Tag: Woody Harrelson

Wilson (2017, Craig Johnson)

From the start, Wilson’s got two problems it can’t possibly overcome. First, director Johnson. He’s never got a decent idea. Not with the actors, not with the composition, not with the pacing. He does seem to understand Laura Dern’s far and away the best thing in the movie, but he doesn’t address compensating for her not being around sometimes.

The second problem is lead Woody Harrelson. He’s Wilson, an old curmudgeon who loves his dog. He inserts himself into people’s personal space to ask invasive questions and just generally be a prick because he’s a white guy, so he’s always gotten away with it. Harrelson will have a comeuppance of sorts, but the film never addresses how that comeuppance affects him or how it manifests in the everyday.

Harrelson’s usually okay. He’s never good. He’s not better in the Dern scenes because Dern’s so awesome it carries over. He’s got no great third-act character arc to bring things around for the finale. Just to get it over with: the third act’s a disaster. When Wilson is good—which is before Cheryl Hines shows up as Dern’s sister in an intentionally unlikable stunt cameo—it’s good enough to make up for the clunky first act. Screenwriter Daniel Clowes, adapting his own graphic novel, stumbles through the entire first act, doing narrative pratfalls and showing off how read mediums can have superior structuring. Though Johnson’s direction is also blah.

And Harrelson’s not making it compelling.

The movie starts with Harrelson’s best friend, Brett Gelman, announcing he’s moving away. I was wondering how the movie was going to deal with Harrelson having such an obvious chemistry vacuum with Gelman’s wife, played by Mary Lynn Rajskub. But they disappear, so it doesn’t matter. Harrelson only ever has to do character development with Dern and Isabella Amara. Amara is the daughter Dern gave away for adoption. Further into the second act than it ever should, Wilson becomes about their mutated take on the nuclear family.

All three characters will have profound arcs.

The film will ignore all of them. It will vaguely acknowledge them, though the solution to all of Amara’s problems seem to just be “don’t be goth,” whereas the movie doesn’t ever get specific with Harrelson or Dern’s exact problems. Like, Harrelson’s got some definite problems at a few points in the movie, but they’re taking on his overarching character development arc in the third act, kind of invalidating the second act for the audience. We just sat through this better movie and now the worse movie tells us it was all for naught.

The copout with Amara and Dern can just be chalked up to “the mystery of women.” Trying to explain them would require adjusting the narrative distance to encompass their points of view. Not going to happen in Wilson, even though Johnson seems to be leaning into Harrelson coming off like a serial killer in the first act, stalking his prey.

The other technicals are all just okay—Frederick Elmes’s photography, and Paul Zucker’s editing. Whoever okayed Ethan Tobman’s entire production design concept should have made better decisions. Jon Brion’s music initially seems like it’s going to bring something to the film.

It does not, though no one really brings anything special except Dern, who’s so great when the film lets her be, which isn’t often.

The rest disappoints.

Wag the Dog (1997, Barry Levinson)

Wag the Dog is a relic from the unrevealed world. Though prescient enough to know sexual misconduct isn’t enough to derail a president from either U.S. political party. As an old—who saw it in the theater, probably opening day—it’s hard to imagine how it plays to someone who’s grown up with Republicans spewing lies and hatred and the Democrats spewing different lies and conditional hatred.

There are political parties in Dog, but the film never identifies allegiances. The one time “personal” politics comes up, it seems like the good guys are Republicans (Anne Heche attacks Dustin Hoffman’s liberalism). But she could just be a Democrat too.

Heche is a White House damage control staffer. The President has just been accused of sexual misconduct and brings in image expert Robert De Niro. Heche is his handler and sidekick. Hoffman is the Hollywood producer De Niro hires to create some war media for them to distract from the molester-in-chief.

Dog’s very cynical about the rape allegations. No one cares. Again, prescient but not about everything. It’s still a world without racism—it’s pre-9/11, so the islamophobia is generalized. In fact, the imaginary Muslim fundamentalist terrorists are white. So as a satire of political reality, Dog is profoundly naive.

Luckily, it’s rarely a political satire. Director Levinson and screenwriters Hilary Henkin and David Mamet avoid it as much as possible, putting the more satirical moments on television actually, which the main characters watch and ridicule.

It’s more often a Hollywood satire, with Hoffman always ready with a self-aggrandizing showbiz anecdote. But the film’s success comes from its position as a Hollywood fable. Hoffman is the populist producer—hair modeled on Robert Evans—who finally achieves important something thanks to De Niro. The stakes are higher, though Hoffman takes a while to understand the dangerous waters he’s found himself in. Just because De Niro’s working for the President doesn’t mean everyone in the federal government wants to go to such extremes to protect a sexual predator.

