Month: September 2011

The humdrum high-tech, low-plot action vehicle these days needs more and more oomph to rise above the brazen yet boring rabble….More solid, realistic characters? Largely absent here. More tortuously disgusting set pieces? Getting warm! An all-star cast stooping beneath their usual stature to add what they can to the mess? Bingo!

Clive Owen could probably still fascinate as an actor if he opted to do a Nike ad. Robert DeNirio, so off and on, gives a few hints he’s still got an interesting role left in him even if this isn’t the one…And of course Killer Elite starsJason Stratham–now resembling a franchise cliche as the tough guy to end all tough guys.

Stratham and DeNiro are professional assassins; Owen a retired British soldier who’s the maverick in a secret society of former SAS officers. They clash when Stratham is brought out of retirement to save a kidnapped DeNiro. Just for fun there’s an Arab sheik around and it’s he who will cough up DeNiro if Stratham jumps through some serious hoops. Turns out Stratham must assassinate three former SAS guys, make them all look like accidents, yet somehow still get a videotaped confession from them that they killed the shiek’s sons…

Piece of cake for Stratham and two equally demented pals. From there things get cloudy with a chance of mothballs as every Bourne effect you can think of is hurled our way and plot twists, barely revealed, run ragged in every direction. Bereft of ideas elsewhere, Killer Elite also sees fit to poach the title of a fairly decent Sam Peckinpah film with which it shares absolutely no characteristics.

3.5 poaches out of 10

The humdrum high-tech, low-plot action vehicle these days needs more and more oomph to rise above the brazen yet boring rabble….More solid, realistic characters? Largely absent here. More tortuously disgusting set pieces? Getting warm! An all-star cast stooping beneath their usual stature to add what they can to the mess? Bingo!

Clive Owen could probably still fascinate as an actor if he opted to do a Nike ad. Robert DeNirio, so off and on, gives a few hints he’s still got an interesting role left in him even if this isn’t the one…And of course Killer Elite starsJason Stratham–now resembling a franchise cliche as the tough guy to end all tough guys.

Stratham and DeNiro are professional assassins; Owen a retired British soldier who’s the maverick in a secret society of former SAS officers. They clash when Stratham is brought out of retirement to save a kidnapped DeNiro. Just for fun there’s an Arab sheik around and it’s he who will cough up DeNiro if Stratham jumps through some serious hoops. Turns out Stratham must assassinate three former SAS guys, make them all look like accidents, yet somehow still get a videotaped confession from them that they killed the shiek’s sons…

Piece of cake for Stratham and two equally demented pals. From there things get cloudy with a chance of mothballs as every Bourne effect you can think of is hurled our way and plot twists, barely revealed, run ragged in every direction. Bereft of ideas elsewhere, Killer Elite also sees fit to poach the title of a fairly decent Sam Peckinpah film with which it shares absolutely no characteristics.

3.5 poaches out of 10

Moneyball lucidly, and often comically, pays earthy homage to the lustre of baseball’s stature as “America’s pastime.” Just beneath the surface of a story arc portraying the maverick ideas of rebel general manager Billy Beane lurks a playful and endearing love of the game and its characters. It’s brought to life by Brad Pitt’s best film performance to date. Beane’s new-breed, statistics-driven player analysis is meant for a low-budget franchise like his Oakland A’s to forge an even playing field with the far richer New York Yankee type organizations as he is about to lose three major free agents from a 2001 100-game winning playoff team, Beane hooks onto special schlepy Yale nerd Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) and promotes him to assistant GM to the begrudging surprise of his jaded longtime player scouts. The scouts are steeped in baseball’s longheld traditions and his head scout condescendingly lectures the younger Beane. Philip Seymour Hoffman does a fine turn as manager Art Howe. Howe, too, has little use for Beane and their scenes together are pure oil and water.

Pitt shakes off the non-believers like so many flies. He not only demurs when they disagree with his player assessments, he eventually goes so against the grain he decides to trade perhaps their “best” player at midseason–a move that gives even Hill some pause.

Like most excellent sports movies, Moneyball ends on a miracle-like winning crescendo. Likewise, it also strikes emotional chords as it is nicely set in relief against Beane’s total dedication to his 12-year old daughter to which he’s a nonncustodial parent. The daughter motif is heartwarming and genuine (and lends itself to Beane’s own often fatherly cameraderie with Brand). The winning streak, while excitingly portrayed, could have contained a return to the fractured relationship between Beane and Howe to see how it was affected by all the winning. Did his nay-saying adversaries react to his success in bringing on the 20-game winning streak after he pulled a series of trade deadline deals? Or were they too busy (particularly Howe) taking the credit for it?

