The Limits of Control

The Limits of Control snuck into town (playing at the Landmark River Oaks) and will probably be gone by the time its run is brief. Make plans to check it out if you consider yourself a savvy filmgoer because this latest film from Jim Jarmusch displays arthouse smarts to spare.
The story repeats itself like a cinematic rhyme. Each scene apes the previous scene in terms of action and dialogue with the main character the only constant factor. The form is minimalist, the music features feedback droning guitar sounds, the cinematography of Christopher Doyle is precise. Some shots outside a railroad car window suggest digital manipulation.
In many ways Limits of Control feels like old school arthouse as opposed to more accessible arthouse fare like the neo-classical style of Soderbergh in Girlfriend Experience or Sam Mendes with the hip breezy Away We Go. The audiences for all of the mentioned films is small but devoted. In the case of Jarmusch the audience will be tested perhaps to the limits of their endurance.
For The Limits of Control it's like Jarmusch wanted to stay in the Ghost Dog lane but also instill the sense of a stern almost authoritative hand not found in early works like Down By Law or Dead Man. The mission once completed doesn't really satisfy on a narrative scale. In fact there's a brief scene right before the protagonist, a taciturn liquidator known as the Lone Man (Isaach De Bankolé who is somewhat of a regular cast member in Jarmusch films), assassinates his assignment that suggest he may be imaging the scene we're observing and in fact has only killed a femme (Paz de la Huerta) who we see lying naked on a bed as Lone Man pulls the sheets over her head. Her character (simply credited as Nude) is the only supporting player that appears more than once. Everyone else - Bill Murray, Gael García Bernal, John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, there are others - show up for one dialogue scene only. (There is a brief shot of Swinton after her one sequence but she doesn't talk.) Of course such prognostication can only be fueled by filmmaking of a highly subjective point of view.
I felt challenged by The Limits of Control and mustered much of my previous movie going acumen to rise to the level of intellectual comfort Jarmusch was trying to provide.

Easy Virtue

Easy Virtue will be reminiscent to audiences familiar with upstairs-downstairs English drawing room style comedy because it is itself part of the template of such scenarios that are so popular with modern audiences. Noel Coward wrote Easy Virtue as a play in the mid-20s. It was made as a silent film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1928 and although I haven't seen that I would out of curiosity. The curiosity factor lessens with the current version, not because it lacks quality which it has overflowing, but because of the repeat effect.
Prodigal son (Ben Barnes, a bland male ingenue) John Whittaker returns home to his English family estate. Kristen Scott Thomas dotes as the mother while Colin Firth essays the detached father with ease. Two younger daughters make snide remarks and the whole tone is arch and funny, with one valet in particular saying a couple of great zingers. John has married an American race car driver (Jessica Biel) and the family, save the father, is simply aghast.
Scott Thomas could never be accused of overacting but she comes close here. Biel sings and acts with conviction making one wish the director gave us more insight during the film's few intimate scenes. There's a plot point involving a pet chihuahua that just doesn't work in the film, and certainly it's been seen more than once anyway.
Production values are top notch but sometimes helmer Stephan Elliott (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is his best known film but his couple of other movies were hardly distributed in America.) throws in arty shots like an overhead view that doesn't really enhance the story so much as call attention to itself.
Easy Virtue will satisfy a sophisticated audience. That's not its problem though. The fact remains that Easy Virtue blends into so many other films just like it that people will be hard pressed to call it a favorite.

Adoration

Adoration attempts to draw interest with a group of disparate characters who soon connect in various ways. Thematically the film wants to deal with issues like how teenagers react to memories of deceased parents in a post-9/11 world. There's a preachy vibe that never overwhelms the story but is there nonetheless.
As much as I like films by Atom Egoyan the ennui inducing Adoration ranks as one of his least interesting films. It's like someone was trying to copy the Egoyan of Exotica or Sweet Hereafter and not having much luck.
Adoration will be of interest for completists who want to see everything done by normally interesting actors like Scott Speedman or Arsinée Khanjian. She's Egoyan's real-life spouse and Speedman only seems to get serious roles in native Canadian films like this one or My Life WIthout Me (otherwise he appears in American films like Underworld). Adoration overflows with characterizations that would be compelling in literature but on film feel like a carbon copy of life.
There's the tow truck driver who devotes his life to raising his nephew when his sister dies in a car accident. The youngster uses his parents death as a fictional starting point to write a story about them really dying in a terrorist situation. This raises the ire of his school and results in the termination of the teacher who not only encouraged the story but unbeknownst to everyone else was formally married to the dead husband. Then there's a cab driver who doesn't actually have a big role but does threaten to throw up in a restaurant and manages to steal some of the lead actor's glory. Later in the movie when the fired teacher jokes about throwing up you almost wish she would just to propel the movie into a confrontational level it lacks.
Production values are slick, especially several tracking shots on a highway that involve the cab and the tow truck. Adoration keeps threatening to become a film with a payoff but that never transpires.

The Hangover

The best thing about The Hangover may be it's R-rated comic hi-jinx and the fact it's a bromance comedy that doesn't feature Paul Rudd or Seth Rogen. Four guys on a bachelor party bender spend a wild couple of days in Las Vegas, most of their time trying to figure what happened during the first wild night. It seems they all wake up with amnesia and can't remember the events of the previous evening's revelry.
The Hangover starts out promising enough with some interesting establishing shots of the California-Nevada journey. The quartet awaken with a stupefying hangover and clues (missing tooth, new baby, tiger in the bathroom) that suggest one member's wedding may not take place on schedule. He's the one that's missing. All logic pretty much gets tossed out the sealed penthouse window as the script hops from sitcom-level supporting characters to absurd situations.
This is not a film that cares about motivation as long as there's the chance to crack wise about the effects of debauchery. Considering the director made Road Trip and Old School only puts the juvenile buddy antics in perspective. The Hangover doesn't adhere to the reality it establishes in the beginning. There's never any resistance to their mayhem. The gangsters with guns and trained tigers are props for gags rather than real dangers. A bunch of dudes are dosed with sedatives that give them a collected memory blackout yet they have the stamina to tear up the town for several hours before they pass out - yeah right.
Why didn't they drop some powerful hallucinogen and make it a real movie? The portrayals of women are either shrewish girlfriends or hookers with hearts of gold. The Hangover will never exceed the appeal of Vegas in movies like Singles or even Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Even second-tier crapfests like What Happens in Vegas or Honeymoon in Vegas are easier to swallow.