Reeling

Review: "The Hurt Locker"

 

Like every war before it, the U.S. invasion of Iraq has generated its share of movies. But The Hurt Locker is the first of them that can properly be called a masterpiece.

Working from a screenplay by Mark Boal (who based the movie on his experiences as an embedded journalist with U.S. troops), director Kathryn Bigelow accomplishes two seemingly obvious but formidably difficult things: She crafts a taut and harrowing thriller in which the suspense level rarely dips below excruciating, and she delivers an exceptionally detailed, first-hand account of the day-to-day existence of U.S. soldiers,in Iraq, the way Platoon did for Vietnam or Saving Private Ryan did for World War II.

The Hurt Locker is good enough to stand alongside those two hallowed classics, although it might initially seem too small and specific to merit such comparisons. Platoon and Ryan were intended to be broad summations of their respective wars, writ large, with the benefit of years of hindsight and reflection.

 

The Hurt Locker, which was shot on grainy 16mm film with handheld cameras and often looks not much different from a report you might see on CNN, is more urgent and of the moment. The movie does not concern itself with grand, sweeping statements or panoramic views of the Iraq conflict - does not concern itself with anything, really, beyond its three protagonists, soldiers with one of the most dangerous jobs the Army has to offer.

They are the members of Delta Company, a bomb-defusing squad led by Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner), who dons protective gear that makes him look like a visiting alien and figures out, patiently and curiously, how to disarm (or safely detonate) explosive devices meant to kill Americans. He is backed by Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), who look out for sniper fire and approaching enemies while James dismantles the bombs.

Sanborn, who is counting the days until he gets to go home, and Eldridge, who still displays the jangled nerves and eager earnestness of a rookie, are far different soldiers from James, who takes to his job with a recklessness many would interpret as suicidal and who performs it with surgical precision.

The plot, such as it is, details the ups and downs of the bond among the soldiers as they carry out their tour of duty in 2004 Baghdad. But the movie is mainly comprised of one large set piece after another, each presenting a new challenge for the combined skills of the unit: A booby-trapped car; a bomb hidden in a pile of trash; a man with explosives strapped to his waist, begging for someone to help remove them before they go off.

 

Bigelow (Point Break, Strange Days, Near Dark), an expert at large-scale kinetic filmmaking and the exploration of the psyches of men under duress, has never had a script so tailor-made to her strengths. Every one of the big sequences in The Hurt Locker - and some of them stretch for more than 15 minutes - is a sensational, nerve-racking exercise in suspense and action. Bigelow knows exactly where to place her cameras and how to edit her shots so the viewer always understands where the threat to the characters is coming from and where they stand in relation to each other.

Her style is the antithesis of the sugary rush the incomprehensible eye candy in Transformers delivers. The spatiality is so clearly defined that some sequences - such as the one in which the soldiers are pinned down by snipers on both sides of a sand dune, and Sanborn's gun jams because the ammo casing is coated with sticky blood - build up an almost intolerable level of anxiety.

 

That is the point of The Hurt Locker, which eschews spoken commentary on the politics of the Iraq war in favor of acts and deeds of insane heroism and bravery. The movie opens with journalist Chris Hedges' statement that "War is a drug," and The Hurt Locker makes you feel how some soldiers, like the bomb dismantler James, become addicted while others remain repulsed. This is not just a great war film -- it's a great action movie, period.

The fact that the subject matter happens to be grave and timely is a bonus. That Bigelow, previously relegated primarily to fantasy and sci-fi genres, achieves her greatest triumph with her most realistic film is a happy coincidence

Review: "Humpday"

 

The unsettling comedy Humpday is most certainly not about a Wednesday. Instead, the film's title refers to the rapidly approaching day in which Ben (Mark Duplass) and Andrew (Joshua Leonard) - best friends from college on the cusp of middle age and secretly terrified of losing what's left of their youth - are planning to film themselves having sex with each other and enter the resulting movie in Seattle's annual amateur porn festival.

Ben and Andrew, who concoct the idea during a night of boozing and bong hits with a group of bohemian, free-thinking friends, are excited by the project, primarily because they know each other so well, and there is no suspicion of any latent homosexual tendencies. "You have to do something that hasn't been done before," they say to rationalize their idea. "There's not a lot of dude-on-dude porn that's not gay. This is not gay; it's beyond gay. It's not porn; it's art."

