Movies by Month: July 2012

Sabrina:  1954 Billy Wilder rom-com starring Audrey Hepburn, William Holden and Humphrey Bogart.  Quiet, shy young Sabrina (Hepburn) is a chauffer’s daughter with a crush on the rich kid next door (Holden).  When her obsession becomes overwhelming she flees to Paris, gains a newfound sense of grace and style, and moves back home ready to woo him into submission.  The rich kid, David, has grown into a roustabout playboy whose endless string of marriages and affairs embarrass his family.  His father Oliver (hilariously played by Walter Hampden) and brother Linus (Bogart), the Sensible Men, have arranged a new financially beneficial union between David and a steel magnate’s daughter, which Sabrina is about to royally screw up.  So Linus starts spending some time with Sabrina in an effort to distract her.  Three guesses what happens next.

            It’s so adorable.  I love Wilder, Holden and Bogart, and I found Hepburn refreshingly tolerable.  It’s light and funny, the supporting cast is great, it’s romantic without being too sappy.  Definitely see it.

Dark Shadows:  2012 Tim Burton comedy based on the totally ridiculous horror soap opera of the same name, starring Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter and Eva Green.  Barnabas Collins is a vampire who was cursed by a witch he once spurned.  He is freed from his 200-year coffin incarceration in 1972, only to find that his once prominent family is barely keeping their fishing business afloat, the witch Angelique is still around and still totes obsessed with him, and his mansion is in near ruins.  I smell a montage!

            Everything is deliciously ‘70s, it’s campy and weird and I kind of liked it.  Green is fantastically alien in her portrayal of Angelique, Pfeiffer and Depp are also great.  It’s cute.  Why not. 

Greenberg:  2010 Noah Baumbach dramedy starring Ben Stiller and Greta Gerwig.  Roger is a carpenter née musician recovering from a nervous breakdown by housesitting for his successful brother.  He’s the kind of guy who spends all day writing angry letters, and admonishing people for compromising and growing, and says things like “I’m really trying to do nothing right now.”  He begins pursuing his brother’s assistant, the equally messed up Florence, via a series of arguments, sweet moments, and depressingly awkward sexual encounters. 

I don’t know about this one.  Roger and Florence are just barely endearing enough to keep you rooting for them, despite the frequent scenes in which they’re being total jackasses.  A line that stuck with me was, “It’s huge to embrace the life you never planned on.”  So if I look at the film from that perspective, that it’s a tale of two people trying to put the past behind them and kind of failing but sometimes succeeding all while stumbling through a relationship . . . maybe it works?

Shame:  2011 British drama directed by Steve McQueen and starring Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan.  A successful ad exec with a sex addiction must deal with his wayward sister showing up and casting a brighter light on his problems.  I couldn’t get through it.  I’d heard it was sad, but thought that Naked Fassbender would counteract that.  Incorrect.  It was profoundly depressing.

The Woman in Black:  2012 horror film directed by James Watkins and starring Daniel Radcliffe, Ciaran Hinds, and Janet McTeer.  Arthur (Radcliffe) is a lawyer in Edwardian London who is mourning the death of his wife.  His employer sends him to a remote village to sort the affairs of a recently deceased client.  Upon his arrival he’s confronted with hostile locals who want him to steer clear of the spooky property he was sent to take care of, which has something to do with the mysterious deaths of many town children.

It was just OK.  Fairly predictable scares and plot twists, but sufficiently creepy.  The ending was WTF.  But it was nice to see Radcliffe acting competently in a non-Harry Potter role.

We Were Here:  2011 documentary about the history of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, directed by David Weissman.  It focuses on five people who were involved in the epidemic from its beginning, either as victims or nurses or volunteer caregivers. 

In an age where there are prescription drugs available specifically to reduce excess belly fat in HIV patients, it’s difficult to fathom just how dark those early days were if you didn’t live through it.  These survivors watched their friends die by the dozen, during a time when 15% of Americans thought that AIDS patients should be tattooed as an identifier. 

