Atomic Blonde (2017)

Between Atomic Blonde and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, I’m really digging the “retro spy” genre – and I’m including throwback spy flicks like Kingsman. There’s something very satisfying about the technological limits placed on the story, which must proceed without the advantages of cell phones and Wi-Fi; usually that careful crafting leads to a more cerebral script – something I always appreciate – and ends up having a trickle-down effect on the rest of the creative process. Going into the theater, I hadn’t known that Atomic Blonde was a period piece, nor had I realized quite how much I’d like the film – both of which were welcome surprises.

It’s 1989. The Berlin Wall is about to come down, and MI6 sends Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) behind the Iron Curtain to find a list of operatives stolen from a dead agent. Berlin station chief Percival (James McAvoy) helps her into East Berlin and enlists her help with East German defector Spyglass (Eddie Marsan), who’s stolen the list. While Lorraine looks for the truth amid a dalliance with French operative Delphine Lasalle (Sofia Boutella), she begins to wonder who she can trust.

I was exhausted after Atomic Blonde – not because the movie was overlong or boring to the point that my hindquarters went numb, but because I’d had to keep up with the film’s sneaky storytelling while enduring the intense and enervating action sequences. Atomic Blonde is not a film that goes for easy moments; none of it looks effortless, and the audience has to work just as hard as Lorraine to discover the identity of Satchel, a traitor in the ranks of MI6. But at least we have the good fortune not to get in the middle of those fight scenes, because they’re incredibly vicious.

Director David Leitch has done a fair job of staging his action scenes like single takes; there’s some digital trickery, to be sure, but in the moment it looks as though these long fights are all done in a straight cinematic line. We’ve got two long and arresting fights staged in apartment buildings – one in the living room, one on the stairs – that most other directors might have done in forty-cuts-per-second shakycam, but Leitch’s patient attention to the intensity of the fights allows them to exhaust the moviegoer and the characters, whose breathy pauses and stumbles make the combat even more real. Brownie points are due to the storytellers who devised Lorraine’s creative uses of an extension cord, a record player, and a doorframe.

In the interminable wait for Bond 25 and the ever-present question of whether Daniel Craig will suit up once or twice more, Charlize Theron proves herself a capable “Lady Bond,” although that does a disservice to Lorraine Broughton. There are certain similarities – their capabilities in close combat, their equal dexterity in the art of seduction – but Lorraine almost feels more of a piece with Bryan Mills in Taken, possessed of a “certain set of skills” that make her unstoppable, even as the odds against her increase. She’s more vulnerable than Mills, though, emotionally and physically; her stake in this fight is personal, and her fling with Delphine seems more genuine than any Bond girl’s. Moreover, those moments where she picks herself off the floor and continues to fight, even as she’s bruised and short of breath, give the character a smartly-crafted strength.

The soundtrack to the film is a smashing mix tape of 80s tracks, and the cinematography is as unforgivingly fluorescent as I imagine the 1980s would have been. It all adds up to a nicely unified experience, where the stark white lights of an interrogation room echo the neon pipes of a Berlin hotel room. Amid it all, there is the brainy sense of needing to keep up and the fervent hope that, as the credits roll, this won’t be the last time we see Lorraine Broughton. I’m ready to enroll her in the same camp as Wonder Woman, welcome alternatives to the same-old/same-old dudes who have run these genres for fifty years. Roll on the new, but please give me a moment to catch my breath.

Atomic Blonde is rated R for “sequences of strong violence, language throughout, and some sexuality/nudity.” Directed by David Leitch. Written by Kurt Johnstad. Based on the graphic novel The Coldest City by Antony Johnston and Sam Hart. Starring Charlize Theron, James McAvoy, Sofia Boutella, Eddie Marsan, John Goodman, and Toby Jones.

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

For an early March release starring a giant computer-generated ape and a jukebox soundtrack to make Suicide Squad blush, designed to be the second installment in an ongoing yet untested franchise, Kong: Skull Island is far better than it has any right to be. While far from the second coming of monster movies, it’s worth a look because of its fun use of the adventure horror genre with a cast that is never less than engaging.

What is the secret of Skull Island? In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, a government researcher (John Goodman) assembles a team for an expedition to the mysterious landmass – including a British tracker (Tom Hiddleston), a military escort (Samuel L. Jackson), and a war photographer (Brie Larson). However, not everyone on the team knows that Skull Island is home to the colossal Kong, a mighty ape who’s far from the least of their worries.

