Monthly Archives: May 2014

New In Theaters

Vampires Done Right

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Only Lovers Left Alive

by George Wolf

 

Vampires again! Can’t we just give it a rest already?

I hear ya, but before you write them off completely, let Only Lovers Left Alive renew your faith in the genre’s possibilities.

Leave it to visionary writer/director Jim Jarmusch to concoct the perfect antidote to the pop culture onslaught of romantic teenage blood drinkers. OLLA is a delicious black comedy, oozing with sharp wit and hipster attitude.

Great lead performances don’t hurt, either, and Jarmusch gets them from Tom Hilddleston and Tilda Swinton as Adam and Eve (perfect!), a vampire couple rekindling their centuries-old romance against the picturesque backdrop of…Detroit.

I’m not going to lie, they had me at Swinton/Hiddleston/Jarmusch/vampires, but it’s such a treat to find the end result only exceeds expectations.

Not since the David Bowie/Catherine Deneuve pairing in The Hunger has there been such perfectly vampiric casting. Swinton and Hiddleston, already two of the most consistently excellent actors around, deliver cooly detached, underplayed performances, wearing the world- weariness of their characters in uniquely contrasting ways.

The less you know about the lifestyles of Adam and Eve, the better, and the plot consists mainly of consequences from a surprise visit by Eve’s sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska). But Jarmusch, as he often does, creates a setting that is totally engrossing, full of fluid beauty and wicked humor. 

His camera lingers in dark corners and high ceilings, swimming in waves of sublime production design, evocative music and mood lighting that is subtle perfection.  This is a master class in style and atmosphere, conjuring up a dark world you’re just geeked to spend time in.

There is substance to accent all the style. The film moseys toward its perfect finale, casually waxing Goth philosophic about soul mates and finding your joy.

Ironically, Jarmusch treats the possibility of nightwalkers among us more realistically than any vampire flick in recent memory. And in the process, has some wry fun with how the whole thing went south.

Talk about finding our joy.

Vampires are back, baby, and Edward can suck it.

 

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

New In Theaters

Slumdog Maguire

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Million Dollar Arm

by Hope Madden

Disney – the studio who brought you Miracle, The Rookie, and Invincible – needs a family-friendly sports movie for the summer. It must be based on a true story. It requires one or more underdogs, a romantic subplot, and plenty of opportunities for lessons learned. Fish out of water are a plus.

The only surprising thing about Million Dollar Arm is the group of people who convened to answer Disney’s ad for a blockbuster.

Director Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) and screenwriter Thomas McCarthy join a talented cast who, collectively, have no business making a predictable crowd pleaser like this. McCarthy, in particular, had a flawless resume up to now, having written and directed the brilliant Station Agent, The Visitor, and Win Win and having written the Pixar masterpiece Up. What’s going on here?

The two inexplicably crafted a film from the true(ish) story of down-on-his-luck sports agent JB Bernstein (Jon Hamm) and his plan to find the next great MLB pitcher in India. And while Million Dollar Arm is equal parts Slumdog Millionaire and Jerry Maguire, and is obvious as all get out, it’s somehow pleasant and appealing.

The filmmaking duo seem to embrace the cliches of their topic, and they manage to expose some ugly realities – sports capitalism, for instance – while they’re at it. They are aided immeasurably by a cast that, too, has far too much talent to be involved with this film.

Jon Hamm embodies the flawed humanity of his character beautifully. While his romantic entanglements are as unmistakable as the hard-won lessons in his near future, his grace and humor provide enough distraction to almost overcome the lack of surprise.

Likewise, neighbor/love interest Lake Bell and potential MLB phenoms Suraj Sharma (Life of Pi) and Madhur Mittal (Slumdog Millionaire) charm in roles that could easily have been one-dimensional. Instead, the three develop a sweet chemistry and find a little believable complexity for their characters.

Alan Arkin, on the other hand, offers the same performance we’ve seen from him in his last 20 or more films, while Bollywood star Pitobash settles for broadly drawn comic relief.

