Oz the Great and Powerful

What a World, What a World;
or
There is no Baum in Gilead

Any movie attempting to resuscitate L. Frank Baum's "Oz" books has to deal with the series' own Wicked Witch of the West—that being M-G-M's musical version The Wizard of Oz, which had Judy Garland in it, and set the bar very high as far as expectations go (for quality that is, whereas for the box-office TWoO was not a box-office success at the time of its release and only became a classic after a couple decades worth of Thanksgiving showings on network TV).  Walter Murch's attempt to take an OZ story back to its roots, 1986's Disney's Return to Oz, was an abysmal failure, although artistically it was a terrific show--but probably butted heads with too many memories for its own goodness as, for instance, the Lion, Tin Man, and Scarecrow were not vaudevillians in theater-suits, as was the 1939 version, but looked more in line with the book's illustrations.

Sam Raimi, he of larkey horror films and the Tobey Maguire Spidermen, is probably a very good choice for doing an OZ film, as he has equal qualities of sweetness and sour, where Tim Burton (the next usual suspect*) would have made the film travel heavier to the morose.  Raimi's Disney's Oz the Great and Powerful (as convoluted and punctuationally challenged a title if ever, oh ever, there was one) manages to be its own thing while bowing and occasionally scraping to the previous' yellow brick road (which is revealed, as an aside, to have potholes, which nicely sums up the movie's respect, and lack thereof).  A prequel, kinda sorta to The Wizard of Oz, it starts out in a black and white box-square format (with a special effect detail amusingly violating it here and there) on a sound-staged Kansas that creepily recalls the musical version.  There scam-magician Oscar Diggs (James Franco) is conning rubes and comely assistants alike, and taking advantage of his stage-assistant, Frank (Zach Braff).  He's a jerk, only revealed to better purposes when a lost love (Michelle Williams) comes to visit to tell him she's going to marry farmer John Gale (father of Dorothy, making her mother of), and he takes the higher road, telling her she chose the better man.

But his past catches up with him...or tries to...and his road goes even higher, escaping a vengeful cuckolded circus strong-man in a helium balloon.  Kansas being Kansas, he is caught up in a tornado—one that presumably opens up a rip in the space-time continuum through some sort of meteorological consequence, and winds up in the storied land of Oz, where, true to movie-form, everything turns to color and the screen expands to wide-screen proportions.

The pattern is set—Diggs is an outsider, a stranger in a strange land, but enough of a roué that any sense of wonder he initially feels is soon replaced by annoyance (Franco is great at that).  Oh, it's nice to have a minor seduction with the first female he stumbles on, Theodora (Mila Kunis), but the flying monkeys (in the form of Finley, voiced by Braff), and the girl who comes from hummle beginnings, the fragile porcelain girl (who comes from the neighboring land of Chinatown and voiced by Joey King), but before long he's embroiled in Oz's matriarchal politics between witches Theodora and her evil sister Evanora (Rachel Weisz), who are lording it over the Emerald City, and the witch Glinda (Williams again), who is protecting the provinces from the influence of the Big Bad City.  This troika of females all think that Oscar will bring some sort of balance to Oz, and despite himself, he's got enough answers to help Finely and China, who become devotees.  Evanora is the first to see Oscar and think "there goes the neighborhood," and the plot and the make-up thickens in a battle royale between the various forces of magic, Evanora and Theodora in the Emerald City, and Glinda and Oscar and her army of tinkers, winkies and munchkins.  Tinkers and winkies and munchkins.  Oh my.

As Donald Rumsfeld said, you fight with the army you got.

And just to show this isn't Gramma's OZ (or Louis B. Mayer's) when we get welcomed to Munchkinland this time, and the town's welcome wagoneers start into a bouncey little song with high, tight voices (provided by composer Danny Elfman), Diggs just calls the whole thing off: "Stop!  Stop it!"  Musical numbers are not tolerated in this more cynical fantasyland.  Nor is anything approaching the good-heartedness of Baum or Fleming.  Even Glinda the Good Witch turns out to be something of a bad-ass here, far badder than in the '39 version.  And that's just a little backwards because the original has an empowered little girl who saves the day, while in this one it's a man, a messiah, who must sort things out in the messy rule of a matriarchy.  

This is progress?

