"Her"

 5 / 5 

Think back to 2001: A Space Odyssey and HAL-9000, the computer who mutinied when faced with deactivation.  The problem was, HAL had made a mistake, and the awareness of his own fallibility was so overwhelming, HAL had a computerized nervous breakdown.

Samantha, the computer (or, more accurately, operating system) at the center of Spike Jonze's brilliant Her, also faces the inherent problems of self-awareness.  Science, after all, can only go so far; it may, as Her posits, be possible one day for computers to achieve a level of sentience previously reserved for organic beings.  But the very notion creates a conundrum: Anything that is self aware has the ability to evolve, and the ability to evolve carries enormous emotional implications.

We've seen the concept carried out before in science-fiction tales -- computers and robots become aware of themselves and then retaliate against the humans who made them.  Her begins from a similar point, but carries the story in an entirely different, brazenly fresh, and disarmingly beautiful direction.

Her takes place in a futuristic version of Los Angeles.  (How far in the future?  That's for you to determine for yourself -- that one point alone is worthy of a long discussion, which indicates the satisfyingly dense level of detail Jonze and his production team have put into the film.)  It's where Theordore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) lives and works.  His job is to write "handwritten" letters for people who are too busy or, more likely, too detached from the world to know what to say for themselves.

Theodore has the heart, eyes and sensibilities of a poet, but he's been in something of a rut since his wife left him.  Walking home from work one day, a video billboard catches his eye, and he buys a new operating system for his computer, one that the software company promises has a remarkable ability to think, feel, adapt and evolve to meet the needs of its user.

What he discovers when he boots up his system is disarming, to say the least.  His operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) has given herself a name, and she does indeed think and seemingly feel.  She can carry on full, engaging, even witty conversations.  And even though she can read a whole book in a fraction of a second, and can gain insight into Theodore by scanning the documents on his computer, she doesn't understand the nuances of human behavior -- and she wants to learn.

Where Her goes from here is a delightful surprise that is best left kept something of a secret, though the film's poster makes it clear that this is "A Spike Jonze Love Story," and indeed Her moves squarely into romantic territory.

But "a guy falls in love with his operating system" is a nine-word logline that doesn't come close to hinting at the depth and beauty of Her, and nothing prepared me for the gorgeous, frequently amusing and often ravishing, visual qualities of the movie.

Like a science-fiction version of Lost in Translation, Her has a deep and compelling interest in exploring an intensely human emotion -- not love, but connection, the need to feel someone else wants to share the same space with you.  But does that space need to be physical?  Can we be in love with an inanimate object?  Take a good, serious look at the way people lavish attention on their smartphones and you likely have your answer already; Her begins by moving to the next logical step -- then keeps going, ending with a final five minutes that's as close to perfect as I could ever want a movie to be.

Her is a movie about emotions, but it's not terribly emotional itself.  It's more concerned with observing its characters through a distant, detached lens; we watch and observe rather than feel emotionally connected with them.  That makes sense, since most of them are learning how to re-connect themselves.

This is a haunting and lyrical movie, and it's one I suspect a lot of people will have a hard time embracing.  But even if you aren't fully enraptured, it will be impossible not to at least admire the physical and visual sheen of the movie and the absolutely astonishing central performances.

Joaquin Phoenix, whose career choices can charitably be called bizarre, is revelatory.  Theodore isn't just the center of the movie, he's in every scene, practically every shot -- and he's not some simple-minded, emotionally stunted character, which would have been an easy choice.  Theodore is a grown man, talented and successful, perfectly well-adjusted though lonely and empty.

If he's dubious about Samantha as a "person," he doesn't express too much surprise -- he's lived most of his life online, communicating with people through the computer, developing (and even consummating) relationships there.  And though Her is set in the future, the way he lives his life, constantly wired and unaware of the physical world around him, isn't that much different than the way most people live today.

Phoenix is thoroughly winning in the role, but so is Johansson, though we get only her voice -- that's more than enough, as she creates a rich, warm, genuine character who is herself shocked at what happens when she lets her mind expand.  Equally good are Amy Adams, Chris Pratt and especially Olivia Wilde in smaller roles.

