ANTICIPATION: FALL 2012

THE MASTER

Filmed in 70mm! Holy crap! P.T. Anderson would be the man to utilize his budget to shoot a movie that way when he knows the days of film are numbered! I expect great weird things from such a great filmmaker of tonal masterpieces. Can't wait!

DREDD 3D

I don't know what it means to get Judge Dredd right except to never reveal his face. Judging by the trailer; Good cast, killer effects, and highly stylized. It may even make good 3D. We'll see.

HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET

Jennifer Lawrence continues to be hot in this formulaic looking thriller. Maybe it will be more than dumb-fun.

LOOPER

Joseph Gordon-Levitt continues to pick unique-concept thrillers. In this case he is returning to collaborate with writer/director Rian Johnson who directed him in the excellent Brick. On top of that, Gordon-Levitt is playing young Bruce Willis opposite actual Bruce Willis. Why? It's a time travel story with consultation from Shane Carruth (Primer). Coooooooool.

TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE

Maybe they should have called it Trouble With The Empty Chair. Clint Eastwood stars in a film directed by his long-time assistant director, Robert Lorenz. He plays a baseball scout working with his daughter played by Amy Adams. There's a good supporting cast too. This looks insanely safe.

FRANKENWEENIE 

Tim Burton does a remake of one of his earliest films. I saw it when I was a kid. I really liked it. It was very short and a wonderful spoof of the fifties horror genre. I can't believe he's getting away with a black and white movie in today's day and age, and a family movie at that! This looks pretty fun. I have a bit of faith this will be one of Burton's good movies but I wouldn't be surprised if it fails in theaters. Disney has a talent for making their good movies fail.

THE PAPERBOY

This looks weird. I want to see it. I'm also really curious what Lee Daniels would make after his brutally amazing film, Precious.

BUTTER

"Hello. My name is butter. I'll be your comedy for tonight. Please laugh here... here... and... here. Thank you very much." It looks like it has potential but it also looks like it goes for cheap mid-western mockery, which has been done to death. Still the films aesthetic obsession with art molded from butter, a great cast, and the assault on suburbia by the counter-culture with butter in between may lead me to give this one a chance. 

 

ARGO
Ben Affleck goes for round three in his successful directorial career with a strange true story to tell about a covert operation to rescue US citizens in Iran during the revolution in 1979. How does Bryan Cranston have time for so many movies when he's busy cooking meth?

KILLING THEM SOFTLY
A crime-drama from Andrew Dominik, director of Chopper and The Asassination of Jesse James... Starring Brad Pitt at an enforcer and a lot of other cool people.

CLOUD ATLAS

The return of the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer in one movie... that looks a little too ambitious for it's own good. Think Tree of Life and The Fountain hosting an orgy. Wow. 

FUN SIZE
So, this looks like a return to that all-too-dependable all-in-one-night comedy formula that made many eighties movies classics and others forgettable. Cute girls, Halloween, what's not to like? Looks a little raunchy for Nickelodeon.  

WRECK-IT RALPH

The story looks pretty run-of-the-mill for a modern animated family film, but the concept is ambitious! This looks to be for the video-game world what Who Framed Roger Rabbit was for the cartoon world. Plus, I love John C. Reilly.

THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS

Jesus Crza my nza! The RZA made a movie. That's crza. Insane cast too! With the help of Eli Roth this could be awesome or a complete embarrassment. It looks like a dream project for the Wu Tang Clan mastermind.   

FLIGHT

The motion-capture animation of Tom Hanks playing Denzel Washington is so life-like. Great job Mr. Zemekis! It almost looks like you shot a real live action movie. Ha! Like you'd ever do that again.

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE

This oddball Sean Penn performance was made forever ago and I guess they're just getting around to an official US release.

SKYFALL

Bond movies are mostly the same in concept, which is why their quality is really a question of style. For film-fans, style really means who is playing James Bond and who is directing. Well, I can say without shame, that Daniel Craig is my favorite Bond ever. Now we have Sam Mendes directing, who sounds like the perfect man for a 007 flick. He thinks in terms of great cinematic spectacle and having directed Craig before in the gorgeous Road to Perdition, we may have a beautiful Bond movie to look forward to. It also has a very high-quality ensemble cast including Javier Bardem as the villain! It has to be better than Quantum of Solace.

