artflickchick.com

Derivative of movies from the lowbrow Home Alone franchise to the highbrow The Butcher Boy, Danny Boyle’s recent release, Millions, succeeds on the basis of three key elements – a typically vivacious visual style (which attributes even his worst films - A Life Less Ordinary, The Beach – an imminent watchability, while elevating his best – Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later – to the level of cult favorites), the central performance of neophyte Alexander Nathan Etel as Damian (whose darling, freckled face and lovely vocal cadences – let’s face it, a British accent makes the kid even cuter – top off a delightful naturalism), and a plot that plays off the pinnacle of childish fantasies and nightmares combined (the week before the UK switches to the euro, thousands of pounds fall from the sky and land on the unassuming young lad, which he believes to be a gift from God only to later learn of its bank heist origins and robber in quick pursuit).

Grown-up but not quite mature enough, Millions stands at a rare crossroads. The difficulty in evaluating the film arises from the fact that it’s aimed squarely at both adults and children. Boyle’s fan base, composed mostly of hip cinephiles enamored of a particular brand of edginess, bring certain expectations to bear, which creates a curious discord rubbing up against the family-friendliness of the endeavor. But seen from amidst the dreadful dreck deemed suitably-appropriate for kids, a market drowning in Hilary Duff- and Anne Hathaway-starring pap, Boyle’s contribution comes off as positively brilliant, a necessary entry into the vault of time-immune children’s classics. Revolving around the pernicious ways money makes the world go round, this fable, with its vibrations of the fantastical and a unique hero (Damian has visions of saints) who stands alone in his desire to use the money for Good, Millions respects the burgeoning intelligence of its impressionable audience while providing a provocative proposition (what would you do with the money?) as teasingly enticing to young fancies as The Goonies’ quest for pirate’s treasure.

But from an adult perspective, one often senses Boyle diluting his usual cinematic verve with this pandering to a broader demographic appeal. Carrying hints of the macabre fairy-tale world of Edward Scissorhands (especially reminiscent in its Danny Elfman-esque score) with none of the dark follow through, the director’s incorporation of various boo!-scary moments (generically grotesque images of the thief stepping into stark close-up from out of the shadows) and an uncharacteristic slushiness (an interlude where Damian converses with an apparition of his dead mother) feel out-of-sync with his mostly sophisticated approach. It occasionally feels like you’re watching an art film as it’s variously hijacked by the lost souls of bad Hollywood movies past.

Because it’s expressionistic of the way a young boy experiences reality, so the counter-argument goes, the exaggerations and clichés are fitting. However, as in another story seen through the eyes of a child, In America, the sentimentality isn’t more effective because it’s supposedly emanating from youthful memory or perception; to say it is seems a weak line of reasoning used to excuse a sloppy simplemindedness. The ending, for example, feels like a cop-out, as if screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce let laziness get the best of him; it’s wish-fulfillment taken a step too far, which derails the magical realism of the project rather than stays true to it.

Still, despite the unevenness inherent in navigating such generation-spanning material, Millions has an undeniable charm, an innocence that’s hard to come by in these cynical times (often the milieu that Boyle himself works in), so it’s a pleasant surprise to see Britain’s bad boy turn out such a confection. While not totally sugar-free, it retains its wit and a certain amount of derring-do while managing to entertain. Besides, I came away smiling, and that says something.

- km

There are some movies, which, from the opening notes, you know are going to be terrible. An immediately apparent awkwardness of tonality denotes that certain je ne sais quoi of the cringe-worthy. David Duchovny’s feature directorial debut, House of D, is of this unfortunate ilk. Disappointing for a devoted fangirl since, from his stint as transsexual Dennis/Denise in Twin Peaks to adorable geek extraordinaire Fox Mulder in The X-Files to a guest spot as Carrie’s former high school boyfriend voluntarily checked-in to a mental institution in Sex and the City, Duchovny often displays gumption in his choice of material which his first-time helming lacks.

House of D’s most glaring flaw is that it wraps itself so tightly in the wistfulness of nostalgia that it nearly suffocates on its own preciousness from the get-go. Or, to use another metaphor, left steeping in its brew of quaint (it begins at a charming apartment building tucked away on a verdant side street in Paris) and quirky (Duchovny’s Tom creates an animated flip book for his son’s birthday present) for too long, it leaves a bitter aftertaste. It begins this way: After cycling home one night, Tom declares this the appropriate moment, on the eve of his son’s thirteenth (nevermind that the boy’s asleep and that Tom will have to repeat the whole spiel again later), to reveal his past to his wife and child and, specifically, how the course of his life changed upon turning that prime age in 1970’s Greenwich Village. Cue extended flashback and move into morose voiceover mode.

That the movie’s titular Women’s House of Detention is where young Tom (Anton Yelchin) finds guidance from one of the prisoners, “Lady” (Erykah Badu) as she prefers to be called, is so obviously meant to ingratiate him to us, this little lost boy in need of a mentor who finds one in an unlikely place while hiding pennies beneath its barred windows, that I couldn’t help but be annoyed. Envisioned by the director as a sage, a mistaken mad-woman-in-the-attic, Lady dispenses bad advice from on high (yeah, that’s exactly what an impressionable, overwrought kid needs in a moment of crisis, someone to encourage him to run away from his problems rather than confront them), but through every exchange, one persistent question comes to mind: Would you really scream out your private, angst-filled, teenage problems to a total stranger in the midst of a very public New York City sidewalk?

