Michael Clayton (2007) is so disappointing because talented actors give their all for a stereotypical story. A tremendous amount of talent has gone into producing a story which has been told before: Corporate lawyers defend a big chemical company against a class action suit. Guess what? The company is guilty. Guess what? After years of working on the case, one lawyer (Tom Wilkinson) cracks under the strain of ripping off the salt-of-the-earth farmers poisoned by the chemicals. Guess what? The chemical company assigns their evil lawyer (Tilda Swinton) and two hired killers to set things “right.” In the final showdown between the law firms “fixer” who has been slowly repulsed by the whole affair (George Clooney) and the evil lawyer from the evil chemical company, do you think he is wired to record the conversation in which the evil lawyer agrees to a bribe?
Tom Wilkinson give a superb performance as a brilliant and dedicated lawyer who cracks after years of fighting for wrong. His crazy scenes are not so extreme that they seem fake; they seem a realistic manifestation of his disorienting revulsion. When he occasionally become lucid—as when he explains how the law firm cannot confine him involuntarily—his voice and demeanour change perfectly to allow a glimpse of the formidable intelligence at work. Tilda Swinton is equally good as the company lawyer who is almost cracking under the strain of devoting her entire life to corporate interests and staying on top of the corporate ladder. Although George Clooney plays with a much more restricted emotional range, within those parameters, he is completely convincing. Even the minor characters, such as the boy who plays Michael Clayton’s son, do a commendable acting job. But all of this acting brilliance is to tell a stale story.
I watched Art School Confidential eagerly, pulled from scene to scene by the suspense. And what talent! Director Terry Zwighoff (Ghost World; Crumb) and writer Daniel Clowes, with an innocent lead by Max Minghella (Bee Season), and a perfectly beautiful, remote muse by Sophia Myles (Tristan + Isolde), a classically incompetent art teacher by John Malkovich, and the list goes on.
Yet when the movie finished, I didn’t like it. Why? Because there was no payoff to all the suspense. Suspense? What suspense? you ask. It is an intellectual suspense. The plot, stated simply, is that an innocent, talented, virginal young man goes to art school, and learns something. What will he learn? He learns two things, which are the themes of the movie. First, to be successful in the art world, talent is far less important than sucking up to the right people. Supporting this theme is the recurring critique of student art. It shows that no work of art is any better than any other work. Second, all people are scum, and hopefully a plague will wipe humanity off the face of the earth—except maybe for him and the girl he idolizes.
Unfortunately, the film does not support either theme. It tantalizingly raises the questions and then fails to provide any original, thought-provoking, or in-depth answers. Concerning the first theme, the comments on the paintings are so stereotypical and so jejune that we learn nothing about what makes good art. Concerning the second theme, we learn that people are scum from the rantings of a dyspeptic, alcoholic artist (played brilliantly by Jim Broadbent), but we don’t learn why he came to that conclusion and we don’t see it in the world around the art school. Although the students are stereotypical, troubled, and pretentious, they don’t deserve to die horrible deaths.
And then there’s the serial killer strangling people around the campus. Enough already! What do we get for watching this sour, dystopian stuff. Not laughs, that’s for sure. Not interesting characters who we can empathize with, for most of the characters are stereotypes. And not any insights into art.
Honeydripper (2007) is what I thought of as “a movie” when I was a child. After seeing my first movie, Gunfight at the OK Corral, and after hearing older folks say things like “We’re treating ourselves: the two of us are going to the movies,” I thought films like Honeydripper were what cinema was all about. Soon I learned that there were all kinds of other movies—deep, philosophical, brooding movies; experimental movies pushing the boundaries of film-making conventions; angry social criticism—and the list goes on. Honeydripper has a simple overarching plot, characters you can identify with, some suspense, no graphic violence, no big sex scenes, no titillating depravity, no cinematic innovations, and a pretty interesting sound track.
