Category Archives: Recommended

Legends of the Fall

Posted on January 29, 2008

This Brad Pitt vehicle seems likely to have been greenlit in the wake of Kevin Costner’s stunning Dances With Wolves. Aiming for a similar epic Western revisionist anti-hero result and adding the burgeoning star power of Brad Pitt backed with Anthony Hopkins as well as the fresh beauty of Julia Ormond, the execs at Columbia surely expected similar huge grosses and perhaps a few golden statuettes of their own.

Sadly Legends of the Fall (1994) was not in the same class as its model. Director Ed Zwick, still mainly known at this point for the hit TV series thirtysomething, was a bit too loose with his focus. Pitt’s Tristan had to contend with his father (Hopkins), compete with his two brothers (Aidan Quinn and Henry Thomas) for Ormand’s heart and disappears for a huge chunk of the second act after finding himself unable to deal with his feelings of responsibility for a tragedy that couldn’t, really, have been down to him at all.

This gets mixmastered by frequent narrations voiced by a native American elder and family friend (Gordon Tootoosis). Frankly, a movie that needs this much help explaining the on-screen action probably should have gone back to scriptwriters Susan Shilliday and Bill Witliff for another draft.

The acting is strong enough, though Quinn as usual does little for me, and the wide open territories in Montana where the  Ludlow clan have a ranch, the film’s primary setting, is awesome; that John Toll took the 1995 Oscar for Best Cinematography seem reasonable. Yet I wonder how much better Legends might have been if the younger brother and related subplots had been edited out.

recommended

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The Caine Mutiny

Posted on January 28, 2008

I really love having video on demand on my cable service. Not only does it give me new episodes of The Wire six days early, I can also find something to watch no matter what my mood. The other night I flipped through the free movie listing and found this 1954 classic tale of men at war and more in conflict with each other than the enemy–there’s only one battle scene and even that shows the Japanese only through the arrival of shots from their shore-based batteries.

The Caine Mutiny is primarily set on the minesweeper Caine in the Pacific Theater during the second half of WWII. Made from Herman Wouk’s bestselling novel, the movie was written by Stanley Roberts (who also adapted Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman for the big screen) and directed by Edward Dmytryk, in his first job after spending several months in prison as one of the Hollywood 10 who refused to cooperate with the DC McCarthyism witchhunts of the early ’50s.

Producer Stanley Kramer (yes, the one who not longer after this became a very successful director) gave Dmytryk a first class cast. Toplining are Humphrey Bogart as the martinet Queeg, Van Johnson as the mutineer Maryk, Fred MacMurray (still a serious actor who had not yet turned to Disney tripe nor the father of My Three Sons) as the creepy comms officer Keefer and Jose Ferrer as Maryk’s Navy attorney plus Robert Francis in a very good performance as naive, audience POV character Ensign Willie Keith. Sadly Francis died in a plane crash the year after this was released.

The Caine is a slack ship, the crew just as sloppy and worn down, as Keith arrives fresh from training for his first posting. Shortly thereafter Queeg takes command and he’s unwilling to permit such unbecoming behavior and state of repair. We see him in a series of questionably petty decisions and confrontations, none truly favorable to him, climaxing in a ship-wide hunt for a purported food locker key used to abscond with a quart of strawberry ice cream.

Maryk, Keefer and Keith surreptitiously ride over to the newly-arrived fleet commander’s carrier, armed with Maryk’s diary of Queeg’s behaviors, to see if Admiral Halsey will  relieve their captain. They back out at the last minute, on Halsey’s doorstep, after Keener points out that much of what the three know is actionable Queeg can likely explain away as imposing discipline and the trio’s action as mutiny.

Finally the ship (and the bigger fleet to which it belongs) runs into a terrible storm that goes on for hours, causing them severe damage. Queeg refuses to deviate in the least from their ordered course despite the fact that doing so will alleviate the threat of capsizing.

The storm goes on and on and Maryk’s requests and suggestions to alter heading become more and more strident; finally Queeg retreats into himself, though physically remaining on the bridge, and Maryk assumes command, with the complicity of Keith, who is officer of the deck during this time. They return to San Francisco, the Caine‘s home port, for the climactic trial of Lt. Maryk on chargs of mutiny.