It’s very moving, a total gut-punch.  I cried A LOT.  See it, and keep the kleenex handy.

X Men: First Class:  2011 action film directed by Matthew Vaughn and starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, Kevin Bacon and Jennifer Lawrence.  It’s an origin tale of how the X-Men was originally founded, it’s fluffy and action-y and if you liked any of the previous X-Men movies then you’ll probably like this too.

Underworld: Awakening:  2012 action film directed by Mans Marlind & Bjorn Stein and starring Kate Beckinsale, India Eisley and Michael Ealy.  It picks up where Evolution left off:  newly invulnerable vampire Selene and her hybrid vampire/lycan mate Michael are captured by humans, Selene awakens twelve years later in a government facility, Michael is missing and she has a hybrid daughter who helps her escape.  During her cryogenic hibernation, the human world became aware of the real existence of vampires and lycans and has hunted them to the brink of extinction.  Selene and her daughter go looking for Michael, who may or may not be dead, and attempt to uncover a government conspiracy involving the lycan population.

            I was promised Scott Speedman.  I was lied to.  His CGI likeness was imposed on a stand-in, so his brief “appearances” were campy and disappointing.  They left it open for the possibility of yet another sequel, but unless the Real Scott Speedman is involved, I won’t be seeing it.  This just wasn’t good enough.

Well isn't THIS new and different.

Nursery University:  2008 documentary directed by Marc H. Simon and Matthew Makar.  The movie follows five families from different age groups, socioeconomic backgrounds, and levels of crazy as they navigate the bizarre world of preschool admissions in New York City.  All of the couples feel that preschool is an important step in their child’s education, and three in particular feel that if they get into the right preschool that means the right grade school, the right private high school, and the Ivy League to follow.  MBA, here we come!  It’s a fascinating look at something I know absolutely nothing about, and I was hooked from the get-go.  The families are diverse enough that we see the entire range of commitment to the insanity: from the couple that decides it’s not worth the stress and sends their toddler to a local co-op preschool, to the woman who hires an admissions consultant and early child development specialist in an effort to get her son into some swanky Twee Harvard.  I loved it.

Movies by Month: June 2012, part 2

-->

50 Dead Men Walking:  2008 crime thriller directed by Kari Skogland and starring Jim Sturgess, Ben Kingsley, Rose McGowan and Natalie Press.  In the 1980s during The Troubles, Martin McGartland is simultaneously recruited by the IRA and British Intelligence, and while he dislikes the tactics used by the police on the residents of his neighborhood, he dislikes the IRA even more.  As a British informant he’s given a sense of purpose and money to support his family, far beyond what he could make on his own.  As the movie builds to its climax his crisis of conscience becomes more dire, and he worries that he and his family will end up dead at the hands of one group or the other.

Apparently it’s full of stereotypes?  If you’re really well-versed in Irish history then maybe it’ll bother you, but it didn’t bother me.  Sturgess, Kingsley and Press are great.  McGowan was completely miscast.  I didn’t buy her Irishness for a second, and it annoyed me to the point of detracting from the rest of the movie.  Overall it was pretty good.  Very intense.

The Dark Crystal:  1982 Jim Henson fantasy Muppet film directed by Frank Oz.  Do I even need to say what it’s about?  I feel like I’m the last person on earth to have watched this movie.  Creepy evil Muppets do battle with creepy good Muppets to save the world via a giant crystal.  It was weird, it was fine.  I might have liked it more had I seen it when I was a kid.  Or it would have terrified me.

Prometheus:  2012 sci fi film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green and Charlize Theron.  I’m pretty sure the less you know about it, the better.  So all I’ll say is that an expedition of scientists travels to the far side of the universe to discover the origins of man, and things go awry.  I’m ambivalent.  It was certainly entertaining.  The acting was stellar all around, which is pretty rare for an action movie.  Fassbender, Theron and Rapace in particular just knocked it out of the park.  But I didn’t understand the point of putting Pearce in makeup instead of just hiring an elderly actor.  And there were plot holes everywhere, and a lot of DUH moments.  At several points I really just wanted to yell at the screen, “Why are you doing that?!?  You’re supposed to be scientists, goddamit!  Use some common sense!”

