Clouds of Sils Maria

CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA (Olivier Assayas, 2014)

In CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA middle-aged actress Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) is en route to accept an award in Switzerland on behalf of the reclusive playwright and filmmaker who provided her big break at the age of 18 when news comes of his death. The occasion provides cause for reflection on her life’s work and faded youth, especially when a director (Lars Eidinger) wants Maria to commit to his restaging of the career-making play but in the older woman’s role. Opposite her in the part she made her name on will be 19-year-old tabloid regular and Hollywood ingenue Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloë Grace Moretz).

In the play within the film Maria broke through as an intern who seduces, uses, and dumps the 40-year-old married businesswoman who falls for her. Now she’s being asked to switch positions to the part that more closely reflects her age yet still identifies with the younger character. Writer-director Olivier Assayas layers CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA so that the script being rehearsed and parts being played within it explore the similarities between the characters doing the reading and the roles they are taking on. When Maria and Valentine are deep in a scene, they could just as well be discussing the dynamic between them. Assayas also introduces a meta level in which comments about the industry, image-making, and gossip could just as well apply to the lives of Binoche, Moretz, and especially Stewart. This blurring of the lines isn’t a cute postmodern trick but a profound means for looking at aging, power, and celebrity.

Binoche is predictably great. As Maria she makes clear how to strive to stay viable in a business that probably gives her a shelf life of twenty years tops before brushing many like her aside. Binoche handles the dialogue-driven portions with incomparable artistry, but the greatest pleasures are often found in seeing her react. Whether it’s the unforced nature of her laugh or fiddling with 3D glasses at a banal blockbuster, she lives in the character’s skin. Stewart matches Binoche’s intensity and technical skill with an affectless performance that her highest profile role in the TWILIGHT films never tapped. She hides her character’s ambition in her attentiveness to Maria, almost like a child to an elderly parent, yet Valentine is willing to push back when she feels unheard or unappreciated. CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA offers complex gratification as the story snakes along and enjoyment as a superior acting showcase.

Grade: A

The Equalizer

THE EQUALIZER (Antoine Fuqua, 2014)

Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) leads what looks to be a simple, quiet life in THE EQUALIZER, but the ordinary appearance of the man known as Bob to co-workers and acquaintances hides the truth of a past he’s trying to leave behind. As far as anyone can tell, Bob is a retiree who picked up a job at a home improvement warehouse to stay busy. He enjoys the work and finds purpose in mentoring Ralphie (Johnny Skourtis), a young colleague who wants to become a security guard. Late at night, when he can’t sleep, he takes a classic novel and a tea bag to a nearby diner to pass the darkest hours.

Teenage prostitute Alina (Chloë Grace Moretz) is also a regular at the eatery in the middle of the night. She and Bob are on friendly terms, perhaps because he displays concern for her well-being while withholding judgment and comments about the occupation she’s been forced into. When Alina isn’t sitting at the counter one evening Bob learns she is in the hospital’s intensive care unit after getting beat up. He pays a visit to her pimp Slavi (David Meunier) and offers $9800 to buy her freedom. When Bob’s money is rejected, he slaughters the roomful of Russians and leaves no trace of his involvement. Clearly there’s a dangerous skill set hidden in the mild-mannered guy who cuts lumber and reads the literary canon. Rather than putting an end to the situation, though, Bob’s actions summon Teddy (Marton Csokas), a Russian secret policeman turned criminal enforcer who aims to get revenge on those responsible for killing the East Coast hub of the Russian mob.

THE EQUALIZER provides Washington with the opportunity to follow Liam Neeson’s success in aging tough guy roles. This potential franchise character could be a superhero suited for the graying population. Opening with a Mark Twain quotation--“The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why”--confirms THE EQUALIZER as an origin story. His brute strength and ingenuity in hand-to-hand combat seem to have no equal. Director Antoine Fuqua borrows visual techniques from the Benedict Cumberbatch-led Sherlock Holmes episodes to depict McCall’s virtually superhuman split-second calculations in key situations.

McCall’s appeal comes from Washington’s charisma as a modern knight clad in impeccable dress shirts in place of armor. Washington wears his movie star cool instead of deriving authority and adoration from a costume, gadgets, and special powers. Without seeming arrogant or threatening he commands respect and an innate understanding that McCall is always the smartest and baddest guy in the room. For as violent as THE EQUALIZER is, Washington’s smooth performance makes him seem most volatile when facing down the villains in conversation.

THE EQUALIZER plays like an expanded version of a CBS procedural, and sure enough, it originated as a television series on the Tiffany Network in the mid-to-late 1980s. The story is both padded out and condensed. Seemingly insignificant subplots bear fruit in the end, but often if feels as though a season’s plotline has been jammed into a film exceeding two hours. The climactic showdown delivers gory satisfaction but lacks the tension that should have been accumulating and releasing for a scene of its magnitude. Washington’s untouchable bearing compensates for such shortcomings, making certain that the THE EQUALIZER finishes with a positive balance.

