TBT: Brink! (1998)

Posted on July 31, 2014 by Tom

As the summer season of filmgoing winds down (well, sort of. . .Guardians of the Galaxy looms around the corner this weekend, so maybe that’s a premature statement) my inspired posts have really ramped up! Today’s TBT comes at you not from the brain of. . .well, me. . . but yeah, from someone else. Someone else’s sick mind is responsible for today’s throwback. And I won’t mention any names (Keith), but suffice it to say — this man has a great taste in movies! I had almost forgotten all about these campy Disney originals, until now. So, he suggested this one and, for anyone who has seen this, I’m sure they’ll also wonder how I could possibly go without talking about

Today’s food for thought: Brink!

Rolling brakeless since: August 29, 1998

[TV]

Ahh, Brink! Yes, the movie title with the mysterious exclamation point at the end, the one to this day I still don’t understand. I mean, why so excited? Everytime I write that title I sound more enthusiastic than I really should about a Disney channel original movie, but you know, whatever. #YOLO.

There’s a great many things yours truly does not understand, and this movie title, not to mention how inexplicably awesome the film itself actually was, are two more things I might as well add to the list.

I ain’t gonna fake it, brah. Brink! is a pretty damn cheesy movie, but it features some blasts of summer fun that time and again recall a much simpler, innocent time. The days spent careening down streets and heckling passers-by on the boardwalk can be recalled fondly for every Californian at home catching it on T.V. for the umpteenth time at 4 p.m. right after school. For those playing the long-distance game, who don’t live in California and who aren’t steeped in the rollerblading culture, it perhaps served better as a postcard from Venice Beach.

When a group of enthusiastic young in-liners led by Andy “Brink” Brinker (that’s not an awkward name at all) clash with a rivaling group of “professionally sponsored” skaters, Brink (Erik von Detten) is forced to decide who to skate for when given the opportunity to raise money for his family by joining Team X-Bladz, the über-serious and totally rad side of skating. But does he have it in him to sacrifice his friends and the simple joy of having fun while skating in order to make money? Dedicated Brink-sters tend to view this fairly asinine struggle as Anakin slowly joining the Dark Side. You desperately want him to turn back, to use reason and logic. Possibly, The Force, if necessary, to escape a lifetime of. . . well, selling out.

Of course, deep down Brink knows that “The Force” is just him having an identity crisis. He was once a passionate skater but now finds it necessary to use his talents as a way to financially help out his family. He betrays his bro’s (Brink, c’mon man), and he even endangers the life of one of them during a street race between himself and Gabby (Christina Vidal) when trying to prove who is the better downhill skater. If there really is a Dark Side in Disney’s eyes, it’s the whole selling one’s self out to corporate greed and uniformity. Ironically actual skaters view the world the same way. Unfortunately even the corporate-sponsored ones still have to fight for food, as the sport is not — as one might imagine — a highly-paid profession.

But enough of the practical talk, this is a Disney Channel movie throwback, for crying out loud. Enough with statistical probability of making it successfully in the industry (yes, the sport of rollerblading has garnered corporate sponsorship, despite what skateboarding might have you thinking otherwise), and enough with the damn comparisons to Star Wars. I just lost an entire paragraph to that metaphor. And about to lose another one to an explanation of why that was weird. Whatever.

At the end of the day, if you haven’t experienced the fast-paced, corny-as-corn action of Brink!, you’re basically missing out. And, brah, you have been for quite some time. The child in me who sat far too close to a television set still wants to think it was longer ago than 1998. Then again, that was well over a decade ago now.

Man, it’s gotta be a burden to possess a face that looks like that . . .

Recommendation: I feel like if I need to recommend Brink! to my readers, I’ve already lost the race. You’ve either seen this one or you gave it a wide berth. I’m not really sure how some of my readers would go about even tracking it down out of curiosity now, unless they are comfortable with sifting through hours of mindless drivel on the Disney channel. Although, that might be a worthwhile sacrifice if you find yourself just curious enough.

Rated: NR

Running Time: 99 mins.

Quoted: “Whatever brah, let’s blade.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.bustle.com; Google images

A Most Wanted Man

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Tom

Release: Friday, July 25, 2014 (limited)

[Theater]

As all good things must, even A Most Wanted Man comes to an end.

And it’s going to take everything in my power to remain on the conservative side here, what with a possible capstone performance to mark the end of a career as towering as Philip Seymour Hoffman’s. Trust me when I say experiencing the final moments of this film is no easy task; that is, if you hold any empathy for the troubled man at all. That’s not to say we won’t be seeing him around in other things, of course. He’ll reprise his role for The Mockingjay: Part 1 this November, and he’s also turned up in the lesser-known 2014 drama God’s Pocket.

But in A Most Wanted Man, here’s where we are obliged to bid adieu to that more significant part of a once-in-a-generation performer. The celluloid here acts as a time capsule, in which Hoffman seems permanently encased. Selfish for us to try, sure, but it’s such a great performance there’s no way we can let this be over. Eventually we’ll have to.

