Watched this Week The Good: Once, Pulp Fiction, True Romance, Body of Lies, Star Wars Ep. III: Revenge of the Sith, lots of Mad Men The Bad: Mr. and Mrs. Smith The Ugly: Transformers: Dark of the Moon Didn't Get Past 20 Minutes: Valhalla Rising Blu-Rays Bought: Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown Trips to the Theater: None Actors of the Week: Elizabeth Moss, Jared Harris, Samuel L. Jackson Director of the Week:Quentin Tarantino
Once (2006) was #7 on my Top Ten list of the last decade. It is the best movie about music I've ever seen. How can I not be immensely curious about this documentary following the success of that movie and the relationship between its two stars Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova. At the same time I'm scared to see it. You don't want anything ruining your love of a movie. And I have a strong feeling this isn't a necessarily happy footnote.
As I've been re-watching, I'm re-posting my review of Mad Men from Aug 2010. It's streaming on Netflix right now. Why aren't you watching it?
For the last 6 days, my life has completely been about Mad Men. I still have to go to work and I still have to shower and shave, but the rest of it has been Mad Men. I of course knew about the show. Emmy for best dramatic series 2 years in a row, Jon Hamm on SNL and 30 Rock, the stunning Christina Hendricks everywhere. I think I tried to watch the pilot a couple years ago but it didn’t click for me then. For whatever reason I decided to rent the first season and proceeded to watch 3 seasons in 3 days. Being single and having no responsibilities has its wonderful benefits.
Mad Men is about New York city ad executives in the early 60s. It was THE job to have. Respected and prestigious, and you could make a ton of money. The head mad man is Don Draper who is the Creative Director of Sterling Cooper(what a great name. who wouldn’t want to work with that company) and he is very good at his job. “I sell products”, and he does it like no one else. He is in charge of the idea. Someone thought of Got Milk and Be Like Mike. My recent favorite is Snickers Satisfies. That’s so perfect. Of course it does. Don would’ve came up with it if Snickers bars existed 50 years ago.
He is the man people want to put in family magazines. He has his beautiful blonde former model wife (January Jones), he has 2 lovely children, and he himself is indecently handsome. He also has mistresses and incredible self-loathing. There are many great supporting characters, but the other lead character really is Peggy Olson(Elisabeth Moss) who starts off the series as Don’s secretary. Secretaries back then were exactly the stereotype women find offensive these days. “Good morning Mr. Draper”. She takes his hat and coat. “Would you like some coffee?” Peggy is a graduate of Ms. Deaver’s Secretarial School and makes her commute from Brooklyn into Manhattan every day.
Like the Sopranos, the show is about two things. It’s about work life and it’s about home life. The work life is fantastic. It actually made me semi-excited to be working in an office. I felt a little pride about that. I thought it was just going to be a show about a—hole ad men selling worthless products but it really goes the other way. It’s about creative people and the creative process. They really have to think hard about these products and how to sell them. Don then gives a presentation to the clients that honestly usually knocks my socks off. His pitch for a Kodak slide machine is unbelievable. And everyone in the office needs to work to help. The art department, the media department, the account managers taking the clients out for drinks, it’s a process that great to watch. It’s also great that the products aren’t fake. They’re trying to convince their clients that Heineken should proudly promoted as imported and that Pepsi’s new diet soda should not be called Patio.
The home life is about the women. When women were prisoners in their homes and did in fact eagerly await their husbands arrival at 5:15 with a drink in hand. Betty Draper looks like the perfect wife but inside is a world of dissatisfaction and loneliness. I was wondering if the show would just turn off female viewers but I think the show might be the most sympathetic to them. The writing staff actually has more women than men. And considering today’s insane shift toward the housewife as an ideal, a show about the 1960s may be more relevant than ever.
Speaking of the 60s, it’s so much of what makes the show fun to watch. Everyone’s constantly smoking and alarmingly, everyone’s drinking in the office. One day Don’s liver is going to explode like firecracker. Not to mention the fashion. The men have their skinny suits with skinnier ties, the women have their 2 hour hairdos, layers of undergarments, and long skirts. It’s surprising how much it doesn’t seem like a costume show. It all just feels normal and that’s a great accomplishment. Btw, I wish I could look half as good as Don Draper looks like in a suit. Also, there’s of course the extreme chauvinism of the time period. Even strong women like office manager Joan Holloway(Christina Hendricks) is at the mercy of these men. Peggy is always referred to as Don’s “girl” and really is treated like a second class citizen. But it's the 60s and things are changing. As a side note, the money really makes me laugh. Don is offered a raise of 40. I thought $40,000/year must’ve been a lot back then as Don is becoming a partner. Then Don asks for 45. “$4500 it is”. $4500! LOL. Then later Peggy asks for a raise of $5/week. $35 up from $30. She can hardly afford the .35 cent lunch and brown bags it every day. Someone even complains that 10 cent diapers are so expensive they should really be made to be used more than once. Awesome.
