The Grouchy Editor

As I was watching How to Train Your Dragon, I kept thinking of another film:  Werner Herzog’s 2005 documentary, Grizzly Man.  In Herzog’s movie, a naïve young fool named Timothy Treadwell believes he can best-friend-forever wild bears, thereby ignoring thousands of years of human history.  Things do not end well for the optimistic Mr. Treadwell.

In How to Train Your Dragon, one of the lessons seems to be:  Animals are our pals, kindred spirits to all of mankind.  “Everything we know about you guys is wrong,” says the young hero, Hiccup, to a dragon.  That’s probably what the Grizzly Man thought, right before he became breakfast.  Things, of course, do not end so badly for the heroes in Dragon – this is a children’s movie, after all – but the story has little, sorry, bearing on reality.

I suppose if you are eight years old, this animated confection is the cat’s meow.  If, however, you are older, it’s a barely tolerable waste of 98 minutes.  The story is unoriginal, the gags are aimed at pre-teens, and much of what transpires is preposterous.  Young Hiccup, drawn as a teenager, is voiced by an actor who is nearly 30 and whose voice sounds exactly that, which is both bizarre and distracting.

As for the celebrated 3-D special effects … I didn’t see it in 3-D, but according to Roger Ebert, I didn’t miss much.  Says Ebert: “The 3-D adds nothing but the opportunity to pay more to see a distracting and unnecessary additional dimension.”  I’ll take his word for it.

How to Train Your Dragon is well-meaning and well-drawn and well … very nice for eight-year-olds.  It is a Gumby movie with more expensive production values.      Grade:  B-

Directors:  Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders  Voice Talent:  Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera  Release:  2010

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Somebody goofed – big time – when developing All Good Things, the new thriller starring Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst.  For raw material, the filmmakers had the fact-based, bizarre story of multimillionaire Robert Durst, a can-you-believe-this melodrama involving some, if not all, of the following elements:  murder, embezzlement, blackmail, cross-dressing, corpse dismemberment, and a woman now missing for 28 years.

With all of that material to work with, what did the producers of All Good Things come up with?  A routine Lifetime drama about a battered woman and her unpleasant in-laws.

For two-thirds of the movie, we watch Dunst play innocent bride to husband Gosling’s – well, it’s hard to peg Gosling’s portrayal of the enigmatic Durst (called “David Marks” in the film).  As played by Gosling, the man is sullen, distant, talks to himself, and has mother issues, but hardly seems the threatening type.  Lurking in the background, pulling son David’s strings, is omnipotent real estate mogul Sanford Marks, played grumpily by Frank Langella.

Katie (Dunst) wants children; David does not.  He hits her; she rationalizes his behavior.  She wants her freedom; he wants to control her.  Blah, blah, blah and haven’t we seen all of this dozens of times?  Katie agonizes.  Katie contemplates leaving David.  Dunst bares her boobies in a shower scene, which makes news in The Huffington Post and Vanity Fair.  Dunst … should never have been the focus of this film.

It’s only in the final third of the movie that the filmmakers turn their attention to the real story:  odd, odd David/Robert.  But by then it’s too late.  All of those elements that make the Durst story so compelling – the murder, madness and mayhem – are crammed into the final act like so many body parts into a suitcase.  The story becomes jumbled and teases us with what might have been a pretty good thriller.       Grade:  C+

Director:  Andrew Jarecki  Cast:  Ryan Gosling, Kirsten Dunst, Frank Langella, Lily Rabe, Philip Baker Hall, Michael Esper, Diane Venora, Nick Offerman, Kristen Wiig, Stephen Kunken  Release:  2010

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Tiny Furniture is like an e-mail you receive from your 22-year-old niece.  You laugh at her misadventures, shake your head over her latest choice of a boyfriend, and worry just a bit about her future.  It’s an amusing and charming e-mail, but she has no earthshaking news, and by the next day you’ve forgotten all about it.

Tiny Furniture creator Lena Dunham is being anointed the next “it” girl by some critics, heralded as a filmmaker with a bright future.  Dunham shot her movie on a shoestring budget in her real family’s Manhattan loft, and enlisted friends and family members to play pivotal roles in what, I assume, is a more-than-slightly autobiographical film.

