Catch the Mystery, Catch the Drift

Mud

*** out of ****

Directed by: Jeff Nichols

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan, Jacob Lofland, Sam Shepard and Reese Witherspoon

Running time: 130 minutes

Ellis and Neckbone, two young teen boys from Arkansas, find solace and adventure while motoring through the bayou by their homes in Mud. The boys, played superbly by young actors Tye Sheridan (The Tree of Life) and Jacob Lofland (in a fiery debut), have a camaraderie that recalls the spark of friendship between two other young boys who traversed the Mississippi River just as freely: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Neckbone is the feistier, more foul-mouthed boy, demanding of others so that he can have his youthful thrills (he would be Tom). Ellis, meanwhile, is more introspective and compassionate, a Huckleberry type that searches for the good in others. However, neither boy knows what to think of a mysterious man marooned on a nearby island named Mud (played by Matthew McConaughey).

Mud is a sunburnt and mossy-haired drifter who lives in a motorboat stuck in a giant tree. He walks around with crosses nailed in his boot heels to mark territory, a .45 pistol in his back pocket and a giant snakebite crevassed in his side. He makes a deal with Ellis and Neckbone to give them shelter in his tree-house boat if they bring him food from the mainland.

Mud is the third feature from Take Shelter writer/director Jeff Nichols, an exciting voice of independent cinema who steeps his stories in rustic, rural America; in places where people mutter but do not quite speak. He is especially good working with young actors, as Sheridan and Lofland give layered, naturalistic turns as the adventurous protagonists.

While Shelter was a gripping psychological thriller and character study, Mud is a mythic, coming-of-age throwback. Nichols reconnects with Shelter actor Michael Shannon (who is hardly onscreen, a shame given his usual intensity) and that film’s cinematographer Adam Stone, who delivers the same crisp images of man interacting with the forces of nature.

As the title character, McConaughey continues to revive his career with mesmerizing portrayals of characters with charisma and dark secrets (like Killer Joe and The Lincoln Lawyer). His surly renegade, dripping with Southern-fried nuggets of wisdom, stands as a counterpart for the idealistic Ellis, who is searching for love and freedom amidst tumultuous adolescence, with his parents divorcing and a crush on a popular girl a few years older.

Sheridan, whose first role was as Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain’s middle son in The Tree of Life, gives a shattering performance of pubescent rage, confusion and discovery. Less memorable is Reese Witherspoon, playing against type as Juniper, a promiscuous ex-girlfriend of Mud’s who pledged to meet him on the island.

Of the various subplots within the film, the one that lacks the most momentum and interest is of Mud and Juniper’s mangled relationship, and Witherspoon is out of place in the role. Otherwise, Mud has an impressive ensemble, including Sam Shepard as a disgruntled father figure for the title character.

Nichols’s script gives the wide ensemble, even what remains of Ellis and Neckbone's families, small stories. The supporting characters are not just placards to spur the main characters into action, but have desires and conflicts of their own that help to colour the film’s wider fabric.

Nichols nods to the drunks, sharp shooters and feuding families that populated Mark Twain’s tales of boyhood coming-of-age. He fills Mud with the same grit as those American classics, delivering an old-fashioned yarn of self-discovery, bolstered by excellent performances and vivid, textured characters.

The Enterprise Strikes Back

Star Trek Into Darkness

***½  out of ****

Directed by: J.J. Abrams

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zoe Saldana and Simon Pegg

Running time: 133 minutes

Star Trek Into Darkness boldly goes where few sequels have gone before – to a higher level than its predecessor. J.J. Abrams’ follow-up to his 2009 reboot is this summer’s Dark Knight, a thrilling and superbly acted ensemble vehicle that doubles as a spectacular sci-fi odyssey and morality play, buoyed by a imperious villain turn from Benedict Cumberbatch.

While Cumberbatch mesmerizes, he does not steal attention from co-stars Pine (who plays Kirk) and Quinto (Spock). Their characters’ wavering friendship, sharply realized by screenwriters Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof, lays the ground for the film’s emotional pull.

As if the title did not state it clearly, the first shot of the film is a descent into volcanic ash, billowing from a red planet system, Nibiru. After a close call there, Starfleet dethrones the USS Enterprise's instinctual captain, James Kirk. Although the renegade lacks humility to his superiors, he is called back after assassins attack Starfleet Command, killing Kirk’s ally and new captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood).

