My Own Love Song *½

Director: Olivier Dahan
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Forest Whitaker
Madeline Zima, Elias Koteas, Nick Nolte

If there's something you can't accuse Olivier Dahan of is subtlety. More than a storyteller he's a pointer, someone who constructs entire universes just to point out a specifically dramatic trait or event in his characters' lives.
Remember how everything in La Vie en Rose for example, was a constant attempt at over dramatizing the already melodramatic life of chanteuse Edith Piaf?
The incoherent editing, the fantastical plot twists, the heightening of emotions through exaggerated visual aids, all with the purpose of exploiting sentiment.
It's not a coincidence that when we first meet Billie (Zima) in this film, she's desperately looking for her wedding band. Minutes later we learn that Billie's husband, like her ring, has disappeared without a trace.
This is the kind of thing Dahan does to point what will become obvious, it's as if he doesn't trust his audience and is constantly trying to tell everything twice.
When My Own Love Song begins we meet former country singer Jane (Zellweger) she's sitting alone in a bar waiting for people she can be mean to apparently.
A stranger approaches her in the way men approach lonely women in bars and Jane proceeds to kick and chew his balls in every way she can. Seconds later, we and the stranger learn that she's in a wheelchair.
Ah, seems to go Dahan's mind, Jane is a bitch because life has been a bitch to her!
After this display of self pity and contempt for humanity Jane wheels herself to her humble house. So far we know she's handicapped, bitter and likes to go to bars. Consequently we will learn she lost her husband in a car accident, had to give up her son to social services and most shocking of all, she has stopped singing! Jane is a Susan Hayward character without the camp.
Jane's best friend is Joey (Whitaker) who can just be described as a magical negro. Period.
He has a stutter, he delivers life changing advice in every line of dialogue and he also talks to angels.
We really can't see why he would even like being around Jane if it wasn't because we know he has a role to fulfill in transforming her hum-drum life. This chance comes in the shape of a trip to Baton Rouge where Joey expects to meet a famous author (who writes about angels) and he also intends to trick Jane into attending her son's first communion (how he finds out this is even occurring is as preposterous as anything you'll see in this film).
They take off towards their own figurative Emerald City where each plans to have their wishes granted. Along the way they meet quirky characters, like the aforementioned Billie and a strange singer (Nolte) who confuses urban legends with myth and has a penchant for magic brownies.
My Own Love Song perhaps would be a better movie if Dahan had concentrated on developing the characters as opposed to finding ways in which to symbolize their every thought in some exciting visual manner. When Jane writes a song about birds we are stuck with a cutesy sequence where the characters walk accompanied by animated birds straight out of a Wes Anderson after school special.
The movie however is mostly a very French take on what an American movie must be like. Get a couple Oscar winners, a soundtrack made out of Bob Dylan songs, squeeze the hell out of quirk and filter all this through the all-American genre by excellence that is the road movie.
It's a pity that the film represents a return to form for Zellweger who has been so intermittent on the big screen this decade. Her Jane might not be extraordinary but the actress does her best with the little she's given, both the actress and the character deserve a much better film.

Where the Wild Things Are ****

Director: Spike Jonze
Cast: Max Records, Catherine Keener, Mark Ruffalo
Lauren Ambrose, James Gandolfini, Paul Dano, Chris Cooper
Forest Whitaker, Catherine O'Hara, Michael Berry Jr.

