The Time Traveler’s Wife

Posted on February 9, 2010 at 8:00 am

Books and movies are two very different modes of expression. Books tend to be more subjective and internal, focusing on what the author or characters think and feel. Movies are usually better at showing what happens. Even a hugely popular book about a deeply passionate romance like The Time Traveler’s Wife made with diligence and respect and starring beautiful people who are good actors, does not always produce a movie that lives up to the vision of the author and the readers.
Henry (Eric Bana) has become an involuntary time traveler following a traumatic accident that killed his mother when he was a child. He has no control over when or where he goes, but a force he describes as being like gravity pulls him back over and over to places and interactions that are most meaningful to him. When a beautiful young woman named Clare (Rachel McAdams) asks him for help at the Newberry Library, he can tell from her expression that she knows his future self and he knows her past self, but at the moment he has no clue who she is, much less that they are in love with one another. The special challenges (disappearing and re-appearing) are painful, often life-threatening, and even the benefits (it can be very helpful to know what is going to happen) can be stressful. But like all great love affairs, the connection between Henry and Clare transcends time.
Like the book, the movie gets weaker as it becomes more convoluted and far-fetched in the last third of the story. Unlike the book, it does not have the evocative and graceful prose written by Audrey Niffenegger. The novel is very internal, and no matter how able Bana and McAdams are, the script gives them little to do to convey the book’s power other than gaze lovingly at each other. The movie eliminates many secondary characters and much of the conversation and interaction that makes us care whether Henry and Clare figure out a way to literally stay together. They seem to have no personality, no substance beyond those longing glances. By far the most interesting character in the movie does not even arrive until the last 20 minutes. As the storyline gets more preposterous (and, in the screening I attended, provoked some unintended laughter), a new character arrives to give the film more weight and honesty than anything that has gone before, making us wish we could go back in time to start the film with that story instead.

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District 13: Ultimatum

Posted on February 4, 2010 at 10:07 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for some violence, language and drug material
Profanity:	Some strong language (a lot of s-words)
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drugs, alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Constant action violence, martial arts, guns, explosions, missiles, crashes
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters, inter-racial romance
Date Released to Theaters:	February 5, 2010

Cyril Raffaelli and David Belle make a sensationally appealing team in this follow-up to their hit film “District B13.” Belle is the creator of “parkour,” a stunt spectacular that turns an entire city into an obstacle course. It has become popular — the opening chase scene in “Casino Royale,” real-life competitions, and thousands of of do-it-yourself videos — something between gymnastics, acrobatics, and levitation as people jump through windows and between buildings. Raffaelli is the best movie martial arts guy since Jet Li. And they have a great chemistry as a loner and a special forces cop who join forces against pervasive institutional corruption.

There is a pointed reference to real-life institutional corruption (including a government-connected mega-corporation called “Harriburton”) but let’s be honest, this is all about the bang-bang and the bang-bang is done with a wink and a boatload of style.

It is 2016. The undesirables of Paris live in a walled section of the city, District 13. Belle plays Leito. He operates on his own but he has cordial relationships with the various ethnic factions. Raffaelli plays Damian, something of a super-cop, who brings down a powerful drug lord using his skills as a detective, strategist, fighter, and something of a disguise artist as well. When he is framed by corrupt cops and Leito comes across evidence of a set-up to start a riot in District 13, they team up.

Damian takes on batches of baddies at a time, once while protecting a priceless Van Gogh. Leito leaps across rooftops with the hang time of a helium balloon. Later on a crime boss named Tao (Elodie Yung) joins in when they assemble a coalition of gangs to prevent their home from being destroyed by missiles. Sort of.

Okay, no one is taking any of this too seriously. But the stunts and fight scenes are electric and entertaining and the film-making is kinetic and a lot of fun. For the character’s sake, I hope that happy ending holds, but for my own, I’d like to see another bunch of bad guys so Raffaelli and Belle — and Yung — can go after them again.

Amelia

Posted on February 3, 2010 at 8:59 am

Amelia Earhart, the pioneering aviator who was lost over the Pacific, is given the big Hollywood biopic treatment in a curiously retro film that feels like it was intended for Katherine Hepburn or Susan Hayward. It is not the 1930’s setting that makes it feel so old-fashioned; it is the traditional take on a very un-traditional life. Earhart’s passion and achievement are what make her most interesting to contemporary audiences. But this film never shows us why flying was important to Earhart or what made her so determined. It does not show us what she was good at. The first name-only title provides the first indication that like the recent “Coco Before Chanel” it will minimize and marginalize the achievements of a woman of enormous historic import by focusing on her love life.

And it’s dull.

Hillary Swank, who produced and stars, plays Earhart as a woman who keeps a lot inside. Much of the acting is done in the varying breadth of her toothy smile, with an occasional blinking back of tears. Earhart is unfailingly brave and game, whether taking first lady Eleanor Roosevelt (an engagingly game Cherry Jones) on a moonlight flight over the Capitol, posing for a luggage ad as a way to finance her flights, or feeling drawn to a man other than her husband (who happens to be, we are repeatedly reminded, the father of future author Gore Vidal).

The film spends too much time on Earhart’s romance with publisher/promoter George Putnam (Richard Gere) and dalliance with Vidal’s father. It feels like a string of incidents without any connecting theme. Even the usually able director, Mira Nair, seems to have her pilot light turned to simmer. As Earhart tries to land on a tiny island to refuel in her attempt to circle the globe for the first time by air, screenwriter Ron Bass (“Stepmom,” “Snow Falling on Cedars”) makes the mistake of trying for for suspense even though the one thing everyone knows about Earhart is that she does not land successfully. The best part of the film comes from the exquisite images from cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh and production design by Stephanie Carroll; they make the backgrounds seem more alive and involving than the characters or the story. It just never takes off.

