by ·Comments Off on Hail, Caesar! (2016, Coen Bros.)

Slower and weirder than it seemed from the trailer, which sets up a madcap comedy.
Katy was disappointed.

Mid-1950’s Hollywood: Josh Brolin is a hard-working studio employee who keeps the stars in line and keeps the press (Tilda Swinton) away from the more damaging stories. Period epic star George Clooney is kidnapped by commies, is curious and agreeable, doesn’t seem to realize he’s being held hostage until rescued by cowboy actor Alden Ehrenreich. Those two and Brolin are great, but they’ve got nothing on Channing Tatum as a dancing sailor who’s secretly the commie group’s leader. Ralph Fiennes plays a frustrated director, and we get quite small roles for McDormand, Johansson and Jonah Hill, and reeeeally small roles for Alex Karpovsky and Dolph Lundgren.

Slant:

On the flipside is a cell of communist screenwriters who abduct mega star Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) to bleed the studios, only to let slip that their ideals of upending the means of production stem from bitterness over not getting the back-end points they think they deserve. In perhaps the only subtle joke in the entire film, the warped prosperity politics that Hollywood communists bring to the cause is tacitly positioned as a precursor to Scientology, another faddish, extreme cause that the Hollywood faithful would frame in terms of making more bank.

G. Kenny:

The movie makes light of the dialectic as explained to Baird by Marcuse, but it also, in its tricky way, continually invites/compels the viewer to use it. Eddie Mannix is a good man who is very good at his job — but his job seems to be manufacturing schlock. People enjoy schlock, but schlock is arguably an agent of The People’s oppression, so… anyway, one needn’t go on. Suffice it to say that in the cosmology of the delightful Hail Caesar!, regardless of the conclusions to which dialectical thinking may lead, acceptance is the key, and Hollywood, while “problematic,” is more a force for good than the military-industrial complex can ever hope to be. And, finally, doing the right thing is an instinct shared by both company men and singing cowboys, for whatever that’s worth.

F. Cardamenis says the movie “reveals a striking ambivalence about [Hollywood], finding magic in its products but malice in its motives.”

D. Ehrlich’s article in Slate was my favorite, even if I did a sorry job condensing its points below:

[Hail Caesar and The Grand Budapest Hotel] shift through several different aspect ratios and feature Ralph Fiennes, Tilda Swinton, and — wait for it! — Fisher Stevens. Both films bake their darker underpinnings beneath a frivolous screwball glaze. More crucially, both films probe the ultimate value of storytelling, and leverage their findings into lucid summations of their creators’ entire career and creative worldview. Hail, Caesar! takes one of the diverse back catalogs in American cinema and forces its various components into a reluctant conversation that changes them all, like strangers who are forced into small talk at a cocktail party only to realize that they have the whole world in common.
…
[the sailor musical sequence] convincingly argues the value of filmmaking to a universe of indelible characters who are struggling to understand it for themselves. It’s a truth they could see if only they had faith. And that, ultimately, is what Hail, Caesar! argues with greater clarity — if not always greater force — than any of the Coens’ previous films. There is no meaning but that which we convince ourselves. It doesn’t matter if you adhere to communism, religion, or movies: The only way you can believe in yourself is if you believe in something bigger. Who wouldn’t want to be a lobby boy at the Grand Budapest hotel, sir? It’s an institution.

by ·Comments Off on The Thin Red Line (1998, Terrence Malick)

First time I’ve seen this in a while, watched in lovely HD.

I think Ben Chaplin (Bell) was the only major Thin Red Line actor to return in The New World, but I never recognize him when I watch it. He’s the thick-browed guy with traitorous wife Miranda Otto (later Tom Cruise’s wife in War of the Worlds).

Blu-ray outtakes: Witt gets berated by John C. Reilly. “Made a mistake getting in this discussion.” Don Harvey gets berated by Paul Gleeson. After Danny Hoch gripes about Lt. Gleeson, Pvt. Larry Romano drunkenly confronts his superior. Private Nick Stahl freaks out after bayoneting an enemy. Bizarre conversation between Witt and sniper Mickey Rourke. Taking Japanese prisoners, one can’t walk. Bell brings his divorce letter to Clooney, who makes good on his earlier comment that he’ll always be available for questions. And a doctor sends Adrian Brody home for his leg injury after Witt dies.

