Producer Paul's Ramblings

The past couple of weeks have been busy, so I haven’t had a chance to watch many movies, but I sneaked a few in. So forthwith are my reviews of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Taking of Pelham 123 (Tony Scott version) and Man on Wire.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s – What can you really say about this one? It’s the granddaddy of romantic comedies, starring a radiant Audrey Hepburn and a handsome George Peppard (yes, the leader from A-Team).  Hepburn plays Holly Golightly, the “real phony.” Holly is a woman who ran away from her life (and marriage to a much older Buddy Epsen) to come to New York and reinvent herself. The only problem is, she doesn’t really know who her real self is. She is terrified of commitment, so much so that she won’t even name the stray cat she has found, only calling him “Cat.” Then she meets George Peppard and commences on a love/hate relationship with him. Anytime he gets too close, she does what she can to drive him away. This being a romantic comedy, the ending is a foregone conclusion, but the trip in getting there is a great trip indeed.  All the acting is superb, down to all the supporting characters. The one exception is Mickey Rooney, who plays (overplays) an agonizingly stereotypical Asian.  It’s all buck teeth and mispronounced L’s.  It’s cringeworthy in the extreme. I’m sure all of this isn’t Rooney’s fault. It’s Blake Edwards’s direction coupled with the times (the movie is 50 years old), but it could have disappeared from the film and not been missed.  That aside, this is well worth seeing if you like well-written trotting down a (by now) familiar path. It should be required viewing for anyone attempting to write a romantic comedy.  8/10

The Taking of Pelham 123 – This Tony Scott directed film is based off the 1974 film starring Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau.  The original was a laid-back, stylish thriller with doses of comedy (and stereotypical Asians too. I just realized that) that had a somewhat anticlimactic (but typically 70′s) ending.  This new version, as typical of Tony Scott, is amped, ramped, and pumped up for an MTV (or I guess now it might be Twitter) generation.  There’s more profanity, more explosions, more chases, and a much more dramatic (and violent) ending. The story concerns Walter Garber (Denzel Washington) who works at the central station of New York’s Metro Transit Authority.  Things are going fine until Ryder (John Travolta) and his cronies hijack a subway train (The Pelham 123 of the title) and demand a million dollars in an hour or they start killing passengers. From there it’s the tension of Garber trying to keep Ryder from doing anything stupid, while the city’s leaders work to put the money together in time. I enjoyed this film. It was a fun thrill ride with some pretty good back and forth between the two main characters.  Travolta went a little overboard at times, especially when he was trying to be “ghetto tough,” but Washington did a wonderful job. The action scenes, as per any Tony Scott film, were top-notch. Lately, Scott has has a tendency to go overboard with “style,” using filters and camera moves and whip fast editing to tell his story. It could get distracting. Fortunately, he holds himself back this time (except for a dose in the opening credits) and that helps make it a much better film. He could have easily screwed this one up (just watch Domino for an example of how).  All in all, this a fun ride. Certainly more fun than actually riding a New York subway. 7/10

Man on Wire – This movie tells the true story of Phillipe Petit, the only man to ever walk a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center. Using actually footage, recreations and modern day interviews with the participants, the movie shows the planning that went into pulling off this daring (some would say insane) escapade. Using a small team of people, Phillipe sneaks into the still under construction towers, sets his line, and then walks between the towers for 45 minutes. The film is intriguing, showing some of Phillipe as a young man (recreations) and then showing the tension involved in trying to plan such a feat. The really amazing thing is how much the people involved filmed of what they were doing.  Overall, this is an interesting film. I think it could have been served being 15 minutes shorter, but it becomes riveting when they talk about the night they pulled it off, and the pictures of Phillipe actually between the towers are breathtaking. Just the thought of even attempting something like that can give you the willies. Another thing that would have been nice is to get their thoughts on the destruction of the towers, but I suppose it really wasn’t important to the subject of the movie.  Check this one out when you get the chance. 7/10

I’m going to start trying to post about each movie after I see it, instead of grouping them together like this.  I can’t promise anything though.

