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Out in Theaters: AIN'T THEM BODIES SAINTS

“Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”
Directed By David Lowery
Starring Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Ben Foster, Keith Carradine, Nate Parker, Rami Malek
Drama
105 Mins 
R

 

Less is more may be a common adage but it’s not one that applies to Ain’t Them Bodies Saint. From the simple old-timey title sequence, this is a film that aims at quiet contemplation but mostly just falls flat. While there are a lot of ideas hinted at throughout, little is ultimately brought to light and we’re left with a soft-gummed mass that asks little of and offers little to its audience.

 
Although director David Lowery is clearly trying to diverge from the modern path of filmmaking – electing to create something more singular, visually striking, and ultimately old-fashioned – his filmfalters. By framing it exclusively in an antiquated schema, Lowery has limited the reach of the film and deprived it of the emotive power he assumes it has.
We meet Ruth and Bob in the midst of a barren wheat field. Ruth is running away from the middle-of-nowhere shanty and her middle-of-nowhere life that she shares with her lover Bob. Catching up with her, Bob convinces her that their place in the world is destined to improve. They just need each other. She reluctantly but lovingly returns home with him but not before revealing that she is unintentionally pregnant with his child.
The scene quickly changes pace and we’re in the midst of a getaway with the cops hot on the tail of this duo. Holed up in their shanty, blasting off rounds at cops, Ruth puts a bullet in an officer. When the two surrender, however, it’s Bob who claims responsibility. Sentenced to 25 years in jail, Bob and Ruth part ways indefinitely but when Bob escapes, Ruth has to choose which path her and her four-year-old daughter will embark upon. Will she return to Bob and live life on the lamb or will she abandon the man who took the proverbial bullet for her? As she grapples with these questions, Bob makes his way towards her, chased by the ghost of his past in the form of three vigilantes hunting him for more than just money.

While starsCasey Affleck and Rooney Mara are certainly on point here, it’s the moustachioed Ben Foster (3:10 to Yuma) that offers up the most solid performance of the group. Playing with subtlety and subtext, Foster isn’t your typical police officer but it’s hard to put your finger on why he works as well as he does. He’s lawful good to the T but there is an uncommon complexity to his undeserved adoration of Mara’s Ruth that makes him more intriguing than the morally grey characters surrounding him.

Deep within said moral greyness, Rooney Mara (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) continues to give worthwhile performances and here plays with guilt and forgiveness. Burying her guilt rather than confronting it, she is an emotionally stranded character who has built castle-high walls around herself. But through her guarded facade is a woman lost. Even though we only see the initial inklings of her letting her guard down, Mara works the nuance and milks her rather slim character for all she’s worth.

Casey Affleck (Gone Baby Gone), on the other hand, is fine but I’m still not won over by him. He’s scraggly and pitiable but he lacks the oomph of a leading man, making it all the more difficult to root for such a flatly written character. As the vultures of his past circle closer, there is neither a big reveal nor any character revelation to up the stakes.

Ultimately, mystery can only go so far. When your faceless villains aren’t given any motives, they become bland sketches rather than shadowy demons. They don’t add anything to the picture because they are lifeless and instead just showcase the more hollow aspects of the film. The mystery runs itself dry and we’re left disappointed and unfulfilled.

While director of photography Bradford Young nabs some stunningly desolate imagery, winning him the Cinematography Award at Sundance, the camera work is mostly as wooden as the plot points. Perhaps I’ll never quite understand why this particular brand of dusty film, accented with brown and grey filters, always feels the need to be so restrained and inward peering but this egotistic meditation just serves to hold it back.

Although there are some intriguing themes taking place, none are aptly fleshed out. Even a committed cast can’t make magic out of nothing, especially with a script that’s this bare-bones and sulky. Posing as a film deeper than it is, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is a rare case where the title is more provocative than the work.

C

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First Poster for Terry Gilliam's THE ZERO THEOREM

Terry Gilliam‘s career is defined by a certain eccentricity and a willingness to stretch the mind of his audience. Responsible for films such as Monty Python, 12 Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Gilliam takes pleasure in dipping into the strangeness of the world and his latest, The Zero Theorem follows that trend closely.

