Review: The Homesman (2014)

* * 1/2
Director: Tommy Lee Jones
Starring: Hilary Swank, Tommy Lee Jones

I can't recall the last movie I saw which left me with as many mixed feelings as Tommy Lee Jones' The Homesman. The film is beautiful to look at but emotionally inert. Well-acted but anchored by characters who never really feel consistent. It seems to want to stand as a statement about the emotional and psychological hardships faced by women in the most masculine of settings - the frontier - but tries to accomplish this through female characters marginalized by society and, ultimately, by a story which leaves the final word and the last act to its central male character, who makes a sudden turn to become an avenging angel of feminine honor. I've sat with this film now for three days and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it and its bizarre point-of-view.

Review: Insomnia (2002)

* * * 1/2
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hilary Swank

Although I'm a definitely a fan of Christopher Nolan, his 2002 thriller Insomnia has somehow eluded me until now. Seeing it ten years after the fact (and seven years after Nolan began his ascent as one of our most dependable producers of high brow blockbusters), I found it to be a singularly entertaining and captivating piece of work. It's not quite on par with Memento, which I think remains his masterpiece, but it's a great psychological thriller.

The Best Picture Countdown #77: Million Dollar Baby (2004)

This post was contributed by CS who writes the blog Big Thoughts From A Small Mind. Get over there and check it out!

Director: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Hilary Swank, Morgan Freeman

Directed by Clint Eastwood, and written by Paul Haggis, Million Dollar Baby is a tale of a waitress, Maggie (Hilary Swank), who decides to pursue her dreams of becoming a professional boxer at age 31. In order to fulfil her dream, Maggie knows she needs a trainer so she turns to former trainer, and current gym owner, Frankie Dunn (Eastwood). Frankie was one of the best trainers in his time, but now spends most of his time filled with regret about how things turned out between him and his estranged daughter. Frankie’s only friend is Scrap (Morgan Freeman), a former boxer who fell on hard times and is now working as a janitor in Frankie’s gym. With the assistance of Scrap, Maggie eventually gets Frankie to break his “I don’t train girls” policy and become her trainer. As the unlikely pair start to make their way around the boxing circuit, Maggie’s star begins to rise. This forces the normally overcautious Frankie, to take a risk and get Maggie that a shot against Billie “The Blue Bear”(Lucia Riker). Billie is one of the dirtiest fighters on the circuit and will do anything to protect her title. With momentum in their favour, Frankie and Maggie know that this fight could possibly change their lives.

It has been five years since I last watched my DVD copy of Million Dollar Baby. I was both excited and a little hesitant to revisit it as sometimes our memories of the experience are greater than the film themselves. One element that was prominent this time around was how annoying Freeman’s constant narration is. Rarely do scenes play out on their own without the narrator chiming in to express the significance of the moment. It is almost as if Haggis and Eastwood are afraid to let the dialogue and images speak for themselves. This inadvertently results in the film underestimating the overall intelligence of its audience. While the last few scenes are designed to show the importance of Freeman’s narration, it is hard to believe that the person the narrator is actually speaking to would be interested in the side story at the gym involving Danger Bach (Jay Baruchel), Shawrelle Berry (Antony Mackie), and Omar (Michael Pena). While I think their side story, and the one involving Maggie’s family, are needed in the film; they would have the same impact without the assistance of the narrator.

My issues with the narrator aside, I found myself still falling for the film despite knowing what was going to happen. Million Dollar Baby is in reality two films in one. The first half is a rags-to-riches style boxing tale in which a self-proclaimed white trash girl and her crotchety trainer learn defy the odds. Like many other odd couple films, they have their ups and downs on the way to gaining mutual respect for one another. The second half is where the true heart of the film is. It is here where the film moves from a simple boxing film to a tale about morality, and family. The film looks at issues regarding euthanasia, atoning for past sins, and spirituality. It is hard to think of Million Dollar Baby without immediately focusing on the latter part of the film.

