Short Cut Movie Review: The Armstrong Lie

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

Documentarian Alex Gibney set out in 2009 to make a film chronicling Lance Armstrong’s improbable comeback after a four year hiatus following his astonishing record-breaking feat of winning the Tour de France seven consecutive times. What Gibney slowly discovered was that he was beginning to be viewed in some circles as making a kind of sycophantic fan film for a man many believed to be a liar, a cheat, and ruthless in the use of his power an celebrity to maintain a code of silence surrounding the rampant doping that we now know the U.S. team was engaged in.

When it later became clear that charges of doping were going to be inescapable for Armstrong and that he would be likely be stripped of his Tour titles, Gibney shifted the focus of the story and ended up producing The Armstrong Lie. He opens the film with Armstrong talking mere hours after his Oprah interview during which he admitted to the American public that he’d been doping nearly his entire professional career, specifically during all of his incredible Tour de France wins. This certainly wasn’t breaking news to anyone who’d ridden with or against him and not even to anyone who pays any kind of attention to professional cycling. What was shocking was that he actually, after years and years of vehement denials and standing behind Livestrong, the cancer awareness foundation for which he’d raised millions of dollars, owned up to it, putting his professional life even outside of cycling in jeopardy.

The film never really amounts to a great deal, mainly because most of us know the story. There’s no big revelation to be discovered, no unlikely turn of events that hadn’t already saturated the sports media for years. If nothing else, there’s a certain fascination in seeing how Armstrong handles himself now that he’s owned his culpability. There’s no tearful remorse and little to evoke sympathy for any plight. His biggest regret appears to be attempting the 2009 comeback, without which most people tend to agree he would have remained “clean” in the eyes of International Cycling. It’s also pretty difficult t condemn yourself when you know that every one of your rivals was using similar methods of illicit performance enhancement. For all the guys interviewed who have since received lifetime bans for doping, it was always just matter of fact that to compete at that level, doping is a must. It seems to me that’s where the interesting story is. What would it take to actually make the sport truly clean? And what happens t the guys who abandon their pursuit early on in the face of refusal to cheat.

Tim's Vermeer Movie Review

In the documentary Tim’s Vermeer, a graphic artist and techno-geek named Tim Jenison posits a theory, also held by art historian David Hockney, that 17^th century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer painted his compositions using a combination of lenses and mirrors to so accurately represent the photo-natural colors and lighting of his subjects. Jenison takes his hypothesis to obsessive extremes by attempting to painstakingly recreated Vermeer’s “The Music Lesson” using methods that would have been available to the artist in his own time. He rebuilds the room where the original was painted. He builds the furniture, has the costumes made, and very carefully places everything just so.

Top Ten of 2013

I'm sort of sneaking this in even though we're fully three months into 2014. I just haven't really had the chance to get around to it in the last six weeks. But here it is officially - my top ten movies of 2013.

1. 12 Years a Slave dir. Steve McQueen - An all-around brilliantly executed movie and with the added bonus of being not only historically, but contemporarily significant. This is arguably the best slave narrative in the history of filmmaking. It gets the number one spot not only because it's a great film, but for its unparalleled historical significance.

2. Her dir. Spike Jonze - A beautiful, warm, and honest romance. The only thing the movie lacked for me was a real emotional hook. I was right there with it all the way through its marvelous production design and perfect screenplay. But it never had that emotional elevation moment for me.

Short Cut Movie Review: Rush

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

It’s a result of severely reduced expectations that Ron Howard’s Rush managed to earn more than a little critical praise last year. As an example of its kind – the race car movie – it’s better than you might expect, but as an example of its kind more broadly – the sports movie – it’s sorely lacking in inspiration and spiritual uplift. The greatest sports movies draw their spectators in and make them stand squarely behind the hero so firmly and with such emotional investment that you can’t help but be overcome with emotion. I think of examples like Rocky or Breaking Away. Alternatively, they set up a tragic figure and become more a study of character and loss like in Raging Bull or Million Dollar Baby. Of the two protagonists in Rush – James hunt, the lothario playboy played by Chris Hemsworth, and Niki Lauda, the cautious and meticulous champion played by Daniel Brühl – neither one achieves either of those apotheoses necessary for greatness of character.

Short Cut Movie Review: 20 Feet from Stardom

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

20 Feet from Stardom celebrates some of the unsung heroes of pop music, especially in the early decades. These are the background singers whose voices we hear in early girl groups and songs by artists as disparate as Sting, The Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Ike and Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, and on and on.

