Saturday, February 18, 2012
"Your horse is a mirror to your soul."
By Edward Copeland
So says Buck Brannaman, the inspiration for the idea of a "horse whisperer" and the subject of the documentary Buck. "Sometimes you may not like what you see, sometimes you will," Brannaman completes his statement. Directed by Cindy Meehl, Buck made the Academy's shortlist for best documentary feature though it didn't make the cut for the final five. It's a fine and interesting film and though my pool of 2011 documentaries runs much smaller than the Academy's, Buck wouldn't have made my final five either.
This isn't meant to imply that there's something intrinsically bad about Buck, it's just that other documentaries proved far more interesting, enlightening or informative to me. What did appeal to me most about Buck was watching and learning about Brannaman's "natural horsemanship" approach to training horses in light of my current enjoyment of the new HBO series Luck. Natural horsemanship is a movement that rejects the use of punishing the animals but instead attempts to speak to the horses in their language as opposed to expecting the horse to learn to speak human. Of course, Brannaman isn't training horses to race, but that's still what sparked my interest because when you get close to them they are just such beautiful, majestic creatures.
Brannaman was one of the primary inspirations for Nicholas Evans' novel The Horse Whisperer and served as a consultant on Robert Redford's film version. Coincidentally, writer Eric Roth adapted the novel into the screenplay for the movie and he now serves as a co-executive producer on Luck and is credited as the writer of the teleplay for the series' first season finale. Redford appears in the documentary and tells the story of how they had a scene where the horse was supposed to come up and nuzzle the young Scarlett Johansson but since it was a trained Hollywood horse who took its clues from his trainer who had no place to be in the sightline of the shot, they could never get the actor horse to do it. They were losing light and running long and Brannaman suggested using one of his horses. Redford, who directed and starred in the film, was skeptical, telling Brannaman that his horse wasn't an actor horse and wouldn't know how to his marks. Brannaman told him to give him about a half an hour and sure enough, Brannaman's horse hit the marks and nuzzled Scarlett and didn't leave a dry eye on the crew. It turned Redford into a true believer of Brannaman's methods right then and there.
Brannaman, who spends nine months out of the year on the road holding clinics and teaching his techniques, had Ray Hunt, one of the founders of the natural horsemanship movement, as his mentor for many years. Hunt popularized the clinic idea in the 1970s, where he began each one by saying, "I'm here for the horse, to help him get a better deal." Hunt also was known for telling participants his philosophy: "If you get bucked off or kicked or bitten, you obviously did something wrong, and that's just too bad. The horse, on the other hand, is never, ever wrong."
The documentary pulls its surprise, at least for someone like me unfamiliar with Brannaman before watching Buck, and makes it more interesting than a simple profile when it reveals that Brannaman's work with horses didn't come about because he sought to end the cycle of violence and cruelty against the animals but because horses along with the citizens of the town in which he and his brother were growing up rescued the boys from the abuse they endured at the hands of their father. When that section comes up, seemingly out of nowhere, it manages to sadden and inspire at the same time. When his P.E. teacher tells Buck in junior high that he must take a shower because Brannaman has been refusing. When he disrobes, the teacher sees the imprints left by his father's frequent whippings. The teacher says we're not going to have any of that and tells the sheriff who repeats the same words and the boys are rescued from their father and placed in the foster care of a protective, loving couple. It's there were Brannaman began seeking comfort in horses. If Buck contains a major flaw, it's that we never hear what happens to his brother. There's also some sad moments concerning an orphaned horse that a woman brings to Brannaman in hopes that he can help calm the horse to be around other horses and people, but even a horse whisperer can't be a miracle worker.
Buck provides many interesting moments but we're living in a time when a plethora of good and great documentaries get made each year — often at a much higher ratio than fictional features — so the competition can be fierce. Buck is good, but there were better.
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Labels: 10s, Books, Documentary, Fiction, HBO, Johansson, Luck, Redford
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Saturday, July 31, 2010
From the Vault: Ghost World
By Edward Copeland
Movies can succeed by taking you to places you've never known or showing you worlds you know too well. The latter is the land where Ghost World resides.