In a somewhat befittingly stressful turn as Günter Bachmann, the leader of a secretive intelligence operation based out of Hamburg, Germany, Hoffman becomes involved in the (mis)handling of a young half-Chechen, half-Russian illegal immigrant named Issa Karpov (an incredible Grigoriy Dobrygin) who’s fleeing from torture and persecution in both his home countries. Bachmann’s methods are not attuned to those maintained by his peers, particularly the snaky Dieter Mohr (Rainer Bock) and his office’s roughneck tactics, and Bachmann holds a particular disdain for the Americans given a situation in the recent past. Pale, disheveled and with a cigarette permanently glued to his lips, Günter is the perfect enigma for Hoffman to decipher.

That the film does not become a sideshow to the real-life tragedy involving one of its cast members is almost miraculous. This will be the last of Hoffman’s lead roles, and while proximate his death, his work still remains relatively unaffected. He does, however, look physically exhausted in a number of scenes. But rather than directly confronting us with his sickly appearance, the film uses it for context, making great use of Hoffman’s tired expressions and measured delivery to express an epic character. His physique immediately conjures a lifetime of struggles.

In Anton Corbijn’s film, perspective taints objective reality. We spend our time with this rag-tag group of German intelligence operatives (whose casting includes the likes of Daniel Brühl and Nina Hoss) but does this mean this is the right side of the tracks to be on? Who really ought to be dealing with this suspected terrorist? Is that precisely what Issa is, a terrorist? What could have become an overwhelmingly complex and dense narrative instead is surprisingly simplified without cutting out critical details — the scarring on Issa’s back is very telling of a dark history and helps cement his nightmarish reality.

Highly compelling material adapted from the novel by John le Carré is distributed evenly and effectively across the film’s myriad talented stars. Willem Dafoe steps in as Tommy Brue, the head of a German bank which may contain funds to be inherited by Issa from his father, a man he claims to have raped his mother in front of him when he was much younger, and when Mother was a mere 15 years old. (Again, despite the crowd-pleasing flavor of the thrill, one thing A Most Wanted Man can’t be accused of is glossing over pertinent stuff.) Robin Wright matches her intensity in House of Cards and continues to affirm her spot in the upper echelons of great thespians with a spectacular performance as CIA Agent Martha Sullivan, who comes to Günter’s assistance when he needs it least. Or so he has determined.

A Wanted Man is a fiercely accurate rendering of real-world events unfolding in a period as hectic as the last ten years have been, both in the Middle East and on a global scale. A fictitious account of one man’s journey through bureaucracy in a desperate investigation into what his real identity is — is he terrorist blood or an innocent civilian trying to escape oppression? — here’s a story that at least demands an open mind.

While we revere this strange German’s effectiveness at his duties, it is safe to say we revere the man behind the man more. If all good things have to come to an end, Hoffman’s story has come to a very good ending indeed. He is hands-down the reason to watch this film, and in a masterpiece such as this, that’s relatively high praise.

Recommendation: One of the very best films of the year, not just as a genre film or from a performance-standpoint, A Most Wanted Man is an excellent way to spend $10. For the Philip Seymour Hoffman fans (of which I believe there are at least one or two), for the Robin Wright fans, for fans of excellent adaptations of books (supposedly. . .I would now like to read this book). For anyone wanting relevance to the ongoing ideological struggles amongst the myriad countries ensnared in violent turmoil in the Middle East currently, and between them and a United States government that insists on making everything its business, you are compelled. . .nay, required to watch this film. It is that good.

Rated: R

Running Time: 121 mins.

Quoted: “We find them. When they’re ours, we direct them at bigger targets. It takes a minnow to catch a barracuda, a barracuda to catch a shark.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com

Lucy

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Tom

Release: Friday, July 25, 2014

[Theater]

While it’s true this outing is a step up from last year’s The Family, with director Luc Besson even seeming willing to dip his toes into deeper waters as far as interesting concepts are concerned, we are, unfortunately, still not operating at 100% yet.

It might seem dismissive to rule this summer’s latest sci-fi obsession guilty of association based on who’s directing it (a man whose last effort found Robert DeNiro and Tommy Lee Jones competing to see who could look more disinterested in being involved), but at the same time it’s also clear that there has got to be some kind of three-strike rule in place for at least this reviewer. There’s only so many times one can go to a film expecting the worst, then receiving pretty much just that and then going to do it all over again another time, hoping for something different.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s the definition of insanity.

Even the great Morgan Freeman can be heard stumbling over a few awkward lines of dialogue at some of the worst times possible. An image of humanity rendered without a brain as powerful as the one it’s been given is a compelling one, but this actual idea is realized as much as the concept car you ogle over in magazines and faux advertisements is ready for the general public.

Uhh. . .it isn’t.

One is left at the end credits with the nagging thought that if anyone else had gotten into the driver’s seat of this car, maybe we might have gone to some truly cool places. While it is at times undeniably fun, Lucy fails to engage on a more significant level as it trades out far too much potential in exchange for the quick and easy thrill, a la mainstream Hollywood. In fact there is so much left to be desired at the time of the flaccid conclusion we wonder if there was anything here that didn’t go to waste.

