"Dallas Buyers Club" and "Mud" Justify the McConaissaince

It's that damn McConaughey. He's so hot right now!

Considering Matthew McConaughey’s recent Oscar win, the fervor surrounding True Detective and his lead part in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film, it’s apparent that we are in the eye of the McConaissaince. As a result, this seems a perfect time to finally put together some thoughts on Dallas Buyers Club and Mud, two 2013 entries I enjoyed quite a bit but never got around to reviewing. I figure it's definitely a good idea to strike before the McConalash sets in.

As a long-time McConaughey defender, I've enjoyed every minute of his comeback. It’s been funny to see the reactions of so many people who had previously written him off solely based on a few paycheck gigs in hollow romantic comedies. Guy always had screen presence to burn, and although he’s limited in some ways by an unshakable accent, he actually operates within a pretty wide range.

At the Oscars, Ellen joked that McConaughey is dirty pretty, but that’s actually an accurate description of his general movie persona. He possesses an oily magnetism that naturally suggests a seedy slickster or a morally compromised antihero, but then there’s the likable swagger and the intense vulnerability bubbling under the surface. He’s sort of a new age Michael Douglas, albeit with a six pack and a Texas twang.

McConaughey deviates from that wheelhouse occasionally (i.e. Contact, Amistad and The Wedding Planner), but like many good actors, he’s found his greatest success by playing into and off of his stock archetype. That assessment is certainly true of Dallas Buyers Club and Mud.

Dallas Buyers Club is a biopic about Ron Woodroof, a homophobic, womanizing good old boy who contracted AIDS in the early ’80s back when it was largely looked at as a gay disease. When Ron realizes the U.S. medical system and the ass-backwards FDA can’t help him, he decides to go south of the border to gain access to unapproved drugs. Soon, with the help of a transvestite partner named Rayon (Jared Leto), he begins smuggling the drugs into America and selling them to fellow AIDS sufferers as part of a monthly membership called the Dallas Buyers Club.

Leto and McConaughey lost a lot of weight for Dallas Buyers Club.

It’s interesting to me that this film languished so long in developmental limbo, because, beyond the topic of AIDS, it’s basically a conventional David vs. Goliath movie, one I suspect most would enjoy if they could get past their discomfort with what they perceive as “gay themes.” The film casts a critical eye on the FDA for being in bed with Big Pharmaceutical Companies to the detriment of the public, but it’s mostly an inspirational character piece about personal growth, redemption and the strength of the human spirit. A large part of the narrative hangs on the growing friendship that develops between Ron and Rayon, and it is all reminiscence of the similarly affecting dynamic Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks shared in Philadelphia.

The film starts like a bat out of hell and then gets into a comfortable rhythm before basically petering out. There’s a structural imbalance to the film, but it is buoyed by an excellent cast that includes winning support from Jennifer Garner, Steve Zahn and Griffin Dunn. McConaughey and Leto both won Oscars for their transformative performances, and while I probably wouldn't have gone with either of them in the stacked year that was 2013, the awards are well deserved. Leto does about everything he can to make Rayon into more than a walking plot device, and McConaughey owns the screen. I know some were annoyed McConaughey rode his comeback story to a victory on Oscar night, particularly at the expense of Leonardo DiCaprio, but this performance feels more charged and awards worthy than those by recent winners like Colin Firth and Jean Dujardin.

Although Dallas Buyers Club received the bulk of the attention, Mud is actually the more interesting McConaughey film to be released last year. Steeped in southern lore and magical realism and populated by a community of river dwellers, Mud instantly recalls last year’s excellent Beasts of the Southern Wild, but it is largely a homage to the works of Mark Twain. There are stand-ins for Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and Jim, and there’s even a character named Tom Blankenship (Sam Shepard), which the internet tells me is the name of the man who inspired Huck Finn. The film even has the feel of classic American literature due to its poetic atmosphere, thematic parallels and rampant symbolism (one could easily imagine a term paper on the significance of the titular character’s shirt or the evocative image of a boat lodged high in a tree).

McConaughey plays Mud, a fugitive wanted for murder and hiding out in the aforementioned boat on a deserted island in the Mississippi River. When Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Loffland), two tween boys from Arkansas, encounter him on an exploratory adventure, Mud makes them a deal. If they’ll bring him food and help him make contact with his long lost love Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), he’ll gift them his pistol and grant them the squatter’s rights to the boat. Neckbone is intrigued by the pistol, while Ellis is mostly captivated by the romance of it all.

