Pre-Summer Catch Up

It's been a couple months since I've written a review, so I decided to cobble together some capsule reviews of films I saw during that period:

The Secret World of Arrietty (Hiromosa Yonebayhashi) ***1/2

Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli has produced some fascinating animated tales including Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and two standout features Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. However the last two Miyazaki outings were incredibly disappointing. I found Howl's Moving Castle to be tedious and Ponyo to be overly cute. The Secret World of Arrietty finds the studio back to form in Hiromasa Yonebayashi's directing debut. The story about tiny people called Borrowers who fend for survival amongst normal sized humans captures the perfect balance between cutesiness and despair. It also contains a winning main character and some excellent voice work (especially from Amy Poehler). I look forward to more work from Yonebayashi.

Rampart (Oren Moverman) **

Woody Harrelson stars as corrupt LAPD cop Dave Brown, whose aggressive tactics start to catch up to him in the wake of the citywide Rampart scandal. Harrelson is well cast here and gives a memorable performance as a thoroughly detestable human being, but beyond that there is very little to admire here. Moverman doesn't seem to have anything interesting to say beyond the central character study and instead invests every scene with an overabundance of style that only serves to distract from, rather than enhance Harrelson's central performance. Harreslon's visit to a nightclub is one of my least favorite film sequences of the year.

Project X (Nima Nourizadeh) *1/2

A complete mess of a film that either doesn't know what it wants to be or just miserably fails at it. It follows a group of teenagers planning a huge birthday party for their friend, hoping that it will be such a big event that it increases their popularity. The film is shot in the noxious found footage format, which already completely destroyed a film with much better material this year (Chronicle) and it fares no better here. The format is intended to make the viewer feel like they are at the party, but all it actually does is trap us with the incredibly unlikeable main characters, who are supposed to be underdogs but generate no sympathy whatsoever. At this point, I think I might hate the found footage format even more than 3D.

John Carter (Andrew Stanton) ***

This big budget spectacle adapted from a series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs is now known as a notorious bomb for Disney ($250 mill budget, $70 mill domestic gross), but it doesn't deserve such a negative reputation. On it's merits, the film is a fun sci-fi/action yarn with an appealing lead performance from Friday Night Lights vet Taylor Kitsch. Director Andrew Stanton isn't nearly as successful in making the transition from Pixar to live action as his fellow Pixar cohort Brad Bird was with the wonderful Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, but he does a good enough job establishing a strong central hero and capably creating exciting action set pieces.

Friends With Kids (Jennifer Westfeldt) ***1/2

11 years earlier, Jennifer Westfeldt completely blew me away with Kissing Jessica Stein, a romantic comedy about a neurotic woman who pursues a lesbian relationship. It wonderfully captured that Woody Allen feel that Allen himself hadn't captured in a long time and contains a controversial ending that I fervently defend to this day. She's drifted from project to project since then with varying degrees of success, but this is the closest she's come to replicating that wonderful film. Friends With Kids is about a couple of close friends (Westfeldt and Adam Scott) who watch as their friends' relationships deteriorate due to the combined pressures of marriage and parenthood. They decide to skip the pressures of a normal couple and raise a child as friends. At first glance, the premise sounds like high concept Hollywood nonsense, but the mature way Westfeldt handles the material shows she's actually interested in exploring the subject for more than a simple device. She's aided by a terrific ensemble cast (Kristen Wiig, Jon Hamm, Chris O'Dowd, and Maya Rudolph all reunite from Bridesmaids) and her own heartfelt central performance. Hell, she even manages to coax a decent performance out of Megan Fox.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (Lasse Hallstrom) **1/2

Here we have a movie with about 10 billion problems and yet it almost works solely due to one person: Emily Blunt. And it's not necessarily her performance (it's fine), but how she looks. Rarely has an actress looked as luminous as Blunt does here. Director Lasse Hallstrom and his Cinematographer Terry Stacey are clearly in love with her and seemingly chose their entire visual strategy on filming her in the best light possible. The story itself, about an incredibly wealthy Sheik who wants to introduce salmon fishing in his home country is too slight and tonally inconsistent (see: Kristin Scott Thomas' funny, but out of place press secretary who seems to have wandered in from In the Loop). However, the central romance between Blunt and Ewan McGregor is appealing enough to make this a pleasant, if not memorable film.

The Hunger Games (Gary Ross) ***1/2

I don't often read novels before the film adaptation comes out and I generally like a movie much less if I do, but this is an exception in both cases. It's a rare case where Hollywood completely nails the casting as every single choice worked out incredibly well, especially Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss. The Hunger Games is a difficult concept to translate to film as it had to somehow walk the tightrope between decrying violence without also making it seem exciting, something that is much easier to do on page than on screen. However, director Gary Ross does an excellent job navigating this concept. There are thrilling moments, but they are properly placed in the context of will Katniss survive. The scenes where she battles others are shot in a shaky cam format where it is a bit disorienting and often difficult to tell what is going on (the final fight scene above the cornucopia being a great example). This nicely undercuts the "excitement" of such scenes and makes them appropriately uncomfortable to watch. Katniss doesn't win the Hunger Games. She survives them. Gary Ross understands that concept and does a great job of translating it to the film.

The Five Year Engagement (Nicholas Stoller) ***

Director Nicholas Stoller and Writer-star Jason Segel reunite from the wonderful lowbrow romantic comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall and deliver a solid, if somewhat disappointing followup. The film follows a a happy couple who get engaged, but find many complications that keep pushing back their wedding. Segel and co-star Emily Blunt have a very nice chemistry together, helping the romantic part work very well. However, the film lacks dynamic supporting characters (such as Russell Brand's Aldous Snow), which were a hallmark of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and other similar films produced by Judd Apatow. There is a solid supporting cast including Chris Pratt, Alison Brie, Rhyhs Ifans, Mindy Kaling, Kevin Hart, and many others but none of them are given strong material to work with. Thus the film isn't quite as funny as those other films, but there are enough amusing moments and an appealing central momence to make this a satisfying venture.

The Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard) ***1/2

There's nothing new about a horror film that takes a knowing, satirical look at the genre. Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven got us started in 1996 with Scream. Ever since then, there have been plenty of postmodern horror films that have analyzed the genre in their own way. However, none have managed to find the right combination of incisive satire and genuine thrills as Drew Goddard and co-writer Joss Whedon have done in The Cabin in the Woods. It's hard to write much more than that without giving too much away, because this is a film filled with wonderful surprises. I will say the central conceit is very clever with some funny and disturbing moments and the finale is brilliantly inventive fun.