If I Stay

I don't know what I was doing at this movie. It is a teen romance/weepy and it has zero surprises to it. The lead actor is an interesting face without any detectable acting talent. The film plays like a promo for the album by the fictional band that is featured in the story and the soundtrack is full of pop music trying to pass itself off as indie-cool. Some of the dialogue in this sounds like it was directly taken from the young adult book that the film is based on and in this case it is not good. I thought "The Fault in our Stars" earlier this summer was dolorously depressing. This movie lays on the sadness with a trowel that is not subtle at all.

Ultimately, the reason I saw this is that I am a fan of Chloë Grace Moretz . As "Hit Girl" she has been one of my favorite characters in movies in the last ten years. She was great in "Hugo" and last year in "Carrie" she held her own. She is growing into a lovely young woman, and that probably makes me sound like a dirty old man but it's not like that. I think she is talented and I hope she has a successful career. She is very good in this movie but the material does feel far below her. This movie is made for young girls to fantasize and cry over and from what I heard in the theater, it appears to work for them.

A high school girl, who feels awkward and a bit of an outsider, has a loving relationship with her parents, falls for a mysterious guy from the Northwest, and has to make a life or death decision for herself. Take out the sparkling vampires and that is essentially what this movie is. Instead of deciding if she wants to live forever as a blood sucker, she has to choose whether to go into the light and stop living all together. There are so many teen novel cliches in this story that it might have been assembled by a computer program. The boy is an aspiring musician/rock star, she is a cellist thinking of applying to Julliard, her parents are former punk rockers living the middle class life but carrying a torch for the Clash. Oh, and it all takes place in Portland which apparently has not had a sunny day in the last twenty years. Every party is fantastic and nothing is unusual about all of the people at the party breaking out in singing an indie type song that mirrors some of the emotions the central character is going through.

I can't really give away more spoilers than the trailer does. All that she knows is taken away in an instant and she lingers in the hospital as a spirit that has to choose whether the bliss of heaven is more inviting than the burgeoning rock star that pines over her. The few moments that actually did move me are provided by veteran actor Stacey Keach. He was terrific as the unpleasant friend from the old neighborhood last year in "Nebraska". He plays Chloe's Gramps in the movie and he has a pretty emotional scene in the hospital room with her but an even better one in a flashback scene when he brings her back home from her audition for Julliard. His line delivery in the truck was excellent and it was one of the few moments when the movie reaches the kinds of emotions that it is striving for.

This will not be something I will ever need to see again. It wasn't something I needed to see now. It is not a bad movie, just a tired one and it is not really made for me. Someone out there will appreciate it, but they will be forty years younger and have one more X chromosome than I do.Chloë Grace Moretz  will go on to better things and this morose music will never assault my ears again. I'm not sure what the young actor in the film will do, to paraphrase the Mom in this movie he'll either get better or disappear.

Begin Again

I come to this post and this movie without any preconceived idea of how the movie is supposed to look or sound or even develop. I have not seen "Once", even though I own a copy and it has been strongly recommend to me. I will not be comparing "Begin Again", made by the same director as "Once", to a movie that I have not seen. It looks to me on a number of sites that this is exactly what other writers are doing. Whether that is fair or not I can't say. This review will be solely based on my experience today. I thought the film was wonderful. The style is interesting and I think it helps justify the title. I liked the actors, especially Mark Ruffalo, and the music was just good enough to believe in for the scenerio that the film creates.

Keira Knightly plays a songwriter, who lives with a musician on the brink of major stardom. Ruffalo is an A and R guy, on his way to oblivion because of his personal life. The movie starts with a single scene in a N.Y. Cafe, where would be musicians play their tunes for audiences that can be indifferent because their beer has just arrived or they spilled their drink, or the date that they are with has suddenly said something interesting and then no one is paying attention to the singer all of a sudden. From the moment of the performance we are then moved to two elaborate flashback sequences that bring us to that particular performance. Neither of the sequences is very pleasant for the characters but they fill the audience in on what the circumstances of the two main people in the story are. As the first flashback ends, it is as if someone reached up and pushed the replay button, so we begin again (See the clever title reference?, Much better than On The Road).

That structure might seem pretentious to some, but I enjoyed it and it reminds us as an audience that this is a story about two people, being told from different perspectives at times. What we as an audience might desire for either of these people, by themselves or together, is bound up with the stories of others and there are cross currents moving continuously. The subject of redemption and the theme of finding yourself are major components of what happens in the story, but the story itself concerns music. This story wants us to revel in music, The film visualizes the process of creating music in several interesting ways, including a fantasy segment of that opening scene. The biggest thing to take away from the movie is the power that music can have over you, both for good or ill. For instance, the musician Keira breaks up with has written a new and beautiful song, but it is so different from what he has written before that it is obvious to her that it was written for someone else. His song reveals things about him that he might have wanted to keep a secret.

