So I Guess There’s A SLEEPY HOLLOW TV Show Now.

FOX has a new show from the writers of the new STAR TREK which re-envisions Washington Irving’s 1820 short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow“ for the modern day.  I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this information.  I grew up on that short story, and on the 1949 Disney retelling.  I grew up not far from Tarrytown where the story is set. I went to haunted hayrides there.  In high school I drew pictures of the Headless Horseman while other kids were trying weed for the first time.  This is a story that has a lot of power for me.  This is a property I know about, more than most.

There’s stuff I like about the promo footage.  I like seeing Clancy Brown (STARSHIP TROOPERS) in anything, although it doesn’t look like he makes it out of the pilot.  I like Nicole Beharie, the female lead, having just seen her in 42 and thinking she made near-angelic sweetness a believable human characteristic there.  I like the idea of the Headless Horseman running rampant through the very bucolic Dobbs Ferry.

But there’s some bizarro stuff in here too.  The premise is that Ichabod Crane, who in this incarnation fought with George Washington, is woken up 250 years into his future, where his nemesis the Horseman has been once again causing trouble.  First of all, that’s Rip Van Winkle, if you know your Irving, but neither that nor the fact that Ichabod has been stripped of his characteristic cowardice is what worries me nearly as much as THE CONSPIRACY.  Oh no, the conspiracy! The back-of-the-dollar-bill spooky-eye pyramid Illuminati conspiracy!  I’m not being sarcastic.  I’m actually concerned.  Concerned that this is going to be turned into NATIONAL TREASURE: THE SERIES.  I don’t watch those movies, the same way I don’t watch DA VINCI CODE movies, because I’m not interested in historical conspiracies.  I’m interested in ghost stories.  Especially when it comes to SLEEPY HOLLOW, I’m interested in the ghosts.  And on top of everything, here they’ve got the spectral swordsman wielding automatic rifles just like he’s Val Kilmer in HEAT.

It’s adequate cause for concern, is all I’m saying.  There are ways to allay worries.  (I am, as always, eminently hirable as consultant on matters of supernatural accuracy.)

Anyway here’s the trailer.  You decide for me.  Keep an eye out for a special guest appearance by the tagline from Tim Burton’s 1999 SLEEPY HOLLOW ad campaign!

@jonnyabomb

Movie Of The Day: SALT (2010).

In honor of Angelina Jolie, I’m throwing it back to a good movie worth a look (largely due to Angelina herself), SALT. I originally wrote this in July of 2010.

I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this before, but that Angelina Jolie, boy, she is one striking lady. She really does have an uncanny ability to command a camera any time she steps in front of one.  In her new movie SALT, the effect is magnified, seeing as how she happens to be standing in front of a camera that is being wielded by one of the world’s greatest cinematographers, Robert Elswit (who shot all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies and most of George Clooney’s.) Actually, she’s not doing much standing here, but instead running throughout the majority of SALT’s running time, dodging moving vehicles and speeding bullets and loud explosions, but through it all, Elswit never loses track of the movie’s main draw.

This being the internet, you don’t have to look far to read everyone from profound critical types to adolescent droolers and one-handed typers rhapsodizing over Angelina Jolie’s features, particularly her mouth, which consists of full lips and a sly, unpredictable smile. But in truth, the main feature which makes her a born movie star are her eyes. She has eyes which register huge onscreen, and which make you interested to know what she’s thinking. And that’s a large part of why SALT is so effective.

For a good length of the movie, you don’t know what the main character, Evelyn Salt, is thinking. Salt is a super-competent CIA agent who is accused by a captive Russian spymaster (played by veteran Polish actor Daniel Olbrychski) of being a sleeper agent for the KGB, which immediately puts her at odds with her mentor, Winter (played by the great Liev Schreiber) and his colleague, Peabody (played by the great Chiwetel Ejiofor.) The Russian spymaster is named Orlov, which immediately made me think of NOSFERATU, which, if intentional, is only one of SALT’s gloriously over-the-top touches that is played totally straight by several great actors and is therefore totally convincing.

Salt claims to be innocent, but she refuses to sit still for the standard interrogation, claiming that she needs to get home to protect her husband (and dog). This is how the chase begins. Winter and Peabody and a small army of heavily-armored agents chase Salt throughout New York City, unable to trust her motives. That’s pretty much the plot. What makes the chase so thrilling and rewarding is the tenor of the thing: We the audience are kept at emotional arm’s distance the whole way, even as we’re given front-row seats to the excellently-staged action. We look in those evocative eyes of Angelina’s and we want to see a good guy there, but we can’t quite trust it, and a couple of very reliable character actors are being convinced on our behalf that she is indeed on the wrong side. Salt’s very behavior begins to be suspect, even though Angelina couldn’t really be a bad guy, now, could she? Could she really be Russian? Are the Russians really still out to get us? (Apparently…) And does Salt really care about that husband after all?

(Maybe not: It’s another canny move on the filmmakers’ part that the husband who Salt is racing to get back to isn’t exactly a perfect dream. He’s written and shot sympathetically, but he’s also a German entomologist, which means he loves bugs and he’s German.  This ain’t exactly Brad Pitt here.)

SALT is a movie about consummate professionals that also happens to be made by consummate professionals. The fast-moving script is by action screenwriter Kurt Wimmer, with uncredited rewrites by Demon’s Resume favorite Brian Helgeland. The effective score is by James Newton Howard. The film was edited by a trio of expert editors, Stuart Baird, John Gilroy, and Steven Kemper. And at the helm is director Phillip Noyce, the strangely-underrated Australian craftsman, who is best known here for his two Jack Ryan movies with Harrison Ford (PATRIOT GAMES and CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER.) Noyce also made a much smaller movie back in his native Australia called RABBIT-PROOF FENCE, which is a special little film that I highly recommend.  RABBIT-PROOF FENCE is the work of a director who is interested in human beings, not just the espionage and action and suspense and machinery that he is obviously so skilled in capturing on film. That’s the human touch that he brings to SALT, along with the performance he gets out of his lead actress – fiery yet cold, sensitive yet emotionless, tender yet violent.

