Movie Review: A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol (2009) 

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Written by Robert Zemeckis 

Starring Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins, Robin Wright, Carey Elwes

Release Date November 6th, 2009 

Published November 5th, 2009

Words associated with Robert Zemeckis's endeavor into CGI, Motion Capture and Digital 3D: Groundbreaking, lifelike, extraordinary, creepy, scary, goofy, rubbery. Opinions have varied on the success of the now three films that Mr. Zemeckis has crafted with his unique technical skills and toys. The Polar Express was magical in story but creepy in rendering. Beowulf was masterful in many technical aspects and still skin-crawlingly awkward in others. Now comes A Christmas Carol and again opinions vary.

Charles Dickens' legendary tale of skinflint turned softy Ebenezer Scrooge is among the most famous holiday tales ever told. There are numerous adaptations featuring as varied a group of players as Kelsey Grammar, Bill Murray even the Muppets who have given life to Scrooge over the years since Dickens popularized the concept of karmic retribution for lack of being charitable. Disney turned him into a duck. Children, even today, can recite the basics of the story from memory.

On Christmas Day the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his late business partner Jakob Marley. He is told that he will be visited by three ghosts. Indeed, haunted he is by the ghosts Christmas past, present and future. Each offers a lesson to Scrooge that if he does not change his miserly ways he will not be mourned by anyone, he will die penniless and alone. Reformed by this experience, Scrooge buys a giant Christmas goose for his longtime, terribly put upon assistant, Bob Cratchit and pays the medical bills of Bob's son Tiny Tim. Scrooge also, finally, attends the Christmas of his loving, kind nephew Fred. 

Dickens' tale is brilliant in its simplicity. But, why bring A Christmas Carol back again? According to Director Zemeckis it was one of his favorite stories of all time. All well and good but does his love justify yet another take on this oft told tale? No, frankly. Especially since Zemeckis brings no new insights to the story. Jim Carrey's Scrooge is faithful to a fault and leaves one to wonder: who hires Jim Carrey and binds him to a character so thoroughly that no wacky schtick can escape?

There is hardly a whisper of whimsy or moment of mugging mirth. Why bother hooking Carrey's well known face up to all that mo-cap technology when you have restrained him so tightly to such a dark, draconian character. Even in Scrooge's happy turn in the end Carrey remains restrained, allowing only for a smile and a brief jig. No actor wants to be shackled to a persona but Jim Carrey is JIM CARREY, his persona overwhelms the notion that he can simply be plugged into a character and have audiences simply accept a straightforward, non Carrey-like performance. 

A Christmas Tale lacks life or any form of whimsy whatsoever and that is not something that works for an animated film the animated spirit is greatly lacking. The one thing it seems that Robert Zemeckis has brought to A Christmas Carol is a dark vision of Dickens' dark words. Dickens' imagery has always been of the nightmare variety, this version of A Christmas Carol captures that vision with frightful faith. I would warn against taking children younger than 13 to this film.

That makes this version of A Christmas Carol more of an adult feature and that would seem to defeat the purpose of the adaptation and animation. This should be a story for kids but parents who take young kids will only come away with frightened youngsters. Sure, their is the happy ending to salve the wounds but many parents and kids will not make it that far.

Far too scary for young children and too well worn for adults, this version of A Christmas Carol seems at a loss to justify its existence. Why another take on this story? Was it just an exercise of the technology? A chance to be faithful to the dark images of Dickens that many adaptations had softened? I cannot tell you and I wonder if Mr. Zemeckis could either.

Movie Review: Unbreakable

Unbreakable (2000) 

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Written by M. Night Shyamalan 

Starring Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Wright

Release Date November 22nd, 2000

Published November 20th, 2020 

Unbreakable was M Night Shyamalan’s last moment as a seemingly unimpeachable genius of pop cinema. After this came Signs which received strong box office but the first real critical grumbles since his little seen debut feature, Wide Awake. Don’t misunderstand, Unbreakable had its critics, but with Shyamalan still in the glow of his multiple Academy Award nominations for The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable was always going to benefit from that film's coattails. 

That Unbreakable wasn’t Shyamalan falling on his face but instead delivering a second straight crowd-pleasing blockbuster is no minor feat. Many directors have shown themselves to be one and done it-person directors in the past. To have back to back blockbuster critical darlings is far more rare than we imagine.

Unbreakable stars Bruce Willis as David, a seemingly ordinary guy with ordinary guy troubles. David’s marriage is failing, his relationship with his son is strained and his search for stable, well paying work has been hampered by his seeming depression. Then, David is seemingly nearly killed in a massive train accident. In fact, by some miracle, he’s the only survivor among more than 100 passengers and crew members.

David’s luck doesn’t go unnoticed. A comic book aficionado by the name of Elijah Price hears of David’s improbable survival and begins to seek him out. For years, Elijah has searched for someone like David on the bizarre belief that the man he is seeking is his direct opposite and thus his super-powered nemeses. Elijah himself, is nearly paralyzed by a brittle bone condition that causes his bones to shatter under pressure.

Elijah believes that David’s bones are unbreakable, making him his super-heroic doppelganger. Where David is unbreakable, Elijah is completely breakable and thus fashions himself as a mastermind type who uses his wits to orchestrate evil that David must work to prevent or avenge. David doesn’t buy Elijah’s superhero nonsense but as he begins to notice things about his body, how he’s never broken a bone, how he doesn’t experience physical fatigue, how he doesn’t get sick, he starts to think that maybe, just maybe the crazy comic book man might be onto something.

