Review: Ocean's 8 (2018)

* * *
Director: Gary Ross
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Rihanna, Sarah Paulson, Mindy Kaling, Awkwafina

"Why do you need to do this?" "Because it's what I'm good at." Sometimes that's all the justification you need. Did the world need another Ocean's movie? Probably not. I mean, one could reasonably argue that there didn't really need to be three in the first place. But movies like Ocean's 8 don't exist to address a need any more than the candy available at the concession does. These things exist because sometimes you just want a treat, something that has no nutritional value but gives you a bit of a sugar rush. Ocean's 8 is a lot of fun. It might not be striving for greatness, but it delivers pretty much exactly what it promises and its mix of charismatic stars, glamour, comedy and adventure makes for a perfect summer entertainment.

Review: Colossal (2017)

* * 1/2
Director: Nacho Vigalondo
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Jason Sudeikis

Nacho Vigalondo's Colossal is the kind of film that I want to praise for its ideas, but which falls just short enough of achieving what it's trying to do that I can't really recommend it. If Colossal was just what it appears to be - an oddity about a woman who realizes that her drunken antics are somehow resulting in a Kaiju appearing in Seoul, stomping through the city and leaving destruction in its wake - then it might have made for a fine absurdist comedy. If its ambitions had been limited to being about a woman confronting and finding a way to conquer her demons, it would probably also have been fine - as the woman in question, Anne Hathaway delivers a performance that is strong and nuanced enough to have pulled that off. But Colossal has greater ambitions than that, and while I admire it for what it's trying to address and what I think it's trying to do, I think it goes about it a little wrong.

Review: Interstellar (2014)

* * 1/2
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain

Whatever else you might say about Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, you certainly can't accuse it of lacking in ambition. This is a film which operates on a grand scale, creating new cinematic vistas which, like Gravity last year, ought to be seen and experienced on the big screen. On a purely visual level, Interstellar is often spectacular. Narratively and thematically it is severely wanting and emotionally empty. The "emotional" part wouldn't necessarily be a problem - plenty of great science fiction films are best described as "cold" or "clinical," after all - but given that Interstellar's story all comes down to the power of love, that lack of emotional impact is a problem. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of talk about feelings throughout, but what does that amount to when the characters are so thin and so much of the dialogue is a re-write or two away from being ready for consumption? But, hey, at least it looks great.

Review: Les Miserables (2012)

* * 1/2
Director: Tom Hooper
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne, Amanda Seyfried

Les Miserables is going to make a lot of money. It's going to get nominated for a bunch of Oscars including, I'm certain, Best Picture. It's going to be loved by a lot of people. There's a lot of good news for Les Miserables. The bad news is that it's actually not a very good film. It has its moments, it is sometimes entertaining, sometimes even moving, but its flaws are so prominent and so distracting that the elements of value are almost buried beneath them.

Review: The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

* * * 1/2
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt

I already feel bad for whomever is tasked with the inevitable reboot of the Batman franchise because even if they turn out a competent and perfectly fine film, it’s bound to suffer in comparison. What writer/director Christopher Nolan accomplished with his three Batman films so completely transcends genre limitations and expectations that it feels reductive to call the films “comic book movies” or action movies, and it’s difficult to imagine that a new take on the story can be anything but a disappointment. With The Dark Knight Rises Nolan brings his series to a close, and brings it full circle, leaving an indelible mark on the cinematic landscape.

Review: Love and Other Drugs (2010)

* *
Director: Edward Zwick
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway

Unless you have an all-consuming need to see either Jake Gyllenhaal or Anne Hathaway naked, you can probably afford to skip Love and Other Drugs. This scattered love story has big ambitions but falls way, way short. Although I suppose it should get points for having its male protagonist as naked and as frequently naked as his female co-star. You don't see that a lot.

