A beautifully stark, challenging drama about an aging mercenary, Anton Corbijn’s The American, starring George Clooney and Violante Placido (above), is a work of pure cinema — a transfixing rumination on lone-wolf masculine
loneliness, and a reminder that the inner lives of screen characters can
be as gripping as any wildly manifested action. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here. (Focus, R, 105 minutes)
I’ve been ruminating on The Town, Ben Affleck’s directorial follow-up to Gone Baby Gone, and it seems a curious choice that the poster and billboard art for the Warner Bros. film features those rubber-faced nun robbers. They grab one’s attention, to an extreme degree, and it just doesn’t translate, on an elemental level; it muddies the water too much, and along with its nondescript title makes the film seem like more of a horror film — or at least opens it up to the interpretation of such, to a casual driver or passerby at a bus stop. It’s a great “give” in the trailer, sure, those images, but not in the print art. I guess it’s meant to be an evocation of the Point Break poster, but that was a more much rooted visual reference, whereas the masks here seem warped/melting, and more overtly creepy. I guarantee some middle-of-the-country impressionable boomers just bought a ticket for the Wall Street sequel instead.
One missed a.m. screening due to traffic, but two other screenings, a slew of interviews and an early-morning screener today, and the final experiential tally includes two adult film starlets, someone’s car getting egged (not by me), Gemma Arterton in short-shorts, one surprising cow stampede (is there any other kind?), nicely lensed equine competition, and some greatly enjoyable work from John Malkovich.