I’m not one of those literalists who demands practical, reasonable answers for everything he sees in a film, but how exactly does a vampire attain stiffitude? Don’t you need warm blood rushing to the loins, etc.? I’m not arguing with the notion of Edward and Bella doing it — it’s fine, and thank God the series is almost over — but did Stephanie Meyer ever try to explain how Edward manages the act? Not criticizing — just asking.
Every now and then…well, actually on very rare occasions Criterion decides to lower itself into the vaguely disreputable, ball-scratching realm of popcorn cinema (Armageddon, The Rock) as a way of sloughing off their elitist, butt-plugged, too-cool-for-school reputation. Their latest release in this realm will be Douglas Cheek‘s CHUD (1984), which Criterion will street on July 12th. One question: why?
True fact: In 1983 I sat one evening at a table in a West 72nd bar with CHUD star John Heard and at least one other CHUD costar (Daniel Stern?) plus a couple of other actor friends including Keith Szarabajka. I distinctly remember Heard explaining to someone at the table that CHUD would be (and I’m writing this from memory) “kind of a subversive, side-pocket, slider-ball type of thing….it’ll be what it’ll be when it opens, and then it’ll be something else in ten or twenty years.” Not a big moneymaker and nothing close to an Oscar-type deal, but possibly destined for coolness and significantly above the level of a Troma Film.
Criterion’s jacket copy: “A rash of bizarre murders in New York City seems to point to a group of grotesquely deformed vagrants living in the sewers. With its surprisingly gritty depiction of urban life, noirish cinematography by Peter Stein (Ernest Goes to Jail), and groundbreaking makeup effects, this Reagan-era chiller remains one of the truest depictions of Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers yet put on film.”
Sony Home Video’s Taxi Driver Bluray (out 4.5) is easily the best non-theatrical version of this film ever seen. It’s very celluloid-looking, thickly colored, like you’re watching a freshly-struck 16mm print in your darkened living room. It’s nothing to jump up and down about, but it’s as good as this ratty little classic — shot on 16mm (or was it a combo of 16mm and 35mm?), appropriately reflective of the slimey tones and textures of mid ’70s Manhattan — is ever going to look.
I haven’t even touched the extras but I’m hearing they’re top-of-the-line.
22 days ago I reviewed Duncan Jones‘ Source Code, and here’s a re-posting to link with today’s opening: “This is an engaging, somewhat sentimental and yet trippy, spiritual-minded sci-fi thriller that deserves a thumbs-up for several reasons, but I was especially delighted that it hasn’t been dumbed down.
(l. to r.) Source Code costars Vera Farmiga, Michelle Monahan and Jake Gyllenhaal, and screenwriter Ben Ripley (far right) on stage at Austin’s Paramount theatre following this evening’s screening.
“It’s an exciting nail-biter, but is essentially cerebral in the manner of an above-average Twilight Zone episode from the early ’60s, and is not what anyone would call fanboy-catering or CG-driven, thank God.
“The rumors were true: this is Groundhog Day with a bomb. Plus a little Sliding Doors, Rashomon (as screenwriter Ben Ripley acknowledged during the q & a) and a touch of Run Lola Run. Notions of reality are constantly being supposed, redefined, fiddled with and scrambled around. It keeps you on your toes but never frustrates or irritates. Jones (Moon) and Ripley work hard to involve viewers but also keep them working, and the pace and the balance are just right.
“Jake Gyllenhaal plays a military chopper pilot who doesn’t know if he’s dreaming or dead or what the hell is happening…at first. All he initially knows is that his last memory involved serving in Afghanistan, but now he’s on a Chicago-bound commuter train in a sequence that loops and re-loops and re-loops in eight minute portions. And that a pretty girl (Michelle Monaghan) whom he apparently knows somewhat is sitting opposite him every time. And that some other guy is staring back at him when he glances at a bathroom mirror. And that the loop will always end with a bomb going off and scores of passengers being ripped to shreds.
