Kevin Costner’s Western has its virtues

   

  In a perceptive article in Variety, critic Owen Gleiberman assessed the lackluster opening weekend of Kevin Costner's Horizon: An American Saga -- Chapter 1,  $11 million for a three-hour Western that cost $100 million to make. Chapter 1 is only the first part of what Costner conceives of as a four-part movie. Chapter 2 releases in August.

     Not a fan of the movie, Gleiberman likened Horizon to fare we might see on TV, calling it  "the seedbed for a miniseries." Although he admired Costner's courage and commitment (the actor/director spent a reported $38 million of his own money on the production), Gleiberman went on to say that the movie teaches the following lesson:

       "Don't turn movies into television."

       Initial box office returns appear to be proving Gleiberman right. 

       But Costner's gamble on the form was interesting and perhaps justified. Audiences, after all, have grown accustomed to watching lengthy novelistic series on small screens; it's reasonable to think they might embrace the form if it were successfully transposed to the big screen.

        Or maybe not. Most miniseries are presented in digestible one-hour segments. Pause buttons allow for bathroom breaks, and concessions are no further away than the refrigerator.

         So, a quick Q&A on Horizons.

         Q. Did it deserve to be widely panned, as it was after premiering at last May's Cannes Film Festival?

          A. No. We've all seen plenty of catastrophes on the big screen. Horizons isn't one of them.

          Q. Are some of the criticisms of the movie justifiable?

          A. Of course.

          Q. Is Horizon a commercial folly -- considering cost and possible returns?

          A. Not my concern.

          Q. Can you summarize your reaction?

           A. Horizon held my interest, kept me from looking at my watch, and included enough tension to build a series of mostly involving mini-dramas.

         Beyond that, Horizon proves adventurous -- albeit not always in expected ways.

      The movie, or more accurately, its form tends toward abstraction. I don't mean to suggest that those who see the movie won't be watching gritty characters who operate in realistic settings. Nothing about Horizon feels avant-garde. 

       I'm talking about the way Costner breaks his Western opus into chunks. Presumably, upon the movie's completion, all these fragments will cohere in ways that justify the "American Saga" part of the movie's title. Perhaps we'll emerge with a comprehensive picture of the forces that helped shape the American West with all its rawness, fiber, decency, and deceit.

      I agree with those who've pointed out that it's difficult to watch Horizon without thinking about Costner's treatment of Native Americans. He did, after all, direct Dances With Wolves, widely hailed for recognizing a Native American perspective.

      One of Costner's most gruesome scenes occurs early and involves Apaches. A band of warriors attack a settlement, ravaging those they view as invaders of their land.

      Although the movie's Apache attack could have been lifted from an older, less sensitive era of moviemaking, Costner -- who wrote the screenplay with Jon Baird -- adds nuance by including a scene in which an aging chief warns the Apache warrior (Owen Crow Shoe) who led the assault that he's fighting a losing battle. 

    A later raid on a peaceful Native American village provides an example of bloody white brutality: Greedy marauders collect scalps for money.

    The movie's structure might be called partially successful. Like clumsy couples on a dance floor, the episodes in Horizon sometimes bump abruptly into one another. Some episodes are better (and more compelling) than others, and I sometimes forgot characters by the time they reappeared.

      It's also possible that the movie has been overpopulated with characters. A mother (Sienna Miller) and her daughter (Georgia MacPhail) survive the early-picture Apache attack. Soldiers (Danny Huston and Sam Worthington) help depict the cavalry as  incapable of protecting so much open terrain. 

      After roughly an hour, Costner appears as Hayes Ellison, and the movie takes on a more conventional Western tone. A hard-bitten horse trader, Ellison kills the brother of an outlaw who's then intent on revenge. In the process, Ellison becomes the protector of a flirtatious prostitute (Abbey Lee) who has taken charge of another woman's two-year-old boy.

     That's a lot for one movie, and I haven't even mentioned Matthew Van Meyden (Luke Wilson), the leader of a wagon train that becomes another source of small dramas, one involving a tender-foot Brit and his wife.

