2013: The Year in Film: "Inside Llewyn Davis" Review

Note: WAY late, guys. But I'm going to make an honest effort to review every film I've seen as of late, AND I'd like to get current over the next month or so. So yes, this film and a number of films I'll be reviewing over the next few weeks are already out on DVD, but I'd like to review them nonetheless. Additionally, as I saw this film in 2013, it will continue to bear the "2013" title, as will the other films I embarrassingly saw in 2013 and have yet to review in May, 2014. So bear with me.

If you put together a list of best/most important modern American directors, the Coen Brothers are pretty damn close to the top of that list.  Their films have run the gamut from absurdist comedy to violent crime caper, and any pair of filmmakers who could count works as diverse as "No Country For Old Men", "The Big Lebowski", "Raising Arizona", "Fargo" and "O Brother Where Art Thou" are surely people to keep your eye on. Their last film, an update on the John Wayne classic "True Grit" featuring a nearly unrecognizable Jeff Bridges in the John Wayne role was a tour de force and one of the more underrated and under appreciated films of the last 5 years or so. (It got subsumed in "King's Speech" madness) However, despite their obvious brilliance, the Coen's have never been filmmakers to subject themselves to industry or audience expectations, and are just as happy to make a mad cap comedy (say, "Burn After Reading") or understated character study/biblical allegory ("A Serious Man") as they are to make the type of serious drama that traditionally dominates awards season.

Enter: "Inside Llewyn Davis", a film that centers on the New York City folk music scene of the early 1960's, and the titular Llewyn Davis, a talented but ornery struggling musician barely eking out a meager living and relying on the generosity of friends as he tries to find success and deals with the recent loss of his songwriting partner.

The Good: Rarely, if ever, have a seen a more true to life depiction of the tortured artistic soul that seems just as likely to create depressed melancholy as it does genius. This isn't an uplifting or inspiring tale of success against unlikely odds or a rise to stardom, it's a portrait of a person, a time, and a place that's important mainly for its very ordinariness. Oscar Isaac's (to this point, a rather minor actor with a career full of supporting performances - but a lead role in the new Star Wars film and this one could signal a coming breakout) performance is, in a word, stunning. The understated charm, musical chops, and sarcastic bitterness masking as humor is the kind of quiet, muted performance that is unlikely (and didn't!) to gain attention from the academy, but it's exactly this kind of performance that makes a film timeless. There are Llewn Davis' playing drop in gigs and open mics in every city in the country, and their trail of bitterness and failure is infinitely more likely to be the outcome than is stardom.  The rest of the cast is solid as well, with Justin Timberlake (who's actually a pretty good actor, you guys) and the always solid Carey Mulligan standing out, with Coen staple John Goodman contributing a memorable and bombastic extended cameo as well. Visually, the film is stunning and a bit disarming, choosing a muted palate of drab colors and dull lighting to give the film a cold and smoky feel that seems to complement the understated folk soundtrack perfectly. Of course, this being a Coen bros. film, there's the trademark dark and absurdist humor that plays out both situationally and via dialogue. When it wants to be, this is a very funny film.


The Bad: if anything, this film is TOO muted and TOO slow for its own good. It's like a lazy winter Sunday encapsulated into film. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but it explains why the film escaped the notice of many when it came time for year-end accolades. While I ultimately was a fan of the narrative (or lack thereof), I can see why the film had its detractors.

Ultimately, if you're a Coen bros. fan, a musician, someone who knows or is interested in either musicians or folk music, or a fan of muted and occasionally very funny character pieces, you could do much, much worse than checking out the Coens' latest, one of the more underappreciated films of 2013.

8.5/10.

2012: The Year in Film: "The Great Gatsby" Review

  "The Great American Novel" is the sort of nebulous term that causes AP English students and college freshman to start doodling while professors ramble. It's also likely to be discussed over coffee by the kind of people who take pictures with fake mustaches. At any rate, F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" has as good a claim to the title as any, and quite frankly, a much better claim than most. It's the sort of Zeitgesit-catching prose and subtlety heavy work that makes translation to screen difficult, despite its many cinematic scenes and qualities. Francis Ford Coppola wrote the 1974 version starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow that ultimately feels incredibly dull and falls short (largely due to a lack of chemistry between the leads - Redford was supposedly so engrossed with the Watergate story that he spent every spare moment in his trailer and neglected his work). Enter: Baz Luhrmann?? The crazy Australian famous for making seizure-inducing bombastic flicks with all the subtlety and social commentary of Gallagher smashing a watermelon? Okay? Lurhmann, famous for the 90's high school angst clownfest Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rougue! (yes, there's an "!" in the title - you can tell his flicks are "edgy" by the titles!), and competitor for "worst movie I've ever seen" Australia, is tasked with bringing Fitzgerald's devastating take-down of American opulence, arrogance and greed. Let's just say that's a strange choice.

