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Archive for the category “Drama”

13 Jun 2013

Risky Business

Review No. 495

What an understated title!

risky_business

B

WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY PAUL BRICKMAN. PRODUCED BY JON AVNET AND STEVE TISCH.  STARRING TOM CRUISE (JOEL GOODSON), REBECCA DE MORNAY (LANA), AND JOE PANTOLIANO (GUIDO). ALSO STARRING RICHARD MASUR, BRONSON PINCHOT, CURTIS ARMSTRONG, NICHOLAS PRYOR, JANET CARROLL, SHERA DANESE, RAPHAEL SBARGE, BRUCE A. YOUNG, AND FERN PERSONS. DISTRIBUTED BY WARNER BROS. PICTURES ON AUGUST 5, 1983. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN BY THE UNITED STATES. RUNS 1 HOUR, 38 MINUTES. RATED R BY THE MPAA (ADULT HUMOR, ADULT SITUATIONS, NUDITY, PROFANITY, STRONG SEXUAL CONTENT).

RISKY BUSINESS WAS WATCHED ON JUNE 7, 2013.

“Joel, you wanna know something? Every now and then say, ‘What the f__k.’ ‘What the f__k’ gives you freedom. Freedom brings opportunity. Opportunity makes your future.” –Miles (Curtis Armstrong)

Risky Business is a film that brings out everything you’d think of when you think “teen comedy from the 1980s.”  It focuses on Joel Goodson (Tom Cruise), a high school loser who, somehow, becomes the cool kid by the end.  He does this by means of breaking every rule in the book.  His parents leave him at home for a week.  They say they trust him, but as Joel says, “if there were any logic to our language, trust would be a four letter word.”  And what does trust mean when the week brings him into a world of sex, drugs, partying, and the hindered safekeeping of a glass egg his mother treasures?

risky business 1983 10

Recognize?

The movie is a full-blown cliché, but it represents one word.  Hint: it starts with an “f,” ends with an “n,” has a “u” in the middle, and clearly, Tom Cruise is having a lot of it here.  What makes the movie so much fun is that even a title as dangerous as Risky Business is a savage understatement.  This movie deals in areas that seem, on one hand, completely rational and, on the other, bizarre and out-of-line.  It gets better as the film progresses.  Joel starts the party off with Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll,” the first and most iconic moment in a highly memorable soundtrack.  It feels like only moments before he’s wrecked his dad’s Porsche, and cleared his bank account of several bonds to pay for a prostitute.

Risky Business is a worthwhile flick, entertaining because of the obsessively caricatured comedy it is.  Yes, the characters are barely two-dimensional, so no, there isn’t exactly much we can do to commiserate with their piss-poor situations.  But if there’s one thing that makes the movie the most fun, it’s the characters themselves.  You just can’t look at Tom Cruise with the cigarette and the Ray-Ban Wayfarer shades, and suppress a smile.

STAY TUNED FOR MY “SPIRITED AWAY” REVIEW @ 4:30

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Posted in Comedy, Drama, [Film Reviews] and tagged | Leave a Comment
12 Jun 2013
10 Comments

The Age of Innocence

Review No. 494

Atmospherically, it’s a wedding juxtaposed against a funeral.

age_of_innocence

A-PLUS

DIRECTED BY MARTIN SCORSESE. PRODUCED BY BARBARA DE FINA AND BRUCE S. PUSTIN. SCREENPLAY BY SCORSESE AND JAY COCKS. BASED ON “THE AGE OF INNOCENCE” BY EDITH WHARTON. NARRATED BY JOANNE WOODWARD. STARRING DANIEL DAY-LEWIS (NEWLAND ARCHER), MICHELLE PFEIFFER (COUNTESS ELLEN OLENSKA), AND WINONA RYDER (MAY WELLAND). ALSO STARRING ALEXIS SMITH, GERALDINE CHAPLIN, MARY BETH HURT, ALEC McCOWEN, RICHARD E. GRANT, MIRIAM MARGOLYES, ROBERT SEAN LEONARD, SIÂN PHILLIPS, CAROLYN FARINA, JONATHAN PRYCE, MICHAEL GOUGH, NORMAN LLOYD, AND STUART WILSON. FEATURING CAMEO APPEARANCES BY MARTIN SCORSESE, CHARLES SCORSESE, CATHERINE SCORSESE, AND TAMASIN DAY-LEWIS. DISTRIBUTED BY COLUMBIA PICTURES ON OCTOBER 1, 1993. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH BY THE UNITED STATES. RUNS 2 HOURS, 19 MINUTES. RATED PG BY THE MPAA, FOR THEMATIC ELEMENTS AND SOME MILD LANGUAGE.

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE WAS WATCHED ON JUNE 6, 2013.

“Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.” –Martin Scorsese

It may seem like a cliché, as a drama about love, death, marriage, divorce, and infidelity. But if there is such a thing as a “sophisticated soap opera,” it’s The Age of Innocence. At the very least, the 1870s setting allows the aforementioned “soap opera” ideas to unsettle and enthrall the audience, not bore it with gossip.

