“Crystal Fairy”
Directed by Sebastián Silva
Starring Michael Cera, Gaby Hoffmann, Juan Andrés Silva, José Miguel Silva, Agustín Silva
Adventure, Comedy
98 Mins
R

Michael Cera is on a tear. He absolutely ripped up the screen in his raunchy, self-caricaturing bit part in This is The End, he was one of the best parts of the new season of Arrested Development and here he goes to bat with a new persona – a jagged narcissist with acid wit and a penchant for substance-induced mood swings. His largely unlikeable character is hung with the reactive humor Cera has always brought to the table but instead of his familiar coy and breathless delivery, here he is affronting, biting and plain old mean.

We meet Cera’s Jaime at a party in Chile, chomping through brews, slugging down lines of blow and making a general ass of himself. He’s got the charm of a cactus and his prickly nature drives him from one engagement to the next, offending and putting off the mostly Chilean crowd with his brash Americano ways. As for why exactly he’s plopped down in Chile, he’s not a student or even a teacher working abroad, he’s just another reason Americans get a bad name internationally. Jaime reveals the  true intention of his international journey boils down to a special plant called San Pedro, better known as peyote.

In the grasp of an alcohol and cocaine cocktail, Jaime meets Crystal (Gaby Hoffmann) dancing with arm-slinky, air-grabbing moves, looking like a stoned fool, another American making an ass of herself. But her’s is a different jackassery: she’s an exemplar of the unshaven granola clump, proud of her pit hair and open spiritual convictions. Mocking her in the wings of the dance floor, Jaime’s bitter persona seems to skip a beat and he winds up inviting her along for his quest. Exchanging numbers, Jaime gives Crystal the low down on their arrangements and tells her to meet them the next morning.

After a late night spent making beans and rice for transsexual prostitutes (don’t ask), Jaime wakes with a brooding hangover, being called up to by Chilean friend Champa (Juan Andrés Silva) awaiting in the street below. Gathering Champa’s brothers, they embark on a ride up north to hunt down the mystical cactus, but a phone call from Crystal confirms Jaime’s suspicions that he was a little too faded the night prior. Although Jaime totally wants to blow her off, Champa’s good guy sensibilities insist that Jaime swallow his pride and follow up on his promise to include the eponymous Crystal Fairy. What follows is a clash of sly-tongued titans.

In one corner, Jaime wants what he wants. He’s the caliber of fella who will steal his beloved cactus from an kindly older woman if need be. He’ll mock Crystal’s abundant body hair, slowly degrading her with his sandpaper snide comments. Crystal is all about sharing, caring and opening up. As she tries to get to the root of Jaime’s cutting animosity towards her, she runs into brick wall after brick wall, dismissed and degraded by his nonchalant dismissal of everything she stands for.

Preparing to launch into a full blown, 14-hour drug trip together, relations between Crystal and Jaime couldn’t be more strained. Jaime can’t even handle sharing a task as simple as cutting thorns off the cactus with the frumpy Crystal nor will he participate in her yoga sessions and even dumps the “spirit stone” she provides him. He won’t buy her new age philosophy, a fact he’s glad to throw in her face. 

As harsh and callous as he is, Cera is as hysterical as he is committed to his character. Out in left field, this version of the funnyman shows a diversity that has escaped him for a majority of his career. Ditching traditional Hollywood comedy and going on a limb like this shows that Cera has broken the box and is now reforming it into something new and far more interesting.

As Crystal, Hoffman is perfection. We’ve all met this new-age spirit in all their mumbo-jumbo slinging glory and we’ve all been irritated by their condensing manner and fax-spiritual jive. And while Crystal’s act is off-putting, it’s also dipped in truth and topped with character. She’s more than another version of a hippie-dippy cloaked in flowy clothing, dipped in flowery patterns and a late stage reveal gives us all a reason to sympathize with her boggled outlook. 

Director Sebastián Silva has based this story on an experience of his own and tells it with riotous but compassionate understanding. It’s funny for much of the same reasons that hanging out with your friends is funny. The laughs come naturally, and don’t feel like jokes are retrofitted one-liners hashed out by a team of writers in some remote room. Why? Because they were largely unscripted, with most of Jaime’s swings and dings straight from the twisted mind of Cera.

Crystal Fairy is Silva’s answer to indie comedy. Rather than getting wound up in dramatic, Silva lets his talented stars loose to dust comedy in generous handfuls. Mixed against broken English and a foreign landscape, Jaime and Crystal’s battle of wits is extremely digestible indie fare that exits on top with a wistful note.

