Movie Review: "Irrational Man" (Woody Allen, 2015)

A MOST SCHOLARLY MURDER by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone in Mr. Allen’s latest.  Photo ©Sony Pictures Classics

More than once in Woody Allen’s morbid parlor picture “Irrational Man,” Professor Abe Lucas takes a stroll on the beach.  And why shouldn’t he?  He’s a depressed intellectual; such creatures must crave the sight of sun-crested waves.  Yet Mr. Allen’s half funny, half leeringly toxic movie makes those blue waters look oddly menacing.  They are not included, I think, for our sightseeing pleasure, but as a metaphor for the sometimes volatile course of fate, or something. 
 

            Fate is a subject that “Irrational Man” obsesses over.  It’s likely what brings Abe to the film’s venue, a dusty East Coast college brimming with pupils played by attractive youngsters like Jamie Blackley and Emma Stone.  Because this is a Woody Allen movie, Ms. Stone’s Jill immediately forms a much-denied crush on Abe, who likes to slosh his rambling lectures over his bulbous beer belly.

            Abe broods as lustily as the characters Mr. Phoenix has seamlessly inhabited in films like “Walk the Line,” “Two Lovers,” “The Master,” “Her,” and “The Immigrant” (he maps the contours of the male soul more skillfully than most other living actors).  Yet the character is also resolutely idealistic and cruel.  Early in the film, Abe overhears a middle-aged woman tearfully confessing that a corrupt judge might wrest her children from her.  In a pinch, Abe takes matters into his own galumphing palms by stalking the judge and concocting a sickening, guiltily entertaining scheme.

            In other words, “Irrational Man” is not a standard-model Woody Allen movie—it is one of his off-brand dramas (in the mold of “Blue Jasmine” and “Match Point”), and a satisfying philosophical bauble at that.  Drained of the limp theatrics of last year’s Allen offering, “Magic in the Moonlight,” the newer film is assuaged not only by sublime images (the cinematographer, Darius Khonji, makes each moment glow like scoops of pale sorbet), but its ability to toy with our sympathies as Abe grows increasingly amoral in his quest for the proverbial greater good.

Movie Review: "Mr. Holmes" (Bill Condon, 2015)

THE OLD MAN AND THE BEES by Mo Shaunette

Above: Ian McKellen is Sherlock in Mr. Condon’s new film.  Photo ©Miramax and Roadside Attractions
 

By now, it’s safe to say that Sherlock Holmes has become a staple of Western culture. “The Guinness Book of World Records” lists Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s master sleuth as “the most portrayed movie character,” having been played by over seventy actors in more than 200 films—to say nothing of his appearances in subsequent novels, television shows, graphic novels, video games, and nearly every other form of media in the world.

Each one of these adaptations draws from different parts of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s source material and presents their own unique take on the world’s greatest detective, particularly those of recent years.  Guy Ritchie’s blockbuster films highlighted Holmes as a pugilist and a pioneer action hero; BBC’s “Sherlock” plays up Holmes’s alienation from the rest of humanity as a socially-stunted, egotistical savant; and ABC’s “Elementary” focuses on Holmes’s drug use and presents him as a recovering addict.

So how does Bill Condon’s “Mr. Holmes” paint the consulting detective?  As an old man; a former luminary who can’t live up to his own celebrity, who finds himself full of regret in his twilight years.  And by reimagining the character this way, Mr. Condon and his stellar cast and crew depict a new version of Holmes that feels both familiar and totally enthralling.

Adapted from the 2005 novel “A Slight Trick of the Mind” by Mitch Cullin, “Mr. Holmes” takes place in 1947.  A 93-year-old Sherlock Holmes (Sir Ian McKellen) has left 221B Baker Street behind for a remote farmhouse in Sussex where his only companions are his housekeeper Mrs. Munro (Laura Linney), her son Roger (Milo Parker), and the bees in his apiary.  As Holmes and Roger form an unlikely bond with each other, Holmes tries to write down the story of his last case in London—partially as a counter to the sensationalist penny dreadfuls John Watson published about him, and partially to remember what was it about this last case that caused him to leave his profession and become a recluse full of regret.

