For the week of January 20th, Universal Studios Home Entertainment is bringing Lucy to Blu-ray. If nothing else, Lucy deserves credit for giving Luc Besson his first unqualified commercial success in North America - as a director - since 1997's The Fifth Element, with Lucy grossing over $126 million on top of its relatively paltry $40-million budget. Besson doesn't work nearly as often as he should, and any encouragement he gets to keep making movies is a good thing; when Besson is cooking, his sleek, endearingly ludicrous approach to aesthetics in filmmaking approaches something close to nirvana for action-movie fans. That said, it's very possible to root for Lucy's success and still wish it were a better movie. The film is yet another example of the "what happens when you use more than 10% of your brain" screen fantasy, as Scarlett Johansson's free-spirited party girl suffers a drug overdose that gives her access to psychic powers she never thought imaginable, and while that theory is nonsense, it's certainly made for compelling cinema - Neil Burger's Limitless, for example, is pretty stupid as a piece of science, yet it's a surprisingly propulsive and exciting B-movie. But Lucy isn't as good, unfortunately, and it's because Besson never quite seems to know how much he wants to embrace this bonkers concept. At times, Lucy's condition seems like mere scaffolding for Besson to mount just another shoot-'em-up: after Lucy begins experiencing the cumulative impact of all the drugs in her system, she becomes a one-woman terminator capable of wreaking all kinds of havoc on the gangsters who abducted her and unwittingly caused her psychic rebirth (the nastiest of whom is played by Choi Min-sik, who was so great in Oldboy and I Saw the Devil). These sections, while viscerally entertaining (Besson couldn't stage a poorly directed action sequence if you put a gun to his head), don't offer much more than another opportunity for Johansson to shine as an action hero, and the whole brain-chemistry angle gets shortchanged. However, once she meets Morgan Freeman's wise scientific mentor (shocker...), the action movie falls away, and what we're left with is a kind of 2001: A Space Odyssey For Dummies that charts what happens to Lucy's humanity as she achieves a higher consciousness. This part of the movie is patently ridiculous, but it's also beautiful and far more ambitious than most summer schlock, and one wishes Besson could have maintained this level of delirious invention for more of Lucy's fleet runtime (even with credits, the film is only eighty-nine minutes).
If anything ties Lucy together (besides Besson's cool professionalism behind the camera), it's Johansson, who has really come into her own as a movie-star: she's able to convey so much inner turmoil with just a look or sideways glance. In that sense, Lucy would make a nice double-feature with her Under the Skin - it's almost the pulpy crowd-pleaser version of that inscrutable arthouse thriller.
In his Blu-ray review, Kenneth Brown wrote that "the action finds Besson rejuvenated - a kid in a candy shop - with an appetite he hasn't shown in years. Lucy's tele-wizardry is a jumble of flashy FX, sure, but the visuals are electrifying, with bodies hurling against walls, hallways full of cops falling unconscious with a gesture, cellphone signals manipulated mid-air, time and space traversed, the universe born, and other eye-popping surprises. There's some cartoonish CG here and there - dinosaurs and an early hominid (famously named Lucy) are eyesores - and Besson's flair for quick docu-cuts is hit or miss (when Lucy first enters Mr. Jang's hotel, brief flashes of an antelope being stalked by cheetahs pepper the scene. Clever. Later, the number of neurons in the brain is compared to the number of stars in the universe. Cue a shot of... stars. Not so clever). But there's an energy driving each sequence, shoot-out, chase and display of superpowers that keeps Lucy above all that. With a more meticulously constructed, character-oriented screenplay, the film would have reached a whole other level, even with its comicbook sensibilities intact. As is, it isn't exactly smart sci-fi. At all. It's just a helluva lot of fun. And every now and then, there's nothing wrong with that."
