Black Mass review

“Black Mass” is essentially a traditional rise and fall gangster drama within the aesthetic of the American gothic experience. Director Scott Cooper tries to subvert the film’s familiar trappings by setting in place a tension within the story where I we know the two main characters are damned to failure from the first scene.  Considering the clever set-up and the movie’s all-star cast, the fact that the story almost broods to a complete stop by the second act is as befuddling as it is a jaw-dropping disappointment.  

Johnny Depp plays James “Whitey” Bulger, the Boston crime-lord who inspired Jack Nicholson’s Frank Costello character from Martin Scorsese’s 2006 Oscar-winning film “The Departed.” And while Depp is every bit as unhinged and deranged here, the portrayal is decidedly less animated. Joel Edgerton plays opposite as John Connolly, a shady FBI agent who lets Bulger does as he pleases, so long as he continues to sell out the Italian Mafioso that’s moving in to the Boston streets. With his brother Billy Bulger (Benedict Cumberbatch) in a position of local political power, Whitey is given a legal hall-pass by both the state and federal authorities to become one of the most powerful and dangerous east-coast gangsters of 70s and 80s.  Nevertheless, Bulger’s paranoia gets the best of him and both his criminal brethren and the cooperating agents of the FBI are in constant fear of triggering his scorn.

Cooper’s vision of this story is interested in investigating the interiority of the characters and exploring how they click within their world of broken rules and the hypocrisy of their familial street-code. This means on a genre-level things tend to skew more towards “The Godfather” side of the gangster spectrum than it does “Goodfellas.” Given this approach, there are far too many story and production choices that orient things toward the broad surfaces. The all-star ensemble and the constant walk-ons by known character-actors like Corey Stoll, Adam Scott, Rory Cochrane, Peter Sarsgaard and Juno Temple spread the story too thin to effectively delve into the tense relationship between Depp and Edgerton as the leads. With a timeline that spans decades and multiple character perspectives to shift to and from, the movie never becomes the deep character study it thinks it is.

Despite this structural flaw, Depp’s performance is nuanced and appropriately pitched to the tone of the film, and in many sequences he is quite engaging without defaulting to his usual post-Pirates affections, but his Dracula-esq make-up design becomes so distracting that it often blocks whatever subtly there is to appreciate in his delivery.  Off and on the rest of the cast have their moments to shine and individual scenes of conversation work well on their own when Cooper is afforded to do what he does best - zeroing in on performance and dialogue. When it comes to the overall big-picture and the execution of the screenplay, the movie unfortunately fails to drum up enough drama to fuel the narrative.

Emotionally “Black Mass” doesn’t work like it should, but the movie isn’t a total wash either. It was nice to see Depp given something juicy to bite into as an actor and to play to his actual age, but Cooper seems out of step with many elements of the film as a director and often conflicts with the base genre elements of the story.

Grade: C-

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Oct-2015

Into the Woods review

        After the awards buzz and accolades that surrounded the 2013's cinematic adaptation of “Les Miserables,” it was only natural that another well regarded Broadway production would make it's way into the next year's crop of holiday releases. Disney's reworking of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's “Into the Woods” is a gleefully traditional musical comedy full of big stars doing big hammy performances, and it's camera-winking dorkiness is probably the most endearing thing about it. Though director Rob Marshall ("Chicago," "Nine") uses his mouse-house money to fully realize the fantasy world in which these intertwining stories take place, on some level, the movie still operates like a high-budget, high school musical staring the most popular jocks and cheerleaders of Hollywood, and within that tonal imagining there's definitely a charm to be had, but the film never quite makes the impact that the cast or the budget would suggest.

        In an extended overture we are introduced to this fairy tale mash-up world where in the same village lives Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) and the Big Bad Wolf (Johnny Depp), Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) and Prince Charming (Chris Pine), Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy), and Jack of the beanstalk fame (Daniell Huddleston). In the background while these stories play themselves out more or less like we have seen before, the primary plot focuses on baker and his wife played by James Cordon and Emily Blunt, who desperately want to have a child and who find themselves manipulated by a witch (Meryl Streep). Together they orchestrate all of these tales in such a way that they can obtain the items they need to perform a fertility spell. It's all very convoluted and for the most part incidental when giving in to the mindless joy of watching our favorite Grim's fairy tales unfold this ironic, post-modern context. Later, when the second half kicks into gear and adds a 'be careful what you wish for' twist to every premature happy ending, the movie oddly runs out of creative juice and the amicable tone of the first half of the film is replaced with ponderous and severely unearned character dilemmas.

