End of Watch

Written at the time of the film's release...long before the Derek Chauvin conviction, but long after the Rodney King footage. Police work is a tough job that I'd be quite incapable of. And it's made tougher by the fact that they've become the "catch-all" solution to all of Society's problems. There's got to be a better way...for them and for us. I stand by the police. But, I don't stand by, blindly, ignoring the fact that they've become a symptom of a system doing as little as possible...and leaving it for someone else to fix.

Cops, the Home Movie
or
"...More Capers in One Deployment Than Most Cops Will See Their Entire Career."

It's a war out there "once upon a time in South Central." And Officer Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the front-line reporter documenting the whole thing "for a project."  He's carrying a camera—not that he really needs it, the dashboard cam will pick up everything needed for an investigation. But that camera can only look forward—it's myopic. It can't see around you, it can't check the perimeter. And it can't look into your soul. It can look at your back, but it can't have it.

It starts with one of those dash-cam chases, so familiar to "reality" chase shows. No overlayed sound, save for Gyllenhall's narration, said in a monotone as if he was giving you your Miranda.  

I am the police and I am here to arrest you. You have broken the law. I did not write the law. I may even disagree with the law. But I will enforce it. No matter how you plead, cajole, beg or attempt to stir my sympathy, nothing you do will stop me from putting you in a steel cage with gray bars. If you run away, I will chase you. If you fight me, I will fight back. If you shoot at me, I will shoot back. By law I am unable to walk away. I am a consequence. I am the unpaid bill. I am fate with a badge and a gun. Behind my badge is a heart like yours. I bleed, I think, I love, and yes, I can be killed. And although I am but one man, I have thousands of brothers and sisters who would die for me and I for them. We stand watch together. The thin-blue-line, protecting the prey from the predators, the good from the bad. We are the police.*

And with that, the law of the film is laid down. The dash-cam goes away and the camera goes into cinema verité, the camera pointing from inside Taylor's locker as he goes through basic introductions—himself, his partner Mike Zavalla (Michael Peña, never better), his equipment (and a conversation from Rio Bravo pops into one's head: "That all you got?" "That's what I got."), and the beginning of the look inside—the harsh joshing, the tensions, the coolness and coldness and camaraderie of the corps. Joseph Wambaugh had an apt phrase for them in his book (and subsequent film), "The New Centurions." But Rome was never like this.

The turf in South Central is tough and hard-scrabble. Poverty is on display on every street corner, and behind the boarded-up windows of the houses in various states of disrepute are secrets for the outside world not to know, but will see the light of day once the front door is kicked in. The war is in the streets, but inside cook the warning signs that something is about to explode, the stakes rising, the limits of human degradation dropping, the calibers of the weapons increasing, the risks increasing and the only good side of it being that they're not increasing exponentially.

It's a tough film, directed and written by the guy who wrote Training Day and the original The Fast and the Furious, David Ayer, who has a knack for keeping things on the down-trodden path no matter who's behind the camera or what the subject matter is. It's not a film for continuity buffs, who will be driven crazy if they think "Okay, who's taking that shot?" with every change of perspective. Very quickly, the strictures of the snatch-and-grabbed shot are forgotten to gain perspective. The film would have been a pretentious (and claustrophobic) confusion if the conceit was maintained throughout, (I can see the review headline now: "The Blair Watch Project"), but as it is, breathes enough air into it while maintaining a feeling of impromptu recording—keeping the spirit of the law, rather than the letter of it. That, along with the ad-libbed spark of the dialogue gives it an edgy immediacy that, again, "seems" right, while never fully escaping the feeling of planned manipulation (not that it ever could). Game try, though. And manages to show the life—long stretches of tedium punctuated by moments of terror—that one imagines the life to be, even though blown up with steroids to fulfill the needs for melodrama and tension.

* But, what it doesn't say is "We are also responsible, culpable, and...accountable."

ParaNorman

Written at the time of film's release...

Re-Animators
or
"I See Dead Puppets"

The town of Blithe Hollow depends on the supernatural for its tourist trade. But, what the city fathers probably don't understand is that if you live by the sword...well, let's just say you'd better have a good cleaning crew.