Well, there’s the central character for one. Scarlett Johansson’s casting indeed becomes the film’s saving grace. She instantly affords Besson and his oft intentionally-stilted screenplay a level of gravitas that helps this story gain traction as it plods ever forward, simultaneously with purpose and without any at all. Lucy is a young woman with not much of an identity seen in the film’s open getting wrangled into a drug deal she never wanted to be a part of. Now handcuffed to a briefcase containing who-knows-what, she’s wrestled into a den of some threatening-looking Asians, led by Min-sik Choi’s mean old Mr. Jang. At such time she’s informed she’s now a drug mule for them, and is subsequently sent out to board a plane for somewhere else in the world. Poor girl. Or is she?

Lucy’s intellectual journey begins quiet, innocuously, as she first sets about finding out what has happened to her. After awakening in a hotel room with a bandaged abdomen and being told she’s carrying a pouch of an extremely potent substance, she makes moves quickly to rid herself of the package. The contents of the bag are a synthesized form of the natural chemicals found in a pregnant woman during late stages of her pregnancy. Their power’s asserted to be the necessary boost that helps form bone structure in the yet-to-be-born child. Needless to say, if this drug (labeled CPH-4 in the film) can do that to an infant, what would a quadruple dose do a fully-grown person?

This is going to be, annoyingly, as confronting and as experimental as the material ever feels like becoming. Instead of detailing all of the ways in which someone’s life could be enhanced — and perhaps just as compellingly, how it might be devalued, even destroyed — by the power of being able to access 100% of one’s brain power and an ever-expanding ocean of information, we get surface-level glimpses at what Besson thinks could happen, you know. . .theoretically.

There are, admittedly, a few drool-worthy visual sequences: Lucy physically manipulating radio and electromagnetic waves to suit her needs; her ability to multitask is on a level most Bluetooth-wearing businessmen would be sorely jealous of; and then there’s the traveling through time and space as a means of exploring what we are meant to be doing here on Earth (if anything at all). To reiterate, its all eye candy for the sake of providing action sequences that immediately yank us out of an intellectual discussion and into a pseudo-summer blockbuster.

Lucy is also guilty of devolving into a somewhat plodding affair. It oftentimes holds all of the enthusiasm of a tenured history professor dragging his students through another 8 A.M. lecture. Ironically enough, this is the very character Morgan Freeman has been hired to play. Professor Norman is first seen speaking extremely National Geographic-narratively to an audience of some nondescript understanding about the fact that people only are typically able to use 10% of their brain function. He stands there apologetically, regurgitating a script that begs us to ponder what we might be able to do if we just used all of our brain. The character, despite Freeman’s unyielding watchability, is a complete cardboard cutout of a layman pondering the true depth of the thinking man’s soul. I’m not going to feign pretense here — the movie is too stupid to be taken seriously.

Norman isn’t the problem, it’s Besson’s handling of what could have been an incredibly inspiring premise. For the second time in a row (that I have seen, anyway), Besson has taken a solid concept and fumbled it at the eleventh hour. Lucy, poised to become a modern sci-fi mind-bender, exists now as a crowd-pleasing slice of mainstream Hollywood entertainment, which should be taken as no insult. But it’s a significant step down from the thought-provoking journey into the essence of what it means to be human — something that this excellent performance from Johansson more often than not hints at.

Not a good time to become claustrophobic

Recommendation: Starpower and an interesting premise unite to dupe audiences into watching a very run-of-the-mill action flick featuring some awe-inspiring visuals and a brief period of hectic violence. Lucy is not what is advertised, but unfortunately that was something that might have been foretold by the names of those involved behind the camera. I’d recommend this film on the basis of Johansson but not much else. There are some truly impressive moments but not enough of them carry through to warrant the kind of Roger Ebert two thumbs-up that I was looking to give here.

Rated: R

Running Time: 90 mins.

Quoted: “We never really die.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com

TBT: I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Posted on July 24, 2014 by Tom

I wonder if I should adopt a new rule or something for this little guy, now the longest-running feature I currently have on my page. Today’s selection is a movie my peepers haven’t come across in quite some time. And so now I’m thinking of all the ways these reviews might be more interesting if I choose films I’ve seen before (but some time ago) and then write something on them. See how my memory serves me, and how my gut reaction changes (if it does). While catching back up on films with recent watches certainly helps to put a fresh perspective on things, sometimes those first reactions we have are the ones we always will hold. Unfortunately, I think this method of reviewing will severely limit the number of films that I can talk about, given I’ve only kicked my movie-watching habits up in the last three or four years and my back catalogue isn’t much to talk about. Either way, look for some more of these kinds of reviews from time to time. You probably won’t be able to tell the difference. Then again, perhaps you will. 😀

Today’s food for thought: I Know What You Did Last Summer

Making 16-year-old prom queens slightly uncomfortable since: October 17, 1997

[TV]

A horror film with not much in the way of a brain, I Know What You Did Last Summer managed to skate on a free-wheeling, fun-having charm all its own. Featuring several of the hottest (and I don’t necessarily mean as in ‘successful’) teen actors from the mid-to-late ’90s — I mean come on, this film was afforded Buffy‘s Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love-Hewitt (who was then still up-and-coming), Freddie Prinze Jr., and a bright-eyed young Johnny Galecki.

