All New Movies to See This Week

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Woody Harrelson in RAMPART

In a sizzling performance, Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt and brutal LA cop trying to stay alive and out of jail in Rampart.

The searing and brilliantly constructed Iranian drama A Separation won the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

Safe House is a fine paranoid action spy thriller with Denzel Washington and the director’s pedal jammed to the floor.   Thin Ice is a Fargo Lite diversion.

If you still need to catch up on the Oscar winners, you can see the Best Picture Oscar winning The Artist and the rockem sockem thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,

I have also commented on Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, the sex addiction drama Shame, the biopic The Iron Lady, the feminist action thriller Haywire and Ralph Fiennes’ contemporary adaption of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.

You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick of (last) week is Outrage, the hardass Japanese gangster movie with lots of dull body tattoos and severed fingers.

Rampart: a sizzling portrait of a man spinning out of control

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In a sizzling performance, Woody Harrelson plays a corrupt and brutal LA cop trying to stay alive and out of jail.  Woody’s Dave Brown is always seeking control.  He manipulates his superiors.  From behind his badge, he unleashes sadistic brute force on every other unfortunate within his sight.  Yet he is a man out of control, whose impulses to bully,  to drink and to seduce increasingly endanger his job security, his finances and what is left of his relationship with his family.  He is already skating on the edge of self-destruction when one brutal incident is caught on video and goes viral a la Rodney King.

Rampart benefits from the one of the best large supporting casts – less an ensemble than a series of great single performances as individual characters tangle with Dave Brown.  Ben Foster (The Messenger) is brilliant as a homeless man with too many drugs and not enough meds.  Robin Wright is also superb as an emotionally damaged lawyer who sleeps with Dave until his paranoia takes over.   Sigourney Weaver and Ice Cube are two LA officials who see Dave as a walking, talking threat to public order and the City treasury.  Ned Beatty is the retired cop who has kept his finger in the police corruption racket. The Broadway star Audra McDonald plays a cop groupie that Dave meets in a bar.   As one would expect, Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon are excellent as Dave’s two amiable but bullshit-proof ex-wives.  Brie Larson and Sammy Boyarsky are especially effective as the daughters, who figure in Rampart‘s most breathtaking scenes.

Rampart is a singularly visual film – we always know that we are in the sunwashed, diverse, sometimes explosive anarchy that is LA.  The movie is structured and shot to heighten the experience of both the chaos that Dave causes and that the chaos that he feels.  This is Oren Moverman’s second effort as writer-director, the first being the searing The Messenger, also starring Harrelson and Foster.  Moverman keeps Rampart spinning along wildly as we wonder what will happen next to unravel Dave Brown’s life.

If you need some redemption to leaven a very dark story, this is not the movie for you.  Rampart reminds us that not everyone finds redemption.

DVD of the Week: Outrage

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Okay, the Oscars are over.  In case you’re done with high-falutin’ cinema, here’s a hardass gangster movie with deliciously bad people doing acts of extreme violence upon each other – Outrage (Autoreiji).  Like any good Yakuza film, there are lots of full body tattoos and severed fingers.

But what makes Outrage stand out is the pace and stylishness of all the nastiness, as if Quentin Tarantino had made Goodfellas (only without all the extra dialogue about foot rubs and the Royale with cheese).

Director Takeshi Kitano also stars, credited as Beat Takeshi.  Takeshi, much like Charles Bronson, has the worn and rough face of a man who has seen too much disappointment and brutality.

Outrage is just filmed too brightly to qualify as a film noir, but the story has all the tragedy of a classic noir.  You’re rooting for the characters to survive, but you know that they probably won’t – and they know it, too.

There is also a crime boss so cynical and duplicitous that he puts the Sopranos to shame.

Outrage is not a great movie, but is plenty entertaining if you’re in the mood.

The 2012 Oscars: meh

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The good news is that there weren’t any huge surprises at the Oscars.  All of the awards were deserved, even Meryl Streep’s (I would have preferred Michele Williams or Viola Davis to win Best Actress).

The bad news was that the show was a bit of a  drudge and instantly forgettable.

The producers made some good choices this year: 1) dropping the full-length renditions of nominated songs; 2) reshuffling the order of awards to mix in the boring ones; 3) limiting the Academy President’s drone to about 30 seconds; 4) subbing in the spectacular Cirque du Soleil for the usual big dance number snorefest; and 5) bringing in the Best of Show/A Mighty Wind cast for a skit on a studio focus group in 1939.  The show was well-paced and ended relatively on-time.

The Academy used the telecast to deliver a message – “Watch our movies in a theater – not on your iPhone!”.  Unfortunately, the delivering was both vague and heavy-handed, using talking heads and a pointless montage of random great film moments.

So the framework was better than in the past, but the Academy still needs to punch up this show.

some random thoughts on tonight’s Oscars

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Oscar deserving Michele Williams (with Dougray Scott as Arthur Miller) in MY WEEK WITH MARILYN

I’m really not too exercised about tonight’s Oscars because I trust that it will a good night for my favorites among the nominated films:  The Artist and The Descendants.  Most of the nominations are relatively deserved, so it’s not like two years ago, when I was gnashing my teeth over the battle between The Hurt Locker (my fave) and Avatar (NOT my fave).

I am really rooting for Michele Williams to win the Best Actress Oscar.  Her performance is deserving, and she warrants recognition as the best of our younger actresses – and one who bravely picks quality scripts (Brokeback Mountain, Wendy and Lucy, Blue Valentine).

If you’re betting, the three biggest locks are Christopher Plummer for Supporting Actor,  Rango for Animated Feature and A Separation for Foreign Language Picture.

