Tag Archives: Bryan Cranston

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

March 31, 2018

Posted under

Uncategorized

Comments

Leave a comment

Isle of Dogs

OK, it’s only the end of March but I think I can safely say this will be on my year end list of favorite films. I dig stop motion animation, I have enjoyed more than my fair share of Wes Anderson films, and I love dogs. Going in it should be a no brainer but I had a few doubts because of the supposed allegorical references to modern issues of immigration and xenophobia. It turns out that anyone who wants to find a tenative tie to some modern political issue in a film, does not have to work that hard. People, if you are reading that much into this story, you need to cut down on your caffeine.

The Wes Anderson style is all over this film. You can hear it in the clipped remarks that the dogs make to one another. It is also full of the color palates that he so lavishly uses in all of his movies (or at least the ones I have seen). Much of the interaction has a dynamic and undercurrent to it that makes it feel as if we are hearing two conversations at once, a surface level interface and then a deeper more satirical intercourse. There are also several visual gags that are gruesome and hysterical at the same time. No one could mistake this for a movie made by someone else.

The fact that only Anderson could have produced this film is one of the reasons that I can’t take any of the charges of cultural appropriation seriously. While the truth is that he is a westerner telling a story set in Japan, it only matters that it is Japanese for some historical context. The idea that a group of people could be mislead by a nefarious political leader is not uniquely Japanese. The notion of parts of a culture being banished is not Japanese either. I’m willing to give him credit for letting the human characters speak in Japanese without making it seem like subtitles are necessary for every utterance. As I have said numerous times in my classes, “you can find something to argue about in just about anything. That doesn’t mean that it is problematic to most people.”

The aesthetic of the film is definitely weird.  The flu that the dogs have seems to be an odd contrivance but it works for the story. The notion of “Trash Island”, is not all that different than the planet that Thor ends up on in Thor Ragnorock. The fact that Jeff Goldblum is featured in both pictures must be coincidental. The island is a nicely realized habitat that our pack has to navigate to reach an objective. There are complex backgrounds but even more intricate machinery and architecture than one would imagine in a dump.

Everything else though is backdrop for the charming story of a boy separated from his dog, and the bonds that humans and animals really do need to be complete. As a dog owner, I have frequently put words in my dogs mouths. Wes Anderson does this for the whole movie and the words are both profound and amusing. My guess is that everyone here will have a favorite dog that he/she will relate to and love. “Chief”, “Duke” and “Spots” are my favorites, but ultimately all the dogs are like most dogs, lovable once you get to know them.

I can’t imagine the time and talent it took to create the intricate puppets that get used for the stop motion action in the film. I know computer work must also have played a part but even then, something has to be designed first and the art direction and characters in this movie are astonishing. The actors all feel as if they are carefully matched to their characters. Bryan Cranston as Chief manages to be gruff but also winsome in spots. Goldblum’s Duke is a never ending fountain of understatement and set up lines, with just the right sonorous tone to make it sound somewhat intellectual. The music combines traditional Japanese flavored drums with more tuneful passages to also add to the environment that everyone in the film is occupying.

Everyone else may have noticed this, it’s not a haiku but it is a homophone:

“I Love Dogs  “

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

December 20, 2015

Posted under

Uncategorized

Comments

2 Comments

Trumbo

Well here is a movie that I don’t have to worry about spoilers for at all. “Trumbo” is a biopic that follows a well known chronology concerning events that occurred about sixty years ago. Film fans will be familiar with the lead character, they know the end of the story and the villains for the most part are identified early on. Hedda Hopper would be the main figure of evil in this piece but there is plenty of vitriol to be spread around, and most of Hollywood gets some on them. The script plays it as if Trumbo were a saint with magical powers and a short sighted ego that crushes his family as much as the events that take place do. As with all stories, the history is more convoluted than the film is and we will not in that direction here. Instead we will focus on the film and it’s many fine qualities and few weaknesses.

The greatest asset the film has is it’s star, Bryan Cranston. In the last few years he has moved from being the excellent but often overlooked comic performer in “Malcolm in the Middle” to a celebrated TV performer, who impressed for multiple seasons of “Breaking Bad” and enjoyed the endorsement of many in the industry for his fine work there. He has worked effectively in an ensemble including the award winning “Argo”, but he has not yet shined as a movie star, that is no longer the truth, he fills the screen with talent in this movie. His line delivery is distinctive and works well with many of the grandiose passages of dialogue that have been written for him. Even when he is in simple conversation he sounds as if it could be a speech he is delivering to an audience. That fits the character quite well. His sly smile, furrowed brow and mannerisms with a cigarette holder all feel genuine for the outlandish egocentric that Dalton apparently was.

The supporting cast is also excellent, ranging from Elle Fanning as the apple that does not fall far from the tree to John Goodman as the crass studio head that exploits the blacklisted writers but also respects their work. The film is a who’s who of Hollywood talent. Diane Lane is effective as Trumbo’s wife Cleo and she gets a juicy scene with Cranston when they fight over his behavior. Helen Mirren is Great Britain’s answer to Meryl Streep, always cast well and always excellent in her scenes. With the exception of Dean O’ Gorman as Kirk Douglas, most of the actors portraying famous performers from the period have little resemblance to their real life counterparts. Some nice digital work inserts O’Gorman’s face into a scene from “Spartacus” and that did enhance the believably of that sequence. While John Wayne would probably be considered on the wrong side of the issue, the screenplay makes him a fairly sympathetic adversary, at least one who has a true sense of morality concern the human beings involved. Trumbo is shown to have flaws (although they are largely skimmed over) when he uses Wayne’s military status during the war as an attack point and then self righteously suggests that he be allowed to remove his glasses before being punched by a man whom he has just invited to do so. It was one of a few ugly moments that Trumbo as a character is allowed to have.