Ellis takes center stage for much of the story, and the film is ultimately a fable about a boy coming to grips with the mad complexities of love. He’s struggling with both the dissolution of his parents’ marriage and his infatuation with an older girl, and in Mud he seems to a have found a kindred romantic soul. He holds out hope that the connection between Mud and Juniper can confirm his faith in love, which can often seem like a cruel joke in the way it melds euphoria with abject disappointment.

The three lead characters of Mud would fit right into a Twain novel.

There’s a lot going on in the film, and writer/director Jeff Nichols juggles most of it very well. While we see the entirety of Ellis’ relationship with his crush, the dynamic between his parents (Sarah Paulson and Ray McKinnon) is fragmented and the one between Mud and Juniper isn't on screen at all. We see what Ellis sees and understand as he understands, and it speaks to the mastery of what Nichols has done that confusing character motivations on the part of some of the adults (especially the women) come into sharp focus as the film reaches its conclusion.

If there’s a misstep, it’s in the inclusion of a subplot involving Neckbone’s uncle. While it allows Nichols regular Michael Shannon to log some screen time, the whole thing feels inconsequential and adds unnecessary bloat to a film that would've been well served by cleaving off 10 minutes.

The below the line aspects are all top notch, and there’s some really great and subtle acting on display here. Both kids give emotive lived-in performances, and Witherspoon does well with a tricky role, striking the right balance as a woman intrigued by grand romanticism, but ultimately reticent and skeptical. And as was the case in Out of the Furnace (reviewed here), Shepard gets to be an old bad ass, but this time he gets a bit more of an opportunity to flex his acting muscles.

As for McConaughey, I’d argue that outside of Rust Cole, this is the greatest performances he’s ever given. There are so many seemingly conflicting things to play here – hope, regret, deception, honor, disgrace, warmth, danger, desperation –and he does it all with such nuance, taking what is a pretty mythical character and grounding him in palpable reality. Nichols has said he wrote the role with McConaughey in mind, and that’s easy to believe. Mud is an excellent showcase for McConaughey’s charisma and chops, and the film even contains a meta joke about being shirtless that is somehow weaved into the fabric of the character.

Like McConaughey’s performance, Mud has an organic quality to it that makes it easy to overlook as merely good at first. But then it lingers in the mind, growing in stature the more you ruminate on it. There’s so much to love here – the themes, the tone, the performances, the cinematography, the music, the iconography. This film is literally overflowing with riches. My favorite takeaway was the shootout toward the end of the picture, a set piece that overcomes its clichéd nature through sheer excellence in staging and visceral impact. When a coming-of-age drama succeeds on so many levels that it even contains my favorite action scene of the year – well, that’s pretty neat.

Dallas Buyers Club B, Mud A-

"Out of the Furnace" and "Ain't Them Bodies Saints" Squander Strengths by Overreaching

Despite it's drawbacks, there is a palpable emotional undercurrent to
Out of the Furnace, largely due to Bale's stellar performance.

I recently took in two extremely well-reviewed Casey Affleck movies – Out of the Furnace and Ain’t Them Bodies Saints – and my feelings about them are so similar that it made sense to throw them together in the same review.

Both are stripped-down entries that admirably avoid artifice and offer subtle, lived-in work from a talented assortment of actors. But both also take narratives that would normally make for fun, pulpy b-movies and turn them into somber, artsy-fartsy ballads straining for profundity.

I’m all about subverting genre conventions, and as a general rule I’m not against these sort of lyrical meditations – The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford does something similar, and it’s one of my favorite films (oddly enough, it also stars Affleck as a troubled outsider). But going this route can totally defang a story, turning what could be something worthwhile into a boring and opaque disappointment.

Of the two, Out of the Furnace is the superior film. It stars Christian Bale as a hard-working grunt at a steel mill who lands in jail after a fatal drunk driving accident. While incarcerated, he loses his girlfriend (Zoe Saldana) to a local cop (Forest Whitaker) and misses out on the remaining days of his sickly father. The only thing he retains is the love of his troubled brother (Affleck), a restless and emotionally damaged Iraqi War veteran who falls into a bare-knuckle brawling ring populated by some shady criminals, including a mostly honorable loan shark (Willem Dafoe) and a homicidal maniac (Woody Harrelson).