                  It was very entertaining.  Just watch it lightly salted.

Futurama: Bender’s Game: 2008 film that along with the other three films in this entry comprised Futurama’s fifth season.  I’d never seen any of these before, and this was one of my favorites.  If you’ve never watched Futurama, I weep for you.  Also these movies won’t make much sense to you. 

                  Leela and Fry become trapped in this weird alternate reality, sort of, based on Bender’s obsession with Dungeons & Dragons.  It’s filled to the brim with nerdy references any Star Wars, LOTR and/or D&D fan would enjoy.  I thought it was awesome, and if you’re a Futurama fan who missed these movies then definitely see it.

I roll TWENTIES.

Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs:  Yeah, I definitely watched these out of order.  The Universe has been ripped open, and through it emerges a giant tentacle that attaches itself to Fry.  Fry encourages his fellow Earthicans to accept the tentacle, and once this creature has its billions of tentacles attached to everyone on the planet, they all start dating the creature.  Like, simultaneously.  It’s pretty good.

Moonrise Kingdom:  2012 Wes Anderson film starring Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Ed Norton, Frances McDormand, Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward, with brief appearances by Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman and Harvey Keitel.  Sam and Suzy are lonely preteen outsiders in 1965 New England who fall in love and run away together, sending the whole community on a search to bring them back home.  It’s so freaking good.  Granted, it’s Wes Anderson which means hipster-vintage-design porn, but if you’re into that kind of thing then this movie is for you.  Maybe even if you’re not into it.  It’s a cute story, the acting is a little slapdash but who cares, and it’s fun to watch.  Norton, Willis and Murray are fantastic, and Schwartzman is hilarious in his small part.  My only teensy tiny complaint was when this 12 year-old couple spoke frankly about an erection.  Suspended the whimsy a bit, made it weird.  But that’s the only hiccup in what is otherwise a really great movie.

                  I doubt Anderson will ever top The Royal Tenenbaums, but this is definitely #2 for me.

Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder:  Fry develops telepathy, eco-feministas (guess who joins that group?) fight the construction of a giant space mini-golf course, and a being called The Dark One attempts to destroy the Universe.  It’s okay.

 

The Elephant in the Living Room:  2011 documentary directed by Michael Webber, about exotic pet ownership in the United States.  I know that sounds weird and potentially uninteresting.  Hear me out.  It centers around two men in Ohio:  Tim is a police officer whose friend was killed by an exotic pet, and Terry is a former truck driver who’s struggling to care for his pair of lions.  Interspersed with the stories of Tim and Terry are snippets of news coverage from all over the U.S. about exotic animal attacks and escapes.  Tim sneaks hidden cameras into exotic pet expos, where we see a young boy holding his newly purchased baby alligator in a perforated Tupperware container, and people selling puff adders and mambas and hyenas—all perfectly legal.  Terry is eventually reduced to housing his lions in a rusted horse trailer, and nearly comes to blows with Tim over their care.  It’s a gut-twistingly sad story, and really compelling.  Definitely see it.

Futurama: Bender’s Big Score:  This was my least favorite of the four.  Despite its reunion of all our favorite characters, it drags a bit, it's weird and convoluted, and the musical numbers are atrocious.  I mean, if you’re going to watch them then you may as well watch them all, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Movies by Month: June 2012, part 1

Snatch:  2000 British crime film directed by Guy Ritchie and starring a great ensemble cast including Jason Statham, Brad Pitt, Stephen Graham and Vinnie Jones.  It’s hard to go over even the basics of the plot without giving too much away, but it essentially involves a diamond heist, gangsters fixing boxing matches, and gypsies.  The pace is quick and light, it’s funny, and Brad Pitt is brilliant.  Seriously.  It’s hands-down my favorite Guy Ritchie movie, and if you like heist movies or action movies or boxing movies then see it.

Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels:  1998 British crime film directed by Guy Ritchie and starring a decent ensemble cast including Jason Statham, Nick Moran, Dexter Fletcher and Vinnie Jones.  A group of four friends are involved in a card scam, and when it goes awry they end up owing a mob boss thousands of dollars.  Luckily (?) they stumble across an opportunity to steal some loot from a group of thieves.  Who are stealing from a group of drug dealers.  And here come the antics!

I saw this movie years ago but didn’t remember much about it, and since I was on a Guy Ritchie roll I figured what the heck.  It’s good, but not as good as Snatch. 

Haywire:  2011 action film directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Gina Carano, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor, Bill Paxton and Michael Fassbender.  Mallory is a military contractor working in conjunction, I guess, with the U.S. government.  A standard operation goes bad and she realizes she’s been double-crossed.  She goes into hiding and then starts to track down the men who want her dead.  And then some fights happen.  There’s a car chase.  And so forth.

                Look, it was fine.  It was a decent action movie with a great cast, and I tip my hat to Soderbergh for taking on this kind of film with a woman in the lead role.  And Carano’s fight sequences were pretty awesome.  But she’s completely wooden when she’s not kicking ass.  Not like I’m-stone-faced-but-obviously-roiling-with-controlled-anger-underneath-my-icy-exterior-I-will-totally-fuck-some-shit-up-in-like-30-seconds-but-right-now-I’m-just-biding-my-time.  Like made of wood.

Fast Five:  2011 action film directed by Justin Lin and starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.  It’s the latest installment in the Fast-Furious franchise, and if you’ve seen any of the previous movies you pretty much know what to expect.  Diesel’s character breaks out of jail and it’s time to steal some cars!  In Rio!  GET SOME!  It’s entertaining, the jokes and one-liners are fairly predictable, and now I totally have a crush on Sung Kang.  Also there’s an interesting twist after the credits.

The thing that surprised me the most was the serious level of smoldering homoeroticism.  There’s just so much testosterone, so many feelings dying to be expressed.  The Rock oozed muscularity and glistened with sweat in nearly every scene; on occasion it looks like someone has misted his beard with olive oil.  My sister even pointed out the scene in which it’s clearly established that Vin Diesel is The Top in their relationship, and I thought she was joking but she WAS RIGHT OH MY GOD HE’S THE TOP. 

Sorority Row:  2009 slasher movie directed by Stewart Hendler and starring Briana Evigan, Leah Pipes, Rumer Willis, Jamie Chung and Carrie Fisher.  A group of sorority sisters play a prank that goes terribly wrong, and a year later they start dying one by one on graduation night.  It’s typical.  Slick, good production values, predictable plot, gratuitous nudity.  It was fine.

Blood Creek:  2009 horror film directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Michael Fassbender, Dominic Purcell, Henry Cavill and Emma Booth.  Evan’s brother has been missing for a year when he shows up in the middle of the night looking like Castaway and insisting that his brother bring weapons and help him kill some family.  OKAY!  Turns out that the family who had been keeping him hostage were in turn being held hostage by a former Nazi occult specialist.  Who is now kind of literally a monster.  And has kept them sort of frozen in time since 1939.  It’s actually a pretty decent horror movie, and it’s not quite as ludicrous as the plot summary sounds.

El Bulli:  2011 documentary directed by Gereon Wetzel, about a season at chef Ferran Adria’s restaurant in Catalonia.  The film starts at the close of the previous season, when the restaurant shuts down for several months so the staff can prepare a new menu.  First the restaurant’s main chefs work in a test kitchen, experimenting with ingredients in meticulous fashion, documenting everything with photographs and notes.  Eventually the film moves to the pre-opening preparations:  cleaning the restaurant, training the wait staff and assistant chefs—“We don’t lean here, we’re not in a disco.  Always proper bearing.”  And the restaurant opens and we see the final menu.