One of the clever aspects of Unbreakable is Bruce Willis’s refusal to buy into David as a superhero. Despite evidence in his very bones, Willis' David stubbornly holds on to his non-believer status. Even as Elijah begins to push him to test his limits and find his weaknesses. David eventually determines that he has ESP, Extra-Sensory Perception. When David touches someone he can sense the crime they committed.

David uses this ability to locate a janitor who had ambushed and murdered a local family man and has taken the man’s wife and children hostage. David rescues the kids and winds up in a pitched battle with the murderer. The journey of the film appears to be Elijah pushing David to become a superhero but, with this being from the mind of M Night Shyamalan, there is a twist to the ending that throws a new light on these characters.

What Shyamalan does so incredibly in Unbreakable is establish mood and tone. The mood is melancholy but with a growing sense of color and light as David slowly uncovers his abilities. The tone of the film is a slow burn of sadness and resignation to ordinary life that builds and builds with excitement through the second act before reaching a pair of jarring crescendos including that terrific twist ending that I mentioned.

Of course, if you are seeing Glass this weekend and you have seen the trailer, you know what the twist is. Still, no need for me to spoil it here. Just a warning though, you do need to see Unbreakable in order for you to understand the action of Glass and the importance of Samuel L Jackson’s character to Bruce Willis’ character. How they are tied in with James McAvoy’s murderous, multiple personalities from Split is the big question that Glass will have to answer.  

As for Unbreakable on its own, I cannot recommend it enough. In some ways, I actually prefer Unbreakable to The Sixth Sense. That’s not a popular position as The Sixth Sense, in many ways, has more dramatic credibility than the comic book quality of Unbreakable. I simply find the conceit of Unbreakable even more irresistibly mainstream and entertaining than even the ‘I see dead people’ conceit of The Sixth Sense.

Both are artfully made, mainstream blockbusters, based in familiar genres, but there is something rather bold and unique in Unbreakable where Shyamalan forces you to treat comic books as a form of serious film art. That takes guts today, let alone in the year 2000, before Marvel made comic book movies that critics could embrace. 

Movie Review: The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009)

Directed by Rebecca Miller 

Written by Rebecca Miller

Starring Robin Wright, Mike Binder, Alan Arkin, Winona Ryder, Zoe Kazan, Keanu Reeves, Blake Lively

Release Date: November 27th, 2009

Published November 26th, 2009 

One woman re-traces the story of her life as she worries her mind is slipping away in “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.” Robin Wright stars as Pippa Lee, a wife and mother whose life is defined by those roles. As a very young lost soul, Pippa met and fell in love with the much older Herb Lee (Alan Arkin).When we meet Pippa Lee, she and Herb have moved into a retirement community in Connecticut. While Herb says they moved in order to protect assets from his life as a publishing magnate from taxes, both are concerned that Herb's mind has begun to slip. 

In the middle of the night someone has been wandering the house leaving a major mess. It turns out not to be Herb but Pippa who has been sleepwalking and that isn't all. She is sleep-driving and sleep-smoking, driving in the night to a local 24-hour shop to buy cigarettes. Afraid she is losing her mind, Pippa tracks back in her mind to her mother, Suky (Maria Bello), a woman addicted to amphetamines who didn't merely dote on her daughter but overwhelmed her as a living doll plaything.

Pippa's mother's addiction and massive mood swings lead to Pippa's own drug experimentation and eventually to her running off to New York to live with her lesbian aunt and her girlfriend, Kat (Julian Moore). Blake Lively plays teenage Pippa with a constantly dazed expression and sad eyes. It is teenage Pippa who meets and falls for Herb. 

Though I recount the plot to you in a somewhat linear fashion, writer-director Rebecca Miller, tells the story in a flashback style, cutting between Pippa's life in the retirement community and her life before and during the early parts of her marriage to Herb. The storytelling doesn't really jibe; the past doesn't comment on the present or really explain it. Pippa's memories are sort of random. That's not necessarily a criticism, Pippa is searching her memory for a meaning that is missing from her life and it makes sense that her search is futile.

The story deepens when Pippa meets Chris, the son of one of the other retirees. He has just ended a long relationship and now lives with his mother while working at the 24-hour shop where Pippa sleepwalks. To say what happens between Pippa and Chris would go too far, but I can tell you, it's not entirely what you might expect. That is the wonderful thing about Rebecca Miller's direction in “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee,” she and star Robin Wright Penn avoid typical choices. Penn's performance begins as off-puttingly thin. It grows to an irksome sort of oddity and then blossoms into something strangely, hypnotically fascinating.

If I had walked out half way through “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee” I would say Robin Wright was terrifically awful. However, I stuck with it and eventually I found that even the irritating qualities had an odd fascination. As I got used to Pippa's irritating qualities they began to reveal things about her and I was slowly won over. By the time Pippa makes her dramatic final decision I was totally with her and shocked by how much I was willing to join up for more of her journey.

The movie ends as if it could have gone on for another half hour and been just as intriguing. It's just the right hopeful note and if you can make it to the end, as I did you  will be surprised how satisfying yet abrupt the ending is.

“The Private Lives of Pippa Lee” is a strange and wonderful little movie with a performance by Robin Wright at its center that will divide people in hatred and glowing praise. It's a risky performance and one that will, in the long run, come to define the odd career of Ms. Wright who never quite blossomed into the leading lady so many expected her to be. Instead she is a working actress who’s made daring choices. Daring is the least of what can be said of Robin Wright's performance in “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.”