During Wartimes Happiness Found In Dollhouses

Life During Wartime

In Life During Wartime director Todd Solondz revisits many of the characters that he brought to life so vividly in his films Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness, 15 and 12 years ago respectively. After once being married to a pedophile, Bill (Ciarán Hinds), Trish (Allison Janney) is happy that she has finally found herself a normal guy, Harvey (Michael Lerner). Trish and Harvey want to get married but their relationship becomes complicated when Bill is released from prison. Meanwhile, Trish’s sister Joy (Shirley Henderson) and her husband Allen (Michael K. Williams) are having problems of their own due to Allen’s habitual immoral habits. Joy decides to takes a solo trip to reconnect with her family but is haunted by the ghost of a past lover. Both Trish and Joy must figure out if it is better to forgive the past or to forget it all together.

Life During Wartime is like warmed over comfort food in many ways. You really do not need it but it satisfies for a brief time before you are ultimately hungry again. As a big fan of Solondz’s previous films I had no problem with the fact that he used a completely new cast to fill out each role. It did take me a while though to reconnect with the characters as it has been ages since I last saw either Welcome to the Dollhouse or Happiness.

I was pleased with the character interpretations that this new cast brought to the film. Janny, Henderson, Williams, Charlotte Rambling, and Paul Rubens are all quite good in their given roles. Yet I could not help but wonder what the actors from the original films would have done with this material? I think this is one of the main issues that hinders Life During Wartime overall. Instead of providing its own cinematic mark, Life During Wartime merely makes you want to revisit the dark beauty of Happiness all over again. Happiness was such a good movie that it really did not warrant a sequel. The same can be said, though to a slightly lesser extent, about Welcome to the Dollhouse. I felt like I knew everything I needed to know about these characters. I was never inclined to ponder “whatever happened to…?”

Todd Solondz trademark dark humor is still intact but somehow the film seems to play things much safer here than in his previous films. Solondz does raise some interesting questions on the lengths of human forgiveness; but this is a theme that he explored far better in his last film, Palindromes. At the end of the day, Life During Wartime serves as a nice reminder that I need to rent Happiness again more than anything else.

Brooklyn's Finest Casting Arrested By Procedural

Brooklyn's Finest

The title in Antonie Fuqua's latest film, Brooklyn's Finest, is a reference to police officers but I think it is more suited for the film's casting. The most significant thing about Finest is the number of actors that appear over the course of the film. It seemed like every two minutes a familiar actor makes their cameo on screen. I guess they all must have been really passionate about the material; it is just too bad that this same passion did not translate into a better film.

Brooklyn's Finest follows three separate police officers as they struggle with what their jobs have turned them into. Eddie (Richard Gere) is a seven days from retirement and wants to do his time and go home. Jaded by all that he has seen and done, Eddie struggles with alcohol addiction and his desire to commit suicide. Eddie's retirement plans our complicated when he is asked to show a new recruit the ropes. Sal (Ethan Hawke) is a narcotics officer struggling to provide for his family on a cop's salary. When the mold in Sal's home starts to make his wife (Lili Taylor) sick, Sal is determined to get his family into a new home at all cost. Even if that means stealing money from the drug dealers he arrests. Tango (Don Cheadle) is an undercover cop who has been under for far too long. He starts to question whether drug dealers like Caz (Wesley Snipes) are any worse than the upper police brass who care more about looking good in the papers than they do about crime on the streets.

As I mentioned above, the casting is really strong in this film. Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, and Ethan Hawke are all vastly talented actors who try their best to overcome the shortcomings of the material. Cheadle was the standout for me, though Hawke's story line does get the most screen time. Personally, it was nice to see Wesley Snipes back on the big screen in a significant role. He looked far more engaged here than he did in The Art of War II: Betrayal, which was the last film I saw Snipes in. The supporting players are equally strong with actors such as Vincent D'Onofrio, Ellen Barkin, Will Patton, Michael K. Williams, and pretty much the bulk of The Wire cast all taking small roles in the film. At times you will get so distracted by the actors on screen that you almost forget how formulaic the movie is.

Brooklyn's Finest strives to be a gritty cop drama were all the characters live in that grey area of life. The film even opens with a discussion on how sometimes breaking the law is actually a good thing for bad people to do in times of crisis. Yet the true murkiness is not found on the hard Brooklyn street but in the film's script. The picture is a slow burner that actually starts off very promising. Antonie Fuqua's film teases us at first, just when you think the payoff is about to happen...he decides to keep you dangling just a little longer. Unfortunately we are dangling for so long that Fuqua give us, unintentionally of course, a film with two endings. The first one is what I like to call the "false ending." It is the point in the film where, if the credits began roll, you would feel like you had a satisfying experience. I will not give away the details but will merely say it is the redemption moment for the characters. It is where they wake up and realize that they need to start making better choices.

The only problem with this style of ending is that it does not fit with the usual aesthetics of an Antonie Fuqua film. After seeing seven of his nine films, the one thing I have come to expect from Fuqua is some sort of shootout or action sequence to cap things off. A film is not over until the body count rises and the characters are all out of bullets. Which brings me to the preposterous final act of the film, or the "official ending" if you will. This is where all logic is thrown out the window and the men find themselves in the same housing complex in "Dirty Harry" mode . It is at this point in which both the story and the characters lose all credibility. By time the film ends we feel nothing for these characters or the situations they found themselves in. Brooklyn's Finest might have actually been a decent film without this ending. Sure it would still be formulaic but enjoyable nonetheless. Sadly the final act of the film is so bad that it is tough to recommend this film on any level.

Road Safety Is Key For Survival

The Full List of Big Thoughts From A Small Mind's 2009 Reviews

This review was originally posted in my 2009 Toronto Film Festival Recap. The review has been re-posted as the film will finally be released in select cinemas this week

The Road

Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, John Hillcoat’s The Road is bleak look at a world on the brink. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, a father (Viggo Mortensen) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) struggle to survive by any means necessary. As duo travel aimlessly day to day, they encounter various individuals (Robert Duvall, Michael K. Williams, etc) that will ultimately blur the lines between good and evil even further.

As weird as it may sound, I always find stories about the decay of society fascinating. The Road is a very bleak film that reminded me of Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness in many ways, though The Road is not nearly as graphic and the overall execution of is far better. The interesting thing about this film is that it does not care what caused the world to get to the point that it is at. The real focus is on the theme of family; and the lengths that people will go through to protect the ones they love.

There is also an underlying question of whether childhood innocence can exist in such a horrific world? There are times in the film where Smit-McPhee’s character comes off a little too naïve for my liking. Especially if you take into account everything that he has experienced up to this point. Having not read the source material I cannot say whether the character was originally written this way or if it was more a result of Hillcoat’s direction.

The real strength of the film is found in the casting. Viggo Mortensen is very good in the lead role; he has the right mixture of vulnerability and jadedness needed for the role. I also really liked the supporting performances of Duvall and Williams. Though I wish Molly Parker and Guy Pearce were given more to do. I understand their character’s roles are minor but, with actors of their talent, it would have been great to see them play some of the darker roles in the film. While it did not blow me away like other post-apocalyptic films have, say Children of Men for example, The Road did hold my interest the throughout.