Also from Universal and Laika Studios is the stop-motion animated adventure The Boxtrolls. An adaptation of the children's tale Here Be Monsters!, The Boxtrolls centers on young Eggs (Game of Thrones' Isaac Hempstead-Wright), an orphan raised by the titular characters; when a ruthless exterminator (Ben Kingsley) begins hunting down these strange but gentle subterranean creatures, Eggs must rally his adopted family and convince the world that the Boxtrolls bear little resemblance to the terrifying stories that humans use to define them. As with all its films, Laika puts a premium in giving fairy tales like The Boxtrolls some substance. Beside the obvious messages of tolerance and good will, there are some sneaky jabs at class warfare. The Boxtrolls live under the town of Cheesebridge, where people are so obsessed with status that they're willing to do awful things (both to themselves and others), and the film paints these characters in the least sympathetic light possible. However, it's to The Boxtrolls' credit that this anti-materialism note never rings as didactic - the movie is too darn beautiful to seem preachy. If the aboveground world looks like some fevered mix of Terry Gilliam and Charles Dickens, then the Boxtrolls' realm feel like a monster-movie directed by Dr. Seuss. There's always something gorgeous to see, and the stop-motion animation lends the proceedings a thrillingly tactile quality. But for all its visual wit - and The Boxtrolls might be Laika's most beautiful and aesthetically striking feature, and that's saying something - it's definitely the least of the studio's three high-profile animated films. It all boils down to titles. The title characters in both Coraline and ParaNorman are engaging, flawed protagonists, equal parts charming and complex, and so it goes with the actual Boxtrolls themselves, who are all marvels of design and characterization. The problem is, they're not the film's main characters. No, that honor falls to Hempstead-Wright's human-turned-Boxtroll and Ellie Fanning's haughty teenager, and outside of Fanning's delightfully perverse obsession with the Boxtrolls, the two just aren't as compelling as the parade of eccentrics and ghouls surrounding them. Now, ultimately, this issue doesn't cripple the film because the supporting cast is so rich. Besides the Boxtrolls themselves and Kingsley's wonderful villain (whose massive self-loathing provides the film with its hilarious and surprisingly morbid conclusion), there's great work from Mad Men's Jared Harris, Tracy Morgan, Richard Ayoade, and Nick Frost, the latter two of whom excel as Kingsley's surprisingly self-aware henchmen (their arc is more than a little reminiscent of Tom Stoppard's great Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, especially with regard to how they impact the picture's lovely epilogue). Still, as wonderful as the side parts are, you still feel the void left by the less-than-stellar human characters: Laika is at its best when everyone gets to be an oddball, and not just the explicitly strange figures. Come to think of it, that feels like a message The Boxtrolls itself promotes...
Just as visually resplendent is Well Go USA's release of The Zero Theorem, the latest film from auteur Terry Gilliam, and if ever there was a film that didn't need a proper directing credit, it's this one. That line isn't an insult: like Tim Burton or Michael Bay, Gilliam is one of those filmmakers whose visual fingerprint is immediately apparent from Frame One, and his work on The Zero Theorem is no exception. For the...gosh, fifth or sixth time, Gilliam presents a dystopian future both oppressive and homemade. Technology invades every facet of his characters' lives, snaking its way around people like the omnipresent tubes that wind and bulge around the corners of the frame, yet it all seems broken or just a few steps away from being broken; whether by design or by budget requirements (and knowing Gilliam's work, I'm guessing it's the latter reason), the chintzy, barely held-together nature of the effects and set decoration ends up benefitting The Zero Theorem immeasurably. Too bad the story also feels as familiar as the look. As in Brazil, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys, and - come to think of it - The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Gilliam is relaying one lonely individual's struggle against the impersonal brutalities of the modern world - in this case, we're in heavy Brazil territory, with painfully antisocial computer programmer Qohen (Christoph Waltz) trying to figure out if he can find a code to prove or disprove humanity, even as a shadowy-yet-inept Management (personified by Matt Damon) keeps throwing bureaucratic hurdles in his way. Now, Gilliam is a true auteur, and auteurs do recycle similar themes and creative obsessions through many films. Howard Hawks Rio Bravo in 1959, and then he remade it as El Dorado in 1966, and then he remade it again as Rio Lobo in 1970, and all three versions are pretty solid (Rio Bravo is still best, though). But considering Gilliam already made the best possible version of this story with his 1985 masterpiece Brazil, it's hard not to think that he's just reheating the same leftovers to increasingly diminished results (see also: Mann, Michael, and the problem he keeps having with every cops-and-criminals procedural he's made post-Heat). Gilliam loyalists should be happy, and Waltz is really very good in a different kind of role for him (he's definitely no motor-mouthed psychopath here), but it's going to be hard to treat the director's films like events if they keep arriving with this pervasive sense of déjà vu.
