My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

I'm still pretty new to anime. I grew up with Star Blazers, but didn't even realize it was Japanese at the time. I just recognized that it was a highly unusual style, and was surprised later in life to see other things that looked like it. Somehow anime never got a hold on me, even though I loved some western cartoons that were clearly influenced by it (The Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack remain among my all-time favorite shows). I just never really exposed myself to it.
In 2012 I decided to rectify this, and the obvious place to start was watching Akira. I respected it very much as a work of art, even enjoyed it, but it didn't really connect with me. I followed that up with a couple of well-regarded television shows that I didn't really like at all, and eventually decided that anime wasn't for me. I delayed the project, figuring I'd eventually return to it, but I'd lost some enthusiasm.
But there was a thing in the back of my head. Ian Loring, who I've mentioned before as one of the hosts of 35mm Heroes and Dude and a Monkey, is a reviewer whose opinion I very much respect. For several years now he's talked about Hiyao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro as the first film he would ever watch with his children once he got around to having some (and his wife has just given birth to their first as I write this, so grats to them). Meanwhile, here in the States, my best friend's wife last year gave birth to their first child. Her first birthday is coming up and I was wondering what I should get her for the occasion, and thought I'd check this movie out as a possible gift on Ian's recommendation. I hoped for something unusual, sweet, and perhaps a bit silly.
My Neighbor Totoro is definitely all of those things, but to a much greater degree than I expected. Bits of it are quite silly, and in fact the movie sometimes seems to be set in a completely different world from the one we live in. The whole thing is indescribably sweet, every second of it. Sometimes it's just sweet and lovely, like the scene in the rain at the bus stop. Sometimes it's sweet and painful, like Mei (the younger girl, about four years old) running off to take the corn she's picked to her mother, hoping it will save her. Sometimes it's sweet and funny, like when Satsuki (the older girl, about nine or ten) and Mei frighten away the “dust bunnies.” But it's always sweet; I watch the entire movie with a smile on my face, and often slightly misty-eyed as well. So, as to its being unusual, it's unusual mostly in that I think it might be the best children's movie I've ever seen.
First of all, it just looks amazing. The exteriors are gorgeous, as if the characters are walking through an impressionist painting. These are landscapes by Monet, or perhaps Cézanne, and you feel like Miyazaki sat and painted each individual frame with oils. Brilliant colors, hazy boundaries, and heavy shadows abound. Interiors, meanwhile, are much sharper, more in the style of mid-Disney and slightly less to my taste, but still lovely. And then the characters are drawn in a style that is very much what I expect from anime: distinctive (each character has his or her own look) and very expressive. I love the exaggerated facial expressions.
And the story is perfect, in that there sort of isn't a story. There's no plot, no antagonist, nothing to be overcome or defeated. There is no climax or denouement. There is no moral to this story. We just have these two young sisters, and their mother is very sick and the family has moved to the country to be nearer the hospital where she's staying, and they're worried about her, but they're also caught up in all the wonder of discovering their new surroundings, and it's just a few months in their lives. Their lives, though, are the way we want to remember childhood. These are the children we wish we'd been, or would like one day to have, cheerful and unquenchable and devoted, full of love and wonder and curiosity. Their father, too, is the sort of parent we'd all wish to be, wise and patient and insightful, always knowing the right thing to say.
I'm not going to get into discussing every little thing about the movie that I love, because this would end up being a 10,000 word essay, so I'll just sum it up into a few very general phrases. The characters are perfectly written, with each thought and emotion fully realized. The girls (and Kanta, the boy who has a crush on Satsuki) are in no way dumbed down, and yet are instantly recognizable as authentic children with believable reactions and motivations, rather than merely little adults. The art (as I mentioned) is flawless, and the fantasy elements fit so smoothly into the story that the viewer can totally believe in them. The movie is full of tiny things, throwaway things that could easily have been glossed over, and yet Miyazaki clearly took care to see that even these little things (Mei's dry but tear-streaked face when she comes to Satsuki's school, for instance, or Kanta riding sideways on a bike that is too large for him) were well-executed. Also, I love living in the City, but if I ever move to the country I want to live in this family's house. It's a gorgeous set.
Let me sum up like this: movies in general, and children's movies in particular, are so often simply entertaining (if they can manage even that), but Miyazaki has created a genuine work of art here. I've never seen any of his other films, but even if all the others are ordinary he's a genius, because only a genius could have created this. If you haven't seen My Neighbor Totoro you really should, but more important if you have young children you simply MUST show this to them. My decision as to my friend's daughter's birthday present is suddenly very easy, and I'll be screening more Miyazaki movies soon; I suspect that she'll be getting his movies for years to come.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: Tough call, but I have to go for the Cat Bus. Actually, it's an indication of how great the movie is that I haven't really even gotten into the fantasy characters in this essay. Totoro is cool, and the dust bunnies, and the little Totoros, but I really wish I could ride on that bus.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: There's only one bad thing about this movie, and it's the music over the opening and closing credits. Good heavens, that's awful (to be fair, Japanese pop music in the eighties was even worse than it was here). The score during the film itself is mostly a mix between electronic updates of traditional Japanese music and Western-style chamber music, which suits it perfectly, and while it occasionally slips into these weird synth-sax passages during action sequences, you don't notice them too much because of what you're seeing. Those opening and closing bits, though, are pretty bad, with the opening the worse of the two. But it's only the first and last moment of the film, and everything in between is brilliant, so I can bear it.

SCORE: 9/10. I have a long-standing policy, from well before I started this blog, that I don't give any movie ten stars on a first watch, or soon after. It's easy to get caught up in how much you enjoy a film and to not notice its flaws until later. So for right now I'll grade this just close to perfect. Tomorrow I'll mail it back to Netflix, and then when my tax refund comes in a couple of weeks I'll buy it and watch it again before giving it that last point, but it's hard to imagine it won't move up. Aside from the opening and closing music, I can't think of a single way in which this film could be improved.
EDIT: Yeah, totally gave it the last point. Just utterly charming. 10/10. (3/4/14)

LISTS: Favorites of the Eighties, My Top 100(ish).

