by George Wolf
NON-STOP
The long, national nightmare is over..the Airport franchise is back, baby!
Okay, not really. There’s no George Kennedy, or Charlton Heston, and no Love Boat-style parade of guest stars hoping for more face time, but Non-Stop brings the mid-air disaster back to the big screen with plenty of B-movie chutzpah.
Liam Neeson stars as Air Marshall Bill, a boozy grump with a tragic past who isn’t too happy with his latest assignment on a transatlantic flight. His particular set of skills is tested a few hours after takeoff, when he begins getting text messages from an unseen passenger. Wire 150 million dollars to a secret account, Bill is told, or every twenty minutes, someone on the plane will die.
It amounts to an interesting setup from a team of writers, one with a Hitchcock-meets-Agatha Christie vibe that director Jaume Collet-Serra (Unknown, another Neeson thriller) has no trouble fleshing out. Things move fast and deliberately, as suspicions fall on a collection of interesting passengers, including the friendly redhead who insists on sitting next to Bill (Jullanne Moore, classing up the joint).
The clearer the resolution becomes, though, the more the film struggles with flimsy contrivance. Yes, it’s a bumpy ride, but Neeson again proves his mettle as a late-blooming action star, and there is just enough fun in Non-Stop to make it an enjoyable, if easily forgettable, trip.
ADULT WORLD
“Fame is your generation’s Black Plague.” So says Rat Billings (John Cusack), world-wearied poet and reluctant mentor to naïve college grad and would-be poet, Amy (Emma Roberts).
Rat has lots of good lines – he is a poet, after all – about the strange era of newly formed adults who grew up working toward fame for fame’s sake. “Generation Mundane” he calls them.
Unbeknownst to Amy, she herself fits that description, and that irony is at the heart of the bright indie comedy Adult World. The chemistry at the heart of the film belongs to Roberts and Cusack.
When Roberts’s Amy leaves the nest 90K in college debt with no marketable skill (her degree is in poetry, after all), she takes a job at an old style porn shop. There, a unique and fascinating world revolves around her, but she’s too busy “feeling, deeply feeling” to notice. Which is, of course, the problem with her artistry – she’s trying to write when she has refused to live, so what could she have to write about?
We watch as Amy refuses to participate in life, insulated from the world by her misguided, socially-instilled belief in her own specialness. Thankfully, director Scott Coffey’s film – scripted with refreshing self-deprecation by Andy Cochran – is rarely too overt with its theme. Sometimes, sure, and you would never call the film exactly subtle. But it has some real freshness to offer instead.
While the cast on the whole is quite solid, Roberts really hits high gear in scenes with Cusack. When these characters are together we get to see each at his or her most potent. Films rarely offer such undiluted presences. Neither actor is afraid to embrace what is unlikeable about their own character, and their scenes together are a kind of joyous celebration of flaws. A giddy artistic energy flows between the two performers that is a blast to watch.
Not every pairing goes as well. Amy’s onscreen love interest is played by Roberts’s offscreen love (and American Horror Story co-star) Evan Peters. Though their romance is sweet, its course is also predictable.
Worse still, the great Cloris Leachman is underused, and Armando Riesco’s drag queen is tacked onto the story sloppily and without real meaning.
Still, much of this story rings true, and the approach taken to poke fun at Generation Mundane is clever and well-intentioned. More than anything, though, it’s great to see Cusack running on all cylinders and matched so well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BpdW7Cvxno
THE WIND RISES
The Wind Rises – the Oscar nominated, animated, fantastical biopic of Japanese aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi – may be genius filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki’s final film.
A body of work like his – Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Ponyo, Princess Mononoke and so many more – deserves a unique capstone, and The Wind Rises is certainly unique. This film is not only unlike anything else Miyazaki has crafted, but unlike anything else period.
Set in Japan in the early 1920s, the film offers a fictionalized account of a nearsighted boy who dreams – literally – of aircraft. In Jiro’s dreams, Italian aeronautical pioneer Gianni Caproni enlightens the boy to the elegant, creative possibilities of airplanes. Unable to become a pilot because of his eyesight, Jiro determines to design planes.
Like everything Miyazaki does, Wind is a visual glory. Whether crowded city streets, mountainside locales, or cloud-speckled heavens, the scenery in this film is breathtaking. Touching, intimate moments and catastrophic acts of God or of war, Miyazaki treats them with the same poetic brushstroke.
The subject matter here proves more adult than his previous efforts, though, and he limits the fantastical elements because of it. Though the dream sequences are a joy, don’t expect to find unusual creatures or outright feats of magic in this one.
Rather, Miyazaki attends to some of Japan’s most epic historic moments, contextualized behind the journey of one quiet, delicate young man’s voyage through life. The result is less giddily entertaining than what you might expect from the filmmaker, but no less captivating.
Still, the thematically bold effort lacks the whimsy that has marked every other film Miyazaki has released. It’s an odd sendoff for the master, an artistic mind unlike any other, who leaves behind a legacy of the most beguiling fantasies any artist could hope to create.
Maybe we can hope for just one more?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZNz3M9E1Wo
GENERATION IRON
“We can do what 99.9 percent of people can’t do..lose fat and gain muscle at the same time.”
“We” refers to the best bodybuilders on the planet, and Generation Iron reveals their world in thoughtful, compelling fashion.
In fact, after nearly forty years, we may have the perfect companion piece to 1977’s Pumping Iron. That film, or course, gave young Arnold Schwarzenegger a big push on his path to icon status, as it followed his attempt to defend the Mr. Olympia title in 1975.
Writer/director Vlad Yudin crafts Generation Iron in similar fashion, focusing on the 2012 Mr. Olympia competition, as champion Phil Heath prepares to takes on several challengers, most notably Kai Green. But, while parts of Pumping Iron were scripted, Yudin plays it straight, presenting a fascinating look at bodybuilding and the athletes who devote their lives to the sport.
Yudin’s instinct for pacing is spot on, as he moves between the different competitors and their training regimes. We get to know them, and their honesty (well, except about steroids) makes us care. Bodybuilding is not only their sport, it is their job, and the amount of devotion it requires can come with a high price.
The presentation of the film also holds your attention, even for those who may not have an interest in bodybuilding. Yudin follows competitors on a trip to the zoo (creating a nice contrast between the animals on display and massive physiques out in the real world) and a casting call, as the shadow of Arnold’s superstardom continues to loom large.
As it builds toward the showdown competition, a certain philosophical nature envelopes the film, though it comes more from the athletes themselves than from Mickey Rourke’s whispered, often melodramatic narration.
Generation Iron not only informs and entertains, but leaves you eager for a sequel focusing on female bodybuilders.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd-4qBhUSR4
More of my reviews and other movie tidbits at MaddWolf.com