Brian DePalma’s latest is steeped in his usual mythology – misogyny, double crosses, and voyeurism. Femme Fatale dips heavily into the film noirs of the 40s for inspiration, particularly Double Indemnity, a classic brew of duplicity, murder and adultery. But after a breathless first twenty minutes DePalma throws logic out the window and allows the movie to wander implausibly through Paris’s seedy underworld. Like the giant photo collage that the Antonio Banderas character constructs in his apartment, this movie feels like a collage of sexy (and or violent) scenes cobbled together to make a whole. It’s incomprehensible eye candy. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as Laure the vampy thief who steals $10 million in jewels before taking off with another woman’s identity, however, is one of the best scoundrels to come along in a while. She’s a long legged bad girl who laughs with glee as two men beat each other up over her. She’s a nasty piece of work who really means it when she says, “I’m a bad, bad girl.” DePalma’s use of split screens and other visual tricks keeps Femme Fatale interesting to look at, making it a work-out for the eyes, but not the mind.
Fish aren’t cuddly. The scales, the smell and the cold blooded nature of the species make them difficult to hug, let alone curl up with. That perception will likely change with the release of Finding Nemo, a film that will do for fish what Babe did for pigs. That is, make them seem like something more than just an accompaniment for French fries.
Pixar, (in co-operation with Disney) the clever animators behind Toy Story and Monsters Inc, are back with a story about a young clownfish named Nemo (Alexander Gould) who gets separated from Marlin (Albert Brooks), his over protected father. With the help of Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), a blue fish with short term memory loss, Marlin desperately searches for his son. In the process he learns about himself and love while risking life and fin to find his son.
The story is typical Disney claptrap, a tale that hits the same emotional buttons that have marked kid’s films since Bambi was a fawn. But it’s not the story that recommends Finding Nemo and makes it the achievement that it is.
The script is tight and quite funny (although in a more subtle way than previous Pixar creations) but it is the visuals that overwhelm. The computer geeks at Pixar have imbued their undersea world with such feeling and splendour that it is hard to believe it isn’t real, that it is, in fact, nothing more than cleverly arranged binary code. The colours and textures of the sea literally come alive on the screen and show a real eye for detail. Particularly eye-popping is the jelly-fish sequence, a beautifully realized scene in which Marlin and Dory must navigate their way through a school of opaque stinging sea creatures.
Albert Brooks heads the cast as Marlin. He’s neurotic, not unlike many of the characters Brooks has played before, but is charmingly so. This may be his best role since Broadcast News. When he deadpans that, despite the name, clownfish aren’t really all that funny, you know the part was written for him. Ellen DeGeneres brings considerable charm to the scatterbrained Dory, while Willem Dafoe and Geoffrey Rush also contribute voices.
Finding Nemo is more than just a technical marvel; it is a computer animated film that transcends the animation to become a film which will engage the heart as well as the mind.
This is a hatchet job. Literally. Bill Paxton in his feature film directorial debut presents an eerie story involving would-be demons, religious fanaticism, fatherly love and axe wielding serial killers. It’s an accomplished thriller that manages to disturb, and keep you guessing right until the end. It wouldn’t be fair to give away any plot details – thrillers rely on the element of surprise – but suffice to say there are more twists and turns here than on any winding mountain road. Texas native Matthew McConaughey turns in strongest performance in years as the narrator, but it is Paxton as the well- meaning, but insane father who really impresses. His “everyman” approach to the character is chilling, displaying the ordinariness of evil, the kind of evil that could live next door to you or me.
Frida, director Julie Taymor’s look at the life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, is a beautiful film that proves that Salma Hayek is more than just a sex-symbol. It is her performance in the title role that saves Frida from being just another run-of-the mill biopic. She captures the spirit of the late Mexican painter in all her uni-browed glory. Films about the creative process don’t usually work, but Taymor takes the back-door approach, giving us the details of Frida’s life that inspired her to make her art – her triumphs, her pain and her bizarre relationship with Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina). We don’t often see her at work in front of an easel, but when we do we understand why she paints.
Director Steven Soderbergh calls Full Frontal the unofficial sequel to Sex Lies and Videotape, his groundbreaking 1989 film. Most everyone else has called it a mess, or useless waste of time. One prominent American critic even suggested this might be the worst film ever by a major director. I can’t say I agree with the harsh criticism. While I’m not exactly sure what the movie is about, and vast passages of it simply do not work, I do think it is a film with great passion and energy. Soderbergh has left behind the slickness of Ocean’s 11 and Erin Brockovich and made an experimental film that bristles with inventiveness. Not everything works, but there are several nice performances, particularly by David Hyde Pierce and Catherine Keener and I enjoyed watching an A-list director stray from the tried and true and explore rockier ground.
At the beginning of The Rise of the Silver Surfer the Fantastic Four—Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, The Thing and The Human Torch—are tabloid celebrities. They have endorsement deals, always travel in first class and their every move is followed by the press. They’re just like Paris Hilton, except that she’s in jail and they aren’t. Oh, and rather than commit crimes, they solve them, and by the end of this movie will have saved the entire world.