I mean, haha, right? How naive can you get?

The film runs a brisk ninety-seven minutes, with De Niro and Heche leading the film from location to location. Hoffman’s top-billed, the protagonist, but he’s the protagonist because of that arc, not because of his presence. Heche, then De Niro are the driving forces, making De Niro’s performance the most important in the film. He’s got to convey a lot with a very little; heck, he sleeps through the first big brainstorming session, where Hoffman assembles the hitmakers to figure out how to gin up a war with Albania.

Director Levinson’s got a phenomenal crew here. The most impressive technical is Rita Ryack’s costumes. Whether it’s Denis Leary’s outrageous outfits (he’s “Fad King,” who figures out all the licensed goods opportunities) or De Niro’s frumpy but still stylish attire, the costumes do a lot of establishing work in the film. There’s a lot of talking (usually Hoffman talking over people—oh, and Hoffman’s outfits are fantastic too), and there are a lot of characters coming and going; the costumes don’t just help establish, they further inform as scenes play out. Also, while obviously De Niro and Hoffman can act while looking like models in very different early eighties clothes catalogs, the performance Levinson gets out of Leary is incredible. His outfit’s too absurd to be believed (though it just looks like most nineties comic book “realistic” costumes).

Anyway.

Then there’s Stu Linder’s photography. Levinson occasionally does quick emphasis zooms, and the camera’s often mobile, not going for raw, jarring documentary, but closer to cinéma vérité than not. Except Linder shoots with these bright lights, shots’ subjects practically shining, overemphasized. Despite being ostentatious, it immediately becomes one of Dog’s hyper-realisms. Neither De Niro, Hoffman, nor Heche operate in the real world. De Niro can control the national narrative, Hoffman can produce fictional reality in real-time, and Heche thinks her party will take care of her. No one in Wag the Dog’s in touch with reality because it’s not about reality; it’s about an entertaining fantasy world of respectability. The joke in Wag the Dog is they’ve got to subvert accountability because the filmmakers are so naive they think accountability exists.

It also might be hard to grok Dog without at least a passing knowledge of Hollywood trivia, specifically twentieth-century blockbusters. Lots of Bible epic and Jaws references would date the picture if the politics didn’t make it a fantasy.

The casting’s impeccable throughout. Besides the lead trio, everyone else is in an extended cameo. The most important—and successful—is Woody Harrelson, an unlikely soldier who gets wrapped up in the scheme. But Willie Nelson’s got a fun part as Hoffman’s songwriter of choice. Another thing to note about Dog’s unreality—there’s little Black presence in American pop culture. Though it’s also an appropriately white cast for the profoundly callous plot.

Some of the other casts aren’t exactly cameo level, but the parts have limited presence and require the actors to do a lot in a little time. They just happen to be the female assistants to great (white) men. Suzie Plakson’s Hoffman’s assistant, Andrea Martin’s Leary’s. Plakson’s great. Martin’s good but with so much less. Plakson gets a pre-crisis scene to banter with Hoffman, which almost no one gets in the film. Similarly, White House press guy John Michael Higgins is one of those not quite cameos but would be with a different actor. He actually gets the least to do (literally parroting for the main trio), but it works with the constraints.

Kirsten Dunst has a good scene as a young actress. William H. Macy’s got an okay one as a CIA agent. He’s there to give De Niro someone good to act off, not to act himself.

While Hoffman’s the whole show—Levinson sparingly does close-ups of Hoffman, like we’ve got to wait to see him execute this divine performance—De Niro and Heche are excellent too. De Niro’s got his less is more thing going, which leaves Heche to draw him into scenes. She’s the breakout performance in the film; she stays salient amid Hoffman doing a victory marathon and De Niro oscillating from napping to cheering Hoffman on.

The film doesn’t have a lot of time for character development, but there’s a very nice, very tragic friendship for Hoffman and De Niro. They’re star-crossed alter egos.

Wag the Dog’s outstanding. It’d be much more dated if it weren’t for the incredible naïveté. Levinson, Hoffman, De Niro, Heche, Linder, Ryack all do spectacular work. And the Henkin and Mamet script’s fantastic.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021, Andy Serkis)

Venom: Let There Be Carnage is under ninety minutes without the end credits, which is fine. While the third act is a perfectly decent bit of action “gore,” once it’s clear Naomie Harris and Woody Harrelson aren’t going to stop embarrassing themselves, the sooner the movie can end, the better.