One of the town's citizens is young Norman Babcock (voiced by Kodi Smith-McPhee) and he has a problem—he sees dead people, all of them. He's ostracized from friends, family and reality...from life, really...as most of his acquaintances are non-corporeal and that leads to bullying, loneliness and a general lack of enthusiasm. He'd be better off dead—as the only people he can relate to already are.

Then, there's his creepy Uncle (a wonderfully comic vocal performance by John Goodman) who tasks him with a special duty—saving Blithe Hollow from destruction by the wrath of the very witch of the town's fame, killed by the city elders centuries before.  To do so, he must go on a hero's journey with unlikely allies, many roadblocks both physical and emotional, while evading zombies, the undead, jocks, bullies and narcissistic big sisters to confront the evil witch.

ParaNorman is hilarious, quirky certainly, but also has a lot of depth and breadth to it.  It would be an easy—too easy—temptation to call it a Tim Burton knock-off (stop-motion animation, horrorific subject matter...it must be a Tim Burton knock-off), but it's actually far more concerned with story over effect than Burton, whose work can become tangentially derailed for a sequence or bit that the director finds funny, even if its a mismatch for the rest of the film and its non-sensibilities. ParaNorman stays on track, managing to brings its humor out of character, rather than despite it, and with a sense of comic timing that's by turns subtle, surprising and goofy. Yes, there are scary bits—it's rated PG, so maybe the littlest of kids shouldn't go—but its horrors are not there to shock, but to thrill. 

And when the film does build up a full head of horror steam at the end, it provides some of the most awesome sights and effects that have been seen in animation in quite some time. A hybrid of the Burton and Aardmann animation studios—directors Chris Butler and Sam Fell worked for both groups, respectively, and you can see aspects of their animation styles meshing, hallmarking the best of both stop-motion worlds—Burton's "antic-ness" and Aardmann's appreciation (and mining the comedic possibilities) of stillness.  Combine that with the story of an outsider who manages to collect a posse of co-adventurers who handle the auxiliary parts of the hero's main mission, and you have a well-rounded story that manages to surpass the limitations of the parts (making it, amusingly, a bit of a zombie-movie itself).  

What's nice is there's enough time in the plot (involving more than just the cemetery variety) to appreciate the artistry behind it—the way the town is laid out with abandoned squalor in the detail, the people with perpetually bemused expressions, and are, like us, anything but symmetrical, the way an ear glows with the back-lighting of sunshine, and in the ending that manages to combine moments of dark beauty and true psychotic scariness. Lots to appreciate. Lots to like. It's a fine film that makes the most of its slim ambitions, and rises above them.

Up in the Air

The Economy and how it grinds up people has been on my mind of late. Here are some movies I've written about in that subject matter. 

Written at the time of the film's release.

"Passing Over"

Down in the lower right hand corner of this review (and every review on BXC) there's a space for meta-data to help readers find similar personnel, year of release, director, major stars—basically general stuff.

But I also like to put the genre of where the film would fit, say, at the video store—nothing too specific. Jason Reitman's new film Up in the Air is the first one to have me stumped. I lean towards "drama," but it's too clever and funny to meet that description. It's not a "comedy" as it deals with pain and contemporary issues that most comedies (most modern comedies, at least) steer clear of—although it's tempting to say that it's a "Judd Apatow comedy" for adults, taking on his basic "growing up" arc, but with a more mature, melancholy overtone. Yet it made me laugh out loud fairly regularly. And it made me think of what a sorry mess we're in.

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a corporate hit-man for hire. His company (run by a tight-smiled cut-throat Jason Bateman) provides a termination service for struggling companies. Bingham flies to the home-offices and fires the people the weasley exec's are too cowardly to break the news to face-to-face. And business is booming.

"This is the biggest financial melt-down in our nation's history" crows Bateman's CEO. "This is our moment." And to make the most of it, he's hired a new 23 year old tyro named Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick, who gets perpetually lost in the lunch-room in the "Twilight" movies*), who hopes to streamline the down-sizing process by doing it over the internet, rather than in person.

This throws the well-managed world of Bingham into a tizzy. No more frequent flier miles which he collects like office-absconded paper-clips. No more stipends and luxury cars for hire, and platinum service lounges. He'll be flying coach rather than first-class. Worse than that, he'll be stuck in a cubicle going nowhere, considerably worse than coach.

