Favorite Films: "The Poseidon Adventure"

The Poseidon Adventure toes the line between broad camp comedy and gripping drama in ways peculiar to the odd sub-genre of disaster films that were so enormously popular in the 1970s -- and it succeeds like none before or since by its sheer audacity.  This is not a subtle film, but it is an intensely sincere one, and that's what makes it so special.

A brief on-screen preface tells you everything you need to know in 33 words, the highest of high concepts: "At midnight on New Year's Eve, the S.S. Poseidon, en route from New York to Athens, met with disaster and was lost. There were only a handful of survivors. This is their story ..."

For those who live under rocks, the disaster is a tidal wave, and in the inimitable style of showman/producer Irwin Allen, it doesn't just hit on New Year's Eve -- it hits precisely at midnight, just as young women in hot pants, fading movie stars in satin gowns and leading men in tuxedoes are all helpfully gathered in the grand ballroom of the old ship, which just happens to be on her final voyage.  And it doesn't just hit the ship with force, it turns it all the way over.  "We're upside-down," characters helpfully note just after the ship turns upside down.

That happens after a 20-minute prelude that introduces each character in a fashion that would later be perfected by TV's The Love Boat: Short vignettes give us just enough information to know that the busty woman is a former hooker now married to a gruff cop, the old couple are Jews, the teenagers are bickering brother and sister, the handsome macho guy is a preacher exiled for his unorthodox ways.

It's the beautiful genius of The Poseidon Adventure to have a cast so game, so ready for this, that even the ridiculous moments are treated as serious drama; given some of the worst dialogue ever committed to screen, the actors make it all feel honest and genuine, if not quite fresh.

They all know that we're not here to see them act, anyway, we're here for the spectacle, and in that regard, The Poseidon Adventure delivers.  This is pre-digital, epic-scale filmmaking at its finest: When that ship flips over, everything turns over, setting in motion a quest for survival that manages to be as riveting the 30th time you see it as it was the first.

The pure moviegoing joy of watching The Poseidon Adventure is knowing how real it all is: Those aren't green-screen backgrounds Shelley Winters, Gene Hackman and Stella Stevens are swimming through, it's actual water.  The fire that surrounds Jack Albertson and Ernest Borgnine is as real as fire gets.  This is a movie that is bound and determined to give the audience its money's worth.

So, by the final scenes, when the Man of God is climbing out of the fire to reach salvation above (symbolism alert!), even modern audiences have to give a little gasp at the sheer enormity of it all.

There used to be a phrase for films like The Poseidon Adventure: "a movie-movie."  It knows it's a movie, it knows it's all for show, but Irwin Allen and his all-star cast are going to give you the best damned show the silver screen can offer.

It's a shame movies like The Poseidon Adventure are relegated to afternoon airings on AMC and to home video.  We'd all be better off if every generation got to see them on the silver screen, to remember that once, movies like this were possible.

There are moments that The Poseidon Adventure threatens to become hilariously awful, especially toward the beginning -- but when a movie wants to please you so desperately it will put both buxom Stella Stevens and wide-bodied Shelley Winters into wet costumes (for such very different reasons), you'll forgive it pretty much anything.

Perhaps the most astonishing and wonderful thing about The Poseidon Adventure is that four decades ago, it was considered family entertainment.  What the kids didn't understand (the hooker, the preacher) wouldn't hurt them, and everyone could talk about the underwater sequences and that Christmas tree on the car ride home.

The Poseidon Adventure may feel dated in so many ways, but it has lost virtually none of its power to captivate an audience, to stun both grown-ups and kids into wide-eyed astonishment, and to remind us of the style and showmanship that used to grace movie screens so long ago.  It's not a perfect film, but it sure is a treasure.

Favorite Films: "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan"

Toward the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the starship Enterprise has narrowly escaped certain doom.  Admiral James T. Kirk looks around the bridge and notices something awry: an empty chair where Mr.   should be.  The Enterprise may be safe, but something is very wrong.

