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March 11, 2010


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2010-03-11

The script went down the rabbit hole...

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is a visual delight, but its muddled story is less than wonderful

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Now playing

Oh me oh my, what a letdown.

Alice in Wonderland is as visually brilliant as you'd expect from director Tim Burton. Like Batman, Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow, its look is distinctive and delightfully weird. Burton's one of those rare auteurs whose idiosyncratic stamp is evident on every one of his films.

But where is the story? What's the film about? Burton seems clueless, and I sat wondering what the Dickens was happening. Not only is the movie rudderless, it's confusing.

In fact, it's worse - it's boring. It's not enough to have lots of fantastic stuff happen to Alice; we have to care about what she wants and what she's trying to do, and dread the consequences of her failure.

These are the building blocks of good storytelling, and they need to be all the stronger in a fairy tale - one of the most direct and elemental of narratives. What's lacking in Alice in Wonderland is a strong hook to grab us and lead us through.

Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is encouraged by her impish father to be a little "half-mad." At 18, she receives from the twittish Hamish (Leo Bill) what seems a perfectly sensible proposal - in the eyes of Hamish's snooty mother, anyway. Alice is less sure, and bolts.

So far, so good. When Alice follows the White Rabbit down his hole, it seems an attempt to escape from pre-determined destiny. But once she's in Wonderland, the set-up becomes disconnected from what follows; she and the movie lose their way.

What happens next? It matters little. Basically, Alice runs afoul of the Red Queen (Helen Bonham-Carter) and encounters eccentric characters, such as the Cheshire Cat (voice of Stephen Fry) and the Mad Hatter.

The Mad Hatter is played by Johnny Depp. This seems like sheer perfection: after all, Depp seems born to play eccentric roles, especially in Tim Burton movies.

Alas, Depp doesn't give us an eccentric character but rather, an eccentric presence. Who is the Mad Hatter? What drives him? Who knows? The movie doesn't tell us. Apparently the Hatter's role is to just kind of hang around and be odd. It's like Burton fed Depp his lines just before rolling camera, shouting, "Be wacky!"

The best performance is Bonham Carter's, who's sheer perfection as the Red Queen; she takes a familiar line - "OFF WITH HER HEAD!!!" - and makes it her own. She's simultaneously hilarious, threatening and pitiful. God knows how much worse this movie would be without her.

I'm not yet sold on 3-D but, it must be said, it suits this particular material, enhancing Wonderland's already fanciful look. The silly glasses make it look like a kind of animated, pop-up storybook. The effect is actually charming.

Ultimately, however, Burton seems to think his quirky vision is enough. It's not. When (spoiler!) Alice pops back out of that rabbit hole, what happened since she went down feels inconsequential. For a director, that's a massive failure.
— Kenton Smith

For committed cult cinema fans only

Late-'70s Japanese horror flick Hausu has plenty of so-bad-it's-funny appeal, but the whole thing gets a tad wearisome after a while

C+

HAUSU
March 12, 8 p.m., Ellice Theatre (587 Ellice Ave.)

Is this movie actually any good? God knows it's something - I can't remember seeing another quite like it.

To be honest, I'm grateful for that. Hausu is an example of a one-of-a-kind film but that designation doesn't necessarily equal praise. There are things to admire about the film, and things that can be enjoyed only by entertaining one's sense of the ridiculous. And then there's stuff that would have been better off being in no movie at all.

This long-lost, late-'70s Japanese horror flick features some of the cheesiest visuals ever committed to celluloid. Seriously, some of the mise-en-scene has to be seen to be believed - such as a guy's slapstick pratfall down a flight of stairs and ass-first into a bucket.

Oh, but it doesn't stop there: through stop-motion animation, the gag continues with the dumb bastard sliding down the street and into traffic. Then there are the oversaturated colours and phony sets that make some scenes look like Saturday-morning kiddie fare.

And that's not even mentioning the female character nicknamed Kung Fu, who does battle with evil forces on more than one occasion; her scenes play out like parodies of the already overwrought martial-arts flicks Tarantino was channeling in Kill Bill.

I could go on. But what the hell does any of this have to do with Japanese horror, you ask? Well, yeah, no shit. It's that very incongruity that's part of the movie's camp factor. And it's fun, to a point.

The slight story concerns a group of Japanese schoolgirls who are summering at the seaside residence of one girl's aunt. It doesn't take long to discover the joint is haunted by malevolent forces that hunger for jailbait.

When the horror elements finally do kick in, Hausu gives us some genuine shocks - such as a severed head in a well, or a staring eyeball peeking out of a character's mouth. The understated, straightforward fashion in which some visuals are presented foreshadows the likes of Ringu and Suicide Club, two staples of contemporary Japanese horror.

