Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
by Hope Madden, MaddWolf.com
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – there’s not a lot of grey area there. If this is your bag – if you’ve always wanted to see Lizzie Bennet (Lily James) prove her inner warrior with a katana to an undead skull – you can’t go entirely wrong here.
You will find all the old familiars: Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, their many marriageable daughters, the scoundrel Wickham (Jack Huston), the dashing Bingley (Douglas Booth), the haughty but lovestruck Darcy (Sam Riley). The main difference is England, which has been overrun by “unmentionables” for some years, making that foul weather trip from the Bennetts’ to the Bingleys’ dangerous for more reasons than a simple flu bug.
In 2009, writer Seth Grahame-Smith found himself with a surprise success in his novel, co-written by Jane Austen (whose original text is firmly in the public domain). Given that someone adapts her novel for the screen about every 25 minutes, it is no surprise that Grahame-Smith’s version has made its way to the cinema. And just in time for Valentine’s Day!
I don’t say that ironically. Like Shaun of the Dead, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies would make a fine date movie for a very specific crowd.
Director Burr Steers keeps the violence mostly off screen and the blood to a relative minimum, preferring to focus on the heaving post-fight-scene bosom. Which, let’s be honest, gets tiresome. He’s probably more intrigued by the image of gorgeously appointed young unmarrieds who hide daggers in their garters than he should be – these are the Bennet girls, for God’s sake – and herein lies the problem.
Burr seems unclear on the film’s audience. He’s unsure just how much action to pack into an Austen narrative, fuzzy on the amount of blood that’s appropriate to the tale, blurry on the balance of levity versus seriousness versus gore.
Lucky for him, this is a very proven story of delayed gratification and all the longing that accompanies it. Plus, zombies. It’s hard to go wrong here, and for the most part, PPZ doesn’t go too wrong. It’s an entertaining if uninspired retelling of a retelling of a tale you’ve heard, read, and seen a dozen times. But this time, Lizzy Bennet’s packing heat, which just seems right.
Hail, Caesar!
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Coen Brothers films can be brilliant (No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man), or not (The Ladykillers, The Hudsucker Proxy), but they’re always crafted with interesting ideas. Hail, Caesar! offers a few too many of those ideas and not enough places for them to fully take root.
The setting is Hollywood’s “Golden Age” of the 1950s, when Hail, Caesar! is the new “story of the Christ” epic being produced by Capitol pictures, and starring their biggest asset, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney).
Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) is the square-jawed, no nonsense Capitol studio “fixer,” which means he’s the one dealing with kidnappers who are demanding 100,000 dollars for Whitlock’s safe return.
But there’s more.
Swimming-pool starlet DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johannson) is facing a scandalous pregnancy, singing cowboy Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) is having trouble adjusting to his new image makeover, and communists may have infiltrated the studio!
Looks like Eddie picked a bad week to quit smoking! No, really, he promised his wife he would quit, and his tobacco guilt is just one of the issues that makes a regular in the confession booth.
Crisscrossing situations combine for a madcap romp that homages various classics of the era, including musical numbers recalling Gene Kelly, Esther Williams and Roy Rogers. The Coens’ writing is as witty and eccentric as ever, but save for two specific bits, rarely more than amusing.
Eddie’s consultation with a roomful of religious elders about the studio’s depiction of Jesus leads to some nice one-liners, while Hobie’s struggle to wrap his cowboy drawl around more refined dialogue finally turns funny after how-long-can-this-go-on repetition and the growing disgust of Hobie’s proper English director (Ralph Fiennes).
Like Fiennes, more famous faces (Channing Tatum, Tilda Swinton, Jonah Hill) come and go quickly, all beautifully framed by esteemed cinematographer Roger Deakins, but the parade of glorified cameos only makes the film’s eccentricities seem more disconnected.
Still, Hail, Caesar! is a fine looking swing that just misses. Beneath all the old Hollywood glamour is familiar Coen territory: faith, folly, finding your purpose and just trying to live a good life.
They’ve done it worse, but they’ve done it better.
45 Years
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
If you were surprised to see the name Charlotte Rampling in this year’s Oscar nominees, 45 Years will justify that recognition in a hurry.
It only takes a few scenes before you realize the subtle depth Rampling brings to her role as Kate Mercer, a woman on the verge of celebrating 45 years of marriage to her husband, Geoff (Tom Courtenay). As their big anniversary party approaches, a bombshell piece of news gets dropped.
Swiss authorities have recovered the body of Geoff’s old girlfriend Katya, five decades after she fell into a crevasse while the two were hiking. Though plans for the party move forward, the couple struggles with the effects of this sudden revelation.
Writer/director Andrew Haigh adapts David Constantine’s short story with elegance and restraint. Secrets are at work here, but they have nothing to do with Katya’s accident. What Haigh is after isn’t nearly as easy to define or resolve.
What bonds two people together for a lifetime? How easily can those bonds be shaken to the core?
Rampling and Courtenay are simple perfection, creating a lived-in chemistry that is utterly authentic. There is never a doubt that their characters have built their lives together, and the actors bring the gravitas that often renders dialog unnecessary. Half-hearted smiles and brief glances can be deafening, and Haigh confidently allows these small moments the space they need to cut deep.
Kate can “smell Katya’s perfume in every room,” and the curiosity about her husband’s former life begins to alter Kate’s perception of her entire marriage, just as that marriage is set to be celebrated for its success.
Rampling may indeed deliver the finest performance of her illustrious career. Ultimately, she is the conduit for making the couples’ intimate details resonate on a universal level, and she does it with deceptive ease.
45 Years may speak softly, but it compels you to listen hard, and sends you home from the party with a shattering final shot that may not leave your head for days.
The Choice
by George Wolf, MaddWolf.com
Just when I thought all Nicholas Sparks movies were churned out of the Sap-o-matic 5000 supercomputer, chocked full of the same melodramatic plot devices played out by interchangeable characters, along comes The Choice to prove me wrong.
Oh sure, it’s still built around a dreamy Southern setting full of beautiful white people getting caught in the rain and kept apart by tragedy, and there’s flashback storytelling, cheating that’s really okay and contrivance out the wazoo, but when the credits finally rolled, one thing was missing.
Where was the are-they-really-going-there shameless plot twist? No wise friend who’s really been dead all this time? No children needing an organ from an old love who was nice enough to die at the perfect time?
Nope.
Other than that , though, same old dreck.
Travis (Benjamin Walker, Abe in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) narrates, and takes us back seven years to when he first met Gabby (Teresa Palmer from Warm Bodies). She moved in next door to Travis’s waterfront South Carolina place, and of course had to bother him in the middle of the night so he could come to the door half dressed.
The spark was lit, and Gabby’s boyfriend Ryan (Tom Welling, Superman from TV’s Smallville) was nice enough to leave town for a few weeks so Travis and Gabby could use her dining room table in a way that I’m pretty sure voided the warranty.
Director Ross Katz dutifully checks the boxes next to rain, tragedy, empty philosophizing while gazing at the sky, plus plenty of pretty scenery.
And then there’s the dialog.
Between Sparks’ source novel and writer Bryan Sipe’s adapted script, there may not be a single conversation in the entire film that rings true. Even the great Tom Wilkinson, showing up as Travis’s father, can’t make these lines seem like something real humans might say.
Then again, they’re not humans, they’re Ken and Barbie dolls in the latest Nicholas Sparks playset.
Silly me.
