Henry Saw: Monogomy and The Ledge

Two bad movies about relationships (among other things)...


The briefest of reviews for two movies that are barely worth our time-



Monogamy:

Let's let Wikipedia provide us with a plot synopsis:

"Monogamy, directed and co-written by Dana Adam Shapiro, is about the strained relationship of an engaged Brooklyn couple, Theo (Chris Messina) and Nat (Rashida Jones). Theo is bored with his job as a wedding photographer—the generic backgrounds, the artificial posing, the stilted newlyweds—so he develops an unconventional side business, called "Gumshoot," a service where clients hire him to stalk them with his camera. Becoming infatuated with one of his clients, a mystery woman who goes by the name Subgirl (Meital Dohan), Theo develops a voyeuristic obsession that forces him to confront uncomfortable truths about himself and his impending marriage."

To get right to the point, Monogamy is a dull and unimpressive film. The tone is completely flat and the movie never gets you remotely interested in Theo and Nat's relationship. Whether it is the brief look at their Brooklyn-hipster lives before Theo starts his Gumshoot service, or the strains that their relationship goes through after Theo becomes more interested in Subgirl than Nat, I never at one point cared what happened to these characters. Dana Adam Shapiro must have assumed that Rashida Jones' natural likability would carry the emotional weight of the film, but even her cute and charming self could not rescue this plodding and detached script.

What makes Monogamy even more frustrating is that the idea of the Gumshoot business is an intriguing one. Obviously playing with some of the same ideas that Hitchcock and De Palma were able to probe to great effect, Shapiro's version of the obsessed voyeur is completely lacking in thrills or subtlety. It doesn't help that his lead Chris Messina seems completely bored by his role. The whole thing plays like a student film, a boring one at that, where despite having a solid premise the director never figured out how to craft an engrossing film around that one idea.

I will say that one positive thing that stood out was the song that Rashida Jones sings multiple times throughout the film. Not only was it catchy, but it reinforced the themes of the movie without being heavy handed. I can also praise the performances from Messina and Jones in their climatic sequence towards the very end of the film. It is the best written scene in the film and the actors were clearly inspired to do their strongest work. Otherwise, Monogamy had nothing to offer this viewer.

Grade: C-

Best Scene: That climatic conversation between Nat and Theo...




The Ledge:

Let's let Wikipedia tell you what this movie's about:

"The movie opens with detective Hollis Lucetti, played by Terrence Howard, receiving the news from a doctor that he has been sterile his entire life. The film quickly switches to Gavin Nichols, an atheist played by Charlie Hunnam, standing on a ledge as if to jump. A small crowd forms below Gavin and Hollis responds to the emergency. The movie then recounts the story of Gavin and his love for Shana, his neighbor's wife played by Liv Tyler. When the neighbor, a fundamentalist Christian named Joe (Patrick Wilson), finds out that Gavin has been sleeping with his wife, he challenged Gavin to a battle of wills. This involved Gavin jumping off a building to prove his love for Shana, despite his disbelief in an afterlife."

Oy.

I said Monogamy felt like a student film...well The Ledge feels like it was written by a pretentious High School senior. It is basically a two hour long treatise on the flaws of fundamental Christianity. What's strange is that I basically agree with a lot of writer/director Matthew Chapman's opinions on the subject. It's just that his film is so poorly written, so ham-handed in its execution, and built around such a silly premise, that even I found myself frustrated and angry at the filmmakers.

The acting is incredibly stilted, like the actors felt awkward delivering the terrible dialogue, and the plot turns (I wouldn't go as far as to call them twists) are silly and completely forced. The direction also shows zero stylistic flourishes and The Ledge does not look any better than your average Law & Order: SVU episode. But it is the screenplay that is the most guilty offender here. The debates the characters have about religion show no nuance and the thriller aspects of the movie are even worse.

Just thinking about the movie is making me angry so I'm gonna end this review here. Don't see The Ledge, it's a mess of a movie, and it almost made me embarrassed to be an atheist.

Grade: D

Best Scene: Ugh...when Charlie Hunnam comforts a maid.

Catching up on 2011 - Henry Saw: The Conspirator

So this was a real stinker


The story of the Lincoln assassination, and the subsequent manhunt and trial that proceeded it, is one of the more intricate and fascinating stories in American history. Unfortunately, The Conspirator is just about the lamest and flattest telling of the tale you can imagine. Every aspect of this film, ranging from the script, to the production design, to the acting is woefully sub-par. There are numerous sequences in The Conspirator that barely rise above the level of the recreation scenes one might see sprinkled throughout a History Channel special. The fact that Robert Redford directed this movie, and it features numerous actors whose work I like and respect, makes the film just that more disappointing.

"In the wake of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, seven men and one woman are arrested and charged with conspiring to kill the President, the Vice-President, and the Secretary of State. The lone woman charged, Mary Surratt, 42, owns a boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and others met and planned the simultaneous attacks. Against the ominous back-drop of post-Civil War Washington, newly-minted lawyer, Frederick Aiken, a 28-year-old Union war-hero, reluctantly agrees to defend Surratt before a military tribunal. As the trial unfolds, Aiken realizes his client may be innocent and that she is being used as bait and hostage in order to capture the only conspirator to have escaped a massive manhunt, her own son." (Via IMDB)



If this was just a boring and spiritless movie that would be one thing. There have been a lot of dry period pieces before, and will be plenty more in the future, but The Conspirator is actually just kind of pathetic. To take such an interesting and pivotal episdoe in American history, and produce this...it almost boggles the mind. Redford fails to stage any interesting sequences, even the recreation of the three fold assassination attempts on Lincoln, Johnson, and Seward falls completely flat. The rest of the movie just exists as an opportunity for Redford to reveal his views about the abuse of power by the government and draw lame parallels to current political hot buttons (even in this the film feels dated by a few years).