Starring Christoph Waltz, the story follows Qohen Leth, a reclusive computer genius who lives in an Orwellian corporate world and suffers from existential angst. Under the instruction of a shadowy figure known only as “Management”, Qohen works to solve the “Zero Theorem” – a mathematical formula which will finally determine whether life has any meaning. Qohen’s work in the burnt-out chapel that serves as his home is interrupted by visits from Bainsley, a seductive woman, and Bob, the teenage son of Management. Waltz is accompanied by Tilda Swinton, Matt Damon, Ben Whishaw, and David Thewlis.

The Zero Theorem is directed by Terry Gilliam and stars Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, Matt Damon, Ben Whishaw, and David Thewlis. It opens December 20.
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Out in Theaters: THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES

“The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones”
Directed by Harald Zwart

Starring Lily Collins Jamie Campbell Bower, Kevin Zegers, Jemima West, Robert Sheehan, Robert Maillet, Lena Headey, Jared Harris, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Aidan Turner
Action, Adventure, Drama
130 Mins
PG-13

 

Going to see The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is like getting a filing from a dentist whose supply of Novocaine has run dry. It’s a painful eternity of an experience that hacks and saws at our entertainment-guzzling sensibilities, defying each and every lesson culled from filmmaking 101 and spewing formula like a film-school-dropout on Ipecac. The “talent” both in front of and behind the camera is so raw-dogged and askew that it almost seeks to redefine “so bad, it’s good”. Needless to say, it misses that mark by a long shot and winds up in its own realm entirely, almost unknowingly. The result is strangely akin to watching a child play in a turd-peppered litter box, mistaking it for the sandbox he knows and loves, helpless to clue the poor thing in on its brown-handed error. 

 
You may find yourself laughing aloud at the twisted excuse for a story as it fumbles over and over but it feels like laughing at a cat chasing after a laser pointer. You feel the cat’s pain and its confusion as it bounds around searching for direction, tragically confuzzled when it comes up empty-handed time and time again, but when all is said and done, you’re thinking to yourself, “What a dumb cat.” In this regard, director Harald Zwart is much like a dumb cat.

Even by teen franchise standards, Zwart’s hyperventilated storytelling is embarrassingly crude and majorly derivative. He’s proven himself to be a more slack jawed character director than Bill Condon with less story assurance than Rupert Sanders. Anytime I’m sitting in a theater daydreaming about  Twilight, a loss has occurred on an epic level.  

At the helm of the cluttered wreckage is Lily Collins as Clary, a plain-Jane teen who discovers that the blood of Shadow Hunters run in her veins when her mom is abruptly kidnapped. Shadow Hunters are age-old crossbreeds between humans and angels, invisible to the normal human eye, sent to Earth as guardians. They are tasked with ridding the world of demons that physically manifest themselves as fiery monsters and tentacle dogs. Also, vampires, because fuck you.

Naturally, werewolves are also in the mix and they’re aligned with the good guys, maintaining a shaky and largely undefined alliance with the Shadow Hunters. But the relational web is so whitewashed and barren that it’s hard to get a read on exactly who is who and what is what and why exactly you’re supposed to care about anyone and anything. Also, a vampire bites a lead character. But don’t worry, none of that will actually matter in terms of the story nor will it ever be addressed again.

The rhyme and reason underlying any one of the scenes seems to be up to your own willingness to accept stupidity at face value. Honestly, I’d be shocked and amazed if anyone who hadn’t read the popular books upon which the movie is based could offer a reasonable plot point to plot point analysis after getting through this genuine nightmare. It is a near impossibility because nothing is ever allowed to breathe; it just charges along completely blind to the wreckage that it calls narrative.

For his part, Zwart can’t even handle the most commonplace of arcs. He chugs along letting the plot holes blow bigger and bigger. Had I been as apparently drunken as the people OKing this 2-hour-(plus!!) brain rape, it probably wouldn’t have been so bad. As it is, I’m already eager to slam it with the title of “Worst Movie of the Year.”

Although Collins (Mirror Mirror, Abduction) is a far cry from good, she does manage to escape more unscathed than her co-stars, who are wholly terrible. The broodingly gaunt Jamie Campbell Bower as Jace mistakes duckface for acting as Kevin Zegers‘s moody Alec is a simple shade of angst, fearfully meek in personifying homosexuality within a family-friendly environment. But none compare to the appallingly untalented Godfrey Gao, a minor character whose limited presence sucks the air right out of the scene. Casting folly notwithstanding, Gao serves as his own executioner. In his debut picture, he’s just acted his way out of a career.

