Coraline

Coraline (***1/2)

Henry Selick, the man who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas--the stop-motion animated movie which has deservedly become a cult classic--once again returns to animation to direct Coraline, a fascinating movie in a lot of different ways. Like Nightmare, its a much darker and stranger vision than most movies that are marketed as "kids" movies, and its also a lot more interesting. I didn't actually realize until after having seen the movie that its based on a children's book by Neil Gaiman of Sandman fame (aside: head down to your local comic book shop and check out "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?", the Gaiman-penned two-part Batman story, the first of which is currently out as Batman #686), but now that I'm privy to that information it makes perfect sense, as it has the same brilliant juxtaposition of the mundane and the fantastical that Gaiman first perfected in Sandman. Like 2007's Beowulf, the screenplay for which was coincidentally written by Gaiman, and a lot of other recent animated movies, Coraline is presented in 3D. Unlike Beowulf, however, the 3D effects didn't annoy the hell out of me and distract me from the movie itself rather than complement it. The fact that the movie is simply a lot better probably doesn't hurt either.

Our heroine for the story is its title character, Coraline. She's an adolescent girl who moves with her parents into an old rustic house that's been split into three apartments in a secluded part of Oregon. Her parents co-publish a gardening periodical, but don't seem to spend any time doing any actual gardening, instead spending all of their time fretting over writing about it. Their devotion to their self-employment irks Coraline, who hates being ignored by them, and can't understand why they dragged her out to the middle of nowhere, away from her friends at her old school when they seem to have barely noticed the change in scenery. Her mother (voiced by Teri Hatcher) seems to have a perpetual migraine made worse every time Coraline pesters her for something, while her father (Johnathan Hodgman) seems good natured enough, but spends all of his time in his office in a not-very-ergonomically correct slouch and sporting a five-o'clock shadow, emerging only to fulfill his promise of doing the cooking for the family, even though he's terrible at cooking.

As a way to vent about all this, Coraline spends a lot of time wondering about outside. On one such occasion she runs into Wybee, a boy who lives not far away with his grandma who is something of a science geek and who inexplicably has a big metal mask with a big crank that rotates between different lenses that looks like something out of Fallout 3. Coraline is mostly annoyed by Wybee's presence (hypocritical much?), but Wybee nevertheless sends Coraline a doll from his grandma's collection that bears an eerie resemblance to her. Things get eerier when Coraline awakens one night, and discovers that a tiny doorway in the living room that was previously bricked up is now a pathway to a strange alternate reality. She's greeted there by her "other mother," who looks exactly like her actual mother except she has doll buttons sewn on her face where her eyes should be. Unlike her actual mother, this version seems all to eager to please Coraline. She also discovers her similarily button-eyed "other father," who instead of sitting in front of a computer, sits in front of a piano with mechanical hands and composes songs about Coraline. The other tenants are different too. The eastern European guy upstairs, seemingly a not-quite-all-there drunk who talks to his rats in reality, gets his rats to put on an elaborate circus performance in this world. Meanwhile, the two old retired actresses living downstairs, normally obsessed with their scottish terriers, really old hard candy, and taking pot-shots at each other about their former careers, put on a stage performance of their own in the "other world" in a giant darkened theatre lit by terriers with flashlights strapped to their heads.

As you might expect, the button-people world is not what it seems and eventually the sinister true nature of it all is revealed. Coraline is given a very creepy ultimatum by her "other mother" that would allow her to stay in the other world with all its wonders and all Coraline has to do is perform one fairly disturbing self-mutliating act, the very idea of which will scare the hell out of a lot of the kids going to see this "kids" movie. Coraline of course knows better, refuses, and becomes locked in a battle of wits with the evil spirit that controls the "other world," making it alluring to children so that she can trap them there. The climax of the story becomes very video game-ish, and the movie's final showdown between hero and villain is exciting only to a mild degree, but the overall atmophere that drives the entire move is more than enough to maintain your interest.

