Non-Stop        (**1/2 Subjective stars)

    While I bobbled along on the tide of image proliferation,  Liam Neeson fandom crept up on me on little cat feet.  Non-Stop, his current air travel thriller, did the trick.  I've seen the pretty good (Kinsey),  the outright crappy (The Grey) and the in-between  (a Star Wars vehicle, Before and After, A-Team, etc.).  He came near to getting a statuette for Schindler's List but came up against Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven.  Like Clint, he's aging into a grizzled eminence that prowls the washed-up-tough-guy roles he's made his metier.

    Never mind Hollywood's constant flogging of shoddy products,  periodically they hit pay dirt. In Non-Stop,   Liam has to pick a murderer out of a motley mix of airline passengers who are being  picked off at a steady clip.  It's Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians at 30,00 feet.   Will it be the Muslim?  The mouthy black dude?  The geeky nerd? Maybe the Julianne Moore character?   Or is Liam a washed up schizophrenic?  No spoilers here, but it's hard to deny the vulnerability of a commercial jet, far over the Atlantic, with wickedness afoot.  And while there are brief interludes rigged for pathos,  I found myself glad to be watching and not flying on that particular flight.  The audience whooped at the end, partly out of sheer nervous flight fatigue and partly cuz Liam rocks it.

PS - For a funny take on Liam Neeson, or Neesons, as they call him, check out Key and Peele's sketch:

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/4494cb/key-and-peele-what-about--non-stop---though-



Next Up:  Nymphomaniac

The Grand Budapest Hotel  (two subjective stars) 

      Intricately conceived from writing to acting, from painstaking set design to camerawork, The Grand Budapest Hotel is total Wes Anderson immersion.  No matter my frustrations with his preciousness,  he's due credit his for commitment to detail.  Motifs and clever details abound.  In one recurring bit, his characters are given to spontaneous readings of windy romantic poetry at humorously inappropriate junctures.  

        
     The camera work is formal and severely two dimensional.  Repeating tracking shots slide parallel to the screen and most of the shots and effects are used to flatten, not deepen, the view.  Straight lines abound and when the camera passes through multiple doors in a long hallway it doesn't convey space, it compresses.   Some of the shots are clear quotes from the silent films of Keaton, Lloyd and Chaplin, when camera movement was technically restricted. Anderson's films also remind me visually of Punch and Judy puppet shows and the shoebox dioramas we made in 4th grade.  

       As in much of his work, the acting here is mannered.  There are bon mots and zingers delivered precisely,  there's no illusion of improv, but rather of an eccentric version of staged screwball comedy.  When Harvey Keitel made his appearance,  I did a double take, expecting method acting to suddenly derail the whole precarious contraption.  

        
      Which brings me to the glue that holds this film together, Ralph Fiennes' luscious performance as M. Gustav, a dowager-screwing dandy with a conscience.  My peeve with Anderson's work is its lack of emotional depth.  I'm a fan of his surreal vision, but his dedication to style at the cost of substance often leaves me cold and bored.  In the character of Gustav, and Fiennes' lovely rendering of him, Anderson brings humanity to a film that is clearly a technical marvel.  I didn't love the film, but I loved much of it and I'm excited to see what comes next.  What more can you ask of an artist?

American Hustle

 American Hustle's charms are numerous, from lavish comb-overs and 70's Cadillacs to striving DA's and con artists.  Everyone's on the make, highborn or low.  The actors seem to be having so much fun, I wanted to throw on some polyester and join them.  That's the good and the bad.  The movie is fun, but ultimately you remember the wigs, not the plot.   David Russell's film makes a halfhearted point about American's striving and hubris, but it doesn't commit.  The mood is too frothy for pathos or satire and you're left just chuckling at the clothes and the shenanigans.

And the acting.  Christian Bale's pudgy Bronx conman in wide lapels and cravat is sumptuous, as is Jennifer Lawrence as his hot, layabout, drama queen wife.  Amy Adams and Bradley Cooper have nice turns, but I particularly like Jeremy Renner's big hearted Mayor of Camden. The comedian Louis CK plays the only seemingly normal character in the film and is cudgeled for his trouble.

One thing that's beginning to irritate me about Russell's films, at least this one and The Fighter, is a  tendency to be voyeuristically looking at lower-middle and middle class characters.  Almost as if the director were winking at us as we laugh at the poor striving schmucks.  It's less of a problem here because the mood is so light, but I found it deeply unpleasant in The Fighter.

Blind Detective

                                                           (3 subjective stars)


Yippee Ki Yay for the 14th San Diego Asian Film Festival.   An awesome variety of styles and content stretching from the Phillipines to India.

