Road trip movies can be divided between stories about existential journeys of the soul and scenic tours through picturesque landscapes. “Easy Rider” vs “Around the World in 80 Days.” You can have both. Witness “Y Tu Mama Tambien” or “Into the Wild,” as movies that make statements about transitory nature of life and love, set against a backdrop of eye-catching countryside.
Director Eleanor Coppola’s “Paris Can Wait” certainly has the scenery—you can almost smell the croissants—but forgets to give us a reason to care. As an ad for the French Riviera Tourist Bureau it works. As a big screen movie experience it’s a good ad for the French Riviera Tourist Bureau.
Diane Lane is Anne, wife of loudmouth film producer Michael (Alec Baldwin). When he interrupts their trip to Cannes to stamp out a fire on a film set in Morocco she must stay in France. Plagued by an ear infection she can’t fly but wants the peace and quiet of an old friend’s apartment in Paris. When Michael’s producing partner Jacques (Arnaud Viard), a free-spirited hedonist, offers to drive her, she accepts.
“Driving is the only way to see a country,” he says.
At first she’s impatient, wanting to get from a to b as quickly as possible but soon she’s seduced by Jacques’ joie de vivre as they make frequent detours to enjoy the country’s copious charms. With every restaurant, historical sight, glass of wine and bite of fancy food she relaxes. “Let’s pretend we don’t know where we’re going or even who we are,” he says. Soon she finds the attention Jacques showers on her is something she’s missing in her marriage.
Coppola has done something remarkable. She has found a way to make Provence and the Brittany dull. For as sensual as the food looks the film’s languid pacing does no favors for the road trip part of the story. It’s like a food network special with movie stars; a travelogue whose pretty pictures are interrupted by Jacques’ stream of consciousness history lessons. “I did not know that my tour guide,” she responds to another of his touristy tidbits. You probably won’t know much of this trivia either and by the middle of the movie you likely won’t care. Where are “The Trip’s” Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon when you need them?
Superhero geeks need not fear, this column will contain no spoilers.
In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the world’s two most famous caped crime fighters throw down, wrestling literally and figuratively to determine what kind of hero is best suited to serve the world’s needs.
The story picks up after the action in Man of Steel, which saw Superman (the square-jawed Henry Cavill) protect the planet by destroying half of Metropolis in an epic battle with the evil General Zod (Michael Shannon).
Batman (Ben Affleck), unimpressed with the collateral damage, joins the contingent of folks who see the Last Son of Krypton not as a champion but an alien threat. A battle ensues.
Who will win? Other than Kryptonite, Superman has no known weaknesses, so this would seem like a fairly one-sided fight, but Batman has skills as well, so who knows?
To get to the bottom of the matter I held a highly unscientific Facebook Batman v Superman poll to determine a winner. It drew mixed results.
“Brains over brawn,” wrote one FB friend, “Batman for the win!”
“Superman could basically fly down at super speed striking Batman before he could even sense he was coming and turn the Bat into vapour,” wrote a Superman fan.
Another wasn’t so sure. “Both seem to wear their underwear over their pants… it is a tough call.” Whatever the outcome, expect a wild showdown. But that’s on screen. It’s make-believe. What about Reel Life v Real Life?
The Caped Crusader and Supes have been duking it out for decades at the box office but Batman, specifically the Christian Bale era, comes out on top. The Dark Knight Rises and The Dark Knight KO the competition, with the 1978 Superman, the first Tim Burton Batman and the recent Man of Steel rounding out the top five.
Batman also brings in the lion’s share of the marketing money. According to comicbookmovie.com Batman sells almost two-to-one to Superman products.
That means more parents dress their kids as Batman than Superman at Halloween and that includes Ben Affleck and Christian Bale who met at a costume store last year as they shopped for Batman outfits for their kids.
What about prestige? Again Batman is victorious, with three Academy Award winners — Affleck, Bale and George Clooney — playing the Bat at one time or another.
As for the Metropolis Marvel, Oscar winners Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood both turned down the role as did best actor nominee James Caan who said, “There’s no way I’m wearing that silly suit.” Oscar winner Nic Cage wore the suit but his Superman story never made it before the cameras.
So far my Reel Life v Real Life look at Batman v Superman favours the Dark Knight, but Clark Kent’s alter ego is still a formidable foe.
Keep in mind, without Superman there may never have been a Batman.
Predating the Caped Crusader, the Man of Steel is a pioneer whose popularity helped create the superhero genre. Since then he’s been ubiquitous, inspiring an American Sign Language symbol, movie serials, TV shows, comic strips, pop songs — (Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman by The Kinks among many others — and even a Broadway musical called It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman.