The atmosphere truly is the heart of the movie and what it will be remembered for, much moreso than the plot which is somewhat fun but also a little bit paint-by-numbers. The score is provided by a French composer who, according to his Wiki article, is new to American movies, but I hope he does more because I immediately fell in love with his work here. From the onset his music provides an etherial and darkly beautiful complement to Coraline's visuals. Even though a plot-point of the movie is Coraline discovering the mysterious and wonderful, "other world," the supposedly mundane world of Coraline is still pretty fantastical. The old building which Coraline's family moves into sort of looks like the Bates motel from Psycho if Psycho was in color and it was painted pink. The Oregon in the movie sometimes looks more like a Lord of the Rings locale than an actual place in Oregon. I guess that's part of the movie's message--that you don't have to wonder into strange alternate realities to find "magic" in the world. Indeed, a key item that Coraline uses to defeat the movie's villain is something that she gets from the "mundane" version of the actresses, and a mysterious character who serves as a guide for Coraline towards the end of the movie can freely travel between both worlds. At any rate, I basically like the visuals beceause they're cool as hell, and serve as a reminder for what animation can do that live action still, for all its advances, can't. As the movie heads towards its conclusion, the other world takes on a macabre feel with set pieces like chairs that are made out of insects. Its everything that made Nightmare Before Christmas great, except probably even darker and more unsettling. If you haven't gotten the idea yet, while the movie is PG rated, its really not for younger or easily squeemish kids. Its definitely pretty intense.

Coraline has a plot is a morality tale that's pretty common amongst children's stories, and has a lot of the "down the rabbit hole" elements that stories have been using since "Alice in Wonderland." But the music, the visuals, and the dark, brooding, sinister character of it all give it tremendous life and make it stand head and shoulders above most animated movies, which are often content to have talking animals dance around and make pop-culture references. A very good, original movie.

Doubt

Doubt (****)

Doubt is an excellent movie; a movie deceptively simple in that it contains just a few main characters and tells a simple story that takes place over the course of just a few days, but is in fact incredibly deep in terms of the discussion that can stem outwardly from it. The movie takes place just about entirely within the confines of a Catholic church and school, but I don't think the movie is necessarily "about" Catholicism or organized religion specifically. You certainly can discuss the movie's portrayal of the rigorous discipline and subservience commanded by how Catholicism is structured, and the movie may have a more personal meaning for people who grew up Catholic, but I think--as its one word title suggests--the overlying themes of the movie are much more universal and fundamental. The movie is about relationships, how people can develop trust and mistrust in others, and how people come to deal with feelings of..... (wait for it).... doubt.

The movie opens with a church service presided over by Father Brendan Flynn, played excellently by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who is gradually establishing himself as one of the best character actors of his generation. He sets up the movie of the film by giving a sermon about.... (wait for it)..... doubt. His basic point being that people should turn to God when they're in doubt, be it about something private or something collective, like America's doubt after the Kennedy assassination, which happened in the past year of when the movie is set. During the sermon we meet Sister Aloysius (Merryl Streep), the living embodiment of the word disciplinarian, who walks up and down the aisles smacking the hell out of kids who aren't paying attention and telling them to sit up straight. She is the headmaster of the Catholic school, demanding of order and conformity from the students, and fiercely traditionalist in her beliefs about the church.

This traditionalism puts her at odds with Father Flynn, who is much more relaxed in his demeanor and in his associations with the congregation and the students at the school. He speaks in a very quaint and low-key fashion which would be commonplace in many churches today, but nigh unheard of amongst dogmaticness of the 1960s Catholic Church. During one sermon he speaks as a caricature of an old Irish priest, and even comes down amongst the congregation in the middle of a service at one important point. Flynn also wants to do things like allow secular songs in the Christmas pageant to "update" the church's image (even the ballad of the pagan hellspawn that is "Frosty the Snowman"). Really all you need to know about the relationship between Aloysius and Flynn is summarized in one scene in Aloysius's office in which she offers Flynn a cup of tea and he asks for three spoons of sugar. Aloysius seems taken aback by the very idea of anyone wanting anything to be that sweet, and then has to frantically hunt around in her desk drawers to actually find a packet of sugar.

Some time after the sermon, Aloysius announces while eating dinner with the other nuns in the church that she thinks Father Flynn's sermon on doubt must have been targeted at someone specifically. Perhaps, even, at himself. Her suspicions seem to be validated, when Sister Jones (Amy Adams), a young teacher at the school who is good-hearted but novice to the point of being very nervous (Aloysius would say naive) in everything she does, believes she smells alcohol on the breath of her student Donald Miller after he returns from a private meeting in the rectory with Father Flynn. Reluctant at first, Sister Jones eventually reveals this to Sister Aloysius, who immediately launches a crusade against Father Flynn, believing him to have molested, or otherwise mistreated Donald, and believing that other similar incidents have occurred with Flynn at other churches which have been covered up. Is Aloysius altruistically protecting a child who she truly believes is being horribly abused? Or is this the ultimate control-freak wrestling control of her church in a way that circumvents its usual hierarchy? Such is the question that looms over the film.