Grade: B-

Carrie

CARRIE (Kimberly Peirce, 2013)

Remaking a film recognized as a genre classic is a tall order for any filmmaker. Although director Kimberly Peirce doesn’t take the shot-for-shot approach for her adaptation of CARRIE, her version is remarkably loyal to Brian De Palma’s 1976 film. Consider it a kind of cinematic karaoke, in which the basic track and lyrics are provided but room for individual interpretation remains.  De Palma got first crack at the Stephen King novel and made his CARRIE in the key of Alfred Hitchcock.  Peirce bases her cover on De Palma’s composition.  While the similarities are hard to deny, the variations construct a conversation between the works a la Liz Phair’s EXILE IN GUYVILLE responding to The Rolling Stones’ EXILE ON MAIN STREET. 

A new opening scene with Margaret White (Julianne Moore) giving birth to Carrie and choosing to spare her life marks one of the biggest differences.  The child’s origin is referenced later in the original CARRIE but not depicted within it.  This key departure makes plain the theme regarding fear and confusion about female sexuality.  It also suggests the possibility of the story being viewed from the mother’s perspective, although ultimately that is an avenue not taken.  Moore’s Margaret doesn’t get significantly more screen time than Piper Laurie did in the role, but the character’s arc is more empathetic in Moore’s portrayal even as it’s clear that this is a woman whose beliefs have caused her great anguish. 

The plot foundation is virtually the same between the two films.  Loathed by her high school classmates, Carrie (Chloë Grace Moretz) becomes a larger object of derision when she reveals her ignorance regarding the changes to her body during adolescence. Rather than comforting her daughter after the traumatic episode in the locker room, Margaret doubles down on a message of religiously rooted guilt and bolts Carrie into a closet to contemplate her inherent sin.  Carrie rejects her mother’s warped philosophy as a source of strength.   She prefers to hone the telekinetic power within her.

Most of the other girls despise Carrie even more now that they are being reprimanded for viciously teasing her and threatened with suspension, including from the prom, if they don’t follow gym teacher Ms. Desjardin’s (Judy Greer) punishment regimen.  Sue Snell (Gabriella Wilde) regrets her behavior toward Carrie and decides to give up her time at the dance because of it.  She persuades her boyfriend Tommy Ross (Ansel Elgort) to take Carrie instead. Chris Hargensen (Portia Doubleday) refuses to do penance for her treatment of Carrie and, along with boyfriend Billy Nolan (Alex Russell), plots to give the shy girl a prom no one will ever forget. 

CARRIE’s examination of teenage cruelty gets updated with a humiliating smartphone video that circulates among the student body, but for all of the potential to illustrate how technology can make an ostracized kid more vulnerable to peer abuse, Peirce’s film doesn’t convey the violation and torment associated with being perceived school-wide as a laughingstock.  Aside from the shower scene, which clashes with the rest of the character’s conception, Moretz’s Carrie seems wise and in control from the get-go. She’s not a meek girl discovering her development but a mostly self-assured young woman who learns to channel her strength, which is a major departure compared to Sissy Spacek’s performance in De Palma’s film.  While Peirce and Moretz are welcome to this put this spin on Carrie, it undermines the protagonist’s trajectory. 

Peirce and screenwriter Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa are indebted to Lawrence D. Cohen’s screenplay but make justifiable minor tweaks.  The film benefits from giving Sue a slightly larger role.  Clarifying her motivation and having Tommy defend Carrie in an English class rather than the reverse adds poignancy to the inevitable tragedy.  Ms. Desjardin gets a fairer shake this time around than her analogue did.  Unfortunately the indistinct extreme Christian fundamentalism remains as much of a caricature in the new CARRIE as it was previously.  Taken on its own terms Peirce’s CARRIE holds its own as a coming-of-age drama even as some of the changes weaken the payoffs.

Grade: C+

Kick-Ass 2

KICK-ASS 2 (Jeff Wadlow, 2013)

In KICK-ASS 2 a member of the supervillain’s posse slaughters a bunch of New York City policemen with increasingly violent methods for comedic effect.  Granted, the perpetrator is on the side of all that is bad, but the scene is undoubtedly meant to be funny.  Clearly we’re well past the time of post-9/11 sensitivity when The Strokes pulled a song from their debut album because of a third-person observation in the chorus about the NYC cops not being very smart.  That’s not to say that the men and women in blue get a lifetime pass for how they’re presented in art, but in this particular context, the glee with which they’re murdered and the positive audience identification with the killer is troublesome, to say the least.

KICK-ASS 2 doesn’t put forth mixed messages so much as it extols vigilanteism and revenge and then, after the climactic battle, tries to paper over the ugly sentiments with lip service about proper conduct.  Lest there be any uncertainty about where the film stands in its conflicting statements, the pretense of responsibility is ripped away in the final scene.  KICK-ASS 2 warns to do as it says, not as it does.  Then it distributes firearms, body armor, and a costume with an encouraging slap on the back.  

