7/15/15 (Part Two): We All Fall Down

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Adriana Barraza, Alma Martinez, anger issues, Anna Kendrick, Cake, Chris Messina, Christophe Beck, chronic pain, cinema, Daniel Barnz, divorced couple, dramas, Evan O'Toole, ex-husband, Felicity Huffman, film reviews, films, grieving mother, House M.D., Jennifer Aniston, letting go, Mamie Gummer, Movies, Patrick Tobin, Pepe Serna, pill addiction, Rachel Morrison, Rose Abdoo, Sam Worthington, single father, suicide, William H. Macy

With her world-weary cynicism, barbed sarcasm, constant physical pain and pill addiction, Claire Bennett doesn’t really look like any role Jennifer Aniston has taken on in her 20+ year career but that doesn’t mean that the character isn’t a little familiar. Change Claire’s gender, give her a lab coat, an even bigger chip on her shoulder and voila: paging Dr. Gregory House to the front lobby.

Reductive? Perhaps, although it’s certainly not meant as any kind of slight on Aniston’s abilities. The former Friends star underplays her part nobly, allowing the inherent anger, depression and hopelessness of her situation to bob to the surface, breaking the chilly serenity like so many jagged ice floes. The problem, as it turns out, is that Daniel Barnz’s Cake (2014) really doesn’t give her a whole lot to do. As Claire frowns, mopes, drops dry repartee and lashes out at the world around her, it becomes increasingly difficult not to think of the surrounding film as a kind of prison, a distressingly familiar, middle-of-the-road salvation story that hits every expected beat, yet constantly feels lesser than the sum of its parts.

We first meet Claire in a chronic-pain support group, where she displays her uncanny ability to be simultaneously charming, obnoxious, combative and exceptionally glum. One of Claire’s fellow group members, Nina (Anna Kendrick), has just committed suicide by jumping from a busy freeway overpass and, in lieu of focusing on her own issues, Claire has decided to figure out just what makes another person decide to kill themselves. Her interest, of course, is purely academic: Claire couldn’t really give two shits about anyone but focusing on her amateur “investigation” is as good as any a way to try to stay occupied.

What, exactly, is Claire’s problem? The film, itself, is pretty cagey about the whole thing, drawing out the revelation as if it were some sort of twist but we get the main elements early enough to draw our own conclusions: with all of her scars and healed injuries, chronic pain, constant mourning and divorce from her husband, Jason (Chris Messina), we know that Claire has been in an accident of some sort, an accident that’s claimed the life of her child and left her bitter, broken and impossibly angry at the world. We get a nice reminder of this when we listen in on a message that Jason leaves for Claire in which he expresses his desire to come claim the rest of his things when she’s not around: nothing in her life is easy, pleasant or positive.

As is wont in this kinds of films, however, a change is a brewin’: once Claire and her put-upon housekeeper/caretaker Silvana (Adriana Barraza) start to dig deep into the details of Nina’s life (and death), Claire begins to regain a tiny bit of her joie de vivre. Things pick up even further when she happens to meet Nina’s husband, Roy (Sam Worthington) and young son, Casey (Evan O’Toole). Like Claire, Roy has plenty of anger issues, most of which he reserves for his dead wife: Nina “abandoned” Roy and Casey and her husband hates her abjectly for it.

Birds of a feather do, indeed, flock together and soon, Claire and Roy are striking up a strictly platonic relationship (they both want “intimacy” but have no interest in “sex”) as they each try to lean on the other for support. There’s an awful lot of anger resting below the surface of Claire’s wit and sarcasm, however, the kind of anger that makes it impossible for anyone to just live their lives. As Claire (and the audience) get ever closer to learning all of the details of Nina’s passing (did I mention that Nina also “appears” to Claire, alternating between berating her, cajoling her and trying to steer her away from Roy? Well, she does.) and the accident that destroyed Claire’s life, as Claire gets ever closer to her own oblivion and Silvana seems helpless to affect any change, we’ll all learn a very important lesson: sometimes, life is just a series of small victories and that’s the best we can ever hope for.

As mentioned earlier, Aniston’s portrayal of Claire is rock-solid (she was even nominated for a Best Actress Golden Globe) but the rest of the film exists on much shakier ground. While the movie has a reliably sturdy, understated look that’s pretty much the definition of “indie drama” (cinematographer Rachel Morrison also shot Sound of My Voice (2011), Fruitvale Station (2013), Little Accidents (2014) and Dope (2015)), Patrick Tobin’s script ends up short-sheeting too many of the characters, giving the film a malnourished, under-developed feel.

