WATCHMEN

Review: Watchmen
4.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Adapting a beloved text to the screen is a daring, treacherous task. In addition to satisfying critics and new, unaccustomed audiences, one must also consider the sometimes millions of well-established fans and face the common collective belief that “the book is always better than the movie.” Especially tricky are the translations of popular comic books, which carry armies of geek followers who are often more cutting than the most astringent film reviewers and more protective of their babies than a cornered lioness. More sensitive still is the case of “Watchmen,” a limited edition, 12-part superhero serial by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons that was originally published in 1986 and has since become a hallowed fanboy bible. Its road from cells to celluloid has been long, hard and full of detours – rewrites, directorial changes, battles over ownership – that plagued the project all the way up to weeks before its release. Now, it's finally here, and it's a slick, beautiful and bad-ass piece of cinema.

I've only flipped through the particularly graphic graphic novel once or twice, so I can't say if director Zack Snyder (“Dawn of the Dead,” “300”) and screenwriters David Haytre (“X-Men”) and Alex Tse (“Sucker Free City”) have made a worthy adaptation or if disgruntled Watchmaniacs are already flooding the blogs with wrathful complaints. But I have seen enough movies to comfortably proclaim that, by marrying the best aspects of modern masked-men motion pictures (the post-“Matrix” stylings of “V for Vendetta” and “Wanted,” the coarsely realistic world view of “The Dark Knight”), Snyder and company have created one of the best comic book films ever. Its only major downside is that, at a hair under three hours, it demands a bit much from those who aren't ga-ga over the source material.


“Watchmen” is as American as “Superman,” as noir as “Sin City” and has as much balls-to-the-wall bravado as both “Kill Bill” flicks combined. Deemed un-filmable by its champions and creators (a stance still held by Moore, who removed his name from the movie's credits), the elaborate story's controversial content includes volatile international relations, societal collapse, nuclear war, grisly gore and – most taboo of all – superhero sex. Its vision is one of an alternative America, the history and conditions of which have been tweaked by the presence and consequences of folks like the Watchmen, a band of superheroes who live among the general public. The year is 1985 (though there are also several flashbacks). The place is – where else? – a cold, wet and shadow-enshrouded New York City. The Watchmen aren't the first superheroes (a painterly, nostalgic opening credit sequence provides a glimpse of their predecessors), but they will be the last according to President Nixon, who's demanded they hang up their capes even after they led him to a Vietnam victory and five consecutive terms in office.

Now in early retirement, Nite Owl (the appropriately all-American Patrick Wilson) is a humdrum homebody who wears thick-rimmed glasses and trades war stories with an aged colleague. “World's Smartest Man” Ozymandius (Matthew Goode) has capitalized on his image and high I.Q. to become a billionaire business mogul. Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) still prowls the streets, disgusted with their decline in the Watchmen's absence. Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) lives a sheltered, pseudo-domestic life in a government stronghold with the almighty Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup and lots of digital makeup). And The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) spends his sleepless nights watching TV and smoking cigars until he's hurled out of a high-rise window in the film's gorgeously rendered first scene. His killing jump-starts the plot's key strand (wherein Rorschach initiates his own renegade murder investigation), which operates within a larger, doomsday component involving Dr. Manhattan and the trigger-happy Soviet Union.


There's not a whole lot of superheroism taking place in this superhero tale, at least not of the typical “it's a bird! it's a plane!” variety. Graciously, much more emphasis is put on legitimizing the characters and their circumstances than showing them shooting laser beams from their eyes, etc. The only Watchman who even possesses supernatural abilities – the others are highly trained in combat and weaponry but still very human – is Dr. Manhattan, whose early exposure to atom-crushing forcefields in a nuclear test facility transformed him into a blue-skinned god-weapon who can do just about anything (teleport, replicate, manipulate matter, walk on the Sun). (Originally contracted by the federal government, he's the reason for the U.S./Soviet tension.) All-powerful but irrevocably all alone, the Doc is seen withdrawing from humanity when it needs him most, thus pushing Silk Spectre into the arms of Nite Owl. He's also seen, as in the comic, completely naked, and Snyder's full-frontal faithfulness to this detail will surely provoke many a conservative gasp (there was a small chorus at my screening). The nudity isn't indecent, it's logical, and it's one of many brave and brilliant choices made by the director, whose graphic style is an ideal match for this material. Snyder shies away from nothing. “Watchmen” is ultra-violent, explicitly sexual and uncommonly grim, but it is still supremely sophisticated.

