Juno (2007)

What's all this then? A RE-view? Sign me up!

To tell the truth, I didn't think I'd ever watch this movie again, at least not for years, not in the least because I wasn't sure I had anything left to say about it. Sars gave me to the hook up re: the problem with Mark and Vanessa in the midst of talking about another movie, and Dana Stevens smartly took apart how we can love and hate the movie at once (hint: it has to do with surviving the 20 minute mark). Enough ink was spilled, but, then again, I think we can all agree that we'd watch just about anything on the plane, right? That's how I came to watch Shakespeare in Love again and The Legend of Bagger Vance . . . twice. It was just as boring the second time.

I was struck by just how underwritten Juno is the second time around. I like Cody and I like Page, and I think that together they have created a character that will rightfully go down in movie history. Let there be no doubt: I like Juno. I do wonder how long Page is going to play things with that monotone before we suspect she's a one trick pony, and I also wonder why Juno gets away with absolutely everything. The script is so proud of its protagonist that it seems fundamentally unwilling to find fault with her. Brenda gets the brunt of her bratty behaviour, although it's unclear why, given that she treats/refers to Juno as her own and has been part of her life for longer than her actually mother with whom Juno has no relationship. Basically, I think Allison Janney, J.K. Simmons, and Philip Seymour Hoffman should get together and form a club devoted to how kick ass they all are.

And why does Brenda have dogs at the end? I get that its supposed to be representative of a change in Juno, but unless that change involves no longer having an allergy, it's a nonsense symbol. Was the allergy never that severe to begin with? Is Juno on allergy meds now? I know it seems like a silly sticking point, but JVO makes a big deal about Brenda being obsessed with dogs, and, in their big fight, it's brought up.

Okay, Sars talked about it, but I feel like we've got to address the Mark and Vanessa problem. It's unclear how or why they got together in the first place or why they stay together. Where/when did Mark even meet Vanessa? Touring in Japan? After he sold out and started writing jingles? After Juno, the adoptive parents are the most important characters in the film, yet very little is invested into making them into real characters much less real people. There's no reason to make it so clear that Mark doesn't want a child. If it weren't so obvious from the word go, it would make for a better climax.

I skipped over Olivia Thirlby in my initial review, which was silly of me. As Leah, Juno's female best friend, Thirlby is the unsung hero of this entire production. Sure, she and Rainn Wilson are in serious competition for having to utter the film's most absurd line*, but she's supportive of Juno from start to finish (offering to make the call to Women Now for her, being there during the delivery) for no reason other than their friendship. She even plops herself down in the movie's most absurd set piece.** Thirlby is a brave, funny soul, and I wish I could see a movie with her and Janney together as mother and daughter.

I realize all this bashing sounds bad, but it comes from a good place. I can see all these things and still mostly like the movie, but I recognize that if Cody had only filled everything out just a little more, I could drop all the kinda/maybe/sortas and just out and out like it. Too bad. B

*I will not repeat these lines. Maybe they will go away and die from lack of repetition.

**It moves quickly beyond ironic to eye-rollingly ridiculous for Juno to sit in a display case while complaining that people are staring at her. Why is that display case even open? It's the kind of thing that sounds clever but should have been nixed before the film started rolling. Eating in the cafeteria is stressful enough.

Pop Culture Round-Up: April 14-18

I was writing a RE-view earlier today, but it will have to wait until I am less distracted. And because you are in need of a distraction:

I started reading Cloons' New Yorker profile when I first heard about it last week, but I have yet to successfully finish it. It is what one might call, "crazy-ass long."

On the fluffier side (yes, fluffier than a celebrity profile), enjoy a little Good Cop/Bad Cop slideshow.

Also from last week, Bob Dylan won an honourary Pulitzer, which is bitchin'.

Jeff Simon's got a love/hate thing going on with film critics.

The Vulture's got career advice for Robert DeNiro (let's hope someone sends him the link).

Sars' kindly revives one of my favourite childhood movies. Blue light special indeed.

And, finally, news that was apparently posted last August, even though Le Journal de Montréal only published it within the last week or so. Whatevs - Colm Feore's going to be First Husband, and I am all about it.

The Savages (2007)

Short: Two adult children, a professor, Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and a failed writer, Wendy (Laura Linney), are forced to care for their absentee father (Philip Bosco) when he develops dementia.

