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The Beguiled (2017)

11 Friday Aug 2017

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D: Sofia Coppola / 94m

Cast: Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, Oona Laurence, Angourie Rice, Addison Riecke, Emma Howard

Remakes are ten-a-penny these days, with movie makers deciding that familiarity will attract more moviegoers than not, and if the original movie is one that is fairly well known and/or regarded (and even better, financially successful), then it makes it easier to justify revisiting said original. But it’s unlikely that anyone was clamouring for a remake of Don Siegel’s minor classic The Beguiled (1971), a movie that bombed on its initial release but which has gained a sterling reputation since then. However, on the advice of production designer Anne Rose, writer/director Sofia Coppola watched Siegel’s version and began thinking of ways in which she could update the movie for modern audiences. The result is a movie that is atmospheric, sophisticated, beautifully shot, and yet curiously distant in its evocation of female desires.

As with the 1971 version, Coppola has adapted the novel A Painted Devil by Thomas P. Cullinan. In it a Union Army corporal named John McBurney (Farrell) suffers a serious leg wound during battle and manages to get away from the fighting. He makes it to some nearby woods where he is discovered by a young girl, Amy (Laurence). She helps him up and takes him to the girls school where she resides along with the school’s owner (and teacher), Miss Martha Farnsworth (Kidman), another teacher, Miss Edwina Morrow (Dunst), a teenage girl called Alicia (Fanning), and three other young girls, Jane (Rice), Emily (Howard), and Marie (Riecke). McBurney’s arrival causes consternation and divided opinions amongst the staff and the pupils, with some of them insisting he be turned over to the Confederate Army as a prisoner of war, and others insisting that he be allowed to stay and at least recover from his wound. In the end, Miss Farnsworth decides that he can stay until his leg has healed.

McBurney’s presence gives rise to his being the recipient of overly attentive behaviour from the women and the children alike. Miss Farnsworth tends to his leg, while Miss Morrow hovers around offering assistance at every opportunity. Alicia too is in close attendance, and the rest of the girls all take an exaggerated interest in McBurney’s well-being. As his leg improves he begins to move around the school, and shows an interest in the garden, which he helps to maintain. He begins to spend more time with Miss Morrow, and eventually professes his love for her. They arrange to meet in her room late one night after everyone has gone to bed, but when McBurney fails to turn up, Miss Morrow goes to his room and finds it empty. And then she hears noises coming from another room…

Where the 1971 version traded on a more fervid atmosphere in order to tell its tale, this version remains an austere and measured accomplishment, with Coppola giving limited expression to any desires held by the female characters. While it’s a given that Miss Farnsworth and Miss Morrow would strive to remain aloof in relation to the presence of a wounded yet otherwise virile soldier, and for the perceived sake of the children in their care, thanks to the precise nature of Coppola’s screenplay, their being aloof hampers the effectiveness of the emotional outbursts that occur as the movie progresses. These outbursts are generally well handled by the cast, but in dramatic terms they don’t have the impact needed to make the viewer sympathise with the characters involved, and even though McBurney suffers more than an injured leg, what should be a moment of horror – both for McBurney’s discovery of what’s happened to him, and the ease with which his suffering is agreed upon and carried out – is let down by the restrained melodrama that precedes it.

This distancing between the viewer and the characters has a strange effect on the story and how it plays out. In many respects, and by making the directorial decisions that she’s made, Coppola has taken Cullinan’s novel and decided to explore it from a female perspective. And usually, this would be all well and good. But Coppola, rather than hold to the idea that repressed sexual tension should be the catalyst for the events that follow McBurney’s arrival at the school, instead makes it all to do with a failing of manners and etiquette on the soldier’s part. This may not be the most obvious reading of the story, and it may not have been Coppola’s main intention in telling the story, but nevertheless, what comes across is a tale of one man’s refusal to accept implicitly the hospitality he has been given, and the consequences of taking that refusal to “behave” too far. When McBurney is seeking to fit in, and to reward his convalescence by helping in the garden, he’s a favoured “guest”. Once his true motives are revealed, his benefactors become his gaolers and his transgressions must be paid for. It’s Old Testament retribution wrapped up in New Testament flummery, but determined by an arch, emotional rigidity of manner that suits Coppola’s arthouse style of movie making but which does a cruel disservice to the material.

