Review: The Mountain Between Us (2017)

* *
Director: Hany Abu-Assad
Starring: Kate Winslet, Idris Elba

I'll answer the two most important questions first: Yes, the dog lives. As a matter of fact, I left the theater convinced that the dog is immortal because nothing takes him down, but try telling that to Kate Winslet's character, who sends Idris Elba's to look for the dog each time it runs off. Second, yes, they do it. How often does a movie put two people that attractive together and not have them get into bed? Now that you know that, you can probably skip it at the theater and catch it when it shows up on your preferred streaming service or when it ends up on TV. It's not a bad movie, but it's definitely the kind of movie that probably plays best when it's raining outside and you have nothing else to keep yourself entertained with.

Review: Triple 9 (2016)

* * 1/2
Director: John Hillcoat
Starring: Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Woody Harrelson, Kate Winslet

Since 1995, all heist movies have existed in the long shadow of Heat, Michael Mann's defining word on the genre. Every once in a while there will be a film like The Town, which struck a deep enough chord to stand somewhat apart, but that's the exception, rather than the rule. Most of the films that have followed Heat have to be content with paling in comparison and John Hillcoat's Triple 9 is no different. A heist movie centering on dirty cops and the Russian mob, Triple 9 features a lot of really good actors playing some pretty stock characters, making for a film that's fairly entertaining most of the time, but ultimately a forgettable entry in the filmographies of all involved. Rarely has such a great cast been assembled for a such a deeply okay movie.

Review: The Dressmaker (2016)

* * * 1/2
Director: Jocelyn Moorhouse
Starring: Kate Winslet

If you think that they don't make 'em like they used to anymore, then you've never seen Kate Winslet in The Dressmaker, vamping like Rita Hayworth, snarling like Bette Davis (perhaps the only actress who could have made more of her character's first line, "I'm back, you bastards."), and mixing strength and vulnerability like Vivien Leigh. But while it sometimes feels like a cross between Bad Day at Black Rock and Johnny Guitar, it wouldn't really be accurate to call the film, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Rosalie Ham, a throwback to a different era. It is very much its own creature, one which defies easy classification, and one which is perhaps either the kind of movie that you embrace completely, or whose charms just completely escape you. It's an oddball, to be sure, but it's glorious in its weirdness.

Review: Steve Jobs (2015)

* * *
Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogan, Jeff Daniels

As written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle, Steve Jobs is not your typical "important man" biopic. It's a biopic that unfolds in three distinct acts, each one focusing on the minutes leading up to a particular product launch, concerned less with pure historical accuracy and revealing the "real" Steve Jobs than it is with exploring the idea of Steve Jobs, pivoting around two key ideas about the man - his struggle over the fact of being adopted and his struggle to accept his role as a father to his eldest child - connected by his need for control. It isn't an especially subtle movie (if you miss the point the first time, the screenplay will circle back to it once or twice later), but it's a vibrant one and totally engrossing from beginning to end. It also adds yet another entry in Michael Fassbender's quickly growing gallery of fantastic performances.

Review: Romance & Cigarettes (2007)

* *
Director: John Turturro
Starring: James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet

Romance & Cigarettes is one of those films that sat on the shelf for years after it was completed, waiting and waiting for release until finally writer/director John Turturro managed to release it himself, distributing it in a limited capacity in 2007. If distributors didn't quite know what to do with this film, that's understandable. It's a strange little concoction with all the marks of a labor of love, and few of the elements that might make it even marginally marketable. If it's not an entirely successful film, there can nevertheless be no doubt that a lot of passion went into it. That comes through in every frame - every crazy, weird frame, which taken all together adds up to a finished film that couldn't be anything less than divisive.

Review: Contagion (2011)

* * *
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Gwyneth Paltrow

Steven Soderbergh's Contagion is a frightening film - not because of the virus that sweeps across the planet, seemingly unstoppable, but because of how it portrays society as little more than a thin veneer easily dismantled in a few quick steps. The almost apocalyptic vision of chaos and destruction that ensues when desperation and greed set in as a population becomes increasingly distrustful of the government's ability and desire to help them, is thought-provoking and skillfully rendered. While the film as a whole is not quite as strong as this particular element, it is ultimately an effective thriller, well-crafted and excellently acted by a cast packed with great actors.

