Coriolanus

How do you review a movie that is of top notch production values, features a handful of amazing performances, tells a gripping story and gets nearly everything right, but you just can’t recommend? I wish someone would tell me because Coriolanus is one of those movies. There’s so much good, so many things to admire and rave about, but there is one giant problem with the film and it pervades its entirety. Watching the movie is like eating a gourmet meal where the main course is only slightly overcooked. It shouldn’t ruin the whole thing, but it kind of does. I want to do nothing more than tell you to watch Coriolanus, but my dismay at one of the most ill-advised decisions I’ve seen in a film in quite a long time is keeping me from doing it.

The film is based on the William Shakespeare play from the early 17th century and it stars Ralph Fiennes as Roman general Caius Martius Coriolanus who, after years of duty to his country, is banished and decides to take revenge on Rome with a man who used to be his enemy, Volscian army general, Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler). It’s a tried and true story, one that is wrought with tension, suspense, drama and meaning that can be tied to modern times in our treatment of soldiers during and after wartime. There is nothing inherently wrong with this story, but the way it’s adapted is a pity.

What Coriolanus does is take an old play that was written over 400 years ago and modernizes it, setting it in the present day and in the current political and societal climates. However, it retains the old Shakespearean dialogue from the early 1600’s and, plain and simple, it doesn’t work. It’s beyond silly to watch a group of soldiers run through the streets with their AKs shooting each other up followed by those same soldiers speaking archaic rhetoric that doesn’t fit the modern time period. Although this decision does allow for some intense monologues, most notably from the terrific Fiennes, these moments only work by themselves and not when analyzed within the overall picture.

Coriolanus is an odd mash-up of two different time periods that don’t work well together and it drags the entire film down because it’s not just one tiny aspect of its production. It’s a major narrative decision, a persistent problem that runs throughout its entire 2 hour length. If writer John Logan wanted to retain that old language, he should have set the film in the appropriate time period. Nobody these days talks like this, about how “thou art lost” and how someone doesn’t hate you, but instead hates “thee.” It’s an artistic decision that is nothing more than laughable.

It’s such a shame because in his directorial debut, Fiennes crafts a beautifully shot film with a handful of outstanding performances that could have made for a powerful experience. He has a distinct visual eye and shoots each scene appropriately within the context of where the story is at that point and he, perhaps because this is an obvious passion project for him, gives what may be his single greatest performance. He’s a sight to behold in this film and the fact that he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar this year is a crying shame.

It’s rare that one bad decision can sour an otherwise solid production, but there you have it. It’s far too hard to blend two different time periods together, your eyes showing you one thing while your ears tell you another, which is most notable in a scene where political pundits argue on the television. Their debate comes off more like gossip between guests at a costume party in 1607 than actual political discourse. Moments like that are indicative of the entire film. Even when you’re watching scenes with breathtaking performances (of which there are many), you can never fully shake how ridiculous the whole affair is. Set this in 17th century Rome and you may be onto something, but as is, Coriolanus is an anomaly: a movie that gets 95% of its content correct and still fails.

Coriolanus receives 2/5

The Iron Lady

There isn’t a movie buff out there who would argue that Meryl Streep is a bad actress. There probably isn’t even one who would argue she’s only good. The fact is she’s great. She always has been and she continues to impress year after year. Her yearly nominations in awards shows of all types are all wholly deserved. The same can be said for her performance in The Iron Lady. She is phenomenal and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her clutching an Oscar a couple months from now. That said, the movie is awful. It’s so bad on so many different levels, it boggles the mind. It may very well be the worst movie I’ve ever seen with a truly phenomenal, applaud worthy performance. Meryl Streep is fantastic. Everything else is rubbish.

Streep plays Margaret Thatcher, the first Prime Minister of England. The film, in the loosest and strangest way possible, traces the steps through her life, from a young adult with dreams of political grandeur to the old maid she became. Though a biopic in nature, The Iron Lady tries to be more. Director Phyllida Lloyd, whose only other notable feature is Mamma Mia!, doesn’t trust in the inherent intrigue of such a life and tries to spice up Thatcher’s story with premonitions of her dead husband and child, panicked zooms, slow motion, extremely out-of-place canted camera angles that serve no metaphorical or narrative purpose and pretty much every other over-stylized technique in the book, including an awkward shot where Thatcher floats down the hall while a crowd of people walk behind her. The pizzazz is misplaced. Add some scary music and half of this movie could play as horror.

What The Iron Lady really boils down to is a brilliant performer at the top of her game in front of the camera and a pretentious director behind it. The movie is over-stylized nonsense, a visual mess. But its problems exist in every other facet too, including the terrible editing where it would be too much of a compliment to say it doesn’t have a good flow (that would imply it has a flow at all). There are multiple cuts between past and present, some of which give no indication the switch was even made, and there are multiple moments where a time lapse happens, but the audio stays the same. Take, for instance, an early scene where young Thatcher’s point of view (and thus, position in the room) changes while her father’s words continue uninterrupted. These are rookie mistakes and they pervade the entire film.

To see those mistakes, however, you’d first to have to get past the writing, which is heavy laden with unbelievable and grating dialogue. Thatcher, a powerful figure and intelligent (though controversial) woman, comes off as a joke in the film, always speaking in “speech,” as if she’s addressing a crowd or nation. Even when she goes to the doctor’s office for a check-up, she goes off on an unnecessary rant made all the more laughable given that she’s in a patient’s robe. By the time, you get to the end, you’ve already stopped caring (if you ever did at all), but the movie still manages to amaze by offering a silly, stupid, inane conclusion to the premonition plot thread.

