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: "Oz: The Great and Powerful"

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-

Review: "The Deep Blue Sea"

Director: Terence Davies
Runtime: 98 minutes

Terence Davies' The Deep Blue Sea is a subtle and understated film, one that takes some of the subject matter present in Anna Karenina and renders it on a much smaller scale. Yet even though Davies' film earns points for its graceful maturity, it lacks both passion and insight. Though capably led by Rachel Weisz and Tom Hiddleston, Sea is merely an adequate relationship drama that, only on occaision, displays any remarkable feats of film making or acting.

Weisz is Hester Collyer, wife of a prominent judge named William (Simon Russel-Beale) in post-WWII London. She engages in an affair with a troubled RAF pilot named Freddie (Hiddleston), which inevitably sets off a series of struggles. Yet where Davies, who also adapted the screenplay from Terence Rattigan's play hits the nail on the head is in his pacing of the story. Hester and Freddie's affair is discovered quite early, and the film is more about the ramifications that ensue when Hester leaves her husband to live with Freddie. Like the stoic Karenin, William allows his wife to do as she pleases, without giving her the satisfaction of a divorce. Rather than convince her to come back, or act maliciously towards her, he simply bows out, leaving her to think on her alleged sins.

Yet all is not well between the semi-liberated lovers. Hester struggles with her guilt over what she's done to William. At times her love for Freddie sustains her. And other times, as indicated in the elegant opening sequence, it can't. Unfortunately, though Hester's struggle takes center stage, it is often less compelling than the lives of those around her. The subtlety is admirable, yet it gets in the way of the film's establishment of Hester and William's marriage, and why it doesn't provide the love Hester desires. At one point, Hester even confesses that physical love is all that matters to her, which does little to make her more sympathetic. The film never really follows up on this point either, thereby leaving an intriguing angle completely unexplored. 

Hiddleston's Freddie, much like William, gets the short end of the stick when it comes to depth. As such, Freddie's sudden bouts of anger are jarring and unconvincing. Freddie's involvement in the war is hazily sketched out, and the reasons for his inner turmoil barely touched upon. So even though the small moments between Freddie and Hester come off nicely, the film neglects the big picture angles, which eventually catches up with the piece on the whole.

As the film's center, Weisz gives a consistent turn, and thankfully avoids the awkward shifts of her work in The Bourne Legacy. Let at the same time, perhaps due somewhat to the writing, she never quite digs into Hester's issues beyond the obvious. Many moments that could have been subtle and laced with buried emotion instead give the impression that Weisz only got a millimeter beneath the character's skin, and then stopped cold. The performance is often adequate, yet Weisz never turns Hester's mix of emotional turmoil and British reserve into a compelling person to watch and follow. 

All in all, it's a shame, because Davies, at least as a director, deserves quite a bit of credit for his adaptation. The camera work flows elegantly, giving a sense of life to scenes that mostly involve people standing, sitting, and talking. There's also a lovely and delicately executed scene - a single shot - of Hester and William watching a group of singers in a tube station as German planes pound the city with bombs. It's a striking moment, yet unfortunately, it has nothing to support it. Much in the vein of Luca Guadagnino's I am Love, the reasons for the protagonist's affair feel too slight, and too thinly sketched out. Whereas Tilda Swinton's Eva at least had an army of snobby family members supposedly suffocating her, Hester only has William's elitist mother. She's a snob, yes, but the old woman is hardly capable of oppressing anyone, considering that William married Hester without too much trouble. 

Once again, the big picture issues hound the film. Without a truly compelling sense of either Hester or her motives, there's little to latch onto or ponder once the credits roll. The elegance and maturity of the execution is wholly commendable, and at the very least keeps the journey interesting, as Davies refuses to have people spell things out for the audience. Yet all the same, all of the elegant camera work and beautiful music can't cover up the film's omnipresent vagueness, which ultimately does it in. For a film titled The Deep Blue Sea, Davies' latest is sadly lacking in depth, and on multiple fronts.

Grade: C+

Review: "The Bourne Legacy"

Director: Tony Gilroy
Runtime: 135 minutes

Rather than function as a full-blown sequel or prequel, The Bourne Legacy exists as a standalone adventure that exists alongside some of the events of 2007's The Bourne Ultimatum. Though Jason Bourne (Matt Damon, sorely missed) never appears on screen, the events of his story do tie in to the somewhat convoluted narrative involving the CIA and an experimental program gone awry. Yet even though series scribe Tony Gilroy is still involved (he also takes over directing duties), it's difficult to jump back into the Bourne universe this time around.

The most immediate, and glaring problem, is the characterization (or lacktherof). Though Jeremy Renner performs convincingly in the role of ex-agent Aaron Cross, he has no depth outside of his desire for answers. Were his quest understandable, this wouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, Gilroy's screenplay is so dense, vague, and at times fractured, that it's difficult to get a grasp on the film's protagonist. Gilroy introduces a supposedly important plot point - a series of pills that Cross is required to take on a rigorous schedule - but never gives a decent explanation as to what they really do or why they matter.

