Monday, February 07, 2011
Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered
By Jonathan Pacheco
"God, she's beautiful," Elliot says, welcoming us into his months-long infatuation with his sister-in-law. Weak at the knees at just the smell of his wife's youngest sister, it won't be long before he indulges his pining and horniness. Misleadingly titled, Hannah and Her Sisters isn't really about Hannah (Mia Farrow), the rock of her wealthy, successful family and an overall supportive older sibling and wife. Rather, Woody Allen's 25 year-old film concerns itself more with Hannah's husband Elliot (Michael Caine), who can't take his lustful eyes off Lee (Barbara Hershey), his wife's intelligent, cultured, but willingly impressionable sister. Meanwhile, Holly (Dianne Wiest), a year removed from a coke addiction and suffering from a bad case of middle child syndrome, needs another loan from Hannah to fund her new catering venture, started to support her floundering acting career. And then there's Allen himself in the tonally contrasting role of Mickey, a TV producer, intense hypochondriac and Hannah's ex-husband.
Mickey's run-in with mortality seemingly has little to do with the film's other stories of marital dissatisfaction and sibling rivalry. A decidedly more "comedic" thread when compared to the subtler ones of Elliot, Lee and Holly, Mickey's arc, instead of throwing off the film's balance, somehow manages to counter the weight of the other three plots all by itself while keeping in line thematically, despite my instincts insisting on the contrary. That's because my initial perceptions of Hannah and Her Sisters, as with my initial assumptions about its title, were a bit off. Its biggest themes don't reside in the realms of marital strife or personal insecurities, but rather in the ideas of acceptance and inevitability — funnily enough, best represented in this film by Mickey's suddenly fitting story.
But before acceptance, these characters have the desperate desire to change who they are, where they're at, and where they're going. Other reviews and summaries will tell you that Elliot's decision to give up on his relationship with Hannah stems from his frustration with her self-sufficiency, but that's not quite the truth. Yes, Hannah is a strong, capable, independent character, and Elliot does indeed love the feeling of "teaching" and "molding" the younger Lee (much like Alvy sought to mold Annie in Annie Hall), but I don't think that drove him to have an affair. Men obsessed with the idea of being with another woman will find an excuse to be "driven away." They'll take a relationship issue that, under normal circumstances, would be "something to work on" — "she can be a bit clingy," "sometimes it's nice to feel needed," "I wish she'd show a little more physical affection" — and turn it into a dealbreaker — "you're suffocating me," "you're too perfect and self-sufficient, and I'm useless to you," "you're a cold, frigid woman!" When Elliot yells at Hannah for being too self-sufficient and too perfect, it sounds like a husband finding a crack in the marriage and trying to chisel his way out through it.
We see this character over and over in Allen's films (as recently as Josh Brolin's Roy in 2010's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger). He's easy to spot, as he's typically combined with the iconic "neurotic Woody Allen" persona we hear about ad nauseum. However, the director has stated that he sees most every character as representing parts of himself, quite evidently in Hannah and Her Sisters. Mickey's paralyzing paranoia as well as Elliot's overpowering lustfulness and weakness of character are traits most commonly associated with Allen. But even in Lee we see his desire for sexual and intellectual stimulation and his thirst for culture (despite coming across as a simple "Marx Brothers and New York Knicks" kind of guy, we know that Allen's interest run somewhat deeper; he was inspired to write this film after a reading of Anna Karenina, and the film itself deliberately shows traces of Fanny and Alexander and Three Sisters). Holly embodies not only Allen's insecurities but his ability as a director to move from project to project, willing and sometimes desperate to try something different. When Holly thinks it a good idea to audition for a musical, I saw visions of Everyone Says I Love You.
Holly, to me, is the most interesting role of the bunch because her life revolves around not coming in first. She deals with the insecurities of being a middle child sandwiched between two "superior" women in almost every respect. Hannah has an angelic beauty, a marriage, a beautiful home, several kids, and even a successful acting career after an acclaimed stage turn as Nora in A Doll's House. Lee has youth, looks, intelligence, and a bright future. Meanwhile, Holly, not quite "the looker" that her sisters are, takes a sloppy-seconds flyer on Hannah's ex-husband Mickey, struggles from audition to audition, jumps from side-career to side-career and requires Hannah's financial help (which she's all-too-willing to provide) in every endeavor. Her partner in catering, April (Carrie Fisher), also is an actress and a friend to Holly — a friend who, like Hannah and Lee, seems to best her in every category. Notice the scene where David (Sam Waterston), a patron at a party Holly caters, comes back into the kitchen, raving about the food. Holly and April are intent on being clear regarding which dishes were created by them individually. The Holly-David-April love triangle continues in a painfully amusing game of one-upmanship as the two women vie for this architect's interest. The story of her life, Holly doesn't win that particular competition.
No, it's not until she accepts her "never first" lot in life that she finds peace and success. A failure at her first career choice, she discovers an interest and talent in writing, with Mickey wanting to produce her second script — not the one based on Elliot and Hannah's relationship, but the one based on her own life and experiences. Soon, she accepts the idea of a relationship with the man who wasn't good enough for her "superior" sister, and in it she finds happiness (and in turn, makes him happier than he ever was).
