Movie/TV Reviews

I’m Not There

Susan Granger’s review of “I’m Not There” (The Weinstein Company)

If you’ve ever been curious about experimental cinema, this is it.
Inspired by the tumultuous life and music of Bob Dylan, it’s a kaleidoscopic, non-linear meditation with little coherence. Eccentric Dylan, called by six different names, is played by six different actors – of different races and genders – each representing a phase in his chaotic life.
Dylan’s childhood is embodied by an 11 year-old African-American runaway (Marcus Carl Franklin) calling himself ‘Woody Guthrie’ in homage to the legendary musician. Riding in railroad box-cars with hoboes, he endears himself to them – and others – playing guitar.
Growing up, he becomes cryptic poet Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Wishaw) and Jack (Christian Bale), a ‘protest’ singer in Greenwich Village, whose lover is activist/folksinger Alice Fabian (Julianne Moore); Jack re-appears later as born-again Pastor John.
Then there’s Robbie (Heath Ledger), a New York actor who’s in love with French painter Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). When success overwhelms, he morphs into swaggering, drugged-out Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett) and eventually becomes a reclusive outlaw (Richard Gere).
Writer/director Todd Haynes (“Far From Heaven”), working with writer Oren Kaufman, assumes a knowledge of Dylan that some audience members may lack, so I suspect it will appeal, primarily, to Dylan devotees.
Cate Blanchett’s androgynous performance is most memorable; ironically, she’s the only one who truly captures Dylan’s mannerisms. And Bruce Greenwood scores as an exasperated British journalist voicing my exact thoughts: “I’m not sure I follow.”
The photography and editing are commendable and the actors mainly lip-sync Dylan’s songs, so the soundtrack incorporates the work many musicians. Only at the conclusion does one glimpse the real Dylan on the harmonica. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “I’m Not There” is a bizarre, discordant, surreal 6 – definitely not a mainstream movie.

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Beowulf

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Beowulf” (Paramount Pictures)

Robert Zemeckis’ animated adaptation of the Old English epic is revisionist mythology. It’s the first full-length, ‘motion-capture’ pop art for adults, utilizing an improved version of “The Polar Express” and “Monster House” technology.
As the story begins, the ribald merrymaking in the dining hall of Danish King Hrothgar (Anthony Hopkins) and Queen Wealthow (Robin Wright Penn) ceases when demonic Grendel (Crispin Glover) goes on a rampage. So the mighty Viking warrior Beowulf (Ray Winstone) comes to battle not only Grendel but also, eventually, his fierce, reptilian mother (Angelina Jolie).
While the original poem preserved the uneasy tension between paganism and Christianity, fantasy novelist Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary eschew spirituality for barbaric violence and a sordid ending that should appeal to fans of “300.”
‘Performance capture’ works by putting actors in skintight Lycra suits with sensors across their faces and bodies. Working on a special stage, their ‘live action’ becomes digital animation as they become digital replicas. This opens up new vistas: an actor’s performance, for example, can be fabricated in any physicality. Chunky Ray Winstone never had to ‘pump iron’ to play the hunky hero and Angelina Jolie wasn’t really naked and gilded as Grendel’s seductive mother.
According to Andy Serkis who used this for Gollum in “Lord of the Rings”: “Performance capture will eventually be an unquestioned and integral part of the filmmaking skill.” Top directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson plan use this process, while James Cameron is already incorporating it into his upcoming “Avatar.”
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Beowulf” is a spectacular if soulless 7. Actors no longer have to fear being replaced by computers; technology has become an integral collaborator. And, in the future, talent, not looks, could determine who achieves cinematic stardom.

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Darfur Now

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Darfur Now” (Warner Independent Pictures)