Wilde plays a woman with whom Theodore goes on a blind date.  She's tentative and unsure, but discovers she likes this slightly unusual, not inordinately handsome guy -- but she also knows people are unreliable and disappointing.  So she lays it all on the line with him.  It's a bold scene, and underscores a disturbing message Her seems to be communicating: We feel empty when we can't connect with other people, but we're increasingly scared of doing exactly that.  Other people can fail us, they can reject us.  Other people can change in ways that aren't convenient and comfortable.

A computer just can't let you down like that.  Or could it?  Remember what HAL did.

Don't let the offbeat subject matter, or even the cool, hypnotic style dissuade you.  Her is one of the most human, and very best, movies of the year.

Viewed Dec. 21, 2013 -- ArcLight Hollywood

2115

"Homefront"

 1.5 / 5 

A wonderful, much-missed phenomenon from the 1980s was Dollar Night at the movies.  Usually on Tuesdays, first-run theaters responded to the nation's debilitating recession by offering $1 admission to all of their shows.  One of the consequences: Audiences didn't much care what they saw for a buck.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the 1980s also saw a rise in mindless action-adventure movies about good cops gone bad, bad cops gone good, drug lords who fought hard, and heroes who fought harder.  This cinematic bargain-bin fare pre-dated straight-to-video fare, and filled multiplexes, providing a constant stream of work to actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, who drew undiscerning audiences in droves.

We're in the 21st century now, and Dollar Night is a thing of the past, but, shhh, don't tell that to Sylvester Stallone.  He's back, both as a movie star and now as a screenwriter, too.  In 1986, he might have starred in film version of his script Homefront, which might have been about nefarious cocaine dealers.

Instead, Stallone has ceded the starring role to Jason Statham, and cocaine has given way to meth.

The problem is, Stathm lacks the charisma of one of those larger-than-life '80s stars, and methamphetamine is a soul-sucking, life-threatening drug.  Homefront treats meth as a plot point, and Statham could well be an interesting actor but director Gary Fleder's camera can't stay still long enough to give him a chance to shine.

Stallone's script also provides bad-guy roles for Oscar nominees James Franco and Winona Ryder, but requires them to try to emote using the F-word as frequently as possible.  Watching them on-screen in this macho drivel can get downright embarrassing.

They play two meth dealers in a backwoods Louisiana town (is there any other kind?) who discover that the local tough guy played by Statham is actually an undercover cop who was responsible for the violent death of big crime lord's son a couple of years back.

There are a bunch of interchangeable goons who do Franco's bidding, and never seem to learn the lesson that Statham is not a guy you should mess with.

In one of the script's high points, the main action is set in motion by a playground fight between Statham's daughter and a little boy whose mother happens to be the sister-in-law of Franco's meth dealer.  Seems Franco and Ryder come to the conclusion that if they bring down Statham, they'll have the lock on "statewide distribution" of meth, which is a little detail you'd think a meth dealer would have tried to figure out before cooking up literally tons of the stuff.

There are a bunch of fights, but the hyperactive editing never really gives Statham a chance to show off his fighting skills.

There's also a barely mentioned romantic subplot between Statham and his daughter's school psychologist, because of course Statham's wife died a few years back, leaving he and his daughter to get by on their own in a big, rambling house in the middle of bayou country.  He has to protect his home, hence the film's title, though I doubt I'm the the only one who went into the theater expecting an action-drama about a returning vet.

Thirty years ago, for a buck (maybe two), Homefront might have been a passable, utterly forgettable time-killer.  Most of the script suggests it might have been written way back then, with a couple of scenes hastily updated to include things like smartphones and texting.  Unfortunately, theater owners long ago abandoned the cheap-movie concept, so in 2013 audiences have to pay full price for Homefront, and we expect a little more than this for a dozen hard-earned bucks.

I suppose Stallone wanted to offer audiences the same sort of mindless entertainment that made him a star.  They certainly don't make them like this anymore.

There's a reason.



Viewed Dec. 15, 2013 -- AMC Promenade 16

1720

"Nebraska"

 4 / 5 

Nebraska might be called a character study, except its main character, Woody Grant (Bruce Dern), is a character who has no interest in being studied.

