Alice Through The Looking Glass Review

Alice Through the Looking Glass

Dir: James Bobin

Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, and Sacha Baron Cohen

There is a moment in “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, Disney’s sequel to 2010’s “Alice in Wonderland”, when the adventurous, strong-willed Alice commands a crew of men aboard a ship away from the attacks of charging pirates by going through treacherous terrain and narrowly escaping. Alice, in this moment in time, is living the fairy-tale life she has always chased, a life where the word “impossible” holds no merit. Unfortunately, in the next moment in time, she is back in the structured Victorian era reality of her hometown being laughed at by a group of businessmen who inform her that a woman’s place is not as a captain of a ship.

The aspects of time and authority play a big role in director James Bobin’s adaptation, a term used very loosely here, of Lewis Carroll’s novel “Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There”. Time, as Alice (Mia Wasikowska) muses, is a villain. One that stole the time she had with her father and continues to take from her life the older she becomes. Authority, especially with relationships, continues to manipulate Alice in ways that trouble and confuse her. The relationship with her mother (Lindsay Duncan), who has always wanted Alice to be a different kind of woman, is strained and filled with misunderstandings. While they both love and care for another, neither of them completely understand one another. Alice’s former fiancé Hamish (Leo Bill), an irksome and cowardly chauvinistic man, is still sore from being left at the alter by Alice. Hamish now runs the company that owns Alice’s ship; he tries to manipulate Alice into a desk job that he deems “fitting” for a woman. 

Just when things couldn’t get much worse for Alice, friends from the past, from her adventures in Wonderland, send for help. Abosolem (voiced by the late Alan Rickman) guides Alice through a mirror and into the realm of Wonderland. The Hatter (Johnny Depp) is in grave danger after finding an object from his past that leads him to believe his family, who were killed by the winged Jabberwocky, are still alive. Alice must travel through time to save Wonderland and her friends.

There is a great cast of actors seen and heard throughout “Alice Through the Looking Glass”. The roles they are tasked to play in this film may not always fit the talent that they have displayed in other roles; still it’s nice to see all these accomplished actors working. The voice work boasts the talents of Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Stephen Fry, and Michael Sheen to name a few. The actors on screen are Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter, Rhys Ifans, and Sacha Baron Cohen. That is an impressive cast. Too bad the product here wasn’t better suited to their talents.

 Johnny Depp was a struggle to watch as The Hatter in the first film, he is even harder to watch in this sequel. Anne Hathaway has a small but doesn’t do much except say a few lines with a heavy whimsical tone. Sacha Baron Cohen comes in to play the physical personification of Time; living in a castle-like structure that is shaped like a clock, the actor adds his signature comedic style throughout his scenes to garner a few laughs. Mia Wasikowska, who plays Alice with a mix of elegance and awkwardness, has a great presence on screening and holds many of the scenes together. These are exceptionally talented people operating in a story that is messy, contrived, and lacking in any kind of depth that makes the characters endearing.

Any character development or subtle emotional moment within a scene is consumed by the overindulgence of computer-generated effects. It’s hard to fault a film that is trying to create scenes of wonder and enchantment through physical structures and characters, the big and boisterous and blossoming scenery works when utilized in small amounts. Still, this extravagance of effects becomes distracting and takes away significantly from the characters in the film. Again, this is a film that consistently references the aspect of time and how it affects our lives in ways we may never understand, how we struggle with time taken away by death, how we struggle with aging. It’s a film that displays the structures of authority through relationships between a father and son, a mother and daughter, and two siblings. These are compelling aspects of storytelling that could have been utilized. While one could say that I am expecting too much from what is ultimately a children’s story, Pixar and Studio Ghibli have been making children’s stories with very mature subject matter for years with great success.

“Alice Through the Looking Glass” has small moments of potential; unfortunately these moments happen when Alice isn't in Wonderland. At nearly two hours in length the film struggles to stay afloat. This was partly because it exaggerated everything the first film did wrong and partly because it squandered good source material and exceptional actors in favor of unnecessary extravagance.

Monte’s Rating

1.75 out of 5.00

The Intern Review

The Intern

Dir: Nancy Meyer

Starring: Robert De Niro, Anne Hathaway, Rene Russo, Adam DeVine, Anders Holm, Zack Pearlman, Linda Lavin, and Andrew Rannells

Twenty-five years ago this week “Goodfellas” was released in theaters, it marked another career defining role for Robert De Niro to add to his already impressive list of characters. This week Robert De Niro is in another role, one that probably won’t crack the top ten in his career but is notable because it is far less threatening and intimidating than most of the roles he is known for. De Niro plays a retired senior citizen looking for a meaningful opportunity that will keep him away from the tiresome retirement routine of daily coffee shop visits and far too often funerals. Director and writer Nancy Meyer, “Something’s Gotta Give” and “It’s Complicated”, has built a career off heartwarming and sentimental storytelling. With “The Intern” it’s more of the same repeated material, with dramatic and comedic setups that sometimes work and other times don’t, the result is simplistic and unchallenging storytelling, a quality some will undoubtedly enjoy.

Jules Ostin (Anne Hathaway) is an overnight success in the e-retail fashion market, building a company filled with young employees and guided by Jules’s “take no prisoners” approach. Ben Whittaker (Robert De Niro) is a 70 year-old widowed retiree who has traveled the world, visits his son and grandchildren, and maintains a strict schedule of daily activities to fill time. Still, Ben is eager for a change and submits a video application to Jules’s company for a senior internship. Ben gets the job and is assigned to Jules.

