James McAvoy is an actor I primarily associate with period dramas and here are two examples, both based on fact.
The Last Station is about Leo Tolstoy, if only it were more about Leo Tolstoy. Christopher Plummer's good in the title role, but I wish the film had been more about him and less about the supporting figures. Instead of Tolstoy dispensing sage advice we get infighting between the acclaimed authors wife and the Tolstoyian communal group that had been built up around him. McAvoy is Tolstoys new secretary, he engages in hero worship, sneezes when nervous, has a nice little love affair, and attends the great man at his death in a train station (hence the title). The work is well crafted and kept my attention but was never as emotionally involving as I think it was suppose to be. It picked up a little at the end, in terms of expressing some kind of emotional resonance, but again this movie for me was just going through the motions.
The Conspirator on the other hand is a much better movie. James McAoy plays Fredrick Aiken, a Captian in the Civil War who is reluctantly pressed into service as legal council for Mary Surratt, the widowed owner of a boarding house who was the only woman charged with involvement in the conspiracy to kill Abraham Lincoln. In the fashion of movies of this type Aiken is gradually won over by Surratt (a strong subtle performance by Robin Wright), and gives to her defence an extraordinary amount of effort despite opposition on nearly every side (it even costs him his girlfriend played by Alexis Bledel, sadly the weakest link in the cast). On the whole however the cast is great, Evan Rachel Wood, Danny Houston, Stephan Root, Colm Meany, Tom Wilkinson as a high minded senator and Kevin Kline as Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton (the primary villain of the piece). It's a really interesting, lesser known story, done skillfully by director Robert Redford. Also as much as we hear about Lincolns assassination I don't know if I've ever seen it depicted in detail on film before.
McAvoy gives strong performances in both films, but Conspirator just plan works better then Station. Director Micheal Hoffman tackled a different and ambitious kind of project in Station, but the more movie friendly storyline of Conspirator, while less ambitious, ultimately was the more effective outing. Surely though McAvoy will continue to play many more second string historical figures in the future.
The Last Station: C
The Conspirator: B+
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
The Shadow Strikes (1937)
Most familiar to us from old time radio and a rather uneven Alec Baldwin film, 'the Shadow' is a child of the pulps and gets sufficiently pulpy treatment here. Independently wealthy "armature criminologist" Lamont Cranston is here played by one time silent star Rod La Rocque, who just a few years after making this film would retire from acting to become a real estate broker. Cranston is helped by your standard type devoted butler as he goes about being "The Scourge of the Underworld". Two seemingly unrelated criminal plots Cranston is working against of course end up connected, though its kind of confusing how every things suppose to fit together.
Early in the film 'The Shadow' foils the attempts of two crooks to rob from an office safe, he doesn't leave the premises fast enough however and is stumbled upon by a cop. Having already apparently ditched his minimal disguise (comprised of a down turned hat and a cape the he must awkwardly hold Dracula like to cover his face), Cranston just ad-hocs a claim to being the lawyer whose safe was almost busted, and ends up just kind of running with this cover for most of the rest of the movie. This seems short sighted on Cranstons part because he's passing himself off with this false identity all over town and that would surely present difficulties down the road for when he's working on other cases, not to mention isn't he suppose to be a 'well known playboy', you'd think someone would recognize him (or at least be aware that he doesn't look like the established lawyer he's pretending to be, good thing the real guys on vacation).
Anyway notable about this film is how bad the writing and acting (with the exception of La Rocque) is. The movie was produced by a company called Grand National Pictures, an outfit so small that I wasn't even familiar with them. The acting is on par with your weaker community theater groups, the dialogue far worse then that in the Dick Tracy, and Bulldog Drummond series. Man who works with the real attorney:"Jeeze this is exciting maybe he's a criminal or something?" Underworld boss after being told that a robbery he commissioned has been foiled by The Shadow: "I'd just like to know who he is?" Also the reporters say a lot of really inappropriate stuff within hearing distance of a bereaved family: "A murder, just what we needed" (spoken enthusiastically). This awkward badness though is part of what makes this movie enjoyable, so it washes out with a grade C.
