Maps to the Stars (2014)

Film: Maps to the Stars (2014)
Stars: Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, John Cusack, Robert Pattinson, Olivia Williams, Sarah Gadon, Evan Bird
Director: David Cronenberg
Oscar History: While it's bizarre release schedule stopped it from gaining any Oscar traction, Moore did snag a Golden Globe nod for the film.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I have always been fascinated by the way that film handles the concept of celebrity.  Whether it's a movie like The Bling Ring, where it's being glamorized at the same time it's being skewered or whether it's like Maps to the Stars, where the manufactured glamour is barely concealed behind a veneer of ugliness, I find it voyeuristic and fantastic to watch what happens when Hollywood turns the unfiltered lens on itself.  We get a lot of juice and really some great monologues in Maps to the Stars, however the film itself isn't quite sharp enough and isn't scripted quite well enough to deliver on what some of the actors were promising in terms of excellence and game performances.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film's chief problem lies in having too many things to do.  The movie opens pretty abruptly on Agatha (Wasikowska) and Jerome (Pattinson), one a woman from Florida coming to Los Angeles after striking up a Twitter friendship with Carrie Fisher (which feels made up until the film bizarrely reveals it's true, making you wonder if you're just one clever DM from palling around with an A-lister) and the other a chauffeur who looks too beautiful to be driving around Hollywood who dreams of being an actor (which feels like it may be true for almost every young chauffeur in Los Angeles).  From there we end up introduced to a truly heinous teen star Benjie (Bird) who is plotting a comeback after a stint in rehab, his manager/producer mother (Williams), his self-help guru father (Cusack) and the film's best creation, a washed-up but still widely-known actress named Havana Segrand (Moore), a woman who is attempting to play a role in a film remake of her enormously famous mother's, and constantly feels haunted by her ghost.

The character of Havana Segrand almost makes the movie move into the good column by itself, as Moore is marvelous and the character is so delicious.  Havana is clearly someone who knows how the game is played in Hollywood-she's been an actress for years, but wants to strike up a comeback in a major way after her career and life seems to be in the toilet, and all the while she's haunted by her beautiful mother, who comes across as a Mommie Dearest meets Natalie Wood sort of figure from her past (she's played by Sarah Gadon, who still feels about two seconds away from being a major star, doesn't she?) and you spend a good chunk of the movie wondering who Moore has in mind when she's playing the character (is it Carrie Fisher, who makes a cameo appearance in the film, or Liza Minnelli or Tatum O'Neal or...the list goes on and on but you can see the fun here).  The thing about Moore's Havana is, though, that she comes across as completely scenery-chewing but extremely believable, and there's still enough glamour and intrigue there that you get why everyone who comes across her is mildly obsessed with her, even if she feels like a washed-out shell of a former star.  It's a fascinating performance, and one that I'm glad I caught (and the Globes noticed as well, even if that may have just been from Moore fever last year).

The rest of the cast kind of pales in comparison.  It's not like anyone is particularly bad, but Cronenberg makes the rest of the film come across as a bad Brett Easton Ellis novel.  The film doesn't really know what to do with all of the other characters, particularly Cusack and Williams as parents who are both destroying their child's life as well as essentially just trying to cling to money and fame, but it doesn't quite work.  Evan Bird's Benjie is a truly horrible human being, but you don't quite get enough of the public persona or the personal draw to understand how he became a star in the first-place, and there's not enough of a focus on the way that publicists manufacture an image to make that leap.  Mia Wasikowska is bizarre as a schizophrenic who is actually the long-lost daughter of Cusack and Williams (who tried to kill Benjie when she was younger), but this is part of a third act twist that doesn't really work except for the bizarre image of Julianne Moore being beaten to death by Wasikowska with a Genie Award (in one of those "only in Hollywood" twists, both Moore and Wasikowska were nominated for the modern-day equivalent of the Genie Award for this movie).  And Robert Pattinson's job is literally just to be pretty, so he more than meets the requirements but considering what his ex-love Kristen Stewart was able to accomplish this past year in Clouds of Sils Maria, he has to be wishing that there'd been more of a challenge in this role.

All being said, Maps to the Stars fails in my estimation, but it's a fascinating failure and one where, if you like unconventional cinema, you might want to give it a look (and if you're a Julianne Moore fan, you need to rent it immediately).  If you've seen the picture, please join in in the comments as I'd be intrigued about other people's takes as it's surely an interesting picture.

