No Strings Attached

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

"Turning Natalie Portman Into a Girl"
or
"That 'Flippy' Thing You Did?  Good Call."

"SUCH a chick-flick!" said one of the young women sitting in front of me at the conclusion of No Strings Attached, the new rom-com with Natalie Portman (who exec-produced, as if you didn't have ENOUGH reasons to hate her) and Ashton Kutcher.  This one might be the most negligible film in the 12 month span which will see her in five new movies (based on previews, I think Thor might actually be the weakest link), having a kid, getting married, and probably winning an Oscar (Geez, Nat,' over-achieving much?).

And, yeah, total chick-flick, but one with a tiny spin to it, although it still falls into the "happily-ever-after" formula they've followed since the days when we innocently worried that Doris Day might lose her chastity to Rock Hudson. No such worries here. There's a lot of hay-rolling in this one, body-double or no, although we see more of Kutcher's tush than hers (for a change). Virtue is not the issue here, but "true love,"* now permanently split, I guess, from sex (not that they really got along).

But, and this is the "neat twist," it is Portman's Emma Kurtzman, who has commitment issues, not, as is typical, the male of the species. "I'm not really an affectionate person," she blandly tells her camp-buddy Adam (they keep "meeting-cute" throughout their lives, which in movie terms means they're destined to be together (Hell, they're in a romantic comedy—of course, they're destined to be together!). But, when both are "available," they have a brief encounter (clocked at 45 seconds), that puts Emma in mind that, rather than suffering through that whole "relationship thing" that they become "friends with benefits," casual sex partners available at the drop of a text message.

Then, in a Hawksian role-reversal, which, as in His Girl Friday, makes the original premise snap into focus a little better, it is Kutcher's TV-assistant director who wants something more, as in commitment, from which Portman's Emma wrinkles her nose, rolls her eyes and turns on her heel. It gets complicated. It gets messy. It gets resolved.

This sounds like a dreadful premise, but for all the "R"-rated language and suggestiveness (though never veering into "bro-mance" crudeness), and the seemingly-required "safe" arc of the storyline,** it is a clever and funny movie in the particulars, thanks in no small part to Elizabeth Meriwether's clever screenplay, a less-leaden-than-usual direction by Ivan Reitman, and a splendid ensemble above and below the title. Incidents and details seem fresh and buoy you up, disguising the fact that there may be some clockwork mechanism behind the face, and the cast makes the most of these moments, making it all play fast and a little loose (with the exception of Kevin Kline, who is just a little practiced and arch as Kutcher's never-grown-up father, but that could be explained away as he's an actor). Portman manages to make her "stick-in-the mud" Emma stiff and likeable simultaneously, and is only too happy to sacrifice her dignity in scenes (she has a great drunken wobble-walk in high-heels that's priceless), and Kutcher—who gets a lot of stick for just being Ashton Kutcher—doesn't take himself so seriously that he avoids turning winsomeness into weakness. Both's comic timing makes for a good chemistry, despite the obstacles their characters regularly throw between each other.  In the end, it is two people's trip to normalcy in a chaotic world that seems to want to either crush them or ignore them, and only by narrowing their focus to each other can they achieve the specialness they think they deserve.

* ...and, coincidentally, Cary Elwes, Westley from The Princess Bride, is in this, although discretely disguised behind a nerdlinger beard, so he doesn't pose a realistic threat to Kutcher.

** One of these days I have to finish that post on Judd Apatow.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

"Boys Own"

or

"I Have Good News and I Have Bad News"

The Second World War makes for fascinating history and fascinating reading. The convergence of warfare, technology, and the dark arts of espionage fairly boggles the mind that so much was going on in the background while foot-soldiers and pilots and sailors were slugging it out on the battlefields. The Allies would do anything to gain an advantage. Whether it was Operation Mincemeat, or Operation Crossbow, or Operation Anthropoid or "The Ladies" at Bletchley Park or Alan Turing's "computing machine" or the spies and conspirators at "Camp X", so much was done behind the scenes of "the lines" to disrupt enemy operations or lead them astray that soon the conspirators got caught up in their own chicanery. When secrets were discovered of enemy bombing runs, the information could not be used to save lives lest the enemy discover the Allies' advantage. One cannot calculate the lives that were lost...and needlessly...in order to preserve that most transitory of things, military secrets.