Before they can be at peace, all these characters must realize that their lives are not going to change into the different ones they want or envisioned. Embracing the lives they've already chosen (or have been given) is the key, in Woody Allen's mind. Elliot and Lee both have to realize that their affair always will be just an affair. Lee understands this first and moves onto another relationship. Elliot must also accept that Hannah is the wife he's chosen, and she never will be the dependent, impressionable "student" Lee is to her mates. Hannah's strong and capable...Is that such a bad thing? And Mickey's seemingly disconnected troubles, in this light, now fit perfectly into the film's thematic motif. His long struggle with mortality and existentialism ultimately leads him to accept that life may be meaningless, and it very well may be permanently over once you die. But if you choose to embrace the situation, well, there's a whole lot about life that still makes it worth living.
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Labels: 80s, Barbara Hershey, Caine, Josh Brolin, Marx Brothers, Mia Farrow, Wiest, Woody
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Sunday, January 30, 2011
"I'm Pat fucking Tillman — why are you shooting at me?"
By Edward Copeland
That post title were the last words the former NFL star turned Army Ranger said before he was killed in Afghanistan by his own troops in 2004.
We are living in the Golden Age of Nonfiction. I thought it silly when the Oscars expanded best picture to 10 nominees, but I could live with them doubling the number of documentary feature nominees because documentaries get better and better. I have a difficult time cutting it down to five. I've only seen one 2010 documentary that I've given a negative review. More importantly, this meant that Oscar finalist The Tillman Story didn't make the final cut and it's the second-best 2010 documentary I've seen (so far).
For the Bush Administration, the wars in Afghanistan and later in Iraq weren't just campaigns for whatever reason they chose to give on any particular day, they also were part of a re-election strategy and whenever there was a chance to sell a positive story to the lazy eager-to-echo-anything press, they took it. So, when Pat Tillman, who earned millions in the NFL for the Arizona Cardinals, decided to give up his football career to join the fight against terrorism after 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told his subordinates to keep special watch on him. This was an American hero in the making that would make for great P.R.
Things didn't turn out that way exactly, though the government and high-ranking Pentagon officials did their best to keep their heroic scenario when Tillman was killed April 22, 2004, the initial story was the he died from enemy fire in an ambush, going so far as to credit him for saving the lives of some of his fellow soldiers and Gen. Stanley McChrystal awarded him the Silver Star posthumously. Just one problem: That was all a lie. Tillman died as a result of friendly fire and it took years and the persistence of his family to get at the truth.
Director Amir Bar-Lev gives a detailed portrait of who Tillman was both before and after his enlistment and with testimony from others who served with him, evokes a sense of outrage at the coverup, misguided accusations and fall guys the government used because their desired tailor-made American hero failed to pan out the way they envisioned. Ironically, during his unit's Iraq deployment Tillman was even there to witness the lengths they went in setting up the false tale of Pvt. Jessica Lynch's rescue. They were kept waiting 24 hours before retrieving Lynch to allow time for the camera crew to arrive. During his time in Iraq, Tillman also turned against Bush and the war effort, commenting to fellow soldiers that the Iraq war was "so fucking illegal." Bar-Lev keeps the focus moving with complete clarity and this documentary is quite a change-of-pace from his previous one, 2007's My Kid Could Paint That.
Narrated by Josh Brolin, The Tillman Story shows the true Pat Tillman, one that defied all stereotypes one would lump on the star athlete. He was a well-read man (Chomsky and Emerson; most religious texts, despite his atheism) who graduated from Arizona State with a 3.8 G.P.A. While the administration and the media were eager to wrap Tillman's decision to forgo his lucrative NFL career with a simple patriotic motive, Tillman himself refused interviews on the subject.
Even though both he and his very close younger brother Kevin joined up as Army Rangers, Tillman was determined to keep his reasons private. However, before he'd ever made the decision to enlist, various NFL players were filmed giving reactions to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and this footage was usurped by the Pentagon in their P.R. efforts to define Tillman's motive, be it true or not.
The entire Tillman family could be viewed somewhat as iconoclasts, compared to most Americans, so as far as I'm concerned that's what endears them to me all the more. When his family first learns of his death, they were given the false story of the ambush and the enemy fire. Still, even at the large, made-for-television memorial service Washington assembled (despite the fact that on his enlistment papers Pat Tillman specifically said he wanted no military funeral. Military officials even tried to take advantage of his grieving wife Marie to get Pat buried at Arlington.), while speakers spoke of God's blessings, etc., ignoring Pat's quite vocal status, like most of his family, as an atheist, his youngest brother Rich thanked the previous speakers for their thoughts but said, "Pat isn't with God. He's fucking dead."
Once soldiers on the scene spoke out and the Pentagon was forced to admit that Tillman was a victim of friendly fire, D.C. realized they picked the wrong family to screw with as his mom began a years-long campaign to get at the truth about the coverup. The story as told proves both inspiring and frustrating, as the Army drops so many documents, most redacted, upon Dannie Tillman, that she and another veteran start approaching them like some sort of crossword puzzle to decipher what names and words are blacked out.
In one of the most infuriating incidents, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, who Tillman served under in Afghanistan, went on ESPN and made comments to the effect that the reason the Tillman family wouldn't let it go and just accept the Army's story was that because they were atheists and didn't believe in God, it would be hard for them to accept any truths. Eventually, after they finally got a congressional inquiry, Kauzlarich was demoted in retirement and remains the only person who received any sanction for the coverup.
On the other hand, the soldiers who did speak to the truth, were all punished in other ways for essentially being whistle-blowers.
