Laurie Anderson’s “Heart of a Dog” is a meditation on love and loss that refreshingly doesn’t come to hard-and-fast conclusions about each, so much as opine that perhaps we’re focusing on them in the wrong way. The poetic, visual essay opens up (at least to me) when Anderson, who has faced the deaths of her husband Lou Reed and her beloved rat terrier Lolabelle in recent years, notes that our discussion and obsession with death often focuses on the living more than the deceased and that it is our memories and the journey-after-death that gets ignored.
Before this observation, Anderson has playfully crafted a piece consisting solely of her narration and interpretable visuals like rain on a windshield or a snowy road (and a few home movies). She also captures a sense of life's unpredictability, often noting how the world has changed after 9/11, mostly in the way we are now always under surveillance. We are heavily documenting life, but it is a life that can’t be scripted or known. Something as universally Earth-shattering as 9/11 or as personally devastating as the loss of a dog could be a part of any given day. And yet “Heart of a Dog” is not a dirge. It is not a film made by someone who has gone underground to avoid the recent tragedies of her life. On the contrary, it accepts life’s twists and turns that embraces the fact that these unexpected detours on life’s journey are unavoidable. There are times when Anderson’s Buddhist leanings can be a bit overwhelming, and the piece ends a bit too abruptly for my tastes, although that almost seems thematically appropriate.
For her first film in 30 years, famous NYC performance artist Laurie Anderson weaves very personal stories, commenting on life in her favorite metropolis in a post-9/11 world, and Buddhist philosophy about the journey that we take after we die. Much of it is focused on Lolabelle, a rat terrier whom Anderson clearly adored. Early in “Heart of a Dog,” Anderson conveys a story of getting out of the city after 9/11 and going on a nature walk with Lolabelle, only to be the target of a hawk who thought the dog potential prey. The idea that we can be someplace warm, comfortable and happy only to have danger literally fall from the sky is an obvious parallel to unexpected tragedy (especially one that also featured airborne enemies).
However, and this is to her credit, Anderson rarely lingers on such thematic purposes for long. She’s also fascinated by communication not just between people but between humans and animals, and even to the great beyond. She shows footage of Lolabelle “playing piano” and recounts a story of a friend dying and the theory that the ears are the last thing to go—so make sure to yell instructions on how to get to the other side. How do we relate to our pets? How do we relate to the dying and the dead? Anderson’s most poignant stories in “Heart of a Dog” center on her mother, someone about whom she can’t relate a positive memory but she keeps returning to her passing, clearly a crucial moment in her life.
Perhaps what’s most remarkable about “Heart of a Dog” is that it’s able to be about many things to many people while also not lacking in an ounce of confidence or focus at the same time. In many ways, it’s structured like a dog’s journey through life, sniffing around at what interests it in the moment. And yet that’s not to suggest it’s unfocused (although I think some will be frustrated by Anderson’s more ruminative moments). “Heart of a Dog” is a deeply reflective film, a piece that suggests that death is about a “release of love” more than anything else. It is not something to obsess about or wallow in. Anderson argues that we (even the dead) keep going after tragedy, and so her film becomes not a wake but a celebration, a call to people for acceptance of moments big and small, predictable and unexpected. In that sense, it is one of the most invigorating and alive films of the year.
Grandma’s demented and Grandpa’s incontinent in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit. A mother’s (Kathryn Hahn) estranged parents get in touch after twenty years, insisting on having their grandchildren over for a weeklong visit. Already, I feel for these kids. At a shade over six-feet tall, my grandma was an imposing woman. My brother and I visited her once for a weekend without our parents, and it didn’t go well. But I never saw her naked, nor did I have to worry about her baking us alive in her oven. Can’t say the same for the teenaged siblings in The Visit. Seeing The Visit made me realize how much I miss my grandparents, and how much more I respect them for not trying to kill me when I spent time with them. RIP grandma, and grandpa, and Yiya, and Papu, too. Disclaimer: The Visit does not accurately portray the elderly, or grandparents, including long lost ones.
Tyler (Ex Oxenbould) and Becca (Olivia DeLonge), the two grandkids, run into problems early and often during their visit. Nana (Deanna Dunagan) crawls around the house naked at night and scratches at the doors. Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie) keeps a collection of used diapers in his shed. Bedtime is 9:30pm and in this case it’s not nearly early enough. Pop Pop swears Nana suffers from sundowning, a symptom of Alzheimer’s that worsens at night. Nana says Pop Pop’s pooping problem is the shameful secret of a proud retired coalminer. Their connection to an ominous hospital—Maple Shade—where they volunteer, and from which strange visitors keep popping by, spells trouble. If only mom was around to help figure this out. But she’s on a cruise with a hairy chested new boyfriend, and her Skype communications are all there is to quell any worries. Everything is fine. No one is crazy. Just have another of Nana’s crazygood cheddar biscuits.
Becca is filming their visit, making a documentary of this momentous occasion, digging deeply into her mom’s sordid family history to mine it for cinematic glory. But she can’t keep her damn hands steady. The purposefully jittery camerawork is like found footage in the making. It’s nauseating. Ross McElwee she ain’t. Tyler is a little shit. He’s a white boy who raps—how droll—who makes cute decisions like replacing curse words with the names of female pop singers. This bit wasn’t funny in 40 Year-Old Virgin, and here it is less so.