What we have here is a film from auteur Martin Scorsese, who directed and co-wrote with Jay Cocks. It’s also a brilliant anomaly. I’ve seen his entire oeuvre, save for Bringing Out the Dead (1999) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and not once have I noticed what he does with his characters here. Rather than giving them intrigue by getting under their skulls, Scorsese has made them intriguing with mysterious personalities. The Age of Innocence is a romance, but that there’s always a character hiding something, provides the tale with ominous, suspenseful undertones. The cast represents this flawlessly: Daniel Day-Lewis as a quiet, reserved lawyer; Michelle Pfeiffer as a Polish Countess with a femme fatale persona; Winona Ryder as the leading male’s naïve and outgoing fiancée. It’s atmospherically a wedding juxtaposed against a funeral.

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Scandalous!

I was dreading The Age of Innocence, to be fairly honest. The film is based on a book by Edith Wharton, which concerned me greatly. I’d read her Ethan Frome last year. Basically, a book about a guy who’s sick and tired of his wife’s attempts to use hypochondria to get his attention, so he abandons her for his mistress. It’s a book I couldn’t wait to get finished with; you had to trust that the author was trying to say something important. From the looks of this early-’90s drama, Wharton’s Age of Innocence is completely different. I swore I’d never read another one of her books, but as it turns out, my interest has been piqued ever-so-desperately.

The Age of Innocence is a beautiful movie. The production is much less a movie than it is a stage play, with the commodities of cinema that make it even more majestic. The characters represent people we’d generally hate, but their mysterious, reserved attitudes make them likable. The music is so much like that of Debussy, you wouldn’t believe it’s an original score by Elmer Bernstein. Add in the costume design and you feel like a Reconstruction Era New Yorker dropping in on the story as it happens.

Risky Business (@2:00); Spirited Away (@4:30)

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Posted in Drama, Romance, [Film Reviews] and tagged
08 Jun 2013
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Kundun

Review No. 493

The Dalai Lama is important, but this movie believes otherwise.

MPW-37758

C

DIRECTED BY MARTIN SCORSESE. PRODUCED BY BARBARA DE FINA.  WRITTEN BY MELISSA MATHISON. DALAI LAMA PORTRAYED BY TENZIN THUTHOB TSARONG (ADULT), GYURME TETHONG (AGE 12), TULKU JAMYANG KUNGA TENZIN (AGE 5), AND TENZIN YESHI PAICHANG (AGE 2). ALSO STARRING TENCHO GYALPO, TENZIN TOPJAR, TSEWANG MIGYUR KHANGSAR, TENZIN LODOE, TSERING LHAMO, GESHI YESHI GYATSO, LOBSANG GYATSO, SONAM PHUNTSOK, GYATSO LUKHANG, LOBSANG SAMTEN, TSEWANG JIGME TSARONG, TENZIN TRINLEY, ROBERT LIN, JURME WANGDA, AND JILL HSIA. DISTRIBUTED BY BUENA VISTA PICTURES ON DECEMBER 25, 1997. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH BY THE UNITED STATES. RUNS 2 HOURS, 14 MINUTES. RATED PG-13 BY THE MPAA, FOR VIOLENT IMAGES.

KUNDUN WAS WATCHED ON JUNE 5, 2013.

“Sleep is the best meditation.” –Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Martin Scorsese can shock you with a good movie. His oeuvre is composed mainly of films you expect to be outstanding, and they turn out even better. He can shock you even more with something as simple as a good scene. The climactic moments of Goodfellas, for example. His biggest shocks, though, are when he makes a movie that’s less-than-tolerable. It rarely happens, but when does it happen, the lack of effort leaves you speechless with disappointment. He first did this in 1972 with Boxcar Bertha. Granted, that wasn’t exactly his film. It was a crime flick that he directed, but it had B-movie trash producer Roger Corman written all over it.

A movie like Kundun is especially disappointing because it’s something Scorsese typically does better than any director. Scorsese is one of very few who uses his creative license wisely when he goes to work on a biopic. He makes the characters his own by, first, telling about what they accomplished and, more importantly, making us really care about them. We just don’t care about a man who’s made to seem perfect. That’s why we have the psychotic boxer Jake LaMotta (Raging Bull), not the champion boxer Jake LaMotta; and why we have the Howard Hughes who became an entrepreneur because he was a control freak (The Aviator), not the Howard Hughes who was just an entrepreneur.

Behold! His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, hath come to bore us all to tears!

Behold! His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, hath come to bore us all to tears!

If directing is defined as standing somewhere among the crew members during production, while he decides what to have for dinner, then Scorsese did indeed direct Kundun. The movie has the entire “flawed character” motif down. Written by Melissa Mathison and doctored by the film’s subject himself, the screenplay offers the Fourteenth Dalai Lama as a character we should care about. But we don’t. The lack of care is obvious in the first ten minutes of the film. It’s the sort of sequence you can tell was in the screenplay, but as Scorsese (for whatever reason) doesn’t seem to care about the character, he calls the shots based on an interpretation that we shouldn’t care either.

The scene features a servant of the recently-deceased Thirteenth Dalai Lama finding two-year-old Tenzin Gyatso in his home and, after meeting him, proclaiming that he must become the Fourteenth Dalai Lama when he comes of age; he visits seven years later to consult Gyatso once more. The reason this scene isn’t moving is because it’s not taken solemnly. The ultimate presentation of these ten minutes is basically identical, but emotionally, it’s somewhere between bizarrely unrealistic and unintentionally funny. We have what appears to be a strange, desperate man, walking into a Tibetan household; noticing a child of nine and his obsession with having power, as is natural for an arrogant nine-year-old; and telling him that he will be whisked away so that in six years, he can rule an entire nation. It’s like watching a random passerby walk into an orphanage and ask Oliver Twist if he wants to become the Prime Minister of England. He probably does, but at his innocent, uninformed age, what does he know about the responsibilities?