      But the overriding theme seems to be the settlement of the West, which the movie sees less as a matter of cowboy grit or settler pluck than as a wave of history breaking across the land, leaving plenty of carnage in its wake. 

     When the movie opens in 1859, a nameless white man and his assistant are seen surveying a remote patch of land. Two Native Americans observe, and a point is made in schematic form: The untamed West is about to be carved into discreet chunks of property. 

      I suppose we should be uneasy about judging a movie that has yet to finish. It's also possible that "good" -- how I'd describe Chapter 1 -- might not be enough for a movie with so much epic ambition.

      Still, in my view, Costner does more than enough to get us to the next chapter. Horizon gives us a version of the West that stems from Costner's knowledge of the genre. The movie often matches the seriousness of its intentions, and Costner doesn't indulge in mythologizing romanticism or cynical deconstruction. The movie acquires its forward motion from the broadness of its sweep.

      I hope the remaining chapters of Horizon  -- unlike this installment -- will be made available to critics in every market before their release. Chapter 1 was not screened for critics in my city.

    So to get back to where we started... Sure, the opening weekend was far from glorious, but it's possible that by the time he's done, Costner will have made a movie that will look quite different.

     What some now see as a misbegotten labor of love may, in time, be viewed as a laudable achievement. After the first helping, Costner left me rooting for the latter.

Viggo Mortensen directs a Western

Viggo Mortensen directs and co-stars with Vicky Krieps in The Dead Don't Hurt, a Western that looks as if it's trying to follow in the footsteps of genre-busting exercises such as Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks. Defined more by silence than dialogue, the acting in The Dead Don't Hurt, a bit like the movie itself, can border on self-consciousness. Approached with a hyper-awareness of period detail, the movie works its way through two hours and nine minutes, employing a structure that involves abruptly inserted flashbacks. The basic story: A Danish immigrant, played by Mortensen, and a French Canadian woman of independent spirit, portrayed by Krieps, meet in San Francisco and migrate to a frontier outpost in Nevada where Mortensen's Olsen owns a dilapidated cabin. Krieps's Vivienne tidies up, adding warmth to the bleak surroundings, but Vivienne resists domestication -- not that Olsen tries to force it on her. Immigrant soulmates, Olsen and Vivienne try to define new lives in the West. When Olsen joins the Union Army to fight against slavery, Vivienne -- now alone -- has a predictably violent encounter with Weston (Solly McLoud), the town's bully and part owner of the bar where Vivienne has landed a job.  To further complicate matters, Weston's dad (Garret Dillahunt) is in the midst of a shady deal with the town's mayor (Danny Huston). Mortensen strains to defeat Western romanticism as The Dead Don't Hurt builds to the inevitable confrontation between Olsen and Weston. Mortensen only partially succeeds at subverting the genre's macho cliches by tossing a strong woman into a male-dominated pressure cooker. Delivering some of her lines in French, Krieps gives the movie's best performance, but The Dead Don't Hurt seems to be aiming for more than it delivers. 

'Angel Has Fallen' so far, it touches bottom

Gerard Butler reprises his role as a Secret Service agent, this time one who falls under suspicion.

Looking heavier and a good deal more shopworn, Gerard Butler returns to the big screen as Secret Service Agent Mike Banning, a character he has played two times before -- once in Olympus Has Fallen (2003) and again in London Has Fallen (2016). Mention Butler's name and something is bound to fall.

As his job description makes clear, Banning must protect the president of the United States, played initially by Aaron Eckhart and in this latest edition by Morgan Freeman, whose job descriptions have grown more exalted as the series progressed. Freeman began as speaker of the house, graduated to vice president, and this time emerges in the nation's top job.

Hold the congratulations. For Freeman's Allan Trumbull, the steady rise to power has not been entirely beneficial. In Angel Has Fallen, the president spends much of the movie in a comatose state after being severely wounded in a wild assassination attempt that takes place during a fishing trip.

Perhaps to freshen the proceedings, Butler's Banning has begun to suffer a crisis of confidence. He experiences the lingering effects of concussions and wonders whether it might not be time to abandon his action-packed life. I'd just have soon followed Banning's retirement than the ridiculous journey on which Angel Has Fallen takes him.