It's the beginning of one of the screen's great death scenes, a moment that will move even those who have never seen an episode of Star Trek in their lives -- and that ability to transcend both its source material and its science-fiction genre is what makes Star Trek II one of the great adventure films, if not one of the great films, period.  Instead of taking the easy way and focusing on the action and visual effects, Star Trek II goes much deeper, emphasizing deep emotions and finely realized characters.

By the time it was made in 1982, William Shatner had played James T. Kirk for the better part of two decades, and while he's often mocked for his overly dramatic tendencies, just look at how he plays the moment when he realizes Spock is not on the bridge -- with just a subtle shift of expression, he conveys the respect, friendship and, yes, love these two characters have for each other.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is the best of the Star Trek films because at its heart it is a celebration of the loyalty and deep affection the entire Enterprise crew has for each other.  This is a movie that could be put to good use by organizational psychologists for the way it shows different people with different temperaments working together, respecting the unique contributions each individual makes.  He may be the captain of the ship, but Kirk doesn't consider himself above reproach.

Today's filmmakers may wonder why a movie like Avatar or Iron Man can be a box-office smash but not engender the longterm affection of audiences the way Star Trek does, but one look at The Wrath of Khan shows why: The entire story is rooted in the way the characters interact with each other.  It is a very human story, beginning and ending with the uncertain feelings Kirk has about growing older.

The plot really heats up with the introduction of the central villain, a superhuman egotist named Khan, who harbors a very deep grudge toward Kirk.  The character is a holdover from a 1967 episode of the "Star Trek" TV series, but most people who watch Star Trek II have never seen him before -- and the film tells us just as much as we need to know to get the gist of their feud.

Fascinatingly, Ricardo Montalban, who plays Khan, and William Shatner didn't actually work together on the film -- the two characters interact with each other via viewing screens, but they work incredibly well together.  And while both of them are astonishingly effective, Montalban's Khan is magnetic, exuding an obsessive vengeance that may have been based on Captain Ahab but that Montalban makes all his own.  Thirty years ago, Montalban was mostly dismissed as a TV actor repeating a TV role, but time has shown his Khan to be one of the screen's all-time great villains.

Backed by a rousing, memorable score by James Horner and some still-impressive visual effects, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a complete success on virtually every level, including the first (and impressive) screen performance by Kirstie Alley as Lt. Saavik.

But what makes Star Trek II so special is the effortless ease with which the crew of the Enterprise work together, particularly the central relationship between Kirk and Spock.  At the beginning of the film, Spock has ascended the ranks to become captain of the Enterprise, but when danger calls, it is clear that only Kirk is equipped to take command.  Kirk comes to ask Spock for permission -- and their quiet scene together is exquisite.  Spock cuts to the truth of the situation: "Commanding a starship is your first, best destiny -- anything else is a waste of material."

These two know each other, and the film takes it for granted that we know them.  The real beauty of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is that we do -- even if we are completely unfamiliar with "Star Trek," we know loyal, true friendship when we see it.  Star Trek II celebrates it, grieves for it, and basks in the undying hope that even when fate may seem to cut it short, friendship is as unswerving and true as the stars themselves.

"Identity Thief"

 2 / 5 

With its formulaic mix of broad slapstick and sappy sincerity, Identity Thief is a foul-mouthed, sex-obsessed version of a Disney movie from the 1970s, replicated later by Disney's own Touchstone in the 1980s.  It's got a high-concept set-up (middle-management executive finds out his identity has been stolen by a crass, plus-sized thief), an unexpected road trip, some bad guys with guns, a couple of zany car chases, and a heart-tugging finale.

Because Identity Thief is from Universal, it can go for R-rated raunch, but overall it works about as well as a movie like Snowball Express or Big Business, delivering fewer laughs and more sap than expected, but still manages to be superficially entertaining, mostly due to the hard work of its two stars, Jason Bateman as the executive, Sandy (that's a girl's name, ha ha -- the movie's favorite running joke), and Melissa McCarthy as the thief.

