For the week of June 16th, Warner Home Entertainment is bringing the action-thriller Run All Night to Blu-ray. The film represents the third collaboration between star Liam Neeson and director Jaume Collet-Serra, and I'm beginning to think the two men are no good for one another. Case in point: I like Neeson and I like Collet-Serra (his House of Wax remake and Orphan are both wonderfully unhinged), but their work together leaves me cold, from Unknown's le Carré-for morons spy plot to Non-Stop's silly United 93-meets-And Then There Were None mystery, and Run All Night is, unfortunately, more of the same. Again, Neeson plays a grizzled badass with exceptional killing abilities - this time, he's an aging mob hitman - again he must spring into action after a personal trauma - after he kills the son (Boyd Holbrook) of his former boss (Ed Harris), Neeson has to protect his own estranged son (Joel Kinnaman) from Harris and his goons - and again Collet-Serra has to work this setup into a lather, the gimmick this time around being the director's over-reliance on digital-landscape composites as Neeson and Kinnaman flee through the streets of New York (it looks like he's trying to ape David Fincher, and badly, at that). In theory, all this noise should add up to watchable fluff, especially given the slickness of the overall affair and a supporting cast filled with great character actors like Common, Holt McCallany, Bruce McGill, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Nick Nolte, yet the film just sits there, and I think the problem ties back to that initial observation: actor and director are two great tastes that don't taste great together. The main reason that Neeson is such a good screen asskicker is because he is, first and foremost, a great actor - the once and future Oskar Schindler and Alfred Kinsey brings his considerable gravity and presence to even the most disreputable of projects, so we buy the implausabilities of a Taken or The A-Team because we take Neeson seriously. That's certainly the case with Run All Night, where his Jimmy Conlon has more in common with his Matt Scudder from A Walk Among the Tombstones (a mediocre movie that still has the distinction of containing Neeson's last great performance): they're both broken alcoholics looking for some kind of redemption. However, Collet-Serra doesn't take anything seriously (this is the man who staged the death of a Big Bad in Unknown with the slapstick panache of Wile E. Coyote getting his just desserts in a Looney Tunes cartoon), and he keeps undercutting Neeson's genuine pain and feeling (and the believably prickly rapport he and Kinnaman share) with winking, lunatic devices, from playing up Nolte's hilariously overwrought/mumbly turn as Neeson's older brother to having Common and Neeson duel with 2X4's that are on fire. The end result is a tonal mess (imagine Matt Damon doing his 100% committed Jason Bourne performance in an Austin Powers movie) that leaves Run All Night simultaneously too silly to be dramatic and too dramatic to be silly. It's proof that Neeson and Collet-Serra need to try seeing other people.
Kenneth Brown wrote that the film is "yet another misfire in an extended mag of generic geriatric action flicks starring the always irresistible Liam Neeson (who hasn't really killed it since The Grey), Jaume Collet-Serra's Run All Night is best approached with the lowest of expectations. The requisite shootouts, burning buildings, explosions, hitman showdowns, sneering mob bosses, redemption arcs and valiant last stands are present and accounted for, but it all feels so tired, so familiar, so rehashed that it hardly registers. Only the film's cast - Neeson and scene-chewing co-stars Ed Harris, Joel Kinnaman, Vincent D'Onofrio, Common and Bruce McGill - make it as Redboxable as it is. Without Neeson and company it wouldn't have made it off the studio lot, and we'd be talking about a mildly successful direct-to-video shoulder shrug rather than a $26 million box office bomb. Are Neeson's once loyal fans, jaded after two subpar Taken sequels and a rash of poorly received actioners, deserting the man they crowned a grizzled action god in 2008? Or is this just a temporary slump? Perhaps choosing better scripts is the first step to recovery."
