Movie Update 30

Here are some Alfred Hitchcock movies! And a couple others too I guess!

Blackmail


Alfred Hitchcock's first sound film is a pretty decent one. It features a lot of elements that would become his signatures - normal people in great distress, tension building as the result of bad decisions, dramatic climaxes in famous locations. It also seems remarkably dark for the period, with the plot kicking into full gear as the result of murder to avoid a sexual assault. It still feels like a silent movie in some ways, with many scenes going on for ages with little happening, but Hitchcock shows a lot of ability in not just his first attempt at a sound picture, but one of the first ever.

Chicago


Chicago is a pretty poor choice for Best Picture, not just in its year but probably most. Laughable, even. But it's not a bad movie. I have a feeling the voters wanted to give the award to a musical again, and the most acclaimed one since Cabaret was a decent opportunity. It's actually sort of the opposite of that film stylistically, with most of its musical numbers being fantasies in the protagonist's head rather than regular performances at an actual music club, but that's not really terribly important. The plot is simple and I have no idea why I'm actually supposed to be sympathetic with Renée Zellweger's character, and some of the pieces being a bit simple for the medium of film. But the acting is pretty good and there's an energy to the movie that's enjoyable to watch. Definitely not bad.

Easy Virtue


An even earlier Hitchcock movie, still stuck in the silent era, and unfortunately this one doesn't show a whole lot of skill from the Master. My main problem with the movie is that nothing happens in it. It begins with a woman going through a messy divorce, and then she meets a new man somewhere else, but eventually her past catches up to her. There's nothing really interesting about any of it, the fallout isn't exactly dramatic and the movie doesn't even really seem to care if you're sympathetic or not. All it really seems to be saying is that women shouldn't do inappropriate things if they want to be happy. Which uh... okay?

Foreign Correspondent


Released the same year as Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent isn't as good, but it's still a solid example of what Hitchcock could pretty much do in his sleep. A reporter gets caught up in a web of spying and secrets that could eventually lead to a World War (paralleling the one that was actually happening), but his ability to tell the truth is compromised when he falls for a girl who's a little too close to the conspiracy. It's one of the weaker American films I've seen by him, but I eventually warmed up to it, especially after its surprisingly exciting climax. It's really more comedic than his work tends to be, maybe because Joel McRea is the lead, and it took me some time to adjust, but it's a fine little international caper.

Rumble Fish


Boy, Francis Ford Coppola's post-70s career is hard to get a bead on. It almost seems like he's a different person. A lot like Tetro, Rumble Fish is a black and white film with splashes of color that partially exists to examine the director's own relationship with his older brother. Matt Dillon plays a young punk who looks up to his brother, played by Mickey Rourke, and who has difficulty finding a way to fit in with the world around him. He hangs out with friends at a pool hall, gets into gang fights,  and treats his girlfriend played by Diane Lane like crap. Eventually things start going badly for him, and I can't say I really minded. It's just kind of a weird movie, but some parts worked well enough that I wasn't bored.

Gangs of New York

I'll be honest, I usually find historical epics to be pretty boring. Even the good ones could use some trimming. Leave it to Martin Scorsese though to create one that's gripping from the first second of its nearly three hour running time to the last. It tells the story of New York City before it became the mecca of human civilization it is today, when the streets still ran red with the blood of the many warring factions that vied for influence and their many victims. The film isn't a true story, but besides some embellishments it may as well have been. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio in his first of four collaborations with Scorsese as the son of an Irish immigrant and leader of the Dead Rabbits, and Daniel Day-Lewis as Bill the Butcher, the man who killed him. It starts with a war between two gangs for control of Five Points, a district in the city where the poor make do. The extremely bloody battle sets the tone for the rest of the film, establishing its main characters and their later motivations, as the plot quickly jumps forward to when DiCaprio's character has grown up.

The two best things about the movie are easily Scorsese's direction combined with the amazing work done to recreate 1800s New York and capture it on film, and Day-Lewis' performance. You could pretty much cut the protagonist out of the film and it could just be a great story about a leader of both crime and community in a city as it slowly develops into something resembling modern society. That's not really to slight DiCaprio, that's just how good Day-Lewis is. There's just something cool about the place the film creates, filled with hard men with curly mustaches, top hats, and razors and knives tucked into their clothing. And he epitomizes it with his glass eye and inscrutable nature. You never know if he's going to cut your throat or give you a pat on the shoulder. DiCaprio has his romantic foil, played by Cameron Diaz, can't quite measure up to his work, though they're perfectly fine otherwise.

