Pretty on the Inside

FILM:

The Pretty One - 2013
Written & Directed by Jenee LaMarque

For some reason, I went into The Pretty One expecting something a little more like a thriller.  After all, it concerned twins, death and lies; notable ingredients for creepiness.  What I found inside was much different, to my pleasant surprise.

Laurel is a gawky young woman whose fear of the world is largely rooted in her lack of self-awareness.  She doesn't know who she is, which makes it hard for her to understand how she can possibly fit into the outside world.  She still lives with her father, taking care of him, helping him in his business of copying master paintings, and wearing her late mother's dresses.  Another movie could easily take the relationship one incestuous step further, but that's not the story that Jenee LaMarque is here to tell, and the the full extent of the unhealthy bond is mitigated by her father's girlfriend.

Laurel's twin sister, Audrey, comes back to town for their shared birthday and sees how stunted Laurel is in an environment content to continue seeing her as an awkward child.  Audrey is everything that Laurel is not; confident, driven, self-identified, less affected by others, and maybe a little more callous -- except where Laurel is concerned. She determines to take Laurel back to the city with her, giving her the opportunity to finally become herself.  In preparation for her big city debut, Audrey takes Laurel to the salon for a makeover, and having little sense of what a more confident self would look like, Laurel gets the same styling as Audrey.

Then they get hit by a truck.

Audrey wakes up in the hospital with a broken arm, just enough facial damage to remind us that she was in an accident, and a temporary case of amnesia.  Laurel, she's told, died in the accident, burned beyond recognition.  It's not until the morning of Laurel's funeral that Audrey realizes that she is actually Laurel, and it was Audrey who dies in the accident.  Before she can straighten things out, her father and his girlfriend start saying the kind of dumb things that people say when they're trying to be comforting but mostly because they feel uncomfortable.  Things like "better this way" and "maybe it's a blessing" and other such foolishness that are intended to soothe Audrey, but instead communicate to Laurel a dismissiveness toward who she was and the life that she lived.  In her pain and anger, she decides to keep the truth to herself.

I don't feel like I'm giving too much away here.  It's really just the set-up for the meat of the story.  Most plot blurbs sum that all up in one or two sentences but it does contain a lot of important character building that speak to why Laurel makes the choices she does.  What follows is Laurel's attempt to live her life through Audrey's identity, and discovering the parts that work for her and the parts that don't.  Audrey, it turns out, had secrets and made bad choices of her own.  Furthermore, she struggles to properly mourn Audrey while she's being Audrey.  Her new life presents exciting new opportunities for her, but they're hobbled by the lies that define that existence.  When her own identity, which has finally found room to grow, outgrows her commitment to Audrey's identity, Laurel has to make some hard choices and deal with the real consequences.

The biggest thing that The Pretty One has going for it is lead actress Zoe Kazan.  She is just so damned charming I can hardly stand it.  How charming is she?  She's so charming that she made the film Ruby Sparks (which she also wrote) work despite the skin-crawling creepiness of Paul Dano.  But she's also just good.  She plays Laurel and Audrey as believably different people despite some of the clumsier split-screen moments in their scenes together.  Laurel's posture makes her look smaller, not just physically, but as a presence.  She broadcasts the emotional state of her characters on a visceral level that draws the viewer into them, or at least that's what I experienced.  I felt like I knew what she was feeling before she really gave it away.  I predict many more good things from her in the years ahead.

Other performances were functional, but not particularly distinguished.  I don't mean that as a negative.  They primarily served the purpose of illustrating what Laurel was going through in different situations.  I still haven't been able to figure out if Jake Johnson is a good actor or not.  He's likeable, but his performances don't strike me as particularly naturalistic.  For what it's worth, that's a combination that has often worked out perfectly well in Hollywood.

The script definitely made some choices and forged ahead with the story it wanted to tell, but then don't they all?  The story was so focused on Laurel that it seemed at time like Audrey got short-changed.  The gravity of her death was diminished by Laurel's issues.  It's not exactly a knock, but it is something that stood out to me as a viewer.  The direction was relatively restrained, which I think was a good choice.  It hung back and just let Kazan carry the film, which she certainly did.  As mentioned, it was the split-screen moments that seemed the clunkiest, but they were few, relative to the overall story.

I will definitely be taking another look at The Pretty One.

