During the most recent Oscars Jon Stewart’s joked, “Two of the movies nominated for this year’s Best Picture are about journalists in a relentless pursuit of the truth… and of course they’re both period pieces.” The films he was referring to were Capote and Good Night, and Good Luck, the latter of which is out on DVD this week in a beautiful black and white transfer.
The story of famed television journalist Edward R. Murrow and his on-air battle with Communist baiting Senator Joe McCarthy which led to McCarthy’s downfall isn’t a biography of either man but a narrowly focused story about the power of television of do good and the rights of the state verses person freedom. Shot through a haze of cigarette smoke this quietly affecting story feels so intimate because of co-writer and director George Clooney’s use of extreme close-ups and the choice to set 99 percent of the film in the smoke clouded CBS television studios in New York. This intimacy slowly turns to paranoia as the film takes on a claustrophobic feel that heightens the paranoia felt by Murrow who feels he is not being supported by the upper CBS brass and McCarthy who sees Communists around every corner.
This fifty-year old story feels amazingly fresh and relevant for today particularly in regard to its views on civil liberties and the existence of an acute socio-political chasm in the United States. Clooney, however, famous for his liberal politics, allows his characters to do the talking, but doesn’t preach. When Murrow says “We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason,” it is completely organic to the story and not necessarily a comment on more recent concerns like the Patriot Act. Clooney does what great directors do, he simply tells the story in a very straightforward way and allows the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions.
Good Night, and Good Luck is good entertainment, well acted by David Strathairn and a solid ensemble cast, but, more importantly is also a cautionary tale. Clooney is subtly reminding us that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, or as Bob Marley said, “if you don’t know your past, you don’t know your future.”
Glory Road: 3 Stars. There are certain clichés that people have come to expect from sports movies; the tense final game which usually goes into overtime and the winner and loser are separated by only one or two points; a gruff but caring coach; the misfit team members. Glory Road features all those and more. Very loosely based on the true story of Texas Western coach Don Haskins, who in 1966, led the first all African-American starting line-up for a college basketball team to an NCAA national championship. It’s a good story and an interesting way to present a story about race relations in 1960s America, but filmmaker James Gartner, under the watchful eye of producer Jerry Bruckheimer, adds too much material to this paint-by-numbers script that is geared to manipulate the audience into feeling inspired. That being said, the basketball sequences are good, and Desperate Housewives fans will get a chance to see Mehcad Brooks in a solid supporting role.
Iron Man, the heaviest of the heavy metal Marvel superheroes, undergoes a transformation in the latest installment of the popular franchise. He’s less self-assured, anxiety ridden, but at least he still looks good in a suit—the giant iron suit that turns him from mortal to immortal hero.
In this installment the sins of Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr) past come back to haunt him. In a flashback to 1999 we meet a biochemist (Rebecca Hall) turned Stark one-night-stand and a meek scientist (Guy Pearce) who both feel the sting of the billionaire arms designer’s arrogance. Cut to years later. Stark is troubled by the recent battle in New York (see “The Avengers” movie) and is having trouble sleeping.
Meanwhile an Osama bin Laden wannabe named The Mandarin (Sir Ben Kingsley) is terrorizing the planet, promising a violent finale on Christmas Day. With just days to go the situation becomes personal for Stark when his girlfriend, Pepper (Gwenyth Paltrow), and longtime bodyguard Happy (Jon Favreau) are endangered by the madman.
This is a darker, talkier “Iron Man” than we’ve seen before. The thing that was so appealing in the first movie—RDJs quick wit and way with a line—had, over the course of a disappointing second movie, become tired and predictable, so writer-director Shane Black modified Stark’s behavior, stripping away some of (but not all) of Stark’s arrogance in favor of a dark character study that sees him on the verge of a breakdown.
“Iron Man 3” is still a huge action movie but between the big blow ‘em up scenes there’s more sturm and drang than usual for a big summer blockbuster. Downey handles Stark’s ups and downs well enough, although you get the feeling that the limitations of the form—tentpole summer flick—prevent him from pushing the envelope performance wise into as dark a place as he might have liked. Really exploring Stark’s turmoil might not sell as many tickets as Marvel needs to break even, but it would have been interesting to see Downey stretch his wings a bit more.