But when the time comes for the camera to roll, things are still going to feel pretty darned ... well, gay. The third feature by writer-director Lynn Shelton, Humpday is more sex, lies and videotape than Brokeback Mountain: With astute and subtle precision, Shelton burrows deeply inside the psyches of her characters, who do not want to admit that they've changed considerably since they last saw each other a decade before.

Ben is happily married to the lovely Anna (Alycia Delmore) and has outgrown the immature antics of his college years. The world-roaming Andrew, who thinks of himself as an irrepressible free spirit, is starting to realize that his lifelong refusal to lay down roots - emotional or physical - has brought him only loneliness. The moment they're reunited, though, Ben and Andrew revert to their college-age hooligan selves, the way male friends often do, unable to be emotionally frank.

During a friendly basketball game, they end up on the ground, wrestling for the ball, a hair's breadth from a real fight, with neither man willing to back down because to do so would imply maturity and adulthood - synonyms for wimpiness and selling out. The same competitiveness goes for their film project, which is born more from their perpetual games of one-upmanship than any desire to jump into bed. "I don't think we should do this because neither of us wants to back down," Ben says at one point, verbalizing the doubt and reluctance that surely also lurk in Andrew's mind.

But neither guy is willing to blink - not even after Anna discovers what they are up to (Delmore's shell-shocked reaction at hearing about her husband's cinematic aspirations is one of the movie's highlights). Humpday sells its admittedly far-fetched premise by illustrating how men often can't help but behave like stubborn children in the company of their friends -- even when the stakes are raised to ridiculous levels.

"Something just hit me," Ben tells Andrew at one point. "I think we might be morons." He's wrong, though. They're just guys.

Might a little less "Funny People" have been funnier?

Every single review of Funny People that appears between now and its July 31 release is going to mention that the film runs a whopping 140 minutes, which is a lot of Adam Sandler for one sitting - too much Adam Sandler for most people.

 

But the weird thing about the movie is that even though it is clearly too long for the story it tells, I can only think of one sequence - the Thanksgiving dinner, which runs about three or four minutes - that I would have cut outright.

I suppose if I were president of Universal Pictures, the studio releasing Judd Apatow's new movie, I might have also asked him to at least shorten the scene in which the characters watch a videotape of Apatow's oldest daughter performing Memory from Cats.

But after that ... well, you wouldn't be hitting bone, exactly, but you'd definitely be carving prime beef. I mean, sure, you could take out the Eminem cameo and shave a couple of minutes off the running time. But then you'd lose the Eminem cameo, and it's really funny.

Both of the movies Apatow wrote and directed before Funny People also ran long (The 40 Year-Old Virgin was 116 minutes and Knocked Up was 129 minutes) and they were even longer in their "unrated" DVD incarnations. Apatow likes to kick back and hang with the characters he creates, and he encourages actors to improvise madly, resulting in comic riffs (like the "You know how I know you're gay?" scene from Virgin) that may not add anything essential to the movie, but are too good to lose.

Curiously, Funny People feels shorter than either Virgin or Knocked Up, perhaps because the story has a distinct three-act structure that keeps the film from overstaying its welcome, the way the Apatow-produced Forgetting Sarah Marshall did (I liked that movie overall, but man did it dawdle).

Funny People's first two acts may have been already ruined by the film's overly detailed trailer. But the third act, which puts the characters in a completely different dilemma than they were in during the previous 90 minutes, has been left unspoiled for audiences to discover.

 

It will be interesting to see how the public responds to Funny People, which is Apatow's least genial and emotionally darkest film to date. It also casts Sandler in the role of a guy who turns out to be a bit of a jerk, and not the kind of jerk you like, either. Basically, he's an asshole.

But those who worried Apatow had pulled a James L. Brooks and gone all Terms of Endearment on us can rest easy: Funny People is many things, but a tearjerker is not one of them.

Review: "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"

 

"You need a shave, my friend," wise old Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) tells his most gifted pupil Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth, talkiest and most engaging installment to date in the boy wizard's ongoing adventures.

