London Boulevard

Let's see what we have here.  London Boulevard is the directorial debut of William Monahan, Academy Award-winning screenwriter of The Departed.  That sounds good.  Of course, he also wrote Edge of Darkness, which included radioactive children, which is less good.  On the other hand, Colin Farrell is in it, and I've really enjoyed him in the last few things I've seen him in (Fright Night and In Bruges), which almost completely makes up for how awful he was at the beginning of his career.  The supporting cast includes the always reliable Ray Winstone, the considerably less consistent David Thewlis, and the adorable Anna Friel.  Keira Knightley plays Farrell's romantic interest, too; while I'm not a big fan, Knightley isn't a bad actress --- she just seems to act in movies I don't want to watch.  When you add all that up, London Boulevard sounds like a pretty solid movie, if not a good one.  And yet, it took a year after its European release for the film to have a limited theatrical run in America.  Is this a misunderstood diamond in the rough, or is this (in the parlance of the UK) just some shite that should have gone direct to DVD? 

After being released from prison, Mitchell (Colin Farrell) is immediately picked up and reintroduced to the shady criminals that got him in trouble in the first place.  Mitchell didn't rat anybody out --- in fact, he's a bit of a legend for being a bad-ass --- so he's not going to get snuffed, but he's tired of that life and wants to move on.  Somehow, Mitchell manages to get a job as a bodyguard for reclusive actress/British tabloid fodder, Charlotte (Keira Knightley).  Charlotte has developed a bit of an anxiety disorder thanks to the constant badgering she has received from the paparazzi; I would say she is paranoid, but they really are out to get her, since the worse she gets, the better their headlines.

She doesn't seem overexposed at all

Taking care of Charlotte is surprisingly rewarding for Mitchell.  Aside from developing friendships that don't revolve around secrecy and being paid --- hold on...okay, his new gig isn't that different from his days as a thug.  Whatever.  Mitchell and Charlotte fall in love, the end.  Or not.  You see, ever since Mitchell got spung from the pokey, local crime boss Rob Gant (Ray Winstone) has been pestering Mitchell to flex some of that infamous bad-assery on his behalf.  Mitchell has refused politely and less politely, but Gant isn't the sort who takes "no" for an answer.  So who will come out on top in the end, gangster Mitchell or reformed Mitchell?

None of the acting in London Boulevard was too bad, but the leads weren't especially impressive.  Colin Farrell did about as much with the role as the script would allow, but the story relies heavily on him being totally bad-ass, and we don't see a whole lot of that.  Keira Knightley was fine as the strung-out celebrity, but her role was surprisingly small, given the initial movie trailer.

Rumor is Keira gained 1.5 lbs to play this role; that rumor may be exaggerated

While I didn't care for the individual performances by Farrell or Knightley, they did show some chemistry together, mostly due to Farrell being understated.  Luckily, the lack of overwhelming charm and charisma from the two headlining stars is more than made up by two stellar supporting performances.  David Thewlis played a habitually stoned manager/hanger-on of Charlotte, and he was great.  What I liked about him was how well he played up the nonchalance of a habitual drug user, without being over-the-top at all. 

This is easily the best work I've seen from Thewlis, although considering his non-Harry Potter career, that's not saying much.  Ray Winstone is great at playing tough guys, and this role was right in his wheelhouse (sorry, I've been playing a lot of MLB12: The Show).  Loud, violent, and scary: that's all you need to know about his performance here.  There are a lot of recognizable faces in the rest of the cast, but the only one who stood out was Ben Chaplin as a sniveling and stupid crook; it wasn't a great part, but Chaplin was suitably unsympathetic.  Stephen Graham and Eddie Marsan were both underutilized in small parts.  Anna Friel was almost completely unnecessary in what could have been a fun bit part, but just felt out of place in London Boulevard.

As William Monahan's first directorial feature, London Boulevard does a decent amount of things right.  The best scenes in the movie --- basically any time Farrell shares the screen with Thewlis or Winstone --- are snappy, well-edited and pretty awesome.  The violence is also fairly raw and abrasive (in a good way).

