That Huppert can be scary when she wants to be.
Remember “The Piano Teacher?” And that’s not the only alarming character on her resume.
“Greta” has the French screen legend playing a nice little (not too old) lady whom a helpful coed/waitress (Moretz) returns a lost purse to.
Let the games begin. Not the only purse Greta owns. Not the only “girl” she’s been “helped” by.
Maika Monroe plays Moretz’s Frances’ BFF.
Robert Zemeckis has been known to take on a movie idea simply for the technical challenge it presents. Think of “Forrest Gump” inserted into history, “Polar Express” motion-capturing Tom Hanks, the dazzling starvation stunt of “Cast Away,” the You Will Believe Denzel can fly a jetliner stoned — and UPSIDE down — of “Flight.”
And he does his experimenting with a LOT of other people’s money — every project financed and scaled in blockbuster proportions. Nice work if you can get it.
Sometimes, of course, he lets the technology turn him into the cinema’s Tin Man. All he and his work lacks, in some of these projects, is a heart.
“Welcome to Marwen” allows Zemeckis and the best special effects minds in the movies to turn Steve Carell, Leslie Mann, Diane Kruger, Janelle Monaé and others into very human animated GI Joe and Barbie dolls.
But he brought in Caroline Thompson (“Edward Scissorhands,” “Black Beauty”) to co-script this story of a traumatized artist who self-medicates by acting out vengeance fantasies with dolls in an imaginary World War II combat zone — Marwen, Belgium. And Thompson, Carell and Mann give this exercise in CGI a sensitivity that makes it, if not a stunning success, then at least a fascinating failure — or near failure.
Carell plays Mark Hogancamp, a Navy vet and successful illustrator living in upstate New York, where guys with an artistic sensibility are bound to rub the rednecks the wrong way. Mark “had the memory beaten out of me,” his talent “ripped out of my brain” by five thugs outside the Avalanche Bar, a hate crime that nearly killed him, broke his spirit and crippled his hands so that he’d never make a living drawing again.
But as he waits for the five to be sentenced for their crime, he gets back to creating. He buys dolls at the local hobby shop, where Roberta (Merritt Wever of “Nurse Jackie”) indulges Mark, nurtures him and is tuned in to what he’s doing with those dolls.
Mark gives them names and inserts him into the sets and dioramas he’s constructed in his yard and all through the mobile home where he lives. This is “the garden spot of Belgium,” Marwen, where his alter ego, Capt. Mark “Hogie” Hogancamp, was shot down during World War II, where he runs a local bar — The Ruined Stocking — as he keeps fighting the occupying Germans, who curse him in German every time they’re about to fill him full of lead.
“Sorry, I don’t speak Nazi, Captain!”
Whenever things get dicey for the outnumbered fighter pilot, a quintet of local women, habitues of his bar, show up packing grenades and machine guns, and mow the Nazis down. Because back then, America was unambiguous about Swastika-wearing thugs.
The Women of Marwen, “You dolls,” are his saviors, and Hogie dresses — and undresses them and poses them in provocative ways. Roberta and Caralala (Eiza Gonzalez), the cook he helps out at the local diner, are engrossed in the story — elaborate action/vengeance tableaux — Mark is telling with dolls who represent them, including his Russian caregiver and a couple of other women –his rehab coach (Monaé) — who have been in his life.
Roberta puts up with a lot in letting her doll-avatar take part in these battles for Marwen.
“What happened to my top?”
“It got ripped off!”
“AGAIN?!”
She sees the therapeutic value of this badly-damaged man’s doll posing. Others have seen the aesthetic appeal of Mark’s elaborate tableaux, covering dolls with blood staging atrocities, simulating wartime romance and then photographing the scenes. Those photographs have earned him an upcoming gallery showing.
If only they could be sure he’ll show up at the opening. If only his lawyer (Conrad Coates) can talk Mark into appearing in court so that his attackers get the punishment they deserve.
Leslie Mann plays Nicol, a compassionate veterinarian with her own damage who moves in across the street and finds herself in Mark’s Marwen saga and the object of his delusional romantic fantasies.
Carell is wonderfully subtle in this role, deftly handling Mark’s mania, his meltdowns and the swagger the real Mark cannot manage that his plastic-jointed doll alter ego, Captain Hogie, can.
