Magic In The Moonlight
By Ian Brockway
The iconic Woody Allen gives a one-handed playful doodle on film. The self- consciously titled “Magic in the Moonlight” drips upon the eyes smoothly enough with some charm, but has little lasting comic effect.
The beloved actor Colin Firth plays Stanley, an effete magician and pessimist in the 1920s who charades as the persona Wei Ling Soo, a Chinese master.
After a self-critical performance, Stanley is summoned by his bookish friend Howard (Simon McBurney) to investigate a young psychic Sophie (Emma Stone). The stentorian and snide Stanley can’t wait to shred the idealistic and bright girl who has delighted the showy and squarish Brice (Hamish Linklater).
Stanley, a dramatic fizz of a character composed of Noel Coward and Cary Grant, starts in with clipped and cutting mockeries. Sophie withers at first, but soon becomes entranced by the cynical conjurer who is innerly vexed by his lackluster life. With each rolling insult and back-handed compliment, Sophie delivers the correct clairvoyant information, and the acidic but watery-eyed Stanley grows fascinated.
A verbal sparring match ensues with lots of drawing room dialogue and chirping. Sophie gets increasingly wide eyed and less reserved, and Stanley creates ruses to meet Sophie in secret, in a nod to Owen Wilson’s behavior in Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.”
Director Allen is more conceptual here, intending to re-create some of the William Powell / Carole Lombard comedies of the 1930s, with an obvious Cary Grant-ish dapper sophistication. One does however, want for a little more meat; the vignettes feel too glossy and rushed over with a mere pinkie finger of character development.
The repartee is airy, accompanied with a striped and silky color, along with few notable lines. Some of the situations have a processed feel as if taken from other Allen films from “A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy” (given the quirky sneaks) to “Play It Again, Sam” and “Annie Hall” (with the character’s hapless second guessing, his hold on fixed ideals and the lust for a vivacious innocent).
Colin Firth retains some congenial verve and likability as does Emma Stone.
There is one nice scene, when after praying, Stanley regains his scientific resolve in saying to Sophie that “only God can forgive her.”
“I thought you said that there is no God.”
“And that is my point,” replies Stanley.
For the most part though, the leers, lopes, wrinkles and worries in the hither and thither run a little uniform.
This is an easy romantic race of push-me pull-you along the now familiar Allen path.
Once again, the beautiful cinematography by Darius Khondji is worth seeing showing the South of France in its creamy and salty sparkle.
The acting of Firth holds all of “Magic in the Moonlight”.
The easy exchanges whiz by as sweet as Chick O Sticks on an Alfa Romeo holiday and the all too pat ending plays for some titters that everyone can see ahead, miles away.
Such slight spirit has not been Allen’s haunt for some time. While this makes for easy play, it is done with such an obvious laze that it seems like automatic filming for a masterful director.
“Magic in the Moonlight” hangs about somewhat indifferently in a passing Mediterranean breeze. Dependably bubbling in a happy froth it is, yet one craves for a more corporeal body to be found within this wispy and almost whispering script.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) takes the helm from Rupert Wyatt, with a startling sequel to the first Planet of the Apes film, entitled “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”. The result is a gripping, visceral and very emotional addition with topical parallels to our current world.
A simian flu has throttled the globe. Humans are vanishing and apes, of all shapes and sizes have their own society. As depicted, it is a huge treehouse city in California.
The humans have taken refuge in a giant defunct warehouse near what resembles Chinatown.
The humans are organized by one Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) a war like vet who still feels he is in combat. The humans need electricity. The ape friendly relief worker, Malcolm (Jason Clarke) steps in to hopefully offer a compromise to the apes and avert a war.
The apes are headed by the genius Caesar (Andy Serkis) who was a baby chimp in the first film and is now a (mostly) benevolent leader, given his human-infused education.
Tensions rise when human guns are brought in to the mix and a debate arises regarding human trust.
Central to the film’s spirit is Andy Serkis whose bodily poetry is nothing less than transcendent in bringing Caesar to life.
These are no mere digital creatures but rather animated and emotional beings. Despite the apocalyptic trappings which makes the “hook,” the core of “Dawn” is its emotional resonance. The tension and suspense ranks with the best Spielberg cliffhangers of the 80s when cinematic thrills were in their heyday.
There is a malicious Bonobo named Koba (Toby Kebbell) who takes on the guise of a tribal warlord. While on the human side, Dreyfus acts the fascist with a human-centric society.
Several analogies can be made here, chief among them being the plight of the Native Americans, but the story also touches on terrorism, the issue of preemptive strikes and perhaps, the quest for Palestine and Israel to exist in peace.
Suffice to say, independence and power are universal strivings for all carbon-based life forms.
Above all else, some very tangible pathos and energy suffuses every aspect of this Saturday Matinee film.
Simply put, we forget the technology entirely. During the film’s motion, these rhythmic entities are no soulless entities, but living apes.
Period.
In watching, the emotion evoked produces questions. What are responsibilities as humans. Are the apes really less evolved than we? Or are they our contemporaries? And, just maybe, they are superior.
No, you don’t have to reflect deeply on this film. Yet the possibilities are there.
One deep look from Caesar and a singular scorned reproach from Koba, recalling the very real existence of scientific torture by experimentation, is reflexively saddening and genuinely paining. Such scenes will have one lamenting our petty self-centered acts, a long tale of woe that still endures.
Yet all is not gloom. “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” makes for terrific episodic entertainment in the tradition of “Star Trek” and Indiana Jones. It just might recall the kitschy 1970s to be sure but gone are the days of one hammy Charlton Heston and his xenophobic histrionics.
This is the age where simian IQ is no Halloween masquerade and our ape ancestors are equal in desire, struggle and empathy.
Here, Here! Awareness has indeed arrived under the conjurer’s trick of a thrilling film, and it is not a moment too soon.
Write Ian at [email protected]
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