There have been many movies about writer’s block. Screenwriters love to write about the affliction that affects everyone who puts fingers to keyboard for a living. So Martin McDonagh, the writer director of “Seven Psychopaths,” isn’t treading new ground here, but he does it entertainingly and with way more guns than you usually find in movies about writers.
Colin Farrell is Marty, an alcoholic screenwriter whose mental state hovers somewhere between depression and suicide. Blocked, he can’t seem to get past the title of his latest screenplay, “Seven Psychopaths.” Trying to pull him out of his funk, his (not always) helpful friend Billy (Sam Rockwell) places an ad in the newspaper asking for certified psychopaths to contact Marty. In exchange for their stories, he might make them famous in the movie. Meantime Billy is working a side job with Hans (Christopher Walken), stealing dogs only to “rescue” them for the reward money. The scheme puts all of them in contact with Charlie (Woody Harrelson), a sensitive psychopath who cries at the thought of his lost dog, but doesn’t mind killing people to get it returned.
As you might imagine from a movie titled “Seven Psychopaths,” there is a great deal of antisocial behavior on display. It’s occasionally gruesome—heads are detached from their bodies, throats are cut—but it is the performance style that you’ll notice. Rockwell has rarely been this twitchy, but it mostly works, and Farrell and Harrelson bring considerable charisma to their roles, but it is Walken who is memorable.
Everybody loves Walken, and there’s no denying he fills the screen, but his idiosyncratic vocal mannerisms are so exaggerated here it’s almost as if you are watching someone do an impression of the actor, rather than the real thing. He’s entertaining, but his performance here is just inches away from self-parody.
In a way that’s appropriate for a film that is so inward looking. McDonagh has taken all the bits and pieces of thriller and turned them on their heads. Early on Marty says he doesn’t want his screenplay to be “about guys with guns in their hands,” sending an indication that the film-idea-within-the-film may be telegraphing the action (or lack thereof) that we’re about to see.
The film subverts its own story to make ironic comments on the collaborative nature of filmmaking when not all the creative agree on the story’s direction, plot structure and role of women in action movies, (“You can’t let the animals die in movies, just the women.”). It almost works except that the cleverness of the idea—making an anti-movie—feels a bit labored in the final third of the film.
“Seven Psychopaths” gets lost in its own idea, but only temporarily. What’s left is solid fun.
Sarah Polley has been in front of the camera since she was a little girl as the star of dozens of films like “The Sweet Hereafter, “Go” and “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.” Now in her first documentary she turns the camera on herself and her family.
“Stories We Tell” is a frank look at a family secret. For years Sarah’s family wondered why she didn’t bare much resemblance to her father, actor Michael Polley. It was the source of family jokes and conjecture, but it wasn’t until a Canadian journalist contacted Polley claiming to have the story of Polley’s lineage and real father that she began to investigate in detail. The result is a stunning film packed with humor, sadness and stark truth and family secrets.
Polley’s portrait of her mother, actress Diane Polley who passed away when Sarah was just eleven years old, father and family is affectionate and unexpected. Her father, for instance, reacts to the news that his late wife had an affair that resulted in Sarah’s birth not with anger, but with the advice for her and her siblings not to blame their mother for straying outside of the marriage.
“Stories We Tell” shuns the exploitive approach of reality television—imagine what Mauray Povich might have done with this story—to explore the consequences of a long ago indiscretion. What could have been a self-indulgent home movie is, instead, a riveting look into the dynamics of a group of individuals bound together by birth and circumstance.
Part “Dreamgirls,” part Mickey and Judy put on a show, “Sparkle” is a musical drama set in Detroit when Marvin Gaye was a superstar and musicians hadn’t yet discovered auto-tune.
“American Idol” champ Jordan Sparks is the title character, (recreating a role made famous by a pre-“Fame” Irene Cara in the 1978 original), a Motown teen with the dream of becoming a star. “I want to be better than Diana,” she says, heady words at the height of the Supremes’s fame. Forming a band with her siblings, the sexy Sister (Carmen Ejogo) and brainiac Delores (Tika Sumpter), the group rockets to fame in the Detroit area based on Sparkle’s songs and Sister’s sex appeal. Soon, however, drugs and domestic violence cast a dark shadow on their success.
