So what could have led Roger Michel, the obviously bright and perceptive director of Enduring Love, to take Ian McEwan's 1998 novel about a bizarre romantic obsession and turn it into a "jokeless gloomarama?" wonders New Yorker critic Anthony Lane. "The ideas behind Enduring Love may be fascinating, but they don't play, they sulk, and so it was during another annoying rant from Jed the Pest [i.e., Rhys Ifans' thoroughly revolting stalker character] that I leaned over to the friend beside me and whispered, 'All I really, really want at this moment, in the whole world, is to be watching
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:04 PM on Sunday, October 31, 2004
In Tom Wolfe's scheme of things, reports a
New York Times Magazine profile (11.31), social behavior is almost always determined by status consciousness -- an instinct to preserve your place in the social pecking order. Pretty much all human endeavor "has to do with status," says the 74 year-old author of "I Am Charlotte Simmons" (excerpted in
Rolling Stone...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:58 AM on Sunday, October 31, 2004
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:22 AM on Sunday, October 31, 2004
Follow-up to my 10.27 item (see below):
Wired...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:06 PM on Saturday, October 30, 2004
An anonymous "Black Man, Husband, Father, Son, Actor, Producer, Director, Poet, Warrior," et. al. who wrote in to Movie City News a day or so ago says he's sick of a lot things in movies today, with all-around mediocrity among the offenders. One things that stick in his craw is Halle Berry's role in
Monster's Ball...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:20 AM on Saturday, October 30, 2004
Roar of Greasepaint
I predicted this a few weeks ago, and now it's coming to pass: Joel Schumacher's
The Phantom of the Opera (Warner Bros., 12.22) is making its way, buzz-wise, into the Best Picture Oscar race.
This lavishly produced (I'm told) musical, which almost no one has seen but is based, as everyone knows, on the popular Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical, has become a big Best Picture "maybe" largely due to a story written by New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman that ran yesterday (10.28).
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:18 PM on Friday, October 29, 2004
The breeze is now blowing in John Kerry's direction. Can you feel it? I can. The tightening of the national poll numbers, the strengthening of the looted weapons depot in Iraq story by eyewitnesses and video footage, the just-announced FBI investigation into Halliburton contracts, etc. The breeze was blowing for Bush a week, week and a half ago....but now it's not.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:31 AM on Friday, October 29, 2004
Revival
Vincent, Tom Cruise's hit-man character in
Collateral, is diamond-like -- hard and sharp and full of glints and reflections. For me it's a hot-cold thing...acting that burns through not because of some forced intensity, but an artful hold-back, cold-steel strategy.
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:17 PM on Wednesday, October 27, 2004
Some day, somehow, major-publication editors are going to give up and start spelling the word "internet" without that fucking capital "I." However you want to define the worldwide web -- an environment, a digital information delivery system, an intergalactic atmosphere -- "internet" is a generic term like "highway" or "radio" or "television." I got into the same kind of idiotic dispute with a writer at the
Hollywood Reporter...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:11 AM on Wednesday, October 27, 2004
New York magazine critic Peter Rainerís review of Alexander Payne's
Sideways is, to me, really quite beautiful. An exquisitely cut stone. Fully in tune with the film itself. Iíd like to see Ken Tucker, Rainerís recently-hired replacement, write something as good. Perhaps he will. Here's hoping Rainer finds a new berth sometime soon...hopefully a berth with an editor who will respect his talents more than
New York editor Adam Moss apparently does.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:41 AM on Wednesday, October 27, 2004
I haven't been invited to see
The Polar Express (Warner Bros., 11.10), the $200 million-plus, digitally groundbreaking, Christmas storybook flick made by director Bob Zemeckis and star-producer Tom Hanks, despite being invited to the product-reel, dog-and-pony show at the Warner lot a few weeks ago. I suppose there's a reason for some concern now that
Variety's David Rooney has called it
The Bi-Polar Express and complained that the story doesn't pay off particularly well. Along with an emerging view that the digitally-composed kids are "dead-eyed" and resemble the alien tykes from
Village of the Damned...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:27 PM on Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Brad Bird's The Incredibles (Disney/Pixar, 11.5)!! This animated comedy about a family of gone-to-seed superhero parents and their two kids, ducking their enemies under the Witness Protection Program but looking to get those old juices flowing again, is looking like a monster hit with all ages. A friend who went to an Academy screening on Monday, 10.25, said, "I loved it...it's funny...people applauded the especially good parts...it runs about 115 minutes but feels like 80 or 90...and it's a crowd-pleaser, a blockbuster...it'll make $200 or $300 million." I could've gone, but I went to the Tom Cruise tribute thing instead. Choices, choices.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:23 PM on Tuesday, October 26, 2004
New Yorker critic David Denby on Paul Giamatti's sublime performance in
Sideways, from a 10.18
posting : "Giamatti has no chin to speak of, a round-shouldered physique, an adenoidal snarl, and the nervous grin of a craven dog. Heís the national anti-ideal, and heís making a brilliant career out of it. In
American Splendor...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:37 PM on Monday, October 25, 2004
There are two words that describe the reported thinking among certain undecided voters out there, as relayed in a
New York Times story out today (10.25), and those words are "staggeringly ignorant." Perhaps the better adjective for ignorant is "willfully," since the only way to support Bush in the face of all the damning indicators is to invest in massive levels of denial. The bad guys seem to be inching up, up, up...polls say Kerry is slightly behind in Hawaii, Florida, et. al. The
New York Times says support for Bush among black voters is higher than it was in '00....
