This is a spacey story about medical engineer Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney). She’s an uptight novice; he’s a wisecracking vet on his final mission. It’s routine stuff until a debris storm, comprised of bits and pieces of old satellites, crashes into their space shuttle. Stone is knocked “off structure” and drifting through the inky darkness while Kowalsky uses his experience and calm to rescue her. The storm has also knocked their communications offline and they are forced to become Space MacGyvers in order to survive.
• Richard: 4/5
• Mark: 4/5
Richard: Mark, Gravity is an ambitious film. From a technical point of view it’s a wild outer space adventure, but it is grounded by Ryan Stone’s personal story and her search to find meaning in her life. It’s not an epic like 2001: A Space Odyssey or an outright horror film like Alien. There are no monsters or face hugging ETs. It’s not even a movie about life or death. Instead it is a life-affirming movie about the will to survive. What did you think?
Mark: Richard, I think the movie is about our deepest fear: the fear of being alone. Sandra Bullock is literally adrift and detached from everything and the effect is powerful. It may take place in space but reminded me of films like Castaway and 127 Hours.
RC: It does have a lot in common with those movies, plus some mind-bending special effects. The isolation of space is well portrayed, the “off structure” sequences are tense and effective and the shots of Bullock drifting in the inky darkness or floating through her space shuttle are beautiful, like interstellar ballet. As effective as the human story is in Gravity, however, I could almost imagine turning the sound down and being content to just watch the pictures. Like Laser Floyd in Space.
What did you think of Bullock?
MB: She was great; very moving. But it’s the cinematography that’s the real star. Pure visual poetry. If there were ever a movie that deserved to be seen in 3D IMAX this is it. But the music was kind of overwrought, wasn’t it?
RC: It’s strange, but I don’t really remember the music. There is no sound in space, I guess. For me the movie is all about the visual beauty. The 17-minute-long uninterrupted shot that starts the film is spectacular and overall the look will make your eyeballs dance, although I wonder though if it isn’t just a bit too in love with its technique in places.
There’s a scene where we see Bullock reflected in one of her own, gravity free, tears. It’s a great image but one that feels a bit too clever. It was one of the few times in the film that I thought I was watching a special effect.
MB: I noticed the tears too, although I was just grateful she didn’t have a runny nose.
“I think we need to make another movie about how we made this movie,” says Sandra Bullock on the filming of Gravity, her new lost-in-space film.
The Heat star plays Dr. Ryan Stone, an astronaut untethered from her space shuttle following a debris storm. Cut loose from her space partner (George Clooney) and her ride to Earth, she drifts through the inky darkness until discovering a way to survive.
“The film is about adversities, and we were going through adversities,” says director Alfonso Cuarón. “Everything was a big challenge.”
Technically, the shoot was arduous. Recreating the zero-gravity of space required Bullock to learn to move at 30 per cent of her usual speed, and to be trussed up like a marionette on a 12-wire system and other torturous devices.
“We had a consultant from Guantanamo Bay come in,” jokes Cuarón.
Emotionally the shoot also presented issues. How could Bullock portray the impassioned inner life of the character when covered with a helmet and spacesuit for much of the performance?
“I think every actor will tell you that they are always panicked about being able to convey something with the least amount of preciousness,” she says. “If all you have are your eyes or your face, just feel it truthfully. For me, I didn’t think about being behind the visor. It was still my whole body feeling it.
“But a lot of times you’d feel yourself emoting something and they’d say, ‘No, we didn’t see anything.’ I just had to trust in what (Cuarón) saw. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. I had him in my head and I just had to trust that.
“It’s a weird profession. You have to unscrew your head and screw on this other head of what this other person is going through and you go, ‘Wow, that’s not a pretty place to live all day.’”
Working with Clooney, who she’s known since before they both were famous, also provided support.
When she was having trouble with a particular scene, Clooney sent an email with a some suggestions on how to make it work. “It’s not my business,” he wrote, “so throw this in the trash or use it.”
As it turns out, his ideas were bang-on. “That’s the gift of knowing someone for so long,” she says. “He gives you gold tidbits like that. It’s sweet.”
At least that’s what the directors of “Blades of Glory,” “Land of the Lost” and “Semi-Pro” thought. Popular with audiences, he was allowed to run riot in a series of so-so films resulting in the bleak middle period of his career where manic energy replaced humor in his films.
“The Heat” suffers from the same affliction. Melissa McCarthy is funny. She knows how to deliver a line, and was one of the most memorable characters in “Bridesmaids” but between “Identity Thief” and this new film with Sandra Bullock, she is off the chain, Ferrelling her way through these comedies, but not bringing enough of the funny along with her.
