IN THE HEART OF THE SEA There's A Lot Of Boring Bombastic Bravado

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IN THE HEART OF THE SEA

(Dir. Ron Howard, 2015)

It’s Ron Howard’s “Moby Dick!”

No, not really. It’s Ron Howard’s adaptation of Nathaniel Philbrick’s 2000 bestseller “In the Heart of the Sea,” about the incident that inspired Herman Melville’s 1851 classic “Moby-Dick.”

Via a framing device, Melville, played by Ben Whishaw, gets the tale how the whaling ship Essex was destroyed by a ginormous 100-foot sperm whale told to him by Bremdan Gleason as Thomas Nickerson, who had been a 14 year old cabin boy on the ship at the time.

So we flash back to the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1821, where the young Nickerson (Tom Holland) fades into the background as Chris Hemsworth (THOR) as Owen Chase and Benjamin Walker (ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER) as George Pollard step forth as the stars. Hemsworth’s Chase, looking like he’s ready to pose for a romance novel cover, was promised that he’d be captain of the Essex, but the powers that be gave the job to the more refined rich boy Pollard.

Chase kisses his pregnant wife (Charlotte Riley) goodbye and the Essex sets sail on its voyage to hunt whales for oil. Tensions rise between Chase and Pollard when Chase defies the Captain’s orders in a vicious storm scene, but they agree to put their differences aside in order to achieve their chartered goal of 2,000 barrels of whale oil – a task that could take several years.

Several months into the voyage is where serious shit goes down. The whale we’ve been waiting for wreaks havoc on the ship and the crew in the central bombastic as hell action sequence, and the surviving sailors, including Chase, Pollard, Nickerson, and a few others including Cilian Murphy, looking as Willem Dafoe-ish as ever, as first mate Matthew Joy, are left with only three small open boats, and very little food or water.

As the men grow weaker so does the film. And, wouldn’t you know it, the cannibalism scene doesn’t help make the story any more compelling! Maybe it would’ve if I cared about these characters, but, even with knowing they were based on real people, the film’s mechanics made them feel like expendable cogs.

IN THE HEART OF THE SEA has a lot of bluster and bravado bursting through its frames, especially during the whaling sequences, in which there's some mighty fine filmmaking. It’s too bad that its post production 3D conversion renders the imagery dark and murky, diluting its possible power.

That said, the film would still be problematic in 2D. Howard’s film, his 24th as director, is an attempt at a swashbuckling ocean epic that has more realism and grit than the Hollywood sea adventures of the past, but it’s so CGI saturated that its ends up having very little resemblance to reality, and as such, detachment and boredom massively set in.

It also bugs me that Nickerson and Melville never met in real life, something I didn’t know until after the movie, but still felt contrived in the film’s context. It’s TITANIC-style storytelling, and the film could’ve really done without it. 

Gleeson, as the boozy, disturbed Nickerson, is likable as always, and Whishaw does his best with his underwritten role, but their scenes add little but some random humor to the equation.

Hemsworth and Walker’s rivalry never gets very interesting either, so what we’re left with is an over-sized, over CGI-ed whaling spectacle that failed to leave much of an impression on me. From what I hear about this film’s opening grosses, I know I’m far from alone in that assessment.

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SKYFALL: The Film Babble Blog Review

    

SKYFALL (Dir. Sam Mendes, 2012) 

Four years after the lackluster QUANTUM OF SOLACE, James Bond is back in this top notch movie that’s not just one of the best of the entire series, it’s one of the best full throttle straight-up action films in years. 

Definitely of this year, as it’s way more adventurous than THE AVENGERS, dangerously darker than THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, and completely out-Bournes THE BOURNE LEGACY. And that’s just in the first 10 minutes.

In a Turkey-set pre-credits sequence that encompasses a chaotic car chase, a motorcycle chase over rooftops (take that TAKEN 2!), a bulldozer demolishing a train carriage while in transit, and a hand to hand fight on top of that train going through a tunnel, Daniel Craig’s 007 has us in the sweaty palm of his bloody hand.

Bond’s superior, M (Judi Dench), has a larger role than usual as her job heading the MI6 is in jeopardy and she’s being targeted by Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem), a former agent turned cyberterrorist.

