Silver Linings Playbook: Why the limited release?

Independent movies can be such fun when all goes according to plan. Every year we are blessed with low-key films that are refreshingly good, but thanks to the quirks of the business are extremely hard to find. Unfortunately for me, Silver Linings Playbook has been that particular hard-to-find indie film this year. The film was given a limited release earlier on this year in October, but I held out, refusing to make a trip to an overpriced cinema in Columbus to watch something I was sure would be out soon on wide release. I was wrong, coming back to Toledo this Christmas break only to discover the nearest showing was from whence I had come. Today, after nearly three months of annoyance I can finally say I have seen it, and it seems as though the wait was worth it. 

Silver Linings follows the story of Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) a former high school history teacher suffering from bipolar disorder who after serving eight months in a mental facility comes home to try and reconcile with his estranged wife, who as luck would have it has claimed a restraining order against him. The task is made more complicated by the introduction of the-ever-so mysterious Tiffany  (Jennifer Lawrence) into his life, not to mention the extremely imperfect nature of Pat's family.  

A good friend of mine once asked why I even bother watching romantic comedies such as these as the plot can be easily deciphered most of the time. In some regards he is right- Silver Linings is at the end of the day,  a "boy with problems meets girl with problems and they help each other" movie, but I am all about the how, and it is in that regard that Silver Linings is fun and unique.  Director David O. Russell achieves this by using a great cast to its full potential, each character showing us his grand illustrated point about mental illness- that we are all in some way broken. 

 

Robert De Niro is predictably great as Pat's dad: a neurotic, superstitious fan-turned-bookie whose beloved Philadelphia Eagles are the focus of his life. Chris Tucker, in his first non Rush Hour movie role since 1997, provides some nice comedic fodder as Pat's "black best friend", habitually escaping from the mental facility to visit under the justification of fabricated legal knowledge. Despite the films great ensemble, with Jackie Weaver (Pat's mum Dolores) and Anupam Kher (Pat's therapist) not to be denied their fair share of acknowledgments, the whole project simply could not work if Bradley Cooper's performance was average. Hell, even the most devoted HIMYM fans will admit that no matter how good everyone else is, watching the plight of a central character for whom you feel little to no love gets old after seven seasons. 

I love HIMYM, but God knows I don't watch it for Ted. 

 I would like to admit that I have not always been a Bradley Cooper fan, although the past two years have seen me slowly become a believer. Cooper's ability to portray a person so conflicted  exceeded  my expectations, leading me to feel truly uncomfortable anytime Pat struggled in the film. Whether it was his meltdowns when hearing his wedding song or his continued determination to see and talk to his wife, there existed a depth to Cooper's acting that I would never have thought possible. What is best is that Cooper simply feeds into a cast synergy that is already so high, inviting the others to create emotionally gripping scenes in a movie that still somehow manages to stay relatively light and cheerful.  Above all the drama and the comedy in Pat's life, the also deeply troubled Tiffany flits in and out like the pleasing aroma of an intoxicating perfume on a passerby, commanding each scene she's in and owning every room . I left the theatre knowing that  for 122 minutes I had been in love with a woman, and her name is Jennifer Lawrence. 

Silver Linings Playbook is one of those films that I will often sit down to watch on a miserably boring Sunday afternoon; light but yet thought provoking, predictable and yet refreshing. 

Les Mis: What is it with pixie cuts and great acting?

As Christmas Day rolled to a close, my Facebook feed became abnormally busy. Everyone I knew had seen Les Miserables , and so I scrolled through the statuses hearing accolade upon accolade heaped upon a film that my bevy of friends had instantly approved. Damn. Even as I went into the cinema on boxing day morning, I was intensely annoyed- how to write a review on a movie that most people already think is good ? The anticipation for Les Mis was so high amongst everyone I knew , that I had arranged to see it twice in one day, once with the family and again with my friends. Although a blizzard has not permitted my second viewing as of yet, I definitely came out of the cinema knowing that I could not sit this one out.