The World's End (2013)

Just in the interests of full discolusure let me make this statement right off the bat: Shaun of the Dead gets my vote as the best film of the 21st century, and my reverence for Spaced is nearly as high. I adore Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and while I'm not under any illusions that they can do no wrong, I do contend that they can do no wrong while they've got Edgar Wright watching over them.
So I came to The World's End with a great deal of excitement, but also some trepidation. I didn't want to be let down, you know? Intellectually I know it isn't going to be another Shaun, but inevitably there's a bit of my brain that's thinking, “Oh, there's a new Shaun coming out!” and that's kind of hard to ignore. I kept telling myself that if it was just as good as Hot Fuzz I would be happy.
Our set-up is pretty simple: Gary King (Simon Pegg) used to be the ringleader of the youth in the little town of Newton Haven. We open on a now-middle-aged Gary telling his therapy group about a night when he tried to do a twelve-stop pub crawl with his gang of friends: Andy (Nick Frost), his best friend; Steven (Paddy Considine), the rival to the throne; Oliver (Martin Freeman), the uptight and ambitious geek; and Peter (Eddie Marsan), the younger boy who tags along with everything the gang does. On the original night the boys only made it through nine pubs, so Gary decides to get the gang back together for another try. Unfortunately, in the course of the evening, they uncover an invasion by alien robots, or "blanks." Easy enough.
The opening montage is pretty good, but I actually like what comes right after better, the start of the story proper, where Gary is going to the guys, talking them into doing the pub crawl. It's funny, but more than that it tells us absolutely everything we need to know about Gary: that he's always got a comeback, that he can't be reasoned with, that he's impervious to anything anyone else says. “Do you know your problem, Gary? You're never wrong,” Andy complains, to which Gary replies, “How is that a problem?”
It sets up the way the other guys look at him well, also. Peter is a little reluctant, but clearly still has a bit of a hero-worship thing going on, and is somewhat under Gary's spell. Steven is determined not to be pushed around by Gary, keeps dropping little lines attempting to assert his superiority, but somehow ends up getting dragged along in Gary's wake anyway. Oliver is sort of detached, telling himself that he's coming along for ironic enjoyment, to see how screwed up things are going to get. I get the impression that this is roughly how their relationship worked as kids, as well. Andy, of course, is the exception, because his relationship with Gary is the one that has really changed, but otherwise it's a pretty econimcal set-up for the characters, past and present.
I do have to ask a question at this point, though....why on Earth does Andy believe Gary's line about his mother's death? There can't be anyone else who knows Gary that would believe that story. He's so clearly someone who will say anything to get his way. It's a bit of a weak point, but since it gets the story going I'm prepared to forgive it.
As with all of Wright's movies, there's a ton of foreshadowing at the beginning of the movie. Practically everything anybody says, practically every image we see, will come back later in the film. Actually, Wright plays with this a little bit, having a few obvious bits that don't pay off. The scene where the guys meet at the station and Oliver says that Gary will outlive them all grabbed me the very first time he said it. “Oh, everybody's gonna die and Gary will die last, or be the only survivor!” But immediately after that comes the discussion of the Musketeers, with Gary saying that there should have been five so that two could die and they'd still have three, and that's pretty obvious as well, isn't it? So I started trying to figure out which three would live. It was easy to figure that Pegg and Frost would be two, so which of the other three? Freeman was the obvious choice just from a casting standpoint, as a much bigger star than either Marsan or Considine, but since we know from the opening montage that Steven made it to the end of the original night it had to be him. Also, I submit that Frost's “Are we there yet?” in that conversation is the best use of that tired old line ever.
Anyway, it might be fun to comb through this movie and write down every tiny bit of foreshadowing and recurring dialog, but that would run to the tens of thousands of words and this isn't a good spot for it. I mostly mention it because one criticism I've heard about this movie is that there's too much repeated dialog, and that annoys me. “Repetitive” is a word I hear a lot in discussions of The World's End, but I love the running jokes in this; in fact, that's very much the point of the movie, and is always gonna be with a Wright/Pegg script. I don't understand the complaint at all, frankly.
I adore the cast in this. In fact, it might be even better than the main cast of Shaun. Rosamund Pike, who plays Oliver's sister Sam (a love interest both for Gary and Steven), is an actress I've always liked, and it's nice to see her in something I'll actually want to watch again as opposed to, say, Die Another Day. It's not the best part any actress have ever been given, of course. It might just be that I watched this and Frances Ha so close together, and am therefore very much aware of how shallow the female characters of male writers can be, comparing them to Greta Gerwig's Frances. The character is pretty ordinary, but suffers in the comparison. I wish there'd been more here for her, but she's very good with what she's got. Also I like it that she keeps saying “Oh, crumbs!” every time she's surprised. I'm a big Dangermouse fan, and that's very Penfold.
