"Frozen"

 3 / 5 

Hans Christian Andersen has long held an allure for Disney animators, but not surprisingly his long, complex, often melancholy and heavily religious stories have proven difficult to adapt.  Still, after their successful, groundbreaking retelling of The Little Mermaid, there's little wonder Disney animators took a second look at a concept that proved too much for even Walt Disney to tackle.

The story is "The Snow Queen," and for Frozen, screenwriters have taken a few bits and pieces from Andersen's story and grafted them to a more traditional narrative.  Instead of two little children from a village, we're presented two princesses (the more cynical among you may already determine some nice merchandising opportunities) who live in the mythical, more or less Norwegian kingdom of Arrendale.

One of them, Elsa, has been born with an odd power: She can conjure up snow and ice at whim.  This delights her younger sister, Anna, but after Elsa accidentally harms her sister during childhood, she shuts herself away and refuses to let anyone know of her abilities, lest she cause more damage.

This is just the setup, and its complexity reveals the film's biggest flaw: It's emotionally a bit icy.  A mermaid who wants to be human, a beast who wants to be a man, a lion who needs to accept his responsibility, a young girl who wants to be released from her forced imprisonment -- they all engage the heart as well as the head.  A princess who has to find her sister who has run away because she turns things to ice and has never learned to control her power but is nonetheless ashamed of it … that's a bit more complicated.

Frozen is a visually masterful film, possibly the best-looking movie Disney has ever created.  Those millions of bubbles under the sea and the march of the animals toward Pride Rock may have been previous high points, but they're nothing compared with the snow, ice and shimmering, frosty beauty of Frozen (which is a movie that looks just fine in 2-D, by the way).

Voice casting is spot on, with an alarmingly good Kristen Bell as Anna and Wicked star Idina Menzel as Elsa.  Menzel makes a fantastic impression, but anyone who's seen Wicked will be hard-pressed not to hear more than a few reminders of Elphaba and Glinda in the soaring duets.

Musically, the movie is all over the place; combining musical styles can work well (think about the calypso beats and Broadway standards of Mermaid), here the pop-rock love ballads don't quite mesh with the more standards songs.  The music is merely fine rather than spectacular.

Best of all are the supporting characters, especially the endlessly amusing, thoroughly adorable snowman named Olaf, who longs to know what summer is like; and a helpful-if-dim reindeer named Sven.  It's also enjoyable to see the standard gender roles reversed -- even in female-driven movies like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and even Tangled, the women wanted to please the men.  In Frozen, the men are strong, interesting characters but secondary to the movie's two females.

It's a shame, then, that the plight of Anna and Elsa doesn't quite feel as strong as it should.  In a visually ravishing sequence, Elsa flees her kingdom and vows never to return -- but her selfishness is presented as a sort of declaration of independence, and unlike, say, Elphaba's key "Defying Gravity" moment, it feels pressured by plot contrivance rather than character.

Similarly, Anna's determination to find her sister struggles for justification.  Her kingdom is under a snowy permafrost, but Anna is less concerned about that than being snubbed by her sister for the umpteenth time.

These aren't small flaws: Frozen struggles to find a story that is genuinely compelling on a purely emotional level.  Still, it gives us some genuinely engaging characters, great performances, and looks absolutely extraordinary.  It's an exquisite film, and on that level ranks up there with the best work Disney animators have ever undertaken.  It's just odd to discover that for all of its great strengths, Frozen left me a little cold.

Viewed Dec. 25, 2013 -- AMC Promenade 16

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Special Guest Review! "All Is Lost" Reviewed by Jeff Watson

For the first time in the history of Out There in the Dark,

we have a guest blogger!  John's partner Jeff weighs in

on the very visceral reaction he had to All Is Lost.

 1 / 5 

All Is Lost, including the two hours of my life that I spent enduring this giant question mark of a movie. 

Who is this guy?

Does he have a name?

Why should I care about him? 

What is motivating him, at the age of eighty-something (Ed. Note: Redford is 78), to set sail alone on the Indian Ocean? 

Why does he make a series of seemingly illogical choices in the face of his predicament?

Is he unaware that the weather, 1,700 nautical miles from Sumatra, can be volatile?

Has he not heard of GPS transponders?

Why does it occur to him to distill his own water before it dawns on him to use his emergency fishing supplies to catch a fish?

REALLY?

Fine.

I can suspend disbelief with the best of them. I do it everyday.  I work for Disney for God’s sake.

But I can’t suspend my annoyance with this uninspired, senseless piece of cinema.  C’mon!

