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The Jungle Book: Mini-review

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Bill Murray

Bill Murray isn’t bearish about The Jungle Book

BDirector Jon Favreau‘s The Jungle Book has two creative fathers: Rudyard Kipling, who wrote the stories on which the movie is based, and Walt Disney, who oversaw production of the 1967 animated version of the children’s classic. In blending these two disparate sources, Favreau and screenwriter Justin Marks opt for thrillingly realistic CGI animals with a touch of Disney’s gentle wit, a mix that’s generally, but not always effective.

The screenplay of the current Jungle Book is closer to the earlier Disney version (this movie was also produced by Disney) than to Kipling’s stories. A young boy, Mowgli (Neel Sethi), has been raised since infancy by wolves, with considerable guidance from the panther Bagheera (voiced by Ben Kingsley). But when Shere Khan (Idris Elba), a vengeful tiger, threatens to kill Mowgli, the boy goes off into the jungle by himself rather than risk the lives of his friends. Eventually, Mowgli returns to confront Shere Khan, hoping to use his human ingenuity and the one thing the tiger fears—fire—to defeat it. 

Disney’s earlier Jungle Book was the last of the studio’s classic hand drawn, brightly illustrated films, and the characters, even the villains, were mostly playful and cartoonish rather than dignified or threatening. Favreau’s film, on the other hand, looks startlingly real, as if it were filmed on location in the depths of the rain forest. In actuality, only Sethi and a couple of other bit actors are real, and everything was “filmed” in a Disney animation studio in Los Angeles. The animals are stunningly rendered and usually look, act, and move naturally. When they do act more like the old Disney characters, The Jungle Book suffers. The worst culprit is King Louie the orangutan (Christopher Walken), who, in this version, is a monstrous creature that towers above Mowgli.  Shere Khan is the best realized character, a surprisingly sympathetic and credible villain, eloquently voiced by Elba. While The Jungle Book‘s efforts at physical comedy are weak, the script gives Bill Murray, as the voice of Baloo the bear, some good one liners, and the film retains the two classic tunes from the earlier version, “The Bare Necessities” and “I Wanna Be Like You.” Jon Favreau doesn’t quite find the right mix of new technology and old Disney, but he has brought Rudyard Kipling’s stories to exciting, realistic, and at times dangerous life.
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The Walk: Mini-review

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Joseph Gordon-Levitt could use some help with his French accent

B+On August 7, 1974, the day Richard Nixon resigned as the U.S. President, a French aerialist named Philippe Petit actually  upstaged Nixon by spending 45 minutes walking back and forth on a high wire between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, some 1,350 feet above the ground. It took four decades for cinematic technology to develop to the stage where a filmmaker could do this feat justice. Finally, director Robert Zemeckis‘ The Walk can give viewers some idea of what Petit experienced.

The Walk follows Petit (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) from his days as a Paris street performer through high wire training with the patriarch of a European circus family, Papa Rudy (Ben Kingsley), to Petit’s lengthy preparation for what he called le coup. Petit and a handful of accomplices, including girlfriend Annie (Charlotte Le Bon), plan the operation as if it were an elaborate heist. Fortunately, one of the towers was still under construction, making building access easier. Still, Petit and his friends Eventually, they have to dodge security guards and race against time to finish rigging the line before workmen arrive.

First and foremost, the best reason to see The Walk is for the spectacular high wire sequence, which lasts nearly 20 minutes (about half the time of the actual walk). Robert Zemeckis has pulled off amazing technical feats his entire career, but the high wire sequence may be his most astounding set piece ever. The Walk is the rare movie that practically cries out to be seen in 3D, and on as big a screen as possible. In the right theater, some audience members may experience vertigo themselves. The film’s earthbound scenes are a mixed bag, though. Petit’s efforts to install the cable may seem a Hollywood invention, but nearly everything portrayed actually occurred, and The Walk has its share of nail-biting moments before Petit leaves steps off the tower. The movie’s biographical scenes aren’t nearly as good. Gordon-Levitt’s French accent seems as bad as Inspector Clouseau’s, but he makes up for it in boyish exuberance. Still, the movie never quite takes flight until Petit arrives at his destination. As a biography, The Walk is only so-so, but as a caper thriller, it begins to take flight, and when Petit actually steps into the void, the movie is soaring right beside him.
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Learning to Drive: Mini-review

