In celebration of its 70th anniversary, Laemmle Theatres is pleased to present “70/70,” a special series of 70mm film screenings ceremonializing its notable longevity in the exhibition business. All screenings will take place at the Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles and benefit the Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic, the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Diabetes Association and AIDS Walk Los Angeles.
Screening today, Friday, December 19, are The Remains of the Day at 5:15 p.m., 1975’s Tommy at 8 p.m. and Pink Floyd: The Wall at 11 p.m. Saturday, December 20 is a James Cameron triple feature; The Abyss screens at 4 p.m., the Oscar-winning Titanic at 7 p.m. and Aliens at 11 p.m. Screening on Sunday, December 21, are Top Gun at 1 p.m., Gremlins at 4 p.m. (with actor William Schallert in person),Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at 7 p.m. and The Untouchables at 10 p.m. The line-up for Monday, December 22, consists of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan at 5:15 p.m. and 1979’s Alien at 8 o’clock. On Tuesday, December 23, Stanley Kubrick’s classic 2001: A Space Odyssey screens at 5:15 p.m., followed by The Hunt for Red October at 8 p.m. The Royal Theatre is located at 11523 Santa Monica Blvd., in West Los Angeles. For more information, click here.
The trailer for I Love You, Man — a “bromance” in which Paul Rudd, lacking in the substantive male friendship department, seeks out the perfect best man (Jason Segal) following his engagement to the lovely Rashida Jones — is online, and I’ve decided it’s a winner.
All the dog crap stuff is a push — supposedly revelatory character humor forced into a box of test audience-approved crassness — but the rapport between all the major players here seems great. Segal’s schlubby vibe is a good fit, seemingly, for this sort of role (the edgy new pal), and Rudd scores with the same sort of smart, tone-appropriate yet still slightly canted delivery (as with “Deep — in my mouth” after Thomas Lennon’s kiss, and “C’mon!” after the walk-by belch) that’s been a hallmark of his comedic screen performances dating all the way back to 1995’s Clueless.
Commercial prospects will be partially determined by rating, but the R-rated Role Models has done $64 million and counting, so things look good for a mid-sized spring hit. Directed by John Hamburg, from a script by Hamburg and Larry Levin, I Love You, Man is currently slated for release on March 20, from DreamWorks/Paramount. It will also open the South by Southwest Festival on March 13, in Austin, Texas.
It’s a happy birthday to erstwhile Who’s the Boss? tyke Alyssa Milano, who — all growed up, indeed — turns 36 today, and celebrates by trying to find a major league pitcher she hasn’t dated, and probably not reconnecting with former childhood beau Corey Haim.
Would that there was more to report… I was to have recently reviewed Milano’s Wisegals, which streeted on DVD on December 2, but that fell apart. I can report, however, that Milano is an entirely serviceable tennis player, since she used to live near me, and strike balls every once in a while.
Queen Latifah came of age, as an actress, in 2002’s Oscar-winning Chicago, a $306 million worldwide earner, and the following spring’s Bringing Down the House, a $162 million global hit. From her earliest days, though — whether on her platinum-selling rap albums or in something like 1996’s ensemble bank heist tale Set it Off — Latifah’s strengths have been her brassiness, sassiness and volume. The bigger, the better: she’s always been able to locate and articulate a recognizable point-of-view amid so much swirling craziness.
So it’s strange to endure a film like Last Holiday, which
makes its Blu-ray debut just after Christmas, since it so clearly
represents a wan attempt to dampen down so much of what makes its star
special. Alternately forced-cute and painfully obvious, it proves a
weird, shot-on-location, multicultural mash-up — imagine a jumble of Under the Tuscan Sun and How Stella Got Her Groove Back — with a
declamatory litany of costume changes and falsely empowering imparted
life lessons.
Last Holiday opened to just under $13 million on the second weekend of January in 2006 — good enough to take third place behind Hoodwinked and Glory Road in a tight
debut frame — and went on to gross just over $38 million domestically, a figure in line with Latifah’s two previous headline outings,
the Barber Shop spin-off Beauty Shop and Taxi, her ill-fated action-comedy
pairing with Jimmy Fallon. But Last Holiday isn’t a film that anyone but the hardest of hardcore Latifah fans will appreciate, given the degree to which it relies on contrivance and emotional gimmickry.