Carell’s Mark is the very embodiment of a “town character,” timidly tugging a toy Jeep loaded with his Marwen Women everywhere he goes, wincing from blows delivered long ago and blows he fears are to come. It’s a funny performance, “broken” but touching. The trailers for the film suggest schmaltzy, but for me, “Marwen” never gets there.
Mann underplays Nicol as well, suggesting what drew the other supportive women who prop up Mark and figure as heroines in his World War II story to him. She is also the latest woman to ignore the “Don’t get close to Hogie” edict — out of pity, empathy and concern.
She is the audience’s surrogate, the new person to this world who gets Roberta to explain it to her and Mark to chronicle his pain, even though we’ve seen the scrapbook he keeps of newspaper accounts of his beating, graphic photos of his injuries and his scribbled comments in the margins.
“BROKEN.” “WORTHLESS.”
Because some of what’s going is him blaming himself for his injuries. Mark has a thing for women’s shoes, and not just the ones he poses on his dolls.
“They’re called ‘stilettos,” but they won’t be invented until 1954.”
Mark likes wearing women’s shoes. This wrinkle in the story is handled with more sensitivity and less sensationalism than it was in the 2010 documentary “Marwencol,” about Hogancamp’s life and art. The women of Marwen understand it, especially the new woman in town, Nicol. Anybody who has ever lived in a small town will find that a bit of a head-snapper.
But that’s a big theme of the Thompson and Zemeckis script — that “different” is nothing to be ashamed of, that there is no guilt in a little harmless shoe fetish. That’s Mark’s journey, learning that and facing the demons of intolerance who beat him and left him to die.
The knocks against “Welcome to Marwen” begin with the glib pop psychology practiced here and continue through some fairly shameless manipulation. There is no more ham-fisted filmmaker working than Zemeckis when it comes to unnecessarily underlining every BIG MOMENT with a piece of pop music so on-the-nose as to be redundant.
Mark and Hogie’s relationship to the Marwen witch (Diane Kruger, in doll form) is set to a cover of “Spooky,” Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” pops up — as if we can’t figure out Mark’s diagnosis for ourselves. The leggy, Barbie-thin avenging angels of Marwen march up to the Nazis — in stilettos — to the tune of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love.” An abusive bully in Nicol’s life (Neil Jackson, scary good) is a big Ted Nugent fan.
Zemeckis has been doing that since “Forrest Gump,” and I just wish one studio exec would tell him, “No more music clearance money for you, pal. Enough already.” It’s a ridiculous crutch.
Those failings can take one right out of the movie, but they don’t ruin it. Carell and Mann create characters we care for, fear for, and root for even if we know there’s no realistic or practical connection between them. Zemeckis makes Hogancamp’s loosening grasp of the difference between his reality and the real world’s version harrowing and eye-popping.
“Welcome to Marwen” won’t be another Zemeckis blockbuster, won’t be anybody’s idea of Oscar bait. But here’s a thought-provoking holiday movie that gives the viewer something to chew on even if the story feels a trifle undigested, at times.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of fantasy violence, some disturbing images, brief suggestive content, thematic material and language
Cast: Steve Carell, Leslie Mann, Janelle Monae, Diane Kruger, Siobhan Williams, Eiza Gonzalez
Credits: Directed by Robert Zemeckis, script by Caroline Thompson and Robert Zemeckis. A Universal release.
Running time: 1:56
This movie had “Oscar bait” written all over it — another technical tour de force from Robert Zemeckis, with Steve Carell in the Tom Hanks/”Forrest Gump” role — as a mugging victim channeling his psychic wounds through dolls he collects, poses in combat situations.
Our hero photographs those posed, bloodied GI Joes, Barbies and Kens, and this war that he’s fighting in his mind — an imagined World War II Belgian combat zone he calls Marwen — becomes chic and talked about.
It even leads to a documentary, “Marwencol.”
And I’m assuming that is what led Zemeckis to this story and this holiday feel-good epic.
The Oscar bait? Nobody seems to have taken it — no SAG, Golden Globes nominations/recognition. Perhaps it is technically dazzling and Zemeckis ran right up against the limits of what Carell can comfortably get across in a performance (rather like “Beautiful Boy”). Perhaps it isn’t technically dazzling at all, or the story’s been juiced and reduced to romantic/sentimental “recovery” tropes. That’s what the final trailer for the film suggests.
