Open Letters Monthly: Frankenweenie

When a once-great director's work becomes so reliably mediocre that people stop showing up to the theater, do you really expect them to come back when that same director actually creates something fun? Frankenweenie, the latest animated film from Tim Burton, ended up disappointing at the box office this past weekend, and one has to wonder how strong Burton's brand is outside of his collaborations with Johnny Depp. It doesn't help that Burton has released an uneven batch of films so far this century, from Planet of the Apes to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Alice in Wonderland to Dark Shadows. He hasn't made a truly great film since Big Fish, and even I'll admit that particular title didn't tug the same heartstrings of everyone out there.

But Frankenweenie, Burton's remake of a short film he shot for Disney, is certainly different, if perhaps only because it's a story he's told before. In it, Victor Frankenstein lives with his family in idyllic New Holland. Not the most outgoing young man, Victor's best friend is Sparky, his dog and constant companion. When Sparky is accidentally killed in a car accident, Victor is distraught, unable to let go of his favored buddyt. And so he hatches a plot to revive Sparky, using the methods taught to him my an enigmatic school teacher, and New Holland will never be the same again.

Frankenweenie features the voices of Charlie Tahan, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, Martin Landau, Winona Ryder, Atticus Shaffer and Robert Capron.

Click here for the full review at Open Letters Monthly.

I Don't Want to Talk about Time Travel

It's odd to comprehend that the scrawny kid from 3'rd Rock from the Sun is seriously a movie star. I can still picture young Tommy Solomon, with his shoulder-length hair and carefree attitude, stealing many a scene from his older, more experienced costars. Since then, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has practically exploded onto the movie scene. He has been exploring a wide variety of film roles, starring in indie flicks like (500) Days of Summer, 50/50 and Hesher, and also major blockbusters G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises and the surprisingly good Premium Rush. But the film widely considered to have catapulted him to where he stands now is 2005's Brick, the neo-noir thriller and debut of director Rian Johnson for which Gordon-Levitt's performance was vastly praised. Seven years later, the actor reunites with his Brick director for the time-traveling thriller Looper, which sees Gordon-Levitt wearing some crazy prosthetics as a unique style of hit-man who is literally confronted by his future.

He's looking a little different...

In the not-too-distant future, crime and poverty have risen to stratospheric heights, and the corrupt government ensures that things won't change anytime soon. In thirty years time travel will be invented, immediately outlawed, and therefore operated by only the largest criminal organizations. Because trackers make disposing of murder victims practically impossible, anybody the mob wants removed is instead zipped into the past, to be disposed of by specially-chosen assassins, named Loopers, who can secretly murder these people and wipe clean of any evidence. It's no easy life of luxury, however, as letting a target escape is grounds for extreme termination. Eventually, Loopers are sent their future selves to "close the loop", paid a boatload of cash and get the next thirty years to live their lives. Joe (Gordon-Levitt) is a Looper who rose from the filth of the streets to make a name for himself as one of the most reliable men in the business. All that changes when he is confronted by his future self (Bruce Willis), who catches Joe off guard and manages to escape, and seems to be on an unknowable mission. Now Joe, on the run from his organization, will do anything to take down his older self, but what is Old Joe's goal? And how does a telekinetic single mother (Emily Blunt) fit into the picture?

"Eyyyyyyy!"

Looper's story is brightened by multiple intricately-managed mysteries, which refuse to be rushed in this two-hour film. The balancing act appears to be Johnson's strength as a writer and director; never revealing even the tiniest details before the timing is absolutely right. Johnson also knows that not everything in the universe needs to be told in vast detail; there are several instances of seemingly important facts glossed over - for instance, that about ten percent of the population can for some reason move small items with their mind -  and the reason for that is there is a major difference between needing to know something and needing to know everything about it. We don't need to know exactly WHY or HOW people have this talent, but we DO need to know that they have it, and Johnson wisely gives us just that. The character growth of Joe is also something of a big deal, as he goes from self-absorbed sociopath to... something else. I won't go into further detail as to avoid spoilers, but Joe's path is one of the better character stories I've seen in film this year, right up there with Judge Anderson in Dredd and the leads in For a Good Time, Call... It helps to be portrayed by a wunderkind like Gordon-Levitt and an underrated performer in Willis, but it is Johnson's direction that ensures that we demand to follow Joe's journey from beginning to end.