Seems odd to introduce a horror film review with a cast whose collective star power has for the most part faded over the last decade or so but it occurs to me now that these highly-recognizable faces contributed mightily in helping this otherwise unremarkable slasher thriller achieve cult status. Hey, that was the best it could have possibly ever hoped for, anyway, right? And while our hindsight is still operating at 20-20, I might as well go on record and declare this film hardly instrumental in extending the success of Michelle Gellar’s career; there are two sequels to this film for any fan bored enough to entertain the notion, but these folks won’t find her in either of them.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was her way out of this kind of purgatory. Then The Grudge came along and had other thoughts on the matter.

But in spite of failing to really impress critics of the day or finding legitimate popularity like cornerstone films like The Shining and the like — why do I have this creepy feeling that the $125 million this film made came out of the pockets of swarming debutantes and their jock boyfriends? — there’s always been something about knowing what these kids did that summer that actually makes for a perfectly pleasant viewing. Perfectly pleasant — yes, you read me right.

A group of teens go out to a popular hang-out spot to do that thing all teens do in the summer. . . study. Right. Yes, they go here and study. And when they’re done studying, they return safely in their cars and tuck themselves into bed quietly and cherubic. Except on this night; this night is different. When returning to town and having become somehow intoxicated (teens don’t drink, that’s an urban legend. . .) the teens swerve off the road and strike a pedestrian. After arguing over what to do about the body, they come to the natural conclusion that it should be discarded of in the ocean.

Hey, he had a life, some kids perhaps and a job to go to every day, but he won’t mind taking this one for the team. But the thing they don’t count on, you see, is this uncanny ability for this man — an apparently keen fisherman — to not stay dead. It’s a practiced skill and this fucker has got it. A struggle inevitably ensues, as these things often do whenever attempting to avoid being tried for manslaughter as a teen. And before the Croaker Pageant, no less! This is just the WORST timing ever. . .

If you have sat through this already, then you know the catalyst occurred fairly early and the bulk of IKWYDLS revolved around the teens trying to shake a mostly-unseen attacker who claims to have witnessed the events of their last trip to that private beach. And as they say, paranoia is not paranoia if someone is really out to, well, slash your throat with an ice pick. Predictable kills surely ensued, but what was less expected was how effective the threats were in actually dredging up some kind of fear in us, the spectators to this pretty poorly-written affair.

Former friends turned on each other try in desperation to figure out who this Mr. Letter-Writer Person is; former boyfriends/girlfriends turned exes — damn, the stakes are just so high in this movie. But we never came to this movie for the potential awards, we came for the killing. And that it does have plenty of. Okay, so maybe we came for the Croaker Pageant, too. That also does not disappoint.

Recommendation: If what you seek is pure entertainment, I’m not sure what you’re waiting for with this slightly-grisly slasher featuring a cast you are hard-pressed to find elsewhere. While not necessarily a staple of the 90’s, IKWYDLS is undeniable fun, a true guilty pleasure that tests the credibility of the age-old urban legend formula.

Rated: R

Running Time: 100 mins.

Quoted: “I got run over. Helen gets her hair chopped off, and Julie gets a body in her trunk, and you get a letter? Yeah, that’s balanced.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.horrornews.net; http://www.imdb.com

Genre Grandeur – Under the Skin (2014)

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Tom

Hey man, sharing is caring. So today I share with you another guest review I have featured over on MovieRob’s terrific site. Over there you’ll find so much stuff to read it’s not even funny. We’re talking multiple quality posts a day, so there’s always something new to read over there. My review of Under the Skin joins his July edition of Genre Grandeur. Check it out!

MovieRob

And here’s another review for this month’s Genre Grandeur – Aliens, submitted by Tom of Digital Shortbread.

If you don’t already follow his site, I recommend that you do so he has some great in depth movie reviews, 30 for 30, numerous opinion pieces and his rating system always gets my stomach rumbling.

It’s still not too late to send me your reviews for this month’s genre. You have until the 25th, so send them to aliens@movierob.net as soon as you can so I can schedule them for you.

Now on to Tom’s Review of Under the Skin (2014)

Under the Skin

Number of times seen – 1 (April 29, 2014)

Brief Synopsis – An alien disguised in human form moves across Scotland, luring men she finds on the streets first into her van, and then. . .into an entirely different world.

My take on it…

View original post 356 more words

The Purge: Anarchy

Posted on July 19, 2014 by Tom

Release: Friday, July 18, 2014

[Theater]

The Purge: Anarchy offers you yet another chance to let it all out with a second blood-splattering of twisted social commentary.

Instead of running around blindly inside a house defending ourselves from masked invaders as we had done only last summer with the Sandins, now we band together with several nondescript characters in the streets of downtown Los Angeles. It’s the year 2023 and the sixth annual purge is set to commence. Get your shotguns ready, kiddies.