Early in the film 'The Shadow' foils the attempts of two crooks to rob from an office safe, he doesn't leave the premises fast enough however and is stumbled upon by a cop. Having already apparently ditched his minimal disguise (comprised of a down turned hat and a cape the he must awkwardly hold Dracula like to cover his face), Cranston just ad-hocs a claim to being the lawyer whose safe was almost busted, and ends up just kind of running with this cover for most of the rest of the movie. This seems short sighted on Cranstons part because he's passing himself off with this false identity all over town and that would surely present difficulties down the road for when he's working on other cases, not to mention isn't he suppose to be a 'well known playboy', you'd think someone would recognize him (or at least be aware that he doesn't look like the established lawyer he's pretending to be, good thing the real guys on vacation).
Anyway notable about this film is how bad the writing and acting (with the exception of La Rocque) is. The movie was produced by a company called Grand National Pictures, an outfit so small that I wasn't even familiar with them. The acting is on par with your weaker community theater groups, the dialogue far worse then that in the Dick Tracy, and Bulldog Drummond series. Man who works with the real attorney:"Jeeze this is exciting maybe he's a criminal or something?" Underworld boss after being told that a robbery he commissioned has been foiled by The Shadow: "I'd just like to know who he is?" Also the reporters say a lot of really inappropriate stuff within hearing distance of a bereaved family: "A murder, just what we needed" (spoken enthusiastically). This awkward badness though is part of what makes this movie enjoyable, so it washes out with a grade C.
Friday, June 24, 2011
They Live by Night (1947/49), Side Street (1950)
Nicholas Ray (best known for Rebel Without a Cause) made his directorial debut with this low budget RKO feature about a young couple on the lamb. Comparisons have been made to Bonnie and Clyde, which are relevant in someways such as the inventive camera work (one of the first films to us a helicopter shot for following an automobile) and the fact that its a 'young couple on the lamb' movie, though these two sweethearts don't actually commit any crimes together. The leads are Farley Granger, a young man whose spent most of his life in prison and just escaped with a couple of fellow inmates, and Cathy O'Donnell the niece of one of Grangers fellow escapees.
The two of course fall in love, its a sweet romance of awkward country virgins whose circumstances are anything but favorable. They split with Grangers share of a Texas bank robbery and travel around the country just trying to stay together. The media has misinterpreted Granger to be the master mind so that only adds to there trouble, they do however take time to stop and get themselves married. The wedding was necessitated by the production code of the time so as to allow for another plot development, O'Donnell's pregnancy. When this comes to light Granger wants to get them to Mexico for safety, espically after his two former compatriots are killed. Of course they never make it and O'Donnell is left a poor young, pregnant widow.
The film can't help but bring to mind Gun Crazy, a much more hard edged, twisted and psychological 'young couple on the lamb' film, which interestingly stared Grangers Rope co-star John Dall. For whatever reason Howard Hughs, president of RKO at the time, sat on the film for two years, though the movie garnered good buzz for Ray and Granger even before its release.
Granger and O'Donnoll have a strong chemistry, he must have known they would as Granger was the one to suggest her as his co-star. Shortly after Nights American release Granger and O'Donnoll were paired together again, this time at MGM in a noir titled Side Street. Filmed largely on location in New York City (an unusual practice for a studio film of the time), Side Street has a basic stock plot of a down-on-his-luck young man who gets in over his head; here in an attempt to steal what he thinks will be just a couple of hundred dollars, Granger ends up with $30,000 and you can bet the crooks he stole it from would like it back.
O'Donnoll doesn't have much to do here, she's pregnant and/or in the hospital for most of the movie (she's really got a lovely face Cathy O'Donnell). There are a number of good character players here to make up for it, including Jean Hagen in a small but memorable part as a gangsters ill fated moll. The cinematography is excellent, all sorts of neat shots, including some very impressive high angle shots that give an extra dimension of 'entrappedness' during the films signature final car chase. The police procedural elements are very Dragnet, but fun and earnest. Two completely solid and rather unique looking noirs.
