Movie Review: "Black Mass" (Scott Cooper, 2015)

THE DEVIL WENT DOWN TO SOUTHIE by Mo Shaunette

Above: Johnny Depp is Whitey Bulger in Mr. Cooper’s film.  Photo ©Warner Bros. Pictures

The story of James “Whitey” Bulger is so strange, so larger than life, that it almost begs to be turned into a movie.  Bulger, a Boston gang leader and elder brother to a state senator, made history when he cut a deal with his childhood friend, FBI agent John Connelly: that Bulger would turn over information on his Italian mafia rivals, in exchange for the Bureau turning a blind eye on his crimes.

This partnership lasted for decades, until Bulger’s exposure in 1995 forced him into hiding.  That story was chronicled in the true crime book “Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob” by Dick Lehr and Gerald O’Neill, which has now been adapted to film by director Scott Cooper (with Bulger’s 2011 arrest meaning the story at least has a stamp on the end).

“Black Mass” focuses in the rise of Bulger (Johnny Depp) to power and his eventual fall from grace.  The movie opens in 1975, with Bulger already the leader of the Winter Hill Gang in South Boston and stuck in a turf war with the mafia. S oon, Agent Connolly (Joel Edgerton) makes contact with him and their partnership to take down the Angiulo Brothers begins.  However, even after the mafia is arrested, the alliance continues, with Connolly protecting Bulger from his FBI partners and superiors, until the weight of Bulger’s crimes becomes too massive to be contained and both men are undone by the Bureau.

If there’s anything that hurts “Black Mask,” it’s the film’s screenplay (which was written by Jez Butterworth and Mark Mallouk).  The story occupies an uncomfortable space between reality and fiction; too plodding and aimless to be a polished three-act feature, too sensational and stylized to be a realistic, true-to-life depiction of a man who spent years on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.  The film never takes a strong stance on Bulger’s life—it doesn’t have a handle on who he was beyond the most basic iteration of “a bad man who did bad things.”

The characters in the movie certainly have ideas.  The film’s framing device features former members of Bulger’s inner circle (Jesse Plemons, Rory Cochraine, W. Earl Brown) giving testimony to a DEA agent (Lonnie Farmer), and it’s partially through their eyes that we see the many sides of Bulger: he was a brilliant planner and manipulator, a man protecting Southie from the mafia, an unpredictable psychopath, a ruthless killer, a leader, a mentor, a destroyer, a boss, and occasionally, even a friend.

That said, the script and the director never really get into Bulger’s head; we see his heinous actions, but we don’t understand entirely the motivation behind them, or his ever-shifting personal code of ethics (which is something that only Bulger seems to understand).  There are times when the movie feels less like the character study it’s trying to sell and more like a Wikipedia page recapping events in Bulger’s life.

Thankfully, the portrayal of Bulger himself holds the film together.  It’s sometimes easy to forget just how good an actor Johnny Depp is (given his recent run of bad career moves), but he turns Bulger into something otherworldly.  Wearing prosthetics that make him look like a cross between a Komodo dragon and the grim reaper and speaking in a growling Boston accent that sounds like a chainsaw about to start up, Mr. Depp makes Bulger seem like a demon masquerading as a human being.  True, there are humanizing moments when Bulger interacts with his family or friends, but he always turns on a dime into a remorseless monster when called upon to handle a rat in the gang or a rival criminal.  It’s the unpredictable terror of his very presence that holds the movie together.

The rest of the cast brings it too, including Mr. Edgerton (who makes Connolly’s subtle descent into corruption compelling) and Messrs. Plemons, Cochraine, and Brown, who are convincing both as eager young gangsters and weary older men remembering a life of violence.  However, a lot of the cast feels underutilized.  Benedict Cumberbatch does a fine job as Senator Billy Bulger, but the relationship between him and Whitey is barely touched on in the film and feels like a missed opportunity.  Other performers like Dakota Johnson (as Bulger’s first wife), Kevin Bacon (as Connolly’s FBI superior), and Julianne Nicholson (as Connolly’s wife) turn in good performances, but are mainly present to be victimized by Bulger or brushed off by Connolly.

In the end, “Black Mass” is a mess, but it's a mess with some amount of focus.  The relationship between Whitey Bulger and John Connolly is strong enough to keep the movie interesting and Mr. Cooper does a good job maintaining the tension throughout and making the violence seem brutal and real.  For those reasons, plus Johnny Depp’s captivating performance, I’m giving “Black Mass” a tentative recommendation.  If you’re really in the mood for gangster melodrama, give it a look.

Oscar Season Preview

GOING FOR THE GOLDEN GUY by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Jennifer Lawrence in David O. Russell’s “Joy.”  Photo ©20^TH Century Fox

2015 has already outstripped 2014 in terms of cranking out quality movies.  But the next three months will be the real test, as studios roll out scarlet carpets heralding the arrival of the movies they consider to be Oscar worthy. 

