Irreviews

The wrap on this film, according to reviewers, is that it doesn’t hold up to the classics in the genera. Are they kidding? Okay, it is not at the level of the best 1970’s political dramas, but compared to what we are fed a steady diet of these days, this film is fantastic.

It definitely owes debts to those classic old films. You can see pieces of Three Days of the Condor, No Way Out, The Parallax View, All the President’s Men, and as my wife pointed out: Notting Hill! (“There are all these reporters outside my place … I had no where else to go;” DIRECTLY lifted from Notting Hill!) The music is straight out of No Way Out – not the style, but the (quite effective) way it is used.

The best thing about this film is that they understand the power of telling a story through dialog! True, it can’t compare to the classics, but its use of dialog is definitely way above average in world of today’s political/action thrillers.

The most surprising thing is that I actually kind of liked Ben Affleck in this film. Russell Crowe is fabulous, as he usually is when he is not teamed up with that hack Ridley Scott. Helen Mirren is good, if a little over-the-top. Rachel McAdams is solid and passible as Russell Crowe’s sidekick. Jason Bateman takes the whole film to a another level when he enters late in the game – it’s a terrific performance. And the incidental acting is very high level, which is key in a film of this genera.

Go see it!

Valkyrie is an easy target because Tom Cruise is such a freak. But in reality, this is not a bad movie. True, it’s not a good movie either. But it is watchable, a little slow perhaps, but watchable. The story is overly simple and told pretty badly in certain sections, but it is basically interesting and somewhat compelling. And they make a decent attempt to actually write some dialog (a little) to propel the story, which I appreciate. The acting is pretty consistent, about on par with the material.

I was not bothered at all by Tom Cruise “mind-melding” with the audience in California English. In fact, Tom Cruise was about the same as he always is in films – not great, not good even, but solid and earnest. Give the guy some credit: he is always earnest as hell in his roles, and is basically a pretty hard-working actor. Tom Cruise off-screen: another story entirely … FREAKAZOID!!!!

This is another one that my wife and I avoided like the plague in 2008, determined to see “something good”, and so we flushed money left and right on pure crap like Slumdog, the Reader, Benjamin Button, etc. If we had just gone to see Valkyrie, we at least would have had a good time, sort-of.

Bottle Suck only held me for about 20 minutes.  It’s like they were determined to make a movie out of this topic, but had nothing to go on for story lines, so they just threw all these random (and really badly done) scenes up on screen and called it “character development,” or whatever they thought they were doing. Nothing works, especially the humor, and it’s boring as all hell.

After holding a red hot iron over the face of a man’s infant child to make him divulge the whereabouts of some scum bag he’s looking for (to kill, of course), the bad cop says “If you tip him off that I’m coming, I’ll kill you, fuck your wife, and kill your kid.”

You wanna watch two and a half hours of this shit, be my guest.

Without Kristen Stewart, Adventureland would be unbearable. With her, it is still a major disappointment. Everyone seems to be giving this thing good reviews – what am I missing here?

First off, in a  movie like this music is very important. They had some decent music, but sadly the filmmaker really does not know how to use it in the film. He should study 13 Going On 30 as an example of how to use a pop soundtrack to underscore the emotions in a film. They make liberal use of the music for cheap humor (e.g. Rock Me Amadeus) throughout the film, and you absolutely cannot do this if you are also going to use music to underscore emotion and create atmosphere. You either take the music seriously or your don’t – there’s no easy middle ground.

Second, the writing is just flat. It’s not funny and it is not deep or even interesting. It could have been, maybe, but that would have required a completely revamped storyline, and an entirely different approach to the humor. Everyone clapped at the end when I saw it, but there were very few instances where the audience actually laughed out loud, so what were they clapping about? The depth of its message? What message!? It’s like puff-pastry … puff pastry that is two-days-stale. For humor it clings to obvious and uninspired ideas – the “giant-ass panda” shtick runs through the whole film even though it feels old by the third iteration, the baseball bat scene from the previews feels stuck in there out of desperation. As for the endless “jokes” about the penny-pinching park managers: toward the end of the film I’m thinking “why do we care, at THIS point in the film, that they are gluing eyes on bananas to pass out as prizes?” It’s like the filmmakers have no sense how to regulate the flow and concentration of humor as a film develops. As a comic piece, this film is completely confused. As a drama, it is an empty vessel.