Clint Eastwood does a good job of juggling both the heavier moments with the comedic ones. He never ventures into the realm of slapstick despite coming close on a few occasions with the character Danger. The boxing scenes are well done and they never feel false. I liked how Eastwood slowly gives Maggie a cocky swagger as her wins increase. This offers a nice build up to her match with the menacing beast that is Billie. Overall Eastwood’s direction is sound and I would argue far better than his performance in the film. This is not to say that Eastwood is bad, in fact he is quite good, but after seeing his grumpy old man act in Gran Torino, it does not have the same humorous effect in Million Dollar Baby as it did when I first saw the film. Hilary Swank is brilliant in the film and well deserving of her Academy Award win for Best Actress. Swank shows both Maggie’s tough side and her fragile side, she has the audience laughing one minute and crying the next. While Maggie and Frankie are supposed to be the odd couple of the film, it is actually Frankie and Scrap who perfect this. Eastwood and Freeman carry over the great chemistry they had in Unforgiven into this film. Freeman is especially good as the man who, though blind in one eye, can see what is truly occurring far better than anyone else in the film.

Although six years has passed since its original release, Million Dollar Baby is aging very well. With the exception of the narration, the story still delivers an emotionally charged tale. The performances from the ensemble cast are great and the mixture of drama and humour help this film to retain its high re-watch value.

Review: P.S. I Love You (2007)

* *
Director: Richard LaGravenese
Starring: Hilary Swank, Gerard Butler, Gina Gershon, Lisa Kudrow

The problem with P.S. I Love You is obvious before you’ve even seen the movie so long as you’ve watched the trailer. The marketing people – and, to a certain extent, the filmmakers themselves – don’t really know what to do with this story. It was marketed as a romantic comedy when it is in fact neither a romance nor a comedy. There are a few funny moments, yes, but the romance is over by the end of the opening credits. This is in actuality a drama about a woman, on her own for the first time in her life, discovering who she is and how to be on her own, and when the film itself remembers that, it isn't half bad.

The film opens with Holly (Hilary Swank) and Gerry (Gerard Butler) in an argument that feels so scripted and explanatory that you almost don’t have to watch the rest of the movie – it’s pretty much all laid out right here. Following this prologue, the film goes into its opening credits and then segues into the film proper, where Gerry has died of a brain tumour and Holly is left on her own. Shortly after Gerry’s death, Holly celebrates her birthday and learns that before he died, Gerry arranged for her to receive a series of letters and gifts from him spread out across her first year of widowhood.

In the interest of revealing the bad news first and saving the good, I’ll start with the elements which bothered me about the film. First: Holly spends a lot of time complaining about her apartment being too small, describing it as if it’s no bigger than a closet. Here’s the thing: that apartment is huge, especially for two people with careers that haven’t gotten off the ground yet and who are living in New York. Second: Holly takes a trip to Ireland with her friends, Sharon (Gina Gershon) and Denise (Lisa Kudrow) where they encourage her to pursue a singer named Billy (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), neither apparently having noticed the more than passing resemblance that Billy bears to Holly’s recently deceased husband. Third: this is a film of standard two hour length but it feels so much longer. Better pacing would have improved it immeasurably.

Now here’s the good news. When the film actually focuses on Holly’s grief and how she works through it, in the process finally getting to know herself as a person in her own right, it’s fairly compelling. Holly goes through a period of depression, cutting herself off from her friends and family, planning to become a modern-day Miss Havisham. She’s pulled out of this in time for the first of Gerry’s messages and then is occupied performing the various tasks he sets her to in his letters. During one of these tasks, she realizes suddenly that even though she hasn’t moved on, everyone else has started to. Denise is about to get married, Sharon is going to have a baby, and now Holly isn’t the center of attention anymore and she finds this fact not a little disconcerting. Refreshingly, her friends actually call her out on this. The scenes between the friends are the best because they feel the most genuine and natural.