It’s interesting that, as all the pre-release press has mentioned, SALT was originally meant to star Tom Cruise. If I hadn’t have known that, I wouldn’t have thought it. It doesn’t feel like a Tom Cruise movie. SALT is definitely a star vehicle, and it plays perfectly to the strengths of its star. Angelina Jolie is the main reason that people will (hopefully) come out to see SALT, along with the thoroughly satisfying action setpieces, and having seen it, it’s hard to imagine it with any other lead actor. I thought that KNIGHT & DAY was ultimately the better choice for Tom Cruise – even though, despite it working pretty well as a star vehicle in its own right, it hasn’t really caught on with audiences. A good star vehicle has to serve its lead actor, to bring out what you love or find interesting about them while still finding ways to surprise you.

SALT is a great star vehicle for Angelina Jolie. It’s convincingly badass yet more emotional than the average spy thriller. I don’t know anyone who isn’t an Angelina fan, but in case you somehow aren’t, please give SALT a chance anyway, and do it on the big screen. After the tidal wave caused last week by  INCEPTION, it’s hard to imagine where action movies can go next. Maybe right now and for the time being, the only way to compete is to be thoroughly competent. SALT does that. It’s a great time at the movies, a BOURNE movie with a feminine twist, and if it’s successful enough to earn a sequel, I’d be very happy to see one.

@jonnyabomb

Movie Of The Day: THE SQUID & THE WHALE (2005).

 

 

Here’s a movie with some personal relevance to me.  It’s not like I recognized much in THE SQUID & THE WHALE as familiar – Brooklyn is part of my family’s history but it’s not where I personally grew up, my family is smart but not remotely this pretentious, and none of the dramatic specifics of the story have much at all to do with my own upbringing – but the significance of the unusual title turned out to have a whole lot to do with my memories.

 

 

“THE SQUID & THE WHALE” refers to something that is familiar to any kid who grew up in and around New York City – the “Clash Of The Titans” exhibit in the Museum of Natural History’s Hall Of Ocean Life, wherein a giant squid grapples with a sperm whale, miles under the ocean’s surface.  In the movie, Jesse Eisenberg’s character suggests that he found this exhibit to be scary – I of course loved it.  I definitely preferred the humongous blue whale that hangs suspended over the center of the hall – I would ‘tempt fate’ by standing under it, wondering how the heck that big monster could be held up by such tiny strings.  (I loved learning about animals as a kid, but I preferred to leave physics and engineering mysterious.)

 

 

So it’s not the most immediately awesome title, but it carries a subtle evocativeness that I really appreciated.  Writer/director Noah Baumbach was very clever to choose a title that so serves so blatantly as a metaphor for the central conflict of his movie, but by obscuring its meaning with such a specific reference.  The movie is equally smart and thought-provoking; I’m sorry that it took me all this time to get around to seeing it, but I’m glad that it was so worthwhile once I finally did.  The performances by the young actors, Owen Kline and the now-deservedly-ubiquitous Jesse Eisenberg, are startling and brave.  Laura Linney, as their mom, is always good, and so is Jeff Daniels, one of the most quietly versatile and unfairly underrated actors anywhere in movies.  Even Anna Paquin is good in this movie.  I also really liked the sunny, autumnal NYC photography by Robert Yeoman, on loan from THE SQUID & THE WHALE‘s co-producer Wes Anderson.

 

 

If you’re like me and you held out this long, check this movie out.  It’s deeply personal and at times EXTREMELY uncomfortable, but somehow it’s still accessible and palatable because it gets to some really universal feelings.

 

And that museum looks so great on film.

 

 

 

THE SQUID & THE WHALE is playing today at BAMcinématek as part of their series, Brooklyn Close-Up.

 

 

@jonnyabomb

 

 

 

See PEEPLES Now, Or Forever Hold Your Think-Piece!

  

Much as I’d like to keep this apolitical and just talk about the movie, the way it deserves, I don’t think I can resist it this time.  Here is a statement I’m going to underline:  I paid to see PEEPLES opening weekend.  I am lucky to have a lot of chances to see movies for free, and quite frankly I need to take those chances whenever I can, because I don’t get paid much from writing yet, and my time-consuming day job pays me a barely-survivable wage.  To say I don’t have a lot of money (or time) right now is an understatement.  But I paid to see PEEPLES.

The main reason I did that is because I really love the main trio of lead actors, Kerry Washington, Craig Robinson, and David Alan Grier. They are actors who constantly make every scene they’re in a scene worth watching. In my opinion, Kerry Washington is an uncommonly passionate screen actor, with an unfakeable decency, whereas Robinson and Grier are two of the most consistent scene-dominators in all of comedy. These are guys who have shared screens with some of the most famous comedians in modern history and have stood out against them every single time. I would watch almost anything any of these three were in, and the three of them together is an irresistible prospect to me personally.  Happily, that instinct paid off for me, and their movie brightened up a gloomy, drizzly Saturday morning.

Craig Robinson, who you probably know from NBC’s The Office or PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, plays Wade Walker, a musician who plays very Craig-Robinson-style songs to school-children as a way to give them life advice.  He doesn’t make a lot of money but for the past year he has been dating a woman who does, glamorous lawyer Grace Peeples — Kerry Washington, most recently from ABC’s Scandal and DJANGO UNCHAINED.  Maybe you’re the type who’d look at the two of them and see a mismatch, but they have a sweet, eminently believable relationship in the opening scenes.  I’m not a romantic comedy kind of guy, but that’s not really because of my love of Clint Eastwood Westerns, monster movies, and ninja flicks.  It’s because most modern romantic comedies feature lead actors who go with their worst instincts and writers who can’t write relatable dialogue or scenarios.  I find either one, or both, of the romantic leads in most of these movies to be people in whose company I don’t want to spend an entire movie.

PEEPLES eradicates that reservation quite simply, with the power of good casting.  Every single actor in PEEPLES comes off well, even when they’re disagreeing with each other within the story.