Just saw the box office draw for The Cold Light of Day.

Unfortunately, that aforementioned lack of detail also leads to one of the few problems I had with Looper: the science. I like time travel stories, from  H.G. Wells to Doctor Who to The Terminator to any comic book reference (and there are many). But do you know what they all have in common? They have rules. Very elaborate rules. Going back in time and altering the past is usually portrayed as a big no-no in stories, most notably because it can cause a paradox that does serious damage to the future. In Marvel Comics and the recent Star Trek reboot, such things merely causes parallel time-lines that exist outside the accepted universe. Even in the Terminator and (admittedly not time time travel) Final Destination pictures, fighting to stop a tragic future is never really successful, as the universe tends to right itself and force those events to occur eventually. Nowhere in modern time travel lore does it say that you can alter the past on a whim and with no major repercussions, and the logic in the science appears tailored to the story Johnson wanted to tell rather than something the tale is built around. Looper does get around this by making sure none of its characters really understand how time travel works, and in the end it doesn't matter all that much. While a little more science wouldn't have hurt the overall story, neither does it's absence detract from the rest of the movie.

She can hold my gun anytime.

The movie's story is one of great characters, and Johnson puts together a stellar cast to patch the whole thing together. Great pains were taken to make Gordon-Levitt and Willis appear like versions of the other, and while Willis puts on one of his better Bruce Willis impersonations, Gordon-Levitt is masterful at representing Willis' younger self. Sure, the unnoticeable prosthetics he dons certainly play a part, but his ability to nuance himself into a role is all but unparalleled in the industry, making for one of the year's better genre performances. A supporting cast of the excellent Emily Blunt, Jeff Daniels, Paul Dano, Piper Perabo, Garret Dillahunt, and Noah Segran flesh out what is already a generous amount of narration, and Johnson shows a keen eye for talent in his selections of his actors. Blunt especially stretches far from her comfort zone, a welcome sight for an actress of such talent, but everyone here is wonderful as well. Each has an important role to play, and more than fill their requisite storytelling needs.

"Just a tip from the future: stay away from the brisket."

Looper has deep and human characters, a generous dose of humor, and one of the best-written morality plays I've seen in this or any other year. This is probably the best science fiction film I've seen in recent years, perhaps only a tick behind District 9 or Moon, even though its a movie that will likely appeal more to mainstream audiences than the hardcore sci-fi fans that will frequent it. The lack of scientific logic might seem like a serious step back from traditional sci-fi, but I'll take the bad science when I'm offered both great characters and a worthy story that keeps me hooked. The only question is where to place it in my Top 10 for the year, a place it surely deserves to be listed. For genre films, it's better than just about everything Marvel has put out (besides The Avengers, of course), and perhaps just a bit higher than Dredd. #5 for 2012 seems just about right. Gordon-Levitt keeps proving that he deserves to be a star, and with fare like this constantly appearing on his resume, I'll gladly allow it.

Horror Show

Normally with so many options out there for things to see, I wouldn't bother with the likes of House at the End of the Street. While there are a few good horror films that come out every year, you can usually tell to a reasonable degree which those will be. More often than not, you'll see the bad ones coming, and in the coming months we'll be subjected to some really horrid-looking titles, including The Collection and the delayed 7500. I know not every horror flick can be as good as Insidious, and every so often I have even been surprised by a strong production. But the genre has a habit of films feeling as cheap as their budgets, and very rarely do they succeed in standing apart from the huddled masses.

One sub-genre of horror that never seems to change much is the teen slasher movie. They have a normal formula, whether they're Slumber Party Massacre or Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Nightmare on Elm Street or Scream: psycho kills pretty young people until he/she is finally brought down (or in some recent fare, utterly succeeds). It's a tale older than my life, with nobody willing or wanting to mess with that magic. And why not? Movies like this are often inexpensively made (no-name actors and almost no special effects), so even a moderate success can reap major profits for a studio.

