Really solid enjoyable film from Ridley Scott. It's got a great pair of central performances and a superb cast of supporting characters as well (including my favorite, the black guy with the blond moustache, but I have no idea what his character name was or who the actor was that played him, but he was outstanding).
Frank Lucas is the driver, bagman, and all around go to guy for the boss who has run Harlem for the last fifty years. Frank is with him when he dies, and Frank witnesses the chaos and illadvised greed that rules the streets following the death of the boss. So Frank does something about it. He's noticed that most of the heroin on the streets is cut drastically. Some of the supply comes from crooked cops who cut the seized heroin even more and redestribute it. Frank heads the Bangkok and sets up a deal to buy the heroin direct so he can distribute to new york himself--no middle man. He sets up an ingenious system to transport the dope and soon he's one of the most powerful underworld figures on the east coast. He's incredibly successful, he's sly, observant and intelligent--he's also violent, prone to fits of temper and not in control of his organization or his reputation because he has grown it so fast and at a high expense to others, making him many enemies. And he doesn't know when to quit. He doesn't scale his ambition or hold it in check, and he's tremendously proud. A terrific fascinating character for a film and Denzel Washington is phenomenal playing him, it's mesmerizing watching him play this character.
Russell Crowe is also excellent, but in a much less showy role than the scenes Washington has. His character doesn't fill a room the way that Lucas does, which is probably as it should be, but it lets Washington walk away with a film that is half Crowe's.
Scott and Zaillian use the two separate storylines superbly. All the major events in each storyline echo each other. So as Crowe is tearing apart planes looking for smuggled drugs you have crooked cops tearing apart Lucas' home looking for getaway money.
What the filmmakers really achieved though is getting into the humanity of what is essentially a monstrous villain role. Lucas may have been responsible for the deaths of countless lives and the misery of untold children because of his drugs, but much of what he did was for his family. The same sort of uneasy perspective that the Godfather achieves--sympathy with criminals that shows you they have 'good' motives for their crimes is taken here, though it's harder to support Lucas because he is in a more complex situation, and rather than making his money off of booze, gambling and prostitutes he's making it off potentially lethal narcotics. This film also doesn't dance around where the dirty money comes from the way the Godfather does.
Spoiler:
On the other hand it's almost worth it to see Lucas nail the crooked pigs. In many respects corrupt police are worse than the actual dealers, suppliers and traffickers becaue their actions ensures continual hatred, contempt and fear of all police AND their actions encourages and generates more crime. So bringing down three quarters of the NYC DEA is spectacular, and one of the few things in the film you can really cheer about (because everyone has a societal indoctrinated fear of cops, but few are afraid of people like Frank Lucas because the latter is so much more rare and distant).
"No Country for Old Men" earns my first 5 star rating of the year. Excellent movie and easily among the best the Coen bros. have ever made in my opinion. Javier Bardem is a lock for a Best Supporting Actor nod and I believe actor Josh Brolin gave what many may see as the best performance he's ever had. Big props go out to Tommy Lee Jones and actress Kelly Macdonald for their solid work here as well. Great, great movie.
My top five of '07 so far...
#1 "No Country for Old Men"
#2 "Michael Clayton" 1/2
#3 "The Bourne Ultimatum"
#4 "Stardust"
#5 "American Gangster"
"Quite an experience to live in fear isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave."
This surprising little film is a tremendously well handled relationship piece. Wonderfully paced, quietly witting and quite touching. It's sort of depressing that Martian Child has crashed, that's the sort of movie when my mom sees it she asks "why don't they make more great movies like this." it's tremendously well done, beautifully shot by Robert Yeoman and virtually flawless dialogue there is a bit of third act by the numbers bit to give the film a pseudo climax but the characters are so well drawn and the the relationships so beautifully and subtly handled throughout the film that I'm think the film more than earned that ending.
maybe I just wasn't in the right mood, but I was overall fairly disappointed by the film. Josh Brolin was terrific, but I didnt feel that Bardem lives up to the tremendous hype, I wish there had been more of Kelly mcDonald.
Spoiler:
I also feel somewhat cheated that we don't see the deaths at the end. I'm reasonably certain that mcdonald died (he checked his feet after leaving her house) but it was kind of anticlimatic to see Moss dead and then have another thirty or forty minutes to go. It's interesting how there are two turning points that did Moss in. One was the gallon of water, the other was his mother in law trusting a suit and a smile. but he did very little else wrong considering the semi-mythical types hunting him. This movie is a lot like Fargo, but I don't think it's as good (and that's far from my favorite Coens film). It's strong, but not a best of year, American Gangster is a much more satisfying film experience. this you kinda come up empty--much like our theatre the second the credits came out, no applause, nobody waiting around for the credits, everyone just anxious to leave, old and young alike, I don't think this'll have really great word of mouth, it just doesn't pack enough of a punch.
a charming film from Disney that pokes warm hearted fun at Disneyfication and how that particular brand of distorting of traditional stories is both oddly appealing and slightly repellant, and the film is also something of a tribute to the incredibly popular success of the Disney-version of stories.