Watched The Hurt Locker last night. The one problem of watching a movie on DVD after hearing tons of hype about it is that, try as you might, you go in with expectations. So many people have proclaimed Hurt Locker the best movie of the year that I was ready to see something earth-shattering, something that would rock me to my core with what it had to say about the Iraq War and the men who fought (and are still fighting) in it.

That’s not what I got. Instead, I got a fairly interesting look at a bomb disposal expert (the excellent Jeremy Renner) who likes to live by his own rules and may or may not be borderline psychotic. I was promised an action movie and I got a drama interspersed with occasional action scenes. Director Katheryn Bigelow knows action, and the action scenes are well-done and incredibly tense, but when we weren’t getting that, what we got was fairly bland.  There really isn’t much to the characters. We have Renner, who, as I said, may be crazy, but we never really get into what makes him tick (no pun intended). Then we have Sgt. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), who is little more than a counterpart to Renner’s insanity, and the last member of the trio, Specialist Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) who has his own (somewhat cliched) stress issues to deal with after the loss of the first team leader.

The acting was top-notch and the action (what there was of it) good, but I found the story very disjointed (being mainly just a series of vignettes with little thought to any overarching storyline) and I wanted to know more about the inner life of the main character.  Is it worth seeing? Certainly, if nothing else for the nail-biting tension in the bomb-defusing scenarios. Is it the Best Picture of the year? Not to me.

6/10

Watched two character pieces in the past two days. One was The Great Buck Howard and the other was Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

Buck Howard is the story of a law student (Colin Hanks) who doesn’t enjoy being a law student and decides to do something else. So he becomes the assistant to a magician (John Malkovich) who was once somebody and now lives in a state of delusion about his popularity. The film follows the two characters as they learn to work together.  There is also a PR person (Emily Blount) who comes in as a love interest to Hanks’s character.  After a particular illusion, Buck again gain a moment of notoriety, his fifteen minutes of fame, and then quietly fades again into obscurity, which, in the end, may be exactly the way he likes it.

This was an okay story, but the biggest problem is that it was about the wrong person.  It was about the Colin Hanks character and the change he goes through, but I wanted to know more about Buck, who was certainly the far more interesting of the two. I wanted to know what made him tick. Why was he so difficult to get along with, why was he delusional? Did he have any idea of what was going on in the real world.  This would have made a great story.  As it was, the movie should have been The Okay Buck Howard.

5/10

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is the story of Nick (Michael Cera) and Norah (Kat Dennings), both of whom are seeing other people, but as we know, are actually intended for each other. They discover this over one long night as they spend it trying to track down a rave party with beloved local band Fluffy (or Where’s Fluffy, I never was quite sure)  The story follows the usual predictable route, but is saved by the charms of both Cera and Dennings. There are also several secondary characters who are a lot of fun, including Nick’s gay bandmates and Norah’s best friend, who gets drunk and acts hysterically. Hats off to Ari Graynor for making the character a lot of fun.

I did have a few questions about the movie, such as exactly how high school age students could get into the clubs they did and also drink like they did.  There were also a couple of coincidences that seemed a bit much.  Overall, this was a fun, lightweight movie that won’t leave much of a lasting impression, but is enjoyable while you’re watching it.

5/10

So, after months of hype and speculation, it was finally here. Avatar, in case you missed the boat, is the new James Cameron movie spectacular. It’s the story of one Jake Sully, who is sent to the world of Pandora in place of his brother in order to work in the “Avatar” program, which is an attempt to win the hearts and minds of the natives in order to get them to move off their land.  Why do they need to move? Because there’s a rare mineral the company mining the planet needs, and the natives’ hame is right on the biggest load.  So Jake goes in to try and persuade them to leave, but ends up “going native” as it were.  It’s Dances with Wolves meets Last Samurai with a little bit of Apocalypse Now thrown in.  But this is not a bad thing.

