Rampart

   To say that I was excited when my friend invited me to join him at a screening of Rampart would be a vast understatement.  For months I've been hearing about Woody Harrelson's career performance as a corrupt L.A. cop in this gritty introspective drama.  Since it still has a very limited release in the United States, I was even more excited to get a look at this much-hyped movie here in Philadelphia.
  I will start by saying that I was mentally and emotionally taken out of this film every three or four minutes because I was surrounded by a tremendously annoying and discourteous audience.  And the major players seemed to all be seated in a two-row radius around us.  A man suffering from a persistent cough that could only be described as a deadly mix of pneumonia and emphysema; a caricature of a human being with an extremely loud laugh intended solely to inform everyone in earshot (which must have extended out into the concession area) that he was witty enough to pick up on the irony of the joke on screen; an aging woman wielding a cane who was seated directly in the center of a row near the front of the theater got up and left with the help of her husband about an hour and ten minutes into the film - which is fine, but as she was forcing everyone to her left to make room for her to get through, she was loudly apologizing and begging for forgiveness, which only made things more distracting; a middle-aged man's cell phone rang, prompting him to frantically search through the pockets of what seemed to be a caribou parka - he was ultimately unable to locate the phone and it went to voice mail.   Having said all of that, I thought the movie was great.
   Harrelson plays Dave Brown, an LAPD officer who lives and works by his own rules.  Brown has a long history of corruption, ranging from something as seemingly innocent as drinking on the job to the alleged murder of a date rapist about a decade before the film takes place.  The film opens with Brown serving as mentor and teacher to a female rookie cop who seems no older than 20.  Minutes before using brutal force to get information from a drug dealer, Brown tells the rookie that everything she has read in the academy handbook is complete bullshit.  We are quickly introduced to Dave Brown's world and given a fair taste of what he is willing to do in the name of justice.
  Brown is twice-divorced, to sisters, and has a child with each of them, making the children both half-sisters and cousins at the same time.  His relationships with the two ex-wives are made even more uncomfortable for us to watch when we discover that they all live together in a twisted web of dysfunction.  Brown clearly loves his daughters but has a difficult time showing it.  In fact, he has a difficult time dealing with every emotion that life has to offer.  Except anger.
  At times, Brown seems like the coolest cop I've ever seen on screen.  Most of the time, however, he is utterly pathetic and unlikeable.  He is a tragic character with flaws that run deep.  The film focuses on two incidents of violence: the first is a brutal beating that is caught on video and spread across news media; the second is the murder of two stick-up men after they attempt to rob a high-stakes card game.  It is the latter that Brown has a difficult time justifying.
  As the LAPD and FBI investigate the double murder, Brown's life spirals, and I mean spirals, out of control.  He loses his kids, his once-meaningful relationships with their mothers, his house, his friendship with a long-time friend and confidant, and most intriguingly, his sanity.  Brown's struggle to survive the storm is compelling on screen.  Director Oren Moverman (The Messenger) works with shaky cameras, quick scene-ending cuts, circling shots at conference tables, and other effects to enhance the tone of his scenes.  I can see how some would say that his style is gimmicky and heavy-handed, as if to say "Hey everybody, look how interesting and gritty I can make this look," but it worked for me.  I felt that it paralleled Brown's self-destruction and manic-depressive lifestyle.  The camera effects during a scene at a nightclub are particularly well done.  Rampart looks like every episode of The Shield, which, for me, is a very good thing.  I typed in the title of this film into IMDB.com and discovered that The Shield's working title was Rampart.  Although I am not certain, I would bet that the connections run even deeper than that.
   Harrelson is perfect in this role.  He is concurrently believable as a physically-imposing badass cop and as a desperate father who is watching his girls slip away.  Rage fills almost every facet of his life except with how he deals with his family.  In one particularly poignant scene where his family is finally kicking him out of the house, I was shocked that Brown didn't resort to violence to escape the situation.  Harrelson is very good at using his various tools as an actor to convey the many sides to Dave Brown.  He is brilliant with his usage of rhetoric while under interrogation by his superior officers.  I was buying that Brown possesses a vast mental catalog of court rulings and legal precedents that enable him to navigate his way through the department's official inquiries.  Conversely, I was also buying him as a man incapable of dealing with hardship without the aid of cigarettes, pills and alcohol.  The character would be, as my friend said, a perfect study for someone with a psychology degree. 
  Robin Wright, Sigourney Weaver, Ned Beatty, Ice Cube, Ben Foster, Anne Heche and Steve Buscemi all have small roles, but do not misunderstand - this is the Woody Harrelson show.  And despite the prevailing circumstances that surrounded me in the theater, I was able to come away with a very positive opinion of this movie. 

