The Place Beyond the Pines: An emotional powerhouse of unstable ambition

The relationship between a boy and his father is a peculiar notion that frequently asks the age-old question, does the apple fall from the tree? Rebutting the perturbing idiom, director Derek Cianfrance’s film “The Place Beyond the Pines” tracks the journey of four men, stunt motorcyclist Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling), police officer Avery (Bradley Cooper), and their respective sons, Jason (Dane DeHaan) and AJ (Emory Cohen).

Narratively executed in three isolated, yet inter-connected tales, the film’s front-running story, Gosling’s, packs an emotional punch that sets the bar too high to follow. Luke, a stunt motorcyclist for a traveling carnival, learns that he knocked up former fling Romina (Eva Mendes) on his previous tour. Growing up without a father, Luke attempts to raise the boy and reconnect with Romina, a difficult task made worse by her current boyfriend. Desperate for money, and coaxed on by fellow motorcycle fanatic Robin (Ben Mendelsohn), Luke begins robbing banks to support his family.

The emotional depth of Gosling’s story let alone his and everyone else’s performance, creates an emotional momentum that is almost unsuccessfully carried on by the film’s trailing acts. Picking up now with Cooper, a police officer struggling with corruption in his profession, the overall film takes an odd misdirection that seems to come way out of left field. While the events of the second act feature a terrific villainous performance by Ray Liotta, and an outstanding enactment by Cooper, proving an incredible range of versatility, the relationships between characters begin to fell more contrived and superficial. Even more so, when fifteen years later we meet Cooper’s son AJ, the typical substance-abusing "daddy doesn’t spend time with me" kid.

While the character of AJ, co-pilot of our third and final story, seems artificial, Jason, Luke’s son and our other protagonist, redelivers the emotional stride that his father established in the beginning of the film. In a haunting manner, the rippling effects of the father’s sins come alive in this act, delivering an emotional finale summed up in one single shot of the film.

Despite hindrance by the over ambitious attempt at telling three tales in one, “The Place Beyond the Pines” is a tragic film worthy of much praise. A testament to Cianfrance’s ability to shock his audience, the film is an absolute must see for those curious about moral ambiguity, placing cops and robbers on a similar grounding, and psychologically unpacking the tantalizing expression, “like father like son.”

Ryan McCabe is a student majoring in Film and T.V. at NYU.  As a student finding his way in the film business at one of the nation's best film institutions, Ryan brings a unique perspective to this blog and recently voiced the roles of Peter Godwin and Theron Campion In Ellen Kushner and Neal Gaeman's  audio book The Fall of Kings. 

Netflix Review: Safety not guaranteed

Probably one of the best games I like to play with my friends is that of hypotheticals.  I really can’t explain just how enjoyable it is to watch each other struggle as we ask ridiculous questions such as “who delivers the eulogy at your funeral?”, or the inevitable last person on earth questions.  It is thus no surprise that I greatly enjoyed Safety Not Guaranteed, a film whose premise could probably fit well within our game.

Wanted: a partner to travel with me back in time, ready for danger and knowing that safety is not guaranteed. The above is the gist of the personal ad placed in a regional newspaper that engages a journalist (Jake Johnson) and his interns.  It turns out that this ad is not a joke, and that loner Kenneth (Mark Duplass- pete from The League) really does believe that he will be time-traveling. Of course nobody believes this guy, and the piece is intended to be a nice bit of comedic fluff for the newspaper.  Chief journalist Jake , has clearly used the situation to try and meet up with a former flame and so his wonderfully sarcastic, cynical intern is sent to investigate this weird so-called time-traveler, by posing as someone interested in his ad.  Naturally, the dude is an absolute nut, but it’s ok mostly because Mark Duplass is just that right amount of crazy to be humourous while gently reminding you of the singing homeless people you sometimes run into on the street; the pain and loneliness of their existence having long ago pushed them over some unseen line.

What makes this movie work is that it’s charming and is light and funny in every regard. It’s not a serious dramatic movie, but yet is capable of moments of supreme clarity, all the while not pretending to be anything that it’s not. The film is pretty predictable in some regards  and yet feels a bit too simple- as though it could be replicated as some sort of made-for-tv-hallmark-special.  Luckily for us, the writing and jokes are extremely well written and very well-delivered. Duplass’ craziness is so well emoted- so well controlled, that I almost forgot that he is the same guy I watch in The League. His chosen time-traveling companion is also a delight- her deadpan humour fitting well in the dynamic of the film, with its jaunty but real approach fitting her on-screen persona rather well.