The film has a lot going for it. All the actors are in peak form, insinuating as much character and personality as is possible with such a bare bones approach. Bale shares a particularly good scene with Saldana that brutally exhibits what his mistake cost him, and his brotherly bond with Affleck is believably wrought.

There’s also a nicely modulated mournfulness hovering over this story of blue collar hardship, and it has a good thread at its core. I could easily imagine all of these components adding up to an excellent drama about a good man who did a bad thing and is now left to pick up the pieces. Instead, writer/director Scott Copper gets bogged down with exploring unsatisfying revenge elements. The film builds to its logical conclusion and ends with a boldly tantalizing final image, but it’s all just so limp.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints embraces a Malick-like aesthetic.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints fairs worse because the character dynamics aren’t as engrossing and the bad guys are woefully undefined. It focuses on Ruth (Rooney Mara) and Bob (Affleck), Bonnie and Clyde types who get involved in a robbery gone wrong and end up in a shootout during which Ruth shoots a cop (Ben Foster). Since Ruth is pregnant with their child, Bob takes the fall, claiming Ruth was an innocent victim in all of it.

Several years later, Ruth is on the straight and narrow, leading a simple life with her daughter Sylvie. When Bob breaks out of prison prepared to whisk his family away, Ruth has to consider what’s right for her daughter. There’s also the matter of that cop Ruth shot, who in investigating Bob’s jailbreak grows closer to her and Sylvie.

Once again, there are things to like – the setup is decent, the cinematography is breathtaking and the acting is top-notch – but writer/director David Lowery’s emphasis is put so emphatically on the picturesque landscape and poetic atmosphere that the whole thing plays as if on mute. Once Bob breaks out, he not only has to worry about the law, but also three shady goons out for blood, and it is never explained where these baddies came from. Some might see this ambiguity as strength, but it only works to add confusion.

These movies have their share of positives, but ultimately they are just too ponderous and intentionally vague to register as great films. I imagine a certain type of person would go gagga over their delicate sinew or something like that, but there’s just a lifelessness to them that left me wanting more. Out of the Furnace B, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints C+

Linklater Deepens Cinema’s Greatest Romance With Trilogy-Capping “Before Midnight”

After showcasing Vienna and Paris in the first two films, Before
Midnight takes place in Greece.

Every movie fan has more than a few films that their embarrassed to say they haven’t actually seen. For some reason, even though we all manage to catch up with our fair share of obvious duds like Baby Geniuses or Boat Trip, a multitude of true classics always fall through the cracks.

Despite my love for cinema and the crazy amount of time I spend on it, my list is still quite extensive. It’s probably no surprise that I haven’t seen many of the foreign classics by the likes of Godard, Traffaut, Bergman, and Fellini, but there are plenty of American films I’ve missed as well. For instance, although I’m a huge fan of the Godfather and have seen it about a dozen times, I’ve never actually seen Godfather, Part II. Meanwhile, it was only a few months ago that I finally caught up with The Silence of the Lambs, and I’m ashamed to admit I’ve yet to watch Apocalypse Now, A Clockwork Orange, Schindler’s List, Vertigo, and Lawrence of Arabia, among many other legendary films.

I try not to beat myself up over this, because, for whatever reason, there’s just so much more effort involved when you know you’re sitting down to watch a classic. Sometimes it’s just simpler to watch something of-the-moment, even mediocre drivel. Is We’re The Millers better than The Big Sleep? Most assuredly no, and yet I still spent two hours of my weekend watching Sudeikis and Aniston in lieu of Bogart and Bacall. It’s just the way things are.

I bring all this up as a preamble to my reaction to Before Midnight, which is the third in writer/director Richard Linklater’s series of talky films focused on soul mates Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy). Up until a few weeks ago, I’d never seen Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, the first two films in the trilogy. I was aware they existed and knew of the good buzz around them, and yet, I never went out of my way to seek them out. After all, how vital could two movies about star-crossed lovers bullshitting with each other during strolls through European locales possibly be?

After reading the raves for Midnight, I decided it was time to prioritize watching the first two films so that I could sit down for the third. Now, after having digested all three films, I’m fully confident that this trilogy belongs on the embarrassment list of any movie fan that has yet to see them. What Linklater and his actors (both of whom co-wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplays for the latter two entries) have accomplished with these films is outright mindboggling. Each one is great on its own, but as a whole, the trilogy places among the greatest cinematic triumphs I've ever seen.

