Despite being a remake of a French film the new movie from Atom Egoyan bears all the earmarks of the director’s work. Continuing his career long examination of sexual taboos and miscommunication he’s made a movie that is part sexual Scheherazade, part Single White Female but is also his most straightforward movie in years.
Starring Amanda Seyfried as an escort hired by Catherine (Julianne Moore) to test her husband’s (Liam Neeson) fidelity, it’s a steamy thriller the director calls “an extreme examination of how to re-eroticize a marriage.” Add to that a layer of sexual obsession and you get a film that feels like a throwback to the erotic thrillers of a couple of decades ago.
Egoyan has crafted a feature that breathes the same air as Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct; films made when the director was busy making his own subtly sexual films like Exotica. At the time Roger Ebert wrote, “There is a quality in all of his work that resists the superficial and facile. Even at the very start, he wasn’t interested in simple storytelling.” Until now, Roger, until now.
There is no question that Egoyan is as gifted a filmmaker as we have working in this country, but Chloe, I’m afraid doesn’t denote a high-water mark in his filmography.
He does, however, bring much to the table.
The film is gorgeous to look at—from the beauty shots of Toronto, to the collective “wowness” of the cast. To match the rich visuals he’s brought his own sensibility to the story, and instead of simply remaking Nathalie, the French film Chloe is based on, he has populated the plot with strong female characters. And, as befits any erotic thriller there are twists and turns galore. Unfortunately most of them will be obvious to anyone who has ever read a Joe Eszterhas script and that is the film’s Achilles’ Heel.
The movie’s closing moments play like a predictable b-movie, albeit a highbrow one, but a b-movie nonetheless.
Chloe marks the first time Egoyan has worked from a script that he didn’t write and despite its angels—nice performances and beautiful photography—it made me yearn for the auteur of the Exotica years who would have made an uncompromising movie with a more dramatic ending.
It is a generally accepted fact that the law of diminishing returns applies to movie sequels. The further away you get from the source the weaker the film. Now, of course “Cop Out,” the new buddy cop movie from Kevin Smith, isn’t a sequel. It only feels like one. One with the number 3 or 4 in the title. It is, more correctly stated, an homage to the buddy cop movies of the 1980s like “48 Hrs.” and “Lethal Weapon.” But it begs the question: When does a movie stop being an homage and start being simply a rehash?
Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan play Jimmy and Paul, veteran NYPD cops. They are the typical wildcard movie cops who cause as much carnage as they prevent. After a drug bust gone wrong they are both suspended for thirty days without pay. The without pay part is a tough pill to swallow for Jimmy, whose daughter is about to be married. To come up with $48,000 he needs to foot the bill for her ceremony he decides to sell his prized possession—a rare, mint condition baseball card. When it is stolen before he is able to sell it he and Paul begin their own investigation, which leads them to an obnoxious drugged out thief (Seann William Scott) and a violent drug lord named after a Louisiana sandwich, Poh Boy (Guillermo Díaz).
“Cop Out” is Kevin Smith’s first studio film and marks the first time in fifteen years that indie overlords Harvey and Bob Weinstein haven’t been calling the shots. Not that it seems to have made much difference. Smith’s trademarked vulgar humor is firmly in place—although in smaller doses than usual and without the sweet edge that Judd Apatow brings to this type of comedy—so fans of bodily function jokes will not be disappointed. No, all the marks of classic Smith are here and the only real difference between “Cop Out” and Smith’s low budget work is the addition of more crane shots, bigger stars and higher production value. The only thing missing is a cameo from Silent Bob… and the action and laughs you’d expect from this kind of comedy.
Smith, it must be said, isn’t an action director. His ham fisted way with the climatic shootout scenes (that’s not a spoiler, you HAD to know this would end up in a shootout) is clumsy and sucks the fun out of the film’s latter moments. Worse, it’s not nearly funny enough. Smith seems to find the characters much funnier than they actually are, allowing scene after scene to drag on past their breaking point.
There are some laughs, mostly courtesy of Morgan, who, although he is essentially playing his “30 Rock” character, brings an unhinged energy to every scene he’s in.
