12 YEARS A SLAVE: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now opening at a theater near me today, that is, exclusively in Raleigh at the Rialto Theater:




12 YEARS A SLAVE

(Dir. Steve McQueen, 2013)

12 YEARS A SLAVE, the third full length feature by 44-year old British filmmaker Steve McQueen, is going to be the movie that everybody feels that they absolutely have to see this season. But don’t go mistaking it for just another piece of big issue Oscar bait, for it’s a powerfully personal story driven by an exemplary performance that movie-goers will benefit greatly from experiencing.

The British born Chiwetel Ejiofor has shown he’s got the actorly goods before in numerous movie and television roles, but here he works his worry lines like never before as Solomon Northup, a New York native who was born free but kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841.

The film, based on the real life Northup’s 1853 autobiography of the same name, focuses without shuddering on Northup, renamed Platt by his abductors, as he tries to survive unspeakable conditions for over a decade on a Louisiana cotton plantation.

Ejiofor’s Northup would get beaten, brutally lashed, if he protests that he’s not a slave so he resigns himself to the misery of the hand he’s been dealt, and, despite the movie posters showing him on the run, largely doesn’t try to escape (on an errand he take off through the woods at one point but runs into some evil white men hanging slaves and thinks the better of it).

McQueen (wish he’d use a middle initial or something so people would stop asking me if he’s *THE* Steve McQueen) populates his film with recognizable actor folk like Paul Giamatti as a cold slave trader, Benedict Cumberbatch as a slave owning preacher, Paul Dano as a particularly abusive foreman, and Michael Fassbender as the worst of the worst slave drivers who constantly refers to Northup and his people only as his “property.”

All the white people aren’t evil however as Cumberbatch appears to have some compassion, and Brad Pitt (one of the film’s co-producers) shows up as a wizened Canadian carpenter and abolitionist, who just may be able to help Northup out.

Aided by cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, who shot the director’s previous films, McQueen makes use of long takes and lingers on some shots in a effectively stirring manner that makes us feel what our poor protagonist is going through intensely. One scene, in which Dano strings up and attempts to lynch Northup, has our suffering lead left dangling with only the tips of his toes touching the ground as the other slaves continue their daily activities quietly behind him.

These harsh incidents are indeed hard to watch, but to fully appreciate the severity of what went down they are a vital necessity. Elements such as Adepero Oduye as one of Ejiofor’s fellow slaves crying uncontrollably over being separated from her children from one scene to the next are as harrowing and haunting as cinema can possibly achieve. Fassbender, who previously starred in McQueen’s SHAME, embodies a creature of pure cruelty so convincingly that you can feel the audience’s hatred of him in full force. There won’t be much sympathy for Sarah Paulson as his wife either, for she’s a wretched piece of wrong-minded menace as well.

Folks may compare it last year’s DJANGO UNCHAINED, but while they may share similar subject matter and may equal each other in the heavy abundance of the use of the “N-word,” Quentin Tarantino’s revisionist revenge fantasy was a cartoon compared to McQueen’s heartfelt and heartbreaking work here with its blindingly faithful to reality rawness.



12 YEARS A SLAVE is McQueen’s best film and one of the best of the year by far. It demands to be seen and felt by everybody who is unafraid to see and feel how somebody can endure such Hellish torture, and survive to tell their tale. It can seem like ancient history, especially as we now have a black President, but here we are reminded that it really wasn't that long ago that there were these horrible conditions in our country, and the repercussions of these injustices are still largely felt to this day. As Faulkner famously said, “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”



It seems these days, the only way to even begin to get past such horrors is to fully acknowledge them. The unflinchingly honest 12 YEARS A SLAVE is here to make it even harder to look the other way.



More later...

New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 9/17/13

Marc Forster’s summer hit WORLD WAR Z heads the crop of Blu ray and DVD releases this week, available in a 2-disc Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy package or a single disc DVD. The film, which as the front cover art displays, features Brad Pitt single-handedly saving the world from a global outbreak of zombies. After months of hype leading up to its theatrical release, the film was pretty disappointing (read my review from last June), but maybe it will have more of an impact on the small screen. Special Features: a couple of featurettes (“Origins” and “Looking to Science”), and a four part “Making of” documentary that explores in detail how such money shots as the masses of zombies scaling the tall fortress walls in Israel were pulled off.