Stark is a troubled guy. Always has been in the comics, but he’s a troubled guy with a cool suit and that’s why we pay to see the “Iron Man” movies. So it’s a little hard to understand why he’s not in the suit more of the time. Imagine a Hulk movie where Bruce Banner doesn’t get angry and you get the idea. “Iron Man 1 & 2” took every opportunity to put Stark in the iron suit, while this movie takes every opportunity to take him out of the suit.
The hodge podge of hot button topics—terrorism, computer hacking, disabled war vets, ecological issues and even a “Downton Abbey” gag—push the story forward, but the core of the thing that makes these movies fun seems to have been pushed to the background.
Of course there are iron suits in the film, lots of them, they just don’t seem to fit as well as they once did.
When we last saw Iron Man he had a perfectly functioning palladium mechanical heart and a best friend who looked a lot like Terrence Howard. How times have changed. In “Iron Man 2” a mysterious malady is threatening to sideline his success and Jim Rhodes, his BFF, now looks like Don Cheadle.
In the time since the previous “Iron Man” movie, (two years in real time, six months in the story) oddball weapons inventor Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) has become a national hero. He’s one part Bono, two parts George Patton. His technologies, including the famous heavy metal suit, are keeping America safe, but not everyone are fans. The US Senate—in particular Senator Stern (Garry Shandling)—sees the egomaniacal inventor as a threat and wants him to hand over his secrets. Then there is his rival, Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell, the best actor out there who isn’t a major movie star), an unctuous arms dealer working for the government. He can best be described as a Stark wannabe whose technology is nowhere near as advanced as Stark’s. Even worse is Ivan Vanko aka Whiplash (Mickey Rourke), a Russia engineer whose father used to work with Stark’s old man. The weathered looking Vanko Jr. has built his own suit, this one equipped with whip-like attachments that harness electrical energy. As if that weren’t enough bad guys, even Bill O’Reilly makes a cameo.
Worst of all, though, Stark’s own technology may be working against him. It appears he is slowly being poisoned by the palladium that powers the miniature arc reactor in his chest.
On the plus side there’s loyal old Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) Stark’s Louboutin-sporting confidant who is now CEO of Stark Industries and Natalie Rushman (Scarlett Johansson) Stark’s new assistant. She’s also a S.H.I.E.L.D. (if you sat through the credits of the first film you’ll remember S.H.I.E.L.D. as the fictional espionage and law-enforcement agency run by Nick Fury, played by Samuel L. Jackson) undercover agent named Black Widow who wears tight leather outfits and shows an until now unseen capacity for gymnastics.
There’s more plot and characters, but I’m almost out of space and haven’t gotten to the review yet and that is part of the problem with the movie. The first “Iron Man” was as clean and concise as a huge summer comic book blockbuster can be—solid characters, not too many of them, and a clear cut story. This time around the director Jon Favreau has thrown simplicity out the window, opting instead for Michael Bay style bombast. Where the first “Iron Man” was an idiosyncratic character study with cool action sprinkled throughout, the new one reverses that formula, relying on action to carry the day.
The characters are still fairly strong, but Downey’s charm seems to have faded a bit since he last wore the iron suit. Maybe we got to know him too well two years ago, but here the character doesn’t have the same kind of fresh appeal he had the first time around.
Perhaps it’s because the overall tone of the film is darker, but “Iron Man 2” isn’t as much fun as the original. It should please comic fans familiar with the storyline and characters, and it certainly has its moments—things go boom and Rourke is a convincing, if underused villain—but like the “Spider Man” movies, which got bigger, but not necessarily better as time went on, “Iron Man 2” feels a bit leaden. Leaden or not, though, this will be the biggest hit this summer NOT in 3D.
In the Marvel universe Iron Man never achieved the super nova status of his comic book colleagues Spider-Man, the X-Men or the Hulk. He’s Freddie and the Dreamers, the rest are The Beatles. Expect that to change with the release of a big budget, big screen adaptation of the Iron Man’s origins starring Robert Downey Jr..
