Trailers of the Week — The Spoils of Tim Burton

by Gabe Valdez

Diving straight in:

BIG EYES

We’ve all been waiting for a return to form by Tim Burton for quite some time. His best film is an argument that will never be solved, but many cinephiles – myself included – will make the case for his kooky, emotive biography of the legendary B-movie director, Ed Wood.

Burton can go off the rails sometimes. It’s the emotion that can’t help but shine through in his most restrained moments that gives his best films their heart. So when Burton finally returns for another biography, let alone one centered on painter Margaret Keane and starring Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz, it’s cause to pay attention.

That and, if you know me at all, you know I’ll watch anything starring Krysten Ritter, one of our most unappreciated screen comedians.

LOW DOWN

Elle Fanning. Peter Dinklage. John Hawkes. Glenn Close. Lena Headey.

You simply don’t get better casts than this. What’s it like to grow up under a drug abusing, drunkard jazz legend? That’s the premise, and while that’s a stellar cast, this looks like Fanning’s movie. She’s been moving further and further out from older sister Dakota’s shadow and at this point may be the better actress – or at least the one choosing more interesting projects (I’m sure Dakota is crying into her Twilight money as I write this).

A MOST VIOLENT YEAR

Jessica Chastain is one of the most fearsomely commanding actors we have. She’s worked a career’s worth of roles in just a few short years. In 2011, she starred in seven films, including Take Shelter, Tree of Life, and The Help. In 2012, she starred in four films, including Zero Dark Thirty. 2013 saw two more films, and this year, she’s in another five or, depending on how you count The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby‘s different his and her variations of a troubled romance, six. Or seven. It’s complicated.

The point is, since her performances announced to the cinema world in 2011 that she’s the kind of force we may not have seen since Meryl Streep first brought her talents to bear, Chastain’s starred in at least 18 films, garnering two Oscar nominations. Anything she does is must-see because across those 18 films, she’s unfailingly created unique and compelling characters. Yeah, Oscar Isaac’s great, too, and J.C. Chandor is the very definition of an up-and-coming director (he helmed last year’s All Is Lost), but Chastain is the reason to see this.

MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN

And, of course, the latest Men, Women & Children trailer. This is looking incredibly good. I featured an earlier trailer a few weeks ago and, aside from championing Jennifer Garner and Judy Greer as under-utilized actors, I stand by the idea that this could echo Adam Sandler’s touching and scary dramatic break in Punch Drunk Love several years back.

THE LIBERATOR

And it doesn’t fit the theme, but all the trailers rarely do, so feast your eyes on this beautiful preview for The Liberator. We aren’t offered many Latin American heroes, let alone in a film that looks so sumptuous and epic.

Worst Trailer of the Week (Tie) –
THE HOUSES THAT OCTOBER BUILT

Oh dear. Normally, I don’t include films made on the cheap. That’s why Bigfoot’s film debut in Exists was excused from Worst Trailer a few weeks ago. But this is from some pretty major found footage talent and it manages to look profoundly atrocious inside of two minutes.

Worst Trailer of the Week (Tie) –
KITE

I also don’t normally feature straight-to-DVD in this section, but Kite was a groundbreaking anime. Why? Not so much for its cliché storyline, but rather for how stylishly it delivered such an incredible amount of violence in so short a time. Centering on an assassin who gets close to her targets using methods of distraction that sometimes involve her underage sexuality, it either bordered on the tasteless or took Japan’s silent cultural endorsement of child sexuality to task. Depends on who you ask. Certainly the imagery in the movie was deeply controversial.

This live-action, English language adaptation? Well, it stars Samuel L. Jackson, who does a film like this every year just to keep his B-movie cred shiny. It otherwise presents itself as a wannabe Hitgirl movie. Will it contain the confrontational gore of the original, or present action free of consequence and saturated in American-style one liners? Will it use the disturbing sexuality of the anime to hammer home a real social commentary, or will it use the premise as an excuse for cheap titillation and provocation? I have my worries.

I haven’t seen the original in so long, I don’t think I could give an accurate opinion. I remember liking the cinematic techniques in the action scenes, but that’s about it. You don’t adapt this project as a cheap cash-in free from addressing in some way what made it so controversial in the first place, and that’s what this trailer reeks of.

