Review: Wild (2014)

* * 1/2
Director: Jean-Marc Vallee
Starring: Reese Witherspoon

When the nominations for the biggest awards started being announced earlier this year, many of the articles that I read which focused on the general lack of diversity in Hollywood storytelling singled out Wild as the sort of great female-driven film that was being ignored and left behind by awarding groups whose membership comprised primarily of white men. Not having seen the film at that point, I didn't really know how valid that criticism was, and having now seen it, I'm somewhat perplexed. Wild is not a great movie, let alone a great movie about women. It's a fine movie and it features a fairly meaty leading role for a woman (in this case Reese Witherspoon, Oscar nominated for it), but it really never rises to the level of greatness as a film, and when it comes to its depiction of women it's never quite as progressive as it seems to want to take credit for, and actually embraces some fairly tired cultural ideas about women and their value within society.

Netflix Recommends... This Means War (2012)

* *
Director: McG
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Tom Hardy, Chris Pine

Recommended to me based on my having watched Warrior, which also starred Tom Hardy so at least there's some scrap of reasoning behind it. Because I remembered how poorly This Means War was received when it was released in 2012, my expectations for this movie were extremely low but, much to my surprise, I actually sort of enjoyed it. It's not a good movie by any means - it's ridiculous, all over the place, and parts of it are extremely problematic (more on that later), but it's also weirdly fascinating with respect to its not at all subtle gay subtext. Seriously, This Means War is rivaled only by Top Gun in the "they have to be doing this on purpose" department. It's amazing, and it's pretty much the only reason to see this one, unless you're just curious to see Tom Hardy in his least "Tom Hardy-like" role.

Oscar Cursed: Reese Witherspoon Edition

Reese Witherspoon used to be a really interesting actress. You might not know that if you judged her career solely on her post-Oscar film output, but she used to make some fairly daring choices. Yes, the seeds for her career slump were sown before she won Best Actress for her portrayal of June Carter Cash in Walk the Line (a role which, arguably, is more supporting than it is lead), but even though she tended towards some highly commercial and homogenously Hollywood fare, she was still trying to balance things out with smaller, less commercial movies and in her "teen" phase she tended towards offbeat roles rather than more typical teen fare. And then she won an Oscar and the interesting movies ceased, but the commercial success (for the most part) of her "Hollywood movies" disappeared as well.

Netflix Recommends... Rendition (2007)

* 1/2
Director: Gavin Hood
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep

This time my Top 10 recommendations included the following movies: Get the Gringo, Listen to Your Heart, Rendition, Retreat and Down Periscope. I went with Rendition, a film featuring a trio of talented actors, and which I vaguely remembered as one of several "war on terror" themed prestige films to come out in 2007 without making much in the way of a lasting impact (the other films were Lions for Lambs, In the Valley of Elah, and Charlie Wilson's War). Having now seen it, I understand why it didn't make much of an impact. This is a film that presents as a work of political import which aims to hold the US government accountable for dangerous and ugly policies, but which, on close inspection, does quite a bit to uphold the values which it supposedly abhors.

Review: Mud (2013)

* * *
Director: Jeff Nichols
Starring: Tye Sheridan, Jacob Lofland, Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon

Two southern boys, navigating the rough terrain between childhood and adulthood, trying to break away, even if only temporarily, from home lives that leave something to be desired, and setting off on adventures that expose them to danger. You might call them Tom and Huck, but in Mud writer/director Jeff Nichols calls them Ellis and Neckbone. As an adventure yarn slash romantic vision of the unique freedoms of adolescence, it’s fairly good. As an entry in Matthew McConaughey’s recent career renaissance, it’s the best yet – at least until Dallas Buyers Club and The Wolf of Wall Street hit screens.

Review: Four Christmases (2008)

*

Director: Seth Gordon
Starring: Vince Vaughn, Reese Witherspoon

Beware of renting a movie when you’ve seen virtually everything on offer because you might end up having to endure a film like Four Christmases. Seriously. If this is all there is, find a book to read, go for a jog, break out a board game – do anything else if it means that you won’t be wasting any time on this dreck. You know how sometimes a movie will try to promote itself by capitalizing on the past Oscar wins of its cast? See the movies that the five Oscar winning cast members were rewarded for instead.

Brad (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon) are a happily childless and unmarried couple who revel in each other’s company. They take dancing lessons for fun, enumerating their reasons for not wanting to get married to the other couples in the class (all of whom are engaged), and they play a game where they each create a character and then go separately to a bar where one tries to pick the other up. Every year they come up with a lie to get out of having to spend time with their families at Christmas so that they can go on vacation to some exotic locale. This year it’s Fiji but the airport is fogged in, delaying their flight until the next day. A TV reporter then pops up to ask them how they feel about their holiday plans being delayed, at which point their families know that they’re still in town and available for the festivities.

Both of their parents are divorced, so they have to make four visits. First they go to see Brad’s father Howard (Robert Duvall), who thinks Brad is prissy, particularly in comparison to his two brothers (Jon Favreau and Tim McGraw), who are Ultimate Fighters. Next they go to see Kate’s mom (Mary Steenbergen), where they get roped into playing Mary and Joseph in a Nativity play. Then they go to see Brad’s mom (Sissy Spacek), who is currently living with Brad’s ex-best friend, who tries to reassure Brad by stating that he “never had a sexual thought about your mom until I was 30.” Finally they go to see Kate’s dad (Jon Voight) who doesn’t get to do much besides own the place where several of the conflicts are finally resolved.

The idea for this story isn’t bad and you could make a good movie out of it, the problem is with the execution. For one thing, it seems like the writers came up with a few jokes and then tried to construct a film around it, the result being that the dynamics between the characters are always shifting to suit the needs of whatever joke is being set up and the jokes, as a result, feel incredibly forced. Brad and Kate are so in love and they have such a deep connection that they spend all of their time together, and yet they apparently haven’t ever had a real conversation in the 3 years that they’ve been together. They also, apparently, have never met anyone in each other’s families (although it seems, at least, that Kate has met Howard before) despite the fact that all of their family members live within such a short distance that they can drive to all four houses and visit at each within the span of about half a day.

This being a romantic comedy, there will of course come a crisis that will test the relationship. In this film it comes in the form of Kate deciding that maybe she wants kids after all (how she reaches this decision after nearly concussing one baby, being projectile vomited upon by another, and being tormented in a bouncy castle by her 8-year-old niece is beyond me) and Brad reiterating that he doesn’t see children in his future. Given how little they apparently know each other, they probably shouldn’t be having kids any time soon, but three guesses as to how the film ends. Since you probably only need one, want to use the other two to guess how their families find out? Yeah.