Sunday, January 15, 2012
Adapt or die
By Edward Copeland
Brad Pitt, as far as I'm concerned, always has received a bit of a bum rap as an actor. Granted, he doesn't have the breadth of abilities of others in his generation such as Edward Norton or Philip Seymour Hoffman (who actually co-stars with him here in Moneyball), but when Pitt gets a role that falls into his narrower range such as in Fight Club or The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, he truly excels. In fact, the older Pitt gets, the more his talent grows and there hasn't been a better example yet than his performance as Billy Beane in Moneyball where he delivers his best work yet. It also doesn't hurt that he's working from an incredibly strong script by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin.
Zaillian and Sorkin's screenplay, with a story by Stan Chervin, was adapted from Michael Lewis' book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. While there have been many films about baseball and several I've liked a lot, Moneyball may revolve around the game, but it doesn't resemble other baseball movies though it manages to be just as compelling — if not more so — than other sports movies where the climax involves a Big Game. Bennett Miller helms Moneyball, his first film since his feature debut, Capote, six years ago. While I liked Capote well enough, Moneyball represents a quantum leap forward in quality for Miller.
Billy Beane works as the general manager of the Oakland A's and the movie begins when the team faced off against the New York Yankees in the October 2011 American League Championship Series. At the time, the A's boasted some talented up-and-coming players such as Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi and Oakland almost pulls off the win, but the Yankees prevail. Figures on the screen put the disparity between the teams in very stark terms: It isn't really the Yankees vs. the A's, it's $114,457,768 vs. $39,722,689. Teams with smaller payrolls just can't compete (especially once the season ends and the Yankees poach Damon and Giambi from the A's). As one sports radio talk show host comments, "It's like we're a farm system for the New York Yankees." I don't follow baseball, but that is a ridiculous disparity. It's much like the political system has become following the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling.
Beane, once a promising player himself, pleads to the Athletics' owner for more money to try to level the playing field with the richer teams, but the owner balks. During a meeting with Cleveland Indians General Manager Mark Shapiro (Reed Diamond) to obtain replacements for his lost stars, Beane gets shot down at every turn by what he can afford. While he's there, he notices a young man (Jonah Hill) whispering advice that appears to be taken. Beane zeroes in on the guy and learns his name is Peter Brand. Brand advocates a different approach to team building. Instead of chasing star players who cost a fortune and may or may not deliver championships, Brand proposes following a statistical formula based on which players get on base most often, usually at lower salaries.
Oakland's veteran baseball scouts and his manager Art Howe (Hoffman) resist this new system and it falls flat at first as Howe continues to use the players the way he always has, ignoring Beane's suggestions. Finally, Beane makes moves that force his Howe to give his new player acquisitions to get game time. Eventually, the new method reaps rewards and the A's go on an incredible and historic winning streak. Even if you aren't a baseball fan, it's difficult not to feel the excitement when a home run comes at a crucial time.
The only criticism I had with Moneyball is that it dips a bit too often into flashbacks to Beane's life as a promising baseball player coming out of high school (It doesn't help that the actor playing the younger Beane doesn't look that much like Pitt). They could have made all the same points they make in those scenes in less time and without so much repetition and shortened the film's 133-minute running time. However, that's a minor complaint against an otherwise solid film.
Pretty much from top to bottom, the cast excels, including brief appearances by Robin Wright as Beane's ex-wife and Arliss Howard as the head of the Boston Red Sox. Hoffman turns in a fine performance as always, but he lays back since this isn't his movie and makes no scene-stealing attempts. Hill gets to show he's capable of playing a role unlike anything he's played before. He's been fine in most of the comedies in which he's appeared, most from the Judd Apatow Factory such as Funny People, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Superbad and Knocked Up, even if the movies' quality varied, but it's nice to see him given the opportunity to portray a completely different type of character and do it well.
Combining the screenplay and Pitt's best-ever performance proves ultimately to be the winning formula that makes Moneyball so compelling. Pitt (who also was a producer) never strikes a false note and the film rarely does either. Even though Moneyball tells a true story, I didn't know what happened in 2002 so the ending came as a genuine surprise, yet one that felt wholly appropriate — and not the way a fictional script would choose to finish its tale. That's another reason Moneyball belongs on the list of 2011's best films.
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Labels: 10s, Apatow, Books, Brad Pitt, Capote, Edward Norton, Jonah Hill, Nonfiction, P.S. Hoffman, Robin Wright, Sorkin
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Monday, June 13, 2011
Giving Rodney some respect
By Edward Copeland
There used to be a story that recurred year after year in Rodney Dangerfield's later years where someone would nominate him to become a member of the Actors Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and each time, his application would be rejected. It sounds like a setup for one of his jokes that would end in how he "don't get no respect," but it wasn't a joke, it was true. When you look again at his performance in Back to School, which was released 25 years ago today, there's a real actor there. His Thornton Melon is quite different from his Al Czervik in Caddyshack. Oh, and the movie itself holds up pretty damn well too.