A shy cookware department store clerk, Georgia Byrd (Latifah) lives a
modest and demure life, singing in her church choir and eschewing risk
in favor of simplicity. Once she’s told that she has but a few weeks
to live — and is rejected by her healthcare provider for treatment
reimbursement — she cuts loose, cashing in her life’s savings and
leaving New Orleans for a dream vacation in Europe. She ends up at the posh Grandhotel Pupp in the Czech Republic,
“blossoming” by trading in her sensible outfits for high-end fashion and
indulging in all manner of culinary indulgences.
Newly uninhibited, she also befriends the hotel’s venerated chef,
Didier (Gerard Depardieu), and teaches lessons to unscrupulous
businessman Matthew Kragen (Timothy Hutton), conveniently also her up-the-ladder boss, who’s convinced by Georgia’s blithe manner that she’s actually a
shrewd business rival. Finally, sensitive co-worker Sean Matthews (LL
Cool J) enters and the requisite love affair ensues, feeling more like a dictated necessity than an artful
or even florid indulgence. In the end, Georgia learns of her
misdiagnosis, something one could surmise from Jeffrey Price and Peter
Seaman’s problematic script, which has trouble balancing disparate
tones throughout.
Director Wayne Wang, who burst onto the scene in earnest with 1993’s The Joy Luck Club, has impressed most with a string of esoteric and
sometimes impressionistic character pieces, including Smoke, Blue In
The Face and The Center of the World. He previously segued into
mainstream fare with the serviceable Anywhere But Here, but Last
Holiday feels more of a piece with the joyless and anonymous Maid in
Manhattan. There’s little of note to the direction, and nothing beyond
the promise of a sizeable studio paycheck to particularly suggest his interest or
psychological investment in the project. Giancarlo Esposito is underutilized in a small supporting role.
Latifah, meanwhile, generally acquits herself, but this tepid outing
proves that her talents are best suited to projects where she shies
away from such early forced timidity.
Bowing on Blu-ray on December 30, Last Holiday is presented in 1080p high definition. Though there’s not much need for action crispness (apart from a cringe-inducing ski sequence) or special effects/small object detail, the picture in the film’s
Blu-ray release is, as advertised, solid, and a noticeable step up from regular DVD quality. Audio is
anchored by a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 mix, with French
and Spanish 5.1 Dolby digital mixes and optional English, French
and Spanish subtitles as well. Special features include a high-definition version of the movie’s original theatrical trailer and, imported from its original DVD release, a pair of deleted scenes and three behind-the-secnes featurettes which chart the movie’s pre-production history, location shooting and filming style. To purchase the film on Blu-ray, click here. C- (Movie) B+ (Disc)
Since it’s a known fact that certain Shared Darkness readers have a Bryan Greenberg crush, I thought I’d pass along this bon mot from the recent press day for Nobel Son, about the joys of working with Alan Rickman, even if it involves getting a bit physical:
“I was looking forward to torturing Alan Rickman for a
whole day, and I think he got a bit annoyed with me, because I kind of
one-upped him in the scene,” says Greenberg. “I had these files (in my hand), and in a wide shot I hit
him on the head with them and (director) Randall Miller said, ‘Oh I like that!’ And I saw this
look on Alan’s face like, ‘Oh great, now he has to do that all day.’ But it
was great to work with Alan, to see an actor who makes specific choices
and sticks by them. It’s kind of rare, actually. I’ve worked with a lot of actors
who kind of rest on their own laurels, and kind of get by on their own
charm and charisma and give up on the process, the work. But Alan is
really a big believer in the work and creation of character, and it’s
really inspiring as a young actor to be around something like that. You
learn a lot from a guy like that.”
On the verge of losing his job, rundown New Yorker jingle writer Harvey Shine (Dustin Hoffman) flies to London for a weekend to attend his daughter’s wedding, but promises to be back on Monday morning to make an important meeting. He arrives to learn his daughter has chosen her stepfather to walk her down the aisle instead of him. Devastated, Harvey leaves the wedding before the reception, misses his plane and ends up drowning his sorrows at the airport bar, where he strikes up a conversation with Kate Walker (Emma Thompson), a slightly prickly, 40-something singleton whose life is limited to work, the occasional humiliating blind date and endless phone calls from her smothering, delusional mother, Maggie (Eileen Atkins). The growing connection between the pair energizes and inspires both of them, even as they grapple with difficulties of adult-onset romance.
