A intense, harrowing '127 Hours'

Director Danny Boyle turns a young man's ordeal into high-energy cinema, but the experience isn't without artistic pretension.

127 Hours seems headed for a bright, awards-laden future. It’s possible that this highly praised movie will win an Oscar nomination for best picture. It’s an equally good bet that the movie’s director, Danny Boyle, will be nominated for best director.

And while we're on the subject of awards: It’s reasonable to speculate that James Franco, the movie’s star, will find himself on Oscar’s short list for best performance by an actor in a lead role, and it wouldn't be shocking if cinematographers Enrique Chediak and Anthony Dod Mantle receive Oscar nominations, as well.

You get the idea. 127 Hours already has struck gold with critics and industry insiders.

All of this is fairly amazing considering that Boyle’s tense and involving movie is a bit of stunt, a celebration of the will to survive and of the stunning, high-definition clarity of its own imagery.

For those who don’t know. a recap is in order: 127 Hours tells the real-life story of Aron Ralston (Franco), a brash young Coloradan who got his arm pinned by a boulder while taking a solo hike in Utah. Isolated in a narrow canyon and facing death, Ralston -- who wrote a 2004 autobiography called Between A Rock and Hard Place -- struggled to find ways to free himself.

Ralston’s story owes its prominence – then and now – to the radical way in which he saved his life. When all else failed, Ralston freed himself by cutting off his lower right arm with a dull knife.

No question a movie such as 127 Hours poses extreme technical challenges for a filmmaker. How do you dramatize a story involving only one location, a spot from which the main character can’t move?

Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) solves the problem with a facile camera, bravura editing, fast-paced depictions of Ralston’s delirious fantasies, split-screen images, occasional flashbacks and dizzying shots of the canyon in which Ralston is trapped. Boyle also provides just enough backstory to establish Ralston as a young man whose journey involves an arc of sorts: Ralston makes the transition from arrogant self-assurance to humbled acknowledgement of his need for others.

Ralston underwent an awful ordeal. He tried to drink water that trickled down to him from a thunderstorm. In desperation, he drank his own urine. He talked to a video camera, sometimes addressing his mother in an attempt to assuage the guilt he felt about not having bothered to return her call before leaving on his ill-fated excursion.

Of course, Boyle makes you squirm when the BIG MOMENT arrives. At some festival screenings a few people reportedly passed out. That strikes me as a bit of an over-reaction, but it is difficult to watch someone cut off an arm. I never approached loss of consciousness, but I did wince.

After some heady opening sequences, Ralston leaves the rest of humanity behind. Before striking out by himself, though, he meets two young women who also are hiking. Ralston takes them to a place where they can suspend themselves between two high rock walls before dropping into a pool of blue water.

It’s a key sequence because it tells us that Aron, played by Franco with giddy but eroding confidence, regards the natural world as a kind of personal playground; it's this view that ultimately betrays him.

Boyle takes us through what feels like the quickest 127 hours in movie history. He’s never boring, but he also never lets us forget that there’s a creative talent working (and sometime overworking) this material. That's why 127 Hours represents an intriguing but strange sort of achievement: Although it's set in the middle of nowhere, Boyle's movie can seem like one of the busiest, most charged-up dramas of the year.

'Morning Glory' tries for comic sunshine

Harrison Ford gives a grumpy, one-note performance. Rachel McAdams works hard at looking like a TV producer who's working hard, and Patrick Wilson finds himself in a badly undernourished romance. All of these statements help define Morning Glory, a mild comedy about television that lacks either the character development or satirical bite of Broadcast News, a 23-year-old movie that touched on many of the same issues. * As Morning Glory unfolds, it becomes clear -- at least it did to me -- that the comedy has been misconceived. * Diane Keaton is a comic standout as an egotistical co-anchor of a once-prominent morning television show on an all-news cable station. Had the movie revolved around Keaton and McAdams, as a young executive producer who's hired to boost the show's dreadful ratings, it might have been a true delight. * But Morning Glory opts to focus on the troubled relationship between McAdams and Ford, who plays a once formidable TV newsman who has been shelved in an era when the line between news and entertainment has blurred. * Thanks to a mildly convincing plot contrivance, Ford's Mike Pomeroy is assigned to co-anchor Daybreak, a show he views with the kind of contempt one might reserve for ... well ... a crappy morning TV show. * Director Roger Michell finds a few laughs here -- most centered on broad comedy involving the show's weatherman, and Jeff Goldblum scores as the network's acerbic top dog, but the movie can't overcome a script that seems unclear about what it's after. Satire? Romance? Laughs? Social commentary? Whatever the movie's searching for, it doesn't find enough of it to lift Morning Glory into the upper echelon of fall releases.

