Tales From the Black List: 50/50 (2011)

* * *
Director: Jonathan Levine
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogan

"That doesn't make any sense though. I mean, I don't smoke, I don't drink, I recycle..." Cancer is the great equalizer. You can do everything right and live an entirely unimpeachable life, you can be young or old, male or female, be anyone anywhere, and still get the news. Loosely based on screenwriter Will Reiser's experience with cancer 50/50, which was part of the 2008 Black List (a list which also included such films as Inglorious Basterds, Up in the Air, The Descendants, Easy A, Foxcatcher and Sherlock Holmes), doesn't linger on the shock of the diagnosis. It comes fast, is given a moment, and then the film carries on, cycling through the stages of grief as it follows its protagonist, whose story is as much about him learning to deal with his diagnosis as it is him learning how to deal with the people around him as they deal with his diagnosis. It's a film that finds the comedy in tragedy, alternately funny and moving, and ultimately very humane.

Review: Don Jon (2013)

* * *
Director: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore

One of the great misconceptions about feminism is that it's something which solely benefits women, and one of the great deceptions about patriarchy is that it's only harmful to women. Patriarchy creates impossible and restrictive standards for men just as it does for women, entrenching in each gender ideas and expectations regarding the other which are unfair at best, and destructive at worst. This is a long way of saying that Joseph Gordon-Levitt's feature directorial debut Don Jon is an uncommonly intelligent film about the ways men and women relate (or fail to do so) and how the culture of "masculinity" and "femininity" determines the confines of that discourse - even if the film ultimately does not quite live up to its thematic ideals.

Review: Premium Rush (2012)

* * * 1/2
Director: David Koepp
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon

In a year which included The Dark Knight Rises, Looper, and Lincoln, Premium Rush would seem like the least of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s 2012 films. Commercially, it certainly was. Secretly, however, it may very well have been his best. Sure, it lacks the gravitas of Lincoln, the mind bending cleverness of Looper, or the pop cultural importance of The Dark Knight Rises, but it more than makes up for all that in no frills action. How good is it? It reminded me a fair bit of Run, Lola, Run. If that means nothing to you, then I suggest that you stop reading right now, get copies of Lola and Rush, and settle in for a thrilling double feature.

Review: Looper (2012)

* * * 1/2Director: Rian Johnson
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt

A genre film done right can be a thing of beauty. It may not end up winning a lot of awards, but its balance of craft and entertainment will ensure that it always has an audience. Looper is a great genre film from a young director whose track record is so sound (Rian Johnson's previous films are Brick and The Brothers Bloom) that in time he may prove to be a sleeper candidate for "best of his generation." Looper is a near perfect science fiction/action film, one brimming with intelligence and packed with well-executed action.

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: Inception (2010)

* * * *
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ken Watanabe

Thank God for Inception because, other than a couple of smaller movies in limited release, this has been a very uneventful summer for me, movie-wise. Fortunately Inception was worth waiting for, as it's a smart, slick movie that engages the mind as much as the eye.

The story takes place at an unspecified time in the future when technology allows for shared dreaming and shared dreaming allows thieves to break into a person's subconscious to steal information. One such thief is Dominic Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) who is attempting in the film's opening minutes to extract information from a man named Saito (Ken Watanabe). The job is unsuccessful but Saito is so impressed with Cobb's work that he offers him a new opportunity. Maurice Fisher (Pete Postlethwaite), a powerful tycoon, is on his death bed and his son, Robert (Cillian Murphy), is about the inherit his empire. Saito wants Cobb and his team to venture into Robert's unconscious and plant the idea of selling off the pieces of his father's business. Though his partner, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), insists that it can't be done, Cobb is persuaded to take the job after Saito informs him that he can pull some strings which would allow Cobb to return to the U.S., where he's currently a wanted man.

Cobb puts together a team which includes Arthur, Eames (Tom Hardy), a forger capable of assuming someone else's identity in dreams, and Ariadne (Ellen Page), the architect who will design the dreams. Since inception is more complicated than extraction, the process will involve dreams within dreams within dreams and since each dream level is more unstable than the last, the team also includes Yusuf (Dileep Rao), a chemist who can make a compound that will allow them to submerge themselves deep enough to enter the lower levels. The team goes under but almost immediately things begin to go awry. For one thing, Fischer has been trained to fight attempts at extraction and his subconscious fights back fiercely against the invaders. For another, Cobb is dragging along a lot of baggage in his own subconscious that threatens to derail the entire operation.