Blamed for the assassination attempt, Banning becomes a hunted man with an FBI agent (Jada Pinkett Smith) trying to bring him to justice. As a fugitive, Banning seeks refuge with the father (Nick Nolte) from whom he's long been estranged. Nolte arrives in the movie as a growling recluse who acts as if he's been politicized by survivalists: His character natters on about the way governments get their hooks into people and won't let go. His foul temperament evidently resulted from his service in Vietnam, where he also learned a lot about planting mines and blowing things up.

Freeman and Nolte are both wonderful actors and it pains me to watch them ply their skills in a meat-grinder affair with an idiotic plot in which the villains are easily spotted.

The rest of the cast doesn't add a lot. Danny Huston joins the proceedings as one of Banning's former military pals; Tim Blake Nelson appears as the nation's vice president, the man who must take over while an unconscious Trumball teeters on death's doorstep. Piper Perabo plays Butler's loyal wife; she sticks by him even when he falls under suspicion.

Director Ric Roman Waugh earns his action bones with a massive drone attack that occurs early in the movie, a kind of prologue to the more mundane grunts and groans of subsequent fights. A late-picture battle in Washington, D.C. makes you wonder how it escapes the prying eye of local TV stations.

No point belaboring this one; Angel Has Fallen is a bit of late-summer B-movie junk; i.e., a movie of low-level smarts and high body counts. You won't need a high-level security clearance to figure this one out long before it crosses the finish line.

All I see is ... well ... boredom

Murky and unsatisfying, All I See Is You stars Blake Lively as Gina, a woman who's blinded in a childhood automobile accident. Director Marc Forster (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland) uses Gina's blindness as an excuse to compile a series of distracting point of view shots. He shows us what Gina can see (blurs of white light) or, on occasion, what she imagines: an orgy. Gina, who lives in Bangkok with her husband (Jason Clarke), regains her sight after a physician (Danny Huston) performs corneal transplant surgery on her. As Gina gains more independence, Clarke's James becomes increasingly uneasy. The only question: How long will it take Gina to realize that James wants Gina to be entirely reliant on him? Forster and co-writer Sean Conway toy with notions about what we see, what we think we see and what we are willing to see. But this listless semi-plunge into the world of perverse psychology fails to generate enough energy to arrive at any real thematic destination. Settings in Bangkok, where James works in the insurance business, create mild interest, as do the Spanish locations the couple visits. But even a side trip to a live sex show in Barcelona adds little by way of spice to a movie that fizzles as psychological drama. Blame over-stylized visuals, an under-nourished story, and performances that suffer from the movie’s lack of focus.

She fights for world peace

Gal Gadot and Chris Pine click in an enjoyable Wonder Woman.

It has epic scale, unforced humor, genuine star chemistry and, of course, a female main character. We're talking about Wonder Woman, an enjoyable new addition to the endless stream of comic-book movies that have seized the popular culture, holding it in a sometimes suffocating grip.

But Wonder Woman is a DC Comics movie with an important difference. Because Wonder Woman's main character can be naive about the nature of the humans she encounters, the movie freely can substitute innocence and conviction for hard-bitten cynicism.

In the hands of director Patty Jenkins (Monster), Wonder Woman introduces us to a character with roots in Greek mythology. From an island where Amazon warrior women train to the cratered battlefields of World War I, Wonder Woman makes it clear that Princess Diana, a.k.a. Wonder Woman, has but one objective: bringing peace to the world.

Early on, we learn that the Amazons have conflicting ideas about Diana's destiny. Diana's mother (Connie Nielsen) wants to protect her daughter from the violent life. Diana's aunt (Robin Wright) insists that the girl learn the arts of combat.

Scenes on the all-women island march to a mythic cadence that allows for introduction of the Amazon women's approach to life and for exploration of their relationship to the gods.

Life on the island mostly seems happy until the real world intrudes. A pilot crashes into the ocean off the island's coast. Diana, who has never seen a man before, rushes to the rescue. Pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) is being chased by Germans who know that he's a spy who has stolen vital information from the German high command.

