Sleeping Beauty Ethics

If you could start your life over on a new planet, even if it meant going into hibernation and sleeping through 120 years to do so, would you? That’s the premise of Passengers, a new science fiction thriller which borrows from classics of the genre but reduces everything to the basics: a big, expensive ship, some pretty advanced robots, two humans in love, and a race against time. But instead of fighting aliens or evil corporations, they’re fighting technology, and not a malicious technology, but a malfunctioning technology. In reducing the science fiction drama to such a simply structured story, Passengers does what few of its ilk remember to do: it breathes. This is a movie that allows us to soak in the peculiar, mind-bending grandeur of being alone in outer space. But the film has a much bigger problem: its creepy Sleeping-Beauty ethics. (More on that later.)

That sense of the vastness of space permeates the great sci-fi movies, like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris and Alien: the power of these films lies in their ability to make us feel like we’re there, partaking in the trippy mysteries of the cosmos. So often, contemporary movies are afraid to invoke such feelings of awe and mystery. Instead, they hurl shiny, fast-moving images at us like we’re infants, easily entertained and just as easily bored, always subduable under the tyranny of the next, shinier, newer object. But Passengers has the patience to linger, and so we spend a lot of time alone with Jim Preston, the mechanic-hero played by Chris Pratt, and the first of the passengers to be wrested from hibernation. 

Jim comes off as a loner, someone predestined to leave Earth behind and spend the rest of his life alone on a spacecraft. He’s supposed to be the kind of guy nobody will miss, but of course, the movie must then convince us that he’s utterly missable, especially to Aurora, the fellow passenger (played by Jennifer Lawrence) who, while asleep, catches his eye (in a none-too-subtle reference to the “Sleeping Beauty” tale). When Jim watches her video interview, which he unearths through the passenger log, he's smitten. (Loneliness is a factor, but then again, she is being played by Jennifer Lawrence.) 

We see Aurora, a writer, explain her reason for leaving everything behind for a new, unknown planet being colonized by earthlings. She will travel 120 years, observe and write about this exciting new colony, and then return to earth in another century, having aged nary a year. It’s the story no other journalist will have, assuming journalism still exists in 250 years. (I’d be afraid that the world as we know it will have completely died out by then.) 

This greatest-scoop-ever is a clever gimmick to tempt a smart young woman into an otherwise ridiculous scenario. And these characters aren’t particularly well-developed. Aurora utters writerly pap such as, “I think we tell each other stories to know we’re not alone.” And Jim, when he realizes his predicament, telegraphs it for us: “I woke up too soon!” It sounds almost like the smarmy little kid in Home Alone who declares, “I made my family disappear,” only minus the smirking. 

Much like Jack Nicholson's character holed up in that big spooky hotel in The Shining, Jim cannot handle the isolation. (He's alone for over a year, and grows out his beard so that he resembles Kurt Russell in The Thing). The movie smartly revels in the knave-like scumminess of Jim's decision to wake Aurora, condemning her to his own fate and stealing her life, just so he won't be alone anymore. But then the movie goes out of its way to defend Jim, to endorse his love for her as somehow truer than the horribleness of this betrayal, and moreover, it tries to convince Aurora that she ought to surrender to love. Sleeping Beauty, rescued by this modern-day prince, ought to be grateful. She's awake, after all. 

Passengers would have been a terrific movie if not for this troubling development. Perhaps director Morten Tyldum fancies himself a romantic, although the scenario he and screenwriter Jon Spaights provide us is more on the level of Overboard, that 1987 romantic comedy where Kurt Russell convinces the amnesia-afflicted Goldie Hawn that she’s his wife and the mother of his unruly brood of boys, all for revenge. (I do love Overboard, but it's a problematic movie.) Ah, the timeless theme of men ruining the lives of women for their own gain; and the women, they may put up a good fight at first, but these movies always wear them down in the end. Surrender is inevitable. 

So, if you turn off your ethics, Passengers is an entertaining secondhand science fiction movie, bolstered by the presence of two of our most appealing young stars. And it’s effective and well-made, too. That’s the shame of it, that a movie can get so much right technically but proffer such disturbing views of the world. 

