RSS
 

Archive for the ‘FILMED BY: Janusz Kaminski’ Category

The Judge

26 Oct

The Judge – directed by David Dobkin. Courtroom Drama/Family Drama. 141 minutes Color 2014.

★★★★

The Story: A slick lawyer returns to defend his alienated father from a murder charge.

~

“I only defend the guilty because the innocent can’t afford me” is the repost Robert Downey Jr. gives to the untidy lawyer calling him shyster, and it’s all you need to know, because the fact that Robert Downey Jr. is playing the big-city lawyer will tell you all the rest. Downey, with his large, lambent, devil-angel eyes brings his inner mischief to the role. He plays heads on with Robert Duval as his cantankerous dad, the small town judge who is on trial for first degree murder. These are two superb actors, and they make the most of their big fat roles, but nothing they do can rescue the longueurs into which this film falls through over-extension both in length and attempted breadth.

We have rich actors on all sides: the cruelly brilliant Billy Bob Thornton plays the prosecuting attorney and he is given a meaningless scene explaining what he is doing working in that small town. Vera Farmiga plays Downey’s high school sweetheart twenty years later and she is given a meaningless daughter. We are expected to take an interest in matters that have no depth, no dramatic truth, and no place except as extraneous exposition. After all, how fascinating is a herring – even one that is red? Downey is given two brothers, and neither of these, well-played though they are, add to the central situation, which is a father-son situation solely.

It is another example of a film, essentially a courtroom drama, that doesn’t know that things need to pick up in the third act. Instead we have far too many scenes and a courtroom denouement which is disgracefully sentimental, legally impossible, and coated with the sprinkles of a score after enduring which one requires a cold shower. The picture is beautifully shot by the great Janusz Kaminski. The settings and physical properties of the film are first rate. The great talents of Downey and Duvall and Thornton and Farmiga are worth watching for the first two acts, but the picture wearies itself before one’s eyes. You want it to be good, but the screenwriter has betrayed the novel by following it too closely – at least that’s my hunch.

But the real problem is that the film is trying to validate a lie, that lie being that traumatized  relations between family members are resolved by their own efforts. When the unforgivable has occurred, the idea that a two hour and ten minute movie can erase it is claptrap. There is a wonderful scene in a bathroom with Duvall and Downey, true, and to watch Downey and Duvall negotiate this lie without running stark mad is a spectacle worth witnessing. We dishonor the contents of the unforgivable in swallowing such tripe. For shame on the film-makers for asking us to.

 

Minority Report

07 Mar

Minority Report – directed by Steven Spielberg. SciFi Action Adventure. A police chief gets caught up in the net he has set to catch murderers. 124 minutes Color 2002.
★★★★
Once again Spielberg fouls up the ending of a movie. Of all his films I have seen none have honest endings. Lincoln and Amistad have weak but workable endings, but all the other endings I have seen throw us into the boiling pot of hackwork. Is he sucking up to public sentiment? This is especially distressing since all that I have ever seen has been, up until then, work of strength, imagination, scenic power, and high craft.

In this case we have triple surprise endings to do the damage.

Now the difficulty with even one surprise ending is that we the audience feel betrayed and made fools of by it. Our trust in the narrative and the commitment we have invested in it are tossed out the window for a screwy twist. While the difficulty of any move is, having set the predicament, to find a way out of it, surprise endings pull the rug out from under, not just us, but the characters before us. Spielberg is a professional person; why doesn’t he know this?

Tom Cruise gives his all to this, over 2-hour, material, and his all amounts to a good deal. For no actor presently before us enjoys acting more, throws his will, and his energy so thoroughly into it as he. His complete investment is why we keep watching him, and he never disappoints.

The story concerns three zombie bodies who can foresee future crimes. And, as the principal talent among them, Samantha Morton is super. You thoroughly believe her half-drowned soul. The excellent Colin Farrell presents Cruise with a rivalry — a rivalry of cute guys, for one thing — but a rivalry set to prove Cruise’s crime prevention methods are flawed. Whatever is the reverse of effervescence would define Max von Sydow — gravitas incarnate; if he were any more grave he’d be in the grave. He is wonderful as the senior operative. But particularly brilliant and richly funny is — worth the entire price of admission — Lois Smith as the inventor of the crime prevention zombies. Her scene with Cruise is priceless. How did Spielberg’s people know to hire her?

The present film is fortified by Spielberg’s old reliables John Williams’ score, and it is filmed as usual by Janusz Kaminski so brilliantly, so beautifully, so imaginatively, that you feel the whole movie is taking place inside a cube of ice. The spectacular action sequences and special effects alone are worth watching the film for, for they are rare and strange and fun.

What a marvelous movie to collapse in on its own excessive final complications.

 
 
Rss Feed Tweeter button Facebook button Technorati button Reddit button Myspace button Linkedin button Webonews button Delicious button Digg button Flickr button Stumbleupon button Newsvine button