A wave of pure joy rushes over you from the moment the studio logos appear in Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are", an energetic, achingly bittersweet adaptation of Maurice Sendak's children's book.
Published in 1963 the book was deemed impossible to translate to the screen considering it's made out of ten sentences and pictures. The kind of beautiful simplicity contained in it charms both kids and adults, because they have the liberty of imagining more than they read.
Jonze, who co-wrote the screenplay with Dave Eggers, retains the essence of the book and expands on it without taking away its power.
But how do you expand on a story that depends so much on each person's own world views? Jonze deftly crafts the story of Max (Records) using conventional archetypes and turns him into a little boy who's ignored by his older sister (Pepita Emmerichs) and bullied by her friends who destroy an igloo he's very proud of.
He also lives with his mom (the luminous Keener) who can't give him all the attention he craves and the only reference we see of his father is in an inscription attached to a globe he gave him which reads "to Max owner of this world love Dad".
One night Max builds a fort to protect himself from the sun's imminent death (which he learned of earlier that day at school) and when his mother refuses to enter in it because she's busy with her boyfriend (Ruffalo), Max proceeds to put on his wolf costume and create the ultimate tantrum.
He runs away to escapepunishment and finds a small rowboat floating in a pond. He gets in it and sails until he reaches an island where he runs into a group of strange creatures.
Max identifies with their love for destruction and approaches them with the kind of selfconfidence he lacked in his own home.
The creatures, who have hair, horns and feather, don't seem to scare him at all. He tells them he has magical powers and they name him their king.
Max's reign will have dirt-clod fights, giant forts, rumpuses and also the promise that he will vanish loneliness and sadness from the creatures' lives.
The king identifies the most with Carol (Gadolfini) who like him throws tantrums when his wishes aren't granted and wants everyone to be together and love each other.
This brings him problems with the others like pushover Ira (Whitaker) and his girlfriend Judith (O'Hara) who's the self appointed downer. Or Alexander (Dano) a goat like creature who feels belittled and ignored most of the time.
But Carol's biggest disappointments usually come at the hand of K.W. (Ambrose), the most independent creature in the group who has decided to leave them and move somewhere else creating conflicts in their society.
Max soon realizes that he won't be able to keep harmony long, after all he's just "a boy pretending to be a wolf pretending to be a king".
Jonze's first miracle comes in the way he doesn't really ask us to suspend our disbelief, he gives Max so much confidence that we believe what he's seeing without having time to wonder where did all this come from.
In a way he does for the creatures' island what Victor Fleming made for Oz; as in creating a land of wonder that might exist only within the main character's imagination, but has enough humanity to allow all of us as visitors too.
But Max thanks to Records' phenomenal work also gives the boy a characteristic that's usually hidden in these kinds of films: complete selfishness.
When he first reaches the island the boy doesn't think for one second of going back home, unlike Dorothy, his quest isn't to find a way back but to remain there forever.
He only starts thinking about his past when he realizes that even in this special world he still feels alone.
Despite Records' fantastic performance, Jonze doesn't make the island specifically about him. It's more like a place where to find every kind of archetype from a collective childhood's psyche.
The journey there is like an existential crisis at a time when simplistic reasoning contains the most powerful wisdom. "Happiness isn't always the best way to be happy" complains Judith and the statement makes sense in the context.
The director tries to tell children that they are not alone in the world and attempts to explain to them that the perils that lie ahead are nothing compared to the joys.
When Max hears that the sun, like all things, will die the camera shows us how he looks at his mother and sister with an angst he can't share with them. He's also aware that this is the very sun that scenes later will illuminate a vast desert and make it seem like the most beautiful thing he's seen.
He also reasons with spirituality as he becomes a God to the creatures who blame him for their unhappiness. This exemplifies perfectly the deification of parents in the child's eye.
Max can't fathom that his father both gave him the world (the globe in this case) and then took it away by leaving them.
His probable guilt is projected in the island with the complicated relationship between Carol and K.W. who love each other but can't be together.
Jonze's raw production, aided by Lance Acord's breathtaking earthy cinematography and Karen O and the Kids' rich, cheerful music, doesn't really give us time to sit down and think about the film's psychological observations. It's way too busy having fun and feeling alive.
The film spoils itself in the first ten minutes or so where again like "The Wizard of Oz" it gives us all the references we need to solve Max's puzzle in the island of the wild things.
The emotional connection it makes to that movie is a bittersweet reminder that Max's story might be ridden with perpetual repetition; its events meant to be reenacted forever by generations to come.
Jonze may not know how to solve the issues of childhood, but he tells us the island will be there when we need it.
And if Jonze, like Max, asks too many questions the imaginative answers he comes up with serve to appease at least for a minute or two the alienation that comes with being a child, regardless of how old we are.