With Laurence Fishburne, giving the film some class as one of the briefly revived crew members, and Michael Sheen, giving the film some levity as the charming bartender-robot.

"Nocturnal Animals": A cautionary tale about the dangers of marrying bad writers

At first, Nocturnal Animals feels like a riff on movie thrillers: It’s set in Los Angeles, where Amy Adams plays Susan Morrow, the owner of a hip (and bankrupt) L.A. art gallery, and the opening sequence features various, nude, obese middle-aged and elderly women, dancing and flaunting their jiggly bodies with audacious confidence: Edith Massey on the outside and Marilyn Monroe on the inside. (Edith Massey was the snaggletoothed, ditzy, delightfully mad older woman who appeared in many of John Waters’ early films, including Pink Flamingos and Polyester). During the show’s after-party, Susan makes conversation, spilling her guts (about her frustrated marriage) to a funky-looking artist-friend, whose big curly hair and long, flowing dress and big earrings seem pickled in the 1970s: she looks like the kind of gaudy woman who’d end up stabbing someone to death in a Dario Argento horror film. There are shades of Brian De Palma, and even whispers of that delightfully awful 1994 film Color of Night, the worst erotic thriller ever made (one that is incredibly watchable in all its glorious badness). 

These impressions might spell a derivative but lewdly entertaining movie, especially in the hands of writer-director Tom Ford, who first worked as a production designer and whose eye for beauty is so keen in the not-entirely-successful but gorgeous 2009 film A Single Man. But Nocturnal Animals makes a number of disappointing structural blunders. Much of the film dramatizes the novel Susan is reading, a manuscript she receives from her ex-husband, Edward, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Susan’s marriage ended badly, because she cheated on Edward (with her current husband, played by Armie Hammer), and the movie emits a grim energy, as though this novel, which is violent and disturbing and clearly borrows from Edward’s past with Susan, is some kind of revenge fantasy. (He even dedicated it to her.)

The novel and its dramatization are nasty and unappealing to Susan, and to us. The story involves a family being accosted by three psychopaths in an isolated part of Texas in the dead of night. The husband, Tony (also played by Gyllenhaal), is left for dead, his wife and daughter are raped and murdered, and the killers vanish without a trace, until a dogged, lung cancer-afflicted investigator (Michael Shannon), helps Tony track them down. 

Because she has nothing to do but read a book, Susan's only active participation in the story must occur in flashbacks, where we see Susan and Edward, once childhood friends, falling in love, against the will of Susan’s Southern-belle mama, played by Laura Linney, with her hair all poofed up and a delightful Blanche Devereaux-esque accent that I could listen to for days. (Tom Ford clearly has an affinity for brassy, bossy women, yet Linney’s character gets minimal screen time, and Susan Morrow is practically a blank.) Mama didn’t approve of Edward because he was poor and sensitive, but Susan married him anyway, and now, everything her mother said would happen has happened: “The things you love about him now are the things you will hate about him in a few years,” she says softly, her threatening prophecy steeped in matronly tenderness. 

When a movie makes its main character passive, it better have a darn good reason. Jimmy Stewart, confined to a wheelchair in Rear Window, turns into a neighborhood snoop, out of boredom, and when he witnesses a murder, enlists his girlfriend Grace Kelly and his physical therapist Thelma Ritter to help him prove it. Thus, Alfred Hitchcock made Stewart’s character active by proxy. But Nocturnal Animals doesn’t know what to do with Amy Adams’ character. There’s nothing compelling about Susan, which makes her passiveness all the more dull. Thus, for Susan, everything hinges on the narrative revealed to us in flashbacks, but those aren’t compelling either. She essentially becomes unhappy with her current husband, and ditches him for another one. 