LINCOLN

I'm a little bummed that Liam Neeson, the giant, isn't playing Abraham Lincoln as planned, but when did Daniel Day-Lewis ever let anyone down? I see every Spielberg film. Even a bad Spielberg film has value that an average good movie lacks.

ANNA KARENINA 

I love Joe Wright. His films are rich in a way that resembles the work of Kubrick whether they are a costume or contemporary drama. Collaborating his visuals with Dario Marianelli, one of today's best film composers, the result is always something tonally unforgettable. I've never read Tolstoy or any Russian literature for that matter but I'll be interested to see what fans think of this film. I love Keira Knightley too.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

David O'Russell does a dark comic drama about an ex-teacher who returns from a mental institution to fix his life. It has Bradley Cooper in the lead, an ensemble of great actors and a re-appearance of Chris Tucker. Russell has been hit and miss with me, but he really came through with The Fighter a couple years ago. Let's hope he's got another good one here.

LIFE OF PI

The movie version of a book I'd been told could never be a movie. Leave it to Ang Lee to be so ambitious. Let's hope it's not the same kind of ambition that resulted in Hulk. 

HYDE PARK ON THE HUDSON

Bill Murray as FDR having an affair during the visit from the King and Queen of England. Looks like someone wants another Oscar nomination. This looks like Gosford Park/Downton Abbey-like dramedy material.

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

Last time I talked about this movie, it was part one of a two-part adaptation. Now it's been expanded into a trilogy. I'm really looking forward to this. I want to see a movie in 48fps and see if it works for this movie or not. Regardless, it will be released widely in standard 24fps. Yes, we've seen enough of this old trailer. Peter! Put out a new trailer already! This should be a fun trip back to Middle-Earth. 

LES MISERABLES

Fans of the stage musical should be confident that the film-version is in competent hands with Tom Hooper (The Kings Speech) directing a cast of talented people. Hathaway and Jackman sure as hell can sing as well as they can act. I've never seen the show. I guess this will be my first experience related to it.

 

 

  

Premium Rush

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a New York City Bicycle Courier threatened and antagonized by Michael Shannon in David Koepp's exciting new thriller, Premium Rush

***1/2 out of ****

Not since Kevin Bacon zoomed the streets to funky beats in Quicksilver, has there been such onscreen exhilaration devoted to the profession of bicycle couriers. Well, that doesn't say very much but I had to mention Quicksilver. At the end of a summer of disappointing action flicks featuring high-powered machinery, Premium Rush delivers fun action on a bike. Hell-yeah!

Roger Ebert says that it is not likely you will enjoy a movie that represents your profession. If you're a doctor, you'll be hard to please when watching a medical-themed movie. So I wonder how bike couriers will feel about a movie that captures the already exiting details of their work-life and amps it up with a thriller plot.

With this film, Brick, Inception, and the upcoming Looper, Joseph Gordon-Levitt seems to have a fondness for unique-concept thrillers on his resume as well as physically demanding roles. Here he competently portrays a bike messenger in Manhattan who finds himself stocked and harassed by a mean guy played with expected creepiness by Michael Shannon (Agent Van Alden on Boardwalk Empire among other sinister roles) who is relentless in obtaining a delivery item. What follows are awesome chase sequences demonstrating every way an angry man behind the wheel is no match for an experienced cyclist in a metro environment.

Aside from great cinematography and stunts, this movie makes really cool stylistic choices. At times, Gordon-Levitt’s character is going at top speed and comes upon an obstacle where he envisions the possible outcomes for every turn he could make to avert disaster. Using the break isn’t an option. He doesn’t have one. Some of the imagined accidents are hilarious! We get to see maps of the smartphone-era to demonstrate the navigational reference needed to keep up with our characters positions as they zig-zag though the condensed New York environment. The film also plays with time in a familiar but effective way, providing us with back-story segments on the film’s characters when it is necessary.