Kirk reassumes command of the Enterprise, as does the stern and analytical Spock, embracing the technicalities of life-death scenarios with more precision than his playboy captain.

The Enterprise’s first big-screen foray since declaring their credo to seek out new civilizations and explore strange new worlds is more archetypal of big-screen sequels: hunt down the villainous John Harrison (Cumberbatch) and return him to Earth. Harrison is a brilliant and powerful assassin, but a black-hooded enigma. All that is known is that he used to be a student of Starfleet but fled to the Klingon home of Kronos after launching a terrorist threat on Earth.

Watching Star Trek Into Darkness makes one a bit less weary of J.J. Abrams’ work on the upcoming Star Wars sequel. The film zips by, balancing deep emotion and levity with some dashing although not flashy or overused computer-generated spectacle. There will also likely be less green screen in the untitled Episode 7, which means the amount of lens flare will probably be sublime.

Abrams is not just a masterful generator of spectacle – the first liftoff of the USS Enterprise is awe-inspiring, recalling a more Spielbergian level of wonder than nearly anything in Super 8 – but he is also a gifted actor’s director. (If Abrams is aping Spielberg, then composer Michael Giacchino’s triumphant score is reminiscent of tip-top John Williams.)

He guides a widely multicultural ensemble to delivering strong supporting work, including underused actors like Zoe Saldana (who returns as Uhura), Peter Weller, who plays a grimacing Starfleet commander, and Simon Pegg with his sharp comic timing as Scotty.

Star Trek Into Darkness is the first major big-screen voyage for character and television actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who is set for a colossal year, where he is set to play both a dragon (Smaug in The Hobbit sequel) and an iconoclast (as Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate). Here, his Harrison is a bit of both, theatrically fiery and commanding but with a playful sneer that suggests he can be a dead ringer for Jeremy Irons at his most sinister.

It is a star-making turn but Cumberbatch does not hog the spotlight from co-stars Pine and Quinto, completely comfortable in their characters’ skin. There is room for development in the relationship between Kirk and Spock, as the two cling to each other within the omnipresent sense of peril. Their frosty banter at the start cumulates in a brotherhood when Harrison summons greater power and the two must depend on each other to bring him to justice.

Star Trek fans may be less elated that Abrams does not stick to the mission plan of exploring new frontiers of space by sticking with a universe and villain they already know well. However, moviegoers should be ecstatic that the mission, as it stands, is an exhilarating experience where the characters face bold emotional territory.

Fear, death and loneliness are among some of the film’s heavy themes, but Into Darkness is not overburdened with seriousness. With deft attention to character, plotting and stimulating action sequences, let us hope Abrams can fill that galaxy far, far away with the same rich emotions and visuals.

Don't Overlook This Crazy Doc

Room 237

***½  out of **** 

Directed by: Rodney Ascher

Running time: 102 minutes

Room 237 is a boffo buffet for film students and conspiracy theorists, a terrific and often bewildering look at cinephilia. Rodney Ascher’s doc played the film festival circuit for more than a year – and it is easy to see why: the film has five different voices presenting their thesis on the deeper subtext and meanings behind Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining, a perceived classic of the horror genre.

The five theorists say they believe Kubrick’s revered, although enigmatic thriller tackled territory such as Native American genocide, the Holocaust and Kubrick’s role as the mastermind behind a faked Apollo 11 moon landing. Room 237 is a hypnotic visual essay that is intriguing and also absurdly funny, since the points these theorists make are often incredible or hard to substantiate.

Ascher shows the moments that the film’s enthusiasts are referring to by screening clips from The Shining over their voices, sometimes moving frame-by-frame to capture the particular moment that the film fan refers to.

One commentator reads the iconic scene where gallons of blood pour out from an elevator shaft on the Overlook Hotel’s bottom floor as a metaphor for spilled Indian blood. The Overlook, in the film and Stephen King’s original novel, stands on Native American burial ground; thus, the blood expunged from the elevators is that of a mass grave.

Another theorist reasons that Kubrick made The Shining as a veiled allusion to his role in filming the footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing in a Hollywood backlot. He says he believes that Kubrick planted clues within the settings, design and characters' costume to hint at the director’s involvement with organizing the hoax, and consequently, becoming unable to express his displeasure with the U.S. government.

Among other claims, the theorist ruminates that the mystifying Room 237 within the film, which was Room 217 in King’s novel, was changed to clue in viewers to the Moon’s distance from the earth (237,000 miles).

