Opening ThisWeek
PAmerican Hustle
Opens Fri., Dec. 20 at Sundance, SIFF Cinema Uptown, and other theaters. Rated R. 137 minutes.
We should mention right off that the New York Film Critics Circle, which decided it needed to be first in the stampede of awards groups doling out accolades this year, bestowed its best-picture prize on American Hustle. That was back on December 3, which means NYFCC members likely saw the film a few days (if not a few hours) before voting on it. This suggests something about American Hustle: If this isn’t a great movie, and it’s not, it sure is a fireworks display, designed to make an immediate and dazzling impression. The latest concoction from director/co-writer David O. Russell is full of big roundhouse swings and juicy performances: It’s a fictionalized take on the Abscam scandal of the late 1970s, in which the FBI teamed with a second-rate con man in a wacko sting operation involving a bogus Arab sheik and bribes to U.S. congressmen.
Christian Bale, loosened up by a risible hairpiece and appalling ’70s eyewear, plays Irving Rosenfeld, the scam artist. Along with the FBI coercing him into its scheme, he’s caught between his hottie moll Sydney (Amy Adams) and neglected wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence, who collected her Oscar for Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook). Even more complicated for Irving is that one of the targets of the undercover operation, a genially corrupt yet idealistic Jersey politico (Jeremy Renner, of The Hurt Locker), turns out to be a soulmate. Equally unhappy is the presiding FBI agent (Bradley Cooper, his permed hair and his sexual urge equally curled in maddening knots), who’s developed a crush on Sydney that is driving him insane. This is a buoyant cast—Russell encourages his actors to go for it, and man, do they go for it—with Adams taking pride of place, definitively establishing that beneath her elfin features is the fierce survival instinct of a shark.
The movie’s fun to watch, if seemingly untethered. It would be nice to be able to avoid comparing it to vintage Scorsese, but the ricocheting camera and syncopated use of pop songs do seem awfully familiar, and just a little ersatz. (I will always be grateful to Russell for the sight of Lawrence hate-singing “Live and Let Die” during a fit of pique, however.) There’s also the odd sense that American Hustle doesn’t feel any actual outrage about corruption at high levels of American politics, except as an ironic outgrowth of a certain ’70s wackiness. Of course, perhaps these clumsy covert operations can only play as comedy, but the film cries out for the disciplined, angry satire of a Joseph Heller novel. What it provides instead, undeniably, is a rockin’ good time. Robert Horton
Anchorman 2:
The Legend Continues
Opens Wed., Dec. 18 at Varsity, Pacific Place, SIFF Cinema Uptown, and others. Rated PG-13. 119 minutes.
Like the shark that improbably figures in the plot of this overdue sequel, Ron Burgundy must keep moving forward. He doesn’t learn from the past, he never fundamentally changes, he can’t have a crisis of conscience or alter who he is—a boorish, borderline racist, male chauvinist pig who reached his zenith during the Jimmy Carter malaise years.
Or rather, Ron shouldn’t be made to change, but his creators, Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, have frittered nearly a decade since their 2004 hit Anchorman. Maybe they’ve overthought the character a tad too much. While Ron has moved from San Diego in the mid-’70s to New York in the early ’80s, more time has passed outside the multiplex. So Ferrell and McKay are torn: Should they reassemble the old cast, add some fresh cameos, and package a bunch of sketches; or should they endeavor to actually say something about the news business?
Both approaches are crammed into one sporadically funny movie, but neither half will have you blowing soda out your nose. Fans will expect more Burgundy catchphrases and inanities from his cohort (Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, and David Koechner). Those are there, but all the ad-libs can feel like a late show at the improv club after the audience has gone home. (McKay has said they’ll present a second DVD version of the film that doesn’t repeat one gag. I can believe it, even if I don’t want to see it.) For every line that scores, as when Koechner calls his meat substitute at a fast-food joint “chicken of the cave,” there are two dozen clunkers that an outside editor would’ve cut. Oddly, amid such riffery, the visual gags work better. The news team rolls its RV in slo-mo, unleashing a cascade of hot cooking oil, loose scorpions, and bowling balls. They later share a swank white Upper East Side bachelor pad decorated with Warhol-style portraits of themselves. When Ron’s crew demands more graphics at the upstart cable channel GNN, the TV screen fills with an insane proliferation of Onion-style tickers. These you’ll want to pause and read next year on video, because they’re often funnier—“Is a war between sharks and humans imminent?”—than what you’re hearing.
GNN is run by a rich Australian, equal parts Richard Branson and Rupert Murdoch, who promotes “synergy” among his shady business interests. He’ll do anything for ratings, trying to rival the big three networks; but GNN isn’t FOX News, and this movie isn’t Network. Ron’s new philosophy of journalism is “I just don’t know why we have to tell the people what they need to hear. We should tell them what they want to hear.” All of which leads to pandering, patriotism, puppies, and Ron’s shameless embrace of “what’s right with America.” This anticipates Roger Ailes and FOX, only without the politics, which negates any real satire. (And McKay and Ferrell know the difference: Recall their sketches and Broadway show lampooning George W. Bush.) It’s not Ron Burgundy who’s the paradigm of dumbed-down news in our time, it’s Megyn Kelly.
Ferrell is now 46, older, beefier, and considerably more prosperous than when he first devised the middle-aged, alcoholic character of Ron. He hasn’t grown into the role so much as grown past it. There are giant Motorola cell phones and predictable ’80s radio hits here, but Ron’s crybaby petulance—hidden beneath the macho bluster and hairspray—feels too small. Ferrell and McKay need a bigger target than the ratings chase to the bottom. Instead they settle for random character bits and pieces. (Kristen Wiig is wasted as a low-IQ love interest for Carell.)