Diana eventually leaves her island paradise with Steve: She believes it is her duty to end the slaughter of World War I, something she plans to accomplish by slaying Ares, the god of war. Diana doesn't care that her plan may seem wacky to everyone else. Diana's view: Men only make war when they fall under the evil influence of Ares, rogue son of Zeus.

We know that Diana will be up to the task because we've already seen her spin in the air in captivating slo-mo. We also know that she has powers even she doesn't fully understand.

Jenkins has lots of fun with scenes in London where our super-heroine confronts the peculiar demands of life among ordinary humans. These include suggestions that Diana wear dresses rather than her regular outfit, which boasts a Wonder Woman tiara, a cape, an armored bustier and short shorts.

Diana also carries a shield, a sword and a glowing Lasso of Truth, not exactly routine accoutrements on the streets of London, circa 1918.

Steve rounds up a colorful crew to accompany Diana to the front. Steve's cohorts include a guy who knows how to work the angles in any situation (Said Taghmaoui), a Native American scout (Eugene Brave Rock) and a sharp-shooter (Ewen Bremner) with a lilting singing voice.

We also meet a British politician who says he wants to negotiate an armistice (David Thewlis) and a secretary (Lucy Davis) who works for Steve and adds plenty of spark.

Villainy arrives courtesy of German General Ludendorff (Danny Huston) and his hideous chemist colleague (Elena Anaya), a woman whose ability to develop lethal gasses has earned her an appropriate nickname: "Doctor Poison."

Gadot claims star status, handling the title-character with charm, sincerity, finesse and a look that exudes beauty and good health. It also doesn't hurt that she and Pine seem to have figured out the intricacies that make for good comic and romantic chemistry or that, at various times, Diana offers crowd-pleasing insistence on her total independence from male authority. It's something she takes for granted.

Those who crave action will find plenty of it: from the training grounds of Diana's island home to the trenches of World War I to a finale that's loaded with the clangor of the customary effects. Wouldn't it have been amazing had Diana, who speaks dozens of languages, been allowed to resolve the movie's problems with more brain than super-power brawn?

Oh well, what can we expect from a movie in which Diana lifts a tank and tosses it as if weighed little more than a Frisbee? Wonder Woman is, after all, a comic-book movie -- and it earns a place among the best of them.

Little movie about 'Big Eyes' painter

With able assistance from Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz, director Tim Burton creates an offbeat amusement..

We've all seen those big-eyed paintings by Margaret Keane, portraits of angelic-looking waifs who can seem plaintive in a freakish, greeting card sort of way. They're children with the eyes of bewildered Pekingese puppies.

Leave it to director Tim Burton to bring Keane's story to the screen. Big Eyes is a fairly straightforward (for Burton) look at the woman who created those paintings and the husband who, for the longest time, took credit for them.

In addition to the terrific art direction and production design that have defined Burton's best films, Big Eyes features a wonderful comic performance from Amy Adams as Keane, a woman who looks less like a painter than the hostess of a Tupperware party, a near-archetypical '50s figure.

Burton also obtains a fine performance from Christoph Waltz, who plays Keane's rapacious second husband, Walter.

The movie tells us that Walter Keane passed himself off as a painter and took credit for the big-eye paintings, which (shockingly) caught on and began selling for major money.

Although both Keanes profited financially from Margaret's paintings, Walter received most of the credit and adulation. Beneath the movie's slightly goofy surface, you'll find real issues about authorship and exploitation.

Working in a small studio, Margaret became a kind of piece worker, turning out big-eye paintings as fast as Walter could sell them.

The big-eye paintings began to catch on after Enrico Banducci (Jon Polito), the owner of the "hungry i" nightclub in San Francisco, agreed to show some of the paintings. He hung them in a hallway en route to the rest rooms, but they were discovered anyway.

Walter Keane's deception quickly took on a life of its own. He began to feel as if he really had made the paintings. Eventually, Margaret's work was shown in the Keane Gallery, which Walter opened.

Those who fawned over the paintings also fawned over Walter. He loved the attention, something he never could achieve on his own. He also was helped by a San Francisco columnist (Danny Huston), who lavished ink on the eager Keane.

As it turns out, Walter's genius involved marketing and sales. He didn't make the paintings, but he helped Keane become famous, and he knew how to convince people to open their wallets.

