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

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 , 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, 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.

B+

April '13 Digital Week I

Blu-rays of the Week

Cold Warriors—Wolves & Buffalo
(PBS)
This edifying PBS Nature program documents how these imposing, endangered creatures—wolves and buffalo—co-exist as mortal enemies on the vast lands of Wood Buffalo National Park in Alberta, Canada.
Filmmaker-naturalist Jeff Turner (who also narrates) has shot incredible footage of these remarkable beasts in their natural habitats; needless to say, the hi-def transfer is outstanding.
Little Fugitive
(Kino)
This freewheeling drama stars a wonderfully natural Richie Andrusco as a 7-year-old who runs off for Coney Island after thinking he caused his older brother’s death. Shot cinema-verite style by a trio of directors (Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin and Ray Ashley), the 1951 film is a candid look at childhood that retains its fresh spontaneity.
The restoration, overseen by the Museum of Modern Art, makes it look incredible on Blu-ray; its extras—Engel’s insightful commentary and two shorts by his daughter Mary Engel, one about him and one about her mom, co-director and photographer Orkin—are nice additions.

On Approval
(Inception)
Playwright Frederick Lonsdale’s pre-Noel Coward comedy about upper-crust Brits was adapted by Clive Brook, who also directed and stars in this fun but minor 1944 film version. The cast, led by Brook and Beatrice Lille, gives Lonsdale’s snappy dialogue the bite that it needs to keep the shenanigans afloat.
The B&W hi-def transfer is well done; extras include Jeffrey Vance’s commentary and an interview with actress Googie Withers.
The Sandlot
(Fox)
The 20th anniversary edition of this sweetly unassuming baseball tale brings back a movie that, unlike Field of Dreams and Bull Durham, shows how kids loved America’s pastime. This diverting story of childhood friendship is nicely acted by a group of youngsters like Tom Guiry as Scotty, whose parents are played by Karen Allen and Denis Leary—there’s even a small turn by James Earl Jones in a pivotal role.
The Blu-ray image is good; too bad there are no new extras to supplement the vintage featurette.



The Sweeney
(e one)
Despite the presence of tough guys like Ray Winstone and Damian Lewis (the antihero of Homeland), Nick Love’s convoluted action flick fails at being clever and ends up crashing cars and shooting up characters we neither care nor know anything about.
Haley Atwell, who’s already proven herself a gifted actress, should have been given far more to do in this hollow knockoff of any crime movie you care to name. The Blu-ray image is impeccable; extras include a commentary, featurettes and storyboards.
To the Arctic
(Warners)
Polar bears, like penguins, are irresistible onscreen fodder, as this IMAX film—shot in glorious high-definition—shows. Narrated by Meryl Streep and with tunes by a former Beatle named Paul, the film beautifully evokes an area of the world where climate change has done supreme damage: the icy habitats of bears and other arctic creatures.
This isn’t simply cinematic advocacy but terrific entertainment. The Blu-ray, of course, looks stupendous—so watch it on the largest TV screen you can. Extras are several featurettes.

DVDs of the Week

Borgen

(MHZ)
This gripping 10-hour Danish mini-series skillfully straddles the line separating politics from personal lives—with endless mixing of the two. In a surprising election, the moderate party’s Birgitte Nyborg becomes Denmark’s first female prime minister, and the fallout is dramatized with incisive awareness of the realities of our virtual world.
With a peerless cast led by Sidse Babett Knudsen as Birgitte, this is unforgettable television; beware of the inevitable American remake, which will surely be vastly inferior.
The Carol Burnett Show—This Time Together
(Time Life)
This latest six-disc compilation of The Carol Burnett Show comprises 17 full-length episodes from the memorable 11-season run of the best TV variety show (on the air from 1967-78).
Each episode features a guest star from the era, like the Pointer Sisters, Sammy Davis, Peggy Lee, Dick van Dyke or the immortal Madeleine Kahn; but what makes the shows rewatchable is Carol’s exceptional repertory company, which comprised Vicki Lawrence, Harvey Korman, Tim Conway and the always underrated star herself. Extras include a cast reunion, interviews and a designer Bob Mackie featurette.
Hey Good Lookin’ and
Second-Hand Hearts
(Warner Archive)
Two nearly forgotten 1981 films, the latest releases on the Warner Archives label, are dumped onto DVD with tolerable but subpar transfers. Hey Good Lookin’, Ralph Bakshi’s clichéd-ridden, anti-Happy Days exploration of the 1950s; despite eye-catching animation, the movie and its songs are forgettable.

Second-Hand Hearts, director Hal Ashby’s biggest commercial failure, is a surprisingly lifeless look at an offbeat romance between Robert Blake and an actress who was usually indestructible, Barbara Harris.
Hitler’s Children
(Film Movement)
In this important addition to our Holocaust knowledge, Israeli director Chanoch Ze’evi interviews descendants of infamous Nazis, from Himmler and Eichmann to Goering and Amon Goeth, the sadistic camp commandant so memorably played by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List.
These men and women, who have spent their lives simultaneously running away from and coming to terms with their family’s stained legacies, deal with the fates they have been handed in varying ways. It’s an eye-opening and emotional journey. The bonus short, Kun 65, concerns a painting with roots in the Holocaust.