Credit for the excellence of The Tillman Story should also be given to Mark Monroe for compiling this massive amount of information into a workable script for Bar-Lev to direct into such a coherent, compelling and, yes, chilling film. It almost makes me want to synopsize the entire documentary, but it's better to see it for yourself.
The ultimate irony about Pat Tillman is that the Bush Administration wanted to mold him into a hero for their own cynical, political purposes but by the covering up of the way he died, it enabled us to see who the real Pat Tillman was and he was more patriotic and a hero on a far grander scale than any P.R. flaks could have dreamed up. It's tragic that he died the way he did, but it's reassuring to know that men like him still exist in the first place.
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Labels: 10s, Documentary, Josh Brolin
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Friday, January 07, 2011
You will see Woody go through the motions — again
By Edward Copeland
At the outset of Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, the film's omniscient narrator (Zak Orth) quotes Shakespeare's famous MacBeth line about life being full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It's hardly the only thing that's familiar about the movie, but it is one of the few steals that receives an audible footnote.
Sadly, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger begins as if it might be a good one. Perhaps it's the fact that it opened with so little noise that my expectations were nonexistent or maybe those tried-but-true white-on-black opening credits still contain enough juice to transport me back to the days when a new Woody Allen film almost inevitably meant you were about to see something worthwhile.
Unfortunately, the longer the film goes on, the more it seems as if Woody has concocted another time waster without purpose. He still assembles talented and interesting casts, but it ends up playing like another case of a writer-director who has simply run out of things to say.
Like most of his recent films, Allen sets his latest relationship comedy in a European locale, this time returning to London. You can change the buildings, the cities — even the accents — but it's becoming clear that you can't teach this old filmmaker new tricks. This isn't the case with all directors who have entered their golden years. (Look no further than Alain Resnais' Wild Grass. Better yet, perhaps Woody Allen should, for inspiration if nothing else.)
The title refers to forecasts that Helena (Gemma Jones, who gives the film's best performance) gets from a fake fortune teller (Pauline Collins) to help her cope after her husband Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) divorces her in a few-decades-too-late midlife crisis. Their daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) indulges Helena, even though it drives Sally's husband Roy (Josh Brolin) crazy. "She needs medicine, not illusions," Roy tells his wife.
Roy isn't on firm ground realitywise either. He completed medical school but instead of becoming a doctor, decided he was meant to write. After one successful novel though, he's just spent years rewriting and struggling to re-create the feat with dense and unreadable followups. He also has become obsessed with the guitar-playing beauty (Freida Pinto) he spies from his apartment window.
Tired of depending on her overbearing mother to pay their bills, Sally takes on a job as assistant to an art gallery owner (Antonio Banderas) whom she develops a crush on when she hears he's unhappily married. Meanwhile, her father impulsively marries a young golddigger (Lucy Punch), who seems as if she's a knockoff of Mira Sorvino's Mighty Aphrodite character, only swapping ditzy charm for hateful spite and lacking any humorous appeal to make up the difference.
It's all very, very familiar from movies both inside and outside the Woody universe. What's particularly discouraging is that not only is the territory terribly reminiscent of things we've seen before and often, many of the story's turns have been used so frequently in so many stories that most can be seen coming a mile away.
Fortunately, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is short and doesn't lag much, despite its predictability, though it doesn't have the flow of Woody's best ensemble pieces. Hopkins' storyline in particular, even though his character has close ties to the others, seems as if it's sealed off from the rest of the movie most of the time.
When the film finally wraps, Orth's narrator returns to tell us it's time to close the book on this tale of sound and fury signifying nothing. Of course, the full MacBeth quote says that life is a tale told by an idiot. Woody Allen isn't an idiot, but he is a filmmaker who has been running on fumes for a long time now. He's made so many great films that I still dream that he has at least one more great work in him, but with each new film I grow more pessimistic about that possibility.
Oh, well. Hope springs eternal.
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Labels: 10s, Banderas, Hopkins, Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts, Resnais, Shakespeare, Woody
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Thursday, December 30, 2010
She's Got Sand
By VenetianBlond
True Grit is the film the Coen brothers make when they're not cracking jokes. It's a straight-up Western, no chaser, and it's head and shoulders above most Hollywood offerings these days. That doesn't mean it's ingenious, however. It doesn't tell us much more about the human condition than we already knew, and I'd posit the same about at least one of the performances. Jeff Bridges nails it as Rooster Cogburn? I'm not sure that was ever in question. But just because we know the stars are up there in the sky, and a good part of why, doesn't mean we don't enjoy looking at them. The same is true of True Grit.
Young Maddie Ross' father is gunned down in cold blood. Her mother is "indecisive and hobbled by grief," and the perpetrator has fled to Indian lands where most law enforcement has no jurisdiction. She is advised to find a U.S. marshal to track Tom Cheney, the murderous hired hand. After hearing the pedigrees of a number of options, she settles on Rooster Cogburn, the orneriest of the ornery, although she is advised he "does like to pull a cork." She also gets into a heated negotiation with a horse trader over ponies her father had recently (unwisely) purchased, and comes out with a good mount for herself and a pocketful of cash with which to get Cogburn's attention. She also attracts the attention of a Texas ranger (Matt Damon), whose fine duds match his runway-ready face. He's been pursuing Tom Cheney himself for a long time, and Maddie points out to him that means he's not terribly effective.
The young actress playing Maddie, Hailee Steinfeld, is getting a lot of attention and deservedly so. She handles the role with the single-minded focus of her character. According to the Coens, thousands of young actresses fell out of the race due to the fact they couldn't handle the necessary heightened language. Hailee not only handles it, she thrives on it, creating an admirable young heroine. One would also suspect she is not a lot of fun to be around. That's a tricky balance to pull off.