When the film begins eccentric, rich inventor Tony Stark (Downey Jr.)—the character was based on Howard Hughes, and the movie was actually shot in the same building where Hughes built the world’s largest airplane, The Spruce Goose—is in Afghanistan. After inheriting a defense company from his father, he has become mega-wealthy selling innovative weapons to the US military. He’s in the Middle East to demo his newly designed missile, The Jericho, for the Air Force. All goes well until the unit guarding him is overcome by the Ten Rings, a terrorist group who kidnap Stark—they call him “the most famous mass murderer in all of America”—after he is wounded with shrapnel from one of his own Stark Industries bombs.
Hidden in a mountain cave his captors demand he recreate his latest and deadliest missile. Instead, with the help of another hostage (Shaun Toub) he builds an iron suit of armor and makes a spectacular escape. Once stateside he has a crisis of conscience and vows to use his gifts for the betterment of man, not its destruction. He wants to offer the world more than “making things blow up.”
His newly found humanistic concerns don’t jive with his board of directors and shareholders, however, and after he perfects his high tech Iron Man suit he must deal with the backlash from within his own company and a dangerous foe in the form of Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), his former second-in-command.
There are a couple of things that set Iron Man apart from the run-of-the-mill superhero movie. The big mistake often made by filmmakers when adapting comic books for the screen is to assume that superhero fans only want action, fight scenes and cool costumes. It’s true that these things are key components to any superhero story, but all the truly great comic book movies are character driven and the action must stem from the characters. Sam Raimi understood that when making Spider-Man. Tim Burton knew it when he made Batman and so does Iron Man director Jon Favreau.
He wisely chose to make character development his main focus. As a result the action scenes fit seamlessly into the story and don’t feel randomly inserted to help keep the film’s pace up or simply entertain the eye with explosions and bombast.
Superhero origin stories are difficult. There has to be a lot of information regarding how and why the character morphed into a superhero, but Favreau painlessly manages to bring the back story to the fore with clever use of dialogue and situations that don’t feel like exposition. I think Iron Man comic book fans will be satisfied and newcomers to the story will have no problem catching up.
At the forefront though, is a commanding and totally entertaining performance from Robert Downey Jr., who dominates every scene he appears in. His Tony Stark is charismatic, funny and smart—this tin man has a brain and a sense of humor—but best of all he plays off his own bad-boy reputation. Stark is a charming rogue, quick with a line—he’s Irony Man!—but there is always a hint of a deeper, darker personality lurking under his middle-aged good looks. This is the film that finally proves what so many have known for so long. RDJr can carry a big budget movie all on his own.
He does, however, get ample help from a strong supporting cast including Gwyneth Paltrow as Stark’s Girl Friday Pepper Potts—she and Downey have chemistry to burn—Jeff Bridges in a rare bad guy role as the ruthlessly evil corporate executive Obadiah Stane and Trevor Howard as military liaison Jim Rhodes. Each elevate comic book archetypes with skillful performances that round out the supporting characters.
I could have done without Ramin Djawadi’s intrusive and yet somehow dull score, but that’s a small quibble when the rest of the package is so enjoyable.
There’s lots of bang—or should that be bang bang—for your buck in the new DVD release of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the neo-noir starring Robert Downey Jr and Val Kilmer.
Writer director Shane Black was a 1980s wunderkind who penned the script to Lethal Weapon when he was just 22 years old. He continued to script big action movies into the 90s before dropping out of the business, no doubt filled with self-loathing for having written Last Action Hero and The Long Kiss Goodnight. The time away appears to have been a good idea as his script for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang contains all the trademarks that elevated his best work—sharp, funny dialogue, well drawn characters and crazy Pulp Fictionesque violence—with none of the bad—turgid pacing and stupid plots.
As a two-bit east coast burglar who finds himself in the middle of Hollywood life-and-death intrigue Robert Downey Jr is at his madcap best, while Val Kilmer as a private eye named Gay Parry whose cell phone ring tone is I Will Survive, is dangerous and funny. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has a plot hat may leave you scratching your head, but the black humor and the cool lead performances more than compensate.
Any movie that borrows its title from a book of film essays by legendary movie critic Pauline Kael better be good, and this one is.
