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Movie Reviews: Mirror Mirror, Wrath of the Titans, Free Men, Delicacy
In Mirror Mirror, the queen does what she must, humiliating and torturing herself in a losing battle with time.
Movie
Mirror Mirror **
Tarsem Singh brings his flair for visual composition to the fairy tale genre, and the modesty of scale reins him in to good effect. But the star of this Snow White adaptation isn’t the scenery, nor the workaday comedy, nor even Snow White herself (an adorable Lilly Collins), even if she is still the heroine. No, this is Julia Roberts’ film. Her haughty, glammed-up Queen discovers what every woman knows: magic or otherwise, the mirror doesn’t lie. A brave role for an aging beauty.
It’s easy to imagine some Hollywood exec seeing certain scenes from Tarsem Singh’s The Fall and thinking, “Holy Tentpole, boys, here’s a director who has rediscovered the art of the breathtaking vista! And look what he can do with tableau! Get this guy on something supernatural before I finish this line of coke or you’re all fired!” It’s as good a guess as any as to how we got the hot mess that was Immortals. Tarsem plus Greek mythology equaled something amazing to look at but not much more. Here was Tarsem unleashed — why were we not entertained?
After seeing the vastly superior Mirror Mirror — the first of this year’s Snow White variations — I wonder if the problem wasn’t the unleashing. We still get those amazing long shots, but here the homespun genre of the fairy tale limits the possibilities, and the limitations do the director some good. Instead of glam gods getting fire-whipped in super slo-mo, we get a gorgeous introduction told through motile china dolls. Instead of nuclear-powered bows, we get a breathtaking royal ball with everyone dressed as animals. The requisite crazy is still there — the accordion stilts worn by the seven dwarfs come to mind — but it’s sufficiently tempered by sobriety, such that the Queen’s magic mirror does nothing more than reflect the truth. (Okay, it talks, but you get my meaning.)
And what a terrible, awful truth it is: Julia Roberts is 44, just a few years younger than Gloria Swanson when she played the ultimate Hollywood has-been in Sunset Boulevard. The Queen wants the Handsome Prince for herself, you see, but he has eyes only for the dewy youth of Snow White. So Her Majesty does what she must, humiliating and torturing herself in a losing battle with time. Sorry, that should read, “getting all dolled up.”
But there are bugs involved. And bird poop. And all the while, Roberts chants “tighten it, brighten it” like a Buddhist mantra. It’s a brave role for the star of a film called Pretty Woman — playing not just dowdy (Erin Brockovich) but faded — and I can’t remember the last time I so enjoyed a Roberts performance. It’s not schadenfreude, it’s admiration. When she finally busted out the famous smile, I was actually happy to see it. In the opening narration, Roberts announces that this is her story, and while there is some dispute on that point, she does own the film. Lilly Collins’s Snow White is pretty and sweet and wants to grow up and be good. For pure spectacle, how can she possibly compare?
Of course, it’s hard to stretch a fairy tale to feature length — how many of you saw Red Riding Hood last year? The temptation to slather on the backstory or to gussy up the zeitgeisty significance beckons like a gingerbread house in the woods. You could also drop separate hooks for kiddies and grownups, reducing the dwarves to slapstick and punch lines while importing a winking sophistication to the proceedings. (No, we didn’t need to hear about Nathan Lane getting raped by a grasshopper during his stint as a cockroach.) Mirror Mirror makes all of these mistakes and more, but here again, there is a measure of restraint, and it serves the story well.
Movie
Wrath of the Titans
Long ago, Zeus used the Spear of Something or Other to defeat his father Cronos, now imprisoned in Tartarus. But now people have stopped praying, and the gods’ work — Tartarus included — is coming undone. What to do? Reassemble the Spear, of course, and make sure half-human Perseus handles it this time. Apparently, the indomitable human spirit is all we really need — plus magic geegaws, of course. Family rivalries — brother vs. brother, father vs. son — get tossed in for drama, like bacon bits on a rancid Greek salad.
A few paragraphs back, Immortals was referred to as a hot mess. Alas, Wrath of the Titans is just a mess, plain and simple. The high concept? The gods take their power from our prayers. Once we stop praying, their work comes undone. The walls of Tartarus begin to crack! Monsters start to roam the earth! If we don’t do something, Cronos the Destroyer will rise and lay waste to everything! Now what? Um, start praying and recharge the gods?
No, silly. Reassemble the Spear of Something or Other, the one made out of Poseiden’s trident, Hades’s pitchfork, and Zeus’s thunderbolt. And make sure Perseus the half-god handles it this time, because being half human makes him stronger than a god, somehow. (Andromeda, a warrior queen who gets all self-conscious and girly when Perseus shows up with his proto-mullet, lets us in on the secret: “We humans hope when there is no hope.”) And find Perseus another half-god to help out, since together they make one whole god, which they’re both stronger than, being half human.