Not yet 40, British-born writer-director Joel Hopkins (Jump Tomorrow) perhaps doesn’t have the necessary life experience to pull off the injection of a credible depth of feeling into this tale. The resultant harmless inconsequentiality is a lumpy, sentimental mass that clumsily strikes many of the familiar surface keys of melancholic regret. But there’s a crinkle-eyed mischievousness that pokes through in Hoffman’s performance and robs the character — and thus the movie as a whole — of a chance at something darker, and more arresting. (As Harvey’s grown but still wounded and emotionally distant daughter Susan, it’s Liane Balaban who makes a lasting impression.) Hopkins doesn’t necessarily want to play on that field, but he should, since his film doesn’t have the wit to compete with Something’s Gotta Give, the movie that it most clearly wants to emulate. Ergo, when the silly montage of Kate trying on dresses inevitably arrives, you don’t forgive it and just go with the flow of the movie, you turn on the film, and hold a grudge. (Overture Films, PG-13, 99 minutes)
After chasing around Shia LaBeouf in the $175 million-grossing techo-thriller Eagle Eye earlier this year, Rosario Dawson spends Seven Pounds with her pulse very much under control. Opposite Will Smith‘s tightly wound, curiously hermetic IRS agent, Ben Thomas, Dawson plays Emily Posa, a terminally ill young woman with a slew of past-due medical bills who sparks an unlikely connection with her auditor. In advance of the film’s release, I spoke with Dawson recently spoke about her own comic book series, her debut film Kids, and lying around post-coital with an awkward Will Smith. For the Q&A feature, from New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.
Jennifer Aniston sat for three segments last night on The Late Show, most of which, little shock, was devoted to her private life — awkward if pleasant non-talk about holiday plans, tabloid/cultural scrutiny, current boyfriend John Mayer, and of course that recent nude photo shoot for GQ. The obviously planned capper to all this — Aniston giving David Letterman the very necktie she sports on the cover, sans clothing — was funny, but dragged on a bit too long, with Letterman swapping out ties and Aniston undercutting the pinch of the moment by repeatedly commenting on how “great” it was. For those wondering, Aniston did also briefly mention matriculating at Green Meadow Waldorf, the New York performing arts school made famous by Fame, though she said there weren’t legwarmer-clad impromptu dance-offs, alas.
A story of awkwardly overlapping romances liberally seasoned with the patented, over-the-top humor of the brothers Farrelly, The Heartbreak Kid — new to Blu-ray this month — reunites the behind-camera comedy specialists with star Ben Stiller in a careening showcase for serial outrageousness that favors potent commercial formula over strict adherence to narrative through-lines.
Stiller stars as San Francisco sports store owner Eddie Cantrow, who, after years of bachelorhood and ample pressure from his widowed father, Doc (Jerry Stiller), and best friend Mac (Rob Corddry), starts to wonder if he’s being too picky about the women he meets. The wedding of a former girlfriend only serves to amplify these feelings of isolation, so when a chance encounter with an alluring blonde marine researcher named Lila (Malin Akerman, above right) leads to the sweet bloom of romance, Eddie believes he’s finally found true love. When the threat of a potential job transfer for Lila endangers the relationship, he impulsively proposes.
But as the newlyweds drive down the California coast on the way to their honeymoon to Cabo San Lucas, Eddie feels familiar pangs of unease and discomfort. Soon after reaching their exotic Mexican hideaway, he’s convinced he’s made a terrible mistake, put off as he is by Lila’s aggressive bedroom demeanor and a chain of kept secrets that range from merely unnerving (a deviated septum) to jaw-tighteningly negligent (a mountain of debt, an old drug habit). It’s here that Eddie also happens to fall for the down-to-earth Miranda (Michelle Monaghan), who’s visiting with her family.