The issue of passion in Coppola’s remains unaddressed by the director herself, and though she elicits good performances from all concerned, the somewhat stuffy dialogue and repressive mood often defeats the cast’s attempts to break free of their acting “chains”. Farrell gets a chance to rage out, but against the restrained nature of the residents of Martha Farnsworth’s Seminary for Young Ladies it’s like witnessing a sudden downpour on any otherwise brilliantly sunny day. The movie does, however, look wondrous, with exquisitely composed exterior shots (moss has rarely looked this beautiful) and tastefully lit interiors that hint of secrets hidden just out of frame. Against the backdrop of the US Civil War, there’s a pleasing sense of deliberate isolationism that may or may not be a reflection on modern US politics, and Coppola wisely exploits the notion of being careful of what you wish for, and on both sides of the gender divide. But all in all, there’s less here than meets the eye, and for that, one shouldn’t be too surprised.

Rating: 7/10 – though Coppola has deliberately dialled down the “hothouse” nature of Don Siegel’s original, The Beguiled lacks for enough passion to make the young ladies of the seminary, and their teachers’ emotional dilemmas, entirely believable; as a thriller it has its moments, and as a drama it’s riveting enough to get by, but technical achievements aside, it’s another movie where Coppola somehow manages to disengage herself from the material too often to provide viewers with a movie that retains an emotional through line.

20th Century Women (2016)

06 Thursday Apr 2017

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D: Mike Mills / 119m

Cast: Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig, Lucas Jade Zumann, Billy Crudup

Mike Mills’ last movie was the appealing and very enjoyable Beginners (2010), in which Christopher Plummer gave an Oscar-winning performance. Six years on and Mills has upped his game considerably with 20th Century Women, a semi-autobiographical tale set in Santa Barbara, California in 1979. By writing a script that’s much closer to home than his previous outings, Mills has made a quirky, sensitive, and much more mature feature, and one that impresses on a variety of levels.

It begins with declarations of life, as divorced, single mother Dorothea (Bening) recounts giving birth to her son, Jamie (Zumann). Despite being a single mother, and receiving no support from her ex-husband, Dorothea views those early years when it was just her and Jamie with warm-hearted nostalgia. But finances being what they were, Dorothea was forced to take in lodgers. In 1979, with Jamie aged fifteen, he and his mother live with Abbie (Gerwig), a budding photographer, and William (Crudup), a carpenter whose work on the house is often paid for in lieu of rent. Abbie is like a big sister to Jamie, but he and William are virtually strangers to each other. Add in the presence of Julie (Fanning), Jamie’s best friend (and object of his romantic affections), and Dorothea begins to believe that her son, because he doesn’t have a father (or father figure) to guide him, and because she feels as if her connection with him is slipping away, decides he needs help “understanding women” and being a “good man”.

To this end, Dorothea recruits Abbie and Julie and persuades them to help Jamie learn more about life and relationships and women. When she tells him this, he reacts angrily and goes off with some of his friends to L.A. to see a concert. When he gets back he finds out that Julie has slept with someone and thinks she might be pregnant. Leading on from that, Dorothea advises Jamie that Abbie, who is in remission from cervical cancer, will be attending a doctor’s appointment and may receive bad news; she asks that he be at home in case she needs some support (Dorothea can’t be there). Instead, he goes with her. The news is both good and bad, but Abbie is glad of Jamie’s presence, and she starts to “teach” him about women by giving him books on feminism.

Jamie’s “education” causes a growing rift between him and his mother, and it provokes a straining of the relationships between Abbie and Dorothea, Jamie and Julie, and William and Dorothea. The friendship between Jamie and Julie is tested the most: an admission made by Julie causes him to question his feelings for her, but she manages to persuade him to take a trip along the coast with her. In San Luis Obispo, things come to a sticking point and Jamie leaves Julie at the motel where they’re staying. Julie alerts Dorothea, and she heads there along with William and Abbie. It proves to be a turning point for everyone, and the status quo is irrevocably affected.

