Clouds of Sils Maria (2015)

Star Powered: Juliette Binoche (foreground) and
Kristen Stewart (background) in "Clouds of Sils Maria."

Clouds of Sils Maria

⭐⭐⭐½

In “Clouds of Sils Maria”—the title is a reference to a majestic cloud phenomenon that takes place within a valley of the Swiss Alps—Juliette Binoche plays Maria Enders, a highly accomplished, somewhat supercilious film and theater actress, now in her forties, faced with the chance to work with an acclaimed stage director in a remake of a story she did many years earlier. The story, called Maloja Snake, told of a lesbian relationship that develops between Helena, an emotionally damaged older actress, and Sigrid, her cruelly manipulative younger assistant.

But complications cause Maria to hesitate. Indeed, when she first performed Maloja Snake, she played the role of the youthful, empowered Sigrid to such significant fanfare that it launched the career of what was then an 18-year-old ingénue. Now, the director wants her to play the more fragile and victimized Helena, a switch she reluctantly agrees to even though it plunges her into a soul-searching examination of the past and present.

For Maria, the role of Sigrid reflected a position of vitality and strength. The difficultly she faces in taking on the mature woman’s role suggests not just a desperation to hold on to her past and a fear of growing older—it’s also a reflection of the artistic landscape itself naturally tilting towards youth.

Meanwhile, Kristen Stewart plays Maria’s whip-smart, hard-working assistant, Valentine, who keeps her up to date on the latest scuttlebutt in the industry while helping her navigate changes in technology. Valentine encourages Maria to play Helena, but then is pulled into her boss’s strange, whirling existential crisis when she rehearses the play reading Sigrid’s part.

A multilayed, mesmerizing study of behavior, acting and the changes that impact people through time, “Clouds of Sils Maria” was expertly helmed by the French writer/director Olivier Assayas, who seems to delight in toying with fundamental questions about psychology and artistic interpretation. Is Maria succumbing to age by playing Helena? Does she become jealous of Valentine for “becoming” Sigrid? Does Maria’s reading of Helena’s part alter the tone of the material? These and many more are explored to teasing and tantalizing effect.

But perhaps the greatest pleasure of the film is watching two sublime actresses—Binoche, the beautiful, commanding French actress still at the peak of her powers; and Stewart, the largely misunderstood but discerning and increasingly formidable young star—trade tense moves, facial expressions and bracing pauses in a classic game of on screen chess. Moreover, Chloe Grace Moretz also impresses in her few scenes.

There’s a paucity of movies with interesting roles for women, but “Clouds of Sils Maria” is not one of them.

A Ghost Story (2017)

Casey Affleck is the specter at the center of "A Ghost Story."

"A Ghost Story"

⭐⭐⭐

Written and directed by David Lowry, “A Ghost Story” features a young couple, played by Casey Affleck and Roomey Mara, living in a modest, one-story house in a sleepy, nondescript suburb close to Dallas. We don’t learn much about them and they don’t say a whole lot, but the laconic lovebirds gain our affection, as they snuggle up adoringly in bed, waking only to check out mysterious noises coming from the piano in the living room.

One day, the soft romance is abruptly shattered when Affleck is killed in a car crash at the end of his own dusty, gravel driveway. They say most accidents happen close to home, but really? Mara goes to the hospital to identify her husband’s body—in an excruciating, subtly powerful scene that notably avoids the usual maudlin trappings—taking one last look before gently covering his head with a sheet.

As Mara walks despondently out of the hospital morgue, Lowry keeps his camera still at the end of the room and—in one of the movie’s several striking visual gestures—holds the shot of Affleck’s lifeless body for several moments, suggesting the dark, horribly incomprehensible, infinite stillness of death.

Startlingly and almost comically, the stillness is interrupted when Affleck’s corpse wakes up and slowly walks out of the room; his sheet suddenly appearing with two black holes for eyes, as if a live-action Charlie Brown finally figured out the scissors and finished his Halloween costume.

Invisible to the living, Affleck’s ghost journeys across town and back to his small house to look in on his grieving wife. Lowry films a devastating, unbroken shot of the couple with Mara sitting silently on the kitchen floor eating a whole pie until it makes her sick, and Affleck’s ghost watching from the edge of the frame—one is a figure seemingly caught between worlds, the other is so deep in sorrow that food no longer has taste or meaning.

Mara finally moves away from the site of her painful memories; however, Affleck stays behind, roaming around the empty house each day as if it were a sad tomb. Time passes, people move in and out of the house, months and years of their lives seemingly unfold in a flash, time no longer feels linear.

