Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on October 15th, 2013
Leland Orser is an actor. You've seen his face a lot over the years playing deranged or demented or despondent characters. He is married to Jeanne Tripplehorn, who is probably better known from the HBO series Big Love and movies like Basic Instinct and Waterworld. Orser decided to write and direct his first movie and have his wife play his wife in the movie. It is an intense character study that includes other top actors like Laura Linney, Eliot Gould, Kyle Chandler, Jason Ritter and Julie White. Everyone in the movie seems to be in support of Jeanne Tripplehorn, who has been given quite a character to play.
Tripplehorn plays someone who seems to be falling apart. The movie starts with her husband on top of her while she stares distractedly out the window. Their relationship seems to become even more disjointed as the day begins. They both begin to completely unravel. It takes a while to get an idea what might be going on. But this movie is in no hurry to clear things up for the viewer.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on October 15th, 2013
Dave Foley is something of a celebrity, not to overstate the fact. He starred in a famous skit comedy show (Kids in the Hall) and sitcom (News Radio). He's not like super-huge famous, but he has a strong cult following. He also looks like the sweetest and least objectionable person in the world. I say he looks like that. He may be the sweetest person in the world, but he is definitely not the least objectionable person in the world. His standup DVD clearly tries to dispel the notion that he doesn't hold a lot of objectionable views. This DVD is definitely not for everyone. If you’re a very religious and conservative person, this DVD is not for you.
Dave starts of by saying he is not gay. He feels he has to say this, but apparently a lot of people think he is gay, probably because he wore a lot of dresses on Kids in the Hall and was very good at playing women. This leads him into covering sexuality in great detail and in all its awkward glory. He doesn't shy away from covering many very intimate moments from his own life. So let's just say lots of bad words are used. He may be sweet, but he's pretty raunchy.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on October 8th, 2013
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Posted in: The Reel World by Archive Authors on September 17th, 2013
I always have a problem when a comedy involves a lot of people getting killed, but there are always exceptions. Mob comedies are rarely completely satisfying, but there is one exception, and that is The Freshman with Marlon Brando and Matthew Broderick, which was completely inspired and hilarious, mostly because it defied expectations at nearly every turn. The new mob comedy, The Family, stars Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, who have both made OK mob comedies before, Analyze This and Married to the Mob respectively. Almost any other mob comedy you can mention falls flat (including Analyze That).
Two of the interesting distinctions are the inclusion of Martin Scorsese as executive producer and Luc Besson as the writer/ director. Executive producers generally don't do much except contribute early on; there are some very obvious moments that show Scorsese's influence, but this more Besson's show.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on September 10th, 2013
Earlier this year, I reviewed Enlightened Season One and said about Laura Dern's character that she “has so many outrageous outbursts of issues great and small that most people have dismissed her as crazy and just wish she would go away.” Now we are back with Season Two, and all of the potential craziness of Season One is ready to spill and overflow in an uncontrollable fashion. Originally conceived with a three-season arc, it is my sad duty to report that it is unlikely we will ever see the promised Season Three. Many shows have met an untimely demise like (the not so aptly titled) Luck, John from Cincinnati, Carnivale and The Big C. The Big C was given a very generous opportunity to come back with an abbreviated four-episode fourth season to conclude its heroine's story. I wish the same could be said of Enlightened. Enlightened was not renewed for a third season despite almost unanimous pleading from the nation's critics. It is always disappointing when a great series with compelling characters doesn't get to complete telling the story to the end. Two great series, Dexter and Breaking Bad, are in the middle of their final episodes, and nothing is more satisfying.
Enlightened Season One was about recovery. Season Two seems to be about revenge. Laura Dern's character, Amy, seems to be trying to sort through many confusing and unsettled feelings. Amy decides to focus on bringing down the company she works for. She has good reasons, but which are the real reasons? Her company is corrupt and dangerous, but is she merely motivated by petty feelings of rejection? Amy is a constantly shifting mass of conflicting emotions, good intentions, and bad impulses.
Posted in: The Reel World by Archive Authors on September 9th, 2013
Vin Diesel. He is a man. A character who doesn't seem real. He is an actor who seems like an artificial creation. He seems to be all brawn and Cro-Magnon heft with just a tiny spark of sensitivity and some sense of inherent intelligence. It turns out Diesel started out making small independent films like Multi-Facial and Strays which led to Hollywood calling for the films Saving Private Ryan and The Iron Giant,which then led to Pitch Black and a TV movie called The Chronicles of Riddick: Into Pitch Black with Diesel playing the Riddick character. Diesel went on to be identified with two other characters, Dominic Toretto (Fast and Furious) and Xander Cage (XXX) but soon bridled at being typecast, and then his career stalled. The sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick (not to be confused with the previously mentioned TV movie), had a much bigger budget with too many new plot lines, but, more importantly, too much pretension. But Diesel loved the Riddick character and got to buy the rights in exchange for a cameo in Fast and Furious 3: Tokyo Drift.
