The opening moments of “The Humbling” are a fever dream, an anxiety-ridden nightmare. As stage superstar Simon Axler (Al Pacino) prepares to perform “As You Like It” his mind wanders, and soon we see him locked out of the theatre, refused reentry by a series of ushers and stagehands.
In reality he’s safe in the womb of his dressing room, but unease and insecurity wins out and he imagines the worst; an actor barred from the theatre.
It’s a glimpse into the mind of a lion in winter, an actor whose abilities are diminished. His crisis crescendos when he tries to commit suicide on stage after fumbling lines in front of a sold out house.
“You get all the awards, the accolades, the special treatment and what do you do? You end up throwing yourself off the stage, trying to pull some Hemingwayesque suicide.”
His flip into the orchestra pit lands him in rehab where he befriends Sybil (Nina Arianda), a troubled woman who thinks Simon, because of some of the roles he played on film, might be the right man to kill her husband. Later, at home, things get even stranger when he begins an affair with his goddaughter Pegeen (Greta Gerwig), a free spirited lesbian who has had a crush on Simon since she was a little girl.
His emotional recuperation is complicated by Sybil’s unexpected visits, Simon’s bad back and a quickly depleting bank account.
“Why don’t you get me a deal writing my memoirs?” he asks his agent (Charles Grodin). “Isn’t that what washed up actors do?”
Instead he gets another shot at the stage, a Broadway adaptation of “King Lear.”
What is never completely clear is how much of the story is a dream, the product of Simon’s mind playing tricks on him, and how much is real. It’s a provocative setup for the story, a sex farce about a older man and much younger woman, fuelled by the insecurities of a man falling apart professionally and personally, but it doesn’t always work.
Pacino goes all in as Axler. He’s both majestically Shakespearean and pathetically pathological but the movie’s uneven rhythms don’t do him any favors. He’s in almost every scene, but director Barry Levinson (working from a novel by Phillip Roth, adapted by Buck Henry) can’t make up its mind whether he is making a comedy, a psychological drama, romance or portrait of a crumbling man, and Pacino feels cut adrift from scene to scene.
It’s an entertaining performance in a diverting movie but as a statement on aging or insecurity or the folly of infatuation, it never sheds much light on what King Lear called, “this great stage of fools.”
Insomnia is director Christopher Nolan’s first film since last year’s Memento, and it is a stunner. In this remake of a Norwegian film made in 1998 by Erik Skjoldbjaerg, Nolan has cast three Oscar winners – Al Pacino and Hillary Swank play police officers chasing down a dangerous psychopath played by Robin Williams. Nolan set the film in Alaska, and makes good use of the location, particularly in the opening credit sequence as the camera follows a two-engine prop plane across the unforgiving jagged ice ridges. A foot chase on moving logs provides excitement, but the best thrills here are psychological. This is a film for adults. Insomnia is a serious thriller that relies not only on action, but on issues of guilt and morality to propel the story. Al Pacino hands in his best performance in years, although his accent seems to change from one scene to another. Robin Williams impresses, playing the homicidal Walter Finch with a chilling intensity that should forever put an end to the Mrs. Doubtfire typecasting pit he fell into in the 90s. Swank as the smart small-town cop delivers a multi-layered performance that is completely believable.
“Hey! There’s a new Adam Sandler movie coming out,” is the first part of a sentence no discerning movie fan ever wants to hear. That’s bad enough but it’s the next part that really rankles. “And it co-stars Al Pacino.” Yes Virginia, it’s been a long time since Pacino’s name was mentioned in the same breath as Brando and DeNiro, but his reputation as one of the great actors of his generation shines a little less brightly today.
Sandler plays both title characters in “Jack and Jill.” They’re womb-mates–twins–who live on different coasts. His California based advertising agency is about to lose their biggest client, Dunkin’ Donuts, if they can’t convince Al Pacino to appear in a commercial for a new product, the Dunkaccino. Jill is a singleton, having devoted her life to looking after their parents back home in the Bronx. She’s the kind of plain talker who says things like, “Are you going bald? No, you getting fat and your hair doesn’t realize it has more face to cover.” Now the parents are gone and Jill comes to visit, turning Jack’s life upside in the process. On the upside Pacino becomes smitten and agrees to do the commercial if he can play twister with Jack’s sister.
Sandler has corralled a number of his friends to make cameo appearances–including one of the biggest stars in the world (wearing a Justin Bieber t-shirt), Bruce Jenner and the usual suspects like David Spade–and they get the movie’s biggest laughs. The rest of the movie makes some of Sandler’s other films, like the odious “Little Nicky,” look like the Marx Brothers.
