Movie Review: Whatever Works (2009, Directed by Woody Allen)

It is with a heavy heart that I express my disappointment with Woody Allen’s fortieth feature film, Whatever Works. Allen is one of my favorite directors. At least five of his pictures belong in a list of my top 100 movies of all time. I am not one of those people who believe that Allen is incapable of producing quality films any more. Several recent films, such as Vicky Christina Barcelona and Match Point, prove that this is not true. While not on the level of Allen’s greatest work like Crimes and Misdemeanors or Everyone Says I Love You, these films show that the aging filmmaker is still able to create profound, witty pictures.

Alas, Whatever Works is a major miscalculation. Larry David plays Boris Yellnikoff, a New York physics professor who hates everyone and everything to such an extent that were are left to wonder how such a human being has managed to survive for so long. In fact, his nihilistic outlook on like drove him to attempt suicide once. Only an intervening canopy broke his fall to the ground out of a New York apartment window.

Yellnikoff’s word is shaken up by the sudden appearance (as if by magic) of Melodie (Evan Rachel Wood), a young girl from the South who has run away from home and decides that New York of all places is a great place to escape to. Hilarity and profundity ensue (supposedly) when Yellnikoff and Melodie develop a “thing” for one another. Then, Melodie’s parents, one by one, suddenly appear in New York, looking for their precious daughter. In the end, after a series of pseudo-Shakespearean bouts of culture clash and curious couplings, everyone finds some happiness and breathes a sigh of relief (except for the audience).

Reportedly, Woody Allen wrote the Whatever Works script back in the 70s, only changing a few lines here and there to make it “work” in a 21st-century world. The problem, though, is that it feels strangely out of touch with our current cultural condition. The film explores the American “cultural divide” in a simplistic and totalizing manner that fits better with the 1970s milieu of “us vs. them.” The stereotypical characters from the South are presented as caricatures that should offend anyone who has ever lived in the South or known anyone from the South. In fact, the script shows such cultural ignorance that one is forced to question whether or not Allen has ever even met anyone who doesn’t live on the East Coast.

Indeed, the message of the film seems to be that New York City is the only place on Earth worth living. Allen’s NYC worshipping was expressed much more effectively in a film like Manhattan. Woody has always presented a romanticized view of the city. This time, though, he seems to say that if you’re not living the bohemian, sexually-open life of an artist in Manhattan, you are a repressed individual who might as well give up all hope. The easy transformation Melodie’s parents experience when they move from the rural South to the urban East is offensive both to them as characters and to the city Allen loves.

The situation isn’t helped any by the acting in the film. Evan Rachel Wood broadly plays up her character’s stereotypical ditsy, naive traits to the point of absurdity. Larry David plays the protagonist as Woody Allen on a very, very bad day. Sure, Allen has always played cynical characters. However, in masterpieces such as Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters his characters still express moments of genuine humanistic concern and empathy. David’s character is no less a monster than the one created by Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein.

The nice thing about Woody is that, at least for now, there’s always a next time. The incredibly prolific Allen has been directing films at the rate of approximately one a year for the past four decades. If Allen decided to retire and never make another film, he would still have the weight of films like Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Everyone Says I Love You to prove him one of the most profound and engaging artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. I just hope that next time he makes a picture that “works.”

Movie Review: Moon (2009, Directed by Duncan Jones)

Something just seems a little off about director Duncan Jones’ debut film Moon. It has been marketed as a kind of cerebral sci-fi pic, playing mostly in art houses. It emphasizes theme and character over special effects. I am normally a champion of thematically-engaging movies in which visual effects are not the focus of attention. Unfortunately, I’m not able to champion Moon, though, because it doesn’t fully commit to its own themes.

Sam Rockwell plays astronaut Sam Bell who has been sent to the moon for three years to mine Helium-3 for a major corporation. In doing so, he is supposedly helping to reverse Earth’s energy crisis. As the film opens, Sam is just a couple weeks shy of his scheduled return to Earth. However, as might be expected from a man who has spent the last three years in complete isolation, he begins feeling strange and possibly becomes delusional.

A film such as this succeeds or fails on the lead character’s performance. Critics have generally been praising Rockwell’s solo outing as the lone astronaut on the dark side of the moon. I must confess that I did not find him particularly engaging. In fact, I was downright bored most of the time by Rockwell’s austere acting style. I never really engaged with the character, and therefore never cared that much what happened to the ill-fated astronaut.

