Movie Review: The Secret of Kells

The Secret of Kells ***
Directed By: Tomm Moor.
Written By: Tomm Moore & Fabrice Ziolkowski.
Starring: Brendan Gleeson (Abbot Cellach), Liam Hourican (Brother Tang / Leonardo), Mick Lally (Aidan), Michael McGrath (Adult Brenda), Evan McGuire (Brendan), Christen Mooney (Aisling), Paul Tylack (Brother Assoua), Paul Young (Brother Square).

The Secret of Kells is a refreshing old fashioned animated life. Not only is the film not filled wall to wall with computer effects, but wonderful looking, hand drawn animation, but the story is winningly old fashioned as well. It is a dark fantasy, yet perfectly good for kids. There is more excitement in this film than in most animated films that work so hard at being funny and colorful from beginning to end that they induce headaches.

The film is about Brendan (with the voice of Evan McGuire), a young boy living in a monastery in Ireland during the time of the Vikings. His Uncle, the Abbot Cellach (Brendan Gleeson), spends all of his time fortifying the walls of their town of Kells in the hopes that the wall will hold off the inevitable invasion by the Vikings. Brendan is a curious boy, but he does what he is told – which is to stay inside the walls and not cause trouble. That is until Brother Aidan (Mick Lally), and his strange cat arrive. Aidan is legendary, as he has been working on a book that will bring light to the world for years. Now old, he has been run out of his hometown by the Vikings, and found his way to Kells to see his old student Cellach. But Cellach has no time for such silly things as books. But to Brendan, Aidan is the most exciting thing that has happened in a long time. On an errand for him, Brendan ventures into the surrounding forest where he meets Aisling (Christen Mooney), an eccentric young woman with long flowing white hair, who knows every inch of the forest, and refers to it as hers.

The film has a wonderful visual look. The characters all have distinctive appearances, not quite looking real, but more like moving geometric shapes. The animation has a flow to it that is wonderful, especially in the scenes in the forest, a magical atmosphere is created. The eventual siege of the town by the Vikings is told almost entirely in blacks and reds – the Vikings are all black except for their glowing red eyes, and as they burn the town to the ground, it is engulfed by flames.

I have a feeling that if kids see this movie (and that’s doubtful as it’s only getting a cursory release to qualify it for the Oscars this year), they will enjoy the story of the young boy on an adventure. It’s not a million miles away from something like The Sword and the Stone.

The movie is short, which helps to make the time pass quickly, but also has the effect of rushing through a little too much at points. Particularly the ending feels rushed, as if the filmmakers just wanted to end the movie instead of truly exploring its characters and what really happened. But no matter, The Secret of Kells is a refreshing animated film – one that kids will enjoy, and adults will as well. Let’s just hope they get a chance to see it.

Movie Review: Mary & Max

Mary and Max ***
Directed By: Adam Elliot.

Written By: Adam Elliot.
Starring: Toni Collette (Mary Daisy Dinkle), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Max Jerry Horovitz), Eric Bana (Damien), Barry Humphries (Narrator), Bethany Whitmore (Young Mary), Renée Geyer (Vera), Ian 'Molly' Meldrum (Homeless Man).

Animation can be used in a lot of different ways. Sadly, North American audiences still mainly see it as kids stuff, and don’t really seem to pay all that much attention to animated films aimed at adults. Mary and Max is a wonderfully animated movie, and while there is no violence, no swearing and no sex, it is still not really a movie for kids. There is an air of sadness that hangs over the entire film.

Mary is a little girl living in Australia. She has an ugly birthmark on her forehead, and no real friends. Her mother is an alcoholic and her father either spends all his time working or in his shed doing his taxidermy. She is utterly, completely alone. One day, at the post office she gets an idea to mail a letter to America. She has been told that babies come out of the bottle of beer glasses in Australia, and wants to know if the same thing happens in America. She picks out a name at random from the book – Max Horovitz – and writes him a letter that asks the question, and also details her life. Thus is the beginning of a very strange pen pal friendship.