Still, for all its flaws, Run All Night doesn't enter trainwreck territory the same way that Neill Blomkamp's staggeringly misguided Chappie does. Chappie is bad enough to make you resent the auteur theory. To wit, with his first film, the bracing mockumentary District 9, Blomkamp announced his singular vision in the sci-fi realm: a crunchy, hyperreal meld of James Cameron-esque technofetishizing and John Carpenter/Paul Verhoeven-level social polemicizing. As a calling card, you couldn't do much better (and Blomkamp's work did receive a well deserved Best Picture nomination at the 2010 Oscars), so it was a little disappointing to see that successful formula fall flat in his 2013 follow-up Elysium, which squandered a great Matt Damon performance and some breathtaking action-movie filmmaking on a trite 99%-vs-1% allegory that had all of District 9's melodrama and none of its wit. I wish I could tell you that Chappie reversed the course, but if anything, it's an even further regression for Blomkamp. The first warning sign is how plot-heavy the proceedings get. At its core, Chappie is a Pinocchio-like look at the Singularity, with Dev Patel's winsome young engineer creating the title character, a robot with an A.I. so advanced it allows for sentient consciousness. Now, Blomkamp's take on the Singularity is nowhere near as nuanced and provocative as, say, the perspectives offered in Alex Garland's Ex Machina or Spike Jonze's staggering Her (there's a reason I compared Chappie to a Disney cartoon), but at least this section of the movie is sweet and reasonably compelling, thanks to District 9 star Sharlto Copley's brilliant mo-cap work as Chappie: his physical performance is so persuasive that it transcends the jerry-rigged character design. However, this material has to jockey for screen time with the corporate struggle between Patel's character and Hugh Jackman's psychotic ex-soldier (and even if this bit didn't feel like a stone rip-off of the Dick Jones-Bob Morton conflict in RoboCop, it would still suffer as a result of Jackman's unbearably hammy villain work), and with Chappie's integration into a quirky South African street gang (Jose Pablo Cantillo and Die Antwoord's Watkin Tudor Jones and Yolandi Visser), AND with a violent third act that, once again, finds Blomkamp remaking his favorite parts from RoboCop and Aliens. And it's this confluence of events and themes that reveals Blomkamp's undoing as a filmmaker. For all of his technical skill, Blomkamp doesn't have the skill to pull the material together under the convoluted political/social agenda guiding his hand (it's an anti-poverty screed. It's a plea for racial tolerance. No, wait, it's a condemnation of corporate greed, and so on, and so forth). Further complicating matters is how tonally incoherent Chappie gets as it moves from sappy uplift to goofy comedy to graphic violence and back again (it doesn't help either that Jones and Visser's criminals-with-hearts-of-gold are so abrasive and unpleasant throughout the film). Combining all these disparate elements requires the hand of a David O. Russell or a in-his-prime Terry Gilliam, and Blomkamp simply isn't that person. It's little wonder he spent more time during the Chappie press tour talking about his plans for a proposed Alien sequel than for his own soon-to-be-released fiasco. Sony is also releasing a Blomkamp³ Limited Edition Collection that has all three of his feature-length films, and I imagine watching them all at once would make for a study in declines: see as the highs of District 9 start to fumble in Elysium before disintegrating altogether in Chappie singular mix of brutality and schmaltz.
Martin Liebman had a far more favorable impression of the picture, writing that "while the movie doesn't really break any new philosophical ground, it explores timely questions and does so in trademark Blomkamp style that blends creative technical genius with epic action and intimate passion....Blomkamp is a director of such skill that he's able to not necessarily hide the absence of creativity but instead elevate the broader film - the support pieces that hold it together - to a higher level. The movie is expectedly slick and seamless, boasting digital effects of the highest order that are integrated so perfectly into the film that it's practically impossible to separate reality and digital. Blomkamp regular Sharlto Copley provides voice and motion capture for Chappie and the result is one of the most seamlessly presented, fully alive, and breathtakingly real digital characters ever seen in a movie. The digital designers have nailed the shell down to...the finest little touches that are always a welcome addition to Blomkamp's movies, but it's Copley who builds the character to a level quite unlike any digital creation before, finding the perfect childlike beginnings of fear and curiosity, constructing an evolving center, and building towards a fully realized individual character with something as close to an essence, or consciousness as the movie presents it, as the current state of the technology allows and to the extent that the narrative demands."