I love Peggy Olson. She is the character I relate to the most. She starts as a secretary, but through fortunate circumstances she starts to write ad copy. First for a lipstick company, then for an electric exercise device for women. Eventually she becomes a junior copywriter. Her upward mobility is shocking to everyone including herself. Elisabeth Moss is incredible in the role. She was first daughter Zoey Bartlett on The West Wing and now she gets to play this young 22 year-old girl who is coming of age before our eyes. It’s perfect casting. Her voice, the fact that she’s the shortest girl in the office, and yet she holds her own with the guys. It’s her talent that earns her respect, not the shortness of her skirt. She finds such joy in being creative and we feel that too. She also has a very bad thing happen to her during the first season but I won’t spoil the surprise. It’s a great character. One of the most memorable female characters I’ve come across in TV or film.
It all comes from the writing. Creator/Executive producer Matt Weiner wrote for the Sopranos and he is a formidable writer. The emotional and dramatic complexity of every episode, I’m very envious. Also the show is very funny and finds great moments of humor both big and small. A German-immigrant from the art department confesses , “I am homosexual”, and one of the guys says, “I don’t think that means what you think that means.” I fell off my couch, I was laughing so hard. I really want to read those scripts. Television shows on cable networks have been one of the greatest things of the last 10 years. 13 episodes, no commercials, no network constraints. The content isn’t for everyone, it’s for smart people. I still love Harry Potter and action movies but the richest writing is on TV. Not the BS CSI episode that has a new murder every week, I’m talking about serialized dramas that follows character and story progression over episodes and years. Lost may be off the air, but there’s still Mad Men.
Obviously I highly recommend it. The pilot is a little weak in my opinion, but the episodes only get better as it goes along. I watch a lot of things and when you find something that’s so good it’s a joy. These last 6 days can only be described as completely satisfying.
**Peggy Olson and Betty Draper. My mom's name is Peggy. My aunt's name is Betty. Strange.
"We were once a peaceful race of intelligent mechanical beings... and then came the war."
I had to pause the movie because I was laughing so hard. And that was the first line. I don't imagine there will be a funnier line in a movie this year.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a terrible film. Noisy, erratic, incoherent, and bloody boring. And you know what, I just don't care about anything going on in it. If the Decepticons take over the Earth, that's fine with me. It's not like the Autobots are any more interesting. Huge ugly robots transforming aren't interesting to me. Despite their cutting edge technology, they still end up just punching each other. Occasionally they wrestle. Btw, has anyone mentioned how bad the designs are for these robots? Couldn't they look better? They are not pleasing to the eye at all. They are sharp metal objects jabbing at my face.
At this point in the review I would recap the plot, but I can't do it. One thing about these Transformers movies is that they seem to go to great lengths to make the most unnecessarily complicated plots possible. I don't think I could pass a test on the story. There are double crosses and fake outs and teleportation and who the hell cares. Who cares! This is horrendous screenwriting from Ehren Kruger who is one of the great hacks the studios love, but who can't possible write a good movie if his life depended on it. His writing credits include Transformers 2, Scream 3, Reindeer Games, and The Skeleton Key with Kate Hudson.
All the human characters do in this movie is scream. Their dialogue is completely inconsequential. They could say anything, it wouldn't affect the movie. It certainly isn't funny or moving or anything normal people would say. Why is a Victoria's Secret model little Shia's girlfriend? Because they need an opening shot of her ass walking up the stairs in black underwear. Chicago is crumbling around her but she must have the time to reapply her pristine make-up in between the action. What about the action? I've heard a lot of "I don't care about the story, I just want to see the action." But it doesn't deliver. Everything is so confusing. Who are the good robots, who are the bad robots? Half the time I didn't know. There's too much slow motion and the kills aren't strong. Big bad guys go down but it's not satisfying. Maybe because they are just lifeless animated characters. It's all too noisy with a lot of sparks. Bay loves sparks. Sparks, sparks, sparks.
One thing I want to mention is the score by composer Steve Jablonsky. It is awful. It is 2.5 hours of over the top trailer music. It's loud and apparently trying to exist apart from the movie it's supposed to be supporting. I can't remember a movie in recent memory whose score irritated me more. Also the worst edited movie I've seen in a while.
This third movie is a mess. A colossal FUBAR mess. It's the most cynical big budget studio summer movie. Who cares about the story, just show lots of explosions, a hot girl, try to jam pop songs into scenes where they don't belong, and then have some narration by the red robot to wrap things up. I've been trying to think of a franchise that is similar. A series of movies that made huge amounts money while the movies were all bad. I still can't think of one. This is a rare achievement by Michael Bay. Stunning really.
The last line was spoken, cut to black, the end credits started. I exhaled and said, "Whoo. That was bad."
