Shared Darkness

The documentary Bully arrives in theaters after much hullabaloo — it initially received a restricted rating from the Motion Picture Association of America due to the presence of a handful of curse words, sparking a social media campaign embraced by many celebrities — again confirming the marketing prowess of Harvey Weinstein. After unsuccessful attempts to reclassify the film as PG-13 Stateside, the mogul’s distribution company, the Weinstein Company, is releasing the movie unrated, and the AMC Theatres chain is allowing minors with a note from their parent or guardian to see the film — a reflective and affecting but still flawed cinematic entreaty which inveighs against teen-on-teen harassment.

Bully is constructed to elicit emotional response, for sure, and there’s an agonizing poignance to some of its pedestrian eloquence, which outstrips most scripted heartbreak. Yet for every illuminating interview tidbit and additional moment of discerning remove — as when director Lee Hirsch lingers on a near catatonic kid, allowing an audience the possibility of contemplating a seething future rage — Bully also seems to miss an opportunity to dig a bit deeper, psychologically, mainly because it doesn’t elicit explanations of mindset from those doing some of the bullying. This would crucially underscore the ineffectiveness and socially unacceptable nature of this behavior, show that this kind of acting out stems from its own type of trauma, and also illustrate that roles are often flipped later in life — with victims becoming victimizers, certainly emotionally if not physically. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. For more information on the film, click here. (The Weinstein Company, unrated, 98 minutes)

A generation or two ago, fantasy genre adventures like Wrath of the Titans still had some semblance of DNA connection to their B-picture forebears, the matinee serials that featured swashbuckling, sword-slinging heroes and backlot action shenanigans. Now, they’re just enormously budgeted machines, tent-pole franchises designed to necessarily wow with state-of-the-art digital wizardry and seemingly interchangeable heroes and circumstances. Such is the case with this inoffensive and slick if still rather middling upgrade over 2010’s Clash of the Titans, which ladles mythological spectacle on top of silly end-of-the-world boilerplate, and puts its characters through an effects laden steeplechase that squeezes out a few moments of synthetic bedazzlement that evaporate upon exiting from the theater. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Warner Bros., PG-13, 99 minutes)

The United States’ military forays into the Middle East over the past decade-plus have resulted in a fair number of big screen dramas of domestic re-entry, but few have the thoughtful delicacy of the quiet, lived-in Return, whose very title has a relaxed connotation that the movie robustly embodies. Spurning crazy outburst or demonstrative dramatic flair for something more measured, fragile and almost ineffable, writer-director Liza Johnson‘s narrative feature film debut is built around a standout performance from ex-Freaks and Geeks and ER star Linda Cardellini, as well as a nice supporting turn from Michael Shannon. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Focus World, R, 97 minutes)

The latest young adult literary property and blockbuster-teen-film-franchise-in-waiting, The Hunger Games will certainly make a mint (weekend showings
have already been selling out around the country), and likely rally many
fans of the book series to its defense, but more inquisitive minds will
find its cinematic adaptation lacking in some, if not many, crucial
respects.

Adapted by director Gary Ross, Billy Ray and Suzanne Collins from the latter’s bestselling novel of the same name, the film unfolds in a post-apocalyptic future, on the ruins of what was once North America and is now a super-nation known as Panem, divided into a dozen districts. As a twisted annual punishment for a past anti-federal uprising, each compliant district holds a lottery in which one adolescent boy and girl apiece are selected to compete in a televised “tribute,” known as the Hunger Games, in which there is but a single survivor.

After her younger sister is chosen, 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) impulsively volunteers to take her spot and represent the impoverished District 12; baker’s son Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), meanwhile, is chosen as her male counterpart. Whisked off to the fancy Capitol by Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks, sporting a wardrobe seemingly nipped from Helena Bonham Carter in Alice in Wonderland), Peeta and Katniss are soon introduced to their assigned mentor, former winner (and current lush) Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson).

After a regimented system of combat and survival training, the contestants are released into a cordoned off wilderness, and the bloodletting begins. Combatants from the elite Districts 1 and 2, located closest to the Capitol, are the aristocratic blue-bloods of this game, training in special academies for years before the competition. Katniss, though, is a skilled hunter with the bow and arrow, and repairs deep into the forest to try to outwit and outlast the others. Peeta at first seems willing to sell her out to the others for his own temporary advantage, but soon a powerful alliance and burgeoning romance between the pair blossoms, perhaps forcing a change in the Hunger Games’ rules.

Taking its inspiration from television’s Survivor, American Idol and many other sources, including The Running Man and 2001’s Series 7: The Contenders, The Hunger Games on the surface seems interested in exploring darker human appetites and impulses that feed so much of our present-day tabloid culture. Except that it doesn’t really exploit or explore anything it sets up, instead diddling around with sappy, sub-par teen romance. Haymitch makes mention of playing nice for the cameras in order to curry sponsors, but there’s no real follow-up with this, nor an explication of the events’ rules, or how the televised extravaganza fits into the broader dystopian society. Ross’ vision for this story is very programmatic, and its finale — a fight against three remaining contestants on top of a Frank Gehry sculpture in the middle of a field — is so predictable as to almost elicit yawns.

