A Real One Two Punch

"Warrior"

Trailers and box office receipts can be misleading when determining the quality of a film.  When Warrior opened in the middle of September last year it made a puny $5 million over its first weekend.  This flick came and gone in matter of weeks making a grand total of $13 million.  Surely the big wigs over at Lionsgate were scratching heads wondering what could have gone wrong.  Let this be said about Warrior, this is not bad a film.  If anything, it's the way this film was marketed which led to its financial failure.  First impressions after watching the trailer are this is a film about MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) which is a big turn off for most and only appeals to a few.  

Warrior is not about MMA.  It is about two brothers who don't like each other, despise their father, and have their own personal problems.  They also just happen to both participate in the sport of MMA.  Older brother Brendan (Joel Edgerton) has a beautiful wife and two adorable daughters.  His house is also about to be foreclosed on by the bank in a matter of weeks.  Brendan and his wife are already working multiple jobs just trying to stay afloat.  Younger brother Tommy (Tom Hardy) recently returned from Iraq as a war hero but is now lost with his thoughts about the past and future.  Their father Paddy (Nick Nolte) is a recovering alcoholic and has now found God as his savior.  Brendan and Tommy are having an extremely hard time dealing with these sudden changes in their father, especially considering what a monster used to be like them when they were growing up.  Brendan and Tommy each have their own sets of debt that have to be paid.  And the only way they can do it is to get back to doing what they did best as kids, fight.

Warrior plays on a number of clichés but never do they hinder the plot.  Yes, this is another root for the underdog stories that has the classic training montage sequence, but that's okay. In the end we're still emotionally invested in both Brendan and Tommy.  This is a film where there are no villains.  The conflict lies within each of them.  Times have changed since they were kids but old wounds reopen.  Paddy wants to reconnect with his two sons only to get the cold shoulder from both of them.  Do we blame Brendan and Tommy for their actions?  No.  But life always has to be moving forward and that's all Paddy wants.

This film is quite similar to 2010's The Fighter.  The story hits some of the same beats.  Again, there's nothing wrong with that.  In films like these it's not about the plot it's about the characters.  Edgerton, Hardy, and Nolte all give very compelling performances.  We're not sure who to root for in all of this (although Brendan does have more on the line) because the conflicts that arise are realistic and fit the story.  We are drawn to each of them because they all are trying to gain some sort of momentum for the future.

Heart pounding are the fight sequences, heartbreaking is Nolte's performance, basically this film has a lot of heart.  Give Warrior a chance considering the film itself turned out to be an underdog in 2011.  The subject matter may look like a turn off but it falls secondary to what the story is actually about.  You will find yourself on the edge of your seat cheering right along with crowds.  Warrior is a satisfying crowd pleasure that got released at a bad time of the year with a trailer that put an emphasis on the wrong element of the film.  Don't brush this film aside because it will knock you out!  

 

Sorkin Steps Up to the Plate

"Moneyball"

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin struck Oscar gold last year with his script for The Social Network.  The fact that his dialogue driven, 150 page script was turned into a 120 minute feature was pretty impressive.  Sorkin was able to make mainstream audiences understand computer programming and the creation of Facebook.  That's a hard thing to do.  Now to be fair not everything in that film was entirely true and certain details were changed to fit the story because of its cinematic setting.  However it was that script that really propelled that film and made for one remarkable piece of entertainment.  A year has passed and Sorkin has put out another screenplay (co-written with Steve Zaillian) called Moneyball.  This time he takes movie going crowds out to the ball game.  

