In time for the Oscars, most of the movies I saw in 2010 - Part V
I watched 42 of 2010's theatrical releases. As much as I'd like to write a thoughtful dissertation on each of them, I'm too busy with my own stories (I'm revising "Every Airship Needs a Wizard" and "Painter" (aka "Black Mist," aka "In Its Place") and mailing "The Dream"). So I gave myself 10-20 minutes per movie to crank out a couple paragraphs, then got burnt out around 30 reviews. Enjoy!
True Grit (2010)
TRON Legacy (2010)
The Tourist (2010)
The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010)
Salt (2010)
True Grit (2010) ****
Directed + written for the screen by Joel + Ethan Coen
"Don't get up, trash."
Every true cineaste born in the last 30 or 40 years has a fondness for knife blades going "shink!" against nothing. But what's MY favorite sound effect? The hammer going back on a single-action revolver.
LOVE "True Grit." LOVE-LOVE-LOVE. I'm a sucker for nostalgic-wistful music during violence, as if to say "Yes, it was terrible, but it is what made us." Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone are the masters of this. I'm listening to "True Grit's" hymnal-powered score by Carter Burwell right now. The best sequence in the whole movie-or possibly any American movie in 2010-is a desperate night-ride to safety, across a harsh, surreal landscape. It's a race against time. But is the music exciting and pulsing? No, it's melancholy and wistful. The track names are "Ride to Death" and "I Will Carry You."
"True Grit's" story of teenage Mattie Ross (Haillee Steinfeld, hopefully about to win an Oscar) enlisting drunken, washed-up one-eyed US marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Briges, great) to help her hunt down her father's murderer is direct and accessible. But interpretations of the movie go in every possible direction, starting with Mattie's opening narration that "Everything in life must be paid for. Except for God's grace."
So we get two hours of gunshot wounds, severed limbs, rough (and often inaccurate) frontier justice, hangings, snakebites, scavenged corpses, and unburied bodies. Yes, it was terrible, but it was the cost of what made the world what it is today. But along the way, there is grace, like when an old man with a misspent life finds redemption. Not so much when he proves that he's a bad-ass one more time (and does he ever prove it, you sons-of-bitches), but when he gets to save a life for a change.
Another perfect sequence: Mattie fording a river on a horseback after Rooster and La Boeuf have connived to remove the ferry.
"I know you!" Another great sequence: the final introduction of her father's murderer, speaking to her as if she's just an old acquaintance he sees passing on the street.
Seen at the Cinemark near my house, possibly on opening day.
TRON: Legacy (2010) **1/2
Directed + co-written by Joe Kosinski
I loved the inside-the-computer universe of "TRON" when I was a kid. I imagined being in it all the time and never had enough quarters to play the video game. But even when I was little, I sort-of knew the movie itself didn't live up to its potential.
"TRON: Legacy" is about what you'd expect. The computer world of TRON looks great and the action sequences are good when they're cut slow enough to tell what's going on. But "TRON: Legacy's" ideas, while intriguing, are undercooked. The scoring of the movie by Daft Punk is inspired.
Olivia Wilde is more interesting than usual. I've seen episodes of "House" with her where she comes across as TV-generic. In "TRON" she plays a computer program of the future that's supposed to "change everything." How? That's what I mean by undercooked. But she sells her wide-eyed sprite. And Michael Sheen's David Bowie impersonation is magnificent.
The Tourist (2010) **1/2
Directed + co-written by Heinkel von Dammersmarck
Critics were too harsh on "The Tourist," the English-language debut of Heinkel von Dammersmarck. You remember him, don't you? He won the Foreign-Language Oscar for directing "The Lives of Others," that slow-burning surveillance thriller in the last days of East Germany. His latest is an action-comedy-romance in the Hitchcock vein.
A bumbling American tourist (Johnny Depp) is drawn into a web of espionage by a "beautiful" woman in Italy (I put "beautiful" in quotes because Angelina Jolie don't do nothing for me). Everything revolves around Depp being mistaken for a figure we're led to believe is a criminal mastermind. By the end, we've come to realize the mastermind is more of an opportunistic bungler.
