Post-Holiday Review Roundup

Hello, everyone! Remember me? I hope you had a terrific December. I know I’ve said this a billion times in the last couple months, but this time I mean it: I’m about to resume a more frequent blogging schedule. Turns out the holidays were a far busier time than I thought they were going to be. But fear not, I have watched a handful of movies in this time and now I’m going to share with you my thoughts on all of them. Beginning this week, I will officially start writing all of my “2012 in film” posts, and then we can move on to 2013. Read on for my opinions of Jack Reacher, Les Misérables, The Loneliest Planet and This is 40. Thanks for still reading, and I assure you things are going to be back to normal real soon.

Jack Reacher

Dir: Christopher MacQuarrie

Tom Cruise is normally a guy that aligns himself with larger-than-life Hollywood productions. He can’t just be an action hero. He has to be an action hero that dangles off the side of the Burj Khalifa with nothing but his belt. He can’t just play a rock star. He has to be the rock star; the kind of guy that wakes up in the morning still drunk with a naked woman on either side of him. That’s why it’s a little puzzling that he would choose Jack Reacher (née One Shot) for his next pet project. Really, it’s just a modest mystery thriller about a notorious army cop who rolls into town, solves a crime, then rides a Greyhound bus into the sunset. There are no grand action set pieces involving skyscrapers or gigantic explosions; most of the excitement comes from Cruise’s character driving around Pittsburgh collecting clues. There are plenty of fights, sure, but Reacher is more old-fashioned than many of Cruise’s recent Hollywood extravaganzas. It also has much more personality than many might expect, and much of the credit for that should go to longtime screenwriter Christopher MacQuarrie for his surprisingly assured direction.

Even still, Jack Reacher is the victim of some truly horrible timing. It was released in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, and the entire story revolves around an opening sequence in which an insane ex-soldier apparently opens fire on a group of random civilians going about their day. Objectively speaking, it’s an effectively chilling sequence, but considering recent events it also has the potential to sicken audiences before the real story ever kicks into gear. Things get more positive once Cruise’s Reacher trots in to town looking to get to the bottom of this shooting, and he starts to uncover a vast conspiracy that leads all the way up a figure named “The Zec,” played by director Werner Herzog. He is not a particularly well-written villain, and despite Herzog’s inherent awesomeness the movie gets a whole lot less satisfying once he hops on board. The more time we spend with Cruise, the better off we all are. And isn’t that true of life in general?

Jack Reacher is certainly successful in fits and starts, but it just doesn’t cohere into a satisfying whole. Things get way too predictable in the final act, and MacQuarrie is never quite able to match the intensity and genuine fun that came before. (In particular, there is one excellent car chase scene that drives home the fact that MacQuarrie may indeed have a future in action direction.) At times, Reacher seems like it has the potential to be a really top-notch thriller, but it settles for just a couple notches below. Still, Cruise remains to be a truly deserving movie star, and only a couple times does it become hard to buy him as a guy that everyone should fear. Jack Reacher is a middle-of-the-road Tom Cruise action film, but those who choose to laugh him off are missing out on an actor that is a lot of fun to watch each and every time he steps in front of a camera.

Grade: B

Les Misérables

Dir: Tom Hooper

After watching his adaptation of the beloved musical Les Misérables, I have come to the conclusion that Tom Hooper is one of those directors that is able to fool people into thinking he’s great. In reality, his style is far more distracting than it is “artistic,” and his more irritating tendencies are on full display here for a solid two and a half hours. I will not deny that he did a good job with The King’s Speech—where his style was much more of an asset—but watching Les Mis is like trying to watch a really fine stage show, only to have Hooper constantly tap-dancing across the stage trying to distract you. This is an inherently engaging story, and I was invested far more often than I was scoffing. But when I did scoff, it was able to take me right out of the movie. All Hooper had to do to make this movie good was get the heck out of the way. Unfortunately, he doesn’t. While this doesn’t quite sink the ship, it frequently requires some bailing out.

Part of the problem: it peaks too early. For those who do not know, Les Misérables tells a decades-spanning story of the fugitive Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), who is constantly being pursued by Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe). After a mostly terrific opening sequence that follows Valjean from slavery to his lonely parole as a dangerous man, we flash forward several years later to find that he has become mayor of the town Montreuil-sur-Mer. In that town, it is revealed that the factory worker Fantine (Anne Hathaway) has an illegitimate child. She is fired and left to sell her hair and teeth for money, until she ultimately resorts to prostitution. This sequence reaches its mournful climax with Hathaway’s rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream,” which is filmed in a single close-up that makes the audience feel every gram of her character’s misery. It’s a heartbreaking moment that is filled with more emotion than the rest of the movie combined.

