Movie Review: Gemini Man

Gemini Man ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Ang Lee.

Written by: David Benioff and Billy Ray and Darren Lemke.

Starring: Will Smith (Henry Brogan / Junior), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Danny Zakarweski), Clive Owen (Clay Verris), Benedict Wong (Baron), Douglas Hodge (Jack Willis), Ralph Brown (Del Patterson), Linda Emond (Janet Lassiter).

 

Ang Lee certainly isn’t the first great director to fall down a technological rabbit hole and not be able to find his way out. Robert Zemeckis spent well over a decade doing those animated films – which I liked for the most part, but he seemed convinced they were the future until they weren’t. James Cameron has become so obsessed with the different technologies, that we’ve only gotten two films from him in the last 20 years – a sad thing from one of the great action directors of his generation. Ang Lee is the one that confuses me the most however. Sure, he’s worked with special effects on and off since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon nearly 20 years ago – but I wouldn’t have guess that the director of Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, Brokeback Mountain and Lust, Caution would become so obsessed with frame rates and 3-D that it would become the entire reason for his output. Apparently it started because he was frustrated with what he could and couldn’t do working on the Oscar winning Life of Pi – and he wanted more control – hence the experimenting with frame rates that has led to Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and now Gemini Man. The 120 frames per second is way more than the regular 24 frames of regular film – and allows more information into the frame – and more control of it. It also makes, it must be said, everything look kind of strange. On one level I get it – Lee was a late convert to digital in the first place, but his basic point was a solid one – digital is a different format than film, so why spend all your time trying to make it look like film rather than exploring what it can be. And it is wholly possibly that at some point we’ll look back at these films as groundbreaking – experiments along the way towards something truly new and revolutionary. I just kind of wish Ang Lee would let someone else do the experimenting – and he went back to just making films.

 

If Lee learned something from Billy Lynn’s failure it may well have been he shouldn’t have tried to make a drama – anything with much emotional heft or dramatic moments, but just go straight ahead action movie. Gemini Man is that – an action thriller about a long time government hit man, Henry Brogan (Will Smith) who stumbles upon the information that the last hit he did before retirement wasn’t exactly above board – and so his former bosses come looking for him. Henry, of course, is the greatest soldier America has ever produced though – and he won’t so easily be killed. He ends up on the run with Danny Zakarweski (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and agent first assigned to watch him (he figures out the ruse, quickly, of course) and eventually his old army buddy Baron (Benedict Wong). Henry’s old bosses, Clay Verris (Clive Owen) meanwhile tries to get permission to unless Gemini on Henry.

 

For a movie that has given away its premise in every preview – and hell, every poster – that the man sent to kill Henry is really his clone – Junior – 25 years younger, played by Smith again with digital de-aging effects – it takes a shocking long time (nearly half the two-hour runtime) to get there in the film. Until then, we do get some action sequences of course – but we also get a lot of tin eared dialogue – delivered by Smith in his “very serious” mode (not the lifeless very serious mode of After Earth – but certainly lacking the charm that made Smith one of the biggest stars in the world). Winstead does what she can – she at least doesn’t seem to be taking anything very seriously, while Owen seems to spend the movie wishing he had a mustache to twirl.

 

I will say this – the de-aged Smith looks good – perhaps not quite “we shot these scenes in the movie 25 years ago Boyhood style and have just been waiting for everyone to age” – but good enough. The problem may be that I’m not quite sure Smith pulls off the performance of the younger version of himself – I think he leans into the naiveté too much, and constantly looks too astonished, and on then on the verge of tears. But hey it works.

 

Shocking, what doesn’t work as much for me is the action scenes themselves – especially everything involving Junior. I’m not quite sure what they did to them, but everything moves too fast – in particular, Junior himself, who almost looks like what they make the Flash or Quiksilver look like in action sequences, and something feels off about them. If you cannot enjoy a scene of a young Will Smith launching a motorcycle at an older Will Smith because something about the picture seems off, you’ve messed up.