Kundun isn’t a bad movie, but it would take significant generosity to call it a good one. Editing, music, and cinematography make the historical account look like the work of David Lean. Perhaps Lean would have gotten his hands on it first, if only he hadn’t passed away six years prior; the essential difference between Kundun and The Bridge on the River Kwai is that the latter has a present meaning. Again, the writing clearly did offer some emotion, but only a crumb of it managed its way to the screen. We learn how arrogance led servants to patronize the 14th Dalai Lama much more than honor him. Even here, you kind of question whether or not he deserved to be patronized. We learn some of his responsibilities a bit later in the film, as far as leading a nation is concerned. I wish I could tell you what some of these duties were, but my mind–like Scorsese’s–was much more concerned with what to have for dinner.

NOTE: The film does not feature a single A-list actor, not even from around the region. The cast here does have interesting stories, though. Tenzin Thuthob Tsarong, who portrayed the 14th adult Dalai Lama, is the grandson of the 14th himself. Lobsang Samten, who portrayed the master of the kitchen, is–according to Wikipedia–”an American Tibetan scholar, sand mandala artist, former Buddhist monk, and Spiritual Director of the Tibeta Buddhist Center of Philadelphia.” The stories go on for about 90% of the cast. All very interesting, but just a year’s worth of acting lessons could have helped, too.

Obstruction #1

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Posted in Biography, Drama, Epic, History, War, [Film Reviews] and tagged
06 Jun 2013
6 Comments

Gangs of New York

Review No. 491

Need a history lesson? Take Scorsese’s.

gangs_of_new_york_ver4

A

DIRECTED BY MARTIN SCORSESE. PRODUCED BY ALBERTO GRIMALDI, HARVEY WEINSTEIN, AND BOB WEINSTEIN.  SCREENPLAY BY JAY COCKS, STEVE ZAILLIAN, AND KENNETH LONERGAN. STORY BY COCKS. STARRING LEONARDO DiCAPRIO (AMSTERDAM VALLON), DANIEL DAY-LEWIS (BILL “THE BUTCHER” CUTTING), AND CAMERON DIAZ (JENNY EVERDEANE). ALSO STARRING LIAM NEESON, JIM BROADBENT, HENRY THOMAS, BRENDAN GLEESON, GARY LEWIS, JOHN C. REILLY, STEPHEN GRAHAM, LARRY GILLARD JR., EDDIE MARSAN, ALEC McCOWEN, DAVID HEMMINGS, CARA SEYMOUR, ROGER ASHTON-GRIFFITHS, BARBARA BOUCHET, MICHAEL BYRNE, JOHN SESSIONS, RICHARD GRAHAM, AND GIOVANNI LOMBARDO RADICE. DISTRIBUTED BY MIRAMAX FILMS ON DECEMBER 20, 2002. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH BY THE UNITED STATES AND ITALY. RUNS 2 HOURS, 46 MINUTES. RATED R BY THE MPAA, FOR INTENSE STRONG VIOLENCE, SEXUALITY/NUDITY AND LANGUAGE.

GANGS OF NEW YORK WAS WATCHED ON JUNE 1, 2013.

“You see this knife? I’m gonna teach you to speak English with this f–king knife!” –”The Butcher” (Daniel Day-Lewis)

Martin Scorsese isn’t a typical director. I don’t mean he’s not mainstream. He’s actually one of the most mainstream directors out there, while also one of the most brilliant. Gangs of New York puts this on perfect display. When we think of a vengeance tale, we think of an action movie about a guy with a minor personal problem. He sets off to find the man or woman responsible, puts a bullet through there brain, and goes home as if nothing ever happened. It’s entertaining, but shallow. Scorsese presents something we haven’t seen since perhaps The Godfather.

Gangs-New-York-03

Is it time for an Edwin Starr nod again?

It is 1862. America is in its second year of civil war, and it’s been corrupted by prejudice. In the Five Points of Manhattan, the Natives gang are still warring with the Dead Rabbits, an Irish mob that they have spent decades defaming and slaughtering. Meanwhile, twentysomething Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio) is looking to get even and hold the Natives accountable for bludgeoning his father to death when he himself was merely a young child. You’d think he has the upper hand: as he was born American, he can pose as a Native, while actually a Dead Rabbit. But he also has to be careful. The man that murdered his father is still the Native leader. He’s an intelligent, aggressive man known as “The Butcher” (Daniel Day-Lewis), carrying around a shillelagh and engraving into it a notch every time he wipes a man off the face of the earth. He runs the risk of suffering the same fate as his father, as well as leaving Irish immigrants to a world of even more hatred.