Safety Not Guaranteed is a great Sunday afternoon movie, a little independent movie that has no grand assumptions about it identity, but holds true to its promise, delivering powerful messages without making you feel burdened. In fact, it got me thinking about what I would do if I traveled back in time, and what I would fix. I’m not quite sure what that would be yet, but I know I have no regrets for having watched a truly wonderful film. 

42: "Good" can't be good enough for a great man

I love baseball movies and yet I hate watching baseball. Don't get me wrong, going to games and relaxing, eating peanuts with your friends and family and occasionally paying attention to any juicy bits of action is really nice,  but we're only a couple weeks in and I'm already sick of seeing a million identical diving catches on SportsCenter's top plays. But somehow, I have never quite had that problem with films about baseball, and so I was excited about the latest entry into the baseball film category- a biopic about the great Jackie Robinson.

For those of you who don't know (i.e. you were cryogenically frozen for the past sixty years) , Jackie Robinson was the first black man to ever play in baseball's major league. One of the best to ever play the game, Robinson became the catalyst for the diversification of America's pastime, serving as a hero to a whole new generation of black sport stars who would change the landscape of sports to what we know today. Robinson's struggle to be seen as an equal in a league that didn't want him , seemed to me to be fodder for a guaranteed home run (yes the baseball puns will be abound in this one), and I came into the theatre not questioning whether it would be good, but great.

Right off the bat, something about the presentation of the movie seemed a little off. Biopics tend to be all over the place in terms of how they introduce their subjects, and at what part in their lives we find them. Unfortunately, the way the beginning of 42 is handled, it felt more like I was watching a Ken Burns PBS Special on the Jackie Robinson Era. While the background on the era was appreciated, it seemed to take away the majesty that one often finds so often in baseball movies. In the following scene we we're taken to the pivotal moment where Dodgers owner Branch Rickley decides he wants to sign a black baseball player. Not only are the acted reactions to this announcement worthy of a middle school christmas program, but surely the screenwriter could have included a lot of the background information from the beginning in the dialogue. I wasn't there, but I'm pretty sure Rickley's staff had more to say than a muffled "you can't do that". I mean at least try something like "you can't do that, there's never been a negro in the major league... that's why we have the negro league". Boom. In thirty seconds worth of effort, the writing could have been that much better, and an out of place opening sequence need not have been shot at all.

Thankfully, the storytelling seems to go a lot better. The fact that much of 42 takes place when Jackie is signed to the Dodgers' feeder team and works his way up turns out to be a brilliant move, as it gives us time to get to know the central characters before some of Jackie's biggest trials are met. Harrison Ford is expectedly good as Rickley, although I don't think he is ever given enough material to really satisfy his justification for wanting to sign a black player in the first place. The acting by Chadwick Boseman as Robinson is sturdy, but by no means anything to contact the annals of history about. He is certainly no Jamie Foxx in Ray, or Sean Penn in Milk, but that's ok, because that's not the sort of movie 42 is.

42 is not daring or particularly life-changing, but it's not mediocre or irreverent either. In fact, I think it's only real problem as a movie is that it is perhaps a bit too focused on being accurate without using some of the historical tools at its disposal. Directors have long used the sanctity of America's pastime to produce philosophical forays into the American experience and there is perhaps no better launch pad to talk about the evolution of race-relations in the States than the story of Jackie Robinson. 42 never shies away from this, and does a fair job of showing some of what Robinson had to deal with, but it fails to drape its hero in the godlike fashion that we expect from great baseball movies and that he deserves. In fictional characters like Benny "The Jet" Rodriguez (The Sandlot) to Roy Hobbs (The Natural), we're given a myriad of figures who are rather human and commit godlike deeds as we watch in awe. Somehow, 42 has managed to take an extraordinary man who commands respect like a deity in his sport,  and made his accomplishments seem somehow less awe-inspiring, even though both your natural knowledge of the subject and the context of the film repeatedly tell you otherwise.

Baseball, in a classic sense, is all about the mythology, the superstition, the fear of being struck out and gunning for a homer all the same. But 42 seems to miss these elements, and in the end a promising hit turns out to be just another pop-fly, caught and quickly forgotten; everything that Jackie Robinson and his legacy are not.

A tribute to Roger Ebert

I scanned my facebook newsfeed this afternoon, and was delivered a small shock of sorts. Roger Ebert, the renowned movie critic and one of my heroes was dead. I knew this not from any "Rest in Peace" statuses (though there were many later), but rather from the simple changing of a profile picture by one of my friends. My friend Jake had the good fortune to meet Ebert at a book signing in Chicago a while ago, and the picture says it all; the grin on my friend's face matching the old gentleman's beside him. Ebert's smile of course wasn't nearly as voluntary as my friend Jake's - a malicious cancer that led to the removal of  his thyroid  in 2006 saw to that, but his eyes in the picture reveal a wit undimmed and a spirit stronger than ever.

The great Roger Ebert

I'm afraid it was this older and more frail Roger Ebert that I really knew of. Like most college students my age, I had been far too young to appreciate  Siskel and Ebert at the Movies, and living in England and Belgium with basic cable prevented me from watching any of his later T.V. shows as great as they were. Considering this and the fact that I never met the guy, one could question my having dedicated an entire blogpost to my thoughts on this man, but I would beg to differ. 

The Roger Ebert I knew of was a man who could no longer speak, but whose writing soared to heights that are only worthy of those forever remembered. As I became more and more interested in movies in high school,  it became a regular occurrence for me to look at one of his reviews soon after watching a movie I had enjoyed. There was something comforting about knowing Ebert agreed with you about a movie, and a weird sense of accomplishment when he didn't. Most of the time we agreed, and I would marvel at the work of a man who seemed able to take everything I had felt about a movie and make it into a coherent, funny and insightful review. Ebert could be erudite and showcase his knowledge of film without being too lofty or condescending, but never degraded himself to those two word quotes fit for airing on commercials five weeks before a film's release, that are clearly given on the way to some studio-sponsored free buffet. 

Above all, what made Roger Ebert so special to me, was that he was so much more than a movie critic. Whilst I loved hearing about how good or bad movies were, I read his reviews to try and piece together different parts of what was a truly fascinating man. Ebert, it seems, possessed an almost Forrest-Gumpian knack for being involved with all things Chicago. It was he after all, according to Oprah Winfrey, who convinced the icon to go into syndication in the first place. Towards the end, Ebert would entertain us, his fans, with tales of strange local bars, drunken interviews with classic movie stars, and his many views on life, all of which were always an amazing read. His opinions on things always came across as being so very genuine, all the while accompanied with devastating sarcasm and an incredible sense of humour. 

Ebert's determination to keep writing both for fun and for reviews even after the loss of his speech, is probably the greatest testament I can give to someone who has truly changed the way people think about movies. The man whose reviews and various publications I have followed for a few years now died today as one of the greatest critics and writers of his generation, and I am proud to have known of him if only for a short time of his life. 

Roger, it seems I hardly knew you, but know that your words have inspired me beyond measure to believe that one small, pudgy man can leave the footprint of a giant. 

Spring Breakers: "Better not bring yo' kids"

Every once in a while there arrive moments in life where you stop and wonder whether you are laughing because something is funny, or whether you are simply laughing to get through the weirdness of it all. For me, quite a few instances come to mind; a bad encounter with Mexican food in Florida among them, but it looks as though I will have to add Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers to that list as well.

I'm not quite sure what it was I was expecting when I went to go see this movie- perhaps a farce starring ex-Disney channel princesses having a Hangover-type experience whilst on holiday ,but that was not what I got. The movie seems to start out that way, as we are introduced to a sleepy college somewhere in Kentucky that is rapidly clearing out for spring break. Faith, the appropiately named supposedly-religious girl played by Selena Gomez, is planning to go down to Florida with her childhood friends, who for whatever reason have chosen quite a different moral path. The problem, it turns out is that they have no money, and thus no real way to get down there. Criminal activity ensues as the girls rob a chicken place to get money and then go down to Florida where upon renting scooters and snorting cocaine (how much money did these girls steal?)  things obviously go wrong.

credit to Eric Moyer for this gem

The thing that makes this film so interesting is the aura it gives at different times. Enter a world of neon lights and neon bikinis, of weird techno sequences not unlike those in Drive playing throughout some of the crucial moments in the film. Korine somehow manages to take a disney-channel original movie setup and make it dirty and grisly, forcing us to laugh even when maybe it isn't that funny. Korine seems to delight in beach party sequences that show wouldn't-want-your-mother-to-walk-in-and-see-you-watching-this-nudity, a dramatic emotional scene and the restatement (three or four times) of some saccharine line about wanting the best ever spring break. In fact, it's so over the top that at points the format can be maddening, but the people in the movie know this and run away with it.

James Franco is at his best as rapper/gangster Alien, the metal-grilled "friend" the girls make on the trip. If this is a tale about the distortion of innocence, Alien is a strange pied-piper figure leading our girls to lower levels of human depravity, every now and then spitting creepily delivered mini-poems and haiku that make you laugh because of the ridiculousness of the situations. In what is soon to be an iconic scene, Franco manages to turn his sung rendition of Britney Spears' Everytime into a surprisingly dark song.

Franco's "Everytime" scene

Franco is probably the only reason the movie works , and a lot of the other characters don't seem to make much sense or really fulfill any real purpose. In the end, only Alien pulls together the neon lights and twisted themes to make us feel like we've watched anything at all, and it's a shame he's not in the first half an hour of the movie. Spring Breakers was definitely a much better film than it could have been- it's a smart, funny, self-aware satire, that seems to want to hanker back to an eighties-film with its sequences.

Oz the Great and Powerful:

Even when I was a little boy, I always knew what sort of children's movies my parents would or wouldn't like. It had to be intelligent, witty and have the balls enough to send some rather dirty jokes right over the heads of kids to the parents to reward them for the hefty price tag that comes when you take your whole family to a multiplex. After I saw Oz the Great and Powerful, I was very confused indeed. I wasn't quite sure what type of kid's movie I had seen and the following is a list of reasons why.

The Acting : Oz  is an origin tale of the "wonderful wizard" we encounter in the classic Wizard of Oz.  Oz starts out as a scheming womanizer known as Oscar Diggs, with no real magical talent who dreams of greatness but doesn't seem willing to do the work to get it. At the same time, our hero is constantly needled by a desire to do the right thing, which of course doesn't happen until the end of the movie. Poor James Franco is probably more confused than we are the whole time. Every once in a while he gets a look on his face that tells us he really is uncomfortable in such a clean children's movie. At times I could almost hear the "that's what she said" jokes going off in his head to counter all of the ridiculously over-saccharine elements of the script. Acknowledging the ridiculousness of the film, Franco gives us some good chuckles every once in a while but ultimately cannot give this movie any real help. While I am happy Johnny Depp passed up on this one (do we really want a repeat of his Michael Jackson-like Wonka?), I can't help but think that Robert Downey Jr. would have been the perfect man for this role had he not turned it down himself. I would have thought that a Zach Braff and James Franco pairing would be an extremely funny pairing, but in the end Braff just isn't given anything to work with. Some briefly funny moments at the beginning of the film are great, but they stop there, and somehow the makers of this movie didn't see comedic potential in Braff voicing a flying monkey? Just scandalous. Mila Kunis seems to do relatively well at the start of the movie, but in the end her turn as Theodora, the eventual Wicked Witch, just doesn't seem to make much sense. When her character is a good witch , she's also somewhat of a jealous crazy girl, so when she turns evil the character development never happens. Word on the street is that this lack of making sense has her in the running for a razzie . The only people that seem to commit well to the movie  are Rachel Weisz and Michelle Williams, and even they are turning coals of dialogue into diamonds. 

Special Effects: In the original classic Wizard of Oz, the change to colour upon arrival in Oz is one of the most iconic moments in the history of film-making  Thus I expected Oz to pull out all the visual stops when they opted to do the same thing and start out the movie in black and white. Unfortunately, after a year of seeing movies like Life of Pi, Oz's decent special effects and created world did not inspire any awe at all. It almost seemed like a mockery of the classic colour change to show the land of Oz so half-heartedly and no child born on this side of the millennium will bat an eyelid at the computer generated characters. 

 Dialogue: Don't misunderstand me, Oz is a children's film- I understand. Nearly all of my childhood  favourites (still my favourites) have some incredibly cheesy themes and lines. Lines like "I do, I do, I do believe in fairies" are just part of the gig. But at least most of them had the decency to tell me all about their hopes and dreams in a song instead of delivering it unconvincingly in the middle of an otherwise serious conversation. Part of what makes the original Wizard of Oz cool is that there are those ridiculous songs in it, and apart from one weird "munchkin song", which brought back politically incorrect echoes of the oompa-loompa songs in the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there was no effort in Oz to harden the mushy message. Some may claim that the age of sing-along children's movies are over, but as Tangled shows, movies that focus in only on the kiddy- viewers can still do very well with those sing-along elements. 

Maybe fifteen years ago I would have enjoyed this movie. But I like to think that kids around the world are smarter than this muddled attempt at a promising premise.Despite a final third that is actually quite enjoyable, Oz will never be iconic in any shape or form, tossed aside a day after mummy buys it along with such movies as The Ant Bully, and The Land Before Time 6 (or 7,8,9 etc.). To make matters worse, box-office reports have been stellar and they're making a sequel! At least franchises like Ice Age started out somewhat seriously before dumbing down its content value and robbing families blind. 

Side Effects: Questionably bad title. Great movie.

A couple weeks ago, a friend expressed his desire to watch a movie with me because he thought it would be a very different experience. I think he was expecting to see me show up to a cinema with notebook and pen in hand to jot down notes for my reviews, but I very rarely write down anything at all when preparing to write one. I do however, do some brainstorming in my head- working out different approaches to each film.  Normally I'm spot on in the first hour of the movie in what I expect I'll say, that was until a couple weeks ago when I saw Steven Soderbergh's latest work entitled Side Effects.

In fact, such was the complex nature of this drama, complete with plot twists bold enough to shock even the most jaded of moviegoers, that it is actually hard to even describe what this film is about without giving away parts of the film that are extremely important.  I guess the most inoffensive summary I can give you is that Side Effects is a drama about a troubled young woman named  Emily (Rooney Mara) who experiences some ridiculously disturbing results after she takes a drug prescribed by her new psychiatrist (Jude Law) to combat her depression. Such a summary actually well describes my initial attitudes towards the film about a quarter of the way through its viewing. Here, I thought, was a rather stark social commentary about our medical system and the cronyism involved between doctors and the drug industry. It was perfect fodder for a great review; I would talk about the quality of the movie and then segue into some meaningful paragraph about the commercialization of medicinal products. Hell, one of Side Effects' leads Catherine Zeta-Jones even suffers from bipolar disorder. A great film about a pertinent issue inspiring a great review. But it was not to be, and the film's sharp turn in direction is something that I could have only expected from someone like Soderbergh, whose CV includes some of my all-time favourites.

Side Effects may soon be added to that list of Soderbergh gems, with literally every aspect of the film working extremely well. I've never been much for the whole maniacally crazy routine, but Rooney Mara was probably as good in this film as I've ever seen her. There is a classic Hitchcock-femme-fatale quality about her facial expressions that makes it all the more effective when she zips from emotion to emotion throughout the film. Mara can be angry, vulnerable, sincere, then snide all at different times during a two-minute conversation without it ever seeming forced or over-dramatic. Jude Law also puts in a great performance, which coincidentally is the first leading role he's had in a while that actually lets him use his natural English accent. As an Englishman myself, I may be biased, but I'm pretty sure the droves of women who worship these actors won't mind if they use their real accents. How much more badass would Idris Elba's character in Prometheus have been if he had been allowed to let that East London slang come through? Fortunately, with Side Effects that is not a question we have to ponder, and besides his usual amount of charm, Law adds a dose of his dramatic flair as as the psychiatrist. 

They originally wanted to hire Blake Lively as the lead...madness

The real cornerstones of this film are the direction and screenplay, which seem like such a breath of fresh air. The plot twists never seem mechanical, the suspense never dulls and more importantly Soderbergh never feels the need to spoon feed everything to you. There are clues along the away that can tip-off the most observant of viewers, but the resolutions to so many of the film's questions don't get answered until they absolutely have to be. This makes Side Effects a great movie to watch with a bunch of friends because everyone will react in different ways based on how many of those clues they have picked up. Any of us that have watched The Walking Dead this season (slight spoiler alert ahead) know that balancing plot twists with unstable characters is no easy task, and I think I appreciate Soderbergh's subtleties even more as a result. 

We all know that 2012 was one of the best years for movies ever, but now it almost seems like Hollywood is hungover from all the past year's revelries and successes. There are plenty of movies to get excited about in 2013, but these past couple months have been rather event-less apart from Warm Bodies. Personally, I left the Christmas season feeling rather drained from having seen and reviewed so many awesome movies, but Side Effects is just the dose of aspirin I needed and the best film of 2013 I've seen so far.