Aside from the 1971 film The Projectionist, a 1977 TV movie and uncredited work as an extra in Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, 1980's Caddyshack truly marked the beginning of Dangerfield's acting career — when Rodney was nearly 60. Of course, his career as a comedian got a similar late start. After an unsuccessful early try, he gave it up for regular work until he tried again at the age of 40. In a movie full of funny people, Caddyshack really boosted Dangerfield's image. Unfortunately, his next film, 1983's Easy Money, didn't quite work, though no one could say his Monty Capuletti was a repeat of Al Czervik either.
As a rule, the more names you see credited with writing a film, the more likely the movie will be a mess. Back to School turned out to be a great exception to that rule with three people, including Dangerfield, receiving story credit and four people named as writing the screenplay. The four credited screenwriters were Steven Kampmann, who wrote seven episodes of WKRP in Cincinnati and played Kirk, the compulsive liar who ran the diner in the first two seasons of Newhart; Will Porter, who co-wrote two films with Kampmann and an episode of Newhart; Peter Torokvei, who wrote eight episodes of WKRP as well as co-writing Real Genius and Guarding Tess; and Harold Ramis, whose resume runs too long to list. With the exception of Torokvei, everyone, including the other two people who have story credit, Greg Fields and Dennis Snee, had ties to Dangerfield, often through TV comedy specials. Many also had separate ties to each other through other projects, so I think this familiarity helped Back to School break the multiple writer curse. What surprised me just looking up things for this post is that I forgot what a huge hit Back to School was. It grossed more than $91 million at the U.S. box office and in its opening weekend, beat Ferris Bueller's Day Off (though Ferris had a two-day head start, opening on a Wednesday) by $2 million. By comparison, Caddyshack's total gross was merely $39 million. (Ferris only ended up around $70 million.)
Not too long ago, Back to School was being shown on commercial TV a lot and I caught much of it many times, but re-watching the uncut version for this anniversary tribute was the first time I'd seen it from start to finish in a long time. I had noticed that the TV versions never showed the scene where Dangerfield sings "Twist & Shout" in the bar (and what strange synchronicity that two films that opened within two days of each other in 1986 both had that song in it, one sung by the star, the other with its star lip-synching The Beatles' cover), but there were quite a few scenes that seemed to have been excised from TV versions. I was relieved that "Twist & Shout" remains on the DVD. I feared it was another example of money-grubbing music industry strong arms forcing them to remove it because they didn't keep paying them extortion and the movie's producers and copyright owners were being threatened with broken legs and cement boots if they didn't keep coughing up the dough. Television does this re-editing of movies quite often and, surprisingly, it's not for content. Edward Norton's underrated Keeping the Faith has its entire framing device removed from the TV cut as well as the hilarious blind date scene Ben Stiller's character has with a woman played by Lisa Edelstein, better known as Cuddy on House. I know they do it to shorten films to squeeze more commercials in, but some of the cuts just seem odd and I wonder who makes these decisions.
My mind may be blanking, but I certainly don't remember the TV cuts opening with the nice black-and-white prologue. The first image we see is an old style phonograph player with the needle coming down to play some opera. We then see a city street scene identified as New York 1940 and a young boy (Jason Hervey, the older
brother on The Wonder Years) admiring a fancy car pulling out into the street before he steps into Meloni's Tailor Shop, where his father (Boris Aplon) is busy working. He asks young Thornton how school was and he reluctantly hands over his report card, which does not contain glowing grades. His immigrant father expresses outrage — how does his son expect to go to college unless he gets good grades? Young Thornton says he doesn't want to go to college. He wants to work with his dad in the family business. Mr. Meloni gets angry and tells his son, "No matter how rich or successful a man is, if he don't got no education, he got nothing." Hervey even does Dangerfield's signature move and pulls at his shirt collar. As the rest of the credits roll, it's a great mockup of Thornton's coming of age into Dangerfield, changing his last name to Melon and transforming that little tailor shop into a successful chain of Thornton Melon's Tall and Fat Stores. Among the mocked up clips of Melon acquiring wealth and fame, they even sneak in a shot of him from Caddyshack, only in black and white. It then goes from the credit montage to Thornton's latest television commercial, which starts Dangerfield's verbal entrance in the film with a rapid series of one liners:"When you go jogging, do you leave potholes? When you make love, do you have to give directions? When you go to the zoo, do the elephants throw YOU peanuts? Do you look at a menu and say, 'OK?'"
We realize he's watching the ad in the back of his limo, driven by his faithful chauffeur/man for all purposes Lou (Burt Young). You hear the ad espouse the store's sizes such as "heavy, stout, extra stout and their new Hindenburg line." It closes with his slogan: "If you want to look thin, hang around with fat people." Melon is en route to a board meeting at his corporate headquarters, where everyone at the conference table is chowing down. Among the ideas offered include a toy to compete with the-then popular Cabbage Patch Kids, only the Melon Patch Kids, instead of being adopted have been abandoned. The meeting gets cut short when Thornton gets a call from his son Jason (Keith Gordon) from college. His dad asks him how his fraternity and the diving team are going and Jason tells his father that everything couldn't be better, though we can see that he doesn't belong to a frat and he serves only as the towel boy for the diving team, where he's tortured by one of the team's members, Chas (William Zabka, the lead adversary in The Karate Kid). Then, Melon has Lou take him home to prepare for a party his wench of a wife Vanessa (Adrienne Barbeau) has planned and which he's dreading. As he confides to Lou, "She gives good headache." When they arrive, he tells Lou that he can't believe they've been married for five years. "It seems like yesterday — and you know what a lousy day yesterday was."