Grace comes from a high-achieving family.  Her father Virgil (David Alan Grier) is a prominent judge.  Her mother Daphne (S. Epatha Merkerson) released a successful R&B album in the 1970s.  Her sister Gloria (Kali Hawk) is an on-camera newswoman.  Her little brother Simon (Tyler James Williams) is a brilliant inventor and an aspiring musician himself.  Her grandmother is Diahann Carroll and her grandfather is Melvin Van Peebles!

Wade has heard a whole lot about “The Chocolate Kennedys”, as he calls them, but he hasn’t met them yet, in a whole year of dating Grace.  This is weighing on his mind because he wants to marry Grace.  (Who wouldn’t?)  He has a romantic weekend planned, where he hopes to give her his grandmother’s ring, but she tells him she has to head home to Sag Harbor to celebrate her father’s beloved Moby Dick weekend.  (Yes, David Alan Grier dresses up like Ahab and reads from Moby Dick, yet another reason for me to feel warmly about this movie.)  When Grace heads off without him, Wade decides to crash the celebration and shows up uninvited, which immediately earns him Virgil’s disapproval, especially since Grace has never once mentioned Wade to them!

The rest of the film is a series of comic shenanigans and hijinks, as Wade struggles to endear himself to Virgil and continues to make things worse.  All of the main characters have secrets:  Wade is hiding his intentions, Grace is hiding her relationship and most of her history, Gloria is hiding the fact that she’s in a committed relationship with a woman (Kimrie Lewis-Davis), Simon is hiding his kleptomania, Daphne is hiding some recreational habits, and even Virgil is hiding… well, you’ll have to see.

This is Tina Gordon Chism’s first movie as both writer and director.  (She previously wrote the screenplays to ATL and DRUMLINE.)  If I had to be critical, I’d say her facility for staging scenes of farce is promising but not fully formed — some of the gags are hilarious, others could be more sharply carried off.  And to be honest, this is more of a showcase for Craig Robinson than for Kerry Washington, who gets less screentime and slightly less comprehensible motives.  But what quibbles I could come up with are overshadowed by my appreciation of this movie’s warmth and affable watchability.  That comes from a script which treats every character as a full human being, and direction that encourages every last actor to shine.  There are no villains here.  Every character is his or her only real enemy, but all of them have the ability to improve, and we get to see most of them do so before the movie’s done.  It doesn’t feel forced or unearned. That’s an increasingly rare experience at the movies. I laughed out loud several times throughout the running time, uncommon for me, and that happened because I enjoyed the characters and the performances.

Right this moment, PEEPLES is flopping at the box office.  That’s why I need to write this piece.  It’s not a perfect movie, but it does not deserve to flop.  It’s a generous movie about likable characters any audience would be happy to know.  For PEEPLES to flop, that means two things are happening:  People who like Tyler Perry are avoiding it, and people who don’t like Tyler Perry are avoiding it.  If you don’t like Tyler Perry, you are seeing his name on the poster and staying away.  Guess what?  I don’t much like Tyler Perry.  I’m the guy who wrote this, after all.

But Tyler Perry didn’t write or direct PEEPLES – Tina Gordon Chism did – and he sure doesn’t appear during it — an amazingly talented ensemble cast does — and very genuinely, I give Tyler Perry a ton of credit for trying to get this movie out in front of people.  To Tyler Perry’s diehard audience, I give no credit at all, since they have demonstrated with their dollar that they prefer exaggerated caricatures over believable characters and judgmental homilies over the loving themes of acceptance and honesty that PEEPLES encourages.

To me, those are themes worth supporting with my hard-won cash.  To me, it is worth supporting with my cash a film that gives Craig Robinson a long-deserved leading role.  (Judd Apatow didn’t give me that!)  To me, it is worth supporting with my cash a movie that maybe doesn’t represent my face specifically, but does represent faces resembling people in my life, dear friends of mine: teenage characters that aren’t sex-crazed morons, gay characters who aren’t mincing stereotypes, black characters who act like witty, successful, loving human beings rather than total fools.  To me, it is worth supporting with my cash the very rare case of a woman, and a black woman no less, writing and directing a feature comedy, especially a comedy that promises a career full of more to come, if only she gets another chance.

See, this is where I have to get political.  In the age of Facebook and Twitter, in the age where everyone has a blog or writes for one, in an age where we get to see and hear everyone’s opinions twenty-four-hours a freaking day, I’m not seeing a lot of put-up-or-shut-up.  In the last day alone, this Jezebel article excoriating misogyny in comedy has been in front of my eyes about a hundred times.  I happen to generally agree with what is being said in that article, and in most of the articles like it.  I’m not sure all of them apply to me specifically, but that’s not for me to decide.  I tend to think that a man who is willing to read an entire article like that in the first place is one who is friendly to the cause and interested in ways he can change if need be.  I love movies and I am trying hard to be a good person and I believe sometimes that means putting my money where my mouth is.  That last part is an important distinction, I think.

Maybe I’m overstepping a bit by suggesting it, but I’m going to do it anyway:  If you are so committed to the principle of furthering women’s roles in comedy, then will you not get out of the house and vote with your own dollar?  Will you not go pay for a movie written and directed by a woman?  Especially because I, someone who normally loves “guy’s” movies and who normally does not love movies with Tyler Perry’s name on them, is insisting that it’s a movie worth your time?  Maybe my opinion doesn’t, won’t, shouldn’t matter.  It’s true: I’m a very heterosexual male and my skin is pretty pale.   But still, the fact that a woman broke through and managed to get a comedy made and nobody’s going to see it is something that doesn’t feel right to me.  I want to do what I can about it.  Here’s one indisputable truth, feminists and fellow feminism-friendly men:  It’s not your blogs or your re-Tweets that are going to encourage studios to make this kind of movie.  It’s your hard-earned dollars.

@jonnyabomb

From The Archives: @PattonOswalt in BIG FAN (2009).

BIG FAN clinched its spot on my Favorite Movies Of 2009 list, instantaneously, the day I saw it.  This is the movie written and directed by Robert Siegel, whose work was most recently seen in theaters as the writer of THE WRESTLER.

