Director: Guillaume Canet
Runtime: 128 minutes
There's no denying that the 70s were a golden era for gritty crime dramas. Sidney Lumet classics like Dog Day Afternoon and Serpico helped shape the new age of American cinema following the culture shock of Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967). However, those eras have passed, as eras tend to do. Most attempts to recapture that rough and gritty side of 70s cinema tend to get swallowed by the decade's long shadow. Guillaume Canet's Blood Ties, sadly, isn't strong enough to buck the trend. The French director's English-language debut looks the part, but it's undone by a flimsy, cliche-ridden script that has neither originality nor dramatic spark.
Co-written by director James Gray, Blood Ties has more of his voice than of the Frenchman behind the camera. Though the film is a remake of a French drama, Gray's treatment has effortlessly American-ized it to fit the mold of the classics from the 70s. Similar to Gray's own We Own the Night, Blood Ties centers on brothers Chris (Clive Owen) and Frank (Billy Crudup) as they struggle to live on opposite sides of the law. For the recently released Chris, that means trying to reconnect with his wife Monica (Marion Cotillard) and the children he's barely seen. For Frank, it's a matter of keeping his brother from falling back into old habits, even as he begins a romance with Vanessa (Zoe Saldana), the girlfriend of the recently arrested Scarfo (Matthias Schoenaerts).
Yet all the talent on screen can't compensate for the fundamental weaknesses of Canet and Gray's writing efforts. Chris and Frank are so lazily defined that there's little motivation to empathize with either. To their credit, Owen and Crudup at least handle the shallow material well enough to suggest where they could have gone with better material. But even with the focus primarily on their intertwined stories, Blood Ties never builds a genuinely compelling emotional or thematic arc. Yes, there are lots of talented people in the cast, but even at two hours, Blood Ties doesn't know how to manage them all properly. Saldana starts off playing a significant role, then practically vanishes until the last second. The reverse happens to Cotillard, who appears briefly in the first half, and then gets dragged into a rushed subplot designed to get the dramatic engine restarted so it can reach the finish line.
For all of the talent wasted, however, the biggest offense is how badly it underuses Schoenaerts. Despite his Belgian origin, the actor has the most convincing accent in the entire film. More importantly, Schoenaerts' handful of scenes have more heat to them than anything else than transpires on screen. Considering the strength of his breakout work in Bullhead, the actor clearly deserves a better English debut vehicle than this. On the other hand, Cotillard, Schoenaerts' Rust and Bone co-star, comes off rather badly in a performance that's all over the place. There are flickers of potential in her work, and there are some convincing moments of acting that rely solely on her facial expressions. Yet when she opens up her mouth, things head south disappointingly fast. The clunkiness of Monica's dialogue doesn't help, but the page doesn't deserve all of the blame in this instance.
With so many moving parts to handle, it doesn't take long for Blood Ties to unravel. Though nothing spectacular, the film's opening stretches mostly get it off to a solid start. As the cliches and messy narrative choices pile up, however, Canet and Gray can't sort their way out. The love triangle with Crudup, Saldana, and Schoenaerts should be the driving force of dramatic tension, but even when Scarfo gets released from prison, there's little to do but shrug and wait for the next tired development. It certainly doesn't help that Crudup and Saldana's affair begins with a handful of rushed scenes that border on laughable.
In fact, nothing sums up the failings of Blood Ties better than one of the pair's first scenes of courtship. We see them sitting in a restaurant while music plays (no dialogue is heard). Suddenly, Saldana explodes, and leaves Crudup behind. Do we ever learn anything about what might have prompted the outburst? Of course not. The film assumes that the production values (admittedly solid) and music will be enough atmosphere to hold it all together. Instead, it almost looks like a scene from a dating montage in a bad romantic comedy (albeit an extra gritty one).
What's particularly disappointing about all of this is how little energy Canet's directing has. With a few shoot outs and chases, you'd think the director of Tell No One would be able to conjure up something moderately engaging. Apparently not this time. Effort clearly went in to making Blood Ties look and sound the part. Beyond that, however, Canet and his collaborators go through the rest on autopilot. It's not quite a numbing experience, but it also never finds any moments where it feels like more than hackneyed, surface-level mimicry.
