Movie Review: The Forbidden Room

The Forbidden Room
Directed by: Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson.
Written by: Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson & Robert Kotyk and John Ashbery and Kim Morgan.
Starring: Roy Dupuis (Cesare), Clara Furey (Margot), Louis Negin (Marv / Smithy / Mars / Organizer / Mr. Lanyon), Udo Kier (Count Yugh / The Butler / The Dead Father / Guard / Pharmacist), Gregory Hlady (Jarvis / Dr. Deane / A Husband), Mathieu Amalric (Thadeusz M___ / Ostler), Noel Burton (Wolf / Pilot / The Captain), Geraldine Chaplin (The Master Passion / Nursemaid / Aunt Chance), Paul Ahmarani (Dr. Deng / Speedy), Caroline Dhavernas (Gong), Slimane Dazi (Baron Pappenheim), Maria de Medeiros (The Blind Mother / Clotilde), Charlotte Rampling (The Ostler's Mother), Karine Vanasse (Florence Labadie), Kim Morgan (Kim), Marie Brassard (Mysterious Necklace Woman).  

One viewing is probably not enough to fully appreciate – or hell, even fully understand, the latest film by Guy Maddin (co-directed by Evan Johnson) – The Forbidden Room. My initial reaction was that it wasn’t among Maddin’s very best films – preferring films like My Winnipeg or The Saddest Music in the World or The Heart of the World (one of the greatest 6 minute films ever made). But the more time passes, and the more I return to The Forbidden Room in my thoughts, the more I think that perhaps it does belong there. It certainly is the most Guy Maddin film that Guy Maddin has ever made – a crazy, visually spectacular journey into cinema’s lost past. To describe the plot of The Forbidden Room would be fool’s errand there’s just way too much of it – and to be honest, it all gets a little confusing at times. What Maddin and Johnson decided to do is research old, lost films and then “remake” them. Sometimes this is based on old reviews, sometimes little more than a poster or a tagline, that Maddin and Johnson spin off into some crazy narrative that lasts just a few minutes. But The Forbidden Room isn’t just a series of short films string together – that would be too simple. The narratives spin off into each other, with such a complicated nesting doll structure. Put it this way, if the nesting doll structure of The Grand Budapest Hotel had 4 different dolls – The Forbidden Room has many multiples of that dozen. Now you’re probably starting to see why I think I need to see the film again – at least once – to wholly appreciate it.

Maddin has assembled a huge, international cast of stars to be in the film. The first face we see is by veteran actor Louis Negin, who is hosting an instructional video on how to take a bath (can you believe that many people now take them every other day – some even every day). Negin will return in multiple roles throughout the film, as will many other members of the cast – just to make everything that much more confusing. What Maddin and Johnson essentially have done here is create a rabbit hole of narrative in which we continue to drop – so the water in the bathtub becomes an ocean, and there is a submarine in there, that cannot surface because it’s would explode if it did, but they’re running out of air, even when they factor in the air pockets from all the pancakes they eat (don’t ask), and their captain is missing, so they go looking for him, and instead find a lumberjack, and when they ask how he got there, he tells them a story about he and a group of his fellow lumberjacks trying to save the woman they all love, and how he had to pass a series of manly tests, but the woman also dreams of being an amnesiac and a singer, who will eventually sing a song about a character played by Udo Kier, who is obsessed with derrieres, and on and on and on and on.

The Forbidden Room is, in short, a pretty crazy film. It’s a film that I think you could probably see dozens of times, and still be surprised by what happens next, because there is so little rhyme or reason to it all. And also, because Maddin and Johnson have created such an immersive film – an impressive technical achievement, where they pretty much throw every technique – both old and new – at the screen to get every shot to look wholly unique and different.

Watching The Forbidden Room is, admittedly, a rather exhausting experience. It’s a film that’s impossible to keep up with, and yet one you want to dive back into when it’s all over. I’m still not convinced that it’s among Maddin’s truly great films – not like My Winnipeg, which had lots of digressions, much like this film, but one that Maddin seemed to have complete control over. This one spins wildly away from even Maddin. Which, of course, it’s one of its many, many charms. The Forbidden Room is far from perfect – but if it was perfect, it wouldn’t be half the film it now is.