The movie ends with some fantasy-nastiness.  Glinda is captured, tortured, and made to grovel before the sisters, Oscar comes to the rescue with his own Earth-bound pyrotechnics, similar to what he's use in the future.  But the movie feels very much like a movie of today—things end not with a splash of water, but a lot of impressive fireworks.  You want something a little meatier, though, something that might last and impress longer, but given the Oz that will come post-prequel, there's really nothing much to do about it.  The great and powerful Oz is merely a humbug, the man behind the curtain.  The evil sisters will remain evil, although Evanora's fashion sense (especially regards hosiery) will take a serious hit.  And Oscar will become a patriarch based on big promises with nothing much to back it up.  Sounds like any politician, really.  This Oz is not so magical, not so great and not so powerful.  What it needs is more brains, more heart and more courage.

Disney's Oz the Great and Powerful is a Rental.

Yellow Brick Road?  Check.  Emerald City? Check.  Dark Forest?  Check.
Now we just needs brains, a heart and courage.

Oz, the Great and Powerful is available on DVD starting today.

And the original is forever.

 
* Frequently recalled as this film is scored by Burton co-conspirator Danny Elfman.

The Bourne Legacy

Baby, We Were Bourne To Run
Or
Pursued By Our Inner Damons

The "Bourne" series laterals the ball to another player in The Bourne Legacy, the fourth film of the series, which, by now, has nothing to do with the Robert Ludlum books on which they are titularly based (which is fine, as I read the first one decades ago and found it one of the worst reads ever).

When last we left Jason Bourne, he'd jumped into the East River to make a desperate escape from his pursuer/handlers, a nice turnaround from when the series started with him being fished out of the water with no clue as to his identity.  We start there again, but this time, we're Bourne again in another body of water with Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) on a training mission way out in nowhere, Alaska (all the better to see Russia, apparently), while the events of the previous Bourne trilogy play out in the States, sending a panic through the intelligence community and an order to purge the Treadstone Project (or is it Operation Outcome...or Operation Blackbriar...only Tom Clancy could keep track of this...and then he'd start a book-series (ghost-written) on each one!).  Whichever project is being scorched to the Earth, the talents from the previous movies (Scott Glenn, Joan Allen, David Straithairn) are dealing with the ramifications of Bourne's re-appearance, another intelligence head* (Stacy Keach-welcome back, sir) puts another middle-management type (Edward Norton) in charge of damage control (an impossible task in any recent spy film).**

As it becomes readily apparent on Renner's training mission, we didn't know diddly about the Bourne project (whatever name it was), as there are other agents like him, who are not only trained, but drugged to enhance their physical endurance, but also mental faculties (take the green and blue pills, but the yellow one you should really take with water or it gets stuck in your throat, evidently).  Just as Cross is about to rotate stateside, he and another agent get a drone-launched nasty-gram stating unequivocally that the mission is over.

That's how it starts, and goes all over the world, subsequently, even while it doesn't really go anywhere.  Oh, things happen, and things explode and people run around a lot (Rachel Weisz is a really good runner, by the way), but it's mostly just movement without any story momentum.  Most movies have a beginning a middle and an end, but this one is content to merely have a beginning, a middle and a chase.  

Tony Gilroy (who cracked the code for the first film—taking the germ of the idea and stream-lining it into a bare essentials man-on-the-run movie—directed the brilliant Michael Clayton and the disappointing Duplicity, one of those "I-get-the-drift-but-it-doesn't-work" movies) co-wrote this one and directed, employing the same kind of Paul Greengrass "run and shoot" style, but taming it down a bit, so it can be followed, as opposed to experienced in barely discernible flashes.***  It's a risk because the Greengrass adrenaline-fueled style keeps one from asking too many questions about the slowing-down factor of injuries and leaps in story-logic.  All well and good, I suppose, but one still gets the sense that Legacy is half-baked, with the kernel of an idea, some complications to keep things from getting too stale and large holes in the script filled with "a fight breaks out," "a chase happens," and "hero jumps from a fire escape into a window."  These all happened in the previous films, but I'll be damned if I can remember which specific ones—I suspect the answer is: "All of them."  They all blur together as the most memorable things are the action sequences, and there's a remarkable...uh...consistency to them.  The stakes are only the agent's own and most of the film's have very little resolution to them.  Legacy has none.  It just ends.

