The Greatest Art Heist in History...

...yet some of the most boring art work in contemporary one-sheets.

Elysium

Four years ago, director Neill Blomkamp surprised the cynical-minded spectrum of summer escapism with the gripping and grandly entertaining South African import District 9.  Blomkamp cleverly invented a lithe, concise allegory about his native's Apartheid shaped around a crisp alien science fiction movie.  In retrospect, it's not so much that the film was necessarily anything stronger than a solid grade-B science fiction diversion, but the fickle nature of expectation is a funny beast in itself in selling mass produced material.   District 9 felt like a breath of fresh air and for it's surprise attack on numb summer moviegoers proved an underdog worthy of rooting for-- especially considering the low budget out-of-nowhere film looked immaculately sharper with a crystallized narrative of the likes Hollywood can't seem to make too often anymore.  The film even managed to earn four Academy Award nominations that year, including one for Best Picture, rare, huzzah feat for a genre science fiction film and culmination of it's surprise, underdog status.

Now we arrive at Elysium, and the nature of the game for Blomkamp is a bit different.  Again the sometimes fickle game of expectation must rear its unforgiving head.  The surprise attack of District 9 dissolved now that Blomkamp is invited to play with major studio money and all that that encompasses, including movie stars.  It feels wrong from the start, or even at all, to spit upon Elysium if nothing more for the fact that it's a big studio-approved science fiction film not at all based upon a superhero or a toy.  It also is a high-minded, well-intentioned, socially conscious movie filled with ideas-- perhaps too many ideas and not enough cohesively developed, but ideas nonetheless.  In fairness, Elysium even in its messy, shaggy, unfiltered state is a gamble that Hollywood should be willing to bet on a lot more than it actually does and I will gladly take one messy Elysium any day over thirty Iron Man 3s.  That being said, Elysium doesn't quite work.

Behind the Candelabra

The flamboyance, the excess, the grandeur, the more of it all is as much a part of the story of Liberace as the man beneath the sequined clothing.  Mr. Showman, the piano man, played up to the heavens with a decadent splendor that positively demanded that any screen treatment that could ever be conceived to paint his picture be the biggest, the flashiest and the most colorful.  Mere 3-D wouldn't be enough to showcase the all the glitter and jewels he bespectacled and properly do it justice.  On that note it is slightly surprising that a filmmaker like Steven Soderbergh, with his muted palette and fly on the wall choreography, would be such a natural to create such a vivid, potent, subtly multifaceted biography of his life and bizarre romance with a man much younger than he.  Ever more surprisingly and sufficiently saddening is the continuing announcement that this may in fact be Soderbergh's swan song from filmmaking.  With the seemingly non-congruent pieces of puzzle in place it only makes sense, I suppose, that Soderbergh's long in development Behind the Candelabra enters the fray with a bittersweet taste to go along with its unorthodox release.  Premiering on HBO instead of the three-thousand screens that typically befits a starry-eyed Soderbergh production-- the main players here are Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, both of whom have ample experience with the filmmaker-- and coming off its in-competition berth at the Cannes Film Festival.

For a subject so peculiar and a film so fascinating, it's both a joyous and sad event that Behind the Candelabra couldn't fashion itself into movie screens.  A subject as big and brash and colorful as Liberace (and the performance that Douglas creates to match it) deserve it, but more so, seemingly demand it.  The small screen almost comes across as an insult for an entertainer who always dreamed a bigger dream than the last.  "To much of a good thing is wonderful," is a clever and cheeky line of dialogue, but Douglas devours it as a mantra.  On the other hand, Behind the Candelabra is a rarefied film in itself-- refined but bawdy, delicate but complex, unrestricted but classy, and one suggests that the practice of the Hollywood machine may have diluted Soderbergh's soulful vision to point of worthless dither, on top of the choice reasoning that the filmmaker states that the film was "too gay" for the focus testers in the film industry.  Of which may very well be true, but to deny a story of Liberace of its "gay-ness" for the sensitivity of weary consumers would be, well, to lie.  On this end, it's for the films betterment that every major studio, as reported, passed on Behind the Candelabra.

Elysium Trailer

Matt Damon and Jodie Foster go all sci-fi distopia on us in Neill Blomkamp's follow-up to District 9.  First impressions?  Meh!

Promised Land

The gentle everyman rhythms of Matt Damon work well for him in the plainly righteous message picture Promised Land.  Damon at the age 42 typically uses his likable, aw shucks demeanor to clue audiences into his character and that all-encompassing nice guy approachability is his center as a movie star, whether playing characters verging on psychotic (like The Talented Mr. Ripley), superhero-ic (the Bourne films) or the quirkily warped (like The Informant!); in the truest sense he's likely the heir apparent to 21st century movie stars to perhaps Tom Hanks during his '90s heyday or Jimmy Stewart.  In Promised Land, Gus Van Sant's latest film, with a screenplay by Damon, co-star John Krasinski, and a story credit to Dave Eggers, Damon's handsomely boyish face and frame is a bit more weathered, his age slowly creeping in, and it serves his character well, especially since the film, more small-boned morality play than great cinema, needs the seasoned pros to sell something that on the surface is so utterly corny, with a narrative that was well dated even back in the days when Frank Capra was extolling similar iterations of wholesome American values.

