The Homesman

The Homesman - Dir. Tommy Lee Jones (2014)

Judging by outward appearances, Tommy Lee Jones doesn't seem to be a jolly old fellow. No surprise that Jones has chosen rather dour material for his directorial efforts. His first film as director, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, was a somber modern-day Western about a rancher making his way to Mexico with the corpse of a ranch hand and the Border Agent who killed him. You could hardly call Jones' sophomore feature, The Homesman, a traditional Western. Sure, the period is appropriate, but white hats don't shoot it out with black hats and the hero doesn't triumphantly ride off into the sunset.

The Homesman takes place during the mid-1800's in the desolate territory now known as Nebraska. Life has been harsh, especially for three women driven insane by the rigors of the frontier and an overbearing patriarchal society. Arabella Sours (Grace Gummer) hasn't even hit her 20's and has already lost her three children to diphtheria. Gro Svendsen (Sonja Richter) went mad due to the death of her mother and repeated sexual abuse by her husband. Theoline Bellknapp (Miranda Otto) suffered such a nervous breakdown that she does something unthinkable. In the movie's most harrowing moment, Theoline stumbles towards an outhouse and tosses her newborn infant into the latrine.

The burgeoning town is hardly equipped to handle this pitiable trio, but a church in Iowa has agreed to care for them. When it's clear their husbands are either unable or unwilling to take them, Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) volunteers to embark on the journey. Perhaps, she feels a kinship to these women as she hides her own crushing loneliness. Cuddy is 31 and unwed, making her a spinster in everyone's eyes. She's been sharply turned down for marriage because she's too "bossy" and too "plain."

As strong-willed as she is, Mary Bee knows she cannot make the trip on her own. Due to happenstance, she comes across George Briggs (Jones), a buffoonish claim jumper left to hang. Briggs agrees not so much out of chivalry, but to get out of the noose along with $300 and a jug of whiskey.

The Homesman was based on a novel by Glendon Swarthout, who also wrote The Shootist, which was adapted into a film starring a grizzled John Wayne in what would be his final role. Of course, Jones brings grizzled to a whole new level. He's not exactly the most amiable of travel partners. The prim and proper Mary Bee does not end up falling for the gruff Briggs the way Katherine Hepburn did with Bogart in The African Queen. In fact, The Homesman never goes where you expect. The protagonists and their charges are outsiders in a rigid culture. They don't find redemption, happiness or sanity.

Jones turns in a fine performance that goes beyond his trademark surliness. He is able to go to dark place while playing the buffoon. Swank's success ratio hasn't been that spectacular, but her work in The Homesman ranks right up there with Million Dollar Baby and her breakout role in Boys Don't Cry. It's a fierce and heartbreaking performance.

The Homesman has been called an anti-western and a feminist revision of the genre. Jones' sophomore effort certainly has more in common with the existentialism of McCabe and Mrs. Miller and the beautiful bleakness of No Country for Old Men. He unravels the romanticism of the Old West by presenting its ugliness without restraint. One of the more underrated films of 2014.

Rating: *** ½ (*****)

The Master

The Master - Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson (2012)

"Good science by definition allows for more than one opinion. Otherwise, you merely have the will of one man which is the basis of cult."

Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master can be easily summed up through a sequence in which Joaquin Phoenix and a group of fellow sailors on shore leave gather around a woman sculpted from wet sand. Phoenix proceeds to vigorously hump the facsimile to the amusement of his comrades. But, as he continues, their laughter turns to awkward chuckles and hushed horror. The Master is enthralling, confounding, and the most enigmatic picture Anderson has made to date. Yet, you can never look away.

Phoenix plays Freddie Quell, an extremely troubled man who has just been discharged from the Navy. Though most would see Quell's service during WWII as the cause of his problems, it's likely he's always been mentally disturbed. Quell only yearns for the basest of needs: drink and sex. His addiction to alcohol is so strong that he's willing to drink anything including paint thinner, photo-chemicals, and missile fuel. Quell seems to have no place as a civilian after being fired from his job as a photographer and chased off a cabbage field by migrant workers. He stows away on a yacht where he meets Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a self-proclaimed renaissance man who fancies himself as a doctor, philosopher, author, and educator. He leads a movement known as The Cause whose followers refer to Dodd as 'Master.' His beliefs will change the world and better all of mankind. In Quell, Dodd sees the infallible validation of his work, for if he can cure Quell, he can cure humanity itself. One of the best sequences in The Master sees Dodd grilling Quell with a series of questions during an exercise called "processing."

