(INTER)VIEW TO A KILL(ING)

The day after Christmas I was turned away, twice, from sold-out shows at the Harkins Valley Art Theatre in Tempe. The film that was packing them in was, of course, The Interview, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s lowbrow farce involving a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

As you’ve possibly heard, a massive hack of Sony and hints of terrorist reprisals, both thought to have originated from North Korea, resulted in the decision, both by the studio and many theater chains, to cancel the movie’s Christmas Day release. For a couple of days it looked like The Interview might become a “lost” movie, but then Sony reconsidered, releasing the picture both to theaters and to video-on-demand. Perhaps with a thought to the safety of other audiences in the multiplexes, Harkins opened the film only at the chain’s one remaining free-standing single-screen house.

I had skipped the screening, so I decided to go to the Valley Art, but got to the box office too late, for two different shows, to get a ticket. No front row, no standing room. The prescient people who were lining up with pre-ordered tickets were mostly the younger sort one would expect at a movie like this—couples on dates, groups of frat-boy-looking buddies—but people of all ages were represented.

Anyway, I went back Saturday morning and saw the film, with a house that wasn’t full but was still surprisingly crowded for an early matinee. On the way in I was given a pin with a picture of stars Rogen and James Franco. It said “I [picture of a popped kernel of popcorn] FREEDOM! HARKINS THEATRES.”

I was puzzled at first by what this meant: I Pop Freedom? I Snack On Freedom? Slow on the take that I am, it took me a minute to realize that the popcorn kernel was vaguely heart-shaped. I Love Freedom. Indeed I do.

Grateful though I was for the souvenir, however, I declined to pin it on my shirt. Having failed, over the last few years, to take to the streets to demonstrate for or against any of a dozen issues I truly care about, it seemed a little much to congratulate myself for going to a silly comedy.

As for The Interview itself, it’s enjoyable enough of its kind, that kind being the self-consciously raunchy Hangover vein. It goes badly off the rails toward the end, but up until then it has some solid laughs and good performances. Franco plays it pretty broad as the nitwit TV interviewer who scores a sit-down with the tyrant and is pressed into service by the CIA to “take him out.” But Rogen, as Franco’s producer, carries the film with his boyishly commonsensical charm, and Randall Park is excellent as (and much handsomer than) Kim.

After it was over, as we were filing out, I heard an usher thank a middle-aged woman for coming, and she replied, very sincerely, “Thank you for having it. I really appreciate it.” If I had to guess, I’d guess that this lady, and quite a number of others in the audience, wouldn’t have thought of going to this particular movie if North Korea hadn’t told them they wouldn’t if they knew what was good for them.

Certainly I think that in the years since 9/11 fear of terrorism, and exploitation of that fear, and even an odd and carefully cultivated sense that one is being unpatriotic if one doesn’t show enough fear, has led our country into atrocious decisions, including ridiculous and probably futile encumbrances to our travel and recreation. I thought the initial decision to pull The Interview was wrong, for instance.

Having said that, I had sympathy for Sony’s cautious position, and even more so for that of the exhibitors. It’s easy for commentators like me with no real responsibility to decry the cancellation as craven, but if, God forbid, one bomb were to go off in a theatre, you can imagine the invective that would be poured on “Hollywood” for endangering people’s lives for a dumb movie. And if the release, and the packed houses, are a healthy step away from "letting the terrorists win," it’s no more than a baby step.

But I had to wonder if, at bottom, the long lines for The Interview not only weren’t about the movie itself, they weren’t even about politics or patriotism or standing up to terrorism. Maybe they were simply a gesture of early nostalgia for the increasingly gratuitous act of actually going to the movies. At any time this weekend, after all, I and just about anyone else at the Valley Art could have seen The Interview in the comfort of our homes, for a couple bucks less than the price of a ticket, and without the hassle of parking in downtown Tempe. Somehow, though, seeing the film in a gathering of strangers turned the experience from sitting through an average comedy into the kind of shared social experience that makes up many of our best movie memories.

MERRY CHRISTMAS...

...from Less Hat, Moorhead!

Into the Woods—A friend of mine likes to say that “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” and “Pittsburgh” are two of the more aptly named entities in creation. I can’t agree with him about the second; I’ve always been fond of Pittsburgh. But there’s no arguing the grimness of those tales.

So Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1986 fairy-tale musical Into the Woods can’t really be called “dark” by comparison to its source material. This retelling of several Grimm yarns is dark only by comparison to the toned-down and glitzed-up style of fairy tales popularized by Disney and its ilk over the past century. Perhaps ironically, it’s Disney that has produced the lavish, star-studded and entertaining movie version of Into the Woods opening today.

