Damsels in Distress (2011)

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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.  

Escape from Tomorrow (2013)

Shot clandestinely entirely within Disney World and Disneyland without the parks’ permission, Escape from Tomorrow is an unusual movie.

According to supplemental DVD material and Wikipedia, the film’s scripts were stored on iPhones the cast and crew could access (which is also largely how the film’s crew communicated). It was shot on hand-held DSLR cameras, similar to those tourists carry around the park every day. The actors, director and camera crew had to communicate selectively and secretively, to avoid attracting attention. Actors rode rides dozens of times repeatedly, to make sure shots were complete, and that the film crew got full coverage. Also according to Wikipedia, director (Randy Moore) “was so determined to keep the project a secret from Disney that he edited it in South Korea.” The fact that his team accomplished filming an entire feature-length movie inside the Magic Kingdoms—given its immensely protective reputation— without inviting legal action or immediate ejection, is remarkable.

Like Avatar, I was more impressed with Tomorrow as an accomplishment than as an piece of entertainment. Website Rotten Tomatoes describes it as “conceptually audacious but only intermittently successful in execution…” I whole heartedly agree. As I watched, I often wondered “how’d they get that on film?”, but rarely thought “this is an interesting, engrossing film.” More often I questioned “what, exactly, is going on here?” Tomorrow has some interesting themes and ideas, but it doesn’t quite hold together. I’m sure the filmmakers knew what they were aiming for, but they didn’t put all the connective tissue up on the screen. What they’ve omitted leaves the finished product confusing and disjointed.

According to first-time director Randy Moore, scenes were blocked and rehearsed in hotel rooms. Preproduction included charting the position of the sun, since using additional lighting equipment wasn’t an option. Multiple scouting trips through the park meant the movie was practiced several times on location prior to actual shooting. Read the Wikipedia entry for more fascinating facts about production.

The bulk of the story a is satire, commenting on the always happy, false façade Disney creates. It’s largely an meditation on how the same park can at once be an exciting, wondrous, joyful place for kids, while at same time often become a nightmare for parents: overwhelming crowds, interminably long ride lines, screaming kids who want expensive plastic toys and yet another t-shirt from overpriced gift shops, etc... For example, there’s an especially creative and effective sequence where It’s a Small World ride transforms from peaceful and inclusive into evil and menacing.

The story follows a family on their final day of vacation at the park. The leering, lecherous father Jim (Roy Abramsohn) eyes every woman in the park. Jim’s constantly hoping to spy revealing flesh. At one point he gets drunk at Epcot, and tries to make out with his wife on a floating ride. When she resists, he embarrassingly vomits over the side, into the water.

Jim spies a pair of Parisienne teenagers riding the monorail. Though they’re way too young for him, he’s seemingly enchanted and hypnotized. They’re his Lolitas. He spends much of the remaining day dragging his kids all over the park, following the girls. To what end?

His wife Emily (Elena Schuber) is a constant nag. Nothing Jim does is ever right (even when, in reality, admittedly nothing he does really is ever right). She’s a drag, constantly reminding him about what he’s not doing for the kids.

There are weird subplots about a nondescript “cat flu,” evil robots, the Siemens corporation conducting mysterious research, and a general sense that Disney is Big Brother, always watching. There’s stuff about hookers and Japanese businessmen, emu, former park princesses with magical amulets, body doubles, and on and on. Who knows what any of this means?

The movie’s strange, ambiguous ending is thoroughly confusing. I won’t reveal what happens. However, if you understand it, your powers of insight trump mine.

The film uses black-and-white footage effectively. It mutes Disney’s hyper color scheme, creating an eerie, dreamlike quality.

A couple of the green-screen scenes are conspicuous; actors are clearly superimposed. However, most of the effects are convincing.

Though it’s confusing and disjointed, I found Tomorrow entertaining enough to recommend. If for no other reason than the film makers were courageous and audacious enough to even attempt something like this. That they there were then actually successful, made the movie’s 90 minutes worthwhile.

PS- Researching this review, I came across another surreptitiously-shot-at-Disney short: Missing in the Mansion. It’s a found-footage thriller, about an urban legend involving the park’s Haunted Mansion. I found it clever, creative, well executed, entertaining, and enjoyed it more than Escape from Tomorrow.

Godzilla (2014)

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It’s a given that the new Godzilla film is going to make tons of money; the theatre where I saw it was packed. Despite this, the movie has several glaring problems.

Firstly, the enormous lizard’s hardly in the movie at all. He’s more of a supporting player, who doesn’t make his first appearance until nearly an hour in. Up until then, the movie’s made up mostly of exposition-providing dialogue, by characters we never get to know. The style of most recent big-budget films is to hook audiences in by giving them an action-packed, over-the=top set piece right out of the gate. I thought Godzilla was going against this recent convention, and instead slowly building and creating suspense, which is a perfectly reasonable choice. But at some point, in a film called Godzilla, there have to be extended sequences of…you know…Godzilla, rather than humans simply talking about Godzilla, and then scenes of aftermath. I’m curious to know what Godzilla’s actual screen time is.

