Review: "The Beguiled"

Director: Sofia Coppola
Runtime: 94 minutes

"There's a war going on, out there, somewhere..." So goes the opening line of current Broadway smash Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. Cannons and guns wreak havoc in the periphery, while a different conflict is waged in the battlefield of opera houses and parlors among those privileged enough to get out of service. A similar framing device hangs over the characters of The Beguiled as well, draped over like a protective veil made of smoke, fog, and moss. Both works exist in realms of refinement, though the latter finds its characters staving off the ugly reality bubbling just outside their line of sight. 

Given that this is a Sofia Coppola film, none of this is terribly surprising. Her specialty has always been her ability to chronicle the shut-off bubbles, specifically of upper class white women. Whether haunting hotel hallways amid the skyscrapers of Tokyo, or traipsing through an unguarded mansion in Beverly Hills, the notion of isolation is the connective thread holding her oeuvre together. Her adaptation of Thomas Cullinan's novel (previously adapted in the 70s with Clint Eastwood) immediately establishes itself as more of the same, at least thematically. 

But the steady progression of The Beguiled (easily her tightest work of pacing) stealthily gives way to something unexpected: a heated, simmering psychological cat-and-mouse game. Or, rather, a cat-and-mice game. Beneath the Southern hospitality and longing glances cast out of windows is a delicious, cunning genre picture ready to claw its way out at any given moment. For once, Coppola allows her female characters to have their bubble punctured, and even violated. The muffled cannon blasts pepper the film's soundscape, but a different, twisty conflict is about to erupt not on the battlefield, but in a place designed to instill manners. 

It takes only a few minutes before Corporal John McBurney (Colin Farrell) collapses on the doorstep of the Farnsworth home. Headed by the steely Miss Martha (Nicole Kidman), the household's exterior suggests a lack of maintenance, and even disarray. But lessons is music, etiquette, sewing, and French still occupy the time of the girls boarded up their by their wealthy Confederate families. And, being the proper Southern ladies they are, Martha's students and their teacher Edwina (Kirsten Dunst) help McBurney inside to treat his wounds. 

McBurney is obviously injured, but there's still a palpable shock for the girls (and, frankly, the viewer), when his gruesome leg injury appears. Coppola loves her introverted, wan ladies, so to see something so lurid is a bit of a jolt. Not soon after, Miss Martha is sewing up McBurney's wound, in a grisly closeup that wouldn't seem out of place in a Guillermo Del Toro drama. Amid all of this, there is a great deal of lustrous closeups of Mr. Farrell's exposed chest and just as much heaving and "oh, my" breathing from the ladies. 

Coppola has dipped her toes into new territory, and while she never takes a full plunge, her restraint is measured rather than timid. With a thick coat of fog, smoke, and mist smeared across many shots, The Beguiled lands firmly in the territory of Southern Gothic storytelling, albeit with an unconventional structure and sense of pace. 

Using only natural/available light (daylight, candles, etc...), The Beguiled has the painterly look of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, albeit with a color scheme more reminiscent of Goya or El Greco. Amid all the murk, the cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd conjures up an array of sharp images. Most transfixing are the closeups, of people handling tools, utensils, or bowls. The Farnsworth Academy may be a bit Brigadoon-esque in its removal from the "real" world, but it's still grounded in a tactile sense of place and time. The fineries of life are all these girls and women have to hold on to, other than each other. And so they clasp on, never giving an inch, whether it's to a wine glass or a gun. 

Inevitably, a misshapen lust triangle emerges from the fog, and Coppola finally lights the fuse that's been sitting in the corner the whole time. Coppola has shown she can generate tension (Taissa Farmiga playing with a gun in The Bling Ring), but it's never been stretched out in any of her films. The wind up is masterfully done, and when the fuse finally reaches its lengthy end, the resulting display doesn't underwhelm. 

There is little outright violence in The Beguiled, despite the early flash of gore, though what occurs lands well. More compelling, however, are the little digs and power plays initiated through dialogue, glances, and gestures. Kidman, delivering an antidote to her work in Cold Mountain, takes center stage amid the uniformly strong ensemble. In every meeting (many of which involve most of, or all, of the cast), he eyes seem to be in constant motion. She's keeping tabs on Edwina, the students, and McBurney all at once. The subtlety on display is, like the film as a whole, a wicked delight. Dunst, a Coppola regular, is gently and affecting as Edwina, who wants nothing more than to get as far away as possible. Farrell, as the object of the film's Female Gaze, is excellent too, crafting an intelligent portrait of a man who goes from victim to manipulator (and then back again). 

