In the Mood for Podcast: Episode 42

This week we take the opportunity to discuss all things Nicholas Cage, with the release of two of his films, the silly action thriller “Stolen,” and the prehistoric animated adventure “The Croods.” Cal sat through Ray of Light supremo Jonas Akerlund’s “Small Apartments” while his veto of “Identity Thief” meant that Pete was all alone with Melissa McCarthy, a terrifying thought in itself. And then we get onto “Compliance,” which may be the biggest casualty of ‘In the Mood’ vitriol since “The Lorax,” and proves that the fast food industry can indeed get more repulsive. A budget reveal of “Jack the Giant Slayer” knocks us for six, while we consider the fate of the once-great Bryan Singer, and the potential disaster brought on by his film’s final scene. Fee Fi Fo Fum! We smell the blood of a sequel! 

Head on over and listen!

Welcome to the Punch (2013)

Welcome to the Punch
Directed by Evan Creevy
Starring: James McAvoy, Mark Strong, David Morrissey, Andrea Riseborough, Peter Mullan, Johnny Harris, Daniel Mays
Grade: B –

“Welcome to the Punch” emerges as a smart British crime thriller, in spite of its heavy reliance upon an opening sequence the filmmakers don't seem to have the budget to pull off. The sketchy attempts to provide a backstory for James McAvoy's dejected police officer never really convince, despite how many times the film seems to hammer this point home, or how dishevelled the actor's gristly facial hair makes him. And still, what the film lacks in character building it gains through a winning cast, who treat the solid plot mechanics with the respect they deserve, alluding to a vast network of criminality beyond what we can essentially see. The text may be better served in a TV series format, in which BBC's investigative crime drama “State of Play,” thrived, but 'Punch' holds its own in this arena, the actions of its characters founded on rational motivations of crime rather than the mafia-style dynamics we see in many mediocre British works of this style.

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013)

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
Directed by Don Scardino
Starring: Steve Carrell, Olivia Wilde, Steve Buscemi, Jim Carrey, Alan Arkin
Grade: C+

“The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” is far more thoughtful than it ever needs to be, given that it's specifically cast for an audience drawn to broad physical comedy. Inevitably there are some moronic attempts at humour, but the script at least attempts to chart an (admittedly schmaltzy) arc for Carrell's washed-up magician, who has to rediscover his passion for his profession to appreciate what he has. There's an accurate commentary on the transition of the industry from wholesome illusion to stunty feats of endurance, whereby supposed street entertainers and bodyshock merchants are popularising non-traditional forms of magic. 'Burt Wonderstone' actually spends so much time on building relationships between its characters that – when it comes to the final third – it can't really resolve all of their issues properly, having to drop Alan Arkin's retired magician like an old toy and reduce Jim Carrey's David Blaine clone to a deranged clown. Nevertheless, there's enough rapport generated to ensure that a soft finale can't really spoil a perfectly amiable experience, the film semi-delivering on the promise of laughs and surprisingly adding some soul, to boot.

The Headless Woman (2008)

The Headless Woman
Directed by Lucrecia Martel
Starring: Maria Onetto, César Bordón, Claudia Cantero, Inés Efron
Grade: B

“The Headless Woman” would be a near-masterpiece if it were not for the opaqueness of its central mystery, which partly feels like a deliberate attempt to preserve that mystery, but also reads as a sheepish move by Martel to answer as few questions as possible without the entire thing seeming like a wasted exercise. “The Headless Woman” isn’t a waste; it’s a great character study about a woman that could be any one of us, and the actions of Onetto’s deathly driver feel wholly identifiable given the situation. A story that could have been driven to melodramatic depths of conspiracy and punishment in the hands of a less sensitive filmmaker is handled shrewdly and not without power; a distant shot of an unidentifiable person or object on a road is harrowing, and certainly a contender for best single shot of 2008. Yet it’s strange that, despite all of its successes, the biggest feeling “The Headless Woman” left me with was the lingering lament of what the film might have been had it probed a little further.