 

this year’s Oscar Dinner

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Every year, The Movie Gourmet watches the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. You can read more at Oscar Dinner.

Here is my menu for Oscar Dinner 2012.

COCKTAILS AND STARTERS

First,  The Artist inspired both strawberries (George Valentin was breakfasting on strawberries while avoiding his wife’s glare) and whiskey (George later downs more than his share).

From Moneyball, we have a ballpark hot dog.

DINNER

Fried chicken from The Help and turnips (remember the ruined crop?) from War Horse.  This also kinda fits with the 50s meat-and-potatoes fare that Jessica Chastain was serving up to Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life.

When George Clooney and Shailene Woodley show up at the beach bungalow in The Descendants, wine is offered.  And we have selected a French wine, a Bordeaux that Michael Sheen in Midnight in Paris can continue to prattle on about.

DESSERT

From Hugo, we have one of the stolen croissants he subsisted upon (although we bought our croissant) served with some of the jam made by the Niels Arestrup character in War Horse.

We are bypassing the most obvious choice on the movie menu – Minnie’s chocolate pie from The Help.  Instead, The Wife is making a Big Apple pie for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.


Looking foward to this year’s Oscar Dinner

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The Movie Gourmet's culinary tribute to 127 HOURS and WINTER'S BONE

Every year, The Movie Gourmet watches the Oscars while enjoying a meal inspired by the Best Picture nominees. For example, last year’s highlight was the ice sculpture of severed hands for 127 Hours and Winter’s Bone. We also had Appletinis for The Social Network, cowboy beans for True Grit, and steak and organic roast vegetable salad with a Petite Syrah from The Kids Are All Right. (I decided not to skin my own squirrel for Winter’s Bone and not to recycle my urine for 127 Hours.)  You get the idea and you can read more at Oscar Dinner.

The pickins are slimmer this year, but fortunately I have found food and/or beverages referenced in or inspired by the Best Picture nominees.

You may remember George Valentin’s uneasy breakfast with his wife in The Artist, or the ruined crop in War Horse, or Jessica Chastain serving up some 50s  fare to Brad Pitt in The Tree of Life.  One thing for sure:  Minnie’s chocolate pie from The Help will make an appearance!

 

Thin Ice: Fargo Lite

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Thin Ice is the Fargoesque story of a sleazy Wisconsin insurance agent whose small scam spins into a major crime.  By the time that he gets into real trouble, he has already lied to everyone in his life so often, that no help is available.

Greg Kinnear plays the ethically challenged agent who is always “on”; if he asks you the time, you know that he is trying to turn your money into his money.   Literally.

Kinnear is excellent, as is Alan Arkin as the old farmer that he is trying to fleece.  Billy Crudup plays the psycho ex-con who becomes Kinnear’s unwelcome partner in crime.  David Harbour shines as go-getter young salesman.  So does Lea Thompson as Kinnear’s soon-to-be-ex-wife and Bob Balaban as a fastidious luthier (look it up if you have to).  And keep your eye on Michelle Arthur, who plays Kinnear’s long suffering secretary.

Thin Ice is entertaining while Kinnear gets more and more entangled in his own web of lies and the pressure builds.  The final reveal at the end (a loooong eight minutes or so of exposition) is kinda lame, and doesn’t stand up to the top films in the genre.  Still, it’s a harmless and fun diversion.

Movies to See This Week

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Oscar nominated Berenice Bejo in (and married in real life to the Oscar nominated director of) THE ARTIST

It’s Oscar Weekend, your chance to catch up with the magical silent romance The Artist, Director Alexander Payne’s (Sideways) family drama The Descendants with George Clooney, Martin Scorsese’s revelatory 3D tale Hugo, the rockem sockem thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and the searing and brilliantly constructed Iranian drama A Separation.

Safe House is a fine paranoid action spy thriller with Denzel Washington and the director’s pedal jammed to the floor.  Thin Ice is a Fargo Lite diversion.

I have also commented on Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, the sex addiction drama Shame, the biopic The Iron Lady, the very odd fable Albert Nobbs, the feminist action thriller Haywire and Ralph Fiennes’ contemporary adaption of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.

I haven’t yet seen the Woody Harrelson police corruption thriller Rampart, which opens this weekend.  You can read descriptions and view trailers of upcoming films at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

My DVD pick of (last) week is Drive starring Ryan Gosling, a stylishly violent noir tale unfolding on a brilliantly filmed canvas.

The Screenplay for a Silent Movie

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You might ask what the script of a silent movie looks like.  Well, here’s the screenplay for The Artist, a film with only three lines of spoken dialogue (and a fourth line while the credits roll).  BTW in a silent movie, the cards that pop up between live action shots are called “intertitles”.

Here is the complete screenplay.

And here is an excerpt:

In the crowd, a young woman right at the front is staring at him in rapture. She drops her bag and, as she bends to pick it up, a swell in the crowd pushes her underneath the arms of the policeman in front of her, out of the crowd and into George. She stares at him, more in love than ever, delighted to be there. The police wait for someone to give orders. George doesn’t quite know what to do. Nobody moves. The young woman finally bursts out laughing, which, after a moment of shock, causes George to laugh too, thus placating the cops and tacitly signaling to the photographers that they can take pictures of the scene. The flashes seem to lend the woman self-confidence who, in a very carefree manner, begins to clown about in front of them. George is delighted at the sight, by the whole scene and, realizing this, the young woman steals a kiss. Flash. The image becomes static, then dissolves into the printed picture on the front page of “The Hollywood Reporter” newspaper, along with three other pictures of the scene and the headline WHO’S THAT GIRL?