A True Underdog Story

Greenberg

*** out of ****

Directed by: Noah Baumbach

Starring: Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig, Rhys Ifans and Jennifer Jason Leigh

Running time: 107 minutes

Independent filmmaker Noah Baumbach must be a giant fan of French New Wave auteur Jean-Luc Godard. His latest film, the offbeat and acerbically funny Greenberg, owes much to that director’s inaugural classic, Breathless.

While replacing the stunning city lights of Paris with the lavish hillside spreads of Los Angeles, he keeps its stylistic jump cutting, aimless characters and meandering storyline.

Baumbach’s latest is also the story of “un vraiment degueulass,” an unstable narcissist named Roger Greenberg. He’s portrayed by Ben Stiller, branching off from loopy blockbuster comedies to riskier dramatic material a la Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love.

Greenberg is house-sitting at his wealthy brother’s estate in the Hollywood Hills as his family vacations for six weeks in sunny Vietnam.

He’s been treated at a New York mental institution for some unexplained circumstance. Although a carpentry career has given him some focus, he doesn’t do much.

Greenberg spends much time with an old pal and band-mate named Ivan (Rhys Ifans), who's going through some marital problems. He also writes off-handed complaint letters to powerful companies, voicing his frustration. Besides that, Greenberg doesn’t have many cares and doesn’t seem to mind either.

Florence (Greta Gerwig) is an entirely different story. She’s a sunny young musician and a caretaker for the Greenberg family. Most of her time consists of driving through busy L.A. intersections to run errands for them.

But her obligations extend to Roger, who craves extra company and refuses to get behind the wheel of a car. Florence and Roger may be foils, but of course, they fall for each other.

This romance should never work, but it does due to the magnetic lead performances.

It may be his looniest character yet, but Stiller abandons his loose, colourful persona here. He’s subtle and natural for much of the film – sans le overcooked outbursts – but also demonstrates great focus, especially for an off-balance character.

Roger Greenberg is a dismal and usually vile person to be around. He's a guy you'd make an effort to avoid at a party.

The character is also the film’s teetering point. One’s overall engagement in the story will depend on the patience he or she has with the character. Regardless of his difficult personality, Stiller manages to offer him unusual pathos.

As good as Stiller is, his co-star Greta Gerwig is even greater. Of little notoriety due to her work in smaller, Sundance-worthy projects, she’s transcendent here as Florence.

Gerwig mixes the energetic charm of Ellen Page, the modest sensibility of Virginia Madsen, and the dignity of a young Kate Winslet. Her approach is hauntingly silent but her craft is effortless. She is hypnotic, and has got a tremendous career ahead.

Both actors usher a humanity into this shifty romantic entanglement. We can see these two confused souls looking into the other, trying their best to extract something good and positive from the other.

It’s a frustrating relationship to watch. “Hurt people hurt people," Florence comments at one point, speaking of its harsh, bruised nature. While their romance sometimes turns awry, many of their scenes together are quite tender.

Greenberg is bound to frustrate those not familiar with the episodic meanderings that Baumbach homages. The story takes many excursions with its wandering protagonist.

His meeting with an old girlfriend (Jennifer Jason Leigh, also Baumbach’s wife) and a late party scene with coked-up teenagers serve little purpose within the story, but are present only to fuel the character.

Curiously, even with all the emphasis on Greenberg, there’s a pregnant emptiness within him. We never get right to the core of his emotional exile, and therefore the character feels incomplete. We want him to be redeemed but don’t know precisely how he needs to be saved.

The film may move in fits and starts – characteristic of French New Wave features – but the writing is smooth. The characters don’t speak dialogue but talk in sentences. It's an unforced normalcy, one that's rare to find at the cinema nowadays.

Many will walk into Greenberg expecting to find the dramatic soul of a successful comedy actor. Instead, they will discover someone else's. Her name is Greta Gerwig.

Just be forewarned: this may be the sourest romantic comedy in ages.

Mission Not Accomplished

Green Zone

** out of ****

Directed by: Paul Greengrass

Starring: Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Amy Ryan, Brendan Gleeson and Jason Isaacs

Running time: 114 minutes

Four springs ago, Paul Greengrass released the superb and relentlessly gripping United 93. Despite mighty acclaim, the film earned a modest box office take: many simply thought it was too soon for a 9/11 film.