In taking on the predisposed vanities of the traditions of a sport accumulated over a hundred years, Beane brings his own cock-suredness. Portrayed as the classic loner outsider, he revolutionizes a sport with a zero tolerance for innovation. Pitt not only makes deals with the savvy of an all-wise lunatic, he occasionally ventures away from his self-imposed no-mingling-with-the-players rule to give his players just the right amount of pep. Or hell. The screenplay, co-written by Adam Sorkin, is often on a par with his script for last year’s marvelous The Social Network. The film is the secong outing from director Bennett Miller (Capote).

Is Moneyball of interest to non-baseball fans? Yes. Beane is such a winning character and his task such a compelling longshot we can’t help but tie it to larger things than baseball. The Michael Lewis book upon with the film is based has the subtitle “The Art of Winning An Unfair Game.” Who doesn’t like an underdog with charisma?

8 on base percentages out of 10

I think it’s only prudent to be wary of films that purport to take on the whole notion of, say, a woman juggling the demands of work and family while paying little attention to the equally immediate demands of plot and character and the credibility of each. The question in my mind is how far can a movie go out of bounds in authenticity before even its modest merits diminish?

With the arrival of I Don’t Know How She Does It I think we have some answers. Shoddy comes to mind. So does waste of talent (Pierce Brosnan). A few scenes are putrid in heir brazen, sit-comish, anything-goes, let’s throw it against the wall and see if it sticks-ness. A film so little feminist that its main character ends up finally throwing her hands up and resigning herself to being a Mom and letting the career go…it’s just not worth it…until Deus Es Machine intervenes.

I’d recount the plot but I’d have to relive it. Suffice it to say, it’s drivel on the order of an earnest, innocent woman (Sarah Jessica Parker) with an investment bank gig and a wasted-in-this-film, very good Greg Kinnear as her husband. She gets an unexpected promotion that forces her to commute to New York and work with The Big Boss Brosnan quite a bit. Her in tow assistant Olivia Munn is a no-nonsense Wharton grad who forces Parker to do things like comb her hair and act more business-like, while swearing she herself will never have kids (guess what’s coming there?)…Phony as in Holden Caulfield-phony comes to mind. Although they get a lot of the child rearing stuff right, everything about the “business” stuff is pure hooey. Brosnan, so effective an actor in The Ghost Writer, seems to have taken the day off with this role. And Parker is so studiously quirky she seems to be goofing on herself the entire time. Speaking
of goofy, I’d be crazy to go on any longer.

2 This-One’s-Meant-for-Oprah’s Out of 10

In Drive, the superb new thriller, Ryan Gosling can do more with his eyes in a single scene than many A-list actors can achieve given the wittiest, busiest screenplay. Scene after scene here almost approachs silent movie turf. Gosling’s character achieves a stunning minimalism that is at once terrifically appealing, and, over the course of the film, increasingly frightening. He has no name (merely The Driver) and no backstory. He’s literally a walking teapot waiting to boil with all the rage and angst of the best screen action/noir/heist heroes. Gosling’s arch has risen so rapidly with each film role lately, he’s now approaching classic film star territory. The Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood comparisons you may have heard about concerning his role in Drive are the real deal.

Gosling also sets the tone for what may be the most deliberate (OK, arty) film noir in recent memory. The contrast director Nicholas Winding Refn (Bronson) achieves with a tone of utter quietness setting up some of the most exaggerated violence is the key to this film’s uniqueness. Fairly ordinary genre elements are given a subversive heightening that’s almost surreal at times. Scenes of “empty” dialogue between Gosling and Irene (Carey Mulligan, An Education) have a realistic edge nonetheless. Mesmerizingly suspenseful waits as Hollywood stunt man Gosling moonlights as a getaway driver for hire with a ticking clock timing the crooks window for escape as his only prop thrill us before the inevitable chase. Gosling’s speechlessly and somberly reflects on the losers surrounding him. These are pertinent tonal set-ups for Gosling making a turn to set a few things straight in order to save Mulligan from victimization. His self sacrifice surprises his friend and boss Shannon (Bruce Cranston), who underestimates his humanity while glorifying his prowess as a driver.