Road trip or road kill? A bit of both

Some laughs, but on a road trip from hell.

They say if you can survive a long car trip with someone, you're probably well suited to have that person as a real friend. The new comedy Due Date asks us to take a cross-country drive with two actors who should have been great comic company: Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis.

But after awhile, it's clear that a road trip augmented by gags, gross-outs, drugs and overproduced car carnage can wear you down. I kept wishing that Downey and Galifianakis could dig themselves out from under the movie's mountain of humor - much of it built around wildly inappropriate behavior - and find a rest stop.

Although there are chuckles along the way, this highly anticipated road-trip comedy proves a hit-and-miss affair, probably as the result of second-rate material that goes for easy laughs and exaggerated weirdness. To those who love director Todd Phillips' work -- namely The Hangover - some of the movie's odd- couple pairing may hit the spot, particular if you like masturbation jokes and other behavior that's supposed to be funny because it's so obviously beyond the pale: Downey's character punching a kid in the stomach, for example.

Say this: Phillips gets the contrivances out of the way quickly, pushing Downey's Peter Highman, an architect, into a cross-country car trip with a total stranger, Galifianakis' Ethan Tremblay. Ethan, an aspiring actor who shows no evidence of talent, is headed for Hollywood. Peter's eager to arrive in Los Angeles where his wife (Michelle Monaghan) is about to give birth to their first child.

It's supposed to be a classic pairing of opposites. Peter is quick to lose patience with Ethan, who's transporting his father's ashes in a coffee can and whose marijuana habit forces him to stop at the out-of-the-way home of a dope dealer (Juliette Lewis). Circumstances also prompt a visit with a guy who once dated Peter's wife, an underutilized Jamie Foxx

Downey, whose character takes a pretty bad beating during the course of the film, can't always save this material, nor can Galifianakis, who sports a perm and who - as he usually does - appears frighteningly sincere and totally off-the-wall at the same time. Galifianakis gives his character a strangely effeminate walk, and seldom is seen without his pet bulldog, a critter that provides the filmmakers with a reliable laugh prop. Ethan isn't just an oddball character, he seems to be in need of institutionalization.

There's only so much you can do with an odd-couple formula. Maybe that's why Phillips attempts to pump up the proceedings with car crashes and chases involving Mexican border patrolmen, portrayed in annoyingly stereotypical fashion.

And how clichéd is this? At one point, Galifianakis' character says, "I'm not an accountant. I'm not even Jewish."

Not exactly inspired writing.

It's a safe bet that most comedy fans will note that Due Date sometimes plays like an updated version of Planes, Trains & Automobiles, but it's a misshapen offspring that doesn't always do the lineage proud. Considering the combined talents of the movie's principal actors, Due Date should have delivered a whole lot more than it does. I got a few laughs to be sure, but I was ready to shed these two sorry travel companions long before the movie ended.

A thriller built from real events

A family under duress in Fair Game.

In July of 2003, CIA agent Valerie Plame had her cover blown because of a complicated revenge plot hatched inside the Bush White House. Plame was outed in a column by the late Robert Novak, who said that he’d received his information from a couple of senior officials in the Bush administration.

Plame’s exposure – which endangered her and her contacts -- also happened to be against the law. It became a hot story for a time, and now has become the basis for Fair Game, a jittery Doug Limon thriller that casts Naomi Watts as Plame and Sean Penn as her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Wilson had traveled to Niger on assignment for the CIA: He was asked to look for information about Iraq’s attempt to acquire materials used in making nuclear weapons. Wilson found no such evidence, but that didn’t stop certain factions within the Bush White House from pushing forward with a plan to invade Iraq, partly based on the assumption that Saddam Hussein possessed the now infamous weapons of mass destruction.

No need to reiterate the entire story, but some background is necessary before plunging into a review of Limon’s attempt to use Palme’s story as the basis for a movie that’s part thriller, part portrait of a strained marriage and part condemnation of the political maneuvering that allowed intelligence to be compromised for political purposes.

There’s no faulting Watts’ portrayal, which may constitute the best reason for seeing the movie. Watts’ plays a typical boomer mom. She’s overwhelmed by the demands of work, kids and marriage. The only difference between Plame and other suburban working wives is that she often leaves the country on sensitive and sometimes dangerous CIA missions in the Middle East.