Set, like a Ren Faire, in a period-vague Once Upon a Time with elements of the Renaissance, the 19th Century and the 20th Century—the Big Bad Wolf dresses like a swing dancer—Into the Woods weaves the stories of Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk around the plight of a Baker and his Wife who are unable to conceive. These two learn from a neighborhood Witch that this is because of a curse upon their house. She gives them the recipe to lift the curse, which brings them into contact with the other characters.

Rob Marshall, who more or less revived the big-screen musical as a viable genre with his 2002 Chicago, directs nimbly, but with an agreeably more straightforward, less hyper-cut style. His work is accomplished, but as usual with musicals, the real key to its success lies in the cast, and the score.

The standouts in the cast, for me, were Meryl Streep, a hoot as the Witch, Emily Blunt as the Baker’s potentially naughty Wife, James Corden as the kindly young Baker, and a startling, apparently genetically-engineered little belter called Lilla Crawford as Red Riding Hood. Johnny Depp is droll in the brief role of the Wolf, Tracey Ullman is funny as Jack’s fed-up Mum, Anna Kendrick makes a sweet Cinderella, and as her self-impressed Prince Charming, Chris Pine, along with Billy Magnussen as Rapunzel’s Prince, scored spontaneous applause from the preview audience with whom I saw the film for their self-parodying duet “Agony.”

As for the score, it’s very, well, Sondheim-y, which for many is about the highest compliment a score can be paid. It’s pretty, if not, overall, as melodically soaring as some of Sondheim’s; it has a more frenetic, haywire sound, in support of the complex, almost patter-song lyrics. It’s compelling, though—when each number is done, you know you’ve really heard something, and you want to hear it again.

About halfway through the movie—at the end of Act One in the stage version—the plot strands are all ingeniously brought to a traditionally happily-ever-after resolution. But Sondheim and Lapine want to remind us that happily-ever-after is fantasy, and that a wish fulfilled always comes at a price—worth it, maybe, but never painless.

The long second act in which the characters wander the forest, struggling with the consequences of their wishes, is the unconcealed point of Into the Woods. But while there is much good music and comedy in this section, you can feel the impatience of the audience—plenty of them were quite satisfied with the corny fake ending, and palpably regard this elaboration as a tiresome imposition (I understand the school-play version of the show simply drops Act Two). It isn’t enough to ruin Into the Woods, but many viewers would have been perfectly happy with happily-ever-after.

So anyway...

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s make this triceratops skeleton come to life in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb our Christmas Day MOTW…

DECK THE HALLS WITH BOUGHS OF CRAWLY

If you’re in an anti-festive mood—I’m not, and I’m sorry if you are, but in case you are—check out my list, on Topless Robot, of The 12 Messed-Up Days of Christmas.

ZOMBIE MERRY AND BRIGHT

Need a last-minute cyber-gift for the twisted, morbid degenerate on your list? Why not send them my holiday zombie novel, The Night Before Christmas of the Living Dead? It’s available on Amazon for a penny less than a buck…

A living-dead-tree edition is available, too, for a couple bucks more.

RAGGEDY ANNIE

Opening today:

Annie—There are plenty of missteps and false notes in this new version of the Broadway musical favorite, reset in modern-day New York. To begin with, the orphanage setting no longer works. The show’s comic villainess Miss Hannigan, here played by Cameron Diaz, is now a bitter, drunken foster mom, which somehow doesn’t have the same menace.

Many of the Martin Charnin lyrics had to be tweaked, while all of the ‘30s-specific numbers had to be dropped entirely, and to make up for this new numbers were added, all forgettable. The movie is badly overlong, needlessly padded with stuff like un-suspenseful chase scenes that add nothing.

On the upside, this Annie, directed by Will Gluck from a script he wrote with Aline Brosh McKenna, starts off well, with a lively opening and several of the show’s best numbers, including the peerless “Hard Knock Life.” Annie’s fellow orphans are spirited, and there are grown-ups who look like they’re going to be bit players but give full-fledged, funny supporting turns, notably Stephanie Kurtzuba as a dazzled social services inspector. The new Sandy, a rescue dog in real life, makes a fine debut as well.

Above all, Quvenzhané Wallis is adorable in the title role. She doesn’t have the brassy Broadway-baby belt usually associated with the part, but she has a sweet voice and she’s as indomitable and assured as she was in the role of Hushpuppy in Beasts of the Southern Wild. She also has a fine, candid onscreen rapport with Jamie Foxx as Oliver Stacks, this film’s standoffish, germaphobic version of Daddy Warbucks, and this carries the picture past its cheesier aspects.