Another film to which I gave a lukewarm review, Sofia Coppola’s THE BLING RING, also comes out today on both Blu ray and DVD. Coppola’s satirical true crime film, her fifth as director, is based on the story of a group of fame-obsessed teens who broke into the Los Angeles houses of celebrities such as Paris Hilton (who has a brief cameo), and stole millions of dollars worth of clothing, jewelry, cash, and swag. It’s interesting for about a third of it, but there’s not much substantial takeaway as you can read in my review: “THE BLING RING: As Superficial And Empty-Headed As The Girls It Depicts” (6/21/13). For folks that find it more fascinating than I, there are a few substantial Special Features including the almost 23 minute featurette “Making THE BLING RING: On Set with Sofia, the Cast and Crew,” the almost 24 minute “Behind the real ‘Bling Ring’,” and the over 10 minute “Scene of the Crime with Paris Hilton.”

A film I missed in its brief theatrical run (not even sure if it came to my area), Henry Alex Rubin’s 2012 thriller DISCONNECT is out this week in single disc Blu ray and DVD editions. A sold ensemble including Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Frank Grillo, Andrea Riseborough, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, and Alexander Skarsgård star in what IMDb tells me is about “searching for human connections in today's wired world.” Special Features: Commentary with Direct Rubin, an almost 30-minute documentary “Making the Connections: Behind the Scenes of DISCONNECT,” a 4-minute featurette “Recording Session of “On the Nature of Daylight,” and the theatrical trailer.

Steven Soderberg’s terrific HBO telefilm from earlier this year, BEHIND THE CANDELABRA, starring Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as his young lover Scott Thorson, is out today in single disc Blu ray and DVD editions. The glitzy biopic (well, not really a biopic as it only covers a few years of Liberace’s life), which was rejected by every major movie studio because it was “too gay,” has been nominated for 15 Emmy Awards, including nominations for Douglas and Damon, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes home a bunch of them this coming Sunday night. There’s only one Special Feature, a 13 minute “Making of” featurette, but it’s an entertaining mix of interview snippets, archival footage of the real Liberace, and insights into how the costume and set designers were able to so convincingly pull off all the lavish surroundings of late ‘70s Las Vegas.

Also releasing today is Zal Batmanglij’s THE EAST, starring Brit Marling, Alexander Skarsgård (man, he gets around!), and Ellen Page as eco-terrorists. It’s a pretty decent thriller that’s at least worth a rental. A few other new films out today: Kyle Killen’s psychological thriller SCENIC ROUTE, Morgan O'Neill’s Australian surfing drama DRIFT, and Uwe Boll's thriller SUDDENLY, starring Ray Liotta, Dominic Purcell, and Michael Paré. That last title, a remake of Lewis Allen’s 1954 film noir thriller of the same name, is actually dumb fun, which is something, considering it’s, you know, a Uwe Boll production.

On the older film new to Blu ray front there’s a nice handful of horror and classic monster movies such as George A. Romero’s 1985 zombie classic DAY OF THE DEAD (Collector’s Edition), the 1931 Bela Lugosi classic DRACULA, Hammer Film’s 1966 Christopher Lee classic DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS, the 1935 Boris Karloff classic THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, and the 1941 Lon Chaney Jr. classic THE WOLF MAN. I also can’t leave out the TREMORS Attack Pack which contains all 4 TREMORS movies (there were 4 of them?). Now, that’s a lot of scary classics that are now all Blu rayed-up!


TV season sets releasing today: Nashville: The Complete First Season, Leverage: The Fifth Season, The Mentalist: The Complete Fifth Season, Grimm: Season Two, Arrow: The Complete First Season, Bates Motel: Season One, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - The 13th Season, and Golgo 13: Complete Collection.

