Search results matching tag 'Reviews'

Review - HBO's Grey Gardens

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:26:23 GMT

Grey Gardens, the feature film on HBO that premieres this weekend, is a mixed bag. Jessica Lange is perfection. Drew Barrymore does some of her best work ever in a dramatic role that hooks into her personal flamboyance and sadness.

But the film, which lays heavily on the making of and repeated recreations of the documentary by The Maysles, feels a bit like Cliff Notes on the rest of their lives. Is the true narrative not that interesting? Or were the writers trying so hard to allow for emotional ambiguity that they never found a strong storyline? I don’t really know. I did see the musical Grey Gardens, which covers a lot of the same ground, but is, in fact, a musical and works decisively in the light or in the dark.

The big question that comes out of the experience of the documentary is, “How did these women get here?” And the doc doesn’t make any effort to answer that question, though some of the film’s great moments are seeing the sense of loss in the eyes of both characters, some things expressed in an oblique way in comments.

The answer, I have learned in the next two incarnations of the tale, is, simplistically, that the mother (Big Edie) had a bad combination of being both co-dependent and delusional in thinking she was truly independent, all in a period where women’s work in wealthy society was marriage and kids. The daughter (Little Edie) shared her mother’s ambition about being independent as well as suffering a serious co-dependence issue. This schizo thinking led to a bad marriage – and an eventual divorce - for Big Edie and no marriage at all for Little Edie.

Dramatically, this is a tough nut to crack, as both women get in their own way and mostly have themselves to blame for their plight. The reason it is so compelling in the doc is that we are watching the results and like reading a novel, we fill in those blanks for ourselves, while at the same time being overwhelmed by what is in front of us. In the musical, it leaps from bright and shiny to the dregs of these lives. The HBO film aspires to filling in some of that middle… and it may be an impossible task.

Simply, there is about 20 missing years of deterioration and whether by design or because there is no better answer, it is missing in this film as it is in the doc and musical, but somehow, because the film is a straight drama, you feel the hole as an audience.

And while I hate to tell a filmmaker what I would have liked him or her to do, I wonder whether there was a better answer in a more raw portrayal? Both the doc and the musical address the idea of sexual jealousy between mother and daughter. Not so much this film. What the film does offer that the other versions do not is an actual affair for Little Edie. Yet, the film doesn’t really dig into its raw power, just the idea that Edie gets hurt by a married man acting like a married man.

What I wanted to know, to be frank, is whether Little Edie, who *** teases the boys in another scene, likes sex. Does she see it as a means to an end? Is it something she truly experiences with passion?

I guess that issue circles around the bigger issue for the film… what are these women passionate about? Anything? Nothing? Are they dead of heart… dead of loins? If so, why? Is it really just as simple as confusion and missed opportunity?

I really hoped for more from this film… and got less than in either other incarnation. Though again, two very strong performances, especially from Ms. Lange, whose absence from the big screen is a real shame. (I felt that way after seeing Dustin Hoffman on screen last year, too. Tootsie 2 is a bad idea… but that reunion of two great actors with two very different styles as mature adults… I would pay to see that.)

If you see the film and it is your first exposure to the tale, you should be pleased and titillated. And then, you should go to Criterion’s website and buy the documentary. Then, in September, you can watch Lange get her Emmy and Drew enjoy having been nominated.

Review – 17 Again

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:23:13 GMT

Zac Efron is cute. Leslie Mann is cute. Thomas Lennon is Tony Randall.

Can I stop there?

Michelle Trachtenberg, at 23, is getting a little creepy playing 17-year-old goth virgins, though it certainly is not her fault that she has perfect skin and young looks and unless she wants to take jobs where she has to take off her clothes to prove she is a 20something, she’s kinda stuck. Melora Hardin is still sexy at 41. Brian Doyle-Murray looks like Bill after 20 years in prison.

Are we done yet?

Matthew Perry is a nice looking man and there is not a hint of him ever looking as movie-star perfect as Zac Efron… not to mention that there is no way that any man goes from Efron’s energy to Perry’s energy… just not smart casting. They should have just pulled the trigger and hired Paul Rudd for a few days… or Michael Sheen, who can use a quick, commercial jobs between awards movies.