Crimson Peak (2015)

Film: Crimson Peak (2015)
Stars: Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Charlie Hunnam, Jim Beaver
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

The films of Guillermo del Toro are ones that I generally like more in theory than in practice.  My first encounter with one of his movies was a doozy, the brilliant and excellent Pan's Labyrinth, still one of my favorite movies from the mid-Aughts.  However, everything after that for some reason hasn't really clicked.  I didn't like Pacific Rim except for the Charlie Hunnam-exploitation, and the Hellboy movies left me a bit cold and uninspired.  His films are visual feats, especially in the ways that he crushes on his favorite color of red, but the substance is almost always lacking and the story is thin.  The movies rely upon rather predictable plots, which shows in this handsomely-executed and occasionally amusingly-acted piece that still is utterly predictable and lacks some of the scares you'd hope for from a horror movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Edith Cushing (Wasikowska), a young woman of a considerable fortune in the turn of the 20th Century who wishes to become the next Mary Shelley, writing stories about ghosts when publishers demand she consider romance instead.  She is pursued initially by a handsome doctor Alan McMichael (Hunnam), but instead falls for the charming but enigmatic Sir Thomas Sharpe (Hiddleston), who woos her away after her father's untimely death to be his wife, living alongside his harsh and domineering sister Lucille (Chastain).  As the film progresses, Edith becomes sick and is haunted by the spirits of women who died violent deaths in the house, all the while realizing that her husband and his sister are involved in an incestuous relationship and are slowly poisoning her.

The film's predictability is really one of its major downfalls.  The thing is that in an era where we are trained to expect a twist (M. Night Shyamalan has left his mark in that regard), the film's straight-forwardness is in some ways refreshing.  We don't need to have a random dead main character to make this film stand out.  However, the film feels almost like it drags as a result of the lack of suspense.  The initial idea about Thomas and Lucille (that they're an incestuous brother-and-sister pair of fortune-seekers) is actually what happens, which causes the film to be kind of dull.  Horror movies rely upon surprises and the occasional shock death to keep their films moving, but Crimson Peak has no surprises-what you see is what you get, and as a result we never get the sense that Edith is in any real danger.  The film's ending results in her running away with Alan and ending up fleeing the mansion, while a dead Lucille becomes the new ghostly lady-of-the-house.  This is exactly what you'd have expected upon the first trailer, and the film doesn't have enough oomph to really sell such a predictable premise.

This is a problem not of anyone really involved, but because the film feels more like a series of portions rather than a cohesive vision.  The actors are all good, particularly Chastain as the creepy Agnes Moorehead-style sister, and the set decoration/costumes are divine to behold.  The effects are appropriately gory (someone's been watching The Knick), and the eyes get a series of truly great images, particularly the house with the roof that won't mend.  However, nothing seems to fit together.  Each scene feels more like a vignette rather than something that makes sense with the previous moment.  We never get a reason, for example why everyone seems to marvel at Edith, who has man flaunting after her despite her bookish disposition and nose-turned-up attitude.  We also don't get why Edith didn't scoop up Alan right away considering her need for her father's favor and the fact that Alan is a sweet, nice guy who also happens to be a brick house.  The entire story, in fact, surrounding Thomas and his allure evades me.  Hiddleston is appropriately attractive and we do get to see some male nudity as he constantly promised on Graham Norton, but his character is kind of a wimp and it's hard to see what his appeal to Lucille is, considering she's the sharper and stronger player in the relationship.  With a lack of suspense in the film, these loopholes start to make more sense and the movie, which feels plucked from a mystery novel of the time, can't quite modernize the tale enough to translate well to the cinema.

That being said, I'm going with three stars here because it's still interesting even if it's not particularly great.  It's the sort of film that if it looks appealing, you won't leave without having enjoyed what you saw, and if you aren't interested, there's nothing to surprise.  This isn't Pan's Labyrinth, a film that would convert new del Toro patrons, but it's not a movie that will alienate the current fanbase.  Like Quentin Tarantino in a lot of ways, del Toro seems to be stuck in his own shadow and hype, but he's still good enough to not make totally narcissistic work (quite yet).

Those were my thoughts on Crimson Peak, what are yours?  Did anyone love the film or hate it (it evaded a meh from me except for some acting and visuals)?  What do you think are its Oscar chances?  And what do you want to see next from Guillermo del Toro?