The actors are all commendable aside from Goode, whose inability to hide his British accent leads to some muffled, distracting line deliveries. The best performance comes from Haley, a gifted character actor who rebounded in 2006 with an Oscar nomination for his work in Todd Field's “Little Children.” Haley brings some serious psychological depth to Rorschach, a pitiless vigilante whose ever-changing inkblot mask is a fun metaphor for his inner demons. Rorschach unearths a turning-point conspiracy, inspiring his fellow Watchmen to come out of hiding and seek justice once more. The prolonged delay of the rock 'em, sock 'em gallantry makes its arrival rewarding, but it comes around the two-hour mark, by which time the film has just begun to wear out its welcome. It's conceivable that Snyder tried to include as much as possible to please the die-hards but, in doing so, he robbed his movie of its perfection. Exciting, smart and offering a cultural perspective through a kind of dirty pop prism, “Watchmen” is a titan of its genre. If only its running time didn't loom as large.

TWO LOVERS

Review: Two Lovers
4 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Having seen the coolly composed trailer for “Two Lovers” – as well as a certain David Letterman interview – prior to my screening, I had every intention of opening this review with something like: “You won't find any of Joaquin Phoenix's recent bizarro behavior in his latest – and, reportedly, last – film.” But, lo and be dazzled, you will, and this sober romance piece from writer/director James Gray is all the richer for it.

Phoenix plays Leonard, a heartbroken, Bipolar antihero with the emotional development of a teenager and the selfish, delusional quirks of an alcoholic. An aspiring photographer and not much more, Leonard returns home to live with his welcoming parents in their Brooklyn apartment after his fiancée leaves him high, dry and suicidal. It's revealed that the split was a result of reproductive complications, but it's conceivable that she left because he's a man-child; not of the “Big” variety, but of the “I-can't-take-care-of-myself-let-alone-anyone-else” kind. Leonard sleeps till noon and goofs around at his father's dry cleaning business where he works part-time. He sneaks out of the house at night needlessly. He can't concentrate. He lies, double-books engagements and hatches impossible schemes, all of which cause him the sort of subsequent grief that most seasoned humans have learned to protect themselves against. In short, he's a paradigm of immaturity, and Phoenix's bittersweet portrayal is the most unguarded of his career. The two-time Oscar nominee is so at home playing an awkward, on-the-fringe noncomformist that one can't help but wonder if those “public performance” rumors regarding his new beard-and-shades persona are, in fact, true.


Leonard is first introduced after having just been fished out of the river by some good samaritans – the aftermath of what we learn from Mom (a heartbreaking Isabella Rossellini) and Dad (Israel's Moni Moshonov) to be one of many suicide attempts. The parents – a classic Jewish couple – are as loving as they are lovable, but they remain at an arm's length from Leonard, fearing that one wrong move could be the excuse he needs to do the unthinkable (there's a quiet anguish in both of their faces that suggests years of doctors' appointments and therapist visits). Their ultimate effort to save their functional-but-unstable son is to set him up with Sandra (Vinessa Shaw), the saintly, kosher daughter of their best friends. Sandra is everything that Leonard needs: she's nurturing, non-judgmental and she's genuinely interested in him. This, of course, makes him less interested in her and more drawn to the toxic pursuit of Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), his gorgeous, unattainable neighbor with his same faulty wiring. Like an adolescent boy, Leonard leads Sandra on for safe keeping while he pines for Michelle, who in turn is sleeping with a married man and wears the obligatory blinders of a mistress (“he's going to leave his wife,” etc.).

The two simultaneous relationships are vastly different. Sandra, who sees Leonard's character flaws as an outlet for her compassion, invites him to dinner with her and her family. Michelle, who can't see Leonard's character flaws because she has so many of her own, invites him to dinner with her and her hitched boyfriend (to his dismay, Leonard remains Michelle's platonic confidant through much of the movie). But both women are almost immediately taken with Leonard and his irresistible boyish charms. He may be a novice in the game of life, but he's clearly experienced in the game of courtship, and Phoenix is especially good at vitalizing this aspect of his character. There's a remarkable segment in which Leonard joins Michelle and her friends for a night on the town. En route to a club, he tries to impress the gals by spitting rhymes, drawing a playful comparison to Phoenix's supposed new vocation. Once inside the bass-laden night spot, Leonard heads straight for the dance floor and breaks into a quick routine that's both slightly embarrassing and surprisingly skillful. The whole portion is brief but outstanding because Phoenix's work is so loose and free, as if the camera – which has a dance of its own and puts you in the party – weren't even rolling.


