On DVD/Blu-ray: EVERY THING WILL BE FINE (2015) and THE CONFIRMATION (2016)

EVERY THING WILL BE FINE
(Germany/Canada/France/Sweden/Norway - 2015)

One of the major voices of the 1970s New German Cinema who reached his pinnacle in the next decade with the classics PARIS, TEXAS (1984) and WINGS OF DESIRE (1987), Wim Wenders has enjoyed his biggest success in the latter half of his career with documentaries like THE BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB (1999), PINA (2011), and his contributions to the PBS series THE BLUES. His first narrative feature since 2008's surreal PALERMO SHOOTING (one of Dennis Hopper's last films, and still unreleased in the US), EVERY THING WILL BE FINE plays more like an homage to SWEET HEREAFTER-era Atom Egoyan, from the crux of its story being a tragedy uniting several people, to its cold, wintry Canadian setting. Judging from the end result, Wenders can't do vintage Egoyan any better than Egoyan can these days. Making superfluous use of 3-D, which is limited mostly to some falling snowflakes for the six people who managed to see this in a theater, EVERY THING WILL BE FINE offers the most somnambulant cast this side of Werner Herzog's HEART OF GLASS, headed by James Franco as Tomas Eldan, a struggling Quebecois novelist whose marriage to Sara (Rachel McAdams, with a distracting and stilted Swedish--I think--accent) is in a rough patch. It gets worse when Tomas is involved in a freak accident on a snowy rural road where he thinks he narrowly averted hitting a young boy in a sled but realizes too late that there were two boys on the sled and the other died, pinned under his SUV. This scene, where Tomas thinks he and the surviving kid had a close call but slowly realizes, when the boys' shell-shocked single mother Kate (Charlotte Gainsbourg) asks where the other boy is, that he's accidentally killed the unseen second child, is by far the best in the film and it's all downhill from there.

Of course, even though it was a tragic accident, Tomas is plagued by guilt and half-heartedly attempts suicide, demonstrated in a trite montage where Wenders shows him crashing in a cheap motel, empty booze and pill bottles and torn up papers strewn about the room. The film repeatedly jumps through a few years at a time. Tomas and Sara have split up and he feels compelled to help the devoutly-religious Kate in some way. She's forgiven him and doesn't blame him and though they seem drawn to one another through their mutual grieving, Wenders and screenwriter Bjorn Olaf Johannessen don't indulge anything further, since that would mean something happening. The film takes place over an 11-year period, and every time Wenders seems to be building to something, he calls a time-out and jumps ahead four years. It's especially frustrating in the last section, when Tomas gets a letter from troubled, 16-year-old Christopher (Robert Naylor), who was five when he survived the accident that killed his little brother. Tomas has become a bestselling author, channeling his pain into prose and becoming rich and famous, and while Christopher is a fan of his work, he feels his brother's death has somehow worked in Tomas' favor while his mother has never really recovered. While Tomas and his second wife Ann (Marie-Josee Croze) are away on a brief book tour, someone--obviously Christopher--breaks into their house and urinates all over their bed. Just as EVERY THING WILL BE FINE seems poised to turn into a thriller of some kind, the film abruptly ends in the most enraging way possible, with Franco--who's about as believable a Quebecois novelist named Tomas as you'd expect--turning to the camera and smiling. Did Wenders just feel "Hey, it's been a while, I should probably make a drama again"? There's some beautiful cinematography by the venerable Benoit Debie, but EVERY THING WILL BE FINE is a film that keeps stopping itself dead in its tracks. Scenes crescendo into nothing and collapse, actors appear and disappear (Peter Stomare has one scene as Tomas' publisher; frequent Wenders actor Patrick Bauchau plays Tomas' dementia-addled father). It seems to be actively avoiding being about anything. The actors seem to be partially sedated, even more so as the film goes on. When a remarried Sara has a chance meeting with Tomas at a Patrick Watson concert (yes, time-killing concert footage) and slaps him, it seems less out of anger than to simply revive Franco. A comatose Wenders misfire like 2001's THE MILLION DOLLAR HOTEL moved at the pace of plate tectonics but at least had an insane performance by a neck-braced Mel Gibson to occasionally liven things up--there's nothing of the sort in EVERY THING WILL BE FINE. Life is filled with disappointments, regrets, and unresolved issues--which can make for compelling cinema but not when it's done the way Wenders does it here. It seems like a sincere enough film, but what's the point? (Unrated, 119 mins)



THE CONFIRMATION
(UK/US/Canada - 2016)