Watched this Week The Good: Bridesmaids, Snatch., Die Hard 2, Days of Thunder, Star Wars ep IV-VI, Mad Men Seasons 1-4 The Bad: The Tree of Life The Ugly: None Didn't Get Past 20 Minutes: None Blu-Rays Bought: Star Wars Trilogy IV-VI Trips to the Theater: None Actors of the Week: Kristen Wiig, Chris O'Dowd, Jon Hamm Director of the Week:Irvin Kershner
2 starsI kept my promise. 3 months after not finishing it at the theater, I watched The Tree of Life in its entirety Sunday night in the comfort of my own home. Here's a link to my previous review. It did help to be alone without a crowd. Malick’s movies aren’t really made for a packed audience. Sadly though, my opinion did not improve.
Despite all of the things I’ve read and heard about what Malick was trying to do with The Tree of Life, such as showing man’s connection to nature, it’s not enough for me. Thematic material is nice to talk about but if you’re not feeling anything the movie has failed. The film isn’t a film. There is no narrative, no plot, no story. It’s a barrage of imagery, some very beautiful, but not enough to hold my interest for 2 hours and 15 minutes. I equate it to a very long movie trailer. Images, voice-over, you get an impression of what the movie may be without the actual movie.
What absolutely killed any momentum for me is the 15 minute sequence showing the birth of the Earth. Dinosaurs, volcanoes, it’s tedious. Yet the same could be said about 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both movies are nearly silent, both movies have a long section set at the beginning of time, both movies are not concerned with the people in it, both movies use lots of classical music, and both movies were made by directors who seem to not care about the pleasure of the audience. Haha. Maybe I enjoy spacecraft and artificial intelligence more than waterfalls and flocks of birds. Kubrick's film does have a story though between shots of shuttles docking. Subjectively, I consider it a masterpiece.
The long section with Pitt’s father character harshly raising his boys is effective, but again, the movie is not complete. It is made up of disparate sections and moments and endless shots of the mother (Jessica Chastain) looking at her boys. And then the boys run around their lawn. The camera cuts to black and then they play some more. And then the camera tracks them from behind as they walk over and over again. Sorry, the work of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men) is sometimes stunning, but I think I’m done with Terrence Malick. I don’t know if he has anything new to say. I felt like the subject matter was better presented in The Thin Red Line. I also don’t know if he’s even trying to reach an audience anymore. Or maybe he just isn’t reaching me anymore. The New World, that's an amazing film. He's coming out with two more relatively soon, but I’m no longer excited about them. You can see for yourself as I'm sure your curiosity is still high, but I'd take Wong Kar-Wai any day.
3 starsAfter seeing her in several films like Adventureland, Paul, and Knocked Up playing bizarre supporting characters, Kristen Wiig so deservedly gets a leading role. After her cameo in Knocked Up, producer Judd Apatow asked her to write a script that she could star in. 4 years later she and her fellow Groundlings alumni Annie Mumolo finished Bridesmaids and it became his biggest hit. At $168 million, it made more money than The 40 Year-Old Virgin, Pineapple Express, and Superbad. A movie about bridesmaids is his most successful film, and she is the best thing in it.
Annie Walker (Kristen Wiig) started a cake bakery in Milwaukee in her 20s, it went under during the recession, and now she's relegated to working in a jewelery store with wood paneling and living with two irritating British roommates. Also her car is a POS with no tail lights. Her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) has just gotten engaged and she asks Annie to be the Maid of Honor (that's supposed to be capitalized right?). And of course, terrible, horribly embarrassing things happen.
The Good Kristen Wiig, Kristen Wiig, and Kristen Wiig. Why can't comedic performances be nominated for Oscars? I don't think I'll see a better female performance this year. She's written the role herself but look what she has to do. She has to be funny in every scene, she has to have wild hilarious sex scenes with Jon Hamm without us losing respect for her character, she has to be real and grounded in a romance, she has to slowly disintegrate over the movie as she's losing her best friend to a new friend (a scary specific Rose Byrne), and she has to pull off some huge scenes of physical comedy. The level of difficulty of this character is very high, and she never fails.
And could she possibly be lovelier? It's not just that she's pretty (which she very much is), but it's great to see a female character who is smart. She's got problems like anyone, yet she remains a sharp, quick witted person. Her dance on the yellow line while she tries to convince a policeman that she's not drunk still makes me laugh. She's one of those people where everything she does is funny.
That policeman is the 2nd best thing in the movie. I had seen Irish actor Chris O'Dowd in Richard Curtis's film Pirate Radio and he was pretty good in it. I wasn't prepared for how charming and likeable he is in this movie. He's not as handsome as Jon Hamm (Annie's loathsome f--k buddy) but he's a winner. He and Wiig's scenes are so sweet, and it goes to show how rare it is when movie romances actually work well. He's in Apatow's next film This is Forty and I hope he continues to work over here.
