Review of "Greenberg"

The Detroit News

Roger Greenberg is such a pathetic, obnoxious loser.

He's 40 years old, has no job, has just been released from a mental hospital and is staying at his brother's house while the guy's out of town.

Greenberg's in Los Angeles and he doesn't drive. He jumps in a swimming pool and the best he can muster is some scared dog paddling. Nearly every line out of his mouth is an insult, a depressing take on life or a rumination on his own sad state. Again, loser.

And yet there's some strange energy that Ben Stiller brings to this twisted sad sack in "Greenberg" that keeps you from hating him. And when he attempts to hook up with his brother's flighty personal assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig), the film takes on a daffy anti-rom-com feel that's somehow transcendent in its anxious blend of awkwardness and need. This is a couple for these rude, confused and nervous times.

"Greenberg" is the latest film from writer-director Noah Baumbach, writing here with his wife, Jennifer Jason Leigh, who also plays Greenberg's ex-girlfriend. Baumbach ("The Squid and the Whale," "Margot at the Wedding") specializes in obnoxious, self-centered characters, so the key to his films is the actor's ability to bring charm to an ugly personality. Jeff Daniels did that brilliantly in "Squid," icy Nicole Kidman failed miserably in "Margot."

Stiller, showing the sort of edgy bravado he's lacked in recent years, makes Greenberg more a jumpy mess than an outright jerk. He's an idealist in search of a path who keeps stumbling over his own untied shoes, and cursing himself and everybody else as a result.

Still, "Greenberg" would be just one more cringe comedy without Gerwig, who turns in a breakthrough performance that hopefully will be remembered at next year's Oscars.

"Greenberg" is a good movie when Stiller is alone on screen; it's a great one when he's interacting with Gerwig, who is so natural it's hard to believe she's not improvising. The princess of the ultra-indie "mumblecore" film movement, Gerwig comes across as the new Diane Keaton here, a completely individual spirit.

It's a good thing the chemistry and characters work so well, though, because "Greenberg" has very little in the way of story.

Greenberg returns to his home town of L.A., meets up with two guys (Rhys Ifans, Mark Duplass) he used to be in a band with (Greenberg apparently had a meltdown when it came time for them to sign a major contract), tries to re-spark things with his ex-girlfriend (Jason Leigh) and has to deal with his brother's seriously ill dog.

He and Gerwig's Florence have one stilted, uncomfortable encounter after another and the film seems to be going nowhere until it doesn't, ending instead on a sweet note of connection.

In many ways this is Baumbach's best film, filled with his bitter but often funny misanthropic perspective ("Life is wasted on people," Greenberg proclaims at one point), but buoyed by the undeniable likability of Stiller and Gerwig.

True, Baumbach is again rolling around in an angst-ridden, negative, mean-spirited world. But this time you get the feeling he's smiling behind the camera. So you smile back.

Greta Gerwig interview

The Detroit News

Greta Gerwig co-stars with Ben Stiller in the new film "Greenberg."

According to boxofficemojo.com, the average Ben Stiller movie has earned $76 million over his career.

And how much has the average Greta Gerwig movie earned?

"I think my average is five dollars," Gerwig says on the phone from San Francisco, where she's promoting "Greenberg."

"Actually, I honestly think it's in the hundreds of dollars. But give it 15 years -- we'll see who's the box-office king or queen then," she says with a laugh.

Over the past three years, Gerwig, 26, has become the princess of the "mumblecore" film movement, an ultra-indie, low-low budget approach to filmmaking that involves a lot of improvisation, perspiration and inspiration and not much in the way of earnings.

It's a do-it-yourself ethic that has seen Gerwig, born and raised in Sacramento but a New York City girl since attending Barnard College, working as a writer, director and actress on such little-seen but critically praised movies as "LOL," "Yeast," "Hannah Takes the Stairs" and the genre's "hit," the faux horror film "Baghead."

But with "Greenberg," in which Gerwig dazzles as a flighty L.A. personal assistant who finds herself falling into a relationship with Stiller's spoiled, 40ish, sometimes mental patient, she finds herself moving into the mainstream, or at least toward it.

"It's all relative, but this for me is big time," Gerwig says.

And chances are it will lead to even bigger times.

Gerwig is drawing raves for the sparkling realism she brings to the role, a naturalism that has drawn inevitable comparisons to Diane Keaton's breakthrough in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall."

Gerwig certainly doesn't mind the comparisons.

"I'm a huge fan of Diane Keaton. I used to dress up like Annie Hall all the time. I was a purveyor of men's wear, which my mom was not so excited about," she says.

Indeed, Gerwig says Allen and his films shaped her entire world view.

"I am a lover of Woody Allen. If you want to talk about ambition, a big ambition is to get myself in a Woody Allen film before he stops making films," she says.

"I grew up in Sacramento, and my impressions of New York and the intelligentsia and cocktail parties and witty banter all came from Woody Allen," she says.

"I spent a lot of time in junior high and high school imitating those people, which is why I didn't have a lot of friends," Gerwig says. "But then I went to New York for college, and I kind of found myself in the world that was so appealing to me on the screen."

