Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Tim Burton does a great service to the modern movie musical with Sweeney Todd, his utterly entertaining and playfully grim adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's legendary musical. Rather than tearing apart the original score and restoring it in bits and pieces like a highlight reel of sorts, Burton only makes a few snippets and keeps the general structure of a musical - sung interaction with minimal spoken dialogue - in tact. The music is as integral to the film as any adaptation of a stage production in years. It doesn't start and stop, but rather permeates the film in its entirety with few exceptions.

The film version is also aided by the quintessential gothic look and feel that Burton brings to nearly all his projects. He creates a grimy, exaggerated London and dresses his characters to the hilt, with paler than pale makeup and mangled looking hair. Johnny Depp's eerie Sweeney looks like something straight out of a dark fairytale. And yet this new version also realizes a vulnerable sense of pathos in the brooding character, a barber by trade who morphs into a throat slitting serial killer by film's end. Sweeney, once Benjamin Barker, is driven to rage after being wrongfully imprisoned by a lecherous judge (Alan Rickman) who lusts after his wife. When he returns from prison and discovers the fate of his lovely spouse and their young daughter, he swears he will have his vengeance on those who wronged him. He teams up with a lonely piemaker named Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), who owns a shop beneath his old apartment. Together they develop a smoothly run business together in which Sweeney slits the throats of men who will not be missed and Mrs. Lovett disposes of the bodies by baking them into her world famous meat pies.

Depp is fabulous in the title role, combining his rich talent for creating unique and fully realized characters with a soulful rock & roll croon. It's as modern and electric a reading of Todd that's probably ever been seen. The same can be said for Helena Bonham Carter whose sprightly voice at first seems too small, but grows into an instrument of intoxicating character. She imbues the role with something that is both charming and desperate, a more nuanced weirdness than the brassy comedic quality Mrs. Lovett possessed on stage in iconic performances by Angela Lansbury and Patti Lupone. Together they're a deeply strange and oddly likable screen couple who both share a dark broken soul. And as bloody and ruthless as the film becomes, there is still something darkly funny about the scenario that allows Burton and Co. to ping pong between gruesome laughs ("A Little Priest") and small tragedies ("Not While I'm Around"). It's a great piece of filmmaking that has both a creative pedigree and a true style about it. It's smart and boldly original without crushing the mold of commerciality too bluntly. There's hope that this sick little twist may yet become a box office hit and subversive potential of a toe tapping, serial killer showstopper filling American screens is a juicy proposition in its own right.

Grade: A

There Will Be Blood

Paul Thomas Anderson comes into his own with There Will Be Blood, a sprawling American epic that is as intimate and intense as it is grandiose and unstoppable. Having been half-hailed and half-hated for his blissful earlier experiments, including the music fueled melodrama Magnolia and the neurotic Adam Sandler tragicomedy Punch-Drunk Love, Anderson makes his long awaited return with an unquestionable masterpiece that will satisfy his longstanding fans as well as earn him new converts. He has never made a film so boldly assured in tone and style. While his excessive long takes and eye popping visuals were deemed "indulgent" by critics of his earlier films, they are used here in a way that is downright masterful. Every frame is flawless and each sweeping camera movement electrifies the screen with a buzzing energy. This film is alive and breathing in ways most films only dream of being. Anderson's style could not be better suited for both the hellish narrative and the bittersweet visuals of rustic America that offer both stunning landscapes and bleak living conditions.

The story focuses on the devilish Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) who strikes oil in the early 20th century and sets out to become a leading tycoon of the time. His pursuits bring him to a small town where the farms are failing and the people have fallen under the guidance of a young preacher and self-proclaimed prophet named Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). Sunday, a self-interested icon of the town's old ways, clashes with his new competition. The two men wage covert wars against one another, Plainview rapes the town of its culture and resources, and ultimately what we witness is just a growing sense of evil and despair. Plainview, Sunday, and the whole town come against one another in constant conflict and the dark soul of the film only grows darker. It culminates in a scene so unexpectedly raw and devastating that it would be a disservice to the film to even synopsize it here. To put it in broad terms, Plainview's devastation of the town and its old ways is as complete and gruesome as one could imagine and his vileness only ripens further as he becomes gnarled and craggy in his old age. The film closes on a bold and grippingly brutal moment that embodies the entire culture conflict of the film in just a few unforgettable frames. This is a true masterpiece that should not be missed.