The supporting cast is fantastic too, featuring recognizable faces in a variety of roles, supporting various sides as they see fit. Liam Neeson brings plenty of gravitas to the couple scenes in the beginning where he plays DiCaprio's father, which lends weight to later scenes where Bill shows clear ongoing respect for his former foe. The small time crew DiCaprio runs with features Al Capone from Boardwalk Empire and D'Angelo from The Wire, and Brendan Gleeson and John C. Reilly give interesting performances as former allies of Neeson who may no longer agree with his ideas. The film isn't without problems, of course. The entire third act is pretty messy, as though the screenwriters lost momentum and had to basically force things to make sure they managed to check off all the plot details they needed to to reach their conclusion. And that conclusion, while thematically appropriate, does result in a rather unfortunate anticlimax of an ending. With Scorsese at the helm though, all of those individual scenes manage to be good if not great, and he makes the problematic ending work because it's very clear what they're going for. He just knows how to make great movies, and this is certainly one of them.

The Thin Red Line

The only thing crazier than how many recognizable actors there are in this movie is how many had their scenes cut completely during the editing process, including Martin Sheen, Gary Oldman, and Mickey Rourke. War movies have a funny away of apparently attracting attention from everyone in the business, as The Thin Red Line was released the same year as Saving Private Ryan, which itself has an extensive and extremely famous cast. I thought it was less distracting here though, except for the scene near the end where George Clooney shows up to give a speech than Sean Penn narrates over.

The Thin Red Line is overall a more painterly and less action-oriented war film than Ryan, focusing more on the internal lives of the soldiers than the combat they take part in. I think they're actually pretty good companion films. Ryan is in the European theater and wears its heart on its sleeve, Line is in the Pacific and a bit more introspective and detached. Ryan begins with one of the most famous war scenes ever made, a gigantic, loud, violent slaughter. Line begins with a soldier played by Jim Caviezel resting on an island with some natives, and there's a full 45 minutes before anyone is in real danger. They're both gorgeous movies, Ryan with its color correction and perfectly chaotic action, Line with its more natural cinematography and focus on wildlife, and intricately pieced together battle scenes.

This is the first movie by Terrence Malick that I've seen (hey, he's only made five), and I was very impressed by his work, though I'm not sure how much I'd like his other stuff. The way intense fighting punctuates and breaks up the long periods of slow moving or still scenery with minimal dialogue creates an intriguing contrast, but a film of nothing but the latter might be tough to handle. Of course, I have no idea if any of his other movies are like that, other than to say I get the impression that that's what The Tree of Life might resemble.

In any case, The Thin Red Line is not a perfect war movie, but I do think it is a great one. There are many brilliant and captivating scenes, and even when things slow down, it's still very nice to look at. If there's one viable criticism, it does seem a bit scattered at times, as it sort of lacks a central figure, and instead bounces from soldier to soldier, letting them narrate their thoughts in turn. The performances are generally very good, even if none of them are terribly substantial. John C. Reilly gets what I think is a single scene of dialogue, and certain characters will pop in at a certain point and then just disappear completely, like the parts played by John Cusack and John Travolta. Nick Nolte might have the most dialogue as an impassioned Lieutenant Colonel, though Penn and Caviezel probably have the biggest parts from a screen time perspective.

It's hard to say whether the somewhat disjointed nature of the film is entirely intentional, or a result of Malick having to trim about 40% of his original cut, or if the full thing was even worse with the additional characters. I didn't really mind the movie being this way, because it was an engrossing experience while watching it. It does result in a slight feeling of dissatisfaction though, especially in retrospect, not having a real central plot to grasp onto. I guess war though can be a pretty existential experience, and this is about as existential as war movies can get. In that way, it's sort of a masterpiece.

Magnolia

This is only the second film by Paul Thomas Anderson that I've seen, but he's more than convinced me at this point that he's one of the most talented directors working today, and moreover one that will do nothing to compromise his vision in order to appeal to a wider audience. This is a movie I can easily see a lot of people hating, either because it's too long and boring or because it's pretentious or because there are some pretty eccentric scenes and performances or because the ending is one of the most out-of-left-field things I've ever seen. Only the first one really bothered me at all, not that it was boring, but that three hours is a lot for a movie about the strange connections between regular people, and they probably didn't need all that time. But the most part I loved the movie, enjoying the twists and turns of its coincidence-driven plot, laughing at the funny parts, and being impressed by the power of the dramatic parts.