Review: Carnage (2011)

* * * 1/2
Director: Roman Polanski
Starring: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly

In Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, guests arrive at a home for a dinner party, enter a room, and then find that they cannot leave. Nothing impedes them from leaving the room; they simply find that they cannot step out. Carnage, based on the play God of Carnage is a lot like that, focusing on four characters who, despite their growing need to be away from each other, find that they just can't leave the Brooklyn apartment which belongs to two of them. As politeness gives way to long simmering resentments, the apartment becomes a battleground of upper middleclass problems.

The Best Picture Countdown #70: Titanic (1997)

Note: this post is modified from a previously published post

Director: James Cameron
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet

When Avatar usurped Titanic as top box office earner of all time, I must admit that I felt a bit sad. It's not that I have any particular affection for Titanic, though having been 15 when it was released of course I saw it; but I guess I felt like part of my adolescence was now gone forever. Most parts of my adolescence I've been more than happy to consign to history, but that one I didn't mind hanging on to. Prior to watching it again recently I hadn't seen Titanic in about a decade and I must say that it's a better movie than I remembered it being. Certainly it deserves better than the dismissive attitude so often applied to it.

Titanic is the story of a boy and a girl, separated first by class and then permanently by disaster. Rose (Kate Winslet) is a socialite with a pushy mother (Frances Fisher) and a brute of a fiancee (Billy Zane); Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an aspiring artist travelling in steerage and so thrilled to be on this adventure that he screams: "I'm the king of the world!" It sounds kind of lame when you write it out like that but, I'll be honest, thinking about it brought a huge grin to my face. I don't think Titanic is a great movie by any stretch, but it does have a certain lingering magic.

Despite the differences in their circumstances, Jack and Rose are drawn to each other and quickly fall in love. DiCaprio and Winslet have good enough chemistry that you're willing to overlook the fact that their relationship never takes on more than two dimensions and the liveliness of their performances also makes you willing to overlook (to an extent) the fact that the story itself is pretty two dimensional. There is a degree of emotional resonance to the story, but that has more to do with certain facts - like that the people in steerage really were locked in to their doom, that desperation made getting to a lifeboat a blood sport, that flares were seen by people on a nearby boat who thought the rich Titanic passengers were just having a party and not in any distress - than it does with the narrative the film builds around those facts. The film's major preoccupation is with what happens after the boat hits the iceberg and the story only needs to be serviceable enough to hold your attention until it reaches that point.

Do I need to say how great the special effects are? Even now they still look pretty good and somehow seem less soulless than a lot of the glossy special effects work done today. Titanic is one of those films where you can definitely see where the money went, but it gets folded pretty seamlessly into everything else. Whatever faults James Cameron may have, you could never accuse him of not putting the work into his projects. Here, as with Avatar and his earlier films, if the technology wasn't there to do exactly what he wanted, he simply found a way to invent it. For this film he helped develop, amongst other things, a special deep-sea camera to capture the footage of the ship on the floor of the sea. Those shots of the ghostly ship are some of the most memorable from the entire film and go a long way towards creating the sad, ominous mood that underlines the story. The money put into Titanic was definitely money well spent.

Titanic is one of those films people raved about when it was first released but started to turn against once Hollywood raved to the tune of an 11 Oscar sweep. The hubris displayed by Cameron perhaps made it an easy target though, if you think about it, hadn't he earned the right to be a bit arrogant? Before its release, people expected it to fail - I mean, how could a film that expensive possibly make a profit? - but instead it reached a ridiculous level of success. He was king of the world at that moment. As for the film itself, while it is arguably not the best film of 1997, I think it would be difficult to make a strong case against 9 of its other Oscar wins (the 10th being its win for Best Song - don't get me started). The lack of depth to the story may allow you to dismiss the film as a pretty but empty box, but it's so pretty. There is such a strong attention to detail, such majesty to the whole production. The film is exquisitely made and even though it has its weaknesses and has been the subject of countless parodies, it's held up pretty well.

