Grand Piano

Grand Piano - Dir. Eugenio Mira (2014)

Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood) was a brilliant piano prodigy until he had a nervous breakdown while attempting to play a daunting piece composed by his mentor. Five years later, Selznick is set for his comeback performance with a piano custom made for his now-deceased teacher, who unfortunately went all Howard Hughes in his twilight years. The concert itself would be stressful enough without smarmy radio interviewers (voiced by Dee Wallace), snide comments from backstage workers, and Selznick being overshadowed by his gorgeous movie star wife Emma (Kerry Bishé). Then, the real bombshell drops when Selznick sees a warning in his music sheets written in bold, red letters. If he misses one note, he will die. If he attempts to warn anyone, his wife will die. Selznick finds out the hard way that there’s a sniper (John Cusack) in the box seats and he means business. Much of the story unfolds afterwards in real time.

That’s the premise for Grand Piano, which may remind you of Phone Booth or Speed on a stage. Yes, the concept is ludicrous and there are plenty of plot points that don’t make sense if you stick down to truly think about them. However, none of that matters because Grand Piano is just so damn fun. Damien Chazelle, who has recently earned acclaim for film festival darling Whiplash, wrote the script with direction by Eugenio Mira, who has clearly been studying his Hitchcock and DePalma. Grand Piano is the type of thriller Hitchcock plied his trade in and the concert hall setting is reminiscent of the climax to The Man Who Knew Too Much. Mira pays homage to DePalma, another Hitchcockian disciple, with split screens and several dazzling tracking shots, including one that follows Selznick through the backstage hallways and another that spins around him on stage. Mira stylishly pans from the orchestra pit and up into the catwalks. Everything is so impeccably blocked so that the audience is never confused about the geography.

Elijah Wood is perfect as Selznick and his doe-eyed expressions are exactly what is needed to convey fear and panic. There’s a great joy in seeing John Cusack cast against type as the obsessed sniper, imagine if his charming hitman from Grosse Pointe Blank went bad. Cusack doesn't appear on screen until the final act, before then he's just a menacing voice speaking through an earpiece Selznick is forced to grab in between movement breaks. Rounding out the cast are character actor Don McManus as the conductor, Downton Abbey's Allen Leech as one of Emma's friends, and Alex Winter of Bill & Ted fame as an all-too friendly security guard.

Grand Piano shouldn't be taken too seriously and the filmmakers luckily realize that too. This is an enjoyable B-movie stylishly made and perfect for midnight madness screenings.

Rating: *** (*****)

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Dir. Peter Jackson (2012)

An Unexpected Journey might as well describe the arduous process of bringing J.R.R. Tolkien's celebrated novel, The Hobbit, to the silver screen. The adaptation languished in development hell due to legal entanglements and the dire financial straits of MGM, who were co-producing it with New Line Cinema. While Peter Jackson stayed on as producer and co-writer with collaborators Philippa Boyens and Frank Walsh, the directorial reins were handed over to Guillermo Del Toro. However, after two years of pre-production in New Zealand, Del Toro departed and Jackson returned as director. Not to disparage the man's undeniable talents, but a fresh pair of eyes may have done wonders for The Hobbit.

Jackson's remake of King Kong received similar criticisms to his LOTR prequel in that both were lambasted for being self-indulgent and overlong. Things might have turned out differently had The Hobbit been filmed first as originally intended. The novel was a lighthearted adventure aimed at children whereas The Lord of the Rings was an expansive trilogy that weaved a rich and incredibly complex mythology. Jackson and his team somehow took what was necessary and jettisoned the extraneous to craft three pictures that stand as remarkable cinematic achievements. Now that he's given the audience a taste of mammoth spectacle, Jackson may have felt obliged to do the same with The Hobbit. The question remained how Jackson would adapt one book and some extra material into a new trilogy.

Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) lives a simple and quiet life that is interrupted upon the arrival of the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellan). Gandalf practically shanghais Bilbo into a quest with a band of dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage). They seek to take back their kingdom of Erebor from the dragon Smaug that drove them from their land and treasure years ago. Along the way, they are pursued by a bloodthirsty Orc named Azog the Defiler (Manu Bennett), who killed Thorin's father during a battle at the gates of Moria.

It's truly wonderful to return to the world of Middle-Earth as envisioned by Peter Jackson. Once the nostalgia fades, you realize just how laborious the story is. The Hobbit takes its time introducing the protagonists and Bilbo doesn't embark on his adventure until about half an hour. Characters given only a passing reference in the book, such as Azog and Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy), are expanded upon for the movie. The quest itself takes numerous detours including an interminable stop at Rivendell where Gandalf seeks council with Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and Galadriel (Cate Blanchett). The majority of the sequence doesn't advance the plot, but merely serves as a setup for later installments. There's also a scene depicting the elderly Bilbo (Ian Holm) and Frodo (Elijah Wood) set just before the events of Fellowship of the Ring that should have been reserved for the Extended Edition Blu-ray. Jackson threatens an additional twenty minutes of footage for that version.

