Running Into the Wonderwall

Alice in Wonderland Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Michael Sheen, Crispin Glover. Directed by: Tim Burton. Written by: Linda Woolverton.

On paper, Tim Burton’s latest film, “Alice in Wonderland,” based on two of Lewis Caroll’s “Alice” stories, should be a slam dunk. The world of Wonderland is just dark and twisty enough to satisfy Burton and his design team’s often macabre sensibilities, the film’s co-stars include two frequent collaborators, Helena Bonham Carter (Burton’s girlfriend) and the indispensible Johnny Depp (his seventh collaboration with Burton) , who add their certain pizzazz to the juicy, odd characters roles, and with the new 3-D technology the film should literally pops off the screen with a whole new life. But unlike in previous Burton efforts such as “Edward Scissorhands,” “Sleepy Hollow, or “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” the director is not able to elevate these elements beyond their level best; creating a film that’s expected instead of exceptional.

The film, in an unexpected plot twist, focuses on the now 20-year-old Alice (newcomer Mia Wasikowska) as she tries to fit into a world of Victorian England, where young ladies are expected to be demure and pretty, instead of curious and adventurous. So when she runs away from a high society garden party and a sniveling young man who fancies her, she once again finds herself chasing a white rabbit in a waistcoat and falling head first down a rabbit hole.

When she arrives in a land we eventually know to be properly pronounced Underland, we see the familiar cast of creatures and characters (including the Caterpillar, the White Rabbit, and the Mad Hatter played by Johnny Depp) we’ve known from past incarnations of the story. They keep insisting she’s been there before, and she keeps pleading with them that she must be dreaming, and that they have the wrong Alice. But as the film progresses though, the young heroine realizes she truly is the right Alice, and it is her destiny to destroy the dragon of the Red Queen and bring peace to the world.

Now that may sound a bit confusing, and don’t worry, that’s actually a simplified version of the plot. Burton and his crew have created a film much like Alice’s ever changing height. There are some moments where we want the film to be large and epic, and instead we get quirky and idiosyncratic, in some situations, like the trainwreck of an ending, the story gets too big for its own good. Instead of using a simple story and letting the intensity of the visuals speak for themselves, he bogs us down with even more story, more unnecessary characters, more confusion than “Alice in Wonderland” needs.

Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter is a perfect example. Even in his most outrageous and outlandish characters, Depp usually straddles the line between insanity and humanity well, but in this film he keeps it too much in the crazy realm. He’s dialed it up to 20 when the story only really calls for about an 8. Similarly Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen is so outrageous, so over-the-top, that even in a world of madness and unreality, she seems almost too mad, to unreal to be believable. That being said, Wasikowska is a breath of fresh air as Alice. Strong and sensitive, emotional yet reserved, this young lady, with her porcelain skin rises above a screenplay and a movie that can’t contain her.

Along with Wasikowska though, Burton’s creative team brings their usual A-game to their parts throughout. Robert Stromberg, who just won an Oscar for the art direction on “Avatar,” has helped combine the 3-D technology with highly-stylized (and still mighty ugly-looking) of Burton’s other films to Underland with ornate castles, grand gardens, and elaborately decorated rooms the story calls for. In the same vein, Colleen Atwood in her eighth collaboration with Burton has fashioned more of the meticulous, Victorian-inflected, corseted waist, full skirt costumes we learned to expect from her.

But at the end of the day, most will agree that sets and costumes are the standout of every film by Tim Burton. We’re always impressed by what aesthetics he presents, but what almost always seems to be missing is the heart. He’s always been a style over substance director, and in this film it becomes increasingly frustrating because we see what potential is just underneath the surface of the palely, painted faces, and over-the-top performances. Just as we’ve seen in so many other incarnations of this story, “Alice in Wonderland” is not always what it seems on the surface. Grade: D

Look who’s Back from Town

After winning a screenwriting Oscar in 1997 for co-writing “Good Will Hunting” (with his childhood friend Matt Damon), Ben Affleck rocketed to the front of every A-list and became one of Hollywood’s resident hunks. But by 2005, after a couple of high-profile relationships and breakups (Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez), a quick stint in rehab, and a series of critical and box office catastrophes (“Pay Check,” “Daredevil,” “Gigli”) Ben Affleck was an industry joke.


