Looper (2012)

Director: Rian Johnson

This is a film of two wildly different halves, and that lack of complete tonal coherence is maybe the reason I can't completely love it, but I definitely come close to doing so. The first half of the film is a sci-fi noir influenced a bit by Jean-Luc Godard in the way Godard depicted the reckless criminal lifestyle. It does a fine job of setting the rules of the world and the character types for when it morphs into a much more low-key film set in large part on a farm of all places. I don't want to spoil why it moves onto a farm (the marketing did a great job of keeping this part of the plot a secret), but it's a symbol of the higher ambition of the film to reach beyond the trappings of the time travel genre and sci-fi genre. It's not a film that focuses on the time travel elements of the plot, it mostly ignores the complexities and paradoxes of the premise while giving you enough information to figure a lot of that stuff out on your own. Instead it focuses on the characters, their emotional attachments, and even how important parenting is.

Time travel films can be confusing to follow, and this one has a very well thought out time travel premise, but writer-director Rian Johnson makes it easy to follow by making it an experiential time travel film in which we only see the movie through the experience of the lead character. The only exception to that is one sequence in the middle of the film in which we follow "Old Joe" played by Bruce Willis in a separate "alternate" timeline set mostly in China that we fast forward through, which sets up Old Joe's character in the timeline of the main plot of the movie. That China sequence/montage is in my mind the standout sequence of the whole film and really shows how much Rian Johnson has improved as a filmmaker. That sequence fits decades in a short time span very efficiently, it's shot beautifully, and manages to make us feel for Old Joe which gives his actions later in the film that much more emotional weight. Those emotional attachments the characters have factor in greatly to why these characters make the decisions they do later in the film and eventually what becomes of the future itself. It's a fantastic sci-fi film by a filmmaker who really is trying to do more than just what fans of the genre expect.

Grade: B

The Brothers Bloom (2008)

Director: Rian Johnson

 At this point, it's pretty difficult to make a unique con film because the genre itself has with it a set of expectations that make it difficult to do anything new (Inception is the only unique recent heist/con film that comes to mind). The main expectation for the audience is a clever plot/con, and that must be the first priority. The Brothers Bloom tries to stand out by adding a unique sense of style to the con film, with some commentary on truth vs. fiction and whether a life is written or unwritten. What it succeeds at is the style, and while the themes are ambitious and refreshing, they don't quite come together at the end. There are hints of a greater movie that does much more than your average conman film, but it doesn't quite reach that height and director Rian Johnson seems to buckle under the weight of the convoluted plot.

The reason to watch this film though is clearly the fun stylistic flourishes that exist mainly in the first half of the film. The opening scene, showing the two conman brothers as children, is absolutely brilliant and is as good as anything in a Wes Anderson film. The film never really lives up to that beginning, but the characters are fun, quirky, and likable the whole time. The relationships between the characters are also important, and those are hit & miss. The romantic friendship between Adrien Brody's character and "the mark" of the con, played by Rachel Weisz, works well and you feel their connection. But the more important relationship, which is between the two brothers, Brody and Mark Ruffalo's characters, doesn't quite come together the way it's supposed to. The last third of the film relies on this relationship heavily and this is one of the main reasons I lost interest in that last third. The problem with long cons is that they can get quite complicated, and if there's no strong emotional anchor it just feels kind of pointless, and that's what happened in this movie.

Grade: C+

Filmcap: The week of Jan 23-30

(Could be a picture taken this week, but it's actually a still from a freakishly relevant movie made 40 years ago)

I watched two Italian films this week, one that features an American actress playing a Russian speaking Italian, and the other features no Italian at all, only French and Arabic. I also watched my third John Ford film thus far, the breakout dwarf movie, and a very unique addition to the growing neo-noir genre.