More later…

WORLD WAR Z: The Film Babble Blog Review

Opening tonight at a multiplex near you:

WORLD WAR Z (Dir. Marc Forster, 2013)

These aren’t the slow “walkers” like on AMC's hit show The Walking Dead, these zombies run at intense speeds, jump long distances, and swarm into a tangled mangled mess of flailing limbs coming at you in 3D in this adaptation of the bestselling 2006 novel by Max Brooks (son of Mel).

But since there’s so much quick cut action, a lot of it in darkness, the zombies aren’t really coming at you, except in chaotic glimpses. Perhaps blame the fact that it’s a PG-13 production, but the zombies here are hard to get a good look at in early scenes set in a Philadelphia traffic jam captured by herky-jerky-cam, a shadowy stairwell in a New Jersey slum, and a dark rainy runway in Korea where they’re mainly seen as spastic silhouettes.

These are locations that Brad Pitt, as a retired United Nations investigator, encounters the blood-thirsty undead as he travels the earth trying to figure out how to stop the zombie apocalypse.

Pitt had managed to shuffle his wife (Mireille Enos) and daughters (Abigail Hargrove and Sterling Jerins) to safety aboard a U.S. Naval ship, but despite wanting to stay with his family he’s talked into saving the world by his former U.N. boss (Fana Mokoena) so he rolls up his sleeves to get the job done.

Pitt co-produced this big ass epic, touted as the most expensive zombie movie ever with its budget of $400 million, so it makes sense that it’s his character’s singular story. We follow him to Israel because they somehow were more prepared for the zombie outbreak, having quickly constructed enormous walls around their cities to protect themselves.

It’s too bad that Pitt doesn’t share with their officials that they should keep the noise down, something he previously learned in Korea, because their loud chanting, aided by misguided microphone use, draws the zombies to pile up in large numbers to scale the walls (this is one of the movie's big money shots). 



Anyway, Pitt, joined by Daniella Kertesz as a wounded Israeli soldier (Pitt had to chop her hand off because of a zombie bite), board a plane, which of course seems quiet and safe at first, but in the bathroom, you got it – a zombie!

The airplane’s fate here won’t make anybody forget the spectacular plane stunt work in last summer’s THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (or even the fall’s FLIGHT for that matter), but it’s still one of the film’s most gripping and exciting sequences.

However, when watching this and the rest of the movie I kept thinking that it really didn’t look like $400 million was up there on the screen. 

But I know that there were many re-writes and re-shootings (as this Vanity Fair piece details) in which Lost and PROMETHEUS writer Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard (CLOVERFIELD) were brought in to not just merely punch up Matthew Michael Carhan’s screenplay, they were recruited to create a new third act and ending and that's what added hugely to the film’s already bloated price tag.

That third act, largely taking place in fluorescent-lit labs at the World Health Organization in Wales, has Pitt testing a theory about a possible anti-zombie vaccine. 

The suspense has pretty much been drained from the movie at this point, and the lack of an emotional connection is pretty numbing too. 

Throughout the film, nobody seems to react to their former family, friends, or colleagues having turned irreversibly into these scary creatures, they just know immediately that they have to get the Hell away from them. When watching people they used to work with at the Wales institute on monitors now zombified, a random comment like “oh, jeez, that was Dr. Rosenthal – what a loss,” would be expected, but the screenwriters seem to be more concern with stating plot-points than at least fleshing out the humans to have at least a few more recognizable feelings than the zombies.

AMC’s flawed but enjoyable The Walking Dead may meander at times, but it compellingly regards this relatable factor with characters struggling with losing their love ones. 

Here a kid that sees his father become infected and change (it takes 10 seconds in this film) never shows anything but a survival instinct as he joins Pitt and family on a helicopter to safety. That kid’s thread is never followed up, like a lot of characters that are trotted out – hey, there’s Lost’s Matthew Fox for a second as a a U.S. Navy SEAL! Oh, nevermind. He’s gone.

The 3D conversion doesn’t do the movie any favors either. I can’t think of a single instance where the in-your-face format was effective. The film’s visual appeal is already dicey with its dull gray tones, the addition of the all too typical blockbuster gimmick of the day just detracts even more from the experience. 



