FILM REVIEW: THE MUPPETS



Animal (voice by Eric Jacobson) in The Muppets.

Are we men or are we puppets?

By Don Simpson

Jason Segel co-writes and stars in a feature film that never even tries to attempt to conceal its purpose: to make the Muppets relevant again. Heck, with its uncanny knack for self-referential humor, The Muppets does not hide anything from its audience. The fourth wall is reduced to a pile of rubble as we are constantly reminded by the film’s characters that we are indeed watching a film -- as if the walking and talking puppets are not enough of a clue.

Gary (Segel) and Mary (Amy Adams) have been dating — celibately, we can only assume since this is a Disney film — for nearly ten years. They live — separately, we can only assume since this is a Disney film — in Smalltown, U.S.A. Gary resides with his muppety brother, Walter (voice by Peter Linz), who senses a unique kinship with the Muppets and is their number one fan.

The threesome embark upon a bus trip to Los Angeles. Their first stop, The Muppet Studios. After sneaking away from a lackluster tour, Walter overhears an evil oil tycoon (Chris Cooper) discussing a dastardly plan with his muppety henchmen — Uncle Deadly (voice by Matt Vogel) and Bobo (voice by Bill Barretta) — to turn the Muppets’ property into an oil field (maniacal laugh, maniacal laugh, maniacal laugh).

But there is hope for the Muppets. They just need to race $10 million dollars. Walter can only think of one logical solution: for the Muppets to reunite and put on a show (of course!). The threesome proceed to travel the world by map (literally) with Kermit the Frog (voice by Steve Whitmire) in a car driven by 80′s Robot (voice by Matt Vogel), picking up a menagerie of Muppets along the way. Oh, and to appease the CDE televsion executive (Rashida Jones) who will be airing their show, the Muppets must find a celebrity host.

Together again, the Muppets — with the assistance of Walter, Gary and Mary — work together as a team to get their old theater back into working order. Mary begins to feel neglected and pouts over having her dreamy romantic vacation hijacked by Walter and the Muppets. Gary is therefore thrust into an existential quagmire, forced to choose between being a man or a Muppet — as expressed in the best song of the film, “Am I a man or a Muppet?”

Yes, for all intents and purposes, The Muppets is a musical. What else would you expect? In addition to dusting off some old classics (“Rainbow Connection”) and adding some new material (written by Bret McKenzie of The Flight of the Conchords), pop songs such as Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and Cee-Lo Green’s “Fuck You” get cleverly Muppetized.

Debuting on the silver screen in 1979 with The Muppets Movie, Jim Henson’s fuzzy little franchise produced six features in the span of 20 years, concluding (or so it seemed) with Muppets from Space in 1999. Frank Oz publicly lampooned the script for The Muppets — the first theatrically-released Muppet film not to include Oz or Jerry Nelson as Muppeteers — and I can kind of see why. Segel and Nicholas Stoller opt to spend far too much time focusing on Mary and Gary in a shoddy attempt at spoofing the rated-G rom-com sub-genre (if such a sub-genre even exists). Mary and Gary’s white bread dialog lacks the luster of the writing for the Muppet characters (and 80's Robot). That is not to say that Segel and Adams do not give commendable performances, specifically in their musical scenes. In fact, the overall strength of The Muppets can be found in the musical scenes — which exceed the production quality of any other Muppets movie to date. I will even go out on the limb and say that the songwriting, choreography, set design and cinematography of the musical sequences are all pitch-perfect.

With The Muppets, we get exactly what us long-time fans have come to expect from the Muppets: fun songs and choreography, great cameos, corny jokes, and strong moral lessons. Unexpectedly, we also get some brilliantly absurd comedy which seems to be handcrafted for the stoner demographic. However, we could do without the slow and tedious rom-com scenes without any Muppets in sight and Fozzie Bear’s (voice by Eric Jacobson) fart jokes.



FILM REVIEW: HUGO

Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) in Hugo.