Ghost World spins the tale of Enid (Thora Birch), a high school graduate (assuming she makes up a failed art class in summer school) who pursues her angst enthusiastically, dwelling almost exclusively in a land of deadpan irony with her best friend Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson).
Enid cloaks herself in wardrobes and hairstyles designed to provoke, daring the world to mock her while she sneers at everything and everyone she encounters. Birch, so good as a different type of alienated teen in American Beauty, nails Enid, capturing her wit and her pathos. Birch seems likely to escape the child actor's curse as she moves into adult roles.
Faithfully adapted by Daniel Clowes and director Terry Zwigoff from Clowes' great comic book, how well Ghost World works depends almost entirely on the degree with which you recognize its characters.
The movie's biggest departure from the comic book is the character of Seymour, a middle-age bachelor and audiophile who begins an unlikely friendship with Enid. Steve Buscemi plays Seymour and it's his best role in quite some time. He slips so easily into Seymour's skin, you'd think a tailor had sewn the character to him.
Zwigoff makes his fiction directing debut with Ghost World, his first feature since making 1995's best film, the documentary Crumb. Zwigoff's pacing lags occasionally, but it seems right for a film about a character as directionless as Enid.
Still, Ghost World entertains consistently, using its sarcasm to hide its more downbeat turns. Again, if this universe seems familiar, you have to know those moments are inevitable.
Ghost World won't please everyone and will leave some viewers cold. However, for those who recognize friends and acquaintances in its vivid character sketches, the movie provides a nostalgic tonic of warmth.
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Labels: 00s, Buscemi, Johansson, Terry Zwigoff
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Monday, December 15, 2008
Running with the Bulls…and Getting Nowhere
By Josh R
There are certain pursuits that only a crazy person — or an inveterate thrill seeker — would ever be gutsy and/or stupid enough to engage in. The annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, is a custom that engenders shock and outrage in some quarters and a sense of vicarious fear and excitement in others. No matter how much one dreads the potential consequences, the notion of flirting with disaster — if not the prospect of being gored and maimed by a hard-charging beast — will always be a turn-on.
Woody Allen is not the first name that comes to mind when the discussion turns to risk-taking.
For much of the '90s and early aughts, his films were characterized by the kind of cheap, prurient humor that all but screamed creative exhaustion; the approach smacked of desperation, while the attitudes smacked of misanthropy (if there are any two films in the Allen canon which convey more contempt for humanity than Deconstructing Harry and Celebrity, please — discourage from Santa from depositing those DVDs in my Christmas stocking). Critics have hailed his most recent strategy — specifically, making films that seem wildly out-of-character for him — as a return to form. Based on how impersonal in style most of the “new” Woody Allen films have been (and even Match Point, while not without merit, felt dry and academic even when it was trying for heat and danger), I remain unconvinced. Sometimes inspiration has to be borrowed rather than self-generated, which is not only forgivable but inevitable for anyone who can boast nearly half of the cinematic output of a Woody Allen. The writer-director has famously paid homage to other directors whose work he admires — most notably Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini — and the results have occasionally been very good indeed. In Vicky Cristina Barcelona he’s taking on Almodóvar without the freak factor, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that it isn’t an assignment he feels particularly comfortable with or well disposed to handle. Tackling the unfamiliar can represent a risk; it’s only a good risk if it has a chance in hell of working. There are things to like — and at least one thing to love — about this awkwardly conceived and frequently exasperating romantic-quadrangle story set in a sunny Spain where the wine runs as freely as those crazy bulls stampeding through the Pamplona streets. On the balance, however, it ultimately seems like a half-baked attempt at the kind of film Woody Allen doesn’t know how to make — or at least, shouldn’t be trying to make in the absence of a concept that's been clearly thought out from beginning to end.
Fittingly, Vicky Cristina is an ode to the perils of grappling with irresolute feelings, and the emotional gap between doing what feels right and what seems best. Two young American women have come to spend the summer in Barcelona, one to finish her dissertation and the other to soak in the rays, take a few snapshots and generally play tagalong. Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), a confirmed dilettante, is the more intrepid of the two. She has no idea what she wants out of life beyond a vague need for excitement and a departure from the norm. Cautious, pragmatic Vicky (Rebecca Hall), engaged to be married at the end of the summer, is a little too firmly resolved on the future for her own good. Both women become romantically entangled with a seductive Spanish painter, Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), who offers each one very different glimpses of what the future might hold should they be brave and/or impulsive enough to act on their desires. Each of the women wind up running with the bulls, and while no one gets gored, no one escapes completely intact either. Ultimately, both women’s inability to reconcile their own conflicted feelings makes the fulfillment of the fantasy somewhat less than satisfying.
