2 Ekim 2013 Çarşamba
Now playing at an indie art house theater near you:
ENOUGH SAID (Dir. Nicole Holofcener, 2013)
It’s a testament to the talents of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the late great James Gandolfini that I forgot about Elaine Bendis and Tony Soprano, i.e. their iconic characters from Seinfeld and The Sopranos, while watching Nicole Holofcener’s newest indie rom com ENOUGH SAID.
Sure, Louis-Dreyfus has some of Elaine’s neurotic neediness, and Gandolfini shares some of Tony’s unhealthy appetites, but the people they portray here are grounded in a more stable sensibility. A sensibility that will be recognizable to those who’ve seen Holofcener’s previous movies that have largely dealt with modern women coming to terms with, well, being modern women, and always have Catherine Keener in them (see: WALKING AND TALKING, LOVELY & AMAZING, FRIENDS WITH WOMEN, PLEASE GIVE).
Here Keener plays Gandolfini’s ex-wife, a successful poet (successful enough to know Joni Mitchell) who hires Louis-Dreyfus to be her masseuse after befriending her at a party. Unknown to Keener, Louis-Dreyfus has begun dating Gandolfini, who she met at the same party.
So when Keener complains at length about her ex-husband during their sessions, Louis-Dreyfus is making all kinds of mental notes about her new beau’s faults. Louis-Dreyfus wants a playbook to guide her through the emotional minefield of when dating somebody gets serious, and for a time Keener unknowingly serves that purpose.
This hilariously comes to a head when Louis-Dreyfus can’t help picking on him about such things as the calories in guacamole at a dinner party with Toni Collette and Ben Falcone (Melissa McCarthy’s husband that you may remember as the Air Marshall in BRIDESMAIDS). On the uneasy drive home, Gandolfini remarks: “Why do I feel like I just spent the evening with my ex-wife?”
Despite its rom com-style plotting – i.e. one half of a couple is keeping something from the other until they get way in over their head – ENOUGH SAID doesn’t strain for laughs, or go for cheap one-liners. Holofcener, who wrote the screenplay, simply wants to spend some time with some flawed folks who are making their way through a transitional period.
There’s somewhat of a misshapen subplot concerning Louis-Dreyfus’s daughter (Tracey Fairaway) leaving home for college, with the mother over compensating by becoming way too close to her daughter’s best friend (Tracey Fairaway), but it doesn’t clutter up the main storyline.
Although Holofcener definitely has her own thing going on, in tone and relationship perspective, I was reminded of Jay and Mark Duplass’s 2010 comedy CYRUS, which also dealt with a couple who met at a party and have an obstacle or two to overcome, and also had Catherine Keener as the ex-wife. In that and in ENOUGH SAID, both very likable low key indies, I rooted strongly for the leads to stick it out.
The chemistry Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus have together is pleasing yet fleeting as we can’t help but be aware that the man is no longer with us. We can at least take a little comfort in the fact that Gandolfini has two more films in the can (small parts in NICKY DUECE and ANIMAL RESCUE set for next year), but that this is his last lead performance is very sad indeed.
ENOUGH SAID will perhaps be remembered more for that than its content, but however people come to it, most will find that it’s a thoughtful and witty take on the insecurities involved with taking a second chance at love. It really shows how good Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus were together working with Holofcener's moody material that that’s the real takeaway.
More later...
ENOUGH SAID (Dir. Nicole Holofcener, 2013)
It’s a testament to the talents of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the late great James Gandolfini that I forgot about Elaine Bendis and Tony Soprano, i.e. their iconic characters from Seinfeld and The Sopranos, while watching Nicole Holofcener’s newest indie rom com ENOUGH SAID.
Sure, Louis-Dreyfus has some of Elaine’s neurotic neediness, and Gandolfini shares some of Tony’s unhealthy appetites, but the people they portray here are grounded in a more stable sensibility. A sensibility that will be recognizable to those who’ve seen Holofcener’s previous movies that have largely dealt with modern women coming to terms with, well, being modern women, and always have Catherine Keener in them (see: WALKING AND TALKING, LOVELY & AMAZING, FRIENDS WITH WOMEN, PLEASE GIVE).