Oscarstravaganza: Titanic

* * *

Winner: Best Visual Effects, 1997
Director: James Cameron
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet

When Avatar usurped Titanic as top box office earner, I must admit that I felt a bit sad. It's not that I have any particular affection for Titanic, though having been 15 when it was released of course I saw it; but I guess I felt like part of my adolescence was now gone forever. Most parts of my adolescence I've been more than happy to consign to history, but that one I didn't mind hanging on to. Prior to watching it again recently I hadn't seen Titanic in about a decade and I must say that it's a better movie than I remembered it being. Certainly it deserves better than the dismissive attitude so often applied to it.

Titanic is the story of a boy and a girl, separated first by class and then permanently by disaster. Rose (Kate Winslet) is a socialite with a pushy mother (Frances Fisher) and a brute of a fiancee (Billy Zane); Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an aspiring artist travelling in steerage and so thrilled to be on this adventure that he screams: "I'm the king of the world!" It sounds kind of lame when you write it out like that but, I'll be honest, thinking about it brought a huge grin to my face. I don't think Titanic is a great movie by any stretch, but it does have a certain lingering magic.

Despite the differences in their circumstances, Jack and Rose are drawn to each other and quickly fall in love. DiCaprio and Winslet have good enough chemistry that you're willing to overlook the fact that relationship never takes on more than two dimensions. The liveliness of their performances also makes you willing to overlook (to an extent) the fact that the story itself is pretty two dimensional. There is a degree of emotional resonance to the story, but that has more to do with certain facts - like that the people in steerage really were locked in to their doom, that desperation made getting to a lifeboat a blood sport, that flares were seen by people on a nearby boat who thought the rich Titanic passengers were just having a party and not in any distress - than it does with the narrative the film builds around those facts. The film's major preoccupation is with what happens after the boat hits the iceberg and the story only needs to be serviceable enough to hold your attention until it reaches that point.

Do I need to say how great the special effects are? Even now they still look pretty good and somehow seem less soulless than a lot of the glossy special effects work done today. Titanic is one of those films where you can definitely see where the money went, but it gets folded pretty seamlessly into everything else. Whatever faults James Cameron may have, you could never accuse him of not putting the work into his projects. Here, as with Avatar and his earlier films, if the technology wasn't there to do exactly what he wanted, he simply found a way to invent it. For this film he helped develop, amongst other things, a special deep-sea camera to capture the footage of the ship on the floor of the sea. Those shots of the ghostly ship are some of the most memorable from the entire film and go a long way towards creating the sad, ominous mood that underlines the story. The money put into Titanic was definitely money well spent.

Titanic is one of those films people raved about when it was first released but started to turn against once Hollywood raved to the tune of an 11 Oscar sweep. The hubris displayed by Cameron perhaps made it an easy target though, if you think about it, hadn't he earned the right to be a bit arrogant? Before its release, people expected it to fail - I mean, how could a film that expensive possibly make a profit? - but it instead it reached a ridiculous level of success. He was king of the world at that moment. As for the film itself, while it is arguably not the best film of 1997, I think it would be difficult to make a strong case against 9 of its other Oscar wins (the 10th being its win for Best Song - don't get me started). The lack of depth to the story may allow you to dismiss the film as a pretty but empty box, but it's so pretty. There is such a strong attention to detail, such majesty to the whole production. The film is exquisitely made and even though it has its weaknesses and has been the subject of countless parodies, it's held up pretty well.

Review: Revolutionary Road (2008)

* * * *
Director: Sam Mendes
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet

You know what would be really, ahem, revolutionary? A movie about people who live in the suburbs and aren’t dead/dying inside. Surely there must exist some genuinely happy people out there whose manicured lawns aren’t representative of disillusionment and silent despair and whose spouse isn’t also their worst enemy and the destroyer of their dreams – or is that just a quaint, bourgeoisie notion? The first hurdle that Revolutionary Road must meet is the fact that its basic premise has already been explored to death. It’s a good film, but it is heavily burdened by outside forces that make it hard to judge in and of itself.