Grade: A

DVD of the Week: Eastern Promises

David Cronenberg's gripping crime saga, Eastern Promises, is a razor sharp, unsentimental drama of extraordinary power. Viggo Mortensen gives perhaps his finest performance as an ice cold chauffeur cum assassin for a highly dangerous boss in the Russian mob (Armin Mueller-Stahl). It's one of the most intense and subtly horrifying pieces of acting I've ever seen and it transforms Steve Knight's somewhat uneven and anticlimactic screenplay into something utterly gripping. Naomi Watts also does fine work as a nurse whose life is changed forever when she begins uncovering unexpected secrets that put her in the way of Mortensen's vicious boss.

Charlie Wilson's War

Mike Nichols delivers one of the most unabashedly enjoyable political films in Charlie Wilson's War, a batty and utterly hilarious reading of the covert war waged by Texas senator Charlie Wilson against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Using his general charm and cunning skills at manipulating the system, the debaucherous an mostly anonymous senator wrangled government financing upward of $500 million to successfully arm and fund the Afghanistan resistance forces to fight back the Russians. The future consequences of this course of action is alluded to briefly with a few bits of ominous foreshadowing, but mostly Nichols and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin settle for a "less is more" approach that highlights the dark wit of the story rather than any sort of speechy political agenda.

And while that's a welcome and enjoyable strategy, it's also one of the film's mildly undoing elements. The story lacks the gravitas you'd want from such a serious historical moment and much of the more specific details of Charlie's coercion get swept up in an overly montage friendly finale that ends with an anticlimactic whimper of a send off. Stll, there is no underestimating how flawless many of the scenes here are and how wonderfully acerbic the dialogue can be. Tom Hanks gives a great, self-consciously sleazy performance as the gluttonous Wilson; Julia Roberts is alluring and sedate as a Texas socialite with a passion for the cause and the bank account to finance its public promotion; and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a devilish scene stealer as a gruff CIA agent with no fear of voicing his opinions. Together this trio, and Sorkin's winning script transform the film from a flighty political farce into something almost special, and certainly worthwhile.

Grade: B+

I Am Legend

Narrative identity and thematic significance remain persistently ambiguous in Francis Lawrence's apocalyptic zombie thriller, I Am Legend. The film shifts from a quiet, haunting drama to a chaotic action-packed adventure, and then back again. It teases at big picture issues like grieving, fate, and the placement of blame, but never really explores any to the fullest. It all comes apart under microscopic inspection, but from a comfortable, popcorn crunching distance, it's a better than average thrill ride with far more sincerity than the typical blockbuster. Will Smith gives another great performance as soldier and scientist Robert Neville, the last living man on an earth cleansed by a deadly virus that turns the infected into rage fueled monsters. Neville has the fortune of being immune to the virus, but the misfortune of outliving his wife and child. His only companion is a dog named Sam and a few realistic looking mannequins that he feigns banter with to keep up the appearance of normalcy as best as he can. He also conveniently happens to be one of the foremost specialists tasked to curing the virus, which he continues to pursue in his basement by running trials on infected rats and other animals. He's a dark figure battling the emotional effects of survivor's guilt and an added sense of responsibility given his failure to reach a cure. He also has the very physical, urgent task of fending off an occasional zombie or two.

The film is nearly note-perfect in its first half or so, but the narrative starts to bounce and bend when new possibilities present themselves and Neville's psychological black hole of an existence begins to expand its horizons. Sudden, awkwardly implanted speeches about God and destiny start to clutter the intense action with needless speechifying. And ultimately, the film ends with a sickening moment of convenience and anticlimax that hinges of fortuitous, unbelievable progression of both narrative and character. But while it's good, it's very good. A broken ending and a dragging final act can't kill the momentum here. Neville remains a compelling, likable character and the action scenes send a striking chill up your spine up until the very end.