The film’s plot and main antagonist aren’t given away in the previews, so I won’t reveal there here, either, other than to say there’s confusing talk of nuclear energy gone wrong, and its inevitable result.

Secondly, once we finally do get a glimpse of the monster, he’s almost always shrouded in mist, or fog or darkness. Which works initially, but again: we need to see Godzilla doing Godzilla things—crushing tanks, toppling skyscrapers, shrugging off artillery fire and breathing fire

In the old, Japanese B-films, behemoths fought in broad daylight. Production values and credulity fell victim, but at least the audience could tell what was happening. Here, fights mostly take place in the shadows. Often time it’s hard to tell what’s happening. Buildings fall beneath monster’s enormous weight, but who knows which beast is winning? Scenes are edited in such a way that they feel amputated. It takes human characters expository dialogue to explain the action, rather than the images doing story-telling heavy lifting.

There are several accomplished and talented actors included, even some Oscar winners and nominees (Bryan Cranston, Juliet Binoche, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Elizabeth Olson). Unfortunately, they have very little to do beyond deliver overwrought lines, and look incredulous and amazed. Their acting consists mainly of looking wide eyed and mouthed.

The visual effects are, as you’d expect, top rate. Specifically, a tsunami the lizard inadvertently causes to hit Hawai’i is convincing and frightening (but did they have to imperil the dog? That felt cheap). When Godzilla ravages the Golden Gate bridge, his rampage is both believable and chaotically reminiscent of the original, when he stomped through the electrical towers and into Tokyo.

The movie’s most suspenseful scene doesn’t involve any monsters at all (an ominous development in a monster movie), but instead a rushing cloud of radioactive gas, chasing a group of inspectors from a Japanese nuclear power plant. It comes early in the film, which leaves what follows feeling like it’s lacking.

This movie owes much to the superior Cloverfield. The scenes of monsters destroying cityscapes were more harrowing and interesting in that film. They felt more vibrant and urgent there, too. Not only that, but we cared about what happened to the characters in that movie. Here, we’re one step removed—detached—merely watching what unfolds instead of feeling invested in the outcome.

I wish I liked Godzilla more. I wanted to. The Saturday afternoons of my youth, spent watching D-grade horror films on Creature Double Feature, made me hopeful. There was charm in those hokey men-in-monsters-suits battling it out. Here the creatures obviously look much better, but there’s no heart or urgency in their CGI (The opening title sequence, with it’s redacted words and phrases, was a creative touch).

More than that, the film’s main problem is that instead of being a ferocious, terrifying, end-of-the-world-bringing monstrosity, the titular character is a good guy, who ultimately helps and protects humankind. It’s a strange choice by director Gareth Edwards (whose low-budget Monsters was promising). Can you imagine a Jaws film where the shark’s on the same team as the swimmers: Instead of eating them, he helps them to shore. Who wants to watch that? Where’s the fun, the fright, the suspense and summer-blockbuster mayhem in that? Godzilla’s shriek is supposed to summon our darkest fears, not reassure us everything will be alright (for that we have the infinite number of superhero and Transformer films).

Like the kid in the iPhone commercial, Godzilla’s supposed to crash through buildings, level cities and be unstoppable. This new 2000s, kinder, gentler King of Monsters couldn’t hold the black-and-white version’s jock.

I Give It a Year (2013)

I Give It a Year has the standard-issue tone of most romantic comedies: nothing’s too heavy or serious, regardless of how dire the topic or situation might seem. Often times the plot and characters’ reactions border on ridiculous. The story is mostly predictable and boilerplate. But somehow despite all this, because it’s funny and its characters are likeable, the film exists comfortably in this unrealistic rom-com world. Surprisingly, it kinda works.

The movie opens with a scenes from a montage of a young, attractive couple’s relationship, played over Stephanie Mills’ disco classic “Never Knew Love Like This Before.” We see them on dates, at dance clubs—doing couple-y things—then ultimately getting married after only being together seven months. Big mistake? The film’s title is a clue.  

The pair are Josh (Rafe Spall) and Nat (Rose Byrne). Nat works at an impossibly upscale London marketing firm. It’s all glass walls and gorgeous views of the Thames. He’s a writer, pecking away at a keyboard in his home office. They’re surrounded by desperate-seeming people, most either unhappily-married couples, or lonely singles. Nat’s sister Naomi (a one-note-but-still-very-funny Minnie Driver; Good Will Hunting, Barney’s Version, Owning Mahowny, An Ideal Husband) is relentlessly bitter and critical of her sad-sack doctor husband (Snatch’s Jason Flemyng; also Benjamin Button, Layer Cake, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels). Friends, parents, co-workers all are either with someone or overtly searching.