Their vocal stylings helped fill out the music of the rock-and-roll generation. We sang along to their parts on the records and they were rarely, if ever, credited. Let’s keep in mind that instrumentalists find themselves in similar situations, adding guitars, keyboards, or drum tracks to songs without so much as a “thank you.” They are studio musicians and that’s what they’re paid for. But in the early 60s some of these women were the actual singing voices behind the more stylish and sexy figure that the record companies preferred for TV and album covers.

Short Cut Movie Review of Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

Why do they keep doing it? Why do filmmakers continue to make biopics of famous historical figures that don’t reveal anything that we couldn’t learn from a documentary about the individual? Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom follows Nelson Mandela from the early 1940s when he was a young lawyer until the mid-90s when he was elected the first black President of South Africa. Big deal! Mandela was a great man. He did great things for his country and helped lead the movement – from prison! – to end Apartheid. But what do we learn about him from Justin Chadwick’s sprawling epic that covers fifty years of his life?

Short Cut Movie Review: Despicable Me 2

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

Following the surprise hit Despicable Me from 2010 comes its sequel, which successfully accomplishes the feat of finding new things for old characters to do in a new movie without repeating a formula. Gru (Steve Carell) is now a retired master villain trying to raise three little girls he adopted at the end of the last movie.

Short Cut Movie Review: Short Term 12

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

Teen angst - ouch

Short Term 12 is like an after school special made to resemble a film. It has all the subtlety and nuance of those low-budget programs designed to teach a lesson or draw attention to a common teen problem. I just couldn’t believe I was seeing the same ham-handed approach to a theatrically-released film and actually made some critics’ top ten lists.

Brie Larson plays Grace (seriously, is that the best you could do for a name?), a young woman who works at a group home for troubled teens. Her boyfriend and co-worker (John Gallagher Jr.) is bearded and shaggy and just so perfectly supportive, caring, and nurturing toward this young woman whose troubled past is signaled by the way she picks at her cuticles, or becomes obsessed with a new arrival of a girl who dresses in dark clothing, is standoffish, has obvious daddy issues, and cuts herself. It doesn’t take a great deal of sleuthing to figure out exactly – and I mean precisely – what happened in Grace’s past to make her like this.

Fruitvale Station Movie Review

There has been a change for the better in this country – and I’m sure it’s no coincidence that it has happened during the tenure of our first black president – with respect to public knowledge and outrage at the unjust killings of young black men. Trayvon Martin’s death is the one that made huge national news headlines, but unfortunately his death is one among many that occur year after year because someone, usually a while man and often a police officer, mistakes him for a threat. These young men become names in the news and we learn little about who they were outside of the specific circumstances in which they died.

Oscar-nominated Live Action Short Films Review

After three years now it’s safe to say I have made a tradition of seeing the Oscar-nominated short films at IFC Center in New York. And I have the same observation this year that I had last year about the live action shorts. There’s something so refreshing about short films. It’s like being freed from the confines of what’s involved in a two hour plus feature. You know with each one that the resolution will come quickly and that there won’t be any subplots. It’s also fascinating to realize that many short films could very easily be expanded to feature length. Therefore the converse must be true and suddenly you start thinking about all the features that might have been better as restrained short films. This year’s crop of five nominees represent not only five different countries, but also very different subject matter and styles of storytelling.

Short Cut Movie Review of Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

I’m certainly no fan of the entire “Jackass” entertainment concept. The idea of a bunch of guys basically daring each other into performing increasingly outlandish stunts and filming them for mass consumption is just bottom feeder garbage. It is about the lowest form of entertainment and the emotional equivalent of a monkey throwing feces. But Johnny Knoxville started doing a little more with the franchise in creating the old man Irving Zisman character, who was strong enough for a movie of his own. Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa is a real movie and it actually works surprisingly well for a hidden camera prank movie.

The Invisible Woman

In the little-known and seldom told tale of Charles Dickens and his much younger lover, director Ralph Fiennes brings a vitality that is often lacking in staid period costume dramas, As an actor, he imbues Dickens with life. It’s easy to imagine him as a hard and severe man what with his novels dealing with orphans, urchins, tough disciplinarians, cruelty, and war. But as played by Fiennes and written by Abi Morgan, he is playful, youthful, and full of vibrancy.