I like your fashion sense.

The only reason House at the End of the Street even remotely stands out is its star, Jennifer Lawrence. Unless you've been hiding completely under a rock the past couple of years, you might have heard of her. She broke out and easily earned an Academy Award nomination for her leading role in 2010's Winter's Bone. She succeeded in supporting parts in 2011 with X-Men First Class and Like Crazy. And 2012 has turned her into a megastar, as she held the lead role of Katniss Everdeen in March's The Hunger Games. In fact, Lawrence did her work on House before Hunger Games, and it's obvious this movie is now hitting theaters in order to capitalize on her new found  status. She is the only reason you might be tempted to see this movie over anything similar, and that's certainly why I elected to see this one over other fare.

...and your choice in friends.

Seventeen year-old Elissa (Lawrence) and her newly-divorced mother Sarah (Elizabeth Shue) have left Chicago to rent a dream home in a rural suburb. While they love the new house, it does come with a caveat. The house next door was the scene of a brutal double homicide; a mother and father butchered in their home by their daughter, who was never seen again. The only surviving family member, Ryan Jacobsen (Max Theriot), still lives there, repairing the house and is generally considered the pariah of the town. Elissa and Max become attracted to one another, despite the wishes of her mother, and begin a relationship, but something is wrong. Max is keeping a dark secret, one that might not just damage their relationship, but could harm Elissa and her mother as well.

Don't worry, be happy!

What's surprising about this movie is just how original the story manages to be. Okay, original might not be the right word; psychotic, homicidal family members are probably standard fare for tons of films that never reach the big screen. That's the point, though; this kind of story rarely gets proper big screen treatment. Typically this type of movie warrants a huge body count to cover all the plot holes, but a a story House stands on its own nicely. There's no murder spree but an interesting tale of what drives a little girl to murder her parents, and the results are honestly more than a little creepy, especially because you can believe such things would (and perhaps do) happen. It's a shame though that director Mark Tonderai can't quite pull it off, failing to scare the audience for more than a few tense moments. He also falls into the cliches of horror moviemaking, including stunts that for all intents and purposes Scream had shamed out of most modern horror directors.

Freeze, Jump Street!

As expected, Lawrence's talent as the film's protagonist proves to be invaluable. Mixing a classic scream queen with a bit of her role in Winter's Bone, she deftly maneuvers from scene to scene, consistently and believably carrying the whole movie. There are only a few scenes in which she does not appear, but thankfully we never become weary of Elissa, a multi-dimensional character with very solid reasons behind her decisions. It also doesn't hurt that Lawrence is a stone-cold fox, ensuring that any men in the audience will be unable to take their eyes off of her. She's the complete package, and will have absolutely no problem making her mark in the industry. The rest of the cast is a mixed bag, residing firmly in the "good enough" category for horror acting. Elizabeth Shue and Gil Bellows play the requisite authority figures, while Nolan Gerard Funk and Allie MacDonald fill the roles of teenagers who develop friendships with the new girl. They're all fine, playing their nevertheless rote characters with enough conviction to get by. Max Theriot is probably the weakest of the bunch, his face frozen in a "they kicked my puppy dog" look while delivering lines in the same dull tone throughout. Theriot certainly has the look for the part he plays, but never strikes the audience as all that sympathetic, at least not to the degree necessary to attract Elissa to him.

Hoping that biting her lip is the worst thing that happens to her.

The result is a horror film not all that scary and clearly looking to clean house thanks to its main star. House at the End of the Street was made for about half of what Lawrence will be earning in the Hunger Games sequels, and while it manages to do more than a few things right, it's not enough to completely save what could have been an original, haunting story of rural America. Lawrence is enough reason to tough out a cinema visit, but if you can wait you're probably better off waiting for the DVD. Still, it's not nearly as bad as perhaps it should be, with a lead that hauls it a slight step above the rest of the horror pack.