Penn’s portrayal of Wilson proves slightly less successful, a portrait built on Wilson’s sense of self-importance and his justifiable outrage over what happened to his wife. Wilson seems the kind of guy you might not like, even if you thought he happened to be right.

When Plame and Wilson found themselves at the center of a turbulent news story, their marriage suffered. According to the movie, which is based on separate books written by Plame and Wilson, Plame was inclined to fly beneath the radar, even after her exposure. For his part, Wilson insisted on loud public protest at every turn.

Neither husband nor wife were entirely right. Limon (The Bourne Identity and Mr. and Mrs. Smith) wisely acknowledges the complexity of their situation, and his stylistic choices – frenetic hand-held camera work, for example – create the sense of anxiety that arises when people try to cope with fast-moving events over which they have little control.

Fast-paced and far from boring, Fair Game is nonetheless a bit unsatisfying, like being thrown into a whirling story that has difficulty settling down and which seems to end as quickly as it started. We’re left with the impression that we’ve watched a slick and avid gloss on events that had profound consequences for the nation and the world.

I felt that something more was needed, although I’m not entirely sure what.

An extraordinary look at the Warsaw Ghetto

Unlike many monstrous movements throughout history, the Nazi assault on Jews was scrupulously codified by its German perpetrators. The Nazis liked to keep careful track of their atrocities, and specialized in creating propaganda about them. * So it’s hardly surprising that an unfinished propaganda film entitled Das Ghetto turned up in East Germany after the war. * In 1998, an additional 30 minutes of Das Ghetto -- filmed in 1942 over the course of a month in the Warsaw Ghetto -- was discovered. * The Nazis may have had a couple of things in mind: They seemed determined to show widespread misery, which they’d blame on Jews, and they attempted to demonstrate, in scenes that they staged, that insensitive rich Jews ignored the plight of their more beleaguered brothers. * Because the film never was finished, the precise intent of the Nazi filmmakers remains unknown. But A Film Unfinished -- a documentary about Das Ghetto -- does two things exceptionally well: It shows the obscenely crowded conditions of the Warsaw Ghetto and the wanton Nazi disregard for Jewish life. It also proves that the Nazis were determined to make something cinematic out of the ghetto experience, something that presumably would bolster the party’s twisted rationale for its monumental crimes. * Israeli director Yael Hersonski assembles the film with snippets of commentary from ghetto survivors, some of the few who escaped the Nazi murderers. * Much of the footage is set against readings from the diaries of Adam Cherniakov, the head of the Jewish Council who attempted to appease the Nazis while ameliorating Jewish suffering, as futile an endeavor as ever there was. Cherniakov committed suicide in the ghetto in 1942. * The impact of a movie such as An Unfinished Film is difficult to describe. It left me speechless, haunted by its images. An addled man dancing in the streets. Dead bodies on sidewalks, a sight that became so commonplace passersby hardly noticed. Carefully staged humiliations. * Hersonski adds fragments of sound to some of the silent footage and the result gives a staggering immediacy to the film. A sense of doom hangs over every frame, knowledge of how the story ends for so many of the faces captured in Warsaw's congested streets. Hersonski liberates these ordinary faces from the vaults of history, enabling them to walk straight into our consciousness. THe result is as moving as it is essential.

'Kicking the Hornet's Nest' to a conclusion

That tattooed girl is back for a final chapter.

At first, I had difficulty becoming involved with The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest -- the final chapter in Swedish author Stieg Larsson's phenomenally popular Millennium Trilogy. Characters were coming and going at a rapid clip, and I had to (pardon the expression) kick myself to keep up with a movie that's long on talk and even longer on complicated conspiratorial thinking. * Then a funny thing happened: Either director Daniel Alfredson settled down or I did. Whichever it was, this final chapter began to draw me into its complicated and often perverse web. * Trimming away much of the novel's social commentary -- particularly Larsson's observations about the media -- Alfredson and screenwriter Jonas Fryberg maintain the kind of thickly ominous atmosphere that adds both welcome intrigue and unfortunate complexity to the proceedings. * Michael Nyqvist (as journalist Mikael Blomkvist) and Noomi Repace (as the punkish Lisbeth Salander) hold their own as the story weaves its way through a plot that begins when Lisbeth is airlifted to a hospital, having suffered a major beating at the end of the last movie. * Plagued with injuries, Lisbeth undergoes surgery and spends a good portion of the movie's 2 1/2 hours recuperating in a hospital bed. When she finally emerges, she does so with a renewed ferocity that gives the movie some much-needed kick. * Meanwhile, Blomkvist works to clear Lisbeth of murder charges stemming from the incendiary events of the last movie. As he proceeds, the story branches out to include the police, secret agents and a cadre of older spies. * Most of the plot reverberations from the second movie pertain to Lisbeth's father (Gerogi Staykov) and her half-brother (Micke Spreitz), a blond giant of a man who looks like a refugee from a '60s Bond movie. * Aksel Morissey has a nice turn as Libseth's doctor, a physician who's intrigued by her and who really has her best interests at heart. Lena Endre returns as magazine editor Erika Berger, and Annika Hallin portrays Blomkvist's sister. * Far too complex to summarize here, the plot will make no sense to those who haven't seen the first two movies or read all three books. But an awful lot of folks have, and most of them should be satisfied with this final installment, the last we'll see of Lisbeth on screen until the American version hits theaters next year.*