To help his boss, Bond travels to Shanghai (always gotta be globe-trotting) to recover the MacGuffin of this movie, a stolen hard drive that identifies many undercover NATO agents. This is where he meets the closest thing this film has to a Bond girl, Bérénice Lim Marlohe, who is under the rule of Bardem.

The spunky Naomie Harris, could be considered a Bond girl, but she’s more of his assistant, and there’s no romance going on there. Despite a quick shot of sex in the cold opening, Craig’s Bond seems less interested in bedding random babes than his predecessors, but that’s maybe just a sign of the times.

Bardem’s Silva is the best villain the series has had since…uh, I’ll say Christopher Walken in A VIEW TO A KILL. Like Walken, Bardem has dyed blonde hair and an unhinged presence. It’s a wickedly funny performance that’s introduced to us in a superb long-shot that has Bond’s back to us (tied in chair), and Bardem slowly getting closer as he puts forward a menacing monologue.

In a shoot-out in Parliament, Bond saves M from Silva and gets her to the safety of his boyhood home in the Highlands, an old crumbling castle named Skyfall. That’s where a STRAW DOGS-ish WITNESS-esque tension resonates as we wait for Silva’s killing crew to arrive.

SKYFALL restores gravitas to the series, and has everything you’d want in a modern day Bond movie. First off, it’s got Craig, who I used to think looked more like one of the thugs that would beat up Bond than Bond, putting in his most intense and riveting acting yet in his third performance as 007. 

Also, this time out, Craig’s equipped with quips as SKYFALL has a lot of laugh out loud lines. This is another plus as his previous turns were pretty close to humorless.

It’s got lovely ladies (Marlohe and Harris), a sharp screenplay (by Bond writer veterans Neil Purvis and Robert Wade, along with 007 newcomer John Logan), incredible cinematography (by Roger Deakins), ginormous explosions, a catchy not-bad theme song (by Adele), near perfect pacing, excellent editing (by Stuart Baird), stunning set-pieces, Bond’s classic Aston Martin, and well chosen supporting cast members, such as Ralph Fiennes as a stuffy higher-up of M’s (great nod to olden days when he says “Don’t cock it up, 007”), and the always welcome Albert Finney as the groundskeeper of the Skyfall estate. 

Oh yeah, there’s also a amusingly befuddled Ben Whishaw (also currently in CLOUD ATLAS) as a young Q, you know, Bond’s go-to gadget guy.

Some of Bond's back story may seem Batman-like, i.e. he comes from a rich family and his parents were both killed when he was a wee lad, but it still didn't feel derivative of the Dark Knight. No, SKYFALL has a different agenda - it wants to re-invigorate a franchise, not give us a lavish end-game.

As super heroes, and brainless spectacle (I’m looking at you THE EXPENDABLES) usually dominates the box office these days, it’s wonderful to report that Bond is back and at his best. Way to celebrate your 50th anniversary 007!

Post note: I guess the iconic gun barrel deal is officially now at the end of the Craig/Bond movies, before the credits roll. That's cool, I can dig it.

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The Epically Entertaining But Empty CLOUD ATLAS

CLOUD ATLAS
(Dirs. Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, & Tom Tykwer, 2012)

Early on in this fantastical blend of seven scenarios, Tom Hanks, in probably the most ridiculous-looking get-up of all the characters he portrays here, plays a cockney gangster turned author who throws a snooty literary critic over a high-rise balcony to his death at a book release party because of a bad review.

It’s a funny gutsy scene, even though it’s so transparently saying ‘screw you haters! This is a big ass powerhouse of a cinematic experience that will throw you off a ledge whether you want to go with it or not!’

To its credit, especially with its bloated almost 3 hour running time, I did largely go with the flow. The Wachowskis, best known as the masterminds behind THE MATRIX trilogy, and Tykwer, best known for RUN LOLA RUN, have taken David Mitchell’s best-selling award-winning 2004 novel, and made it into a mega-movie for all genres.

It cuts back and forth through the various story-lines, sometimes with imagery morphing from likewise aesthetics in one shot into the other. With a cast including Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Ben Whishaw, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant, Hugo Weaving, and Doona Bae playing multiple roles in cut-up centuries-spanning sequences, the film takes a gaggle of genres - i.e. dystopian sci-fi, post-apocalyptic drama, ‘70s conspiracy thrillers, British comedy, historical mystery, etc. - and puts them into a grinder, and they all come together to form epic entertainment.