 

They make for good reading,* but Hollywood never seems to think that they'd make good stories unless they're blown up (and real good) to cartoonish proportions. That Operation Crossbow film is a good example of that.

 

Gus March-Phillips in the hirsute form of Henry Cavill

And so is The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Guy Ritchie's new film, which tells the story (sort of) of "Operation Postmaster" an "unofficial" British operation to disrupt the supply chain to German U-boats (or anything else) by dispatching ships that the Special Operations Executive suspected were running arms for the Germans. It was a short operation—roughly 30 minutes—where what was called The Small Scale Raiding Force, under the command of Gus March Phillips, hijacked three ships from the Spanish harbor of Fernando Po in Spanish Guinea, while the ships' officers were being thrown a party ashore (by an SOE agent). The SSRF delivered the ships to the Navy a few days later.

Lassen, March-Phillips and Hayes update a German war-ship on the floppy state of its captain.

Well, that sounds exciting enough, but the screenwriters aren't happy with that, so they invented rescues, subterfuges, feints, a honey trap, and various bloody attacks to complicate the story and make it more of an episode of "Mission: Impossible" than what actually happened, no matter the "Based on a True Story" card that starts the film. The filmmakers take it too far and not far enough—the actors hardly resemble their real-life counterparts and their fighting skills are far more athletic and balletic than the training required of what was called a "butcher and bolt" unit. And although much play is made of the crew being "'A'-Team" "mad," the SSRF has been more described as amphetamine-popping sociopaths (all in a good cause, of course).

In the movie, that's Ian Fleming in the middle and Gubbins on the right.

(Fleming wasn't even in this branch, although he did do some spy-work)

So, don't believe what you see—it's not a true story in the way its being portrayed—and I'll shut up about the discrepancies and just talk about what's there on-screen, although don't be surprised by a pervasive grumbling tone.

It seems that England is having difficulties with German U-boats patrolling the Atlantic, disrupting shipping lines and destroying relief efforts sent from the United States—which is still reluctant about entering the war with troops, despite Germany goose-stepping all the way to France. For Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Rory Kinnear, unrecognizable in make-up), this is infuriating: even if America did send troops, there's a good possibility that the troop transports would be sunk, and any aggressive action is opposed by His Majesty's Government and by the British Navy. Churchill decides to take covert action through the SOE—"Hitler is not playing by the rules and so neither are we"—to take out any boats they can find at sea and try to disrupt the German's supply lines to the U-boats.

SOE's head Brigadier Colin Gubbins (Cary Elwes), with help from his adjutant Ian Fleming (Freddie Fox) spring Gustavus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill) out of irons and tells him of their plans to sink the Duchessa d'Aosta, an Italian merchant ship docked at the port of Santa Isabel on the Spanish island of Fernando Po that reconnaissance has determined is a supply ship for the German U-boats. March-Phillips is informed that two SOE agents, the already established-in-Fernando Po Heron (Babs Olusanmokun, who has become a favorite of mine since playing the ship's doctor on "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds") and Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González, who I'm glad is there even though Marjorie Stewart had no part of the mission) are already on their way to Fernando Po by train to lay the ground-work for their operation.

March-Phillips, while taking the time to mooch booze, cigars and Fleming's lighter, is understandably skeptical ("We both know I'm not very popular with this current administration) and he warns that the troops he wants to gather for the mission are a bit unorthodox ("You won't like them...they're all mad"), and is reassured that he has discretion as the job doesn't officially exist (nor will it ever exist, seeing as they're going to be attacking a Spanish port and Spain is being obstinately neutral in the war as its Prime Minister, Franco, is obstinately a fascist).