B

“Blue Jasmine”
Directed by Woody Allem
Starring Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Sally Hawkins, Andrew Dice Clay, Bobby Cannavale, Louis C.K., Peter Skarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg
Drama
98 Mins
PG-13

In the aftermath of Blue Jasmine, the thing that people will be talking about most is Cate Blanchett‘s performance – a role for which she is assured an Oscar nomination. But while Blanchett is busy giving her powerhouse turn as titular Jasmine, Mr. Woody Allen is in the back corner shamelessly plagiarizing. This accusation rings true as the characters, beats, themes, and plots are pulled straight from the pages of Tennessee William‘s A Streetcar Named Desire. Those unfamiliar with the iconic play – or the Marlon Brando film – will be more willing to engage with the material on different terms but Allen’s project seems to have been the result of a little too much glancing at his neighbor’s work and we can’t help but mark him down for it. This fact does not, however, take away from the considerable work from Blanchett’s corner.

Playing an uppity socialite, Blanchett harnesses the manic hysterics of a character crippled by her own snobbish worldviews. Even though Allen has not put himself in front of the camera for much of his recent work, we all know that Allen still remains on the screen – just in another form. As Midnight in Paris injected star Owen Wilson with a more whimsical and charmed version of Allen, Blanchett’s Jasmine is Allen’s neurosis and angst cranked up until the dials break. She is a self-critical, self-loathing masochist, bottled up and shaken until she can’t help but pop, lashing at the the world around her just for existing.

Throughout her life, Jasmine is a woman who has come to define herself by her wealth so when her investment scourge husband, Hal (Alec Baldwin), is sent to jail and stripped of his fortune, Jasmine not only loses a husband, but more importantly, her affluence. In her eyes, she may as well have been executed. Jasmine has spent her life building up this ideologies of herself, formulating a persona who is “engaging” and “attractive” even though she would be hard pressed to understand these terms outside of a dictionary. She’s a fake, a phony and her entire bio is a blatant fabrication. Even her name is contrived – having changed it from Jeannette to the more perfumed and “elegant” Jasmine in order to become a more eligible bachelorette.

Her impending “poverty” (which is still accompanied by custom Louis Vuitton luggage) inspires her to exile herself from New York, an alternative superior to becoming a high-class saleswoman, which in her mind is the equivalent of some lower-class social pariah – a bug to be stepped on. So Jasmine flees New York for San Francisco to the one person who will take her: her sister, Ginger (Sally Hawkins).

From minks and jewels to a pullout couch at her sister’s place, Jasmine keeps her hoity-toity superiority in tow even in the midst of her existential crisis. Even scraping rock bottom, Jasmine keeps her veneer, refusing help from anyone, but we can see the shallow act for what it is. Jasmine is a mirror for the one-percenters, a shell of wealth that begs questions of self-sufficiency in a patriarchal pyramid of more, more, more. To communicate this idea, Allen ratchets up his iconic neurosis to a paralyzing degree and Blanchett is crippled by her inability to cope “without”. As Batman is the symbol of justice, she is the iconoclast and definitive “crazy, rich bitch”.

When not dressing down those around her, she’s chattering away to herself. From the very first scene, Blanchett is revealed to be unhinging, blabbering on and on to what seems like a close friend but turns out to be a unfortunate neighbor. We wonder if Jasmine is Allen’s ironic, self-critical hand at work – mocking his own wealth and manic compulsions – or if he’s trying to unhinge an international pathos: a continuum where greed begets greed and wealth is an object of desire in and of itself.

While Allen’s intent here is more unclear than it is in most of his other work, this fact may be explained by the fact that this is also his most heavily borrowed film. The themes, characters, and tone are pulled straight from A Streetcar Named Desire making this one of Allen’s few films utterly ineligible for the screenwriting nod, which his work has become so accustomed to. While there is no inherent problem with building on, or borrowing from, themes from other works, Blue Jasmine is so directly congruent to William’s play that entire characters and relationships feel more plagiarized than reinvented.

You pity sister Ginger, whose life is hijacked by Jasmine’s overbearing presence and disillusioned megalomania, much like you pity Stella. Ginger sees herself as inferior to Jasmine – a relationship that her crooked, older sibling fights to preserve – and so excuses Jasmine’s selfish behavior while letting her own life hit the fan. Poor Ginger and ex-husband Augie (Andrew Dice Clay) were even duped by Hal to invest their life savings in his Ponzi-scheming dealings. It’s the loss of this nest-egg that leads to their eventual divorce and yet Ginger goes on defending her elder sister.