 *For those who don't know, the American remake of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the first book in the series will be released in Dec. 2011; it's being directed by David Fincher (Social Network) who cast actress Rooney Mara in the pivotal role of Lisbeth.

The inside job that wrecked the economy

Inside Job -- a powerful documentary about how the country wound up flirting with financial ruin -- may leave you wondering why citizens of the U.S. haven't taken to the streets to protest against the conniving financial types and willing government officials who brought about this man-made catastrophe. Unlike global warming, there's no debating the fact that the economic crisis results from human activity. Couple avaricious behavior with a lack of government regulation, and you land the economy in a hell stoked by the fires of derivatives, credit default swaps, subprime loans and other financial sleights of hand. Director Charles Ferguson, who examined how we got into the Iraq war in (No End in Sight), does an admirable job of clarifying complex financial matters. He works hard to make the whole business understandable to those of us who have difficulty balancing a checkbook. He also brings an appropriately aggressive style to interviews. Inside Job is tough, but it's no cheap shot. I won't name all the villains in this well-crafted piece, but you'll probably recognize many of the players. Inside Job demonstrates that, at root, a wanton disregard for the common good saddled us with the current troubles. To further stoke the fires of outrage, the movie also reminds us that those who benefited most from all the shenanigans seem to have suffered the least -- at least as far as their pocketbooks are concerned. Disgusting.

More about the "here" than the "after"

A moment from one a most remarkable sequence.

It's nothing if not daring to begin a movie with its most remarkable sequence. In fact, the opening of Hereafter -a vivid depiction of the tsunami that struck Thailand in 2004 - is one of the most amazing sequences of the year, a gripping combination of special effects and speeding camera work that hits the screen with tidal force.

Fair to say that little following in the wake of this re-created natural disaster has similar power, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the rest of Hereafter - a movie that marks a great leap for director Clint Eastwood --- boasts some of the year's gentlest filmmaking. Still surprising at 80, Eastwood hits some of the loveliest notes in what's become an astonishingly varied directorial career.

Hereafter may posit the existence of some sort of after-death experience, but it's no tricky supernatural thriller. Rather, it's a movie about the ways in which two characters cope with death in their lives and the way in which another tries to come to terms with his troublesome psychic abilities.

Eastwood, wisely I think, understands that the important hereafter is not the one that follows death, but the one these characters will pursue once they've found their share of peace and resolution.

It's not uncommon for movies that attempt to tell three distinct stories - which Hereafter does - to stumble as they switch inelegantly between various plot threads. Eastwood manages the transitions smoothly, uniting the three strands only at the movie's end. He also keeps the movie's rhythms subdued, a directorial choice that stops Hereafter from feeling exploitative or sensationalized.

To the extent that Eastwood shows the afterlife, it looks dull enough to make you wonder whether you'd really like to wind up there. But supernatural kicks aren't what Eastwood's after. I have no idea what Eastwood believes about death and the hereafter, but he's respectful of the journey on which his characters have embarked, which is precisely what the job requires.

As for those three stories...

One involves a San Francisco psychic (Matt Damon) who views his abilities as more curse than gift. Damon's George Lonegan wants to live a normal life, but his brother (Jay Mohr) hopes that he'll use his powers to turn a profit. Grief-torn customers will pay for the comfort of receiving a message from a lost love one. Wanting no part of the commercial psychic's life, George works in a factory and lives in relative isolation.

Scenes between Bryce Dallas Howard and Damon, who meet in an Italian cooking class, are built around a quietly evolving but palpable sexual chemistry. But George knows that his exceptional abilities can sabotage relationships and return him to isolation.

