the man-child -- physically mature, but mentally stuck somewhere between high school and adulthood. Now we meet his female counterpart, and it's not a pretty sight. So much the better: Reteaming pop-savvy scribe Diablo Cody with "Juno" director Jason Reitman, "Young Adult" revels in breaking the rules of safe Hollywood storytelling, casting Charlize Theron as an emotionally stunted YA novelist with limited appeal and no tidy character arc. A B.O. gamble, the deliberately prickly pic courageously risks offending audiences to arrive at a truth beyond its genre's normal grasp.

Cody has found herself in the media crosshairs after the overnight acclaim of "Juno," and though the snark-meister has managed to sustain her unique brand through a mix of Twitter updates, Entertainment Weekly columns and edgy writing assignments ("Jennifer's Body," "The United States of Tara"), "Young Adult" will surely be the make-it-or-break-it project in many people's estimation of her talents. Rather than play it safe, Cody spins a personal case of writer's block -- possibly inspired by her gig adapting "Sweet Valley High" for screen -- into a deeply unflattering, semi-autobiographical takedown of adult-onset insecurity and egotism, inventing the story of a self-absorbed teen-lit novelist who returns home to rekindle things with the now-married boyfriend she dated in high school.

Theron plays Mavis Gary -- beautiful, successful and a mess. Mavis long ago achieved her goal of escaping the perceived oppression of small-town Mercury, Minn., to live the dream in Minneapolis. So why is she so unhappy? "Young Adult" is hip to the answer, but never preaches it outright: When people can hardly stand to be around themselves, they continue to run from and reinvent their lives until they address the fact that the root of their dissatisfaction lies within.

Though Mavis is undoubtedly fashioned from aspects of her creator's own personality, the operating idea here seems to be that people don't change. The high-school queen bee will always be insufferable, and her fitting punishment will be having to live with herself -- which is precisely Mavis' situation when the film opens: divorced and getting by on TV dinners and one-night stands in a dumpy caricature of her cosmopolitan ideal.

In such straits, an innocuous email announcing the birth of her old flame's baby is all it takes to send Mavis' mind back to the glory days, when she and football star Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson, reprising his laid-back "prom king" aura from "Little Children") were the school's cutest couple. On the surface, "Young Adult" is about Mavis' delusional quest to steal her former beau away from new wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser in a sly supporting turn). Deeper down, the film engages with the concept of maturity in a culture that celebrates such youthful ideals as beauty and instant gratification.

In Mavis' case, writing pulp melodramas for the Noxzema set encourages her to stay stuck in an adolescent mindset. However, since comedy is tragedy that happens to other people, the film easily plays as satire, following in the same vein as Alexander Payne's shrewdly observant, gently condescending Midwestern portraits, featuring character moments so true, one can't help but laugh in pained recognition.

While Cody settles on a less singular yet still piquant voice for her contempo characters than the one heard in "Juno," Reitman and his cast expertly manage the film's tricky tone. Even so, "Young Adult" seems content to remain small, retreating from Mavis' climactic moment of catharsis to deliver an ending that breaks yet another long-standing Hollywood rule, as the flawed heroine stares self-realization in the face and consciously decides not to learn from her experience.

In a film intent on authenticity, it's no coincidence that Mavis seems to be surrounded by inane reality-TV programming. Real life is messier than that, as demonstrated by the film's most sympathetic character, a former classmate named Matt Freehauf who was crippled by the cool kids during a miscalculated gay-bashing incident. In a poignant, career-redefining performance by comedian Patton Oswalt, Matt has every right to be resentful, and yet, he's coped with his adolescent issues better than Mavis.

Mavis, by contrast, comes across like a vampire straight out of one of the supernatural YA book series so popular these days. Shying away from the sun, she eavesdrops on real teens for story ideas and stalks Buddy and his new family, oblivious to the damage she's capable of inflicting on others.

For Theron, this represents a different kind of performance from "Monster" and "North Country," for which she won plaudits while allowing herself to look superficially unattractive. Here, the actress plays closer to home, inviting auds to observe the process by which she makes herself beautiful, painting on makeup, clipping her nails and attaching hair extensions to disguise her physical flaws. But the scowl etched on her face reveals the ugliness within, demonstrating a naked candor -- one that extends to the screenplay itself -- that's plenty admirable, in part because it's so squirm-inducing to behold.