There is so much more to 20th Century Women that any proper synopsis would run to thousands of words instead of mere hundreds. What is mentioned above is only a fraction of the material that Mills has collated for his screenplay, but almost none of it feels extraneous or superficial. Each scene acts in service to the character(s) appearing in it, and each scene helps to further the narrative and the myriad of subplots that float along waiting for the next occasion when they can be exploited. Mills has written such a carefully constructed screenplay that there are dozens of moments that echo or resonate in relation to both earlier and future moments (yes, it’s that good a script), and there are a similar amount of subtle references and non-linear connections that add to the quality and the depth of his writing.

Mills has also taken the time to make the various characters memorable and credible and unique in their own way, with special attention given to the relationships between them all. Dorothea is an odd mix of honest maternal concern and inappropriate parenting, wanting her son to be a “good man” but still wishing he could remain her little boy. The emotional tug-of-war that occurs through these warring factions leave Dorothea looking and sounding a little distracted at times, as if the notion of being a mother requires abstract thought for it to make sense (to her, at least). Bening perfectly captures the hopeful, yet curiously distant nature of Jamie’s mother with her customary skill and attention to character detail, making her by turns alarmingly obtuse and/or resolutely indifferent, and fixated by love at the same time. It’s a fine balancing act, and one that would have challenged most actresses, but Bening carries it off with seeming ease, displaying an emotional and intellectual dexterity in the role that serves as a reminder of just how fine an actress she is.

There are equally impressive turns from Fanning and Gerwig. As the seemingly carefree (and care-less) Julie, Fanning shows the character’s innate vulnerability even when she’s trying to be offhand or dismissive of her feelings, and there are times when Julie seems determined to suffer the fate she believes others expect her to. This kind of disturbing fatalism can be difficult to pull off (if it’s given too much emphasis it can come across as irreparably narcissistic), but Fanning acquits herself well, grounding the character through the discomfort and confusion she feels at being regarded solely as an object of desire. Gerwig is just as impressive as Abbie, taking the character’s history and using it to portray a young woman who speaks for the rights of others, but who seems unable to heed her own advice when it comes to the opposite sex. Like Jamie, she lacks a father figure in her life, and this informs her behaviour far more than she would like to admit, and when she’s challenged over this, she can only retaliate, and in doing so, deflect the pain she’s all too aware she’s causing herself. It’s a very subtle role indeed, but Gerwig carries it off with style and confidence.

On the male side, Crudup is the kind of sensitive, caring man who always appears attractive to women, even though they won’t ever commit to a sustained relationship with him, and the actor portrays him with an easy-going attitude that plays off well against the stresses and strained emotions of the female characters. And then there’s Zumann, a young actor showing a lot of promise, and more than capable of keeping up with his more experienced co-stars. Like a lot of child actors, Zumann has the ability to be casually audacious, and show the kind of emotional range that some adult actors never achieve. He’s intuitive, adventurous, quick off the mark, and he has the gift of making it seem that he’s much more wiser than his years. His scenes with Bening are touching, and Mills is to be congratulated for finding a young actor who can share a scene with her and not be intimidated or do anything that doesn’t match the effort she herself is putting in.

By setting the movie in 1979, Mills makes use of that period’s history to provide a backdrop of social and political upheaval that compliments the upheavals going on in the Fields’ household. He also plays deliberate havoc with the characters’ pasts and futures, illuminating them in a way that adds even more resonance to the main storylines. And while it can be an emotionally messy movie at times, Mills has become such a strong, confident movie maker that he can be forgiven the occasional misstep. He’s said in the past that, “Making a movie is so hard, you’d better make movies about something you really know about.” By making this semi-autobiographical tale so moving and funny and poignant and life-affirming, he’s certainly done that, and to an incredibly rewarding degree.

Rating: 9/10 – a movie that constantly surprises and impresses, 20th Century Women is that rare thing: a picture about women told from a male perspective and infused with a great deal of understanding and respect; with a clutch of great performances, and an equally great soundtrack to accompany it, Mills and his cast and crew have created a movie that is so good, repeat viewings will only make it look and sound better.