Jeffrey Kauffman's Blu-ray review noted that "there's a lot to like, perhaps even admire, in The Zero Theorem, including the expected attributes of a stunning, carnival like production design and Gilliam's always odd but endearing framings. Little touches like the weird dance Qohen engages in with a street sweeper early in the film give The Zero Theorem a certain antique charm. And there are certainly piquant ideas aplenty jammed into virtually every nook and cranny of the film. Lovers of Gilliam - and I count myself, at least generally, among them - will be able to look past the film's more inchoate aspects to concentrate on what really works here, which includes a trite but still meaningful depiction of the dehumanization of individuals in an increasingly technological society. Those who don't cotton to Gilliam's patented blend of whimsy and hyperbolism will probably feel much like Qohen himself, lost in a world he doesn't understand and which he really doesn't even want to participate in."
Finally, the Criterion Collection is giving Preston Sturges' The Palm Beach Story a sparkling Blu-ray upgrade. In the 1940s, Sturges went on an eight-year creative tear that sent him to the forefront of screen humorists. From 1940's The Great McGinty to 1948's Unfaithfully Yours, no one could touch Sturges in terms of sheer comic verve - yes, Howard Hawks, Billy Wilder, and Ernst Lubitsch came close, but, as comedian Bill Hader says on one of the Blu-ray's special features, Wilder and Lubitsch were too controlled in their approach to comedy, and Hawks was too laissez-faire - and The Palm Beach Story might be his finest film. It's a delirious farce that stars Joel McCrea and the incomparable Claudette Colbert as an eccentric married couple whose financial problems have been placing a huge strain on their relationship; to help alleviate the strain, Colbert decides the only possible solution is for her to divorce him, marry some rich benefactor, and then use Said Benefactor's money to fuel McCrea's crackpot inventions. There's a version of this setup where Colbert's character actually falls for her new beau (the wonderful Rudy Vallee), as well as a darker iteration that sees McCrea and Colbert plotting to kill Husband #2 for his fortune, but Sturges happily dodges both scenarios for something more cracked. The Palm Beach Story feels not at all dissimilar from the kind of comedies the Coen Brothers make when they make out-and-out comedies (think The Big Lebowski) in that both Sturges and the Coens place their characters in worlds far removed from reality, and so we don't bat an eye in The Palm Beach Story when Sturges upends narrative convention for comic mayhem, particularly a twenty-some-minute detour into the booze-saturated mishaps of the Ale and Quail Club - this diversion serves little in the way of narrative importance, but it's so consistently hilarious that you just don't care. Plus, as zany as things get, there's a refreshingly adult tone to the proceedings. McCrea and Colbert's characters never stop loving one another - and Sturges is surprisingly frank about indicating that their sexual chemistry is a big part of why they keep falling back into one another's arms - and Vallee's zillionaire is the kind of open-hearted schlub who has no problem backing McCrea even after he figures out the couple's plan, and that's because the ending finds him...but I'd rather not reveal that bit here. Suffice to say, Sturges frames The Palm Beach Story on a note of whiplash surrealism that ranks as one of the great screen non-sequiturs. But then again, so much of what he's doing here is great, from the razor-sharp dialogue and double entendres, to the breakneck sense of pacing, to the inspired comedic performances from the likes of Vallee, Mary Astor, Sig Arno, William Demarest, Robert Dudley, and - of course - Colbert. A romantic comedy for those who want a little Looney Tunes with their romance.
Svet Atanasov wrote that "though slightly less effective than Sullivan's Travels, [The Palm Beach Story] has all the key attributes that define his trademark style - witty dialog full of outstanding one-liners, razor-sharp satire, fantastic characterizations, and of course a great sense of humor. The dynamics of the relationships aren't always believable, but once the audience befriends the main characters it is very difficult to actually question their decisions. It is all part of the magic that makes Sturges' films so entertaining - for a short period of time they transport the audience to a different place where good things happen to good people and at the end true love always wins. The cast is wonderful. Colbert and McCrea are the film's undisputed stars, but Vallee, Astor, and a myriad of fantastic supporting actors also leave lasting impressions (the great German actor Sig Arno is particularly funny as Princess Centimillia's bubbly toy)."