A Mighty Heart

Spoiler level: n/a

A Mighty Heart is the story of the death of Daniel Pearl, an American journalist kidnapped and beheaded in Pakistan in 2002. Or rather, A Mighty Heart is the story of Pearl’s pregnant wife, Mariane, who waits for him to return home, and tries to gather information about his situation. It’s a heartbreaking and tragic movie, even if it’s never quite the bracing punch-in-the-gut it so clearly tries to be.

Paul Greengrass’s United 93 was one of the best movies of last year, mostly because it departed from the usual trappings of the tragedy re-creation genre. There were no above-the-line stars, no manipulative music to cue the audience how to feel, and it managed to build suspense, even while the ending was never in doubt. Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center was a lesser accomplishment, despite being the bigger box office draw. It was more conventional, with dramatic close-ups of star Nicolas Cage, glossier cinematography and music, and therefore, I suspect, easier to sit through. A Mighty Heart sort of splits the difference between those two films.

The camera movement in A Mighty Heart recalls Greengrass’s incredibly effective work in United 93, which lent the film an air of immediacy, by borrowing the conventions of documentary filmmaking. His use of hand-held cameras made it feel as though the scenes were not set up and were happening in real time. A Mighty Heart’s director, Michael Winterbottom, uses the same techniques, and it’s nearly as potent here. Most of the film has the feel of a home movie, with the camera struggling to keep up with the action, and not entirely sure what to focus on next. The difference between the two films is in the editing. Winterbottom overuses the Michael Bay style of cutting every four or five seconds, which initially makes the proceedings seem more exciting, but becomes wearying over the course of the running time.

Like World Trade Center, A Mighty Heart is an almost old-fashioned star-driven vehicle, and the movie seems to exist primarily to win awards, rather than to say something new or insightful about its subject. At this film’s center is Angelina Jolie, who these days is more known for her personal life than for her work. In the past, she has not been a very consistent actor, balancing decent performances with absolutely terrible ones (a la Gone in 60 Seconds). But she clearly relished having a role with some true emotional heft, and she does a fine job here, particularly early on, before the “Oscar clip” moments where Winterbottom allows his star to overact. Her Mariane is a beautiful, strong woman, keeping her composure under the worst imaginable circumstances, and trying to stay optimistic, even as evidence mounts that all will not end well. But the camera naturally gravitates to Jolie’s star presence, and after a while, I felt a little queasy that this real-life atrocity has been fashioned so nakedly into an award-coveting showcase.

Much has been made of Jolie’s casting in the role of Mariane – the real Mariane Pearl is a black woman, while Jolie is, well, not. I’m of two minds about this. On one hand, I think the idea of color-blind casting is a good one – find the person who can best perform the role, regardless of their race. On the other hand, as good as Jolie is here, I’m not sure that she performed the role any better than another actor would have. There doesn’t appear to be an overabundance of roles for black women, especially juicy, high-profile ones such as this. It feels a little unfair to me that, since Jolie can have pretty much her pick of roles, she was chosen for this one, while I’m sure that Thandie Newton, say, was never really considered for the role of Lara Croft. It would only be fair if it worked both ways. I’m aware that the real-life Mariane requested Jolie to play her, but there’s always an inherent danger in having your subject be too intimately involved with your production. Mariane Pearl is a journalist, not a filmmaker, and the filmmakers should have decided on the best actor, regardless of her wishes.

The central problem with the movie is that there is not really much to it. By centering the action around Mariane, the film becomes a repetitive series of phone calls and emails. Every morning, she wakes up, calls people, tries calling Daniel’s cell phone, attempts to get information about the people her husband was interviewing, and fills in information on a convoluted chart. Like in Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead, it becomes apparent that we are following the wrong person, while the more interesting story happens elsewhere, out of our sight. I’m not in any way saying this to dismiss the real Mrs. Pearl’s plight; it’s just that there is not enough to this part of her story to credibly fill out a feature-length movie.