Harry and his pals Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) are well on their way to young adulthood - Grint, in particular, seems to have grown a foot since the previous movie - and a considerable part of the appeal of Half-Blood Prince comes in director David Yates' willingness to downplay all the stuff regarding destinies, curses, ancient secrets and magic duels in favor of his three central characters and their irrepressible struggles with roiling hormones.

  

Of course, since these kids happen to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, all their adolescent crushes and romances will be leavened by wands and potions. Yates, having obviously grown comfortable with his lead actors after directing them in Order of the Phoenix, nudges real performances from them. Radcliffe has never been this loose and charismatic. Grint comes into his own as more than just comic relief, and Watson gives teenage heartache the depth and universality that was once the speciality of Molly Ringwald.

The emphasis on character is critical now that the series is heading into the home stretch, and, with two movies left to go (both spun from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling's finale), the action is presumably about to ramp up. Screenwriter Steve Kloves, returning to the series after taking a breather from the previous film, has compressed Rowling's 652-page novel into two and a half hours. Fans of the books will undoubtedly complain about some excisions, most notably the film's climactic showdown between good and evil, which apparently has been whittled down from a major set piece in the novel to only a couple of minutes' worth of screen time.

 

Overall, though, the story remains the same. The evil Death Eaters aggressively attack the world of Muggles; Harry is assigned by Dumbledore to befriend the school's new professor (a terrific Jim Broadbent) and get him to share a secret memory from his past; the is-he-or-isn't-he-evil Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) finally reveals which team he's really playing for, and Harry's arch-nemesis Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) becomes a tortured, quasi-tragic figure as he delves further into the dark side of magic.

The Half-Blood Prince has plenty of instances of sheer wonder, such as the kids' visit to a magic-trick shop that sells all kinds of tantalizing gadgets or a sequence set in a dark cavern in which Dumbledore goes all Gandalf on the hordes of Gollum-esque creatures that attack him and Harry. For the first time in the series, we get a Quidditch game that bears actual relevance to the plot.

There is also Helena Bonham Carter's performance as the Death Eater Bellatrix Lestrange, a wonderful bit of deliriously unhinged acting that serves as a special effect of a sort - and makes you hope the character has an even larger part in the remaining installments.

 

Mostly, though, Half-Blood Prince downplays the visual trickery and even the series' famous action: A mid-film attack by the Death Eaters on our heroes in a field of wheat seems to have been thrown in only to remind the audience they're watching a fantasy instead of High School Confidential.

That observation is meant as praise, not scorn. The Harry Potter films will be regarded as one of the most remarkable series in film history, and Half-Blood Prince is the franchise's Empire Strikes Back - the episode in which the pace slows down a bit, the characters deepen and mature, the good guys take a big hit, and all hell is gearing up to break loose.

Review: "Moon"

 

In the near future as depicted in Moon, Earth's energy crisis has been solved by mining fuel from rocks on the dark side of the moon's surface. The elaborate operation,which is run by a private company, is almost entirely automated, requiring the supervision of only one person who serves a three-year stint.

Currently holding the job is Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), who has two weeks left before he gets to come home. Sam is eager to see his wife (Dominique McElligott) and young daughter,with whom he has communicated via taped video messages (curiously, his wife says that although she can't wait to see him, she hopes the time Sam has spent alone has done him some good).

Sam is also eager to have someone to talk to other than Gerty, the robotic assistant that prepares his meals, cuts his hair and speaks to him in the mellifluous voice of Kevin Spacey (doing his best imitation of 2001's HAL). Gerty is a pleasant companion, for a machine, but "I'm talking to myself on a regular basis," Sam says, lamenting his need for simple human interaction.

 

But as his departure date draws nearer, curious things start to happen: a young woman suddenly materializes in Sam's favorite chair and then just as quickly vanishes. Was she really there, or is Sam, alone for too long, starting to see things?

 Moon, which marks the directorial debut of Duncan Jones (until now best known as David Bowie's son), openly quotes 2001 and Solaris, another science-fiction tale set in outer space that concentrated on the inner space of its characters' minds. But Jones' modest, resolutely focused movie is up to something far different from the motivation driving either of those classics.

