Les Misérables (2012)

Let me start by professing my cultural ignorance when it comes to musicals.  My top three musicals are South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  My least favorite musicals are Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, Chicago and Rent.  Suffice to say, if you are a fan of movie musicals, then my opinion may mean nothing to you.  I normally wouldn't go out of my way to watch this movie, but Les Mis is apparently the most successful musical of all time and I knew nothing about it.  Musicals may not be my cup of tea, but that sort of gap in my knowledge is inexcusable.  And who knows?  Maybe I'll be one of the millions who love Les Misérables.

Les Misérables is the first musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel to reach the big screen, although there have been a few dramatic big screen adaptations already.  In other words, if you don't know the story by now, SPOILER ALERT.  The story begins in 19th century France with Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), a convict whose crime was stealing bread for a starving child.  After serving a mere nineteen years for his crime, Valjean is paroled by Javert (Russell Crowe), the French equivalent of Boss Godfrey.  Valjean quickly realizes that there are not many opportunities out there for someone who's spent more of his adult life in prison than free, so he chooses to skip bail and start a new life with a new name.  Years later, Valjean is living under an assumed name and is living the good life; he is a factory owner and the mayor of a town.

I wonder if he ran on a "tough on crime" platform?

In his factory, one of his workers, Fantine (Anne Hathaway), is fired.  Why?  As far as I can tell, it is because A) she won't sleep with the foreman and B) she has a child, to whom she sends a sizable chunk of her paycheck.  Neither reason would pass muster nowadays, so I'm not exactly sure why being a parent mattered.  Whatever the reason, Fantine is fired and quickly starts selling parts of her body for cash; her hair and teeth are the first to go, but it isn't long before she is a bald, toothless prostitute.

Why so glum?  Now you don't have to brush your hair or teeth!

The next thing you know, Fantine is dying.  Jean "I'm totally not Jean Valjean" Valjean and Javert discover her, and Valjean takes her to the hospital and promises to take care of her daughter Cosette if worse comes to worse.  In a movie called "The Miserable," I wonder how likely that outcome is?  Simultaneously, Valjean learns that someone (specifically, not Hugh Jackman) has been arrested and is sentenced to die for being Jean Valjean.  Because he's a master of planning ahead, Valjean reveals himself to the court and basically says "Yeah, yeah, I'll serve my sentence," and then tells the dying Fantine that he'll be the father to her child.  Those two don't go hand in hand, so when Javert shows up to arrest him, Valjean fights and escapes, finds the child, and takes her with him to live a new life under yet another identity.

You know a kid's got a tough life when this guy is the less creepy option

We then jump forward in time again, until Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) is an eligible young lady.  Unfortunately, she falls in love with a French radical in the 1830s.  While her love seems doomed, Javert is seen sniffing around their neighborhood for Valjean once more.  Toss in some an unrequited love, a dirty kid, and some comic relief, and this decades-long plot is ready to come to a head.  And if you want to know the effect of open sewage on gunshot wounds, this movie might not be the most scientifically accurate.

Little known fact: Valjean dips everyone he carries in open sewage.  It's a fetish.

Here's a factoid that everyone who talks about this production of Les Misérables cannot help mentioning: the cast sang each take live, with only piano accompaniment.  Most musicals record their soundtrack several weeks ahead of time and later mime their performances for the movie cameras.  In other words, the actors of Les Mis had a better opportunity for onscreen chemistry because they had the freedom to change things up from take to take.  Did they make the most of it?  Well, I have to admit that the emoting in this film is pretty good.  Hugh Jackman did a reasonably fine job in the acting department; his character goes through the most changes and Jackman doesn't ever seem silly in the process.  Russell Crowe played "stern" capably, although I would argue that this is one of his more wooden performances, overall.

Russell Crowe: making movies, making songs and fightin' around the world

Anne Hathaway was a scene-stealer with limited screen time, even though I really didn't like her character at all.  Who sells their teeth before their flesh, anyway?  And why does anyone want to buy her teeth?  Sure, Hathaway seems to have roughly five rows in her mouth, but that's just weird.  I'm not a huge Amanda Seyfried fan, but she played her (to be fair, totally bland) role well.  I don't know what it is about Eddie Redmayne, but his face genuinely bothers me in this movie; I think it has something to do with his awful brushed-forward/There's-Something-About-Mary-gel-scene haircut.  He's okay as a youngster rebelling and falling in love.  The more I see of Sacha Baron Cohen, the less impressed I am by him.  He's not bad or annoying in this movie, but he doesn't seem to have the ability to play anything resembling human.  I liked Helena Bonham Carter well enough, though, and the two paired up decently well.  I was impressed by Samantha Barks, even though her part was fairly small. 