Tonally, it's not all doom and gloom and ripped bodices. There is a tart sense of humor that hangs in the air along with the perfume, sweat, and hormones. At times, The Beguiled is basically a Gothic-accented comedy of manners. That is, until certain lines are crossed, and the battle lines are drawn. The bubble must be protected after all, and it will be done with a stiff upper lip, a beautiful gown, a prayer, and a very carefully constructed recipe. With a flirty, dangerous wink, Coppola signs off with one of those gems of Southern charm that can be wielded as an invitation or a weapon: Y'all come back now...

Grade: A-

AFI Fest '15 Review: "The Lobster"

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Runtime: 118 minutes

Without any notable visual flourishes, The Lobster does what so many films set in the near (or far) future fail to do even with massive budgets: create an instantly convincing, wholly immersive world. Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth), making his English language debut, has outdone himself with his break from his homeland and native tongue. Absurd, strange, blackly funny, and even oddly touching, The Lobster will most certainly be an acquired taste. Those who can get on Lanthimos' wavelength, however, are in for one hell of a treat as the film makes the rounds at festivals ahead of its currently TBD American release next year.

The end of a relationship, especially one that lasts for more than a decade, is always painful. But there isn't much time to wallow in newfound loneliness in the world of The Lobster, as we quickly learn from following newly single David (Colin Farrell, heavily de-glammed). In accordance with current government laws (setting is undefined, though signs point to French Canadian territory), David is carted off to a sleek countryside resort, where he will be given 45 days to find a new mate. If he fails, he will be turned into an animal, albeit one of his choosing (in David's case: the film's titular crustacean). 

Unfolding with a level of deadpan that would make Wes Anderson envious, The Lobster's chief strength, among many, is how maintains its tricky tone over the course of two taut hours. From a pacing standpoint, this is easily the most polished of Lanthimos' films, which prevents one from falling out of touch with the uncompromising idiosyncrasies. The Lobster's second half breaks the narrative out of a delightfully repetitive cycle, yet manages to maintain and build upon the successes of the beginning. Just when you think that Lanthimos is getting too lost in his own vision, Yorgos Mavropsaridis' editing keeps things moving with laser-cutter precision, all without disrupting the deliberate flow of the story. All other technical aspects are similarly excellent, especially the green and beige-hued photography of Thimios Bakatakis and the discordant soundtrack that mixes pop songs with jolting string pieces.

Lanthimos reigns all of this in beautifully from the director's chair, with plenty of crisply-assembled passages composed of stealthily compelling shots with little or no camera movement. For as much time as the film spends at the singles' resort/internment camp, Lanthimos always finds new visual alleys to drag one further down the rabbit hole. Even the most mundane hotel hallway comes loaded with bizarro uncertainty in the world of The Lobster, which prides itself on subverting the ordinary by underlining it with hints of ludicrous, yet somehow plausible, extremism. In Woody Allen's Crimes & Misdemeanors, Alan Alda's character quoted Larry Gelbart's, "if it bends, it's funny; if it breaks it's not funny" remark, and that manifesto is certainly true here. Lanthimos bends The Lobster to its absolute further, keeping it on the precipice of breaking without ever going too far.

Yet for all of The Lobster's understated work in the arts/tech departments, Lanthimos' script ultimately holds the key to the aforementioned control of tone. The Lobster could have easily become a one-note joke, but Lanthimos and co-writer Efthymis Filippou dole out the bizarro details of the film's setting in carefully constructed vignettes that gradually coalesce into a spectacular whole. Some are strange, some are disturbing, and some are gut-bustingly funny in their deliberate emotional vacancy. Few scenes capture the whole of The Lobster quite like the one wherein the hotel manager (a pitch-perfect Olivia Colman) and her husband try to serenade the horde of single folk with listless performances of romantic songs and robotic dance moves. 