This is a remake of the John Wayne film, so the plot is fairly well known. They set off with Texas Ranger LaBouef, separate, run into others on the trail, fall in together again, and finally do encounter Cheney, who has joined the Lucky Ned Pepper gang. Cheney is played by Josh Brolin, and one might wonder why such a big name gets so little screen time. His casting, and his performance, demonstrates the truly chilling fact that the good guys do not always battle evil genius. Sometimes it's merely a regular someone, or even a half-witted someone, as Maddie says, who can get away with horrible things just out of blind luck.
The film is set up as Maddie's retrospective. It opens with her voiceover as an older lady, and there is an epilogue in which the older Maddie attempts to find Rooster. How well this works depends on the reading of the film. In my view, it's appropriate because the Coens highlight the film's world as a different place and time, and they separate the modern viewer from the work. The language is very precise and self-consciously constructed. A good portion comes directly from the book and it serves the same purpose as the language in Deadwood. Whether or not it is actually reflective of the speech patterns they actually used in those times and places is not as relevant as the fact that it's very different from how we use it today. In fact, rather than being naturalistic, the language is used to underline action we already see — "I extend my hand." Although it's definitely Maddie's story as told from her memory, it's not filmed strongly from her point of view.
That mentioned, it also is a realistic portrayal of the Old West — the violence is surprisingly quick and nasty, the air is cold, the ground is hard and the open country is awe inspiring. The Coen brothers know how to make a movie, that is clear. It's just a matter of how accurately they aim their "carbine." They've taken on the Old West, and aimed true.
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Labels: 10s, Coens, Deadwood, Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin, Matt Damon, Remakes, Wayne
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Monday, September 27, 2010
Oliver Stone's Other Favorite Lizard King Returns
By J.D.
It has been more than 20 years since Wall Street (1987) was released in theaters and, at the time, it was blamed for cashing in on the stock market crash that wiped out more than a few people’s fortunes. The financial landscape has changed radically since then and so, in many ways, has Oliver Stone’s career. In the 1980s and early 1990s, he was on an unbelievable roll, cranking out controversial, headline-grabbing films such as Platoon (1986), JFK (1991) and Natural Born Killers (1994). And then he made Nixon (1995), arguably his most ambitious and complex (both stylistically and content-wise) film to date — critics were divided and audiences failed to show up.
Stone continued to plug along gamely but after his longtime director of photography Robert Richardson left after the neo-noir oddity U-Turn (1997), the director lost his most important creative collaborator. Any Given Sunday (1999) was an energetic if not flawed expose of professional American football and well, let’s just say that the 2000s have not been kind to him (see Alexander, World Trade Center and W.) With the release of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010), there’s a glimmer of hope that this new project might be a return to form for the auteur. He’s never done a sequel before but with how radically the financial world has changed since 9/11 it is an intriguing prospect to see what a character such as Gordon Gekko would be doing now. With recent scandals such as Enron and the Dow Jones meltdown in 2008, a Wall Street sequel is very timely.
It’s 2001 and Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) has been released from prison. There’s no one to pick him up and instead he’s handed a check for $1,800 and a train ticket. Seven years later, he’s peddling a book, Is Greed Good? and trying to get back into the game. Meanwhile, Jacob “Jake” Moore (Shia LaBeouf) is a young and ambitious proprietary trader working Keller Zabel. This whiz kid is trying to develop an alternative energy project. Stone immerses us in the trading floor and boy, does it look different than it did back in 1987. The technology, obviously, is vastly different but the frenetic energy is still the same. Jake is living with and engaged to a beautiful young woman named Winnie (Carey Mulligan) who is an Internet journalist working for a liberal-minded Web site. Oh yeah, her estranged father just happens to be Gekko, much to her chagrin.
When Jake's investment firm's stock takes a major hit, his distraught and disillusioned mentor Lewis Zabel (Frank Langella) is pushed out of the company by ruthless hedge fund manager Bretton James (Josh Brolin). Devastated and humiliated, Zabel takes his own life. Jake goes to see Gekko speak and is impressed by what the man has to say. Maybe he’s found a new mentor. Afterward, Jake meets Gekko and tells him about his plans to marry Winnie. They strike a deal: Jake will help Gekko reconcile with his daughter and in return Gekko will help Jake exact some payback on James, the man who sent Zabel over the edge.
With Gekko’s help, Jake does some digging and spreads a few rumors that cause Churchill Schwartz, the company that James works for, to take a notable hit. Impressed by what he did, James hires Jake because after all, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Jake naturally accepts as it brings him in close proximity to James so that he can ultimately bring him down. And like that, it’s on with Jake and James going after each other with Gekko as the wild card, begging the question, what is his stake in all this?
Shia LaBeouf, an actor known for mindless blockbusters (Transformers and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) and generic thrillers (Disturbia and Eagle Eye), finally shows some actual acting chops in his first legitimate dramatic role that has him up against heavyweights like Michael Douglas, Josh Brolin and Frank Langella — guys that can really act. Being in their company forces LaBeouf to raise his game and he holds his own. This time around, it is LaBeouf who is the idealistic young man swimming with the sharks and in danger of being seduced by lots of money.