Harrelson is the titular Carnage, and Harris is his girlfriend. They grew up together in a home for murderous children—though, twist, it seems most of the people these kids would’ve murdered deserved it, or at least the kids were acting in self-defense—and they took Harris away because she’s got superpowers. She has a Canary cry, a sonic cry, or a “Shriek” (her comic book villain name). When she’s being transported, she tries to escape, so the cop shoots her in the head. Everyone thinks she’s dead, but she’s really carted off to the facility where evil psychiatrist Sian Webber experiments on metahumans. I didn’t think metahumans were a thing in Venom 1, but whatever. They’re just all locked up at Webber’s hospital.

Webber doesn’t get a character name and doesn’t do anything but taunt Harris throughout the film, so it’s hard to have much sympathy. Especially since they’re like torturing the people.

Anyway.

We get all that backstory in the prologue, which has Jack Bandeira playing young Woody Harrelson. In the nineties. When Woody Harrelson was in his thirties. Harris is closer to actual age, but… Carnage asks for some extra suspension of disbelief in the silly movie about the head-eating space aliens who banter with their human hosts. Apparently, they really wanted Harrelson, who I hope got a nice check because his performance is atrocious. The part’s not good either, but there are times where there’s not zero potential. Harrelson and Harris’s parts could’ve been breakthrough roles with better writing, casting, directing, and so on.

The film will occasionally stumble into a Bonnie & Clyde-type tone and then run away from it like director Serkis doesn’t want to try anything at all; no one’s more ashamed of taking Carnage seriously than Serkis. With a better script and a less “realistic” visual tone, it might work as camp. But it’d need better performances. Harris, Harrelson, and cop Stephen Graham would have to go.

Graham’s the cop hounding Tom Hardy. Now, Hardy’s the star, but the story’s entirely about Harrelson and Harris, with Graham having been the one to shoot Harris back when she was a kid in his charge. Graham seems to be suffering from guilt over it, but maybe not. It’s impossible to tell with his acting and the script.

The film sets up Hardy—the human—as a complete doofus who can’t function without the Venom symbiote to take care of him. Hardy voices Venom, too, so large swathes of the film are actually just Hardy talking to himself. It’s fine. He’s slightly better as the symbiote than the human because it’s unbelievable Hardy the human could ever function as an adult with even the scantest responsibilities.

Michelle Williams is back as Hardy’s ex-girlfriend, who both Hardy the human and Venom pine for. But she’s marrying doctor Reid Scott, also back from the first one. Williams and Scott are like Hardy’s square friends. Thanks to Williams being phenomenal and holding the movie up whenever she’s around, it works out really well.

And Hardy’s pretty fun. Much of the dialogue’s bad, and Hardy and Graham are terrible together, but Hardy manages to be energetic while dejected, which is impressive. He always seems too good for the movie. It brings a charm, especially with Williams around.

The direction’s fine, albeit unambitious, rushed, and disinterested. Carnage’s script—credit to Kelly Marcel, from a story by she and Hardy—seems like three episodes of a poorly written cartoon strung together, so, really, anything’s a success.

It’s often silly, sometimes inept, sometimes bad, but usually kind of fun, which isn’t bad given all the constraints. If they could just get a better writer, Venom might be good?

Or at least better more of the time. Because despite some genuinely terrible performances from its actors, Hardy, Hardy, Williams, and even Scott make Carnage an almost all right outing.

Frasier (1993) s06e13 – The Show Where Woody Shows Up

For an obligatory Woody Harrelson finally guest stars on “Frasier” episode, they do all right. There’s a good mix of Harrelson with the regular cast–including some of the regular supporting cast—and there’s a little bit of an unrelated B plot. Station engineer Noel (Patrick Kerr) is trying to woo Peri Gilpin while everyone drops “Star Trek” jokes because he’s a nerd Trekkie. Or Trekker. I think he talks about it (but not on this episode). There’s additional synergy because it’s all Paramount—including directly making a William Shatner joke (but at Kerr’s expense). And it gives the script something to do besides make “Woody is dumb” jokes.

There are a lot of “Woody is dumb” jokes.

Rob Greenberg gets the script credit. Other than not knowing what to do with David Hyde Pierce—he hangs out with Kelsey Grammer and Harrelson for their bar buddy reunion, but since there’s nothing for him and Harrelson to interact on, Hyde Pierce just makes reaction shots to the “Woody is dumb” jokes. At least John Mahoney appears to be enjoying Harrelson doing the schtick. He’s beaming during some of the shots as he watches the energy buzz of Harrelson. Harrelson is genuinely great at playing a lovable buffoon.