Open Letters Monthly: The Master

Have any interest in Paul Thomas Anderson? Or Scientology? Then you've probably been hearing about The Master, Anderson's newly-directed effort that came out a few weeks ago. It tells the story of mentally traumatized WWII sailor Freddie Quells, who attempts to discover his place in the world during peacetime. In his travels, he discovers a religious group calling themselves The Cause and their enigmatic leader Lancaster Dodd. At first Freddie thinks he has found his calling as Dodd's right-hand man. But Dodd's methods to help heal Freddie seem to have no effect, and more and more Freddie hears from others that Dodd is making the whole thing up as he goes. As Freddie becomes more and more frustrated with The Cause, they are growing weary of his violent, immature attitude, with only Lancaster Dodd arguing his importance to The Cause.

The Master is directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and stars Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Laura Dern, Ambyr Childers and Jesse Plemons.

Click here for the complete review at Open Letters Monthly.

"Trouble" with the Curve

You see what I did there? How I used quotation marks to emphasize the one word in the title of the movie that actually describes its execution? Wasn't that clever? What? It wasn't? Well, Clint Eastwood has made a career out of making similar unsubtle statements in his films he directs. No, it hasn't always been a deal killer; he has built movies wonderful (Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby), awful (Letters from Iwo Jima, Hereafter) and everywhere in between (Mystic River, J. Edgar). But anyone who contends that he is a great director has obviously been swayed by his long acting career and forgiven many of the cliched storytelling elements he includes in his pictures, ones that most truly talented filmmakers would never use in this day and age.

I was worried at first that this style would be the problem with Trouble with the Curve, which is also Eastwood's first acting gig since people say he was snubbed for a Best Actor nomination in 2008's Gran Torino. Surprisingly, while there are a few cliched moments (parent releasing child's hand to show abandonment, a few lingering shots expressing a character's loneliness), Trouble was not the technical abomination I had been expecting. I found out in the closing credits for the reason for this; turns out the film wasn't directed by Eastwood at all. Instead it was filmed by Robert Lorenz, who had been an assistant director on over twenty films. While Lorenz certainly learned a bit from working with Eastwood on Bloodwork, Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby, it's obvious he also developed his style from working with other directors, making for a thankfully more adept movie than I was expecting.

Timberlake gets directing tips from Eastwood.

It's a shame that my expectations had been so low, as a movie featuring baseball, Eastwood, Amy Adams and BASEBALL should have been one of my more highly expected theatrical releases. It was, but more for potential than what I actually thought I would see. Eastwood plays longtime baseball scout Gus Lobel; an employee of the Atlanta Braves, Gus is as old-fashioned a talent scout as you can get, completely eschewing the modern computer age and relying exclusively on what he can see in a player. This hasn't endeared him to his superiors in Atlanta, who want him to check out a highly-touted player in the Carolinas as their potential top pick in the upcoming draft. The expectation is that if Gus fails, they can simply let his swiftly-expiring contract run out. When his longtime friend and superior Pete (John Goodman) worries about his diminishing health, he calls Gus' daughter Mickey (Adams) to join him to see if there is anything she can do. With relations already strained between Gus and Mickey, all they can do try to communicate with one another while bonding over the one thing they both seem to love; baseball.

"OMG JT is SOOO HOT"

Unfortunately, just because it's not directed by its star doesn't mean that it's automatically better. This is the first ever published screenplay by Randy Brown, and it definitely shows in the overly-simple rendition of what should be deep emotional themes. There doesn't seem to be any consistency in the routes the characters take, with the relationship between Gus and Mickey especially jumpy in between scenes. One scene they seem fine, the next they're at each others' throats. There are reasons for that, and the film does its best to lay them all out, but I never felt as though any middle ground between those two points was explored. Adams is nevertheless wonderful, her naturally bubbly persona taking a backseat to a serious, dramatic side that gets her attention and awards. Eastwood however tends to rest on his laurels, with only a few scenes making him reach as a performer. His role is fine, as is that of Justin Timberlake as a former player turned scout (turned love interest for Mickey) for the Boston Red Sox, but both are limited to performances that are high on levity and short on storytelling.

