Review: "Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)"

Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Runtime: 119 minutes

Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has always displayed gifts as a storyteller and as a director of actors. His key weakness, largely due to collaborations with writer Guillermo Arriaga, is that he wants to stretch his vision over far too much. His 2006 drama Babel, though beautifully photographed and acted, was a manipulative and contrived mess. The intersecting stories felt like attempts at making something capital I important rather than authentically compelling. Even after parting ways with Arriaga, Inarritu fell into the same trap with 2010's Biutiful. Once again, strong visuals and powerful acting held back by an exasperating amount of plots and subplots. 

Only four years later, however, Inarritu has finally shed his attempts at creating a sprawling game of narrative connect-the-dots. Working with three other credited writers, the director's latest, Birdman, finds him taking on a script actually worthy of his skills. Straightforward, lively, and devoid of narrative flab, Birdman is a bravura work of directing topped off with excellent performances (welcome back, Michael Keaton) and thrillingly ambitious photography.

With the globe-spanning finally laid by the wayside, Inarritu confines nearly all of Birdman in and around a prominent New York theater. It's there where, after a brief and cryptic opening, we meet aging star Riggan Thompson (Keaton), meditating in nothing but his underwear. Oh, and he's levitating about four feet off of the ground, or at least that's what his mind has him believe. 

Riggan, as realized here, smartly incorporates Keaton's actual status as an actor, without going overboard with the parallels and references. In the late 80s and early 90s, Riggan was the star of the mega-successful Birdman superhero franchise. That is, until he declined to star in a fourth film, and promptly sent his career into a tailspin. Now, he sits in his dreary looking dressing room watching Robert Downey Jr. rake in obscene amounts of money in the wake of Hollywood's current superhero obsession. 

The star dressing room for the Broadway stage is a dream for so many actors, including Riggan's costar Lesley (Naomi Watts). For the former lycra-clad superhero, however, it's much more; it's a chance to put it all out there for the world to see, and bring some credibility back to the faded glory of his name. From the moment that Riggan starts talking about his play - an adaptation of a Raymond Carver story - it's clear that his trip to the stage as writer, actor, and director is all that he has left in himself. 

Despite the talented ensemble that fleshes out Birdman's insular world, and the strong moments they all have, one thing is clear: this is Keaton's movie, and it's going to live or die by what he delivers. He succeeds. I've started that short and simple so as to prevent myself from exploding with hyperbole. Electrifying is an easy word to throw around, but Keaton surely earns it. His casting (combined with the part's writing) gives him something to tap into, but it's more than that. In the two hours we spend with Riggan, Keaton captures all of his guilt, frustration, desperation, and rage with the precision of a tightrope walker. 

The tightrope comparison applies not only to Keaton or his castmates, but Birdman as a complete entity. Filmed and edited to appear as if 95% of the movie occurs in an uninterrupted shot, Birdman's near-constant movement keeps the storytelling and performances consistently on edge. As it turns out, technical ambition works much better for Inarritu than narrative ambition.

But even though Inarritu has enlisted the great Emmanuel Lubezki (The Tree of Life, Gravity), the camerawork is always kept in service of the story and, more importantly, the characters. With the camera turning and circling and prowling all over the place nonstop, the early sequences of Birdman are unusually buoyant. It captures the frazzled, hypersensitive state of Thompson's mind as he's met with everything from stage disaster's to a hilariously difficult new cast member (Edward Norton). Better yet, the impressive technique on display ends up actually being in service of the film's endgame, rather than a mere bit of cinephile fan service. 

Birdman is, for all the flourishes, a story about the art of saving artistic face while reasserting one's cultural relevance in the increasingly over saturated world of modern celebrity. Riggan does his best to care for his daughter Sam (Emma Stone), but his best involves hiring her as an assistant. He gets to technically spend time with his daughter, but still get use out of her as he prepares to take the defibrillator to his reputation.