Let me start by reaffirming what most of you already know: Les Mis is good. But most of us who have seen it didn't go to see if it would be good , as the accolades have been swirling for weeks. I went to see Les Mis in order to know why it was good, to be impressed, and to be moved.  Musicals turned into movies can be difficult for me to connect to in that last regard - a strange tension always existing between the actors the directors cast and those who can actually sing/act. I'll never forget the day I told my mum that all of the leads in 1961's West Side Story were dubbed with other people's voices. Natalie Wood (who played Maria) could not sing well to save her life, and when one watches the live recordings of the cast singing, it is easy to understand why such a choice was made. Because of that, there is a subtle disconnect between the actor and lyrics that already seem  cheesy for a movie screen. It really is no small wonder that a lot of movie enthusiasts can't stand musicals.  Forty years later, the musical about Jean Valjean, a  parole-violating former french convict searching for redemption by raising the little girl of a single mother down on her luck(understatement of the year), has been filmed with one goal in mind: to do justice to a piece that when placed in good hands, allows actors to do incredible things.

In order to achieve this, director Tom Hooper asked all singing by leads to be done live, each one having an ear piece through which they could hear accompanying music being played by an on-set pianist, who would retard or proceed as the actor so wished. The theory of course being that live singing enables the actor to play around with what he or she could do with every possible line of a song, allowing musical actors to...act.

As I watched the film, it became apparent that Hooper had staked almost everything on this technique, with nearly every major soliloquy  shot up close and personal , with stars sometimes looking not necessarily at you, but through you. In taking such a gamble, Hooper tees up many of his stars for home runs- notably a superb Anne Hathaway, whose performance as the desperate , struggling Fantine can only be described as her most effective performance to date. In fact, I found myself wishing that her character's place in the plot allowed her to be in more of the film, as I felt that she delivered an emotional  range both in acting and singing that the audience wasn't really ready to appreciate right out of the gate. One person that no doubt will have enjoyed Hathaway's performance is the actress' own mother, who herself starred once starred in the same role on Broadway. Hugh Jackman puts in another fantastic performance as Jean Valjean, and in those rare moments where the film seems to lose some sense of direction, he pulls you ever so roughly back into the story and the eternal struggle between a man and his God.

Sadly, every time I got ready to celebrate a home-run, there were those that simply missed the ball completely. Russell Crowe, one of my favourite actors, seemed to be out of place as Inspector Javert, who hunts Valjean throughout the story. I was thoroughly not entertained each time the Gladiator actor came on screen, singing  in a way that unfortunately wasn't nearly as bad as his acting or lack thereof. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter made a nice enough comedic pairing as thieving dishonest innkeepers, but I think it would have been even funnier had Cohen channeled more of his inner-Frenchman from Talladega Nights (average movie I know, but the man was funny). Eddie Redmayne and Amanda Seyfried 's turn as the lovers Maurius and Cosette (the girl Valjean raises), was also well done, with Redmayne living up to an already sparkling West End stage reputation and often outshining Seyfried, whose Cosette never truly seems to justify such great struggle and sacrifice by everyone around her.

And yet, such blots as Crowe's performance did not by any means ruin my enjoyment of this film. As a kid who never did a musical in high school until his senior year, I often went to see otherwise good performances where some elements definitely left more to be desired. In much the same way, such is the power and strength of those that buy into Hooper's goals that the film works, and after almost three hours of  romance, despair and tantalizing hope , there was not a dry eye to be had in the theatre. This is not a perfect film by any means, and yet its imperfections are an afterthought  to it's achievements  as Hooper somehow balances a world filled with green-screens with footage of real palaces and grime-filled sets. It is in its legitimacy and bravery that the film connects to its viewers, leaving me with an experience that I will always remember, long after the music has stopped.

The Hobbit: To childhood and back again

Just a bit over ten years ago, I sat unhappily in my seat awaiting the start of The Fellowship of the Ring, severely annoyed that the movie I really wanted to see (the first harry potter), was sold out. Instead, I had forced to go with my dad to watch what I was sure to be a complete borefest. I had started reading the book earlier that day after receiving it as a Christmas present, and had been disappointed to find a slow, boring beginning. I distinctly remember voicing my disapproval to my dad during the previews, claiming that this was not worth seeing because "it was nothing like The Hobbit". Naturally, after a few hours of movie history in the making,  I was singing a very different tune. The Lord of the Rings definitely wasn't The Hobbit, and that eight year-old was glad of it.  On Thursday night however, I could not have been more excited to see the first installment of Peter Jackson's latest addition to his Middle-Earth collection.  So after basically waiting all day, I grabbed some friends and scurried to the cinema.