My bigger problem with the film, though, has to do with an M. Night Shyamalon-style plot twist in the movie’s second half. I won’t reveal the twist here, but it seemed inexplicable and downright unreasonable to me. I do not demand that every last detail of a science-fiction piece be realistic, but it should at least follow the logic of the universe it creates. The main problem I had with the film’s twist has to do with motivation. We have been given no real reason to believe that the characters would act the way they do following the plot twist.

I applaud Jones’ efforts to make an intelligent film on a limited budget that attempts to engage with some interesting moral issues surrounding science and technology. We need more movies in this vain. The fact that first-time director Jones did not succeed with Moon doesn’t mean that he is doomed to failure forever. I feel sure that he has a good film in him, and perhaps we will see that next time.

Movie Review: Up (2009, Directed by Pete Docter)

I am convinced that we are living in a golden age of animated cinema. Future film scholars will perhaps look back on the 21st century’s first decade and realize that the most important innovations in movie artistry came from the talented technicians at Pixar Studios. Don’t get me wrong, Pixar is capable of producing some mediocre films (see Cars, for example). However, last year’s WALL-E and the previous year’s Ratatouille had critics and general audiences alike talking about how animated film can be as thoughtful and humanistic as live-action film. This year’s Up follows in the path of these previous two successes and, in some ways, improves upon them.

If you’ve seen the trailer for Up, you know the basic premise of the new Pixar film. An elderly gentleman, voiced sensitively by Ed Asner, decides to leave his dreary and lonely life behind and embark on a new adventure, one that involves lifting his house via balloons to a land far, far away. He is accompanied by a young Boy Scout who is simultaneously annoying and irresistibly hilarious.

To boil this film down to that bare bones plot summary is to do it a great disservice. I was not prepared for what the movie’s first twenty minutes or so had to offer. We get the back story on how the elderly protagonist got to his current state of loneliness and general grumpiness. In the most artfully-composed montage I have seen in recent memory, we see the story of our grumpy old man and his beloved wife, starting with their first meeting as children and ending with the inevitable encroachment of death. In only ten minutes, we know more about their relationship and feel for them as characters more than we do for couples in every stupid romantic comedy combined. It is so refreshing to see an animated film that doesn’t insult our intelligence as viewers and provides exposition without coming right and telling us everything that is going on. The last film I saw that handled the protagonist’s background story with such deft technique was Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will be Blood. Significantly, both films give us important background information about the main character via the long lost art of silent montage. Perhaps there is hope for the future …

Unfortunately, the rest of Up can’t quite compare with these breathtaking opening moments. There are several significant plot holes and character development problems that took me out of the story. I don’t want to discuss these in detail because it may spoil a few plot developments that arise in the film’s final act. But, there are still many moments of profound insight and insurmountable joy in the latter half of the movie. I particularly loved the concept of dogs wearing collars programmed by their master to express the dog’s thoughts in “people speak.” Ultimately, I found the film’s resolution satisfying despite the misguided steps it takes along the way.

I find it interesting that both WALL-E and Up suffer from the same problem of starting with an incredibly engaging and innovative exposition but not following through with the storytelling devices necessary to keep the narrative flow going. It is my hope in the future that Pixar can create a film that finishes as robustly as it begins.

In the meantime, though, Up can be considered a paragon of excellence for the animated movie genre. Every frame reminds us, especially in the film’s first half, that we are watching human beings on the screen, not cartoon characters. Animation has come a long way from the early days of Steamboat Willy. Up is my favorite film of the year so far.

Movie Review: The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009, Directed by Tony Scott)

As long as you are okay with accepting a plethora of absurdities in the plot, Tony Scott’s remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 is a fun ride. This is the kind of summer movie that is meant to be experienced more than analyzed.

By now anyone who has seen a trailer for the picture knows the basic plot. John Travolta plays a former Wall Street man who has hijacked a New York subway and taken hostages. Denzell Washington plays an MTA official who must find a peaceful solution to the public crisis. As we all know, Denzell Washington can do no wrong as an actor. Travolta, on the other hand, can do wrong and does in this picture. He is so over the top in his crazed terrorist posturing that I found him more humorous than chilling.

But, this movie isn’t really about the acting. It’s about the suspense inherent in the plot. Some in the press have discussed how the filmmakers were given unprecedented access to New York subways and MTA transit centers in the making of this movie. I don’t doubt that this is true. However, it’s impossible to discern the setting’s authenticity with Tony Scott’s camera continually whizzing around in fevered patterns of aggression. We’re not so much watching an action movie as playing a high-energy video game.