Here Keener plays Gandolfini’s ex-wife, a successful poet (successful enough to know Joni Mitchell) who hires Louis-Dreyfus to be her masseuse after befriending her at a party. Unknown to Keener, Louis-Dreyfus has begun dating Gandolfini, who she met at the same party.
So when Keener complains at length about her ex-husband during their sessions, Louis-Dreyfus is making all kinds of mental notes about her new beau’s faults. Louis-Dreyfus wants a playbook to guide her through the emotional minefield of when dating somebody gets serious, and for a time Keener unknowingly serves that purpose.
This hilariously comes to a head when Louis-Dreyfus can’t help picking on him about such things as the calories in guacamole at a dinner party with Toni Collette and Ben Falcone (Melissa McCarthy’s husband that you may remember as the Air Marshall in BRIDESMAIDS). On the uneasy drive home, Gandolfini remarks: “Why do I feel like I just spent the evening with my ex-wife?”
Despite its rom com-style plotting – i.e. one half of a couple is keeping something from the other until they get way in over their head – ENOUGH SAID doesn’t strain for laughs, or go for cheap one-liners. Holofcener, who wrote the screenplay, simply wants to spend some time with some flawed folks who are making their way through a transitional period.
There’s somewhat of a misshapen subplot concerning Louis-Dreyfus’s daughter (Tracey Fairaway) leaving home for college, with the mother over compensating by becoming way too close to her daughter’s best friend (Tracey Fairaway), but it doesn’t clutter up the main storyline.
Although Holofcener definitely has her own thing going on, in tone and relationship perspective, I was reminded of Jay and Mark Duplass’s 2010 comedy CYRUS, which also dealt with a couple who met at a party and have an obstacle or two to overcome, and also had Catherine Keener as the ex-wife. In that and in ENOUGH SAID, both very likable low key indies, I rooted strongly for the leads to stick it out.
The chemistry Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus have together is pleasing yet fleeting as we can’t help but be aware that the man is no longer with us. We can at least take a little comfort in the fact that Gandolfini has two more films in the can (small parts in NICKY DUECE and ANIMAL RESCUE set for next year), but that this is his last lead performance is very sad indeed.
ENOUGH SAID will perhaps be remembered more for that than its content, but however people come to it, most will find that it’s a thoughtful and witty take on the insecurities involved with taking a second chance at love. It really shows how good Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus were together working with Holofcener's moody material that that’s the real takeaway.
More later...
18 Eylül 2013 Çarşamba
Occasionally, I’m going to shine a spotlight on a could be classic scene from cinema history. This time around, let’s take a look at the final casino scene from Martin Campbell's 2006 James Bond film CASINO ROYALE.
The film, the 21st in the series, was the first outing as 007 for Daniel Craig, and it served as a reboot for Bond after the increasing silliness of the Pierce Brosnan entries.
A film I wrote about earlier this year, John Dahl’s 1998 poker-driven crime drama ROUNDERS is widely respected within the casino games community, on the grounds that the gambling is more realistically depicted than usual in Hollywood movies, but the gambling scenes in CASINO ROYALE put cinema over realism in a way that only Bond movies can.
No one should ever expect gritty realism in a Bond film so when our secret agent hero faces off against arch villain Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) over a game of Texas Hold’em the stakes are absurdly high. Bond knows he has to win, because le Chiffre plans to use the winnings to aid terrorists, which gives the game an edge even the most gripping of cinematic poker games could never match.
In the scene, the game is down to four players - Bond, Chiffre, Fukutu (Tom So), and Infante (Ade) – with four million in the pot. Bond has the biggest stack of chips, and the coolest demeanor, of course. After studying his main opponent with his icy eyes, Bond puts his entire 40 million, 5 hundred thousand in on the next hand to the gasping of the roomful of patrons surrounding them. Chiffre follows suit, and puts his money, all $115 million of it, in the pot.