Much has been made about Anderson basing The Master on L. Ron Hubbard and the formation of the Church of Scientology. While Dodd is clearly inspired by Hubbard, The Master could hardly be considered an exposé on the origins of Scientology. Instead, Anderson uses those concepts as a springboard to explore the symbiotic relationship between Dodd and Quell. This is a different take on the father-son dynamic than what was explored in Boogie Nights and There Will Be Blood. There are times when Dodd disciplines Quell as he would a dog, by chastising him while screaming, "Naughty." Quell certainly behaves like an attack dog when he assaults and threatens anyone who criticizes Dodd, including Dodd's own son, Val (Jesse Plemons), who looks upon his father's work with ambivalence.

On the surface, Dodd portrays the refined intellectual, but he is hardly as evolved as he believes. He'll unleash a profane outburst should he be questioned as one loyal follower (Laura Dern) unfortunately discovers. When he's around Quell, Dodd indulges in simpler pleasures, drinking his protégé's noxious concoctions and laughing at his fart jokes. If Quell is pure id and Dodd the ego that would make the latter's wife, Peggy (Amy Adams), the superego. Peggy comes off as the doting wife in the public's eye, but behind closed doors, she is the true power of the Cause. She literally has her husband by the balls, manipulating him through sex.

The Master is sparked by three powerhouse performances from Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams, all of whom were nominated for Academy Awards. However, it was largely ignored in every other category. Not surprising since The Master is a tough nut to crack. Anderson deploys an unconventional narrative that builds to an ambiguous ending that some may find infuriating. Personally, I found it to be an enriching and though provoking experience, a story that is masterly told.

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

Battleship

Battleship - Dir. Peter Berg (2012)

The idea of adapting a board game into a movie isn't unprecedented. In 1985, Paramount turned Clue into a comedic mystery that cleverly used multiple endings. While it did poorly at the box office, Clue has built up a cult audience due to home video and cable TV airings. Still, it seems like the studios are running short of ideas if they're turning to old board games for concepts. Monopoly is in development, Adam Sandler is attached to produce and star in Candyland, and Universal wants to turn Ouija into a low-budget horror film ala Paranormal Activity. I suppose it's only a matter of time before they make Hungry Hungry Hippos as a white knuckle jungle adventure or Operation as a gripping hospital drama. Until Connect Four: The Movie hits theaters nationwide, Universal and Hasbro have teamed up bring us Battleship.

Taylor Kitsch, in his second blockbuster of the year, stars as Alex Hopper, a professional screw-up, who gets in trouble with the law after breaking into a convenience store for a frozen chicken burrito. Why in the world would he do that? To impress the lovely Brooklyn Decker, who plays a physical therapist named Samantha Shane, the daughter of a stern Admiral (Liam Neeson) in the U.S. Navy. Admiral Shane also happens to be the commanding officer of Alex's older brother, Stone (Alexander Skarsgard). Stone forces his younger sibling to enlist in the Navy in the hopes they will straighten him out.

Years pass and the Hopper Brothers are stationed off the coast of Hawaii where they are to participate in a war games exercise with a Japanese fleet. The simulation turns deathly real with the arrival of alien scout ships that have followed NASA transmissions back to Earth. The extraterrestrial invaders sink two ships and erect an impenetrable force field around a section of the sea. Only the USS John Paul Jones is left with Alex assuming command as all other senior officers have been killed. Meanwhile, another squad of aliens is building a communications array on the mainland to contact their home planet. The only humans able to stop them are a nerdy NASA scientist (Hamish Linklater), Samantha, and one of her patients, Lt. Col. Canales, played by war vet and real-life amputee Gregory D. Gadson.