Unfortunately, the episode can’t think of anything to do with Peri Gilpin (Harrelson’s happily married, though there could’ve been a fantastic baby bonding thing), so she’s only in it long enough to set up an offscreen gag for Grammer, Kerr, and Edward Hibbert. It’s okay—they all go to karaokeing offscreen, and then Grammer and Harrelson talk about it later, letting the audience imagine Kerr and Hibbert’s performances. There’s a reward for it too, so it does work out. But it’s a bit of a detour.

Because the crux of the plot is Grammer feels like he’s outgrown Harrelson and “Cheers” and wants to ditch him but can’t. Harrelson’s in town for a wedding, which never comes up after the first six minutes, even though it seems like it should. It’s an okay plot—a little meta with the now erudite Grammer unable to pal around with his working-class former regular bartender Harrelson; the writers’ room just gave up—and it’s funny. There are maybe too many of the “Woody is dumb” jokes but not too too many. Enough you remember why Harrelson couldn’t have led a spin-off plus one, but not so many a couple last-minute ones aren’t just fine.

Good direction from Pamela Fryman.

It’s a successful very special guest star episode.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri (2017, Martin McDonagh)

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri needs a lot of passes. On one hand, writer and director McDonagh writes really shallow female characters outside protagonist Frances McDormand (well, part-time protagonist). On the other, he’s got a really shallow way of characterizing racists—they’re literally too dumb to know better. And then he’s got this weird way of writing Black characters, only two of whom exist in the aforementioned town. Given they immediately hit it off romantically, it’s weird they never met each other. There’s a third Black character–played by Clarke Peters—but he’s from out of town. And he’s got a way of getting the crackers in line.

There have got to be TV movies from the eighties and nineties with more depth, but not with the caliber of the cast. McDonagh gets a bunch of great performances out of his cast, who have mostly easy parts. Like Sam Rockwell as the numbskull racist stormtrooper deputy? Rockwell can do it. He can do it well. But it also doesn’t take much, which is why the performances seems less impressive after Caleb Landry Jones is able to run their scenes together. Or Zeljko Ivanek. Or Peter Dinklage. Or Lucas Hedges.

Wait, Hedges doesn’t have a scene with Rockwell, but Hedges is great and would be able to run the scene. Because Rockwell’s a victim of sorts too. His momma—Sandy Martin in an odd performance—raised him bad because she’s a numbskull racist too, what else would happen. And if it weren’t for sheriff Woody Harrelson’s terminal cancer, he might have a chance to teach Rockwell to stop torturing Black people in custody–which is a running “joke” for the first act and a bit of the second. Apparently McDonagh wanted to go for the audience who’d laugh at everyone repeatedly talking about torturing Black people but know it’s wrong. The torturing, not the laughing. His audience is very much the people who want to defend the laughing.

Harrelson gives an incredibly phoned in performance as the sheriff, who’s unable to solve the murder of McDormand’s teenage daughter (a good Kathryn Newton in flashback), so McDormand takes out three billboards drawing attention to that inability. Harrelson’s got the cancer subplot, he’s got the wife and kids subplot (though no one in the film is less important than Harrelson’s wife, Abbie Cornish, whose personality is her Australian accent), he’s too busy for a crime solving subplot.

McDonagh works a compelling enough melodrama—though, again, it’s frequently cringe-y and not just because all the guys are with women twenty years their junior and said women are just dehumanized ditz jokes—through the second act, but then fizzles when he tries to make it about the mystery. And the redemption arcs. So much redemption, so many abandoned characters.

If it were better, it’d be a mess, but McDonagh’s never able to pull it off after his first big twist. He’s only got two; neither are good. But the second one is at least in the finale, where there ought to be a big twist. The other one is where there shouldn’t be one so it draws attention and McDonagh never recovers from it.

Technically good performance from John Hawkes as McDormand’s abusive ex-husband who regularly beats her in front of their kids, which the kids have normalized and turned into a joke. Does Hawkes make the situation believable? No. But he’s good. Samara Weaving’s good as his nineteen year-old girlfriend who apparently supports him on her wages at a petting zoo or something.

Brendan Sexton III has an appropriate cameo, but it’d have worked better if I’d known it was him. Nick Searcy has a good cameo, but his name’s not on the movie because I think it came out he was too racist even for a vaguely edgy production like this one to promote. It’s in the first act when McDonagh’s writing for McDormand is best. Great scene.