 

I guess this is the point to point out that I didn’t see Gemini Man in the format Ang Lee intended – I would have to travel a good 45 minutes each way to find a theater playing Gemini Man in 3-D in the frame rate, so I just saw it at the multiplex five minutes from my house. Watching it projected in regular 2-D digital, you can definitely tell that something is different about this film. Visually, the film can be distracting – even without the super speed action sequences of Junior. But that’s not always a bad thing. There are shots and moments here that don’t quite look like anything else I’ve seen. When I watched Billy Lynn – in IMAX 3-D as Lee intended (I think there were like three of us in the audience) – that film really did look like watching a film with motion smoothing on like a high definition TV – which some critics have complained about this film looking as well. There are moments of that here as well – but they are few and far between. Perhaps projecting it in a format other than intended actually improved the look of this film.

 

There is probably a future for this type of filmmaking – as more and more filmmakers come on board, and experiment. Apparently Cameron is using the same format for the Avatar sequels. And every new technology has their early struggles before the concept is proven, and it starts looking better and better. We probably need to go through those experiments. I just wish it wasn’t Ang Lee doing the experimenting. There are lots of filmmakers who do the experimenting (Michael Bay for example) – but there’s only one Ang Lee – and we haven’t really seen him in a while.

Movie Review: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

Directed by: Ang Lee.

Written by: Jean-Christophe Castelli based on the novel by Ben Fountain.

Starring: Joe Alwyn (Billy Lynn), Kristen Stewart (Kathryn Lynn), Chris Tucker (Albert), Garrett Hedlund (Sgt. David Dime), Vin Diesel (Shroom), Steve Martin (Norm Oglesby), Ismael Cruz Cordova (Sgt. Holliday), Arturo Castro ("Mango" Montoya), Ben Platt (Josh), Deirdre Lovejoy (Denise Lynn), Tim Blake Nelson (Wayne Foster), Makenzie Leigh (Faison Zorn), Beau Knapp (Crack), Barney Harris (Sykes), Allen Daniel (Major Mac).

 

Ang Lee is a filmmaker I cannot help but admire, even when I don’t much like the film he has made. His version of Hulk (2003) may not have been a great film – but had it succeeded, perhaps we would have seen a series of more personal, individual superhero movies instead of the ones that come off the assembly line now (Hulk isn’t a particularly good movie – but it is undeniably an Ang Lee movie). Life of Pi (2012) is one of the few live action film that really does justify the 3-D it uses – it was such a stunning film to look at, and experience on the big screen, you kind of forget that the story never quite connects like it should. With Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Lee has decided to shoot his movie at 120 frames per second – far more than the normal 24 frames per second of traditional film and even the 48 frames per second that Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit films were shot in. It’s an odd thing for Lee to do for many reasons – for one, no one much like the look of The Hobbit films, saying that it made the film look like an over lit soap opera, and more importantly, the vast majority of people who will ever watch Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, will not see it projected as Lee wants it to be – since theaters are not equipped with the projectors capable of doing it. This is how I saw the film, projected by my local multiplex, and I have to say the whole thing felt like a distraction more than anything else – you can sense that Lee is trying to make the most of this format, in some of the slow pans around the stadium where most of the action takes place, or in the strange close-ups through the film (trying to put us, in the audience, into the eyes of the title character) – but the effect doesn’t really work. All this is really a shame, because Ben Fountain’s novel, which the film is based on, is one of the best written about the Iraq war – and it deserves a real movie made out of it, not just a director, as brilliant as Lee is, playing around with a camera.