Classic Movie Review: Murder My Sweet

Murder, My Sweet (1944)
Directed by: Edward Dmytryk.
Written by: John Paxton based on the novel by Raymond Chandler.
Starring: Dick Powell (Philip Marlowe), Claire Trevor (Mrs. Helen Grayle), Anne Shirley (Ann Grayle), Otto Kruger (Jules Amthor), Mike Mazurki (Moose Malloy), Miles Mander (Mr. Grayle), Douglas Walton (Lindsay Marriott), Donald Douglas (Police Lieutenant Randall), Ralf Harolde (Dr. Sonderborg), Esther Howard (Jessie Florian).

In many ways, Edward Dmytryk’s Murder, My Sweet is a prototypical film noir, even if it never quite becomes a great one. It has all the elements of noir, some fine performances, excellent camera work and twisty story that takes several unexpected plot twists. The final scene is a little too lightweight and happy for my taste in noir – which runs darker – and really for any movie based on a Raymond Chandler Marlowe novel – whose endings were always bleaker than this (as it was in the novel, Farewell My Lovely that is the basis for this movie). It’s a fine film noir – and a reasonably good adaptation of Chandler. But it never quite reaches the level of greatness.

I like Roger Ebert’s description of the plot of The Long Goodbye – another Chandler novel turned into a movie in that the “plot can summarized in one sentence or endlessly” – and that’s true of all of Chandler’s novels, where the plots were hugely complex, involved many different characters, and yet somehow all comes together in the end (or at least we think they do – even if Chandler had to admit he didn’t always know what happened). Here, the basic plot involves Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) who comes to find Marlowe after spending a few years in jail. Before he got sent up, we was in love with a girl named Verna – and he wants Marlowe to find her for him. He’s been back to the club she used to work for, and they say they don’t know her. Marlowe isn’t quite so sure they’re telling the truth, so he starts digging deeper. He’s also hired by Lindsay Marriott to be his bodyguard on what he thinks will be a simple task – he’s to head out and buy back some jewels that belong to a friend of his that were stolen. Things don’t go as planned. As in many film noirs, there are two girls – a potential femme fatale in Mrs. Helen Grayle (Claire Trevor) – the younger wife of a rich man, whose jewels were the ones stolen, and the so-called “good girl” Ann Grayle (Anne Shirley) – Helen’s step daughter – who doesn’t trust her stepmother. There’s an assortment of other lowlifes, and cops, and everyone else you’d expect to find in a noir.

Marlowe is played by Dick Powell – who is the screen’s first official Marlowe (two other adaptations of Chandler’s novels, including a 1942 film based on the same novel were made, but both change the character’s name). His Marlowe isn’t quite as good as the best screen Marlowe’s – Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946), Gould in The Long Goodbye (1973) or Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely (1975) – but it’s pretty good. It’s more of a surface performance, with Powell relishing the clever dialogue he is given to deliver – and also having fun being smarter than everyone else in the movie. Powell has a bemused grin – he’s not taking this too seriously – accept in the bookending scenes (unnecessary in my opinion) as he recounts for the police everything that happened.

 Powell’s performance could describe the movie itself – it’s full of surface charm, without much in the way of substance beneath it. The best film noirs, of course, had style to spare – and Dmytryk’s direction certainly has that in this film – but get deeper into the darkness of wartime, and post wartime, America. Chandler’s novels often tapped into this darkness as well. This film just skims the surface of that darkness. Most film noir isn’t fun – but Murder, My Sweet is quite fun.

There are things to like about the movie – Claire Trevor would do far better work in noirs over the next decade, but she’s in fine form here, honing her craft. The screenplay is clever, and Powell is fun to watch. The “love story” between him and Ann doesn’t fit in with the rest of the movie – in particular in the final scene, which rings false.

Overall though, Murder, My Sweet is fine, if somewhat lightweight, film noir. It’s one of the films that helped establish many of the archetypes of film noir – which better, deeper films would use in the coming years in one of the best genres in film history.

The Films of Oliver Stone: Talk Radio

Talk Radio (1988)
Directed by: Oliver Stone.
Written by: Eric Bogosian & Oliver Stone based on the play by Bogosian & Tad Savinar and the book by Stephen Singular.
Starring: Eric Bogosian (Barry), Ellen Greene (Ellen), Leslie Hope (Laura), John C. McGinley (Stu), Alec Baldwin (Dan), John Pankow (Dietz), Michael Wincott (Kent / Michael / Joe), Linda Atkinson (Sheila Fleming), Robert Trebor (Jeffrey Fisher / Francine), Zach Grenier (Sid Greenberg), Tony Frank (Dino).