With so little to latch on to, The Bourne Legacy trudges on through its first two acts or so. Throughout the narrative, we're given some painfully vague glimpses into Aaron Cross' past, but it adds up to precious little that carries any weight. Not helping things is a surprisingly uneven turn from Rachel Weisz, cast as a scientist who Cross coerces into aiding him in his quest for...whatever the hell he's supposed to be after. Things improve for the actress in the final act, but in one key scene (an interrogation), she's all lightweight surface, awkwardly shifting gears from anxiety/confusion to anger. 

Only in the finale does Legacy start to feel like a proper entry in the Bourne series. As dull and stagnant as much of the film feels, Gilroy and DP Robert Elswitt do an excellent job when it comes to capturing the film's action sequences, which have the series' trademark gritty energy and verve. Editor John Gilroy smartly strings them together, creating an electric sense of pace while still holding on shots long enough to give the viewer a clear sense of what's going on. 

Yet the finale isn't nearly enough to redeem the film as a whole. By and large, it feels dense , but also completely uninteresting. The vague sense that something important is happening pervades the run of dimly lit office scenes with Norton and company, but all it ever amounts to is one big shrug. Worse still is that Gilroy ends on a note meant to suggest some romantic possibility between Renner and Weisz, despite their absolute lack of chemistry.There is so little to latch on to here, that The Bourne Legacy ultimately becomes everything its predecessors weren't: just another action movie that lacks any pulse whenever people aren't running, jumping, punching, or shooting.

Grade: C/C-

Review: "360"

When a director makes a big splash with a debut or with a film that catapults them into new found recognition, an extra amount of scrutiny is thrust upon any following work. Fernando Meirelles has been working as a director since the early 80s, but he didn't make his mark on world cinema until 2002's stunning City of God. Focused on a very singular world - the slums of Rio De Janeiro -  Meirelles turned out a visually striking and relevant film about poverty and crime. Fast forward a decade, and the director has expanded his vision to more than a single city, with incredibly diminished results. Obvious and lacking anything resembling suspense, passion, or insight, 360, the latest film from Meirelles, lives up to its title to the point that it goes almost nowhere.


Inspired by Arthur Schnitzler's play "La Ronde," the film weaves a series of stories across the globe into what one hopes would be quite a powerhouse of a narrative. Unfortunately, the problems in 360 become evident all too clear. Despite some smooth and smartly employed split screen work, many of the characters couldn't be less interesting. Among the ensemble, Jude Law and Rachel Weisz, as a pair of unfaithful spouses, are truly wasted. Law, in particular, is stuck in a small series of scenes that merely exist, without anything there to drive the film from a narrative or thematic standpoint. Other cast members are given more to do, but suffer a similar fate, stuck with story threads that border on being vignettes, which isn't quite the film's goal.


The lone bright spot is Ben Foster, playing a convicted sex offender temporarily on leave. In a critical scene set in an airport hotel, the actor brings an intensity and depth missing from all of the film's other scenes. In that one moment 360 feels alive and filled with some sense of purpose. Unfortunately, once the scene ends, we basically never see Foster again, and the film resumes its unintentional aimlessness. Other performers (other than the big names in the cast) perform capably, yet there's nothing they can do to overcome the writing (a Bulgarian subplot feels particularly empty, despite everything that happens). Peter Morgan's script feels, sadly, like a very rough sketch or first draft, with all of the characters and arcs feeling too distant for the film's own good. 


So when it all comes together for the finale and lives up to its tagline ("Everything comes full circle"), all that's left to do is shrug and say "...and?" 360 seems almost built on a gimmick, to have its narrative come full circle and then, surpriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiise, conclude with a scene identical to its opening, albeit with different characters. Though it borders on predictable, there are plenty of films with similar ideas that carry it off well. Here, however, it just feels like an inevitable conclusion to a thoroughly dull affair that feels too long (certainly a lot longer than 2 hours) and too empty to justify its existence. This is one of those films where all of the ideas were down on paper or in someone's head, but never even came close to achieving the proper transition to the screen. Other unsuccessful films like this include 2006's Babel, of which I'm no fan. But that film at least has some emotional resonance, as contrived and manipulative as it is.The methods may be cruddy, but at least there's an attempt to connect to the audience and make them feel. 360, by contrast, runs on autopilot the whole way through, never trying to be anything more than a series of scenes strung together just so it can have a been-there-done-that hack job of an ending.


Grade: D+

"Agora" - REVIEW (short version)

This is a weird one. While on one hand, I was never bored for a second, it does sort of struggle to balance whether it wants to be a broad, sweeping historical epic about religious clashes, or focus more strictly on Hypatia. Granted, you can't tell Hypatia's story without looking at the events around her, but the script seemed to wander in focus. Judging by her work in this film with seemingly split intentions, Weisz probably would have knocked it out of the park had the religious conflicts been kept further in the background, with the story centered firmly on Hypatia. That said, the production values are pretty fantastic (I never felt like Amenabar's film was confined to a set, even with the CGI-enhanced wide shots), the cast members are perfectly competent in their roles, and it's certainly engaging. But by the time it reaches its end, regardless of whatever may have been exaggerated/made-up/etc, it just can't seem to cross that line between "solid entertainment" and "great entertainment."

P.S.: This has to earn some sort of award for the strangest edit of the year. We go from people yelling, "JESUS was a Jew! JE-SUS was a Jew!" to...

Grade: B-