And as much as I lit up every time Colman appeared, the rest of the cast are all a treat to watch as well. Farrell continues to excel when given darker, off beat material, and while 'David' doesn't allow him the range of In Bruges, it demonstrates his skill as a versatile actor who should never have been propped up as a traditional leading man. Other hotel residents are marvelously filled out by the likes of Ben Whishaw, John C. Reilly, Extras's Ashley Jensen, and frequent Lanthimos collaborator Angeliki Papoulia (as an ice cold "hunter" who delivers the film's darkest joke). Later arrivals like Lea Seydoux and Rachel Weisz (the latter of whom narrates the film throughout) are welcome presences as well. 

However, these characters are ultimately pawns in Lanthimos' oddball experiment. In some ways, he's taking a page from the Coen brothers, playing a narrative god with a merciless combination of dark humor and irony. But even when the ambiguous ending arrives (he's a fan of those), Lanthimos refuses to let his detachment from his characters slip into cruelty. The characters may do horrible things (or have horrible reactions), but in the film's later stages Lanthimos subtly shifts into empathy without puncturing the carefully crafted tone and losing all thematic control. Like another film set to play at AFI Fest (Todd Haynes' Carol), The Lobster possesses an unwavering dedication to a strict code of tone and atmosphere that will strike many as redundant and exhausting. Yet for others, the relentless unwillingness to make major changes will become its main selling point, highlighting, for better or for worse, the purposeful vision at the helm. 

Grade: A

Review: "Miss Julie"

Director: Liv Ullmann
Runtime: 129 minutes

During one of the climactic scenes of Miss Julie, the titular character implores her valet to stay by her side because he understands her. She may very well be right about her assessment, considering the tumultuous evening and morning spent with her servant over the course of the film. But even if the valet does understand Miss Julie, that same understanding of character appears to elude writer and director Liv Ullmann in her adaptation of August Strindberg's play. Powerful (though sporadically overheated) performances from the three main actors are the only real draw in this uneven and often stagey production.

Tensions between the sexes have appeared in numerous recent releases, but Miss Julie has the advantage of working in a discussion of class. Over the course of a midsummer night in 1890s Ireland, wealthy Miss Julie (Jessica Chastain) will do her best to coerce her valet John (Colin Farrell) into seducing her while his fiancee Kathleen (Samantha Morton) watches. With Julie's father, a baron, gone to a party and the rest of the servants at their own celebration, it doesn't take long for tensions to rise. The baron's estate is quite spacious, even encompassing a wide stretch of lush forrest, but the characters are increasingly trapped by their surroundings, with only each other as company.

The first 15 minutes or so don't bode terribly well, and may be enough to convince some that spending time with these three isn't worth it. The opening passages of the story are written and performed in a halting, stiff manner that seems like the work of a nervous theater troupe on opening night. When Miss Julie charges into the kitchen to start toying with her two servants, scenes are cut together with amateurish abruptness. Revealing a character's motivations over time is hardly new, but Miss Julie's initial, erratic behavior rings false because there's nothing to latch onto. A brief prologue with Julie as a child adds nothing until the film is almost over. It creates a series of rushed histrionics, rather than a clear arc for the character. Chastain does the best she can, but the character is too unformed at the start for anyone to really make sense of.

This isn't helped by the structure of the first half of the film, which positions Julie as a listener and observer instead of an active participant. The writing is so enraptured with John's past that at times one wonders why the story was named after Miss Julie at all. Pitting two characters against each other for long periods of time can be powerful stuff, but it tends to work better if both sides are engaged at the same time, rather than standing idly by as if they're in a formal debate.

The subject and setting, with its isolated characters confronting their own demons and each other, certainly seems like an ideal fit for Ullmann. As the longtime partner of Ingmar Bergman, she's had her fair share of experience with stories like Miss Julie, albeit in front of the camera. Yet even Bergman's smallest, simplest stories with captured with a visual dimensionality that transcended the limitations of the stage. Miss Julie, by contrast, is often quite flat. The subject matter doesn't demand any flashy tricks, but at times Ullmann's framing is so mundane that you might as well be watching the actors on a stage. More curious is how the staginess of the direction has seeped into the performances. The cast appears to have been directed to over-emphasize every huff and puff and gesture (good god, the hand gestures) as though they're trying to make sure people in the nosebleed seats can hear them. They're playing to the rafters, when there's a perfectly good camera and sound team only a few feet away from them.

