MOVIE REVIEWS (Week of Mar. 19)
DUPLICITY
By Greg Ursic
To build trust in a relationship, both parties must be ready to drag the skeletons out of their closets. For Ray (Clive Owen) and Claire (Julia Roberts), it’s like a trip through an elephant graveyard: Former government spooks tasked with pre-empting global chaos, they now sell their services to corporate interests and deliver the goods on shampoo and toothpaste. Ready for a taste of the good life, the pair plots the mother of all scams. To pull it off, all they have to do is overcome years of programming and cast aside their Cupid-proof vests.
After lambasting corporate dirty deeds in Michael Clayton, writer-director Tony Gilroy opts for a softer touch in Duplicity — but don’t dismiss the tongue-in-cheek styling and dollops of romance as formulaic rom-com fare. Gilroy weaves a labyrinthine story, replete with twisting timelines, red herrings, snappy dialogue, a host of gorgeous locations, multi-layered characters, and a powerhouse cast. So how could this potential juggernaut possibly go awry?
Roberts (looking particularly platypus-y in several scenes) and Owen are charming, but the camera usually veers away just as the chemistry between them starts to bubble. Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamiatti, meanwhile, are relegated to the background after a great opening sequence. Aside from a runtime that’s 20 minutes too long, Gilroy tries too hard to be clever, resulting in a story that jumps around too much, is often intentionally dense, and will undoubtedly frustrate the average viewer.
I LOVE YOU, MAN
By Curtis Woloschuk
After donning full Kiss makeup for last year’s Role Models, Paul Rudd now moves on to crooning Rush songs while “slapping the bass” in director John Hamburg’s addition to the burgeoning bromance genre. One can only imagine that Rudd is currently dusting off his old Yes or Max Webster records in preparation for his next role.
How is it that the affable actor ends up tackling the likes of “Tom Sawyer” and “Limelight”? Well, after proposing to girlfriend Zooey (Rashida Jones), Peter (Rudd) realizes that he not only lacks a viable candidate for his best man, but also any male friends whatsoever. After enduring a series of disastrous blind “man dates” (cue montage), a chance encounter introduces him to free-spirited Sydney (Jason Segel). Despite having little in common with each other except their devotion to the “holy trinity” of Canadian prog-rockers, Peter and Sydney become fast friends, much to Zooey’s consternation.
After setting his comedy controls to acerbic overdrive in most of his recent efforts, Rudd plays things purely puppy-dog here. His awkward mannerisms and stammering delivery are spot-on as the mild-mannered, premium-cable-loving realtor struggling mightily to adapt to the jocular trappings — as well as the requisite nicknames — of male friendship. Meanwhile, Segel continues to cement his status as one of Hollywood’s go-tos when it comes to casting a slovenly dork.
Lacking any standout scenes (or even a hint of legitimate conflict), Hamburg and Larry Levin’s script instead settles for being persistently amusing. Indeed, there’s just enough quality material for supporting players such as Jon Favreau, Jaime Pressly, and Andy Samberg to deliver some solid comic turns. But the bulk of the film’s minor success can be wholly attributed to the downright sweet chemistry between Rudd and Segel.
POLYTECHNIQUE
By Curtis Woloschuk
Before director Denis Villeneuve’s portrayal of Montréal’s École Polytechnique Massacre can commence, a disclaimer advises that all names have been changed “out of respect” for the deceased. By the time the closing credits roll 70 blood-soaked minutes later, a viewer can’t help but question just how respectful Villeneuve’s artful exercise has been to the 14 women who lost their lives on December 6, 1989. If a filmmaker is so hellbent on re-opening the wounds of a national tragedy, aren’t they obliged to offer something more substantial than a well-crafted re-enactment?
