Director: J.C. Chandor
Runtime: 106 minutes
Almost all of Robert Redford's dialogue in All is Lost happens in voice over, during the first two minutes. As the camera pans across a cargo tank adrift at sea, we hear what are presumably his final words to those who knew him. Given the nature of the unnamed protagonist's circumstances, it's understandable that he would remain silent. Unfortunately, the film around Redford's stoic performance has even less to say than its lone character. Though effectively mounted and acted, All is Lost is ultimately too focused on the technical minutiae of survival to work as character study pitting man against nature.
As a simple tale of survival, All is Lost does still manage to get quite a bit right. Making a complete left turn from the talky financial drama Margin Call, writer/director J.C. Chandor acquits himself quite nicely when it comes to staging bare bones story. Strip the middle section of Life of Pi of its computer generated fantasias and persistent voice over monologues, and that's essentially what All is Lost has to offer. Chandor also ups him game considerably during the film's first storm sequence, which involves an Inception-like scene of things going topsy turvy.
Mr. Redford also makes a nice impression, though for large stretches that is probably due more to basic physicality than acting. The sense of tough, world-weary sufficiency is practically etched into the actor's face at this point in his life. Like Tommy Lee Jones, the increasingly prominent lines and cracks on his face seem to render him more effortlessly expressive and dignified with each passing year.
And that's why it's such a shame that Chandor's script is such a wafer-thin piece of writing. Though the incidents that move the story, which takes place over a week, prevent repetition, they are all that the film has. Like Redford's character, stranded out on the ocean, the script rarely attempts a dip beneath the surface. Compounding this problem is that there simply isn't enough of a surface to scratch in the first place.
Movies that rely on lone protagonists up against the elements are always fighting an uphill battle. There's a need to provide some level of backstory, especially when there's no establishing scenes a la Cast Away. And if a movie isn't going to look at where its stranded protagonists came from, then it needs to find ways of showing who that character is as they react to their situation in their methods, as well as their reactions of moments of success and failure.
In All is Lost, we can see that Redford is a resourceful man, and clearly an accomplished solo sailor. He knows how to plan, and how to keep his cool when things go from bad to much much worse. Yet without any other forms of emotional release, big or small, Redford sometimes comes off as a bit of an automaton, albeit one in disguise as a 77 year old man. Even when yelling at a cargo ship as they cross his path, there's an emptiness and a lack of investment that works against the film, rather than in its favor.
Rather than turn its simplicity into a virtue, All is Lost's script comes off more as a blueprint of a story than is still a long way from completion. A film like this should be a prime showcase for both a director and an actor. However, given the writing, Chandor undermines himself and his leading man. If anything, Chandor has more room to shine behind the camera than Redford ever does in front of it. As a result, All is Lost is a well-made, yet curiously underwhelming film that is sabotaged by its own attempts at narrative and emotional minimalism. It drifts on like the shipping container from the beginning, pulled by the waves, and never able to make any of its own.
Grade: C+
Director: Steve McQueen
Runtime: 133 minutes
When a movie has you doubting its quality for its first half hour, it tends to send up more than a few red flags. That was the experience I had with Steve McQueen's third feature film, 12 Years a Slave. All of the festival hype about this being a masterpiece didn't even seem remotely present. Yet over the course of its grueling duration, the movie has a way of getting under your skin long before you fully realize it. This is a film that rights itself so powerfully that it manages to meet, and possibly surpass, its overwhelming hype.
Arriving nearly a year after Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, Slave is quick to position itself as a polar opposite. Tarantino's take on slavery was brutal, but so stylized that it quickly arrived at winking hyperbole. That tongue-in-cheek revisionism is nowhere to be found in McQueen's film, which sternly cements itself as one of the definitive cinematic portraits of the horrors of American slavery.
Yet for all of the brutality, emotional and physical, on display, 12 Years a Slave's approach is remarkably restrained. McQueen, working off of John Ridley's adaptation of the novel of the same title, has ample opportunity to bludgeon the viewer into numbing submission. As we follow Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free man captured and sold into the southern slavery machine, we are witness to unspeakable violence, as expected. But rather than reflect Northrup's own horror, the film spends most of its time depicting its atrocities with quiet detachment. Rarely has the concept of the banality of evil been so maturely transferred to the silver screen.