The cast, though theoretically impressive, are all wasted and all look out of place. Kevin Kline is comically bad as a maniacal version of Edwin Stanton, Tom Wilkinson is given nothing to work with and just sort of sleep walks through his scenes, and only god knows what Justin Long is doing in this movie. The two leads, Robin Wright Penn as Mary Surratt herself, and James McAvoy as her lawyer Frederick Aiken, do their best but also fall far short. Penn is just dull in her underwritten and one dimensional role while McAvoy seems to be trying to use all his acting tricks to save the movie but his performance ends up feeling off-kilter and unfocused.



I'm always down for a solid and dramatic period piece, and sometimes even a mediocre and melodramatic one, but The Conspirator can't even live up to that low standard. It's a flat out bad movie, and it's pedigree just makes it all the worse.

Grade: D

Best Scene: The early scene showing McAvoy attending a party near the end of the war.

Henry Saw: Cars 2 and Rango

An unexpected delight and Pixar's first true failure...




Rango:

After the disasters that were the last two Pirates of the Caribbean films, I was not at all interested in seeing director Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp team up again. Even when Rango got some very positive reviews from critics I trust I thought it looked obnoxious and derivative. I was completely wrong. Rango is a wholly original, lovingly made, and totally unique romp. Filled with knowing humor and joyfully irreverent plot turns, Rango is one of the coolest movies to be released in 2011.

"From the director of 'The Pirates of the Caribbean' comes 'Rango,' featuring Johnny Depp in an original animated comedy-adventure that takes moviegoers for a hilarious and heartfelt walk in the Wild West. The story follows the comical, transformative journey of Rango (Depp), a sheltered chameleon living as an ordinary family pet, while facing a major identity crisis. After all, how high can you aim when your whole purpose in life is to blend in? When Rango accidentally winds up in the gritty, gun-slinging town of Dirt -- a lawless outpost populated by the desert's most wily and whimsical creatures -- the less-than-courageous lizard suddenly finds he stands out. Welcomed as the last hope the town has been waiting for, new Sheriff Rango is forced to play his new role to the hilt...until, in a blaze of action-packed situations and encounters with outrageous characters, Rango starts to become the hero he once only pretended to be." (Via Moviefone)

Rango plays as a love letter to both classic westerns and the surreal works of Terry Gilliam, Hunter S. Thompson, and Carlos Castaneda. It's a strange blend for a children's film, and I'm honestly not sure how much Verbinski cared about entertaining kids, but I personally really enjoyed his film. It looks like no other CGI film I've ever seen before, the animals and world are animated in an exaggerated but photo realistic manner, and Verbinski uses his blockbuster pedigree to craft some truly exciting action scenes.

Rango is also buoyed by Johnny Depp's best performance in years. Verbinski, taking a page out of Wes Anderson's book, filmed his actors acting out each scene and then had his animators use that footage to create the film. That technique works even better here than it did for Anderson's The Talented Mr. Fox. Rango really feels like a Johnny Depp character, but unlike his recent garish performances in Alice and Wonderland or the fourth Pirates film, has a sense of spirit and inspiration that those roles utterly lacked. The rest of the cast, which includes Isla Fisher, Bill Nighy, and Timothy Olyphant, are all perfectly utilized and you can tell the actors loved playing their parts.

Rango is a real pleasure. Anyone who enjoys spaghetti westerns, kooky and hip children's films, or the movie Chinatown (you'll know why when you watch it) should seek out Rango. There is a controlled chaos to the movie that I found completely engrossing. While the movie might be a little too long, and not all of the jokes hit their mark, I would still say that Rango is by far the best animated film of the year.

Which brings us to our next review...



Cars 2:

It was inevitable. We knew it was coming, and some of us predicted it would be this year, but it is still kind of sad. Eventually, Pixar was going to have to make a bad movie. In the history of cinema there have been few runs that can compare to what Pixar accomplished from 1995-20110. From Toy Story, to the The Incredibles, to Wall*E, to Toy Story 3, Pixar's films have been so exemplary that they have changed how American critics and audiences view and discuss animated films. And though there have been some Pixar movies I didn't connect with, both Ratatouille and Toy Story 2 are films whose charms escaped me, I still think they are both excellently made and worthy of all the praise they received. In fact, the only movie Pixar ever released that I would have described as sub-par was the original Cars, a movie I found boring and uninspired, but it was not without its admirable qualities.

Which brings us to Cars 2...which is a terrible film. An awful, obnoxious, and ugly movie. At least the first Cars was earnest and made with the very best of intentions. Cars 2 feels like a soulless product that was made with no creative burst behind it save a desire to make money. If it was made by any other studio it would be easier to dismiss, but Pixar has set the bar so high for itself that Cars 2 is an especially depressing experience.

"Star race car Lightning McQueen and his pal Mater head overseas to compete in the World Grand Prix race. But the road to the championship becomes rocky as Mater gets caught up in an intriguing adventure of his own: international espionage." (Via IMDB)

I really have very little to say about this movie. It is a disposable and irritating waste of time. None of the humor works, the awkward car puns are plentiful and painful, and the movie is centered around the annoying sidekick character of Mater (voiced by Larry the Cable Guy). The driving scenes are dull and predictable, the espionage plot is actually just hard to follow, and the movie's message is highly questionable. I really kind of despised Cars 2, something I never thought I would say about a Pixar film, but then again...I guess it was inevitable.

'Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away'

Let's hope Pixar can rally back next year with their first fairy tale picture Brave.


Rango: B+

Cars 2: D