Gray has directed Phoenix twice before, in “We Own the Night” (2007) and “The Yards” (2000), but never like this. Though also set in Gray's home of New York, the previous movies were both crime dramas, while “Two Lovers” has the mood of a French film – and not just because of the exquisite music choices. The characters, like the plot, are fostered slowly but surely. Gray and co-writer Ric Menello layer these people with believable complexity, allowing them to become familiar but never wholly predictable (specifically, Leonard's rocky temperament creates moments of unexpected suspense – when his fantasies begin to crumble, we're uneasy and unsure of how he'll respond). And Gray gets great performances from the rest of his cast as well. Paltrow, her golden locks strewn about like heaven-straw, lights up the film the moment she appears and has the power to darken it, too. Shaw, a Hilary Swank look-alike who's leading lady material all the way, makes you wonder why the most you've seen of her lately is in bit parts in fare like “3:10 to Yuma.” And Rossellini and Moshonov create a screen duo to be cherished.

But the spotlight is rarely pulled away from Phoenix, the film's indisputable star. Throughout “Two Lovers,” I couldn't stop thinking about what a shame it is if Phoenix truly means business when he says he's quitting his.

GOMORRAH

Review: Gomorrah
4.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

One of the strongest cornerstones of American cinema is the gangster picture – morally challenging stories of morally depraved men who pursue (and often achieve) the American Dream via corruption, lies and murder. There's a wealth of dramatic allure to these stories, but even more conspicuous are the veritable riches they boast both on and off the screen. From “The Godfather” to “The Sopranos” (yes, I'm including HBO's sensational series in the mafia movie canon), we've seen mobsters gain affluence in their world (money, mansions, cars, casinos), and ours (Oscars, Golden Globes, Emmys, best-of-all-time lists). “Gomorrah,” a scary and scathing look at at a very real organized crime syndicate, turns this entire scenario on its head. First of all, it's not American, it's Italian, shot in the land and language from which many of the tales we know were born. Secondly, what's depicted and how it's depicted are anything but decadent. And as for off-screen glory*, “Gomorrah” wasn't nominated for any Oscars, didn't win any Golden Globes and isn't eligible for the Emmys, but it deserves a spot on those best-ever lists.


The title is indeed a nod to the biblical city of sin, but it's also a phonetic riff on the Camorra, a powerful underground criminal network in Naples that has its dirty hands in the world's drug trade, fashion industry and, like the Soprano clan, the all-too-appropriate waste management business. The organization's influence is felt worldwide – its revenue has even been legally reinvested into the reconstruction of the Twin Towers – and its history is blood-soaked and devastating. Check out these statistics: the Camorra is responsible for the deaths of roughly 4,000 people in the last 30 years (that's one every three days); its drug sales total approximately 400,000 euro per faction per day; and if the toxic waste barrels it illegally dumps were piled one on top of the other, the height would reach over 47,900 feet. “Gomorrah,” based on the 2006 book by 29-year-old investigative reporter Roberto Saviano (who's now in witness protection), illustrates these atrocities with frightful, no-frills realism. Daring director Matteo Garrone has no interest in high points or happy endings; he pulls us in, pulls the wool from our eyes and pries them open.

At 135 minutes, “Gomorrah” has an epic saga's running time to boot. The first 20-or-so of those minutes are a tad confusing, introducing the various fictional characters that will play out the factual events with a slow, stick-around-for-answers vibe. We're not quite sure how all the players – a money man who's sick of paying the family members of Family Members in prison; a 13-year-old, zit-faced boy who makes deliveries for the mob in his neighborhood; a pair of ambitious young punks whose discovery of an army's worth of weapons isn't the only thing that could get them killed; a tailor who works for a Camorra-owned dress manufacturer but secretly teaches his skills to the Chinese; and a silver-haired business exec who looks legitimate but deals in death, using a massive quarry as a depository for chemical waste that seeps into the ground and gives cancer to nearby residents – will factor into the big game, but Garrone is constantly providing immersive situations while the pieces gradually lock into place. Half the excitement of “Gomorrah” is figuring out where it's going, and I'd take its trickling narrative drip over the forced injection of something like “The International” any day of the week. (The best films hold you spellbound even when you're puzzled.)


