Dressmaker obtuse peculiar

Kate Winslet in The Dressmaker. Image courtesy Broad Green Pictures.

The first word that came to mind to describe The Dressmaker after watching it is bizarre. But it's not a good bizarre like the works of Davids Cronenberg and Lynch, who make movies that force audiences to interpret what they're watching with minimal input from the respective director. No, this is bad bizarre, strange for the sake of being strange with little no idea of what it wants to accomplish at the end of its final reel. The only thing The Dressmaker will think about it how poorly constructed the clunky flick you just watched is.

The Dressmaker is several films in one, it's opening sequence shoving things toward a soap opera and melodramatic direction. It could've made for a fascinating engagement to watch Kate Winslet (as the eponymous sartorial creator) and Hugo Weaving vamp things up for 90 minutes with terrific fashion ensembles in the middle of nowhere Australia. (It’s worked before for Weaving.) Then the film moves forward and the story goes into so many directions at once the question arises as to what, exactly, the film is trying to do. Is it a revenge tale featuring a black sheep returning home for a little vengeance so many years later? Is it a noir with Winslet as the femme fatale? Is it a study of the dangers of memory, how forgetting is sometimes for the best? Is it a mismatched romance between Winslet and Liam Hemsworth as the wokest Aussie in 1952? Is the film trying to show how difficult it can be for mothers (in this case Judy Davis) and daughters to reunite? Is this a film like Chocolat or Needful Things in which an outsider causes ruffles in the small community? Is it a profile of the evils hidden within a small community? Is it a comedy, a drama, a dramedy or a coma? Somehow, the answer is yes, which is a problem for a film trying to tell something resembling a linear plot and eschewing dreaminess or the fantastical. So many elements exist the filmmakers simply have no time to delve into any of them with some sense of completion or satisfaction. It creates an atonal experience by combining so much of everything the viewer is left with nothing to latch onto.

The film has this sort of attitude of tossing as much stuff into it as possible that, perhaps, something might land somewhere near successful. Admittedly, the ensembles designed by Winslet's character are quite lovely, and Weaving plays things so campy it becomes somewhat charming to watch him revel at Winslet's sartorial creations. No one else follows his lead, aside from a few slips by Winslet into behaving in a somewhat scandalous fashion, so The Dressmaker comes across as more straight faced than it ought to be. It's strange how this film both rejects and embraces its oddness, pushing away from being too strange yet replacing character development with quirks. It tries too hard to be odd when it does go in that direction, becoming a subpar Twin Peaks and failing to provide that show’s sense of community intrigue.

At least Twin Peaks has some grounding and logic for its esoteric leanings. The Dressmaker doesn’t have that same grounding, lacking true motivation for its plot machinations besides an illogical revenge plot. The film has so many malarkey plot twists designed to forcibly advance Winslet's character into something resembling independence the whole endeavor could easily break a viewer’s mind trying to put the events into some form of logical flow. The initial prompt for the event is a lost memory from Winslet’s past, and the film resolves it in a fittingly messy fashion, only to continue beyond any point of interest through a bombastic ending that loses any sense of logic within a few moments of thought.

Thought, really, is anathema to The Dressmaker. Thought provides an undercurrent of logic to an obtusely illogical situation designed by filmmakers to be appear difficult and challenging. Films like this fail because they try to appear smart and lose that sheen once people can start parsing through what they witnessed. The Dressmaker requires more direction than it currently has, some underlying point to make Winslet’s return home emotionally affecting or at least designed to be more than a series of flukes. Otherwise all that’s left is watching Hugo Weaving go mad over Dior, which isn’t a bad thing but not something that can carry a two-hour movie.

Review: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer

Rating: R

Run time: 118 minute

Genre: Drama

 

Ask Away

Target audience: People down for obscure Aussie flicks.

Take the whole family?: Stick with the rating recommendation on this one; it gets a bit bloody and very uncomfortable.

Theater or Netflix?: Stay home if you must watch it.

Academy Award chances?: Hopefully about zero for the regular categories, even with Hugo Weaving's daffy, fascinating performance. It might get a little something for the costuming though, as the era-appropriate apparel looks quite fetching, albeit not on the same level as, say, Carol from last year.

Watch this instead?: Young Adult has a concept but adds in a lot more bite and loses the melodrama, and Twin Peaks hits the odd community notes far, far better. Also, just because Kate Winslet's involvement, seek out the tremendously brilliant Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Blurring the thin blue line

Anthony Mackie and Clifton Collins Jr. in "Triple 9." Image courtesy Open Road Films

Most of my time watching the almost entirely forgettable “Triple 9” was spent thinking about the many other better movies I could be watching at the moment. “Deadpool,” after all, was just a theater away, or I could have gone home and put on “Rififi” or “Dog Day Afternoon.” I sat through “Triple 9” anyway, waiting for something unique or noteworthy to occur and hoping beyond hope this thing could contribute something more to society than contrivances, racism and Aaron Paul doing crack once again.