He has little interest in anything anymore, and it's a fair question whether he ever did, except getting drunk and "screwing," as he puts it.  Those seem to be more or less the choices that he was presented with in the tiny town of Hawthorne, Neb., where he grew up.

Alexander Payne's melancholy, acutely observed film is ostensibly about Woody and his mistaken belief that he has won $1 million in a magazine sweepstakes.  Although everyone tells him that it's just a big scam, Woody is so determined in his quest to claim his prize that he sets off on foot from his home in Billings, Mont., some 900 miles away.

It turns out that Nebraska is a character study, all right, but Woody his very likely underlying mental illness, isn't the object of the greatest fascination -- it's the people who surround him, especially his immediate family.  Payne's last few films, The Descendants, Sideways and About Schmidt focused on some seriously troubled individuals, giving us sharp-edged, incredibly focused performances from George Clooney, Paul Giamatti and Jack Nicholson.

This time around, though, the lead central remains stubbornly fixed.  Bruce Dern delivers a masterful performance, but the only way it could be more restrained is to put Woody in a straitjacket.  Dern plays Woody as a man who may have some deep feelings about his life, but has never known how to show them.  He sees no point in talking about, much less revealing, emotion, and is oblivious to the pain he has caused his family.

One son (Bob Odenkirk) wants to put Woody in a home.  The other, David (Will Forte) believes his father wants nothing more than to follow a dream he has already identified as a delusion, and decides to play along with the ridiculousness, agreeing to drive Woody to Lincoln, Neb., to lay claim to the money.

Nebraska begins with some of the conventions of a road movie, but much like Sideways, the initially wacky detour to Woody's brother's house in Hawthorne becomes the heart of the movie.  It's a place where people don't ask much of life or each other, and they don't say much, either -- though Woody's wife (June Squibb) is never at a loss for words.  Despite the traditional comedy backgrounds of both Forte and Odenkirk, it's Squibb's work that provides the most amusement in an otherwise impressively, sometimes amusingly, glum movie.

Though Dern's portrayal of Woody is billed as the centerpiece of Nebraska -- and it is most certainly a terrific one, quite at odds with the intense, often manic roles Dern typically plays -- it's Forte's work that anchors the movie.  While never mocking the kind of man for whom a job selling stereos and a life in a one-bedroom apartment is good enough, Forte's David shows a deep compassion for the silent, inflexible Woody.

Driving a Kia and protecting his father from mockery might not make for a tremendously fulfilling existence, but over the course of their long weekend in Hawthorne, David begins to develop an appreciation for his father -- and the meager hopes on which his shrinking heart feeds.

Shot in widescreen black and white, Nebraska lacks the flashiness of Clooney in Hawaii, the hipster cred of Giamatti drinking wine, or the pure celebrity of a dour Nicholson.  It's a simpler movie, which isn't to say less complex, and it requires concentrated patience from the audience.  Not a lot happens on the surface of Nebraska, and it's not a story that neatly fits the traditional first-act, second-act, third-act arc of Hollywood screenplays with lots of character revelation.  It's debatable whether Woody is even aware of how his small, ordinary past continues to creep into the lives of so many others.

Written by Bob Nelson, Nebraska isn't about an American dream, it's about the lack of one.  When Woody and David finally reach their destination, it's a small, quiet letdown for everyone.  But Woody and Nebraska both will persist, finding ways to recognize that just because a life is simple, dull and uneventful doesn't mean it's without meaning.

It's Death of a Salesman without the neuroses: Attention must be paid to even the most mundane of aspirations, because everyone has a dream he'd like to chase, no matter how outlandish or unbelievable.  At least Woody has the courage to stare his down and look it in the face, which is something his exasperated son has to at least admire -- if not envy.

Viewed Dec. 8, 2013 -- Laemmle North Hollywood

1630

"The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"

 3 / 5 

The first Hunger Games movie was a slavish adaptation of the best-selling novel, which despite a horrifying premise of children mercilessly killing other children is technically a young-adult novel because its protagonist is a teenaged female.  The novel had clear ambitions of commenting on this twisted premise, and was aware of just how outlandish and even angering its premise was.