The Iron Lady is dry, bland, slow, boring, pretentious, over-stylized, grating, amateurish and pretty much every other negative adjective in between with one shining star in the middle. As much as she deserves it, Streep’s shoe-in awards nominations will only give the film more exposure and lead more people to watching it, wasting precious hours in their short lives. Perhaps, just this once, we should ignore the power of Streep and let her movie fade into oblivion. We'll be doing the world a favor.

The Iron  Lady receives 1/5

Pariah

Homosexuality is a topic often explored in cinema. This is because it simultaneously provides interesting characters with an inner struggle who try to find themselves and cope with the discriminating world around them and because it provides for interesting societal commentary, given the rampant homophobia of many of the world’s citizens. Pariah is the latest movie to give the topic a go and it’s weak. It’s not terrible, but it doesn’t do enough to reach the thematic depth of other similar movies. At a mere 86 minutes (less without credits), it doesn’t give itself enough time to do or say anything profound.

The movie follows Alike, played by relative newcomer Adepero Oduye, a 17 year old virgin lesbian who is one person at home and another when out on the town. At home, her strict, more traditional mother urges her to find a boyfriend, but she doesn’t yet know that Alike isn’t interested in boys, as she goes to great lengths to hide it. She leaves the house for school in a typical female outfit and changes on the way into something that suits her better. Before she gets home, she switches back again. But the more she hangs out with her friend Laura, played by Pernell Walker, the more suspicious her mother becomes, which will ultimately lead them down two very different roads.

That synopsis probably makes Pariah seem more intellectually stimulating than it really is. The mother in the movie, played by Kim Wayans, is held up as the villain, but they rarely take the time to develop her villainy. Her negative behavior and rejection of her daughter is unforgivable, not to mention the one moment of physical abuse, but all of that is piled on the end. The moments leading up to that don’t even hint at what may be coming. As far as the viewer can tell, her mother is no different than any other mother. She wants her daughter to grow up with good moral values and takes her to church on a regular basis. She tells Alike not to hang out with Laura because she thinks Laura is a bad influence. When you see the two together as they visit various sketchy clubs, you realize she’s right, though we’re supposed to look at her as vindictive and unreasonable for thinking so. Until the end, her villainy is forced and I wasn’t buying it.

In fact, everything is stacked near the end in a lame attempt to bring forth some type of emotion. For instance, Laura’s relationship with her mother isn’t even mentioned or shown until the final third of the movie and it’s just so hard to care. But the question is why should you if even the screenplay doesn’t seem to? No characters are built and the story doesn’t allow them the growth they need. By the time Alike begins to discover into her own sexuality, the movie is in the process of wrapping up and the potential for an interesting story is lost. That’s not to say it doesn’t make some good points. It does, but they’re hit more like bullet points that are missing an explaining paragraph.

Nevertheless, the performances are good and although I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Oduye is a godsend to cinema like some critics, she impresses with what little she’s given to work with. All the actors do, but they’re stuck playing characters that are uninteresting and stereotypical. Lots of words can be used to describe Pariah, but, as sad as it is to say, “thoughtful” is not one of them.

Pariah receives 2/5

War Horse

Steven Spielberg is one of the most prolific directors to ever step behind the camera. His movies are mesmerizing, exciting and sometimes even profound. Those adjectives are perhaps most characteristic of his earlier efforts like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, but that doesn’t mean his newer films, like Minority Report and War of the Worlds, don’t entertain, even if they are thematically less interesting. He’s a living legend with a filmography as impressive as anyone to have ever been involved in the movies, so even though his latest, War Horse, is still a technically good movie, it manages to disappoint because it doesn’t live up to his other efforts. You should still see it, but only if you’ve already seen the others.

The story takes place during World War I. A poor family has just bought a new horse to plow their farm. However, the horse proves to be a poor worker and he is just as quickly sold to the soldiers going off to fight the war, much to the chagrin of Albert, played by Jeremy Irvine, who has developed a bond and fallen in love with it. Tracing the path of the horse and the boy, the movie explores the bond between human and animal, even when they are worlds apart.

Or so it tries. Narratively, War Horse is bland. It moves along at an inconsistent pace, at times forgetting about the boy and other times forgetting about the horse. At times, this movie could simply be called War because the horse has little impact on what’s happening. And emotionally, the film is empty. Only the scene where they are torn apart manages to evoke any type of sadness because the bond between man and beast is barely even created, much less explored. You never feel like the boy is that upset about their departure because it is never shown. By the time they reunite via a major plot contrivance (which are preceded by a number of other major plot contrivances), only the most emotionally fragile of viewers will feel anything but coldness.

What really drags down War Horse is its sentimentality. Spielberg has had success in the past with what some might consider overemotional plots, but War Horse takes the cake. The dramatics in the film aren’t just obvious; they seem intentional. Spielberg could have just as easily filmed himself for two and a half hours begging for an Oscar and you’d get the same effect. Still, the film is a technical accomplishment. He may overdo it in regards to emotionality, but this is nevertheless a terrific looking movie. The gorgeous landscape shots really give a sense of time and place to the film, when folks didn’t have television or video games and spent most of their days plowing large stretches of field, and the war scenes are (unsurprisingly, given his success with Saving Private Ryan) intense and exciting. Spielberg directs with style and it shows.

The actors are phenomenal as well, even though they are forced to trudge through soap opera melodramatics. They are never thrown off by the unpredictableness of the horse and manage to make all of the film’s problems at least somewhat tolerable. Lots of lines are eye-rollers, but they’re delivered with confidence, which negates some of their negative effects. On the whole, however, War Horse is two and a half hours of mediocrity. It tries real hard, but in this case, that’s a bad thing. Its efforts come off as desperate, surely an unintended side effect. Don’t let my negativity fool you, though. This is still a good movie; it’s just not Spielberg good.

War Horse receives 3/5