In Villeneuve’s film, gunman Marc Lépine is rendered nameless and played by the dead-eyed Maxim Gaudette. Jacques Davidts’s script seems uninterested in deeply examining any of the personal circumstances that may have contributed to the arch-misogynist’s shooting rampage. Instead, a voiceover of Lépine’s vile suicide note simply underscores the obvious: He was a deeply troubled man. Similar cursory introductions are supplied for Valérie (Karine Vanasse), one of the assassin’s female targets, and Jean-François (Sébastien Huberdeau), a powerless male student. While the actors’ performances are certainly effective, Villeneuve and Davidts really ask them to do little more than skulk menacingly or flee in terror.
Rendered almost inappropriately alluring by Pierre Gill’s black-and-white cinematography, Polytechnique is derailed by some confounding decision-making at the narrative level. For instance, in a tale of female victimization, two male players monopolize the screen time. Furthermore, the chronology of the storyline is unnecessarily jumbled, with several scenes replayed from different points of view. Consequently, the audience is asked to endure the film’s most brutal scene — the gunman excuses the men from a classroom so that he might murder the women — twice. As with the entirety of this disturbing film, neither of the perspectives supplies a viewer with even a modicum of insight.
Read an exclusive interview with Polytechnique star Karine Vanasse at WestEnder.com
Virtual JFK: Vietnam if Kennedy Had Lived
By Greg Ursic
When playing the “What if...?” game, most people confine their fantasies to lottery winnings or superstardom. Historians tend to embrace a broader context — like, for instance, what the world be like today if Hitler had been successful as an artist. In Virtual JFK, Koji Masutani uses archival footage and declassified documents to examine Kennedy’s actions during such crises as the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis to plot a potential course of action for his administration in Vietnam.
The doc’s strengths lie in the many press-conference snippets that highlight Kennedy’s good looks, self-deprecating sense of humour, and sharp wit — and also showcase a vigilant press not afraid to question a standing president and hold him accountable. Masuatani clearly demonstrates Kennedy’s penchant for negotiation over military action, despite considerable and persistent pressure from military advisors and aides, bolstering his thesis that the U.S. response to Vietnam would have been different under Kennedy. Not exactly earth-shattering news.
Unfortunately, the narration is disjointed. Masutani wastes 20 minutes on President Johnson’s actions in Vietnam, and the film’s title is ultimately misleading: We never get a glimpse of what may have happened if Vietnam hadn’t been ravaged by another 30 years of war — the film’s apparent raison d’être. Still, JFK fans and armchair historians will find this film interesting, especially in light of recent events in U.S. foreign policy.
12
By Kaitlin Fontana
Put simply, 12 is Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov’s adaptation of Sidney Lumet’s 1957 jury drama 12 Angry Men. However, Mikhalkov, who won a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for 1994’s Burnt by the Sun, is not a simple filmmaker. 12 is a movie with the heft and complexity befitting the work of fellow Russians Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Turgenev.
Set in a dilapidated Moscow high school gym that substitutes for a jury room, the case before the jurors is that of a Chechen boy accused of killing his adoptive father, a Russian army officer. Guilt is assumed, but the first vote, unexpectedly, comes back 11 for guilt, one for innocence.
The resulting debate leads to a series of character studies, ostensibly representing diverse parts of Russia’s modern landscape: an older Jew, a racist cabbie, a knife-wielding surgeon. Through their prejudices, flashbacks of the wars with Chechnya, and their effect on the accused boy, the picture of a monumentally complex, precipice-clinging country emerges.
The film is beautiful and frustrating by turns, and far too long. Over nearly three hours, the squirming the jurors feel at their captivity transfers to the audience, and lengthy monologues begin to wear. At the same time, steps taken to prove or disprove elements of the case come off as light procedural — either too obvious or too tangentially discovered. These distract from the film’s greater ideas (Chechnya, Russia, independence and innocence), and, along with a grand-gesture ending, tend to confuse and conflate the arguments on either side. Complexity and ambiguity in art can reveal much about its origins, but it can also make for a too-tangled web.
http://www.westender.com/articles/entry/duplicity-second-guesses-itself/