We began to question, He took some time off, did some decent acting jobs (such as his still-underrated performance in “Hollywoodland”), and then did something that seemed certain to cement his status as a Hollywood bust…direct.

But contrary to every expectation in the head of every critic or industry expert, 2007’s “Gone Baby Gone” wasn’t a disaster at all. Actually it was a triumph; a robust and artistically satisfying thriller that showed there may be more than a few thoughts sloshing about in his well-coifed head.

Now Affleck’s back with “The Town,” a full-bodied, highly-entertaining heist picture that despite some familiar story tropes is told with a swagger and a flavor that meets all expectations and exceeds them.

Affleck stars as Doug McCray a second-generation bank robber who, despite his best efforts to get out of the family business, keeps getting dragged into one job after another. After one such robbery, after one of his cohorts, the hotheaded Jem (Jeremy Renner) briefly takes Claire (Rebecca Hall), one of the bank managers hostage. When they realize she lives in the neighborhood, tensions begin to rise.

Did she see anything she could tip off to the police? Will she be able to identify them?

Instead of just killing her and quickly eliminating any potential snags, Doug decides to check her out. The two eventually fall in love, of course, not knowing his true identity.

The film is also filled out with many of the other familiar characters in this kind of story: the gruff, no-excuses FBI agent (“Mad Men” star Jon Hamm), the grungy, drug-addled, ex-girlfriend and mole (“Gossip Girl” star Blake Lively), and the ever-present boss man (Pete Postelwaithe). The film offers such nice surprises throughout that it’s hard to pick just one or two.

Affleck shot and paced this picture with such a refreshing realism that you can’t help but fall for the antics of these amoral characters. You’re not overpowered by the explosions and ridiculous stunts, but the characters and their story are left center stage. The city of Boston is shown in such a reverent light, but Affleck doesn’t mind showing the grimy and the unlikable. And for a film with such a masculine edge, the love story is shockingly tender.

Affleck’s direction is efficient and clean, and so is his acting. This is the best performance Affleck has ever given as an actor. He holds his scenes with such an authority and connectivity audiences have never seen in at least a decade. Renner on the other hand is nowhere near as together or controlled; he’s a wild, loose cannon with guns and tempers a blazing. Even without his stature and similar facial features, he’s reminiscent of a younger James Cagney, all fire and music.

The circumstances that lead up to the final showdown between cops and crooks is a bit convenient for my taste, and towards the end I feel like the characters, despite the actors best efforts, don’t move much beyond their preordained types.
But after a summer film season of the overblown and generally stupid, “The Town” is a pulpy, stark film that finds a rhythm of the streets and the minds of the robbers. Run don’t walk to “The Town.”
Grade: B+

Can't We Be Friends?- The Social Network Review

When we first lay eyes on Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) in “The Social Network,” he looks pretty unassuming. His close-cropped, curly hair, his slight build buried in a baggy sweatshirt, his sad eyes all scream an everyman, your average nerd. But after waxing poetically about trying to get into one of Harvard’s elite final clubs to his girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara), she promptly dumps him because frankly, he’s not a very nice guy. Then, almost as if he flips a switch, Mark’s eyes change from that of sadness and longing and become cold, steely, and full of fire. He leaves in a huff, and takes his anger out in the only way that he seems to know how, on the Internet.

It’s these rants—along with a pretty crass and comical internet site about the women of Harvard (that’s too good to spoil)—that brings him to the attention of the university’s conduct board as well as the Winklevoss brothers (Armie Hammer, pulling double duty by playing both roles) a pair of upper-crust, identical twins on Harvard’s rowing team. They’re looking for a programmer to create Harvard Connection, a site where users could add friends, send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Sound familiar?
So when Zuckerberg goes back to his dorm and tells his good buddy Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), and suggests a site called The Facebook where users could add friends, send them messages, and update personal profiles to notify friends about themselves, but they have to be invited to join, just like the exclusive clubs Mark isn’t getting into, we all begin to get a bit suspicious. He asks Eduardo to be the CFO, gets $1000 for startup costs, and they begin their work.