Here's a review from The AV Club.

The rest of the cast works well with Wolé Parks; a competitive messenger, Aasif Mandvi; the dispatcher, Jamie Chung; the woman in trouble, and Dania Ramirez; a badass messenger chick and love interest.

From my experience of hanging out with bicycle couriers, this movie is so damn satisfying as it emphasizes the romantic nature of the profession. I always thought what these people do would lend itself to cinema in a big way, especially now that advances in cinematography make shooting on a bicycle much easier. It’s really great to see that come to fruition here.

The film is co-written and directed by David Koepp who writes for the enjoyment of the ride but ends his stories, as though there had never been a definite destination in his mind. As a result his endings range between disappointing (The Lost World: Jurassic Park) to acceptable (Stir of Echoes). Thank goodness Premium Rush is the latter of those two; last-minute plot conveniences, not much of an impact, but it didn't taint the fun time I had watching it. Tonally the movie still manages to have an arc as our hero narrates his life-affirming devotion to a job/lifestyle the beginning and end.

Premium Rush isn't profound or entirely believable but it is the kind of creative energetic sensationalism I'd been craving all summer. The bicycle-chase movie is a sub-genre that has taken too long to make a comeback. To me, it has the same value as martial-arts flicks. As for bike couriers everywhere, I think they will be happy to be getting a little glory on the big screen, even if they may find it silly at times. For everyone else, this is totally worth your time.  

Note: This movie is facing a lawsuit for copyright infringement due to similarities to a writer's novel and screenplay about roller-blade couriers by day, computer hackers by night. Thank god that movie was never made.

Check out Bob Mondello's review on All Things Considered

The Intouchables

Omar Sy and François Cluzet in The Intouchables

*** out of ****

If you're one of those American movie-goers who likes feel-good unchallenging movies but won't give foreign films a chance, it's time to paralyze yourself and take care from the jovial antics of Omar Sy in The Intouchables. This is as crowd-pleasing a film as anyone could ask for, even for American cinematic standards. I'll never see The Bucket List because I feel like I just saw the french version. Being physically challenged or doomed in some way can still be fun when you're rich. This movie is manipulative and easy in it's convenient resolutions but I won't deny I had a good time watching it.

It follows a billionaire paraplegic played by François Cluzet, as he recruits a young man from the ghetto to be his caregiver because he wants to be cared for without pity and thinks the unhinged boisterous nature of the man is what he needs.   

It's a fun-loving movie of human kindness that I am sure is a great embellishment from it's true story source. It has cool music selections from Shubert to Earth Wind and Fire to Terry Callier. Like most commercial French films, the imagery is rich and viabrant with the well-lit interiors of the mansion and nighttime Parisian streets. The winning aspect of this film, is that it is successful through the effective acting of it's performers who make the trite subject matter entertaining.

I said that this is a feel good movie somewhere in this review, so for those who have an aversion to that term, you've been warned. This movie is exactly what you think it is. Speaking for myself, I can enjoy these movies once in a while even when my better senses kick in later and I realize I learned almost nothing from the experience of watching a movie that claimed to be life-affirming.

Check out Ebert's Review.

The Bourne Legacy

Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz in the Bourneless The Bourne Legacy

*** out of ***

The Bourne Legacy is a bad idea treated very well. It has a great cast, a talented writer/director with ties to the original trilogy, cinematography by Robert Elswit, and is what I call a semiquel... or would it be called a parallelquel?... It's a movie that takes place during the same time as it's predecessor. Movies of this kind are hardy existent. There's Kieslowski's Three Colors Trilogy, which hardly applies. There's also Back to the Future Part II where Marty and Doc go back to the fifties all over again during the last act of the film and must avoid running into their-selves from the previous movie. I can't believe this hasn't been done more. Well, The Bourne Legacy only earns it's title by a stretch of reason and is really it's own adventure. Like the other three it's very entertaining and well-directed. Remarkably, in one scene there was a predictable setup for a surprise action scene, that did such a good job at setting me at ease, that at one point I thought it wasn't coming at all... And then it did... and it came down hard.