The highlight for most adults will be Thomas Lennon as The Other 40 Year Old Virgin. Nice outright steal, guys. The whole film is like that, though not often as successfully. I’m not sure that the trio of girls who are, quite literally, offering Zac Efron sex without requiring that he even know their names (and unlike O&R, no sobriety issues… this is clear eyed slutting) is the best thing to put into a film for teen girls. No question though, Melissa Ordway will get a lot of meetings with execs trying to get her to repeat the offer… though I have a feeling she’s already been having those meetings and that’s not likely what she’s after. (She wants a part… not THAT part.)

Aside from another offer to be in Footloose, this film won’t do much for anyone… except for the kid, Sterling Knight, who doesn’t seem at first to be able to act, but who gets stronger as the film progresses. There is a glimpse that he may become something real in time.

The story? Uh… yeah. 1950s teen comedy with texting. (Note: this is not your breakthrough “kids text now” film. ) Not a complete piece of crap… not anything worth paying much attention to… just your basic Novocain, not nitrous oxide kind of movie.

Review - State of Play

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:44:52 GMT

State of Play sets itself up to be a strong contender for a now all too rare genre of film… the complicated-story but genre-simplistic morality tale as a thriller. Lumet to Pakula to Pollack to Bourne. The problem with State of Play is that it fails in this ambition on two fairly serious fronts. First, the rather great story ideas – stuff that has not yet been well done on film – don’t have enough room to breathe. If you walked out of the film feeling that you really had a sense of what internet writers are like and how they operate versus how old school print reporters operate – especially in Washington –this would have been a masterpiece. But the ambition to add in this twist, seemingly well into the life of this screenplay bouncing around in its various incarnations, didn’t make this into the true “A” story in which the intrigue thriller the reporters are working on becomes the thing that draws you into the world of these reporters and pays off with some third act thrills.

The “A” plot of this film remains a political intrigue that the reporters are chasing down. This track is also interesting. The movie that seems to be leading here is “Russell Crowe is an old-school reporter whose close ties are both his greatest asset and his greatest problem and he’s going to fight through, walking the tightrope, until we get to the story’s end and all the secrets have been revealed.” But besides the second fatal flaw of the film, which I will get to momentarily, there is a big problem with the great idea of focusing on how web reporting is infecting traditional newsrooms – or not – in that it ends up completely distracting from this story, which would have worked a lot better if it just stuck to its narrow, more traditional ambitions.

And that is the rub here, isn’t it? Both tracks of this movie are, very clearly, about The Old vs The New. The screenplay gives us both Old Media vs New Media and Old Washington vs The Hope of a New Washington. Operating on both tracks at once is a modernistic approach to a classic kind of tale. (Don’t confuse this script with Traffic, as an example, where there are many stories that tie together thematically and, eventually, in story connectors… this is not that kind of story concept.) But the film fails because of that modern ambition. If they had just stuck with the classical form, they would have been 90% of the way to a win already. On the other hand – just like in all of these battles – you have to be excited by the ambition of reaching for more. The problem with those reaches, most often, is that everything else isn’t working near perfection, every flaw in the Big Idea gets muddled and the soufflé falls.

Review - Observe & Report

Anonymous — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 03:48:29 GMT

How do I start this?

Jody Hill… save your money.

The clock is ticking on this spectacularly overrated writer/director. He just got a second season pick-up for the mediocre Eastbound & Down. Observe & Report is coming out with some love from the people who so want to love this guy’s style of hateful, white-trash-mocking humor.

And unless he shows an enormous amount of growth – which is unlikely for writer/directors who are told they are geniuses when they are just kinda okay at best – he will be a movie business memory by 2012.

Observe & Report is, after all the hype, Paul Blart: Mall Cop with less storytelling skill and a lot of “fucks,” cocks, implants (bobs and lips) and drug/alcohol abuse. Hill has the advantage of having some taste in actors. Seth Rogen shows that he really is capable of carrying a movie… but is not asked to do much more than to be a pudgy face and to read lines in his familiar rhythms. The highlight of the film, for me, is Michael Pena as an indescribably ambivalent Hispanic all cop with a Mike Tyson speech impediment who is teamed with Rogen’s Ronnie Barnhardt. He is just funny and really commits to the character.

