Partial Education: The Minimally Talented Spoiled Brat?

Partial Education Presents

The Minimally Talented Spoiled Brat?

Featuring Partially Educated Reviews of

Girl, Interrupted

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

A Mighty Heart

Wanted

Changeling

and Maleficent

A brief lesson in recent history for those who don't get the title. During the recent Sony Pictures hacking scandal, e-mails were leaked from producer Scott Rudin in which he referred to Angelina Jolie as, well, the title of this post. It's evident there's a growing divide in perception towards Jolie, with her actions off screen seemingly taking on more notoriety than her performances. Either she's an annoying do-gooder, or the embodiment of the strong female. Frankly, it's not a debate I want to discuss because the two words that really made me scoff at Rudin's remarks were "minimally talented". I've always considered Jolie to be an actress with a hefty dose of talent. I'm not saying she's one of the greatest, but I'm usually interested in seeing her projects. With the exception of Changeling though (reviewed later), I struggle to actually name a truly great performance from her. So, using a handful of her films, I'm looking simply to find out whether Jolie actually can act.

Here's the one that I absolutely had to include, as this film contains the role that won Jolie the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Curious then, that this film is very much focussed on it's lead actress, Winona Ryder. She plays Susanna Kaysen (author of the film's source material), who at the age of 18 was coerced into committing herself to a mental institution after taking an overdose of painkillers. This film is enshrouded in the ever-present shadow of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, but it does have tricks up it's sleeve to help avoid too many similarities. The fact that it's dealing with female inmates is the most obvious one, but this goes further than the simple difference in sexual organs, with issues that are dealt with as a result of the cast's femininity helping to differ the two. Also, these characters are barely two steps into adulthood, thus giving it a much more youthful feeling. There are flaws though, which serve to make this the inferior film. Most notably, a number of characters feel defined by what it is that makes them "mental", as averse to the person that lies behind and this can run at odds with how the film wants you to perceive those characters. Amongst this though, there are some great performances. In my Tim Burton reviews, I said that I wasn't the biggest fan of Ryder, but some of the films I've seen her in recently may have made me re-evaluate my stance and this is one of them. It's a small performance in a film that's full of large ones and this actually helps to make it stand out. Ryder's own distancing from grand displays of emotion mean that when the time comes for her to go for it, the moments feel more affecting. A smaller supporting role for Brittany Murphy is also well-played and has some real depth to it, despite her minimal screen time. Her storyline also provides the film's most affecting moment, though one that I am remiss to spoil. What, though, of Jolie? This will sound like an insult, but it isn't. Her performance is one that is most notable when she's not around. As the hospital's resident live wire, her off-the-rails (though blatantly compensatory) rebel is presented in bursts and then we get a bit of a break from her: a wise move as her character would become grossly annoying if around for much longer. When she isn't around you can feel how her appearances have affected everyone around her and she becomes the film's touchstone for how things will continue. It's a performance that's at times great, but at other times overdone. In an ending that is riddled with histrionics, she stands most guilty of all. Girl, Interrupted is a film that is built on these performances, but doesn't quite feel like a cohesive whole and holds a slightly unsubtle grasp on it's message. However, those performances are still enough to give this film a recommendation.

THREE out of five

Perhaps the inclusion of Tomb Raider is a little mean. Video game adaptations often serve as the place in which usually great actors (and Milla Jovovich) go to get rid of all the brain rot that's built up inside. Jolie's performance in Tomb Raider is no exception to this, so why do I feel the need to include it? Two reasons. First, she was stupid enough to sign up for a sequel (unless it was contractual obligation, but I'm ignoring that possibility). Also though, I've read a lot of reviews that actually try to claim she's the film's good point. In case you too have gone insane, let's get this straight. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is a film that doesn't have good points. Instead, it has a hell of a lot of average ones. This amounts to a film that will only surprise you when it shows that it isn't laughably bad, but instead boringly pedestrian. For those who need a plot, there's a girl called Lara. She raids tombs. Despite the film's numerous attempts to throw in twists and turns and introduce us to all sorts of shady characters and fellow treasure hunters, that is all the film ever amounts to. It's a staple trademark of director Simon West's work, as he seems drawn to these sorts of films that set up the concept and then attempt to dazzle and excite, rather than intrigue. That may have worked for his debut film Con Air, but some 18 years later, that's still the film you need to go back to when making a case for the guy. Perhaps it's the gratuitous size of Jolie's lips that make it seem like her performance is little more than a pout with an uber-posh British accent, but even by her lofty stands, said lips protrude to an impressive level. Without that, there really isn't anything to remember the performance for. She's just a generic action hero, with her femininity only really defined by the ways in which her many curves are shot. There's also an early Daniel Craig performance, as a rival tomb raider and though Craig demonstrates some of the charm that would earn him the Bond role, he also demonstrates his still present lack of range when it comes to accents. Iain Glen is the only reason that would make you want to check this one out, though the reasons are less than complementary. As chief villain, Manfred Powell, he is every bit as terrible as his moniker. His range of facial emotions range from sneer to mild smirk and he adopts the "talk slowly and slyly" rule when it comes to proving your villainy. All this results in is criminal levels of hamminess. This film is all action and it's all so very forgettable. I just about remember some statues that kill and a spinning thing of some importance at the end, but honestly have no care to remind myself why it was there so that I can elaborate. Tomb Raider doesn't deserve to rank with the Uwe Boll adaptations and it's not as irritating as Prince Of Persia. It's just so royally meh.