Libeled Lady (1936)

Libeled Lady
Directed by Jack Conway
Starring: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Jean Harlow
Grade: A –

A viewing of “Libeled Lady” at least illuminates something that had been puzzling me for a while: that Best Picture Oscar snub for “My Man Godfrey.” Why vote for ‘Godfrey’ – its collection of actors far more deserving than a sparkling but philosophically conflicted script – when you can throw a bone to Jack Conway’s “Libeled Lady,” a spicier, more capable comedy about duping daffy socialites? Of course, the question should be why Conway’s film didn’t land nominations for its cast, led by a supreme William Powell (nominated for ‘Godfrey’) and loaded with great supporting turns from Loy, Tracy, and Harlow. The film showcases the strengths of screwball comedy – particularly its canny measure of deceit, which appears to set characters up for a fall before harmlessly snatching them from the jaws of self-destruction. Rallying us to the corner of the newspaper industry works because the film portrays it as a hopeless instigator of its own downfall, while the genre’s trademark gender politics has rarely felt as incisive as within the central relationship between old favourites Powell and Loy.

The Deer Hunter (1978)

The Deer Hunter
Directed by Michael Cimino
Starring: Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Cazale
Grade: B+

“The Deer Hunter” might just be the most quintessentially masculine movie I’ve ever seen. While it could be classified as a war film, its sequences of combat are far less impacting than the character work done either side of that conflict; the film’s opening farewell party for the battle-bound men – chief of which is Robert De Niro’s Michael – tentatively setting up the nuances of character which heighten upon the guys’ return from duty. The film’s final hour recalls the most severe moments in William Wyler’s “The Best Years of Our Lives,” updated for a different generation, but with a similar impression of war as an unconquerable hyper-reality. One of the main criticisms of “The Deer Hunter” has been that it advocates America’s involvement in Vietnam, and that it depicts the Vietnamese soldiers as monsters. That second point may have some validity, but Cimino’s film primarily uses the horrors of war to chart the descension of man’s moral fibre, and with a distressing amount of visceral power, too. There’s perhaps an overuse of Russian Roulette to work suspense into its depiction of devolved humanity, a final scene involving the grisly game a somewhat melodramatic move, if instantly iconic in the annals of cinema.

Midnight Run (1988)

Midnight Run
Directed by Martin Brest
Starring: Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin, Yaphet Kotto, Dennis Farina, Joe Pantoliano
Grade: B

In terms of dynamics, “Midnight Run” is intriguing: it ends up playing out rather like “The Defiant Ones,” despite De Niro’s bounty hunter essentially having the upper hand in his quest to bring corrupt accountant Charles Grodin to justice. The difference here is that the characters’ main differences are behavioural, the film mining their contrasting approaches towards getting their own way for maximum laughs. The film had me worried on occasion; a scene in which De Niro returns to his estranged wife and daughter suggested things might take on a personal angle, while there are some questionable ideas about what constitutes justice towards the end. Nevertheless, “Midnight Run” has some enjoyably madcap qualities, and De Niro exhibits just how great he is at being the flawed good guy by giving a hilarious, immaculately-pitched turn. Ultimately, the success of the film probably depends on whether you buy Grodin’s quiet, apathetic charade of a performance, which I found disarming at first but grew to appreciate – mainly for having to compete against a man aware that he’s totally running the show.

Ali (2001)

Ali
Directed by Michael Mann
Starring: Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, Jon Voight, Nona Gaye, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mario Van Peebles
Grade: B –

While it loosely follows the conventional structure of biopics, Mann’s impression of the boxer deemed the world’s ‘greatest’ is often bitingly honest, Ali shown to be an arrogant adulterer with a nasty streak about him. And yet the film still feels compromised, the attempts to associate Ali’s Islamic commitments to the people of Zaire confusing given that the characterisation of the man suggests his approach towards religion was a hypocritical burden to all around him. It might be that I’m reading this wrongly, or that the film simply doesn’t handle this element of Ali well, but it does feel like the late switch to Africa leading up to the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ tries to reconcile the behaviour of Ali the Man when there doesn’t appear to be much to identify with. The decision to cast Will Smith, however, is a wise move, the guy’s extrovert nature and clear sense of ambition a good fit for Ali’s charismatic brand of showmanship, while Nona Gaye gives an excellent performance as his suffering second wife.