The overall plot is nothing special and the handful of action sequences run the gamut from perfunctory (the needless boat chase) to amusing (barefoot rooftop escape) to inspired (the final showdown). But I like the tone of wistfulness and melancholy that von Dammersmarck and Depp bring to the proceedings. There's a one-sentence throwaway explanation that informs Depp's melancholy throughout. The script is written like he's trying to get laid, but that's not the way he plays it at all.
Von Dammersmarck may be hit-or-miss when it comes to bullets, but he's an ace with showing how law enforcement is primarily the tedious work of cigarette-smoking men in cramped offices (Paul Bettany's treasury agent is outstanding). And all around them are some of the most beautiful cities in the world. When the mastermind's decoy is caught at the end of the movie, his explanation as to why he was willing to be a decoy is perfect.
The overall movie may not come together quite right, but it has these fine, tossed-off moments. Despite being panned, I think "The Tourist" has made its money, both in the US and internationally, and the crowd I saw it with at the Tuesday night dinner-and-a-movie place liked it just fine. Sometimes grownups need a break from action movies that ram everything at their faces.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2010) **1/2
Directed by Jon Turteltaub
About what you'd expect from the star and creative team behind "National Treasure." "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" is dumb as a box of hammers, and something in the back of your mind tells you know it's devoid of cinematic nutrients. But, like "National Treasure," it's high-spirited, light-hearted, and doesn't take itself too seriously.
It's the kind of movie you take your parents to see at the dinner-and-drinks-and-movie place (which is what the wife and I did). Or the kind of movie you can recommend to your "we see one movie a year" friends because you've come to accept that recommending "There Will Be Blood" or " INLAND EMPIRE" is starting to come across as a passive-aggressive waste of breath.
I recently read an article that said, because of his complete devotion to any role, no matter how ridiculous, Nicholas Cage could be mathematically proved to be the greatest actor alive today. It's a valid point. As the sorcerer of the title, he is utterly sincere with his crazy hair, pointy shoes, underground hideout, and thousand-year-devotion to an undead mega-babe. (It's Monica Bellucci. A thousand years is nothing.) After so many Harry Potter movies, it's refreshing to see someone for whom magic and immortality are actually appearing to get wearisome.
The apprentice is played by nerd's nerd Jay Baruchel, who sells his ad-libbed wisecracks by making them the product of nerves and fear. Nic and Jay's counterparts are an evil wizard played by Alfred Molina and his apprentice, who has platform boots and his face on playing cards for "Magic: The Gathering."
Anyway, there are worse ways to spend your time.
Salt (2010) **
Directed by Philip Noyce
I feel for the makers of "Salt," I really do. They've made a movie in which the protagonist's motives are almost always mysterious. Is she a Russian sleeper agent or not? I wrote a story like that once. I don't think it worked either. It's hard to do all that traditional character-identification-stuff when you don't know whether someone's doing something to save the free world or destroy it.
So it makes a certain amount of sense for the makers of "Salt" to cast Angelina Jolie in the lead. Everything about her is statuesque, unapproachable, aloof. Some roles need that. There's nothing "everywoman" about her, which makes her continual casting as an action heroine baffling to me. Jolie should make a great action villain. And, in fact, she has. For the first half of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," both she and Brad Pitt were essentially villains. And she may have been one of the good guys in "Sky Captain," but she was an untrustworthy one.
But what if "Salt" went the other direction? What if Salt was played by a more transparent, identifiable movie star? Tom Cruise, for instance, was originally cast, but backed out when he decided the movie was too similar to his "Mission: Impossible" franchise. Whatever his range as an actor, or however crazy he is in real-life, we follow Cruise when he's framed in "Mission: Impossible" or " Minority Report" or anything else where's he framed and has to run in his goofy stiff-limbed way. If you prefer a girl, Jodie Foster or Sigourney Weaver work the same. We instinctively take their side when we see them on screen.
For me, Jolie, not so much. So "Salt" left me adrift.
SPOILER ALERT: Of course, maybe the makers of "Salt" wanted Salt to be inaccessible because they wanted the other, true traitor to be accessible, the one we side with. Which I totally did, up until about 30 seconds before he betrayed everyone.
As an action movie, "Salt" is okay. There's a highway chase that's alright, but other than that, mostly she just jumps from off-camera and punches people in the face. Would it kill director Philip Noyce ("Patriot Games") to show her crouching in a corner first, getting ready to spring?
Copyright © 2011 by Peter Kovic
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