Mini-Review: Live by Night (2016)

21 Saturday Jan 2017

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live-by-night-poster

D: Ben Affleck / 128m

Cast: Ben Affleck, Elle Fanning, Remo Girone, Brendan Gleeson, Chris Messina, Matthew Maher, Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana, Robert Glenister, Chris Cooper, Miguel J. Pimentel, Titus Welliver, Max Casella

Undermined by a leaden script, Live by Night is writer/director/actor Ben Affleck’s third movie as a multi-hyphenate, but after the successes of Argo (2012) and The Town (2010), his latest project is a plodding affair that looks good thanks to Robert Richardson’s usual exemplary cinematography, but otherwise remains remote and uninvolving. The tale of a small-time Boston crook, Joe Coughlin (Affleck), who finds himself at odds with Irish gangster Albert White (Glenister) through his relationship with White’s girlfriend, Emma Gould (Miller), this adaptation of the novel by Dennis Lehane starts off well but soon gets bogged down by messy plotting and too many characters who randomly come and go.

Coughlin’s romance with Emma ends badly, leading him to offer his “services” to White’s rival, Maso Pescatore (Girone). Pescatore sends Coughlin down to Florida, to Ybor City, with instructions to take control of his rum-running operation and ensure that White’s activities in the area are curtailed. Once there, Coughlin, aided by trusted friend Dion (Messina), soon streamlines Pescatore’s operation and squeezes out all the competition. In the process he establishes a business relationship with a Cuban family, and begins an affair with the sister, Graciela (Saldana). Things run smoothly until Coughlin’s working with the Cubans as well as a group of local Negroes, attracts the ire of the Ku Klux Klan. Coughlin tries to come to an amicable arrangement with them, but the Klan’s leader, RD Pruitt (Maher) refuses to play ball, leading Coughlin to make an arrangement with Pruitt’s brother-in-law, Chief Figgis (Cooper) that has unforeseen consequences.

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The Chief’s daughter, Loretta (Fanning), begins making evangelical protests against a casino that Coughlin is building in anticipation of Prohibition being repealed. Her protests lead to the project stalling, which makes Pescatore angry enough to forget all the money Coughlin has made for him, and travel down to Florida to oversee matters for himself, a development that leaves Coughlin vulnerable, and his future in doubt.

For all the convincing period detail and the impressive production design, Live by Night is let down by Affleck’s inability to craft a cohesive screenplay from Lehane’s novel. While Coughlin’s story is told against a backdrop of violence and betrayal, the movie remains a staid, pedestrian affair that moves at a steady pace despite Affleck’s best efforts to inject some energy and verve into proceedings. Part of the problem is the number of characters that appear for a short time then disappear or pop up again for another short period. Despite the cast’s best efforts, they’re let down by Affleck’s script, which uses each character to advance the narrative, but without investing in them to any great degree. This leaves actors of the calibre of Gleeson, Saldana and Glenister stranded for the most part, with only Miller and Fanning making much of an impression. It doesn’t help that Affleck’s portrayal of Coughlin also lacks range or depth, leaving the viewer hoping that things will improve over time, and that a way in to the material with eventually arise, something that, unfortunately, never happens.

Rating: 6/10 – curiously turgid and flat, Live by Night has clear aspirations to be a crime drama with operatic overtones, but instead, remains resolutely commonplace; with too many strands that make for a stop-start narrative, and characters that aren’t allowed to make much of an impact, the movie keeps its audience at a distance, and never looks as if it will close the gap at any point throughout.

The Boxtrolls (2014)

12 Friday Sep 2014

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Boxtrolls, The

D: Anthony Stacchi, Graham Annable / 97m

Cast: Ben Kingsley, Isaac Hempstead Wright, Elle Fanning, Jared Harris, Toni Collette, Nick Frost, Richard Ayoade, Tracy Morgan, Dee Bradley Baker, Steve Blum, Simon Pegg

In the town of Cheesebridge, there is a clear hierarchy in place: there is the Establishment, as represented by Lord Portley-Rind (Harris), who wear white hats as a sign of their social standing and influence; there are the common folk who are poorer by default; and then there are the Boxtrolls, cave-dwelling scavengers who avoid human contact as much as possible.  The Boxtrolls are a curious breed who wear cardboard boxes they can retreat into like tortoises when danger arises, and who have a strange language all their own.  They are feared by the human population of Cheesebridge, and are being hunted down by Archibald Snatcher (Kingsley).  Snatcher’s plan is to rid the town of the Boxtrolls and by doing so, rise up from his humble beginnings and claim a white hat; he has an agreement to this end with Lord Portley-Rind.