Still, I’ve been looking forward to it, as have millions of others. How do I know? I’ve literally been dining out on my review of “Marwencol,” written in 2010, producing staggering online traffic all this year thanks to interest in this movie.
It might be the holiday release that is actually “about something,” as I like to say when criticizing popcorn pics, comic book movies and even “Mary Poppins Returns,” which at least is about something.
“Welcome to Marwen” opens Friday. Reviews are embargoed until late tonight, which usually isn’t a good sign. Awards groups have already seen it. But there’s always the chance that Universal is hoping to take the world by surprise with it.
Fingers crossed.
Don’t be fooled by the wallow in ’80s nostalgia — music, fashion, the bad TV. It’s just naked pandering to its “I grew UP with ‘Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye!” first-gen fans.
What the “Bumblebee” reboot of “Transformers” really offers is what the TV show that spawned it had going for it — childish innocence. It’s a 12-and-under action picture, PG-13 or not, with robot-on-robot violence, simple jokes, a heaping helping of cute, cornball and unreal “liquidation” deaths.
What screenwriter Christina Hodson delivers is an appealing heroine, an adorably vulnerable robot, all alone among the Mean Old Earthlings, and something this insanely successful but ever-so-empty-headed franchise has never had — charm.
She’s concocted a prequel — “How Bumblebee Lost his Voice” — that rigidly adheres to the cars-turn-to-robots-and-befriend-humans formula. She wrings a few laughs out of sight gags and knowing ’80s references — “ALF! ‘Hey WILLY!'”
And while “Bumblebee” never achieves the antic, self-mocking giddiness of the first 45 minutes of that first “Transformers” film, it’s at least relatively painless — more than you could say for the Mark Wahlberg years.
Animation veteran turned feature director Travis Knight gives the transformations a tactile reality and the epic robot brawls a visual coherence that Michael Bay (still a producer) never did.
The story begins on Cybertron, just as the Autobots Rebellion is failing. Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen) sends B-127 (voiced by Dylan O’Brien) from the crumbling planet (another Krypton/Atlantis collapse) to Earth, an advance scout for the base Prime plans to use to stage the rebels’ comeback.
But B-127 crashes into the middle of an Army training exercise being run by Agent Burns (John Cena, funny), and in the ensuing mayhem, is smashed up by a pursuing Decepticon. No more voice.
B-127 lays low as a vintage VW Beetle, which is how grease-monkey teen Charlie (Hailee Steinfeld of “True Grit”) finds him. She gets the VW running at Uncle Hank’s (Len Cariou) boatyard, and drives it all the way home without knowing she’s been wrenching a robot.
He had a beehive in his trunk, so she gives the mute machine, given to cowering in the corner (battle fatigue), his name.
But the Decepticons are on his trail, and they enlist an enthusiastic scientist (John Ortiz) and the reluctant US military (Burns/Cena) in the hunt.
Angela Bassett voices Shatter, the evil genius of Team Decepticon, the one who purrs, “Take me to your leader.” Burns isn’t hearing it.
“They call themselves DECEPTICONS! That doesn’t set off any RED FLAGS?”
The line should be “RAISE any RED FLAGS” or “set off any ALARMS?” But never mind.
Charlie, a former competitive diver who lost her dad a few years before, has to protect Bumblebee, get over her phobia about diving, placate her mom (Pamela Adlon, wasted in this) and maybe notice the cute boy next door (Jorge Lendeborg Jr., dull) who has a crush on her which he’s too nerdy/shy to act on.
The girl-robot bonding stuff is sweet…ish. Charlie is the one who makes Bumblebee talk via taped music, which he learns to appreciate via her passion for The Smiths, Sammy Hagar, Rick Astley and “The Breakfast Club.”
The romance is chaste, strictly a non-starter, and perhaps the clearest sign that they’re taking this franchise back to little kids who buy the toys — and NOT the people who keep such toys in their original packaging. No hint of Megan Fox/Shia LaBeouf heat, no leering, lingering shots of cleavage, very little swearing.
The violence is just rough enough, with humans succumbing in explosions of goo.
“I like the way they POP,” Decepticon Shatter (Justin Theroux) jokes.