In general, you get a story about an agent named Aaron Cross played with the great physicality and emotional detachment Jeremy Renner can convey. His training and experiences tell us more about the background of Jason Bourne who must have undergone the same things before losing his memory. Like Bourne, he's on the run from the organization that created him, except he's not an amnesiac, so it opens the world a bit more. The role of the required female tag-along in this film is very well filled by Rachel Weisz and has more purpose than being an audience surrogate as she is an expert who Cross must rely on to survive. 

The movie moves at a great pace and by the end of it's two-hour and fifteen-minute runtime, I still felt like like I was cheated out of a final act by a chase scene that went on too long. Like certain other movies from franchises with abrupt endings, I felt like there was a promise that they'll be back and maybe even better. I also see this movie as a test that had to be passed to get Matt Damon back in the game through the creation of a character he's clearly supposed to partner-up with. Bourne and Cross? Crossing Bourne? Bourne's Crossing?

Margaret (Extended Cut)

Anna Paquin as Lisa in Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret

**** out of ****

What a difference it is, when adding footage to an already long movie makes it flow at a pace that is so much more natural, that I didn't feel it's time. I still maintain that Kenneth Lonergan's project would have found the appropriate venue through HBO or IFC as a miniseries and not as a theatrical feature. Then again, this movie was shot in 2006, when ambitious experimental dramas still had a place in the cinemas. Today, the avant-garde seeks refuge on subscription television and the internet.  

Watching the longer version of Margaret, I am definitely seeing a superior version of the film. All the key scenes that made the original cut, seem more meaningful with extra time between them. I have trouble believing the inept editing of the theatrical cut which left behind traces of deleted subplots when condensing the film. I thought of that version as a messy and unfocused film with quality scenes -kind of like The Adventures of Sebastian Cole.

The three-hour version of this film is hypnotic at times. The sound editing is odd and experimental, especially in scenes where Lonergan allows the noisy New York environment and the conversations of others to drown out the main dialogue which reminded me quite often, of Paul Thomas Anderson films. Another thing this version does, is give you the sense of this girl's everyday life which seems like the way the story was supposed to be told.

What's funny here, is my surprise that the movie is improved by length, when the theatrical version made me think it only needed to be shorter. 

Listen to David Edelstein's review.

Margaret (US Theatrical Cut)

Anna Paquin is Lisa in Kenneth Lonergan's long-awaited film, Margaret

*** out of ****

Margaret is an overly-long episodic viewing experience where I question if there is a perfect ninety-minute movie buried in it's one-hundred-and-fifty-minute running time, or would it have worked better, stretched-out as a television miniseries? I'm tempted to think the latter. Kenneth Lonergan has made a film with no bad scenes, yet it never seems to take shape as a whole.

Anna Paquin plays Lisa, a smart teenage New Yorker who is discovering her sexuality, dealing with her divorced family, and struggling through school -all while testing boundaries everywhere she goes. When she distracts a bus driver one day (played by Mark Ruffalo), the bus runs a red light, hitting a pedestrian (Allison Janney). The resulting scene is devastating and Lisa doesn't know what to do except to comfort the woman as she dies in the street. Ashamed of her action that contributed to the accident, she lies to the police in her statement as a witness, saying that the light was green, to protect the driver from getting his life destroyed through taking responsibility. The rest of the film follows Lisa's experiences as she becomes more aggressive and difficult to those close to her, not knowing how to cope with the impact that such horror can cause a young mind.

The film is filled with well-played supporting characters (some distractingly too-famous for the simple role) and subplots that are all interesting but make it feel like it's getting over-stuffed with too many relationships to be able to find focus within the narrative of a movie.

The AV Club's review really hits the nail on the head.

Lonergan made a great impression with his 2000 sleeper-hit You Can Count On Me, which has a title that leaves no impression, but is a great film and a touching drama with flawless writing and acting. He's one of those talents who seems too strong to only have a couple films to his career that he can claim ownership of. In this film, he continues to create conversations that feel so completely related to the drama of real life where characters can engage each other emotionally but with the amount of intelligence it takes to make a good conversation last in a beautiful way. Sometimes, the emotion takes over and the scene abruptly cuts to a calm exchange with another character some great time later. 