His unpredictability, however, is the only unpredictable thing about the movie. It rehashes (there’s that word again) every cliché from the buddy cop genre, including stereotyped bad guys who make Tony Montana look subdued.
According to answers.com the meaning of cop out is “a failure to fulfill a commitment or responsibility,” and I can’t help but think that the movie’s title squares with this definition. Kevin Smith may have been committed to the project, but he failed to fulfill the responsibility of making a good movie.
Welcome to Ogden Marsh, Iowa, population 1260, the friendliest place on earth. Friendliest place, that is, until a mysterious virus rips through town turning the quaint townsfolk into homicidal maniacs. A remake of George A. Romero’s 1973 movie of the same name, “The Crazies” is a classic tale of “us” versus “them”, with an extra “them” thrown in for good measure.
The town is picture perfect, the kind of Norman Rockwell community where the first baseball game of the year is a big event that attracts everyone in town. The season opener, however, turns into a nightmare when Rory, a local farmer, wanders onto the field with a shotgun, a blank expression and bad intentions. Gunned down by town sheriff David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) Rory is just the first victim of the upcoming hillbilly holocaust caused by a government biochemical weapon in the town’s water supply. Soon, after several strange murders and a block on all landlines, internet and cell phones in town Dutton uses his Holmesian powers of deduction to determine that “something’s really wrong.” Think of it as “28 Days Later” without the English accents.
“The Crazies” is a dark little movie, and I don’t just mean subject wise. It’s dark as though it was shot through a long sooty chimney. The murky darkness is meant to build atmosphere, and by and large it works. Director Breck Eisner creates tension, using darkness and shadows, only occasionally showing the gory stuff and even when the screen does go red, the chills are low-fi. Probably just as well, I don’t think we need close-ups of Ben, the former high school principal, now a thoroughly koo-koo bananas crazy killer repeatedly stabbing people with a pitchfork. Blood drips and there are lotsa squibs but this is more about tension and Romero’s original intention—setting up a comparison between the mania created by the virus and the martial law actions of the government when they try to contain the outbreak. It’s Dutton versus the crazies and the government versus everybody and that dynamic is the most interesting part of the movie.
The horror doesn’t hold up particularly well. This is one of those “everyone we know is dead” movies. A story where the hero husband says to his wife, “You wait here and don’t go anywhere,” while proceeding to leave her vulnerable and open to attack. She, of course responds, “Stop pretending everything is going to be OK!” It’s the clichéd dialogue of every couples-in-peril movie and could use a facelift.
“The Crazies” isn’t as off-the-wall crazy as the title would suggest. It gets the tone right—the atmosphere and tension are well done—but could have used a script that expanded on the government’s role in the epidemic and went a little lighter on some of the clichés and added some depth to the theme of the collapse of social order.
For clarity “Creation” should have been subtitled, The Origin of The Origin of Species. Paul Bettany plays Charles Darwin, the English naturalist who revolutionized science with his theory that all species of life descended from common ancestors. We meet him in the years leading up to the publication of his groundbreaking work on natural selection, a work condemned by the church, and, closer to home, by Emma, his religious wife (Jennifer Connolly), who feared his ideas would separate them forever in the afterlife.
Based on the book “Annie’s Box” by Darwin’s great, great grandson, Randal Keynes “Creation” wipes away the popular image of Darwin as an old, bewhiskered scientist, bringing him to somewhat vivid life—he was plagued by sickness for much of his adult life—telling the story of the troubled evolution of his theory of evolution.
“Creation” is handsomely photographed, beautifully acted by real-life husband and wife Bettany and Connolly, wonderfully appointed with 1850s period details and just a bit dull. The story should be quite fascinating—between the death of his beloved daughter, his inner demons, his sicknesses and his scientific trailblazing Darwin’s life is not short of drama—but director Jon Amiel has a hard time balancing Darwin’s personal and professional lives. They are, of course, almost inextricably intertwined, but Amiel let’s the film get away from him in the middle section, placing too much emphasis on Darwin’s neuroses and not enough on the story.
Keeping things compelling, however, is Bettany who does impressive work, artfully and subtly portraying Darwin’s complicated inner life, drawing whatever emotion there is to be had out of this austere and slowly paced script.