While watching I came to really wonder how much of the story came from Herman Wouk’s own experience on the same kind of ship during the war. The performances are generally strong, with interesting small parts by very young Lee Marvin, Claude Akins and E.G. Marshall; I’m less clear on why Roberts and Dmytryk kept Ensign Keith’s subplot other than as a sop to the female audience.

recommended

Also posted in drama, history, war | Comments Off

12 Monkeys

Posted on January 27, 2008

From the very strange mind of Terry Gilliam (Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and all those whack Monty Python animations back in the day) comes this darkly humorous examination of a man (Bruce Willis) who can’t decide if he’s insane or has been sent back in time to help humanity recover from a devastating virus unleashed by terrorist group that killed 97% of us. Brad Pitt co-stars as a fellow lunatic and putative leader of the terrorists.

In the dread future that opens 12 Monkeys (1995) the remainders struggle along underground in a strictly regimented society dependent on a strange steampunk-ish combination of technology with forays to the surface tightly controlled to avoid bringing the virus into their cramped quarters. Scientists have developed a (never explained) method for traveling back in time, though as its still highly experimental only long-sentence prisoners are used as chrononauts. Hence Cole’s (Willis) involvement.

The machinery lacks precision so travelers have been scatted across the centuries (indeed, the film implies the 14th century black death was triggered by one of Cole’s predecessors) and our boy requires several tries before surfacing any time close in 1990–the virus is unleashed in 1996. Naked and incoherent he’s immediately arrested and sent to a local loony bin where he meets Jeffrey (Pitt), who really is off his rocker but understands Cole well enough to help him attempt to escape.

The hospital is also where Cole meets Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe, who looks more appealing here than almost any other film in which I’ve seen her). Though unconvinced by Cole’s story his strange disappearance (the scientists pull him back to the future after his failed escape) inspires her to write a book and softens her response when he reappears in her life days before the virus’ release.

The main block of the film is what transpires from this point, with Cole attempting to convince himself he is insane and the ‘memories’ of the terrible future proof of his disease while Dr. Railly similarly moves towards believing the opposite. Pitt, meanwhile, has been released into the care of his world-famous virologist father but remains less than sane, having used some of dad’s riches to found the Army of the 12 Monkeys.

For me 12 Monkeys is the most successful of Gilliam’s trilogy of future fantasy comedies; it would have to be since I’ve never been able to sit through either Brazil or Munchausen. Roger Ebert once wrote that “[Gilliam's] world is always hallucinatory in its richness of detail” and I would have to agree. The set designs, both in the underground of the future and mid-’90s Philadelphia, are worn-down and dirty and feature unlikely combinations of components, furniture and so on, while Willis’s mental uncertainty, Pitt’s vivid lunacy and Stowe’s growing belief offer complimentary psychology tension. Stowe, whose character clearly represents the audience point of view, is a useful guidepost as the film unfolds.

recommended

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Lucky Number Slevin

Posted on January 13, 2008

Paul McGuigan takes an American spin on the gangster revenge flick he did so well a half decade earlier in Gangster No. 1. The result here is good but while it is no doubt funnier lacks the vicious edge that put the 2001 movie over the top. You will want to pay close attention, though, as almost nothing is as it seems.

Lucky Number Slevin has quite the cast. Josh Hartnett is the title character, Bruce Willis is a veteran mob hitman called Goodkat(?), Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley are partners turned rival gangsters called The Boss and The Rabbi (yes, Kingsley’s character really is a rabbi), Stanley Tucci is an NYPD detective, Mykelti Williamson is a dimwitted henchman, Danny Aiello has a cameo as a bookie, Robert Forster a cameo as one of Tucci’s colleagues and Lucy Liu is her usual sexy, gregarious self as Slevin’s accidental love.

The plot is a black humor twist of Hitchcock’s mistaken identity classic, North by Northwest, with Slevin standing in for Cary Grant’s Roger Thornhill and Liu for Eva Marie Saint. Writer Jason Smilovic doesn’t leave the comparison to chance and has Kingsley’s character talk about taking his immigrant father to see it. But while we viewers know from the start that Slevin Kelevra is not the Nick Fisher the others seem to think, well, like I said at the top nothing is as it seems; Lucky Number has onion-like layers, an Outback Steakhouse Bloomin’ Onion, fried and big and greasy and still so tasty.

recommended

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Clerks II

Posted on January 13, 2008

Ten years on and much Hollywood success later, Kevin “Silent Bob” Smith returns to bookend the original black & white indie comedy that launched him. Where are Dante and Randal now? Has Dante outgrown his indecisiveness or Randal his adolescent preoccupations? And did they ever see that fabled donkey show?