Other imaginative bits include a sea of blood welling up from under the floor, leaving characters frantically floating about on tatami mats. There are also some outrageous moments of surrealism, such as a bunch of severed fingers dancing on a piano's keyboard. It's the kind of shot Sam Raimi would have used if he'd thought of it first.

In the end, this movie is what it is. Whether it 'works' or not is still a valid question, however, and Hausu certainly doesn't work as what it seems to want to be: a hybrid of high-spirited teen bubblegum comedy and supernatural horror.

Yes, the film's "it's-so-bad-it's-funny-OMFG-I-can't-believe-what-I'm-seeing" quality is supposed to be part of the attraction, like so many Japanese game shows. But a little Hausu goes a long way; the sheer absurdity of the movie actually gets wearisome the longer it plays out.

Nonetheless, fans of preposterous cult cinema will probably consider this movie a late valentine. You know who you are. Enjoy.
— Kenton Smith

'What was that?'

Not only does Remember Me not have a point, it also exploits the horrors of 9/11 in a sad attempt to add meaning

One really must begin with the ending. Just what in the name of Jehovah were they thinking?

(Warning: spoilers ahead).

Sept. 11 was a black day. It ranks among the worst - if not the worst - terrorist attacks in history. Thousands died. The families of each and every victim will never be the same.

This doesn't make the subject somehow sacrosanct or improper material for fictional treatment. But if you're going to invoke 9/11, there seems an implicit obligation to make it mean something.

What Remember Me does is exploit that day's horror and tragedy to inject false meaning into an otherwise meaningless script. This movie has no idea what it's doing for over 100 minutes and it only magnifies its vast emptiness by exploiting cold-blooded mass murder.

At least Alice in Wonderland, another exercise in pointlessness, has some amazing sights to behold. Unless the sight of Twilight star Robert Pattinson gets you damp, Remember Me doesn't even have that redeeming quality.

Seriously. What's the point of this godawful thing? I have nothing against teen romances, just so you know. There have been a great many films made on the subject of young love, youthful angst, and coming of age.

What we get in Remember Me is zero genuine insight into the emotional trials of young adulthood. As far as I can tell, its purpose is to present Pattinson's character as some sort of wounded romantic soul that young and impressionable female audience members can flutter over.

Oh yeah, the story - such as it is. Tyler Hawkins (Pattinson) is tortured by the suicide of his younger brother. He blames the distance of his businessman father (Pierce Brosnan), whom he seems to take pleasure in disappointing.

One night he goes looking for trouble and ends up arrested by a police officer (Chris Cooper) whose wife was murdered 10 years earlier. Her memory haunts both him and daughter Ally (Emilie de Ravin). When Tyler's buddy sees Ally on campus, he dares Tyler to pursue her and really get that uppity cop's goat.

Do the wounded Tyler and Ally fall in love? Will their romance be threatened by Tyler's duplicity? Do you really need to ask?

What's weird about the movie is how it almost seems to forget about this aspect of the plot, spinning off into this, that, and the other direction. Remember Me has no centre of gravity; it has no idea what story it wants to tell, or what it really wants to say.

(I'm probably repeating myself but then again, few recent films I've seen are this puzzling in their lack of focus.)

It's terrible to see good actors get wasted like this. Pierce Brosnan brings a limited sense of weight to his scenes, but that's in spite of a script that gives him SFA to work with. Lena Olin, so tactilely sensual in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, almost becomes part of the background here.

And then there's that ending. But I've said enough. Go see Avatar again.
— Kenton Smith

Old Jack City

Brooklyn's Finest, the new cop drama from the director of Training Day, is diverting, but not arresting

B-

BROOKLYN'S FINEST
Now playing

There's a much better movie hiding inside this one, somewhere. We have good actors and a capable director - what holds the enterprise back is a script that doesn't pull its weight.

Brooklyn's Finest is another in the line of films about flawed cops and mean streets; Prince of the City and Q&A are somewhere higher up the family tree. It seems to want to say something profound about cops, crime, and justice in the inner city, but the message is garbled in transmission.

What we're left is a story with some intriguing but half-baked ideas at best, some overworked elements and outright clichés at worst. What's good about the film makes it watchable - but the filmmakers were clearly aiming higher, and fall short.

The movie spins three separate strands involving different New York cops, all of whom are morally compromised in some way. In the opening scene, Sal (Ethan Hawke) commits cold-blooded murder and steals drug money; he can't support his already oversized family on his salary.