Watch the scene and feel the tension:
With so many glitzy gambling scenes throughout the series, it would be hard to say that this one is the best, but it's definitely in the top 5 I'd say. It also recalls that the first time we met 007 on the silver screen, portrayed by Sean Connery in 1962’s DR. NO, he was sitting in a tux at a gambling table. Some things never change.
More later...
5 Nisan 2013 Cuma
Opening today at a multiplex near you:
JURASSIC PARK 3D
(Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1993)
To celebrate its 20th anniversary, and to create franchise awareness for the big ass IMAX 3D event spectacular JURASSIC PARK IV set for Summer 2014, Steven Spielberg’s action adventure epic has now been outfitted in 3D for a theatrical re-release opening today.
That’s all well and good, but at the advance screening I attended, the image looked faded. The colors were much more vibrant in a revival screening I saw the same week of THE MUPPET MOVIE (part of the Cool Classics series at the Colony Theater in Raleigh), and that was an original 35 mm print 15 years older than JURASSIC PARK!
I know, I know, it's digital and I can only speak for how it looked at the one screening I saw, so I’ll be curious to know if any other movie-goers experienced such a dim image. When I see TV spots for the film, the color looks over-saturated, as if to make up for the faded picture. But anyway, on to the actual movie.
I could tell from the feel of the packed auditorium (and overhearing some random chatting) that many there had not seen the original JURASSIC PARK before. It has been a long time since I’ve seen it in full, but it has been on television so often that I’m very familiar with large chunks of it.
The Spielberg sense of otherworldly awe, that shined blindingly in such classics as CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND , RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and E.T., takes its last glorious gasp here.
The scene where Richard Attenborough introduces Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and the less famous kids (Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello) to the wide landscape of cloned dinosaurs still has jaw-dropping impact, but the 3D-ness present this time is only intermittently effective throughout the film (the shot with the T-rex roaring into the jeep mirror with the disclaimer “Objects may seem closer than they appear” is one effective in-your-face instance). But most of the time, I didn’t even notice it.
The storyline (based on the 1990 novel by Michael Cricton, who co-wrote the screenplay with Spielberg cronie David Koepp) hasn’t really aged well - i.e. billionaire Attenborough brings a team of paleontologists and scientists (Neill, Dern, Goldblum), and a blood-sucking lawyer (Martin Ferrero) to inspect his new cloned dinosaur island theme park, but things go wrong (thanks to the conniving ways of Newman from Seinfeld) and they spend the rest of the movie being chased by CGI dinosaurs - but does it matter with so many genuine thrills on display? No it doesn’t.
It also has a number of entertaining elements such as a pre-PULP FICTION Samuel L. Jackson (“hold on to your butts!”) as the park’s chief engineer, the before mentioned Newman (actually Wayne Knight) providing snotty comic relief (Goldblum provides the more egg-headed kind), and a great suspenseful sequence with the kids trying to escape from a few raptors in the lavish kitchen in the visitor’s center, so the film still largely holds up.
It’s not even that dated - I only noticed Knight drinking a Jolt Cola, and Richards identifying herself as a “hacker” reminded me how new a term that was 20 years ago.
However, over and over I could tell that in this new 3D presentation, the things that got rises from the audience (many of whom were kids) came from Spielberg’s film making drive being in fifth gear, not the 3D enhancement, which, as I said before, didn’t look very good.
If your kids haven’t seen it, or only seen it on TV, a matinee may be in order of Spielberg’s crowd-pleaser, but contrary to Attenborough’s repeated boasts throughout the film, it looks to me like they did spare some expense with this re-tinkering, so brace yourself for a picture that doesn’t quite pop.
Sigh. If only a 2D 20th anniversary re-release was an option at the multiplexes.
More later...
JURASSIC PARK 3D
(Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1993)
To celebrate its 20th anniversary, and to create franchise awareness for the big ass IMAX 3D event spectacular JURASSIC PARK IV set for Summer 2014, Steven Spielberg’s action adventure epic has now been outfitted in 3D for a theatrical re-release opening today.