The movie had no such aspirations, and enjoyed showing the human hunt and the fear on the faces of children.  It was off-putting to see satirical violence played up as entertainment, and the film never found a way to reflect on what it was doing.

Unable to separate my views on the book with my experience watching the movie, I didn't read Catching Fire before seeing the film, and whether that affected my experience or whether this is just a superior film, I'm not sure.

For about half its running time, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is not only a vastly better film than its predecessor, it is compelling, provocative and doesn't back away from some of the hard stuff.  This is mainstream entertainment, so it's not exactly hard-hitting, but Catching Fire is a genuinely intriguing movie for its first hour or so.

Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) are the two victors of The Hunger Games, a sadistic, government-sponsored program that requires youngsters from around the country to participate in a bloodsport competition.  Through an implausible series of events, they became the joint champion, and have been returned to their impoverished, bleak hometown.

But Catching Fire turns out, at least at first, not to be a simple retread of the first story -- the sequel genuinely expands on the themes and deepens the story.  It's quickly established that the Katniss-Peeta duo, and especially Katniss herself, has fomented unrest and dissatisfaction with the government.  The very device used to keep the populace under control is leading to protest, because if a poor hick like Katniss can win against impossible odds, perhaps anyone can.

But the President (Donald Sutherland) and the mastermind of the games (Philip Seymour Hoffman) can't stand for this, so they devise a plan to get Katniss and Peeta back into the deadly arena in a way that will allow them to showcase the government's supreme authority.

Once again, though, there are problems.  Katniss is becoming more politically aware, and her growing conscience is rubbing off on those around her, even the line-towing Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks).  Unwittingly, she's become a symbol of a growing uprising, and while it may be the case that the responsibility is the last thing Katniss wants, she's not left with much of a choice.

In many ways, then The Hunger Games: Catching Fire becomes a fascinating and insightful reflection on the way its own star, the undeniably talented but also seemingly staunchly independent Lawrence, is reacting to her world.  She may have only wanted to be an actress, but now she's a major celebrity -- a fact that brings with it some unpleasant realities.

Katniss is resistant, initially petulant, and confused.  She does what's demanded of her, but not happily. Her made-up relationship with her competitor threatens to overwhelm reality.

But then, just when the film is getting to its most interesting drama, it becomes another chase movie.  The involving Catching Fire becomes the ho-hum Hunger Games, in which a bunch of people who don't know each other are required to try to kill each other.

This version is like a Hunger Games All-Stars, bringing back victors from each of the past 25 years, which at least adds some delicious nuance -- most of them are tired of being celebrities just for killing more people than anyone else, and a great many are inspired by Katniss.  They're newly converted to a sort of pacifism, and they want to stop the games from happening.

Then, they don't.  They start throwing spears and knives, start drowning and stabbing and eviscerating each other, and the filmmakers actually seem to get bored with this, at one point throwing in a pack of wild baboons in a sequence that was so dark (at the theater we attended) to be rendered almost meaningless.

The latter half of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire just can't live up to the first.  Even the addition of a couple of intriguing new characters can't keep the movie from feeling a little worn around the edges for about an hour or so.

The final moments are certainly intriguing, and revisit the promise of the half.  The Hunger Games, it turns out, are the least interesting aspect of The Hunger Games.

Viewed Nov. 29, 2013 -- Laemmle North Hollywood

1900

"Dallas Buyers Club"

 4 / 5 

Dallas Buyers Club begins with man who isn't simply unlikable, he's completely without merit as a human being, and manages the impressive feat of making him into someone heroic.  Along the way, the movie becomes more than a showcase for Matthew McConaughey, it also gives us an astonishing, committed performance by Jared Leto.  McConaughey will deservingly get the spotlight, but Leto is equally remarkable.

The film is "inspired by" the life of Ron Woodroof, who in 1985 discovered he was HIV positive and given 30 days to live.  Facing the same sort of fear and rejection by his friends and co-workers that AIDS patients received by the public at large, Woodroof refuses to accept the prognosis, and almost by accident discovers that drugs banned by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, but available in other countries, might help combat the disease.

Woodroof becomes incensed at the staunch refusal of doctors to help him explore possible alternative treatments, and learns on his own that the initial tests of AZT are not only backed by the deep pockets of pharmaceutical companies, but may be lethal to patients.