Train in vein

By Don Simpson

Hugo, director Martin Scorsese’s virginal foray into 3D cinema, begins with one fantastic flaunting of the third dimension, utilizing a long tracking shot that squeezes through the narrow tunnels and crowded platforms of a 1930s Parisian train station. (Brian Selznick’s source novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret takes place in 1931 whereas Scorsese’s film is not dated.) Unfortunately, this is a cinematic sequence that could only possibly take place in the mostly artificial realm of CGI, and to my discerning eye it appears unbelievably fake. In theory, it is a worthwhile attempt as Scorsese proves that he truly understands how scenes need to be framed in order to take full advantage of the 3D medium. If only he could have confined the entirety of Hugo to crowded confines, and kept the scenes somewhat grounded in the reality of actual locations rather than a CGI stage.

For the most part, I was pretty annoyed and frustrated by the 3D lensing. Not only does the technology render the images darker and softer than 2D images, but it also makes everything appear so damn artificial (during certain scenes Hugo actually looks eerily similar to The Polar Express, which is not a compliment). ).

Now, on with the story… Is it just me, or does almost every children’s fantasy/adventure film feature orphan protagonists? The titular Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) is no exception. The prepubescent Hugo is left to clandestinely tend to a complicated system of clocks at the aforementioned Parisian train station after his father (Jude Law) dies and his uncle (Ray Winstone) disappears. An ever-vigilant station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) has made it his life’s mission to roundup all of the orphans he can find and ship them to the orphanage; so Oliver, I mean Hugo, must remain one step ahead of him at all times.

In a feeble attempt to reconnect with his father, Hugo attempts to rebuild an automaton with spare toy and clock parts. Unfortunately, a nasty old curmudgeon (Ben Kingsley) who tends a toy shop in the station snatches Hugo’s notebook which contains his father’s notes on how to fix the automaton. Hugo desperately enlists the assistance of Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), a precocious young bookworm with bright eyes and a glowing smile — and she is the goddaughter of the old man — to win his notebook back.

The conniving young duo are quickly distracted from their original mission as Hugo takes Isabelle to see her first film — Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last — and Isabelle brings Hugo to a library for his first time. Their two adventuresome interests fatefully collide when they come across a book entitled The Invention of Dreams: The Story of the First Movies Ever Made, and this book provides them with clues regarding the true identity of Georges Méliès. (This is around where Hugo suddenly makes a sharp left turn from a kids’ adventure story to a pseudo-bio-pic about Méliès.) Isabelle and Hugo join forces with the book’s author, René Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg), to bring Méliès out from the shadows.

Unless you are a connoisseur of early silent films, you are probably wondering who the heck this Méliès character is… Well, in short, Méliès was the first to recognize the connection between the cinema and dreams. This is the man who is often credited with originating the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres of cinema. Méliès came from a family of shoemakers, but he sold his share of the shoe factory to begin a career as a magician. The invention of the movies in France by the Lumière brothers prompted Méliès to build his own film camera out of parts from an automaton. He directed 531 films between 1896 and 1914, ranging in length from one to 40 minutes. What Méliès films lacked in plot, they made up for in the cinematic magic of groundbreaking special effects (not unlike a lot of Hollywood blockbusters today, and not unlike Hugo).

Contrary to what Hugo will have us believe, Méliès was never presumed dead during World War I; he stopped making films in 1913 after being forced into bankruptcy by much larger French and American studios (Méliès’ production company was bought out of receivership by Pathé Frères). The celluloid of his films did not become the heels of women’s shoes, but the French Army did seize most of Méliès’ film stock to be melted down into boot heels during World War I. However, there are some truths about Méliès in Hugo such as he did become a toy salesman at a Parisian train station and did collect automata.