Freeman's Sherlock co-star Benedict Cumberbatch receives a prominent credit for playing Smaug and the Necromancer. Yet, he doesn't appear at all or speak a single line.

While Jackson may not be the most judicious writer, he does have a remarkable eye for action. There's a scene where two mountains come to life and clash against the backdrop of a torrential thunderstorm with Bilbo and the dwarves helplessly caught in the middle like insects. Another sees the heroes fight their way through an underground goblin den.

Despite the inordinate runtime, the large company of dwarves are hardly flesh out save for Thorin though most get a smidgeon of personality. Owing to a lack of doom and gloom, Gandalf is a less portentous character in the prequel. He's a little looser and more whimsical, allowing McKellan to have some fun with him. The same goes for Hugo Weaving as Elrond. The real star of The Hobbit is Martin Freeman who is perfectly cast as the unlikeliest of heroes. Freeman has great comic timing and the right amount of nervous reluctance. Even with all the amazing set pieces, the highlight of The Hobbit is the sequence where Bilbo and Gollum (Andy Serkis) challenge each other to a game of riddles. These scenes run the gamut of emotions from humorous to frightening. A lot of that is owed to both the performance of Freeman as well as Serkis with an assist from the motion capture artists. Technology has grown to allow Gollum a more expressive and ghoulish visage.

Speaking of technology, The Hobbit is the first feature film shot at 48-frames per second (aka High Frame Rate), which is double the industry standard. Thus, audiences have the choice to see it in plain old 2D, regular 3D, HFR 3D, IMAX 3D, and HFR IMAX 3D. I saw The Hobbit first in 2D in order to avoid any visual distractions. That would be my preferred format. The HFR version features exceptionally clear picture quality and a far more defined depth of field for the 3D. On the other hand, the resolution is so sharp that the movie looks more like a high definition broadcast of a theatrical play. There are times when the characters move as if they are on fast forward. I haven't mentioned the eyestrain it caused me from time to time. Maybe when James Cameron shoots Avatar 2 and 3 at 60FPS the tech will have improved, but for now HFR should be considered a work in progress.

After shooting Star Wars in 1977, George Lucas didn't return to the director's chair until he filmed The Phantom Menace over twenty years later. Fans immediately decried the prequels as drivel that emphasized special effects over genuine emotion. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey certainly isn't as awful as any of the Star Wars prequels, but it hardly holds a glowing blue sword to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Hobbit simply didn't need to be told on such a grand scale.

Rating: *** (*****)

9

9 - Dir. Shane Acker (2009)


9 was originally produced as a short film by writer/director Shane Acker while he was a student at UCLA. Acker earned himself an Oscar nomination in 2005 for Best Animated Short Film, quite the accomplishment. I’ve seen my share of student films and none of them come close to earning any sort of award. I should know, I’ve unleashed a few abominations to the horror of the miniscule audiences who could be bothered to see them. Anyways, Acker developed 9 into a feature-length film along with co-writer Pamela Pettler (The Corpse Bride) and filmmakers Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov attached as producers.

As with many sci-fi films, the machines have revolted and wiped mankind off the face of the Earth. The only life left in the world is a small group of dolls, mechanical parts wrapped in burlap. They have no names, just numbers. The movie opens with the awakening of 9 (Elijah Wood) who wanders into the wasteland and meets the eccentric inventor 2 (Martin Landau). From there, 9 stumbles from one plot contrivance after another. 2 is captured by a mechanical monstrosity called the Beast. 9 is rescued by 2’s protégé, 5 (John C. Reilly), and eventually meets 1 (Christopher Plummer) their narrow-minded leader who is always protected by the massive 8. There’s also 7 (Jennifer Connelly), the Smurfette of the group. You know, the only one that is inexplicably female. She has left the fold to hunt down the Beast on her own.

9, 5 and 7 set out to rescue 2. 9 gets 2 killed and unleashes something worse, the machine that began the war against humanity. It creates other machines from scavenged junkyard parts to hunt down the protagonists.

The animation is simply gorgeous and suitably dark for something with Tim Burton’s name on it. Acker doesn’t go for the usual Mad Max post-apocalyptic landscape, instead he paints the world in the fashion of a bombed-out WWII Europe, the government eerily reminiscent of the Third Reich. Visually, 9 packs a powerful punch, but the story fails to follow suit. The plot is just too derivative of films like The Matrix and any other sci-fi where machines rebel against humanity. It fails to connect on an emotional level the way Pixar routinely seems to do.

9 isn’t the run-of-the-mill CG animated film that Hollywood peddles to family audiences like junk food. Rated PG-13, it’s a dark and somber picture. The animation is worth seeing alone even, but the story doesn’t stack up in comparison to a film like Wall-E.

Rating: **