Winterbottom attempts to compensate for this monotony by making liberal use of flashbacks. Since Daniel leaves for his ill-fated interview in the first few minutes of the film, we get to know him primarily through these memories and dreams of Mariane. Played by Dan Futterman, Daniel exudes a sort of sexy-nerd charm, and we can see why Mariane is in love with him. He has a disarming, self-effacing demeanor that would seem to make him a good interviewer. I’m certainly no fan of the conventional biopic, but I would like to have seen more of Daniel, though I suppose a movie tracing his last days from his perspective would be almost unbearable to watch.

Winterbottom is a director who likes challenges. He recently filmed the “unfilmable” novel Tristram Shandy by turning it into a mockumentary about the making of the movie. He changed up the “concert film” genre by weaving hardcore sex between musical numbers by Franz Ferdinand and The Dandy Warhols in 9 Songs. So he would seem to be up to the task of making this difficult subject matter into something transcendent, or at least watchable. And he succeeds on some level. He has an eye for uncovering the mundane details of everyday life that make these characters seem real. The crying child. Bottles of half-finished water sitting around. The way Mariane picks up a book about childbirth and puts it down without reading it. Ultimately, though, he gets painted into a corner. We know how, and even when the story will end, and since we don’t see Daniel’s ordeal, there’s nowhere to go and nothing for us to do but wait. And wait.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Spoiler level: Moderate

Someone at Fox deserves a raise. Not the filmmakers behind this terrible movie, of course; they deserve to make Daddy Day Care sequels for the rest of eternity. No, the brilliant minds at work here are the studio marketing department. By focusing their advertising on the rad Silver Surfer, they managed to make this kids movie seem like it might have some adult crossover appeal. Make no mistake, though – Rise of the Silver Surfer is strictly for the young ‘uns.

RotSS cost a reported $125 million, but it resembles nothing so much as one of those failed 80’s “epics” like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe or Captain America. It’s so cheesy and bad, that I think today’s kids will have a soft spot for it when they are older, the way people my age do for 1980’s Flash Gordon. Everything that doesn’t involve the Silver Surfer feels like an elaborate, expensive joke. The cast all seem to realize they’re in a bad movie, and act accordingly (except Jessica Alba, who’s probably trying her best, bless her little heart). Ioan Gruffudd actually turned in a good performance earlier this year in Amazing Grace, so he’s at least capable of acting. But director Tim Story has a magic latter-day-Lucas ability to coax the worst possible performances out of otherwise fine actors.

The writing isn’t doing anybody any favors here, either. This is another one of those stories where the world could conceivably come to an end at any moment, but the heroes can’t stop bickering amongst themselves about some triviality or other. In this case, it’s the wedding of Gruffudd’s stretchy Reed Richards and Alba’s occasionally invisible Sue Storm. The fate of mankind and their marriage ceremony are given about equal weight in this story, and Sue pouts and kicks pebbles every time Reed works on saving the planet instead of, you know, like, working on his vows, or something. She comes off as whiny, annoying, and unreasonable as Mary Jane in the latest Spiderman movie, and that’s no small feat.

Speaking of Spiderman 3, RotSS has the summer’s second stunningly incongruous dance sequence. Johnny Storm, the narcissistic party boy of the bunch, convinces the normally introverted Reed to have a bachelor party at a the city’s hottest PG-rated nightclub. Reed’s a little uptight, but soon he’s spinning girls around, his Stretch Armstrong limbs shooting across the dance floor. In possibly the most embarrassing shot I have ever seen, he twists upwards, grinning to the camera like a psychotic figure skater. The audience bursts out laughing, and, like with so much of this movie, you’re not completely sure if the filmmakers are in on the joke.