Miranda has no clue that Eddie has just married, and with Lila confined to the honeymoon suite with a brutal case of sunburn, Eddie struggles to find a way to extricate himself from his days-old marriage without losing the (new) girl of his dreams. A tangled bit of misunderstanding leads Miranda to believe that Eddie is a widower, but when that gives way to the truth, and Miranda returns home, Eddie sets off to try to win her back.
While The Heartbreak Kid retains the Farrelly’s trademark humanistic touch (evident with the care paid to Miranda’s country-raised family, including Danny McBride) it also doesn’t hesitate to offend, chiefly through Lila’s sexual voraciousness, but also a wide variety of casual brusque language and one-liners.Notions of character consistency are hard to pin down, though, especially since some of Lila’s sprung “surprises” are matters that would have easily been previously sorted out, even in six weeks of virginal, whirlwind courtship. There’s the soft but frustrating contrast, too, of scenes in which Lila talks about being just like an elderly couple in 10 years (she’s “not good at math,” she confesses), then immediately references she and Eddie spending the next 40 or 50 years together.
The fact is that The Heartbreak Kid asks in many ways to be taken air-quote seriously as something a bit darker and of more modern, sardonic substance than director Elaine May and screenwriter Neil Simon’s original 1972 comedy — from Eddie’s familial entanglements with his “would-be” in-laws to the movie’s general view of relationships and its barbed, deliciously bleak-hearted ending. The film’s wild and crazy, blue asides, then (bits that include a shot of Lila’s hairy, pierced pubic area, and a discussion of Carlos Mencia’s hotel concierge placing Lila’s hand on his genitals), often arrive with the jarring force of a less-than-well-oiled traveling theme park ride; they’re naughty, outside-the-lines coloring, wedged in for cheap effect. Still, the performances are almost uniformly engaging, with Stiller cycling through a catalog of sputtering resistance ploys that still mostly work, no matter their familiarity.
Presented on Blu-ray in stunning, 1080p high definition, The Heartbreak Kid comes with three audio options — English language 5.1 Dolby True HD, French language 5.1 Dolby digital and Spanish language 5.1 Dolby digital — as well as optional subtitles in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. Imported from the movie’s previous DVD release are a series of fairly brief standard definition featurettes and gag reels, along with a high definition of the movie’s original theatrical trailer.
An audio commentary track with the Farrelly brothers anchors this release, and anyone who’s heard previous alt-audio tracks with these guys knows that their chats are anecdote-laden and full of love for all the background players, which typically consist of their extended family and friends. This track is no different; it’s breezy and lively, but short on what you might call psychologically penetrating analysis. Still, there’s mad affection dished out for the production leeway granted them by DreamWorks, and unsuspecting viewers might be surprised to learn about a plot tidbit suggested by none other than Steven Spielberg. Clocking in at 16 minutes is “The Farrelly Brothers: In the French Tradition,” a short, tongue-in-cheek joint biographical sketch about the filmmaking siblings, and what pointed them down the occupational path they eventually chose.
The five-minute “Ben & Jerry” finds Ben Stiller and his real-life father yukking it up, and talking about how they love working together, while “Heartbreak Halloween” showcases the cast and crew donning Halloween costumes and having a grand old time on set. Extending that theme is another eight-minute featurette, this one about the off-book egg-toss contests held on set, as well as a four-minute gag reel of flubbed lines and interactions from the film. These segments are basically all of a piece, and while they’re fun and jokey, they don’t necessarily bear repeat or scrutinizing viewings. Rounding things out, along with the aforementioned trailer and a gallery of some other previews, is a small collection of a half dozen deleted scenes. To purchase The Heartbreak Kid on Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) B (Disc)
The Screen Actors Guild announced its award nominations this morning, ass-crack early, and while there was some spread in the nods, there was also no doubt as to the biggest winner. The headlining nominations, for Outstanding Performance by an Entire Cast, are The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Doubt, Frost/Nixon, Milk and Slumdog Millionaire. In the Male Actor in a Leading Role category, the nominees are Richard Jenkins for The Visitor; Frank Langella for Frost/Nixon; Sean Penn for Milk; Brad Pitt for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; and Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler. In the Female Actor in a Leading Role category, the nominees are Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married; Angelina Jolie for Changeling; Melissa Leo for Frozen River; Meryl Streep for Doubt; and Kate Winslet for Revolutionary Road.