There was so much lost in the transfer of The Purge from script to screen. This grisly thriller was so ineffective in selling its audiences that a sequel became necessary as if to say, “Oh yeah! Wait. Here’s what we meant.” Though the acting isn’t much of an improvement, getting out of the house has proven to be the healthiest thing for this possible franchise-in-the-making.

One of the great missteps made by DeMonaco and company last year was stunting the growth of some of the admittedly intriguing concepts, about how one man’s choice to kill a fellow human being would invariably differ from the man standing to his left or his right. Or about how class struggles between the very wealthy and the destitute could make the choice to murder a much easier, and possibly even an economical one. What The Purge boiled down to was a luke-warm home invasion procedure, where audiences were relegated to surviving jump scares and a few squirts of blood as forms of entertainment.

The Purge: Anarchy actually stumbles just as much as its predecessor, almost as if it were stabbed in the gut, but the novelty of this evening and the concept manifest themselves in more convincing ways this time around. There’s more to focus on here. More by which to become distracted from the cheesy dialogue and over-acting. Rather than running into dead ends and hallway doors every ten minutes, DeMonaco’s new script presents more characters, more creative kills and more ethical dilemmas to mix up the tension, the violence and the surprises in a much more engaging way that The Purge simply wasn’t able to. Instead of centering around an average family that failed to really gain our sympathy, even as they were being invaded on this horrible night, we now become drawn into a cauldron of desperation and panic via three different walks of life.

We are firstly introduced to a mother-daughter dynamic between a woman who works in a diner, Eva (Carmen Ejogo) and her daughter, Cali (Zoe Soul). Eva’s working hard to earn a raise so she’ll be able to afford her father’s medicine, medicine that’s apparently not having much of an impact on whatever his ailment is. The second perspective comes in the form of a young couple fallen on hard times and actually considering separating soon — Zach Gilford and Kiele Sanchez portray Shane and Liz who are driving to a safe place before the commencement of the purge before they predictably break down in an unsafe part of town. Then, of course, we get the requisite battle-hardened man, a man who knows what real loss feels like. Frank Grillo seems somewhat suited for the job and is Anarchy‘s most interesting character by a long shot.

He’s relatively boring still. And a bad cliché at that. This is to suggest the rest of the ensemble are completely stock characters, and they are. There’s not a single trait among the four others that rings the bell of originality, and oftentimes many of them are completely frustrating. Cali’s infatuation with Sergeant is most vividly irritating, though the dynamic between them is not as bad, ironically, as the one between her and her on-screen mother.

But we’re not here to scrutinize every last performance. To do so in Anarchy would render this review a rant, for at least The Purge had Ethan Hawke. It wasted Ethan Hawke, but it did have him in it. Maybe it ought to be considered a consolation prize being dubbed a waste in these films. Hawke was underused and underwritten in 2013 whereas Grillo has to contend with a thoroughly expressionless and stiff character whose ultimate trajectory is one of complete predictability.

Fortunately, the bloodletting and the overarching narrative that is Anarchy isn’t quite as much. Each group of characters journey through this night in different stages of shock and each have different reactions, which allows for easier access into this world as compared to a snooty family being protected by a modern fortress. Far be it from me to tell the director how to shoot his own work, but this approach to his curious ethical dilemma here is far more interesting and says much more about the human condition than whatever it was that he came up with a year ago.

If you want to remember all the good the purge does, may I recommend you see this film rather than what came before it.

the-purge-2-anarchy-teaser-screenshot-ritual1

“O fuck’s sake, this again?”

Recommendation: Though still engorged with its share of narrative flaws, character woes, and thematic tenuity, The Purge: Anarchy is, at the end of the day, a mark of maturity. There are expansions in almost every direction and the most rewarding one is the physical: the setting helps to actually crank up the tension, whereas the home setting in the previous did everything it could to water down what could have been an additionally chilling indictment of a culture increasingly infatuated with violence as a means of self-expression. And I honestly would give the rare recommendation of seeing the second film before the first.

Rated: R

Running Time: 103 mins.

Quoted: “People like us don’t survive tonight!”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com

Third Person

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Tom

Release: Friday, June 20, 2014 (limited)

[Theater]

Putting it mildly, Third Person is a rather luke-warm rumination on romance whose title feels fairly appropriate considering how much the content likes to emotionally strand the viewer for over two painfully long hours. In fact the lethargic pace is such that it’s easy to get the impression the director really doesn’t care whether you’re occupying a seat or not.

Clearly working within a certain blueprint, Paul Haggis at best treads water with his latest entry, a trio of love stories taking place simultaneously in Paris, Rome and New York. Whereas ten years prior he was comfortable allowing his cameras to settle on moments of pure and unnerving racial tension in his Best Picture-winning Crash, here his commitment to painting reality like it is just doesn’t feel as inspired. The structural similarity also suggests possible creative burn-out on Haggis’ part, though the recycled formula is less of an issue as the quality of this final product.

