Will Ferrell is a successful sketch and movie comedian
because he commits himself to the role one hundred percent and never wavers. I
have faulted him in the past for giving too much of a knowing wink to his over
the top performances and in his latest it’s the absence of that wink and his
usual commitment, this time to the drama, that makes his performance admirable.
However, Casa de mi Padre is not a
drama. Well, it is in a sense because it’s made completely in the style of
Latin American telenovelas combined with low budget Mexican cinema. So it’s a
comedy by virtue of the fact that the filmmakers have deliberately set out to
parody those styles.
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.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
25 Years Ago This Month: Raising Arizona Movie Review
The Coen brothers’ sophomore effort, Raising Arizona, was a far lighter follow-up to their dark noir
tale Blood Simple. It’s a comedy in
the style of Looney Tunes, with zany expressions, lots of screaming, and
physical comedy. But then there are dark and sinister elements which make it a
cartoon comedy for adults and maybe older kids. This is the first Coen brothers
film I ever had any exposure to when it used to play on cable when I was a kid.
I had no appreciation for the finer things at the time so I only took it at
face value as an absurd comedy. Little did I know that eventually the
filmmaking duo (Joel and Ethan co-write and direct, although in their earlier
films Joel was the credited director and Ethan the producer) would become my
absolute favorite filmmakers. And looking at Raising Arizona now, I can clearly see their usual themes and
styles emerging. In fact they were still developing their own style at the
time, but there are shots that they continually come back to and every one of
their films contains at least one scene with “that Coen brothers feeling.”
Classic Movie Review: Charlie Chaplin's City Lights
As the cinematic rival of the stoic Buster Keaton it was
Charlie Chaplin who infused his comedic work with great pathos through his
perennial character of The Little Tramp. Chaplin constantly strove for that
perfect balance between a lovably goofy man-child and moments of grand emotion.
Never did he accomplish the blend so symmetrically and effortlessly it seems as
with City Lights. It just might be
his best work.
Made after the advent of synchronized soundtracks for
films and at a time when studios had completely abandoned silent cinema,
Chaplin insisted City Lights remained
silent with respect to dialogue, retaining the custom of inter-titles because
The Little Tramp was a universal character. He could be understood across
cultures, across borders, across languages. Not to mention that every
individual around the world who knew the character would have given him, in
their own heads, a voice only they knew. To strip that all away would have been
to unravel part of what made him so special.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Classic Movie Review: Charlie Chaplin's The Circus
The Circus is
probably Charlie Chaplin’s best pure comedy feature. It doesn’t have the same
dramatic level as his earlier The Kid or
his follow-up City Lights. It’s no
wonder this is the only Chaplin film that won any significant Academy Award
(notwithstanding the fact that 1928 was the first year the Oscars were
bestowed). The Academy removed his film from consideration as a nominee in four
major categories and decided instead to award him an Honorary Oscar for
producing, directing, writing and acting The
Circus. It’s a film that perfectly sums up the Tramp as a character.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Classic Movie Review: Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush
This review is
based on the original 1925 version of The Gold Rush with accompanying music provided on the DVD. In 1943 Charles Chaplin
personally supervised a re-release version with original musical score and
voiceover narration provided by Chaplin himself.
It’s hard enough these days to get easily engrossed in a
silent feature film. The classics are worth watching, especially if you’re at
all interested in understanding the development of narrative form on screen. It
takes a great deal of mental focus and a commitment that you’re going to stick
it out through more than an hour of silent viewing. Surely, just as with
subtitled films, the more you watch them, the easier it gets. But I find
Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush to
be, at times, tedious viewing. It has great classic bits, but the story that
holds it together is occasionally thrown together in a ramshackle way.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
From My Collection: American Pie Movie Review
Sometimes I really wish I could experience things for the
first time again. There’s nothing quite like seeing a hilarious comedy in a
crowded theater early in its run, especially when you are smack within the age
range of the target audience. I was 21 when American
Pie came out and I saw it three times that summer. Although I’m sure I was
much more likely then to enjoy a gross-out comedy than now, I was by no means a
sheep that followed the masses when it came to movies. I’ve always had more discerning
taste.
Charlie Chaplin's A Woman of Paris Movie Review
In 1923 Charlie Chaplin released his second feature film,
A Woman of Paris. Although this film
is all but forgotten because Chaplin is remembered for his classic comedies,
there is a lot of value in this rare drama from one of the greatest clowns of
the silent era. Chaplin had wanted to create a serious drama for his long time
leading lady Edna Purviance, who had starred alongside him in a great number of
comedies. As she got older and more mature, he felt she was no longer suited to
comedic roles.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Movie Review: Gianni e le donne [The Salt of Life]
Gianni Di Gregorio’s second feature film The Salt of Life is billed as a comedy,
but there’s an inherent sadness in this tale of a late middle aged Roman man
taking a second stab in life at finding happiness through pleasures of the
flesh. The film, written and directed by Di Gregorio, is a sequel to his 2010
comedy Mid-August Lunch. Not having
seen the first film, I can attest that it’s hardly a prerequisite to enjoying
the second.