Amongst the Boxtrolls is the unexpected presence of a young boy known as Eggs (Wright), who has been raised by them since he was a baby.  Eggs knows both English and the Boxtroll language, and ventures out with them at night to search for scrap they can salvage and turn into something more useful.  While on one such trip, Eggs meets Lord Portley-Rind’s daughter Winnie (Fanning), and her astonishment at seeing him with the Boxtrolls leads her to question why Snatcher is hunting them down.  But with her father unwilling to listen to her, Winnie teams up with Eggs and the Boxtrolls in order to show the people of Cheesebridge that their suspicions and fears about the little creatures are unfounded, and that Snatcher is up to no good.

Snatcher, however, is one step ahead of them.  He devises a machine that threatens both the Boxtrolls’ underground home, as well as Lord Portley-Rind.  Meanwhile, Eggs learns that he’s not a boxtroll and that he’s a child who has long been thought of as disappeared.  While he and Winnie piece together his past – and Snatcher’s part in it – at a prestigious gala, Snatcher steps up his nefarious plan by using his machine to intimidate Lord Portley-Rind into giving him a White Hat.  Only Eggs, Winnie and the Boxtrolls can stop him…

Boxtrolls, The - scene

The latest from Laika Entertainment – they also made Coraline (2009) and ParaNorman (2012) – The Boxtrolls is an adaptation of Alan Snow’s Here Be Monsters!  It’s in keeping with their usual visual approach, an arresting mix of stop-motion animation augmented by CGI and traditional hand-drawn artwork, creating an endlessly fascinating and detailed Victorian-era steampunk aesthetic that keeps the eye transfixed throughout and is uniquely ravishing beneath the surface grime.

It may be a dark, ostensibly moody looking movie, but thanks to Irena Brignull and Adam Pava’s clever adaptation – and once the potentially difficult set up of the Boxtrolls’ world is established – the movie reveals a heart and soul that makes it a joy to follow along with, making its cardboard box-wearing stars immediately likeable and endearing.  The Boxtrolls themselves are a lot like a gaggle of unruly schoolchildren, their childlike wonder at the world around them giving them a naiveté that suits their characters and personalities.  Their quirky habits and foibles are rendered with charm and compassion, even when they’re busy playing pranks on each other.  With their innate sensitivity and goodness brought to the fore from the outset, it’s left to the scheming Archibald Snatcher to provide the villainy, and he’s a suitably impressive creation, dextrously voiced by Kingsley, and looking like he’s stepped straight out of one of Dickens’ workhouses.  He’s a gloriously hissable bad guy, and every time his face leers forward it’s like an assault.

Snatcher’s aided by a trio of equally grotesque associates, Mr Trout (Frost), Mr Pickles (Ayoade), and Mr Gristle (Morgan), and as sidekicks they provide some of the more knowing, self-aware humour (watch out for a wonderful pre-end credits piece of post-modernist deconstruction – really).  As the battling youngsters, Eggs and Winnie, both Wright and Fanning offer winning performances, while Harris is instantly recognisable as the straight-laced, luxuriously whiskered Portley-Rind (though viewers may have trouble recognising Collette as his wife).

There’s so much to enjoy in The Boxtrolls it’s almost a struggle to keep up with each new development or piece of background whimsy (like a lot of densely detailed animated features, the movie benefits from repeat viewings), and there are finely tuned moments of anarchic fun in amongst the more darker elements, but thanks to the combined efforts of co-directors Stacchi and Annable the movie achieves a balance that keeps it from tipping over too far in one direction.  From its often remarkable production design courtesy of Paul Lasaine, allied with Curt Enderle’s inspired art direction, the movie looks and feels like a world that’s truly lived in.  The story is involving, and if it all ends a little too predictably, it’s no bad thing.