Jesse and Celine are a long way from the idealized encounters they
shared in Before Sunrise (left) and Before Sunset (right).

For good reason, much of the emphasis on these films will be put on the romantic element and that makes sense. This is dubbed as one of the best romances in cinema history and with good reason – through three films Linklater has detailed the ongoing process that is love. Without giving too much away, it’s fair to say that Sunrise offers a dreamy evening between would-be lovers in Vienna, Sunset rekindles the passion after nine years apart, and Midnight catches up with the duo nine years later , during a critical juncture of what has become a long-term relationship.

There’s a universality to the whole journey – the idealism of a fresh connection, the realization that it wasn’t a fluke, that the love really was palpable and unique, and then, finally, the realism that sets in once you’re waist deep in a relationships, trying to keep love alive while maintaining your personal identity, making compromises and getting on one another’s nerves.

But these films detail not only the arc of a relationship, but the growth in these two people, and there’s something entirely relatable about the way the creative team so expertly captures the contradictions of the life stages in these three snapshots of life.

In his widely accepted Stages of Psychosocial Development, psychologist Erik Erikson* describes the psychosocial crisis for young adults (18 to 40) as love vs. intimacy, and the first two films fall in line with his teachings. There is a giddiness to the first film that echoes what it’s like being in your late teens and early 20s, a time when you’re fearless and exuberant but somehow simultaneously filled with all sorts of doubt. And the second highlights the mounting confidence that comes along midway through young adulthood that consistently clashes with a sort of restless desperation for things to finally come together.

*I’m not trying to be overly clinical here, but it’s very hard not to mention Erikson, especially considering Boyhood, Linklater’s latest film. Shot over the course of 12 years with the same four actors (Hawke included), the film is a literal coming of age story that chronicles the development of a boy from age 6 to 18. Clearly Linklater has a great interest in development and the passage of time, and it’s hard to imagine he hasn’t considered Erikson’s theory himself given that and how the theory perfectly dovetails with what he’s done in this series. If I ever were to get a chance to speak with the guy, you can bet I’d be sure to ask him about it.

Unlike the previous two entries in the series, Before Midnight features several other significant characters.

In Midnight, Jesse and Celine are no longer spring chickens. Erickson would place them firmly in adulthood (40 to 65), a time in which people begin wrestling with the psychosocial crisis of generativity vs. stagnation. It’s a time for people to focus on making a lasting mark in the world, and so, rightly, we find Jesse and Celine dealing with fears related to child rearing and career choices.

Overall, I think I like Sunset the best, mostly because it’s filmed in real-time, which lends immediacy to Jesse and Celine’s race to determine if this connection they’ve long idealized is a love worth changing their lives over. But all three films are absolutely fantastic in the way they capture the contradictions of life and love.

To focus specifically solely on the newest film, I greatly enjoy the ways in which it differentiates itself from its predecessors. Through the end of the second film, we had seen every moment shared between these two people, but now there’s nine years of added history – tender moments and strained concessions we haven’t witnessed – and that adds an extra weight to the proceedings.

Yes, Midnight ultimately focuses on a long and winding conversation in yet another European destination, but Linklater also opens up the narrative in the early going, including a revealing interaction between Jesse and his son from a previous relationship, as well as an extended dinner party sequence during which Jesse and Celine banter with several other couples. These two are no longer the sole voices on display, which is a clever way of indicating the mounting external factors these two are coping with now that fantasy has been replaced by reality. Things get darker in this third outing as the duo begins to feel boxed in by circumstance, and the narrative goes in some deeper and more complicated directions as a result.

Before closing, I have to mention that one of the very best things about these films is how wonderfully each one ends. All of them go out on satisfyingly poignant notes while somehow still leaving things provocatively unresolved. I’m not sure if Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy have the desire to keep returning to Jesse and Celine every nine years, but further entries would be more than welcome if they remain anywhere near as thought-provoking and engrossing as the first three have been. A

McQueen Delivers With the Harrowing "12 Years A Slave"

12 Years A Slave has a number of squirm-inducing long takes.

Just a year after Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (reviewed here), director Steve McQueen has brought another slavery tale to mainstream America, but his 12 Years A Slave proves a far more unsettling experience.

