rating: ****
the story: A new MiB recruit quickly discovers another giant intergalactic crisis.
review: So, here's the thing: Men in Black (1997) is probably a classic on par with Ghostbusters (1984), but it's somewhat hard to view it as such because Will Smith was just getting started on a decade-long run as one of the most reliable box office attractions of that period, making it difficult to distinguish whether Men in Black was its own entity or, ultimately, just another Will Smith smash hit. Regardless of whether or not you enjoy Smith two subsequent appearances in the series, this fourth entry then becomes: Does the concept work without him?
I think it does. Then, I generally like the whole series. The storytelling has changed over time, notably the attempt to pivot almost entirely to Smith in the third one, at a time when his appeal was actually waning, and his performances were shifting away from the kind he was giving in the first one, which actually served to put more focus on the MiB universe itself, its vision of aliens run amok in all manner of guises. MiB: International, at the very least, adds to the memorable menagerie with the sidekick Pawny and the Beard Alien. The Beard Alien is just awesome.
Notably, the stars of the movie, Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, are actually reprising an act from Thor: Ragnarok. Thompson is the lead character here, inhabiting the Will Smith initiate role from the first movie, which a more developed backstory and a more deliberate arc. Any concerns that the hard focus on her being a woman playing too much into current trends might be redirected to how Smith was presented, including the memorable gag of the decoy white driver. Which is to say, even that is entirely in-character for the series.
Hemsworth, meanwhile, gets to do what Smith never did, which is to make being an agent seem like a casual thing. Clearly Smith's J was always supposed to turn out to be a rogue figure, but he was mostly presented as such in relation to Tommy Lee Jones' K. I like that Hemsworth and Thompson actually reveal their real names to each other, further distinguishing the two versions of the series, where even though we learn J and K's names, those initials will always be how they're remembered. If this is the only time we experience Hemsworth and Thompson in the series (though it would be interesting to Fast & Furious the series), then at least they leave a mark.
The mole trope seems fairly obvious from the moment Liam Neeson appears. He plays his part obviously from the start, but he's here for a supporting role. Emma Thompson provides one of several pieces of linking material within the series (in hindsight it was a good thing Rip Torn was killed off last movie, since by this one he was, sadly, dead in real life). Rebecca Ferguson appears as the somewhat requisite femme fatale.
Bottom line: International proves the series isn't entirely about Will Smith. That's a good thing.
Saturday, September 21, 2019
Donnybrook (2019)
rating: ****
the story: A U.S. army vet goes to extreme lengths to improve life for his family.
review: There's now a lineage of movies from the past decade that needs pointing out: Warrior (2011) to Hell or High Water (2016) to Donnybrook (2019), which will be perhaps the best and easiest way to explain what Donnybrook accomplishes.
Warrior was an MMA movie that was anything but an MMA movie. It wasn't the MMA version of the traditional Hollywood boxing drama, but rather a movie that featured mixed martial arts but wasn't about mixed martial arts. It was about the contrasting fortunes of a pair of brothers destined to collide all over again (in or out of the octagon). It was above all else great filmmaking. Hell or High Water was a latter-day western, a Great Recession story about a pair of outlaws who were also brothers. They were both concerned with matters of the modern world we often don't focus on, how easy it is to fall behind when everyone's so focused on the glories of getting ahead. But the reality is, there's a large percentage of the population that routinely struggles.
Donnybrook is a powerful, poetic experience. It maintains a razor focus on its characters. It features acts of grizzly violence. Interestingly, the only time director Tim Sutton actually shows the violence is perhaps the worst but also the most routine: when a scene of domestic violence plays out inside of a car. It's fair to say that most of this is metaphor, that unlike Warrior, which ends up spotlighting the MMA tournament it builds toward, the eponymous backwoods version of that event in Donnybrook is really only glimpsed at the very end. Where Warrior and Hell or High Water trace a sequence of events, Donnybrook follows its lead characters as they meet their various fates.
It's a movie where the villain has no redeeming qualities. This is an era that has often put villains in a sort of sympathetic spotlight, but not Donnybrook. There's never any hope of redemption for Frank Grillo, who had his breakthrough role in Warrior, which led to Captain America: Winter Soldier, where he first inhabited this kind of character. Grillo's sister is played by Margaret Qualley, who nearly stole Once Upon a Time in Hollywood from much bigger actors. Between the two performances, she has easily become a personal favorite. Grillo's counterpoint is Jamie Bell, once an adorable young actor and now turned into grizzled veteran, and perhaps this is his perfect role, the army vet with nowhere to turn but sheer desperation. James Badge Dale, who seems to have been cast out from Hollywood proper, turns in a typically compelling performance as the only cop who might've been able to intervene in these desperate lives, having firsthand experience as he does.