OVP: Defiance (2008)

Film: Defiance (2008)
Stars: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell, George MacKay, Alexa Davalos, Mark Feuerstein, Mia Wasikowska
Director: Edward Zwick
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Not all important subjects mean we get important movies, I think is a lesson we learn nearly every single year at the cinema.  Each year there's a number of films, some where critics are in on the joke (The Monuments Men) some where they sadly aren't (The Imitation Game) where a big, serious topic is brought to screen with absolutely no life in it.  We get neutered versions of real-life human beings and only a smattering of story about a person who deserved better.  This was surely true for the Bielski brothers, a band of four men that lived in a forest in Belarus during World War II, saving hundreds of Jews from the concentration camps.  What should have been a dramatic and fascinating look at survival instead became a cookie cutter, hyper-masculine, and boring movie that lacks any sort of style or individual stamp.

(Spoilers Ahead, though this is real life so, you know, you should know the spoilers) The film, as I stated above, is about the Bielski brothers, a group of men whose parents are killed by the Germans during World War II.  The four brothers vow revenge and head into the forest, where they are joined increasingly by a number of Jewish refugees.  The eldest brother Tuvia (Craig) finds himself at odds with his younger brother Zus (Schreiber), as Zus wants to take a more militant approach to the Germans and to surrounding farms (willing to kill for food), while Tuvia doesn't like the risk.  Zus eventually abandons them to join a Russian military group while Tuvia fights it out in the forest.  After a rough winter, the two are reconnected when the Germans are attacking (it's one of those "all is lost" moments where the cavalry comes charging in like we're in an old John Ford western).  The film ends with stories of what happened to the brothers after the war.

The story is pretty paint-by-numbers even if living it clearly was a harrowing experience.  I don't know why we didn't get more into the behind-the-scenes of the camp style sequences as a result.  We see little outside of the brothers, who are obviously in a weird position of power in the camp as they are the ones making most decisions and who frequently are on the military frontline (they're also the movie stars, so we know that they won't be dying, at least not until the end of the film).  I would have loved to have learned more about, say Mark Feuerstein's intellectual and what he thought of the warring brothers, or about any of the women (there's a recurring commentary about "forest brides" that becomes a little hippie commune that would have been fascinating to learn more about).  Women in this film, it's worth noting are treated particularly appallingly by the screenwriters.  Basically the only women that remotely get any interest from the writers or director are women that might sleep with one of the brothers.  I don't blame the women for wanting to sleep with them (Jamie Bell, y'all!), but this sort of derivative treatment of women is appalling.  It might be the 1940's in the movie, but it's 21st Century when you're making it.  Try and tell a bit of these women's stories that doesn't involve wanting one of the Bielski brothers.

The performances are not great, it's also worth noting.  I'm starting to realize that I don't really like Liev Schreiber as an actor.  His accent is thick and fine, but the rest of the performance is too calculated, constantly trying to "be in the moment" of a scene without creating the moment, and his character becomes too easy to spot in terms of anger and not letting the script (which is great) do its job.  Craig isn't much better.  I generally like his James Bond, but he finds no shading in his main character.  Jamie Bell is the actor I like the most of these three, and occasionally it feels like he might be doing something interesting (balancing hormones, anger, resentment, and two brothers with completely opposite world views, he might be the most promising character), but the script abandons him after his wedding to a then-unknown Mia Wasikowska, and we're left with the huffing of Craig and Schreiber instead.

The film received one Oscar nomination, which was for Best Score, and while I get it and James Newton Howard is an Academy favorite, of course, I think they could have tried harder.  There's nothing iconic here-this could easily be any number of other Newton Howard scores, and while it's very pretty, you should expect more than just pretty from an Oscar-nominated score.

Overall I left bored and felt bad that this is probably the definitive story of the Bielskis.  What were your thoughts on this movie?  Were you like me and wanting more?  Do you also find yourself wondering how directors can turn exciting stories into boring ones?  Which Bielski brother/actor is your favorite?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Stoker (2013)

Film: Stoker (2013)
Stars: Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, Nicole Kidman, Dermot Mulroney, Jacki Weaver
Director: Park Chan-wook
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Nicole Kidman remains one of the most vitally interesting movie stars on the planet.  After she won her Oscar for The Hours, most people dismissed her in light of the creative misfires of Bewitched and The Stepford Wives, but the reality is that she has subsequently created some truly mesmerizing movies on-screen, frequently working with creative auteurs and totally deserving a second Oscar along the way.  She adds to every film that she's in, and is always a reason to seek out a movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) And she can add to a film that is itself a completely hot mess, which unfortunately Stoker is.  I saw the movie Saturday, the first English-language film directed by Park Chan-wook (whose Oldboy I had...complicated feelings for), and written by Wentworth Miller (yes, THAT Wentworth Miller), was a bitter disappointment after some truly creepy set-up and some great looking trailers.  The film is about a girl named India (Wasikowska) who has lost her father and is forced to live with her mother Evelyn (Kidman) and her previously unknown Uncle Charlie (Goode).