Together it’s a mish-mash effort that has no business entertaining as much as it does. Even penned inside a formula, McCarthy can write, Hamm can act, and Gillespie can make it all appear fresh regardless of the fact that we know from the opening credits exactly what we’ll see by the time those credits roll again two hours later.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

New In Theaters, Slider

Oh No! There Goes Tokyo!

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Godzilla

by Hope Madden

Movies love to depict our fear of science, a trend that dates back to Edison’s 1910 rendition of Frankenstein. But the real frenzy came with the onset of the atomic age.

Among the countless “creature features” spawned by our global fear of the destruction science had wrought, Godzilla reigned supreme. Ishiro Honda’s Hiroshima analogy simultaneously entertained and terrified as it tapped our horrified fascination with the destruction, once unthinkable, that was suddenly an ever-present danger.

Back in 2010, visual effects maestro Gareth Edwards tread similar ground of societal guilt, dread and terror with his underseen alien flick Monsters. More than anything, though, that film clarified his aptitude for creature action, a talent that serves him well for his Godzilla reboot.

He’s assembled a phenomenal cast for the monster mash up, though I’m not sure why. Award-winning actors Ken Watanabe, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Olsen, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Juliette Binoche and Aaron Taylor-Johnson appear onscreen (and do little else) as we wait for the epic battle between Godzilla and two new creatures with a taste for radiation.

Taylor-Johnson is a military bomb defusing expert who leaves his wife (Olsen) and their son behind in San Francisco to fly to Japan to bail his crazy scientist/grieving widower father (Cranston) out of jail. He’d been caught trespassing on a site quarantined for 14 years – ever since the nuclear reactor disaster that killed his wife.

Well, there’s more to that story than meets the eye.

The talent-laden cast doesn’t get the opportunity to flesh out their characters, so there’s little human drama to cling to as chaos approaches. Perhaps even more damaging, Max Borenstein and Dave Callaham’s screenplay fails to truly lay blame for this behemoth blood match on mankind.

Flaws aside, Godzilla delivers the creature feature goods. Few summer blockbusters contain such gloriously realized action sequences, gorgeously framed images of disarray, or thrillingly articulated beasts.

Edwards never hides his inspiration (the lead’s name is Brody, for God’s sake).  While he draws from Jaws, Aliens, Close Encounters, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and any number of previous Godzilla efforts, the amalgam is purely his own.

This is an easy franchise to take in the wrong direction. Who remembers Godzuki? But Edwards brings a competent hand and reverent tone to breathe new life into the old dinosaur.

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

 

New In Theaters

Write it Down, Nic Cage Acts

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Joe

by Hope Madden

After seven years of exploring the big budget, big star world of Hollywood, filmmaker David Gordon Green revisits his ultra indie roots. He hasn’t returned alone, though. For his newest effort, Joe, he brought with him Hollywood staple and Internet joke Nicolas Cage. And God bless him for it.

As the eponymous Joe, Cage reminds us that he picked up that Oscar for a reason. He dials down the bug-eyed mania of many recent efforts in favor of a textured performance that emphasizes his natural chemistry with other actors, his vulnerability and barely caged rage, and his weirdly charming sense of humor.

Joe’s a good-hearted guy with a lot of issues, a volcano that’s never fully dormant. It’s part and parcel for a sun dappled, visually lovely film absolutely saturated in violence. While Joe bursts into less outright carnage than many films, the pervasive dread that violence could erupt at any second is the very air the film breathes.

In the middle of this modern Wild West atmosphere, Joe befriends a boy in need of a mentor. Gary is played by the increasingly impressive Tye Sheridan. With just three roles under his belt – Tree of Life, Mud, and Joe – Sheridan has proven to be an amazing natural talent. In his hands, Gary’s youthful exuberance is equal parts darling and tragic, given his circumstances. Sheridan’s performance is amazing, and his repartee with Cage is perfect.

Both are helped by an excellent ensemble, many of them nonprofessional actors. One particular stand out is a sinister Ronnie Gene Blevins as the oily Willie. But no one in the film can outshine street performer turned actor Gary Poulter. His turn as Gary’s drunken father offers more layers than anything a seasoned actor has offered yet this year, each one as believable as it is shocking. His performance is stunning, and it elevates the film immeasurably.