Then there is the unbelievability factor. I did not believe that Kristen Stewart was a NYU college student (she’s still fun to watch though), that Jessie Eisenberg was some hot-shot future ivy-league grad student, that the geeky nerd with glasses was some profound scholar of whatever he was a scholar of,  that the manager of the fun park was a park manager, none of it! They all seemed like hopeless stoners going nowhere, frankly, which is kind of what they were. I didn’t even believe that Lisa P. was a creature of the 80’s (her jaw-line screams generation Y.) Come to think of it, none of them look like people from the 1980’s; go back and watch Say Anything, or Pretty in Pink, or Sixteen Candles and see for yourself how close they got. In fact, the only person that struck me as at all believable was the weirdo that kept punching Jessie Eisenberg in the balls.

The much-despised Ryan Reynolds is, as always, appealing and solidly good, even if he is a bit miscast and struggling (as they all did) with a poorly written role. I think he is too subtle for most professional movie reviewers, who tend to prefer over-the-top hacks like Robert Downey Jr. where it’s all totally in your face. Reynolds has a very pleasing energy on screen, good subtle comic timing, and a nice restrained approach to his craft. Put me down as a fan!

Then there are the leads. Kristen Stewart can uplift almost any piece of trash that she gets involved in, but there are limits to her powers to save bad films. As for Jessie Eisenberg, his performance just didn’t work for me. I don’t know if it was him or the director or the material, but I think it was the last two.

At least it has a happy ending, but that doesn’t save it.

Alright, I’ve had it. The Coen brothers have struck again, and once again I am left shaking my head in disbelief as everyone else falls over themselves in utter rapturous praise. This film, which may rank among the DUMBEST films ever to achieve wide-spread critical acclaim, won the Academy Award for best picture and best adapted screenplay?! It’s time for me to hold forth on the many flaws and inadequacies of the much-lauded Coen Brothers.

(This review contains major spoilers.)

First, here is the Coen brothers’ general formula, at least in their non-comedy films that I have seen. The first third is usually interesting in a quirky and somewhat suspenseful way. Their trademark stylized dialog seems funny and enjoyable for about the first third also, and their equally stylized camerawork combines with the writing to create an pleasant atmosphere of non-specific anticipation. In the second third, they kind of keep the energy of the first third going, but the story starts to noticeably narrow and simplify, and the stylized dialog starts to ware on you and seem kind of dumb. The poverty of their writing and artistic vision begins to self-manifest as they depend more and more on stylized visuals and random Seinfeldesque conversations.  In the last third, they completely run out of ideas, start killing people off almost randomly, and then it just dissolves into a fetid and unwholesome pudding that you realize you have unknowingly ingested and really wish you could up-chuck.

Okay, with that said, on to No Country For Old Men. No Country is quite interesting for about the first third (if we ignore Tommy Lee Jone’s incomprehensible and unspeakably boring monologue at the beginning of the film.) The scene with Josh Brolin and the dog floating down the river is one I will remember for a long time. The set up is a bit non-specific, but you accept it because of their quirky style and the fact that you effectively connect with Josh Brolin’s plight. He’s a guy running for his life – this virtually guarantees at least minimal viewer interest.

In the middle third you realize that the seemingly amazing narrative possibilities of the first third are not only NOT going to be realized, but they were in fact figments of your hopeful imagination born of the Coen brothers’ stylistic manipulation earlier in the film. The vacuousness of the story begins to dawn on you. The “quirky” dialog starts to seem more and more like filler. They start relying more and more on visual style points (example: the beeping of the homing device as the psycho is driving by the various rooms of the motel – the fact that they are dragging that scene out so long is a clue that they are already running out of ideas.) Other characters we might have expected to develop in interesting ways (Tommy Lee Jones, Kelly Macdonald) drop away suddenly, and we are left with the two guys duking it out, Terminator-style. New and uninteresting characters that we don’t care about (Woody Harrelson) are suddenly forced on us.

Then in the last third the film turns into a “goat-fuck,” to use a phrase from the movie.