The film surely knows how to put in a solid set-up.  You see Uncle Charlie cleverly try to seduce Evelyn (successfully, as the film continues), while stifling all of the voices of reasons surrounding her.  There's a terrific scene about halfway through the movie where Jacki Weaver, playing a great aunt to India, has the good sense to go to a different hotel in town, all the while being tracked down by Charlie, who has great hollowness in his eyes as he kills her.  The scene is marvelously acted by Weaver (who adds marvelous moments to a very brief on-screen role), and is the sort of crisp, enigmatic we-learn-more-but-in-the-process-less-film acts I have encountered in a while.

Unfortunately, the movie cannot sustain this momentum, and the most obvious answers to the movie (that Uncle Charlie killed India's father and that he did it out of jealousy of his happy life) are in fact the correct ones.  No amount of theme-altering music and wide-eyed stares from Goode and Wasikowska are going to make me believe that India is going to shoot her mother instead of her uncle in the end, and the ending seems to not jive with the character onscreen.  India spends the final moments before she becomes her uncle on the road, murdering at will, killing a state trooper who had interviewed her earlier.  This is a moment that doesn't quite jive with the rest of her character, and left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Overall, the plot in the second half cost the movie a lot of points with me, but so did a few of the performances.  Goode is perfectly cast in theory, and again, the first half of the film works with him.  He's so handsome that you want to give him a metaphorical inch to see what he does with it, even if he might use it to murder you (there's a scene late in the movie where Kidman's Evelyn is caught between knowing he will kill her and potentially having sex with him, and she chooses the latter, and Goode's intense magnetism makes you believe that most people would have done the same in that situation).  He's not a particularly strong actor, though, so when he has to actually do something other than allure, I found him to be a bit out-of-his-league, and as the serial killer at the center of a mystery, that's an unforgivable blow to a movie.

Wasikowska, is a strong actor, but doesn't seem to know what to do with this film.  She was so good as a stoic, broken-down Jane Eyre a few years ago, but cannot do the same with India-she's too old in real life to appear so naive in the film, and her heightened senses trait adds nothing to the actual film (again-the script was not taut in the final thirty minutes).  She also is not a strong choice for a woman who is playing both a wallflower and a femme fatale.  She has the look down right for femme fatale when she needs it, but she doesn't have the confidence quite yet, and becomes too sheltered in her wallflower period of the movie, meaning both ends of the spectrum come across as hokey.  The entire film I was wondering where the girl who was so terrific in Jane Eyre was, and while I will continue to seek her out in the future, I am a little bit nervous that she may have just landed one truly great performance and cannot replicate it (we'll see-I'm hoping to hit Tracks in the coming weeks).

That said, Kidman is magnetic as her dragon mother.  This so easily could have descended into Joan Crawford-level camp, but Kidman keeps that just out of reach.  You slowly begin to have hatred for her, but never quite enough to push us into rooting for India-Evelyn's shallow, egotistical, and not a good person, but India appears to have made no efforts through the years to get to know her mother, and perhaps Evelyn is the only redeemable person on the screen.  It's a tricky tight-wire act to follow, and it takes an actress as principled as Kidman to keep it in-line.

Still, though, that's not enough to recommend this picture, which I don't, but perhaps you do?  If you're a fan of the movie, let me know why in the comments.  And wonder what sort of movie this would have been if we'd seen it from Kidman's or Jacki Weaver's eyes (I think it could have been more interesting, personally).

Lawless (2012)

Film: Lawless (2012)
Stars: Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jason Clarke, Guy Pearce, Mia Wasikowska, Jessica Chastain, Gary Oldman
Director: John Hillcoat
Oscar History: None
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Lawless opens on a young boy trying to muster the courage to shoot a pig, while being egged on by his brothers.  It's a scene we've witnessed before, and the sort of trope that you feel comfortable setting into as a movie starts-establishing the "good" brother and the "wild" brother and inevitably the "other" brother (poor, not quite as famous Jason Clarke-give it time, buddy).  And yet, it's something that should be harkened back to, something that we should watch evolve.  Lawless, unfortunately, never really finds that evolution, and falls quite flat despite the best of intentions.  Let's examine them, shall we?