The crazy part about the movie being three hours is that it's not even the whole story - there's a subplot with a body found in apartment that is touched on again but not resolved. It's tangential to the real movie though, which is about a group of characters played by an all-star cast of actors as they experience one of the most eventful and unusual days to go by in their city. A lot of the characters are larger than life, especially the ones played by Tom Cruise and Julianne Moore, who are both affected by the looming death of a bed-ridden old man.The main thing that ties everything together is a long-running game show that pits regular adults against smart children, a show that everyone seems to be watching as the current group of kids approaches the record for longest run on the show, and one that William H. Macy's character was on as a kid before he grew up to become William H. Macy. My favorite character was probably John C. Reilly's, a bumbling cop with a good heart and a particular distaste for foul language. If you're going to watch Magnolia it should be with the knowledge that it's a strange movie, but if you have the same taste for unique experiments and genuinely shocking and entertaining moments as me, you'll probably like it.

Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule

I somehow missed that the fifth season of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! was its last, as the creators seem to be moving on and expanding their reach beyond Adult Swim. They've done music videos, commercials, and appeared on multiple other shows. I'm fine with this, because anything they do seems to be gold. They haven't abandoned Cartoon Network though, producing and writing this spin-off along with John C. Reilly. I don't know if a legitimate actor like Reilly intends to do more after this solid, six episode run, but I sure wouldn't mind if he did.

The Steve Brule character has always been a highlight of Awesome Show when he's shown up, and giving him his own investigative series is a brilliant idea. They really take the lo-fi channel 5 community television thing to the max, with the whole series filmed and edited on VHS with constant errors and glitches, like we're watching someone's taped copy of the series which airs at 4:30 AM before "Mass for Shut-Ins". The show features a range of topics and some good guest stars, as Steve talks about things that interest him, such as his own fear of puppets and the importance of family. The character is almost too cripplingly stupid at this point to believably have a presence on even local television, but it's funny enough, and often depressing enough when he explores his own inadequacies, that it's still a good watch. There's not a ton of content here, but what there is is pretty enjoyable.

Characters of the Decade: Part 4

One more to go after this one. Man, this really is TV heavy, isn't it?

Haruhi Suzumiya
Aya Hirano - The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya


"Feelings of love are just a temporary lapse in judgment. Like a mental illness."

I might actually like mild-mannered narrator Kyon more, but the show's about Haruhi, and unlike the vast majority of characters, the universe really does revolve around her. She has a unique, eccentric personality that can make almost anything fun to watch, and is the sort of leader whose followers always wonder why they do what she says but do anyway. And there are enough glimpses at her normal, affectionate side in between world threatening crises that she's inadvertently responsible for that she comes through as a person and not just a cipher for the writers' wacky ideas. I guess I like that kind of character a lot, don't I?

Dexter Morgan
Michael C. Hall - Dexter


"Harry and Dorris Morgan did a wonderful job raising me. But they're both dead now. I didn't kill them. Honest."

In a lot of ways, Dexter is a flawed show. It's frequently predictable and there's way too much time spent on supporting characters and subplots we never actually care about. It's easy to keep watching though, because Hall's work is so good. I admit to being a little tired of his dry narrating style at this point but he can still carry the series through any low points. Until very recently he's been one of the best actors I can think of who only works in television, but he's really damn good at it, finally getting recognized by the Golden globes recently (although that award's tainted because Bryan Cranston wasn't even nominated), and is why I gave Six Feet Under a shot, which turned out to be a good decision. He somehow finds a way to sell the sympathetic serial killer angle, and still be menacing when required. All you could ask for from a lead.

Dr. Steve Brule
John C. Reilly - Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!


"For your health!"

Reilly is supposedly a very good serious actor, although all I've ever seen from him is his brilliant comedy work. His best role is most pathetic, as the befuddled and under-qualified local news correspondent Dr. Steve Brule. He's good for a few appearances per season, and they're routinely pure gold. In addition to his terrible advice and wacky outtakes, there are a lot of things about the character that make him endearing in a sad way like his chronic loneliness and crush on married news anchor Jan Skylar. He's getting his own show soon, and I can't see how it won't be fantastic.

Juno MacGuff
Ellen Page - Juno


"Nah... I mean, I'm already pregnant, so what other kind of shenanigans could I get into?"