That’s all well and good, but at the advance screening I attended, the image looked faded. The colors were much more vibrant in a revival screening I saw the same week of THE MUPPET MOVIE (part of the Cool Classics series at the Colony Theater in Raleigh), and that was an original 35 mm print 15 years older than JURASSIC PARK!
I know, I know, it's digital and I can only speak for how it looked at the one screening I saw, so I’ll be curious to know if any other movie-goers experienced such a dim image. When I see TV spots for the film, the color looks over-saturated, as if to make up for the faded picture. But anyway, on to the actual movie.
I could tell from the feel of the packed auditorium (and overhearing some random chatting) that many there had not seen the original JURASSIC PARK before. It has been a long time since I’ve seen it in full, but it has been on television so often that I’m very familiar with large chunks of it.
The Spielberg sense of otherworldly awe, that shined blindingly in such classics as CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND , RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, and E.T., takes its last glorious gasp here.
The scene where Richard Attenborough introduces Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and the less famous kids (Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello) to the wide landscape of cloned dinosaurs still has jaw-dropping impact, but the 3D-ness present this time is only intermittently effective throughout the film (the shot with the T-rex roaring into the jeep mirror with the disclaimer “Objects may seem closer than they appear” is one effective in-your-face instance). But most of the time, I didn’t even notice it.
The storyline (based on the 1990 novel by Michael Cricton, who co-wrote the screenplay with Spielberg cronie David Koepp) hasn’t really aged well - i.e. billionaire Attenborough brings a team of paleontologists and scientists (Neill, Dern, Goldblum), and a blood-sucking lawyer (Martin Ferrero) to inspect his new cloned dinosaur island theme park, but things go wrong (thanks to the conniving ways of Newman from Seinfeld) and they spend the rest of the movie being chased by CGI dinosaurs - but does it matter with so many genuine thrills on display? No it doesn’t.
It also has a number of entertaining elements such as a pre-PULP FICTION Samuel L. Jackson (“hold on to your butts!”) as the park’s chief engineer, the before mentioned Newman (actually Wayne Knight) providing snotty comic relief (Goldblum provides the more egg-headed kind), and a great suspenseful sequence with the kids trying to escape from a few raptors in the lavish kitchen in the visitor’s center, so the film still largely holds up.
It’s not even that dated - I only noticed Knight drinking a Jolt Cola, and Richards identifying herself as a “hacker” reminded me how new a term that was 20 years ago.
However, over and over I could tell that in this new 3D presentation, the things that got rises from the audience (many of whom were kids) came from Spielberg’s film making drive being in fifth gear, not the 3D enhancement, which, as I said before, didn’t look very good.
If your kids haven’t seen it, or only seen it on TV, a matinee may be in order of Spielberg’s crowd-pleaser, but contrary to Attenborough’s repeated boasts throughout the film, it looks to me like they did spare some expense with this re-tinkering, so brace yourself for a picture that doesn’t quite pop.
Sigh. If only a 2D 20th anniversary re-release was an option at the multiplexes.
More later...
15 Mart 2013 Cuma
This new documentary, rockumentary if you will, as Marty DiBergi would say, is now playing in selected cities across the country:
DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’: EVERYMAN’S JOURNEY
(Dir. Ramona S. Diaz, 2012)
Dammit! I can never escape Journey.
Over three decades since they first tortured me via AOR radio, the San Francisco band's particular brand of schlocky power balladry is still unavoidable. The use of the song “Don’t Stop Believin’” in the controversial last episode of The Sopranos has had a lot to do with the current resurgence of the band’s popularity that came to an ugly head in last summer’s awful ‘80s hair rock homage ROCK OF AGES (happily that movie flopped).
I should’ve accepted by now that Journey is a corporate rock machine, one that will keep going even if it has to replace a vital part. This documentary, the debut full length feature by director Ramona S. Diaz, is about the most recent replacement of the band’s lead singer in 2008, for an album and tour that was already in the works.
What’s interesting, or at least amusing, is how they went about finding their man. Guitarist and founding member Neil Schon trolled YouTube watching clips of Journey cover bands and tribute artists in a desperate last minute search to find a Steve Perry sound-alike for what he calls that “legacy sound.”