To my mind, the only real surprise is Patel, who’s been lambasted in some reviews of Slumdog; a nominal surprise is Brolin, whose been getting plenty of critical love, but hadn’t really broken through with a top-shelf prize yet to more firmly establish himself as an Oscar contender. There was as much love for Che as for The Love Guru, it turns out — which is to say none. Which doesn’t bother me, I confess. The SAG Awards will be simulcast live on Sunday, January 25, on TBS and TNT, at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific times.
The trailer for Fired Up! (Screen Gems, February 20) is online, and not inspiring much confidence about the current state of genre screenwriting. The plot? Two high school guys, Nick (Eric Christian Olsen) and Shawn (Nicholas D’Agosto, great in the under-seen Rocket Science), are dreading the prospect of another summer at football camp. So when Nick hatches a scheme for the two to follow their school’s cheerleaders to cheer camp instead, they find themselves awash in a sea of gorgeous young women. Everything goes great until Shawn falls for Carly (Sarah Roemer), the beautiful head cheerleader who sees right through their plot.
The sort of naked brazenness with which Bring It On is ripped off comes across as eye-stabbingly bad, sure, but more damning is the fact that this trailer seems to go on for-ever, which is not a good sign for the movie’s long-play prospects. With presumably a bit more forward-leaning of a character, Roemer, aka the chick from Disturbia, gets a chance to prove her mettle in something else, and survive and advance in the Hollywood starlet sweepstakes. Other thoughts: the 31-year-old Olsen as a high schooler, no matter how jocked out, is a real stretch… and if John Michael Higgins shouldn’t yet completely stop receiving work, he should definitely be excised from trailer rotation. His hiring now says one thing, and one thing only: sure, we didn’t write a funny character, but we paid a little bit extra to get this guy you’ve seen before, in the hopes that he has some residual goodwill still in the tank.
Ryan Reynolds cut a nice comic figure in the original Van Wilder, elevating the movie despite the presence of Tara Reid. Then Kal Penn took the anarchic collegiate party-planning overseas in Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj, about Wilder’s protégé-turned-playa. Now there’s the announcement of the not-particularly-clamored-for completion of the trilogy, in the form of Van Wilder: Freshman Year, which hits DVD and Blu-ray on March 17 and promises to be “packed with panty raids, wild parties and shocking behavior,” according to the press release. For those wondering, the curiously-eyebrowed Jonathan Bennett (Mean Girls) takes over as “Van the Man,” Kristin Cavallari is the requisite eye candy, and Steve Talley, Kurt Fuller and Linden Ashby costar as Van’s partners in mayhem.
Oldish news by industry standards, I certainly realize, but Bob Yari has placed the releasing division of his Yari Film Group into Chapter 11 reorganization, per Variety and others, which can’t bode well for Brian Goodman’s What Doesn’t Kill You and Rod Lurie’s Nothing But the Truth, two solid, meat-and-potato-type dramas that were trying to use limited, boutique awards qualification runs in New York and Los Angeles to boost long-play theatrical commercial prospects. Also somewhat in peril, just from an available resources point-of-view, is Assassination of a High School President, starring Bruce Willis, which was/for now still is slated for a late February ’09 release.
Have trouble keeping track of exactly which 1960s bands served as incubators to other seminal groups? Answers arrive in the form of The Story of the Yardbirds, a solid documentary covering the group in question, as well as the 1963 to 1968 rock scene in general, in glancing, effective shorthand.
Running about 52 minutes, this behind-the-scenes look at an influential but short-lived supergroup includes tons of original tunes, archive convert footage, interviews with bandmates, session musicians and other associates, and of course plenty of footage of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. Two 1964 live cuts with Clapton and the Yardbirds, “Louise” and “I Wish I Would,” are given the most reverential spotlight treatment, but in all honestly the title works as both a primer for classic rock neophytes and a nice little blood-pumping exercise in reminiscence for long-time fans. The rest of the track listing of musical selections is as follows: “I’m a Man,” “Heart Full of Soul,” “Still I’m Sad,” “Train Kept Rolling,” “Over, Under, Sideways, Down,” “Shapes of Things,” “Happening Ten Years Ago,” “For the Love,” “My Girl Sloppy,” “Stroll On” and a personal favorite, “Dazed and Confused.”