Gangs of New York is a movie that goes as far as it needs to achieve reality. This film is violent, often with more brutality than any other Scorsese movie. But it’s not there to repulse. It’s there for the same reason the characters are so well developed; the same reason the actors (save for a sorely miscast Cameron Diaz) are anything but actors in costume. Amsterdam is the typical hero here. He’s able to exhibit a false sense of determination, until he meets eyes with the man he fears. Leonardo DiCaprio is a natural for this role. He’s almost always played the hero, but never once has he played a hero who wants to take control of his enemies, or is able to keep his enemies from taking control of him. Even better is the enemy himself, Daniel Day-Lewis. The man knows how to act because he knows that very little of his character is in the screenplay. His character is both lovable and detestable at the same time. There’s a scene in which he attacks Amsterdam, feeling utterly betrayed. It’s one of those rare movie moments that enrages and saddens the audience, at the same time.

Sixteen Candles

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Posted in Crime, Drama, Epic, History, [Film Reviews] and tagged
04 Jun 2013
4 Comments

New York, New York

Review No. 489

Martin Scorsese is king of the hill once again with “New York, New York”.

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B-PLUS

DIRECTED BY MARTIN SCORSESE. PRODUCED BY ROBERT CHARTOFF AND IRWIN WINKLER.  SCREENPLAY BY EARL MAC RAUCH AND MARDIK MARTIN. STORY BY RAUCH. STARRING LIZA MINNELLI (FRANCINE EVANS) AND ROBERT DE NIRO (JIMMY DOYLE). ALSO STARRING LIONEL STANDER, BARRY PRIMUS, MARY KAY PLACE, GEORGIE AULD, GEORGE MEMMOLI, DICK MILLER, CLARENCE CLEMONS, CASEY KASEM, AND ADAM WINKLER. DISTRIBUTED BY UNITED ARTISTS ON JUNE 21, 1977. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH BY THE UNITED STATES. RUNS TWO HOURS, 43 MINUTES. RATED PG BY THE MPAA (ADULT LANGUAGE, ADULT SITUATIONS).

NEW YORK, NEW YORK WAS WATCHED ON MAY 27, 2013.

“Do I look like a gentleman to you in this shirt and these pants?” –Jimmy Doyle (Robert De Niro)

Jimmy Doyle (Robert De Niro) is a womanizing saxophonist who meets his wife-to-be, singer Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli), at a party in New York City. She doesn’t show much interest in him at first, but when they have absolutely no trouble getting a gig as a musical duo, she’s in love with him. The trouble from there on out is when a rivalry arises between the two. Jimmy wants to take control of his wife’s career. If it’s not how he wants it, then he’ll willingly spend hours assuring her that it’s not the way she wants it, either. Francine makes every attempt to show her possessive spouse that she genuinely appreciates him, and his ego has to show disapproval.

There’s no way to explain the story without immediately revealing the formula that sets it into action. The idea that music is first what brings two people together, but later what splits them apart, is something you could find on TV at almost any time. But beyond this, New York, New York isn’t a generic VH1 biopic. It’s a Martin Scorsese film, so there’s much depth added. New York, New York gives us an intricate look at our characters. We feel not what Jimmy is feeling, not what Francine is feeling, but whatever Scorsese wants us to be feeling.

The film is simply beautiful. Admittedly, there’s several exterior sceneries that are undoubtedly fake, purely for theatrical effect. That’s not a sunset, that’s handpainted celluloid. Ditto a train and a row of skyscrapers. But when Scorsese takes his hand off Broadway, there’s a lavishly cinematic sensation before you. New York, New York is a romance that involves its audience, as Scorsese is the one director who can and will make you fall in love with the Big Apple.

New York New York pic2

“We’ll always have Paris.” But not N’Yawk.

The chemistry between De Niro and Minnelli is impeccable, contrary to what one might expect. The ups and downs of their marriage is fun to watch as it begins. Their banter is amusing and seems ad libbed flawlessly. It’s difficult not to love them. Then the screenplay introduces a bit of melancholia as the relationship goes downhill. The climactic scenes feature more sincere looks at what’s been at hand all along: De Niro’s domineering egotism and Minnelli’s submission to him. A scene when he goes berserk on her when she mentions her personal matters, is shocking.

Minnelli’s performance of “New York, New York” is an especially poignant ending to the film. The scene was almost inevitable, but the emotion it offers up was not in the least.* New York, New York isn’t a masterpiece, but it does entertain. At nearly three hours, every minute flies by in a beautiful breeze of 1940s big band music. By the time Minnelli performs the title song, it feels like only an hour has passed.

*Not to knock Frank Sinatra, but that we associate the tune with his cover performance (three years later) is absolute blasphemy.

The Next Few Days/Weeks/Months…

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Posted in Drama, Music/Musical, Romance, [Film Reviews] and tagged
30 May 2013
2 Comments

To the Wonder

Review No. 486

Don’t let the word “Wonder” throw you off.

to_the_wonder_ver7

D

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY TERRENCE MALICK. PRODUCED BY NICOLAS GONDA AND SARAH GREEN.  STARRING BEN AFFLECK (NEIL), OLGA KURYLENKO (MARINA), RACHEL McADAMS (JANE), AND JAVIER BARDEM (FATHER QUINTANA). ALSO STARRING TATIANA CHILINE, CHARLES BAKER, AND ROMINA MONDELLO. DISTRIBUTED BY MAGNOLIA PICTURES ON APRIL 12, 2013. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH, FRENCH, AND SPANISH BY THE UNITED STATES. RUNS 1 HOUR, 53 MINUTES. RATED R BY THE MPAA, FOR SOME SEXUALITY/NUDITY.

TO THE WONDER WAS WATCHED ON MAY 24, 2013.