I’ve seen a lot of critics lament the belabored point that Kong: Skull Island does not live up to the original 1933 film, to which I have to say – is it supposed to? Isn’t this a bit like complaining that your girlfriend’s recipe for apple pie can’t compare to the one that’s been in your family for generations? And as apple pies go, Kong: Skull Island is a real peach of a pie. I laughed, I held my breath, and I thrilled to the spectacle (and seeing it in an immersive 3D IMAX experience didn’t hurt). It’s popcorn fun at its finest.

Kong: Skull Island is exuberantly fun, enthusiastic about its content, but more importantly it gets the audience on board with that with equal fervor. After an opening scene that ably demonstrates the scope of the action, the film stages several scenes of character development – admittedly, this isn’t War & Peace, and the characters aren’t exactly breaking any molds, but the performers are having so much fun nibbling on the scenery that it’s easy to play along. Once we get to Skull Island, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts stages a number of very engrossing set pieces that I’ve called adventure horror – think Pirates of the Caribbean by way of Alien, Stephen King’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. Kong: Skull Island mixes the period piece atmosphere of a comedic adventure film with the sudden onset of terrifying dread as these funny characters find themselves in genuinely perilous situations, and it’s to Vogt-Roberts’s credit that these tonal shifts manage not to feel disjointed.

I’ve said that the character work in Kong: Skull Island won’t dazzle you with originality, but again, in a film that stars King Kong, I’m not sure they need to do so. And the good news is that Kong is really quite stunning, like the recent Planet of the Apes movies on steroids. While I was aware that Kong has been, for lack of a better term, embiggened so that he can eventually go toe-to-toe with Godzilla in a sequel down the pike, I couldn’t help feeling that a larger Kong was what set this one apart and justified another Kong film. (I was surprised, however, to read that we’ve had fewer than ten King Kong films since 1933. That number seems low to me.) That larger Kong motivates our characters to react differently to him; he’s no longer a sideshow attraction to be captured and tamed. He’s a dangerous monster, either an object of fear or a massive target to kill. Tom Hiddleston does broody and British as well as ever, tracking and understanding Kong, while Brie Larson gets to do a fun updated riff on the Fay Wray “damsel” who draws Kong’s eye in a way that feels fresh and more female-friendly than before. While Shea Whigham ends up stealing the show with his blissfully oblivious army captain, it’s Samuel L. Jackson’s eyes themselves who become a star attraction. Frequently shot in intense close-ups that look like something out of a samurai revenge film, Jackson’s eyes play the fury of Preston Packard like Captain Ahab by way of Colonel Kurtz, pitted to perfection against the deftly-animated human-like peepers of our snarling simian star.

To tell you the truth – I never lie, dear reader – I am not all that thrilled with the idea of King Kong vs. Godzilla, which feels a little bit like another studio’s attempt to crib the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s success by building yet one more franchised shared universe. I’m not opposed to the idea in principle, and you’ll probably see a review of Godzilla vs. Kong right here in 2020, if all goes well. But the truth of the matter is that I enjoyed Kong: Skull Island so much as a standalone that I’d rather not look too far forward just yet. Let me enjoy this one for a while, and if there’s more of the same coming down the river, all the better.

Kong: Skull Island is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and for brief strong language.” Directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts. Written by John Gatins, Dan Gilroy, Max Borenstein, and Derek Connolly. Starring Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson, and John C. Reilly.

Monday at the Movies - October 31, 2016

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” Today’s Halloween, so we’ve got a very scary feature on tap for you.

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) – For a film released back in March, there’s something suitable about me finally getting around to it in October. 10 Cloverfield Lane is a quiet creepy success, perfect for an after-midnight movie with all the lights out. Like its titular predecessor from 2008, 10 Cloverfield Lane is a bit of a mystery box, about whose plot the less said, the better. There’s a fine twist, though – where the original Cloverfield left no question about its monster movie affinity, 10 Cloverfield Lane invites us to wonder along with our protagonist Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) whether her captor (John Goodman) is telling the truth that the world has been unlivably ravaged by forces unknown. Director Dan Trachtenberg plays up the claustrophobic aspect of the bunker prison, which might actually be Michelle’s salvation. Winstead is suitable as the damsel in quasi-distress, an unsurprisingly competent hand at the panicked till. But it’s Goodman’s show through and through. I’m a big fan of movies like this, which give master craftsmen a chance to play a role that is truly terrifying, and Goodman plays it perfectly. At turns, he’s the true monster of the film, a horrifying abductor whose mouth-breathing portends a kind of supernatural terror; in other moments, though, he’s surprisingly sensitive and paternalistic, suggesting he might not be all bad – misguided, perhaps, but well-intentioned. Of course, the film never cops out and does address its central questions, and sooner than you’d expect, too, leading to a final act that is divinely unpredictable. With the recent news that there’s more to come from the Cloverfield brand, 10 Cloverfield Lane doesn’t need to take me captive.

