For the ages
4
Boyhood A lot can go wrong when you film a movie on and off for more than 12 years with the cast aging naturally. Cast members could die, the director could lose his drive and quit, etc. Boyhood, writer-director Richard Linklater’s amazing cinematic undertaking, doesn’t have the ring of experimental or stunt filmmaking about it. It’s just a great looking, by terrifically acted, tremendously moving film Bob Grimm made progressively over 12 years. It’s an amazing thing to see young Mason bgrimm@ newsreview.c om (Ellar Coltrane, who we first see set to the joyous strains of Coldplay’s “Yellow” on the soundtrack) go from a wide-eyed 5-year-old boy staring at the sky to an 18-year-old college student dealing with girls and big life decisions. It’s equally fascinating to watch Ethan Hawke, playing Mason’s father, go from Training Day Hawke to The Purge Hawke in the course of three hours.
5
Mason discovers the coolest thing ever: Netscape Navigator.
1 Poor
2 Fair
3 Good
4 Very Good
We also see Linklater’s daughter Lorelei playing Samantha, Mason’s sister, and Patricia Arquette as Mom, putting in her best performance since she graced the screen as Alabama in True Romance. All of the performers go through beautiful and awkward stages, aging before our eyes without the aid of special effects makeup. All of this would mean relatively little if it was at the service of a bad screenplay. Happily, Linklater has delivered the sort of observational, honest, enlightening screenplay that made his School of Rock and Dazed and Confused such endearing films. While there have been great films about adolescence, family turmoil and growing up (Linklater having been the architect of a few), never before has one film captured the essence of “boyhood” quite like this.
Mason has three different dads in this movie, the first being his biological father played by Hawke. Hawke brings a bohemian charm to the well-meaning but somewhat flaky dad, basically a good man who didn’t have what it takes to last with Arquette’s mom. While he isn’t there every day, he remains an important force in Mason’s life. As Mason’s first stepdad, Marco Perella delivers a chilling depiction of alcoholism, unlike any I have ever seen on screen. We first see him as Mom’s charming college professor, and ultimately see him in a visceral, frightening sequence involving a man out of control in front of his family. Perella worked on the film for three years, and his snarky disintegration into alcoholic madness is deserving of Oscar consideration. Arquette is brilliant as the mom who makes a few mistakes along the way—her third husband isn’t much better than the first two—but keeps on chugging. She has a breakdown scene when Mason heads off to college that I’m sure many moms can relate to. It’s fun to see both Hawke and Arquette at Mason’s high school graduation party. While they surely aren’t Coltrane’s real parents, they probably attained some sort of honorary aunt and uncle status, having known Coltrane most of his life. And what of Coltrane as Mason? How did Linklater know he was casting such an interesting kid when he signed him up? Every moment that Coltrane spends on the screen feels real and possesses the sort of depth many actors can’t muster. I especially liked young Mason’s face when he was getting an unwanted haircut. Coltrane does a great job showing the pain and tragedy of a haircut no boy wants to display at school. It must’ve been a crazy day when they wrapped shooting on Boyhood. A cast and crew working together on the same story for over 12 years hugs and says goodbye as the whole thing heads to post-production. The resulting product is one of amazing foresight, almost impossible visual consistency, and rewarding performances. This is a movie that will only be made once. Nobody will ever pull anything like Boyhood off again. Linklater has made a permanent, monumental mark on cinematic history. Ω
5 excellent
OPINION
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NEWS
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GREEN
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FEATURE STORY
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ARTS&CULTURE
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ART OF THE STATE
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FOODFINDS
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FILM
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MUSICBEAT
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Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
to take down the entire universe, Quill finds himself in serious trouble. Events lead to his joining forces with a genetically enhanced Raccoon named Rocket (voice of Bradley Cooper), a gigantic tree person thing named Groot (voice of Vin Diesel), an angry, musclebound alien named Drax (Dave Bautista) and an ass-kicking green woman named Gamora (Zoe Saldana). Together, they become the Guardians of the Galaxy, an unlikely troupe of mischievous outcasts that plays like the Avengers meets the Marx Brothers. The cast, buoyed by a spirited script co-written by Gunn, keeps things zippy and always funny. Visually, the movie is a tremendous feat of special and makeup effects. If you see it in 3-D, you’ll be happy with the results.
The motion-capture apes take another step toward world domination in a sequel just as good as its predecessor, and certainly a step forward when it comes to pure, unadulterated ass-kicking ape action. The movie picks up 10 years after a well-meaning doctor played by James Franco first shot an experimental drug into a chimp and unintentionally initiated the end of the human race. Caesar (Andy Serkis doing his motion-capture best) is leading a group of genetically modified apes in the redwoods near the Golden Gate Bridge. Life is good, and the humans have seemingly disappeared thanks to the Simian Flu brought on by the Franco character’s experiments. As it turns out, some humans have survived, led by Gary Oldman’s frustrated Dreyfus, who fears the humans will soon run out of fuel for their generators. There’s a chance for some hydraulic power via a dam in the woods, a dam that just happens to be near the apes compound. A band of humans led by Malcolm (Jason Clarke) sets out to repair the dam, stumbles upon the apes, and those apes aren’t happy to see them. Koba, an ape who figured prominently in the first film, returns, and he has no interest in a peaceful existence with humans. So, they fight, and they fight in glorious and exciting fashion. Matt Reeves, who directed Cloverfield, Let Me In and the vastly underrated The Pallbearer, proves a more than ample choice for this movie. He’s already been announced for the sequel, due two years from now.