“Mr. Holmes” divorces itself from much of the Sherlock lore that we’ve grown accustomed to.  Watson, Mycroft Holmes, and Mrs. Hudson have all passed away by now and are only glimpsed in flashbacks; no mention is made of James Moriarty, Inspector Lestrade, Irene Adler, or the Baker Street Irregulars.  This is a story uniquely about Sherlock Holmes, about him not quite matching the fantastical persona Watson gave him in his books, about him leaving behind a lifetime of great adventures, and about him dealing with the loss of his most valuable gift: his mind.  The nonagenarian Holmes is going senile, and the struggle to kick-start his memories so he can be at peace with his own past becomes the through line in the film.

As far as the performances go, “Mr. Holmes” leans heavily on its small but no less terrific cast.  Sir Ian McKellen is by now one of our generation’s best actors and it's no surprise that his Holmes is absolutely spot on.  Whereas most versions of the character give actors the chance to be intelligent and cocky and smarmy, Sir Ian’s Sherlock is one defined by immense loneliness.  His friends have passed on and he now feels their absence more than ever.  He’s still brusque and occasionally condescending to people, but it’s less out of malice than thoughtlessness.

If there’s any problem with the film, it’s that it’s a rather small one.  Despite starring a larger-than-life icon of fiction (an indeed, hinging on both the character and his legacy), the story is about growing up and growing old—not exactly the world-shattering adventures one might expect from the world’s greatest detective.  However, “Mr. Holmes” is still engaging thanks to the actors, Mr. Condon’s directing, and a sharp, well-paced script from Jeffrey Hatcher.

Two mysteries play out in “Mr. Holmes.”  One, taking place in the present, is a minor inquiry that adds stakes to the third act but ultimately exists as a bonding exercise between Holmes and Roger.  The other is the question of what exactly Holmes’ last case was and why it broke him so.  The result of these stories is a tragic, but no less satisfying tale that could only be about Sherlock Holmes.  Sherlock may be a character so ingrained in popular culture that we as the audience think that we know everything about him, but “Mr. Holmes” manages to introduce us to the world’s greatest detective all over again.

Movie Review: "Fantastic Four" (Josh Trank, 2015)

GRADED F FOR FANT4STIC by Mo Shaunette

Above: Miles Teller as Reed Richards. Photo © 20th Century Fox.

Normally in these reviews, I talk about things like story, acting, themes, etc, giving you a general idea of what the movie's like.  However, Fox’s new “Fantastic 4” (or “Fant4stic,” because replacing letters with numbers is totally kewl!) is so utterly lacking in all of those departments that I thought it would be better to just recap this 100-minute failure-to-launch so that you, the viewing public, may understand the many shortcomings of this movie without needing to spend your hard-earned money on it.  Let’s begin, shall we?

The film (based on the characters that kick-started Marvel's iconic 60's-era renaissance) commences in small-town New York, where young prodigy Reed Richards is experimenting with building a teleporter.  His teacher (Dan Castellanata, collecting an easy paycheck between seasons of voicing Homer on “The Simpsons”) tells him to be more realistic in his aspirations (not unlike what I imagine the studio heads told director Josh Trank and his team).  Classmate Ben Grimm, however, is intrigued by the idea and agrees to help Reed build his prototype, providing the invaluable service of telling him to use a Phillips-head screwdriver instead of a slotted one.  Truly, they are a scientific force to be reckoned with.

We also see Ben’s home life, where his older brother beats him up after quickly saying, “It’s clobberin’ time,” hoping that the audience won’t notice that Ben’s iconic catchphrase is now associated with physical abuse.  Also, we see a menorah on the mantelpiece in his house, assuring the audience that Ben Grimm (who eventually morphs into a character called the Thing) is still Jewish, despite the fact that the tie-in “Thing Burger” at Denny’s has bacon on it.

Anyway, l’il Reed and Ben make a functioning teleporter that makes a toy car disappear and brings back a soil sample.  Cut to seven years later and the duo are now teens played by Miles Teller and Jamie Bell, respectively.  They try to demonstrate the teleporter in front of Homer Simpson at a science fair, but it doesn’t work entirely and they are once again shunned (the laughter in the audience did a better job of informing me that this was comedy than the scene did).

