TRON: Legacy Review: Not the Best One to Leave Behind

TRON: Legacy is one of the biggest releases of the year and while it has its problems, the visuals certainly aren't one of them.

TRON: Legacy picks up where the original TRON left off in 1982. Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridge, reprising his role but in aged hippie mode) has returned to our world from the digital world. He creates the video game TRON based on his experiences in the digital world for Encom, a company that rises to prominence under his leadership. TRON becomes the most successful video game of all time. The company becomes incredibly successful. Kevin has a son, Sam Flynn, whom he puts bed at night by telling him stories of his exploits in the digital world. Flynn tells Sam that he still visits the world and that he is building it into something incredible with the help of Tron, the warrior that helped him during his first visit, and Clu, a program he created in his likeness. Life is going well for Kevin Flynn. But then he disappears.

Twenty years later, Flynn's company, Encom, is run by heartless business men that only care about making money and his son is a reckless vandal that will sabotage the company but won't step up to take control of Encom. A message from a phone line that has been disconnected for twenty years sends Sam (Garret Hedlund) to Flynn's arcade where he discovers his father's secret lab and is transported into the digital world. At first he marvels at the world his father has created, but soon learns that this world and his own are in peril.

Without equivocation, this film is beautiful. The design work is incredible, preserving the designs from the original film but adding more detail and scope. The design of the costumes is magnificent. It would be easy to make skin tight black body suits that light up look cheap and tacky but these look sleek and modern and just downright cool. The whole world carries a beautiful polish, from the imposing cityscape to the light cycles and other vehicles. And the way to activate a light cycle is pretty damn awesome. If you thought light cycles couldn't get any cooler, brace your yourself, because you were wrong. In fact, all the light in this movie is pretty cool.

TRON: Legacy's world is an interesting one because it seems to contain no light. All the light in that world radiates from the characters or the vehicles and buildings they have created. This leads to an interesting idea of the morality of characters being expressed through the colour of the light they emit. Good characters emit a pale blue light and evil characters emit a red light. Although there are a few exceptions for specific characters, some emit white light, suggesting that they are most pure. One character in particular emits an orange light, which appears to be a blend of the pale blue and the red, suggesting that his morality is conflicted.

I wish as much work had been put into the characters as was put into the character designs. Or that director Joseph Kosinski had been less enamored with the world he crafted. The pace of the movie plods along because there are so many shots inserted to show off the world. Also, while the action scenes are numerous, they are over so fast it is hard for them to make any impact. With the notable exception of the light cycle sequence. And rarely do these sequence convey any sense of stakes, which is a problem of the entire film.

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The Company Men Review: Do You Give Up or Start Over?

The Company Men, the feature directing and writing debut of John Wells, is a film that is funny, heartbreaking, uplifting, and relentlessly honest.

The Company Men follows the story of three men working for a huge corporation, GTX. From Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck), a young but successful salesman, to Phil Woodward (Chris Cooper), one of the senior salesman, to Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones), the head of the transportation division – which Bobby and Phil work for - and a founder of the company. When the economic crisis hits, GTX begins to downsize to cut costs and this touches all three of these men in different ways.

Bobby is first on the chopping block. When he walks into work, he’s called in and handed his severance package first thing. Ben Affleck is very good in this role. When he loses his job, he looks like he was hit by bus, completely devastated. But he manages to keep it together, because he has to harbor the hope that he can turn around and find another job without a problem, because he’s young and he’s that good. What he soon finds out is that he’s competing with people younger, cheaper, and just as good, and no amount of favors called in can change that. Affleck plays this role beautifully. At first he seems to be completely in denial of his situation, but then there is the sense that there is something beneath the surface. There is anger and frustration stewing as he tries to fight off his fears which have to come bubbling to the surface. Affleck lets those emotions do just that: stew and bubble. He doesn’t lash out, rather he makes an incisive remark to cut someone down or buries the fear that his family will find out, but the fear bleeds out his eyes as they dart around the room, wondering if anyone has figured it out yet.

Phil survives the first round of firings. But when the head of the company, James Salinger, a cold and callous Craig T. Nelson, decides he needs to raise the stock value again, he orders another round of lay offs. He opts to do this instead of breaking up the company or selling the new building for the brand new multi-million dollar GTX headquarters. Phil falls victim this time. He finds himself in an even rougher situation than Bobby. He’s older, more expensive, and comes with more debt and kids with college tuitions. He can’t handle it as well as Bobby. It isn’t long before he is spending most of his days in a bar, not helped by the fact that his wife is ashamed of him so she won’t let him come home until after six, for fear that the neighbors figure it out. While Chris Cooper’s part is the smallest of the three, he is indelible as a man made out of desperation. He’s near the end of his life and just had the reset button pressed. Cooper’s work is very good here, because even though Phil is afraid for his job from the start, there is still a pride in how he carries himself. After he loses his job, you can see that slip away from him until it disappears.