Camera (Deluxe color), Eric Steelberg; editor, Dana E. Glauberman; music, Rolfe Kent; music supervisor, Linda Cohen; production designer, Kevin Thompson; art director, Michael Ahern; set decorator, Carrie Stewart; costume designer, David Robinson; sound (Dolby Digital/Datasat/SDDS), Ken Ishii; supervising sound editors, Warren Shaw, Perry Robertson, Scott Sanders; re-recording mixers, Michael Barry, Eric Hirsch; visual effects supervisor, John Bair; visual effects, Phosphene; stunt coordinator, Peter Bucossi; assistant director, Jason A. Blumenfield; casting, Suzanne Smith Crowley, Jessica Kelly. Reviewed at DGA Theater, Los Angeles, Nov. 15, 2011. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 93 MIN.

Read More

The Iron Lady - Movie Reviews

 

A Weinstein Co. (in U.S.)/20th Century Fox (in U.K.) release of a Pathe, Film4, U.K. Film Council presentation with the participation of Canal Plus and Cine Plus, in association with Goldcrest Film Prod., of a DJ Films production. (International sales: Pathe, London.) Produced by Damian Jones. Executive producers, Francois Ivernel, Cameron McCracken, Tessa Ross, Adam Kulick. Co-producers, Anita Overland, Colleen Woodcock. Directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Screenplay, Abi Morgan.

Read More

Arthur Christmas - Movie Reviews

 

 

 There are two types of movies that are particularly hard to judge at this strange juncture in cinema: animated films and Christmas movies. The former is not, really, due to a lack of offerings in the medium but more the fact that Pixar has dominated the genre for much of the last two decades; save for the occasional burst of brilliance from Dreamworks ( How to Train Your Dragon), the studio's supremacy in this area has rarely been in dispute, so everything else tends to pale in comparison. Even this summer's woebegotten Cars2 had more originality than a good chunk of the latter three Shrek movies. Christmas movies, meanwhile, generally are what they are, which is to say mildly amusing seasonal escapism with no real purpose or function outside the winter months, originally guaranteed heart-warmers, they've become more formulaic by the year and critics have generally treated as such, rendered cold by the skepticism of a skeptical age. (Case in point: they're usually released on DVD a full year after their theatrical run to coincide with the next year's holiday season. Ho ho ho, meet sell sell sell.)

In any case, the rarely-heard-from Sony Pictures Animation is throwing their own horse into both races, a 3D-enhanced, Bieber-cosigned (the music video for his Jackson Five-interpolating cover of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" precedes each screening, in full 3D no less) holiday jaunt called Arthur Christmas that's hardly a home run on either front, but with an impressively invested voice cast and a genuine heart at its center, it will certainly qualify as a high-pop double. The film is hardly memorable for any of its plot points (except for a genuinely touching ending, but more on that later) but it is infectiously genuine. For all its 2011 bells and whistles, it seems to have come from an earlier, more innocent era of filmmaking when audiences were not yet so jaded; it's heavy-handed at best yet so completely invested in the candy-coated shtick it's selling you can't help but get swept up in its better moments.

The film borrows its wildly amusing premise from the notion that, yes Virginia, Santa Claus (voice of Jim Broadbent) exists, his name is actually Malcolm, and he's got a bustling, Modern Family-style brood to call his very own. Our Arthur Christmas (James McAvoy) is his youngest son, a clodhopping goofball in an itchy-looking sweater and slippers that beep and boop Yuletide carols with every step. Designated responder for all of Santa's fan mail, Arthur is this film's embodiment of the Christmas mythos as applied to young kids; all he wants is for everyone to get a present and believe that Santa loves them enough to have paid them an honest-to-gosh visit. The character himself doesn't really have much to do besides recite the usual Christmas message, but McAvoy's delivery of each line at a high-pitched squeal, as if Arthur is waking up every day on, well, Christmas morning, is as infectious to experience as it is irritating to have described to you. If you have to be force-fed a heap of Yuletide mush, you want it to be from a guy like this.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Santa's eldest son and heir to the big guy's mantle, an enterprising meathead named Steve (Hugh Laurie) who has streamlined Christmas night into a full-scale, military-style operation complete with a giant, sleigh-shaped spaceship and an army of elves (hilarious, every one of them) who deliver presents and slip into houses in the same manner as Tom Cruise tends to infiltrate evil foreigners in the Mission: Impossible movies. If Arthur is the Miracle on 34th Street version of Christmas, all wide-eyed and wonder, Steve is its Jingle All The Way , focusing his attentions on the bells and whistles of the holiday season and not so much on the soul. At one point, he purports to give a child an upgraded version of the toy they had originally asked for. "Bigger, ergo, better," he chips in Laurie's impeccable British accent.