Max lives in New York City. He was born a Jew, but is now an atheist. He is in his 50s, massively overweight and has Aspersers. Like Mary, he is utterly, completely alone. Intrigued by Mary’s letter, he rattles off pages of typewritten screed where he details his own life in rather literal detail. The two start exchanging letters on a regular basis throughout the years. They have both finally found a friend – even if that friend is on the other side of the world.

Mary and Max is told in mainly black and white claymation. There are dashes of color that director Adam Elliot sprinkles throughout the film, but mainly the film has a dark look to it – which only serves to highlight the lives of the characters, who are both in their own way depressed. As the movie moves along, the color scheme changes at times when things get a little brighter for the characters, and then darkens again. Although a movie about pen pals does not seem like the typical movie to be animated, it works amazingly well here.

The voice work also helps quite a bit. As a child, Mary is voiced by Bethany Whitmore, who has innocence about her voice that works well for the character. She does not have a good life, but she has hope that it going to get better. When she becomes an adult, Toni Collette takes over as the voice, and there is a forced cheeriness about her voice as she tries to convince herself that she is happy. Eric Bana is good in support, and Barry Humphries may have the most lines as anyone as the narrator. But the star of the movie, vocal wise, is Philip Seymour Hoffman as Max. I knew he was doing the voice before the movie started, and I still didn’t recognize the voice as his. It sounds almost like Richard Lewis, but with more sadness and despair threaded through it. It is one of the best vocal performances of the year.

Mary and Max meanders a little bit in places. Watching the film, even though I was utterly involved in the lives of the two characters, I had the suspicion at times that the film would have worked better had it been shorter. Things seem a little too drawn out at points to try and stretch the movie to feature length. But that is a small complaint about what is really a touching, insightful little movie. Don’t let the fact that it is animated fool you. This movie is about real people.

Movie Review: Red Cliff

Red Cliff *** ½
Directed By: John Woo.
Written By: John Woo & Khan Chan & Cheng Kuo & Heyu Sheng based on the novel by Guanzhong Luo.
Starring: Tony Leung Chiu Wai (Zhou Yu), Takeshi Kaneshiro (Zhuge Liang), Fengyi Zhang (Cao Cao), Chen Chang (Sun Quan), Wei Zhao (Sun Shangxiang), Jun Hu (Zhao Yun), Chiling Lin (Xiao Qiao), Shido Nakamura (Gan Xing), Yong You (Liu Bei), Ba Sen Zha Bu (Guan Yu), Yong Hou (Lu Su).

In Asia, John Woo’s epic Red Cliff was released in two parts spanning nearly 5 hours. For us in North America, the two movies were edited together, jettisoning almost half the total running time, and giving us one large movie. The result is sometimes choppy – we get the feeling that we should probably know more about some of the characters than we actually do – but it is still a wonderful action epic. The final battle sequence – which runs almost 45 minutes – is one of the best of its kind I’ve ever seen on the big screen. Woo has always been an action master, and he has ignored the trendiness of the rapid editing and shaky camera movements for a smoother, more coherent style. By returning to Hong Kong for the first time for the first time since 1992’s Hardboiled (after two very disappointing American films, Windtalkers and Paycheck), Woo has crafted one of his best films. I look forward to the DVD release of Red Cliff so I can catch everything that I missed at the theater.

The movie takes places in 208 CE in China, where the Prime Minister Cao Cao (Fengyi Zhang) has convinced the Emperor to go to war with two “warlords” in the South, Liu Bei (Yong You) and Sun Quan (Chen Chang), all under the guise of quelling “rebels” and uniting China. His real motivations are much more personal, and only become clear much later in the movie. Liu Bei’s army is quickly crushed by Cao Cao, and the remaining soldiers retreat to fight another day. Liu Bei knows that without Sun Quan’s help, Cao Cao will easily take over his land, and then move onto to Sun Quan’s, which he will also quickly win. He sends his military adviser Zhunge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro) to meet with Sun Quan, and his closest adviser Zhou Yu (Tony Leung) to try and set up an alliance between the two of the them to fight off Cao Cao. He agrees, after some initial reluctance, and the two new allies agree to make their stand at Red Cliff, where Cao Cao sets up on the other side of the water and plots his attack.

