FRANKENWEENIE, THE PAPERBOY, SISTER

Frankenweenie is the full length version of director Tim Burton’s short film called, astonishingly enough, Frankenweenie.  The 87 minute version is written by Leonard Ripps and directed by the aforesaid Burton.  Like the short film, the story here is your basic boy meets dog, boy loses dog, boy gets dog, but with a Mary Shelley twist.  Victor, a young boy in high school (who for some odd reason starts out as a filmmaker and then suddenly switches a third of the way through to become a scientific genius, a standard trope in Hollywood these days, I guess), figures out a way to bring his pet dog Sparky back to life after it is hit and killed by a car.  While this version is not boring and is enjoyable enough, I can’t bring myself to say it’s much more than that.  The short was clever and refreshing.  The full length feels a bit padded and bloated, filled with some extra monsters created the same way Victor brings Sparky back to life, but with no real explanation as to why they turn out so differently than Sparky does (other than that the story needed padding).  The strongest aspects of the movie are some beautiful miniatures (Rick Heinrichs, Tim Browning and Alexandra Walker did the production design and art direction) of an Andy Griffith like home town filled with Leave it to Beaver houses, as well as stark and effective black and white photography that makes you think the story might turn into a duck and cover educational film at any moment (the time period is the ‘50’s).  The city the story takes place in is called New Holland—it’s unclear why since no one is Dutch.  Well, there actually is a reason—it’s to justify the existence of a windmill so the climax can mimic that other movie with Boris Karloff.  In the short, the windmill was located in a miniature golf course—a cleverness this version often lacks.

The Paperboy is a southern melodrama that out Gothics William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor and Tennessee Williams put together (the various fetishes dramatized here read like a typical night out at a German S&M bar with water sports not of the Olympic kind and Black on White bondage and torture).  Though Nicole Kidman is in it, it’s Zac Efron who is sexually exploited here with the writers (Peter Dexter, who also wrote the book the screenplay is based on, and Lee Daniels, who also directs) going out of their way to film him in tighty-whities and shorts (in all fairness, Matthew McConaughey also bares his butt a couple of times, but I suspect that that’s only because it’s a standard clause in his contract).   The movie starts out well, but soon loses its way and finally seems to stop going anywhere.  This may be because it feels as if something is missing at the core of the story.  It’s about two reporters (the aforesaid McConaughey, and David Oyelowo, as a somewhat fey version of Sidney Poitier) investigating the conviction of a man on death row in the home town of McConaughey’s character.  What’s missing is a compelling or convincing reason why they care, or perhaps more importantly, why their paper, and only their paper, cares.  Without this, it’s unclear that anything is at stake and the tension quickly seeps out of the story, with it all becoming a tough swamp to slog through, both literally and figuratively.  No one gives a bad performance, while Kidman and John Cusack (as the weirdo on death row) giving the strongest.  To be honest, McConaughey does push his bit a bit too much, as he is wont to do, but Efron in the title role (he plays McConaughey’s younger brother) is surprisingly good, until he has to really emote; but even then, he does well enough for the circumstances.  In the end, though, the story is never quite believable, especially a Governor’s pardon resulting from a newspaper story based on anonymous sources that is obviously full of lies (hey, it could happen).  The movie might have worked a little better if everybody, including Dexter and Daniels, were having a bit more fun with it (or any fun at all), but no, everyone is deathly serious here.  So, if a ranking would help, when all is said and done, this is no Killer Joe, which in its turn is no The Killer Inside Me.

Sister is the Swiss entry in the Academy Award foreign language film category.  Written by Antoine Jaccoud, Gilles Taurand and the director Ursula Meier, it’s a very solid and at times moving character study of Simon, a young teenager who goes to a resort in the nearby mountains and steals equipment and skis and sells them to make money to support himself and his sister.   Simon is played by Kacey Mottet Klein, who handles the role as capably as his character steals.  You may not approve of what he does, but you have to admire his lack of self pity, his self reliance and his Trump-like entrepreneurship.   The story grows in strength once the big reveal is, well, revealed, and matters get far more complicated, both emotionally and practically.  There are strong guest turns by Sweet Sixteen/Red Road’s Martin Compson and The X-Files Gillian Anderson.  The somewhat downbeat subject matter ends on a glimmer of hope, slim as it may be.