Yet even though the performances boil over, they remain compelling. The longer Miss Julie goes on, the more consistent all aspects of the filmmaking become. The first half belongs to Farrell, who delivers some of the best acting moments of his career as the lowly valet turned unwilling seducer. There's an earnestness and vulnerability to the performance that shows a different side of the actor after his strong work in a few dark comedies. It's through John that Strindberg's ideas about class and equality first appear, and Farrell makes the most of his early monologues. 

And after a rocky start, Chastain really takes hold of the titular role. The character gains considerable dramatic breathing room as the film progresses, which benefits the actress considerably. As Miss Julie starts to lose control of herself and come unraveled, Chastain goes in the opposite direction and begins to dominate the movie. She captures Julie's mix of haughty superiority and deeply buried fragility with powerful results. When Julie is pushed to her breaking point, she explodes with a volcanic fury that Chastain turns into what might be the most harrowing piece of acting she's done yet. The calm that follows Julie's storm is equally wrenching, finally adding some uncomfortable emotional heft to the stodgy storytelling.

Samantha Morton, meanwhile, is less fortunate. The character is an important wrench in John and Julie's bleak little duel, but Morton has even less room for nuance than her co-stars. With more to do, Morton's Kathleen could have been an invaluable supporting player. Instead, she's a distraction from the appetizing possibilities of John and Julie's emotional sparring. Thankfully, Morton's final appearances are worthwhile, adding a religious perspective to Miss Julie's notions of power, wealth, and servitude.

From a technical standpoint, Ullmann's film looks and sounds adequate, never getting in the way of the performances. With its limited time frame, Miss Julie doesn't have lots of opportunity for change, so costumes and sets are kept to a bare minimum. The lone noteworthy behind the scenes contributor is cinematographer Michail Krichman, who has at least lit and shot everything quite nicely. Several key shots involve harsh white light falling on the sides of the actors' faces, and they lend a stark beauty to images with limited visual possibility.

Miss Julie certainly ends much stronger than it begins, but the ideas of Strindberg's play still lack elegance. Somewhere in the original text is the potential for a well-rounded examination of the author's themes, but this version isn't quite up to the task. It hits its points in fits and starts, and saves too much of most powerful material for the end, leaving the early stretches quite malnourished.

Grade: C+

Review: "Winter's Tale"

Director: Akiva Goldsman
Runtime: 118 minutes

The IMDB plot synopsis for Akiva Goldsman's Winter's Tale reads as follows: "A burglar falls for an heiress as she dies in his arms. When he learns that he has the gift of reincarnation, he sets out to save her." Are you simultaneously intrigued and stifling a laugh? Then you're probably the ideal audience for Mr. Goldsman's directorial debut, an attempt at magical realism that wields unapologetic sincerity as a blunt instrument. Too bad that said sincerity wasn't in service of something more coherent and engaging. 

Still coasting on the goodwill from his Oscar-winning screenplay for A Beautiful Mind, Goldsman's movie is more or less what its synopsis proclaims. Yet it is also so much more, often to a baffling degree. There are demons engaged in a vaguely defined spiritual war, a magic horse that turns into a Pegasus when convenient, and a cameo from a superstar actor as Lucifer that ranks as one of the stranger bits of stunt casting in recent memory.

The absurdity, however, isn't apparent right at the start. It's the turn of the century, and orphan Peter Lake (Colin Farrell) is on the run in New York City. He spends his time stealing small objects, and storing them in his home, the attic of Grand Central Station (very Hugo-esque, no?). Mr. Lake is in hiding because he's run afoul of his former thieves, led by the intimidating Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe, brogue-ing it up to high heaven). Things really get moving, however, when Peter is caught trying to rob the home of Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay of Downton Abbey fame). She has consumption, just like Satine in Moulin Rouge!, but without the dancing skills, and knows it's not long before she shuffles off of this mortal coil to keep the plot going. 

In between its risible dialogue ("Is it possible to love someone so completely that they never die?") and bland performances (aside from Mr. Crowe, who is spectacularly bad), Winter's Tale spends most of its time being marginally interesting, albeit in the dullest way possible. The reason to stick with it is simply to see where the whole nonsensical journey goes. Goldsman's adaptation of Mark Helprin's acclaimed novel is crippled by one of the worst hallmarks of bad fantasy: the rules of its world are poorly established, giving off the feeling that Goldsman is making things up as he goes along. There's a convenient answer for everything, and it usually involves the magical horse (who is named, wait for it, Horse). 