While one can admire the proficiency with which it is done, there's nothing all that memorable about this one...or the last one.  Even with fresh faces and a new idea of two, it's the same old thing, hardly worth being "Bourne" at all.

The Bourne Legacy is a Rental

  * You know, one could make a case for the excesses of "Big Gov'mint" just by noting the cast of good character actors in the "Bourne" series and all the different intelligence branches and mid-levels.

** Who fixes things in these films-and why haven't the unemployment rates dropped as a result?

*** This helped by a change in the style of Dan Bradley, who seems to have taken a film directing class in the interim, because his second unit direction in the chase sequences actually have some shots that feature relationship perspective going so far as to even including both participants in the chase in the same frame.  That's some kind of break-through after his disastrous work on Quantum of Solace.

The Brothers Bloom

"The Brothers Bloom" (Rian Johnson, 2008) One of those ones that "got away" when I first started LNTAM; I'd wanted to see this in the theaters and it disappeared, like your betting money, so quickly there wasn't a chance.

Johnson had been the enfant terrible behind the enfant terrible noir-film "Brick," (which was a nicely designed but ultimately precious/pretentious conceit—a detective movie set in high school), and there was enough there to anticipate what he was going to do next. The last thing you'd expect would be this reality-twisting con-game movie at equal times ebullient and dark, densely written and skippily edited that tips its hat to the Tarantino era with all its style, but none of its sloppy excesses.

And the other thing: it's a double-love story...about people who can't, don't or won't tell the truth and being able to express that love and make it stick, or accept that love and believe it.

No, no. Don't get worried. It's also a lot of fun, especially in its puppyish wise-acre first hour that moves at such an unsustainable pace of quirk that the second-half doesn't have a chance to match it. That half-way down-shift initially feels like a let-down (and some unfortunate back-story editing robs the movie of some Peckinpavian resonance), but Johnson has to reveal the con at some point and the visceral let-down is inevitable. The motto of the movie (and The Brothers Bloom) is "the perfect con is when everyone gets exactly what they want." Johnson manages to pull that off...and quite brilliantly.

He's got great players to do it with. Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo play the brothers (Brody's Bloom, and Ruffalo's his older brother Stephen), two orphan con-men locked in the game that informs and colors their lives. Their partner in crime is the mostly mute Bang Bang (the clever Rinko Kikuchi), and there's a network of con-men they tap into (but never really trust) including The Curator (Robbie Coltrane) and Diamond Dog (Maximilian Schell)—a lot of Oscars in this cast—but the focus of the last of a series of Last Big Cons is Penelope Stamp (Rachel Weisz) an eccentric millionaire, isolated in her youth by a misdiagnosed allergy (to everything), and with whom Bloom becomes her first true friend. Weisz's peculiar choices in performance nicely buoy Brody's sad-sack (which he has perfected) and both Ruffalo and Kikuchi play off each other and the other actors with a kind of thrilling certainty of the world and their place in it (and ability to change it). Johnson's multi-plane action in frames (especially in the first half) approach the deft timing of a Warner Brothers cartoon.

It's different, breaks the mold, keeps you guessing and stays with you until you make that last jump—that all movies are a con. And the best ones are the ones where people get exactly what they want. Yes.

The Lovely Bones

"My Name is Salmon. Like 'Swimming Upstream.'"

I had a heated movie discussion with a friend about "Mystic River" one evening. "Explain to me why you don't like it," I said, genuinely curious.

For those who haven't seen it (and it is a tough slog), it's Clint Eastwood's film of the Dennis Lehane novel about the death of a hoodlum's daughter and his steps to exact revenge. The object of the hood's scrutiny becomes his childhood friend who was kidnapped by pedophiles as a child, a violent act that has colored his adulthood. Tough stuff, but I have high regard for the film, despite the broad (and Oscar-winning) acting by Sean Penn and Tim Robbins.

But the friend couldn't abide it. "Why?" I kept persisting. And finally it boiled down to "there are some subjects—like the victimization of children—that have no place in movies. Now, I could point out all sorts of films, from "The Wizard of Oz" to "Empire of the Sun," that, unpleasant though they might be at times, convey the theme and are still great films. However, Peter Jackson's film of "The Lovely Bones" had me recalling this conversation, and sympathizing with my friend's attitude.

