Tag: John C. Reiley

Wreck-It Ralph

The plight of Wreck-It Ralph was best said by Jessica Rabbit. “I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.”

“Wreck-It Ralph” is a movie with a killer premise about an 8-bit arcade game villain who wants to be the good guy for once. It’s a cute film with a lot of heart that kids will gobble up, but it doesn’t represent video games in the way I would’ve hoped.

Very much like “Toy Story,” when the arcade closes, all the characters leave their in-game roles and live out lives of their own. They can even leave their own game and interact with others in a central train station hub, better known to us humans as a power strip.

Poor Ralph (John C. Reiley) has been the bad guy in his “Donkey Kong” inspired game for 30 years, and in all that time the townspeople have heaped praise on the game’s hero, Fix-It Felix (Jack McBrayer), and made him live in a garbage dump. In the film’s most clever scene, Ralph seeks help at an AA meeting for video game villains, and Bowser, Blinkie, Zangeef, Dr. Eggman and a stray zombie get him to realize that being a bad guy doesn’t mean you’re a “bad guy.”

But in an effort to win some pride, Ralph leaves his game and first joins a violent and realistic First Person Shooter and then a “Mario Kart” racer, where he helps a glitchy character named Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) win her own in-game acceptance.

“Wreck-It Ralph” is at its best when it’s riffing on games. The references function mostly as Easter Eggs for a nerdy audience brought up on Playstation, but the fun nuances are everywhere in the film’s first half hour, from a PSA featuring Sonic the Hedgehog to a race on the infamous Rainbow Road. Even the animation reflects the way certain game characters move or how background elements can be pixelated and under-developed.

For a movie that’s been given so much care, it’s a shame to see it turn into a vehicle for potty humor and lame puns about candy. The film’s big chases and action sequences feel less like actual levels in a game and more like bland movie set pieces. There’s a gag that involves Laffy Taffys and Fix-It Felix hitting himself in the face with a hammer that feels very low-brow.

And yet “Wreck-It Ralph” is sugary sweet. The characters are perky and optimistic, and Ralph is never anything but loveable. He just gets a bad rap.

I read on Twitter that this was the year that Disney made a Pixar movie and Pixar made a Disney movie (“Brave”), but “Wreck-It Ralph” is not quite “Toy Story.” It needs to level up if it wants to beat that.

3 stars

We Need to Talk About Kevin

Tilda Swinton said in an interview with Roger Ebert that just about every mother at one point has a twisted nightmare that her child will turn out badly. The child will do something horrible someday, and the fear is that she may be responsible.

Does this sound like a horror story? It kind of is, but “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is more than an art house retread of “The Omen.” It’s a psychological examination of a woman whose life has been changed by motherhood and is now alone with her twisted thoughts. Continue reading “We Need to Talk About Kevin”

Rapid Response: Boogie Nights

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” is a hilarious movie about sexuality while also being an interesting take on a genre picture.

When Hollywood struggles because YouTube thrives, so does the porn industry suffer as anyone can film themselves having sex. Not every porn star can be Sasha Grey and find work with Steven Soderbergh.

Strangely enough then, Paul Thomas Anderson’s breakout film “Boogie Nights” has renewed significance. It’s the story of the rise and fall of Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) as the veteran porn stars struggle to stay hard and horny as video tapes take movies out of the XXX theaters.

“Boogie Nights” isn’t really about porn, it’s just more open about its sexuality. (“Jack says you have a great big cock. Can I see it?”) The one-off joke is that this coming-of-age story of stardom and struggle is just the same even with a grindhouse quality filter. Anderson’s whole goal is not to make a genre picture but to make an art house movie that looks and feels like a genre picture. He did much the same thing with romantic comedies in “Punch-Drunk Love.” And it’s the reason why in “Boogie Nights’s” second half, the whole story seems to go off the rails when it becomes so drenched in painful and melodramatic self parody. The end belongs to another movie, and PTA finally acknowledges that shift with a 13-inch nod to “Raging Bull.”

Anderson wonderfully mixes style and kitsch here. The film has a vitality in its disco score that permeates the campy, referential ’70s vibe and carries through to the more depressing moments all bathed in jaded melodrama and cynicism.

His camera moves in ways that don’t intrinsically make sense, but they draw your eyes and your mind. Watch the camera crop out Burt Reynolds’s character to show Julianne Moore staring admiringly at the young, nervous Dirk. He doesn’t return the glance even though the camera does the same for him, and this is not necessarily a clue to her motherly infatuation with Dirk. But we’re captivated by the moment. The camera itself is alluring and sexy.

The early moments of the film are also plain funny as hell. Wahlberg was overshadowed by Burt Reynolds’s Oscar nominated performance (he turns into a sort of George Lucas of porn, and he’s capable of conveying a vision of porn that is simultaneously idealistic and perverse), but it’s refreshing to see Wahlberg when he was still the young Marky Mark posing for Calvin Klein. He’s been typecast in so many tough guy roles lately that it’s impossible to imagine him playing anyone like Dirk anymore.

