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What Lies Beneath – 3.75 stars

September 9, 2012
00s, 3 stars, Scary
3 Comments

What Lies Beneath Was All Wrong. What Lies Beneath is the type of film… | by Brett Seegmiller | Brett Seegmiller | Medium

Robert Zemeckis’ ghost story is both an homage to Hitchcock and a vehicle for the director’s visual audacity (or, if you’re harder on Zemeckis, gimmickry). There’s little new in this old-fashioned haunted house tale, but what is presented is solid and entertaining.

A beautiful, vulnerable Michele Pfeiffer lives with her researcher/scholar husband (Harrison Ford) in a New England college town, their home a picturesque waterfront exemplar from Architectural Digest.  Pfeiffer has just dropped her only child off at college and is in the midst of an empty nest crisis.  Worse, she’s recovering from a car accident a year prior and she believes her new neighbors’ marital woes have escalated to the husband killing the wife (she even believes she sees the husband disposing of the body, much as Jimmy Stewart saw Raymond Burr covering up his foul deed in Rear Window).  What better to harass this fragile woman than a spirit attempting to communicate with her?

Zemeckis does a nice job of interweaving a few plot lines, and he produces some genuinely creepy moments.  But the film has flaws.  First, Zemeckis so distrusts the audience’s ability to follow the plot he over-lingers to focus our attention on a fact or clue.   So, in his work, Ford is working with a drug that immobilizes while the subject maintains consciousness. I wonder if that will come into play later?  Second, Hitchcockian is one thing, but a replica is quite another. By the end of the film, the score is a mash of Bernard Hermann and the tribute so unrelenting, Mel Brooks’ High Anxiety comes to mind.  The movie is also overlong, piling reveal scenes on top of each other, replacing tension with exhaustion.

The virtues, however, outweigh the negatives.  The film mostly moves briskly, there are genuine scares, and the characters, while a tad humorless, are engaging.  Pfeiffer is an effective mix of emotional fragility and upper class angst, and Ford is a surprisingly sympathetic villain.  Indeed, Pfeiffer comes off as spoiled and becomes so unstable, you find yourself siding with the seemingly reasonable Ford, who fairly suggests his wife is punishing him in a passive aggressive manner with all the ghost nonsense.

Solid.

Bernie – 4 stars

September 7, 2012
2012, 4 stars, Comedy, Crime/Mystery
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marjorie nugent

Richard Linklater offers the story of Bernie Tiede (Jack Black), a gay mortician who companions a significantly older woman, Marjorie Nugent (Shirley MacLaine) and then, in a fit of rage and exasperation at her domineering ways,  shoots her in the back and stuffs her in a freezer, pretending she is still alive (not ala’ Norman Bates).  Tiede is the town Robin Hood, the town being Carthage, Texas, and in many ways, Carthage is the star of the film.  Linklater uses very few professional actors, instead interspersing the dramatic narrative with interviews of real-life Carthage citizens, almost all of whom are squarely on the side of Tiede, and almost all of whom are hilarious.  To them, Nugent was a nasty, wicked old wretch and Bernie Tiede was the man who bought you a nice gift, sang the beautiful song that escorted a loved one to the hereafter, directed the town play or just gave you a nice wave everyday.  And he was driven to it.

Of course, in the presentation, Linklater neglects a few ugly details of the real life Tiede (not all of the vast sums he spent of Nugent’s wealth went to charity), but it appears the basic premise is true – Tiede was well-loved and Nugent well-hated (her own nephew observed, “‘Bernie’s not the first one who thought about killing her.  He’s just the first one who went through with it”).

Black is mesmerizing as Tiede, hilarious, hapless and harried, but uncontainably sweet and just a  little guilty (even before the murder).  MacLaine is effective as an old witch and Matthew McConaghey is amusing as the dogged D.A.  But the stars are the real people of Carthage, who Linklater neither mocks or mythologizes, wisely letting them be.

My only criticism is the choice to make Tiede so sympathetic.  Black does a great job in keeping him from being saccharine, with occasional flashes of guilty pleasure at his newly found wealth, but Linklater keeps away from any real dark heart, opting for a feel-good film.  Which is fine, but I think it could have remained feel-good and still been a little more revealing.

The Expendables – 0 stars

September 3, 2012
0 stars, 2010, Action/Disaster
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My boy read that The Expendables 2 had gotten decent reviews, we both appreciate a good shoot ’em up, and The Expendables was available streaming on Netflix.  We made it about 30 minutes in to this star-studded, macho story of a group of mercenaries bound together by brawn, honor, anabolic steroids, and in some cases (leader Sylvester Stallone, rival Arnold Schwarzennegger, and tattoo artist/operation facilitator Mickey Rourke), plastic surgery. 