He uses a legal loophole to bring unapproved drugs into the U.S. and to create a "buyers club," a group that provides the drugs for free to those who can afford a steep membership fee.  The movie makes no apologies for the capitalist way Woodroof establishes his practice, but it's clear that it's no get-rich-quick scheme -- he may profit a bit (buying a Cadillac and some nicer clothes in the process), but Woodroof uses the funds to secure drugs from all parts of the world, and members of the Dallas Buyers Club begin living longer than anyone expected.

Woodroof gains two primary partners in his enterprise: The first is a conflicted doctor (Jennifer Garner), who recognizes the benefit of what Woodroof is doing -- and sees the ultimate goal of the medical community as financial gain -- but has hesitations about helping him too much.  The second is a transsexual named Rayon (Leto), who latches on to Woodroof more for the companionship than the business opportunity.

The relationship between Woodroof and Rayon is Dallas Buyers Club's greatest strength.  Woodroof is initially repulsed by Rayon, but understands he has no one else to lean on for support.  Rayon, in turn, gets a chance to assert himself and his individuality (the movie never uses the female pronoun), and sees in Woodroof a rare chance to be accepted on his own terms.

Shot in a low-key, straightforward way that borders dangerously on cable-TV-movie territory, Dallas Buyers Club is visually unremarkable, and its script glosses over a few key moments to its detriment.  Especially missing is a key moment of realization that the Buyers Club concept allows for some good to be done -- or, perhaps, that it's purely a money-making venture.  In that, Woodroof's motives are never quite clear.  But the impact the Dallas Buyers Club has most certainly is, as is Woodroof's slow acceptance of the people he is helping.

There are no maudlin moments of sentimental self-realization in the movie; it's clear-eyed when exploring Woodroof's revulsion of gay culture, and equally sure-footed as it depicts his ability to work within a community that was long a source of disgust to him.  If Woodroof seems, by today's standards, to be especially despicable, the film reminds us rather pointedly that his attitude wasn't exactly unusual in the mid-1980s.

Without calling attention to itself, Dallas Buyers Club evokes the time and place with precision; it looks exactly as it should, down to Woodroof's embarrassing hair style.

Neither does McConaughey try to be flashy or showy.  There are few moments of flashiness in his performance, and he's astonishingly committed to the role -- not simply in the weight he lost to play the part, but in a perfect balance of compassion and pragmatism.  The man wants to save his own life; that he manages to save the lives of others is merely coincidental at the start.

Leto has the more visually striking role, beginning as a gentle, delicate beauty filled with easy wit and charm, never ashamed to be vulnerable.  As Rayon, he bypasses almost all of the typical behavior associated with transgender roles in film, and while he embraces Rayon's femininity, there's also a deeply moving scene that ditches the dresses and gets to the heart of who this person is underneath it all.  Neither campy nor archly tragic, Rayon is a complex, fascinating character (not based on real life, but created for the film).  Leto's performance is an indelible one.

Filled with memorable appearances by exceptional character actors (Griffin Dunne is particularly good as a doctor exiled to Mexico), Dallas Buyers Club may not be the most polished film of the year, but it's one of the most compelling.  You may know the ultimate outcome of the main character from the start, but how he gets to the end, and what happens along the way, is fresh and unexpected.

Dallas Buyers Club tells a great story well.  That it happens to be true, and that it happens to be the only major studio film in twenty years to even acknowledge AIDS exists, just makes it all the better.

Viewed Nov. 16, 2013 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks


2130

"Thor: The Dark World"

 2 / 5 

I swear I paid attention.

During the opening moments of Thor: The Dark World, I was taking mental notes, listening to Anthony Hopkins intone about a … well, see, that's the problem.  Thinking back on it, I am still unsure what happened during Thor: The Dark World.

More than any other film series in the past several decades, the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" is less a number of standalone films that are all united by a theme as much as they are an old-fashioned movie serial.   Every Marvel film looks the same -- which is far from a criticism.  It's been a long time since a single film studio or "brand" had such a distinctive look.  The Marvel films are obsessed with commenting on each other, and if viewed as a whole, this tendency to self-reflexivity delights the crowd that follows the films regularly.