Grade: B

DVD of the Week: Once

Once is a breathtaking film of simple beauty that threatens to revolutionize an entire genre. The musical has long been the muse of those aspiring to spectacle productions and glamorous song and dance routines. Once is just the opposite. It’s a lovely little gem of almost no budget that features fairly ordinary musicians singing sparse songs in drab, authentic locales in and around the streets of Dublin. Marketa Irglova and Glen Hansard of The Frames star as two street musicians who meet one another by chance and have a passionate musical fling in which they express increasingly more personal feelings to one another over several days of musical collaboration. It’s the movie musical reinvented for the modern culture of indie rock, iPods, and DIY filmmaking.

The Kite Runner

Flowery language and saccharine family values turn what may have been a potent world drama into a watered down, mildly effective family saga. Inspired by Khaled Hosseini's best selling novel of the same name, The Kite Runner tells the story of Amir, (Khalid Abdalla) a man who must return to his childhood home of Kabul in order to rescue the son of his oldest friend, Hassan. The two parted ways early in their youth following a traumatic event in the life of Hassan that drives a wedge between the two friends.

We begin the film with an extended flashback of the two boys that is sometimes lovely and elsewhere both oddly soft and weirdly indelicate. One the one hand, the two boys live in a "life is good" bubble of comradery and speechy, almost unbelievably articulate expressions of mutual respect between them. But they are also subject to severe torment and pressures of violence from their peers and authority figures. The film's visual language simply does not have the nuance to support such radical shifts in tone. It walks and talks like a sweet family drama and when events of violence and rape crush the children's innocence, it doesn't sting with the pain of broken youth but instead just feels muddled and melodramatic. It simply does not handle these severe matters with enough sympathy and sophistication, creating a rather crude and dull setup to the film.

When we return to Kabul with an adult Amir (a far more interestingly realized character), the film takes some shape and finds its true narrative center. The mission of Amir to locate and rescue Hassan's orphaned son amidst a Taliban controlled Kabul embodies the kind of verve and suspense that this story has the potential to offer us. It also abandons the more glossy coating that wrecks the film's first half and finally opens itself to the dark realities at its feet. Director Marc Forster, who seems to be oscillating here between his Finding Neverland loveliness and Monster's Ball grittiness, just doesn't seem to know when to be grim and when to be serene. And most problematically, he cannot comfortably shift between the two. The result is an awkward hybrid that works for this segment of the film and this segment alone. Two charming child actors (Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada and Zekeria Ebrahimi) carry the first half of the film ably enough to make it watchable, but Forster turns the film's conclusion into a "peace and love" coda that dampens and dishonors the serious turn of events that precedes it. It supposes that simply by moving on to greener pastures, all of the characters of the film will be cleansed of the pains of their past. The film hinges on the notion that the past clings onto us no matter how much time and distance we put between us and it. It's this haunting sense of guilt that sends Amir on this great and dangerous journey home. Yet when we reach the end, it's as if all the danger and brutality has vanished. Somehow out of sight suddenly means out of mind, and the characters share in a frustratingly simple celebration that offers no greater, deeper response to the more serious subjects here.

This is a film burdened by a desperation to be wholesome enough to compete in a league with other commercial family dramas, but at its heart it is designed to be an art minded tragedy. The two sides of this equation are never quite reconciled and despite strong performances and an often gripping story, the film fails on most counts. It's a case where the pieces exceed the whole. The performers are all working at top form and Hosseini's tale is rich with worthwhile material, but Forster and equally guilty screenwriter David Benioff settle too easily on the softest possible route, resulting in a film too grimacing to really serve as a family piece and too candy coated to please cinema enthusiasts. They tried admirable to make an authentic, historically accurate film in realistic looking locales (in this case a doubling China) and using the appropriate Dari language. They just did not commit as passionately to the story as needed to create a film that does justice to this larger than life tale of regret, betrayal, and redemption.