Noted wordsmith Aaron Sorkin (“A Few Good Men,” TV’s “The West Wing”) beautifully and efficiently sets up the film as part intellectual thriller part court room drama. The narrative I’ve described above is interspliced with scenes from the two lawsuits brought against Zuckerberg by Saverin and the Winklevosses. We never know with whom our allegiances lie because as much as we think we know the true story, no one, except maybe the real Zuckerberg, will ever truly know what happened in those beer-soaked back rooms.



Based on “The Accidental Billionaires” by Ben Mezerick, Every time a new piece of information is revealed, we’re expertly cut back to the depositions in the conference rooms, where each side is able to put its own spin on the events. Credit editors Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter for being able juggle all of these intricate pieces with precision and flair.


David Fincher, a director so-closely and adeptly associated with striking visuals and beautiful set pieces (Remember “Se7en” or “Fight Club”), has allowed Sorkin’s dialogue to soar through. The expert camera work is still there, but just as an added bonus, we get a script so witty, so cunning, that the words feel like daggers to gut every time.

The reason the dialogue sounds so good though is it’s being said by a cast of some of Hollywood’s freshest and most sparkling new talent. Andrew Garfield’s Eduardo Saverin seems to be the only person in the film with any shred of soul left. The film contends the only mistake he ever made, in Zuckerberg’s mind, was dreaming too small. It’s a tragic performance that will leave you breathless from his awkward arrival through the embittered tell-off he gives Mark towards the close.

Justin Timberlake, with a laid back charm and earthy realness, plays Sean Parker (a sort of devil in disguise), the co-creator of Napster who befriends Mark as a way to get in on the action of Facebook and to show Mark what potential spoils can be gained from living the high life.

The film is held together though, through the amazing breakthrough of Jesse Eisenberg as Mark. Eisenberg isn’t a stranger to movie audiences. He’s been the awkward, stammering, young twentysomething in “Adventureland” or “Zombie Land,” but his work here is something completely new. He can rattle off Sorkin’s dialogue with such ease and beauty you’d think he thought it up himself. His facial reactions show everything he’s feeling and he doesn’t mind anyone seeing it. He’s able to carry such bravado and such fierce ambition; you know he’ll stop at nothing to achieve his goals, no matter who he hurts.

The film has caught considerable flack from the actual people involved for the dramatic liberties that Sorkin and Fincher have taken to tell their story, but the filmmakers are not looking for complete or exact accuracy. They’re not making a documentary, and the film speaks more directly to a generation of people and how they interact with the world around them. The film taps into such a primal and integral part of the college experience: wanting to be accepted, wanting to be liked. Mark creates Facebook in the first place is to be able to control who gets into his special little club.

In a world so large and expansive where even the most confident individuals can feel lost in the shuffle; Mark wants to create a place where people can come together, and a place where he can feel better about himself. He’s a 21st century Citizen Kane whose relationships are laid waste to his mile-high ambition.

Unlike Citizen Kane though, we don’t really know if by the end Mark Zuckerberg has any trace of the young guy who we meet in the beginning of the movie. He has certainly changed from the beginning, but how much? You as an audience will be immeasurably changed by the continued power of “The Social Network.” Grade: A

Some Unholy War

In the harrowing times in which we live, it has become immensely difficult to avoid the war in Iraq. It is on every news station, on the cover of every paper and magazine, and is in the hearts and minds of our nation’s citizens. Now Hollywood is getting in on the action with a host of new films focusing on all aspects of the war and the people it affects. One of those films is Paul Haggis’s “In the Valley of Elah,” a timely and graceful film that is both entertaining and quietly brilliant.

The film stars Tommy Lee Jones (“The Fugitive” and “JFK”) as Hank Deerman, a former Army sergeant and Vietnam veteran, who goes to find his recently disappeared son Mike shortly after he returns home from Iraq. When he arrives at the base, no one seems to know where he is, but they don’t seem to be very forthcoming with information either. He visits the local bars and strip clubs looking for any leads and clues, and the police don’t want really seem to want to deal with him. That is, except Detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron), a tough woman who continually is trying to prove herself and her contemporaries that she is worthy of the job. The whole case seems to go rather cold until pieces of a body are found in field that are later determined to be those of Mike.