Despite – or, I guess, due to – the fine work of a batch of screenwriters including Garrone, none of this feels scripted. There's not an ounce of forced or false dialogue, just the blistering conveyance of ugly truth. Nor does it feel acted; the cast is made up of naturally gifted amateurs and international stars like Italy's Toni Servillo, all of whom come off like documentary subjects. Much of that tone is a result of Garrone's directorial style, a fly-on-the-wall, observationist approach that drops us into the middle of a desolate land where gangsters are at war with each other and everyone is at risk. D.P. Marco Onorato's tirelessly curious hand-held camera peers around this minefield like a photojournalist on location, further implying that “Gomorrah” is a faithful adaptation of its source material. The movie isn't scored; the only music we ever hear is the occasional pop song and the only way we hear it is if it's played within a scene (in a car, in a club, on a stereo). As a final stamp of authenticity, Garrone throws in a slyly effective bit in which the two-timing tailor watches TV and sees Scarlett Johannson wearing his garment on the red carpet.

“Gomorrah” redefines the mob flick because it shows a criminal association not as it might be, but as it is. Still, Garrone isn't above giving a nod to his genre predecessors, namely Brian DePalma and his immortal Pacino vehicle, “Scarface.” The brief opening sequence has a tacky neon opulence reminiscent of the cult classic – even the title logo goes from red to “Vice City” pink – and, later, the delinquent duo play with empty pistols in an empty warehouse and pretend to be Tony Montana. What would Tony say if he saw “Gomorrah?” Fuhgeddaboutit? No way. Not this merciless movie. It sticks with you for days.

*Note: “Gomorrah” has collected a handful of accolades, including five European Film Awards, a Golden Satellite for Best Foreign Language Film and the coveted Grand Prix at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Its omission from this year's Academy Award nominees for Best Foreign Language Film is viewed by audiences, critics and insiders alike as a travesty. It opens at the Ritz at the Bourse in Philadelphia on Friday, Feb. 27.

THE INTERNATIONAL

Review: The International
3 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

“The International” lives up to its name. The title refers to a corrupt bank in Luxembourg that basically runs the world, but the film is a globe-trotting thriller, jumping from Berlin to Milan to Manhattan to Istanbul in a span of two hours. All of these locations are fantastically photographed. To the benefit of the audience, particular attention is paid to the diverse architecture of each metropolis. The camera (overseen by cinematographer Frank Griebe, who shot “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer”) homes in on the New York skyline, climbs the towers of a grand Turkish mosque, weaves through Milan's busy streets and painstakingly surveys the bank's headquarters – a staggeringly vast modern fortress of glass and steel. These are the kinds of intriguing, urban/worldly visuals that boost the stakes in a high-stakes cliffhanger, and “The International,” directed by Tom Tykwer (“Perfume,” “Run Lola Run”), certainly looks the part. It's the movie's continuous, self-important, 10-dollar-word chattiness that lowers those stakes considerably and could cause viewers to question their investments.


The first shot is of Clive Owen's face – that super-serious, sandblasted hybrid of Robert Mitchum's ruggedness and Cary Grant's leading-man magnetism. It's a strong, tone-setting opening image because, by now, we know that Owen means business. Whether he's screaming at the top of his lungs at Julia Roberts in “Closer” or navigating an apocalyptic wasteland in “Children of Men,” the UK-born actor does just about everything with fervid, white-knuckled conviction. Here he plays Louis Salinger, an Interpol agent investigating the many criminal activities of the fictitious International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC) along with Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts), an assistant district attorney from Manhattan. Within the first 10 minutes, one of Salinger's and Whitman's colleagues is assassinated by one of IBBC's cloak-and-dagger mercenaries, but the justice-seeking duo can't prove it. Nor can they prove any of the bank's other shady deals – arming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, supporting African radicals, affiliations with organized crime, etc. – because the institution's influence reaches so high that essentially every major government body in the world has a hand in its operations. Whoever gets too close to IBBC is promptly snuffed out, making it even harder for Salinger and Whitman to uncover and expose The Truth, a lofty ideal that hardly anyone else in the film seems to care about.

