Broken (2012)

In Broken, a slice-of-life drama set in London’s working-class suburbs, things aren’t always what they seem. We think we have a handle on what’s happening, and why. But then a little more information is revealed, and that changes our entire perspective, almost magically.  

At the outset, the camera follows 12-year old “Skunk,” a precocious, eager girl on her meandering walk home from school. When she finally arrives at her cul-de-sac, she chats briefly with an awkward, older neighbor boy called Rick (Robert Emms; War Horse, Anonymous), who’s washing a car in his driveway (Rick may exist somewhere on the Autism scale).

After, she goes inside and witnesses something from her bedroom window which sets the rest of the film in motion.

Skunk is diabetic, often checking her blood levels to make sure they’re safe. She lives with her attorney dad Archie (Tarantino staple Tim Roth, looking a bit like Elvis Costello, in a quietly noble performance), older brother Jed (Bill Milner; X-Men: First Class), and their au pair Kasia (Zana Marjanovic). Their mother left for another man, so the family’s left to soldier on without her. Archie’s often busy studying work papers, but he’s also warm, nurturing and generous with his children. Their bond is obvious.

Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Sunshine, Perrier’s Bounty, the Dark Knight) plays Kasia’s boyfriend Mike, who also happens to be Skunk’s school teacher. He admires Skunk, recognizing she’s an exceptional kid in many ways.

They’re a likeable group, this lot. Smart, funny, amiable and caring towards one another.

In sharp contrast is neighbor Bob Oswald (Rory Kinnear; Quantum of Solace, Skyfall), and his three delinquent daughters. Bob’s wife died (we’re not told how), and the poor family’s never recovered. The Oswald’s don’t smile (and mostly sneer), look cheap and well worn, talk tough, and act tougher. The worst is the youngest, the ironically-named Sunrise (Martha Bryant). She’s a classic bully, her foul-mouthed terror packed into a 4-foot frame. At school she extorts lunch money, promising violent retribution from big sister if classmates (Skunk among them) don’t pay up. Like the rest of her family she’s tough as bricks. But for the Oswalds, the neighborhood would be quiet, charming and pleasant. But they’re ticking time bombs, who can’t seem to help but cause trouble.

Rick (the car-washing boy from the beginning) is sent to a mental facility for treatment, while his parents fret and hope for improvement. Kasia grows impatient with Mike’s inability to commit more profoundly to their relationship. Skunk acquiesces to the crush of a brash neighborhood kid, while Jed takes an unwholesome interest in one of the Oswald girls.

All of this may sound fairly standard, but the way first-time director Rufus Norris (known prior for his work in theater) blends the characters’ stories is effortless and natural. I was reminded of John Sayles’ City of Hope and Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. What actually happens isn’t so much the point; it’s how all the characters interact, and how their stories intersect, that makes the movie compelling.

Norris also does an admirable job of bringing depth to each of the characters, rather than leaving them as one-dimensional archetypes. His direction isn’t flashy. There aren’t any wacky lighting tricks, or strange camera angles. Broken just feels uncluttered and honest.

The performances (especially the kids’!) are uniformly pitch perfect. As Skunk, newcomer Eloise Laurence is bright-faced, charming, intelligent and effervescent. She has an unusual energy and gleam in her eye. Like Mike we, too, believe she’s unique. The three Oswald girls radiate menace and trouble. They’re mean as snakes. Emms’ “Rick” is innocent to a fault, child-like fear pouring from his eyes. As Archie, Roth projects a calm, steadying, mature confidence throughout. Murphy alternates between sweet and gentle kindness, and the confused immaturity of a man in his early 30s, who’s resisting full adulthood.

Based on the novel by Daniel Clay, Broken is so good, it caught me off guard. Sure, it’s probably more of a fable than an accurate picture of real life, but couldn’t the same be said of the Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, or Downton Abbey? As with those shows, I admired and enjoyed these characters so much, I never even had any minor disbelief to suspend. Broken is buoyant, optimistic, funny, touching and life affirming. It far outstripped my expectations, which rarely happens at the movies nowadays. Like Skunk, it’s special.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

I’m a little embarrassed to say that it took this long for me to finally get around to seeing what is widely viewed as a classic. I wasn’t sure quite what to expect when I sat down to watch one of , if not the, seminal science fiction films of all time, 2001: A Space Odyssey. I think I had some notion that the technology would look sort of dated, but that since it was directed by Stanley Kubrick, the concepts and craft would be top rate. One of my closest friends (a woman whose cinematic sensibilities and tastes run very close to mine) saw it once when she was 12, and hated it. So I was curious.

It opens with a pitch black screen. For minutes, there’s nothing. Then the iconic music begins. It’s been used and parodied so many times, I'm not sure if its capable of having its original effect anymore. Finally we see the sun, earth and moon. This type of symbolism is used throughout.

Essentially the movie is a triptych.