No, no and no, of course, not in a Kevin Smith movie. The opening of Clerks II is Dante (Brian O’Halloran) raising the metal grating one morning at the Quick Stop only to find the interior consumed in fire; Randal (Jeff Anderson), with typical thoughtlessness, had left the empty coffeepot on the previous evening. Fate finally put an end to their internment and not ambition or even pride (the boys are 33 years old, for crying out loud) but what do they do with the opportunity? Take jobs behind the counter at the local Mooby’s fast food joint.

Dante has found love, sort of, in the form of their hot high school classmate Emma (Jennifer Schwalbach Smith, married in real life to writer/director Smith) and, a year after the fire, the two are headed to Florida in 24 hours where they’ll move in with her wealthy parents for a few months until the wedding. Emma seems to have realized that the hunky guys she’s been dating before Dante have egos to match her own but Dante’s low self-esteem makes him her’s to control.

Randal is as foul-mouthed and misinformed as ever. One running joke is over the made-up anti-black slur porch monkey, that he never understood his grandmother was a racist and all the nasty names she taught him were offensive epithets. Another is his confusion of Anne Frank and Helen Keller, though not to quite the same effect. He isn’t happy with Dante’s plans. There’s a new younger character, sort of Randal’s opposite (virgin who’d rather wash his mouth out with soap than curse), played by Trevor Ferhman called Elias; the kid is the butt of many, many of Randal’s jokes.

Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith) are here too, just returned from six months in rehab, hanging out back dealing drugs and dancing their weird dances. Rosario Dawson is Becky, the lovely younger woman who really loves Dante, though she won’t admit it and he doesn’t realize it. Jason Lee and Ben Affleck make their customary cameos though Lee has the better of it, playing a high school classmate of our boys who recently struck it rich after his internet startup was acquired for millions.

The best scene in C2, for me is when Becky tries to teach Dante how to dance for his wedding up on the Mooby’s roof (other than the open and close and a couple of brief scenes, the entire film takes place in or around the fast food joint). The song is the Jackson 5 classic ABC, played at blast volume by Jay down below, and after we see the blinders fall from Dante’s eyes at the girls beauty and charm Smith gives a terrific homage to the Ray Charles music store scene in Blues Brothers. First a series of quick cuts to the other leads toe-tapping or headshaking wherever they are and then a full blown coordinated dance scene out in the parking lot.

Overall funnier than I thought it would be, if (and this is a big if) you can get past the continuous stream of obscenities and general teenage level nastiness. And that donkey scene? Close but not quite what you’ll be expecting.

recommended

Also posted in buddies, comedy, indie, Reviews | 1 Comment

Notes on a Scandal

Posted on January 13, 2008

This 2006 drama is a twisted, dark romance from writer Patrick Marber and director Richard Eyre and stars Dame Judith Dench, Cate Blanchett and Bill Nighy with a meaty supporting role for teenager Andrew Simpson. Marber and Eyre are highly regarded for their theater work so it’s no surprise that dialog and body language are far more significant than would typically be the case.

Notes on a Scandal covers the term when Sheba (Blanchett) arrives as the new arts teacher at a London high school where Barbara (Dench) is an institution nearing retirement and 15 year old Steven (Simpson) is enrolled as a 10th Year student. Being so pretty and vivacious Sheba is someone everyone else wants to get close with, and her marriage to the much older, yet loving and caring, Richard (Nighy) doesn’t an obstacle to either friendship or romance.

Barbara, who also provides much needed narration, certainly doesn’t see Richard or Sheba’s two children as problems for the “special” relationship she wants with the newcomer. After all, her last intended young lovely friend scampered away rather than suffer the attention.

Sheba, well, she would have done just fine if she’d only stopped herself from acting on forbidden desires but temptation, as Greg Allman sang, “is a loaded gun.” So hard not to fire at least one bullet, then one more and another and another and then you get sloppy, which is when someone’s bound to see your mess.

Barbara, of course, has been paying Sheba special attention so we’re not surprised when it’s her eyes that do and that’s all this spider needs for springing her trap. Aging predators can’t catch prey as well or as easily; Barbara should’ve learned this from her last result but is desperate not to be alone for her last years.

As I said, this is a very dark movie but quite a good one: Dench, Blanchett and Marber all got Oscar nominations though they lost to Helen Mirren (who played another aging British monarch), Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) and William Monahan (The Departed), respectively.