We couldn’t understand Stallone, Rourke or Schwarzenegger half the time, the action was unimaginative, and the banter was either painful (Randy Coutre of the UFC is given lines instead of grunts, and the results are not pretty) or uncomfortably homoerotic.  This not-safe-for-work clip begs the question – are these guys gonna’ fight or kiss?

But what do we know?  Domestic and foreign, it grossed a quarter of a billion dollars.

The Doors – 1 star

September 2, 2012
1 star, 90s, Drama, Historical
3 Comments

Like Any Given Sunday, a bad movie that is occasionally engaging but makes you feel guilty for being engaged, Oliver Stone’s The Doors is indulgent, dizzying and vapid. The caricature of James Morrison invades Val Kilmer, who gives an embarrassing, showy performance.  Kilmer’s idea of Morrison is little more than a faraway stare and a lycanthropic lope.  So perpetual is Kilmer’s saunter that he presents less Lizard King, more inebriated catwalk model.

The film almost stops dead in its tracks a third in with a ridiculous overlong band “trip” to the desert for some peyote and pretentious native American b.s. The Doors emerge from this interminable detour performing a live version of a song as silly and overlong as the movie, “The End.”  All time taken away from the only story you want to see about a marginal rock talent: rise to fame, drugs, booze, chicks, and then, crash and burn.

Stone is so enamored of his subject he not only photographs him lovingly, he actually takes the singer’s poetry seriously.  Morrison is such an obvious talent Stone felt he could dispense with any back story for him.  We don’t know much about his early life (except he once saw a dead Indian by the road during a family trip) because Stone is in such a hurry to show us this avant garde pioneer, a guy who riffed “mother, I want to f### you” right into the director’s heart.

We get a few fun moments, snapshots of nostalgia from the 60s, like the Ed Sullivan performance.  But even that has to be gussied up and romanticized. The Doors were asked to forego the line “girl we couldn’t get much higher” from their hit, “Light my Fire.” They happily did so in rehearsal, but during a lethargic live performance, Morrison forgot and sang it.   Not good enough for Stone.  In the film,  Kilmer lectures the band on kowtowing to “the Man” and then belts it out as a taunt just to show those suits what for. Then he starts hip swiveling, sending lily-livered execs into apoplexy.

As Morrison descends into the fat, bloated bore he would become, visions of a dour Indian pop up.  In the desert.  During gigs.  Even before meeting Andy Warhol (portrayed by Marty McFly’s father).  When unintentionally funny imagery isn’t on screen, the picture is a crashing bore.  Morrison always was a pompous dick and a medium talent at best.  He never really merited the Stone treatment.  Or maybe that is exactly what he deserved.

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas – 3 stars

August 31, 2012
2011, 3 stars, Comedy
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In my house, we have a few Christmas rituals, including a slate of television shows and movies we must watch on or near the holiday.  The shows are sacrosanct; “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “The Grinch.”  The movies have always included such staples as A Christmas Carol (the George C. Scott version) and A Christmas Story.  It’s a Wonderful Life tends to be seen bi-annually, and it can be watched at Thanksgiving.  The most recent additions have been Elf and, of course, that holiday heartwarmer, Die Hard. 

My boy and I gave A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas its audition.  Harold and Kumar are much funnier than Cheech and Chong, and in this third installment of their stoner oeuvre, a baby gets stoned, does coke, and ecstacy; Neil Patrick Harris attempts to pleasure himself on an unsuspecting chorus girl who he is massaging (the joke? Doogie’s Howser’s homsexuality is really just a ruse to take advantage of vulnerable women); the 3D is used mostly for the shooting of bodily fluids at the screen; Harold gets his penis stuck to a cold pole ala’ A Christmas Story; and then he shoots Santa in the head.

Let’s just say it’s on the bubble.

The Hunger Games – 4.5 stars

August 29, 2012
2012, 4 stars, Action/Disaster, Drama
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Riveting, though a little soulless, this dystopian thriller mixes some Lord of the Flies with Logan’s Run and The Running Man.  It is anchored by Jennifer Lawrence’s strong and touching performance (Lawrence was deservedly nominated for best actress in Winter’s Bone). 