Not much happens, but what does is sometimes strangely funny, sometimes mournfully poetic. One family moves away after Affleck pulls a haunted house stunt (a glass of milk floats in the air, dishes crash to the floor); another hosts a wild party featuring a somber, long-winded monologue about memories and death; Affleck looks out the window and begins communicating with a female ghost next door, a sign that there are yet more lost souls in the world.

“A Ghost Story” begins as a tender romance, slips into a quiet tragedy, has notes of suspense, thriller, horror and even comedy before finishing, rather uncertainly and unsatisfyingly, as a peculiar sort of supernatural, time-travel fantasy.

Still, “A Ghost Story” is highly compelling, particularly in the first half, as an achingly painful contemplation of loss. Lowry’s extended takes and long stretches without dialogue make this increasingly ambitious movie seem distinctly small and minimalist, like something plucked from the silent era.

There’s been nothing else quite like it for a long time, and that’s saying something.

Deadpool (2016)

"Deadpool"

⭐⭐

The first few scenes of “Deadpool”—the sometimes funny but often flat, queasy and profoundly cynical new Marvel comics movie—feature the sarcastic, masked vigilante of the title, dispatching a bumbling coterie of enemies using a semi-automatic pistol, a barrage of vulgar one-liners, and enough narcissistic mincing and mugging to suggest the sadistic gang from “A Clockwork Orange.” For anybody who’s ever wondered what would happen if you crossed Ace Ventura with the X-Men and added an R-rating, here’s your answer.

The character was actually introduced in the 2009 film, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” when he was still a human named Wade Wilson, special operations agent turned mutant sidekick of Hugh Jackman and company.

In the new movie, Wilson’s life is upended by a terminal cancer diagnosis, leading to a break up with his gal pal (Morena Baccarin), and a murky meeting with the villainous Ajax (Ed Skrein), a demented goon who promises a cure and delivers pain and torture—injecting Wilson with blueish goo that gives him invincible powers but leaves him looking less like Ryan Reynolds and more like something lurking in the shadows underneath Parisian opera houses.

After an exceedingly gory confrontation with Ajax, Wilson starts preparing for the inevitable third act, donning the whole Deadpool get-up and knocking off the former’s minions one by one. Meanwhile, a pair of X-Men—a walking skyscraper named Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) and a surly teenager (Brianna Hildrebrand)—show up now and then when Deadpool needs fresh fodder for his incessant witticisms.

The comedy in “Deadpool” consists largely of random derisive banter, winking references to other movies, and juvenille scatological asides, much of it delivered by the main character either directly, in voice-over narration, or face-to-face with the audience. Some bits score a laugh but most land with a thud, and the direct-address gimmick wears thin.

Tim Miller, a visual effects artist making his debut as a director, pumps up the action with slow-mo acrobatics and bloody close-ups. “There’s the money shot, baby,” Deadpool quips delightedly as a bullet shreds an adversary at a grisly 300-ish frames a second. The screenplay, by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, essentially turns Deadpool into the insult comic of comic book heroes, making him more of a stand-up routine than a fully fleshed out character.

“I had another Liam Neeson nightmare,” Deadpool says, in a reference to the actor’s “Taken” series. Ironically, it’s during scenes when the burned hero stalks the streets looking to capture glimpses of his girlfriend and his former life that “Deadpool” evokes one of Neeson’s other, more obscure movies—the brilliant and underrated comic book style adventure “Darkman” from 1990.

That film also featured a revenge-minded protagonist who uses his wits to ferret out the criminal element responsible for leaving his countenance mutilated and his life in ruins. But what made “Darkman” more emotionally resonant and enduring lies both in the humanity of the hero’s suffering and the edgy, noirish world director Sam Raimi brought vividly to life with expressive camera angles and movements.

“Darkman” was a real movie; “Deadpool” is just an evening at the improv.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (2015)

Last Arrow: Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen
 in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2."

The battle for Panem reaches its finale in “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2,” the mostly compelling, if sometimes tepid conclusion to the cinematic saga based on the novels of Suzanne Collins.

Once again directed by Francis Lawrence—who took over the reins of the franchise after the first installment—the story resumes with Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) leading a gang of rebels on a mission to invade the Capitol and, by her own iconic bow and arrow, assassinate its ruthless leader.

Naturally, there are plenty of obstacles along the way. The Capitol landscape comes riddled with lethal booby traps, the most elaborate of which is a city square sealed off and flooded in inky oil in an attempt to drown the plucky heroine and her charges. Later, when the characters take their trek underground, they encounter vicious so-called mutts (computer-generated creatures that suggest a cross between faceless extraterrestrials and a gruesome team of flying trapeze artists) guarding the murky sewers by the dozens.