Oliver Stone’s Talk Radio is perhaps the director’s least known film since his breakout in 1986. If the film was bad, that would be understandable. Yet, Talk Radio is not bad – it’s actually one of Stone’s best films, even if it seems, at first glance anyway, to be a rather atypical film for him. Like many early Stone films, Talk Radio is in many ways, a howl of rage at the State of America at the time the movie was made. Oddly, even though Talk Radio is about a media form that is long past it’s era of prime influence, Talk Radio has aged far better than you would expect it to (far better than Wall Street, the much better known Stone film released the year before). It would be very easy to see a modern day version of Talk Radio take place entirely online – or on Twitter. Except in the intervening years, things have gotten much, much worse.

The movie stars Eric Bogosian – who also co-wrote both the screenplay, and Pulitzer Prize nominated play the movie is based on. It was inspired by the life and death of Alan Berg, a Colorado radio personality gunned down by white supremacists. The movie takes place over four days – starting on Friday night, when popular Dallas late night talk radio host Barry Champlain finds out that the following Monday, his show is going National. Barry is both loved and hated on the air- he is a politically liberal, outspoken Jew in the middle of Texas, so of course he generates controversy. But Barry doesn’t just hatred for bigots, and those on the right. He’ll rip just about anyone who calls in apart for any reason. This has gotten him fans – and detractors, and more than a few death threats. Barry doesn’t much care – he seems to have a death wish, and is scared of his own success. After finding out he is going National, he calls his ex-wife Ellen (Ellen Greene) to come in for the weekend, so he’ll have someone he can trust – this despite the fact that she has already re-married, and he’s now sleeping with his much younger producer, Laura (Leslie Hope). After a trying weekend, he returns on Monday night – to discover that the breaks have been put on him going National. He may be a little too controversial. The show that night goes off the rails even more than usual – which, of course, is exactly what is wanted.

The original stage play apparently took place entirely in the radio studio, “on the air” as it were the entire time. The movie opens this up a little bit – a trip to a basketball game, where the fans show Barry what they think of him, flashbacks to his Barry’s rise up the ranks to his current position, a scene with Barry and Laura outside of work, where he feelings for her become clear. These scenes are fine – they help fill in the gaps in Barry’s personality – but they are largely not needed. The main focus of the movie is, and should be, those two nights – Friday and Monday – and how Barry pushes everyone around him – his employers, employees, his girlfriend, his ex-wife, and his listeners – to their breaking point and then keeps right on going.

As a director, Stone does a remarkable job using the tight, claustrophobic space of the radio station itself – opening it visually with his camera, which moves nearly constantly in the confined space. Bogosian is at the heart of every scene, and he delivers a great performance – the type of once in a lifetime role actors like him rarely get (which is why he had to write it for himself). He was unquestionably the right choice for the role, even if he wasn’t a big enough star to sell the film.

Talk Radio is about freedom of speech – which of course means nothing without the freedom to offend. Barry Champlain is offensive to be sure – but that’s why people tune in every day, to hear what he’s going to say next. And freedom of speech doesn’t mean you get to say whatever you want without consequence – you’re allowed to say whatever offensive thing you want, but people are allowed to be offended. But it’s about more than that as well – throughout the course of movie, Barry sees himself more clearly than he has before, just how miserable he really is, and how perhaps he isn’t that much better than the people he’s talking to. They deserve each other.

This is what makes Talk Radio still relevant today. Today’s internet culture is much like the insular world than Barry had created for himself – a constant outrage generator, in which Barry is able to get angry at anyone and anything for any reason. It’s easy for Barry to be an ass when it’s just voices on the other end of a phone – they aren’t people. During that last broadcast, they become people however – one of his callers shows up at the station, and he gets to see who his audience is close up. Then when his ex-wife calls in, he is cruel to her. There is a line – and he crosses it, and he knows he cannot come back from it. Barry is a victim to be sure – but in some ways, he’s a co-conspirator in his own victimization.