McCarthy, of course, was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Bridesmaids, the movie that Identity Thief's marketers most desperately wish this one was.  Once again, she proves she's one of the most fearless comedians working in film today, willing to do anything to get a laugh.  As Diana, the cyber-criminal who goes on spending sprees with other people's money, she tries hard to create a fully realized character, but the script does her no favors.

Mostly, Diana is a caricature, a broadly defined broad whose deep-down loneliness has driven her to her many misdeeds.  By playing up the warmth and playing down the realism, the filmmakers missed a chance to take us into some edgy, dark, bizarre territory the way Martin Scorsese did with some similarly distasteful characters in The King of Comedy three decades ago.  Identity Thief doesn't have that kind of nerve, opting instead for a middle-of-the-road approach that plays down her sociopathic tendencies in favor of her brazen goofiness.

McCarthy still manages to be wildly inappropriate and almost singularly equipped to repeat dialogue that would be impossible for any other actor to say, much less make funny.

Bateman is her match as a comedic actor, combining exasperation and desperation and grounding them in a reality that helps guide the film through its less effective moments.  There are, alas, plenty of those here -- for every genuine belly laugh, and there are several, there are two or three misconceived efforts to be sentimental and find a way to make these two characters somehow like each other despite Diana's despicable misdeeds.

There are also some needless, one-dimensional villains who are also hot on Diana's trail, a way-too-long detour into broad sex comedy (too obviously trying to emulate Bridesmaids), and a completely superfluous sequence that has Diana and Sandy battling a snake in the woods.  At that point, Identity Thief has quite literally gone off the track, and it never completely finds its way back.

Identity Thief never hits the comic heights it aspires to and never creates compelling chemistry between its weirdly matched characters. It's a mild diversion, but from actors like McCarthy and Bateman, it's fair to expect a lot more. 

Viewed Feb. 9, 2013 -- ArcLight Hollywood

2000

Catching Up: "We Need to Talk About Kevin"

 3.5 / 5 

You should know it up front, because it's something the film is a little coy about: Kevin has killed a lot of people.  Knowing this informs everything that comes, and "spoils" nothing -- this is a movie about something unspeakably awful and someone unspeakably evil.

We Need to Talk About Kevin suffers just a bit for the hesitancy it displays in communicating this information.  If you were to watch it again, and I'm not sure why you ever would want to, the weird, languid, spaced-out moments of the opening would make sense.

They're images that are in the thoughts of Eva Khatchadourian, Kevin's mother, who is now just a shattered shell of a woman, thinking back on the life that got her to where she is now.  It is not in any way a happy life, and if there's one thing that can definitively be said about We Need to Talk About Kevin is that it is far, far from a happy movie.  There is not a moment that this movie will make you feel better about life; I have never had children, and We Need to Talk About Kevin left me seriously questioning my own parenting skills, worrying for children I didn't have.

Tilda Swinton plays Eva as a woman who was on the verge of losing her sanity the moment she discovered her pregnancy.  She and her husband Franklin (John C. Reilly, whose naturally sunny demeanor is intentionally forced and out of place here) have very different views of their son, who in turn throws very different attitudes toward them -- to his father, he's warm and loving, to his stay-at-home mother, he's distant, cold, alien.

Eva can't pinpoint a moment it went wrong, because it was so very wrong from the start.  Now, she's left to piece through the memories on her own, unable or unwilling to leave town, her husband and daughter -- who turned out well herself -- strangely absent.  But then, everything is strange in Eva's life. We Need to Talk About Kevin moves back and forth in time, floating and meandering in the odd, disconnected way Eva herself feels.

Everything that happens in We Need to Talk About Kevin is a shock.  Why wouldn't the parents have known something was horribly wrong despite the reassurances of a pediatrician?  How is it possible Franklin is so unaware of his own son's sociopathic tendencies?  Could Eva's own emotional distance have affected the boy?  Might she have inadvertently planted the idea for his mass destruction?  And why, for God's sake, wouldn't she have done something about this long ago?