Not only will he have to get his own drinks, he may have to get a life. Bingham is in a groove, as personal and as transitory as the swipe of a card-reader. He is constantly between Point A and Point B and prides himself on finding the most efficient route. His life is reduced to a minimum of baggage—carry-on's with wheels that don't squeak, a packing ritual as choreographed as a Fosse number down to the split-second, and little contact with family. He knows the airport routine cold. And as a sideline, he gives lectures on travelling efficiently in the air and in life. "Our attachments weigh us down," he intones to his conference rooms of drones. "The slower we move, the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. We are not monogamous swans. We are sharks."

Clooney's in full smug mode—a variation of his divorce attorney Miles Massey from Intolerable Cruelty played straight—he practically marches to the beat of "Come Fly With Me" and his smile is as practiced and measured as his patter...with everyone, business associates and family. His character has a part to play and when the show's over, it's "me" time, like the "James Bond" fantasy of living the high life while doing dirty jobs. Everything is first-class and preferred customer, his one goal being a targeted accumulation of miles over a life-time—his own personal best. He has an apartment, but he's never in it and it has the same empty utilitarian ambiance of a Ramada Suite. He's the personification of "fly-by-night" in slip-off shoes.

So are his relationships, such as they are. At the same time that he is forced to show Natalie "the ropes" of the "down-sizing" business, he's established a "ships that pass in the night" fling with fellow traveller Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga, finally getting a role that has more heft than "girlfriend"). Natalie, who probably has a Power-Point presentation for how her life is going to go ("I should be driving an Explorer by 23"), is horrified at the casualness of it all. She's just out of the starting blocks and doesn't know the pit-falls of the track ahead, with all the confidence and brashness of someone who doesn't know what she doesn't know, and how theory reacts when it collides with reality. It's a crash-course in transitioning, on the job and in real life, and the two veterans try to bring the kid down easy—at least to get her to remember to lock her wheels.

There'll I'll leave it, for to tell too much will ruin it. But I admire any movie that acknowledges the mature adult, that attempts to show that a life is segmented, complicated and compromised, where dreams could come true, but mostly don't, where decency is its own reward and the idea of "soul-mates" is a lot of hooey. A lot of hooey to sell soap.

And movies.

Jason Reitman grew up in movies—his father is Ivan Reitman—and with his first three films (the others being Thank You for Smoking and Juno) he has shown himself all too willing to throw sabo's into the gears of the Hollywood Dream Factory,** making contemporary movies of stylish form about tough choices and compromised principles in today's America, while still keeping them highly entertaining and unpretentious. One hopes he can sustain that promise and not flirt with issues of the elite, as so many of his peers have in the past, and buy into the fairy tale myth of mainstream Hollywood.

One hopes he can keep his feet on the ground.

* Kendrick is great, no doubt about it, but one hears a whine of feed-back in the false amplification of her performance. It is nuanced and studied, alright, and just a tinge robotic. The joy in the performance is watching the gears seize, the plugs mis-fire, and the LED's in her eyes dim. It's like watching a puppet turn into a real live girl. But she doesn't blow the other stars away, or "steal the movie." There's just a whiff of Dream Factory hype in this talk. As long as it stays in the publicity and stays off the screen, I'm all for it.

** If you do want an unequivocal happy ending and an example of dreams coming true, stay to the end of the movie. Reitman is a very generous man. And the song manages to perfectly distill the movie.

The Accountant

Attention-Deficit
or
Settling All Accounts

Gavin O'Connor's a busy director these days. His last film, the little-seen Natalie Portman Western, Jane Got a Gun was released a mere nine months ago.*

But, he is probably best known for the Disney-financed film of the 1980 "Miracle on the Ice," Miracle, as well as the 2011 Tom Hardy MMA film Warrior (television watchers may know him for directing the pilot of the popular TV series "The Americans").

His credentials for working fast and efficiently and with no flab associated with his movies is well-known.

The Accountant (like Jane Got a Gun) was on the 2011 "Blacklist" of well-regarded un-made scripts for that year. An original screenplay, it followed the action market with a twisted tale of revenge and detection.