The difficulty in making film about people who don’t know what they want comes in creating clear definition of character, or in finding a sense of purpose in their behavior. This is something that Allen (with one glorious exception) never really figures out how to do, and as a result, Vicky Cristina often feels like a film in search of an author. None of the people we observe, save for one, really ever come into sharp focus, saddled as they are with behaviors and attitudes that are too inconsistent, or just plain hard to make sense of, to be entirely convincing. Bardem is such a marvelously predatory presence in the first half of the film, that the passivity he displays in the second undermines all the goodwill and he’s built up as an enjoyably shady schmoozer of tourists. As the hedonist who’s too flaky to stay fixed on a single sensation long enough to find any lasting gratification in it, Johansson does her usual trick of underplaying every scene that she’s in – the fact that she does it to good effect here doesn’t dispel the lingering sense that, as an actress, she may be a one-trick pony. Rebecca Hall, a newcomer who sometimes manages to make a striking impression, has an intuitive grasp of the nuances of Allen’s dialogue and speech patterns. She has a presence and substance that Johansson lacks, but the character’s hostility toward Bardem in the early scenes is alienating, while her staunch determination not to give over to her feelings exhausts the audience’s patience later on (her powers of forbearance are so commendable she’s like Elizabeth II refusing to break down and give Prince Charles a hug). None are helped by dialogue that often seems as stilted as the bald, perfunctory-seeming narration that flattens out the action like a steamroller. Allen’s dialogue used to flow so naturally, to the point where it often seemed improvised — perhaps because he’s no longer making the kind of films that he feels comfortable making, or that feel distinctively his, the words now come out sounding as if they were translated into English from another language.
Things being what they are, Vicky Cristina Barcelona stumbles along for its first 45 minutes or so like a Cook’s tour without a guide, without conveying much in the way of excitement or energy — stumbling, that is, until the arrival of Juan Antonio’s ex-wife, Maria Elena, the kind of volatile and erratic presence for whom creating chaos comes as naturally as getting out of bed. Maria Elena is played by Penélope Cruz, an actress who’s been easy to dismiss as little more than a pretty face for the bulk of her career. She needn’t have to worry about that from here on out. As a walking cyclone of emotions who is passionate, provocative, paranoid and more than slightly unhinged, Cruz's impact on the film is something akin to a bomb going off in a glass factory; the character may not be any more fully realized by the author than any of the others, but the performance has such an electric intensity that it cuts right through the bullshit and becomes a genuine force of nature — dangerous, unpredictable, and as sexy-scary as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Unfortunately for the actress, and the audience, neither the film nor the filmmaker know exactly what to do with her. We keep waiting for Allen to give Cruz the opportunity to take Vicky Cristina Barcelona to another level — a big juicy scene, a monologue, anything… she gets so much kick and charge out of the material she has that it whets our appetite for more (in short, she's terrific). The bull is waiting at the gates, kicking back the dirt with steam issuing from her nostrils. Sad to say, Mr. Allen can’t quite muster the courage to run with her.
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Labels: 00s, Almodóvar, Bardem, Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Johansson, Penélope Cruz, Woody
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Monday, September 03, 2007
First forgive yourself
By Edward Copeland
Acting truly is a wondrous talent, a gift that can raise an otherwise marginal film to a higher level as is the case with The Lookout.
Screenwriter Scott Frank (Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Minority Report) makes his directing debut with The Lookout from his own original script and while both his writing and directing bring positive elements to the film, much of the credit for the film's success really belongs to its cast, particularly Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the lead role of Chris Pratt.
Chris is a young man struggling with the after-effects of a horrifying car crash that left him with a traumatic brain injury and a large dose of guilt. Gordon-Levitt could have easily overplayed the role of a man forced to use notes to keep his mind on track but instead the actor goes the other direction and embraces stillness and quiet in the role. Eschewing histrionics helps prevent The Lookout from turning into a gimmick picture and allows the viewer to more fully invest in Chris' plight.