Note to Woody: Here's your next muse.

Watching "Greenberg," it's hard to believe that Gerwig isn't improvising her lines, both because of the natural way they flow and her ease before the camera. But writer-director Noah Baumbach ("The Squid and the Whale") is a man who sticks to his script.

"I'm always happy when people think it's improvised, because that means we're selling it," Gerwig says. "It's easier to make great writing not feel like it's acting," she says.

The blond Gerwig is a natural beauty, but that's not something she tries to take to the screen, she says.

"I kind of always saw films and acting as not the place to be perfect and beautiful," Gerwig says.

"I saw films and acting as a place to be true, and I think that my obligation has always been to the character and the situation, even if that person is not gorgeous or she's annoying, she's a little dim or she's selfish, or whatever it is," she says.

"I strive to look good and be nice in my life, and I'm interested in exploring these other elements on film," Gerwig says. "I find it very freeing."

Woody, seriously, pick up the phone.

Review of Green Zone

The Detroit News

There's such a stain of truth to "Green Zone," the new Iraq War thriller starring Matt Damon, that it can be hard to watch.

Yes, you might be able to turn off your mind and soak up the film as a fast-paced conspiracy flick that plays out on and off the field of battle. Heaven knows there's plenty of action and intrigue to be had here.

But director Paul Greengrass ("The Bourne Ultimatum," "United 93") has a lot more on his mind.

Working from a script by Brian Helgeland ("Mystic River," "Man on Fire") that employs the nonfiction reporting from Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone," Greengrass is using a (barely) fictional story to expose, or at least question, the truth about the war's origins.

The result shares a strange spirit with Quentin Tarantino's recent "Inglourious Basterds" in that it rewrites history. But where Tarantino went for the outlandish, Greengrass sticks so close to reality that it burns.

Matt Damon stars as Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller, charged immediately after the invasion with finding the WMDs -- weapons of mass destruction -- that were the supposed reason the U.S. attacked Iraq. Needless to say, he is thoroughly frustrated in his search.

When he begins to openly question the "intelligence" that keeps sending him and his men to risk their lives looking through empty buildings, Miller is told to pipe down and follow orders.

But a CIA agent named Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson) takes Miller seriously. And he knows that top-level bureaucrat Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear) has been feeding false stories about WMDs to a Wall Street Journal reporter (Amy Ryan) for months, stoking fires for the war.

Brown also knows that Poundstone is trying to get an edict handed down that would dissolve the Iraqi army, even though that army could be used to police and unify the conquered country.

So Brown sends Miller off on a mission to make contact with a high-ranking Iraq Army general (Igal Naor) and bring him in for negotiations.

Unfortunately, Poundstone also wants the general, but for very different reasons.

Every nightmare memory of the early war pops up here. The manipulation of the gullible media, the torture and senseless imprisonment, the looting and chaos in the streets, and mostly the vast cluelessness that America brought to the table with few people speaking the language or knowing the country's customs.

Early on, Miller is given information about a clandestine meeting by an Iraqi citizen named Freddie (Khalid Abdallah), and Freddie stays on as Miller's interpreter, exposed to all the wrong-headed moves his conquerors are making, seeing the lawless and usually pointless violence being committed against his people and country.

He's an innocent dragged into a bizarre battle for his hometown among different American factions. And you can feel his frustration and sense of powerlessness beginning to boil.

Much has been made of the apolitical approach of last year's Iraq War film "The Hurt Locker." Well, Greengrass will have none of that, and the crass, ego-centric incompetence of the Bush administration and America's war machine is his target here.

This is a movie that's filled with shoot-outs, back-handed deals, chase scenes and heroism. But it's mostly a film about the abuse of power.

Those hoping to see "Bourne Goes to Iraq" may be disappointed. Miller is not a fleshed-out character, just a decent soldier trying to do what's right, and he gets his butt kicked early on. Jason Bourne never got his butt kicked.

But Greengrass is the current king of shaky camera action and quick edits, and he delivers a rousing action movie at the same time he's making a political exposé.

It's never easy to look back on mistakes -- especially mistakes of this magnitude -- that cost lives. But it's important to face them.

"Green Zone" hits hard and doesn't forgive. It plays out like fiction, and in some ways it is. But in too many ways, it's not.

“Popular Criticism”

Course description
“Popular Criticism” will explore criticism of the popular arts written for a mass audience. Basic concepts of art criticism will be refigured to include entertainment criticism with central issues such as context, balance, manipulation, novelty, sentiment and audience considered. Students will form their own approach to popular criticism and apply it to four mass art forms -- the fiction novel, television, film, and music. The idea is not to tell students what is good or bad in popular art but to give them the tools to decide such for themselves and then communicate their thoughts to a broad readership. Beyond that, the hope is to teach students to see and comment critically on social concerns reflected in the popular arts.

