Review: Stoker (2013)

* * * 1/2
Director: Park Chan-wook
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, Nicole Kidman

There’s something very wrong in the Stoker house. When people aren’t disappearing, they’re appearing suddenly, after decades’ absence, and casting a sinister pall over everything. Stoker, South Korean director Park Chan-wook’s English language debut, is a brutally effective and atmospheric thriller of almost immaculate execution. Almost. It flies off the rails a little bit in its third act, but at least it looks great while it’s doing it, and manages to pull things back on track in time for the finale. If nothing else, Stoker is a very welcome reprieve from the weak “first quarter” selections at theaters lately.

Review: Lawless (2012)

* * *Director: John Hillcoat
Starring: Shia LeBeouf, Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska

John Hillcoat's Lawless is a competent (albeit blood soaked) genre film that stumbles somewhat whenever it makes a play at being a prestige picture. It takes itself very, very seriously and it aims higher than it can hit, but even though it has some fairly prominent flaws, it is entertaining nevertheless. If nothing else, it makes for a nice medium between the summer popcorn fare and the fall's slate of potential Oscar contenders.

Review: Jane Eyre (2011)

* * * *
Director: Cary Fukunaga
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Judi Dench

The familiarity that audiences generally have with the story of Jane Eyre should make it a difficult novel to successfully adapt. There have been so many versions of it in both film and television – between the two mediums a new version comes out every five to ten years – that it ought to be difficult to bring any new perspective to it, to make it in any way fresh. And yet, here is director Cary Fukunaga’s take (working from a screenplay adapted by Moira Buffini), a glorious looking adaptation that feels like a breath of fresh air. Here is an adaptation that gets it absolutely right.

Review: The Kids Are All Right (2010)

* * * *
Director: Lisa Cholodenko
Starring: Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffallo

The kids are, indeed, all right though the adults are kind of messed up. Lisa Cholodenko's latest film has been much hyped (way hyped), but hopefully its early in the year release will allow it complete the "hype/over-hyped/reconsidered" cycle in time to secure some very well-deserved Oscar nominations. This story of a family and a marriage in crisis is thoughtful, extremely well-acted, and alternates easily between being very funny and very moving.

The kids are Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson), two perfectly average suburban teenagers save for the fact that they’re being raised by two mothers. Joni has just graduated from high school and since she’s 18, Laser encourages her to contact the sperm bank their mothers used in order to find out the identity of their donor. Though reluctant, Joni ultimately agrees to do it since it means so much to her brother, and after a somewhat awkward phone call the siblings meet Paul (Mark Ruffalo). When their mothers, Nik (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore), find out about the meeting it opens the floodgates for a lot of anxieties, putting pressure on a relationship that’s already at a shaky stage.

When Paul hires Jules to do some landscaping work at his house, things go from bad to worse. With Jules and Paul growing closer (much too close) and him exercising a degree of influence on the kids that she finds troubling, Nik increasingly feels like her family is in jeopardy or, rather, like her place in the family is slipping away. When she discovers that Jules and Paul have been having an affair, the family’s delicate balance is irrevocably changed and all the film's relationships are thrown into a tailspin.

The Kids Are All Right occupies a somewhat odd position pop culture-wise in that it centers on a gay relationship and works to legitimize it in part by highlighting all the ways that gay relationships aren't really so different from straight ones, while at the same time having a plot that hinges on a trope seen in a lot of mainstream films and TV shows and that often serves to reassure male viewers that lesbians aren't threatening because, ultimately, they're just waiting for the right man - a line of thinking which obviously undercuts the idea that a lesbian relationship is legitimate or real. The film thus finds itself in the strange position of being criticized by both the Christian right for being too gay, and by the gay community for being too straight.