An aside: supposedly Pike was originally cast as Emma Frost in X-Men: First Class, and I want to go on record here saying that she might have given that movie an extra star; she suits the role far better than January Jones. I doubt I'll ever write about that one, since I don't expect to see it again, but I bet I'd be more interested if Rosamund Pike had been in it.
Considine is good as the smart and competent guy who somehow always gets overwhelmed by the force of Gary's personality, and Freeman nearly as good as the detached, ironic, but still irritable Oliver. Marsan is better than either, and in fact I'll go so far as to say I've never seen him better. He really nails that mopey quality, and I wish that Gary had been more obviously protective of him (I do quite like the scene in the opening montage where the bully smacks Peter with his bookbag and Gary stands up for him, but nothing is really made of that).
It was nice to see Nick Frost getting a chance to play a different kind of character. I'm so used to seeing him as a big kid, but he does a really good job as a grown-up, a lawyer wrestling with real-life issues and frustrated at the behavior in his friend that typifies the characters he usually plays. Prior to Spaced Frost wasn't an actor at all, and pretty much his whole career since then has been more or less under the auspices of Pegg and Wright. I'm hoping that after this he'll be on his own. I look forward to seeing what he's got.
Pegg's Gary has been the lightning rod for this film from folks who don't like it. Personally I think he does a great job playing a very nearly unredeemable character, but of course that means that he's a bit unlikeable on a first watch. I saw a lot of myself in Gary, and I think that's why I disliked him so much the first time I saw this, but he has definitely grown on me. I still like Pegg better as Shaun, but I would go so far as to say that I like this portrayal better than Nick Angel in Hot Fuzz. I think he does exactly what the part requires.
As with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, though, the real star of this movie is Wright's direction, and I continue to be amazed at his progression as a filmmaker. In my opinion he's the best director under 40 out there (though as of April 18th that won't be true anymore). He has a real flair for how comedy ought to progress, and how to knit together many tiny threads into an appealing cloth, but what's interesting is that he's become a really solid action director. The opening fight in the bathroom is very well-put-together (the bit where Gary knocks the first robot's head off in particular), but what I really like is when Andy gets up, rips his sweater open, screams “I hate this town,” and lays into the blanks with a pair of stools. Nick Frost, Action Hero, is not something I expected ever to see, but I really like it.
The ending is not all I might have wanted it to be. In the first place, it really bothers me that Gary doesn't get his last pint at The World's End. More than anything else in the film I understood Gary's desire for those twelve drinks, and it feels like a terrible let-down that he only got eleven. Also, I don't get why the blanks leaving sent us back to the dark ages, even if they did provide the know-how for all the digitized connectivity. We already had plenty of technology before they arrived, so shouldn't we at worst go back to the world of the early nineties? No smart phones, but at least cars and radio and, you know, electricity? Allowing for a world-wide EMP that destroyed every circuit on the planet, we know how to make new circuits, right? Even I understand the principle, and I am not a practical-minded man. And the closing monologue from Frost could be better, though I do like the image of Gary wandering the countryside with the robot forms of his old friends, getting in trouble. It's not a terrible ending, but it's a bit jarring coming at the end of a film that otherwise so carefully written and smoothly directed. To be honest, there's nothing I really like after we see Sam, Gary, Andy, and Steven on the hillside watching the town burn. That would have made a great ending, if a bit abrupt. If something had to come after, I wish it had been a better something.
But the ending doesn't spoil the film for me. It just prevents it from being perfect. It's behind Shaun, of course, and behind Scott Pilgrim as well, but it's very much on par with Hot Fuzz, and as with all Edgar Wright films I'm sure I'll like it more upon the many, many re-watches I'm bound to give it.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: Just the relationships between the five boys and, to a lesser extent, Sam. One thing I've heard a lot in reviews of this movie is that it might have been better if it had been just the pub-crawl, without the invasion aspect. I can't agree with that, but I do get it; the movie is at its best when it's just those six people talking. Great writing, and great performances all around.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The first time I saw this I shouted “Don't let Oliver go to the john alone!” It was obvious that, if the blanks could get any of the boys alone, they'd be assimilated. And then Oliver comes back, no longer drunk, no longer stressed out, no longer angry when the boys make inappropriate remarks about his sister, and very much on Gary's side about not leaving town. It's obvious that Oliver is a blank, but the movie plays that out waaay too long. I mentioned that the ending let me down, and to be honest that's the worst thing, but this happened right in the middle of the movie still being really good and it jars a bit, so I had to mention it.