Connolly, on the other hand, is as cold as ice as Darwin’s fiercely pious wife Emma. The expected warmth between the real-life couple is largely absent as Connolly completely disappears into the role of the hardnosed wife who put her religious values before her husband’s scientific beliefs.
Also worth noting is newcomer Martha West as daughter Annie, the common link who binds Charles and Emma together. Without fail her scenes bring the film warmth and familial energy.
“Creation” picks up in its final minutes, giving us a glimpse of the intelligent, exciting movie it could have been, but it’s too little to late.
In “Crazy Heart” Bad Blake, played by Jeff Bridges in what will likely become his fifth Oscar nomination, is Willie Nelson if the IRS had their way with him, or Kris Kristofferson if he hadn’t written “Me and Bobby McGee.” “I used to be somebody,” he sings at one point, “but now I’m somebody else.” That someone else is a broke, drunk country music has-been whose idea of a great gig is playing a bowling alley where he isn’t even allowed to run a bar tab.
In a story that echoes “The Wrestler” “Crazy Heart” follows the tail end of the career of a man who once had everything but threw it away. Bad Blake was a big country music star whose life seems ripped from the lyrics of a hurtin’ Hank Williams song. On the road he’s so lonely he could die, so he fills his time with groupies; women who follow him back to his seedy hotel room, remembering the star he once was and not the sweaty, drunk wreck he has become. His downward spiral is slowed when he meets Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a journalist and single mother who becomes his anchor.
“Crazy Heart” is an average movie buoyed by a great central performance. We’ve seen stories like this before but Bridges’s performance and the film’s details make this a recommend.
First the details. As a general rule most movies about fictional musicians get the most basic thing wrong—the music. Forgettable songs have ruined many a music movie but “Crazy Heart” and composers T-Bone Burnett and Stephen Bruton (who died of cancer before the film was released) nail an authentic country sound. The songs sound Grand Ole Opry ready and once filtered through Bridges’s weathered vocal chords could be echoes from any small town honky tonk or dive bar. It’s hurtin’ music and is spot on.
Beyond the music there are the small details that add so much to the film. There are the nice shards of dialogue like Bad’s flirty remark to Jean as they do an interview in a dingy motel room, “I want to talk about how bad you make this room look” and the accurate portrayal of small town bars and bowling alleys.
It all helps to elevate the predictable story, but none of it would matter a whit if Jeff Bridges wasn’t firmly in control. His Bad Blake is pure outlaw country, a hard drinking and cigarette smoking poet who breathes the same air as Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggart. Bridges throws his vanity out the window, allowing his gut to peak out from behind his guitar and wrinkles to peer out from the sides of his aviators. More than that, however, he nails the troubled charm that made Bad a star and then brought him to his knees. It’s complex work but Bridges, with his smooth, relaxed way with a character makes it look easy. Don’t be fooled; this is the work of a master who is often underrated.
“Crazy Heart” has some major flaws but is worth a look for the performances from Bridges, Gyllenhaal (although she seems a tad young for the part) and Colin Farrell in a small un-credited part as Bad’s former protégé.
The best thing about “The Collector” is that it is not a remake of the creepy Oscar nominated Terence Stamp movie of the same name. Instead two alum of the “Saw” franchise, Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, have partnered up to make the kind of film you’d expect from the writers of “Saw IV,” “V” and “VI.” It’s a gory story about an ex-con turned day laborer (Josh Stewart) who, in an attempt to get some easy money to save his family, breaks into his employer’s house to steal a rare gem. Of course, also inside the house is a nasty surprise—a psychopathic “Collector” (Juan Fernandez) who sets a series of Rube Goldberg-esque booby traps to kill both the residing family and our burglar hero.
“The Collector’s” unholy mix of gorno and heist flick plays like a mash-up of “Saw” and “Home Alone” with extra gore and no jokes. In fact there isn’t much of anything here except for some stylish photography and an anxiety inducing soundtrack.
There are, I guess, as many inventive ways to kill someone as there are people to kill, but the audience isn’t going to care about the ways and means if they don’t care about the characters, and that is “The Collectors” downfall. These characters are so cardboard the most humane thing to do with them would be to sort and recycle them.
