Archive | Film Matters
Of Lady Jolie and ‘Maleficent’
The following is a review I originally published in Word and Film:
It’s hard to comprehend the career trajectory of Angelina Jolie. In the 1990s, she was the premier wild child, so fully in possession of her sexual powers that she seemed to do everyone a favor just by training her gaze upon them. When she announced she was “so in love with her brother” during her 1999 Oscar acceptance speech after jumping in a pool upon winning a Golden Globe earlier that season, two things seemed clear: We were all in her thrall. And none of us knew what she’d do next.
Certainly we never expected the girl with the blood vial necklace to evolve into such an upstanding citizen. In the ensuing years, she’s become a U.N. ambassador of goodwill, the doting mother of six, the long-term partner of Brad Pitt, the outspoken survivor of a double mastectomy, the director of mediocre message movies, and an actor. Arguably in that order. These days, the extraordinary promise she once exhibited on screen has mostly been eclipsed by a great puff of tabloid coverage even when she does appear in films. As of now, Maleficent, in which she plays the title character in a Disney retelling of Sleeping Beauty from the villainess’ perspective, is one of her last scheduled acting jobs. (She has announced her retirement before but might mean it this time.) This may be for the best. This sort of film hinges upon the voltage of the old Angelina – a ferocious, and ferociously gorgeous, creature who inspired equal parts fear and admiration in a whirl of feral improvisation – and Lady Jolie, though as visually compelling as ever, does not seem up to the task.
Instead, the true star of Maleficent is its lavish design. Director Robert Stromberg (the production designer of the equally lavish “Alice in Wonderland,” “Oz: The Great and Powerful,” and “Avatar”) has created a 3D netherworld of streams, meadows, caves, and forests that soars at us like an ever-shifting Mucha painting. It’s an effect so pleasing that for a while we don’t mind how little else commands our attention – not even Angelina’s already-impressive cheekbones, which are so digitally enhanced that other characters’ faces look downright doughy in comparison. This whole film hangs off her cheekbones. Continue Reading →
Why ‘Hannibal’ Is an Acquired Taste
The following is a review I originally published in Word and Film.
The season two finale of “Hannibal” airs May 23, and most of us have no clue how it will end even if we’ve read Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon, upon which the series is loosely based. That’s if we’ve been watching at all: The NBC show’s ratings have dipped perilously low though it’s been renewed it for another season.
Yet, aside from Sherlock Holmes, there may be no crime-novel figure who looms as large in our collective imagination as Hannibal Lecter does, and this show goes a long way toward explaining why. Like all of our most terrifying dreams, “Hannibal” seduces us before grabbing us by the throat. Ironically, that seduction relies mightily upon a moral and narrative ambiguity that also may be alienating audiences.
In the movies adapted from Harris’ books about the serial killer, Hannibal Lecter is larger-than-life – so much so that a little of him goes a long way. In 1986’s “Manhunter,” actor Brian Cox bases his portrayal less on the character’s literary antecedent than on the Scottish serial killer Peter Manuel. The effect is plenty chilling but more brutish than we might expect of an aesthete whose declared foe is bad taste. In “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Red Dragon,” and the unfortunate “Hannibal,” Anthony Hopkins’ iconic take is more refined but also so hammy that it’s only palatable in small doses (cannibalism metaphors apparently being irresistible in this context). It’s hard to, ahem, swallow that the doctor wouldn’t eat someone else alive for such showboating, quid pro quo. And let’s not discuss Gaspard Ulliel’s turn as the young Lecter in 2007’s unspeakably bad “Hannibal Rising”; Thomas Harris was reportedly bullied into writing this film and book by those who held the cinematic rights to the character.
Then there’s Mads Mikkelsen’s Hannibal in the eponymously titled NBC show, which swoops in and out of a fidelity to Harris’ books with a discombobulating, off-kilter elegance that is this series’ trademark. Continue Reading →