Whereas Django Unchained had all sorts of accouterments that made its brutality palpable for viewers – clever dialogue, irreverent humor and, importantly, the revenge element – 12 Years A Slave is an unflinching horror story. It is a serious movie about a serious topic, and in depicting slave conditions of the mid 1800s, it offers no moments of levity to break up the ugliness.

Based on the autobiographical account of Solomon Northup, 12 Years A Slave tells the story of how a free, educated black man was kidnapped and sold into slavery. Northup languished on several southern plantations for 12 years before finally coming across a Canadian carpenter willing to send word to his family and friends up north. After being freed, he became a major voice for the abolitionist cause and joined the Underground Railroad before ultimately disappearing a decade later under mysterious circumstances midway through the Civil War.

Knowing all of that doesn’t spoil the movie since it basically gives away the resolution in the title. The film is much more concerned with communicating the slavery experience – the savagery of a broken and immoral system that shockingly and embarrassingly took root in our country. McQueen doesn’t shy away from the inherent inhumanity of the story, and he purposefully holds certain shots for unbearably long amounts of time.

Two whippings are depicted in one-shot long takes and a scene in which Solomon is left hanging by a noose, struggling on tiptoes to stay alive is made all-the-more uncomfortable by contrasting his squirming for survival against the everyday farm work happening around him. Meanwhile, another scene in which slaves are displayed naked for purposes of sale is particularly unnerving given just how blasé the customers seem as they roam around an open house perusing potential product.

The cast is uniformly excellent, as one might expect given the three acting nominations the film landed from the Academy. Chiwetel Ejiofor is a gifted actor who probably hasn’t gotten the opportunities he deserves because he’s something like the eighth or ninth middle-aged black guy vying for roles in Hollywood, but he owns the screen here, using his wonderfully expressive face to communicate an array of emotions from confusion to desperation to relief.

Prepare for some powerhouse acting.

Meanwhile, McQueen regular Michael Fassbender gives a terrifying portrayal as Edwin Epps, an unhinged slave owner who uses select bible passages to justify his unbridled mistreatment of slaves. Both Ejiofor and Fassbender are worthy of any recognition that comes their way and the two of them share a quiet and intense sequence by lamp light that is one my favorite individual scenes from a 2013 film.

Despite their greatness, most of the acting accolades for the film have been funneled toward Lupita Nyong’o. She plays Patsey, a slave with an unparalleled ability to pick cotton who becomes the unfortunate focus of Epps’ affections, leading to a great deal of abuse from his jealous wife (Sarah Paulson as an evil Lady MacBeth type). I wouldn’t normally have expected Nyong’o to get such awards traction, but it’s a relatively weak field and she gives a solid performance, so I have no qualms about her taking home as many trophies as possible.

The rest of the cast is populated by a number of well-known actors, which can, at times, become a bit of a distraction. Paul Dano and Benedict Cumberbatch are given enough to do that they blend in seamlessly, but Alfre Woodard and Paul Giamatti call undue attention to themselves despite delivering fine performances.

Worst of all is the casting of Brad Pitt as the Canadian who orchestrated Solomon’s freedom. Pitt’s a producer on the film and he deserves a lot of credit for its existence, but he’s too big a star to show up in a spot like this. The role is a bit problematic anyway since the character is sort of a deus ex machina, but considering Pitt’s producer status, his presence adds a seemingly self-aggrandizing element. There’s nothing wrong with his performance, but it does pull the viewer out of the narrative once Brad Pitt shows up to punch slavery in the mouth.

That’s a minor blight, but the film does have some other flaws. For instance, the passage of time is poorly delineated and the key relationship between Patsey and Solomon is underdeveloped. However, none of that takes away from the achievement that is 12 Years A Slave. This is a great piece of film-making filled with a number of harrowing sequences and exceptional work in front of and behind the camera. It's not the best film of 2013, but it's pretty damn close to the top of the list. A

Polley Gets Personal With the Delightful "Stories We Tell"

Sarah Polley delves into her family history for her third film.

After the excellent one-two punch of Away From Her and Take This Waltz (which I reviewed last year), actress-turned-director Sarah Polley has ventured into the realm of nonfiction with her third feature. It's hard to talk about what makes the award-winning Stories We Tell such a treat without ruining some of the documentary's surprising revelations, but it is fair to say it covers the same thematic terrain of her fiction work – marriage, infidelity and the pursuit of personal fulfillment.

