I've always admired Cusack. Maybe because as a kid I used to love watching Better Off Dead whenever it was on TV. Maybe it's because I identified with certain aspects of Lloyd Dobbler in Say Anything.... I don't think much of it now (nor did I then really), but One Crazy Summer was a staple of my lazy Sunday repeat viewing as a young lad.
A blog mostly dedicated to cinema (including both new and old film reviews; commentary; and as the URL suggests - movie lists, although it has been lacking in this area to be honest), but on occasion touching on other areas of personal interest to me.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
The Films of John Cusack
He's not a megastar. He doesn't have the classic good looks of a George Clooney or the only megastar of his generation - Tom Cruise. When you think of him, you don't think of the acting talents of his contemporaries Nicolas Cage and Forest Whitaker. John Cusack is a movie star who came to prominence in the 80s and is, in many ways, defined by that decade. He's one of the few actors of his generation whose star shone brightly twenty-five years ago and continues to have success today. In addition to Cruise, Cage and Whitaker (who was mostly a utility player and not a star until his Oscar win a few years back) there's Matt Dillon and Matthew Broderick who date from that period. Neither of them works as often in feature films as Cusack continues to.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Warrior Movie Review
I might describe Warrior
as equal parts Rocky and Miracle. In fact, during the final
contest we even hear the sports commentator shout something akin to the famous,
“Do you believe in miracles?” spoken by Al Michaels at the close of the 1980 “Miracle
on Ice” when the USA defeated the Soviet Union in ice hockey in the Lake Placid
Olympics. Miracle, based on that
event, was also directed by Gavin O’Connor, the helmsman of Warrior.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Contagion Movie Review: Sanitize Your Hands, Cover Your Mouth
How disease can spread without your knowing it. |
Leave it to director Steven Soderbergh to take a worn out
movie premise and zap us with a unique take. How many iterations of the global
pandemic film can we take? That’s what I thought when I saw the ads for Contagion, which rather unfortunately
make the film look much more like an action thriller than it really is.
Soderbergh, working from an original screenplay by Scott Z. Burns, guts the
genre of just about everything we expect. There are no chases. There’s no government
cover up, though one particularly repugnant character hints at one. There’s no
thumping and pounding musical score. There’s no child in danger (actually, a
young child is dispatched early on with very little fanfare and no time for
reflection) and no last minute rescue or rush to manufacture a vaccine to save
the world.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
The Guard Movie Review: Irish Garda Meets FBI
“I’m not sure if you’re really dumb or really smart.” So
says the FBI man played by Don Cheadle to Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleason), a
sergeant in the Irish Garda stationed in Galway on the west coast of Ireland
where the people have surly attitudes toward outsiders (particularly Dubliners)
and sometimes they insist on speaking only Irish. Gleeson, a bulky bear of a
man, is just the right actor to pull off the delicate balance between stupid
and clever. His character might be equal parts ‘Mad-Eye’ Moody from the Harry Potter films and Martin Cahill,
his character in The General.
The Guard, written
and directed by John Michael McDonagh, has a darkly sinister comic sensibility
akin to In Bruges, also starring
Gleeson and written and directed by McDonagh’s brother Martin. The film opens
with a car careering along the country roads of Galway, going just off camera
as we see Gerry in his patrol car and then hear the screeching tires and crash
of metal on the soundtrack. Gerry’s expression doesn’t change as he witnesses
and then approaches the scene to find an overturned car and several bodies
strewn about the road. He then rummages through a dead man’s pockets for the
drugs he knows he’ll find – not as evidence but for personal recreational use.
This scene plays as black comedy, setting the tone for the rest of the film,
mainly because of the complete absence of blood and gore that should be present
on the road.
Monday, September 12, 2011
25 Years Ago This Month: September 1986
I have been remiss in keeping regular posts going and I completely forgot to get this entry together for the start of the month. Nevertheless, it is still September, so I haven't really missed my deadline.
Sort of oddly, the source I use for finding movie release dates has only a small handful of movies that opened in September 1986.
The most significant release of the month must have been David Lynch's weird and wild Blue Velvet, a story which begins by showing us a nice normal suburban American neighborhood with white picket fences, and then has our hero discover a severed ear in a grassy field. That ear only hints at the thematic darkness beneath the surface that would become a hallmark of Lynch's work. It contains one of the late Dennis Hopper's greatest performances, as well as excellent work from Isabella Rossellini, Laura Dern and Kyle MacLachlan.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Modern Classic Movie Review: The Matrix
There are those moments when going to see a new movie in
the cinema can allow you to be a witness to a sea change in filmmaking. When The Matrix was released in March 1999 I
don’t recall thinking much about it beforehand in the way of anticipation. But
when the movie finished, I had but one thought in my head: “Tremendous!”
The Matrix
utilized state of the art technology and equipment to employ special effects in
ways that augmented the story rather than supplanting it like so much of the
effects-driven tripe we see now. Beyond the fantastic look of the film, it’s also
a movie that strives to say something interesting. It is philosophical in
nature, asking the BIG questions about destiny, technological advancement, the
nature of reality and the meanings of these things for humanity. Andy and Larry
Wachowski, who wrote and directed the film, are clearly movie and comic book
nerds (a term I use without derision) with a solid background knowledge of the
classics.
Friday, September 9, 2011
The Help Movie Review: Subtlety Is not its Strong Point
The Help, written
and directed by Tate Taylor and based on the popular best seller by Kathryn
Stockett, is a do-gooder drama that thinks it’s treating important subject
matter with great care, but actually does a horrible disservice to history, the
Civil Rights Movement, and all the people who played a role (many of whom game
their lives) in it. That said, it’s worth noting that there is a huge disparity
between the kind of film Dreamworks has chosen to advertise with the trailers
and the actual film that Taylor made.
The adverts would have us think The Help is a comedy with some dramatic elements, treating Jackson,
Mississippi, cerca 1963 as a hotbed of sassy black women and comical white
racists. I was genuinely surprised to find that it’s not until the final 30
minutes or so of this overlong 140 minute film that it devolves into cheap
laughs. As a matter of fact, the bulk of the film is built on a foundation of
real drama, mostly provided by the astounding performances of Octavia Spencer,
Viola Davis, and Cicely Tyson.
Monday, September 5, 2011
The Debt Movie Review: Questions on Jewish Justice and Vengeance
Vengeance is not Jewish. This is an idea that people
throughout history have had difficulty reconciling with their own (at times)
warped views of Jewish people. A sense of fairness and justice has primacy in
Jewish intellectual and political history. From Shylock to Steven Spielberg’s Munich the question rages on: What is
fair and just punishment for a crime and when do we cross the line in to pure
revenge.
John Madden’s The
Debt, based on the 2007 Israeli film Ha
Hov (unseen by me), treads similar ground to Munich, although with far less cunning insight. And I’ve never viewed
Steven Spielberg as a particularly insightful or challenging filmmaker. The Debt concerns a fictional Mossad
mission to capture The Surgeon of Birkenau, a Nazi war criminal obviously modeled
on Josef Mengele, who performed grotesque medical experiments on Jewish and
Roma men, women, and children at Auschwitz.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
How'd I Do? 93rd Academy Awards Nominations Edition
I got 36 out of 43 in the top eight categories. That's 83.7%. Getting 19/20 in the acting categories made up for the fact that I went on...
-
This film will open commercially in the United States on 22 April 2011. Immediately after being born, an infant child is tattooed ...
-
As I rewatched Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down for the first time I more than a decade, two other war Berchtesgaden more than a year late...
-
There are those moments when going to see a new movie in the cinema can allow you to be a witness to a sea change in filmmaking. When The...