Unsurprisingly, Room 237 opens with a disclaimer that the commentators’ opinions do not reflect the views of the filmmaker or crew members. However, purists of The Shining, alongside many film enthusiasts, will likely not feel that these interpretations scar the reputation of a classic.

There is room to both chuckle at some of the incongruous commentaries, some of which present flimsy evidence, but also an opportunity to ponder over whether these analyses have credibility or not.

The subjects often muse at how Kubrick, who died in 1999, often tackled controversial themes, and was both a genius and a stylistic perfectionist. The continuity errors and bizarre symbolism must have some significance to the themes and characters, right?

While the author’s intent is unknown, the theorists have fun hypothesizing the events within Kubrick’s life – what he was reading during the 1970s before making The Shining, the cartoons he saw as a young boy growing up during World War 2 – that influence their arguments. The opinions held by the five voices would be problematic in a university-level film essay due to the lack of proof, but are fascinating to watch unfold on the big screen, playing over selected clips.

Ascher deserves credit for giving the recipients fair treatment. None of them are seen; instead, Ascher plays archive clips from other films over the commentators’ voices. For instance, when one of them refers to heading out to see the film, the audience sees a clip from Eyes Wide Shut, as Tom Cruise checks out film posters underneath a theatre marquee.

The fusion of other film clips within a documentary already oriented toward cinema analysis further blurs the lines of subjectivity within the art form. As the audience adapts their impression of these images to suit the speaker’s argument, we further lose ourselves into the power of moving images.

The theories are often outlandish, although the arguers stand firmly entrenched in their reasoning. They find meaning in some of The Shining’s glaring continuity errors: when patterns on the carpet or a chair’s appearance in one scene switches between shots, the theorists insist these mistakes were intentional and have deeply layered subtext that back up their own views.

Ascher does not negate the persuasiveness of the opinions, but lets the audience decide on whether they have credibility or even a shred of sense behind them. He keeps the argument and analysis alive, proving that all of the commentators’ critical work (and no play, considering their fanaticism toward the subject) makes Room 237 not such a dull film.

Miss Miss Bang Bang

Iron Man 3

** out of ****

Directed by: Shane Black

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce and Ben Kingsley

Running time: 129 minutes

The onslaught of superhero franchises that hit the big screen after Spider Man broke box office records in May 2002 fed an audience demand to see big, broad, effects-laden stories of good overcoming evil. The closest of Marvel's films to interact directly with both the tensions and patriotic bravado of a post-9/11 society was Iron Man.

That trilogy's greatest asset was always Robert Downey Jr., whose dry, sarcastic persona brought a lighthearted amicability to billionaire industrialist Tony Stark. However, his biting charm as Stark, King of Snark, is not enough to save Iron Man 3, a big, dumb, noisy extravaganza that turns (unintentionally) into a self-parody of the superhero subgenre.

Stark is a weapon of mass destruction in his Iron Man suit, especially when he battles alongside pal James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), who has his own metal alter ego, War Machine (or “Iron Patriot,” depending on whichever you think sounds cooler).

Together, Stark and Rhodes are single-handedly fighting the War on Terror. Using terms from the modern geopolitical environment, Iron Man and War Machine are drones. They soar through the sky to defend the motherland from the Mandarin, a nonchalant terrorist kingpin played by Ben Kingsley. 

After the Mandarin orders an air strike on Stark’s Malibu mansion and sends it crumbling into the Pacific, the playboy superhero must redeem himself and find out the terrorist's identity by investigating the places the mysterious antagonist already bombed.

The film takes place in a world of familiar political anxieties. Stark can summon his iron components with the flick of a wrist, using state-of-the-art technology to control the effectiveness of his violent capabilities. Instead of looking into the dilemma of drone warfare in the War on Terror or how it confronts the protagonist and the victims of such attacks, Iron Man 3's conflict is, unfortunately, rather tame.

Although the film opens with Stark’s voice explaining how “men create their own demons,” Shane Black’s film doesn’t spend much time exploring the emotional complexity of the character - even when terrorists threaten Stark’s life, as well as his girlfriend, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow).

Black, who co-wrote the film with Drew Pearce, is as close a screenwriter as one could get to Stark’s persona: self-aware, scathingly funny and full of curt one-liners. Black wrote Lethal Weapon, Last Action Hero and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, all of which would have been appropriate subtitles for Iron Man 3. However, his reunion with Bang Bang star Downey Jr. does not have much of the wit or substance of that earlier noir parody.

