Monday at the Movies - July 29, 2013

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies” – this week, we backfill some of our missing Pixar coverage.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) – After A Bug’s Life didn’t inspire audiences the way Pixar might have hoped – although Toy Story 2 did – Pixar’s third original idea had a lot riding on its shoulders.  Aw, never mind, you know it worked; we’ve had Pixar movies galore since then, including a Monsters, Inc. prequel back in June.  But the one that started it all?  The original monster-buddy picture finds Sulley (John Goodman) and Mike (Billy Crystal) tearing up the Scare Floor, racking up the big screams in a private competition with slithery serpentine Randall (Steve Buscemi, in a wonderfully scummy villainous role).  The movie’s real soul, though, comes when an adorable toddler named Boo wanders into the monster world – a strict no-no for the creatures from our closets.  Though the animation isn’t as astounding as recent turns, the deliberately cartoonish nature of the characters engages us in an endearing way, especially (once again) the innocently chubby cheeks and spastic arm movements of Boo.  It’s not that she’s the only ray of light in a dismal feature film; Goodman and Crystal are perfect as the opposites-attract team of scarer and engineer, and Buscemi is a revelation as always as the antagonist.  But Boo is that one character in ten thousand who completely eclipses the rest of the movie; like Heath Ledger’s Joker or the monkey puppet Monk on HBO’s Family Ties, Boo steals not just the film but your very gaze in every one of her scenes.  She’ll make you laugh, and if she doesn’t make you cry that Randy Newman score almost certainly will.

Ratatouille (2007) – There comes a moment every time I rewatch Ratatouille where I sit back in my chair and think to myself, “My God, I really love this movie.”  It’s not always the same moment every time – usually it’s Remy’s silent plea not to be drowned or it’s Anton Ego’s big monologue evaluating whether or not anyone actually can cook (which, yes, still brings a tear or two of aesthetic sublimity) – but there’s something about Brad Bird’s second Pixar film that just hits you right square in the feels in a way that The Incredibles never did.  That’s not a slight to Incredibles, which I love, but Ratatouille manages to transcend a hokey conceit (talking mice?) and a clichéd message (follow your dreams) in one of my favorite Pixar movies.  Patton Oswalt voices Remy, a mouse with sensitive taste buds and a desire to cook, while Lou Romano plays Linguini, the clumsy but well-intentioned janitor-cum-chef who brokers a deal with Remy so that both can achieve their goals and feed Paris.  Naturally, the plan butts heads with Head Chef Skinner (Ian Holm), who resents both Linguini and the rat infestation, while top critic Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole, in a brilliant performance) fumes at the resurgence of a restaurant he once damned.  There’s so much this film does right – the friendship between Remy and Linguini, the familial bonds amongst the kitchen staff, the characterization of Ego – that makes Ratatouille an A-Number-One feature, topped with a score by Michael Giacchino (Pixar’s best, for my money) so perfect that you’ll be downloading recipes and wishing you had a “lil chef” to help you out.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - August 20, 2012

Welcome to Week Thirty-One of “Monday at the Movies.”  With the summer blockbuster season officially closed (I, The Cinema King, decree it – so let it be written, so let it be done), and in the wake of Prometheus, it’s time for that long-promised look at the “Alien Quadrilogy.”

Alien (1979) – Ridley Scott has been mostly canonized for Alien, and not without reason; more than thirty years later the film remains frighteningly effective and gruesomely imaginative, even with the lights on (how wonderful this film must have been in a full darkened theater!).  The story, a hybrid of science fiction and horror tropes, mutates frequently, much like its eponymous creature, so that the audience never gets a comfortable handle on things; instead, we’re put on edge at every twist and turn.  The cast doesn’t do Oscar-caliber work, but they too are pivotal in subverting expectation, particularly Sigourney Weaver, in a star-making performance as the heroine Ripley, and Ian Holm, in brilliant creepy form as the shady scientist Ash.  As with Prometheus, this is a film that functions as much on a visceral level as an intellectual/aesthetic one, with a pervasive feeling of suspenseful dread over the whole affair.  Scott wisely knows how much to show and how much to conceal, such that the creature might even be behind your sofa (you’d best make sure it’s not).  But unlike its prequel successor, Alien never aspires beyond its ability; we don’t need to know why the crew of the Nostromo is in space, nor do they have any goals but survival – nor, in this case, do they need them.  This is an insular and claustrophobic film which feels as taut as its scope.  Kudos especially to H.R. Giger, whose sexualized designs pervade the film and give it an offbeat sensibility that quickly and efficiently distances Alien from those other spaceship movies while setting an aesthetic tone for the future of the filmed future.  Effective and intelligent, Alien deserves its status as a cultural icon.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