Gyllenhaal stars as Jamie Randall, the defiantly underachieving eldest son of a family of doctors, who gets a sales job with Pfizer through his brother, Josh (Josh Gad). He starts out selling Zoloft, trying in vain to get a foothold in the offices of doctors who have loyally been prescribing the Prozac supplied by Trey Hannigan (Gabriel Macht). In the course of his work he meets Maggie Murdoch (Hathaway), whose battle with Parkinson's disease has made her reluctant to get romantically involved with anyone (and who, coincidentally, was last involved with Hannigan). They begin a casual relationship which, despite their best efforts, eventually becomes serious. So serious that Jamie says, "I love you," words he's never said to anyone - not even his parents - before (Maggie, on the other hand, once said it to a cat).

As Maggie's symptoms start to become more prominent, Jamie makes it his mission to find the best possible treatment options for her. The stress of her illness and the increasing feeling that he's trying to "fix" her quickly drives a wedge between them, however, and she breaks things off. With his career taking off thanks to the advent of Viagra, Jamie tries to return to the shallow and meaningless life he was living before but ultimately decides that he can't give Maggie up without a fight.

The screenplay by Charles Randolph, Marshall Herskovitz, and Edward Zwick (who also directs) is the film's greatest obstacle and the other elements never quite overcome that. The problem basically boils down to two things. For one, it seems like two stories smashed together instead of one cohesive narrative and, as such, it seems confused about what kind of movie it wants to be. For another, it commits the cardinal sin of storytelling by being all "tell" and no "show." Rather than taking the chance that the audience might miss some subtle touch or nuance, the screenplay spells everything out, painting in such broad strokes that everything feels false, unnatural and, at times, overwrought.

Despite the shortcomings of the screenplay, Gyllenhaal and Hathaway turn in good performances. The characters are, by design, rather two dimensional - Jamie is the golden boy on the cusp of realizing his potential; Maggie is your standard Manic Pixie Dream Girl - because the story is more concerned with the "issue" than exploring the issue through the characters; but Gyllenhaal and Hathaway do a lot of heavy lifting and manage to breathe life into them. It helps, of course, that both are such likeable actors and play so well off each other. Love and Other Drugs is not a particularly good movie, but that's definitely not the fault of either of its leads.

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Oscarstravaganza: Brokeback Mountain

* * * *

Winner: Best Director, 2005
Director: Ang Lee
Starring: Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway

Brokeback Mountain is representative of a lot of things to a lot of people. For some it is a watershed film that suggests a movement towards a more inclusive mainstream cinema. For others, it is a lightning rod for controversy and further evidence of society’s decaying values. It is one of two films involved in what is easily the most contentious Best Picture selection of the last decade. “Brokeback Mountain” is bigger than the film itself, bigger than the story on which it is based, bigger than even the Hollywood machine. Its reception is indicative of the volatile relationship between society and the individual and a measure of the distance left to travel in the battle for equality. But beneath all of that lies a quiet and beautifully crafted masterpiece, a film that transcends whatever boundaries might otherwise ghettoize it as a "gay movie" to become, simply, a great movie.

Beginning in 1962, the film explores the relationship between Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) that begins at the eponymous locale. Hired to tend to sheep for the summer, Ennis and Jack go up the mountain, set up camp, and prepare for months of near total isolation. They have no one but each other for company and yet spend large swaths of time apart, as one is supposed to tend to the camp while the other guards the sheep, leaving the flock only twice per day in order to have breakfast and dinner. One night the routine is broken and both spend the night at camp, their relationship progressing from longing looks to physical contact.

They insist to each other that they aren’t gay, agreeing that their relationship is situational, though their bond obviously runs much deeper than that. When the job ends, they come back down the mountain and go their separate ways – Jack back to the rodeo, Ennis to marry Alma (Michelle Williams). Four years pass. Ennis and Alma have two daughters and are barely able make ends meet; Jack has given up the rodeo and settled into a life of financial comfort with his wife Lureen (Anne Hathaway) and their son, and sells farm equipment for his father-in-law’s company. When the opportunity arises to pass through Wyoming, Jack looks Ennis up and they pick up where they left off.

