The Fountain

Immediately after watching Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, “The Fountain,” I began to worry that perhaps I missed something. Maybe there was some deeper meaning woven into the film that I, in my post-Thanksgiving stupor had failed to pick up. There was also the issue of style.
Directors these days all seem to have their own personal styles that absolve them from their cinematic wrong doings. If I really hate a movie and I give a detailed description of my distaste some fellow movie viewer might suggest that maybe I just didn’t “get” that director’s style.
Did no one ever hear that form is supposed to follow function? “Kill Bill” this isn’t, in a movie that tries for lofty messages and heavy theological/philosophical meanings it is important that these grandiose ideas are communicated successfully to the audience.
I consider myself to be a pretty astute patron of the silver screen, and I’ll stand behind my initial reaction to this movie; that it was bloated and pointless. This is surprising because in each and ever shot you can practically touch the careful consideration of the filmmaker. It doesn’t take long for drawn out sincerity to become boring repetition.
The concept of the film, in as much as I could perceive, is a tale in three time periods featuring the same couple and the same basic ideas. In the time of Spanish conquistadors and ancient Aztec ruins, a man named Thomas Creo, played by Hugh Jackman, searches for the Tree of Life to bring immortal life to Queen Isabel, played by Rachel Wiesz, and himself.
In the present day a man named Tommy Creo, also played by Hugh Jackman, searches for a way to cure his terminally ill wife, Izzy Creo, played by Rachel Wiesz again. Izzy is nearly finished writing a book, called The Fountain, that tells the story of the Queen and the conquistador.
In the 26th century a man called Tom drifts through space toward the after life in what can only be described as a snowless snow globe holding the ironically dying Tree of Life and Tom.
The middle story is the most fully flushed and provides a bridge between the two of them. Obviously, Izzy’s characters are those in the first story, and Tom the astronaut is continually haunted by recurring memories of Tommy and Izzy Creo. Tom flying through space seems to be a metaphor for Tommy’s mental and spiritual journey.
The stages Thomas/Tommy/Tom journeys to and from are beyond me however because the story is so convoluted and mysterious that it leaves you trying to figure out the final outcome in each time period.
The film is a marvel to behold, as I previously implied it was shot with a keen eye for visual poetry. From start to finish there are so many marvelous and unique sights that I know I won’t forget them any time soon, if ever.
Unfortunately all these beautiful images are clouded by the fact that the story is utterly confusing and ultimately ineffective. Who are these people supposed to represent? What revelations do they experience that I can learn from? Is the conclusion that one should never stop fighting for immortality, or that there is creation in death? These are the things that fill my mind, and hearing that “one must take from the film what one feels they are meant to take” is not good enough.
I think Aronofsky was trying to send a message he considered very valuable. He ahs worked years to create this movie, even going so far as to completely rewrite the script after rejection of his original. The most depressing thing, far beyond a man lost forever in space or a conquistador consumed by the earth, is knowing that someone has tried so hard to tell the world something and has exquisitely failed.

C

Happy Feet

This is going to be short since it's not one for the school paper and I don't have to meet any kind of a word minimum! Happy Feet was an pretty good movie, it had a stellar cast, but like Shark Tale a while back (another animated movie with an unbelievably star studded marquee) it suffers from a bunch of heavy handed soap boxing that winds up bringing the whole thing down to a dull political statement in the end. Be that as it may, it is never dull to look at, and if you ever want to see computer animation at its finest just turn off the sound and watch the images, preferably on the largest screen you can find, and HDDVD or Blue Ray wouldn't hurt a thing, assuming you don't go to the theaters that is. The story is pretty paint by numbers, some penguin named Mumble can't sing and therefore can't find his true love in the traditional penguin way. All of the other penguins can sing and this is one of the movies other strong points besides the visuals. The soundtrack is bursting with Prince, The Beach Boys, Elvis, Pink, and Nicole Kidman, who isn't singer I know, but has had me waiting eagerly since she last sang in one of the greatest film musicals, Moulin Rouge! Anyway, it all goes pretty smoothly for an hour and then the politics start crowding the scenes with the "accept everybody" and "don't let man destroy the earth" stuff. Not that these ideas are all bad, it's just that it's a happy little family movie and all of the sudden I feel like I'm walking through an activists rally. There is also a surprising amount of suggestive and frightening material for a kids movie. Not that any of the material is both suggestive and frightening, but when penguins are doing pelvic thrusts and talking about making eggs I'm thinking wow there are kids in the audience, do they even get this? Then three minutes later some penguin or another is being locked away in a zoo somewhere with enough depression to rival Catcher in the Rye (though no where NEAR enough wit to make up for it!). The point of all this is that it's an enjoyable movie, for the first half, but the state of the art animation carries the boring last half through fairly well. So go if you want, and leave fifteen minutes before the end, or half way, or heck leave after you've seen the new Harry Potter trailer for all I care (I must admit I almost did, I'd got what I really came for!) but you might end up happy you stayed, I was anyway.