As Thornton says to a potential romantic interest later in describing his marriage to Vanessa (after decades of bliss with Jason's late mother), "I was an earth sign, she was a water sign. Together, we made mud." He hates her and she feels the same toward him, basically using him as a bank account to throw trendy parties
where people come to suck up to her. She doesn't try too hard to hide her infidelities. Thornton even catches her at the party with Giorgio (Robert Picardo). Melon does his best to embarrass her, saying how he hates tiny food and taking most of the hors d'oeuvres off a table and turning them into a sandwich. When she introduces him to a couple she's trying to impress and compliments the woman's dress and its lovely shade of green, Melon's response is "If that dress had pockets, you'd look like a pool table." That's the final straw for Vanessa who asks to see Thornton in private where she demands a divorce. "I knew we had something in common," Melon says, whipping out divorce papers he's already had prepared. Vanessa vows he won't get off that easy — it'll cost him. Melon disagrees and starts showing her Polaroids he has of Vanessa and Giorgio in various places, though he asks for an explanation on one. "There's you, there's Giorgio…What's with the midget over here?" Vanessa storms out and Thornton takes a swim, tells Lou he's free and decides to visit Jason at college.At Grand Lakes University (mascot: The Hooters), things aren't going well for Jason. In addition to not making the diving team or being accepted into a fraternity, his grades aren't doing well either. He's telling his iconoclastic dorm roommate Derek Lutz (a hilarious Robert Downey Jr., with splashes of blue and purple in his hair) that he's thinking of dropping out of the whole enterprise. It doesn't help that he's got a mad crush on
Valerie Desmond (Terry Farrell), a girl who is sort of dating Chas and who Derek reminds him is far out of the league of dorks like the two of them. Farrell, who would go on years later to be Lt. Dax on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the movie's weakest link in a cast that otherwise amazes with the depth of its great collection of character actors. When Lou and Thornton arrive, Thornton first starts walking blindly into Greek houses looking for Jason, learning that he doesn't belong to a frat, and checks out the diving team, where he finds out he's really the towel boy. So, when Jason and Derek get back to the dorm, Thornton and Lou surprise them by already waiting inside. Jason's dad confronts him about what he's discovered and wants an explanation. Jason gives a straight-forward response, "I lied." His father hugs him but tells his son, "Jason, you don't lie to me — you lie to girls." When Jason tells Thornton that he's thinking of dropping out, Melon won't have it and repeats his father's words to him. "If you don't have an education, you don't have anything" and he decides, he's going to go through the process with him — Thornton Melon is going to enroll as a freshman at Grand Lakes University.
Now, Thornton can't just waltz into enrollment. He never finished high school, has no records or GED, ACT or SAT scores that the university can take into account when considering him, explains Dean Martin (admittedly, a cheap laugh they use too often) played by the always reliable Ned Beatty. Melon finds a way around those problems by suggesting he donate the money for construction of the future Melon
School of Business, which introduces Thornton's villain for the film, business professor Philip Barbay (Paxton Whitehead), who holds Melon in disdain and feels his admission makes the accomplishments of students who worked hard to get there lack meaning. He shows up at the groundbreaking to protest to Dean Martin, who replies, "In Mister Melon's defense, it was a really big check." The rivalry grows worse when Melon becomes a student in Barbay's class and embarrasses him when he proposes the class set up a pretend business and Thornton corrects him on all the steps he left out that you have to go through to build a factory in the real world. The final straw though comes when Melon starts wooing his English teacher Dr. Diane Turner (Sally Kellerman), who had sort of been dating the stuffy Barbay.
Back to School was directed by Alan Metter and it can't really be said that he directed any notable films before or after this one (his most recent credit on IMDb is a 2005 Olivia Newton-John video) with a filmography that includes Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Moving, Police Academy: Mission to Moscow and, for television, The Growing Pains Movie. However, he has one bona fide winner on his resume with Back to School. It's almost wall-to-wall jokes, but it also has heart as well. No one can accuse it of being terribly original or having surprises in its plot (except for one delicious one which now, 25 years later, I'm sure every knows about). Thornton, who becomes a true party animal on campus treats college like
he does his business: He delegates, bringing in experts to do his homework. When Jason tells him that he's got a paper due on Kurt Vonnegut and he hasn't read any of the books, his dad tells him he tried, but he just didn't get them. Then, there's a knock on the dorm room door and who's standing there but Kurt Vonnegut himself. Then, to add another layer on the joke, Dr. Turner gives Thornton an 'F' on the paper because she says she can tell he didn't do it and "Whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut!" For the final punchline, cut from TV because of language, we see Melon calling Vonnegut up to complain about the grade. "And another thing Vonnegut, I'm gonna stop payment on the check. Fuck me? Hey, Kurt, can you read lips? Fuck you! Next time, I'll call Robert Ludlum." 