These are all the same questions Eva has, answered only by the simple facts: This happened, and nothing is going to change it.  She views it as her punishment to stay behind, to face the abuse heaped upon her by the townspeople to whom she is just as responsible as her son.

We Need to Talk About Kevin is filled with cool, even-handed cinematography (which emphasizes the color red, maybe a bit too frequently), a mannered and bleakly effective central performance by Swinton, and a slow and methodical pace, but the standout in the film is Kevin himself, played with galvanizing anger and rage by two different actors.

From six to eight, Jasper Newell plays him with cold dispassion, a hollow emptiness that refuses to be filled with anything other than hostility.  As a teenager, Ezra Miller adds fear-inducing mirth and glee to the performance -- Kevin takes delight in the pain he's causing, in the act he plays for his father and the bizarre regard he has for his mother.  This pair of actors create something rare: a character we've not seen before in the movies, a boy not like any other boy, vicious and calculating and completely without remorse.

We Need to Talk About Kevin doesn't open itself to a nature-versus-nurture debate -- Kevin is an awful, terrible human being, and his mother is right to be afraid of him.  Yet, its certainty about Kevin may be its biggest flaw: There is no examination of the crime or the perpetrator, purely observation, and Swinton's Eva is so far beyond help herself that there's no perspective.  We Need to Talk About Kevin is as dispassionate and deliberate as its central character.

But it is stunning.  There are moments that will literally take your breath away with their daring.  We Need to Talk About Kevin doesn't flinch -- even, and especially, when you wish it would.

"Warm Bodies"

 2.5 / 5 

Warm Bodies is a fitfully entertaining trifle, a riff on the kinds of big-budget monster-mashups that have proven so popular with audiences, combining The Walking Dead with Twilight in a way that could have been funnier if the filmmakers had taken the all-out spoof approach.

Instead, they're semi-serious, giving us a hero (Nicholas Hoult) who delivers rapid-fire narration of his thoughts but otherwise can barely grunt and shuffle along, being as undead as he is.  He doesn't remember his name, but is pretty sure it began with an "R," and that's about the funniest the jokes get here, folks -- the writers were clearly more amused with themselves than the audience is.

"R" spends his undead days and nights roaming around an airport that looks vaguely European, because it's Montreal, though the film never specifies where it's set -- it's one big, anonymous city that some time in the past was decimated by a rapidly spreading plague that turned most people into zombies.

The fact that we even notice the not-quite-American airport and try to read the signs, looking for clues where this might be taking place, indicates that Warm Bodies isn't successful in holding our attention with the story alone.  Maybe, like so many other zombie movies, part of the problem is that zombies just sort of stand there not doing much, certainly not saying much, which rather limits the opportunity for comedy.  So, give some props to Hoult (no, he's not at all the same strange little kid from About a Boy) for doing what he can to make "R" engaging within some rather serious constraints.

Miles away from the airport is the city's walled-off center, now an enclave for the last remaining humans, who don't know whether they are the last Americans or the last people, period.  They're assuming the latter and taking no chances under the leadership of their justifiably paranoid leader (John Malkovich), who recruits able-bodied teens for missions beyond the wall when supplies like medicine are running low.

In the latest group is the leader's daughter Julie (Teresa Palmer) and her boyfriend Perry (Dave Franco, James's lookalike brother).  On their mission, they're accosted by some wayward airport zombies who got bored and decided to head for the action of the city -- one of the film's conceits is that zombies still maintain a tiny bit of buried humanity, an idea you'll either roll with or you won't.  After a scuffle, "R" attacks Perry and eats his brain in a polite, PG-13 kind of way, absorbing his memories, which means he immediately falls in love with Julie.

"R" manages to get Julie back to the airport and perform some tentative, teenage-zombie-in-love moves on her, but naturally she's none too thrilled about the idea of making out with a guy whose tongue tastes like her dead boyfriend's brains.  Will these two kids from different worlds find a way to make the relationship work?  Might that little glimpse into a zombie's empty soul mean there's hope for "R"?