Ben Davis’s photography is fine. McDonagh shoots it Panavision and can’t fill the frame, which is a bummer. Carter Burwell’s there to remind you Frances McDormand was in a Coen Brothers movie once so if you watch through half-closed eyes it seems like a Coen riff on a redneck gothic melodrama character piece. Only the movie ditches McDormand and switches to Rockwell in the third act to give it a very literal ending for the people in the audience who weren’t paying enough attention.

Otherwise, McDonagh’s direction is good. He’s very good with the cast. The problem’s his lack of insight.

McDormand’s good enough to carry it too, so when he shifts it to Rockwell, who can’t because it’s a nothing arc, way too little, way too late, Ebbing takes a big third act stumble.

It’s fine, actually. If it had a good finish with all the icky bad asterisks on it, it’d be worse. Once it’s clear McDormand and Rockwell don’t have great parts and Harrelson’s out of it… it’s fine. Just with a bunch of asterisks.

Solo (2018, Ron Howard)

Solo: A Star Wars Story is juvenile, which might be what manages to save it. It’s got nothing but problems—a troubled production (director Howard took over from fired “executive producers” Christopher Miller and Phil Lord and shot seventy-percent of what’s in the film), an uninspired screenplay (by Empire and Jedi screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and his son), the worst Star Wars music since A Day to Celebrate (“courtesy” John Powell), and a hilarious miscast “lead,” Alden Ehrenreich.

Ehrenreich is playing young Han Solo, almost forty years after Harrison Ford originated the part and became a megastar. Howard never directed Ford in anything—they did fight over Shirley Feeney in 1962 Modesto—and maybe it would’ve helped if Howard had any experience with him. But the script is so talky—the Kasdans write Ehrenreich is a cocky jabberer (and I’m not sure they realize with juxtaposing him with whiny Mark Hamill from the original Star Wars is a bad idea)—and Ehrenreich so bland he can’t even figure out how to get his hair to do the acting for him, which means he couldn’t have worked in the seventies, it was never going to work. Solo tries to ignore itself instead of embrace itself and ends up rotting on the vine.

The only performance the film needs to have right and has right is, arguably, Donald Glover, who’s playing Billy Dee Williams playing Lando Calrissian. Glover doesn’t mimic Williams’s mannerisms, but the voice inflections are spot on. And Glover manages to have a sincere subplot. Not in the script, but in his performance.

Miscast or not, Ehrenreich shouldn’t be getting shown up as far as sincerity goes. Especially not after now bad girl ex-girlfriend Emilia Clarke tells Ehrenreich he’s secretly the good guy. If we’re finding out Solo is going to come back and save them at the Death Star, we need to see it. We don’t see it anywhere.

Though Solo’s particularly bad at showing things. Cinematographer Bradford Young is anti-contrast; everything looks a little muddy, a little muted. Whatever Young and Howard thought they were doing with the colored lighting doesn’t work either. Especially not when the movie starts pretending it’s Empire Strikes Back, which leads to some okay spaceship flying shots and some really bad attempts from composer Powell to integrate John Williams music for nostalgia’s sake.

But at least they’re trying something.

And the trying is what “saves” Solo; albeit conditionally.

The movie opens with thirty year-old teenagers Ehrenreich and Clarke growing up in a Star Wars version of Oliver Twist. When they finally get to escape, only Ehrenreich can make it. He’s going to come back for her, he promises.

Fast forward three years and Ehrenreich hooks up with Woody Harrelson’s intergalactic thief crew. It’s Harrelson, Thandiwe Newton, and Jon Favreau voicing the CGI action figure. Harrelson initially seems like he’s having fun and it’s not translating to a good performance. Then it seems like he’s not having fun and it’s still not translating to a good performance. Newton’s okay but she’s got the nagging girlfriend part–Solo goes out of its way to fail Bechdel and its “equality for droids” subplot is problematic and the slavery stuff is icky too. It’s not malicious, just exceptionally thoughtless.

Though, obviously, the whole thing is exceptionally thoughtless. It’s not like there’s some gem of a chase sequence or the big redeeming action set piece.

In not trying, however, Solo manages not to fail. Occasionally. There’s the broad fail of the concept, the broad fail of Ehrenreich, but Glover’s… captivating in his impression or performance or whatever. Clarke’s got a thin part written a piece of fortune cookie paper but she’s sympathetic.

Even if she apparently said no to Star Wars costumes and just wears a dress.

Paul Bettany’s villain isn’t… good but Bettany’s not sleeping through the performance. He’s not Harrelsoning it. And Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s droid activist really does seem to be there for a bunch of White men to laugh at civil rights, but Waller-Bridge’s great. And her comedy timing is better than anyone’s, though she presumably recorded the droid’s voice in post-production and didn’t have to suffer the set.