The kind of slight, low-key character piece that goes over like gangbusters at film festivals but plays to crickets and tumbleweed in general release, THE CONFIRMATION is the directing debut of Oscar-nominated NEBRASKA screenwriter Bob Nelson. As in that film, we have a story set in a blue collar town where most of the residents have seen better days. Anthony (MIDNIGHT SPECIAL's Jaeden Lieberher) has it pretty good other than his ambivalence about being prodded into confession and confirmation by his church-going mom Bonnie (Maria Bello) and stepdad Kyle (Matthew Modine). Bonnie and Kyle are going away to a church-sponsored couples retreat for the weekend, leaving Anthony in the care of his alcoholic, sporadically-employed carpenter dad Walt (Clive Owen). Slumped-shouldered Walt has been dealt some shitty hands and is beaten down by life, but he's trying to make things work. He's on his latest attempt to quit drinking and isn't sure what to do with Anthony over the weekend, but that soon becomes a moot point as the pair encounter one obstacle after another. Walt gets a lucrative job lined up for Monday morning, but his expensive and sentimental (they were his dad's) specialty tools get stolen from his truck, his truck breaks down, a trip to drop a huge jar of change into a Coinstar machine at the grocery store to get some quick cash is all for naught when Anthony accidentally hits the "Donate" button, and they get locked out of the house when Walt gets an eviction notice. Borrowing Bonnie's SUV--Anthony neglects to tell Walt the brakes need replaced--the pair spend the weekend tracking down Walt's tools BICYCLE THIEF-style, getting help from a variety of odd folks both helpful and dubious, ranging from Walt's fatherly friend Otto (Robert Forster), drunken gun nut Vaughn (Tim Blake Nelson), and eccentric drywaller Drake (Patton Oswalt) whose claim to have the inside info on Walt's tools is negated by the fact that everyone knows he's back on meth.

THE CONFIRMATION is basically a standard redemption saga, with Walt and Anthony bonding and everyone realizing Walt's not such a loser after all. Nelson gives the story time to breathe and find its way, even with the trite symbolism of carpenter Walt "building" a relationship with his son. Walt tries to keep his temper in check as the deck is constantly stacked against him and and does everything he can to not cave to temptation and disappoint his son (after a bad withdrawal episode the first night, the first thing out of Walt's mouth in the morning is "Are you OK? Did I hurt you?"). Though he's hardly a textbook role model, Walt tries to dispense life lessons to the boy, and of course, he learns just as much from the wise-beyond-his-years Anthony. There's some legitimate surprises in the development of some of the characters: Anthony forms a friendship with Vaughn's sensitive son Allen (Spencer Drever); when Walt finds out who stole his tools, he feels sympathy rather than anger; and after constantly hearing from Walt what a useless tool he is, we're surprised to find that Kyle is actually a genuinely nice and sincere guy once we meet him. There's no big scenes or huge plot reveals in THE CONFIRMATION. It's a quiet, working-class indie film where the actors probably wore there own clothes and packed their own lunches for Nelson's heartfelt labor of love. It's not much to get excited about, but Owen and Lieberher make a good team, and fans of the actors will definitely want to check it out. (PG-13, 101 mins)

In Theaters: SPOTLIGHT (2015)

SPOTLIGHT
(US - 2015)

Directed by Tom McCarthy. Written by Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy. Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian D'Arcy James, Billy Crudup, Len Cariou, Jamey Sheridan, Paul Guilfoyle, Gene Amoroso, Neal Huff, Elena Wohl. (R, 128 mins)

"We've got two stories here: a story about degenerate clergy, and a story about a bunch of lawyers turning child abuse into a cottage industry. Which story do you want us to write? Because we're writing one of them."

As much a chronicle of the Boston Globe's breaking of a cover-up of systemic sexual abuse in the Catholic church as it is a document of a dying profession, SPOTLIGHT is a film that dives deep into the nitty gritty of newspaper reporting. What's refreshing is that it does so without the sense of heroism, martyrdom, and apologia that TRUTH, another recent journalism drama, rather shamelessly wallowed. In TRUTH, 60 MINUTES II producer Mary Mapes is crucified for rushed and sloppy work on a story about George W. Bush's days in the National Guard, but the film wants to make her a saint anyway, and an uncharacteristically grating Cate Blanchett's overwrought performance has her barreling through it doing everything short of wearing a "For Your Consideration" sandwich board to get awards attention. SPOTLIGHT goes in the opposite direction, immersing the audience in the daily grind of hardworking reporters. A lot of the film has them talking on phones, jotting down notes, and fumbling for a pen when theirs runs dry. They leave messages, check sources, meet interview subjects in coffee shops, sit outside offices waiting for an appointment, dig through files and old newspapers, and thumb through dog-eared reference books and directories chasing every tip, lead, and theory they get. They go where the story takes them as each new development opens up another Pandora's Box of paperwork and legal hurdles. A smart film that makes the boring minutiae of the job riveting, SPOTLIGHT may just be a notch below the great modern-era journalism films like Alan J. Pakula's ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976) or, to an extent, David Fincher's ZODIAC (2007), but it's easily the best film about investigative reporting since Billy Ray's SHATTERED GLASS (2003).