...and, apparently, underclothed

But Les Misérables is a musical!  What about the singing?  I would have to say that the best singers in the cast were the supporting women.  Hathaway and Barks were pretty impressive, and Seyfried was pretty good except for too much vibrato in her falsetto.  I didn't care for Hugh Jackman's songs.  He's a bit too "musical theater" for my tastes.  And yes, I know that this film is probably the best place for someone with a musical theater background, but that doesn't change how much I liked him.  I was surprised to hear how strong Crowe's voice was, until I remembered he had a finger-quotes rock band.  Bonham-Carter and Baron Cohen were comedy relief, so their voices were intentionally at odds with everything around them; I wasn't a big fan, but they served their purpose. 

Their purpose: to look like a Christmas hangover

Tom Hooper chose Les Mis as his directorial follow up to The King's Speech.  He could have gone for another British period piece, but he chose to bring a musical that is entirely singing to the big screen instead.  This is only the second film of his I've seen, but I'm going to go ahead and say that Hooper is a pretty damned good director.  The choice to not pre-record the vocals was interesting, and I think he got some of the best acting-while-singing I've ever seen.  The camerawork was very good and the set designs were impressive.  Since the film jumps around so much in time, there were a lot of different sets, and each one looked great.

I'm pretty sure this building was only in about 15 seconds of film

From what I can tell, Hooper did an admirable job bringing this huge musical to the big screen.  Too bad I didn't like it.  Despite that, the final scene still hit me like a ton of bricks, out of absolutely nowhere, which just goes to show how effective Hooper is at working his script.

So, I didn't like Les Misérables.  The directing was good, the acting was fine, and I liked some of the singing (just not particularly the two male leads).  What's my problem, then?  If I had to narrow it down to one reason, it would have to be the songs.  I didn't really like any of them.  There were a few snippets, here and there, that I enjoyed --- Anne Hathaway's signature song, and the beginning to the love song of Cosette and Marius --- but they served as segues to larger medleys that I didn't care for.  My overwhelming impression of the songs in this musical was "Shouldn't these rhyme more?"  My imagination tried to help fix the songs, too, by pairing any line ending with "gone" or "on" with "like Jean Valjean."  Not surprisingly, it didn't help.  It also doesn't help that the entire film is sung, so I could not truly enjoy the downtime between medleys, either.

I also had some major problems with the story.  Ignoring Javert's insatiable bloodlust for Valjean --- which seems more than a little out of proportion, especially given all the other criminals Javert had met that were worse --- still leaves me with points that I just couldn't comprehend.  Fantine's storyline confused the hell out of me.  I think she was fired from her crap job because she had a child; this somehow turns into accusations of prostitution, which still should be nobody's business but hers and the police; once she's out on the street, Fantine almost immediately contracts a fatal dose of prostitution.  I think that's the gist of her story, but the logic behind it escapes me.  Almost as bad was the little revolutionary street rat, Aladdin Gavroche.  That little shit caused more trouble than anyone else in the movie (with the possible exception of that loaf of bread Valjean stole before the first scene).  This film would have 70% fewer casualties if he hadn't essentially shamed the rebels into fighting to the death.  I also don't understand Javert's motivation when he pinned a medal on Gavroche's corpse; for someone who viewed crime as black and white, that felt very uncharacteristic.

For the record, cute girls in newsboy clothes are hot, while revolutionary boys with girl hair are little shits

Obviously, I am only speaking for myself.  Countless people have seen and heard this musical and love it to shreds; if there is going to be a movie that satisfies that audience, this is it.  I can appreciate the work that went into this production, and the craftsmanship of Tom Hooper and the cast is undeniable.  It just didn't tickle my fancy.  If you're into musicals, you'll probably dig this one.  If not, then this won't change your mind.  If you're somewhere in-between, I think the artistry will win you over.  But for me, it falls into the realm of barely worth watching.