The whole experience is handled expertly, from how it opens to how the story circles back to that point, and the rich music score that punctuates every moment, knowing exactly when to pivot, as the story itself does. Apparently what little exposure it has had fixates on the violence, but doesn't seem to understand how little there really is, or what any of it means. A pity. But one that shouldn't end up being the final word.
the story: A U.S. army vet goes to extreme lengths to improve life for his family.
review: There's now a lineage of movies from the past decade that needs pointing out: Warrior (2011) to Hell or High Water (2016) to Donnybrook (2019), which will be perhaps the best and easiest way to explain what Donnybrook accomplishes.
Warrior was an MMA movie that was anything but an MMA movie. It wasn't the MMA version of the traditional Hollywood boxing drama, but rather a movie that featured mixed martial arts but wasn't about mixed martial arts. It was about the contrasting fortunes of a pair of brothers destined to collide all over again (in or out of the octagon). It was above all else great filmmaking. Hell or High Water was a latter-day western, a Great Recession story about a pair of outlaws who were also brothers. They were both concerned with matters of the modern world we often don't focus on, how easy it is to fall behind when everyone's so focused on the glories of getting ahead. But the reality is, there's a large percentage of the population that routinely struggles.
Donnybrook is a powerful, poetic experience. It maintains a razor focus on its characters. It features acts of grizzly violence. Interestingly, the only time director Tim Sutton actually shows the violence is perhaps the worst but also the most routine: when a scene of domestic violence plays out inside of a car. It's fair to say that most of this is metaphor, that unlike Warrior, which ends up spotlighting the MMA tournament it builds toward, the eponymous backwoods version of that event in Donnybrook is really only glimpsed at the very end. Where Warrior and Hell or High Water trace a sequence of events, Donnybrook follows its lead characters as they meet their various fates.
It's a movie where the villain has no redeeming qualities. This is an era that has often put villains in a sort of sympathetic spotlight, but not Donnybrook. There's never any hope of redemption for Frank Grillo, who had his breakthrough role in Warrior, which led to Captain America: Winter Soldier, where he first inhabited this kind of character. Grillo's sister is played by Margaret Qualley, who nearly stole Once Upon a Time in Hollywood from much bigger actors. Between the two performances, she has easily become a personal favorite. Grillo's counterpoint is Jamie Bell, once an adorable young actor and now turned into grizzled veteran, and perhaps this is his perfect role, the army vet with nowhere to turn but sheer desperation. James Badge Dale, who seems to have been cast out from Hollywood proper, turns in a typically compelling performance as the only cop who might've been able to intervene in these desperate lives, having firsthand experience as he does.
The whole experience is handled expertly, from how it opens to how the story circles back to that point, and the rich music score that punctuates every moment, knowing exactly when to pivot, as the story itself does. Apparently what little exposure it has had fixates on the violence, but doesn't seem to understand how little there really is, or what any of it means. A pity. But one that shouldn't end up being the final word.
Saturday, September 7, 2019
The Distinguished Gentleman (1992)
rating: *****
the story: A conman runs for congress (stop me if you've heard this one).
review: Wow. So until I randomly ran across a DVD of it in a library book sale, I'd never heard of The Distinguished Gentleman. Seems kind of odd. I mean, it stars Eddie Murphy, one of the best-known comedic actors of the past forty years. He'd made a considerable splash in the '80s with movies like Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hours, and Trading Places, and while it's true he went into a box office dry spell in the early '90s, before The Nutty Professor revived his career, I still thought I'd at least knew the stuff in-between. But apparently not. There might be a very good reason, and it has nothing at all to do with the quality of the movie itself.
The Distinguished Gentleman was released in theaters in December 1992. You may recall that the US presidential election had just been held the previous November, and that Bill Clinton won. It was a highly-publicized political season. Clinton's popularity surged in part thanks to his appearance playing a saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show, and he was later called "the first black president." Distinguished Gentleman makes no direct references to Clinton (other than borrowing part of his campaign material evoking H.W. Bush's "read my lips"), but anyone paying attention to the movie will understand how it perfectly evokes Clinton-style politics, and as such, it can be viewed as a criticism of Clinton on the very eave of his presidency.
And yet it's strangely nonpartisan. Murphy's conman spends the whole movie, in which he quickly wins congressional election based on name recognition alone (he shares a last name with the recently-deceased congressman played by James Garner) and plunges straight into Washington affairs, without once worrying whether anyone is a Democrat or Republican. The '90s were a period where the feud between the parties hotly intensified. Aside from probably Air Force One, Hollywood presidents tended to be Democrats in the Clinton years, typified by The American President (which in turn gave birth to The West Wing but perhaps most honestly, Spin City).