What dooms Third Person more than anything is one doozy of a predictable denouement that can be all but seen coming from the film’s opening title sequence. It’s the kind of unimaginative revelation that sends up red flags as to whether Haggis even bothered. It is also the second suggestion that inspires the thought that this was a film made with no real discernible audience in mind. Perhaps its just catering to the audience with the least discernible tastes in romanticism.

Upon this chessboard of troubled relationships Haggis has placed several bland characters, ones slightly improved by the big names portraying them.

Liam Neeson is once again a hardened, scruffy tough man. . .well, a writer. . .named Michael, and Olivia Wilde is Anna, a woman with a dark history. They’re introduced to us in a rather surreptitious manner; indifferent camera angles lingering on a young, beautiful woman and her significantly older, more moody male counterpart passive-aggressively suggests something ain’t quite right with the girl.

The second pairing finds James Franco playing a successful artist, apparently named Rick (at the very least, we learn character names aren’t worth much in this universe), and who is having trouble with an ex of his who had attempted to hurt their son. Spotlight on a Mila Kunis who might not have ever achieved this level of irritating. Not even as Meg. Shut up, Meg.

The third relationship takes place in Rome and blossoms between Adrien Brody’s Scott and a mysterious Romanian woman named Monika (Moran Atias). The two bump into one another at a dive bar, wherein Scott, a clothing designer harboring a disdain for Italian fashion, learns that Monika is on the trail to meet up with her long-missing daughter who was kidnapped by a Russian gangster. Awkwardly ingratiating himself in the woman’s personal affairs from the get-go, this thread might be the most woefully developed and conceived of the three as Brody does his best to force something out of almost literally nothing. Ice-breaker conversation at the bar comes close to inducing an early nap time.

Whereas the other stories experience less boredom, the intertwining scenes that flip between Michael and Anna’s affair versus Rick and Julia (Kunis)’ troubled history instead just cause a headache and a good bit of confusion. One might be able to admire Haggis’ ability to thread the needle in certain spots — his delivery of certain heartbreaking pieces of information do indeed almost break the heart they’re so painful and twisted in their morality — but these brief spurts of brightness are perhaps the only compliments you can pay Third Person — noteworthy or otherwise. More often than not the multiple tiers of varied trust issues add up to nothing more than a rambling, incoherent mess. A more detailed review of it would start to feel much the same.

If 2004 was the Crash, well, we should have been prepared for the burn.

Recommendation: There’s not a whole lot that Third Person presents compellingly. Love stories trend much the same way as the millions that have come before, yet the involvement of three stories punches up the intrigue factor just a little. But if I can recommend this film on a performance-basis, I see no reason to outright say ‘No’ to this. The actors do fine work. But the script and Haggis most certainly do not. May I recommend the rental. . .and then the very frequent scene-skipping to get to the good parts. Which basically involve Olivia Wilde. Okay, okay — and Liam Neeson.

Rated: R

Running Time: 137 mins.

Quoted: “I need you to look at what you did, I need you to face what you can’t face, and I need you to tell me the truth.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com

Begin Again

Posted on July 11, 2014 by Tom

Release: Friday, June 27, 2014 (limited)

[Theater]

A disgraced record label executive has a chance run-in with a down-on-her-luck musician at a bar and the two forge a friendship that inspires more than great music — it reinvigorates one another’s thirst for life.

The Hulk takes a chill pill as Mark Ruffalo fits himself back into a decidedly more human outfit in John Carney’s musical romantic-comedy Begin Again. Instead of wreaking havoc on everything around him in a physical manner, Dan’s going about the same by butting heads with top execs at the label he started up years ago. His idealistic approach to talent management and discovery is viewed as a product of a bygone era in this company and it puts him at odds with the future of the label. His life quickly unravels.

The film’s secondary focus is Keira Knightley’s emotionally fragile yet three-dimensional Gretta, a guitarist from England whose longtime boyfriend is finding massive popularity in America, particularly in Los Angeles. Begin Again spends much of its second act detailing the spiraling downward of this at-once mesmeric and repulsively stagnant relationship between two musicians struggling to find themselves. Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine juggles being Knightley’s heart throb and heart ache impressively as Dave, a man whose artistic integrity as well as devotion to Gretta slowly disintegrates as his star brightens.

Gretta, on the other hand, refuses to bend in the wind. Her firm grasp on her own creative control rings more authentic than manipulative; the choice more a microcosm of an entire population of aspiring artists or even successful ones who have remained true to their roots. So it’s no surprise when she becomes embroiled in drunken conversation with a man who claims to be a formerly successful record producer (yeah, this Dan guy) that we can almost feel it as the stranger smacks straight into the brick wall that is Gretta’s defense mechanism in the face of this awkward business proposition. She claims she is no performer; rather, she creates music at will.

Despite her biting tone, her discomfort seems to stem less from Dan’s crash-landing in her life as it does from being in the present moment. Her very existence here in this spot is the problem. Owed mostly to the ingenuity of the way Carney has constructed this tale, her backstory is explained and introduced in a wholly satisfying way, one that provides the bar scene a greater depth that’s often missing in these ‘when boy-meets-girl’ encounters.

