by George Wolf
Dolphin Tale 2
After seeing the trailer for Dolphin Tale 2, a friend of mine remarked, “Wow, did someone order extra cheese?”
That’s a good line, and a fair point, but the entire film spreads the schmaltz out much more evenly, resulting in a sweet, satisfying family film.
The entire cast returns from part one, along with director Charles Martin Smith, who also adds writing duties. His workmanlike script is based on more true adventures at the Clearwater Marine Hospital where Winter, the inspirational dolphin with a prosthetic flipper, has been acting strangely.
Her longtime pal Panama has passed away, and if the hospital staff can’t find a suitable replacement to provide Winter some essential social interaction, they will lose her to a Texas facility. Injured dolphin Mandy might be the answer, but when she recovers enough to return to the open ocean….what to do?
Meanwhile, Winter’s human buddy Sawyer (Nathan Gamble) has been offered a great opportunity to earn college credit on a live-aboard marine biology expedition, but he can’t seem to commit. He’s hesitant to leave not only Winter, but his mother Lorraine (Ashley Judd) and his best friend Hazel (the charming Cozi Zuehlsdorff).
Yes, the symbolism Smith employs with a child leaving the “nest” and an animal in the wild is obvious, but it’s handled in such an earnestly sweet way that the melodrama never becomes overbearing.
Same goes for almost everything in the movie. The characters lack depth, the dialogue is often superficial and the plotting reeks of an after school special…but there’s a mighty big heart here, and a nice message, too.
Together they let Dolphin Tale 2 exist in a world where cynicism doesn’t stand a chance, and sometimes, that’s a refreshing place to be.
The Drop
by George Wolf
An accomplished writer and a young director combine talents in The Drop, while a masterful actor walks away with their film.
That would be Tom Hardy, adding fascinating layers to his role as Bob, lead bartender at his cousin Marv’s (James Gandolfini) place in a rough section of New York City.
Well, it used to be Marv’s bar until he, as Bob says, “blinked,” and allowed a takeover by some Chechan gangsters. Now, the bar is often used to launder cash for the foreign mob, and they don’t much like it when Bob and Marv are robbed one night after closing. No doubt, shady characters and double crosses abound, but Bob seems above it all. He’s calm, polite, a bit simple.
Or not.
From the minute Bob rescues a battered pit bull puppy from a trash can, we get the drift: treat Bob the wrong way, and he may get vicious.
Writer Dennis Lehane, known for the novels that inspired Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River, and Shutter Island, infuses his first screenplay with familiar themes of desperation, regret and redemption. Though not quite as gripping as Lehane’s best work, the story is effective, and in capable hands with director Michael R. Roskam.
In his debut English language feature, Roskam creates a mood of palpable dread and inevitability. Despite a few occasions when his camera gets a bit too fond of gradual focus and Scorcese-esque panning shots, Roskam finds a tone of simmering tension and displays a confident hand with his superior cast.
Gandolfini, in his final role, is customarily great, and there is solid supporting work from Noomi Repace and Matthias Schoenaerts (Rust and Bone), but Hardy is the force driving The Drop. He’s mesmerizing, inhabiting his character so completely it evokes memories of 1950s Brando.
Yep, he’s that good. And the movie ain’t bad either.
God Help the Girl
A unique take on the movie musical, Stuart Murdock’s God Help the Girl pulls you into the wistful world of Eve (Emily Browning), a damaged young girl whose talent may be her own salvation.
The Belle and Sebastian frontman wrote and directed the quirky drama with the kind of thoughtful flair he brings to his own music. Eve, a singer/songwriter with her own singular artistic vision, struggles to find her place and express her voice in the world. She falls in with fellow musician and delicate soul James (Olly Alexander).
It’s a coming of age tale layered with mental illness, artistic integrity, nonconformity, and a nostalgia for Sixties pop.
Murdock makes some interesting choices early in the film, experimenting with form while charming with this fantasy of hip youngsters in impossibly smashing outfits living their rock and roll dreams. He wisely edges their fanciful days with an uglier, forever threatening reality, giving the tale a melancholy aftertaste that fits the music.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t see his more interesting experiments through. He throws a lot of appealing ideas at the screen – Eve narrating her escape from the institution in a mischievous song, for instance – but drops them as quickly as he brings them up. Rather than a fantastical musical, it becomes a straight drama about starting a band, which loses the charm and forces you to notice the film’s weakness in scripting and acting.
Browning poses well; her acting, though, is not so strong. Alexander, on the other hand, brings something unique but recognizable to the role of the quietly smitten bandmate. And while their delightful adventures can be enjoyable to watch, the film eventually collapses under the weight of its own whimsy.
Murdock and company haven’t built a strong enough foundation for all the froth, leaving you with a film that tries to be provocative and meaningful but winds up settling for adorable.
The Last of Robin Hood
Errol Flynn was a bad dude, but charming and rich enough to get away with it. Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s accounting of his scandalous last days, The Last of Robin Hood, sidesteps the tawdry details and tries to shed some light on how it all could have happened.
For the unenlightened, Flynn is best known for his Hollywood swashbuckling films of the 30s and 40s and just slightly less known for his wicked ways. He died at 50 in the arms of his teenaged lover, whose mother was later charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor for her involvement in the affair.
The film avoids lurid antics, mercifully, and treats young Beverly Aadland (Dakota Fanning) with respect throughout. Fanning’s performance is an understated wonder, animating a person who accepted people at face value, refused to be a victim, and managed to respect herself though everyone else saw her as a lovable pawn.
Equally wonderful is Susan Sarandon as Beverly’s scheming mother. Layered with desperation, naiveté, cynicism and star-struck gullibility, the performance reminds you of just how talented the veteran is.
As Flynn, Kevin Kline looks surprisingly like the old swashbuckler, but his performance skirts caricature. Worse still, though he certainly manages to showcase Flynn’s charisma and oily charm, he isn’t able to find the ugliness inside. His performance is too generous, which is the film’s greatest weakness. Glazer and Westmoreland seem to hold all involved relatively blameless. For that reason, their film has no teeth.
It’s a curious approach, partly because of the way Lolita – both the book and Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film – is worked into the narrative. It would appear that Flynn recognized the similarities between his situation and that of Nabakov’s lead. While many would use this fact as an avenue into Flynn’s twisted perception, the film and Kline convey it as almost sadly self congratulatory. The tone is of melancholy rather than repulsion, or even indignation.
Perhaps the filmmakers saw no real villainy in a story where a mother passes her 15-year-old daughter off as 18 and a lecherous old perv takes advantage of the situation. There are certainly those who believe Nabakov dismissed the repugnant behavior of his character. But perhaps Nabakov had faith in a reader who could recognize an unreliable narrator, and he used that device to explore the mind of a predator who can barely recognize his own criminality.
The Last of Robin Hood could have benefitted from the same wry, weary wisdom. Instead, it chooses to point its finger nowhere in particular, leaving us with a villainless tale of a by-gone era where things were less wholesome than we’d imagined.
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Photo credit: Warner Bros.