Chris Evans as Johnny is definitely in on the joke, though. He has a knack for winking to the audience that recalls Owen Wilson’s early work in The Haunting and Anaconda. They both manage to convince you that they’re cooler than the movie that they’re stuck in, and hey!, why don’t we all just try to get through this thing together? Most of his role involves friendly quarreling with Michael Chiklis’s Ben Grimm, aka The Thing. Johnny acquires the ability to swap powers with whomever he touches, and this leads to some antics where the gang get to walk a mile in each other shoes. Evans’s other notable role is as the male sex symbol of the movie. He does the Ryan Reynolds clown-with-killer-abs thing, and has one scene where the camera basically leers at his wet, naked torso for two minutes. Tim Story? Is that a pseudonym for Victor Salva? Jeepers!

When the Silver Surfer actually shows up, it’s such a relief from all this mindless “comedy,” that we’re willing to forgive the fact that he’s not in the movie very much. He’s an imposing figure – sort of like the T-1000 on a mercury surfboard. He’s voiced by Laurence Fishburne, who seems to have turned into Morpheus over the years. I’m not sure Fishburne was the right choice here, because his line readings and vocal inflections are so indentifiable that they distract from the character. The Surfer’s physical form belongs to Doug Jones, from Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy. Jones, like Andy Serkis, has the ability to infuse his characters with personality, regardless of the special effects that get piled on top of him. It’s a great physical performance, and deserving of a better movie.

The ads try to tiptoe around the fact that the Surfer might not be the villain he seems, though the first time you hear his ennobled Aslan voice, it should be obvious. Andre Braugher, doing that thing he does, is a general who reluctantly teams up with the Four to try stopping the Surfer. This includes some tasteful, off-camera torture, thankfully not endorsed by our heroes. Braugher also enlists the help of Victor Von Doom, the baddie from the first movie. I’ll leave it for you to discover if someone with the last name “Von Doom” has less than noble intentions, but I will say that the actor who portrays him, Julian McMahon, gives the worst performance I have seen in recent memory. His sneering doctor is something straight out of an early CD-ROM Choose Your Own Adventure game.

Picking on a Fantastic Four sequel, though, is kind of like complaining that the bright blue gum you just bought isn’t very good. How good was that bright blue gum capable of being? Secretly, didn’t you buy it expecting it to be the worst gum you’ve ever chewed, and thereby giving you a story to tell your friends? RotSS is a big piece of awful blue gum. Sure, you’ll spit it out. But the flavor lasts and lasts.

Surf’s Up

Spoiler level: Low

The number of animated movies rolling their way into multiplexes has increased exponentially in the past couple of years. What used to be an “event” now seems to occur every other week. The vast majority of these tend to be “talking animal” movies, like Madagascar, Over the Hedge, The Wild, Shark Tale, etc. They usually center around a set of characters who have the same problems and anxieties as the rest of us – they just happen to have fur or gills. These cartoons are bright and colorful, piled high with pop cultural references, and are almost all interchangeable. I can’t remember which sassy talking hippo or neurotic lion belongs to which movie anymore. They’re all kind of a vague famously-voiced blur in my head. So, I’m happy to report that the latest (at least for the next two weeks) talking animal cartoon, Surf’s Up, is actually something different, despite being yet another penguin movie.

Unlike the noxious Happy Feet (the worst Academy Award winner since Renee Zellweger in Cold Mountain, by the way), which tried to squeeze out every last itty-bitty drop of cuteness from its penguins, Surf’s Up plays it (wait for it…) cool. It has some adorable penguins, sure, but you won’t need an insulin shot after seeing it. In fact, for the most part, Surf’s Up downplays the penguin jokes, and really could have centered around almost any animal, so if you’re burnt out on penguins, you can be assured that there’s not really a whole lot of penguinity at the center.

What really sets Surf’s Up apart from the rest of its anthropomorphic kin is its style. It purports to be a documentary following young Cody Maverick as he leaves behind the life of an Antarctic fish stacker/sorter, and follows his dreams to surf competitively in the beach paradise of Pen Gu Island. The more surf documentaries you’ve seen, the more you will enjoy the look and feel of Surf’s Up, with its scratchy “archival” footage, boom mics entering the frame, and various passerby staring and waving at the camera and “crew.” The animators at Sony have taken the idea of those “outtakes” at the end of some Pixar movies, and run with it. You would think it could get old quickly, but surprisingly, the conceit remains funny for the length of the film.