“Muppets Most Wanted” — Comedic Success and Missed Opportunity

Muppets Most Wanted is a comedy in which the main characters are three-foot puppets, a la Sesame Street. The most famous is Kermit the Frog, who leads his eclectic band of performers to put on shows that are part variety act, part rock concert, and part circus. Most of the humor isn’t designed to make you laugh uncontrollably as much as to make you smile broadly. It’s written for adults as much as it is for children, but because its biggest charm is its good intent, it needs to be funny to adults without falling back on suggestive jokes.

This is a tall order for a movie. It was pulled off in 2011 when the dormant franchise got rebooted in The Muppets, but that film rested its narrative on the journey and love story of two non-muppet humans played by Jason Segel and Amy Adams. The muppets themselves were only half the story.

In Muppets Most Wanted, the muppets are now on their own. There are supporting human players – British comedian Ricky Gervais returns, now playing Muppets manager Dominic Badguy. He replaces Kermit with lookalike frog Constantine (“the most dangerous frog in the world”) in order to use the Muppets’ world tour as a front for robbing museums and banks across Europe. Kermit himself is snatched by police after a case of mistaken identity, and sent to complete Constantine’s prison sentence in a Siberian Gulag.

Ty Burrell (Modern Family) plays French investigator Jean Pierre, who is more often on-break than he is on-the-case. Tina Fey (30 Rock) is Nadya, the strict officer in charge of the Gulag. She steals the show pretty regularly. The whole concoction makes for a great family movie. There’s slapstick humor for the kids, the musical numbers are clever and varied, and the film is rife with sight gags and celebrity cameos for the adults. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Ray Liotta (GoodFellas) and Danny Trejo (Machete) auditioning their song-and-dance routine for the Gulag’s all-prisoner variety show. The film fires gags so fast that if one misses the mark, you don’t have time to think about it before the next one hits.

I can’t help but feel that Muppets Most Wanted misses an opportunity, however. Writer-director James Bobin is so intent on communicating the many needless details of what’s really a very simple plot that he forgets to create many sketches – nearly all of the jokes are one-offs.

This is a genre of comedy that’s strongest when it blends together the entire history of cinema. There are clever visual gags that reference everything from M to Lawrence of Arabia to Silence of the Lambs, but they’re gone as quickly as they’re delivered. The only time Muppets Most Wanted even hints at a full sketch is in its songs, particularly when Jean Pierre and his muppet CIA partner, Sam Eagle, question various muppets about the international heists. These situational sketches are potential goldmines for comedy, but they’re constantly passed over. It makes you feel like the best bits might be happening in between the scenes you get to see.

Muppets Most Wanted is pleasing. You’ll want to see what visual gag or surprise cameo is around the corner. There just isn’t as much to invest in this time around. The Muppets had some surprisingly moving moments, such as the song “Man or Muppet,” in which two brothers – one man, one muppet – both faced taking a step into the unknown and away from each other. It hearkened back to the moment Kermit sat on a rock with his banjo and lamented “It’s not easy bein’ green,” a song that in 1970 sparked families to discuss diversity and intolerance with their children, topics that were being asked about by youth, but that were being shied away from in popular culture.

“Man or Muppet” is a song that made my niece – five at the time – ask me about taking chances in life, about the hopes and fears you can have even in an average schoolday. Muppets Most Wanted doesn’t have any such moments. It’s cute and funny. It will definitely make you smile. It just lacks that little bit of emotional resonance that earned its predecessor a spot in so many hearts. Muppets Most Wanted is rated PG for action.

Impossibly, Somehow: “American Hustle”

American Hustle exists. Is it a comedy? Is it a drama? The film about con men in the 1970s is the funniest film I’ve seen all year, but many of its laughs are the kind that bug my conscience. Some even come through tears. There’s as much lust for life as in any film I’ve seen in recent memory. Its cast of characters is the most passive-aggressive since All About Eve, and that was made in 1950.

American Hustle is deeply American. Every character wants that next leg up. Every character thinks he or she’s the one to get it. Everyone has that extra drive and that bit of luck we’re all convinced we have in our very best moments. Every character lives in dread and survives through hope. Christian Bale plays con artist Irving Rosenfeld, potbellied, middle-aged, and sporting “a rather elaborate combover.” His partner in crime is Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), who plays the part of English royalty as much to forget she’s a small-town girl from Albuquerque as to bamboozle her helpless marks. Irving and Sydney’s operation is light on its feet, until it’s busted by the FBI. Agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) isn’t interested in prosecuting them, however. He wants to use their talents to take down politicians and make a name for himself.

