After you get past (or just used to) its Wes-Andersonny tics, Rocket Science boasts great acting from its actually-adolescent-looking cast, and manages to be that teen-angsty-romance-schoolcompetition sort of film without fading into those films’ ruts. It was funny, moving — but really the leads (Reece Thompson and Anna Kendrick) made the film more than a minor pleasure.
Acting also amps up the rewards of The Assassination of Jesse James, with the justly-nominated Casey Affleck as the weaselly Bob Ford wheedling across the screen in a really great performance, and lots of strong work from supporting cast (Sam Rockwell is reliably great, Paul Schneider quite funny, and Garret Dillahunt outstanding as the hangdog Ed Miller). Plus the film looks a wonder, shot by Roger Deakins to enthusiastically capture the look of images (photographed and painted) from the era depicted. Still, I found the story often muddled — some great dialogue, but… well, James was a cipher, and I couldn’t even get a real handle on Ford, let alone the film itself. Intriguing at first, always ravishing to see, but after a while (and it goes on a while) wandering with the emphasis on wan.
Great World of Sound is lo-fi Lomanesque: we follow two hapless music “producers” in a shady record company as they try to recruit talent (who are then asked to kick in a few bucks toward production) across the South. The two salesguys (a very strong Pat Healy and Kene Halliday) strike up an odd, believable, surface-level friendship.
Believable’s the key here — this film is like one of the recent spate of what’s been called the mumblecore movement, shot through with angst and wry humor, dialogue full of sputters and ums and seeming half-improvised, and while filmed on the cheap also with a keen clear eye. But it felt a bit weightier, more invested in issues beyond the existential pitfalls of the (usually) white protagonists. Race and class complicate that existential crunch here. What I liked best about this film was its generous, unflinching engagement with misguided dreams, how it skirts along the edge of a dingy urban south where people are struggling to make ends meet, but have some vision–however cheap, tattered, unlikely–of a way out.
(David Gordon Green is also listed on the production end, and director Craig Zobel worked on George Washington, so perhaps that lineage makes more sense than my link to the films of Andrew Bujalski, Aaron Katz, Jay Duplass.)
I gather that some–or maybe even many?–of the music auditions were shot with unsuspecting auditioners… which gives the film an uncomfortable edge (that I kind of liked).
All told, I maybe didn’t love the film, but despite the recognizable con of the central plot (and the foreboding about said con’s collapse), I still felt surprised and engaged by the story. It’s unlike most anything I’ve seen in a while.
Ah, and a quick check of imdb shows that Zobel is one of the founders of homestarrunner. Interesting.
I was hooked in, nearly mesmerized by The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. I expected to be bored by the beauty of it all and it certainly is a rarefied visual experienced anchored by a compelling though mannered approach to character acting. Still, I was completely engaged. There are some fantastic set pieces. Affleck, though about ten years too old for the role, digs deep and, dare I say it, really knows how to act. And though Brad Pitt has a limited range of facial expressions, his Jesse James kept me on my guard. Here is a portrait of a gentleman psychopath and the fact that one is never quite sure which persona will define any given scene keeps the film teetering between frat-boy revelry and dangerous paranoia. I’d give it an eight out of ten.
Gone Baby Gone occasionally misfires but most often–cast to setting to dialogue to its small, powerful close–is pretty damn good. I regret that the movie lost some of the force of Patsy G’s personality (Michelle Monaghan is fine, but the character’s been diminished), and the editing is occasionally … well, stiff and choppy. But there are some excellent scenes where the verbal punch of Lehane’s novel comes through (especially a barroom confrontation that sold me on Casey A in the lead role).
I think this film does a better job at capturing Lehane’s deployment of ye olde pedophile tropes, too. Where the adaptation of “Mystic River” kind of bought wholeheartedly into the great Satan of child molestation, a pure kind of evil that made the moral wash of the film more black and white than the book’s incredibly compelling central dilemmas (particularly with the character played by Tim Robbins), Gone has its demons but puts Evil on the back-burner, far more interested in the (im)possibility of doing right. The film’s central thesis seems profoundly grim.