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Story of the Yardbirds is presented on a region-free disc in 16×9 widescreen, with an English mono audio track. The sole supplemental feature comes in the form of 14 minutes of full-frame bonus footage of the Yardbirds, with a very young Jimmy Page on guitar,
from a German TV broadcast in late March, 1967. Trippy, amusing stuff, though an academic/talking head dissection of it would have been a cool inclusion as well. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B- (Disc)
Alone except for her dog Lucy, a retriever, and some vaguely defined dreams of a new life, Indiana native Wendy Carroll (Michelle Williams) is driving through the Pacific Northwest to Alaska, in hopes of a summer of lucrative work at a fish cannery. When her car breaks down in a sleepy, boarded-up Oregon mining town, however, the thin fabric of her already tenuous financial situation comes apart, and she confronts a series of increasingly dire economic decisions, with far-ranging repercussions for herself and Lucy.
Working from a screenplay written with her Old Joy collaborator Jon Raymond, director Kelly Reichardt uses a formal minimalist style to construct an emotionally impressionistic road movie that feels rudderless in ways mostly enthralling but also sometimes frustrating. A carefully observed film about sympathy and generosity at the dirty-fingernailed edges of American life (one is reminded of the refrain from U2’s “One” — “we get to carry each other” — about the privilege of shared sacrifice), Wendy and Lucy also touches on the limits and depths of people’s duty to one another. If the film sputters a bit in conveying much of substance about what Wendy thinks about her predicament, Williams herself is never less than hypnotizing. And in the current recessional times, the film’s blank canvas and broadly sketched melancholic tones serve as an empty vessel for those who would watch a film and like to turn the personal into the political. (Oscilloscope/filmscience, R, 80 minutes)
Today, the American Film Institute announced their official selections for the year’s most outstanding achievements in film, which will be honored at an invitation-only luncheon on Friday, January 9, 2009 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. “AFI Awards honors the community of artists who come together each year to create films and television programs of excellence,” said Bob Gazzale, AFI’s President and CEO in a press release. “They are not competitors at an event, but colleagues, in a world that needs art and entertainment more than ever.” In alphabetical order, AFI’s honorees are: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, Frozen River, Gran Torino, Iron Man, Milk, Wall▪E, Wendy and Lucy and The Wrestler. Needless to say, as someone who has seen all 10 films listed above, this slate has both sins of omission and sins of commission, in my opinion, but we’ll be getting into that more in the coming weeks.
The trailer for Fast & Furious, the streamline-titled fourth installment in the zippy-brightly-colored-car franchisethat helped Vin Diesel and especially Paul Walker eat and dress well, is a slick, well-pitched thing, even if its turbo-charged automotive shenanigans seem a little bit wince-inducing and bone-rattling after my own unnerving dance with vehicular mayhem on I-405 tonight. Sure, the moving hijacking of a “gasoline land train” in the Dominican Republic (“street value: $1.4 million”) is totally absurd and over-the-top, especially when one considers that apparently the driver of said vehicle is given only a prop-store pistol for self-defense, but this series has never been particularly concerned with subtlety or reality. Ergo, gingham-clad cholos will rejoice, among other twenty- and early thirtysomethings.
Coming home from Tokyo, the fourth movie’s tagline — “New Model, Original Parts” — is representative of Hollywood studio-think at its best, and summons to mind those few times when your parents completely yielded to all the pressures of juggling work and family life and just let you eat McDonald’s and a fifth of a pound of Oreos for dinner. For more on the film, which bows April 3 from Universal, despite the “this summer” tag in its trailer, click here.
I recently chatted to Marisa Tomei at a mid-week press day for Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, and if there’s probably something to reports of her on-set friction with Mickey Rourke (answers regarding him ranged from coolly polite to awkwardly short and incomplete) it doesn’t dint my appreciation of her naturalistic charms, both physically and, every bit as striking, inwardly. Excerpts from the roundtable interview follow below:
On personal curiosity, and how she initially came to acting: “That is one of the great things about acting — learning about different people, different subcultures, even different skills. I mean, who thought pole-dancing was going to be on my resume? But I think that a lot of it was survival skill. I was a really shy kid, and it was [a question of], ‘How do you get to a place where you can let your emotions out really safely?'”