Also great are the scenes with Annie and Lillian (Maya Rudolph is Wiig's real life best friend). Their first scene together having breakfast is so good. They're the best friends anyone would want to have, and so not the annoying Sex and the City ladies. They're real, they're so comfortable with each other, and I'm admittedly not a huge fan of dirty humor, but Rudolph's line is a killer: "Did you let him sleepover... in your mouth?" I wish more female friendships in movies were half as enjoyable.
And despite the broad humor (no pun intended), there are real things here. Things that us 30 year-olds are going through. I'm not a woman, but I identified with her. She's in her 30s, things aren't coming together yet, and everyone she knows is with someone. Imagine your best friend is moving to another city and her new friend is better looking than you and has lots of money. I'm threatened already.
The Bad I didn't laugh as much as I should've. Once the wedding prep starts, the comedy was hit or miss for me. Maybe it was because after talking to many friends, and witnessing it first hand, I know how stressful a wedding can be. It's supposed to be special and not have major problems and that's all this movie is about. It's hard for me to laugh when I think of myself at the engagement party and two women are fighting over the microphone trying to top each others' toasts and then they end up humiliating themselves in an impromptu duet. A lot of the miss is specifically because of Rose Byrne's character Helen. She represents a kind of woman I cannot tolerate. She's passive aggressive, spoiled and rich, she takes herself way too seriously, and there isn't a genuine thing about her. I love Australian actress Rose Byrne, but I hate, hate, hated her character. She's Wiig's nemesis and I realized passive aggression is no longer funny to me. I can't take it. I couldn't get passed how much I hated her in every scene she is in, which are many.
I've thought about this, and maybe I'm old fashioned, but I don't like laughing at women? There is that big food poisoning scene and we see the bridesmaids' nauseating bodily consequences, but I didn't laugh, I just felt bad. I also felt bad when Wiig freaks out on a long airplane sequence. The other bridesmaids are hit or miss too. They don't really have strong storylines. Maybe there were too many? Ellie Kemper has barely anything to do, Wendi McLendon-Covey has a few funny lines complaining about her kids, but nothing's really there. I thought about Ed Helms' character in The Hangover. He's going through all this crazy stuff in Vegas, but his real story is how he needs to leave his fiance. The girls don't have much in terms of characters arcs. Melissa McCarthy as the extra butch Megan is the funniest of the bunch, but her creepy relationship with a guy she meets on the plane doesn't amount to much. Lastly, I wish Wilson Phillips would've stayed in the 90s where they belong. I might've liked the song "Hold On" then. It's just cringing embarrassing now.
I'm aware I'm not necessarily the target audience for Bridesmaids. Women are. And by all accounts, it's a hugely popular movie. I liked a lot of it, but it's not up there with the best of Apatow's movies to me. Still, there's Kristen Wiig. She's very special and I kind of got a small crush on her. I think a lot of people will, probably both men and women. The movie is worth seeing just to see her in it.
2 stars I honestly don't know what to make of Danish director Nicolas Refn's Drive. I thought about it during, I thought about it after, but what is this movie trying to be?
Is it trying to be a throwback genre piece? It succeeds as a period movie. You take away the cell phones, and this is a movie straight from the late 60s/early 70s. And yet it doesn't satisfy as a genre movie about cars. There is only one real car chase and it is very brief. There is a tense opening that actually shows Gosling's character doing his job as a getaway driver but considering the rest of the movie, it seems superfluous. There are gangsters and sexy women and tough guy violence but it's too detached for me. None of it really means anything. And in between we get a lot of scenes where characters sit and stare for long periods of time.
So is it then a movie commenting on the genre, much like Tarantino does? Along with being a car movie, it is a heist gone wrong movie, but it doesn't have much suspense or the more fun aspects of a thriller. It's not as smart as it thinks it is. For example, Gosling's performance is obviously inspired by the silent Clint Eastwood/Steve McQueen anti hero, but he and the movie can't sell it. You have to innately have that tough guy in you and I didn't believe he did. Choosing him for this role is an attempt to be different but it doesn't work. Also, why is this movie filled with so many bland cliches? The wife who has a husband in jail and when he gets out things go to hell. The guy getting a shot at a legitimate living but he can't seem to escape his life of crime. There are plenty of bad guys swearing and doing bad things but how many guys in track suits and gold chains do I need. For a movie trying to be different it isn't that different. Replace Gosling with Jason Statham, add more action, and this is The Transporter.