Using a combination of talking heads, family videos and cannily cast dramatic recreations, the film focuses on Polley’s enigmatic mother Diane, a woman with plenty of secrets who died when Polley was just 11 years old. Every player in the story – Polley's siblings and half-siblings, her father, her mother's various friends –gets a chance to offer their versions of the woman and her actions.

It’s easy to wonder why one would want to sit down and watch a documentary about a filmmaker’s mother, but the Polley brood is so intriguingly non-nuclear and each member so distinct that it’s hard not to get drawn into their orbit. Polley’s father Michael emerges as the heart of the film. When she begins to really pry into his past, he jokes, “What a vicious director you are” in a way that coveys he is both pained to dig up these emotions and impressed by the command of his daughter.

The film also makes some universal points that take it beyond the self-regarding piece it could have been. Initially it’s not clear which home videos are real and which are fabrications, but that only strengthens Polley’s argument about what she calls the “vagaries of truth.” There’s an often-unintended pliability to the way people process their pasts, and Polley captures that perfectly here.

“I’m interested in the way we tell stories about our lives, about the fact that the truth about the past is often ephemeral and difficult to pin down,” Polley says early in the film. By going the Roshomon route, Polley makes some keen points about skewed perceptions and unreliable memories, and she ultimately offers a layered presentation of Diane by stringing together the sometimes dissonant viewpoints of those left behind. A

Blomkamp Comes Back Down to Earth With "Elysium"

Elysium finds Matt Damon in badass mode. 

District 9 was a real shot of adrenaline when it hit theaters back in 2009. In an era in which so many blockbuster types are sequels, remakes or so derivative that they might as well be, here was a complicated, raw and original piece of science fiction.

Like many films of the genre, it was a full-on political allegory, and it attacked societal tendencies of xenophobia and social segregation in a way that was intellectually stimulating, pulse-poundingly thrilling and emotionally affecting. The film used a cinema verite mockumentary style to deliver its atypically personal and rough-edged story, but it still managed to deliver impressively large-scale special effects.

In short, it was one of the best films of that year, and really, one of the greatest science fiction films I’ve come across.

Because of this, I was anxiously anticipating Elysium, the sophomore outing from writer/director Neill Blomkamp, who once again teams with actor Sharlto Copley for an original science fiction film. With Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, and an increased budget in tow, expectations were undoubtedly high.

So, it’s with a great deal of disappointment that I write that Elysium is about as ho-hum as it gets. It’s visually stimulating and Copley makes some interesting choices with his batty bad guy, but the action’s not all that memorable and the narrative is a passably clichéd effort.

With this, District 9 and 2015's Chappie, Copley and Blomkamp
are clearly keen collaborators.

The film is another Occupy Movement parable. Earth’s wealthiest inhabitants have moved to Elysium, a utopian space station in which all sicknesses can be cured by med-bays that seem right out of Prometheus. The rest of society remains on Earth, which has become an overpopulated slum policed by oppressive robot forces.

Damon stars as Max Decker, an ex-con who works on an assembly line creating police robots just like Douglas Quaid did in Total Recall. His long-term dream of visiting Elysium becomes a vital necessity when he is exposed to lethal radiation on the job, and his effort to get to Elysium and into a med-bay leads him to join forces with some anarchic smugglers. They fit him with a powered exoskeleton and promise him a ride to Elysium if he can boost a sort of access card to the space station from the brain of one of its citizens working on Earth.

In doing this, Max stumbles into possession of a program that can override Elysium’s defenses, drawing the attention of Elysium’s power hungry secretary of defense (Foster) and her homicidal goon (Copley). Thrown into the mix is Max’s childhood friend (Alice Braga) whose daughter has terminal leukemia.

Throughout all of this, the plot relies on a mounting number of coincidences. The worst of all is Max’s insistence that the smugglers go after the guy whose brain just so happens to hold the key to overthrowing Elysium simply because he’s mad at him for owning the plant where he was exposed to radiation.

Worse than that, the story doesn't give viewers anybody worth caring about. Damon does what he can, but Max’s character arc is a telegraphed string of clichés with an endpoint that isn't really earned.

Blomkamp’s take on the divide between the haves and have nots is not nearly as moving or gripping as his exploration of apartheid in District 9. If that’s an unfair standard, I’ll go a step or two lower and confirm it’s not even as good as Oblivion, 2013’s other derivative “original” science fiction entry (reviewed here).