The toughest acting work comes for the actresses, who Hill seems to think can be misogynized or mocked as slutty old drunks only to be redeemed by one ”good girl.” He didn’t watch The Farrellys closely enough.

But back to the movie itself…

It’s not funny.

I laughed out loud once during the entire film. The audience I saw it with laughed out loud twice… the second time when someone was shot with a gun. Hee hee.

I’m sure Mr. Hill is a great guy and it seems that talent is ready to work with him. His humor reminds me a bit of Dane Cook… if it’s not funny, make it loud and use the word “***” and at least you will get their attention.

The problem with the movie is not that it is severe… because in truth, it is not nearly as severe as some of the smarter comedy out there. This guy has nothing on Bruce, Carlin or Pryor's sense of truth-telling. It is that it lies… mostly to itself. Gags have a shelf-life of minutes… sometimes less. Whatever might get a laugh. But who are these people?

When I read the pathetically self-congratulatory argument from this director that this film is inspired somehow by Taxi Driver, it all makes sense. He doesn’t understand or have any interest in Taxi Driver. He understands and is interested in a guy looking in the mirror saying, “You talkin’ to me?,” and even more so, people imitating DeNiro saying that phrase. That is his cultural touchstone… not the film and what it was about, but the decades of people getting instant gratification with a reference to a line that has become less than the whole of that film.

I would be curious to know how many people recognize – or even hear – Hill’s reference to Miller’s Crossing during the movie. It perked me up. It got me rooting for the guy. How bad could he be if he made a Miller’s Crossing joke in this middle of this simplistic comedy? But he soon lost me again.

After a while, I just kept thinking that this was a movie about grown men who play with their own poop and think it is the funniest thing in the world. And that is about all that the movie will commit to. Ronnie Barnhardt isn’t really a loser. He’s a guy who, if he stayed on his meds, might be a real success. Of course, the movie throws out the idea that he is both on meds and that he stops taking them in a matter of a minute, about halfway through the film. Bam. There it is. But even that left field shot doesn’t actually go anywhere. The story suggests he is driven to extremes by circumstance, not psychosis. So why throw in the meds issue? And if it matters, why doesn’t he really go nuts?

Over and over, that is the story of this film. Hill sets up the situation and then drops the ball completely, looking quickly for the next set-up to raise and abandon. This is true of both the biggest and smallest plot points. What is his relationship with becoming a “real” policeman? What is the post-first-date relationship with The Girl? What does this guy do all day?

One of the moments that struck me, in particular, was Ronnie’s mother – the sadly abused, always excellent actress Celia Weston – struggling to put booze in a soda bottle. It is a somewhat subtle, insightful, and intriguing bit. It is one of the things that alcoholics who want to maintain the pretense that they are not really drinking often do. But she is not a booze hider. Her words are relentlessly honest and direct about herself and what she feels to be true.

So which one is it? You want to make the argument that “real life” is both, sometimes at the same time? Okay. But as drama goes, I consider that a complete cop out. Who is Ronnie and what does his life with his mother mean? Is he still living with her because he really is a loser or because he is being responsible for a woman who can’t take care of herself? Has she been shielding him from him limitations for all these years?

I am sure that some people will wonder, “why are you taking this silly comedy so seriously?” Well, that is the thing of all drama, serious or comedic, austere or frivolous. The reason that most of the Apatow films and the early Farrelly films work so well is that there is that core of truth. You forgive their lead characters everything and root for them no matter how ugly their behaviors. Even if absurdity, they are humans with recognizable wants and needs.

Is date rape funny? Does a girl waking up long enough to tell the guy to keep pumping away make it okay to laugh at a date rape? But let’s go past that scene… when the same woman establishes, as she really did even before the date rape scene, that she has no boundaries in her sexual choices aside from who brings the drugs, alcohol or power, is it funny for one of those who used her to treat her like a whore?