Then there's the eminently successful French TV journalist Marie LeLay (Cecile De France), enmeshed in an affair and caught in the tsunami that opens the picture.
Finally, we meet twins Marcus and Jason (played by real-life twins Frankie and George McLaren). They're conspiring allies in an on-going battle to keep London social workers from taking them from their drug-addicted mother.

The McLaren twins give the movie's best and most moving performances. I wasn't entirely sure how to take Damon's deeply wary portrayal of George, and there's unfortunate redundancy in George's constant insistence that he's done with the psychic life.

Screenwriter Patrick Morgan's script avoids sentimentality, but hardly qualifies as a treasure trove of psychological subtext. It's content to tell a story that's less interested in convincing us that there's an afterlife than in exploring something that turns out be more credible: what might happen to characters who hold such beliefs. It's hardly surprising that Eastwood - as down-to-earth a director as there is -- ultimately casts his lot more with the "here" than with the "after." Hereafter could be the most determinedly grounded "supernatural" movie yet.

There's plenty of 'Conviction' in this one

Hilary Swank and Sam Rockwell have convictions.

Some levels of persistence defy explanation.

That’s pretty much what I concluded after watching Conviction, the story of Betty Anne Waters, a Massachusetts woman who worked to save her brother from a life in prison. Blessed with a first-rate cast led by Hilary Swank, director Tony Goldwyn takes a stirring look at a case that would have flown under the radar had it not been for Waters' heroic efforts.

A waitress by trade, Waters put herself through college and then law school just so she could appeal her brother’s murder conviction. Ultimately, she brought her brother’s case to the attention of Barry Scheck’s Innocence Project, a group that specializes in fighting for the release of prisoners through the use of DNA evidence, a technique that didn’t exist when Kenny Waters was found guilty.

Swank’s performance, aided by a pitch perfect Massachusetts accent, captures the determination it took for Waters to stay a course that lasted 18 years, and she receives able assistance from a strong supporting cast. Sam Rockwell portrays Waters' brother Kenny, a Massachusetts guy who had plenty of rumbles with local police before he found himself on trial for a brutal murder. Rockwell conveys both Kenny’s volatility and his charm. Kenny appalled those around him with sudden displays of temper, but quickly appeased them with bursts of goofy humor.

Minnie Driver plays Betty Anne’s supportive best friend, a fellow lawyer. She's good, too, but Juliette Lewis has an eye-opening turn as a woman whose testimony helped convict Kenny. Toward the end of the movie, Lewis has a scene that may well catapult her into Oscar consideration in the supporting actress category.

No faulting the rest of the cast, either. Melissa Leo hits all the right notes as the police officer who pushed for Kenny’s arrest, and Peter Gallagher handles the role of DNA maven Barry Scheck with the easy pragmatism of an attorney who's been around the legal block more than a few times.
Conviction mostly focuses on Waters' legal struggles, but it does attempt to deal with the domestic turmoil that resulted from her commitment to her brother. Waters' marriage deteriorated, and, at one point, her two sons chose to live with their father.
For all its acting prowess and the presence of an undeniably strong story, Conviction isn't flawless. The movie ultimately is built for inspiration, and Goldwyn has said that Conviction can be viewed as a love story between brother and sister. He’s certainly not wrong, but his movie might have benefited from a little more outrage at the injustices experienced by those whose lack of resources binds them to a legal system that too easily can ignore them.

I guess the rest of this review contains SPOILERS, so read on at your peril.
Goldwyn, who visited Denver along with Waters, defends a decision that he made regarding Kenny's fate. The movie ends without telling us that six months after his release from prison, Kenny died as a result of injuries sustained during a fall. Test audiences evidently felt that such knowledge deflated the movie, and Goldwyn ultimately concluded that the story's major themes had little to do with Kenny's death.
It seems to me, though, that acknowledgement of Kenny's fate could have strengthened the case for making prompt use of DNA evidence. The innocent should not be languishing in our prisons, especially when the technology exists to exonerate them. Kenny was robbed of 18 years of his life. His death only magnifies the injustice he suffered.

Waters is too strong a woman to allow the cruel irony of her brother's demise to tie her in knots. “The last six months were the happiest in Kenny’s life,” she says.

Spend five minutes with Waters and you'll know that she's the real deal. She still works at the bar depicted in the movie; she’s not full of herself, and she's instantly likable, an ordinary woman who accomplished something extraordinary.
If you want to know the definition of the phrase “I’ve got your back,” you need look no further than Waters and the movie that introduces her to the world at large.
Sure I've got my quibbles with Conviction, but it's well worth seeing.