Thankfully, this week's prospects improve exponentially with Disney's release of the Studio Ghibli classic Spirited Away. This animated fantasy represented the first of two or three swan songs for filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki; the master animator had announced his retirement with the 1997 mythical epic Princess Mononoke, yet here he was in 2001 helming another full-length feature. Short version: he made a masterpiece. Of Miyazaki's career triumphs - Princess Mononoke, The Wind Rises, or the underrated Porco Rosso - only Spirited Away feels both familiar and atypical. All his auteurist leanings are present - the hand-drawn whimsy, the subtle environmentalism (in the form of the film's magical/repulsive Stink God), the focus on a preteen female protagonist (Daveigh Chase's Chihiro, who has shades of Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service and Satsuki from My Neighbor Totoro), and the borrowed structure from archetypal myths and stories, in this case Alice in Wonderland, as ordinary girl Chihiro also casually stumbles into a magical realm with its own set of idiosyncratic standards and codes of behavior. However, Miyazaki develops these concepts at a pitch he's never quite attempted before or since the film. For one, he keeps us at a distance from the characters, and that remove comes as a shock, considering his traditional reliance on audience-protagonist surrogacy. We might sympathize with Chihiro, but the static animated compositions deny us a more subjective form of empathy: we're aware of the whole world (and its attendant, wonderful details) instead of just her view of it. The effect is not unlike watching a film by Ozu or Michael Haneke, and that clash between Miyazaki's inviting animation and the ever-so objective filmmaking style creates a heightened, dreamlike state, where characters merge and shift into bizarre iterations (the fate that befalls Chihiro's parents, or her relationship with the many-limbed Kamaji) and Chihiro's goals change suddenly even as her overall demeanor remains placid and focused. We're deep in the realm of the subconscious here - this is the only one of Miyazaki's works that one could describe as "Lynchian," and perhaps the best way to accept its oddities and contradictions is to just let it wash over you on a first viewing - but the strangeness at work serves a key thematic point. Ultimately, Miyazaki is making a film about how difficult growing up is, and that the only way to compensate is by following Chihiro's lead and adapting to whatever twists (and I mean whatever) life throws at you. A remarkable, stunning piece of work.
In his Blu-ray review, Kenneth Brown pondered "how is it that such a bizarre, otherworldly realm rings so true? That such high fantasy tells so human a story? It's not the animation, though it's an example of Ghibli at its most striking and imaginative. It's not the story, though Miyazaki's script is magnificently simple and deceptively complex, crafting layer upon layer of context and significance for cinephiles to unearth. It's not the eclectic cast of supernatural creatures or the outstanding voice performances (Japanese and English), though you won't soon forget a single one. No. It's fear. Chihiro's fear. Miyzaki devotes substantial screentime to the difficulty Chihiro endures adjusting to the spirit world, conceiving and capturing the sort of convincing panic and sheer terror you'd expect from a real 10-year old girl thrust into such extraordinary circumstances. Chihiro is not only forced to face these overpowering moments of crippling fear - sometimes with help, sometimes on her own - she's forced to overcome them; her courage and confidence growing, bit by inspiring bit, naturally and organically within the story. Miyazaki grasps childhood more intuitively and instinctively than any animation filmmaker living today, and it's in this understanding of a child's emotions, conflicts and inner-strength that his films grab hold of the imagination. The stunning visuals, gripping script, infectious humor, unsettling horror and sweeping music form a riveting framework."
