Tag: Sarah Paulson

Ocean’s 8

Gary Ross’s film has a strong, gender flipped cast, but it’s a hollow retread of Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s 11”

The real heist of “Ocean’s 8” is how they managed to fool us into thinking this was something new. Gary Ross’s film is effectively a remake of Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s 11,” but with a gender-flipped cast. And instead of a radical experiment, a fresh point of view on a spectacularly male franchise, “Ocean’s 8” is an incredibly safe, unassuming, if amusing, retread with some slightly different faces.

“Ocean’s 8” starts just as Soderbergh’s film does. Danny Ocean is up for parole, but this time it’s Debbie Ocean, played with George Clooney’s same suave charm by Sandra Bullock. She’s been spending her entire prison stint concocting a brilliant heist, and now she’ll assemble a team and make it happen. Also, Danny Ocean is dead…maybe.

You know, you don’t actually have to do this, Elliot Gould explains to Debbie in a cameo. Sometimes just knowing you can pull off the job is satisfaction enough. To hear that line, it sets decidedly low stakes for “Ocean’s 8.” Even Debbie Ocean is only in it for the thrill and precision of the heist and little of substance, so why are we?  Continue reading “Ocean’s 8”

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”

Mud

Jeff Nichols’s Mud is a true Americana movie that, like a wise elder, has true secrets and wisdom to impart.

Jeff Nichols, along with Ramin Bahrani, is the best director today capturing the spirit of down-south Americana values. His third feature “Mud” follows this tradition by showing just how deeply rooted all his characters are, each with their own deep-seeded histories that guide the film through otherwise rough waters.

Deep in the rivers of Arkansas, two boys named Ellis and Neckbone (Tye Sheridan of “The Tree of Life” and debut performer Jacob Lofland) come across an island, a boat stuck in a tree and a drifter named Mud (Matthew McConaughey) calling it his home. These kids have hard faces and journey out into the open fully aware, yet still wary, of the danger. So when Mud appears and asks for their help, they act on instinct and ingrained country wisdom.

Mud’s a murderer on the lam with only a shirt and a pistol to his name. He explains to the boys that he killed a man trying to defend the love of his life, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon). The two plan to escape together, but Juniper is aimless, uncertain and faced with her own danger.

It’s a thriller in this way, one that turns a bit too Hollywood near the end for its own good, but the intricate subtext surrounding the livelihood of Ellis is what makes “Mud” feel so at home. Continue reading “Mud”

Game Change

When Sarah Palin first appeared on the national political stage, she struck me as someone straight out of a reality show or a Disney movie. She had such cartoonish and folksy charm that made her believe so strongly in the backwards, extreme right wing rhetoric she stumbled over that she couldn’t have possibly whined her way into the spotlight.

The HBO film “Game Change” is unkind to Palin, painting her as a teenage brat while confirming little more than I already suspected about the 2008 campaign.

It’s a movie that doesn’t provide behind the scenes insight as it does re-enact the story from an insider perspective. McCain is losing the election, he needs a bold move, and they take a chance on a nobody without properly vetting her. Palin (Julianne Moore) proves to be an incompetent nutcase, she goes rogue, they lose the election, and everyone responsible smacks their heads in embarrassment. End of story.

What we see of McCain (Ed Harris) and his campaign advisor Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson) are little more than reaction shots. “Game Change” is filled with sound bytes of McCain’s team saying, “She’s doing great!” or “Oh god!” This much seems obvious. It has nothing new to add, no contrarian viewpoint of people defending her or calling her bluff. Continue reading “Game Change”