CIFF Review: Last Vegas

Hopefully this is the last time such legendary actors humiliate themselves like this.

“Last Vegas” screened as the Chicago International Film Festival’s Surprise Screening. This early review is merely an impression of the version screened. 

One would hope that a movie called “Last Vegas” might be the last time some legendary actors starred in such a simple, dumb comedy to be humiliated. Somehow such a thing seems unlikely, especially when this is hardly the first time Robert De Niro has signed up for such a pitiful exploit.

The difference is that Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline and De Niro will all likely survive “Last Vegas” mostly unscathed. Jon Turtletaub’s film is unfunny enough to be listless, a litany of Vegas set pieces with old people that are hardly even designed to be funny, and yet it still manages to fall far short of the kind of outrageous raunch and madcap insanity that came to define the “Hangover” sequels. Continue reading “CIFF Review: Last Vegas”

12 Years a Slave

“12 Years a Slave” is the heaviest, hardest film to watch of the year, but it’s much more than a grim history lesson.

A black woman in tatters is sitting in a cart crying uncontrollably as she pulls up to a luxurious Southern plantation home. A wealthy white woman comes to greet her new “property” and asks her husband why this one is in tears. She’s been separated from her children in the slave trade; it couldn’t be helped, he explains. “Poor woman,” the new master opines, “Your children will soon be forgotten.”

Such coldness despite an occasionally glossy and soothing tone is business as usual in the masterpiece “12 Years a Slave.” Like the stylish but burdensome “Shame” before it, Steve McQueen’s film is by far the heaviest, most difficult film to endure of the year. It should not be taken lightly that this is a film about slavery and all its harsh colors. Such devastating films are usually just about braving it only to learn a history lesson. “12 Years a Slave” is about maintaining your fortitude and still knowing who you are when you come out the other side.

The film is quite simply the story of a free black man living in upstate New York in 1840 who was kidnapped and sold into slavery for 12 years. That the man lived to tell his tale and write the memoir that inspired this film is magnificent enough. But McQueen uses Solomon Northup’s (Chiwetel Ejiofor) story to show us what freedom is. It’s not the ability to live in wealth and privilege, to live free of pain or to be allowed to walk where you please. Northup earned his freedom by remembering who he was when the time came. Being strong enough to retain that memory: that’s freedom. Continue reading “12 Years a Slave”

Gravity

“Gravity” is a jaw-dropping sci-fi that rewrites the rules of cinema.

For all of the innovative, jaw-dropping, never before seen CGI wonder in Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity,” the impossibly balletic movement of Emmanuel Lubezki’s camera and the impeccably seamless 3-D effects, one of the film’s most impressive and memorable things is something Cuaron has withheld.

In space, there is nothing to carry sound. Satellites collide and rupture into millions of pieces, jetpacks soar and glide through the stars and astronauts dangle from floating space stations, clinging with their last ounce of strength to avoid floating into the distance, and nothing is to be heard.

Although the swell of an orchestra will remind you this is a Hollywood film, “Gravity” shatters the mold of what it is to be epic. Today’s tentpole movies are all noise and bombast; the multi-million dollar visual effects are par for the course. Unlike “Avatar,” “Life of Pi” and “Hugo” before it, 3-D and CGI are not here to enhance. Working through technology that needed to be invented, Cuaron has invented something breathtakingly original.

His focus on sights, not sound, story nor style, has nearly taken cinema back to its silent day roots and helped to imagine a future vision for what cinema can be. Continue reading “Gravity”

Rapid Response: Trouble in Paradise

What is “The Lubitsch Touch”? It’s on full display in “Trouble in Paradise.”

“What would Lubitsch do?” This was the famous phrase Billy Wilder had emblazoned on his office wall, a testament to the German director’s impeccable taste. Where one director would be cynical, Lubitsch would be sweet. Where another would be zany, he would be sincere. And where most would be sexually blunt and awkward, he could be deceptively delicate and no less racy.

“Trouble in Paradise” is his finest film, a pre-code movie that embodies the best of his sophisticated, classy approach to farce as well as his gift with suggestive innuendos, romance and goofy, quick witted characters who would later define an entire genre of screwball comedy.