I can’t read a lot of my notes — those 3-D glasses made it harder to write in the dark, even as they failed to deliver much in the way of enhanced visuals — but here’s one page: “Makes no sense.” “Pegasus.” “Chimera.” “Han Solo Lite.” That last one is about Agenor, smarmy son of Poseidon. And I remember admiring the writhing life they managed to cram in the CGI chimera. Certainly more compelling, more visceral than the rest of the nasties that show up: cyclops, minotaur, etc.
But wait! There are themes! Brothers: Hades and Zeus, Perseus and Ares! Fathers and Sons: Helios and Perseus, Zeus and...everyone! Jealousy! Forgiveness! At one point, Ares pauses while kicking Perseus’s ass to marvel, “So, this is what a father will go through?” Even though Perseus isn’t going through anything qua father, only qua half-brother beefing with the bad son who sided with Grandpa against dear old Dad. Oh, wait. He’s trying to make a better world for his son. That is, a world not smashed into atoms by Cronos.
Sorry, my head hurts. This movie stinks so badly that I can’t decide whether casting Bill Nighy as a half-dotty Hephaestus made things better or worse.
Movie
Free Men **
A methodical meditation on the meaning of “we,” <em>Free Men </em>tells the story of Algerians — both Muslim and Jewish — living in Paris during the German occupation. To escape persecution, some of those Jews are carrying forged papers declaring them to be Muslims — common heritage trumping religious difference. Our ticket into this complicated world is Younes, a lukewarm Muslim who gets drawn in through family connections, then gets his circle of moral identification stretched in some surprising ways. Director Ismaël Ferroukhi keeps the proceedings moving smoothly.
A methodical meditation on the meaning of “we,” Free Men tells the story of Algerians — both Muslim and Jewish — living in Paris during the German occupation. Tahar Rahim — think Dylan McDermott without the squinty smarm — plays the Muslim Younes. But he’s not much of a Muslim. His principal thought is to make some money on the black market and get home to his family. He has no interest in life at the mosque nor in his cousin Ali’s talk of attending meetings and forming unions. That is, until he’s picked up in a police sweep and forced to work as an informant. It seems there are communists about, and also Jews carrying forged papers declaring them to be Muslims.
What follows is the stretching of Younes’s circle of moral identification, and he bumps up against those who would be united to him by faith, by country, by ideals, and finally by a surprising sort of love. Michael Lonsdale shines as a canny cleric — a man who believes but also knows the political uses of faith — and Ismaël Ferroukhi’s smooth direction keeps the intricate story clear enough to let the characters hold our attention. The soundtrack slips from moody jazz trumpet to traditional North African ballads with surprising ease.
Movie
Delicacy **
Audrey Tautou brings her curious, wide-eyed beauty to a gentle portrait of grief after loss. We’re given plenty of time to loll in the perfect bliss of her romance with a handsome hunk before he dies, the better to grasp the numb paralysis that follows. The restoration that follows that is the work of time and a bearish Swede. Nobody understands what she sees in him. But we do, and so we’re willing to wait and watch as he hunts for the humanity inside his mournful angel.
Hey, you. You there, the bearish Swede with the gut and the bald spot and the bad teeth and the ungainly limbs. What would you do if Audrey Tautou, the angelic pixie of Amélie, glided up to you at work and kissed you, long and hard?
But wait, there’s a catch: she did it while in a fugue state brought on by overwhelming, years-old grief over the death of her beloved, handsome husband. And now she wants you to forget the whole thing.
That’s the big hook of Delicacy, even if it’s not exactly what the film is about. What it’s about is the grief, and it paints a careful and detailed — if somewhat muted — portrait. Last year’s Rabbit Hole plunged us into Nicole Kidman’s life after the death of her child. She was a live wire, stretched thin and snapping, sparks everywhere. Delicacy takes a much slower, more crushing approach, first giving us ample time to enjoy the sight of Nathalie (Tautou) and François (Pio Marmaï) enjoying each other as young lovers in Paris. It’s all impossibly lovely — they even like each other’s parents. Then he gets hit by a car, and we cut to Nathalie enduring a long line of consoling huggers at the graveside — a dark version of the matrimonial receiving line. We’re spared the shock and devastation that comes with loss. What we suffer instead are the numbing and paralysis that follow. Nathalie is, as she puts it, “walled up in grief.”
Some walls you can smash. This one has to be dismantled piece by piece, and some of the bricks are lodged more tightly than others. But that fugue is the first crack in the mortar, and the bearish Swede is nothing if not persistent. And funny. And attentive. And homely. Few can understand what seems to be happening between the bear and the pixie. Happily, they don’t need to.