The effect is distancing at first, and it can make 12 Years a Slave difficult to fully engage with at times. There are moments made to elicit gasps of horror, but also any number of scenes presented so matter-of-factly that they appear determined to keep the viewer at arm's length. It's a strategy that could have proved damning in the long run. Instead, it all builds to a finale that packs what has to be the biggest emotional wallop of the year, and by quite a wide margin.
The academically rigorous treatment that takes up most of the runtime is, secretly, the key to the film's success. By refusing to indulge in exploitation and wallowing in awfulness, the story clips along, capturing evil as ordinarily as possible, as though it were just another part of the day. The intelligence with which Ridley treats his characters, coupled with McQueen's vision, allow the film to work as an accessibly arty drama, as well as an honest and unflinching portrait of one of the biggest travesties in American history.
And as the glue holding the story together, Mr. Ejiofor is tremendous, infusing Solomon with hope, determination, and despair without mugging. The middle of the story sees Solomon - with a new name, and reduced to little more than a cotton picker - as an observer and occasional victim. Rather than slip into laziness, Ejiofor infuses Solomon's defeated passivity with a tragic grace that only becomes more impressive as time passes.
While Ejiofor carries the movie on his shoulders, he allows his co-stars the bulk of the film's flashier moments. As Mr. and Mrs. Epps, Michael Fassbender and Sarah Paulson make up one of the most despicable, yet frighteningly believable, couples in recent memory. Whatever their quarrels with each other, they have no problem abusing and manipulating the slaves as a means of attacking each other. As Mr. Epps watches, with mocking delight, his slaves dance, his wife catches him eyeing young Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o, also excellent). Her retaliation is to pick up a glass decanter and toss it at the girl's head, with all of the effort of tossing paper into a waste bin. It's a moment horrifying for its basic cruelty, the chillingly casual manner of its depiction, and implications it has about the Epps' worldviews. That the moment lasts but 10 seconds only magnifies the scene's blunt force.
At this point it almost seems pointless to point out the films flaws, considering how contained they are to the beginning of the movie. However, though the initial missteps don't undercut the power of the conclusion, they do start the film off in a puzzling manner that feels at odds with what follows.
Rather than proceed in strictly linear fashion, the opening begins with a few vignettes of Solomon already on the Epps' plantation. Later, the film inserts brief flashbacks to Northrup's time with his wife and two children as they go about their life as free and respected members of society. The "payoff" that this structure delivers is little more than a condensed repeat of the opening scenes in a bizarre attempt to generate a moment of psychological tension. Compared with the elegant frankness of the film's majority, these moments can't help but feel rough around the edges. Hans Zimmer's early scoring contributions don't help matters, and threaten to send certain scenes careening off of the rails with their horror movie intensity.
Thankfully, 12 Years a Slave's triumphs do more than make up for its failures. They absolutely demolish them. With all of the accumulated pain and suffering built up over the course of more than two hours, the film arrives at its shattering conclusion. It's an otherworldly combination of hopefulness about the story's end, as well as a cathartic end to a profoundly wrenching journey. McQueen's film could derisively be deemed his broadest and most accessible. However, by tapping into such a difficult subject matter with such precision, he has delivered a challenging, gripping story by staring evil in the eye and never once backing down.
Grade: A-
Director: Alfonso Cuaron
Runtime: 90 minutes
Much of the pre-release buzz around Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity has featured comparisons to 2001: A Space Odyssey. That Kubrick classic is not only held up as one of the greatest space-set movies ever, but also as one of the best made in any genre whatsoever. With its icy, yet hypnotic, atmosphere and complex symbolism, it's no surprise that 2001 is still kept on such a lofty perch. How can Gravity measure up to 2001's legacy? The short answer is that it doesn't. The long answer is that it doesn't because it's a totally different sort of space adventure, one that succeeds effortlessly on its own terms.
Instead of trying to one-up Kubrick's film, Cuaron has made a movie that is the polar opposite. 2001 is a heady puzzle open to all sorts of interpretations, even as it's dressed up as a sci-fi adventure. Gravity is infinitely simpler. That's a statement, not an insult. Gravity isn't out to ask big questions or leave us scratching our heads. Instead, it's an expertly calibrated thrill-ride that seamlessly moves from one set-piece to the next, all executed with magnificent skill.