For his part–or rather, parts–Sandler does his usual schick times two. Once in a wig and painted nails and once in his trademark t-shirts and sneakers. We don’t expect much more from him, so he doesn’t exactly disappoint, but it is hard to understand what Pacino was thinking.
Like Neil Patrick Harris in “Harold and Kumar go to White Castle” the Oscar winner is playing a heightened version of himself, but his “Pacino related shenanigans” as Jack calls them, aren’t funny. Instead it feels like we’re witnessing a slow slide into self parody and the movie’s references to Stella Adler and Marlon Brando only add insult to… well, insult.
Near the end of the movie Pacino says (SLIGHT SPOILER), “Burn this. this must never be seen by anyone.” Certainly not anyone who cherishes his performance in the first wo “Godfather” movies. He is, of course, free to do what he wants, but we are just as free not to watch it happen.
I don’t blame Adam Sandler for showcasing Pacino in this way, but I do have some advice for him. If he keeps making movies as bad as “Jack and Jill” he might end up like Pacino–appearing in bad Adam Sandler movies.
Al Pacino is a world-weary New York show biz publicist in People I Know, so world-weary in fact that it looks like he hasn’t slept since he finished shooting on Insomnia in 2002. The bags under his eyes aren’t bags anymore, they’re suitcases. As Eli Wurman he is on the way out, a has-been from another area who medicates himself with a constant cocktail of cigarettes, booze and pills. A personal scandal threatens an event he is planning, and we follow him through the final preparations for his last big hurrah. Director Daniel Algrant pulls great performances out of Pacino, Kim Basinger and Tea Leoni and Robert Klein, who all seem to relish the chance to speak well written, smart dialogue. Set in the present People I Know feels very contemporary, but manages to have a timeless quality about it. The seamy underbelly of New York doesn’t really change from year to year, only the faces do.
A movie called “Stand Up Guys” that contains the line, “They’re the kind of guys who take your kidneys and don’t even try to sell them,” sounds like maybe it’s about gangster comedians. Or witty wise-guys. Or hilarious hit men. Instead it’s an occasionally funny, but mostly heartfelt look at friendship disguised as a buddy movie starring Al Pacino and Christopher Walken.
Pacino is Val, a career criminal and “stand up guy” who did a twenty-eight year stretch in prison rather than implicate his partners in crime. He soon discovers, however, that his first day of freedom may become his last day on earth. His old boss Claphand (Mark Margolis) has hired Val’s best friend Doc (Walken) to kill him in revenge for the death of his son almost three decades ago.
Doc is conflicted about the job, even though Val seems to understand the twisted logic of the underworld vendetta. With just ten hours until the deadline (literally, Val must be dead by 10 am) the old friends go on a spree, breaking their friend Hirsch (Alan Arkin) out of his retirement home and going on a last caper or two.
“Stand Up Guys” is just slightly less than the sum of its parts. The leads—Pacino, Walken and Arkin—combined bring with them a century or two of screen work, and it shows. It’s a pleasure to see these three old pros cut through this material like a pizza cutter through tender dough.
It’s too bad then, that the material contains Viagara jokes that would seem more appropriate in a “Grumpy Old Men” movie. That and the long shadow of Tarantino that blankets almost every scene leaves the film feeling less than original despite the engaging performances.
It is, however, almost worth the price of admission to listen to Christopher Walken talk about watching television, or “cable teeVEE” as he pronounces it.
Simone is a wickedly funny satire on the movie business and the nature of celebrity. Al Pacino is Viktor Taransky, a middling filmmaker who has never had a hit. When his star walks out on him in mid production on his latest film he must find a replacement or the movie will never be released. A chance meeting with an eccentric computer programmer with terminal cancer – a tumour developed in his eye from staring at a monitor for too long – leads Viktor to his new leading lady, a synthespian named Simone, (a shortened version of Simulation One). The blonde, blue-eyed vision of beauty doesn’t actually exist except on a floppy disc, but becomes an overnight sensation after the release of picture. Taransky must resort to trickery to keep his secret and her identity under wraps. As she becomes more and more popular – at one point being nominated for two Best Actress Academy awards in the same year, and winning both of them – Taranski realizes that his personal success is completely linked to her existence, and it eats away at him. Pacino shines as Taranski. Gone are the dark days when he simply yelled his way through a role. The histrionics have disappeared and he has started acting again. His Taranski is an interesting character, a man who only cares about art, but finds himself tangled up in the most artificial business in the world. Pacino plays him with humour and restraint. Catherine Keener is here playing an entertainment executive for the third time in the same year – Death to Smoochy and Full Frontal were the other two – and hands in the kind of solid, funny, sexy performance she is known for. Winona Ryder has a small role as a fiercely difficult actress named Nicola Anders. I remember think that after her dreadful performance in Mr. Deeds it seemed like Ryder had forgotten how to act. Well she’s back in my good books after seeing her in Simone. While she doesn’t exactly steal the movie, she’s very good.