“Newborn. I open my eyes. I melt. Into the eternal night. A spark. You got me out of the darkness. You gathered me up from earth. You’ve brought me back to life.” –Marina (Olga Kurylenko)

Terrence Malick is a strange dude. He makes a movie as outstanding as The Tree of Life, and all he can think of doing is designing a followup that makes us wonder where the hell he’s gone. To the Wonder is The Tree of Life with very small–albeit very impactful–changes. It’s shorter, but it feels so much longer. There’s a yearn for a poetic style in both voiceover and visuals, but the visuals are truly all that matter here. (In fact, if I’m not able to dissuade you from this, find a theater that is playing this, because it won’t look good on home video.)

The most major difference, however, is in how Malick approaches the story, or how successfully he does so. In The Tree of Life, he took the hardships of a 1950s family and, throughout the film, explained the story as an allegory for life and death. To the Wonder seems to be making an allegory out of its story, when the characters are so indecisive, overly emotional, and commonplace. We just don’t care that it’s trying to resemble how love becomes hate.

wonder

Try keeping count of how many times this shot recurs. It’s like counting sheep as you fall asleep.

I wanted to love To the Wonder, but once an hour or so had gone by, I was ready to leave the theater. That’s a simple story of blind love and how it becomes realized hate, which encompasses the plot here. But it’s agonizingly boring because it’s buried under so much else. Without a doubt, both the cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki) and the music (Hanan Townshend) are the film’s two redeeming qualities. But there’s a lack of dialogue here, mostly due to the hackneyed narrations we hear. She’s writing a love letter to someone, he’s whining, some preacher man is pondering theology, yadda yadda yadda.

When you feel most cheated is when you actually feel you can understand the story. If it takes you by surprise, I had to Google the story. That’s not to say I didn’t feel cheated with the two, terminally boring hours I wasted watching this movie. To the Wonder is a soap opera. Nothing more, and nothing less. Why anyone would want to evoke beauty from an exasperated Lifetime Movie is beyond me. I don’t remember picking up on the characters’ names, but in case it matters, the guy is Neil (Ben Affleck) and the girl is Marina (Olga Kurylenko). He’s American, she’s Ukrainian. They want to live together, but there’s some sort of problem getting a green card. There’s the forefront to your plot. The rest is a frenetic mess of scenes that are supposed to get your emotions. One moment they’re swapping spit; the next moment, they can’t look at each other because they’ve just cheated on each other.

Perhaps you don’t feel cheated when you most understand the story. I should rephrase that statement: Once you understand the story, and you thought it had some sort of inner meaning, then you feel cheated. To the Wonder is what you get when an average couple rents a top-notch film camera, records the ups and downs of their relationship, and cuts out all “the wonder” it could ever warrant.

History of the World, Part I

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Posted in Drama, Romance, [Film Reviews] and tagged
29 May 2013
14 Comments

The Great Gatsby

Review No. 484

“The Good Gatsby”. Chapter 1…

great_gatsby_ver15

B

DIRECTED BY BAZ LUHRMANN. PRODUCED BY LUHRMANN, DOUGLAS WICK, LUCY FISHER, CATHERINE MARTIN, AND CATHERINE KNAPMAN.  WRITTEN BY LUHRMANN AND CRAIG PEARCE. BASED ON “THE GREAT GATSBY” BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD. STARRING LEONARDO DiCAPRIO (JAY GATSBY), TOBEY MAGUIRE (NICK CARRAWAY), CAREY MULLIGAN (DAISY BUCHANAN), JOEL EDGERTON (TOM BUCHANAN), ISLA FISHER (MYRTLE WILSON), ELIZABETH DEBICKI (JORDAN BAKER), ADELAIDE CLEMENS (CATHERINE), AND JASON CLARKE (GEORGE WILSON). ALSO STARRING AMITABH BACHCHAN, JACK THOMPSON, GEMMA WARD, CALLAN McAULIFFE, GUS MURRAY, STEPHEN JAMES KING, JENS HOLCK, ALISON BENSTEAD, MAX CULLEN, BRENDAN MACLEAN, JOEL AMOS BYRNES, CHRIS PROCTOR, KATE MULVANY, KIM KNUCKEY, CONOR FOGARTY, SAM DAVIS, TASMAN PALAZZI, EDWARD MIDGLEY, GARETH HAMILTON-FOSTER, VINCE COLOSIMO. DISTRIBUTED BY WARNER BROS. PICTURES ON MAY 10, 2013. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH BY THE UNITED STATES AND AUSTRALIA. RUNS 2 HOURS, 23 MINUTES. RATED PG-13 BY THE MPAA, FOR SOME VIOLENT IMAGES, SEXUAL CONTENT, SMOKING, PARTYING AND BRIEF LANGUAGE.

THE GREAT GATSBY WAS WATCHED ON MAY 21, 2013.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” –The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

For those who haven’t seen a single trailer for the film (as if that’s possible), The Great Gatsby is a work of art, visually. And that’s undeniable. These are by far the most spectacular set pieces I’ve ever seen, and that’s the sort of style we need to bring out Gatsby’s pompous, obsessive New Yorker character. The film opens in 2-D, black-and-white footage, then gradually becomes full-color and eyepopping 3-D. Perhaps a neat bit of symbolism to represent the “rags to riches” story in less than a minute. But if you are a fan of the book, you will find perhaps every reason to hate Baz Luhrmann’s interpretation of Gatsby. It may be important to note two things before continuing on with my review. One, I have not read the book, but after seeing the movie, I do feel enticed to do so. Two, if you have not read the book, you are far more likely to concur with my analysis.