However, Reed and Ben’s work is noticed by Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and his adopted daughter Sue (Kate Mara).  The Storms immediately offer Reed a scholarship with the Baxter Foundation, a government-funded research group for young geniuses that just so happens to be working on the exact same thing as Reed, only bigger (they call it a “quantum gate”).  Reed jumps at the chance to join, leaving Ben to continue living and working at his family's scrap yard.  Them’s the breaks, Benjy.

We are then given a scene where Reed begins exploring the library at the Baxter Building and runs into Sue, who is listening to music and reading.  Sue explains music in scientific terms of pattern recognition, allowing the screenwriters (Mr. Trank, Simon Kinberg, and Jeremy Slater) to show off how many articles about science they read and also establish what Sue’s “thing” is.  Reed then decides to talk about his favorite book, “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” and explain the plot to Sue, because he assumes that a girl who comes from a background of physics and engineering couldn’t possibly know the plot of one of the most iconic pieces of science-fiction literature.  This establishes what Reed’s “thing” is (his love of "20,000 Leagues,” not his being a dumbass).

Meanwhile, Franklin is arguing with his board of directors about funding for the Foundation, particularly with the facility supervisor, played by Tim Blake Nelson.  It’s unclear if he works for the government or just wants to work with them, but I’m going to assume the former.  Anyway, Dr. Government Man learns that Franklin is also planning on bringing back the former leader of the quantum gate project, Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell), who has bad blood with the organization.  Franklin insists he’s earned a second chance.

Victor, as it turns out, is a colossal jerk who now lives in a scienced-up bachelor pad (he’s like Tony Stark with a quarter of the budget and none of the style).  He only agrees to leave behind his life of listening to terrible music in the dark while playing off-brand “Street Fighter” when he learns that Sue is still working at Baxter, because the villain lusting after the female lead is totally fresh material, right?

The film also brings in Sue’s brother Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan), who is introduced to us as he races (and subsequently crashes) his customized car.  Yep, for about three minutes there, “Fant4stic” becomes the most half-ass “Fast and Furious” sequel ever.  Dear old dad pays for his son’s medical bills on the condition that he also work on the quantum gate project, thus leading to a building-stuff montage that only exists to establish that our characters are good at science.

It’s at this point in the recap that I feel I should mention the acting: it’s terrible across the board.  Part of this is because the script that gives our mains the slimmest of personalities, but even then the cast seems to be on autopilot.  Mr. Teller doesn’t have the wide-eyed wonder the film hints at, Ms. Mara is given precisely fuck-all to do, Mr. Jordan seems to be trying to give his character more charm than the screenplay does, and Mr. Bell just grumbles his way through Ben’s lines.  The worst offender is Mr. Kebbell, whose Doom is entirely lifeless and dull, and whose stunning lack of range and charisma only makes things worse.

Eventually, the quantum gate is built and tested, successfully sending a chimpanzee into and out of another dimension (and teasing fanboys like me with the possibility of an origin for regular F4 villains the Super-Apes).  Government Man then tells our team that while they were promised to be the first ones to walk on Planet Zero (the eventual name of the other dimension), they’re actually going to send NASA astronauts to the other side.  Disheartened, Reed, Johnny, and Victor spend the night drinking.

After some speechifying from Victor about how nobody will ever know their names, Reed decides that they should cross the gate first anyway, despite his earlier assertion that he doesn’t care about being famous.  He also calls Ben to come with him, because teenagers make stupid decisions when they’re drunk.  Ben agrees to sneak into a major tech lab with his intoxicated scientist friends in the middle of the night and breach the known barriers of space and time because Ben doesn’t have a lot of foresight.  Regardless, the four science bros suit up and pass through the gate, becoming the first humans to land on Planet Zero (which I will be calling Peezo).

Notice someone missing from this equation?  Sue freaking Storm!  Apparently, she can’t come on the guys’ dimensional adventure because girls ruin good times with their cooties and whatnot.  Still, she (and only she) notices that the gate has been activated and runs down to the lab to monitor their progress.

While on Peezo, Reed and friends find pools of energy strewn about.  Victor—who is either hypnotized by the planet somehow, or just plain stupid—sticks his hand in one, causing a chain reaction and a series of explosions.  The four race back to the gate, but a burst of energy overpowers Victor.  Reed, Johnny, and Ben make it back to the teleporter pods and Sue pulls them back, bringing with them enough space energy to give them all superpowers…a full hour into the 100-minute movie.