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Patricia Clarkson

Patricia Clarkson sparkles in a rare lead role

BMovies starring actresses with a trace of gray in their hair who aren’t named Meryl Streep or Julianne Moore are quite rare today. So are movies about serious platonic relationships between heterosexual couples. So, Learning to Drive provides some seldom-seen delights for viewers interested in more serious, well-written fare.

The movie’s platonic couple are Wendy (Patricia Clarkson) and Darwan (Ben Kingsley). She’s a writer and literary critic in New York whose husband of some 20 years (Jake Weber) has just left her for a younger woman. He’s a Sikh driving instructor and taxi driver, granted political asylum in the U.S. so he can’t return to his native India, even for a visit. What starts as an effort to get some order in her life and simply a part of his job winds up blossoming into a real friendship.

Learning to Drive is a small, rather brief movie that is content to have its characters take small steps rather than solve all their life problems in less than 90 minutes. Clarkson is particularly radiant here, but the film makes it clear that radiance wasn’t always on display during her marriage. Kingsley has mastered this dignified sage role, but his Darwan too has a dark side, a temper and imperiousness that shows in his relation with his new wife (Sarita Choudhury), the product of a marriage arranged by his mother. For a movie this short, Learning to Drive never seems rushed. Instead, the script lets the relationship between Wendy and Darwan develop naturally. In part that’s because the script requires them to spend considerable time two feet apart in the confines of a car, a situation that encourages eventually revealing confidences to one another. Also, director Isabel Coixet wisely decides not to waste time with lame attempts at supposedly funny, bad driving set pieces. Even so, by the end of Learning to Drive, viewers feel they want to see more of Wendy and Darwan than the film allows. But Learning to Drive is a movie about minor accomplishments, and a successful film of that nature is actually a major accomplishment nowadays. 
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Self/less: Mini-review

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Ryan Reynolds

Ryan Reynolds is pretty much his old self here

C+The idea behind Self/less, that the wealthy can extend their lives by appropriating the bodies of younger, healthier people, presents fascinating moral, ethical, and psychological issues that could easily fuel a dozen or more similar movies. Unfortunately, after carefully setting up its premise, Self/less instead appropriates the form of a generic action thriller.

The process used in Self/less involves transferring the mind and memory of one person, wealthy but cancer ridden Damian Hale (Ben Kingsley), into the body of another, desperately broke Ryan Reynolds, who agrees to “die” in order to pay his own sick daughter’s medical bills. Damian doesn’t know this is what’s happening; he thinks that his new body was somehow grown from scratch by the man responsible, Dr. Albright (Matthew Goode). At first, Damian’s new life in his younger body is nonstop fun, sex, and games, but when he forgets to take his medication one day, he has visions of his younger self’s former life. A now understandably curious Damian pays a visit to the younger self’s wife (Natalie Martinez) and eventually figures out what Albright has done.

As an action thriller, Self/less is competently made with a fair share of requisite chases and fight scenes, Viewers, however, soon realize that the movie cuts every corner possible in search of a predictably happy ending. Damian himself comes across as merely a hard-nosed, workaholic businessman who very conveniently inherits the body of a highly trained combat vet. Worst of all, the film avoids having to seriously question the morality of the regeneration process by turning Albright into a combination sinister huckster and prototypical mad scientist. Reynolds is a likable hero but never manages to convince the audience he’s the younger version of Kingsley. Instead, it’s the real Kingsley who gives Self/less what power it has in only fifteen minutes of screen time. Self/less seems to lose its creative life about the same time Damian loses his actual one, but, unlike Damian, the movie never really comes back. 
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