As the film began I realised that at nineteen years of age, I had made the very same mistake as I had all those years ago. Most people might have realised that all of the shots in previews for the film look completely different to those in most films and certainly in the LOTR trilogy with Jackson choosing to shoot the film at 48 frames per second (fps).Why is this significant? Well, most films are done at a traditional 24 fps, which essentially means that when you watch The Hobbit, your eye is processing frames captured at double the traditional speed, getting rid of things like motion blurs. The faster frame rate also means that the picture is extremely lifelike, giving movies a sort of weird familiarity with which we are not normally accustomed to seeing.

Director Peter Jackson doing work

Before I saw The Hobbit, I was very concerned with how such a change would affect the general tone and feel of the movie, and I was picturing a project with all the grandeur and occasion of a Once Upon a Time episode.  But I was pre-evaluating the film as if it were the same animal as LOTR, with all the dark and solemn depiction that I had loved.  I continued this thinking right into the first few minutes of the movie, with a cameo by Elijah Wood in the opening scenes almost inviting me to explore the differences, in fact, it's almost as though Jackson wanted us to know the difference right away. Still, even as I settled into the film's natural groove, a shot here or there would jerk me out of my enjoyment just because it seemed too sharp.

Aside from a rough introduction, what is most defining about this film is its ability to be a totally different animal while still giving a LOTR lover everything they could have wanted.  A far cry in mood from the LOTR series, The Hobbit is about the adventures of Frodo's uncle Bilbo Baggins as he travels with dwarves hoping to reclaim a stolen fortune from a notorious dragon. The cast for such an excursion was everything I could have  hoped for, with Martin Freeman (Bilbo) and Ian McKellen (if you don't know who he plays...) thriving on a sharp and witty script that uses only just as much of the book's actual dialogue as is needed. In fact, Jackson's ability to recreate scenes from The Hobbit at times far surpasses his feat with the LOTR trilogy, turning potentially cringe-worthy singing situations into moving moments. Most interestingly of all, is the way Jackson deals with Smaug the Dragon, which for the sake of those who haven't seen the film, I will not expound upon. Jackson also assuaged my fears about making a short book into three parts by introducing side story-lines, material and characters from extended middle-earth folklore to flesh out the story and tie everything together with the LOTR series.

In almost every aspect the movie just seems so warm, giving it the feel of something pictured in a child's imagination ; not without fear, violence , and danger, but ultimately innocent. Watching Bilbo and the Dwarves jump "out of the frying pan and into the fire" time and time again made me smile in a way I do not often do, conjuring up memories of reading the book, then suggested to me by my third grade teacher, aloud to my mum as she cooked supper. That is the beauty of this creation; it made me laugh, wince, and gasp as a child again- an experience that events continue to tell us cannot be taken for granted.


Guncotton would like to dedicate this review to the recent victims in Connecticut and those children dying in violence around the world everyday. 

Paige's Pages: Shipwrecks & Spirituality (A Life of Pi Review)

Director Ang Lee is the master of producing films that many could consider unfilmable. With 1995’s Sense and Sensibility, Lee turned Jane Austen’s rambling story of two sisters looking for love in the middle of nowhere into an engaging, emotional picture.  Brokeback Mountain (2005), the controversial short story of two male cowboys deeply in love, was adapted into a film both critically and commercially beloved. Likewise, with 2007’s Lust, Caution, the sex scenes were so explicit that critics wondered if they were unsimulated; yet, the movie opened to rave reviews.

Lee’s Life of Pi is no different. Based on the book that’s a staple of so many a high school curriculum, the film tells the story of a boy who loses his family in a shipwreck in the Pacific ocean en route from India to Canada. Grappling with his grief, the boy, Pi (the name is explained to charming effect in the film), also finds himself on a small lifeboat with a bevy of zoo animals that is soon whittled down to the tiger Richard Parker.

Afloat in a gorgeous salty wasteland, Pi grapples with religion (several, in fact), getting slapped in the face with massive schools of flying fish, and taming the frustratingly feral Richard Parker.

I was skeptical about seeing this movie after hearing the ads exclaiming that it is “the next Avatar!” Avatar’s plot nearly made me sleep due to boredom, and dream in the deep blues and vivid greens of Pandora, the only things that bemused me in the movie (yay, colors).

Thankfully, the color scheme and the sensually divine visuals were only ties between the two films.