Robert Downey Jr.’s entrance in the opening minute of “Sherlock Holmes”—he leaps off a buttress, effortlessly rolls down a set of stairs stopping just in time for the camera to catch his close-up—suggests that this isn’t your father’s—or your grandfather’s or mom’s or anybody else’s—Sherlock Holmes. The ensuing kung fu battle and satanic ritual confirms it.
Set in 1891 the story centers on Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law), doctor, war veteran and best friend, getting to the bottom of a case involving the supernatural, an ex-flame (Rachel McAdams) of the great detective, The House of Lords and deadly cult leader named Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong). It plays like Holmes meets “The DaVinci Code.”
With “Sherlock Holmes” director Guy Ritchie has created the darkest movie of the Christmas season. Mimicking the depressing fog and industrial smoke that colored Victorian London, he’s made a drab and dreary looking movie that never met a shade of gray it didn’t like. That would be fine if the story or the performances added some color to the film, but unfortunately for Holmes (and for the audience) not only is “Sherlock Holmes’s” color palate a bit monochromatic but the whole film is a little on the dull side.
The story is suitably convoluted for a Holmes story, there is plenty of intrigue, much deducing and loads of clues, trouble is, nothing much happens. The game may be a-foot but it feels more like a loose collection of action sequences bound together by some witty “Odd Couple” style banter between the leads and Downey’s quirky performance.
Downey plays Holmes like a cross between Robert Langdon and a Victorian street urchin. Apparently being brilliant means you don’t have to wash. Or tuck your shirt in. Or shave or clean your fingernails. Downey throws out the image of the debonair Basil Rathbone Holmes in a deerstalker hat for something much more bohemian. In fact, it’s closer to the description of the detective offered up in Conan Doyle’s books and short stories. Downey plays the role with suitable gusto (and acceptable English accent), but is let down by a script that is a non-starter.
Downey has good chemistry with Jude Law but the same can’t be said for Rachel McAdams as his love interest. Guy Ritchie isn’t known for his way with female characters and “Sherlock Holmes” and she suffers for it. The movie wastes McAdams in a damsel in distress role that requires her to do little other than leer in Holmes’s general direction. She’s more a plot point than a character and it’s a shame to see McAdams wasted like that. She gets lost in the über-maleness of it all.
“Sherlock Holmes” gets the spirit of Holmes but doesn’t deliver the goods. Big budget action scenes are sprinkled throughout, but even the huge set pieces like the fight in the shipyard—which must have cost a fortune—contains no drama and the only real mystery here is how Guy Ritchie managed to take good elements—like Robert Downey Jr and Sherlock Holmes, one of the most popular characters of the last one hundred years—and make such a lackluster movie.
The Soloist is the great award hope from last year that never happened. Originally slated to open in late November, just in time for Academy Award balloteering, the film sounds like sure fire Oscar bait—between them co-stars Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr have two nominations and one Best Actor win and director Joe Wright a BAFTA contender—but at the last minute the movie was shuffled to an April release, and very likely, out of Oscar consideration.
The film is based on the true story of Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a musical prodigy who developed schizophrenia during his second year at Juilliard School, and wound up living on the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Robert Downey Jr. plays Steve Lopez, a disenchanted Los Angeles Times columnist who discovers Ayers and bases a series of columns on Ayers and his life. Over time they form a friendship based on the liberating power of music.
On paper this sounds like a sure Oscar bet. The Academy loves redemption stories, bio pics and big names in dramas, but, as any bookie can tell you, there’s no such thing as a sure bet. The Soloist is a non-traditional biography that suffers from Wright’s focus on style over story.
It’s a great looking film. Wright loads the screen with artful pictures and stylish flourishes such as a symphony of color that fills the screen when Nathaniel listens to a live symphony orchestra, but it often feels like more thought was given to the movie’s technique than to the story. Wright is clearly in love with the film’s style, I just wish he had loved the characters as much.
Although it’s based on a complex and interesting relationship between these two very different men, the movie feels padded. It’s not trite, it just doesn’t get very far past the main thrust that music has the power to transform everyone, no matter what your station in life. It is one idea stretched to 105 minutes.