The film is not without its faults. Several characters are severely underdeveloped given their ultimate place in the story, and there are times when Cage cannot match the naturalism of the performers around him. The film also suffers from its resemblance to Mud, Sheridan’s 2012 cinematic of coming-of-age poetry.

But Green’s once-trademark touches – meandering storyline, poetic score, bruised masculinity – are in full bloom as he reworks Larry Brown’s novel into his own unique vision of low income Americans’ melancholy struggle. In doing so, he’s reestablished not only his own artistic authority, but Cage’s as well.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

Outtakes

The Dreamy Life and Work of Filmmaker David Gordon Green

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About seven years into filmmaker David Gordon Green’s career, it seemed like he’d found his niche with lyrical, Southern tales that braid poverty with nature, resilience with melancholy. And then he directed the Seth Rogan/James Franco flick Pineapple Express.

I’m sorry, what?

Yes, DGG shook free from that ultra indie aura and dove into Hollywood comedies, and even TV, directing many episodes of Danny McBride’s hilariously wrong HBO series Eastbound and Down. Lately, though, he’s returning to his cinematic roots, as evidenced by his latest effort, Joe.

The filmmaker returned to the Wexner Center of the Arts in March to screen the film, which opens nationwide this Friday. He took a few minutes to talk with MaddWolf.

MaddWolf: The last time I got to talk to you was just before you screened Snow Angels at the Wexner. Now you’re here with Joe. How does the Wex keep getting so lucky?

David Gordon Green: I’ve got some friends there, and the people there are interested in my work. Plus, I always look forward to creative ways to exhibit my movies, not just the obvious ways. So it’s nice to come out to Columbus, show some Eastbound and Down episodes that I worked on, and then present the movie. I enjoy doing that.

MW: Back then, with Snow Angels, you told me you were interested in doing some big Hollywood type movies. You have done that, as well as TV since then. And then you did Prince Avalanche – a delightful, decidedly non-commercial effort. What drives you artistically?

DGG: It just depends how I wake up in the morning, what my dreams were like the night before. I really do work in a kind of whimsical way. I have a great work ethic and I wake up and start working on things. Just as you turn on the radio and tune to a station that you’re feeling, I kind of turn my work efforts to a specific medium that I’m drawn to at that moment. Then I chip away at things until, at a point, something becomes real.

If I’ve got ten things in development – at least in my brain – some of them formally, some of them informally – at a point, something becomes real, and then I really commit to it and give it all my focus and attention. Sometimes that’s radically different from what I’ve just done because I’ve needed that shift in tone or texture or mood in my life.

MW: That kind of sounds dreamy. Is it the greatest thing ever?

DGG: Pretty ideal, I’d say.

MW: Do you prefer one medium to another?

DGG: They all have their advantages. It’s nice to have resources and commercial possibilities, reach a wide audience. It’s amazing seeing a line around the block for a movie you’ve worked on. It’s awesome to have all the toys in the toy chest that you can play with during production, and everyone gets paid.

Other times, it’s nice to make a personal statement and just worry about you and your immediate collaborators. Or, with the opportunities of television, it’s nice to be able to follow a character over a long period of time with some nontraditional arcs of storytelling. It’s very satisfying.

MW: When you set to work on Joe, what made you think of Nicolas Cage?

DGG: When I read the book about 15 years ago, I always imagined Robert Mitchum in his younger days playing the role. When I got serious about making the project, I was trying to think of someone who was a leading man type that was capable of the action and physicality, was capable of the drama and prestige that I was hoping we would shoot for, and also had a sense of humor about him. Cage is the only leading man that has successfully worn all three of those labels as a movie star. He was the first guy I spoke to about it and it was exciting to have him respond to it enthusiastically and immediately.

MW: He has proven in glimpses that he’s among the most talented actors working, but it’s easy to forget that. He’s gotten really strong reviews for his work in this film. What do you think it is about this project or character that brought it out in him?

DGG: He’ll tell you that this role is the closest to who he is of any role he’s ever played. I think it’s that personal investment, that closeness that he had to the role that really brought it to life in a unique way. And as diverse a resume as he has, this is unlike any role he’s ever played.