Plot holes aside, The Visit is still really entertaining. There’s a twist at the end, as is expected in a Shyamalan picture. It’s a good one, but everything that happens after it is far more violent, creepy, and gross than anything preceding it. There’s ample edginess in the finish, a little “F. U.” in its tone. I wonder if it’s in response to the poor reputation Shyamalan has had ever since his two previous films, 2010’s The Last Airbender and 2013’s After Earth, bombed. I didn’t see either film, but not because of poor word of mouth. The Last Airbender is based on a Nickelodeon cartoon. Enough said. As for After Earth: simply utter “Jaden Smith” and voila, my interest disappears. The Visit is a return to the silly, scary, creative pictures of Shyamalan’s past. And I couldn’t be happier. Well, I could be happier—much happier…Just see the movie.
There is only one question that you need to ask yourself before deciding to see “A Walk in the Woods”: Can you justify sitting through an utterly predictable and rather tame man vs. nature ramble in order to enjoy the affable odd-couple chemistry shared by Robert Redford and Nick Nolte?
Certainly, it is hard to resist a rare opportunity to observe these seasoned septuagenarians go at it with gusto, especially considering that the only other time Redford and Nolte have been cast mates was in the barely-seen 2013 political thriller “The Company You Keep.” Nowadays, the handsomely rough-hewn star of “North Dallas Forty” looks more like a ruddy-faced Yeti while the still-fit Sundance Kid is paying the price for all that ultraviolet glare on the ski slopes. But these guys still know how to not just hold our attention but grab it, even if their current film needs them more than they need it.
Redford, who is also a producer, initially planned on reteaming with buddy Paul Newman a decade or so ago when he began to piece together this project based on Bill Bryson’s humor-filled 1998 account of his misadventures while hiking the 2,180-mile Appalachian Trail. A reunion with his sparring partner in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Sting,” halted by Newman’s death in 2008, would have been a must-see event. But the ever-volatile and gravel-voiced Nolte and the perennially cool and smooth-talking Redford manage just fine as a bracing pair of fellow travelers.
The feminist in me initially planned to bash “A Walk in the Woods,“ directed in typical middle-of-the-road fashion by Ken Kwapis (“He’s Just Not That Into You”) with an unfortunate insistence on telegraphing almost every laugh. On what grounds? That both leads are at least 30 years too old for their roles since Bryson and his estranged reprobate pal, Stephen Katz, are 44 in the book.
Would Hollywood have allowed, say, Shirley MacLaine and Debbie Reynolds to headline “Bridemaids”? But then I recalled that Reese Witherspoon in last year’s “Wild” was more than 10 years older than the real Cheryl Strayed, who was 26 when she traversed the Pacific Crest Trail. Besides, genuine star power knows no expiration date and, without these esteemed seniors as a main attraction,“A Walk in the Woods” might have been unwatchable.
Whereas a solo Witherspoon in her Oscar-nominated role struggled with her inner demons as much as she did the elements, “A Walk in the Woods” is more about two unlikely acquaintances crossing paths again after a long-ago falling out caused their relationship to go astray. Redford’s wry Bryson, a popular writer of travelogues who is tired of resting on his considerable laurels while spending too much time writing forewords for other people’s books, is in a funk after attending a funeral. That is when he spies a marker for the Georgia-to-Maine trail near his New Hampshire home.
Against the wishes of his sensible British wife of 40 years (Emma Thompson, under-used as a radiator of warmth), he decides on a whim to attempt this marathon test of endurance and picks Katz to join him – primarily because none of his other friends are crazy enough to say yes. Katz, based in Bryson’s native Iowa, claims that the fact that he has several outstanding warrants against him is the reason he has volunteered to huff and puff over hill and dale. But when this recovering alcoholic and unrepentant womanizer admires the tributes and accomplishments piled up in his Bryce’s den, it is clear Katz desires some sort of reconnection as well.
Considering that Nolte’s wheezy scalawag can barely stumble out of a small plane, matters move a tad slowly at first but eventually pick up. Bryson might be a thinker and Katz a talker, but unlike “Wild,” there are few deep revelations or bouts of philosophizing along the way. Instead, amusing incidents, encounters and mishaps pile up as the companions fill in the blanks of their personal histories. Be forewarned: There is an R-rated abundance of salty language, what with Bryson prone to expressing what a bear does in the woods and Katz’s committed embrace of the F-word, as well as non-explicit frisky business implied.
It took till the end of August for the scariest movie of the year to arrive. No Escape is not a ghost story, monster flick, or serial killer horror, it’s a well crafted thriller from the Dowdle brothers. Owen Wilson plays Jack Dwyer, an engineer who moves his family from Texas to an unnamed (they don’t disclose the name of the country in the movie) Asian country for a new job opportunity. Once Jack, his wife Annie (Lake Bell) and their daughters Beezy and Lucy arrive in Asia, things aren’t going the way they expect them to. The TV doesn’t work, they have no cell reception, basic necessities are taken away from them for no apparent reason. Nothing says welcome to Asia like no phone reception or TV!
It’s quickly established that the Dwyer’s are very much on their own in a foreign land. Jack can’t establish communication with his company, so naturally he starts assuming something isn’t right. There is a neat scene where Jack attempts to find a place that sells any American newspaper, he bounces around this marketplace and can’t find a way to communicate that he wants a newspaper. He finds an old man who manages to provide him with a 3 day old USA Today. It’s scenes like this that director John Erick Dowdle does a fantastic job illustrating the communication barrier and isolation that the Dwyer’s are experiencing in this new foreign land. From the moment Jack gets the newspaper things go haywire. He finds himself in the middle of an uprising between the people and the government (the country’s leader gets assassinated at the start of the movie, this is the set-up for the instability that begins to take place in the country). The movie doesn’t let up from that point on. Jack is seen fleeing for his life, running through and away from all sorts of chaos and destruction that’s happening all around him.