Is it then something else? Is this a serious work from a director attempting to express something? I don't think so. First, stylistically it is disappointing. The camera work and lighting are nothing special. This is far from a gritty Scorsese crime film. For all of the long lingering shots on brooding characters I don't care about them. I don't care who gets the money or who dies because of it. I don't care about this driver and what he wants his life to be. And I don't believe him when he says that meeting his neighbor (Carey Mulligan) and spending time with her and her son was the best time of his life. A script like this doesn't deserve the caliber of actors in this movie. Albert Brooks, Ron Perlman, Bryan Cranston. They bring so much themselves but they are not playing people, they are playing movie characters. Which would be fine if they were the least bit memorable. And poor Christina Hendricks is absolutely wasted in a miniscule role. It was so good to see her in a movie but she has nothing to do but give some exposition, whimper and smoke.
I loved Refn's previous film Bronson with Tom Hardy. He has loads of talent and taste, but this material is no good. There are a couple fantastic moments matching images to music (with a great song called "A Real Hero" from a group called College) but it's not enough. What I'll remember is Gosling's silver jacket with a scorpion on the back and several shocking and over the top scenes of violence. After an hour of somber calm, they really do come out of nowhere and I had no idea how to feel about them. I'm curious what the critics see as this has been widely praised. I personally was wondering why the movie was being dumped in September but now I get it. I'm sure there can be a good even great movie about existentialism and car driving, but this one ain't it.
*A better movie in the same vein is Tarantino's Death Proof, which was the second half of his Grindhouse double feature with Robert Rodriguez. It's available as a full movie as well.
Watched this Week The Good: Sons of Anarchy Seasons 1-3, Inception, Taken, Talk to Her The Bad: Pride and Glory The Ugly: None Didn't Get Past 20 Minutes: None Blu-Rays Bought: Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, The A-Team, Trainspotting Trips to the Theater: Warrior x2!, Drive Actors of the Week: The cast of Warrior including Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy, Jennifer Morrison, Nick Nolte, and Frank Grillo Director of the Week:Gavin O'Connor
Re-posting my review of the first. And I'm only planning to buy the original trilogy as no one should have Attack of the Clones in their collection.
Star Wars (1977) Classic People talk a lot about Empire, but my favorite of all 6 is the first, Star Wars. I don't call it A New Hope, I don't call it episode 4, it's Star Wars. It's the original. It's the one I taped off channel 2, on BETA, and I watched it from ages 6-16 that way. It's the one movie my sister has memorized from front to back, and any movie that has any special effects, my parents always refer to them as Star Wars.
As a kid, my favorite was Jedi which is the first movie I consciously remember seeing in a theater. As an adult, Star Wars is my favorite. It's the most pure, it's the most adventurous. I kind of like that it's not about the deep mythology of the Star Wars universe, it's a simple adventure story about a farm boy who has to rescue a princess and then joins a band of rebels fighting an evil empire. And within that framework it's just a colossal amount of fun. That opening shot is astounding even now with the little rebel ship flying away from camera, and then the underside of that enormous white Star Destroyer that fills the screen and keeps and going and going and the music is rising and I always feel chills. The Storm Troopers blast their way through some rebel soldiers (the last time in all the films when the Storm Troopers are actually scary) and Darth Vader emerges through the smoke and chokes that guy. "Commander tear the ship apart until you've found those plans, and bring me the passengers, I want them alive!"
The movie does take a serious dip in energy as R2 and C3PO's leisurely journey through Tatooine isn't as charming or exotic as it might've been in 1977. I forgot how long it takes for Luke to actually show up. "But I was going to go Tosche station to pick up some power converters!" That image of Luke watching those two suns set still hits home. This guy should not be a moisture farmer, he should be on a space ship going at lightspeed, and this for me is the heart of the whole series. It's Luke's journey that we go on. Han Solo is a cool guy, but Luke is the one I identify with.
What I noticed most this time around is how well edited the film is. The prequels might have more digital environments and creatures and expensive CGI, but I find that those things fade. Special effects always depreciate over time but the sequences in Star Wars are at their core so well constructed that they hold their excitement. Take that scene when Luke and Han are in Storm Trooper outfits and they're trying to save the Princess. It turns into just a shootout between them and some guards, but the way the scene is put together along with John Williams' score, I mean, I still get pumped. Another one is when Luke and Leia have to swing across that chasm, but they have to hold off and shoot the Storm Troopers that are firing on them from above. Just a great scene. However, the best edited sequence, the grand champion is when they have escaped the Death Star and 4 TIE fighters take on the Millenium Falcon and Luke and Han are at gun turrets trying to shoot them down. That scene is perfectly put together. Lucas started as an editor and man does it show. Cutting from the cockpit, to the guns, to the ships, it is stunning. And this is long before digital editing. Someone had to actually splice the film and put the cuts together with scotch tape.
Harrison Ford is Han Solo and I forgot how funny he is in the movie. "Uh, everything's under control, situation normal." Even little moments like when he screams at Chewie to get behind him and when he kicks the Wookie into the garbage shoot. "Get in there!". He is so good at being a real person in this unreal world. He's speaking to Greedo the green alien who has a gun on him and he's just inconvenienced and annoyed. Also I really noticed how good Carrie Fisher is as Leia. She's such a great, strong character, very rare for the time. She's not at all a princess, but a lot of the time a superior to both leading men. She's a sharp and smart leader of this rebellion and at no point is she unconvincing. The fact they chose such a witty and intelligent person as opposed to just some hot girl to play her was great. I can't believe she was 19 at the time.