Rating: 8/10 – another triumph for the folks at Laika, The Boxtrolls is irresistibly charming; exploring further the themes of abandonment and belonging that suffused Coraline and ParaNorman, this is animation that rewards on so many levels it’s almost embarrassing.

Maleficent (2014)

03 Tuesday Jun 2014

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Maleficent

D: Robert Stromberg / 97m

Cast: Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Sharlto Copley, Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Sam Riley, Brenton Thwaites, Kenneth Cranham, Hannah New

A revisionist version of the Sleeping Beauty story, Maleficent begins long before the traditional tale begins, and tells of two neighbouring lands, one human, one fairy, that exist with animosity simmering between them.  As a young child, Maleficent (Isobelle Molloy) is curious about humans but doesn’t venture any further than the boundary of the fairy lands (known as the Moors).  One day a young boy, Stefan (Michael Higgins) is found stealing in the Moors.  Maleficent saves him from the forest guards and a friendship is born.  Stefan returns to the Moors from time to time and friendship blossoms into romance.  When Maleficent is sixteen, Stefan gives her a “true love’s” kiss, but he never returns after that day.

Years pass.  Now an adult, Maleficent (Jolie) is the de facto queen of the Moors.  When King Henry (Cranham) tries to invade the fairy lands she repels his army and the King is injured.  With no natural heir to succeed him, he offers the throne to whomever kills Maleficent.  Stefan (Copley) is a courtier but uses his relationship with Maleficent to get close to her.  Unable to kill her outright, instead he cuts off her wings; he brings them back to Henry and becomes King when Henry dies; he also marries Henry’s daughter, Leila (New).  Maleficent, meanwhile, saves a raven from being captured by a human and transforms him into a man who tells her his name is Diaval (Riley).  Diaval agrees to be Maleficent’s spy in the human lands, and brings news when Stefan and Leila have a daughter, Aurora.

Maleficent attends the christening and bestows a gift on the child, a curse that on her sixteenth birthday Aurora will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall asleep for the rest of eternity; the only thing that can lift the curse is a “true love’s” kiss.  Stefan orders all the spinning wheels in the kingdom broken up and burned and sends Aurora away under the charge of three pixies, Knotgrass (Staunton), Flittle (Manville) and Thistlewit (Temple), to live in a cottage deep in the nearby woods; she is to live there until the day after her sixteenth birthday.

As she approaches that fateful date, Aurora (Fanning) becomes increasingly fascinated with the Moors.  Maleficent puts her under a spell and brings her into the Moors.  Aurora is enchanted by what she sees and she becomes determined to stay there (she has no idea of her background or history).  At the same time her relationship with Maleficent develops into a strong bond, and Maleficent softens in her attitude toward her.  On her way to tell the pixies of her decision, she meets Prince Philip (Thwaites) with whom there is an instant mutual attraction.  When she reaches the cottage, Knotgrass inadvertently mentions her father, whom Aurora has been told died long ago.  The pixies reveal the truth about her heritage and Aurora confronts Maleficent.  Distraught, Aurora returns to the castle on her sixteenth birthday, where Stefan is preparing for what he believes will be  Maleficent’s imminent arrival.  That night, Aurora escapes from her room but ends up in the basement where all the broken up and charred spinning wheels are.  As the curse decrees, Aurora pricks her finger on a spindle and falls into eternal sleep…

Maleficent - scene

With the look and feel of both Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Sam Raimi’s Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) – and it’s no surprise, as director Stromberg was the production designer on both movies – Maleficent is a feast for the eyes and looks beautiful throughout.  The Moors has an air of whimsy about it and the various pastel shades employed to bring it to life are cleverly overlapped to create a ravishing whole.  Once Maleficent is betrayed, the colours are muted and the Moors is not quite as vividly rendered, but it’s still a wonderful place for a young girl to grow up in.