"I'm an artist at my chosen craft"

And yet, London Boulevard is a huge mess.  The first thing you'll notice is the variety and thickness of the British accents in the film; I enjoy the Brits, but even I had a hard time figuring out what was being said at times.  Worse, Monahan's adapted screenplay is all over the place.  The trailer makes this movie look pretty promising.  A tough guy trying to get out of the criminal life and protect his new life with the woman he loves.  Nothing wrong with that, at the very least, and it has the potential for greatness.  But here's the thing: this movie really isn't about that.  It's more of an odyssey for Mitchell as he adjusts to non-criminal life.  The subplot featuring his sister was absolutely useless.  The extended subplot featuring Mitchell's homeless buddy would have been useless, if not for the cheap shot it provides at the end of the film.  But what is worse, a useless subplot, or a seemingly unimportant part of the movie coming back at the very, very end and suddenly being improbably important?  And then there is the bit about the crooked parole officer, and the technical owner of a certain house...there's just a lot going on, but not in a fast-paced crime caper kind of way.  Chunks of this movie work, but they don't actually connect to each other in a narrative or thematic fashion.

That disconnect is really at the core of what keeps London Boulevard from working.  There are some good bits (the familiar overarching plot, the snappy banter in key scenes), but the pacing of the film as a whole is awful.  The story gets sidetracked by subplots with little to no payoff, Mitchell is attached to certain characters for reasons the viewer never really understands, and the core of the story --- Mitchell and Charlotte falling in love --- is rushed and left mostly unexplored and unexplained.

That's enough of that!

How do you screw up a British gangster movie with so much talent in the film?  By not focusing on the "gangster" part and not letting the talent interact with each other, I suppose.  I was already sorely disappointed in the film when it suddenly sealed the deal and earned my ire. 

I'd be pissed, too, if I starred in this

SPOILER ALERT: Mitch has just gone out of his way to keep himself and Charlotte safe, and he's leaving her house to get on a plane and meet up with her.  And then he gets the shit stabbed out of him.  Not by any of the famous actors in the cast, or even someone with a speaking part up to this point, but by a kid.  You see, Mitch gave his homeless buddy a knife to protect himself, the homeless guy gets beaten to death, and word on the street is that a kid did the deed; Mitch tracked the kid down and was seconds away from murdering him, but he stopped, presumably because he made a choice to change.  And then that stupid kid stabs him to death with his own knife, out of nowhere.  That...that is just awful.  It may not be the worst ending I've seen, but it is, at the very least, complete bullshit.  If the movie had been good up to that point, I would have been seriously upset, so at least London Boulevard made sure you had lost interest before doing something so stupid. 

For the record, that is one star each for David Thewlis and Ray Winstone.  The rest of this movie can curl up and die, for all I care.

War Horse

I don't get the appeal of horses.  Maybe I'm just not an animal lover (scratch that --- I'm definitely not an animal lover), but I see horses as walking, pooping, glue factories.  As you might have surmised, I was not looking forward to seeing War Horse.  I assumed that it would be good --- I haven't seen a bad Spielberg movie yet --- but the commercials made it look like a dramatization of Charlotte's Web, from the human point of view: "That sure is some pig horse."

War Horse begins with the birth of Joey, who would one day become England's Secretary of War (Horse) is never actually called "war horse" by anyone important in the movie.  Joey's birth is witnessed by Albert (Jeremy Irvine), a nice local kid with more guts than smarts.  Albert immediately becomes infatuated by Joey, constantly trying to win his affection.  To be honest, young Albert's love of horses borders on the disturbing.

"Let's keep this between you and me"

Albert wins the bestiality lottery when his father gets drunk and bids far too much money for ownership of Joey.  Albert's family lives on a farm and needs a plow horse, not a thoroughbred like Joey, but the horse and Albert surprise everyone except the audience by plowing a difficult field.  This is the first "some horse" moment in the film, but certainly not the last. 

Joey's not running here, but carefully balancing

Eventually, circumstances dictate that Joey must be separated from Albert, thanks to World War I and its insatiable appetite for killing things.  The horse gets drafted, but Albert is too young; the war horse goes to war without his master.  From this point on, we see how Joey impacts the lives of several humans.  He serves with both the English and the German armies, befriends a young girl and her jam-making grandfather, and serves as the stimulus for a Christmas Truce-type scene in the trenches.  All the while, Albert is slowly growing old enough to join the army and, if he's lucky, rejoin his magnificent horse.

It's perfectly fine if you hum the "Theme to Rawhide" while watching this film

That plot breakdown may make it seem like I didn't enjoy War Horse, but I actually did.  The ensemble cast is solid, and the brutality of the war scenes is well-balanced by clever and cute civilian scenes.  This is a movie meant to tug on the heart strings, and tug it does.  So what's my problem, then?  I'll get to it in a bit, but I want to acknowledge what I liked first.

The acting in War Horse doesn't contain any amazing performances, but they were all pretty good.  Jeremy Irvine is likable as the main (human) character, which is essential to the success of the film.  There are far too many moments early in the film where his love of Joey could be construed as romantic, but I thought he was fine otherwise.

