Film Review: "The Place Beyond the Pines" A Gloomy, Thoughtful Meditation on Legacy

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Sunday, 07 April 2013 22:41

Written by Matt Oakes

The Place Beyond the Pines
Directed by Derek Cianfrance
Starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Ben Mendelsohn, Ray Liotta
Drama/Crime
140 Minutes
R

Following up the brilliant Blue Valentine, Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond the Pines is an equally challenging film that's not without its faults but the ambitious scope and structural risks allow it to tackle themes of reverberation and legacy that rarely come together so effectively.

In crafting a spider web of stories that don't orbit around noxious serendipity, Cianfrance has made the anti-Crash. He's directed a film that actually justifies its revolving door of narratives rather than using them as a crutch for poor screenwriting and in doing so explores the interconnectedness of two families destined to collide and the aftermath that follows.

The film opens on a quiet, young rebel named Luke, the always-winning Ryan Gosling, sporting the ever-popular bleeding-dagger-face-tattoo, cloaked in a red leather jacket and zipping hither and thither on his beloved dirt bike. Luke is a man living in the cacophony of his life decisions - a rootless, wandering soul who abruptly discovers that he has a son with one time lover Romina, Eva Mendes. When Luke decides he wants to help raise the child, he realizes the meagerness of funds accrued from riding while a stunt bike in a sphere cage. However impressive his gravity-defying, harmonious loops may be, they aren't quite enough to win over the mother of his child and as a result, turns to robbing banks with lowlife buddy Robin, in a great little turn by Ben Mendelsohn.

Even when Luke is scraping bottom and cawing at fearful tellers and bank patrons, he never seems like a bad guy; a lost soul, surely; a desperado at wit's end, yes; but never that cold-eyed criminal these characters are so often reduced to. The fleshed out dimensionality of Luke is due in large part to the casting of Gosling who adds a dollop of sincerity and humanity to even his tough guy roles.

As Luke's story accelerates, we met Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), a law-school-grad-turned-rookie-cop whose heart is in the right place. This is a man of justice with a ideological stance and a vendetta against corruption. Cooper scores here again and offers a complex and thoughtful performance offering some Oscar worthy soundbites that are sure to turn heads.

The natural dissonance so craftily built here is that both Luke and Avery are likeable individuals doing the best they can in the circumstances of their lives so it's hard to take sides. Each suffer their own character flaws; their personal follies that both drive them and define them. It just so happens that these traits happen to put them on a collision course with each other. What begins when they finally do crash is an inter-generational battle between naturally polar forces. Order clashes with anarchy and the resulting push and pull becomes characterizing moments in these people's lives.

It's the age-old tale of the lawman and the criminal but the film steps outside of these constraints when it shifts the narrative to their now-aged children: AJ Cross (Emory Cohen) and Luke's offspring Jason (Dane DeHaan) - exploring how the conflict between their father's spans more than just their generation. As Jason embodies the somber, gentle persona of his father, AJ is a drug-addled bully - the antithesis of his father's principles. Here we question the power of heredity and genetics with regards to their respective upbringing, what and who is ultimately responsible for who these young men will become. It's a battleground for the war between nature and nurture to unfold.

However sweeping the tale becomes, in these stark transitions between narratives, Cianfrance loses the sense of pounding momentum he has worked so hard to build in the first place and though this ultimately pays off in the end, it seems like there could have been a way to incorporate these rivaling tales without feeling like three conflicting movies compete for the biggest piece of the pie.

But what ultimately makes The Place Beyond the Pines such a successful meditation on legacy is Cianfrance's refusal to take sides. There's clearly a well-defined legal good and evil but outside the stringent reach of the law, life isn't so black and white. Bad things happen to good people and money is stolen by cops and criminals alike. Goodness comes not from what we do but how we do it and what we do it for. As the wheels spin round, we wonder if we're helpless to change the things set in motion for ourselves.

While the scope here offers a commanding view of the nature of reverberations, the mood is repeatedly dour and at times painstakingly hard to watch. This glum tone takes command and when paired with the shadowy cinematography by Sean Bobbitt (Shame, Hunger), things often seem hopeless. But it is only at our lowest point that we are able to rise up and although the conclusion is up to interpretation, it's impossible to deny the beauty of everything coming full circle.

Even though the film wallows in a lot of muck, The Place Beyond the Pines charters an ambitious course which few successful others can rival in terms of breadth. Each and every performance on display is top-notch and even though it might not be the type of breezy, uplifting cinema most audiences pine for (see what I did there?), it will be sure to leave you thinking minutes, hours and days later.

