Movie Review - Experimenter

Experimenter (2015)

Starring Peter Sarsgaard and Winona Ryder

Directed by Michael Almereyda

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

I was not a fan of director-screenwriter Michael Almereyda's other 2015 film, the overly dramatic Shakespearean adaptation Cymbeline, so when I looked at IMDB and saw his participation in Experimenter, I wasn't quite sure what to expect.  However, Experimenter presents interesting directorial and screenwriting techniques which don't quite all work, but at least help to present a more unique biopic film than is typically lensed.

Back in 1961, social psychologist Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) formulated a famous experiment in which he tested the complicity of test subjects to obey an authority figure and administer increasingly higher voltages of electricity to strangers. His experiment garnered him accolades and critiques from his colleagues as well as media interest as the years passed.  Milgram's theories proved revolutionary in the psychology world, but the public outcry about his treatment of his test subjects always hung over his works.

Nearly right off the bat, Almereyda takes the unique approach of having Milgram break the fourth wall with the audience.  By having actor Peter Sarsgaard talk directly into the camera, we're immediately jolted into a rather uncommon cinematic situation.  Later, it appears as if Milgram and his wife Alexandra (Winona Ryder) have stepped onto an odd theatrical set with black-and-white scrims as backdrops. Time jumps forward and backward at certain points in the film.  Admittedly, I'm not quite sure if there's a purpose to these unique visual flourishes, but they worked in the flick's advantage by keeping the viewer intrigued without ever seeming too showy or ostentatious.

Sarsgaard is good here as Milgram, although he's fared a bit better in the past.  For a biopic, the film doesn't really give Sarsgaard a lot to chomp on in terms of dramatic moments.  However, he's certainly captivating as is Ryder and the large array of "Hey, I Know That Guy" individuals who pop up for a single scene here or there as either subjects in Milgram's experiments or colleagues of the famous psychologist.  I was always one to say "Phooey!" to psychology in college, thinking that many of the theories were mumbo jumbo, but Experimenter presents Milgram's ideologies in a way that I found accessible and, surprisingly, relatable.  I'm not saying I'm heading back to get a degree in the subject, but the flick is definitely a captivating glimpse into one man's societal theories.

The RyMickey Rating  B-

Movie Review - The Iceman

The Iceman (2013)

Starring Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder, Ray Liotta, Chris Evans, and David Schwimmer

Directed by Ariel Vromen

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

I found myself kept at a distance from the plot and characters in director Ariel Vromen's film The Iceman based on the true story of Richard Kuklinski (played here by Michael Shannon), a regular joe (well, actually a porn editor with an anger issue who perhaps killed a man or two who made him angry) who gets mixed up with mobster Roy Demeo (Ray Liotta) and ends up becoming one of Demeo's most trusted and talented hitmen, murdering over one hundred targets across a thirty year span.

Shannon certainly tries to bring dimensionality to Richard, but the script oftentimes feels like it's trying to hard to show us that he's a family guy (married with two kids, nice house in the 'burbs, etc) who gets mixed up with the wrong crowd.  Ultimately, this urge to kill seemingly was in Richard's blood from an early age -- we see key plot points before Kuklinski meets Demeo that appear to prove this -- yet the film still attempts to show him as a guy with heart.  Sure, he may love his wife (played by Winona Ryder) and his two daughters, but the film doesn't ever allow us to empathize with him perhaps because Shannon never once plays Richard as any modicum of "warmth" or "tenderness."  Frankly, we don't feel too bad for his family as the harsh Kuklinski receives his inevitable comeuppance (this is a mobster movie and all mobster flicks feature this ending as protocol it seems, so that's not really a spoiler), yet the screenwriters keep trying unsuccessfully to get us to relate to him.