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:33 AM on Monday, October 25, 2004
"Closer is, I suppose, a Carnal Knowledge for 2004," cinematographer Stephen Goldblatt has told San Francisco Chronicle...
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:07 AM on Monday, October 25, 2004
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:19 AM on Sunday, October 24, 2004
It was clear from an early John Logan draft of
The Aviator...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:37 AM on Sunday, October 24, 2004
"The challenge of taking on esteemed material has evidently inspired
Alfie director [Charles] Shyer to shake off the bland and bloodless polish of his ultra-mainstream Hollywood pictures to inject this remake with welcome vitality," writes
Variety...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:21 AM on Sunday, October 24, 2004
Maybe Baby
Take this with a very small grain, but remarks from a couple of actresses have upped my interest in Clint Eastwood's
Million Dollar Baby (Warner Bros., 12.15).
Paul Haggis's script is a surrogate father-surrogate daughter relationship piece. It's about an aged ex-prize fighter (Eastwood) who decides to train a young woman (Hilary Swank) who's determined to box. Morgan Freeman plays Eastwood's longtime pal and confidante...the character with the pithy sayings and sage ringside commentary.
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:50 PM on Friday, October 22, 2004
Roman Polanski, your legend is about to be challenged. Before shooting
Washington, the third and final installment of his Amerika trilogy, Lars von Trier is going to make some kind of classy horror film about the Devil. To be called
Antikrist, it will ìput an end to the big lie that God created the world,î according to von Trierís producer, Peter Aalbek Jensen, and will explore von Trier's contrarian view that ìit was Satan who created the human race and the world.î Thereís no script yet apparently, but according to a story in the Danish daily
Berlingske Tidende ...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:55 AM on Thursday, October 21, 2004
Ancient Tides
The fundamental yea-nay on Oliver Stone's
Alexander (Warner Bros., 11.25) will hinge, I'm guessing, on one basic thing.
Has Stone sufficiently channeled the times of Alexander -- the beliefs and core values that provided a sense of identity, cohesion and destiny to players in the period from 356 to 334 B.C.? Has Stone sufficiently imbedded his film in the bedrock faiths and realities of that time and culture?
And in so doing (that's if...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:06 PM on Wednesday, October 20, 2004
From Bill Maher's "New Rules" routine on last Friday's (19.15) "Real Time with Bill Maher" HBO show, to wit: "New Rule: No puppet fucking. The South Park guys have a new movie called Team America, which features graphic sex scenes between marionettes. Hey, you know what? If I had any interest in wooden sex with strings attached, I'd get married."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:04 AM on Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Natalie Portman's striptease-club scene in Closer will, I'm told, be cause for hormonal excitation among younger males, particularly those who haven't seen her in Garden State (in which she gives a wonderfully ripe and robust performance)and who know her primarily as Princess Amidala. I don't know what I can add to this, except to say that strip clubs are very exciting places to be for about five minutes...until that rancid predatory vibe starts to seep into your pores and you can't wait to leave. But those first five minutes are great.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:54 AM on Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Another totally detestable movie idea being developed by Joe Roth's Revolution Studios: a Beatles film musical called "All You Need Is Love," currently being written by Brit screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. Pic would use well over a dozen cover versions of Beatle songs to "drive the narative" of a love story between an English lad and an American lassie, set against the backdrop of the social upheaval of the 1960s.