The plot is but a simple tale of man vs. the environment. After a Russian satellite is destroyed, the debris wipes out the space shuttle carrying veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), and first-time space walker Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock). With communications with Houston down, the pair are left to their own devices to survive long enough for some sort of rescue. Only, as the opening title cards inform us, this is an environment where there can be no happy co-existence. Life in space is impossible, so it's not a matter of whether the characters can adjust to their surroundings. They know full well what awaits them if they fail.
And as a tale of desperation and determination, it's hard to fault what Cuaron and his team have pulled off. Running at a crisp 90 minutes, you'd be hard pressed to find a wasted moment in this visual roller coaster as it careens from one big moment to the next. Even in standard 2D, the sensation of being in space fully comes through thanks to Cuaron's bravura direction, along with Emmanuel Lubezki's photography, and the staggering visual effects that fill out his shots. As in Children of Men (2006), there are quite a few long takes, which only heightens the sensation of zero-gravity terror. Steven Price's score is also quite powerful, used consistently but never to the point that it becomes a suffocating sonic distraction.
But it's not all technical showmanship that makes Gravity such a relentlessly effective experience. Children of Men was also a first-rate bit of filmmaking, but it suffered from thin scripting and lukewarm performances. Gravity's writing may not be its strong point, but it certainly hits the mark considerably better than Children of Men ever did. There's little room to create full, satisfying dramatic arcs, but the scant characterization does come through in moving, and ultimately rousing, ways.
This is largely due to what leading lady Bullock pulls off as the film's emotional anchor. While her co-star is used more for cheeky asides and star power (sometimes distractingly so), Bullock is fully convincing with what could have been an empty shell of a character. First and foremost, Dr. Stone has to simply survive, and Bullock carries herself with the right amount of fear and steely determination. The film could have easily turned into nothing more than an hour and a half of Bullock screaming and panting. Instead, there's enough attention to her character's past, as well as enough moments that give the actress room to breathe, that make her someone worth rooting for, instead of a blank audience surrogate.
Of course, given the set up, this means that the information we learn about Dr. Stone has to come in the form of dialogue that manages to cover all of the BIG important details of her life. It's not the most elegant approach, but Cuaron's directing never flags in the quieter moments. When things slow down (relatively speaking), and silence takes over, Bullock turns the handful of character details into a surprisingly affecting performance. The actress may not have much to sell, but she gives it her all and sells the hell out of it, even when the script threatens to become hackneyed.
All of this builds to a tremendous finish that is not only visceral, but also quite emotional. It's tempting to refer to Gravity as little more than an expertly-crafted theme park ride. However, I doubt anyone has ever been on a ride that worked their emotions over along with their nerves and adrenaline glands. Gravity is a narratively simple film, but to dismiss its achievements so flippantly ignores the tremendous amount of effort put forth by those involved. Cuaron's film, which took seven years to reach screens, is a powerful cinematic experience that uses its simplicity wisely, rather than as a crutch. It's not the next 2001, and it doesn't need to be. Gravity is its own sort of space adventure, and it's a fantastic one to boot. That ought to be enough.
Grade: A-
Director: Paul Greengrass
Runtime: 134 minutes
Movies, like any art form, have a tricky relationship with reality. And that relationship only becomes more of a hurdle when the link to reality is concrete, and the story concerns matters of life and death, or success and failure. Even when a movie takes on a story that's decades old, reality tends to act as a roadblock to complete investment on the part of the viewer. That was the case with Brian Singer's Valkyrie, which told the story of a group of Nazi officials who attempted to assassinate Hitler. The subject matter of Singer's film is fascinating, but it fails to create an atmosphere that leads one to believe that (just maybe) the protagonists will succeed.
A similar issue looms over Paul Greengrass' newest film, Captain Phillips, even though it's a far more compelling bit of fact-based storytelling. As in the director's wrenching United 93, the basic outcome of the story is well-known, but the details aren't touched on much. Yet where Greengrass' 9/11 hijacking film was an ensemble piece, Captain Phillips ultimately zeroes in on a handful of people. Among the main subjects is the titular captain (Tom Hanks), whose cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama, was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009.