Schon happened upon videos of Arnel Pineda, a Filipino singer/songwriter who could imitate Perry’s vocal chops impeccably. Schon sent Pineda an email offering him the job that stressed “this is not a joke,” and before you know it, the skinny energetic 40-year old was fronting the band he idolized.
And then suddenly, Journey has more of an international appeal.
This is all established in the first 15 minutes so after that the documentary goes in circles through Journey’s history, stuff that was better covered in their episode of VH1’s Behind The Music, and through footage of the band onstage and backstage on their Revelation Tour ‘08.
Despite the name of the tour depicted, there are no real revelations in the backstage stuff, which is the kind of fluff that fills up special features on concert Blu ray or DVD releases, and the lengthy chunks of the band performing to thousands of appreciative fans will only be appreciated by those same fans.
Diaz’s documentary is most compelling when it touches on the fans that weren’t on board with Pineda joining Journey. We see Pineda reacting to cruel racist posts on internet message boards like one that yells with all caps: “ONLY FILIPINOS WILL SUPPORT TIS CRAPPY SINGER!!!!!!” (misspelling kept intact).
“I think he should be from here,” says one young female concertgoer, who stresses she’s not being racist. Another girl in the same concert venue parking lot counters with “He sounds just like him, and it’s still music.” Well, at least she’s half right. No, that’s a cheap shot, but I wish they spent more time with the white trash fans getting drunk and spouting out inanities before the show, but that’s probably because it reminded me of HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT (Jeff Krulik’s 1986 short shot in the parking lot of a Judas Priest that lives up to its cult reputation).
It’s all well and good, that Pineda was able to overcome the poverty of the streets of Manila and the rough living of his youth to hit the big-time, and it’s great he could buy his family a nice house and all, but the way that this is packaged, like an inspirational polemic is laughable. It seems to be saying that you too could be plucked from YouTube obscurity to front your favorite band, so don’t stop believin’ in your dreams, kids!
Pineda’s storyline weaving through the history of Journey’s branding does have uplifting elements, and he seems like a nice guy humbled by the spotlight, but, hey, it’s a one in a million tale of luck. No amount of belief will change that, even if it goes on and on and on and on and on…
More later...
26 Kasım 2012 Pazartesi
THE EXPENDABLES 2 (Dir. Simon West, 2012)Sylvester Stallone and his army of aging action movie icons are back in this big noisy sequel that’s actually better than the first one. Don't get me wrong - it's a bad movie, but it's a much more gloriously stupid experience the second time out.
2010’s THE EXPENDABLES only had a grasp on half a formula, but the follow-up is full on formula and much more big dumb fun.
It also tops the first one by having much more of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis, who both just put in cameos in the original, and it has a lot more explosions - the first 10 minutes feels like it’s packed with more explosions than in Michael Bay’s entire career! There’s a lot more CGI-ed blood splatter too.
This time, Stallone along with Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, and Terry Crews, (Steve Austin doesn’t return, and sadly there’s no Mickey Rourke) are taking on Jean-Claude Van Damme as an evil arms dealer.
There’s a new Expendable, the young Liam Hemsworth, but the second he starts talking about one last mission before he goes home to his girlfriend we know he’s going to die (my wife called it, and she was on her laptop not even really paying attention to the movie).
As if Stallone, along with co-writer Richard Wenk, knew that there was way too much testosterone on the screen, we’ve also got the addition of Chinese actress Yu Nan, as a CIA agent brought in by Willis. Nan is in charge of the movie’s MacGuffin, a computer that contains the location of tons of plutonium, but is it any surprise that the plot doesn’t matter?
It’s just an excuse to get all these guys together for a bunch of shoot-outs, stunts, quick-cut instances of hand to hand combat, and, yep, ginormous explosions all set in Foreign locales (Bulgaria, China).
The film really falters in its downtime when we are reminded that these guys aren’t great actors, something the horribly written dialogue immensely highlights.
Willis, maybe the best actor here, is given what’s possibly the single worst line of 2012: “For all this male pattern badness I’ve got to put you in the deepest darkest hole at Gitmo.”