Everyone else is merely a means to an end, though that doesn't mean that Inarritu and his writers have left the other headliners without anything to work with. Norton is especially fun as a pompous stage veteran Mike, providing the perfect external antagonist to drive the film's first half. And he's not just a grotesque caricature of a jerk. His interactions with Riggan contain their own cruel grains of truth, even if they've been distorted by Mike's own pretension and ego. Watts, meanwhile, is nervy and vulnerable, and brings sincerity (or at least the illusion of sincerity) to Lesley, a woman on the verge of finally having her break as she's entering a stage in life where good parts start to vanish. And, as Riggan's former and current partners, Amy Ryan (ex-wife) and Andrea Riseborough (friend with benefits) each lend their own valuable contributions to Birdman's tale of ambition in the face of dashed hopes and dreams. Lindsay Duncan also leaves her mark as the formidable New York Times critic out for blood, and able to deflect each and every verbal blow Riggan throws her way.

All of the above performers have their time to shine, but none impresses quite like Emma Stone. Sam's status as a former addict is never belabored by the writing or directing, leaving Stone room to tap into her character's past while still be able to forge her own future. As good as everyone is here, Stone's interactions with Keaton are the ones I was left desperate for more of when the lights came up. Too often type cast as sassy, cutesy romantic leads, she slips into this damaged, no-bullshit psyche beautifully. Finally, with room to do something truly different, Stone takes charge, and comes closest to matching Keaton in commitment to every unpleasant little detail doled out by the script. Mike presents an artistic challenge, and the booming voice in Riggan's head is a psychological challenge, but only Sam is the real deal when it comes to affecting legitimate reflection in Riggan's life. Everything else, despite all the fuss about reviews and box office intake, is secondary, regardless of what Riggan tells himself.

There is a deep sadness at the core of Birdman, but Inarritu and his collaborators have kept the whole enterprise such a dynamic, spontaneous atmosphere that there's little room to get mired in existential woe. Lubezki's camera demands that, even in the most painful confession, Riggan - and therefore, the audience - keep moving forward. Accentuated by a soundtrack composed of rapturous classical pieces and Antonio Sanchez's drums-only score, and Birdman takes on the movements of a piece of experimental jazz. It's always going, always searching for whatever happens next, thrilling you with its next camera movement or powerful feat of acting, only to go somewhere totally different at a moment's notice. Under Inarritu's firm hand in the director's chair, that vivaciousness is under tight control, yet maintains the feeling of being executed off of the cuff. 

Many filmmakers, even great ones, struggle with the balance of style and substance. Inarritu, unlike many of his similarly-afflicted contemporaries, has both of them down. Yet on the matter of substance, he's only succeeded in investigating the emotional core of his stories and characters. The methods of investigation are where the problems show up. After Biutiful's false start at new beginnings, Birdman delivers the great film that Inarritu has had in him ever since he debuted Amores Perros nearly 15 years ago. Birdman's eventual, visceral impact is the direct result of this long-delayed artistic growth. Inarritu has spent his career swinging for the fences and tossing off foul balls. The difference, due to his newfound narrative focus, is that this time he's finally able to get the bat and the ball to connect at the sweet spot.

Grade: A

Review: "The Impossible"

Director: J.A. Bayona
Runtime: 114 minutes

It's not easy making a movie about a tragedy, especially if said tragedy occurred less than a decade ago. There's the danger of cheap exploitation, and not just within the emotional confines of the story. And that's what makes J.A. Bayona's The Impossible, which is by no means flawless, such a noteworthy achievement. At the end of the day, people were paid to make a movie about very real (and far-reaching) devastation, suffering, and loss. Yet Bayona and his collaborators deserve credit for telling this true story with a level of maturity and respect that avoids turning the 2004 tsunami into overwrought, sensationalist entertainment.

Opening two days before the tsunami, Bayona's film centers on Maria and Henry Bennett (Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor), a British couple vacationing in Thailand with their sons Lucas (Tom Holland), Thomas (Samuel Joslin), and Simon (Oaklee Pendergast). After enjoying a lovely Christmas morning, the family partakes in a number of activities at their upscale hotel. The next morning, however, they, like countless others, are torn apart as a wall of water smashes through the area, devastating natural and man-made structures alike. 