Solo is bland, long, boring—the first act is particularly dreadful, mostly because Ehrenreich’s so prominent and so disappointing—but it’s also not… predictable. The Kasdans’ script does make a lot of bad narrative decisions but they are decisions. And there are a lot of them. Event-based plotting might be the way I’d have described it as a teenager in an effort to justify liking it.

Plus there’s an Elder God.

Also… and I didn’t manage to work this anecdote in anywhere because I didn’t trend mean enough… Ron Howard? Bringing in the guy who infamously failed with Willow is a choice. Bringing in the guy who caped for Jake Lloyd’s performance in Phantom Menace is a choice.

And none of it even matters: Solo never had a chance. You might be able to recast Harrison Ford, but you can’t recreate Harrison Ford as Han Solo.

Though maybe they should’ve let Donald Glover try.

The Thin Red Line (1998, Terrence Malick)

The Thin Red Line is about fear, beauty, solitude, loneliness. Director Malick’s approach is, frankly, staggering. Thin Red Line is an odd film to talk about because in most ways, it’s my favorite film. One of the great things about a good movie–not even an excellent or an amazing movie, but a good movie (and quite a few bad ones)–is being able to return to it as one matures, learns, comprehends and to appreciate it on additional levels. Returning to Thin Red Line for the first time in many years, I discovered it works in all those ways. Knowing more about film informs it, knowing more about history informs it, knowing more about narrative informs it, knowing more about owls informs it. Film is not static. Film ages with everything else. It grows, it contracts, it makes people laugh at the wrong moment. Malick acknowledges the film’s majesty. He does not give Nick Nolte a big part as a blowhard because he isn’t acknowledging the perfection in that casting choice. He does it because Nolte can do this part and he can make it phenomenal.

So much of the film is about the acting but not the actors. Malick doesn’t let the viewer identify with the characters by actor, rather by emotional impact. The film has frequent–often constant–narration from a variety of characters. I don’t even think the main narrator is ever identified, not for sure, because the viewer is the main narrator. He or she goes through the film as presented, through the fear, through the beauty, the solitude, the loneliness, and comes to this conclusion. To the film’s conclusion.

Or the narrator is just John Dee Smith. Though, if Smith is the narrator, Malick manages to turn the viewer into a Southern boy with an abusive stepfather and bad teeth, because there’s no difference. Malick doesn’t use characters in that manner. Even with Ben Chaplin’s officer turned private, whose entire internal life is about his wife back home, his details aren’t as important as how he reacts with them in frame. Because Thin Red Line isn’t some grand, sweeping melodrama, it’s an intensely focused, intensely personal film, emphasis on the film. Malick’s far more in the Eisenstein school of collision–basically how the presentation of shots and their editing, not necessarily their content, can be used to create emotion in the viewer–than something like David Lean or anyone else. It’s a lyrical assault.

Only Malick is using the content. He’s using the visual content of these beautiful, tropical Eden. He’s using the narrative content of a war movie. He’s using the audial content of the narrators. And he collides them, he separates them, he compares them. Thin Red Line is like going to an island of World War II reenactors and taking acid. And you’re invisible. And everyone looks like a famous person. Malick is speaking directly to the viewer and creating this setting for the viewer’s personal edification.

Malick strips the community out of The Thin Red Line. The way he structures the first act, the way he structures the first half–he’s removing the viewer’s sense of community, sense of stability. It’s far more personal. The poetic narration, separated so much from the characters or the setting, engages with the viewer. Malick is using the narrative content to echo the emotions created by the film’s visuals. Pardon my passive voice.

This sort of tempo isn’t unique to the film or to Malick. It’s the rhythm of good filmmaking. But Malick is playing different music and getting the same emotional beats. He’s got two movies playing side by side, one top of one another, completely transparent. And they’re jointly the film.

Like I said.

Staggering.

Malick gets some phenomenal performances out of his cast. Nolte, Chaplin, top-billed Sean Penn, Elias Koteas, Dash Mihok, John Cusack’s great in his small role. Woody Harrelson too. Though differently.

And then there’s Jim Caviezel. He doesn’t exactly play the film’s lead, but he does play the character who the audience spends the film trying to understand. It’s not clear if Malick thinks Caviezel’s the most interesting guy around; the film’s pretty even between Caviezel, Chaplin and then Nolte and Koteas in the stuff of epical importance. Oh, and then Mihok. He’s got a fairly large part.