TWO out of five

A Mighty Heart is a curious film. It feels like one tailor-made to arrive at the start of the New Year, fitting in with all the other awards season hopefuls. It's a performance-led piece, based on current events and deals with some real-life tragedy. Let's face it, the only thing lacking to make it a shoo-in for Best Picture would be making the lead a cripple. It wasn't released then though. It was released in June, right in the middle of blockbuster season. The inevitable result was it tanked and the sadder result is that it's now been largely forgotten. Not sad because it's an amazing film, but instead because it contains a Jolie performance that would shut a lot of the haters up if anyone had seen it in the first place. Dealing with the 2002 kidnapping of American journalist Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman) by Pakistani militants, the film shows the various attempts to locate and rescue Pearl through the eyes of his pregnant wife Mariane (Jolie). Jolie's performance is one that has a real focus on ticking the "strong woman" boxes (gratefully without tomb raiding this time), but this works because the film wants us to see every facet of Mariane, not just the face of determination. She is a fighter in the truest sense of the word, determined not to allow her husband's kidnappers to see her break. In private though, we see the toll that the ordeal is taking on her and, for the most part, she's brilliant. I say, for the most part, because there are some moments later on in the film that some might find a little much in the expression of emotion, but they worked well enough for me. The film itself, however, is less sure of itself. Michael Winterbottom's direction feels a little confused here, particularly in a sense of tone. For much of the film, he shoots it docudrama style with handheld cameras and creates a feeling that the people on screen are aware of the camera in the room, but have no time to oblige it with attention. That's fine and suits a film that is far less about what happened (you have to assume most people know how it ends) and instead a look at how everything happened. There's moments though where he tries to go cinematic and these jar with the rest of the film, particularly in cases where Mariane is on her own and we get the slow, sad (and slightly manipulative) music creeping in. These simply aren't needed and their objective in making you sympathise with Mariane will be achieved elsewhere unless you're a completely heartless bastard. My comments about A Mighty Heart being designed for Oscar season aren't my way of saying it deserved a load of them, but Jolie's performance perhaps did deserve a bit of the attention that would have come from it, so next time you want to slag her off, watch this first.

THREE out of five

From the simple and affecting, to the overblown and insane. I probably should have gone for Salt here, as it's Jolie in a lead action role, as averse to Wanted where she plays second fiddle to James McAvoy. Salt is a bit of a mess though, saddling numerous great actors with zero chance to break through because of how indecisive the plot is. Wanted is a Timur Bekmambetov film, which means that while it's every bit as stupid as you'd expect from the man who gave us Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, he also has that desire to bring out some characters in his work. McAvoy is Wesley Gibson, a pen-pushing office worker who suffers from anxiety attacks and a chronic case of spinelessness. This all changes when he is approached by Fox (Jolie), an assassin who happened to work with Gibson's previously thought dead father. Gibson is brought into The Fraternity (led by Morgan Freeman, as Morgan Freeman), a group of secret (as averse to the usually public) assassins, who are assigned their targets by (and this is the good bit) The Loom Of Fate. That being a loom which names the target through a secret code defined by the errors in it's weaves. Thinking about this film will give you a headache and also mostly defies the point of it. Though the film does have some attempt at societal comment in Gibson's own perceived lack of use in the world, once it gets going, it's all about the action. Bullets curve, heads explode and bodies fall to the ground as the devastating lack of subtlety to The Fraternity's methods begs the persistent question: how the hell do they remain so secret? Both McAvoy and Jolie make for good to great action leads, with McAvoy not looking quite as out of place as you'd initially expect in the action sequences. He may be every bit as whiny as he is snarky, but he represents the everyman. Jolie, on the other hand, represents the ideal, as the cool and determined aspirational figure. Though she may be a cold-blooded killer, her reasons are fully justified and she's the film's strongest presence. There is one thing though that really sticks in this and it's one of my real bugbears in action films. When your supposed heroes show just as little concern for the well-being of the general public as your apparent villains do, it all blurs the lines and gets a little bit uncomfortable. The film's big action sequence on a train may be thrilling, but becomes unsettling in how uncaring the film seems to be towards the truly horrific nature of what is occurring. It may not be on the level of the old favourite of destroying London and then continuing on as if nothing happened afterwards, but it is still something that I absolutely hate in these sorts of films. Move on from that and Wanted is the sort of film that will serve all of your action needs. However, if you must insist on the presence of brains, assume this to be the case…