The sequel picks up with high school senior Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) having hung up his superhero uniform, but he can’t resist playing the hero again when he sees ordinary citizens following in the trail he blazed as Kick-Ass.  He begins getting back into crime-fighting shape under the rigorous training of freshman Mindy Macready (Chloë Grace Moretz), otherwise known as Hit-Girl, with the intention of them becoming a dynamic duo.  Plans for their alliance come to an end when her guardian, Detective Marcus Williams (Morris Chestnut), insists that she devote her after school activities to traditional socializing rather than meting out street justice.

While Mindy struggles to fit into the in crowd, Dave finds a group of like-minded civilians who want to join forces to clean up the Big Apple.  Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carrey), a former mob enforcer turned born-again Christian with little tolerance for foul language, leads their so-called community service efforts.  Chris D’Amico (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) still seethes over Kick-Ass blasting his criminal father with a bazooka, so when he notices that Kick-Ass has resurfaced, he dons his mother’s fetish gear and dubs himself with an Oedipal, family publication-unfriendly name to refashion himself as the first supervillain with an accompanying crew of brutes.

Like its deluded, self-professed champions of public safety, KICK-ASS 2 fancies itself as something more admirable than it is.  How unsurprising for a film that stages a rape scene that uses framing and editing to empathize with the attacker even though the moment is ultimately played for laughs at his expense.  Rather than initiating a subversive conversation on superheroes and those who wish they could become them, KICK-ASS 2 indulges the worst power fantasies while also getting off on sociopathic behavior.

Grade: D+

Dark Shadows

DARK SHADOWS (Tim Burton, 2012)

Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp), the dashing heir to the family fishing empire, picks the wrong woman to spurn in DARK SHADOWS.  Angelique (Eva Green), a servant at the Collins manor, reacts badly to his decision to break off their romance.  As a witch, she’s more than capable of getting her revenge.  She causes the deaths of Barnabas’ parents and his beloved Josette (Bella Heathcote).  As if that isn’t punishment enough, Angelique turns him into a vampire and then sees to it that he is locked in a buried coffin.

Almost two hundred years later--1972, to be exact--Barnabas is accidentally freed.  He returns to the coastal town of Collinsport, Maine and finds it to be much different than what he knew.  The changes aren’t just technological and societal.  The family estate is in disrepair and inhabited by eight strangers, as is apt to happen when one is gone for nearly two centuries.  Now calling Collinwood Manor home are matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) and her daughter Carolyn (Chloë Grace Moretz), Elizabeth’s brother Roger (Jonny Lee Miller) and his son David (Gulliver McGrath), the boy’s psychiatrist Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), groundskeeper Willie Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley), maid Mrs. Johnson (Ray Shirley), and newly arrived governess Victoria Winters (Heathcote), who bears a marked resemblance to the love of Barnabas’ lifetime.

Elizabeth is the only one who knows Barnabas’ secrets, so in exchange for being permitted to stay at Collinwood, he promises not to indulge his vampiric impulses on anyone living there.  Barnabas then settles in to restore the family business to its former glory only to realize that the competition is headed by the very woman who cursed him so many years ago.  She’s going by the name Angel now and is a pillar of the community.  Worst of all, her desire to call Barnabas hers has not abated.

From 1966 to 1971 the soap opera DARK SHADOWS ran for more than 1200 episodes.  With so much material to choose from and only 113 minutes to fill, director Tim Burton’s film is best described as being based on the TV show rather than a remake of it, although screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith does his best to shove as much plot in as possible.  DARK SHADOWS has a lot to establish and does so with clarity, but it feels like half of the film is prologue.  (Ironically, the opening scenes in the mid-1700s are efficient in setting up Barnabas and his eternal dilemma.)  Once everything is finally laid out, the narrative struggles to gain momentum.  

DARK SHADOWS gets stuck in neutral because of the uncertainty as to what kind of a film it wants to be.  In keeping with its soap opera roots, it overflows with doomed romanticism and heightened drama.  Long stretches pass in which events and relationships are treated as being deadly serious.  Not enough is invested in these characters, though, to feel the big emotional scale DARK SHADOWS wishes to pull off.

Complicating matters is that the film is also intended to be a comedy.  Burton appears more at ease in acknowledging the ridiculous elements of the story and simply having fun with the supernatural twists and turns.  Depp handles his role with composure and sufficient restraint, making him a humorously refined but still lethal bloodsucker.  Sinking her teeth into the villain role, Green charges her scenes with Depp with sex, danger, and playfulness that the rest of the film resists.  For all of the good these two leads do, the jokes in DARK SHADOWS mostly consist of easy targets related to Barnabas’ puzzlement by modernity.  Director and screenwriter settle for arriving at the mildly amusing when the obvious destination is camp territory.  

The production and art design and Colleen Atwood’s costumes help Burton create a familiar but no less dazzling gloomy world.  Visual effects are put to spectacular use when Green’s skin looks like cracked eggshell.  Burton has lavished a lot of attention on the surface and it shows.  No matter how good it looks, DARK SHADOWS is missing a soul and a heart despite no lack of wanting them.     

Grade: C-