On the eve of the marriage between Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd) and The Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba) strange atmospheric disturbances begin to plague the earth. Seas freeze and giant craters start to pop up everywhere. Despite the trouble the superheroes decide to go ahead with the wedding as planned. Just before the “I do’s” a shiny silver man on a shiny silver surfboard whizzes by, disrupting everything, and very nearly mussing Jessica Alba’s really fake looking blonde hair.
Some scientific mumbo jumbo later it is revealed that every time the Silver Surfer buzzes a planet, it dies eight days later. Call him Mr. Global Warming.
No one likes a deadline, but the Fan 4 jump into action, with the help of the army and their former nemesis Victor Von Doom (Nip and Tuck’s Julian McMahon) who has returned from the dead and may have some crucial information to help save the world. With time counting down the Silver Surfer will, to paraphrase Brian Wilson, have fun, fun, fun until the Fan 4 take his surfboard away.
The Rise of the Silver Surfer is a vast improvement on the first movie in this franchise, 2005’s Fantastic Four, which made a lot of money (hence the sequel) but offered little in the way of good story-telling or even interesting special effects. Neither film is as smart as any of the X-Men movies, as stylish as Spider-Man 1 or 2, or even as action-packed as Batman Begins, but they do manage to capture some of the goofy fun of the comic books. Corny jokes pepper the script, and instead of taking their usual powers seriously, the superheroes seem to have fun with them. The Invisible Girl uses her magical cloaking abilities to make a zit disappear on her wedding day and Mr. Fantastic, more colloquially know as Rubber Man really struts—or should that be stretches—his stuff on the dance floor.
Teenagers and fans of the comic books should enjoy the action sequences, the bad guy, Dr. Doom, a villain so over-the-top dramatic he makes the Phantom of the Opera look like he’s auditioning for a high school glee club, the straightforward story—there’s no background info, dark sides or any of the other stuff that often make movies based on comic books a bit of a slog—and The Silver Surfer who is just flat out cool.
Too bad the acting isn’t better—we’re looking at you Alba and Grufudd—and the dialogue a little sharper. The Fantastic Four are hugely popular comic book characters, unfortunately when translated to the screen they’re not quite fantastic, just adequate.
Not to be confused with “The Getaway,” a vastly superior film starring Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw, or even the so-so remake of that movie with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, “Getaway,” is not only reductive in its title, but also in its story.
The movie starts promisingly with a five-minute sequence. It effectively sets up the story in true cinematic fashion—show me, don’t tell me. Brent Magna (Ethan Hawke) comes home to find his apartment trashed and his wife gone. As he tries to wrap his head around what happened, a cell phone rings. A mysterious voice directs him to a car park where he is to steal a souped-up Shelby Supersnake car and perform a number of duties or his wife will be killed.
It’s simple and effective. Unfortunately when the movie gets up to speed—pun intended—it’s all downhill. Some of the jobs are silly—smash into a water truck!—others are impossibly dangerous, and all are given by a nefarious bad man (Jon Voight) who directs the game as though he is playing chess with a race car and dozens of police instead of rooks and pawns.
Things do not improve when The Kid (Selena Gomez) shows up. She’s a rich kid who claims that Brent has stolen her car.
On a scale of zero to stupid, ”Getaway” ranks an eleven. It is what we call in the film criticism business a S.D.M. (Silly Damn Movie). OK, I made that last part up, but I couldn’t really think of any other category to place this movie under. Maybe E.S.D.M. (Extremely Silly Damn Movie).
Some of the chase scenes are quite good. They seem organic, as if there might actually be real people driving the cars as they careen off bridges and explode into bits. There’s too many of them, but the fact that the crashes looks real and not like CGI-A-Ramas increases the stakes.
But just barely.
There is no amount of drama that could make us care about The Kid. Let’s just say that it’s quite possible that Gomez is even more annoying as an actress than she is as a singer. Her “performance” consists of pouting, grimacing and saying things like, “I’m totally screwed.” If you want to know what she’s like without paying to see the movie, go to any mall on a Saturday and eavesdrop at any American Apparel store.
Hawke is having a good year. “Before Midnight” is his awards bait and “The Purge” made a bunch of money. I doubt he’ll look back at 2013 as the year “Getaway” came out. In fact, I doubt he’ll ever think about this movie again once the cheque clears.
“Getaway” is a groaner, an S.D.M. that could have been a fun ride but runs out of gas after the first five minutes.
The old saying, “They got bigger, but they didn’t grow up,” perfectly applies to this new Sandler and Company movie. It’s ninety minutes of middle-aged men, urination gags (too many to count) and cleavage shots. So while the actors may have matured (chronologically at least) the jokes haven’t.
Question is, Is it funny?
I didn’t really think so, although I have to say Shaquille O’Neal’s big-guy-Andre-the-Giant schick made me laugh.