B-

Casino Royale

It’s been four years since the last James Bond movie marred the silver screen, the longest break between films since the six-year wait for “GoldenEye.” I guess whenever the powers that be decide to cast a new actor as Britain’s favorite secret agent with a license to kill, they are forced to take a little extra time.
“Casino Royale” is the twenty-first James Bond film, though you’d never realize it because up until now they have all been the same thing, give or take a certain amount of quality. Each time a Bond movie comes out, it seems, it is compared to “Godfinger” the third film in the series and the gold standard, no pun intended.
There has been a lot of controversy about this latest addition, specifically about the casting of blond hair and blue-eyed actor Daniel Craig in the lead. He is the sixth to step into the role and many people were not happy at the idea of relinquishing the “tall, dark, and handsome” Bond they’ve come to know.
Before I really start picking this movie apart it is important to point out that for a long time I have been an avid hater of James Bond. Not Ian Fleming’s 007, I hated the silver screen version of Bond. He was always so full of himself and outlandish, and worst of all he wasn’t cool. Being cool means that you don’t have to try at it. James Bond was always trying too hard, until now.
How amazing that after twenty movies, approximately 45 hours of James Bond shooting things, running, and womanizing, there’s still enough talent out there to not only resurrect the nearly dead career of 007, but give us one of the best Bond films to date.
There is almost no explanation for why it’s taken twenty-one films to finally get to Fleming’s first James Bond novel; after all they’ve made films out of the other thirteen original books. Even now that it’s here, the story and setting of Casino Royale has been modified to fit the present day.
The whole film is a fresh updated approach at James Bond; updated and improved. Gone are the increasingly ridiculous gadgets that have always been a staple of the Bond legacy. Gone are the megalomaniac villains bent on world destruction and/or domination. Most importantly, gone is the smug obnoxious Agent 007 that somehow evolved from the decent guy Sean Connery portrayed in the first four films.
Dame Judi Dench reprises the role of M, ever weary of Bond’s method of getting the job done. She is the only remaining cast member from the previous films and it seems that this time around she is particularly sharp in her role, most likely due to the markedly improved dialogue she delivers with such impeccable timing and tone.
Daniel Craig gives us a younger less experienced Bond that is just starting his career, and must overcome a number of doubts concerning his ability to do his job efficiently. To say that he is the best Bond since Sean Connery is not enough. Craig is the first and only actor to really bring to life Fleming’s Bond, and doing so sets himself apart from the previous five Bonds so that comparison is not really an option, for now. He is scheduled to return for Bond 22, so perhaps after he has spent more time as the character he can be realistically compared to the likes of Connery, though I wouldn’t hold your breath, he has already brought more personality to the character than the other five combined.
“Casino Royale” may have reworked a lot of traditional Bond elements, but rest assured, there are still the gorgeous women to accompany Bond in his daring escapades. Eva Green joins the cast as Vesper Lynd, a treasury agent and Bond’s counterpart in his mission. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but as far as I can see, Eva Green is hands down the most beautiful Bond Girl ever to grace the screen. She’s not to shabby when it comes to the witty banter with Bond, either.
The Villain is a banker to many terrorists of the world, a man called Le Chiffre, played by Mads Mikkelsen. Besides having the frightful condition of weeping tears and relying heavily on his inhaler, this Bond antagonist will most likely go down in film history for his truly awful method of torturing Bond that must be seen to be believed.
The cast is superb, but, as it ought to be, Craig’s Bond stands out as the movie’s strongest character. What makes this movie different from its predecessors is the fact that it is not created solely as an excuse for action scenes and beautiful women. Paul Haggis, known for his work on “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash,” wrote the screenplay for “Casino Royale,” and between his skill and Fleming’s original vision the movie has turned out to be a story about the characters, what they feel and how they act, rather than how many people they can kill in a two hour feature.
The movie tells the story of the origin of James Bond, and after seeing it the audience has a much better idea of what makes him tick, so to speak. It is a terrific film, completely apart from the other twenty available. Because there are so many Bond films, measuring their quality becomes a process of comparing them to the previous ones. It’s no Best Picture contender, but in terms of a Bond film it is a total success and for years to come it will be the Bond film to beat.