“Sparkle” is two movies. The first hour is a musical Motown fairy tale, complete with sparkling sings and glittering costumes. The second hour becomes a campy cautionary tale, complete with lines like, “Sister can’t fly on one wing,” as Ejogo preps a line of coke.
Of course it ends well, with a huge redemptive musical number, but it’s hard not to wonder why the movie isn’t called “Sister” instead of “Sparkle.”
As dramatic storylines go Sister has all the bases covered and Ejogo hands in a charismatic performance that is much more dynamic than Sparks. Imagine a James Bond movie where M got to do all the cool stuff, and you get the idea.
Sparks holds her own, although she isn’t required to do much other than sing and act plucky, but is outshone (except when she sings) by the more experienced actors. Ejogo, a star in the UK but a relatively new face here, is a scene-stealer, and Mike Epps is terrific as her husband, the vicious comedian Satin. As Stix, the determined but kindhearted manager, Derek Luke has charm to burn, but it is Whitney Houston, in her last role who will likely command most of the attention.
As Emma, the stern single mother who long ago gave up on her dreams of being a singer, Houston is simple and unaffected. She provides a highlight with her take on “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” belting out the gospel song with equal parts gusto and world-weariness.
Hindsight is, of course, twenty-twenty, but it is hard not to read deeper meaning into some of her dialogue. Now that she is gone a line like, “Was my life not cautionary tale enough for you?” seems to ring with meaning.
“Sparkle” is an amiable film that despite its glossy outer shell and melodramatic moments is a crowd pleaser.
I knew “Savages” was going to be an over-the-top Oliver Stone movie from the opening minutes. A “wargasm” reference was my first clue and by the time Benicio Del Toro literally twirled his moustache like a pantomime baddie I knew this wasn’t the same restrained director who gave us “W” and “World Trade Center,” this was Stone in unhinged “Natural Born Killers” mode. It’s a wild ride, but I found it more flamboyant than fun.
Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch are Ben and Chon, entrepreneurs, drug dealers and two thirds of a love triangle with California cutie Ophelia (Blake Lively). They sell a potent strain of legal medical grade marijuana but also siphon off some for illicit practice and profit, which earns the attention of a Mexican Baja drug Cartel run by Elena (Salma Hayek). She’ll do anything to create a “joint” venture, including kidnapping their shared paramour Ophelia. Revenge turns bloody when Elena’s enforcer, Lado (Benicio Del Toro), gets involved and complicated when a dirty DEA agent (John Travolta) double-crosses everyone.
“Savages” is definitely a good-looking movie from the stars to the scenery, but I thought the cast was really interesting as well as pretty. Johnson and Kitsch are good and evil, flip sides of the same coin, Lively isn’t as sprightly as her name might suggest, but she does do damaged quite well. I also enjoyed Travolta, Hayek and Del Toro chewing the scenery but I felt it hard to care about any of them. They’re all rather despicable, and I found myself hoping they’d all end up in a Mexican standoff, firing until no one was left standing.
But stand they do, so for a little over two hours we’re taken to their world of double-crosses, beheadings, threesomes and seemingly pointless close-ups of beaches, crabs and Buddha statues. Stone is a sensualist, allowing his camera to caress Lively’s face and fill the screen with beautiful images. Even Del Toro’s torture scenes have a certain glamorous élan to them, but as entertaining to the eye as it all is, it’s a rather empty experience.
The plotting goes crazy near the middle, and any comment on the morality of the drug trade, one way or another, is sidestepped in favor of an ending—and this is no spoiler—that seems to want to play both sides of the intellectual fence.
Perhaps I expected too much. “Savages” is at its black-hearted best a preposterous popcorn movie that strives to be something more, but the film’s message apparently went, like the product that makes all the characters do such horrible things, up in smoke.
What happens when the end of the world is just days away and you meet the person of your dreams? Are you a hopeless romantic or is your romance hopeless?
Three weeks before a giant asteroid is scheduled to collide with earth, killing everyone on the planet, Dodge (Steve Carell) finds himself suddenly single wondering if you can find meaning in a world that soon won’t exist. When a riot breaks out on his Manhattan street he and his flaky downstairs neighbor Penny (Keira Knightley) escape the mayhem and head out of town, toward their destiny. He wants to reconnect with his high school sweet heart, she wants to fly home to England to see her family.
“Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” is a keenly observed—if somewhat speculative—look at what might happen when the end is near… or here. The movie begins with a darkly comedic take on civilization’s last moments. “Nobody is anyone’s anything anymore,” says the despondent wife of Dodge’s best friend. The looming apocalypse has leveled the playing field, giving usually staid insurance salespersons in Dodge’s life permission to behave how they’ve always wanted—sleeping around, doing heroin and generally letting their hair down.
It’s amusing and inventive, but the film really begins when Dodge and Penny hit the road. The movie takes a serious turn, turning the camera on the characters and not the jokey predicaments of the first half-hour.
On the big screen Carell leaves the trademarks of his best-known character—Michael Scott from “The Office”—behind. He can still hit a punch line, but he can also drum up empathy for a character without resorting to melodrama. He’s a likeable everyman, and as such the viewer wants the best for him, no matter what the situation.
Knightley is a good foil for Carell. The camera loves her, and soon, despite her character’s self concern, she wins over the audience as well. A scene over spaghetti with a Herb Alpert soundtrack seals the deal. It’s a wonderfully romantic scene about true love, vinyl and getting to know someone better.
It’s a movie that requires the viewer to get caught up in the romance of the story, and accept some far fetched twists. If you’re prepared to accept them, bring some Kleenex. If not, go see “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” instead.
“Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” is a low-key movie that could have been a broad comedy, but instead chooses for a more modest, heartfelt approach.
“Snow White and the Huntsman” plays like the love child of the Brothers Grimm and The Hobbit. It is dark in tone and in look with just a few hi ho ho’s provided by the Seven Dwarfs. That’ll be my last bad Snow White joke, I promise. The first hour is a gothic fairy tale, the second hour more an action movie, but through it all Charlize’s Theron’s bug eyed Grand Guiginol performance remains constant.
It’s a tale as old as time… wait a minute! That’s Beauty and the Beast. But Snow White’s story dates back almost as far. In this twist on the familiar fairy tale Charlize Theron is Ravenna, an evil queen so obsessed with being the fairest in the land she condemns the dead king’s lovely daughter, Snow White (Kristen Stewart), to a lifetime of solitude and captivity. When the queen’s gossipy mirror-on-the-wall tells her that Ms. White will one day reclaim the throne, Ravenna does what any evil monarch would do. She decides to eat Snow’s still beating heart, thereby ensuring immortality and the throne. Luckily Snow escapes, and with the help of a handsome huntsman, (Thor’s Chris Hemsworth), a childhood friend (Sam Claflin) and eight diminutive allies (Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan, Toby Jones, Johnny Harris and Brian Gleeson), fulfills her destiny.
“Snow White and the Huntsman” may be the fairest movie of the summer, and I’m not referring to the fetching Charlize or KStew, or the chiseled Hemsworth or Claflin, but to the look of the film. It is majestically bleak, blending stark realism with fantasy elements to create a look rich in detail. With much of the color drained from the palette the movie has a dark foreboding feel which helps shape the narrative.
First time director Rupert Sanders knows how to establish atmosphere, it’s too bad he isn’t as skilled in storytelling.
The look, from the sets to the creatures—very cool tree troll and some airy fairies—to Ravenna’s evil wardrobe are all spot on, but some of the good will they create is blown by a script that often relies on banalities.
The talky bits aren’t nearly as interesting as the yelling bits (thanks to Charlize’s unhinged performance) and the action sequences. When the movie is on horseback, or Charlize is chewing the scenery (or her favorite snack, beating bird hearts) the movie is great fun. When it slows down to up the word count, it’s less so.
Stewart brings her usual brooding intensity, this time matched with an English accent and Hemsworth is having fun in a physical role that does not involve throwing a giant hammer. But as appealing as they both are, “Snow White and the Huntsman” becomes something other than a beautifully shot teen retelling of the story (with a strong sword wielding female lead and a feminist twist) only when Theron is lets loose or the band of small-sized warriors are on screen.