Another example of how music can be so important in defining a relationship comes in a section in which Ruffalo and Knightly share their playlists with each other while also sharing the same device. It is a moment of deliberate self disclosure that brings them to the edge of a deeper relationship. As they walk through NYC listening to Frank Sinatra, Stevie Wonder and Dooley Wilson, they realize how much of the other person they can connect to. It may be one of those artificial movie moments but if you love music, it is a moment that you would hope to experience yourself. The creation of music is another place where people can connect to one another. There are several montages of recording sessions that the two of them and their rag tag group of musicians conduct in various NY locations, outdoors with the ambiance of the city as their studio.  Classically trained musicians come together with funk and hip hop artists and street buskers to make the music that our leading lady has written. The A and R guy is a former music producer who knows how to make it work and he brings just the right touches to each song and set up. As a side plot, the music also helps his personal life begin to reconnect as well.

The music industry may take it on the chin with the business model that this story develops. Indie kids and media anarchists will love some of the criticism of the music business. Musicians will I'm sure identify with a number of the secondary characters as they struggle to make it as well. Talent makes out both for those who might be accused of selling out, but also those who hold firm to their convictions. This is a fantasy that aspiring artists will take to heart. I'm moved by music all the time. Themes from movies run through my head, pop songs from my youth are on a continuous loop when I look back at different points in my life. I love hearing a new song that I can connect to. I have never had the talent or the ear that it takes to be effected by music the way these people can be. I've had other passions and I can relate those pretty easily to the comparable points in music. This movie gets it for the most part. I will bet however, that it is going to cost you more than a dollar to get these swell songs on your ipod, phone, media device. That I'm afraid is one truth this fantasy cannot escape for the moment. There was one other piece of truth that the film shares. As Ruffalo's character refrains from drinking at a party, in part to gain control of his life, he instead picks up a can of soda to make his little toast with. I know that the meaning of his next statement is really about drinking soda instead of alcohol, but when he practically spits it out and asks, "how can people drink this shit?" as a loyal Coke brand consumer, I could not help but laugh  out loud and smile knowingly as he looks disgustedly at the can of Pepsi in his hand. Exactly my thought.

Maleficent

Disney is doing it's darndest to exploit all their properties and keep us entertained at the same time. A traditional retelling of "Sleeping Beauty" could have worked fine, just as the live action "101 Dalmatians" did a dozen or so years ago. Somewhere in the bowels of the Imagineering Department or in the Production agreement with big movie stars, someone has decided that a straight remake is not cool, and a story needs to be tweaked to make it fresh. The best known example of this in the recent past has been the musical "Wicked". A couple of years ago, Disney re-imagined "Alice in Wonderland". Now it is time for a classic fairy tale to get it's own variation and they have chosen one with a great villainess which makes the visualization a handy shortcut to the story.

There is a great deal to admire about this movie. I thought the opening section in which the character of "Maleficent" is introduced in her child form was really marvelous. The character was appealing and there is a nice romantic edge to the story line that is being developed. The character of Stephan however, is not quite as nicely developed and it was hard to see the conflicting choices he was faced with until the key scenes in the movie. The character development here was incomplete which makes some of the plotting a little muddled. Although a conflict between the two worlds was suggested in the narration, we are not really shown any of that except in a direct combat scene. One side is immediately presented as evil and as a result, they lose any interest as part of the story. A whole Kingdom becomes a cardboard cutout villain. The movie shows armies and battles but nothing that would back up the need or desire for those battles.

My daughter has watched "Once Upon a Time" and we have both seen "Frozen" so the twist in the movie is not as great as it should be. I liked it pretty well but she feels that it is almost becoming a contemporary cliche. The movie is aggressively unromantic and that trend may reflect blowback from all the years that Disney has been accused of brainwashing little girls about "true love" and the handsome prince. The switch in tone is meant to appeal to more modern audiences and ways of thinking, but it feels like something of the magic is being lost by doing this. The outcome does differ from tradition and while that might sometimes be appealing, it does feel strange when being thrust upon a story like this. In a way it makes the calculation of changing the character focus even more noticeable.