There’s one mighty risk Luhrmann takes when constructing Gatsby and it turns out to remain the only true flaw. Words from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel are all over, not just in dialogue, but in Tobey Maguire’s narration as well as 3-D calligraphy. This is Luhrmann going the extra step to make his movies beautiful. He doesn’t have to. It’s clear from the story and the mysterious attitude of Jay Gatsby that the novel is a well-written one. Unfortunately, the story becomes not a story of Gatsby, but of one man’s reactions to the 1920s-laden story of Gatsby. You can make a movie feel like a novel, but that’s not the way to approach it.

gatsby

This is where the 11-19 female demographic goes NUTS.

Apart from this, Gatsby is a well-executed production. This is the story of how a man begins at the very bottom and makes his way up to the top, then proceeding to blind himself with every minute of his life. It’s a heartwarming tragedy about Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), a penniless man who meets the girl of his dreams (Carey Mulligan) and suddenly disappears. During this time, he is in the mob business, desperate to earn enough money so that he can live nearby her in an umpteen-story mansion, host parties around the clock, and win her heart by devoting so much else to her. And he does all of this. The only trouble is, she’s the object of a dream to him, not the woman that she is. It would break his heart if she were to, by mere accident, take of a notch of his insurmountable fantasy-brought-to-life.

The tale is well-rounded by Luhrmann’s style. This is easily his most poignant movie. We connect so quickly with Jay Gatsby, a man who begins with a suave appearance and tumbles downhill as his emotional grief stabs him in the heart. Most of this connection is not from the screenplay, but from the music choices. At least seventy-five-percent of these selections are “mashups” between 1920s jazz and today’s mainstream music, most of which is by Jay-Z. Both components work well in a coagulation, but they function great separately, as well. The jazz provides an atmosphere of the era with no trouble at all. The music isn’t merely an anachronistic style piece to remind us that it is 2013, as we sit in the theater; it’s there because of the lyrics, which add even more depth. There’s a scene that really caught my attention by bringing this to full power. Tobey Maguire is in an apartment, giving us a picture of when alcoholism first shook hands with him. We hear a man trumpeting on his fire escape, and when Maguire takes a drink that trumpeting becomes the harmony for an upbeat party song. The camera would cut back to the trumpeter every now and then, and whenever it did, I felt as if I was inhaling the aroma of a grilled hot dog, straight from the Big Apple.

Addendum: I began reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel just a few hours after seeing the movie, and I feel that if I were to see the movie again, I would love it no less.  Luhrmann’s cinematic scope is very faithful.  No, it doesn’t speak the horrors of the 1920s romance-blown-to-hell like Fitzgerald does, but since when are filmmakers not allowed to take their liberties?  I rest my case.

Lethal Weapon (@2:00); To the Wonder (@4:30)

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Posted in Drama, Romance, [Film Reviews] and tagged
26 May 2013

Pretty in Pink

Review No. 483

“Pretty” good, but we’ve seen much better from John Hughes.

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B-MINUS

DIRECTED BY HOWARD DEUTCH. PRODUCED BY LAUREN SHULER.  WRITTEN BY JOHN HUGHES. STARRING MOLLY RINGWALD (ANDIE WALSH), ANDREW McCARTHY (BLANE McDONOUGH), JON CRYER (PHILIP F. “DUCKIE” DALE), HARRY DEAN STANTON (JACK WALSH), ANNIE POTTS (IONA), AND JAMES SPADER (STEFF McKEE). ALSO STARRING KATE VERNON, ANDREW DICE CLAY, KRISTY SWANSON, ALEXA KENIN, DWEEZIL ZAPPA, AND GINA GERSHON. DISTRIBUTED BY PARAMOUNT PICTURES ON FEBRUARY 28, 1986. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH BY THE UNITED STATES. RUNS 1 HOUR, 36 MINUTES. RATED PG-13 BY THE MPAA (ADULT LANGUAGE, ADULT SITUATIONS, ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION).

PRETTY IN PINK WAS WATCHED ON MAY 20, 2013.

“This is a really volcanic ensemble you’re wearing, it’s really marvelous!” –”Duckie” (Jon Cryer)

When we think of writer-director John Hughes, we think of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or The Breakfast Club, not National Lampoon’s Vacation or Planes, Trains and Automobiles. I’m not saying the latter aren’t classics, but that he wouldn’t be a household name three decades later if he hadn’t written and directed that handful of teen flicks.

Pretty in Pink is proof that until one of his films has hit theaters, only John Hughes himself knows what he’s talking about. This was the only teen-centric script he wrote and let someone else direct, and it shows. Yes, Hughes has his writing translated in the same calligraphy as his chefs d’oeuvre. Molly Ringwald, check. Synthesizer music, check. School that is demographically 95% “cool kid” and 5% outcast, check. An outcast lead, check. But in spite of all this, there’s something missing, and something that just goes too far.

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“A working class hero is something to be.”