American Hustle loves its characters enough to put them through hell. Against Irving’s better instincts, he helps Richie create an irresistible “investment opportunity” – the rebuilding of Atlantic City. The plot is based on Abscam, an FBI sting operation that netted the conviction of one U.S. senator, six representatives, and a variety of other corrupt politicians. (Can we please launch Abscam 2?) Writer-director David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook) isn’t interested in politics, however. He’s barely interested in the sting operation. He lets you know what you need to know when you need to know it.

American Hustle is instead obsessed with the con each character plays on him or herself in order to make it day-to-day. Characters trick themselves and each other so often that most cease to be happy without a steady diet of deception. Love triangles have nothing on the flow chart going on between Irving, Richie, Sydney, Sydney’s alter-ego Lady Edith Greensly, Irving’s wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), Rosalyn’s mob suitor Pete (Jack Huston), and Richie’s fiancee. Each character has a moment when they try to come clean to someone they trust, and each character has a moment when they are soundly rejected. These moments are one and the same.

American Hustle knows that in a world of con artists and men who only value their own renown, an honest man is doomed. The only one trying to do right by his fellow man is also the only character you’re certain will suffer in the end. Mayor Carmine Polito’s (Jeremy Renner) only interest is in securing funds to rebuild Atlantic City and put his constituency back to work. In him, Richie sees a big conviction and his ticket to the big leagues. Irving sees the betrayal of a kindred spirit, of the only man who cares at all to change the sort of conditions that made Irving what he is. Renner invests such earnestness and empathy in Polito that his unsuspecting role in the con becomes tragic – except for the parts where you’re laughing.

American Hustle proves Christian Bale is the most capable chameleon of an actor working today. Two weeks ago, I reviewed Out of the Furnace. A few nights ago, I re-watched Batman Begins on TV. Yesterday, I enjoyed American Hustle. Bale is the common thread: heartbreaking in one, iconic in the next, and – through a deeply affected performance – the most genuine thing on-screen in American Hustle. It’s a rare actor who can make a philandering con man on the downside of his career this endearing and earnest.

American Hustle is really the crowning achievement of its entire cast. Amy Adams mines a depth of pathos I had never even suspected. Her Sydney is so alluring and full of verve she’s contagious, but so out-of-control and vindictive it must be viral. Bradley Cooper has been working up to Richie DiMaso for a long time, and as an agent becoming a legend in his own head, he provides much of the film’s comedy. One scene, in which Sydney tries to reveal who she really is to Richie, reflects the whole film – hilarious at one instant, sexually charged in the next, and nearly ending on a violent note that would derail the entire plot. The sharp turns in mood and energy of it all would be over-the-top if it wasn’t so finely controlled by the director and his actors. Instead, these moments become so deeply felt that aggressive, out-of-control, and over-the-top become smooth, soft, and supple.

American Hustle is the announcement that Jennifer Lawrence is both the actress of the moment, and of her generation. As Irving’s wife, Rosalyn, she naturally enamors whomsoever crosses her path without the effort Sydney has to put into conning them. Lawrence commands the screen every second she’s on it.

American Hustle is the cinematic embodiment of jazz. It throws the hopes and dreams of four unstoppable objects together and basks in the human drama and paradoxical comedy that arises from it. It weaves four brilliant soloists together, sometimes in harmony and sometimes in conflict, and it demands everything these actors have, every shred of commitment and ounce of energy. These characters are each awful, and we should hate them, yet we feel sympathy. We root for them because we recognize their acute panic at being lost in life, controlled by others. We know that drowning feeling that you’re less and less who you thought you could be by the day. We root for them because they’re each so hopeful.

American Hustle is an impossibly brave film, constantly an inch away from being too ridiculous. It feels more real than real, supersaturated with feeling and color only in the way movies can be, yet too embarrassingly private in the way only life is. It’s charged, it’s classic, it’s a masterpiece and one big put-on all at once. The more absurd a moment, the more it matters. It knows what all the notes are but doesn’t look at the sheet music because it’ll play what it wants – it knows how the music should feel – and, somehow, that becomes the more perfect way to do it.

American Hustle, like its characters, is determined to make sure you know it exists. And boy oh boy, does it ever exist.

American Hustle exists. Somehow.

American Hustle is rated R for pervasive language, some sexual content, and brief violence.