Despite the fact that the movie is over two and half hours long, the pace of the movie is quick. The action sequences at the beginning of the film perhaps rely on special effects a little too heavily, as geysers of blood pour out of the people in battle. Yet Woo’s sequences here, even if they are not as good as his normal sequences, are still better than most action sequences around. When the final battle does come, starting with a roaring sea battle, and continuing on land as the entire world seems to burn around Cao Cao, is masterfully handled. This is one of the best extended battle sequences I have ever seen, as the action also helps to develop the characters further. Even at the height of the action, Woo never loses focus on the story.

It is true that the movie does have to jettison a lot of character development that was probably in the longer version of the film, because the plot is so complex that it needs to be moved forward constantly in every scene. What Woo does though is not abandon character development completely, but focuses on fewer characters, particularly the relationship between Leung’s Zhou Yu and Kaneshrio’s Zhunge Liang. There is a certain element of homoeroticism between these two, particularly in a scene where the two perform a duet on their instruments, and in the films final shot where their faces are so close together you swear they are about to kiss. There is something undeniably feminine about Zhunge Liang, brought out in the sequence when everyone else goes to battle, and he stands on a cliff and says that he has done all he can. Why isn’t he fighting? He stays behind with the women.

Cao Cao is another interesting character, and although he is the villain of the movie, there is a certain aspect of Shakespearian tragedy to his character – perhaps Richard III or Macbeth. He is not only brought down by his hubris, but also by love. Fengyi Zhang’s performance is the film’s finest, a man who initially comes off as wholly evil, who turns out to be more complex then we thought he was.

With Red Cliff, John Woo has reestablished himself as one of the premiere action directors working today. Perhaps the two part version of this film is his masterpiece. I won’t know until I see it. But the version he has released into North America theaters is one of the best action movies of the year.

Movie Review: Everybody's Fine

Everybody’s Fine **
Directed By: Kirk Jones.
Written By: Kirk Jones based on the movie written by Massimo De Rita & Tonino Guerra & Giuseppe Tornatore.
Starring: Robert De Niro (Frank Goode), Drew Barrymore (Rosie), Kate Beckinsale (Amy), Sam Rockwell (Robert), Lucian Maisel (Jack), Damian Young (Jeff), James Frain (Tom), Melissa Leo (Colleen), Katherine Moennig (Jilly), James Murtaugh (Dr. Ed).

Everyone is not fine in Everybody’s Fine. Frank (Robert DeNiro) has lung problems, and is dealing with the death of his beloved wife 8 months prior to the start of the movie. He was looking forward to his four children coming to spend the weekend with him, but they all cancelled on him at the last minute. So he decides to board train after train, bus after bus and visit all four of his children. Each visit holds a surprise for him.

His artist son in New York, David, is not at his apartment. We gather from phone calls between the other siblings that he may have been arrested in Mexico on drug charges, but they aren’t telling Frank about it. Eventually he just leaves a note and heads off to Chicago to visit Amy (Kate Beckinsale) an ad executive with a husband (Damian Young) and son on the verge of his teenage years (Lucian Maisel). They don’t have time to visit him really, and he senses a tension in the house, although he is told that they are fine. After one night, he heads off to Denver to see his son Robert (Sam Rockwell) who Frank thinks is conducting an orchestra, but who is really just playing the drums. Again, he is put off by Robert, so he heads to Vegas to see Rosie (Drew Barrymore), a dancer. Something is strange about her living arrangements – as she lives in a huge apartment, and when her “friend” Jilly (Katherine Moenning stops by carrying a baby, things get awkward.