The award-winning and best-selling novel tells the story of a murder victim—a child of 14—and her experience after death, watching the effects her non-existence has on her family and murderer, as her sense of unfinished business keeps her tied to a "between-place," unwilling to move on, until there is some sense of closure on several fronts, those being her family's efforts to find her killer, her killer's obsession with her and with other family members, the internment of her corpse, and that first kiss with the boy she was falling in love with.

Eh?

Uh...we'll get back to that.

Jackson film differs slightly from the novel (the parents' story is given an upbeat resolution and it's a first kiss, rather than a sexual experience with the boy), but, however much he tries to perfume it, it's still the story of a rotting corpse in a bank-safe. That may sound brutal, but that's what "The Lovely Bones" is, constantly winging back and forth from the girl's conception of heaven (which Jackson conveys as an ever-evolving series of candy-colored landscapes depending on the girl's mood, somewhat reflective of her earthly experiences) and the mordant reality back on terra firma. The lack of satisfying resolutions in some of the cases has a cruel feel to them and, perversely, that may be the only saving grace from the relentlessly oppressive pity-party of "The Lovely Bones"—there is no justice, shit happens and sometimes it happens appropriately in some karmic equation, but it's not the Universe's job to make us feel good by balancing the scales. Jackson provides some lex talionis (at the demand of preview audiences, bless their little Roman hearts), but it's an indifferent cosmos, not a buttoned-up drama, and certainly not a wonderful after-life.

That's the underlying theme of the story, which is creepy and morbid enough, but you throw in Jackson's interpretation and it turns downright cloying. Jackson and his writing collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens make it dreamy and moony in that hormone-addled manner that appeals to young teenage girls (and made the "Twilight" series a phenom') and (lest I be accused of being sexist) not far from the über-romantic manner Francis Ford Coppola filmed his gang story "The Outsiders."* And Jackson is a precise director, one who delves into the details, rather than the over-arching idea. This helps when given a vague impressionistic series of novels like Tolkien's, but it also leads to things like his monstrous 3-hour "King Kong" (Jackson's favorite film is the 1933 version), where the journey to Skull Island is interminable, sequences that flew by in the original drag on and on, and the general deep-love lethargy of the thing drops it like the big ape to the side-walk. "The Lovely Bones" is a series of close-ups, swooping camera moves that graze the edges of things and catch life in clusters and clumps and fussy little details. It has jokey little references to Jackson's other films and a cameo of him that seems indulgent. It's in those little moments that you wonder if the director has forgotten he's making a movie about a girl who's been raped and murdered.

The audience is spared the actual attack (in a spiritual slight-of-hand that sets up the way she can interact with the living that's a wee a bit...convenient), no thanks for small favors. But the creepiest thing about the movie, beyond the trivialization of an After-Life as merely a CGI Disney Channel fantasy (or worse, it reminded me of the land of the Teletubbies), the brutish smugness of its tone, or its moony-goony morbid romanticism is that, of all the characters in the scenario, the one we are given the most information about is the killer. Despite the herculean work of Saoirse Ronan (she was the youngest of the Briony's in "Atonement"**) as Our Girl in Purgatory, Susie Salmon, where the film-maker gets his jollies is showing the planning, the drafting, the intricate handiwork and the general creepiness of the serial killer hiding in plain sight. That he is portrayed by one of the better actors in the cast doesn't help. Mark Wahlberg, who can be quite good, here has the same puppy-earnestness that threatens to turn him into this generation's Steve Guttenberg, Rachel Weisz seems lost and her complicated motivations are lost between edits somewhere. Worst of all is Susan Sarandon as Susie's grandmother, meant to be comic relief, but who is so cluelessly self-centered and destructive, one can't help the stray thought that she had a hand in the killing.

I haven't read the novel, so I can't account for the interest—evidently it is written well, but that doesn't translate to the screen. It shares one unique aspect that Jackson is a bit successful in communicating—the empathetic relationship that victims of the same attacker must feel for each other. It stems from author Alice Sebold's own violent attack, and her learning subsequently that an earlier victim had been killed. Certainly a novel life-experience, and probably too common in these berserk days. But, whatever empathy in the original is ground up in the film-making machinery. Perhaps it shouldn't have been made at all.