This analogue to the Sixteen Candles panty scene was a bit much, though

Ted Narracott was good as Irvine's drunk and gruff father, but Emily Watson was the best supporting actor in the film.  I thought her character grounded the story on the human side of things, adding some much-needed wry humor and solid dramatic chops.

...and glamor.  Don't forget the glamor!

David Thewlis sheds a bit of his fuzzy Harry Potter image by playing the local rich guy and being generally unlikable.  The most promising cast members were definitely the British soliders who don't have much screen time.  Up-and-comers Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston play the thankless role of soldiers who haven't realized that machine gun combat has made cavalry charges useless; neither man is terribly impressive here, but I've liked them quite a bit in other things, so I thought I'd call them out.

L-R: Sherlock Holmes, cannon fodder, and Loki

The rest of the cast was okay, but similarly unremarkable.  Young Celine Buckens gave a cute debut performance, David Kross was good in a surprisingly brief role, and frequent character actors Eddie Marsan and Liam Cunningham make brief appearances before the end.

Steven Spielberg directed War Horse, so you know it's going to look good.  The war scenes looked cool, but were not plentiful enough to change the focus of this movie from a boy and his horse to a war and its horse.  For the record, though, War Horse is probably the most dead horse-filled movie I have ever seen.  Spielberg's always had a good touch with light humor in his action films, and he maintains it here.  The cinematography is pretty, the lighting is noticeably interesting at points (especially the last scene), and the story is suitably emotional. 

And, for little girls, that emotion is "ridiculous horse-caused joy"

The style is awfully retro, though.  War Horse feels more like a John Ford movie than a Spielberg film.  This is the kind of semi-epic, ultra-earnest story that was all the rage in the 50s and 60s, but has fallen out of favor of late because it can seem a bit dated or corny.  And War Horse is kind of dated and corny, so that makes sense.  It's not just that the film is a tad predictable and old-fashioned, it takes itself pretty seriously.  Sure, there are some intentionally funny moments (many involving a goose, a sure sign of broad audience pandering), but there are also some unintentionally funny conceptual moments.  For instance, Joey has a companion horse during the war; that's right, the main character in this war movie inevitably finds a war buddy, and that buddy's character development mirrors that of most "best friend" characters in war movies. 

That horse is one week away from retirement

And then there is John Williams' overeager score; I love me some John Williams, but he lays it on a little thick at the very beginning of the movie, practically screaming at the audience that even the uneventful beginning of this film is epic.  And, of course, there are all the instances where immature jackasses like myself giggled when Albert's affection seemed a little less than chaste.

None of that makes War Horse a bad movie.  While I thought the film was sentimental and nostalgic, I certainly teared up on a few occasions.  This is a well-made movie that hits all the right notes, but just isn't very interesting to me.  On the other hand, I think it is a little funny that, in the same year J.J. Abrams made a movie that waxed nostalgic for Close Encounters, Spielberg wound up making an homage to the emotional epics of yesteryear.  This is a quality picture, just not necessarily as great as it wants to be.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Quick, name your favorite third installment of a film franchise.  Yeah...it takes a little bit of thought, doesn't it?  Aside from Die Hard With a Vengeance and Army of Darkness, is there a great third movie in a series?  If you can think of another great #3, leave it in the comments (I can think of two others).  These movies usually end up putting the lid on the franchise coffin, instead of improving upon the established formula.  After two successful (but similar) movies about magical children, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban changes the tone a bit and delves into darker territory, with a tale about betrayal and murder.  That sounds about right for a family film, doesn't it?

Like the last two films, Azkaban covers an entire school year for Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends, Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson).  Also like the last two films, the plot is split between the ongoing struggle between Harry and the forces of evil wizard extraordinaire, Lord Voldemort, and Harry's smaller-scale problems at school.  As Harry prepares to return to Hogwart's wizard boarding school, he notices wanted posters for a man named Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) everywhere he looks.  Black, a disciple of Voldemort, had just broken out of the super-secure wizard gulag, Azkaban; this is a big deal for the wizarding world because Black was the first-ever escapee of the prison and also because his crimes were especially heinous.  Not only did he blow up a fellow wizard, Peter Pettigrew (Timothy Spall), with only a finger escaping total incineration, but Sirius Black was the man who led Voldemort to Harry Potter's parents on the night they were murdered.  Out of prison, it just makes sense that his first move would be to kill Harry for his master.  When Harry learns Black's history, he welcomes the fight and declares his intention to kill Black.  Apparently, having evil wizards try to kill you every year can make thirteen-year-olds get a little aggressive.