Matthew McConhaughy plays a small town football star injured just before he would have gone pro. His gridiron career on the field is over, but behind the scenes he develops an uncanny knack for picking winners for gamblers. He is recruited by a New York odds-making firm and for a while everything he touches turns to gold. He can’t lose. We know this because he trades in his jeans and hooded sweatshirts for Armani suits and Gucci shoes.
Of course there wouldn’t be much of a movie unless he hit a rough patch—and while this isn’t much of a movie— McConhaughy’s character does hit a losing streak that teaches him something about himself. Mixed in is Rene Russo as a former junkie turned mother figure and Al Pacino as the young man’s crazy mentor.
I would have given this movie more stars, but Al Pacino ate them while he was chewing the scenery. His performance is so over the top that I was afraid that he was going to literally gnaw through the screen and chew on audience members. This is Pacino in full-on “Hoo-Haw” mode, the kind of performance that gets mimicked by comedians.
Pacino’s performance overwhelms almost everything in its path, including all the other actors and the story. The only thing that overshadows his insane performance are McConhaughy’s frequently displayed and finely toned ab muscles which seem to be acting in a different movie.
To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, “Some people get no respect.”
A new film, “Casting By,” clearly and eloquently tells the story of legendary casting director Marion Dougherty, a seminal figure in the careers of a generation of actors. She gave Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Glenn Close, Danny Glover and Jon Voight, among others, their first big breaks, redirected Robert Redford’s career from light comedian to star of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” and paired Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton on “All in the Family.”
“Casting is a high art when you run into a Marion Dougherty,” said television producer Norman Lear.
Still, after 50 years of influential work she was never recognized by the Academy and in the film director Taylor “Ray” Hackford disputes whether casting directors have even earned the right to be called “directors.”
The documentary attempts to right these slights with a detailed and engaging walk down memory lane, combining newly shot material with people who worked with Dougherty and archival footage from set visits and contemporary interviews.
Director Tom Donahue tries to explain the alchemy behind the instinctual art of casting. Woody Allen benefitted from Dougherty’s prowess to steer him toward talent when he was too shy to meet the talent himself. “I never had to shake any hands or tell any lies,” he says. “Never mind the Purell bills.” He even says, “If left up to me, I’d settle for anything.”
“Casting By” is a treat for film fans, particularly if you have a bent for 1970s New York centric cinema. It’s not particularly cinematic in of itself—this could easily be watched on the small screen as a television doc—but the story cuts to the heart of what makes films great and finally offers Dougherty the respect that the Academy and Hackford denied her during her lifetime.
In 88 Minutes Al Pacino is Jack Gramm, a troubled college professor whose forensic psychiatrist testimony put serial killer Jon Forster (Neal McDonough) on death row. On the eve of the execution Gramm receives a mysterious phone call informing him that he only has 88 minutes to live. As the minutes speed by Gramm narrowly escapes several attempts on his life as he and some of his students (including Alicia Witt, Leelee Sobieski, and Benjamin McKenzie) attempt to track down the mysterious caller.
88 Minutes was shot two years ago in Vancouver and has been languishing on the shelf ever since, save for a DVD release in Brazil. Too bad for us that it made its way from the shelf to our theatres. From its ridiculous story to Pacino’s poodle hair 88 Minutes is an ill advised mess.
It’s a thriller with no thrills that ineptly tires to use the “real time” tricking clock to create tension and excitement. 88 Minutes? It feels more like 88 hours as Pacino sleepwalks through this absurd waste of time. Even though Pacino’s character is trying to beat the clock to avoid a mysterious death sentence I guarantee you’ll be looking at your watch more often than he does during the film’s running time.
Years ago actress Jennifer Tilly told me that whenever she’s made a really bad movie it’s because she needed the money to put a new roof on her guest house or the like. With that in mind, and having just seen 88 Minutes, I wonder how the renovation on Pacino’s guest house went.