His latest feature, Green Zone, is not selling many tickets either. Even though some could mistake it as a sequel of sorts with its post-9/11 setting, the feeling is contrary to his earlier masterpiece – and probably the reason its box office is not igniting. It’s just too little, too late.

Matt Damon reunites with Greengrass, his collaborator on the final two Jason Bourne films. Here, he plays the truth-seeking Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller.

Miller intends to find weapons of mass destruction that are allegedly stockpiled in warehouses across Baghdad. But within weeks of the US invasion, three of his raids have curiously come up empty.

His superiors report that their intelligence, according to the Pentagon and a high-ranking official named Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear), is accurate. When Miller questions the integrity of this information, his doubts go ignored.

That is, with the exception of a tactful CIA honcho and Middle East specialist (Brendan Gleeson), as well as a suspicious journalist (Gone Baby Gone’s Amy Ryan), whose information regarding the WMDs was initially given credence by the American press.

Both are scrutinizing the situation, and suspect that Miller’s theories have more traction than what the authorities accept.

Green Zone simply doesn’t work as a dramatization of the American insurgency; surprisingly, it’s inspired by a lauded non-fiction book, titled Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

Whereas his earlier pictures, Bloody Sunday and United 93, were thrillers that contained known people, events and situations, every major character and sequence in Greengrass's latest is purely fictional.

That wouldn’t be a bother if the characters weren’t pale variations of those from better political dramas and war thrillers. They are, especially Greg Kinnear's slimy suit of a villain and the rugged, tyrannical Special Forces officer portrayed by Jason Issacs.

Still, Damon does a certifiable job here, and commands the screen well. Unfortunately, his character was composed as a baby-faced Jack Bauer without the flaws, bloodthirsty edge or kinetic energy.

Not that the film lags in caffeinated camera-work and crisp cutting – this is a Paul Greengrass film! We expect the shaky, hand-held cinematography (not recommended for pregnant women or motion-sickness sufferers) and hyperactive editing that upped the pulse on his earlier Bourne installments.

This approach is done for realism’s sake, and works well, letting the audience hang on for dear life within the intense (and excellent) action sequences.

But Green Zone’s strongly liberal depiction of post-invasion Iraq is overly, and regrettably, simplistic.

It’s known that the War was an intelligence failure and a disaster that vilified America's reputation.

But if the film had managed to inject some fierce insights – from liberal and conservative points of view, and both American and Iraqi perspectives – into life during wartime, we may have compelling subject matter on our hands.

Green Zone could have broadened its storytelling horizons, trimmed its political subjectivity and captured our attention with vivid characters and situations.

But the story's watered-down elements slacken the surprise and high-octane thrills. Green Zone also fails to provoke the same diplomatic arguments that fueled many documentaries on the subject, such as 2007’s award-winning No End in Sight.

Its familiarity is easy for a mainstream studio to sell but more difficult to engage an audience, especially an informed and intelligent one. Like the raids conducted at the beginning of the film, Green Zone comes up surprisingly empty.

Ghost in the Darkness

The Ghost Writer

*** out of ****

Directed by: Roman Polanski

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, Kim Cattrall and Tom Wilkinson

Running time: 128 minutes

He might be under house arrest, but Roman Polanski still knows how to direct an arresting thriller.

You may not respect him for his misdeeds, but it’s difficult not to admire him as a filmmaker for his masterful work on The Ghost Writer, a mystery where the direction is more intriguing than the intrigue itself.

Like the disgraced filmmaker, the Ghost (played by Ewan McGregor, whose character’s name is never revealed) is stuck inside a swank fortress, isolated from society.

He’s assigned the job of completing the memoirs for a former British Prime Minister named Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan). The Ghost is replacing a writer who wound up dead after a suspicious accident, but that's the least of his concerns.

Right as he begins his duties at the politician's mansion, a British Cabinet Minister publicly denounces Lang as a war criminal. Soon enough, the press pickets outside the home, waiting impatiently for the ex-PM to be tried for his actions. (No doubt Polanski can relate to more than one character now.)

Of course, the publicity only makes the Ghost’s work a hot property. But with only two weeks to pen the manuscript, and with uneasy relations between Lang’s personal assistant (Kim Cattrall) and bossy wife (Olivia Williams) distracting the ex-PM, his deadline seems out of reach.

It’s a good thing the Ghost's predecessor did some digging before he arrived on the scene. Our nameless protagonist decides to leave the estate to gather up a whole other story – one he didn’t set out to scribe.