The team we happen to be rooting for is the 2002 Oakland A's.  General Manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is in a real pickle.  He just lost a trip to the World Series as well as his top three players to other teams.  Why did these guys leave?  Money.  It's all about money.  As the opening titles indicate to us, the New York Yankees have a massive payroll of $114 million vs. Oakland's $40 million.  With the departure of their star players Billy realizes that it is time to rebuild.  How is he going to do it on such on puny budget?  A Yale graduate who majored in economics by the name of Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) holds the answers to Billy's predicament.  Peter tells Billy that together they can rebuild a team that consists of players whose current teams have given up on them.  The A's can pick them up cheap and turn them into winners because statistically speaking it is possible to do so.  Billy trusts Peter and the statistical computer program he devised that essentially predicts the team will have a favorable outcome by the end of the season.

Moneyball is a success story about a man who took a real chance in playing against the odds in a professional sport setting not really knowing if it would it payoff.  Pitt does a fine job of communicating the anxiety, frustrations, triumphs, and politics of baseball experienced over the course of one season.  Or rather, Sorkin does.  Those who are not fans of baseball, Sorkin flavors the subject matter into a pill that everyone can digest.  For once this isn't about the players on a team and their rise to glory but instead the man behind the scenes who put it all together.  True followers of the sport will probably have their gripes about how the events of the 2002 A's actually happened but just remember this is a movie, not a documentary.  

Being an avid fan of any professional sport probably would help as you can relate to the agony of watching your favorite team lose and wonder what sort of politics are actually at play.  One example is the scenes between Billy and head coach Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman.)  There is a clear power struggle between the two characters.  One wants his team to win with the players who are (statistically speaking) capable of winning the game.  The other wants to keep his job or at least have some answers when he's being interviewed by other teams on the decisions he made as a coach.  The higher ups in a professional organization are rarely at fault.  It's the players and coaches who are always to blame, right?  Moneyball does an excellent job of showing us things that occur on a team that we only read about in newspapers.

There are several scenes in this film that involve Billy and the relationship he has with his twelve year old daughter that come off as quite distracting.  It’s these few parts when the story loses focus and we're taken out of the game.  They seem forced and only in there so as to gain our sympathies towards Billy.  Those scenes also build to an ending scene that seems very textbook and Hollywoodized (maybe Zaillian wrote those parts.)  We already have a good idea of what going on in Billy's head.  The flashbacks we see of him when he used to be a player who signed right out of high school for all the wrong reasons gives us a good set up for how his character changes over time.   

Director Bennett Miller received much praise for his direction on Capote.  Finally we get to see his sophomore project.  The result is good but not great.  While his direction and the performances he gets from his actors is superb, it's those few aforementioned moments from the script that hurt the film.  Moneyball still comes highly recommended as one of the best films of the year.  A solid effort all around from the cast and crew makes Moneyball out be another choice piece of entertainment in a subject matter that would otherwise would be for sports junkies.  Miller and Sorkin get the bases loaded, score some runs, but don't quite get the grand slam.  A hit deep into left field is more like it.

The Living Proof

"The Help"

Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone) is an eager, young woman fresh out of college ready to start her career as a journalist.  Skeeter comes from Jackson, Mississippi at a time when the civil rights movement is full swing.  She does manage to snag a job at the local paper answering questions for a column about housekeeping.  Skeeter's friends and family all have African American maids who do all the cooking, cleaning, and child rearing.  She goes to Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) for advice.  Aibileen has been a maid for many years and has raised her share of white children while their mothers just stand idly by and can't be bothered to do any sort of child rearing themselves.  Skeeter then gets the idea of wanting to tell the stories of the oppressed maids.  Any and all sufferings, sorrows, and sacrifices they’ve had to make to get to where they are now will be put down on paper and turned into a novel.  This is their story in their own words.  It's time for their voices to be heard.

The Help is as an excellent piece of entertainment with a good history lesson to go along with it.  The film deals with the very turbulent times this country was in during the 1960's.  While it does bring up some of the big picture issues that were going on at the time they are not the main focus of the feature.  Those issues perhaps would make this film out to be too broad on a societal scope.  Instead it focuses on particular (fictitious) individuals and how everything is affecting them in their world.  This is helpful because it allows us to become intimate with the subject matter and have characters we can sympathize with rather than having the film turn into a documentary.