One of his proposed team, the master planner of his outfit, Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer) is a prisoner of the Nazis, and March-Phillips and his crew—Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson, streaming's "Reacher"), Henry Hayes** (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), and explosives expert Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding)—do a side-trip rescue on the way, using their Brixham fishing trawler, Maid of Honour, as their transport.

That's a lot of set-up exposition, but one of the strengths of Richie's direction—and of the screen-writers—is that it all gets taken care of quickly, amusingly, and lets you know who's who and what's what before settling into the details and taking care of the action, which is fast, brutal, and probably far beyond what the actual team doing the mission did. Oh, they were perfectly capable of filleting a man with a knife—as happens frequently in the movie—but, the action is just too choreographed to be in any way realistic. Efficient and fast, certainly, but, once a jugular is slit, why keep stabbing?

There's also an air of pushing the "aren't we crazy" throughout, an inherent smugness that carries on throughout the movie. Usually, Cavill is the most visible culprit of this in whatever he plays, and, yes, in the film's first 45 minutes, he succumbs to that—Florence Pugh's line "What a poser..." kept coming to mind—but, eventually he settles down, stops grand-standing, and towards the end, is a welcoming commanding presence and then, towards the end, exquisitely delivers a good James Bond-ish line: "Marjorie! Over-dressed and under-dressed at the same time...as usual."

An aside: Here's an issue that irked me—The "James Bond" angle. Sure, they uncomfortably shoe-horned Ian Fleming (Bond's creator) into the narrative, then capped the movie by saying that Cavill's character, March-Phillips, was Fleming's inspiration for Bond, but I've heard others, including William Stephenson, were Fleming's model—there has been so much speculation and it's usually based solely on trying to make some correspondent's subject matter more important (or at least "buzz-worthy") than it would be without it. Fleming saw a lot of spy-craft during the war, but I think he got his main inspiration by looking in the mirror and fantasizing.

It's a good adventure flick with the added bonus that SOME of it is true, and, surprisingly, in some of the details that they don't make a point of, but it's a bit of over-kill on many levels. War is butchery, after all, and there's quite a bit of evisceration in this film. At one point, in taking over the ships, Ritchson's Anders goes through picking off crew-men, starting with bow and arrows (his specialty), then knives, then an axe, all done with a blood-thirsty glee. "Good times". But, maybe that wouldn't have been as entertaining as what the "mad" "crazy" "sociopathic" members of the SSRF really did when the took over those ships in 1942.

Those crew-men that didn't put up a fight they took prisoner, 29 in all, and turned them over to the British Navy.

The Small Scale Raiding Force—No. 62 Commando

 

Top: Maj. Gustavus March-Phillips, Geoffrey Appleyard,  Graham Hayes, Anders Lassen

Bottom: Marjorie Stewart, Major Colin 'M' Gubbins

The Target
 

* One of my most enjoyable times reading one of these histories is "The Man Called Intrepid" by William Stevenson, published in 1976, about William Stephenson. It's fascinating reading, but some of its validity has been called into question.

 

** The man's name was actually Graham Hayes, and can't think of a logical reason why they might have changed it.

A Christmas Carol (2009)

Christmas is Monday. B/CL is closed on Mondays...like theaters and like museums...so I won't be posting then. Besides, it's Christmas, Scrooge!  So, here's what I would've posted on Monday were I posting.

Written at the time of this version's release (Oh, don't worry! I'm sure another version is coming out shortly).

"God Bless Us, Every Mega-Pixel" 

  

Everyone has a favorite "Christmas Carol" (or I should say, "version" of "A Christmas Carol").* A novella, it is the perfect length for adaptation to movie (with some padding) or television special (with some commercials). And being as it's in the Public Domain, anybody can adapt it without paying any money to Mr. Dickens (who probably haunts the producers, every one!). Hence the title: Disney's 'A Christmas Carol.'tm **

 

Disney may own it, but it's Robert Zemeckis and Jim Carrey's "A Christmas Carol," and it stands up against even beloved ghosts of "Christmas Carols" past. Face it. There are so many, that presentation becomes the main criterion to base a judgement, like "Hamlet." And format has a lot to do with what drives Zemeckis' version. Skip the 3-D aspect for a moment. This motion capture-CG "take" does some very interesting things with the story (adapted within a farthing of Dickens' original by Zemeckis himself) that are only possible with animation—the ghosts being integral to the story.

