I’ve managed to watch a few films this Summer, crazy busy as it is.
Moonrise Kingdom
2012. Directed by Wes Anderson
I love Wes Anderson. He’s one of my favorite film directors. His style is overwhelming and a tad too silly sometimes, but he tells unique stories with such deep emotional resonance that I’m always left applauding and forgiving any and all of his stylistic idiosyncrasies. This is the first of his films that made me pause, though. It’s a sweet tale about two young misfits who run off together in the woods. Set in the nostalgia of the 1960s on a idylic island somewhere in New England, the film just screams Norman Rockwell and classic boys adventure novels. The runaway girl and boy are desperately searched for by their dysfunctional families and the oddball cast of characters that populate the island, all culminating in a bizarre chase scene that involves massive armies of Boy Scouts, what seems like Noah’s flood, and repeated run-ins with lightning. The children and their searchers find grace at the end of it all, and the peace of the island is restored. The art design is lovely, the actors are clearly all having a blast and the film is sweet, but it takes a major misstep about halfway through. Wes Anderson asks the two young actors to play a brief scene that is obviously embarrassing for both of them and feels more like exploitation than realism. Without this scene, Moonrise Kingdom is a lovely film about misfits and the grace they find. With it, it just tastes sour.
This Must Be The Place
2011. Directed by Paolo Sorrentino
In This Must Be The Place, Sean Penn plays a goth rocker stuck in a twenty year tragedy. He wears his hair dyed black and tangled and he painstakingly applies lip stick and dark eye shadow every morning. He lives in a mansion in Ireland with his happy-go-lucky firefighter wife and sad goth niece. When his father dies, he decides to return to America to find the Nazi war criminal who tormented him. What follows is a meditative trek across America, full of sublime imagery and bizarre revelations. Penn is great as the aging rocker, speaking in a blank-faced, squeaky falsetto, and the film really just seems to be an excuse to let him play this strange character. That would have been fine, but the director seems to be aiming for a higher goal, attempting to address the meaning of human loss, evil and suffering. Sadly, whatever he’s trying to say comes off as complete incoherence, and we’re left with Penn’s otherwise wonderful character spewing random truisms and staring into space a lot in an attempt to compensate. At the end of the day, its a good film that tells a unique tale. It just trips over its own feet when it’s trying to be deep.
John Carter
2012. Directed by Andrew Stanton
John Carter is a massive exercise in world building that took my breath away. It’s built with love and care, obviously a tribute to its original creator, Edgar Rice Burrows. You can just see the money being spent here, from the thousands of intricately animated green multi-armed aliens, to the gigantic CG set pieces and richly clothed crowd scenes. It’s a shame that the story wasn’t more interesting, or the characters more engaging. As it is, John Carter is middle of the road fare: okay storytelling, but nothing special, no spark. Unfortunately for Disney, for films this big, this much about world building to work, that spark is essential. Star Wars had it. John Carter does not.
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
1983. Directed by Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam
I’ve always wondered why I’ve never seen this film. Monty Python is one of my favorite things ever. I have almost every sketch memorized and nothing makes me laugh harder. Python is brilliant for its great comedic acting and intelligent writing, so what two things were thrown out the window in this film? Great comedic acting and intelligent writing. The whole cast seems like they’re phoning it in and the script relies almost entirely on overproduced visual gags which was never a hallmark of the show. The few bits that are about the writing just seem like dull retreads of old sketches, and the final product feels like a bunch of people pretending to be Monty Python. Add to that offensive and pointless nudity, gore and an overwhelming sense of ill-will and you get the morass that is The Meaning of Life. I turned it off before it was through. Now I know why I’ve never seen this film.