The conventional way of recording voice-overs for these animated movies is to have each actor record the dialog alone in a booth, and paste it all together later. Often, these “co-stars” don’t even meet each other until the press junket right before the release. Surf’s Up bucked this trend by recording several of the actors together, allowing them to play off each other in real time. This pays off tremendously, as the exchanges between the characters feels really naturalistic, which is a necessity for the requirements of a mockumentary.

Cody is voiced by Shia LeBoeuf, who’s having quite a summer, and his voice-over work is great here. He brings exactly the right tone of enthusiasm and awe to Cody, which is a welcome change from the lifeless voice acting in Shrek the Third. Jeff Bridges voices Geek, a beach bum penguin with a secret, and if you’re a fan of The Big Lebowski, you’re going to have some extra fun here. Geek is basically The Dude with flippers, another joke that manages to stay consistently amusing throughout. Cody’s love interest, a lifeguard named Lani, is played by Zooey Deschanel, who is adorable even when you can only hear her. And Jon Heder is Chicken Joe, a Spicoli-esque surfin’ bird, anachronistic even in the context of this wave-riding penguin movie. His is the character the kids will love the most, even if they don’t get the many stoner jokes until they’re older.

In fact, most of Surf’s Up feels like it was made to entertain parents first. Kids don’t know anything about Endless Summer or Fast Times at Ridgemont High. They probably won’t get the Survivor pee-on-the-foot joke. They won’t particularly appreciate the gorgeously rendered waves. But you will, and this makes Surf’s Up a rare non-Pixar animated movie that doesn’t talk down to kids, and will allow them to appreciate it on a different level when they’re older. The Lion King might be the ultimate example of a movie that plays for kids, but has themes that will resonate much more when they’ve aged a little. Surf’s Up is certainly no Lion King; it’s too goofy and slight. But its central message – that no one is infallible and everyone can use a little help sometimes – is a pretty solid one. It’s actually a feel-good movie, the first of the season, and is the best time I’ve had at the movies so far this summer.

Knocked Up

Spoiler level: Moderate

Writer/director/producer Judd Apatow is the Kevin Bacon of comedy. Having been involved with some of the biggest comedy hits of the past few years (Anchorman, Talladega Nights, The 40 Year-Old Virgin), and with seven movies coming up (including August’s Superbad), his connection to the world of comedy is undeniable, and about to become inescapable. He worked on TV’s beloved Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, was a producer on The Larry Sanders Show and Ben Stiller’s sketch-comedy program, and was even Adam Sandler’s roommate, for crying out loud. If there is a new school of comedy, you would be hard-pressed to find one of its pupils that doesn’t link in some way to Apatow.

His latest movie, Knocked Up, may be the Apatow-iest of his work to date. He has rounded up a collection of actors he worked with in the past, including Jason Segal and Martin Starr from Freaks, Jay Baruchel from Undeclared, and Jonah Hill from Virgin. He’s even thrown in cameos from former Apatow players Steve Carell and James Franco. As his leading man, he’s cast Seth Rogen, who would seem to be his muse, having appeared in all of these projects, as well as being Apatow’s sometimes writing and producing partner. Like Christopher Guest and Woody Allen, Apatow has created something of a repertory company, surrounding himself with talent he has enjoyed working with previously. Unfortunately, he also runs the danger of having Knocked Up be too precious, too in-jokey.

And it is, a little bit.

Starr, Segal, Baruchel, and Hill are Rogen’s bong-hitting, porn-watching, job-shirking roommates. There are too many of them for any to really register with us. Starr, so great as nerd-to-end-all-nerds Bill Haverchuck on Freaks, is given nothing to do here but grow an awful beard and get mocked for it. And Hill isn’t even given that, leaving Baruchel’s sweet stoner and Segal’s smooth talker to do most of the “irresponsible friend” heavy lifting. Clearly, Apatow loves these guys, loves these characters, but should have focused on fewer of them, and allowed them to develop more (although I’m sure their outtakes and deleted scenes that will end up on the DVD will be great).