“Between each segment Gyllenhaal finds himself in a small padded isolation chamber of some kind and speaking to an Air Force officer (Vera Farmiga) about what he remembers and what he’s learned. The basic idea, he realizes early on, is to try and eventually figure out who the bomber is, and how to stop him. Because the train bomb is only a prelude, he’s told, and that the bomber, whoever he or she is, intends to explode a nuclear device somewhere in downtown Chicago, so he/she has to be busted in what might as well be called a repeating Source Code realm in order to be stopped in real life.
Source Code director Duncan Jones is on the far left.
“What technology allows the train-bomb sequence to be played and replayed over and over? Is Gyllenhaal’s helicopter pilot dreaming, or perhaps a figment of some computer programmer’s imagination? Does Source Code-tripping provide a mere reflection of a fragment of what’s already happened and is locked in, or does it have some vague potential to reconfigure or change the future?
“That’s as far as I’m going to go in explaining the basics, but it’s remarkable that so much information is packed into a mere 95 minutes or thereabouts, and yet the film doesn’t feel congested or maddeningly detailed or anything along those lines. Source Code is obviously intended to tickle and tease, but it’s not Rubik’s Cube — bright but non-genius types (like myself) won’t be driven mad.
“The only mildly bothersome element is that the CG train explosions could be a little better looking (they don’t seem fully refined), and that two or three trains cars explode in flames despite the oft-demonstrated fact that there’s only one big bomb causing the destruction. And there’s a tone of alpha-emanating happiness at the end that isn’t…how to say this?…absolutely rock-solid necessary and perhaps is a little too happy-fizzy. But it’s part of a worked-out karma uplift element that ties in with death and fate and momentary eternities , and is therefore not much a problem.”
“Will Ferrell does a serious turn in Everything Must Go with mixed results,” Hollywood Reporter critic Kirk Honeycutt wrote during last September’s Toronto Film festival. “Playing an alcoholic at a crucial crossroad in his life, he uses his middle-age slacker persona well to convey a guy lost in his own immaturity and low self-esteem. And he nicely finds humor in an otherwise pathetic situation.
“But the performance is too one-note. Using an acting muscle hitherto ignored, Ferrell isn’t able to track the ups-and-downs in the story’s dramatic beats. Instead he falls back on physical humor and facial expressions that don’t quite get to the bottom of what ails his character.
The film, written and directed by commercials director Dan Rush from a Raymond Carver short story, is likewise a mixed blessing. It doesn’t try to shake off its literary roots. Rush intends a fable-like quality to his tale about a guy literally forced to live several days on his suburban front lawn. Yet the protagonist is such a sad sack an audience has to do much too much work to like this guy at all. You don’t even get the impression that if he stopped drinking, he would necessarily be a better person.”
Forget what Hanna (Focus Features, 4.8) is about because you’ve seen this fists-of-fury action-girl fantasy stuff before in Kickass, Salt and Sucker Punch — the same crap about a young 115-pound female hardbody wailing on much bigger and heavier adversaries, etc. But if you focus on Hanna‘s throttling symphonic style — the high-grade chops and adrenalized tone and choice fashion-flash photography, and the way it pounds into your head with a loud, throbbing techno-score by the Chemical Brothers — you may feel a special wow.
I’d always wanted to see Fred Zinneman‘s A Hatful of Rain on a big wide screen (rather than on a small television set, which is what I saw it on when I was 15) because it’s in black-and-white Scope — my favorite format. So I caught it last night at the Aero, and briefly spoke with star Don Murray (who’s looking very fit and vibrant at age 82) and listened to a q & a with Murray and costar Eva Marie Saint.
Released in 1957 and set mostly in a small lower-Manhattan apartment, A Hatful of Rain is an on-the-nose melodrama about middle-class drug addiction. Murray plays Johnny Pope, a married Korean War veteran in his mid 20s with a heroin habit that keeps him out at all hours. His brother Polo (Anthony Franciosa) has helped him score for months out of misplaced sympathy, and in the process has blown $2500 that had been loaned by their father (Lloyd Nolan), who’s just come up from Florida to visit. And Pope’s wife Celia (Saint) suspects that he’s having an affair, and is in fact relieved when she finally discovers that he hasn’t been unfaithful in a sexual sense.