It is great to see Michael Douglas back in his most famous role and he slips back into it effortlessly. Gekko is as cagey as ever and like Jake we’re never quite sure what his true intentions are but one thing’s for sure, he’s not to be underestimated. And Douglas does a nice job hinting at the dangerous Gekko that lurks under his smiling façade. He has more than a few tricks up his sleeve and with all the cunning of an exceptional card player.
Josh Brolin plays a smug, cigar-smoking shark with no heart. He’s a grinning, deliciously evil bad guy. Carey Mulligan doesn’t have much to do but does a fine job with what she has to work with, especially a scene where Winnie and Gekko finally have it out over how his dirty financial dealings destroyed their family. One of the weak spots of the original Wall Street was Bud Fox’s relationship with his love interest and Stone tries not to make the same mistake with this film by casting a stronger actress with Mulligan and by placing a bigger emphasis on the relationship between Jake and Winnie. However, the film stalls when the focus shifts to them when we really should be tracking Jake plotting revenge on James.
The screenplay throws all kinds of financial jargon at the audience but it is all really window-dressing because all that matters is what it all means and Stone makes sure that we understand the bottom line. The dialogue still has some of the crackle and pop of the original film, especially in a good scene where Gekko and James spar verbally. If there is any glaring flaw in this film it is the overuse of David Byrne songs to the point of distraction. Each cue puts too fine a point on the scene with lyrics that spell out exactly what we are watching. Not to mention the songs are milquetoast drivel robbing the film of its fast-moving momentum at times.
Stone does a good job of keeping things visually interesting but the cinematography lacks the energy and that special something that Robert Richardson brought to the first film. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is easily the best film Stone’s done since Any Given Sunday. Of course, that’s not saying much but at least it feels like the kind of film that Stone used to make back in his prime. There is a confidence that comes with being back on familiar turf that Stone displays with this film. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is just the kind of film that he needs to reinvigorate his career and remind us why we regarded his films so highly in the first place.
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Labels: 10s, Carey Mulligan, Josh Brolin, M. Douglas, Oliver Stone
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Tuesday, March 03, 2009
It seems to me I've heard this song before
By Edward Copeland
Without much enthusiasm, I finally watched Oliver Stone's W. a few days ago. From the clips I'd seen, Josh Brolin looked quite good, but having just escaped the hell of the eight years of the real Bush administration, I wasn't anxious to revisit it in fictional form. It's as if someone had given me a copy of Michael Bolton's Greatest Hits. I didn't like it the first time, why would I want to hear it again?
Still, I bit the bullet and did it anyway and found much of what I expected to find. Brolin was uncanny at times in his mimicry. Stone defied expectations by trying to paint a somewhat sympathetic portrait of the former president as a man who could never make his cold father happy. You know what? I could give a rat's ass what Dubya's psychological underpinnings are after what he put my country through.
Stone's film only focuses on the buildup and execution of the Iraq war, showing admirable restraint by skipping Dubya's skirting of Vietnam service. The problem is that pretty much everything depicted in the film is something I either knew or that I could recognize as a fudge.
Granted, sometimes you have to condense characters but where were Andy Card or Karen Hughes? Why was Karl Rove in a meeting with Bush 41 for his 1988 presidential campaign but there was no Lee Atwater character? Finally, what was this film's point?
When Stone re-creates the moment in a news conference when a reporter asked Dubya how he thought history would treat him and he replied that we'd all be dead, it sort of tells the truth and undermines the film.
It's too soon to have a really interesting, vivid take on one of the worst presidents in U.S. history, let alone rushing to get a film out that was released before the dunderhead even left office.
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Labels: 00s, Josh Brolin, Oliver Stone
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Wednesday, January 07, 2009
You gotta give 'em hope
By Edward Copeland
Critics don't like to admit it, but sometimes they go into a film with preconceived notions. The ads for Milk put me off, making it look as if Sean Penn were giving another mannered performance (I've never forgiven him for I Am Sam) and though I avoid reviews of films before I see them, I got the sinking suspicion that the positive ones came from a place of political correctness and the negative ones, some by people I respect, hued closer to the truth. That's why it was such a surprise that when I finally gave in and watched Gus Van Sant's film I found myself riveted and impressed.
Granted, Dustin Lance Black's script does what many a biopic does: Turn its subject matter into a pseudosaint, but it hardly matters because so many of the issues seem surprisingly timely even though they happened 30 years ago. Harvey Milk leads the fight to defeat a right-wing California state senator's state ballot initiative to ban homosexuals from being school teachers as well as any heterosexual teachers who would dare to support gay educators.
Called Proposition 6, it's uncannily reminiscent of California's recent Proposition 8 on banning gay marriage. The big difference: Proposition 6 went down to defeat. Even Ronald Reagan publicly opposed it. If he were alive today, would he oppose all the gay marriage ban nonsense? Hell, to be honest, Reagan would probably be too liberal for today's Republican Party.
The Proposition 6 fight is just one part of Milk, which not only benefits from one of Sean Penn's best and least-mannered performances in a long time, but an amazingly talented ensemble.
Josh Brolin is appropriately frightening as San Francisco city supervisor Dan White, Milk's eventual assassin, coiffed with a hairdo that seems stolen directly from Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's head. To me, the actor who hasn't been getting the amount of credit he deserves is Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones, who begins as a young man picking up tricks on the street before becoming one of the most successful gay political activists.
Van Sant keeps the film flowing, seamlessly moving between the re-created scenes, actual footage and flights of fancy. Sometimes, as wrong as it is, a critic will come to a film he or she is dreading loaded for bear. That's why it is all the more satisfying when the movie's excellence punctures your balloon.
