Category: Motion Pictures

When one waits too long to write a review, one finds that it isn’t the easiest of things to do, especially when the movie was not particularly earth-shattering.  Which is certainly the case with this one.  This is a marked shift from what one typically expects from the Coen brothers.  It is an exuberant embrace of Golden-Age Hollywood, gliding smoothly through various classic genres over a day in the life of a harried studio executive. There’s Channing Tatum, doing his best Gene Kelly impression as a lonely sailor in a beautifully choreographed dance number.  Then there’s Scarlett Johansson, in a bathing-beauty extravaganza number.  And then there’s George Clooney as the star of a period film, a sword-and-sandal epic that’s meant to be the studio’s year-end prestige picture. The whole thing is called: “Hail, Caesar: A Tale of the Christ.” Ralph Fiennes is the fastidious director.  And finally, there’s Jonah Hill in a small but intriguing role as a lawyer.

This is all a very roundabout way of saying that the individual films within the film work beautifully. It’s the tying them all together that didn’t work out too well.  Josh Brolin stars as a studio fixer who makes his daily confession of nothing terribly earth-shattering to a vaguely annoyed priest.   And as is often the case in the Coen brothers’ films, religion comes into significant play, not only in Brolin’s Catholicism but also in the film-within-the-film, “Hail, Caesar!”, and in the notion that movies provide something to believe in — a sense of guidance and hope.  And finally, from what I can remember, the conclusion — which is decidedly abrupt and unsatisfying — is intended to serve as a contrast to the neatly packaged Hollywood endings that mark the made-up movies in “Hail, Caesar!”

Overall, a somewhat underwhelming and often perplexing set of action sequences that gets all-too confusing at times.  But still, a brilliant cast of actors who make you want to sit up and pay attention.

 

Navigating a Zoo to See Zoolander  

If You’re Looking for Some Laughs, You Check Out ‘Hail, Caesar!’  

To say that it was both emotionally exuberant and exhausting an experience to view this masterpiece of a motion-picture would be an understatement.

If there was a way to convey all of the determination and anguish of a fur tradesman from the nineteenth century in the brutally beautiful mountainous terrain of the American Rockies, it would be with the face of DiCaprio – who does it skillfully with the blazing emotions in his eyes and the grunts and groans he exudes as he pushes his body to superhuman feats. His is truly an amazingly physical performance. The Revenant takes a stark, simple story and stretches it out over two-and-a-half hours of mind-blowing artistry. It is slow and contemplative, staggeringly beautiful, and utterly compelling.  It is excruciating in the voluminous narrative that is unspoken for the better part of the movie – because none is needed.  And it is haunting in the intentionality of its many themes – the most obvious one being that of survival.

But even greater than that obvious theme of survival – that takes the shape of the ordeal endured by DiCaprio’s Glass – the more compelling ones to me were those of loyalty and love.  This was a love-story, plain and simple.  That between a man and a woman, and a father and his son.  One’s will to live is not so much a function of one’s desire to seek revenge, but due to the sweet memory of one’s loved one, and the determination to keep that memory alive for as long as possible.

This is, what is called muscular film-making, I suppose, and there is much muscle – and bone and blood and sinew.  Such imagery is not for the faint-hearted, but how does one then feel the pain of love and loss without any of that?  And while much has been made of the punishing physicality of the shoot in artic-like temperatures – with a digital grizzly bear that looks anything but digital, it is true that the film is gorgeously shot in a most relentlessly violent manner.  Alas, nature watches in gorgeous indifference as the human characters suffer.

If you ask me, this is a genre all to itself, but just to keep it simple, I would endorse this movie to be nominated for and to sweep Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Cinematography this year, next year and the year after that.

So, if chess is the game of life, then a chess-themed story-line has got to be teeming with chess metaphors, no doubt.

Which is what you get with Wazir.  And so, beyond the metaphor-heavy plot, what you have is a reasonably well-told story, only, there’s an inconsistency to the quality of it all: the quality of the convincing story-line, the acting, and everything else in between.  I suppose I ought to disclose here that I have never been big on revenge-themed stories, which is quite possibly the reason for my approach to this review.   But if that is your cup of tea, by all means, I daresay you may find it to be satisfying, perhaps even stellar in parts.

But as for me, I was taken with the early setting-of-the-stage to the story and the fresh young faces that were a good reminder of the talent that Bollywood is bursting with – and especially when viewed in contrast to other established talent from the likes of Mr. Bachchan and Mr. Abraham.

Final thoughts:  not a bad way to spend a Friday evening, but if there’s something else on tap, you’re none the loser if you choose to give it a miss.

Theater 7, Please!