We briefly meet Silvana’s daughter and out-of-work husband (the whole scene lasts maybe 2-3 minutes, tops) but that’s the extent of any character building with that character, unless one counts the even briefer scene where Claire and Silvana run into a couple of Silvana’s old “friends” in Tijuana. Despite being in a fair amount of the film, Worthington’s Roy never really amounts to anything more than a plot contrivance (he gives Claire more info on Nina, sort of like a gamer running around and talking to NPCs in a role-playing-game) and any romance between him and Claire seems pretty dead on arrival. Kendrick pops up constantly, as the “ghost” of Nina (I guess), but we never get much better sense of her character than “suicide victim.” There’s even an extremely odd, unexplained scene where Claire seems to have sex with some guy that climbs in through her window. Is he a friend? A prostitute? She seems to pay him with a box of toys so, if he’s a professional, I’m guessing that he’s not a particularly astute one.

And don’t even get me started on poor William H. Macy, who gets exactly one scene (essentially a cameo) as the guy who was, apparently, responsible for the death of Claire’s child. We never get any more explanation than that: he shows up at her door, begs forgiveness, gets yelled at, thrown out and then exits stage left, never to be seen (or heard from) again. Any opportunity to milk honest emotional resonance from the scene is rendered moot by the fact that it all happens so quickly and, seemingly, arbitrarily.

In the end, this lack of fleshing out becomes the film’s biggest Achilles’ heel. Even the title, Cake, is based on something that seems to be as disposable and insubstantial as possible: when Nina and Claire were discussing what they would do if they were pain-free, Nina responded that she would bake her kid a birthday cake, from scratch (Claire’s wish was to screw an entire soccer team, for what it’s worth). All well and good. This whole notion culminates in a thoroughly head-scratching bit, however, where Claire and Silvana pick up a young hitchhiker and pay her to make a cake from scratch. The girl bakes the cake, steals Claire’s purse and takes off. As with the aforementioned scenes, the whole incident is over so quickly and so under-developed that it really has no impact: cut the hitchhiker scenes (along with the explanation of the cake) and the film is no worse for the wear.

There’s also a decided lack of danger to the film, a feeling that the stakes are too low to really make any of us break a sweat. There’s never a sense of urgency to anything Claire does, never the notion that she’s ever in any real danger, even when her and Silvana get stopped at the border with their load of illegal scrips. Even the scene where Claire comes perilously close to following Nina into the great beyond is quickly set up and then hurried along to the next scene, almost as if the filmmakers were checking points off a list. I had a similar issue with another film about addiction issues, Why Stop Now? (2012): in both cases, it felt as if the filmmakers were taking a purely surface view of a much darker, deeper issue, pushing everything towards the kind of “it all works out” ending that, in reality, rarely happens.

Ultimately, the one thing that consistently works, as far as Cake is concerned, is Aniston’s performance. Despite the very obvious comparisons to Hugh Laurie’s cantankerous sawbones, Claire is a thoroughly multi-dimensional character and definitely marks a new high-water line in the actress’ career. While I didn’t think the performance was the best of its year (or even one of the best of the past several years), Aniston brings an understated, completely welcome sense of honesty and genuine pain that manages to shine over the rest of the film like a beacon.

In a better film (I’m thinking of something like the surprisingly great Life of Crime (2013)), Aniston has shown that she’s no slouch when it comes to the more dramatic side of the silver screen: despite being predominately cast in comedies, romances and rom-coms, I’d like to think that filmmakers will begin to realize that she’s a lot more versatile than she’s been given credit for. As it stands, though, Cake is a very serious, very well-meaning but, ultimately, rather shallow film. Everybody might love cake but this particular treat, unfortunately, falls a little flat.

