This is the End
Jun 17 2013

Review: This is the End ***1/2

There might be a few people disappointed that “This is the End” effectively closes the door on a “Pineapple Express” sequel in one quick, hilarious scene. The “Superbad” reunion is even shorter. And for what it’s worth, “This is the End” might just be the last time you see any of these actors make a movie this silly and outrageous again.

But I guess that’s appropriate for a comedy about the end of the world. If Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg were going to make a movie that allows Seth, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill, James Franco, Danny McBride and all their other assorted friends the chance to play the fool one last time, they’d better do so in the most spectacularly destructive way possible.

Although they’re all playing themselves, this time officially, Rogen and Company have effectively driven the stake in their on-screen personas that have followed them through so many films since the “Knocked Up” days. They’ve been impaled by street lamps, sucked into sinkholes, eaten by cannibals and raped by demons, and maybe now they can usher in a new era of comedies from the ashes of their hilariously vulgar corpses.

More so than a scathing look at Hollywood, “This is the End” is the crew taking the piss, lampooning their screen selves for yucks all around. The film begins with Jay visiting Seth in L.A., in which the two have an epic weekend of pot and video games ahead of them. Is this their lifestyle? Perhaps not, but we as an audience can’t truly see them any other way. Continue reading →

Jun 11 2013

Review: Upstream Color ****

Upstream Color

Shane Carruth’s first film “Primer” was a maddeningly precise work of genius. Its lo-fi, home movie charm managed to amplify the science aspect of science fiction with a dense, procedural script. By its nature, it demanded to be scrutinized but resisted being solved, and “Primer” survives as not quite a cult mind-bender and not quite a critical darling.

Now nine years later, Carruth has grown up from a young man with studious fascination to a worn 30-something with little to his name. “Upstream Color” trades in the jargon for few words at all, and yet it is no less beguiling, impenetrable and a potential masterpiece.

But impenetrable does not mean without feeling. What can’t be unraveled about the plot or motivations in “Upstream Color” is amended by the pain and confusion that is inherent in these characters. On a rudimentary level, “Upstream Color’s” fantastical element involves a powerful form of hypnosis, a device used not as a suspense builder or parable, but one that makes us feel lost due to powers beyond our control. Continue reading →

Jun 3 2013

Rapid Response: Cleo from 5 to 7

Cleo from 5 to 7

About half way through “Cleo from 5 to 7,” so we’ll place her at about 6:00 PM in the movie’s timeline, the singer Cleo is rehearsing in her luxurious, yet empty loft with her composer and her songwriter. They offer comic relief as she claims to feel sick, and they work through a collection of diddys that would delight another audience. She listens in bemusement, and her charm, after lamenting if she’s going to be diagnosed with cancer, after nasal gazing at her own beauty and laying sweet nothings on her bland lover, has almost run out.

But in an instant, the composer begins to play a song called “Cry of Love.” The camera slowly swivels around the piano as Cleo starts to sing. A figurative black curtain drops and Cleo is isolated in her moment of pain and passion. An orchestra swells, and the moment does not show her pretension as earlier, but her utter vulnerability and transformation. This little aria is absolutely haunting, so emotional that she can’t even bring herself to finish.

This might just be one of the finest scenes in all of French New Wave cinema. But it works so perfectly because it catches you off guard, the transformation seems to happen in real-time, and the simple reality of its staging combined with a subtle and noticeable unreality is a true miracle.

“Cleo from 5 to 7″ carries through on that sensation throughout its duration. Its director, Agnes Varda, is one of the lesser known members of the French New Wave pantheon, and this is her earliest masterpiece at the height of an era. Continue reading →

Behind the Candelabra
Jun 2 2013

Review: Behind the Candelabra ***

Too gay, was the reason Steven Soderbergh gave that “Behind the Candelabra” became an HBO TV movie rather than a wide released feature. And yet this biopic on Liberace’s relationship with Scott Thorson shoves the homosexual politicking to the background in favor of the more familiar trope of marital bickering. Although much of the film is enjoyable in that Mr. Showmanship way, this genre, unlike Soderbergh’s other recent genre experiments, does not fit him as well.

Although Liberace (Michael Douglas) was a skilled pop pianist in the ‘70s, his real claim to fame was his fine-tuned crowd work. We’re introduced to Liberace through a dopey Boogie-Woogie number in his Vegas stage show made fun through his simple pleasantries. It’s not that Liberace was the natural showman, but that everything he says here seems just right, and it’s no wonder he wins over Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) along the way.