Perhaps this unkempt company isn’t quite to blame though considering the script doesn’t seem to allow for any semblance of good acting, as most of the scripted lines are expository reports rather than genuine colloquial speech. With her debut screenwriting credit, Jessica Postigo has chalked up character motivation as flimsy as toothpicks, bending with the shift of the wind, which share the one-time-use disposable trait. Each and every action and reaction is about as thought through as the choice to sneeze or not. But still the thing sputters along, weaving a miscalculated web of romance, all of which by film’s end wind up being creepy, incestuous or homophobic.

While not shoehorning in love triangles until the skin-tight leather seams are about to burst, Zwart tries to usher in a level of self-awareness that escapes him and his performers. While trying to buddy up to the fan base and poke fun at the film, Zwart is having his cake and eating it too. But this cake is actually a grave, and he’s digging it deeper by the second. Even though it boasts an impressive amount of “laugh at us, not with us” lines, nothing is nearly as satisfying as the long awaited breath of relief when this invasive clunker has finally run its course.

Spoiler Alert: They’re siblings.

Within the genre norms of trying to razzle-dazzle preteens and generally younger audiences, the film somehow manages to miss yet again. It’s impossible to reconcile the film’s darker, near grotesque creature designs with the flowery teen-sheen of the character relations but they’re all sharing the screen in their misfitted glory. As Zwart turgidly shovels plot points and familiar character beats into a witch’s brew of genre cliches, the only spell he ends up casting is a sleeping spell. Sadly those do not exist in the real world, so parents – be sure to bring along a double dose of Ambien. 

To return to the initial analogy, Zwart’s teenaged musings can really only be compared to the unwelcome discomfort we experience sitting in a dentist’s chair, jaw braced and teeth probed. Mortal Instruments is a grin-and-bear-it slog so relentless in its awful tendencies that the result is a special kind of agitating. As if untrained interns were solely responsible for the shaggy writing and Julienne-chopped editing, the film tries to substitute genuine craft with a stale pump of out-of-date laughing gas and a slopjob of visual flair that doesn’t even hold up to post-2000 standards. In a word, it’s absolutely dreadful…the brand of active, egregious dreadful that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

F

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Snazzy Behind the Scenes Shots of Aronofsky's NOAH

A few months back, we got our first look at Darren Aronofsky‘s Noah -the biblical epic that follows Russell Crowe as the eponymous Old Testament hero inside of a film taking an environmental bent with its storytelling. These high-res behind-the-scenes photos take a look at the Iceland location and the work being done on the film. With filming still in progress, the film will wrap soon to allow enough post production time for its March 28, 2014 release date.

Noah is directed by Darren Aronofsky and stars Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone, Kevin Durand, Douglas Booth and Dakota Goyo. It storms into theaters March 28, 2014.

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J.J. Abrams Intriguingly Teases New Project

While taking with EW.com, "Episode VII" director J.J. Abrams opened up about what he has in mind for continuing the venerable "Star Wars" franchise.

There is little known about J.J. Abram’s (Star Trek, Lost) newest project, and no, I am not referring to Star Wars 7. Without a title, synopsis or confirmation as to whether it is a film, a short film, a television show or a Spanish telenovela, this little tease, entitled “Stranger,” is just compelling enough to pique our interest in the newest project from the horn-rimmed glass slinging, sci-fi guru’s Bad Robot production company.

As a massive fan of Lost and 2009’s Star Trek, I’m curious to see just what Abram’s has cooking but would hardly venture to say that we’re guaranteed something of value here. Though Abrams has been a part of some massive success stories, he’s also has his hand in some not so stellar projects.

One way or another, this little one minute tease is certainly worth a look.

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THOR: THE DARK WORLD Gets Dull Poster

In a bit of inner-studio mimicry, the latest poster for Thor: The Dark World looks quite a bit like this summer’s poster for Iron Man 3. While many have taken shots at Marvel for using a similar formula for their films, it seems that they are now applying that formula to posters.

