Seduced and Abandoned is director James Toback’s (The Pickup Artist, Tyson) documentary about that overlooked aspect of filmmaking: the pitch. The camera follows Toback and his star Alec Baldwin through the Cannes Film Festival as they try to get funding for their new movie. The project they are pitching is Last Tango in Tikrit. One can only imagine…
Toback is shameless in his pursuit of backers: “250 years from now, the only reason anyone will know your name is when it rolls on the screen as producer of my movie”. When Toback and Baldwin learn that a young actor-wannabe has a very rich dad, they pounce and dangle a newly written role for the son. Toback is willing to dump Neve Campbell for a younger box office hottie and to change the plot from a Middle East story so he can shoot in the US. It’s all very sly.
Seduced and Abandoned is playing on HBO. Here’s the teaser.
This week’s best picks are the flawless true story thrillerCaptain Phillips and the space thriller Gravity – an amazing achievement by filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón with what may be Sandra Bullock’s finest performance. 12 Years a Slave is an unsparingly realistic depiction of the horrors of American slavery.
I haven’t yet seen the French film that won the top prize at Cannes – Blue is the Warmest Color, which opens today. Actresses Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux (Farewell My Queen, Midnight in Paris) are reportedly spectacular in this three-hour love story. One of the explicit sex scenes takes over twenty minutes.
The Motel Life, which also opens today, is solid character-driven drama. Joseph Gordon Levitt’s offbeat comedy Don Jon offers both guffaws and an unexpected moment of self-discovery.
My Stream of the Week is the entirely fresh and riveting Parkland, which sharply dramatizes the events of November 22-25 in Dallas from the viewpoints of the secondary participants. Parkland is available streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and XBOX Live.
Check out my new feature VOD Roundup, where you can find my comments on over twenty current movies available on Video on Demand. There are some good ones, some bad ones and some really, really good ones (including How to Make Money Selling Drugs).
On November 11, Turner Classic Movies is playing the underrated 1949 noir The Set-up. This is one of the great film noirs and one of my 10 Best Boxing Movies. Robert Ryan plays a washed-up boxer that nobody believes can win again, not even his long-suffering wife. His manager doesn’t bother to tell him that he is committed to taking a dive in his next fight. But what if he wins? Director Robert Wise makes use of then innovative real time narrative. In this clip, watch for the verisimilitude of the bar where the deal goes down.
We glimpse inside the lives of two damaged brothers in the solid little drama The Motel Life. The younger brother (Stephen Dorff) lost his lower leg in a childhood accident, and is often child-like in his decision-making. The older brother (Emile Hirsch) tries to look after him, but has his own problems, including drinking so much that there’s blood in his vomit. The two are at best underemployed and living a marginal existence in seedy Reno motels. The younger brother blunders into a life-changing jam, and the older one tries to get him out-of-town. This may be Hirsch’s best performance since Into the Wild, but, in the showier role, Dorff was a little too grimace-y for my taste.
Dakota Fanning is very good as a love interest, and Kris Kristofferson has a brief role, too. There’s some creativity at work here, as in some animation that represents the younger brother’s illustration of the older brother’s storytelling. There’s a funny scene when they bet a bank wad constituting all hope for their economic survival on the Buster Douglas-Mike Tyson fight. And I liked the Reno and Elko exteriors. The Motel Life is worthwhile, but not a Must See.
Chiwetel Ejiafor and Michael Fassbender in 12 YEARS A SLAVE
12 Years a Slave is an unsparing, I repeat, unsparing depiction of American slavery. It tells the true story of Soloman Northup, a comfortable Syracuse, New York, free man of color who was kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery in the South, where he languished for twelve years. At first, Northup is bewildered and can’t believe what is happening to him, but he is quickly immersed into the horrors of slavery, and remains focused on his own survival in hopes that eventually he can be rescued. As he is traded from slave-owner to slave-owner, we witness his experience. All of the slave-owners are brutal in their own ways, but the last one is also a psychotic sadist (Michael Fassbender). As a result, almost all of 12 Years a Slave’s 134 minutes is the beating, whipping, raping and killing of (and commerce in) enslaved people. It’s an unrelentingly tough watch.
The fine British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dirty Pretty Things) plays Northup, and his outstanding performance carries the film. The other startling performance is by Fassbender (who previously teamed with director Steve McQueen for Shame), whose demented role would be lusted after by the likes of Christolph Walz and Gary Oldman. The acting is uniformly excellent, but I’ll also call out Sarah Paulson as a bitter plantation mistress and Garret Dillahunt (Winter’s Bone, Assassination of Jesse James yada yada, Looper, Killing Them Softly) as a morally weak White trash loser.
12 Years a Slave’s Metacritic rating has shot to an atmospheric 97 because critics are gushing about the groundbreakingly ultra-realistic (and thus horrifying) depiction of slavery by a Hollywood movie (in contrast to the decades of bowdlerized portrayals by the likes of Gone with the Wind). Give the credit to screenwriter John Ridley (who wrote the story in Three Kings).