Everybody’s Fine is a remake of a highly regard Italian film of the same name directed by Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso) and starring Marcello Mastroinni. I never saw that film (I don’t think it exists on DVD), but this film never really comes together. Due to the nature of the film, it is more a series of vignettes than a fully formed film. The film works very hard to play everything close to the vest, not really wanting to reveal the secret of the movie, either what is really going on with David, or just how hard Frank was on his kids when they were growing up. At each stop, more and more stuff comes up, but Frank never really confronts his kids on any of it. They all seem to think that they need to protect Frank from all the bad stuff in their lives. He simply drifts from one stop to the next.

DeNiro does a fine job as Frank, our one source of consistency in the movie. He keeps the movie grounded. But because he is so kind of quiet, and doesn’t want confrontation, he isn’t the most dramatic of characters. His kids all lie constantly, so the real drama in the movie is left unstated until right near the end of the film. The result is a film that feels rather lazy and lackadaisical. It is hard to get truly involved with the film as while everything is bubbling under the surface, it never really comes to a head. It remains there.

The performances are fine – at least given the material the actors had to work with. It is the writing and directing by Kirk Jones (Waking Ned Devine) that undoes the film. The whole film just kind of sits there on screen, and we wait for the movie to start, which it never really does. It isn’t a horrible film by any means, but it never really comes together like we expect it to.

DVD Releases for December 8, 2009

This week four good to great movies come out on DVD, all of which you will want to catch up on if you want to be up to date during awards season.

The Cove *** ½
Probably the best, most powerful, documentary of the year, this film concentrates on the slaughter of dolphins at a remote cave in Japan. The filmmakers team up with environmentalists to try and get footage of what is really going on so that they can show the world. The result is a powerful environmental documentary, one that reduced me to tears, as well as an exciting story of almost espionage like tactics. This could easily be your Oscar winner for best documentary this year. For my original review please see: http://davesmoviesite.blogspot.com/2009/08/movie-review-cove.html

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince *** ½
The sixth film in the Harry Potter series, and the second directed by David Yates, does not hit the heights of the best of the series (that would be the third and fourth films), and is disappointing in that it cut a lot of the stuff that for me made this the best installment of the books, but is a definite improvement over the last film, and as a film unto itself is still a supreme entertainment. The child actors have grown into their roles admirably, and the addition of Jim Broadbent as Professor Slughorn was inspired. For my original review please see: http://davesmoviesite.blogspot.com/2009/07/movie-review-harry-potter-and-half.html

Julie & Julia ***
A chick flick if there ever was one, this film is about two women, Julie (Amy Adams) a modern resident of New York and her idol Julia Child (Meryl Streep) is France during the 1950s. The two stories cut back and forth, so while Child is learning to cook and writing her first cookbook, Julie is making her way through the same cookbook, trying to get through every recipe in a year. They have the unconditional support of their admiring husbands (Stanley Tucci is wonderful as Childs). The movie is fine, the performances quite good (although I still do not understand why Streep is going to get nominated for hers, but whatever), here is a fine that women will certainly admire much more than men, although I must admit I enjoyed it. For my original review please see: http://davesmoviesite.blogspot.com/2009/08/movie-review-julie-and-julia.html

Public Enemies ****
Michael Mann’s latest ode to all things masculine is one of his best. I know a lot of people complained that this was more of the same from Mann, and that he didn’t even try to connect the story of John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) to that of the great depression, but to me those were minor points. What remains in Public Enemies is a story of men defined by their actions (which is how they always are in a Mann film) and the brilliant, glimmering surface of the movie – one of the best made films this year bar none. Depp and Christian Bale, who plays the FBI Agent trying to get Dillinger, are both in fine form, but the ace up the films sleeve is Marion Cotillard, with the best eyes in show business, who for the first time in a Mann film delivers a real, full performance by a woman. A great film. For my original review please see: http://davesmoviesite.blogspot.com/2009/07/movie-review-public-enemies.html

Movie Review: Up in the Air

Up in the Air ****
Directed By: Jason Reitman.
Written By: Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner based on the novel by Walter Kirn.
Starring: George Clooney (Ryan Bingham), Vera Farmiga (Alex Goran), Anna Kendrick (Natalie Keener), Jason Bateman (Craig Gregory), Amy Morton (Kara Bingham), Melanie Lynskey (Julie Bingham), J.K. Simmons (Bob), Sam Elliott (Maynard Finch), Danny McBride (Jim Miller), Zach Galifianakis (Steve).