But Malick posits he is showing the viewer the world through Caviezel’s character’s perspective. Not his eyes. His perspective (which allows for subplots). And Malick uses that particular perspective with the visual aspects of the film. The narrative level is far looser; Malick’s ability to naturally follow Caviezel around, especially as he inserts himself into the story, is skillful filmmaking. Malick, Caviezel, the other actors, the editors, they do a great job.

The editors are real important for Thin Red Line. Leslie Jones, Saar Klein, Billy Weber. The cuts in the film are sublime. The editors understand Malick’s narrative needs–for example, introducing the characters to the viewer–but also the need to actively force the viewer to make his or her own connections. Thin Red Line has a steep learning curve and unforgiving blind corners.

(Sorry, I needed a good mixed metaphor).

The first time I saw The Thin Red Line, I saw it again immediately following. Opening night. Returning to it over fifteen years later, I’m terrified at the prospective of an immediate rewatch. It’s too much. I like it too much. The Thin Red Line is my Nietzschean abyss. I just can’t too much.

This time watching it–I’d forgotten a lot–I really noticed the change in the weather. The clouds moving across the soldiers. That detail pulled me in. And I can see the film doing it, beckoning me, but it doesn’t matter. Creating something so focused, so controlled, yet so open, so welcoming… it’s just another amazing part of the film and Malick’s filmmaking here.

I also noticed, this time, Caviezel’s character has a Japanese alter ego.

Wonder what I’ll notice next time.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Terrence Malick; screenplay by Malick, based on the novel by James Jones; director of photography, John Toll; edited by Billy Weber, Saar Klein and Leslie Jones; music by Hans Zimmer; production designer, Jack Fisk; produced by Robert Michael Geisler, John Roberdeau and Grant Hill; released by 20th Century Fox.

Starring Sean Penn (First Sgt. Edward Welsh), John Travolta (Barr), James Caviezel (Private Witt), Adrien Brody (Corporal Fife), Elias Koteas (Capt. James Staros), Nick Nolte (Lieut. Col. Gordon Tall), Ben Chaplin (Private Bell), Dash Mihok (Private First Class Doll), Arie Verveen (Private Dale), David Harrod (Corporal Queen), John C. Reilly (Mess Sergeant Storm), John Cusack (Capt. John Gaff), Larry Romano (Private Mazzi), Tim Blake Nelson (Private Tills), Woody Harrelson (Staff Sergeant Keck), George Clooney (Capt. Charles Bosche) and John Savage (McCron).

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Now You See Me (2013, Louis Leterrier), the extended edition

Now You See Me plays a little like Ocean’s Eleven without Steven Soderbergh and a great cast of supporting character actors instead of lead actors doing an ensemble. Except maybe Jesse Eisenberg. He acts like he’s running See Me, even though he’s not in it very much. And his character’s supposed to be acting like he owns it… it kind of works.

Director Leterrier is outstanding at the flash. There’s a flashy car chase, there’s flashy magic acts, there’s flashy this, there’s flashy that–but he’s also capable of doing a nice, quiet character arc for Mark Ruffalo and Mélanie Laurent. They’ve got wonderful chemistry. They play the federal agents (okay, she’s from Interpol but whatever) after Eisenberg and his fellow outlaw magicians (an amusing Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher in the film’s only bad performance and a very appealing Dave Franco). Along the way, they get a little flirty and it’s a nice subplot for the picture, which is very busy with it’s more scripted plotting.

Besides the magicians–and See Me jumps ahead a year from their introduction, so they’re no longer reliable protagonists–there’s the FBI, but also Morgan Freeman as a magician debunker and Michael Caine’s around too as the magician’s wealthy benefactor. Leterrier juggles everything quite well–the film doesn’t even drag until the car chase, almost seventy minutes in, gets a little long in the tooth.

It’s just empty and dumb. An actual smart script, and not a sneaky one, would have helped a lot.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by Louis Leterrier; screenplay by Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin and Edward Ricourt, based on a story by Yakin and Ricourt; directors of photography, Mitchell Amundsen and Larry Fong; edited by Robert Leighton and Vincent Tabaillon; music by Brian Tyler; production designer, Peter Wenham; produced by Bobby Cohen, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci; released by Summit Entertainment.

Starring Mark Ruffalo (Dylan Rhodes), Mélanie Laurent (Alma Dray), Jesse Eisenberg (J. Daniel Atlas), Woody Harrelson (Merritt McKinney), Isla Fisher (Henley Reeves), Dave Franco (Jack Wilder), Morgan Freeman (Thaddeus Bradley), Michael Caine (Arthur Tressler), Michael Kelly (Agent Fuller), Common (Evans), David Warshofsky (Cowan) and José Garcia (Etienne Forcier).