This leaves Winter's Tale without any stakes or tension. We have no sense of what's possible or not in this low fantasy world, so barely any of the pieces ever come together to produce a moment of legitimate interest. Again, the story is only interesting in so far as it leaves you wondering what sort of half-baked nonsense the script will churn out next. And this is before the time travel. Remember that reincarnation bit? Well, somewhere past the halfway point, Peter winds up in present day Manhattan, and I'm not sure I can go any further without slipping into a state of slack-jawed awe. 

Even from a technical point, Mr. Goldsman's film is thoroughly lackluster. Despite a solid budget of $60 million, the entire film is shot and colored in murky shades of blue, grey, and beige. By contrast, something as sumptuous as 2012's Anna Karenina was made for a fraction of the cost. Other aspects, like costumes, sets, and music, range from bland to just slightly above adequate.   

Yet the question remains: just how bad is it? Well, it's certainly bad. Very bad. But, I must confess, the film's total sincerity is its own weird saving grace of sorts. It commits to this mushy fantastical nonsense, dammit, and that's probably the reason I felt no anger towards anyone involved. Winter's Tale isn't decent enough to be a noble failure, but it doesn't quite stoop low enough to be a disgrace. It's a film that's trying, yet simply putting all of its effort in all of the wrong places. 

Grade: C-

Review: "Saving Mr. Banks"

Director: John Lee Hancock
Runtime: 125 minutes

Saving Mr. Banks begins and ends with shots of the clouds, which is just as well, seeing as the film seems to have been written and created with its head up among them. A sugar-coated, albeit never treacly, slice of Disney history, the film goes down easy, though it can't help but leave a sour taste in light of how events actually panned out. Emma Thompson is as effective and effortlessly watchable as ever as the film's lead, but even her work isn't enough to raise the material above (largely harmless) mediocrity.

Right off of the bat, it's clear that writer P.L. Travers (Thompson) isn't terribly enthusiastic about Walt Disney's (Tom Hanks) desire to turn her beloved Mary Poppins novels into a film. The stories, Travers insists, don't lend themselves to a feature film, especially if said film is to include musical numbers and, even worse, animated sequences. From the moment Travers sets foot on her flight from London to LA, she's standoffish with everyone from flight attendants to hotel bell boys. Her cheery hired Disney driver (Paul Giamatti) tells her that the sun has come out to greet her. Travers responds by remarking that the City of Angels smells like chlorine and sweat.

Travers' mood doesn't improve after meeting Disney, or the team of writers and songwriters who have been tasked with the adaptation (Bradley Whitford, B.J. Novak, and Jason Schwartzman). Hardly a line in the script goes by without a correction or objection from the protective author, who shoots down everything from set designs to the eventually famous lyric "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." If there are parts of Saving Mr. Banks that are legitimately entertaining and informative, it's the early butting of heads between the Disney creatives and the author. Thompson's no nonsense, almost school marm-ish delivery is a highlight, and lends some contentious spark to an otherwise adequate film. 

Less sure are the flashbacks detailing Travers' childhood in Australia, the experiences of which inspired the Poppins books. When Thompson is on screen, there's a level of restraint in both the writing and in Hancock's direction. With Thompson gone, however, the flashbacks often come off as a touch hoakey, despite events that lend a darker shading to the narrative. Instead of being anchored around Thompson, the trips into the past are shouldered on Colin Farrell as Travers' troubled, alcoholic father. Farrell has proven himself a talented actor, especially in dark comedies, but he seems miscast here. The overeager image he projects - in general or around his young children - tends to ring false. Moments between father and daughter that should charm are, instead, bland and hammy. More effective is Ruth Wilson as Travers' troubled mother, despite her performance largely consisting of reactions to her husband's actions. 

Oddly, the most effective secondary thread has nothing to do with Mr. Disney or the Travers family's Outback melodrama. Though their scenes rarely build outside of a few quips, Thompson and Giamatti's slow-building friendship leads to a lovely conclusion that feels more in line with who Travers was, and what she stood for. The movie eventually has her won over by the 1964 Julie Andrews/Dick Van Dyke film, which undercuts the author's resilience and regret over the enterprise. On the other hand, Travers' relationship with her happy-go-lucky driver, however embellished or invented, have a mark of truth to them that transcends the otherwise pedestrian material, albeit only by a hair's breadth. 