The other plot line follows Harry's progressive immersion in the world of magic.  As a side effect of Black's escape, Azkaban guards (called Dementors) arrive, looking for Black.  Dementors are not people, but soul-sucking monsters that find Harry a particularly tasty morsel.  Harry takes lessons on how to deflect these creatures from his new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Remus Lupin (David Thewlis).  Like Harry's last two DADA teachers (villains in the last two films), Lupin has a secret that plays a part in the film's climax.  Also playing a part is the school groundskeeper, Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane), who earned a promotion to teacher.  He introduced a hippogriff (a magical half-horse and half-eagle creature) to some students and, despite it being very friendly to Harry, it injured a student, perennial Potter bully Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton).  As such, the animal receives an execution date.  I wonder...will these seemingly dissimilar plots ever coalesce in time for the film's end?

At the time of its publication, the book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, was the longest in the series.  Since the last two films went over two hours to cover everything in the books, it became necessary to cut the novel into something more digestible in movie form.  As such, Azkaban is the first Harry Potter film to take liberties with the source text.  That's great news for someone like me, who liked the first two films, but felt that they could have done more to adapt to the film genre.  That means that this film is more plot-driven that the others.  The other big change is Alfonso Cuaron's assumption of the director's role; aside from making a very good cutting of the story (in my opinion) for the screenplay, Cuaron played with the film's color palette, opting for more blues and a general washed-out feel, which I thought matched the story's being-hunted-by-a-murderer plot.  The DVD special features also point out an instance of Cuaron's dealings with his teenage cast; he asked the three main actors to write an essay about their characters, and the responses he got were surprisingly in-line with the work the characters themselves would have done: Watson wrote a fifteen-page paper, Radcliffe wrote a few pages, and Grint didn't do his homework.  Well, I laughed, anyway.

The acting in this film is a marked improvement over The Chamber of Secrets.  Daniel Radcliffe not only looked the part, with the most Harry Potter-ish hair of any of the movies, but his casual acting skills showed a lot of growth.  He doesn't quite nail every emotion (anger seems a little out of his grasp), but it's still a big step.  Emma Watson is, once again, the most natural actor of the three, but this movie gives her less screen time and, thus, less to do.  Rupert Grint manages to make ugly faces whenever he's supposed to be frightened, which is often.  I wasn't terribly impressed with David Thewlis' Lupin, but that has more to do with the CGI used on his character and my own impression of the character from the book than any particular shortcoming in his performance; I thought he would be more...raggedy, I guess.  And I'm still not certain why his CGI-aided moments went with such a lanky character design instead of the more traditional bulk.  Gary Oldman, one of the great actors of the 90s, took this role to make some money, but his performance is still pretty good; I loved the design for his character, from the hair and tattoos to his emaciated body.  Much of Oldman's presence in the film comes from wanted posters, but they are pretty awesome, just the same.  Tom Felton's turn as Draco is far less sinister than in previous movies; here he is used as comic relief instead of a legitimate rival to Harry.  Michael Gambon replaced Richard Harris as Hogwarts headmaster Dumbledore, and his performance had the subtle mischief I felt was lacking in Harris' performances.  Emma Thompson and Timothy Spall make their Potter debuts here in limited performances and cast staples Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, and Robbie Coltrane all do fine work in their small supporting roles.

Personally, I think this third installment surpasses the first two Harry Potters easily.  The acting is better, the pace of the film is better, and several details are glossed over in favor of a more seamless narrative.  Not only were the individual acting performances better than in previous films, but I think the more casual scenes showing the kids goofing off and having fun felt natural an unforced, which was a huge departure from the I'm-waiting-for-you-to-stop-talking-so-I-can-deliver-my-lines performances from the last film.  This movie also helped build the budding romance between Hermione and Ron a bit, something the other films left on the cutting room floor.

Not every choice was well made, though.  The Jamaican shrunken head in the early stages of the film was just obnoxious, for starters.  There were a few instances where the token black student at Hogwarts makes some reference to Black (as in Sirius) being up to no good, or how he could be anywhere, or whatever --- I'm not a racist, but unintentional racism makes me giggle.  I mean, really?  You couldn't find any other actor to make negative comments about "Black"?  Those aren't major complaints, though.  The one thing holding this movie back is the source material.  There is a plot element that is revealed in the final third of the movie (to be fair, it is foreshadowed) that essentially acts as a deus ex machina.  As such, the final third of the movie can seem somewhat contrived, but that is what the book offered, so I guess the filmmakers were kind of stuck.  Still, even with the contrived ending, this is the best of the bunch so far.