From the slightly cocked, minorly confuzzled and majorly concerned face of the heroine with her one hand on her man’s right pectoral, to the foreboding yet flexing stance of the hero, to the secondary characters superimposed in the background, and a big villain’s head looming in the distance, it’s a cluttered and failed attempt at a Photoshop job that just comes off as rushed, copied and, well, bad.

For comparisons sake, take a look at this poster for Iron Man 3 and see just how similar they look. With this new poster, expect another trailer to follow soon. If you missed the first trailer, check it out here.

Thor 2 is directed by Game of Thrones helmer Alan Taylor andstars Chris Hemsworth, Natalie PortmanTom Hiddleston, Stellan Skarsgård, Idris Elba, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Kat Dennings, Ray Stevenson, Zachary Levi, Tadanobu Asano, Jaimie Alexander, Rene Russo, and Anthony Hopkins and opens in theaters on November 8, 2013.

 

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First Two Posters for X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST Splices Old and New Characters

With an absolutely massive cast that takes actors from both Bryan Singer‘s original trilogy and Matthew Vaughn‘s X-Men: First Class, this first poster from X-Men: Days of Future Past splices together the old and new Professor X and Magneto.

With both Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy playing Professor X and Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender playing Magneto, Days of Future Past involves a time-traveling plot where mutants from the future travel back in time to help past X-Men characters stop malevolent machines, known as Sentinels, bent on destroying mutants once and for all.

Patrick Stewart/James McAvoy as Professor X

 

Ian McKellen/Michael Fassbender as Magneto

X-Men: Days of Future Past is directed by Bryan Singer and stars Patrick Stewart, James McAvoy, Ian McKellen, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Halle Berry, Nicholas Hoult, Peter Dinklage, Ellen Page, Anna Paquin, Shaun Ashmore, Omar Sy and Evan Peters. It hits theaters on May 23, 2014.

 

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Posthumous Trailer for James Gandolfini's ENOUGH SAID

 


The entertainment community suffered a staggering loss with the passing of James Gandolfini but luckily one final performance from the man most known for his gangster persona on The Sopranos remains to be seen in the indie film, Enough Said. As a major change of pace for Gandolfini, he plays a vulnerable and sensitive man suffering from depression after a divorce.

 

Gandolfini plays against Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Seinfeld) with a confusing synopsis that reads: A divorced woman who decides to pursue the man she’s interested in learns he’s her new friend’s ex-husband.

Co-star Toni Collette said of Gandolfini’s performance, “He was just so generous, so funny, so sweet and a real teddy bear. I know he had certainly in the Sopranos but in a lot of roles was cast as a strong, influential dude and here he plays a character who’s compromised and confused and vulnerable.

Take a look at the trailer and see if you’ll try and support the final performance from a behemoth talent.

Enough Said is directed by Nicole Holofcener and stars James Gandolfini, Toni Collette, Catherine Keener, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. It opens on September 20.

 

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HOMELAND Season 3 Gets Emotional 3 Minute Trailer

  

If you haven’t yet tuned into Showtime‘s Homeland, stop what you’re doing and get on the ball. Seriously, you owe it to yourself to make time for this show. Defined by absolutely stunning performances from Claire Danes, Damian Lewis and Mandy Patinkin, the first season was edge-of-your-seat entertainment that seemed impossible to follow up. 

While the second season wasn’t quite the shocking breath of fresh air that the first one way, the performers continued to entrance us and it proved the Homeland was here to stay as a massive entertaining show. From 24’s showrunner Howard Gordon, Homeland is based on the Israeli series Hatufim, obviously changed to make it pertinent to an American audience. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXOUIsu-E0Q

Anyone who has kept up with the show has surely latched onto the love story of mentally unstable CIA operative, Carrie Mathison (Danes), and shifty domestic terrorist, Nicholas Brody (Lewis). Since the second season ended with a bang (pun intended), this next part of the journey could really go anywhere and that’s one of the best parts of this show – we literally have no idea where it will be heading next. I, for one, can’t wait for the next part of this stellar series. New episodes premiere on September 29.

