Larry Crowne

Tom Hanks’ “Larry Crowne” is a harmless film that will offend no one. This is a luxury if you don’t mind your films so tepid and tame lest anything more surprise you.

Hanks directs himself as the title character, a loveable lug who was just fired from his long time job at the superstore UMart. This bothers him, slightly, but he soon realizes that if he wants to get back on his feet and start working again, he’ll need to get a college degree.

“Oh No! I lost my job at UMart,” I thought as Larry returned to his comfy suburban home. The film naturally addresses the economic crisis and does so simply and directly. This is not a difficult film. Continue reading “Larry Crowne”

Blazing Saddles (1974)

Having not seen “Blazing Saddles” in many years, I had to confirm whether or not it was actually the comedic masterpiece it for so long has been hailed as. Regardless of if the film is actually the sixth funniest movie ever made (according to AFI), it is riotously silly, hilarious, clever, controversial and influential.

Mel Brooks’ movie is the pinnacle example for how to do so many things right. It’s sad that he arguably never got it right again with any of his subsequent films. “The Producers,” “Young Frankenstein” and “Saddles” are his masterstrokes, and while the man still holds some cult acclaim today, every other parody film he made post “Saddles” is somewhat overrated.

And unlike the other two favorites, only “Saddles” is good evidence as to why. It’s tempting to not want to think about a film as silly as this, but like the Marx Brothers before him and “The Simpsons” and “South Park” after him, Brooks practically gets away with murder and it’s worth it to wonder how. Continue reading “Blazing Saddles (1974)”

Rapid Response: Barton Fink

It’s a bit hard to imagine a time when the Coens were not living legends and instead were precocious young filmmakers imagining any film they could. “Barton Fink” was their fourth film, and it’s tough to say which film really put them on the map.

This one won the Palme D’Or at Cannes. But it didn’t just win; it was selected unanimously. Seems like it would be a big stepping stone, but their debut “Blood Simple” was so riveting and classically good in its Americana thriller way that they already captured the attention of critics, and “Raising Arizona” became a cult comedy long before “The Big Lebowski” did. Then of course they made “Fargo” in ’96 and struck Oscar gold, and ever since they won their Oscar for “No Country for Old Men,” they’ve had the freedom to do whatever they want as bona-fide auteurs.

But “Barton Fink” is a pivotal film for them. It pairs them with legacy character actors of theirs, including John Turturro, John Goodman and Steve Buscemi. It depicts one of the best films about writing a screenplay since “Sunset Boulevard” by following the neurotic Jewish writer Barton Fink (Turturro) after the massive success of his first play on Broadway. He thinks he can radically change Broadway to be a place for the common man, and from these humble beginnings it evolves into a psychological thriller/dark comedy of sorts. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Barton Fink”

Rapid Response: Tender Mercies

If a movie is good enough, you can enjoy any music in it. I’m not a country music fan, but I’ve been an admirer of the filmmaking, performances and sheer charisma on stage in movies like “Walk the Line,” “Crazy Heart” and now “Tender Mercies.” It’s also hard to deny Robert Duvall’s sheer acting presence in any film he’s in, and this is the one he won his Oscar for, despite being one of the most understated performances of his career.

It’s about a former country music star, Mac Sledge, who lost his fame, fortune and family to the bottle and will now try to make a comeback in a way other than just with his music. It did remind me a lot of “Crazy Heart,” as did Duvall’s character in comparison to Jeff Bridges’ (ironically, Bridges won his Oscar for that role as well), but “Tender Mercies” is in many ways better than it. Rather than show Mac’s plummet, we meet Mac at his low point and see him rise from there, and we also don’t know anything about his past, least of all as a country singer. Instead, the movie floors us with his history all at once when a journalist outs his presence in this small Texas town to the world.

There are no cornball scenes of him falling back on alcohol or montages of him writing music again. It doesn’t even devote too much attention to his marriage to Rosa Lee (Tess Harper), but that’s because there’s more to this character than just his surface level problems. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Tender Mercies”

Beginners

In a smattering of close-up pictures and jump cuts, Mike Mills accelerates us through time and history during his film “Beginners.” He points out the sun, the stars, the president and what emotions look like. These symbols have come to define us, but they’re endowed by someone else, by society. His story is about three people learning to communicate their own personalities and embrace the idea and feeling of happiness, not just the image.