Perhaps the even bigger issue is the fact that as Richard grows into one of the most successful mob hitmen of all time, his hits blend into one another and never carry any weight or meaning.  While there certainly are underlining plot lines about Demeo believing that some on his crew are betraying him, all of that is brushed under the rug incredibly quickly to allow Shannon to angrily hold a gun to someone's head or slit their throat.  Without any meaning behind the assassinations, we lose any sense of plot.  There's probably an interesting story behind Richard Kuklinski's success in the mob -- The Iceman doesn't provide that.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - Homefront

Homefront (2013)

Starring Jason Statham, James Franco, Winona Ryder, Kate Bosworth, Rachelle Lefevre, and Izabella Vidovic

Directed by Gary Fleder

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

I have no idea why I wanted to see Homefront upon its release last Thanksgiving, but for some reason of another, the trailer looked like it was for a film that may have recognized its cheesiness and played it up to provide a laughably humorous over-the-top revenge flick.  That wasn't the case at all.

I should've known to stop as soon as "Written by Sylvester Stallone" came up on the screen, but I trudged on despite my better judgment.  Jason Statham plays one of his interchangeable tough guys here -- this time he's Phil Broker, a former undercover cop who moves to a new town after his cover is blown following a successful drug bust in Shreveport, Louisiana.  During that drug bust, the son of the ringleader of the gang Phil was infiltrating is killed, setting the story up for REVENGE.  Jump to a few years later and Phil's daughter Maddy (Izabella Vidovic) gets into a fight on the school playground with a classmate.  Because only uncivilized hicks live in down south, this classmate's mother is a drug-addicted basket case named Cassie (Kate Bosworth) who wants Phil to pay for Maddy's indiscretions.  Phil and Maddy end up apologizing and assuaging the situation, but not before Cassie tells her brother Morgan (James Franco) to teach Phil a lesson.  Morgan (AKA "Gator" -- because...of course his nickname is Gator) sneaks into Phil's house and discovers that he was a former undercover cop.  It just so happens that Gator's girlfriend Sheryl (Winona Ryder) was good friends with the leader of that aforementioned drug deal gone bad.  Gator and Sheryl see this as an opportunity to help their burgeoning crystal meth business -- they'll reveal Phil's location to the drug clan leader in exchange for having full distribution rights for their crystal meth for their locale.

Of course, Phil being played by Jason Statham lets you know right away that Gator and his clan aren't going to win out, but, with this being a commercial film I wouldn't really expect anything less.  However, I did expect James Franco's Gator to at least be a bit more maniacal and enjoyable to watch.  Instead, we get a rather straightforward performance from a role that simply screams for overacting.  Sure, Winona Ryder and Kate Bosworth pick up the slack in that department -- and I say that without any criticism at all seeing how their roles called for it -- but Franco could've done so much more.  Jason Statham is like he is in every movie -- perfectly reliable and capable, but he's not given anything above and beyond what we've seen from him before.  Perhaps the biggest surprise in the acting department comes from young Izabella Vidovic (who is listed in the film's credits as this being her first big screen role, but she'd already had a feature credit to her name so...).  Much like everyone else in the film, Vidovic isn't given much to do, but she definitely held her own amidst the more seasoned actors with whom she shares the screen.

Ultimately, the fault of the film comes down to the script and the direction.  Stallone's dialogue, story, and character development are pretty awful -- Maddy's teacher (Rachelle Lefevre) is introduced as a potential love interest for Phil in the film's first half and then never makes another appearance.  Why throw that into the mix if you're not going to do anything with it?  Of course, Stallone may very well have written something and director Gary Fleder may have left it on the cutting room floor.  I'd have almost let that slide if Fleder had upped the "corny" factor several notches.  This film was screaming out for a director who realized the absurd humor in the story and Fleder does not bring that aspect to the table.  Instead, Homefront is played straightforward which lets its flaws shine right through.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - Frankenweenie

Frankenweenie (2012)

Featuring the voice talents of Charlie Tahan, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, Martin Landau, Atticus Shaffer, and Winona Ryder 

Directed by Tim Burton

I had seen the original live action Frankenweenie short film years ago and remember thinking that it didn't have enough story to pad its thirty minute running time.  So, admittedly, I went into the new animated version a little reluctantly doubting that Tim Burton could make it work with even more time. Somehow, though, this black-and-white stop-motion animated flick fares a bit better than its predecessor likely thanks to an amusing climax full of homages to classic horror films like Godzilla, The Mummy, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon that ends the film on a positive note.