Project Nim

   Project Nim is a documentary about a chimpanzee named Nim, who was taken from his mother as an infant and raised as a human child by a Manhattan family in the 1970s.  This controversial experiment was designed to see if chimps were able to learn to use sign language to communicate with human beings.  This film, which was directed by James Marsh (Man on Wire), introduces you to a host of caretakers over a span of more than two decades.  Herb Terrace is the scientist who initiated the experiment and he is, like so many of the other people involved throughout the story, at times quite likeable and at other times fiercely loathsome.  The beauty of this documentary, which was one of the things I liked so much about the Oscar-winning Man on Wire, is that Marsh merely presents the facts of the case and lets us decide who is good and who is bad.  More importantly, he lets us decide if Nim is the beneficiary or the victim.  During a large part of the film, an argument can be made in either corner.  At the end, it is a bit easier to determine what to think about it all when we hear testimony from Terrace himself about how he believes Nim was nothing more than a cunning and clever chimp who merely mimicked the signs he saw from his handlers simply to get treats.  Terrace did not dispute that Nim knew a few signs, like hug and play, but he felt that it was not enough to conclude that Nim knew the language.  I suppose it is like when a dog responds to the phrase "roll over" because it knows it will be rewarded if it does so.  Terrace argued that Nim's behavior simply fell under the model of operant conditioning rather than a significant grasp of language as we understand it.
  As Nim is transferred from one set of caretakers to another to another, he becomes increasingly defiant and his tendency towards acting violently increases with each new 'owner.'  I couldn't help but think about the products of poor and/or inconsistent parenting that I witness every day in the classroom.  Nearly 100% of a child's behavior, whether it is good or bad, is a direct result of parenting.  The correlation is as clear with Nim as it is with school children. 
   I recently heard a James Solomon interview with Rise of the Planet of the Apes director Rupert Wyatt where he talked about how his fictional story was so closely connected to Project Nim.  Wyatt confirmed that his writers were very familiar with the story of Nim and said that the chimp protagonist Caesar was indeed modeled after Nim (and also Oliver, a 'missing-link humanzee' who was discovered by scientists in Africa in the 1960s and brought to America for testing and public exhibition).  In a separate Solomon interview with James Marsh, the Nim director similarly confirmed the connection between the two films and expressed excitement about being mentioned together as a pair. 
  Project Nim was both a zoological and sociological experiment that failed miserably, while Project Nim is both a fascinating and tragic bio-pic documentary that succeeds triumphantly.

(I would recommend seeing Nim and Rise together)

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

  Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close stars child actor Thomas Horn as Oskar Schell, an eccentric ten-year old who lost his father in the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks.  A year after the tragic day, Oskar finds a key in his father’s closet and decides to search all of New York City to find the lock that it opens.  He has only one clue: the word “Black” is written on the envelope that the key was in.  Oskar assumes that this is the last name of the person who owns the lock that the key will open, so he compiles a list of nearly 500 people with the last name Black and embarks on a journey to unlock the mystery of the key.  The key is a vehicle - it is Oskar's way of trying to hold on to the memories of his father.  

  I read some of Jonathan Safran Foer's novel but couldn't really get into it enough to finish it.  I did, however, read enough to get an idea of who Oskar was and what he was all about.  Although I don't feel that the screenplay captured him very well, Horn's stellar performance was enough to make up for it.  His scenes never lack a feeling of genuine emotion and believability.  Horn never hits one false note.  The same can not be said about Tom Hanks, who plays his father.  I was turned off by his over the top delivery.  It reminded me of when an actor goes on Sesame Street and teaches kids at home about the alphabet.  I did like Sandra Bullock in the role as Oskar's mother quite a bit.  Max Von Sydow did as well as he could have given the circumstances (his character doesn't speak).  I don't know what Viola Davis or John Goodman were doing in this movie - star power I guess.