Finally, as one of my Facebook friends pointed out, Superman has at least one insurmountable advantage over Batman: “If Superman loses the fight he can fly back in time to fight again.”
In 1984 raspy-throated singer Bonnie Tyler warbled, “I’m holding out for a hero.” At the time I didn’t get the song’s sexy undertones but was reminded of the tune as I watched “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.” Thirty odd years later it’s quite clear what kind of hero Bonnie Tyler was looking for—“It’s gonna take a superman to sweep me off my feet!”— but it’s less certain what kind of hero the city of Metropolis wants or needs.
Ben Affleck plays Bruce Wayne as a weathered crime fighter, someone his trusty butler Alfred (Jeremy Irons) says, “got too old to die young, and not for want of trying.” Banged up and grumpy, his fellow crime fighter Superman (Henry Cavill) is in his bad books after tearing up Metropolis and knocking over Wayne Tower, killing many of those inside, during an epic fight against villain General Zod. “Maybe it’s the Gotham City in me,” says Wayne. “We have a bad history was freaks dressed as clowns.”
He’s not the only one to have a bone to pick with The Last Son of Krypton. Distressed by the Man of Steel’s seemingly uncontrollable power Congressional Superman Committee head Senator Finch (Holly Hunter) finds a supporter for her Aliens Are Un-American campaign in a Machiavellian tech mogul named Alexander “Lex” Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg). “The world has been so caught up by what Superman can do,” Finch says, “we haven’t thought about what he should do.”
All this leads to a superhero showdown, a battle of the behemoths, cowls v capes. It’s Batman, a billionaire vengeance seeker with a bursting bank account and cool toys, v Superman, an alien with good intentions but uncontrollable powers. “It’ll be the greatest gladiator battle in the history of the world,” giggles Luthor.
Who will win? Who should win? Will it be the hero Bonnie Tyler is holding out for?
Wrapped around the central storyline is the introduction of lasso-wielding Amazonian Diana Prince a.k.a. Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Luthor’s crazy schemes and the appropriately named Doomsday, a Kryptonian killing machine.
These are jittery times and “Batman v Superman” is a jittery movie. Luthor’s xenophobic notion that Superman is a dangerous alien, an “other” who we don’t quite understand, is ripped right out of Donald Trump’s playbook. “People hate what they don’t understand,” says Martha Kent (Diane Lane).
Mix that with depictions of the death and destruction on city streets and all-too-familiar shots of buildings with smoke oozing out of them and you’re left with a movie that as feels timely and ripped-from-the-headlines as a movie about tights-wearing superheroes can be.
Other than that it is essentially a long trailer for the next DC superhero ensemble movie tagged on to a WrestleMania style smack down. Director Zack Snyder does have a flair for staging darkly dramatic scenes—Superman surrounded by Mexican Day of the Dead revellers is a stunner and the image of Supes casually kicking the indestructible Batmobile out of frame with a flick of his foot is very cool—but while he is entertaining your eye he does little to engage your brain. There is tons of psuedo-intellectual talk about gods and monsters but it’s all surface, chatter meant to make the film seem smarter than it actually is. Very little of what happens feels motivated by the characters. It mainly feels as though someone came up with a grabby title and crafted a set of circumstances to justify the name. Characters talk and interact with one another but it feels in service of the title, as if they are all simply brand ambassadors, rather than living breathing people.
The performances are, if not super, then fine. As the superheroes Affleck makes a better Bruce than Bat and Cavill is suitably steel-jawed. Eisenberg plays Lex as a twitchy Mark Zuckerberg in a performance that suits the wonky tone of the film. The women aren’t given much to do, but Adams finds Lane’s pluckiness and Gadot shows real promise as Wonder Woman. Nearly everyone gets overpowered by the CGI overkill of the final hour, but I suspect fans aren’t looking for nuance as much as they are mega action and that Snyder delivers.
“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” is bombastic. The experience of watching it is like having a drunk at a bar tell you the story after five beers. It’s loud and in-your-face with the occasional maudlin moment.
There was a time when superhero movies were fun, escapist entertainment. Those days seem to have passed. There are a total of two laughs in “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” although there are several other unintentionally laughable moments. Now our caped and cowled heroes are as dark and troubled as a reject from a Kafka novel which, in this case, makes for a rather loud but dreary night at the movies.
Actress Phyllis Smith has had many jobs in and out of show business.