Similarities to Polanski’s predicament notwithstanding, there are several other allusions within the twisty script, adapted by the director and Robert Harris, author of the film's source material ("The Ghost").

Adam Lang is a suave “man of the people” under fire for unethical foreign policy and is harshly criticized for his close alignment with the United States. Since Harris started working on "The Ghost" in the wake of Tony Blair’s resignation, the comparisons feel boundless.

It’s also not every day that you can marvel at a Pierce Brosnan performance, but this is just one of those times. Although only in a few scenes, he makes the most of his screen-time as the slick and impassioned politician. Tom Wilkinson as an old-time friend and Harvard professor with a few secrets of his own is great in a brief appearance, as well.

McGregor is also excellent, blending far better into his role as a writer here than he did in 2009’s The Men Who Stare at Goats. Moreover, Olivia Williams is fiercely lewd as Lang’s saucy wife, while Cattrall’s British accent could have used some tweaking.

But there’s one master in this film, and it’s the one currently stuck in a Swiss chalet (not the restaurant, but nice try).

Polanski does something almost entirely unheard of in contemporary thrillers. He doesn’t throttle straight for the action to move the events forward, but focuses the camera on mundane things and behaviours to shroud the viewer with paranoia.

He may take his precious time, but the man knows how to create suspense. There’s never a sense of calm at any time within The Ghost Writer. Props to composer Alexandre Desplat and cinematographer Pawel Edelman for emulating a tense, Hitchcockian strain of suspense throughout (my favourite homage being a gripping note-passing sequence).

The pacing is next to perfect. The mystery elements, on the other hand, are usually flat and only occasionally convincing.

The clues seem too orderly and convenient - a house visit and a couple of Google searches are all it takes - while the film’s final twist is uninspired. The audience may even be questioning the irrationality of the protagonist’s actions at the end more than the legitimacy of the big reveal; unfortunately, it wouldn’t matter as neither work particularly well.

Roman Polanski may not be someone you’d welcome into your home. Regardless, he is capable enough to take a slight, second-rate thriller at the seams and cloak it with layers of greatness that recall the finest paranoia thrillers of the 1970s.

The Ghost Writer arrives with such masterful direction and simmers with such patient suspense, this reviewer is willing to forgive the questionable outcome.

Burton's Wonderland Feels Sleepy and Hollow

Alice in Wonderland

** out of ****

Directed by: Tim Burton

Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway and Crispin Glover

Running time: 109 minutes

It looked like a dream on paper: zany fantasy director Tim Burton reuniting with frequent collaborator Johnny Depp for an extension of Lewis Carroll’s psychedelic classics – and for Disney, where the filmmaker first made his mark.

Alice in Wonderland seems like a perfect brew for Burton and Co., yet it is only a shrug-worthy effort, an adaptation that feels more manufactured than invigorated.

Australian actress Mia Wasikowska (from HBO’s In Treatment) portrays the title character.

As a young girl, Alice visited Underland (its real name), but years later believes the place is only a strange fantastical world from within her dreams.

Now 19, and an independent woman in Victorian-era England, she’s set up to marry the son (Leo Bill) of her late father’s affluent business partner. But Alice dodges the marriage proposal and rushes off to chase a White Rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen) down that pesky hole.

Between her two visits, Underland has changed. The haughty Red Queen, Iracebeth (Helena Bonham Carter), has conquered the throne, usurping power from her sister Mirana, the White Queen (Anne Hathaway).

It is written in scripture that the Frabjous Day is upon all creatures of Underland. As our precocious protagonist soon discovers, she is destined to slay the Jabberwocky, a frightening fire-breathing concoction that belongs to the Red Queen (and inspired by a Carroll poem), on that pivotal day.

But before she can slay the dragon, she must ally herself with a flurry of oddball companions, from the gleefully aloof Mad Hatter (who else but Johnny Depp) to the kooky Cheshire Cat (voiced by Stephen Fry) to the chain-smoking caterpillar, Absolem (the growl of Alan Rickman).

Burton attempts to flesh the universe within a cohesive narrative – far from the episodic wanderings of Carroll’s original source. He ensured that screenwriter Linda Woolverton (The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast) would pen the film with a story that lies within the archetype of good-triumphs-evil fantasy fanfare.