Another character torn right from the book of Steetcar is Chili (Bobby Cannavale). You already know him as he is Brando’s Stanley down to his wife-beater tank-top, lower-class European roots, and penchant for sudden violent outbursts. It’s a wonder that he doesn’t belt out, “Ginger!!!!” in the middle of a dark night but a scene in the grocery store where Ginger works is a close equivalent as he’s publicly begging her forgiveness.

Continuing down the checklist, Jasmine’s romantic interests further the parallels to Streetcar. Like Blanche before her, Jasmine is an attractive, if past her prime, woman so she earns the attention of the local townspeople. None, however, are up to her lofty standards. On a few occasions, she mutters to herself, repeating her character’s important through-line – that she’s looking for “something substantial.” While she never fleshes out what exactly she means by this, her battling with romantic inadequacies only serve to fulfill the ideology that “something substantial” only comes in the form of wealth. When she meets a politician-in-the-making with the trappings of old-money in Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard), she sees a way out in much the same way that Blanche does in Mitch. Regardless of the swooning character differences, both barrel towards the same inevitable conclusion.

Even though the film delivers some full-bellied laughs and is anchored by Blanchett’s knock-em-dead performance, it feels too borrowed to herald as “the return” to Allen’s heights. There’s no denying that Allen is aware of the many resemblances to William’s work but he fails to deviate far enough from the path to make this anything more than minor Woody. It’s worth watching, especially if you’re unfamiliar with William’s work as this definitely serves as an ample introduction, but it won’t change the stratosphere. If you are trying to discover early Oscar-nominated performances in their theatrical run though, be sure to catch this as Blanchett is nothing less than a shoe-in.

B-

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“Fruitvale Station”
Directed by Ryan Coogler
Starring Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Octavia Spencer, Kevin Durand, Chad Michael Murray, Ariana Neal
Biography, Drama
90 Mins
R

*Warning: Spoilers follow. If you are unfamiliar with the true-life 2009 San Francisco Fruitvale Station event, don’t read on.*

As the lights pull up on Fruitvale Station, there wasn’t a dry eye in the theater. No one was hustling to get out first. Cell phones weren’t clicking on left and right. For once, everyone was somber, respectful and obviously moved by what they had just seen. In fact, in the midst of the moments where the film goes mute, lingering on lost moments, you could have heard a pin drop. That palpable, humbling silence is proof of the magnetizing power of Ryan Coogler‘s first feature film. Like Muhammad Ali, he floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee.

Opening with real cell phone footage of the 2009 San Francisco Fruitvale Station incident -in which a motionless, handcuffed 22-year old African American, named Oscar Grant, is shot in the back and killed by a police for no evident reason – we’re jolted into the tragedy to unfold. Rather than make us uncomfortable hostages to another “important story,” the hovering camerawork and winning, congenial tone invite us into the fold.  
Ex-jailbird, Oscar is a member of a loving, supportive family. He’s got the good fortune of a loving daughter and a forgiving baby-mama but he just can’t seem to get his act together. Trying to internalize Oprah’s mantra that “it takes 30 days to form a habit”, he’s seeking a new life that won’t result in a third prison sentence and further in more time spent away from his little girl.

Taking a real-world event and transforming it from just another tragedy to shake our heads at into a visceral theatrical experience, Coogler has done more than the average filmmaker. He has made a film with a razor sharp point that grabs us by the neck, pats us on the head, and then sits us down for a talk about why daddy is gone.

Speaking of his intentions behind the film, Coogler claims, “I wanted the audience to get to know this guy, to get attached, so that when the situation that happens to him happens, it’s not just like you read it in the paper, you know what I mean? When you know somebody as a human being, you know that life means something.” In this goal, Coogler has succeed tremendously.

The merciless gunning down of a two-time felon like Oscar Grant, played here with sterling commitment by Michael B. Jordan, is easily overlooked in the grand scheme of national calamities. We live in a world peppered with headlines of worldwide manhunts, massive bombings, increasing firearm massacres and counts upon counts of gang violence. In a way, we’ve become so accustomed to the shit that we don’t bother to notice another dump in an ocean stained brown. From the distant confines of our living rooms, it’s easy to shrug off these horror stories and go about our daily lives. It isn’t even entitlement, it’s Psycology 101. If we were to break down over every single case of injustice across the globe, mulling over each and every catastrophe, we wouldn’t make it to the supermarket without melting into a full-blown nervous wreck. We don’t get bogged down because we can’t. We blunt ourselves because the abominations of reality are too abundant to process.