I like having a Blog because, even if no one reads them, I can at least qualify my reviews rather than just stamping a grade on them. as I tried to point out in the end of my review up there, I measure Bond movies, or comic book movies, or war movies, or whatever genre of movies, by different standards. I mean there's the basic stuff that makes a quality movie, but there's different stuff for different types. I don't really care if it seems like a grade that's too high for a mere action movie, this was the best Bond I've ever seen and by the standards of a Bond movie it was pretty much perfect!

A

Stranger Than Fiction

With Thanksgiving arriving quickly, and Christmas products already lining the shelves of stores, you will begin to hear people say that it is “the most wonderful time of the year.” Whether or not this time is really the year’s “most wonderful,” remains to be seen, but there is something about the approaching season that fills me with joy. This uplifting element is, of course, the movies.
As I have previously observed, the months of November and December are possibly the two most promising when it comes to the cinema. As the year draws to a close, studios unveil their strongest films in hopes that they will be fresh in the minds of the Academy voters when Oscar decisions are made.
Some films are meant to showcase the talent of directors, some to delight the audience with clever dialogue or an insightful plot, and others are vehicles for stars to display their talent in hopes of an Oscar nod or, dare they dream it, a win.
“Stranger Than Fiction,” the latest pleasurable harbinger of the season of award bound films, is a film that has so much going for it that it almost seems bound to disappoint. The plot, as can be suspected from the trailers, is not a conventional one, but something more along the lines of Charlie Kaufman, and certainly not like the traditional Will Ferrell outing.
This brings me to the second strength of the film, the cast. Ferrell abandons the frat boy Saturday Night Live persona we know so well from films like “Old School,” “Anchorman,” and “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” Not that his past performances are unworthy of praise, they simply all run together. He seemed to only be able to fill the role of a loud-mouthed jerk who is not quite living in the real world.
Ferrell’s Harold Crick is not loud, not a jerk by any means, and he is not only living in the real world, he is stuck in the real world. His life is all about numbers and order. All this orderly perfection comes crashing down when Harold begins hearing his life narrated to him as he lives it.
The narrator, known to the audience but not to Harold, is writer Karen Eiffel played by the ever-improving Emma Thompson. Karen, or Kay to her colleagues, is suffering from writer’s block in that she cannot decide how she will kill her main character. Harold is distraught at the news of his “imminent death” and seeks the help of a literature professor.
The cast becomes even more impressive when two-time Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman enters in as the coffee guzzling Prof. Jules Hilbert. The Professor tries as best as possible to aid the desperate Harold in discovering what kind of story his is, comedy or tragedy, and who the author might be. The nature of his life is hard for Harold to pin down due to his recent interactions with bakery owner Ana Pascal.
Ana’s character could have been half-heartedly thrown on screen by some second rate actress, but I’m happy to report that it wasn’t. Instead we get Maggie Gyllenhaal in her best performance yet. I’m generally skeptical of actors and actresses who come into the lime light on the tail of a family member, as exciting as it sounds nepotism is not always the most successful venture. Whether Maggie Gyllenhaal is the exception or the rule makes very little difference when it comes to her latest performance.
She is a tough business owner but also a caring sweet sort of person who can’t help but make cookies for the IRS agent auditing her, even after she has spent the day making his job as difficult as possible.
Not one of the performers overshadows another, and not one of them gives less than an excellent performance. The weight of the project, then, falls on director Marc Forster to take an interesting story and all these great performances and turn them into a worthwhile film. With such movies as “Monster’s Ball” and “Finding Neverland” in his portfolio Forster was more than capable of turning out such a movie, and though it seemed too good to be true, “Stranger Than Fiction” winds up being just as remarkable as it ought to be.
It’s more than just a quirky comedy, it’s a well imagined and thought provoking movie that amuses the audience but gives them credit for having enough brain cells to consider the point it has to make. It’s almost unfair that once again this “good film after good film” season has come again. We are spoiled, as each weekend there is some new highly praised offering at the theater. But if you tire of hearing never ending four-star reviews, just remember that Oscar season will be over, and before you even know it we’ll be back to the regular lambasting of atrocious movies. For now, enjoy the good things Hollywood has to offer. Who’d have thought that Will Ferrell trying to coax words from his toothbrush could be one of these good things?