That “Trouble in Paradise” is so decidedly not a “screwball” but a satire in which the characters talk swiftly, their intentions are in the wrong place and their situations are absurd and exaggerated is exactly what makes it so perfect and indicative of the “Lubitsch touch.” His signature is also, as Andrew Sarris put it, “a poignant sadness infiltrates the director’s gayest moments,” and its these genuine moments of pathos and niceties in his characters that sets it apart from the screwballs that tend to be all one-sided. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Trouble in Paradise”

Rapid Response: Oldboy

“Oldboy” is the pinnacle example of the Cult film in the 21st Century.

“Oldboy” is the finest example of a cult film we have in the 21st Century. “Pulp Fiction,” “Fight Club,” “American History X,” “Memento”: all these movies have attained ubiquity to some extent, the Internet uniting all these factions to raise these movies from the underground and into the mainstream. All it means to be a cult film today is to have a ravenous fan base or for a passionate fan base to emerge when the mainstream wasn’t there to swoop it into the stratosphere.

“Oldboy” on the other hand has the same kinetic style, the same cryptically impossible story and the same rebellious themes of the classic cult favorites, and because it comes from Korea, it somewhat has the capability of flying beneath the radar, able to be made into an American studio film by Spike Lee without ruffling too many feathers.

In a way, “Oldboy” is a standard revenge drama. Oh Dae-su (Min-sik Choi) is a flawed, but good man driven to pitifulness by alcohol, and he is abducted without explanation and forced to right a wrong done to his family. Later when he is freed, he will meet a beautiful girl to help him on his journey, he’ll get a mysterious phone call from a suave sounding villain, and he’ll become a Charles Bronson-esque vigilante skilled in combat. The cryptic nature of the mystery will culminate into an epic twist and climax, and many will be killed along the way. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Oldboy”

Rush

Ron Howard’s “Rush” hits its stride in thrilling, driver’s eye perspectives of Formula One racing.

Formula One is a near impossible sport. Only the right combination of near-death daring, speed, mechanics, weather and precise skill can not only win the race but also allow you to finish it in one piece. When all the extraneous parts come together, it makes for sheer, cathartic fun.

Ron Howard’s “Rush” feels that way when it hits its stride. “Rush” is a formulaic sports movie with a driver’s eye mentality that grants an infinitely more heart pounding sensation even when the narrative and drivers seem to be going around in circles.

Americans have never caught on to Formula One the way the rest of the world has, but they know rivalries, and they know assholes, especially foreign ones. “Rush” has both, it being a biopic on an infamous rivalry between the smarmy and posh Brit James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and the blunt, coldly calculating Austrian Niki Lauda (Daniel Bruhl) during their 1976 season.

Hunt drove for McLaren and Lauda for Ferrari, each forcing their way into the big leagues with equal parts skill and money. Their rivalry is built on the fact that they’re both jerks inside the car and out, testing each other in harsh conditions while trading barbs about their wives and general appearance. Continue reading “Rush”

Don Jon

The ideas in “Don Jon” are occasionally as thin as its meat-head protagonist, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt brings charm to the part.

After seeing something as gratingly powerful as Steve McQueen’s “Shame,” it perhaps occurred to Joseph Gordon-Levitt that for most, Internet porn is not as severe as a crippling sex addiction, and yet it’s prevalence suggests something much deeper about our culture.

This is nothing new. The think pieces about how it’s changing our kids’ perceptions about sex, relationships and what defines someone as attractive are everywhere. Vanity Fair wrote one just this week. The media has immense influence, and it most strongly affects those who already display a level of naiveté and arrogance.

That’s perhaps why the eponymous protagonist of Gordon-Levitt’s “Don Jon” is not just a narcissistic Jersey boy but also a lowest common denominator schmuck without much to his name beside his seedy browser history. In his attempt to make a film about addiction, media overdose and modern, self-centered personalities while still keeping “Don Jon” a swift, funny, 90-minute sex romp, Gordon-Levitt is somewhat grasping at straws, making the ideas in it as thin as the movie’s buff hero.

Yet JGL’s ability to make Jon disarmingly charming even as he’s playing the fool is what makes this indie comedy rise above the rest of the rom-com, media trash the movie condemns. Continue reading “Don Jon”

Chicago International Film Festival Preview 2013

A preview of 35 films showing at the 49th Chicago International Film Festival (CIFF) between October 10-24

Toronto, Sundance, New York and now Telluride get all the love.

Those North American festivals have been covered to death in this Oscar season that’s come (and been declared finished) all too early, and the focus moves so fast that the media neglects to appeal to the millions in the Midwest and elsewhere who never get to see those buzzy movies with that tiny fraction of the film loving community.