It doesn't help either that Forster’s ham-fisted direction, formerly on display in the 007 dud QUANTUM OF SOLACE and 2011’s MACHINE GUN PREACHER, barely keeps the film afloat through the chaotic camerawork by cinematographer Ben Seresin (TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, UNSTOPPABLE). 


As this summer’s event movies go, WORLD WAR Z is not as all over the place as IRON MAN 3, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS and MAN OF STEEL are, but its narrow focus on Pitt’s heroics doesn’t make it any more powerful, especially when the entire ordeal boils down to Pitt being able to walk down a hallway through a hoard of zombies without getting bitten. All the socio-policital commentary in the book has been discarded so that we can have the standard race-against-time to save the day scenario, but then that's what the audience wants, right?

Inevitably, after its best shots and moments have been Spoiled by its heavy promotion over the last several months, Forster’s film can’t help but feel anticlimactic. 



Folks who swarm in messy mobs just like the zombies to see it this weekend will most likely find that large chunks of it work as surface level entertainment, but overall its a mediocre and over-reaching opus that has nowhere near the gritty gravitas it’s going for.

More later...

Upcoming Blockbuster Wannabes (With Trailers!)

I went to see THE GREAT GATSBY 3D, which wasn’t that great, last weekend and like usual when I go to the multiplex I get exhausted before the main attraction even starts because of the bombastic noisy trailers for upcoming blockbuster wannabes. 

At least the theater, the Raleigh Grande, didn’t pile too many on like some others do. The bombast started with SUPERMAN RESTARTS, sorry, MAN OF STEEL, the new Superman reboot starring Henry Cavill and directed by Zack Snyder (300, WATCHMEN, SUCKER PUNCH) coming out on June 14th.

The epic trailer looked incredibly promising, albeit Christopher Nolan-ized (Nolan executive-produced), and I like the idea of Russell Crowe as Superman’s biological father Jor El from Krypton, Kevin Costner as his Earth father, and especially Michael Shannon as General Zod. Here’s hoping that it at least strikes a more successful chord than Bryan Singer’s SUPERMAN RETURNS. Check out the trailer:

The following trailer, for THOR: INTO DARKNESS, sorry, THOR: THE DARK WORLD, due out November 8th, really suffered by comparison to the MAN OF STEEL one. 

Alan Taylor takes over on directing duties from Kenneth Branagh for the sequel to the 2011 Marvel Universe entry, in which Chris Hemsworth reprises his role as the Asgardian warrior for the third time (the second was in last year’s smash THE AVENGERS). Natalie Portman also returns in this CGI-saturated super hero flick that has Thor battling…uh, I’m not sure. Actually I couldn’t get a sense of the plot, except that Portman goes to Thor’s dimension or whatever you call it, from the roughly 2 minute trailer, which you can see below, but looks like there’s lots of action and stylized violence just like you’d expect. 

Lastly, one of the most anticipated movies of the summer, Marc Forster’s WORLD WAR Z, based on the book by Mel Brooks’ son Max Brooks, was advertised in a trailer also filled with quick cuts of thunderous action. Brad Pitt stars in the film (the trailer doesn’t make his occupation clear, but it's some kind of government job) that consists of swarming zombies (they move much much quicker than in The Walking Dead) overtaking the earth. The film has a budget of over $200 million and from the looks of this preview, it looks like it’s all up on the screen. Check it out the trailer for WORLD WAR Z, opening the week after MAN OF STEEL on June 21st in IMAX 3D and plain ole 2D:

More later...

Talky KILLING THEM SOFTLY Gives Us A Lesson In Gangster Economics

Opening today in Raleigh and the Triangle area:

KILLING THEM SOFTLY (Dir. Andrew Dominik, 2012)

Although this film is based on the 1974 crime novel “Coogan’s Trade” by George V. Higgins, fans of The Sopranos are going to find its trappings familiar. Not only because it features Tony Soprano himself, James Gandolfini, and series regulars Vincent Curatola, and Max Casella, but because its scenario set-up about low level idiots that try to get ahead by robbing a mob protected card game is ground well trodden by David Chase’s iconic characters.