It’s also interesting, since Omar (Michael Williams) and Deadwood’s Silas (Titus Welliver) show up, to think of the ethical universe being worked out in those shows, in Lehane and Pelecanos and other popular fictions — far from the war-on-terror clarity promised by the “clash of civilizations,” we see reinvigorated old genres (the western, the procedural, film noir) even more committed to exploring the dreadful uncertain ethics of the social contract. (This probably ties back to Michael’s previously-made smart points about new forms of horror, too.)
‘The Bank Job’ is much better than one would expect. I was anticipating some sort of laddish ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ or ‘Snatch’ movie, but after an overly hectic beginning, this settles down to be a well-acted, quite poignant movie.
Apparently based on real events, the movie tells the story of a bank robbery, where the robbery is the least of the plot. There are at least four different sub-plots, all linked to the bank (primarily through incriminating material in the safe deposit boxes). When Jason Stratham and his mates pull off the robbery, they have to deal with the fallout from all the people trying to keep the contents of the boxes secret.
I can’t quite believe I’m writing this, but Stratham really is good: he has a quiet charisma that allows him to blend with the rest of the ensemble cast and yet stand out at the same time. And David Suchet, as the porn king, Lew Vogel, is superb. In all these movie set in East London, you watch in terror at which patsy will be set up to play the Michael Caine role of wise-cracking but deadly serious hoodlum. Usually, the choice is embarrassing. But Suchet manages to be funny, menacing and vulnerable at the same time.
Honestly, this is a lot better than you expect, and certainly better than it intends to be.
coincidentally, i recently watched another jason statham vehicle, war. it is terrible. but he’s not the worst thing in it. i guess jet li doesn’t want to do martial arts movies anymore–well, he’d better find another line of work in that case.
I heard that too, and yet at the movies today I saw a preview for ‘Forbidden Kingdom’ a martial arts film with Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Given that it is all Li can do, he is smart not to give it up.
There was also a preview for a movie with the perfect title: ‘Midnight Meat Train’. Apparently a psychopath rides the subway late at night, kills and dismembers people and disposes of the bodies among the carcasses of butchered cows so they aren’t ever found (?). I’m glad they went with the most descriptive and straightforward title.
Normally, I’d see the title Midnight Meat Train and simultaneously drool (over the prospects of an unrepentantly sleazy bit of gore) and dismiss (over the prospects of a straight-to-dvd bit of nonsense). But this one has some interesting pedigree: it’s based on an old short story by Clive Barker *and* is directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, who did the wonderful ridiculous Versus, a time-travel/yakuza/zombie flick that I can’t praise highly enough. So… I’m cautiously willing to believe that Vinnie Jones stalking the subways with a cleaver might be not just fun, but stylish fun.
Meanwhile, Jet Li has a job as a body-double for Daniel Tiffany, whenever the martial-arts gig wears out. Sorry about the inside-ness of that for you non-USC types.
Mike,
I hear that Tiffany has been doing body double work for Henry Gibson. a white hairpiece and voila!
I think Daniel Tiffany and Henry Gibson should do a remake of that “Man With Two Heads” flick–but the kick of the remake is that they’re BOTH Ray Milland!
i join chris in recommending the bank job which does a creditable job of recreating the early 70s london that i know intimately from other cinematic simulacra, and also of recreating an earlier kind of heist movie. and yes, statham does a good job. i didn’t even recognize suchet.
The last time I was at the multiplex I watched not one but two trailers for movies starring Clive Owen, one opposite Julia Roberts, no less. I just came across a 2003 movie, “I’ll sleep When I’m Dead” with Owen and Malcolm McDowell. It is directed by Mike Hodges, and it clearly owes a lot to his classic ‘Get Carter.’ Will Graham (Owen) was once a hard London gangster but had some sort of breakdown and now lives in a van and does odd jobs on the south coast of England. Three years later, back in London, his younger brother Davey is raped and commits suicide. Will returns to extract vengeance.
It has its moments, but it can’t quite carry the weight of its own seriousness. It is noir (the title alone tells you that) but it is larded up with voiceovers by Owen about the nature of death, and a series of relationships that are neither explained nor necessary. Charlotte Rampling appears to have been Will’s former lover. Some gangster is terrified Will is back to reclaim his turf. The moment of confrontation between Will and the man who raped Davey seems underdetermined, and there is the implication that Rampling is being held hostage to trap Will, though that implication is never followed through with.
Nonetheless, Owen is always fun to watch, and this is a better class of gangster film than the crap Guy Ritchie has been serving up.
