Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky has directed five films, Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler, and now Black Swan. In the first two films, Aronofsky established his brand specializing in disturbing visuals of what was happening in the heads of crazy, drugged-out, unhappy people. Then came The Fountain which is a weird multi-dimensional, multi-time-period epic. Two years ago, he made The Wrestler which broke the mold. It was a nice little movie with strong characters and a compelling story that got a couple of Oscar nominations. With the exception of The Wrestler, I find Aronofsky movies interesting from the point of view of film techniques, but not so interesting as movies. Which brings us to his latest film, Black Swan, which takes Aronofsky back to his roots presenting disturbing visuals of what is happening in the heads of crazy, unhappy people, in particular, Natalie Portman.

In Black Swan, Portman portrays a ballerina, long lost in the obscurity of the corps de ballet, who gets her big chance to star in Swan Lake. She is picked by the director (Vincent Cassel) to replace the aging star of the ballet troupe (Winona Ryder). That's right! You heard me. There has been another Winona Ryder sighting! Anyway, Portman's character is a bit stressed out, not just by her debut on the big stage, but also by the director's emotional abuse, her stage-mother mother (Barbara Hershey), and her competitor for the part (Mila Kunis). Oh and she is anorexic too.

Anyway, this all a bit too much for Portman, who then becomes the stereotypical Aronofsky character who loses it, and starts to experience delusions, hallucinations, nightmares, and you name it. In a mirroring of the ballet itself, Portman begins to see herself undergoing a metamorphosis from the good swan to the evil one. The problem with the Aronofsky brand, seen in Pi, Requiem for a Dream, and Black Swan, is that all his energy seems to go into the visual effects and not into the story and characters.

None of the characters in Black Swan are at all three dimensional, and some, like Barbara Hershey as Portman's mother, and Vincent Cassel as the director, are barely one-dimensional. Mila Kunis does the best job with her character as Portman's would be friend and competitor. I haven't seen Kunis (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) before, but she manages to put some nice complexity into her character. It's nice to see Winona Ryder who is trying to make a bit of a comeback with character parts after so many years in the wilderness. She was also seen in Star Trek last year.

Portman struggles mightily to do something in Black Swan but is defeated by the banality of her character. But the blame has to rest with Aronofsky, who after discovering the importance of character and story in The Wrestler, has completely forgotten it again in Black Swan. This movie is a terrible waste of a nice cast and also of an interesting plot idea. I say "idea" because that is all that it is, and it doesn't get developed beyond a stressed out ballerina who doesn't eat enough and starts to hallucinate. I was excited to see this movie but then very disappointed that the old Aronofsky is back. There are lots of better Christmas movies out there. Go see them.

Love and Other Drugs

Love and Other Drugs is directed by the veteran, Edward Zwick. He seems like a weird choice to direct what seems on the face of it to be a romantic comedy. His last few films, Defiance, Blood Diamond, The Siege, and Courage Under Fire, are all war films of one sort or another. But I think that he gives Love and Other Drugs an edge that it might not have had otherwise. The setup of the movie is slightly strange anyway. This is a love story about a slacker (Jake Gyllenhaal) turned Viagra salesman, who has spent his life getting along on his good looks, and a reclusive artist (Anne Hathaway) with Parkinson's disease. Part of the movie is a bit slapstick as Gyllenhaal and his mentor (Oliver Platt) try to get doctors to sell more Zoloft and Viagra.

But the love story between Gyllenhaal, who has never committed to anything in his life, and Hathaway, who has decided that she doesn't ever want to depend on anyone, is pretty raw. It's not quite as amazing as the stuff going down in Rachel Getting Married including fistfights with Debra Winger, but Love and Other Drugs doesn't pull its punches, at least until the unfortunate climax where the romantic Hollywood formula is applied, and Gyllenhaal engages in a high speed chase down the interstate so that he can flag down Hathaway and express his undying devotion.

But up to that point, Love and Other Drugs is pretty interesting. Gyllenhaal and Platt are good at the comic relief as they lie in wait to ambush doctors and bribe their receptionists. Gyllenhaal first sees Hathaway while in a doctor's waiting room. The predictable wild sex is followed by the breaking down of a lot of walls on both sides as Gyllenhaal has never fallen in love before, and Hathaway has vowed never to fall in love again. The movie ends up being a juxtaposition of slapstick humor and serious romantic issues but it mostly works. The two leads don't just look good but can act as well. And the director keeps things moving. This movie probably won't make my top ten for the year but it's worth seeing.

Eeeeeeeew!

You gotta love Danny Boyle. He has directed Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Millions, and my pick for best movie of the year two years ago, Slumdog Millionaire. He makes unusual movies and mostly they are very good. His new movie is 127 Hours, the real-life story of Aron Ralston (see pic). He's the hiker who was trapped when I rock fell on his arm while he was way off the grid in Canyonlands National Park. Since he didn't tell anyone where he was going, and he was unlikely to be found, he had a choice of slow death, or to try and cut his arm off so he could get away. You all know what he did. Anyway, this may seem like a strange choice for a movie. It's definitely dramatic, but the whole story is about a guy stuck by himself for days while he cuts his own arm off. Yuck.