Josh Brolin’s character is the only interesting character in the movie. He is the only character that is at all developed, and he is certainly the only character we care about. He’s just dumb enough to get himself into trouble, but just resourceful enough to make a go of it anyway, and the whole first two thirds of the movie is (let’s face it, shall we) all about whether or not he is going to evade the psycho and make off with the money. So, in the last third of the movie what do the Coen brothers do? They just instantly drop him from the story – he just turns up dead, killed OFF SCREEN!  We don’t even get to see him die! He’s just suddenly dead, and Tommy Lee Jones (who we do not give a rat’s ass about, and who we have not seen on screen for over an hour) is suddenly the main character of the movie.

But it gets worse. Josh Brolin is not even killed by the psycho. He was killed, we are told, by some random Mexicans. Who were they? Well, they were hired by the guy who hired Woody Harrelson to hunt down the psycho in that short-lived and completely unsatisfying subplot that went nowhere. And who was the guy who did the hiring, exactly? How should we know?! We’re never told. Obviously he is connected to the shoot-em-up in the beginning, but we’re never told how. We’re never told who Woody Harrelson is. We’re never even told who Javier Bardem’s character is. We’re never told who those two guys in suits were that he was with in the very beginning, or why he killed them. So the main character, and entire justification for the movie, is just simply erased from the film, leaving an narrative void of epic proportions.

The final third of the movie is just pitiful. Kelly Macdonald is killed for no reason – they try to keep selling the the quirky insanity of the psycho as something having some kind of hidden profoundness, but this whole shtick has by this time long been revealed as pure idiocy substituting for decent script-writing, and as a result her death is just revolting and inane. Then the psycho gets in a car wreck, breaks his arm, and bribes some kids to help him, all this in a scene written like it is a throwaway humor scene from some crap Tarantino film; besides, since when does this guy let anyone he comes in contact with live, without at least flipping a coin? To remain true to his character he should have perforated the two kids with one of his incredibly huge tank-stopping weapons that he carries around all the time, and left them sprawled in ghastly pool of blood. Finally, the film becomes about Tommy Lee Jones and his … dementia, shall we say? He visits some old man living in a single-wide in the country – I still have no idea who that guy was – and they have a rather looooooooooooong conversation that (like the film’s prologue) is largely incomprehensible and unspeakably boring.

Poor Javier Bardem. The guy is an amazing actor, and they give him an Oscar for THIS????!!!! All he has to do is walk around exhibiting … zero emotional range! He IS the Terminator; they didn’t give Arnold an Oscar, did they?! Why couldn’t they give him one for Vicky Christina Barcelona – that was a great performance! Or how about Before Night Falls, another marvelous performance in a movie that was actually decent. But no, he is honored for this ridiculous performance.

And poor Kelly MacDonald. She too is a wonderful actress, but I think she has had her moments on screen (Two Room House and Gosford Park) and now it’s just going to be crap like this for her from here on out – playing weak women getting terrorized and killed. Just like Virginia Madsen, who got to do Sideways and then she’s Harrison Ford’s pathetic, disempowered wife for the rest of her career. It makes you realize that there are very few good roles written for women anymore.

As for Tommy Lee Jones, it’s been a while since I’ve seen an actor looking so lost in his role. Sometimes he suddenly starts channeling The Fugitive! Then he’s acting like the mumbling geriatric weirdos in Synecdoche, New York. Yeah, those Coen brothers are great directors all right!

The New York Times is so full of shit. They trashed this film and loved Duplicity, but I’m telling you it is a fun, well-made little indie film. It’s not great, but it is good. Amy Adams is an actress that I really want to like, and I thought she was good in this role as a star cheerleader trying to make her disappointing life something she can be proud of. Emily Blunt is simply a marvelous actress, and she is good in this film as Amy Adams screwed-up sister, but she really doesn’t have too much to do in the film. Same for Alan Arkin. The character of Winston is really cool – when was the last time you saw a character that real in a mainstream film? Brilliant casting. Even the kid is pretty cool, not over-the-top like most kids in movies.

The story is simple, but fun and interesting and even a bit inspirational.  Go see it!