"From the studio that brought you Transformers," has been utilized prominently in the film's marketing campaign. The phrase is fitting because Battleship seems to have sprung from the mind of Michael Bay. Every aspect of Battleship has a Bay-esque feel to it, from the production design to the sound effects. The filmmakers even brought on Steve Jablonsky, who scored the Transformers series, to score Battleship. The aliens' spacecraft and weaponry look like they were bought from a Decepticon garage sale. Director Peter Berg shoots his action sequences with the same frenzied, kinetic pace as Bay. Scenes of massive urban destruction appear to have been pulled directly from Armageddon. At least, Battleship isn't replete with the misogyny and racial stereotypes generally found in Bay productions. The script by Erich & Jon Hoeber (who also wrote Whiteout and Red) is riddled with plot holes, a leaky vessel to use nautical parlance. The aliens knock out the Navy's communications and radar with an electromagnetic pulse, yet the crew still has access to digital monitors and other electronic devices. The screenplay isn't subtle either as it constantly hammers home how Alex is full of wasted potential.

The main reason to knock out the radar is to allow the filmmakers to incorporate the hit-and-miss strategy of the original game. The crew of the John Paul Jones utilizes buoys to create a grid in order to detect where the enemy ships are. The aliens also use missiles made to look like the game pegs. Sadly, no one utters the catchphrase, "You sunk my battleship." Though one character does say, "No one's gonna sink this battleship." The aliens themselves are pulled off in an interesting manner. They are humanoid with a convenient weakness, but have clear rules of engagement

Kitsch isn't as leaden here as he was in John Carter, maybe because he's able to play it a little looser. Still, you can't help but wonder how the film would have unfolded had Alexander Skarsgard been cast in the lead. Fans of Friday Night Lights will be pleased to see Kitsch reunited with former castmate Jesse Plemons as the requisite comic relief sidekick, a role also taken by Hamish Linklater. Pop sensation Rihanna makes her acting debut as a scrappy weapons specialist, a role usually reserved for Michelle Rodriguez. She does fine in the limited role and gets one of the movie's best lines ("Mahalo, motherfucker.") Meanwhile, Liam Neeson is wasted in a throwaway part though I'm sure he got a nice, fat paycheck.

Battleship is everything audiences have come to expect from a summer blockbuster: loud, dumb, and full of expensive special effects. Taken on that level, it may be enjoyable to those looking for simple, escapist fun.

Rating: ** (*****)

Paul

Paul - Dir. Greg Mottola (2011)

Along with director Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost came to prominence in geek culture with their Channel 4 sitcom, Spaced. Their leap to feature films with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz was wildly successful. Having tackled zombies and cops, Pegg and Frost finally get around to tackling sci-fi with Paul, based on a script they wrote with Greg Mottola (Adventureland Superbad) behind the camera.

Paul makes it known right away who its target demographic with an opening sequence set at Comic-Con. Pegg and Frost are Graeme Willy and Clive Gollings, a graphic artist and science fiction writer, respectively. The best friends traveled to the United States to attend the Mecca of nerd-dom. They ogle the Slave Leias and get starstruck at meeting the robot from Buck Rogers ("…bidi, bidi, bidi."). Afterwards, Graeme and Clive embark on a bromantic road trip in a rented RV to visit famous UFO sites such as Area 51 and Roswell. Coming across a car accident, they are shocked to discover, Paul (Seth Rogen), an alien who has been locked away in a government facility since his spaceship crashed in the 1940's. Graeme and Clive agree to help Paul get to his mothership. Along the way, they also pick up Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig), a Christian fundamentalist whose faith is shaken by the appearance of a creature from outer space.

The supporting cast is a tremendous ensemble of players that include Jason Bateman as a no-nonsense man in black on the hunt for Paul with a pair of bumbling FBI agents played by Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio. They take their orders from Sigourney Weaver, who appears for most of the picture as a hidden voice sort of like Dr. Klaw from Inspector Gadget. We also have Jeffrey Tambor as sci-fi author Adam Shadowchild and Jane Lynch in a tiny role (a little Jane Lynch goes a long way) as a diner owner. Everyone is good, but none more so than Wiig as both a comic foil to Paul and love interest to Graeme. Wiig takes a rather one-dimensional character in Ruth and makes her extremely likable. She also possesses tremendous comic timing shown off when Ruth awkwardly tries cursing for the first time and launches into a series of nonsensical profanities ("Well, ain't that a bag of tits.").