 

James Franco took on the role of Ralston, and the story is shown in very straightforward way. 127 Hours doesn't waste a lot of time with the back story. In the first scene, Franco is loading up his backpack and getting ready to leave for Canyonlands. The one bit of foreshadowing is that he can't find his Swiss Army knife. He does meet and help out a couple of cute female hikers (Amber Tamblyn & Kate Mara). They invite him to a party, but he fails to tell them where he is going and soon after, he falls into a fissure when a boulder gets loose and ends up with his arm wedged beneath it. He has a little water but no food. So he tries various things to shift or lift the rock but to no avail. 

Franco has a video camera and begins a running commentary including messages to his friends and loved ones. At this point in 127 Hours we start to get the back story of his life.  We meet his parents (Treat Williams & Kate Burton) and his ex-girlfriend (Clémence Poésy) and find out that he's a bit of a slacker who works in a outdoor gear store, and hasn't committed to anything except extreme sports. As time goes on and the water runs out, the flashbacks turn into hallucinations. The supporting cast are good but they aren't on screen very much. If Franco's parents and ex look familiar, you've probably seen them around. Treat Williams has done a bunch of TV and movies (Once Upon a Time in America) and Kate Burton played Meredith Grey's Alzheimer's-inflicted mother on Grey's Anatomy. Clémence Poésy played Fleur Delacour in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

The subject matter of 127 Hours, coupled with the fact that the viewer is forced to watch while Franco breaks his arm and then hacks it off with a very blunt instrument, is a bit of a turn off. My girlfriend wouldn't even go into the theatre. She saw Fair Game instead. I watched 127 Hours, but I have to say I closed my eyes quite a bit during the last half hour or so. Despite this, it's a very good film. Franco is great. During what is, in essence, a 90 minute soliloquy, he does a very good job of being upbeat and keeping the story moving, as does the director, Danny Boyle. It's a very simple storyline with a minimum of subplots and the viewer gets dragged along inexorably toward the uplifting but very gory climax. The plot is unbelievable, no more so because it is true. Not only does Franco cut the arm off, but then he has to rappel down a cliff (with one arm) and walk out until he runs into some hikers and is rescued. It is an amazing story told very well but I just don't think many people consider it to be a date movie.

Morning Glory

The wattage in Morning Glory is very high. The stars are Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton, two giants of the screen, plus Rachel McAdams, a very good up and comer. Plus Jeff Goldblum is included for the freak factor. Then, we have Director Roger Michell (Venus, Notting Hill), the writer Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada) and the producer JJ Abrams (Star Trek, Lost). So what went wrong? Why is this movie so bad? I mean my expectations weren't too high. But with Ford, Keaton, and McAdams in the mix, I did expect it to be at least OK. The problem is as always with the script. They spent untold millions on the cast and didn't care enough to have some witty words for the stars to say on screen. That being said, I do get some entertainment value from watching a group of professional actors trying their hardest to rise above the material. And to their credit, the cast of Morning Glory try to do just that.

The plot of Morning Glory, such as it is, follows the ups and mostly downs of the bottom-rated network morning show. The longtime female host (Diane Keaton) is in need of a new partner. She goes through them like drummers in Spinal Tap. The new producer of "Daybreak" (Rachel McAdams) has just been hired by the head of the network (Jeff Goldblum), and decides to go after the network's Walter Cronkite-esque, former anchorman (Harrison Ford). Ford's character is described as "the third worst person in the world." The first two are Kim Jong-il and Angela Lansbury. In case you didn't notice, this is supposed to be funny. Unfortunately, it's about the funniest line in Morning Glory. No wait, the only funny scene in the movie is when Ford goes on a bender the night before his debut on the morning show and McAdams looks for him in every bar in NYC only to find him drinking with Morley Safer, Bob Schieffer and Chris Matthews. 

But if anything, Ford's character is the worst person in the world and very one-dimensional at that. Here's where the "try to rise above the material" part comes in, because Ford tries really hard to get a least two dimensions out of his character, and I did appreciate the effort. The most wasted talent on Morning Glory is Diane Keaton. Did she see a script before she signed on? I can't believe she did. She is barely in this movie, appearing on the set with Ford or McAdams every 15 minutes or so.

Morning Glory is a Ford/McAdams movie for better or worse. And McAdams tries as hard as Ford does to rise above her one dimensional perky-loser persona. They give her a boyfriend (Patrick Wilson), also terribly wasted in his few scenes. See him in Angels in America for an example of three-dimensional characters. At least I sort of liked McAdams' character and (maybe) wanted her to succeed, whereas you get tired very fast of Ford rejecting McAdams' every suggestion even though you know that it will turn out that Ford isn't the worst person in the world and a heart-warming ending. And, Diane Keaton, what a waste. What I won't do is waste more of your time reading this. Don't see Morning Glory. See one of the many good movies that these good actors have been in.

