Cinderella review

                The live-action “Cinderella” is further evidence of the lengths major studios are willing to go to avoid coming up with new ideas and to see how much they can recycle their past before completely losing the good will of the audience. Director Kenneth Branagh, who was once known for his dynamic Shakespeare film adaptions, first collaborated with Disney with their successful adaptation of Marvel’s “Thor,” and when you think about it, Disney’s fairytale princesses relate closely to the iconicism and comfortable familiarity of the comic book superhero genre. With that in mind, and with the relative success of this functional remake, we can expect more of these to come.

               The story here follows most of the beats laid out in the 1950 animated classic. Ella (Lily James) is the warm and forgiving daughter of a wealthy aristocrat and who then is tragically left without a mother and father and forced to live as the servant of her evil stepmother (Cate Blanchett) and her obnoxious and self-absorbed stepsisters (Sophie McShera and Holliday Grainger). What comes after? You guessed it; a prince, a ball, a fairy godmother, glass slippers and a pumpkin-shaped stagecoach.

             Chris Weitz’s screenplay front-loads the original fairytale with the backstory of Cinderella’s biological mother and father, their tragic passing and the deteriorating relationship between her and her lawful step-family. Some of this is mildly interesting—one might wonder why Cinderella’s father would ever end up with an evil stepmother in the first place, and Blanchett is given a great screen entrance as the bloodless vamp—but much of this narrative padding is tedious, plot-stalling and treated with too much gauzy romanticism to register as effective tragedy.

                Branagh’s strengths as a storyteller are compromised by the prime objective of this adaptation, as it only exists to conjure the nostalgia of Disney’s once-relevant legacy in animation, and, ironically enough, this film expounds the very reasons why animation is given tonal allowances that simply don’t work in live action. The first problem here is that Cinderella is inherently a boring character and Lily James doesn't do much with the paper-thin persona as written to bring her to life. With catchy songs, talking mice and an exaggerated environment an animated feature can skate by on iconography alone, but once you throw in real actors and close-ups and throw out the musical sequences, the film is forced to create a believable emotional space, and this version of “Cinderella” does not.

                Blanchett eats up the scenery around her and leans into the film’s camp value like a professional, but the romantic scenes between Cinderella and the Prince (Richard Madden) are painfully unsupported and the inclusion of CGI birds and mice distract more than they endear. Occasionally, when Branagh is allowed focus in on a scene without pandering to fan-service and gives his actors some intimacy to express themselves, a hint of depth appears, but these rare moments are squandered on obtrusive special effects and an aesthetic slickness that makes the majority of the film look like an overproduced Tide commercial.
               Young girls are going to enjoy this and no review will stop the monolithic cynicism of these kinds of uninspired remakes.  Unlike Tim Burton’s misbegotten “Alice in Wonderland” or the mish-mash mythology of “Snow White and the Huntsman,” this fairytale retelling refuses to risk alienating audiences with a lofty post-modern interpretation. It’s not a particularly memorable or creative venture but it isn't offensive or challenging either, but what is frustrating is its defiant dedication to triviality. 

Grade: D+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/March-2015

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit review

                  At one time you could have called the superhero movie a niche or facet of the action genre, but as time has gone it has become the premier trend, whereas once, the spy thriller might have been a more profitable action trope. Films like “Goldeneye”, “Mission Impossible”, and of course the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan espionage features like “Clear and Present Danger” and “Patriot Games” were considered a kind of thinking man’s blockbuster that showcased a masculine hero who, while resourceful and highly skilled, wasn’t endowed with extra-human abilities. Instead, these films exploited the political and social paranoia’s of their time and blew them up to dramatically satisfying heights. But since then the world has changed and so has the demographics.

                Jack Ryan, once played by an aging Harrison Ford, is now embodied by Chris Pine, also known as the younger, sexier Captain Kirk in the recent “Star Trek” reboots. In the new origin story “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit”, Pine and his director Kenneth Branagh, the actor/director known primarily for his on-screen Shakespeare adaptations, come together to dig up the grave of the spy-game potboiler for a younger, perhaps less-patient audience. Their attempt, while hardly groundbreaking or innovative in any way, is more or less successful, though not without a few uneven results.

               While getting his PHD at Cambridge University in England, Jack Ryan witnesses the terrorism of 911 and enlists as a Marine, where he’s later injured in Afghanistan.  He works tirelessly to get back on his feet with his physical therapist turned fiancé, played by Keira Knightley, and it’s at this time that he is approached and recruited by a vetted member of the CIA (Kevin Costner). His special mission is to work undercover as a wall-street banker, where he can keep an eye on shadowy trading between countries that could lead to another attack on American soil.

                Branagh steps out from behind the camera as Viktor Cherevin, a Russian oil tycoon who plans on building a pipeline to Turkey, where he can sell vast amounts of company stock, which, when triggered by another American bombing, will destroy our crippled economy…or something like that.

                The plot of this movie is silly and so socially aware and stuffed with recent news-bites that Jack Ryan practically becomes a CIA Forrest Gump; conveniently connected to 911, the middle-eastern wars, sleeper cell terrorism, Wall Street, and the global economy.  Most of the tension is built by scenes where characters are looking at computer screens waiting for stock to sell or jump-drives to load, and, for the most part, none of it makes much sense. But this isn’t supposed to be believable, it’s supposed to be fun, and for the most part it is, just not when it thinks it is.

                Branagh works through the scripts lazy plotting and decides to direct this in the style of campy, Roger Moor era James Bond film. His acting work as the villain is so delightfully over-the-top he might as well be stroking a white cat with every scene he’s in. The conversations the dubious Branagh and Pine as our likable rooky hero are attention grabbing and well-rehearsed, as well as the dialogue driven scenes shared by Pine and Kevin Costner as his CIA confidant and Knightley as his worried, out-of-the-loop lover.  The action set-pieces however are handled with only enough skill to keep the movie afloat, but are mostly minor and unmemorable.

                As a classically trained actor and director Branagh wisely turns this by-the-numbers actioner into a character-centric B-movie. It isn’t a remarkable or note-worthy film, but it basically works as a light and agreeable attempt at a pre-Bourn espionage throwback. The screenplay ultimately prevents it from hitting the franchise-generating bull’s-eye it’s aiming for, but the film will likely entertain just fine as a stay-at-home Netflix time-waster.

Grade: C+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Jan-2013