Jmunney's Blog

As Above, So Below has one of the most unique horror premises in a while: a team of explorers go spelunking in the catacombs below Paris and as they enter rarely-explored sections, they discover that they might be in a portal to Hell, or something like it.  Too bad it takes forever for the story to actually get around to exploring that premise.  The lead spelunker is multilingual, multi-degreed Scarlett (Perdita Weeks), who is carrying on the work of her late father of finding the Philosopher’s Stone, a legendary substance said to have alchemical and life elixir powers.  A prologue of Scarlet searching for clues in an Iranian cave suggests that the hellish nature of underground locations may not be limited to one place, as she sees a vision of a man hanging himself that serves as a bit of foreshadowing.  Following this prologue is approximately 45 minutes of Scarlet and her crew in Paris figuring out how they are going to enter the catacombs, and it is just as boring as it sounds.

Much has been made of the fact that As Above, So Below is yet another in horror’s found-footage sub-genre, and the talk I have seen is generally bemoaning that there is yet another fake documentary in the arena.  As Above would have worked perfectly fine without this gimmick, even though it actually does attempt some interesting techniques with it, such as placing mounted cameras on everyone’s cave headgear, which solves the problem of limited realistic camera angles.  But, ultimately, this movie does not make sense as found-footage because there is no reason for this footage to be found, because (SPOILER ALERT) multiple characters survive and presumably hold onto the footage.

The failing of As Above, So Below is that all of its worthwhile elements are crammed into the last act.  This is either a failure of pacing, or a failure of not having enough ideas to fill out a feature length.  I actually think it is mostly the former, as the last 15 minutes or so show the weird, exciting adventure that this film could have been all along.  Ultimately the catacombs are less Hell but something closer to purgatory.  It is a gauntlet that can be survived, if those who pass through it prove worthy.  Scarlet and her crew are haunted by terrible memories of their past, specifically, moments when a loved one died that they fear they could have done something to prevent. The ghosts of these loved ones can serve as agents of either retribution or forgiveness, which could have led to some fascinating psychological territory.  But this pattern is a little inconsistent, and it takes too long for it to become clear for it to have its fullest effect.  As Above, So Below does, however, feature a first-person perspective of Scarlet punching not one, but two, monsters in the head, after more than an hour of everyone having no idea how to fend off the evil creatures. C+

I don’t know if the filming-over-11-years gimmick made this happen, or if it was just Richard Linklater’s sensibility, but Boyhood avoided just about every coming-of-age cliché it possibly could.  And let’s be clear: the 11 years of filming was a gimmick.  That’s not a knock – I love gimmicks.  You just gotta commit to them.  And the very nature of this gimmick required commitment.

There are so many moments in Mason Evans, Jr.’s boyhood that seem like they are heading towards the typical melodramatic formula of getting into trouble, followed by confrontations, and then tearful apologies.  Take, for example, Mason drinking beer in his friend’s family cabin, or watching porn with his stepbrother.  These are things that could get him into trouble, but instead, they are just things that happen.  These moments are typical of most boys’ lives.  What is important in portraying them is how each particular boy experiences them.  This extended filmmaking technique proves to be a successful experiment in exploring these moments as they pertain to the meaning of growing up.  A decade on one project has led to wonderfully internalized character work, resulting in one-of-a-kind performances from Ellar Coltrane (Mason), Patricia Arquette (Mason’s mom), Ethan Hawke (Mason, Sr.), and Lorelei Linklater (Mason’s sister). A-

When reviewing the latest Captain America, I diagnosed myself with Superhero Fatigue.  Marvel’s cinematic output has lately been consistent, but safe.  So kudos to them for going unpredictable with Guardians of the Galaxy.  This one is different insofar as it is not really a superhero movie at all, but insted a goofy romp through the universe starring roguish Earthling Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), roguish green woman Gamora (Zoe Saldana), roguish vengeful warrior Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), roguish tree-like humanoid Groot (Vin Diesel), and roguish talking raccoon Rocket (Bradley Cooper, in one of the great voice acting performances of all time).  The “space opera” is a longstanding genre, but it has been a long time since it has been presented as imaginatively and thoughtfully as it is here.

