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By the Sea (2015)

"By The Sea" is a Looking Glass

[6/10 · 13 October 2016]

"By the Sea" is a beautifully-filmed movie in which the pace and the dialog — the solitude and the silence — conveys a certain emptiness. At the heart of the film is overcoming adversities that can grow a marriage apart. You don't really get the sense that you even know what that adversity is for more than half the film. You know that Vanessa is struggling with something profound and that her husband, Roland, is trying to understand but feels compelled to give her her space (during which time he drinks away the day at a cafe).

You get the feeling that Roland failed his wife somehow and that she blames him for her misery. You also get the impression that he's locked out of her mind, which hides a painful secret. Vanessa suffers flashbacks, which implies that she is dealing with PTSD. There are scenes in which she almost seems fearful of her husband's advances. I had my mind made up as to what this "something" that has come between them is, until the last quarter of the film at which point it is revealed to be something quite different.

The pain Vanessa is experiencing is pain she insists on carrying alone. There are scenes in which Roland asks Vanessa to get it off her chest but she refuses — which only reinforces the impression that Vanessa has been the victim of a profound trauma. When the film reveals what the issue really is, the way in which Vanessa behaves makes no more sense than it did to begin with.

"By the Sea" has merit from an artistic vantage point and from the way in which it captures the "make or break point" between husband and wife. But it left me thinking that Vanessa's behavior would better correlate to the aftermath of abuse, not the reason supplied. It's not that the reason for Vanessa's depression isn't believable because it most definitely is a source of personal devastation. But the way it is played off between the two of them led me to assume that Roland wasn't really "in on it" himself. For at least half of the film Roland seems trapped on the outside of his wife's suffering looking in when he is in reality a victim of the same circumstances that so devastated his wife. For a great deal of the film, "By the Sea" leaves the viewer to speculate about what might be responsible for throwing Vanessa and Roland's marriage into crisis. Is it the slow burn of the day-to-day grind? Is it loneliness and isolation? Is it infidelity? Perhaps the genius of this film is that it is intended to evoke all of those things and none of those things at all.

The Peanuts Movie (2015)

The Peanuts Movie: Charlie Brown Kicks the Football, Metaphorically Speaking!

[6/10 · 22 November 2015]

Like many moviegoers, I am a longtime Peanuts fan of both the cartoon strip and the made-for-TV specials. When the classic animated features came out on DVD I purchased the entire set, and I relive my childhood Peanuts gang memories by revisiting them each and every holiday season.

"The Peanuts Movie" borrows a lot from the originals but it departs in key ways, too. The first notable difference is the animation. The Peanuts Movie sports a distinctive 3-D appearance in which Snoopy gains a textured coat of fur. All of the characters and scenes are attractively rendered; however, if I had to pick one character that didn't hit me right it is Snoopy, who looks more like a cuddly puppy than the full-grown dog he is in the original strip and the made-for-TV features.

The voice acting is spot on for this film — very similar to the originals in most respects — and the storyline incorporates many of the gags from the original shows, too. The movie, however, falls down on the soundtrack. While the film opens with a winter skating scene, it doesn't feature the "Skating" song but rather the Peanuts theme song, which echos throughout the movie. About a quarter of the way through, the film begins to move away from the jazz ambiance Charles Schulz so faithfully incorporated into the TV specials. I would have preferred to an entirely different genre of music more emphasis on either the original soundtracks or a new interpretation on Vince Guaraldi's jazz piano scores, but instead the movie relies on hip-hop inspired vocalists for much of the balance, not to revisit the characteristic "Peanuts sound" until the final minutes of the credits.

In any other animated movie the soundtrack featured in this film would have been a good fit. However, one of the problems in attempting to modernize the musical accompaniment is that it may date itself that much faster. If you compare Guaraldi's 1960s compositions to the more modern, fast-tempo, synthesizer-heavy music of the 1980s, what ends up sounding more "period" in nature is the '80s music as compared to Guaraldi's jazz piano. The latter, while unusual even for its time in a children's production, imparted a more timeless feel to Schulz' animated features, which in the long run may be lost upon this one. Musically, there's a smattering of everything in The Peanuts Movie. In Snoopy's Red Baron fight-scenes, the music takes a radical departure yet again with a classical-inspired orchestral score. With some creativity, there could have been a jazz fusion influence apparent even in Snoopy's flying ace scenes but it is not to be. Although I would stop short of describing the soundtrack as a "hot mess" — because in any other animated film the soundtrack would not be out of place — in this case key scenes in the film depart too heavily from the musical identity of the originals.

