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Just a little message to make readers aware that this site is still active, despite there being no posts or sidebar updates for several weeks. I am in the process of shifting the blog to a different host, which will hopefully be ready in the next few days, here at the same address.
In the meantime, weekly episodes of the podcast are still ongoing.
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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!
Il Postino
Directed by Michael Radford
Starring: Massimo Troisi, Philippe Noiret, Maria Grazia Cucinotta, Linda Moretti
Grade: C
Given that its leading man basically gave his life to bring “Il Postino” to the screen (at least in the form we see it now), criticising the film feels rather like kicking a puppy. Nevertheless, its depiction of an insular Italian community – and the man at the centre of it – is disappointingly narrow, plumbing the sweetness of quaint, small-town living rather than expanding upon the relationships Massimo Troisi's Mario has with his girlfriend and her mother. Troisi himself gives a soulful turn which adds to the proceedings, but the film misjudges the measure of Mario, charting his enlightenment far too drastically. We're supposed to believe that his new-found engagement with poetry has also ignited political motivations in his character, but why? The integration of politics is a half-baked device devised to add drama to a story otherwise devoid of it, and snatch at our emotions with a late manipulative climax. Radford's routinely tepid direction adds very little in the way of flair, while Luis Bacalov's nice but earnest musical accompaniment reinforces how dreary the entire affair is.
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
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 highlight of a quiet week at the cinema is Lee Daniels’ “The Paperboy,” but will he finally impress us “Precious” skeptics with his Florida-set thriller? We discuss the controversy of that jellyfish scene, as well as other films that kicked up a fuss, for one reason or another. The rest of the releases include showbiz comedy “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” and British thriller “Welcome to the Punch.” We’re looking ahead to the next few episodes by dishing our thoughts on trailers for films out in the next month or so, including Seth Gordon’s “Identity Thief,” which one of us has already vetoed. Cal promotes a re-release of Joseph Losey’s “The Servant,” while his unflattering review of “Beyond the Hills” is hijacked by Pete’s desire to turn it into a Catholic-style remake of “Wreck-It Ralph.” Just another week, then…
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
The Guilt Trip
Directed by Anne Fletcher
Starring: Seth Rogen, Barbra Streisand
Grade: C+
As predisposed as I am to welcoming Barbra Streisand’s return to acting with open arms, this is a role she could ace in her sleep, that of a pernickety mother eager for her boy to settle down and find a nice girl. The surprise here is that she and Seth Rogen (as her inventor-of-sorts son) have a winning chemistry together, their exchanges of banter making the utmost out of a fairly mediocre script. The road-trip narrative – used so often as a tool to force two people to identify with each other – plays out as schematically here as it ever has, but the film at least has some markedly interesting quirks; a recurrent joke involving a hook Streisand uses to keep her purse from becoming dirty is an amusing aside, while the practical influence she has on her son’s sales approach handily emphasises the strengths of both their characters. The film aims to reel in its audience through traditional Route-66 stamps, breaking out the 2-D stereotypes along the way, and makes the mistake of trying to reconcile past issues involving Streisand’s character in one late, cloying scene. That it finds an identity amid an abundant use of cliché at least makes “The Guilt Trip” not an entirely wasted journey.
The Firm
Directed by Sydney Pollack
Starring: Tom Cruise, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Gene Hackman, Holly Hunter, Ed Harris, David Strathairn, Tobin Bell
Grade: C –
John Grisham’s “The Client” had a better shot at mainstream success, but was badly acted and directed; “The Firm” just feels like an overcooked attempt to make us care about people we really shouldn’t. Cruise’s discovery of corruption and murder is followed by the implication that his plucky lawyer possesses some sort of elitist brand of ethics – he goes to such lengths to find a legal solution to his problem – which is unjustifiable given the rest of his behaviour (Don’t get me started on his fiscally-dependent relationship with Jeanne Tripplehorn). While I’m reliably informed that Grisham’s novel makes for a bracing read, “The Firm” makes it clear that his specified prose does not lend itself well to broad cinematic appeal. Pollack’s quest to turn the David vs. Goliath-style narrative of this legal drama into the vein of a survivalist thriller further compounds that observation, a distractingly overutilised score one of his failed attempts to inject tension into a strangely anaemic exercise.
Give ‘Em Hell, Harry!
Directed by Steve Binder
Starring: James Whitmore
Grade: C+
‘Harry’ is a difficult film to judge, given that it’s essentially a videotaped production of a stage play, and not a particularly accomplished one at that; there are many inexplicable close-ups of its actor when he isn’t facing the audience, and when the performance cuts to an interval or ceases it appears as if the cameraman has become lost in the crowd. But this was 1975, and cinema-goers were fortunate to have even seen this on the big screen at all, foremost a vehicle for James Whitmore’s Academy Award nomination but also a canny exploiter of the Watergate scandal as a catalyst for considering the core values of modern American politics. Whitmore’s turn is, quite literally, a tour-de-force, largely successful at expressing the practical habits of Harry Truman and his humanist condemnation of prejudice and bigotry. The humour itself is rather tame, and you can sense the audience laughing before they’ve even had time to digest the joke, the actor’s intense delivery not always lending itself to clarity of thought or consideration. I don’t know enough about Truman to know if this is an accurate or founded portrayal of the man, but as a nostalgic yearn for integrity in Washington, it’s quite an enamouring showcase.
