Deepwater Horizon

Peter Berg’s exploitative disaster film is confused and cliche.

deepwaterhorizonposterPeter Berg’s “Deepwater Horizon” might just be the most confused, peculiar, conservative Americana cash grab in recent memory. It’s staged like a gritty, exploitative war film in the vein of Berg’s “Lone Survivor,” and yet it’s the story about the worst oil spill in history? There’s almost no mention of the environmental damage of the spill, and the people involved are all scientific technicians, and yet they behave like salt of the Earth, blue-collar Marines? And the movie’s biggest enemy is actually big business? Not to mention it stars Mark Wahlberg?

Labeling “Deepwater Horizon” as a movie that’s pandering to a certain sector of the American public may be reductive, because the movie’s real problem is that it isn’t about anything more than a tragedy. Like a Transformers movie, it’s obsessed with metallic carnage and special effects even before everything goes to hell, and it’s loaded with mechanical jargon as if the way in which an oil rig works is interesting enough to anyone on its own. “Deepwater Horizon” wants to praise human sacrifice, but it stops short at exploring the mental struggle heroes face or examining their values. Continue reading “Deepwater Horizon”

Rapid Response: Boogie Nights

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Boogie Nights” is a hilarious movie about sexuality while also being an interesting take on a genre picture.

When Hollywood struggles because YouTube thrives, so does the porn industry suffer as anyone can film themselves having sex. Not every porn star can be Sasha Grey and find work with Steven Soderbergh.

Strangely enough then, Paul Thomas Anderson’s breakout film “Boogie Nights” has renewed significance. It’s the story of the rise and fall of Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) as the veteran porn stars struggle to stay hard and horny as video tapes take movies out of the XXX theaters.

“Boogie Nights” isn’t really about porn, it’s just more open about its sexuality. (“Jack says you have a great big cock. Can I see it?”) The one-off joke is that this coming-of-age story of stardom and struggle is just the same even with a grindhouse quality filter. Anderson’s whole goal is not to make a genre picture but to make an art house movie that looks and feels like a genre picture. He did much the same thing with romantic comedies in “Punch-Drunk Love.” And it’s the reason why in “Boogie Nights’s” second half, the whole story seems to go off the rails when it becomes so drenched in painful and melodramatic self parody. The end belongs to another movie, and PTA finally acknowledges that shift with a 13-inch nod to “Raging Bull.”

Anderson wonderfully mixes style and kitsch here. The film has a vitality in its disco score that permeates the campy, referential ’70s vibe and carries through to the more depressing moments all bathed in jaded melodrama and cynicism.

His camera moves in ways that don’t intrinsically make sense, but they draw your eyes and your mind. Watch the camera crop out Burt Reynolds’s character to show Julianne Moore staring admiringly at the young, nervous Dirk. He doesn’t return the glance even though the camera does the same for him, and this is not necessarily a clue to her motherly infatuation with Dirk. But we’re captivated by the moment. The camera itself is alluring and sexy.

The early moments of the film are also plain funny as hell. Wahlberg was overshadowed by Burt Reynolds’s Oscar nominated performance (he turns into a sort of George Lucas of porn, and he’s capable of conveying a vision of porn that is simultaneously idealistic and perverse), but it’s refreshing to see Wahlberg when he was still the young Marky Mark posing for Calvin Klein. He’s been typecast in so many tough guy roles lately that it’s impossible to imagine him playing anyone like Dirk anymore.

John C. Reiley and Philip Seymour Hoffman are also riots. Hoffman especially is playing off type as an overweight, closeted gay man with an attraction to Dirk. As for Reiley, the camera stays put and lets him work. His best moment is when he asks Dirk how much he can squat, only to up Dirk’s ante by an absurd 150 pounds.

In the way you could argue we don’t have movie stars like Cary Grant and John Wayne anymore, we don’t really have porn stars like Dirk Diggler anymore. And for that matter, we don’t have other directors in America making movies the way Paul Thomas Anderson does anymore.

Contraband

Why is everyone in “Contraband” a smuggler, a screw-up, an idiot or all three? Better yet, why do these people from New Orleans talk with Boston accents?

“Contraband” is a thickheaded heist thriller with a laborious plot and a whole lot of contrived violence against women and children to make up for it.

Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg) is the best in the biz, and although he’s out of the game, he’s doing “one last job” (sigh) to pay back his kid brother-in-law’s debt after a drug run gone bad.

These guys are in love with the idea of smuggling. They call Chris the “Lennon and McCartney” of smugglers. They discuss their work with their wives, family and friends. They walk right into danger and plot an elaborate heist just because they can, and then they act surprised when things go horribly wrong.

I grew irritated at how many times Chris walked right up to his brother-in-law’s attacker, Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi), and then could think of nothing better than to run another job just to pay him his money.

Although, it was not as irritating as Briggs’s voice, an accent so thick and fake (“Say g’bye ta ya wiiife!”) his presence as a villain is laughable.

What’s more, Wahlberg’s tough, bad guy turned straight is getting weary. It’s a role he’s played so many times he better be getting a tax write-off.

Their dull performances do nothing to energize this ugly film shot in a cliché documentary style.

It’s often so slow and without vitality it has to concoct elaborate set pieces like a boat threatening to crash into a pier or a van dangling out of a high flying shipping container, none of which chalk up points for the film as intelligent.

Please let “Contraband” be the one last time Wahlberg does one last job.

2 stars

The Fighter

David O. Russell takes the boxing movie and makes it into a rich family dramedy.

I wasn’t looking at Mark Wahlberg when he was training in the boxing ring. I wasn’t watching his gloves either, moving swiftly and smoothly from blow to blow. I was watching Christian Bale playing Wahlberg’s coked out brother as he’s training in the ring along with him. In “The Fighter,” he’s not just bobbing and weaving to block the punches.

Bale portrays Dicky Eklund, the brother of Wahlberg’s Micky Ward. Ward is the fighter, training to win a title, looking for romance and struggling with his own sense of self. Dicky already had his chance. 14 years ago, he knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard and became the pride of Lowell, Massachusetts. Now it’s 1993, and he’s addicted to crack, but still he’s the life of the party. Continue reading “The Fighter”