Grade: B-

Juno

For about every dozen disposable, degrading films about teenagers, there's one of these: a gem of a picture about adolescents with heart and soul. This year there has been more than most when you factor in Jeffrey Blitz's stunning Rocket Science, Tom Vaughan's retro-Hughes tribute Starter for 10 and Greg Mottola's reliably funny and coolly relatable Superbad. That's no small miracle when gaged in relation to the pantheon of sticky pop petulance that's dominated the teen market for the past several decades. It's also a sad fact that all of these films came to us through indie channels and yielded minuscule box office success save for one (the aforementioned Superbad whose rise to prominence may have never come about without the producing muscle of comedy king elect Judd Apatow). So as Juno arrives into theaters with a warm heap of festival praise behind it and a golden road toward major accolades clearly in its sight, it glimmers like something of a capstone to a genre redefining year that just may change teens in film forever.

There has certainly never been a girl quite like Juno MacGuff in a teen comedy before. Girls with bad attitudes and short tempers abound but more often than not they are the villains of the piece, or the dark-haired sidekick to the perky blonde heroine of teen rom-com lore. Juno MacGuff (played bravely and pitch-perfectly by rising actress Ellen Page) is neither of those things. She's an outspoken pseudo-renegade with good intentions and honest emotions that she skillfully denies having to further assert her alluring anti-social snippy exterior self. She speaks in riddles and rhymes that call to mind the impish charms of a young person too articulate not to end up a writer. And when she gets pregnant unexpectedly after a strange night with longtime friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) she has nothing but the best quips, and "bun in the oven" puns to offer. It's to the credit of first-time screenwriter and bona fide breakout scribe Diablo Cody that Juno's witty tough shell hits with such honest hilarity. She pens some of the best one-liners of the year while simultaneously her characters and transforming her characters into complete 3-dimensional beings with strengths and weaknesses to savor. Even the smaller roles played by supporting players Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner (as the adoptive parents Juno plans to give her baby up to) and Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons (as her step-mother and father respectively) are so effortlessly, gleefully crafted with both character specific humor and warm, honest passion. They are all characters that live beyond the four corners of the movie screen. They emerge as clear as day and as real as real could be.

If there is an unsung hero in this production (and it's safe to say that the singing is far from over), it has to be director Jason Reitman who solidifies his status as one of comedy's leading new talents with this, his second feature. Following the deftly handled satire Thank You for Smoking, Reitman has grown to new heights. Here he draws captivating performances and enlivens the film with a stylish but uncompromising look and feel that plays to typical teen flick strengths (trendy colorful costumes, cleverly designed bedrooms 16 year-olds only dream about having, and catchy music courtesy of the splendid Kimya Dawson) while also bringing to life a hazy warmth and prickly awkwardness that is utterly real. He's never too self-involved with his choices but he also doesn't let the jazzy dialogue and attractive stars get in the way of telling a very potent, and very funny story.

Grade: A

DVD of the Week: The Bourne Ultimatum

There's no better middle ground when it comes to summer blockbusters than this consistent espionage franchise. In the wake of endless cartoonish superheroes and Hasbro toys turned action stars, The Bourne Ultimatum plays like a jolt back to reality, a combination of spectacle appeal and true artistry. Shot largely on location and through the inventive eye of returning helmer Paul Greengrass (hot off an Oscar nomination for United 93), it's the kind of action movie that makes other action movies seem lazy. The story picks up after the climactic, dizzying car chase of 2004's The Bourne Supremacy and follows Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) as he continues on his quest to figure out who he is and what exactly the government has done to him. He gets a lead when a London based journalist (Paddy Considine) scores vital info from an inside government source, but the CIA, led by the ruthless and snide Noah Vosen (David Stathairn) gets to the reporter first. Bourne and Vosen collide in a breathless chase sequence at Waterloo Station and from that moment on they each embark in hot pursuit of the journalist's unknown source. The chase very quickly goes global and we're treated to another round of worldly, sophisticated spy vs. spy excitement.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a film unlike anything you've ever seen before. It's grounded in the riveting tale of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, (played here by Mathieu Amalric) who suffered a massive stroke and spent the rest of his life completely paralyzed. He learns to communicate through a system that involves only blinking and with this technique he dictated the autobiographical book upon which this film is based.