Say what you will about the choice of director, but he managed to assemble a great cast. Leonardo DiCaprio (Leo!) as the titular Gatsby, Joel Edgerton and Casey Mulligan as Tom and Daisy Buchanan, Jason Clarke, Isla Fisher and... Tobey Maguire as Fitzgerald cipher Nick Carraway. (Ok, good except for the last part) Gatsby, of course, follows recent college grad Nick Carraway (a poor but socially connected Midwesterner) as he moves among the new and old money social set of Jazz-Age New York and Long Island. The novel features scenes of decadent parties, dingy speakeasies, and a city alive with energy.


The Good: This flick looks spectacular. Plain and simply, Luhrmann does not disappoint when it comes to the glittering city, the opulent scenes at Gatsby's mansion are dizzying and the film is enveloped in a sort of otherworldly majesty. The acting is strong, particularly from DiCaprio, who is at his movie-star finest here. It's kind of fascinating to see just how dashing he is, considering he's spent most of his career trying to make himself look like a regular guy. Minor blog "boys" Jason Clarke and Joel Edgerton turn in solid efforts as well.  As expected, Luhrmann does a great job in capturing what was so intoxicating about the Jazz Age as New York rose to prominence as maybe the most important city on the planet.

The Mediocre: Carey Mulligan, whom I've always liked (watch "An Education", seriously. Thank me later), simply isn't up to the task of pulling off Daisy Buchanan and matching Leo step for step. Despite Luhrmann's best efforts to glam her up, you're never buying that she's this dynamo of reckless sexual energy and spontaneity who men want to be with and women want to be. That's not entirely her fault, I don't know if there's an actress under 35 capable of playing that part, which is why I listed it under "mediocre", but it really takes away from what Luhrman is trying to do.

The Bad: Tobey freaking Maguire is a bottom 6 actor on the planet. How he manages to finagle his way from big budget flick to big budget flick I'll never know. (Is he a secret Coppola too?) More than once during the flick I thought to myself "What is the dopey version of Peter Parker doing on West Egg?" before I realized that Tobey just can't act and just constantly wears a look on his face more befitting non-sentient creatures. His attempts to literally embody "wide-eyed wonder" are an embarrassment. I understand that the role itself is little more than a cipher for Fitzgerald's voice, but Maguire manages to imbibe it with absolutely zero charm and even less personality. A complete and utter empty shell of a character who dopes around from scene to scene without the faintest glimpse at any inner life of his own or the merest spark of intelligence. Plot/theme wise, we get an important glimpse into Baz Luhrmann's mind here. Fitzgerald's work is an important and rather scathing critique of material wealth, greed, status and the corrupting nature of it all. Luhrmann apparently read the book and decided it was a touching tome on star-crossed lovers amidst fabulous settings. The love story in the book is, by and large, merely a plot device. Efforts at the end to rescue the lessons and theme of the book fall short of the grandiose treatment given to the very things the book sought to condemn and which deserve extra condemnation today. Oh, and while I don't have an issue with anachronistic song choices, in and of themselves (let's be real, no one wants to see a  Baz Luhrmann 1920's flick featuring only Cole Porter songs and the ragtime), the song choices used here (Jay-Z and Watch the Throne by and large..) are just TOO on the nose. Featuring a rapper rapping about "balling" while showing rich people being decadent is about as subtle as playing "Free Bird" or "White Rabbit" while someone is using drugs. There are THOUSANDS of songs in this world, hire a hipster to mix it up some, Baz.

Ultimately, this is a flick that looks great and features a core performance of a true movie star at the top of his game. If it were just a tragic love story about rich people in the Jazz Age (and didn't star Tobey Maguire) this would be a legitimately kind of good movie. As it is, this is The Great freaking Gatsby, and I question whichever studio head put Baz and his fever dreams in charge of it. A shame it falls short, because there was a good movie somewhere in here. A Great Gatsby adaptation should be an awards favorite, not stuck between Iron Man 3 and Star Trek 2 as a studio money grab looking for the mom dollars.

5/10.