Borrowing heavily from Frankenstein for inspiration, Frankenweenie tells the tale of young Victor Frankenstein and his lovable pet dog Sparky.  Together, they're a great pair and the shy loner Victor finds great comfort in his pet.  Unfortunately, one afternoon a horrible tragedy befalls Sparky as he has an untimely meeting with the front bumper of a car.  Depressed, Victor wallows through his everyday life until one day during science class, his new teacher Mr. Rzykruski (Martin Landau) displays that despite the fact that living things die, their muscles and nerves can still react to electric stimulus.  With the school science fair on the horizon, Victor sets out to reanimate his beloved Sparky.

Unlike this year's previous stop-motion entries -- Paranorman and The Pirates! Band of Misfits -- Frankenweenie's animation is charmingly more herky-jerky in nature.  Whereas the aforementioned films had a fluidity that had me wondering if I was watching a computer-animated version of stop motion, Tim Burton's film was lovingly "old school" and it worked to great effect considering this is Burton's homage to classic horror films.  Both styles prove that stop-motion animation is still a wonderful format...it's simply unfortunate that the general public doesn't seem to feel that way as none of the three films proved to be overly successful at the box office.

With some nice vocal turns from Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, and Martin Landau and a beautiful black-and-white landscape to feast upon, I'd love to say that Frankenweenie is completely successful.  Unfortunately, this animated film falls into the same trap as the short that preceded it -- there's just not enough story here.  Granted, the animated film does adequately fluff out the basic story and while it is more successful in that department than the short, it still doesn't quite achieve success.  For a film with a eighty-minute runtime, I shouldn't find myself staring frequently at a watch.

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Movie Review - Alien: Resurrection

--Alien Week--

Please note that all "Alien Week" film reviews may contain spoilers related to both the film that is being reviewed and other films in the series.

Alien: Resurrection (1997)

Starring Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, and Ron Perlman

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

The Theatrical Version was watched as the director prefers the original cut.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.  After a rousing start with Alien and a terrific follow-up with Aliens, the science fiction horror franchise starring Sigourney Weaver began to falter with Alien 3 and now lands with a horrible thud thanks to Alien: Resurrection, a film that is so tonally different from its predecessors that it's jarring to viewers and almost uncomfortable to sit through.

The blame has to be placed on two people -- screenwriter Joss Whedon and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet.  Whedon -- best known for mixing wry comedy with more dire situations in things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Cabin in the Woods -- is a good writer, but I'm not quite sure he was the right pick to pen an Alien picture.  Previous installments have been über-serious, but this fourth film in which Weaver's Ripley (who died in Alien 3) returns as a human clone developed by the military solely to give birth to alien life forms is too often played for laughs (and with the ludicrous aforementioned premise it's easy to see why they went for the yuks).  Unlike the third film, Whedon at least attempts to create some memorable characters with distinct personalities, but he isn't always successful at crafting anything more than the standard stereotypical machismo-type folks that typically inhabit action films like this.  We're given caricatures instead of "real" people.

Also needing to take a heap of the blame for the film's failure is director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the helmer behind the fantastical and visually inventive Amelie.  Jeunet doesn't ever really go for scares...and what's an Alien film without scares or at least the imminent threat of scares?  The aliens here are even sometimes played for a laugh and that's almost sacrilegious.  He also fails to get good performances from much of the supporting players, many of whom are asked to play up the humor rather than the sheer terror that should come from killer creatures running rampant in a spaceship.

During the film's second half, the humor gets tossed aside and Jeunet attempts to create an action film (though the scares still remain nonexistent), but he isn't successful in that respect either.  However, it's the combined missteps from both Jeunet and Whedon that make Alien: Resurrection the biggest disappointment thus far in the Alien franchise and an unfortunate coda to the series.