The only reason I can think of for the film to exist (outside of the monetary gain of the makers) is as a cautionary tale of warning to gullible teens...and fulsome directors.

"The Lovely Bones" is a Cable-Watcher.

* Coppola filmed two S.E. Hinton "young adult" stories, "The Outsiders" and "Rumble Fish." "The Outsiders," he said, was filmed in the romantic way teenagers would make it, "Rumble Fish" the way he wanted to make it.

** It is a fine performance, and Roran at the time of filming two years ago, still had the awkward duckling look of a developing teen. At the premiere, she looks like she could be a Redgrave.

The Fountain

Tapping a Dry Well

First off, this is the best-sounding film I've heard from 2006, with a subtle, supple sound design that makes great use of the stereo field to direct your attention. Secondly, it's one of the most beautiful--a truly different looking set-bound "green-screen" film that doesn't go for vast (and busy) pixilated papier-mache-feeling vistas ala "Sky Captain" or "The Lord of the Rings." There is a perpetually claustrophobic feel to it, despite the exotic locales that extend from an ancient Mayan temple to "the vast reaches of space."
And yet....one expects great things of a Darren Aronofsky film--not just in the images, but also in the ideas. Both "Pi" and "Requiem for a Dream" were visually and thoughtfully stunning, so one wanders into "The Fountain" expecting to be transported to new places, not only visually and aurally, but within the mind as well.

That's why I found "The Fountain" very disappointing. Though trying to say something profound, it offers up an idea so obvious that it occurs to me only every time I sit down for a meal, and that is: Out of Death comes Life. To make its point, there are three time-lines in the film--the first takes place in the present day as a researcher named Tom studies treatments of brain tumors in a frenzied race to save his wife Izzy's life. He is so bent on finding a cure that he loses all the precious moments he could be sharing with her. She is writing a fanciful book of a Spanish explorer named Tomas (wait, wait...don't get too far ahead yet. I mean, you're right. it's that obvious, but bear with me for a couple more sentences) who invades a Mayan tribe trying to find a fountain of youth (which is actually the sap of a specific tree) for his doomed queen Isobel--the story's a sort of parallel-o-gram to the researcher to wake up and see what he's missing. The next time-line features an older Tom, beneficiary of his research that has found the secret of long life (which involves the bark of a certain South American tree), in space-transit to restore his wife...from a tree... by means of the energy of a star (Xibulba) that figured in the Mayan legend of the explorer...well, everything relates--all the elements fall back on themselves in a self-referential heap.* All the Tom's of the film (portrayed by Hugh Jackman) are after Eternal Life in some form or another for their Queens...but mostly for themselves, while the Isabel/Isobel's (played by Rachel Weisz) know they will never achieve it. It takes him a near-eternity to learn that life is an eternal process (only not individually!) and that death is a necessary ingredient for it. The only original idea in the film is to state that to aspire to immortality is, rather than overcoming death, to deny the process of life and renewal. The idea should be profound, but it comes across as simplistic...and obvious. And dramatically inert. The tag-line for the film is "What If You Could Live Forever?" and the answer appears to be "Then You'd be a Selfish Bastard!"

Still, there is a sense of relief in, for once, seeing a film where death is the inevitable conclusion and you don't start whispering "So DIE already!" underneath your breath (curiously, part of the gorgeous sound-design has the film saying it for you...though not those exact words...frequently through the movie), but it did plant the seed of Elton John's "The Circle of Life" in my head for days for which it must be held accountable. And needless to say, "The Fountain" won't be at the top of the NetFlix list for the Schindler household.

The Fountain" will lose any visual splendor on the small-screen. Make it the cheapest of matinee's.

*"The Fountain" had a troubled production history. Millions of dollars were wasted in the first attempt at it (when it starred *shudder* Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett...hmmm, now, they're in "Babel"). One can only wonder if, when re-started with half its original budget, whole sections of the screen-story that might have given it depth, were ash-canned (I haven't read Aronofsky's graphic novel, which ala Neil Gaiman's "Signal to Noise" might be closer to his original vision) which is a pity. But I don't know. Aronofsky was supposedly inspired to attempt this film by "The Matrix," which is just one more thing that overrated geek-flick needs to answer for.

