Sweeney Todd - Review

Sweeping, tragic, epic and strange, Sweeney Todd is, without reservations, one of the best films of the year. Blessed with the oddly perfect pairing of director Tim Burton’s gloomy visuals and Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant music and lyrics, it’s a clever adaptation of a notoriously difficult Broadway play. While remaining respectful to the source material, Burton has created something very much his own. It’s grisly and darkly funny in the way we expect from him, but also more emotionally resonant and genuine than perhaps anything he’s done in his career.

Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) was a happy barber in London, blessed with a beautiful wife and child who, unfortunately, were also admired by the loathsome Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman). Turpin sent Barker to an Australian prison on false charges and took wife Lucy and infant daughter Johanna as his own. Lucy poisoned herself, leaving Johanna as Turpin’s ward. Back in London after 15 years in exile, Barker, having renamed himself Sweeney Todd, is out for revenge.

The film begins as Sweeney arrives on a ship into a grim, ghostly London, taking leave of shipmate Anthony (Jamie Campbell Bower). The camera then flies through the grimy streets, pausing to take note of clusters of prostitutes or drunks, while the music (but not lyrics) from “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd” plays in the background. It’s an exhilarating ride, and Burton’s first opportunity to announce that no, you’re not in the theater any more.

Sweeney soon pays a visit to Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), his former landlady who sells meat pies from the shop below his old flat. She’s preserved Sweeney’s razors for him all these years, and with them in hand he announces “My arm is complete again.” He sets up shop as a barber with the single goal of bringing Turpin beneath his blade. In the meantime though, a run-in with arrogant rival barber Signor Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen) and a just-missed opportunity to shave Turpin unhinges Sweeney a bit. “We all deserve to die,” he tells Mrs. Lovett, and he sets out to cut the throats of as many men as he can. And with the price of meat what it is, Mrs. Lovett reasons, why waste all the material that’s already in the shop?

That is, forgive me, the meat of Sweeney Todd’s story, along wit a subplot that finds Anthony in love with teenage Johanna (Jayne Wisener) and conspiring to spirit her away from Turpin’s grasp. Anthony and Johanna’s parts have been significantly reduced from the musical, with several songs and scenes eliminated entirely. The effect is interesting: it shortens the story, which had to happen (the stage version is 3 hours long!), and throws more attention to the dark, bloody antics of Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett. There is love in the air, yes, but it’s overpowered by the stench of blood.

As with any Burton production the visuals are the thing here, and they’re spectacular. Sweeney’s London is a monochromatic swirl of black and gray, right down to Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett themselves, pale as ghosts with eyes rimmed black. The muted colors never feel tired, especially when those colors start to be complemented by bloody reds. All the interiors are cramped and filthy, and the streets are even worse; you’re sucked into the vortex with Sweeney, a world with no color and no hope.

Depp and Bonham Carter moor the gothic story with their terrific performances, jumping into their parts with complete disregard to their lack of singing chops. They accomplish the more important task of making what could be caricatures elementally, achingly human. Depp’s Sweeney is as wronged as the poor saps who suffer his close shaves, and you root for him even as he rejects every moral code he has set for himself. And a surprisingly restrained Bonham Carter is a wondrous Mrs. Lovett, in love with a man who can’t see her and willing to do whatever it takes to win him—cannibalism included.

The supporting cast is superb down the line, particularly Campbell Bower and Wisener, with youthful good looks and powerhouse singing voices that nicely contrast the decrepit, doomed pie makers. Rickman is, as always, deliciously villainous, and his scenes with Depp practically emit sparks. Timothy Spall, as Turpin’s unctuous assistant Beadle Bamford, is always welcome, but it’s Baron Cohen who steals the show as Signor Pirelli—he’s a consistent delight in his entire short-lived part.

Burton’s vision of Sweeney Todd allows room for a little humor, particularly Mrs. Lovett’s “By the Sea” song, which envisions her wedding to Sweeney in a candy-colored world, though they both remain pale-faced and dour. When it’s time to turn to tragedy, though, Burton holds nothing back, and ends the film on a note of such shocking darkness you almost beg for an epilogue.

The bloodletting in the final third of the film is rough, but with one glorious exception, you always see it coming, and it likely won’t get in the way of anyone who could handle Javier Bardem’s air gun in No Country for Old Men. The purists should be satisfied that Sondheim’s music is largely intact, and performed ably and energetically; movie fans across the board should be thrilled that a great musical drama can be turned into a great film, a film as gripping and heartbreaking as any in which characters don’t burst into song. Sweeney Todd is often considered Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece; it’s too early to say, but it may be Tim Burton’s as well.

August Rush - Review

August Rush is one of those rare movies that made me dislike it, then won be back over before the end credits roll. It’s not common to see a movie accomplish that roller-coaster ride that turns me away from the picture and then picks me back up, but somehow the story manages it and left me a giddy, sappy mess by the end.