On My Cousin Vinny, and how Joe Pesci’s advice sometimes stinks: “It was the first time I was on location, and only the second movie I’d ever done. I was kind of overwhelmed on that level. I was a grown-up, but still kind of homesick. And Joe (Pesci) and I are still friends, he’s always looked after me. He’s always telling me when I suck and when I don’t. He told me I was an idiot for wanting to do this movie, and then he called me and said, ‘I guess you weren’t so stupid after all!’ But he’s always telling me the truth, and he’s such a good, good friend.”
On what she looks for in potential film roles: “I want to make movies with people who really, really care. And I think that I tend to respond more thematically than anything else. With this movie, it was really talking about changes of life, or facing getting older, or performers’ identity versus quote-unquote real people’s identity. I thought that those were interesting things to think about. In this case I could relate [to them more directly], yes, but it’s more is [a script] interesting, and what are the ideas about. I guess it’s all a matter of that [aforementioned] curiosity, really.”
On Darren Aronofsky: “He likes to talk, he likes to understand everything, and I appreciate that, and know where it’s coming from — it’s coming from really caring and wanting to support actors as much as he can. But sometimes I had to explain that it’s better for me not to articulate things, that it’s going to be detrimental to what he wants and what we all want, which is a natural feeling. But he’s right there, and tries to support you in every way he can, whether it’s bringing you little juices to make sure you don’t catch a cold and stay healthy to being available to talk about anything, if you want to. He totally notices everything — any little detail about your hair or your nail polish. I wonder what he’s like as a husband.”
Sure, by all reasonable accounts heretofore Dance Flick seems just another lame spoof-o-rama (e.g., Disaster Movie, Superhero Movie) stuffed to the rafters with sight gags and over-foleyed slapstick, this time from the Wayans brothers. But I can live with it, and the one-sheet brought a smile to my face because it’s an overpeddled genre that needs to be taken down, notwithstanding the honest-to-goodness, yes-I-said-it pop-vibrance of Step Up 2 the Streets. It’s ripe material, in other words — the first ingredient for good satire. And who knows, maybe the cast will help elevate it a bit; the fact that in the trailer they’re peddling unknowns instead of Carmen Electra or some such star cameos actually gives one a modicum of hope. Yet to be rated, Dance Flick releases February 6 from Paramount.
UPDATE 1/02/09: Apparently fearing The Pink Panther 2, Dance Flick has now moved to the more wide open pastures of August 14, probably a wiser move in that it abuts the autumnal commencement of high school.
Though recently stuck in a host of thankless “girlfriend/wife/lover” roles (Joey, Viva Laughlin, Gossip Girl, My Own Worst Enemy), we should never forget the wham-bang, one-two punch of Amick’s eyes and those come-hither ‘brows. She’s like the rich man’s Olivia Wilde, and then some.
A serviceable if straightforwardly plotted historical thriller, director Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise as a German officer who joins a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, will play decently with those who have helped make speculative and non-fiction World War II tales a viable small screen cottage industry. Rooted in actual events, the film more or less compensates for a lack of verve and action with solid production design and crisp, respectable performances from its ensemble cast, which includes Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy and Terrence Stamp.
Set mostly in July, 1944, the story focuses on Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise), a German officer who has become appalled by Hitler’s atrocities and the outrages committed by his Nazi SS. Joining up with a band of resistance plotters consisting of both senior officers and other statesmen-in-waiting, von Stauffenberg helps refine a plan to kill Hitler with explosives, and use the momentary period of resulting confusion to take over Berlin, and thus the government. The conspirators arm themselves with Hitler’s own code-named emergency plan to stabilize the nation in the event of his attack or demise, hoping to quickly mobilize the reserve army and turn them against the brutal SS elite.
Apart from an opening air attack sequence, Valkyrie is fundamentally a film about back-room plotting, not big-stroke action. There are a few striking visual markers — uncradled phones and slamming typewriter keys — that hint at kinetic, building tension, but Singer also misses key opportunities to inject a little energy and visual flash into the story, as exemplified by a clumsily staged arrest sequence late in the film. Valkyrie at times feels emotionally constrained, too invested in knit-brow speechifying.