The Boy who Lived then Died then Lived

It's hard to remember a world before Harry Potter. But it is only 13 years since the first book appeared, and 9 years since the first film. So the actors playing Harry, Hermione, and Ron (Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint) were 11 years old in HP and the Sorcerer's Stone (see pic above) and are about 20 now (see pic below). It took me a while to get caught up in the Harry Potter mania, but by the time the last book came out I was a believer. I was observing at Mauna Kea when HP and the Deathly Hallows was released so someone had to drive down the mountain and buy books for everyone and bring them up to the observatory.

The movies have had four different directors including Chris Columbus (1 and 2), Alfonso Cuarón (3), Mike Newell (4), and David Yates (5,6,7,8).There are 8 films because HP and the Deathly Hallows has been split into two films. Part II is due out in July 2011. On the whole the movies have been good, and have followed the books pretty closely for fear of a backlash by the teens (now twenty somethings) who have memorized the books. The main actors, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint have been more than adequate, but it has been a joy to see the panoply of British character actors who play the supporting cast. The author of the books, J. K. Rowling, had asked that the whole cast be British so we get to see Richard Harris, Michael Gambon, John Hurt, Robbie Coltrane, Ralph Fiennes, Julie Walters, Helena Bonham Carter, Bill Nighy, Richard Griffiths, Jason Isaacs, Timothy Spall, Rhys Ifans, Maggie Smith, John Cleese, Kenneth Branagh, Gary Oldman, Emma Thompson, Miranda Richardson, Brendan Gleeson, Robert Hardy, and Imelda Staunton. These great British character actors have 28 Oscar nominations between them.

If you haven't been living on Alpha Centauri for the last 13 years, you know all about Harry Potter, and you know that HP and the Deathly Hallows is the last book of the series in which Harry is on a collision course for a final confrontation with "He Who Shall Not Be Named." But that is going to happen in Part II along with the decimation of the cast of characters that we have come to know and love. With the exception of Mad-Eyed Moodie (Brendan Gleeson) everyone is pretty much still alive at the end of Part I. Unlike the other books (and movies), HP and the Deathly Hallows is not set at Hogwarts. Instead, Harry with lots of help from Hermione and a little from Ron is scouring the Earth for the pieces of Voldemorts soul that are hidden in seven Horcruxes. As Harry is about to leave on his quest, Ron says, we won't last two days without Hermione. He is so right.  She has this great bottomless bag which contains among other things, a tent. Besides Horcruxes, the big word in HP and the Deathly Hallows is Apparate. Every time that Voldemort sends someone to kill Harry, which is basically all the time in Part I, he and Hermione and Ron are forced to Apparate, which is the equivalent of "Scotty, beam me up" in Star Trek.

I went to see HP and the Deathly Hallows with my girlfriend who has seen all of the Harry Potter movies but hasn't read any of the books. She was whispering to me all through the movie asking who was who and what was happening. HP and the Deathly Hallows is a bit similar Lord of the Rings. I don't think you can follow who is doing what to whom if you haven't read the books.

All this being said, HP and the Deathly Hallows Part I is pretty good. It is really nice to see Harry and Hermione and even Ron again. There is a fair amount of standing around wondering what to do (by Harry and Ron, never by Hermione). But the movie gets going, and I do love it when the Avada Kedavra curses start flying. There are one or two new faces including Bill Nighy as the Minister of Magic. He won't be back for Part II. As usual my fav, Nymphadora Tonks (Natlia Tena), is given short shrift. But Snape (Alan Rickman), Neville (Matthew Lewis), and Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) are only in about one scene apiece, and McGonagall (Maggie Smith) none at all.

Even though there's so much going on (it was a very thick book) that only Harry, Hermione and Ron get a lot of screen time, pretty much every character from the previous six Harry Potter books, who is still alive and kicking, shows up in HP and the Deathly Hallows on one side or the other. Although, we only see Dumbledore dead. It was nice to see Fleur Delacour (Clémence Poésy)  (Book 4) and Ollivander (John Hurt) (Book 1) again, but do you remember who they are? There are lots of details mentioned maybe once or twice in some previous book like the fact that Harry and Voldemort's wands are related that come into play in HP and the Deathly Hallows. And did I mention that you really need to know what a Horcrux is. HP and the Deathly Hallows suffers a bit from the fact that it is Part I and is setting the scene for the climactic confrontation between the Order of the Phoenix/Dumbledore's Army and the Death Eaters, and in particular between Harry and Voldemort. Now we just have to wait until July. I'll wait until then to go on and on about how I can't accept Hermione and Ron as a couple. At least they don't kiss in HP and the Deathly Hallows. The only kissing that Hermione does is with Harry while naked! Better go see it....