  I found some of the 9/11 stuff pretty offensive - mainly the shots of Hanks falling through the air.  Capturing that on film was completely unnecessary and probably very hurtful to a lot of people.  That could have been conveyed in a much more subtle way, or taken out completely.  It offered zero to the sadness of him dying in the attacks.  It really took me out of the story.

  There were a lot of character traits about Oskar that were never really explained fully, and some not at all.  One was about him having "heavy boots" - in the book, Oskar says this a lot when he finds it tough to move.  In the movie, he says it twice and both times it felt very odd and out of place.  The movie never really explains why Oskar and the doorman (Goodman) use insults and profanity to communicate with one another.  It is strange to hear a grown man call a child, especially an eccentric child who most likely has autism or Asberger's, a retard.  Very offensive.  It is never really explained why Oskar dives into these incredibly quick, angry rants about people or things around him.  It just seemed strange.  And what about Oskar's dad saying that New York once had a 6th borough?  He tells his wife that he does it so Oskar will go out into Central Park and be forced to communicate with strangers in order to become more social.  But what parents would encourage, let alone force, their 10 year old son go out into NYC alone?  I don't get it.  Also, the title is never really explained.  From what I understand, there is something about birds and a downstairs neighbor. 

  Putting all of that aside, I can not deny that this movie did tug at my heartstrings.  At its core, it is the story of a young boy who is struggling mightily to understand why his father was taken from him.  It is about a mother who is devastated by the loss of her husband and fears that she is losing touch with her son more and more each day.   These are real stories; real emotions.  And they worked for me.  Especially in the few scenes when Oskar and his mother are alone in a room, forced to confront the emotional trauma that each one has gone through since "the worst day."  It was gut-wrenching to see a kid have to go through so much pain so early in life.  The messages that Oskar's dad left on the answering machine were horrifyingly sad.  The final phone conversation between Hanks and Bullock was tough to watch.  Anyone and everyone can put themselves in that position and feel the helplessness; the desperation.  

  I absolutely loved what Oskar said at the very end of the movie.  It is as inspirational as it gets to hear such a young boy say something that is filled with such maturity, acceptance and hope.  

The Guard

   The Guard is the impressive debut film by Irish director John Michael McDonagh starring Brendan Gleeson (Braveheart, Harry Potter, In Bruges) as Irish police officer Gerry Boyle, who shows sides of heroism, hilarity and corruption.  Boyle and FBI agent Wendell Everett, played by Don Cheadle, make an unlikely team in an effort to take down an international drug trafficking ring.  Gleeson is very funny in this role, even when I couldn't understand what he was saying (thank goodness for subtitles) but I didn't care for Cheadle's performance, which seemed ordinary and inauthentic, especially when the two men are drinking at a local pub.
   With the plot such as it is, this film's substance runs deeper than you might think and its multi-layered delivery helps move the story along quickly and efficiently.  McDonagh pokes fun at how people from Ireland view America and how Americans view Ireland.  He plays around with stereotypes that people from both nations have of one another.  For one, there are very few scenes that aren't absolutely drenched in green.  Boyle's office alone has green walls, green telephones, green lamps, green pens and green benches.  In most scenes, the actors faces are illuminated in green lighting.  At a diner, instead of yellow and red condiment bottles, they have dark green and bright green.  It is pretty unique.  The American phrase "good to go" is mocked.  One of the drug traffickers mentions how American police are less likely to take bribes than their Irish counterparts.  Classic American music is used at two key points in the movie.  In one diner scene, the characters are sitting around having a dialogue about how creepy Bobbie Gentry is when she says she is going to throw something, whatever the heck it is, off the Tallahatchie Bridge.  John Denver's Leaving on a Jet Plane blares over the closing credits.  It is very interesting to see elements like this get woven into an Irish film.
  It is certainly a fine debut film from director McDonagh.  Gleeson made me laugh quite a bit.  This film has sequel written all over it and I definitely look forward to one.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