Theodore Braun’s well-intentioned documentary focuses on the horror and atrocities of the government-sponsored mass murders in Darfur, the westernmost region of Sudan. As of 2007, United Nations estimates that 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced from their rural villages in that African nation. Attempting to put a human face on the catastrophe, Braun delineates six different perspectives, showing how the actions of just one person can make a difference to millions.
In Sudan, Ahmed Mohammed Abakar is a displaced farmer who has assumed a leadership position in his chaotic refugee camp, and Hejewa Adam is a young woman who has been training with the armed guerrillas since her infant son was beaten to death by Janjaweed militia.
Elsewhere, Louis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, works tirelessly to investigate war crimes and obtain indictments against the Sudanese.
“Most people care about family and neighborhood but not about the world,” he says.
Ecuadorian aid worker Pablo Recalde struggles to transport donated food by convoy to the starving masses, while Adam Sterling, a USC graduate student, lobbies California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to prevent state funds from going to the culpable Sudanese government.
“Indifference is complicity,” maintains 24 year-old Sterling, who eventually gets a divestment bill passed.
A frequent visitor to refugee camps, Don Cheadle (“Hotel Rwanda”) agrees. Along with John Prendergast, he wrote “Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond,” and he’s is seen here with fellow activist George Clooney.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Darfur Now” is a sympathetic 6. Unfortunately, Braun never captures the emotional heart of the enormous tragedy and fails to ignite the passion he so obviously wants his audience to feel.

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This Christmas

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “This Christmas” (Screen Gems)

Reminiscent of Jodie Foster’s “Home for the Holidays,” this Yuletide-themed saga chronicles an angst-filled, three-day gathering at the Whitfields’ in the West Adams district of Los Angeles.
Since Pa long ago “moved on,” Ma’Dere (Loretta Devine) now lives with a companion, Joe (Delroy Lindo). While the rest of her grown children know about their relationship, it comes as an unwelcome surprise to her son, Quentin Jr. (Idris Elba), a jazz musician who’s been ‘out of town’ for four years and is pursued by two debt-collecting thugs who show up unexpectedly.
Another son, Claude (Columbus Short), comes home in Marine uniform and without his secret (and white) wife (Jessica Stroup). A third son, teenage musician Michael, aptly called Baby (Chris Brown), is still living at home. Daughter Lisa (Regina King) is still with her philandering, chauvinistic, Princeton-educated husband, Malcolm (Laz Alonso); conflicted daughter Mel (Lauren London) is back from college with her beau Devean (Keith Robinson); and successful businesswoman daughter Kelli (Sharon Leal) lets everyone know she’s several rungs up on the corporate ladder and has a charming suitor (Mekhi Phifer).
Screenwriter/director Preston A. Whitmore II (“Crossover,” “Walking Dead”) plays to his intended African-American audience, delineating the emotional baggage each sibling carries through the holidays, as secrets are revealed and family ties are sorely tested.
There are several welcome music-and-dance interludes, including Chris Brown’s rendition of “Try a Little Tenderness” and gospel singer DeNetria Champ’s traditional “O Holy Night.” The soundtrack should sell well. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “This Christmas” is a timely, squabbling 7, a festive soap-opera overstuffed with suds.

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August Rush

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “August Rush” (Warner Bros.)

One of the cinematic blessings of this Thanksgiving season is this heart-warming, life-affirming fantasy from first-time director Kirsten Sheridan (Jim Sheridan’s daughter).
“Listen, can you hear the music?” inquires August Rush (Freddie Highmore). “I can hear it everywhere.I believe in music the way some people believe in fairy tales.”
Rush’s story actually begins 11 years earlier on a rooftop high above Manhattan’s Washington Square, where a lovely cellist, Lyla Novacek (Keri Russell), has an idyllic interlude with an Irish rock singer, Louis Connelly (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers). They arrange to meet again the following night, but her domineering, career-obsessed father (William Saldler) prevents it. Nine months later, the boy who becomes ‘August Rush’ is born, but Lyla’s father tells her the baby died at birth and gives him up for adoption.
Raised as Evan Taylor in an upstate orphanage, he longs for the parents he ‘knows’ are out there somewhere – and since they haven’t found him, he runs away to find them. Lost and alone in Central Park, he befriends a young street guitarist (Leon G. Thomas) who introduces him to the Wizard (Robin Williams), a modern-day Fagin who spots his musical talent and dubs him ‘August Rush.’ But Evan’s an authentic prodigy and winds up conducting a Julliard concert in Central Park. Meanwhile, a conscientious social worker (Terrence Howard) is searching for him, as is heartbroken Lyla, whose father confessed on his deathbed how he’d deceived her.
The screenplay – credited to Nick Castle, James V. Hart and Paul Castro – strains credulity but Mark Mancina’s music makes up for it. Blending rock, classical and gospel, it’s integral as a uniting force. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “August Rush” is an engaging 8, a magical, musical adventure, geared for families.