BIG FAN stars the brilliant stand-up comedian Patton Oswalt as Paul Aufiero, Staten Island’s biggest New York Giants fan.  He lives with his mother and spends his days tailgating Giants games with his best and only friend (played by Kevin Corrigan of so many movies, from GOODFELLAS and PINEAPPLE EXPRESS), and his every night calling in to the Sports Dogg talk radio show.  One of Paul’s favorite topics to rave about is Giants star Quantrell Bishop (played by Jon Hamm, but not the one you’re thinking about), and one night he actually runs into his hero.  Things do not go well.

I’m sure that part of my love for this movie comes from my own history – I grew up in the tri-state area and this movie expertly captures sights, sounds, and people that are remarkably familiar – but I wouldn’t respond to it so strongly if it wasn’t so good at drawing those environments.  Beyond the obsessed, belligerent sports fans without much else to distract them, there are the decent Italian mothers burdened with difficult adult sons, the hometown lawyers (like Paul’s older brother) who aren’t as smart as their degrees and nice suburban houses lead them to believe, the housewives (like Paul’s sister-in-law) whose cartoonish makeup and absurd cleavage don’t lend them an ounce of class, and the law officers who see patterns and are annoyed by them, but resigned to them.

I’m making a point of this stuff, but a strength of Siegel’s work as writer and director is that he doesn’t underline anything to make a point.  BIG FAN is rich in finely-observed detail, but it is admirably subtle about its approach.  When you hear that Patton Oswalt, one of the funniest people in the world at the moment, is playing in a movie that could easily be described (and frequently has been by critics) as a non-sexual version of TAXI DRIVER – Paul loves Quantrell a bit differently than Travis Bickle loves Betsy and Iris – you couldn’t be blamed for expecting a comedy.  But that’s not what this is.

While the movie is consistently fascinating and absorbing, I didn’t find it funny for a moment.  While Patton Oswalt is a hilarious comedian everywhere else he goes, here he completely disappears into his role, committing fully to a disturbingly sympathetic portrayal of a very sad yet strangely fulfilled life.  It’s one of the best sustained feats of acting I’ve seen all year.  Everyone in the movie, in fact, is ideally suited to the movie’s gray tapestry, whether they’re more unfamiliar, unpretty faces, or if they’re recognizable and reliable character actors, such as Kevin Corrigan, or the perfectly-cast cameo by the not-to-be-revealed-by-me actor who plays Paul’s on-air nemesis Philadelphia Phil.

BIG FAN is bound to be overlooked, because it’s probably not what you’d expect when you hear that Patton Oswalt has his first lead role, and if you don’t know who Patton Oswalt is, his performance might feel too real and then the movie will probably feel more depressing than its premise might lead you to believe.  I write this piece with the express purpose of keeping this humble and unflashy but great feature from being overlooked.  For me, it was one of the most eagerly awaited movies of the year, and it did not disappoint.

Between THE WRESTLER and BIG FAN, Robert Siegel has staked a very specific claim as a chronicler of untold sports stories that could just as easily have been comedies, about tragic, optimistic characters who are far from the mainstream and far more interesting than the typical subjects of sports movies because of it.  THE WRESTLER was about a big man who feels small, and BIG FAN is about a small man who feels big.  Neither character is entirely right about himself, but neither of them is entirely wrong either.  The disconnect is where the truly interesting stuff happens.

See this movie the first chance you get.

From November 15th, 2009.

@jonnyabomb 

My Favorite Christmas Movie: SCROOGED (1988).

 

We’re now in week four of Christmas.  Really.  Christmas Day is officially once every December 25, right?  Somewhere along the line, someone — very probably someone who owns a shopping mall chain — erased the numeral specific, and turned all of December into Christmas.

 

Actually, that’s too generous.  I started hearing Christmas music in stores on November 1^st this year.  November 1^st!  Like the otherwise relentless Headless Horseman and his aversion to bodies of water, these demons of consumerism haven’t yet found a way to cross the Halloween threshold, but since Thanksgiving doesn’t have much in the way of  identifiable tunage, they can stampede right over that one.  I know how these corporate coyotes think – people hear Christmas themes and they start buying like crazy.

 

You don’t have to agree, but I’m calling it like it really is.  The day after Thanksgiving is a shamefully, even despicably, early time for the major corporations to start pummeling the universe with Christmas songs and broadcasts.  The day after Halloween – that’s legitimately criminal.  Is it about the religion or the spirit anymore, or is it about selling CDs?  Gross.  It’d be all worth it if people all got with the program, but take a ride on the subway.  Most people are the same miserable, self-serving assholes in December that they are all year round.  Again, don’t get me wrong, I like the Christmas season mighty fine, but I have to admit that at just about this time every year, I’m just a little bit looking forward to December 26^th.

 

However…

 

 

As long as they slip Bill Murray’s SCROOGED into the programming every once in a while, I know I can make it through another day of getting knocked around by pushy commuters while being bombarded by that god-awful Paul McCartney song.  SCROOGED reminds me of what it could and should be about.

 

People who know what they’re talking about, when it comes to Bill Murray movies, usually point to QUICK CHANGE as the most underrated Bill Murray movie.  And they’re right (that‘s a longer talk for another time), but I would also submit this one for consideration.

 

SCROOGED isn’t as thoroughly hilarious as it might be, mostly because Bill Murray plays it so MEAN for much of the movie (‘course, he is basically playing Ebenezer Scrooge after all), and there are a couple genuinely creepy moments (which I won‘t spoil if you haven‘t seen it yet but of course it’s to do with Christmas Future), well evoked by director Richard Donner, composer Danny Elfman, and cinematographer Michael Chapman (TAXI DRIVER).

 

 

But mainly, Bill keeps things real damn funny.  No one plays the detached sardonic cynic with secreted reserves of sensitivity better than Bill Murray.  He also does a pretty decent Richard Burton impression, which is very random.