After a prologue set in 1976, where a molesting priest is quietly ushered out of a police station by Boston Archdiocese officials, the story moves to the summer of 2001 with Globe's hiring of new chief editor Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), a man known for his bottom-line concerns during stints in New York and Miami. Baron thinks there might be a story in an alarming number of allegations against that 1976 priest, which got a brief mention in the Metro section some time back, but was never pursued with any vigor by the paper. Wanting to re-establish the Globe as the local paper of record with a focus on Boston concerns, Baron directs the Spotlight team--a four-person crew of reporters who work on months-long investigative pieces--to chronicle the paper trail of accusations against the priest.  Led by editor Walter "Robby" Robinson (Michael Keaton), the Spotlight team--Mike Rezendes (a jumpy Mark Ruffalo), Sasha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), and Matt Carroll (Brian D'Arcy James)--go to work, butting heads with lawyers, victims, church officials, rival papers, and concerned city big shots among others, not to mention the whole effort being jeopardized when Baron makes them put the story on the backburner for six weeks after September 11, 2001, during which time the Spotlight team is temporarily split up and assigned to other 9/11-related beats. Boston is a strongly Catholic community, and there's a concern that such talk may not rest well with the devout churchgoers. But when old Archdiocese guides show that many of the molesting priests--they eventually uncover 87 of them in Boston alone--were classified as "on sick leave" during times that coincide with the accusations, the Spotlight team correctly hypothesizes that it's a status given to priest reassigned to other parishes or sent away after an abuse incident that's settled privately and promptly buried by Cardinal Law (Len Cariou), the head of the Boston Archdiocese who's known of the plethora of incidents that have been going on for decades, with the cover-up trail leading all the way to the Vatican.

Directed and co-written by Tom McCarthy (THE STATION AGENT), who somehow made this and the career-worst Adam Sandler movie THE COBBLER in the same year, SPOTLIGHT boasts one of the year's strongest ensembles, headed by a resurgent Keaton on the heels of his triumphant BIRDMAN comeback. Keaton's been down this road before in Ron Howard's underrated THE PAPER (1994), and he's perfectly cast as the driven, quick-witted (when told by a lawyer friend that he read an article about Baron being the Globe's first Jewish editor, Robby replies "Really? Must've been a slow news day") Spotlight leader. McAdams and James are fine, but don't really stand out like Keaton or, for better or worse, Ruffalo, whose mannered performance takes some getting used to but is said to be an accurate portrayal of Rezendes. The actors also get sterling support from Billy Crudup and Jamey Sheridan as tight-lipped, big-shot attorneys behind a series of abuse case settlements, John Slattery as the Globe's managing editor Ben Bradlee, Jr. (whose father was executive editor of The Washington Post when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate story), and Stanley Tucci as victims' advocate Mitchell Garabedian, an eccentric, crusading lawyer who's been representing a number of abuse victims in their cases against the Archdiocese. SPOTLIGHT is as no-nonsense as its characters, a methodical and matter-of-fact grinder that tells its story as effectively as the Spotlight team pursued theirs. It doesn't make Baron, Robinson, and the writers into glory-seeking heroes--they're just people doing their job and doing it with commitment and tireless determination. TRUTH was about glory, but SPOTLIGHT is about the guts.

In Theaters: SOUTHPAW (2015)

SOUTHPAW
(US - 2015)

Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Written by Kurt Sutter. Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker, Rachel McAdams, Naomie Harris, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, Oona Laurence, Miguel Gomez, Skylan Brooks, Victor Ortiz, Beau Knapp, Dominic Colon. (R, 124 mins)