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SIFF Review: PRINCE AVALANCHE

 

“Prince Avalanche” 
Directed by David Gordon Green
Starring Paul Rudd, Emile Hirsh, Lance LeGault, Joyce Payne
Comedy, Drama
94 Mins
R

Prince Avalanche starts slow, aims lows and won’t make any dough. It’s a pretentious channeling of Terrence Malick, infected with self-importance and devoid of any meaning. Attempts to pull an “Emperor’s New Clothes” gag, Green’s film openly mocks you if you don’t “get it”. But it’s clear, there is nothing to get here, little to take away and zero to cherish. The equivalent of an imitation Jackson Pollock, this is a festering pile of trash wrapped up with fancy names and presented as craft. From the childish performances to the wandering story, and all along the gimmicky art-house road, this is a bad movie that made me jealous of the people storming out in the middle of it.

 

To get a grasp on what exactly makes Prince Avalanche so bad, first comprehend what it could have been. The combination of director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express), Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch screams comedy gold. Even the trailer presented this as a quirky comedy about two offbeat guys doing goofy things – nothing could be more misleading.

In reality, this is the story of Alvin (Rudd) and Lance (Hirsh) – two strange, moody, unlikable blue-collar workers who do the most boring job in the world: hammer posts into the side of the road. How do I know it’s the most boring job in the world? Because Green spends a good tenth of his movie showing us just exactly how boring it is to hammer in post after post on the side of the goddamn road. But does this make good filmmaking? Do I even have to tell you “no”?

Living together out of a tent in the woods, they run into weird situations like Hirsh beating off in the middle of the night and Lance getting dumped via snail mail and getting super-duper bummed about it. While events like these and the Odd Couple-in-the-woods living situation could make for good comedy beats, every attempt at comedy is eyebrow raising and wildly disappointing. It’s awkward in all the wrong ways and excuses this faltering comedy with attempts to “get deep”. An unnamed truck driver (Lance LeGault) gets a slight raise from the corner of the lip, but that’s the extent of our comedic enjoyment in a film that’s as confused as a Saturday night bag-lady and as funny as watching Grandma die.

More important, and more devastating, than the misfired attempts at comedy, is the lacking sense of fluidity between events and total absence of any driving sense of stakes. Without either, the film never even stood a chance at getting us the least bit invested in the trials and tribulations of these characters. If anything, we can’t stand them.

Lance is off-putting and childish and Alvin is a solitary type who seems to be slipping off his rocker in the most introverted and banal of ways. A moment where Alvin finds an abandoned house in the woods and goes about an impromptu game of “house” is most likely the moment where it all starts to come undone. A random elderly woman wanders into the scene (a local who was in no way a part of the production nor a character scripted in the story) and becomes a focal point for what seems like a lifetime, but is probably about five minutes. As this complete sidetracking indicates, there is simply no importance to anything. Instead, everything Green does feels as trivial as an extended Vine video. There’s no connective tissue, no fibers linking one scene to the next, and the backbone, if there even is one, is so bent with scoliosis that the only humane option is to put it to a long and wakeless sleep.

With a production schedule that only lasted a few weeks, it’s clear that little prep work was involved in storyboarding as well as with the performances, which come off as hackneyed and adolescent. Being immature and acting immature are two separate entities – one that Green, Hirsch and Rudd fail to delineate here. You don’t go to a playground to watch kids run around and yell at each other for fun much like you don’t go to the movies to watch actors saunter and tear around like children. You go to experience character, to be sucked into a story, to feel something. Prince Avalanche fails on all counts.

With the appeal of watching a book mildew, the film is basically to adults what Where the Wild Things Are was to children – confusing, stilted and just plain, off. Don’t take that as an attack on Where the Wild Things Are, just a well-deserved critique that that movie was very clearly not meant for kids. The dark themes and tragic, mature elements went over their heads and the meaning was lost on that younger generation. This, similarly, takes aim at an intended audience (adults in this case) and misses wildly. If anything, this is a movie for kids. But even more so, it seems like a film made for none. If you are however interested in good actors performing poorly, not doing anything of interest and then doing a lot more of nothing, than this is most surely the film for you.

I don’t doubt there will be droves of art-film enthusiasts lining up to put in their two-cent defense of Green’s latest but I can’t foresee any conclusion that would sway my strong distaste for this dead-on-arrival “film”.  It’s the worst case scenario of “artsiness” and someone has to hold art film’s feet to the fire when they fail… and fail this one has. Green proves that being both smug and dull are a lethal combination and results in a film that I, for one,  couldn’t wait to end.

F