Yes, 12 Years a Slave is a landmark historical movie. Yes, it is well-made and centered around a superb leading performance. But you should know that it is a very grim viewing experience.
James Badge Dale and Jacki Weaver on left in PARKLAND
On the morning of November 22, 1963, many folks in Dallas did not expect to be impacted by the Presidential visit – not the medical staff at Parkland Memorial Hospital, not the assassin’s brother Robert Oswald and, shockingly, not the local FBI office. Businessman Abraham Zapruder did intend to catch a glimpse of the festivities, but as an onlooker, not as a participant. This is the inventive perspective of Parkland, which sharply dramatizes the events of November 22-25 in Dallas. We’re all familiar with the actions of JFK, Jackie, Lee Harvey Oswald and LBJ on that fateful day, but these characters are only glimpsed in Parkland, which explores the JFK assassination from the viewpoints of the secondary participants.
It’s a very successful approach. The four story lines are compelling – the surgeries, the Zapruder film and the reactions by the Oswalds and the local FBI office. Parkland‘s rapid cuts and handheld (but not too jerky) cameras enhance the urgency.
The cast is excellent, with the most unforgettable performances coming from Marcia Gay Harden as an emergency room nurse, Paul Giamatti as Zapruder, James Badge Dale (the unforgettable Gaunt Young Man in Flight) and Jacki Weaver (Oscar nominated for Animal Kingdom) as Marguerite Oswald.
Parkland is conspiracy-theory-neutral. It portrays events that everybody – regardless of how you feel about the lone gunman theory – recognizes: the emergency surgeries attempting to save Kennedy (and then Oswald), the processing of the Zapruder film, the Oswald family’s reaction to the events, the FBI’s destruction of some key evidence.
Parkland is available streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu and XBOX Live.
Just right for Halloween week, the satisfying shocker The Conjuring begins in a familiar way. In 1971, a couple (Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor) moves into an old, isolated farmhouse with their five daughters. The youngest kid finds a creepy old music box, the dog refuses to come inside the house, all the clocks stop at 3:07 AM, the house is always chilly and there’s a boarded-up cellar. If you’ve ever seen a scary movie, you know that THIS HOUSE IS HAUNTED. Soon, the family desperately seeks the help of husband and wife ghostbusters (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson).
Interestingly, the story is based on a real occurrence. The real ghost experts soon afterward took on the notorious house in Amityville, Long Island.
What makes The Conjuring work so well? First, the performances of Vera Farmiga and Lili Taylor elevate the material. Each is gifted with the capacity to mix passion, inner strength and fragility.
Director James Wan superbly paces the action, letting our sense of dread build and build until we jump in our seats. He uses a handheld (but not jumpy) camera to provide cool angles and a point of view that helps us relate to the characters.
And there is no gore. There are a few scary images, but The Conjuring relies on good, old-fashioned surprises and our discomfort with the occult to supply the fright.
The Conjuring is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and other VOD providers.
This week’s best picks are the flawless true story thrillerCaptain Phillips and the space thriller Gravity – an amazing achievement by filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón with what may be Sandra Bullock’s finest performance. I’m also featuring two cinematic masterpieces on TCM – The Conversation and Blow-up (see below).
I also like the intricately plotted and unrelentingly tense suspense thriller Prisoners (with Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman). Joseph Gordon Levitt’s offbeat comedy Don Jon offers both guffaws and an unexpected moment of self-discovery. In addition, the rock music documentary Muscle Shoals, the based-on-fact French foodie saga Haute Cuisine and the witty French rom com Populaire each has something to offer.
Check out my new feature VOD Roundup, where you can find my comments on over twenty current movies available on Video on Demand. There are some good ones, some bad ones and some really, really good ones (including How to Make Money Selling Drugs).
I haven’t yet seen the Robert Redford survival drama All Is Lost, opening this weekend. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films atMovies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD/Stream of the week is the cop buddy comedy The Heat, with Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock. The Heat is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu and other VOD outlets.The Heat is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu and other VOD outlets.
On October 30, Turner Classic Movies is presenting back-to-back two murder mysteries that are among the greatest movies ever – The Conversation (1974) and Blow-up (1966). At the height of his powers, Francis Ford Coppola directed The Conversation between The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II, and The Conversation is every bit the masterwork as the others. In a role just as iconic as in The French Connection, Gene Hackman plays an audio surveillance expert entangled in a morally troubling assignment – and then obsessed. Veteran character actor Allen Garfield is just as good and the irreplaceable John Cazale makes us cringe and ache as always. Look for a very young Harrison Ford and for a glimpse of an uncredited Robert Duvall as a corpse. The most significant achievement in The Conversation, however, is the groundbreaking sound editing by Walter Murch. After experiencing The Conversation, you’ll never again overlook movie sound editing.