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Labels: 00s, Josh Brolin, Sean Penn, Van Sant
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Thursday, January 24, 2008
1 divided by 2 + footage=Planet Terror
By Edward Copeland
I never got a chance to see Grindhouse in the theater though I really wanted to, but the odd way they've handled its DVD release means I will never see what others did. The much-talked about trailers between Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof might be on bonus discs, but I didn't rent those. Of course, I also have no way of knowing what's been added to Planet Terror. I can say though that, for what it is, I enjoyed it quite a lot.
For the most part, Rodriguez really nails the look and feel of a '70s-type exploitation film and the great ensemble cast all play it just right, from Jeff Fahey as the chili cook to Josh Brolin as the asshole doctor, from Naveen Andrews' crooked scientist to Freddy Rodriguez's ostensible hero.
If I had any complaint about Planet Terror, it's when it inserts timely references such as Osama bin Laden and 9/11. They seem out of place since the film plays as if it were made in the 1970s and come off sounding like anachronisms.
The action scenes come off suitably over-the-top as does the gore, since this is a zombie film. I wish I could have seen it as Grindhouse, especially with those fake trailers in between, though the Machete preview at the opening is fun in itself.
Death Proof is up next in my rental queue, so I'll get to see the second half of Grindhouse soon, sort of.
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I never got a chance to see Grindhouse in the theater though I really wanted to, but the odd way they've handled its DVD release means I will never see what others did. The much-talked about trailers between Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof might be on bonus discs, but I didn't rent those. Of course, I also have no way of knowing what's been added to Planet Terror. I can say though that, for what it is, I enjoyed it quite a lot.
For the most part, Rodriguez really nails the look and feel of a '70s-type exploitation film and the great ensemble cast all play it just right, from Jeff Fahey as the chili cook to Josh Brolin as the asshole doctor, from Naveen Andrews' crooked scientist to Freddy Rodriguez's ostensible hero.
If I had any complaint about Planet Terror, it's when it inserts timely references such as Osama bin Laden and 9/11. They seem out of place since the film plays as if it were made in the 1970s and come off sounding like anachronisms.
The action scenes come off suitably over-the-top as does the gore, since this is a zombie film. I wish I could have seen it as Grindhouse, especially with those fake trailers in between, though the Machete preview at the opening is fun in itself.
Death Proof is up next in my rental queue, so I'll get to see the second half of Grindhouse soon, sort of.
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Labels: 00s, Josh Brolin, Rodriguez, Tarantino
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Digging for ideas within a genre
By Edward Copeland
Some films have so much going for them, are so close to hitting the mark, that it's frustrating as you watch the missed opportunities. This is certainly the case with Ridley Scott's American Gangster which, despite having a top-notch cast and interesting themes, just doesn't quite finish with a win.
Written by Steven Zaillian, American Gangster tells the true story of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), who went from a driver for the kingpin of the Harlem mob to an enterprising player who dominated the heroin trade in New York in the 1970s.
It also tells the parallel story of Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), an honest N.Y. detective attending night school to become a lawyer who ends up heading a federally sanctioned task force to make inroads in the war on drugs.
The plot sounds like numerous fictional and nonfictional accounts of crooks and the cops who chase them, but American Gangster has a more interesting take on the genre buried within its surface. Unfortunately, the plodding pace of the overlong film holds the movie back from being truly great.
The movie sets up its theme in the opening, when Lucas, still a driver for the Harlem kingpin Bumpy Johnson (played in an uncredited cameo by Clarence E. Williams III), hears Bumpy lament the disappearance of the middle man as chain stores started replacing mom-and-pop operations in the late 1960s. When Bumpy passes on, Frank decides to pursue that entrepreneurial spirit his boss decried, setting up direct dealings with opium merchants in Southeast Asia, an operation enabled by the Vietnam War.
The script's almost anthropological approach neatly sets up the parallels between Lucas and Roberts, as both are upsetting "the natural order of things" on both sides of the law.
Crowe gives one of his most subdued performances as Roberts, but Washington's work as the ultracool and slick Lucas dominates the proceedings.
Living in the flashy, Superfly-like world of gaudy gangsters, Lucas realizes that "the loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room" and does his best to operate below the radar, without the flash that would attract attention. In an interesting way, Lucas is really the better family man, taking care of his aging mother (the great Ruby Dee) and assorted kin, while Roberts neglects his son and pursues several brief flings.
In another respect, Lucas really isn't the most villainous character in American Gangster. That goes to Josh Brolin as a particularly corrupt and vile detective. 2007 has really been a breakout year for Brolin, with his great work here and in No Country for Old Men.
The fantastic ensemble also includes solid turns by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Armand Assante, Idris Elba, John Hawkes, Ted Levine, Jon Polito and the best role Cuba Gooding Jr. has had in more than a decade.
Scott does well creating the atmospherics of the film's '70s milieu, but he takes so long getting the story going that by the time it gets to its payoffs, it feel rushed. It's a shame, because there is a great story within American Gangster that wants to raise questions such as whether it's really in anyone's business interests to stop the drug trade, but much of that gets lost in the film's flab.
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Some films have so much going for them, are so close to hitting the mark, that it's frustrating as you watch the missed opportunities. This is certainly the case with Ridley Scott's American Gangster which, despite having a top-notch cast and interesting themes, just doesn't quite finish with a win.