Like the “Bourne” trilogy, “International” maintains a rather nimble pace by moving us from map point to map point, and the intermittent action is no holds-barred. There's one incredible, whiz-bang gun battle inside the Guggenheim in New York that's almost reason enough to recommend the movie. Shot on location as well as on a massive scale replica in Berlin, the sequence – in which Salinger and a former IBBC hired hand fend off a small army of gun-toting thugs – is arresting, utilizing an amazing architectural space for an amazing bit of filmmaking. The bullets and bad guys keep on coming, video game style, and the inside of the main rotunda looks like Swiss cheese by the end. “The International” has much to offer in terms of what's on screen. Things go south when newbie screenwriter Eric Singer's script starts describing everything for us.


This is a movie that talks at you – a lot – about character backgrounds, about trying-to-be-timely issues and shadowy schemes, about big, philosophical ideas that sound obvious and out of place. Singer's style is a prime example of how not to write a film: it's too much “tell” and not enough “show,” unduly dependent on preachy, pretentious dialogue to tell its story. Owen sells his lines effectively because his reliable intensity could make the Yellow Pages sound important. But the rest of the cast members are not so fortunate; they're endowed with clunky declarations that undermine their talents and the viewers' intelligence. Watts – who I didn't believe could give a bad performance until now – gets the worst of it and does next to nothing to humanize her poorly written character. Whitman is not a person, not even an archetype, but a sort of automated drone who speaks with the robotic inflections of an MSNBC correspondent. Among other things, she blabs about her intentions when they're already clearly defined and she proclaims to her boss that “The Truth means responsibility!,” a flagrant last-ditch effort to milk that elusive ideal for all its worth.

Speaking of grandiose food for thought, Armin Mueller-Stahl – an asset for filmmakers in need of wise, old men – plays Wilhelm Wexler, a former communist-turned IBBC traitor who moonlights as a philosopher. When toying with the notion of helping Salinger, Wexler gives him and us a string of “duh!” ideologies, like: “the difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to make sense.” Is this really the right venue for all these didactic life lessons? People will tell you it is, just as they'll tell you that the movie's villain, an all-powerful financial institution, is the perfect foe for these shaky times. I didn't feel that; I felt like I was being told to feel that. People will also say that this movie is very smart. It is well-researched, and it's involved, for sure, but involved doesn't necessarily mean clever. The narrative requires that you listen closely to see where it's going and then makes you regret that you did. That's too bad, because “The International” is a pretty excellent film...when no one's talking.

PUSH

Review: Push
2 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Dakota Fanning has had a busy week. Without any signs of having broken a sweat, the be-all and end-all of child stars has been popping up all over the place. Her 2008 films “Hounddog” and “The Secret Life of Bees” both just arrived on DVD, and she's been back and forth promoting the simultaneous theatrical releases of “Coraline,” a stop-motion animation project in which she voices the title character, and “Push,” a sci-fi thriller that casts her as a punked-out clairvoyant. I'd argue that Fanning's hard work is most apparent in the latter; she does some seriously heavy lifting here, enough that it's a wonder her twig-like legs don't snap in the process. Her surprisingly nuanced performance is the best – and most believable – thing about “Push,” an incomprehensible mind-bender that's big on style and short on substance.


Fanning plays Cassie, a second-generation “watcher” who sees mental glimpses of the future and draws the images in a chalkboard-like sketchbook. Cassie's mother also has this psychic gift (hence, second-generation), but she's been captured and locked up by The Division, a secret government agency that's been trying to form an army of these “special people” since they were bio-experiment guinea pigs back in WWII. In modern-day Hong Kong, Cassie meets Nick (Chris Evans of “Fantastic Four”), a twenty-something telekinetic, a.k.a. “mover,” who's been hiding out in the densely populated region since The Division murdered his similarly skilled father 10 years ago. Cassie needs Chris to help her find Kira (Camilla Shell, I mean, Belle from “10,000 B.C.”), an extremely powerful “pusher” who can project artificial and potentially fatal thoughts into the minds of others simply by turning her eyeballs shark-black (because the use of strange-colored eyeballs is one of the few ways Hollywood knows how to depict supernatural abilities at work). Kira recently escaped from The Division's headquarters with a briefcase containing a syringe containing a drug that, in certain hands, could throw off the agency's plan of world domination. Now, the bad guys, led by another “pusher,” Carver (two-time Oscar nominee Djimon Hounsou, sporting a gray goatee and reaching a career low), are after Kira and the clock is ticking.