Andie (Molly Ringwald) is fearing prom night, particularly because she is convinced she won’t be there. She’s a working class girl, her mother left years ago, and her father feels it’s safer to lie and make her feel better than to be honest about his troubles. She isn’t having the best time as a high school senior. But lo and behold, the richest guy in school has approached her and asked her out. She’s fallen in love with him, but neither one of them can feel instantly broken apart. She feels awkward being around his uptight, rich friends, and he is afraid that if he’s seen with someone who can’t afford nice clothes, his friends will never accept him.

I find it reasonable to note that the ending doesn’t begin to become obvious until at least an hour has passed. We’ve seen this story countless times before, so on those grounds, its entertainment value is high. It’s somewhat ironic, as well, that the two über-bloated caricatures here are delivered quite memorably. Jon Cryer goes to both north and south poles as far as his acting efforts. On one hand, he ad libs his minor comic relief as if he were the male lead, almost to the point at which this romantic drama is excusable for a comedy. On the other, he’s funny as all hell, so whether it matters depends on how well you, personally, can tolerate the film’s pacing. Another notable performance is from Annie Potts, as the amusing gossip queen Iona. I couldn’t help but think of her as a pure ’80s echo of Anita in West Side Story. It’s performances like these that sophisticate Pretty in Pink beyond anything it deserves to be. It’s decent, but far from perfect. Let’s just say that upon its initial release, this little drama was simply warmup for Hughes’s quintessential Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, which took charge less than four months later.

Addendum – 5/26/2013 10:39 PM: Howard Deutch also directed Some Kind of Wonderful, a teen drama also written by John Hughrs.

Posted in Cult, Drama, Romance, [Film Reviews] and tagged | Leave a Comment
24 May 2013
8 Comments

Speak

Review No. 481

The more it does “Speak”, the more powerful it becomes.

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A-MINUS

DIRECTED BY JESSICA SHARZER. PRODUCED BY SHARZER, FRED BERNER, MATTHEW MYERS, AND ANNIE YOUNG FRISBIE.  SCREENPLAY BY SHARZER AND FRISBIE. BASED ON THE NOVEL BY LAURIE HALSE ANDERSON. STARRING KRISTEN STEWART (MELINDA SORDINO), MICHAEL ANGARANO (DAVE PETRAKIS), ROBERT JOHN BURKE (MR. NECK), ERIC LIVELY (ANDY EVANS), ELIZABETH PERKINS (JOYCE SORDINO), D. B. SWEENEY (JACK SORDINO), AND STEVE ZAHN (MR. FREEMAN). ALSO STARRING HALLEE HIRSH, TONY ROSEBORO, AND ALLISON SIKO. DISTRIBUTED BY SHOWTIME NETWORKS, INC. ON JANUARY 20, 2004. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH BY THE UNITED STATES. RUNS 1 HOUR, 32 MINUTES. RATED PG-13 BY THE MPAA, FOR MATURE THEMATIC MATERIAL INVOLVING A TEEN RAPE.

SPEAK WAS WATCHED ON MAY 18, 2013.

“I have never heard a more eloquent silence.” –Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

On the outside, it’s embracing the clichés of a teen drama ever so obliviously. Our characters are merely Hollywood high schoolers. We have the insecure, bitchy, blonde girls who have nothing better to do than gossip. The annoying kid who we realize is neglected, but we also realize it’s probably because he/she just doesn’t shut up. The guy that doesn’t seem like anything special to the protagonist, but seems cuter to her as the story progresses. The parents who just couldn’t care much less what’s going on in their daughter’s life. But as the story moves on, these one-dimensional caricatures rise up as three-dimensional…well, people, and for that matter, ordinary people.

Speaking of ordinary people, Speak is a lot like 1980′s Ordinary People, and when Speak speaks, it speaks a powerful tale. We begin after the horrifying events that turned an outgoing girl like Melinda Sordino (Kristen Stewart) into the shy girl who, in her buried state, decides to stop speaking and notices a certain beauty that cannot be expressed by words. Melinda was raped the summer before she entered her freshman year. She was at a party, and when she dialed 9-1-1, she was far too shocked to report the incident. When the cops arrived, she was still more traumatized then ever, and she was, thus, labelled a “squealer” by everyone at the party.

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Symbolism?

Melinda experiences numerous flashbacks to the incident during the course of the film. Yet she can’t admit to anyone that she was raped, and she’s desperately trying to convince herself that she wasn’t. She decides that she can’t live her life hell-bent on lying to herself and blinding everyone around her from the truth. When her parents notice her grades dropping significantly, they seek help for her. Now Melinda must find a way to rub away her scars, rather than pretend she can’t feel them.

Speak features Kristen Stewart in a tour de force role. In so-called “efforts” such as Twilight and Snow White and the Huntsman, Kristen barely acts. Her monotonous, melancholy facial expressions, rapid-fire verbal delivery, and insomniac build have earned her much negativity in recent years. Yet all this seems to fit in this earlier drama. She makes the role of a disturbed teenager seem easy to portray, and it’s not. She always looks depressed. When she does speak, it’s generally in quick, broken stutters. What makes her twenty-three-year-old self look sleepless, made her thirteen-year-old self look miserable. Even her nervous breakdowns can be difficult to watch, simply because they’re performed well.

Speak isn’t a movie one watches over and over.  Its disappearance into the “TV movie” nomenclature–despite a premiere at the Sundance Film Festival over a year and a half prior–leads me to believe that the movie never got the love it deserves.  As previously mentioned, it does build off sheer caricatures.  But it also builds those into a poignant, gripping slice of life.  I may have teared up near the end, but I was too focused on Melinda to worry over my own matters.

