Mercurious at the Movies: April 20, 2013

It's rather in vogue to dislike Tom Cruise these days, and indeed there is much reason to roll your eyes when it comes to reviewing his public persona. The apparent arrogance of the man, the role as Scientology puppet, the carefully orchestrated and controlled PR machine....he's not a fellow that earns a lot of accolades for what he's done with his fame.

But when I think carefully about the movies I've seen featuring Tom Cruise, I have to conclude that there is a certain type of big-budget "B" movie (maybe B-plus) that he's really pretty good at.  And in his occasional turns in self-parody, he's also very good. Among the Tom Cruise movies I've thoroughly enjoyed:  Risky Business, Color of Money, Rain Man, Mission Impossible 1, Magnolia, The Last Samauri, Collateral, Mission Impossible III, Tropic Thunder, Rock of Ages.  In fact, when you look at the entire list of 40 or so films, there are really fewer dogs than you might imagine, given the actor is somebody you'd really like to dislike.  I realized that I very often wince when going into a theater showing a Tom Cruise movie, only to emerge a couple hours later to say to myself "not bad," or even "pretty darned good."

To this list I'll now add Oblivion, a very stylish and surprisingly thoughtful dystopian sci-fi film that features great special effects, but used in a manner that remains subordinate to an even more interesting story line. This isn't "Star Wars," for example (films that always frankly bored me  little with their ridiculous cartoon quality), but much more like "Inception" or "2001" in its visual stylishness and conceptual nature.

It's also a very nice homage to some of the very best classic sci-fi of modern times. It has bit of the best aspects of Star Wars effects, as well as traces of the Matrix, Terminator, Star Trek, Close Encounters, and most significantly, 2001, A Space Odyssey. If you are a fan of modern sci fi classics, you will recognize nods to those films in the imagery and directing.

Now, Tom Cruise's ego is such that he will always be "Movie Star ", and is unlikely to find a more socially conscious position in the Hollywood world, like former pretty-boy actors Brad Pitt and George Clooney pulled off. He could never imagine Cruise working with Terrence Malick in a pure art film, for example. Nor can you really imagine Cruise becoming a politically aware humanitarian spokesman like George Clooney or Ben Affleck. He's too self-absorbed for that.  But really, Tom Cruise needs credit where it's due. Oblivion is really quite a good movie, and may be as good a sci-fi thriller as you'll see this year.

Movies by Mercurious: January 3, 2013

This film will be highly polarizing: you will either have your socks blown off by it, or you'll be utterly disgusted. A few people may have both responses (this was true for a geezer friend of mine, who was stunned in a way that nearly caused him to walk out).

Quentin Tarantino tends to elicit this kind extreme reaction in audiences, and Django Unchained is no exception. My own view is that it's an exceptionally fine movie, but lord almighty is it shocking and brutal. I found myself averting my eyes a dozen times, even while I winced and laughed at the over-the-top humor of the thing. 

It's rather hard to discuss the movie without giving a whole lot a way and spoiling it for potential viewers, so instead I'll give some diagnostic questions to help you decide if this movie is appropriate for you:

• You are able to watch movie violence and over-ride your suspension of disbelief in a way that lets you enjoy the pure demonstration of special effects. 

• You can see potential for finding humor in a raid by a KKK lynch mob.

• You enjoyed movies like Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, Seven Psychopaths. 

If you can answer yes to at least two of these, you can probably safely see Django Unchained. 

Tarantino is so invested in shocking normal attitudes that I'm not sure he'll ever get nominated at the Golden Globe or Academy level; but if he does, this might be the movie that does it. Mrs. Mercurious, bless her soul, is great at appreciating the same kind of movies as me, and she liked this one much better than Pulp Fiction—which she loved.   A word of warning, though: it's likely a rare member of the feminine geezer club who can get ride this vehicle—it has the potential for badly sickening the faint of heart.  It might be a move best enjoyed "with the boys."  Not exactly a date movie. 