“The Heat” is an odd couple, buddy cop movie set in Boston. Sarah Ashburn (Oscar winner Bullock) is an uptight, lone wolf FBI agent who has closed more cases than anyone else at the Bureau. Her colleagues don’t respect her, however, thinking that she’s arrogant and competitive.
When she is assigned to a case in Boston she bumps heads with Shannon Mullins (McCarthy), a tough-talking street cop who spends as much time berating her co-workers as she does arresting bad guys.
They form an unlikely alliance, teaming up to bring down a murderous drug dealer.
This kind of dynamic is as old as the movies, so you’d hope for the performances to breath some new life into the film’s withered lungs. Instead we get the same old from two good performers.
“Bridesmaids,” also directed by Paul Feig, worked because no matter how outrageous the situation the characters were based in some kind of reality. They may have been exaggerated in a Commedia dell’Arte kind of way, but at their core each character felt somewhat grounded and the humor in the film arose from the situations and audience’s relationship with the people on screen.
In an effort to create real characters “The Heat” adds in some family dynamics and backstory, but even then, it feels more like a plot device than an authentic attempt to deepen the onscreen dynamic.
“The Heat” has two capable stars with good chemistry—McCarthy is crass and likeable; Bullock is charming and likeable—but their broad characterizations of Ashburn and Mullins never achieve any kind of bond. Instead they push for laughs that often don’t appear.
There are laughs—less funny are some hacky jabs at the expense of an albino character— but with this pedigree there should be more. McCarthy is responsible for many of the chuckles, but the gag to giggle ratio is 5 to 1. McCarthy doesn’t do anything here we haven’t seen her do before, and her foul-mouthed, female Zach Galifianakis schtick is getting old. She has more to offer than this, and before she turns into “Land of the Lost” Ferrell I hope she tries something new.
“The Heat” is a mild summer diversion, a formulaic movie that once seen will be instantly forgotten.
No one has spent as much time on screen jumping from dimension to dimension as Keanu Reeves. All the way back to Bill and Ted’s excellent time traveling adventures through to Neo in the Matrix and Constantine his characters have tripped the light fantastic, jumping from one plane to the another. His latest film, The Lake House, is a romance so you’d think that all the time shifting mumbo jumbo would be put aside, but think again. In The Lake House Reeves and co-star Sandra Bullock have the ultimate long distance relationship.
Based on Lee Hyeon-seung’s 2000 Korean film Il Mare, The Lake House is the story of Bullock, a forlorn doctor and Reeves, a frustrated architect. In common they have a beautiful house on a quiet lake. It’s been in his family for years and she has rented it while interning at a nearby hospital. When she moves out she leaves a courtesy note in the mailbox asking the owner to forward any mail that may get misdirected to that address. An exchange of letters begins and it becomes obvious that something is off. Somehow our leads have been swept into a time tunnel—he’s living in 2004, she’s in 2006. Unlike the last time they shared a marquee—1994’s Speed—there is no madman on a speeding bus to keep them apart. This time it’s meta-physical.
Meta-physical romance isn’t a new genre—there have been others like Frequency and Somewhere in Time—but the thing all those movies have in common is the difficulty of keeping the romance passionate when the two leads are rarely in the same time zone. The Lake House makes the best use of that sense of longing for something that may, or may not be real, and tries hard to generate some heat between the Bullock and Reeves. Their physical encounters should appeal to the romantics in the audience who will be rooting for them to figure out the physics and get together.
The Lake House has a bit of a tone problem in trying to tell too many stories at once. The addition of Christopher Plummer—who might enjoy a little mustard with his hammy performance—as an uncaring father gets in the way of the magical romance. On the plus side the movie has a slow, deliberate style and despite some editing that seems like it was borrowed from a 1980s wedding video, unfolds into a passionate romance.
Murder by Numbers comes off as a re-imagination of the Leopold and Leob story, crossbred with an episode of Murder She Wrote. Sandra Bullock is Cassie Mayweather, a veteran detective paired with Sam (Ben Chaplin) an inexperienced by-the-book cop to investigate the death of a middle aged woman whose mutilated corpse was found in the woods. The cops have little in common, so, of course, they fall into bed from time to time, only to bicker and fight during working hours. So far we’ve seen all this before. The thing that sets this apart from the run-of-the-mill murder mystery is the attention to the police procedural details, and the performances of Ryan Gostling and Michael Pitt as the two intellectual teenaged killers. Gostling’s Richard is a master manipulator, while Pitt’s Justin is the brains of the duo. Like the Leopold and Leob (the true-life inspiration for the Hitchcock movie Rope) the pair concoct the perfect crime, randomly killing someone without leaving any clues behind. Gostling is a charismatic actor who is able to ride the fine line between menacing and sexy, while Pitt (best known as Tommy Gnosis Hedwig and the Angry Inch) has the sensitive tortured-soul act down to a science. Directed by the steady hand of Barbet Schroeder, Murder by Numbers is a morality play about how crime doesn’t pay, no matter how smart you think you are.
