Mud (***1/2)

Who’d have expected to see Matthew McConaughey in a thoughtful coming-of-age story set on the Arkansas/Mississippi border? The titles of Fool’s Gold and Failure to Launch might almost have been metaphors for his career, although he’s mixed in some good movies too. Still, with his turn as a male stripper in Magic Mike, his upcoming role in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, and even his small part in Bernie, he seems to a have been choosing a higher percentage of noteworthy projects lately. (The July/August 2013 Atlantic includes the actor in a list of “Once-Discredited Ideas Now Staging Comebacks.”) McConaughey is the biggest name here, and plays the title character, but not actually the main one. Instead, Mud becomes the vehicle through which an idealistic 14-year old (Tye Sheridan), Ellis begins to understand the complexities of adult relationships, and romantic ones.

Ellis’s parents are threatening to split; for him, the primary meaning of this will be having to move from his home by the river and become a “townie.” A more programmatic plot might have made Mud into a wise father figure imparting wisdom. But wise men are not often found living alone on an island, where Ellis and his best friend find him. Why Mud is there, and what/who he’s waiting for, becomes clearer as the movie goes on, even as his true character becomes murkier. (His name stays mysterious.) Mud does impart wisdom, but subtly. The ending is probably less subtle, and less ambiguous, than I’d have preferred, but I suspect I’d be in the minority, and it’s certainly not awful.


IMDb link


viewed 6/13/13 and reviewed 6/14–17/13

Django (***1/2)

If you’ve seen Inglorious Basterds, you’ll have seen Quentin Tarentino’s template for his anti-slavery saga, set in 1858–1859. Not that the year matters much, since historical fidelity is not Tarentino’s aim. Normally I’d be irked by the use of dynamite (invented in the 1860s), or the possibly fictional “mandingo fighting,” in which slaves are pitted against each other in fights to the death. But anyone who saw Hitler murdered in Inglorious Basterds should not express dismay upon seeing Jamie Foxx, as the freed slave Django, wearing modern-looking sunglasses here. No, the kind of authenticity Tarentino strives for is not to American history, but to movie history. Paying homage to both 1960s spaghetti westerns and 1970s blaxploitation films,  he has the advantages of bigger budgets, top-notch actors, and, mostly, better scripts. He has even appropriated the “Django” theme song for from a similarly titled Italian western whose star, Franco Nero, has a cameo, music being one of the things that is period inappropriate. The liberal use of a certain racial epithet seems pretty accurate, though.

 

As with a gunfighter in a spaghetti western or blaxploitation film, Tarentino is all about the underdog hero, and specifically about turning the powerless victims of oppression into their own powerful saviors. Django begins as a cowering slave purchased by a white bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz), Schultz, due to his ability to recognize Schulz’s quarry. An enlightened German immigrant, Schultz makes Django his partner and agrees to help him find the wife (Kerry Washington) from whom he has been separated. By the end of the film, Django has transcended race, history, and the law to become the most powerful man on the screen. This may not be entirely realistic, but as modern fable it is certainly entertaining.

 

Tarentino also believes in the exact thing that makes me uncomfortable about his films, which is cathartic violence. In theory, I don’t entirely agree with Tarentino’s view that movie violence, which he calls “fun,” has no commonality with real violence. I say nothing as to whether one actually causes the other; however, in highlighting the inhumanity of the villain so as to justify the violence of the hero, a filmmaker puts us, the audience, in the position of being perpetrators. To the extent that we suspend our disbelief, as film asks us to, this feeling is real. Still, in making this objection, in this case I feel a little like someone protesting the violence in a Roadrunner cartoon. In point of fact, I have seen much more explicit violence. In consideration of filmgoers’ sensibilities, not his own, Tarentino implies rather than directly shows the two most sadistic acts. Notably, in each case slaves are the victims. In this and other ways, he manages the trick of making most of the violence seem cartoonish, and much of the film comedic, while making clear that the degradations and cruelty visited upon slaves were no joke. To the extent that filmgoers are disturbed by the movie, it will likely be because he makes the black victims into real people. Quantitatively, Django and Schulz perpetrate most of the violence themselves, and it is often more explicit, but it’s less likely to bother anyone.

 

Tarentino calls his film an “adventure,” and doubtless it’s the incorporation of action and violence that creates their appeal beyond the art house, but it’s his vividly drawn characters, superior dialogue and ability to create tension in even the calmest scenes that makes them memorable for film buffs. As the plot requires Django and Schultz to pretend to be something other than the bounty hunters they are, the early sequences play out like a series of set pieces. Foxx is perfectly fine as Django, Leonardo DiCaprio is a compellingly villainous plantation master, and Samuel L. Jackson is frequently funny as the butler to DiCaprio’s characrter, a slave who truly loves his master. But Waltz gets most of the best lines, as he did as the villain of Inglorious Basterds. “Speak English, goddamit,” says one of the slavers, shortly before being shot by Schultz. The way that Waltz drags out words like “acolytes,” seeming to emphasize each syllable, seems to heighten the tension in every line.

 

Inevitably, though, linguistic subtlety gives way to catharisis. I would argue that the two heroes lose sight of their goal (rescuing Django’s wife), and that Schultz acts out of character, for the sake of generating the sort of spectacular ending that is clearly required. This takes another half hour, and it’s not uninteresting, or unfunny, but makes the movie feels slightly padded and, even within the bounds of Tarentino’s unreality, strained. Nonetheless, I look forward to his next movie, in which, no doubt, some Chinese women and a group of former Korean “comfort women” team up to castrate thousands of Japanese men during the Rape of Nanking. Oh, the fun to be had righting the world’s historical wrongs.

IMDb link

 

viewed 1/20/12 1:50 pm at Rave Ritz Center 16 NJ

Jonah Hex (**)

Not only is this not the season’s best action movie, but it’s not even the best one to draw on war-on-terror analogies for its tired plot. At least Prince of Persia had an exotic setting and some swordplay. It even had more of a story, despite not having this effort’s nearly 30-year-old DC Comics pedigree on which to draw. (Hex creator John Albano died before production on the movie began.) The particulars of the title character (Josh Brolin) are that the right side of face is horribly scarred and that he can communicate with the dead. The scars come from an encounter with the film’s villain, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich); the power to talk to the dead—not in the comics version—presumably comes from Neveldine & Taylor, the screenwriting duo (Crank) credited here. Without this fantasy element, the movie would simply be a bad western. With it, it has some creepy sequences in which Hex raises the dead, only to abuse them some more.

There’s more creepiness, but aside from atmospherics and the crisp direction provided by Jimmy Hayward, there’s little else to recommend. The plot is more than a little reminiscent of Wild Wild West, the Will Smith-starring turkey that similarly featured a Confederate-sympathizing villain, a superweapon, and President Grant. Neither villain nor hero are memorable, though Brolin tries, conveying the literal and figurative wounds of a man forced to watch his family burn to death. In a scene meant as dark comedy, Hex shoots a man for asking about his scar. The government comes calling with an opportunity at revenge, and he becomes a good guy.

I guess, it being 1876, Turnbull and his henchmen haven’t seen enough action-thrillers to know that you shouldn’t stop and say things like “you're not going anywhere” rather than quickly finish off the guy you’ve just wounded. However, the more sophisticated 21st-century moviegoer may feel justified at groaning at such clichés. Though Megan Fox has a supporting role as a tough prostitute (and love interest), there aren’t enough tricks to make Jonah Hex anything more than yet another action movie sporting an anti-terrorism patina while reveling in the spectacle of mindless violence.

IMDB link

viewed 6/16/10 at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and reviewed 6/17–19/10