As the film continues, it unfolds like a thrilling crime drama: intriguing, intense, and urgent. Unfortunately, not all crime thrillers are given such revelatory performances like one from Tommy Lee Jones in this film. Jones’s performance is a work of sheer brilliance. It’s a quiet struggle for his character, but he plays it with every emotion and feeling right there on his heavily-wrinkled face. His character, Hank, is a man conflicted; conflicted between the duty and honor he knows and understands as a former military man and as a father full of rage and sadness for his own son’s death.

Theron does some of her best work in years, and Susan Sarandon, who plays Hank’s long-suffering military wife, glows in her few scenes. The film is a sharp, incisive look at the effects of war on the psyche and emotions of the men and women who see this chaos first hand and then try to find some meaning in it. Compared to Haggis’s last directorial effort “Crash,” which beat its message of racism and intolerance into its audience’s skulls with a mallet of contrived plot points and overly-preachy moments, Mr. Haggis has allowed his message to gently breeze through the film and permeate its consciousness while still keeping the story grounded in reality. Gorgeously shot, beautifully acted, and terribly important, “In the Valley of Elah” is the right movie at the right time. A

For Your Precious Love

The more I ponder “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” the tough yet continually electrifying new film directed by Lee Daniels, the more I’m unsure of what to adequately say about it. Is it really meant to be just a piece of entertainment? Or is it more a strong social commentary? Or is it merely a well-structured character study? It is in this questioning, this inquiry into the complexity and nuance, that the raw and glittering facets to this diamond of a film can truly be found.

As the title says, “Precious” centers on the title character, Clarice “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), a morbidly obese, illiterate, 16-year-old black girl, who lives in a rundown, Harlem apartment with her physically and emotionally abusive mother Mary (comedienne Mo’Nique).

After her high school teacher finds out she’s pregnant for the second time by her absent and drug-addicted father, the principal kicks her out of high school. But instead of leaving her destitute without an education, the principal suggests Precious go to a program for troubled teens looking to get their GED because her math teacher says she has an aptitude for math.

Mary thinks that school won’t do her daughter any good, and thinks going down to the welfare office to qualify for assistance is a better idea than bothering with school. Defiantly, Precious decides to go to school instead, despite her mother’s fuming rage. But it’s ultimately in this class, under the tutelage of Ms. Rain (Paula Patton) that Precious really begins to awaken and become a real person.

This normally would be the point in the oft-mocked Lifetime movie where the young protagonist would learn to overcome her adversity and become her high school’s valedictorian or something equally ridiculous. But screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher by strictly sticking to Sapphire’s novel and with director Daniels’s assured direction, “Precious” transcends any kind of cliché. These characters are fully-realized people full of flaws and all haunted with demons of the past and their uncertain futures.

Both Precious and her mother Mary are locked into relationships that feed off of each other’s worst qualities. Mary treats her daughter as her whipping boy, yet Precious sticks around, allowing her mother to still treat her horribly. The violence that happens between mother and daughter is so casually treated it seems an expected way of life by both victim and abuser.

Mo’Nique, in her first dramatic role, is a fiery tornado as Mary. She’s equal parts malevolent and pitiful, desperate yet vindictive. But just when you thought that her performance would only hit the bitter and evil side, she throws in moments of sheer crestfallen grace. She’s a broken woman struggling under generations of what she’s told it means to be a woman, and ruined by the lack of love she’s never received.
Similarly to Mo’Nique’s performance is the startling work of Gabourey Sidibe.

To be plucked from obscurity and in her first major film role to have the instincts and raw talent that is this 24-year-old has, is something beyond extraordinary. She plays Precious as a subtle storm of emotions, uncertainties, and sadness wrapped up in the blank stare of someone slowly being destroyed by their circumstances. She’s so convincing, you wouldn’t believe that it’s the same effervescent and excitable girl who’s been doing the interview circuit to support the film.

The supporting cast is also quite strong with Mariah Carey, yes I said, Mariah Carey, in a sturdy and sympathetic role as a welfare worker trying to help Precious through her turmoil.

To say this film is a must-see is the understatement of the year. Films like this don’t come along very often. Let me rephrase: experiences like this don’t come along often enough. You don’t just watch “Precious”; you take it in as if to witness something for the very first time.
Grade: A