Whether you like Honeydripper depends largely on whether you are satisfied with a more traditional movie or whether you want something more sophisticated or daring. While Honeydripper receives an average score of 69% fresh tomatoes (a mediocre rating), an average of 69% can result from two very different sets of reviews. In one scenario, nearly every critic may say that the movie has some strengths but also some weaknesses, say, a great characters but a boring, predictable plot. Statisticians would call this a normal distribution. In the other scenario, however, approximately half the critics might love the movie, saying for example that they are delighted to see an old-fashioned movie, while approximately half the critics might hate the movie, saying for example that it has all been done before. Statisticians call this a bi-modal distribution. For us deciding whether to see a certain movie, the above distinction is crucial because if 69% reflects a normal distribution, we will likely find the movie mediocre; but if 69% reflects a bi-modal distribution, we will either love the movie or hate it. The reviews of Honeydripper are largely bi-model.
The overarching plot is predictable. Try it: A struggling bar owner tries to save his club by bringing in a big name musician, but the big name does not show. A young man has come to town hoping to make it as a guitar player and singer in the new electric blues style. Do you think the young guy will be a success and the bar owner will be able to pay the rent? Of course! But along the way, there are dozens of points in the plot where you don’t know what is going to happen. Will the bar owner’s wife get serious religion and leave him to tend bar by himself? The person I saw the movie with guessed yes; I guessed no.
Some critics have said the music is really good. I think this short-changes the movie. The point is that the music is usually not that great—as it should be! The gospel singers in the revival tent sing out of tune—as they should. Do you think the Staple Singers would be performing in a tent on the edge of a dusty little southern town? When the young man gets his big break on stage, he opens with “Good Rockin’ Tonight.” Everybody in the pick-up band is together, and the tune is enjoyable, but it does not hold a candle to the original by Wynonie Harris—nor should it. The kid’s guitar solos are simple and repetitive and primarily rhythmic—as you’d expect. One of the strengths of the movie is to provide music that is slightly amateurish yet still enjoyable to listen to. The most polished pickin’ is by Keb Mo playing a blind, itinerant blues musician—and he turns out to be imaginary.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself at this movie.
After Juno (2007) has been nominated for tons of awards, been deemed movie of the year by our favourite film critic, Roger Ebert, and garnered a screen writing Oscar for first-time screenwriter Diablo Cody, who but an idiot would say the film was not particularly good and the main problem was the script?
While I enjoyed the film and felt it well worth seeing, I can relate to the only criticism you hear of the movie: “Teenaged girls don’t talk like that.” This is quickly and erroneously refuted by saying, “People in movies never speak like people in real life.” Whoa, let’s slow things down. Yes, it is true that movie dialogue is not everyday speech transcribed, and I think most people know that. So what people mean when they say “Teenaged girls don’t talk like that” is more like this: “When some movie characters speak a script, they create the illusion for us that certain people really speak that way, and the characters thus seem realistic. But when Juno speaks the script, she doesn’t create the illusion that certain teens really speak that way, and, consequently, her character doesn’t strike us as being as realistic as it could be.” I agree.
The foregoing compares the character in a movie to real people in real life. But you can also ask if Juno is a cohesive, unified character in and of herself, regardless of how realistic she is. And the answer, I think, gets us closer to why some people have found the dialogue and the movie lacking. At some times, Juno has the feel of a unified personality. When she dogged tries to work things out for herself and when she persistently attempts to do the best thing for the baby, she projects a convincing cohesiveness. But in some of her hip dialogue, she seems more a hollow mouth-piece for wit and cool. When, for example, she changes topics from serious to trivial without warning and without changing tone of voice, she lacks convincing motivation. Dude. In other words, we cannot say to ourselves, “As well as I know that young woman, she did that because . . . (she was nervous or she lacked self-confidence or whatever).” Now, the rejoinder to my argument would be “Ah, but Juno sometimes appears fragmented because, as she says to her parents, she doesn’t really know what kind of a girl she is.” But there are two kinds of fragmented. In one, we sense the character has some kind of integrity or core; in the other kind of fragmented, we get nothing but bits and pieces with no strings to tie them together. Of course, it is difficult to make someone seem fragmented and simultaneously a coherent person acting from an identifiable essence. But it can be done, and a better script could have done it for Juno.
Mother of Mine (2005) is excellent—a moving story and a sophisticated theme, and great acting to convey them.