Unfortunately, that plight includes becoming involved in a plot to rob the bank where he does custodial work. The crime angle threatens to derail what until then is simply a compelling character study, but the strength of Gordon-Levitt and his co-stars manage to navigate the film past this potential plot bump. In particular, the two actors whose support proves incalculable are Jeff Daniels and Matthew Goode.
Daniels plays the blind burnout with whom Chris lives and who seems to have a far-better ability to see through people and things than the sighted Chris does.
Goode is a revelation. Watching the film, I had no idea who he was, playing the shady Gary who lures Chris into the bank plot. It wasn't until I watched some of the DVD's extras that I realized Goode was not only British but was the same actor who played Jonathan Rhys Meyers' brother-in-law and Scarlett Johansson's original boyfriend in Match Point. He didn't make much of an impression on me in Woody Allen's film, but Goode truly announces himself as someone to watch in The Lookout.
Still, this is Gordon-Levitt's film. He sure has come a long way from his work as a child actor and on TV's silly comedy 3rd Rock From the Sun, but The Lookout definitely proves that he is one of our finest young actors.
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Labels: 00s, Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Johansson, Television, Woody
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Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Playing dressup with De Palma
By Edward Copeland
My experiences with Brian De Palma, though I've certainly enjoyed some of his films, have usually fallen along the same line: He comes up with a couple of good sequences and then seems to blow off the rest of the movie. The Black Dahlia is the first time that I can recall that I've watched a De Palma movie where it seems as if after getting the look of the film set, he didn't bother with anything else that would be necessary for making an interesting film.
Certainly, the technical aspects are exceptional. Vilmos Zsigmond definitely deserved his Oscar nomination for cinematography, Dante Ferretti has assembled a great production design and Jenny Beavan's costumes are right on the mark. The same cannot be said for Mark Isham's suffocating musical score, which never seems to shut up and drowns out much of the dialogue which, admittedly, is a blessing at times.
Unfortunately, The Black Dahlia may well be one of the worst-cast films I've seen in some time. In telling the story of an infamous 1940s murder of an aspiring starlet in Los Angeles and based on the novel by James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential), it's obvious that De Palma and screenwriter Josh Friedman want to evoke the memories of classic noirs of Hollywood's past, but the hokey dialogue, poorly delivered by the likes of Josh Hartnett and Scarlett Johansson, don't make you yearn for Hollywood's glorious past but rather just reminds me you how superior more recent efforts such as L.A. Confidential and last year's Hollywoodland are.
Making matters worse is that the story is a muddle of nearly unparalleled proportions, involvings cops who sideline as prizefighters, an abusive ex-boyfriend set to be released from jail, a bank heist gone awry, police corruption and, of course, the central mystery and none of the stories make a lick of sense or hold your interest.
The actors who seem to be in the right place are few and far between. Aaron Eckhart does fine as one of the two central cops as does Mike Starr in a small role as a police superior. However, the rest of the cast flounders, partly by their own performances and partly by the dumb dialogue. Hartnett turns in a performance blander than usual. I know he can turn in an interesting performance: He was the best thing in Tim Blake Nelson's O, playing the modern equivalent of Iago. Here though, he's an emotionless blank slate and his voiceover work is even worse.
Johansson tries, but her mix of sophistication and naivete falls flat and she looks downright silly when she's got a cigarette holder in her hand. However, one of the film's two worst performances belongs to Hilary Swank in a mannered turn as a young socialite with a resemblance to the dead starlet and some sort of connection to the various crimes that I still can't figure out even after seeing the movie.
The other is what amounts to a cameo by the by the great Irish actress Fiona Shaw, who seems to have been teleported from the set of a 1960s Robert Aldrich movie. To say her climactic scene is over the top is to do a disservice to over-the-top performances, though I have to wonder if she just played it that way in the hopes she could get her involvement in the movie over more quickly.
