Premium Rush is a thriller set in Manhattan’s bike messenger subculture and is basically one 90-minute chase scene. It is cool to watch skilled outlaws bob in and out of NYC traffic, running red lights and just missing cabs, more cabs and the occasional baby carriage. But that’s all that Premium Rush has to offer.
Premium Rush does employ – and mostly waste – the talents of two of our greatest actors, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Shannon. Gordon-Levitt is just fine, and, Lord knows, he deserves a Hollywood payday after making all those wonderful indies. The same goes for Shannon (who better to play a maniacal villain?), who does well when called upon to be scary and less well when he displays Elmer Fudd frustration.
I was impressed by The Hunger Games, a well-paced, well-acted and intelligent sci-fi adventure fable for tweens – and for the rest of us, too.
Since I apparently live under a rock, I was unaware of the source material, the popular and acclaimed young adult fiction trilogy by Suzanne Collins. The only reason I saw The Hunger Games was to accompany The Wife, who had read the first Hunger Games book. I hadn’t even seen the trailer, so I went in totally blind.
The story is set in the future, where several generations after a rebellion, an authoritarian government plucks teenagers from the formerly rebellious provinces to fight to the death in a forest. It’s all broadcast on reality TV for the entertainment of the masses. Children killing children – it doesn’t get much harsher than that.
Jennifer Lawrence plays the heroine, a poor Appalachian girl who volunteers to compete in place of her little sister. Lawrence starred in Winter’s Bone, my pick for the best movie of 2010. Here she carries the movie with her performance as an incredibly determined and resourceful girl. Her character is completely candid and unfiltered. This creates a moment that is all the more powerful when she has to pull off smarmy inauthenticity for an insipid TV interview.
Stanley Tucci is brilliant as the oleaginous reality TV host – it’s an Oscar-worthy performance.
Warren William with Loretta Young in EMPLOYEES ENTRANCE
I’ve recently discovered the actor Warren William, whose movies from the early 30s remain fresh today. On August 30, Turner Classic Movies will be broadcasting sixteen Warren William movies. Although he is not well-known today, William was “King of the Pre-Code”, starring in 25 movies between 1931 and 1934, many with the sexual frankness and moral ambiguity that was to be erased by the Production Code. His leading ladies included the likes of Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Loretta Young, Ann Dvorak and Claudette Colbert.
With his striking features (including a prominent and noble nose) and his deep and cultured voice, William was a natural for the newfangled talkies. William excelled in the Pre-Code movies because he could play deliciously shameless scoundrels who would use their wit and position to exploit everyone else, especially for sex, power and money. His characters are fun to watch because they take such delight in their own depravity. But in 1934, the new Production Code meant that movies could no longer allow his characters to have sex and otherwise behave badly and get away with it.
My recommendation among TCM’s offerings this week is the 1933 Employees Entrance. William plays a department store manager who is viciously ruthless with his competitors and suppliers. He abuses his own employees and is indifferent to the resultant suicide attempts. He uses his position to have sex with a young employee (Loretta Young), even after she marries someone else. And he keeps a floozy on the payroll to distract another executive (his putative supervisor) from meddling in the business. And for all 75 minutes of Employees Entrance, William’s joyously despicable character is richly enjoying himself. If you’re looking for the triumph of Good over Evil, this isn’t your movie.
One of my favorite movies is 1932’s hilarious political comedy The Dark Horse, in which William plays an equally ruthless and amoral campaign manager. He is such a scoundrel that he must first get sprung from jail to teach his dimwitted candidate to answer every question with “Yes…and, then again, no.” He describes his own candidate (the gleefully dim Guy Kibbee) thus: “He’s the dumbest human being I ever saw. Every time he opens his mouth he subtracts from the sum total of human knowledge.” (Unfortunately, TCM is not showing The Dark Horse this week.)
Ever the sexually predatory cad on the screen, the real life William led a quiet life and was married to the same woman for twenty-five years until his death.
During the next few months, we’re going to see some major releases of violent crime dramas.
The first, opening on August 29, is Lawless, written by musician Nick Cave. It is set among moonshiners in Depression Era Appalachia. The cast includes Tom Hardy, Guy Pearce, Jessica Chastain, Gary Oldman, Mia Wasikowska and (why is he a movie star?) Shia LaBeouf.
On October 19, we’ll see what I expect to be the best of the lot, the stylishly violent Killing Them Softly, a big hit at Cannes. It’s a contemporary story with an ensemble cast featuring Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins and Sam Shepherd.
Those two movies were going to sandwich the release of Gangster Squad, a mob movie based on Mickey Cohn’s 1949 sojourn in LA, starring Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte, Josh Brolin, Emma Stone, Anthony Mackie (The Hurt Locker) and Giovanni Ribisi. But one scene in Gangster Squad is a shooting in a movie theater; the Aurora, Colorado, tragedy made the distributor skittish, and the release has been delayed to January 13.
You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To. Here’s the trailer for Killing Me Softly:
I really enjoyed Celeste and Jesse Forever, starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg as best friends who have been married, are now working on an amiable divorce and are still best friends. The screenplay is co-written by Rashida Jones (Paul Rudd’s fiance in I Love You, Man) and, once you accept the comic premise that this couple is made for each other but not as a married couple, everyone’s behavior is authentic. Sure, he wants to get back with her when she isn’t in a place to do that – and, then, vice versa – but the characters resolve the conflict as they would in real life. Here’s a mini-spoiler – this movie is just too smart to end in rushing to the airport or disrupting the wedding or any of the other typical rom com contrivances.