But I call Chicago home, and so do thousands of other film lovers. Our Chicago International Film Festival is in its 49th year, and although Harvey Weinstein didn’t think to premiere his awards bait movies here, we get a diverse line-up of films and crave guidance, recommendations and coverage just like anyone else.

This year’s lineup, which runs October 10-24, is now available for sale to the general public and can be viewed in full here, seems especially strong, and my lineup is fairly stacked with a handful of near schedule conflicts. So if you’ve got a Festival Pass, here’s a little who’s who of 35 of this year’s CIFF movies.

*Films marked with an asterisk represent films on my personal schedule Continue reading “Chicago International Film Festival Preview 2013”

Prisoners

“Prisoners” floors you by depicting the unclear nature of evil.

There’s a woman in Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners” who lost her son 26 years prior to this film’s events. She shows Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) the one tape she watches of her missing son each morning and dejectedly declares, “No one took him. Nothing happened. He’s just gone.”

Detective thrillers and crime procedurals have conditioned us into always expecting an answer and motivation behind the terrible things that happen in the world. We’re left unsatisfied when we don’t get the answer we were looking for, if the puzzle pieces don’t paint a complete portrait or if the ending isn’t nice and tidy.

Rarely in life is this ever the case, and like David Fincher’s cryptic “Zodiac,” “Prisoners” attains intense thrills and gravitas through scattered clues that seem to be everywhere and answers that are nowhere. It’s a studio film that minimizes on the action set pieces, the family melodrama and the pretentious psychology to show that evil is not only omnipresent, but it’s the real mystery.

The two young daughters of the Dover family and the Birch family go missing much like that first boy 26 years earlier; they just disappear. On Thanksgiving Day the two girls go across the street, we get a close-up of a barren tree outside their suburban home, and they’re gone.

Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) suspects the timid loner Alex Jones (Paul Dano) swiped his daughter. With flat, stringy hair, thick glasses belonging to another decade and a junker RV, he certainly fits the description, but when Detective Loki is brought in to interrogate, Alex is clean and seems incapable of anything so sinister. When Alex is let go without charge, Keller intervenes and abducts Alex himself, demanding the answer he knows must be there.   Continue reading “Prisoners”

Rapid Response: The Caine Mutiny

“The Caine Mutiny” aims to paint a uniquely tragic figure, but even Humphrey Bogart’s great performance falls short.

On paper, “The Caine Mutiny” instantly reminds of “K-19: The Widowmaker” or “Mutiny on the Bounty,” which this movie even slyly alludes to as Humphrey Bogart makes his excellent and provocative introduction as Lt. Cmdr. Queeg. And yet far from a film about revolution, rebellion or loyalties, “The Caine Mutiny” is dedicated to the Navy and those who have suffered great trauma due to the effects of war. It’s a film about paranoia and mental illness, not morals or valor.

And yet working against “The Caine Mutiny” right out of the gate is that we’ve now developed a deeper, more complex understanding of human psychology than this movie has to offer. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a well-known term today, and although films like “The Best Days of Our Lives” were peddling it for melodrama earlier than this film, Director Edward Dymtryk tries to make the ruthless perfectionist Captain Queeg into a uniquely tragic figure.

Brought to manage the minesweeper Caine during World War II, Queeg’s new crew quickly suspects that his affinity for seamen with their shirts tucked in or the location of a key have rendered him mentally incapable of helming their ship. Bogart convincingly barks orders and demonstrates fear, and he received an Oscar nomination for the role, but the film neglects informing us what personal war demons he may carry. He’s a flat, silly character, and our only emotional attachment comes in the form of him manipulating steel ball bearings nervously and in Bogart’s magnetic face during one of the film’s few arresting close-ups during its climax.

Some of the performances, including Jose Ferrer’s sarcastic Lt. Greenwald, Fred MacMurray’s lying scumbag of an officer and Van Johnson’s calm, careful first mate help raise the caliber of “The Caine Mutiny,” but too much is wasted on the debut performances of Robert Francis and May Wynn. Their romance is a dud, and his attachment to his mother is a plot line left hanging. It would be less distracting if the on-board events were more compelling, but Queeg’s hunt for a quart of strawberries is the absolute pits if it’s made to be taken seriously, and the resulting courtroom drama leaves little to the imagination on a narrative or visual level.

“The Caine Mutiny” was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor Humphrey Bogart and Best Screenplay, but lost out to “On the Waterfront.” That film depicted what you could call a paranoid character, and it did so with bounds more gravitas than this film unfortunately.