War Horse
(Jeremy Irvine, Peter Mullan, Emily Watson, Tom Hiddleston, David Cross, Celine Buckens)
What a beautiful, exquisite film! Director Steven Spielberg harvests the power of mythology, reining in his refined visuals with lovely, human emotion and a tale about bravery and friendship in the midst of war.
Irvine is a poor English farm boy in the early 1900s; his drunken father (Mullan) brings home a thoroughbred instead of the needed plow horse. Irvine names the horse Joey and trains him, saving animal and farm. Then WWI breaks out and Mullan sells the horse to Hiddleston (Thor), a soldier who promises to bring Joey back after the fighting is done. Joey's journey through the worst of The Great War leads him into the lives of a poor French farm girl (Buckens) and a Nazi soldier (Cross of the Narnia series). Both Joey and his master must learn the cruelty of war and the saving grace of companionship.
War Horse is a film Spielberg was meant to make. It holds the childhood charm of E.T., the epic timeline of The Color Purple, and the knowledge of Saving Private Ryan. There's a reason this is PG-13, but it's marvelous how the violence is so tastefully, powerfully rendered. Much of this is larger-than-life metaphor, and yet War Horse is perfect, from the insistent score to the beautiful cinematography.
On a personal note, my job requires I see about 150 movies a year, and I'll still happily go and cry through this one again.
(Starring Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgard)
Well, at the risk of sounding like a film snob (too late!), this and the fascinating Swedish version are interchangeable.
Dragon Tattoo is a sick thriller based on the international bestseller by Stieg Larsson. The book was all over the place”a mystery involving Nazis, ritualistic religious beliefs and misogyny. Both film versions suffer by conforming too tightly to the novel's meandering structure.
Craig is a Swedish investigative journalist hired by rich old tycoon Plummer. Plummer wants to find out what happened to his niece who went missing from the family island 40 years ago. At the same time, Plummer has Craig spied upon by tattooed Mara. She's an enigmatic punk, a brilliant hacker, a young woman who has suffered repeatedly under men's cruelty.
Craig's and Mara's stories are separate and then come together. Director David Fincher (Se7en) is often amazing, but the original film did a more emotional job at combining the grisly storylines. The labyrinthine plot and excessively long wrap-up are either intriguing or flawed, depending on your perspective.
Both versions are slick and sick, only taking slightly different approaches. Which one is better? Perhaps you'd have a different opinion.
Young Adult
(Starring Charlize Theron, Patrick Wilson, Patton Oswalt)
In 2006, a very funny script written by a stripper was bouncing around LA. It was Juno, and the author, Diablo Cody, cornered the market on wry, funny dialogue, winning an Oscar on her first try.
Young Adult is a black comedy about a basically unlikable, shallow person who never got past high school. Cody teams with her Juno director, Jason Reitman (Up in the Air). Together, they snag a brilliant cast. In the middle of this cruelty, they even find small bits of real drama.
Theron is a former homecoming queen who moved out of her small Minnesota town and into the bustling metropolis of Minneapolis. She ghostwrites young adult novels about popular girls in high school. She also drinks excessively and sleeps around. At 37, she finds her high school sweetheart (Wilson) has had his first kid. So she leaves her “glamorous” alcoholic life to return home, break up his marriage, and win him back.
What obviously drew Oscar-winner Theron to this dark, mealy material were Reitman and Cody. Together this team, along with a wonderfully acerbic Patton Oswalt, get everything right by going all wrong.
Young Adult isn't for everyone, but audiences who love bleak comedies will appreciate the creativity behind this one-time popular girl's self-destruction.