MW: Tye Sheridan is proving to be an amazing talent. How did he wind up in the project?

DGG: I was a big fan of what he did in Tree of Life. When I saw that, he really popped out at me as the gravity of that movie, the real emotional connection. And then my friend Jeff Nichols was editing Mud and I was helping him out, and we just started talking about it.

Jeff knows the novel Joe really well – Jeff and I worked together as production assistants on a documentary about Larry Brown’s (author of the source novel) life. So he knew Larry, knew I really wanted to find that right young voice, and Tye was coming into the right age. I really liked Tye’s ideas for the characters, and he can improvise really well, which is important to me.

MW: You did not write this one. Gary Hawkins – the documentarian who made the film you mention about Larry Brown – adapted the novel written by Brown. How did this come about? Did the screenplay exist before you were attached?

DGG: I think after Larry passed away, Gary wrote the adaptation as a kind of a tribute to Larry and he sent it to me when it was done. I loved it. I fell in love with it and I thought, well, this is the right time in my life and my career. It’s very ambitious in a lot of ways. I think, for the directorial tools I needed, this was the point I felt confident in it.

I’ve been kicking this around for about four years, I guess.

MW: What was it like filming?

DGG: It was amazing. With someone as seasoned as Nic, and one as young and hungry as Tye, they just complimented each other really well. And then the rest of the cast is mostly nontraditional actors and some street performers and some day laborers that we hired – it was just a fun, eclectic ensemble. We had a really good time. We did go to some really difficult dramatic places, so it’s nice to have people you can trust and have a laugh or a drink with at the end of the day.

MW: What’s next? You going to direct a play?

DGG: I’m just finishing up a movie with Al Pacino and Holly Hunter called Manglehorn. I wrote this with Al in mind, created the character for him. In a lot of ways it was me trying to dig back to some of his early Seventies performances – Panic in Needle Park and Scarecrow – some of the less bravado, more vulnerable roles he’s played. This is 100% Pacino. He’s in every frame, and it was a lovely, wonderful education for me in a lot of ways and inspiration in every way.

MW: Like Cage, Pacino – clearly one of the all time greats – has done some really questionable work over the years. Was it a specific goal for you to put these guys in the position to do great work again?

DGG: Absolutely. They are some of the greatest actors of all time, and rather than trying to rally Channing Tatum or Bradley Cooper to come be in a movie, I thought, let’s find the greats of the greats at a time where they’ll take my phone calls and we’ll go do something that’ll rock the world.

For Your Queue

ScarJo X 2 for the Queue

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Releasing today on DVD is the most imaginative love story in a decade or more, Her. Writer/director Spike Jonze’s unique vision of the near future offers a compelling, tender peek at what may lie in store for a generation weaned off of intimacy by technology. Scarlett Johansson and Joaquin Phoenix are perfection as the lovebirds, but Jonze and his imagination are the real stars.

 

Another unusual take on romance worth checking out is Joseph Gordon Levitt’s writing/directing debut Don Jon. Coincidentally, the film also boasts a magnificent performance from Scarlett Johansson – just one of several great turns in delightful and loaded cast. Check out Tony Danza! JGL skewers a culture that encourages alienation and suppresses intimacy – two obstacles also facing the lovers in Her. It’s a confident, clever, surprising effort from a filmmaker to watch.

New In Theaters

A Few Missing Pages

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God’s Pocket

by George Wolf

Seedy neighborhoods, sad sacks and shady characters populate God’s Pocket, an uneven drama that gets a big boost from its strong ensemble cast.

An adaptation of Peter Dexter’s first novel, the film is the big screen directorial debut for veteran actor John Slattery (Mad Men). He does show a confident, generous hand with his performers, but Slattery’s instincts for tone and storytelling aren’t quite as polished.

Dexter (The Paperboy, Deadwood) based the story partly on his own experience as a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, when he suffered a severe beating at the hands of a local gang angry over one of his pieces.

