Category Archives: Keira Knightley

Movie Review: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

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This basically sums it up.

Don’t get me wrong, Steve Carell is one of the funniest, most likable actors working today. But with his past few features, and his latest, “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” he has a created a new film archetype: The Sad Insurance Salesman.

The Sad Insurance Salesman is a male in mid-life crisis. His wife will have cheated and then walked out on him because their marriage has lost all sense of excitement. Basically, the Sad Insurance Salesman might as well say, “I’m really nice, but I’m also boring.”

This, in a way, can also define “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.” It is nice at parts but in the end, it is unsatisfying and lacks chemistry.
“Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” begins at the end. Well, the end of the world, that is. An asteroid is hurdling towards Earth, and death is inevitable. Dodge (Steve Carell), a timid insurance salesman who doesn’t take a lot of risks, is abandoned by his wife (Nancy Carell, Carell’s real life wife), who doesn’t want to spent her last days on Earth with him. Her exit is marked with The Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t it Be Nice” playing over the radio. No matter how many times that song is used ironically over a dark scene in a movie, it never gets old.

Dodge still shows up to work everyday, despite the fact that most of his co-workers have jumped ship. Here is a man who won’t step out of his comfort zone and enjoy life, even as all life on Earth is about to end. Dodge doesn’t want to face the end alone, but he also doesn’t want to be promiscuous, as per the advice of his friends (Rob Corddry and Patton Oswalt, both criminally underused). Instead, he first seeks solace in a dog that has been abandoned by its owner. The dog might have been the highlight of the movie, even if it felt a little like pandering at times. The dog might have been the best part for me for the sole reason that it is a dog. Dodge names the dog Sorry, because it shows his regrets in life, and blah blah blatant symbolism.

One night, Dodge meets another lonely tenant in his apartment building, Penny (Keira Knightley). Penny is deeply unhappy with her relationship to a penniless musician (Adam Brody). She breaks up with him, and her and Dodge find solace in their loneliness. Unlike Dodge, Penny is spontaneous and positive. She also carries around her baggage from the past: a collection of records, without a record player to play it on. Based on Penny’s collection, which includes Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed, writer-director Lorene Scafaria must be a pretty awesome person.

“Seeking a Friend” becomes a road movie with two separate goals: Dodge wants to spend his last days with his childhood sweetheart, and he promises Penny a plane that will take her to England to see her parents. Unfortunately, one goal seems to be completely forgotten and another becomes completely unnecessary.

As Dodge and Penny, Carell and Knightley are not bad, just underwhelming. Carell is one of the most infinitely likable actors around, but I think he does better as the lovable idiot character role that he perfected in varying degress on “The Office” and in “Anchorman.” Knightley, meanwhile, doesn’t quite settle in well to the comedic potential of her character. Her role would have been much better suited to Gillian Jacobs, the “Community” MVP who shines in a minor role as a waitress who lives too close to the edge. She displays all of the zany energy that would have made Penny as impressionable a character as she was meant to be.

For a movie about a meteor hitting Earth, “Seeking a Friend” ends more with a whimper than with a bang. Without giving much away, there is a fade to white, and the only reaction that immediately came to mind was, “that’s it?” Every conflict plays out in an anti-climatic matter, and not the kind of anti-climatic that skewers your expectations for the best. “Seeking a Friend” would have been better suited as a straight up comedy sprinkled with poignant moments. The movie is supposed to be a look at humanity with typical societal constraints removed. People overlook it, but oftentimes comedy is the most truthful way to examine mankind.

Also, it would mean a lot to me if you could check out this review on The Film Stage. I actually give it a letter grade!

Movie Review: A Dangerous Method

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Psychoanalyzing the Psychologists

Scorsese has one. Kubrick has one. Cronenberg now has one. The Croneberg stare; in which a character looks into the camera, realizing what they lost is really what they wanted and all they have left to feel is remorse and self-hatred. This happens just seconds before the dramatic cut to black. This is repeated once again in “A Dangerous Method.”