Juno's a really divisive movie. Some appreciate its uniquely goofy dialogue and moments of indie cuteness, while others can't stand it. I'm with the former, and a big part of why the movie works for me is Juno herself. She has a unique vocabulary for a teenager, but I'm not selective on what I allow films to be fanciful about, and she really sells the whole teenage girl with problems thing that I usually can't stomach for very long. In a movie I saw for Jason Bateman and Michael Cera, Ellen Page is the one who impressed me most.

Leon Black
J.B. Smoove - Curb Your Enthusiasm


"Barack Obama! I'm the President of hitting that ass!"

Probably the least scripted character on this list. In a show where everybody just says what comes to mind during the scene, Leon takes it to the extreme. He can make any topic funnier than should be possible, from the proper way to respond to an insult to the appropriate amount of discretion required when discussing a friend's wife whose ass you're hitting. I enjoyed seeing Smoove pop up in an episode of Castle and hope to see him get more opportunities, but to me he'll always be Leon.

Emerson Cod
Chi McBride - Pushing Daisies


"Bitch, I was in proximity!"

After watching the rather bad previews for Human Target, I almost decided to give it a shot. That's how much I like the whole cast of Pushing Daisies, and I liked Emerson most of all. While the show lived off its saccharine sweetness, Cod was the bitter one who kept it from floating off into space. He's a perfect foil for pretty much everyone else, and his combination of intuition, wit, and resourcefulness made each case into a classic film noir. The show made strides to humanize him during its short run with love interests and a missing daughter, but it probably didn't need to. He's the kind of guy who'd be a pleasure to watch visit the DMV.

GLaDOS
Ellen McLain - Portal


"That thing you burned up isn't important to me. It's the fluid catalytic cracking unit. It made shoes for orphans. Nice job breaking it, hero."

Portal was already a unique and brilliant mind-bending puzzle game, but GLaDOS made it something that every gamer should try. Just one of the funniest and best executed character arcs in the medium. Encouraging at first, the artificial intelligence guiding you through a test facility you never quite understand slowly becomes more sinister over time, and downright hostile after a certain point. But she never loses her sense of humor, logging one of the best percentages of successful one liners in history (I just made that up, but it sounds right). Plus the song at the end is just icing on the cake. I just made myself groan.

Anton Chigurh
Javier Bardem - No Country for Old Men


"Would you hold still please, sir?"

It's rare to see such an intimidating force of nature in a film. Compared to the other people in the story, Chigurh is almost a caricature, a flesh and blood Terminator that will stop at nothing to accomplish his task. He also sort of rips off Two-Face's gimmick, although he pulls it off better. It's sort of his lack of humanity that makes him work though, taking the movie from being a solid, off-beat thriller and making it into a pretty impressive, unique work that stands alone. I'm not sure if it's exactly a brilliant performance, but it's certainly exactly what it needed to be.

Nathan Drake
Nolan North - Uncharted series


"I didn't think that far ahead!"

As video game protagonists were getting too grim and gritty, Nate came along and reminded people that heroes are allowed to be likable. Sure, his carefree attitude doesn't quite work with his near-genocidal kill count after only two games, but work with me here. It's shifted the tone of a lot of modern action games, and there's been so much demand for North's voice work that the Internet backlash is already well underway. It's clear from some of his roles that he has a good deal of range, but his classic sarcastic good guy voice is what people want, and I'll forever associate it with the first and still most interesting character I heard it from, Mr. Drake.

Daniel Plainview
Daniel Day-Lewis - There Will Be Blood


"One night I'm gonna come to you, inside of your house, wherever you're sleeping, and I'm gonna cut your throat."

I think my favorite single adjective I've heard used to describe Day-Lewis' work in this film was when Quentin Tarantino called it "volcanic". It just fits, doesn't it? There's really not much I can say about it that hasn't been said better by people who have a deeper understanding of acting. I just know that I've never been more impressed while watching somebody in a film. From his silent actions in the very beginning, to his dark charisma as his business gets going, to his increasing madness as the film continues and to the final scene which is both funny and startling, there's not a moment that could have been obviously improved. I won't forget it any time soon.

Walter White
Bryan Cranston - Breaking Bad


"We are going to make a good product that does what it is supposed to, as advertised. No emulsifiers, no baking powder, no bleach, no chili powder."