His nemesis is none other than Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks). The comedian/film director and recent novelist, comes up with one of the year’s most surprising performances as a film producer/underworld investor who’s deceivingly normal. At first. His connection to Gosling is as co-backer (along with an annoying Ron Perlman as Nino) for Gosling’s Shannon-fueled entrance into the racing circuit world Brook’s transformation into a villain sneaks up on you, and by the time he’s in gear, Gosling’s drive to redemption is up against an equally eccentric and intense force that’s as nuts as he is.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find Gosling and Brooks both nominated for Oscars. They make what was already a tumultuous screenplay (Hossein Amini) and a hypnotic and atmospheric film (Refn won Best director at Cannes for this film) an experience teeming with action but presented as a collision of unsuspecting bedfellows: art and thriller meet. Europe comes to America to rewrite the film noir thriller as Scandinavian Refn makes his mark successfully merging the detached and the profane….Gosling, on the heels of Blue Valentine and Crazy, Stupid, Love; strikes again next month in George Clooney’s long-awaited Ides of March. Life is good: autumn movies season must be here.

8.5 silent wheels out of 10

James Marsden is no Dustin Hoffman and director Rod Lurie is no Sam Peckinpah. The remake of the controversial 1971 film Straw Dogs, contemporizes, Americanizes, and adds just enough Grindhouse/slasher effects while making things paradoxically safe and somewhat sanitized. A film that on first thought seemed beyond the scope of a remake, also happens to be rather entertaining and not without the philosophical content of its predecessor.

Marsden, as the Hollywood/Harvard screenwriter who moves with his actress wife to her hometown in Blackwater (get it?) Mississippi, is way too insipid and goody-two-shoes for the role and it looks like we’re headed for disaster….Enter his wife, Kate Bosworth as the local girl coming back home after making it as a TV actress, and, well, we’ve got a movie again. Bosworth recalls vintage Brigette Bardot for sheer sexpot quotient, and when the going gets rough, her considerable acting chops kick in and save the film from total Clicheland. When Marsden invites her ex-boyfriend Charlie and his redneck pals to fix their remote house’s roof, we’ve got a clash coming between Marsden’s outsider/intellectual and the homeboys’ cruder values and Bosworth is caught smack in the middle. While she’s out jogging one morning, Charlie and his boys in the pickup truck get a view of her that cause them to, er, leer. When Marsden responds to her concerns with, “Maybe you ought to start wearing a bra,” the tension between the couple begins to mount. Bosworth is utterly believable and her natural beauty begins to wane in favor of confusion, frustration,and eventually, pain, as she’s more and more caught in the web of Charlie and gang’s revengeful maneuvering.

James Woods is also around as the quintessential scary loco local. Makes the most vicious and intolerant type of this sort you can remember pale in comparison. His former football coach (in a town where football is everything) who acts like he still owns the town is genuinely around the bend and serves as the perfect catalyst for the violence to come. There’s a black sheriff, who has the difficult task of keeping the rednecks in line, and finally, there’s Charlie (Alexander Skarsgard, True Blood). Affectionately calls Amy nothing but “Amy Cakes”. Gives Marsden nothing but the most unctuous politeness, calling him “Mr. Sumner” at every turn before turning devious nasties against him and Amy behind their backs. Skarsgard gives the character nuance and enough charisma to start messing with our heads as we stay aligned with Marsden but only this much. Our real alliance is with Amy. She’s caught. Wants her husband to act more like a man and stand up to the turds’ bad behavior. With Peckinpah, the relative ethics of each side was even more even-handed. It’s now 2011, not 1971, and Amy clearly can’t, even for a moment, go so far as to align herself with the old boys as they abuse her, as was the implication in the original. Thus we have a remake more exploitative in its genre excesses with the one exception that Amy doesn’t for a minute accept Charlie’s horrible act. It’s either a softening of the message or a saner expression of it. Yet little is sane here. The tale of a meek man forced to get in touch with his own savagery is filmmaking on the edge no matter how you slice it.

We’re allowed to not hate ourselves when Marsden goes nuts and we root him on like he’s a Navy Seal going after Osama Bin Laden.

5.5 Blackwaters (out of 10)

Watching a full-fledged plague roll in front of you really broadens your outlook. Contagion is yet another disaster flick, only this time from top-shelf director Steven Soderbergh, who knows how to achieve a slow burn toward the relatively believable dread of a global pandemic. Ready to curl up to a lot of lab coat and voiceover media “action” while human stories emerge in the underbrush?