The rest of the film is a handsome, though uninspired, technical package, nicely capturing the period without doing anything to truly stand out. From the costumes to the generic Thomas Newman score, it all looks and sounds right, even though none of the techs leave an impression. In many ways, Saving Mr. Banks resembles last year's Hitchcock, another film about creative battles behind iconic Hollywood products. It gets the job done and provides a few moments of enjoyment, but it's ultimately little more than a sanitized take on a story that has thornier complexities  that deserved to be unpacked and explored. 

Grade: C+

Review: "Seven Psychopaths"

Director: Martin McDonagh
Runtime: 109 minutes

A wild, meandering, and darkly funny ride through LA, Martin McDonagh's Seven Psychopaths may be a lesser film than In Bruges, but it is satisfying on its own terms. Ultimately, the Irish writer/director's second feature film lacks the legitimate pathos and hard-hitting laughs of his 2008 film. However, if Psychopaths is less funny, it is also considerably more interesting from a narrative standpoint. In Bruges took the hit men in hiding concept and executed it with McDonagh's fresh mix of dark comedy and bloody tragedy. Psychopaths, however, starts out as a caper-gone-wrong, yet takes some surprising turns and becomes increasingly meta, with enormously entertaining and unexpected results. 

Marty (Colin Farrell) is a struggling screenwriter in LA, who is trying to put together his next project. It involves seven psychopaths, although Marty has only been able to come up with one. Desperate to help him is his long-time friend Billy (Sam Rockwell). When he's not trying to help (or hinder) Marty's writing or chastising him about his drinking, Billy also runs a dog-napping business with the pacifistic Hans (Christopher Walken). Unfortunately, just as Marty is starting to get his screenplay going, he gets dragged into Billy's shenanigans after Billy steals a dog belonging to a rage-prone mobster (Woody Harrelson). 

But, as the characters later reflect, that's just the beginning. There may be cliches in Seven Psychopaths, but unlike so many other crime films, McDonagh's is self-aware, and never in an obnoxious way. McDonagh's screenplay doesn't afford his characters the same level of hilarious dialogue that In Bruges  did, but there is certainly meaty material for the cast to dig into. Rockwell and Walken fare best, and McDonagh wisely gives both of them plenty of  dialogue to have a blast with. Rockwell is reckless with a twinkle in his eye, and has fleeting moments of sadness and disappointment which the actor skillfully brings to life. And Walken manages to overcome potential typecasting as an eccentric weirdo to deliver an actual performance. Not only is he effective at navigating the comedy and tragedy of McDonagh's script, but his pronunciation of the word "hallucinogens" is worth the price of admission. Like Rockwell's work, Walken is playing an oddity as far as characters go: he's rounded, yet not terribly deep. That description applies to the film as a whole as well, yet somehow it's not a bad trait in this case. 

Yet as broad as the characters are, it's in these two roles (of the main ensemble) that McDonagh is able to inject the hint of something deeper. Seven Psychopaths has the interesting ability to create a sense of drama out of thin air without feeling forced. This is, after all, a crime film, which means there's plenty of bullets fired and lives taken. So even though much of the film is ultimately a rather surface-oriented dark comedy, McDonagh still makes his characters worth caring about, even if we're not deeply invested in them.

Other roles are nicely handled as well, though none really have the meat of Rockwell and Walken's roles. Farrell, as the audience stand-in (and also something of a stand-in for McDonagh), is stuck being an observer for so much that he isn't really given anything to push him. I still think that Farrell and McDonagh make a perfect actor-director pairing, but hopefully their next collaboration (assuming it happens) gives Farrell material more in line with In Bruges to work with. Instead, Farrell probably comes in fourth among the cast (third place to Woody Harrelson's one-note anger/menace). Not far behind are a series of killer cameos and side roles (including a rabbit-toting Tom Waits) who only add to the meta-ness of the enterprise. 

