The Reel World

With the holidays behind us and a new year already in full swing, most of us are recovering from all the holiday spirit and quality family time that this time of year seems to demand of all of us.  At some point I’m sure most families have suffered through heated exchanges and emotional turmoil that only our kin can pry out of us.  August: Osage County is about that family turmoil, and skeletons in the closet but ramped up to the point where some viewers may need some counselling of their own by the time the credits roll.

Besides the fact that it stars Leonardo DiCaprio and that it’s essentially a white collar gloss on Goodfellas, you’d be forgiven for thinking somebody other than Martin Scorsese directed The Wolf of Wall Street. I don’t mean to suggest Scorsese has lost his masterful touch or his passion for filmmaking, both of which were on display as recently as two years ago in the wonderful Hugo. It’s more that after spending the better part of the 21st century making strong, serious dramas, I didn’t necessarily expect Scorsese to make his funniest, loosest and most audacious picture in decades.

You know exactly what's going on here. It's Rocky Balboa vs. Joe La Motta, and they're not exactly in their prime. For reasons of property rights, of course, this really isn't Rocky or La Motta, but you and I know it is. The film takes great pains to remind us of each of these iconic characters. Sly's character tries to take a shot at some hanging meat after drinking a glass of raw eggs. De Niro's character is found telling boxing jokes in his own club, just as the real-life La Motta did after his fighting days were over. Both of these actors played iconic fighters in their day.

“Some of this actually happened.”

 It’s the quote that opens a film that I don’t just consider the most enjoyable experience on the big screen this year, but one of the best films to be released in years.  It’s a comedy, it’s a love story, it’s all a giant con wrapped in the world of the mid 70’s that David O. Russell captures with flare and detail and often at times feels as though it could be a sister film to Goodfellas.  By no means is this a gangster film (although the mob is present), but this is a film about characters who are all trying to do the right thing only the method by which they go about accomplishing the task is morally questionable.

You already know Mary Poppins is one of the most beloved movie musicals of all time. But did you know it also holds the record for most Oscar nominations (13) and wins (5) for a movie released by Walt Disney Studios? Audiences...critics...everybody loves Mary Poppins, right? Well, unless you follow movie history pretty closely, you may not know the film had a famous, formidable critic in P.L. Travers, the author of the “Mary Poppins” book series.

"There are dark spirits, old and full of hate...The world is in great danger."

A trilogy is a hard animal to pull off. Even when you have a popular franchise, it is extremely difficult. All of the pieces have to work just right or you could have a disaster on your hands. It is even harder when you've already beaten the odds once and delivered a trilogy that is both loved and a huge box office success. You run into an almost insurmountable mountain of expectations. Your pieces must somehow fit together so that they can be viewed as one whole product.

Director Scott Cooper made his directorial debut with the much critically acclaimed film Crazy Heart.  It was an impressive first film that managed to get Jeff Bridges an academy award.  With Out of the Furnace, Cooper again has a film on his hands that may gain some award recognition due to the many great performances sprinkled throughout the film.  But aside from the great performances, how does the actual film hold up?  It’s something I’ve been pondering for a bit.  The film wastes no time showing us its dark side right from the start.  Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson) is out on a date and heaving outside his car at a drive-in theater. 

This is a film that was sitting on a few shelves for quite some time. It was first a novel by Chuck Logan back in 2006. Sylvester Stallone liked the idea and put together a screenplay. It was intended as a vehicle for him, but that's where the whole sitting on a shelf thing comes into play. The movie never really got off the ground, and before long Sly was a little too long in the tooth to do the role. It's not like he was a spring chicken when he wrote the thing, which could account for, you know, that sitting on a shelf business. The screenplay has finally gotten off the shelf and into our movie screens. After careful consideration, I'm looking for that shelf again.

The most peculiar thing about The Hunger Games — both in the books and the blockbuster movie adaptations — is that the Games themselves are easily the least interesting part. The first film's staggering box office success predictably led to a much bigger budget for the rabidly-anticipated sequel. (Catching Fire cost a reported $140 million, which is nearly double the original's $78 million budget.) The extra money is on display in almost every engrossing frame, including the action-packed arena scenes filmed in Hawaii. But the real reason Catching Fire is an improvement over its predecessor is because the story's satirical, political, rebellious spirit has been placed front and center.

What would you do if you found out that you fathered 533 kids? Better yet, how would you handle that news on top of the news that the children you fathered are petitioning the courts to have your identity revealed? Well, that is the dilemma that Vince Vaughn is faced with in his new comedy Delivery Man. As you can figure out from the funny premise, this is a comedy, but it is not just hapless jokes without any real substance; Delivery Man actually has another side to it, a side that tugs on the heartstrings a bit.