Angelina Jolie was obviously perfectly cast in the movie. She almost has the high cheekbones without the prosthetic and special effects makeup. Her eyes do a lot of the acting in the movie but her voice is also used exceptionally well. She is the main reason to see the film. She appears to be invested in telling the story and selling her performance. She has two emotional transformations that she has to pull off and both of them succeed pretty well. The second one is more subtle and takes up much of the storyline but it feels solid because it is allowed to play out. You can see the turn coming, but you can also believe that it might not get here, That is the value of her performance. It is a bit disconcerting that the bad guy has to be the hero and the reverse happens as well. I hope that the desire to tell traditional stories doesn't require us to subvert what came before every time. I'm willing to go along today because of the casting and performance, but screenwriters should be careful about going to that well too frequently.

This may have been a film where the 3D process would be worth seeing. I saw it in a regular two dimensional form and the edges of characters looked soft and artificial to me. I saw several spots where the extra dimensionality would be exciting in the scene, and make the events in those sequences more dynamic. The creatures of the moors that Maleficent is the de-facto queen over look a bit cartoonish and sometimes silly. There are long sequences where the beauty of the woods is supposed to be a marvel but it just looks conventional and weak. The best live comparison I could think of to make was Ridley Scott's "Legend". The enchanted forest in that film looked more real on the sets than anything in this CGI wonderland that has been created for the character here to inhabit.

You may notice that I've said nothing about Sleeping Beauty herself. Elle Fanning is a good actress, she was great in "Super 8" a couple of years ago. She is fine in this film but there is so little to her part that almost any pretty young actress would have been fine in the role. It has to be a thankless task to star in a fairy tale as the princess who is subject to a curse, and end up playing second fiddle to a character that might be mostly defined by her horns. The three good faeries are played strictly for laughs and between them and King Stephan, there is no emotional investment in what goes on with Aurora. There is more to say but it is late and I've been busy this weekend as you will see if you visit the other blog.  I may come back and add some more to this review but for now i can say it was an interesting experience that I can't quite warm up to, but did admire at times.

The Other Woman

I think everybody knows the answer to this before it opened, but I'll go ahead and ask and answer the question anyway. Is there any way that this movie will be any good?     No.

I have liked Leslie Mann in other films, she is an every day kind of attractive. She is a talented comedic actress. She should have looked at this script and run the other way. Having made the movie, she should now sue the producers for turning her into a whining, needy, idiot, character who is made to look unattractive and stupid in nearly every sequence in the film. I have always had a thing for women in hats, maybe I saw Casablanca and and fell in love with Ingrid Bergman at a young age. This movie may have cured me of that fetish. Whenever the director wanted her to look awful, he put her in a hat that not even Bergman could have sold.

Cameron Diaz is still an attractive woman, but she is a little older now and sometimes looks a bit well worn at times. Her smile still twinkles, and her hair is cute in whatever form it shows up in, but either the sun or plastic surgery have given her a tougher look than she probably deserves. Now I will say there was a trailer for "The Sex Tape" playing before this movie and she looked terrific in that, so maybe the director of photography needs to share some of the blame here. She has been funny in a dozen movies. Many of which I liked but others have dismissed (eg. "Knight and Day") Here she has nothing funny to do or say. There are moments when I wondered if she knew what the tone of the film was supposed to be.

I don't really know Kate Upton. She is a beautiful woman and apparently world famous, probably for being beautiful. It turns out she has made three films now and I have seen all three of them. I have no memory of her from the other two at all. So while beauty is certainly a calling card, it is not a memory card, because unless she is on the beach in a bikini, I suspect her acting career will be limited. I hope that doesn't sound too mean, I don't want it to. I was just not convinced that she needed to even be in this movie.

This could almost be a remake of "The First Wives Club" from 1996. Except instead of three philanderers, we have one serial philanderer and the women he has cheated on. It's a woman's empowerment revenge story. Unfortunately, none of the main characters is likable enough to feel much sympathy for and at times they are downright irritating. The male character in the story is played with a tone that guns from suave James Bond sex machine to doofus Jeff Daniels in "Dumb and Dumber". Nothing in the way any of these characters act is in the realm of reality, which would be alright if it was all revenge fantasy, but it isn't. There is another romance shoehorned onto the story, a superfluous character played by Don Johnson, who looks great by the way, that is distracting and totally predictable, and some cultural references to  the French that might have worked if the story had stuck to the comedy and not veered into melodrama.

It doesn't work. I did not expect it to, and the two women who went with me agreed. It's the only new wide release this weekend, so maybe it will make some money, but you can look for a quick exit from theaters and an even quicker exit from your memory.