PUNCH THE AIR MOMENT: When the robot consciousness says “It's pointless arguing with you.” I love the idea of humanity being so stubborn, belligerent, and idiotic that higher races would simply give up on us. It's a beautiful thought, the very antithesis of the sugary Star Trek speeches you'd get once or twice a year about our great potential. I find it far more emotionally satisfying. Also, I'm a big Sisters of Mercy fan and was turned on all movie by Gary's T-shirt, so when the blank version of Gary appears with the choral opening of "This Corrosion" playing...well, that wrecked me a little bit.

SCORE: 8/10. A better ending would have given it a clean nine stars, but you can't have everything. Like I said, I told myself coming in that if this movie was as good as Hot Fuzz it would be a success, and that's what I got. Considering that this year all of my other most-anticipated films have been at least slightly disappointing (outside of The Grandmaster, which I still haven't managed to see), I'm pretty well satisfied with this.

LISTS: Favorites of the Teens (so far).

Stoker (2013)

This year has seen two of the greatest Korean directors come to the West to make their first English-language movies. Of Kim Jee-Woon's The Last Stand I can't say anything, because even though I prefer his work to Park Chan-Wook's, I haven't seen The Last Stand yet. I decided it could wait, because whatever I think of their previous work, Park's Stoker is clearly the more interesting of the two films, and I've been eager to see it.
It's easy to look at Stoker and call it a sensual experience, more about sound and visual than story. I think that's true, but it doesn't detract from the story. I don't know that it's terribly deep, or that it will change anyone's life (and if it does, a person whose life is changed by Stoker is probably someone you want to keep in front of you), but it's a coherent, well-told story. Usually when we say that a film is more about the images than the plot we're saying that the plot makes little sense, but that isn't the case with Stoker. The plot is simple but it proceeds naturally, without any missteps or foolishness. It isn't interested in surprising us; the surprises will be audio-visual, rather than plot-oriented. I have no problem with it.
It helps that the film is so well-acted. Matthew Goode, who plays Charlie Stoker, is creepy and charming by turns, as the role requires. His big puppy-dog eyes, his sweet smile, they're extremely sinister. I got the impression early in the film that Park wanted us to suspect that Charlie was some kind of vampire (the movie's title, the fact that Charlie never eats, and we don't see how he kills his first victim), but he pretty clearly isn't one. Still, he would have made a good one.
Nicole Kidman is better as Evelyn Stoker, the widow of Charlie's brother Richard. She's both jaded and wistful; there's a genuine sense of longing from her throughout the picture, a longing for the man she married (Richard had ceased being that man by the time he died), a longing for a good relationship with her daughter, an overarching longing to be cared for. She's a lonely, pointless woman and clearly has been for a long time. I assume that this happened because Richard saw something in their daughter India when she was very young, something that he had also seen in Charlie, and tried to “save” her from her impulses in a similar way to that tried by James Remar's character in Dexter, and he became so caught up in that effort that his relationship with Evelyn suffered. Ever since, she's been trying to matter to someone and has never learned how either to make herself valuable to others, or to value herself.
The big success is Mia Wasikowska as India. I was worried about her coming into the picture; I only knew her as the title character in Tim Burton's poorly-received Alice in Wonderland, and wasn't looking forward to seeing her in this. However, in Stoker she's a real star. It's a genuinely mesmerizing performance. The last time I was as impressed by an actress so young was Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone, and while this doesn't equal that performance, it's remarkable none the less.
But again, the film mostly works as a sensual experience. I love the sound in particular. In the opening scene we hear India's voiceover, saying that she can hear things that most people can't, and the sound mix constantly reminds us of how important sound is to her. We hear the footsteps of the spider crawling up her stocking, the heightened sound of the pencil being sharpened, Charlie's “See you soon” at the funeral. At the dinner table, when she and Charlie are sitting alone and he slides his wine glass across to her, that's the loudest glass of wine I've ever heard drunk. I love the scene where she's rolling the egg around on the table, listening to the shell cracking, or where she leaves the metronome running and can hear it all the through the house, timing her movements to it as she climbs the stairs, as she makes snow angels on her bed. The sound in this film is actually more compelling than the visuals.
And that's really saying something, as the visuals are both beautifully-done and intellectually interesting. Obviously there are gorgeous shots that don't require much thought, In particular there's one where a scene of India brushing Evelyn's hair turns into a flashback of India and her father hunting, visualized by Kidman's copper-colored hair transforming into tall grass that is amazing to see. You don't have to think to appreciate the film, but there seem to be rewards in figuring out the subtleties in Park's presentation. I'm still trying to figure out some of the camera movements in the film that seem to indicate a first-person perspective even though they don't. It'll stand some figuring out. I doubt that Park did that accidentally.
Park tells his story as much through these visual cues as through dialog. Take the scene in the classroom where the students are meant to be doing a still-life of a vase of flowers, and it turns out that India is actually doing the design inside the vase rather than the outside that everyone else sees. What does that tell us about India? Again, that she sees things that others don't. It's a subtle reinforcement of that opening voice-over. The whole movie is full of little clues.
The best scene in the whole movie, in my opinion, has no dialog in it at all. India is playing piano, and Charlie comes in and sits down next to her and begins to play along. Very simple, but it's one of the best sex scenes I've ever seen in a film, and there's no sex in it. By comparison Charlie and Evelyn making out to “Summer Wine” or India masturbating in the shower seem pretty pale.
I also like the bit where India comes home in the rain to find the umbrella hanging on the gate. Charlie offered it to her as she left, saying it was going to rain, and she ignored him. She also doesn't take it when she sees it on the gate. Charlie is attempting to be a shepherd for her, and she won't be herded. It's a running theme of their relationship. Charlie pays some lip service to treating her as an equal, sure. The scene on the stairs during her father's memorial service where Charlie says he'll be staying for a while, but that he wants it to be India's decision as well, for instance. But he can be insistent when she demurs. The last thing he ever says is an order: “India, come here! Now!” Charlie has come home seeking her companionship, but it's clear that he wants to be both father and lover to her. By the end of the movie she wants neither. She wants to belong to herself.
That's why it isn't surprising when India kills Charlie at the end. I believe she's fascinated by him, and the film does start with her talking about wanting to be rescued. When she first realizes what Charlie is she's attracted to him, and I think she means to go away with him when he first suggests it, but she knows that if she does she'll have to follow his path, and she would rather follow her own. In retrospect Charlie's death seems inevitable, as in fact do all the deaths in the film.
What's more interesting to me, and seems not at all inevitable, is the death that doesn't take place. Not Pitt, who dies in the original script but survives the movie, but Evelyn. Why does India spare her? She doesn't seem to have any genuine affection for her, and furthermore has just received a pretty scalding lecture from her. You might reasonably expect her to be feeling resentment after hearing it, if she feels anything at all. On the other hand, though she's clearly trying to hurt India, Evelyn seems more pathetic in that moment than anything else. “India, who are you? You were supposed to love me, weren't you?” Evelyn is very much still a child, and India has become a woman with Charlie's death. Perhaps she thinks that particular murder would be beneath her. Perhaps it was Evelyn's request to Charlie that he take her instead of India, if we can see that as her attempting to sacrifice herself to protect her daughter (I'm torn as to whether she's protecting India, upset that neither of them wants her, envious that he prefers India to her...). However India interpreted that conversation may have affected her somehow, but I don't understand her forbearance in this scene. If someone would like to explain it, I'm listening.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: I've already gone on at some length about the sound in this, but on top of that the music is magnificent. Clint Mansell is really coming into his own now. He's been doing good work for Darren Aronofsky for years, of course, and his Requiem for a Dream score is rightly highly regarded, but in just the past few years, with Moon, Black Swan, and now this, he's established himself as the best in the business, in my opinion. Also, the song “Becomes the Color” by Emily Wells that plays over the last scene and the credits is perfect. I love it when a movie ends with just the right song. That's a star all by itself, really.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: Aside from not understanding why Evelyn is still alive at the end I have no real problem with the movie, so I guess it has to be that. But it doesn't trouble me much.