Written and directed by Christopher Nolan, Inception is a labyrinth of ideas, the density of which makes this a particularly ambitious film. Using Ariadne - who is new to the process of shared dreaming - as a surrogate for the audience, Nolan methodically sets up the rules of the unconscious state in the film's first half and then plunges us into action in the second half as level upon level upon level of unconsciousness first open out of each other and then collapse in. There is the threat that the characters will go too deep, that they'll submerge themselves so far that they'll be trapped in the unconscious indefinitely or that they'll no longer be able to tell reality from the dream state. Both risks are associated with Cobb who has essentially been to the other side and come back, though the things he left behind constantly threaten to pull him back. The final scene is ambiguous and already scores of theories have been put forth as possible explanations; this is a film that is obviously inspiring a lot of discussion and thought and I think that it's worthy of all of that effort.

The film has been described as "cold" by some critics and while I agree that it's cold, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Stanley Kubrick's films are cold and his coldest - 2001: A Space Odyssey which Nolan references here - is widely considered one of the highest achievements in film history. Besides which, I think coldness is entirely appropriate given the subject. If our unconscious is home to our baser instincts and our consciousness is tempered by our humanity, doesn't it make sense that it would get colder the deep you go? Just a thought.

Other criticisms of the film are, I think, more legitimate. There is a heavy handedness in terms of the naming of characters (aside from Ariadne there's also Mal, French for "bad" and the name of Cobb's destructive projection) and aside from Cobb, none of the characters is really fleshed out (though even that isn't necessarily a criticism, depending on your theory about the film). Still, Inception is an engrossing and often challenging film that makes up for whatever weaknesses it might have through the sheer force of its many strengths. I think it's safe to say that with this film and the rebooted Batman franchise under his belt, Nolan has a blank check to do whatever crazy shit he wants for the next ten years at least.

Review: (500) Days of Summer (2009)

* * * *
Director: Marc Webb
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel

There aren’t a lot of movies that deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Annie Hall, but (500) Days of Summer is one of them. While most romantic comedies centre on the romance of possibility and end at the real beginning, this one focuses instead on an actual relationship, with all its inherent ups and downs, and knows that just because something is good, doesn’t mean it’s meant to be permanent. I can think of no better way to introduce this movie than to quote another great comedy: “Love don’t make things nice – it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. We are here to ruin ourselves and break out hearts and love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are bullshit.”

Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a hopeless romantic. How hopeless? He thinks The Graduate has a happy ending. The first time he sees Summer (Zooey Deschanel), he’s smitten, as many men are. Alas, she does not want a boyfriend, as she prefers to be independent and not “belong” to anyone. Because he wants her so badly, he allows himself to believe that he can change her mind, that he can convince her as he’s convinced himself that they’re fated to be together. Their relationship begins casually (for her, anyway), gets serious, and then abruptly ends, leaving him heartbroken and confused. As he looks back on the relationship, he just can’t understand where it all went wrong. They were so right for each other so how can it just be over?

The problem is that despite Tom’s proclamations that Summer is the love of his life, he doesn’t really know her. He’s so fixated on his idea of a perfect, permanent love and so determined to make her fit into the mould that he’s always had in his mind that it prevents him from really seeing her as a human being in her own right. This disconnect is exacerbated by the unconscious knowledge that as much as he wants to he can’t actually make her fit into his vision, and all the anxieties that that knowledge entails. One of the most telling scenes for me is when Tom and Summer go to a bar and she’s relentlessly hit on by some idiot. The guy expresses disbelief that Tom is Summer’s boyfriend and Tom punches him, which upsets Summer. “I did it for you!” he laments, which is absolutely not true. He may have done it because of her, but he certainly didn’t do it for her. He did it for himself because the guy in the bar wounded his pride and expressed Tom’s own fear that Summer is out of his league, that she’s going to realize it and that she’s going to leave him.

As a character, Summer is thinly conceived. Since we only see her through Tom’s eyes this makes sense because he either can’t read her or doesn’t really want to. Late in the film, one of Tom’s friends compares his girlfriend to his dream girl and declares that his girlfriend is better because she’s real. Tom thinks he can have both the reality and the dream and so he ignores those things about Summer that don’t conform to his ideal. To emphasize this the film incorporates many elements of fantasy, including a dance number and a sequence done in split screen, dividing Tom’s dream version of an event from the reality of it. These elements are folded easily into the larger narrative and provide a lot of insight into Tom’s character and state of mind.

I went into (500) Days of Summer somewhat guarded. Having been bombarded with the trailer for the last couple of weeks, I felt a bit over the movie before even seeing it, but my enthusiasm for it was renewed once I was watching it. It isn’t a perfect movie – I could have lived without the “wise child” character and I think that the ending is perhaps too clever by half – but it is pretty great and features wonderful performances from both Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel.

Review: Brick (2005)

* * *
Director: Rian Johnson
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Film noir is a great genre, but it’s almost impossible to make a “pure” noir in this day and age. The current culture is too ironic, too self-consciously cool for the brutal sincerity in which noir is rooted. Brick is a film that fully embraces its artificiality and plays it for all its worth, making the style as important as the plot. The film is highly entertaining and delightfully well-plotted but that overt self-awareness also makes it less weighty than it might otherwise have been.