I certainly appreciate Scorsese’s hero worship of Méliès and Hugo may actually have a better chance of turning audiences on to silent films than The Artist. But is this the film everyone is expecting Hugo to be? Hugo is being marketed as a children’s adventure story, not a lesson on film history and a diatribe about the importance of film preservation. Even Scorsese the magician leads us to believe that Hugo is the former, until he unveils the latter, thus pulling a Méliès-esque trick by making so many seemingly important threads of the first half of the narrative disappear before our very eyes. Poof!

I was also very confused by Scorsese’s decision to have all of the French characters speak in British accents. I guess the language and dialect of Hugo is just another directorial magic trick.

FILM REVIEW: INCENDIARY

Barry Schenk in Incendiary: The Willingham Case.

Texas is burning

By John Esther

As Rick Perry carries on his futile run for the Republican Party 2012 presidential nomination, a documentary about just some of his misconduct as the current and longest Governor of Texas hits a few select theaters.

Co-directed and produced by Steve Mims and Joe Bailey Jr., Incendiary: The Willingham Case chronicles how a brutish -- but seemingly innocent of infanticide -- man named Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted and executed for the murder of his three children.

In December of 1991 Willingham was home with his three children when a fire started in his house. While he was able to escape, his three children were not. When two fire investigators arrived they practiced their "art" by immediately suspecting arson, ruling out any other theory. In the process they destroyed what could have been evidence to the contrary. Soon after Willingham was arrested and charged with three counts of murder in the first degree.

Incompetently represented by a defender who considered Willingham a sociopath, David Martin (who comes off here as the scummiest of scum), Willingham was found guilty based on bunk science and prison snitch (who later recanted), sentenced and, after spending 23 hours a day for 12 years in solitary confinement, executed. Willingham turned down a guilty plea in exchange for a life sentence.

It was an irresponsible (to put it mildly) rush to the switch and some people would not let it go, including some of the greatest fire experts in the country plus Barry Scheck and The Innocence Project. As the pressure mounted against Perry and his old boys, something had to be done and it was not going to be made in the name of justice.

While a state execution of an innocent man is hardly new – nationwide state governments have executed hundreds of innocent men and women since the early 1900s – what resonates for this documentary is the issue of science and how, sometimes, it gets in the way of quick justice and mean politics.

As sober as a lab report, the excellent documentary metes out its findings with calm precision. Rather than make a particular point, the co-directors let the participants establish and prove his and her findings as well as some grand “common sense” stupidity.  The results go beyond the tragic, terrifying death of three children under the age of three and their father 12 years later. They strike hard into the willful and deliberate ignorance of far too many Americans.

FILM REVIEW: THE DESCENDANTS

Matt King (George Clooney) in The Descendants.

Sharing his Payne

By Don Simpson

Chinos and Hawaiian shirts are normal every day attire for Honolulu lawyer, Matt King (George Clooney). Unfortunately, Matt’s life is not nearly as relaxed as his fashion sense. His wife, Elizabeth (Patti Hastie), is in a coma after a serious boating accident while Matt’s daughters, 17-year-old Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) and 10-year-old Scotty (Amara Miller), are both suffering through rebellious periods of their lives.

After prioritizing his career over his family for the last decade, Matt decides that it is prime time to buckle up and become a better husband and father. But… How? He starts by forging an alliance of sorts with Alexandra — who has been suddenly catapulted into the role of substitute mother for Scottie — which requires Matt to accept her mere-caricature-of-a-stoner-[boy]friend, Sid (Nick Krause) as more than the dumber-than-a-rock idiot he seems to be. It is a tough pill for Matt to swallow but, against all odds, he pulls it off without beating the living shit out of him.

It is not without purpose that Matt’s change of heart towards his family occurs on the eve of his decision on what to do with his family’s 25,000 acres of virgin land on the island of Kauai. Matt and his family might be a-holes, I mean “haoles” (white Hawaiians), but they are also the direct descendants of the House of Kamehameha. Matt and his family have been collecting pitches from several developers; no matter which one Matt — the sole executor of the estate — chooses, the entire family will instantaneously become unfathomably rich.