However, anyone paying the least bit of attention to the film's promotion knows one crucial fact: the entire family survives the tragedy. This means that, as a film, The Impossible needs to rely on more than just the question of whether the family will be reunited; the specifics of their struggle have to come to the forefront. And that's one of this film's strengths. First and foremost is Bayona's handling of the tsunami, which avoids turning the catastrophe into the sort of disaster porn that one might find in a Roland Emmerich blockbuster. The scenes of the family struggling in the raging waters are compelling, but they never feel overblown. If anything, certain stylistic flourishes lend greater insight into the physical struggles people faced. The most successful of these are the underwater shots, filled with tilting camera angles and furious, swirling imagery. It's been said that being submerged in the tsunami felt like being trapped in a washing machine, and Bayona captures that effect with a harrowing, white knuckle intensity. 

But the film doesn't get caught up in the chaos of the tidal wave. Bayona and screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez are, first and foremost, focused on the story of survival and the triumph of the human spirit even in the worst of times. The scenes of the family struggling in the raging waters are already exhausting, and The Impossible doesn't go overboard with them, thereby allowing them to never run out of impact. Just as impressive is the treatment of the rest of the family's journey, which begins with its focus on Maria and Lucas. 

And though there's not much to work with on paper, the cast, thankfully, turns in nice work, even if they're working with blank slates. This is a film about circumstances, not character, which limits what the actors can really achieve. But Watts, McGregor, and Holland are all compelling presences, and their looks of exhaustion and anguish never feel redundant or strained. At the same time, it remains difficult to find anything extraordinary in the performances, as the emotional impact is achieved through the broader themes and events, rather than the specifics of the individuals at the narrative's core.

Where The Impossible becomes a little wobbly, however, is in some of its less physically demanding sequences. Some dialogue, especially for the three children, feels rather stiff, and at times even jarring to hear coming out of such young characters. Suffice it to say that the film handles the overarching components well, but stumbles when it comes to the particulars of character interactions. Writing quibbles aside, the film engages in some needless (albeit brief) moments involving various members of the family just barely missing each other as they wander around a chaotic Thai hospital. 

But perhaps the film's biggest weakness is Fernando Velazquez's score, which often feels like leftover tracks from the latest Almodovar film. The raw emotion on display is compelling enough, yet there are too many instances where the score either telegraphs an emotion too soon, or simply becomes overbearing. What should be one of the film's most powerful moments is nearly sunk by the surging music that floods over the entire scene. In a movie that successfully blends compelling film making techniques and upfront emotional impact, the use of such forced music seems wildly out of place. Once The Impossible winds down to its final moments, the sense of authenticity largely returns, but there are enough rough spots here and there that hold the film back. However, Bayona deserves credit for his treatment of the '04 tsunami, and how he is able to make the film suitably wrenching without exploiting or cheapening the suffering of thousands. If anything, The Impossible is an anti-disaster movie, and should, at least, be given some recognition for its treatment of such destruction with such a visceral, yet still human, vision.

Grade: B 

Review: "J. Edgar"

Whatever your opinion on J. Edgar Hoover is - unwavering patriot, paranoid witch-hunter, a bit of both... - the man is undeniably one of the most fascinating figures in American history. With such rich material to mine from, one would think that a film maker like Clint Eastwood and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (who won an Oscar for his look at Harvey Milk in Milk) would be able to create a film as fascinating as its subject. Unfortunately, that's not quite the case. Eastwood's directorial career, recently in a bit of a funk, doesn't get the reinvigoration it so desperately needs from J. Edgar. It's not a horrible film, just a terribly simple and unremarkable one.

Of any film this fall, J. Edgar certainly screams "Oscar bait" the loudest. Biopic of famous American figure? Check. Period piece? Check. Simplistic framing device? Check. Old age makeup, some of it absolutely awful (poor Armie Hammer)? Check. Judi Dench? Check. All of these are part of the film. The problem is that Eastwood seems to simply stop there. He's made (and Black has written) an Oscar contender that feels lazy. The film may cover nearly seven decades, but even with all of that time, it never amounts to much more than a safe and shallow examination of its central subject. Black and Eastwood never take any sort of stance on Hoover as a man. True, they've avoided making a lopsided cartoon of Hoover, but they've also failed to have any sort of opinion on him at all.