The plot builds steadily throughout the film, with liberal interludes during which familiar gags appear. There's only one point where the continuity breaks down, about half way through. Following a sequence of loosely connected "fast-foward" scenes, the movie's thus-far prevailing winter season abruptly ends and Charlie Brown is asked by a boy — not one of the better-known characters — for advice on how to fly a kite. Although the story attempts to transition between the dead of winter and the lush green of spring, it is not a smoothly connected sequence from a plot point of view because the interlude in which Charlie Brown attempts to show a younger boy how to fly a kite arrives smack dab in the midst of an important turning point for Charlie Brown in the main plot. Just as you are expecting Charlie Brown to pick up where he left off in the previous schoolyard scene, he's transported somewhere else entirely, interacting in a different setting, in a different season and with a different character entirely.

Although the storyline is ultimately uplifting, the entire plot is the Peanuts equivalent of Charlie Brown successfully kicking Lucy's football, which as all Peanuts fans know is never gonna happen. As endearing as the story is, The Peanuts Movie does not close on the such-is-life theme for which the comic strip and the made-for-TV specials are best known. This movie, in conclusion, will make it into my Peanuts DVD collection, but I highly doubt I will break out The Peanuts Movie to revisit the gang with the same enthusiasm I reserve for the originals. Although the movie succeeds in eliciting familiar laughs, in the end the main plot and the soundtrack deviations are too liberal. Dare I say, I suspect the gang's creator would agree.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Picnic at Hanging Rock: Beautiful and Ultimately Empty

[3/10 · 4 November 2013]

Everything about "Picnic at Hanging Rock" is promising. The costuming, the set, the characters, the cinematography — the Australian outback itself. Unfortunately, the film doesn't develop the characters into much more than vignettes, doing little to delve into how the characters think and feel. Relationships and how or why they are formed are scarcely defined, and little else about the story is, either. The film doesn't elaborate on the themes of the story to salvage the mystery it works so hard to build. This film contains parallel story lines, some of which appear to tie into the disappearances of the schoolgirls, some of which do not. Picnic at Hanging Rock feels like one of those films you need to watch repeatedly for some of the nuances or "clues" to sink in, but in reality a lack of resolution to the story IS the story.

Filmed in the mid '70s, the pace of the film is slow, perhaps intended to weave a dreamlike atmosphere (or to be less charitable, a throwback to the weed-smoking, psychedelic drug culture of the time). For modern audiences, however, the movie may prove frustrating in that it doesn't move the plot along fast enough to sustain the momentum that the tension- building soundtrack attempts to create. The soundtrack alone simply isn't enough to carry the mood.

There are those who will say that enigma itself is artful, whereas other viewers will no doubt feel that the ill-defined ending to this film has cheated them out of two hours of their valuable (and limited) recreational time. I would have to side with those who believe that enigma without resolution — or at least allusion to some semblance of solution — makes for an unsatisfactory film-watching experience. Think about it: real life is itself an open-ended "mystery". Those who seek escape in film or books are often looking for more closure than a "real life" film like this can offer — or at minimum the intellectual challenge of spotting all the clues to solve the mystery for themselves. By today's standards, Picnic at Hanging Rock moves too slow and delivers too little. With so many watch-worthy films and so little time, this isn't among the better picks. Enigmatic, open-ended films have their place, but it remains true that those without a clear beginning, middle and end are rarely successful among the mainstream as ends unto themselves.

There Will Be Blood (2007)

There Will Be Blood: Is there Great Talent in Depicting Human Depravity?

[2/10 · 17 August 2013]

"There Will Be Blood" offers the viewer a first-rate location, set, costuming, acting and cinematography but that's where the pleasure of this film ends. The soundtrack is repetitive in parts, at other times disjointed and distracting. What is supposed to be frenetic and suspense-building musical accompaniment is annoying, sounding as if it would better fit a scene set in the African bush — not the American West.

