The Grouchy Editor

Since The Blind Side is purportedly about football, allow me to divide the film into halves:  The movie scores in its first half, but develops a severe case of fumble-itis in the second half.  Half One works well because it skillfully manipulates the audience.  There is nothing wrong with that.  All movies “manipulate” the audience — that’s what directors and editors are paid to do.  It’s only when we don’t care for a flick that we use the “M” word derisively. 

Blind Side gets off to its great start on the strength of star Sandra Bullock’s charisma.  Bullock is the queen of feistiness and the half-smile.  Her youngest child says something precocious?  Cut to a Bullock half-smile.  Her husband does something endearingly stupid?  Close-up shot of that half-smile.

Into Bullock’s charmed, upper-middle-class life comes Michael Oher, a teenaged giant from the Memphis slums with a teddy-bear personality and no place to sleep at night.  Bullock and her brood take the kid in.  I haven’t read the Michael Lewis book upon which  Blind Side is based but, according to critics who have, what follows in the film is very loosely based on the truth.  Young Michael’s adaptation to the privileged, white world of the Tuohy family was not so tidy in reality.

But no matter.  This is a Hollywood movie, and director John Lee Hancock’s artistic liberties make for a touching and funny first half.  Ironically, The Blind Side starts to collapse the minute its focus turns to football.  No amount of manipulation can change the feeling that we’ve seen this plot many times before, and even Bullock’s charm can’t stave off the staleness.     Grade:  C+

Director:  John Lee Hancock  Cast:  Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Kathy Bates, Quinton Aaron, Jae Head, Lily Collins  Release:  2009

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There is a car chase in Roman Polanski’s new thriller, The Ghost Writer.  As car chases go, it’s not much of one.  It’s over shortly after it begins, and there are no crashes.  You have to wonder if it was inserted at the studio’s behest, something to spice up the trailers and lure in Joe and Mary Sixpack.  Having made that observation,  I’ll say The Ghost Writer is one of the year’s best movies.

That’s because Polanski, that old pro, has delivered a first-class psychological thriller, or, on second thought, a mental thriller.  The exiled director gathered a veteran cast, moved filming to Northern Europe (the story takes place on the U.S. east coast), and then assembled the pieces of his puzzle with loving attention to detail.

Ewan McGregor is a perfect everyman, an innocuous (and unnamed, in the story) ghost writer surrounded by perilous people and perilous places.  McGregor’s writer finds himself embroiled in not just a political whodunit, but also a “whatdunit,” and Polanski’s cast members — Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, Tom Wilkinson, and Robert Pugh, in particular —  all ooze menace.

The movie is a tad too long and it could do with one or two less red herrings, but it’s something all too rare at today’s cineplex:  a thriller that doesn’t need any damn car chases.      Grade  B+

Director:  Roman Polanski  Cast:  Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams, Eli Wallach, James Belushi, Timothy Hutton, Tom Wilkinson  Release:  2010

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Where the Wild Things Are has everything:  breathtaking Australian scenery, with foaming surf pounding barren cliffsides; magical sets in which miniature worlds come to life; a quirky musical score that fully complements the story’s surreal atmosphere.  Oh, and did I mention it has actors in giant animal suits?

Where the Wild Things Are is certainly not a bad film — if you happen to be nine years old.  I found it excruciating.  I kept glancing at my watch to see when it would end, and I don’t wear a watch.  I might be one of six people in America who has not read Maurice Sendak’s beloved story, but there was nothing in director Spike Jonze’s crashing bore of a film to send me rushing to the bookstore.

I can’t completely trash the movie, because for all I know, it really does hold appeal for the tots in our midst.  But its arty pretentiousness leads me to think that Jonze was targeting adults, as well.  But whatever metaphors or embrace-your-inner-child motivations the filmmakers might have had are lost in this soggy mess, in which the whining “monsters” are more annoying than the young protagonist.

And did I mention there are actors in giant animal suits?  Sheesh.     Grade:  D

Director:  Spike Jonze  Cast:  Paul Dano, Forest Whitaker, Mark Ruffalo, Catherine Keener, Catherine O’Hara, Max Records, Lauren Ambrose, James Gandolfini, Chris Cooper  Release:  2009

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I recently saw 1947’s The Egg and I on television, and I kept thinking about that old comedy as I watched Did You Hear About the Morgans?, a film that aspires to Egg-like humor, with Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker playing an estranged couple stuck in Wyoming under the witness protection program.  People complain that “they just don’t make movies the way they used to,” but you can’t say Hollywood doesn’t try, and Morgans is a perfect example.