Basically, the film seems oddly disengaged from the potential richness of its conceit, and interested in little more than a parallel-world representation of the distracting spectacle in which its sub-class is forced to participate.That its politics are shapeless and its social commentary less than trenchant is perhaps hardly surprising in the grand scheme of things, given the hundreds of millions of dollars which distributor Lionsgate wishes to mine from the property, in the form of this movie, its sequels and all sorts of merchandising spin-offs. Still, at a certain point, does mere baseline structural proficience stop being enough for audiences? The Hunger Games just sets its sights on “good enough,” and ergo achieves that result in listless fashion.

Equally problematic is the visual scheme Ross and cinematographer Tom Stern (Million Dollar Baby, J. Edgar) employ, which favors wildly restless, tightly framed hand-held camerawork and close-ups that undercut any potential thrill or pop in the movie’s additionally blandly staged action sequences. For the first forty-plus minutes this is fairly interminable. It settles a bit — once settled in the Capitol, the filmmakers seem less eager to prove how wild and desperate circumstances are for the average citizen — but never comes across as more than a strange masking technique, a substitute for deeper characterization.

Some of the supporting players definitely enliven the proceedings — Banks, Stanley Tucci and especially Harrelson — but they’re still interlopers from a grander world we know little about. Lawrence is a fine actress, as evidenced in Winter’s Bone and Lori Petty’s The Poker House, but she seems a bit too perfect and un-rough-around-the-edges as Katniss. Different strokes, I realize, but a pertinent point of comparison is Saoirse Ronan in Hanna; she anchored that film, physically and emotionally, but also retained a certain feral or socially maladapted quality stemming from her having been raised alone in the woods by her father. Katniss comes from what used to be (and basically remains) rural Appalachia, but seems a bit too at ease with the circumstances around her, burdened by neither wonderment nor the fear of an animal who is lower on the food chain. (Lionsgate, PG-13, 142 minutes)

Simple grace is a quality rarer in modern films than one might expect, as is the yard-by-yard, in-the-trenches slog of messy human connection, absent a lot of cathartic speechifying. Both are on rich display in French import The Kid With a Bike, however, the winner of the Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, and a Best Foreign Language Film Golden Globe nominee. With their latest movie, fraternal portraitists Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne deliver a compelling character study of adolescent emotional dislocation, shining a light on the weight of both nature and nurture.

The Kid With a Bike centers, as one might surmise, on a title character, 11-year-old ward of the state Cyril (newcomer Thomas Doret, an acting neophyte), and his relationship with Samantha (Cecile de France), a hairdresser who is granted part-time custody of him via weekend furloughs, and finds herself surprised at how determined she is to help him. Spare but never without thought and care, the Dardennes’ movie unfolds on a precipice of loss and confusion, teetering in the wind. It’s a stirring reminder of the variety of divergent paths that life affords each of us, and how the more nuanced consideration of those choices and decisions can be corrupted by the white-hot heat of overriding emotion. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the film, meanwhile, click here. (Sundance Selects, unrated, 87 minutes)

A Kiwi-shot period piece Western which details the odd, thawing relationship between a
vulnerable kidnapped woman and her uncouth captor, Good For
Nothing is a movie which tells a pretty simple story but leaves
its quiet mark — to the extent that it imparts one — chiefly via the
unfussy naturalistic performances of its leads. Lacking much in the way
of narrative dynamism, the film should chiefly appeal to genre
enthusiasts.

There’s nothing wildly revelatory about the performances of Cohen Holloway or Inge Rademeyer (above), the latter of whom vaguely recalls Kate Beckinsale. They each show a certain gift and comfort with silence, though, which not all actors possess. If only the movie trusted them enough to spend more time with them instead of dawdling with an in-pursuit posse subplot that doesn’t pay off, Good For Nothing might amount to something a bit more special and memorable. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For more information on the movie, meanwhile, click here. (Screen Media/Mi Films, R, 93 minutes)

An irreverent reboot of the late 1980s TV series that helped launch the career of Johnny Depp, 21 Jump Street only half-heartedly scratches the surface of the more intriguing comedy of young male anxiety at which it hints, preferring instead to target broader laughs. If it gets bogged down a bit in its dutiful inclusion of procedural and action hijinks, the movie still sails on the strength of some of its joke writing, and the chemistry and smart use of its stars, Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Sony, R, 110 minutes)

A colorful, vivacious and faithful CG-animated adaptation of Dr. Seuss same-named children’s book, The Lorax delivers a peppy juvenile adventure along with an underlying ethical message that advises against greed and rampant overconsumption. Some talking heads on the far right side of the political spectrum have already decried this part of the movie as indoctrination, but the fairly innocuous moral slots in comfortably with a burgeoning eco-consciousness that should make the film a solid commercial performer with family audiences, even if it rather heartily leans on kid-pic conventions, and there’s a fundamental disconnect between story elements as discussed and actually rendered. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Universal, PG, 85 minutes)