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Reviews - A Christmas Carol, The Men Who Stare at Goats, The Fourth Kind & The Box
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Going through the motions without any emotion whatsoever, Robert Zemeckis’ take on the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol adds not a single worthy element to the well-known tale, besides a bunch of goofy looking characters and even goofier set pieces. Zemeckis continues to be stuck in his obsession with motion-captured cgi performances (The Polar Express, Beowulf), while letting the narratives get lost in the shuffle. That said, his Carol is far eerier than trailers and advertisements have shown, instead standing as an ill-conceived dark take that isn’t wicked enough to be something new and is too goofy elsewhere to be taken seriously.
Take for example the arrival of Marley, Scrooge’s old business partner. In a grim bedroom, Scrooge sits and shivers as he hears chains dragging closer and closer to his door. The ghostly figure of Marley makes his welcome, warning his old friend of a horrific future and foretelling of the three spirits who will soon come. Amidst the foreboding, Marley’s jaw becomes unhinged, flapping in the wind as he tries to speak. It is an awkward bit of comedy that takes the viewer entirely out of the film, which up until that moment was one of the movie’s few effective scenes.
Zemeckis seems far more interested in playing with his new technology. These toys allow Jim Carrey to play a bevy of roles, including Scrooge at a variety of ages and as all three ghosts. The idea of these figures perhaps representing some trace of Scrooge’s psyche is interesting and entirely ignored. Instead, it allows Carrey - who actually makes an enjoyable curmudgeon - to do a bunch of whacky voices. As the Ghost of Christmas Past, Zemeckis and Carrey create a vaguely candle brought to life, who hisses all the time, sounding like a Scottish Cobra Commander. Christmas Present on the other hand is a gargantuan Santa Jesus, incessantly laughing and grinning. We are meant to taken in by Mr. Present and his warm nature, but you never for a second feel that genuine emotion. Zemeckis tells us that Scrooge is a man coming to terms with how awful he has become, but his big turn in the final act stems from a fear of death rather than any large revelation.
Then there is the general bizarreness of Carol’s animation. The lighting, clothing and settings are all assuredly impressive. The characters though are largely freakish in nature. Colin Firth plays Scrooge’s nephew Fred. The voice and some of the facial mannerisms are there. However, it looks like Firth is donning a fat-suit, with blubbering rubber cheeks and dead-eyes (yes, they have not truly been fixed). Gary Oldman’s Bob Cratchit is even worse, resembling some troll-like creature with vaguely Oldman-esque features. Characters in the background seem to be on a loop, with vacant stares, occasionally clapping along to whatever is taking place. It is a shame that a director who once made such imaginative works as Back to the Future now merely crafts maddeningly dull adaptations of famous works.
A Christmas Carol opens wide all across Seattle today.
Some movies you just know are going to be good. Look at this week’s The Men Who Stare At Goats. It stars George Clooney, who has been on a major roll lately, and also features Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey and the always watchable Jeff Bridges. Grant Heslov is directing, a key figure behind several Clooney projects, most notably a co-writer of Good Night, and Good Luck. The premise, an adaptation of Jon Ronson’s book, is charmingly strange, following a reporter (McGregor) wandering around war-time Iraq learning the secrets of a 1980s military program that was delving into the creation of the first superhero soldier (“We must become the first superpower to develop superpowers”). When the trailer for Goats debuted, it had the makings of a fantastic comedy, with laugh after laugh. Even the poster is amusing, baring a lineup of stoic faces ending with the titular bearded animal who clearly means business. Too bad Goats isn’t just a letdown, it is an outright bore. Didn’t see that coming.
The jokes are repetitive and the characters are achingly one-note. 93 minutes of constant buffoonery, which feels far longer, Goats lacks the wit of recent movies like The Informant! or In the Loop, similar tales of idiots with power. Where those two pictures had oddballs running amok, they remained actual human beings. Heslov’s film is content to sit back and say, “Hey there is George Clooney in a silly wig. And he’s dancing!” All of it is a note off. It looks like it should be funny. In execution though, the laughs are few and very far between.
An annoying narration by McGregor, who still has no clue how to do an American accent, does not help matters. It pops up to say the obvious and then skampers off. Peter Straughan (How to Lose Friends & Alienate People) wrote the screenplay and easily could have lent McGregor’s character a large sense of confusion. Instead of reacting like any reasonable person to the notion of an Army program that was honing “Jedis” (a word you here well over 20 times in the movie), he gets caught up in the sheer wackiness of it all. Yet, he doesn’t go all out in his enthusiasm, remaining in an odd middle ground where he just sits along for the ride, which is a boring place to be and even more boring to watch.
By the time an irrational layer of drama takes hold of the movie, with Clooney’s sad sack looking around and asking, “Do you believe in redemption?” The sloppiness of the comedy has undermined any possibilities of some larger emotional arc. The people on screen are clearly having a grand old time together, living up the motto of “Make love, not war.” Wish they had made a good movie while doing so too.
The Men Who Stare At Goats opens wide all across Seattle today.