Riddick definitely drops the pretension of the second Riddick film, and the new film more closely resembles Pitch Black. The difference is that he winds up on a totally different planet. Now Riddick is a Furyan, so he wanted to go back home, but no such luck. He has to make do with a barren, unfamiliar and inhospitable world. He also has to self-heal a broken leg. No big deal.
Posted in: The Reel World by Archive Authors on September 2nd, 2013
What makes a bad movie? What makes a good movie? The standards are getting lost in murky waters, because many of the critics have no interest in film history and the clear record of what is great and what is garbage. That goes for many filmmakers too. Their standards are what works in the last 12 months and how to try out the latest technology. Unfortunately they often forget the tried and true basics like good writing and good acting.
Getaway is getting dumped on by the critics, but is it really fair? I don't think so.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by Archive Authors on September 2nd, 2013
The Bronte Sisters is a very historical film in many ways. It is the most accurate film we have depicting the real lives of some very famous writers. It is also an old film from 1979 being reissued that stars three great actresses who are very well known now. It has an excellent commentary that addresses both of these points by film scholar Wade Major and Bronte scholar Sue Lonoff de Cuevas done in 2013. It also includes a 2012 Bronte documentary by Dominique Maillet called the Ghosts of Hapworth. The Bronte Sisters was directed by respected French director, Andre Techine'.
That the French seem to love these British sisters only shows the universal appeal their stories had. No one can deny that Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are two of the best known stories in literature. Both have been made into films numerous times. I just recently reviewed a new version of Wuthering Heights just a few months ago which prompted me to watch an old British miniseries called The Brontes of Hapworth. There was even an old Hollywood movie called Devotion that took many liberties with the truth. The three Bronte sisters share a kinship with another beloved writer, Jane Austen. Their stories are about intelligent women who tried to find a place in a society that did not truly respect them. The three sisters originally published under male names due to Victorian constraints but eventually had to come clean after dealing with some difficult publishers. They all started writing together as young girls, creating the mythical lands of Angria and Gondol. Anne's books Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are not as well known, but highly regarded as early examples of feminism. The three sisters were spurred on by their brother Branwell who was full of artistic talents in poetry and sculpture but was slowly robbed of any success. He even erased himself from a portrait he did of the four siblings.
Posted in: The Reel World by Archive Authors on August 21st, 2013
It's nice to see two Spielberg veterans in the same movie. It's been a long time since American Graffiti when Harrison Ford and Richard Dreyfuss last appeared together. It's been a long time since Hooper in Jaws and Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but Dreyfuss and Ford don't appear together in this movie either. It's like they are in two different movies. Paranoia is a corporate espionage thriller with two CEO's played by Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman, who have strong ties and stronger hates. There is lots to like about the movie, but many, many missed opportunities too.
The story is fairly tangled and revolves around a young genius (Liam Hemsworth, the brother of Chris who plays Thor in some other movies) who suffers from immaturity and bad judgment. Richard Dreyfuss is his lovable loser of a father who needs his medical insurance. But he loses his medical insurance because he's not important enough to his big boss Oldman, who fires him. It turns out that was a bit of a ruse. It's actually much more convoluted and confusing than that, but that's the essence of it. Oldman's rivalry with his former mentor and now fierce competitor played by Ford is all-consuming, so much logic is lost in his zeal. Oldman uses threat of death and promises of riches to entice Hemsworth to infiltrate Ford's inner circle.
Posted in: The Reel World by Archive Authors on August 9th, 2013
For adults with kids, there is a great need for animated films to make the family happy. For movie studios, there is a great need for films that the entire family can go to that are not slapped with an R-rating which cuts down on profits. Two recent films recently made films about races, Planes and Turbo, showed a need for speed. More and more, the glut of these movies shows the need for greed. Greed is what makes studios only think about making money and not good movies. I actually did like both Planes and Turbo, which is strange because I absolutely hated Cars 2, which was also a race movie.
Planes is a sequel to Cars, which is odd since it wasn't produced by Pixar but Disneytoons which normally produce a heavy slate of straight-to-video fare. Early reception generated plan to make two more Planes films. Planes takes the world wide race that was tried in Cars 2 and makes it more visually entertaining. One of the most interesting things when watching one of these movies is figuring out the vocal talent. Here the names are not A-list stars, but they serve well. They are Dane Cook, Stacy Keach, Cedric the Entertainer, John Cleese, Teri Hatcher, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Brad Garrett and Carlos Alazraqui. I know. I've never heard of Alazraqui either, but he does a dead-on imitation of Antonio Banderas as Puss in Boots. The visuals are the key here. The swooping vistas of flight are always exhilarating. It is still put in the framework of an overly familiar story of a downtrodden underdog.