The first part consists of early man (read: humans dressed in monkey suits) living in packs, in a barren desert. There is no dialogue (remember: monkeys don’t talk, except in the new Planet of the Apes movies) for the first 25 minutes of the movie. Which is challenging. In 2014, its unusual have wordless sections that last this long, especially to open a movie. Tribes of these hairy creatures eat, drink, fight, chase each other back-and-forth away from a watering hole, make lots of noise, and do what monkeys do. Until one day they wake to discover an enormous stone block (“the monolith”) sitting where nothing in particular had been sitting the day before. The monkeys are frightened, then curious. We can almost hear them think: “What is this thing? And why is it here?”

Soon after, we see one of the monkeys use a bone to kill another monkey, then a tapir. I took it to be the first-ever uses of tools by animals (I learn from IMDB that in addition, this is also supposed to depict early humans learning to use weapons, kill with them, eat meat, and walk upright; who knew?). After killing the tapir, he flings the bone in the air. The camera follows the spinning bone into a jump cut, and suddenly we see a space ship orbiting earth. So begins the second, and most-engrossing portion of the film.

A second monolith has been found buried on the moon. Scientists are summoned in secret, to determine its origin. I can’t divulge what they find wihout ruining the suspense, but Kubrick creates a creepy tension around the mystery of the monolith.

Because of what the scientists discover, a team of astronauts is sent to explore one of Jupiter’s moons. Their mission is top secret. All but two of them are kept in hypersleep for the duration of the travel. Overseeing almost all of the ship’s function is an omnipotent computer program called the HAL 9000. He exists only as a eerily calm voice, and red fish-eye light. Yet over the course of the film, he becomes one of the best movie villains ever.

The special effects here are incredibly convincing, especially considering they were created over 40 years ago, long before computers could create entire worlds with the movement of a mouse. It looks like these actors are actually moving around in outer space. Movies made decades later (even now!) aren’t this realistic.

The final third of the film is introduced by a title card reading “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.” Uh oh. This new-agey hokum doesn’t bode well (and also recalls questionable title decision of the Metallica documentary Through the Never). I’m not sure how to begin to describe this section of the movie, other than to say it comes across now—in 2014—like the way we in the early 2000s think naïve film makers in the 60s would portray acid trips. All fast movie spicy lights and bright colors going every where. It was the 60s. Add to this a confusing scene set in a Louis XIV bedroom, where one of the characters has aged decades. What any of this means, I’ve no idea. Maybe it's a clue that co-screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke said “if you understood ‘2001’ completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered.” With the bookends of the film, at least, mission accomplished.

But none of that really matters. What’s remarkable is how well the movie’s aged. The technology doesn’t phony or hokey, always a risk with sci-fi pictures. In fact it’s held up incredibly well. It all looks great, and still feels conceptually realistic. Nothing comes across like the computers in the Batcave from the campy 60s TV show (where everything had notecards describing what it was and did; because its users wouldn’t know?). With a few small details aside (I’m looking at you gravity boots and food drunk through straws), all of it still looks and seems plausible and current. Things like voice-recognition software were still decades away, but they got it mostly spot-on, here. Even the space suits look accurate.

The look of the film is terrific. Down to the tiniest details (lengthy description of a zero-G toilet, as well as exploding bolts on a pod door), the film is exquisite. The sets and their decoration—perfect. Kubrick’s trademark blinding white over-lighting is everywhere. But there are splashes of color, too. The primary-colored spacesuits against the blank room. The bright lights on control panels set in darkness. Also worth mention is the frequent use of bizarre camera angles. It adds an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia to the space-station scenes.

Finally, what they accomplished mimicking zero gravity is terrific to the point of distraction. I found myself trying to figure out “How’d they do that in 1968?”, rather than paying attention to the film. It’s really incredible.

It’s difficult to overstate how influential this one movie has been. Alien, Terminator, Close Encounters, Star Wars, Gravity, Apollo 13, and countless others all owe a debt to 2001. This film got so much right, so many years before we all had phones in our pockets, internet, WiFi, or iTunes. It was so prescient so long ago, that its easy to forgive that its interpretive beginning and ending sections are pretty slow and impenetrable. With how far both visual and special effects have come in the ensuing 40 years, its hard to forgive the men-in-suits bit. Not to mention the interpretive, surrealistic qualities of both sections make them pretty dull. But the middle section is so good, so visionary and so suspenseful, I didn’t even worry about not knowing what the hell all the symbolic and metaphorical stuff (like the space baby at the end) even meant. 

(PS- I just read Ebert's review, and am not confident he understood the ending, either) 

Blue Caprice (2013)

Dark and Stormy

Blue Caprice (2013) is a dark, moody film. A character study following descent into madness, it follows a disaffected pair of killers, who terrorized the Washington D.C.-area during the “Beltway Sniper Attacks,” which took 10 lives and wounded three more, in 2002 (the film’s name references the car they drove, and used as their sniper platform).

The pair were John Allen Muhammad (played by Isaiah Washington, who also serves as the film’s executive producer; Clockers, Out of Sight, TVs Grey’s Anatomy) and Lee Boyd Malvo (Tequan Richmond; a cinematic newcomer, known primarily for his work on television).