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

The Gambler (2014)

Wherefore art thou, William Monahan?  Whither went the man who won an Oscar for the screenplay to my single favorite movie of all time, The Departed?  Well, it seems we know; he had a hand in the dismal Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, and now this.  The Gambler isn’t on par with the disappointing and ultimately unnecessary Sin City sequel, largely on the strength of the performances, but it is a tragically unengaging affair.

Mark Wahlberg stars as Jim Bennett, a literature professor and novelist with a gambling addiction and a laundry list of sharks (Michael K. Williams and John Goodman among them) to whom he owes money.  While he wrestles with his debts, he borrows money from his mother (Jessica Lange) and enters into a semi-illicit romance with one of his top students (Brie Larson).

As someone who has taught literature at the college level for some time now, I must begin by saying that the classroom scenes in The Gambler are halfhearted at best and, at worst, horribly ill-conceived.  They seem to serve only to introduce the character of Lamar so that he can be in place for the climax of the film, because top student Amy (more about whom, later) doesn’t contribute much.  It’s evident that Monahan hasn’t set foot in a classroom in a very long time, even setting aside the utter absurdity of placing Camus next to Shakespeare on a survey course syllabus.  Bennett’s class sessions, which oscillate between a packed lecture hall and a group of barely ten students, are longwinded, unfocused, with little to no actual literary content; instead, Bennett insufferably berates his students and himself until dismissing them early because one is sick of the other.

Maybe that’s the point, you suggest, to which I’m willing to listen – at which point, however, I respond that the very characterization of Jim Bennett is a colossal misstep.  Either he’s deliberately unlikeable, or Monahan’s script has failed the character.  I’m inclined to think the latter based on the film’s conclusion.  Without spoiling anything, the character pulls off an eleventh-hour personality change and becomes really quite clever – this after two hours of the gambling equivalent of Leaving Las Vegas.  I’m sorry, Gambler, you can’t be both an unflinching look at the woes of addiction and then go for the Hollywood ending.

Then there’s the whole problem with Larson’s character.  As near as I can tell, the sum purpose of her character is that Amy is someone with whom Mark Wahlberg’s character can have sex.  I’d forgive the script the intensely problematic aspect that Bennett has a relationship with a student if the script didn’t explicitly point out how inappropriate this is and then proceed to do nothing with that detail.  The worse crime is that the character is virtually devoid of personality and could be removed from the film entirely without any impact on the plot whatsoever.

None of this, incidentally, is the cast’s fault.  Wahlberg, Williams, and especially Goodman all turn in grand performances, and if the production starred rank amateurs I’d have walked out.  This holy trinity, however, does the best they can with the material, and my faith in them maybe even elevates the material.  There are a few really snappily-written monologues in the film, mostly leading up to scenes in which Bennett borrows money, monologues that make me long for the William Monahan with whom I fell in screenplay love.

If you’ll indulge the concluding pun, I think The Gambler is something of a gamble for moviegoers.  Either you’ll have the patience for the uneven screenplay or you won’t, but the game is rigged in favor of an unearned Hollywood ending amid a host of master showmen brandishing their hands.

The Gambler is rated R for “language throughout, and for some sexuality/nudity.”  The language is as salty as the popcorn, rife with the F-word, and a brief scene in a strip club shows topless women.  Wahlberg gets roughed up a bit by the folks to whom he owes money.

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!

Monsters University (2013)

Aside from Cars 2 (which, if we’re being honest, felt a little like a cash grab), Pixar’s made a name for itself for high quality original material, only dipping a second time into the well when the story merits it.  We go all the way back to (before) 2001’s Monsters, Inc., which gets the prequel treatment with Monsters University.  And like a matriculating monster, Monsters U stumbles at first but finds itself and recovers by film’s end.

Set to fulfill his lifetime dream of becoming a professional scarer, Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) heads to top college Monsters University.  There, studious Mike meets James P. Sullivan (John Goodman), son of a top scarer and more party-hearty than study-buddy.  Antagonized by the stern Dean Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren), the two enter into the college’s olympian Scare Games, with their reputations and their standing at the college on the line.