That’s not to say it doesn’t have some nice, interesting moments. There’s good interplay between Downey Jr and Catherine Keener as his ex-wife and current boss and Foxx has thrown vanity out the window in an unpredictable performance that veers between sweet and menacing. It’s a brave, but not completely successful performance. Ditto Downey Jr. Both actors are riding the razor’s edge of emotion here, and both occasionally go overboard, as if they are fighting to be noticed amid the movie’s overwhelming stylistic affectations.
The Soloist is an art film disguised as an uplifting drama, and is only partially successful on both counts.
If the new Zach Galifianakis / Robert Downey Jr. comedy was a mathematical equation it might look something like this: “Trains, Planes and Automobiles” x “The Hangover” ^4√( “The Odd Couple” + “Thelma and Louise”) = “Due Date.” In other words it’s a gross out road trip story (masturbating dogs!) about two mismatched people with a bit of action.
Downey and Galifianakis are Peter and Ethan, the odd couple who, through circumstance, find themselves placed on a no fly list after an incident at the Atlanta airport. To make matters worse, Peter needs to be in LA in three days to attend the birth of his first child and Ethan, a wannabe actor has a meeting with an agent. Peter reluctantly agrees to share a ride with Ethan and by the time they arrive in Los Angeles they have been arrested, drank coffee made of human ashes and come close to dying.
“Due Date” is the kind of movie where you lean over to the person next to you and VERY quietly whisper, “That was funny,” more often than you will actually laugh out loud. The movie is amusing, often gross and rather dark, but it doesn’t have the deep belly laughs of Galifianakis and director Todd Phillips’s last film “The Hangover.” Its ninety minutes of strange non sequitors, socially awkward behavior and bickering. In other words it’s a lot like a 2010 version of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” but we live in a more cynical and mean spirited time and the movie reflects that.
“Due Date” is missing the one element that made “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” so appealing and that’s sweetness. John Candy’s character—reflected here through a fun house mirror by Galifianakis—was annoying as all get out but underneath the annoying questions, bumbling and boorish behavior was an undeniable sweetness which Phillips has surgically removed from almost every scene of “Due Date.” The characters have an edgy kind of chemistry, but charming they are not.
Ethan is a borderline head case and Peter has rage issues. That’s a combo that’s been played for laughs since the days of the Three Stooges and Laurel and Hardy but the thing that’s missing is amiability.
Not that “Due Date” isn’t funny. It is, it just isn’t very likeable.
Robert Downey Jr. knows how to work a room. I notice this while at the swank-a-delic Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills for a press conference to celebrate the release of Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows.
It’s a packed panel, including co-stars Noomi Rapace (the original Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) and Jared Harris, mega producer Joel Silver and Downey’s business and life partner Susan. Between them there are untold Oscar nominations and hundreds of millions in box office returns, but that doesn’t mean squat when Downey enters and takes centre stage.
All eyes — and 90 per cent of the questions — go to him. Midway he feigns embarrassment at the attention and says, “Why doesn’t someone ask Joel Silver a question?”
Why? Because Downey is the most quotable, funny and memorable person in the room, that’s why.
Here’s a sample of what he had to say.
On making sequels:
“There should be a whole online support team for anyone who has ever been involved in making a second part to a first that worked. There is so much to learn. The greatest disguise was us disguising ourselves as consummate by-the-numbers professionals when, in fact, we’re all incredibly eccentric.”
When asked to talk about performing Sherlock Holmes’s drag scenes:
“I guess we’re not talking about this as one of the most important films of the year. I put on some makeup. How are we going to get nominated with these kinds of questions?”
On improving on set:
“I think the goal is to make a well-written scene seem improvised, or to find things in the room you couldn’t have known until you get in the real situation and just try and improve things as you go along.”
On why his co-star was absent:
“Jude (Law) would have been here, by the by, but his son had a soccer game.”
On keeping the set “green”:
“I just remember that every animal that was harmed was promptly taxidermied and sent as a gift to one of the many ecological companies who have these huge concerns that I validate.”
On working with Jude Law and director Guy Ritchie:
“Jude and I are pretty close, but Guy and I are practically brothers. There have been times I have wanted to lob off his head with a machete.”
On collaborating with his director and fellow actors:
“It was a democracy in the truest and most frustrating and most rewarding sense of the word.”