There’s little that could be called adult in either the humor (muted, limited) or situations. So of the three popcorn pictures this holiday season presents, “Bumblebee” stands out as the most infantile. Girl-powered or not, it’s not really about anything, any more than “Spider-Man/Spider-Verse” or “Aquaman.”
But I dare say if I was 11 I’d think it was two hours well-spent. I’d want the toys, and I’d definitely break the seal on the packaging.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action violence
CastL Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, Angela Bassett, Justin Theroux, Pamela Adlon, the voice of Peter Cullen
Credits: Directed by Travis Knight, script by Christina Hodson. A Paramount release.
Running time: 1:53
Spencer Locke’s from Winter Park, Fla., if memory serves — for our “Shadow of the Mouse” readers.
Great to see Lin Shaye and Tony Todd having this adorable third act in their horror film careers.
“The Final Wish” opens Jan. 24.
The Motion Picture Academy continues to try and muzzle the impact of the Golden Globes by unleashing a raft of “short lists” — radically narrowing the list of films that will be eligible for Academy awards a month before actual Oscar nominations are announced.
Some of the suspense is taken away, but some intrigue is revealed in how the field has been narrowed this far already.
For instance — the documentary short list. Five of these films will be nominated for an Oscar.
“Charm City”
“Communion”
“Crime + Punishment”
“Dark Money”
“The Distant Barking of Dogs”
“Free Solo”
“Hale County This Morning, This Evening”
“Minding the Gap”
“Of Fathers and Sons”
“On Her Shoulders”
“RBG”
“Shirkers”
“The Silence of Others”
“Three Identical Strangers”
“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”
I’ve seen most of them, and there are so many popular and/or sentimental favorites, that the Academy could ALMOST make this category one people pay attention to this year.
No, Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 11/9” isn’t here.
But “RBG,” the Ruth Bader Ginsburg doc is. As is the delightful and dark “Three Identical Strangers.” The climbing community will get all worked up that “Free Solo” is on the short list, but not “The Dawn Wall.
I’d call “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” the favorite out of this lot, and a LOT of people saw it and will getting around to seeing it.
The Best Foreign Language Film short list has three potential winners — four, if you count the push that “Capernaum” is getting from the likes of NPR. Five films from this list will be Oscar nominated.
Colombia, “Birds of Passage”
Denmark, “The Guilty”
Germany, “Never Look Away”
Japan, “Shoplifters”
Kazakhstan, “Ayka”
Lebanon, “Capernaum”
Mexico, “Roma”
Poland, “Cold War”
South Korea, “Burning”
“Roma” should be the favorite, and really, this is the best place to honor Alfonso Cuaron’s personal memoir of growing up in Mexico in the turmoil of 1970. I’m not one of the “Roma” worshippers — a good film getting praised to the high heavens when A) it rambles and meanders and spreads its few dramatic or comic moments out over a long period of time, B) those moments aren’t of the heart-stopping variety and C) it has the flattest, dullest black and white cinematography imaginable.
But I liked the film and say, honor Cuaron and honor Mexico with this award, if you must. So long as nobody calls this Netflix production “best picture.”
MY FAVORITE foreign language film this year was the Japanese drama “Shoplifters.”
There’s buzz for “Cold War,” too, and Korea’s “Burning.”
Best Original Song’s shortlist is where “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” could land a nomination.
Even if you figure the best songs from “Mary Poppins Returns” have the best shot at winning.
“When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings” from “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”
“Treasure” from “Beautiful Boy”
“All The Stars” from “Black Panther”
“Revelation” from “Boy Erased”
“Girl In The Movies” from “Dumplin’”
“We Won’t Move” from “The Hate U Give”
“The Place Where Lost Things Go” from “Mary Poppins Returns”
“Trip A Little Light Fantastic” from “Mary Poppins Returns”
“Keep Reachin’” from “Quincy”
“I’ll Fight” from “RBG”
“A Place Called Slaughter Race” from “Ralph Breaks the Internet”
“OYAHYTT” from “Sorry to Bother You”
“Shallow” from “A Star Is Born”
“Suspirium” from “Suspiria”
“The Big Unknown” from “Widows”
Best Music? Anybody’s guess.