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Based on a true story Biography Drama

Law Abiding Citizen

Posted on February 3, 2010 at 8:00 am

This is not just a bad film; it is a despicable one. The slim but highly profitable torture porn genre has now begun to permeate major studio films directed at a general audience and the result is this dim-witted thriller that purports to have some legitimacy beyond serving as an excuse for full-on butchery. It does not. This is the “Saw”-ification of mainstream films.

Clyde (Gerard Butler of “300” and “Phantom of the Opera”) is quickly and very briefly established as a loving husband and father and then five minutes into the film two intruders come into the house, knock him out, and rape and murder his wife and little girl. Later, a slick prosecutor named Nick (Jamie Foxx) makes a deal that gives the worst of the two offenders a reduced sentence while his partner is sentenced to death. The execution goes wrong and the death is agonizingly painful. And the other offender, released from prison, is captured and subjected to excruciating torture (described in excruciating detail) before he, too, is killed. It turns out that Clyde has not just a motive for revenge; as a former highly trained government operative, he has the means. And he is just beginning.

It is supposed to be an intriguing cat-and-mouse game, but the fun of those stories is putting together the pieces of the puzzle and seeing the bad guy out-smarted. But there is nothing smart here, much less out-smart. The screenplay is so lazy that it cannot even decide who Nick works for, the District Attorney (local), the Justice Department (federal), or both. He also seems to be moonlighting as a detective, leaving the courtroom behind as he races into dark buildings without calling for any back-up. Because Clyde’s character has suffered so profoundly and the bad guys are so over-the-top despicable, we are supposed to find some satisfaction in their hideously painful deaths. But we’re supposed to be on Nick’s side, too. He may be a little too slick, but when the body count starts to pile up and Clyde threatens to kill “everyone,” we’re back on the side of law enforcement, previously portrayed as ineffectual and pragmatic to the point of moral compromise.

Revenge is such a reliable plot engine that it is hard to mess it up. Think of the purity of the first “Kill Bill.” But in this film, the details of the torture as entertainment, the sheer pointless excess of the carnage in the context of what purports to be a drama, and then the literal over-the-top ending that once again undercuts everything we have been asked to believe is more than exploitative; it is depraved. Viola Davis adds some class and dignity to the film as the frustrated mayor, like a visitor from another film, maybe another world. But then we are back to the phony sanctimoniousness of this film, with its final insults the idea that even upholders of the law are entitled to cause massive destruction and put lives at risk for payback and that all of this carnage is justified as a reminder to be a better daddy.

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Action/Adventure Crime Drama

Love Happens

Posted on February 2, 2010 at 8:10 am

Pay attention, class. Jennifer Aniston makes two kinds of movies. When she has her hair tied back, it’s usually an independent film (like last summer’s “Management”) and usually worth watching. But when her hair is loose it’s usually a big, glossy, studio film like this one. She tends to hide behind her hair in these films, flipping it around or holding her head to keep it still instead of acting. And it hasn’t been working out that well for her. Other than the ensemble film “He’s Just Not That Into You,” and the movie about the dog, “Marley & Me,” she has not been very successful at the box office lately. And this charmless, predictable, and downright dull unromantic romance is another big dud. I’d call it manipulative, too, except that it never came close to manipulating any emotions in me. It’s a romance without an ounce of chemistry between its leads or between its story and its audience.
Aaron Eckhart plays Burke, a successful self-help author and motivational speaker about to sign a huge multi-media deal. He specializes in helping people deal with tragic losses, inspired by his own struggle to deal with his wife’s death in a car crash three years earlier. But like two other self-help authors in movies within the last couple of months (Kevin Spacey in “Shrink” and in Jeff Daniels in “Answer Man”), he is better at giving advice than taking it. Burke has been using his work, the book and seminars, to insulate him from his pain instead of dealing with it.
At a Hilton in Seattle, he (literally) bumps into a florist named Eloise (Aniston). For the first time since his wife’s death, he feels something. She has just broken up with an unfaithful boyfriend and has no interest in feeling anything. He likes her because (I’m not kidding about this) she writes obscure words on the wall of the hotel behind paintings. She tries to dissuade him from his interest by (and I’m really not kidding about this) pretending to be deaf. Defacing property, exploiting a non-existent disability, and making money from the pain of ordinary people. They are meant for each other!

Even Aniston cannot make the antics forced on her by this screenplay look adorable — including a parrot-stealing adventure that is, like everything else in the film, poorly paced and over-long. Eckart’s best moment is early in the film when a photographer asks him a question and a range of emotions flicker across his face, giving us a glimpse of how much more he has to offer than this film allows. The delectable Judy Geer, go-to best friend in studio romance films, featuring actresses named Jennifer or who look like they should be named Jennifer is as usual criminally underused. And I don’t even want to tell you how mistreated poor Martin Sheen is. Worst of all is the screenplay. There is a lot to be said about the way that self-help gurus are this generation’s Elmer Gantrys, but this movie’s decision to try to have it all ways leaves the story without any point of view, forcing the characters to behave in completely inconsistent ways just for a preposterous “feel-good” resolution.
At one point in this film, a minor character in great pain from a devastating loss begins his recovery with a trip to a hardware store. We expect that this will lead to some building project with a positive impact that will help him and the other people in the group work on something constructive and generous. But it turns out to be just a shopping trip, a lot of money and a lot of building materials for nothing. The same can be said of the movie.

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Comedy Date movie Romance