Side Effects (2013)

Side Effects
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Channing Tatum, Vanessa Shaw
Grade: C –

One hopes that Steven Soderbergh’s “Side Effects” isn’t – as proclaimed – his final feature film, since it’s lazily unbecoming of his eclectic filmography, and a severe disappointment. Soderbergh’s biggest crime is to squander opportunities to provide a concrete commentary on the perils of the pharmaceutical industry, using the arena as a haven for exploitation but at no particular cost to the accepted enterprise of doping to maintain business. Instead, the film acts as more of a cautionary tale about how manipulative women can be – particularly when they aren’t under the spell of a man (please!) – its array of characters all morally compromised and conceited to some degree. That the film makes the two ‘victims’ of events a corrupt stockbroker and a vindictive shrink adds little weight to its ideas of corporate greed, as it doesn’t really establish a network beyond its set of strangely compartmentalised characters to punctuate lasting observations about a ‘rotten core’ to the industry, like “Margin Call” did, for example. The thriller’s linear path creates just one legitimate avenue of mystery, and the film fails to maintain enough interest to offset the inevitability of its climax, settling instead to offer a couple of redundant twists at its laboured denouement.

The Entertainer (1960)

The Entertainer
Directed by Tony Richardson
Starring: Laurence Olivier, Joan Plowright, Alan Bates, Albert Finney, Roger Livesey
Grade: B+

Set in the seaside town of Morecambe, this John Osborne-penned domestic drama deals with concerns relevant to British tourism even today – most notably the need to revamp traditional customs of holiday entertainment and move with the times. In detailing the resistance of Laurence Olivier’s Archie to transition from his Vaudeville roots, “The Entertainer” expresses the difficulties posed by the uncertainty of change, balancing the suffocation of small-town living with the charm of its familiar comforts. The film has a real knack for building loaded relationships between the characters without them having to vocalise issues, far looser and eminently more interesting than the overwrought “Look Back in Anger.” Away from Shakespearean territory Olivier enlivens Osborne’s selfish antihero with a sad artificiality, reinforcing the independent spirit of Archie by ‘performing’ to even his closest family members, and hurting them by acting like the twenty year-old Jack The Lad it’s obvious he once was. It feels fitting that in a year loaded with great male acting showcases – from Anthony Perkins, Marcello Mastrioianni, Albert Finney, Jack Lemmon, Burt Lancaster, and Spencer Tracy, to name but a few – Olivier managed to bring out his best, too.

In the Mood for Podcast: Episode 40

But for some football-related rants this week’s episode is surprisingly concise, as we turn our attention towards legacies. As Steven Soderbergh prepares to fold up his chair and retire (we’ll believe it when we see it) after his final film “Side Effects,” we reveal whether we think his pharmaceutical thriller is a worthy swansong, and offer our favourite examples of final films from directors. Sam Raimi is resurrecting L. Frank Baum’s series of Oz books with “Oz the Great and Powerful,” but can this kaleidoscopic 3D adventure even come close to replicating the magic of the original? And will Barbra Streisand’s Razzie-nominated return to acting in “The Guilt Trip” affect her long-standing reputation as a Queen among actresses? We have reviews of Jason Statham vehicle “Parker,” the acclaimed British thriller “Broken,” and Pete’s precious “Robot & Frank,” while we assess the power of Bette Midler’s Oscar-nominated performance in “The Rose” and look ahead to Sofia Coppola’s latest foray into the perils of youth, “The Bling Ring.” Sit back and listen to us bitch!

Head on over to the blog and give it a listen!