Along with frequent bursts of violence, Katniss’ fractured relationship with Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), her District 12 partner and love interest, provides an undercurrent of emotional conflict with an edge of menace. Peeta, who unwittingly attacked and nearly killed Katniss after being captured by the enemy and brainwashed at the end of the previous film, here resembles a soldier left shell shocked by war, seemingly normal yet potentially dangerous. “Sometimes I’m alert,” he says, “other times, it’s like I’m sleepwalking.”

Similarly, the whole movie has a tendency to be soporific, as if the fight has outlasted the characters. Action sequences are highly charged and sometimes exciting, but there’s a feeling that everyone is battle fatigued and tired. Rejected by his people, the once evil and menacing President Snow (Donald Sutherland) is now almost a sympathetic figure, stricken with illness and pale like a ghost; even Katniss, once mighty with resolve, seems worn out and subdued, as if the horrors she’s experienced—along with those she dreads—have drained the life from her.

In the film’s overly sentimental last scene, a future Katniss talks about what she does to combat the nightmares from her past, a recurring strategy that involves looking for the good in people. “It gets a little tedious at times,” she admits. Perhaps it’s a similar sense of tediousness—of the inevitable misery, loss and futility of war—that causes “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2” to land with more of a thud than a roar. Maybe it’s even true that it should.

The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)

(From left to right) Woody Allen, David Ogden Stiers
and Helen Hunt in "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion."

Now seems like the perfect time to revisit writer/director Woody Allen’s “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.” This year marks the 15th anniversary of the picture’s 2001 release, and it’s currently available to stream over the Netflix platform. More interestingly, the film has gained a somewhat dubious reputation in large part because Allen himself has labeled it as ‘perhaps his worst movie,’ making it certainly worthy of another look.

The film takes place in 1940 and features Allen as C.W. Briggs, a longtime insurance investigator whose messy workspace at his sprawling New York office is overhauled, much to his displeasure, by a new hotshot efficiency expert, Betty Ann Fitzgerald (a splendidly acerbic and funny Helen Hunt), whose modern way of doing things conflicts with his antiquated methods.

The two characters immediately loathe one another, and conversations are highlighted by a heavy dose of sarcastic quips and barbs leveled back and forth like tennis volleys. “Who do you think I am,” Fitzgerald exclaims during their first meeting, “some peroxide little stenographer with her brains in her sweater whose rear end you pinch?”

“Pinch it? I couldn’t get my arms around it,” Briggs fires back, Groucho Marx-style. For her part, she peppers him with a barrage of insults (roach, inchworm, mouse, weasel) demeaning his smallish stature throughout.

The plot twists begin at an employee dinner, where Briggs and Fitzgerald are summoned to the stage by a bizarre magician (David Ogden Stiers) who waves a tiny scorpion pendant in front of their faces and uses a pair of code words (Constantinople and Madagascar) to plunge them into deep hypnosis. Later, the tricky swindler puts Briggs into a trance over the phone, this time using him as a proxy to prowl around town like a zombie plundering expensive jewels.

When the insurance company is forced to examine the case, the clues point back to Briggs. Flummoxed, Briggs finds himself on the run for robberies he committed but has no memory of, with Fitzgerald eventually becoming an unwitting accomplice after hearing the magic word.

Charlize Theron in Woody Allen's funny, underrated
screwball comedy "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion."

“Curse of the Jade Scorpion” is a charming, breezy and consistently funny screwball comedy and a playful valentine to film noir. At one point, when acting on a hunch, Briggs credits “the little man that lives inside me,” a line that seems inspired by Edward G. Robinson’s memorable turn as an insurance man who uncovers Fred MacMurray and femme fatale Barbara Stanwyck’s twisted scheme of romance and murder in Billy Wilder’s masterful crime drama “Double Indemnity” (1944).

Allen has said that he believes casting himself as the lead in “Curse” was a mistake, but nothing could be further from the truth. Consider a moment early on, when Briggs is in the midst of an argument with Fitzgerald, demanding that she return some files to his office. “Or what?” she commands.

“Or what?” he asks, awkwardly. “This is the question you…ask me? Or…or what? … Or what? Are you…saying ‘or what’ to me?” The intimidated, halting way that Allen recites these lines— all nervous gestures, turning his head off screen and pausing as if searching for stingers—is ingeniously nuanced and subtly hilarious. Anyone familiar with Woody Allen knows there’s no one else in movies who could act quite this way. It’s one of his funniest performances.

The film isn’t flawless. Dan Aykroyd is interminably dull as the cheating boss whose fling with Fitzgerald fizzles, opening the door for her and Briggs to become an unlikely couple; and Charlize Theron is underused as a slinky, smoky blonde who prefers seducing athletic types but gets Briggs instead.

Still, it’s not nearly enough to compromise this consistently fun and entertaining romp. “My instincts aren’t infallible,” Briggs says near the end. If Allen’s instincts are right about “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion” being his worst movie, it clearly means it’s ok to be wrong sometimes.