What really holds Back to School together, other than Dangerfield himself and the high joke quotient, and helps it overcome its paper-thin, predictable plotting is the amazing cast assembled for it. In addition to the
aforementioned Gordon, Young, Beatty, Whitehead, Kellerman and Downey, we also get supporting actor extraordinaire M. Emmet Walsh as the diving team coach and a single scene of Edie McClurg (who appeared in both films with "Twist & Shout" that 1986 weekend) as one of Thornton's secretaries that he sends to Barbay's class to take notes on a dictation machine. Gordon really has the hardest role of them all because he's basically playing straight man to an entire cast as well as trying to shoulder the more "dramatic" parts of the story as he deals with the embarrassment his father causes him on campus. It doesn't help that Gordon must also moon over his would-be love interest Valerie, as played by Farrell, which provides the film's dullest moments since, to be blunt, Farrell's acting is horrid. That plot also entangles Zabka, whom you can't really judge since he's just there to be a one-dimensional frat boy asshole the same way he was a one-dimensional karate school asshole in The Karate Kid two years earlier, though we do get spared a moment at the end where his character suddenly has a turnaround and shouts, "You're alright, Melon!"
Perhaps the most memorable appearance of the film — though it was the only film in which the comedian ever appeared — is one that should ensure that the legend of the far-too-short career of Sam Kinison will go on. Discovered in his club by Dangerfield, he insisted on finding a place in the film for the brilliant wildman. There never was and never has been another comedian quite like Kinison, who was a huge influence on my friends and I during our high school years. I remember the night when I learned of his death and calling up a friend with the news, crying out, "Why couln't it have been Dice?" In Back to School, Kinison has a brief role as American history Professor Terguson, a shell-shocked Vietnam vet who has a tendency to explode into the type of rants you'd find in a Kinison standup routine. It's a hlarious, brief encapsulation of the comic's style that hopefully encourages people to seek out his actual comedy. Gone far too soon.
Of all the supporting performances that deserve special recognition, more must be said about the wonderfully droll work of Burt Young as Lou — driver, bodyguard, confidant and whatever job Thornton needs to be done. He's a man of few words, but he can earn so many laughs with no words at all, whether he's crushing a napkin
holder before proceeding to single-handedly beat up the university's football team or just laying in a chaisse lounge after Thornton and Vanessa finally split. He pulls off his one big speech when he tells Jason that he's being a big hard on his father, who needs his help for a change. "I know your pop 30 years. He understands. He's a nice guy and he's tough," Lou tells Jason. "Like me. I'm nice and I'm tough. I'll give you an idea what I mean. My two boys — I put one through college and the other I put through a wall. Your papa loves you. He's lookin' out for ya. Look out for him." Then, in one of my favorite moments, Lou gets to sit in the stands at the diving team event next to Derek who comments how no one heckles divers and blows an air horn when the opposing team dives (another scene cut for TV since it's an illegal act) prompting Lou to tell Derek, "I'm beginning to like you kid."
Back to School also offers one of the earlier Danny Elfman film scores, but it goes one step further. Elfman appears in the film himself with his band Oingo Boingo singing their song "Dead Man's Party" at a huge blowout that Thornton throws in the revamped dorm room that he, Jason, Derek and Lou share.
In the end though, this is Dangerfield's film and he deserves credit for giving an actual performance that goes beyond being a mere joke machine. True, Thornton Melon doesn't go too long without delivering a punchline,
but he's also a character with depth, a man whose love for his son truly comes through, who can register hurt. It's a shame that in his lifetime the Academy were such snobs to always refuse him entry, especially when you see some of the people who they have allowed to join. (Hell, they allowed Barbra Streisand to join before she had her first film even released). Dangerfield made some bad movies, but he did show he could act, even in a film I despised such as Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. Back to School though I believe contains his best performance and it was his biggest hit. There was talk before he died about trying to do a remake. Don't even try. I can't imagine them finding an equal to Dangerfield or the rest of the cast. Leave well enough alone. If you've run out of new ideas, stop making new movies and just re-release the old ones. It would be better for the studios' bottom lines and audiences would be better served. Tweet
Labels: 80s, Beatles, Burt Young, Edward Norton, Kubrick, Movie Tributes, N. Beatty, Oliver Stone, Oscars, Ramis, Robert Downey Jr., Streisand, Television, Vonnegut
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Thursday, December 09, 2010
Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul
By Edward Copeland
Actors relish the chance to play twins and Edward Norton makes the most of it in Tim Blake Nelson's unusual Leaves of Grass where Norton gets to play brothers, one who has abandoned his Oklahoma roots to teach classical philosophy on the East Coast, the other who is just as intelligent but thoroughly Okie and uses his brain for designing intricate hydroponic marijuana growing techniques.
Brown professor Bill Kincaid has become a minor star in his teaching field, earning magazine covers, an offer from Harvard to launch his own department and lovestruck students who try to seduce him while they recite love poems they've written in Latin.