Its hook? "The Accountant" is a mercenary on two fronts—he cooks the books of cartels while also pursuing "bad-guys" who have done "bad things," and he's autistic. He runs a little tax business out of Small-Town, Illinois, where he helps folks pull through on their taxes and he does some consulting work on the side. He's well-known for being "nothing short of supernatural" with accounting and he's often in demand for moving funds, finding depreciations, and making money disappear and magically reappear. He gets his work-referrals from a closed-loop system that advises and watches over him and when he mentions doing something contrary responds with "heavy sigh." 

Right now, he's supplementing his income tracing irregularities for a high-tech prosthetics firm called Living Robotics that is looking to go public, but a junior accountant (Anna Kendrick) has found some irregularities in the ledgers and the Accountant (going by the name of Chris Wolff), played by Ben Affleck, meets with the corporate heads (Jean Smart, Andy Umberger and John Lithgow)—one lovely exchange has Wolf being told he'll get ten years worth of records to examine: "How long have you been CFO?" "Fifteen years" "Then, I'll need your records for the past fifteen years..." While he starts preparing for the audit, things are happening in Washington D.C.

Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson, she's TV's version of Suicide Squad's Amanda Waller on "Arrow") is called into the office of the head of financial crimes division (J.K. Simmons) at the Treasury Department. "Do you like puzzles, Agent Medina?" he asks her and proceeds to give her a doozy. The Treasury head, Ray King, has all sorts of surveillance photos of various cartels meeting in plain sight, but the one thing they have in common is one man, never in clear view, but identifiable by stature and dress which is similar between all snaps. King has a file on Medina showing that she lied about a past criminal record on her Fed application—a felony offense. Her puzzle is to identify the man in the photos and she has two weeks to do it. At the end of the two weeks, she either has the answer and keeps her job, or is charged with that felony.

In the meantime, Wolff splits his time between at LRI and his business, and his modest suburban home and a bay in a public storage facility where he keeps an air-stream trailer—his home-away-from home. There, he conditions himself with loud music and irritating lights, while he does some rudimentary calisthenics. That trailer is a combined fortress of solitude, arsenal and bank, where he keeps his collateral in the form of collectibles (paintings and vintage comic-books, mostly), gold bars and easily-available cash. His front is the house, very wired and camera'd, and we learn a little bit about his background through flashbacks.

He's diagnosed as autistic with sensitivity to light and noise, but totally driven. A tour of a school for the condition is attractive to his parents, who have another son, Braxton, but his father, an Army lifer, puts the kibosh on the idea, intending, instead, to instill discipline into the child's world, rather than closeting him away in a school. The child will have to learn his way, make his choices about his path, and he must do it in the real-world, not protected—if anything, he will have to learn to fight and be self-sufficient.

Back at LRI, he starts work. The junior accountant who found the discrepancies, Dana Cummings, has stayed up all night gathering the doc-boxes and PNL statements and Wolff dismisses her help and expertise without so much as a "thank you." He then pulls out his dry-erase markers—there are a lot of them—and begins work in a conference room on the white-board at one end of the room. 

Pretty soon, the calculations are filling up the white-board and the markers are being tossed into the waste-basket as they go dry. Wolff works through the night and the white-board, eventually using the windows of the conference room to continue the calculations. He doesn't stop, but by the beginning of the next business day, every window has been filled and by the time Cummings walks in, Wolff, displaying more emotion than he has throughout the entire movie is able to go over the calculations, showing that eventually $61 million went missing from Living Robotics—he hasn't figured out how and by whom, but he will not get a chance to, as the CEO's sister walks in, asks for his progress, and dismisses him, telling him his work is done.

It isn't, though...not to Wolff's satisfaction. It sets him off his routine, which manifests itself in little miscalculations and annoying little errors. What he doesn't know—besides the investigation going on about him across the country—is that there is a player on the other side, an assassin (Jon Bernthal), an outlier, who's been making his way through the LRI economic infrastructure. It was this assassin who convinced the LRI CFO to commit suicide in order to prevent the hit-man from killing him...and then killing his family. Money may not trickle down, but blood does. And when the assassin targets Wolff and the lowly Dana Cummings, he goes into a more aggressive stance...to settle accounts. 