The RyMickey Rating:  D

Movie Review - Black Swan

Black Swan (2010)

Starring Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Winona Ryder, and Barbara Hershey

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

I don't really know where to begin with Black Swan.  There are things like the direction and Natalie Portman's performance that I truly admired in Darren Aronofsky's character study of a tortured ballerina.  And then there's a script which, for the first two-thirds of the film, is riddled with clichés and painfully silly dialog that not even a talented director and actress can overcome.  While I do believe that Aronofsky is well aware of what I perceive as the script's problems (not that he would agree with that assessment) and attempts to play them to a full-tilt almost camp-like tone, the end product is flawed.

After struggling for a few years as part of a prestigious ballet troupe in New York City, Nina (Natalie Portman) finally seizes her chance to make a name for herself in her craft when the group's director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel) gives the young woman an opportunity to play the lead in his re-imagining of the classic ballet Swan Lake.  As the lead in the ballet, Nina must take on duel roles of both the white swan and black swan, with the former lending itself to the beautiful gracefulness that one typically associates with ballet and the latter adopting a more loose, aggressive, and powerful style.  Thomas is quite pleased with the softer side of Nina, but feels that her technique for the black swan is not nearly as gritty as he would like.  While he tries to prod Nina into exploring her inner self (which apparently only involves pleasuring oneself sexually), the young ballerina slowly begins to break down.  Feeling pressure from both her overbearing mother (Barbara Hershey) who treats Nina as if she were a little girl and Lilly, the sexy and talented newcomer to the group (Mila Kunis) whose wild, heavy-drinking ways are the complete opposite of the uptight and quiet Nina, Nina starts to go a little cuckoo (which is a completely different type of bird from a swan).

In and of itself, the story is fine.  The problem lies in both the dialog (which is so childish and stilted that there were moments I chuckled to myself) and the character of Nina who never really develops any characteristic other than "neurotic."  Even at the beginning of the film, Nina's timidity is too extreme to be normal and as the film progresses, she just gets increasingly more crazy.  Sure, the kookiness is a valid characteristic for the character, but there's nothing else there for Natalie Portman to latch onto as an actress despite the fact that multiple attempts are made to blatantly tell us that Nina is a fractured soul.  If she's so fractured, where are all these other elements besides "CRAZY" that make Nina who she is?

That said, Portman latches onto that craziness and gives the role her all.  Although, as evidenced by the previous paragraph, there's not nearly the depth that I thought was going to be present.  Portman is at her best in scenes where she's paired up with the lovely and sexy (and surprisingly talented) Mila Kunis and the frighteningly "Mommie Dearest-y" Barbara Hershey.  Both Kunis and Hershey are simply playing stereotypes to the hilt, but they embrace those clichés with gusto and make Portman's Nina an infinitely more interesting character.

As a director, Darren Aronofsky is certainly someone whom I admire.  Requiem for a Dream is one of the very few movies that I have given an 'A' to on this blog and it's a film that is probably in my Top 20 of All Time.  The Wrestler also was quite good and, similar to that film which was a tour de force character study for Mickey Rourke, Black Swan attempts to be a showcase for Portman.  Aronofsky certainly has talent -- there are scenes here that held me riveted...and then there was some insanely horrid dialog that ruined things.  But still, Aronsofsky has an eye for interesting visuals.  One scene that had me particularly entranced takes place in a night club and as the strobe lights begin to flash, Aronofsky simply pops up a completely different image with each flash of the strobes.  Portman...then Kunis...then the two together...et cetera.  That scene alone was sexier than any of the others in the film -- and this film certainly has a few sex scenes (although I'm sure a few will be very disappointed by the complete lack of nudity).