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Atonement

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Atonement” (Focus Features)

Literary adaptations abound this season but few have been as highly anticipated as the cinematic interpretation of Ian McEwan’s best-seller by screenwriter Christopher Hampton (“Dangerous Liaisons”) and director Joe Wright (“Pride and Prejudice”).
Although the chronology is scrambled as the perspectives shift, the basic story revolves around an incident that takes place at the Tallis country estate in rural southeast England on a sultry summer day back in 1935, when na•ve 13 year-old Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) sees her glamorous older sister, Cecilia (Keira Knightley), with Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), the son of their housekeeper (Brenda Blethlyn).
Imaginative and impetuous, Briony tells a lie which results in Robbie being sent to prison for sexual assault. The rest of the narrative examines the cultural and emotional consequences of that fabrication – from war-ravaged London, where 18 year-old Briony (Romola Garai) seeks redemption as a nurse, and Robbie serves with the British forces in northern France to decades later, as an elderly Briony (Vanessa Redgrave) explains her contrition to a television interviewer (director Anthony Mingella).
Seamus McGarvey’s cinematography is cleverly evocative, particularly during the massive 1940 Dunkirk evacuation, when the camera lingers on a Ferris wheel turning idly, a man exercising on a pommel horse, the slaughtering of horses for food, and exhausted soldiers singing hymns on a bandstand. But there’s an aura of artificiality and a lack of sexual chemistry between Knightley and McAvoy, as the wronged lovers, that results in emotional sterility. It’s as if everything is too self-consciously dramatized and emphasized by Dario Marianelli’s score. Indeed, nothing feels ‘real’ until Vanessa Redgrave’s surprising concluding twist.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Atonement” is an admirable 8 – but the great epic drama seems to have lost its heart somewhere along the way.

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Enchanted

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Enchanted” (Walt Disney)

In the fairy tale land of Andalasia, lovely Princess Giselle (Amy Adams) finds what she thinks is True Love in the form of dashing, troll-hunting Prince Edward (James Marsden). But her wicked future mother-in-law, Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon), is not happy with the match. Indeed, she has sweetly innocent Princess Giselle pushed down a deep, deep well – only to surface from under a manhole cover in real-life Times Square.
Thoroughly bewildered, drenched and distraught as she wanders the harsh, ‘mean streets’ of Manhattan, Giselle is befriended by a cynical divorce attorney, Robert (Patrick Dempsey), and his daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey), who has a passion for fluffy pink and fairy princesses. And things get complicated when Robert’s super-successful girl-friend (Idina Menzel) appears.
Meanwhile, Prince Edward (James Marsden) leaves the animated world to search for his precious fiancŽe, bringing his duplicitous servant, Nathaniel (Timothy Spall) – who is secretly in cahoots with Queen Narissa – and Giselle’s best friend, her chipmunk Pip. Eventually and inevitably, blissful Princess Giselle must choose between storybook Prince Edward and single-dad Robert for her own “happily ever after.”
In this charming, satirical romantic comedy, screenwriter Bill Kelly (“Premonition”) and director Kevin Lima (“Tarzan”) subtly, seamlessly combine classic 2-D Disney animation and CGI with live action – and the cast is perfect. While Amy Adams (“Junebug”) captures the perky optimism of the Princess, it’s Patrick Dempsey’s (Dr. McDreamy on TV’s “Gray’s Anatomy”) reactions that generate laughs, infusing Robert’s low-key character with far more humanity than is written on the pages of the script.
Narrated by Julie Andrews with buoyant songs by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Enchanted” is an endearing, fun-filled 10. This magical fantasy-in-reverse is perhaps the best family-film of the year.

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The Golden Compass

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “The Golden Compass” (New Line Cinema)

When director Chris Weitz (“About a Boy”) chose to jettison the challenging exposition of Philip Pullman’s acclaimed sci-fi fantasy “The Dark Materials,” having it vaguely covered by a narrator (Eva Green), this first installment was doomed to being a confusing, meaningless and inconclusive introduction to a parallel universe.
Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) is a mysteriously privileged 12 year-old placed under the guardianship of wicked, icily manipulative Marisa Coulter (Nicole Kidman), who transports her to the frozen Arctic to find her adventurous uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig). Before she departs, Lyra is given a coveted truth-telling device called a Golden Compass and, along the way, she befriends an ‘aeronaut’ (Sam Elliott), a flying witch (Eva Green) and a polar bear (voiced by Ian McKellen).
Obviously, Lyra is the heroine in what is planned to be two additional movies based on the complicated tale in which Dust is a powerful cosmic substance. In this alternative world, everyone is conjoined with a “daemon” or an animal spirit. Lyra’s is ‘Pan’ (voiced by Freddie Highmore) and, because she is still young, it shape-shifts into different animals as Lyra’s mood changes.
An admitted atheist, Philip Pullman wrote “The Dark Materials” in reaction to the religious allegory in C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia.” Because the theme is critical of the abuse of religion for political power, several Catholic/Christian groups have called it subversive rhetoric since it, ultimately, follows two children who destroy an impostor deity whose Magisterium bears a striking resemblance to Vatican City.
Except for its inventive visuals, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Golden Compass” is a disappointing 5. Light on plot and philosophy, it’s heavy on CGI animals, particularly a spectacular showdown between two armored polar bears.