The nuance of Michael Douglas’s performance, one that strays away from impersonation, is that he does feel as though he’s trying. It is a performance, no matter whom he’s talking to, and that shows. It’s when we’ve been around this act too much that it grows old and tiresome, and that’s exactly what happens to Scott. Continue reading →

Frances Ha
Jun 2 2013

Review: Frances Ha ***1/2

Does 27 feel old? 23-years-old, which I’ll be in a week, is starting to feel that way: too young to really have forged a career in this day and age, yet too far out of school to still be coasting.

So it must feel ancient for someone like Frances (Greta Gerwig), the title character of “Frances Ha,” who is rapidly approaching that of a mature failure, but still feels young enough to be figuring things out. Noah Baumbach’s film captures the generational feel of modern millenials, much the same themes as Lena Dunham’s “Girls,” but does so in a way that feels fresh and personal.

Frances might just be a female Woody Allen surrogate for a new generation. Baumbach and Gerwig’s dialogue often feels like vintage “Hannah and Her Sisters,” with four-way conversations surrounding a dinner table that touch on joblessness, hipster poverty and casual hook-up culture in all the best ways, and all of it happening a mile a minute. Continue reading →

Jun 2 2013

Rapid Response: Anatomy of a Murder

Anatomy of a Murder

The casting of Jimmy Stewart in “Anatomy of a Murder” was a stroke of genius by Otto Preminger or whomever at Columbia dreamed up their pairing. Cast Humphrey Bogart and the tone mixed with the film’s already dark plot would’ve been too coldly grim for a courtroom drama, one more befitting a noir. Put another director in place, and Stewart’s performance turns away from the nuanced country lawyer with a sharp history and into the all too noble “aw, shucks”-ter he was always known for.

Maybe it’s Preminger’s cynicism that brings it out in him, but Stewart puts on one of the more unique performances in his career. He’s playing the sly, trickster always a few steps ahead and the smartest guy in the room, which is not usually the attitude of the humble defense lawyer in a movie such as this. Look at “The Verdict,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “12 Angry Men,” in which nobility shines through more than cunning. Stewart would’ve fit into one of those roles like a glove. But here he’s condescending of the witnesses on the stand, full of punchlines, playing the politics of the courtroom to his advantage, and only taking this murder case because it’ll give him a chance to get his feet wet against the current D.A., because he’s attracted to the defendant’s wife (Lee Remick) and because he’s not going to take any of his client’s (Ben Gazzara) crap.

Perhaps only Stewart would be able to nail this character, one who is acting not out of nobility but not out of sheer greed either, one who seems to be taking advantage of his situation, but also feels perfectly relatable, honest and even fatherly.

He helps to elevate “Anatomy of a Murder” to one of the best courtroom dramas ever made. It’s purely procedural, and it’s famous for its explicit discussion of rape, sex, panties and “spermatogenesis” in a Code-approved picture, but Preminger never goes for exploitation. Preminger denies us any of the explicit acts of violence used as the basis for the trial, which not only makes us suspect the truth later, but it also makes the courtroom scenes that much more effective and climactic. This is a film that only deepens in layers of intrigue as the plot goes on, and the whole thing feels just more devilish and suspenseful in the process. Continue reading →

House of Cards Kevin Spacey
May 28 2013

Cinema Isn’t Dying; The Business Is

“Ack! You can’t make movies out of statistics! That’s not art! AARRGGHHH!”

That’s my impression of a filmmaker or critic reading an article about Big Data, a currently buzzy, business-y tech term that every industry is currently figuring out what to do with, including Hollywood.

Now, I understand that most of the people who got into making movies or writing about them did so because they never wanted to have to learn about something like Big Data. But as a struggling movie blogger, I’ve had no such luck, and Big Data makes up a big chunk of the articles I’ve been reading for the past few months.

So it came as a shock to me to hear about this panel called “Big Data and the Movies” at the Tribeca Film Festival and see my worlds colliding. It happened to coincide with Netflix’s release of “House of Cards,” this New York Times article about a man using analytics to give notes on screenplays, and then of course two wonderfully insider and apocalyptic discussions about the state of cinema, one by A.O. Scott and David Denby at Tribeca, the other by allegedly retiring filmmaker Steven Soderbergh at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

With all those things together, I began to wonder: How does the movie industry innovate? Continue reading →

May 26 2013

“Blue is the Warmest Colour” wins Palme D’Or – Cannes 2013 Recap

Blue is the Warmest Colour

The Steven Spielberg led jury at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival selected Abdellatif Kechiche’s “Blue is the Warmest Colour” for the Palme D’Or Sunday, the festival’s top prize.