Up in the Air is the story of a man who has shut himself off from the world. No, he doesn’t live like the Unabomber is some remote shack. In fact he is constantly surrounded by people. But he might as well be alone, as he has no meaningful connections with anyone. His parents are dead, and he largely ignores his two sisters. He works for a company whose specialty is firing people for companies who do not have the guts to do it themselves. He travels over 300 days a year, flying from one part of the country to another to lay people off. He lives in a bubble, and that’s the way he likes it.

George Clooney plays this character, called Ryan Bingham, in one of his best performances. There is not another actor in the world right now that is better capable of playing these movie star roles. We should hate Ryan Bingham. He is smug and arrogant, treats everyone as if they are disposable, and essentially thinks of no one other than himself. But we don’t hate Ryan. Clooney makes him too likable for that.

Several things bring Ryan out of his bubble – including as it must in all movies like this – two women. The first woman is Alex (Vera Farmiga), a fellow road warrior who Bingham meets in a bar, and the two start flirting by talking about the different airlines, hotels and car rental places they like. The fall into bed quickly – they’ve both done this before – but instead of this ending up as just another one night stand on the road, they coordinate their schedules so they can do it again. Not a real relationship mind you – this is just a series of one night stands with the same woman – but for Ryan, that may be as much of a connection as he’s ever had with a woman.

The other woman is Natalie (Anna Kendrick), a whip smart young woman who just graduated at the top of her class from Cornell, and has joined Ryan’s company. She has an idea to save the company lots of money – instead of flying people like Ryan all over the country, they can fire people via video conferencing over the internet. This will essentially make Ryan irrelevant, and worse, will stop his way of life. Before this new system is put into place however, the boss Craig (Jason Bateman), wants Ryan to bring Natalie out on the road with him for a few weeks so she can get a feel for what this job is really like. He begrudgingly agrees.

Written and directed by Jason Reitman, Up in the Air is the best American comedy of the year. It reminded, as did Reitman’s other two films Thank You for Smoking and Juno, of the films of Billy Wilder, with its cynical surface covering a heart of gold at the middle. Clooney is at his Cary Grant best here – smart, funny delivering one liners with perfection, but also slowly revealing the man underneath, who is slowly coming to realize his way of life is empty. When he’s not firing people, he delivers speeches to business audiences where he preaches leaving every connection behind them. He compares it all to a backpack – and all the things in our lives – houses, cars, children, spouses – are just baggage weighing us down and preventing us from really moving, which in his mind is living. Clooney is well on his way to an Oscar nomination for this performance, and he deserves it.

The supporting cast is universally excellent. The movie is filled with small roles that are played to perfection. JK Simmons and Zach Galifankis are both excellent as fired employees (almost all the rest of the people who Clooney fires are played by real life workers who were let go from their jobs). Jason Bateman is perfect as an asshole boss, with a few days growth on his face, spouting off about how great this economic downturn is for his company. Amy Morton (so brilliant on Broadway in August: Osage County) and Melanie Lynsky show up as Ryan’s sisters, and perhaps the only people left in the world who care about Ryan, although even they are starting to not care as much.

The two other standout performances though are by Farmiga and Kendrick. Farmiga is perfect as the businesswoman who has spent her life much like Ryan, and learned how to move in a man’s world. She tells Ryan at one point to think of her just like himself, only with a vagina, and that’s a fairly accurate description, Farmiga, as she has done in film after film in the last few years, takes a difficult role, and somehow makes us understand the woman underneath. She can be warm and funny, but also cold. It is a great performance. Even better is Kendrick as the type of recent University grad who thinks she has everything figured out, but really has a lot left to learn. She is whip smart, yet still somewhat naïve, and in Ryan she sees the type of person she doesn’t want to be, and in Alex the type of person she is destined to be. Kendrick has been delivering great performances for a few years now (I loved her in Rocket Science), but here she has her breakout role. If she wins an Oscar for this performance, I won’t be disappointed.