The main problem I had with A Hatful of Rain (which is a great-sounding title without thinking about what it might mean) is that it’s not actually about drug addiction as much as 1950s middle-class denial — about the inability of Average Joes like Johnny and Polo to own up to shameful situations and deal with them straight-on. The ’50s were about everyone trying to live up to a nice white-bread homogenous ideal, about “everything’s okay” and conforming to the norm and not rocking the boat, and boy, is this movie ever about that!
And so for at least 95 minutes of A Hatful of Rain‘s 109-minute running time, all that happens is denial and lying, denial and lying, and more denial and lying. No habit, no horse, no desperation. “Everything is fine, pop…really.”
The guilt-wracked Murray and Franciosa feel can’t tell Saint or Nolan what’s actually going on despite abundant indications that something’s way off, and it becomes very, very exasperating after an hour of this. You’re muttering to yourself, “C’mon, guys…lying about being a junkie all the time is much, much worse than facing up to it, no matter how ashamed you might be.” And you have to sit through another 35 to 40 minutes of endless dodging and fibbing and covering up before it all comes out in the wash.
And Franciosa is constantly over-acting, and I mean in a way that says, “I am an actor playing a character and I am going to pretend like hell that I’m feeling all the heavy stuff that I’m dealing with because an audience needs to understand and consider all this.” He’s giving it everything he has and then some, and it’s definitely one of the more painful performances I’ve had to sit through in a long while.
It’s partly Zinneman’s fault, of course — he could have told Franciosa to use a little subtlety and economy, but he didn’t. But on-the-nose emoting was par for the course in the 1950s for all but a very few (i.e., Brando, Dean, Clift). Henry Silva plays “mother,” Murray’s drug dealer, and William Hickey plays Silva’s twitchy-scumbag pally or assistant or whatever.
And yet Michael V. Gazzo‘s script, adapted from his B’way play, is reasonably realistic and well-honed for what it is. It has believable dialogue and behavior that seems palatable and recognizable. And it has a clean and decisive ending. (I’m presuming everyone knows that Gazzo played Frankie Pantangeli in The Godfather, Part II.)
But the Aero’s projection, unfortunately, was a little soft. Or the print was a dupe. Either way it looked okay but not all that terrific. I kept saying to myself, “This is going to look so much better when and if it comes out on DVD.”
I realize, of course, that hundreds of thousands of people who don’t know any better make fools of themselves in karaoke bars on a nightly basis, but I can’t understand why intelligent journos who have a clue would degrade themselves in this fashion. “Hey, I have an idea! Let’s all go to a karaoke bar and prove to drunken strangers that we can’t sing or phrase as well as professionals! And are sometimes flat or off-key!” HE rule #39: if you’re not all that good at something, keep it to yourself.
MSN‘s James Rocchi and Cinema Blend‘s Katey Rich.
Manhattan-visiting friend: “Just a reminder to call anyone you know who can help you score tickets to The Book of Mormon. I saw it last night, and it’s the real deal. It’s thrilling, and, yes, irreverent, blasphemous and an equal-opportunity offender. But would you expect anything less from Trey Parker and Matt Stone?
“But what’s amazing is their real love and understanding of musical theatre, and the fact that is has a huge palpitating heart at its center. I don’t remember sitting in a Broadway theatre surrounded by a more thrilled audience (which last night included Sting and Sandra Bullock.)
My response: “I called [a producer friend] and he offered to help me — but only with premium tickets at $260-something a pop. I can’t do that. It’s just a Broadway musical. It’s just two and half hours in a theatre. Plus the irksome and roly-poly Josh Gad, who all but singlehandedly destroyed Love and Other Drugs, is in it…so I’m not completely hearbroken.”
With today’s release (and concurrent critical savaging) of Cat Run, it’s time to once again lament the saga of John Stockwell — an extremely bright, hip and likable guy who started out as an actor in the ’80s (Top Gun) but really found his footing as a director — first with the entirely decent, well-shaped, movingly performed Crazy/Beautiful (’01) and then Blue Crush, one of the best modestly-proportioned surfer movies I’ve ever seen.