The on-disc interviews are fascinating. It feels strange, though – the actors speak of the movie as Malick’s personal vision, so it’s all Terry this and Terry that, and the absence of his own perspective in the extras makes it seem like reminiscences of a dead artist. Of course it’s understandable that he doesn’t want to participate, that’s just the impression I got. After actors there’s editing, source novel/author, and music (Hans Zimmer says Terry wanted the music to ask questions, not answer them).

by ·Comments Off on The Descendants (2011, Alexander Payne)

Kind of like Sideways – a good-enough (but never great) drama about cheating (and now death) with an immensely appealing lead actor (was Giamatti, now Clooney). A very emotional journey for the characters involved, if not for us.

Robert Forster is going to hit you:

Hawaiian one-percenter Clooney takes care of 17-yr-old misfit daughter Shailene Woodley (star of an ABC Family drama) and 10-yr-old budding-misfit daughter Amara Miller (plus Shailene’s surfer-grinning friend). While his wife is dying in a coma, Clooney tries to find the realtor (Matthew Lillard of Hackers and 13 Ghosts Remake) who’d been having an affair with her. More wackiness as Clooney deals with a father-in-law (Robert Forster) who never liked him, and work with his co-inheritor cousins to decide what to do with a huge plot of unspoiled land (obviously they’ll keep it in the end). Except none of these things are wacky – it’s all played for sadness and empathy, which is fine if I’d been feeling it.

by ·Comments Off on The Last Ten Minutes vol. 6

Netflix Streaming has got a bunch more movies I would never pay to rent, but which I might watch for free if I was sick or something. I’m sick today, so here goes.

Prince of Persia (2010, Mike Newell)
I see ropes and swords and Lord of the Rings fire-sculptures, and holy crap is that Ben Kingsley?? Donnie Darko has a fake british accent, and he just let his girlfriend fall into the pit of hell before unleashing a crazy amount of ‘splosions and triggering a muted montage of flashback snippets. Then Donnie, who long ago became less cool than his big sister Maggie Darko, discovers that the movie was just a dream he saw in the handle of his magic dagger. All I remember from the video game is that your little man had a more human-like gait than was usual for video games, and it was incredibly hard to avoid falling into pits. As I type this, Donnie is telling a beardy fellow to “listen to your heart.” So it’s safe to say the movie isn’t much like the game, except when the girl fell into that pit.

The Men Who Stare At Goats (2009, Grant Heslov)
“Larry’s dead,” are the first words I hear… guess I won’t be seeing Kevin Spacey. Still holding out hope for Stephen Root, though. Oh wait, there’s Spacey now, wtf. Directed by an actor who played “guy in big suit” in Bug. There’s an LSD prank then all the army base’s goats and prisoners are set free. I’m not detecting much comedy in this comedy, so I guess it got dark and turned into a drama halfway through. Jeff Bridges and George Clooney escape in a chopper, Ewan provides poignant, anti-corporate-media voiceover, and it ends on a dud of a joke. Glad I didn’t sit through the rest of this.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009, Niels Oplev)
A pierced punk rock girl (a “rebellious computer hacker” according to the Netflix description) talking with her mama seems sad. Later, some blond woman is talking about being raped by her dad, cue spazzy flashback with bland music. Punk girl visits hospitalized boyfriend, drops off secret financial records, he writes an article causing a mogul to commit suicide, and punk girl steals a lot of money and escapes to a tropical paradise. Whole thing seems anticlimactic and unengaging. But I guess if The Da Vinci Code can be a huge success, so can this. Still, at least Da Vinci had a big ending (the codex is shattered! Amelie is Jesus’s daughter!) to justify all the dreary exposition. This one wasn’t even exciting enough for me to check out the last ten minutes of the sequels.

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009, Nishimura & Tomomatsu)
Dubbing!! The fakest CGI ever. Oh, this is one of those direct-to-video Japanese teen movies full of awful music where everyone wears school uniforms. It’s not even as good as Tokyo Gore Police (they share a director). “When you gave me that chocolate, I had no idea how you really felt about me” should not be one of the final lines of a movie with this title. Oh, and Vampire Girl decisively wins.

