| 22 February 2012
YOUR CALLon Tower Heist, the action caper comedy from Brett Ratner. Playing off of the Wall Street collapse and bail out, Tower Heist focuses on the residents of an exclusive New York high rise populated by the super rich. Ben Stiller plays Josh Kovacs, the building’s manager, who instructs employees in the art of ass-kissing. Josh discovers, however, that Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), one of the building’s most prominent residents, has swindled the building workers out of their pension fund. He launches a scheme to “steal back” the money.
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Working off of an improbable story, with improbable character alliances who come up with an improbable plan that turns into an improbable heist with an improbable ending, Tower Heist doesn’t really work as an action movie. But a strong comedic cast, led by Stiller, and strongly supported by Gabourey Sidibe, Michael Pena (who plays a character so dumb he’s smart), and the welcome return of funny Eddie Murphy (last seen about 10 years ago) help the film along as a laugher. Not all the jokes work, and Casey Affleck as Stiller’s bumbling brother-in-law and Matthew Broderick as a wimpy failed investment banker don’t add much. Ditto a faux-romance between Stiller and Tea Leoni as an FBI agent investigating Alda, which comes across as filler.
Putting aside the problems with the caper story, there are sincerely funny moments of crisp dialogue, and a number of sight gags during the actual heist which work well. Ratner smartly gives his film fast pacing and a quick resolution, ignoring plot holes that, even if fixed, wouldn’t save the action story anyway, and instead focusing on getting us to the next laugh. This was a fun movie, albeit nothing special.
SKIP The Mighty Macs, based on the true story of the 1971 Immaculata College girls’ basketball team, and their unlikely run to a national championship. Let’s face it, if you’ve seen one inspirational sports movie, you’ve seen them all, and The Mighty Macs draws heavily on Hoosiers, Glory Road and Remember the Titans with a little Sister Act thrown in for comic relief. I only decided to watch this picture because a) Women’s basketball is so underrepresented in film that I figured it deserved a chance; b) the main character, Cathy Rush (Carla Gugino) grew up about a mile from where I live so I wanted to catch the local color (props for one scene in which legendary Bill Campbell is calling a Sixers game on the radio); and c) I love movies set in the ‘60s or ‘70s.
Beyond my personal particular interest, there is little reason to watch here. The story has been done to death - the Macs are awful before they are mighty - and there are no real surprising twists or compelling characters. Gugino isn’t very credible as some great motivational coach, and she loses the spotlight several times to Marley Shelton, who plays a young nun working as her assistant. The film takes no advantage at all of it’s setting - there is virtually no commentary on the burgeoning women’s movement of the early ‘70s, and The Mighty Macs doesn’t even feature a decent soundtrack. The basketball sequences, at least, play out fairly realistically.
Withing nothing new or novel to offer, The Mighty Macs is for hardcore fans of the inspirational sports drama only.
SEE Martha Marcy May Marlene, the oustanding debut effort from writer/director Sean Durkin. In Martha Marcy May Marlene, we meet Martha (Elizabeth Olsen), who is a member of a commune that we eventually learn is really a cult. Martha escapes and is reunited with her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson) and brother-in-law Ted (Hugh Dancy). Through flashbacks, we see how Martha first came to be part of the cult (naturally, it wasn’t so cult-y at the beginning); through well-written dialogue, we get some sense of why she was susceptible to such a group. Through Olsen’s amazing performance, we’re left to decide for ourselves whether she suffered more damage while under the control of patriarchal cult leader Patrick (John Hawkes) or whether there is some other cause for her dysfunction.
Cult following: Hawkes, with Olsen
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Fledgling director Durkin engages in a fantastic use of disjointed sound and lighting to help put us inside Martha’s confused head. The dialogue rings true, and the storytelling is deliberate, although there is some lacking foundation on why anyone would join Patrick’s cult in the first place, and how Martha steeled herself to leave. The depiction of life in the commune are wonderfully layered, mixing the mundane with the sinister, and never coming across as over the top.
The best part of this film, however, lies in the performances. Olsen is magnificent - honest and believable but never melodramatic, and helps drive home a sense of surrealism simply through her movements and reactions. Paulson and Dancy are very good in support - demonstrating balanced feelings of concern and frustration with the enigmatic Martha.
Loaded with squirm in your seat moments that stop well short of sensationalism, Martha Marcy May Marlene is a great picture that gets to your emotions without exploiting them. I’m looking forward to more from this filmmaker and from Elizabeth Olsen.
SEE J. Edgar, Clint Eastwood’s biopic about former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Spanning five decades, this film works well as a character study, although its historical story is told from the highly myopic viewpoint of Hoover himself, and while in many respects the film is a balanced look at Hoover, it’s also so character driven that the expansive narrative (and 137 minute run time) seem excessive at times.
As Hoover, Leonardo DiCaprio is outstanding. The character is many times over a conflict turned against itself, and DiCaprio is able to show us how Hoover was ambitious and unscrupulous, but clever and insightful. A prescient and powerful figure in shaping the growth of law enforcement and criminal investigation, but at the same time a petty, self-aggrandizing megalomaniac.
DiCaprio as Hoover
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As the historical text plays out in the background, the film’s primary focus is on Hoover’s relationships with his stern mother (Judi Densch), his longtime second-in-command Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) and his even longer time personal secretary, confidant and kindred spirit Helen Gand (Naomi Watts). DiCaprio and Watts have a rare chemistry for characters with no romantic relationship, and it is their scenes together that make up many of the film’s best moments. Less true is the uneasy companionship between Tolson and Hoover, and I never quite bought into how these two characters meshed in the film. Densch is withering and severe, and while some of the scenes between her and DiCaprio feel stilted, the characters themselves have that kind of relationship to begin with.
J. Edgar is worth a viewing for DiCaprio’s and Watts’ performances, and for the superior way the characters and settings are shown through the decades - the aging makeup is seamless and the overall presentation of the various time frames in which the film is set feel authentic at all times. The story itself falls a little short of compelling, but never fails to hold interest, and although the picture runs long, it never runs slow. It’s worth a look.