The Help features many fine performances from an almost entirely female cast.  Stone and Davis are solid as the leads.  You can tell just by the looking at Aibileen's face that she has endured a ton of hardships in her lifetime.  Davis plays a character that has had some real tragedies in her life but is able to show a great deal of restraint given the heated racial climate she happens to be living in.  Jessica Chastain and Octavia Spencer both churn out energetic supporting performances as some real firecracker women.  They are the most fun to watch.  Bryce Dallas Howard plays one of those uppity, Bible belting, snooty, thinks she's better than everyone else, sort of characters down to a tee.  All the actresses in this picture are written so strong and powerful which is something you rarely get to see in today's cinema.

Aibileen introduces herself to us by directly addressing the camera. Right from that opening sequence, you can tell The Help is going to be another one of those films that has a great theatrical quality about it.   There are many examples where there are only two or three characters sharing the screen which lets us really enjoy what each actress is bring to the scene.  The Help will make you laugh out loud, touch your heart, and even bring you to tears.  Most importantly though, you be entertained.  A well written adapted screenplay, real performances, and imperative societal themes bind this film together.  The Help is kind.  The Help is smart.  The Help is important.   

 

We All Have to Start Sometime

"Beginners"

After watching the trailer for Beginners from "acclaimed director" Mike Mills which was playing before some feature presentation almost a year ago it did not make the must see list of 2011 for this critic.  Now that we are in thick of awards season and Christopher Plummer is getting quite a bit of attention across the board, this film has made its way on to the radar.  Going into Beginners, the expectations were set quite low.  Coming out, the reaction to the picture was disappointing.

The year is 2003 and thirty-eight year old Oliver Fields (Ewan McGregor) has been in four failed relationships in his life and wasn't looking to be in anymore.  His life changes when he meets an actress by the name of Anna (Mélanie Laurent) one night at a party.  Oliver and Anna are both damaged goods.  They are both depressed individuals looking for something out of life.  We aren't told a whole lot about Anna's past, however it seems Oliver has been in an ongoing state of unhappiness since he was a child.  That despondency continued on with Oliver's mother Georgia (Mary Page Keller) passing away in 1997.  With her passing, his father Hal (Plummer) felt it time to come out of the closet to his son.  Several years after that Hal also passed away.  The story cuts between the relationship Oliver has with Anna, the relationship he had with his mother when he was a child, and the relationship he had with his gay father in the years leading up to his death.

This probably could have been a pretty gripping and engaging film (considering it was based on the relationship Mills had with his father) had it not been for the way the story was told and its depressing characters.  The fact that we keep jumping back and forth between different stages of Oliver's life makes the film lose any sort of flow or progression.  Beginners is supposed to be about the kinship Oliver has with his now openly gay father.  There are too many scenes with Anna and Oliver together and not enough moments with Hal.  Also, the reoccurring montages that keep coming up are pointless.  They come off as being as showy for all the wrong reasons.  Those sequences add nothing to the story.

Plummer is by far the best thing about the film and gives a wonderful performance as a man who is finally allowed to live the life he always wanted to.  Hal is the only content character in the film.  He has so many fun times with all the friends he is able to accumulate and have a boyfriend who loves him so dearly.  Hal is clearly making the most out of what little time he has left.  There is so much joy that beams through that 75 year old face of Plummer's.  You can tell he's having a good time playing the role.

Beginners does have a few good scenes (just the ones with Plummer) but in the end you are just left feeling unmoved and emotionless.  Something is missing.  Oliver is just so down in the dumps for the whole picture which brings the tone of the entire picture down.  The story remains fairly one dimensional in its portrayal of a son attempting to come terms with a life (whether it be his father’s or his own) that's been a lie.  There isn't enough exploration on the issues that are raised.  The film doesn't live up to its promises and instead mucks about on a story that should not be its focal point.  And although Plummer is pleasing to watch if he does go on to win at the Academy Awards it'll be more in recognition for his career than the actual role.  Beginners never quite starts, but you can’t wait until it ends.