Entering prequel territory for a buddy picture like Monsters, Inc. verges on predictable in the sense that the film has to cover the “adversaries turn amigos” plot beat in order to feel narratively fulfilling.  Monsters U hits those moments without feeling too forced; remember, Mike and Sulley were hardly birds of a feather in Inc.  Monsters U does not, however, spend too much time making Mike and Sulley polar opposites that meet in the middle, casting them more as contrasting types who begrudgingly work together.  (More interesting for the prequel enthusiast:  the way that Monsters U recasts the tension between Mike and in-crowd wannabe Randall [Steve Buscemi], now college roommates divided by fraternity loyalties.)

There are lots of very interesting things going on in the movie, which aren’t explored at much length in order to focus on the intramural Scare Games.  I see the value in concentrating on the Scare Games; the episodic nature of an event-based competition helps us to see how Oozma Kappa (Mike’s fraternity) improves, and it allows the filmmakers to expand the Monsters world by showing various other creatures (plus it boosts the toy line significantly).

But even in spite of the parts where Monsters U feels paint-by-numbers – which, in Pixar’s hands, is still plenty enjoyable if more generic than usual – there are moments of pure genius that remind us why Pixar movies are still the pinnacle of animated film (or, perhaps, even above most live-action storytelling).  I’ll pit the last twenty minutes of Monsters U against any of the other great Pixar moments for genre-bending imagination and exuberant pathos.  It’s almost too good to spoil where the movie goes, but the film quickly shirks that cliché you feel it’s embracing before contorting 180 degrees into a monster-inflected take on the “Play nice” scene from Toy Story. 

It ends with a callback to a bit of Inc. you didn’t expect to see, but the real heart comes when Dean Hardscrabble – in a turn delivered strongly by Mirren – warms up ever so slightly to our heroes.  It’s comparable to Anton Ego’s change of heart in Ratatouille, and as with Peter O’Toole it’s a reminder that the film needs as much of these top thespians as we can get.  Otherwise, the voice cast is what you’d expect from Pixar – pitch-perfect and full of aural treats (like Aubrey Plaza’s laconic sorority president, though Nathan Fillion’s swagger is more distracting because of how larger-than-life his voice tends to be).

In the end, I find myself having written a more positive review than I anticipated, in part because there’s nothing about Monsters University that is entirely irredeemable; even when they’re not pulling out all the stops creatively, the Pixar team is still lightyears (pun intended) ahead of the competition.  But when they do, Monsters University is a real scream.

Monsters University is rated G.  A few monsters have tricks and skills that might scare the wee babies, but overall most kids can handle it.

The Hangover Part III

When director Todd Phillips unleashed The Hangover, he really let the dogs out in one of the funniest movies of the last five years.  The sequel wasn’t an entire dud, keeping enough of what worked while choosing to recycle most of the plot of the first movie without much vigor.  For Part III, we’re promised an end to the trilogy, an end that’s more Godfather III than Dark Knight Rises.

There’s no wedding, no bachelor party, not even a morning-after hangover – just an intervention for man-child Alan (Zach Galifianakis) after an unfortunate incident involving a giraffe.  En route to rehab, Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), and Alan are abducted by mad mafioso Marshall (John Goodman), who’s got a beef with Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong).  Tasked with finding Chow, the Wolfpack goes on the hunt.

The Hangover Part III is not a terrible movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s far from the resounding success of the first film.  Mercifully, Phillips doesn’t retread over the what-just-happened plot of the first two, and it’s to his credit that he attempts something new.  But in his verve for a creative closer, he left a handful of laughs somewhere along the trail, and Part III just isn’t as funny as its predecessors.  There are a few great moments, mostly due to some stellar line readings, and a moment or two of physical comedy, but overall Part III doesn’t hit the high bar on humor.  It’s not that it’s subtler; it’s just more restrained and perhaps even a bit more contemplative as the franchise winds down. 

The good news is that everyone still turns in consistently good work.  Galifianakis, the undisputed breakout star of the first film, is suitably kooky and not suited for the real world, an awkward bundle of issues that should have been worked out in kindergarten.  Cooper and Helms are still able straight men, though Helms gets more to do with his deft dry heaves, hilarious as ever.  And newcomers Goodman and Melissa McCarthy (as a pawn shop proprietor and amour pour Alan) fit in perfectly, exuberantly over the top with their collaborators; it’s a shame that they’re practically cameos, since their reliably solid work comprises much of the real treats the film has to offer.