The Films of Oliver Stone: Wall Street (1987)

Wall Street (1987)
Directed by: Oliver Stone.
Written by: Stanley Weiser & Oliver Stone.
Starring: Charlie Sheen (Bud Fox), Michael Douglas (Gordon Gekko), Daryl Hannah (Darien Taylor), Martin Sheen (Carl Fox), Hal Holbrook (Lou Mannheim), John C. McGinley (Marvin), Terence Stamp (Sir Larry Wildman), Sean Young (Kate Gekko), James Spader (Roger Barnes), James Karen (Lynch), Sylvia Miles (Dolores the Realtor).

Wall Street is perhaps the quintessential 1980s movie. Not the best movie of the decade – nor even one of the best – but a film that if you want to know what prestige, adult dramas looked like during that decade, you would pretty much get the complete picture by watching it. It is a flashy, stylistic film – complete with montages playing over a drum machine based score, men in flashy suits, with big hair, and women in dresses with huge shoulder pads, and even bigger hair. As a director, Oliver Stone seemed willing to embrace all trends of the time in terms of filmmaking, to make his film seem cutting edge – which, of course, is a surefire sign that the movie will end up aging poorly – which in some ways, Wall Street certainly has. It is very much a movie of its time and place – a portrait of Reagan era excess, meant by Stone to be an outraged howl against it. That the film ended up inspiring a new age of Wall Street men who wanted to be Gordon Gekko is one of the most ironic things about the movie.

The film stars Charlie Sheen as Bud Fox – who works at one of the lowest levels of Wall Street – a broker, sure, but one who has to survive making cold calls to the “little fish”. He wants to be a whale – and sets his sights on the biggest one he can find – Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko. After months of trying, Bud finally gets a meeting with Gekko – but the older man remains unimpressed with Bud and his information – that is, until he gives Gekko a piece of information that no one else knows, about the airline where Bud’s father works. That’s a good tip – and Gekko wants more from Bud. He doesn’t need more analysts pouring over information – he needs someone who is willing to go out there and get the information by whatever means necessary – and Bud is willing to do that. Bud knows what he’s doing isn’t strictly legal – but hey, everyone’s doing it. Soon Bud is sucked into Gekko’s world of big money, and fast women – like Darien (Daryl Hannah), an interior designer who is willing to be with Bud, as long as the money keeps coming in. And Bud is willing to do what it takes to keep it that way.

Stone means Wall Street to be a wake-up call to the unmitigated greed that he saw taking over the country during the go-go 1980s – and he mainly succeeds. Gekko is a person who is willing to do anything to make money – he doesn’t much care if people are hurt by his actions, he doesn’t create anything – he simply does his best to move money from someone else’s pocket to his own. And yet, Stone also created a movie where it is possible to root for Gekko from the get-go, even knowing he’s a greedy asshole. As played by Douglas, who won a deserved Oscar for the role, Gekko is the smartest, most charming guy in the movie. His infamous “Greed is Good” speech – which is probably the scene that won him that Oscar – is a brilliant distillation of the greed of Wall Street, and of “trickle down” economics, that should leave audiences shocked by the greed. Except for the fact that Douglas delivers it with so much conviction, that you wind up almost believing it yourself, unless you’re actually listening to it. Gekko is so much more charming that anyone in the movie – certainly more so that Martin Sheen, as Bud’s father, who is supposed to be the working collar, honest, hardworking counterpoint to Gekko’s greed in the film. But damn it, he also seems like such a stick in the mud – a downer, always lecturing his son. No wonder he goes for Gekko’s line of bullshit with little prompting – it’s so much more fun. For an entire generation, Gekko represents everything that is wrong with Wall Street and greed – unless, of course, you’re one of the many people who decided they wanted to be Gordon Gekko themselves. In another movie – Boiler Room (2000) – the young brokers quote Gekko like he is their God – because in many ways, he is.

Does this make Wall Street a success, or a failure? Wall Street is certainly a “message” movie, and the message comes in loud and clear to many – and is completely inverted for just as many. If Stone can be faulted for anything in Wall Street it’s that he made a film that is perhaps too much fun. Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) was accused by many of glamorizing its real life Wall Street crooks for much the same reason – the movie is a hell of a lot of fun. Then again, if you cannot see the serious critique of Wall Street greed in both of these films just because they’re entertaining – that’s more on you than the movies themselves. Wall Street is a slick movie – a traditional rise and fall story for Bud Fox, as he starts from the bottom, comes all the way, and then comes crashing down at the end. The rise has got to be fun, or else it wouldn’t make much sense. 