I've been trying pretty hard to figure out what exactly the motivations are behind all these characters' actions and I've still got nothing. Everyone wants this briefcase (a la “Pulp Fiction”), but why? It contains a chemical that boosts the powers of the “special people,” but if Kira stole it from The Division's home base, don't they have more in stock? Why is it so special? And why does another group of characters – a Hong Kong gang comprised of glass and eardrum-shattering “screamers” and an even stronger “watcher” – want it? If the drug eventually kills any “special person” injected with it, what are their plans for it? And how does Cassie expect to use it to free her mother? Furthermore, how does Nick, whose only apparent ability is to move objects by will, orchestrate a climactic scheme that could've only been planned by anticipating the unknown? Is he a “watcher” as well? Who knows? There are enough unanswered and unanswerable questions here for 10 splitting headaches, and “Push” has plenty of problems long before one attempts to decipher its cheesecloth plot.


Though they never fully cultivate the concept (or any concept, for that matter), director Paul McGuigan (“Lucky Number Slevin”) and writer David Bourla (the little-seen and critically panned “Larceny”) position Nick as the reluctant, “chosen one”-type hero, like Keanu Reeves's Neo from the “Matrix” films. Neo was surrounded by environments of subterranean gloom and sleek, sterile perfection, making his extraordinary capabilities that much more mind-blowingly conspicuous. Nick is trapped in a land of overly-saturated colors and overly-relied upon Asian influences (the movie is like “Blade Runner” on crack), leaving his uncanny gifts lost in the frenetic mix. Neo was part of a film that used state-of-the-art technology to enhance the actions of its rather complex characters. Nick is part of a film that uses every stylistic enhancement available – jumpy photography, fast edits, skewed angles, fuzzy edges, computer effects – and has little time for character development. Neo was part of a story that, in the first installment, at least, took big, existential ideas and streamlined them into slick, fascinating entertainment. Nick is part of a story that seems to have taken a lot of big ideas, tossed them into a bag, shook them up and plucked them out at random.

And despite Reeve's reputation as a hopelessly one-note performer, he might look like Marlon Brando if he worked alongside Evans, an actor who, despite his good looks and adroit moves, is hopelessly, endlessly boring. Regardless of what else is happening in “Push” (and there's always A LOT happening), it's impossible to care about a lead character with such a leaden personality. Evans is matched by the snooze-inducing Belle, who's way too good at playing a girl who's dead inside. And then there's Fanning, the youngest member of the cast who runs circles around her co-stars and the material. She gets a lot of mileage out of a lousy script and, without any “pushing” abilities, she's the only player who projects the emotions of her character onto her face. The most exciting thing for me was watching Fanning and thinking that she might just make good on those Jodie Foster comparisons, surviving the rollercoaster transition from kiddie prodigy to respectable, grown-up artiste.

Since she already endured a much buzzed-about rape scene in “Hounddog,” it's not that shocking to see Fanning get drunk in “Push” (you read right). Still, one might wonder how the 13-year-old knew how to portray intoxication realistically. Here's my guess: she sat in on the pitch meeting for this movie, which is kind of like what would result if the creators of “The Matrix,” “Blade Runner” and “X-Men” got together, got hammered and then got to work.

HE'S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU

Review: He's Just Not That Into You
3.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

There's a line exchange in “He's Just Not That Into You,” the new ensemble comedy based on the science-of-romance bestseller by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tucillo, that officially brands it with a born-on date – and the date isn't 2009. Mary, a magazine editor played by Drew Barrymore, confides in her crew of flamboyant friends that her latest crush “MySpaced” her. With a bewildered grimace, one of the friends tells her that “MySpace is the new booty call.” The problem is, in 2009, MySpace isn't really the new anything. By 2019, the social networking platform will inarguably be centuries old in sci-tech years. Behrendt's and Tucillo's book, inspired by an episode of “Sex and the City,” was published in 2004 – right around the time when MySpace exploded. New Line Cinema's movie version, directed by Ken Kwapis (“Licensed to Wed”), finished shooting in 2007 – right around the time when Facebook exploded. Two years later, the dating game hasn't changed much, but the way we talk about it has, and “He's Just Not That Into You,” a movie that tries to be an encyclopedia on modern love, feels a little behind the times. But, man, if it doesn't boast one heck of an all-star cast, capable of charming the pants off of any audience in any era.