SCORE: 9/10. I think this is the best 2013 movie I've seen so far, by a fairly wide margin. Furthermore I'll have to agree with and say that it's Park's best work. As much as I love Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and appreciate Oldboy, I found neither of them as moving or as artistically rewarding as this one.

LISTS: Top 100(ish), Favorites of the Teens (so far)

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Coming into 2013 I had a list of films that I thought had a real shot at being my favorite movie of the year. Because I haven't been able to get to theaters much, I've watched only Now You See Me, which I enjoyed but nowhere near as much as I hoped to. I haven't yet gotten to Stoker, The Grandmaster, Much Ado About Nothing, Pacific Rim, or The World's End, which appear to be the main contenders (barring a few dark horses like Only God Forgives or Europa Report). At this moment, my favorite film of 2013 is probably the Evil Dead remake, and while that's a fun little picture, if it ends the year at the top of the list 2013 will have been a desperate failure.
The one I was really looking forward to, the one I was sure would be my favorite, was Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. It was by far my most-anticipated movie of the year. I know that Luhrmann is known as a style-over-substance guy, but to be fair, I'm sometimes a style-over-substance guy myself. I loved his Romeo + Juliet when it came out, and I enjoyed Moulin Rouge, which is a bit of an accomplishment in itself because it's a movie I should have hated. Gatsby seems like the kind of story Luhrmann can tell maybe better than anyone else, but what really put it over the top for me was the casting of Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role. I've been saying for years that he was born to play Jay Gatsby, and he was finally getting his shot. Having Carey Mulligan, one of my favorite actresses, and Toby McGuire along for the ride was just icing on the cake.
I finally got to watch it last weekend, and I've been thinking about it a lot in the week since, trying to decide how I felt about it, and the principal feeling I keep coming back to is disappointment. It is nowhere near as good as it should have been.
DiCaprio is good, but I kind of had this feeling throughout the movie that he wasn't playing Jay Gatsby. Instead, he was playing Orson Welles playing Jay Gatsby. At his first moment at the party, where he shakes Nick's hand and the voiceover is talking about his smile, I thought, “That's Orson Welles' smile,” and DiCaprio never swayed me from that opinion. I couldn't really say it troubled me, but I was constantly aware of it.
Mulligan had to play Daisy, a thankless task. Daisy is one of the less likeable characters in American fiction, selfish and careless and shallow. Luhrmann and Mulligan seem to have decided to try to give her some warmth, and to an extent that works, but it ends up robbing her of any character. She seems to have no volition, no motivation. She's a charming and beautiful doll, no more capable of thought or complex feeling or making her own decisions than if her head were filled with straw.
Of course, to portray her this way, they had to take her completely out of the story after the death of Myrtle (Isla Fisher, who is somehow both under-served by the part and not very good in it). From that moment we never hear a complete line of dialog from her, just hints of phrases now and then, drowned out by ambient noise and other voices. We get no more closeups of her face, either. Luhrmann can't show her reaction, since she feels remorse neither for the crime itself nor for the fact that Gatsby took the blame for it and has been murdered because of it. He doesn't want us to see her as heartless, but the result is that she's just...blank. Gatsby's love for her is the single most important aspect of the story they're telling, and we never get why he loves her at all. How could anyone love her? Be charmed by her, sure. Fall for her briefly, of course; she's Carey Mulligan. But love her? Never.
Of course, the fact that Gatsby's love for her is the most important aspect of this story is in itself damning. This is supposed to be a story about class, about the cluelessness and casual cruelty of the wealthy, yet for some reason Luhrmann mostly ignores it. Sure, we see Tom (Joel Edgerton) treat a few “lesser” people as props and devices, but even that's mostly glossed over. During the confrontation in the hotel between Gatsby and Tom it finally comes out a bit, but it's still underdone and is, in any case, too little too late. F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel is a political work, an indictment of the wealthy, a statement on the inequality of American society. Luhrmann misses that whole text completely.
So what, though, right? We knew coming in that Luhrmann isn't a storyteller, and while it's clear that he doesn't have even a Cliff's Notes-level understanding of the story, the story isn't supposed to be the main thing. It's supposed to be visual, tactile. It's supposed to be about luxury, opulence, the decadence of the Roaring Twenties. For a style-over-substance guy, Long Island in 1922 is as obvious a setting as the fin-de-siècle Paris of Moulin Rouge.
So how does Luhrmann get the style so wrong? Well, principally, by not having real style. Almost all of the sets in this movie are computer-generated, and obviously so. In places that works, giving a dreamlike quality to the surroundings that the characters (who often blur into the backgrounds, so heavy-handed are the effects) move through, adding a layer of unreality to Gatsby's world which is, in fact, unreal. From a narrative standpoint that makes sense, then, but it still looks terrible. And during Myrtle's death scene it goes so far into the fantastic that I felt like I was watching the long-rumored Sin City sequel. It was literally cartoonish. I found myself starving for anything at all to look real, just for a minute.
Not everything about the movie was terrible, of course. There was actually quite a lot to like here. McGuire is exactly what Nick ought to be, and Edgerton is extremely strong (meaning, of course, extremely hateful) as Tom. Hell, DiCaprio and Mulligan weren't actually bad, they just weren't what I wanted. Unfortunately, none of the supporting cast distinguished themselves, except perhaps for Elizabeth Debicki. I was looking forward to seeing Adelaide Clemens again. I've been wanting to find out whether or not she can actually act since her not-great-but-better-than-the-film-deserved performance in Silent Hill Revelation. I'm still wondering. There just wasn't anything for her to do.
The score, which was my principal worry coming into the film, turned out okay. I still wish they had used period music from the most exciting period of American music, rather than Jay-Z's approximation of it, but the fact is that I like Jay-Z and he did a decent, though not outstanding, job here. The ballroom scenes were exactly the kind of excess I enjoy. The frame of Nick writing about the events of that summer from some time in the future, allowing Luhrmann to use some of Fitzgerald's excellent prose, works surprisingly well given that it doesn't make sense...everybody knows that Nick Calloway didn't write The Great Gatsby.
But overall I really feel let down. This is just such a tragic missed opportunity. Luhrmann had a great story with the perfect leads, and instead of using them he just masturbated for two and a half hours. Thirty minutes in I almost turned it off, and actually said out loud, “Man, I hate this movie.” As it went on it pulled me in to some extent, but I never shook that first impression.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The scene at the hotel. It's actually extremely well-done, with DiCaprio, Mulligan, and Edgerton all giving it everything they have. In context, though, it just reminds us of how great this movie might have been.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The endless CGI. Jesus, Baz, you've got plenty of money. Build a fucking set!

SCORE: 4/10. Perhaps that's unfairly low, but it's been years since I found a movie this disappointing. In a couple of years I'll go back to it, I suppose, and maybe I'll find things to like about it. I might even decide I like the movie overall. But right now, all I can feel about it is that tremendous disappointment. Someday, someone will make a proper movie from The Great Gatsby, and when that happens I'm sure I'll love it, but it won't have DiCaprio. It won't have Mulligan. It kind of breaks my heart.

In Bruges (2008)

