Film Reviews, Interviews and Articles
Look no further than James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad for proof that superhero media has truly become too big to fail. As legions of old and new, traditional and bizarre, familiar and not-so-familiar heroes position themselves to win out at the box office, as well as, increasingly, on our premium streaming services, comic lore has become the last remaining monocultural tentpole of our current age. Read More
The Water Diviner frankensteins elements from three distinct movie genres: a blood and honor war movie, a fish-out-of-water travelogue and an old timey, on the road adventure flick. Despite borrowing trappings from all of the above genres, it still can’t manage to be interesting or, unsurprisingly, cohesive. It’s like A Good Year collided into a Gallipoli and started napping. The picture is hamstrung to the point of essentially becoming the Australian Unbroken, with director Russell Crowe disproving the old adage “if you can fake it, you can make it.”
For a film about WWI, lost children, sharia law, horse riding and… coffee?, Crowe’s directorial debut is a feckless kitchen sinker short ordered on excitement and emotion, despite the oft circled back upon thumping drums of war and obvious tear duct ploys it pulls throughout. And from cute Turkish lobby boys in a fez to the ear-splitting thump of canons blasting at our heroes escaping over the hills like certified Von Trapps, The Water Diviner is just one miffed attempt after another to win our sympathies and our interest. All it won from me is a few snores.
In addition to directing, Crowe also stars in his movie as a man whose sons are lost to the Australian war effort (a fact that is revealed in a very shitty table-setter of dramatic misappropriations to come) and whose wife offs herself from the grief. The Water Diviner even manages to slip in your classic Crowe cradling the deceased corpse of his wife, a la Gladiator. Score. After forfeiting his car to the local (and supremely snarky might I add) priest, Crowe’s Connor sets of for Turkey to recover the bodies of his three dead boys. Hip hip, hurray!
Jai Courtney appears with a silly mustache (it’s a bad movie, of course Jai is in it) as a Lt. heading up the corpse recovery effort over in Turkey and has little to play with in a role that ultimately just gets forgotten about halfway through the movie. His part is meant to forecast his career (*ba dum tssh*). Once Bond girl Olga Kurylenko is paired up with Crowe as a love interest despite their 16 year age difference (I was also surprised to find out that Crowe was only 51. I could have sworn that he was just about Neeson’s contemporary. Now I get the whole “Russell Crowe’s a fatty” argument…but I digress.) The chemistry between Kurylenko and Crowe is as forced as an arranged marriage (ironic seeing that such issue becomes a contention point) and fails to anchor the romantic element in something believable or worth caring about. Once again, you might as well snooze through these segments (I know I did.)
As Crowe stumbles about, busting chops hither and thither, yelling about his sons (general Fightin’ Round the World fare) he comes to the realization that perhaps all of his offspring have not perished. Zoinks, there’s only two corpses with bullet holes in their heads! Perhaps William or Timothy or whoever it was survived after all! Whodathunkit?! Did I mention that he finds the bodies of his sons by some kind of watery premonition? Because that happens.
Early on in the film, we see Connor water witching; sliding around his property dousing for underground agua sources. Which he promptly discovers, digs a 12 foot hole and voila! a lake sprouts from the ground like a babe from the womb. Connor screams at the sky victorious. He later uses this same technique to find the corpses of his kids. The celebration isn’t as pronounced. I don’t know if we’re supposed to take this whole affair at face value (it is worth mentioning that this is “inspired by true events”) or find it inspiring or spiritual or whatever but it’s just so… ugh.
What follows is a supremely boring search for a foredrawn conclusion we all know to expect only 10 minutes into the movie (like playing connect the dots with only a dozen dots. We know it’s an elephant alright?!). Though he’s mostly solid in front of it, Crowe has some issues behind the camera including horrible CGI (the reported $125 million budget will really make you scratch your head), repetitive scene work and a general lack of oomph. For a man who’s worked with a who’s who of directors in a handful of big box office hits, it’s evident that Crowe has learned very little at the feet of the masters. Indeed, his feature is flat where it should be round, hollow where it should be dense and overstuffed with movie hullabaloo in each and every orafice. The sets and costumes do admittedly look nice in Crowe’s all-encompassing sepia tone though.
Don’t let its multiple AACTA Award wins and nominations fool you, the only thing The Water Diviner can divine is a good siesta.
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“Divergent”
Directed Neil Burger
Starring Shailene Woodley, Miles Teller, Kate Winslet, Jai Courtney, Theo James
Science-Fiction, Action
139 Mins
PG-13
Watching Divergent is like trying to figure out what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. You’re thrust a grab-bag of emotions ranging from awe to complete disbelief. Who made this thing? What terrible atrocity happened to these people? Why didn’t the technology work? Where the hell did everything go wrong? Did this really happen?