Finally, the Criterion Collection is giving cineastes a real tonic in the form of its André Gregory & Wallace Shawn: 3 Films collection. The partnership between these two performers (both subscribe to the "actor-director-writer-theatrical impresario" hyphenate) has yielded stunning work in the artistic community over the last half-century or so; Gregory and Shawn give such deep consideration to the interplay between art and reality, between the actor and the role, between the text and the culture surrounding it, that their joint collaborations take on something of the flavor of an especially vivid, joyous, and terrifying psychotherapy session. This process can take years to unravel - it's part of the reason the two men have only had five official collaborations since 1970 - but even in these three examples do we sense the fullness of their work, that notion of performance as quest. Cinematically, their time together began with Louis Malle's 1981 drama My Dinner with André. The concept is simplicity itself: after years without seeing one another, Shawn reluctantly agrees to have dinner with Gregory, who talks, and talks, and talks about his life in the interim. Minus some short bookends, their conversation occupies the whole of the film, and you could be forgiven for expecting something boring and dry. However, My Dinner with André is a constant delight and a landmark of arthouse cinema (you know you've done something right when both The Simpsons and Community make fun of you), and its intrigue comes from the genuine relationship between its leads. While their dialogue is tightly scripted (during the writing process, Shawn and Gregory brainstormed incidents and experiences from their own lives as fodder for the fictionalized versions of themselves), it contains a freshness and meter that turns these classic individuals into universal forms: Gregory is the perpetual seeker, desperate to find meaning in all experiences, no matter how mundane, and Shawn is the worrier, hiding behind cynicism and fear to avoid emotional/artistic growth. This dinner pits these two worldviews against one another (Gregory dominates the first half with his stories both profound and absurd, while Shawn counters in the second half with his own blend of skepticism and resentment), and wisely, neither man wins. Rather, the film ends on a wistful détente, of sorts, as they're left to question what they've just heard and how it might apply to them. It's a quietly devastating finish, and one that speaks to Louis Malle's guiding hand (My Dinner with André fits comfortably in the oeuvre of the man who directed the wonderful Murmur of the Heart and Lacombe, Lucien). He's the third most important person in the Gregory-Shawn union, and his directorial instincts give this ideological/philosophical study in contrasts the dramatic spark it needs.
Of My Dinner with André, Svet Atanasov wrote that "depending on who you ask, Louis Malle's My Dinner with André is either a brilliantly executed film or a boring and quite pretentious chamber piece loaded with a massive amount of meaningless words. As it often happens with such polarizing films, however, the truth is somewhere in the middle. The bulk of the film is really quite fascinating to behold. While one may not "get" all of its important points about the meaning of life, sacrifice, and art, it is difficult not to agree that there is an incredible chemistry between Shawn and Gregory. There is obvious mutual respect on display that also prevents their conversation from evolving into an elitist debate...It probably is, assuming that one is also part of the same reality the two friends belong to and is intrigued by the same subjects their minds find fascinating - the evolving standards of acting workshops, Martin Buber's theories about human nature, or the obvious and not so obvious benefits of electric blankets. The logic behind their thoughts and observations is flat-out mesmerizing. But the film can also be quite frustrating because it does test one's IQ without giving second chances to those who miss the sea of references and witty jokes. (Are you familiar with Konstantin Stanislavsky's work? What do you know about Albert Speer?) In other words, viewing the film could be like attending a masterclass presented by a brilliant nuclear medicine physician who has a lot of meaningful things to say, but while describing his findings constantly draws parallels that don't seem to make a whole lot of sense."