The Accountant is a good little actioner, a bit unique, smart in not-obvious places, and obvious in some usual places. A lot of good actors, doing good, in not often inspired work. It keeps you engaged by jumping back and forth in time in order to give you some back-story and some education, and the action is done efficiently, and gun-nuts will appreciate the hardware. It's well-done, and has half a brain in its head. The last twenty minutes seem a bit rote, but still manages to toss in a twist or two.

Recommended.

* It was filmed in 2013 and been held up from release for various issues, including legal. O'Connor replaced director Lynne Ramsey after financial issues with the producer, caused her to walk out on the project. 

End of Watch

Cops, the Home Movie
or
"...More Capers in One Deployment Than Most Cops Will See Their Entire Career."

It's a war out there "once upon a time in South Central."  And Officer Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the front-line reporter documenting the whole thing "for a project."  He's carrying a camera—not that he really needs it, the dashboard cam will pick up everything needed for an investigation.  But that camera can only look forward—it's myopic.  It can't see around you, it can't check the perimeter.  And it can't look into your soul.  It can look at your back, but it can't have it.

It starts with one of those dash-cam chases, so familiar to "reality" chase shows.  No overlayed sound, save for Gyllenhall's narration, said in a monotone as if he was giving you your Miranda.  

I am the police and I am here to arrest you.  You have broken the law.  I did not write the law.  I may even disagree with the law.  But I will enforce it.  No matter how you plead, cajole, beg or attempt to stir my sympathy, nothing you do will stop me from putting you in a steel cage with gray bars.  If you run away, I will chase you.  If you fight me, I will fight back.  If you shoot at me, I will shoot back.  By law I am unable to walk away.  I am a consequence.  I am the unpaid bill.  I am fate with a badge and a gun.  Behind my badge is a heart like yours. I bleed, I think, I love, and yes, I can be killed. And although I am but one man, I have thousands of brothers and sisters who would die for me and I for them.  We stand watch together.  The thin-blue-line, protecting the prey from the predators, the good from the bad. We are the police.

And with that, the law of the film is layed down.  The dash-cam goes away and the camera goes into cinema verité, the camera pointing from inside Taylor's locker as he goes through basic introductions—himself, his partner Mike Zavalla (Michael Peña, never better), his equipment (and a conversation from Rio Bravo pops into one's head: "That all you got?"  "That's what I got."), and the beginning of the look inside—the harsh joshing, the tensions, the coolness and coldness and camaraderie of the corps. Joseph Wambaugh had an apt phrase for them in his book (and subsequent film), "The New Centurions."  But Rome was never like this.

The turf in South Central is tough and hard-scrabble.  Poverty is on display on every street corner, and behind the boarded-up windows of the houses in various states of disrepute are secrets for the outside world not to know, but will see the light of day once the front door is kicked in.  The war is in the streets, but inside cook the warning signs that something is about to explode, the stakes rising, the limits of human degradation dropping, the calibers of the weapons increasing, the risks increasing and the only good side of it being that they're not increasing exponentially.

It's a tough film, directed and written by the guy who wrote Training Day and the original The Fast and the Furious, David Ayer, who has a knack for keeping things on the down-trodden path no matter who's behind the camera or what the subject matter is.  It's not a film for continuity buffs, who will be driven crazy if they think "Okay, who's taking that shot?" with every change of perspective.  Very quickly, the strictures of the snatch-and-grabbed shot are forgotten to gain perspective.  The film would have been a pretentious (and claustrophobic) confusion if the conceit was maintained throughout, (I can see the review headline now: "The Blair Watch Project"), but as it is, breathes enough air into it while maintaining a feeling of impromptu recording—keeping the spirit of the law, rather than the letter of it.  That, along with the ad-libbed spark of the dialogue gives it an edgy immediacy that, again, "seems" right, while never fully escaping the feeling of planned manipulation (not that it ever could).  Game try, though.  And manages to show the life—long stretches of tedium punctuated by moments of terror—that one imagines the life to be, even though blown up with steroids to fulfill the needs for melodrama and tension.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

"Getting a Life"

Finally. A comedy that's ambitious, funny, and definitely not "coasting." If anything, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World might be working too hard for its laughs by violating every rule in the book: episodic, fast, edited in a deliberately outre style with images crashing into each other, stepping on and crushing dialogue, seamlessly merging, not unlike "The Archers," reality and fantasy. Indeed, you're never sure if what you're seeing is reality, or merely the Red Bull fueled fantasies of its lead character, Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera, appearing "scruffy," thin and even more chinless than usual) young adult, but in name only. And the movie manages to sustain the breathless pace its entire length, without losing its inventiveness or attitude.