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Seven Psychopaths (2012, Martin McDonough)

One could say a lot about Seven Psychopaths and how McDonough teases the fourth wall to propel the plot. But such a discussion would distract too much from the film. McDonough gleefully avoids profundity with Psychopaths, though he does occasionally find it. At those moments, he allows the briefest pause before continuing with the relentless, savage humor.

McDonough isn’t discreet about these plotting decisions either–he draws attention to them so jokes pay off better. Psychopaths jokes range from situational to phonetical. He takes great advantage of each actor, whether it’s Sam Rockwell (who gets the most to do in the film) or Christopher Walken (who gets the second most, but has the best revelations in his character). The actors fully inhabit their characters, even Woody Harrelson, who has the weakest part.

Of course, the lead’s not Rockwell or Walken (they just carry the movie away with them), it’s Colin Farrell. And Farrell’s playing a screenwriter named Martin–just like McDonough, playing up the pliable fourth wall. Farrell’s job is to provide some stability and his greatest achievement is not getting lost amongst the more dynamic performances. He has an analogue in an underutilized Zeljko Ivanek. Both are playing straight men (Ivanek to Harrelson, Farrell to everyone); both do rather well at it.

Also excellent are Linda Bright Clay and Tom Waits. Look fast for Crispin Glover.

McDonough’s Panavision composition is strong, ably assisted by Ben Davis’s photography. It’s occasionally too crisp.

Psychopaths is an excellently acted, excellently written amusement.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Written and directed by Martin McDonough; director of photography, Ben Davis; edited by Lisa Gunning; music by Carter Burwell; production designer, David Wasco; produced by Graham Broadbent, Peter Czernin and McDonough; released by CBS Films.

Starring Colin Farrell (Marty), Sam Rockwell (Billy), Woody Harrelson (Charlie), Christopher Walken (Hans), Tom Waits (Zachariah), Abbie Cornish (Kaya), Olga Kurylenko (Angela), Linda Bright Clay (Myra), Kevin Corrigan (Dennis), Zeljko Ivanek (Paulo) and Long Nguyen (The Priest).

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Bunraku (2010, Guy Moshe)

Even with the annoying narration from Mike Patton (maybe director Moshe cast him because he’s a big Faith No More fan because Patton doesn’t narrate well), Bunraku is seamless. Moshe’s initial artistic impulse carries through. Things sometimes don’t work—Josh Hartnett’s character is supposed to be a drifter in the Western tradition, but his wardrobe seems more appropriate for film noir. And there are quirks with that character in particular. But Moshe carries them through and doesn’t give up on them.

The film is he and Gackt seeking revenge on the town bad guy, played by Ron Perlman. The film’s a mix of post-apocalyptic, Western, Japanese samurai and… Soviet propaganda films. It’s visually stunning. There’s no sky in Bunraku, just papier-mâché. The outdoor scenes are mesmerizing, even the simple ones, because Moshe creates something so distinct.

But Moshe’s approach isn’t just Western or samurai… Sometimes he embraces the absurdity of the film. With Terrence Blanchard’s fantastic, fluid score going, Bunraku at times seems like an episode of the “Batman” TV show (during the fight scenes), only magnificently choreographed.

The relationship between Hartnett and Gackt works—though it needs a third, whether it’s Woody Harrelson’s bartender mentor, or (in Moshe’s most subtle stroke) Gackt’s cousin, played by Emily Kaiho.

Perlman’s good as the villain, but can’t compete with Kevin McKidd as his vicious subordinate. McKidd transfixes.

While not good, Demi Moore’s not terrible.

Besides that annoying narration, Bunraku is an excellent film. Moshe’s enthusiasm for the film is infectious.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Guy Moshe; screenplay by Moshe, based on a story by Boaz Davidson; director of photography, Juan Ruiz Anchía; edited by Glenn Garland and Zach Staenberg; music by Terrence Blanchard; production designer, Chris Farmer; produced by Ram Bergman, Keith Calder, Nava Levin and Jessica Wu; released by Arc Entertainment.

Starring Josh Hartnett (The Drifter), Gackt (Yoshi), Woody Harrelson (The Bartender), Kevin McKidd (Killer #2), Jordi Mollà (Valentine), Emily Kaiho (Momoko), Sugata Shun (Uncle), Ron Perlman (Nicola) and Demi Moore (Alexandra). Narrated by Mike Patton.

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