The acclaim surrounding Jeff Bridges’ turn in Crazy Heart — in which everyone seemingly slaps their foreheads in remembrance of how talented the guy is — also recalls William Hurt, another actor with a penchant for blending seamlessly into his surroundings. In The Yellow Handkerchief, Hurt plays a recently paroled convict who, beset with inner conflict about whether to try to reach out to a past love, crosses paths with a young duo (Kristen Stewart and Eddie Redmayne) on a post-Katrina road trip through Louisiana. I caught up with a bearded Hurt in a Beverly Hills hotel suite recently to talk about his career, shrinking IQs and what Sally Field said to him when he won his Oscar. For the Q&A, with New York Magazine‘s Vulture, click here.
Italian import Vincere, a richly photographed historical drama that
charts the life of the discarded mistress of fascist, war-mongering dictator Benito Mussolini, would be sort of interesting to view with
Rielle Hunter, the flighty New Age lover (and baby mama) of erstwhile
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. After all, her insights
into the continued love of a man who would very publicly and harshly
disown his own progeny could be considerable.
Written and directed by Marco Bellocchio (Fists in the Pocket), Vincere (which translates as “to win”) chronicles the largely unknown story of the secret marriage of Mussolini (Filippo Timi, above third from left) to Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), a woman whom Il Duce meets when he’s a rising star in the Socialist movement. Inspired by the intensity of his beliefs, Dalser sells off all of her belongings to fund the newspaper that would eventually launch his political career. After bearing him a son, though, Dalser discovers that Mussolini already has another family, and he will do everything in his power to keep her away from them. She rants and rages, but finds out it’s hard to fight a dictator.
Purely in terms of information, and the manner in which this peek behind the fascist curtain informs an understanding of Italy leading up to World War II, Vincere is of historical interest. But while undeniably told with passion and verve — it feels almost operatic at times — Vincere is a basically nativist document that bogs down because of unresolved tension between its conflicting political and melodramatic instincts. Early on, Bellocchio establishes the primal, almost animalistic connection between Dalser and Mussolini with little dialogue, and for a while seems intent on exploring a very intriguing idea — the notion of women responding so nakedly to provocation, aggression and accumulated power. Eventually, though, Bellocchio mostly abandons this focus, so when Dalser, committed to an insane asylum for refusing to recant her paternity claims, asserts that Il Duce is merely “testing her” and mentally preparing her for an eventual reunion… well, it runs counter to evidenced fact, and tips the movie over into crazy-mistress Lifetime movie territory. At least that’s a man’s reading; I’m not yet sure Rielle Hunter would think. (IFC Films, R, 122 minutes)
I could go the rest of my life without seeing another point-of-view shot, from the floor up, of someone receiving a massage, which is but one of several dozen reasons that Frat Party grates so. A downmarket, wildly unfunny college comedy pitched at foreign market fans of Old School, all those American Pie straight-to-DVD sequels and their countless mouth-breathing derivatives, like Dorm Daze 2, this film serves as hornball rental fodder for those who haven’t yet figured out how to use the Internet to track down pictures of boobs.
When big-man-on-campus Duffy (Randy Wayne, channeling a watered-down Matthew McConaughey) announces he’s going to be marrying Adriana (Caroline D’Amore, a Sorority Row bit player), a debutante heiress to an Italian winery, right after college graduation, he realizes his days of partying may be coming to an end. Of course, he still wants to squeeze in one final frat house kegger the night before his out-of-town wedding, so air-quote hijinks ensue. Among the obstacles along the way are a father-in-law who will stop at nothing to put the kibosh on his daughter marrying a party animal like Duffy; his minion, scheming family friend Stefano (Robert Parks-Valletta); and Duffy’s old girlfriend Kelly (new WWE ringmaster Lauren Mayhew), who wants to reacquaint herself with his jock. Along with tubby buddy Mac (Jareb Dauplaise), Duffy makes a play for fun, and then a scramble to get back in the good graces of Adriana. Will the couple live happily ever after? Will anyone remember what happened the night before? Will anyone care, in the slightest?
Naturally, there’s booze and babes aplenty here (Katerina Mikailenko and Erica Day provide some eye candy, along with the aforementioned masseuse scene, which attempts to spoof the legend of “happy endings” of Asian massage parlors), but Frat Party is a misguided medley of popped collars and bop-gun comedic blanks almost from frame one. Writer-director Robert Bennett never clearly settles on a strong, singular point-of-view, despite the fact that he opens the movie with a bunch of wearyingly on-the-nose direct-address material from Duffy. Large swatches of the rest of the film hinge on half-heartedly sketched scenes with seemingly improvised dialogue (“Even sometimes I even surprise myself!”). The performances are broad and cartoonish, rendering Bennett’s earnest attempts to milk honest feeling regarding Duffy and Adriana’s relationship even more painful to watch. And the requisite tentpole gross-out moments, meanwhile (including an ejaculatory release), do not inspire wide-eyed guffaws, but instead merely tired sighs.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Frat Party comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and fairly imprecise English SDH subtitles. The ample roster of bonus materials is designed to bait high school guys who have yet to ever attend a frat party into renting or purchasing Frat Party. There’s a two-minute tidbit, “How to Throw a Frat Party,” that is virtually indistinguishable from a separate three-minute behind-the-scenes tour segment; both are single-play shrugs. There’s also a three-minute featurette focusing on former adult star turned legit flick bit player Jesse Jane (who, somewhat amusingly, frets over having to learn lines at the last moment from a “new script”) and, yes, a one-minute collection of “slow-motion goodies,” which is as it sounds — most of the movie’s bared bosoms, collected for your viewing enjoyment. The only slightly amusing supplemental extra is a six-minute look at the massage scene, in which a crouching female stagehand mans the artificial semen pump, and Dauplaise gets psyched and into character by repeating over and over, “Will Ferrell would do this, Will Ferrell would do this, Will Ferrell would do this!” There’s also a feature-length audio commentary track from Bennett. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. F (Movie) C (Disc)
A gorgeously mounted but fundamentally humdrum telling of Lewis Carroll’s fantasy novels, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, costarring Johnny Depp (above), is no more or less engaging than one might expect it to be based only upon a cursory glance at its marketing materials. Filtered through the director’s highly subjective, singular visual perspective, the movie achieves sumptuous beauty with ease but fails to connect on a full-bodied emotional level, making for a pleasant but somewhat empty ride. For the full review, from Screen International, click here. (Disney, PG, 107 minutes)
Over at the L.A. Weekly, the estimable F.X. Feeney pens a love letter to Don Levy’s 1967 film Herostratus, describing a “lost masterpiece of life as advertisement,” which includes a three-minute cameo from an 18-year-old Helen Mirren. The film screens at Redcat on Monday, March 1 at 8:30 p.m.
