The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Posted on May 12, 2009 at 8:00 am

Brad Pitt is a very fine actor (see “Twelve Monkeys” and “True Romance”) but in this epic fantasy his diligent and thoughtful performance contributes less to the film than his appearance, about two-thirds of the way through. I mean appearance in the broadest sense. It is not until that point that we feel that the Pitt we have been waiting for shows up on screen. And it is at that moment that Pitt’s appearance, meaning his golden movie star beauty, provides the essential jolt that propels the story forward into its final, heart-wrenching conclusion.

It takes its title from a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald about a man who lives his life backwards, born as an old man and getting younger every day. The movie begins with both of its main characters very, very old. One is Daisy (Cate Blanchett), dying in a hospital, with her daughter standing vigil. Daisy asks her daughter to read aloud from an old diary and we go back to the Armistice, the end of World War I. A baby is born and his mother dies in childbirth. The father is horrified by the child and leaves him on the doorstep of a home for the elderly where he is adopted by Queenie (the marvelous Taraji P. Henson), who works at the home. At first he seems like an exceptionally ugly baby. And then as he gets older he seems to be disabled. A nursing home is a perfect environment for young Benjamin Button. He’s just another person who needs help. He is raised in an atmosphere of unconditional love and acceptance and grows up to have a gentle and observant nature.

One day a little girl comes to visit her grandmother. It is Daisy. Benjamin looks like a very old man but he is really a little boy and he wants to play with her. As she grows up, he gets younger, but there are still decades between them. Benjamin leaves the nursing home to work on a ship and writes to Daisy from around the world.

The digital effects are very well done and by this time Pitt starts to become more recognizable, so almost-familiar that we almost believe that this is the way he looks now, that he’s getting a little older like the rest of us. And then, all of a sudden, there he is, the wind brushing his hair, a burnished glow on, around, and coming from him, the very personification of youth and promise and every possible kind of yes. Our hearts ache with the bittersweet longing for what he has that no one ever will, the look and energy of youth with the wisdom and experience of age. And then they ache again with what he shares with us and every human, the awareness of how brief it all really is and the need for connection to transcend life’s limits.

This is a film with the scope and reach of almost a century but its power comes from the smallest gestures and the simplest moments. And its ultimate conclusion is one of the most powerful and moving of the year.

The Spirit

Posted on April 14, 2009 at 8:00 am

If there is ever an Oscar category for best performance by an article of clothing, the red tie worn by the title character in this film would be the clear winner and the rain coat would most likely be the runner-up.

This film version of the innovative and influential comic book owes much more to writer/director Frank Miller than to the man who created the character, Will Eisner. Miller, who revitalized Batman as The Dark Knight and co-directed “Sin City,” based on his own comic book series, itself in part inspired by Eisner’s subversive noir stories.

The Spirit is is something more than a man but something less than a superhero. Once he was Denny Colt, a cop, but something has happened that gives him special power and special responsibility. His great love is the city and he serves as its masked and mysterious protector. But there are also women, many of them and all utterly captivating and utterly captivated by him — his childhood sweetheart, the doctor who patches him up, a rookie cop. And there is a super villain, Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson), a guy who has developed a potion for giving him something on the brink of immortality. He has the same kind of special powers of healing that The Spirit does. And he wants something that will give him everything he needs to become all-powerful but it was in a box that got mixed up with something also very valuable but much more mundane.

Miller misses the forest for the trees here with luscious, insouciant images that sizzle and tantalize but finally detract from any sense of story, purpose, or character. I’ve seen lava lamps with more of a plot. And for an action movie it all seems very posed and static. Comic books, with their panel-bound drawings, provide a more muscular sense of motion than Miller does here. He pays more attention to the sole of The Spirit’s shoe than he does to anything that would connect us with the character or even connect the characters do each other. Everyone is arch. Everyone just poses. They might as well be trying out for “America’s Next Top Model.”

And Jackson is not just over the top. He is over whatever is over the top. As his sidekick, Scarlett Johansson is completely out of her depth and it is uncomfortable to see her floundering to try to look predatory. In the title role, Gabriel Macht is outdone by his clothes. The only watchable performance is from Eva Mendes as Sand Serif, the bad girl who could only have a heart of gold if she stole one.

Eye candy can only go so far. Archness is not the same as irony. Style is not the same as substance. Miller captures the letter, but what this film is lacking, in every sense of the word, is the Spirit.

List: Body-Switching Movies

Posted on April 13, 2009 at 10:00 am

This week’s release of “17 Again,” starring Zac Efron and Matthew Perry, about a middle-aged man who finds himself turned back into a teenager, reminded me of some of my favorite “body-switching” movies.

1. Freaky Friday Both feature film versions of the classic book about a mother and daughter who switch bodies are delightful and it is fun to see them both and talk about the way each one reflects its era. Be sure to read the book by Mary Rodgers (daughter of Richard Rodgers of Rodgers and Hammerstein).

2. Vice Versa Judge Reinhold and “Wonder Years'” Fred Savage play the body-switching father and son in this 1988 comedy.

3. All of Me This very funny story about a wealthy lifelong invalid who wants her spirit to find a healthy body has lawyer Steve Martin is inhabited by the spirit of Lily Tomlin (some mature material).