 

Also, I love the supporting cast. SCROOGED has got Karen Allen, the coolest lady in all of 1980s cinema.  She was the voice of sanity in ANIMAL HOUSE, the girl who brought Starman to Earth, and the indisputable greatest girl Indiana Jones ever met, and she’s really lovable in all her scenes with Bill Murray here.  The rest of the ensemble is filled out by weird, memorable cameos and surprising supporting turns from unexpected places.  And best of all, this movie even has room for the eternally badass Robert Mitchum as Bill’s boss.  (Which makes sense.  How many other actors could fill such a role?)

 

But moreover, this is a crucial showcase for the greatest working film comedian.  Murray made this movie in 1988, after four years of virtual seclusion from movies, so it obviously meant something to him for this to be his return to cinema screens.  I really think that the final segment of the movie, where Bill Murray makes the case for Christmas spirit directly to the camera in a combination of singing and pleading, is one of his all-time best performances.  I don’t know how much of it was scripted, but it sure doesn’t feel that way.  It looks just like someone genuinely pouring their heart out.  Sure, it’s more than a bit corny.  But big-time emotional moments like that always are.

 

 

I don’t know about you, but those look like real tears to me.  That’s not Hollywood actor bullshit.  That’s a guy speaking his heart.  That fucking moves me.

 

He was  so often misunderstood as strictly sardonic or detached or cynical in his approach, but I would maintain that there has always been at least one passing moment of authentic humanity in any Bill Murray comedy performance, no matter how out-there the surrounding film, whether it be GHOSTBUSTERS (note the way he looks at the statue of the devil dog when he thinks Sigourney Weaver is gone forever), GHOSTBUSTERS II (that brief moment when he addresses the baby with “I should have been your father”),  and yes, even in the elephant movie.  That’s why more serious-minded indie filmmakers like Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Aaron Schneider, and Jim Jarmusch were  able to snap him right up and do wonders with him.  And that’s why he’s one of the all-time great film comedians, and certainly why he’s my personal favorite.

 

@jonnyabomb

Stone Classics: BERRY GORDY’S THE LAST DRAGON (1985).

R.I.P. Leo O’Brien.  He played “Richie Green” in THE LAST DRAGON, maybe the best character in the movie.  Definitely the one with all the best lines.

I don’t do irony well.  I tend to take the movies I like in the spirit they were intended.  If a movie feels genuine to me, then my affection for it is genuine.  THE LAST DRAGON is a kid’s movie, but one of the few I will still watch from time to time because it’s guaranteed to lift my mood.  If I’m being completely honest, I love this movie way more than I love most conventionally accepted “classic films.”  Given the choice, I’d opt without hesitation to watch this movie over CITIZEN KANE, CASABLANCA, and even THE GODFATHER. There, it’s out.  I said it.

I accept that no one will ever let me call this a good movie, but the rest of the world is going to have to accept my insistence that this is a one-of-a- kind genre occurrence, and for that alone it deserves respect.  There aren’t two like it.  As the story of young Leroy “Bruce Leroy” Green (Taimak) and his mission to defend popular VJ Laura Charles (Vanity) against evil arcade owner Eddie Arkadian (Chris Murney) and local bully The Shogun Of Harlem (Julius J. Carry III), THE LAST DRAGON stands alone in its genre — it’s the first, last, and only Motown-kung fu-action-romantic-comedy musical.  There’s so much genuine goodness about THE LAST DRAGON.  It encourages the mild-mannered to stand up for themselves.  It teaches kids about Eastern philosophy.  It teaches kids about Bruce Lee.  It gave early-career employment to legendary character-actors Mike Starr, Chazz Palminteri, and William H. Macy.  It has music from Willie Hutch, Stevie Wonder, and Vanity.  It has a kid (Leo O’Brien) who’s been tied up by bad guys escaping capture by break-dancing out of the ropes.

This movie is a positive force for the universe.  I watch it and I smile.  It’s one of my few nostalgic indulgences – but it’s still fun to watch as an adult.  I fear the potential remake, despite the involvement of Sam Jackson and the RZA and despite the personal assurance I’ve received from Taimak himself (!).  THE LAST DRAGON was lightning in a bottle, and let’s face it, it’s not actually possible to catch lightning in a bottle… unless a genuine miracle is involved.

This post originally appeared on Rupert Pupkin Speaks.  Give ‘em a visit!

Follow Taimak on Twitter:  @iamtaimak

50 Best Movies Of The 1990s That @TheAVClub Didn’t Have Room For.

Don’t let the title above get me wrong: The A.V. Club’s recently-completed list of the 50 Best Films Of The ’90s is as close to a definitive consensus as anyone could ever hope for.  It’s a terrific list.  Barring the inclusion of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (I understand why they felt they needed to include it, but it’s a bad movie), there isn’t anything I could even begin to object to — in fact, most of their choices would have been mine.  But since the 1990s are the decade in which I [sort of] came of age, I thought up 50 more that could have been included.  In my opinion.  There.  Disclaimed.

Here are some of my favorite 1990s movies, any of which I could make a strong case for as the decade’s best, grouped by year NOT by numerical rank:

Incredible imagery from a true master of cinema.

Read my dissertation at Daily Grindhouse!

All three leads are brilliant in this con-man crime film written by Donald Westlake and directed by the hugely-underrated-by-film-geeks Stephen Frears.

Look at the upper left side of that poster.  There’s no better vote of confidence on the planet.

This is one of the best of the decade based on the music alone.

Known to true Bill Murray fans as the most underrated Bill Murray movie, this one was actually co-directed by our hero, and it’s an expert farce and one of the better New York movies ever.

A radio shock jock (Jeff Bridges) and a homeless man (Robin Williams) cross paths in another underrated New York movie, this one from the genius visual wizard Terry Gilliam.

This choice comes down to whichever definition of “best” you’re personally using at the time in regards to movies.  Are there more culturally resonant and artistically sophisticated movies than this one?  Sure.  Am I more likely to put one of those on at the end of a long day over this one?  Nope.

What does “best” mean?  Maybe I equivocate too much.  I’m an action guy, and this fits the term “best” under any definition.  John Woo is an artisan of cinematic mayhem and this is arguably the pinnacle of his career.