Back in the Little Dixie section of Oklahoma, Bill's brother Brady is facing problems from rival dealers who think he's trying to encroach on their territory and a local kingpin who financed his massive hydroponic project but has yet to be repaid for his investment.
Soon, Bill receives a call from Brady's best friend Bolger (Nelson) with the sad news that Brady has been murdered by a crossbow so, for the first time in years, Bill is hopping a plane back to the Sooner State where his perfectly capable mom (Susan Sarandon), a pothead in her own right, has chosen to live in a retirement home just because she thinks it makes for an easier life.
Bill has worked long and hard to shed himself of all Oklahoma ties, so the thought of going back does not appeal to him. He doesn't want to see his mother and he's especially pissed off once he gets there and realizes that Brady wasn't killed but just used the story as a ruse to lure him there so he'd have an alibi to be in two places at once.
The one positive Bill finds in the trip is meeting a high school English teacher named Janet (Keri Russell) who seems to be the only person on Bill's wavelength, but chose to stay in Oklahoma anyway. In one scene, she takes Bill noodling for catfish and as Bill discusses his lot in life, Janet surprises him by tossing off some Whitman. Bill tells her that he never though he'd hear Whitman recited to him by a woman gutting a catfish to which Janet replies that it's the only way Whitman should be recited.
Leaves of Grass plays as a true original. Much of it comes off as wicked farce, somewhat in the vein of Raising Arizona, but at moments it will surprise you with some real poignancy. Tulsa native Nelson also never goes for the easy laughs of painting all the Oklahomans as rubes.
He's also assembled an impressive cast for a low-budget indie. In addition to those mentioned, there's also fine work by Melanie Lynskey, Josh Pais, Maggie Siff, Pruitt Taylor Vince and, best of all, in little more than a single scene, Richard Dreyfuss as a Jewish philanthropist out of Tulsa who also happens to finance the marijuana business on the side to fund aid to Israel.
Nelson's triple-threat work here pays off as he's created a very funny, very human crime story with philosophical underpinnings. It's one of a kind.
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Labels: 10s, Edward Norton, Susan Sarandon
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Friday, November 14, 2008
Raider of a lost art
By Edward Copeland
I can't recall whether it was Time or Newsweek, but I remember the cover: Harrison Ford and Karen Allen tied to a post. I'm fairly certain the name Spielberg hadn't entered my consciousness, even though I loved Jaws. I hadn't seen Close Encounters or 1941 or The Sugarland Express for that matter (though I had seen Duel). I could hardly wait for Raiders of the Lost Ark and when my 12-year-old enthusiasm got to see the movie, I loved it. As the years went by, each time I saw Raiders, I liked it a little less, so it was with dread when I faced the prospect of a fourth installment 27 years after the original.
Because of my health problems this year, I couldn't see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in the theater. I knew most of the twists ahead of the time. Even worse (or better, depending on your point of view), the week before I saw it on DVD I saw the hilarious South Park episode that had the kids trying to get Spielberg and George Lucas arrested for "raping Indiana Jones."
Now, while I don't feel what Crystal Skull did was that bad, it certainly wasn't a very good movie. I hated Temple of Doom from the first time I saw it, but I thought Last Crusade was enjoyable enough. Crystal Skull was just a bore. It just made me think about how
Raiders diminished in my eyes over time. I remember reading Pauline Kael's review after my mind had started to change and her writeup crystallized my thoughts. That wasn't the only time it had happened with a Spielberg film either. While E.T. held me in wonder when it first came out, years later when I saw it again, I found myself mocking it as I watched it. Now, if I do like a Spielberg film when I first see it such as Minority Report or Catch Me if You Can, I'm afraid to re-watch it because with the exception of the glorious and incomparable Jaws, Spielberg's movies don't wear very well. Schindler's List was great both times I saw it, but it's not exactly the type of film you want to pop some popcorn for and kick back for a carefree evening of moviewatching with friends. When thinking about what to say in this piece, I realized that Spielberg is one of the few acclaimed directors that you seldom hear discussing movies or filmmakers who influenced him. Granted, not everyone can be a Scorsese, who gets positively giddy discussing obscure films he saw as a child, but I almost wonder did any films make an impression on Spielberg? Is that why so many of his feel so thin, either from the get-go or over time?I recently saw an interview Elvis Mitchell did with Edward Norton where Norton talked about how Spike Lee would try to screen a movie every night while they filmed 25th Hour. One night, Lee showed Midnight Cowboy and when it was done, he turned to Norton and said, "Still a muthafucker." Does Spielberg ever show films to his cast and crew to give them an idea of what he's after like so many other directors do or is that why sometimes so many seem to be in different movies at the same time. It seems to me that Spielberg turned into a corporation before he had a chance to grow as an artist. The same year he released E.T. was the year he began to be a producing machine with Poltergeist, with varying degrees of success from the drudgery of The Goonies to the brilliance of Back to the Future, which is better than most of the films Spielberg has actually directed. For me, the greatest film Spielberg has made remains Jaws, which I never tire of watching. I wonder if he's watched it lately. Maybe he should. Maybe he'll spot something he's lost.