Damon plays Steve Butler, a mid-level traveling salesman for a natural gas company.  In toe with his ball-busting partner Sue (Frances McDormand, one of America's best at selling even the most hokum of dialogue), they go from small farm town to the next leasing properties in order to drill, exciting poorer citizens with hopes of a large payday.  Steve, a small town farm boy in his youth, speaks plainly and directly, priding himself with straightforward honesty and charm, without big city tricks or bells and whistles.  He's such a good salesman, he believes his pitch himself and that he's a helpful ambassador to struggling, disenfranchised Americans.  The dangers, and thus the message, of Promised Land, gets out of the way fairly early on-- that with the process of the drilling, called "fracking"-- a potentially dangerous and controversial environmental issue.  Steve, no stranger to semantics, holds his ground and firmly believes in the honesty and faith of not just what he's selling, but the corporate world larger than him.  That notion is the one major miss of Promised Land, where Steve's naivete, essential for coaxing the drama and in moving the character and the plot forward.  Damon seems to savvy for that, but like any good salesman, spins it as well as one can, retaining he's easy-going, nice guy persona.  Steve, himself, as he begins to question, even reminds himself, "I'm the good guy."

As the town is divided over what direction they should take-- Hal Holbrook plays an esteemed small town gentry who fears what his community will come to if too many people agree to drilling-- and decides to hold a formal vote.  Steve and Sue become nervous upon the arrival of an environmental activist (played by Krasinski) who stirs trouble by canvassing the town with slogans and a pinched bravado.  At this point in the film, the bigger dramatic question looms...could Matt Damon be playing the villain here?  Of course not, he, as well as the film keep reminding us, that "he's a good guy," and Krasinski's environ-douche Dustin is such a cad from the onset, that just can't be possible.  Never mind all of that, however, for the plainly stated virtues of Promised Land, which does a decent enough job of taking a snapshot of a topical subject matter that isn't as viably discussed as much as it should, and, better yet, for keeping it at arms length as to not read as didactic as it surely could have.  Cynically, the film can be read as a pet project, write off for movie stars in pursuit of charity work, or a film that will, no doubt, further push the well-greased argument that the media is speared by the liberal elite.  Van Sant debunks that with a small and earthy straightforwardness, so much so, that even the climatic Capra moment where our hero does the noble thing and the emotional violins strum along, it registers with the simplest of beats.

But that's also a bit of a shortcoming as the tiny play is at times so muted it barely registers a pulse.  A grating subplot where Steve and Dustin pine for a local school teacher (Rosemarie DeWitt) further pulls the film away; a shame considering the warmth a performer like DeWitt imbues is one that the film could have taken advantage of wisely had the stridency of formula not stood in the way.  Similarly, most of the characters outside of Steve and Sue reads far too easily and, perhaps even a tad offensive.  Most residents come off as ignorant rubes, following like cattle to whomever has the fanciest speak, and others including the character portrayed by Holbrook as mere ciphers for the films messaging.  While the film is nearly defiant in it's lack of vanity, Promised Land still adheres to the staples of the message picture, one that even the even the finest messages can't quite hurdle.

The presence of Matt Damon, as guide, advocate and movie star, is likely the only legitimate reason a film like this could have gotten off the ground, and how it could be given an Oscar-qualifying release by Focus Features, and why, I have little doubt, anyone will turn up to actually watch it to begin with.  He sells well and earnestly with integrity and quiet compassion.  And while Damon may well be our generations Jimmy Stewart, there's really no denying that Steve Butler will come any near Mr. Smith in the pantheon of American cinemas great nice guys.  B-

We Bought a Zoo trailer

There's been a lot of flack on this in the online universe, and with quite reason-- on first glance Cameron Crowe's latest We Bought a Zoo looks pretty terrible, with seemingly every family dramedy cliche in place, and what appears to be slightly mawkish sentimentality-- but either by foolish illogical reasoning or whatever, I'm forever hopeful that this finds an audience and restores some much needed creative stock in Crowe.  He was the screenwriter behind Fast Times at Ridgemont High (one of the best teen comedies of the over-saturated genre of the 1980s), and the man behind Say Anything (has a Poison song ever been put to better use; no!) and the Oscar-winning writer and director of Almost Famous, which is probably the greatest movie about rock and roll ever made.  With a heart forever steeped in music, and a knack for dialogue that it's best channels both Billy Wilder and Frank Capra, I want a joyous return for Crowe.  Of course, after the disasters of Vanilla Sky and Elizabethtown still burn.  One blessing might come from it's casting-- Matt Damon is proving himself a mature and lovable cinematic everyman and Elle Fanning is still fawned about for her muse-like performance in Super 8.  I'd like to be hopeful here....