It’s a shame then that as much effort wasn’t put into the human kingdom, its stone walls and bland woodwork acting as a dreary counterpoint to the Moors.  It’s also a good reference point when discussing the characters.  Maleficent herself is a wonderful creation, given depth and pathos by Jolie, and graced with the sharpest cheekbones you’re ever likely to see on screen.  It’s a magnificent performance, and a reminder that Jolie, last seen in the less than wonderful The Tourist (2010), is an accomplished actress, but here she’s the sole focus in a movie that short changes its other characters, leaving the rest of the cast to fend for themselves while Jolie gets the lion’s share of the screen time and any character development.  Ultimately, this single-mindedness hurts the movie tremendously, and wastes the talents of Fanning, Copley, Staunton et al.  Copley, despite a minimal attempt to endow Stefan with a degree of guilt for his actions, is hamstrung by the lack of range his character is imbued with, and by the movie’s end he’s so close to providing a one-note performance as to make no difference (it doesn’t help that his accent wavers all over the place in his early scenes).

With Linda Woolverton’s script providing less meat than required, Maleficent suffers in other areas as well.  For such a handsomely mounted, cleverly revisionist tale, it’s also curiously flat throughout.  The early scenes – pre-adult Maleficent – seem in a hurry to get to the main bulk of the movie, and the remainder doesn’t excite or captivate in the way that it should.  Scene follows scene but not in any organic way; instead it’s as if the movie is more concerned with hitting each plot development in turn but not with how it gets there.  This leaves some scenes feeling redundant, often before the scene has ended.  And too much happens purely because the script needs it to: Stefan’s preparations for Maleficent’s return to the castle, for example, planned so far in advance of her actually needing to go there that it doesn’t make sense; and Maleficent’s wings, unmoving and apparently lifeless when Stefan removes them, but animated and responsive after more than sixteen years (and just when Maleficent needs them).

Story and plot problems notwithstanding, Maleficent lacks the zest and energy needed to fully bring it’s reworking of Sleeping Beauty (1959) to life.  There’s also the issue of whether or not Maleficent is really the villainous character she is in Disney’s animated version of the story.  Here, she’s clearly a character who’s been tragically wronged, and despite attempts to make her “evil”, they’re never convincing, and Jolie’s approach to the character highlights the theme of female empowerment that permeates the movie throughout.  This leaves Stefan as the movie’s one true villain, and far more “evil” than Maleficent could ever be, even with the maniacal chuckling that Jolie strives for during the christening.  (It’s a shame as it would definitely have made the movie more interesting, but with the emphasis on rehabilitating the character for a modern audience – as if we really needed it – a completely evil Maleficent was never on the cards.)

Stromberg is not a strong director, either, and his lack of experience contributes to the overall shortcomings of the movie.  The action sequences lack the excitement expected from them, and the editing by Chris Lebenzon and Richard Pearson often contributes to the sense that there’s a more structured, deliberate movie back in the cutting room (a longer version might be interesting to watch).  In the end, this is Jolie’s triumph, not anyone else’s, but by herself she’s not able to rescue the movie from the doldrums it repeatedly finds itself in.

Rating: 5/10 – not entirely the success its makers would have hoped for, but not entirely a dud either, just a maddeningly disappointing movie that never takes off (as Maleficent herself does); plagued by too many bad decisions affecting its presentation, Maleficent keeps the viewer at arm’s length for long periods, and only occasionally tries to bring them any closer.

Twixt (2011)

16 Saturday Nov 2013

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Twixt

D: Francis Ford Coppola / 88m

Cast: Val Kilmer, Bruce Dern, Elle Fanning, Ben Chaplin, Joanne Whalley, David Paymer, Anthony Fusco, Alden Ehrenreich, Bruce A. Miroglio

Several years ago, Francis Ford Coppola announced he would be making only personal films, and since then we’ve had Youth Without Youth (2007), Tetro (2009), and now Twixt, ostensibly a horror movie but one that veers off down several different paths before its conclusion.