Muhammad meets the young Malvo on a Caribbean island, and takes the boy under his wing. Almost immediately, Muhammad sets about turning Malvo from an average teenager into a soldier he intends to loose in some imagined battle versus the forces in life he believes are aligned against him. He intends to teach the world a lesson for crossing him. “It would only take five bodies a day, for 30 days” he casually says, pushing a cart through a grocery story. Hungry for attention, and desperate for acceptance, Malvo proves a model student. He soon displays his mettle by killing a woman who testified against Muhammad, on her doorstep. From there, the pair embark on a cross-country killing and robbing spree, that culminates in D.C. shootings.

Washington’s Muhammad is frightening because, outwardly, he doesn’t appear threatening. When questioned by a police officer or store manager, he’s polite and obliging. He knows how to deal with authority without drawing attention to himself. It’s only in brief flashes (during a phone call, or firing a gun in a basement) where we recognize his temper knows no limits.

Malvo, on the other hand, is shown mostly as a dumb kid, blindly following where ever Muhammad leads him. How truthful this portrayal is, I have no way of knowing. But the film certainly places the lion’s share of blame for the crimes on the elder culprit.

What the film tries to depict (and is only marginally successful in showing) is how these men evolved from aimless, lower-middle-class loners into sociopathic murderers. Muhammad has child-custody problems with his estranged wife. Malvo’s mom is more concerned with her job than with parental guidance. But are these problems alone enough to push men to behave in such violent ways, unless they’re already teetering precariously on some dangerous line? Don’t countless people face similar problems (and worse) every day, without flying off half cocked and shooting everyone in sight? These explanations for the men’s pathology felt facile, and oversimplified.

What the film does get right is the ennui, poverty and suffocating aimlessness everywhere in the world these men occupy. The houses and cars are run down. They seem to have few options into which to funnel their rage. There aren’t any outlets which might assuage their steadily growing discontent. It’s no accident that the skies are always gray or rainy in Blue Caprice.

Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother, Where Art Thou, Syriana; director of the underrated

The Grey Zone and Eye of God) and Joey Lauren Adams (Chasing Amy, Dazed and Confused) are convincing as a pair of unsuspecting rubes, who unknowingly become enablers to the would-be killers up. Proving no good deed goes unpunished, they put the criminals up prior to the crimes’ start, thus unwittingly providing a headquarters for murderers’ nascent plans.

The movie’s first half is unusually slow. I know director Alexandre Moors (in his feature debut) is trying to develop character. It’s an interesting choice he makes to show very little about the crimes themselves, instead focusing on all the build up leading to them. In theory, this should create backstory, and help us understand Malvo and Muhammad better. However, what’s on screen (Muhammad alternating between speech making and showing Malvo how to wrestle, drive a car, fire a gun, etc…) is ponderously uneventful, and ultimately uninteresting.

The film has its merits, however. Audio of actual 911 calls is heartbreaking and terrifying, conveying the gravity and horror of the killings. The movie’s score is haunting, and the photography creates an eerie atmosphere. The conspicuous use of blue-gray color palette (and overall lack of bright colors throughout) mirrors the killers cold, calculating lack of empathy. That Malvo and Muhammad seem dangerous and unstable as they do owes as much to these specific cinematic elements, as anything.

Damsels in Distress (2011)

We know what's best; trust us

The basic premise is that, at this privileged, northeastern college, a group of arrogant, critical girls think they can mold and shape the un-evolved men on campus into versions the girls approve of. To them, theirs are the definitive opinions. They run a suicide prevention group on campus, with their chief therapy consisting of having the clinically depressed perform dance numbers. Honestly. I think it’s supposed to be funny.

Greta Gerwig (Greenberg, Hannah Takes the Stairs) is the leader of the group. She finds men who are too smart, good looking or self confident less attractive. She hopes to create a new dance craze, seeing it as a significant cultural contribution to society. To her, Neanderthal frat guys can be redeemed through better-scented soap. One of her minions is constantly on the lookout for “playboys and operators.” So much so I never want to hear that phrase ever again.

Into their tight-knit group comes a new member, Lilly (Analeigh Tipton; Warm Bodies, Crazy Stupid Love), who reacts to their judgmental condescension with appropriate incredulity and criticism. No matter. The girls in the group are supremely confident in their beliefs. They than Lilly for her insight, then instantly dismiss it.

There is a storyline involving a boy (Adam Brody) Gerwig develops feelings for. However, it felt as false an arbitrary as the rest of the film. Scenes start and end in the middle, with the beginnings and ends cut out. The characters don't feel like actual humans, but instead hyper-exaggerated talking stereotypes. The naïve, sheltered girl is unbelievably so. The dumb guys are dumber than possible. They don’t talk as much as they deliver a writer’s too-clever ideas an insights delivered as soliloquys.

I was happy to see a couple of actors I really enjoy in minor roles: the awkward and wryly brilliant Zach Woods (In the Loop, HBO’s Veep and Silicon Valley), as well as Jermaine Crawford, who played “Dukie” on the Wire.   

Mostly, the entire film felt like a series of quirky inside jokes that I wasn’t in on.

Damsels in Distress is the first Whit Stillman film I’ve seen. It didn’t inspire me to see more.