"A Christmas Carol" is a ghost story. The ghosts and their tours of Scrooge's life past, present and future must be enough to slap Scrooge giddy, make him "scared straight," turn his perspective from "profit" to "a common good." 

In other words, it must turn him from a "cool, conservative man" to a "bleeding heart liberal."*** You have to have really scary ghosts to do that. Really scary ghosts. Any half-steps and Scrooge would be a "champagne liberal," and what good are they?

In this version, Carrey not only plays "Scrooge" (through Zemeckis' ever-improving "motion-capture" technique) but also the three Ghosts: a cooing Irish flame for the past, a roaring Scottish present, and a funereally silent Future. Each has their own presentation of their visions, Past whisking Scrooge to his old haunts, Present turning Scrooge's sitting room into a camera obscura to spy the current Christmas, flinging Scrooge to a stage street to present Want and Ignorance, two feral spirits—the one growing up violent behind prison bars, the other morphing into a hooker and into a straight-jacketed mad-woman. And Future, in a neat touch, forms itself from Scrooge's own shadow. 

There emerges during the sequence a chase as Scrooge is pursued by his own nightmarish funeral cortege pulled by two red-eyed horses, a bit that old Walt would have been proud of. It soon deteriorates into a demonstration of 3-D (which Zemeckis and Pixar are already masters of—the previews of James Cameron's Avatar shows a few problems) as bedlam as a mouse-sized Scrooge must scramble through the sewers to escape a terrible fate. One could live without it, as well as the "snuffing" episode of Christmas Past were the sequence not a vivid demonstration of just how well Zemeckis uses the technology to bring a life-like edge to the movie. And that's where this "Christmas Carol" truly makes its mark. 

Where this version of "A Christmas Carol" is unique is that this marks the occasion when "motion capture" CG "got the faces right." Zemeckis' previous experiment in this realm, Beowulf, had an odd, plasticene feel to it, mouths didn't crinkle correctly in speech, faces wobbled in perspective. Not here. Carrey is a broad actor, to be sure. But he's also an actor of simultaneous quicksilver subtleties, and this film captures it all. It's one thing to flit the camera perspective through snow-storms and sail through the chains of a scale, falling chestnuts, and the "eye" of a wreath (all done in the film's credits), but it's quite another artistic thing to capture the look of pleased instant love on young Ebeneezer's face when he first meets his beloved Belle (Robin Wright Penn), or to show the pleading terror and remorse when a ghostly Scrooge comes "face-to-face" with a mourning Bob Cratchit (a perfect Gary Oldman). Keep your dizzying flights of fancy 3-D. It's in those moments of intricate expression when "Disney's 'A Christmas Carol'" truly soars.

* Well, since you asked, I have my own favorites—usually the ones that are a bit scarier in their psychic psychological warfare on Scrooge. I like the "Alastair Sim" version often sighted as a favorite, and love the "George C. Scott" version for television from 1984 (he's scarier at the end than at the beginning!), but my favorite—and this is probably a case of "Mom's Apple Pie Syndrome"—is "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol," which, even though it is a musical, even though it is a cartoon and even though Scrooge is Jim Backus, still manages to pack an emotional wallop, more than any "live" version I've seen, including this version.  

** They've already done a version with Mickey Mouse: "Mickey's Christmas Carol" (1983). Scrooge McDuck played Scrooge. Natch.  