Why didn't I like the songs?  I think I just have a problem with people singing different songs at each other:

X-Men

Doesn't the tagline "Trust a Few, Fear the Rest" kind of go against the movie's message?

As the release of the X-Men franchise reboot/re-imagining/origin story, X-Men: First Class, rapidly approaches, I thought it would be interesting to re-watch X-Men and see how the ball got rolling.

To understand this movie, you have to accept that there has been a genetic trend in human births over the last sixty or so years that has allowed a tiny minority of people to be born with genetic mutations.  I'm not talking about your normal defects or abnormalities, though.

Ugly is not a super-power.

These mutations give extraordinary powers to otherwise normal people.  The powers range quite a bit, from the ability to control weather or magnetism to fast healing or being irresistible to women.

Hell-lloooo, ladies!

Can you buy into all that?  If not, this movie is going to seem a little silly.  Well, mutants (as the super-powered-by-birth are called) have apparently been trying to live normal lives, safe in their anonymity from the lynchings that can occur when people find something new to hate.  Seeing this as a dangerous status quo, Senator Kelly (Bruce Davidson) proposes legislation that will require all mutants to register themselves and their abilities with the US Government, essentially treating them as weapons.  Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) believes that Senator Kelly is frightened of what he doesn't understand, but that the general public will see the legislation as the bigoted mess it is.  His take on the situation is to protect humanity from angry mutants and things will get better.  Magneto (Ian McKellan), who survived German concentration camps, sees this as another attempt to wipe "his people" off the face of the planet.  Understandably, he decides to take a more offensive approach to this problem.  Both men have followers willing to fight for these two opposing ideologies, but the first steps toward a genetic war come when a runaway teen, Rogue (Anna Paquin), and a metal-boned and -clawed tough guy, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), suddenly pop up on the radars of Xavier and Magneto.

Man, the cast of X-Men is good!  Mostly.  Well, Hugh Jackman is perfect in the lead role as Wolverine, at the very least.  Angry and tough, yet confused and surprisingly caring, Jackman brought the iconic character to life.  Ian McKellan was great as the villainous Magneto, but it wasn't his nastiness that made him so appealing; McKellan succeeded in the always difficult task of making a bad guy sympathetic.  Patrick Stewart was also good as Xavier, and not just because he looks exactly like the comic character.  Stewart's eloquence and British accent helped make the almost saintly nature of Xavier plausible --- if only the screenwriters could have found a way for his character to not get sidelined in the movie, then we could have seen his kindness tested.

The rest of the cast was definitely supporting, when compared to those three.  Anna Paquin was solid as Rogue, and she managed to not be annoying or whiny in a role that could have easily swung that way.  I think James Marsden doesn't get enough credit for his work as Cyclops; yes, playing the uptight guy is pretty easy, but he and Jackman had a lot of chemistry with their verbal barbs.  Famke Janssen was completely acceptable as Jean Grey, even if the love triangle that formed around her was pretty underdeveloped.  Halle Berry, on the other hand, was truly wretched as Storm.  Pick an accent, already, lady!  It doesn't help matters that she delivered the absolute worst line in the whole movie: "Do you know what happens when a toad is struck by lightning?  The same thing that happens to everything else."  That's just terrible.

Two non-masturbation things that make you go blind: bad acting and bangs.

On the other hand, I liked Shawn Ashmore's performance as Iceman, even if it was steeped a little too heavily in teen melodrama.  As for the bad guys, Ray Park was pretty cool as Toad, even if he's just a green-painted stuntman.  I thought Rebecca Romijn looked pretty hot in her ridiculously naked "costume," and the special effects made her character seem awesome.  When you look a little closer, though, you realize that she almost never spoke and most of her "acting" involved her looking sexy.  Well, that's good enough for most people, I guess.

Not the most attractive "O" face, but I'll take it.

I was pretty disappointed in Tyler Mane's Sabretooth, though.  A lack of interesting dialogue, an over-reliance on wires to show off his super-strength and super-jumping (?) abilities, and a generally awful character design combined to make Sabretooth pretty lame.  And that's a shame, since --- in the comics, which are obviously not the movies --- he's basically Wolverine minus the conscience. 

Plucking and threading aren't enough...grab a mower to tame those brows!