Definitely worth watching now that Notes has come to premium cable.

recommended

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Renaissance

Posted on December 29, 2007

This is a very different kind of animated film, much more of a literary exercise than the standard DreamWorks/Pixar cartoon outing, other commentaries classing the black and white, techno-nightmare fable as cross of Blade Runner and Sin City. Finally released in 2006 after six years cooking, Renaissance is a dark tale set in 2046 Paris about a hard as nails cop assigned to find a beautiful young genetics researcher gone missing.

Daniel Craig voices the snatch squad captain, Karas, with Romola Garai as the missing girl, Jonathon Pryce well-cast as her devious corporate box, Ian Holm as her mentor and Catherine McCormack as Garai’s gorgeous older sister rounding out the top line cast.

Karas, we see straight from the start, is a stereotype, the I do as I see fit copper constantly running afoul of his superiors and so you won’t be surprised that halfway through, after pissing off the case’s prosecutor he gets suspended. His team are loyal to him despite the prospect of serious career damage and, of course, the sister and Karas fall in love. Not many surprises in either plot or characterization.

No, the attraction of Renaissance is the striking visual of his motion capture animation and I wasn’t surprised that the opening credits featured (that is, the ones before the title, usually only given to production companies, stars and the director) those responsible. Director Christian Volckman gives us a future Paris that mixes the mega-urbanity of Blade Runner‘s Seattle and the Fritz Lang 1927 classic Metropolis where daylight seems to be vanishing along with, say, the flora and fauna.

recommended

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Primer

Posted on December 25, 2007

This odd 2004 indie production (e.g., $7,000 budget) caught my eye in the program grid and with nothing else on on Christmas Eve afternoon. Weird is an understatement, even for an old time science fiction fan like me. Though this film does indeed fall into the science fiction wing of the library, it isn’t Star Wars/Star Trek big bang SF but rather more from the Stanislaw Lem/William Gibson school of intellectual puzzles and the SF aside, the movie it most reminds me of is Memento.

Frankly I don’t think I can do much good explaining Primer but Roger Ebert takes a decent shot and it did win the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Drama. Shane Carruth wrote, directed, produced and stars and I give him credit for doing a lot with that slim budget.

You will come away puzzling over nearly everything about this movie, in a good way, if you watch on day when you mind is open for business.

moderately recommended

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The Golden Compass

Posted on December 24, 2007

This big budget fantasy caused a bit of controversy over it’s perceived anti-Church message, albeit apparently much toned down from the original novel by Philip Pullman, but honestly if I had read about the protests and complaints I’d have never noticed it, nor did TS1.

We both enjoyed The Golden Compass. The first of a trilogy, this movie introduces us to 12 year old heroine Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards) and launches her on an adventure to, well, save free will across all the Earths in the many parallel universes in existence. The controversy is that she’s saving it from the Magisterium, essentially a worldwide church that also is the secular political power. Lyra’s uncle Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig, in his second big post-Bond debut role) is the scientist who figured out how to travel between Earths and the Magisterium plans to crush him and use his innovation to extend their grubby grasp.

Lyra isn’t about to let that just happen so its a good thing she’s no ordinary 12 year old orphan girl. Not only is she smart and courageous, Lyra also has (and understands how to use, a rare skill) the last Alethiometer, a special compass-like device that shows her the true answer to any question she poses to it.

The big adventure begins when Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman) shows up at the university where her uncle has left her in the care of his fellow researchers. Coulter knows that Lyra is special and probably the child named in an unspecified prophecy and she’s also plugged in right to the top of the Magisterium so when she asks that Lyra accompany her on a trip to the frigid north (no child labor laws on this Earth) no one has the nerve to say no.

We also get good performances from Sam Elliot, in all his gray-haired, Texas drawl glory as an airship pilot he joins Lyra’s quest, Eva Green (Craig’s Casino Royale love interest) as the queen of the good witches, Ian McKellen as the voice of a princely bear (this world’s bears are sentient but do not have souls as humans do) who also joins with Lyra, Christopher Lee and Derek Jacobi as two of the Magisterium’s high councilors, veteran Brit character actor Jim Carter as head of the rebellious Gyptians (who also join with Lyra, for a little girl she gets lots of adults to sign up without as much as a fluttering of her eyelashes) and Ben Walker as Lyra’s best mate Roger.

