rating: ****
the story: In the Old West, a young man goes on a quest to rescue the love of his life.
review: I've been a fan of Robert Pattinson since he showed up for a minor role in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005). He later made his name in the Twilight movies, and has been working steadily in low profile starring roles ever since. With last year's Good Time, Pattinson started receiving some critical appreciation. He's become a kind of new Leonardo DiCaprio, whom he most closely resembles in style in Damsel, although his role choices have started to look a lot like the young Brad Pitt. Little wonder that he's gone in either direction; hard to find any actors with more interesting careers than theirs, in an era that has increasingly challenged the continued validity of the lead actor concept.
Damsel seems to have confounded most viewers. Is it meant to be a straight western? If so, why is Pattinson so buggy in the lead role? Or is it supposed to be a farce? Then why all the nasty violence? This ain't exactly Deadpool. So what's the deal?
A damn fine piece of filmmaking, one of the more interesting efforts I've seen in recent years. Directors David(who doubles as one of the main characters, a parson who's consistently in way over his head) and Nathan Zellner have no previous widely-known films under their belts (I know movies pretty well; their work seems to have fallen in the extremely limited release realm before Damsel), but their work here is a true revelation. Beautiful cinematography on top of everything else, it's their storytelling that most singles them out.
And what exactly is the story of Damsel? Because about halfway through, it completely switches tracks! Pattinson's character is dead, and everything the story had suggested about him turns out to be false, and...we're never really given clarification. It ends up being about Mia Wasikowska's "damsel" as she struggles to reclaim her sanity. Pattinson shows up out of nowhere, suddenly less a daring-do romantic hero and more a psychotic murderer, who kills her husband before committing suicide once it becomes clear he never really had Wasikowska's heart...Yeah!
It seems to be completely nuts. But in such a good way! The lack of answers actually works in Damsel's favor, ambiguity that's far too rare in mainstream movies (unless you're Christopher Nolan). Pattinson is positively magnetic in his role, seems to have been positively born to play it. Wasikowska, who has yet to have been fully embraced by critics despite years of excellent work, more than carries the movie in his absence. If this is an experience that confounds viewers, it's also one that is difficult to ignore, and hopefully helps everyone involved attract greater notice in the future.
Of course, Damsel gets a lot of extra credit for me from the opening sequence with Robert Forster, who's somehow never gotten the attention he deserved from his rediscovery in Jackie Brown (1997), where he effortlessly commands the screen with his unique charisma. Yeah, his presence also helps set the tone for this one.
But the movie itself is so peculiarly compelling, that Damsel ought to at least earn a cult following. It's like Seth MacFarlane's post-modern western A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014), but as a true work of art.
Saturday, November 24, 2018
Friday, November 23, 2018
Heat (1995)
rating: ****
the story: An epic showdown between cop and criminal.
review: Long billed as the long-awaited pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino onscreen together (they previously both appeared in Godfather Part II, but in separate sequences), Heat is actually an embarrassment of riches, in hindsight, full of actors who would populate the big and small screens for years to come. And it's arguably the predecessor to The Dark Knight in terms of action movies.
Here's the talent assembled for Heat: De Niro, Pacino. Val Kilmer and Natalie Portman. Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd. Jon Voight (who like Kilmer sports long hair for the movie). Tom Sizemore. Mykelti Williamson, who the year previous had his breakthrough appearance as Bubba in Forrest Gump, and would later play another cop in the underappreciated TV gem Boomtown. Dennis Haysbert, years before playing a president in 24, or helping us be in good hands with All-State. Danny Trejo. William Fichtner, who still has yet to be properly noticed. Wes Studi, Hank Azaria, Xander Berkeley (who also later appeared in 24). And Jeremy Piven, another talent who deserves much greater recognition for his screen presence.
And they're all here! Just spending the time enjoying them make their appearances, large and small, is worth watching this one.
Of course, it circles back to De Niro and Pacino. De Niro is in subdued mode, not the outsize gangster he is in Scorsese movies but more as he appears in Tarantino's Jackie Brown, two years later. Pacino, as he often does, chews a lot of scenery, but when it counts, he matches De Niro's mood, and it's everything you always heard Heat was. These are screen giants, and their epic showdown is exactly what it was always supposed to be.
But Michael Mann, who made his name in television, including Miami Vice (which he later adapted to the big screen in the same mold as Heat), isn't merely interested in acting. He's got a big action movie in mind, in the kind of scope he basically perfects, in the years before superheroes came to dominate the genre, in the years after the '80s saw them dominated by action stars. This is an experience that crosses all boundaries.