That's something of a surprise as director Edgar Wright's previous films, like Shaun of the Dead, and Hot Fuzz, outwore their welcomes at the 2/3 mark but kept on going. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World starts out of the gate fast and only lets up at its resolution (appropriately), in a melange of styles and techniques, while also shifting the narrative into over-drive with cartoony and comics graphics touches that invade and overlay photo-reality. Fight Club and Stranger Than Fiction did the same with a formalist style, but "Pilgrim" suffuses it with an energetic slacker zeal, as if these things were appearing off the top of its protagonist's head (which, in the narrative, it probably is). A movie hasn't been this anarchistically fun to watch tearing apart movie-sensibilities since...oh...Fight Club, Moulin Rouge!, or, hell, Citizen Kane.* Film-making rules are bent almost in two, but never break the narrative flow. This is good stuff.**

I've stayed away from reading any reviews (which is my M.O.), but a scan of headlines leads one to think that the film has turned off its "Gamer" audience.

I can see where the argument would come: it's really not about gaming (not in the electronic sense) and whimsically lampoons the culture using its tropes and excesses against it. On a deeper level, however, it manages to take the insular mind-set and short-term rewards and gratification of gaming and place it in context into the real world. And finds it wanting in the course of a life. At the same time, it manages to make the sensibilities of gaming concepts—the nexus-choices of "Continue?," "Adding a life," and "Game Over," and draw parallels to painful life-lessons—real ones—that legitimize the story-line, gaming structure and the very reason for making the movie. Very, very smart.

Now, this is a lot of "deep thought" for a teen-relationship (kinda) movie, and I run the risk of gilding the lily, and worse, building high anticipation which might kill the appreciation for what is there in the theater.*** But, more light-bulbs went off for me in this one, about how to use the craft to tell a story, and, in context, of achieving something more than the instant gratification that permeates our society (and the damage it can create) than anything I've seen in awhile.

It also managed to save, for me, what has been a rather disappointing movie Summer. It's also the kind of high-concept circus act that the director can only pull off once—another movie in this style would lay him open to suggestions that he's a "one-trick pony." But, if he can bring this kind of sensibility to this project, imagine where that mind could go in the future. It makes one anticipate, and excited for, what can happen in the future.  As for now, Wright's taken things to a whole new level.

* Okay, lest this be taken out of context ("He's comparing 'Scott Pilgrim vs. the World' to 'Citizen Kane?'!) and I'm accused of Kael-esque hyperbole, I found the same sense of film-making brio in this one that I've found in the others.  I always find this exciting, whoever does it, even if the results are ultimately to a less than satisfying experience.  I'm all for pushing the envelope, but the results have to be more than a good-looking envelope.  There's got to be a good message inside it, too.

 ** And, there's another layer—the sound design.  This one may be my winner for "Best Use of Sound" for the year, tossing in music and effects in a giddy montage that's constantly inventive and supportive.  I've tried to do this sort of stuff in my work—specifically for the old "Bill Nye the Science Guy" show—but, I could only aspire to the level that "Scott Pilgrim" does. Bravo. (Clapclapclap)

*** Notice, please, that I haven't done a plot synopsis, quoted good lines (which there are, a-plenty) or said anything about the movie other than a basic wash-and-rinse of the film-going experience.  There are too many surprises, and too fine a resolution, to go about spoiling one's viewing.  I want to keep your preconceptions of this movie (which I hope you'll do) as spoiler-free as possible.  Go in expecting nothing, and this will be a better film—for you—for it.