“Annihilation”
“Avengers: Infinity War”
“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”
“Black Panther”
“BlacKkKlansman”
“Crazy Rich Asians”
“The Death of Stalin”
“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald”
“First Man”
“If Beale Street Could Talk”
“Isle of Dogs”
“Mary Poppins Returns”
“A Quiet Place”
“Ready Player One”
“Vice”
If you want to SHORTEN the Academy Awards telecast, the best place to start would be moving honoring the short film winners off-stage and not on the broadcast. But nobody asked me.
Best Animated Short short list? Pixar’s “Bao,” attached to their last feature film release, has to be the favorite.
“Age of Sail”
“Animal Behaviour”
“Bao”
“Bilby”
“Bird Karma”
“Late Afternoon”
“Lost & Found”
“One Small Step”
“Pépé le Morse”
“Weekends”
Best Live Action Short short list.
Caroline”
“Chuchotage”
“Detainment”
“Fauve”
“Icare”
“Marguerite”
“May Day”
“Mother”
“Skin”
“Wale”
Best Makeup? You could guess these if you went to the movies much this year. “Black Panther” might be the favorite here, unless “Vice” has some impact on the evening.
“Black Panther”
“Bohemian Rhapsody”
“Border”
“Mary Queen of Scots”
“Stan & Ollie”
“Suspiria”
“Vice”
Two hours and twenty three minutes is a long enough time to ponder just how perfect Jason Momoa’s casting as Aquaman is. Of course, his few minutes in “Justice League” and the two and a half minute trailers for “Aquaman” made that clear in a less Bollywood-length span.
But it’s also time enough to contemplate how Warner Brothers, custodians of the DC Universe and famed within the industry as the class act of Hollywood, where talent flocks to be coddled, indulged and showcased in posh Golden Age of Hollywood productions, can’t seem to manage that Marvel Studios touch.
You’d think that if Christopher Nolan isn’t available, they’d poach Jon Favreau or Kenneth Branagh to direct. They’d hire teams of script analysts to judge screenwriting talent fit to cook up a decent version of the “origin story,” one at least as good as “Wonder Woman,” which wasn’t terribly original, but worked and was directed by Patty Jenkins with a light touch.
Maybe it’s just the source material, I was thinking, well into the second hour of this senseless undersea quest/brawl/stunt and effects spectacle. Too many DC stories are of “chosen ones,” with only the least interesting Marvel origin (“Thor”) having that un-American “to the manner born” entitled-to-lead ethos.
Which is why I suggested hiring “Thor” director and Shakespearean Branagh. Brits get that whole royalty thing. But never mind. The deft director of “Saw” and “Insidious” will have to do. Only he doesn’t.
“Aquaman” introduces the myth, of the Queen of Atlantis (Nicole Kidman), on the lam and washing ashore in Maine where she falls for a lighthouse keeper (Temuera Morrison) and makes little future King Arthur (Curry), a “half-breed” boy who can swim like a fish and talk to the fish and fend off bullies with the help of his pals with fins.
Yeah, you saw the trailer. You know the aquarium scene’s punchline.
Years later, that queen’s other son (Patrick Wilson) is hellbent on becoming “Ocean Master,” making the various other undersea realms (“Realm of the Fishermen,” “Realm of the Trenches,” etc.) subservient to Atlantis.
Then, he can teach those polluting, killing land-dwellers (us) a lesson for the ages.
Only his flaming redheaded intended (Amber Heard) isn’t having it, and sets off to fetch man mountain Arthur (Momoa) from his life of fighting pirates, saving Russian submariners (Make Atlantis Great Again?), flipping his long locks and swilling beer to take his “rightful place” on the throne.
Arthur has his hero’s quest — several, actually — which takes him and Mera (Heard) from the Sahara to assorted undersea kingdoms, extant and extinct, a tidal wave to survive, gladiatorial combat to endure, a second villain (pirate Black Manta, dully played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) to fend off and the counsel of the wise “vizier” Vulko (Willem Dafoe) to consider.
He never has to deal with Mera’s compromised undersea king dad (Dolph Lundgren in red hair and beard, quite cool).