I found it relaxing (for the most part) and interesting.  If you enjoy minimalist cooking shows and don’t mind total lack of narration, then you’ll probably like this.

The Caller:  2011 supernatural thriller directed by Matthew Parkhill and starring Rachelle Lefevre and Stephen Moyer.  Mary is a young divorcee who just moved in to a new apartment.  There’s a cool old phone in the apartment that she starts receiving strange calls on.  At first she thinks it’s her abusive ex-husband harassing her, but then eerie things start to happen.  It was okay.  Definitely not the route I thought it would take, kind of a bummer.

The People vs. George Lucas:  2010 documentary directed by Alexandre O. Philippe.  In case you’re not even remotely a Star Wars fan, here’s the crux of it:  George Lucas created a hugely successful film trilogy in the late 1970s, with the promise to follow up with three prequels.  His loyal followers waited with bated breath for nearly two decades, and were essentially handed a giant pile of shit.  THEN Mr. Lucas decided that the original three Star Wars movies were “unfinished,” so he rereleased them with some CGI bullshit and poor editing choices.

The question the documentary explores is this: does an artist have the right to revisit and make significant changes to their work once it’s been shown to the masses?  Good points are raised on both sides.  Neil Gaiman points out that if he took every fan’s suggestion or preference into account while writing his novels he would end up creating the same plot with the same characters over and over again, and still would not have pleased everyone.  But it also points out that Lucas testified to Congress about the need to preserve films in their original, unaltered state, and then 20 years later decided to change his movies and not release the original versions on DVD.  And he basically made the Academy Awards the original films won for editing and visual effects moot.

Respect the fans even if, or maybe because, they are this rabid.  Even if those fans show no tolerance for your later work.  I really liked it, but probably because I really like Star Wars.

Han shot first! 

Movies by Month: May 2012, part 2

Giuliani Time:  2006 documentary directed by Kevin Keating about the career of Rudy Giuliani.  The film mostly focuses on pre-9/11 Rudy, which I knew next to nothing about before watching this.  It covers his childhood and his family’s supposed Mob connections, his start in government and his switch from Democrat to Republican, and his years as Mayor of New York City.  This last part was the most interesting to me; they go into detail about the instituting of CompStat and his fights for and against the police unions during the more controversial police violence cases.  It’s an intriguing documentary about the evolution of a major political figure, but it just ended up adding to my cynicism.  Like most of these documentaries.

Girlhood:  2003 documentary directed by Liz Garbus.  It follows Shanae Owens and Megan Jensen for a three-year period beginning in 1999, when they’re incarcerated at the Waxter Juvenile Facility in Baltimore.  Megan is in for attacking a fellow foster kid with a box cutter.  She’s the more vivacious of the two, and has been in and out of foster homes and facilities most of her life.  She willfully breaks the rules with a smile on her face, but I found myself rooting for her even while she’s talking back to facility staff and plotting her escape. 

Shanae was sent to Waxter for killing another girl in a knife fight when she was 11, during a period of downward spiral after she was gang-raped by five boys.  She says she has little memory of the incident, but her release is contingent upon her owning up to her crime and taking responsibility for it emotionally.  She’s quieter than Megan, more reserved, younger and more naïve. 

The movie goes into their respective pasts just enough to let you know it’s really fucked up.  It’s riveting, but really sad.  The ending is bittersweet and hopeful, but it’s a toss up for me about recommending it.

The Fly:  1986 sci fi film directed by David Cronenberg and starring Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis and John Getz.  Veronica is a sharp young reporter for a science journal, and while she’s scouring a terrible cocktail party for a lead on the Next Big Thing, a scientist named Seth Brundle convinces her to come back to his lab to see his top-secret invention.  What a line, am I right ladies?  And oh wow it’s a teleportation device WHAT COULD GO WRONG?  You know the story:  Brundle decides to test the device on himself, a fly gets in with him, they combine somehow and he starts to mutate over the next few days.  The make-up team did a bang-up job with this one.  It’s a really decent horror movie, though not really scary and very very gross, like really very gross.