SOUTHPAW is the first big-screen project scripted by Kurt Sutter, who made a name for himself as a writer and producer on THE SHIELD and went on to become the mastermind behind SONS OF ANARCHY. As any viewer of those classic TV shows is aware, Sutter is drawn to strutting, tough-talking bro-huggers whose macho bravado masks a torrent of pain and anguish, men who play by their own rules and go outside the law if necessary if that's what it takes to get to another day because that's what they do. SOUTHPAW plays a lot like a whittled-down series that Sutter might've produced for FX, and as such, there's jumps in the narrative where things can be easily glossed over but there's no natural flow or feel for how one event leads to another. Plus, if you were to remove a few Eminem songs, the constantly spitting blood, and the plethora of F-bombs, and SOUTHPAW is every bit as hokey and melodramatic as any late 1930s/early 1940s Warner Bros. boxing programmer with James Cagney or Arthur Kennedy as a scrappy, wunderkind pugilist and Humphrey Bogart or Barton MacLane as his unscrupulous manager. SOUTHPAW is certainly watchable and has moments that are fine, but it hits every genre trope and cliche like it's bulldozing through a checklist, and yet it behaves as if it's somehow the first boxing movie with a down-and-out hero, once on top of the world, now kicked to the curb with something to prove, going the distance in the fight of his life.

Jake Gyllenhaal is light heavyweight world champion Billy Hope (Sutter never was one for subtlety), currently holding a 43-0 professional record but being urged to slow down by his Noo Yawk-talking wife Maureen (Rachel McAdams). Billy and Maureen both "came up through the system," and met in a Hell's Kitchen orphanage when they were 12 years old. They've been blessed with fame and fortune and only want the best for their young daughter Leila (Oona Laurence). Maureen, or "Mo," wants Billy to call it a career, but with all of his homeboys on his payroll and his opportunistic manager Jordan Mains (50 Cent, cast radically against type as a piece of shit) always pushing him, Billy has to keep the money rolling in, with a $30 million offer from HBO already on the table for his next fight. All of that goes south when mouthy up-and-comer Miguel Escobar (Miguel Gomez) keeps publicly calling him out to grant him a shot at the title. During one such encounter at a gala benefit for the orphanage, Miguel threatens to "take your title and your bitch," and a brawl ensues that results in Mo being shot and killed. Almost overnight, Billy's lawyer informs he's in serious debt and owes back taxes. When a drunk, depressed Billy crashes his car into a tree on the front lawn, the house goes into foreclosure and Child Protective Services take Leila into custody. Almost all of his friends abandon him and Mains dumps him in favor of Escobar (cue Fiddy with the mandatory "Nothin' personal...it's just business, baby"). Billy moves into a shithole apartment in the projects and when a grieving Leila refuses to see him during one of his supervised visits, he has nowhere to go but the ramshackle gym of Tick Wills (Forest Whitaker), an old-school trainer, blind in one eye from his days in the ring, the kind of taskmaster who charges fifty push-ups for swearing and whose speed and heavy bags are barely held together with duct tape. Through Tick, will Billy learn back-to-the-basics boxing and earn the respect of the kids at the gym, thereby attaining respect for himself? Will he find the fire--the "eye of the tiger," if you will--that once propelled him into the upper echelons of the sport, win back the love of his embittered daughter and symbolically avenge his wife's death by regaining the belt that's has since been won by the ever-boasting Escobar?  If you've ever seen a movie before, you'll know where SOUTHPAW is going long before it gets there.

Sutter and director Antoine Fuqua (TRAINING DAY, THE EQUALIZER) leave no cliche untouched throughout SOUTHPAW. They also gloss over subplots that range from undeveloped (the home situation of a kid who hangs out at Tick's gym) to outright abandoned (Escobar's crack-addled wife and the investigation into who shot Maureen). The film seems to think that it can coast by solely on Gyllenhaal's startling physical transformation into the ripped Billy Hope. It's quite a contrast to last year's NIGHTCRAWLER, where the actor lost weight to appear wiry and gaunt as a sleazy, greasy tabloid videographer. Gyllenhaal's lack of an Oscar nomination for NIGHTCRAWLER remains one of the more outrageous Academy snubs in recent years, but his performance in SOUTHPAW reeks of transparent Oscar bait. The role was originally conceived with Eminem in mind, and that seems to be who Gyllenhaal is trying to emulate. As a result, his performance too often feels like mannered posturing and a collection of twitches and flinches. Billy Hope is a man who has a hard time articulating himself to the point where exploding in violence is all he can do, but Gyllenhaal's performance is too much of a performance. Compare his work to that of Channing Tatum in FOXCATCHER--a film I really didn't like, but Tatum is a revelation in it--and you see the difference. Gyllenhaal is simply trying too hard and it ends up backfiring on him. Whitaker makes some good moments out of a stock, cardboard character. Young Laurence does a good job of capturing the sass and fire demonstrated by McAdams in her brief screen time (she's gone by the 30-minute mark), enough that they're both quite believable as mother and daughter, while Naomie Harris can't do much with a superfluous supporting role as Leila's child services case worker (why is she at the final fight between Billy and Escobar?). Fuqua's staging of the fight sequences is mostly well-handled, but occasionally demonstrates an overuse of today's quick-cut, shaky-cam approach--not to the point where it's overwhelming, but enough that you miss the in-the-ring intensity of ROCKY or RAGING BULL.  Never boring but instantly forgettable, SOUTHPAW is one of Fuqua's weakest films and as far as recent boxing movies go, it isn't even as interesting as last year's DTV Dominic Purcell B-movie A FIGHTING MAN, with the film's sporadic positive elements negated by a thoroughly predictable and maddeningly formulaic presentation. Regardless of how much time Gyllenhaal spent getting physically prepped for the role, there isn't a single thing here that hasn't been recycled from a hundred other boxing movies before it.