Gangs of New York (2002)

Gangs of New York
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo Di Caprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz, Brendan Gleeson, Jim Broadbent
Grade: C

Scorsese, usually so good at fleshing out criminal networks and hierarchies, doesn’t quite get there with ‘Gangs’, torn between the various constraints of the story – historical accuracy, romance, and primarily the Jesse James-Robert Ford relationship between Day-Lewis and Di Caprio – that much of it feels overstuffed and undernourished. When he has to widen the scope and chart New York’s escalating lack of rule in the second half, the tone intensifies and the anarchic state of the city is shown through choppy editing and manic cinematography, which feels completely out of place with the rest of the movie. Its unevenness is – in many ways – a double-edged sword; While distracting, at least the erratic nature of ‘Gangs’ means that you can never really settle into it, the theatrical performance of Day-Lewis a disarming treat in itself, and the dourer elements of the period shown to be quite enterprising. As for any grander commentary on New York, the film takes two hours to establish a political system within the city (an election battle seemingly emerges from nowhere), affirming that its helmer may have had a little too much on his plate here.

The Evil Dead (1983)

The Evil Dead
Directed by Sam Raimi
Starring: Bruce Campbell
Grade: C+

I don’t know whether I’m supposed to be impressed by how cheap “The Evil Dead” is, or how much blood it manages to squeeze out of that miniscule budget. Either way, it’s safe to say it doesn’t click in the way that “The Blair Witch Project” did, neither particularly terrifying nor funny, basically a silly exercise in genre filmmaking with Dogme-like limitations. It does hold up as an example of how production values are unimportant in creating an effective horror film in relation to what you do with those production values, and Raimi’s roaming style of filmmaking achieves a fair blend between genuine scares and a wholly ridiculous grand guignol. Ultimately, the film means much more in the context of independent filmmaking than as a benchmark for its genre, the 1980s equivalent of what “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” was for the 1970s, and ‘Blair Witch’ was for the 1990s, but stuck in a decade in which American cinema struggled, and an obvious, dated representation of that.

Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)

Good Morning, Vietnam
Directed by Barry Levinson
Starring: Robin Williams, Forest Whitaker, Bruno Kirby, Tung Thanh Tran
Grade: D+

I suppose the souring reputation of this one-time Oscar nominee comes from its failure to commit to a particular stance on the (also) souring debacle that was the Vietnam War. It’s not so much that the film sanitises the event but rather that the story of Robin Williams’ outspoken disc jockey is an ineffective window into this period of history, playing out rather like Lenny Bruce Does Asia, with Bruno Kirby’s stuffy Lieutenant the counterpart purveyor of conservative taste. Mitch Markowitz’s script tries to forge an even reflection between comedy and drama by heightening the seriousness in the second half, and it all gets terribly messy when an escalating subplot involving the funny-man’s local friends pushes the character into unbearable degrees of self-righteousness. Williams, either hysterically funny or hysterically frustrated, rides along with the flaws of the film, adept at giving an impression of Oz’s Good Witch of the North, but less successful at providing his character’s growing political conscience with any logical credence.

The Keys of the Kingdom (1944)

The Keys of the Kingdom
Directed by John M. Stahl
Starring: Gregory Peck, Thomas Mitchell, Cedric Hardwicke, Rose Stradner
Grade: C+

“The Keys of the Kingdom” has a potentially silly setup, whereby a young Gregory Peck dons old-age makeup, and plays an elderly Scottish Priest told to retire by the monsignor in charge of his church. When the monsignor finds the priest’s journal he becomes enthralled, and the film flashes back to tell his life story, the bulk of which takes place in war-torn China.