It's a shame, because poor Leonardo DiCaprio really is trying his hardest here, even having to fighting against some odd old age makeup that gives him awkward-looking jowls. It's a committed performance, and DiCaprio totally sells it. Unfortunately, there isn't enough for him to sell, even with the script's hints at Hoover's closeted sexuality and mommy issues. No one else fares well either, if only because the film isn't as interested in any of the characters as it is in Hoover. Armie Hammer tries his best as Clyde Tolson, Hoover's right-hand man and rumored lover, though the character is ultimately little more than an oversimplified foil to Hoover. Judi Dench pops in for a few scenes as Hoover's mother and brings her usual credibility without doing much more save for one scene that links Hoover's mommy issues with his sexuality. The most unfortunate, though, is Naomi Watts as Hoover's lifelong secretary Helen Gandy. To be brief, it's almost criminal how basic the character is considering the remarkable actress playing her on screen.

And it's this precise lack of anything remarkable that leaves J. Edgar feeling so middling. Though certain memories, such as those surrounding the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, are interesting, there's never enough of a look into Hoover's thought process to explain his increasingly paranoid tendencies. As such, the film has some strong scenes, but never rises to become a fully compelling examination. The closest it comes is in a moment after Hoover's mother dies, but given how safe the film is in dealing with that angle, it amounts to little in the long run. Considering all of the ways Hoover was involved in Washington's inner-workings, it's amazing how tame some of the "surprises" of the story feel.

The film is also brought down by the ho-hum look of everything, by which I mean the fact that every frame seems to be filled with nothing but shades of grey and green. I'm not sure why Eastwood has recently become fond of this washed-out look, but he needs to get over it, and soon. I can at least say that for once Eastwood's score contributions (extremely limited this time around) are either effective or aren't noticeable. I'd comment about the production design and costumes, but with everything so drained of color it's hard to evaluate (or care about). Then again, maybe the lighting and coloring of the film actually works, because it embodies the film as a whole: so safe that it feels drained of any life or vivacity that would have made it as fascinating as Hoover himself.

Grade: C

"Fair Game" trailer

The film, modeled on the Valerie Plame story, received mixed reviews at Cannes, and this trailer isn't doing much to make me more interested. At the same time, I'm a sucker for whistle-blower stories (I looooooooooooove The Insider) and Watts and Penn (who co-starred with each other in 21 Grams) are pretty reliable performers. But Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) is more of an action director, and without action being the forefront (the explosions are all background noise), I'm curious to see whether he can pull off such a recent, hot-topic political drama.

Trailer for "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger"

While I'm not as excited as I was while this was being cast/filmed, there's always the chance that this will be more in the vein of Vicky Cristina Barcelona and less in the vein of Whatever Works. I like the cast a lot, and depending on the execution, it could be a breezy, enjoyable romp. However, some of the word from Cannes was that the film was quite somber, though to what degree was never specified.

Cannes Review Round-Up: Doug Liman's "Fair Game"

Next up for reviewing is Doug Limon's (The Bourne Identity) latest film: the Valerie Plame story, titled Fair Game, with Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. Limon, who's more know for his flashier, action-oriented films, is in relatively new territory with a thriller that has to engage purely with words, and without any chases or fights. I haven't been able to find too many reviews to choose from, but the general consensus seem solid, if not ecstatic. IndieWire's Eric Kohn isn't too enthusiastic, saying that the film "only occasionally moves beyond the level of a solid made-for-TV-movie" (yikes). Kohn does go on to say, though, that Penn and Watts's performances "ensure that the stronger bits hold together," and that the film "builds to an admirably intelligent perspective in its middle section." Brad Brevet over at Rope of Silicon is much more positive, giving the film a grade of 'B+'. He says that "Watts and Penn are excellent," citing Penn's restraint and claiming that Watts "will most likely make a change at the Best Actress category come nomination time in one of her better performances to date." Brevet goes on to praise the film's pacing, saying that after its run time of 1 hr 46 min, "you certainly wouldn't mind if it had gone further." The Guardian, which has yet to publish a full review, mentions the film in a column about film at Cannes with mixed emotion. Xan Brooks says he's not totally sold on the film, in part because it's "too stolid, too by-the-book." James Rocchi of IFC, however, says that Fair Game "specifically succeeds as ambitious and engaging cinema." Finally, The Playlist offers up a review in the middle ground. Kevin Jagernauth writes that while the opening is strange and that "Limon assumes the audience knows nothing about the post-9/11 lead in to the war," he goes on to say that "as the film moves into its second half...the film rockets forward." However, Jagernauth says the film ends on a false note involving a speech by Penn's character to high school students about democracy. That said, he praises the performances, writing that "Watts and Penn are in top form here."