The movie is so much more than a biopic though. It's a study of life and all its complexities. It traps us inside the mind of an immobile man and at the same time opens us up to the world of his imagination, giving us the single most complete and internal portrait of a character that I've ever seen. In cutting to the heart of Bauby's essence, the film scratches at grand truths. Bauby is the vessel through which it reflects us all. The human condition comes alive with soaring visual stylization courtesy of Schnabel and biting wit courtesy of screenwriter Ronald Harwood (and no doubt Bauby's own personality). There are events here that simply have never been portrayed before as this is something of a novel film subject. And even amongst the pantheon of films of this sort, and even in the broader range of all films about dealing with disabilities, there has probably never been one so genuinely full of life, capable of being as snarky and surreal as it wishes without ever losing sight of its pure, emotional but unsentimental core.

This is a modern masterpiece and one of the finest films all year. It is as effortlessly assembled as it is utterly alive in a way most films only dream of being. Its floating camera and dreamy photography feel likea dream upon waking and when mixed with the starkly filmed reality of Bauby's harrowing condition they add up to a moving portrait of man's search to escape himself.

Grade: A

Grace Is Gone

Screenwriter James C. Strouse (Lonesome Jim) makes his directorial debut with this quiet portrait of American grief. It's admirable, contemporary, and sweet, but altogether modest in size and scope. John Cusack gives one of his richest performance as Stanley Phillips, the husband of a recently deceased Army Sargent (the Grace of the film's title) who died in combat. Unable to inform his two young daughters of their mother's death, he decides instead to postpone the inevitable and take the girls on a spontaneous road trip to anyplace in the world that they'd like to go. The daughters are played beautifully by two precocious child actors,
Shélan O'Keefe as the wise beyond her years Heidi and Gracie Bednarczyk as the impulsive young Dawn.

Along the way on their journey, with the daily routine of the lives disrupted, the family discovers new things about one another and ultimately grows closer together. Stanley, who is introduced to us as a very strict father, learns to open up and listen to his daughters rather than to silence them. They grow into a warm and winning collective only to have their newfound trust tested by the utterance Stanley has been delaying for days.

The film is a bit slow moving, taking the typical meandering route of most episodic road trip adventures. It doesn't always add up neatly into sweeping movements, but rather just observes small details. In parts it can be very rewarding and as a whole it has a great deal of heart and sensitivity to share. None of this adds up to a great film by any means but it does add up to a nice one.

Grade: B

The Savages

Tamara Jenkins, best known for the offbeat Slums of Beverly Hills, makes a triumphant return with this stirring, funny, and tenderly observed dramatic comedy about two delinquent siblings trying to care for their neglectful father in his twilight years. Laura Linney gives one of her finest performances as Wendy Savage, the emotionally stunted self-saboteur who dreams of being a famous playwright and often exaggerates details of her life to better impress her peers. She's matched ably by Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Jon Savage, a scholar writing a book about Brecht while simultaneously grappling with his emotional detachment. Together the two embark on a whirlwind, life changing journey that delivers on all levels. This is one of the smartest comedies of the year with characters so dynamic that they are nothing short of miraculous.

Veteran actor Philip Bosco is perhaps the film's beating heart as Lenny Savage the cantankerous yet unforgettably vulnerable old man who has been entrusted to the Savage siblings. He swears and rants bitterly at them but in the moments where his absent-mindedness and physical impairments become evident, he is reduced to the sad state of near infancy, requiring the assistance of the people he so aggressively lashed out at only seconds before. It's a heartbreaking portrait of dementia that's as honest and disturbing as it is unpredictably funny. This is the sort of film that not only highlights life's tragedies but also recognizes the ways in which it is very often unconventionally hilarious. This is a gem of a character comedy with a great, organic laughs and complex, fascinating characters.