FOUR out of five

My subtle hint in the introduction may have given this away, but praise Clint Eastwood for I love this film. It even baffles me how the year that Slumdog Millionaire dominated the awards season gave almost no love to Changeling. Based on the infuriatingly sickening, but brilliantly told true story of events that occurred in Wineville, California during the 1920s (I'm spoiling nothing), Jolie is Christine Collins, a single mother whose son Walter goes missing. After several weeks, LAPD Captain J.J. Jones (the outstanding Jeffrey Donovan) delivers the good news that they have found her son alive and well. The reunion, however, isn't as happy as one would expect, as the boy presented to Collins isn't her son, but the LAPD refuse to believe her. What follows is a delve into a story that is powerful, but deeply disturbing as Collins and the Reverend Gustav Brieglev (John Malkovich) seek to expose the lies of the LAPD that will hopefully lead to finding her real son. While the supporting performances are great (Michael Kelly and Colm Feore are just as good as Donovan and Malkovich), this really is a Jolie vehicle, as she gives her what I think is the greatest performance of her career. There are a lot of similarities between this and her portrayal of Mariane Pearl, but as good as she was at Pearl, she is much better here, getting the balance between determination and despair bang on. Eastwood's direction is fairly standard for Eastwood, as he's always been a fairly blunt director who's very much focussed on story. While it must be said that complaining about a lack of subtlety in his films is a bit like complaining about a bad smell in an abattoir, there is one odd moment that lets the side down a little. The story eventually bring us to a mental asylum and these scene are distractingly stereotypical. It's curious because the more I watch those scenes, the more I dislike them, but there's so much good elsewhere that I could never bring myself to mark the film down for it. The film's final scenes are truly brilliant and completely negate any of these flaws that have previously occurred. I have now seen Changeling three times and I could watch it again right away. The reason this review is shorter is not because I can't think of what to say, it's because I already feel as though I've given too much of this magnificent film away and I refuse to give more.

FIVE out of five

Changeling is magnificent. Magnificent rhymes with Maleficent. Maleficent is rubbish.

ONE out of five

Alright, alright. I'll do it properly. I mentioned to a friend how average I thought Maleficent was, but after thinking about it I found myself hating this film more and more. Effectively the story of Sleeping Beauty told from the perspective of Jolie as chief villain Maleficent, the film seeks to put a new spin on things, giving us some perspective for why she does what she does. Jolie is the film's sole light, but I'm scraping there. She's got some pizazz about her and some wicked wit that occasionally helps the film rise out of the doldrums, but everything else is there to throw it back in there. The writers appear to think that we want to see the good side of Maleficent, with very little of the bad side and that is far from the case. As she watches the young Aurora grow up, blissfully unaware of the curse placed upon her, Maleficent softens to her and takes on the role of the good guy, rather than develop into the villain that made her a classic character. Her growing admiration toward Aurora then become the true focus of the film, consuming a good three quarters of the (blissfully only 90 minute) running time. The ending is where the film packs most of the surprises, but they're not good ones. It's rare that I actually yell at the TV screen, but this films ending caused me to spout out two words in it's direction (the second one was "off"). I don't recall ever having done that before. It's not like the film is all that exemplary on a visual side either. It's pretty enough, which should be expected from a fairy tale story, but the effects themselves don't blend with the real action. You can practically see a cut-out line around all of the non-CGI characters as they stand there, but never feel like they've blended into the surroundings. On the acting side, despite Jolie's solid turn, all of the supporting performances are poor and I mean that without exception. The usually decent Elle Fanning does little other than this eardrum-chewing laugh that makes you want Maleficent to heighten the curse and also holds a grossly painful stab at the British accent. The three pixies (played here by Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple and Lesley Manville) lack that motherly feel and go for the slapstick, which also dies on it's arse. Meanwhile, Sharlto Copley and Sam Riley are just a bit dull in their roles: which is a real blight for Copley as he's fairly pivotal. I guess the best thing that could be said about Maleficent is that it isn't as bad when you're watching it, as it is when you think about it afterwards. So I guess you'll just have to try and not do the second bit. I did though.

ONE out of five

Let's close by answering the question though. Can Angelina Jolie act?