Classic Movie Review: Charlie Chaplin's The Kid
Charlie Chaplin’s The
Kid is unique among his films in that it’s the only time we see the Tramp
as a family man. Normally he’s on his own and breezing through life.
Occasionally there’s a girl and sometimes he even wins her in the end. But to
see the Tramp with a child to care for reveals a side of the character unseen
either before or after.
To be sure, the Tramp comes to fatherhood like most
things in his life – unwillingly and unwittingly. At the start of the film a
young woman leaves a charity hospital with baby in arms. Destitute and without
means to care for the infant she leaves it in the car of a wealthy man.
Regretful a short time later she returns, but the car has been stolen by two
thieves who leave the baby in an alley. This series of coincidences leads to
the Tramp finding the baby. He picks it up believing it belongs to a passerby.
Yet one more coincidence – a passing beat cop – precludes the possibility he
can put the child back in the alley. And so a father is born.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Charlie Chaplin Focus: Reviews of 4 Short Films for Mutual
These four short comedies by Chaplin are from volume 3 of a three volume set known as The Chaplin Mutuals comprising all 12 comedies he made for the Mutual company in 1916.
In Chaplin’s first short film for Mutual, The Floorwalker, he plays a customer in
a retail store who becomes unwittingly mixed up in an embezzlement scheme
involving the store’s manager and floorwalker. This is made possible by his
uncanny resemblance to the floorwalker which provides for an oft repeated (most
famously by the Marx brothers) classic bit in which Chaplin and his
doppelganger (Lloyd Bacon) play like they’re each looking in a mirror at the
other. What starts as another episode of the bumbling Tramp acting the fool
becomes a classic mistaken identity comedy as the store manager (Eric Campbell)
takes him for the man who betrayed him for the cash embezzlement. The Floorwalker is notable for being the
first film to use an escalator for comedy which provides Chaplin some great
physical comedy centered on one character chasing another down the ‘up’
escalator with neither of them moving anywhere. The climax features an elevator
as well, the two working together to add a new level to Chaplin’s comedic work.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Charlie Chaplin Focus Starts Now
Last November I decided to take on the task of looking at a selection of Charlie Chaplin's feature film work as my focus for December. It quickly ballooned into including his short films as well because several were available on DVD at my local library. The onset of the end of year films and the Oscars kept me busy with other film viewing and I kept putting off my Chaplin focus. Finally this month I've been able to get through a large chunk of his work.
I can count ten of his short films and 11 of 12 feature films on the list of what I've seen. The Pilgrim is the only feature I've not been able to get either through the library or Netflix. But I've watched all the rest. There are still some short films I plan to watch before finishing this long and drawn out project.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Friends With Kids Movie Review
I saw a trailer for the upcoming comedy What to Expect When You’re Expecting,
based on the best-selling book of the same name. Judging from the two minute
trailer, it looks like yet another lowest common denominator comedy that gets
the majority of its laughs from trafficking in stereotypes of the difficulties
of parenting. In 2012 can Hollywood really do no better than jokes about
incompetent dads who just don’t know what they’re doing? Seriously? This
trailer came at the front of Jennifer Westfeldt’s startlingly excellent comedy Friends With Kids. The trailer for What to Expect doesn’t belong anywhere
near the same screen as Westfeldt’s film.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
25 Years Ago This Month: March 1987
The Iran-Contra Scandal occupied much of the White House's time. Rebels moved into Nicaragua armed with American aid. The U.S. and the Soviet Union continued talks on the spread of nuclear missiles. U2 released The Joshua Tree. Disney CEO Michael Eisner reached a deal with French PM Jacques Chirac to purchase land for the construction of Euro-Disney and AZT was approved by the FDA for use in AIDS treatment.
Street Smart Movie Review: 25 Years Ago This Month
New York in the 1980s makes you think of grimy streets
and a Times Square overrun by prostitutes, pimps and sex shows. To walk through
those streets of Manhattan now is like another world compared to what’s on
screen in Street Smart, a long
forgotten 1987 film starring Christopher Reeve as a magazine reporter who gets
unwittingly mixed up in the seedy underworld after committing a truly
dunderheaded act of stupidity.
Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood Movie Review
Apparently rentals of silent films have spiked since The Artist won the Best Picture Oscar
last week. If you want to see where Jean Dujardin found the inspiration for his
character of George Valentin, look to the classic silent film actor Douglas
Fairbanks. Fairbanks was the original swashbuckler costume adventure hero to
become a major star. He started in comic roles and then transitioned to
adventure films with The Mark of Zorro
in 1920, but one of his most impressive outings has to be Robin Hood from 1922.
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...