Here’s my idea for a marketing plan for the new action film “Safe”:
Body Count: 350
Bullet Budget: $1,000,000
Jason Statham’s Steely Glare: Priceless
In “Safe,” the gravelly-voiced Statham digs deep into his bag of tricks to play Luke Wright, Statham Character #2. That’s the “loner with a past who must protect a youthful innocent.” (As opposed to Statham Character #1 in which he plays “loner with a past who must protect a loved one.”) The innocent in this case is an eleven-year-old prodigy named Mei (Catherine Chan) who has been kidnapped by a Chinese Triad boss (James Hong) who hopes to use her photographic memory to store sensitive information. Of course this makes her valuable to the Russian mob, who try and snatch her away to unlock the secrets in her pretty little head. Enter Luke, a coiled spring of a man who has nothing to live for until he meets the girl genius.
The first half hour of “Safe” consists of choppy set-up—plot, character exposition and backstory. It’s clunky and strangely Statham-less. Then at the thirty-minute mark Statham comes to life—he may be down-on-his-luck, but you know the body count is about to go way up. All of a sudden he becomes a one-liner-spouting action hero and “Safe” becomes the dumb good fun we expect from Statham’s movies.
There’s lots of good old fashioned fist fights, some awesome cheeseball backstory info delivered with gusto by Chris Sarandon and corrupt cops. Unfortunately there’s also young Mei. It cannot be a coincidence that Mei’s character name is only one letter away from the word meh. She delivers one of the worst child mastermind performances in recent years.
Luckily she’s playing opposite Statham who covers the screen with his own brand of awesome.
“Safe” isn’t for everyone, but Statham fans will find something to like.
As tittles go “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” is a mouthful. It’s quirky enough to catch your eye, I suppose, and it isn’t a cute metaphor for something else. This movie is indeed about salmon fishing in the Yemen, but it’s also about faith as much as fishing.
Ewan McGregor is Dr. Alfred Jones a rigid scientist at the British government department of fisheries. He studies spawning habits of fish, writes scientific papers and lives a life of quiet desperation. When he is approached by Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Emily Blunt), a consultant for Yemeni Sheikh Mohammed (Amr Waked), to create a fly fishing reserve in the Yemen, he balks at first but soon not only dives in headfirst to the project, but, since this is a light romanic comedy, also discovers an interest in a life form without gills.
“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” should do for fly-fishing what “The Big Year” did for bird watching. That is to say, not much. The mix of science, faith–fishing is a mystical past time, apparently—and romance has some charm, mostly due to the engaging performances of McGregor, Blunt and Waked, but other plot threads—like an assassination attempt–feel forced and out of place.
Popping in and out of the story is Kristin Scott Thomas as the aggressive spokesperson for he Prime Minister. She’s used for comedic relief and pulls off the part with aplomb. If the rest of the film had the spark she brings to her scenes we might have been better able to forgive its plot transgressions.
For most of the running time Safe House is a pretty exciting action movie. Things blow up, Denzel is a wicked cool bad guy, but when the movie slows down to try and provide some back story it loses some of its explosive power.
Ryan Reynolds plays Matt Weston, a rookie CIA agent stationed at an underused safe house in Cape Town, South Africa. When agents bring in Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), an ex-agent wanted for espionage, Weston is thrust into a wild escape plan, high level intrigue and must learn who to trust.
The underlying sense of tension in “Safe House” originates with Washington. If this was a Tom Cruise or Will Smith vehicle you know that even though they might do dastardly things occasionally, they only ever play heroes. Washington is different. He’s not afraid to explore the dark side of his characters and it is not a guarantee that he will be alive by the time the end credits roll. That’s not a spoiler, it’s a comment on an actor who brings some much welcome moral ambiguity to the role. Want to find out if he lives or dies? Buy a ticket. The movie is mostly worth the ride.
It slows down when it show amp up in its last quarter. The knee-deep intrigue slows down the movie’s momentum, clichés pile up and Denzel’s uncanny ability to walk between the hundreds of bullets fired his way begins to wear thin. But up until it starts trying to tie up loose ends it has some good action and a wall of tension so high it sometimes feels like you’ll never be able to see over it.
The loser here is Ryan Reynolds who is blown off screen by Washington’s effortless cool and never rises above the clichés that make up his new-guy-thrown-into-a- fracas-of-unparalleled-danger-and-intrigue. Too bad the “Green Lantern” didn’t have action half as good as “Safe House.” If it did there might have been a sequel and we’d all be talking about Reynolds in his green tights instead of how here he is mainly a pile of clichés who barely registers when placed next to the more complex Washington character.