She was working as a casting associate when director Ken Kwapis fell in love with the way she read opposite the auditioning actors and cast her as Dunder Mifflin saleswoman Phyllis on The Office. She appeared on the hit show for nine years and just as that series wound down she got a call from Pixar.
Inside Out producer Jonas Rivera was flicking around the stations one night when he settled on Bad Teacher, a 2011 comedy co-starring Smith and Cameron Diaz. The raunchy film couldn’t be further afield of Pixar’s family friendly movies, but Rivera liked the sound of Smith’s voice. He knew she was the actor to play one of Inside Out’s main roles, the living embodiment of an emotion in an eleven-year-old girl’s head.
“He picked up the phone and called [director] Pete Docter and said, ‘I think I’ve found our Sadness,’” recalls Smith. “I guess it was the timidity in that scene and the timbre of my voice. That’s the nice thing about working for Pixar, when you get that call they pretty much already know what they want.”
Smith joins an all-star cast — Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling and Amy Poehler as Fear, Anger, Disgust and Joy respectively — in a film that Variety called, “the greatest idea the toon studio [Pixar] has ever had.”
“Long after we’re gone people will still be watching,” Smith says. “Sort of like the Wizard of Oz.”
Smith, who is much more gregarious in person than her onscreen persona would suggest, is riding high today but it was a long circuitous route to television and film success.
“I started out as a professional dancer,” she says. “A show dancer. No stripping, but there were plumes, feathers, g-strings and all that. I was also in two ballet companies, a jazz company. That was my passion but I had an injury and knew logically it was time for me to make a switch in my career. I was getting older. So I just did what I had to do to pay my bills.”
She worked as a receptionist, an NFL cheerleader and manned the box office at a Los Angeles movie theatre. She dressed as Marilyn Monroe and played Steve Carell’s mother in a deleted scene from The 40-Year Old Virgin, but one job stands out for her.
“I worked for JC Penny in the warehouse tagging the merchandise,” she remembers. “I used to stand there and tag thousands of fishing lures or bowling balls or roller shades, which were heavy as heck to lift around. The people were great to work with but the merchandise was a little challenging.
“I used to stand there, thinking about life, wondering what it is we all have in common because we’re not all given the same opportunity. Some people’s health is impaired when they’re born while others are charmed with intelligence or looks. I thought, ‘There has to be something that we all have. A commonality.’ I figured out that it’s the ability to love. We all, in some form or another, want to love and be loved. That was my big revelation. My lightbulb moment. Also, if you’re standing on a concrete floor, make sure you’re wearing comfortable shoes or you’ll pay for it later.”
If you’ve ever looked at someone and wondered what’s going on inside their head—and who hasn’t?—the new Pixar film “Inside Out” tries to provide some answers. Loosely based on the mood swings of director Pete Docter’s twelve-year-old daughter it’s an action adventure set in the subconscious of a young girl.
The set up is simple. A Minnesotan family, Mom (voice of Diane Lane), Dad (Kyle MacLachlan) and eleven-year-old daughter Riley (Kaitlyn Dias), leave their comfortable Midwestern life behind in favour of business opportunities in San Francisco. Riley leaves behind her friends, her school and her beloved hockey team; everything she’s ever known.
Plopped down in a new city, homesick and surrounded by new people, she becomes moody. She’s completely guided by her emotions, which happen to run things from Headquarters, located deep inside her thinking box. In these San Fran days and nights Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) rule the roost, while Joy (Amy Poehler) tries to hold things together. Navigating Riley’s cerebrum, Joy journeys through long term and core memories, the Islands of Personality and Dream Productions to realize it takes a variety of emotions to make a balanced life.
I don’t know if there is such a thing as an instant classic but “Inside Out” is the best argument for creating the term I’ve come across for some time. From dazzling animation, to a script that toggles between childlike wonder and ingenious introspection “Inside Out” is glued together with a degree of emotional acumen not often found in mainstream film. In other words, it will make you laugh, cry and think.
Like the best of Pixar’s work—“Toy Story,” “Up,” “WALL-E”—“Inside Out” works on multiple levels. It is, first and foremost a family film designed to entertain everyone from the young’uns to grandma, but it’s also simultaneously a flight of fancy and a grounded story about growing up that kids (and anyone who has ever been a kid) will relate to. The movie may deal with abstract thought, but the idea that without sadness there can be no joy, and vice versa, is clear as day.
“Inside Out” is a film that will deepen with repeat viewings, which is probably a good thing as when it hits Blu Ray kids are going to want to watch it again and again, and for once, parents won’t mind joining in.