Despite the Golden Globes' continued negligence (Seriously, Avatar's the movie of the year? Why did I even look up the results?), even the slightly less maligned Emmys managed to see what everyone else has the last couple years with Cranston's great work on Breaking Bad the last two years. Watching a man learn that he was dying, turn desperately to crime to help his family, go back and forth hope and despair, and ultimately lose sight of what's important in his life has been a really eye opening experience. We always knew Cranston could be funny, but I've been a lot more impressed by this. I can only wonder what Walter will do next.

Bryan Mills
Liam Neeson - Taken


"That is what happens when you sit behind a desk. You forget things, like the weight in the hand of a gun that's loaded and one that's not."

What should have been a simple revenge-driven action movie ended up being pretty brilliant thanks to to lead's increasing willingness to abandon reason or sympathy in his quest to get his daughter back. More movies should just put guns in the hands of respected veteran actors and see what happens, because it totally worked out here with Neeson. In some ways it's a bog standard thriller, it's just that extra 10% of gravitas and brutality that makes it one of my favorite films ever of the type. Why exactly did they sit on this for a year before releasing it in America?

Concluded tomorrow.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

300 posts. I don't know if I should be proud or ashamed of myself.

Talladega Nights was much funnier than I thought it would be. I'm not sure why my expectations were low, I guess I just might be growing out of stupid comedies a bit, but it wasn't as dumb as I assumed. They could have just made fun of rednecks and NASCAR for a couple hours, but there were lots of clever moments and pretty good wordplay that made it quite funny in spots. Even when characters were just insulting each other, the specific insults were usually pretty darn good. It was especially great hearing it from Ricky's two kids, who were horrible brats in the beginning but ended up as articulate gentlemen.

Will Ferrell's schtick of picking a random, usually sports related profession and doing a movie about it is getting a little tiring, but he's been likable whenever I've seen him on the screen (I just realized I've never seen one of his movies in theaters, which is weird), and does a good job carrying this movie. John C. Reilly plays his sidekick and best friend, who's very dedicated but completely lacks common sense. Sacha Baron Cohen is also good as the villain to the story. They use the character as a simple excuse for a lot of French and gay jokes, but he provides a lot of amusement as well. The rest of the cast also does a pretty good job keeping things funny, including known names like Michael Clarke Duncan and Amy Adams. The dialogue is a strong point of the script if the pacing isn't. It felt like Ricky spent too little time doing well and too much wallowing in his own failure before recovering in the obvious return-to-glory storyline. Instead of spending time establishing the situation, there were some pretty drawn-out scenes that were strictly for laughs, although I suppose I can't fault a comedy for having those. In the end, I liked the movie quite a bit.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Before I talk about the movie, I'll mention I'm a little surprised that this basically bombed after the huge success of every other Apatow flick in recent memory, including two (Superbad and Knocked Up) just this year. I guess the subject matter isn't quite as universal, but there's no reason my dad and I should have been the only people in the theater when we saw it. Granted, it was a 1:50 show on a Wednesday, but most people don't work the day after Christmas. Oh well. Walk Hard's a little sillier, but still quite funny throughout. It's as straight up a parody as we've seen from the The Judd Apatow Sex Comedy Train, but unlike the other truly awful parody movies we see (seriously, anyone who's seen the horrendous trailer for Meet the Spartans knows what I mean), it's a genuinely funny movie in its own right that happens to closely follow the structure of the biopics it mocks instead of lamely copying popular scenes with no production value, idiotic gags, and tons of shitty pop culture references that are devoid of content or point. Jake Kasdan directed and co-wrote, and like Mottola with Superbad, he doesn't seem especially good or bad, and fits right into the groove with everyone Apatow works with.

Walk Hard packs scads of cameos by some very funny people, often playing famous musicians, like Jack White as Elvis or Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Justin Long, and Jason Schwartzman as the Beatles in a truly hilarious scene. John C. Reilly is known as a character actor, but he steps up as the lead very well, carrying the movie with ease and performing ably in the musical segments. There's plenty of mature (or is it really immature?) humor involving sex and drugs, like a great running gag with Tim Meadows trying to keep Dewey away from whatever he's using while at the same time making it sound really enticing. A couple gags from trailers didn't make it to the final cut, leaving me positive the DVD will be packed with some great stuff. Besides just being funny, Walk Hard is a movie about the life of musician, and there's a lot of different kinds of music performed, most of which is actually pretty good and sometimes funny as well, like the Bob Dylan parody. I would have liked to have seen it with a bigger audience, but Walk Hard was still quite an enjoyable experience.