Short Takes: "Love and Other Drugs" and "Hereafter".

More than the "Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhall Naked Variety Show", this movie is a sadly overdone ode to complicated love. Sure, Anne and Jake are naked a lot and as good a marketing angle as that might've been, the truth is that they are remarkable not because of their bubble butts and perfect stomachs but because of the nakedness of their performances (corny to say it but true...).

Gyllenhaal plays womanizing Pfizer medical representative Jamie. Hathaway plays Maggie, the cynical, early onset Parkinson's disease, patient he falls for.

They try to make it all about sex but movie conventions have showed us that before soon they'll be entangled in some messy emotional issues.

When this happens the movie gives its lead actors a chance to shine, the rest however is a confused mess that makes it seem as if the editor and the director were on some weird emotion altering pill.

The film alternates between moods in such an uneven way that it's impossible for the filmmakers to say they were doing a cute postmodernist take on the drug experience through editing. The whole thing is jut muddled filmmaking.

It's nice then to see Gyllenhaal stretching his limited chops to explore a more aggressive character, someone unafraid to come off as a total jerk and win our hearts by the end (George Clooney would've played him in the 90's...).

And it obviously comes as no surprise that Anne Hathaway is all sorts of magnificent. The little things she gives Maggie are stunningly detailed without being show-offs. She could've played this woman with pity and gone over the top to deliver her message, however she does quite the opposite and slowly lets Maggie become who she is.

Watching Hathaway go from sexiness to raw pain is the one truly addictive thing about this movie.

Clint Eastwood has got to be one of the most overrated working directors, yet at the same time some of his films are so subtle and misunderstood that he seems to be slightly underrated.

Such is the case with Hereafter, a haunting romantic drama that fails to ignite the tragic passion The Bridges of Madison County did but is still able to steer off the preachy stubbornness of Changeling.

The script (written by Peter Morgan) seems to be getting its line from the Iñárritu school of "connecting random dots to achieve universal catharsis" and as such, we see how the lives of former psychic George (Damon), French tsunami survivor Marie (de France) and British boy Marcus (Frankie McLaren) are united by death and then brought together by the magic of the movies.

Eastwood however directs taking his cue from the school of Clint and turns the film into a meditative examination of life in times of chaos. Hereafter takes its time to make its point but it's never a slow movie. In fact Clint plays with the story so well that for a moment we doubt it's leading to the place where it eventually takes us to.

This makes it a curious experiment and the film often feels as moody as the characters are tragic. Damon gives a superbly restrained performance but the film perhaps belongs to the stunning de France. Her bittersweet portrayal of Marie is infused with a cruel tenderness that gives her such rich layers. Her story is often at risk of becoming the most convoluted and corny, yet she handles it with such class that you really don't care when the movie tries to turn her into a paperback romance heroine.

The ending of Hereafter might turn off some who feel Clint's gone senile, surrendered to love and just teased us for 130 minutes with the promise of turning on his darkness and delivering one of his intense takes on justice.

However those willing to look past the sensationalism the movie deals with, will be rewarded with a heartbreaking tale that tells us to stop worrying about what's to come when all we really have is today.

Love and Other Drugs **

Hereafter ***

2012 *

Director: Roland Emmerich
Cast: John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor
Thandie Newton, Thomas McCarthy, Oliver Platt, Morgan Lily
Liam James, Johann Urb, Zlatko Buric, Beatrice Rosen
Danny Glover, George Segal, Woody Harrelson