Course goals
1) To stimulate consideration of the purpose of entertainment and art
2) To build a system of evaluation that allows for effective and consistent judgment of the popular arts
3) To learn how to clearly express opinions succinctly in both a longer (750 word) and shorter (250 word) format
4) To learn to write in a manner that is both engaging to a mass audience and intellectually sound
5) To extrapolate larger social trends and concerns reflected in popular culture and write about them in a manner that’s economical, readable, and, to the extent possible, comprehensive

Assignments/process
Over the length of the course students will be expected to write three 750-word pieces. Students will also be writing 10 250-word pieces for the course, most of which will be small reviews, but a few of which will be on general topics covered in the class.

Works covered and discussed in class will include three films, two fiction novels, one hour-long television drama, two episodes of a television sitcom, one full-length music album, one pop song, a live concert performance and one entire season of a long-form television drama.

All works reviewed will be chosen by the instructor. The fiction and television season will be assigned the first day of class; all other works will be revealed on the day they are to be reviewed.

The 750-word pieces will be written on a) any one review topic of the student’s choice, b) the TV season assigned and c) a larger social trend story as a final paper, considering what a pop culture phenomenon (vampires, apocalyptic stories, politicians as unerringly corrupt) says about our world.

Students will also be asked to read alternating Friday editions of USA Today and the New York Times for the first 10 weeks of the course, and asked to bring in examples of what they consider both good and bad popular criticism.

During each class anonymous samples from the previous week’s student critiques will be read in class and discussed.

The text for the class will be “The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture” by Henry Jenkins.

Grading
Forty percent of the final grade will be based on the student’s reviews and papers, with the weight of those reviews growing progressively; 20 percent will be based on the social trend story final; and 40 percent will be based on classroom participation.

Editing and writing assistance
Many if not most students will not have written popular criticism before, so the instructor will be available before classes and through appointment for coaching and editing assistance.

Materials needed
Text (affordable on Amazon); TV season (about $30 or Netflix); two fiction books (common usage, Amazon or used book store); one concert ticket (low cost)

Review of "Alice in Wonderland"

There's no denying the dazzle in director Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland," a visually imaginative fairy tale that suffers slightly from its predictable course but still manages to wow at all the crucial moments.

Much of that wow factor can be attributed directly to the look of the familiar fantastical characters on display, most notably Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter, a frizzy, carrot-topped concoction who takes on heroic sensibilities, and even moreso Helena Bonham Carter's Red Queen, a bulbous-headed ferocity sporting a makeup job straight from Kabuki hell.

From "Edward Scissorhands" forward Burton has always proven himself a master of the garish, and here he exults in the story's eye candy opportunities, as well he should.

Unfortunately, Burton has also let his affection for outrageous visuals get the best of his films ("Planet of the Apes," "Sweeney Todd," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory") at times, forgetting to attach enough heart and soul to them.

But while it's true "Alice" marches toward the same Big Battle conclusion as every other Narnia-Rings fantasy, the story's over-riding sense of wonder and purpose gives it a sweetness Burton's other recent films have lacked.

Selling that sense of wonder is the job of unknown Mia Wasikowska as a 19-year-old Alice who only remembers her first trip down the rabbit hole as a dream.

Burton constructs a nice frame that introduces Alice's plight -- some dork of a nobleman is proposing marriage, and she seems doomed to a life of dull normalcy at best.

But then she spots the White Rabbit (Michael Sheen) and follows him to his hole, which she promptly falls into, setting off a déjÀ vu of a story where she's introduced to the kooky characters -- the blue caterpillar (Alan Rickman), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas) -- from her dream.

This, however, is not the same Wonderland of Alice's youth. The tyrannical Red Queen, aided by her one-eyed right-hand man the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover, perfect), has thrown a blanket of fear over the land.

Luckily, legend has it that a brave warrior will soon arrive to help the White Queen (impossibly white Anne Hathaway) defeat her evil sister by slaughtering the monstrous Jabberwocky.

Unfortunately for Alice, she is that presumed warrior-savior; so the forces of evil are out to get her from the moment she arrives, and an alliance with the crazed Mad Hatter turns out to only add an extra dose of danger to her life.

Wasikowska, powdered white to distraction at times, plays Alice as something of a casually fierce angel, able to roll along with wild circumstance while instinctively righteous.

Depp is in full Depp bonkers glory as the Hatter, rattling on like a train off its track at times, but providing a surprising moral center. And Hathaway's fluttery life-is-beauty hand motions as the White Queen are hilarious.

Still, the film's most arresting image is the Red Queen. How Burton manages to balance that humongous head on that petite torso is the stuff of movie magic, and Bonham Carter's sudden eruptions of fury are wonderful to behold.

Burton has uglied up Bonham Carter, his longtime partner in real life, in many a role over the years -- a hag in "Sweeney Todd," a gorilla in "Apes," as the witch in "Big Fish" -- but with the Red Queen they've both outdone themselves.

One area that might cause some disappointment for audiences, though, is the 3-D projection. The effects are perfectly adequate, but in a post-"Avatar" world, they still seem a bit lacking, added more as afterthoughts (which they likely were since the movie wasn't actually shot in 3-D).

Still, "Alice in Wonderland" is an undeniable visual marvel and the best use of Burton's eye in at least a decade. If its trajectory is a bit too familiar, its attitude, look and execution make up for it. This is indeed a "Wonderland" worth visiting.