There’s yet more obsession in Blow-up. Set in the Mod London of the mid-60s, a fashion photographer (David Hemmings) is living a fun but shallow life filled with sportscars, discos and and scoring with supermodels (think Jane Birkin, Sarah Miles and Verushka). Then he finds that a landscape that he randomly photographed may contain a clue in a murder, and meets a mystery woman (Vanessa Redgrave). After taking us into a vivid depiction of the Mod world, director Michelangelo Antonioni brilliantly turns the story into a suspenseful story of spiraling obsession. His L’Avventura, La Notte and L’Eclisse made Antonioni an icon of cinema, but Blow-up is his most accessible and enjoyable masterwork. There’s also a cameo performance by the Jeff Beck/Jimmy Page version of the Yardbirds and a quick sighting of Michael Palin in a club.
The gripping visually spectacular Gravity is less a sci-fi film than it is a basic Man Against Nature (mostly Woman Against Nature) survival tale set in space. A catastrophe strikes a space station, and it’s in doubt whether the two survivors (Sandra Bullock and George Clooney) will be able to make it back to Earth or be forever lost in space.
The skeleton of the story may be simple, but Gravity is an exceptional experience because writer-director Alfonso Cuarón, in a triumph of special effects, captures both the messy nuts and bolts of space travel and the potential lethality of the space environment. I’ve seen my share of space movies, but I’ve never experienced a better sense of the terrifying dark and silent vastness of space. A human in space is suspended in an infinity in which, without a man-made propulsion device, he/she can only helplessly drift. Space is not so much hostile to humans as it is indifferent to our tiny existences.
The technical marvels of manned space missions have dulled us to the reality that space-walking astronauts are just one broken tether or one lost grip from floating away and becoming lifeless space lint. Cuarón brings his audience into that reality, and keeps our tension acute during Ms. Bullock’s Wild Ride.
The Mexico City-born Cuarón will certainly receive an Academy Award nomination for directing. Now Cuarón is an amazingly gifted filmmaker – he also wrote and directed Children of Men, my #2 movie of 2006 and Y Tu Mama Tambien, my #1 movie of 2002. Along the way, he also directed one of the best Harry Potter movies – Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azbakan (the one with the Dementors, Sirius Black and the werewolf).
There are essentially only two characters on the screen, and Cuarón benefits from two instantly sympathetic movie stars, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Clooney, of course, can do anything on the screen, and he nails the less complex role of a The Right Stuff style space jock. (In a wonderful nod to Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff, Ed Harris voices the earth-based NASA control chief.)
I’m generally not a huge fan of Bullock but acknowledge her ability to sometimes excel in comedy (The Heat) and to bring something extra to action (Speed). But I’ve gotta say that she’s never been better than she is in Gravity. Here she plays the Everyman role of a person with ordinary skills thrust into overwhelming peril – the kind of cinematic part that made icons out of James Stewart and Tom Hanks. There isn’t a false moment in Bullock’s performance, and she keeps us rooting for her on whole wild ride.
Gravity currently has an unbelievably high 96 Metacritic rating because critics are rightly acknowledging Cuarón’s achievements in directing and special effects. Gravity is without flaws, and it’s damn entertaining, but I’m not going to rate it as the year’s best; I think that some indies and foreign films are more emotionally compelling and have more textured stories. But Gravity is definitely the best Hollywood film of the year so far.
We’ve all seen cop buddy comedies before (Lethal Weapon, 48 Hours and scores of copycats). In the The Heat, the odd couple is Sandra Bullock (as the arrogant and fastidious FBI agent) and Melissa McCarthy (as the earthy and streetwise Boston cop). There are some especially well-written bits in The Heat, especially when Bullock’s prig finally explodes into a completely inept torrent of profanity and when McCarthy’s cop belittles her commander’s manhood for what must be the zillionth time.
But here’s why you will enjoy The Heat. Melissa McCarthy’s line readings are brilliantly hilarious. Her gift for dialogue makes everything and everyone in this movie much funnier. Her performance elevates the entire movie. In fact, every person who has talked to me about The Heat has laughed when describing it. It may not be that original, but it’s sufficiently well made and McCarthy is sublime.
The Heat is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu and other VOD outlets.
This week’s best pick is the flawless thrillerCaptain Phillips, with Tom Hanks starring as the real-life ship captain hijacked by Somali pirates and rescued by American commandos in 2009.
I also like the intricately plotted and unrelentingly tense suspense thriller Prisoners (with Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman). Joseph Gordon Levitt’s offbeat comedy Don Jon offers both guffaws and an unexpected moment of self-discovery.
My other top recommendations are Woody Allen’s very funny Blue Jasmine (with an Oscar-worthy performance by Cate Blanchett) and the very well-acted civil rights epic Lee Daniels’ The Butler.
In addition, the rock music documentary Muscle Shoals, the based-on-fact French foodie saga Haute Cuisine and the witty French rom com Populaire each has something to offer.
Check out my new feature VOD Roundup, where you can find my comments on over twenty current movies available on Video on Demand. There are some good ones, some bad ones and some really, really good ones (including How to Make Money Selling Drugs).
My DVD/Stream of the week is the cop buddy comedy The Heat, with Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock. The Heat is available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu and other VOD outlets.