It is the future.  The “haves” live in splendor, wealth and fashion, while the “have nots” reside in 1 of 12 poorer districts, which, at some point, rebelled against the central authority.  As s punishment/control mechanism, the central authority conducts an annual Hunger Games, where 2 teens from each district are selected by lottery.  They are then sent to the equivalent of The Emerald City for training and gussying up as if they were to meet the great and powerful Oz.  Instead, they are offered up in an elaborate ritual, televised for the masses and announced by two Ryan Secrests (Stanley Tucci and Toby Jones), wherein they are released in the wild to fight to the death.  Lawrence volunteers after her younger sister is chosen.  Traps abound, and aid can be given by wealthy viewers who “favor” their champion (for example, Lawrence is injured, but a patron sends her healing ointment via mechanical device as she huddles in a tree).  The orchestrator of the games (game master Wes Bentley and evil sage Donald Sutherland) can also tweak circumstances and change rules to amp interest and/or for political reasons.        

I was totally hooked, and the addition of a wisened and cynical Woody Harrelson as an advisor to Lawrence (he was a winner from her district and he is clearly scarred by the experience), as well as Lenny Kravitz as her charm/clothing consultant (the kids have to do a dog-and-pony show ala’ “American Idol” so the viewers get to know them) are substantial. 

The lack of background as to how a society engineering  these games came to be is problematic, and the film’s treatment of the powers-that-be is glancing.  There is also a fair amount of discomfort as you find yourself rooting for one child to kill another.  The New Republic’s Tim Noah high-handedly called it “morally repugnant” because the film “wants to have it both ways.  It wants us to register severe moral disapproval of a society that would require children to hunt one another as if they were woodland creatures. But—because it also wants to be an entertainment with a sympathetic heroine and some good old-fashioned suspense—The Hunger Games also invites us to root for the right person to win the competition by, um, killing other children.”  I think Noah is being a bit hysterical here, going overboard as to how the filmmakers want us to be repulsed by the concept of The Hunger Games.  He’s wrong; the games themselves are a brilliant vehicle so fantastical that having to expend energy on their moral condemnation is like insisting an audience object to Eastwood’s brutality in Dirty Harry even as he metes it out to the bad guys.  Who has the time to be so scrupulous?

But Noah identifies how the movie lets you off the hook by making a few of the combatants so loathsome you feel better about your bloodlust (“The nice (usually younger) kids, whom she tries to save, all get killed by others. The few she must kill are all nasty preppies apparently raised from birth to be smug, violent and cruel”).  

It would have been more honest to have Katniss kill someone neutral, if not sympathetic, but there are sequels to be had here.

Splash – 2.5 stars

August 28, 2012
2 stars, 80s, Comedy, Romance
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Splash put Tom Hanks on the map as a leading man, though he was not yet filled-in and substantial.  Instead, Hanks was mannered in the way an actor can be after a long stint on a sitcom (Hanks was one of the Bosom Buddies from 1980 to 1982).  The film was also Ron Howard’s biggest feature, and its success would launch his career as the director of competent, workmanlike, earnest and generally dull films.

Hanks plays a love-phobic NYC businessman (derived from a childhood trauma – he fell off a Cape Cod ferry and encountered a mermaid).  In the depths of despair over his romantic failures, he returns to Cape Cod, falls in the water again, and is again rescued by the mermaid, now grown up (Daryl Hannah), who follows him to New York.  She is pursued by a cruel scientist (Eugene Levy), captured and probed to the point of sickness (ala’ E.T.) and then is busted out by Hanks, his brother (John Candy) and a repentant Levy.

Almost 30 years later, it’s a shock to see such a callow and obnoxious Hanks.  His voice is whiny, his character churlish and childish, and he seems too much the boy for the part, light as it is.  Perhaps because a mermaid has no experience with men, she just presumed Hanks was a good catch (ba-dump) but he is not.  He’s aggravating and surprisingly unfunny.

The same cannot be said for Candy, who steals the movie as the heavy, schmoozing, hard drinking,  yuk-yukking brother, excited to have one of his letters printed in Penthouse.  Levy is also good as the nerdly, bitter scientist, and Hannah is appropriately innocent and glowing as the fish-out-of-water.

It’s a cute movie, no more, but it ends in an uninentionally ridiculous fashion.  Hanks jumps in the water, making the choice to live the rest of his live with Hannah under the sea (he cannot, for reasons unexplained, ever return to land).  The credits roll and Hanks and Hannah swim the ocean as she shows him her world.  She has a big fin, he does not (when she was on land, when dry, she had legs and what goes along with them when they meet, and they were able to have a lot of sex).  Her world is murky and humdrum.  “See, this is the ocean floor.  And there is a conch.  And there are some fish.”  And what will Hanks eat?

Image result for Splash hanks underwater

“This was a poor choice.”