If this thing ever gets made, it could one day share the marquee of West Hollywood's New Beverly cinema with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 6:25 PM on Tuesday, October 19, 2004
If you buy what some Democratic pulse-takers are saying, the election is closer than it seems because the historical record is that the vast majority of undecided voters have always gone for the challenger at the last minute. I'd like to believe this, but with an apparent majority of red-staters still preferring Bush in every poll except the most recent
New York Times...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:44 PM on Tuesday, October 19, 2004
There was an early-bird press screening of Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Touchstone, 12.25) last Monday evening (10.18), and one reasonably discerning guy who attended says he "loved it....I was laughing hysterically...it was a real rush...my heart and mind were completely in synch over it." This from a guy, F.Y.I., who liked Anderson's first three films -- Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums -- but didn't quite love them.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 1:31 PM on Tuesday, October 19, 2004
In her role as Tea Leoni's mother in James L. Brooks'
Spanglish...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:59 AM on Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Nothing further on Matt Stone and Trey Parker's political sympathies needs to be said, but here's New York Times critic Tony Scott riffing on them anyway: "A number of commentators have discerned a pronounced conservative streak amid the anarchy of South Park, a hypothesis that Team America to some extent confirms. Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins and other left-leaning movie stars are eviscerated (quite literally -- also decapitated, set on fire and eaten by house cats), while right-wing media figures escape derision altogether. It seems likely that [Stone and Parker's] emphases and omissions reflect a particular point of view."
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 4:05 PM on Saturday, October 16, 2004
It was George Bush '41, not President Bush, who was quoted Friday as having called Michael Moore a "total ass" and "slimeball" for pushing "outrageous...lies about my family" in Fahrenheit 9/11.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:33 AM on Saturday, October 16, 2004
A reader named Mark Zeigler says he's having doubts about my enthusiasm for
Sideways (Fox Searchlight, 10.22) because
Salon critic Charles Taylor has mostly panned it and called its director-cowriter, Alexander Payne, "a pretentious wiseass." First, it's okay for Taylor to trash
Sideways. He's going to feel pretty lonely with that viewpoint, but fine. But second, Zeigler may want to consider what
New York Times...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:13 AM on Saturday, October 16, 2004
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:03 AM on Saturday, October 16, 2004
Figuring the specific reason iNDEMAND decided to bail on airing "The Michael Moore Pre-Election Special" will be an interesting pursuit. The company, owned by Time Warner, Cox and Comcast cable companies, announced Friday it wouldn't be showing "The Michael Moore Pre-Election Special" due to "legitimate business and legal concerns," which is apparently a euphemism for political pressure. Moore has stated that he and iNDEMAND signed a contract to air the special (which would have included a showing of
Fahrenheit 9/11...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 8:39 AM on Saturday, October 16, 2004
Mean Streets
The arrival of Gillo Pontecorvo's
The Battle of Algiers on a Criterion DVD last Tuesday is one of the most fascinating historical echo events in a long time.
A nearly 40 year-old account of guerilla warfare waged by the Algerian Liberation Front against French colonialists on native soil in the late 1950s, Pontecorvo's astonishing film is a primer on what U.S. forces are grappling with now in Iraq.
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:18 AM on Friday, October 15, 2004
Wolves Wearing Wool
Trey Parker and Matt Stone are clever filmmakers and inspired comedians, but I can't help despising where they're coming from politically in
Team America: World Police (Paramount, 10.15), their R-rated puppet flick.
...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:29 PM on Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Some of you might be tempted to look at Jeannot Szwarc's
Somewhere in Time in tribute to Christopher Reeve, who gave one of his better performances in it. I happen to be a sucker for this film, not for the "all" of it but because of a closing sequence that I saw at critics' screening some 24 years ago....but which I haven't seen since. I asked about this when I happened to run into
Somewhere in Time...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:26 AM on Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Anyone looking at Wes Anderson's upcoming
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Touchstone, 12.25) and saying it's not Oscar material....as a fairly well-connected journalist friend suggested last weekend...is missing the point. Wes Anderson films are about their own state of mind and nothing further. They simply
are...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:21 AM on Wednesday, October 13, 2004
I'm watching the Rock (a.k.a., Dwayne Johnson) talk about shooting a bizarre action scene in
The Rundown...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 11:58 AM on Tuesday, October 12, 2004
For me, Richard Eyre's
Stage Beauty...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 10:08 AM on Monday, October 11, 2004
Certain taste-maker journos around town are telling me Dylan Kidd's P.S. (Newmarket, 10.15) isn't good enough and therefore that Laura Linney's shot at a Best Actress nom for her work in this film is in peril. I really think they're wrong about this. This obviously smart, curiously romantic film is alive and originally plotted, it never drifts or bores, and Linney is radiantly readable in every frame.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:20 AM on Monday, October 11, 2004
Christopher Reeve was a symbol of undying hope, fortitude and courage. What did he die of exactly? A
New York Times story said that Reeve fell into a coma Saturday after going into cardiac arrest while at his home in Pound Ridge, New York. Reeve "was being treated for a pressure wound, a common complication for people in wheelchairs," the
Times...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:59 PM on Sunday, October 10, 2004
Sorry I dropped out for three days, but I had a mild neurological freakout on Friday morning. In plainer terms, I kind of, heh-heh, "lost it" and thereafter decided on some primal deep-down level that I needed to re-charge for a day or two. Sorry -- I'll try not to let it happen again. Do I really mean that? Sure I do...as far as it goes.