Instead, Iron Man 3 turns into an unintentional parody of superhero blockbusters, relying on sequel indulgences that have failed in the past. Like its first sequel, this Iron Man entry is packed with thinly written characters that have questionable motivations. Among this group is Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), a scientist and old flame of Stark’s who gets little to do. 

She works for Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), who is interested in limb regeneration; unfortunately, the script cannot generate much personality within that character until he turns into a cartoon halfway through. Pearce is a good actor in a thankless role – similar to Sam Rockwell’s disappointing turn in #2. Furthermore, a precocious (and dreadfully annoying) kid who enters during the middle third is useless to the story, but required to help Marvel Studios pander to the younger audiences of parent company Disney. 

At one point of Iron Man 3, Killian tells Stark that "subtlety has indeed had its day," which could be a future tagline for Marvel Studios. Sure, the film has some thrilling action sequences, including a fantastic rescue of free-falling airplane passengers. However, instead of exploring its characters or examining the shades of grey surrounding weapons technology in modern times, Iron Man 3 is content to think in terms of black and white, as well as be an illogical, loud and explosive piece of popcorn cinema.

Here's To You, Mr. Robinson

42

*** out of ****

Directed by: Brian Helgeland

Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Harrison Ford, Nicole Beharie, Christopher Meloni and Andre Holland

Running time: 128 minutes

In his first season with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Jackie Robinson – the first African-American athlete to play in the major leagues – was named Rookie of the Year. In 42, a biographical picture about him from L.A. Confidential scribe Brian Helgeland, one learns that Robinson also led the league with a more infamous statistic: the number of times hit by a pitch.

Although the film is conventional, it hits its story beats with pride. Helgeland does not proclaim Robinson’s greatness for him; instead, the film shows a more multi-faceted glimpse at the American hero at its centre, depicting the bigotry that Robinson faced and how he braved it admirably.

As Helgeland examines, Robinson’s catapult from the segregated Negro leagues to the Brooklyn Dodgers was an economic strategy from team executive Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford). As Rickey munches a fat cigar and schmeckles at managers who gape at his decision, he explains that it does not matter whether the players are white or black, since “every dollar is green.” 

Robinson is hired not just for his gritty athleticism, but also to feed the demographics. If the film was not up to par, then I would compare Rickey to whoever greenlit this film. #42, however, is quick-tempered against the racial intolerance of postwar America. Rickey tells Robinson that he has to turn the other cheek. If he fights back against racism on the field, the public will label him as a vicious hound and demand he leave the league.

As #42, fresh-faced Chadwick Boseman is magnetic, with both a charm and intensity that recall a young Denzel Washington (an actor who was also considered to play Robinson onscreen in the 1990s).

Boseman is leaner than Robinson but gets into meaty territory during several of the moments where his character is tested psychologically by jeers from the crowds, some slimy umpires and a harsh, bigoted manager (played by Alan Tudyk) who chirps out the “N” word with the gusto and speed of an auctioneer.

The best moments in the film are the scenes between Ford and Boseman. Ford’s Rickey is more than just a gravelly-voiced Clint Eastwood impression; although he looks like a cartoon, he is the closest thing Robinson gets to a motivating support figure. Thankfully, Helgeland does not credit the white executive for Robinson’s success, nixing any form of white supremacy over the subject.

Nicole Beharie is also terrific (despite limited screentime) as Robinson’s supportive wife, Rachel, who is daunted with having her husband receive drubbings from fans.

The film has a restrained, neoclassical visual style in the off-field scenes, which ensures that the moments on the diamond pop. It is a thrill to watch Boseman as Robinson, rubbing dirt on his hands at the plate, scampering around the bases with a dirty jersey and clean smile, and intimidating the pitchers who eye him caustically as he prepares to steal a base.

As the film only tracks two years and stays entrenched with the sport for much of the running time, there is a curiosity to know more about the man behind the number. Helgeland gives much screen time to Robinson’s teammates and managers, many of whom are simplified into bigoted caricatures wary of Robinson’s conspicuousness – to the extent that #42 was embarrassed to have a post-game shower with the rest of the team.

42 is too conventional to become an instant classic, but writer/director Brian Helgeland does a fine job at sticking to the humanity of a terrific sports story. Yes, there are a couple of moments where sappy music over montages of cheering crowds lays on the schmaltz too thickly. Most of the film, though, is riveting, especially when Helgeland looks inward to Robinson’s turmoil, both on and off the field.