It is far too predictable what Matt finally chooses to do with the land — though would we really desire any other possible ending? Writer-director Alexander Payne opts to give the audience exactly what they want, opting to turn The Descendants into pure, unfiltered Oscar fodder. Let’s just say that I can already guarantee that my mom will love The Descendants, and not just because she thinks George Clooney is one dreamy motherfucker (my words, not her’s — my mom is a good Catholic woman, while I am obviously not a good Catholic or a woman…though I do find Clooney to be quite dreamy). Clooney’s severely understated performance as a severely undemonstrative character,  who is incredibly bland and undeniably average, is at the absolute heart of The Descendants’s appeal. As Payne did with Jack Nicholson (About Schmidt), Paul Giamatti (Sideways) and Thomas Haden Church (Sideways), he all but castrates Clooney to restrain his performance, leaving him as a mere shell of his formerly entertaining self.

AFI 2011: PINA

Ditta Miranda Jasifi in Pina.

Moving beyond death

By Ed Rampell

German director Wim Wenders’ Pina is full of filmic flights of whimsy. Wenders, of course, has directed highly regarded features, such as Paris, Texas, but he has also helmed the nonfiction Cuban concert pic, The Buena Vista Social Club. At Pina’s first AFI Film Festival screening Wenders told the audience that it took him a long time to make this documentary because “I didn’t know how to do justice to Pina” Bausch, the choreographer and guru of the Tanztheater Wuppertal.

After grappling with this aesthetic dilemma for 20 years, the return to prominence of the 3D process solved Wenders’ creative conundrum because he was now able to render the plasticity of dance. But just as he was about to commence making the doc Bausch suddenly died, leaving Wenders in the lurch, again. However, her dancers urged him to “make the film for Pina,” and after a few years he did shoot the film, which is a testament to her remarkable talent and personality.

The result is a work that alternates between visual splendor and repetitiousness, as the Tanztheater Wuppertal dancers reflect on their fallen instructor and perform a variety of modern dances set to classical, jazz and other music. Many of the routines are a treat to behold, such as the opening rendition of much of Igor Stravinsky’s jarring The Rite of Spring. Some of the dances are full of wit and are sort of choreographed physical comedy a la Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton or Jacques Tati. Others have monotonous movements and are boring to sit through as the Pina-heads perform the same motions over and over again.

Wenders makes great use of Wuppertal, located in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, east of Düsseldorf, where Pina’s Tanztheater is located. There are great shots of and in a moving overhead monorail that looks like it came straight out of Fritz Lang’s classic sci fi silent film, Metropolis, that expertly utilize the 3D technique. A hallmark of 3D technology is that objects are tossed straight at the camera -- such as flaming spears in the 1950s potboiler, Drums of Tahiti -- to jar and remind auds that they are watching three dimensional imagery. Wenders attains this effect with leaves scattered by a leaf blower, splashing water, billowing curtains and sometimes with dancers who seem to be defying gravity, but he hasn’t completely mastered this complex medium yet.

The performers are multi-culti and multi-generational -- one female hoofer comments on the fact that Bausch continued working with dancers 40 and over -- and they often prance, romp and leap to and fro in revealing outfits. In The Rite of Spring number the women’s tops cling to their nipples and they lift filmy skirts to reveal their panties; in another set piece a male dancer literally drops his drawers as he dances from one female to another. It seems to me that Pina’s choreography expressed a yearning to be liberated, to overcome restraints, and that her work included an erotic dimension along these lines.

Pina has no plot, some dialogue, and is mainly for fans of modern dance, 3D and/or Wenders. It is Germany's Official Foreign-Language Oscar Submission and part of the AFI Film Festival’s Special Screenings section.    

AFI 2011: WUSS

Mitch (Nate Rubin) in Wuss.