The Live by Night: B-
Side Street: B-
The two of course fall in love, its a sweet romance of awkward country virgins whose circumstances are anything but favorable. They split with Grangers share of a Texas bank robbery and travel around the country just trying to stay together. The media has misinterpreted Granger to be the master mind so that only adds to there trouble, they do however take time to stop and get themselves married. The wedding was necessitated by the production code of the time so as to allow for another plot development, O'Donnell's pregnancy. When this comes to light Granger wants to get them to Mexico for safety, espically after his two former compatriots are killed. Of course they never make it and O'Donnell is left a poor young, pregnant widow.
The film can't help but bring to mind Gun Crazy, a much more hard edged, twisted and psychological 'young couple on the lamb' film, which interestingly stared Grangers Rope co-star John Dall. For whatever reason Howard Hughs, president of RKO at the time, sat on the film for two years, though the movie garnered good buzz for Ray and Granger even before its release.
Granger and O'Donnoll have a strong chemistry, he must have known they would as Granger was the one to suggest her as his co-star. Shortly after Nights American release Granger and O'Donnoll were paired together again, this time at MGM in a noir titled Side Street. Filmed largely on location in New York City (an unusual practice for a studio film of the time), Side Street has a basic stock plot of a down-on-his-luck young man who gets in over his head; here in an attempt to steal what he thinks will be just a couple of hundred dollars, Granger ends up with $30,000 and you can bet the crooks he stole it from would like it back.
O'Donnoll doesn't have much to do here, she's pregnant and/or in the hospital for most of the movie (she's really got a lovely face Cathy O'Donnell). There are a number of good character players here to make up for it, including Jean Hagen in a small but memorable part as a gangsters ill fated moll. The cinematography is excellent, all sorts of neat shots, including some very impressive high angle shots that give an extra dimension of 'entrappedness' during the films signature final car chase. The police procedural elements are very Dragnet, but fun and earnest. Two completely solid and rather unique looking noirs.
The Live by Night: B-
Side Street: B-
Monday, June 20, 2011
Hereafter (2010)
Speaking to the dead, returning from the dead, all too common in current films and television. Clint Eastwood wanted to freshen our perspective, treat the subject 'seriously' and make it new again. He failed.
"Your wrong its not a gift, its a curse" says retired psychic Matt Damon to his brother Jay Mohr. That's the most cliche line possible about 'supernatural abilities', and the casting of Jay Mohr as the money hungry brother is a cliche as well. The movie is three different 'short stories' about death that eventully come together at the end, the basic Babel-type story structure that I think works a hell of a lot better in books then in movies.
The first story concerns a french journalist (the pretty and mostly unknown Cecile de France) who has a near death experience during the 2004 Asian tsunami. After being caught up in a large CG wave Cecile has a brief stay in a vague and fuzzy looking afterlife before coming too among a couple of locals. She becomes obsessed with her experience, it affects her work, she takes a leave to write a book about former French president Francois Mitterrand but instead begins research on a book about near death experiences. When she submits the first three chapters to her publishers they are upset, she loses her contract (both there and with her old TV station) and at the publishers suggestion begins to write the book in English for an American or British audience.
The second story is about young twin English boys, one of the boys is killed in a tragic accident, and the survivor is taken away from his unfit mother and put into foster care. He becomes obsessed with contacting his dead brother and tries a number of avenues including psychics, and some guy with a special recording machine, but to no avail.
The final story concerns Damons San Fransisco based psychic. He has come to the determination that he can never have a life of his own if he spends it talking to the dead, so he quits the business and works a $2,000 a month job at a factory. He takes an Italian cooking class at a local community center and there he meets Bryce Dallas Howard who is putting on the adorable. They hover at the edge of a relationship in what is probably the most successful part of the film. She however finds out he used to be a psychic, and in this capacity he finds out she was sexually abused by her father and the budding relationship ends suddenly. Despite importuning by his brother to go back into the psychic business after Damon is downsized, our reluctant psychic instead decides to take a trip to England to visit the home of his favorite author Charles Dickens. This of course is when our three stories come to intersect, and each character finds what they truly most want in life.