Perhaps the most complex character is Gene McClary. He helped found the company with Salinger, whom he considers to be his best friend. However he is powerless to stop the firings of people he considers very valuable. He wants to honor his employees above the wants of the shareholders. And as these people are fired, despite his protests, he becomes richer and richer from his shares in the company. Compound this with the fact that he is literally sleeping with the enemy as he carries on an affair with Sally Wilcox (a sadly under-utilized Mario Bello), the woman in charge of making the lists of who should go and delivering the bad news, and you have a man filled to the breaking point with conflict. Despite all this conflict, Tommy Lee Jones’s performance is masterfully subtle. Instead of smashing things against the wall and screaming, he sits at the breakfast table staring at a newspaper, unshaven and in his robe. He tries to reason with his friend, but is shut out, until whatever fight he has left leaves him and he too has to face the question that Bobby and Phil face: do you give up or start over?

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Black Swan Review: A Disturbing Quest for Perfection

Darren Aronofsky’s follow up to The Wrestler is Black Swan, an unrelenting, absolutely enthralling, psychological horror film about ballet. Yes, you read that correctly.

Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) is a committed ballerina in a dance company in New York. She has spent years waiting for her chance. The director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), decides to put on Swan Lake, but with a new take: one dancer will play both the White Swan and the Black Swan. This means starting fresh, which means getting rid of the established star, Beth (Winona Ryder, with a performance completely full of venom), and casting a new star. Nina arises as the favorite for the part, but that soon becomes threatened by a newcomer, Lily (Mila Kunis). The stress of competition and the overbearing pressure of her mother (Barbara Hershey) begins to cause Nina to unravel is frightening ways.

Nina is the White Swan. She is pristine. Her movements are precise and she is constantly striving for perfection. Her attitude as a dancer is her attitude as a person. She is timid and naïve. She has to keep her desires under control because she has to be perfect. However, if she wants to star in the show, she needs to find the darker side of herself, the Black Swan. This is where Lily comes in. Lily serves as Nina’s example – she is the Black Swan. She is free from the desire of perfection. She follows her desires wherever it takes her. It is when she drags Nina along with her that Nina begins to find the Black Swan within herself.

Natalie Portman is incredible in this film. She is so fragile as Nina. It is amazing the level of innocence she is able to convey by the way she moves, the way she has a hard time keeping eye contact, the way she shrugs her shoulders. It feels like she is made out of porcelain and could shatter into a million pieces if not handled with care. As incredible as this portrayal is, the most remarkable part of her performance is her transformation. As she discovers the Black Swan within herself, that softness disappears and a hard edge emerges. It is near jaw dropping to see what was once a timid girl throw aside people that stand in her way and take what belongs to her. It’s a fascinating character and an incredible performance. Portman is perfect in this role.

Mila Kunis is fascinating to watch as Lily. It’s never clear what her motives are. Is she a friend or a foe? Kunis takes to both with ease and stretches herself beyond the carefree spirit she enters the story as. She is kind in one moment and ruthless in the next. She is ally and adversary. A lot of this is a consequence of the point of view of the film.

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The King's Speech Review: Raise Your Voice

Tom Hooper’s film, The King’s Speech, is far more than a film catering to one spectacular performance. It is a wonderful film filled with wit and insight.

King George VI of Britain (Colin Firth), Bertie to his family, has a terrible stutter. While he is in the shadows as a prince this is only an embarrassment. All the same, he tries to cure it, visiting every specialist he can to no avail. His wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) discovers a therapist with rather unorthodox ideas, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). His therapy is a personal endeavor until Bertie unexpectedly becomes king after his father, King George V (Michael Gambon), dies and his brother, King Edward VIII (Guy Pearce), abdicates the throne. His country is on the eve of war with Hitler and he must find the words to speak for them.

Colin Firth is incredible in this film as Bertie. There is never a moment where his stammer feels false. It feels as though he was born with it. It isn’t the comical stutter that is exaggerated but the painful stammering of someone trapped in their own mind. It’s very hard to watch. When Bertie stammers you can see the frustration in his face. He knows what he wants to say, his mind has made the thoughts, but his body can’t communicate those thoughts – it has betrayed him. Firth’s ability to show this is what makes his performance so brilliant.

Geoffrey Rush is also brilliant as Lionel Logue, the counterpoint to Bertie. Rush imbues the character with such warmth and compassion, yet there is an edge to him. Logue won’t be intimidated by the air of royalty. That’s what makes him important to Bertie. He speaks to him with complete honesty, be it brutal or not. Rush also brings some comedy to the role, making Logue a bit of a scoundrel. All of these things are necessary to break down the barriers that Bertie has erected.

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