Momoa’s magnificent build, flowing hair and swagger are put to good use throughout. Those who only know him from “Conan” (he was young and not as interesting) and his TV work on “Game of Thrones” and “Red Road” have missed him growing into this funny, brooding self-mocking Hawaiian hunk. Indie films like “Road to Paloma,” “Sugar Mountain” and “Wolves” have readied him for this sort of stardom.
His promotional appearances for the film have included performing a Maori/Polynesian “haka” chant with his boys.
But aside from the odd, well-timed bit of swearing and the occasional one-liner, he’s given too little to play with here.
“Ask the sea for mercy,” he spits at the murderous pirates.
“Heads up, We’ve got BOGEYS on our six!” he shouts at Atlantean undersea pilot Mera in one chase.
“What does that even MEAN?”
Director James Wan and the many-handed script just keep piling up new settings, clever effects such as the watery hologram King Orm (Wilson) used to communicates with the hapless (and misplaced for most of the movie) Black Manta.
The tidal wave suggests Warners is ready to do the Hollywood remake of the Norwegian films “The Wave” and “The Quake” (now in theaters and much better than this).
Is it the ongoing presence of “Superman” mis-director Zack Snyder on these productions that gives each this incurable case of elephantiasis? Because “Aquaman” has that usual DC bloat about it, too much attempted, a movie not trimmed (in the script stage) into its best, most coherent story, sharpest jokes and most important confrontations.
The funniest sequence is the battle royale the king and Arthur fight in front of all of Atlantis, where Arthur’s disqualifications for the throne are listed — “land-dweller, likes beer.”
The best joke here is a throw-away, the TV commercial playing when Arthur’s dad rescues his wounded mom in Maine. It’s 1985, and the TV ad is for the late British funnyman Arthur Treacher’s fast food franchise, “Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips.” Is that where they got Arthur’s name?
“Aquaman” is already an international blockbuster, so perhaps they’ll do better by Momoa next time. A tip for Warners, though. If you’re making a movie about fish, think “poached” not deep fried. Steal yourself some Marvel talent if you want to give this guy a chance.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for some language
Cast: Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Patrick Wilson, Willem Dafoe, Nicole Kidman
Credits: Directed by James Wan, script by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall. A Warner Bros. release.
Running time: 2:23
Peter Jackson’s “They Shall Not Grow Old,” his much-ballyhooed colorized documentary of World War I from the British Tommy’s trench–eye-view of the fighting, almost lives up to its hype.
It is immersive, letting us hear and feel the concussion of artillery, if not the whistling hail of bullets and the desperation and fury of hand to hand combat.
This is very old and for any History Channel or PBS or even CBS viewer — which broadcast hours of this stuff on TV in the ’60s — somewhat familiar footage, British Imperial War Museum black and white, 18 frames-per-second newsreel and government documentary footage of what “The Great War” was really like — 100 years ago.
Jackson edits this material into a bottom-of-the-ranks look at this “War to End All Wars,” screening it over archival oral history interviews with legions of unnamed survivors — recordings probably from the late 1950s or so, from the sounds of the men.
It paints a fairly thorough view of the British experience of the war from the view of the men who fought it. The myopia of the trenchworks, the narrow focus of “staying alive” and “having a job and getting on with it,” the very essence of keeping calm and “carrying on,” means that we see no maps, hear no historians declaiming the strategies, the ebb and flow of the war, or even the arrival of the Americans — which turned the tide in 1918.
These fellows had no experience of that, and when the Armistice was announced, they admit there was “no cheering” or celebrating, no feeling of “We’ve won.” Just exhaustion, followed by relief followed by bitter disappointment upon returning home.
One soldier recalls being accosted by women in 1914, harassed with “Why aren’t YOU in uniform?” One slipped a white feather, denoting cowardice, onto his person. There was no British “Lysistrata,” women taking the lead in preventing slaughter. Patriotism among those with no risk of being exposed to combat was universal.
What Jackson wanted to do was turn New Zealand’s digital effects wizards loose on a process that Ted Turner made infamous 30 years ago, ruining “Casablanca” and other black and white classics for his TV networks. Jackson’s team was working with much rougher footage, jerky motion due to the 18 (and not 24) frames per second exposure of hand cranked film cameras, washed out images due to the conditions of filming, faces often indistinct if the man being photographed turned his head while being filmed.