The Wheelers are special. Everyone says so and they themselves have bought into the hype, though the hard truth is that they are absolutely ordinary. They married and moved to the suburbs and had two children before the age of 30 and though they want more, they will never attain it. Frank’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) problem is that he lacks imagination, which is somewhat ironic given that he works in marketing for Knox Business Machines. He hates his job but doesn’t know how to escape it because he can’t think of anything else he can do. He aspires to nothing except not ending up like his father, who also worked for Knox. He has an affair with one of the secretaries that seems inspired less by passion than expectation: this is simply the sort of thing that men in his position do. He is absolutely and utterly conventional, even in the ways that he rebels against societal mores and values.

April (Kate Winslet) is in certain respects the opposite. She has ideas, she has plans for their escape, but she lacks the ability to follow through on her own. She has been anchored to suburbia by maternity and lack of opportunity. She once aspired to be an actress but lacks the talent and the time to devote herself to studying and making herself better. Because she has no income, no money of her own, she needs Frank in order to start over somewhere else – anywhere else, though she sets her mind to Paris. She has a plan: Frank will quit his job, they’ll sell their house and car and move to Paris, where they’ll live off their savings until April can get a secretarial position at an Embassy while Frank works at finding himself. It doesn’t take much for her to talk Frank around to this proposition, but his agreeing to it and actually doing it are two different things.

Regardless of Frank’s initial enthusiasm, the fact is that the Paris plan could never come to fruition because of his sensitivity regarding his manhood. Nothing sets him off like the accusation that he’s not a man, which is occasionally stated in a direct fashion (first by April at the beginning of the film, later by John Givings, the son of friends of the Wheelers who absolutely lacks a filter and says whatever, whenever) and at other times it is more couched in conversation, as when he explains the plan to other men and they question him about the logistics of it because, after all, what kind of man lets his wife support him? And even if Frank could go through with it, what then? There’s nothing about him which indicates that he’s capable of being anything other than a cog in a big corporate machine. The result, in all likelihood, is that they would be even more miserable in Paris because Frank would feel emasculated by his lack of work and embarrassed by his inability to “create,” and April would feel burdened by the responsibility of supporting him, which would leave her feeling even more weighted down than she does already.

The story and its study of middle class malaise is solid and although the performances are good (particularly that of Michael Shannon, nominated as Best Supporting Actor for playing John Givings) and the direction is sound, making the most of the intense performances of DiCaprio and Winslet, I find myself wishing that it had been made, say, 30 years ago and by different people (which I suppose it would have to be, though the idea of 4-year-old DiCaprio and 3-year-old Winslet tackling this material is somewhat amusing) if only to escape all the baggage that invariably gets brought into it. I mean, Sam Mendes directing a film about suburban disaffection? American Beauty. Kate Winslet playing a distressed housewife? Little Children. An inspection of life behind the conservative veneer of post-WWII, pre-sexual revolution America? Mad Men. You just can’t get away from these things.

That being said, Revolutionary Road is a very good movie and its only real crime is bad timing. I don’t know if it will only need a few years or if it will take decades, but I do believe that at some point, when the trees can be separated out from the forest, this will be a film that stands apart and will be valued for what it achieves. It got lost in the shuffle of 2008 and buried in the zeitgeist, but it’s ripe for being “discovered” in the years to come.

Review: The Reader (2008)

* * * 1/2
Director: Stephen Daldry
Starring: Kate Winslet, David Kross, Ralph Fiennes

The Reader is a well made film in every way but, watching it, you can’t quite escape the feeling that you’re experiencing something that’s good for you rather than something that’s necessarily good. It’s the kind of film where history is revisited, important questions are asked, and people come to terms with things – all very heavy stuff, all beautifully handled, and yet the film seems somehow too aware of its heaviness, too academic in its observances.

The film is based on the novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink that uses an affair between a teenage boy and an older woman to explore post-war guilt in Germany. That boy is Michael, played as a young man by David Kross and as an adult by Ralph Fiennes, and that woman is Hanna, played by Kate Winslet. They meet in the late 1950s when he falls ill in the street and she helps him get home. When he’s sufficiently recovered, he returns to thank her and they begin their affair, which is at first purely sexual (they don’t even learn each other’s names until they’ve had a handful of encounters) but deepens after Hanna begins asking Michael to read aloud to her as a prelude to sex.