But anyone who began to suspect that politics had become a sort of cynical, get-rich-quick lifestyle might have found Distinguished Gentleman very familiar. It's just not how people were actually talking about it. Clinton's most direct satire, Primary Colors, began as a cynical book phenomenon but eventually became a somewhat fawning movie. But Distinguished Gentleman blows it out of the water. It's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for the modern age.
Where Jimmy Stewart plays an irrepressible idealist, Murphy at first has no interest in the job itself, until he begins to see the responsibility he's accepted, and the colleagues who have completely rejected it. Lane Smith plays his mentor, and in name he evokes Nixon (Smith even played Nixon three years prior, in The Final Days, so it can hardly be considered coincidental), but the story, in an era where Watergate's legacy remains as relevant as ever, never really reflects Nixon himself. This is called biting satire.
The somewhat anonymous cast includes Chi McBride when he apparently was being billed simply as "Chi." He remains a hidden treasure wherever he pops up. The spotlight rests, then, on Murphy, who gets to pull off, instead of his familiar trick of Peter Sellers ubiquity, a number of killer accents, including an MLK impression that if he'd ever turned into a full performance might've totally transformed his career. But he never mugs for the camera. This is a fairly straight performance for Murphy, which is probably one of the reasons it's been so easy to overlook. It's obviously a comedic movie, but its famously spastic star restrains himself. It's the absurdity of the story that's the source of the humor this time.
And the sad part is that politics remains exactly like this today, making Distinguished Gentleman increasingly relevant material, created at the dawn of an era, dismissed as poorly timed, but in the end, quite timeless. And well worth rediscovering because of it.
the story: A conman runs for congress (stop me if you've heard this one).
review: Wow. So until I randomly ran across a DVD of it in a library book sale, I'd never heard of The Distinguished Gentleman. Seems kind of odd. I mean, it stars Eddie Murphy, one of the best-known comedic actors of the past forty years. He'd made a considerable splash in the '80s with movies like Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hours, and Trading Places, and while it's true he went into a box office dry spell in the early '90s, before The Nutty Professor revived his career, I still thought I'd at least knew the stuff in-between. But apparently not. There might be a very good reason, and it has nothing at all to do with the quality of the movie itself.
The Distinguished Gentleman was released in theaters in December 1992. You may recall that the US presidential election had just been held the previous November, and that Bill Clinton won. It was a highly-publicized political season. Clinton's popularity surged in part thanks to his appearance playing a saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show, and he was later called "the first black president." Distinguished Gentleman makes no direct references to Clinton (other than borrowing part of his campaign material evoking H.W. Bush's "read my lips"), but anyone paying attention to the movie will understand how it perfectly evokes Clinton-style politics, and as such, it can be viewed as a criticism of Clinton on the very eave of his presidency.
And yet it's strangely nonpartisan. Murphy's conman spends the whole movie, in which he quickly wins congressional election based on name recognition alone (he shares a last name with the recently-deceased congressman played by James Garner) and plunges straight into Washington affairs, without once worrying whether anyone is a Democrat or Republican. The '90s were a period where the feud between the parties hotly intensified. Aside from probably Air Force One, Hollywood presidents tended to be Democrats in the Clinton years, typified by The American President (which in turn gave birth to The West Wing but perhaps most honestly, Spin City).
But anyone who began to suspect that politics had become a sort of cynical, get-rich-quick lifestyle might have found Distinguished Gentleman very familiar. It's just not how people were actually talking about it. Clinton's most direct satire, Primary Colors, began as a cynical book phenomenon but eventually became a somewhat fawning movie. But Distinguished Gentleman blows it out of the water. It's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for the modern age.
Where Jimmy Stewart plays an irrepressible idealist, Murphy at first has no interest in the job itself, until he begins to see the responsibility he's accepted, and the colleagues who have completely rejected it. Lane Smith plays his mentor, and in name he evokes Nixon (Smith even played Nixon three years prior, in The Final Days, so it can hardly be considered coincidental), but the story, in an era where Watergate's legacy remains as relevant as ever, never really reflects Nixon himself. This is called biting satire.
The somewhat anonymous cast includes Chi McBride when he apparently was being billed simply as "Chi." He remains a hidden treasure wherever he pops up. The spotlight rests, then, on Murphy, who gets to pull off, instead of his familiar trick of Peter Sellers ubiquity, a number of killer accents, including an MLK impression that if he'd ever turned into a full performance might've totally transformed his career. But he never mugs for the camera. This is a fairly straight performance for Murphy, which is probably one of the reasons it's been so easy to overlook. It's obviously a comedic movie, but its famously spastic star restrains himself. It's the absurdity of the story that's the source of the humor this time.