As the wedding winds down, Josh’s parents reminisce about the many years of their union. Specifically, the myriad difficulties of surviving that first year together. That, they believe, is the toughest part. According to them, if you can somehow manage to get through those first twelve months, the rest is downhill. Its an ominous harbinger for our young protagonists.

Over and awkward dinner, we (and Nat) learn Josh used to date the pretty-but-plain Chloe (an intentionally drab, low-key, and hapless Anna Ferris; Lost in Translation, the Dictator). Years earlier she interrupted their relationship by leaving for Africa “to help stop the spread of disease.” Now she’s back, and clearly the romantic feelings they once shared still linger.

Nat, in turn, meets the good-looking, suave, persistent, and aptly-named Guy (Simon Baker; TVs the Mentalist) through work (he’s a potential client). Eschewing any rules of professional decorum, he hits on her like a runaway freight train. She’s reluctant to mention she’s married, thinking it improves her chances of landing the account if she comes across as available. Though she doesn’t exactly flirt back, she doesn’t quite quash his advances, either.

Increasingly unhappy in their floundering marriage (she finds it impossible not to list Josh’s shortcomings: during a bout of writers block, he lies on the couch watching bad TV; he leaves the toilet seat up, he won’t take out the trash until asked, etc…among other annoying idiosyncrasies), she’s slowly starts to find Guy’s looks, confidence and bank account charming and attractive. Or she starts to wither in the face of his constant pressure. Either one.

So the set-up is that, but for the inconvenience of their marriage, both halves of the couple would really prefer to be with someone else. But alas, there’s that pesky wedding vow standing in the way. What to do?

The cast is first rate. Spall (Life of Pi, Hot Fuzz, Prometheus) and the ubiquitous Byrne (Get Him to the Greek, Bridesmaids, Sunshine, the Internship, current theatrical release Neighbors) are likeable enough. Their foibles are common and relatable. Both seem viable partners, just not for each other.

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Frequent Ricky Gervais-collaborator Steve Merchant (the British Office, HBO’s Hello Ladies, the animated Ricky Gervais Show and Extras, Hot Fuzz, an Idiot Abroad, Life’s Too Short) delivers the funniest, most memorable first-man speech of all time. It’s the part of the movie you’ll remember after it’s over. Examine the picture above. Look closely at the faces of the speech giver, then the husband and the wife. Brilliant. Even if his character is mostly superfluous, Merchant’s scenes are all terrifically funny. They’re the highlights of the film.

The film’s told in flashback, with the couple relating their story from the office of a severely-dysfunctional marriage counselor. This adds to the sense that, despite their desires being decidedly elsewhere, Nat and Josh really would like to at least make it through the first year. If for no other reason than to say they did.

The movie looks great. London is bright, vibrant and alive. The interiors (offices, hotels, bars and flats) are all sleek and modern. There’s no poverty on display here. Maybe not even any middle class.

Distractingly, the filmmakers (Year was written and directed by Dan Mazer, producer for Sacha Baron Cohen’s hysterical Ali G, Bruno and Borat vehicles) also use a freeze-frame/snap-shot effect repeatedly, for no discernible reason. It’s an artistic flourish that, while it may look neat, doesn’t really fit in or add anything to the story telling.  

I never heard of I Give It a Year before seeing the trailer on DVD. Was it ever theatrically released in America? I don’t remember any ads for it. With all its flaws, I Give It a Year is still pleasant and mildly satisfying. Even though it’s kind of dopey, lacks cohesion and some parts are unoriginal, owing to the cast's undeniable energy, and probably more so because it doesn't take itself too seriously, I liked it. Really. In fact, I’ve probably seen better movies, and enjoyed them less. It’s not great by any measure (this review is likely entirely too long for this movie), but it’s certainly watchable. The kind of movie you want to see while sprawled on the couch, snuggled beneath blankets, when you’re home sick from work one day. It’s cheerful, entertaining, and doesn't take much effort. I’ll grant that it’s not very deep; by the end I knew no more about the characters, or why they behave the ways that they do, than at the start. Still, I’m happy I saw it, even if I probably never need to see it again. Merchant’s best-man speech alone is worth it.

PS- After writing this, I stumbled another author’s review and was reminded of several scenes I failed to mention here. Recalling them, I wound up feeling that I liked Year even more than I had before.

The other writer claims the film “is not romantic in the slightest.” Which is true. And an odd quality for a film that appears (on its surface, at least) to be a “romantic-comedy.” The writer also believes the film wants to be both “silly” and “sentimental.” Both are reasonable goals. However, she feels that that joining of the two under one roof is ultimately the film’s “fatal flaw.” Though I think there’s room for both, it’s still a keen insight. The film probably would have been better, and felt less stilted, if it had committed more to one over the other. At the risk of seeming a plagiarist, I found her perspective smart, and worth mention.