Like “Traffic” with dinner dates, the Baltimore-set film consists of a road map of storylines, all of which are not-so-surprisingly interconnected. There's Mary, who's gal pals with yoga instructor Anna (Scarlett Johansson), who's uncontrollably drawn to lawyer Ben (Bradley Cooper), who's married to spice company marketer Janine (Jennifer Connelly), who works with unhappily unmarried Beth (Jennifer Aniston) and hopeless romantic Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin), who gets dating advice from bar owner Alex (Justin Long), who's buddies with serial dater and real estate agent Connor (Kevin Connolly), who's in love with Anna and buys ad space from Mary. There are more connections, and even more characters, like Neil (Ben Affleck), Beth's boyfriend who doesn't believe in marriage. Screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein (“Never Been Kissed”) take the book's self-help format and transform it into an engaging narrative, employing that popular small-world concept that's often a great fit for the microcosms movies create. When it's revealed that Ben is also best friends with Neil, or that Anna is also using Connor on the side, we modern moviegoers aren't exactly shocked, but there's still a thrill to be had in those “ah-ha!” moments.

The entire cast is wonderful, and though we relate to some characters more than others, we pretty much root for all of them. As Gigi, Goodwin nabs her first starring role, narrating the movie and using that same lovable naivete she exercises on HBO's “Big Love” to enchant a whole new audience. It's been rumored that Goodwin, all smiles and dimples, avoided reading the source material until after production wrapped. In doing so, the actress turns in an endearing performance that's anything but by the book. Long proves he's far beyond embodying a computer in Apple commercials, displaying a gravitas that surpasses his comedic work. Oscar-winner Connelly brings some reverence and maturity to the table, even though she's playing a woman in need of personal growth. Aniston has never been better on the big screen, finally able to express the thoughts and feelings of her character and not just bounce around the set. The relationship between Beth and Neil is the film's most lived-in and heartwarming, thanks also to Affleck, who toned himself up and down for his role. Even the people we're meant to hate win our affections, such as the two-timing Ben, whom soon-to-be superstar Cooper makes sympathetic despite his wrongdoings.


Where these people go and what they do is easy (and fun) to follow, but the sheer abundance of them causes some stories to feel less urgent and more distracting. Barrymore's bit, specifically, is superfluous to the plot, and seems to pop up just to deliver that dangerously dated techie lingo. The 33-year-old actress – who also served as executive producer – is adorable as usual, and the fate of her character will draw many smiles, but the movie would have been stronger and more succinct if she had stayed behind the camera. Another misstep is the strange and random wasting of respectable talents like Kris Kristofferson and Luis Guzman, who play Beth's ailing father and Janine's contractor, respectively, and are given very few lines. I could move on to grumble about cinematographer John Bailey's semi-sloppy camerawork, which tends to cut actors off at the neck and turn them into talking heads, but that would just be nitpicking.

“He's Just Not That Into You” is a real crowd-pleaser – it's funny, it's sharper than most titles of its kind, it's heartfelt, and it's extremely accessible (watch out for chapter stops in which even more actors break down the book's famous “rules,” confessional style, and basically describe everyone's dating experiences). I, for one, was pleasantly caught off-guard by how much I came to care about most of the inhabitants of the film's vine-ridden jungle of mixed drinks, mixed feelings, and mixed messages. If only the writers had done away with that pesky, time-sensitive, “profile-updating” dialogue – which is good for a laugh and not much else – the movie wouldn't have such a brief and definitive shelf life. Note to filmmakers: if you're going to cook up something that speaks to today's ever-changing culture, you'd best have your fingers on its pulse. Over at HesJustNotThatIntoYouMovie.com, there's a link directing users to the film's Facebook account, not its MySpace profile, proving that a lot of folks are just not that into MySpace anymore. Go figure.