One day Hanna abruptly disappears, which leaves Michael confused and despairing. Nearly a decade later they come back into each other’s orbit when Michael is a law student and Hanna is on trial with five other women for their actions when they were guards at Auschwitz. Michael is devastated by these revelations about Hanna and feels guilty for ever having loved her. This guilt will inform his relationships with women ever after, as he can never really bring himself to connect with anyone because he no longer trusts his own judgment. The section of the film which deals with the trial is the strongest both in terms of performance and narrative because it explores the issue of guilt and complicity in both intimate and more general terms. Hanna’s life is defined by a secret she finds shameful and which leads her to pursue a job at Auschwitz, leads her to abandon the life she was leading when she was with Michael, and eventually leads her to take the fall for her co-defendants so long as it means that she doesn’t have to admit to it. Michael comes to realize her secret and knows that it could save her from spending the rest of her life in prison but chooses to remain silent. Guilt here is not defined as action but inaction, as silence - the same silence that made the holocaust possible.

There is a conflict between Hanna and Michael’s generations centered on the legacy of the holocaust. When Hanna asks “What would you have done?” she voices the essential question of her generation, of people who were complicit either actively or through their very passivity in the face of the Nazi nightmare. It’s a question that Michael’s generation cannot comprehend because to acknowledge it as legitimate is to admit that in the worst of circumstances, they themselves might not do right. There is black and there is white and the guilt by association felt by the younger generation breeds contempt – one of Michael’s classmates suggests that the only thing to do is wipe out the previous generations and the stigma that surrounds them.

Director Stephen Daldry approaches the story with a necessary detachment - Michael is a very detached character, one who carefully compartmentalizes his life to keep any one thread from meeting another, and the narrative is moved forward by the practice of wilful ignorance, of pretending not to know or see. Fiennes is well cast as the older, haunted Michael and Kross is excellent as the younger Michael who slowly closes himself off. Per usual, Winslet is wonderful, her very movements and bearing suggesting the weight of her guilt and her shame. Her character is tricky because she at once owns her actions but doesn’t think of them as extraordinary. When asked towards the end if she ever thinks about the women from the camps who died as a result of her decisions, she shrugs. “The dead are still dead,” she says, adopting a very Leni Riefenstahl-esque attitude in noting that she can’t change the past.

For all that’s right about the film – and there’s a lot of things that are – it doesn’t quite push itself from being good to being great. It’s ultimately lacking in heart, which I think is a result of it wanting so badly to teach you important lessons. It comes so close but doesn’t quite get there.

Review: Little Children (2006)

* * *
Director: Todd Field
Starring: Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson, Jackie Earle Haley

“It’s not the cheating. It’s the hunger. The hunger for an alternative and the refusal to accept a life of unhappiness,” Sarah explains, speaking as much about Madame Bovary as her own life. Little Children is a film full of unhappy people searching for a way out, another story in a long line of stories about suburban malaise. The problem with the film isn’t that its characters search for alternatives, it’s that after finding them, they opt to accept lives of unhappiness anyway.

Kate Winslet stars as Sarah, a stay-at-home wife and mother. She’s an outcast at the playground, existing on the fringe of discussion between the other mothers, who parent with efficient coldness, having finely tuned their children to very precise schedules which allow little room for variation. In comparison, Sarah is something of a mess, a mother whose style is perhaps best described as haphazard and, to a certain degree, desperate. The truth is that Sarah is unsuited for her roles as wife and mother, a fact driven home by the narrator who describes her as getting through her days by “counting down the hours.”

One afternoon a hush falls over the other mothers: the Prom King (Patrick Wilson), who figures heavily into their fantasies but to whom no one ever speaks, has returned to the park. His name is Brad and he and Sarah have an instant, albeit somewhat awkward, connection. Like her, he’s stuck, an emasculated stay-at-home husband and father who takes a backseat in all things to his wife (Jennifer Connelly), who holds tight to the purse strings and pushes Brad to take the bar exam for the third time, apparently unaware that he doesn’t really want to be a lawyer. The relationship which develops between Sarah and Brad is chaste until the tension between them explodes in a series of sexual encounters.