Then we get to the bad news.  Aside from missing the consistent roaring-in-the-aisles laughter of the first film, The Hangover Part III makes the unpardonable mistake of giving us way too damn much Leslie Chow.  I don’t know who decided Ken Jeong has ever been funny, but I wasn’t invited to that meeting and indeed would have voted against it.  Chow was unquestionably the worst bit about the first Hangover, but there his presence was minimized; his expanded role in Part II was one of that film’s worst excesses.  Here, it’s worse; it’s everywhere.  It’s uninspired, hammy, amateurishly caricatured, and a little bit offensive – but the worst problem about Mr. Chow is that he’s just not funny.  And in a comedy movie, that’s a deadly sin.

But if Part III is like The Godfather Part III, Chow is unquestionably the Sofia Coppola of the flick.  But like Godfather III, Hangover III is as good a note as any to end the trilogy – not overstaying its welcome, conscious of its own finality, and without the need to suggest further installments.  The Hangover franchise has, I believe, fully run its course, and it’s better to end on a passable note than by overstaying its welcome. 

The Hangover Part III is rated R for “pervasive language including sexual references, some violence and drug content, and brief graphic nudity.”  The dialogue is pretty crude, unapologetically talking about orifices and objects of entry; there are a few firearm casualties and several discussions of drugging people.  As for the nudity, it’s prosthetic and restricted to the mid-credits scene (which maybe you don’t want to miss).

Monday at the Movies - January 21, 2013

Welcome to the first “Monday at the Movies” of 2013!  (Somebody went to the movies a lot in January.)  This week, two features that elicited less-than-favorable reactions – though you may be surprised which one I enjoyed more...

Red State (2011) – Kevin Smith is a talented (if loquacious) raconteur, but I’ve never been a big fan of his movies; Chasing Amy is just okay, and Mallrats has its moments.  It just seems that Smith doesn’t have very much to say in movies filled with chattering.  With Red State, Smith approaches a theme – that extreme belief in anything, be it God or country, is dangerous – and then bludgeons you over the head with it.  Smith clearly has an axe to grind with Patriot Act-ers and the Westboro Baptist Church, but his disapproval of these groups is so unsubtle that (no joke) Smith actually cameos to shout “Shut the f--- up!” at a preacher.  The film imagines Westboro as Hostel-style torture pornographers, murdering local homosexuals and adulterers on the orders of Abin Cooper (Michael Parks).  The film escalates when Cooper’s church kidnaps a trio of teenagers before the ATF – led by John Goodman – bumble their way into a raid on the compound.  Red State is, surprisingly for Smith, quite violent, but there’s neither mirth nor menace in the bloodshed; instead, the movie plods along without any suspense or momentum.  The film is populated by many character actors – Goodman, Melissa Leo, Stephen Root, Kevin Pollak – but surprisingly the standout performance here is Michael Parks, surprisingly because Parks hasn’t really been acting when I’ve seen him team up with Quentin Tarantino.  As Cooper, Parks is equal parts charismatic and terrifying, subtle with a manic gleam in his eye; thanks to Parks, it’s not difficult to see how Abin Cooper could have acquired such power.  Parks’s performance, combined with an odd compulsion to see how this mess will all turn out, ends up redeeming the film and making it watchable, though faith in Kevin Smith as a filmmaker has yet to be earned.

V/H/S/ (2012) – I’m a sucker for a good horror film, only there are so few of them around that I almost always write off the genre as a dumping ground for most of what Hollywood would be unable to sell without some blood and breasts.  Paradoxically, one of my favorite movie experiences is watching a truly scary film with all the lights off, allowing that sense of dread to creep into my very being as the movie washes over me.  None of this was my experience with V/H/S, an amateurish-at-best attempt to capitalize on the dying craze of found footage.  The film revolves around a group of friends who break into an abandoned house to steal a videotape, allowing the film to take on an anthology format as we watch the tapes with the characters.  Perhaps using a dead medium like the VHS tape is a perfect analogy, because V/H/S is better off left in the basement with those moldering relics of a bygone era of home video.  There are almost no good scares here, only two memorable moments of palpable dread (a knife-wielding camerawoman and a haunted house with arms coming through the walls), and a cast populated by “fresh faces” so unskilled that their bad acting is entirely distracting.  You’d think that any anthology would have at least one redeeming entry (even the disappointing New York, I Love You, after all, did), but the rubbish acting, the unconvincing gimmick (why, for example, would a Skype call be on a VHS tape?), and the generally misogynistic tone make V/H/S an unredeeming waste of time.