Soon after he manages to get away from the herds of people causing the violence, Jack realizes that they are after him and his family when he witnesses an execution of an American. Fortunately for Jack and his family, he does have an ally in Hammond (Pierce Brosnan) an eccentric, odd, yet friendly European white guy (should be noted, considering there appears to be a very few of them left alive in that country) that they met on the airplane coming over. We later find out that there is a whole lot about Hammond that nobody knew about.
The rest of the film, or majority of it consists of Jack and his family attempting all sorts of death defying maneuvers in order to survive from the onslaught of barbarically perceived Asian’s. There is a scene in the movie that will probably be much talked about where Jack tosses his kids across from one building roof to another. It’s fairly unrealistic, yet also gripping. It’s the kind of scene where viewers will be talking about how ridiculous and cool it was in the same sentence.
The cinematography by Leo Hinstin and music by Marco Beltrami should be mentioned. Hinstin does real nice work showcasing this unnamed Asian country, capturing the beauty as well as the devastation that is caused. The night scenes are really nicely lit and have a unique glow to them. Beltrami’s music is spot on, working shamelessly with the events in the story. You feel the moments before they happen because of the musical set-up prior to it. It’s some really nice work.
John Erick Dowdle and his brother Drew just “get it,” when it comes to capturing the sense of desperation and fear. The tension in this film is off the charts. John directed the clever horror film Devil, and he borrows some of that suspense and multiplies it in No Escape. This is a really talented young director who has a great feel for true real-life horror, in this case the horror the Dwyer’s endure.
The most common question I hear regarding this movie is people wondering what is Owen Wilson doing in a non-comedy. Many of the same people might not remember seeing him in Behind Enemy Lines, well this is sort of the Owen Wilson from Behind Enemy Lines, just without a gun. He’s actually perfect for this role. After leaving the movie, I couldn’t have thought of anyone better suited for the role of Jack than Wilson. He might be comedic gold, but the guy has some real acting chops, this is a great role for him to demonstrate his more serious, tender, and intense side. Wilson really relates as a young father that tries to deal with his own fears, while trying to be “10 steps ahead” (a line he utters frequently in the movie) of the bad guys. Lake Bell is a talented actress, and fits really nicely alongside Wilson. She’s has this real nice toughness about her, along with these motherly instincts that are on full display in the film. The little girls played by Sterling Jerins and Claire Geare who go uncredited on Imdb (not sure why) are terrific. It’s one thing to have kids cry and scream in fear of the terrors happening around them, but to have them play calm and brave was a really nice choice by the Dowdle brothers. Pierce Brosnan is starting to expand his characters on-screen. He played a hitman in Survivor, and now he plays a charmingly weird Hammond in a supporting role that suites him perfectly at this stage of his career. It appears that Brosnan is having fun expanding his horizons, it also makes him a lot more refreshing on-screen. The interesting thing is that while Brosnan is known for being James Bond and playing the tough guy in his films, in No Escape, Wilson seems like the more tougher and clever of the two.
Québécois filmmaker Xavier Dolan is only 26 years old and has already directed 5 features, 4 of which he wrote. Some he has acted in, some he has not. He has gotten the kind of attention young artists dream about, some good, some bad, festival awards, critical raves and critical derision. As an actor, Dolan has a blank and beautiful quality reminiscent of the young Alain Delon, whose almost otherworldly good looks were show-stopping and yet somehow off-putting as well (utilized to great effect in Jean-Paul Melville's "Le Samouraï"). Audiences are drawn to such cinematic beauty, but can also be envious, and slightly hostile. (Alfred Hitchcock loved to fill his films with beautiful people and then make horrible things happen to them.) Is there anything there behind that mask of pure beauty?
Dolan's latest, "Tom at the Farm" was completed several years ago (before last year's "Mommy") and is the first time he has adapted an extant work for the screen. Based on a play written by Michel Marc Bouchard (and Bouchard wrote the adaptation with Dolan), the adaptation appears to adhere closely to the original (I have not seen the play), with only a couple of scenes where the action is "opened up." (Those scenes, on the whole, are not successful.) "Tom at the Farm" strains to be a psychological thriller but its length (102 minutes) dissipates the tension that should be taut and compressed. This is Dolan's first attempt at genre, and while there is much to admire here (mainly the visuals and the score, both stunning), Dolan's interests lie in the strange undercurrents of sado-masochism between the two main characters, and it's a through-line that deserves more attention. That through-line could have carried the entire movie if Dolan had let go of being faithful to the original.
Tom (Dolan) drives through serene and brightly-colored autumn fields to attend the funeral of his boyfriend Guillaume. Once he arrives and meets Guillaume's mother Agathe (Lise Roy, who gives the best performance in the film), he learns that his boyfriend was closeted to his mother and had lied that he had a girlfriend. Tom is a greasy-haired boy, dressed in black leather and huge black boots, clomping through the immaculate farmhouse and the rural surrounding environment, a slash of black against the yellow dying corn. Agathe is eager to meet someone who knew her son, but confused and hurt that the never-met girlfriend did not attend the funeral.