The plot revolves around a MacGuffin: an orb stolen by Quill that is sought by the genocidal Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) of the Kree race.  Like other MacGuffins, this orb may not be what the movie is really about, but it is a bigger deal than most MacGuffins.  Ronan means to use the orb to destroy an entire rival race, and the fight for possession of the orb lasts until the very end.  Thus it is strange – though not necessarily problematically – that the tone remains so lighthearted throughout.  Actually, the mix of light and dark that Guardians pulls off is often a highlight of great adventure films.  It is just too bad that every discussion explaining the orb – and there are a lot of them – is a bunch of gobbledygook.  It also would have been more engaging if Ronan and the other villains (save for Michael Rooker as the bandit Yondu, who was more antagonist than villain) had felt more like characters instead of just pure forces of evil.  Ultimately, Guardians is inconsistent about conveying a high-stakes tone, rendering its thrills not quite as viscerally satisfying as they could have been.  Still, it does pull off the fun side of the adventure genre with no problem, and I imagine it might grow on me, because I could watch a baby tree dance to the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” all day long. B

The premise of Snowpiercer is ostensibly depressing, but in a weird way, it is also optimistic about the current state of the world.  The future ice age of director Bong Joon-ho’s dystopia is caused by an experiment to counteract global warming that works too well.  As the prologue explains, the temperatures were lowered to uninhabitable levels by dropping the cooling agent CW7 all over the planet.  The idea that the solution to global warming could be so simple is naive, but also weirdly hopeful.  Of course, this snowy apocalypse could be interpreted as an argument against attempting to reverse global warming, in that it implies that doing so could lead to the opposite problem.  Ultimately, though, the terms in which Snowpiercer presents this possibility are too simplistic and the movie itself is too insane for anything realistic about the environment to be inferred here.  This setup is just an excuse to have the entire remaining human population trapped on a train that is speeding around the planet, and that proves to be a perfectly fine justification.

Like most dystopian pictures, Snowpiercer is about a fight between the have’s and the have-not’s, and naturally enough, there is a handsome hero (Chris Evans) leading the rebellion.  The particular social inequality of Snowpiercer is not all that unique or meaningful.  But luckily it is not really about the allegory; instead, it is about what life would be like if all of human society (consisting mainly of Koreans, Americans, Brits, and a few Eastern Europeans) were trapped in a confined space.  It has been 17 years since life on the Snowpiercer has begun, so people have settled into it as a home, but there is not really enough room – at least not for everyone – to truly be at home.  Those in the back of the train with the least means cannot afford to be anything other than constant travelers.  Thus, we have a character like Tilda Swinton’s Mason, visiting to impose the rules from the front of the train onto these passengers.  Swinton is typically androgynous and outrageous (making her the perfect actor for this film), and she is also typically nuanced, which is much appreciated for a role that could have been pure evil in other hands.

There is a lived-in griminess to the opening act that effectively sets the stakes of the narrative, but it is not until the middle section that Snowpiercer gets truly bizarre and memorable by showing off the elements of society that are not of the sort in constant flux.  One train car that the rebels make their way through features a middle-school classroom, with Alison Pill in a delightfully deranged turn as the gun-toting, pregnant teacher.  The type of education offered aboard the Snowpiercer is indoctrination to the cult of personality of Wilford, the creator of the titular train.  There is no way to physically cordon the revolution from the schooling, nor is there even an attempt to bother to do so.  But really, the most insane thing about this scenario is the illusion that a normal-looking classroom can remain a sensible idea.