If the law of attraction had scientific validity, then Roland Emmerich would be held responsible for the apocalypse.
Throughout his career he has destroyed the planet by way of aliens, natural cataclysms, giant reptiles and meteors; this time he goes the conquistador's way and exploits the Mayan by stating that according to their calendar the world will come to an end on December 21, 2012.
And just as they predicted, when the date arrives the planets align, the sun emits radiation that causes "the Earth's core to destabilize" and the disasters begin.
Los Angeles succumbs to a massive plate movement, Yellowstone Park becomes the Earth's largest volcano and a Tsunami covers the Himalayas.
Fortunately there's a backup plan; as G8 members have been working on the construction of massive arks to help preserve art, animals and for a billion-Euros-a-seat, the planet's finest people.
But Emmerich can't let the world go down in this corrupt hedonism and for every dirty politician like the US President's Chief of Staff, Carl Anheuser (a slimier than usual Platt) there's someone whose spirit is nothing but saintly like the President played by Glover, or the film's leads.
On one side we have Jackson Curtis (Cusack), a failed sci-fi author, working as a limo driver, who discovers about the disaster from a loon in the woods (who else but Harrelson?) and runs to save his two kids (the lovely Lily and James), his ex-wife (Peet) and her new man (McCarthy).
We also have heart-o'-gold scientist Adrian Helmsley (Ejiofor), one of the first people to discover the Mayans were right and becomes advisor to the U.S. President, only to discover that the people behind the arks don't really care about humanity (gasp!).
The predictable plot will unite their stories at one point, but before that we are subjected to two hours of terrible acting, ridiculous dialogue and more CGI than you'll ever want to see in your life.
One of the film's major problems is its need to be so big about everything; therefore Emmerich has to steal from any other major disaster movie you can think of.
There's a mini Poseidon drama (where poor Segal is relegated as a stock player), "Earthquake" like moments of cheesy tragedy, Ejiofor and Cusack trying their best to be Paul Newman and Steve McQueen from "The Towering Inferno" and even a nod to "Titanic" as the life saving arks find themselves in peril.
What this movie fails to do is connect us to the people in the midst of the tragedies. Watching Cusack's character most of the time feels as if it's taking the fun out of watching the preposterous ways in which the director can think of destroying historical monuments, especially because the whole thing might even be a manifestation of his regret about losing his family.
So Emmerich removes the morbid fun out of watching the world collapse, by preaching to us why it should be saved, through characters that never really justify their need for salvation, besides the billing of course.
What's more, for all Emmerich has to say about what makes the world such a wonderful place, he constantly does his best to remind us about our worst.
One of his plotlines includes the death of a French art curator (think "The DaVinci Code" with Thandie Newton) who is killed in a car accident in a familiar looking Parisian tunnel.
That the director chooses to kill a man in the place where Princess Diana died, isn't what's disgustingly tacky, but the fact that he states it as something "curious" is a repulsive nod to tabloid lovers everywhere.
Another moment has him getting rid of almost every Russian character in the plot; because why would a new Earth need mobsters and Russian brides he asks.
And then, in one of the film's most cringe worthy scenes he seems to suggest that reality television will not die with the apocalypse, but will become a way of bonding and learning.
Perhaps Emmerich believes his movies to be just entertainment, but deep within their plots there often lie ideas that glorify the Western world and squeeze even the last cliché out of everyone else.
The world will not come to its end because of prophecies ancient civilizations made, but because of a humanity that has the technology and resources to exalt the beautiful things we can create, yet chooses only to glorify the very worst in our nature.

Frost/Nixon **

Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen
Kevin Bacon, Toby Jones, Sam Rockwell, Oliver Platt
Matthew McFadyen, Rebecca Hall