H.W., portrayed as Daniel Plainview's son, is too much the "little man" to be a believable character for his age — largely mute even before he suffers his accident. The majority of the film follows Plainview and H.W., who appear to remain the same age, only to jump abruptly into the future in which H.W. is a man. It feels as if the film editors suddenly realize they need cut an hour out of the film to make it "feature length", which leaves the viewer with a few sketchy transitional scenes over a smooth narrative segue.

Essentially the lead character is a greedy but lucky drunk. Writing human depravity is not among the greater literary talents — it's harder to make a character beloved than hated. Films and books that evoke the worst of human nature are a dime a dozen because it's easy to be gritty, cynical and dark. Try pulling off a convincing and compelling storyline that isn't cheesy and transparently sentimental — that's the greater challenge in screen writing, one that Hollywood attempts far too little these days.

In spite of critics' high praises, there is little to "There Will Be Blood" that doesn't drive home the same point in repetitive circles. Eli Sunday starts out as a mild-mannered kid who quickly becomes an over-played caricature of a country preacher and Plainview is a wretched soul who seeks no redemption. If the film succeeds, it succeeds in leaving one disgusted enough not to have any desire to watch it again.

Take a pass.

Saving Sarah Cain (2007)

Dark movies are a dime a dozen, as are romances. Someone writes a "sappy" movie about the Amish and it's bad?

[9/10 · 12 May 2008]

This comment is an attempt to balance out a "review" that broad brushed the acting in "Saving Sarah Cain" as wooden, the situations unrealistic, and the movie nothing more than sappy and clichéd. There was no sense of giving the reader the pros and cons to this film. As such, the author's "take" on the film had more to say about his or her film preferences than it did about the merits of the film itself.

While the premise of "Saving Sarah Cain" is somewhat of a stretch — relocating orphaned Amish children to a big city in order to live with an "English outsider" — the film is nevertheless intriguing and heartwarming.

To read such harsh criticism, however, one has to wonder if there some "rule" that says a good movie must be dark, depraved, brash, violent, sardonic or just plain jaded? If these harsh criticisms had been applied to yet another romantic comedy, I would say that the man-meets-woman premise has been milked to death and probably does deserve some of those criticisms. However, "Saving Sarah Cain" is not at all shallow, shows no disrespect or flippancy toward Amish culture, and the subject matter itself is not at all overdone. The acting on the part of the Amish children's characters was sensitive and convincing to the point of wondering if they somehow WERE drawn from among the Amish (or had lived among them in order to become true to their mannerisms). In addition, the situations and the psychological reactions to them were portrayed well enough to make the characters believable, though it is, in fact, based upon a work of fiction.

It would seem that the review presently leading the pack for this film advanced the idea that a "real movie" cannot be touching. However, I would say that sentimentality is not the problem. To the contrary, it is much harder to portray that which is innocent, earnest, restrained, modest or pure than it is to portray the hardened, jaded, disturbed, dysfunctional or brash characters that many dramas either call for. Of course, we're not living in the Silver Screen era, so it should be no surprise that this sort of movie — the director, script and its actors — would draw criticism from those who think there's only one way to make a decent movie: the way everyone else is doing it. I cannot name one film or work of fiction that does not follow a protagonist/antagonist formula, so the "cliché" criticism in the prior review is nothing more than a Red Herring.

In conclusion, if films that focus on an uplifting ending and steer clear of violence and stereotypical subjects and characters do not appeal, don't blame the director. Blame it on the fact that NO such movie is one's cup of tea. You'll never see me write a horror movie review because I would not do the subtleties of the horror genre justice. Likewise, I do not wish to read another review written by someone who obviously doesn't "get" the audience to whom "Saving Sarah Cain" is directed. There are some people who like to post reviews simply because they are contrarians and are under the impression that intellectual and artistic prowess must be demonstrated via criticism. The art is never good enough. The wine is never good enough. The films are never good enough. You get the idea…

Ignore them.

"Saving Sarah Cain" gets my vote for a movie well worth watching.