I feel like I am leaving so much out when I write about such a big movie, and that's my problem with it. This movie, or at least this version of it, has too many profound things to think about and it needs structure.

Listen to an interview with Lonergan on Fresh Air. 

Margaret was shot in 2006, wound up in legal problems regarding the edit of the film, was shelved, found an extremely limited release last year and is just now being released to the masses on blu-ray. There is also an "Extended Cut" dvd available as an extra with the blu-ray, which David Edelstein stresses in his review, is the far superior version. I am curious if it is. This movie's content is so valuable that I will give it another chance in any form. I'll be back to talk more about Margaret.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Five-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis is the star of Beasts of the Southern Wild, one of many residents of the Louisiana bayou country cast in this film.

***1/2 out of ****

Beasts of the Southern Wild looked like a film with a foreboding atmosphere in it's trailer and it is. Maybe more than I thought it would be. It's still not nearly as despairing as The Road. This film is a pre-apocalyptic drama that is very inspired by the devastation of Katrina so it feels real and relevant. It's about a community of people who live in the flooded territory past the levies in the bayou area. Due to climate change, the water has been rising more and more over the years. It is all told from a small child's perspective (who has tremendous screen presence) as she survives with her ill father.

I was, at times, reminded of Terry Gilliam's film Tideland for it's disturbing content from the point of view of a young innocent who sees beauty in an environment of desolation. After all, she has nothing to compare it with. It also calls back to Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven for the beautifully naive and sometimes awkward narration of a child. A cheap way to describe it, would be to say that it's Gummo meets Waterworld.

Check out Roger Ebert's review.

This film is unapologetically visceral in it's depiction of American poverty and it is daring you to celebrate with it's survivors, most of whom proudly embrace their independence (in a drunken stupor) from the sterility of the modern civilization that threatens to put them all in shelters. It's as if they are beasts who know that their habitat is threatened but don't want to be caged.

I could have done without the high level of handheld shaky-cam cinematography in this movie. Your average shot has enough chaotic content for the camera to stay still, I think this is an indie-film that could have benefited from steady tracking shots. It's still directed in a way that makes great use of it's inexperienced cast and real environment. This was also an ideal project to shoot on 16mm film, a format that's just as endangered as the film's characters.

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a little vague with it's symbolism of giant prehistoric warthogs but like the real souls and uncomfortable situations this movie showcases, it is unforgettable. This is a film that leaves a very strong impression.

Here is an interview with the film's director, Ben Zeitlin, on All Things Considered.

Total Recall (2012)

Colin Farrell doesn't get his ass to Mars in the remake of Total Recall

**1/2 out of ****

When I first found out they were making a new version of Total Recall with the PG-13 rating, I was like 'How are you ever going to show the prostitute with three boobs? It won't be allowed. This is going to suck!' But then it turned out that it's okay to show bare breasts in a PG-13 movie as long as they're prosthetic. So I got my three boobs and that makes it a good movie.

Not really. One of the worst things going for this needless remake of a bad-taste masterpiece, is the references to the original. The hooker with the three breasts didn't belong in this version of Total Recall! Like a lot of reboots and remakes of recent years, most movie-goers won't get the references to the original and everyone who does will more likely groan than chuckle. Okay, one reference in this movie made me chuckle, but it still removed me from the story and what was going on at that moment.

What's good about this movie? Well... actually, it has quite a bit going for it. To start off, you'd have to be a pretty bad filmmaker to screw up a plot this good. Just like the original, it draws inspiration from a short science-fiction story by Philip K. Dick set in the future with a man who goes to a clinic for a fake memory implant and doesn't know if the experiences that follow are real or not. And just like the original, it's a state-of-the-art special effects-driven action movie with the same characters, mostly of the same names, but the setting is different and the film's attitude is much more sincere. This had my eyes glued to the screen because even though it was following the passage of a story I knew, I wanted to see how it was executed this time around and for the first half, this movie was pretty cool to watch.