In movies such as Burton's look at no-budget filmmaker Ed Wood, the director proved that he had a talent for portraying the lives of oddball figures who live on the margins of creativity. No surprise, then, that he's in fine form in this sideshow of an arena.

The plot leads both Keanes into a courtroom, where (in a pathetic attempt at defending himself), Walter serves as his own attorney.

Burton misses few chances to add offbeat humor, but he doesn't turn either character into a total joke, even after New York Times critic John Canaday (Terrence Stamp) denounces the work as spectacularly unworthy.

I don't know whether Burton has tapped into something essential about American life or simply has introduced us to a small and very odd bit of Americana.

Whatever he's done, Big Eyes makes for an amusingly offbeat time at the movies.

'Hitchcock:' doesn't cut deep enough

Calling attention to the Master of Suspense without adding a great deal of insight.

Earlier this year, Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo ended the 50-year reign of Citizen Kane as the greatest movie ever made -- at least according to a much-watched poll conducted by the British magazine Sight & Sound. Then came the eagerly awaited but generally disappointing HBO movie, The Girl, an examination of Hitchcock's weirdly obsessive relationship with actress Tippi Hedren, who starred in both The Birds and Marnie.

As if to keep this mini-revival percolating, we now have Hitchcock, a film with a title that suggests an extensive biography but which focuses only on the ordeal Hitchcock faced in making Psycho, a landmark horror film that caused a generation of moviegoers to think twice when pulling back a shower curtain.

For all of this renewed interested in Hitchcock, the cumulative impact of the Sight & Sound poll and two movies about the renowned Master of Suspense have added little by way of fresh insight into one of the screen's most peculiar geniuses, as well as one of its most formidable talents.

Hedren's story already had been recounted in Donald Spoto's 1981 biography, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock. And aficionados long have been familiar with much of the lore surrounding the making of Psycho, the 1960 classic that Hitchcock shot in black-and-white and infused with some of the impolite energies of low-rent horror.

For those who are unfamiliar with Hitchcock's life, Hitchcock -- directed by Sacha Gervasi (Anvil! The Story of Anvil) and starring Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock -- offers the amusement of backstage meandering through Psycho's evolution. Precisely who wishes to watch such a movie remains a little unclear to me. We'll see.

Some background: After North by Northwest, Hitchcock turned his attention to a 1959 novel by Robert Bloch. Bloch's Psycho was inspired by the case of real-flie serial killer Ed Gein. Arrested in 1957, Gein specialized in murder and the exhumation of body parts.

Psycho's road to the screen was bumpy, requiring Hitchcock to mortgage his home to finance a movie that Paramount and its long-time chief -- Barney Balaban (Richard Portnow) -- regarded as an astonishingly bad idea.

The screenplay for Hitchcock -- credited to John J. McLaughlin and Stephen Rebello -- portrays Hitchcock in a period when he found himself at odds with his wife Alma (Helen Mirren). Alma is portrayed as the woman behind the man, truly Hitchcock's better half. According to the movie, Alma should be regarded as essential to Hitchcock's overall success.

In this telling of the tale, a gallant and well-mannered screenwriter, Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston), who had worked with Hitchcock on Strangers on a Train, arouses Hitchcock's jealousy by establishing a flirtatious relationship with the attention-starved Alma, who evidently had become accustomed to tolerating Hitchcock's fascination with chilly, beautiful blondes.

So what of Hopkins's performance? Keep in mind that Hitchcock was not only a great director but a prominent figure in American culture, mostly because of his television show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Long before I had heard of the auteur theory, I knew about Hitchcock, understood something about his style and eagerly lined up to see anything he had chosen to direct.

Put another way, I've seen Hitchcock, and even in a fat suit, Hopkins is no Hitchcock. Still, the obviously gifted Hopkins does his best to find Hitchcock's humor and flair for showmanship, as well as his moments of insecurity. Mirren does better as the steadfast Alma, a woman whose plainness of appearance was matched by a widely acknowledged sharpness of mind.

The movie's small performances can be entertaining. Scarlett Johansson makes a credible Janet Leigh; and James D'Arcy's canny imitation of Anthony Perkins proves a minor delight.