For me though, the sequence I watch over and over and over again is the final 12 minute battle when 30 X-Wings take on that Death Star. It is really unlike any battle sequence in any film. You can't copy it, it's so specific to that movie. Flying down a long trench to launch a proton torpedo into a 2 meter exhaust port. I love it! The best part, the BEST PART of it is the interaction between all of the pilots. Red 10 standing by, Red 3 standing by. "Stay on target, stay on target!" And all of the cross talk and trying to evade TIE fighters and the gun towers shooting big green lasers, I'm in geek heaven. That is another exceptionally edited sequence. I'm surprised the prequels are so badly edited and not half as exciting as this. When those guys die, you feel it. You feel how desperate it's getting and Luke has no chance, but then the Millenium Falcon comes in at the last moment and Vader is knocked out of the trench and you're all clear kid, now let's blow this thing and go home. WHOOO!!
There are so many other thing to talk about but this review is already pretty long. But I should mention things like John Williams' score, one of the best scores in movie history, the wonderful design choices and how I always laugh when I hear that song that's played in the Cantina. Particularly worth praising is Ben Burtt's landmark sound design for this film. Seriously, has a movie ever sounded as cool as Star Wars? I might write reviews of the other films, but I kind of fell in love with this first one all over again. It is a triumph, a watershed, and simply one of the funnest movies of all time. The whole series is out on Blu-ray September 16th.
I saw it again tonight. I hope you go and check it out.
This is an alternative trailer, probably more true to how the film really feels. And after hearing their stuff in Win Win, Friday Night Lights, and now Warrior, I'm really starting to like the band The National.
4 stars I always say you have to judge a movie on what it wants to be and how good is it at being that. Warrior wants to be a fight movie and a family drama and it is extremely successful at being that. I don't know if I'll be more emotionally invested in a film this year.
The two brothers of Warrior are Tommy Riordan and Brendan Conlon. Tommy (Tom Hardy) is the younger brother who with his mother left home so they could escape the abuse of their drunk father when he was still in high school. Brendan (Joel Edgerton) stayed in Pittsburgh as he was in love, he eventually married his girlfriend Tess (Jennifer Morrison), but both brothers have cut ties with their father Paddy (Nick Nolte) and both haven't spoken to each other since. It's now 14 years later and Tommy comes home to Pittsburgh looking to fight. He joins a local gym, and despite being unwilling to forgive or reconcile with his dad, he wants his pop to train him. Brendan is looking at the foreclosure of his home in 3 months and out of options, he decides to start fighting again.
If you look at the separate parts without any knowledge of the actors or what the film would look like, you would say this could be pretty cheesy. Broken family, one brother a screw up and angry, the other responsible and trying to make ends meet, an alcoholic father trying to make amends. This could all be very bad. But one thing I also say is that even the most cliched and tired of subjects can still make a good movie. It's just about how you make it. What's happened here is that everything has gone right. Very right. This is an incredible film.
The first thing that is very right is this cast. You may not know Australian actor Joel Edgerton but he is a fine actor, so good in last year's Animal Kingdom, and he is incredibly strong in this film. A decent guy to the core with an internal determination that is very interesting on screen. I like that he remains decent throughout the film as it's difficult to make an essentially nice guy into a compelling one. Hardy you'll know from Inception, I know him from his amazing performance in Bronson, but he is also very good in the movie. Guys will walk out talking about him. I usually don't like angry brooders but there is something so real about his performance. It isn't "acting". This British theater actor is absolutely a guy from Pittsburgh with a huge back who lives with years of hurt and disappointment. Nolte is as expected good, but a surprise was Chicago actress Jennifer Morrison as Brendan's wife Tess. Most may know her from House or How I Met Your Mother. The wife/girlfriend role in these movies are usually so bad. And even though there is a scene of her not wanting him to fight, it doesn't come out of nagging, it comes out of how much she is devoted to him. This is a loving, caring marriage and who wants to see their spouse get slammed to the ground and kicked in the face. They seem like a couple who have been together for a long time and who still really love each other. She is strong in the movie, even when she has to just sit in the stands and react. She ain't bad to look at either.
I don't know much about MMA but the fight scenes are exceedingly well done. Crazy exciting and visceral. I was concerned that maybe the sport wasn't made for movies as there is a lot of two grown men rolling around on the ground, but like any movie, they just show the best parts. It was also very cool to see how the smaller guys beat the bigger ones through technique. Tommy is about fierce ground and pound, but Brendan is a technical fighter. I can't tell you how satisfying it was watching a submission hold turn into a tap out on film. The two guys seem and feel authentic and real as fighters. Hardy a little too much as he is ridiculously big in the movie. It's hard to imagine he's still a middle weight. He's huge!