The supporting characters are funny without being absurdly zany (except for one pot dealer). Chris Messina pops up in Celeste, as he did in Ruby Sparks, and does a good job here, too.
I’m certainly looking forward to Rashida Jones’ next screenplay.
Here’s a surprise – there are some appealing (and smart) romantic comedies this August! I am impressed by both Celeste and Jesse Forever and Ruby Sparks – each is written by an actress and each is a good time at the movies. Celeste and Jesse Forever is a smart and authentic comedy of best friends too perfect for each other to fall in love at the same time. Ruby Sparks is a hilariously inventive romance that probes whether realizing a fantasy can bring happiness.
And here are two more comedy winners. Frank Langella’s performance in Robot and Frank elevates the film from a pretty good comedy to a revealing study of getting older. The Intouchables is a crowd pleasing odd couple comedy – an attendance record breaker in France.
It’s worth seeking out the compelling documentary Searching for Sugar Man, about the hunt to uncover the secret fate of an artist that didn’t know that he was a rock star. The same holds for Bill W., the story of the reluctant leader of a movement, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in New York, which opens this week, is a rollicking light culture clash comedy. The Dark Night Rises is too corny and too long, but Anne Hathaway sparkles. Magic Mike has male stripping, but no magic.
I haven’t yet seen the French drama Beloved, the controversial indie drama Compliance or the bike messenger thriller Premium Rush, all of which open this weekend. You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.
My DVD pick this week is the brilliantly constructed (but gloomy) Iranian drama A Separation, which won the Best Foreign Language Picture Oscar.
A contemporary Iranian couple had planned to leave Iran for a better life in the West, but, by the time they have wrangled a visa from the bureaucracy, the husband’s father has developed Alzheimer’s. The husband refuses to leave his father and the wife leaves the home in protest. They are well-educated and secular. The husband hires a poor and religious woman to care for his father (and she does not tell her husband about her job). Then there is an incident which unravels the lives of both families.
This is a brilliant film. Writer-director Asghar Farhadi has constructed a story in which the audience sees and hears everything that happens, but our understanding of the events and characters evolve. We think we know what has happened, but then other narratives are revealed. Likewise, the moral high ground is passed from one character to another and to another. It’s like Rashomon, but with the audience keeping a single point of view.
Much of that point of view is shared by the ever watchful teenage daughter of the educated couple. She desperately wants her parents back together, views everything through this prism and is powerless to make it happen. She is played by Farhadi’s real life daughter.
Religion towers above the action – and not in a good way. It guides the actions of the religious couple into choices against their interest. The Iranian theocracy restricts the choices of the secular couple and of the judges trying to sort everything out. Almost every character is a good person who is forced to lie to avoid some horrific result otherwise required by the culture.
One final note: it will be a lot harder to make an easy joke at the expense of American lawyers after watching the Iranian justice system in A Separation.
The realistic angst of the chapters makes this a difficult film to watch – not a light date movie for sure. But the payoff is worth it, and it’s a must see.
This film was on the top ten list of over 30 critics and is Roger Ebert’s top-rated film of 2011. It won the 2011 Foreign Language Picture Oscar. Because regular folks like us could only see it in 2012, it made my list of Best Movies of 2012 – So Far.
Ruby Sparks is a hilariously inventive romance that probes whether realizing a fantasy can bring happiness. In contrast, Killer Joe is NC-17 for a reason and will either thrill or disgust you; that notwithstanding, it pops and crackles with excellent performances by Mathew McConaughey and Juno Temple. The Intouchables is a crowd pleasing odd couple comedy – an attendance record breaker in France.
It’s worth seeking out the compelling documentary Searching for Sugar Man, about the hunt to uncover the secret fate of an artist that didn’t know that he was a rock star. The same holds for Bill W., the story of the reluctant leader of a movement, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Julie Delpy’s 2 Days in New York, which opens this week, is a rollicking light culture clash comedy. The Dark Night Rises is too corny and too long, but Anne Hathaway sparkles. Magic Mike has male stripping, but no magic. The relationship drama 360 is a snoozer.
Writer-director Julie Delpy and Chris Rock play a couple living together in a cramped New York City apartment with their kids from previous relationships when her eccentric French family comes for a visit. Most French are reserved and impeccably polite; because that’s not funny, Delpy wrote her visitors to be very badly behaved extreme hedonists. The stress of the first visit by the in-laws, the claustrophobia of packing people into a tiny apartment and language and cultural barriers are all promising comic situations. A mid-range comedy, 2 Days in New York has its moments.
As a screenwriter, Delpy’s strengths are a keen eye for family dysfunction, brisk pacing and a willingness to get raunchy. But much of the broadest gags in 2 Days in New York fall flat. There is a funny bit about Delpy’s emotionally brittle artist literally selling her soul as a piece of performance art. And it’s funny when Delpy invents a preposterous tragedy to avoid facing a complaint from a neighbor. But the funniest moments are two Chris Rock monologues when he retreats to his man cave to converse with a large poster of Barack Obama.
I wouldn’t recommend a special trip to the theater to see 2 Days in New York, but it’s a pleasant enough diversion to watch on DVD or stream later this year.