Labels: 00s, 70s, 80s, 90s, Edward Norton, Harrison Ford, Kael, Lucas, Scorsese, Sequels, South Park, Spielberg, Spike Lee
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Thursday, February 01, 2007
Sometimes there's truth in illusion
By Edward Copeland
Even though The Illusionist opened first, The Prestige garnered more attention last year, making this film seem as if it's the "other 19th-century magician movie." However, that label does a disservice to both films because aside from the time period and the occupation of the central characters, the two films couldn't be more different.
While The Prestige chronicled games of oneupmanship between battling magicians, The Illusionist at its heart really is a love story. What the two films do have in common though is that both are quite good.
Edward Norton stars as Eisenheim, the son of a poor carpenter who makes a name for himself as a master magician in Vienna only to discover that his once-lost love (Jessica Biel) is now the fiancee of a power-hungry prince (Rufus Sewell), eager to take the reins of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
To reveal much more would spoil the turns the story takes. However, it is worth noting that the Oscar nomination it received for Dick Pope's cinematography was more than deserved as are most of the other technical aspects of the film, including the writing and directing of Neil Burger. Hell, even Philip Glass' score doesn't intrude on the film the way it did in Notes on a Scandal.
Norton turns in a solid performance as always, but for me the real standout is Paul Giamatti as the chief inspector, ambitious and willing to serve as a lackey for the prince but who still remains conscientious. When Eisenheim asks him at one point if he's completely corrupt and Giamatti replies, "No, not completely" I couldn't help but be reminded of Claude Rains' Renault in Casablanca.
Giamatti also gets a moment near the film's denouement that is as much a joy to watch as a viewer as it is for the character himself. Of the two films, I still slightly prefer The Prestige, but The Illusionist certainly is worth a look as well.
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Even though The Illusionist opened first, The Prestige garnered more attention last year, making this film seem as if it's the "other 19th-century magician movie." However, that label does a disservice to both films because aside from the time period and the occupation of the central characters, the two films couldn't be more different.
While The Prestige chronicled games of oneupmanship between battling magicians, The Illusionist at its heart really is a love story. What the two films do have in common though is that both are quite good.
Edward Norton stars as Eisenheim, the son of a poor carpenter who makes a name for himself as a master magician in Vienna only to discover that his once-lost love (Jessica Biel) is now the fiancee of a power-hungry prince (Rufus Sewell), eager to take the reins of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
To reveal much more would spoil the turns the story takes. However, it is worth noting that the Oscar nomination it received for Dick Pope's cinematography was more than deserved as are most of the other technical aspects of the film, including the writing and directing of Neil Burger. Hell, even Philip Glass' score doesn't intrude on the film the way it did in Notes on a Scandal.
Norton turns in a solid performance as always, but for me the real standout is Paul Giamatti as the chief inspector, ambitious and willing to serve as a lackey for the prince but who still remains conscientious. When Eisenheim asks him at one point if he's completely corrupt and Giamatti replies, "No, not completely" I couldn't help but be reminded of Claude Rains' Renault in Casablanca.
Giamatti also gets a moment near the film's denouement that is as much a joy to watch as a viewer as it is for the character himself. Of the two films, I still slightly prefer The Prestige, but The Illusionist certainly is worth a look as well.
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Labels: 00s, Edward Norton, Giamatti
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Monday, December 18, 2006
When bad movies happen to good actors
By Edward Copeland
About halfway through the excruciating Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs (Joseph Cross) admits that sometimes he fantasizes about grabbing a knife and stabbing both of his parents to death. I admit to harboring the same thoughts as far as this movie is concerned, which turned out to be one of the most annoying filmwatching experiences I've had all year.
What makes it even more puzzling is that somehow, within the stilted archness and hateful characters, most of the actors manage to still turn in good performances, which always presents a quandary for me — should I honor performances that are good in spite of the movies that contain them? While Annette Bening got all the early buzz before the film ever opened, the true standout here is Jill Clayburgh who it is truly great to see in such fine form so long since she's had a really good film role. She plays Agnes, the unstable wife (actually, it seems redundant to call her character unstable since there isn't a stable character in the entire film) of Dr. Finch (Brian Cox), the demanding, crooked shrink of Augusten's mother Deirdre (Bening).
At first, Clayburgh sort of exists merely as background decoration but as the film grinds along, her character becomes more and more important and her scenes contain a gravity that the rest of the film sorely needs.
Bening is good as always, but if she keeps picking roles such as Deirdre in movies as awful as Running With Scissors, I think that Oscar may always elude her whether Hilary Swank is in the running or not. I thought all along the reason she lost for American Beauty was because she was saddled with the film's least likable character. In the case of Being Julia, her character certainly was less grating, but she existed in a movie that few saw and that those who did found very underwhelming.
The third in the troika of the film's great female performances belongs to Evan Rachel Wood as the youngest of Dr. Finch's daughters. She seems to get better and better as she gets older. She also was fine in the underseen Down in the Valley with Edward Norton this year.
