Love Actually

Perhaps there is no better way to start a movie than with Bill Nighy singing and strutting about to a terrible cover of the sub-par song "Love Is All Around." Here, Nighy is Billy Mack, an aging rock star who likes to poke fun at his manager (Gregory Fisher) and still engage in naughty activities. Nighy is absolutely terrific in the film. His performance of the character makes him seem like he would fit in perfectly with Mick Jagger and David Bowie. Later on, Mack is asked on a radio show about the best intimate partner (to put it mildly) he was ever with. His response: Britney Spears. But then a chuckle. "No," he says, giggling. "She was rubbish." How can one not smile at his performance (and frankly, much of the movie)?  But during the recording session, Mack asks an important question: "This is shit, isn't it?" Indeed, some have asked the same of Love Actually.

I had always planned on writing about Love Actually after reading that it was celebrating its tenth year anniversary this year. But I wasn't expecting there to be such a fierce debate about the movie. There are a variety of passionate opinions about the it, from the Atlantic, NPR, Jezebel, another one from NPR, Mother Jones. As you can see, there is a considerably vocal faction (but not a majority) of critics and audience members who detest the film and there are many who love Love Actually and forever will. So, the tremendously less influential Chris and the Movies has decided to chime in. And so here it is:

We are introduced to a whole host of characters. Emma Thompson is Karen and is married to Harry (Alan Rickman), who soon starts to lust for his new secretary (Heike Makatsch). Karen is a friend of Daniel (Liam Neeson) whose wife lost her battle to cancer and so is now responsible for raising his stepson (Thomas Sangster). There's another story about Jamie (Colin Firth), a writer whose wife cheated on him with his brother, so he moves to France. Rowan Atkinson appears in a role that was originally meant to be a Christmas angel (it will make it a bit easier to understand his character after understanding that). Then there's a wedding--oh, and the Prime Minister (Hugh Grant). Wait, I forget about the sex scene body doubles (Martin Freeman and Joanna Page). As you can see, "Unnecessarily Complicated Actually" or "You Really Don't Need Twenty Stories All Somehow Related to Each Other Actually" could have been suitable titles. You can try and figure out the labyrinth of connections provided by Wikipedia, but I suspect you won't. Why should you? Many of the characters are interesting; their networks are not.

But that is not the major flaw of the film. Instead, its the annoying shift from adorable, sweet, water-in-the-eye inducing material to the inferior drivel. Consider first Hugh Grant's role as David, the Prime Minister of England. This is the fourth time Grant has worked with director Richard Curtis, and here he's as charming as ever. The chemistry between him and his secretary (Martine McCutcheon) is probably the most charming in the film. We even get a sudden dosage of politics when the U.S. President (Billy Bob Thorton) arrives for bilateral talks with the U.K. Thorton's performance is no doubt meant to be a harsh indictment of recent U.S. presidents, a clear hybrid of Bill Clinton's promiscuity and George W. Bush's bullying cowboy approach to foreign policy. But David stands up--he's not going to be anybody's poodle--and he gives a fairly cheesy speech about how great Great Britain is; the corniness nearly marches that of Michael Douglas' speech in The American President. Later in the night, David is offered a time of private (or so he thinks) self-celebration, and busts out doing a dance to "Jump (for My Love)." Again, how can you not smile?

But then consider the story of Daniel and his stepson. Neeson's scene as a grieving husband at his wife's funeral features a perfect moment of acting; with one stare at the ground, he says more than he could in an entire monologue. Indeed, some of the movie's finest moments bring our attention to emotional appeals. The appeal to fear, to jealousy, to embarrassment; emotions of being miserable and of being wronged are all employed here. But the sympathy I felt for Daniel disappeared as his story becomes a bit strange. Are we really to believe that a young boy is suddenly cured of his sadness over his mother's death due to his terrible crush on the school's coolest girl? And did I really watch Liam Neeson pretend to be Leonardo DiCaprio to his stepson's Kate Winslet in Titanic? But Daniel and son are not alone in the weirdness. There's the note card scene--oh, that awful note card scene. How many creepy guys were inspired to do something like that because of this movie? It is likely the worst scene of its kind since John Cusack stood on a car with a boombox.            

If it seems like this review is disorganized, it's because it's a review of a disorganized film. This is certainly a movie that has about three stories too many. They're all cheesily connected somehow ("the first of its kind!" I am inaccurately told by my friends), and it's a bit too much about love. Does every aspect of love need to be covered here? It is too often a sin of modern-day films (and even great old ones like The Red Shoes) to be unable to sustain a film beyond a second act, and that is particularly true with this one. By the end, it tires. There's too much love.