I remember when this movie came out people were kind of excited about a new movie from writer-director Tamara Jenkins. Turns out that I've seen her only other feature length picture: Slums of Beverly Hills. It's been a while since I've seen it, but I remember that I watched it more than once, liked it, and particularly liked Natasha Lyonne* and Maris Tomei** in it. But that was a decade ago, so I can't be certain of how good it was.

This movie, sadly, is not so good. I had high hopes, due to the cast alone, but it didn't work out. To be honest, it's all there in the title. Savage? Yeah, that's their last name. It's the kind of thing that seems clever on the surface, but the more you think about it, the less clever it becomes. You get to the "Okay, so?" moment when you contemplate it.

Linney and Hoffman are fantastic actors, and I'm pretty sure Hoffman in particular could create a fulled formed character out of thin air, but they just don't have enough to work with. Thanks to Linney, we can see Wendy trying to connect with her father, looking for some closure for whatever's gone on between them in the past, and finding that her father isn't present enough to give it to her. Wendy's really the protagonist, in that we see Wendy without Jon, but it's kind of a shame because I want to know more of Jon's story.

We never really get to know enough of any one's story, which I suppose is a point unto itself from Jenkins' script, but it hurts the finished product. There's a suggestion in the middle that their father was physically abused by his father, and another one right at the end that Jon was physically abused by their father, but we never get a sense of who their father was. As wonderful as Bosco is in what's, frankly, a thankless role, there really isn't enough of a character for us to care like we should about his deteriorating mental condition. He's less a person than a series of things that have happened to Jon and Wendy: he left them, and now that they've got him, he's gone.

There are moments, whole moments, when it seemed like Hoffman was in another, better movie, one that dug deep into life's cruel joke called growing old, into the reality of adult children caring for their dependent parents, into the horror of figuring out what to do next. I wish I could have seen that movie. It could have starred all the same people but instead of wasting time on Wendy's affair with a married man, it would have shown us Jon grading papers in a chair next to his father's bed for just a few seconds before Wendy found him there. B-

*Whatever happened to her? She's still making movies, but I feel like I haven't seen her in anything since approximately 2001.

**I love Marisa Tomei, and I kind of wish Tomei was one of those actors who used to be bigger but now has a TV show. Christian Slater's supposed to have one in the fall, for pete's sake. And if you think I wouldn't watch it just because it stars Christian Slater, you really missed the boat on that one.

The Counterfeiters (2007)

Brief: Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) is a renowned counterfeiter in 1936 Berlin. He gets caught, and his jail sentence leads to a concentration camp. Toward the end of WWII, the detective who arrested him, Herzog (Devid Striesow), now an SS officer, brings Sally in along with other printing (Adolf Burger, as played by August Diehl), inking (Sebastian Urzendowsky), and bank specialists to perfect the British pound and American dollar in order to finance the war.

A few weeks ago in Ask the AV Club, a reader wondered what the clubbers' problem was with this and other Holocaust movies (it's the third letter, so you've got to scroll). I read the response and started to worry about what would happen when I saw it for myself. Tasha Robinson is right in that the movie presents a story we've never seen before in a way that we have. For the most part, though the material is fresh, the movie seems familiar. Writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky's script, based on Adolf Burger's book, is facile. It's somewhat strange that it's Burger's book, but his character isn't the hero (at least not in the short term) or even the protagonist. At any rate, Ruzowitsky is too quick to set up Burger and Sally as polar opposites. Sally will do anything to survive, while Burger is so steadfast to his principles that he's willing to get them all killed. If there's anything in between, Ruzowitsky doesn't want you to think about it.

Still, this movie has its good points. Markovics gives an astonishingly cold and reserved performance. He's careful not to reveal any emotion until the last possible moment, making even the slightest twitch of the eye shattering. His will to survive is so strong that he can bend others to it, but we never see why. That's just the way he is. Plus he's got a sexy thing going with his strange, beautiful face.

Combined with Marius Ruhland's fantastic score (he puts aside the stirring strings for a more folk feel) and the amazing lighting that I must attribute to cinematographer Benedict Neuenfels (if this movie was silent, you could understand it entirely from the shifting lighting. I wish I knew who designed the concept because it is beautifully evocative), it's easy to overlook the film's characterization flaws and still get something out of it. It makes me want to read the book, to be honest. B

Whoa, whoa, whoa, Tobias, listen to me. Dreams are worth fighting for. Now, are you gonna be an actor, or are you gonna be a doctor?

Not to spoil anything, but he's gonna be an actor. A bad one. Carl Weathers makes a good point, though. Dreams are important, so you can read all about movies that are in whole or at least in large part dreams in my latest Culture article.