Moon, which was written by Nathan Parker, cleverly toys with our expectations and the baggage we bring from other sci-fi pictures. We keep waiting for the amiable Gerty to short-circuit and turn against Sam or for alien visitors to knock on his door, either to help him or try to kill him.

 

Instead, Moon heads elsewhere, becoming a melancholy meditation on loneliness (can you think of a more desolate place than the dark side of the moon?) and man's eternal struggle to accept mortality. Rockwell, an actor known primarily for playing goofballs and weirdoes, convincingly portrays someone who's been alone far too long and the terror that accompanies his gradually weakening grip on reality.

There's a lot more to Rockwell's performance, but more detail would spoil Moon's trippy surprises. Most contemporary sci-fi movies come on with all CGI-guns blazing, trying to blow the roof off the theater. Moon settles for trying to blow your mind instead.

Filmmaking 101

Here's a link to my Q&A with former Miamian Reed Martin, who will appear at the Gables Books & Books at 4 p.m. Sunday to talk about The Reel Truth, a do's-and-don'ts manual for aspiring filmmakers.

The book is a terrific read for film buffs as well as filmmakers, since Martin interviewed a lot of A-list directors and got them to recount the mistakes they made on their way to becoming big shots. 

"G.I. Joe" is a no-go

Paramount Pictures has informed me that the critics' screening they had set up for G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra has been unceremoniously canceled. Instead, the studio is going to screen the film the Thursday night before opening, which is Hollywoodspeak for "Our movie blows, and we know it."

Studios often bypass critics' screenings when they know they have a dog on their hands. But I can't remember a studio ever having set a screening and then canceling it.

 I'm not entirely surprised, since the trailer for G.I. Joe I saw in the theater was so nonsensical and generic, it wasn't until the film's title flashed on the screen that I knew which movie it was promoting. Check it out here and see if I'm lying.

"The Big Picture" debuts

Beginning this week, I'm going to be doing brief video segments on herald.com talking about the new movies opening in theaters. I am one of those people who is terrified of a TV camera, and I think I overcompensated for my nerves bytalkingamileaminute.

I also didn't use a script, the way the video gurus at the Herald suggested, because I'm ever worse when trying to read a teleprompter. I basically just made it all up on the spot, but I'm not sure it didn't turn out like babbling.

Anyways, here's the first installment. Looking for constructive criticism, so please let me know what you think. Don't pull your punches. I'm a critic. I can take it.

Is "Public Enemies" do-or-die time for Michael Mann?

The Daily Beast's Kim Masters has posted an interesting story claiming that Michael Mann's future as a maker of big-budget studio movies is riding on Public Enemies, which opened today.

The story takes a negative slant toward Mann and the movie, quoting a "former studio chairman" who has not seen the film that "it’s going to take itself too seriously, it’s going to be way too long and it will not focus on entertaining the audience. Michael Mann, in the past 15 years, has not made one movie I’ve liked.”

What, Masters couldn't find anyone in Hollywood who had actually seen Public Enemies to comment?

The story also claims that "Johnny Depp disliked Mann’s chaotic style of filmmaking to the point that he ultimately refused to speak to the director."

I'm guessing the vibe on the sets of those write-them-as-we-go-along Pirates of the Caribbean movies was a lot calmer and more orderly. And even if the gossip is true, and Depp stopped speaking to Mann altogether, it certainly didn't hurt his performance. So who cares?

I'm not a studio executive, but I can't imagine any of the higher-ups at Universal Pictures saw what Mann was up to during the shooting of Public Enemies and thought "This is gonna be bigger than Transformers!" They knew exactly what they were getting into, especially considering this is the same studio that distributed Mann's last movie, Miami Vice, which was even more aggressively uncommercial than Public Enemies.

There is no shortage of Hollywood movies that "focus on entertaining the audience." But the number of serious film artists like Mann who get to play on a large-scale canvas continues to get smaller. I can't imagine that, when you add in home video and cable TV revenues, the $100 million Public Enemies won't at least earn its costs back.

In the process, Universal gets to distribute a film that qualifies as a work of art - and that some people will still be thinking and talking about long after the summer movie season has receded into a hazy memory.