“It’s total crap, and they can’t stop watching,” says one GNN executive. Oh, wait, are we talking about the news . . . ? Brian Miller
PInside Llewyn Davis
Opens Fri., Dec. 20 at Harvard Exit and Sundance Cinemas. Rated R. 105 minutes.
When the Coen brothers make an outright comedy, they let you know it. There may be death and disaster in Burn After Reading or O Brother, Where Art Thou?, but we’re plainly being invited to laugh at human folly. Yet while there are funny bits in this simple story of a struggling folk musician in 1961 Greenwich Village, very loosely inspired by Dave Van Ronk’s memoir The Mayor of MacDougal Street, the situation for Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is fairly dire. He has no money, no apartment, and no real prospects in the music industry—apart from an album that isn’t selling. He’s even impregnated the wife (Carey Mulligan) of a friend (Justin Timberlake), both slightly more successful folkies—meaning they have an apartment with a couch for Llewyn to crash on. He’s the wrong guy at the right moment, as the movie’s poignant final scenes make clear.
So, while I and others tried to laugh at a preview screening, you should temper your expectations to appreciate the movie’s minor-key rewards. Isaac can really sing and play guitar; the sterling soundtrack, by T Bone Burnett, is built around live music performances; and the catchiest tune—an astronaut ditty called “Please, Mr. Kennedy”—is a knowingly cornball novelty song. But Llewyn’s trajectory is fundamentally downward and depressing. He’s a jerk to fellow musicians and benefactors, rude to his sister, and dismissive of others’ talent—possibly because he’s unsure of his own. Idealism has made Llewyn cynical. He scoffs at careerists, sellouts, and squares, sputtering at his sister’s humble life in Queens (“Just . . . exist?!? ”) like it’s purgatory. Such selfishness can be excused by genius, but the Coens never imply Llewyn is some kind of misunderstood genius. He’s a guy in need of a moral education, possibly a tutorial beating, both of which he’ll belatedly receive.
Like a vintage album cover sprung to life, Inside Llewyn Davis ’s depiction of pre-Beatles, pre-Dylan New York has a wonderful, dirty-snow verisimilitude. Llewyn is often framed in tight tenement hallways or seen trudging down sidewalks with shoulders hunched against the cold. (He can’t afford a winter coat, he says more than once.) This threadbare era seems closer to World War II than to what we now consider the ’60s. The apartment of some Upper West Side academics who shelter Llewyn—and suffer his abuse—is decorated with a perfect magpie collection of postwar trends: foreign movie posters, abstract art, volumes of Freud and Camus, African tribal masks, and Danish furniture. For them, folk music, embodied by Llewyn, is just another token of the exotic and the progressive. Letting him sleep on their couch and care for their orange tabby is like sponsoring an orphan in Botswana. And Llewyn likewise has the sneaking suspicion that folk music is but a commodity, a fad, to those who come to hear him play at the Gaslight Cafe.
As a man, Llewyn is a self-described asshole offstage; he’s only at his best onstage; and Isaac gives him a genuine grace and connection to songs including “Dink’s Song,” “The Death of Queen Jane,” and the sea shanty “The Shoals of Herring.” The latter is sung to Isaac’s dying father, fading away in an old sailor’s home, like feeble old Woody Guthrie being visited at the hospital by another young man with a guitar. Llewyn plucks his last notes and looks up at his silent father—whether loving, disapproving, or deaf, we can only guess. “Wow,” is all he can say to the old man. It’s a beautiful moment, a great performance made for absolutely no money and an audience of one. If that’s success in the Coens’ scheme, it may be the only success Llewyn will find in this sad ballad of a movie. If music can’t save him or provide a career, it’s also his only succor against life’s crushing disappointments. Brian Miller
Walking With Dinosaurs
Opens Fri., Dec. 20 at Pacific Place and other theaters. Rated PG. 87 minutes.
This new feature is based on a 1999 BBC series that took a serious approach to visualizing the world of dinosaurs. Such seriousness extended to the absence of, for instance, talking animals, which would have been an unconscionable sop toward attracting a kiddie audience. In fact, the makers of the new film intended to use the same approach. Now, what do you suppose are the odds that 20th Century Fox would sink $60 million into an animated movie that didn’t have talking dinosaurs?
And so we have Walking With Dinosaurs, starring the voices of Justin Long as a li’l baby dino named Patchi and John Leguizamo as Alex, the prehistoric bird narrating the story. The script by John Collee (he wrote Happy Feet) includes gags about the tiny arms of the T-Rex and the copiousness of dinosaur poop—although, to be fair, both of those examples are historically accurate. Our heroic young pachyrhinosaurus tags along with the annual migration from Alaska and back again, learning how to fend off predators and the weather as he grows into manhood . . . er, dino-hood. The movie’s pretty underdone as drama, with Patchi’s rivalry with older bro Scowler (Skyler Stone) the main bone of contention. In that sense, although the movie is a technical marvel, it’s hard to predict what the audience is going to be. Kids are bound to get restless, despite the opening period of baby-dino romping; and adults looking for an Animal Planet sort of spectacle will have to put up with talking dinosaurs. (It’s all voice-over, by the way—the creatures’ mouths don’t move. One of the strangest exercises in internal monologue ever.)
Despite all this, the movie looks incredible (and is meant for 3-D, which is the way you should see it if you’re still inclined). The backgrounds are generally authentic locations (Alaska and New Zealand in the starring roles), with the digitally generated creatures then added to the landscapes. So while I didn’t care much about the unfolding story, I was frequently astonished by the crisp visions that seamlessly made the dinosaurs come to credible life in their natural habitats. Now if they would just stop talking . . . Robert Horton
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