by George Wolf
If I Stay
Is it just for the cash, or do the people behind these teen romance fantasies actually believe they are being profound?
The latest, If I Stay, starts with a teenager saying “you know how when you meet someone, and they just, already are the person they’re meant to be?”
Excuse me but no, I don’t, because that’s nothing close to reality, it’s a line of melodramatic crap written by an adult for a teenage audience they know will lap it up and feel like this movie really “gets them.”
The same formula was seen just weeks ago in The Fault in Our Stars, and If I Stay, also adapted from a popular young adult novel, is only too happy to follow it.
The latest teen girl who doesn’t fit in is Mia (Chloe Grace Moretz). She’s got hip, rockin’ parents, but Mia prefers classical cello, and feels awkward about her talent.
If only there were someone who could make Mia realize how special she’s been all along?
This time his name is Adam (Jamie Blackley), and he’s the supercool Senior who already fronts a popular local rock band. After one casual glance at Mia practicing, Adam is smitten and confidently proclaims “You can’t hide in the rehearsal room forever…I see you.”
He sees her! Oh happy day! Now her specialness can be revealed!
The added emotional manipulation…,er, I mean plot twist.. comes in the form of a car accident that puts Mia in a coma. As she leaves her physical body and watches family and friends react to the tragedy, Mia is able to reflect on her young life and decide if she wants to stay in this world.
Director R.J. Cutler and writer Shauna Cross can’t bring one ounce of authenticity to their film. Everything feels fake – from Adam’s band to Mia’s family to the hospital staff – and sadly, that includes Moretz. Though she has often shown real talent, here she plays down to the material with a completely uninspired performance.
The young adult audience is more than just tomorrow’s Nicholas Sparks fans, but you wouldn’t know it from what plays at the multiplex. Too often, those movies teach boys to trivialize adolescence and teach girls to wallow in its drama. Meanwhile, more honest films such as It felt Like Love and Palo Alto struggle to get noticed.
Yeah, yeah, that’s Hollywood feeding the cash cow. I know it, but I don’t have to like it….or the maddening mess of a movie that is If I Stay.
Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For
Remember The Matrix? So cool! Full of heady ideas with a visual execution like nothing we’d ever seen before, it kind of took audiences’ breath away. But just two years later when the sequel came out, the visuals were already stale, which made the weaknesses in the script, performances and direction more evident, which led to a pretty big letdown.
So at least you’re prepared for Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For.
Though directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller have not lost their flair for comic book imagery – SC2 is to noir cartoon glory what LeBron James is to homecomings – it’s no longer enough to overlook the flaws in the story. It’s been nine years since the experience was new, and it’s been redone by many since then. What else does this Dame have to offer?
More of the same: damaged, mostly naked women, some of them in bondage wear; tough guys with a soft spot for dames and a weakness for their own inner demons; lost souls of good people who make bad choices; evildoers, and one back alley surgeon who gives the film a much needed moment of levity.
The timelines among this film’s vignettes and those of its predecessor are never clear, which works in this surreal environment. Sure, Marv (Mickey Rourke) died last time, but maybe this is a prequel. I mean, the twins are still alive. Except Marv’s wearing that black trench coat and the Nancy storyline is up to date, so…who cares? Just go with it. The film has enough problems without you taking a magnifying glass to its narrative structure.
No one would claim the original Sin City was a feminist manifesto, but its sequel’s shift in primary villain from a quartet of power- and flesh-hungry men to one very naked woman (the never shy Eva Green) tips the misogyny scale away from guilty pleasure to vicarious contempt.
Which is not to say that Green does a bad job. Hers is easily the strongest performance onscreen, an admirable accomplishment since her role can be summed up in three tasks: get naked, seduce, repeat.
There are two or three storylines that go nowhere, while the Nancy (Jessica Alba)/Hartigan (Bruce Willis) side plot begs for a little clarity. Very little happening onscreen is as compelling as it was last time around, and the co-directors frequently lose their pacing, giving their tales a bloated, tedious feel.