Divergent is the rare oddity where the trailer is more exciting than the movie ever gets. Director Neil Burger’s (Limitless) latest big-screen project is trapped in Act One purgatory. Somehow he never manages to make it to Act Two (forget about Act Three), while only fitting ten minutes of action into a nearly three-hour movie. Simultaneously the slowest and most pointless flick this year, it never seems to start or end. At 139 minutes in run-time, it’s about 130 minutes too long. Divergent takes longer to reach a climax than… well, you get it.
The film, based on Veronica Roth’s novel of the same, stars Shailene Woodley in her first foray into high-budget Hollywood film. Miles Teller, Jai Courtney, Theo James and Kate Winslet (!?) join her. Stealing elements from Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games and similar teen-fiction titles, Divergent gets old fast.
Based in a worn-down Chicago (somehow the last place on Earth), a “utopian” society is divided into five separate factions: Abnegation, for the selfless; Amity, for the peaceful; Candor, for the honest; Dauntless, for the brave; and Erudite, for the knowledgeable. Every year, 16-year olds must go through testing to determine which faction they should join. Of course, there’s a problem with this: sometimes kids can show competency in the characteristics of several factions, hence the eponymous “Divergent.”
“Abnegation” dresses like they’re in a prison camp, while their social responsibility is to feed the homeless—dubbed “Factionless”—and avoid all forms of comfort, including looking in the mirror—oh, how selfless! Since they’re considered the most altruistic, they also run the government… I won’t venture a joke at that one, it’s not even worth it.
“Dauntless” are gymnasts who spend their days sprinting everywhere, jumping on rooftops and giggling their asses off. They’re Chicago’s “police,” charged with defending the citizens and keeping order. Of course, they’re also the most diverse group. Let’s put it this way: you won’t see a black kid in Erudite. They look like the United Colors of Benetton teamed up with Nike to help the under-privileged. Supposedly, their fitness makes them fearless. Instead, they just look delirious.
Woodley, a Divergent, decides to join Dauntless, which is right about when this film loses all impetus. Similar to the Hunger Games, in order to join the faction, she has to beat out her competition by proving herself in various activities.This quickly turns Divergent into a futuristic Summer Camp for the fit and beautiful, complete with a ropes course; Capture the LED-Flag; team-building exercises; zip-lines through Chicago; and, you guessed it, Tag. I’m surprised they chose not to fit in a friendship bracelet workshop or a round of Duck Duck Grey Duck. Burger spends two full hours trying to entertain you by showing teens doing things you barely enjoyed doing yourself when you were younger. “Look how much fun they’re all having!”
To prove their mettle and fearlessness, Woodley and her pledge class of giddy recruits have to jump onto a train, then subsequently jump off. At one point, they compete in a five-minute paintball fight. They’re told to get tattoos to show their badassery. These feats of strength continue for about an hour and forty-five minutes. A love-story is also interspersed throughout, as camp-instructor Theo James and Woodley must overcome various obstacles in order to finally make out.
The only real conflict in this film involves whether Woodley will get kicked out of camp. We’re constantly submitted to idiotic recitations of the same bullshit, over and over. Again and again, she’s told: “You’re dauntless, so act dauntless or get kicked out.” My question: why would anyone choose to be part of this group of tattooed douchebags? I’d much rather live on the street, being fed by horribly clothed government workers than spend my days getting harassed by tatted-up jocks in leather windbreakers.
Her final initiation ritual before ultimately becoming one of these idiots involves submitting herself to some sort of virtual reality fear-machine where her fearlessness is tested. Phobias that she must overcome include sexual assault by James, death by killer crow, murdering her family, and drowning in a sealed glass case. She’s able to conquer these fears by telling herself “This isn’t real.” I wish.
Around two hours in, things finally ramp up. The last fifteen minutes are actually decent, dragged along by great acting from Woodley and the ever-spectacular Miles Teller. Everyone else slows them down, notably James, Jai Courtney, and Kate Winslet, who is in this movie for no apparent reason. She’s terrible.
Ultimately, Divergent is Hunger Games without the stakes, Twilight without the romance, Harry Potter without the magic. The Disney Channel-level acting and plot cramps you up like Hunger Pangs; this isn’t Katniss, it’s cat piss.
In the end, you leave Divergent telling yourself that this was just a dream; maybe you ate some bad shellfish and hallucinated the whole thing. You tell yourself, “this isn’t real,” hoping against all hope that it isn’t. Maybe Flight 370 never even existed. This is all a figment of your imagination, a cruel joke. Yeah, this week was just a wild nightmare. You click your heels together three times. This isn’t real… This isn’t real… This isn’t real…
Screams snap you out of it. You’re sitting next to a pre-pubescent girl’s volleyball team from the local middle school—they shriek every time Miles Teller is on-screen. Now it’s clear who this movie was made for, except this film calls for a different brand of ‘spike.’ You’ll have to down a few drinks to make it through this one.
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