And yeah, it's exactly the kind of experience that Christopher Nolan later duplicated for The Dark Knight. The hype and magnetism of Heath Ledger's Joker was what everyone talks about, but Nolan was the first director since Mann to nail this kind of action movie. And at its heart, Dark Knight is more this kind of action movie than it is a superhero movie, and I think that's what Nolan realized, and was going for, and what audiences liked so much about it, too.
If Heat doesn't get talked about enough these days as a milestone of the '90s, and filmmaking in general, it's because it's remembered now for the De Niro/Pacino pairing, and the fact that after this their careers were never quite the same again. De Niro reached a dramatic peak, and went in the direction of comedy, and Pacino became dismissed for what's since become best illustrated by Nicolas Cage, the idea that acting style is suddenly a crime, where the idea of movie stars has slipped by the wayside. Which is ironic, as the dawn of the modern blockbuster begins with a movie where the acting is, distractedly, the whole point, by observers who can't quite keep the whole scope of the experience in mind.
the story: An epic showdown between cop and criminal.
review: Long billed as the long-awaited pairing of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino onscreen together (they previously both appeared in Godfather Part II, but in separate sequences), Heat is actually an embarrassment of riches, in hindsight, full of actors who would populate the big and small screens for years to come. And it's arguably the predecessor to The Dark Knight in terms of action movies.
Here's the talent assembled for Heat: De Niro, Pacino. Val Kilmer and Natalie Portman. Amy Brenneman, Ashley Judd. Jon Voight (who like Kilmer sports long hair for the movie). Tom Sizemore. Mykelti Williamson, who the year previous had his breakthrough appearance as Bubba in Forrest Gump, and would later play another cop in the underappreciated TV gem Boomtown. Dennis Haysbert, years before playing a president in 24, or helping us be in good hands with All-State. Danny Trejo. William Fichtner, who still has yet to be properly noticed. Wes Studi, Hank Azaria, Xander Berkeley (who also later appeared in 24). And Jeremy Piven, another talent who deserves much greater recognition for his screen presence.
And they're all here! Just spending the time enjoying them make their appearances, large and small, is worth watching this one.
Of course, it circles back to De Niro and Pacino. De Niro is in subdued mode, not the outsize gangster he is in Scorsese movies but more as he appears in Tarantino's Jackie Brown, two years later. Pacino, as he often does, chews a lot of scenery, but when it counts, he matches De Niro's mood, and it's everything you always heard Heat was. These are screen giants, and their epic showdown is exactly what it was always supposed to be.
But Michael Mann, who made his name in television, including Miami Vice (which he later adapted to the big screen in the same mold as Heat), isn't merely interested in acting. He's got a big action movie in mind, in the kind of scope he basically perfects, in the years before superheroes came to dominate the genre, in the years after the '80s saw them dominated by action stars. This is an experience that crosses all boundaries.
And yeah, it's exactly the kind of experience that Christopher Nolan later duplicated for The Dark Knight. The hype and magnetism of Heath Ledger's Joker was what everyone talks about, but Nolan was the first director since Mann to nail this kind of action movie. And at its heart, Dark Knight is more this kind of action movie than it is a superhero movie, and I think that's what Nolan realized, and was going for, and what audiences liked so much about it, too.
If Heat doesn't get talked about enough these days as a milestone of the '90s, and filmmaking in general, it's because it's remembered now for the De Niro/Pacino pairing, and the fact that after this their careers were never quite the same again. De Niro reached a dramatic peak, and went in the direction of comedy, and Pacino became dismissed for what's since become best illustrated by Nicolas Cage, the idea that acting style is suddenly a crime, where the idea of movie stars has slipped by the wayside. Which is ironic, as the dawn of the modern blockbuster begins with a movie where the acting is, distractedly, the whole point, by observers who can't quite keep the whole scope of the experience in mind.
The Old Man & the Gun (2018)
rating: ****
the story: An old bank robber proves charm is his greatest weapon.
review: I've become a huge fan of director David Lowery. Last year's A Ghost Story was a creative masterpiece and career highlight following previous films promising great potential (Ain't Them Bodies Saints, the live action Pete's Dragon). However, he's one of the young directors of his generation who's found it tough to find much popular, much less visible critical success. Scoring what's billed as Robert Redford's final role is probably a good way to get some attention. The results are once again worthy of the potential.
Redford was at the head of another creative generation, one of the brightest acting talents to come out of the '60s, where he made one of his earliest standout films, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where he first teamed up with Paul Newman (they struck again with The Sting), and set the tone for what Lowery evokes with The Old Man & the Gun. Redford made a career out of his effortless charm. His most recent mainstream role was as a bad guy in the MCU, the Marvel superhero Avengers franchise. I feared that this was how younger moviegoers were going to end up remembering him, and maybe they still will, but at least now he gets to go out on a high note, one that's all his own.