Meanwhile, Tango (Don Cheadle) is begging for a transfer from undercover work, before his wife leaves him permanently. And Eddie (Richard Gere) is literally marking the days until retirement. He's got exactly one week left, and he wants no trouble. We get the impression this is how he's conducted his entire career.

Each man winds up in his own tangled situation of ethics and morality, leading to a climax that brings all three together at the same crime-infested projects. How and why this occurs I will not say; however, it's in this very construction that the film's flaws become clearest.

Why, to begin, did the screenwriters choose this parallel structure? For no other reason I can discern than, they wanted all three protagonists to wind up in the same place. Why? Search me. Their paths never actually cross, and the reasons for each man arriving at the same destination are inconsistent.

In other words, it seems the screenwriters are operating at Level One thinking: basically, it seemed cool to, y'know, have all these separate stories come together. Except they don't, really. Nor is the device used to make any larger point.

Nonetheless, the actors go far in spite of the yokes they strain against. Hawke looks like it's 2004 and he's starving to beat out Christian Bale for The Machinist: he looks gaunt, weary, and coming apart at the seams. There's convincing desperation in his voice.

And then there's Gere, a much better actor than he's often given credit for. Watch him in the scene where he tries to convince a hooker to come away with him. It's a marvelous exchange.

But here's the thing about Brooklyn's Finest - this material is familiar. It's almost old hat. To make it work again, it must be made to feel fresh. Something new must be brought to the table. Instead, the film feels like a patchwork from better movies.

Still, at least it's not boring.
— Kenton Smith

See this film - you just might learn something

The End of Poverty provides a crash course on globalization's historical dark side

THE END OF POVERTY
March 12-17, Cinematheque

Let's do a thought experiment. Imagine that centuries from now, the peoples of Western Civilization are reduced to poverty, dependency, and ignorance of their own cultural legacies. Seems fantastical, no?

Now imagine yourself, say, a native Bolivian, Chilean or Peruvian. For you, it's no abstraction - you're a living descendant of deposed civilizations. Your ancestors would likewise have scoffed at the idea of living as future beggars.

So how on earth did you get here? The answer to that question is perhaps the most valuable aspect of The End of Poverty, a dense documentary that shows how so much of the world's disenfranchised countries got that way. It explains precisely what's meant when terms such as post-colonialism are thrown around.

Yes, the empires that once occupied the likes of the Caribbean, South America and Africa have largely packed up and gone home. Yet "northern" interests largely continue to dominate the peoples of these regions.

Consider: the colonized peoples had their cultures and collective knowledge destroyed. They're saddled with debt and economies built on exporting raw materials. They've been stripped of their self-sufficiency. That puts them at the mercy of unscrupulous foreign interests.

Take the privatization of water in Bolivia: prices are jacked up so as to be unaffordable. As one Bolivian says regarding the resulting protests, it is literally a "live or die" situation.

And if leaders have the audacity to assert that their people ought to keep more of their own wealth? Those leaders are deposed or eliminated. It's a pattern that's played out for centuries - right up to the present.

The film contains some appalling statistics. Over a billion people live on less than one American dollar a day. In 1970, 434 million people suffering from malnutrition; today, the figure is 854 million. Things are getting worse, not better.

"Pffft," you might say, "you sound just like a lefty." Hey, don't take my word for it. The End of Poverty cites what seems like dozens of experts, all saying the same thing. Watching the film, you wonder why we listen to some politicians, when the people studying this stuff all seem to have formed a different consensus.

One of the most compelling eggheads is Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who says the world has essentially had individualistic capitalism imposed on it. The imposition is based in pure ideology, Stiglitz explains - it has nothing to do with any notion of sound economic theory.

One thing that's clear is why so many countries around the world have embraced socialist models: because the principles involved are closer to the various cultures' ways of thinking. When you consider the needs of everyone, everyone wins. Seems like a no-brainer - unless you simply don't give a shit about anyone else.

Perhaps the central image of The End of Poverty is of native Bolivians celebrating in an improvised temple of their own, next door to a Catholic church. Through music, they're remembering who they are. That, the film seems to suggest, is the essential necessary step.
— Kenton Smith

Quietly reflective, powerfully affecting

La Belle Visite (Journey's End) is an understated, fly-on-the-wall look at a retirement home in rural Quebec

LA BELLE VISITE (JOURNEY'S END)
March 18, Cinematheque

I'll tell you what I was thinking during this doc on a retirement home in rural Quebec: Please God, don't ever let me wind up in a place like this.

I simply cannot imagine living out my final years in such an institution. I can't think how anyone could. But what about the residents in the film? How do they feel?