Warm Bodies is a genial attempt to be a bit more intelligent about teenage romance than Twilight, but it's still hard to care much about a zombie and the girl he kidnaped.  The young leads make a good effort, but they don't generate a lot of chemistry, and a subplot involving a race of super zombies is a half-hearted attempt to create tension.

Warm Bodies will amuse uncritical audiences, but its desire to stay wryly sweet and keep the focus on lighthearted rom-com doesn't fully work.  These undead corpses who munch on living human flesh and can only be killed by a bullet to the brain really don't make very good boyfriends.

Viewed Feb. 2, 2013 -- ArcLight Hollywood

2110

"The Guilt Trip"

 2 / 5 

Let us take it as a matter of faith that both Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand are gifted comic actors.  This is something you might not realize solely on the basis of The Guilt Trip, a listless road-trip movie that makes some seriously wrong turns.

You don't have to reach as far back as What's Up Doc? or For Pete's Sake to see Streisand's gifts -- they were on lesser but still fine display in 2004's Meet the Fockers.  She's great at situational comedy and even better (or, at least, was decades ago) at flat-out farce.  Movies like Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin prove Rogen knows how to mine comic gold out of seemingly the most mundane of premises, though his career has taken a rather odd trajectory of late.

So, what goes wrong in The Guilt Trip?  For starters, it doesn't seem to know what to do with the talents of either of its stars, even though they're its executive producers.  They're both playing it way too safe here as Andy, a struggling thirtysomething scientist-turned-inventor, and his overbearing Jewish mother, Joyce, who decide to take a road trip together.

The motivation for the trip isn't as patently absurd as, say, Steve Martin's and John Candy's in Planes, Trains and Automobiles or as weird as Albert Brooks's was in Mother (a similar movie that's superior on every level).  It's forced and contrived, as Andy sets up a series of meetings to pitch the non-chemical cleaner he has invented and decides to take his mother along when she reveals something about her (and his) past he never knew.

And there, precisely, is the dilemma.  The movie is marketed as "One Mother of a Road Trip," when really it tries almost too hard to be a warm, touching, heartfelt tale of a mother reconnecting with her distant son.  Marketing aside, you don't put Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand in a movie together to watch them emote -- unless, perhaps, you're Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand.

Every minor mishap and hazard along this road comes with thorough emotional explanations, as if watching these two wind up in a topless bar or scarfing down a 50-oz. steak wouldn't be enough.  There's nary a bare breast or hint of vomit to be seen -- and, let's face it, that's what you'd want to see in this post-Apatow comedy world.  The broad, slapsticky stuff is pushed aside almost entirely; in fact, you'll have to stay until the very last of the end credits to see the movie's sole laugh-out-loud bit of physical comedy, which didn't even make it into the film itself.

Really, why make a movie like this unless you're going to mine the comic possibilities inherent in 70-year-old Babs getting drunk in Vegas?  Instead, she sheepishly walks into the room at 7 a.m. and tells her son what she did the night before.  A side trip to the Grand Canyon doesn't involve a mule or a Native American headdress or a spill in the Colorado River; the two stars just stand there and try to riff off of National Lampoon's Vacation for a moment.

And yet, somehow, The Guilt Trip isn't a total failure.  Streisand is, as she always has been, a confident, ingratiating screen presence, the kind of actress you like almost despite yourself.  In full schlub mode, Rogen is charmingly flummoxed by his inability to find success and happiness.  And in a few of these warm-and-fuzzy moments, of which there are far too many in The Guilt Trip, the movie works.

Most notably, I looked up the name Ari Graynor to see who the actress was who so successfully delivers a single word on screen that brings an unexpectedly strong emotional core to a dramatic scene that threatens to fall disappointingly flat.  And when, in a cheap motel, Streisand finally lets loose and tells her son exactly what she thinks of the way he's been acting, she once again demonstrates how accomplished she is at toeing that fine line between anger and sweetness, between humor and pathos.