 Film trailers often, and often purposefully,  obscure the nature of a film by cherry picking the best scenes.  The trailer for Blind Detective describes a straightforward thriller, but this mad concoction comes from Hong Kong where they excel at mashing genres.  Sharply directed by Hong Kong mainstay Johnny To, Blind Detective delivers an irresistible hybrid of slapstick, screwball comedy, thriller and supernatural mystery.   The closest thing in Hollywood are tongue-in-cheek Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis films, but those offer an anemic version of Hong Kong flavor for US cineplex audiences.  Blind Detective takes delight in it's sharp turns of tone,  contrasting ghostly flashbacks with romantic bickering, interspersed with slapstick and real bloodletting.  

While both leads are superb, Sammi Cheng, as a kung fu-fighting, lovestruck Dr. Watson to the eponymous Blind Detective (Andy Lau) constantly amazes with lightning-quick changes between melodrama, comedy and outright tomfoolery.  A lovely, bemused sense of humor hovers over the film and the writing crew is due credit for the wit and restraint, as is the masterly direction.   Oddly, the cinematography varies from excellent interiors to some drab location shooting.  A tiny bit long at 150 minutes,  Blind Detective is still wildly entertaining and much of that credit is due the editor. 

If Hong Kong filmmaking in all it's riot of fusion appeals to you,  you'll savor Blind Detective.

The Counselor

First, a disclaimer.  I viewed this film under duress, not as a first on my list.  Hope to put  up  something more interesting soon.  SD Asian Film Festival begins early in November and includes the promising Hong Kong thriller Blind Detective.

The script for The Counselor is direct from Cormac McCarthy and many of the tropes from No Country For Old Men resurface.  Fate and Greed trudge mercilessly through the film.  I guess No Country worked because McCarthy wrote the book, but the Coens wrote the script and the pretensions were minimized.   The Counselor is sharp in fits, but the rhythm stutters badly as the actors choke on portentous sawdust.  I'm also going to mark McCarthy an old school sexist, whose female characters hew to the virginal or the viperous.   Cameron Diaz, wearing overtly sinister makeup,  gets the unpleasant task of embodying the highly sexual and (coincidentally) scheming female lead.  Javier Bardem as a mellow, reflective drug dealer achieves the only human, and humorous characterization in the film.  Michael Fassbender is sadly wasted.  Wait for Netflix and then be sure to be multitasking. 

Moonrise Kingdom

I always want to like Wes Anderson's films.  And there are often aspects that I appreciate.  The humor is dry, the mis-en-scene is lovingly detailed.  But those aspects are also part of the problem.  The films are often crafted into oblivion and the detached tone of the films can turn stale.  You almost root for someone to flub a line or break character.  One positive is the performances he elicits.  Here Bruce Willis plays nicely against type as a weak-kneed policeman and Edward Norton does a nice turn as  Boy Scout leader.  There are funny, absurdist moments, but I  ended up exhausted by the effort of trying to like a film that's overdetermined.  It's a whimsical film without whimsy.

Prometheus


How does Ridley Scott fall so short of the mark set by Alien?  


The original was written by Dan O'Bannon, who also wrote Total Recall, and it featured a gritty, realist view of space travel.  The ship oozed grime and the crew were clearly disgruntled hired help working for a sinister corporation.  The cast was seamless with great American character actors Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton, British stars Ian Holm and John Hurt, all led by Tom Skerritt and Sigourney Weaver.  The plot hummed with tension as the characters slowly succumbed to the nearly invincible creature. 


 Prometheus boasts an almost equally fine lineup with Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Noomi Rapace (Girl/Tattoo), Charlize Theron and the amazing Michael Fassbender.  But here the action doesn't hum, it drones.   My sister complained that Ms. Rapace wasn't up to Sigourney Weaver's toughness in the original, but Rapace was plenty tough in Girl w/Dragon Tattoo.   As the role is written,  she simply isn't viable as an anthropologist who conveniently morphs into an action hero.   Bad directing and writing.  Charlize Theron seems to be typecast as the cold bitch here, more or less the same role she has  in Snow White and the Huntsman.  Her part in the movie is extraneous, as are those of most of the crew. There are too many plot points stolen from the original - landing on a dangerous planet, infection, betrayal by android, corporate skullduggery - undercutting the possibility of suspense.   Bad writing.    And the brief but powerful use of bodily gore in Alien becomes over-the-top horror in Prometheus.  Bad writing and directing.  Horror doesn't equal tension.  The film is undeniably gorgeous on the big screen and it has moments, but it's a sadly pale companion to the beauty of Alien.