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Juno

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Juno” (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Could “Juno” could be this year’s “Little Miss Sunshine”? It’s a cynical, yet irresistible serio-comedy about a pregnant teenager with unquenchable optimism.
Much to her horror, precociously hip 16 year-old Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) discovers that her one sexual encounter with nerdy, perpetually bewildered Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) has resulted in an accidental pregnancy.
“It all started with a chair,” Juno explains in a clever voice-over narration, tracing the screwball narrative over a period of four seasons, beginning in the autumn, moving into winter and spring, and concluding in summer.
Informing her best-friend, Leah (Olivia Thirlby), surly yet loving working-class father (J.T. Simmons) and dog-obsessed stepmother (Allison Janney) is simple, compared with arranging a legal adoption with the Lorings (Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman), “a perfect couple” whom she found through a Penny Saver ad. The wealthy ‘yuppified’ Lorings live in a suburban McMansion and yearn for a newborn. But complications arise and Juno must, once again, cope with the weirdly unintended consequences of her actions.
This is the third Hollywood ‘take’ this year on the topic of unexpected pregnancy, following “Knocked Up” and “Waitress.” But sassy writer Diablo Cody (AKA Brook Busey-Hunt, a former stripper-turned-blogger) and director Jason Reitman (“Thank You for Smoking”) defy expectations and stereotyping, treating both adolescent and adult characters with sensitivity and respect.
Ellen Page’s (“Hard Candy”) performance is perfection, delivering Juno’s witty, self-deprecating, playful dialogue with panache, blithely deflecting tinges of humiliation at school over her increasingly obvious physical condition, while sorting out her feelings for her increasingly smitten boyfriend. And – miracle of miracles – the rest of the cast is equally convincing.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Juno” is an endearing, terrific 10 – a coming-of-age crowd-pleaser that’s full of life, laughter and tears.

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Margot at the Wedding

Movie/TV Reviews / Susan

Susan Granger’s review of “Margot at the Wedding” (Paramount Vantage)

Sisterhood is dissected in writer/director Noah Baumbach’s latest domestic drama
From the moment that sharp-tongued, successful short-story writer Margot (Nicole Kidman) arrives in the Hamptons from Manhattan with her reluctant 12 year-old son Claude (Zane Pais) for her free-spirited sister Pauline’s wedding, she makes it clear that – in her opinion – newly pregnant Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is marrying a loser in Malcolm (Jack Black), a whining, creepy, unemployed artist. As the ceremony approaches, one domestic complication crashes into the next, including Margot’s marital turmoil and cranky new neighbors who detest a beloved tree in the backyard.
That tree takes on a metaphysical aspect in that – in one scene – Margot is, literally, stranded atop it, needing to be rescued, and – in a later scene – Malcolm tries to chop it down with a chain-saw, achieving predictably disastrous results.
While Baumbach’s previous “The Squid and the Whale” was funny and touching because it showed acrimonious adults from the adolescent’s point-of-view, this outing has none of its neurotic charm. Instead, it’s filled with the kind of endless, petty squabbling that gives family occasions a bad name.
One’s aggressive and the other’s passive, but neither sister is even remotely interesting to watch or listen to. So it’s excruciating, at times, to have to spend 93 minutes in their company. Exquisite Nicole Kidman manages to make herself look downright dowdy in a brown wig, while usually scowling, snarling Jennifer Jason Leigh forces an occasional smile – or perhaps a twitch.
Since Baumbach utilizes primarily close-ups with a hand-held camera, showing no interest in the art of cinematography, and the pervasive mood is relentless angst. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Margot at the Wedding” is an unhappy, mind-numbing 4 – a dysfunctional family diatribe.

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