But director/screenwriter Andrew Dominik, re-united with his THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES star, Brad Pitt, has loftier goals that just staging a big screen Sopranos episode. Dominik sets the story in New Orleans in 2008, and we are taken back to the days of Obama getting elected during the country’s economic collapse via a string of television screens in the background always tuned to the news. The underlying implication is that the mafia is yet another American corporation whose business model is faltering in these tough times.

Pitt, with slicked back hair, shades, and goatee, plays an enforcer for the mob who’s brought in to track down the three low level idiots who thought it was a good idea to rob a high-stakes card game run by the fidgety stressed-out Ray Liotta. Liotta, is in real hot water with this theft, because he’s robbed the game before himself, and he’s going to take the blame for this one.

An often smirking Richard Jenkins, brings his Nathaniel Fisher (the all-knowing ghost dad on Six Feet Under) confidence in his part as Pitt’s contact, a jaded mob lawyer, who says matter-of-factly that “this is a business of relationships,” ever so slyly adding to the movie’s not-so-subtle set of themes.

Gandolfini shows up as a boozing burn-out of a hitman that Pitt seems to think he needs in order to pull off the job. Gandolfini and Pitt have a few intense and intimate scenes together; one on one exchanges in which you feel their history together both as these shady guys, and as actors who’ve worked together for 2 decades, starting with Tony Scott’s TRUE ROMANCE. 

Despite some vivid violence (this movie is where to go to see Liotta getting the shit beaten out of him), it’s a dialogue-driven film, all about the sit-downs. The power and thrust of the film’s thesis can be found in Pitt’s parked car consultations with Jenkins, Gandolfini’s meaty monologues, and the frightened babbling of Scoot McNairy’s Frankie (one of the idiots involved in the card heist), who steals the movie out from under the bigwigs when he’s onscreen with his perfectly unhinged performance.

As McNairy’s partner in crime and stupidity, Ben Mendelsohn (ANIMAL KINGDOM) is also effective as a seedy heroin addict you can’t believe anybody would trust to get them coffee, let alone pull off a dangerous job.

Pitt, who is one of 17 (!) different producers on this project, provides a solid performance, but it’s nothing we’ve never seen him do before. Still, the man’s particular brand of presence is never bland.

Sort of like a mash-up of GOODFELLAS and MARGIN CALL, KILLING THEM SOFTLY may be a bit too talky for its target audience. 

Because of its marketing, which highlights the stars, the stylishness and the one explosion, audiences are likely to think that it’s a different movie than it is - much like Anton Corbijn’s THE AMERICAN, which looked like a commercial George Clooney action flick, or Nicolas Winding Refn’s DRIVE, which looked like a commercial Ryan Gosling car chase thriller. Both turned out to be artsy cerebral takes on their genres, and while film buffs like me loved them, I knew many folks who were turned off.

This take on the gangster drama genre deserves an audience’s attention, even if the dry tone that Dominik creates, along with the immaculately shot framework (by cinematographer Grieg Fraser) surrounding some of the year’s most astonishing acting, ultimately makes more of an impression than any of the political points he’s attempting to make. 

More later...

MONEYBALL: The Film Babble Blog Review

MONEYBALL (Dir. Bennett Miller, 2011)

 

Some of the best camaraderie I’ve seen on the big screen lately is in the exchanges between Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill throughout this unorthodox take on the traditional inspirational sports story.

Pitt plays the real-life Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, who recruits Hill, as a Yale economy major based on Paul DePodesta, to help him think outside the box in putting together a baseball team on an extremely low budget.

There’s a delicious deadpan thing happening with Pitt and Hill as they employ a statistical approach to scouting for new players, no doubt due to the thoroughy witty screenplay written by Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian. It’s a pleasure to see Pitt as basically a regular relatable guy - a divorced dad who is driven to shake things up in his career - trading ideas with Hill, in one of his most likable and believable roles.

A dour Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the field manager of the team, doesn’t quite get what Pitt and Hill are up to so there are some flare-ups, but a rag tag roster of players is assembled (including Chris Pratt, Stephen Bishop, Casey Bond, and Royce Clayton) that pulls off a 20-game winning streak.

