Digithoughts

Today we launch the weekly Digi@themovies blog entry, thanks to our friends at Allied Advertising. Each week, different Digitarians will offer their thoughts on what’s new at the multiplex, and whether it’s worth the money now or better off waiting to pirate it in a couple months (only kidding, SOPA!). Here goes.

EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE -- The highest profile release this weekend is director Stephen Baldry’s critically polarizing 9/11 aftermath movie, which opened in New York and L.A. last year as Oscar-bait but goes wide around the country today. There’s not been a lot of middle ground on this adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s best-selling novel -- people seem to think it's either one of the most powerful, moving films of the year or a shamelessly manipulative piece of claptrap.

I got picked to review this movie for Digitaria because I’d read the book, but after seeing it I’m not sure literary familiarity with the material gives you a leg up on enjoying the movie -- if “enjoying” is the proper term for a picture that left at least half the theater is gut-wrenching sobs.

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell (effectively portrayed by newcomer Thomas Horn), stumbles upon a mysterious key in the closet of his father (Tom Hanks), who was a victim of the 9/11 attacks.  In an effort to find meaning and reason in his dad’s murder, Oskar embarks on a mission to uncover the lock the key opens. Through the course of the journey, Oskar is revealed as an understandably troubled boy that has a strained (yet unexplained) relationship with his mother (Sandra Bullock). Their troubled bond is only one of the film’s questions that is never satisfactorily addressed, leaving very little resolved after the film’s roughly two hours.

There’s a lot to leave you frustrated with the movie, but the central problem is Oskar himself: A character I found quirky, fascinating and entertaining (if a little annoying) in the book becomes selfish, abusive, emotionally exhausting and at times very annoying in the film. At fault is not the young actor Horn, who nails the emotions he’s supposed to, but instead the large number of sub-plots & characters have been truncated, poorly adapted or excised all-together from the original source material, making Oskar’s behavior less easy to understand and thus empathize.

As for the movie stars, Tom Hanks plays the reassuring paternal role we’ve come to expect from him, albeit with less screen-time than normal, as he’s only available in flashback. Sandra Bullock gives a touchingly believable performance as Oskar’s mother, but her turn is basically a cameo. The best part goes to Max Von Sydow, as an intriguing character known only as The Renter, but like too much of the adaptation his role is underwritten and leaves the audience with more unanswered questions and loose ends.

Any subject matter that attempts to address 9/11 is entering a mine-field of potential exploitative offenses, but this film exercises more than a fair amount of restraint, other than one particularly egregious scene that shows someone falling from the WTC directly into the camera eye. That’s not to say Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close isn’t effective and emotionally affective. Director Baldry has proven in the past with Billy Elliott, The Reader and The Hours that he has a deep empathy for humanity’s strengths and flaws, and his take on this difficult subject matter does at times resonate without feeling manipulative. His movie is very likely more enjoyable for viewers unfamiliar with the novel, and in that aspect it may well stand on it’s own. But once you know how much more is available, you’re left waiting and hoping for moments that never come; much more keen to the mistakes and inexplicably missing pieces that must have been lost on the cutting room floor. (**½) -- Michael Jackson

RED TAILS -- Could the man responsible for Jar Jar Binks really do justice to the story of the all African-American Tuskegee Airmen of WWII? Dubstep-heavy trailer aside, the agreeably old-fashioned Red Tails, produced by George Lucas as his (alleged) farewell to the blockbuster, is chock-full of breathtaking aerial dogfights that, whether due to budget restraints or attention to historical realism, often feel short-lived and anti-climatic. Nate Parker, David Oyelowo, Terrance Howard, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Method Man (Yeah, I saw you!) and a surprisingly funny performance from Ne-Yo (he’s half Bubba Gump, half Robert Johnson) make up an extremely entertaining cast of archetypal but distinctive characters. Director Anthony Hemingway does an admirable job portraying the racial atmosphere during the first half of the film, but then resolves the issue all too unrealistically with our heroes earning the respect of their fellow white soldiers through their  abilities but never alluding to the continued discrimination that the Tuskegee pilots faced once they got home. If you don’t know the backstory already, George Lucas financed Red Tails with his own money after studios purportedly refused to back the project citing that an all-African American cast wouldn’t be profitable. With beautifully shot dogfights and spirited performances from the cast, I hope Red Tails proves those studios wrong. (***) -- Michael Liang

HAYWIRE – Is America ready to embrace a female Steven Seagal as its latest action hero? ‘Cause that’s what they’re getting in Oscar-winning (Traffic) director Steven Soderbergh’s kickass, estrogen-driven, doublecross and revenge genre flick with artsy pretensions. Starring the mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carano, hard-bodied as a brick but with similar acting range, and supported by a veritable rogue’s gallery of Hollywood big shots and flavors of the moment – Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor, Antonio Banderas, Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbinder, etc., etc – this would-be star-making vehicle is expertly made and intricately plotted escapism that will stand or fall on how willing you are to tolerate the one-note performance from its protagonist. While the numerous fight scenes are thrilling and realistically shot, and it’s great to see a sexy woman who breaks the mold of ridiculously emaciated actresses in super-heroine roles (see: Angelina Jolie in the laughable Salt), when you cast a non-actress in a role, you get….non-acting. Carano has zero range, her performance near monotone and a disservice to too much of screenwriter Lem Dobbs’ tough-gal dialogue. It doesn’t sink the movie, but keeps it from being the exhilarating B-movie thrill-ride it should be. Soderbergh is aces otherwise though; he can do it all (and again shoots the movie himself under a pseudonym). Kudos to David Holmes, for his groovy retro-’70s exploitation flick score. (**½) -- Tom Siebert

UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING – There were no critics’ screenings for this latest entry in the ultraviolent Vampire/Werewolf war; usually that means even the studio releasing it thinks it sucks like Lestat on steroids, but you never know. After taking a hiatus from the third movie, Kate Beckinsale “returns as the vampire warrioress Selene, who escapes imprisonment to find herself in a world where humans have discovered the existence of both vampire and [werewolf] clans, and are conducting an all-out war to eradicate both immortal species,” says the publicity material.  People who like this sort of thing, you know who you are. We’ll pass. -- Tom Siebert
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Digitaria Staff Co-authored Post

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