And so Nocturnal Animals alternates between blandness and nastiness. Laura Linney’s performance, as well as the performances of Shannon and of Aaron-Taylor Johnson (as one of the killers), give the film some vitality, but it’s not enough to save the film from its own bad plot. The final scene, when Susan goes to meet Edward for dinner and he stands her up, should be an emotionally powerful moment. But Susan hasn’t been enough of a cold bitch to warrant our hate, and she’s not sympathetic enough for us to care about her. Moreover, Susan’s judgment has really gone downhill: She criticized Edward’s writing when they were together, but now she raves about this crappy novel in an email she sends him. Then again, she agreed to meet with Edward for drinks in the first place, another sign that her judgment is not to be trusted. Anyone who dedicates a novel like this to you, should be avoided at all costs. 

Kill the Messenger

Why do I feel so ambivalent about Kill the Messenger? I think it’s because Kill the Messenger is trying to be both a riveting journalistic thriller and a tribute to a daring reporter. It doesn't always succeed at the former, although the problem may be a case of bad marketing. At any rate, I'll say this: Jeremy Renner is worth the price of admission. He plays real-life reporter Gary Webb, who wrote for a small paper in San Jose, California and who, in the mid-90s, began investigating a story of chilling implications about drugs and the U.S. government. 

It’s pretty obvious that Renner, who co-produced this project, wanted to do a service to a man who, if the film is accurate, had his name and credibility dragged through the mud after he began reporting on the CIA’s alleged involvement in drug trafficking. The movie traces a seemingly tenuous connection between cocaine distribution in large American cities such as Los Angeles and political unrest in Central America in the 80s and 90s.

In the movie, Webb is handed this tantalizing story by the girlfriend of an accused drug dealer. She has conveniently saved a transcript of a drug dealer’s confession that implicates the CIA in allowing cocaine to be sold in this country. The motive? Supplying our political allies in Nicaragua with sophisticated weaponry. These are indeed alarming accusations, and when Webb’s story goes live, he’s met with a real firestorm of rage and hostility from the government and various other media outlets (most of whom are jealous that they didn’t get the scoop first, and then eager to prove Webb’s story a lie by undermining his sources).

Kill the Messenger is a solid piece of entertainment. It generally avoids the more dramatic temptations of a journalistic thriller. (If this had been made in the 90s, when the events actually take place, the filmmakers would likely have given this the full John Grisham treatment). The director, Michael Cuesta, wants to look at the man Gary Webb and the effect that his story has not just on the world but on him and his family. The film is hell-bent on humanizing Gary Webb, and at times feels less like a crackling thriller and more like a documentary about him. There are meek attempts to give us the John Grisham treatment, but they’re always suggestions, such as the scene when Renner sees someone prowling in his driveway in the middle of the night. He scares the man off and calls the police, but we never find out who it was. Some sneaky possible CIA goons worm their way into the house while the police are there and begin rifling through Webb’s stuff; this is the heart of the scene and the prowler is a mere device to get us there.

The film also struggles to be consistent at times. When Webb’s story first emerges, he’s quickly hailed as the reporter of the year by his peers. But then we see almost everyone in the journalism world renege on their praise: the bigger papers question the veracity of Webb’s sources and—possibly due to efforts of the CIA—raise doubt about Webb’s own integrity. After all this reversal of opinion about Gary Webb, the film (near the end) cuts to a scene of his big award night, as though none of the doubt or criticism has taken place, including the skepticism of Webb’s own editor (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, whose performance is at times lifeless).

Despite all Cuesta’s attempts to make Kill the Messenger an almost-exciting thriller, the most compelling scene involves Webb and his family. It’s when Webb is confronted by his teenage son, who has just found out about an affair his father had several years back. The actor, Lucas Hedges, shows us the gut-wrenching feeling of seeing your father no longer as a superhero, but as a flawed man. That moment does more to humanize Kill the Messenger than anything else. It’s also a turning point, where the movie becomes more interesting. But I should note that the “Gary Webb: Family Man” moments are not always successful, and Rosemarie DeWitt has little to do as Webb’s long-suffering wife. (The women in this movie are all pretty lifeless, come to think of it. The director doesn’t seem to know what to do with them.)