There’s more humor here than before too, albeit some is unintentional, like when Chuck Norris in what amounts to a cameo, throws a bad guy out a window yet still fires his machine gun at him.
Also there’s a bunch of shout-outs to the principal’s previous roles - Schwarzenegger, who is told that he may be terminated, mocks Willis’ “Yippee Ki Yay” catchphrase from DIE HARD, Rambo is mentioned, and Norris’ nickname is “Lone Wolf.” That’s fine by me, these guys can self reference all they want, it only adds to the film’s awareness that it’s a colossal collection of action movie clichés, a thorough homage to the genre’s ‘80s heyday.
Stallone was right to hand over direction duties to Simon West. West (CON AIR, the first LAURA CROFT) is no wunderkind, but his handling of all this noisy spectacle, along with veteran action cinematographer Shelly Johnson, comes together much more cohesively than Stallone’s ham fisted helming of the first one.
My biggest complaint is that for a Blu ray of a new movie, the image is really grainy, grimy even, and out of focus at times, but I’ve read that it looked that way in theaters. Maybe that’s just keeping in line with how crappy visually the ‘80s action standards this movie apes were, but I doubt it was that intentional.
Special Features: By far the best of the bonus material is a half hour featurette called “Big Guns, Bigger Heroes,” which puts THE EXPENDABLES movies in their proper context by examining the rise of the action film genre in the Reagan era. Other features include an audio commentary by Simon West, featurettes entitled “Gods of War,” “On the Assault,” “Guns For Hire” (about real life government mercenaries for hire), a couple of minutes of deleted scenes, and a gag reel.
Bonus Blu ray review:
Released last August right when THE EXPENDABLES 2 hit theaters, was a 3 film collection of Stallone titles: RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD, COP LAND, and the lesser known LOCK UP.
I’m not usually a fan of those DVD or Blu ray deals that you see for sale in supermarkets or big- box stores that package random films together or in this case, three films by a well known actor, but if you’re a fan and are running out of shelf space, maybe they’re ideal. It doesn’t bode well that the Blu ray cover sports an image of Stallone with a mustache and shades that’s not from any of the films in the set (it’s from GET CARTER), but the movies aren’t bare boned like in other packages; they feature all the bonus materials that accompanied their DVD special editions.
Makes me wonder why they didn’t just package the first 3 Rambo movies together, but I digress. The first Rambo film, originally just titled FIRST BLOOD (Dir. Ted Kotcheff, 1982), holds up as Stallone as his sweaty best as a dead-eyed Vietnam vet taking on the entire police force of a small town in Washington, largely because the local hard-ass Sherriff (Brian Dennehey) is an asshole.
Dennehey thinks Stallone is just an aimless drifter, but a grizzled Colonel (Richard Crenna) corrects him: “You don't seem to want to accept the fact you're dealing with an expert in guerrilla warfare, with a man who's the best, with guns, with knives, with his bare hands.” So Rambo builds traps, destroys a lot of property with a machine gun, and blows up buildings (there were a lot more explosions than I remember when I saw it as a kid), but actually doesn’t kill anybody.
Stallone, who co-wrote, gives a crazed cried-out speech at the end, that plays the sympathy card for Vietnam vets who got a raw deal for what it’s worth, then a laughably dated power ballad (“It’s a Long Road,” written by Jerry Goldsmith, sung by Dan Hill, whoever that is) plays over the end credits. Great cornball stuff through and through that’s been satirized a zillion times yet still packs a whallop. Funny how the picture quality of the FIRST BLOOD Blu ray is a lot sharper than THE EXPENDABLES 2 Blu ray too.
Special features include the alternate ending in which Rambo dies, a half hour featurette (“Drawing First Blood”), and 2 commentaries – one by Stallone, the other by writer David Morrell.
An odd choice for this 3 Blu ray set, is James Mangold’s COP LAND (1997), which Stallone himself described as a more thoughtful film than he had been known for when he hosted SNL to promote the film’s release. It is, but despite its amazing cast, including Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Janeane Garofalo, Michael Rapaport, Robert Patrick, Peter Berg, Arthur Nascarella, and John Spencer, and cool premise (the town of Garrison, New Jersey is run by corrupt New York City cops who reside there), the movie isn’t fleshed out enough to really make an impact, and it comes off like second hand Scorsese.