The conclusion of Snowpiercer is well worth discussing, but not worth spoiling except in the vaguest of terms.  It features a surprising turn from an Oscar-nominated actor in a narrative turn that diverges sharply from the rest of the film in a way that was reminiscent of William Hurt’s appearance at the end of A History of Violence.  It plays around with the concluding tropes of dystopian films a fair bit.  Ultimately, Snowpiercer is a singularly bizarre action fantasia with a legendary set design that will not soon be forgotten. A-

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes doesn’t play by the damn dirty rules of Hollywood blockbuster sequels.  While I currently prefer its predecessor, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn may yet supplant it, as it is the type of movie that demands mulling over, which is already one way it sets itself apart.  It is also strikingly small-scale.  Your typical action spectacular is about saving the entire world, while Dawn takes place entirely in and around what remains of San Francisco, even though the whole planet has been decimated by the virus that began spreading at the end of Rise.  That tight focus is simply smart storytelling: the audience can keep track of one emblematic storyline and see how it fits into the larger context.

But what is most striking about how Dawn‘s independently-minded m.o. is its thoughtfulness, and this is especially striking considering how singularly action-oriented it also is.  This is essentially a war movie: when a group of humans who are genetically immune to the virus stumble upon the ape community in the Muir Woods, it leads to a series of conflicts that culminates in an apes-vs.-humans battle for the city.  So obviously there is plenty of action (including several lovingly shot sequences of apes riding horseback), but it is complemented with lots of scenes of talking.  Most of this verbal communication involves the apes, providing a mix of sign language, grunts and screams, and some basic spoken English.  The lines that make up the dialogue are not particularly extraordinary, but the fact that so much screen time is spent on what is essentially the development of a new form of communication is extraordinary.

This ape communication is a key component to how Dawn truly excels.  In portraying the evolution of apes adapting human abilities, this movie essentially presents a species unlike any other that we have seen before.  The original Planet of the Apes just had people in ape costumes, which was fine, but what was started in Rise and now fully realized in Dawn goes beyond just people with ape characteristics or apes with people characteristics.  Andy Serkis, reprising his role here as ape leader Caesar, has been rightly praised as the trailblazer of motion capture acting, but this technology is now strong enough that every ape performer is on his level: among others, there is Toby Kebbell going wild as the rebellious Koba, Karin Konoval supplying peaceful energry as Caesar’s trusted orangutan advisor Maurice, and Judy Greer providing plenty of pathos as Caesar’s wife Cornelia.  The combination here of CGI, practical effects, and the presence of actual individuals produces something that is unknown but familiar.  Too many current action blockbusters rely on CGI to fill everything in and come off as painfully fake.  Dawn goes for a more practical approach but recognizes that the CGI can be corralled to achieve the mark of a successful movie: real connection. B+

Sometimes a story is just too good to screw up.  The music of The Four Seasons is of the variety that you can’t help but sing along and tap your feet to it, and their backstage drama is of the sort that inspired intense loyalty and profound resentment in equal measure.  Jersey Boys is a loud, boisterous affair, and it is therefore ideally suited to the stage.  I have not seen the original musical version, but I can understand why it has been such a big Broadway hit.  The best elements of the film version worked plenty fine on the screen, but I couldn’t help but thinking during each of those moments, “This surely works a lot better on stage.”  John Lloyd Young, Vincent Piazza, Erich Bergen, and Michael Lomenda are uncanny in their channeling of Frankie, Tommy, Bob, and Nick during the musical numbers, but there is an immediacy lacking without the live element.  The fourth-wall breaking narration is a strong device, and the fact that each band member takes a turn with the dictation plays into one of the film’s stated themes (“everyone remembers it how they need to, right?”), but there is a potential intimacy to this technique that cannot quite be fully conveyed at the multiplex.  There is even an all-cast end credits song-and-dance routine that basically screams “Broadway musical closing number!”  What prevents Jersey Boys from being a classic instead of merely good is the risk-averse style of director Clint Eastwood.  Clint is a competent filmmaker: there is nothing in the frame that doesn’t belong there, nor is there a single bad edit.  But he is too content to let the story just speak for itself.  I think where he truly excels is with more challenging material (such as the racially charged Gran Torino or the underrated, spiritually complicated Hereafter), and the degree of difficulty for Jersey Boys simply wasn’t as high as it needed to be.  Its lasting impression is of a great story, but not quite a great filmic experience. B