Movies have a funny way of dealing with history. Some praise those movies that remain completely accurate to the facts, and others prefer those that deviate into historical fiction territory. “A Dangerous Method” is a restrained drama that wants to be an intense one and a piece that strives to be totally historically accurate yet deep down, it wants to be an insane piece of historical fiction. 
  “A Dangerous Method” begins at the turn of the 20th century as Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), a budding star in the psychoanalysis movement, attempts to cure a seemingly incurable patient named Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley). Jung’s personality is one that is cold and impersonal, and he doesn’t even look at his patients when he speaks to them. The deeper Jung digs into Sabrina’s child issues, the closer the two become, and the more dangerous their relationship ultimately turns out to be. Let’s just say a touch of S&M is involved. 
While Jung studies and beds Sabina (unbeknownst to his wife), he makes frequent trips to Vienna to visit his friend and mentor, the cigar-chomping Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen). The two construct the foundations of early psychoanalysis but they have differing opinions on it. Freud is purely scientific and Jung is quite spiritual. They clash and talk but mostly, they just talk. 
“A Dangerous Method” is not necessarily a bad movie. It is more like a good movie that missed the mark of greatness that it had the potential for. Oftentimes, this is even worse than a movie that is just bad. Cronenberg is an immensely talented director, especially when it comes to dealing with the darkest depths of human behavior. However, he never really makes movies on a larger scale, and a larger scale is exactly what “A Dangerous Method” could have used. 
I walked into “A Dangerous Method” as a stranger to psychology. The many dialogues between Jung and Freud made me more interested in further exploring the subject on my own. However, it is the subject matter, and not the story created about it, that is so interesting here. It tries to tell too many different stories at once and therefore never effectively completes any of them. Cronenberg seems like he wants to focus more on Sabina, and while she has a twisted and interesting mind, there is much more fertile ground that needs to be explored in the rivalry between Freud and Jung. The movie sometimes feels like a vehicle for Knightley’s turn in a dramatic role. She is effective when she’s not hamming it up and being reminiscent of nothing more than a pirate princess.
But let’s back up to the rivalry between Freud and Jung, and the fact that it doesn’t even seem to exist. In the movie, it is less of a rivalry and more like an extended heated argument that leads to nothing once the steam cools. In one brief sentence, it is revealed that Sabina’s findings go against Freud’s findings on sex and the ego. It is addressed once, and then never brought up again. In another similar incident, Freud tells Jung he will reveal nothing of his thoughts to him as a way of remaining powerful over him. It is a strong moment that should have paved the way for an entirely different movie. Why wasn’t Jung more angry at Freud for this, when Jung knew that some of Freud’s findings were wrong?
“A Dangerous Method” should have taken a cue from a much better film about a rivalry during the birth of the new discoveries during the beginning of the 1900s: “There Will Be Blood.” The rivalry of that movie culminated into something much more horrific and tragic; a boom rather than a whimper. Maybe this story would have benefitted in the hands of a different director and a different writer.
“A Dangerous Method” is saved mostly by the outstanding performances of Fassbender and Mortensen. Fassbender rises to the occasion even with some of the flat dialogue he is given and Mortensen, meanwhile, depicts a tone and voice that are reminiscent of Alex DeLarge, who ironically could have used a serious couch session with Freud. The real star of the movie however, is cinematographer Peter Suschitzky. His stunning camerawork is romantic yet haunting; a mood that most perfectly captures the era. I could see myself watching this movie with the volume off and just being carried away by the imagery.
All of those great parts just feel like fragments. Occasional lines are thrown in here and there to show their importance but then are never brought back to their full extent. “A Dangerous Method” is like watching a very monotonous professor in a very crowded Psych 101 lecture. That is why that stare at the end feels blake rather than thoughtful at the end, as Cronenberg’s previous features (“A History of Violence”, “Eastern Promises”) left so much more to ponder. “A Dangerous Method” consists of many great parts searching for a much better movie to be a part of.