And the sad part is that politics remains exactly like this today, making Distinguished Gentleman increasingly relevant material, created at the dawn of an era, dismissed as poorly timed, but in the end, quite timeless. And well worth rediscovering because of it.
Saturday, August 24, 2019
Iron Man 2 (2010)
rating: ****
the story: Tony Stark's afterglow from the big Iron Man reveal is threatened by a business rival.
review. I hate Iron Man. I hate the movie responsible for the whole MCU. I think that if everyone who flocked to see Avengers: Endgame this year actually bothered to rewatch (or surely in some cases, watch) it, they'd hate it, too. But we have this fiction that the MCU has done no wrong. Forget that everyone forgets Incredible Hulk is the second MCU movie, or even exists within the MCU, and you get an origin to the whole thing that makes it all the more remarkable that the MCU happened at all. What saved Iron Man was the fortuitous casting and performance of Robert Downey Jr., and Iron Man 2.
Now, conventional wisdom is that it's actually Iron Man 2 that sucks. Which is nonsense. Iron Man 2 is the reason the MCU happened. And it's the reason why anyone thinks the MCU has been so good. It's the real template. And it did it better than just about all of the subsequent movies.
Tony Stark is given a real arc. A real arc. This is the only movie, in all his appearances, where he is given a real arc. And a satisfying one, at that. He seems like a real character. The charm of the performance matches, for the first time, the charm of the character. And built all around it is an incredible assembly, the first great assemblage of characters in the MCU. This is Scarlett Johansson's first appearance as Black Widow. Arguably it's her best appearance as Black Widow. Samuel L. Jackson has his first decent-sized appearance as Nick Fury. Don Cheadle assumes the role of Jim Rhodes. Garry Shandling is a smarmy senator trying to match wits with Tony Stark. Gwyneth Paltrow does more of her Pepper Potts (which is basically the same in every appearance). Director Jon Favreau, in his second and final film at the helm in the MCU, puts in another appearance as Happy Hogan (inexplicably his most enduring contribution to the whole thing). Mickey Rourke throws away his Hollywood comebackto play Whiplash, with a wicked Russian accent. Clark Gregg puts in an Agent Coulson appearance. And...ladies and gentlemen: Sam Rockwell.
Sam Rockwell's whole career is unfathomable. How does he keep finding roles? You'd think after The Green Mile he would've been dismissed into an endless stream of tiny creep roles. But he just keeps finding decent roles, decent-sized roles. And you can thank appearances like his Justin Hammer for it. He utterly lampoons the Tony Stark of Iron Man in this one. He lampoons the Tony Stark of Iron Man 2 in this one. And somehow we never see the dude again. Absolutely indispensable magic. But at least they realized instantly how important Loki was (the best thing about Thor by far).
So the whole package is pretty wonderful. And quite possibly still the best single thing about the whole MCU.
the story: Tony Stark's afterglow from the big Iron Man reveal is threatened by a business rival.
review. I hate Iron Man. I hate the movie responsible for the whole MCU. I think that if everyone who flocked to see Avengers: Endgame this year actually bothered to rewatch (or surely in some cases, watch) it, they'd hate it, too. But we have this fiction that the MCU has done no wrong. Forget that everyone forgets Incredible Hulk is the second MCU movie, or even exists within the MCU, and you get an origin to the whole thing that makes it all the more remarkable that the MCU happened at all. What saved Iron Man was the fortuitous casting and performance of Robert Downey Jr., and Iron Man 2.
Now, conventional wisdom is that it's actually Iron Man 2 that sucks. Which is nonsense. Iron Man 2 is the reason the MCU happened. And it's the reason why anyone thinks the MCU has been so good. It's the real template. And it did it better than just about all of the subsequent movies.
Tony Stark is given a real arc. A real arc. This is the only movie, in all his appearances, where he is given a real arc. And a satisfying one, at that. He seems like a real character. The charm of the performance matches, for the first time, the charm of the character. And built all around it is an incredible assembly, the first great assemblage of characters in the MCU. This is Scarlett Johansson's first appearance as Black Widow. Arguably it's her best appearance as Black Widow. Samuel L. Jackson has his first decent-sized appearance as Nick Fury. Don Cheadle assumes the role of Jim Rhodes. Garry Shandling is a smarmy senator trying to match wits with Tony Stark. Gwyneth Paltrow does more of her Pepper Potts (which is basically the same in every appearance). Director Jon Favreau, in his second and final film at the helm in the MCU, puts in another appearance as Happy Hogan (inexplicably his most enduring contribution to the whole thing). Mickey Rourke throws away his Hollywood comebackto play Whiplash, with a wicked Russian accent. Clark Gregg puts in an Agent Coulson appearance. And...ladies and gentlemen: Sam Rockwell.