 

The movie takes place over the course of a day – although it does have flashbacks – as Bravo Company are the guests of honor at a Thanksgiving Dallas Cowboys football game. It’s 2004, and they’ve been home for two weeks, on a morale boosting tour (for America, not the Bravos), as Billy’s heroism – as he tried to jump in and save the life of one of his fellow soldiers, Shroom Vin Diesel), was captured on film and became an internet sensation. The Dallas Cowboys game will be the last stop on this tour before they are sent back to Iraq – with the halftime show, when they will be on the field with Destiny’s Child, being the highlight. Throughout, the movie will flashback to Billy’s time in Iraq – his friendship with the fallen Shroom, and a few scenes of his short visit home to his family – where his big sister, Kathryn (Kristen Stewart) tries to talk him out of going back to Iraq.

 

The football game material is supposed to be surreal and satirical. The men on Bravo company are stuck in Texas, where everyone comes up to shake their hands, wish them well, tell them how they support the troops – when in reality they are not doing much of anything. The trappings of the football game – and in particular the halftime show – put a façade of militaristic patriotism on things, but it’s hollow and false. People keeping saying military type commands to the men, who think it’s a joke – they’re talking about meeting cheerleaders here, not war. They meet the team’s owner – Norm Oglesby (Steve Martin) – a billionaire with a phony Texas drawl, who only cares about them when it doesn’t cost him anything – and allows him to put them on display to show everyone how much he cares. The Bravos have an agent (Chris Tucker), with a cellphone glued to his ear, trying to make them a deal to make them rich by selling their story to Hollywood. Hilary Swank is apparently very interested.

 

The problem with the film is that Lee doesn’t seem all that interested in what is going on in front of the camera in terms of the story or characters. The cast is full of talented people- but aside from Kristen Stewart, showing once again she’s incapable of hitting a false note right now, the rest of the cast has moments that fall flat, or where they simply look silly. Vin Diesel in particular was the wrong choice to play the philosophy spouting Shroom – but even he could have done better than he does here, where more often than not he simply looks silly. Much of the heavy lifting is given to newcomer Joe Alowyn as the title character – and he’s fine, I guess, but far from great. The film is full of distractions – including the ridiculous way Lee gets around shooting a Destiny’s Child concert when they obviously said no to appearing in the film.

 

But it is the way the film is shot that really, truly sinks it. The visual style of the movie is distracting and at times dizzying in a bad way. Even if what was happening in front of the camera was better executed on a script or performance level, you cannot concentrate on it because you fear you’re getting motion sickness.

 

I will say this for Ang Lee – someone was bound to try this eventually, and now that a director of his caliber has, and failed, it may be a while before someone tries again. Lee is trying to do something here – trying to push cinema in another direction, using technology as a tool. I can admire the intent – even if, on this occasion, it results in a failure.

Thoughts on Hulk (2003) and The Incredible Hulk (2008)

Hulk (2003)
Directed by: Ang Lee.
Written by: John Turman and Michael France and James Schamus based on the Marvel comic book character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
Starring: Eric Bana (Bruce Banner), Jennifer Connelly (Betty Ross), Sam Elliott (Ross), Josh Lucas (Talbot), Nick Nolte (Father), Paul Kersey (Young David Banner), Cara Buono (Edith Banner), Todd Tesen (Young Ross), Kevin Rankin  (Harper), Celia Weston (Mrs. Krensler).

The Incredible Hulk (2008)

Directed by:  Louis Leterrier.
Written by: Zak Penn.
Starring: Edward Norton (Bruce Banner), Liv Tyler (Betty Ross), Tim Roth (Emil Blonsky), William Hurt (General 'Thunderbolt' Ross), Tim Blake Nelson (Samuel Sterns), Ty Burrell (Leonard), Christina Cabot (Major Kathleen Sparr), Peter Mensah (General Joe Greller), Lou Ferrigno (The Incredible Hulk / Security Guard), Paul Soles (Stanley), Débora Nascimento (Martina).