I saw Martin McDonagh's second film, Seven Psychopaths, earlier this year and loved it, and have loved it more each time I've re-watched it since. So I've been kind of putting off watching this one, because it would have to be a disappointment; I was sure it would be obviously the first effort, the one where McDonagh made all the mistakes he would learn from before creating his masterpiece. I was totally wrong, though. McDonagh hit a home run first time out. I'm surprised but pleased to say that I think this is actually the better of the two films.
Of course, it helps when a young guy making his first picture is able to get Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, and Colin Farrell to star in it. That's got to smooth out the wrinkles somewhat, doesn't it? But regardless of the cast McDonagh has put together such a strong, thoughtful, well-told story here. I'm so impressed by it that I'm going to do something out of character for me: I'm going to issue a spoiler warning. If you haven't seen this go watch it (it's streaming on Netflix) and come back. For most films I really don't think it matters much, but this one you'll want to see without knowing too much about it first. And because it's the story that interests me, I'm gonna go into it in some detail.
So let's go. The basic story is pretty simple. Ken (Gleeson) and Ray (Farrell) are two hit men in the employ of Harry (Fiennes) who have been sent to Bruges to await further instructions. It eventually turns out that the reason they've been sent off is that their last job went bad, and Ray accidentally murdered a young boy. Ray thinks they're in Bruges to hide out. Ken thinks they're there on the next job. He's half right. Harry visited the city as a child, loved it, and sent them there so that Ray could have a nice time right before Harry orders Ken to kill him.
The main thing McDonagh had to do to make this film work is to get us on Ray's side. This isn't the first time an attempt has been made to make a child murderer sympathetic, of course. It's a challenge filmmakers have been setting for themselves since M, but McDonagh needs more than that. We can't just sympathize with Ray. We have to like him. So it's interesting that at the beginning of the movie we don't, or at least I didn't. He's whiny. He's rude. He's ungrateful, here in this beautiful city that he refuses to even try to enjoy. We're a half-hour into the movie before we learn what he's done, and another filmmaker would have used that time to seduce us. McDonagh doesn't even try to make Ray likeable 'til we know about the boy. That's pretty bold.
He comes alive when he meets Chloe (Clémence Poésy) and we learn that, when he's not being a big crybaby he's actually very charming, or at least a bit of a likeable nincompoop. Even when he's violent he's endearing, especially when he smacks down the annoying Canadian (Zeljko Ivanek); for a smoker that scene is pretty rewarding. Chloe makes us like him, in effect saves his character for us, so it's interesting that she's his undoing. If not for her, he wouldn't have hit the Canadian, and so wouldn't have gotten arrested on the train. Instead of making his escape, he's dragged back to Bruges, and back into danger. Furthermore, if not for Chloe he wouldn't have blinded Eiric (Jérémie Renier), and if Eiric hadn't wanted revenge Harry might not have found Ray anyway. It's not her fault, really; certainly she means him no harm, but the fact is that if he hadn't met her he would be safe somewhere else on the Continent, and Harry and Ken would have buried the hatchet. Happy ending.
That's the thing, though, isn't it? Should there be a happy ending? Because it sure feels like there's gonna be one. Ray and Chloe are happy together at the cafe, Harry and Ken have made up in the bell tower, and it feels like everything's gonna work out, and we're pleased with that because we've gotten so into Ray and Ken and what's going on with them that we've forgotten what the movie is actually about. Then Eiric calls up to Harry, he and Ken fight, and Harry shoots Ken in the neck. “I'm sorry, Ken,” he says, “but you can't kill a kid and expect to get away with it. You just can't.” Suddenly it all comes back to us. Do we want Ray to walk away? Just...run off with the beautiful girl and live happily ever after? Is that justice?
Well, is it? Society cries out for punishment, doesn't it? But me, personally, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of punishment. Don't get me wrong, I recognize the need to remove some people from the community; we're all better off when folks without conscience are taken off the streets. But Ray has a conscience. It's only Ken's intervention that prevents his suicide in the park. He knows that he deserves to die, says that he wants to, and it's only Ken and Chloe keeping him alive. If the only point is to make him suffer for what he's done, what can we do to him that will hurt him more than he's already hurting himself?
And yet, it's an open question whether Ray has learned any lesson, really. I think we can safely assume that he isn't gonna be a hitman anymore, but in the course of the film we see him assault the Canadian and his girlfriend and Jimmy (Jordan Prentice), as well as Eirik (to be fair, that one was self-defense). He may not want to kill, but he certainly hasn't lost his taste for violence.
That's what makes the scene where Harry comes for him at the hotel so gripping. Marie (Thekla Reuten, who has more than a touch of Juliette Binoche about her, of which I heartily approve) is blocking Harry from going upstairs after Ray, guessing that he won't hurt a pregnant woman. She's right, of course. But while they argue Ray creeps to the top of the stairs and takes aim at Harry, and the first time I saw this I was convinced that Ray would take the shot and accidentally kill Marie instead. It's a huge relief when he doesn't. Maybe he is learning.
On that note, I think it's instructive what happens when Jimmy is killed. Harry has just put a bunch of bullets into Ray. He's badly, perhaps mortally, wounded, but he crawls across the snowy cobblestones towards Jimmy's body. When Harry sees the body, he wrongly assumes he's killed a child himself, just as Ray did. So instead of delivering the coup de grace, Harry shoots himself. But, and here's the important point, Ray tries to stop him. With what might have been one of his last breaths, Ray tells Harry to wait, so that he can explain, but Harry just says "You've got to live by your principles" and kills himself.
Think about it: if Ray just keeps his mouth shut then the man who has shot him will die, and Ray will still have a slim chance to survive. If Ray tells him the truth, then he himself will die and Harry will go home to his wife and kids. Ray knows this, yet he still tries to tell Harry the truth. He is, in effect, attempting to sacrifice himself to save the man who has killed him. I think that's McDonagh telling us that Ray has learned, that he might somehow find a way to make amends, if he lives.
So that's what the movie comes down to, and why the ending is so good. We don't know whether Ray lives or dies. He needs to repay society for the damage he's done to it, and he seems to want to, and he clearly can't if he's dead or in prison. But like Harry says, can he kill a child and just walk away? Do we want him to live, or don't we? McDonagh leaves it up to us. All he has is questions. He offers no answers.
Farrell is very good as Ray. I especially like the scene where he finds Ken at the bar and explains how his date with Chloe went, and his mouth is running at three times normal speed because he's just done a gram of cocaine. I don't know how he delivered that dialog; it's like watching a great guitarist play a complicated piece of music, really. Fiennes is, as always, excellent. It's always good to see Ivanek, who is one of my guys. Poésy is very charming, though I did keep thinking of Melanie Laurent while I watched her. Still, watching her was a genuine pleasure. But the real star is Gleeson. He's one of my favorites; I love his face, the way you can see everything he's thinking right there in his eyes. You get so much out of him even when he's not talking. Like Fiennes, he's always excellent, and I think this might actually be the best work he's ever done. There are moments, like when he's telling Harry that he loves him, that make your breath catch. I'd watch him in anything.
And once again, I have to give a lot of credit to McDonagh. What a great debut film! It's not quite at the same level as Duncan Jones' Moon, but then, Jones' follow-up Source Code isn't as good as Seven Psychopaths, either. I hope to see a lot more from this guy, although the fact that he took four years between films, and the second one was about writer's block, makes me a little nervous. I hope this isn't all we're gonna get from him. Still, even if it is, he's done more with these two films than most writers or directors do in a whole career.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM:

The city itself. Having seen it in this film, Bruges is now the place to which I hope to retire. It's just gorgeous, and shockingly photogenic. Full props to the cinematographer (Eigil Bryld), but it's clear that he had a lot to work with.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The beginning isn't much fun. It becomes brilliant once Chloe is introduced, and we get the flashback to the boy's murder, but up until then it's both slow and aggravating. Even on a re-watch I find the first twenty minutes a bit hard to enjoy.

SCORE: 9/10. Very close to perfect (aside from those first twenty minutes). It raises questions that are worth discussing, and makes me wish I had seen it in theaters back in 2008 and then gone to the bar with friends afterwards to talk about it all night.

LISTS: Favorites of the Naughts, Top Ten of the 21st Century, My Top 100(ish).

