Day: October 21, 2016

Can’t Work Up The Steam

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I tried for two days to write something about Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, but I couldn’t get it up. I blame myself, not the film. Because I had an usual response that I couldn’t quite explain in the right way. Now I’m on an Atlanta-bound flight (heading for the Savannah Film Festival) and I have to get this done. My basic thought is this: “Why isn’t it okay for a rote, second-tier throwaway action flick to just deal the cards in a rote, second-tier, no-big-deal way?  As long as it’s reasonably well done?”

At least this is a less-is-more Reacher film, not quite in the vein of Chris McQuarrie’s 2012 original (which was better) but not what the two trailers had indicated, which was a Reacher T-1000 film. At least it’s operating on a higher level than a typical bonehead Dwayne Johnson film.

Sorry but there’s something in me that relaxes when a film  announces that it’s not up to anything special and is just planning to bang around for 110 minutes or so. It’s a B movie.  If the attitude is right and the craft levels are okay, I don’t have a problem with that.

I could see what this was and sense the lackadaisical attitude, but I didn’t hate it. I can’t imagine how anyone could. I was mildly engaged, never irked. And I could feel the audience settling into it. (And I know what it feels like when a film isn’t working and the audience is getting restless.) It isn’t anyone’s idea of clever or knockout or originally conceived (the Rotten Tomatoes score is only 39%), but…I don’t know, maybe I’m turning soft or something.

The only thing that elevates it is slumming Tom Cruise, but that’s okay because even in a film like this he has that thing going on, that presence, that vibe. Say what you will about Cruise but he always has your attention when he walks into a room, and now that he’s 54 and a little bit heavier and even a wee bit saggy in a more-or-less-acceptable way, he’s got a little something extra going on, a slight attitude of acceptance that life is closing in and narrowing his options and that sooner or later he’ll have to stop making hammmerhead action flicks and…who knows?

HE (speaking to Cruise): How much are you worth? More than $200 millon?
Cruise: Oh my, yes!
HE: Why are you making nothing but grandslam franchise action films? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can’t already afford?
Cruise: The future, Mr. Wells! The future.

McDonagh On The Stick

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“Last night I caught a test screening of Martin McDonagh‘s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri,” reports a Los Angeles-based HE reader. “It stars Frances McDormand as Mildred Hayes, an antique-shop owner, and it’s basically about the fact that months before the film’s events McDormand’s daughter was viciously raped and murdered. There’s been no news about the case in a long time and no arrests, and Mildred has begun to feel that authorities may be dropping the ball.

“So she rents out three billboards leading into town and puts up an advertisement that says something along the lines of ‘Why aren’t the cops doing more to catch the guilty?’ and singles out the police chief (played by Woody Harrelson). The police are of course riled about being called out like this (the rest of the town, including Mildred’s son, also think that the billboards are taking it too far), and so begins an interesting battle of wits between Mildred and the police department.

“I didn’t care for Seven Psychopaths much at all, but I really liked In Bruges. I think this film is on par with the latter quality-wise — it’s an incredibly smart, dark comedy with a great script.

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Anyone Who Uses The Word “Genius”…

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Obviously there are some who’ve been gifted with extraordinary perception and creativity. Artists, mathematicians, inventors, chefs. You can call them geniuses if you want to, but I wouldn’t touch that word with a ten-foot pole. Mainly because the people who seem to use it the most — sycophants, ass-kissers, headline writers, obsequious wives and girlfriends, employees, speechwriters — are not the sort I’d want to have dinner with. I doubt if anyone who has that special crackle-and-snap aliveness in their craniums would use it either. I first heard the term when my mother was telling me who Albert Einstein is, and that was way before he changed his name to Albert Brooks. All I know is that I decided a long time ago to make a little mental note about anyone who says “oh, he/she’s a genius.” Only second-tier people use it.

Polite Dispute

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“To describe Moonlight (A24, opening today), Barry Jenkins’ second feature, as a movie about growing up poor, black and gay would be accurate enough. It would also not be wrong to call it a movie about drug abuse, mass incarceration and school violence. But those classifications are also inadequate, so much as to be downright misleading. It would be truer to the mood and spirit of this breathtaking film to say that it’s about teaching a child to swim, about cooking a meal for an old friend, about the feeling of sand on skin and the sound of waves on a darkened beach, about first kisses and lingering regrets.

“Based on the play ‘In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue’ by Tarell Alvin McCraney, Moonlight is both a disarmingly, at times almost unbearably personal film and an urgent social document, a hard look at American reality and a poem written in light, music and vivid human faces.

“[Jenkins] does not generalize. He empathizes. Every moment is infused with what the poet Hart Crane called ‘infinite consanguinity,’ the mysterious bond that links us with one another and that only an alert and sensitive artistic imagination can make visible. From first shot to last, Moonlight is about as beautiful a movie as you are ever likely to see. The colors are rich and luminous. (The director of photography is James Laxton.) The music — hip-hop, R&B, astute classical selections and Nicholas Britell’s subtle score — is both surprising and perfect.” — From A.O. Scott‘s 10.20 N.Y. Times review, titled “Is This the Year’s Best Movie?”

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Distinctive Production Design Dominates Creepy Swiss Clinic, Anti-Youth Tale

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Does it make sense that a Swiss wellness clinic would specialize in terrifying its patients? This is nonetheless the basic premise of Gore Verbinski‘s A Cure For Wellness (20th Century Fox, 2.17.17). Obviously a neo-German expressionist production design flick first and whatever else second. The bulk of the film was shot at Hohenzollern Castle in the Bisingen municipality, in southwest Germany. Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs, Mia Goth, et. al. Written by Justin Haythe (Revolutionary Road).