Standing around waiting for something to happen; just like the real game!

Worse is the cliched junk that seems tossed in as filler. Of COURSE there's an "evil scout" who relies solely on computer data (Matthew Lillard) who actually seems to want Gus fired. Of COURSE the player Gus is asked to scout is a complete asshole. Of COURSE he has a fatal flaw which is not apparent at the college level but that Gus knows will prevent him from being successful in the big leagues. Of COURSE the answer to everyone's dreams is telegraphed a mile away. Of COURSE Gus is losing the ONE THING (his eyesight) which would prevent him from excelling at his job. Of COURSE they use a Dirty Harry scene for a flashback. Okay, that last one was a bit out of left field. The point is that for every decent or genuinely good thing Trouble pitches us, it lobs more than a few stinkers that undermine the quality of the film. A script rewrite should have been in order, and the lack of one indicates that Eastwood was more in charge than we were led to believe.

"Wait, he gave us a bad review?"

Trouble with the Curve came out with a LOT of potential. Baseball may not be that popular sport, but it has inspired more great stories in film and print than just about any other game, even the all-powerful sport of football. For a baseball story to appear so hollow and disingenuous is certainly a disappointment, especially when it gathers such a solid blend of acting talent as its foundation. Still, Curve disappoints, especially considering its fighting the scout/computer battle has been more or less settled in the years following the publication of Moneyball. Like Eastwood, Curve is a story out of time, not exactly sure where we are today, and both scared and angry about it.

Two Days 'Til Retirement

In a weekend where there were four major theatrical releases, at least two high-ceiling limited releases and one major expansion into wide release, there's one reason that people didn't go out and enjoy Dredd, an excellent genre flick which sadly finished in sixth place at the box office and hasn't gotten the love it deserves. It wasn't House at the End of the Street or The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which mostly attracted young women. It wasn't Trouble with the Curve, which appealed mainly to older folks. And it wasn't The Master, which is more like Oscar bait than blockbuster. No, for a film appealing mainly to young men, Dredd was hampered by the fact that most of their potential audience was instead down the hall with End of Watch. This movie is perfectly in director David Ayer's wheel house. The writer/director has been basing his stories in Los Angeles for over a decade, and he's best known for the man who wrote Training Day, which won Denzel Washington an Oscar and is this century's epitome of Los Angeles crime drama. All this time later, and Ayer still has stories to tell about the LAPD, though thankfully they're not all about corruption and scandal, as he proves here.

Just another day in the office.

Police officers and best friends, Officers Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Pena) are two of the hottest shots, regularly seen patrolling the worst areas of South Central Los Angeles. End of Watch details their close friendship, rivalries and pranks with other officers, and their everyday lives, which include Zavala's expecting a child with wife Gabby (Natalie Martinez) and Taylor's burgeoning romance with a Janet (Anna Kendrick), whom he meets at school. When the duo discover an even darker side to the city in the form of the Mexican drug cartels, Taylor and Zavala find themselves on the wrong side of Hispanic gangs that have lately been rising in prominence in the area. One night, that brewing conflict will all come to a very violent conclusion

No, ma'am, this isn't Magic Mike.

Strangely, though, that finale really takes its time to come around, meaning that most of the first two acts of the film are not intensely focused on the cartels but the everyday challenges of being a beat cop in LA. Having had a grandfather on the force in Atlantic City, I appreciate how the movie took care to present the men and women of the law as normal people with families and problems and times both good and bad. Ayer humanizes his heroes, and while they're considered among the best of their class, Taylor and Zavala are still unpredictable, prone to both mistakes and heroics. Most importantly, they're men who love their jobs, which makes it incredibly easy to root for them.

Paperwork: the stuff that keeps the world spinning.