Sometimes I amuse myself by wondering if the Superhero movie landscape would be any different today if Ang Lee’s Hulk was more successfully – either with audiences or critics. The film came out in 2003, when superhero movies were nowhere near as prevalent as they are today. Joel Schumacher had killed Batman, and Christopher Nolan hadn’t resurrected him yet. Superman had been dead for nearly 2 decades. We had no idea what the Marvel Comic Universe was. There was only two superhero franchises – still in their infancy – going at the time. Bryan Singer’s X-Men (2000) had been a hit, and the sequel came out the same summer (although later) than Hulk. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002) had been the highest grossing film of the year – beating out the second Lord of the Rings movie and Star Wars Episode II, which no one thought it would do. Then, with a lot of fanfare, Hulk was released – and more or less bombed. Yes, it made $132 million at the box office – but Spider-Man had made $400 million. If they had plans to make Hulk into a franchise, they stopped. Watching the film again, for the first time since it came out, it’s easy to see why it didn’t do particularly well with anyone – it quite simply isn’t very good (that’s not to say it’s bad). It’s both a mediocre superhero movie and a mediocre Ang Lee movie – but the thing about it is this – it IS an Ang Lee superhero movie. I’m not sure how many superhero movies since Hulk – aside from Nolan’s Batman films – undeniably feel like the work of their directors, and not like the work of some corporate committee. To be fair, many of those movie are far superior to Ang Lee’s Hulk – but I still dream of a world where even huge blockbusters that cost hundreds of millions of dollars feel at least somewhat personal.

To be far, even if Ang Lee’s Hulk had been successful, at best it would have just delayed the inevitable transfer from personal to corporate vision. When the Marvel Comic Universe on film started, they did hire at least (somewhat) more personal filmmakers – like Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Iron Man 2), Kenneth Branagh (Thor) and Joe Johnston (Captain America: The First Avenger). Even Louis Leterrier, who they hired to reboot The Incredible Hulk, just five years after Lee’s failure, was an action director of some experience – having made the first two Transporter movies as well as the Jet Li vehicle Unleashed. His hiring sent a message though – that this Hulk would be more action oriented than Lee’s morose character study of a man haunted by childhood abuse. This new film would be more smashy-smashy, and less weepy-weepy. It’s a similar message Marvel sends now – replacing directors like Favreau, Branagh and Johnston with TV vets like Alan Coulter (Thor 2: The Dark World) and Anthony & Joe Russo (Captain America: The Winter Solider, the next Captain America and the next two Avengers movies after Ultron), or a relative directing novice like Shane Black (Iron Man 3) or replacing the singular Edgar Wright with the not singular Peyton Reed on the upcoming Ant-Man. Marvel now has a house style, and they do not want singular visions anymore – they want people who will make the movies look and feel like all the others, with a few touches here and there to differentiate between them. I enjoy James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy as much as anyone – but it sure doesn’t feel much like a film from the director of Slither or Super. I look forward to Avengers: Age of Ultron, and think Joss Whedon is incredibly talented – but even he, who is as responsible as any one person is for the direction of the Marvel movies over the past decade, has not been able to add much in the way of strong female characters to the films – which is normally a Whedon trademark. Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow may be a great character – and Johansson is consistently excellent in the movies, but she’s always playing second fiddle to at least one male character. Zoe Saldana’s Gamora is a great character, but she’s still behind a dancing Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy.

Anyway, I seem to have gotten off track a little bit here. Back to Ang Lee’s Hulk and its problems. As a film, Hulk really is kind of a mess. There is a lot of heavy (and heavy handed) character driven stuff in the first hour or so in the movie. It introduces us to Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) via his tragic backstory – adopted when he was still a young boy after his parents were supposedly killed in an army base explosion. But we know more than Bruce does in the early going – that his father, a scientist, had been experimenting with something to alter his own DNA, to make him stronger, and that he passed that down to Bruce. Bruce is now a scientist, working with gamma radiation, which he thinks may help people in the future cure all sorts of diseases and make them stronger – but all he has been able to do so far is blow up frogs. Then, in a heroic act, he saves a co-worker by taking a huge dose of gamma radiation himself – something that should kill him, but of course doesn’t. But now, when he gets angry, he’s no longer Bruce Banner – but he transforms into a giant green monster – who many people at the time said looked like the Jolly Green Giant – and they weren’t exactly wrong – the coloring is strongly reminiscent of that Brussel sprout pitchman.