In Theaters: A MOST WANTED MAN (2014)

A MOST WANTED MAN
(UK/US/Germany - 2014)

Directed by Anton Corbijn. Written by Andrew Bovell and Stephen Cornwell. Cast: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, Robin Wright, Grigoriy Dobrygin, Daniel Bruhl, Nina Hoss, Homayoun Ershadi, Mehdi Debhi, Rainer Bock, Herbert Gronemeyer, Vicky Krieps, Martin Wuttke, Max Volkert Martens. (R, 122 mins)

The late Philip Seymour Hoffman had two films in the can and he was nearly finished with his scenes on the next two HUNGER GAMES installments when he died of a heroin overdose on February 2, 2014. To say that modern cinema has lost one of its greatest actors isn't an exaggeration: a look at Hoffman's credits over the last 15-20 years brings back memories of so many unforgettable characters: the obnoxious, "shaka-laka-doobie-do" craps player in HARD EIGHT; the awkward, closeted production assistant pining for Dirk Diggler in BOOGIE NIGHTS; the obscene phone caller in HAPPINESS; dispensing sage-like wisdom as Lester Bangs in ALMOST FAMOUS; the gas-huffing widower in LOVE LIZA; the gambling-addicted bank manager in OWNING MAHOWNY; his Oscar-winning turn as CAPOTE; the scheming son orchestrating a robbery gone horribly awry in BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD; the theater director given an unlimited budget to create his life's work in SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK; the priest who may or may not be abusing altar boys in DOUBT; the L. Ron Hubbard figure in THE MASTER. Just 46 when he died, Hoffman already amassed a body of work that gave significant credibility to the notion that he was the best of his generation, but it's depressing to think of all the great performances he still had left in him.

Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967-2014)

Shot two years ago, A MOST WANTED MAN, based on the 2008 novel by the seemingly ageless John le Carre, grants Hoffman another memorable character into which he vanishes completely: Gunther Bachmann, a German counterterrorism agent based in Hamburg. Like most of the protagonists in le Carre's perpetually gray and dreary, Spy Who Came in From the Cold settings, Bachmann is weary, rumpled, jaded, and cynical. He has no apparent life outside of his job, he chain smokes, lives on black coffee, whiskey, and fast food, probably sleeps in his office most nights, and wears the same clothes several days in a row. He feels the Hamburg assignment is punishment for a job that went south on his watch in Beirut, resulting in the deaths of most of his team. Bachmann is the beaten-down-by-life doppelganger of Hoffman's bellicose Gust Avrakatos in CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR. But Hamburg is actually an important post, being the residence of 9/11 hijacker/ringleader Mohammed Atta prior to the terrorist attacks in 2001, and Bachmann believes he's on to something with respected philanthropist, Islam expert, and anti-terrorism lecturer Dr. Faisal Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi).  Records of Abdullah's many charitable donations always show a discrepancy involving a mysterious shipping company based in Cyprus, through which Bachmann believes the doctor is funneling money to terrorist organizations. Meanwhile, Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin), a Russian/Chechen fugitive, has escaped captivity and made his way to Hamburg. Believed to have terrorist ties that may involve Abdullah, Bachmann and his team keep surveillance on both men. Karpov is led to left-wing, civil-rights activist lawyer (or, as Bachmann calls her, "a terrorist social worker") Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams), who agrees to oversee his collecting an inheritance from his late father that's being kept in a bank owned by Tommy Brue (Willem Dafoe). Having been tortured in Russian and Chechen prisons and renouncing all terrorist beliefs, Karpov wishes to take his inheritance and donate it to the worthy causes of the outwardly altruistic Abdullah. With the German government breathing down his neck for results and believing Karpov innocent, Bachmann instead wants to use Karpov to nail Abdullah, teaming with opportunistic CIA operative Martha Sullivan (Robin Wright) to set Karpov and Annabel up at a safe house while they put the complex plan in motion.