Bryan Singer did a great job directing this film, with the exception of letting Halle Berry use a terrible accent (sometimes).  This is a character-driven movie, where these potentially silly and melodramatic mutants are seen as people instead of excuses for special effects.  That is what makes this movie so important.  Keep in mind that the last major super-hero movies before this were the too-violent-for-kids Blade and the awful Batman & Robin; if X-Men didn't deliver to a wide audience, you can be sure that Spider-Man and Batman Begins would not have been made (at least not in this decade).  I appreciated a lot of the choices made by Singer and his production team, too.  The black leather costumes keep the guffaws of implausibility away much longer than comic book costumes would have.  Making Wolverine the main character and leaving a lot of his history unexplained/under-explained gave his character (who is otherwise kind of un-invested in Xavier's team) motivation and a character arc.  The tone of the film is perhaps Singer's greatest legacy on this movie, as well as for all post-2000 comic book movies.  This feels like a science fiction film instead of an adaptation of a childish medium.

Hugh Jackman always has time to entertain with a Tonys-related tale.

The movie is not perfect, though.  Magneto's secret hideout is located in an island prison with no walkways between the cells?  Exactly where would that be?  The pace is a little slow, and nothing truly thrilling ever happens; it does an admirable job of setting up the premise with a fairly interesting story, so the sequel could be awesome.  The special effects are solid, but not spectacular.  What makes this movie seem more impressive is the awful development hell it went through before being made this way.  There were several script rewrites, many directors, and Hugh Jackman was cast as Wolverine after the movie had been filming for three weeks already; the actor originally signed to play the part was the awful Dougray Scott, who backed out to film Mission: Impossible II.  The film also had Joss Whedon do a dialogue-fixing rewrite for one of the older, stupider scripts; his script allegedly only had two lines make the final movie --- Storm's lightning and toads line and the one where Wolverine calls Cyclops a dick, the worst and best (respectively) lines of the movie.  When you think of the other Marvel Comics movies that had been made before this (the Dolph Lungren Punisher and the rubber-eared Captain America) and how easily this film could have been made into something like them, I think X-Men deserves some respect.  And it helps that it's a good movie.

I should also point out that I am a ridiculously big X-Men comics fan (like, 30+ solid years of collecting big), so I know good and bad X-Men stories when I see them.  Writing this review also reminded me of the awesomely cheesy (but still awesome for its time) X-Men cartoon and its cool theme music.  Adapting that theme into a symphonic film score would have made this movie near perfect for my nerdy tastes.

The Fountain

If I could live forever, I would avoid ever seeing Requiem for a Dream again.

Darren Aronofsky has a reputation for making movies that mess with your head.  I will admit that I haven't been keeping up with his career (I'm seeing Black Swan this weekend, but I still haven't see The Wrestler), but this fits with my first-hand knowledge of his works.  I enjoyed his first film, Pi, because it was weird; I hate Requiem For a Dream because I found it pretentious and ridiculously depressing.  But the man is up for another Oscar nomination and is going to direct the X-Men spin-off, The Wolverine, so I thought I should check out the man's work.

Those with elephantine memories might recall The Fountain as one of those Hollywood projects that was destined to fail.  It had a big budget and some big name actors attached, but it never got made, even after Brad Pitt grew this fantastic beard for the lead role:

Beard tentacles!

Sadly, Pitt left the picture to star in Troy, which wasn't good, and Aronofsky was left back at square one.  But, being a determined man, he retooled the script, cut the budget in half, and convinced two fairly big name actors (Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz) to star in the film.  Even this didn't keep the movie from flopping in the box office, but with an auteur like Aronofsky, that doesn't necessarily indicate a bad movie.

The plot is difficult to summarize.  It is not told in a linear fashion, but that is not because the plot is trying to postpone a relevant twist until the end of the movie.  No, this movie is nonlinear for symbolic purposes.  There are actually three storylines.  The first involves a Spanish Conquistador searching for the fountain of youth for his queen, the second is about a modern-day scientist that is desperately trying to cure his wife's brain tumor, and the third is about a futuristic astronaut that is trying to reach a distant nebula.  Making things extra difficult, Hugh Jackman plays Tomas, Thomas, and Tom in the three storylines, respectively, and Rachel Weisz plays Isabel and Izzie, respectively.  Man, this is getting complicated even before I attempt to summarize it.