 

Not faring quite as well is Edward G. Robinson, a supporter of the Hollywood Ten until his career is mangled by the blacklist.  Another opportunity to show Trumbo’s vindictive side occurs when he confronts Robinson, who ultimately testified as a friendly witness, and Trumbo dismisses Robinson’s justification for his actions, despite the fact that he gave many of the same justifications earlier to fellow refusenik Arlin Hird ( a very solid Louie C.K.), an apparently fictional character that espouses some of the true philosophies of the Communist Party of the United States. Whether the confrontation took place or not, it must surely have been endemic of Hollywood at the time since there were so many people effected in some way by the blacklist.

I am usually suspicious of a movie that works in a speech to an audience as a story telling device, it seems a lazy way to sneak in narrative with an emotional content, but the speech given at the end to the Writer’s Guild appears to have been genuine and it is suggested that it went a long way to healing the wounds of the blacklist. That makes it all the more odd that after finishing with an effective dramatic moment, the film turns polemic with a series of screen scrolls that start the argument all over again. The sour tone is probably designed to make the political message more important, but it feels like the screenwriter simply felt like the drama had failed to do so and therefore a post script was required. I thought it undercut what was to that point a human drama that showed the turmoil of the times and the confusion of the figures involved. That’s too bad because for the most part, what came before really was compelling.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

May 17, 2014

Posted under

Action

Comments

Leave a comment

Godzilla

Why anyone would need a review for this is not clear. If you like the idea of watching giant monsters destroy a city and battle it out among themselves, then you will already be queuing up for this and you will have a good time. If you think that special effects movies and worldwide destruction are being over done in films these days, then you will probably want to stay home and find a more intimate horror film to spend an evening with. All in all, you will get what you expect from this movie. There are some surprises, and some disappointments but they are minor in contrast to the spectacle of a 300 foot high gorilla-like lizard wrecking havoc on most of the stuff around him.

The movie is fortunately a slow burn. Some people want the money shot from the get go, but like romance, anticipation and deferral can make the ultimate outcome so much more rewarding. There is an effective action beat to start the movie but it may be unsatisfying because we don’t really see a monster or even know for sure what is going on. Bryan Cranston plays a supervising engineer at a nuclear power plant in Japan. I like Bryan Cranston, I’ve never seen “Breaking Bad” but I know his work from many other movies and TV shows. His performance is a little consciously showy. He is not quite chewing the furniture because the part calls for him to be a bit “mad”, but it is noticeable that he is playing it that way. His wife is also a specialist who is responsible for monitoring and controlling leaks of radioactivity. She is played by the Academy Award winning actress Juliette Binoche. We have barely had time to get started when before you know it, both of these characters disappear from the story. Flash forward fifteen years and their son played by “Kick Ass” star Aaron Taylor Johnson becomes the focal point for the story. All three are excellent but they have little opportunity to emote or build character because the real star of the movie is a big monster still to be revealed.

Father and son briefly reunite to discover the truth behind the accident at the nuclear power plant a decade and a half earlier. The original Godzilla from the 1950s was a mediation on the dangers of nuclear war and the power of radiation to destroy the planet. This story is more about the dangers of government cover up and the risks we take when we seek to supress information rather than shine a light on it. This last couple of sentences suggests a level of philosophical thought that is never really developed or cared about. It is just in the background to give us something to pay attention to until monsters start duking it out. This movie is filled with halfway developed points to keep us involved until something reaches it’s creepy foot out of a hole to do some destruction. Taylor Johnson has a wife and son who are neglected by his military career but love him anyway. Academy Award nominees Sally Hawkings and Ken Watanabe are scientists with something to say about the dangers of screwing with the environment and the power of nature, but they are simply the heralds for “Godzilla” himself. A lost little boy will be a surrogate for Taylor Johnson to care for at a given point.

Last year in “Pacific Rim” there were giant robots fighting giant monsters. In “Godzilla”, following the tradition of dozens of Japanese predecessors, monsters fight each other and we are bystanders with a rooting interest. The explanations for the MUTO monster are a bit confusing and they are placed in the narrative in a way that tries to avoid having some scientist give us a lecture for five minutes, but they are coming at the same time that we are being delivered information about “Godzilla” and that made some of the characteristics unclear. It will only bother you for a couple of minutes because soon the monsters are tearing up cities and being general douches on a grand scale, and at that point no one will be thinking about their origins, mating and eating habits. Not when Cesar’s Palace is getting shredded before our eyes. There is a good sequence featured in the teaser above that shows a HALO action and makes use of the same style of wailing choruses found in “2001”. However, it is the monster fights in the big cities that everyone came to see, and except for the fact they are frequently shot in the dark, with dusk clouds obscuring our vision, they are pretty good.

We ended up paying $16 a ticket to see this in 3D at a time that worked for us. You absolutely do not need to see this in 3D. There was nothing special or dramatic or interesting that was enhanced by the third dimension. Now the volume in the theater and the size of the screen will make a difference to you so be sure to take that into consideration when making a movie selection. “Godzilla” will be a place holder in the summer movie line up. It will do good business and people will be entertained for the running time, but it is not special enough to think back on for long or to see a second or third time. Half of my enjoyment of the movie came from the Hot Tamale candy I dumped in my box of buttery popcorn. Searching for one of those treats was able to distract me enough that I could ignore how standard much of the movie narrative was. I don’t know that American audiences will take Godzilla to heart as a hero like the Japanese have, but if you liked the T-Rex at the end of Jurassic Park, then maybe a “Godzilla” stuffed toy should be under your Christmas tree this year.
godzilla_ver4