Reviewed in the movie capsules: Goon and The Trouble with Bliss.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Movie Reviews: Mirror Mirror, Wrath of the Titans, Free Men, Delicacy
Movie Reviews: Mirror Mirror, Wrath of the Titans, Free Men, Delicacy
In Mirror Mirror, the queen does what she must, humiliating and torturing herself in a losing battle with time.
Movie
Mirror Mirror **
Tarsem Singh brings his flair for visual composition to the fairy tale genre, and the modesty of scale reins him in to good effect. But the star of this Snow White adaptation isn’t the scenery, nor the workaday comedy, nor even Snow White herself (an adorable Lilly Collins), even if she is still the heroine. No, this is Julia Roberts’ film. Her haughty, glammed-up Queen discovers what every woman knows: magic or otherwise, the mirror doesn’t lie. A brave role for an aging beauty.
It’s easy to imagine some Hollywood exec seeing certain scenes from Tarsem Singh’s The Fall and thinking, “Holy Tentpole, boys, here’s a director who has rediscovered the art of the breathtaking vista! And look what he can do with tableau! Get this guy on something supernatural before I finish this line of coke or you’re all fired!” It’s as good a guess as any as to how we got the hot mess that was Immortals. Tarsem plus Greek mythology equaled something amazing to look at but not much more. Here was Tarsem unleashed — why were we not entertained?
After seeing the vastly superior Mirror Mirror — the first of this year’s Snow White variations — I wonder if the problem wasn’t the unleashing. We still get those amazing long shots, but here the homespun genre of the fairy tale limits the possibilities, and the limitations do the director some good. Instead of glam gods getting fire-whipped in super slo-mo, we get a gorgeous introduction told through motile china dolls. Instead of nuclear-powered bows, we get a breathtaking royal ball with everyone dressed as animals. The requisite crazy is still there — the accordion stilts worn by the seven dwarfs come to mind — but it’s sufficiently tempered by sobriety, such that the Queen’s magic mirror does nothing more than reflect the truth. (Okay, it talks, but you get my meaning.)
And what a terrible, awful truth it is: Julia Roberts is 44, just a few years younger than Gloria Swanson when she played the ultimate Hollywood has-been in Sunset Boulevard. The Queen wants the Handsome Prince for herself, you see, but he has eyes only for the dewy youth of Snow White. So Her Majesty does what she must, humiliating and torturing herself in a losing battle with time. Sorry, that should read, “getting all dolled up.”
But there are bugs involved. And bird poop. And all the while, Roberts chants “tighten it, brighten it” like a Buddhist mantra. It’s a brave role for the star of a film called Pretty Woman — playing not just dowdy (Erin Brockovich) but faded — and I can’t remember the last time I so enjoyed a Roberts performance. It’s not schadenfreude, it’s admiration. When she finally busted out the famous smile, I was actually happy to see it. In the opening narration, Roberts announces that this is her story, and while there is some dispute on that point, she does own the film. Lilly Collins’s Snow White is pretty and sweet and wants to grow up and be good. For pure spectacle, how can she possibly compare?
Of course, it’s hard to stretch a fairy tale to feature length — how many of you saw Red Riding Hood last year? The temptation to slather on the backstory or to gussy up the zeitgeisty significance beckons like a gingerbread house in the woods. You could also drop separate hooks for kiddies and grownups, reducing the dwarves to slapstick and punch lines while importing a winking sophistication to the proceedings. (No, we didn’t need to hear about Nathan Lane getting raped by a grasshopper during his stint as a cockroach.) Mirror Mirror makes all of these mistakes and more, but here again, there is a measure of restraint, and it serves the story well.
Movie
Wrath of the Titans
Long ago, Zeus used the Spear of Something or Other to defeat his father Cronos, now imprisoned in Tartarus. But now people have stopped praying, and the gods’ work — Tartarus included — is coming undone. What to do? Reassemble the Spear, of course, and make sure half-human Perseus handles it this time. Apparently, the indomitable human spirit is all we really need — plus magic geegaws, of course. Family rivalries — brother vs. brother, father vs. son — get tossed in for drama, like bacon bits on a rancid Greek salad.
A few paragraphs back, Immortals was referred to as a hot mess. Alas, Wrath of the Titans is just a mess, plain and simple. The high concept? The gods take their power from our prayers. Once we stop praying, their work comes undone. The walls of Tartarus begin to crack! Monsters start to roam the earth! If we don’t do something, Cronos the Destroyer will rise and lay waste to everything! Now what? Um, start praying and recharge the gods?
No, silly. Reassemble the Spear of Something or Other, the one made out of Poseiden’s trident, Hades’s pitchfork, and Zeus’s thunderbolt. And make sure Perseus the half-god handles it this time, because being half human makes him stronger than a god, somehow. (Andromeda, a warrior queen who gets all self-conscious and girly when Perseus shows up with his proto-mullet, lets us in on the secret: “We humans hope when there is no hope.”) And find Perseus another half-god to help out, since together they make one whole god, which they’re both stronger than, being half human.