[current] Cannes Verdict: A fact-based, political thriller that walks a fine line between compelling thriller and bland procedural drama.

Cannes Review Round-Up: Woody Allen's "You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger"

Welcome to the second installment of the hopefully many-part series detailing the "results" of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Up next is Woody Allen's latest star-studded ensemble piece, You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger. Even though Nicole Kidman left the project, dashing the first possible chance for her to work with BFF Naomi Watts, it is the latest from Woody, which good or bad, usually means interesting. Continuing his European phase after Match Point, and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, now Allen's in London. Judging from the first handful of reviews, the response has been nice, but nothing spectacular. The Hollywood Reporter calls the film "A serviceable Woody Allen comedy that trifles with its characters rather than engaging with them." Vanity Fair has a slightly different take; content-wise, that is. Julian Sancton says the film "is perhaps the most somber screening at Cannes." However, Sancton goes on to say that, like the film's press conference, the film was "the funniest and darkest at Cannes." Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman is less kind right from the get go; his article/post is titled "Mike Leigh scores and Woody Allen bores". The review doesn't let up, with such comments as, "The atrociously titled You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is one of Woody Allen’s “fables” — which is practically code, at this point, for the flavorless, dry- cookie thing that results when he writes and directs a comedy on autopilot," and, "There should, by now, be an award for worst actor forced to impersonate Woody Allen in a Woody Allen film. I would probably give the award to Kenneth Branagh in Celebrity (with Scarlett Johansson as a close runner-up in Scoop). But if Josh Brolin, in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, doesn’t quite enter the make-it-stop stratosphere of whiny fumbling stuttering embarrassment, he’s still got to be the least likely actor yet to play a faux-Woody neurotic intellectual." Ouch.

[current] Cannes Verdict: A routine Woody Allen comedy/drama that is by no means essential viewing.

Clip from "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger"

There isn't a lot of personality in the clip, which was the opposite of when clips from Vicky Cristina Barcelona made their way to the internet, but I'm still interested in seeing this. Obviously Allen loves his neurosis-ridden protagonists, but I hope the film isn't 90 minutes of Watts and Banderas stammering awkwardly to each other. A little of that goes a llllllooooooooooooooong way. And is it wrong the the single-take-conversation shot sort of reminds me of this? Very different in tone, but something struck me as oddly similar...

First official still from Woody Allen's "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger"

For other pictures of the cast, including Anthony Hopkins, go here.

This is the case year by year with Woody Allen films, details are generally scant at first. But really, as much as we love the guy, the general stories of his films are never a big surprise by this point and such is the case with the newly revealed synopsis for "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger." You can read the barebones studio-supplied description below:

"A little romance, some sex, some treachery and apart from that, a few laughs. The lives of a group of people whose passions, ambitions and anxieties force them all into assorted troubles that run the gamut from ludicrous to dangerous."

The vague synopsis of course also applies to more than a handful of Allen's films throughout his career and you could add some marital infidelity and neuroticism to the list. The title reportedly refers to a visit to a scene from early in the movie in which Naomi Watts' character visits a gypsy fortune teller who tells of her future romantic acquaintances. Perhaps we'll get some of the same light-hearted goofy mysticism that Allen presented in "Scoop" and "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion"?

As previously reported, the film also features Josh Brolin (playing the Allen character type) as a writer who enters an extra-marital affair. Allen described the film as "being amusing and also serious," so you can expect the sort of mixed moods that Allen often employs. In addition to Watts and Brolin, the London-set film features Anthony Hopkins, Antonio Banderas, Freida Pinto, Lucy Punch, and Anna Friel. 'Stranger' is slated for a September 23rd release date with a rumored Cannes premiere.