Up in the Air is pretty much a perfect movie for this time of economic uncertainty. Movies are always a little slow to catch up with the times, but Up in the Air feels like a movie for this moment in history, yet also one that will remain relevant in the upcoming years. Reitman has established himself as perhaps the best director of intelligent comedy working today, and Up in the Air is his best film to date.

Movie Review: Brothers

Brothers ***
Directed By: Jim Sheridan.
Written By: David Benioff based on the movie written by Susanne Bier & Anders Thomas Jensen.
Starring: Natalie Portman (Grace Cahill), Tobey Maguire (Capt. Sam Cahill), Jake Gyllenhaal (Tommy Cahill), Clifton Collins Jr. (Major Cavazos), Bailee Madison (Isabelle Cahill), Sam Shepard (Hank Cahill), Mare Winningham (Elsie Cahill), Taylor Geare (Maggie Cahill), Patrick Flueger (Private Joe Willis), Carey Mulligan (Cassie Willis).

Sam (Tobey Maguire) and Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) are brothers, although they share little in common. Sam has married his high school sweetheart Grace (Natalie Portman), had two beautiful daughters, Isabelle and Maggie, got a house and joined the army, where he has risen to the rank of Captain. He has already done one tour of duty in Afghanistan and is now set to return again. Tommy on the other hand has lived a life of petty crime, and on the eve of his brothers departure, he is released from jail. Grace doesn’t like Tommy very much, and he is a disappointment to his father, the Vietnam vet Hank (Sam Shepherd), who is constantly telling Tommy to be more like his brother. But Sam sticks up for Tommy to everyone. He is his brother, and we get the sense their childhood was not a happy one. All they had were each other, and Sam cannot just leave Tommy behind.

But then Sam’s helicopter is shot down in Afghanistan, and he is presumed dead. The news hits home hard for everyone involved, and Tommy starts to realize that he has wasted his life. He starts coming around the house more, becoming a father figure for the girls, and a source of support for Grace. Even Hank starts to warm up to him a little bit. We know that Sam isn’t dead – he has been taken prisoner along with a Private under his command, and held at some training base for the Taliban, but to everyone at home, Sam is dead. Life goes on, even if he has left a huge hole in the family.

Jim Sheridan’s Brothers is based on a Danish film of the same name from 2004. That film, directed by Susanne Bier, was an emotional powerhouse, and featured the best performance of Connie Nielson’s career, as she is torn between the two brothers. Perhaps because my memory of that film was so strong, this one didn’t hit me with as much power as that one did. Sheridan is a fine filmmaker, and does a wonderful job with this film, and the performances are also top notch. Portman is mature beyond her years as the woman who has had her world crushed, slowly tries to rebuild it, only to have it crushed again when Sam returns, and begin the process all over again. It is one of her best performances. Gyllenhaal would not have been my choice to play a “bad boy”, as he always struck me as more of a wounded puppy dog, but he delivers a fine performance as Tommy, the irresponsible brother who learns to be a part of a family, then doesn’t know he place anymore. Maguire is more erratic as Sam – powerful in the scenes in Afghanistan as a prisoner, but perhaps he overdoes it a little too much when he returns. Still it is a fine performance by an real actor, who has seemingly had his career put on hold while he plays Spider-Man.

There really is nothing wrong with the movie. While it doesn’t pack the same punch as the original did, it still does pack an emotional wallop. Most audiences in North American will have never have heard of the original film, let alone seen it, so I suspect that audiences are going to like the film more than I did. I found a lot to admire in this film, so I still recommend it, but for those of you who have seen the original, this one just isn’t quite at that level. Few films are.