*** I have to bring this up: a couple years ago one of the Zucker bros. directed a conservative version of "A Christmas Carol," but it took the Christmas out of it—I guess it's "An X-mas Carol," then,...talk about your "Wars on the Holidays"(sic)—called "An American Carol" in which a Michael Moore type (played by Chris Farley's brother—more popularly known as "Chris Farley's brother") is shown the Ghosts of America Past, Present, and Future in order to "scare" him into being more conservative—frankly the Bush II Administration had the opposite effect on me. Not to paint with too large a brush, but conservative political humor tends to be so ham-fisted and structurally unsound that it can't even see its own hypocritical ironies.

The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner, 1987) The Princess Bride just misses being an "Anytime Movie"—I watch it whenever I see it appear while browsing through my cable list as it's a genuine crowd-please (this crowd, anyway)—but it barely doesn't make it because the direction is a bit...ordinary. Ordinary with enticing touches of brilliance.

The story of Princess Buttercup (Robin Wright) who meets, then loses her one True Love (caps) in the stable-boy Westley (Cary Elwes) at a time of turmoil in the lands of Florin and Guilder was written by William Goldman with the conceit that his version was merely the "Good Parts" abridgment of a longer tale by S. Morgenstern was released in 1973 and had a fabled history in not being turned into a film (by such as Francois Truffaut, Richard Lester, Robert Redford and Norman Jewison). Goldman found the process so frustrating that, at one point, he actually bought the film rights back to retain some measure of control.

When Reiner, after making This is Spinal Tap, and while filming Stand By Me, was asked about future projects, he mentioned "The Princess Bride" but was told it wasn't possible. Too many studios had tried. Too many had failed. But, with seed money from Norman Lear and Goldman's support and screenplay, the "unfilmable" book began production. 

The film only had moderate success at the box office—the distributor, 20th Century Fox, didn't quite have a handle on how to market it—but the film has achieved a cult following, buoyed by video distribution and an undeniable charm that is nearly irresistible, due to several aspects that strengthened the work, but may have made that marketing strategy somewhat "inconceivable."

1) The casting couldn't have been stronger, despite a lack of bankable stars. Wright was working on a U.S. soap opera, but when she showed up on Reiner's door-step back-lit by the sun, Goldman sealed her casting by saying "That's what I wrote." Elwes had a couple movies under his belt, was Errol Flynn-handsome, but also possessed a razor-sharp comic timing and sense of the absurd that conveyed a maturity beyond his years and nails both the romantic and slap-stick aspects of the character—you take him seriously even if the character doesn't always.

The rest of the film is suffused with wonderful character actors—and the charming Andre the Giant—who take the fairy tale seriously in ways both ironic and heart-felt (and then, Billy Crystal and Carol Kane shuffle in, throw all that out and ad-lib hilariously). Goldman's characters all have their particular quirks and the actors slot their performances neatly into place...to the point where the lines become distinctively quotable—in their precise inflections.

2) That melding of actor with dialogue goes a long way to making the film enjoyable and also indelible in the memory. It is a sure thing that you can quote at least five lines from The Princess Bride, probably stretch it to ten and even more. Any work place that starts with one line will insure a good ten minutes of others adding another. I've based two "Don't Make a Scene" posts on my favorites: "Life is pain, princess. Anyone who says differently is selling something" and "You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is never get involved in a land-war in Asia." But, there could be others, many others. And there's enough grace in The Princess Bride that they all don't have to be laugh-lines or cynically charming. In fact, the best line paying off relying on audience memory is one used through-out and has its largest pay-off as the last line of the movie: "As you wish."

3) The structure of The Princess Bride is rather magical. Just as Goldman uses the conceit of an abridgment in the book version, the movie uses a narrative structure where a young boy (Fred Savage), sick and kept out of school, is read the book by his grandfather (Peter Falk), with interruptions and protestations about "kissing" scenes and lapses in logic that allows the movie to get to the "good parts" without bothering about transitions or belaboring sentiment. Those scenes are unique to the movie and give it an added emotional resonance, especially given Falk's duty as narrator of the story. The book-ending (no pun intended) structure buttresses the story, imbues it with the warm glow of parental story-telling and manages to link fable with life, in a shared secret of experience and affection. That's a master-stroke.