Hall Baltimore (Kilmer) is a moderately successful writer of witchcraft-themed horror novels.  He’s also in a bit of a creative slump.  While on a book tour, he finds himself in the small town of Swann Valley.  He meets Sheriff Bobby LeGrange (Dern) who tells him about a mystery that involves a dead girl and a group of teens camped out across the lake.  The girl is recently deceased, “obviously the victim of a serial killer”, according to LaGrange, and still in the sheriff’s office-cum-morgue with a stake through her heart.  That night, Baltimore falls asleep and dreams of walking through town and out into the surrounding woods.  There he meets V (Fanning), a young girl who looks drained of blood.  They go to the Old Chickering Hotel where Baltimore learns that the bodies of twelve children are buried under the floor.  This adds to the mystery, and when Baltimore wakes up he realises the answers to both his creative slump and the murder of the dead girl are to be found in his dreams.

To give a fuller description of the plot would take a while as Coppola, serving as writer, producer and director, piles layer upon layer of story onto the already overloaded plotting.  There’s several appearances by Edgar Allan Poe (Chaplin) who helps Baltimore in his dreams but also provides some literary allusions to the main plot.  There’s a sub-plot involving a seven-sided clock tower where each clock face tells a different time.  The twelve children were the charge of Pastor Allan Floyd (Fusco); there’s a protracted sequence involving a Jim Jones-style massacre.  LaGrange acts strangely throughout, at one point knocking Baltimore unconscious out of anger (but also as a handy device for getting him to the next dream sequence).  Baltimore is also mourning the death of his teenage daughter, while fending off the financial needs of his wife Denise (Whalley).  The teens across the river, led by Beaudelaire-quoting Flamingo (Ehrenreich), provide temporary relief from the increasing pretentiousness of all the other proceedings.  Oh, and there’s a scene involving a Ouija board, and Baltimore fighting writer’s block by impersonating Marlon Brando (with a near-quote from Apocalypse Now) and James Mason amongst others, and an ending so abrupt you might wonder if you’ve nodded off and missed a few minutes.

Twixt - scene

From all this you could be forgiven for thinking that Twixt is a bit of a mess, and largely it is.  Coppola has applied a kind of kitchen sink approach to the movie, and it would be a dedicated viewer – one prepared to watch it several times in fact – who could find a strict, coherent storyline that runs through the movie, and who could adequately explain the various diversions that Coppola includes.  However, I’m not sure Coppola himself knows exactly what’s going on, or why, and if he doesn’t, then the rest of us don’t stand a chance.

Visually, though, the movie is often stunning to look at, the initial dream sequences – at the Old Chickering hotel, Baltimore’s chat with Poe in the same location – all have a weird, surreal quality that suits the action that’s unfolding.  The characters speak with a slight hollowness, and the colour scheme, all grey, metallic hues, looks wonderfully unsettling.  This is where Twixt works best, in the dreamworld that Baltimore inhabits as often as he can.  Coppola pulls out all the stops in these sequences, imbuing them with a sense of predatory menace that elevates them from perfunctory scenes of exposition to something more disquieting.  Alas, the scenes in the real world lack any kind of sense or coherence, and as a result, bog down the movie unnecessarily.

The cast do their best under the circumstances, Kilmer injecting some humour when he can at the absurdity of LaGrange’s eccentricities, but otherwise going with the flow and committing to the script’s vagaries.  Dern adds another oddball character to his repertoire, while Fanning plays the girl who may or may not have gotten away from the pastor (it’s never made clear) with an appropriate detachment.  Chaplin copes well with some really dense, literary dialogue, and rest of the supporting cast do the best they can as well, particularly Miroglio as Deputy Arbus.

Ultimately, the best that can be said about Twixt is that it’s no better or worse than a lot of other horror movies made in the last five years, but definitely a step up visually.  Coppola still knows how to construct a scene and have it play out – even if the internal logic is skewed – and he still has the confidence borne out of his many years as a director.  He may not have made the best decision in working from his own script, and if truth be told, this may not be the best version of that script (some of the cast have apparently seen an earlier, different version), but despite the absurdities and the incoherent plot, Twixt still has enough going for it to make it worth watching, even if it’s just to say you have.

Rating: 6/10 – Coppola delivers what appears to be a train wreck of a movie, but on closer inspection, there’s still a few carriages on the track to rescue things; worth seeing for its hallucinogenic visuals and Kilmer back on form after too many low-budget thrillers.