Josh Stewart is trying hard here. He’s the kind of character that, if he didn’t have bad luck, as the song goes, wouldn’t have no luck at all. That’s about it for character development here, but in a movie where the characters are so thin, I’ll take it.
What I can’t accept, however, is the dull, repetitious plot. “The Collector,” however, does get a couple of things right—the soundtrack effectively creates a scary atmosphere, and it looks kinda cool—but it is marred by a silly ending that sets it up for a sequel.
It’s clearly being prepped to become the “Saw” of the next decade, a never ending franchise that has kept Dunstan and Melton busy for the last few years. The difference is “The Collector” is a pointless celebration of sadism, whereas the “Saw” movies, gory as they may be, at least have a twisted morality to them—the people in the traps are being punished for their sins. Let’s just hope “The Collector” doesn’t collect enough dollars at the box office to warrant a second installment.
The guys from “Swingers” have finally grown up. Thirteen years after their break out hit Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau are teamed up again but this time around the zoot suits have been left in storage and the hipster lingo is a thing of the past. In “Couples Retreat” (sic) the boys are old hipsters with wives, kids, martial dysfunction and a group of friends teetering on the cusp of major mid life crisis. They’re no longer “money,” to use the “Swingers” lingo, but they’re in for some major change.
The story focuses on four couples Dave and Ronnie (Vince Vaughn and Malin Akerman), Shane and Trudy (Faizon Love and Kali Hawk), Jason and Cynthia (Jason Bateman and Kristen Bell), and Joey and Lucy (Jon Favreau and Kristin Davis) who go to an island resort called Eden West. This isn’t Sandals or Hedonism, however, couples at Eden West are expected to follow a rigorous relationship building course, that is equal parts Tai Chi, couples therapy and Art of War, taught by Marcel (Jean Reno). Participation is not optional, and of course, each of the couples learns something new about themselves and their bond.
“Couples Retreat” annoyed me for many reasons. First off, when did it become OK for Hollywood to completely ignore the lowly apostrophe? The title should be “Couple’s Retreat,” but apparently no one at Universal (or Vaughn or Favreau) owns a copy of “The Elements of Style.” Punctuation, however, is just the beginning of the problems with “Couple Retreat.”
The movie starts promisingly. The cast is likeable enough—Vaughn, Favreau, Jason Bateman, Faison Love, Malin Ackerman and the two Kristens, Davis and Bell—and the opening half-an-hour pleases in a low-fi way. As a set up to the main action—the trip to the Bora Bora—we’re treated to a mostly well written and interesting introduction to the characters. And Vaughn and Ackerman’s youngest son is hilarious. As I say, it’s mostly good stuff that sets up the relationship comedy that is to follow, except that once they hit the island at 40ish minute mark the movie slows to a slow grind. A grating slow grind.
What is it about comedies set on islands Remember “Club Paradise”? “Club Dread”? Sunshine and sky blue water seem to be comedy killers (except for “Gilligan’s Island” of course!). It’s certainly the case here. The post island scenes are only intermittently amusing, slowed by therapy scenes that don’t deliver big laughs and predictable relationship “development” that should be heartfelt but feels forced.
High points include Carlos Ponce as the randy yoga instructor Salvadore and the scenes with the kids that bookend the film. Low points include every minute the usually reliable Jean Reno is on screen and the beyond shameless product placement for Applebee’s and Guitar Hero.
“Couples Retreat” feels like a movie of missed opportunities. It’s not funny enough to be called a comedy and when the best relationship advice on offer is about finding the right person to take to Applebee’s, it can’t be called insightful either.
The release of “Capitalism: A Love Story” will be met with the usual hoopla that surrounds all Michael Moore exposés. Fox News will challenge his facts and call him un-American for having the temerity to suggest that one of the threads of the good old red, white and blue, capitalism, is a flawed and outdated system. Fifty years ago Moore’s habit of sticking up for the little guy, the average American who’s just been foreclosed on or had their pension disappear, would have made him a Roy Rogers type folk hero. But in today’s climate where dissent is seen as disloyalty Moore is painted as a villain, a naysayer determined to undermine the very fabric of American life. Perhaps the name callers should actually try watching one of his films, or at least stay through to the end of “Capitalism,” where, after a look at how the America he loves is in tatters, he announces, “I refuse to live in a country like this… and I’m not leaving.” It’s his “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” moment and a powerful end to an information packed, if somewhat rambling movie.