Good thing we’ve got Matt Damon as the voice of reason, Marion Cotillard as a premier scientific researcher who becomes afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome, Kate Winslet as an aloof, no-nonsense Doc who gets her, er, hands dirty; and Jude Law as a muckraking cum fraud thorn-in-dispassionate-CDC-honcho-Lawrence Fishburne’s side. Without these assorted Oscar winners and nominees and Gwyeth Paltrow as the epidemic’s living catalyst, we might be left with a movie closer to just any disaster movie despite Soderbergh’s highly proficient touches of craftsmanship.

In case you’re wondering what the human base level, lowest common denominator in a time of crisis is, here’s your answer. The desperate victims literally trample upon each other to acquire the inevitable vaccine. There’s looting and lawlessness to rival Children of Men for sheer human susceptibility to avarice.

What do we learn? It’s not the first time: a 19th century scourge wiped out a full one percent of the earth’s population….Casual contact is deadly when it comes to a highly contagious disease: Soderbergh’s most effective moments embellish victim’s every cough and touch with amplified close-ups that would be comic were it not for their inherent terror. He makes it easy to believe the outbreak spreads this fast and so devastatingly wide.

Law’s character, a blogger initially denigrated for not possessing a “real” journalistic pedigree, forces the issue of the politics of government’s control in rationing information flow, and perhaps in colluding with the interests of drug companies to favor only cures that jibe with their financial interests. Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns muffle Law’s message with a twist of their own pointing to his own lack of credibility, equating misinformation spread through the internet with the larger depicted sins of a public gone bat-shit. Seems like a copout but it’s more an ironic complexity.

With high voltage art direction and sound and visual effects, Soderbergh make up for (barely) a general lack of emotion and overambitious spreading himself too thin with his multiple characters and their viewpoints. You won’t forget a particularly grisly scene with Paltrow. You might, however, forget most of this film by the next day. Except you’ll wash your hands more and avoid shaking hands for awhile. Scientists say this is one disaster that could really happen.

7 handshakes out of 10

Watching a full-fledged plague roll in front of you really broadens your outlook. Contagion is yet another disaster flick, only this time from top-shelf director Steven Soderbergh, who knows how to achieve a slow burn toward the relatively believable dread of a global pandemic. Ready to curl up to a lot of lab coat and voiceover media “action” while human stories emerge in the underbrush?

Good thing we’ve got Matt Damon as the voice of reason, Marion Cotillard as a premier scientific researcher who becomes afflicted with Stockholm Syndrome, Kate Winslet as an aloof, no-nonsense Doc who gets her, er, hands dirty; and Jude Law as a muckraking cum fraud thorn-in-dispassionate-CDC-honcho-Lawrence Fishburne’s side. Without these assorted Oscar winners and nominees and Gwyeth Paltrow as the epidemic’s living catalyst, we might be left with a movie closer to just any disaster movie despite Soderbergh’s highly proficient touches of craftsmanship.

In case you’re wondering what the human base level, lowest common denominator in a time of crisis is, here’s your answer. The desperate victims literally trample upon each other to acquire the inevitable vaccine. There’s looting and lawlessness to rival Children of Men for sheer human susceptibility to avarice.

What do we learn? It’s not the first time: a 19th century scourge wiped out a full one percent of the earth’s population….Casual contact is deadly when it comes to a highly contagious disease: Soderbergh’s most effective moments embellish victim’s every cough and touch with amplified close-ups that would be comic were it not for their inherent terror. He makes it easy to believe the outbreak spreads this fast and so devastatingly wide.

Law’s character, a blogger initially denigrated for not possessing a “real” journalistic pedigree, forces the issue of the politics of government’s control in rationing information flow, and perhaps in colluding with the interests of drug companies to favor only cures that jibe with their financial interests. Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns muffle Law’s message with a twist of their own pointing to his own lack of credibility, equating misinformation spread through the internet with the larger depicted sins of a public gone bat-shit. Seems like a copout but it’s more an ironic complexity.

With high voltage art direction and sound and visual effects, Soderbergh make up for (barely) a general lack of emotion and overambitious spreading himself too thin with his multiple characters and their viewpoints. You won’t forget a particularly grisly scene with Paltrow. You might, however, forget most of this film by the next day. Except you’ll wash your hands more and avoid shaking hands for awhile. Scientists say this is one disaster that could really happen.

7 handshakes out of 10

Two Helen Mirren movies in under a week should be considered wildly fortunate for admirers of taut, no-nonsense acting of the first order. The problem arises when the subsequent film, The Debt, merely gives pause to fond remembrances of last week’s superior Mirren performance in Brighton Rock.