I think it's a better film than The Fighter. Grittier, more blue collar, more appealing. I think the family drama is better, and most of all, my emotional investment was off the scales. When you actually grimace, and lean forward, and then want to cheer during a movie, you are invested. And shockingly, I genuinely didn't know how it was going to end. That is unheard of for a fight film. There are no bad guys in this movie, just guys you care about. The action is great, but the emotional payoff is the thing I came away with. These two brothers are what I'm still thinking about even now. And I'm very happy people will start to know who Joel Edgerton and Tom Hardy are. Hardy is in the next Batman movie, Edgerton is in Baz Luhrmann's upcoming film of The Great Gatsby. For the record, I have never watched a full UFC fight, and I don't think I'm necessarily going to start. But Warrior is a great movie with tons of heart. I think I'm going to see it again.
Watched this Week The Good: Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, Chocolat, Big Night, Finding Neverland, Bend it Like Beckham, Casino Royale, First Knight, Inside Man, Atonement, Gattaca The Bad:Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Find Me Guilty The Ugly: None Didn't Get Past 20 Minutes: None Blu-Rays Bought: The Office Season 7, King Arthur, Wanted Trips to the Theater: None Actors of the Week: Juliette Binoche, Clive Owen, James McAvoy Directors of the Week:Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott
Trailers/Clips of the Week: Margaret. From the writer/director of You Can Count on Me.
3 starsAfter many years dedicated to film, I’ve realized you can’t just like the good movies. Good movies are what we all want. We want to go to the theater or rent a DVD and be satisfied for 2 hours. No problems, no glaring mistakes, but the odds are against you. So I’ve come to appreciate the imperfect movies that maybe aren’t all the way excellent, but have many good things about them. Gangs of New York, Funny People, Ocean’s Twelve. They all need more work both in the script and editing stages but there is so much good stuff in them. They may not be great on the first viewing, but they get better on subsequent viewings, especially when you are able to skip passed bad or unnecessary scenes. I think King Arthur falls into this category for me.
King Arthur got lost in the summer of 2004 as the sword and armor epics were coming to an end. I think Troy also came out that summer and once people were unsatisfied by that, it took the shine off this one. Also the movie was hurt by what I think was a poor marketing campaign (look at that lame poster) and by the fact that Disney forced the movie to become a PG-13. It was filmed as a hard R movie, but they literally took the blood out of the movie.
King Arthur retells the legend of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table by attempting to set it in some historical context. I’m not sure if it is in fact historically accurate, but it’s an interesting take. Arthur is a centurion from Rome who for 15 years has led his knights in protection of Briton, who at this time (about 400 AD) was under the rule of the Roman Empire. Their service is about to come to an end, but threats are moving toward Briton. The Saxons, an old Germanic tribe of barbarians, have a large army heading toward the wall. Also the Woads, the Native Americans of Briton so I guess Native Britons, are looming as well. Will Arthur stay and protect Briton or will he go back to Rome?
The script has good dialogue but its thematic material and overall story drive is not presented as best it could. Free will vs. Fate. Faith vs. Free will. It’s talked about, but I don’t feel strongly about it. Perhaps it is the lack of a singular character with one driven storyline that hurts the movie. Braveheart (man wants freedom) and Gladiator (man wants revenge) work so well because of their single mindedness. It’s easier to attach yourself to those stories.
What is great and what causes me to return to this movie is the cast and how this movie looks. Along with Braveheart, I think this may be one of the roughest and most down and dirty epics. It’s not a pretty time and people are living off the land. It’s overcast and moody and freaking gorgeous. Ireland stands in for ancient Briton and it is beautiful. Director Antoine Fuqua is a good shooter (Training Day) but Polish cinematographer Slawomir Idziak (Black Hawk Down, Gattaca) is an amazing shooter. The lighting is just my taste, with filters and desaturation and great texture. The final battle is filled with billows of smoke in the sky and although the action may not be as big as Kingdom of Heaven or LOTR, the mood and tone are so satisfying. This is a stunning film to look at. The current banner gives a nice taste to what I mean.
The cast is top rate. Ray Winstone, Ray Stevenson, Joel Edgerton. These guys are heavy hitters and they bring a lot more to their characters than was probably on the page. It’s a masculine group of knights with distinctive fighting styles and good moments that make up for the lack of character development. Even Ioan Gruffudd (Fantastic Four) makes a surprisingly strong impression as Lancelot. Keira was 19 at the time and man is she a movie star. There are some actors the camera just loves and she’s one of them. Completely engaging and completely convincing in her action sequences. Too many times they try to turn actresses into burly fighting men. Here they use her small size and speed to her advantage, and I think it’s a lot more effective. Above all though is Clive Owen as Arthur. It’s probably his most Alpha male role and he is so great in it. Strong and complex and a man of deep thought. I wish he would do more movies like this. He sadly wasn’t that famous at the time and that’s why he’s not in the center of the poster as he should be. Stellan Skarsgard is also very good as a low energy heavy who is a born killer but has grown tired that there is no one worth killing. He lights up when he discovers Arthur may be a match for him.