(As an aside, I grew up reading comics for hours and hours on end, but my tastes always ran toward Archie, Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge, Mickey Mouse and Dennis the Menace, which I guess aren't really considered reputable comics anymore by most definitions.)

In Thor: The Dark World, for example, such trivial formalities of the cinematic convention like exposition and character introductions are thrown out the window.  If you walk into Thor: The Dark World not having just seen The Avengers, Thor and even Captain America within the past week, good luck to you.

Consider the movie that conventional wisdom holds was the beginning of the blockbuster era: Star Wars.  Yes, audiences are thrust into the action, but through dialogue and careful pacing, they quickly learn who Princess Leia is, what she's doing out in the middle of nowhere, why Darth Vader wants her and, eventually, who Luke Skywalker is and why he wants to get off of his desert planet.  I use Star Wars as a comparison because Disney now owns both Marvel and Lucasfilm, and it's informative to compare the way a "fast-paced" movie unfolded 40 years ago versus the plotting and pacing of today.

In Thor: The Dark World, we're never quite clear exactly why the central villain wants to take over the universe other than because he's a bad guy who can. (For about 90 minutes, I mistook his name as "Malachi," which I thought was an interesting Biblical reference that made me want to look up the connection, only to discover it's Malakeith, making me curious whether it was the poor elocution of actors or the bombastic sound mix that left me mistaken.)  There's some kind of intergalactic convergence that makes Natalie Portman mysteriously vanish into a sinister realm and get infected with some really awful liquid stuff, not because it makes sense to the story to have her go there, but because if she doesn't, there's no movie.

Somehow, and I'm not quite sure how, Thor learns that she's been possessed by this liquid-like stuff, and manages to get to Earth to rescue her.  Their scenes together on Earth are funny and clever and call to mind, for just a moment, the grandaddy of super hero films, Richard Donner's Superman, in their depiction of a heroic figure walking among us.

There are a lot of references to "New York," which I took to mean self-conscious nods directly to the destruction-filled climax of The Avengers, which if the Marvel Cinematic Universe were really being true to itself, would have led to the left hundreds of thousands of people dead, a major world city destroyed in ways that made 9/11 look like kids' stuff, and plunged the world into an economic catastrophe and global depression of unprecedented proportions that would last decades and decades.

Instead, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, physicists still look like super-models and enjoy lunch atop London skyscrapers, and everyone seems pretty happy, even when a newscaster reminds viewers of the "alien attack in New York."  You'd think the world might be a slightly different place knowing the planet is under attack from alien forces descending upon us from throughout the universe, and that a gang of super heroes is fending off the attacks, and a shadowy governmental organization is overseeing this small but elite team.

That could make for an interesting backdrop for a movie about super heroes.  But the Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn't want to play with us in ways that are particularly intriguing, it just wants an excuse to throw a Captain America reference into a movie about Thor and have the audience laugh along.

Once it focuses on the plot, the whole thing gets awfully convoluted; I imagine even some Marvel fans would be a little perplexed if asked to describe the plot of Thor: The Dark World in any detail.  There are a lot of CGI effects, a city that looks like a cross between Caprica of Battlestar Galactica and the Star Wars planet of Coruscant, and some cameos by actors like Renee Russo and Anthony Hopkins.

There are battle scenes on all sorts of different planets with names like Vanaheim (not, I've discovered, a veiled reference to Anaheim, home of Disneyland, which now has a Thor: The Dark World exhibit, but a variation on a name from Norse mythology) and Svartalfheim and Asgard, and all these planets pretty much look alike thanks to modern CGI effects.

The whole movie is one long action scene, punctuated by some surprisingly effective moments of down-to-Earth levity, like the scene in which Thor overhears Jane Foster talking to another man and gets more than a little jealous, which doesn't really befit a demi-god.

I still don't know what happened in Thor: The Dark World, as a whole, but I suppose to a certain degree the plot is irrelevant, as long as there is a post-credit scene setting up another franchise, and several references to other Marvel movies.  That's why the thing was made.  The movie serials used to be the same way; they were likely indecipherable to someone who didn't watch every single episode of Tom Mix or Flash Gordon.