Woody Allen Continues His Trek Across Europe

"Midnight in Paris"

Writer/director Woody Allen has a unique way of writing characters and dialogue.  You just know when you're watching something that is by him.  Allen is extremely talented and has been for decades now.  Like Clint Eastwood, he has released a movie almost every year for at least the past ten years.  Over the past decade there have been some definite hits and multiple misses for him.  While You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger was one of his lesser works, Allen's latest, Midnight in Paris is a fantastic piece of filmmaking reminding us all that the 76 year old still has some life left in him.

Successful Hollywood screenwriter Gil (Owen Wilson) grows weary of the industry and wants a change of pace.  He has decided to write a novel but is struggling to do so.  For inspiration Gil and his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams) are vacationing in Paris.  Gil loves everything about the city and ideally envisions himself actually living there someday.  Inez isn't too nuts about the idea but loves her future husband.  One night while Inez decides to do some catching up with old friends of hers, Gil (slightly intoxicated) decides to walk back to their hotel.  He ends up getting lost and decides to sit down and rest as the clock strikes midnight.  Suddenly a car from the 1920's rolls up and Gil is beckoned by its passengers to hop in.  He's taken to a party where he meets none other than F. Scott (Tom Hiddleston) and Zelda Fitzgerald (Allison Pil.)  And the music in the background is played by Cole Porter (Yves Heck.)  Gil is shocked.  How could this be?  Is it all a dream?  For him this is very much a reality.  Everyone in this reality is interested in Gil and his potential novel.  Other characters he meets along way include Ernest Hemingway (Cory Stoll,) Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates,) and Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody.)  What a fantastic time and place be in, Paris in the 1920's.  During the daytime sequences Gil is taken back to the unimpressive present day where he must face Inez, her parents, and her stuck up friends.

Whenever Allen isn't acting in one of his films, he always has the one character that is personified as him.   Wilson at first glance seems like a rather questionable choice to star in a Woody Allen picture.  Given the actors previous flicks, why would Allen want to work with him?  It's because Wilson plays Allen quite well.  After watching Midnight in Paris it's now clear that Allen knew exactly what he was doing when he cast Wilson.  He does a great job of embodying the struggling writer.  This is a much more down to Earth character for Wilson with a lot more depth and insight than anything else he has ever played.  Another pairing with the actor and director would be a welcome choice for a future project.

Wilson aside though, it's the idea of the film that makes it so much fun to watch.  The screenplay is so original, fresh, and pleasant.  Allen has made a number of quite serious pictures over his career but comedies are where his strengths lie.  Midnight in Paris is nowhere near as humorous as something like Annie Hall or Manhattan but the tone of the film proves to be a rather enjoyable outing as we stroll through the streets and nightclubs of Paris alongside Gil.  This may seem like a stretch, but for brief moments of the screenplay it almost feels like this is Allen's take on Alice in Wonderland.  Alice had to overcome certain internal struggles.  She used Wonderland as place to escape and the creatures that lived there helped her deal with those conflicts.  Gil escapes to the 1920's because of the struggles he is facing in his present time.  All the famous writers and painters he meets help him with his problems.

Midnight in Paris is by far the best thing Allen has turned out since he entered the 2000's.  So much creativity and imagination bind this feature together it's hard for you too not to fall in love with the city of Paris.  Anyone who has an appreciation for Allen, literature, art, history, or even Wilson should get something out of this picture.  This is a film that clearly plays to all the strengths of its director.  The fantasy aspect is unique and different but we accept as part of the story.  Woody Allen in some ways continues to reinvent himself and Midnight in Paris pays off in big way.  He is showing no signs of slowing down.  All the gears turning in his head are perfectly in-sync with each other for this lovely picture.  Longue vie Woody Allen!