If there is one movie this year that should be a guaranteed tearjerker, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” should be it. It has all the elements to make eyes water—a trailer that hits all the right emotional notes, a sad-eyed child protagonist, a dead father and to top it all off, 9/11. Whether the water works are turned on or off will likely only depend on whether you are made of stone or not.
Based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, the movie explores the horror of 9/11 through the eyes of a gifted ten-year-old named Oskar (Thomas Horn). His father (Tom Hanks) was killed in the attack, leaving behind Oskar, his mother (Sandra Bullock) and grandmother (Zoe Caldwell) who lives in the brownstone next door. A year after the “worst day” Oskar finds a blue vase containing an envelope simply marked “Black” and a key. Thinking the key must unlock something special—a message from his father perhaps—he embarks on a well organized, if somewhat daunting mission to find out what the key opens.
“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is a 9/11 movie that isn’t about ideology but the human cost of ideology. There’s no talk of Osama Bin laden or Al Quaida, instead it is about a young boy’s search to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense. His search isn’t for answers as to why 9/11 happened, but rather to keep a connection to his father alive.
Horn does much of the heavy lifting here, carrying the movie while veterans Hanks, Bullock and Max Von Sydow watch from afar. In most scenes he is supremely effective, his doe eyes conveying the pain, hurt and confusion that comes along with great loss.
Only occasionally does he fall into precious kid actor territory. It’s a tough character, an old-beyond-his-years boy, who may or may not have Asperger’s Syndrome. He’s smart but awkward and Horn usually finds the balance, but every now and again the character becomes all quirk. Are we meant to believe Oskar would have a WWII gas mask on him in preparation for his first subway ride? In moments like that we’re taken out of the story as Oskar becomes a more a vessel for some of director’s Stephen Daltry’s quirky character ideas.
His strongest scenes are the most emotional. A long conversation late in the movie with his mom is a show-stopper. His reaction when he figures out why his father has left so many phone messages on 9/11 is heartfelt and tragic. Like asking to kiss the first woman he goes to see on his journey. The movie gets it right in those tender moments.
Hanks is barely in the movie, seemingly cast because of the goodwill he naturally inspires in audiences. The film needs a lovable dad who is largely absent through the story and Hanks fits the bill.
Bullock is given more to do and her every-woman appeal brings great empathy to the mother’s character. Von Sydow is brilliant in a character whose presence is completely unnecessary to the success of the film. He doesn’t forward the action or add much overall, but he’s such a joy to watch I’m really glad he’s there.
On a tear-jerker scale of one to ten this young boy’s discovery that his connection with his dead father will be a metaphysical one rather than a physical one, is a seven. A bit over long, with a drawn out ending, but a few moments guaranteed to trigger the water works.
The idea behind The Proposal is nothing special. Marriages of convenience for immigration papers have been the subject of many movies, including (but not limited to) the aptly named Green Card starring Gérard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell, the Canadian illegal alien thriller Honeymoon and A Paper Wedding which sees Geneviève Bujold marry a Chilean man so he can stay in the country. So without a fresh premise what can a movie like The Proposal offer? How about likeable, charismatic stars? Sometimes that’s enough.
Sandra Bullock is Margaret, a high-powered book editor, about to be deported back to her native Canada (“It’s not like I’m an immigrant,” she says, “I’m from Canada!”). She’s the kind of Devil Wears Prada boss who inspires fear and nasty instant messages like “The witch is on her broom” among her staff. In a bid to stay in the U.S. and hang on to her high paying gig—that’s how we know this is a work of fiction; she’s a wealthy book editor, which is like being a rich banjo player— the quick-thinking editor convinces her beleaguered assistant Andrew (Ryan Reynolds, who says he would often “dream of her getting hit by cabs”) to marry her. He says yes, but with a few conditions including meeting his salt-of-the-earth family (Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. Nelson, Betty White) in small town Alaska. As if meeting the family wasn’t enough, a curious immigration official complicates their lives as well.
The Proposal is primarily a rom com with side orders of the old “fish out of water” routine, a bit of slapstick and topped with some heartfelt family values for good measure. So what makes it different from, say, New In Town, the similar but unforgettably terrible Renee Zellweger film from earlier this year?