Sam Rockwell's whole career is unfathomable. How does he keep finding roles? You'd think after The Green Mile he would've been dismissed into an endless stream of tiny creep roles. But he just keeps finding decent roles, decent-sized roles. And you can thank appearances like his Justin Hammer for it. He utterly lampoons the Tony Stark of Iron Man in this one. He lampoons the Tony Stark of Iron Man 2 in this one. And somehow we never see the dude again. Absolutely indispensable magic. But at least they realized instantly how important Loki was (the best thing about Thor by far).
So the whole package is pretty wonderful. And quite possibly still the best single thing about the whole MCU.
The Great Gatsby (2013)
rating: ***
the story: Nick Carraway becomes swept up in the epic life of Jay Gatsby.
review: Leonardo DiCaprio has frequently been a brilliant actor. Not always. And it's always strange to discover the exceptions. The Great Gatsby is one of them.
Baz Luhrmann does the Moulin Rouge version of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic, and Spider-Man, I mean Tobey Maguire, is our host. Maguire's casting, and performance, in the film is one of the textbook examples of failing to escape a well-known role. Maguire had a career as someone other than Spider-Man, before he put on the spandex, but then he did and now, because he's an actor of limited range, it's going to be hard to see him as anything but Spider-Man. And I find it difficult to believe that Lurhmann didn't on some level comprehend that. Maguire has voiceover work in his Spider-Man movies, too, so it's even harder to understand. He plays Carraway as the same Peter Parker dork persona, and Luhrmann dresses him as the same Peter Parker dork persona.
And then in strolls DiCaprio, and by now it's clear that he's developed a worn-in face, but the voice, if he isn't careful, is that of a child actor who...just has a career that's inexplicably continued. And that's Leo DiCaprio if he hasn't bothered to sculpt a performance. And that's his Gatsby. Anytime he opens his mouth, it's just Jack from Titanic in an alternate reality. Which I suppose was half the point of casting DiCaprio in the role.
Carey Mulligan is Daisy Buchanan. Mulligan was the It Girl at the time, but displays little reason for being It in the role. Isla Fisher has a thankless tiny supporting role (as she tends to have), and Jason Clarke is in it, too.
The real reason, the only reason to watch this version of The Great Gatsby is Joel Edgerton's Tom Buchanan, is Joel Edgerton. Following his Hollywood breakthrough performance in Warrior (2011), The Great Gatsby was Edgerton's first real chance to shine, and he obviously threw himself at the opportunity. His even better performance in Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), I suspect, has something to do with this one. Edgerton's somewhat blank face has always been his biggest drawback, but his voice and his sheer acting talent, when he's been allowed to shine, are undeniably huge assets. He clearly seized this opportunity. He's the only one in the movie who simultaneously loses himself in the time period and dominates the screen every time he appears. Some would call it overacting, or simply dismiss him as a ham. Those I would call clueless idiots. In another era, he would've instantly become a huge star. In this one he's settled back into a fairly anonymous career in the years since.
So the Jay Gatsby of this version? Is its Tom Buchanan.
the story: Nick Carraway becomes swept up in the epic life of Jay Gatsby.
review: Leonardo DiCaprio has frequently been a brilliant actor. Not always. And it's always strange to discover the exceptions. The Great Gatsby is one of them.
Baz Luhrmann does the Moulin Rouge version of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic, and Spider-Man, I mean Tobey Maguire, is our host. Maguire's casting, and performance, in the film is one of the textbook examples of failing to escape a well-known role. Maguire had a career as someone other than Spider-Man, before he put on the spandex, but then he did and now, because he's an actor of limited range, it's going to be hard to see him as anything but Spider-Man. And I find it difficult to believe that Lurhmann didn't on some level comprehend that. Maguire has voiceover work in his Spider-Man movies, too, so it's even harder to understand. He plays Carraway as the same Peter Parker dork persona, and Luhrmann dresses him as the same Peter Parker dork persona.
And then in strolls DiCaprio, and by now it's clear that he's developed a worn-in face, but the voice, if he isn't careful, is that of a child actor who...just has a career that's inexplicably continued. And that's Leo DiCaprio if he hasn't bothered to sculpt a performance. And that's his Gatsby. Anytime he opens his mouth, it's just Jack from Titanic in an alternate reality. Which I suppose was half the point of casting DiCaprio in the role.