I used to think that Clive Owen was a good actor, mainly because I liked his character in Gosford Park. I have been wondering why he subsequently seemed to always take roles where he was playing an emotionless robot of some kind or another. Then my wife pointed out that his role in Gosford Park was very small, and it was completely supported by phenomenal performances all around him and a phenomenal script and story, and in fact if you look at his performance in isolation, he really just has to utter somewhat robotic lines, like “My mother had me. A little while later she died. End of story.”

His co-star, Julia Roberts, is about as miscast as is humanly possible. Julia Roberts is a true movie star, and as such she is basically tolerable in an incredibly wide range of roles. But in this film we have hit the limit. What they needed was some young generic red-hot blond corporate monster-woman to play opposite robotic Clive Owen. They needed someone who we could believe would actually go for Clive, at least in a cold, post-modern kind of way. But instead we get poor Julia Roberts trying to act like a nasty bitch – just doesn’t work.

So, put these two together in a film with a bad script, a dumb story and a disappointing ending and what do you have? A wasted evening, that’s what.

To say they don’t have chemistry is a bit of an understatement. There is a palpably repulsive energy between them. They look like they would rather shovel shit than kiss each other. It’s kind of hard to swallow all the unbelievable stuff in the movie if you can’t even swallow the central love story (which is the only reason they are working together at all.)

The actual plot itself is not that interesting, and what little quality it has falls off rather quickly. And to make matters worse, the constant cutting back and forth from flashbacks is not cleverly done – it does not even successfully disguise the weak story, à la Pulp Fiction. In fact, it highlights the weakness of the story. Plus, they make very, very bad use of multi-frame screens. It makes the entire film look amateurish, that’s how badly this particular effect is done.

By the way, this movie has some of the worst opening credits I can remember, perhaps the worst of all time – the two balding CEO’s cursing at each other in SUPER SLOOOOW MOOOOTION, to some frantic but generic-sounding and boring 70s jam session. God, it is just excruciating to sit through. It’s not even the slightest bit funny or clever, especially since at this point in the film you don’t even know who those two people are, except by virtue of having seen the preview.

Now that I think about it, they really are the worst opening credits in the history of cinema!

This movie is a shameless vehicle for Glen Hanslard’s caterwauling music, nothing more and certainly nothing less. The opening scene, where he is standing out on a street corner wailing his highly repetitive music with great gusto, is okay. “The guy’s a passionate musician,” you think to yourself, “this could be an interesting story!” Then some guy steals his guitar case and he runs him down and recovers it.

If only the guy had swiped his guitar … and gotten away!

But he didn’t. So the film continues on and slowly certain painful things begin to dawn on you. First you realize that … there is no story! The characters just walk around performing this droning, depressing music. (Did I mention how REPETITIVE the music is?!) This film is a love story, they say? How do you figure? These people barely interact! Then he buys her a (really ugly) piano and splits with their demo tape to go make his fortune, leaving her in that crap apartment surrounded by all those losers. A love story would be: they fall in love, move some place really cool, start a band and become successful artists.  Okay, maybe I am overly sentimental.

Second, let’s talk about the music for a sec, shall we? It’s like listening to the drone note of a bag pipe, all by itself, for long stretches of time, overlaid with the harrowing sounds of someone doing really bad things to some poor animal. These songs go on and on and on, and they are so boring and so depressing! He’s just up there HOWLING about his sorry-ass life and some girl who dumped him (can you blame her?). He needs to take happy pills and write something else, something that does not inspire suicide.

Third, the only thing in the movie that had any hope of being the slightest bit interesting is the scene in the studio. But they miss every chance to capitalize on this (they would actually have to write some dialog for that) and instead just seize the opportunity to have this dude rasping out his ultimate creation: a painfully monotonous, bad U2-ripoff in 5/4 time, with Hanslard screeching his agony all over everything. The actor playing the engineer has to pretend to be won over by the group and the song, an acting assignment that is undoubtedly beyond the powers of our greatest thespians, certainly beyond his powers. After something like 10 minutes of this (or it sure seemed that long) the song finally raps up, and someone says “now let’s listen to it on crap speakers, to see if the mix translates.” So they all go for a drive, pop in the tape, and yup, the very same endless, wretched song plays all over again, in its entirety. It’s just unspeakably cruel.

When you walk out of the theater, all you will take with you are the mournful, numbing strains of his life-denying music, playing in your head like an evil carousel from Hell that you are strapped to for all eternity.