The idea of the "good" rogue is at least as old as Robin Hood, the criminal as likable, even defensible. Casey Affleck, who also appeared in Ghost Story and Ain't Them Bodies Saint, and as such has easily become a signature Lowery collaborator (he starred with Rooney Mara in them, and I wish she'd appeared in this one, too), plays a cop who eventually sympathizes with Redford's bank robber after spending most off the movie trying to catch him. Tom Waits (arguably continuing to reap the benefits of being Heath Ledger's purported model for his iconic Joker in The Dark Knight) and Danny Glover play Redford's fellow crooks, while Sissy Spacek plays a woman who falls for his charms in a purely romantic sense.
By the time Lowery allows himself to become showy (the whole thing is actually his filmmaking as more accessible, beyond Redford's appeal, than he's been in the past), playfully chronicling Redford's many jailbreaks, setting up the ending, you can appreciate the subtlety of the storytelling even more. A lot of other directors would've dwelt on that element a lot longer, and thus lost the point, and taken the focus off of Redford himself. But we do get a brief look at vintage Redford screen footage during the montage, and that's another great way to help say goodbye. In an era where we're suddenly resurrecting dead actors via CGI seemingly without batting an eye, remembering we have old footage available, and knowing how to use it, seems a lot more, well, artful.
And "artful" is what The Old Man & the Gun is all about, the art of moviemaking, the old charms, the timeless charms, and adding to them, explaining them, maybe.
the story: An old bank robber proves charm is his greatest weapon.
review: I've become a huge fan of director David Lowery. Last year's A Ghost Story was a creative masterpiece and career highlight following previous films promising great potential (Ain't Them Bodies Saints, the live action Pete's Dragon). However, he's one of the young directors of his generation who's found it tough to find much popular, much less visible critical success. Scoring what's billed as Robert Redford's final role is probably a good way to get some attention. The results are once again worthy of the potential.
Redford was at the head of another creative generation, one of the brightest acting talents to come out of the '60s, where he made one of his earliest standout films, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where he first teamed up with Paul Newman (they struck again with The Sting), and set the tone for what Lowery evokes with The Old Man & the Gun. Redford made a career out of his effortless charm. His most recent mainstream role was as a bad guy in the MCU, the Marvel superhero Avengers franchise. I feared that this was how younger moviegoers were going to end up remembering him, and maybe they still will, but at least now he gets to go out on a high note, one that's all his own.
The idea of the "good" rogue is at least as old as Robin Hood, the criminal as likable, even defensible. Casey Affleck, who also appeared in Ghost Story and Ain't Them Bodies Saint, and as such has easily become a signature Lowery collaborator (he starred with Rooney Mara in them, and I wish she'd appeared in this one, too), plays a cop who eventually sympathizes with Redford's bank robber after spending most off the movie trying to catch him. Tom Waits (arguably continuing to reap the benefits of being Heath Ledger's purported model for his iconic Joker in The Dark Knight) and Danny Glover play Redford's fellow crooks, while Sissy Spacek plays a woman who falls for his charms in a purely romantic sense.
By the time Lowery allows himself to become showy (the whole thing is actually his filmmaking as more accessible, beyond Redford's appeal, than he's been in the past), playfully chronicling Redford's many jailbreaks, setting up the ending, you can appreciate the subtlety of the storytelling even more. A lot of other directors would've dwelt on that element a lot longer, and thus lost the point, and taken the focus off of Redford himself. But we do get a brief look at vintage Redford screen footage during the montage, and that's another great way to help say goodbye. In an era where we're suddenly resurrecting dead actors via CGI seemingly without batting an eye, remembering we have old footage available, and knowing how to use it, seems a lot more, well, artful.
And "artful" is what The Old Man & the Gun is all about, the art of moviemaking, the old charms, the timeless charms, and adding to them, explaining them, maybe.
Gringo (2018)
rating: ****
the story: A ruthless company attempts to use one of its most loyal employees as a patsy in Mexico.
review: When I saw the trailer for Gringo, I thought it looked like a delightful farce. I was interested in it anyway, as it starred Charlize Theron and Joel Edgerton, two of my favorite modern actors. But more intriguing, from the trailer, was David Oyelowo, the would-be patsy whose reactions were hilariously over-the-top to the chaos happening around him.