Much of that is corrected, and the colorized sequences — establishing shots of marching to the trenches, crawling into them, or rest and recreation scenes when the men were off the line — with dubbed background noise (a preacher giving a funeral sermon, officers giving pep talks, enlisted men bantering) can be impressive.
But quite often the colorized faces seem to drift clear of the footage they’re being superimposed upon. Sprints across No Man’s Land are disembodied, surreal with movement that isn’t remotely human. Explosions look like early TV efforts to videotape fire, fireworks and bomb blasts — diffuse, with an effect smothering what the camera actually captured.
Most impressive are the first tanks and the squat, thunderous howitzers of the day. We’ve never seen these British-invented tanks in their olive drab combat colors, and the jolt of the cannon — one moment has the mere noise blowing tiles off the roof of a nearby French barn — are impressively goosed by adding sound with impact.
It takes its title from the “Ode of Remembrance” portion of the famous “Remembrance Day” poem by Laurence Binyon, “For the Fallen.”
“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.”
So the larger aim here wasn’t so much the “in living (nope) colour” gimmick. This was a generation wiped out on the miscalculations and whims of unrepresentative governments. Jackson wants to pay tribute to those who served and those millions who fell, and cannot help but sentimentalize them, just a little.
A short film of American participation in the war, narrated by Gary Sinise and supporting a US World War I memorial, accompanies this Fathom Events presentation of Jackson’s Warner Brothers production.
I could not help but be moved by the seemingly senseless tragedy, the scale of the horror, which the survivors would only describe as “tension” on those rare occasions when the folks back home wanted to know what the soldiers went through.
Adding color to the carnage of bleeding men, trench foot treatments, smashed corpses and dying horses just underscores the awfulness of it all. Seeing it in 3D will heighten the immersive nature of it all.
But every so often — more often than you’d like — the hyped colorizing looks like rotoscoping — animator Ralph Bakshi’s way of filming “The Lord of the Rings” in the ’70s, Richard Linklater’s “Waking Life” a more recent example. That gives “They Shall Not Grow Old” an impressionistic touch, as Jackson mixes still drawings, recruiting posters and the noble black and white footage to frame the story he tells in largely washed-out colors.
That distracts and lets the effects rob what they’re depicting of some of the power that these images still hold for those who don’t need them colorized to remember the nightmare an entire “lost” generation — killed, wounded or brutalized in other ways — endured. The whole is rather less impressive than the hype (there’s a “making of” short film after each showing) would have us believe.
MPAA Rating: R for disturbing war images
Credits: Directed by Peter Jackson. A Warner Brothers release.
Running time: 1:40
Peter Jackson needs some good news, considering the debacle that the “Mortal Engines” adaptation he produced and co-scripted stands as the biggest bomb of the year — many a year.
So let’s go see his righteous WWI doc (showing Dec. 17 and 27 at select cinemas in the US) and hope we’re not bummed by the colorization of the footage or the added sound of “They Shall Not Grow Old.” My Grandfather fought in the Great War, but as it fades into distant memory, a turning point in human history and the starting point for arguments against war, the military-industrial complex, oligarchs and monarchs is worth remembering.
“Aquaman” opened overseas and has a few foreign and US premiere reviews up already. Indifferent reviews. But we will see for ourselves, shall we? It opens Friday.
A favorite moment from “Between Worlds,” the latest Nicolas Cage Z-movie released to an audience of one, is in a “love scene.”
We’ll call it that, because a more accurate description has to get into a lot of grey areas. His character, a trucker named Joe, is sexing up the overripe daughter (Penelope Mitchell) of his new “choke-me” girlfriend (Franka Potente). The daughter is, we’re pretty sure and Joe is dead-certain, Joe’s trashy late wife whose spirit has popped up in that daughter. And popped up means horned up as well.
Anyway, they’re going at it, and she requests a little dirty talk. And then she gets specific.
“Read to me from ‘Memories,’ Joe.” So he does. He picks up what looks like a publisher’s proof of “Memories,” a self-published porno by…Nicolas Cage. And he reads from its explicit pages.
Nic Cage has already shared his butt crack with us in the film’s opening images. He is playing a trucker, after all. And if there’s one thing the man is, it’s self-aware. He’s an Academy Award winner making another movie probably not worthy of his talents. Might as well have a little fun at his own expense, something to tickle his fans.