But that’s exactly where the problem lies: this Wonderland is too ordinary. Gone is the offbeat joy of the original material. What remains is a leaden story-line too uniform with other CGI-heavy adaptations, from Harry Potter to Narnia to The Golden Compass.

The slight characterization doesn’t help matters. Alice is not remotely curious and lacks the spirit we’ve accustomed to the character. She barely cracks a smile – when did Alice turn from Dorothy Gales into Bella Swan?

This should be Wasikowska’s picture, but her character wanders around Underland with grave disappointment for much of the duration. The young actress, as well as Hathaway’s White Queen, get personalities as lifeless as the doll versions of their characters young girls will undoubtedly receive in their Happy Meals.

Instead, much of the attention is focused on Depp and Bonham Carter, who can’t seem to get enough of their Tim Burton fix (rightfully so for the latter, being his wife).

Buried under buckets of white makeup, both actors have an unabashed, eccentric presence. Depp is great fun (Burton even sneaks in a sly Edward Scissorhands reference during a pivotal scene), and Bonham Carter even more so as the deliciously rotten and poofy-headed Red Queen.

Also at the top of their game are the makeup artists and production designers (headed by Robert Stromberg, a newly minted Oscar winner for Avatar), aptly so considering the fantasia of these kooky characters and the grandeur of Carroll’s universe.

The sets are rich with detail and the surroundings are equally magnificent, even if their pizzazz has a hazy, Blue Period, feel.

Still, there’s a struggle, predictably, between live-action and CGI. The computer-generated effects are fancifully executed, but they don’t mesh with the rest of the picture. This becomes increasingly noticeable when the characters (especially Alice) interact with entirely superficial creatures.

The 3D isn’t very immersive either. Nice for Disney to take advantage of our wallets, though. Perhaps they were weary of bad word-of-mouth from families, as the film contains its fair share of decapitations, gouged-out eyeballs and Hookah-smoking caterpillars.

This Wonderland may be pretty, but it’s hardly engrossing. By making critical story mistakes, and extracting a bland leading performance from Wasikowska, Burton and his crew have obviously not remembered what the Dormouse said.

It's Time for Oscar! 2009 Edition

(Note: The 2009 Academy Awards are awarded at the beginning of 2010, honouring films that were released in 2009. Just thought I’d clarify this…)

Hollywood’s ticking down to this weekend’s Academy Awards, and I don’t think the bomb squad from The Hurt Locker could diffuse the excitement. Things will surely explode at the Kodak Theater on Sunday night.

This year’s Oscars have been unpredictable from the start. Early last fall, festival accolades crowned Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire as the clear front-runner (several publications even said it was the Slumdog Millionaire of 2009).

Then, Up in the Air got remarkable buzz after its Best Picture win from the National Board of Review and a leading nomination tally at the Golden Globes.

But Precious and Up in the Air will have to make way for the tightest Oscar race in years. The front-runners are Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq war flick (and critical smash) The Hurt Locker and James Cameron’s Pandora sci-fi extravaganza (and box office smash) Avatar.

And unless you were living on Pandora for the last month or so, you surely know that Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron used to be married.

Also, the Academy has doubled the Best Picture nominees (from 5 to 10) and the number of hosts (2, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin) this year.

So, here’s who I think will triumph at the 2009 Academy Awards:

Best Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress:

There’s virtually no contest in either of these categories. Christoph Waltz owns the Supporting Actor race as the hotsy-totsy Nazi from Inglourious Basterds. He’s owned the podium at every other award show so far, as has Mo’Nique, who portrayed the vile, abusive mother from Precious.

Both actors play villains, and with their wins, they will ensure that 5 of the last 6 winners of supporting performances at the Oscars will be for villainous roles (Javier Bardem, Tilda Swinton and Heath Ledger being the others).

Best Actor:

It’s Jeff Bridges' year, folks. He’s already been nominated 4 times previously (first for The Last Picture Show, and most recently for 2000’s The Contender), proving he’s an Academy darling, and he also swept the awards circuit. This is a strong category, but the Academy will abide with The Dude.

Best Actress:

Sandra or Meryl? The first-time nominee or the 16-timer? Streep hasn’t won since Sophie’s Choice in 1983, but Julie and Julia got little support from the Academy (Best Actress is its sole nomination). Whereas The Blind Side has a Best Picture nomination, and Bullock’s performance has already proven to be victorious at other awards junctions.