3
Get on Up
THIS WEEK
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MISCELLANY
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Legions of Michael Bay haters have been jumping all over this Turtles reboot before it even hit the screen. It’s actually not a Michael Bay film; he only served as producer on this one. Jonathan Liebesman (Wrath of the Titans, Battle Los Angeles) is the director here, and he’s put something together that is far more coherent than the latest Bay-helmed Transformers movie. This is not to say that the movie is any good, because it actually isn’t, but it is markedly better than most of Bay’s output. Megan Fox plays April, a wannabe reporter who stumbles upon a vigilante force protecting Manhattan from an evil terrorist group. The vigilantes turn out to be the infamous turtles—also, coincidentally, the turtles April had as a child. The turtles, the result of scientific experiments, were raised in the sewers by a rat, and now they are ready to rise above the street surface and kick some ass. The film has some good moments, and the turtles eat some pizza and get some laughs. Fox is a bit of a bore in the central human role, Will Arnett is virtually wasted as her cameraman, and I’m sick and tired of William Fichtner playing bad guys. The special effects are OK, but the story offers nothing special. A sequel is already being prepared. A director with a better sense of wonder, and a better sense of humor, could do the franchise well.
This is a goofy, dazzling, often hilarious convergence of inspired nuttiness. You’ll probably hear comparisons to the original Star Wars, The Fifth Element and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, and all of those comparisons would be plausible. It’s a blessedly new and crazy direction for the Marvel universe, and director James Gunn (Super, Slither) has taken a huge step towards the A-list. Also taking a giant leap toward the upper echelon of Hollywood royalty is Chris Pratt, who mixes great charm, rugged action hero bravado and premium comic timing as Peter Quill, a.k.a. Star-Lord. After a prologue that shows the Earthly origins of his character, Pratt sets the tone for the movie during the opening credits, grooving to his cassette-playing Sony Walkman on an alien planet and using squirrelly little critters as stand-in microphones. After unknowingly stealing a relic that could have the power
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Lucy
What starts out as a potentially great movie winds up being a merely good one in the end. Scarlett Johansson stars as the title character, an American living in Taiwan who gets mixed up with the wrong people and winds up not only a drug mule, but a drug mule with a highly experimental drug placed inside her lower stomach. When the drugs start to leak, Lucy winds up using her brain to full capacity, not only resulting in her ability to control her body but also the forces around her. Luc Besson directs with his usual visual competence, and Johansson is great in the title role. The problem keeping the film from greatness is that it feels as if it’s going to some great place, and then suddenly ends at 89 minutes. Granted, it’s a good 89 minutes, but I was left feeling a bit unfulfilled. Morgan Freeman shows up as a scientist who knows a lot about brains, while Min-sik Choi (the original Oldboy) plays a true bastard of a bad guy. Surely, the premise is total bullshit, but the resultant mayhem is fun bullshit at that. I just wish Besson had a more complete story to tell.
Guardians of the Galaxy
NIGHTCLUBS/CASINOS
3
Dwayne Johnson, following the likes of Steve Reeves, Kevin Sorbo and Arnold Schwarzenegger, steps into the role of Son of Zeus. Actually, this film suggests that the title character might not be immortal, and is part of a scam. It’s one of the many sly touches that make this movie enjoyable. Johnson is good in the lead, and his band of battle disciples includes Ian McShane and Rufus Sewell in fine form. It’s directed by Brett Ratner, the man who got himself into trouble with legions of rabid fans for screwing up X-Men: The Last Stand. (I didn’t think it was that bad.) Ratner does a lot with a medium-sized budget. (Yes, $100 million for a blockbuster is medium these days.) The movie looks good, and is quite clever at times. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting this to be much good given its pedigree, but the results are kind of enjoyable. Johnson has developed into a fun movie star, and Ratner can make a decent movie, even if he is the guy responsible for the Rush Hour films.
The Godfather of Soul gets a rollicking but milquetoast biopic with Get on Up, showcasing a dynamite Chadwick Boseman as James Brown. The movie is entertaining, and it does flirt with the more controversial aspects of Brown’s life, but it plays it a little too safe. A true telling of James Brown’s often insane life would command an R-rating and be a real powder keg of a movie. Director Tate Taylor (The Help) doesn’t avoid the domestic violence, drugs and brushes with the law that were mainstays in Brown’s life, but he does treat those aspects as a bit of a side note. The film’s focus stays primarily on Brown’s tough upbringing and his music. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does result in what feels like a missed opportunity for greatness. The movie, which is not told chronologically, starts promisingly as we see the events leading up to the infamous police chase that landed Brown in jail for three years. Boseman is nothing short of amazing in these scenes as the somewhat crazy older Brown, brandishing a shotgun and seeking out the person who dared to use his bathroom to take a dump. The film then commences to bounce around in time, showing Brown as a young child in Augusta, Georgia, all the way up to his latter years as a performer. This narrative technique is certainly fun, giving the movie a sense of “anything can happen” and making it feel far from routine. Boseman even breaks the fourth wall to chat with the audience, something that’s a bit jarring at first but eventually works. If you go to this movie to see somebody kick some major ass with the James Brown dance moves, Get on Up definitely delivers. If you’re looking for a biopic that captures his amazingly crazy life, you’ll just have to keep waiting. I’m no James Brown expert, but what I do know tells me this movie doesn’t even scratch the surface.
5
3
Hercules
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AUGUST 14, 2014
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RN&R
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25