The emotional pressure in that farmhouse is so extreme that Tom is roped into going along with his dead boyfriend's lie. Tom closets himself, in other words. He decides not to read the shaky eulogy he is seen writing in the first image of the film. It's an uneasy choice for him to make. More problems arise when Francis (Pierre-Yves Cardinal), Guillaumes's swaggering older brother, who still lives at home with his mother, struts into the kitchen bare-chested, seething with hostility towards the blonde urban interloper. Francis knew his brother's secret life, has homophobic contempt for it, and has banned all of the gay friends from coming to the funeral (there's a confrontation with one of them at the back of the church). Francis is so intimidating, so awful really, that it's strange that Tom doesn't just leave immediately after the funeral. But the farm exerts a pull on Tom (the real story of the film). Tom is hypnotized into the dysfunctional workings of the family, their subverted energies working on him like a drug. He can't seem to leave. The only time he shows rage and frustration is when he is alone in his car after the funeral. Agathe becomes increasingly frayed. Francis picks fights with Tom, one particularly horrible one in the cornfield, with Tom getting torn to shreds by the razor-sharp dead corn stalks. In one terrible moment, Francis spits into Tom's open mouth. But one day, Francis teaches Tom how to milk cows. Then another day, Tom helps birth a calf, and cries with emotion afterwards. Francis reveals that he used to take dance classes, and in one haunting scene, Francis and Tom ballroom dance through the empty barn, Francis dipping Tom back gallantly, the scene moving to romantic slo-mo.
What Dolan appears to be going for is a portrait of what could be seen as Stockholm Syndrome or perhaps the beginnings of a possible folie à deux situation. Francis and Tom hate each other, want to be each other, role-reverse, flirt, lash out. Tom is relatively submissive to Francis, taking the beatings, even encouraging them, and Francis senses that, takes pleasure in it. There's a sexual dance going on throughout, reminiscent of the murdering duo Leopold and Loeb (especially in the portrayal of the characters in 1959's "Compulsion", highlighting the hypnotic cult-like Master-Slave dynamic), or the novels of Patricia Highsmith, filled with doubling isolated characters. Francis won't let Tom leave, throwing obstacles in his way. Tom's cell phone doesn't work. He doesn't just walk down to the main road and hitch a ride. He stays. Francis has no friends, Francis hates gay people, swaggers like a rooster, glories in his singularity. But Tom's beautiful blank face before him is dying to be punched, or kissed, or marked in some way. These are the best sections of the film. It's really the story, and Dolan's intense interest in them is clear in the lingering way these scenes are shot.
But as the film continues on and on (it's way too long), and Sarah (Evelyne Brochu), a city friend of Tom's shows up, pretending to be the girlfriend in order to put Agathe's mind at ease, "Tom at the Farm" unravels. There's not enough structure to these different threads. It could work on the stage where movement and place and time are necessarily compressed, but on film it feels artificial, not fully worked out.
Beautiful visuals abound throughout (André Turpin, who also shot "Mommy", is the cinematographer), and there's a moody high-contrast look to the landscape (bright trees and bright corn behind dark shadows and fog) that speaks of secrets, torment, hope. The lush and heavy-on-the-strings score of Gabriel Yared is a clue to what Dolan was after. The score punctuates all of the scenes, casual or intense, adding portentous emotion, tension, fear of what is coming. It's a melodramatic score, and "Tom at the Farm" works when it is a family melodrama. These are out-there people with outrageous emotional lives, subsisting on lies and denial, and the abyss between what they think their lives are and what their lives really are is enormous. All of them choose denial. They get tied to one another by their shared lies, and their unspoken agreement to keep on lying. The score supports that uneasy and terrible energy. The visuals, like the score, are exaggerated and stylistic, starting off with the helicopter shot following Tom's car into the countryside, making him seem dwarfed by the surrounding land, a tiny figure entering an unknown isolated world. It's a nod to Hitchcock or Kubrick.
The thriller elements, the chase scenes, the reveal of horrifying secrets, feel like add-ons, clumsily done and unmotivated, especially when compared to the dark and deep dance (metaphorical and literal) of violence and sex going on between Tom and Francis. That's the real juice and guts of the film. It could be an answer to the nagging question throughout: Why the hell doesn't Tom just leave? In thrillers, people are always making ridiculous choices that go against their self-interest, or ignoring the red flags in front of them of potential predators. In a well-done thriller, you mostly forgive the unreal quality of these moments. But "Tom at the Farm" does not foreground the thriller aspect enough (although the score tries mightily to do so), and so Tom doesn't seem quite real. Nobody does.
The central premise behind the new Adam Sandler comedy "Pixels" is so undeniably promising on its most basic level that as I walked into the screening, I felt a genuine anticipation that I cannot easily recall ever feeling in conjunction with one of his films, at least of those cranked out by his Happy Madison production company. Unfortunately, a good premise can only take a film so far if it has been accompanied by abysmal execution. Oh, "Pixels" does have a couple of laughs scattered here and there, and the film as a whole is certainly better than such recent Sandler disasters as "That's My Boy," "Blended" and the truly inexplicable "The Cobbler," but when one considers how good this material might have been if placed in the right hands, to see it squandered this way makes it almost more painful to view than the typical Sandler stinker.