Bet this one on Bullock, but don’t be blind sided by Streep, who may prove to be a shocker here.

Best Director:

Girls rule, boys drool. Well, not exactly, but count on Kathryn Bigelow to make Oscar history as the first woman to ever win the prestigious honour. Cameron, despite garnering a Best Director prize at the Golden Globes, has been absent from the podium everywhere else. Besides, he already won for Titanic and the Academy may feel tempted to spread the wealth.

Expect Bigelow to be crowned as Queen of the World.

Best Picture:

It’s down to two: Avatar and The Hurt Locker. All the other movies should just be happy to be there and enjoy the festivities.

Avatar is adored by audiences around the world and has become the biggest film of all time during its worldwide theatrical run so far (over $2.5 billion). Its technical achievements are revolutionary and people can’t stop talking about it.

Since viewership of the telecast has lagged in recent years due to the modest box-office takes of nominated films, the Academy may want to privilege a film that more viewers will be rooting for.

Then again, Avatar may be doomed for a few reasons:

1) It has no acting or screenplay nominations. The last time a movie won Best Picture without acting or writing nominations, it was for Grand Hotel - in 1933!

2) A science-fiction film has never won Best Picture. Other box-office behemoths in the genre, E.T. and Star Wars, won a handful of Oscars. But, they lost the top prize to Gandhi and Annie Hall, respectively.

3) This year’s complex voting process.

Instead of checking off one film on the ballot – as done in years prior – the Academy has the option of ranking the nominees from 1 (their top pick) to 10. In the first round, the Academy will put down which film each member puts as their #1 choice. Films with significantly lower takes will be disqualified, and the voters who selected those films will have their #2 pick counted. And so on.

The first film to get over 50% of the total will take home Best Picture. So, films that appear high on many lists (from #1 to #4, let's say) will have an upper hand on others.

So why does this spell trouble for Avatar? Unlike The Hurt Locker, Avatar has had a love-it-or-I'm-not-that-nuts-about-it response. Many think the film's fantastic, but its acclaim doesn’t reach everyone. Even some of its greater supporters feel that the story is derivative and that it’s not Best Picture material.

The Hurt Locker, on the other hand, has very little backlash, guaranteeing that it will get a lot of approval from Academy voters.

Still, some controversy has given The Hurt Locker a bit of a bumpy ride. Nicolas Chartier, one of the film’s producers, sent a letter to several Academy voters telling them not to vote for Avatar (he has since apologized and will not be present at the ceremony).

Also, some veterans have spoken out against the film, claiming that is an inauthentic portrayal of the US military.

But these controversies don’t necessarily spell disaster for The Hurt Locker. A Beautiful Mind received a similar backlash due to the anti-Semitism of the film’s subject, Nobel-Prize winner John Nash. It won Best Picture in 2002.

Also, complaints about Roman Polanski was thought to have hurt his Oscar chances when he was nominated for 2002’s The Pianist. He won, too.

And even with the film’s middling box office take (less than $20 million worldwide, compared to Avatar’s $2.5 billion), The Hurt Locker has owned this awards season. It won the top prize at the DGAs, the WGAs, the PGAs, and the American Cinema Editors awards – all ceremonies with voting bodies that spread over to the Academy. It also took home several prizes at the BAFTAs (the British equivalent of the Oscars)

The Hollywood Foreign Press, who awarded Avatar the Best Picture Golden Globe, is entirely separate from the Academy.

Expect the Academy to award The Hurt Locker. Sorry, James.

Here's a full list of my Oscar predictions:

Best Picture: The Hurt Locker

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker

Best Actor: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

Best Actress: Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Best Supporting Actress: Mo’Nique, Precious

Best Original Screenplay: Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker

Best Adapted Screenplay: Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner, Up in the Air

Best Foreign Language Film: The White Ribbon

Best Animated Feature: Up

Best Cinematography: Avatar

Best Visual Effects: Avatar

Best Film Editing: The Hurt Locker

Best Sound Mixing: Avatar

Best Sound Editing: Avatar

Best Makeup: The Young Victoria

Best Original Score: Up

Best Costume Design: The Young Victoria

Best Art Direction: Avatar

Best Original Song: Crazy Heart (“The Weary Kind”)

Best Documentary Feature: The Cove

Best Documentary Short: China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province

Best Live Action Short: The Door

Best Animated Short: A Matter of Loaf and Death