And that's what you get the movie itself, too, and that's more than satisfying. The best part is that it casts Oyelowo in an entirely new light, for me. I was previously exposed to him only, as far as I know, in Selma, where I thought he was horribly miscast as Martin Luther King, Jr., and as a result I didn't think much of him as an actor in general. But Gringo proves me wrong. Selma's problems don't seem to have been Oyelowo's problems at all, its creative shortcomings a result of the creative process. Gringo is what the creative process working the right way looks like.
At heart it's a massive criticism of how greedy the business sector continues to be, long after the supposed "greed decade" of the '80s. Theron and Edgerton (whose brother Nash directed the movie) play the business colleagues trying to save their own skins at Oyelowo's expense. Edgerton famously has a passive face, expressionless, and I think it held him back early in his career, but he's managed to work around it thanks to his considerable acting chops (best exemplified, I think, in Warrior and Exodus: Gods and Kings), to the point where he can guide his own career now. His ruthless businessman in Gringo in particular uses his peculiar screen presence to full advantage, that passive face playing into is callousness as he tries to have his cake and eat it, too, backstabbing the haplessly loyal and trusting Oyelowo (until Oyelowo realizes that he's been had and turns the tables on him).
Sharlto Copley, who moreso than director Neill Blomkamp managed to parlay District 9 into a fascinating career, plays Edgerton and Theron's muscle who ends up siding with Oyelowo, and is another great presence in the movie. There's also Thandie Newton (can't believe she was ever allowed to vanish from the forefront), Amanda Seyfried, and Alan Ruck in supporting roles.
Gringo is a movie I think could very easily settle into a cult favorite, and a career highlight for a number of its actors, especially Oyelowo.
the story: A ruthless company attempts to use one of its most loyal employees as a patsy in Mexico.
review: When I saw the trailer for Gringo, I thought it looked like a delightful farce. I was interested in it anyway, as it starred Charlize Theron and Joel Edgerton, two of my favorite modern actors. But more intriguing, from the trailer, was David Oyelowo, the would-be patsy whose reactions were hilariously over-the-top to the chaos happening around him.
And that's what you get the movie itself, too, and that's more than satisfying. The best part is that it casts Oyelowo in an entirely new light, for me. I was previously exposed to him only, as far as I know, in Selma, where I thought he was horribly miscast as Martin Luther King, Jr., and as a result I didn't think much of him as an actor in general. But Gringo proves me wrong. Selma's problems don't seem to have been Oyelowo's problems at all, its creative shortcomings a result of the creative process. Gringo is what the creative process working the right way looks like.
At heart it's a massive criticism of how greedy the business sector continues to be, long after the supposed "greed decade" of the '80s. Theron and Edgerton (whose brother Nash directed the movie) play the business colleagues trying to save their own skins at Oyelowo's expense. Edgerton famously has a passive face, expressionless, and I think it held him back early in his career, but he's managed to work around it thanks to his considerable acting chops (best exemplified, I think, in Warrior and Exodus: Gods and Kings), to the point where he can guide his own career now. His ruthless businessman in Gringo in particular uses his peculiar screen presence to full advantage, that passive face playing into is callousness as he tries to have his cake and eat it, too, backstabbing the haplessly loyal and trusting Oyelowo (until Oyelowo realizes that he's been had and turns the tables on him).
Sharlto Copley, who moreso than director Neill Blomkamp managed to parlay District 9 into a fascinating career, plays Edgerton and Theron's muscle who ends up siding with Oyelowo, and is another great presence in the movie. There's also Thandie Newton (can't believe she was ever allowed to vanish from the forefront), Amanda Seyfried, and Alan Ruck in supporting roles.
Gringo is a movie I think could very easily settle into a cult favorite, and a career highlight for a number of its actors, especially Oyelowo.
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Liberal Arts (2012)
rating: ****
the story: A thirty-something unexpectedly reconnects with his college self when visiting a retiring professor.
review: Josh Radnor's bid to be recognized in the same league as Zach Braff, Liberal Arts is the kind of small film that reminds you why small films are important, too. Like Braff (best known for Scrubs before making a brief transition into film glory with Garden State), Radnor is best known for his starring role in a sitcom (How I Met Your Mother) but subsequently made a push into making his own movies. Liberal Arts was the second of two movies he's directed to date.
It's the story of the struggle to reconcile real life with the kind experienced in college. Radnor's character feels lost in the real world. Everything he valued in college seems meaningless outside of it. At college, literature and poetry didn't feel out of place.