So I hate this movie. Wait, I hate this movie?  Of course not!  It's Love Actually! For all the eye-rolling it inspires, there are just as many really adorable and enjoyable moments here.  It deserves a legacy more than ten years. True, it will be unable to stand in the hall of greats like It's a Wonderful Life, but it at least earns comparisons to The Shop Around the Corner. Its score by Craig Anderson is just about perfect. You may find it too difficult to suspend your disbelief and actually love it, but a little embracing of the absurd will take you a long way. Especially its touching ending, just before the credits. Just about everyone will love that scene. It's the perfect ending to a fine holiday movie.  Even Billy Mack would like it. 

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

Something wicked this way has finally ended. After a period of ten years and $6.3 billion dollars, one of the world's most successful and well-made franchises has come to a conclusion. Happy I am that despite the trajectory of the recent Harry Potter films becoming less and less interesting with each movie, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" is truly exceptional, the most exciting since the second ("The Chamber of Secrets") and the third ("The Prisoner of Azkaban").

Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends (Rupert Grint as Ron and Emma Watson as Hermione) are still on the run. They have not returned for another year at Hogwarts, their beloved school, now taken over by a new headmaster, Severus Snape (Alan Rickman), the puppet of the Dark Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). There were all sorts of details I should explain but I had forgotten about them from previous films. There's something about a horcrux, whatever the hell that is, that they have to gather and destroy before Voldemort finds them, but he's not really looking for them, or he's waiting, or something. Wasn't there a prisoner of Afghanistan, or somewhere? He was a bad guy, too, right? But then he became good, and all the professors who we thought were good--ah, to hell with it. Who cares? By this point, there's no need for it to be "Harry Potter and the Exposition." Harry and his friends are going to fight Voldemort and the bad guys. That's all you need to know.

This film series has never failed to look terrific. Even if the story lags or becomes too repetitive or crowded, you can still tell that the producers have found the most talented directors, composers, editors, visual effects creators, makeup artists, cinematographers, and costumer designers in town. It looks so good that even though I did not view it in 3-D, I can confidently recommend that (unless you have a bizarre attraction to hurting your eyes, insulting your brain, and lightening your wallet) you can skip viewing it in 3-D. I suppose that one of the faults is that in this film everything is so dark and morbid and depressing that I have to remind myself it's a children's story. The cinematography of John Seale and then Roger Pratt in the earlier films looked quite brighter than the cinematography of Bruno Delbonnel and then Eduardo Serra in the most recent ones. One character's throat is slit, and another falls into a ball of fire. Young girls scream terrible screams. Yes, I understand that in the tradition of Brothers Grimm all children's stories should have some darkness to them, but instead of "Snow White" this film at times becomes "Harry Potter and the All Quiet on the Western Front."

Another disappointment is that yet again, because there's so many characters, some of them just sort of show up and stand there. Helena Bonham Carter just snickers a bit, while Jason Isaacs looks drunk and sleep-deprived (for a reason I'm sure explained at one point). Jim Broadbent's bumbling about in "The Half-Blood Prince" is hardly ever found in this one. But fortunately some characters are given more. Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall takes over the school, and even gets to use a spell she's been aching to give a try. And Rickman as Snape, after practically a cameo in "Part 1," is given better treatment here, allowing him to once again portray everything that is appealing about the character, the pathetic yet sympathetic flawed and deeply ambiguous witch. Finally, Fiennes, as always, looks as if he is having an absolutely terrific time as one of cinema's greatest villains.

The series has been about a school for witchcraft and wizardry, but in reality it has been an actor's studio for its young stars. They--especially Radcliffe, Grint and Watson--have acted with practically every famous British actor working today. By now the list is quite high and certainly impressive: Richard Harris, Michael Gambon, Warwick Davis, Robbie Coltrane, Kenneth Branagh, Maggie Smith, Jim Broadbent, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Brendan Gleeson, Julie Walters, Ralph Fiennes, Helena Bonham Carter, Jason Isaacs, Timothy Spall, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Richard Griffiths, John Hurt, Rhys Ifans, Toby Jones, Julian Glover. And so Radcliffe, Grint and Watson and the others have profited greatly from such education, and I'm sure the world looks forward to their next great performances.

I couldn't help but notice at the midnight showing on opening night/morning that the vast, vast majority of viewers were young people--people my age, some slightly younger and some slightly older. These young people have grown up with these books and movies. It was ten years ago that the very first Harry Potter film was released, about one month after 9/11. I was a freshman in high school then. About two months before the release of this final Harry Potter film, bin Laden was finally killed. If my generation is to be known as the "9/11 Generation" as USA Today called us, then we have known a great deal--the rise of the internet, the return of "Star Wars," social networking, Y2K. Some have called us the Peter Pan generation for obvious reason--a sense of entitlement and stubbornness, youthful idealism, and not growing up (how many of us still live with our parents?). But we in a sense grew up on 9/11. We lived through the day and its aftermath, the Great Recession, global warming and a whole host of other problems. It's nice to be able to escape from all that with films like these Harry Potter movies, perhaps the last film series to consistently capture a sense of wonderment in the escapism of movies.