Still, it is superior to the similarly themed In Time (which I reviewed last year), and the space station is neatly realized.  Ultimately, it functions as an OK palate cleanser as we await the next big thing from a filmmaker with clear talent to burn. C+

"Saving Mr. Banks" Gets The Disney Treatment, For Good and Bad

Banks shows a P.L. Travers who warms to the Disney way.

Saving Mr. Banks is about the making of Mary Poppins, and taken on its own terms, it’s an enjoyable crowd-pleaser with a multitude of fine performances that, if nothing else, made me want to revisit the classic Disney film.

However, at the same time, it’s also a candy-coated fabrication, and it really rubbed me the wrong way how it turns P.L. Travers’ (Emma Thompson) justified concerns over Hollywood ransacking and her understandable desires to maintain artistic integrity into nothing more than daddy issues that the sweet-natured Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) needed to massage and overcome.

I have no reason to doubt Travers was a difficult, nitpicky woman, but the movie makes her story into a “Taming of the Shrew” tale that seems largely biased and unfair. The driving thrust of the movie concerns whether or not Disney and the brain trust behind the film adaptation can convince Travers to sign over the rights of the film, but in reality she already had signed the rights over out of financial necessity. A trip to California did occur, and, I can imagine Disney tried to allure her into seeing his way so that he might get the rights to her other books. However, scenes depicting her succumbing to the charms of Disney Land, connecting with Disney over shared childhood troubles and enjoying the film at the premier are totally made up.

Generally, I don’t have a problem with films bending the facts or making major changes if necessary (American Hustle recently did this, and, as my review indicates, I unblinkingly loved the film). I'm usually a firm believer in not letting the truth get in the way of good drama, and that’s especially true if embellishments give actors good beats to play, as the trip to London affords Hanks. However, this film clearly implies that it is a good thing to allow a giant corporation to pillage one’s art, and that’s an unsettling takeaway for me.

The film spends a lot of time on Travers' tough childhood.

To be fair, the throughline about fathers and how we want to remember them is a poignant one, and it certainly hits on a recognizable and interesting nerve. But the way it's delivered diminishes Travers as a character. In the film, Disney assuages Travers not by compromising on her understandable concerns about fake sentimentality, animation or the casting of Dick Van Dyke, but by promising to save Mr. Banks. Her qualms are only an extension of her icy exterior, and the good heart thawing by Disney has made them moot.

All of this makes for a meta viewing experience. The film Disney produces is a loose adaptation of Travers’ book, one that includes all the basic elements but also adds various spoonfuls of sugar to make it all play better. The end result may be a bit artificial, but it does make the father figure look good.

The exact same comments could be made about Saving Mr. Banks itself. Most of the basic elements are here, with certain things artificially livened up and/or sanded down to make it all go down easier, but, most importantly, it makes Walt Disney look good.

Considering all of this, one could easily make the case that the film was a giant work of propaganda with the following goals:

1) Make sure Walt Disney comes across well. 

2) Convey that the corporation know best when it comes to artistic direction (That's especially interesting on the heels of the whole disaster that went down with the making of Brave, which I reviewed last year). 

3)  Make people feel nostalgia over Mary Poppins, particularly in light of the fact that we just released a 50^th Anniversary Edition Blue Ray. In stores everywhere!

Hanks is great as Disney, but the film does a lot of myth making.

It’s really personal opinion on whether or not you take issue with any of that. I find some of it problematic, but, honestly, I’m more annoyed that the sugarcoating results in a missed opportunity. Midway through the film, Disney indicates he understands Travers' protectiveness because he had a similar experience with Mickey Mouse, and that scene hints at what this film could’ve been.

The real Disney got to maintain his artistic license, while Travers did not. Instead, Disney steamrolled her vision, basically because he thought he knew best. History has shown his inclinations were smart ones, and I think a more interesting movie would've explored this dichotomy more fully (the film’s excellent poster pointed to it).

There are shades of gray to the making of Mary Poppins and fascinating complexity to the two pivotal people involved, but Saving Mr. Banks is more interested in showcasing a sugary confection. That’s not a big surprise, and in fact, it echoes what happened with the original film, calling to mind a line included in both: “Can't put my finger on what lies in store, but I feel what's to happen all happened before.” B