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure:  1985 adventure comedy directed by Tim Burton and starring Paul Reubens, Elizabeth Daily and Mark Holton.  That’s right, I’d never seen this movie until now.  Oh sure, I’d catch bits and pieces here and there, and I liked the television series, but somehow never got around to watching the whole thing.  Pee-wee’s bike is stolen and he goes on a cross-country tour of strangeness to find it.  If you like Pee-wee Herman even a little bit, totally see it.  In fact, if you like ‘80s comedies in general I would say it’s worth a shot.  I loved it.  Obviously.

Stolen:  2006 documentary directed by Rebecca Dreyfus and starring Harold Smith, featuring voice work by Blythe Danner and Campbell Scott.  In 1990 a group of thieves entered the woefully unsecured Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and pulled off the largest art heist in modern history.  They walked away with 13 priceless pieces, including paintings by Vermeer, Manet, and Rembrandt.  Enter Harold Smith, Badass Art Detective.  He wears a bowler hat, a prosthetic nose, an eye patch, and is more energetic in his 80s than I am now. 

                  The movie goes back and forth between Smith’s investigation and the history of the collection’s acquisition, which is less interesting.  He flies all over to meet crazy informants, whose theories of who the thieves were range from the IRA to Whitey Bolger to a conspiracy between US Congressmen, the IRA and Whitey Bolger.  It’s a cute documentary; Smith is by far the most interesting aspect. 

The Hurt Locker:  2008 action movie directed by Kathryn Bigelow and starring Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty.  William James arrives as the new team leader of a three-man Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit, and quickly alienates his fellow unit members with his disdain for procedure and severe adrenaline habit.  It’s a nail-biter, really intense, and goes above and beyond the typical day-in-the-life-of war movie.  I loved it, and I love Bigelow; that lady makes a damn fine action movie.  Renner is brilliant.  I mean, it’s really really super good.  It takes a hell of a war movie to make me cry.

Seamless:  2005 documentary directed by Douglas Keeve about the first Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund competition.  The film follows three of the competition finalists:  Doo-Ri Chung, Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCullough (the duo behind Proenza Schouler) and Alexander Plokhov.  The style and personalities of the designers differ greatly, which I really liked.  The viewer is given a sneak-peak at the judging process, but most of the documentary focuses on the designers.  Though very different, they are all struggling with balancing work and personal relationships, they all struggle with production problems and tight deadlines and STRESS.  I’ll say it again, I love watching fashion shows and documentaries because they make me feel better about my crazy job.  I wanted all three of them to win, and I felt like the judging committee went with the safe bet.  But this was made several years ago, hindsight 20/20, all that.  It was pretty fluffy, but I liked it

The Conspirator: A Review for History Nerds

The Conspirator:  Finally, a more thorough follow-up.

Here was my original mini review for normal human beings and/or the average movie watcher:  2010 historical drama about the trial of Mary Surratt after the Lincoln assassination; directed by Robert Redford and starring James McAvoy, Rachel Wood, Robin Wright, and Kevin Kline.  It’s great.  It’s very well done, the acting is excellent for the most part, and the cinematography is beautiful.  See it if you like historical dramas or are as rabid a McAvoy fan as I am.

But I couldn’t quite leave the review at that.  What follows is a little bit more about the three main historical gaffes that bothered me.  In doing research for this post I came across this article, which goes into every tiny little historical imperfection of the movie.  If you really want to nerd out, read that as well.  I don’t have the patience to recount all the minor complaints I had.  Plus that guy already did it for me.