PRECIOUS AND VICIOUS ARE THE MOMENTS WE TOO CAN SHARE: Reviews of Precious and The Vicious Kind

There’s probably no point in my reviewing Precious: Based on the novel Push by Sapphire because I probably have little to add to what’s already been said (though that has never stopped me before, just ask my friends). It’s exhilarating and exciting, powerful and powerfully moving, etc., etc., with a screenplay by Geoffrey Fletcher that gets its point across without looking like that’s all it’s doing. It’s not nearly the downer one would think from what the previews and what the circumstances the central character Precious finds herself in would suggest. The reason this is surprisingly uplifting is probably for two reasons: the quirky direction by Lee Daniels who uses all sorts of fun, non-realistic methods to tell his story (sort of like Woody Allen in Annie Hall, an odd comparison, but for me, still apt). And for a reason that is probably the movie’s main fault: the almost unbelievable, if not totally unbelievable, resilience shown by Precious, who no matter what horror is thrown in her direction, is not defeated, but finds a way to rise up against it, to get up the next morning determined to make a better life for herself, when in reality, most people in her circumstances would have been hopelessly destroyed long before. Gabourey Sadibe seems like one of those found actors, someone who is cast because they aren’t an actor, and her performance lands somewhere in between: not totally amateurish, but not totally professional. She hits just the right note to make her character and the movie work and she has that one heartbreaking scene where she begs her teacher (played by Paula Patton) not to lie to her when she says that no one loves her. Of course, the acting stand out is Mo’Nique as Precious’s monstrous mother Mary. She has an incredible scene at the end where she confronts Precious and Precious’s social worker (played by a deglamorized Mariah Carey) and explains why she is the way she is. What is remarkable about this speech (kudos to Fletcher for this) is that just when you think you are going to feel empathy for Mary, Mary keeps going in her defense. She goes so far, that any feelings of empathy suddenly turn to outrage and horror as you realize just how much of a monster Mary really is. It’s a lovely film (again an odd choice of words, but still for me, apt).

The main reason to see The Vicious Kind is for Adam Scott’s performance. Scott is one of our more underrated actors, perhaps a bit too quirky in looks to make it as a traditional lead, so is relegated to playing character parts like this (it’s a difficult job, but, hey, someone’s got to do it and thank God for actors like Scott who can). Here he plays Caleb, a man almost totally defined by anger, anger against his father, anger against women (his misogyny almost knows no bounds), anger fueled by his inability to sleep or even relax. The basic plot is that Caleb gives his brother Peter (Alex Frost) and Peter’s knew girlfriend Emma (Brittany Snow) a ride home from college for Thanksgiving which will be held at his and Peter’s father 's (J.K. Simmons), though Caleb himself won’t be attending because he and his father have been angry and haven’t spoken ever since Caleb’s mother died years earlier. Caleb thinks that Emma, like all women, is a slut and will do nothing but hurt Alex, so he tries to sabotage their relationship by coming on to Emma himself and the two end up having sex. Beyond Adam’s performance, which holds the movie together and gives it the interest it does, I was never convinced by much of the story. The reason for Adam’s misogyny and hatred toward his father was not strong enough for me and seemed more a construct of the author (director Lee Toland Krieger). Emma also seems a construct of the author; she never really seems to have a character herself and her reason for falling for Caleb doesn’t seem to be because her character would, but because that’s just the way women are, always falling for the bad boy rather than the good one. This is one of those movies where relationships are defined by who can give the female character an orgasm (and true to form, guess who that is, the bad boy filled with anger and unresolved issues or the good one who is really in love with her—if you can’t answer this, you need to get out to the movies more or at least watch a little more television). It’s well shot and looks grainily realistic and it does hold interest. Krieger obviously has talent, but this movie seemed to get away from him a little bit.