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Alice in Wonderland

Todd Gilchrist recently wrote an interesting piece about the filmmakers who have influenced Tim Burton. It is not difficult to see the obvious similarities between Burton's work and that of Robert Wiene, Fritz Lang, Roger Corman, Ray Harryhausen, Terrence Fischer and Walt Disney, all mentioned in Gilchrist's article. The homages Burton paid to each of those filmmakers were really simple; obvious to film lover's but not blatant plagiarism. In essence they were appropriate and fitting, and helped to establish a Burton look highly admired.

In his newest film, "Alice in Wonderland," however, there is little of that previously found influence, despite how ripe his material was for it. It is not too inconceivable perhaps to envision what the film would have looked like with Burton's previous ways of making films. There could have been an Expressionism-style set, just as he did with "Batman Returns," or Corman silliness, just as there was in "Beetlejuice." (Wouldn't it have been more enjoyable to see Alan Rickman in a costume, able to project so much of that famous persona of many of his characters with that face, instead of being hidden behind graphics that appeared to have been stolen from a children's show?) There might have been a stop-motion climax of the Jabberwocky instead of hackneyed use of CGI.

Tim Burton has been in good company, with filmmakers like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson salivating over CGI effects. Who can truly blame Burton? With the encouragement and perhaps pressure he must have felt when James Cameron's "Avatar" made so much money all over the world, it was probably much easier to shelve the older ways in favor of a CGI orgy.

In this adaptation, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is pressured to marry a young man she is not interested in the slightest, so she rushes away from. Predictably, she falls down a hole and returns to Wonderland, a place she has completely forgotten. Her old friends (whom she has forgotten) are happy to see her, for the Red Queen has taken things over, and they need a champion to set things right.

On an acting note, Burton has as usual assembled a fine cast who all appropriately fit the parts: Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat, Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar, Christopher Lee as the Jabberwocky, Michael Gough as the Do-Do Bird, Anne Hathaway as the White Queen, Michael Sheen as the White Rabbit, Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, and Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen. Depp is his usual fun to watch. Particularly noteworthy is his approach to the character, and he explained that his inspiration to have the Mad Hatter's hair be orange came from the fact that the term "mad as a hatter" came from mercury poisoning from the hats of the 19th century, though for some reason he's so mad that his accent arbitrarily changes so often that it's maddening, if you will. Bonham Carter, though, really does shine here as the villain. Her head so ingeniously enlarged, and she really has understood how to perfectly combine the silliness and the terror of the character's tantrums. Finally, Lee, who has found his renaissance in the cinema thanks to Burton, has said that he is simply too old to travel to New Zealand if he is asked to return as Saruman in "The Hobbit," though he would like to voice the role of Smaug the dragon. If he does not get his wish, then he would have at least achieved it here as the Jabberwocky, though his voice is heard only briefly.

The sense of imagination I found in the Disney "Alice" and in previous Burton films was mostly missing here. For one, Burton has stated that he never particularly enjoyed the previous adaptations and so this called for a new story. So, in a style similar to "Hook," Alice has forgotten all about Wonderland and must learn about its wonders in new ways. That is fine, theoretically, but as a friend of mine stated, "Alice couldn't remember anything about Wonderland, and dammit, neither could I!"

Another complaint is that Burton has shifted away from his wonderful sets and marvelously simplistic stop-motion effects in favor of these bad CGI effects. By the end of the film, Alice now has a sword (so does the Mad Hatter), and she and the rest of the actors have to do their best to make believe with green screens. And finally, 3-D glasses are not the most comfortable glasses to wear, but sometimes (like in "Coraline") the movie is so good and the 3-D is done so well that it is justifiable. Here, this is not the case. One of the things that really made Burton's previous films work is that the designs of the films really elevated the stories, instead of simply forming a distraction. With "Alice in Wonderland," the latter prevails.

There is a fascinating article in the New York Times by Melanie Bayley called "Algebra in Wonderland." Bayley writes about the mathematical symbolism in Carroll's "Alice" stories. One example is the Queen of Hearts (or Red Queen in this movie) is often keen on ordering an execution by way of ax (a pun, according to Bayley, on the word "axes," the plural of axis of a graph). The point I'd like to make is that Carroll's stories apparently are ripe with symbolism, philosophy, and thought, little of which is evident here.

This does not make the movie awful, and to use the simplistic language of the newer "At the Movies," would say "rent it." But if one is looking for that true sense of wonder and awe found in Burton's previous films, one might be disappointed. To put it another way, hopefully this concludes Burton's trilogy--"Planet of the Apes," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and "Alice in Wonderland"--of films that are not particularly bad but not particularly satisfying either. Though, to be fair, in the time that he made those films, he also made "Big Fish" and "The Corpse Bride," much finer films. I do hope his next tale will be more wonderful. Please, Mr. Burton, please help rid movie-making of this unhealthy addiction. A return to the "Burton look" would help.

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