Knuckleball
(FilmBuff)
Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg’s engaging documentary is about baseball’s most misunderstood pitchers, of whom there is one left in the majors: former Met R. A. Dickey, now with Toronto.
Interviews with Dickey, Tim Wakefield (who retired in 2011) and other knucklers like Phil Niekro and Charlie Hough provide insights into being a baseball pariah and how difficult it is breaking into the big leagues with what everybody considers a trick pitch. Hours of extras feature more interviews and featurettes.
Pioneers of Television—Season 3
(PBS)
This set’s programs—Funny Ladies, Superheroes, Miniseries, Primetime Soaps—are excellent overviews of network TV programming from the ‘50s to ‘70s.
Superbly-chosen clips from I Love Lucy, Carol Burnett Show, Mary Tyler Moore Show, Batman, Wonder Woman, Roots, Thorn Birds, Dynasty and Dallas are complemented by interviews with Burnett, Moore, Adam West, Lynda Carter, LeVar Burton, Ed Asner, Rachel Ward, Donna Mills and Larry Hagman, to name a few. Extras include added scenes.

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

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.

B

Film Review: "Stoker" Creeps, Sneaks and Scores

Stoker
Directed: by Chan Wook-Park
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, Nicole Kidman, Jacki Weaver
Drama/Mystery/Thriller
99 mins
R


Korean director Chan Wook Park's Stoker is a product of great precision. Each shot is brilliantly articulated and poised with such deliberation that it's impossible to ignore the artistry and preparedness in each and every frame.

Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) plays India, a loner type whose father has just died, the Eve to Matthew Goode's biblical garden-dwelling snake. The stars align as India finds herself in a perfectly helpless state when her previously unknown uncle arrives and the game of cat and mouse beings. Although India initially pushes him away, she finds herself slowly seduced by the mystery that is her uncle Charlie.

Charlie, with his vampirically sparkling eyes and cloaked intentions, is an enigma off the bat. We as an audience know that something is amiss from the first time we glimpse him, standing over the funeral on a hazy distant hill, and yet when we met him there is an immediate air of allure seeping from the chiseled jawed, stony persona that makes up Charlie.



As Korean director Park's, who directed the cult hit Oldboy, first foray into the American film industry, he manages to maintain the same level of fierce detail and intelligent zeal that defines his predominantly visual storytelling. Park's fervor for intricate story-boarding, for which he is famous, is clearly evident onscreen as each shot perfectly transitions into the next with the effortlessness of a professional ballet troupe. Even with a thick language barrier between Park and his cast, he seems to have directed them in exactly the way that he intended down to the subtlest movement and the slightest sway of the camera. With Stoker, Park is a puppet master with a tenacious handle on the reins.

Even as the title cards play, a sense of Hitchcockian mystique that brands the film is established but it's not until everything is said and done that everything comes full circle and clicks into place. Moments that once seemed little more than fruitless experiments with visual artistry later become cornerstones to the masterful smattering of foreshadow. It's within this careful positioning of all the pieces tha a rarely accomplished feel of competition to the film emerges as does a lasting sense of wonder. Where ever these characters go from here, I would most certainly like to see that journey and yet it is not only the seen but the unseen that makes the film such a taut little piece of suspense.



In terms of the performances in the piece, Wasikowska's brooding India is just as shrouded in gothic mystery as her uncle Charlie. As the constant chiming of clocks and syncopated clack of metronomes click in the background, we can only make guesswork as to what exactly makes India tick. As the film opens on her 18th birthday, this is the tale of her transition into adulthood, a exploration of a troubled teen and who she chooses to become. Having been a gung-ho daddy's girl all her life, India's relationship with her mother, played by Nicole Kidman, has always been lackluster to her mother's dismay.

Kidman is the real tragic character here, playing a lonely, pitiable woman who really seemed to try to foster a relationship with her dismissive daughter but could never break down the icy boundaries between them. While I was at first under the impression that mother Evelyn would be painted as a villain, I found myself siding with this pleading, tragic character. Sure, maybe she should have tried a little harder in the past to be a better mother but there is an insurmountable misunderstanding between her and India that just cannot be summited.
 

Matthew Goode as Uncle Charlie is more than good and while it doesn't take a long time to figure out that he's a bona fide creeper, it's the unpacking of what makes him such an eerie presence that gives Goode an opportunity to shine. There is so much festering behind his impossibly blue-hued eyes that the scenes were he just stares at India or Evelyn or just out into space are totally hypnotic. While I don't want to give too much away here, it often seems that Goode channels that final moment that we see Norman Bates in the perfectly slow pan out in Psycho.

After all is said and done, Stoker adds up to a wonderfully paced creep-fest that knows exactly where to mine for the best elements of suspense. It's morbid revelry in the underbelly of family secrets offers up some tasty moments of macabre and underscores the film with a lurid fascination with the root of all evil. What lingers on after the credits roll is this creeping sense that malevolence may just be hereditary.

A-

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