6/21/15: Know When To Say When

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Anthony Hopkins, based on a book, based on a true story, British-Dutch films, cinema, Cor van Hout, crime thriller, Daniel Alfredson, David Dencik, drama, film reviews, films, foreign films, Fredrik Bäckar, Håkan Karlsson, Heineken, Heineken beer, held for ransom, Jemima West, Jim Sturgess, Kat Lindsay, kidnapping, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken, large ransoms, Lucas Vidal, Mark van Eeuwen, Movies, Peter R. de Vries, Ryan Kwanten, Sam Worthington, set in 1980s, set in Amsterdam, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, The Girl Who Played With Fire, Thomas Cocquerel, Willem Holleeder, William Brookfield

On paper, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken (2015) must have seemed like a no-brainer: throw Sam Worthington, Jim Sturgess and some fellow named Sir Anthony Hopkins into a film about the real-life kidnapping of the titular beer baron and get the guy who directed the original versions of The Girl Who Played With Fire (2009) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (2009) to helm it. Stir, cook at 350 and voila: instant thriller goodness! The resulting film, however, ends up being much less than the sum of its parts: while Kidnapping Mr. Heineken sports a fairly relentless pace, it’s also overly familiar, a little nonsensical and more than a little slight. While the principals all turn in sturdy performances, it’s unlikely that you’ll remember much of it after the credits roll.

Taking place in Amsterdam, in the early ’80s, we’re immediately introduced to our intrepid gang of wannabe kidnappers: Cor van Hout (Jim Sturgess), his best friend, Willem Holleeder (Sam Worthington), “Cat” Boellard (Ryan Kwanten), “Spikes” Meijer (Mark van Eeuwen) and “Brakes” Erkamps (Thomas Cocquerel). When we first meet them, the group is trying to secure a renovation loan for an apartment building that they collectively own, a building which has now been overrun by “squatter punks.” When the loan officer indicates that the building will need to be “cleaned out” before any money can be disbursed, the gang springs into action and goes to kick some punk ass. The point is clear: this is a bunch of dudes who takes matters into their own hands.

On the home-front, Cor and his girlfriend, Sonja (Jemima West), are expecting a baby, which has put quite the financial strain on them. Cor wants to provide for Sonja (who also happens to be Willem’s sister) but there aren’t a lot of options out there for someone who’s done time in the big house. The group comes up with a simple, if outrageous, solution: they decide to kidnap Alfred “Freddy” Heineken (Anthony Hopkins) and hold him for the largest ransom in history…$35 million.

In order to finance their scheme, the gang robs a bank in a daring, daytime heist and uses the money to buy weapons, getaway vehicles and a soundproof, hidden room to hide their abductee. After planning the crime extensively, the group executes their mission without a hitch, grabbing Heineken and his driver (David Dencik) and spiriting them away to their hiding place. Once they actually have their quarry, however, everything begins to unravel: the group begins to fall out among each other, Willem becomes increasingly violent and irrational and Heineken ends up being a canny, sly bastard who pours pretty poison in the ear of anyone he comes in contact with. As the authorities begin to close in, will Cor and the others be able to reap their “rewards” or will grabbing Heineken prove to be the stupidest (and last) thing any of them will ever do?

Technically, all of the moving parts in Kidnapping Mr. Heineken do what they’re supposed to do: the cinematography is crisp and polished (Bäckar was also a cameraman on the American remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)), all of the action scenes have a relentless pace (in particular, the bank heist is a truly impressive, exhilarating setpiece) and the acting is, for the most part, as sturdy as a rock. While this won’t go down as anyone’s shining moment (Hopkins, in particular, is rather stiff), it all works just fine in service of the actual film. As a director, Daniel Alfredson handles the action setpieces just fine, even if some of the more dramatic elements feel a little short-sheeted.

The big problem, as it turns out, is that Alfredson’s film just doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from any number of similar movies: in certain ways, this comes across as a “paint-by-numbers” action film, a generic template where only the names and faces have been changed. None of the characters are really fleshed-out in any meaningful way (there’s some mention made of one of the kidnappers’ families being intrinsically tied to Heineken but that particular plot point leads nowhere), which means that we never get fully invested in them. Sturgess plays Cor like any number of “nice guy forced to do bad things” roles, while Worthington brings nothing new, whatsoever, to his portrayal of the loose cannon. Sonja is just the put-upon significant other, Heineken is just the petulant rich guy. None of the characters ever breaks out of their generic “types,” leaving us with a drama that feels no weightier than the average teen slasher flick.

Kidnapping Mr. Heineken is also one of those crime thriller/heist films where the characters act in inexplicable ways as a means of advancing the plot. They take their masks off at inopportune times, leave witnesses behind, and, in general, seem to do everything they can to get caught. Closing text informs us that no one really knows why the group originally got caught: if the real-life criminals were this sloppy and stupid, I’m pretty sure we don’t need three guesses.