The odd title of the movie comes from the lead character: a young orphan who sneaks away from the orphanage to find his real parents. The kid is convinced that he is still connected to his parents through a mysterious tune that comes to him through just about anything that makes sound, so he sneaks away from the orphanage and into the big city, where he is “adopted” by Wizard (Robin Williams), the leader of a collection of street performing children. Wizard sees the child’s gift for music, which he wants to use for his own personal gain. He renames the kid “August Rush,” and tries to manage the kid’s career. Meanwhile, fate is reuniting August’s biological parents, a concert cellist (Keri Russell) and a rock musician (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), who actually only got together for one night eleven years ago; the night when August was conceived.

As a film that theorizes about a unifying theme in music, August Rush has a bit of a surreal edge to it. The movie breaks occasionally from narrative storytelling to reveal the music that comes from August’s world in slightly surreal editing. It’s slightly gimmicky, especially when you consider that acts like Stomp have been using everyday items for percussion sounds for years now. Oddly, as August actually starts to learn about music, these vignettes become less common. One could almost infer that the more August learns about music, the less he hears it, although I don’t think that’s the point; I think it just coincides with a need for the central story to become the primary focus. I think it could have been handled a little better though, mostly by removing some of the sequences earlier in the film. August hears this tune everywhere. We get it in the first few minutes of the movie, so hammering it home in semi-surreal sequences can be a bit obtrusive.

Of course, you can’t have a movie about music without a decent score, and August Rush’s Mark Mancini delivers one of the most intoxicating soundtracks I’ve heard in recent years. It’s a pretty tall order to ask a composer to come up with a sound for music that sounds like it connects to all humans – the music we’ve all heard somewhere in our dreams but never can truly recreate. Mancini lives up to the idea however, with one of the most intoxicating scores this year. It’s a soundtrack that felt so right, both its use in the picture and on a musical level, that I had to race out and pick up a copy. I can’t offer higher praise than that.

The big downside of the movie is that it is completely derivative. There is almost nothing in here that you’ve not seen before in almost identical stories. Child separated from parents, hoping something in the world will reunite them: An American Tail. Street urchins held together by a cruel gang-leader: Oliver Twist. The notion that some unseen “force” unifies the world: Star Wars. The talented Freddie Highmore (Finding Neverland) even seems to be channeling Haley Joel Osment from about a decade ago. Just about everything in August Rush has been done before, but somehow, it still works and the deeper the movie gets, the more it draws you in to the point that you can look past the derivative nature of the film and enjoy it.

There’s no way to avoid saying it: August Rush is a “feel-good movie” with a bit of a fairy tale element with the story of the forlorn orphan seeking out his parents and finding a world of instant success along the way. Fans of sappy feel-good flicks should love it. It’s not tremendously deep, but it’s still entertaining despite the feeling that all of this has appeared before somewhere else. Even if the story lacks originality, at least the music is enjoyable.

The Invasion - Review

Even after 50 years and three movie adaptations, Jack Finney’s short story “The Body Snatchers” is still irresistible fodder for anyone wanting to make a political statement in the guise of creepy aliens. Even those who don’t remember the Cold War/Red Scare paranoia of 1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or the Nixonian anti-government fear of the 1970’s film of the same name, are familiar with pod people, alien beings that attack and replace humans in order to completely restructure the human race.

With this summer’s The Invasion, the times have changed a bit, and not remotely for the better. Pod people have become gelatinous cellular alien blob somethings, and instead of killing humans and growing exact replicas in pods in the backyard, they change the host human’s DNA from the inside as they sleep, leaving that person to wake up looking exactly the same, but working for the alien agenda. Despite adhering to many of the details of the original two films, right down to the characters’ names, all attempts to update this property and give it real-life meaning fall completely flat thanks to a meandering plot and an overwhelming lack of vision.

Nicole Kidman plays our persistently human heroine Carol Bennell, with Daniel Craig as her sidekick and love interest. Craig is a doctor who, along with a lab assistant played by Jeffrey Wright, helps Carol wise up to the fact that everyone around them has become emotionless automatons, working tirelessly to transform all remaining humans by (in a disgusting touch) vomiting alien goo into their mouths. Carol soon realizes that her son Oliver—off for the weekend with the new, alien version of his father—is not only in danger of being alien-ized, but may possess the immunity to the alien virus necessary to reverse its effects. And so the chase begins.

Reports say that director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s original cut of the film was further edited and re-shot by the Wachowski Brothers (of The Matrix fame), which might explain the completely disjointed message The Invasion is sending us. The “pod people” concept has always made a great allegory, but this time no one can seem to decide what they want to say. There’s an obvious message about falling “asleep” and waking up not caring about anything or anyone, a slap on the wrist to a culture perfectly willing to ignore current strife. At the same time, the aliens’ lack of emotion results in the end of wars—real wars, like Iraq and Darfur—repeatedly shown via CNN reports. Carol clearly believes that humanity is worth saving regardless, but how about the Iraqi citizens who just achieved peace at the small cost of a few strands of alien DNA? It seems insane for any director to let us root for the aliens, but when it’s the lives of millions of real Sudanese vs. Nicole Kidman and her low-rent Haley Joel Osment son, the choice is easy.