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Labels: 00s, Aldrich, De Palma, Johansson
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Friday, April 20, 2007
Touch my heart — with your film
By Edward Copeland
I'm not certain what year it was when I first saw Annie Hall, which turns 30 years old today, but I do remember the circumstance. I was still in grade school and a local TV station was showing it late one Friday night. I decided to watch, though I'd never seen a Woody Allen film at this point and all I knew was that this was the movie that stopped my beloved Star Wars from winning the Oscar for best picture. I thought it was funny and I liked it, though it would take years for me to truly appreciate all of its charms and jokes (and about the same time before I finally admitted that yes, the best picture had won for 1977).
"I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable."
Alvy Singer
It seems odd to me now how strongly I identified with the Woody Allen persona when I was young. Sure, I was funny and cynical, but I certainly wasn't middle-age, Jewish or a New Yorker and I hadn't endured a series of painful relationships. Hell, I was in grade school, really I had no relationship experience at all (though like Alvy Singer, I too never had a latency period). I think a great deal of my identification with Alvy came with the way I was introduced to him and, by extension, Allen: With him talking directly to the screen (i.e., me) and telling two funny jokes about relationships that seemed to make perfect sense to me even at the time. ("And such small portions" and "I would never belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member" seemed to ring particularly true to even my young self.)
Even the gags I didn't truly get upon first viewing (such as the classic Marshall McLuhan moment) were still funny, whether you knew who McLuhan was or what he stood for. The funny thing is that when I re-watched Annie Hall prior to writing this piece, I realized for the first time that the blowhard standing behind Alvy and Annie in line actually is right about Fellini being overly indulgent in terms of films such as Juliet of the Spirits and Satyricon. I could go on endlessly repeating the famous lines and memorable scenes, but I'll try to refrain myself as much as possible on the chance that some people who read this still might not have seen Annie Hall.
Instead, let me just recount some of the many reasons I love this movie. First and foremost, there is Diane Keaton in her Oscar-winning role and at her most effervescent as the charming, infuriating mess that is Annie Hall. Allen always has worked best when he has had a talented muse to center his films around. Keaton was his first great one, Mia Farrow his second. Now, Allen flounders, since Soon-Yi can't fit that bill and, as much as I like Scarlett Johansson, I don't believe she can fill that void either.
Then there are the hilarious flashbacks to his childhood though they could be anyone's childhood, to some extent). Who didn't think many of their classmates were jerks and idiots and who didn't have run-ins with teachers that you just knew intuitively didn't quite have enough on the ball? That attitude extends to adults as well (I still laugh every time Alvy describes intellectuals as people who can be completely brilliant and still not know anything). Then there is this: "Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving... on the road at night... I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The... flames rising out of the flowing gasoline," which may well be the first in a seemingly endless series of great Christopher Walken movie monologues in his role as Annie's brother Duane.
Annie Hall marks the transition of Woody Allen's filmmaking from his flat-out early comedies (most of which are still priceless) to his ventures into other realms. (Allen once famously said that Annie Hall was hardly his 8½, more like his 2½. Who knew how right he was?) As great as Annie Hall was and still is, it really just laid the foundation for some of his greater works to come such as The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Even if he's been in a cinematic slump for awhile, with a few exceptions, his work from 1977-1989 is astounding.
With Annie Hall, he also experimented with the medium, not in any remarkable ways really, but still in ways that impress, from the scene where subtitles translate characters' inner thoughts, to frequent, contrasting split screens and even an animated sequence. Unlike many films from the 1970s, Annie Hall seems fairly timeless (though you do have to gulp when Alvy is outraged to learn that Annie pays $400 a month for a lousy Manhattan apartment. Those were the days...) As Roger Ebert once wrote about Citizen Kane, that film's structure is such that no matter how often you've seen it, if you come in after it's started, you are never quite certain what scene comes next. Annie Hall works much the same way. While Annie Hall above all else is a comedy (and one of the rare times the Academy saw fit to honor a comedy), Alvy Singer does, if you look hard enough, share some superficial similarities to Charles Foster Kane. Both men are described as islands unto themselves and both just want to be loved, though Woody Allen got to speak frankly about sex in a way Orson Welles couldn't be allowed. ("Don't knock masturbation — it's sex with someone I love"; "As Balzac said, 'There goes another novel.'"; "That's the most fun I've had without laughing." Alvy also has his sexual prowess described as a "Kafkaesque experience," which the woman played by Shelley Duvall insists is a compliment.)