For the men, they do what they can. Cross is fine — but he looks too old for what the character is supposed to be. I was stunned when he mentions he's in junior high and later when he celebrates his 15th birthday when he so obviously looks as if he's college age.
Joseph Fiennes is unrecognizable as another of Dr. Finch's "adopted" children — I didn't realize it was him until I checked the credits. Alec Baldwin appears way too briefly as Augusten's dad.
Cox makes the most of his daffy shrink character. At one point, he gathers his family around the toilet stool to stare at his morning bowel movement, declaring "My turd is a direct communication from the holy father." If turds truly were signs of a higher power, Running With Scissors certainly will make an atheist of anyone who endures it.
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Labels: 00s, Alec Baldwin, Bening, E.R. Wood, Edward Norton
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Friday, January 20, 2006
Let's Twist Again -- Spoilers ahead
You all have been warned. This post is going to deal with major plot twists in lots of films, so if there are major movies you've missed — don't say I didn't warn you. So far, the post and comments have included specific and vague references to the following titles: Psycho, The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, The Crying Game, In Old Arizona, The Usual Suspects, The Family Stone, Match Point, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Lone Star, Vanilla Sky, Sunset Blvd., The Wizard of Oz, Angel Heart, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Matchstick Men, To Live and Die in L.A. and L.A. Confidential.
By Edward Copeland
Every time a friend of mine has a new child — something which seems to happen with more and more frequency — I make one simple request: I beg them to do their damndest to keep all knowledge about the movie Psycho (the original, not the Gus Van Sant travesty) away from them. Can you imagine what it must have been like to see Psycho in 1960 for the first time, unaware that the shower scene was coming and the main character up to that point was going to bite it? I can't. I wish I could. By the time I saw Psycho — I think I was in the sixth grade — I already knew about the shower scene and had seen Anthony Perkins spoof Norman Bates in a Saturday Night Live sketch about the Norman Bates School for Motel Management.
There are lots of movies such as Psycho, where you want to guard their secrets as closely as the Bush Administration tried to hide warrantless wiretapping. However, many times the twist has been blown, often by the movie's own trailer, before you ever get to see it.
Back in 1999, there were two such films with big twists that I knew were coming before I saw the movies. I was very late in getting to The Sixth Sense, but I think that even if I saw it opening day, I would have figured out that Bruce Willis was dead. Granted, I'll never know for sure, but it seemed obvious to me and lessened my interest in the movie. Would I have liked it better if I'd been left in the dark? I'll never know.
On the other hand, I had Fight Club ruined for me by a throwaway line in a David Thomson article in The New York Times that, without warning, gave away the secret that Brad Pitt's character was a figment of Edward Norton's character's imagination.
However, this time knowing the twist actually made the moviegoing experience deeper for me — and Fight Club ended up being one of my favorite films of the year. The fact that I knew what was going on didn't affect my love for the film any less, which to me would seem to indicate that Fight Club is just a vastly superior film than The Sixth Sense.
When The Crying Game came out in 1992, I was lucky. I saw it very early and all I knew about it was that it was about the IRA and it had a twist. When captured British soldier Forest Whitaker made his escape and got killed by a convoy of his own troops en route to rescue him, I relaxed. I figured that was the twist, so the revelation that Dil was a man took me by surprise. One interesting note though: In my experience, female viewers were always quicker to pick up on Dil's gender than male viewers were.
Twists are a long tradition in movies. Sometimes they are used well and help the film, other times they add nothing and make absolutely no sense. Not too long ago, I saw 1928's In Old Arizona, which won Warner Baxter the second Oscar for best actor for playing the Cisco Kid. Even it had a nice twist in it, which I have to imagine was pretty cold and surprising for audiences back then.
Other movies with twists seem to be all about the twist and nothing more. That was my problem with The Sixth Sense and with something like The Usual Suspects. I mean — who cares really who Keyser Soze was? By process of elimination, you narrow it to two people pretty early and by the end, you know for sure and the more you think about it, the less sense it makes.
Trailers these days seem intent on ruining their plot twists, even when they aren't blatant about it. Could anyone watch the trailer for The Family Stone and not know that Sarah Jessica Parker was going to end up with Luke Wilson instead of Dermot Mulroney? I didn't see the trailer before I saw Woody Allen's Match Point, but nearly all the reviews gave away that Jonathan Rhys Meyers was going to kill Scarlett Johansson. Even if they hadn't, people who have seen a lot of Woody Allen movies would probably smell a similarity to Crimes and Misdemeanors, especially when Johansson's character takes a sharp turn toward Anjelica Huston's shrill mistress character from Crimes to justify the third act. Then, after I saw the movie, I actually saw the clips they spliced together for The Golden Globes — and they show Rhys Meyers in the apartment with the shotgun. I guess they don't even care if it's ruined.
Granted, from years of moviegoing, it's hard to fool me with much, but some plot twists do take me by surprise — especially if I'm so engaged with the film as a whole that I'm not expecting them. Looking back, I should have seen the twist that Chris Cooper and Elizabeth Pena were half-siblings in John Sayles' Lone Star coming, but I didn't — and it made the movie that much more enjoyable for me.