Like Tomas Alfredson's masterful TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (2011), A MOST WANTED MAN is a melancholy slow-burner for grown-up audiences. There's a lot of espionage machinations and what little there is in the way of action doesn't play at all like a typical spy-movie crowd-pleaser, with Bachmann gasping and wheezing after being on the losing end of a foot chase. The film is directed by Anton Corbijn, whose last effort was the glacially-paced, Euro-styled George Clooney mood piece THE AMERICAN (2010), a very good film sold as a commercial shoot 'em up actioner when it fact it was a somber, morose Jean-Pierre Melville homage that should've played the art-house circuit (still one of the funniest things I've ever witnessed in a movie theater: an older woman at a matinee of THE AMERICAN standing up and shouting "Hang the director!" as the closing credits rolled). A MOST WANTED MAN isn't quite as austere as THE AMERICAN, and it's forcefully driven by one of Hoffman's greatest performances. Again disappearing into a role, Hoffman's German accent is flawless from the start and you immediately forget you're watching Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman was always an actor who committed regardless of how undignified he had to be, and his out-of-shape, overweight Bachmann, his belly hanging over his belt and his breathing labored with audible congestion between every drag on the cigarette constantly between his lips, is a vividly real characterization. Given his unexpected passing, most of the focus of A MOST WANTED MAN will be on him, but the rest of the cast does excellent work as well, particularly McAdams and Dafoe, both offering German accents just as convincing as Hoffman's. Scripted by Andrew Bovell, with an "additional writing" credit for le Carre's son and co-producer Stephen Cornwell, A MOST WANTED MAN is the kind of summer movie specifically engineered as counterprogramming for adult audiences, but at the same time, it's a bittersweet reminder that we've lost a gifted, one-of-a-kind actor whose absence will be felt for years to come.

In Theaters/On VOD: PASSION (2013)

PASSION
(France/Germany - 2013)

Directed by Brian De Palma.  Written by Brian De Palma and Natalie Carter. Cast: Rachel McAdams, Noomi Rapace, Karoline Herfurth, Paul Anderson, Rainer Bock, Benjamin Sadler, Michael Rotschopf, Dominic Raacke. (R, 96 mins)

Brian De Palma's first film since the 2007 misfire REDACTED is a throwback to his stylish suspense films of old:  hardcore fans will smile and nod at Pino Donaggio's melodramatic score (conducted, of course, by Natale Massara), an early split-diopter shot, and about an hour in, one of those famous De Palma split-screen sequences.  As nice as it is to see and hear those things again, one can't help but think that the legendary director is just punching a clock with this one.  It's a remake of Alain Corneau's French film LOVE CRIME (2010), but even with the uniquely De Palma-esque elements, PASSION is rather dull before the auteur finally snaps out of his trance and starts showing off.  Few directors can manipulate an audience like De Palma and, at 73, he's at the emeritus stage of his career where any shots or scenes that look like his classic work automatically get a pass because it's just "classic De Palma."  That was sort-of the approach he took with 2002's FEMME FATALE, but PASSION is seriously lacking that masterpiece's sense of filmmaking giddiness.   It's very probable that FEMME FATALE will go down as De Palma's last great film, whereas PASSION just finds him throwing some vintage-looking De Palma bits at you and it feels more out of a sense of obligation than engagement with the material. 

A tale of backstabbing bitchiness in the marketing world, PASSION stars Rachel McAdams as American marketing executive Christine Stanford, who oversees the Berlin branch of a big-time agency.  She has a flirtatious rapport with her ambitious underling Isabelle James (Noomi Rapace), who's sleeping with Christine's embezzling, Eurotrash lover Dirk (Paul Anderson).  It would seem that Christine and Dirk have an open relationship, but that doesn't stop Christine's need for control by taking credit for one of Isabelle's marketing concepts, which sets off a chain reaction of psychological and sexual head games between the two women.  First it's harmlessly passive-aggressive, but before long, it escalates into cattiness, public humiliation and, finally, of course, murder.

For its first hour, PASSION plays a lot like a Skinemax erotic thriller from the mid-to-late '90s.  That is, the boring parts between the fuck scenes.  McAdams plays Christine very much like an anachronistic nod to Sharon Stone.  She's often cartoonish but seems to be relishing the opportunity to play an alternate universe version of her MEAN GIRLS character.  It's hard to get a handle on Rapace's character and her performance.  At best, it seems like she's awkward, miscast, and occasionally overwrought, but De Palma has been known to make casting decisions like that before and have the point go over the heads of audiences (much the way he took the inherently bland screen presences of Craig Wasson in BODY DOUBLE and Josh Hartnett in THE BLACK DAHLIA and used it to each film's advantage), but I'm not sure what he was trying to accomplish with Rapace's frequently stilted performance.  Before the end of the film, you'll realize both stars are outacted by German actress Karoline Herfurth (recently seen in ERRORS OF THE HUMAN BODY) as Isabelle's lesbian assistant who pretty obviously has the hots for her boss. 