Issue #1:  Washington D.C. was too clean.  When Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 the Civil War had gone on for four years.  Troops had been stationed all around Washington, the city had many permanent and temporary hospitals that treated more than 20,000 men over the course of the war, and it had been the staging area for campaigns like Manassas.  It was kind of a mess, you guys.  There was a serious overpopulation issue between the residents, the soldiers, and the freed slaves pouring in from the South.  There were unpaved streets that turned into giant muddy canals after a hard rain, there was a weak sanitation system and the mosquitos reached near plague-like proportions.

Yet in Redford’s D.C. the streets sparkle and glisten, the uniforms of soldiers are rakish instead of ragged.  Even the Old Capitol Prison where Mary Surratt is held is merely shabby chic.  The piles of hay on the floor of her cell are clean and golden, with tiny wisps of dust and chaff glittering in the air, lit by the sun streaming in.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME.  Would it not have been better to use the talents of cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel (who also worked on Drive) to beautifully light the surroundings but keep them dingy?  As they should be?  It was a desperate time for our country, an uncertain time!  Why is everything so GD clean?  Metaphors!

Issue #2:  Who the heck is that dude playing John Wilkes Booth?  Booth was like the Brad Pitt of the 1860s – except, you know, totally bonkers.  He was charming, talented, smart, and very very very handsome.  SO handsome.  Like Swarthy Disney Prince handsome.  Because Booth is barely in the movie at all, for so short a time that the acting didn’t really have to be outstanding, then maybe Redford should have focused on finding an actor who actually looked like Booth.  And could deliver a single line competently.  Shouldn’t have been hard.

            Toby Kebbell is a handsome guy.  But in this getup he looks like Borat.  None of the fine yet strong features of Booth.  Maybe the chin.  I don’t know.  It’s really hard to tell from the pictures I was able to find but when I watched the movie I was immediately put off by how un-Booth Kebell was.  OK also, the crowd in the theater didn’t start screaming until AFTER Booth jumped to the stage and yelled Sic semper tyrannis.  Not immediately after Booth shot Lincoln.  Duh.

Issue #3:  The glorification of Frederick Aiken.  In the movie Aiken (played ably by James McAvoy) is a bright young thing on the rise in Washington.  He’s a Union veteran who was wholly devoted to The Cause, a man saddled with the unenviable task of defending one of the most hated persons in U. S. history.  He’s eager, honest, he grapples with being shunned by his friends and would-be girlfriend and worries that his career will be marred forever but dammit he just has to do it it’s his duty he’s a PATRIOT! 

Uh, yeah.  Except the real Frederick Aiken offered his services to Jefferson Davis at the start of the war, before joining the Union Army.  If he even joined voluntarily, it’s not clear if he was drafted or not.  He also supported the candidacy of Vice President John C. Breckinridge, who later became a general in the Confederate Army.

I’ll concede that the details of Aiken’s life are sketchy at best, especially before the trial.  But when all the other characters in the movie are so clearly Right and Wrong, wouldn’t it have made for a more interesting movie if Redford had played up some of those ambiguities?  Made the audience wonder at his motives?

But all in all I still maintain that it’s a decent movie, and worth giving a shot if you like historical dramas.

Movies by Month: May 2012, part 1

Meek’s Cutoff:  2010 western directed by Kelly Reichardt and starring Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Bruce Greenwood, Will Patton and Shirley Henderson.  A small group of settlers break away from the Oregon Trail on what they believe is a shortcut to The West, and they come to realize their guide probably has no idea where he’s going.  When they encounter and capture a Native American the group is divided as to whose directions they should listen to next:  the potentially clueless fur trapper guide or the potentially dangerous Indian hostage.

            You have died of dysentery.  And boredom.  I weep for this period of American history that has been ruined for my generation by a computer game.  But at least the computer game was entertaining.  The pace of the movie was plodding, nothing really happens, they just walk and walk and the ending is stupid and inconclusive.  It would have been way more interesting if any context had been given; I had no idea that this was based on a true story or about the background or conclusion of their journey until I started researching it for this entry.  Skip it.