Today technology touches people’s lives in ways unimaginable even twenty years ago. Cell phones keep us connected. Blackberrys make it possible to send and receive e-mails twenty four hours a day. X Boxes increase reaction skills and you can get almost anything you want on the internet from rare books to lawnmowers to jewelry and even, as a new techno thriller called Untraceable suggests, murder.
Diane Lane stars as agent Jennifer Marsh of the FBI’s Cyber Crimes unit. She is investigating a twisted cyber terrorist who rigs up elaborate death traps involving sulfuric acid, heat lamps and nasty chemicals to off his victims and plays streaming video of their suffering on a site called www.killwithme.com. The more people visit the site the faster the victims die.
Think of it as Saw with an url or Se7en in Cyber Space. It may also make you never want to go on-line again.
Untraceable is a well enough constructed thriller. Directed by Fracture’s Gregory Hoblit (whose father was an FBI agent) it’s certainly better than many of the women-in-peril films we’ve seen lately but is sometimes done in by clichéd dialogue and implausible situations. Why, for instance, would an FBI computer expert allow her 8 year-old daughter to download games on her work computer?
More interesting than the movie’s predictable twists and turns is the suggestion that the internet is the Wild West, a place where people feel no responsibility for their actions. Untraceable points the finger of guilt directly at users who anonymously and impassively sit at home watching the snuff site, feeling no remorse, even though they are hastening the victim’s death. The suggestion is that the internet, while powerful, has created a community of voyeurs desensitized to real life who can even view murder as entertainment. The idea isn’t developed well enough, Hoblit chooses to stick with the thriller elements of the story rather than the social commentary, but for those willing to dig a bit deeper it raises good questions about how we use the internet.
Despite the missed opportunities for social comment, Untraceable is a good attempt at blending old school thriller techniques with a high tech premise.
An affair by a bored housewife has consequences for her family that she never imagined. Diane Lane is utterly convincing as Connie Sumner, a beautiful forty-something who chances upon a young sexy French man (Oliver Martinez) in a wind storm. She begins an affair with him, keeping it a secret from her husband Edward (Richard Gere). To tell you more would give away too much of the plot, but just be aware that there are dire consequences for everyone involved. Diane Lane carries this movie with a strong, appealing performance that makes me wonder why we don’t see more of her on the big screen. Adrian Lyne paces the movie nicely as it changes from an illicit romance to a thriller. Only the very end seems false. Lyne has a perfect out twenty minutes before the end, but inexplicitly chooses to drag things out.
What do Elizabeth Taylor and Diane Lane have in common? Besides earning the title World’s Most Desirable Woman (Lane, officially, in 2004, and Taylor, pretty much all the way through the ’60s and ’70s), they’ve both shared the screen with a 1,600-pound leading man.
No, it wasn’t Marlon Brando, it was a horse, of course. Both have starred in movies featuring four-legged cast mates — Taylor most famously in National Velvet, Lane in this weekend’s Secretariat, the story of racing’s most famous thoroughbred.
Secretariat may be the most storied real-life horse to be portrayed in the movies, but he’s not the only one. Remember Phar Lap? The biopic of his life and career — he was the most famous Australian animal athlete of all time, so well known that his heart, preserved at the National Museum of Australia, is their most requested exhibit — was not a hit in North America despite a 100 per cent Rotten Tomatoes rating, but was popular in Australia and New Zealand where the horse is a national treasure.
Faring better at the box office was the inspirational equine movie Seabiscuit, a Depression-era story about a charger that won races and lifted spirits. Dubbed “Three Men and a Horse” by one writer, the story of a jockey (Tobey Maguire), a businessman (Jeff Bridges) and a wise old cowboy (Chris Cooper) connected with audiences and sold a hefty 5.5 million copies on DVD.
Memorable quote? “The horse is too small, the jockey too big, the trainer too old, and I’m too dumb to know the difference.”
More fleet of foot than the racehorse sports movies is the Disney comedy The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit. Based on the novel The Year of the Horse by Eric Hatch, it mixes Mad Men-style advertising executives, a cute kid and a horse named after a stomach pill with stars Kurt Russell, Dean Jones and Dick Van Dyke Show regular, Morey Amsterdam.
Coming around the homestretch are two horse movies starring Hollywood stud Robert Redford. In The Electric Horseman, he’s a washed-up rodeo star “just walkin’” around to save funeral expenses.” He’s a bit on the decrepit side, but Redford did all of his own riding stunts in the film. Redford is back in the saddle in The Horse Whisperer, playing a horse trainer with a special touch. Memorable quote? “Truth is, I help horses with people problems.”