Our heroes then wake up and discover, to their horror, what they’ve become: Reed gets stretchy, Sue turns invisible, Johnny can light on fire, and Ben becomes made of stone, leading to me wishing that he was voiced by Annie Savage yelling in her best caveman voice, “I’M A ROCK MAN!” (Thrilling Adventure Hour joke!)  Anyway, Reed escapes the super-secret army base they're being kept at and promises Ben that he’ll find a cure for him before stretching off into the night.

 

We then cut to one year later.  Yes, you heard me right, we have a random time-skip this far into the movie.  By now, Sue and Johnny have figured out their powers and Ben has been sent on covert missions for the government, with Johnny soon to follow.  So not only have there been potentially cool action scenes and training montages happening off screen, but according to a presentation given by Government Man, Ben apparently has fifty-seven kills to his name.  Oy vey.

Meanwhile Reed has been off the grid; buying parts to build another quantum gate, tracking Ben’s movements, and discretely taking intel from the Foundation.  Sue is tasked with tracking him down because pattern recognition is her thing, remember?  She realizes what Reed’s been doing because one of the logins to the Foundation is from “capt. n3m0,” because “20,000 Leagues” was his thing, remember?

The government sends a squad of goons along with Ben to retrieve Reed so he can finish a second quantum gate for them (the first one was destroyed by the superpowers incident).  They arrive at his hidey-hole in Peru and for a good one-to-two-minutes, we get an action scene of Reed “fighting” government guys.  Then Ben shows up and head butts him unconscious.  I’d say that the action was fun while it lasted, but I’d be lying.  "Fant4stic" and the concept of "fun" do not occupy the same dimension.

Back at HQ, Reed figures out the final thing they need for the second gate to work within minutes, because he’s just that ding-dang smart.  It’s activated and some NASA guys go through it that very day.  After they land on Planet Zero, Reed watches the camera feed from the teleporter pods and exclaims that the landscape has changed; it never occurs to him that maybe the NASA team landed on a different part of the planet than he did.  The NASA team then sees something moving in the distance: Victor, somehow still alive after all these months.

If you followed “Fant4stic”’s marketing at all, you may have noticed that its lead villain was suspiciously absent from most of it.  That’s because the post-Peezo Victor looks terrible.  His spacesuit has melted onto him and he now has spots that glow green with hokey-looking space energy.  Also, Victor has inexplicably taken to wearing a cape with a hood.  I choose to believe he sewed it out of rocks, because as we find out later, Doom’s main power is doing stuff with rocks.

Back in the base, Doom explains that the planet is something of a living organism that sustained him for those many months, and that there’s potential for new life on Peezo.  Capitalizing on his earlier nihilistic ramblings, he then decides that the best way to fuel Peezo’s reinvention as a life-bearing planet is to demolish the Earth and use its resources.  He begins using his vaguely-defined telekinetic powers to kill scientists and blow up Government Man before storming through the base to get back to the gate to Peezo, overloading it in order to create a black hole.  Also, he kills Franklin Storm on the way back because what would a superhero story be without a dead parent?

Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben, united for the first time ever in the movie (FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE IT ENDS), follow Doom onto Peezo in a sequence that looks like the “Doctor Who” opening, prompting me to sing the “Doctor Who” theme song.  After Doom puts on his fabulous cape again, he uses a bunch of rocks to build a device that shoots a blue beam into the sky (because blue beams have become prerequisite for superhero movies).

The Four arrive and fight Doom, but he beats them all by throwing rocks at them.  However, one of the Four (I forget which. Probably Reed) knocks him down long enough for Reed to give a “teamwork is good, you guys” speech, which leads to the unbeatable strategy of “everybody punch the bad guy at the same time.”  Ridiculously, this is enough to knock Doom into the big blue science beam and disintegrate him.  The Four then escape Peezo together through the portal, I sing the “Doctor Who” theme again, a big fuck-off crater appears in the middle of upstate New York, and the day is saved.

Finally, we get a wrap-up where new government men agree to give the Four carte blanche for doing their research, because apparently all they needed to get that was to have Ben intimidate a few generals.  The finishing touch is Reed coming up with a name for his new superhero team…but before he can say it, he’s cut off by the end credits.  Apparently, the filmmakers decided that that gag was so funny in “Avengers: Age of Ultron” that it would work okay here too.