Seeing Brokeback Mountain again for the first time in years, I was struck by the thread of loneliness that runs through it. The landscape is open and empty; the characters are isolated and unable, for the most part, to connect with each other. The most meaningful connection is forged reluctantly, kept alive through brief intervals of contact over the course of some twenty years. Ennis and Jack spend most of their relationship lonely not only for each other but also for themselves and the ability to abandon a pretence that makes life painful for them. Jack is willing to take the risk, always talking about setting off so that they can have a real life together, but Ennis, scarred by a violent memory from childhood, won’t be persuaded and so their relationship remains a major force relegated to the very margins of their lives. One of the most touching scenes in the film comes at the end, when Ennis’ daughter invites him to her wedding. He tells her that he doesn’t think he can take time off work, an excuse he also used occasionally with Jack, and then thinks better of it, having learned how precious time with someone you love can be. He may never feel safe enough to let her know this other part of himself, but he won't keep himself from her entirely either. In a performance that is strong from beginning to end, these are Ledger's finest moments.

Due to its subject matter, the film was controversial before it even hit theatres, though it isn't at all explicit. In fact, the physicality between Ledger and Gyllenhaal is downright chaste compared to some of the obligatory pseudo-lesbianism that is occasionally shoehorned into the American mainstream. However, in making Ennis and Jack cowboys, Brokeback challenges a very masculine, very American image and calls into question popular conceptions of sexuality and gender, exposing those popular images for the fragile poses that they are. It also explores its themes in terms of the personal rather than the political. In films like Milk and Philadelphia, for example, the focus isn't on the protagonists' sex lives as much as it is on the issues of equality and acceptance. Brokeback Mountain can't be considered in the same terms because Ennis and Jack aren't crusaders but two simple men trying simply to find happiness. This isn't an "issue movie" but a romance that asks the viewer to see its characters as human beings rather than symbols and questions why their desires should be considered illegitimate and what purpose is served by making two consenting adults feel like criminals for wanting to be together.

As the starcrossed lovers, Ledger and Gyllenhaal both render solid, effective performances. For many people, myself included, this film was the first indication that Ledger could actually, you know, act and though Ennis is a man of few words, Ledger is able to convey his inner turmoil. As for Gyllenhaal, he guides Jack's transition from needy youth to weary and fed-up middle-age without ever missing a beat. The ageing process for the two characters is done in such a subtle, believable way that you hardly even notice as you're watching and that's as much a credit to makeup as it is to the two actors and the ways that they allow their characters to grow and change over time.

Although Brokeback Mountain's impact on the culture is not as great as its ubiquity might suggest, given the dearth of gay characters as romantic leads in mainstream cinema since its release, it is nevertheless a great film. It is as powerful today as when it was first released and by all rights should be considered one of the great movie love stories of all time.

Review: Get Smart (2008)

* * *
Director: Peter Segal
Starring: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway

The TV version of Get Smart was before my time, but it’s one of my dad’s favourite shows so I’m familiar enough with the premise without being attached to the “purity” of the original. Although I enjoyed the film version, I think it falls prey to the same problem found in a lot of TV to movie adaptations, which is that it can’t seem to make up its mind about how to engage the source material. This inherent unevenness is a drag on the film, giving it an uneasy mix of action and comedy.

At the beginning of the film Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell) is an analyst whose reports run hundreds of pages, detailing seemingly mundane facts that the field agents mock but that the Chief (Alan Arkin) appreciates because it reminds him of old school spy work. Smart wants desperately to be promoted to field agent, but the Chief thinks he’s too valuable as an analyst until a break in at CONTROL headquarters means that the identities of all the field agents have been compromised. In order to stop the latest plot by KAOS, the Chief has no other option but to promote Max to Agent 86 and send him out with Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), whose recent plastic surgery means that she’s still viable in the field.