Fred Claus

Sibling Revelry

I know what you're asking: Is this a Christmas Movie where someone has to SAVE CHRISTMAS and do they?

Short answer: Yes.

Come to think of it, just about every Christmas Movie is about SAVING Christmas. From the Martians, from the Grinch, from Tim Allen, from adults, from the Gubernator, from just about everything, except all the right-wing nutters who really DO think there's a War on Christmas. Excuse me, Xmas.

The "SAVING Christmas" movie is so prevalent, it could be a genre all to itself. As long as you threaten Christmas verbally, physically, psychically or by omission, in the real or fantasy-sense, that's all that's required. How many movies or stop-motion animation specials can you name? Swell, I just came up with dinner-table conversation for this Christmas. And believe me, I looked at this blog's budget, that's all you're getting (I need the lumps of coal to heat the house).

So, in "Fred Claus" it turns out that Clement Moore didn't know a thing about Santa Claus' older, dumber, bitter brother. That's right, the Clauses had another son, who after the birth of little Nicholas, was left parched of his parents' affection. I mean, c'mon, how can you compete against a really cute fat baby whose first words are "Ho Ho?" It doesn't take long before Fred has transitioned from Promising To Be The Best Big Brother In The Whole World to throwing things at the little saint's head.

Fred goes off to the Real World, while Nick becomes an icon with a Factory-town at the North Pole with an indentured population of elves. Guess the North Pole is outside the jurisdiction of fair and best practices law. Anyway, Santa has built up quite the little illegal monopoly up there, plus there's the stress of reading every kid's mail, producing the specifically-requested toys for delivery and then shipping them all in one night on a twelve hour turn-around. Add to that, this year there's an Efficiency Expert (played by Kevin Spacey--when did he stop knowing how to be funny?) prowling around who seems determined to Shut Santa Down, though "Why" and "For Whom" goes unanswered (and the possibilities dance like sugar-plums in my head--China? Wal-Mart?).**

Then, Fred calls out of the blue, wanting to borrow money, and Nick is SUCH a Nicely Overwhelming Holiday Icon that he can't say no. Well, he does attach a rider saying that Fred has to work it off at the North Pole determining who is "NAUGHTY" and who is "NICE" and then condemning the former children to an unhappy Christmas. Despite this, Santa still has the snow-balls to say to his wife "I'm a Saint, sweetheart. Tough love is a little difficult for me!"

Not for me, sweetheart. "Tough" love is the only love this flick will get.

It's all meant to be whimsical, but one walks out wanting to "clock" a bell-ringer. The North Pole seems to have all the charm of a Wal-Mart town, with exactly the same sort of benefit-policy for their work-force. To determine who will be stamped "Naughty" or "Nice" Santa and his pint-sized voyeurs in the "Judgemental" Department have a magic snow-globe that they use to spy on every child's behavior. You think Homeland Security is a threat to privacy--you've never ever thought about peeping Santa. Just the emphasis that Santy sees you when you're sleeping and knows when you're awake (just like the NSA!) is probably not too jolly an idea to bring up during these liberty-crushing times, but "Fred Claus" makes it a key plot-point.

The cast does what it can, in its best "Tim Allen/Chevy Chase-in-overdrive" way, but it all amounts to hanging tinsel on a dead tree. Vaughn pulls off some nicely ad-libbed fast-talk. Paul Giamatti as Santa has a bit more sand to it than you might expect--but you just know the rest of the cast said "Hey, Giamatti's in it--there's gotta be something to this," so you have Rachel Weisz (as "Girl-friend"), Miranda Richardson (as Mrs. Santa), Kathy Bates as "Mom" Claus, all vamping, waiting for the movie to become better. And it doesn't.

Maybe next Christmas, kids.* Maybe instead of saving Christmas, someone should try to save the Christmas Movie.

"Fred Claus" is a cable-watcher, but I have a better time in Mall-traffic.

* Okay, there is one scene that works. Fred decides to go to a support group for "overshadowed" brothers, and among them is Frank Stallone, Roger Clinton, and Billy Baldwin. That scene is genuinely funny, as the 'brothers" gamely mock themselves.

** Doesn't all this turning of childhood fantasy into a corporate metaphor a little creepy? Saving Christmas, Pshaw! How about saving childhood?