Ultimately, PASSION is a pretty scattershot affair.  It looks great, is very well-shot by Jose Luis Alcaine, and when those De Palma moments finally start happening, PASSION picks up considerably.  But then the director just starts getting silly with dream sequences within dream sequences, the introduction of a long-lost twin sister, and a blatant swipe from Dario Argento's TENEBRE in the climax (not the first time he's borrowed that famous shot), which ends the film on a frustrating note.  In the right film with the right script, a director staging obvious callbacks to earlier works is a beautiful thing for fans.  De Palma did it the right way with FEMME FATALE.  The story makes all the difference here, and when the too-frequently stale PASSION does it, it just feels trite and forced. It's obviously worth seeing for De Palma obsessives and even uninspired De Palma is better than the A-games of a lot of today's directors, but the "De Palma can do no wrong" crowd on IMDb and other sites needs something a little more concrete than "It's not meant to be taken seriously!" to effectively defend the master, especially since you could say that about most of De Palma's classics.  PASSION should be trashy fun, but it just isn't. 

In Theaters/On VOD: TO THE WONDER (2013)

TO THE WONDER

(US - 2013)

Written and directed by Terrence Malick.  Cast: Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem, Rachel McAdams, Tatiana Chilline, Romina Mondello, Marshall Bell, Charles Baker. (R, 109 mins)

After taking a 20-year sabbatical between 1978's DAYS OF HEAVEN and 1998's THE THIN RED LINE, Terrence Malick seemed to inherit the "greatest living American filmmaker" title with the 1999 passing of Stanley Kubrick.  All of his films, from his 1973 debut BADLANDS to 2005's THE NEW WORLD and 2011's THE TREE OF LIFE, are works of stunning beauty that are the singular and unique voice of a true auteur.  Terrence Malick films are distinctly his.  No one else makes Terrence Malick films the way Malick does, though some have come very close (Andrew Dominik's THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD is a brilliant example).  And indeed, other than Kubrick, it's possible that no other living American filmmaker is as universally lionized as Malick--even guys like Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg aren't immune to criticism.  With THE THIN RED LINE and particularly with the divisive THE NEW WORLD, to criticize Malick was to insult the very art of film itself.  It was just not allowed, and anyone who didn't find Malick brilliant simply didn't "get it."  Malick's fan base is one of the most fervently devoted in all of cinema, and if you spend enough time on film discussion boards, you'll inevitably see a Malick argument break out, with many of his base taking criticism very personally.  In an era where film criticism is gradually being replaced by snark, nitpicking, and hate-watching, few other filmmakers inspire that level of undying devotion.  On one hand, it's nice to see that kind of passion and thought-provoking discussion, but on the other, there's a fine line between sticking up for your guy and sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling "La la la! Can't hear you!"

Having said that, early responses to Malick's latest film, TO THE WONDER, seem to indicate the first sign of trouble in paradise for the director and his fans.  Since returning to filmmaking, Malick's work has become increasingly abstract and less character and plot-driven.  Beautiful visuals accompanied by ethereal, whispery, stream-of-consciousness narration have always been a distinct Malick trademark, but with TO THE WONDER, his focus is more on these sorts of dreamlike ruminations and it's only a matter of time before he abandons plot, characters, and actors altogether. 

Olga Kurylenko stars as Marina, a Parisian in a whirlwind romance with American Neil (Ben Affleck) as the film opens.  There's very little dialogue spoken directly by the actors--almost all of it is past-tense narration.  When we first see Neil, Marina, and her daughter Tatiana (Tatiana Chilline), who, unless I'm mistaken, is the only character referenced by name, Marina's narration states "Newborn.  I open my eyes.  I melt.  Into the eternal night."  As they walk through the streets of Paris, Marina's voiceover continues: "Love makes us one.  Two.  One.  I in you.  You in me."  This goes on for most of the film, though it quickly relocates to an anonymous suburb in Oklahoma, where Neil lives.  Marina and Tatiana have a hard time adjusting to America, though Marina never seems to stop dancing and frolicking in the backyard, in the streets, or at the supermarket.  Eventually, her visa expires and she leaves the unwilling-to-commit Neil, who reunites with his ex-girlfriend Jane (Rachel McAdams) for a short romance before Marina returns, without Tatiana, who's living in Paris with her father.  Neil and Marina marry.  Meanwhile, melancholy local priest Father Quintana (Javier Bardem) has a crisis of faith and tries to re-establish his connection with God, a theme touched upon by the devoutly religious Jane, and also explored by Marina and Neil, who begin searching for their spiritual side when their marriage starts to crumble. 

This story is largely conveyed visually, with frequent nonsensical narration ("Enter me.  Show me how to love you" and "What is this love that loves us?"), that would be completely laughable to English-speaking audiences were it not mostly in French (for Kurylenko) or Spanish (for Bardem) with English subtitles (maybe French and Spanish audiences will find it just as terribly-written).  There's no denying that TO THE WONDER is a visually stunning film.  Malick and his NEW WORLD/TREE OF LIFE cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki achieve a very European view of suburban America, almost in a Michelangelo Antonioni or Wim Wenders way.  They and the constantly moving camera manage to find the visual beauty in fast-food restaurants, laundromats, appliance stores, Wal-Mart, and Walgreens, and even in a polluted lake or with the buzz of fluorescent lights and the hum of central air units.  In a way, I think this is partially Malick's homage to Antonioni's 1964 film RED DESERT with its depictions of human alienation and loneliness in an increasingly industrialized world of homogenized familiarity.  It's set and shot in Oklahoma but with the chain stores, fast-food joints, gas stations and Econo Lodges all over, it could be anywhere.  Thankfully, Malick doesn't work in texting or Facebook, but that's probably because he isn't aware of those things.  With his increasing disdain for characters and plot construction, it doesn't seem like Malick knows how people talk anymore.  Malick's going to be 70 this year and the writing in TO THE WONDER sounds like he plagiarized the tear-smeared scribblings in an emo kid's journal.  And it's even worse in the rare instances where there's actual spoken dialogue.  Witness the scene where Jane's Italian friend (Romina Mondello) visits her in Oklahoma:  she speaks and behaves like no human being would and it's the film's strongest indication that, like latter-day Kubrick, Terrence Malick probably doesn't get out much.

I get what he was going after with the "together yet isolated" thing.  The religious stuff seems a little wedged in, but hey, whatever, it's his movie.  A lot of TO THE WONDER looks like it was shot on the fly (there's a few instances of passersby glancing at the camera) and Malick didn't really know what he wanted until he started putting it together.  TO THE WONDER was shot in 2010 and 2011 and it took Malick plus five credited editors to put it all together, with the narration (mostly Kurylenko and Bardem) then used to advance the "story."  When other filmmakers display an over-reliance on voiceover, it's a desperation Hail Mary move, but if you listen to Malick fans, when he does it, he's reinventing the rules of cinema. 

Regardless, even the most slavishly devoted Malick apologists seem to be rejecting TO THE WONDER, the general feeling being that Malick is simply going too far in his abandonment of conventional narrative.  He doesn't seem to know what to do with his actors:  Of the major stars, Bardem probably comes off best since he gets to play the closest thing resembling a well-rounded character.  You could make a drinking game out of how many times Kurylenko dances, turns and looks at the camera, and does another pirouette.  McAdams isn't in it enough to really make an impression, and Affleck, who had most of his dialogue cut, just looks confused, much like Sean Penn in the present-day scenes in THE TREE OF LIFE (it's worth noting that Penn later said he had no idea why he was even in the finished film).  Young Chilline turns in the most natural performance, since Malick mostly lets her simply be herself.  Jessica Chastain, Rachel Weisz, Amanda Peet, Barry Pepper, and Michael Sheen all had co-starring roles in principal photography--all were left on the cutting room floor, further evidence to support the idea that Malick was just pulling the completed film out of his ass.  Sure, they got paid, but who wastes the time of five name actors?  Of course, like any piece of art, a film can evolve from its inception to completion, but if you're completely cutting people like Chastain and Weisz out of the film, then you simply didn't know what you wanted when you finished shooting, let alone started.  Malick also assembled star-packed casts for three subsequent films that are in various states of post-production (KNIGHT OF CUPS, due out later this year, plus VOYAGE OF TIME and a still-untitled third film), indicating an uncharacteristic burst of productivity for the notoriously sporadic director.  But who knows how many of those performances will get axed before the films are eventually released?

TO THE WONDER is a breathtakingly beautiful film, no question about it. When it hits DVD and Blu-ray, it'll be interesting to see if playing the chapter stops at random makes the slightest bit of difference.  My advice:  wait and watch the Blu-ray and hit the mute button. I have nothing but respect for this one-of-a-kind cinematic figure, but it's disheartening to see Terrence Malick making what looks and feels like a parody of a Terrence Malick film.