Factotum (2005, Bent Hamer)
Hooray, Lili Taylor! Long takes + poorly furnished rooms = gritty realism. Poor Charlie Bukowski is having money issues and lady issues. Matt Dillon gets life advice from “Old Black Man” (according to the credits) in the unemployment office, finally gets one of his stories published. I don’t find Dillon’s poetic voiceover very compelling. From the dude who made Kitchen Stories.

Ondine (2009, Neil Jordan)
She is telling fisherman Colin Farrell that she’s not a magical water creature, but just a girl who almost drowned while escaping from something or other. Uh oh, some fellows with pistols and strong accents. What is happening? Colin and the girl live, are getting married at the end. Jordan made a bunch of movies that always look somewhat intriguing but not quite essential.

The Day The Earth Stopped (2008, C. Thomas Howell)
If you start watching a movie ten minutes before the closing credits, the hero and villain are always in the middle of some revelatory exposition scene. All movies are the same. Should you really entrust the remake rights of The Day The Earth Stood Still to one of the teen actors from Red Dawn? Earth starts shaking (I’d hardly say it is standing still) and sepia-toned CGI versions of major world monuments (and a ferris wheel) are falling rapidly towards the camera. I was excited that Judd Nelson is in this, but I’d gotten him confused with Judge Reinhold – who is Judd Nelson? There is yelling and guns and terrible camerawork, then something really stupid happens and I guess the aliens don’t destroy Earth. Shame.

2012 (2009, Roland Emmerich)
Here’s a movie that isn’t afraid to let the world end, or to cast Oliver Platt! I don’t see world monuments crumbling, just a big Titanicky iceberg adventure (Roland must’ve had some ice left over from The Day After Tomorrow) with people yelling and swimming through tunnels to close or open portals and machinery. Oh, surviving mankind lives on arks now, and Africa turns out to be the future, or the home of the our civilization or something.

Salt (2010, Phillip Noyce)
Another movie with a third-billed Chiwetel Ejiofor, and more awful camerawork – only this time it’s awful in a big-budget extreme-cutting sense, not the give-an-idiot-a-camera awfulness of The Day The Earth Stopped. Ooh, the president is down. A. Jolie, handcuffed in FBI custody, still manages to kill Liev Schreiber, whoever he is. The backstory exposition comes a couple minutes late in this movie, then noble Chiwetel lets Jolie escape to kill again. From the writer of Equilibrium (and Ultraviolet, yuck) and director of Rabbit Proof Fence (and Sliver).

Red Dragon (2002, Brett Ratner)
Emily Watson is in a super intense burning-house scene, then a big fake explosion knocks down Ed Norton. This movie marked the end of my needing to see everything Norton was in (Keeping the Faith and The Score had already lowered expectations). Ed’s in the William Petersen role (WP’s on a cop show now). After he and Raiff Fiennes shoot each other to death, we see ol’ Hopkins (in the Brian Cox role) writing letters, and oh Ed isn’t dead actually, and it ends with a cheese-headed transition into an early scene from Silence of the Lambs. Doesn’t look bad, really, but as with all Ratner movies it is not to be taken seriously.

by ·Comments Off on Up In The Air (2009, Jason Reitman)

Clooney fires people for a living, is always flying, gives speeches about dropping all your attachments and being free of troublesome possessions, hobbies, pets, family and friends which only weigh you down and lead to death (he didn’t explain exactly how his way of free living equals happiness or longevity). Doesn’t sound like a winner of a guy, but we’re talking George Clooney here. He cruises by on charisma, intensity and confidence, never looking back or down until he crashes, hard, in love with a fellow traveler. Movie ends beautifully with him rethinking his priorities, gazing at a departure board.

Equally excellent: George’s happily-married affair Vera Farmiga (the only woman in The Departed, the two-timing psychiatrist) and George’s possible successor, super-confident young Anna Kendrick (Rocket Science, Edgar Wright’s next film).

I found nothing wrong with the movie, enjoyed almost as much as Michael Clayton. Katy liked it too, but disagrees with the award talk for George’s performance – said he just plays George Clooney. Some real call-attention-to-themselves cameo appearances by Zach Galifianakis, JK Simmons and Sam Elliott still aren’t as distracting as Clooney’s own cameo in The Thin Red Line, so I give them a pass. I guess none is distracting if you don’t know the actor. Katy misidentified Zach, and I was probably the only drooling Big Lebowski fan in the theater who got excited over Sam.