“Fant4stic” is a dud; not a spectacular failure or a misfire, but a dull, drab, lifeless movie, pushed forward by an unengaging script and half-hearted performances.  It's not just uninterested in entertaining its audience, it doesn't seem to want to say or do anything new or exciting with its source material.  Honestly, there’s so little effort and enthusiasm in this picture that it’s not even worth hating.  Fox has said they have plans for a sequel but I sincerely doubt we’ll ever see one.  Even if you love superheroes or science-fiction, give this one a hard pass.

Movie Review: "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation" (Christopher McQuarrie, 2015)

STUDIO SPIES by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Rebecca Ferguson and Tom Cruise in Mr. McQuarrie's new film. Photo ©Paramount Pictures

 

Like a dagger on two legs, Tom Cruise runs into the first scene of “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.”  The scene is set on an airfield, where lush green grasses contrast with Mr. Cruise’s neat black suit as he appears out of nowhere, just in time to leap aboard a jet plane and, as he has done in numerous trailers and promotional videos, dangle off the aircraft as it rises into a punishing gust.

            “Rogue Nation” is packed with such flights of fancy.  That does not make it an especially good film, but it doesn’t make it a bad one either.  Pre-Griffith filmmakers, after all, were proponents of “the cinema of attractions,” believing that gasp-worthy images were a highbrow art of their own that didn’t demand a sophisticated story.  Glimpsed in this light, “Rogue Nation,” can almost mask its identity as a crude cash grab.

            “Rogue Nation” features several of the “Mission” saga’s familiar spunky spies.  Jeremy Renner is on hand as the deadpan Brandt; Simon Pegg skitters about as the ferrety tech head Benji; and Mr. Cruise’s teeth-bared superspy Ethan Hunt remains in the spotlight, punching, racing, and roaring.  Here, he reunites with the rest of the players to beat up on “the syndicate,” a cabal of nasty agents whose generic motives invite the kind nonsensical blather about betrayal and revenge that twenty-first century espionage thrillers live, die, and profit from.

            It is perhaps a little too easy to be cynical about these kinds of formulaic summer entertainments.  After all, there is a certain kind of beauty to Mr. McQuarrie’s modulation of action and suspense.  Whereas most blockbuster directors pummel us with explosive debris, Mr. McQuarrie handles his movie with sublime finesse, especially in a remarkably coherent chase across Morocco (where Mr. Cruise’s knee practically scrapes the highway as he takes his motorcycle through a painfully tight turn).  

            In that moment, “Rogue Nation” leaps toward the ring of famous films whose energy was crystallized by adrenaline-spitting car chases—masterworks of fender-bending like “The Bourne Identity,” “Drive,” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.”  But in those films, violence and action were always an expression of emotion, of a man or woman’s desperation to live, not just quell another doomsday scenario.  “Rogue Nation” is far more sedate.  True, the film tries to jolt Ethan by killing off one of his female contacts right after the credits, but at the end of the day, her death is just fuel to get him on to the next mission.

Movie Review: "Testament of Youth" (James Kent, 2015)

PEACEFUL CRUSADE by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Alicia Vikander is Vera Britain in Mr. Kent's movie. Photo ©Sony Pictures Classics

 

“Testament of Youth” stars the fast-rising Alicia Vikander (portrayer of the serene robot Ava in “Ex Machina”) as Vera Britain, a young woman who’s forced to watch all the men she knows (lover, brother, friend) trek off to the battlefields of World War I.  Actually, she doesn’t just watch; Vera’s role in the war is arguably more crucial.  Shunting aside her studies at Oxford, she becomes a nurse, thrusting herself into the same muck and blood that soldiers are marching through and dying in.

            Is there any point mentioning that about half the cast of “Testament of Youth” dies?  Hardly; this is a war film, and a dreary one at that.  But when Vera stands before a jeering crowd to rail against not just this war, but all wars, I felt something.  As it turns out, the film (which was drawn from the real Vera’s memoir) hinges on a great coup—it never telegraphs the steady build of Vera’s pacifist conviction.  Instead, it lets its earnest call to peace seep through Ms. Vikander’s heartbroken face, until all her grief, rage, and idealism burst out in one beautiful moment that can’t be shaken from your consciousness.