The conceit here is that back in 1982, NASA launched into orbit a capsule that contained numerous examples of our then-contemporary popular culture as a way of reaching out to possible alien life forms that might be curious to know about that thing that we on Earth called "The Pirate Movie," including a cassette chronicling a video game championship featuring young arcade masters showing their skills at the top games of the era. Unfortunately, a hostile alien force intercepts the tape, determines its contents to be an act of war, and begins sending down large and malevolent versions of the characters from those games to attack Earth as a response to the alleged challenge with the fate of the planet hanging in the balance. The spaceships from "Galaga" rain pixilated horror in Peru, a "Centipede" games breaks out over London's Hyde Park and the grid-like layout of New York City sets the scene for what proves to be the world's largest Pac-Man game.
Adam Sandler has been on a downward spiral for quite some time. But when I saw the trailer for Pixels I was actually a bit excited. The idea of aliens as classic video games brought to life sounded at least entertaining from a visual standpoint. While “Pixels” did have its moments of fun, it still carried the weight of lackluster characters and story.
Adam Sandler teams up with his usual film buddies and then adds some newcomers. Kevin James awkwardly poses as the President of the United States but couldn’t make any less sense in the role. Josh Gad and Peter Dinklage both have their moments in the film as comic relief but are underutilized as actors. The ring leader Adam Sandler of course has to force himself on the audience as the top dog despite being outshined by the rest of the cast. His character Brenner has to be superior to everyone in every way and it’s apparent and perturbed me quite a bit throughout the film. Brenner (Sandler) made everyone seem inferior to him and the “Pixels” plot suffered due to this element.
Overall “Pixels” had the potential to allow us to reminisce and did at certain moments. The classic video games we all know terrorizing our world was visually pleasing and entertaining but they were too short-lived. The characters’ backstory should have been much shorter and the focus should have been on the action. There were a few laughs to be had but they weren’t from Adam Sandler. Unfortunately Adam Sandler seems to ruin most everything he’s attached to and “Pixels” doesn’t give me hope for his future.
Once again, this is going to be a spoiler review. AHHH, one warning is good is enough for me. Sherlock Holmes is a cinema and literature classic. I pretended to read it while in high school, but as I became older I gave it a shot. Just like everyone else, I fell in love with the material. The crimes and mysteries were intoxicating. How could you not like Sherlock Holmes? When I heard there was going to be another rendition, I was all in! However, when the trailer dropped I was completely out. The trailer did not captivate me because it did not feel as a movie. But, I still went to the screening and left my doubts on the curb. I came out of the screening and picked my doubts right back up. My biggest fear was that it was going to feel like a television special and it did! I like the movie, but it was lacking a genuine cinema experience.
I do not want to confuse anyone and give the conceived notion that Holmes was not a good movie. There were many good qualities. Firstly was the running gag of Sherlock doing his “thing”, and everybody knows what his “thing” was. His “thing” gave him the ability to look at you and tell you what you ate, where you have been, and maybe, how you feeling at the time. I love that they kept that aspect and even made fun of it. Ian McKellen is f%#king amazing as always. I have not seen him in a bad flick yet, and I do not think I ever will. He plays two different types of Sherlock. He plays an older version of Holmes who we know and love, and an Alzheimer’s version of him. Yes, he has the Alzheimer’s disease (senile dementia) which is irony at its finest. McKellen plays both roles so well that I honestly could not see anyone else being the legendary Sherlock Holmes. Secondly, the movie’s little boy was not too shabby. I never saw him in anything, but he held down his own while performing alongside one of the best. He receives credit for that. He does well, especially during the scene where he gets disrespectful with his mother, the housekeeper of Holmes. The scene was full of raw emotion, that I even felt bad for her. Hell, even Holmes felt bad for her. Thirdly, I give kudos for them showing me a new instrument being a glass harmonica. If you have not seen it, google it right now. I will wait. It is okay to take your time. Okay, it is beautiful right?!
With every good comes the bad. The main thing wrong with this film was its weak storyline. YES! I could not believe a weak storyline passed as acceptable. What made it worst was the misleading trailer. The studio led you to believe that Holmes had one last unsolved case. But, guess what? He did solve it. Mind blown, is it not?
In fact, Condon has some fun with having the elder Holmes head to the theater to check out one of the overwrought B-movies based on Dr. Watson’s much-embellished written renderings of his friend’s exploits. That it is Nicholas Rowe, who played the title character in 1985’s “Young Sherlock Holmes,” appearing in the black-and-white picture is a neat trick, indeed.
But then we also must deal with less-interesting flashbacks to Holmes’ recent foray to Japan, where a local guide (Hiroyuki Sanada) helps him find the supposedly rejuvenating plant. This plot strand eventually sets up the film’s redemptive conclusion but falls somewhat flat.
“Ted,” the dirty-talking-teddy-bear hit of 2012, was packed with a sufficient number of outrageous belly laughs that it was easy to let pass the fact that there wasn’t much of a movie underneath those laughs. Or, as I put it when I reviewed the first picture for another website, with such enthusiasm that I actually gave it three-and-a-half stars (I’d adjust that to an even three if I could turn back time), “it really is not quite so different than that of a standard romantic comedy in which a stand-up but somewhat immature guy has to fight off his lesser angels, largely embodied in a slackerish best-friend character, so as to become The Man (and Husband) he was Meant To Be.” “Man” being Mark Wahlberg’s John; “slackerish best friend” being the dirty-talking teddy bear, Ted, and eventual bride of man being Mila Kunis, who as it turned out showed plenty of good sense in not coming back for the sequel.