Some people have complained that the story is simple, or just a rehash. But you know what? Star Wars was a simple, familiar story too, and that seemed to work. After all, an old story told in a new way is still a new story. And this story is perfectly suited to the real star of the show, which is the special effects. And special is the key word here.  This is hands down the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen put on screen.  Yeah, we’ve seen computer generated vistas before, but not like these. And sure, we’ve seen motion captured people before, but not with this sense of realism.  There are close up of the Na’vi’ (the alien race) that are simply astounding in their details. You see veins, you see translucency in the skin, you see dirty, ragged fingernails.  Before too long, you forget you’re seeing computer images and just assume they are tall actors in makeup.  If you really let your imagination go, you can think Cameron just took some 3D cameras to another planet and shot his movie with native actors.

The planet itself is a wonder of ecology, with vibrant creatures, large flying lizard that bond with the natives (shades of Dragonriders of Pern), and living plants that react with bioluminescent displays when people approach. It’s obvious Cameron was influenced by his time underwater.

The acting, which some have complained about, is perfectly fine. This isn’t a movie that’s meant to win acting Oscars. All the people play their (admittedly somewhat 2 dimensional) characters perfectly fine.  I also didn’t have a problem with the dialogue that many seemed to have. The military guys have a few corny lines, but they’re the kind of cliches you could picture military guys saying, so it worked.  There’s a ecological message here, but it isn’t preached at us like it was in The Abyss. It’s just there to take if you want, or not. Some have complained that it’s about Iraq and is Anti-American, because the military are the “bad guys.”  I choose to see it more as an indictment of human nature throughout the ages, anytime a technologically superior culture comes upon a more primitive one.  It’s happened in the past, and Cameron is saying it’s certain to happen in the future.  It’s a bleak message if you choose to take it that way, but this is far from a bleak film.  Quite the opposite.

It’s a wonder to behold. The closest I can come to describing it is the first time I saw Star Wars when I was 12.  It’s that same sense of wonder all over, and I can see this movie inspiring many up and coming teens to want to make their own amazing stories. See it as soon as you can, and by all means, pay the extra couple of bucks to see it in 3D. I personally plan on seeing it at least two more times to catch everything I missed the first time.

Rating: 10/10

This Clive Owen/Naomi Watts thriller started out very well. Clive is an agent working with Interpol trying to discover why a bank is spending billions of dollars on missile systems.  At the beginning, his partner is meeting with a mysterious man in a car. The partner leaves the car, walks toward our hero, and drops dead. A heart attack.  Or was it?

From there the story spirals into a huge conspiracy involving crooked bankers, Libyan warlords, and weapons manufacturers. And it spirals, and spirals. And therein lies the big problem with the movie, it spirals out of control of its own plot.  There are too many people involved from too many angles and it eventually bogs down and turns from a well-paced, fairly suspenseful film (the first half) into an inert mess (the second half). Clive does a serviceable job as always, but Naomi is pretty bad, and plays a character that seems to be there only so Clive could have a female partner, in an attempt to attract a female audience. She’s very supportive, but she never actually DOES anything to speak of.

There’s a great shootout in the Guggenheim Museum, but that’s about it for action.  So what we’re left with is an action movie without much action and a thriller without enough thrills.  It’s a grand conspiracy that ends up not meaning a whole lot in the end.  Speaking of the ending, it’s a giant cop-out and ends up with nothing really resolved (although there were some newspaper clippings during the end credits that may have “resolved” things. I don’t know, I didn’t bother to watch them.)  It was a grand disappointment, especially since I enjoyed Tom Twyker’s other movies (Run Lola Run and Poison). But this time the excitement just wasn’t there.

4/10

Saw this today in a surprisingly full theater.  This stop motion film is based on the Roald Dahl book about a fox who steals chickens until his pregnant wife makes him promise not to do it anymore.  He agrees, but restless after two years, he goes back to his ways, stealing from the three most powerful farmers in the neighborhood. He arouses their ire, they go gunning for him (literally) and many hijinks ensue.