Here's the gist of the stories.  Tomas the Conquistador wants to save his queen from the Spanish Inquisition; she convinces him that the only way to do that is to find the fountain of life.  If he succeeds, she will become his wife.  The movie shows him being convinced by the queen and in the jungles of America on his search.  There are no Spanish accents to be found in this film, though.  Thomas is a talented neuroscientist whose wife, Izzy, is terminally ill.  Instead of accepting her death (as she has), he throws himself into his research, desperate for the breakthrough that she doesn't demand, but he so desperately needs.  Tom is inside a large bubble (who needs a spaceship in the future?) with only a few personal items and a dying tree (that might be Isabel?  Maybe?); his goal is to reach a nebula and be consumed by it, which will somehow give renewed life to the tree.

The three stories are mixed together so that they all climax at about the same time.  The obvious implication of the characters names is that they are the same people/souls, and all three stories are trying to find a way to come to terms with death.  Now, that is a pretty big issue --- does this movie have what it takes to handle it?

Not especially.  It's overly ambitious (do you really think they're going to come to a satisfying conclusion about eternal life here?), but that doesn't mean that the actors or director did a bad job assembling this movie.  Yes, I'm a little suspicious as to why Pitt had to grow such a massive beard but Jackman just grew a goatee, but that doesn't negate what was done on screen.  Since the movie is, essentially, divided into three distinct parts (regardless of how interconnected they may be), each part deserves a satisfying conclusion.  Do they get it?  Well...not so much.  What viewers do get is a few half-baked ideas about eternal life.  Does eternal life mean living as normal folks know it, or does it mean joining some other consciousness?  Is eternal life a good thing, or a curse?  Is it better to fight or accept death?

I don't know what to tell you.  You would think a movie that tackles such deep issues would take a definite stance on this, but I'm not seeing it.  Of course, Aronofsky could be making a singular point and is just obscuring it in metaphors.  Maybe.  But I think it is more likely that the confusion I felt while watching the movie is representative of the film's message.  Life and death are The Big Issues, and this movie is not nearly equipped to deal with them.

My problem with The Fountain could have been with its pretentiousness.  It certainly is full of itself, but I'm okay with that when a movie is trying to make a big statement about important things.  No, my problem is with its execution.  There are three storylines in this movie; there only needs to be one.  I actually liked the modern day story; the acting was good, it had the most believable characters, and it had the most depth.  The other two story lines are just weird.  Do we need a Conquistador that literally turns into flowers?  That seems doubtful.  How about a tai chi practitioner that eats tree/woman bark to sustain his life?  Unlikely.  Both of those storylines were beyond odd to watch and, in the end, they left me speechless.  That's not a good thing.  I was only rendered speechless because I don't like to curse out loud when I'm home alone.

Why is this tree hairy?  ***sound of head exploding***

The film's biggest crime is not even its WTF moments.  It wants to be an important talking piece about death, but it falls so short of its goals; this movie isn't bad because it aimed for the stars, but because it fell so short.  By cut-and-pasting the three narratives together, The Fountain succeeds in drawing parallels between its three Toms and their situations.  That same process cheapens the emotional impact of modern-day Thomas' story; his Izzie has warmth and depth and is genuinely interesting, but the subtlety of Rachel Weisz's performance is lost when it is edited to parallel a bizarre space bubble riding, tree-eating cosmonaut.

The Fountain is what many critics might call an "interesting failure."  That sounds a little pompous to me, but there is some truth to it.  There is no denying that Darren Aronofsky is a talented director.  His movies are always visually imaginative.  He gets some very good performances from his actors, even in unusual roles.  I didn't like the story lines of Christmases past or future here, but the primary storyline had some very good acting.  Rachel Weisz was excellent as Izzie, Hugh Jackman was good as Thomas (less good as Tom and Tomas, though), and the supporting cast was solid.  Ellen Burstyn, Ethan Suplee, Sean Patrick Thomas, Mark Margolis, and Stephen McHattie all make appearances in this movie, although only Burstyn has the opportunity to act much.  Now, if Aronofsky could just make a movie that isn't miserable to watch, he'd be great.

Despite the impressive visuals and the occasionally impressive acting, The Fountain is still a narrative mess.  There's a small voice in the back of my head that keeps suggesting that maybe I don't get it, but I think I do --- and I'm not impressed.  What is the lesson here?  Maybe the bigger the central idea, the less convoluted it needs to be.