Seth Rogen may be suffering from overexposure as of late. While you certainly cannot fault the man for venturing out of his comfort zone, the results have been mixed at best (i.e. Observe and Report, The Green Hornet). Here, Rogen goes back to basics providing only motion capture work and his distinctive voice. His Paul pulls a 180 on the prototypical alien by turning him into a rude and gross little guy with a cigarette constantly in his hand. He's E.T. if he were a potty-mouthed, bulb-headed stoner from a galaxy far, far away.

Paul definitely has its weaknesses. As foreigners, Pegg and Frost go the easy route by portraying most of the Americans they come across as bible-thumping zealots or gun-toting rednecks. David Koechner and Friday Night Lights' Jesse Plemons a bit wasted as the latter. Some of the subplots don't pay off, especially the one involving Ruth's domineering father (John Carroll Lynch), which could have easily been cut from the film to tighten the plot. In the end, Paul will live and die by its geek chic sense of humor.

While Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz poked fun at genre conventions, Paul is more concerned with making specific references, many of which will go most everyone's heads. There are tons of requisite Star Wars gags with entire lines of dialogue quoted by various characters. One of the best features a country western band playing their version of the Mos Eisley Cantina song. Other iconic sci-fi flicks like Back to the Future and obscure ones like Mac and Me are referenced as are numerous Spielberg movies to the point where the director himself makes a voice cameo receiving story advice from Paul.

Make no mistake about it, Paul is a movie for geeks and by geeks. As someone who is steeped in the culture (I'm a Comic-Con veteran for nearly two decades), it's hard for me to say how mainstream audiences might take the film. Hopefully, they'll find Paul as hilarious and surprisingly poignant as I have.

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

Observe and Report

Observe and Report - Dir. Jody Hill (2009)


”The world has no use for another scared man. Right now, the world needs a fucking hero.”

Much like Adventureland which was released a week before, Observe and Report is advertised as something it’s not. Trading on the popularity of Seth Rogen, Observe has plenty of low-brow, raunchy humor, but it's not the wall-to-wall laugh riot the trailers make it out to be. It’s far darker than any of the Apatow or Apatow-like films. The comparison could be made that this is Seth Rogen's Cable Guy. The film is the sophomore effort from writer/director Jody Hill who inexplicably wowed a select group of Sundance festival-goers with his debut, The Foot Fist Way about an abrasive Tae Kwan Do instructor played by Danny McBride.

Seth Rogen’s Ronnie Barnhardt has a similarly abrasive attitude sometimes hidden behind a mask of geniality. Barnhardt is a mall cop, but he’s not quite as likeable as previous Rogen characters and he’s certainly nothing like Paul Blart. He’s bipolar with a deep-seated vicious streak and delusions of grandeur. Ronnie has held an unrequited crush on Brandi (Anna Faris), the buxom blonde behind the make-up counter. A serial flasher begins turning the mall into his own personal playground by exposing himself to unsuspecting women. When Brandi becomes his latest victim, he vows to bring the pervert to justice. This puts him at odds with Detective Harrison (Ray Liotta), the officer assigned to the case. Harrison becomes even more exasperated when Ronnie makes it known that he intends to join the police force. Throughout the film, Ronnie battles his own personal demons just as he battles teenage skateboarders.

Observe and Report answers the question of what Taxi Driver would have been like if Scorsese made it into a comedy. Ronnie Barnhardt is a disturbed individual and walks that thin line between being funny and repulsive. It's only through the sheer force of personality that Rogen keeps him from becoming completely unsympathetic. The first half of the film belie the darker corners in which it delves in the latter half. Jody Hill's script is uneven. At times, it's sharp and outrageous. Yet, Hill fails to curb his baser impulses and the film just goes too far, particularly in the end.

Rogen's best scenes really are when he's attempting to keep things more lighthearted. He trades F you's with a Middle Eastern vendor (Aziz Ansari) who he derisively calls Saddam. Anna Faris is perfectly suited for the shallow bimbo role and proves again she's one of the most talented female comics today. The real surprise comes from Michael Pena who is known more for dramatic fare such as Crash and World Trade Center. Here, Pena dons a mop top and lisp to play Ronnie's second-in-command Dennis.

Rating: ** 1/2