I thought Chris Weitz did a good job with the screenplay and direction of The Golden Compass. Its a very different kind of movie from his previous work, none of which were fantasies or even big budget actioners: The American Pie farces and About a Boy. As a science fiction fan I’m probably more disposed to accept the fantastical elements than most but Weitz did well to avoid lapses of logic that be really annoying to viewers like me, and he avoided the trap of trying to explain every little detail (e.g., the odd gyroscopicish devices that seemed to power airships and ground vehicles).

recommended

Also posted in fantasy, Reviews | 1 Comment

The Net

Posted on December 23, 2007

Sandra Bullock stars in one of the earlier (1995) “the internet will doom us all, but at least we can work from home in pajamas” thrillers. The technological conceit at the heart of The Net is surprisingly possible, albeit not quite in the form used–no single piece of security software will ever get to the necessary level of market share to do the damage envisioned in the film without being unmasked by the quite vigilant group of researchers tracking the security market.

Irwin Winkler, who was primarily a producer for 30 years before this on many big movies including the Rocky series and a number of Martin Scorsese’s films, made this his third directorial effort. The Net, though, was his first shot at a big box office event, following two smaller Robert De Niro dramas (Guilty by Association and Night and the City). The script came from the team of John Brancato and Michael Ferris, whose career is littered with sequels (Terminator 3 and the upcoming Terminator reboot, Catwoman) minor films that sound better on paper than on celluloid (The Game).

Bullock plays Angela Bennett, a nearly agoraphobic, mysanthropic top rank computer programmer. She works from home in Santa Monica (for a San Francisco software outfit), orders delivery rather cook, has a social life consisting of hanging out in a chat room with other geeks she’s never willing to meet IRL and ventures out mainly to dutifully visit her Alzheimer’s-wasted mom.

Angela decides to take her first vacation in six years a day after sending a friendly co-worker a new virus for his collection. Dale returns the favor but says he will fly down in his Cessna to talk about his find over breakfast before she leaves for Mexico. As he’s not arrived by the time she needs to head to LAX, Angela calls his office only to be told Dale dies when his plane crashed. We viewers, though, already knew it and also that the crash was caused by some chicanery to the Cessna.

On her vacation’s last morning, sitting out on the beach, Angela connects with a cute British guy named Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam, in a role that was probably turned down by Hugh Grant as too dark). This is no coincidence, though, as Devlin somehow is constantly exactly on the mark with every choice from favorite movie to dinner on a romantic powerboat followed, of course, by a night of passionate sex.

Jack, you see (and you would see, since Winkler and his writers telegraph nearly every move), is a ruthless mercenary only interested in retrieving that disk Dale sent Angela and making sure there are neither copies nor anyone else who knows of it’s contents. Those questions answered, and the sex finished, Jack’s ready to kill our heroine and dump her body somewhere off the coast of Cancun.

Angela realized this just before and was able to remove the bullets, though for some reason didn’t keep the loaded gun for herself. Anyway she knocks Jack silly with a wine bottle, disables the boat, dumps him overboard and makes her getaway in the main boat’s dinghy. Sadly, it wasn’t a clean getaway and she herself is knocked unconscious after running into some rocks. Her recovery in a local hospital provides Jack with the time to erase the computer existence of Angela Bennett.

On making her way home Angela finds her house emptied of it’s contents and a realtor holding an open house to sell it; unable to convince the realtor, a neighbor or a pair of patrol cops the house belongs to her or even that she really is Angela Bennett, she’s arrested and her life spirals further down.

But this woman is no wimp even if she is a nerd! No sir. And as good as her opponents’ computer skills may be, her’s are better and besides she has her former lover/psychiatrist (a feel good, wants to feel Angela again Dennis Miller) on her side.

You see, what Angela and Dale stumbled onto was nothing less than the attempt to subvert the entire business and government infrastructure of the United States by a group dedicated to taking down institutions that, well, just get too big for the general good. The Praetorians, Devlin’s employers, are lead by another very smart geek, not really seen much on screen or a character in this movie, but you can think of him as an evil Mitch Kapor or Larry Ellison. GateKeeper, his Trojan horse security software app, is gaining more and more marketshare while keeping it’s true purpose hidden.

Overall I think this is an entertaining 90 minutes because for 1993 or 94, when presumably the script was written, the core concepts are pretty insightful and while Winkler may not be a great director (see my review of his best received work, the 2001 Life as a House) he learned from Scorsese and other great ones while producing and knows how to keep the action moving and the plot on point.

mildly recommended

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