War, Inc.:  2008 political satire directed by Joshua Seftel and starring John and Joan Cusack, Marisa Tomei, Hilary Duff and Dan Aykroyd.  A hit man is sent to a fictional Arabic country to assassinate an oil tycoon.  His cover is to pose as a trade show host, but his story starts to unravel upon meeting an enchanting American journalist. 

I was just going to let this one pass me by, but was led to believe it was sort of, kind of a sequel to Grosse Pointe Blank.  That was a lie.  But the Cusack’s!  And Aykroyd!  I was misled.  I see what they were going for, but the satire was a bit heavy-handed, way too obvious.  There were a few small moments I found funny, but not enough to keep my attention.

Mississippi Burning:  1988 crime drama directed by Alan Parker and starring Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe, R. Lee Ermey (heart), Brad Dourif, Michael Rooker and Frances McDormand.  It’s loosely based on the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964.  Hackman and Dafoe are an FBI odd couple sent to investigate the crime and bring the killers to justice.  Should be totally easy in a hostile Southern small town during the Civil Rights era, right?  It’s a little over the top at times, a bit preachy at times, a bit North-good-South-bad at times, but I still found it very enjoyable.

These Amazing Shadows:  2011 documentary about the history of the National Film Registry, directed by Paul Mariano and featuring interviews with a bunch of awesome movie nerds.  A few years back I finished watching the AFI Top 100 movies list, and since then have been slowly (and far less methodically) trying to watch Ebert’s Great Films list and the National Film Registry list.  It’s daunting.  As of 2011 the NFR included 575 films deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”  And about 25 new films are added each year.  It’s a Sisyphean task, but maybe by the time I retire . . .

            Anyway, it’s a great documentary if you love movies.

Brothers:  2009 drama directed by Jim Sheridan and starring Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman and Sam Shepard.  Sam (Maguire) is a stand-up guy:  a Marine about to embark on his fourth tour of duty, wonderful father to two little girls, married to his high school sweetheart, and has a haircut you could set your watch to.  Tommy (Gyllenhaal) is the black sheep of the family, just let out of prison as his brother is heading off to war.  When Sam is reported missing and presumed dead, Tommy steps up to help his sister-in-law keep her life together.  Tommy is found alive, but when he returns home he’s not the same man he used to be, and becomes obsessed with the idea that his brother may have been sleeping with his wife.  Good story in theory, right?  Yeah, I just didn’t think it was all that good – with the exception of the performances by Portman, Gyllenhaal and brilliant Bailee Madison as the older daughter.  The music is terrible, adds a significant cheese factor.  Maguire was tolerable right up until the climax, when he overshot it.  Maybe the original version is better.

The Warriors:  1979 cult action-thriller directed by Walter Hill and starring Michael Beck, James Remar, Deborah Van Valkenburgh and David Patrick Kelly.  When a powerful leader is killed at a NYC gang summit, word gets out that a crew called The Warriors is responsible.  They have to make it from the Bronx back to their home turf at Coney Island before one of the other gangs takes them out.  Um, it’s hilarious.  It’s campy and super ‘70s and I really liked it.  A gang that dresses as if KISS formed a baseball team?  But I think that watching it at a late night screening at my local independent movie theater surrounded by really enthusiastic people in costume probably helped.

J. Edgar:  2011 biographical drama directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Josh Lucas and Judi Dench.  If all you know about J. Edgar Hoover is that he was the head of the FBI and that he may have been gay or a cross-dresser, you are missing out.  The film gives him context; most people don’t remember the 1919 anarchist bombings that helped shape his character, or about his childhood stutter or his overbearing mother.  It’s a bit over the top at times, but I thought it did a fine job giving the broad-brushstrokes version of the FBI’s history, and it captured the good and the bad of Hoover.  He helped build the Library of Congress, standardized finger printing, centralized criminal records, and embraced scientific methods of detection and forensics long before anyone else did.  He also blackmailed civil rights leaders, illegally wiretapped like everyone in America, and was paranoid and power-hungry.  He’s a fascinating man, and I thought the movie was decent enough.