Done dork deal

By Don Simpson

Meet Mitch (Nate Rubin), a meek and measly twerp of a high school English teacher (technically, a substitute with a long-term assignment) who is known by some, including Assistant Principal, Wally Combs (Alex Karpovsky), as “Little Bitch”. Mitch allows himself to be teased, ridiculed and slapped around by every living being with whom he comes into contact, no matter their age or gender. He is an aspiring fiction writer who plays D&D (as in Dungeons and Dragons) with his high school friends and still lives at home with his mom and queen bitch of a sister (Jennifer Sipes). It is as if high school never ended for Mitch. Once a wuss, always a wuss.

Judging from Mitch’s very first English II class, it is quite obvious that the students will dictate the rules of the classroom, with the school thug Re-up (Ryan Anderson) leading the wolf pack. Mitch makes fast enemies with Re-up and embarrassingly wears a plethora of scars and bruises to prove it. Nonetheless, Mitch plows onward with his classes, discussing On the Beach, Dune, and the Bible (the first science fiction novel?). Enter Maddie (Alicia Anthony), a marching band student. She takes a liking to Mitch and uses her remarkably powerful influence around school to protect him.

Though writer-director Clay Liford asserts that Wuss is not intended to carry any social or political significance, it paints a sharp critique of how high schools have evolved, with their metal detectors and overly “mature” student population. On paper, the overall plot seems to be torn straight from a Hollywood script, but Liford unearths a profound intensity that lends Wuss a uniquely dire sense of realism, thanks to strong performances by Rubin and Anthony. While some of the supporting cast appear as purposefully clownish stereotypes, the characters of Mitch and Maddie never once veer away from being incredibly realistic…even as they smoke dope together while listening to the Alan Parson’s Project.

Typically, cinema does not provide us with a wuss who is as endearing as Mitch; they are usually annoyingly stupid characters with few redeeming qualities. But Mitch seems like a perfectly nice guy. He is not stupid and apparently he is not a wuss by choice. Mitch’s supreme wussiness seems to be in his blood or maybe his genes — there is no hope for him to ever escape it.

AFI 2011: CORIOLANUS

Tullus (Gerard Butler) and Caius (Ralph Fiennes) in Coriolanus.

Ass wipe out

By Don Simpson

Coriolanus opens in Rome soon after the expulsion of the Tarquin kings and the Roman citizens (the 99 percent, if you will) are up in arms because the man (the one percent, if you will) is withholding their access to grain. The unruly citizens specifically blame a Roman general named Caius (Ralph Fiennes) for their state of woe — to which Caius fiercely retorts that the plebeians are not worthy of the grain due to their lack of military service.

Caius then goes off to battle against the Volscian army, specifically targeting their commander, Tullus (Gerard Butler). Upon his return to Rome, the leader of the Roman army, Cominius (John Kani) grants Caius the title of “Coriolanus”. Coriolanus’ mother (Vanessa Redgrave) encourages her son to ride this tidal wave of popularity and run for political office. He effortlessly wins the support of the Roman Senate, but the commoners are a trickier matter, especially because two tribunes of Rome — Brutus (Paul Jesson) and Sicinius (James Nesbitt) — are scheming to undo Coriolanus by spinning a web of rhetoric in order to convince the malleable masses that Coriolanus is not a hero but a traitor to Rome.

The Complete Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged) refers to William Shakespeare’s much overlooked Coriolanus as “the anus play." As if this is not strange enough, Fiennes opts to feature Shakespeare’s “anus play” as his directorial debut, and then chooses to set the John Logan adapted tale (mind the pun) in a non-specific (presumably contemporary) time period.

Fiennes’ approach to Coriolanus seems to be one of disorientation. As if delivering the antiquated prose of Shakespeare into a modern setting is not jarring enough, Fiennes utilizes an international cast, who speak unabashedly in their native accents. To top it all off, Fiennes juxtaposes the displaced dialogue and voices with the shaky kino-eye of neo-realist cinematographer Barry Ackroyd (Green Zone, The Hurt Locker, Battle in Seattle) in order to convey a pseudo-documentary aesthetic. As the unreal and the hyper-real clash, no survivors are taken.