‘Fast and Furious’ is the fourth in the series and, to my surprise, it is the best of the bunch, an almost flawless B-movie that combines some great road-racing scenes with the fuel-injected (ha ha) return of Vin Diesel’s long-missing charisma. The opening five minute sequence, which involves stealing a gasoline truck in the Dominican Republic, alone is worth the price of admission. Most of the cast of #1 of the series is reunited, and we even get a guest appearance from Han (who was killed in the third, so presumably #4 is meant to take place before #3, or maybe Han is a ghost, or Han’s brother, also named Han). Anyway, it won’t have broad appeal on this blog, but I found it utterly satisfying.
I have been struggling to write something explaining why I liked ‘Up in the Air’ so much, given that it seems to violate my anti-middlebrow rule. I’m still struggling, but here is a nice commentary from Inside Higher Ed: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/01/08/herbst
Lots of spoilers in this essay so beware.
I too really liked this film. I guess I understand the Weber connection. The film does work to upend the “McDonaldization” of global culture where rational, bureaucratic efficiency (particularly an organizational model predicated on gentility or, to put it another way, pleasantness as a manufactured commodity) breeds apathy, alienation, and, more disturbing to lazy asses like myself, a greater reinvestment in the very bureaucracy which seemingly promotes individual freedom and greater leisure, etc. The cellphone was supposed to free us up, right? Personal computers would make us work less, n’est-ce pas?
Up in the Air does entertain, but it does so with a bite (the audience ardently roots for the film as if it were a romantic comedy, which, of course, it is not). It also does so with a light though intelligent touch and a great deal of assurance on Jason Reitman’s part. The actors are winning and the script seems to capture the zeitgeist in ways no other American film did this year. I was reminded of James L. Brooks’ Broadcast News and also thought of the fine work of filmmakers like Michael Ritchie and Hal Ashby (though Ashby would have given his version even more bite and bile). That all bein said, the film I was most reminded of while watching and in the hours after I saw the film was Mike Nichols’ The Graduate, particularly the open ambivalence at the end of both films but also the way these films seem to define their culture moments. I have more to say but am being called away . . .
I happened to see Gone, Baby, Gone on television last night while I lolled in a semi-stupor on the couch. I am not sure of what to make of it. Perhaps like many actor-directors Affleck overdoes it with the ACTING! Perhaps,too, Affleck was scared by a Sidney Lumet film while in the womb. a somewhat ludicruous plot goes hand-in-hand with kitchen sink realism and psychological intensity (sometimes attempts at intensity rather than the thing itself). so many tortured figures…so many cops….so many intense stares….I am not sure sure of the tortured thesis that it is impossible not to do right. Don’t mule drugs with your kid. Don’t shoot criminals in the head, without due process (how does the character get away with this). Don’t kidnap children not your own. Problem solved.
I am being harder on the film for the sake of rhetorical flourishes–it’s quite engrossing, but I don’t know if its “seriousness” is earned.
i hated it.
It is a new experience for me to go to see an action movie, not because it is particularly high up my priority list, but rather because my younger son has been drooling over it ever since he saw the first trailer. So it was that I went last weekend to see ‘Takers’, a heist movie that has been (unfavorably) compared to ‘Heat.’ It’s claim to fame for my upper middle class, very white son, is that it stars a handful of rappers, including T.I. and Chris Brown. There is something culturally jarring to hearing my son repeat, twenty times a day, each in a pitch-perfect replication of T.I.’s character, “Business is business, money is money, I never said we were friends.”
In any case, the movie is worth a rental, even if it is far too obvious in plot trajectory. A gang of high end thieves (including Idris Elba and Paul Walker) pull off a series of spectacular heists. Matt Dillon is the flawed cop on the gang’s tail (the Pacino to Elba’s De Niro, if you like). Along comes Ghost (played by T.I.), former member of the gang, recently out of prison, with a plan (“my plan, your command” as my son also likes to repeat endlessly) for a major robbery. Of course, things are not as they seem and events spiral out of control. The action sequences are not bad, including one parkour-inspired routine, and one that is obviously indebted to the final shootout in ‘True Romance’.
wanderlust is occasionally funny, and largely inoffensive. watch on a plane.
how is it that the people from the state have successful film/tv careers while the kids in the hall continue to wander in the wilderness?