There is, of course, a lot more story than that. There’s Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly), Bruce’s girlfriend and partner in the lab, who is many ways is reprising her Oscar winning role in A Beautiful Mind (2001) – as the woman who has to be depressed, and look morose, as her genius mate cannot control himself. There’s Ross’ father, General Ross (Sam Elliot), who knew Banner’s father on that army base, and both wants to protect his daughter, and figure out what this new Banner is hiding. There is Talbot (Josh Lucas), a corporate stooge, who also works with the army who wants to figure out how to turn what Bruce is doing into a weapon. And then there’s Nick Nolte as Banner’s long lost father who gets out of jail at the most convenient time imaginable, but doesn’t want a heartwarming father-son reunion.

Ang Lee may seem today like a somewhat surprising choice to direct a big budget action movie – but it made some sense back in 2003. His last film was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), a brilliant action epic, and although its breathtaking effects were mainly practical and wire work, it seemed like it was a good idea at the time to allow him to direct action. But this is also the director of films like The Ice Storm (1997), a morose (yet brilliant), family drama, and that Lee shows up in the early scenes of Hulk. Eric Bana makes the choice to try and make Banner into a repressed character suffering the effects of his traumatic childhood – but basically, he just comes across as bored. The movie drags in the first hour with all this weight. The second hour is a mess of one action sequence after another, and Banner transforms and fights off the army – the angrier he gets, the bigger he grows – and eventually having to confront his father, who has transformed into something greater as well.

I have to give Lee credit for trying something new here. It’s becomes fairly standard issue for comic books movies to try to be very, very serious now – but it wasn’t back in 2003. Lee wanted to make a movie about a man who turns into a giant monster every time he gets angry, but take it seriously. That may sound strange – but it’s basically what Nolan did with a trilogy of movies about a billionaire who dresses up like a bat to fight a man with a burlap sack mask, a guy in clown makeup, and a muscle bound man with a strange breathing apparatus. It worked for Nolan – it didn’t really for Lee. But dammit, he tried. He also tried some interesting things visually – experimenting by splitting the screen, and having boxes, so at times the screen looked like a comic book. Again, I’m not sure it totally worked (in fact, I know it didn’t) – but it was an interesting idea.

What ultimately undoes Hulk is that the film takes itself too seriously for a movie where the special effects are not good enough to take seriously. This Hulk never feels real – never looks real, has an offputtingly bright shade of green. The action scenes are confused and overlong. And Eric Bana doesn’t have Christian Bale’s charisma to make a sulking man into anything other than a bore. Hulk is a flawed movie to be sure – but it was an ambitious one. It failed – but it was trying for something.

In contrast, the 2008 film The Incredible Hulk, directed by Louis Letterier, and starring Edward Norton as Bruce Banner, has far less ambition, but it is far more successful working on its own terms. Thankfully, the film doesn’t try to truly reboot the franchise – the film disposes of the origin story during some flashes over the opening credits - and it’s not the same as the one in Ang Lee’s Hulk – although Banner starts this movie where Bana’s Lee ended, in South America. Banner is living anonymously – working at a soft drink bottling plant, and trying to discover a cure for his affliction. He is also learning ways to control his anger, so he doesn’t just Hulk out every time he gets angry. Of course, General Ross (William Hurt) discovers where he is, and sends a team – led by Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) after him, and of course, Banner escapes and comes back to America. He re-teams with his old flame Betty (Liv Tyler), and tracks down a scientist he thinks may be able to help him (Tim Blake Nelson) – all the while on the run from General Ross and Blonsky.