Written by Steven Zaillian, American Gangster tells the true story of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), who went from a driver for the kingpin of the Harlem mob to an enterprising player who dominated the heroin trade in New York in the 1970s.
It also tells the parallel story of Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), an honest N.Y. detective attending night school to become a lawyer who ends up heading a federally sanctioned task force to make inroads in the war on drugs.
The plot sounds like numerous fictional and nonfictional accounts of crooks and the cops who chase them, but American Gangster has a more interesting take on the genre buried within its surface. Unfortunately, the plodding pace of the overlong film holds the movie back from being truly great.
The movie sets up its theme in the opening, when Lucas, still a driver for the Harlem kingpin Bumpy Johnson (played in an uncredited cameo by Clarence E. Williams III), hears Bumpy lament the disappearance of the middle man as chain stores started replacing mom-and-pop operations in the late 1960s. When Bumpy passes on, Frank decides to pursue that entrepreneurial spirit his boss decried, setting up direct dealings with opium merchants in Southeast Asia, an operation enabled by the Vietnam War.
The script's almost anthropological approach neatly sets up the parallels between Lucas and Roberts, as both are upsetting "the natural order of things" on both sides of the law.
Crowe gives one of his most subdued performances as Roberts, but Washington's work as the ultracool and slick Lucas dominates the proceedings.
Living in the flashy, Superfly-like world of gaudy gangsters, Lucas realizes that "the loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room" and does his best to operate below the radar, without the flash that would attract attention. In an interesting way, Lucas is really the better family man, taking care of his aging mother (the great Ruby Dee) and assorted kin, while Roberts neglects his son and pursues several brief flings.
In another respect, Lucas really isn't the most villainous character in American Gangster. That goes to Josh Brolin as a particularly corrupt and vile detective. 2007 has really been a breakout year for Brolin, with his great work here and in No Country for Old Men.
The fantastic ensemble also includes solid turns by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Armand Assante, Idris Elba, John Hawkes, Ted Levine, Jon Polito and the best role Cuba Gooding Jr. has had in more than a decade.
Scott does well creating the atmospherics of the film's '70s milieu, but he takes so long getting the story going that by the time it gets to its payoffs, it feel rushed. It's a shame, because there is a great story within American Gangster that wants to raise questions such as whether it's really in anyone's business interests to stop the drug trade, but much of that gets lost in the film's flab.
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Labels: 00s, Denzel, Josh Brolin, R. Scott, Russell Crowe
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Monday, November 26, 2007
Welcome back boys
By Edward Copeland
For more than a decade now, I've lived in a critical wilderness when it comes to the Coen brothers. I was a huge fan of the siblings from the moment I saw Blood Simple back in 1985, through the great fun of Raising Arizona and the exquisite Miller's Crossing. I liked Barton Fink a lot, though something of their style was starting to strike me as repetitive.
When Fargo came and seemingly the entire critical world ravished it with hosannas, I felt as if I stood alone thinking the movie was overrated and the Coens were stuck in a rut, a feeling that only grew over the course of their next films, so much so that I skipped offerings such as the ill-advised remake of The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty. When No Country for Old Men started garnering raves, I was skeptical as I had been post-Hudsucker Proxy, partly as self-defense so as not to be disappointed. Now I've seen No Country for Old Men and no one is more delighted than I am to say that Joel, Ethan and I have met up again on the same path.
This isn't to say that some of the praise for No Country for Old Men isn't overselling the film's worth, but I think it's understandable since it plays like such a radical departure from the usual Coen outing. As Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff says at one point, "it's hard to take measure of something when you don't understand." Still, this film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel isn't really hard to grasp, it's just removed from most of the brothers' recent output in its coldness, straight-forward nature and relative lack of snark.
In a way, the Coen brothers film that No Country most closely resembles is their very first effort, Blood Simple, with its Western noir feel and Texas setting. Unlike Simple's great showiness, No Country resists all impulses to call attention to itself. It's as if the Coens, tired of two decades as the high school class clowns of American filmmaking, have finally matured to middle age.
The other Coen film that No Country parallels, albeit slightly, is Fargo since it really has no lead but instead three characters whose paths intersect at times. In addition to Jones' sheriff, who seems like a more reticent version of the character he played in his underrated directing debut, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, there is Josh Brolin's trailer park denizen who stumbles upon the scene of a drug deal gone bad and makes off with a briefcase full of cash.
The third, and most vivid, member of this trio is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a stoic killing machine with pasty skin and a Prince Valiant haircut, out to retrieve the money as well as slaughter anyone whose death meets his peculiar fancy.
What's most remarkable about the film to me is its pacing, which seems very deliberate yet delivers much momentum without ever feeling rushed. I also liked how it's a period piece, but one so subtle that unless you pay close attention, you might not realize it is set in 1980.
In fact, what No Country bubbles over with more than anything else is subtlety, not something I've come to expect from the Coens. The themes of what a tough country America can be and the futility of chasing things that have fallen far from your reach are there, but delivered with a velvet touch instead of a sledgehammer. The other thing that impressed me most is that really none of the characters are particularly dumb.
Sure, they make mistakes, sometime fatal ones, but the movie never mocks them and some of their ingenuity seems out of a script from MacGyver. Also, while this is a violent film, much of the bloodshed is only seen either in the aftermath or not at all.
The performances are great across the board, from Jones and Brolin to Kelly Macdonald as Brolin's wife and Garret Dillahunt (late of HBO's Deadwood and John from Cincinnati) as Jones' deputy as well as brief appearances from Woody Harrelson and Barry Corbin.
