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Glitzy Gunk

I saw Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps almost ten days ago and the fact that I haven't written anything about it is clear enough evidence that it didn't do anything for me whatsoever.

It's a humdrum financial tale about a young guy (Shia LaBeouf) who gets his feathers ruffled during the big financial meltdown and his face-to-face with the villainous Josh Brolin all the while attempting to reconnect his fiancee (Carey Mulligan) with her high-stakes shark of a father, the iconic Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas).

But alas, this is a blunt, lifeless drudge - a messy resuscitation and a logical yet unprogressive sequel to the 1987 original, which is far more snappy and smooth and easier to invest in (no pun intended).

The main problem I have with it is what is done with Douglas' Gordon Gekko, here pushed to the margins and then given a "will he or won't he" moment at the end where he must choose between his sharky, game-playing persona and his softer side, his daughter and yaddity, yaddity, who cares?

Like Stone's W, which is ultimately a better film for Brolin's performance and its refusal to resort to easy political skewering, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps feels lackadaisical and slummy, its would-be timeliness lacking teeth and purpose. [C]

Review: The Social Network (2010)

There isn't much more to be said about David Fincher's The Social Network, but I've now seen it twice and both times I've come away endlessly entertained, intellectually massaged and a little touched at its subtle outbursts of human sympathy and its scope of a species trending towards social inadequacy. 

It's a talky, snappy, back-stabbing tale about the genesis and growth of Facebook at Harvard around late '03 and '04, a delicate, never demonstrative encapsulation of the internet generation, and finally a tragicomic character study about a man so socially awkward, he invents his own form of communication, only to wilt and crawl into his own wealth and creation. 

It's not quite as grand or opulent as David Fincher's Zodiac, but The Social Network is certainly cut from the same cloth, like a lunch-sized portion of the real deal - the same stuff, smaller portions, just filling enough.

The way the film bounces back-and-forth (Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall's editing is remarkable) between the here and now, from deposition room to dorm room, from black comedy to obsessive tragedy, the film bears Fincher's fingerprints from start to finish and would make for one hell of a double-feature coming on the tail end of that epic, sprawling serial-killer saga. 

Justin Timberlake plays Napster founder Sean Parker, a showy master spokesman and entrepreneur who becomes linked together with the expansion of Facebook shortly after a blurry meeting with the co-founders in sunny California. His performance is getting buzz, but honestly, it's an empty role - flashy but thin, airy - and he's upstaged by his boys from Harvard.

As Eduardo Saverin, Andrew Garfield (the future Peter Parker) is the heart and soul of the film, a good-hearted friend whose betrayal at the hands of his best friend anchors the emotional impact of the film's final ten minutes and his confrontation scene is a stunner. 

But it's Jesse Eisenberg as the mysteriously chilly Mark Zuckerberg who gives the master performance and certainly his best to date as the young whiz driven by his social downturns to both make it big and enhance or conceal his deficiencies. 

He's not an easy character to like - he's witty yet ruthless and greedy, but Eisenberg brings so many layers to him that there's a palpable feeling of guilt and aloofness in the final scenes, allowing us to peak past the asshole facade that so troubles him.  

The Social Network may not be the "defining film of our generation" or deserving of any other lofty, ambitious taglines as such, but as a modern-age depiction of greedy, generation-next human nature, it's ravishing, splashy and the scariest kind of true story. [A-]

Trailer: True Grit

As expected, Joel and Ethan Coen's True Grit (Paramount, 12.25) looks like the real deal and another feather in the cap for the Coens who are enjoying quite the resurgence these days.



If this were an other writer-director team, I'd be worried about young Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross or the fact that Henry Hathaway's 1969 original is nothing more than a fun little father-daughter road trip movie with a fine performance from John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn.

But, this being who it is (with quite the assembly of talented actors), I'm at ease and wholly confident that it'll top the original in every way. The Coens are too good at creating and submerging themselves in their environments through language, landscapes and stereotypes all with a sturdy, deadpan sense of humor, startling violence and the usual fatalistic undercurrents.

Plus it looks like Roger Deakins is up to his usual tricks again, as in The Assassination of Jesse James great.

Short Review: Never Let Me Go (2010)

Having already been labeled an early season casualty - a surplus of cold, disenchanted reactions and a mild box-office turnout in is wake - I was surprised to find that Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go isn't an entirely suffocating British weeper, it's science-fiction baseline given a caring, methodically dour sensibility that slowly envelopes the viewer - if a bit unconvincingly. 

Adam Kimmel's pastel-colored lensing and the performances of Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield chiefly stand out as highlights - the realist, quiet submission of the former and the manic, moody hopefulness of the latter carrying whatever emotional impact the film has, which is admittedly rather mute for a good portion. 

It's essentially an elegiac poem of longing, forbidden love, inevitability and slow, protracted suffering - it doesn't ever really turn a corner and offer any retribution or salvation or discovery, and as such, is something that just sort of floats away - from screen and from memory. [B-]

Review: Devil (2010)

The five-people-in-an-elevator thriller Devil is taut, mildly effective and undeniably silly, but it's also the best thing that M. Night Shyamalan has had his name attached to since 2002's Signs and one of the more entertaining low-budget horror exercises you'll see this year.

It takes a very Saw-like approach - a scruffy, plain-speaking detective (Chris Messina) with a tortured past is investigated a possible suicide before being dragged into a never-ending elevator jam in which the stranded passengers begin turning on each other as strange events start piling up. 

It's mostly a bunch of heaven and hell hokum - dying for your sins, asking for forgiveness, etc, etc. - and it all leads to a rather foolish twist involving the past of two key players and a creaky, oddly optimistic conclusion.

There's a deep, brassy Fernando Velázquez score, a tricky upside-down opening credits sequence and an array of potentially hazardous twists and turns, but mostly Devil keeps its footing while ours remains firmly on edge. [B-]

Review: Let Me In (2010)

Matt Reeves' Let Me In, judged solely on its own terms, is a delicate and atmospherically spooky boy-meets-girl vampire yarn, a cathartic school-bully revenge tale and a sweet, rewarding pre-pubescent love story. It's clearly made with the right frame of mind and certainly accomplishes the same icy, desolate chilliness of Tomas Alfredson's original.

The problem is that anything the film accomplishes - mainly that stirring juxtaposition of violence and tenderness, coldness and warmness - is almost entirely indebted to its Swedish inspiration. Aside from a cute plot-loop framework, it's a befuddling cut, paste and repeat process down to the final shot (even the locations are strikingly familiar). 

Yet the cast, with the likes of Kodi Smit-McPhee, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas and the great Chloe Moretz, bring an added sincerity to the core relationships which run through this horrific yet amiable story that even Alfredson's original couldn't match. 

It's just a shame that Reeves fails miserably to make the film his own - in fact, the only strong deviation is an example of divulging too much information - and he manages to adapt his source material without shaping, forming and applying his own ideas whatsoever. As it stands, this is one great film that's awfully imitative - get your own swimming pool. [B-]