This does not mean the season ahead will be artistically fruitful; the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could never be accused of having faultless taste (this is, after all, the same organization that picked “The King’s Speech” over “Inception”).  But it is true that studios often save their most vibrant, cutting, and convention-busting works for last.

            What follows is a dossier on the awards season movies I’m anticipating most. 

JOY (David O. Russell) With Hollywood slowly awakening to its abysmal lack of diversity, the pop cultural moment has never been riper for a decades-spanning epic about the life of a female business titan.  The ballsy Jennifer Lawrence plays that woman; David O. Russell (whose last film was the manic, heartfelt “American Hustle”) directs.

 

THE MARTIAN (Ridley Scott) Even if Ridley Scott has fallen in our eyes since the heady days of “Blade Runner,” his big studio entertainments usually ooze beautiful colors and provocative ideas.  Hopefully, this one (about a stranded astronaut played by Matt Damon) will too.

THE REVENANT (Alejandro G. Iñárritu) Another Iñárritu opus, his first since the insufferable “Birdman.”  This time, he directs Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass, a nineteenth century hunter who, abandoned by his comrades after being mauled by a bear, went on a muddy quest for revenge (which here is captured by the hard-working cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki).

 

SICARIO (Denis Villeneuve) Denis Villeneuve’s films (including “Enemy” and “Prisoners”) have a way of snaking their way into your skull and preying upon your most mesmerizingly nasty fantasies.  Considering the rapture that greeted this crime thriller’s debut at Cannes, it should do the same.

STAR WARS: EPISODE VII—THE FORCE AWAKENS” (J.J. Abrams) If there’s anyone equipped to infuse a slab of Disney product with genuine emotion and visual grace, it’s Mr. Abrams, the man who reinvented “Star Trek” as a vibrant saga of sacrifice and grief.

 

STEVE JOBS (Danny Boyle) Aside from the attraction of being a biopic of the controversial, ingenious mind behind Apple computers, Mr. Boyle’s new movie offers a meaty part for its star, the always-abounding Michael Fassbender.

Movie Review: "The Diary of a Teenage Girl" (Marielle Heller, 2015)

TORTURED RECOLLECTIONS by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Bel Powley and Kristen Wiig star in Ms. Heller’s new movie.  Photo ©Sony Pictures Classics

In the most memorable scene of Marielle Heller’s 1970s-set film “The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” the film’s sixteen-year-old heroine, Minnie (Bel Powley), drops acid.  She does it right after having sex with her mother’s boyfriend, Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård), who seems pitiful indeed compared to Minnie’s sudden vision—her small feet rising a few inches from the bed as her arms sprout glittering, phoenix-like wings.

            That image is confident, exultant—Minnie is basking in the glow of her ascendant desires.  Yet there is something childish and cartoon-like about her imagined feathery appendages.  Throughout the movie, Minnie tackles trials that would traumatize adults (betrayal, drug use, rape).  But she is still, as the title reminds us, a girl, and her “lover” happens to be a grown man and a child molester.

            With a dopey grin and a cheesecake mustache, Monroe looks less like a lothario than a dull-witted, slimy slug.  He sleeps with Minnie countless times, and she convinces herself that she loves him.  “Don’t you feel like you’re being taken advantage of?” Minnie’s friend Kimmie (Madeleine Waters) asks her over the phone.  Minnie’s only response is injured silence.

            Watching “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” is not a pleasant experience.  Every time Monroe exploits Minnie, she’s pushed deeper into emotional turmoil; late in the film, she even finds herself wandering through the streets of San Francisco, perched on the precipice of homelessness.  Like so many American independent films, this one (which is based on a graphic novel by Phoebe Gloeckner) instinctively zeroes in on myriad bleak outcomes before winging its way toward optimism. 

            Throughout the film, detailed cartoons of Minnie’s erotic fantasies rove, float, and dance across the screen.  Yet in the end, “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” takes an almost puritanical view of sex.  Predators like Monroe may haunt the streets and headlines of America, but the movie uses him not as a character, but as a crutch designed to appease viewers who might be aghast at a film that portrayed sex as something other than deviance.

            In other words, moviegoers probably would have been more shocked if the story had focused on an unexploited, well-adjusted teenage girl discovering her sexuality.  So while Minnie’s late revelation that she doesn’t need male companionship to be happy (“Maybe no one will ever love me,” she declares with an air of confident acceptance) is heartening, it carries a whiff of the monastic because the film is so determined to associate sex with sickos like Monroe.         