I can’t read a lot of my notes — those 3-D glasses made it harder to write in the dark, even as they failed to deliver much in the way of enhanced visuals — but here’s one page: “Makes no sense.” “Pegasus.” “Chimera.” “Han Solo Lite.” That last one is about Agenor, smarmy son of Poseidon. And I remember admiring the writhing life they managed to cram in the CGI chimera. Certainly more compelling, more visceral than the rest of the nasties that show up: cyclops, minotaur, etc.
But wait! There are themes! Brothers: Hades and Zeus, Perseus and Ares! Fathers and Sons: Helios and Perseus, Zeus and...everyone! Jealousy! Forgiveness! At one point, Ares pauses while kicking Perseus’s ass to marvel, “So, this is what a father will go through?” Even though Perseus isn’t going through anything qua father, only qua half-brother beefing with the bad son who sided with Grandpa against dear old Dad. Oh, wait. He’s trying to make a better world for his son. That is, a world not smashed into atoms by Cronos.
Sorry, my head hurts. This movie stinks so badly that I can’t decide whether casting Bill Nighy as a half-dotty Hephaestus made things better or worse.
Movie
Free Men **
A methodical meditation on the meaning of “we,” <em>Free Men </em>tells the story of Algerians — both Muslim and Jewish — living in Paris during the German occupation. To escape persecution, some of those Jews are carrying forged papers declaring them to be Muslims — common heritage trumping religious difference. Our ticket into this complicated world is Younes, a lukewarm Muslim who gets drawn in through family connections, then gets his circle of moral identification stretched in some surprising ways. Director Ismaël Ferroukhi keeps the proceedings moving smoothly.
A methodical meditation on the meaning of “we,” Free Men tells the story of Algerians — both Muslim and Jewish — living in Paris during the German occupation. Tahar Rahim — think Dylan McDermott without the squinty smarm — plays the Muslim Younes. But he’s not much of a Muslim. His principal thought is to make some money on the black market and get home to his family. He has no interest in life at the mosque nor in his cousin Ali’s talk of attending meetings and forming unions. That is, until he’s picked up in a police sweep and forced to work as an informant. It seems there are communists about, and also Jews carrying forged papers declaring them to be Muslims.
What follows is the stretching of Younes’s circle of moral identification, and he bumps up against those who would be united to him by faith, by country, by ideals, and finally by a surprising sort of love. Michael Lonsdale shines as a canny cleric — a man who believes but also knows the political uses of faith — and Ismaël Ferroukhi’s smooth direction keeps the intricate story clear enough to let the characters hold our attention. The soundtrack slips from moody jazz trumpet to traditional North African ballads with surprising ease.
Movie
Delicacy **
Audrey Tautou brings her curious, wide-eyed beauty to a gentle portrait of grief after loss. We’re given plenty of time to loll in the perfect bliss of her romance with a handsome hunk before he dies, the better to grasp the numb paralysis that follows. The restoration that follows that is the work of time and a bearish Swede. Nobody understands what she sees in him. But we do, and so we’re willing to wait and watch as he hunts for the humanity inside his mournful angel.
Hey, you. You there, the bearish Swede with the gut and the bald spot and the bad teeth and the ungainly limbs. What would you do if Audrey Tautou, the angelic pixie of Amélie, glided up to you at work and kissed you, long and hard?
But wait, there’s a catch: she did it while in a fugue state brought on by overwhelming, years-old grief over the death of her beloved, handsome husband. And now she wants you to forget the whole thing.
That’s the big hook of Delicacy, even if it’s not exactly what the film is about. What it’s about is the grief, and it paints a careful and detailed — if somewhat muted — portrait. Last year’s Rabbit Hole plunged us into Nicole Kidman’s life after the death of her child. She was a live wire, stretched thin and snapping, sparks everywhere. Delicacy takes a much slower, more crushing approach, first giving us ample time to enjoy the sight of Nathalie (Tautou) and François (Pio Marmaï) enjoying each other as young lovers in Paris. It’s all impossibly lovely — they even like each other’s parents. Then he gets hit by a car, and we cut to Nathalie enduring a long line of consoling huggers at the graveside — a dark version of the matrimonial receiving line. We’re spared the shock and devastation that comes with loss. What we suffer instead are the numbing and paralysis that follow. Nathalie is, as she puts it, “walled up in grief.”
Some walls you can smash. This one has to be dismantled piece by piece, and some of the bricks are lodged more tightly than others. But that fugue is the first crack in the mortar, and the bearish Swede is nothing if not persistent. And funny. And attentive. And homely. Few can understand what seems to be happening between the bear and the pixie. Happily, they don’t need to.
Reviewed in the movie capsules: Goon and The Trouble with Bliss.
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