There is much less plot in this version of the Hulk than in Lee’s – and no real unnecessary characters. Everyone in the movie basically has one function, with no real complexity to them, and the film is basically one big chase, with a few stops along the way for a Norton to Hulk out and smash a bunch of things – leading, of course, to a big showdown with Blonsky – now a gigantic creature himself – on the streets of Harlem.

Marvel learned a thing or two from their experience with Lee and his Hulk. People do not want nor need a complex backstory. They just want a lot of things to be smashed- and the movie delivers on that. Actually, watching the film now, 7 years after it was made, is how low stakes the film feels when compared to the rest of the Marvel films. Blonsky may turn into a monster – but the fate of the world is never at stake – just the fate of one street in Harlem. The film has almost no ambition – even by the standards comic book movies. But what it sets out to do, it mainly does. They did a smart thing and made this Hulk a darker green than Lee’s – no Jolly Green Giant this time. They also have little backstory, little character development and never takes itself very seriously. It’s a straight ahead movie.

It was used simply as a way to re-introduce the character to audiences before The Avengers. Of course, the movie didn’t really make any more money than Lee’s Hulk, and Marvel didn’t get along with Norton, so they once again had to recast the role for upcoming movies (with Mark Ruffalo). There have been rumors of a standalone Hulk movie with Ruffalo – who audiences seem to like more than Bana or Norton – but then again, he doesn’t really have much to do in The Avengers. Everyone remembers the lines “I’m angry all the time” (which, to me, simply raises more questions, not answers any) and of course “Puny God” – which is my favorite moment in the film – but he barely has a character to play in the film.

So what film is better? The ambitious film that fails to live up to its ambitions, or the non-ambitious film that delivers exactly what it sets out to do? I’ll let you decide that. I hadn’t revisited either film since they came out – and probably won’t revisit them again anytime soon. Neither is a great film, neither is a disaster either.

I do know which film I wish had been successful – Ang Lee’s. Had Lee made a successful film, perhaps superhero movies today would be different – and for the better. Probably not. Sooner or later, when hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent, the people putting up that money are going to want a lot of say. But it’s nice to think what could have been.

Movie Review: Life of Pi

Life of Pi
Directed by: Ang Lee.
Written by: David Magee based on the novel by Yann Martel.
Starring: Suraj Sharma (Pi Patel), Irrfan Khan (Adult Pi Patel), Ayush Tandon (Pi Patel -11 / 12 Years), Gautam Belur (Pi Patel -5 Years), Adil Hussain (Santosh Patel), Tabu (Gita Patel), Ayan Khan (Ravi Patel -7 Years), Vibish Sivakumar (Ravi Patel -18 / 19 Years), Rafe Spall (Writer), Gérard Depardieu (Cook), James Saito (Older Insurance Investigator), Jun Naito (Younger Insurance Investigator), Andrea Di Stefano (Priest), Shravanthi Sainath (Anandi).

Life of Pi is one of the most stunningly beautiful films I have ever seen. I urge you to see the film in a theatre – on the largest screen possible, and spring for the 3-D, which for once is actually used to perfection. Even if you don’t think much of the story, this movie gives you an almost constant stream of beautiful images to gawk at. And yet, something was holding me back from truly loving the film. The rest of the film never quite rises to the level of its visuals.

The film opens with a middle aged Pi (Irrfan Khan) living in Montreal telling his story to a writer (Rafe Spall). We flash back to Pi’s childhood in India, where he was raised (literally) in a zoo. Pi was always a spiritual child, and could never decide on a religion. He was born a Hindu, but became a Catholic and a Muslim, not in place of each other, but at the same time. In the 1970s, Pi’s father decides that it is time to sell the animals, and head to Winnipeg for a better life (and here I thought people moved away from Winnipeg for a better life). The family and the animals are loaded on a huge cargo ship – and it isn’t long before the ship wrecks, leaving Pi as the only human on a life raft. He’s not alone though – there’s a rat, a hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. It isn’t long before it’s just Pi and Richard Parker – and Pi has to figure out how to keep the giant beast from eating him, and stay alive for months at sea.