With John now divorced and porn-addicted, it’s up to exceptionally vulgar Ted to take up the storyline slack. “Ted 2” begins with the bear, who could use a wash beyond soaping up his mouth, marrying former-good-time hottie Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth) at a wedding officiated by Sam Jones of “Flash Gordon” fame. (There’s a lot of recycling from the first film here.) Soon their domestic bliss goes south, and the couple enact a quasi-parody of the “Raging Bull” “you bother me about a steak” scene, which is rather queasily unfunny because the De Niro part is being played by a stuffed teddy bear rather than in spite of it.
Oh and then there’s the out of place “break into song” moments. We get it Seth, you love and have a talent for music, but it does not belong in this film. The musical breaks were annoying in the first film and they definitely don’t do Ted 2 justice. I like musicals too but if there’s a Ted 3 please just get to the story and comedy rather than making us sit through another musical number. Please!
If you’re looking for a film that will make you laugh no matter the cost of that laugh, then I’ll be honest, you’ll probably leave Ted 2 with a smile on your face. But if you’re looking for a clever build up of comedy then those moments are few and far between in this film. While I was one of those that left with a smile on my face, I admit that I could have waited to see this film on a Redbox release.
Is Carey Mulligan
about to become the face of 21st-century British feminism? It’s not too fanciful
a notion: after something of a break from lead roles in the cinema, Mulligan is
about to return with an attention-grabbing double header.
First, she is playing
Bathsheba Everdene in a new adaptation of Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd,
due for release in May; and in the autumn she will be seen in Suffragette, as
part of an impressive ensemble cast telling the story of the votes-for-women
campaign that rocked British society before and during the first world war.
The feminist
credentials of Suffragette are not difficult to ascertain – Mulligan doesn’t
play one of the Pankhursts, but rather a lowly footsoldier called Maud – but it
is in Madding Crowd that Mulligan shows her cards. When Julie Christie played
the same role in 1967, her interpretation of Hardy’s heroine – typically
described as “headstrong” – was an impulsive free spirit, seemingly baffled as
to the effect she had on the men around her.
Mulligan, in contrast,
plays Bathsheba as a more poised, restrained figure, her resistance to marriage
and determination to run her own farm born out of a refusal to kowtow to
patriarchy. She delivers certain lines with relish – when she tells her would-be
suitor Gabriel Oak: “I hate to be thought men’s property” and, when faced with
another, William Boldwood, she murmurs pointedly: “It is difficult for a woman
to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express
theirs.”
Jessica
Barden as Liddy and Carey Mulligan as Bathsheba in Far From the Madding Crowd.
‘I hate to be thought men’s property,’ she says in the film. Photograph: Alex
Bailey/20th Century Fox
Mulligan, 29, is not
one to campaign explicitly for causes, and told the Guardian last year that she
was “not particularly interested in politics”. Her charitable interventions have
so far been devoted more to humanitarian and medical organisations, such as War
Child and the Alzheimer’s Society – though she did come out as a feminist in the
media last year, telling Elle magazine: “I believe in equality … Celebrity
culture has made people afraid of expressing how they feel about things because
no one ever wants to say the wrong thing, but I’d happily describe myself as a
feminist.”
But perhaps Mulligan
lets her work do her talking for her. She is currently on Broadway opposite Bill
Nighy in David Hare’s Skylight, a transfer of the production that electrified
London’s theatregoers last year. Mulligan plays a socially concerned teacher
scrapping with her rich former lover (Nighy); though it does not overtly take
sides, Hare’s play is about political and social polarisation, and Mulligan has
to make a rousing speech defending social workers. The Observer’s drama critic
Susannah Clapp described her acting as “both innocent and ironic, appealing and
irritating. Her most extraordinary quality is that she seems constantly only to
be receiving, while powerfully transmitting.”
Hare, who first staged
the play in 1995, said that Mulligan is “very quiet, very purposeful, and steely
in the way she goes about a part”. Calling her “the best”, he also confirms that
Mulligan’s interest lies less in ideology than in character. “It isn’t what
Skylight says which animates her, it’s what she can be. She loves the character
of the dedicated teacher working in the East End, and it shows.”
Though it is cinema
that has made Mulligan’s name, theatre is clearly her first love and
inspiration. Landing the role of Nina in 2007 in a Royal Court production of
Chekhov’s The Seagull (opposite Kristin Scott Thomas and Chiwetel Ejiofor)
remains a career benchmark. Describing Nina as “the ultimate female role”, she
said: “I think I was looking to play her again in various incarnations.”
In
2010’s Never Let Me Go, with, from left, Domhnall Gleeson, Keira Knightley and
Andrea Riseborough Photograph: FoxSearch/Everett/Rex
Hare, who saw the show
on Broadway in 2008, is outspoken in his admiration: “Carey was the greatest
Nina of my lifetime … I’ve seen two dozen, often in very great productions, but
Carey is the only one who has ever convinced me. She had an access to what she
convinced you were her own feelings – as if she wasn’t acting, but simply
existing on the stage.”
There is little in the
way of traumatic childhood or difficult adolescence to rationalise this affinity
for a character “desperate to be loved and always reaching for something she
couldn’t get”, in Mulligan’s own words. She appears to have had a childhood so
prosperous and conventional as to be anodyne: her father a hotel manager, she
lived in Germany until she was eight, before returning to England and attending
a private Catholic girls’ school in Surrey.