Running parallel to this story is the story of Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley), a convicted sex offender whose release has stirred public indignation and widespread fear. Ronnie lives an isolated life with only his mother (Phyllis Somerville) to keep him company as he endures a barrage of harassment from an ex-cop (Noah Emmerich) who decides to make it his job to ensure that Ronnie never has a moment of peace. At various times, separately and together, both Brad and Sarah will come into contact with Ronnie, who indirectly impacts their lives in ways neither could have anticipated.

Throughout the narrative, Little Children alternates between bringing the audience right into the story with scenes of incredibly intimacy, and pushing us away with scenes designed to create an ironic distance. This mix gives the film kind of a lopsided feel, which is only exacerbated by the ending. Sarah and Brad are both unfulfilled in their marriages and manage to find something in each other which brings some light into their lives. In the end, though, they abandon each other and happily return to lives which made them miserable before and will, no doubt, make them miserable again. I’m not arguing that they should have ended up together, but rather that by having them return to where they started the film undermines its earlier message that it’s okay not to settle and to want more out of life.

Performance-wise the film is strong, though I’m at something of a loss to explain what attracted an actress as skilled as Jennifer Connelly to a character who ends up being such a non-entity. The two standouts are Haley and Winslet who, perhaps not coincidentally, have the two meatiest roles. Overall I’d say that the performances make the film worth seeing even though the film itself is a bit muddled.

Review: Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004)

* * * *
Director: Michel Gondry
Starring: Jim Carey, Kate Winslet

I have no reasonable explanation as to why it has taken me so long to finally get around to seeing this movie. Everything I’ve ever heard about it suggested to me that it’s the kind of movie I’d like and yet I managed to spend four years just never getting around to seeing it. It was, most certainly, my loss.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is a brilliantly conceived and executed post-modern love story – though on reflection it is perhaps better described as tragedy. Joel (Jim Carey) is a shy man who meets the extroverted Clementine (Kate Winslet) on a beach in Montauk, falls in love with her and then discovers one day that she has had him erased from her memory. Out of anger, Joel decides that he’ll erase her, too, and visits the Lacuna clinic run by Dr. Mierzwiak (Tom Wilkinson). A map is created of Joel’s memories of Clem, each of which will be systematically wiped out as he sleeps. However, as she’s disappearing, he decides that he’d like to remember her after all and his unconscious self begins to rebel against the procedure.

Joel’s attempts to hide Clementine away in his mind are unsuccessful and he wakes up having forgotten her. When impulse compels him to go to Montauk, he and Clementine meet and fall in love again and then discover the lengths they had previously gone to in order to be rid of each other. It’s a bittersweet moment when, at the end, they quietly acknowledge that they’ll probably end up right back at Lacuna, but feel compelled to be together nonetheless. The idea that they’ve erased the details but failed to sever the connection brought to my mind a line from Memento: “I just can’t remember to forget you.”

The ways that director Michel Gondry and writer Charlie Kaufman demonstrate the process of erasure is very well done, with memories overlapping and invading each other, losing details before our eyes, and with consciousness echoing into the unconscious and the unconscious trying to answer back. There’s a danger with movies like this, where the style is so pronounced, that everything else can seem muted in comparison, but there’s harmony in the elements of Eternal Sunshine... which allows the story and the performances to gain equal footing with the style.

Prior to this film, I never really believed in Carey’s ability to play straight, serious roles. I found him likable enough in both The Truman Show and Man On The Moon, but I never really felt like he rose above the broader strokes of those characters. Here he provides us not with a “character,” but with a person who seems genuine and realistic – no mean feat given the insanity that’s going on around him. Winslet, per usual, demonstrates that she’s one of the finest actors working today and adds yet another unique and layered performance to her ever growing repertoire. The supporting cast, made up of Wilkinson, Mark Ruffalo, Kirsten Dundst and Elijah Wood, are uniformly good, operating at varying levels of zaniness.

What more can I say? This is a great movie, a funny, sad, and intriguing play on the adage that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.