Two words, Bullock and Reynolds. It’s quite simple; they are likeable actors the audience wants the best for. She’s a rom com vet who brings her considerable charisma to a predictable and occasionally thinly written script; he’s a hunk who can do romance and do funny. Together they elevate a paint-by-numbers story, if not to the level of great art, than at least to the level of those earnest big eyed paintings.
It’s a rom com that focuses on the rom rather than the com. The Proposal does have laughs sprinkled throughout—many of which come from Betty White who seems to be channeling her inner crazy Cloris Leachman here—but overall it can best be described as amiable rather than laugh out loud.
The Proposal doesn’t have the humor of When Harry Met Sally, the heart of Notting Hill or the farce of While You Were Sleeping but the leads have enough charm to smooth out all the film’s rough edges.
Director Alfonso Cuarón described the process of making Gravity as “painful and gruesome” for his star Sandra Bullock.
“Bodily fluids come to mind,” says Bullock. “There was blood. Blisters.”
The Oscar winner plays Dr. Ryan Stone, an astronaut untethered from her space shuttle following a debris storm. Cut adrift from her ride back to earth and her space partner (George Clooney) she floats through the inky darkness until she discovers the will and a way to survive.
Initially the filmmakers considered using the “vomit comet”—a plane that allows you to achieve weightlessness—to create the zero gravity of space. When that idea was rejected new technology was built to facilitate the film’s thrilling and chilling outer space scenes.
“There were contraptions that took twenty minutes to get into,” says Bullock. “that harnessed you and locked you into something that you had no control over once it started.”
She describes long takes in really uncomfortable positions strung up like a marionette on a twelve-wire system, an office chair on a hydraulic lift, cameras that flew toward her and the frustration of being “attached to something and not being able to use your body the way you’re used to.”
“It was something completely new,” she says. “It was more like being part of Cirque du Soleil than what we had been used to as actors.”
The technical issues of the job were physically challenging—“I love it,” she says, “but I didn’t love it while I was doing it.”— but she adds that the shoot, emotionally, was “the Wild West.”
“Most of it was frustration and trying not to take your anger out on Alfonso. I had no one else listening to me but him so he got the brunt of it. But it was my frustration with myself because I didn’t have all the tools I was used to to get me where I wanted to go.”
“I missed being in the sun. I missed being with my son. I missed being with people and having communication. It was lonely. Luckily I got to get out of it at the end of the day and appreciate the sunshine or my boy.”
In the end the arduous shoot was worth it. There’s Oscar buzz surrounding Bullock’s performance and she even got the thumbs up from real life spaceman Chris Hadfield
“Sandra Bullock was great,” he tweeted. “I’d fly with her.”
The Bechdel gender bias Test was created in the mid-eighties by cartoonist Alison Bechdel. It’s a simple analysis that gives movies a pass or fail based on three simple criteria:
1.) It has to have at least two women in it, 2.) who talk to each other, 3.) about something besides a man.
This weekend The Heat will submit itself up to the Bechdel Test and has a good chance of getting the seal of approval.
Starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy as an uptight FBI agent paired with a loose cannon Boston cop to hunt down a drug lord, the movie is a rarity—a female buddy cop movie.
Not all of he movies on Bechdel’s list are winners—Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula, anyone?—but the test isn’t an indicator of quality, just gender bias.
For example, the buddy picture Beaches, starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey as lifelong friends has the Bechdel seal of approval but is hopelessly melodramatic. The story of the bond between singer “C.C.” and wealthy lawyer Hillary is a weepie (the Wind Beneath Your Wings moment is a five Kleenex scene) that audiences responded to because of the tender relationship between the two women.
Woody Allen’s most successful movies have frequently had women’s names in their titles and while Vicky Christina Barcelona isn’t a classic like Hannah and Her Sisters and Annie Hall it really good and earned a thumbs up from Bechdel.
The movie begins with two girlfriends, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), on summer vacation in Spain. They’re best of friends but have very different outlooks on life. Vicky is a straight-laced New Yorker, Cristina is a sexually audacious free spirit, still trying to find herself. The young Americans meet an intriguing painter (Javier Bardem) who woos them both as he tries to deal with his residual feelings for his passionate but slightly loopy ex-wife (Penelope Cruz).
Finally, Whip It, first time director Drew Barrymore’s movie about female roller derby, also gets a passing grade on Bechdel’s test. Ellen Page plays an unhappy teenager from small town Texas who stumbles across a flyer for a female Roller Derby league and sees a way out of her mundane life. Turns out she has a natural derby demon ability and soon learns that just because she’s found a new family at the roller rink she can’t throw her old family away.