There are also compelling bits of documentary footage thrown into Kill the Messenger, of politicians like Maxine Waters and John Kerry decrying the CIA’s shady dealings with cocaine dealers and their detrimental effects on the black community in South Central Los Angeles. There’s a scene in the film where Webb and the assistant district attorney drive to South Central, and Webb gets out of the car and walks around for a moment. It’s one of those neighborhoods where white people feel unsafe because everyone there is black, and it’s clear the movie wants us to understand the very unsavory attitudes at the heart of the drug war: We just don’t care if it doesn’t affect “our own people.” It’s not unlike how Gone Girl points out the way rich white women who disappear are given far more media coverage than their black or Hispanic counterparts.

Kill the Messenger is somewhat hampered in its effort to be so many things to so many people, but it features a typically strong performance by Jeremy Renner, who’s always reason enough to see a movie. Renner lets the emotions his character experiences build and build, and watching him explode a little is kind of powerful, exciting. He’s a strong actor even when he’s not doing anything overtly grandiose or “explosive.” And in its defense, Kill the Messenger is a smart film that doesn’t go for cheap thrills or cheap drama. The emotions may be somewhat manipulative, but they’re also credible and honest. And the questions this movie raises are difficult to shake off. The ending is also surprisingly touching: it’s understated where so many films of this kind would go for something big and showy.

With Barry Pepper, Ray Liotta, Paz Vega, Oliver Platt, Michael Sheen, Andy Garcia, Robert Patrick, Michael K. Williams, and Joshua Close.

The Queen

Helen Mirren acts with a lot of restraint and good judgment as Queen Elizabeth II, whose refusal to react publicly to the death of Princess Diana in 1997 caused a public outcry. The Queen (2006) is an intriguing little political drama, particularly because it manages to be both critical and sympathetic toward the Queen, whose decision not to make any kind of public statement about Diana's death is based in her belief that part of the job of being Queen is maintaining oneself publicly. Only after the persistent encouragement of the newly elected Prime Minister, Tony Blair (Michael Sheen), does she finally relent, conceding to the overwhelming evidence that the world has changed, and the world she knows and operates in no longer exists.

The script by Peter Morgan manages to avoid cheap sentiment, and director Stephen Frears doesn't cave in either: the tabloid aspects of this story (Princess Diana herself being the chief one) are not played up. Rather, this film is interested in looking at the political life of a country that has one foot in the past and one in the future: a monarch performing a lot of ceremonial duties (such as offering a formal invitation to the Prime Minister, which seals his election) that mean something, but not much. The old institutions are suspect to the new generation that would rather have a Queen relate to them on a kind of gooey, feel-good emotional level. Essentially, they want an Oprah, not a queen. You end up sympathizing with Elizabeth more and more.

With James Cromwell as Prince Phillip, Helen McCroy as Cherie Blair, Alex Jennings as Prince Charles, Sylvia Syms as the Queen Mother, Tim McMullan, Mark Bazeley (who offers up an enjoyably wry performance as Blair's strategic assistant). The film uses real news footage more adeptly than you might think, and manages to create a vivid sense of realism without sensationalizing a story that was (and still is) sensationalized in real life. 103 min. ★★★

Admission

I'm happy to live in a world where Tina Fey is making movies and TV shows, because it's a much funnier, more interesting world than it would be without her. Admission, Fey's latest movie, is that way too: the movie would be less funny and less interesting if she weren't in it. More to the point, it's the kind of romantic comedy that seems tailored to fit Fey's personality--or at least the personality she projects into characters like Liz Lemon, her character from the just-ended sitcom 30 Rock. (I'll refrain from inserting a comment like "30 Rock is the best situational comedy in the last ten years, possibly the last 20.")

Fey plays slight variations of her Liz Lemon character in movies like Baby Mama (2008) and Admission. They're always women who are successful but unhappy. They've avoided the pitfalls of marriage and family only to find another pitfall in their careers. In this latest vehicle, Fey plays Portia Nathan, an admissions officer at Princeton University. (Something about the name 'Portia' seems like an inside joke.) Portia isn't single. She's been living with a Princeton English professor (who thinks that reading lines from Canterbury Tales in Middle English are a good way to spend an evening). She isn't unhappy (she has a rewarding job at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, and she's one of the ones who says "yes" or "no" to a student's application). And she isn't worried about having children. These non-problems only become problems after she meets John (Paul Rudd), a teacher at an experimental school in New Hampshire who's trying to get one of his students into Princeton.