The Palme D’Or was awarded to not only the Tunisian director but also actresses Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux, an unprecedented move for the festival, as the festival has a rule that the Palme D’Or winner cannot also have a winning actor or actress. This enabled the jury to recognize the performers as equal authors in the work.

The film upset other favorites including Ashgar Farhadi’s “The Past,” which won the Best Actress award for “The Artist’s” Berenice Bejo, Alexander Payne’s road-trip comedy “Nebraska,” which won the Best Actor award for Bruce Dern, Kore-Eda Hirokazu’s “Like Father, Like Son,” which won the Jury Prize, and the Coen Brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis,” which won the runner up Grand Prix prize.

Although Cannes is often criticized for featuring too many films from “auteurs” and only a few rare chances for discovery, a fact likely pointed out in James Toback’s Cannes centered documentary “Seduced and Abandoned,” this year was touted as important thanks to the stature of its jury, the quality of the films and the legacy of the filmmakers.

Whereas 2012’s Palme D’Or winner “Amour” may have been seen as a fluke for picking up as many Oscar nominations as it did, a seal of approval from this jury could very likely spell Oscar gold down the line.

Here’s a round-up of just some of the more notable titles coming out of this year’s festival.

Continue reading →

Forbidden Planet
May 24 2013

Rapid Response: Forbidden Planet

“Forbidden Planet” exists in a peculiar dead-zone for famous Hollywood sci-fi’s. It’s too campy and stilted to be called truly great, but it’s also too grand and philosophical to belong to the McCarthy era B-movies of the period that in some cases have aged even better. It’s an imperfect film on numerous levels, but it works so memorably because “Forbidden Planet” is all about the pursuit for human perfection and the beauty in humanity’s flaws.

Though famous for its ahead-of-its-time special effects, Cinemascope aesthetic, high budget, early Leslie Nielsen performance and lofty ambitions, it’s actually one of the more subtle Shakespeare adaptations of its kind. Based on “The Tempest,” a group of soldiers hundreds of years in the future have ventured to the Earth-like planet Altair, where an entire colony had gone missing and never reported back. The one sole survivor is Dr. Morbius (Walter Pidgeon in a steadied, but high in the clouds performance), who has since fashioned a comfortable life with a talking robot named Robbie and his short-skirted vixen of a daughter, Alta (Anne Francis). Commander J. J. Adams (Nielsen) is tasked with discovering what became of the colony just as his own crew is slowly slaughtered by an unknown, invisible force.

You can see how “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” could be quite literally lifted from moments of “Forbidden Planet.” The pseudo 3-D title card recalls “Star Wars’” iconic opening credits, a cleansing pod on Adams’s ship resembles the transport beams on the Enterprise, and at one point a crew member comments on the natural beauty of Altair’s two mooons. Even the bulbous, slow moving Robbie the Robot seems to be a direct ancestor of Marvin the Paranoid Android and The Robot from “Lost in Space.” Continue reading →

Jack Reacher Tom Cruise
May 20 2013

Review: Jack Reacher **1/2

Look, I get that killing is bad no matter how you go about doing it, but Jack Reacher is a plain thug. Only firing a gun if he’s within point blank range, Reacher prefers to beat the pulp out of lesser opponents, finally getting in a few brutal finishing moves to the crotch, by breaking legs or wrists or finally stomping someone’s face in.

He makes for a disturbingly cold action hero, and the movie that shares his name, “Jack Reacher,” feels much the same.

Blending TV crime procedural talking points with hyper violent vigilante excitement, “Jack Reacher” explores the investigation of a man who went on a sharpshooter killing spree, murdering five random and innocent people, only to frame the attack on an Iraq War veteran discharged for a similar attack. Just before he’s beaten and goes into a coma, he asks for Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise), his former military detective, to come and help him.

Based on Lee Child’s series of novels, “Jack Reacher” has a distinctly literary quality for an action film. It’s labored with a heavy backstory and conspiracy nuance, but all of it in arguably the wrong places. We learn an awful lot about the supposed murderer, the female lawyer, investigator and love interest (Rosamund Pike) and her relationship with her father (Richard Jenkins) and the bizarre mastermind without even much of a reason to be in the movie (Werner Herzog being absolutely sinister and iconic while barely lifting an eyebrow), but very little about the mysterious Jack Reacher. Continue reading →