Anyway, I've rambled long enough and the more that I'm rambling, the more I'm actually disliking the film.  All that said, I do feel like this is a film I want to watch again without a doubt...and I honestly feel like the next time around, my thoughts could be completely different.  While I don't see this becoming the Best Film of 2010, I can see it rising up in the ratings.  Then again, I can also see it plummeting precipitously if I discover that it seems even emptier than I think it is now.  In the end, Black Swan is too many things and too few things at the same time.  It's a horror film, a psychological drama, and an intense character study...but it's also a character study with a complete lack of characteristics to be studying.  It's difficult to say that the film was one-note simply because I appreciate the direction of Aronofsky, but when you remove all the fluff around the edges of the story, there's really not nearly as much depth in the main character as the filmmakers would lead you to believe.  

The RyMickey Rating:  C+

Movie Review -- Star Trek (2009)

Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Zoe Saldana, Bruce Greenwood, Karl Urban, John Cho, Simon Pegg, Anton Yelchin, Winona Ryder, and Leonard Nimoy

Written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman

Directed by J.J. Abrams

I'm a huge J.J. Abrams fan. I love Lost, liked Alias, thought Felicity was an incredibly underrated series, thought J.J's Mission: Impossible was the best of the bunch...so I went into this expecting a lot.

In all likelihood, this will probably be my favorite action movie of the summer. The action sequences were very subdued, not non-stop in-your-face, and edited in such a way that I could actually tell what was going on (I'm talking to you, Michael Bay). So, if I liked the way they were filmed so much, why was I underwhelmed by these action sequences? There seemed to be a lack of tension in these scenes which (being an action movie) is rather unfortunate.

I'm not really going to get into the story here, except that this flick is essentially an "origin" story (albeit an infinitely better one than this recent flick I viewed), telling the tale of how James T. Kirk happened to become captain of the Enterprise. If someone has never seen anything having to do with Star Trek before, this is a perfect introduction. You don't need to know anything going into this. Everything is explained to you. While that could be tremendously boring for those that do know Star Trek (I know a little...I watched Next Generation as a kid), the way that the two screenwriters presented the information was perfect -- not the least bit boring for the Trekkies (or, apparently Trekkers, as they prefer to be called) and not the least bit confusing for the casual viewer.

The acting is across the board top-notch which is really what raised this film above your typical summer blockbuster. Chris Pine is a perfect Kirk, mirroring some of William Shatner's mannerisms, but making the character his own. Same goes for Zachary Quinto's Spock, who actually gets to spend time onscreen with the original Spock, Leonard Nimoy. A stand-out was Simon Pegg's Scotty who made the absolute most of his minimal screen time. Zoe Saldana's Uhura was also quite good. The only problem with the skilled group of younger actors was Karl Urban's McCoy...he was the only one who seemed to be playing a copy of the original -- he was certainly directed to go for the "corny," but it felt a little out of place at times (there's a ridiculous scene between McCoy, Kirk, and a pair of swollen hands that is completely out of place with the rest of the film).

Overall, a good film. Certainly the best of the summer so far. Hopefully, the flick does good enough to warrant a sequel because I certainly wouldn't mind taking another voyage with this crew.

The RyMickey Rating: B

Movie Review - The Informers (2009)

Starring Billy Bob Thornton, Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger, and Winona Ryder

Written by Bret Easton Ellis and Nicholas Jarecki

Directed by Gregor Jordan

This one will be short.

A bunch of interweaving storylines that have precarious connections at best about pretentious assholes that live in L.A. in 1983, doing drugs...and each other (I must admit, the "pretentious assholes" was mine, but I stole the "doing drugs...and each other" from imdb).

Awful movie with awful acting across the board (poor Brad Renfro who killed himself shortly after filming this was the worst of the bunch by far). Not a single reason to care about anyone. Sure there were lots of boobs, but at some point, that's not enough.

The RyMickey Rating: F

FYI...Because I care about all my readers...

In case you didn't know, according to what happens in this film, you can seemingly not have any symptoms of AIDS, but then develop purple splotches and die within in a week. Be careful out there, folks!