John C. Reiley and Philip Seymour Hoffman are also riots. Hoffman especially is playing off type as an overweight, closeted gay man with an attraction to Dirk. As for Reiley, the camera stays put and lets him work. His best moment is when he asks Dirk how much he can squat, only to up Dirk’s ante by an absurd 150 pounds.

In the way you could argue we don’t have movie stars like Cary Grant and John Wayne anymore, we don’t really have porn stars like Dirk Diggler anymore. And for that matter, we don’t have other directors in America making movies the way Paul Thomas Anderson does anymore.

The Dictator

There’s a moment when we see The Dictator of Wadiya Admiral General Aladeen play a game on the Wii specifically for dictators. In it, he swings his arm as if playing Wii Tennis, but instead he’s cutting off a video game avatar’s head. It’s not exactly offensive because it’s so dopey.

“The Dictator” is much like that Wii game, cartoonishly violent and gross, but never truly edgy or interesting. Continue reading “The Dictator”

Rapid Response: What’s Eating Gilbert Grape

I recently wrote a story on a film series at the IU Cinema on Disability Awareness Films as part of Indiana’s Disability Awareness Month that you can read here, and although the interviews I did drastically changed the way I thought about disabilities, I wondered if a movie, especially tonight’s screening of “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” could do the same.

The movie is sweet and saccharine with some melodrama that surprisingly never steps too far, but when you consider all it does wonderfully in depicting disabilities as a natural part of everyday life, you begin to realize how special the film is.

The story is of a family of four young adults living and caring with their morbidly obese mother in a small town. Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) does a lot of work around the house and around town and is also the primary care giver for his autistic younger brother Arnie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

The beauty of the story in relation to disabilities is that the handicapped individuals are hardly one-dimensional figures made to pose problems or melodrama for the able bodied people. Both the mother and Arnie are endearing, likeable, emotional, display growth and are not defined by their disabilities. For instance, the mother’s disability is not really obesity but grief over the death of her husband.

The film treats the problems of disabled people as just another complication in a normal day, and we see depth in that this is really a story of being stuck and being judged. Gilbert is stuck inside his hometown, the mother is trapped in her home, Arnie is trapped within his own mind, Gilbert’s new-found girlfriend Becky is literally stuck in this town in the middle of nowhere, and a local married woman having an affair with Gilbert is first stuck in a dysfunctional family and is later surrounded by accusations of her killing her husband.

“Gilbert Grape” is perhaps little seen today but well heard of because it happens to be a remarkable time capsule with a million now famous actors doing things radically different from what they’re doing today. Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Juliette Lewis, Mary Steenburgen, John C. Reiley and Crispin Glover all have early, major roles, and just about all of them are wonderful.

You could talk for hours about how good Leo is as someone with autism. He was rightfully nominated for an Oscar, but you watch him act and can hardly see the actor he is today, let alone would be within just years of that performance as a teen heartthrob. He’s so natural, as if he was an actual autistic actor, and his portrayal is considered remarkably accurate.

This is also a great everyman performance for Johnny Depp. It’s very understated and reserved, and yet he displays some touching range and emotion. I wonder whatever happened to that actor.

Cyrus

“Cyrus” is what is known as a “mumblecore” film, which is a new revolution of indie filmmaking. The genre is known for its real characters and even more “real,” if mundane, plots. Its lo-fi style makes its characters and their common problems highly relatable, but not all mumblecore films can avoid feeling contrived.

I identify most closely with John (John C. Reiley), a lonely and divorced 40-something who abruptly discovers his ex wife (Catherine Keener) is getting remarried. The two remain congenial, and she invites John to a house party where he can meet a girl and drown his sorrows.

John’s monologue spoken to a disengaged girl at the party, delivered so affectingly and with frailty by Reilly, is very close to what I feel at times, and what I imagine most average people go through. He says he’s in a tailspin, that he’s depressed and lonely, but he knows himself to be a fun person with so much to give if he only finds the right person.

This man is not starting at rock bottom. How many people really do? We go through lonely, turbulent times, but many of us can still persevere and continue living. This is a common and true emotion rarely seen in mainstream Hollywood. Continue reading “Cyrus”

Chicago

As movies go digital and trail blaze ahead with 3-D technology, it’s nice to see an older film that feels as though it was grafted from the stage, rife with metaphorical depth and space, and yet still maintains its image as a film production of massive proportions impossible to recreate in any theater.

Considering “Chicago” is this decade’s rebirth of the musical, there are probably more important things worth paying attention to, but you have to hold on to both the big and little things the movies have to offer.

Rob Marshall’s adaptation of “Chicago” is a remarkable musical in the spirit of “Cabaret.” It is a delightful romp full of fun performances, catchy rhythms and fabulous choreography on a massive scale. To not enjoy such a film would be to dislike entertainment. No, the plot is not riveted with psychological depth and drama. There is no revolutionary fancy footwork throughout the film either. But it is still a joy. Continue reading “Chicago”