The film is an extremely faithful adaptation of Yann Martel’s bestselling book – it’s legions of fans will not be disappointed. It makes some trims, necessary for time reasons, mostly in the film’s opening passages set in India, but mainly adheres closely to the book. I read the book not long ago, and liked it quite a bit, but didn’t love it as much as many have. Perhaps, in the interest of fairness, I should mention that I am an atheist and so this “story that will make you believe in God” just couldn’t have the same spiritual impact it has had on many. For this is clearly a religious movie – a movie where the very real journey Pi takes across the ocean is also a spiritual journey – he has his faith in God tested, but he ultimately prevails. It’s not that I cannot be moved by religious or spiritual films – hell I named The Tree of Life the best film of 2011, but that film, although it ultimately confirms the existence of God (at least if you read the ending like most do), was really about a man’s struggle with God and his “mysterious ways”. I never got that sense in Life of Pi, either the book or the movie, that Pi’s faith is really tested that much – his faith is shaken, but he never really loses it. It doesn’t help that in the movie, he doesn’t get the same sort of running, interior monologue that he has in the book, so we are left more often than not trying to read the face of novice actor Suraj Sharma as Pi. Sharma is good as Pi, but not great – perhaps a little too passive at times. The bookending scenes of Irrfan Khan and Rafe Spall are also a little clumsily handled – although they are mainly saved by Khan, who once again proves why he is a great actor. Mychael Danna’s score is a little overbearing at times, but it generally moving.

Yet, these are mainly minor flaws in the movie. Directed by Ang Lee, who has made many beautiful movies in the past (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain, Lust, Caution chief among them), but has never made a film this purely visually stunning before. The cinematography, by Claudio Miranda (who is used to working with special effects in films like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Tron: Legacy) is one of the triumphs of the year. There are shots here that are simply stunning – the clear water of a Paris swimming pool broken by a solitary swimmer above being my personal favorite. The film’s color palette is bright and bold, fitting its narrative, both in India and on the ocean. The special effects are effortlessly integrated into the world Lee has created. Despite my problems with the narrative at times, I was never anything but fully engrossed in the pure visual wonder Lee has put on screen.

Even the 3-D works. I have mentioned numerous times over the last few years that I am not a fan of 3-D – I don’t mind it with animated movies as much, but more often than not, in live action movies it is little more than an unnecessary distraction. Life of Pi joins the extremely short list of films – perhaps as sort as Avatar and Hugo – of live action films that actually use 3-D well. Lee doesn’t use the technology to have a bunch of stuff coming flying at the audience (okay, yes, he does just that in the flying fish sequence, but that’s only one scene), but to add depth to his images. Overall, while I don’t think that Life of Pi is quite the religious experience Ang Lee and company were hoping for – at least for me – it is still one of the most visual achievements of the year.

Movie Review: Taking Woodstock

Taking Woodstock **
Directed By: Ang Lee.
Written By: James Schamus based on the book by Elliot Tiber & Tom Monte.
Starring: Demetri Martin (Elliot Teichberg), Henry Goodman (Jake Teichberg), Imelda Staunton (Sonia Teichberg), Emile Hirsch (Billy), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Dan), Eugene Levy (Max Yasgur), Dan Fogler (Devon), Jonathan Groff (Michael Lang), Mamie Gummer (Tisha), Liev Schreiber (Vilma), Paul Dano (VW Guy), Kelli Garner (VW Girl).