As mentioned before, the plots in these movies are almost superfluous, but it does help that this one is genuinely interesting: Steve is denied the Santa Claus title and forgets to deliver a kid's present to boot. While he convalesces in jealousy and Malcolm snoozes away, Arthur hijacks the original Santa sleigh to deliver the lost gift. Comedy ensues, some impressively adult cultural references are tossed around, the ornery coot "Grandsanta" (a fantastic Bill Nighy, doing what appears to be a Geoffrey Rush impression for some reason) all but steals the show, and the movie generally lives up to its kid-friendly premise while keeping the adults entertained.

Suffice it to say, everyone knows exactly where this movie is headed, except not. While you'd expect the coda to be treacly, preachy, condescending or some unholy marriage of the three, director and co-writer Sarah Smith smartly keeps it quiet and intimate, focusing on the little sounds that make Christmas morning pop in the memories of even the most jaded adults: the creaking of the steps, the cracking of the wrapping paper, the peek of the morning light through the window, and the child's squeal that brings the whole thing home (that this film came from Wallace and Gromit masterminds Aaardman Animation makes it seem less surprising that they nail the scene so beautifully, but at the risk of spoiling the party, one does wonder how the movie would have played out in Claymation). 

And yes, there is a certain amount of mush following that particular scene, but that, it seems, is the trade-off. Still, there is something to be said for a movie that, at the end of the day, puts its money in faith and fancy to carry the day. Grinch about it all you want. Resistance is futile.

 

Read More

The Muppets - Movie Reviews

 

 One of the great things about Jim Henson's Muppets shows and films was really just how much of the Muppets there were in them. Sure, humans continually popped into frame -- whether it was Steve Martin mugging for his ten seconds of screen time or Charles Grodin playing baddie. But mostly Henson stuck to his gloriously personable sock puppet weirdos destroying the set or bringing the house down with a big musical number. So while it's fantastic to see Jason Segel bringing the guys back to the big screen in proper form, it's disconcerting to see humans so prominently displayed. Amy Adams certainly does pull off a sweet solo number with admirable flash, but wouldn't it have been better with a backup chorus led by Rizzo the Rat?

Segel stars in and wrote this snarky-smart film, and he deserves credit for bringing back a franchise that had been driven into the ground by the uninspired likes of Muppet Treasure Island -- and with no less a creativity-killer behind him than the Muppets' new bosses: Disney. A soft-featured giant with a penchant for innocent-faced hangdog types, Segel plays Gary, mild-mannered resident of Smalltown whose brother Walter just so happens to be a Muppet who's obsessed with the TV Muppets. Gary agrees to bring Walter along on the anniversary trip he and his longtime girlfriend Mary (Adams, beaming to beat the sun) are taking to Los Angeles, blithely ignoring Mary's total disatisfaction with the arrangement.
A high-stepping song in which Gary and Walter sing about how perfect everything is kicks things off like a chirpy, hard-working Broadway musical. The smiles are stretched as wide as an IMAX screen and an air of mildly trippy surrealism pervades (perhaps the film's best nod to the original 1979 film). Disappointment looms when Walter discovers that the Muppet theater is a run-down dusty shell on Hollywood boulevard, and the old gang scattered to the winds. That blow is followed up by the arrival of oilman Tex Richman (Chris Cooper), who's exploiting a loophole in the Muppets contract that gives him control of the theater --  and the oil deposits underneath -- if the Muppets can't raise $10 million in a few days.

Like a latter-day Blues Brothers, the film quickly pivots into "we're getting the band back together mode," always a convenient excuse for giving a large cast of characters their moment to shine. As great as it is to see Miss Piggy swanning around the Paris offices of Vogue and Gonzo as a filthy rich toilet magnate, though, Segel earns extra points for imagining Animal in anger management class ("Jack Black says no drums!").

Segel and director James Bobin set the mood to full, beaming grins. All this sunshine is layered with gags that mostly zing (Kermit blowing dust off his old guest-star rolodex and calling up President Carter is a nice touch) but don't come as fast and thick as they could. Surprisingly, given Bobin's experience directing Flight of the Conchords, he doesn't pack the film with songs. Earlier films like The Great Muppet Carpet had so many production numbers they were essentially musicals. The Muppets has just a few original numbers, including one with Cooper that could be the best solid minute of film audiences will see all year, padded out with covers ranging from the good (Gonzo's chickens doing Cee-Lo) to the sublime (a barbershop quartet rendition of "Smells Like Teen Spirit").

The Muppets is most satisfying the closer it hews to the glorious chaos of the old TV show, a mood heavily replicated in its last third. That sense of flailing vaudeville anarchy is missed in the rest of the film, which is funny enough and even occasionally touching, but sometimes forgets the cardinal rule of any Muppets creation: the humans should be there for cameos and celebrity hosting, not to star.

 

 

Read More