All of the pseudo-intellectual posturing and mixed messages would be tolerable were the film not so damn slow. The main characters spend forever figuring out what the audiences knows within the first minutes of the film, and the last 45 minutes are stuffed with car chases, set-piece explosions and relentlessly-flashy editing that substitute for actual suspense. Because these pod people don’t actually kill their victims, just alter them, they’re not nearly as threatening as they ought to be; a twist thrown in at the end that threatens Oliver’s life simply doesn’t matter so late in the game.

Kidman does her best in an action hero role, but casting her as the only human in a world full of emotionless aliens is almost a joke. She’s one of the most expressionless actresses out there, and is far better at imitating the aliens—as she must do to walk safely among them—than being a real person. Craig does better, miraculously pulling off the “ignored best friend love interest” role despite the James Bond lurking within him, but never gets the attention he deserves.

Despite a classic premise, some talented actors and a few good ideas,

The Invasion is a snore-inducing mess. Though we look to the 50’s and 70’s versions of this story for insights into our national identity at the time, I can’t imagine The Invasion will even be remembered at all. At least, I hope not.

The Reaping - Review

What hath God wrought? That’s the question the poster asked of me as I walked into The Reaping. Once the movie was over I still wasn’t exactly sure what it was God was supposed to have wrought, but I can tell you exactly what the filmmakers hath wrought: a steaming pile of crap.

Somewhere in Hollywood there must be a special place where desperate filmmakers go to get ideas. In this place there is sort of slot machine with three windows and a giant lever arm. Each window has the possibility of showing the title of some past film, some concept that can be rehashed. These desperate filmmakers hand over their dignity and respectability at the door in exchange for a token, which no doubt has Uwe Boll’s face on it. Dropping the token into the slot machine and pulling the lever, they anxiously await their results. This time around twin brothers and writing team Carey and Chad Hayes (the guys who hath wrought House of Wax) pulled the lever and received the inspired combination of The Ten Commandments, The Omen and The Skeleton Key. The resulting script that the Hayes brothers concoct is a horror film nightmare, but not in a good way.

Katherine Winter (Hilary Swank) used to believe in miracles. As an ordained priest she was so convinced of her purpose in life that she followed a calling and took her daughter and husband to a remote, and deeply cultic, African village to serve as a missionary. During her year stay the region experiences a severe drought and the locals sacrifice Winter’s family to appease their gods. Her faith shattered, Winter rejects the idea that there is a God and launches into a lifelong pursuit of debunking so-called miraculous occurrences.

Turns out she’s pretty good at it too. During her many years traveling the world to places where people say miracles are happening, she has discovered a logical and scientific explanation for each and every one of them. One day, while she’s giving a lecture to her college class (apparently they teach Miracle Debunking 101 at LSU), a man named Doug from the tiny bayou town of Haven (David Morrissey) shows up and asks for her help. Haven is beginning to experience what some of its painfully zealous citizens believe is a revisitation of the Biblical ten plagues and he needs someone to figure out what’s really going on.

At first Winter is hesitant but when Doug explains that the townsfolk believe the plagues will end if they kill a little girl (AnnaSophia Robb) who they think is causing the plagues because she murdered her brother, Winter is only too happy to step in and rescue the girl by proving the events aren’t divine intervention. With her Bible believing associate Ben (Idris Elba) in tow, Winter sets out to prove that a river of blood, infestations of various pests, and the mysterious death of otherwise healthy cattle all have a perfectly logical explanation.

As Winter and company are out doing their thing, director Stephen Hopkins does his best to find places to frighten his audience. From time to time he manages something gasp-worthy, but in general he’s forced to fall back on the sorts of gory and creepy stuff that are easy takes when dealing with Biblical plagues. Things like watching lice scatter over children’s scalps as their teachers shave their heads to eliminate an infestation will make your skin crawl, but the most bloodcurdling thing about the movie is the way it hobbles through its ache-inducing storyline. The visual effects are rather well done, but that’s a small concession when the setups are shallow and the scares are predictable. A slightly surprising plot twist at the end nearly makes watching the hour and a half long build up worthwhile, but Hopkins throws it all away with an absurd sequel-setup finale that offers the biggest scare of all: the thought that they’re interested in making The Reaping 2.

Apparently Hilary Swank has had enough of making interesting, meaningful films and what with a second Academy Award under her belt has decided it’s time to go back to making drivel. I would have hoped The Core was a fluke in her otherwise noteworthy career, but I guess not. She should be setting a better example for her young co-star AnnaSophia Robb, whose talent is also frittered away on this film. It’s not to say both don’t do a decent job with their roles, but that kind of compliment is pointless when the roles might just as well have been played by Paris Hilton and a child-sized mannequin with a running stunt double.

It’s not a secret that I’m no lover of horror movies, at least not the frenetic gore fests that are churned out by the roll these days. But I do enjoy a good scare, especially when it’s woven into a good story. The Reaping offers neither. It might have been better titled The Weeping. I know that’s what I felt like doing for most of the show.