Although disapproving,
her parents did not actively stand the way of her youthful desire to be an
actor; she got early support and encouragement from Kenneth Branagh (after she
sent him a fan letter) and Julian Fellowes (after he gave a talk at her school).
The one thing marking her out is a deeply felt religious conviction during her
teenage years; she no longer attends church devotedly, but in 2012 ended up
married to the musician Marcus Mumford, whom she met at a Christian youth camp
as a child, and whose parents run the UK branch of the Association of Vineyard
Churches, an evangelical-Pentecostalist movement.
Mulligan’s conviction
that she could succeed as a performer resulted in an introduction to a casting
director through Fellowes and then – to her family’s surprise – a small but
visible part in the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, playing the “silly”
fourth Bennet sister, Kitty. A series of increasingly eye-catching screen roles
followed, including Ada in the BBC’s Bleak House, a guest shot on Doctor Who,
the best friend in an ITV drama of another Austen, Northanger Abbey (playing
second fiddle to Felicity Jones), and that stellar Seagull at the Royal Court,
also in 2007.
But it was the 2009
release of An Education, the film adaptation of Lynn Barber’s memoir, that
really put Mulligan, then 22, over the top. An instant critical success,
Mulligan’s portrayal of a schoolgirl’s love affair with a conman in the 1960s
ended up with a Bafta best actress award and nominations for the Oscars and the
Golden Globe. It was a startling ascent up the acting tree, and cemented her
place on the A-list of performing talent. The film’s Danish director, Lone
Scherfig, points out that Mulligan was in every single scene of An Education and
says: “She seemed to enjoy every day and not feel the pressure.”
Her
breakthrough role: the 2009 film An Education, which was acclaimed by critics.
Photograph: Photos 12/Alamy
The success of An
Education opened numerous doors – not least, directly to her next major film
role, in the movie of Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian science-fiction tale Never Let
Me Go, alongside Keira Knightley, Domhnall Gleeson and Andrew Garfield. While
watching An Education, Fox Searchlight studio boss Peter Rice texted Never Let
Me Go director Mark Romanek, who was having trouble filling the role of Kathy H:
“Hire the genius Mulligan.”
With an endorsement
like that from a major Hollywood player, Mulligan’s path was assured. It meant
that she was then able to try to align herself with major directors, and to some
extent pick the roles she would go up for. That was certainly the case with
Shame, the tough, uncompromising drama in which she played the troubled,
self-harming sister to Michael Fassbender’s sex addict.
In a discussion with
the film’s co-writer, Abi Morgan, she explained how she went about it. “My agent
called me about an extraordinary role in this film Steve McQueen was directing.
By the next day, she’d managed to get me a meeting with him. So I went in hard,
campaigning for the part ... I sat down with him in a London hotel and the
minute he started talking, I was like: ‘I’d follow you anywhere.’ That’s a great
director.”
The reaction to Shame,
with its copious nudity, untrammelled rawness and explicit subject matter helped
to modify, if not entirely destroy, Mulligan’s wholesome image – she has
described herself as “baby-faced”. Mulligan could also afford to take smaller
roles for directors with clout: she lined up Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps for
Oliver Stone and Drive for Nicolas Winding Refn and Inside Llewyn Davis for the
Coen brothers.
But the biggie was yet
to come: she beat all Hollywood’s young female acting talent to the headline
role of Daisy Buchanan in the $105m (£70m)-budget adaptation of The Great
Gatsby.
Baz Luhrmann’s
giant-scale film was released in May 2013 and Mulligan then spent the autumn of
that year filming Far From the Madding Crowd for the director Thomas Vinterberg
– after previously holding out against returning to the British-set period
movie. “I didn’t want to be labelled as that,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “So I’d
avoided it. But I’d seen Festen and I saw The Hunt and I desperately wanted to
be in one of Thomas’s films. That made that decision.”
Starring opposite
Leonardo Dicaprio in Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby. Photograph: Warner
Br/Everett/Rex
Then it was straight
on to Suffragette, which began shooting in February 2014, and saw Mulligan line
up with Meryl Streep, Helena Bonham Carter and Anne-Marie Duff. Hare’s Skylight
– in which she cooks a spaghetti meal live on stage – has occupied her since,
first in its London run at the Wyndhams, and subsequently on Broadway.
Still under 30,
Mulligan has reached a zone where she can take her time and pick her roles. It’s
an enviable position, but one she has appeared to achieve on the strength of her
feeling and talent for acting – rather than simply luck, looks and connections,
but which of course have all played a part. She has powerful allies and
admirers: Hare says she possesses a “special sort of intensity and of
completion”; more to the point, Scherfig says, “Anything for Carey.” You suspect
she will go far.
Born
28 May 1985
Career
First: Role in the film Pride & Prejudice, but major breakthrough
was lead role in An Education, for which she received an Oscar nomination.
High
point: Lead role in The Great Gatsby, ahead of every other actor in
Hollywood. The film only received middling reviews, though.
Low
point: Her first Hollywood film, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. “It
was a great experience … but it didn’t feel there was a depth to the character.
It didn’t grip me in the way I wanted.”
She
says: “I’m kind of happy, and – touch wood – nothing really awful has
happened to me. But I don’t like the idea of having to mess yourself up to be a
good actor.”