But when it’s in our cities, in our towns, in our families, there is nothing more emotionally crippling than the loss of someone who’ve known and loved. This is Coogler’s aim; to introduce us to a man and see the resulting devastation when he is ripped away as hostilely and abruptly as a Brazilian wax. Like a top spinning and spinning and spinning and then woefully split onto its side, the true life affair is reeling with life and then suddenly, harrowingly still. We feel this resounding loss deep in our souls, shaken from our apathetic sidelines. But instead of trying to rub our noses in our indifference, Coogler has respectfully set out to present us with the full package that is Oscar Grant – the good with the bad.

Does Coogler reach too far trying to make Oscar a relatable character? Maybe, but, in all honesty, isn’t that the point? I never knew the man outside the context of the film but I feel like I got to know someone here. Whether he was an invention or not, I cared about him and it made it that much more devastating when he is gunned down like a dog in the street.

The point is, this could have happened to any of us. Coogler’s not trying to turn Oscar into a martyr or a saint, he’s just a normal guy in shitty circumstances. Do these so-called circumstances have to do with him being black? Most certainly. In this, Coogler cuts to the heart of an unsettling cultural epoch that accepts racial stereotyping as commonplace police methodology. Driving the film into something more than a mere biopic, Coogler’s is a stinging indictment holding the cruel reality of a modern police force where racism has come to fester and thrive up to the light.

Fleshing out what feels so much like a true recounting of events, Jordan is a sensation. He commits fully to his role, disappearing into it with warm familiarity. A prison-bound scene in which he demands a hug from his mother is especially affecting and could earn Jordan an Oscar nom on its own. As Oscar’s loving but stern mother, Octavia Spencer is a powerhouse – throttling between a strong matriarch and a grieving mother who’s life force is sapped by the loss of her baby child. As she weeps over him, it’s impossible to not feel a lump growing like a balloon in your throat.

But Fruitvale Station doesn’t bank on the brand of weepy, sentimental tearjerkers that leaves you with the bad taste of manipulation. It’s something entirely different and entirely beautiful – a genuinely power, superbly acted trainwreck spilling over with throbbing purpose. Even for those not absolutely spellbound, it would take an incredible degree of jaded indifference to shrug this powerful experience off.

A

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“The Wolverine”
Directed by James Mangold
Starring Hugh Jackman, Rila Fukushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Brian Tee, Hal Yamanouchi, Will Yun Lee, Ken Yamamura, Famke Janssen
Action, Adventure, Fantasy
126 Mins
PG-13

The Wolverine is as good a movie about Wolverine that audiences will probably ever get. While that sentiment comes saddled with a huge qualifier, I’d go so far as to claim that it’s a pretty good movie on its own terms. I dare say it might have been a great movie if directed by Darren Aronofsky.

As you may already know, Aronofsky was originally designed to direct this sixth Hugh Jackman-led X-Men film but when the devastating 2011 Tōhoku tsunami hit Japan, he backed out due to a projected major production delay (ironically enough moving onto a movie about impending giant waves: Noah). Even without his physical presence on set, the film carries on with his signature fingerprints. Displaying themes of isolation and madness amidst a particularly genre-defying and soul-rummaging performance from Hugh Jackman, this is (until late in the third act) the least cartoonish superhero movie to date.

We’ve been lead to believe that we know Wolverine before – having been presented his lackluster, but nonetheless enjoyable, origin story in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Where that fell short, this bone-bleached view really digs into his character by stripping away the mutant world around him and plopping him in the midst of a modern samurai story. In prior installations, Wolverine has been a player in a massive web of mutant characters occupying the X-universe – though his importance is more similar to a queen than a pawn, or even a knight. But this is truly Logan’s story. It’s the story of a Ronin – a samurai without a master. In stark contrast to prior outings, he is the only “superhero” on display, even though that ubiquitous label may not suffice in this case study. We’re mixing more with Logan than Wolverine here – the daring, rogue outcast rather than the metal-clawed animal.

Unlike Wolverine’s introduction in Origins, this installment does better than frantic doggy paddling while fishing for Logan’s inner suffering. While his adamantium-laced body could have easily sunk, Logan manages to swim – in full, fluid strokes. It’s always a treat to see a project that intends to do more than barely keeping afloat. Six films later, Logan feels as fresh and timely as ever because this particular iteration more closely resembles a passion project than a cash-grab. Upon inspecting the pieces that went into this, it is clear why.