  Since I have never seen for the original run of Apes movies, I only have the clips I've seen of Charlton Heston hanging upside down in a rope snare issuing his famous warning.  Oh, and I've also seen the 2001 Tim Burton remake of the original that stars Mark Wahlberg as the spaceman, but I think hardcore fans of the franchise would rather if that one were not mentioned.  Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the seventh movie in this franchise and, if you exclude the 2001 remake, the first since 1973.  It tells the story of how genetically-altered apes rebel against the humans who hold them captive in zoos, laboratories, etc.  The film's timeline presumably takes place prior to the narrative of the 1968 film, and focuses on how a highly-intelligent, genetically-modified ape named Caesar ascends to alpha status and leads a rebellion.  James Franco, who I didn't really like in this film, plays scientist Will Rodman who works for a company that is on the leading edge of developing cures for human diseases, primarily Alzheimer's.  We are introduced to a chimpanzee named Bright Eyes, who is undergoing gene therapy treatments by Rodman to see if the Alzheimer cure is viable.  The test has drastic side-effects that cause the chimp to develop extreme levels of intelligence.  At one point, Bright Eyes believes that her baby is being threatened by lab technicians and breaks out of her cage and runs rampant through the laboratories, effectively cutting off funding on the project.  After her death, we find out that she passed her intelligent genes onto her newborn offspring.  Rather than see the baby chimp be euthanized, Rodman takes Caesar in and raises him in secrecy for years.
   Eight years later, Caesar is a full-grown, incredibly intelligent chimpanzee who lives in Rodman's attic, constantly looking out his window with curiosity and fascination of what the outside world is all about.  This is where the movie really hits its stride.  Caesar, with sign-language, asks his "dad" who he is and why he looks so different from him.  He also wonders if he is a pet, like any other dog on a leash.  At this point, the motion-capture performance of Andy Serkis needs to be lauded.  Serkis plays Caesar with impressive emotional range.  It is fascinating to see how Caesar is brought to life with a real actor making real movements and real facial nuances.  Like in King Kong and Lord of the Rings, Serkis dons his high-tech suit of colorful spheres and fluorescent receptors and puts on a remarkable show.  But the camera technology has come along far enough since a film like Avatar that they can now put the actor in the actual scene with the other actors, whereas before they were in a studio in front of a green screen.  I've heard that Serkis deserves award recognition for his performance and I can not disagree.  I don't think that he should merely be recognized in a special effects category, I think his performance is worthy of being lumped in with the other "real" performances of the year.  Serkis has the talent to show the tiniest facial movements that we all know to convey emotions of frustration, curiosity, envy, rage, glee, and every gray area in between.  Caesar's face is reason enough to see this film. 
   In an attempt to protect Rodman's father from what he perceives is a dangerous situation, Caesar attacks a man and is soon placed in the custody of the state.  As you can imagine from the title of the film (and the trailer), Caesar is the leader of a group of oppressed apes who begin to fight back, not to necessarily punish or hurt the humans (although this happens in at least two memorable moments) who imprisoned them, but rather to seek freedom from life in a cage.  Caesar notices that his fellow cage-mates are not as smart as he is, and is discouraged by their primal instincts and basic desires.  He acquires enough of the gene-altering formula to treat all of the other apes around him and soon discovers that the rebellion is ready to begin.  There is an amazing set of action sequences on the Golden Gate Bridge that is visually spectacular.
  There are obvious metaphors between the oppression of the apes and the oppression that many groups of humans have gone through in history.  We have a knack for destroying ourselves.    
  This movie wouldn't be as great as it is without the captivating performance of Andy Serkis.  He brings the main character to life and gives him a high level of believability and earnestness.
  Leading up to this week, I have heard and read a lot of great things about this movie, which is one that I wouldn't ordinarily see in a million years.  I decided to give it a shot and must say that I was on board the whole time and look forward to the next film in the series. 
  