Street Kings *

Director: David Ayer

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie

Jay Mohr, Chris Evans, Naomie Harris, Common, Martha Higareda

John Corbett, Amaury Nolasco

From the land of bad pulp comes David Ayer's sophomore directing effort; a film about Tom Ludlow (Reeves), a corrupt LA cop haunted by his wife's death who becomes an unjustified hero after rescuing some hostages using unconventional and illegal methods.

After his former partner (Terry Crews) is murdered, Tom begins to investigate the causes and discovers a web of corruption under his very department.

He has to face an inquisitive Internal Affairs officer (Laurie) while protecting his superior (Whitaker) who he trusts and admires.

Ten minutes into the film you already know who the bad guys (i.e the responsible for the corruption) are, the problem is that the film doesn't really know it or doesn't care that we don't feel the need to discover why they did it.

Following the "L.A Confidential" rules of how to make film noir in our times, the filmmakers try to create an updated mood that still has the tortured souls, the dark cinematography and a femme fatale prospect or two, but in trying to pull off the "noir", they neglected the "film" and deliver something so by the numbers that it only thrills when you wonder how many times a man can be shot before he dies.

The ensemble work is all over the place, beginning with Reeves whose only leading man quality is the fact that he has the most scenes. In a way it's as if the whole movie sets the situations to work for him; you know he will find the exact clue at the right time or that he will find a way to work his way up to the good side of the law, because everyone else sets everything for him.

Unlike his character, Reeves doesn't need to do any dirty work to get what he wants.

Whitaker is loud and cliché, while Laurie didn't seem to bother to play his character at all, despite the fact that he should be the most ambiguous in terms of plot contribution.

The set pieces are nothing new and while the film has some good intentions, in all it's a perfect example of how to go from noir to nah.

Vantage Point *

Director: Pete Travis

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Forest Whitaker

Eduardo Noriega, Edgar Ramírez, Said Taghmaoui, Ayelet Zurer

William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver

Boasting an impressive cast, the film tells the story of the attempted assassination of the American President (Hurt) through eight different points of view.

The story unfolds in Salamanca, Spain, home to a world summit to stop terrorism where several heads of state are meeting. Of course the one causing the most controversy is the American one and in the film's only moment of truth, crowds are seen protesting and accusing him of being the real terrorist.

With this hostile setting, it comes as no wonder when the President is shot by a sniper. Minutes later a bomb explodes killing dozens of people in the square where the conference is being held.

After this, the film goes back in time to the exact same hour in order to show the events through the eyes of each character. Not as "Rashomon" in its development as it wants to be, it feels more like an episode of a television action drama, where after each commercial break we get new clues to solving the mystery and save the world.

While the technical execution is rather good and engaging (although they could've gotten a different shot of the explosion for each flashback...) , the story is filled with more clichés than a Hallmark card. These come especially in the form of some characters and the dialogues they're forced to say.

Weaver injects fire and entertaining bitchiness to a CNN like producer, Zoe Saldana brings a peaceful sense of dignity to her outspoken reporter. Noriega and Ramírez are affecting as opposing sides who have more than they think in common, Quaid's performance as a not so young bodyguard trying to live up to his glorious past gives the actor a great opportunity to shine and Hurt can probably do no wrong, despite the awful lines he's given which are supposed to be inspirational.

But with most characters the film paints everything too by the numbers, sometimes insulting laws of common sense.

As if this wasn't bad enough, most of the film's flaws come in the shape of stereotypes the characters are supposed to be fighting against.

Having Whitaker play a saintly man who can do absolutely no wrong and goes around saving little girls and taping everything with his indestructible camcorder comes off looking as a forced attempt to soften his enigmatic looks, while the beautiful Zurer is given Spanish lines which for American audiences might result romantic, but for people who know the language sound like soap opera parodies.

There is nothing eminently wrong with a Hollywood film that features over the top chase sequences, explosions and body doubles. In a way we've come to expect it of a film like this.

What results monstruous is that the same film tries to deliver a message of world conscience, while reducing the idea of terrorism to a game whose winning is limited to the regulations of American foreign policy.

A film which at some level tries to promote international understanding and then kills off every non American character comes off looking as one with double standards, or maybe scarily honest in its innocence not to nocitce what it's doing.