How fitting, that when Gregory and Shawn decided thirteen years later to film Vanya on 42nd Street, their probing interpretation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, they tapped Malle as director once again - if Malle could make two guys talking the stuff of riveting cinema, then surely he could keep a filmed play from becoming aesthetically or dramatically inert. Plus, if anything, this project's origins were even more esoteric. Instead of mounting a conventional Vanya revival, Gregory and Shawn conducted a series of rehearsals over four years geared to let cast and crew experiment with the endless permutations in David Mamet's English translation. The company only performed before an audience a handful of times near the end of the four-year period, and only then for a small handful of spectators. In order to capture the tightly cloistered intimacy of the Vanya troupe, Malle embraced the project's "stagy" origins, framing the film as one of those select performances and shooting the action in the derelict New Amsterdam Theatre in Manhattan. The result is screen alchemy, a meta and challenging look at one of Modern Drama's key works. Using the great cinematographer Declan Quinn, Malle gets in tight on his cast (besides Shawn as Vanya, the troupe includes Larry Pine, George Gaynes, Lynn Cohen, a pre-stardom Julianne Moore, and the heartbreaking Brooke Smith), who know their parts so well by this point that we never see them acting - the air is hushed, voyeuristic. And yet, because we know these are "performers," because we see the trappings of the stage around them, we can't fully lose ourselves in the drama, and so we become invested in the same questions of artistic connection and exploration that Gregory and Shawn ask of their actors and of themselves. Malle died not long after Vanya on 42nd Street's theatrical release, but not only had he gone out on an unqualified masterpiece, he'd also helped document the fullest ethos of Gregory and Shawn's work together.
Svet Atanasov called Vanya on 42nd Street "a fascinating experiment that merges theater and film. It was completed in 1994, approximately five years after Gregory invited the film's brilliant cast to the not so friendly and largely abandoned Victory Theater on 42nd Street in New York City, where the actors started rehearsing Chekhov's play. The film, like the play, is brilliant. The key conflicts in it are largely unchanged, but the Russian fatalism is replaced with contemporary cosmopolitan views which most Western viewers will find far easier to understand and appreciate. A lot of the dry sarcasm from the play is also replaced with subtle dark humor. What makes this film so fascinating to behold, however, is the outstanding cast. There is a very real connection between the actors that transcends far beyond what is typically regarded as acting. The conflicts they are involved with are not staged, they are happening. The emotions are real, the reactions are authentic."
Anyone hoping to follow in the wake of Vanya's artistic achievement would have to live up to some towering expectations, and that's exactly the situation that Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme found himself in when he began production on Gregory and Shawn's Henrik Ibsen-riff A Master Builder. As with Vanya, Gregory and Shawn immersed themselves in the rehearsal process: they began working with the play in 1999 and chose Demme to fill Malle's shoes in 2013. Demme had to a) synthesize fourteen years of theatrical analysis into one movie while still b) crafting a film version of A Master Builder that would please Ibsen fans and neophytes alike, and while Demme succeeds more on the first count, he doesn't quite pull off the second. If nothing else, A Master Builder is a triumph of acting. Shawn gives the performance of his life as Halvard Solness, a dying architect who reconnects mysteriously with a young woman (Lisa Joyce) claiming that the two had an inappropriate physical relationship when she was just a preteen. Shawn is hardly the virile tower of masculinity that Ibsen describes in the play, but he is so chillingly, oozingly manipulative that you never doubt his hold over the other characters (played by Gregory, Larry Pine, Julie Hagerty, Emily Cass McDonnell, and Jeff Biehl), and Joyce matches him beat for beat, turning her Hilda into a figure that's equal parts deranged, wounded, and ethereal. Theirs is an intimacy both tender and unspeakable, but as good as they are, Demme can't quite modulate his work to best serve them. Instead of drawing our attentions to the confines of theater itself, Demme shoots A Master Builder as a traditional narrative film, albeit one with a variety of tones and styles: he shifts from 1.78:1 to 2.39:1 aspect ratios, he alternates between frenetic Dogme 95-esque camerawork to more sedate compositions, and he frames Solness' story as a "haunted house" movie that questions the reality of the things he's seeing and the people he's meeting. In theory, all of these conceits are interesting, but they play like a jukebox assortment of aesthetics, and as a result, the film never settles, never finds that perfect balance of tone and content and drama that Malle captured with Vanya - just as we're getting used to one style, Demme throws out something else, and we struggle to acclimate to the delicate work of his performers. Demme has described his take on A Master Builder as a ghost story, and that description proves apt - no matter what, he can't escape the ghosts of Malle and Vanya on 42nd Street. Still, for fans of Gregory and Shawn, the film proves an invaluable - if imperfect - look at their ever-evolving process.