The private lives of public figures have always been a fetish for the masses. The private lives of fallen public figures are practically bliss.
In 1977 when Richard Nixon sat down for his first interview after his resignation, as President of the United States, with, British talk show host, David Frost those who cared saw in it the chance to go behind the scenes of the most controversial President in American history as well as an opportunity to end the speculation and set the record straight, giving Nixon an informal trial.
In an appropriately postmodernist approach, screenwriter Peter Morgan wonders what went on behind the scenes of the interviews and as directed by Ron Howard the result is a vastly entertaining film that fails to become relevant despite its best intentions.
When the film begins, Frost (Sheen) is doing a variety show in Australia and upon watching how popular the last Nixon (Langella) speech was, decides that interviewing the former President will save his career from exile and get him respect as a journalist.
After paying Nixon six hundred thousand dollars and coming up with a team that includes a top television producer (McFadyen) and investigators Bob Zelnick (Platt) and James Reston Jr. (Rockwell), the interview consisting of twelve two hour long sessions takes place.
Nothing in the film is as exciting as watching Langella and Sheen face each other. Both actors deliver breathtaking work as they become the people they're playing (that one mostly knows the actual beings through television gives the film an interesting meta connotation).
Langella is commanding and gives Nixon a dignity he preserves even during moments when he has to deliver cheap, self-analytical lines.
While looking nothing like the President his performance is full of vitality and even charm, Langella makes us believe in his Nixon.
Sheen on the other side proves again what a master of subtlety he can be as he lets the veteran actor take the movie from his hands and fully supports the main performance. He makes out of Frost an ambitious, persevering man with such charisma that you always know he's holding the aces.
Altogether the ensemble does terrific job, Bacon, as Nixon's chief of staff Jack Brennan, gives a moving portrayal of loyalty until the end, while Rockwell's manic energy actually helps make his Reston Jr. come off looking more serious than a conspiracy theorist.
Howard's direction has rarely been this efficient as he creates real tension in events with widely known outcomes. His detailed reconstruction of the interviews and the era is remarkable; he reccurs to aesthetic techniques of the 70's and fashions the film after a docudrama interviewing his own characters. All of this gives the movie a brisk, enjoyable pace that isn't able to get rid of the awkward, insecure discourse behind the people who made it.
Because deep into "Frost/Nixon" you realize that this film isn't exactly a biopic or a mere play adaptation but an actual attempt by Howard (and to some extent Morgan presumedly) to say something about our times.
And this becomes almost crystal clear during a moment when Frost accuses Nixon of invading Cambodia looking for Communists and coming up with nothing.
If you take Communists exchange them for weapons of mass destruction and Cambodia for Irak you have an obvious parallel with the Bush administration and more specifically its inhuman foreign policy.
Once Bush's administration is over hopefully the lesson that will be learned by the world is that history is nothing but a repetitive cycle, "all of this has happened before and it will happen again". And if there has ever been an administration as controversial as the current one it's Nixon's who with Vietnam, Watergate and his subsequent pardon by President Gerald Ford left an entire generation thirsty for justice.
In this way, the plot isn't only premonitory of what will ultimately happen to Bush who like Nixon "devalued the presidency" and "left the country who elected him in trauma" but also fails in justifying its existence.
The questions made by Frost are time appropriate, but the answers become underwhelming as they bring us back to the historical context of the film (there is no other way a reenactment could've gone obviously).
You have to add to this the fact that Howard's view tends to proselitism when from the very start we're made to see Frost and never Nixon as the underdog.
He manages to wash his hands a bit by making Frost a manipulator, "he knows television" says one of the characters and the film often suggests he had dubious qualifications for the job despite his eventual success.
One also has to remember that in a way Frost very well embodies the kind of journalism which we're stuck with nowadays, where attractive, charming people are the ones digesting the news for the audience and delivering them in easy to digest forms.
If the interviews were meant to take place today it's sad to think that someone like Frost would've probably been the only option.
But we never know if Frost is fighting for his credibility, getting back at his critics or if he's actually after the truth.
Not that it matters much because in a way Frost is like the movie itself with the filmmakers using it to make questions they don't know how else to address in the very same way that researchers in the film use the journalist to ventilate their own, more complex inquiries.
But what happens when the film, like Frost can only deliver what they are trained to do? Which is basically to entertain.
You throw them a Ron Howard-ism, which here comes in the shape of an unexpected call the President makes to Frost, where he all but gives away his weak points under the influence of alcohol.
Here the film which has delighted itself in throwing these two men into a cockfight reduces the final interview to an exorcism of class resentment.
Like a "Rocky"-esque match where it also suggests that Frost had the edge merely because he had good timing, "Frost/Nixon" is both its accusation and its absolution.