by George Wolf
Divergent
High school sucks, but like all harrowing experiences and universal truths, it can lead to valid and valued artistic expression – nearly all modern adolescent literature, for instance.
Whether it’s The Hunger Games, Ender’s Game or the more clearly allegorical Divergent, the story is basically the same: a powerful system requires helpless parents to submit their precious children to bloodsport (high school); cliques are mindless and dangerous; the kid with the most power is a manipulative asshole; only the outcast can ultimately thrive. (Hell, even the magnificent Harry Potter series plays off the same riff.)
While it doesn’t make prom seem very appealing, in the hands of professionals, it can make for a compelling tale.
Director Neil Burger does a lot right with this film. Not everything, but a lot. He’s blessed with a straightforward script that won’t confuse the uninitiated. A hundred years after a great war, the world is broken into factions, each of which match individual personality types (and, to a certain degree, high school cliques): the smart kids (Erudite), the nice kids (Abnegation), the pot heads – I mean, happy, peaceful types (Amity), the honest (Candor), and the brave/fun/bully/popular kids (Dauntless). And then there are the dreaded factionless – a fate worse than death, like unpopularity.
People stay with their faction, and all is peaceful. But unique souls who don’t really fit – divergents – threaten the system.
Divergent also boasts two profound talents: Kate Winslet and Shailene Woodley. Winslet commands respect and awe as leader of the Erudites and general evildoer. Woodley plays our hero, the divergent Tris.
Both performers deserve stronger material, to be honest. While the screenplay, adapted from Veronica Roth’s novel by Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor, offers a fairly smooth streamlining of the story, it too often proves a bit toothless. The strength of the performers helps to compel attention. Woodley’s onscreen chemistry with Theo James as love interest Four gives the film a pulse, and her big-eyed vulnerability makes the sense of loss and longing palpable.
Too bad Berger felt it necessary to include so much exposition. An unfortunate symptom lately of Episodes 1 of a trilogy, Divergent simply takes so long to get to the action that you get bored.
Roth’s source material offers several clever conceits to play with, and both Woodley and Winslet seem game, but Berger can’t quite settle on a tone or a pace. It’s too bad, because comparisons to The Hunger Games are inevitable, and Divergent could easily have become a worthwhile companion to JLaw’s Kickass Quadrilogy. Instead it’s a fun but forgettable way to waste time before the real blockbusters release this summer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=336qJITnDi0
Muppets Most Wanted
The new adventure picks up immediately after the finale of 2011’s The Muppets, when the group is approached by prospective road manager Dominic Badguy (Ricky Gervais), who wants them to launch a world tour.
Meanwhile, the diabolical Constantine, a dead-ringer for our beloved Kermie and widely known the world’s most dangerous frog, breaks out of a Russian gulag. Coincidence?
About 3/4 of the team that brought Kermit and Co. back after more than a decade of absence for The Muppets returns for the sequel. Producer/co-writer/star Jason Segel is noticeably absent, though, having made the upcoming Sex Tape instead (although that could have given the Muppet franchise an interesting wrinkle).
But director James Bobin, co-writer Nicholas Stoller, and, perhaps importantly, songwriter Bret McKenzie return.
McKenzie (one half of the comedy duo Flight of the Conchords) delivers clever enough tunes such as “We’re Doing a Sequel”, “I’m Number One”, and “Interrogation Song,” but none come close to the charm of “Man or Muppet,” his Oscar-winner from the last film.
And though most of the flesh and blood crew that made The Muppets so warm, fun, irreverent and yet sweet return, the film is clearly missing something. Segel, we’re looking at you.
The important characters are all accounted for: Kermit, Miss Piggy, Dr. Teeth, Bunsen Honeydew and Beeker, Fozzie, Gonzo, Sam Eagle, etc, etc.
And, the requisite cameos pile up: Diddy, Chloe Moretz, Usher, Ray Liotta, Danny Trejo, Tom Hiddleston, Zach Galafianakis, Saoirse Ronan, Celine Dion, Salma Hayak, Tony Bennett, Josh Groban – it’s a long list.
Though the film does many things right – starting with putting the spotlight back on the Muppets themselves – it can’t shake the feeling that this is more an assignment than a labor of love. The mistaken identity plot begins to drag, even with co-starring roles for Tina Fey as the Gulag warden and Ty Burrell as a bumbling inspector.
It’s fun enough, nostalgic enough, self-reverential enough, but never magical.
Bad Words
by George Wolf
Is it amusing to watch a 40 year old man act like a total S.O.B. to everyone around him, frequently unleashing crude verbal assaults on kids and parents alike?
When that man is Jason Bateman..yes, yes it is.
Bateman not only stars, but makes his big screen directorial debut in Bad Words, and he delivers a darkly funny romp through the cutthroat world of spelling bees. Think Best in Show meets Bad Santa and you’ll be in the right-but-way-wrong neighborhood.
Smarmy Guy Trilby (Bateman) crashes the spelling regionals in his hometown of Columbus, informing the judges that through a loophole in the rules, he is eligible to compete. With no legal grounds to deny him, they relent and find out Guy is not only a great speller, but a nasty douchebag who will stop at nothing to humiliate his opponents.