Still, it’s one of Stallone’s best roles: Freddy Heflin, the schlubby (he gained a gut for this part) good guy Sheriff of Garrison, who’s pushed around by just about everybody, as he pines for Annabella Sciorra (married to one of the corrupt cops). I love that the guy falls asleep drunk on his beat up couch listening to Springsteen’s “The River.” For once, Stallone pulls off a performance of pained powerlessness with none of his trademark alpha-male-isms. It’s also cool to see De Niro and Keitel sparring in their last film together, along with almost every Sopranos bit player you can think of on the sidelines. Plus it has a great well paced bloody ending, so, hmm, maybe I'm selling this one short.
Special Features: Commentary with Stallone, Patrick, Mangold, and producer Cathy Konrad, a 15 minute featurette (“Cop Land: The Making of an Urban Western”), and deleted scenes.
Lastly, there’s John Flynn’s 1989 prison thriller, LOCK UP, which puts Stallone behind bars under the evil eye of Warden Donald Sutherland. This is the cheesiest of the Stallone offerings in this set, with a supremely cheesy score by extremely cheesy film composer Bill Conti. A skinny Tom Sizemore (it was his 3rd film) is on hand for comic relief as a fellow inmate, and Sutherland (mostly spending his role looking menacing out the window) has a great hammy speech (“This is Hell, and I’m going to give you the guided tour”), but this is a by-the-numbers rundown of prison movie clichés, that wears out its welcome really fast.
Special Features: Only a 6 minute “making of” featurette, the theatrical trailer, and a lame Stallone profile, but that’s just as well.
Okay! I think I’ve had as much as I can take of “The Itallian Stallion” for now.
More later…
21 Eylül 2012 Cuma
TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE
(Dir. Robert Lorenz, 2012)
Sure, every critic will mention it, but Clint Eastwood’s embarrassing crazy-old-man-yells-at-chair speech at the RNC a few weeks back doesn’t at all get in the way of his new film being a good old-fashioned cornball crowd-pleaser.
Eastwood, with his crotchetiness played to greater comic effect than say in GRAN TORINO, plays a baseball scout for the Altlanta Braves who is going blind, so he may be in his final season on the job. As his daughter, Amy Adams (also in THE MASTER opening today) joins him on the trip against his wishes, to help out.
Meanwhile, back at the home office, Matt Lillard, as obviously a jerk for the audience to hate, wants Eastwood out of the game, and his boss, a grimacing Robert Patrick, might agree. But luckily Eastwood has a friend in the Braves’ organization in the form of John Goodman pulling for him.
Another friend, Justin Timberlake as a retired pitcher now doing the scouting thing too, runs into Eastwood at a game, and immediately has eyes for Adams.
It’s a comfortable ole baseball glove of a commercial movie, where everything falls exactly in the place you’d expect. With only a few current topical references, its script, by first time screenwriter Randy Brown, feels like it was written in the ‘90s when old people were first becoming troubled by the idea of a computer run world. Clint’s line about the “interwebs” attests to that.
In that way it’s like a gruff counterpoint to last year’s MONEYBALL, in which old school on the spot skills are favored over statistical analysis. So much so that I expected Clint to take a baseball bat to a laptop OFFICE SPACE-style.
TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE, throws no curves story-wise, is full of cheesy clichés, and was completely filmed in Georgia, despite being mostly set in my home-state North Carolina, yet I still found it highly likable.
Eastwood’s growling and grunting through his part is amusingly affecting, and Adams, along with Timberlake both put in warm and fuzzy performances. And if you want your film to be more likable, casting Goodman is always a good idea.
Robert Lorenz, whose first film as director this is after many assistant directing duties, provides Eastwood and co. with a sturdy vehicle that has plenty of cornball charm, and isn’t too sappy. It’s not a home run, but it’s a perfectly pleasant stroll around the bases.