Star Trek Into Darkness

Posted in Drama, [Film Reviews] and tagged
23 May 2013
7 Comments

Strictly Ballroom

Review No. 479

Baz Luhrmann, take your Adderall.

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D-MINUS

DIRECTED BY BAZ LUHRMANN.  PRODUCED BY TRISTRAM MIALL AND ANTOINETTE ALBERT. WRITTEN BY LUHRMANN, ANDREW BOVELL, AND CRAIG PEARCE. STARRING PAUL MERCURIO (SCOTT HASTINGS), TARA MORICE (FRAN), BILL HUNTER (BARRY FIFE), GIA CARIDES (LIZ HOLT), LAUREN HEWETT (KYLIE HASTINGS), AND ANTONIO VARGAS (RICO). ALSO STARRING PAT THOMSON, PETER WHITFORD, BARRY OTTO, ARMONIA BENEDITO, JOHN HANNAN, KERRY SHRIMPTON, KRIS McQUADE, SONIA KRUGER, TODD McKENNEY, PIP MUSHIN, LEONIE PAGE, STEVE GRACE. DISTRIBUTED BY MIRAMAX FILMS ON FEBRUARY 12, 1993. PRODUCED IN ENGLISH AND SPANISH BY AUSTRALIA. RUNS 1 HOUR, 34 MINUTES. RATED PG BY THE MPAA, FOR MILD LANGUAGE AND SENSUALITY.

STRICTLY BALLROOM WAS WATCHED ON MAY 18, 2013.

“There are no new steps!” –Barry Fife (Bill Hunter)

Director Baz Luhrmann’s films have been rambunctiously different in quality, wildly loopholing around the map as if it were his flashy style. You never know when he’s going to appease a crowd or enrage them; all you know is that, due to his interest in product placement and flamboyant (but, somehow, tame) trailers, he’ll have a crowd to react to him. We didn’t know that Romeo + Juliet would be a complete Baztardization of British literature, but it was. We didn’t expect Moulin Rouge! to be a near-definitive jukebox opera, but it was. We hoped for Australia to be a shorter ode to the outback, but it wasn’t. And no matter how much time we spend praying to whatever deity that Strictly Ballroom is not god-awful, that deity laughs. And he doesn’t stop until Baz is done masochistically torturing us.

I don’t want to spend time reviewing Strictly Ballroom. I don’t want to relive it. I don’t want to compliment it at all. Because I hated it. Fine, the music was decent. I’ll give it that, but if I knew what I was in for, I wouldn’t have gone ahead and pressed play, even on the conditions of these sped-up/slowed-down excerpts Baz has included here. I could be listening to the music while doing something else. Why didn’t I think of that in the first place? Am I that stupid?

Strictly Ballroom wants to put dancing on film. Lovingly. I mean, it’s Hans Christian Anderson’s The Ugly Duckling, except for ballroom dancing. Who doesn’t love The Ugly Duckling? Okay, I’ll be honest, it’s a good story, but if you can connect it to The Ugly Duckling, it’s a flaring cliché. Honestly, it’s an abomination to both dancing and film. There’s virtually nothing cinematic about this movie, other than that it’s filmed with a 35mm camera and has a crew assigned to it. The cast doesn’t know how to act in the least, and the crew goes far over the top with lighting, sound, editing, special effects, and costumes. If you, for whatever reason, are curious about the experience of an epileptic seizure, here’s your chance.

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That’s her reaction to him. For my reaction to “Strictly Ballroom”, please Google “A Clockwork Orange Ludovico torture scene.”

Baz Luhrmann co-wrote with two other mostly unfamiliar men, one of whom is his continuing writing collaborator Craig Pearce. Luhrmann is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the field of pacing, and yes, it is very frightening indeed. He seems contained one moment. Oh it’s just a fine, simplistic dancing movie. People with Australian accents, talking daintily to one another like fine chums and chaps and the amicable blokes we are and whatnot. (Perhaps an Australian could teach me better slang.) Then, his medication wears off in an instant. We’re watching kangaroos hop across the screen to a cover version of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”. Except these aren’t kangaroos. These are humans. Moreover, they’re actors claiming to star in a real movie, and getting paid for doing so!

Please try and reason with me as to why this is one of the greatest movies of all time. I’m astonished that critics seem to think so. But at this point, when Rotten Tomatoes reports that “95% of critics liked it,” that statistic means absolutely nothing to me. Because, guess what, 20% of me liked it. That’s a generous twenty for something as simple as the renditions we hear in the audio, especially when I could be listening to it elsewhere.

I know what you’re thinking. You want me to shut up at this point. I should, or else I’ll start directing movies, and my obnoxious, vocal, repetitively flamboyant attitude may transform me into a theoretical “Son of Luhrmann”. As in Son of Dracula, or Son of Frankenstein, but Son of Luhrmann, which is ten times more horrifying. Oh, look at the exit music cutting me off. It appears to fit the occasion quite nicely, and it seems as if spoken by the great Roger Ebert himself:

“I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.”

STAY TUNED FOR MY “WAYNE’S WORLD” REVIEW @ 4:30

Posted in Comedy, Drama, Music/Musical, [Film Reviews] and tagged ,

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