I am a big fan of Wes Anderson movies, and this one is no exception. Whimsical and offbeat, this movie had me smiling throughout, chuckling many times, and laughing out loud quite a few. And I suspect it’s a movie that will reveal more on multiple viewings, since there were many nuances in the backgrounds.  The stop motion is crude but serviceable and actually adds to the film’s charm.  In this day of ultra slick computer animation, it’s nice to see something handcrafted and even sort of sloppy. You can see hairs moving about even when the creatures are still, as if the animators didn’t take the time to keep thing consistent. But knowing Anderson’s quirks, this was probably intentional.

The voice acting is uniformly excellent, with quite a cast, including George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman. Cooney was perfect for the role, since Mr. Fox is basically an animated version of the rogue Danny Ocean from the Ocean’s films. I almost wish they could have had someone else do the voice, since it was sometimes tough to separate the voice from the action on screen, and I occasionally has flashes of Clooney in the voice booth doing his thing.

But that’s a minor quibble for what is a delightful film with great dialogue, fun situations, and even some beautful camera work. Be sure to check this one out when you get a chance.

8/10

Watched this on DVD last night. This is the Russell Crowe movie where he plays a grizzled old newspaper reporter. At the beginning three people are killed, a purse snatcher, a man delivering a pizza on a bicycle, and a woman who takes suicide by subway car. 

The “subway suicide” turns out to be the lead researcher on a Congressional investigation against security company Haliburton…I mean, Pointcorp. She’s also having an affair with the Congressman (Ben Affleck) who is spearheading the investigation. So does that mean she didn’t commit suicide? Is she somehow connected with the other two killings from the beginning?  Come on, we’ve all seen this kind of movie before.

And that’s the major problem.  This movie has a whole been there feeling. We’ve seen this before, and better, in movies like Three Days of the Condor or All The President’s Men. It was well acted, with some especially nice moments between Crowe and Helen Mirren, who plays the editor of The Washington Globe. Affleck did a nice job (but I don’t have a problem with his acting like many do). I found Rachel McAdams a bit weak as the up and coming report–excuse me, blogger, who slowly gets sucked into the investigation and learns the value of the printed (as opposed to electronic) word.

Which leads me to the one thing that was different about this movie, and something I wish they would have explored more in-depth. That is the dawning of the electronic era, which may (some say will) eventually lead to the demise of newspapers in printed form.  Crowe represented old school and McAdams was the new school.  There was some tension between them, but more would have been nice, and would have made the movie that much more interesting.

Overall, this isn’t a bad movie. It’s like a comfortable pair of old shoes.  You like them because their comfortable and familiar, not because they’re sporty and flashy.

6/10

We all know that McDonald’s is bad for us, but every now and then you just have to have that Filet-O-Fish and a large fry.  It’s satisfying on a primal level, even though you worry about your cholesterol the whole time you’re eating it.

Roland Emmerich films are much the same way.  Sometimes you just want to check your brain at the door and indulge your inner lover of crappy cinema. 2012 delivers that junk in spades.

It follows the same formula as all of Emmerich’s disaster films.  We’re introduced to a variety of “characters” that we’re supposed to care about, although we rarely do.  This is interspersed with slow building scenes of the disaster to come.  Then, somewhere in the 30-40 minute mark, the shit hits the fan and all bets are off.  Then we’re treated to ever larger spectacle mixed with scenes of ersatz emotion, fake tears, and sentimental hogwash.

Is it complete crap?  Yes.  Did I enjoy it?  For the most part.

The movie starts in 2009 when a geologist (Chiwetel Eljofor) discovers something is happening to the Earth’s crust. Something to do with neutrinos causing physical changes. Doesn’t really matter. There hasn’t been a physical science yet the Emmerich can’t mangle to his own purposes. Anyway, the scientist’s discovery and subsequent reporting sets into motion a chain of events that had the world’s governments working together to find a way out of the coming apocalypse.

John Cusack plays a failed sci-fi writer who is trying to reconcile with his family, and there’s nothing like the end of the world to facilitate such things. And Woody Harrelson has an extended cameo as a wilderness nutjob who turns out to not be quite so nutty.