Giselle is a Disney Princess from Andalasia. She lives in Sleeping Beauty's cottage (the opening title of Walt Disney presents is also in Sleeping Beauty's font, the set up introduction through the book invokes several Disney films, and the expositions via stills (pop up book) reminds one of Beauty and the Beast), and is patiently waiting for her prince to randomly appear and carry her off to be married (and kissed, but that's all). Her prince is nearby hunting ogres, and he just happens upon her, then saves her from an ogre, and a slightly bewildered and skeptical looking Giselle is carted off to be wedded and bedded (scratch that last bit, this is Disney we're talking about). The ruling queen, the prince's wicked stepmother, doesn't want to be dethroned so she disguises herself as the Snow White crone and sends/curses Giselle into the real world, New York to be exact. The Queen even has a bumbling assistant. Likewise Giselle has furry animated friends, led by a chipmunk. The chipmunk clues the prince into Giselle's banishment and the duo pursue Giselle, the Queen quickly sends her bumbling assistant to thwart them, but only provides him the tools to do it with later.
Meanwhile Giselle is lost in NYC in her wedding dress. she comes across a divorce attorney, Robert, and his daughter on their way home, and somehow she ends up staying. This puts a bit of a crimper when Robert's soon-to-be fiancee arrives bright and early. Robert soon has to deal with an apparently delusional and chipper woman (Giselle) interfering with his family, relationships, work and experience of NYC in general. Because around Giselle, critters do her bidding, people burst into synchonized song and dance, and she can mend a hardened heart with a platitude and some wide eyed sincere honesty. Soon enough Robert is falling in love with her--in one day!
The concept and overall execution of the film is brilliant, the actors are tremendously talented and are working with excellent dialogue, and a fairly decent plot. But they're also hampered by story construction and some weak links, haphazard jumps and poor pacing throughout. the pacing problems are especially apparent in the animated section at the beginning of the film. Tremendously dull, it has bits of wit, but they're completely buried under the lethargic pacing and tone-deaf ear for the nuances of successful satire, and it simply fails completely as a satisfying exposition.
And the animation is also pretty substandard for 2d as well. Very lifeless.
Spoiler:
on the other hand the final animated segment of the film is one of the best
Most of the rest of the problems with the film have to do with motivating the plot, and the writers 'solve' these problems mainly by just having an unconnected scene comes next and you logically assume that since you saw A and B and now we're at E, that C and D happened somewhere in between. There's also a serious problem in how they executed the bumbling idiot and wicked queen. They could have been a tremendous pair, instead we have a castrated queen who essentially does nothing for the first 4/5 of the film, because she will randomly show up in some water and give another order. there is no sense of threat or danger from her throughout the film or when she finally shows up, the filmmakers really missed the element that a good villain will have on the effect of the story, of keeping the audience on the edge of their seats even if they know a happily ever after is coming. Sadly the evil queen is more of a moustache twirler than an Ursula, Wicked Stepmother, Maleficent, or The Queen. The role the Queen plays in the story is more Shere Kahn than anything, she shows up at the end and there's a heroic battle, but it works for the Jungle Book because like Bruce the Shark or the velociraptor, we never actually see or encounter Kahn until the very end. And Susan Sarandon is so excellent as the complete live action embodiment of a Disney villainous that it's a crying shame her live action role wasn't as meaty as that of the bumbling assistant. It also would have provided an excellent way to counterpoint the way Giselle and her Prince interact with the real world with how she interacts with the real world.
But despite all that, Amy Adams makes this film soar far above the limitations of the script and lack of vision for the material. By sheer star power and a tremendously sincere, pitch perfect performance she turns a watered down Disney variant of Shrek into a very fun gentle and appealing satire instead.
her's is probably the best Disney Live action performance since Julie Andrews (excepting the Pirates movies) in Mary Poppins.
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Beowulf - 6 of 10
in Imax 3d.
This is my first experience with Imax 3d and while it's superior to the other 3d methods, by no means is it worth the several dollar premium on top of a regular 3d premium.
They wanted to get to photoreal on Beowulf and they're about 98% of the way there on facial closeups of only one character (the lead) and about 90% there on the other major roles and wide shots of Beowulf, and only about 75% of the way there on all the background roles. The problem of inconsistency with how 'real' the various people in the film are is one of the most distracting and detracting of the film experience. The fire also looks terrible animated--very fake, as did the food and water.
To a certain extent the 3d really exaggerates the descrepancy because the background characters tend to look like Southpark figure cutouts standing out separated from the background. And as an animated film it overall fails in the animation department with so much of the background action being rudimentary or non existent.
As much as I dislike 300 they took the more appealing route, a nearly entirely computer generated pseudo photo real environment (and crowds) into which they dropped real actors. Anthony Hopkins doesn't look that different from Hrothgar. And it was just unpleasant to look at the women in the film, they were so stiff and unnatural, more akin to polar express than this film. a better route would to have taken the 300 route, shot live actors with some live props and a cgi Beowulf integrated the way that Gollum was. This would have focused more resources on the lead and may have gotten him all the way to photo real.