Max and 99 are sent to the Ukraine where agents from KAOS, led by Siegfried (Terrence Stamp), are assembling nuclear weapons that they intend to sell to dictatorships which are hostile towards the US. The plot is set-up well enough, but it’s really the film’s secondary concern. First and foremost the film is about letting Max find new and interesting ways to injure himself, from a mishap with a mini-crossbow to his attempt to slip through a room secured with laser beams. Carell takes these moments in stride, as able at physical as verbal comedy.

When the film is focused on the comedic aspect of the story it’s quite good, but in when it tries to be an action movie it looses its way a little bit. Maybe I’m just difficult to please, but I found myself a little bored by the explosions, high speed chases, and cartoony violence peppered throughout the story. It’s not that it isn’t all well done, it’s just that it’s nothing that I haven’t seen before and I found myself thinking, “Get back to the funny stuff.” Another problem is the romantic storyline between Max and 99. While I know that their relationship is canon as far as the TV series is concerned and formula as far as film construction is concerned, I just didn’t feel any sexual tension between the two which made me believe that they could make the transition from friendly antagonism to love. I think that Carell and Hathaway have good “buddy” chemistry, they just don’t have romantic/sexual chemistry.

Get Smart isn’t an entirely successful movie, but I ultimately feel compelled to give it a pass. I laughed a lot and I think Carell is well cast even if the material sometimes lets him down. If there’s a sequel (and I’m assuming that there will be given the $100 million plus gross), I hope the filmmakers learn from the mistakes of this one and are able to work out some of the kinks.

Review: Rachel Getting Married (2008)

* * * 1/2
Director: Jonathan Demme
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt

Rachel Getting Married is a film about the three “a”s of family get-togethers: awkwardness, agony, affection. A lot of things go unsaid in the film, and a lot of things are said that perhaps shouldn’t be. It can occasionally be difficult to watch but it really nails the complex and sometimes contradictory dynamics that play out between members of a family. At the centre of it all, Anne Hathaway demonstrates just how much she has matured as an actress.

Hathaway stars as Kym, a woman with deep emotional scars who takes a break from her latest stint in rehab to attend the wedding of her sister, Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt). Although her reunion with her sister is happy, albeit a bit tentatively, tensions quickly begin to mount. Kym is accustomed to being the centre of attention and can’t bring herself to relinquish it, even on what should be Rachel’s day. This is par for the course as far as Rachel is concerned and there comes a point when she basically accuses Kym of holding the family hostage with her antics. Their father (Bill Irwin) tries to mediate, but makes things worse by seeming (to Rachel, at least) to favour Kym, about whom he is considerably and understandably worried.

Largely absent from the pre-wedding festivities is Rachel and Kym’s mother, Abby (Debra Winger), who even when she is around holds herself at a distance from her children. Her participation in the wedding is slight, even when Rachel tries to gently prod her into becoming more involved, and she remains largely cold and emotionless throughout the proceedings, save for one scene between her and Kym. The way that these three characters interact with each other explains a lot without actually spelling everything out. It’s a prime example of how to show rather than tell.

As Kym, Anna Hathaway really comes into her own as an actress. I’ve always found Hathaway to be a likeable but not particularly memorable actress, but here she renders a performance of incredible depth. There is one scene in particular which stands out for me, when Kym, who has allowed herself to become defined by a family tragedy, asks who she’s supposed to be if she stops being the family’s train wreck. DeWitt is similarly excellent as the frustrated older sister who at one point informs Kym that she wishes she’d either get better or die so that the family can finally be released from her chaos. The relationship between the sisters is fraught but not doomed – beneath all the old resentments that have been built up, there’s genuine affection and a desire for things to be better between them.

To navigate the audience through these relationships director Jonathan Demme uses a handheld camera, which gives the story an intimacy that is occasionally brutal. It should be said though that during the wedding reception scenes it does start to feel a little too much like watching a home movie, and as an audience you start to feel a bit anxious for the story to get moving again. When all is said and done, however, the good far outweighs the bad and this is definitely a movie worth seeing.