Above all else, Greengrass has retained his ability to plunge audiences into the unnerving immediacy of tense situations. The story of Richard Phillips, his crew, and the Somali pirates has more to it than people yelling threats and pointing guns. Billy Ray's screenplay generally keeps things moving, while still allowing for the general emotional toll of the incident to build. Watching Phillips match wits with the pirates, who are often ready to counter their defensive tricks, provides the film with some of its best moments. The no-frills, crisp filmmaking enlivens scenarios where the outcome is obvious. We know that the pirates will board the ship, but seeing the back and forth between the two sides of the conflict leading up to that moment is every bit as compelling as what follows.
Where the film starts to sag is in its last section, which sees Phillips trapped on the Alabama's lifeboat along with his pirate captors. While the level of incidental detail shown on screen is technically impressive, the film's home stretch is where the story's endpoint starts disrupting one's cinematic investment. There's a point where Phillips tale, however extraordinary, has to segue into its harrowing final moments. Greengrass and Ray, however, are determined to keep stringing the viewer along, to the point where you wish the Monty Python lads would arrive and shout, "Get on with it!"
Despite the final act's excessive length, it does at least give Hanks and Barkhad Abdi (playing pirate leader Muse) room to chip away at their characters' exteriors. Even as the final stretch wears out its welcome, the two men's performances help dig beneath the otherwise clinical treatment of the story. Phillips and Muse are both pushed to very different breaking points, and Hanks and Abdi find the humanity beneath their characters' single-minded determination. Abdi, in particular, makes a strong impression, albeit less overtly than his famous co-star. Whatever his character's background and motivations (which are sketched out in a brief scene in Somalia), the actor never turns Muse into a garish cartoon villain. Muse and his crew are credible threats, but the pirates are far from the racist caricatures they could have been in less intelligent hands.
As good as the performances are, they still aren't enough to turn Captain Phillips in to more than ordinary. Greengrass' directing is as assured as ever, and suits the material perfectly, but the writing isn't as consistently engaging as it needs to be. This problem is only magnified by the story's ripped-from-the-headlines subject matter. It's a respectable account of the Alabama's hijacking, but there's nothing the be gained from this dramatization that you couldn't get from reading articles about the incident.
Grade: B-
Director: Ron Howard
Runtime: 123 minutes
The marriage of a Formula 1 racing story and Ron Howard, king of the middlebrow adult drama, is a head-scratcher on paper. Howard's films rarely dip into the sort of dangerous, even sexy, territory that defines the subject matter of a film like Rush. Yet even though this racing drama has its share of major faults, it certainly represents a return to form after 2011's dead-on-arrival rom-com The Dilemma. Most impressively, Howard even gets to show off his rarely seen stylish side.
If you're wary that Rush is little more than some lunkheaded racing drama, have no fear. Despite the subject matter, Howard and scribe Peter Morgan's story is as much a character-study as it is a cinematic adrenaline rush. After a brief mid-70s intro, the story proper kicks into gear at the top of the decade, quickly introducing us to handsome hothead James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth), and rival Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl). Both men prove themselves as skilled racers on the Formula 3 circuit, but it's not long before Lauda finds ways of cutting corners into the big leagues.
Yet Bruhl's Lauda is no cheat, despite the many instances where Hunt calls him a rat. Rats, according to Lauda, may be unappealing, but they're also smart and determined survivalists. While Hunt drinks and sleeps around, Lauda spends time obsessing over the smallest specifications of his car, even showing his Ferrari-backed mechanics a thing or two about design. As Lauda keeps his nose to the grind, Hunt continues to live life to the fullest, until it starts catching up with his career. Lauda is an obsessive perfectionist, but he also has Hunt beat when it comes to playing the sponsorship game.
Morgan's script may not contain many surprises (even if you go in unaware of a major late game development), but it does at least keep the simple narrative moving. Howard's directing, filled with some of the flashiest techniques in his entire career, more than keeps pace. Even when the Hunt/Lauda rivalry scenes become redundant, Howard and his editors never let the film stall. The director also deserves credit for his handling of the slick racing sequences which, despite their Tony Scott-inspired freneticism, never lose coherence. If anything, one could argue that Howard and Morgan wait too long before fully delivering a real racing scene.