Set in a hard knock Philly neighborhood dubbed “God’s Pocket,” the film follows events set in motion by the death of Leon Hubbard (Caleb Landry Jones), a young slacker who is killed while working as a day laborer on a construction site.

Leon’s distraught mother Jeanie (Christina Hendricks) isn’t satisfied with the official version of the accident, and she pressures her husband Mickey Scarpato (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) to call upon his semi-connected associates and dig for more details. 

Right off, Jeanie’s suspicions seem desperate. Is there a reason she instantly thinks the death wasn’t accidental, or is it a convenient way to push her unsatisfying husband deeper into dangerous waters?

We never know, and ambiguous motivation is a problem throughout the film. These are interesting characters that beg for insightful backstory, but all we’re given is the neighborhood. Yes, we get that these are tough people who close ranks against outsiders, but this story needs more than vague cliches to truly resonate.

Slattery, who helped adapt the screenplay, also has trouble finding the appropriate tone to incorporate the black humor. It’s no easy feat, even for masters such as the Coens or Jim Jarmusch, and here we’re left unsure about feeling for these people, or laughing at them.

There’s nothing unsure about the cast. Hoffman, who reportedly wanted to move away from these “loser” roles before his tragic death, wears Mickey’s burdens like an old shirt you can’t bear to part with, only reinforcing how badly his talent will be missed.

Hendricks gives Jeanie a smoldering vulnerability, and enough mystery to justify the obsessive attention of Shellburn (Richard Jenkins), the boozing newspaper columnist whose life is awakened by her charms.  Jenkins, customarily excellent, cements Shellburn as the differing reference point the film needs.

God’s Pocket ends up resembling a book with too many missing pages. There are some fine moments here, all searching for a foundation strong enough to keep them from drifting away.

Verdict-3-0-Stars

 

 

Outtakes

Great Directors’ Horrifying Output

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This week, the great writer/director/Ohioan Jim Jarmusch releases just another masterpiece, the vampire flick Only Lovers Left Alive. While Jarmusch is certainly not an easy artist to peg, a vampire film was not exactly a predictable choice.

Still, loads of the most prestigious filmmakers have made horror films. Back in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock made it acceptable for directors of immense talent to take on the genre. In 1991, we even had a horror film win best picture (and actor, actress, director, and screenplay).

Some filmmakers, like Sam Raimi or Brian DePalma, are as well known for horror as for their more mainstream titles. Stanley Kubrick and Roman Polanski were equally at home in horror as they were in any genre. Other giants in the industry, like David Cronenberg and David Lynch, cut their teeth in horror before moving on, while a few, like Jarmusch and Martin Scorsese, dabbled in the genre late into an established career.

Here is a peek at the horror output of some of the greats that you may have missed.

Ingmar Bergman: Hour of the Wolf (1968)

Like all Bergman films, this hypnotic, surreal effort straddles lines of reality and unreality and aches with existential dread. But Bergman and his star, Max von Sydow, cross over into territory of the hallucinatory and grotesque, calling to mind ideas of vampires, insanity and bloodlust as one man confronts repressed desires as he awaits the birth of his child.

Peter Jackson: Dead Alive (1982)

Long before Peter Jackson went legit with the exceptional Heavenly Creatures, or became infamous for his work with hobbits and apes and more hobbits, he made his name back in New Zealand with some of the all time goriest, bloodiest, nastiest horror comedies ever produced. The best of these is Dead Alive, a bright, silly, outrageous bloodbath. For lovers of the genre, the director, or the Sumatran rat monkey, it is essential viewing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eigwPFVmMIU

Michael Haneke: Funny Games (1997, 2007)

The Oscar winning director behind Amore, The White Ribbon, and Cache, made a horrific experiment of etiquette in 1997, and then again in 2007, with Funny Games. Made first in his native German, and a decade later, with nearly shot for shot integrity, in English, Funny Games upends the comfort of societal expectations in a number of ingenious and terrifying ways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Has9E7j9Lrg

Lars von Trier: Antichrist (2009)