Any good review will tell you why the reviewer feels connected to that particular material. Radnor's thoughts are much my own. Even working at a bookstore for five years wasn't anywhere close to the literary immersion I experienced at college. I often found myself wondering who these book people were who showed up at the store, because I never really recognized them. Sure, they read, but they didn't seem to feel any of it. It was just an obligation to them. For a lot of students, reading is an obligation, too, but the sheer volume of students means there's a greater chance of finding, inside and out of the classroom, other people who get it, who aren't just going through the motions.
But Liberal Arts ultimately concludes that you need to stick your head out of the books, too, and while it's not a new message, and the story feels like a collegiate exercise, it's done with conviction, it feels real. It doesn't attempt to give you all the answers. Like Radnor's work in How I Met Your Mother, it's a subtle reminder that life is a struggle for everyone, but that magic can sometimes happen, too, mostly in the connections we make along the way. Radnor's old professor is played by Richard Jenkins, who has cornered the market on this kind of character, who's aged and agitated, but also a welcome presence, someone you want around. Allison Janney plays Radnor's favorite poetry professor, and while her part is smaller and more stereotypical, even she gets to have an open ending. Zac Efron has a small but memorable part as a kind of spiritual guru, a part he would probably never have played outside of this film. Elizabeth Olsen, the kid sister of the famous twins, had a breakout role as the college girl who nudges Radnor along to better understanding his predicament. Elizabeth Reaser gets to benefit from that as the bookseller who becomes his girlfriend.
Maybe it's a movie that speaks so directly to me, with a lead actor I already like, and so that's why I think it's good. And maybe it's just one of those movies that fills a whole in the cultural narrative, and its value is objectively visible, and you just need someone like me to help point it out. I wish Radnor had gotten to make more movies (there's obviously still time). He and Braff are representing an entire generation, one that can easily get lost in the shuffle, a generation that took a lot of things for granted and started finding out that not everything benefited them the way they thought it would. This is the kind of stuff a previous generation (or two or three) of movie stars got to make whole careers out of. And this is what it looks like today.
the story: A thirty-something unexpectedly reconnects with his college self when visiting a retiring professor.
review: Josh Radnor's bid to be recognized in the same league as Zach Braff, Liberal Arts is the kind of small film that reminds you why small films are important, too. Like Braff (best known for Scrubs before making a brief transition into film glory with Garden State), Radnor is best known for his starring role in a sitcom (How I Met Your Mother) but subsequently made a push into making his own movies. Liberal Arts was the second of two movies he's directed to date.
It's the story of the struggle to reconcile real life with the kind experienced in college. Radnor's character feels lost in the real world. Everything he valued in college seems meaningless outside of it. At college, literature and poetry didn't feel out of place.
Any good review will tell you why the reviewer feels connected to that particular material. Radnor's thoughts are much my own. Even working at a bookstore for five years wasn't anywhere close to the literary immersion I experienced at college. I often found myself wondering who these book people were who showed up at the store, because I never really recognized them. Sure, they read, but they didn't seem to feel any of it. It was just an obligation to them. For a lot of students, reading is an obligation, too, but the sheer volume of students means there's a greater chance of finding, inside and out of the classroom, other people who get it, who aren't just going through the motions.
But Liberal Arts ultimately concludes that you need to stick your head out of the books, too, and while it's not a new message, and the story feels like a collegiate exercise, it's done with conviction, it feels real. It doesn't attempt to give you all the answers. Like Radnor's work in How I Met Your Mother, it's a subtle reminder that life is a struggle for everyone, but that magic can sometimes happen, too, mostly in the connections we make along the way. Radnor's old professor is played by Richard Jenkins, who has cornered the market on this kind of character, who's aged and agitated, but also a welcome presence, someone you want around. Allison Janney plays Radnor's favorite poetry professor, and while her part is smaller and more stereotypical, even she gets to have an open ending. Zac Efron has a small but memorable part as a kind of spiritual guru, a part he would probably never have played outside of this film. Elizabeth Olsen, the kid sister of the famous twins, had a breakout role as the college girl who nudges Radnor along to better understanding his predicament. Elizabeth Reaser gets to benefit from that as the bookseller who becomes his girlfriend.
Maybe it's a movie that speaks so directly to me, with a lead actor I already like, and so that's why I think it's good. And maybe it's just one of those movies that fills a whole in the cultural narrative, and its value is objectively visible, and you just need someone like me to help point it out. I wish Radnor had gotten to make more movies (there's obviously still time). He and Braff are representing an entire generation, one that can easily get lost in the shuffle, a generation that took a lot of things for granted and started finding out that not everything benefited them the way they thought it would. This is the kind of stuff a previous generation (or two or three) of movie stars got to make whole careers out of. And this is what it looks like today.
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