Wall Street does have its share of problems, of course. The ending always rings false to me – as if Bud would suddenly find his conscience again in the blink of an eye, and then do what he does. The fact that the film has a traditional ending – where the evil are punished – actually undercuts the movie’s power a little bit – as it would have been far more honest had everyone gotten away with everything, as that is what seems to happen in real life way more often than not. As mentioned before, Martin Sheen doesn’t quite often the counterpunch to Douglas that I think the movie requires him to – it’s not much Sheen’s fault, he didn’t write his dialogue which basically consists of moral grandstanding speeches. And, as has become common in this series on Stone movies, Wall Street certainly has a woman problem. I think The Wolf of Wall Street does a far better job at showing women are used, abused and tossed aside but the alpha male characters on Wall Street than this movie does, which basically doesn’t bother to present them at all. The only significant female character is Daryl Hannah – who is given almost nothing to do, and looks completely and totally bored the entire time she is doing it. It would have been far better had Stone did what he did with Platoon – and present Wall Street as an all-male world – that at least would have been a quiet commentary on the misogyny of Wall Street where woman are still vastly under represented.

Still, Wall Street is a very good movie. It is one of Stone’s best remembered, and still iconic movies (it’s hard to imagine him being given the money to make a sequel to any of his other films more than two decades later). It isn’t one of his best – it’s a little simplistic to me, perhaps too much style over substance, and too much speechifying to make it as good as it could have been (like The Wolf of Wall Street is – that’s a masterpiece on the same subject). Still, I have seen Wall Street at least five or six times over the years, and it never fails to draw me back in once again. Is the movie too entertaining for its own good? Perhaps – but that’s preferable to the alternative.

Movie Review: The Martian

The Martian
Directed by: Ridley Scott.
Written by: Drew Goddard based on the book by Andy Weir.
Starring: Matt Damon (Mark Watney), Jessica Chastain (Melissa Lewis), Chiwetel Ejiofor (Vincent Kapoor), Kristen Wiig (Annie Montrose), Jeff Daniels (Teddy Sanders), Michael Peña (Rick Martinez), Sean Bean (Mitch Henderson), Kate Mara (Beth Johanssen), Sebastian Stan (Chris Beck), Aksel Hennie (Alex Vogel), Mackenzie Davis (Mindy Park), Donald Glover (Rich Purnell). 

There is a reason why movie stars are always cast in the roles of men (and the occasional woman) who trapped by themselves for most of the movie – and the reason is simple charisma. Movie stars are often not the best actors, but the best ones are an innate ability to get you to like them immediately. Think of Tom Hanks in Castaway or Robert Redford in All is Lost or Sandra Bulllock in Gravity. You immediately like them and are willing to follow them anywhere the movie takes them. They can also hold the screen with ease. Matt Damon is a movie star with the best of them – and he is key to why Ridley Scott’s The Martian works – and is actually one of the best big budget films of the year. Damon spends most of his screen time by himself, talking to himself (or the audience through his video diaries) and thinking through a series of complex problems that threaten his life as he is stranded on Mars. The film is basically about a group of really smart people getting together to solve a series of complex problems, using science that people much smarter than I have deemed at least close to reality. There is Damon’s Mark Watney on Mars of course – but back at NASA there are a lot of other really smart people also working on a series of problems. And following the lead of casting Damon in the lead to make him instantly relatable and likable, pretty much every supporting player is played actors more than capable of carrying a movie by themselves, who give affable performances, and for the most part get along. Sure, there are times when the people at NASA disagree – but there are no villains here. Just really smart people, doing really smart things.

The film opens with a crew already on Mars – a sudden storm hits, Watney is struck with flying debris, making the rest of the crew think he’s dead (his “biometer” says he is)– and they cannot find his body, but don’t have time – if they don’t take off now, they’re all dead. Of course, Watney isn’t dead and when he wakes up to discover the rest of the crew gone, it would be easy for him to simply give up. After all, he now has no way to contact NASA, and even if he could, it would take years to get him help – and he doesn’t have the food supply to last, let alone a place that has been designed to stand up for that long. But no matter, Watney takes things on, one problem at a time – and eventually when NASA finds out he’s alive, they do the same thing.