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

I've been in the mood for some classic noirs lately. After all, just last week I wrote about The Third Man. That's a personal favorite, and I've seen it many times. Right now my queue at Netflix is full of my favorite noirs, but with a few classics I never got around to mixed in. This is one of those; I'm a little embarrassed to admit that until early this morning I had never seen The Postman Always Rings Twice.
It's also the first time I've ever seen John Garfield, though of course I knew the name from studying the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee. I knew he was one of their main victims; though not a Communist, he was a well-known liberal, and he worked for good jobs for black and latino actors and crew, and of course he was Jewish, and that was enough for the fascists on the HUAC, who thought Hollywood could only be trusted to conservative christian racists. They hunted him relentlessly, had him blacklisted, and when he returned to Broadway (he got his start on the stage) even hounded him there. He had a bad heart, and they literally hounded him to death before he was forty. So I had some regard for Garfield as a martyr to liberal causes, particularly political freedom, but somehow that never translated into watching any of his movies.
Lana Turner, of course, I know. Even more than I love classic noirs, I love classic horror, and she was in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Spencer Tracy. That's how I know her best. I have that on DVD and will inevitably write about it, but for now I'll say that she was passably good in a passably good movie. Turner herself, though, always considered this her best role, and so I feel like I know her a lot better now that I've seen it.
The thing is, I'm not sure this really is a film noir. The genre is a little nebulous, but this doesn't have the sort of photography and camera tricks that you'd expect from a noir, and the characters are subtly different. The overall drift of the story is pretty standard for the genre, to be fair. A drifter, Frank Chambers (Garfield), takes a job at a roadside gas station/burger joint, owned by affable middle-aged Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway). Frank and Nick's beautiful young wife, Cora (Turner), fall in love. Nick wants Cora to run away with him, but Cora refuses to give up the restaurant; she knows Nick will cut her off without a penny if she divorces him, and she doesn't want to return to the life of wage slavery. So the young lovers murder Nick, and spend the rest of the movie wilting under suspicion and turning on each other while still being unable to resist each other.
Like I say, fairly typical. It's in the details that this distinguishes itself from the typical fare of the genre. Cora is not your everyday femme fatale. In the first place, she doesn't seduce Frank; he seduces her, and in fact is a bit more aggressive in his courtship than modern sensibilities would be perfectly comfortable with. She not only resists Frank, but goes out of her way to demonstrate that she is happy with Nick. Nick himself sort of drives them together. There is one scene that seems almost comical with regards to Nick's cluelessness: he plays guitar and asks Cora to dance. She doesn't want to, because she doesn't want to turn Frank on, so she says that she feels silly dancing alone. Frank offers to dance, but Cora says that she and Nick should turn on the jukebox and dance together. Nick insists, saying that he would rather watch dancing than dance himself, so Cora says they can't dance in the living room anyway, since there's not enough room. So Nick moves them all into the restaurant, where instead of dancing to the light tune Nick had been playing on his guitar, they dance to a sexy latin song on the jukebox, with Cora getting more uncomfortable by the moment. In a more modern film, you'd almost expect Nick to be the kind of man who likes to watch his wife having sex with other men.
The idea that it would be nice if Nick died occurs first to Frank, not Cora, though it is Cora who insists upon going through with it, and who plans and carries out their first attempt on Nick's life. That's more typical, and we begin to feel more comfortable with the plot, but it doesn't really last. When the second attempt works, but Frank is injured, the District Attorney, Kyle Sackett (Leon Ames), briefly convinces Frank that Cora actually intended to kill them both; Frank signs a complaint against her, and both murder and attempted murder charges are brought against Cora. At this point Cora turns on Frank, but we understand why: if he had trusted her and stuck to their original story, there would have been no evidence to convict them. Frank's statement might well send her to the gallows. She turns fierce then, and yet it's hard not to side with her against Frank. I wonder if that wasn't less true in 1946; maybe back then a woman who had turned on her husband was automatically more to blame than the lover who had helped her, but to a modern audience she is far more the injured party.
Also, I'm sympathetic to Cora when we learn that Frank plans to sell Twin Oaks (the road house) and move to Canada to take care of his paralyzed sister. He hasn't even considered Cora's feelings, which is especially bad since he's committing Cora to becoming a nurse for his sister. She doesn't want to spend the best years of her life washing and cleaning up after a woman she's never met and has no loyalty to. We might well revere a woman who was willing to make this sacrifice for her selflessness, but we don't condemn a woman who isn't that selfless; the selflessness is notable because it's so rare, and I doubt many of the folks watching the movie (or reading this) would be willing to make this sacrifice, and so if we're fair, we can't think less of her for her unwillingness. Just in case we can, Frank has to stop Cora from committing suicide over it.
It's the only moment where Nick is the bad guy, and of course it's the impetus to the second, successful murder attempt. We can feel, and sympathize with, Cora's desperation here. Something clearly has to be done. Of course, in the real world, we would want Cora to divorce Nick rather than murdering him, but she still has our sympathy to some extent.
I've been thinking about Out of the Past, and Jane Greer's role in that. Greer's Kathie is the perfect model of the character type, and I've always referred to her as the most fatale of all femmes. Greer begins that film as the sort of dangerous, amoral woman that Cora becomes in this one, the woman who fights off the blackmail attempt, who threatens to turn Frank in as revenge for his infidelity. I think that perhaps what makes Cora so memorable is that she isn't a femme fatale; rather she becomes one during the course of the story, and we get to watch it happening. In effect, I fell like this is how Kathie became Kathie.
In this genre, we usually watch the hero make mistakes, fall gradually into a state of despair and degradation, and usually he does this under the influence of a character like Kathie. In this movie we watch her make mistakes, bad decisions that seem to be her only option in desperate moments. She is the nascent belle dame sans merci. And then of course there's the end of the film, where she is willing to sacrifice herself in order to regain her humanity and the love and trust of her relationship with Frank; very few femmes fatales have done the same, and we almost feel that she dies with a clear conscience.
In effect, within the regular tropes of the noir, she's the hero and Frank is the femme fatale. It's a great and, within the genre, unique role. No wonder Turner thought it her best. So, how is she in it? Well, I've always considered Turner to be very much of her time, I think. Most of the things I've seen her in seem fairly dated now. Look at her contemporary, Ingrid Bergman. When we watch Casablanca or Notorious we belong to her; her star power is undiluted by the years, and I don't think we can say that about Turner. On the other hand, when we watch someone like Jean Harlowe, she's almost a joke. It's hard to understand what anyone ever saw in her. Turner is somewhere in between. She isn't Bergman's equal, but she's risen a lot in my estimation. The years have somewhat diminished her, but she is still powerful, and I doubt anyone else could have played the part better.
You get solid support from Ames and Hume Cronyn (as Cora's lawyer), and also from Audrey Totter in what amounts to a cameo appearance. I love Totter, no matter what she does. The big supporting role, the one that makes the film work, is Kellaway's, though. Aside from the one scene I mentioned above, he's just so likeable, so naïve and trusting. He just feels like a nice guy, and that's another important distinction between this movie and many similar ones: we don't get to feel that the plot against him might be justified, like in Out of the Past. He's just too...well, again, nice. If he's an ogre, this movie loses half its power.
Garfield is very good as Frank, as well. Like I said, I don't know his work well, but I like him. He's nearly as emotionally complex as Cora. He feels very natural in the part, not like he's playing a rough-and-tumble tramp, but like they cast a rough-and-tumble tramp in the part and let him play himself. I've moved Body and Soul, which I've always heard was his defining film, up to number one in my queue; this movie makes me want to see more of him, because this is really about Lana Turner. Even though Garfield has more screen time, even though it's told from his perspective and largely through his narration, this is her movie, a great performance in an iconic role. Everyone else in the movie is secondary.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: I'm saying the story. Just the complexity of it, the way Cora's and Frank's feelings for each other change constantly throughout the film. As good as Turner and Garfield are, they have a lot to work with. It's an accomplishment, so let me give credit to screenwriters Harry Ruskin and Niven Bush, and also maybe to James M. Cain, who wrote the novel the film is based on. I haven't read it and don't know how true they are to the original, but regardless Ruskin and Bush did some fine work here. The dialog is only pretty good, but the way the story unfolds is definitely special.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: The direction and cinematography aren't bad, but they aren't really noirish enough, in my opinion. I suppose that makes sense, since neither director Tay Garnett nor DP Sidney Wagner had worked much in the genre. It's perfectly well-shot, don't get me wrong, but it isn't quite what I wanted. I'm a bit unforgiving with my noirs.