In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of Kidnapping Mr. Heineken isn’t what happens on-screen but, apparently, what happened to the real-life participants after the film ended. As that helpful text informs us, Cor and Willem went on to become criminal godfathers in the Netherlands, after serving their 11-year prison sentences. Cor would go on to be assassinated, with scuttlebutt pointing the finger at his own best friend, Willem. Perhaps it’s only me but that actually sounds like a much more interesting story than the by-the-book heist film that we actually get: it’s rather telling that the film never really sparked my interest until it was actually over.

Ultimately, Kidnapping Mr. Heineken isn’t a terrible film, although it is a terribly familiar one. With its slight characterizations, lapses in logic and adherence to multiplex action movie conventions, Alfredson’s film might play well in the background but it’s unlikely to earn your full, undivided attention. In other words, this beer ain’t bad but it is pretty flat.

12/25/14 (Part Two): Listen All of Y’all, It’s a…Mess

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action film, action films, Arnold Schwarzenegger, cinema, co-writers, corrupt law enforcement, David Ayer, DEA agents, drug cartel, drug dealers, dumb films, End of Watch, film reviews, films, hambonin', Harold Perrineau, Jerry Bruckheimer, Joe Manganiello, Josh Holloway, Kevin Vance, Mark Schlegel, Martin Donovan, Max Martini, Mireille Enos, Movies, Olivia Williams, Sabotage, Sam Worthington, stolen money, Terrence Howard, writer-director-producer

When we’re talking about action films, there isn’t necessarily anything bad about loud, dumb movies: as someone who worked his way through a veritable mountain of cheesetastic ’80s flicks (picture the ones where the hero takes out the bad guy with a close-range rocket launcher to get the full effect), I can attest that the stupidest films are, quite often, the most thrilling. After all, when we’re bombarded by so much chaos, conflict and real-world violence, sometimes it’s nice to just pop the cap on a cold one, turn off your brain and thrill to explosions, sneered badassitude and black-and-white concepts of good and evil, no?

There is, however, a limit, a tipping point, if you will: invisible to the naked eye, there is, nonetheless, a fine line between stupid and clever (thanks, Tap). David Ayer’s big, loud, Schwarzenegger vehicle, Sabotage (2014), has to see the line, since the whole film seems like a conscious effort to craft the biggest, dumbest, loudest action film possible: the film’s mantra seems to be “bigger is always better” and let me tell ya…this film ends up riding a giant, turbo-charged rocket straight into the heart of stupid, boldly going where few have dared to tread. Existing in a cinematic universe where Antoine Fuqua and Jerry Bruckheimer are the alpha and omega of existence, Sabotage is the ultimate fizzled bonfire: all smoke, precious little actual fire.

Sabotage concerns the various (very bad) activities of a group of rogue DEA agents, the kind that are de rigueur for Hollywood but don’t really paint the rosiest picture of our nation’s continued war on drugs. Led by the leather-faced, oddly-coiffed John “Breacher” Wharton (Arnold Schwarzenegger), the crew look (and sound) like various rejects from several seasons of American Gladiator: Monster (Sam Worthington), Grinder (Joe Manganiello), Neck (Josh Holloway), Sugar (Terrence Howard), Pyro (Max Martini), Tripod (Kevin Vance), Smoke (Mark Schlegel) and Lizzy (Mireille Enos, so amazingly over-the-top that she doesn’t need a cool nickname…she just “is,” dude). Their modus operandi is pretty simple: blow the ever-loving shit out of the bad guys, steal their money, blow up as much stuff as possible, get fuckin’ craaaazy, man…lather, rinse, repeat. It all works splendidly because, well, they’re badasses, man…aren’t you listening?

A fly enters the ointment, however, when one of their “jobs” results in the death of Smoke and the loss of $10 million in stolen drug money. The crew start falling out because agitated shouting is required (along with some good, ol’ character building, don’tcha know?) and, as we all know, you can’t trust a thief…especially if you’re a crooked, bloodthirsty fellow thief, I’m imagining. Things really get complicated, however, when members of the squad start to mysteriously die, one by one. When one guy wakes up to find his RV on the railroad, moments before impact, local police think it could possibly be a case of too much spiked eggnog. After lead detective Carolyn Brentwood (Olivia Williams) slips in a slick of blood the size of Michigan when her and Breacher go to interview another team member, however, her spidey sense is definitely tingling: when she looks up and sees the poor guy nailed to the ceiling, eviscerated, she definitely begins to think that these may be more than simple household accidents.