On paper, The Debt should blow Brighton’s doors off. Mossad agents, then and now, 30 years apart, yet in the same struggle to not only hunt a despicable Nazi but deal with highly ethical questions of truth and guilt in combating one of history’s greatest challenges. Suspense tropes, albeit too slickly, roam the territory between a mean and nasty abduction of a war criminal now working gynecology in 1960s East Berlin, and a late-1990s revelation that the past is far from perfect.

Weaving Jessica Chastain (Brad Pitt’s ostensibly mute wife in Tree Of Life) as his reluctant hero of the 60s portion of this flick, with her 30 years hence portrayer, Mirren, we’re left with more than a little vertigo. Sure, it’s exhilarating to watch Chastain and two male pals abduct and hold prisoner a horrendous villain, but my head hurt trying to go along with that other superior actor, Tom Wilkinson, showing up as a later day version of Chastain’s Mossad ringleader, or Ciaran Hinds as a similar 1990s version of Chastain’s one-that-got-away, Sam Worthington. It’s like being jolted back and forth between two different movies each trying too hard by half to identify itself with the other.

Director John Madden can boast Shakespeare in Love among his credits. Here it’s more like Mirren/Wilkenson/Hinds In Hock… Some suspenseful moments, to be sure, and Chastain again proves she’s a screen presence to keep an eye on, but in the end The Debt, introduces a great question: Is it OK to lie to the public if the greater good prevails as a result? It answers it only superficially, since genre requirements and spy movie schematics restrict a more natural resulting flow. Based on an Israeli film that hardly anybody saw (Ha-Hov, 2007) I’ve got a feeling the original should be sought out. Here, we’ve got superior performances by Jesper Christensen as The Nazi and Marton Csokas as the young Wilkinson, a perfunctory satisfying Mirren, and a slightly above average suspense movie that also throws in a primarily distracting love triangle. Meh….If I want to explore the ramifications of retribution against evil, I’ll rewatch Munich, thank you. Come to think of it, my spy movie jones was only merely teased here, too. Can’t wait for December’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy to perhaps whet that appetite more fully.

5.5 Another Foreign Film Remade out of 10

Two Helen Mirren movies in under a week should be considered wildly fortunate for admirers of taut, no-nonsense acting of the first order. The problem arises when the subsequent film, The Debt, merely gives pause to fond remembrances of last week’s superior Mirren performance in Brighton Rock.

On paper, The Debt should blow Brighton’s doors off. Mossad agents, then and now, 30 years apart, yet in the same struggle to not only hunt a despicable Nazi but deal with highly ethical questions of truth and guilt in combating one of history’s greatest challenges. Suspense tropes, albeit too slickly, roam the territory between a mean and nasty abduction of a war criminal now working gynecology in 1960s East Berlin, and a late-1990s revelation that the past is far from perfect.

Weaving Jessica Chastain (Brad Pitt’s ostensibly mute wife in Tree Of Life) as his reluctant hero of the 60s portion of this flick, with her 30 years hence portrayer, Mirren, we’re left with more than a little vertigo. Sure, it’s exhilarating to watch Chastain and two male pals abduct and hold prisoner a horrendous villain, but my head hurt trying to go along with that other superior actor, Tom Wilkinson, showing up as a later day version of Chastain’s Mossad ringleader, or Ciaran Hinds as a similar 1990s version of Chastain’s one-that-got-away, Sam Worthington. It’s like being jolted back and forth between two different movies each trying too hard by half to identify itself with the other.

Director John Madden can boast Shakespeare in Love among his credits. Here it’s more like Mirren/Wilkenson/Hinds In Hock… Some suspenseful moments, to be sure, and Chastain again proves she’s a screen presence to keep an eye on, but in the end The Debt, introduces a great question: Is it OK to lie to the public if the greater good prevails as a result? It answers it only superficially, since genre requirements and spy movie schematics restrict a more natural resulting flow. Based on an Israeli film that hardly anybody saw (Ha-Hov, 2007) I’ve got a feeling the original should be sought out. Here, we’ve got superior performances by Jesper Christensen as The Nazi and Marton Csokas as the young Wilkinson, a perfunctory satisfying Mirren, and a slightly above average suspense movie that also throws in a primarily distracting love triangle. Meh….If I want to explore the ramifications of retribution against evil, I’ll rewatch Munich, thank you. Come to think of it, my spy movie jones was only merely teased here, too. Can’t wait for December’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy to perhaps whet that appetite more fully.

5.5 Another Foreign Film Remade out of 10