In Alvy's final joke, again spoken directly to the audience, he tells of a man who tells a psychiatrist that his brother thinks he's a chicken. The doctor asks why the man doesn't turn him in, to which the man replies, "I would, but I need the eggs." We need eggs such as Annie Hall and I still hold out hope that Woody Allen can rebound with some more great films before his moviemaking career ends, but even if he doesn't, he's left us more than enough quality eggs with which to cook some tasty cinematic omelettes.
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Labels: 70s, Diane Keaton, Ebert, Fellini, Johansson, Mia Farrow, Movie Tributes, Walken, Welles, Woody
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Tuesday, February 27, 2007
One step forward, two steps back
By Edward Copeland
I really miss Al Swearengen. After getting to watch Ian McShane's masterful work as Al on the three brief seasons of HBO's Deadwood, I can only hope that his career will produce better parts than the one he was saddled with here in Woody Allen's Scoop.
After coming back a bit from a more than decade-long slump with 2005's Match Point, Allen tumbles backward a bit with Scoop, though it is at least watchable and nowhere near as painful as some of his other recent efforts such as Hollywood Ending, Curse of the Jade Scorpion or Celebrity.
Allen casts Scarlett Johansson for the second film in a row, this time in a comic mystery as well as in a role that bears many similarities to Woody himself. He's done this tact a lot, but it always seems odd when he also appears in the film in question. Johansson plays an aspiring journalist visiting London and Allen plays a magician, who for some reason has been performing his act in London.
The two meet when he pulls her onstage as a volunteer for a trick where she enters a box only to disappear and then reappear. The catch? While in the box, she encounters the spirit of a prominent journalist (McShane), recently deceased in a car accident, who gives her the tip that a prominent member of British society (Hugh Jackman) also is the notorious Tarot Card Killer, who has been terrorizing the city's prostitutes for quite some time.
Since he can't land the story himself, he picks the young woman to be his surrogate and she drags the magician on her quest. Since the suspect in question is, after all, Hugh Jackman, Johansson inevitably falls heads over heels for him. With this light a confection, obviously the mystery isn't a puzzler or an attraction, so what's left is the comedy which, unfortunately, is tired. You see the jokes coming with almost as much clairvoyance as the best psychic solving the mystery.
That said, Scoop isn't painful to watch. It's still somewhat sad to see Allen struggling through this work without remembering the glories of his past. In one sequence, when he's driving a tiny silver car, it's hard not to think back to Sleeper and how much you'd rather be watching it. Still, what elicits the most sadness is McShane's presence. He's fine, but it's a nothing part and just makes any Deadwood fan long for the further episodes that we deserve.
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I really miss Al Swearengen. After getting to watch Ian McShane's masterful work as Al on the three brief seasons of HBO's Deadwood, I can only hope that his career will produce better parts than the one he was saddled with here in Woody Allen's Scoop.
After coming back a bit from a more than decade-long slump with 2005's Match Point, Allen tumbles backward a bit with Scoop, though it is at least watchable and nowhere near as painful as some of his other recent efforts such as Hollywood Ending, Curse of the Jade Scorpion or Celebrity.
Allen casts Scarlett Johansson for the second film in a row, this time in a comic mystery as well as in a role that bears many similarities to Woody himself. He's done this tact a lot, but it always seems odd when he also appears in the film in question. Johansson plays an aspiring journalist visiting London and Allen plays a magician, who for some reason has been performing his act in London.
The two meet when he pulls her onstage as a volunteer for a trick where she enters a box only to disappear and then reappear. The catch? While in the box, she encounters the spirit of a prominent journalist (McShane), recently deceased in a car accident, who gives her the tip that a prominent member of British society (Hugh Jackman) also is the notorious Tarot Card Killer, who has been terrorizing the city's prostitutes for quite some time.
Since he can't land the story himself, he picks the young woman to be his surrogate and she drags the magician on her quest. Since the suspect in question is, after all, Hugh Jackman, Johansson inevitably falls heads over heels for him. With this light a confection, obviously the mystery isn't a puzzler or an attraction, so what's left is the comedy which, unfortunately, is tired. You see the jokes coming with almost as much clairvoyance as the best psychic solving the mystery.