Django Unchained is blessed with some exceptionally fine supporting roles, so much so that it would be difficult to pick who might get supporting actor nods. Christopher Waltz is, if anything, even better than he was as the Nazi you loved to hate in Inglorious Basterds. Samuel L. Jackson (of Pulp Fiction fame) is also astounding. The biggest treat, though, might be Leonardo DeCaprio, who makes a villainous turn here that is exceptionally fine. There comes a moment where DeCaprio shifts from amiable evil to truly disturbing perversity in a way that will make you rethink Leo's abilities as an actor. Any one of the three is quite worthy of best supporting actor.  

I cannot think of a movie that has stuck in my head quite the way this one has. If you are really willing to challenge your soul, you might do a long double-feature matinee, seeing Spielberg's Lincoln in the early showing, then taking the electroshock treatment of Django late in the day. The close juxtaposition of the two movies will mess you up for weeks.  

These may well be the two best movies of the year, and they ostensibly deal with the same subject matter (slavery) in an historical time period only 10 years or so apart. 

And you will never see two movies that are so good, and yet so unlike one another. 

Django Unchained Geezer Quotient: 96/100

Les Miserable Movie Afternoon: Movies by Mercurious, December 27

Now, it must be said that I'm not a fan of musicals, either on the stage or on screen. So you may want to interpret this review with that knowledge. When The Sound of Music comes onto the tube annually, it is almost physically painful for me to watch it. Recent efforts to tolerate the  Broadway performances of Wicked and Beauty & the Beast performed by excellent touring companies at local stage theaters caused a similar reaction in me.

But there are exceptions to this rule. I was entertained greatly by The Lion King, enough to see the stage play twice; and have been pleased by other stage performances over the years—Camelot, Chorus Line, Cabaret, come to mind. On the screen, I thought Chicago was a lot of fun, and Moulin Rouge was inventive enough that I actually own a Blu-ray copy. I  thought that Rock of Ages was old- fashioned silly fun, much like Bye, Bye Birdie was in its day,  and I admired it for its lack of pretentious self-indulgence.

I had some hopes the Les Miserables might fall into the latter category of tolerable musicals, as the film trailers seemed interesting, and I have some admiration for both Hugh Jackman's range as an action-hero/song-and-dance performer, and young Ann Hathaway's talent. Having never seen a live staging of the play, I attended the film without a lot of preconceived opinions, though I was aware that the Broadway stage play tends to be either adored or loathed.

(As the classic Victor Hugo novel was an all-time favorite for me, after first reading it nearly 40 years ago, the whole idea of turning it into a musical always struck me as rather bizarre. The Nazi gas chambers and the crucifixion of Jesus seem just about as well suited for musical dramatization. I did acknowledge that the potential for Phantom of the Opera silliness was certainly inherent in this play.)

To make a long story short, Les Miz will not enter that short list of good musicals for me. Too long, amateurish lyrics on the bulk of the filler songs, too few really good showcase numbers, a silly alteration of a classic story, all add up to a fairly excruciating Christmas afternoon matinee.

To start with, the film attempted to follow the stage drama too closely, I think, and as a result did not make use of the advantages that film as a medium—to tell story through images rather than words, to imply time symbolically rather than literally, etc. This was the thing the Moulin Rouge and Chicago did so well.

I should not have been surprised, I suppose, that the producers of the film insisted on making the love story the main element of the tale. It was undoubtedly necessary to ensure commercial success, but it also doomed the film artistically.

Those who have read the novel understand that this light love story was not really a central element of the novel.  The Victor Hugo novel I so admire is really mostly about the redemptive power of correct moral choices in circumstances of pain and suffering, a message was sadly diluted by the the dreamy-eyed characters batting their lashes at one another throughout this film adaption.