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

Argo (2012)

I’ve been on record as saying that Ben Affleck is a better director than an actor (the former often helping the latter), and with Argo Affleck three-peats with another suspenseful thriller that, despite a true-story foregone conclusion, ratchets up the anxiety.

In addition to working behind the camera, Affleck stars as Tony Mendez, the CIA’s top exfiltration agent.  Since he specializes in getting people out of hot spots, Mendez is called to consult on the case of six Americans in Iran who escaped the 1979 embassy hostage crisis but are holed up in the Canadian ambassador’s home.  To do so, he forms a fake movie company with the support of a prosthetics designer (John Goodman) and a once-was director (Alan Arkin).  Thus armed with “the best bad idea we’ve got,” Mendez flies to Iran to establish cover stories to disguise the refugee embassy workers as a film crew.

Surprisingly for the man who starred in such trainwrecks as Gigli and Daredevil, Ben Affleck is shaping up to be one of this generation’s better directors.  With Gone Baby Gone, Affleck established a cinematic style for himself that relied on tension and suspicion, while in The Town Affleck added himself in front of the camera, demonstrating both directorial consistency and better acting than he’d done in years.  Argo, then, completes the hat trick with another taut thriller in a nail-biting setting.

Affleck uses claustrophobia to great effect here, giving the sense that the walls are closing in.  Absent are the spacious CIA interiors we’ve come to expect since Homeland or the James Bond flicks; instead we get an intelligence office where the ceiling is too low, the lighting dim, and the tempers high.  Similarly, Iran is a place swarming with bodies, physically and ideologically oppressive.  All of this is captured in the film’s visual language, which builds an effective sense of discomfort even though we know that the ending is going to be a happy one.

But the film isn’t all gloom and doom.  In the best film tradition, the film defuses weighty subject matter with a talented cast of lighthearted characters, where the humor isn’t always dark.  As a CIA head honcho, Bryan Cranston continues his inter/post-Breaking Bad career revival by popping tense moments with an expertly timed one-liner (the result, no doubt, of his comedic training).  Also fun to watch are Goodman and Arkin, the film’s ostensible Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who manage to balance patriotism with pathos, solemnity with comedy; true, they play the same characters they’ve always played – the gregarious goliath and the cantankerous old man – but they play it well, their star power and recognizability even helping their performances as Hollywood power brokers.

Conversely, Affleck wisely casts relatively unfamiliar character actors as the escaped hostages.  You’ll probably recognize them in passing, in a “Where have I seen her” kind of way, but it won’t distract; rather, it underscores the universality of the story Affleck is telling.  Likewise, familiar face Victor Garber hides under a wig and thick glasses to portray the Canadian ambassador as a paternalistic shepherd.  The cast clearly has chemistry among themselves – the refugee hostages in particular – but they’re also quite good at subtle glances to indicate internal stress or some emotional backstory.

While it isn’t enough to put him in the same strata as Scorsese or Nolan, Argo does demonstrate that Ben Affleck’s recent string of successes has not been a fluke.  Rather, I’d say we’re looking at a contender once the Oscars roll around.


Argo is rated R “for language and some violent images.”  The F-word is dropped several times in the film, often as part of a hilarious catchphrase, and the film’s depiction of Islamic fundamentalists may be disturbing or frightening for some, though the film is mostly bloodless.

Come back on Wednesday for The Cinema King’s review of Looper – stay tuned!

Monday at the Movies - March 19, 2012

Welcome to Week Twelve of “Monday at the Movies.” On the docket this week, an Oscar winning movie, a movie as good as The Wicker Man (2006), and a trip between worlds: in other words, two hits and a miss this week – but oh, what a miss!

The Artist (2011) – This is the second silent film in as many weeks here on The Cinema King, although it might be unfair to label Michel Hazanavicius’s Best Picture winner as such, since the film does feature diegetic sound in several important scenes. While the revisiting of the silent film is a bit of a gimmick, the ways in which Hazanavicius and company subvert the expectations that come along with the genre redeem the film from being merely “that silent film.” I remain unconvinced that The Artist is better than fellow nominee Hugo, but it’s an equally compelling love letter to the cinema and its magic. The acting is, predictably, over-the-top, as all silent performances must be, and lead actor Jean Dujardin has no compunctions about chewing the scenery as necessary while portraying the actor George Valentin and his fall from fame. More restrained, mercifully, is his leading lady Bérénice Bejo, who plays talkies flapper Peppy Miller and can convey more with a wink than a lot of today’s crop of actresses. A few familiar faces round out the supporting cast – James Cromwell, John Goodman, and Malcolm McDowell among them – but all ears must necessarily be on Ludovic Bource’s score, which flounces through the highs and wallows in the lows of George Valentin’s descent. I enjoyed the film and was glad to finally start to catch up on last year’s Oscar frontrunners, although I must confess that there are parts where the film drags and most conventional filmgoers will lose interest. But stick with it; the ending is among the best I’ve seen in recent years.