But, boy, The Guilt Trip makes you work for those few moments, and work far too hard.  Neither pleasingly bland nor riotously inappropriate (you wonder what that movie might have been like), The Guilt Trip is an unfortunate, almost unrelievedly mediocre misfire. 

Viewed Jan. 20, 2013 -- Pacific's Sherman Oaks 5

1945

"Amour"

 4.5 / 5 

The first two shots of Amour announce its simple, quiet brilliance.  In the first, firefighters break into a Parisian apartment and discover the body of an old woman meticulously placed on a bed, surrounded by flowers.  Amour will have no plot surprises in that sense: The woman has died.

But in the next long, static shot, she is alive, part of an audience preparing to watch a concert.  In the traditional, narrative sense that matters so much to Hollywood, nothing happens -- but the shot is a little cinematic miracle, as director Michael Haneke manages to make the woman and her husband stand out even while they blend in.  They get ready for the performance, they exchange a few unheard words, they could be anyone.

They are Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emannuelle Riva).  They are in their eighties, have been married for more years than they likely can count, and are so sure of each others' steady presence that what happens the next morning at breakfast is something neither knows what to do about.  It's a perfectly ordinary morning, Anne makes an egg, sits down and vanishes into herself.  The moment doesn't last long, but it is the moment that will end a marriage and at least one life -- slowly, with desperate sadness.

Amour is a sad film, and a lovely one, but Haneke seems less interested in eliciting an emotional response from the audience.  Like the pianist the audience is assembled to watch in the opening shot, this is a film that demands to be admired for its artistic and technical accomplishments, to be regarded and contemplated more than savored.

It is, clearly, not a film for audiences accustomed to narrative action and dramatic arcs.  Amour encompasses a wonderful story told with sweet sympathy, but when it comes to seeing old people on film, it is as far from Driving Miss Daisy or Cocoon than, I imagine, most American audiences are willing to see.  Many in the audience I saw it with grew restless, some were perplexed, others riveted to the screen -- but everyone let out a sudden shriek when a moment of shocking violence occurs, one that is so modest by American standards it is hardly worth mentioning, but that elicits a reaction so sharp it speaks to the ways in which viewers will be emotionally wrapped up in Amour even if they find it distant and cold.

With a barely moving camera, meticulously composed shots and almost icy insistence on forcing us to watch the most personal, often humiliating moments of a vivacious spirit whose life is coming to an end, Amour demands patience and rewards it with a thoughtful, complex examination of its title subject.  What is love?  What does it mean?

Curiously and enticingly, Haneke lets us know only what we see and hear of characters who keep much to themselves.  Their adult daughter (Isabelle Huppert) is told her mother has had a stroke well after it happens, and her reaction -- and that of her parents -- is unexpected and, most importantly, unexplained.  Haneke knows only these three people could understand.

After that night at the concert and an unseen trip to the hospital, Anne will never leave the apartment again.  The entire film, save its first three shots, are contained in this magnificent dwelling that, itself, is ever so slowly falling apart.

Rather soon after arriving home, Anne says it might be better if she were to die now.  "Put yourself in my situation," she reasons with her husband.  Neither betrays their intellectual's inclination for emotional restraint, but the love in their eyes and heart is evident.  Georges refuses, Anne knows she is helpless.

Both Trintignant and Riva are extraordinary -- but she, in particular, astounds with a performance that demands absolutely no dramatic ferocity, no histrionics or artifice.

In Anne, she creates a woman with a long life, lovely at times, no doubt unlovely at others.  She is not an easy woman, but she is a soul, one that is slowly fading, and Amour asks, quietly but boldly, if you loved someone, what, in the end, would you do any differently?  Love is patient and kind, we have been told; love never fails. Amour reminds us that is true.

Viewed Jan. 18, 2013 -- Sundance Sunset Cinemas

1915