Lolo (2016)

About two-thirds of the way through “Lolo,” the title character, a struggling, smug young artist still living at home, is having a conversation with his mother’s new boyfriend about their living arrangement. Although mom has already given him the boot, the son attempts to save face by convincing the boyfriend that moving out was his idea. “I need my space,” he says. “We're not gonna play blended families like some dumb American comedy.”

Julie Delpy (center) directed and stars in "Lolo" with
Dany Boon (left) and Vincent Lacoste.

The line is meant to be ironic but falls flat because the movie—a mildly amusing, increasingly tedious French romantic comedy about a 40-year-old divorced mom looking for love while her emotionally needy son still competes for her attention—essentially becomes what it parodies, devolving into familiar clichés instead of discovering something fresh to say.

It’s a shame, considering “Lolo” was directed and co-written by Julie Delpy, who also plays the mom and is the talented, radiant French star of many enduring, intellectually challenging films—from Richard Linklater’s smart, sensitive “Before Sunrise” trilogy; to “White,” the darkly funny and brilliant middle chapter of the late Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s contemplative, masterful Three Colors trilogy.

Delpy does get some pretty good performances from her cast. Dany Boon is endearing as Jean-Rene, the computer geek who falls in love with Delpy’s character, Violette, an exec on the chic Parisian fashion scene; Karin Viard is the sassy Ariane, Violette’s sexually candid best friend; and Vincent Lacoste is effective as Lolo, the duplicitous, clingy son with a sinister, half-realized Oedipus complex.

But the film’s sense of humor is more sophomoric and vulgar than inspired or funny. The ways in which the devious Lolo attempts to sabotage his mother’s relationship with a series of cruel practical jokes leveled at Jean-Rene—spreading itching powder onto his clothes, slipping a tranquilizer into his drink at a party, sending a pair of hookers into his room while he’s sleeping—demonstrate that the infantile comedy here never really rises above sitcom level.

About the only thing the movie proves is that, touché, the French can make dumb American comedies just as well as Americans.

Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015)

A scene from "Shaun the Sheep Movie," the new animated
movie from the makers of "Wallace & Gromit."

Plunged into a state of ennui from the clockwork daily routine of farm life, an enterprising, slightly mischievous young sheep figures out a way for him and his friends to avoid the farmer’s clippers and get a day off to sit on the couch, watch TV and eat snacks in “Shaun the Sheep Movie,” the delightful, funny and imaginative latest work from Aardman Animations, the wildly talented team out of Bristol, England behind such stop-motion gems as “Wallace & Gromit” (about an absent-minded Brit and his faithful dog) and “Chicken Run” (a cartoon version of “The Great Escape”).

The plan, of course, doesn’t go smoothly. Shaun and the rest of the flock from Mossy Bottom Farm end up sending their owner on a wild ride to the Big City, as it’s called, where he crashes and winds up with a case of amnesia. The sheep travel to retrieve the farmer, but are threatened with capture by a relentless animal control agent, who wants to lock them up in dark, gloomy cells with other stray animals and hilariously wayward pets—menacing dogs, a cat version of Hannibal Lecter, and a melancholy, harmonica-playing goldfish.

Along the way, Shaun is joined by a flurry of quirky, wonderfully distinct characters—all with the big, expressive eyes that are an Aardman trademark. There’s Bitzker, the farmer’s sheepdog, a shepherd with a weakness for bones and a skepticism that suggests Gromit; Slip, a lonely, lovable homeless dog with scraggly features; Timmy, a tiny sheep who looks up to Shaun; and Shirley, a sheep so large that items disappear under her round, cottony coat.

Most strikingly, there is no dialogue in “Shaun the Sheep.” The characters communicate almost entirely through facial expressions and physical gestures. It’s like a stop-motion silent film, with sounds limited to indecipherable murmurs and mumbles, grunts and groans, sighs and sometimes whistles. And since so much depends on the movie functioning in visual terms, its success is a celebration of the storytelling power of imagery and movement.

Much like Wallace & Gromit, which began as a series of short films before inspiring a feature-length movie in 2005, Shaun started small, first with a supporting role in “A Close Shave” in 1995, then as a series in 2007 for British television. The wunderkind behind these worlds is Nick Park, who created the characters and directed the films. This time, Park is signed on as executive producer, turning over the directing reins to fellow Aardman players Mark Burton and Richard Starzak, who also co-wrote the screenplay.

Still, it’s likely Park had plenty of influence on the collective vision. Regardless of who’s at the controls, nowhere else in movies is stop-motion animation done with such consistent beauty, humor and warmth. “Shaun the Sheep Movie” is another splendid example of the Aardman team operating at the peak of their creative powers.