In true romantic comedy fashion, Admission hinges upon a series of unlikely plot devices, such as the teenage boy, who Portia learns might just be the son she had in college and gave up for adoption when he was still a baby. This hypothetical pushes a lot of maternal buttons that Portia didn't know existed in her, and she finds herself doing all of the irrational things parents do to help their children: The very things she's encouraged parents of college applicants not to do.

I really enjoyed Admission. The writing (it was adapted from Jean Hanff Korelitz's novel by Karen Croner) somehow balances clever with commercial, which makes Admission a surprisingly refreshing comedy. It goes in unexpected directions, and requires more from Tina Fey as an actress than her previous movie roles have. She pulls off the dramatic scenes convincingly. But it's her delivery of the jokes that sells this movie. Every one of her throwaway lines seems so fragile, so destined for failure if even one thing is off, be it the timing or the cadence or the facial expression. Yet Fey locates and projects the humor in lines that wouldn't necessarily look funny on the screen. (Except that more likely than not, Croner was familiar with her acting enough to imagine the lines working. This assumes that the movie was written with Tina Fey in mind, of course.)

Lily Tomlin co-stars as Portia's mom. She's an eccentric loner who was a major voice of the feminist movement during the 1970s. She's put a lot of pressure on Portia to be fiercely independent of men, and as Portia treads the ground forged by her mother, she begins to suspect that perhaps it's not as fulfilling as she thought it would be. Tomlin is a delightful comedian, and it's especially fun to see her paired with Fey. Paul Rudd is surprisingly likable in this movie. He's finally been cast in a movie in which he doesn't have to be a jerk, even slightly. He's just charming and even foolishly passionate about the world. It's a refreshing change. With Michael Sheen, Wallace Shawn, Nat Wolff, Travaris Spears, and Gloria Reuben. Directed by Paul Weitz. ★★½

Breaking Dawn Part 2

I didn't see Breaking Dawn Part 1, but it wasn't that hard to catch up with everyone's favorite shiny vampire couple, Bella and Edward, from where I left them at Eclipse. Breaking Dawn Part 2 is the payoff of the payoff. Finally all those who were too lazy to read the books can feel the exquisite relief of resolution. And to my surprise, Breaking Dawn Part 2 was a first-rate piece of entertainment, marked by brilliant writing (shout-out to screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg), heart-pounding suspense, breathtaking vistas of the Pacific Northwest, and a performance from Robert Pattinson that can only be summed up in one word: Brando.

Okay, none of this is true. But I've been criticized before for pointing out the shortcomings in this series. Nobody goes to see the Twilight movies for quality, they tell me. Okay, fine. But don't you have any standards? Actually, there were some improvements. This is the most entertaining entry I've seen. And the cast isn't as bad as it was before. For example, Kristen Stewart, whose acting has now been upgraded to corpse-plus rather than sub-corpse. She may eventually surpass Kevin Costner if she continues working long enough. (She actually seems to be feeling something this time around, definitely an encouraging sign.) Stewart's also gotten more beautiful--or at the very least, the pore refiner has increased in quality in proportion with the budget. She seems to be coming into her adulthood a little more, and that makes her more believable as a heroine. Maybe it's because she finally has some motivation beyond gushy teen love: a child of her own whom she must defend from the Volturi, that evil organization of vampires which rules all of nosferatudom and seems to be itching for a vampire vs. vampire battle. When they find out about Bella and Edward's daughter, they believe the Cullen family has broken an age-old law that forbids interbreeding between vampires and humans, and this escalates the conflict that was coming to a boil in the first four films.