That moment never came though, largely due to a plot dreamed up by a bored Homer Simpson and written by an overeager freshman film major. “Triple 9” opens with a successful bank robbery – because it's always a bank robbery – perpetrated by Paul, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clifton Collins Jr., Norman Reedus and Anthony Mackie. The big twist? Everybody except Paul and Ejiofor are cops for the Atlanta Police Department pulling the job for Russian mob boss Irina Vlaslov (Kate Winslet pulling out an atrocious Russian accent from a secondary orifice) who happens to be the sister of Ejiofor's ex (Gal Gadot). One job isn't enough though, and the crew is recruited for another heist that will free Winslet's husband from the Gulag or something like that. (It was tough to tell because the dialogue was in Russian and the subtitles were cutoff on the bottom of the screen.) This new job is difficult, as robbing from a Homeland Security building will draw lots of unwanted attention.

Unless, that is, someone kills a cop – a titular code 999 – which will distract every officer in the area. And who better to murder than Mackie's new annoying partner Chris Allen (Casey Affleck), nephew of daffy but well-regarded investigator Jeffrey Allen (Woody Harrelson), who happens to be investigating that first heist. Mackie and company come up with a plan to slaughter Affleck for their own means, but the best laid plans in such films never work out so well, and things start to fall apart from there amid shenanigans involving Latino gangs, booze and women filled with malice.

In other words, pretty much the general plot of most heist films stuffed into less than two hours of run time, even though director John Hillcoat and writer Matt Cook clearly need more time to establish characters and coordinate plot machinations. “Triple 9” is far too short for it's ambitions – it feels like someone slashed off 15 minutes or so indiscriminately – although it still somehow lasts too long after the second heist when all the loose ends have to be wrapped up. One of the worst places a film can be is in that zone of being too long and too short, and “Triple 9” finds itself right smack dab in the middle of the dull zone. Then again, a longer film would mean having to watch even more of “Triple 9,” which isn't a very exciting proposition. It's not a visually stunning movie nor a particularly well executed one when it comes to its action sequences, most of which are filmed in a workmanlike fashion with little to no ownership. Even the moments theoretically meant to invoke suspense come off as funny and light instead of serious; the audience literally laughed at what was clearly the point of greatest tension of the entire movie.

None of this would be overly bothersome; forgettable films come and go like the tides or the next great presidential candidate. What makes “Triple 9” stand out though is a discomfiting vein of racism directed toward its Hispanic characters. Hillcoat and Cook go out of their way to establish a backstory for just about every character to offer some justification for their actions; it’s the main reasons why the plot is so overstuffed. Ejiofor has a kid he's trying to see again, Mackie is torn between loyalty to his partner and his comrades, and Paul is mourning for much of the film. Clifton, the lone Hispanic member of this group, is a remorseless killer though, a very bad man whose motivations are rooted solely in dollars and self preservation. He's an extension of the way the filmmakers portray the Hispanic community, a group that in this film is violent, uneducated, crude, cruel, slightly atavistic, and borderline subhuman. “Triple 9” is a film built to justify white people's fear of Hispanic communities, which is such a weird angle for a film otherwise devoted to themes of loyalty and moral quagmires.

It's that aspect that shoves “Triple 9” into the problematic realm, a film unwilling to shake clichés both damaging and useless because they might look cool. It tries ever so hard to be smart, to be a head spinner on par with a Tony Gilroy flick. But as “Triple 9” proves, trying too hard to be smart really makes you look pretty dumb.

Review: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 115 minutes (One hour and 55 minutes)

Genre: Drama

Ask Away

Target audience: People who want an unnecessarily convoluted cop flick.

Take the whole family?: A ton of dudes get shot in the head in this one, so stick with the rating suggestion and send your kids to “Zootopia” next week.

Theater or Netflix?: Stream it.

Who do you want to win the Academy Awards?: Brie Larson for “Room” and Rooney Mara for “Carol” would be terrific choices for Best Actress and Supporting Actress, respectively. On the male side, Leonardo DiCaprio is the best choice from the options granted, while I'd really like Mark Ruffalo to win for “Spotlight.” If I had my druthers, George Miller would win for directing and “Mad Max: Fury Road” for Best Picture, although neither will probably occur.

Watch this instead?: Considering “Triple 9” tries to be a cop film and a heist film, recommending from both genres makes sense. Both “Bad Lieutenant” and “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” are fascinating films for the former category, while “Inside Job” (also starring Chiwetel Ejiofor) and “Asphalt Jungle” are terrific heist films.