Short Takes
by Ella Taylor
CONTROL Covering the final years of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis’ brief life, music photographer Anton Corbijn’s directorial debut traces its subject from his teen years obsessing over Bowie records to his troubled relationship with wife Debbie (Samantha Morton) to his battles with depression and epilepsy to his 1980 suicide. Unlike most rock biopics—which try to impose themes, motives and Behind the Music inanities onto popular music’s mercurial talents—Control strips away Curtis’ tragic-deity status. Shot in demythologizing black-and-white, Corbijn’s film eschews a moment-by-moment documentation of Joy Division’s rise and fall, instead offering a moody snapshot of Curtis’ fragile mental state via newcomer Sam Riley. Beyond resembling the singer, Riley channels Curtis’ essence, resulting in a characterization that feels appropriately under-formed. Control never lets you forget that Curtis was only 23 when he took his own life; the Ian we see here is a well-meaning work in progress, a perpetually flailing little boy. Curtis never could have imagined that almost 30 years after his death anyone would bother making a film about what he perceived as his miserable existence. Control honors its subject’s eternal self-doubt by honing in on that truth and leaving the legend to others. —Tim Grierson (Opens Friday at Green Hills)
MR. MAGORIUM’S WONDER EMPORIUM Writer-director Zach Helm’s amiable but nerveless kids’ movie about a 243-year-old toy-store owner (Dustin Hoffman in shell-shocked hair, purple suit and annoying lithp) who prepares to hand over his unusual business begins with a bracing meditation on the inevitability of death. With that the film grows tediously familiar, stuffed with PSAs about the importance of belief and the life you make for yourself until the time comes to croak without fuss. This falls on the deaf ears of the unfulfilled souls who most need to hear it: Mr. Magorium’s existentially stalled manager Mahoney (Natalie Portman, dressed as if doing public penance for her nude scene in Wes Anderson’s Hotel Chevalier); Eric (the appealing Zach Mills), a sensitive 9-year-old collector of kooky hats; and The Mutant (Jason Bateman), a buttoned-down accountant who knows nothing of love or play. All very sweet, but where do you take a movie without noticeable adversaries beyond the enemy within? The only creature worth rooting for is the emporium itself, a charmingly anarchic showcase for misbehavior by the kind of handmade toys only scads of cutting-edge CGI could bring to life. Helm’s pacing is as pallid as his palette is vivid, and for a movie that celebrates wonder and strangeness, the whole enterprise feels coy and half-baked. —Ella Taylor (Opens Friday)
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