Despite such factors as Pitt’s overly precocious daughter (Kerris Dorsey) and his ex-wife (a barely registering Robin Wright), there’s not much of an emotional impact to this material, but the backroom break-downs which make up the bulk of this film are engaging enough to draw one in.

Subdued yet extremely sharp, MONEYBALL isn’t a movie just for baseball fanatics, it’s for anybody who enjoys character driven drama about people experimenting with new methods with compelling determination. Pitt provides one of his most down to earth performances that carries the film superbly, and the inventive pairing of him with Hill works way better than one would think.

Not being a baseball guy, or a sports guy at all for that matter, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this film. It has the drive of the best docudramas – the ones that educate as much as they entertain – and folks should walk away with a good sense of how a couple of everyday guys can really be gamechangers.



More later...

THE TREE OF LIFE: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE TREE OF LIFE (Dir. Terrence Malick, 2011)

This is sure to be the most debated film of the year.



Just a cursory glance at internet message boards shows that while some people are labeling it “pretentious crap,” another thread of folks are calling it “one of the best movies ever.”



Consider me in the latter camp.



For his first film since THE NEW WORLD in 2005, the none-too-prolific Terrace Malick (BADLANDS, THE THIN RED LINE) has made a non-linear epic of incredible photography, lavish reconstructions of astrological history, and classical music.



It’s an overwhelming work that obviously a lot of people simply won’t get. I myself am still trying to piece it together, but I think I get it. I think.



Through beautifully fleeting imagery, we follow Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain as the parents of three sons in 1950s Waco, Texas. One of the sons dies, the cause of which is never explained, and the family is in mourning with Chastain asking the Heavens: “Lord, why? Where were you?”



Malick attempts to answer that question by going back to the beginning of time in a mesmerizing series of shots of thick engulfing clouds, glowing globules of every color, shining light, fire, flowing lava, etc.



History comes alive via CGI, and we even get to spend a little time with a few dinosaurs.



The visual thrust of all of this is stupefying; it’s like Malick is actually trying to capture God on film.



I’m really not sure if he succeeded, but that a film maker would try so hard and in some flashing moments appear to get so close is amazing to behold.



The timeline catches up with the ‘50s family again, as we see the boy who died being born. A strict disciplinarian, Pitt practices tough love on his boys (Hunter McCraken, Laramie Eppler, and Tye Seridan) while Chastain offers nothing but unconditional motherly love.



The vivid cinematography by four-time Oscar nominee Emmanuel Lubezki is astounding. Whether it’s exploiting the lush splendor of nature or zeroing in on the characters in emotional despair, the camera is always moving, exploring the space of every frame.



Close-ups are handled in a manner I haven’t seen in a film in ages. Even when the boys join a roving group of trouble making pre-teens, a feeling of isolation around McCracken is felt. His misguided desire to fit in with the window breaking, animal abusing brats is captured in the restless energy of the camerawork.



As the troubled eldest son Jack, McCracken is arguably the protagonist. His angry brow dominates the screen as he grows to resent his father. It’s a spare yet piercing performance – a noteworthy film debut.



An older version of Jack is played by Sean Penn, a businessman in the modern world still suffering over the loss of his brother and estranged relationship with his father. Penn’s part is one of the film’s only weaknesses. Penn, who gets more grizzled looking every movie he makes, mainly broods with his presence threatening to stop the film’s immersive flow.



As the last third becomes engulfed in surrealism, Penn is seen, suited up, wandering around a desert landscape. These images are pretty, but ultimately superfluous.



Many moviegoers (and critics) are going to be baffled by THE TREE OF LIFE. It’s a challenging and dense work that comes off at times like STAND BY ME filtered through the Kubrickian kaleidoscope of the last ten minutes of  2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.



To me it’s not just a massive breath of fresh air during this sequel saturated summer, it’s a near masterpiece about life, death, the universe and everything.



In other words, here’s the year’s first major contender for Best Picture at the next Academy Awards.





More later...