Donald Miller is the lone black student at the school, occupied predominately by deep-rooted Irish and Italian Catholic families. Flynn's explanation is that the boy is harassed by his fellow classmates (this is indeed true, as we see him get "booked" in the hallway in one scene), and that his close relationship with the boy is close because Donald has no other real friends and looks up to him as a mentor and father figure. His explanation for the alcohol is that Donald, an alter boy, stole some communion wine. Flynn said he wanted to handle the matter privately with Donald, because being an alter boy seemed to be one of Donald's few true pleasures at the school and so Flynn was attempting to give him a pass. Donald confirms this story. Sister Jones--who is much more of Father Flynn's mindset when it comes to the question of whether their church should abandon the rigidity of traditional Catholicism--immediately accepts Flynn's explanation, but Aloysius still doubts him, and points out (quite correctly) that a man in Flynn's position could easily orchestrate a cover-up for his alleged abuse. The situation is further muddled when Aloysius speaks with Donald's mother, and realizes that Father Flynn has represented an escape from the very much certain physical abuse carried out by Donald's father. The back-and-forth battle of wits between the central triangle of characters continues for the rest of the movie.

Simply because of their personalities, while watching the movie I wanted to immediately treat Flynn as the hero of the movie, who has to struggle against the oppression of the cold-hearted, manipulated villain in the form of Aloysius. I suspect I'm far from alone in this, even though there's no solid evidence presented that Flynn's story is in fact the correct one and thus that he's innocent. No one really wants Aloysius to be right, because Father Flynn seems like a very jovial person you can get along with, whereas Aloysius evokes memories of everyone's most despised authority figure. Futhermore, we don't want Sister Jones to be wrong about Father Flynn, because we feel like if Flynn is removed from the picture, Aloysius will crush Sister Jones's fragile, youthful spirit and she'll become Aloysius's subservient drone, ready to carry on her legacy of obsessing over posture and the use of ballpoint pens at the school. The film does a lot to explore how first impressions and personal biases can get in the way of truth.

As I mentioned, there are no real definitive answers in Doubt. While there is a definite ending in terms of the fate of Father Flynn, the question of his actual guilt is left completely open. There are a lot of little subtleties throughout the film, though, which compel you to rewatch the movie and open up new avenues of discussion about it. There's a scene where Flynn enters a room and looks up at a stained glass window which is halfway up the staircase to the next floor. Why is he looking there? Is he looking for forgiveness from God, thus making it a tacit admission of his guilt? In the shot, we the bars from the staircase between Flynn and the window. In old noir movies, vertical bars were often used as symbolic prison bars. Is Flynn "imprisoned" and unable to reach out to God because of the secret he's keeping? There are all sorts of examples like this in the film which can be debated endlessly. The only real complaint I have about an otherwise spectacular movie, is Aloysius's last line, which I won't reveal except to say that, unlike the rest of the movie, its completely overt and in your face. It reminds me of the opera episode of "Futurama" where the Robot Devil confronts Fry over his opera lyrics: "Stupider?! You can't just have your characters go around announcing how they feel! That makes me feel angry!" This, however, barely hurt my enjoyment of the film, and I really only mention it because so much of the rest of it was so good. This is a great movie, and an underrated one, given that it seems like overall consensus puts it sort of in the second tier of movies of the year behind some others.

Milk

Milk (***1/2)

Milk is a good movie, but its kinda gay. Thanks, I'll be here all week.

In all series, Milk is an excellent biopic of Harvey Milk, who became the United States' first openly gay public official when he was elected to San Francisco's board of supervisors. It would be a good movie in any context, but seems especially resonant having come out a few months removed from an election that saw Proposition 8--specifically amending the State Constitution to define marriage as one man and one woman--be put on the ballot and pass in California. Sean Penn is likely to give series competition to Mickey Rourke from The Wrester for the Oscar nod for Best Actor (Penn won the SAG award, Rourke won the Golden Globe), and its easy to recognize why he's in the running. Penn's performance is certainly the most striking thing about the movie, but it has a lot more going for it than that, with several other good performances and an excellent job of directing by Gus Van Saint.

After a brief overture of sorts showing headlines and photos from police raids on gay bars in the
'60s, the movie opens with Harvey Milk talking into a tape recorder, recording a message that is to be played in the event of his assassination. It then flashes forward to the real-life footage of Diane Feinstien announcing that Milk was, indeed, assassinated, along with the mayor of San Francisco, then flashes back about a decade to Milk on his 40th birthday, before he enters the political arena. Here we see Harvey seemingly randomly meet up with Scott (James Franco), a man who is much younger, but who Harvey manages to coax into a relationship. They open a camera shop together, not really hiding the fact that they're more than just business partners. After another store owner tells them in the nicest way possible, "We don't like your kind around here!" Harvey decides to form an alliance with other businesses with gay owners in the area. They get their big break when they form a pact with the Teamsters union to boycott Coors beer.