Rogen is, as always, a bracing change from the usual cookie-cutter guys on screen. His Ben is chubby and hairy, but has an innate goodness and humor to him that is attractive, and we can understand when pretty blond TV journalist Alison (Grey’s Anatomy’s Katherine Heigl) takes him home after a night of heavy drinking. The next morning, during a grueling post-coital breakfast, Ben orders a milkshake, tells Alison how he plans to live the next two years on 900 bucks, and they go their separate ways, neither really expecting to see the other again.

That wouldn’t leave much of a movie, though, so six weeks later, Alison discovers she is pregnant. An abortion is barely even thought about, and goes unmentioned by name, which I think is a bit of dishonesty on Apatow’s part. Knocked Up is a film that mostly tries to be as realistic as possible, and to not acknowledge that these apparently liberal characters would probably at least consider the option makes this movie seem more conservative than its large doses of casual sex, nudity and profanity would suggest. I realize that the premise is shot if they have an abortion, but Alison’s seemingly overnight decision to have the baby feels more like a requirement of the screenplay than a natural decision.

In any case, the bulk of the film deals with Ben and Alison attempting to see if there could be anything between them romantically, in the months leading up to the birth. Giving them a possible glimpse of their future are Alison’s sister and brother-in-law, played by Apatow’s real-life wife, Leslie Mann, and Paul Rudd (another Friend of Apatow). They argue, criticize, lie, and it’s all just too much. I guess Apatow should be credited with allowing his wife to come off so badly, but her character, Debbie, is truly hateful. She’s the worst kind of caricature of a modern suburban mom – shallow, spiteful, vindictive – and you want Rudd’s character to take the kids and get the hell away from her. Apatow has a keen ear for dialog and eye for character where his shlubby everyday guys are concerned, but he’s a bit of a mess with the ladies. Debbie’s a monster, and even Alison’s job is mostly to react to Ben’s immaturity.

Remember in Wayne’s World when things were going really bad for Wayne (losing his girlfriend, not talking to Garth, etc.), and he was so full of anger and sadness that even the camera started to move away from him? Knocked Up has a middle section like that, but instead of it occupying ten minutes or so, it seems to go on forever, and bogs down the entire movie in the process. It’s a pretty serious miscalculation. Our two main couples have split up, after some really nasty arguments all around, and this is followed by endless conversations about the difficulty of relationships. The boys go to Vegas to eat shrooms and fall in love with each other. Not in any kind of sexual way, of course, but they are obviously more enamored of each other than they are of their women. This trip to Vegas yields some funny bits, but it’s wholly unnecessary, and goes on for far too long. Since the end of the movie is never in any doubt, we sit through these scenes and wait for them to be over, so everyone can go back to being nice again (well, everyone but Debbie). It’s a bit of padding in a movie that could have done with less padding.

If I seem to be overly critical here, I assure you it’s only out of love. Freaks and Geeks may be my favorite TV show, and 40 Year-Old Virgin was one of the best movies of that year, so if I don’t think Knocked Up is quite up to those other triumphs, I don’t mean to suggest that much of it isn’t damned funny. It is, and there are plenty of things to love about it. SNL’s Kristin Wiig is absolutely hilarious as a passive-aggressive TV executive. Ryan Seacrest has a great, self-mocking cameo. The scene with Ben and Alison having pregnant sex is deliriously funny while still managing to feel authentic. Harold Ramis as Ben’s dad is some terrific casting, and the two have some really nicely done father and son conversations.

Like every other movie so far this summer that doesn’t have a talking gingerbread man, Knocked Up is entirely too long, and would have been stronger with a bit of pruning. But I suspect that Apatow’s reluctance to trim too much comes out of his genuine love for these characters, making this a more personal, acceptable indulgence. If someone has to dominate our comedy-viewing lives for the next few years, I guess I’m glad it’s him. I mean, it could be Larry the Cable Guy, say, with seven productions in development.