Inside Llewyn Davis Movie Review

The Coen brothers love failures. They love characters who just hopelessly fail at what they do. Any great literary character has to have some flaw. Flaws make us human. The Greeks understood that. The most memorable Coen Brothers protagonists are defined by flaws and made human by the occasional glimmer of having it together. Mostly their heroes are lucky to get out alive. Their latest creation, Llewyn Davis, embodies elements we’ve seen before in their films. He’s going through a Job-like test a la Larry Gopnik. He’s Tom Regan without the wits and strokes of luck. He’s Jeff Lebowski without a bed of his own. He’s Everett McGill without a plan. He’s Barton Fink without the success. He’s all of this, but still entirely original.

Monsters University Movie Review

Someone suggested that a more fitting title for Monsters University, the prequel to Pixar’s hit Monsters, Inc., would have been When Mike Met Sulley. Not only do you get the Sully/Sally pun, but of course Mike is voiced by Billy Crystal, who played Harry, the man who met Sally. That’s neither here nor there, having little to do with the movie itself. It’s just an observation, but essentially Monsters University is the story of how Mike Wazowski, the irrepressible and energetic little walking eyeball became best buds with Sully, the big pastel-hewed fierce and furry “scarer” voiced by John Goodman. This is the story of how they came to be the powerful team that generates innumerable canisters of screams to power the Monster city.

ParaNorman Movie Review

Laika Entertainment is filling the niche of animated features intended for children who are a little more grown up. Their first two films, Corpse Bride and Coraline, are darker and more macabre than the fare churned out by the other big animation studios (although Dreamworks, Disney, and Pixar produce some fantastic animated films). Laika’s third feature, released earlier this year and just recently nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, is ParaNorman, an equally light macabre story that is great family fun if you leave it the youngest and most impressionable members of your clan unless they can handle ghost, zombies and scary witches.

Flight Movie Review

Most of us remember that remarkable incident of averting an air disaster when Captain “Sully” Sullenberger successfully ditched a commercial airliner in the Hudson River alongside the Manhattan skyline after losing both engines to a flock of geese on takeoff. That man, otherwise ordinary except that he was suddenly and unexpectedly elevated to hero status for saving the lives of all on board, became an overnight media sensation. The talk shows wanted him for five minutes on air. Magazines wanted to delve into his personal history to find something in his past that led to his calm during what appeared to be certain death for everyone. What if it had turned out that he was drunk or high on drugs at the time? Would that negate the good he did in saving lives? What if the hypothetical alcohol in his system actually helped him relax enough to safely land the plane on the water? How does that change our approach to him as a human being and as a pilot?

Argo Movie Review

Just about everyone knows or remembers that in 1979 Iranian revolutionaries seized control of the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for the next 444 days, after which all of them went home alive. The story was on the minds of nearly everyone in the country. The incident figured heavily in the sense of national pride when the U.S. hockey team defeated Russia and won gold at the Lake Placid Olympics. My six year old brother was so disturbed by the story that he scratched Iran off a beautiful glass globe that belonged to my great grandfather.

The part I never knew, and what many people apparently never knew, was that six Americans escaped out the back door and hid at the home of the Canadian ambassador while the CIA worked out scenarios for exfiltrating them. Even less known than that was the method eventually used and the cover provided to bring them home safely. The real story was declassified in 1997 and has now been turned into a movie called Argo and directed by Ben Affleck. Chris Terrio wrote the screenplay based on a 2007 “Wired” article by Joshuah Bearman and on a book by the CIA operative Tony Mendez, who orchestrated the escape. Apollo 13 has been playing recently on AMC. What I remembered most about that movie was how great Ron Howard was at building suspense through a story whose outcome we already knew. Those three astronauts survived, but we feel the tension along with them because they don’t know what their futures hold. That’s how I felt during much of Argo.

Trouble with the Curve Movie Review

I have to give Clint Eastwood a lot of credit for his acting choices as he gets older. He has never shied away from playing his age, a rarity in a business that rewards youth and vigor. Roughly since Unforgiven he has continued to play characters whose age has some profound impact on the story. As Gus in Trouble with the Curve, Eastwood plays a baseball scout who faces irrelevancy by the new technologies and theories that have a way of creeping into the workplace.

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.”

The Artist Movie Review

They just don’t make ‘em like they used to. So goes the lament of the traditionalist, the old curmudgeon, the aging aficionado who, like me, thinks the state of commercial filmmaking these days is severely lacking in skilled craftsmen to write a screenplay and cut together a coherent film. Perhaps that’s why French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius’s silent drama The Artist has garnered so much attention and accolades. It’s not just a film shot without dialogue in a contemporary style. It’s a complete throwback to classical storytelling techniques used from the 20’s through the 50’s.

Another from the Celebrity Death Pool Bites the Dust

Many years ago I heard about these celebrity death pools in which people throw their money into a pool to bet on which celebrities will die in the next 6 months. The younger the celebrity who dies and the sooner within the 6 months, the more points you earn. It's a sick game. It's morally depraved at best, but it was so intriguing. I thought about throwing myself into the thick of it and made up a preliminary list of those likely to die.