Movie Review: "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." (Guy Ritchie, 2015)

SIMPLER TIMES by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer play sparring spies in Mr. Ritchie’s film. Photo ©Warner Bros. Pictures

Shiny, fluffy, and mostly delightful, “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” is the latest frolic from director Guy Ritchie (he adapted the film from a television series).  Most recently, Mr. Ritchie whipped up a frenetic and facile version of Sherlock Holmes; now, he’s moved onto Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill), a tenacious (and one-dimensional) secret agent man working for the CIA at the height of the Cold War. 

After a credits sequence tinged with retro-red headlines, Mr. Ritchie guides us through the concrete-heavy streets of Berlin, where Napoleon pays a visit to Gaby (the indispensable Alicia Vikander), a car mechanic who happens to be the daughter of a Nazi scientist.  Napoleon, we learn, wants to capture Gaby’s father, a man who’s been targeted by the KGB’s Illya Karuyakin (a beautiful blonde monstrosity played by Armie Hammer).

            Illya spends the first leg of the film scampering after Napoleon and Gaby.  Yet it’s the inevitable team-up between these three would-be sleuths that makes “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” at least modestly entertaining.  Unlike the plastic figurine heroes of “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation,” Napoleon, Gaby, and Ilya behave somewhat like real and eccentric human beings, most memorably in a scene where Gaby spins a record, dons some shades, and dances across Illya’s lush hotel room while drunk. 

Shallow Mr. Ritchie may be; conventional he is not.

Summer 2015 Best-To-Worst Movies List

THINGS ARE LOOKING UP by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Riley Keough, Courtney Eaton, and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in “Mad Max: Fury Road.”  Photo ©Warner Bros. Pictures

In the wake of a disappointing 2014, 2015 has risen to startling creative heights.  And while nothing this past summer could compete with the heavy-metal velocity of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” there were other triumphs, including the tender, candy-colored “Inside Out” and a parcel of brilliant indies (“Testament of Youth,” “Dope,” “Infinitely Polar Bear,” etc.).

            So here they are the movies of summer 2015, ranked from best to worst (in my humble opinion).  Bring on the awards season.

1.       “Mad Max: Fury Road” (George Miller)

2.      “Testament of Youth” (James Kent)

3.      “Infinitely Polar Bear” (Maya Forbes)

4.      “Irrational Man” (Woody Allen)

5.      “Inside Out” (Pete Docter)

6.      “Dope” (Rick Fumuyiwa)

7.      “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (Joss Whedon)

8.      “The Man From U.N.C.L.E” (Guy Ritchie)

9.      “She’s Funny That Way” (Peter Bogdanovich)

10.   “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” (Christopher McQuarrie)

11.   “Aloha” (Cameron Crowe)

12.   “Tomorrowland” (Brad Bird)

13.    “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” (Marielle Heller)

14.    “Far From the Madding Crowd” (Thomas Vinterberg)

15.   “Ant-Man” (Peyton Reed)

16.   “Spy” (Paul Feig)

17.   “Trainwreck” (Judd Apatow)

18.    “The Gift” (Joel Edgerton)

19.   “Results” (Andrew Bujalski)

20.  “Fantastic Four”(Josh Trank)

21.   “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” (Alfonso Gomez-Rejon)

Movie Review: "Justice League: Gods and Monsters" (Sam Liu, 2015)

NEW WORLD ORDER by Mo Shaunette

Above: The latest DC animated film unveils a very different Justice League.  Photo ©Warner Home Video

 

“Justice League: Gods and Monsters” has a lot going for it.  It’s a fresh story from Alan Burnett and Bruce Timm (two of the guiding hands in the highly regarded DC Animated Universe), it’s got a great voice cast and strong animation, and it features a wide and varied cast of DC Comics mainstays.  The biggest thing it doesn’t seem to have, however, is a reason to exist—at the end of the film’s seventy-two minutes, I found myself wondering what exactly the point of its story was.  
 

 

            “Gods and Monsters” is what DC Comics would call an “Elseworlds" tale—an out-of-continuity story that re-imagines iconic characters in compellingly bizarre scenarios.  A lot of these “what ifs” have proved fertile ground for exploring questions like, what if Superman’s ship didn’t land in Smallville, Kansas, but in communist Russia?  What if Batman had inherited the Green Lantern ring?  What if the DC heroes were recreated with Marvel’s Stan Lee as writer?  
 

            The conceit of “Gods and Monsters” is simpler.  In the film, a more violent iteration of the Justice League works alongside (but not for) the US government with limited accountability.  Superman (Benjamin Bratt) is now the biological son of General Zod as opposed to Jor-El and was raised by Mexican migrant farmers as opposed to the Kents; Batman (Michael C. Hall) is Dr. Kirk Langstrom, here a scientifically-created vampire as opposed to the monstrous Man-Bat; and Wonder Woman (Tamara Taylor) is Bekka, a relatively minor character from Jack Kirby’s iconic space opera “Fourth World.”
 