Based on Wolverine’s beloved Japanese story arc, Oscar-winner Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) is behind the first draft, James Mangold, accolade-dressed director of Walk the Line and 3:10 to Yuma, sits in the captain’s chair, and Hugh Jackman as Logan is as committed to the role as ever. While a talent-mash doesn’t always result in success, this is more than just a sum of parts. Their acute commitment to novelty has inspired something largely unique that actually delivers on the promise to do something new. Though it does stray from the bold course coming into the home stretch, the willingness to ground this in a different culture, a different country and a different cage makes it an experimental success.

The film starts with a harrowing vignette in which Logan, a prisoner at a WWII Japanese war base, saves a young Japanese soldier, Yasida (Hal Yamanouchi), from incoming B52 bombers. With commanders performing traditional harakiri around them as a nuclear warhead detonates silently in the distance, the scene is measured in subtlety, foreshadowing motifs of the horror of war, the explosive shock of sudden desolation, and survivor’s guilt.

Waking from this flashback, Logan encounters the only thing really tethering this story to the previous X-Men entries: Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). Logan’s dreamy, introspective chats with Jean help flesh out the man he is and the internal battles he’s fighting. He’s a man who has sworn off violence, struggling with the animalistic urges that have driven him in the past. Considering that this story takes place after the events of X-Men: Last Stand, where Jean transforms into Phoenix, becomes a major mutant mind-terrorist and is killed by a remorseful Wolverine, we’re weary of her presence in the film, but soon learn that she is really just a mirror into Logan’s soul. As an ethereal guiding presence, Jean functions as a proxy to Logan’s conscious rather than a character with her own motive. In reality, Logan is truly alone.

Living amongst grizzly bears, blanketed in snow, and using evergreen trees as scratching posts, Logan is holed up in a graveyard of whiskey bottles, his unkempt beard and seedy appearance speaking volumes about his decaying fortitude. Shying away from the world at large, his attempts to go incognito run dry when his rage breaks lose in a bar fight and red-haired Japanese warrior, Yukio (Rila Fukushima), drags him out of his self-created hellhole to face fortune and glory all the way over in Japan.

Dumpster-rummaging, nightmare-driven exposition like this helps set the groundwork for Wolverine’s journey, which takes him from the backwoods of Canada to the towering megalopolis of Tokyo. At the behest of Yashida, the soldier he once saved turned tech-guru, now on his deathbed, Logan is wary to join but when he does, he’s a fish-out-of-water in Japan. With Japanese-based set design that calls attention to the ideas of old conflicting with new – tradition against innovation – Toyko is a living, breathing platform that serves to magnify Logan’s isolation.

Caught in a time warp where wounds heal and faces never age, Logan is haunted not by death but by life. Having lived hundreds of years already, Logan welcomes the idea of putting an end to his suffering but when Yashida unexpectedly offers to rid Logan of his eternal nature, Logan begins to realize that his gift might be worth keeping after all. Let’s just say that things don’t quite go that way and things aim towards the Spiderman 2 route where old Peter Parker stops being so adept at wall climbing.

Stripped of his powers and forced to experience life as an everyman, this is the story of the man behind the muttonchops, the bones beneath the metal-casings but that doesn’t mean there aren’t the requisite action sequences. Trust me, they’re there.

Instead of the building-smashing, chaotic entropy of recent superhero fare, the spectacles are honed in on traditional Japanese warfare – the art of the katana. Logan’s initial disregard for the time-honored Japanese sword later plays into the overarching themes of respect but, on a purely popcorn level, it makes for some great swordplay sequences. With a hierarchy that sets close quarters skills above gun blazing carnage, this is more of a samurai film than a superhero movie. Even the commercially succulent, bullet train-top sequence introduces the idea of stasis as victory – a riff on the old notion that the tortoise can beat the hare. In these regards, The Wolverine takes far more notes from The Last Samurai than The Dark Knight.

Even from a visual standpoint, The Wolverine doesn’t contain the bleak imagery of gritty affairs as Ross Emery frames everything in a splendor of picturesque Japanese vistas. In these choices, X-Men remains the boldest superhero franchise still breathing. Had Fox had the decency to stick by McQuarrie’s script – in which Wolverine was the only mutant, and axed Svetlana Khodchenkova‘s poison ivy-esque Viper, they would have really had something on their hands. But with blood on his claws, stumbling through a mob of broken English, Logan’s battle with the consequences of immortality is entirely watchable. Top that off with perhaps the best mid-credits scene in the history of credit scenes (one that actually is an important and meaningful scene, far superior to the weakening teasers from the Marvel camp) and you have a reason to go to the theaters this weekend.

B-