Because nobody else ever before or since made a movie like this one.

One of the few movies that genuinely emotionally moves me every time I see it.  A high point for Jeff Bridges, who has had a ton of high points.

It’s not exactly that Robert De Niro and Bill Murray trade personas here.  This movie isn’t a stunt.  It’s something way more sensitive and thoughtful than that.  But De Niro does play the meek, mild-mannered police photographer and Murray the unpredicably-violent gangster who dreams of being a stand-up.  And it was written by the great Richard Price and directed by the man who made HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER.

Enthusiasm for this movie seems to have dimmed, as has much appreciation for director Jonathan Demme (people are a little too much “What have you done for me lately?”, but this movie represents a key moment in the cultural mainstreaming of things that needed to be made mainstream at the time.  Honestly it’s been a while so I don’t know how much it all holds up, but to my memory, it was a thoughtful, character-based film about the big issues.  Terrific soundtrack also.

Well I said a bunch here and here.  This movie is a switchblade-arsenal of terrific actors, showcased with bombastic direction from Tony Scott working in concert with the unconquerably individualistic Quentin Tarantino script.  It’s kind of a nexus of everything that became important and trendy in 1990s crime and action films.

This wouldn’t make a personal top 50 or 100 or maybe not even a top 200, but it’s impeccable Disney entertaining for the widest possible audience and believe me, it still works as hugely as it did nearly twenty years ago.  (You’re old.)

C0-written by David Peoples (UNFORGIVEN), which makes it important right there.  But again, Terry Gilliam, this time challenging Bruce Willis into another great performance (Bruce always seems to do best with the most individualistic filmmakers).  Madeline Stowe is great.  And character-actor Brad Pitt beats leading-man Brad Pitt six out of seven days a week.

Super-serious great movies are easy.  Great comedies are hard.  This is one of the funniest of the decade.

Yeah, I get it.  Some of you think it’s too much.  I think it’s opera.  I think Michael Mann is criminally underappreciated by the listmakers and the award-givers.  I think it’s one of the few movies more than two hours that I can watch over and over without getting bored.  This movie got in my soul the first time I saw it, and it’s still there.

This came toward the end of John Carpenter’s remarkable run of horror and action classics, but it still has moments of colossal inspiration, and a truly memorable lead performance by the great Sam Neill.

I’ll admit it’s probably a stretch to call this one of the best movies of the 1990s, but it’s one of my favorite filmmakers, Sam Raimi, taking on one of my favorite genres, the “spaghetti” Western, and supercharging it with his anarchic cartoony innovations.  There’s more energy in this movie than in most of the Best Picture winners of the decade.

All I’m saying is, I’ve seen this one more times than I’ve seen RUSHMORE and THE ROYAL TENNENBAUMS combined.

Some people maintain that this remains Paul Thomas Anderson’s best movie.  Some days I can see what they mean.  It’s certainly his tightest, most controlled, most focus, most conventional.  And it’s the Rosetta Stone where many of his later musical cues, character names, themes, and company players were first established.  For me, it’s a treat to see Robert Elswit’s camera roam around Nevada — Elswit is the (until-recently) unsung hero of Anderson’s oevre (until recently.  I also like this movie because it makes me feel like an asshole.  It was released when Anderson was 26.  You should have seen what I was doing at 26.  Feeling like an asshole is good, though – it motivates me.

This is a black, black comedy.  You gotta give these guys credit — they did not take the easy road after DUMB & DUMBER kick-started their careers.  Even THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY goes to some daring places (it’s a romantic comedy about stalking, after all), but it’s nowhere near as nasty as this one.  And once again, Bill Murray, comedy’s supreme ninja master, comes in for a few scenes and completely destroys throughout every single moment he appears.

Chris Rock’s favorite Tim Burton movie.  I don’t have a favorite Tim Burton movie — impossible for me to choose — but this one is up there.  It’s pure anarchy on film.  Somebody gave the creepy kid down the street complete access to fireworks and all the best toys — expensive sets, costumes, huge movie stars — and he went to work blowing them all up with demented glee.  (Demented Glee is my favorite Fox TV show, by the way.)  It was a stroke of inspiration to reframe the alien invasion movie as a 1970s-style disaster movie, and to make the whole thing a comedy.  This weirded out a country more interested in the more straightforward INDEPENDENCE DAY, but I’m with the weird kid.

Because as much credit as Eddie Murphy and Rick Baker get for their brilliance, it still isn’t enough.

A case could be made for THE TRUMAN SHOW as the best Jim Carrey movie of the 1990s (maybe ever, barring ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND), but I’m a fan of the big weird risk and the sudden detour and the critical and popular underdog.  THE CABLE GUY is even weirder than you may remember, and in retrospect it paved the way for enduring cult comedies to follow like ZOOLANDER and ANCHORMAN.

Best-of lists always go heavy on lauding the director and the actors, but how about the screenwriters?  You know, the guys and gals without whom the entire movie would not exist in the first place?  Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski are the kings of the gonzo biopics of the 1990s, with ED WOOD, MAN ON THE MOON, and this, the story of Hustler founder Larry Flynt.  Woody Harrelson is incredible in the role, and the whole thing, under the stewardship of the mighty Milos Forman, is a raunchy, raucous, searing, and sad affair.

Leon Gast’s film is one of THE essential sports documentaries ever made.  It’s the story of Muhammad Ali’s match against George Foreman for the title of heavyweight champion of the world.  The ‘Rumble In The Jungle’ took place in Africa in 1974, and the movie is supercharged with electric history.

In my local paper at the time, the shoddy film critic referred to this movie with a cheap shot: “Lifeless, Ordinary.”  It’s anything but.  It’s everything but.  The follow-up to TRAINSPOTTING from the team of Danny Boyle, John Hodge, and Andrew McDonald is a deranged, delirious trip through America.  It’s colorful and kinetic and enthusiastically acted and it sounds like a million bucks.  (Why not?)  It’s boistrous and unruly and maybe a little too self-indulgent, but it’s my kind of self-indulgent — the boldly original kind – so the complainers can go screw.