April '13 Digital Week I

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Sunday, 07 April 2013 20:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

Little Fugitive

To the Arctic

Borgen

The Carol Burnett Show—This Time Together

Hey Good Lookin’ and

Hitler’s Children

Pioneers of Television—Season 3

CDs of the Week

Dvorak: Piano Trios

(Artistled and Bridge)
Although Antonin Dvorak composed four piano trios, two new recordings unsurprisingly pair his most popular: No. 3 in F minor (from 1883), his first mature work in the genre; and No. 4, the E minor "Dumky" Trio, which has become an undisputed classic trio since its 1891 premiere.

On the Artistled disc, pianist Wu Han, violinist Philip Setzer and cellist David Finckel draw out the grandeur and drama of both trios, particularly No. 3; its reading of the "Dumky" trio—whose six movements are relatively short compared to the earlier work's four—is bracing in its relatively quick pace. On the Bridge CD, the Trio Solisti plays the F minor trio with straightforward elegance, while the "Dumky" Trio is given more breathing space than on the other disc. Both approaches work admirably.

Film Review: 'Evil Dead' Ups the Gore, Drops the Laughs

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Sunday, 07 April 2013 16:33

Written by Matt Oakes

Evil Dead
Directed by Fede Alvarez
Starring Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas and Elizabeth Blackmore
Horror
91 Minutes
R

This 2013 rendition of Evil Dead definitely does enough to distinguish itself from the 1981 original but in doing so, abandons a lot of the winking goofiness that made the original such a one-of-a-kind. It's mucky, yucky, and dripping in goo but there's not quite enough beneath the buckets of blood to claim the bone-throne of horror classics.

Although it didn't quite meet the lofty expectations it set for itself with it's tagline, "The Most Terrifying Film You Will Ever Experience," it does rise to the occasion of trying to out-do it's predecessors and certainly scores there. The obvious goal behind this Fede Alvarez's remake was to rain down the blood and treat its central troop of unfortunate victims like human pincushions just waiting to be jammed full of a whole spectrum of unconventional weapons chilling in the tool shed. In regard to that goal, congratulations are in order. Alvarez has made one of the most chilling, grisly, visceral horror movies to date.

For those unfamiliar with the original storyline, the whole concept of the Evil Dead franchise follows a group of five twenty-something year olds who visit an abandoned cabin in the woods and after reading a passage from the Necronomicon - an ancient book made from human flesh - unleash evil personified, hell-bent on devouring their physical bodies and claiming their souls. Sounds like the kind of vacation just about anyone would ask for. This film deviates in the setup to this weekend-of-death with some exposition that is pure Diablo Cody (Juno, United States of Tara), who penned the script. Evil Dead imagines that this group of old friends and family reunited to help carry out a cold-turkey weekend for junk addict/little sister Mia. As you can imagine, things didn't quite go that way.

In establishing the little weekend getaway as a rehab stint, the film avoids the tired cliché of friends on vaca in a creepy locale and at least attempts to justify the initial refusal to run at the first hint of things gone awry. It's this small semblance of intelligence that offers some promise for Evil Dead to transcend the genre stereotypes but in the end, it's still the same breed just a little prettier, a little smarter and a whole lot bloodier. 

Once the evil is unleashed, the heads begin to roll and Alvarez and Cody only stop the onslaught of human plasma to occasionally remind us that these are people with relationships that we're supposed to care about. The only problem is most of these relationships are built on rushed and shaky foundations so it's hard to really elicit much of an emotional response. We're not watching My Girl, we're watching Evil Dead so crank up the deaths and dial down the pity.  

As a remake, it hits the right marks. The basic elements are in the same place but it heads in enough of a different direction to make the affair noteworthy not only in the horror genre but in the much beloved franchise. I'm sure there will be a legion of deadites protesting the absence of snark involved but Evil Dead never quite tries to capture that element that so clearly defined Sam Raimi's films.

Instead, it's happy being the depraved little cousin reveling in the sick carnage of it all. Just like the best and most memorable of the genre, the telltale earmarks of exploitation are written all over it. The film essentially presents itself like a dare; a cynic's double-dog dare to watch the thing wide-eyed and not occasionally cringing. However,  I personally guarantee that it'll make even the most stable of knees go wobbly thanks in large part to the top-notch practical effects - Alvarez promised to totally avoid CGI - and a fantastically creepy turn by Jane Levy.

The bottom line: Evil Dead is a gory mess in both substance and execution. This bloody remake drops the campy laughs of the original in favor of an all out gore-fest. There's enough viscus flying around the camera to make even the hardest stomach squeamish and even though the laughs come from the rare, sadistic chuckle rather than the cackle inspired by campy lunacy this is exactly the kind of goopy, gory goodness any horror affiliate is hunting for.