Milla Jovovich walks onto the screen as The Fourth Kind begins, stating that she is, well, Milla Jovovich. She goes on to say that what follows is a dramatization of real events centering on a series of disappearances in Nome, Alaska that may have to do with alien abductions. These dramatizations are to be presented alongside “archival footage” from the mysterious happenings. What takes place is other-worldly in nature, complete with shadowy figures, flying saucers and levitating therapy patients. Before all this occurs though, Jovovich plainly proncouces that, “What you believe is yours to decide.”
I decide to call it a bunch of lies, which is different than thinking The Fourth Kind is entertaining. Like a big budget episode of “Unsolved Mysteries,” the film is equal parts ridiculous and intriguing. The “footage” of the actual events, said to be filmed for Jovovich’s character’s records, goes fuzzy whenever something unorthodox (speaking in Samarian, floating off the couch) begins. The dramatization shares a split-screen with the “footage”, however, when the aliens arrive, director Olatunde Osunsanmi sticks strictly to the latter, letting you imagine the horrific madness through the blurs. The move usually works, even if it reminds you how thoroughly average the more cinematic sections are. Osunsanmi presents a film steeped in paranoia and when things are working, the bipolar atmosphere switches from goofiness to creepy.
For many, it will only be the laughable. Those that grew up watching “Sightings” every week and delving into the pages of books about big-eyed, cone-shaped neighbors from another planet will find something to enjoy.
The interesting debate that stems from The Fourth Kind has less to do with its merits than how much leeway you are willing to give it. The film definitely appears to have twisted true tragic events into its own tale. An excellent piece by local writer Brad Brevet goes deep into the history of Nome’s actual cases surrounding missing people. Assuming it is all a hoax, which the film never states but most likely remains, one question lingers; how far is too far when molding real stories into new ones? Are The Fourth Kind’s deviations any worse than those in Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man? In Howard’s picture, he transforms Max Baer, a boxing champion, into a brutal, pompous man who laughs off the fact that he accidentally killed men in the ring. Historically it is known that Baer was devastated by the situation and would never have taunted other athletes with threats to possibly do the same. Yet, Howard wants a more villainous opponent for his hero’s big bout, so that Jim Braddock would not merely overcome poverty, he would also slay a monster. Nonetheless, Cinderella Man remains thoroughly watchable. Should these facts change one’s viewing or are they merely they accepted baggage of any film “based on a true story” or “inspired by real events?” To quote Jovovich, “What you believe is yours to decide.”
The Fourth Kind opens wide all across Seattle today.
Along the lines of this weekend’s The Fourth Kind, The Box will no doubt entrance and be laughed at by audiences. Directed and written by Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) and based on a Richard Matheson short story (also turned into a “The Twilight Zone" episode), The Box is very much a high concept movie. The central conceit of the film makes one curious to see what happens, even if the idea is so bizarre.
The setting is Richmond, Virginia in the late 1970s. Married couple Norma (Cameron Diaz) and Arthur (James Masdren) live a fairly normal life. They both are happy with their jobs. Arthur may even become an astronaut. The two have an intelligent, curious son who they both adore as well. Then, quite suddenly, all the little things in their life begin to turn for the worse. Money woes creep into their life (though oddly, no one ever says anything about selling Arthur’s Corvette) and the two who seemingly had it all begin to fret.
A man named Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) comes to the doorstep. He left a package for the family in the morning and is now back to make them an offer. Norma lets Steward in, despite his frightening appearance; the left side of his face has been burned off by a lightning strike. Steward’s proposal is a simple one. Inside the package is a box, featuring a large red button. If she or her husband pushes the button, one of two things will happen. The first is that someone, who Steward promptly says, “You don’t know” will die. With that push, however, also comes the payment of one million dollars. Norma and Arthur have 24 hours to make a decision.
The premise is ripe for a tense, moralistic tale. Unfortunately, The Box is so uneven in tone, stumbling when it matters most, that one will find themselves increasingly rolling your eyes. There is good here. Marsden is a likeable leading man, able to strike that right level between movie star and Average Joe. His befuddlement over the titular item and struggle to rationalize it is well handled. Even more enjoyable is Langella’s turn as Steward. Especially in the earlier scenes, Langella plays this devilish figure with a calming charm. Not the used-car salesman kind, more like a kindly grandpa. He states “I assure you I’m not a monster, just a man with a job to do.”
The opening half-hour, which basically features the ending of the original television version, is The Box at its best. It is missing one major component though, the morality. Arthur and Norma are so wrapped up in the mystery, they leave the debate over whether or not it is okay to kill a person for a one-minute dinner table talk. Norma’s argues for it with the idea that, “What if it’s a murderer on death row?” Diaz is not bad in The Box but she certainly does not excel. Some of this must come from Kelly’s direction. A prime example is when she first hears Steward’s offer, particularly the, you know, death part. Diaz’s facial reaction resembles that of a person offered stale crackers, not something horrendous.
As Kelly opens up his world, investigating the truth behind the device and why it is so many people suddenly are getting nosebleeds, the movie gets sloppy. Groups of people stalk our leads, presented as ghoulish but feeling simply goofy. Kelly creates a world where the most terrifying thing is random men with weird haircuts and glasses staring like a slack-jawed yokel. Every time the tension builds, Kelly undercuts his film by going too far, leading to inappropriate giggles. This is not a dull movie, just one whose grand ideas gets caught up in the convolution.
The Box opens wide all across Seattle today.
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