A-

Marie Antoinette

About half way through watching “Marie Antoinette” the elderly couple in the next row down got up and left. They weren’t going for popcorn or a bathroom break, no they gathered coats, purse, and other such personal belongings and exited the theater having had enough of the film. You know what, they probably wouldn’t get it anyway.
Sofia Coppola’s third, and most recent movie is certainly not for everyone. It’s the cinematic equivalent of walking through Versailles, admiring the lavish décor and hundred’s of rooms, while you’re blasting New Order, Bow Wow Wow, or The Cure into your ears. Not for the traditionalists to say the least.
These things are not said out of disrespect for the movie, on the contrary the style is most important part of this movie and it is handled expertly by one Hollywood’s most promising directors. To call Sofia Coppola an “up and coming” director would be a slight. Let us not forget that she was nominated for “Lost in Translation” in 2003 for Best Director and Best Picture Oscars and she won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. She has certainly established herself apart from simply being her father’s daughter.
There is a certain sort of theme that Coppola has established as her preferred choice, the theme of young women in a foreign overwhelming world. Whether or not she often portrays this as a reflection on her upbringing in the movie industry is beside the point. She knows how to show it well.
Kirsten Dunst, who worked with Coppola on her first film “The Virgin Suicides,” is marvelous in this role. The transformation in appearance, from a child of fourteen to adulthood, can be attributed to the makeup crew. The performance, though, is her own achievement of blending the beautiful Austrian born French queen of the paintings and history books with a modern day attitude that fit the infamous queen.
I could not help but to think of Paris Hilton when, in the movie, Marie Antoinette performs for her court and husband in a little opera at the theater in Versailles. It’s the same old story; little wild rich girl who has the means to make herself into a performer without the talent because she can just pay her way through that step. But then I realized that it wasn’t Marie Antoinette who should be making me think of Paris Hilton, it’s the other way around.
The tabloids at the supermarket scream the most recent exploits of this party girl or that one, what clubs they were at and with whom they were seen. Marie Antoinette did it first! Enough about Lindsay Lohan or Tara Reid, I want to party with Marie and Louis at a Parisian Masquerade or better yet, at her eighteenth birthday celebration in the wild and colorful halls of Versailles!
That’s the thing about “Marie Antoinette,” it does what movies like “A Knight’s Tale” tried to do, but it does it right. It bridges that gap between then and now. Every shot looks like a vividly detailed painting of the time. The costumes are magnificent. The way the characters carry themselves and move around the palace fits the setting perfectly. And then the soundtrack comes screaming through it all to bring the modern attitude that doesn’t even bother being veiled, thinly or otherwise.
The viewers connect with Dunst’s Marie Antoinette because we see the frightened girl who is just trying to please her mother, her new husband, and the two countries she joins. It’s this girl who is outwardly thrilled to see the brand new baby boy of a Duke and Duchess, but hides away in her room to sob alone at her husband’s unwillingness to consummate their marriage long past their wedding night.
We come away from the movie understanding the queen better because we see it all from her point of view. Everything’s on silver platters and done with ceremony as she idles away her youthful exuberance and frivolity until one day the angry mobs of the outside world are at her gate demanding her life.
What was black and white on the boring pages of some musty old book is alive and in Technicolor. With the actual palace of Versailles as a backdrop, and all the finery it has to offer adorning the actors and actresses, Sofia Coppola has painted a truly marvelous biopic of one of history’s most famous young women. Supposedly Marie Antoinette, when told of the peasant’s lack of bread, brushed the news aside with the response of “Let them eat cake.” It seems we’ve been given our cinematic cake, though instead of beheading Sofia, I applaud her.

B+