During several sequences of Life of Pi, I was so moved by certain seascapes as viewed through my 3D glasses that I actually whispered “pretty” with all the articulateness of a 4-year-old, much to the chagrin of the British male sitting next to me. At one point, Pi sits in his boat on a still night sea, with jellyfish illuminating the water for miles around. At another, adorable meerkats scramble over one another and Pi on a vine-covered island. Pi also experiences a vision while peering into a deep trench in the sea so divine that I can’t – or maybe just won’t – describe it here.

But, it is important to note that this film doesn’t only triumph in the realms of cinematography and special effects, but in its capacity to move those who are watching. One can see the poignancy in older Pi’s eyes as he narrates his story to a reporter, even though he is a successful professor with a lovely family. His struggle is enormous, and not easy for the viewer to forget.

You will come out of this movie appreciating your family. Weird as it sounds, I do love a good movie once in a while that causes me to go and wrap my parents in bear hugs simply because they’re not dead.

You will ponder your existence. In the beginning, a humorous and touching sequence described Pi’s growing beliefs in Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity, and religion doesn’t leave the scene after it’s over. When a vicious storm overtakes the shipwreck, Pi yells God that he is ready to die; a scene that when viewed on the big screen is actually quite disturbing.

Finally, you will likely have a nightmare involving a shipwreck. But Life of Pi, the supposedly unfilmable film about a boy, a lifeboat, a tiger, and the endless salty sea, is worth the visions of sinking in the ocean, for that ocean will be a heavenly mix of aqua and indigo, and alight with the bioluminescence of a million sea creatures – and maybe a tiger.

Paige Shermis is a contributor to this blog. She is a sophomore English major at Kenyon College who likes napping, string lights, and John Keats. She adds a feminine perspective as well as an English major-y feel to the atmosphere of this site (she likes to think).

Killing Them Softly: We're all Broke

It's that time of year again, and for most of us everything possibly stressful about life finds a way to push its way into our consciousness just in time for the break. There are secret santa gifts to be gotten for people you don't know very well,  travel plans to be arranged and exams (for us college kids) to be taken.  Predictably, the question of money seems to come into everyone's heads . Buying presents is ultimately dictated by how much money you are willing to shell out, and let's face it, there is absolutely nothing better than sitting down on a commitment free afternoon during Christmas break and realising you just got paid for whatever work you did before the break started. Until I find myself in that glorious moment, however, hell must be endured and thus I found my momentary pre-exam escape in a place I never thought I'd find it - Andrew Dominik's film Killing Them Softly. 

The film begins in interesting fashion, showing a dark hallway with a sunlit lot at it's entrance. As the camera moves towards the lot ,  an audio clip of an Obama speech fades in and out, being methodically interrupted by static. We're in 2008 it seems, and more importantly, the economy is in the toilet. 

The middle-class, so shamelessly pursued in the most recent U.S. election, are apparently not the only ones struggling. Enter dry cleaning service owner John Amato and his contemporary Frankie, who are looking to make some good money off of a job stealing money from a poker game.  Usually such a stunt would result in someone getting hunted down and killed, but because owner of the game Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta) once arranged a theft of his own poker game, Amato figures the blame will be logically displaced. The problem is that the goonish Frankie needs a partner, eventually finding one in his idiotic friend Russell. The heist is pulled off, but the aftermath is botched, leaving Mafia hit man Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt) to set things right. 

Now having read that little summary, you probably expect a film involving high speed chases, typical violence and some shots of Brad Pitt being bad ass, but I'm going to have to disappoint you in that regard. In describing his preference for killing people, Cogan explains that he likes to do it coldly and from afar, as to avoid the pleading and mess that accompanies murders. Funnily enough, this not only explains the film's title but also explains the nature of the film itself. In fact, I can summarize the movie very easily by a simple formula:

dialogue...laughter...dialogue..laughter...dialogue..bang! And yet as a whole, it finds a way to work. 

The main reason the film is any good at all is actually the dialogue. Although at times seemingly unnecessarily long (one conversation in particular takes ten minutes), there were times where I could not stop laughing. James Gandolfini is hilarious as Cogan's friend Mickey, reminding you of that one horny kid amongst your college friends with a mouth dirtier than than a pig's backside and supposedly the experience to go with it.  Similarly, the combination of Scoot McNairy (fresh from Argo) and Ben Mendelsohn as the hopeless Frankie and Russell respectively, carries the front half of the film. And yet, for most viewers this movie will be terrible. Why? Because the plot isn't really being carried anywhere anytime soon. This was so much the case that everyone I saw the film with seemed in caught off guard when it was actually over. 