Another Place and Time

FILM: 
The Place Beyond The Pines - 2013
Directed by Derek Cianfrance
see link for writing team

The first thing to understand about The Place Beyond The Pines is that most descriptions fail to explain it adequately.  From what I'd read, I expected some kind of protracted game of cat and mouse between Ryan Gosling's motorcycle-stunt-rider-turned-bank-robber and Bradley Cooper's ambitious-but-stalwart-cop-in-a-corrupt-department.  Sort of like a, say... Vanishing Point versus Copland or Heat meets The Departed... 'cept, you know, with motorcycles.

Well, it's not that.  At least not the way you think it is.

The Place Beyond the Pines is really three movies in the space of a movie-and-a-half.  The first act belongs to Gosling's character, Luke.  He is indeed a sideshow stunt rider who walks away from his job when he learns that he left more behind than tender memories the last time he passed through Schenectady, NY.  Eva Mendes is the mother of his child who can't decide what she wants.  In order to support his son and be involved (as his own father wasn't), Luke ends up robbing banks using his riding skills to get away swiftly.  When his partner (the brains of the operation) backs out on him, Luke's next job goes from bad to worse.

This leads to a fateful encounter with Bradley Cooper as Avery, a rookie cop with a law degree and big plans for the future.  The second act is his, as the fallout from the encounter brings him the kind of notoriety that could help to fulfill those ambitions, but also involves him with the inner circle of corrupt good-ol'-cops.  His intermittent conscience leads him into conflict with the cops, but for the time, ambition has all the answers.

The third act is set 15 years later and belongs to their teenage sons who are unaware of the history between their fathers.  The choices of the past ripple through the future, shaking the lives of all involved.

Each act is very different; not merely in perspective but in tone and momentum, but they do add up to a really impressive and satisfying arc.  It's an action crime flick, then a cop drama and finally a coming of age movie.  The film doesn't judge the characters or even really push the story very hard.  All the events flow naturally from a single choice.  It's an engaging consideration of the way that choices echo through time, giving particular attention (intentional or not) to self-defeating behaviors.  Luke and Avery are both haunted by their fathers in their own choices, which gets passed on to their own sons.

Shorts on Film

My resolution for the new year (inasmuch as I believe in such things) is to update more.  Toward that end, I will be allowing myself to relax and share shorter impressions of more things, rather than getting bogged down in longer articles so much (I still have three unfinished from the past year).  If this seems to skew to the negative, it's because I'm also working on a separate list of the Best of 2013, and many of these are those that did not make the cut.

Escape From Tomorrow - 2013
Written & Directed by Randy Moore


The story behind the Escape From Tomorrow is really more interesting than the movie itself.  Much of it was filmed surreptitiously within Disney World, unbeknownst to corporate and park management.  That's pretty cool.  Sadly, the long, long segments of park-wandering lose their fascination for the viewer much earlier than they did for the filmmaker.  It was actually possible to watch much of it on fast forward without missing a thing.  The acting is just bad and the story wasn't really a story so much as a pastiche of weirdness and creeping dread.  There are some interesting and funny parts, but it doesn't add up to a satisfactory whole.  Think of it as a (what was once called) a "head" film for the digital age of paranoia.  It's a bad trip for characters and viewers alike.

Blue Jasmine - 2013
Written & Directed by Woody Allen


I have only myself to blame.

I was immediately put off by blurbs describing the story as "a troubled New York socialite imposes on her sister after her philandering Wall Street husband's indictment brings on a nervous breakdown."  Don't get me wrong.  I have nothing against nervous breakdowns, but vapid and solipsistic New York socialites really aren't my bag.  Then it started getting all kinds of awards attention, so I decided to give it a chance and received a stark reminder about trusting my instincts.  The characters are miserable and unpleasant.  No one learns anything.  All hopes are false.  The character arc is not-so-much an arc as a body tumbling down an incline, left for dead.

The acting is good and the photography is pretty.  It might even be a good movie, but that simply doesn't trump its unlikeability for me.  I may be done with Woody Allen.

Captain Phillips - 2013
Written by Billy Ray
Directed by Paul Greengrass


I didn't expect much from Captain Phillips.  I had a pretty good idea about the story, and while it's true that it held few surprises, Greengrass' way with cinematic pacing kept me engaged throughout.  I had a pretty good idea what to expect from Tom Hanks, and while it's true that his New England accent held few surprises, he really delivered the emotional intensity to keep pace with the third act.  I had a sense, watching the film, that the characters existed outside of the part of their lives that we're shown.  It wasn't so much a matter of the story, to suggest this, but their emotions and behaviors that showed us they were connected to things outside of the frame.  Obviously this is something we're meant to feel more often, from characters in films, but the fact that it stood out to me so starkly makes me think; maybe we haven't been getting what we should.  Involving and entertaining -- this is what we watch movie for.