The framing device seems rather arbitrary on the face of it, until it becomes obvious that this is a drastic attempt to slap unearned sentiment onto an unendingly earnest portrayal of humble service. I get the distinct impression that “The Keys of the Kingdom” is a film best viewed in one’s later years, when its self-important reverence of legacy may punctuate best towards somebody genuinely looking back on their achievements and wondering whether they could have done more. Nevertheless, the film acts as a formal vessel for its message that we make the best of what’s given to us – hardly a novel or particularly interesting concept, but one that makes for a disarmingly moving last twenty minutes or so, when an appropriately stately Peck laments to his female colleague about being overlooked for a Bishop’s position. It’s a shame that the obligatory structure of biographical narratives means that we don’t get as much of a character study as in these later scenes, but ‘Kingdom’ still carries a surprising amount of emotional heft.

In the Mood for Podcast: Episode 39

EPISODE 39: Shostakovich & Shockers [1:22:37]
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It's Episode 39 of In the Mood for Podcast, a British-based film podcast hosted by Calum Reed of Ultimate Addict and Pete Sheppard of In the Mood for Blog. We might be a little off-form this week, as Pete is still ill and Cal is hungover, but we've got some juicy-looking films to ponder. We aim to be positive by bringing out our irregular Red Light District segment and pimping the best films we've seen in the past month, which include a Russian classic and a film about a woman who rents cats. We check out "Stoker," the latest bloodthirsty offering from arthouse favourite Park Chan-Wook, and there's blood on the hands of Richard Gere's troubled billionaire too, in Nicholas Jarecki's "Arbitrage". While Pete opted for masculine thriller "Broken City" Cal sat down for Lasse Hallstrom's adaptation of Nicholas Sparks novel "Safe Haven," but we both saw part two of Terrence Malick's prolific streak, the grand, romantic "To the Wonder." Tune in to find out which one of us was reduced to tears by Malick's film, and listen to our confessions of which films never fail to make us blub. 

To the Wonder (2013)

To the Wonder
Directed by Terrence Malick
Starring: Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams, Javier Bardem
Grade: B

Those put off by the broader themes in Malick’s vision in “The Tree of Life” can be assured that “To the Wonder” reverts to a form of romantic personalisation that won him loyal supporters back in “Days of Heaven.” A rural-American setting once again provides the landscape for a story which reinforces themes of dislocation and estrangement, but details them as a destructive factor in a relationship, rather than a uniting, primitive bond, as in his 1978 romance.

The courtship of Affleck’s Neil and Kurylenko’s Marina exercises Malick’s enterprising visual flair, his inherent tenderness as a filmmaker giving their romance a swooning, crystallising glow. The couple’s subsequent deterioration echoes common relationship issues like cultural mismatch, commitment phobia, and even boredom, problems which could easily grow repetitive and tire a film so attached to narrative pitfalls, like last year’s “Keep the Lights On.” Malick’s style ensures that, largely, this isn’t the case, never fully immersed in the finer details of the couple – we get flashes of dialogue regarding VISA trouble and a sexual issue, but never more than that – and therefore able to curb the potentially overwrought nature of their relationship in favour of his trademark visual storytelling.

 

The disadvantage of this technique is that “To the Wonder” becomes more reliant upon individual performances than any of Malick’s previous films – save for maybe “Badlands” – to provide bursts of characterisation, and the success of the cast members vary significantly. Kurylenko gives an astonishingly layered performance, imbued with the precocious, playful qualities which make her endearing in the first place, but reveal themselves to be tiresome and misguidedly idealistic that it’s no wonder Neil loses interest in Marina. Affleck – who it’s good to see back in front of the camera again – fares less well, not necessarily through a particular fault of his own, but rather that Malick seems less interested in his character’s plight than Kurylenko’s, whose effervescent complexion fits more with his entrancing, romanticised view of a doomed love affair. In any case, he doesn’t afford Affleck as much freedom as Pitt in “The Tree of Life” or Caviezel in “The Thin Red Line,” tortured male characters who were far easier to identify with.

While some attest that “The Tree of Life” is a religious film, its reverence of the natural mystique reads more to me as a spiritual piece uncommitted to God, or Jesus. The attempts to introduce Catholicism into “To the Wonder” sit less well – not because they represent a more specified belief system, but because they’re closely associated with guilt, and there isn’t a strong enough sense of duty from either of the couple to warrant that aside. At under two hours “To the Wonder” feels drawn out, too, although positively so: the conviction of its director towards creating an emotional pull makes the film visually extraneous without letting its characters overstay their welcome, and may perhaps best demonstrate the appeal of Malick’s unique brand of cinema.

