Les Misérables *½

Director: Tom Hooper
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway
Amanda Seyfried, Eddie Redmayne, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen
Samantha Barks, Aaron Tveit

Based on the eponymous musical by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg (itself an adaptation of the famous novel by Victor Hugo) Les Misérables is a story about revenge, injustice and doomed love...or at least that's what one gathers it's supposed to be about, considering how bloated and lacking in feeling this adaptation is. The film opens with an impressive shot as the camera rises from under the ocean and we watch a group of prisoners raise a ship in the galleys. Among them is Jean Valjean (Jackman), a man about to be released who has been in prison for two decades for stealing a loaf of bread. Keeping a close eye on Valjean is inspector Javert (Crowe) who reminds him he must respect his parole. Immediately a dynamic of abuser and abused is established and we know that Javert will make Valjean's life a living hell.

Yet the problem is that we know this only by default. Les Misérables is one of the most celebrated works of literature in history and people from all ages have come to know it even if they're not fully aware of it (The Fugitive anyone?) but director Tom Hooper depends so much on the audience's knowledge of the novel/musical that he pretty much forgets to make a "movie" to go with the story. Before we know it, we're back with a clean shaven Valjean who has changed his name and become mayor of a small town (how? Why? We never know). His peaceful existence is suddenly threatened when Javert is appointed as guard in his town. This Roadrunner/Coyote dynamic goes on during the rest of the film as life keeps putting Javert in the reformed Valjean's way even when he's trying to do nothing but good. Among his greatest deeds is the adoption of Cosette, the daughter of doomed grisette Fantine (Hathaway), perhaps the most miserable of them all, who dies after selling her hair, contracting an unnamed disease (*cough* TB *cough*) and killing it with a rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream".

The plot spans over two decades and clumsily tries to fit a ridiculous amount of uninteresting events into its overtly melodramatic structure, yet the problem isn't how over the top everything is but how inefficiently Hooper puts it on film. The film is supposed to be grand, sweeping, majestic etc. but the myriad of topics covered in Victor Hugo's historical fiction simply slip through Hooper's fingers. Les Misérables is an epic and simply put, Tom Hooper is no David Lean. He makes it seem as if the historical context exists exclusively in the service of the romantic plots and the Valjean/Javert dynamic. Things just happen and we never truly understand why. But he also fails in giving all these characters a true emotional background. They too, exist there only to serve the director's vision.

Hooper and DP Danny Cohen shoot every scene as if it was being viewed through a smartphone picture application, creating distasteful compositions that contribute nothing more than "style" to a movie that should've been ruled by substance. If the songs weren't loud and dramatic enough, Hooper's camera zooms so close to the actors' faces that it seems he's trying to make a statement about their tonsils. His stylistic choices (why try to develop an auteur vision if it's so inefficient?) often take you out of the movie and you begin to question everything that surrounds it. Why don't characters seem to age if it's been 20 years? Why are Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter still playing their Sweeney Todd characters? Why does Éponine seem to have been written to be the heroine in a telenovela? Why isn't Russell Crowe's fantastic Javert (the only character who seems to have a moral ambiguity) featured in more scenes where he's not being reduced to a sneering villain?

Les Misérables is sure to make viewers just as miserable as its characters, unless they're willing to pretend the movie's over after "I Dreamed a Dream". During the key sequence Hathaway is shot like Falconetti and she does so much with her face and your emotions, that her work should be considered nothing if not truly miraculous.

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming films.


If someone had told me I'd be looking forward to a Paul Haggis movie I would've punched them right in the nose. However this is precisely what the marvelous posters for The Next Three Days have been doing for me.
This one sheet in particular looks like a lost piece of advertising from a Steve McQueen movie and as such it's perfection.


And the award for best campaign of 2010 has got to go to Black Swan.
I'm not crazy to see the movie as most are but I'd surely hang any of the posters all over my house. Such beautiful works!

