Movie Sunday

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Scary Movie meets VH1 rockumentary
A very talented group of writers and a sharp cinematic parody lens bring this spoof on the movie music biopic out of potential gutterville and into frolicking funland. Dewey Cox grows up poor, southern, and stupid. Hitting on every cliche - white guy stealing black music, marrying his underage sweetheart, abandoning family #1 for the road, sex, and drugs, and setting out on a few comebacks, Dewey's story takes us through 50 years of musical genres without having to suffer through a crap plot like Forrest Gump. I laughed heartily at many of the scenes and situations and loved the cameos by folks like Lyle Lovett and Eddie Veder. The writers had a wealth of material to draw from and when on script, it was creative gold. Occasionally I found a few moments dragging or some banter going no where which made me wonder i this riffing was unscripted improv. But there were few of these moments and overall it was a good escapist movie. I liked Johc C. Riley's reigned in performance and I loved all my favorite comedians in supporting roles - best comedy ensemble I've seen pulled together since Animal House. And stay through the credits to see a clip of the 'real' Dewey Cox.

Atonement
Titanic meets The End of the Affair
An anorexic rich girl (Keira Knightly) and a handsome, pouty young man (John McAvoy) of servant class find themselves lustfully drawn together. Unfortunately a bratty younger sister and World War II are destine to pull them apart. This film pushes all the traditional buttons trying hard to be important, romantic and epic while contrasting love against war-torn European devastation. All the excessive gore and glory is captured with sepia tones through a filtered lens: a long camera shot through the massive soldier build-up on the beaches of France, the skull wound of a solider ready to die, the romance of the aristocratic English countryside. What the film lacks in passion, purpose or pathos. The resolution and regret at the end isn't cathartic or redemptive but an unearned confessional of sorts. I felt a bit cheated, as if my lover had been married the whole time during our affair. So what was left was a nostalgic sense of visual romance, nothing more ... and the feeling that I could snap Keira like a twig if she ever got scrappy with me. Oh, at it sure makes smoking glamorous again; just what we need :(

Sweeney Todd
Jeffery Domer goes Dickensian
What goes well with revenge, murder and meat pies made of human flesh - musical number? NOT! While I love the macabre humor of Steven Sondheim's musical when presented in the intimacy of the theater, I did not like it as a fully orchestrated film replete with semi-professional singing by a cast much too pretty to play the nasty, dirty roles or Benjamin Barker and Mrs. Lovett. Under with wickedly visual Gothic touch of Tim Burton, this film could have has so much more fun had it not tried to confine itself to the musical numbers in the stage production (and I've seen the recent revival in New York and loved it). The beauty of Sondheim's strained discords is they work to make the gruesome story more eerie - with a small set of instruments, it works better when the actors (Patti LuPone played the tuba!) have to awkwardly play notes and you don't have the luxury of sweeping crescendos and hundreds of musicians playing perfectly together. Another problems with the film adaptation is the strained and distracting breaks into song by folks who really can't make this work - I love Alan Rickman but he loses villainy credence when he starts to croon. And Helena Bonham Carter is so weak. Johnny Depp does a fair job singing but every time a song popped up I just kept wanting Burton to return to the strange characters, textured costumes and sets, and visual creepiness he's known for - I loved the scenes of the chair being built and the THUD-CRACK when the bodies hit the floor, head first. So while many may like this reverent take on the musical version of Sweeney Todd, and I love the musical on stage, I wished they would have taken a chance and abandoned the notes for something more film-inspiring and original. I think it would have made it more marketable, too. But I do have to note that I did revel in Sacha Baron Cohen's interpretation of Sr. Pirelli. She was a wonder in satin-blue smirking splendor in an otherwise gray show. Excuse me while I go use the men's room.

There Will Be Blood
Citizen Kane without Rosebud memories
America is a strong, determined, hardworking, greedy and successful country. Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) represents all that is American is his driven destiny to conquer the oil buried deep in the ground of California. His quest to dominate the land could be viewed retrospectively as exploitive but Plainview clearly sees the challenge of seizing this treasure as a smart way to make money. So which comes first - the drive to conquer or the thirst to dominate? Plainview's soft-spoken way does not let the viewer make that determination easily. At times you admire his hardworking ways and ingenuity: he spends long hours at great physical peril working this mines and fields of the west; he designs and builds very innovative rigs and drills to advance his profession. At times you feel he has a heart - sharing a moment of joy with a baby. Other times you think it is all an act, his colloquial way of speaking, "I'm just an oil man so I'm going to speak plainly". One thing is clear - this is a man who will succeed at all cost, even if he has to prostrate himself in front of those he ridicules. To compare Plainview's industrial conquest against another dominant force in the American psyche, faith. Eli Sunday appears to act as the religious moral anchor for the town and soon finds himself in a psychological and physical battle with Plainview. But the men both desire success and no small town sense of community or humanity will reign that desire in. Oil is blood, life, the source of wealth but human blood is the sacrifice to turn this black blood to gold. So we watch as Plainview shows us how America, in its blind quest for blood and black gold, has morally bankrupted itself and turned it's back on humanity. And no false faith could save Plainview and us from our fall from grace.

Much has been said about Danial Day-Lewis's performance and all the high praise is definitely warranted. At times he comes across as a rugged and softly spoken wise cowboy, reminiscent of
Richard Farnsworth. But when his anger uncorks, there is no mistaking this character as a myopic, driven, force to be reckoned with. There are points where we see he still has some humanity left, some hope to connect to family blood, the desire to protect his son (Beautiful scene when his son is affected by an accident at a rig). But by the end, his lust and greed have killed any of this hope and we have only a bitter and dangerous shell of a man left. Many critics compare it to Citizen Kane which is predictable given the theme of a man who spends his life chasing success on the grandest of scales only to find it can't satisfy him. But Plainview, unlike Charles Foster Kane, is bitter and has not even an ounce of goodness left in him to cling to. After achieving and conquering his goals, Plainview finds himself with nothing driving him anyone and he attacks all those around him, including his son, H.W. (brutal yet powerful father-son confrontational scene when his son is grown). So without even a found memory like Rosebud to connect Plainview to goodness and joy, he becomes finished, bankrupt in every sense except financially. Bravo to a riveting script and wonderful direction by Paul Thomas Anderson. Bravo to the fabulous editing, leaving some characters and motivations ambiguous. But a big BRAVO to the levitating performance of Danial Day-Lewis who makes a rather despicable character infinitely nuanced and complex beyond any role presented on screen in my movie-watching experience. The best film I've seen in years.