Maps to the Stars (2014)-I watched this because I remember it coming out the year that Julianne Moore won her Oscar for the other film she was in (Still Alice). I also distinctly remember this being in the comedy/musical category of the Golden Globes, but wait, this film is directed by David Cronenberg?! Did he decide to mix things up and direct a light-hearted comedy? Nope, this is a macabre, twisted story and the Hollywood Foreign Press got it wrong as usual.
This film is extremely similar tonally to both Robert Altman's The Player and David Lynch's Mullholland Drive in deriving not just satire but genuine horror at the shallowness that pervades Hollywood life. Julianne Moore plays a has-been actress who isn't necessarily malicious but she's pretty soulless in her desperate quest for relevance. She's paralleled by a self-help guru, played by John Cusack, who's son (Evan Bird) is an extremely bratty child actor. There's also an opportunistic burn victim who represents the ingeneue looking to make her mark on Hollywood (think Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street if she chanted Wiccan prayers whenever she passed along the Hollywood Walk of Fame). The only halfway decent character might be the limo driver played by Robert Pattinson although he comes off as a little devoid. There's also a Hollywood director who will trade parts for sex, an entire clique of vapid child stars who enable Evan Bird's character, and a rival for a part that displays the kind of shallow flattery that lets us know in an instant just how fake this town is.
Like "The Player" which shifts gears midway from its broad ensemble satire to the perfect crime; or "Mullholland Drive" which segues to a Lesbian love story than a mobius strip; this film's satirical elements get overwhelmed midway for a more gruesome tragedy which makes the ending feel like something that's been tacked on to cover a superfluous detour from what was originally a better film.
Gifted (2017)-What a wonderful gem of a film. McKenna Grace (who was also in I Tonya AND How to be a Latin Lover in the same year, what a busybody of an 11 year old) plays a math prodigy who's mother committed suicide due to trying too hard to being a math genius. Her grandmother (Lindsay Duncan, the nasty critic in Birdman) was also a math genius and tries to get her granddaughter's custody so she can put her in "service to humanity" solving big math problems. On the other side of this custody hearing is McKenna's uncle who is an incredibly handsome and free-spirited Chris Evans. When he talks about how he went to go get laid the night that his sister committed suicide, it comes off as an odd humble brag.
No worries, Chris Evans isn't just a piece of meat. He's very solid here and his relationship to his niece carries a whollop of sentiment. This is also the first time I've really liked Jenny Slate, and the two are so cute together. I couldn't imagine Jenny Slate being a teacher somewhere and not having half the dads on parent-teacher night not massively crushing on her.
This is a film that is about the kinds of issues with genius, parenting, and growing up in an untraditional environment that you don't see often enough and the film has done its homework on these issues. It's also rare to see a film portrayed so richly from a child's point of view.
Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)-If your favorite off-the-grid indie rock band that you like to gloat about at parties because only you know about them were anthropomorphized into a film about the teenage experience, you'd get this film about a teenage outcast who's magically rescued from having to sit alone in lunch (the horror!) by a manic pixie dream set of siblings (MPDG played by Emma Watson and MPD Gay Best Friend played by Ezra Miller) who don't seem to have any basis in reality. That they would bond with him so instantaneously and unconditionally is a bit off as is the fact that they are step-siblings who voluntarily spend that much time with each other. Were they best friends first who parent-trapped their respective mom and dad?
Logan Lerman, who one year prior played Renaissance France's greatest heartthrob, D'artagnan in the Three Musketeers remake, plays the ugly duckling but he's not particularly convincing. He's obviously good looking so he comes off as a broody James Dean type instead. Perhaps if his part were switched with Ezra Miller, then we'd be getting somewhere.
Lerman's character, Charlie, plays into every stereotype for an indie hero: Wanna be writer, self-realization through indie music, crushing hard on an unattainable girl, etc. While the film has enough verisimilitude to the teenage experience to make it engaging, that doesn't mean that Charlie is by any means original.
Attempting to parse out a dense novel into a two-hour film shouldn't be this hard considering the writer of the novel is the screenwriter and director, but there seem to be a lot of threads that are massively under-resolved. Charlie deals with schizophrenia and black-outs and a molestation story line that all gets so little screen time that since it comes off as an afterthought that was thrown into the script, it takes away from the gravity of any of these serious issues the film is trying to pull us through.
He also has a sister (Vampire Diaries' Nina Dobrev) who's interesting but she has so little screentime, she might as well have been cut to tighten the narrative, and there's a brother too but uh,, what? I don't even remember that character anymore.
In terms of tangent, the film is best served by realizing that Charlie isn't the most interesting character in the story. Patrick's (the manic pixie gay best friend) love affair with a closeted jock or the reveal that Emma Watson's character, Sam, is trying to overcome a past of sexual abuse and promiscuity, are both lines that do get a mention here or there.
No comments:
Post a Comment