You’ve got to feel for a 9-year old whose happy existence is torn apart by the war—his father dies in battle, his mother gives him up (maybe needlessly) to be whisked away to safe Sweden where he encounters a “foster mother” who doesn’t want him. Through these trials, the boy is not pathetic but rather a feisty kid determined to have an impact. He tries to assure his mother that he can fix the war-damaged house, he builds a raft and tries to sail back to Finland, and, central to the film, he settles on a way of related to his two mothers (not to trust either of them).
The acting ensemble is the best I’ve seen since 3:10 to Yuma last year. Young Eero (Topi Majaniemi) never over acts and manages to project a jejune masculine determination throughout. His Swedish “foster father” (Martin Nyqvist) establishes a natural relationship with the lad, not one of the too common I’m-a-famous-actor-working-with-a-youngster relationships. Realistically, the father starts out thankful to have a hired hand, quickly grows to like the boy, and then, when his wife becomes more emotionally available, distances himself subtly from the boy and supports sending him back to Finland. The foster mother, Signe (Maria Lundqvist) is fierce. In one of the best acting performances of the year, she conveys repressed guilt, sorrow, love, and a host of other emotions authentically while always maintaining the sense that this changing woman is an integrated, coherent person. Spout reviewer QFLW praises her performance, Spout reviewer Erico says the “great acting” is the film’s strength, and Spout reviewer Demndiary says the entire film is “filled with amazing performances.”
The film’s narrative structure is strong but doesn’t work as well as it could. Spout reviewer Erico says the flash forwards into the present harm the movie so much they should be eliminated: “They shift the film away from the central focus . . of what it is to be a mother and puts the film in a more nostalgic tone.” This issue is worth looking at. To be clear, the movie is almost one giant flash back. The memories of World War II are triggered when Eero, now a podgy middle-aged man, receives an invitation to return to Sweden for the funeral of his Swedish “mother.” With the invitation, we later learn, came two letters that Eero had not seen, but should have seen, as a child. In the present, he shows up at his aged mother’s place and “wants to talk about the war.” Although she at first rebuffs him, they wind up talking heart-to-heart at the end of the movie. These “present” scenes are wisely shot in black and white. For Eero, the past and past mistakes are more vivid than his present existence. The black and white scenes would have integrated into the movie better if they had been shot in the same style as the coloured scenes. Although it is difficult to describe the differences, most of the movie is shot in a slightly blurry or soft colour, the lighting is flat or diffuse, and there are relatively few tight close-ups; but the black and white features tight shots starkly lighted. The black and white flash-forwards would also have seemed more integral to the movie if they had had more action. The flashback has a surprising amount of action, albeit from a child’s perspective, but the black and white is primarily a mother and son sitting and talking. I admit I don’t have a brilliant idea of how these should have been shot, but the most effective black and white scene was of the mother rebuffing her son, so if the truth about the past had come out in a more dramatic way than sitting and talking, the scenes would have seemed more integral to the movie. If you omitted the flash forward scenes, you would hurt the movie because they are crucial for the film’s theme. Spout review QFLW identifies the theme as “coming to terms with painful, conflicting emotions of the past and with the well-meaning but wounding mistakes both his mothers made.” The director (Klaus Haro), not always the best source for the theme a movie, writes for Film Movement: “The story focuses on the principal character’s lifelong battle with his suppressed feelings—in order to dispel his parents mistakes from his mind, Eero has to face them, and come to terms with himself and his two mothers.” This argues for a more developed present in the film.
The only major weakness of the film is what Spout reviewer Erico calls the “the sweeping melodramatic score” which is “plain annoying.” Especially at the start of the movie, before you get to know the characters, the orchestra tries to tell you how to feel. Interestingly, during one of the most poignant scenes later in the movie, the music is a sparse, spare melody by a single instrument—and very effective.
Mother of Mine was Finland’s entry in the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film. To put this in context, the same year saw the atmospheric El Aura from Argentina, the wrenching view of street life The Child from Belgium, and the stark moral drama about resistance to Hitler, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days from Germany. Mother of Mine can certainly hold its own in this company.