Lars von Trier’s cinematic output had been punishing viewers for decades. In 2009, he finally embraced the genre that he’d been courting his whole career. Antichrist is a beautiful, poetic, painful, horrifying examination of guilt, laden with all the elements that mark a LVT effort. What’s unusual is that he takes, for the majority of the film, a traditional “cabin in the woods” approach, depositing his unique vision in well-worn horror territory. And once there, he embraces the genre with much zeal. And a few gardening tools.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBdDcQONmkM

Francis Ford Coppola: Dementia 13 (1963)

Copolla began his career under the tutelage of B-movie god Roger Corman, and Dementia 13 was one of his first solo flights as director. It wasn’t his last attempt at horror – we all remember the abysmal Dracula remake – but Dementia 13 marks the early promise of a guy who understands the power of killing a loved one in a rowboat on a lake.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tcI47OkNhg

James Cameron: Piranha Part Two:  The Spawning (1981)

Just three years before taking Hollywood by storm with The Terminator, James Cameron showed absolutely no sign of competence behind the camera when he helmed the sequel to Joe Dante’s B-movie Piranha. This time around, those deadly man-eaters manifest a new mutation. They can fly! Sure, it might look like someone standing just off screen is throwing them at naked women and minorities, but they can fly, I tell you! This one is an underseen gem of bad cinema, and it offers an early peek at Cameron’s fixation with water, strong female leads, and Lance Henriksen.

New In Theaters

Sci-Fi Trailblazer

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Jodorowsky’s Dune

by George Wolf

 

Jodorowsky’s Dune isn’t actually the famed director’s long-overdue treatment of a science fiction classic, but you’ll end up wishing that it was.

And, ironically, that’s a testament to how well this documentary tells its story of “the greatest sci-fi film never made.”

Chilean artist/writer/filmmaker/actor Alejandro Jodorowsky came to prominence in the early 1970s with surrealist, boundary-pushing films such as El Topo and The Holy Mountain. In 1975, he began a project that aimed to turn Frank Herbert’s epic novel Dune into something resembling an acid trip on film.

By all accounts, that film would have been awesome, so why didn’t we get it?

Director Frank Pavich answers that question in an interesting, entertaining way, wisely putting Jodorowsky himself front and center.

Jodorowsky is still energetic and ambitious at age 85, and you can’t help but buy into his vision. Even now, he bubbles with excitement when outlining his failed plans, which included offering Orson Welles his own on -set personal chef just so Welles would join the cast. Budgets were not much of a concern to Jodorowsky, and you begin to understand why the big film studios were a tad frightened.

Science fiction geeks and movie nerds will be in behind-the-scenes heaven, but the film also works on a mainstream level. It’s a compelling story of the creative process and the passion that drives it.

Pavich showcases Jodorowky’s “most interesting man”-style charisma, and surrounds it with the relevance needed to both entertain and satisfy. By the time Pavich offers concrete examples of how the original Dune storyboards continue to influence Hollywood, you’ll be sorry Jodorowsky’s Dune isn’t the opener of a nonexistent double feature.

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

New In Theaters

Those Meddling Kids

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Teenage

by George Wolf

“Those who get the youth, get the future.”

It takes a few minutes to get a handle on Teenage, but don’t let go. His methods may be a bit  outside the norm for documentaries, but director/co-writer Matt Wolf (no relation) ultimately creates a captivating look at the evolution of the teenage experience.

Mixing classic newsreel footage with fictional recreations and celebrity narrators (Jena Malone,Ben Whishaw) Wolf overcomes moments of pretension to deliver a vibrant collage of history lesson, art film, and political statement.

The film reminds us that, hard as it may be for Beliebers to belieb, “teenager” wasn’t always a thing. Starting with the period before child labor laws and working forward, Wolf illustrates how societies in both Europe and America slowly began to recognize adolescence as a separate, and viable, stage of life.

Phrases such as “our music made the feet of the world dance” may be a bit dramatic, but then, so are teens. The dramatic details the film provides, from the birth of the Boy Scouts to Vietnam, do much to overcome the heavy handed moments.

Wolf seems to realize he’s bitten into a big subject, one he can’t begin to encompass at the pace he settles into. While some historical periods do get short shrift, Teenage becomes an effective highlight reel, one that sparks your curiosity for more.

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars