Margot at the Wedding
dir. Noah Baumbach
Noah Baumbach makes movies about the type of people you normally see
standing in an art-house line. In both Kicking and Screaming and the great The Squid and the Whale, the writer-director
homed his sights on a very particular breed of Americanus
annoyingus, namely, the sort of overeducated, hypercritical people
of privilege who turn themselves into a bigger dartboard with every
smug bon mot.
Margot at the Wedding, Baumbach’s latest—and possibly
greatest—continues burrowing under the skin of the self-absorbed
to what feels like a brilliantly astringent endpoint. At least I kind
of hope that it’s an endpoint: Despite a few genuine belly laughs, a
multitude of quotable lines, and a revelatory lead performance by
Nicole Kidman, the overall mood is so ultimately despairing that it
feels only one or two steps away from Larry David’s patented
everybody-sucks territory.
Shot in jump-cut, nouvelle vague-y fashion, Baumbach’s
script follows Kidman’s titular character, a therapist’s nightmare of a
short-story writer who drags her puberty-racked son to the wedding of
her estranged, hippie-dippy sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Once there,
she proceeds to freak out the oafish husband-to-be (Jack Black),
further driving a wedge between family members, and basically causing
the barely contained tics of everyone around her to come bursting
forth. Baumbach certainly doesn’t skimp on neurosis, but Kidman’s
fascinating monster holds center stage, as a woman who can’t utter a
single sentence without a stabbing backbeat of aggression. Given the
presence of such an awful, pitiable figure at its core, the fact that
it all manages to end on a rather lovely note feels like a really,
really good magic trick.
Admittedly, this might not be the movie to catch when you’ve got a
case of the holiday blues (though I’m still laughing over the presence
of a horndog neighbor named Dick Koosman), but Baumbach’s finely
crafted, deceptively glum tone poem deserves a bigger audience than
it’s likely to get. To watch it is to see a filmmaker at the absolute
top of his game, even if this particular game probably shouldn’t be
topped. ANDREW WRIGHT
Enchanted
dir. Kevin Lima
I have mixed feelings about princesses. On the one hand, I love
them. Obviously. On the other hand, GET A JOB! Enchanted,
Disney’s new animation/live-action hybrid, is all about those fluffy
royal cupcakes: how princesses are dumb, how princesses are bizarre,
how princesses are the FUCKING BOMB. A smart, sparkly, self-aware
lampoon of every silly Disney cliché, Enchanted manages
to make fun of princesses without being a total dick about it. I
laughed (hard) at the funny parts. I got choked up (NOT KIDDING) at the
serious parts. Clearly I have emotional problems, but that doesn’t mean
that Enchanted doesn’t totally rule. It does.
In the maaaaagical land of Andalasia, princess-to-be Giselle (Amy
Adams) lives in a magical cottage with 10,000 magical chipmunks. When
she’s not chatting up the forest vermin, she’s singing laborious
prince-related ditties: “I’ve been dreaming of a true love’s kiss, and
the prince I hope will come with this!” Her prince finally arrives
(James Marsden, professional comedian?) and he’s all, “We shall be
married in the morning!” and the wicked queen is all, “Hell naw!” (or
the queenly equivalent) and Giselle is banished to “a place where there
are no happily ever afters,” aka New York City. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In rapid succession, Giselle encounters gay people, black people,
revolving doors, and the unexpected complexities of live-action
relationships. Adams (the prettiest person in the world) delivers
every line with a wide-eyed sincerity that disarms any objection to the
fish-out-of-water formula (“Could you direct me to some place to rest
my head for the night… maybe a nearby meadow or a hollow tree?”).
She’s taken in by très jaded divorce lawyer and single
dad Rob (Patrick Dempsey—hey America, you guys know he’s been in
movies since, like, 1985, right? Why the weirdly abrupt Dempsey
obsession?), and starts working her magic on those frozen New York
hearts. Awwww!
I have to warn you that the last act of this movie is ridiculous.
But it’s worth it for exchanges such as: “Where did you get that
dress?” “I gathered the silk from my silkworm friends and then I spun
it into thread on my spinning wheel!” Shut up, princess! I love you,
girl! LINDY WEST
I’m Not There
dir. Todd Haynes
The central thesis of Todd Haynes’s extraordinary new film is that
there is no such thing as “Bob Dylan.” He’s both the incoherent mumbler
and the Eliot-inspired poet, the motorcycle-crashing pillhead and the
Jews for Jesus affiliate, the socially conscious folkie and the
sneering rocker—the dichotomies go on and on. This elusiveness is
compounded by Dylan’s role as his era’s spokesperson (a job he spent
his whole life trying to avoid), and the myriad projections he’s
fielded from either side of the generation gap.
These observations are anything but original—but what is
revelatory is the way Haynes exploits them in I’m Not There, a
film whose scope stretches far beyond the much-discussed use of
multiple actors to play fictional versions of the Dylan character. Six
different films in at least as many styles weave through I’m Not
There, each with its own “Dylan but not Dylan” protagonist, played
by actors that include Cate Blanchett and the pubescent
African-American Marcus Carl Franklin. The different characters each
represent a unique strand of Dylan’s creative path, career, or persona,
and all toy with notions of personal and public identity.
Bob Dylan fans are thrown treats throughout the film, with tweaked
re-creations of famous Dylan moments that persist both in the popular
imagination and documentaries like Don’t Look Back. Haynes
takes a playful approach to the famous Newport incident: At the squelch
of Dylan’s Telecaster, Pete Seeger just so happens to have a hatchet
hanging nearby (what’s a folk fest without hatchets lying around
everywhere?). The obnoxious, drunken hotel-room argument about a broken
glass, captured in D. A. Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary, is reimagined
here as a hostile standoff with a crazed bellboy (giving Blanchett the
opportunity to deliver my favorite movie line of all time: “Either be
groovy or leave, man!”).
Viewers who want to learn about the “Blowing in the Wind” songwriter
will be frustrated by I’m Not There, to put it mildly.
Similarly, audiences who like their films linear should steer clear.
I’m Not There is suggestive, not instructive; poetic, not
prosaic. It is also, I strongly feel after only one viewing, one of the
smartest, most innovative, and most beautiful films of this era. CHAS
BOWIE
August Rush
dir. Kirsten Sheridan
America loves little boys. Remember when everyone creamed their
pants over that Billy Elliot movie? “He wants to be a dancer!
Whee!”
With that rule, August Rush (by Disco Pigs director Kirsten Sheridan) should do really well in theaters. But no
one is going to see it. Robin Williams is in it. And nobody feels
strongly enough about the gorgeous and not-at-all-offensive Keri
Russell or her costars Terrence Howard and Jonathan Rhys Meyers to go
see a movie based on their involvement alone.
That’s sad. Because despite the fact that the plot is goofy and rife
with romantic improbabilities, and despite the fact that the script is
loaded with cheesy moments like, “I believe in music the way some
people believe in fairy tales,” August Rush is actually a
charming little film about a musical prodigy who ends up performing
with the New York Philharmonic in order to find the mom and dad who
don’t even know he exists.
See, Mom’s a touring cellist and she went slumming one night with
the frontman of a rock ‘n’ roll band. Magic happened, then mistakes
happened, and then some people told some lies. So the adorable August
Rush bounces from orphanage to Robin Williams to the New York
Philharmonic, and he makes music only because he firmly believes his
parents will hear it and know he’s out there.
It sounds bad, right? I know. And I’m just making it sound worse.
But the parts in the film where it shows August Rush composing and
hearing music in everything he sees—well, those are actually
pretty cool. Because music itself is pretty cool. It’s such a shame
that this movie about music is 100 percent uncool. MEGAN SELING
This Christmas
dir. Preston A. Whitmore II
Happy birthday, Jesus! Do you like “dramadies”? You know, those
movies that aren’t funny enough to be comedies but don’t have enough
plot to be dramas? Of course you do. You love everything, you old
hippie. But, look, anyone else would think this was a terrible birthday
present—a trite, predictable Christmas joint with the dull,
drawn-out pacing of a prolonged family dinner.
Basically, this Christmas is about to be the best Christmas ever for
the Whitfield family. Or is it? The whole family is together for the
first time in four years, and, even though there are problems, somehow
you know with absolute certainty that everyone will manage to overcome
them and share in the true spirit of family Christmas blah blah
blah.
Will the Whitfield matriarch rediscover the joy of music even though
her jazzman husband broke her heart? Will the
dutiful-daughter-who-puts-everyone-else-first dump her greedy,
adulterous husband and whip him with his own belt? Will the
career-minded, vibrator-packing single daughter finally find a man and
settle down? Will the wayward black-sheep saxophonist son make peace
with Ma Dear and her new man? Will the AWOL soldier tell everyone about
his honky wife? Will Baby (played by real-life R&B singer Chris
Brown) perform a way less charismatic version of Otis Redding’s “Try a
Little Tenderness” than Duckie’s from Pretty in Pink? Will the
secondary characters stay politely in the background? Will the whole
cast dance and mug for the camera after the last freeze frame but
before the credits roll? And most importantly, will this movie keep you
from talking to your own awful family for two hours?
The answer to all these questions is, of course, yes. Merry fucking
Christmas. ERIC GRANDY
The Landlord
dir. Hal Ashby
The year before Harold and Maude, Hal Ashby made his debut
with this eccentric racial satire (written by the black screenwriter
Bill Gunn) about the considerable challenge of gentrifying Brooklyn.
Set in 1970 Park Slope—now best known for lesbians with
prams—The Landlord concerns Elgar Enders (the
baby-faced, weak-chinned Beau Bridges), a rich white man with nothing
better to do than invest in real estate. He buys a “tenement building”
in a black neighborhood, tries to take a potted rhododendron up the
stairs, and promptly gets chased off the block by an ad hoc crowd of
jeering neighbors.
Eventually, Elgar shoves his way into the local social scene.
(Tolerance isn’t so elusive, he learns, if you’re willing to make
yourself the object of sport.) Soon he’s dating a gorgeous
light-skinned dancer (Marki Bey) and sleeping with one of his own
tenants (Diana Sands). Meanwhile, white people are crazy: At Elgar’s
parents’ grassy estate, a marijuana-addled sister falls down the stairs
and dumps a pot of soup over the butler’s bald head. Serious
conversations are reserved for the relative privacy of golf carts and
dinner guests just happen to work in the napalm industry.
Taken one scene at a time, the satire is blissful. And there’s
something compelling about watching sad, puffy Beau Bridges embody a
historical force. Unfortunately, the plot is half-baked, and the ending
(in which a girl contentedly adopts her boyfriend’s son by another
woman) is about as satisfying as a yellowing manual on maternal
instinct. The Landlord wishes it were about the future of
America, but its forecast is just too hazy. ANNIE WAGNER
Hitman
dir. Xavier Gens
According to long-established theory, any movie produced by aging
Gallic wunderkind Luc Besson (The Transporter, District
B13) must contain at least three of the following elements to be
successful: (A) a stylishly bald protagonist; (B) a short-haired,
raccoon-mascaraed love interest wearing Gaultier slit up to
here; (C) bulging supporting actors who appear to have learned
their lines phonetically just moments before shooting; (D) enough blue
filters to wrap around a small moon; (E) guns, guns, guns.
Hitman, a proudly R-rated video-game adaptation coproduced
by Besson, handily aces all of the elements above. Featuring a
multitude of squib hits and a far better than necessary performance by
Timothy Olyphant in a prime Deadwood smolder, it’s rooted
firmly on the positive side of good and dumb.
Based on a long-running game franchise (which nobody I’ve talked to
ever seems to have actually played), the story follows the mysterious
figure known only as Agent 47 (Olyphant), a born-in-the-lab, bar-coded
super assassin with vague ties to the Vatican. After an attempted hit
on an Eastern European political heavy goes wrong, 47 swears vengeance,
with the aid of a punky waif witness sporting a tattooed dragon on her
cheek.
Director Xavier Gens keeps the nonsense flowing briskly, with a
number of pulpily effective action scenes (an early four-way swordfight
has some of the holy-crap-did-you-just-see-that quality of prime Hong
Kong cinema) and a healthy sense of the material’s inherent
ridiculousness. Whether you go for it or not may ultimately depend on
your feelings about a movie that helpfully explains its locations with
onscreen captions like “London–England” and
“Moscow–Russia.” Vive le Luc. ANDREW WRIGHT
The Mist
dir. Frank Darabont
In contrast to Frank Darabont’s previous Stephen King adaptations
The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, The
Mist is a relatively lean affair. The story is pure schlock: After
a violent storm, a small Maine hamlet is invaded by a mysterious and
deadly mist. Seeking refuge in a grocery store, stock characters
(average-guy hero, hillbilly, religious freak, wise old bat, etc.)
squabble, battle otherworldly bugs and tentacles, and generally freak
the fuck out.
For the majority of the film, Darabont can’t help but fumble the big
scares. Every dark cranny is overlit, every monster is overexposed. In
lieu of building tension, he resorts to half-assed handheld camerawork;
instead of keeping the menace mysterious, he quickly coughs up answers.
This may be faithful to King’s original story, but as a stand-in for
our own imaginations, Darabont’s is sorely lacking. Only during a
sequence involving 300 feet of rope does he actually deliver on the
creeps—and even then it feels rushed.
Darabont seems far more interested in the various in-fights among
the survivors, especially a rift between the devout and the secular.
Unfortunately, that rift is handled so ham-fistedly—the
caricatures turning outright ugly at times—that it quickly turns
tedious, rendering the bulk of the film not just void of frights, but
plodding as well. Only in a truly shocking third act is The
Mist nearly redeemed, but by that point the twist feels like
little more than a mean, and fairly cheap, stunt. BRADLEY
STEINBACHER