On the other hand the script sparkles and the performances by Ray Winstone and Brandon Gleeson are superb. John Malkovich hams it up and tries to impersonate Bette Davis with his role, which is completely off the tone of the script that Winstone and Gleeson so perfectly nailed. Angelina Jolie does a terrible accent and has been animated to look like a barbie doll and therefore her nudity will avoid the terrible ire of the MPAA ratings comittee. How they got away with just a pg13 I'll never know but they somehow did with all the sexual innuendo and brutal violence seen throughout the film. Hopkins sleepwalks through his role but doesn't try to actively sabotage the film the way that Malkovich seems to be doing.
Grendel is also a disappointment, he seems more ugly and deformed than monstrous. but his design even fails to really carry that off since I spent most of his screentime trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with his exoskeleton/skin/ etc, and why he essentially looked inside out--not especially scary or satisfying, and pretty ridiculous and not in tone with the dialogue imo. The design really fails.
Still the action is wonderfully made, the story is extremely well put together and the 3d is quite fun if a little gimmicky. better directed than 300 (better everything than 300, but that's not particularly hard, almost all films in the action-fantasy genre are) the film is mainly hurt by the failure of the process to deliver a consistent result.
Just added August Rush, which I was hesitant to see after a real drubbing from critics.
Is it sappy and sacchrine? Absolutely, but it's execution of the Oliver Twist story through music is one of the best I've seen in years. A truly top notch family film that tells kids they should believe in something again. One of the most heartfelt climaxes I've seen in a long time. Much better than most of the hip, cynical fare that passes for family entertainment these days.
Wow, three tens for the year so far, and not even halfway through december.
The dialogue is pitch perfection amazing, the performances all around are absolutely wonderful and Ellen Page in particular is spectacular. A tremendous and wonderful film.
Juno is pregnant, and she's not happy about it. She's sixteen, a junior, and mainly just getting by duking out her quirky path through life. She plans on aborting, even goes to the clinic, but she doesn't go through with it.
Instead she finds some upper middle class suburnites to adopt her baby, and she likes both parents quite a lot, the husband is a former rocker, and the wife is uptight from being unable to fulfill her maternal instincts the way she has succussfully managed her career and professional desires.
The film is such a wonderful, compact, beautiful jewel of a movie that I don't want to say any more and feel I've already said too much. but EVERYONE should see this film, it's one for the ages. Brilliantly funny, emotionally moving and with none of the scatological vulgarity of Knocked up to sugar-coat the pill for cynics.
Just added The Golden Compass, one of the best straight adaptations I've ever seen of a children's movie - yes, even with the ending chopped off. That unfortunately doesn't make as great of a movie as it might sound. The first third and change is burdened by exposition that is tiring when the same information was conveyed gracefully and intriuging by Pullman on the page. Otherwise, the film's shortcomings are the book's shortcomings: in particular an episodic nature that never quite justifies itself to the reader/viewer. Much like C.S. Lewis's Christian fantasy epic, the rules of the universe never quite convalesce into a solid cohesive hole. Just when we've bought souls that live as animal daemons, we're introduced to seafaring gypsies, witches, balloon-flying Texan cowboys and finally talking polar bears. The book made all of the induvidual elements work staggerly well, and the movie also succeeds with immaculate casting. The characters felt like they leaped out of my imagination. In addition to staggering newcomer Dakota Blue Richards, who perfectly balances all of the facets of Lyra's character, Nichole Kidman puts in a performance as Mrs. Coulter that is a character best. She was born to play this role, and the result feels like the character lept out of the book. We don't see much of Lord Azrael as a result of the abridged ending, and he doesn't visually match what I imagined, but he does a good job of capturing both Azrael's passion and recklessness. He's the opposite of Mrs. Coulter's uptight rigidity, but no less dangerous feeling even though Lyra seems blind to his imperfections. Sam Elliot is, of course, fantastic as Lee Scoresby. And the visuals are magnificent.
The dry, exposition-heavy first half hurts my opinion of the film. As it is I'm leaning between 3 and 3 1/2 out of 4 stars. I marked a 3 for now, but that might change.
superb little film with John Cusack giving a wonderful, awards type performance. I think I preferred him in Martian Child but he transforms here.
The story is that both he and his wife were in the army, met fell in love married, but he was eventually kicked out when they found out he was cheating on his eye tests. Now Grace has shipped out to Iraq, leaving him to care for their 12 and 8 year old daughters, and managing a Home Depot.
She is killed and he can't deal. They just drive, to disney world.
the performances by the little girls are excellent, they are superbly directed, with pitch perfect business and dialogue. Likewise the adults in the film are all good, and the overall a quite powerful story that is exactly as long as it needs to be.
except the film is hampered by us never quite understanding why he deals with his grief like this, why he continually runs away from it. this is only redeemed by the script causing the elder daughter to follow along with her father's method of grief, there is understanding in her eyes and bearing, and she flees from it. She knows everything, but chooses not to know anything. so it makes the moment when she is explicitly told the truth all the more heartbreaking. That moment is worth the frustrations earlier in the film, but it results in a film that isn't cohesive or consistent. But it is wonderful, and worth seeking out.