In 1997, Kevin Smith was still a filmmaker who led with his heart and inspired an entire generation of creatively-inclined young’uns to write with honesty and candor.  Smith’s first four movies were sloppily-made but felt incredibly personal, and CHASING AMY was maybe the rawest of them all.  I’m not sure I could revisit it now any more than I’d like to look at a high school yearbook, but I’m grateful for that long-ago validation the success of CHASING AMY gave me and a ton of more-famous, more influential up-and-comers. As for Smith, he made an encouraging return to form with the flawed but fiery RED STATE. Unfortunately, he seems to be more interested in everything BUT filmmaking nowadays. Too bad.

There’s over-the-top pulp, and then there’s JOHN WOO over-the-top pulp.  This is the most gloriously operatic and unrestrained of any of John Woo’s Hollywood movies, and both of its stars seem to have been stuck in that mode ever since.

The first BABE is pure sweetness and you should definitely see it too, but this is the one directed by George Miller, of MAD MAX fame.  It’s wilder, sadder, scarier, and even more bizarre.  It’s great.  George Miller doesn’t work nearly enough.

Michael Mann again.  This is his most high-minded movie, and there’s no reason it should be remotely as watchable and rewatchable as it is.  It’s about network TV, journalism, and big tobacco, and yet it’s suspenseful, moving, and entertaining as all hell.  So much of that comes from the dynamic, unusual directing choices of Mann, working with his DP from HEAT, Dante Spinotti.  The musical selection, both of score and soundtrack, is impeccable and distinctive as it ever is with Mann, and the editing style is somewhat hypnotic.  Of course the script by Mann and Eric Roth is impeccable, and then you have a roster of some of the world’s greatest actors, led by Al Pacino in maybe his last truly excellent role, and Russell Crowe, who was so ridiculously incredible in his transformative role that the Oscars realized they fucked up by not giving him Best Actor for this movie and corrected it the next year. 

Still the best Superman movie since Richard Donner was making ‘em.

Look, I’ve had it up to here with M. Night Shyamalan too, but no one, not even Shyamalan himself, can strike this one from the win column.  It’s a very solid script accompanied by thoughftul direction, with an unusually soft-spoken and gentle performance from Bruce.

This movie came on like a revelation from director David O. Russell, who had made two small movies at that point and no one could have expected him to make an action-comedy/war movie with an eclectic ensemble cast (including director Spike Jonze!) with raucous energy and actual formal innovations (with bleached-out cinematography by Newton Thomas Sigel).  It’s like KELLY’S HEROES but with more of a social conscience.  This is one of the reasons people think of 1999 as a banner year for American film.

A bizarre and beautiful chimera that is a perfectly-modulated melding of the sensibilities of Jim Jarmusch and The RZA.  Contains what is probably the last of the great wackadoo Henry Silva performances.

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From The Archives: THE FUNERAL (1996).

Abel Ferrara is a controversial cult director who is probably best known for his most notorious movie, Bad Lieutenant.  That’s the one that’s supposed to be super-violent and is widely-feared for prominently featuring full-frontal Harvey Keitel.  I’ve never felt the need to voluntarily submit myself to that image, but I have seen Ferrara’s nearly-as-infamous film, King Of New York.  And I liked that one, but not nearly as much as the Notorious B.I.G. did.  (Biggie called himself “the black Frank White,” after Christopher Walken’s character.)  Ferrara also directed the pilot to Michael Mann’s excellent 1980s TV series, Crime Story.

Knowing all that, though, I still didn’t know what to expect of The Funeral.

 Turns out it’s a New York crime story, set in the 1930s, and centers around three first-generation Italian brothers.  The brothers are played by Christopher Walken, Chris Penn, and Vincent Gallo.  Their father appears briefly in flashbacks, but I have to assume that there were three very different mothers with the incongruous mugs on that trio.

The three are all members of a local crime family, but Walken is contemplative and a family man, whereas Penn also runs a bar, and Gallo sneaks out to radical union meetings.  At the outset of the film, Gallo is in a coffin, and his two older brothers don’t yet know the identity of his killer. (Don’t read Wikipedia’s entry on this movie, by the way; they have it wrong.)

The Funeral is an increasingly interesting movie as it progresses, because while it starts as a loosely-structured collection of scenes – many of which not dissimilar to familiar mob movie clichés – it delves deep into the Walken and Penn characters and comes up with very much worthwhile results.  Chris Penn, in particular, makes the movie absolutely necessary to watch, as he takes the traditional Sonny Corleone hothead character and turns it into a heartbreaking, horrific portrayal of real mental illness.  It’s an amazing showcase for a much-missed character actor.  And who knew the guy had such an incredible singing voice?

In fact, the acting bench is stacked way deep with great character actors.  Annabella Sciorra, who also produced along with Russell Simmons (!), plays Walken’s wife.  Isabella Rossellini plays Penn’s.  Gretchen Mol is Gallo’s widow.  Benicio Del Toro has a substantial early role as a rival gangster who may or may not have been behind the trigger.  John Ventimiglia, the never-fortunate Artie Bucco from The Sopranos, plays Walken’s consigliere.  Victor Argo, a great New York actor who Scorsese fans will immediately recognize, has a brief role as a spooky enforcer.  Frank John Hughes (Wild Bill from Band Of Brothers) has a similar role.  David Patrick Kelly (you know him from The Warriors) has one great scene as a union speaker.  Edie Falco (Carmella!) has a cameo in there.  So does Joey G (Vito!).

So yeah, if you’re a character-actor aficionado like I am, The Funeral is like a piñata full of goodness.  David Chase obviously saw it.

 

I ended up digging on The Funeral, but I’m not sure if I’m a newly-converted Ferrara fan, exactly.  Then again, Ferrara’s upcoming project, Jekyll and Hyde, was announced not too long ago, and it’s supposedly a re-envisioning of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring Forest Whitaker as Jekyll and 50 Cent as Hyde.  I will absolutely watch that movie.

 

 

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Movies I Wasn’t So Nice About: DATE NIGHT (2010).