Grade: C-
Director: Sam Raimi
Runtime: 130 minutes
It's been nearly three quarters of a century since Dorothy landed in Oz. For decades, the classic MGM fantasy-musical has been a cornerstone of growing up. It boasts some of the most memorable characters in all of cinema and pop-culture history. And though it's been years since the 1939 film's visual effects have been thought of as state of the art, they possess a timeless charm, as evidenced by the film's enduring status. Bigger and newer aren't always better, and that's certainly the case with Sam Raimi's Oz: The Great and Powerful. Though beautifully rendered, the latest cinematic venture into Oz is lacking in heart, brains, or courage, and has only fleeting moments of genuine entertainment.
Opening in 1905 in both black and white and the old 4:3 aspect ratio, Raimi's film introduces us to Oscar (James Franco), a wily magician at a traveling circus in (where else?) Kansas. In addition to conning folks out of their money, Oscar also has a penchant for charming women out of their clothes, and it doesn't take long for that to catch up with him. While running from a jealous husband, Oscar boards a hot air balloon, which soon gets sucks up into a tornado. And, as it was in the 1939, so it is in 2013: violent storms are the means of entering the wonderful world of Oz and its widescreen aspect ratio. Yet Oscar doesn't have much time to soak up the CGI masses around him. He quickly runs into Theodora the good witch (Mila Kunis), who believes that Oscar is here to fulfill a prophecy and save Oz.
Yet for all of the money thrown at the screen, Raimi's Oz is disappointingly lacking. The environments themselves are beautiful, but any time the film shows live action actors walking among them, they begin to feel more flat and artificial than the matte paintings of yesteryear. Thankfully, there are marvels amid the digital excess. The flying monkeys look fantastic, and are effectively menacing (at least as menacing as they can be in a PG film). But the real star is China Doll (voiced by Joey King), a beautiful digital creation who comes closest to giving the film a beating heart.
Sadly, China Doll's live action counterparts don't fare so well. Particularly egregious is James Franco's Oscar. Part of the fun of this role, on paper, is that Oscar is a con artist who spends considerable time bluffing his way through a foreign land. It requires a certain charm and swagger that Franco never once brings to the screen. Instead, he's left straining to reach those show-off moments, and the result is a black hole of charisma. Then there's Mila Kunis, who's faced with the opposite problem: she seems engaged with the material, but has only thin writing and poor motivation to work with. Rachel Weisz has what fun she can with a boring role that's largely shoved to the background and never fleshed out. The only flesh and blood figure on screen who remotely works in Michelle Williams' Glinda. It may not be much, but the actress brings a charm and warmth to the character that helps offset Franco's problematic performance.
But, at the end of the day, the story is Oscar's, and because Franco's performance is such a misfire, the rest of the enterprise sinks with him. Raimi manages a few good jumps here and there, and the visuals are quite nice (I desperately wanted more looks at the vaguely art deco-style Emerald City), but it's all too much. Oz isn't engaging, moving, or funny enough (though Zach Braff does his best) to ever become consistently entertaining. Instead, much like Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, it often sinks under the weight of its super-saturated CGI vistas that are large in scale, but lack any sense of awe or wonder. A shame really, when the matte paintings would have probably been so much cheaper.
Grade: C-
A firmly established name in the world of TV, it was only a matter of time until Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy and American Dad made the jump to live-action film making. Both of his shows have strong followings (Family Guy remains popular despite its general decline, while American Dad is becoming more popular) and with the resurgence of R-rated comedies over the past decade, the transition only makes sense. MacFarlane's signature brand of non sequiturs, bawdy humor, and varying degrees of pop culture references certainly has its critics (even among the fan base), and as such, your opinion of Ted likely hinges somewhat on how you feel about MacFarlane's work so far. Almost. For even though Ted builds its humor more out of the situation (despite the references) a la American Dad, the success rate and overall execution call to mind the recent seasons of Family Guy: moments of inspired hilarity weighed down by awkward plotting and attempts at humor that are only partially successful or that fall flat.