It turns out, Frank Miller’s grim, salacious world wasn’t really worth the return trip.
Calvary
Has the Catholic Church so comprehensively betrayed the nation of Ireland that it would take the second coming of the Messiah to set things straight?
Maybe.
The ever more impressive writer/director John Michael McDonagh may not be trying to rectify the Church’s situation, nor is he bringing about revelation. Rather, he offers a microcosm of the fallout with insight, humor and compassion in Calvary.
Brendan Gleeson, as brilliant as always, plays Father James, a good priest. As the film opens, we sit inside the cramped confessional as Fr. James waits for the penitent on the other side to begin.
A man states that he was first abused when he was just seven years old.
It’s not a confession so much as an announcement. The parishioner, whose face we never see, spent a childhood of horrifying abuse at the hands of a priest. But what good is it to kill a bad priest? If you want to really send a message, you kill a good priest.
He gives Fr. James a week to get his affairs in order and makes a date to take his life. “Sunday week, let’s say?”
It’s almost too ripe a premise, really, and yet McDonagh’s never stoops to melodrama, or even thriller. As Fr. James goes about his week tending to his parish and reflecting on what’s to be done about this threat, we get the unique perspective of a good, decent man with a collar.
The dry, insightful, exasperated humor that saturates McDonagh’s writing is a thrill to take in, and Gleeson has never been better. Never showy, without a hint of sentimentality, he brings this decent but hardly sinless man authentically to life.
As Fr. James’s week drags on, McDonagh and his ensemble slowly amplify the wickedness of the townsfolk, creating, finally, a real parallel between the plight onscreen and the allusion of the title. But nothing about Calvary is even moderately preachy.
The priesthood is not what it used to be – not for them or for us. And it may be too late to save the Catholic Church. But a filmmaker who can hold up a mirror to our troubled times and find weary humor and redemptive humanity in it is inspiration in itself.
When the Game Stands Tall
The last time director Thomas Carter made a feature film, it was the inspiring true story of high school coach Ken Carter who, though leading an undefeated team, believed there was something more important to the future of his players than winning.
The filmmaker’s next effort really shows his range – because that movie was about basketball.
When the Game Stands Tall is the true story of Bob Ladouceur, probably the greatest high school football coach in history. He led his La De Salle Spartans to an unprecedented, quite likely unbreakable 151 game winning streak.
Carter is not known for his light hand at the helm. Indeed, this film has as manipulative and leading a score as anything since Remember the Titans, and the similarities don’t begin or end there. But he deserves credit for situating his story where he does, not focusing on the obvious victories, but mining the team’s more challenging, less glamorous time for the values that transcend the sport.
Jim Caviezel plays Ladouceur as a stoic, noble, righteous soul – because that is all Jim Caviezel is capable of. Luckily enough, it generally suits the role and he has other actors to appear humanlike around him.
The performances skirt cliché but are handled admirably. Laura Dern is the loving, ignored and concerned wife. Matthew Daddario is the coach’s son who just wants his dad’s approval, while Alexander Ludwig is the teammate whose volatile father only loves his son for the vicarious glory and accolades. It all sounds eerily familiar.
Carter also provides plenty of on-field play, and does a fine job of lensing it, though cinematic gridiron action may never look better than it did in Friday Night Lights. But that’s an altogether superior film. By comparison, When the Game Stands Tall looks downright naïve in its portrayal of athlete lives off the field, where they drink soda from bottles and make promise pledges with their chaste girlfriends in a town where fans are exclusively positive.
It’s an exceedingly passable product of a threadbare formula. It might even be enjoyable if Caviezel could muster the charisma necessary to carry the film. Unfortunately, Caviezel is no Sam Jackson or Billy Bob Thornton – and he sure as hell is no Denzel Washington- so his film feels more junior varsity than it might.