Ayer also makes an effort to portray the story from a gritty, street-level perspective. To that end, he has incorporated the popular "found footage" method by showing the footage as being recorded by the two officers via a handicam and some fairly sophisticated flash cameras attached to their uniforms, all as part of a college project for Taylor. It does a great job of making much of the film feel natural and off the cuff, but it does present its own set of problems. For one, while it's feasible for some police helicopter footage to make its way into the film to present a sense of scale, some of the movie contains far less likely cam footage, for instance from the perspective of the Latino gang that just happens to be recording their own misdeeds at the same time as our heroes. It's far less natural than the police footage, and gives far too much away, as I would have preferred more mysterious and less predictable antagonists. Also, the found footage attempt turns in a few clunkers, as more than a few occasions see scenes apparently not captured by anybody's camera, but are shot just the same. Ayer is quoted as saying (in an interview on Open Letters Monthly) that if you're wondering who is carrying the camera, then he lost you. Well, as a critic, he did lose me. It wasn't often, but occasionally my thought process turned to the fact that nobody could have been casually shooting at a certain moment. Thankfully, those were few and far between, and most of the camera efforts were done well enough to escape serious scrutiny.

...And there was much rejoicing.

Of course, none of this would have been worth anything if not for the excellent acting and chemistry of leads Gyllenhall and Pena. Ayer did a great job preparing the two actors for their constant partnership throughout the film, and it really shows in their ability to bounce seemingly random things off one another from scene to scene while still remaining relevant to the story. Gyllenhaal has struggled to define himself in modern Hollywood, going from young talent to pseudo action star to the character-driven performances in which he often excels. While he has sometimes struggled with consistency, that doesn't happen here, and he brings his special brand of intensity that often worms its way into his best work. Pena meanwhile has always been excellent, while not necessarily getting the choicest roles (the lot of Latinos in the movie industry, unfortunately). Still, he's often the best part of even bad movies, and he rewards Ayer's confidence in him by simply being the most wonderful, animated thing on the screen at any given time. Together the pair's antics are as authentic as anything I've seen in theaters this year, and their interaction with the surrounding landscape looks completely natural and familiar. While the film mainly centers around its leads, the pair get a lot of support from Kendrick and Martinez, as well as Frank Grillo, America Ferrera, Cody Horn and David Harbour as their fellow officers.

...here's the bad news...

The only real problem with End of Watch is its mess of an ending, which is almost completely predictable if you actually pay attention to the story (or the trailers, for that matter), and understand the usual cop movie cliches. This isn't really a surprise, as Ayer seems to like his tragedy-laden final acts, and to be fair it really doesn't feel out of place in the grand scheme of things. But for once I would love to be surprised, and Ayer just isn't the director who is going to do that for me. End of Watch is still an inspired production, with much more to like than not. Ayer needs to up his writing skills though, especially if he's going to keep working around treatments of the same subject matter. While I still believe Dredd is the best option for you action lovers in theaters right now, End of Watch is a more than solid second option while awaiting Looper's release this coming weekend.

Movie Monday: Dredd Life

How far can you possibly run from a Sylvester Stallone movie? Dredd has used excellent acting, a well-told story and major contributions from the character's creator in distancing itself from the horrible 1995 flick Judge Dredd. With screenwriter Alex Garland directly behind this reboot, we have a Dredd who doesn't enter romantic relations and never EVER removes his helmet. Thank you, Hollywood!

In the nuclear wasteland that is North America, one light of life is Mega-City One, stretching from Boston to Washington, populated by over 800 million people. With so much humanity crammed together, chaos and criminal activity run the streets, with innocents often trapped in their hellish nets. The city's response to the overwhelming violence? The Judges, granted the combined powers of judge, jury and - when necessary - executioner. Judge Dredd is one of the best, but even he knows that there's only so much the Judges can do in such a large city. While tasked with assessing the potential of psychic, rookie Judge Anderson, they find themselves on the bad side of drug kingpin Ma-Ma, who traps them in a slum complex and sends her men in to wipe them out. The only way out is up, and without backup Dredd and Anderson must scale 200 floors to shut down Ma-Ma's criminal enterprise if they want any chance at survival.

Dredd is written by Alex Garland and directed by Pete Travis and stars Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby and Lena Headey.

Click here to read the full review at Open Letters Monthly.