Opening with voice over about humanity's belief in magic, MacFarlane firmly establishes that Ted takes place in the live-action reality that the clans of Peter Griffin and Stan Smith would live in were they not animated. Like MacFarlane's signature shows (as well as that unfortunate mess that is The Cleveland Show), Ted involves a sentient, non-human creature. Instead of an entirely organic creation like Brian the dog or Roger the alien, however, this time the non-human role is a teddy bear belonging to the friendless John Bennett (who will grow up to be played by Mark Wahlberg, so life's not so bad...). Upon seeing a shooting star, young John wishes that he and his Teddy bear will stay friends forever. Lo and behold, the next morning, John discovers that Ted has come to life. Though Ted's existence quickly catches on and he becomes a media sensation, the two remain close friends, never separating.
Jump forward a few decades, and John is 35, stuck in a dead end job but blessed with a disproportionately sexy girlfriend named Lori (Mila Kunis). Lori and John are close, but she's not exactly keen on one part of John's life: the fact that Ted, now a foul-mouthed pot smoker, still lives with John, and seems to keep him anchored in a state of perpetual man-boyhood. And, despite the fact that the film is live-action, adjusting to MacFarlane's world is surprisingly easy. Having the film establish Ted's "birth" of sorts and then jump forward essentially removes any of the tedium involved in having to go through the typical cope-with-the-extraordinary-circumstances shtick. This gives Ted a more relaxed feel, one where the magical talking teddy bear can function as a character, rather than a plot device.
But if the set up is decently handled, everything from that point on is a mixed bag. When MacFarlane's shows are on their A-game, they are, for all of their flagrant disregard for anything remotely PC, actually pretty damn funny. American Dad in particular can be an absolute riot, seeing as it forgoes the excessive cutaway jokes and develops humor simply out of the ridiculousness of the situations and the characters involved in them. Unfortunately, Ted feels more like an iffy episode of Family Guy stretched out for a feature film. Some lines that have the potential to be funny only register a minor 'ha,' while others just sink. Even when the material clicks, there's a certain taut zaniness that's missing from the situations and set ups. One could make the argument that this is simply because we're getting acquainted to the characters, whereas TV shows have time to build up their characters. The problem, in reality, has more to do with the pacing and plotting than with the characters.
Take, for example, a subplot involving a man who has been obsessed with Ted since he first saw him on the news (Giovanni Ribisi). After the character's introduction, he appears only briefly in one other scene, before coming back to incite a kidnapping subplot to give the film a climax. Other scenes, like those involving John interacting with his co-workers (among them Patrick Warburton and Veep's Matt Walsh), feel like they're desperately trying to branch off and become their own (really awful) sitcom. Mila Kunis may get the short end of the stick when it comes to funny material, but at least when the film follows her at work, the film has a perfectly obnoxious Joel McHale to liven things up.
Unfortunately, Mark Wahlberg is tasked with being too much of a straight man, and even when the film puts him in funny scenes, the character remains marginally entertaining at best. This means that it's up to Ted to be the source of humor, and the character proves he's not quite up to the task. Some of the material is funny, but even some of the best material is never fully successful. A massive drunken party at Ted's apartment packs some of the film's best laughs, but is undermined by moments that either go too far or are just plain bad. Many of the attempts at pop culture references also fall flat, including the recurring use of actor Tom Skerritt. At its worst, the film throws in split second jabs that feel lazy (an insult thrown at Katy Perry's singing lands with a particularly loud 'thud'). Only a handful of shots of Ribisi doing some absolutely loopy dance moves in front of a TV provide consistent laughs.
It doesn't really help matters that some of the editing lags and the whole production looks rather drab. The awkward smudgy glow of digital pervades so many of the shots, as if no one had any intention of making the film look decent. Only Walter Murphy's boisterous score works, and helps lend an old-fashioned sense of energy to the cartoonish shenanigans. Overall, though, MacFarlane's exploration of growing up a few decades too late is too uneven to fully succeed. The initial conceit may feel fresh, but it doesn't take long for it to settle for being too familiar, without enough successful humor to make up for it.
Grade: C