Some storylines work better than others, and often the big cosmic gist of it all, you know, that everything ever is connected and that little acts of kindness can ripple through time and affect the future, didn’t really gel like I believe they were intending, but the pure visual splendor, along with the larger-than-life personalities present, still worked wonders.

Possibly Broadbent’s bits were the most likable. Whether as a fuzzy codger of a composer conniving to take credit for a supposedly brilliant piece of music called “The Cloud Atlas Sextet,” actually written by a suicidal gay musician (Whishaw, no stranger to mixed-up mashes of movies as he was one of the Dylans in Todd Haynes’ I’M NOT THERE), or as a present day heavily-in-debt publisher who gets wrongly committed to a nursing home by his brother (Grant), Broadbent’s energy and comic timing made a bigger impression on me than anyone else.

That’s not to say that there are some fine stand-out performances, as Hanks pulls off all his parts with ace acting, Berry puts in her best work since MONSTER'S BALL, and newcomer Bae has an emotional glow to her that fits right into the film’s absorbingly colorful palette.

Often in CLOUD ATLAS, the actors and actresses are unrecognizable because of intense makeup transformations that their change races, genders, and ages. Mostly the effect works, but there are instances that may provoke unintentional laughs when, say, first seeing a heavily freckled Susan Sarandon as an aging Southern Belle, or a Berry as a Blonde German woman. There were a lot of gasps at the screening I saw at the end credits montage that revealed who played what character. One thing is for certain: this film will undoubtedly get an Oscar nomination for Best Makeup.

As much as I was awed by what the Wachowskis and Tykwer put up on the screen, there was a bit of emptiness to the lavish proceedings that was hard to escape. Like in a conversation where you realize that somebody is only pretending to say something deep and meaningful when they really don’t have any new insight to share. Still, the ‘it’s all a show’ mentality makes for some spectacular movies, even if they are the equivalent of big junk food feasts.

Like many of those unhealthy feasts, CLOUD ATLAS is crammed full of empty calories, but that’s probably what makes it so undeniably delicious.

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BRIGHT STAR: The Film Babble Blog Review

BRIGHT STAR (Dir. Jan Campion, 2009)



A poem isn’t something to “work out”, John Keats (Ben Whishaw) tells Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). It’s something to “luxuriate in” he explains. Keats scorns the craft of poetry believing that it must come as naturally to a poet as the leaves comes to the trees. Brawne is quite taken with Keats with a fascination that quickly becomes infatuation, but is it for him or for his words? The film seems to be in the same boat; Keats is a poor man who could never fully provide for Brawne, yet as history later confirms, he is rich in romantic poetry and that is all she cares about.

In her first film since IN THE CUT (2003), Jane Campion returns to the picturesque period piece palette of her breakthrough THE PIANO (1993). She gives us the last 3 years of John Keats’ life rendered un-romantically but beautifully nevertheless. He spends his days lounging around his Hamstead house with his dear friend and writing partner Charles Armitage Brown (Paul Schneider) seemingly waiting for inspiration to arise. Scene stealer Schneider portrays Brown as a boorish lout who is over-protective of Keats. However as Keats suffers a severe bout of tuberculosis, Brown’s stance becomes more and more valid.

Brawne falls for the doomed poet and bathes in his words whether they come from the printed page or a folded letter, but knows that her mother and society in general would not approve. We, of course, are aware that there is no happy ending here but even if one has no knowledge of any biographical information the tale is told with such an engaging emphasis on the fragility of love that its pathos is no less powerful.

With no showy tricks or stylish staging, Campion provides a sad splendor to what in someone else's hands might amount to just another costume drama. Whishaw, who has portrayed other notable tortured artists such as Bob Dylan (I’M NOT THERE) and Keith Richards (STONED), brings a quiet passion to the part of Keats which can be summoned simply in his suggestive smirk. It’s Cornish’s movie though and her performance is as much a work of beauty as the film surrounding her. As Whishaw’s recitation of Keat’s famous lines serenaded the end credits it was hard for me to leave my seat. For BRIGHT STAR isn’t just a fine film to take in and then exit, it’s one to luxuriate in.

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