It reminds me of The Lone Ranger, actually. It’s too well made, too well-intentioned and too ambitious to call “bad”, and sometimes it succeeds in its goals and is occasionally engaging, but overall, Ridley Scott’s The Counselor is a mess, and falls somewhere on the spectrum between “not good” and “ambitious debacle”. Written by arguably one of the best living American authors, Cormac McCarthy, The Counselor wants to be the kind of cautionary morality tale for which McCarthy is renowned (he wrote the novels No Country for Old Men and The Road—among many others—though this is his first feature film script), but mostly it’s just a murky, directionless plot peopled by barely-there characters with myriad mysterious motivations.Continue reading “The Counselor is a mess”
CIFF Review: Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and Kill Your Darlings
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
Rush was a serviceable car racing movie, but it was a rather boring biopic, because Rush split the difference between two Formula 1 drivers, James Hunt and Niki Lauda. It would have worked a lot better if it had been either a movie about Hunt, or a movie about Lauda, but making it about both ended up short-changing everyone and character-wise it felt, well, rushed. You didn’t really come to care about either character because, due to time constraints, neither really existed as an independent person. They were just a mish-mash of clichés that hung off of each other. Then there was The Butler, which was also serviceable but ultimately flat because it attempted to cover entirely too much time. If Lee Daniels wanted to tell the story of White House butler Cecil Gaines’ fascinating forty year career, he would have been better off doing so in a ten-part HBO miniseries. If he just wanted to tell us about Cecil Gaines, then he needed to ground the story in one place and time and not bother showing us a bushel of presidents. It was too much for two hours.
I bring these two movies up because Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom combines the best (worst?) of both of those problems. Directed by Justin Chadwick (The Other Boleyn Girl) and starring Idris Elba as Nelson Mandela and Naomi Harris (Skyfall) as Winnie Mandela, Mandela has too much going on to do justice to either of its subjects.Continue reading “CIFF Review: Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and Kill Your Darlings”
Carrie: On Female Power and Identity
The remake of Stephen King’s horror classic, Carrie, isn’t a great film, but it is a big upgrade from the 1976 original, directed by Brian De Palma. Despite Sissy Spacek’s performance, the original Carrie is a schlocky bastion of unintentional comedy with a rather repugnant male eroticism injected into it. Yes, the prom scene is exciting, but everything that leads up to it is janky as shit and it hasn’t aged well. Piper Laurie (The Hustler) is a good actress who was horrible in that movie—there’s a reason “they’re all going to laugh at you” is so often parodied: it’s an atrocious, unintentionally hilarious line reading. So while Chloe Grace Moretz’s portrayal of Carrie White does not top Spacek’s—though it has its moments, particularly as Carrie’s confidence and rage grow in equal proportion—Julianne Moore’s work as creepy Jesus-freak mom Margaret is a huge improvement. There is nothing laughable about Moore’s Margaret. She’s abusive and borderline psychotic and it’s deeply unsettling.Continue reading “Carrie: On Female Power and Identity”
CIFF Review: Blue is the Warmest Color and August: Osage County
Going to have to double up some of these reviews or else I’ll never be able to keep up. I’m already like, a week behind here. Anyway, I’ve seen two movies at CIFF that on the surface have nothing to do with one another but which ended up connecting in my mind, thanks to a series of tremendous performances. The French import Blue is the Warmest Color and the professionally lit talent show that is August: Osage County both revolve around top-notch acting, but what struck me about them is how each approaches acting from different angles, one completely naturalistic, the other mannered and theatrical. They’re both valid approaches for storytelling, and these two movies typify how differing ways actors work can be used to drive a narrative.Continue reading “CIFF Review: Blue is the Warmest Color and August: Osage County”
CIFF Review: The Immigrant
The Chicago International Film Festival kicked off last Thursday with James Gray’s The Immigrant starring Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix and Jeremy Renner. The movie was picked up by The Weinstein Company and looked initially like prime Oscar bait, but TWC shunted it to their speciality arm, Radius, and then kicked it to spring 2014, taking it out of Oscar consideration for this year. After seeing it, I understand why that move was made, but it’s too bad because it will disadvantage an extraordinary performance by Cotillard.Continue reading “CIFF Review: The Immigrant”
Gravity: Everything is pointless and we all die alone
I wish I could remember the name of the article, or at least the philosopher who wrote it, but I once read a contemporary philosophical theory about the brain’s role in determining our humanity. Basically the theory goes that humans are obsessed with coincidences, that we define ourselves, as individuals and groups, by stringing together coincidences to create bonds, e.g. “You like the color blue? I like the color blue, too! We’re super best friends.” This is a false construct based on a completely random happenstance but we deem it significant because it gives us a sense of community, to share something that is as inherently individual and arbitrary as one’s personal tastes.Continue reading “Gravity: Everything is pointless and we all die alone”
A Single Shot is a nervy, slow burning thriller
Over the last couple months I have started, in my halting, not-remotely-consistent way, to bring you a selection of reviews for movies that are available on demand (under the “VOD review” tag). I’m tired of people complaining about the state of cinema when it is, in fact, easier than ever to see quality movies, thanks to in-home programming, and to that end, I’m making a point of including reviews of on demand movies. So far it’s been an even spread between pretty great, decent, and really fucking unpleasant, but with A Single Shot, adapted by Matthew F. Jones from his own novel, we can chalk another one up in the “pretty great” category.Continue reading “A Single Shot is a nervy, slow burning thriller”
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