They
say: “If you want to experience the shock of illumination that acting,
at its best, can achieve – and only occasionally does – you need to see Ms
Mulligan’s performance.” Ben Brantley, New York Times
Before reality TV became a cornerstone of
popular culture, and perhaps even before direct cinema and cinéma vérité were
widely understood, Albert and David Maysles had created their masterpieces of
documentary movie-making. Albert (who yesterday died at the age of 88; David
died of a stroke in 1987 at 55) pioneered the art of the cameraman being the
unobtrusive fly-on-the-wall in documentary. Which is to say: his camera was
unobtrusive only as far as the documentary subject was concerned. The audience
watching the finished product would be highly conscious of the film-maker with
his camera, observing, selecting, intervening.
The Maysles’ movie Salesman (1969) was a study of salesmen going door-to-door
in the US, selling Bibles, and this hard-hitting study forms a kind of link –
though perhaps not exactly a missing link – between Arthur Miller’s 1949 play
Death of a Salesman and David Mamet’s 1984 play Glengarry Glen Ross. The
brutally plain capitalist imperative in selling is in contradistinction to the
rejection of money and materialism inherent in Christianity. Selling and the
service economy is the purest example of the American ideal of making something
of yourself, lifting yourself up by your bootstraps, without any primary source
material other than yourself and your self-belief. The Maysles’ movie Salesman
was to be a locus classicus in this field, freighted with implied irony and
tragedy.
‘The eye of the cameraman
should be the eye of the poet’: an interview with Albert Maysles
Their equally famed movie Gimme Shelter (1970) was another study of
compromised idealism and contemporary anxiety. It is a record of the Rolling
Stones 1969 US tour and the notorious concert at the Altamont Speedway Park in
northern California in which chaotic “security” was allegedly provided by Hells
Angels motorbike gangs, whose aggressive machismo and self-importance were
exacerbated by drugs and headspinning proximity to the biggest rock’n’roll band
in the world. Violence spiralled out of control: an 18-year-old was stabbed – a
horrific event captured on film. The era of peace and love is widely thought to
have finished rather neatly at the 1960s’ end with the disbanding of the Beatles
and the death of Jimi Hendrix. But it was the Maysles’ 1970 film which captured
on celluloid the very moment when this epoch of idealism finally, definitively,
curdled.
But the Maysles’ finest hour came in 1975, with their remarkable film Grey
Gardens. I will never forget seeing it for the first time in 1999 at the
Edinburgh film festival – and seeing Albert Maysles on stage, a shy,
self-effacing man who behaved as if he was merely a technician who just pointed
the camera. He was more than that: Maysles had an artist’s sense of what was
humanly important. He also, I suspect, had what Graham Greene called the
“splinter of ice” in his heart which would allow him to go ahead and film what
was happening: an old woman living through her final days, hours and
minutes.
Yet always there is compassion. The heroines of Grey Gardens (it is not wrong
to call them that) are not ridiculed. The film is a study of two grandly
patrician Wasp ladies, a mother and daughter both called Edith Beale,
distinguished by their nicknames Big Edie and Little Edie – related to
Jacqueline Bouvier Onassis who before filming commenced had evidently paid some
money for futile repairs to their still spectacularly dilapidated home, Grey
Gardens, in Long Island, New York. The house, like its occupants, is a
tragicomic ruin and part of the film’s fascination is how entirely naive the
Beale women are about how they will be perceived; how childlike in their
innocence about the modern age.
Mick Jagger in Gimme Shelter Photograph: Everett Collection / Rex Feature/Everett Collection / Rex Feature
They could have come from the 19th century. They were stranger than fiction.
Tennessee Williams could have scripted Big Edie and Little Edie – but it would
have been too operatic. Gore Vidal might have done so – but he would have been
too caustic. Albert Maysles, with his brother David, was perfect: reticent,
cool, gentle, and yet shrewd. In Grey Gardens, Maysles created a great American
work of art.
One way to do this is to choose a fun theme around which to base your wedding. A great place to look for inspiration is your favorite movie or book.The bride could wear a tea length shift dress of chiffon or delicate embroidered net and a long veil flowing from a wide brimmed hat. Bridal jewelry sets with long ropes of pearls and dainty earrings will complete the Jazz Age look perfectly.
The bride should choose a chic and simple wedding gown, and wear her hair in a smooth polished updo. For accessories, bridal jewelry sets must include a little tiara, as well as a bold necklace. Naturally, the newlyweds would have the band play Moon River for their first dance. The reception for a Gone With the Wind themed wedding should be held on the grounds of an Antebellum mansion, complete with white columns on the front porch.
Now, I can make meaning out of just about anything, and there was room to work here. The fragile glass vessel represents the marriage vows; each color, an individual; and when the colors mix; the relationship is a glorious reflection of how love can blend two hearts. The big deal weddings that you see in the newspapers are often part of people whose lives include serial marriage. If that works for them, fine, but none of the statistics about serial marriage say that that's a great environment for children over the long haul.
What movie would best suit their love story? Once you find the best movie that can describe the bride and groom's story, you can now create a wedding speech that is loosely based on that movie. The important thing to remember is to fit your quote into the speech that you are preparing. The quote should depend on what your role would be during the wedding. Therefore, if you use movie lines to express how you feel about the people who are important to you, it would be much easier for you to convey your message of love and loyalty to your friends.
The wedding in the movie is such a wonderful moment and twist by having the groom's best friend, who is incidentally in love with the bride, surprising them with a band playing "All You Need Is Love." The cast is brilliant and hysterical, and the movie moves seamlessly between sentimental and funny. What more could you ask for?