The Departed – 4.5 stars

August 23, 2012
00s, 4 stars, Crime/Mystery
4 Comments

Cinemascope: The Departed [2006]

A meaty, engrossing crime picture, right in Martin Scorsese’s wheelhouse.  Jack Nicholson is a Boston crime boss who has a quasi-adopted son/mole in the Boston PD (Matt Damon).  In that same department, a small unit (headed up by Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg) is set up to get Nicholson, and they recruit a police academy trainee (Leonardo DiCaprio) who has one leg in the tough streets of Southie (his dad’s side) and another in the upper crust of Boston (his mom).  Meanwhile, a second task force, headed by Alec Baldwin, is also trying to get Nicholson and can’t get a handle on why they are thwarted at every turn.  DiCaprio is “erased” from police files, purposely gets arrested, and infiltrates Nicholson’s organization, which is populated by colorful, brutal goons (Ray Winstone, David O’Hara), in order to identify the mole.  Meanwhile, Damon keeps screwing Baldwin’s pooch.

A cat-and-mouse hunt ensues, as Damon searches for DiCaprio and vice versa.  Damon is also dating a psychologist (Vera Farmiga) who treats cops and ex-cons, including DiCaprio.

Almost to a person, the performances are rich and rough.  DiCaprio is now in full bloom, grown out of the Titanic baby face and having just previously offered two nuanced and substantial performances in The Aviator and Blood Diamond.  Nicholson is bloody and funny, and, well, Nicholson.

All the supporting characters are strong and natural save for Farmiga (she’s too feminine for the role and when she becomes infatuated by a clearly unstable DiCaprio, it is unconvincing) and Wahlberg, who, ironically, was nominated for best supporting actor.  He yells an awful lot and delivers a few speeches, but volume and line memorization do not deserve a nomination.  Wahlberg seems uncomfortable and masks it with rage.   And once again, Matt Damon does all the heavy lifting and gets none of the credit.  His turn as the fatherless boy who is being manipulated by Nicholson is alternately frightening and heartbreaking, yet he remains a very charming sociopath.

The picture whizzes by.  Scorsese effortlessly paces what could have been a morass of a story, providing his signature quick-cut expositions to perfectly chosen music (The Stones, Badfinger, Allman Brothers).

J. Edgar – 1 star

August 22, 2012
1 star, 2011, Drama, Historical
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Clint Eastwood’s biopic is lovingly photographed.  Washington, D.C., and other venues, from the teens through the 1970s, are regal, warm and classic. Unfortunately, Eastwood has populated his pretty film with a dull collection of historical figures, none of whom have much to offer. Eastwood also mostly punts on the nature of Hoover, and as played by Leonardo DiCaprio, the character is little more than a one-note old windbag, constantly going on and on about the same thing – the enemy within.  Eastwood’s vehicle for Hoover’s reminisces – Hoover is dictating his memoirs to an ever-changing number of aides- does not help.  As one is replaced, you can almost hear the jettisoned aide saying, “Thank God! What a snooze!”  Oliver Stone’s Nixon gave us a ridiculously lustful and evil Hoover, played by Bob Hoskins, but at least he wasn’t tedious.

Naomi Watts is wholly wasted as Hoover’s long loyal secretary.  Armie Hammer, as Hoover’s long loyal number 2 Clyde Tolson, does a poor version of a young Brendan Fraser (Hammer was last seen in The Social Network playing the Winkelvosses).  Judi Dench’s turn as Hoover’s overdoting mother is predictable.  Josh Lucas’s take on Charles Lindbergh is foggy.  In fact, the only decent performance is a brief appearance by Jeffrey Donovan as a trumped Bobby Kennedy.  Donovan thankfully avoids the standard “Haaaaaaaaahvaaaaaads” and “Baaaaaaahstons” endemic to the role.

Eastwood portrays Hoover as a repressed homosexual, no question.  Which makes Mom upset and Tolson bitter.   And Hoover seems most bothered by Martin Luther King because he overheard King having sex on a wiretap.  Not much of a motivation.  Eastwood even gives in to the dubious cross dressing story, but ennobles it because Hoover gets gussied up in Mom’s clothes after she dies.  Another punt.

Another problem.  DiCaprio’s makeup as an older Hoover is very good.  Hammer and Watts, however, look ridiculous, very similar to the characters in “Star Trek” when they age decades in hours.

The Many Looks of Captain Kirk - IGN

Dustin Lance Black’s (Milk) script ends in treacle and nonsense.  Out out of nowhere, Hoover turns moralistic, the man who would stop . . . Nixon!  This prefaces a melodramatic conversation between an old Hoover and Tolson that is straight up “One Life to Live.” When Tolson, doddering in his ridiculous makeup, finds the dead Hoover, it comes close to bringing laughter.

At one point, DiCaprio asks Watts, “Did I kill everything I love?”

Oh if she’d said, “No Edgar.  That was Michael Corleone.  You just bored them to death.”