From there, Hooper trots out the same tricks again and again. As revelatory as the single-take technique was for “I Dreamed a Dream,” it rings hollow every time it’s used for the rest of the movie. Much has been made of Hooper’s constant use of close-ups, and it indeed becomes horribly distracting after a while. There’s no denying the appeal of Les Misérables, and despite its very long running time it never becomes wholly tedious. It just gets close every once in a while. There’s no doubt a truly great movie could have been made from this material, but Hooper frequently makes puzzling decisions that ultimately hold this film back.

No discussion of Hooper’s Les Mis would be complete without bringing up the “live singing” approach, which means that the actors performed the songs live on set with the orchestral accompaniments being added later. Overall I like the idea of it, though I think some of the actors took the opportunity to ACT! more than was really necessary. Problems aside, and there were plenty, Les Mis is probably the perfect musical to try out this new technique, considering how emotional so many of the numbers are. Like the rest of the movie, the live singing is able to create moments of transcendence but is hampered by some strange directorial choices. This is material that has enough going for it from a prestige standpoint. It doesn’t need Hooper constantly trying to be “artistic.”

Grade: B

The Loneliest Planet

Dir: Julia Loktev

I’m not going to talk very much about Julia Loktev’s understated-but-powerful The Loneliest Planet, as any real discussion of it revolves around a moment that occurs about halfway through. Just know this: it is about a couple (Gael Garcia Bernal and Hani Furstenberg) who hire a guide (Bidzina Gujabidze) to help them hike through the mountains of Georgia (the country). Things are going well enough for a while, as the audience gets to feast their eyes on the gorgeous landscapes and observe a couple that appears to be very, very much in love. Then this aforementioned moment occurs, and it puts a wet blanket on the proceedings to say the least. The last half of the film watches as the two of them negotiate this moment without actually saying a word about it. That’s what makes it all the more heartbreaking. The less I say now, the better. Just know that The Loneliest Planet is a mesmerizing film about relationships, gender roles, and several other things. It says so much despite not saying very much at all.

Grade: A-

This is 40

Dir: Judd Apatow

Judd Apatow films have always had a meandering quality to them, but with each passing project he seems committed to pushing his films further into the world of shapelessness. Audiences (and several critics) dismissed his last film Funny People, which was a two-and-a-half-hour comedy/drama about a wealthy comedian/movie star that is a terrible person, gets cancer, and then continues to be a terrible person to all his friends and family. Despite the fact that it’s actually quite good, it wasn’t quite what people had in mind when they signed up for an Adam Sandler/Seth Rogen vehicle. Since that film didn’t quite catch fire, it’s logical to think that Apatow would choose to go a more commercial route for his next project. Surprisingly, but not regrettably, he has made yet another long, rambling, and incredibly personal comedy that revisits some of the characters that were seen in his second film Knocked Up. He’s long been fascinated by immature characters being suddenly thrust into adulthood, and This is 40 takes it to the next level: what happens when two adults realize just how far into adulthood they are?

These two adults are Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann), a couple whose marriage needs constant readjustment. Their children Sadie and Charlotte (Maude and Iris Apatow, respectively) have grown up since we last saw them, and now Pete is running his own record label as opposed to working for someone else’s. Unfortunately, 2012 isn’t necessarily the greatest time to be starting a record label. This very episodic film follows Pete and Debbie as they deal with each other, their increasingly hard-to-handle children, and their newfound financial woes. As with most Apatow films, he is less concerned with the overall plot than he is in making clever observations over the course of several mostly-improvised scenes.

If you’re on board with Apatow’s ramshackle formula, then you’ll probably like This is 40 quite a bit. I know I did. However, those with little patience are probably better off looking elsewhere. Apatow is a director that loves his actors’ work so much that often scenes will find a way to go two or three riffs too long. It can be murder on the pacing, which is admittedly glacial, but at least it’s a lot of fun to watch these characters hang out with each other. As with all his films, he is able to extract some truly profound moments from all the mess. It just may take a little bit longer to get there than some would like. In a career full of shapeless movies, This is 40 might just be the most shapeless one he’s made. However, the real appeal is in watching these characters interact with each other and go about their very strange—and very funny—lives.

Grade: B+