For me, it isn't perfect (but, that just me—I'm a curmudgeon). I wish that the whole movie could have the look of the picture above. There are times when the movie is just beautiful...and others when it looks a bit clunky, staged haphazardly and shot more for TV soap opera than fairy-tale. Some of the sets—I'm thinking particularly of the top of the Cliffs of Insanity but there are others—are so set-bound that it jars with the complex verdure found in a lot of the movie. There is an amateurish charm to some things, creatures and machines, that—if one were righting a defending thesis—could be just the limited imaginings in the child's head. But, that's making excuses when the most reasonable one is "budget." 

And the score. Mark Knopfler's themes are sometimes quite nice, but lose the organic feel and human touch as calculated on a synthesizer. An orchestra, or just a few mixed-in strings could have gone a long way to putting some breath into the music, instead of the mechanics that sometimes clash and distance. There's no resonance to it and an absence of the human touch.

Quibbles! Nit-picking! There's been talk of a musical version being done—all have come to naught. There's been speculation of a remake—to which Cary Elwes had the best tweet: "There’s a shortage of perfect movies in this world. It would be a pity to damage this one." 

This one succeeds so much that it would be best to just leave it be.

As we wish.

 

Shadow of the Vampire

Shadow of the Vampire (E. Elias Merhige, 2000) "Such is the cost of genius...Thank God! An end to this artifice!"

God has nothing to do with it.

Besides, there's only room for one god on a movie set.

F.W. Murnau may be the greatest director "of all time." He will have his way and his vision no matter what the cost. Wanting to make a film of Bram Stoker's "Dracula," not even the small matter of the author's estate refusing the rights will stop him.  It is only the first purifying cross he must bear in his effort to make the perfect vampire movie. His actors are either rebelling or morons, his crew is competent but not privy to his plans. It's all in his head, as he is the auteur, and he will see his film to the bitter end, even if he is the last man standing. No cost is too great, no sacrifice too small in his sociopathic, artistic blood-lust to see his film see the light of day and projector.

He could be the star of his own vampire movie. Shadow of the Vampire is, on the epidermis level, a fictionalized version of the filming of Murnau's Nosferatu, but it is also the story of how movie-making can be a power struggle, completely opposite to the collaborative effort it usually is. The Murnau of the film (portrayed by John Malkovich) solves all the problems, does all the ground-work, directs the actors in a running stream of manipulation during filming (it's a silent film, of course). He wants authenticity no matter what, filming on location in castles and ships, disdaining studio sets (despite Nosferatu's artistic expressionism), and going the extra mile—hiring Max Schreck* (Willem Dafoe, who was nominated for an Oscar for his performance) to play his vampire.

Here's where the film-makers leave reality behind and make their own story about creativity, and the supernatural hold power can sometimes hold over people: to realize his ideal of authenticity, Murnau, in the film, hires a real vampire. Or maybe not. Schreck, it is explained to the crew, has studied, with Stanislavsky, the immersive "method" of acting. So, when he plays a vampire...he REALLY plays a vampire, always in costume, always in mood, even when the camera isn't rolling—just another demanding actor whose eccentricities must be humored. And the humor is dark in Shadow of the Vampire, in the small areas ("I want make-up," Schreck sulks at one point.  "You're not getting it!" Murnau abrasively replies.) and in the larger scheme of things—the power struggles between the ego-manical director and the homicidal vampire are giggle-inducing (in a good way)...and apt. That Malkovich and Dafoe tend to resemble each other (and if Dafoe wasn't heavily made up and affecting Schreckage it would be even more apparent) and director Merhige keeps them sparring, negotiating, arguing throughout the film. That the two don't destroy each other during the making of the film is only due to their mutual need.

Or maybe it's merely professional courtesy.

* Schreck, and this performance, are somewhat legendary. Nicolas Cage, who executive produced the film, did his own version of Schreck's performance in Vampire's Kiss. And Tim Burton named the manipulative toy magnate played by Christopher Walken in Batman Returns after the actor.