Along with a pair of wonderful lead performances (Ruffalo and Knightley share the kind of chemistry that’s seemingly only developed over many a season of working together) Begin Again also distinguishes itself by not settling for the typical rom-com story arc. It certainly follows structure, but whereas most tend to fail as far as providing surprises is concerned, this little slice of life as a musician in the big city has some wiggle room in terms of deviating from the norm. An unconventional dynamic between the musician and record producer is largely responsible for this. Sidelined for much of the running time is Dan’s estranged daughter, Violet (Hailee Steinfeld) and wife Miriam (Catherine Keener) who work their way onto the fringe as Dan attempts to pull his life back together.

Indeed, Dan and Gretta may be down but not down for the count. Inspired by the sound Gretta was able to produce with an acoustic guitar and just her voice — yes, that bit from the previews is every bit as charming in the film, especially since it’s prolonged — Dan starts coming up with ideas about what to do next with his career. Will the chance run-in with this talent be enough to turn things around in his life or has he back-peddled too far?

The exploration of the soul through the prism of music is not particularly inventive, but when done right it is rewarding. Doubly so when the music and the story against which its set as a backdrop are both high in quality. Now and again Begin Again contains a few music video-esque sequences (look to the songs ‘Coming Up Roses’ and ‘Tell Me if You Wanna Go Home’) that seem to heighten both the visual and audio senses. It’s a unique sensory experience that seems to verify Carney’s talents as a genre director. Many will say his 2006 production Once is the superior film to this, considering the thematic and tonal similarities each share. It may be a lesser film but there is no denying the feel-good vibes. These are the kinds of films we can’t really tire of.

At least, not quite as quickly.

Recommendation: Featuring a plethora of good songs and talented performers to back up these songs, Begin Again offers an interesting cinematic experience that succeeds in pleasing genre fans, Ruffalo fans, Knightley fans and fans of rich acoustic melodies. Though not always the most original tale, Carney’s drama often overcomes through sheer likability.

Rated: R

Running Time: 101 mins.

Quoted: “I’m not a performer, I just write songs from time to time.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com

TBT: Twister (1996)

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Tom

So today the stars have aligned, and it being the tenth of the month both TBT and The Franco Files have merged on the same day! Given the performance I decided to highlight with July’s installment of TFF, and the fact it involves a pretty ridiculous tornado, I started thinking about movies featuring similarly whacky weather. Pretty hard to find the film that’s more consistently entertaining and taxing on the old bag of popcorn than this particularly thrilling rollicking through the midwestern plains in Jan DeBont’s adaptation of a screenplay penned by best-selling author Michael Crichton.

Today’s food for thought: Twister.

Rockin’ Wakita since: May 10, 1996

[Theater]

I can’t really justify my great love for this special-effects driven spectacular, or why I cherish it over other similar disaster action films. Actually, yes I can. I can back-up my love for Twister: it’s supremely fun, at times even scary. . .even to this day. You can’t tell me you don’t go at least a little white-knuckle during the destruction of the drive-in theater. So, really, it’s the whole having to explain why this particular, generic story does it for me more than others. There’s a legion of other similar films that have tried to mimic the scale of Jan de Bont’s adventure, and there are about ten times as many films that fall under the umbrella of cheesy disaster films — most of which are relegated to the Sci-Fy channel.

So, what was it?

Was it the air-born cow. . .or cows, plural? (How many of those fuckers were there flying around?) Or was it the rescuing of Aunt Meg (Lois Smith) after the same brute force that tore down the drive-in theater absolutely hammered the small town of Wakita? Might it have been a delightful turn from Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the free-spirited Dusty that piqued my curiosity so? The general (albeit slightly stereotyped) enthusiasm shared amongst the entire storm chase team — the likes of which featured a couple on the cusp of divorce? Or could it have been the idea that this pair of unlikelies — Bill (Bill Paxton) and Jo (Helen Hunt) — managed to fend off their emotional storm enough to weather a summer of historically high tornadic activity in the midwest?

Wait. . .aren’t people supposed to be the ones doing the chasing?

Umm. . . how about all of the above? Toss some spices into the pot in the form of a killer rock-and-roll soundtrack, and what you have simmering on the cooker is a highly memorable action-packed summer film that simultaneously satiates the meteorology dork in me and satisfies my sweet tooth for visual spectacle (these renderings were pretty impressive for the time, you have to admit). Never mind the respect for science, as Crichton’s screenplay turns the wind phenomenon commonly known as a tornado (or ‘nader, depending on where you hail from. . .and yes, that was also a terrible pun) into a character in itself, presenting it as an increasingly intimidating force of nature the longer the movie endures.

Sure, Twister can’t help playing out on occasion like an amusement park ride, its narrative ultimately boiling down to a series of stops at various locations, all of which become sites of near-catastrophic failure as the team have multiple close encounters with some seriously high-speed winds. In the end, I’m not sure what other choices de Bont had in steering the audience through this chaotic summer period, one in which a fearless group of scientists competed with others to help provide safer precautions for people living directly in harm’s way. While the presence of so many tornados in such a short time span tended to strain credulity, the damage they subsequently caused hardly did. Neither did the harsh reality that served as the team’s motivation. Aunt Meg had a close call, but so many others, like Jo’s family, hadn’t been so lucky.