The difference between Apatow and The Farrellys and Hill is that the first two understand that The Guy has to learn something in order for his former bad behavior to be something other than hateful.

Of course, there are a load of other silly mistakes in judgment in the film by the filmmaker. Anyone who shows themselves to have the skills that Ronnie occasionally shows would be valued differently than he is in the film. The flips between romantic notions and opportunism would make Nadia Comaneci queasy. The whole “real gun” obsession plays like a neo-Nazi porn video. And the music… oy. I have quoted a great composer before, commenting that the fewer music cues a film has, the better the film. This film is so wall-to-wall with music that one has to wonder if Mr. Hill trusted anything he put on film to connect with audiences without a loud, pounding cue.

I guess it is easy to overstate just how bad this movie is. But honestly, when you get halfway through a film like this and sincerely feel that Paul Blart is a better made, more clearly thought out, simply enjoyable piece of crap… well, that is a pretty low standard to challenge.

I really like watching Rogen. I feel as though Anna Faris has destroyed her future career with the *** implants and lip collagen – though this is her second of three studio leads since she pumped up... studio jobs she wasn't getting before with a push-up bra and perky charm – and I miss the lovable girl she used to be every time I watch her work now, talented though she still is. These two and Pena and Weston made the experience of watching this quite frustrating. That and that the ideas here could well have made a really interesting, quirky comedy. But they just didn’t.

Finally, I am beginning to think that the need that some of these comedy directors have lately to show penises flopping about is another show of a sad immaturity in these men. Part of me says, “Who cares?” But part of me says,” If it doesn’t matter and you did it, you have failed utterly.”

I would argue that the “turnabout” argument made by some women is inaccurate, as the analogous body part to the make penis is not the ***, but the labia… and when is the last time you saw labia in a studio movie? How impotent do you have to be to feel compelled to put male genitalia on display to get a laugh? And how immature is the laugh you get? Just wondering…

Wiseman @AFI Dallas

Anonymous — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:57:44 GMT

One doesn't expect "Domestic Violence, Pt 1" to be so refreshing. But Frederick Wiseman's 2001 six and a half hour document of a shelter in Tampa, FL is so square that it's spectacularly hip in this era of the Look At Me doc. No narration, no music, no director's statement of position, no structured timeline... just slices of reality, bursts really... the most vivid and simple and human emotions coming at you in wave after wave.

Wow. Radical!

SXSW 2009: "Sorry, Thanks."

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:56:32 GMT

Apologies for whipping out the m-word, but mumblecore always seemed to me to be defined by its choreography of conflict avoidance. Its characters are so vague about they want and what they think because what they definitely don't want is to lay those things out and risk disagreement, rejection or open hostility. They lack any obvious sharp edges, and so seem to be infected with terminal niceness, but to say that is to ignore all the passive aggression lurking underneath the surface of those meandering exchanges. A fine sign of how the mumble-crowd is coming of age is Dia Sokol's directorial debut "Sorry, Thanks," a film set in a familiar milieu of noncommittal 20-somethings with a fair amount of time on their hands, but one that also asks its characters to come to terms with the fact that not acknowledging what they're doing doesn't mean they can't hurt anyone. Kira...

Another Watchmen Review

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 02:49:36 GMT

From the great Kyle C

The Watchmen Review (98% spoiler-free)

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:00:00 GMT

The Watchmen pre-game checklist is, indeed, the buzz of many writers. But after seeing the film, not so much.

Big blue ***?
Not that big a deal, albeit utterly unnecessary.

Ultraviolence?
Not for kids, and interestingly one of the areas where Mr. Snyder decided to be less faithful to the graphic novel, but hard-R comic book acceptable for adults.

Casting?
Not as much of a problem as expected… but not always for the best reasons.

The problem with Watchmen is, in the end, that it is a bit of a big stiff bore for two acts with an improved, but mostly uninspired third act.

There is a moment, about 2 hours and 25 minutes in, when the movie shows us exactly what its promise was. It is The Showdown Of The Film… which I will not spoil here. But suffice it to say that it had strong character choices, little fat in paying homage to the book like it was the m-f’ing Bible passed down by God himself, and the book’s perfect combination of narrative and ideology.