Still, No Country for Old Men belongs to Bardem, who has created a monster for the ages.
One criticism I heard from people leaving the theater when I left was frustration with the somewhat vague ending that denies the audience clear-cut payoffs. That didn't bother me, because it's all there if you pay attention and the Coens aren't rubbing anything in the audience's face as they've done in the past.
In a way, it somewhat resembles the reaction to the finale of The Sopranos, emphasizing what many of that HBO series' fans hit upon: the recurrence of the idea that some things you never see coming. I have to admit I didn't see this good a film coming from the Coens again, but I'm most grateful that it did.
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Labels: 00s, Bardem, Coens, Deadwood, Harrelson, HBO, Josh Brolin, The Sopranos, Tommy Lee Jones
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Saturday, January 13, 2007
As if seeing for the first time
By Edward Copeland
One of the great joys of habitual moviegoing comes when a performer you've not seen for a long time suddenly reappears in such an attention-grabbing way that you wonder where he or she has been lately. What's so amazing about The Dead Girl is that the film assembles a cast with nary a weak link and contains surprising turns across the board from supporting performers you've grown accustomed to being excellent.
You know that actresses such as Toni Collette, Mary Steenburgen and Marcia Gay Harden will be up to the task, but you probably aren't prepared for such strong turns from Kerry Washington, Brittany Murphy or Rose Byrne or for invigorating work from actors such as James Franco and Josh Brolin in what should be throwaway roles.
Most of all though, for me at least, I was unprepared to see such strong work from a great actress such as Piper Laurie, who hasn't seen a role this good probably since Twin Peaks went off the air, or, especially, the brilliant performance of a nearly unrecognizable Mary Beth Hurt.
The pleasant surprises of The Dead Girl aren't limited to who is in front of the camera either. Writer-director Karen Moncrieff's first feature, Blue Car, truly underwhelmed me, but The Dead Girl shows strength in every area where her previous work proved weak.
Moncrieff also manages to make what essentially is an anthology succeed in a way that most collections of stories don't. Jean-Luc Godard famously said that the best way to express criticism of a film was to make another movie and in its own way, that is what The Dead Girl does. It connects its five stories in a cohesive way that movies such as last year's Nine Lives or, to a lesser extent since the parallel isn't exact, this year's insipid Babel, don't.
What links the tales in The Dead Girl is the title character (Murphy) and how her life and death affect various women, some who knew her and some who didn't. Its theme of abused women never beats you over the head but instead just lurks ominously in the background as the performers and the story go on, letting the audience pick up on the themes instead.
Moncrieff deserves a lot of credit not only for constructing this script but for assembling this disparate a cast and using them so well, especially Hurt. I keep being drawn back to her. It seems appropriate that I review this film the same day as The Night Listener starring Robin Williams, since my first memory of Hurt was opposite Williams in The World According to Garp. If I didn't know going in that she was in The Dead Girl, I doubt I would have recognized her immediately since her role as the dowdy wife of the manager of storage trailers is so far removed from Helen Holm that you think you're seeing her for the very first time.
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One of the great joys of habitual moviegoing comes when a performer you've not seen for a long time suddenly reappears in such an attention-grabbing way that you wonder where he or she has been lately. What's so amazing about The Dead Girl is that the film assembles a cast with nary a weak link and contains surprising turns across the board from supporting performers you've grown accustomed to being excellent.
You know that actresses such as Toni Collette, Mary Steenburgen and Marcia Gay Harden will be up to the task, but you probably aren't prepared for such strong turns from Kerry Washington, Brittany Murphy or Rose Byrne or for invigorating work from actors such as James Franco and Josh Brolin in what should be throwaway roles.
Most of all though, for me at least, I was unprepared to see such strong work from a great actress such as Piper Laurie, who hasn't seen a role this good probably since Twin Peaks went off the air, or, especially, the brilliant performance of a nearly unrecognizable Mary Beth Hurt.
The pleasant surprises of The Dead Girl aren't limited to who is in front of the camera either. Writer-director Karen Moncrieff's first feature, Blue Car, truly underwhelmed me, but The Dead Girl shows strength in every area where her previous work proved weak.
Moncrieff also manages to make what essentially is an anthology succeed in a way that most collections of stories don't. Jean-Luc Godard famously said that the best way to express criticism of a film was to make another movie and in its own way, that is what The Dead Girl does. It connects its five stories in a cohesive way that movies such as last year's Nine Lives or, to a lesser extent since the parallel isn't exact, this year's insipid Babel, don't.
What links the tales in The Dead Girl is the title character (Murphy) and how her life and death affect various women, some who knew her and some who didn't. Its theme of abused women never beats you over the head but instead just lurks ominously in the background as the performers and the story go on, letting the audience pick up on the themes instead.
Moncrieff deserves a lot of credit not only for constructing this script but for assembling this disparate a cast and using them so well, especially Hurt. I keep being drawn back to her. It seems appropriate that I review this film the same day as The Night Listener starring Robin Williams, since my first memory of Hurt was opposite Williams in The World According to Garp. If I didn't know going in that she was in The Dead Girl, I doubt I would have recognized her immediately since her role as the dowdy wife of the manager of storage trailers is so far removed from Helen Holm that you think you're seeing her for the very first time.
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Labels: 00s, Franco, Godard, Josh Brolin, Piper Laurie, Robin, Toni Collette, Twin Peaks
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