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THE MASTER (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)
The impact of the amazing imagery in Paul Thomas Anderson’s follow-up to 2007’s THERE WILL BE BLOOD is immediate. Opening shots of the frothy ocean from above are vividly captured by the camera of cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr., as is the following sequence of American soldiers on a tropical beach at the end of World War II. However, the impact of the narrative, as it shapes, isn’t as immediate, for this is a film that viewers will still be processing way after it ends.
Joaquin Phoenix, looking more haggard than usual, plays one of the soldiers, and his chief characteristics are that he’s a horny drunkard. So much so that he can’t keep the department store photographer job he gets shortly after returning to the states, because of the effects of his homemade moonshine. That also leads to the end of his next occupation, as a cabbage picker, when one of his fellow workers swigs too much of Phoenix’s toxic concoction, and may die of poisoning.
Phoenix bolts out of there, at first chased by other pickers, and stows away on a ritzy riverboat where he meets Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the charismatic leader of a new religious movement called “The Cause.” Oh, yeah, in case you haven’t heard – this is the movie that’s supposedly based on Scientology, and Hoffman is allegedly based on writer/Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
It’s impossible not to think about that when Phoenix undergoes intense questioning by Hoffman, i.e. auditing, and when vague yet lofty theological platitudes are tossed around. Hoffman sees through Phoenix, but still takes him on as a protégé. Hoffman’s family, including wife Amy Adams, daughter Ambyr Childers, and son-in-law Rami Malek are skeptical of Phoenix, although it’s obvious Childers has a thing for him, but Hoffman apparently sees something in him that reminds him of his younger self, or, maybe, he just wants him around to make more of that powerful moonshine.
Despite that Phoenix pines for a girl he left behind when he went to war, played by Madisen Beaty in a scene that I’m not sure if is imagined or not, he appears to want to screw every woman in sight. In a party scene hosted at the house of a benefactor played by Laura Dern, Phoenix envisions every woman in the nude as Hoffman sings a bawdy song. Except for the men who all remained clothed, his imagination doesn’t discriminate age-wise, and even a pregnant seated Amy Adams (who looks very uncomfortable) is naked.
Phoenix doesn’t seem to pay attention to the philosophies of the cult around him, and Anderson’s screenplay really doesn’t either. When Hoffman’s son, played by Jesse Plemmons (amusingly recently referred to as Meth Damon on a A.V. Club message board because of his role on Breakin’ Bad and resemblance to Matt Damon), asks Phoenix “Don’t you know he’s making it all up as he goes along?” it doesn’t really register.
Figuring out what’s supposed to register in THE MASTER will be quite a sport this season. Many will be turned off by the coldness of the production, but no doubt will endlessly discuss it.
The film’s wide scope, which was shot in 70 mm, can be overwhelming, even when it’s only focusing on a few faces in the frame. Or just one – mostly Phoenix’s gritty mug, but the red sweaty pores of Hoffman’s cheeks get exhaustingly explored as well.
Phoenix nails the adrift emptiness of a man who just wants to go with the flow, as long as booze and loose woman are part of that flow. Hoffman’s religion may be bullshit to him, but it’s still something to grasp onto, or at least the trappings around it.
I got lost in the engulfing experience that was “The Master,” and believe it’s one of the year’s best films. Each of Anderson’s films has an angle on the American right to the pursuit of happiness, whether it be gained through drilling oil (THERE WILL BE BLOOD), the business of pornography (BOOGIE NIGHTS), crime (HARD EIGHT), romance (PUNCH DRUNK LOVE), or pure chance (MAGNOLIA).
Here, Anderson’s angle is much more difficult to pinpoint, but because of the incredible luscious look of the film, the meticulous acting (both Hoffman and Phoenix’s sharp performances will surely garner award season attention), the precision of the writing, and the excellently fierce and sometimes frightening score by Jonny Greenwood, maybe that doesn’t matter.
The only thing I can really pinpoint is THE MASTER felt like a complicated yet beautiful dream. You just have to wait ‘til later to ask me what it means though, I’m still processing it.
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