Still, there's never any doubt as to how things will end up. You can hardly accuse this movie of being a cliffhanger. Okay, it's a simple matter of giving people what they want. And that's understandable. They've waited four years, for heaven's sake. What's more frustrating for a movie lover is to see a film so self-deluded: it thinks that the subdued kissing scenes and all the half-remorseful, half-horned-up glances are passion. This movie never achieves room temperature, let alone anything remotely hot enough to qualify as passion. Even the countless vampire decapitations--this film has more beheadings than Paris in 1794--lack integrity. (Obviously the filmmakers wanted a PG-13 rating, as their box office revenue depends upon the army of tweens who inundated the theater tonight.) When the vampires' heads are yanked out of their neck sockets, they look like china figures. One of them gets separated at the jaw line, but even this effect is too tame to elicit anything more than laughter. (Although the fans were cheering with reverie at each and every Volturi beheading.)

 As for the other leads: Robert Pattinson is a fairly good actor, except he always seems to be playing boring roles. I think the camera itself fell in love with Pattinson. But it's not him really. It's the make-up: the pasty white skin that turns him into an emaciated-looking bloodsucker, and the burgundy lips that suggest a passionate fire underneath the cool exterior. He's the perfect Harlequin hero, and still homo-erotic enough when acting with his longtime frenemy Taylor Lautner that I would invest in their Bed & Breakfast in Vermont. (You can read about that in my Eclipse review.)

The problem with these movies has always been that everyone's too beautiful. That's the fantasy they're selling--that everyone's buying, it should be pointed out--but it really doesn't work for the genre, even if the Meyer vampire is a far cry from Bram Stoker's, or even the vampires of the 70s cult soap opera Dark Shadows. This is a Gothic for the Abercrombie & Fitch generation, which is to say it's a Gothic full of mannequins with empty heads.

The script, by Rosenberg (who has seen the series through to the end, valiantly unwilling to part with the banality of author Stephenie Meyer's ideas), hasn't a speck of irony about it, although there are a few funny parts. Most of them are little gifts, wafers for the initiated--those fans who've been faithful enough to sit through all five of the movies. There are moments where Edward and Jacob make little sarcastic comments too, showing a spark of self-awareness, and for those brief seconds the movie doesn't take itself too seriously.

But the director, Bill Condon, goes all-in in terms of giving you Twimaniacs your money's worth. Condon treats every scene either like he's uncorking a bottle of champagne or beholding the breathtaking wonder of Mount Everest. These rapturous renderings generally herald nothing more than inane twaddle between the vegetarian vampires, or "stirring" nature sequences, some of them looking a bit fakey. Bella and Edward hurdle through the crisp evergreens looking for animals to hunt, and she decides to go after a rock climber instead. A clever idea, except she's stopped by Edward and his commitment to being a decent vampire. (This film--and its predecessors-- would have been more intriguing with the ambiguity ratcheted up. Edward was never really bad enough to be the enticing rebel without a pulse. Maybe Bella could have led us delightfully astray by turning into a human-hunting bloodsucker. That would have given them an excuse for Breaking Dawn 3. But nobody's interested in seeing her veer from the straight-and-narrow. That, or the writers' idea of turning away from good is living forever young and sparkling in sunlight. How incredibly bad-ass.)

As the head villain, Michael Sheen turns in a performance that's like bad Dr. Evil. He sports a particularly lame make-up job, as one of my friends I saw the movie with pointed out to me. Sheen delivers a creepy laugh--a high-pitched, hollowed-out welt of a titter--that elicited a wave of guffaws from the audience. I was actually enjoying the audience more than the movie. Their applause was generous throughout, and you could certainly feel their excitement. 

Some of the dialogue is delightfully bad. "Forever isn't as long as I'd hoped" comes to mind. Or, when Jacob refers to Bella's infant by the nickname Nessy, she exclaims with horrified indignation, "you nicknamed my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster?!" Kristen Stewart's voice is too flat to suggest real anger. All that moping she did in the first Twilight has paid off, though. It proves that pouty girls really can have it all.

With Peter Facinelli, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz, Billy Burke, Elizabeth Reaser, Dakota Fanning, Jamie Campbell Bower, Mackenzie Foy, Maggie Grace, and Jackson Rathbone. 108 mins.