Lord of War (2005)

I went into Lord of War expecting not to like it. Even as the FBI warning flashed across my screen, I settled into the couch and thought, "This is gonna be bad." I was expecting a cheesy accent, over-the-top emoting, and a film that generally deserved a better star.

Fortunately, I was mostly wrong. Lord of War is, in spite of my preconceived notions, enjoyable, and even Cage himself is pretty good here.

Narrated by its protagonist, Lord of War is a demi-biopic of arms dealer Yuri Orlov (Cage), who finds himself adapting to a new geopolitical climate after the fall of the Soviet Union. With his brother Vitaly (Jared "Paul Allen" Leto) as his partner, Orlov grapples with competing arms dealer Simeon Weisz (a smarmy Ian Holm), allies himself with Liberian dictator Andre Baptiste (Eammon Walker), and woos the girl of his dreams, model Ava Fontaine (Bridget Moynahan) - all while doding Interpol and its persistent agent Jack Valentine (Ethan Hawke). The film is a standard rise-and-fall story, with a moralistic twist at the end that turns it into a little something more.

I have a love-hate relationship with Nicolas Cage's films. Early Nic Cage - Raising Arizona, for example, and Honeymoon in Vegas - demonstrated a flair for comedic timing while playing offbeat characters with quirky and well-played mannerisms. A funny thing happened on the way to the modern day, and somewhere Nic's career fell to splinters, culminating in what I affectionately call the "Trilogy of Terrible" - Ghost Rider, Next, and The Wicker Man (my personal favorite "bad movie"). Recently, though, he seems to be on a bit of an upswing; the National Treasure franchise won't win any Oscars, but they're at least watchable, and I thought Cage was fantastic as Big Daddy in Kick-Ass. Lord of War brings Cage another step closer on the path to redemption, though he has a long way to go if I'm to forget the (in)famous line "How'd it get burned?!"

The rest of the cast is, for the most part, interchangeable. No actor or actress leaves a truly indelible mark on the film such that the roles couldn't be played by anyone else; as pursuing Interpol agent Jack Valentine, Hawke is fine, but any other actor could have done one step better (I'm thinking of Denzel Washington, but I don't know why). As Ava, Moynahan often bemoans her status as just another pretty face in this film, but I'm wondering if there's a bit of metafictional irony behind that, since any other "pretty" actress could have been just as good here. The only exception, as always, is Ian Holm, who does a fantastic job embodying arms dealer Simeon, once the top in his field and now struggling to retain his position - but I would have liked to see more of him in here, since his appearances are delightful but few and far between.

Though I'm labeling this as a "good" film and "to my liking," I should go on record as saying that the movie falls apart once it runs into the stereotypical "arms dealing is bad" moralism that ends the film. What began as an entertaining flick with a conscience turns into a conscience with moving pictures; suddenly the audience is preached at, with heavyhanded talk of "necessary evils" and closing title cards that indict members of the U.S. government and the UN Security Council for being worse arms dealers than Yuri Orlov. Huh? I don't know what it is about me, but I'm running into problems with films that start as one thing and end as another without successfully transitioning between the two.

Consequently, the film - and Cage - seems to run out of steam by the end. Cage seems tired, the plot careens into a highly politicized direction, and the film ends with none of the joy that it bore in the first 90 minutes. Perhaps that's the point; gunrunning is a joyless occupation. All right, but the film changes its focus to attempt to highlight the international gunrunning scene when we've previously focused only on Yuri; this switch is sudden and virtually ineffective, leaving only a jarring sense and the feeling that we're watching a different movie than the one we started with.