Then it took a nose-dive into the earth's core with an action finale that could have been predicted at the mid-way point when new plot material started making it's way in and eventually lead to sci-fi action at it's most boring. Yes my friends, an army of robots. Yawn.

Check out Kenneth Turan's review.

It gets worse when the movie is wrapping itself up and becomes confusing -and not in a profound science fiction way. The last couple scenes are so vague, that I can't help but suspect that this was due to last-minute re-writes and re-shoots. 

The screenwriters, Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback miss some great oportunities with this remake. Like maybe repairing the biggest failure of logic in the original: Scenes that are taking place outside the main character's experience.

In the original, there were several scenes with the villains talking about how they were going to capture the main character, Quaid. Unless you are assuming that Quaid could be dreaming about events he isn't witnessing, it kind of kills the ambiguity on whether he's dreaming or not. In the beginning of this version, every scene is from Quaid's perspective. Even when he visits Recall, he doesn't fall asleep while the technicians come to a scary realization about him. He's awake the whole time. But then the subjectivity is broken and it plays out in the same flawed way the original did. This story would have thrived on a subjective perspective! It could have also turned the original story on it's head in so many ways! Is there a creativity drought in the screenwriting world?

Director Len Wiseman has always struck me as a high-tech-action-director-for-hire. His perception of humanity seems a bit superficial, but he's no Michael Bay. He brings a similar style lacking the obnoxiousness with gorgeous women (one his wife) and the design of the futuristic environment in this film is just as sensational as Minority Report, The Fifth Element, or even Blade Runner. If you're a sucker for that kind of stuff like I am, it's worth seeing the movie for this element alone. Even though the plot device of the robots is pretty lame, the robots look great. They also invent a really cool concept for this movie called "The Fall": A skyscraper-sized elevator that takes Australian commuters to England through the earth's core! 

Ultimately, this is a remake that entertains with great sci-fi sensation until it falls flat on it's face leaving you wondering who's dumb idea it was to make it. 

Excuse me, I'm going to watch a cool movie where people's heads blow up on Mars.

Also check out Scott Tobias' review on The AV Club 

IN RETROSPECT: Seconds (1966)

Post-op on a life change

My theme "In Retrospect" applies to cinema history and not myself, as I just saw John Frankenheimer's, Seconds with my friend, Beau, for the first time last night. What an amazingly disturbing movie! I'm reminded of many titles like, David Fincher's The Game, The Stepford Wives, Abre los ojos (the original Vanilla Sky), David Lynch's Lost Highway and many films containing Outer Limits/Twilight Zone-type surreal plots. Of course you have to consider that Frankenheimer made this only a few films after The Manchurian Candidate, which was also a surreal psychological thriller.

The story follows a man in his late-fifties, played by John Randolf, who is being indirectly contacted by a friend who was thought to be dead. These contacts slowly direct him to a secret organization where for thirty-thousand dollars, they can fake your death, rejuvenate you and give you a new identity to start over. He chooses to leave his lifeless marriage behind and become a young painter, played for the rest of the film by Rock Hudson. Eventually his soul is plagued by the artificiality of his new existence and wonders if he can accept it. 

I don't think I'm going out on a limb to call this a generally forgotten film. My friend and I both agreed that this movie looks way ahead of it's time and easily borrows from the then influencial and innovative French New Wave directors. It's wonderfully shot in black and white and makes great use of wide angle lenses in the way that Terry Gilliam later did with Brazil. I was kind of surprised to see a sudden explosion of mass nudity in the middle of it as well. Aside from it being such a strong psychological thriller, it's filled with subtextual social commentary about the traditional older generation vs the subversive and counter-cultural youth of the time. 

It seems this movie was booed at Cannes during it's premiere and was heavily criticized. What for? I'm having trouble digging up that info. While it drags a little in the middle and asks you to follow a truly bizarre plot, I accepted every minute of this movie as I would accept a series of different dreams in my sleep that change between fantasies of desire to nightmare. The end of this film is a very well crafted twist and truly, truly scary. Real good one.