Grade: A

I'm Not There

In his backdoor biopic, I'm Not There, director Todd Haynes paints a loopy and intoxicating mosaic of elusive rock & roll icon Bob Dylan that reads something like an abstract portrait made for the cinema. Dylan is represented through six different characters that embody different attributes from different periods of his life. None of them is specifically named "Bob Dylan" and hardly any one of their stories contains more than mere pencil sketches of actual truth, but they are each, in their own way, imaginative and emotive mini-masterpieces. I should also state that this is not a film depicted in clear cut segments but rather a montage tone poem that weaves strands of fact with strands of fiction and moments of joy with moments of sorrow. It doesn't really tell the story of Bob Dylan's life. It simply picks up all the shards of Dylan's many shattered public representations, both accurate and inaccurate, and melds them into one grand statement on the way people, particularly celebrities, have not one face but many. The film could spin on and on for many hours more and never run out of stories to tell, but it's agenda is not to depict Dylan's complex identity in its entirety. In fact, you can imagine Haynes would see such a task as a complete impossibility and an utter waste of his time. This is not really a biography at all, but rather a statement on the untouchable nature of the human spirit.

Of the many Dylans (Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Ben Wishaw, Marcus Carl Franklin), the standout portrayal is undeniably that of the chameleonic Cate Blanchett whose turn here as a Dylan doppleganger facing cruel press in London following a radical leap of musical style from folk music like "The Times They Are A Changin" to the throttling rock sounds of "Maggie's Farm" is one of the year's most unanticipated joys of artful experimentation. Such a leap could easily fall flat, but Blanchett, in perhaps her most radical and demanding transformation yet, delivers a wild, playful, and wounded take on Dylan that is unmatched by her peers. Sitting in a limousine, speaking in the thumping cadences of Dylan's deliberate, oddly phrased speech, she gets genuinely lost in philosophical thought and humble ramblings only to conclude with an unforgettable smirk "Everybody knows I'm not a folk singer." It's simple enough, but in that moment the film is unlocked and Dylan himself seems to come into clearer focus. It's not the statement itself. It's the simplicity of the words mixed with the character of the speaker. It's an amalgamation of sights and sounds that speaks to the nature of Dylan's ever evolving nature, Blanchett's artificial imitation, and the endeavor undertaken by this entire production. No one is who they say they are. And more importantly, no one knows who they are. They know only that they are not what people have called them.

Grade: A

Atonement

Joe Wright's gorgeous adaptation of Ian McEwan's epic novel of romance and betrayal could very well emerge as this award season's biggest firestarter when it comes to splitting the opinions of audiences. In the "Pros" column there is no doubt going to be talk of the breathtaking beauty of its photography, an elegant and dreamy realization of McEwan's text that's so crystal clear it may come closest of all recent cinematic adaptations to matching the lyricism of great prose. In the "Cons" list there's also a strong case to be made that the core of the film, a star-crossed romance between Cecilia, (Keira Knightley) the elegant daughter of a wealthy family, and the lowly groundkeeper's son Robbie (James McAvoy), just doesn't work. The surreally magnetic connection between the two emerges suddenly and then becomes quickly relegated to a sight unseen character motivation for reasons I will not divulge. Needless to say that the emotional inertia of Cecilia and Robbie's connection leaves much of the film hanging by a very thin thread. The connection between the two is supposed to be the catalyst for a historical epic, but it's actually the dullest thing about this film. Scenes exclusively between the two are filled with little more than picturesque and utterly unreal dramatizations of their glorious love affair. The whole thing reeks of the sort of indulgent contrivance that morphs sweeping romance into blubbery gush. To reconcile the "Pros" and "Cons" I'll say only this: Atonement is beautiful, perhaps even the most stunning film so far this year, but save for some scenes so tragic it would take soullessness not to feel them, it's not likely to stir much honest feeling from its audience.

The real heart of the film is the emotionally complex, at times unlikable, but always fascinating little sister to Cecilia, Briony (played at various ages by the equally brilliant Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai, and Vanessa Redgrave). Her childhood cruelty leads to a series of events with terrifying consequences for all. Briony's journey is really the only dramatic story with bite. She's a prickly youngster but morphs into a remorseful, repetent young woman in due time. Her transformation is inspiring in small ways though ultimately futile and heartbreaking. As the film ends, we feel only small sympathy for the victims of Briony's betrayal, namely Cecilia and Robbie whose conflicts are almost fully engulfed by the film's eagerness to look and feel lovely. What we feel most strongly is an aching sorrow for the anti-hero that is Briony Tallis and a devastating understanding that great sins can never truly be atoned.

Grade: B+