Ridley Scott has made science fiction movies that ask bigger questions about what it means to be human, and where we fit into the grand scheme of things. His Blade Runner (1982) is a masterpiece of the genre, and even if Prometheus isn’t well loved, I actually quite liked it – and appreciated the fact that Scott and his collaborators were trying for something grand. The Martian is not one of those movies. The movie is almost a comedy – full of witty banter and comradery, and asks no greater questions other than the most mundane – like how to grow potatoes on Mars, without enough water, in soil that has never grown anything. And how can he get a Mars rover to travel farther than it’s supposed to – and is there a way to prolong the battery life, etc. The film is based on a book by Andy Weir – a scientist himself – and he takes these questions seriously. He also takes the more complex questions about the logistics of sending help to Mars seriously as well. The movie retains the books sense of humor – it actually heightens it in many of the scenes in NASA, where the film almost has the feel of a Howard Hawks comedy from the 1940s – where talented people just bounce off each other.

The Martian isn’t groundbreaking in anyway – but it is rock solid, mainstream entertainment – Scott’s best film in years, a genuine movie star vehicle for Damon, and an ensemble comedy when it’s at NASA. You know the outcome going in – but that hardly matters. Neither does the running time – which is nearly two and half hours – but flies by. The Martian is pure, mainstream entertainment – done better than most movies of this size and scale in recent memory. If it doesn’t reinvent the wheel at the same time – well, it doesn’t really need to.

Movie Review: The Walk

The Walk
Directed by: Robert Zemeckis.
Written by: Robert Zemeckis & Christopher Browne based on the book by Philippe Petit.
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Philippe Petit), Charlotte Le Bon (Annie), James Badge Dale (Jean-Pierre / J.P.), Ben Kingsley (Papa Rudy), Clément Sibony (Jean-Louis), César Domboy (Jeff / Jean-François), Ben Schwartz (Albert), Steve Valentine (Barry Greenhouse), Mark Camacho (Guy Tozolli), Benedict Samuel (David).

The actual walk in The Walk – that makes up the last third of the movie or so – is stunning – one of the best sequences of its kind you will ever see, and demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible, with the best possible 3-D. Normally, I don’t 3-D, but the work here is clearly the best in a mainstream movie since Gravity – and easily ranks among the best  3-D the medium has produced since they’ve gone 3-D crazy in recent years. It is simply dizzying and awe-inspiring – and if that sounds like hyperbole, well, it kind of is – but not too much. That alone makes the movie worth seeing.

That sequence is so good in fact that you want to overlook much of the rest of the movie, that is filled with sloppy storytelling, and moments that are trying way too hard to make things seem more important than they are. The film has a goofy spirit that I quite liked – anchored by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who goes wonderfully over-the-top in every way, especially the accent, in his performance as Frenchman Philippe Petit, who in 1974 strung a high wire up between the Twin Towers of the WTC and walked back and forth on it. If you really want to see Petit’s story, than you should watch the Oscar winning documentary by James Marsh – Man on Wire from 2008 – which does a much better job telling his story, and connecting what he did in 1974, with what the Towers would eventually come to represent. For the most part, The Walk treats everything like a heist movie – with Petit assembling his crack (and not so crack) team in the hopes of pulling off his “coup”. He knows he has limited time – the towers are just about complete, and when they are it will become impossible to do what he needs to do.

The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis, who has always been on the cutting edge of technology, but often the films he makes lag behind their technical achievement. I’m not a Forrest Gump hater like some, but there’s little doubt that then the groundbreaking special effects are more impressive than the movie as whole. Zemeckis also spent far too long working in motion capture animation – films like The Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol – which were groundbreaking in their own way, if not precisely great. Long ago now are the days when Zemeckis combined both the groundbreaking visuals with a truly great story, like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Personally, I quite liked his last film – Flight, with its excellent performance by Denzel Washington, but that seemed more like Zemeckis edging back into live action filmmaking after his decade immersed in animation.