That's not to say that there aren't glimpses of the sport, or its deadly consequences. Morgan's focus, however, seems to boil down exclusively to the rivalry drama. This would be perfectly fine, even great, if it weren't for the hollowness of Morgan's own writing. As stated above, the scenes that pit Hunt and Lauda against each other lose their novelty quickly. Both men may refuse to significantly change, but Morgan never gives enough heft to the reasons for their mentalities. Hunt's condescending remarks and Lauda's hard-ass attitude make for some fun exchanges, but somewhere around the midpoint you wish they'd find something else to say to each other. It doesn't help matters that Morgan opens the film with voice-overs from both characters as a means of establishing their backgrounds. It's an efficient way of covering each man's emotional history (both were disowned by their families), but it undercuts the drama that the film actually does show us.
At the very least, Hemsworth and Bruhl turn in a pair of effective performances. Both do their best to elevate the table scraps Morgan has thrown their way, and each has his moments. They so successfully inhabit their respective personas that it becomes frustrating to see them tackle such repetitive material. Bruhl emerges as the stronger of the two, though that's largely due to the tragic fate of his character that allows some excellent make-up work to do part of the acting for him. Olivia Wilde and Alexandra Maria Lara are, likewise, effective, though they have even less to work with and a paltry amount of screen time.
The most satisfying "performance" ends up being Howard's work behind the camera. Aided greatly by glossy, stylish visuals from cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, Rush looks as vibrant and dangerous as the races at the center of the drama. Regular Howard collaborator Hans Zimmer continues his recent winning streak with surging score that avoids his recent bombastic tendencies. Sound work is, unsurprisingly, up to par, and the racing scenes sound as good as they look.
Rush was, reportedly, a huge crowd pleaser when it played at the Toronto Film Festival, which is hardly a surprise. This is sleek and sexy entertainment that retains just the right amount of Howard's tasteful aesthetic. The film may drop the ball when it comes to the drama, but it never slides into tedium, thanks to Howard's flashy approach. Even if you're the furthest thing from a racing enthusiast, Rush has enough good qualities to make it an engaging, momentarily gripping, experience. Just don't expect it to linger much once the tires stop screeching.
Grade: B-
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Runtime: 153 minutes
You'll have to look awfully hard to find anything new in a film like Prisoners, the English language debut of Quebec-born filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. As written by Aaron Guzikowski, the film's tale of two missing girls and the search to find them covers its share of well-worn tropes, many of which can be found on one of the many police procedurals currently on TV. Yet thanks to superlative craftsmanship, effective plotting, and top flight performances, Prisoners rises above the average procedural, even though it never quite transcends the genre to achieve true greatness.
As the film opens, we see hear Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) reciting the Lord's Prayer as he and his son lie in wait for a deer to shoot. This immediate juxtaposition of faith and violence (on an innocent subject, no less) will echo throughout the film's tale of desperation, loss, and vigilante justice. On an overcast Thanksgiving Day, the youngest children of the Dovers (Jackman and Maria Bello) and the Birches (Terrence Howard and Viola Davis) go missing. Though twitchy Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) quickly finds potential suspect Alex Jones (Paul Dano), the hunt for the girls has just begun. Frustrated with the police department's inability to find strong evidence, Keller takes matters into his own hands.
All of this takes up no more than the film's first 40 minutes, leaving roughly 110 more. Yet rather than cram the remaining runtime with twists and red herrings, Prisoners finds a smart, and even surprising, balance between the mystery driving the narrative forward, and the character drama that holds it all together. While this makes the narrative less immediately compelling, it allows Prisoners to explore its characters and the repercussions of their actions without having to rush. Rather than try to pull off something we've never seen before, the film simply takes familiar ingredients and executes them with a very sure hand.