In the end, there’s very little to defend about this film as it pertains to memorable cinematic achievement. You know, excluding those eye-popping visuals. Apart from Hoffman’s ingratiating Dusty, characters don’t really leave lasting impressions; they weren’t designed to. But the film as a whole succeeded immensely, designed as a simple popcorn package meant to entertain and enthrall.

Jack Nicholson about to be. . .blown away. . .by this film’s special effects.

Recommendation: Suckers for early films coated in special effects and well-versed in action set-pieces have this film in their collection, no doubt. It’s a must-have for anyone who’s fan enough to take the tour at Universal Studios of the reconstructed set of the drive-in. (Hint-hint, I took the tour at Universal Studios. . . 🙂 ) It’s also a classic for anyone seeking a nature-related, thrilling adventure from the ’90s.

Rated: PG-13

Running Time: 113 mins.

TBTrivia: As anyone knows, the tornadoes in this film generate quite the racket. To help create the cacophonous noise associated with these brutal winds, the filmmakers chose to incorporate a slowed-down audio recording of a camel moaning. Yes, that’s right. A camel moaning.

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.drafthouse.com; http://www.imdb.com

The Franco Files – #6

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Tom

Welcome to July, and the sixth edition of The Franco Files! No good and thorough evaluation of an actor’s career would really be complete without taking a turn to negative town once in a while. In order to appreciate the good, you must experience the. . .well, the shit, to go all Charles Barkley on ya’ll. There’s almost no getting around the stinkiness of today’s performance, and, not to air Franco’s dirty laundry or anything, but this is certainly not his finest hour and it’s good to get this over with right now. Right? Or will you see this is as the great tainted TFF. . .a.k.a. TTFF???

Eh, it’s not a real big deal, I suppose. When I stop to consider the damage caused by this über-unnecessary 2013 re-boot of The Wizard of Oz in which the usually-reliable Franco inexplicably elected to take part, I feel just a little bit better. One negative TFF surely won’t taint this feature forever. . . will it? And compare that to the pain of this CGI-loaded, cheese-stuffed (sounds like I’m talking about pizza) experience that feels something akin to the teeth-kicking-down-throat that Ryan Gosling “vaguely threatened” in Drive. I kind of know what that feels like. . .along with anyone else who got to see this and didn’t really like what they were handed!

Well, no. That’s all rather melodramatic. This movie’s pretty bad, but I think I can still defend Franco. . . . within reason. It is not his greatest performance by a mile but it is also not entirely entirely ENTIRELY his fault. This shall be a tricky little evaluation, though. No two ways of getting around the fact that objectivity gets much harder when things tend to. . . well, suck. (Man, I’ve really been watching a lot of Inside the NBA lately, haven’t I . . . )

Francophile #6: Oscar Diggs/Oz, Oz, the Great and Powerful

Role Type: Lead

Genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy

Character Profile: Oscar is part of a small-time traveling circus racket performing magic. He’s rather dissatisfied with what his life is, yet has no real motivation to better himself. Franco imbues this character with the requisite smugness that goes along with being able to pull off what he considers ‘simple acts of magic,’ often using the stunts to attract women, although he comes off perhaps too sleazy. When he does this to the wrong woman, he’s chased down by the circus strong man, forcing Oscar to escape in a hot air balloon that gets caught up in a gigantic storm, whisking Oscar away to seemingly an entirely new world. Oscar is soon discovered by a beautiful woman who incorrectly assumes him to be a great and powerful wizard, a vision prophesied to come save the people of Oz, the strange land his journey has taken him to. What will he do to prove who he really is inside?

If you lose Franco, the film loses: one really bad performance out of a slew of bad performances. Ouch. . . this really pains me to say this. We’ve come to the inevitable negative review, boys and girls. And this stings, because there is no getting around the fact that Franco’s performance is a stinker in this awfully wooden, sleazy lead role in which he has few redeeming qualities but until the very end, at which point they are generally bestowed upon him in the most contrived of ways possible. He’s not entirely to blame, given the script isn’t worth a penny. But there is something inside me that thinks that perhaps Oz, the Great and Powerful might have benefitted from another actor in this role, one who might have been able to make the schlockiness of the character actually work for them. Sorry James, but the more I think about this outing, the more I want to toss this one down the garbage chute.

Out of Character: “I can’t say that my attraction to [the film] was identifying with any of the characters as much as it was being transported to a fantastical world. If I look back on the kinds of books and movies that I was interested in when I was younger, I’d say that the common denominator was this feeling of being transported to a fantastical land.”

Rate the Performance (relative to his other work):

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.imdb.com

Thomas J

My Journey Through Film

Monthly Archives: July 2014

TBT: Brink! (1998)

A Most Wanted Man

Lucy

TBT: I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

Genre Grandeur – Under the Skin (2014)

The Purge: Anarchy

Third Person

Begin Again

TBT: Twister (1996)

The Franco Files – #6