SCORE: 8/10

LISTS: Favorites of the Forties

Now You See Me (2013)

The first time I saw a trailer for this, I fell in love. I love magic, I love heist films, I love several of the actors. So a movie with good actors playing magicians who rob banks? Oh, man, I'm so totally in. I was sure this was going to be my #1 film of the year, and hoped it would be one of my favorites, period. I'm sorry to say that it is neither, but it's still pretty good.
The story is an interesting one. Four magicians (a mentalist played by Woody Harrelson, an escape artist played by Isla Fisher, and two sleight-of-hand guys played by Jesse Eisenberg and Dave Franco) set up a big show in Vegas, during the course of which they rob a bank in Paris and shower the audience with the loot. The FBI and Interpol are after them, but of course they don't know how the trick was done. The quartet give two more shows and pull of two other big-time heists, each time giving the money to the audience, and then at the end we find out who's behind the heists and why he's doing it.
There are some problems with the film. A few plot points are pretty convenient. Some of the magic tricks are pretty clearly impossible without the use of CGI; I would rather they had stuck to actual stage magic. And Michael Caine, the wealthy man backing the magicians, just kind of...disappears. Not in a magic way, just in a “the writer forgot about him” way.
Also, the characterization is a little thin. None of these characters are particularly memorable. It seems that director Louis Leterrier and his writers (Boaz Yakin, Edward Ricourt, and Ed Solomon) were very caught up in the way the plot was moving, and didn't want to slow down to develop everyone. Instead, they hired a very good cast and trusted them to put more into the roles than what was actually on the page. To be fair, I think it worked pretty well; the four magicians (unfortunately given the terribly clichéd name “The Four Horsemen”) are all very likeable, and you end up wishing you could spend more time with all of them. Harrelson in particular doesn't get anything like enough screen time, and Fisher spends a lot of time just looking pretty, but both have their moments. Franco is supposed to be the clear #4 behind the other three, but actually he gets some of the best bits, especially the ridiculously fun takedown of Ruffalo and his partner when they raid the Horsemen's apartment. Eisenberg stands out among the four. He is playing basically the opposite of the character he played in Zombieland, which is interesting, given that everybody says he's a one-note actor. Anyway, if the point is to leave your audience wanting more, those four people did a damned good job.
A little more time is spent on the FBI agent leading the investigation (Dylan Rhodes, played by Mark Ruffalo). As an actor I like him more than any of the magicians, but his character isn't quite as interesting. And then there's Mélanie Laurent as the Interpol agent working with him. I suspect that once I've seen more of her work she's going to be one of my favorite actors, but prior to this I'd only seen her in Inglourious Basterds. She was magnificent in that, and was the biggest draw in this cast for me. And, you know, she did a fine job, but there just wasn't a lot there for her. Although she had more screen time than anyone but Ruffalo, her character was a little flat. Like Ruffalo, she was overshadowed by the magicians, and it's kind of too bad we didn't see more of the Four and less of the Law. Still, both are very charming actors, and I'm not complaining about them too much.
Caine is Caine; he can't do a bad job. Morgan Freeman is a surprise. I've gotten so used to seeing him play wise, kind old men that it took me a while to realize that he's the villain in this. I kept thinking, “Well, if they want me to like him just because of who he is, in spite of his asshattery, they've badly misjudged me.” I was halfway through the movie before I realized, no, I'm NOT supposed to like him. So if I'm going to name a cast member who confounded my expectations, it's got to be him, and the final resolution of his story is pretty rewarding; that's a good scene.
So all the actors are somewhat underserved but do good jobs anyway, in the service of keeping a fairly intricate plot moving. It's quite a good plot, as well; sure, it's implausible, but didn't we expect a story about magicians robbing banks to be a bit implausible? And Leterrier deserves a lot of credit for his direction: the film looks and sounds great, and moves very, very fast. The closest it comes to getting bogged down is when the Four have a brief, out-of-nowhere moment of doubt just before the last show, but it resolves itself quickly into Franco's best scene, the one I mentioned before. There were a few occasions where I was thinking, "Whoah, Louis, stop moving the camera around so much, let us see what's happening," but mostly I was pleased with his work.
I think this is a movie that tells you something about yourself when you watch it. It tells you what kind of movie watcher you are. Some people can lose themselves in a movie; they can suspend disbelief and just go along for the ride. Others can't; they analyze each scene, pick at each plot hole. I happen to be the former, and so for me this movie was a good time. I'm not blind to the holes in it, but they don't ruin the film for me. Most of the people writing about this movie on the IMDb message boards, on the other hand, appear to be of the latter type. There's an awful lot of haters on there. I'm not saying those people are bad, or stupid, or wrong, but I'm glad I'm not one of them.

BEST THING ABOUT THE FILM: I really like the interrogation scenes. Harrelson and Eisenberg really shine there; I love the bit where Eisenberg tosses the handcuffs onto Ruffalo. On the other hand, that really shows up what I was saying earlier about the magicians not getting enough screen time: why didn't we get to see the interrogations of Fisher and Franco? That would have been perfect.

WORST THING ABOUT THE FILM: No particular moment. There isn't really anything I dislike about this film; there's just a sort of general, mild disappointment. It's an entertaining movie, but I have to think that with a little more polish on the script, some holes plugged and loose ends tied up, a few more character moments here and there, it could have been great. It was a very good time, and I liked it very much, but as I said at the start, I really wanted to love it.

PUNCH THE AIR MOMENT: There isn't one. There really should be. How could they not include a punch the air moment?

SCORE: 7/10. A pretty low seven, but still a seven.