There's also the matter of the effort that's been put into the film's look, which does its best to distance itself from the small screen as possible. With its gloomy visual aesthetic and haunting flares of music, Prisoners owes as much to the crime thrillers of David Fincher as it does to TV dramas like Broadchurch and The Killing. Where the film receives a considerable boost is in the lensing from master cinematographer Roger Deakins. With its rainy, wintery suburban settings, there appears to be little room for a movie like Prisoners to have any visual flair. Yet Deakins, with all cylinders firing from start to finish, finds ways of capturing the dreary and plain settings with a level of artistry that feels wholly cinematic, yet never pretentious or distracting.
The cast certainly aren't shirking their duties either. Stacked with talent in every major role, the entire ensemble gives it their all. Even Bello and Davis, whose characters are somewhat underutilized, have moments that they knock out of the park. Dano is effective as well as the mumbly Alex, while Melissa Leo underplays her ambiguous role as the boy's doddering aunt. Of the supporting roster, however, it's Howard who makes the strongest impression. Some of that is due to how the script uses the character, but the actor finds ways of communicating grief and confusion without ever being redundant. As one of the cast members who spends the most time playing off of Jackman, Howard makes his straightforward character a nicely conflicted foil.
Where the acting really shines, however, is in the leading duo of Jackman and Gyllenhaal. The roles are radically different, yet the way they reflect the dual strands of Prisoners' narrative creates a compelling blend of material driven by pure emotion and by pure clinical determination. Jackman, coming off of a career high with Les Miserables, has the emotional side of the story to carry, and the ferocity he brings to the role is never less than gripping. For all of the hysterical yelling involved, the actor never sounds shrill or false. It may not be subtle work, but Jackman invests each growl and yell with a fury that would make even Wolverine cower. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Gyllenhaal, who makes the less emotive role work in his favor. He puts a nervous bit of blinking, though initially distracting, to smart use as a means of communicating the character's internal processing of events.
Behind the scenes, Villeneuve deserves immense credit for his intelligent balance between the emotional and the procedural elements of the story. His previous film, 2010's Oscar-nominated Incendies, marked him as a talent to watch. Though more harrowing than Prisoners, that film also suffered from a messiness that built to a pair of twists that bordered on laughable. Prisoners runs nearly 15 minutes longer than Incendies, but it feels remarkably more focused, despite the room it allows for slow-building drama. Procedural mysteries live or die by how well they pull you in. Even the best of the genre, such as The Silence of the Lambs and Seven, have their implausibilities upon reflection. Yet what makes a great procedural work is its ability to cast a strong enough spell to allow you to suspend your sense of disbelief. Following in the footsteps of those aforementioned films, Prisoners certainly succeeds on that level, albeit with less flash (you'll find no lip-smacking cannibals).
The lone disappointment of Prisoners, however, stems from the very aspect of its script that also makes it a success. By aiming for character-based drama over thrills, the film starts to feel more generic as a whole, despite the first rate filmmaking. There's a tantalizing taste of the more ambitious, possibly pulpier, movie that could have been made in the form of a mysterious maze symbol. You can practically feel Guzikowski contemplating whether or not to take said symbol and use it to turn Prisoners into a denser and more twisted story. Instead, the resolution of the maze, and the main plot, comes across as rather expected, even though it's as well-crafted as everything that precedes it.
In straddling the line between thoughtful character drama and attention-grabbing thriller, Prisoners somewhat robs itself of a sharper identity. In trying to focus more on emotional developments, the film forgets to give itself a memorable stamp. Not content to end with a whimper, however, Prisoners ends (and the sound team deserves kudos here) its somewhat mundane narrative with a brilliant piece of ambiguity. Just when it seems in danger of fading out forgettably, it throws in one last nasty little kick that ensures that it'll stay with you just a little bit longer (Law and Order looks cheerful in comparison). It may not be the next Zodiac, but Prisoners is still an compelling and satisfying mystery with a refreshingly adult look at unsettling subject matter.
Grade: B+
Director: Nicole Holofcener
Runtime: 93 minutes
It's been three years since Nicole Holofcener last released a film, and it's been fifteen years since Julia Louis-Dreyfus appeared on screen. The latter's previous appearance was in a Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry, so it's quite fitting that her return would be in a film by the former. Though Holofcener's career is much younger than Allen's (and not nearly as prolific) her work feels right at home next to the typical Allen film. Instead of intricate plots, both directors prefer more open-ended explorations of the privileged middle and upper classes, and the various hijinks in which they dabble. And even though Enough Said's style and structure occasionally feel like that of a network sitcom, it is ultimately a highly enjoyable comedy, albeit one that operates at a broader level than Holofcener's previous work.