The film is set in modern-day southern California, but the dialogue, the attitude, the archetypes, are straight from the classic noir of the 40s. Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is, for lack of a better term, the hero, the guy who puts the pieces together and whose tough exterior masks the wounds of lost love. That love is Emily (Emilie de Ravin), an ex-girlfriend who gets caught up in a situation she can’t handle and goes to him for help – but too late. He finds her dead and is haunted by the things she told him, information imparted in a code he doesn’t quite understand. To get to the bottom of things he employs the help of a character known simply as “The Brain” (Matt O’Leary), who seems to be able to insert himself into any loop to get enough information for Brendan to build on.

Along his travels, Brendan encounters a number of characters familiar to the genre: Laura (Nora Zehetner), the femme fatale who might be there to help him but might also be the root of all evil, Tugger (Noah Fleiss), the heavy who's lucky he has a gun because his brain sure wouldn’t see him through, and The Pin (Lukas Haas), the slightly effete source of all the trouble. What Brendan discovers as he interacts with these characters isn’t really the point. Plot has never been the raison d’etre of any noir, though a great deal of effort is put into making grand, twisting narratives. Noir is about atmosphere, about carrying the audience along on mood and dialogue so that they effectively forget about the plot. A successful noir isn’t one that can be followed, but one that can be felt and if you notice a plot hole while you’re watching it, then it’s not doing its job.

Written and directed by Rian Johnson, who obviously has great familiarity with and appreciation for the genre, Brick is a successful example of style but not a particularly resonant film. The technique of using old school dialogue in a modern setting creates a distance between the film and the audience that cannot be overcome so that we don’t really care what becomes of the characters because we don’t really believe in them. Their fate is meaningless because their existence is so overtly artificial and nothing that they do, or fail to do, matters because they’re just part of a larger game being played by the film.

The film is well-written and Johnson is fortunate in the players he was able to cast, all of whom seem comfortable enough with the dialogue and style not to get lost in it. The standout, as is so often the case, is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, an actor who has spent the better part of the last decade making consistently interesting choices and will hopefully continue to do so. He will also, hopefully, start to get some significant recognition for his considerable talent.

Review: Stop-Loss (2008)

* *
Director: Kimberly Peirce
Starring: Ryan Phillippe, Abbie Cornish, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Stop-Loss is a movie with a lot of potential that falls just short of being good. The characters wander through the story, endlessly repeating the same lines in different variations as if the act of repetition will disguise the fact that the film only skims the very surface of the issues it wants us to believe it is exploring. Kimberley Peirce is a good director, her work on Boys Don’t Cry proves that, but this story is ultimately directionless, ending not with any kind of resolution, but with a metaphorical shrug.

Brandon (Ryan Phillippe), Steve (Channing Tatum) and Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are three friends returning to their hometown after a tour of duty in Iraq. Tommy will be going back for another tour, but Brandon and Steve have finished and are getting ready to leave the army and move on with their lives. On what he believes to be his last day of service, Brandon finds out that he’s been stop-lossed and will return to Iraq for another tour. More out of anger than anything else, Brandon flees with the help of Steve’s fiancée Michelle (Abbie Cornish), first planning to go to Washington to seek the help of a Senator and then planning to go to Canada under an assumed identity.

It must be said that the first thirty or so minutes of this film, which explores the chaos of Iraq and the tension of returning home, are outstanding and say more about the war than all the speeches that take place during the rest of the film. The ambush scene, in which Brandon follows Steve into a residence and makes a split-second decision which will come to haunt him, is easily the most powerful part of the movie but it seems wasted given how briefly this moment is touched on and how quickly the story loses the thread.

There are a lot of problems with the film, but the biggest is with its protagonist. Brandon is the focus of the story and of the three returning friends, he’s the least interesting. Both Steve and Tommy are on the verge of cracking up, drowning their memories in booze and taking out their aggression on the women in their lives. Steve, afraid of trying to live as a civilian again after his experiences overseas, voluntarily re-enlists despite his promises to Michelle. Tommy, who acts out in various ways, is discharged from the army for bad behaviour and kicked out by his wife for much the same reason. In comparison, Brandon seems a little plastic, a little too perfect. The performance by Phillippe doesn’t do much to help; he yells a lot and makes a number of anguished faces but it just seems overwrought and there’s not much depth to the performance. Gordon-Levitt, who does a lot with what little the film provides for him, might have been a better choice to play Brandon.

[As a slight aside to anyone who has seen the film: did anyone else find it distracting, given Kimberly Peirce’s previous film, that the protagonist was named Brandon?]

Stop-Loss wants very badly to be a film that’s about something, but it only glosses over the issues it wants to explore. The situation in which Brandon finds himself is unfair, but simply pointing out that it’s unfair and offering little else by way of commentary is insufficient at this point. An excellent film could have come out of the first third of this one, but Stop-Loss isn’t it.