Moore doesn’t waste time getting to the point. He kicks things off with a mix of archival and recent footage that compares modern culture to the fall of the Roman Empire. From there he walks us through the beginnings of capitalism—which he describes as a system of giving and taking, mostly taking—through to the Regan years when, he says, it all started to go wrong. The story of capitalism unleashed continues through several more administrations until, for reasons far too complicated to detail here, the bottom falls out and we’re left with a system that instead of creating products for people to enjoy has been co-opted by banks who specialize in schemes that make money in ways that actually harm Main Street America. Along the way we meet the profiteers, companies who take insurance on their employees and benefit from their deaths—it’s called Dead Peasant insurance—and a poor family paid to clean out their own house; a house the bank had just repossessed.
Moore narrates the entire movie in his best Uncle Mikey voice, a calm reassuring tone with just a hint of outrage. It’s become his trademark, and even when he spews unsubstantiated “facts” like “Japanese and German cars hardly ever break down” he sounds convincing. It’s Fox News in reverse. Where they rely on raised voices and hyperbole to make their point Moore keeps the volume on low, but uses masterfully chosen images and music to drive home his outrage.
A sequence describing how Regan reduced taxes on the rich is scored with demonic “Omen” style chanting to reinforce the idea of the evil that was being perpetrated. Other sections are illustrated with a mix of archival and new imagery and, as always, Moore chooses provocative pictures to create emotion. Only the hardest hearted would be unmoved by the joy on a woman’s face as Obama is named president or the tears shed by someone who has just lost their home.
Moore’s greatest skill is creating great propaganda. He can string together info and images like no one else. It’s not documentary filmmaking in the strictest sense, he’s too agenda minded to be a purest to the form, but he knows how to entertain while slamming home his point.
“Capitalism: A Love Story” feels a bit more unfocussed than his previous films, but the ideas contained within, that capitalism has been perverted into a system that enriches the few at the expense of the many, may make this his most important film to date.
If Coco Chanel was a superhero, “Coco Avant Chanel” would be called her origin story. Here we learn about the how the superstar designer went from orphan to unhappily kept woman to finding her secret weapon—the little black dress. Of course she’d never wear something as gaudy as a logo on her chest, she exemplified understated class, but she was a wonder woman who created an empire in a business primarily run by men.
As the title suggests this is the story of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel before the fame. When we first meet her she is being shunted off to an orphanage by an uncaring father. Raised in austerity she becomes a seamstress who moonlights as a nightclub singer. While working at the club she enters into a long affair with an older playboy aristocrat named Étienne Balsan (Benoît Poelvoorde). He provides for her and elevates her social status ever so slightly—mistresses were tolerated in turn-of-the-century French society, but not celebrated—but their relationship falls apart when she meets a young English businessman who would become the love of her life, Arthur ‘Boy’ Capel (Alessandro Nivola).
Like “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” or “Iron Man” this movie gives us the background we need to fully understand how she went from zero to hero except that the hero part is barely examined. We follow Chanel just up to the point at which she becomes a major fashion force. Director Anne Fontaine is more interested in the events that drove the designer to revolutionize the fashion industry rather than the revolution itself.
Audrey Tautou, the waifish French star of “Amélie” and “The DaVinci Code,” is an inspired choice to play the iron willed designer. She’s been criticized for looking dour throughout much of the film, but I prefer to see her look as one of steely determination as she navigates the turbulent waters of Chanel’s private life. The charismatic Tautou—who bears an uncanny resemblance to the designer—slowly develops the character, showing the struggle Chanel faced to enter society, to be accepted and have her work taken seriously. It’s nicely rounded performance that breathes life into a person who, despite placing on Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people of the 20th century, is a mystery to the average viewer.
“Coco Avant Chanel” works both as a bio pic (which could easily be followed by a sequel detailing her life at the top of the fashion field) and a romantic melodrama. Anchored by a terrific performance from Tautou and luscious production design it’s an inspiring rags to riches tale.