Excited to see either of these?

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.


Today we have two examples of how to do the poster for an adult thriller. One of them's bad, the other's simply outstanding.
First up is the lazy, lazy Fair Game design. I'm really interested in this movie but the marketing team seems to want to make me look elsewhere. First up was that by-the-numbers trailer that made the plot seem like a Lifetime drama and not the actual, too amazing to be real, spy story it is. Now there's this lackluster poster that seems to have been made by the kind of person who had trouble staying inside the line when coloring as a child (those titles couldn't be less symmetrical if they tried! It's impossible to read what this poster has to say with words everywhere!).
Then there's the fact that the actors seem to be in completely different movies. Naomi Watts seems to be auditioning to play Matt Damon in a Bourne poster (not coincidentally Doug Liman directed this and the first Bourne installment) and Sean Penn seems to be still playing Harvey Milk.


Next we have this incredible design for, wait for it, the new Paul Haggis movie.
That was enough of a surprise for me before digging into the richness of the poster and how it plays with the "movie star floating head" in an unexpected way. Reminds me of that poster form Premonition with Sandra Bullock's face made out of branches.
Excellent all over.

Seen anything interesting in your theater lobby?

Robin Hood *1/2

Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett
Mark Strong, William Hurt, Matthew Macfadyen, Oscar Isaac
Danny Huston, Mark Addy, Kevin Durand, Scott Grimes
Eileen Atkins, Max von Sydow

What do you get when you combine Batman Begins, Gladiator and Lord of the Rings but take away anything that was good about them? The answer is Robin Hood.
Ridley Scott's retelling of the English folk tale is a conflicted attempt at updating the basic story for modern audiences and keeping faithful to its roots.
It's the 12th century and rebellious soldier Robin Longstride (Crowe) decides he's had enough of the Crusades. He's been fighting along Richard the Lionheart (Huston) for a decade and his patience just runs out one day.
After learning the king has died (which he obviously hasn't as anyone with the slightest inkling of world history would know) Robin and his, not so, Merry Men (Addy, Grimes and Durand) run into an ambush planned by the wicked sir Godfrey (Strong).
Godfrey plans to steal the crown, create civil war in England and help the French invade the country but Robin botches his plan and inadvertently ends setting the way for a farce which has him travel to England and pretend to be the deceased sir Robert Loxley (Douglas Hodge) who before dying made him promise he'd deliver his sword to his estranged father sir Walter (von Sydow).
Before Robin even leaves France we have ourselves the possibility to make at least four different movies but Scott and screenwriter Brian Helgeland seem to think that more is more and keep on stuffing the plot.
Back in British territory, the spoiled Prince John (Isaac) is wreaking havoc, bedding French women and making his mom (Atkins) quite pissed. Like a villain out of Shrek the young man simply succumbs to his whims and jeopardizes his kingdom and the movie's attempt at being coherent.
He's convinced by Godfrey to tax the hell out of his people, while he's secretly plotting to create a distraction for the French to take over the country, and paves the way for Robin to earn his hood.
Robin meanwhile is on his way to Nottingham where the evil Sheriff (MacFadyen) is executing the crown's orders with mean delight. There he meets sir Walter and Marion Loxley (Blanchett), no longer a maiden but a widow. Walter immediately takes a liking to Robin and requests that he pretend to be his son officially and stay living with them.
He obliges and soon is robbing grain from the Church, traveling at the speed of light to be in war councils, plowing the fields, saving England from the French invasion, creating the Magna Carta, solving daddy issues and courting the reluctant Marion.
There is so much going on in Robin Hood that it makes total sense how it's only when the film ends that we learn that "so the legend begins". Precisely, how would this man have time to become the Robin we know about, when Scott forces him to be so many things?
The hero's lack of identity determines the disunity that characterizes the entire film which amounts to little more than a wasted opportunity.
With that cast, which is rather impressive, one would at least expect the movie to deliver moments that evoked The Lion in Winter, instead the performances range from the hammy (Strong) to the confusing (Hurt).
Crowe, varies his accent from scene to scene and really shows no commitment to the role he's playing. This is obviously not his fault, entirely, given how the screenplay shows no regard whatsoever for any dramatic background.
In a way it's strange that Robin Hood in a way repeats the Gladiator formula yet fails so miserably.
As in the previous film, Crowe plays a troubles soldier adopted by a great actor, who changes the course of history. But while Gladiator had an almost Shakesparean aspect to it, Robin Hood is more unintentional Monty Python.
The film's major issue is probably the lack of clarity about what it wants to be exactly. Scott is known for his gritty realism and wondrously crafted action sequences but he also can do stupendous fantasy.
Here though he tries to do both at the same time without any cohesion, therefore we have Robin being all "Robin" and seducing the tough Marion (who honestly never seems to be into him) and a few minutes later he's behaving like an actual historical figure delivering grandiose speeches.
The story sometimes moves by inertia (it's never explained why the Merry Men actually follow Robin and the sudden "I love you" he says to Marion is ludicrous), then stalls, then throws in a random action sequence.
We never know for sure if we're meant to take anything about the movie seriously, is it trying to demythify the character? Is it trying to mythify history? What about the political undertones? Is it actually saying something about socialism and human rights?
It's ironic to say so but this is one Robin with no aim.