Lasted about 10 minutes.

Return To The Dark Knight

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:07:37 GMT

One of the blog commenters can't seem to separate why Slumdog won from why The Dark Knight was not nominated. In response, I found myself explaining my TDK issues – which are not nearly as severe as he constantly claims – in yet another way… so I thought I would share…

I have never said Dark Knight is flimsy.

It is I who said that it should have been a longer piece and would be better as one.

The problem with Dark Knight - though it is certainly a beautifully made and strong film - is that it didn't achieve its own ambitions... not MY ambitions for it... ITS ambitions.

The balance of Harvey Dent/Two-Face and The Joker is simply not achieved. The reason I think that is the case is that they didn't have the time to develop the more complex ideas of Two-Face in 2:40.

The opera of The Dark Knight is that chaos is unleashed by the absolute insanity of The Joker... it is fought by the absolute austerity of The Batman... and Two-Face ends up in between, a character of gray only because he swings between the two extremes.

Unfortunately, in the film what we get is Harvey Dent and then Two-Face as a pawn and victim, not as a character that changes the balance in a real way. The hour that was not in what should have been a 2 part saga was the hour about Dent/Two-Face embodying, even in his craziness, what a District Attorney is, not pure justice, but a compromiser, working the system, lying when expedient, and trying to enforce the law, even if it means breaking the law. That is what, in the construct that The Nolans set up, is so fascinating about that character... and which they barely scratched the surface of in a limited time frame.

Jim Gordon is also a part of that ambiguity, as are the bad guys. Gordon is willing to bend the rules for Batman, but he has lines he will not cross. And the same is true of the mob guys, who want to do their bad deeds, but are uncomfortable with the extreme lack of any restraint shown by The Joker. And in that are, The Nolans did a pretty complete job. Likewise, they got about as much out of The Joker – who does so many things in a harder, more real version of the Nicholson Joker of the Burton film – as there was to get.

But the reason the film is not fully realized is in the incompletion of Two-Face (and tangentially, by the fact that his drama over the loss of Rachel seems overstated and not in line with their relationship), which I would argue could have been fulfilled with more time.

If you think that makes me a Bat-basher or someone who would cal the film “flimsy,” so be it. That kind of narrow thinking is unfortunate and inaccurate, but everyone is entitled to their opinion, just as I am entitled to disregard it when it seems irrational.

Top Ten 2008

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:42:26 GMT

I haven’t exactly rushed out my 2008 Top Ten list. Really, I just didn’t much feel like it. There are plenty of movies I truly admire, but somehow, my passion is just not inflamed as it should be at the end of the year.

Here are 21 runners up: Battle For Haditha, Beaufort, Beauty in Trouble, Blindness, Boy A, Cadillac Records, The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, Frozen River, Hancock, In Bruges, Let The Right One In, My Winnipeg, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, Paranoid Park, Seven Pounds, Speed Racer, Surfwise, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Visitor, and W.

How I feel about the films is one thing, but I want to pull out a couple of films for special mention, as they are more than just good films. The Wachowski’s Speed Racer is going to be one of the most influential films of its generation. Of course, we are already seeing other filmmakers on some of the same paths, like Gus Van Sant’s seam-unworried mixture of documentary and produced footage in Milk or Danny Boyle’s mélange of Slumdog Millionaire. But The Wachowskis are stunningly fearless and gifted… and too easily misunderstood or underthought.

Also, Nick Broomfield’s Battle For Haditha kicks most other films based on this war’s ass. There are finally a few, like the thriller-as-near-doc The Hurt Locker (from Kathryn Bigalow, due in 2009), that are egoless enough to turn the complicated trick of creating drama out of a war that is still going on.

Gus van Sant’s Paranoid Park and Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In, and even, albeit more heavily handed fashion, Gabriele Muccino’s Seven Pounds offer a slow, gentle, ambitious, and demanding form of drama that somehow resonates well beyond a viewing in remarkably unexpected ways.

And now…

THE TOP TEN OF 2008