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

  David Fincher, thankfully, puts his familiar style into this story written by the late Swedish writer Stieg Larsson.  Fincher has directed some of the slickest thrillers in recent years, ranging from Seven to Zodiac to Fight Club.  He also directed last year's The Social Network, which you'll be reminded of if you see The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  Both films have a similar look, feel and sound.  Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross scored both movies with their usual genius mix of electronics, piano and percussion.  While this score isn't as catchy and uptempo as The Social Network's, I do think it served the film very well.  It helps give the movie a driving backbeat and goes along with the title character's techno-ubiquity.  Rooney Mara plays Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the tattoo, with a dark intensity that will make her both impossible to dislike and difficult to forget.  Her computer hacking abilities are as frightening as they are impressive - I would not want her investigating me.  I've read that the producers and studio executives needed six months of convincing before casting Mara for this iconic role - they felt that she didn't have the right look and/or ability to convey the level of strength of Lisbeth Salander.  Good lord, were they wrong.  Mara is literally the perfect actress for this role.
   Daniel Craig plays Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who is hired by a wealthy family patriarch to figure out the circumstances surrounding a mysterious disappearance nearly 40 years earlier.   Craig is good in this role, although he isn't given much room to show off his dramatic range.  He instantly becomes more intriguing when he and Salander join forces on screen. 
   While I have never read any of the three books by Larsson, I have seen all three Swedish films that came out in 2009, and feel confidently equipped to say that Fincher's version blows the originals so far out of the water, it hardly seems a fair fight.  Both actors who play the Swedish versions of Salander and Blomkvist are awkward and uninteresting compared to Mara and Craig.  I liked Mara's Salander far better than Rapace's - and there are plenty of differences, believe it or not.  Salander in the American version is far more feminine and attractive, yet also far more childish (often seen eating Ramen noodles and Happy Meals).  It's clear that Hollywood had a hand in making Salander more appealing for American audiences.
   I liked this film, especially since I had absolutely no idea where the story was going.  If I had seen the Swedish version or read the novel prior to seeing this film, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it quite as much.  Much of the fun of it was the anticipation of what was coming next - trying to unravel the mystery on my own was thrilling and suspenseful.  Being introduced to such a unique and damaged character like Lisbeth Salander was really amazing.  It is hard to take your eyes off of Rooney Mara in this role.  She inexplicably shows the many layers of sadness and anger, strength and stoicism, arrogance and sexuality, brilliance and rage.  How can she pull off being vulnerable and invincible at the same time?
   In terms of the plot coverage of both the Swedish version and the Fincher version, there were significant differences.  I won't get into them in this post, but I will say that the final scene in Fincher's version was absolutely amazing.  I did not see it coming a mile away and it was a perfect way to end the film.  The Swedish version suffered greatly for not having this as the ending. 
   Solid turns from Christopher Plummer, Robin Wright and Stellan Skarsgard help to round out the cast.
   Fincher wraps it all together quite well and I was pleased to hear that, despite a poor box-office performance, he will be directing the second and third films in the series.  Without his dedication to style and Mara's riveting performance, it would merely be just another thriller, like its Swedish predecessor.

(As I am typing this, Rooney Mara just lost the Golden Globe for best actress to some woman named Meryl Streep)

Hugo

   
  Hugo is the latest film from director Martin Scorsese.  It is the story of a young orphan named Hugo who lives in the walls of a Parisian train station and has assumed the job of maintaining all of the station's clocks.  He meets a filmmaker named Georges Melies, played by Ben Kingsley, and together they spend the movie figuring out how they can help one another.  This is the first movie I've seen in 3-D since the 1980s and I will say that it was visually captivating.  I don't have anything really negative to say about this movie.  It was a good story that was well acted and well directed.  Scorsese uses this film as a way of teaching us about an important time in film history and I must say that I enjoyed the lesson.  
  While I can't say anything negative about the film, I also can't say that I truly loved it either.  I saw it last week and I haven't thought about it once since sitting down to write about it now.  The 3-D was cool, especially in the main clock tower sequence near the end of the film.  I don't traditionally like kids movies, with a few exceptions (Wall-E being one of them).
  A lot of times, when I am trying to quantify how much I liked a film, I think about how badly I want to see it again.  I would say that I liked this movie for what it was and would certainly recommend it to anyone who loves good, safe storytelling that the whole family can enjoy together.  I have no desire, however, to see it again.