Dunham directed, wrote, and stars in the film as Aura, a recent college grad who returns to her mother’s home to little fanfare, and proceeds to struggle with men, old friends, work and, mostly, an apparently unsympathetic mother and a self-centered younger sister.  Aura is no pampered product of the new millennium; she’s a friendly, funny, and smart cookie cast adrift in that messy thing called adulthood.

It’s been a long time since I graduated from college (even longer since I was a young woman), so I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that young women will relate to Aura’s heartbreak and frustrations much more than I did.  But I also believe that exceptional movies transcend gender, reaching out to both sexes and all ages.  Tiny Furniture doesn’t do that.  Its dramatics might be profoundly relevant to my 22-year-old niece – but not really to anyone else.        Grade:  B

Director:  Lena Dunham  Cast:  Lena Dunham, Laurie Simmons, Grace Dunham, Jemima Kirke, Alex Karpovsky, David Call, Merritt Wever  Release:  2010

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There are two impressions I can’t seem to shake after watching Countdown to Zero, a new documentary about nuclear-weapons proliferation.  One of them is the sobering knowledge that movies like WarGames, Fail-Safe, and Dr. Strangelove are not as far-fetched as they might seem.  Much of what passes for escapist entertainment in those films – technical malfunctions, human error – is alarmingly close to reality.

But there is also an image in the film that haunts me:  a black-and-white photograph of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American scientist commonly known as the “father of the atomic bomb.”  In the famous photo, Oppenheimer wears a fedora, smokes a cigarette, and stares directly into the camera lens.  His eyes appear to issue a warning:  “I was Pandora,” they seem to say, “What happens next … is up to you.”  Oppenheimer looks fatalistic – which can’t be good news for the rest of us.

The following is an Oppenheimer quote from 1947, two years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:  “I have been asked whether in the years to come it will be possible to kill 40 million American people in the 20 largest American towns by the use of atomic bombs in a single night.  I am afraid that the answer to that question is yes.  I have been asked whether there is hope for the nation’s security in keeping secret some of the knowledge which has gone into the making of the bombs.  I am afraid there is no such hope.”

Hope seems in short supply in Countdown to Zero.  Director Lucy Walker’s film is a catalog of near-disasters and rampant dissemination of nuclear materials to just about anyone who can pay for them.  This onslaught of nightmarish news left me feeling pessimistic, despite Walker’s pro-disarmament message.  It’s not exactly heartening to be reminded that there are still 23,000 nuclear weapons on Earth.  Also disturbing is this potential conflict between the United States and Russia, as described by a member of the World Security Institute:  “Within 15 minutes, all of the forces on launch-ready alert [could] be in the air in their flight to the other side of the planet … and they could kill over 100 million Russians and Americans within 30 minutes.”

I’m guessing it won’t help anyone sleep at night to learn that, should the American or Russian presidents be forced to consider retaliation in the event of a (possibly false) reported attack, the amount of time allotted to make that decision would be about the same as the time you just took to read this review.              Grade:  A-

Director:  Lucy Walker  Featuring:  Graham Allison, James Baker III, Bruce Blair, Tony Blair, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter, Joseph Cirincione, Mikhail Gorbachev, Robert McNamara, Valerie Plame Wilson  Release:  2010

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Scenario 1:  Lady A is late to the movie theater.  Parking is impossible to find, and the concession-stand line is endless.  As a result, Lady A misses the first half of High Lane.

Scenario 2:  Gentleman B watches the first half of High Lane, but receives an emergency call from his cousin Bertie, who urgently needs bail money.  Gentleman B departs the theater, and misses the second half of High Lane.

The following day, you bump into Lady A and Gentleman B, and ask both what they thought of the film.  “A crackerjack adventure with gorgeous scenery,” Gentleman B tells you, adding, “I highly recommend it.”  “It was horrid, cliché-ridden, slasher dreck,” says Lady A.  “By all means, avoid it,” she adds.  Who is giving you the best advice – Lady A or Gentleman B?  Answer:  both of them.

The first half of director Abel Ferry’s … well, “horror/adventure,” sports some of the best, tensest mountain-climbing scenes this side of Cliffhanger.   The mountain views (allegedly of the Balkans but reportedly shot in France) are breathtaking.   Ferry’s depiction of these nerve-wracking crags and crevices and their effect on one character’s vertigo is dizzying, indeed.

But for some unfathomable reason, at the 45-minute-mark the film makes a Wrong Turn and steers away from nail-biting action to tiresome, seen-it-all-before horror.  I suppose the idea must have looked good on paper:  Deliverance Meets Leatherface.