In terms of the gay community's response, I do think that the displeasure incited by Jules' affair with Paul is valid given the dearth of positive portrayals of same sex relationships within the mainstream, but I also think this criticism is somewhat misplaced with regards to this particular film. For one thing, the development makes sense in the context of the rest of the story: after two decades together Nik and Jules have grown apart, Jules feels like there’s a power imbalance in the relationship, and she feels like her children are growing up and away from her. Paul reminds her of her kids, he makes her feel useful, and he doesn’t criticize her. Their affair isn’t about a lesbian who discovers that she wants sex with a man, but about a lonely woman reaching out for something familiar and comforting. For another thing, the development really isn’t surprising within the context Cholodenko’s work as a whole. Sexual fluidity and infidelity (and its effects) are consistent themes for her, the only difference is that in High Art and Laurel Canyon women in relationships with men have affairs with women. All Cholodenko has done is flip the script that she typically works with.

Laying all that aside, beneath whatever controversies the film has inspired it is, ultimately, a very good movie. Cholodenko, who co-wrote the screenplay with Stuart Blumberg, gives the characters plenty of room to breathe and allows them to be more than two dimentional drones at the mercy of the plot. There is a richness to the characters, the way they interact with each other, and the way the film approaches them (not to mention the masterful way in which each is played) that makes the film worth multiple viewings. I've really only scratched the surface of what makes The Kids Are All Right worth talking about; there is a lot to this movie and I really don't think I could recommend it more.

Review: Alice In Wonderland (2010)

* *
Director: Tim Burton
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway

Oh, man. I'd been looking forward to Alice In Wonderland for months and even after reading a few less than favourable reviews, I still held out hope. I was prepared to be a bit disappointed in Tim Burton's rendering of the classic story, but instead I find myself feeling apathetic. I've tried to start this review about a dozen times over the past couple of days but when I try to articulate my feelings about this movie all I can think is... *shrug*.

After a brief prologue in which we meet the young Alice, haunted by memories of Wonderland which she believes to be nothing more than dreams, the film flashes forward 13 years to the teenage Alice (Mia Wasikowska), who is on the verge of being married off to a less than desirable (from her perspective) suitor. She flees from his proposal and, chasing after a rabbit, falls down a hole where she enters a strange new world. There she meets a wide variety of characters who are willing to acknowledge that she's an Alice but are convinced that she's not the Alice. Meanwhile, she's convinced that it's just a dream, despite all painful evidence to the contrary.

Alice's return is of interest to both the benevolent White Queen (Anne Hathaway), who needs her to slay the Jabberwocky, and the tantrum prone Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), who wants to cut off her head because cutting off heads is her favourite past time. When the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) is taken prisoner by the Red Queen, Alice infiltrates the palace as Um from Umbradge in order to rescue him. While she fails at this, she does manage to get the vorpal sword, the only thing that can kill the Jabberwocky, and escape with it back to the White Queen's palace, setting the stage for the great and final battle between good and evil.

The film plays fast and loose with Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, taking elements from both stories without strictly adhering to either. The film also tries to incorporate a bit of feminism to guide its narrative arc, essentially making the story about how Alice learns to stand up for herself. This element both does and doesn't work. As nice as it is to see a film about a heroic female lead, particularly one that emphasizes the importance of her making her own choices rather than blindly following a script imposed on her by outside forces, Alice's moment of triumph at the film's end is somewhat lacking in impact because she holds a position of disadvantaged advantage in society. She's disadvantaged because she's a woman but her class and wealth make it possible for her to take a defiant stance that a woman of lesser means wouldn't be able to afford. The last scenes are less "score one for womankind" than "score one for rich women" - it's nice for Alice, but kind of empty in the greater scheme of things. Not that I expected Alice to be a political symbol, but if the film is going to play at rooting itself in certain politics, it should do so in a less shallow, more nuanced way. And I don't even want to get into the ideological implications of the war between the Red Queen and White Queen and the ways that that undercuts what the film is trying to do through Alice.

There are things about Alice In Wonderland that I liked - anything involving the Chesire Cat, Depp's melancholic Hatter, Tweedledee and Tweeldedum - but ultimately I found the film so unrelentingly dour that it was hard to enjoy. I didn't expect it to be happy and peppy (this is Tim Burton, after all) but I did think it would be a bit more, I don't know, magical. There seems to be no joy to this particular cinematic exercise which leaves the product rather hollow.