The attention Harvey is able to garner from this allows him to launch his first political campaign, in which he gets his ass handed to him. However, he gradually builds up a base amongst the gay citizens of San Francisco, and then begins to slowly work his work towards building a coalition of other disenfranchised groups (the poor, the elderly, etc.). As he begins to focus more and more time with his political career, his relationship with Scott--who is exhausted by the whole idea of campaigning--becomes strained, eventually ends, and Harvey meets another, much younger man named Jack and starts a relationship with him which runs into similar problems. The whole "work/relationship" balance part of the story feels pretty cliche (aside from the fact that its generally people of the opposite sex arguing with each other), but for all I know, how it was portrayed in the movie was exactly how it happened in real life so I don't know how much I can really criticize it. At any rate, I felt it was probably the least engaging aspect of the film.

In the second half of the film, we meet Dan White (Josh Brolin), Harvey's eventual killer. Harvey posits that White might be a closeted homosexual, even though he's married with children. If it is in fact the case that he's gay, White certainly isn't ready to admit it to anyone, and doesn't seem ready to fully embrace Harvey's doctrine of equal rights for everyone either. Nevertheless, he's a schrewd politican, and tries to warm of to Harvey and meet him halfway on some of his proposals. When Harvey doesn't follow through by giving Dan his vote on a piece of legistlation (because he sees his gay rights bill as pretty much hopeless regardless of Dan's support), Dan feels betrayed. Our first sense that Dan might not quite be all on the level comes when Dan shows up to Harvey's birthday party stumbling drunk. We see Dan a few more times before his eventual murder of Harvey, but he doesn't quite feel like a complete character. Gus Van Saint was probably trying to avoid making it obvious what was going to occur in the end for people who didn't know the Harvey Milk story, but I think someone who is as important as White is to the eventual conclusion of the story should have more front-and-center screen time and less just sort of existing around the periphery.

I'm of the opinion that in order for a biopic to be any good, it has to be more than just the life story of its main character, however interesting of a life that may be. There's plenty of crappy made-for-cable-TV movies that more or less accurately tell the story of an interesting person's life, but are nevertheless complete piles of crap. A successful movie has to have a larger and more profound idea encompassing it. In the case of Milk, the plot certainly is tied to Harvey Milk's start in politics, following him throughout his rise in success up to his eventual assassination, but it has a lot more going on than that. The movie ties Harvey Milk's struggle to the larger struggle for tolerance that is still ongoing, and its also sort of a celebration of grassroots activism in all its forms. When Harvey rallies the first of his supporters in his first attempt to run for office, we see him literally set up a soap box in the middle of the street to use as a platform. Later in the movie, when Harvey is already a public figure, he hands his bullhorn to Cleve, a younger gay man who he manged to persuade to join the movement earlier in the film, as sort of a symbolic passing of the torch for the "voice of the streets," since Harvey had essentially left the streets.

There are also extremely obvious parallels between the film's depiction of Proposition 6, which concerned protections for homosexuals from being fired from their jobs, and the modern day Proposition 8, which specifically banned gay marriage in the California constitution. In each case, many of the main players on the side seeking to continue quelling gay marriage didn't actually live or work in California, and merely decended upon the state to persuade Californians to vote their way on the proposition. In the film, leading Evangelical leaders from the '70s are seen in archival TV footage scaring the hell out of people with fire and brimstone sermons and insisting that homosexuality simply isn't Godly. Similarly, Proposition 8 passed last year in California in large part because of a massive spending spree by ultra right-wing groups like James Dobson's Focus on the Family. Preconcieved notions we see in the film regarding gay people being inherently preverse, and wanting to work in schools so they can "recruit" young children still exist today. Harvey Milk's message of tolerance and understanding was a simple one, but obviously not one that many people have really gotten yet.

Sean Penn's performance is easily the best thing going for Milk, he clearly gets himself lost in the character and gives Harvey's lines a great deal of power. The rest of the film is interesting, and has more going on than a lot of biopics, and has a certain importance to it because of how prescient the subject matter still is, but some of the other characters seem to get lost in the periphery and aren't as memorable as they could be. Its a very good movie, but perhaps not a masterpiece.