I’m not sure The Walk is truly groundbreaking – but it is an amazing use of 3-D technology that actually deepens the visuals, and gives them a feel that just cannot be replicated without it. The whole time Petit is on that wire, between the Twin Towers the film is amazing. The rest of it is fairly average – and sometimes worse. Zemeckis takes his time getting to that wire – and to be honest, I got rather impatient at times. I also could have done without Gordon-Levitt’s narration – particularly over the walk itself – but really through the whole movie. It’s a distraction, and not really needed.

So I’m torn on The Walk. On one hand, I really want everyone to see it, on the biggest screen imaginable, because the film gives you an experience not quite like anything else. On the other hand, everything that leads up to that Walk is mediocre at best. If you could walk into the theater with about 45 minutes to go, that would probably be ideal. But even if you watch the whole thing, you’ll have a decent time at the beginning – and be blown away at the end. Not a bad deal really.

Movie Review: Finders Keepers

Finders Keepers
Directed by: Bryan Carberry & J. Clay Tweel .
Featuring: Shannon Whisnant, John Wood.

It would be very easy to make fun of the two men at the heart of the new documentary Finders Keepers. Reality TV shows like Duck Dynasty or Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo essentially exist to mock the “rednecks” they document, and Jerry Springer has been doing to same thing for decades now. But fairly early on in Finders Keepers, you get the sense that this movie isn’t going to do that. For one thing, unlike those TV shows, the two men at the heart of the movie actually are part of a fascinating story – the kind that you could not make a feature film about, because no one would believe it. And then, gradually over the course of the movie the men, who do somewhat start out as caricatures, become something far more human. Finders Keepers is a very funny documentary – but it’s also a sad, and very human one as well.

The story begins with a plane crash – when the father of John Wood crashes his small plane, which leaves him dead – his son survives, but loses his leg below the knee. Unlike most people, he wants to keep his amputated limb – and is shocked to discover when they give it to him that it’s not just bones, but actually still has all the skin on it. To keep things brief, and less grisly, let’s just say he kind of dries out the leg to preserve it – he then places the leg in a BBQ smoker, and leaves it in a storage unit – which he doesn’t keep up on the rent for. If you’ve seen Storage Wars, you know what happens next – an auction. And this is when Shannon Whisnant acquires the smoker, and the leg inside. He does the right thing (at first anyway) and calls the police – who take the leg back. But once he knows the story of how the leg ended up there, he wants it back. He bought it after all, and Whisnant is the type of guy who is always on the lookout for a moneymaking scheme. And his plan is to turn the smoker and the leg into a tourist attraction. Wood just wants his leg back – and he gets it – but once the media get a hold of the story, it becomes something more than anyone could have anticipated.

Directed by Bryan Carberry and J. Clay Tweel with simplicity – they are basically in straight ahead point and shoot intercut with talking heads doc mode here – Finders Keepers becomes a surprisingly interesting movie throughout, touching on a lot of themes from celebrity culture to drug addiction and many other things in between. Carberry and Tweel show what the documentary could have been – with lots of news reports about the incident sprinkled through the film, which basically paint the entire thing as a freak show – as well as moments from the Judge Mathis episode that ultimately determined the ownership of the leg, and others shows where basically both parties are mocked.

The movie has some fun with the story – of course – but really does want to get to know the two guys at the center of it. The movie spends a long time on Wood’s drug addiction – he had been getting better before the plane crash, but that sent him on a downward spiral again – one that for a while looked like it was going to cost him what family he had remaining – his sister is very sympathetic to his struggles, his mother not so much. Although he comes from a rich family – he ends up living under a bridge. His story, at least, has some redemption.

Strangely, it is the story of Shannon Whisnant which seems to take sadder turns throughout the movie. He wants to be rich and famous – he wants to be on TV every day and make people laugh. The most painful sequence in the movie may just be when Shannon gets cast on a reality TV show, and slowly realizes how his “audience” sees him. At first it looks like it may break him – and then he adjusts. It’s a sad little moment.

Finders Keepers is the type of documentary that works only as it is – I cannot imagine a feature film version, as it all just be too weird, too strange, and it couldn’t possibly have the same impact. Others have compared the film to Errol Morris’ first masterpiece – Gates of Heaven (1978) about Pet Cemeteries, and it does kind of resemble that film (although it doesn’t come close to matching the strange power of that film – but few films do). What they both do is find the humanity underneath the surface of people that many would mock – and come up with a quietly touching documentary.