Lord of War bears an R rating "for strong violence, drug use, language, and sexuality." The violence is particularly graphic here, and the language is pretty strong. Drug use is limited to a few scenes surrounding cocaine, and sexuality includes fleeting moments of nudity as well as a pronounced presence of adultery and prostitution.

Big Night (1996)

There's something about Italian accents, I think, especially when they're mingled with shoutings about food and good-spirited feuding. From The Godfather to Goodfellas, from The Sopranos to Cake Boss (an exciting and hysterical reality show about cakemakers in Jersey), I've never been able to resist the dulcet tones of the Italian culture.

There's no Mafia in Big Night, but we do have Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub as brothers Secondo and Primo, who own and run the Paradise restaurant in 1950s New Jersey. They aren't doing great business and find themselves in some financial trouble, thanks in part to the uninspired yet heavily commercialized competition across the street. Their competitor Pascal (Ian Holm) is waiting out their business in the hopes that Primo and Secondo will eventually come work for him, but Pascal tosses the brothers a bone when he says that - as a personal favor - he's invited musical bigshot Louis Prima to dine at their restaurant tomorrow night. With one day to prepare for the big night, tensions flare as high as the flames in the kitchen.

I've said it once, and I'll say it again. Why isn't Stanley Tucci an A-lister? Between this, The Devil Wears Prada, and the trailer for Julie & Julia, it's high time that Mr. Tucci starts getting some of the respect that he deserves. Though he looks a lot like Andy Garcia in this one (perhaps they and Mark Strong should get together and play a trio of brothers), Tucci is in good form, emotionally gripping in one breath and comedically gifted in the next. Plus, Tucci co-wrote and co-directed Big Night. Can we please get this guy the recognition he deserves? (At least he's hitched his wagon to the Meryl Streep star, so at least more people will be seeing his films.) Shalhoub (TV's Monk) has the stronger temper and thus more of the comic opportunity, but he's got a real chemistry with Tucci, and it's not hard to believe the two are brothers.

But the scene stealer in the movie is neither Minnie Driver nor Isabella Rosselini nor even Allison Janney as love interests; for big stars, none of these three ladies (who have proven themselves elsewhere to be fairly gifted, professionally speaking) are given much to do, though Rosselini tries the best of the three. No, the real "best supporting actor" as it were is Ian Holm as Pascal. Though he's not terribly convincing as an Italian (his accent isn't as impeccable as Tucci & Shalhoub's), his turn as a top restaurateur and expert salesman (particularly of himself and his grandiose personality) is superb. If you ever wondered how Pixar & Co. chose Holm for the villainous Skinner in Ratatouille, look no further than his entertaining used car salesman of a cuisine king.

I came into this expecting a laugh-out-loud comedy, which the film delivers though only sporadically in top-notch moments (see: preceding paragraph) and not in a consistent cheek-wounding capacity like The Hangover did. It's more appropriately a drama film with a comedic streak. As a result, there was a bit in this film that felt unnecessary; a subplot involving infidelty felt like fat that needed to be trimmed from this steak of a film, making its characters too fallible and unnecessarily complex. Furthermore, there's a predictable ending, accompanied with a familiar message about how all we really have is each other (a theme I prefer delivered in the "Family first" capacity of Arrested Development). But the film scores points on execution here, because the film's final scene is a deaf play between Primo, Secondo, and Cristiano (a young Marc Anthony) - all done in one long take. Of course, I just melt like garlic in a frying pan when I see a well-done long take.

For a few well-done moments, well-timed dialogue, and a top performance from Ian Holm, Big Night is hot. The film, though, tends more to simmer than sizzle and so is best appreciated like a fine wine and not a quick shot of what-have-you.

Big Night is rated "R for language," most of which comes from moderate use of the F-word, primarily from Pascal. But that's part of what makes him so endearing, to me!