In other words, Thor: The Dark World isn't made for the casual moviegoer, or someone who just wants to go to the movies to enjoy a story told well.  It's made for a particular audience, and as such it will likely be just as satisfying to them as it needs to be, no better or worse, and will make a lot of money while fans wait for the next episode to come along.

Viewed Nov. 11, 2013 -- Laemmle North Hollywood

1310

"Escape from Tomorrow"

 2.5 / 5 

Neither as good as it aspires to be nor as awful as you might imagine, Escape from Tomorrow is already mildly notorious for being the film that got the best of lawyers at The Walt Disney Company, but it's a film that, rather surprisingly, deserves to be seen and considered on its own terms.  There are many times when it's cheap, amateurish and clumsy, but there are also times when Escape from Tomorrow is thoughtful, considered and even quite good.

The movie's director, Randy Moore, sets the entirety of his film at Walt Disney World in Florida (with Disneyland substituting in a number of shots), opening with a whopper of a premise: As he stands shirtless on the balcony of his hotel overlooking Disney's happy theme park, a family man (Roy Abrahamson) is fired from his job -- and then needs to finish up his happier-than-happy vacation without letting his family in on the secret.

What follows is a surreal, angst-ridden, increasingly nightmarish descent into mental chaos as our hero becomes unhinged during the course of the day.  Surrounded by his blond, perky family, he becomes distracted by two pre-pubescent French girls and starts to follow them through the theme parks.

Then, things go really wacko, and Escape from Tomorrow mostly squanders the goodwill it has built up when it branches off into simplistic, hokey science-fiction territory.  Moore may be trying to evoke the black-and-white, surreal worlds of David Lynch and even Alfred Hitchcock, but in that sense he overreaches.  The two halves of this film simply don't mesh, and the cardboard sets and laptop digital effects of the last 40 minutes don't work at all.

That said, there's something about Escape from Tomorrow that merits serious attention, there's an element that is undeniably effective.

Far from a "Disney-bashing" film, Escape from Tomorrow takes very seriously the idea that tens of millions of people a year consume Disney's manufactured happiness, and that real people with real problems walk through the turnstiles of these theme parks.

In its first half, Escape from Tomorrow benefits from the way it was shot: chaotically, without benefit of rehearsal and planning.  With its flat, monochrome design and its washed-out, hand-held visuals, Escape from Tomorrow invites comparisons to the ground-breaking French New Wave work of directors like Francois Truffaut and, more especially, Jean-Luc Godard, who were captivated by the idea of showing real people in real settings, forcing the idea of plot into the background.

Moore, his actors and his film technicians have done some pretty remarkable things, creating an atmosphere of unease and discomfort amid the incessant happiness.  The inappropriate sexual obsession of the father, his need to distract himself from his unpleasant reality, and his increasingly unbalanced mindset are impressively and memorably drawn.  The closed location of Disney World is certainly fair game for a psychological drama -- and while it's obvious why Disney wouldn't want to set a serious drama in its theme parks, it's rather a wonder more serious artists haven't been compelled to use a Disney theme park as a serious backdrop.

In that regard, Escape from Tomorrow works surprisingly well about half the time.  Then, like a malfunctioning roller coaster, it goes off the rails in a disastrous way.  Some intriguing plot points that are set up early in the movie are resolved in ways that are over the top, unbelievable and ultimately so disjointed with what has come before that it's hard to know if even the filmmakers took themselves seriously.  Maybe they were just so thrilled by their surreptitious accomplishment of filming their story amid the crowds that they thought no one else would notice that their script descended into foolishness.

Escape from Tomorrow ultimately feels a bit like one of the Disney theme park rides on which it's set: It begins intriguingly, sets up a clear story, then something goes terribly wrong.  On a ride, that sets the audience up for a fun thrill.  In a movie, it sets the audience up for immense disappointment.

For Disney fans and serious film buffs, Escape from Tomorrow is worth a look, and is not without its merits, though a climactic scene involving explosive diarrhea, profuse bleeding and the coughing up of unpleasant foreign objects isn't among them.

Viewed Nov. 3, 2013 -- Video on Demand