Killing  Them Softly is not an action movie with a couple funny lines, some boobs, and a thrilling plot. Full stop. It's slow and deliberate, the nature of its progression reminding me of when my dad used to ask me if I wanted to "go for a drive" with him for no apparent reason for the sake of enjoying the weather. However, the film does have a reason in it's not-so-subtle social commentary. It is here that Brad Pitt makes his contribution as Cogan, going about his job with all the routine efficiency of a plumber concerned only about getting paid his hefty fees for a burst pipe that could have been avoided. That metaphor clung in my head throughout the occasional focusing of the camera on speeches made by Bush at the start of the financial crisis, with all the characters in the film calling foul on the promise of a united nation while Obama's campaign speeches of unity ring almost nostalgically in the background.  I understood what the film was trying to say and found it to be good, although perhaps not one to put next to Goodfellas on my DVD Shelf. 

Woah...we've got a social commentary up in here

Sadly, I find myself asking if this film will find the audience that will enjoy it; especially in an autumn and winter season that has moviegoers ecstatic. What is most ironic is that the driving theme behind the film is what will kill it's success. No one goes for joy rides when petrol is this expensive and let's be honest, we're all still broke. 

Netflix Review: Dogtooth : Is a movie good if it's this messed up?

A couple of weeks ago, a dear friend of mine requested a review on a movie he had seen. Of course  I felt obliged to do it- requests for movie reviews show an engaged following of some sort. When I found the film on Netflix however, I immediately delayed watching it. For those of you that haven't searched for the Greek film Dogtooth on Netflix, the image presented with it shows a woman whose mouth is covered in blood. The premise of such a film being what would happen if you raised your children completely cut off from the outside world in an extremely controlled, 1984 - like environment. I'm guessing you can imagine my hesitation to watch this- especially since my poor, college student lifestyle demands that I use my parent's Netflix account. The thought of my mum being automatically recommended movies like Dogtooth made my skin crawl, but eventually I sucked it up and watched the movie (making sure to indicate to Netlfix that it was not something I wanted to see again).

Firstly, the fact that the whole film is in Greek, probably actually helped me keep watching it. As long, as the scenario seemed as far away from my own life as possible, it dimmed some of the horror of the film.  Director Yorgos Lanthimos wastes no time in freaking you out, mostly with the introduction of a female security officer who is brought home every once in a while by the dad to satisfy his son's libido. Even just writing about such concepts is weird to me, but regardless I carried on watching. The film to its credit gets much better, as eventually you see the types of mechanisms the parents use to keep their kids imprisoned. The mechanisms are really devious- with the parents even manipulating the vocabulary of their children to keep them under control. For example ,the mother teaches the kids that the word "excursion" is a very resistant material and that a motorway (highway for you Americans) is a strong wind.

every ten minutes or so...

All of this of course is doomed to fail at some point, and as you watch, it's apparent that it is only a matter of time until things unwind. The shocking thing about this movie is that the situation deteriorates in a way that is messed up beyond belief. And yet, once I was an hour into the movie, I was clearly going to finish it. My roommate couldn't help but laugh as I cussed and grimaced all the way to the finish, and then proceeded to watch episodes of Frasier to cheer me up. The acting performances were strong, and the premise very well thought out and executed, but I find myself at an internal struggle to see if that even matters.

I have often pontificated about the ability of films to be works of art that can remind us about the origins of acting, plays and drama.  But when you watch a movie like this, it is impossible not to be disgusted, and if you aren't then you have a problem. I've seen my fair share of messed up movies, notably an occasion where I got tricked into seeing The Human Centipede 2 before I knew what that series was. I was expecting a standard horror movie, and instead went through an hour and a half of covering my eyes. But Dogtooth is different, in that it is more the concept of situations that are messed up as opposed to any insane violence. But when I think about it, some of the greatest pieces for the stage and screen have been messed up in multiple ways. Hell, even Sophocles drama , Oedipus Rex's climax is centered around the poor man realising he married his own mother and killed his father. So perhaps I am merely too sensitive a soul , but I've come to realise that there are some acclaimed movies  that you don't really need to see, and for me,  Dogtooth is one of them.