4. Face/Off It’s actually not the bodies but the faces that switch in this fantasy-thriller that has cop Nicolas Cage swapping his face and voice with criminal John Travolta (very mature material).

5. Dating the Enemy A pair switches not just bodies but genders in this story about an estranged couple about to break up find themselves in each other’s bodies in this Australian film starring Guy Pearce.

6. Big One of the most beloved films in this category has Tom Hanks as a boy in a grown-up body. It includes the “Chopsticks” scene, with Hanks and Robert Loggia jumping over an enormous keyboard to play the song. (Some mature material)

7. Turnabout This odd little 1940 comedy has a married couple switching bodies thanks to a magical statue in their bedroom.

8. Prelude to a Kiss Alec Baldwin and Meg Ryan fall in love and then on their wedding day an old man gives her a kiss and what began as a fairly standard romance becomes a meditation on identity and intimacy.

9. Being John Malkovich A brilliant screenplay by Charlie Kauffman explores the nature of identity, art, gender, the wish for immortality, and a lot more in this story of a portal to the mind of actor Malkovich (who appears as himself, sort of). (Very mature material)

10. 18 Again! and Seventeen Again Body-switching skips a generation as grandparents find themselves teenagers again in these two movies, one starring George Burns and the other starring Tia and Tamera Mowry.

Others in this category include Goodbye Charlie and Switch (both about lotharios whose spirits come back as women) and A Saintly Switch, a Disney film with Viveca A. Fox and David Allen Grier as a quarreling pregnant woman and her football player husband who switch bodies thanks to a magical potion.

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Fantasy For Your Netflix Queue Lists

Bedtime Stories

Posted on April 10, 2009 at 8:00 am

Once upon a time there was a movie studio that thought it could produce a hit with a performer best known for raunchy slacker comedies and a lot of money for special effects. This story does not turn out very happily ever after.

Adam Sandler plays Skeeter, a hotel handyman who dreams of being the manager. His sister Wendy (Courtney Cox) asks him to stay with her children while she interviews for a new job. He tells them a bedtime story which they embellish and the next day some of its most outlandish details start to come true, even a shower of gumballs. As Skeeter competes with the obsequious Kendall (Guy Pearce) who is the boyfriend of the hotel owner, for the position of manager of a fancy new facility, he tries to direct the bedtime stories to help him succeed. Each night’s story — whether about a knight, a cowboy, an outer space adventurer, or a gladiator — influences the next day’s events.

The children in the audience laughed a lot at some of the silly details and schoolyard humor. And they enjoyed figuring out before Skeeter did that it was not the details he added to the story but the children’s ideas that shaped the real-world events. There are some marvelous special effects in the depiction of the stories, too. But anyone over the age of seven is unlikely to be more than mildly entertained by the film because of Sandler’s pudgy, barely-interested performance and a present-day storyline that is lackluster in contrast with the wild adventures of the bedtime sagas. Wendy’s “funny” restrictions on the children’s food and activities and a subplot intended to be suspenseful about whether her school will be torn down are distracting, especially when near the end there is a big waste of time when the film has to step up the pressure by putting children in senseless peril and dragging out the suspense. Keri Russell is radiant as always as Wendy’s friend and Skeeter’s love interest. Her brief appearance in the fantasy stories are as dazzling as the most elaborate special effects. The other characters are never as interesting as the time allotted to them means them to be. British bad boy Russell Brand is completely out of place as Skeeter’s friend and Guy Pearce is fighting at way below his weight class as Skeeter’s nemesis. We would all have done better if the children wrote the story.

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Comedy Fantasy

Pinocchio

Posted on March 9, 2009 at 2:00 pm

A+

Lowest Recommended Age:	All Ages
MPAA Rating:	G
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Children smoke cigars
Violence/ Scariness:	Tense and scary scenes including characters being swallowed by a whale and apparent death
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	1940
Date Released to DVD:	January 30, 2017
Amazon.com ASIN:	B01M105H8W

This week Disney is releasing a glorious new edition of its most most gorgeous, splendid, and fully realized of all of its hand-drawn animation classics before the use of photocopiers and computers. Every detail is brilliantly executed, from the intricate clocks in Geppetto’s workshop to the foam on the waves as the enormous whale Monstro thrashes the water. It also has one of Disney’s finest scores, featuring “When You Wish Upon a Star,” which has become the Disney theme song. “I’ve Got No Strings,” “Give a Little Whistle,” and “An Actor’s Life for Me” are also memorable. It is the classic story about the wooden puppet whose nose grows when he tells a lie and has to almost turn into a donkey before he can become a real boy, told with endless imagination and beauty, a must-see for all families.

This new edition has some great behind-the-scenes extras.

“Pinocchio” is a natural for the first discussions with kids about telling the truth (especially admitting a mistake) and not talking to strangers. Talk to them, too, about how to find their own conscience and listen to it as if it were Jiminy Cricket. The trip to Pleasure Island may also lead to a discussion of why things that feel like fun may be harmful, and the difference between fun and happiness.