If you’re looking for a movie that has the slightest semblance of thoughtfulness or purpose, this film isn’t for you. But, heck, we’re in the middle of the summer action pic season. Why not get out of the heat, grab some popcorn, and turn your mind off for a couple of hours? I had great fun immersing myself in this frenzied picture, and then calmly taking the subway home.

Movie Review: Away We Go (2009, Directed by Sam Mendes)

I must confess that I enjoyed Away we Go, director Sam Mendes’ latest take on American family life, much more than I probably should have. The film is practically crying out for some intelligent and articulate critic to catalogue its many faults. Let’s just say that the movie’s ending is one of the most contrived and underwhelming I have seen recently on the screen. The film’s two TV star leads, John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph have a thing or two (or three) to learn about film acting. The film is populated by secondary characters so under-developed and “quirky” with a capital “Q” that they would have been better suited in a Warner Brothers cartoon short.

OK … enough with the negatives (read A.O. Scott’s New York Times review if you want a scathing critique). Focus on the positives …

Krasinsky and Rudolph play a thirtyish couple who still haven’t “discovered” themselves. A baby is on the way and they don’t want to raise the child into a life of quiet confusion. So, they take off on an emotional journey of sorts, visiting different cities to determine where they should “settle” before the child is born. They’re seeking not so much a stimulating environment in which to exist, but rather people with whom they can share their parenting responsibilities. Thus, they look up “friends” from their past who may be able to help shed some light on what it means to be a caring parent.

The result, as you might anticipate, is that there are no easy answers (at least until the film’s misguided ending in which the protagonists literally stare into the camera and explain the lessons they have learned to the strains of Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man”). Somehow, though, the couple finds an authentic sense of peace in their multi-city journey through the inevitabilities of adulthood. They also learn quite a bit about each other (never a bad idea for a successful relationship).

I suppose the reason I enjoyed this film is simply that it made me laugh quite a bit. There’s something touching about Krasinky and Rudolph’s relationship and the moments when they are onscreen alone (away from the so-quirky-you-want-to-vomit characters they meet along the way) are at times fresh and insightful. Therefore, I have to at least give the movie a mild recommendation. It’s at least a nice quieter anecdote for the loud and explosive summer movie season. It’s just too bad that this cute film is so offensive to thoughtful filmgoers on so many levels. Oh well … I guess I’ll just do what this film’s lead couple would do … shrug my shoulders and move on.

Movie Review: Drag Me to Hell (2009, Directed by Sam Raimi)

Drag Me to Hell represents a return to form for director Sam Raimi, after the blockbuster success of the Spider-Man series. He proves that he is still able to mix comedy and horror together in just the right proportion, á la Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2. While Drag Me to Hell succeeds more as a comedy than as a horror picture, it still has enough thrills to make me jump in my seat a time or two. What more could you really ask for?

The film’s plot is not terribly important. Let’s just say it’s about a young woman who makes an old lady mad and there’s hell to pay (literally). Along the way, we get the typical horror tropes of stolen Gypsy jewelry, unseen (but deeply felt) spirits, a cursed jacket button, a haunted goat’s head, a capitalistic fortune teller, an unfortunate little kitty cat, and a grave-digging during a torrential downpour.

I am not by any means a connoisseur of horror cinema, but I admired the way this movie implies rather than shows much of the horror. During much of the film, Raimi winks his eye at us and reminds us that it’s only a movie we’re watching. The director’s goal is more to have fun with the audience than to deliver legitimately creepy moments of graphic gore and horrific images.

If Drag Me to Hell made me think about anything, it is how deeply moralistic and totalizing most horror films are. Raimi’s film could be described as a parable about the consequences of dishonesty and unchecked personal ambition. The protagonist makes one arguably immoral decision with the aim of advancing her career as a loan officer. The weight of this questionable choice is felt throughout the entire movie and leads to its fatalistic, yet tragic ending. Horror movies seem to operate on the assumption that there are deep consequences for every one of our sins, no matter how great or slight.

I would love to see a talented director play with these conventions and explore what a horror picture might look like in a world not as obsessively consumed by guilt. Until then, I’m perfectly content with Raimi’s moralistic, yet good-old-fashioned-fun, creepshow.