Yes, Robert Redford can hold the screen with relative ease.  But so could that whale from Blackfish.  The whale, I rooted for.  The crazy old guy on the yacht alone in the middle of nowhere, not so much.  I mean, when my grandfather was this guy’s age, he wasn’t allowed out in the garage without supervision.

*******

JOHN: So, you didn't like the movie?

JEFF: I'd rather watch a marathon of Madea films.  

"All Is Lost"

 2 / 5 

Having spent a sum total of less than a day of my life on board a water vessel of any sort, I'm the last person who can criticize the technical veracity of All Is Lost, but the nameless character played by Robert Redford doesn't seem the brightest of sailors.

There he is, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, when his sailboat is hit by a stray cargo container.  Water floods into the boat, destroying the communication equipment and leaving Redford's stalwart character, unhelpfully named "Our Man" in the credits, all alone.

Maybe what he does next is exactly what any experienced sailor would do, but it seems unlikely.  He tries to patch up his boat, tries to get his ruined radio to work, and eventually ends up jumping into an inflatable life raft as his vessel sinks beneath the surface.

All Is Lost tries to be two things: a blatant bid for an Oscar for a film legend, and an allegorical ode to the indomitability of the human spirit.  It fails at both.

It bungles the Oscar opportunity by failing to give us an idea of who this mystery man is, and although Redford inarguably can hold attention on screen, even he can't create a character out of thin air.  All Is Lost gives us absolutely no information about why "Our Man" went out to sea in the first place, what he's trying to find (even if just a spirit of adventure), or if he feels lost and adrift in his own life.  There's a single clue: His boat is called the Virginia Jean, but what does that mean?  Is it his wife?  His daughter?

The movie opens with a few lines of indifferently delivered narration.  They're just about the only words uttered in the movie, with the exception of one expletive screamed to the heavens about an hour in to the film.  But they provide no insight into this character -- and without it, the film is purely a technical achievement.

On that level, it's interesting enough, though hardly unprecedented.  Movies as varied as Open Water, Life of Pi and Jaws have made the sea more menacing, majestic and compelling, and the long central sequence in which "Our Man" and the Virginia Jean are tossed about at sea look a bit too much like they were shot in a studio with a fire hose trained on Redford.

As for the allegory: We get it.  Never give up on life.  There are always possibilities.  Hope is never lost.  All that good stuff.  They're important messages, they can be rendered beautifully.  But without any clue of who we're watching, we're left with no idea why it matters.  Of course "Our Man" will try to save himself at every junction, because what would be the point of making a movie about a man who just gives up?  It would be an awfully short movie.

As it is, All Is Lost feels like an awfully long movie, and seems to struggle to find ways to show us how desperate "Our Man's" situation is.  There are a lot of shots of "Our Man" eating canned beans.  And yet, a few scenes later, there he is cooking up a meal on a propane stove.  He goes days and days trying to cope without water or food, never realizing until it's too late that there's a fishing line and probably a decent number of fish right under him.

The guy can't navigate by the stars, but lo and behold he manages to recover an expensive, unopened sextant from his sinking ship and use it to plot a course (on a free-floating raft, no less) into shipping lanes.

The problem with All Is Lost isn't that these unlikely things happen, it's that you're aware they're happening and you focus on just how unlikely they are.  In the fantastical, joyful movie Joe Versus the Volcano (which otherwise bears no resemblance to All Is Lost in any way), Joe and his beautiful girlfriend are on a raft in the middle of the ocean when Joe sees the moon rise, falls to his knees and thanks God for his life, even if it has set him adrift.

I kept waiting for some similar scene to happen in All Is Lost -- a moment that conveyed the existential nightmare of being lost at sea, wondering if anyone back home even knows you're out there.  I wanted "Our Man" to realize the foolishness of his ways, to seek contrition, to find peace in his impossible situation.  This isn't that movie, not even close.

All Is Lost proves that even at 78 years old, Robert Redford can still command the screen like nobody's business, but that even an actor of his underrated, formidable achievement can't be compelling without material.  There's nothing here, nothing at all, just a nameless man who has to figure out a way to survive.  How they managed to make that so uninspiring is beyond me, but they did.

There's some beautiful underwater photography in All Is Lost, and it's quite literally impossible not to find some compelling drama in the plight of a man drifting in a raft in the middle of the Indian Ocean, hoping to be rescued.  All Is Lost is never boring, exactly, it's simply as aimless as that little life raft, always threatening to deflate and sink, and somehow staying above the surface, though just barely.

Viewed Dec. 23, 2013 -- Sundance Sunset Cinemas

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"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

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"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

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"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

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"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

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