But all that is just side attractions for the main show: The destruction of the world in mass quantities. And here the film delivers. In fact, in some ways, it over delivers. I actually got a little worn out watching John and family just narrowly escape any number of situations, defying all laws of physics while doing so.  (As I mentioned, Emmerich and science don’t always see eye-to-eye).

That was probably my biggest problem with the movie is that it was just too much.  I love cinematic overkill as much as the next CGI freak, but this was overkill overkill.  One less escape, one less crisis, one less subplot would have been nice. (And would have knocked the movie down by 20 or so minutes)

The bottom line is, if you want to see some heady disaster porn and go in knowing that paper-thin characters are going to do impossible things wrapped around a plot with more holes than Swiss cheese, then you should have a grand time.  If you demand logic, consistency, and, God forbid, realism, then you best look elsewhere.

And by all means, see it on the big screen, so you get the full effect of the fun that is there.

Rating: 7/10 for eye candy, 3/10 for everything else.

Sunshine Cleaning is the story of sisters Rose and Norah (Amy Adams and Emily Blunt).  Rose is a financially strapped single mother of Oscar (Jason Spevack) a boy who, I get the feeling based on his behavior, was borderline autistic.  Norah is finally strapped because she has no sense of responsibility. She has had to move back in with her father (Alan Arkin).  When Oscar causes problems at school, the principal suggests he be put on medication.  Rose refuses and takes him out of school.  To try and raise the money to put him in private school, she take the suggestion of a cop (Steve Zahn) whom she’s having an affair with and starts a business as a “post-mortem cleanup service.”  That is, they go into the aftermath of crime scenes and clean up the mess.

The rest of the movie follows them as they learn the job, through some humorous trial and error, and have the usual ups and downs of starting a new business. We also learn a backstory on the girls that has affected their whole life.

This was a wonderful movie.  I went in expecting a raucous comedy based on the trailer, but what I got was a thoughtful, emotional drama with bits of reality-based comedy dribbled throughout.  The girl’s emotional conflict and relationship was very believable, as was the conflict between Rose and her cop “boyfriend,” who is married. The acting is top-notch through the entire cast and the direction is spot on. It’s quite the emotional journey and I found myself a little choked up at time.  I can see why this was a Sundance favorite.  There is some gore in the movie, but it is not a gory movie, if that makes sense.  Everything is after the fact, so mainly it’s just blood.

If I have one complaint about the film it’s that, after the inevitable act two setback, things resolve just a tad too quickly and the ending is more cut and dried than I would have liked.  Some ambiguity would have been nice and would have fit more with the tone of the film.  But, that certainly doesn’t stop me from highly recommending this film to anyone who enjoys a well-written well acted drama.

8/10

I went into this movie with pretty high expectations, since every reviewer in the world seemed to love it and a bunch of my friends told me how great it was.

So did it meet my expectations?  Yes and no.  There were parts of it I really liked, such as the opening 20 minutes and the ending sequence, which takes place in a theme park.  The middle of the movie?  A little slow.

But it’s only a 90 minute movie, so the slow parts aren’t that long, and they are spiced up with an unexpected cameo that is a great deal of fun.

The high points:  Woody Harrelson returning to comedy as a badass zombie hunter.  He is certainly the best thing about the movie and is obviously having a great time.  The aforementioned opening scenes (including the inspired opening credits).  And Jesse’s Eisenberg’s “rules” for surviving a zombie apocalypse are amusing and enjoyable. The zombie kills are also very inventive and appropriately gruesome.

The low points:  Jesse Eisenberg.  He is a fine actor, but he reminds me too much of Michael Cera.  He’s kind of Michael Cera Light, so that was a bit distracting.  Also, I think Abagail Breslin was the wrong actress to play the young hoodlum style girl.  She’s still too much Little Miss Sunshine and not enough Hard Candy.

That’s about it.  A fun movie, an enjoyable movie, but not a great movie. 7/10.