Moreover, Judy Becker's production design -- particularly of the Hitchcock home -- captures the bright rigidity of the '50s, down to the twin beds in which Alma and Alfred slept.

If you're a Hitchcock fan, all of this may strike you as intriguing and you may want to devote some time to discovering where the screenplay has taken liberties with fact. Invention aside, this sometimes amusing look at Hitchcock doesn't dig deeply enough into either Hitchcock's psychology or his artistry to qualify as anything more than a by-the-numbers curio about the making of a movie that has stood the test of time as one of the greatest of all horror movies.

A history lesson from Robert Redford

The Conspirator tells an interesting story, but it's awfully earnest -- and that's the trouble.

What do you do when a movie tackles an interesting subject, boasts a prestigious cast, delivers a message with which you generally agree, and you still give it your enthusiastic endorsement?

Here's what I do: I say that you may want to see Robert Redford's new movie The Conspirator, but you probably shouldn't expect to be blown away. Redford's movie has its virtues, but it's also overly earnest and dry, a bit of civics lesson on film.

I'm betting that not many Americans know the story of Mary Surratt, a 42-year-old woman who was hanged in 1865 for being part of the conspiracy that led to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth. Surratt, a staunch Catholic and proud Southerner, owned a Washington, D.C., boarding house where the conspirators plotted the president's murder. She claimed innocence.

At one point, Surratt was offered leniency on condition that she disclose the whereabouts of her youngest son, John. John later admitted to helping hatch a plot to kidnap Lincoln, but insisted that he had no part in the president's assassination. John Surratt remained in hiding during his mother's trial; he ultimately was tried and acquitted.

In telling Surratt's story, Redford takes a step forward from his last directorial outing, 2007's Lions For Lambs. Preachy and obvious, Lions made a head-on attempt to deal with the consequences of the war in Afghanistan. Steeped in period atmosphere, The Conspirator proves more subtle, although it's impossible not to see parallels between the issues raised by the Surratt trial and those surrounding military proceedings at Guantanamo.

Rather than providing us with a definitive answer about Surratt's guilt, Redford uses the movie to defend a principle: A nation of laws - especially during times of heated public sentiment -- must offer fair trials even to those whose guilt seems beyond question. Justice must be served; the craving for vengeance, resisted.

Working from a script by James D. Solomon, Redford focuses on Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy), the lawyer who's assigned to defend Surratt before a military tribunal.

At first Aiken wants no part of the Surratt case. Like just about everyone else in Washington, he has little doubt about her guilt. As the story develops, Aiken begins to understand that, at minimum, Surratt deserves a hearing, something the military seems disinclined to provide.

Redford surrounds McAvoy with a powerful cast. Robin Wright portrays Surratt as a strong and devoted mother: She won't betray her son to save he own life. Surratt makes no bones about her loyalty to the Confederacy, but insists she knew nothing about what the plotters were discussing when they gathered in her boarding house.

Tom Wilkinson plays Reverdy Johnson, the Maryland lawyer who involved Aiken in Surratt's defense; Danny Huston portrays Joseph Holt, the prosecuting attorney; and Kevin Kline appears as Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War.

According to the movie, Stanton wanted a quick verdict; he was interested in satisfying the public hunger for vengeance that followed the assassination. Kline's Stanton is a severe, unforgiving man who thinks the demands of the nation, as he sees them, take precedence over individual rights.

Evan Rachel Wood terrific as Veda Pierce in HBO's recent version of Mildred Pierce, brings emotional urgency to a movie that sometimes seems to be striking courtroom-drama poses. She plays Surratt's daughter.

Credit Redford & company for attempting to illuminate a little-known chapter of American history, and giving the movie a persuasive period look, but The Conspirator can feel restricted by its courtroom setting and by what seems a carefully worked-out agenda, the need to remind us that emergency situations shouldn't obliterate our freedoms. At times, the movie seems as committed to making points as it is to telling a story.

Still, there's no point damning Redford's effort, even if it ultimately emerges as a musty addition to the canon of socially conscious movies that don't so much raise questions as answer them.