Our heroes, a group of five young and attractive (naturally) climbers, suddenly find themselves stalked and cocked by a sort of Croatian Keith Richards, an unwashed hillbilly who, in the grand tradition of all bogeymen, has no trouble snaring young people who sprint full-speed while he simply plods after them.  Everything you expect to see is included:  A young woman miraculously displays martial arts skills; people go places they shouldn’t, and do things they oughtn’t – all in the service of a plot gone spectacularly wrong.           Grade:  C

Director:  Abel Ferry  Cast:  Fanny Valette, Johan Libereau, Raphael Lenglet, Nicolas Giraud, Maud Wyler, Justin Blanckaert  Release:  2009

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I don’t care how old you are, 15 or 50, the beginning of the end of the Harry Potter saga is sad news.  But for me, this magical film franchise really began to fade about five years ago.

The Potter films were a marvel in the beginning.  Director Chris Columbus reached into a hat and produced a pair of movies that captured not only the essence of J.K. Rowling’s novels, but also their appearance.  Think about it.  All of the Potter films – including the five not directed by Columbus – have relied on the ingenious casting, sets, and music introduced in the first film.  Who supervised the construction of Hogwarts?  What genius cast Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid?  With all due respect, it wasn’t David Yates; nor was it Mike Newell or Alfonso Cuaron.  Rowling could not have asked for a better director than Columbus to transfer her vision to film.

Beginning with the third film, the series’s tone began to change.  Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the movies lost some of their charm.  As Harry, Ron and Hermione grew older and less innocent, the stories moved away from the wonder of magic and the mind-blowing concept of a school for wizards, and more toward standard teenage melodrama.  It’s impossible to pinpoint exactly when the fantasy began to diminish, but the transition was unmistakable.   If I were handing out Harry Potter grades in the Great Hall, they would go something like this:  First two films – A;  third and fourth films – B+;  fifth and sixth films – B.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a good movie.  The franchise’s expensive production values, veteran actors, and commitment to quality ensure that all Potter films at least look and sound impressive.  It’s the tone, the ambience, that has changed – and not for the better.

Rowling’s books somehow managed to avoid this pitfall.  Maybe that’s because in the books we don’t actually hear Harry’s voice mutate from soprano to baritone (as we did in Chamber of Secrets), nor did we actually watch Ron grow so tall.  Or maybe it’s simply a testament to Rowling’s skill as a writer.

Here’s hoping that Deathly Hallows, which opens in a few days, can recapture some of that old magic … although I don’t expect that it will.   Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:    Grade:  B-

Director:  David Yates  Cast:  Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Helena Bonham Carter, Jim Broadbent, Robbie Coltrane, Tom Felton, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith  Release:  2009

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Let’s take a little trip, shall we?  Let’s go back to the Garden of Eden.  While we’re there, maybe we can answer a few nagging questions.  Was Eve really a villain?  Are women more responsible than men for “original sin”?  And is life a matter of rational thought creating order … or does chaos reign?

Lars von Trier’s thought-provoking Antichrist has been attacked as a misogynistic film, but I didn’t get that impression.  In Trier’s hellish view of our time here on Earth, we are all of us pretty much screwed.  Here is an exchange between a wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her husband (Willem Dafoe):

She:  “If human nature is evil, then that goes as well for the nature of —“

He:  “Of the women.”

She:  “— the nature of all the sisters.”

Critics have seized on Trier’s storyline in which the wife, traumatized over the accidental death of the couple’s only child, gradually becomes an Eve apparently designed by the devil, leading to some graphically violent outbursts against her husband.  But prior to that, I had to wonder who was torturing whom — if your husband, a therapist, deals with his own grief by treating you like a psychological experiment in a Petri dish (“No therapist can know as much about you as I do,” he tells her), might not you snap, as well?  They say there’s nothing worse than losing a child.  After watching Antichrist, it seems there might be one thing worse:  marriage to a jerk who sidesteps his own problems by analyzing your every move and thought.

All of this sounds like dreary stuff, and it is.  There are a few graphic scenes, but nothing that fans of, say, Hostel haven’t seen before.  Trier has turned potentially off-putting material into an engrossing, visually dazzling, study of the nature of, well, nature.        Grade:  A-

Director:  Lars von Trier  Cast:  Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg  Release:  2009

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