Ms. Meyer operates the script with a clear emphasis on two different kinds of characters, the independent, hard-working entrepreneur mom and the gentleman standard of yesteryear. Jules is a combination of different issues, playing the role of self-confidence and independence in the professional world and the guiding hand of nurture and love as mother and wife, all while trying to balance the daily trials of being a woman in the 21^st century, judged and maligned around every corner by blatant and unexpected foes. Ben is a man from a different mold, a hardworking, wake-up early, dress-for-success era of men who lived by a basic set of family and work values. In “The Intern” Ben is surrounded by the current trend of men who don’t tuck their shirts in, welcome unkempt facial hair, and dance around issues with women rather than taking a forward attempt at chivalry. Ms. Meyer takes hold of these issues and fashions them with varying forms of success, while Jules mostly comes off admirably with influential and self-assured qualities, she is also undermined with questionable choices that would make one utter “how has she made it this far”. Ben’s honest ideals and charming virtues are justly arranged some moments, while in other moments they seem lost in the changing tides of societal and economic structures. Many of these insights will be overlooked because “The Intern” is superficially appealing with humorous setups and a great choice by Ms. Meyer to cast Robert De Niro. 

Mr. De Niro is in complete control, guiding the performance with grinning, better to call it smirking, optimism without turning into a begrudging old man who yells at the kids on his lawn. Anne Hathaway plays off Mr. De Niro throughout the film. Jules’s slow appreciation of Ben comes about with a mix of paternal admiration and then unlikely friendship, it’s unfortunate that most of her character is merely a shell of self-defeating ideas. Still, without these two actors the film wouldn’t be as successfully executed.

“The Intern” seems like it wants to say much more about age, work culture, gender differences, and feminism but instead, and perhaps rightly so, takes the easier route by diligently composing a film that forces viewers to leave the theater with warm feelings and a smile.

Monte’s Rating

3.25 out of 5.00

Interstellar Review

Interstellar

Dir: Christopher Nolan

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, John Lithgow, Wes Bentley, Casey Affleck, Ellen Burstyn, Topher Grace, and Mackenzie Foy

There are movies and then there are Christopher Nolan movies. Nolan, whose career catalog has been nothing short of impressive, attempts to accomplish one of the most ambitious visionary feats of recent years with “Interstellar”. This film is an experience in the fullest terms; visually beautiful to watch, awe-inspiringly composed, and bursting at the narrative seams with thematic theoretical wonders. “Interstellar” is a film whose ambitiousness will ultimately become its Achilles heel, though in a film so passionately composed, it’s a minor concern for the film enthusiast this film is intended for.

Earth is dying and the last of humanity lives as farmers to produce food for a dwindling existence. A former pilot named Cooper lives with his family in a small town. With the help of his daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) Cooper discovers coordinates that lead him to a group of explorers heading a mission into deep space, beyond our galaxy, to find a habitable planet to save mankind.

Nolan composes a distinct vision of the future. A bleak outlook and regretful remembrances occupy an Earth that is searching for any glimmer of hope. This is found through a wormhole near the rings of Saturn with coordinates received from an unknown source that is guiding the explorers. The script is ingenious with mounting theories that drive the film from plausible to implausible positions, a rift at times that Nolan traverses with ease and other times tumbles messily into. It’s the kind of obstacle that in lesser hands would derail a film, however Nolan recovers and continues to charge forth towards further ambitious expanses. Nolan builds events towards near epic standards with such ease and simplicity of design. In one scene the sheen of a spacecraft floating across a gorgeously rendered backdrop of Saturn’s atmosphere is accommodated by Hans Zimmer’s equally moving score. This all escalates gradually, giving the journey into uncharted territory a grandiose quality without looking overdone. It’s a brilliant design.

Just as all the best science fiction, there is an underlying message being proposed. Nolan discusses regret throughout. Difficult choices, necessary choices, and selfish choices all compose a collection of people who understand that the right decisions, both individual and communal, could have been made in the past to prevent the current state. There is a constant connection with the elements as well, represented through layers of wind blown soil, pummeling water, and flashes of fire, these elements seemingly betraying humanity by displaying their dominating destructive force on life.

The cast, as in most of Nolan’s films, is great. McConaughey is the consummate heroic figure, self-sacrificing to a fault and emotionally motivated for the greater good. The script spends time building his character as a devoted family man with subtle emotional touches initially, but as the film charges into space the relationship between his family is slightly stilted and relinquished to a few, albeit touching, moments. One might defend this portrayal as another character facet by Nolan to display the nature of a father willing to attempt impossible feats to save his family, but the emotional influence is lost until the final act. Mackenzie Foy, who portrays young Murph, is quite excellent. As is Jessica Chastain, who portrays older Murph with a maturity that is strong willed though bruised by the abandonment felt by her father. There are also nice turns by Michael Caine and Anne Hathaway accommodating another reflective father and daughter story.

 “Interstellar” has minor difficulties living up to its lofty ambitions, however it is still an exceptional vision unmatched by other films in recent memory. Christopher Nolan confidently crafts an intricately beautiful and seemingly uncompromised work of science fiction.

Monte’s Rating

4.00 out of 5.00