Short Cut Movie Review: The Lone Ranger

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

Not nearly as bad as I was expecting (not to be mistaken for an endorsement) was Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger. I was expecting Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End levels of awfulness, but it rose to the middling heights of The Curse of the Black Pearl. It does most of what you’d expect from an update of a classic TV and radio show beloved by the Boomers. It throws in lots of big action set pieces, impossible stunts, a poop joke, and a lame attempt at making it seem less exploitative of American Indians, but as long as it’s got Johnny Depp running around in a ridiculous getup and makeup acting all Looney Toons, it’s sort of undermining itself.

Short Cut Movie Review: Ernest & Célestine

The moment I start watching a foreign animated film, I realize how generic the American studio animation is. True, Pixar has been the gold standard for animated features, especially in terms of story and characterization. And theirs are among the few animated films where the director’s hand can be felt. But when it comes down to it, there’s an almost level uniformity to the projects coming out of Pixaar, Disney, Dreamworks, and Warner Bros. So to watch something like the French film Ernest & Célestine is to be reminded taht artistry, style, and uniqueness of visión can all be worked into animation. Also, the story can be based on a children’s book without pandering to children.

The Grandmaster Movie Review

Admittedly, I’ve never given the films of Wong Kar Wai a fair shake. I tried 2046 a few years back and found it, at the time, to be a little inaccessible and didn’t finish it. And from what I know about his style, I get the sense they require deep focus and a high level of mental commitment. Probably they key is to see his movies in the theater where there are no distractions. Anyone who wants to know what happens when a director of Chinese melodrama tackles the martial arts genre need look no further than The Grandmaster. I suppose it’s almost inevitable that every Asian director gets around to doing it at least once. But only Won Kar Wai can do it and make it about something that isn’t really action-oriented at all.

Short Cut Movie Review: Two Lives

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

This film has not yet been released commercially in the United States.

The German-Norwegian co-production Two Lives is about the war children of Norway – babies fathered by Nazi soldiers during the occupation. Because Norwegians were considered true Aryans, these children were regarded as part of the pure race and so the movie, written by Georg Maas, Christoph Tölle, Stale Stein Berg, and Judith Kaufman (and directed by Maas), claims many of these children were forcibly removed from their Norwegian mothers and placed in Lebensborn homes in Germany. This is the story, based on an unpublished novel, of a woman who was reunited with her birth mother in Norway, but whose life begins to unravel after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Short Cut Movie Review: The Croods

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

I can’t figure out how The Croods, an animated film from Dreamworks, was nominated for the Oscar for Animated Feature over a couple of other options that were demonstrably better movies.

Emma Stone voices Eep, a typical American teenager in most respects excepting the fact that she lives in prehistoric caveman days. She whines and complains about not being able to leave the cave at night, her family is a real drag, and she goes bonkers over some new shoes. Her dad, Grug (Nicolas Cage) is an excessive worrier. Ugga (Catherine Keener) is the mom who goes along to get alone. Cloris Leachman is Gran, the hanger-on in the family, and Clark Duke is the dim-witted son, Thunk.

The Spectacular Now Movie Review

James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now is a refreshing depiction of teenage life, friendship, romantic relationships, and angst. Its main character, Sutter (Miles Teller), is the school’s life of the party. He’s fun and funny, popular among the ‘right’ people, and has an on again-off again beautiful girlfriend, who looks like the all-American Homecoming Queen. Like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, this is as close to the spirit of John Hughes as we’ve seen, in the sense of a writer who gets the voice and troubles of the American teenager.

Short Cut Movie Review: The Broken Circle Breakdown

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

The Belgian film The Broken Circle Breakdown is precisely the kind of film that foreign countries typically enter as their candidates for the Foreign Language Film Oscar. They’ve learned to play the game. If it takes on subject matter that tends to be appealing to Hollywood, then they get noticed. And sure enough, it was nominated last week for the Oscar. A marriage in crisis and a cancer-stricken child are the two major plot points and it doesn’t get much more emotionally heart-wrenching than that. And really I’m not saying it’s a bad movie, but I’ve come to anticipate that foreign films will me something new. When they mimic some of the worst aspects of studio filmmaking, I’m disappointed.

The Book Thief Movie Review

I’m not even sure where to begin describing everything that is loathsome about The Book Thief, Brian Percival’s film of the novel by Markus Zusak, adapted by Michael Petroni. It almost stirred in me a potentially self-punishing interest in reading the novel to discover if Zusak’s representation of a German town during WWII is any less trite and sanitized than Percival’s film. It is true that a WWII-themed story, even one taking place in Germany, doesn’t have to be mired in depression and death. The Book Thief has its share of death and some destruction, but it fails to capture any real sense of devastation and decay among the German people as their morals and country crumbled around them.