Coming in last, as part of a bit of the film's commentary on gangster movies, are the main female roles, filled out (in form only) by Abbie Cornish and Olga Kurlyenko. Thankfully, In Bruges showed that McDonagh has no aversion to good female characters (hell, even the pregnant hotel manager in In Bruges was good), because he certainly isn't doing his ladies any favors here. McDonagh does acknowledge the point of their limited and empty roles, and he actually prevents the weak female presence from becoming a weird, sexist hindrance (and there is some nice work from female cast members...just not the listed ones). McDonagh is commenting on the weakness of female characters in crime films, and he's smart enough to avoid portraying all women as weak as part of his "commentary." 

Because, above all else, what's on McDonagh's mind isn't so much commentary as a look at story-telling and narrative cleverness. In ways that are too funny and surprising to spoil, Seven Psychopaths is a blood-stained love letter to the creative process, even as it sends up traits of an entire cinematic genre. As previously demonstrated by films like Hot Fuzz, a film that mixes satire and sincerity can often transcend its genre. That's certainly the cast with this film, which rises above being just another crime film by at times refusing to be a crime film at all (or at least delaying inevitable scenes). And it's in these detours that the film becomes the most surprising and engaging. This is a film where one can only guess a character's fate in his or her last minutes (or seconds), but not several acts before. 

And in addition to being well-written, directed, and acted, the production values aren't too shabby either. The cinematography nicely captures the sun-baked Los Angeles vistas, while still allowing for a wide range of colors to exist in the frame. The editing is also a marvel, and it keeps the story flowing with clean, precise cuts that keep even the still scenes on their toes. The lone letdown is, perhaps, Carter Burwell's score. It's appropriately low-key and fits the film perfectly, but unlike Burwell's work on In Bruges, it possesses no moment or theme that allows it to become something more than generically effective. 

What's ultimately most impressive about Seven Psychopaths is how well it succeeds on its own terms. Narrative cleverness takes precedence over character development, but McDonagh never overreaches. The film's impact is lighter than that of In Bruges, both as comedy and tragedy, but there is no feeling of disappointment once the credits roll. This is a film (and script) that is comfortable with itself, and as such, is able to turn its overall lesser quality into a striking advantage. Deeper, richer films are likely in store for us over the coming months. That said, I have no doubt that, at year's end, Seven Psychopaths will stand as one of 2012's cleverest and most satisfying, depth or no depth. 

Grade: B+

UK trailer for "London Boulevard"

While I expected the trailer to have a much darker feel (the music is a little on the "happy" side), I'm excited for this. Monahan's screenplay for The Departed was one that film's stronger elements, so I'm looking forward to seeing what he comes up with as both writer and director. It's also nice to see Colin Farrell in another major leading role; here's hoping the career comeback kickstarted by In Bruges continues. And then there's Keira Knightley, who's always refreshing to see in something that isn't a period piece, even if her role might not be all that large or substantial.

First look at "London Boulevard" and "Thor"

One post; two very different movies. First is London Boulevard, which as of now doesn't have have a release date. I've heard this title thrown around for a few months, and I kept confusing with Last Night, also starring Ms. Knightley. However, that film has the increasingly dull Sam Worthington, whereas Knightley's co-star here is the increasingly awesome Colin Farrell, who made a stellar come-back with 2008's In Bruges. The story, about a released convict who falls in love with a movie star, is definitely an interesting one, with the potential for plenty of strong drama. And wouldn't it be nice to see Keira Knightley give a good performance in a film that isn't a period piece? I think it's about time. The film is still in post-production and has yet to find a distributor, but if it's any good, expect someone to snatch it up and market the hell out of it come awards season. After all, it's directed by William Monahan, who wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for The Departed.

Next is Kenneth Branagh's (yes, that Kenneth Branagh) Thor. I've never been much of a comic book enthusiast, so I can't really give any insight as to whether this brief glimpse of Chris Hemsworth is promising or worrisome. As is the question with these films nowadays, we have to wonder if Branagh will go for the more serious, Dark Knight route, or take a slightly lighter tone a la Iron Man (maybe somewhere in between?). I'm also interested to see what Shakespeare-loving Branagh can bring to the table in what could otherwise be just another comic-book adaptation (albeit one with a Norse mythology angle). The film, which also stars Anthony Hopkins and Natalie Portman, opens May 6, 2011, though I'm sure it won't be too much longer before we starting getting some teasers.