Carey Mulligan is Daisy Buchanan. Mulligan was the It Girl at the time, but displays little reason for being It in the role. Isla Fisher has a thankless tiny supporting role (as she tends to have), and Jason Clarke is in it, too.
The real reason, the only reason to watch this version of The Great Gatsby is Joel Edgerton's Tom Buchanan, is Joel Edgerton. Following his Hollywood breakthrough performance in Warrior (2011), The Great Gatsby was Edgerton's first real chance to shine, and he obviously threw himself at the opportunity. His even better performance in Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), I suspect, has something to do with this one. Edgerton's somewhat blank face has always been his biggest drawback, but his voice and his sheer acting talent, when he's been allowed to shine, are undeniably huge assets. He clearly seized this opportunity. He's the only one in the movie who simultaneously loses himself in the time period and dominates the screen every time he appears. Some would call it overacting, or simply dismiss him as a ham. Those I would call clueless idiots. In another era, he would've instantly become a huge star. In this one he's settled back into a fairly anonymous career in the years since.
So the Jay Gatsby of this version? Is its Tom Buchanan.
Cinderella Man (2005)
rating: ****
the story: The Great Depression is almost Jim Braddock's greatest opponent.
review: Boxing is such a familiar movie premise at this point it can be easy to take for granted, but there's a reason it's used so much, because it's inherently cinematic. It's almost better to watch boxing in the movies than any other way. Cinderella Man, in turn, dramatizes one of the great boxing stories, a comeback tale that dwarfs the later fictional Rocky Balboa saga.
It's also a Russell Crowe vehicle. It seems as if Hollywood (and/or the press) periodically chews up and spits out its stars, finding whatever pretense it can (there always seems to be one), and this was just about the point where Crowe's remarkable Oscars streak (starring in back-to-back Best Picture winners, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind) had reached its sell-by date, right when he seemed to have found another surefire winner. But the system was done with him, and that's all you really needed to know about Cinderella Man. Right?
Crowe has been chasing Brando his whole career, by his own admission. Before he became a known acting commodity, Crowe was acting singing (yeah! he sang before he acted) "I Just Wanna Be Like Marlon Brando." Brando's early defining role was washed-up boxer Terry Malloy ("I coulda been a contenda!"). It's not hard to imagine Crowe envisioning himself playing Malloy, after a fashion, and the audience finally getting to see the guy actually box. And of course, because it's based on a real story, Malloy getting to hold his head high for an entirely different reason, at the end of the movie.
Cinderella Man is in some ways the end of the old Hollywood, before blockbusters finally squeezed out the traditional drama in the popular imagination. The Oscars, ironically, no longer have time for movies like it, even though their whole stereotype is built on it. But Cinderella Man isn't just the stereotype. As I say at the beginning of the review, it's about the boxing itself, how well it translates to film, and about perhaps the greatest boxing story ever.
Crowe's only real support in all this is Paul Giamatti, in a role that catches him at the exact moment he was attempting to finally transition into a leading man, thanks to the one-two punch (pop! pop!) of American Splendor and Sideways that helped studios and audiences finally discover his unique appeal. His role in Cinderalla Man expands as the movie continues, but it's still clearly a supporting one. There's also Renee Zellweger, who was in the midst of her own career transition, downward, having once been a Hollywood darling. Her role shrinks in the movie as it goes along, naturally. Director Ron Howard, of course, who helmed Crowe previously in A Beautiful Mind, was afterward best known for his Robert Langdon adaptations, and never again, like Crowe, embraced by the Oscar set.
Crowe never did get to make movies like this again. His subsequent career has been marked with reinvention. So perhaps different for the better. Cinderella Man is a neat little swan song for all involved.
the story: The Great Depression is almost Jim Braddock's greatest opponent.
review: Boxing is such a familiar movie premise at this point it can be easy to take for granted, but there's a reason it's used so much, because it's inherently cinematic. It's almost better to watch boxing in the movies than any other way. Cinderella Man, in turn, dramatizes one of the great boxing stories, a comeback tale that dwarfs the later fictional Rocky Balboa saga.
It's also a Russell Crowe vehicle. It seems as if Hollywood (and/or the press) periodically chews up and spits out its stars, finding whatever pretense it can (there always seems to be one), and this was just about the point where Crowe's remarkable Oscars streak (starring in back-to-back Best Picture winners, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind) had reached its sell-by date, right when he seemed to have found another surefire winner. But the system was done with him, and that's all you really needed to know about Cinderella Man. Right?