That said, Scoop isn't painful to watch. It's still somewhat sad to see Allen struggling through this work without remembering the glories of his past. In one sequence, when he's driving a tiny silver car, it's hard not to think back to Sleeper and how much you'd rather be watching it. Still, what elicits the most sadness is McShane's presence. He's fine, but it's a nothing part and just makes any Deadwood fan long for the further episodes that we deserve.
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Labels: 00s, Deadwood, HBO, Hugh Jackman, Johansson, Woody
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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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Saturday, January 07, 2006
Woody's comeback
By Edward Copeland
Having been burned for a decade now by Woody Allen, I was skeptical whenever anyone touted one of his new films as a return to form. In my opinion, he hadn't produced a satisfying film since Bullets Over Broadway in 1994. So, when people would tout things such as Sweet and Lowdown or Melinda and Melinda, I'd inevitably be disappointed. I didn't even bother with Anything Else, because to me it seemed as if the critics praising it didn't even believe what they were saying. Needless to say, when the groundswell began for Match Point, my expectations were low. That's why I'm pleased to say that it's good — not great, not near any of Woody's masterpieces — but solid.
The main reason is Match Point doesn't seem remotely like a Woody Allen film, partly because of its British setting and mostly British cast and its lack of yuks of any kind. It also contains more visual inventiveness than one usually associates with Allen as a director.
On the other hand, even if you didn't know Woody wrote it, you would recognize plot points that seem familiar. Most of the reviews have given it away, but if you want to stay away from spoilers, avert your eyes now, even though I'll be as vague as possible.
The last act of Match Point plays like the Martin Landau half of Crimes and Misdemeanors and I'm afraid to say that Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is no Martin Landau. While you empathized with Landau's character and his conflict, you never get any sense about how you should feel about Rhys-Meyers. Is he a cad? Is he a nice guy in over his head? Villain? Being justly punished (or not)? Scarlett Johansson is good as his mistress, but a sudden switch in her character burdens her and seems to occur mainly to justify the movie's final act.
Aside from those criticisms, for the most part, Woody is trying something new — and after inflicting a decade of duds on us such as Celebrity, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending, etc., this is a good thing.
Some critics have overpraised Match Point to some degree, but it's at least understandable this time because it is a byproduct of an actual good creative effort instead of wishful thinking.
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TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Having been burned for a decade now by Woody Allen, I was skeptical whenever anyone touted one of his new films as a return to form. In my opinion, he hadn't produced a satisfying film since Bullets Over Broadway in 1994. So, when people would tout things such as Sweet and Lowdown or Melinda and Melinda, I'd inevitably be disappointed. I didn't even bother with Anything Else, because to me it seemed as if the critics praising it didn't even believe what they were saying. Needless to say, when the groundswell began for Match Point, my expectations were low. That's why I'm pleased to say that it's good — not great, not near any of Woody's masterpieces — but solid.
The main reason is Match Point doesn't seem remotely like a Woody Allen film, partly because of its British setting and mostly British cast and its lack of yuks of any kind. It also contains more visual inventiveness than one usually associates with Allen as a director.
On the other hand, even if you didn't know Woody wrote it, you would recognize plot points that seem familiar. Most of the reviews have given it away, but if you want to stay away from spoilers, avert your eyes now, even though I'll be as vague as possible.
The last act of Match Point plays like the Martin Landau half of Crimes and Misdemeanors and I'm afraid to say that Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is no Martin Landau. While you empathized with Landau's character and his conflict, you never get any sense about how you should feel about Rhys-Meyers. Is he a cad? Is he a nice guy in over his head? Villain? Being justly punished (or not)? Scarlett Johansson is good as his mistress, but a sudden switch in her character burdens her and seems to occur mainly to justify the movie's final act.
Aside from those criticisms, for the most part, Woody is trying something new — and after inflicting a decade of duds on us such as Celebrity, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Hollywood Ending, etc., this is a good thing.
Some critics have overpraised Match Point to some degree, but it's at least understandable this time because it is a byproduct of an actual good creative effort instead of wishful thinking.
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Labels: 00s, Johansson, Landau, Woody
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