There are a couple of cute in-jokes, too. A band playing in a club, for instance, is called the Leapin’ Lizards. Best of all, Stacks’ opponent in the New York mayoral race is a progressive incumbent named Harold Gray, after the creator of the original Little Orphan Annie newspaper strip. There’s a special piquancy to this gag if you know the truth about Gray: that he was a Union-hating, New Deal-loathing reactionary, and that he—of all freakin’ people—was a staunch opponent of Child Labor Laws! Apparently he believed there were benefits to a hard knock life.

STAY YONGARY

Check out my list, on Topless Robot, of 10 Insults to North Korea You Could Watch Instead of The Interview. The list includes the North Korean giant monster flick Pulgasari, but Pulgie’s been a Monster-of-the-Week twice already, so…

Monster-of-the-Week: …in the interest of international equal time this week let’s acknowledge a South Korean beast, the title character of 1967’s Yongary, Monster From the Deep…

This late-show favorite may be viewed in its entirety, here:

THREE, TIMES FIVE

Opening today:

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies—The third installment of Peter Jackson’s three-part adaptation—and embellishment upon—the Tolkien novel starts off big. The dragon Smaug, voiced by the ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch, wreaks havoc on a nearby fishing village and does battle with a valiant local boy (Luke Evans). While I sat there watching this sequence, I thought it was so strong that Jackson would have a hard time topping it, and as it ended I settled in for a long evening of droning exposition and wearying, incomprehensible-to-non-geeks prophesying.

I was wrong. Hobbit Part Two was better than Hobbit Part One, and for my money, Hobbit Part Three is the most exciting of the lot. Title character Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and his pals the dwarves have taken occupancy in the dragon’s treasure-filled lair, and dwarf king Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) is going all Treasure of Sierra Madre with gold-fueled paranoia.

Meanwhile four other legions—the elegant, aloof elves, the ogre-ish Orcs, the humans from the fishing village and more dwarves led by Thorin’s cantankerous brother Dain (the great Billy Connolly) converge outside the lair, each with its own agenda involving Smaug’s hoarded booty. At the heart of this bombast, and comically contrasted with it, is the modest sheepishness and goodwill of Bilbo, scurrying around trying to be honest and do the right thing.

When you get past the brilliance and intricacy of Jackson’s staging, I suppose all these tempestuous fight scenes don’t have anything deeper behind them than pro wrestling. But I liked how almost every positive thing that happens in this finale happens because members of different races reach out to each other.

Now that his Hobbit saga is (presumably!) complete, I really hope that Jackson puts the Tolkien on the shelf, at least for a decade or so, and tries something different. Almost anything different will do—a car chase movie, a bachelor party comedy—as long as it doesn’t involve broadswords and shaggy beards. Middle Earth has been very good to Jackson, but I hope that now this incredibly talented filmmaker will turn his attention, and his camera, back towards regular old Earth.

The Phoenix Film Critics Society, of which I am always proud to note that I'm a founding member, has announced our 2014 Award Winners. As always, some of them reflect my voting—despite my gripes about Birdman, for instance, Michael Keaton had my vote—and others don't, but there are plenty of movies worth seeing on the list. I was particularly pleased to see the powerful and artful Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me take Best Documentary.

BEST PICTURE

Birdman

TOP TEN FILMS OF 2014 (in alphabetical order)

A Most Violent Year
Birdman
Boyhood
Gone Girl
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Guardians of the Galaxy
The Imitation Game
The Lego Movie
The Theory of Everything
Whiplash

BEST DIRECTOR

Richard Linklater, Boyhood

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Michael Keaton, Birdman

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

J. K. Simmons, Whiplash

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game

BEST ENSEMBLE ACTING

Birdman

BEST SCREENPLAY WRITTEN DIRECTLY FOR THE SCREEN

The Grand Budapest Hotel

BEST SCREENPLAY ADAPTED FROM MATERIAL IN ANOTHER MEDIUM

Gone Girl

BEST LIVE ACTION FAMILY FILM (Rated G or PG)

Into the Woods

THE OVERLOOKED FILM OF THE YEAR

Edge of Tomorrow

BEST ANIMATED FILM

The Lego Movie

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Ida

BEST DOCUMENTARY

Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

"Everything is Awesome," The Lego Movie

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Birdman

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Birdman

BEST FILM EDITING

Birdman

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

The Grand Budapest Hotel

BEST COSTUME DESIGN

The Grand Budapest Hotel

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

Intersellar

BEST STUNTS

Edge of Tomorrow

BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE ON CAMERA

Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl

BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE BEHIND THE CAMERA

Dan Gilroy, Nightcrawler

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A YOUTH IN A LEAD OR SUPPORTING ROLE: MALE

Jaeden Lieberer, St. Vincent

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A YOUTH IN A LEAD OR SUPPORTING ROLE: FEMALE

Lilla Crawford, Into the Woods