Drive Angry (2011) – You can always count on Nicolas Cage for a really bad movie, but whether it’ll be an enjoyably bad movie or just a waste of film is always up for grabs. It’s been said that you can judge a Nic Cage flick by how far back his hairline goes, and in Drive Angry we’re getting a lot of forehead. And yes, it’s as bad as all that. In fact, the only thing that redeems Drive Angry from being completely unwatchable is that it seems to be in on its own joke, recognizing how absurd it is and reveling in its own ridiculousness. Nic overacts at level red as John Milton, late of hell, walking – nay, driving – the earth in search of his granddaughter, who’s about to be sacrificed by a satanic cult. Riding shotgun is Amber Heard as ex-waitress Piper, a pretty face who doesn’t do much aside from a fight scene near the middle of the film, and the villainous William Fichtner (recognizable as the bank manager in every film you’ve ever seen) plays The Accountant, who’s looking to return Milton to hell. I didn’t see the film in 3-D, and it’s apparently lost a bit of extravagance in the translation to two dimensions, but one thing the movie isn’t missing is explosions. A credible plot, realistic dialogue, meaningful character interactions, and narrative creativity – all of these are nowhere to be seen in Drive Angry, but at least (to borrow a line from Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok) it blowed up real good.

John Carter (2012) – It’s a major science fiction franchise, backed by arguably the biggest studio in town and a story by a major author of the twentieth century. Why, then, did it underperform? Taylor Kitsch stars as Civil War vet John Carter, who finds himself transported to Mars, where he’s quickly embroiled in a planetary conflict between the Tharks (led by Willem Dafoe’s voice in the body of a Green Martian), the Red Martians (with their king Ciarán Hinds), evil Sab Than (Dominic “McNulty” West), and the mystical Therns (headed by Mark Strong’s menacing Matai Shang) over the hand of Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). Director Andrew Stanton has lent a hand on nearly every Pixar film, but for his first live-action solo outing John Carter is surprisingly good. Critical response has not been kind, and I’m not quite sure why. Granted, John Carter is not the best film you’ll see all year (wait until July for that), but it’s more than diverting; the effects are solid (although the Tharks recall the dismal Na’vi), the cast is strong, and the story is involving (if comprised of several infodumps). The best I can come up with is that John Carter’s biggest detriment is a weak marketing campaign; this ought to be a summer blockbuster, but it’s dumped ignominiously into the middle of March with not a single action figure on the shelves. I’d like to see a sequel, because it seems that the creative team is working very hard to introduce a lot of factions in an uncomplicated manner; I only hope they get a franchise out of it, because the last trilogy with which Andrew Stanton worked on made us all cry over a sheriff doll and a space ranger action figure.

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

The Big Lebowski (1998)

To say that I'm a fan of the Coen Brothers is something of an understatement: they're among my favorite filmmakers, abundantly entertaining and deftly profuse. So to say that The Big Lebowski is my favorite Coen flick is probably also an understatement (though Barton Fink kind of muddles that statement).

There are two Jeffrey Lebowskis - The Dude (Jeff Bridges), amiable stoner hero extraordinaire prone to swilling White Russians, and The Big Lebowski (David Huddleston), a prime mover in the L.A. region. When the two are confused by a pair of nitwit goons - and one micturates on The Dude's rug - looking for The Big Lebowski's wife Bunny (Tara Reid) and the money she owes to one Jackie Treehorn, that's where the trouble begins. It only gets worse when The Dude tells bowling buddies Walter Sobchak (a perfectly over-the-top John Goodman), a Vietnam vet obsessed with his service and his religion ("Shomer Shabbos!"), and Donny (Steve Buscemi), who can't seem to get a word in edgewise, Walter convinces The Dude to petition The Big Lebowski for rug compensation. After all, "that rug really tied the room together."