“Between Worlds” is a down and dirty supernatural thriller with the faintest veneer of substance covering the sordid.
We meet Joe at a truck stop where he interrupts, he thinks, a serial killer offing a woman in the bathroom.
“We don’t HURT women down South!” Next time, try wrasslin’ a MAN gator!”
Vintage one-liners that add to the cult of Cage. But might this woman, Julie (Franka Potente of “Run Lola Run” and a couple of “Bourne” movies) like being choked? Not exactly.
“You MARAN!” Julie shouts, because she’s German and it doesn’t roll off the tongue in Baden-Baden the way it might in Biloxi.
This “strangling business is inSANE!” Joe bellows. But “I haven’t even GOTTEN to the crazy part,” she promises.
It seems that when she was a kid, she drowned (seen in the opening credits imagery). And something about that experience connected her to “the other side.” When she’s choked, she gets to cross over “Between Worlds.” She’s a trucker herself, and the dude who was choking her? He was doing her a favor.
Her daughter was in a motorcycle wreck and may be dying in a hospital in Mobile. Mom needed to be choked-out “to save her.” She would drift into the afterlife and bring Billie (Mitchell) back.
She explains this to Joe as he’s giving her a lift and telling her his life story. He drinks from a bottomless flask, stomps the clutch, brakes and gas pedals with his cowboy boots and shows her a family photo.
“Wife and daughter. You like? OOOPS! Dead!”
Naturally they end up banging the bedposts and waking the neighbors when she gets home. Her daughter has been “saved.” But was it really Billie’s spirit Julie retrieved from the afterlife?
Writer-director Maria Pulera (“Falsely Accused” with Rosanna Arquette is her best known credit) plays up the Southern Gothic/trailer trashy elements of this tale, wallowing in the seamy sex and testy lust triangle the story sets up.
The soundtrack imitates the spacey mystery of “Twin Peaks,” which is what Pulera might have been going for here.
Billie is possessed by Joe’s even trashier late wife Mary (Lydia Hearst). And Mary’s favorite expression, the phrase she wore out when complaining to her long-haul trucker husband, was “Don’t you EVER leave me alone again!”
Whatever Billie thinks about hurting Mom by sleeping with Mom’s new man, Mary inside of Billie is an uninhibited freak. A banana hammock moment and a gonzo dream-sequence involving hosing off Billie’s motorcycle are classic Cage clips hidden inside “Between Worlds.”
In movies like this, Cage dresses down to the point where no self-respecting woman would want him — “I smell like three days on the road,” and he looks it, too.
That’s part of the joke. Another part is Julie’s slow speed in picking up on the fornicating going on under her roof, which she isn’t participating in.
Figuring things out is only half a solution, though. At some point, we know somebody’s going to have to choke somebody else.
One takes one’s pleasure in Cage’s performances in pictures like this one from his eye for a telling detail. Truck driving isn’t just about Dan Post python-skin cowboy boots, flasks, and those little bottle energy drinks that keep them awake.
It’s about that battered Turkey and the Wolf cap Joe wears on the road. It’s a famed New Orleans eatery, and Cage has called New Orleans home, off and on, for years.
And it’s about Cage relishing any chance he can to Deep South drawl his way through a part, with a “What’s a nice lil’German gal like you doin’ drivin’ a Big Rig in the ol’U-S of A?”
It’s only when the film has as little entertainment value or value value as “Between Worlds” that I’m reminded of the shadow that work like this casts over Cage.
He’s still got fanboy cachet, thanks to the occasional appearance in comic book movies like “Kick-Ass” or the new “Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse.”
But as he has told me a few times over the years in interviews, work isn’t about ego or fans or tax bills, challenging himself or building a nest egg. It’s a compulsion, a mania, a need to not be at home alone with his thoughts.
It’s why Bob Dylan tours constantly, and why Nic Cage shuffles from film to film, some of them barely worth releasing (this is better than some, worse than most). There’s a sadness in that, but a nobility, too. I try to keep that in mind every time I review one of these flea-bitten dogs.
MPAA Rating: R for strong sexual content, language throughout, drug use and some violence
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Franka Potente, Penelope Mitchell, Garret Clayton
Credits: Written and directed by Maria Pulera. A Saban Films release
Running time: 1:30