One type of twist that really needs to go away is the "It's all a dream" twist. It hasn't worked since Dorothy woke up back in Kansas back in 1939, but films still go there now and then, like Cameron Crowe's awful Vanilla Sky. Even the abundance of movies where the narrator and/or protagonist turn out to be dead, seem like a rehash since Billy Wilder did it so beautifully with William Holden in Sunset Blvd.
I could probably go on and on with examples of twists, both good and bad, but now I want it to be your turn. What movies have your favorite twists? What movies have twists you don't think work at all?
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By Edward Copeland
Every time a friend of mine has a new child — something which seems to happen with more and more frequency — I make one simple request: I beg them to do their damndest to keep all knowledge about the movie Psycho (the original, not the Gus Van Sant travesty) away from them. Can you imagine what it must have been like to see Psycho in 1960 for the first time, unaware that the shower scene was coming and the main character up to that point was going to bite it? I can't. I wish I could. By the time I saw Psycho — I think I was in the sixth grade — I already knew about the shower scene and had seen Anthony Perkins spoof Norman Bates in a Saturday Night Live sketch about the Norman Bates School for Motel Management.
There are lots of movies such as Psycho, where you want to guard their secrets as closely as the Bush Administration tried to hide warrantless wiretapping. However, many times the twist has been blown, often by the movie's own trailer, before you ever get to see it.
Back in 1999, there were two such films with big twists that I knew were coming before I saw the movies. I was very late in getting to The Sixth Sense, but I think that even if I saw it opening day, I would have figured out that Bruce Willis was dead. Granted, I'll never know for sure, but it seemed obvious to me and lessened my interest in the movie. Would I have liked it better if I'd been left in the dark? I'll never know.
On the other hand, I had Fight Club ruined for me by a throwaway line in a David Thomson article in The New York Times that, without warning, gave away the secret that Brad Pitt's character was a figment of Edward Norton's character's imagination.
However, this time knowing the twist actually made the moviegoing experience deeper for me — and Fight Club ended up being one of my favorite films of the year. The fact that I knew what was going on didn't affect my love for the film any less, which to me would seem to indicate that Fight Club is just a vastly superior film than The Sixth Sense.
When The Crying Game came out in 1992, I was lucky. I saw it very early and all I knew about it was that it was about the IRA and it had a twist. When captured British soldier Forest Whitaker made his escape and got killed by a convoy of his own troops en route to rescue him, I relaxed. I figured that was the twist, so the revelation that Dil was a man took me by surprise. One interesting note though: In my experience, female viewers were always quicker to pick up on Dil's gender than male viewers were.
Twists are a long tradition in movies. Sometimes they are used well and help the film, other times they add nothing and make absolutely no sense. Not too long ago, I saw 1928's In Old Arizona, which won Warner Baxter the second Oscar for best actor for playing the Cisco Kid. Even it had a nice twist in it, which I have to imagine was pretty cold and surprising for audiences back then.
Other movies with twists seem to be all about the twist and nothing more. That was my problem with The Sixth Sense and with something like The Usual Suspects. I mean — who cares really who Keyser Soze was? By process of elimination, you narrow it to two people pretty early and by the end, you know for sure and the more you think about it, the less sense it makes.
Trailers these days seem intent on ruining their plot twists, even when they aren't blatant about it. Could anyone watch the trailer for The Family Stone and not know that Sarah Jessica Parker was going to end up with Luke Wilson instead of Dermot Mulroney? I didn't see the trailer before I saw Woody Allen's Match Point, but nearly all the reviews gave away that Jonathan Rhys Meyers was going to kill Scarlett Johansson. Even if they hadn't, people who have seen a lot of Woody Allen movies would probably smell a similarity to Crimes and Misdemeanors, especially when Johansson's character takes a sharp turn toward Anjelica Huston's shrill mistress character from Crimes to justify the third act. Then, after I saw the movie, I actually saw the clips they spliced together for The Golden Globes — and they show Rhys Meyers in the apartment with the shotgun. I guess they don't even care if it's ruined.
Granted, from years of moviegoing, it's hard to fool me with much, but some plot twists do take me by surprise — especially if I'm so engaged with the film as a whole that I'm not expecting them. Looking back, I should have seen the twist that Chris Cooper and Elizabeth Pena were half-siblings in John Sayles' Lone Star coming, but I didn't — and it made the movie that much more enjoyable for me.
One type of twist that really needs to go away is the "It's all a dream" twist. It hasn't worked since Dorothy woke up back in Kansas back in 1939, but films still go there now and then, like Cameron Crowe's awful Vanilla Sky. Even the abundance of movies where the narrator and/or protagonist turn out to be dead, seem like a rehash since Billy Wilder did it so beautifully with William Holden in Sunset Blvd.
I could probably go on and on with examples of twists, both good and bad, but now I want it to be your turn. What movies have your favorite twists? What movies have twists you don't think work at all?
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Labels: A. Huston, Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Holden, Huston, Johansson, Sayles, Van Sant, Wilder, Willis, Woody
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