Working with the overly cagey, withdrawn Breacher, Brentwood tries to gather information from the others, yet meets with nothing but cold resistance: the troops have circled the wagons and no strangers are getting through. As more and more of his squad end up dead, however, Breacher is suddenly faced with the shocking idea that the killer may not be a cartel hitman…it may be someone a little closer to home…dun dun duuunh!

Alright, here’s the thing: I was more than willing to give Sabotage as much slack as it needed, mostly because I was duly impressed with director Ayer’s previous effort, the Jake Gyllenhaal-starring End of Watch (2012). I was able to look past the film’s overly kinetic, restless action sequences, even when said restlessness began to extend into non-action, “quiet” parts of the film. I didn’t care for the shaky camera or odd, overly-saturated color palette but I’d seen plenty worse. I didn’t really even mind the on-the-nose, endlessly posturing dialogue: you have to expect a certain measure of shit-talking in films like this, after all, and who doesn’t love a badass ass-kicker?

At a certain point, however, all of Sabotage’s dead weight ends up dragging the film straight to Davy Jones’ locker, my patience be damned. Perhaps it was the unbelievably douchy scene where Brentwood comes by to speak to the crew during a pool party and the whole thing devolves into ridiculous chest-thumping and frat-boy innuendos: I can’t tell you how bad I wanted to slap the fucking smirk straight off Joe Manganiello’s dumb mug right about the time he got up in the detective’s face and started hambonin’ her (thanks, Regular Show). Maybe it was the insultingly obnoxious “banter” between Brentwood and her partner, Jackson (Harold Perrineau), scenes which reminded me of the cringingly bad interplay between Jay Leno and his ever-suffering band-leader, Kevin Eubanks. Perhaps it was the climatic chase scene that involved one of the characters blasting away at the good guys from a car trunk, chewing and swallowing so much scenery that you can feel the film’s world unraveling from the massive gravitational pull of it all.

One thing’s for certain, however: the acting on display here does no one any favors. Schwarzenegger comes off the best, unsurprisingly, although that damned dead marmot on his head makes it patently impossible to take him completely seriously. His world-weary, “I’m too old for this” schtick actually works, much of the time, and he even gets a few “relatively” reflective moments to do a little modest acting…nothing that will make folks forget his glory days, mind you, but a decent enough continuation of his un-retirement. Other than that relative high point, however, the rest of the cast is pretty much a wash. While all of them are patently ridiculous, I must reserve a special amount of scorn for Enos and Manganiello: at no point in the film are either character anything approaching realistic, likable or even interesting…they’re just unbelievably loud, crude, obnoxious and rather hateful little cliches (Manganiello the huge, unstoppable Cro-Magnon, Enos the “tough chick with bigger balls than the whole combined crew”). As someone who’s a huge fan of Enos’ work on the cable series The Killing, I must admit to being completely flabbergasted by her film work: her previous performance, in Devil’s Knot (2013), was pretty awful but her work as Lizzy vaults her into a whole new realm of terribleness. If the only requirement for portraying a badass character is to shout til your veins pop, Enos’ Lizzy is our new gold standard.

And there, in a nutshell, is pretty much Sabotage’s problem: it’s a thoroughly average action film that’s completely undone by the constantly shifting tone, terrible characters/acting and patently ridiculous situations. One of the most puzzling aspects of the film, for me, was the way in which it almost seemed to have a foot in the horror world: between the splattery aftermath of the great train kapow and the evisceration scene that’s fully Hannibal Lecter approved, Sabotage often feels like a slasher film in action clothing, ala No One Lives (2012). While the gore is well done, it also feels completely out-of-place, similar to how the occasionally intentional comic beats fail miserably.

Despite how it sounds, I didn’t hate Sabotage, although I will freely admit to hating many of the performances. Rather, the film reminded me of any number of bottom-of-the-barrel actioners that I used to gorge myself on during rainy weekends as a kid. Without all of the critical injuries, I don’t see any reason why Ayer’s film couldn’t limp into the finish line. As it stands, however, I can’t help but feel that someone should have done the noble thing and just taken it out in the field to be shot, instead.