(Spoiler alerts throughout-and big ones too) The film follows three brothers (Hardy, Clarke, and LaBeouf) as they watch their Prohibition-era moonshining business become disrupted when a special agent (Guy Pearce) decides to disrupt and take control of the business, much to the chagrin of the three brothers.  What ensues is a bloody mess-as the brothers, who are thought to be invincible, fight back, and then brutally watch as the twisted special agent inflicts his own brand of sadistic retribution on them.  Amongst other things in the "peak-your-through-your-eyes" moments that we are subjected to are a literal tar-and-feathering, Tom Hardy's neck being slit open, and Pearce breaking the neck of a handicapped boy named Cricket.  It's a rough, red-stained mess, and probably the best parts of the movie lie in those moments, as they're the most jarring, as the film desperately hopes to be The Wild Bunch.  Unfortunately, with The Wild Bunch, you didn't have weak links in the cast, and with Lawless, you have two big ones.

The first, and most obvious, is LaBeouf.  It's becoming harder and harder to be able to reconcile the on-screen affability that LaBeouf occasionally brings (his best performance may have been his childhood role in Even Stevens, a forgettable Disney Channel series that he brought intense amounts of goofy charm to) with the juvenile (I have a word related to a Summer's Eve product I'd rather use and is probably more on-the-nose, but I'm going to refrain to keep it classy-that Loretta Young post is watching) attitude he brings to the table in his public persona.  But even if we can discard it (and again, like Lindsay Lohan and Mel Gibson, you can't hold them off forever Shia, so you should best remember that), LaBeouf is most comfortable as an everyman or a comedic sidekick, not as a dramatic lead.  His story arch is laid right out in front of him to seize, but he just can't pull it off.  While it's believable that he'd be angry, at no point does it seem like he can ever measure up to his two brothers, particularly Hardy, and quite frankly it seems impossible that he could compete with Pearce's lunatic of a district attorney.  He gets a strong scene partner in Mia Wasikowska, who finds the the fun in their relationship and adds "strong banter with lesser costars" to her growing list of acting skills, but that's not enough.  LaBeouf's attempts at crying, at mustering anger, at trying to be a man rather than a boy-on-the-way-to-becoming-a-man (in this regard, he is not helped by the fact that he still looks like he should be pledging at a frat), seem more like a reality television star who has landed a film contract than of an actor who has worked with Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, and soon Lars von Trier of all people, and looks all the more sophomoric compared with the likes of Chastain, Hardy, and Oldman sharing the screen with him.  While he's clearly a box office draw at this point, he seems to be on borrowed time at this point as a marquee pull unless he can find someway to have chops when not aided by metamorphosizing robots.

The other weak point, and probably a little less obvious, is Pearce.  I haven't read any reviews of his work to see if some critics have praised his dark and OCD villain, but I found him at the highly overwrought end of the scenery-chewing scale.  Pearce's character, admittedly, doesn't get the opportunities that LaBeouf's does to establish a "why" behind his particular tics and hatreds, but that doesn't mean that Pearce's loud, wildly nonsensical movements and flares make any sense in the context of the film-what causes him to be the way he is, why does he have so much hatred-where is all of that coming from?  We get no sense of that from his character, and therefore his over-the-top antics seem more disjointed than anything else.

With the two principle characters on the "jeer" list, it's hard to save the film, but that doesn't mean that there aren't parts to cheer for (this isn't a one-star film).  The rustic, strong music (courtesy of Willie Nelson and Nick Cave, who also wrote the filmn) sets a rousing pace that recalls Cave's genius work in Assassination of Jesse James (a film somewhat similar in tone, but not in quality, as Jesse James is near perfection).  Gary Oldman, who is inexplicably in just a few scenes and has a character that largely goes nowhere, is a winking, delicious force that you can't help but love and which you wish the film would find more room for.  Jessica Chastain proves once again why she's the next big actress as she plays the mysterious Maggie, a woman drawn to bad men, and who has a past that is hinted at, but never really investigated.  And at the top of the pile is Hardy, a grunting caveman of a different time-he's Charles Bronson's Harmonica in the country roads of Virginia, a man of few words but many actions.  I know it's a true story (based on the novel The Wettest County in the World, and why the hell didn't they go with that title instead of the hopelessly forgettable Lawless?), but a lot of artistic license focused around those three characters, and you've got yourself a solid movie.  As it is, though, you're simply left leaving the theater, wanting much, much more.

What about you-did you have a strong reaction to the film, and was it inline with me or did you see the fun gangster flick that I apparently missed (based on the Rotten Tomatoes score, someone out there must have liked it)?  Do you also wish that Shia LaBeouf would stick to goofball comedies and leave the dramatic acting to the Jessica Chastains and Tom Hardys who can handle it?  Don't you wish they'd gone with the original film's title?  And if you didn't see Lawless, what else did you catch this lovely Labor Day weekend?