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:53 PM on Sunday, October 10, 2004
Basic Instinct
It's built into our genes to show obeisance before power. It's obviously a big tendency in Hollywood circles, but hardly an exclusive one. Every culture, every species does the bow-down.
I was speaking the other night to this know-it-all guy who goes to a lot of Academy screenings and parties, and we were talking about possible Best Actor nominees. We'd both just seen Ray and knew for sure Jamie Foxx was a shoo-in, but who else?
"Paul Giamatti," I said.
"Who?" he asked.
"The lead in Sideways," I reminded him. "He's amazing, heartbreaking... and the film is masterful."Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 9:18 AM on Friday, October 8, 2004
Sex Detective
I admired and enjoyed Bill Condon's
Kinsey (Fox Searchlight, 11.12) upon seeing it Monday night. It's a smart, probing, movingly performed portrait of what it was like to live in sexually suppressed times, and how a startling work of research by an gangly odd-duck scientist named Alfred Kinsey (Liam Neeson) began to lift the cloak of sexual puritanism.
I've just made it sound like one of those plodding, dutiful, good-for-you biopics. It's not. It's alert and focused and keeps you thinking and re-thinking.
Neeson hasn't been this concentrated and affecting since Schindler's List...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 5:52 PM on Wednesday, October 6, 2004
In a piece honoring the recently deceased Janet Leigh,
L.A. Times critic Carina Chocano says in today's edition (10.5) that Leigh's best films --
Touch of Evil,
Psycho and
The Manchurian Candidate -- amounted to "a dark trilogy, [in which she played] an icy, un-settling and alienated woman, a cynically tragic ur-feminist." I'd leave room for a fourth character in this vein: the embittered ex-wife of Paul Newman's down-at-the-heels shamus in Jack Smight's
Harper (1966), which boasted a finely-tuned script by William Goldman. The angry and wounded Susan Harper was surely a more substantial part than Leigh's bizarre
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:38 PM on Tuesday, October 5, 2004
After nine submissions, the MPAA ratings board has finally given Matt Parker and Trey Stone's political satire
Team America: World Police...
Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:12 PM on Tuesday, October 5, 2004
The perception that Kerry won last week's debate has wiped out President Bush's lead in the race, according to the latest
Newsweek...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:43 PM on Sunday, October 3, 2004
29 year-old Leonardo DiCaprio's performance as Howard Hughes in
The Aviator (Warner Bros., 12.17) is "stunning," producer Michael Mann has told
Empire...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 3:03 PM on Sunday, October 3, 2004
So
Shark Tale did just shy of $50 million on its first weekend...big deal. A movie can be a box-office leviathan and people can still hate it. Everyone says it's mainly about other movies, it's got no heart, and the only good voice-actor performance is Martin Scorsese's. Last May I attended a big DreamWorks presentation for
Shark Tale...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:50 PM on Sunday, October 3, 2004
Chaos Theory
I'm all over the place this morning (researching, ad concerns, re-designing) and running late with Wednesday's (10.6) column. It probably won't be up until 3 pm Pacific time. If only there two of me...or three of me, for that matter. One could sleep on the couch and the other on a cot in the dining room.
I'm tapping something out about Ray...Read More
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 2:42 PM on Friday, October 1, 2004
"The most powerful moments are so realistic that they're almost excruciating. A good half dozen sequences are so intensely acted and so deeply involving that audiences will forget they're watching a movie until the scene ends and exhaling can recommence. Yet [the director] knows how to increase the overall effect by interlacing quieter, more tender scenes as well." I'm definitely intrigued by this excerpt from Peter Brunette's review of
Crash...
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posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:58 AM on Friday, October 1, 2004
posted by Jeffrey Wells at 7:34 AM on Friday, October 1, 2004