Some seem melancholy, others stoic. Yet many actually seem, well, content. Accepting. It makes me think I underestimate people's strength. It also reminds that not everyone sets the bar for personal happiness at the same height. There is probably wisdom in that.

This is the valuable achievement of La Belle Visite (Journey's End): there is no commentary in this quiet, graceful film, no interviews, no labouring to make a point. We're simply confronted with the reality of old age and impending death, and left to decide how we feel about it.

It's a powerful, affecting experience. Some viewers may find the approach uncomfortable: many want to watch a film passively, to be told a story. This film forces us to sit there and stew in our own juices, in reaction to a subject that many may prefer not to think about.

Or not. There I go again, being presumptuous. It be may just as well that many will simply be moved by the great beauty, even poetry, of the film. The crisp cinematography shows the seasons of the pastoral landscape passing with elegance. An understated point is made: there is a natural order to things, including human life.

Understatement. That's really the key to this film. Understatedly, unobtrusively, the camera records the comings and goings of people no longer able to look after themselves. It simply observes.

Or seems to, anyway. Obviously the filmmakers made choices as to what to include and what to leave out. Nonetheless, for the viewer their presence is nowhere to be felt: they seem to have receded into the woodwork, becoming as much of a "fly on the wall" as is perhaps possible. The technique is essential to the effect.

What do we see onscreen, exactly? No less than what each of us practices each day: routine. People dress, groom, eat, pray. Actually, we see a lot of praying. It's clear the Catholic faith remains pervasive among the older Quebec generation.

It also seems clear that many residents invest a great deal of importance in that faith. Does it help them cope with facing the end of the road? Does it provide comfort? Meaning? We're left to wonder. It sure seems to. There is a warmth on some faces, as the Virgin is invoked, that seems to reflect genuine fearlessness of death.

La Belle Visite itself feels like a religious experience - or, if you prefer, a profoundly philosophical one. There is a somberness to it, an invitation to seriousness. It doesn't let you check your brain at the door -but this is a film where you may be better for it.
— Kenton Smith

A provoking lesson in good and evil

Antichrist isn't the easiest film to watch - but the experience is worth it

A+

ANTICHRIST
Until March 21, Cinematheque

Forget what you may have read: this is a great film.

Lars von Trier's Antichrist was greeted with a mixed reaction at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Critical opinion is split: the movie holds a 49% rating at Rottentomatoes.com.

This doesn't prove anything, but it isn't surprising. Antichrist is a deeply challenging film. It confronts nihilism and human despair head-on, without flinching; it's thus perhaps inevitable that many in the audience will.

Be warned: this film contains almost indescribable violence. Yet it's not the freak show the movie's press may suggest. The film isn't merely saturated with senseless gore: the violence has purpose, and when the characters commit it, they have reasons.

What those reasons are is open to interpretation. Like all great films, Antichrist allows for multiple meanings: it's quite possible to make sense of it at various levels. What meaning the film holds for you depends upon exactly how you evaluate what's onscreen.

Antichrist suggests a frightening existential question: are human beings simply evil? The character known only as She (Charlotte Gainsbourg) begins to wonder, after her son accidentally dies while she and her husband (Willem Dafoe) are making love.

The couple is grief-stricken, yet the loss may have affected the wife more profoundly. She blames herself. The husband, a therapist, tells her she cannot, and tries to treat her. It does not occur to him that what she really needs is for him to be her husband.

They retreat to their cabin, called Eden. She confides her fear of the woods, of nature: it seems dark, senseless, malevolent. It seems that way to the husband as well, in disturbing visions that may or may not be real. Yet he tries to remain rational.

Too rational, perhaps: the wife protests he doesn't love her. He doesn't seem to feel. She becomes abusive. Is she trying to provoke a reaction, any reaction?

And what about the dissertation she spent time at the cabin writing, on the subject of witchcraft and misogyny? Has she internalized the very self-hating ideas she intended to dispel? Does she see herself as an evil being, born of an evil world?

Some think this is the side Von Trier comes down on. That's not necessarily so, however: what's important is that She may come down on that side. She cannot make sense of their tragedy. When all sense has left, with it goes all meaning.

While Antichrist hints at darker possibilities, the film functions simultaneously as a spellbinding psychological drama. It's possible to view the film purely as human tragedy - which is to say, the characters' own personal flaws, and the self-destruction to which they lead.

I know many would rather not see a film like this. But in addition to being diverted, we deserve serious films that examine serious subjects.

We owe it to ourselves to be confronted with profound questions about human existence. We owe it to ourselves to reflect. Antichrist may shake you - but that's a good thing.
— Kenton Smith

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