As for the rest, there’s a subplot involving Holly’s budding friendship with Daniel (Harry Connick, Jr.), who works for her mother (Kathy Bates), that’s good in that it runs contrary to convention, but it also seems somewhat superfluous. The central performance by Swank is fine and her chemistry with her various leading men is passable if occasionally a little forced. All things considered, it isn’t really a bad movie, it just isn’t an especially good one.

100 Days, 100 Movies: Boys Don't Cry (1999)

Director: Kimberly Pierce
Starring: Hilary Swank, Chloe Sevigny

To call Boys Don’t Cry an astonishing debut is something of an understatement. Throughout the film, director Kimberly Pierce shows remarkable control over the story, guiding doomed transsexual Brandon Teena towards an end that is as inevitable as it is tragic. The strength of the film is that it isn’t simply about Brandon, his struggles and his horrific end, but that in a more general sense it’s about all people stuck in small towns, forever trapped playing their small town roles, when all they want is to break free and make themselves something more.

Whenever I watch Boys Don’t Cry, I can’t help but notice the way that the characters – especially Brandon (Hilary Swank) and Lana (Chloe Sevigny) – are literally framed by their surroundings. They’re continually shot as if they’re trapped, photographed standing between door and window frames, between objects, between people. There are only a couple of scenes when Brandon and Lana are alone together when there is open space around them and they’re free, albeit briefly.

The performance by Hilary Swank has been hailed and rightly so. She won the Oscar, amongst other awards, and brings the right mixture of bravery and vulnerability to the role. But look closely at the performance by Chloe Sevigny. From her first appearance it’s obvious that Lana is a young woman who has already been deeply disappointed by life, who sees how little her town has to offer her, sees where she'll end up and how little she'll have to show for her life, but sees no way out and lacks the courage to try. Brandon is like a lifeline to her, someone who treats her with respect and encourages her to think beyond her small town. Does she suspect the truth about Brandon? I believe she does. During the first sex scene there's the suggestion that she sees Brandon's prosthesis. "I don't care," she tells him, but doesn't elaborate on what it is she doesn't care about. Ultimately, it isn't Brandon's physical gender that attracts her, and that's why she seeks him out after the brutal, humiliating revelation, and why she makes plans to leave town with him. Pierce is exploring a relationship that goes beyond the physical manifestation of gender, forcing us to ask ourselves what it is about him that makes Brandon a man that Lana can love.

The film is, of course, based on a true story, but it plays fast and loose with some facts (watch is alongside the documentary The Brandon Teena Story and you'll see what I mean). This is often presented as a criticism of the film, but I’ve never really seen it that way. The rape and murder of Brandon Teena plays a tremendous role in the film, but I've always thought that it's less about the literal truth of the crime itself than the more figurative truths about gender and identity that the crime brings to light. Brandon and Lana's relationship is one which transcends boundaries of gender and sexuality. This is never more apparent than in a scene towards the end, after the revelation, when Brandon lets Lana see his body (in the previous love scene, he remained clothed). "I don't know what to do," Lana says, alluding to how they'll go about having sex. "We'll figure it out," Brandon replies. It's a relationship that's beyond any easily definable categories; it can't simply be tagged as "gay" or "straight." By presenting Brandon and Lana’s relationship in such a sincere way, the film challenges traditional concepts of sexuality and gender, and questions their validity as normal or natural. Why do John and Tom kill Brandon? Is it because they're afraid he'll go to the police, or is it because they were fooled and don't want to face the fact that their ideas of what makes them "men" are poses that can be appropriated and are ultimately useless as "proof" of their masculinity? On the surface it's the former, but underneath lies the latter. If Brandon isn't a "real" man, but acts just like them and can be treated like a real man by Lana, then what are they? They'd rather kill him than have to answer that question.

Boys Don't Cry is a film that works on a number of levels. Watch it once for its take on gender politics. Watch it again for the human story at its heart, and the two brilliant performances at its centre that make it come alive.