Into the Woods

Not as Grim (as Grimm Can Be)
or
The Family That Slaps Together Raps Together

Rob Marshall's output as a director has been problematic. He managed to make a fully fleshed-out version of the stage schematics of Chicago, then followed up his multi-Oscar-winner by making a mess of Memoirs of a Geisha, then only managed to sporadically liven up a film version of Nine (but without evoking any ghosts of Fellini, on whose work the whole thing is based). One looked at the plans set photos for Into the Woods and wondered if Marshall was making it or Tim Burton.

However he got there, it was the right path, because Into the Woods, his adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's 1987 Grimm fairy tale mash-up may be his best movie ever after. Marshall's directorial touch post-Chicago has been mostly heavy-handed and cheerless, and only occasionally lightening up in musical moments. Here, the film doesn't flag whenever the music stops.

Blunt and Corden practice their baby-holding techniques

The "real world" of Into the Woods is a fairy tale land where anything is possible...in the confines of one village. There, various stories from the imaginations of The Brothers Grimm intersect to form one story of wishes coming true and going horribly (horribly) wrong and the resulting consequences. In the village is a baker and his wife (James Corden and Emily Blunt) who cannot conceive a child due to the curse of a witch (Meryl Streep) owing to the previous generation's actions. There is also a little girl (Lilla Crawford) in a red cape who is on her way to visit her invalid grandmother, a matriarchal family of women (Christine Baranski, Lucy Punch and Tammy Blanchard) who regularly abuse the runt of the litter (Anna Kendrick), a rather dull-witted farmer's son (Daniel Huttlestone), tasked by his mother (Tracey Ullman) with selling the family cow, and the sister of the baker (Mackenzie Mauzy) (abducted by that same witch) who is locked away in a tower with nothing to do but let her hair grow.

Lilla Crawford as "Red"

The story's machinations and complications take place in a nearby woods which are lovely, dark and Johnny Depp'd (he plays the Big...well, smallish...Bad Wolf), with a crowded thicket of swamps, quick-sand, dangerous cliffs, ghosts and spirited trees, crowding the path to the castle of the King who has two charming, handsome, and extraordinarily dramatic princes (Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen) who must have inherited the trait from their Mother's side.

Anna Kendrick as Cinderella

The music and songs are by Stephen Sondheim (slightly toned down by the Disney studio, which produced) who has a fine time mixing and matching rhyming schemes—but with a difference.  Most movie-goers experiencing musical fare (like...Disney...again) have their "tent-pole" songs (called that because they support the structure of the movie with key-points, like tent-poles, roughly one every 15 minutes) expressing emotions in stasis (or "this is what I'm feeling right now").  

"The woods are lovely, dark and Johnny Depp'd"

Sondheim goes a couple steps better as both song-writer and dramatist—his song's catalogue a character's change of emotion or realization, their thought processes more than their emotions, their motivations, not their feelings. Sondheim's songs travel, propelling the story and characters along, not stopping the show to get a song in, and the lyrics are so dexterous and nimble that, if anything, the pace increases, rather than slows for a musical "time-out."

Mauzy as Rapunzel "lets her hair down"

It is Marshall's best film to date—well cast and performed (everybody can sing...and well), nimbly paced and production-designed somewhere on the border between Burtonville and the Gilliam-verse.  It's fairy-tale land, but things can turn pretty Grimm (despite Disney's efforts to homogenize the material*)—one notices early on that there's a lot of face-slapping going between families. Things do not turn out happily ever after, and the consequences are irrevocable, despite some hocus-pocus, bovine resurrections and after-lives.  But, the through-line is the journey from life to myth, the passing of reality into legend, as it should be. Nothing down-beat about that.

Chris Pine does...some...Shatnering...as the Prince

Performances are uniformly excellent and done with verve, but standouts are Streep, Blunt, Depp and Pine (the "Agony" duet is a comic highlight), working with good material that is consistently entertaining and deep, adding extra dimension to the so-familiar words on pages, breathing life and giving voice to old chestnuts and bringing them to full bloom.

* For instance: the Wolf's song "Hello, Little Girl" has some of its more wicked aspects stripped from it, the princes' reprise of "Agony" (which makes them even more fickle) has been cut, and the ultimate fate of Rapunzel (who is given short shrift, anyway) is not even mentioned.  Sondheim did approve the changes (as he did with Burton's film of Sweeney Todd)