A peripheral love story is present in the novel, but is quite tangential to the interior moral dilemma within the conflict between  Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert. The novel works on both a psychological level as an examination of personal redemption, and as a sociological comment on class warfare, but traditional romance isn't really a part of it at all. So naturally, the geniuses of American musical theater thought it made great sense to change one of the 10 greatest novels of all time for the benefit of the Entertainment Tonight crowd.

(And if you are going to do something so stupid, I really, really, don't understand why there can't be more genuine poetry in the text of these musicals. Are there really so few talented writers penning for the musical stage these days?  Such text drivel could never get published in obscure academic literary magazines, and it's impossible to understand how big-budget broadway theater can be written so much more poorly than the average Aaron Sorkin television drama.)

In a song near the end of the film (though not close enough to the end), a character speaks of his "pain that will never end.)  I turned to my wife and whispered "Much like this movie," which elicited chuckles from nearby patrons.

Les Miserable could have been great. Wasn't very good. Geezer quotient: 60/100.

Django Unchained awaits for the New Year's movie adventure.

Movies by Mercurious Dec. 23, 2012

I wanted to like The Hobbit. I really, really was hoping it would be fabulous, even while I worried it might disappoint.

And disappoint it did, but not quite as badly as I feared. I hoped that it would be on the same caliber as The Two Towers—the second installment of the LOTR trilogy that was actually considerably better than the Return of the King, the final installment of the original trilogy, which won Peter Jackson the Oscar for Best Picture. 

I feared, on the other hand, that it might be an abomination on the level of Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, one of the most embarrassing, undisciplined, self-indulgent films ever made. There were signs that Jackson was beginning to lose his discipline in the last 45 minutes of Return of the King (holy Lord, has a movie ever taken longer to end?) and his next feature, the King Kong remake; and the The Lovely Bones caused us to fear that he had gone down the Michael Cimino path (who had the astounding The Deer Hunter many years ago, then never produced another good film, ever.) 

The reality is somewhere in between on this one. Visually, the movie is as much fun as LOTR, and in fact from a technical view is even better. There are apparently three different print versions in theaters: a standard digital print, a standard digital 3D version, and a "high-frame-rate" (HFR) 3D version, which was shot at 48 frames per second rather than the more standard 24 frames.

I highly recommend the super-deluxe HFR 3D version, if there is a showing of it near you (there are apparently only 900 or so theaters nationwide equipped to show it; in the Minneapolis area, there were only two). The visual difference is not radical, but still quite noticeable. Much the way digital movie projection was equivalent to the jump from standard definition TV to high-def, HFR is quite a lot like the difference between a VHS video movie and blu-ray.

It's especially startling in 3D, as the kind of artifice you normally spot in 3D movies tends to vanish in HFR, so you really are no longer aware that you're looking at a gimmick of any kind. It also tends to brighten a 3D movie, which is one of the few drawbacks up to now. This technology would have been truly amazing for a film like Scorcese's Hugo. It pretty clearly is something we're going to see a lot more of going forward. 

But back to the film itself. At one point, Guillermo del Toro was slated to direct the Hobbit—a move that would have been very, very interesting. Instead, Peter Jackson returned to direct this, and as a result the techniques are largely the same as in the first trilogy, though many of the special effects are smoother and more convincing. 

But the story, and the characters, are just plain weak. There are no portrayals that really grab you, and the apparent decision to try to extend the single Hobbit book into THREE films means that the pace of the movie languishes quite a lot in the effort to stretch one moderate novel into what likely will be 9 full hours of cinema. We see a lot of the same marvelous sets trotted out again, but there's not a lot that's really ground-breaking, other than the HRF filming technique. 

So go see the movie for the technical innovation, but don't expect an Oscar caliber film. And don't expect to find it on Mercurious' list of best films of 2012. 

Geezer quotient: 70/100

And as an afterthought, there's no real reason to see Barbara Streisand's new movie, The Guilt Trip. Annoying, irritating conversation occasionally broken up by moderately gentle moments. Geezer quotient on this one: 50/100.