            This trio is not as well-liked as most superheroes, and they find tensions running high when they’re framed for the murder of several scientists.  This forces the League to investigate the crimes and improve their relationship with the world at large before the government comes for them.
 

            Our story is largely divided between character pieces that define our heroes and the murder mystery pulling it all forward.  The characterizations turn out to be the strongest parts; familiar in some ways, but different in others.  Superman still carries the weight of responsibility his powers give him, but has more contempt for authority; Batman is still trying to pull something good out of personal tragedy, but is more withdrawn from humanity than ever; Wonder Woman is still estranged from her homeland in the modern world, but is more guarded, distancing herself from personal entanglements.  
 

            The murder mystery isn’t particularly strong, but since there isn’t much to it in the first place, it’s not really a problem.  The culprit’s motives don’t quite in sync up with the rest of the story thematically, and their scheme ends up relying on a lot of variables to pull off, to the point where you have to question its construction.  Granted, our villain is supposed to be somewhat insane, but they’re still supposed to be smarter than that.
 

            As for the movie’s aesthetics, they’re as good as we’ve come to expect from the DC Animated projects.  The voice cast is uniformly strong, with special mention going to Mr. Hall’s monotone Batman (and the fact he’s once again playing a character who kills criminals and collects their blood) and Jason Isaacs as a hermit Lex Luthor.  The action is solid and fast-paced, though it’s still weird for me to see the more gruesome scenes applied to this style of animation.  The score from Hyesu Yang is grand and operatic and fits perfectly with the movie.  It all works, albeit in service to a merely okay story.
 

            “Gods and Monsters” feels more than anything like an exercise for the creators; a chance for the newly-returned Bruce Timm to play around with his toys and hopefully launch a new serial to be used in future movies.  In terms of world-building, it works, but as a standalone story, it just feels incomplete.  If you’ve liked the DC Animated features thus far, you’ll probably find something to like here.  There’s more good than there is bad, there’s just not as much of it as we’re used to.

Movie Review: "The Gift" (Joel Edgerton, 2015)

JUST OUTSIDE THE DOOR by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Rebecca Hall stars as a tormented spouse in Mr. Edgerton’s film.  Photo ©STX Entertainment

 

There are four stars in the icy new horror-thriller “The Gift.”  The first is Joel Edgerton, who plays a wan creep named Gordo; the next two are Rebecca Hall and Jason Bateman as Robyn and Simon, two of Gordo’s victims; and the fourth and most crucial is Rebecca Hall’s hair, which is easily the most expressive performer in the film.  Cut short, it makes her neck look bizarrely long and it bounces at odd angles, looking stylish yet deliberately off-center—not unlike this elegant and deeply muddled movie.
 

            “The Gift” is Mr. Edgerton’s directorial debut (as an actor, his resume encompasses films as diverse as “The Great Gatsby” and “Revenge of the Sith”), and it’s already apparent that he possesses a talent for extreme visual control.  Working with the skilled production designer Richard Sherman (“Breaking Dawn”), he drains the film of color, especially during scenes set in the pristine Los Angeles house that Robyn and Simon move into in the film’s opening moments.

            Soon, however, the film’s dull whites and beiges are breached by the arrival of a red envelope.  And another.  And another.  They’re from Gordo, an old classmate of Simon’s with a penchant for housewarming gifts and a habit of visiting Robyn when she’s home alone.  Supposedly, Gordo has a job, but he seems to have an unusual amount of free time; his pale, friendly face is never far from Simon and Robyn’s front door, where he eagerly waits to be invited inside.

            These are not idle visits; Gordo’s generosity (at one point, he leaves a fleet of orange-finned fish in Robyn and Simon’s front yard pond) is a prelude to acts of sinister mayhem that, at the theater where I saw the film, inspired at least one viewer to unleash several unearthly shrieks.

Still, for all Mr. Edgerton’s skill at building dread, he falters once the buildup is complete.  As accusations are leveled, tears are dripped, and suburban glass is shattered by gunfire, “The Gift” grows increasingly nonsensical.  Of course, there is some pathos—with vague conviction, Mr. Edgerton concocts a back story about how Simon tormented Gordo in high school, suggesting that it is Simon’s own fault that a predator like Gordo exists.  But this juicy idea is spattered by a dull scene where Simon sobs with regret, humbled by his many and varied sins.

            Even worse is the miscasting of Ms. Hall.  Seven years ago, she played a gleefully disdainful tourist in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” a movie that permitted her to unearth her inner Grace Kelly.  But in “The Gift,” she is yet again called upon to play the part of the delicately pained love interest, something that is as boring to watch as it must have been to perform.