Also very good is a sequence in the middle of the film where the knights have to hold off a Saxon brigade on a frozen lake. The army advances while the 8 of them must hold them back with arrows, wondering if the ice will break. Eventually big Ray Stevenson has had enough and takes out his axe. He runs for the middle and takes huge swings at the ice, screaming in desperation for it to split. It’s a fantastic action sequence and fairly original.
The movie is too long, a death toward the end doesn’t have the meaning it wants to, but I still find myself enjoying King Arthur whenever I pop it back in. Btw, the Blu-ray is the director’s cut which has restored some of the violence and that is welcome. If you have a taste for this genre, and honestly I usually don’t, I hope you check it out.
3 stars I don't know if we'll ever know what really happened between Conan, Leno, and NBC. There will be a book, unless there is one already that I am not aware of, and there will probably be a TV movie dramatizing events, but I doubt Conan can legally talk about what really went down. And for the people who want this documentary to be about that, it isn't. It's there in bits and pieces, but the movie is about the tour Conan went on during the summer after he lost his job. The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour.
The movie is kind of strange to me. There are no terrible embarrassing moments for Conan, but it's a documentary that avoids the subject we're all interested in. It's like seeing a documentary about someone who almost died in the desert, but we don't hear much about the desert experience, instead we just see a lot of what he did with his time in the months after. References are made, and he does mention how angry he is, but there are no formal interviews or any large revelations.
What we do get is a ton of fly on the wall style documentary footage which I admit is a style I'm not a big fan of. I like docs that have some sort of structural context. This is just a lot of behind the scenes video from a tour that most of us haven't seen. We get to see parts of the show, but really not that much. It's mostly seeing Conan before the show and then after the show, and because I like Conan, and because I think he's an interesting guy in that he is very serious about being likeable and funny, I enjoyed watching him. I enjoyed seeing him sign almost anything anyone would bring to him. But it was also interesting seeing how much he dislikes taking pictures with people. It comes to the point where they just tell people no pictures since it eats up so much time. They can take a picture of him, but he's not going wait to pose with you. And then your friend doesn't know how to work the camera. And then when they do, they then have to get in the picture themselves and what a bloody nightmare. I will never ask a celebrity to take a photo with me. And you shouldn't either.
We also get a lot of moments of Conan being worried and stressed and doubtful about his performance. Again, it's not revelatory, it's kind of par for the course for performers. But it's Conan, so he's funny while he worries. He exorcises it by making fun of his kind assistant Sona and by being pretty cruel to Jack McBrayer (30 Rock). There is a pretty painful sequence where he continues to rail on Jack for being from the sticks. There is a passive aggressiveness to comedians that comes to light here. Everything's a joke, and the jokes get meaner when they get mad. We also get to see Conan in sweaty t-shirts after the show, we get to see him hilariously put on make-up as his assistant tries to coach him, and we get to see him with his wife and kids. That should be no big deal, but it was oddly sweet and endearing to see as I usually don't think of comedians having warm moments with their families. Seriously, Letterman, Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin, Seinfeld. For all of the family entertainment they do, I still think of them having sad lonely lives without lovely blonde children.
Ultimately the movie isn't all that profound, but I'm glad I saw it. The cumulative sum of all of these moments left me with a lot of admiration for Conan. Not because he's perfect, but because he's so human and still wants to give to people. For example, on his "day off" he volunteers to perform at his 25 year College Reunion with a full show. I am hoping one day for a blow by blow behind the scenes look at what went down between Conan, Leno, and NBC, but for now I'm happy watching Conan take the stage at Bonnaroo and use still images to show how much he looks like actress Tilda Swinton. I hope he never stops. He's a special guy, and he's one of us. That's why we side with him and love him. My dad likes Leno. He's 71 and retired.
Watched this Week
The Good: Pom Wonderful Presents the Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Pirates 1, Pirates 3, Watchmen, King Arthur, Miller's Crossing The Bad:Thor (review), Pirates 2 The Ugly: None Didn't Get Past 20 Minutes: The Perfect Host Blu-Rays Bought: Good Will Hunting, Pirates 1 Trips to the Theater: None Actors of the Week: Johnny Depp, Jack Davenport, Keira Knightley Directors of the Week:Gore Verbinski, Morgan Spurlock
Trailers/Clips of the Week: Wilde Salome. I really enjoyed Pacino's Richard III documentary Looking for Richard. I'm sure he's more passionate about Oscar Wilde than his work in Jack and Jill with Adam Sandler.
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