State of Play **1/2

Director: Kevin Macdonald
Cast: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck
Rachel McAdams, Jeff Daniels, Robin Wright Penn, Helen Mirren
Jason Bateman, Viola Davis, Michael Berresse

A research assistant working for congressman Stephen Collins (Affleck) dies mysteriously. A man and a pizza deliverer are shot by an unidentified gunman.
Before you can say Clark Kent, Washington Globe reporter Cal McAffrey (Crowe) has found links between both incidents as well as a corporate conspiracy involving senators, sex scandals and hitmen.
Based on Paul Abbott's magnificent miniseries for the BBC, director Macdonald finds himself trying to deliver six hours worth of material in two streamlined hours; with results that often thrill, but never fulfill.
The succession of events is rapid and keeps you interested in the action, especially because new evidence/leads arrive by the minute and for this the film essentially achieves its mission of being one of the only adult thrillers delivered so far this year.
The cast is phenomenal, even if they don't really push their craft too much. Crowe is always fascinating to watch, he inhabits McAffrey in such a way that you never doubt he's been a reporter for almost two decades.
McAdams as ingenue blogger Della Frye brings a sense of girl scout perkiness that flies well with Crowe's more established macho ways (romance between them is never hinted, but there is sexual tension all the time).
Mirren plays editor Cameron Lynne and the role is a walk through the park for her, it requires her just being commanding and elegantly offensive. Wright Penn, who really needs to get herself a leading role, brings a moving sense of despair playing Stephen's cheated wife.
Daniels is wonderful in a limited role, as is the always fascinating Davis (she gets one miserable scene here!). The only inadequate piece is Affleck, who thinks playing a congressman requires him to frown and overuse his squared jaw.
The screenplay remains taut and the changes that have been made from the miniseries actually work (for the most part), there are still some lose ends and some rather Hollywood-esque plot twists (a deranged hitman goes all Terminator on Crowe in the final, unnecessary, showdown).
But mostly the film suffers because it fails to follow one of the guiding rules of journalism; it doesn't choose an angle.
It wants to be about everything, about current politics, about Iraq war profits, about the decease of printed media (which should've been the angle to pick!), plus each of the characters represents a particular point of view.
Cal is all about respect for the the story, Della believes in morality and "the right thing", Cameron thinks about money and company losses and there is just so much going on that the whole movie feels as a work in progress.
Those who can, should stick to the miniseries, those who have not seen it will probably enjoy this movie with all and its typos.