There is a good story lurking somewhere beanth the surface of Taking Woodstock, and it’s a shame that neither the movie, nor the book it is based on, does a very good job of telling it. When we think about Woodstock, we think about the music, the rain, the mud, the drugs and the hippies. But Taking Woodstock tells the story for a different perspective. Elliot Tiber (Demetri Martin) was a closeted gay man who was helping his parents Jake and Sonia (Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton) run their old motel in the Catskills in upstate New York. The bank is about ready to call in their mortage, and things look hopeless. That is until Elliot finds out that a huge concert has just lost its permit in nearby Watkill. They need another outdoor venue and fast. And Elliot has just what they need. Soon the town of White Lake is flooded with workers setting up a new stage, and hippies from around the country show up in town. The town is outraged, but there is nothing they can do about it. The experience of being around so many people who are comfortable in their own skin, makes Elliot accept who he is, and in a strange way, accept who his parents - who have always driven him crazy - are as well.

This probably sounds like an interesting story, and admittedly it is. It’s too bad that the movie never really settles down to tell its story. The first hour of the film is actually quite entertaining, if flawed, in telling the story of the leadup to the concert itself. The second hour however goes wildly off the rails, as director Ang Lee and his screenwriter James Schamus appear to be more interested in creating a headtrip of the movie (and not even a good one at that). Whatever interesting insights the movie had to offer about Elliot, his parents and the townspeople of White Lake, are lost in their attempt to be “trippy”.

Perhaps it was not really their fault. I just finished Tiber’s book that is the basis of this movie, and he does not seem all that interested in the people of White Lake either. To him, they were little more than uptight, pathetic, anti-semetic, homophobic jerks. And for much of the book, Tiber does not even appear that interested in telling us the story of what happened, and instead he likes to ramble on about the “truth and beauty” of the people he met at Woodstock, and how wonderful it all was. Sometimes, the person at the center of the story - in this case Elliot - is not the right person to tell it.

What keeps the movie as interesting as it is, are the performances. Demetri Martin, best known for his terrific standup, and his work on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, here slides effortlessly into the role of Elliot. His hopeless optimism and seemingly never ending naivete is somewhat entertaining, and funny throughout. He is is practically every scene in the film, and he carries the film quite well during that first hour. During the second hour, where he has to spend more time stoned and screaming, he is not as effective, but I wonder anyone could have competed with Lee’s constant shifting color palette, and his lackadaisal pace. We keep watching this part of the film - the part that actually takes place during the concert itself - waiting for the music to start - and it never does. While I’m all for taking an original view of Woodstock, it seems kind of a ripoff that we never get to see any performances at the greatest concert of all time.

The rest of the cast is in a similar boat. We cannot help but like Goodman as Elliot’s father, long beaten down by life and a domineering wife, who finally feels alive again when he’s given a purpose. Staunton is given a one note role as the stereotypical shrill Jewish mother, hording money and an expert at giving guilt trips to her son. We do not like her character, and to be honest, whenever she is onscreen, I wished she would go away as soon as possible. Jonathan Groff fares much better as Michael Lang, the concert promoter. No matter what is going on, he seems completely at ease and calm. “Relax”, he keeps telling Elliot, “Everything is going to be fine”. Somehow when he says it, we believe him. I do wish the filmmakers had done more with Liev Schreiber than simply put him in a dress. He plays a former Army Sergeant, and grandfather (he married young), who shows up and offers his help as a security guard. Why when you have such an interesting character is he shunted to the background? Worse yet is Emile Hirsch as Billy, a Vietnam vet prone to flashbacks and drug abuse. They do nothing original with this character, and although Hirsch plays the role to the hilt, he cannot save it. We keep expecting Jeffrey Dean Morgan to do something as one of the townspeople who is not happy with the concert, but the film seems to forget that he - and the rest of the town for that matter - is there at all.

Ang Lee is one of the best filmmakers in the world, but here I don’t think he ever really thought through the material. Here is a filmmaker whose films include such great ones as The Ice Storm, Brokeback Mountain and Lust, Caution - complex films that concentrated on their characters. Here, Lee does not seem as interested in his characters. They are all one note and fairly uninteresting. It’s too bad, because I have a feeling that if the filmmakers had spent more time fleshing out the characters, and less time trying to be trippy, then they could have a had a great film. As it stands, Taking Woodstock is not even a good one.