In the realm of faceless people writing about movies from the safety of the internet, I like to think I’m one of the more reasonable you’ll find. But I could be wrong. (See?) It’s a point that’s come up before, but it bears repeating: Unlike most people who write about movies online, I’ve spent A LOT of time working in all corners of the film and television industries in virtually every position there is. I know well how hard people work, around the clock, to bring every show to an audience. I try not to take that hard-earned knowledge lightly. Besides, I have friends who still work in film and TV, and I’m not even all the way out myself. I try mighty hard not to put anything on a computer screen that I don’t feel ready to say to someone’s face. On top of all of that, I grew up with movies. I love this stuff as much now as I did when I was young — if not more. It doesn’t make me happy to be unkind. I’m in this to share my enthusiasm, plain and simple.

All of that said, and try as I might, it’s way harder to find new ways to be nice. It’s certainly harder to be funny that way. And sometimes, a movie is put in front of me about which I just can’t find much nice to say and still remain honest.

These are the movies that forced me to be unkind.

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This is from April 12th, 2010:

The reason to see Date Night is exactly the reason you expect it will be.  Actually, it’s two reasons – Tina Fey and Steve Carell – two very, very good reasons.  These are quite possibly the two most lovable comedy stars in America at the moment, blending a broad audience appeal with the sharpest of comic sensibilities.  Seriously, if you can come up with a single reason to dislike either Fey or Carell, it’s time for you to get hit with the defibrillator.  They were both bred in the fabled Second City comedy troupe in Chicago, hit big with Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show (respectively), then moved onto movies and 30 Rock and The Office (respectively) — these are people with the highest caliber of expertise at their craft, but both possessed of the kind of innate likability that just can’t be taught.

It’s interesting to watch these two in Date Night, because while Fey has found great success in playing smart, and Carell has found great success in playing dumb, here they are both playing people who are resolutely normal – neither astoundingly smart but not hardly dumb, just plain average.  They play Claire and Phil Foster, a nice couple of suburban parents from New Jersey, who on an increasingly rare date night in New York City get wrapped up in a scandalous whirlwind of corrupt politicians, corrupt cops, hustlers, gangsters, and strippers.  The cast is stacked with small roles from old pros and recognizable faces: William Fichtner as a district attorney, Ray Liotta as a crime boss, Common as a glowering bad guy, Taraji Henson as a tough cop, Kristin Wiig and Mark Ruffalo as a neighbor couple headed for a split, James Franco and Mila Kunis as a couple of blackmailers, and Mark Wahlberg as a constantly shirtless James Bond type, an old acquaintance of Fey’s character.  It really is a parade of extended cameos, but everyone is well-cast and everyone comes off well.

The less you know about the movie going in, the better.  There’s not much here you haven’t seen before in many different ways, but the jokes and the set-pieces are occasionally innovative – or at least original and ingratiating enough to be entertaining.  I’ve seen some reviews coming in on Date Night that slam the script, which is credited to Josh Klausner – that’s not really fair.  This movie worked great on an audience – obviously when you have tremendous talents at hand like Tina Fey and Steve Carell, both terrific writers as well as practiced and meticulous comedians, you’re working at an advantage.  But one of the movie’s signature scenes, where a fender-bender with a cab turns into a high-speed chase through the streets of New York with the two cars still attached, really blew up the audience and that’s a credit to the writing.  Also to the script’s credit, it moves fairly quickly from the opening domestic scenes right into the main thrust of the story.  (Not enough mainstream movies seem willing to do that.)

It’s more the direction of the film that leaves something to be desired.  Shawn Levy is a director who takes a lot of criticism from the kind of movie fanatics who keep track of the names in the credits.  He’s a guy who makes middle-of-the-road entertainments with huge stars, most recently the two Night At The Museum movies.  I don’t have the same problem with the guy that many people of similar taste to me do – I think Shawn Levy makes effective enough movies that do the job they set out to do by obviously hitting a lot of demographics at once.  He’s not an artist or a risk-taker but he’s not offensively, oppressively bad (compare this movie to Cop Out, for example) and Date Night is definitely his best movie so far… however much that says (or doesn’t) as a compliment.

I think where I agree with Shawn Levy’s critics is that his movies make me long for the days when true cinematic anarchists were holding the reins on huge-budget, huge-star comedies.  Twenty or thirty years ago, guys like John Landis (Animal House, The Blues Brothers) and Ivan Reitman (Stripes, Ghostbusters) were working these kinds of movies.  Nowadays, the really ballsy helmers are either working mostly in TV or animation, such as Trey Parker (Team America), or they’re being unfairly ignored by the majority of moviegoers, such as Jody Hill (Observe & Report).  This may say more about the changing culture of big-budget moviemaking and marketing than it does about Shawn Levy’s personal taste or interests, but as one of the most successful yet somewhat anonymous filmmakers working today, he is somewhat representative of the change, fairly or not.

When you see Date Night (and I’m clearly not recommending strongly for or against it), just keep an eye out for the subplot with the DA and you’ll understand what I mean.  Without giving much away, I’ll say that William Fichtner’s character is clearly inspired in part by former governor Elliot Spitzer’s shenanigans.  Instead of going for the satire with teeth bared, the movie uses the character as a plot device and generally side-steps any assertive or resonant comedy that could have been.  (You could argue that Date Night is a fairly soft PG-13 and so it shouldn’t be going for such adult material, but then again there are guns fired throughout the movie and one particularly lengthy scene takes place in a strip club, so there goes that argument.)  Also, the pacing is noticeably more slack and muted than the great comedies tend to be – the feel of Date Night is very much watered-down and sanded edges.  That begins and ends with the director.

But again, it’s Steve Carell and Tina Fey who are front and center, and they are predictably polished, energetic, and hilarious.  They’re also a really great match onscreen, each one sympathetic and compelling and well-complemented by the other.  They make you care about these somewhat underwritten characters, they make you believe the rare tender moments, and they make you want to see them stay together as a couple.  I certainly wouldn’t care to see a sequel to this movie, but the pairing of these two stars almost demands a rematch, preferably in material that is somewhat more biting.

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