Aside from the contrived cutesy-ness which tends to unsettle the stomach (the nausea enhanced, in this case, by Robin Williams at his treacly worst as Tom’s mentally-challenged best friend, Pappass), my biggest problem with flicks wherein characters eulogize the past in this way (the equally wretched Now and Then comes to mind), is that this searching for the root of problems being currently faced more often than not merely serves as a framing device rather than one which elucidates past or present. The reminiscing adult ostensibly learns from his or her involved adolescent post-mortem examination, but since equal attention isn’t paid to both periods, how is one supposed to know what this long-ago yesterday implies for today? Show me Now or show me Then, but don’t spend the bulk of the movie describing Then and expect me to care about the grown-up Tom of Now, whose personal problems I know nothing about aside from a few sketched-in details of generic existential and marital crises. These recovered revelations might be sending shock waves through his adult self, but it’s nothing anyone else in the audience can feel.

Though it’s hard to fault Duchovny for such a sincere first effort as this so blatantly is (especially since he’s joined the blogging masses - a star made human via copious spelling errors and a predilection for noncapitalization - with his online making-of-the-movie journal), that doesn’t prevent those mawkish moments from inducing this-is-so-bad (amazing how different these feel from the this-is-so-good variety) goosebumps, complicated by feelings of guilt because you want to find something redeeming in such a heartfelt attempt but can’t.

- km

Depictions of angry woman are few and far between in film. Often, the power of such roles is diffused either by demoting fury to feisty, ala Meg Ryan trying to win back her ex in French Kiss, or amping it up to the level of crazy-deranged like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. For this reason, no matter the clumsy writing and direction by Mike Binder, The Upside of Anger provides a breath of fresh air in the form of the resplendent Joan Allen, who’s given full reign to play the unapologetically enraged (not appealingly pouty, but full-force infuriated, the kind you tip-toe around) Terry Wolfmeyer, after her husband abandons her, along with their four daughters (too bad the all-starlet quartet of Keri Russell, Erika Christensen, Alicia Witt, and Evan Rachel Wood are underwritten). Even more refreshingly, as badly-behaved as she is, we’re never made to scorn or hate her, never feel the urge to dismiss her with the snap judgment “bitch.” We can’t, because we’re firmly positioned on her side from the start, and understand that this vitriol stems from deep reservoirs of pain and denial.

Into her miasma of alcohol-soaked bitterness comes friendly neighbor Kevin Costner as Denny Davies, a has-been baseball player, who’s looking for a drinking buddy himself. While Costner’s never been much of an acting chameleon, he here injects his naturalistic good-guy shtick with an air of sad compromise and resignation that lends his character gravitas. Sporting a pot-belly and five o’ clock shadow, a beer perpetually in hand, he’s an almost pathetic figure, but self-aware and disarmingly sweet enough that he rises above that designation. The ensuing relationship between the two runs the hazard of falling into clichés of mid-life revitalization (since both Denny and Terry have hit bottom and have nowhere to go but up), and I expected disappointment, anticipating the surefire turn towards gooey life-affirming melodrama, ready to sniffingly turn my nose up at a simplistic description. But, amazingly, the moment never comes. Devoid of assumptions of roses and romance (I’m not even sure the word “love” crops up) their connection is described in a gratifyingly grown-up manner, with an emphasis on quiet comfort, good sex, and televisual companionship. It so startles in its acknowledgement of real-world pragmatism and bucking of conventions – I’ve never seen a star-billed Hollywood movie so demystify operatic notions of the romantic relationship – that it takes you by slow surprise.

The film’s investigation into the transformative power of anger is consciousness-raising if not consistent or complex enough to be called feminist (the productively energizing nature of the emotion long recognized by the movement). I love that neither the script nor Allen, sputtering, swearing, swigging, ever backs off; she’s not couched in endearing terms, her acerbic comments delivered straight up, the way she takes her drinks. This illustration of the ways wrath consumes her sense of self is quite singular, and taps into personal memories of past rage (as I’m sure it does for many female viewers, accounting for part of the film’s popularity). Way back when in college, having hooked up with my (former) best friend, the first boy I truly loved, only to have him completely shut me out afterwards, I remember listening to Sarah McLachlan’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy on endless cycles of repeat. Encouraged by its poetic gloominess to mope and brood and longingly ponder, I switched to Hole’s Live Through This, and yes, that may seem too easy, too obvious, but it rocked and it worked. Once awakened, the vehemence of my anger scared me, but I eventually came to embrace it to the tune of Courtney Love’s screeching vocals (“Someday you will ache like I ache” wasn’t just a lyric, it was an anthem). Oh, the persuasive force of music. Being pissed off, I discovered, empowers you, while sadness debilitates. I finally learned to say “Fuck him,” scribbled a furious letter for closure, and got on with my life, which I doubt I could’ve done had I continued to be placated by the soothing melancholy of Sarah. But contradictorily, while this movie’s title suggests the renewing, liberating aspects of getting mad, it doesn’t pursue these tenets so much as the deleterious effects. This makes The Upside of Anger equally interesting from another angle, since its representation of Terry’s hostility, which continues unabated despite the presence of a new man, means the narrative avoids the pat life-goes-on hokum, but the title becomes something of a misnomer, and muddies the thematics.

(spoiler)
Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter anyway, because the twist ending betrays any radical tendencies and reabsorbs them, short-circuiting the need for more probing discussion. Walking on the property one day, Denny discovers the body of Mr. Wolfmeyer in an old well. Having assumed he’d run off to Sweden with his secretary, Terry’s anger, in an instant, dissolves into irrelevance and, in light of the freak truth of the accident, is implicitly deemed a tragically stupid waste of time and energy. With so many sophisticated elements at work, it’s a shame The Upside of Anger is so sloppily executed, and that its creator doesn’t have enough faith in the unique and believably human story he’s crafted to give it the gentle, authentic unfolding, minus the stunts, it deserves.

- km