12 Years A Slave - 2013
Written by John Ridley - Directed by Steve McQueen


In 1841, Solomon Northrup, a free black man, was kidnapped and sold into slavery.  This wasn't so uncommon at the time, but what is exceptional about it is that he was eventually freed and wrote a book about it.  That's not just a summary; that's pretty much the entire story.  12 Years A Slave offers no surprises and very little insight.  I watched Roots again last year, so this really felt like a reprise.  Where Captain Phillips held few surprises, it made up for it with its own kinetic momentum.  12 Years A Slave, however, has very little momentum other than the desire to see him free again, with a slow, languorous pace which I believe was designed to convey the sensation of 12 long years.  The film is beautiful to behold and performances range from the excellent (mainly Chiwitel Ejiofor) to the eye-rollingly melodramatic, and points between.  I'm not exactly complaining.  As long as the idea holds appeal to you as a viewer, this is an excellently made film and you should enjoy it much as you expect to.  If, however, you're looking for something that will enrich your understanding of the American Shame of Slavery, it's only going to tell you what you already know.

One thing I want to say about 12 Years A Slave is how I appreciate it telling its own story.  Last year, we had a bunch of whiny-ass writers and directors bitching about Django Unchained using slavery themes.  Steve McQueen DID something -- shared HIS voice and vision -- rather than gripe, and for that, I respect him even more.  Your turn, Spike Lee.  Deliver, or shut the hell up.

Also, can we talk about how fucking creepy Paul Dano is?  Guh! 



Saving Mr. Banks - 2013
Written by Kelly Marcel & Sue Smith - Directed by John Lee Hancock


Another short-on-plot, long-on-character piece of end-of-the-year obvious Oscar-bait.  In fact, I think this is a slot within that frame that comes around every year; the Gentle Biopic (often set in Old Hollywood).  It was Hitchcock last year and The King's Speech the year before.  Anyway, what we get here is the fairly light story of the strained relationship between P.L. Travers, author of Mary Poppins and Walt Disney, who deeply wanted to bring it to the screen.  Emma Thompson really carries the film.  The filmmakers give us her extremely prickly character, and then actually bother to develop that, causing us to question why and lending the film its main momentum.  Tom Hanks does his affable Tom Hanks stock character here, which is endearing enough, but offers far less depth than Thompson (or indeed, Hanks in Capt. Phillips).  He does a nice job with the speech at the end that magically makes everything all okay.

American Hustle - 2013
Written by Eric Singer & DOR - Directed by David O. Russell


Great performances, especially from Amy Adams. The plot isn't particularly engaging and it falls to the characters to propel the film forward, which they do, mostly without falter.  However, I can't say that they ever give us much to care about.

I, personally, find it interesting that we're now calling David O. Russell a director with a "confrontational method" where back around the time of Three Kings we merely recognized him as an unbalanced asshole.

Enough Said - 2013
Written & Directed by Nicole Holofcener


I wanted so badly to like this movie.  It starts out as a sweet romantic comedy about adults-of-a-certain-age finding each other and negotiating the silliness of dating, all while enjoying funny conversations.  Then it turns on you like a good curry made with bad goat.  People stop acting like adults and the plot-like substance which emerges turns out to be a DEEPLY STUPID sitcom kind of set-up.  And then that just drags on, VERY, VERY UNCOMFORTABLY for the remainder of the film.  When Dreyfus' immature behavior catches up with her, it's hard to care because she's been such a cowardly a-hole.  I just wanted Gandolfini's character to get these HORRIBLE women out of his life.  As disappointing as getting a Fony GameStation 4 with Carl of Duty 9 for Christmas.

The Heat - 2013
Written by Katie Dipold - Directed by Paul Feig


I really wasn't sure we needed another comedic take on the buddy cop movie after Cop Out and The Other Guys, but The Heat delivers enough energy and silliness to make it a good, fun time.  The viewer is responsible for checking their higher sensibilities at the door.  It's obvious, when we see Melissa McCarthy chasing down a perp in her car (because she'd lose him in the length of a block on foot) that the idea of her as a badass break-the-rules kind of cop is laughable in an uncomedic way, but she sells it with the same goofball mania that she brought to Bridesmaids and her SNL appearance.  It's funny, and that's its job.