NEW IN TOWN

Review: New in Town
1.5 stars (out of 5)
By R. Kurt Osenlund

Someone told me recently that I complain too much about movies lacking originality, to which I offered a rebuttal that has itself become a cliché, at least among critics: “There's a devastating shortage of inventiveness in Hollywood.” I hope my accuser – who simply shrugged at my response – is reading this review, because my complaints are about to blast through the roof. “New in Town,” the latest time-waster to show off Renee Zellweger's poor acting skills and freakish visage, is the most unabashedly unoriginal film I've seen in years. Its wholly derivative fabric – which, from rising action to climax, may well have been copied straight out of a textbook on standard script formats – is a quilted pattern of elements that stumble from unwatchable to cheaply charming to totally trite. Exploiting the same old story of a big city girl who finds love and self-fulfillment in a small town, the movie's alternate title could easily be “Sweet Home Minnesota.”


Comparisons to 2002's Reese Witherspoon rom-com are inevitable, especially since both “New in Town” and “Sweet Home Alabama” were written by C. Jay Cox (who here shares screenwriting credits with a fella named Ken Rance). One foundational difference between these two titles is that Witherspoon is likeable and Zellweger is not. However typical your movie may be, throw in a charismatic star and the result can be transcendent. Throw in Zellweger and you've got lemon juice on a wound. Anyone who watched this year's Golden Globe Awards can concur that this woman is surely turning into some type of alien, her zipper-tight pursed lips engulfed by a face that's endured one too many “Bridget Jones” fluctuations. But it's unfair to judge Zellweger solely on her progressively strange appearance; after all, it's the insincerity of her performances that leaves the viewer feeling detached.

In “New in Town,” she plays Lucy Hill, an enterprising, soon-to-be corporate executive living the high life in Miami. We meet her in the midst of her busy day-to-day routine via over-emphasized shots of stilettos, sports cars, and Starbucks cups. Scurrying awkwardly from scene to scene, Zellweger does about as much to convince us that she's a high-powered glamazon as Alicia Silverstone did to make us buy her as a superhero in “Batman & Robin” – she can't even walk the walk. When Lucy volunteers to whip a small, under-performing company factory into shape, the attempt to advance her career becomes a nightmare of privileged female discomfort. She hops a plane to a one-horse Minnesota town with a year's worth of luggage in tow. She braves the cold, inexplicably packs her mountain of Louis Vuitton bags into a rented mid-size sedan, rolls on to her destination, and whines a lot. When she meets the chipper, simple townspeople who talk openly about pets and Jesus, Lucy can't relate, and Zellweger plays the character's disconnect by staring blankly into the distance and making snide remarks. The painful-to-view first act is capped off by a surprisingly mean-spirited scene in which Lucy, after being invited to dinner by one of the natives, promptly insults an entire roomful of strangers. The ill-conceived bit is meant to establish a strong romantic rivalry between Lucy and Ted, the local union rep. played adequately by Harry Connick Jr., but instead takes the story from stale to sour.


Lucy, of course, begins to warm up to the chilly little community. She befriends the ladies she first saw as subordinate, finds merit in the factory workers she was sent to lay off, and falls for Ted, who was thankfully the only other soul around when she stranded herself in a snow bank in the middle of nowhere. When Lucy learns that corporate wants to shut down the factory, she predictably embarks on a quest to save it, commencing the use of a handful of pop songs that tell us how to feel. None of the plot developments are believable – not for a second. It's unclear how much time passes before Lucy comes around, but her conversion from bullheaded outsider to appreciative guest seems to happen in a blink. After a few homemade gifts and one down-home holiday carol sing, she's on board with the simple life, trading the use of big words like “mechanization” and “dialoguing” for the acceptance of Midwestern banter like “patootie” and “don't cha know?” And there's one post-makeover reveal involving Ted's teenage daughter that's so overused, it's even been spoofed in those repellent “Movie” movies. Cox, Rance, and director Jonas Elmer had to have known this going in.

The same someone who called me out on my frequent gripes about the biz accompanied me to “New in Town” and told me it's the kind of movie that everyone wants to see made every year, over and over. “If that's true,” I replied, still coated in Obama inauguration afterglow, “then a little slice of my newly restored hope for this country just died.” That may sound a little extreme in regards to a seemingly harmless romantic comedy, but such overtly uninspired refuse can't really be what all those smart folks who elected the right president are seeking for entertainment – can it? All I know is, the last scene in this film shows a supporting character receiving a check for more money than she's probably ever seen in her life. I gave her to the count of three to faint. She keeled over at the count of two. There was a sea of laughter in the theater. Yikes.