But since then Stockwell has fallen into a trap in which the only films he’s been allowed (or been able) to make are callow thrillers and youth-market programmers — Into The Blue, Turistas, Middle of Nowhere, etc. And now Cat Run, which Time Out‘s Nick Schager calls “a third-generation Tarantino rip-off distinguished only by its equal-opportunity nudity.” Knowing Stockwell as I do (which is to say slightly or somewhat), I believe he’s much better than the material he’s managed to work with over the last eight years. Which is really too bad because life is effin’ short, man.
While waiting for last night’s 7:30 pm showing of A Hatful of Rain to begin at the Aero, Empire‘s Helen O’Hara tweeted that I owed her an apology for having written last Monday that her 3.28 story about Britain’s Icon planning to open Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life on May 4th, or several days before its expected debut at next month’s Cannes Film Festival, was “probably incorrect.”
Because O’Hara’s story is apparently correct.
Icon’s 5.4 Tree release was confirmed yesterday (or the day before?) on the Film Distributor’s Association list and O’Hara also reconfirmed the story in an update. This despite a distinct possibility that Fox Searchlight will pressure Icon into backing off because a 5.4 release in Great Britain would all but torpedo the Cannes hoo-hah they were (and still are) looking to get from debuting The Tree of Life there.
So I apologize — O’Hara was right and I was led to believe that she “probably” wasn’t. Let the record show that I never said her story was definitely wrong. I wrote that I’d been told it was “most likely untrue” by two Fox Searchlight execs and also that two key sources — Jill Jones, chief of int’l distribution for Summit Entertainment, which holds int’l rights on The Tree of Life, and Zak Brilliant, VP distribution and publicity or Icon Distribution UK — had refused to confirm or deny. I called and emailed both, pleading for assistance. It was like talking to a brick wall.
This morning I wrote Brilliant and Jones again, asking if this is really a set-in-stone plan and if there’s any chance of rescinding, etc.
A 3.31 analysis of the situation by The Playlist‘s Oliver Lyttleton says Icon’s decision “comes at the cost of screwing over their fellow distributors — a Cannes premiere seems to have been key to Fox Searchlight’s strategy for the film, and, should the date stick, they’ve now got less than two months to rejig their campaign. There’s no doubt that the studio would have been furious when they heard the news — in fact, considering their initial denial, they may have found out about it through Empire’s story, rather than being notified by Icon, and initially disbelieved it.
“Does this mean that Brits will be able to head to their local Cineworld on May 4th and buy a ticket for The Tree of Life? Possibly not. In fact, probably not. Summit International, who acted as the sales agent for the film, has major relationships with both Icon and the Cannes Film Festival, and if Icon’s hand gets forced, it’s likely to be by Summit.”
What happened, says Lyttleton, was “a case of the right hand not talking to the left hand. If one studio is releasing a film worldwide, then the timing of its release can be perfectly synchronized, but for an independently produced project like The Tree of Life, which will be released by dozens of different distributors worldwide, it doesn’t work in the same way. Once a final print has been delivered, generally speaking, only good faith and mutual interest keep the companies in sync.
“Whether they were seeking publicity by being the first territory to release the picture, or simply decided it was the most effective date for the film, Icon genuinely picked the May 4th date, and as of the moment of writing, intends to release it then.
“A British opening doesn’t rule the film out of Cannes — last year’s out-of-competition opening film, Robin Hood, started screening for the public in the U.K. on the morning of its bow on the Croisette, while Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces was in competition in 2009, despite going on general release in Spain two months earlier. But it’s almost certain that Icon will have more to lose, reputation-wise, if they stick to their guns, and they’ll likely defer to Fox Searchlight.”
Here’s my guess: (a) It is widely presumed that The Tree of Life is no one’s idea of a popcorn film and may in fact be a blatantly uncommercial property (who knows?), and given this (b) Icon decided they’d get more of an opening-week bang out of a Sean Penn-and-Brad Pitt-with-dinosaurs movie with limited critical response (i.e., with only British critics weighing in). Rightly or wrongly, they came to believe that a significant percentage of Cannes Film Festival journalists will trash it, and that this international chorus will obviously generate negative online buzz so why not open it before this happens?
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