In the Mood for Podcast: Episode 37

Episode 37 has reviews of "A Good Day to Die Hard," "Beautiful Creatures," Judd Apatow's "This Is 40," and Foreign Language Oscar nominee "No." We're also predicting the winners of Sunday's Academy Awards.

Head on over to the new site and listen!

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

A Good Day to Die Hard
Directed by John Moore
Starring: Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Yuliya Snigir, Radivoje Bukvic, Sergei Kolesnikov, Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Grade: D+

For those at the helm of this appropriately ‘dying’ franchise it was a good time to start trying hard, but John Moore’s “A Good Day to Die Hard” is sadly as dumb as most action flicks fobbed off to the public, if not dumber. The action set-pieces have clearly swallowed up a sizeable chunk of the budget, a vehicular pile-up which leaves Willis’ John McClane and his estranged son Jack (Courtney) on the same team a sequence bracing enough to grace an installment of the “Mission: Impossible” series. It’s the only thing the filmmakers can be remotely proud of, every other element of “A Good Day to Die Hard” as lazily conceived as even the most routine actioners.

The plot involving Russian politicians is a laughably cartoonish hark back to the days of Cold War propaganda, while Skip Woods’ script attempts to inject an angst-ridden through-line narrative involving the father and son’s tattered relationship mending itself through comradeship and bloodthirsty identification with one another. The father-son bond is wholly unconvincing, both because Bruce Willis – clearly scrimping around for any buck he can get at the moment – is as bemused with this story as half the audience I saw the film with, and also because Jai Courtney is too old, and too much of a leading presence, to be saddled with the role of Understudy.  As if it wasn't enough to consign Eastern-European politics to a series of sneering, bearded men grandstanding in bare ashen rooms, the film dredges up the Chernobyl disaster to frame the murky motivations of its villain, before McClane Sr. and McClane Jr. somehow manage to leave the nuclear wasteland in a worse condition than they found it. What sort of botched idea of heroism is that?

Beautiful Creatures (2013)

Beautiful Creatures
Directed by Richard LaGravenese
Starring: Alden Ehrenreich, Alice Englert, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis, Emma Thompson, Emmy Rossum, Dame Eileen Atkins, Margo Martindale
Grade: B

What is being billed as a potential new franchise aimed primarily at teen audiences – in the vein of “The Hunger Games” or “Twilight” – “Beautiful Creatures,” adapted from a novel by Kami Garcia, shows no signs of limiting itself to romantic young minds.  While this story of love and magic will likely appeal to a target demographic, surrounding the young central couple of Ehrenreich and Englert with a host of reputable actors, from Viola Davis to Dame Eileen Atkins, ensures that the film is more accessible to an older audience. Of course, it helps that LaGravenese’s deft script gives these actors so much to do, the dynamic between the spell-casting members of the mysterious Ravenwood family fascinatingly volatile, Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson’s bristling standoff in a church allowing both actors to flex their acting muscle in ways we haven’t seen in a while, and Emmy Rossum an electric presence as the film's catty villain.

As the young lead of the film, Ehrenreich exerts such charm and charisma, elitist in the way that he observes the narrow-minded members of his small town, itching for an alien form of excitement he gratefully receives. He and Englert have a winning chemistry together, and it’s somewhat of a relief that the strength of their romance isn’t diluted by the overkill of the obstacles and constraints which come between them. Nevertheless, “Beautiful Creatures” has its problems: An excellent first hour is undone by some convoluted plot twists in the second, and its finale strangely appears to betray the already-established mechanics of its world. But once it has you in its stranglehold “Beautiful Creatures” won’t let go, beautifully nostalgic with its horror elements and lovingly new-age in its impression of star-crossed lovers separated by supernature.