         The cast is obviously having fun here and are given license to fully send-up the cliches attached to their stories and their character's. Chris Pine's turn as the egomaniac Prince Charming and Streep, who's doing her best Margaret Hamilton impersonation, keep things lively and funny. Blunt and Cordon also do a fine enough job working as the glue that keeps these dispirit plots from overwhelming the spinal narrative, but it's Marshall's lackluster visual design and directorial blandness that chains this movie to the floor and keeps it from fully taking flight. Much of this production is lit in muted blues and grays and creates for a dreary, damp looking post-Burton conceptual expression that doesn't reflect the buoyancy of the performances or Sondheim's varied musical numbers. Many scenes are shot in traditional coverage, composed mostly of simple masters, close-ups and over the shoulder shots, without hardly any swooping cranes, impressive single-takes or even occasional grandiose establishing shots that would open up the frame, resulting in musical set-pieces that feel small and televisual.
       Far less melodramatic or irritating as last-year's overlong “Les Miz”, and with sing-along musical sequences that are more confidently and skillfully performed, recorded and mixed, “Into the Woods” is a benign, if somewhat banal, movie going experience. Family's who're looking to escape the polar-vortex and/or the discomfort of having to talk to each other will most likely enjoy the majority what they see here, even if by the last thirty minutes they might be thinking more about their holiday dinner leftovers than how the movie will be resolved.

Grade: C+  

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Jan-2015

Transcendence review

                Wally Pfister, the talented cinematographer behind modern classics such as “The Dark Knight”, “Inception” and “Moneyball” brings us his directorial debut in “Transcendence”, a sci-fi drama starring Johnny Depp as a mad scientist who becomes a highly sentient computer with ambiguous goals towards the human race.  Tonally and visually, considering his recent work with director Christopher Nolan, the movie is presented in a way we might expect; cold, stark, and sterile, mirroring the dehumanizing technologies that the plot warns the audience against.

                Though Pfister hands over the photography work to Jess Hill his fingerprints are all over the film, but unfortunately when it comes to storytelling, pacing, and drama this curiously drab blockbuster lacks the same sense of meticulous identity.  Many scenes drag their feet when the movie is begging for acceleration and the themes of loneliness, the gradual loss of individuality, and progress by any means are somehow bluntly beat into the ground without ever really committing to any of them.

                Depp stars as Will Caster, a Ted-Talking computer genius who’s figured out the process of creating fully formed artificial intelligence. His wife Evelyn, played by Rebecca Hall, is working in union to create medical nano-bots.  When her husband is fatally injured by a gunshot from a technophobic revolutionary, Evelyn does what she can to keep him alive and uploads his consciousness into the mainframe of his super-computer. There, he’s not only able to access all of his memories and knowledge but he's able to think exponentially faster and more efficiently, using Evelyn’s nano-technologies to heal the sick and injured and to build fields of solar panels, expanding his ever-growing digital network. 

                This cyberpunk Frankenstein plot should have provided a simple but useful framework for the actors and the screenplay to really go in a myriad of different, and hopefully interesting directions. Unfortunately, Phister never really gives us a clear sense of the key players in the narrative when it comes to why we should care about anything that’s going on. Depp and Hall’s tragic romance is underwhelming and almost nondescript, leaving all the pulp-genre elements of the film feeling derivatively old-hat.  We're never as sad as we should be about the Evelyn’s straining marriage to her computer husband as he becomes less human and we're never as worried as we are supposed to be about Will’s descent into cold calculation over compassion due to Depp’s flat-line performance through each point of his character’s arc. 

                Cillian Murphy and Morgan Freeman step over from Nolan’s stable of repertory actors and are given almost nothing to do here as concerned investigators. Them, along with Kate Mara as the leader of the human rebellion against Castor’s digital army, are strangely disconnected from the more interesting—though ultimately flailing--emotional story. Paul Bettany, as a former colleague of Depp’s character, who is then recruited by the militaristic insurgence, probably gives the best performance in the entire film, picking up the slack dropped by everyone else. Rebecca Hall is clearly trying her hardest but has absolutely nothing to work with or against, rendering her best scenes into an ineffectual, one-women juggling act.

                Despite the fact that “Transcendence” has the right budget, the right actors, and a promising director--given the pedigree of films he’s worked on as crew--the final result is a depressing slog, not worth your time or consideration.  It’s competently framed and lit but the screenplay lacks any kind of specificity or vitality, and the simple joys of the movie’s sci-fi conceits are almost instantly drowned in its bland austerity.

Grade: D+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/April-2014