Crowe has been chasing Brando his whole career, by his own admission. Before he became a known acting commodity, Crowe was acting singing (yeah! he sang before he acted) "I Just Wanna Be Like Marlon Brando." Brando's early defining role was washed-up boxer Terry Malloy ("I coulda been a contenda!"). It's not hard to imagine Crowe envisioning himself playing Malloy, after a fashion, and the audience finally getting to see the guy actually box. And of course, because it's based on a real story, Malloy getting to hold his head high for an entirely different reason, at the end of the movie.
Cinderella Man is in some ways the end of the old Hollywood, before blockbusters finally squeezed out the traditional drama in the popular imagination. The Oscars, ironically, no longer have time for movies like it, even though their whole stereotype is built on it. But Cinderella Man isn't just the stereotype. As I say at the beginning of the review, it's about the boxing itself, how well it translates to film, and about perhaps the greatest boxing story ever.
Crowe's only real support in all this is Paul Giamatti, in a role that catches him at the exact moment he was attempting to finally transition into a leading man, thanks to the one-two punch (pop! pop!) of American Splendor and Sideways that helped studios and audiences finally discover his unique appeal. His role in Cinderalla Man expands as the movie continues, but it's still clearly a supporting one. There's also Renee Zellweger, who was in the midst of her own career transition, downward, having once been a Hollywood darling. Her role shrinks in the movie as it goes along, naturally. Director Ron Howard, of course, who helmed Crowe previously in A Beautiful Mind, was afterward best known for his Robert Langdon adaptations, and never again, like Crowe, embraced by the Oscar set.
Crowe never did get to make movies like this again. His subsequent career has been marked with reinvention. So perhaps different for the better. Cinderella Man is a neat little swan song for all involved.
Saturday, August 10, 2019
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)
rating: ****
the story: A former TV star's bid for career resurrection intertwines with the life of Sharon Tate.
review: A week after seeing it I'm still processing Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Sometimes I'm instantly in love with a Quentin Tarantino film (Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained), other times I'm not sure how devoted I'll be (Jackie Brown, Hateful Eight, even Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs). The two-volume Kill Bill is sort of in-between, although the second one is closer to instant love.
But of all his movies, Once Upon...is probably closest to Jackie Brown, which was Tarantino's first taste of languid, of just letting his filmmaking speak for itself rather than splashy violence (Reservoir Dogs) or splashy stars (Pulp Fiction) do the talking (along with the characters, naturally). Once Upon takes its tone from Margot Robbie's Sharon Tate, who today is best known for being horribly murdered at the behest of Charles Manson. Tarantino has stated that he wanted Tate to exist apart from that narrative. In fact, Once Upon... becomes his second film, after Inglourious Basterds, to deliberately rewrite history, in allowing Tate to avoid her fate, and it's in that regard that the film reaches its highest note and possibly the note on which the entire movie will ultimately be judged.
But Robbie's Tate isn't really the star of the movie. That honor falls to Leonardo DiCaprio, who's featured as the former TV star, a fictional character, who has been struggling to find meaningful roles. His TV show was a western, and by the time we catch up with him he's being cast in his latest guest spot in another one, and as Tarantino presents it the material becomes a movie-within-a-movie, something I wish he'd done with Django Unchained (as a flashback-of-sorts for the Brunhilda myth), which for some viewers might be a needless tangent, but it helps put the character in context, how he views himself, and thus how everything would turn out for all the characters if we followed their narratives equally. Metaphorically, you understand.
Just below DiCaprio is Brad Pitt playing his former stunt double, now personal assistant. After, oh, about a decade of sliding toward irrelevance and being best known for his relationship with Angelina Jolie, Pitt's performance in Once Upon... is almost akin to Travolta in Pulp Fiction, a giant reminder of his considerable talents, the full impact of his charismatic screen presence. He's got the best scene, too, a fight with Bruce Lee that becomes better as it builds, which is interesting for Tarantino, who usually accomplishes the bulk of his work with words. It's another subtle evolution of his filmmaking mastery.
Among the supporting players are Al Pacino (allowing himself a rare character role), Bruce Dern, and Kurt Russell, who's probably in the best sweet spot of his career (previewed, in some ways, by Death Proof, with a great spotlight in Hateful Eight).
But the ending is the real selling point. As I said, Tarantino allows Sharon Tate to cheat fate. In doing so, he probably allows Tate's husband, at the time of her death, Roman Polanski a reboot as well. Polanski at one time was known simply as a brilliant director. He was just coming off his breakthrough film, Rosemary's Baby, at the time, and would later direct Chinatown and The Pianist, but his career was forever tarnished by a rape charge he chose exile from America to avoid prosecution over. Is it reasonable to assume Tate's death played a role in the sequence of events that led to this fate? Is Tarantino saving two lives here? That's how I choose to view it, anyway.