Having directed episodes of TV's Parks and Recreation and Enlightened in the years since her last film (2010's wonderful Please Give), it's not entirely surprising that some sitcom-y tendencies have slipped into Holofcener's authorial bloodstream. With its abundance of characters and hazily sketched subplots, Enough Said does have a tendency to feel like something of a pilot episode. Some of the comedy arrives in fits and starts, and some dialogue exchanges feel a too artificial for their own good. Under different circumstances, these traits would become large, painful thorns in a film's side.
Enough Said, thankfully, has the low-key level of craft and acting that elevates its material into territory that is entirely pleasurable, rather than grating. That elevation comes largely from Ms. Louis-Dreyfus as protagonist Eva, and the late James Gandolfini as love interest Albert. The pair of TV titans (Louis-Dreyfus is close to beating Lucille Ball's record amount of Emmy wins) seem like an odd match at first glance. And, in fairness, it's kind of hard to picture Elaine or the Veep going for Tony Soprano. They appear to agree. When the two divorcees meet at a party, they both dryly comment that there's no one at the even they find attractive. Yet that first shared sentiment turns out to be a hidden sign. After a surprisingly enjoyable first date, Eva and Albert's relationship starts to grow in ways they never expected.
Of course, there are complications. If you've seen the trailer, you know how Eva's relationship with new client Marianne (Catherine Keener, Ms. Holofcener's muse of sorts) throws a wrench in everything. Yet whether or not you have foreknowledge of the film's surprise, it's hardly likely to affect your perception of the film. Holofcener keeps the pacing brisk, never allowing the more dramatic undercurrents of the story to suck the fun out of the film as a whole.
At first, that makes Enough Said seem rather slight. And, truthfully, Enough Said is a modest, unambitious character-based comedy. Yet even among the sitcom-y scenes and situations, there remains a remarkable attention to detail when it comes to the characters. The ensemble is close to being overstuffed (with friends, ex-husbands, daughters, and clients), yet seeing Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini play against type is more than enough to give the film some intrigue. Watching the former handle less misanthropic and neurotic humor, and watching the latter be funny at all, proves to be the film's secret weapon.
With the amount of time TV stars spend in a role, they tend to become associated with a certain persona, and are thus more vulnerable to being typecast. And even though Louis-Dreyfus retains some facial tics from her Seinfeld days, by the time Enough Said rolls into its final reels, there's no mistaking Eva for Elaine. The maternal compassion and hesitant romantic longing that the actress finds, without going overboard, is a delight to watch. For such a simple set up, Enough Said pulls its leading lady in a surprising number of directions. Individually they may seem plain, but the combination that Holofcener and Louis-Dreyfus come up with here somehow feels fresh.
More subdued, though just as enjoyable, is Mr. Gandolfini, in one of his last roles. While his untimely passing is tragic, he could still be alive, and his portrayal of Albert would be no less delightful. A self-professed slob, Albert remains good at heart. In situations where Tony Soprano would have lost his cool and started throwing punches, Albert keeps a level head and internalizes his feelings of anger and disappointment. It culminates in one of the film's best scenes, that also happens to be one of the few dramatic ones in the entire 90 minute run time.
And even though Enough Said is broader than Holofcener's previous work, it still has her keen ability to use character-based comedy to touch on deeper emotional truths. She mines the realm of middle-aged romantic foibles for comedy and tear-jerking drama with remarkable dexterity. The humor may not be quite as successful, but it still builds effectively to several beautifully human scenes. While these moments aren't exactly enough to make Enough Said more than a good film, they further demonstrate Holofcener's gifts as an observational humorist and storyteller. Even when working at a gentler, more accessible level, the writer/director remains one of the most consistent voices among indie filmmakers, which bodes well for her future. As small as Enough Said is, it's still something of a miniature triumph for how thoroughly it fulfills its own small-scale ambitions. That's something that even personalities as disparate as Elaine and Tony Soprano could agree about.
Grade: B