Why would a grown man do such a thing?
Reporter Jenny Widgeon (Kathryn Hahn) reflects our curiosity, and she travels with Guy on his journey to the national finals, hoping to discover his motives and land a story.
The screenplay, a debut for Andrew Dodge, has apparently been floating around for years, scaring off potential filmmakers with its down and dirty edges. Bateman, who’s been elevating projects since his days as a child actor, proves a natural at fleshing it out.
As a comic actor, Bateman’s timing is always flawless, a trait which translates well to his direction. He keeps the story lean and mean, with a quick pace and plenty of funny moments that never feel forced. Best of all, the heartwarming life lessons are kept to a minimum.
If you guessed that Guy and reporter Jenny find love, while a cute young speller teaches Guy the meaning of friendship, no one could blame you. Bateman’s not following that tired formula, and bless him for that.
That’s not to say that Jenny and Guy don’t share some hilariously awkward moments, or that precocious spelling champ Chaitanya (young Rohan Chand in a charming performance) doesn’t want to be friends, but Bateman never lets any of it become overly saccharine. He sets his tone and, for the most part, sees it through.
If you don’t like nasty funny, stay far away from Bad Words.
But if you do, come sit next to me.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Let’s be honest, film critics love Wes Anderson. How can we help ourselves? An auteur if ever there was one, he owns a style unlike any other, marries whimsy with melancholy, gathers impeccable casts, draws beautifully unexpected performances – basically, he invites us into an imagination so wonderful and unusual that we are left breathless and giddy. We are not made of stone.
So, yes, to quote a recent (and brilliant) SNL sketch, with The Grand Budapest Hotel, you had me at Wes Anderson.
To be fair, with Anderson’s previous and most masterful effort, Moonrise Kingdom, he set a pretty high bar for himself. And while GBH doesn’t offer quite the heart of that picture, there’s a real darkness to this brightly colored outing that gives it a haunting quality quite unlike any of his previous films.
It’s a story told in flashback by one time lobby boy Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham) of the last great hotel concierge, M. Gustave (Ralph Feinnes), and a conspiracy, an art theft, a jailbreak, excellent manners, and finely crafted pastries.
The filmmaker’s inimitable framing and visual panache is unmatched, but he’s taken it to new highs with this effort. A frothy combination of artifice and reality, GBH amounts to a wickedly clever dark comedy despite its cheery palette. Anderson’s eccentric artistry belies a mournful theme.
Feinnes is magnificent in the central role, and the cast Anderson puts in orbit around him are equally wonderful. Adrien Brody, conjuring Snidley Whiplash, makes for an exceptional nemesis, while Anderson regular Willem Dafoe cuts an impressive figure as his thug sidekick.
The only filmmaker who can out-cameo a Muppet movie includes brief but memorable, brilliantly deadpan scenes with all the old gang: Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Bob Balaban, Harvey Keitel. But the real scene stealer is Europe itself.
Set between the two great wars, the film is a smoky ode to bygone glamour, a precisely drawn if slightly faded love letter to an image of the past.
Of course it is.
Says Zero of his mentor Gustav, “His world had vanished long before he ever entered it, but he certainly sustained the illusion with a marvelous grace.” He could obviously have been speaking of the director as well.
Grand Piano
A man with a very particular set of skills is lured into a deadly cat and mouse game by an unseen tormentor…
If you’re thinking Liam Neeson, think a little smaller.
Elijah Wood is the star of Grand Piano, as stage-fright prone master pianist Tom Selznick. Returning to the stage after a five-year hiatus, Tom finds an unexpected piece of music inserted into his planned repertoire. It is an “unplayable” piece, and one that he botched big-time in a previous try.
A hand-written message on the sheet music, coupled with a sudden laser target on his chest, give Tom extra motivation: play it perfectly, without missing one single note, or die.
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s request hour!
Much like Neeson’s recent thriller Non-Stop, Grand Piano does a fine job setting up an engaging premise, only to stumble trying to find a worthy way out.
Screenwriter Damien Chazelle invents clever twists to keep the tension going, providing multiple Hitchcock homages that are able to toe an entertaining line between cheesy fun and pretentious contrivance.
Chazelle has the perfect partner in director Eugenio Mira, who seems almost gleeful in the way he sets the pace. Multiple perspectives are blended with skill, precision and timing, not the least of which are impressive concert sequences of Wood appearing to be a virtuoso.
The unplayable piece and the deadly situation escalate in delightful symmetry, and Wood deftly conveys the persona of a man pushed to the edge of both his nerve, and his talent.
In case you don’t already know who plays the baddie, I won’t spoil it, but his battle of wits with Wood is all fiendish fun until everyone involved must deal with that pesky conclusion. After the buildup, it smacks of a give-up, or something lifted from an old episode of Magnum, P.I.
Sure, there are a couple leaps in logic and classical music fans will likely nitpick the concert details, but until that last sour note, Grand Piano stays in tune.
More of my reviews at www.maddwolf.com!