Giving Tate the focus, rather than Charles Manson, is itself a noteworthy choice on Tarantino's part. It takes the power away from Manson, who entered virtual cultural immortality as the result of ordering Tate's murder, and Tate herself became just a name. In effect, Tarantino is addressing two major sins, and offering a chance at correction, that've haunted Hollywood for fifty years, which is noteworthy in and of itself at a time when Hollywood has been playing a moral authority. Is it a direct criticism? Will Hollywood even care, come the Oscars next year, or merely be flattered, as it tends to be, when presented as subject matter? If it gives Tarantino his long-deserved Academy recognition, all the better.
Perhaps, in time, I'll better understand how much I appreciate this one. For now I'll be a little cautious. But like all Tarantino's movies, it won't be easy to forget. Not by a long shot. Yeah....
the story: A former TV star's bid for career resurrection intertwines with the life of Sharon Tate.
review: A week after seeing it I'm still processing Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Sometimes I'm instantly in love with a Quentin Tarantino film (Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained), other times I'm not sure how devoted I'll be (Jackie Brown, Hateful Eight, even Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs). The two-volume Kill Bill is sort of in-between, although the second one is closer to instant love.
But of all his movies, Once Upon...is probably closest to Jackie Brown, which was Tarantino's first taste of languid, of just letting his filmmaking speak for itself rather than splashy violence (Reservoir Dogs) or splashy stars (Pulp Fiction) do the talking (along with the characters, naturally). Once Upon takes its tone from Margot Robbie's Sharon Tate, who today is best known for being horribly murdered at the behest of Charles Manson. Tarantino has stated that he wanted Tate to exist apart from that narrative. In fact, Once Upon... becomes his second film, after Inglourious Basterds, to deliberately rewrite history, in allowing Tate to avoid her fate, and it's in that regard that the film reaches its highest note and possibly the note on which the entire movie will ultimately be judged.
But Robbie's Tate isn't really the star of the movie. That honor falls to Leonardo DiCaprio, who's featured as the former TV star, a fictional character, who has been struggling to find meaningful roles. His TV show was a western, and by the time we catch up with him he's being cast in his latest guest spot in another one, and as Tarantino presents it the material becomes a movie-within-a-movie, something I wish he'd done with Django Unchained (as a flashback-of-sorts for the Brunhilda myth), which for some viewers might be a needless tangent, but it helps put the character in context, how he views himself, and thus how everything would turn out for all the characters if we followed their narratives equally. Metaphorically, you understand.
Just below DiCaprio is Brad Pitt playing his former stunt double, now personal assistant. After, oh, about a decade of sliding toward irrelevance and being best known for his relationship with Angelina Jolie, Pitt's performance in Once Upon... is almost akin to Travolta in Pulp Fiction, a giant reminder of his considerable talents, the full impact of his charismatic screen presence. He's got the best scene, too, a fight with Bruce Lee that becomes better as it builds, which is interesting for Tarantino, who usually accomplishes the bulk of his work with words. It's another subtle evolution of his filmmaking mastery.
Among the supporting players are Al Pacino (allowing himself a rare character role), Bruce Dern, and Kurt Russell, who's probably in the best sweet spot of his career (previewed, in some ways, by Death Proof, with a great spotlight in Hateful Eight).
But the ending is the real selling point. As I said, Tarantino allows Sharon Tate to cheat fate. In doing so, he probably allows Tate's husband, at the time of her death, Roman Polanski a reboot as well. Polanski at one time was known simply as a brilliant director. He was just coming off his breakthrough film, Rosemary's Baby, at the time, and would later direct Chinatown and The Pianist, but his career was forever tarnished by a rape charge he chose exile from America to avoid prosecution over. Is it reasonable to assume Tate's death played a role in the sequence of events that led to this fate? Is Tarantino saving two lives here? That's how I choose to view it, anyway.
Giving Tate the focus, rather than Charles Manson, is itself a noteworthy choice on Tarantino's part. It takes the power away from Manson, who entered virtual cultural immortality as the result of ordering Tate's murder, and Tate herself became just a name. In effect, Tarantino is addressing two major sins, and offering a chance at correction, that've haunted Hollywood for fifty years, which is noteworthy in and of itself at a time when Hollywood has been playing a moral authority. Is it a direct criticism? Will Hollywood even care, come the Oscars next year, or merely be flattered, as it tends to be, when presented as subject matter? If it gives Tarantino his long-deserved Academy recognition, all the better.
Perhaps, in time, I'll better understand how much I appreciate this one. For now I'll be a little cautious. But like all Tarantino's movies, it won't be easy to forget. Not by a long shot. Yeah....
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