Few films are truly about communication. Even “The Social Network” merely analyzes speech patterns, internal coding and societal trends. “Beginners” understands that the words and symbols themselves have no meaning except the meaning we assign to them. Society has branded Hal (Christopher Plummer) as the member of a happy American family, complete with a job, wife, child and home in the suburbs. But after his wife dies, Hal, at the age of 75, confesses to his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) that he’s gay.

This comes months before Hal’s death, yet in the time before and after Hal’s death, Oliver is just as confused with the symbols of success and friendship he’s been presented with. He does not begin to change until he meets the lovely Anna (“Inglourious Basterds’” Melanie Laurent) and she asks him, “Why are you at a party if you’re so sad?”

The beauty of that question is twofold. Firstly, why would anyone even think to ask a question like that? Aren’t their emotions simply implied by the people around them? But secondly, she asks this question with a pad and pencil. She has laryngitis, but not by accident, and not for the filmmaker to be cute. Look at how clearly Anna learns how to communicate with Oliver without words and even without expression behind makeup at a costume party.

“Beginners” speaks without speaking at all, and it is eloquent and beautiful in its quiet. Continue reading “Beginners”

The Trip

“All you can do is do something else that’s already been done but do it different or better.” This is Rob Brydon’s advice to Steve Coogan, both of whom are British comedians and talented voice impersonators. “The Trip” is their clever attempt to re-imagine the cheap laughs we usually get from impressions.

By saying we get cheap laughs from impressions, I do not mean to belittle the talents of Coogan and Brydon. In fact, they’ve shown in “The Trip” great versatility at convincingly portraying themselves in this quasi-mockumentary.

The question really is, how do you center a film around impressions? We all enjoy impressions, but they must be taken in doses, and they have little ability to convey actual storytelling. The genius thing about “The Trip” is how it is hardly a conventional narrative and yet does not seem completely aimless in its attempts to showcase these two comedians’ talents. Continue reading “The Trip”

127 Hours

Danny Boyle is a chameleon of a director. He’s never made a remotely similar film in terms of genre, and yet each one is undeniably his own. They can be brutal and visceral throughout and yet find a way to be inspirational and exciting in the end. “127 Hours” is one of Boyle’s greatest challenges and greatest achievements.

Boyle took the story of Aron Ralston, a reckless mountain climber who went deep into Utah and got himself trapped in a crevasse underneath a boulder for 127 hours, and made it an exciting, visually stimulating film. We know Ralston survived because his book “Between a Rock and a Hard Place” serves as the basis for this film. The way he escaped is almost just as much common knowledge, and the buildup to his eventual escape builds a wonderful tension throughout the film. Boyle feeds us small teases of Ralston weighing his options before making that decision, and in an amazingly nauseating climactic scene, he floors us.

Such is the power of the rest of “127 Hours,” which finds ways to be simultaneously adrenaline fueled and heart stopping, intense and desolate or revealing and claustrophobic. Enrique Chediak’s cinematography is the best of the year because he wonderfully blends the handheld queasy cam with the panoramic HD cam to create those dual emotions. Watch some of the early shots inside the cliff’s cracks looking up at Ralston, and notice how as buried as the camera remains, how much it still seems to capture. Continue reading “127 Hours”

Rapid Response: L.A. Confidential

I’ve been playing the video game “L.A. Noire” for the last few weeks, and a game critic I admire said the game’s story borrowed heavily from the 1997 “L.A. Confidential.” I had seen the film before, but hadn’t remembered it for whatever reason. And the two stories do have their similarities, but the film’s rich characterization, stark yet colorful cinematography and gritty action sequences just can’t be beat by a video game.

It’s a story of the corrupt and broken Los Angeles police department in the 1950s when the actions of the police could still be brushed under the rug and their image manipulated within the press and how three completely different cops respond to that environment. Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce are the three cops, each of them giving great performances and giving the film more memorable moments than almost any noir made in the ‘40s.