“Grown Ups 2” picks up where the last movie left off. Lenny (Adam Sandler in his first ever sequel) has relocated his wife (Salma Hayek) and kids back to his hometown to be closer to friends and family. It’s the last day of school, and as the kids are packing up their books, their fathers (Kevin James, Chris Rock and David Spade) grapple with growing up, growing old and a gang of frat boys (lead by “Twilight’s” Taylor Lautner) who think the four old friends are WAY over the hill.
The movie comes equipped with an all-star comedy cast. In addition to the above-the-title actors there’s cameos by everyone from Colin Quinn, Tim Meadows, Georgia Engel and Steve Buscemi to name a few. In fact there may be more recognizable faces here than true laughs.
That’s not to say there are no laughs at all. James’ deadpan dumb kid who can’t add or spell is a funny running gag, Hayek does a pretty good Sofía Vergara imitation and O’Neal’s oversized antics are fun but for a movie about growing up it is all so juvenile. I didn’t expect a searing meditation on aging but I did think they might touch on the fact that they were growing old with more smarts than lines like, “I used to buy ten cases of beer for my parties, now I get ten cases of juice boxes.”
There’s nothing wrong with a good silly movie and “Grown Ups 2” had the chance to be just that, but I just wish it was silly AND about something other than a moose urinating on Sandler’s unsuspecting family, and by extension, the audience.
Jay Gatsby, the doomed millionaire and star of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, is one of the most famous characters of the twentieth century. Representing the ultimate self-made-American man he is, at once, a romantic, fatally idealistic figure and a poseur with grandiose ideas, much like the new Baz Luhrman movie about Gatsby’s short but eventful life.
We first meet narrator Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) when he is at a sanatorium being treated for severe alcoholism and bouts of depression. Part of his treatment involves writing a memoir about the events that brought him to his current state. Flashback to the Jazz Age, early 1920s in New York. Nick is working as a stockbroker in the city while living in a wealthy enclave known as West Egg. His neighbor is the enigmatic Jay Gatsby (Leonardo Di Caprio), whose ornate mansion—more of a palace really—plays hosts to wild weekend parties that attract a mix of the era’s well-heeled and round-heeled.
Across the water is the estate of Nick’s cousin, Daisy (Carey Mulligan), and her husband, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton). She’s a debutant; he’s old money, a sports star with a short temper and a roving eye.
Nick soon learns that Gatsby was Daisy’s first love. That’s not the only secret in Gatsby’s life, however. Turns out he isn’t the aristocrat he claims to be, but the son of dirt-poor farmers who reinvented himself as Jay Gatsby, making a fortune bootlegging alcohol and manipulating the stock market.
Gatsby and Daisy pick up where they left off, but Gatsby proves unable to control the future as adeptly as he created his past.
Baz Luhrman may be the perfect person to retell Jay Gatsby’s Roaring Twenties’ story. Equally at home with razzle-dazzle and substance, he captures the tone of the Jazz Age while still allowing the story’s deeper resonance to shine through the gloss.
The movie’s first hour focuses on the superficial. Luhrman’s restless camera sweeps and swoops, never settling in one place for too long. It’s so over the top it makes the effervescent “Moulin Rouge!” look subdued but it also captures the unbridled optimism of the age. Gatsby’s parties are bacchanals complete with giant champagne bottles that shoot glitter over crowds of scantily clad flappers, gallons of bootleg whiskey served by white-gloved waiters and other “riotous amusements on offer.”
It’s eye candy, pure and simple, and yet the sense of doom that hangs over the beautiful and damned characters in the story is palpable. Without it this would be just another story about pretty people doing pretty-people things, but Luhrman broadens the story to inject some real-life feeling into a mannered story about a life that feels unreal.
He stays quite faithful to Fitzgerald’s book—even including the novel’s famous last line, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” which was noticeably absent from the Robert Redford version—but has structured the story to have a cinematic arc.
As the story changes so does the look and feel of the film—it slows down, luxuriating in the details, not only of the character’s lives, but of their situation as well. It’s an extremely stylish movie, but aside from some curious music choices—like the anachronism of a Jay-Z rap blaring over 1920’s NYC footage—the style doesn’t overwhelm the narrative.
As Gatsby Di Caprio not only makes the best movie star entrance ever—complete with swelling music, fireworks and zooming camera—but also plays a more tortured Gatsby than we’ve seen before. He’s smooth and slick in an “Old sport” kind of way, but bubbling just under the surface is an inner turmoil that trumps the mannered façade.
Maguire and Edgerton hand in effective performances—Maguire is a passive observer for the most part, Edgerton more aggressive—but Carey Mulligan steals the show.
Daisy is one of Fitzgerald’s “bright precious things,” a hothouse flower and Mulligan has a face capable of simultaneously showing great happiness and profound sadness, a duality that serves her character well. She effortlessly tosses off shallow lines like, “Your life is adorable,” while digging deep to convey Daisy’s conflicted nature.
“The Great Gatsby” is a flashy, in-your-face 3D movie but despite the sophisticated use of special effects it still maintains a classic feel, driven by a respect for the story and interesting performances.