That said, there’s a polished, professional sheen to the film. Greys dominate cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel’s palette, highlighting the despair the conspirators feel. John Ottman’s score pushes all the right buttons, and since he’s also the movie’s editor the match of image and music seems to especially work well in concert. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (MGM, PG-13, 120 minutes)
Philip Seymour Hoffman appeared on The Daily Show last night, in support of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, and the most interesting portion of his conversation with host Jon Stewart centered around the institutionalized sexism… err, gender-biased hierarchy of the Catholic church, which comprises the backdrop against which the film’s 1960s-set tale of possible sexual abuse unfolds. Hoffman said that was difficult to wrap his mind around, and so the scene where he subtly usurps the power of Meryl Streep’s headmistress nun by sitting in her chair freaked him out and gave him pause because, as he pointed out, “That’s not a nice thing to do — then she won’t like me!”
OK, Jennifer Aniston: you win. You got me to post a picture of you — a nude picture of you, from a recent GQ photo shoot — in promotion of your new PG-rated movie, the Christmas release Marley & Me. Your Ph.D. in media manipulation surpasses my Baccalaureate of willpower. Check and mate. Again, you win. I acknowledge this. Just please stop talking, and leave Angelina Jolie out of this.
The directorial debut of longtime character actor Brian Goodman, What Doesn’t Kill You slots in as this December’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, which is to say a Northeastern-set tale of marginalized fringe-dwellers forced, by desperate circumstances, into making One Last Bad Decision.
It’s not a knock at all to say that the Lumet-ian crime drama is a sort of flip-side companion piece to movies like We Own the Night and Pride and Glory — the big similarity being the intersection and messy entanglements of family and illicit activities, and the key difference being the lack of any concrete, behind-the-badge perspective. Well acted and solidly put together, What Doesn’t Kill You may not win prizes for narrative trailblazing, but fans of both similar films and the actors involved here will no doubt take to its distressed genuineness.
At the center of the movie are two knockabout guys, Brian (Mark Ruffalo, above) and Paulie (Ethan Hawke), longtime friends who grew up as close as brothers on the gritty streets of south Boston. Living by the code of their dog-eat-dog neighborhood, their petty crimes and misdemeanors eventually bring them under the wing of local crime boss Pat Kelly (multi-hyphenate Goodman). After 15 years of errands and percentile cuts, though, they’re looking for bigger stakes. When Pat gets shipped off to prison on an old homicide rap, the pair make their move, carving out their own niche by muscling in on the business of a coke dealer friend. As Brian becomes increasingly lost in a haze of drugs, even the love he has for his wife (Amanda Peet) and two children doesn’t seem like it will be enough to redeem him.
Soon Brian and Paulie land in prison too. Brian gets out first, and tries to put his life back on track with the assistance of a neighborhood mentor who urges him to consider AA meetings. But when Paulie gets out and unveils bold plans for (the obligatory) one last heist, will underemployed Brian find the allure of old fraternal bonds and the potential of quick, easy money too much to resist?
The film’s press notes assert that it’s based on events from Goodman’s life, which may be what lends the screenplay — co-written with Paul Murray and Donnie Wahlberg, who has a small role as a cop who shadows and harasses the guys — an air of unfussy authenticity, if not necessarily deep originality. Certainly Hawke and Ruffalo have a nice rapport, and the latter seems invigorated by the chance to play something a bit meatier, angrier and more assertive. Excepting a largely procedural part in David Fincher’s Zodiac, this is Ruffalo’s best screen performance in easily four or five years.
Some of the smartest, most interesting parts of What Doesn’t Kill You, though, lie in its small, anchoring grace notes. Goodman’s selection of composer Alex Wurman proves a wise one, as the delicate, melancholic piano-and-strings theme helps underscore a forlorn, parallel socioeconomic struggle innate to the narrative, and lend the movie’s underclass struggle a certain sympathetic identification. Watching and ruminating upon What Doesn’t Kill You, it’s easy to understand the Christian maxim, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” (Yari Film Group, R, 100 minutes)