Grant is certainly a better comic actor than Egg’s Fred MacMurray, although Parker is no match for Claudette Colbert.  But Grant and Parker can both handle romantic comedy, and the fish-out-of-water plot device never gets old — does it?  So why doesn’t this material work better in 2010?  I think it’s just a sign of the times. 

Sixty years ago, MacMurray’s flirtation with a neighboring rich lady was amusing, whereas Grant and Parker actually cheating on each other is not.  And it was okay to poke fun at Ma and Pa Kettle in 1947, but laughing at Wyoming “country folk” who own computers and satellite dishes seems forced and condescending today.

Still, Morgans has its share of genuine chuckles.  The movie might not be able to channel Hollywood’s golden age, but it’s fun to watch it try.    Grade:  C

Director:  Marc Lawrence  Cast:  Hugh Grant, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sam Elliott, Mary Steenburgen, Elizabeth Moss, Michael Kelly, Wilford Brimley  Release:  2009

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I am of two minds about (500) Days of Summer.  I loved its bittersweet, realistic denouement.  The young actors in this romantic comedy are attractive and talented.  But there is only one word to describe my reaction to much of what precedes that poignant ending:  boredom.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel are likable as the young-lover protagonists, and the filmmakers deserve kudos for avoiding Judd Apatow plotting; the screenplay, refreshingly, seems not to have been informed by drunken frat boys.  But the screenplay is still the problem — not enough happens in it.  Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel meet, become a couple, break up … and that’s about it.  Their discussions about his architecture and her dreams of losing her teeth are not the stuff of great wit or great drama.

But as I said, the ending is very good.  And I’ll have to admit, I’d probably like the movie a lot more if I were 25 instead of, well, the age I am.      Grade:  B-

Director:  Marc Webb  Cast:  Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Clark Gregg, Minka Kelly, Matthew Gray Gubler, Rachel Boston, Geoffrey Arend, Chloe Moretz  Release:  2009

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At the end of Capitalism: A Love Story, filmmaker Michael Moore pauses in his narration and says, “You know, I can’t really do this anymore.  Unless those of you who are watching … want to join me.”  It’s an understandable sentiment.  Moore has been railing against societal ills — both real and perceived — for more than 20 years now, ever since he finally chased down General Motors CEO Roger Smith in Moore’s breakthrough documentary, Roger & Me.

Will Moore’s latest tantrum make you reach for the Alka-Seltzer?  I’m sure it will.  No matter what your political leanings, Capitalism will confirm your worst fears.  If you’re anti-establishment, Moore’s anger will infect you.  If you’re more status quo, Moore himself will infect you.

As usual, his tactics are one-sided.  Are none of the evicted homeowners he champions guilty of having eyes bigger than their wallets?  With all its inherent problems, didn’t capitalism also turn the United States into an economic superpower?  Those questions are brushed aside in this movie. 

But Moore presents so much damning evidence against the other side (“evil” capitalists) that any thinking person has to conclude that something has gone very, very wrong.  And Moore can hardly be accused of liberal partisanship this time around:  His most vicious skewering is reserved for Democratic senators like Chris Dodd and Barack Obama’s economic advisers.     Grade:  B+

Director:  Michael Moore  Release:  2009

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I have an elderly aunt, never married, who once told me that if the choice was between staying single or being in an unhappy marriage, her preference was to live alone.  This choice is one of the themes of Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, in which George Clooney’s character sees not just marriage, but all relationships, as so much unnecessary baggage.

About two-thirds into the film, I had the sinking feeling that director Reitman was going to take this idea into stale romantic-comedy turf.  After knocking some sense into Clooney’s bachelor, it seemed the story would ensure a white picket fence and lots of little Clooneys in his future.  But Reitman and cowriter Sheldon Turner had other, brighter ideas, and this is one reason why I think Up in the Air was robbed of a Best Screenplay Oscar.

Precious, which took home the screenplay award, was not a writer’s picture.  Its signature moments involve great acting, particularly from the explosive Mo’Nique.  Up in the Air, to the contrary, is a writer’s baby — from the repartee between Clooney and his female costars to the unexpected directions we are taken in the final act.

Does the film side with my elderly aunt’s philosophy on marriage?  That’s a question the makers of Up in the Air leave, well, up in the air.      Grade:  B+

Director:  Jason Reitman  Cast:  George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey, Danny McBride, J.K. Simmons  Release:  2009 

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