That's all in the first ten or so minutes. The rest is a tangled web of mystery, blackmail, kidnapping, Creedence Clearwater Revival, pornography, deceit, and bowling. Eat your heart out, Raymond Chandler. Speaking of Chandler, this is the best adaptation of The Big Sleep since Bogart and Bacall bantered back in the Forties. It's also the most comprehensible, although I'll admit it took me a second viewing to fully understand just what had happened. This is a top-notch screenplay from the Coens, poetically profane and tantalizingly tangled.

Much as Sweeney Todd was for Tim Burton, this is the movie that the Coens have been aiming to make throughout their whole career. It's got all the Coen staples - both plot points and cast members - and it's their pinnacle film. Nothing before or since - not even No Country for Old Men, Oscar-winner though it may be - has matched The Big Lebowski.

The film takes place in a world populated by classic Coen characters, The Dude and Walter not least among them. There's John Turturro as pederast bowler Jesus Quintana, who talks a big game; Philip Seymour Hoffman as bootlicking sycophant butler Brandt; Julianne Moore as feminist artist Maude, who wants The Dude in more ways than one; Ben Gazzara as mysterious smut peddler Jackie Treehorn; Arthur Digby Sellers, a classic TV writer now confined to an iron lung; his son, a sloppy juvenile delinquent; and Sam Elliott as The Stranger, a narrator soothing enough to give Morgan Freeman a run for his money.

It's difficult to say much more about The Big Lebowski beyond "It must be seen." This is a wholly original movie that really escapes description. Relaxed and entertaining, The Big Lebowski is certainly my favorite Coen Bros. picture - and may even land a spot on my irregular-around-the-margins Best Movies of All Time list.

Barton Fink (1991)

Where do we begin discussion about a film like the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink? Do we examine the allegories to Nazism, the Fight Club syndrome that diagnoses most films as "it's all in his head," my personal theory that the Hotel Earle is really hell, or do we simply ask "What the heck is up with John Turturro's hair?"

After the lackluster Blood Simple., I needed a film that would restore my faith in the filmmaking abilities of Joel and Ethan Coen. It was then that I realized that I was two films shy of seeing the enire Coen canon - Barton Fink and The Hudsucker Proxy. Almost by fate, Fink fell on television yesterday afternoon, so I had to take a powwow for it.

Let me say this about Barton Fink. It is the most fascinating "slow movie" I have ever seen. That is, the pacing of the movie is deliberate and without hurry, but - though little happens on the screen for large portions of time - I could not stop watching. Even as the credits rolled, I remained glued in thought.

After his socially conscious play makes big splashes, quirky playwright Barton Fink (Turturro) lands a gig writing Wallace Beery wrestling flicks for Capitol Pictures. While desperately attempting to dodge deadlines and writer's block, Barton Fink resides at the Hotel Earle, a place where Steve Buscemi valets, strange noises come from the sixth floor, and his boisterous neighbor Charlie Meadows (John Goodman) is a constant visitor - who sometimes steals the glassware. The film is a butterfly collection of the most unique characters the Coens have ever crafted, including angry film moguls Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner) and Ben Geisler (Tony Shalhoub), groveling gopher Lou Breeze (Jon Polito), drunken novelist Bill Mayhew (Frasier's dad John Mahoney), and his jaded sweetheart Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis).

If it sounds like a lot to take in, that's because there are a lot of parentheses in the preceding paragraph. The Coens keep the film moving and create three-dimensional figures that are characteristically Coen in their prolixity and personality overloads. The basic through-line of the film is simple - Barton Fink has writer's block. The rest of the film is a series of character-driven vignettes that give the Coens an opportunity to flex their dialogue muscles and give the actors involved the chance to show us just how believable they can make these ridiculous characters.

The central performance - though all are worthy of commendation - is Turturro's Fink. Fink is restrained, quiet, shy, and nervous; everything Turturro does, from the quiver in his voice to the way he holds his coffee cup, is completely in step with his character. Ditto for Goodman, who's perfectly cast as the jolly world's-worst-neighbor.

An added bonus is the absolutely beautiful set design and direction that make me nostalgic for a 1941 that probably never was. Every set piece contributes to the all out 40s-immersion the film projects, prompting me to say at several points, "Boy, I wish I could live there." Even the decrepit Hotel Earle, with its peeling wallpaper and occasionally igniting walls, generates that nostalgic feeling.

If we are to believe the theory that Barton Fink is a response to/remake of David Lynch's Eraserhead, it's a marked improvement. But I'm inclined to believe that Barton Fink is a wholly original Coen creation, because no one else could have come up with a product as quirky at this one.