That’s not to say “L.A. Confidential” is the best noir of all time, but the reason it stands out as a unique example of a noir is because while it has the complexity of “The Big Sleep” and the sleazy characters of “Double Indemnity,” it also has the modern vigor and intensity of other ‘90s action films. Continue reading “Rapid Response: L.A. Confidential”

Rapid Response: Wild Strawberries

Ingmar Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries” is a gorgeous film with a tenderness and spirituality that is universal.

One of the most beloved, critical favorite directors of all time is the Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. Some of his films are dark and haunting, but most are the most profound, spiritual films ever made.

“Wild Strawberries” is one such of those masterpieces. Made in 1957, the same year as one of his other masterpieces, “The Seventh Seal,” Bergman here follows Dr. Isak Borg (Victor Sjostrom), an aging and lonely professor going on a road trip to accept an honorary degree.

The first post-credits scene is a bizarre and silent dream sequence, one that exists free of time, space and the rules that populate “Inception.” Rather, this is a film that is reflective and contemplative. It has simple characters but reveals deep truths.

Bergman carries us through themes of pain, love, life and loneliness by introducing us to Dr. Isak, his daughter in law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin), and three young travel companions they pick up along the way. Each of them is at critical stages in their lives, and in this long, silent drive they ponder otherwise tough philosophical questions.

The main theme of the film comes out in a touching moment when Marianne reflects on how she departed from her husband, he so cynical and jaded with life that he feels already dead. Why would he want to live in such a terrible world, let alone bring a child into it with his wife, and Isak realizes as he hears this that he is not too different from his son. It is only then that Bergman shows us that removing all the pain in the world from our lives comes at the price of loneliness, leaving us nothing but coldness and death.

In fact, Bergman even explores similar themes of the afterlife as were recently explored in “The Tree of Life” for instance, but he does it so subtly and quaintly, not nearly as epic or grandiose in scale as Malick’s film.

“Wild Strawberries” is a gorgeous film (beautifully shot in black and white by the recently deceased cinematographer Gunnar Fischer) with a tenderness and spirituality that is universal.

Rapid Response: L’Avventura

Roger Ebert wrote about “L’Avventura” in his great movies entry that when he first saw Michelangelo Antonioni’s film in 1960 when he was merely 18 that he didn’t understand it’s greatness, and how could he, he asks? I was excited to see the film after seeing how many best of all time lists the film was on, and although I enjoyed it, I have to say I felt much of the same way.

The film is about a pair of lovers entrenched in decadence but bored beyond anything but their own sexuality. To say I didn’t really get that until I read it and heard it compared to Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” speaks to my own youth and inexperience (I also haven’t seen the Fellini movie).

What I did notice was a film filled with lying, cheating and seduction all photographed in striking black and white and deliberately paced. The film’s simple dialogue reveals some remarkably dry, insouciant characters with nothing but the idea of a forbidden love on their minds.

Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) is engaged to Anna (Lea Massari), and just before they leave to go on a cruise with Anna’s friend Claudia (Monica Vitti), they make her wait as they have sex, with her peering into the window in the distance. Later, Anna acts strangely on the cruise ship, making up a story about a shark and then disappearing on an island.

Sandro and Claudia spend much of their time looking for her, but soon give up and start their own tortured love affair. Naturally, the film is not about Anna’s disappearance but how Claudia unknowingly begins to transform into Anna, filling the void for Sandro.

This is my cursory understanding of the film. I didn’t quite grasp just yet how it was perceived as so radical in 1960, earning boos from a suspicious audience at Cannes but going on to win the Special Jury Prize for its “new film language and beautiful visuals.” It certainly is shocking in its sex appeal for 1960, right on the cusp of the edge of the production code system in America. It also has lovely deep focus cinematography that is at times just chilling.

I’ll have to watch the film again, but some others to watch before then include his other masterpiece “Blow-Up” and the three other movies he made with the legendary Monica Vitti (too bad I missed all those screenings at the IU Cinema).