It's a little hard to understand the point of this movie. Its a sober treatment, not flashy or explotive, in fact its maddeningly dull throughout. Eastwood makes a point of showing how psychics and others who claim to be able to contact the dead are con artists and frauds, so you wonder what his point is in giving us one psychic who isn't? A node towards hope? 'It's a great mystery what happens hereafter and who knows, maybe somebody can actually contact the dead?' The message felt mixed, I don't really know what he was trying to say. None of the stories were as affective to me as I suppose they were suppose to be, even the ten year old kid with the dead brother rang contrived and hollow. I don't know, its well executed as you'd expect from an Eastwood directed film, but it was also a bore and sold out for the trite. I'm sorry Clint but only my respect for you keeps this above an F. Grade: D.
"Your wrong its not a gift, its a curse" says retired psychic Matt Damon to his brother Jay Mohr. That's the most cliche line possible about 'supernatural abilities', and the casting of Jay Mohr as the money hungry brother is a cliche as well. The movie is three different 'short stories' about death that eventully come together at the end, the basic Babel-type story structure that I think works a hell of a lot better in books then in movies.
The first story concerns a french journalist (the pretty and mostly unknown Cecile de France) who has a near death experience during the 2004 Asian tsunami. After being caught up in a large CG wave Cecile has a brief stay in a vague and fuzzy looking afterlife before coming too among a couple of locals. She becomes obsessed with her experience, it affects her work, she takes a leave to write a book about former French president Francois Mitterrand but instead begins research on a book about near death experiences. When she submits the first three chapters to her publishers they are upset, she loses her contract (both there and with her old TV station) and at the publishers suggestion begins to write the book in English for an American or British audience.
The second story is about young twin English boys, one of the boys is killed in a tragic accident, and the survivor is taken away from his unfit mother and put into foster care. He becomes obsessed with contacting his dead brother and tries a number of avenues including psychics, and some guy with a special recording machine, but to no avail.
The final story concerns Damons San Fransisco based psychic. He has come to the determination that he can never have a life of his own if he spends it talking to the dead, so he quits the business and works a $2,000 a month job at a factory. He takes an Italian cooking class at a local community center and there he meets Bryce Dallas Howard who is putting on the adorable. They hover at the edge of a relationship in what is probably the most successful part of the film. She however finds out he used to be a psychic, and in this capacity he finds out she was sexually abused by her father and the budding relationship ends suddenly. Despite importuning by his brother to go back into the psychic business after Damon is downsized, our reluctant psychic instead decides to take a trip to England to visit the home of his favorite author Charles Dickens. This of course is when our three stories come to intersect, and each character finds what they truly most want in life.
It's a little hard to understand the point of this movie. Its a sober treatment, not flashy or explotive, in fact its maddeningly dull throughout. Eastwood makes a point of showing how psychics and others who claim to be able to contact the dead are con artists and frauds, so you wonder what his point is in giving us one psychic who isn't? A node towards hope? 'It's a great mystery what happens hereafter and who knows, maybe somebody can actually contact the dead?' The message felt mixed, I don't really know what he was trying to say. None of the stories were as affective to me as I suppose they were suppose to be, even the ten year old kid with the dead brother rang contrived and hollow. I don't know, its well executed as you'd expect from an Eastwood directed film, but it was also a bore and sold out for the trite. I'm sorry Clint but only my respect for you keeps this above an F. Grade: D.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Gun Crazy (1950)
Oddness. Limited budget combined with exquisite handling. Noted for its realism but actually highly stylized; The carnival, the shooting competition, the long shot, the hovel in Montana, the duck blind. The lanky Dall with the big grin, Cummins showing her shape in the tight cowgirl outfit. The unrealness, the crazy danger of there first filtration/shooting contest. Nedrick Young's glasses. Ruby and the kids in the little house by the rail yard. Two generations of Sheriffs Boston.
A moralizing beginning, like out of Reefer Madness. Obsession. Guns; phallic. Exile and return. Mad love; like Bonnie and Clyde racing around the country. Banks and meat packing plants. A couple as viewed from the backseat. Contradiction. She'll kill in a panic while he's blocked from shooting any living thing. They're bound together, a mutual detour. It circles back home and to the mountains. What is the moral? Does it need one? Grade: B
A moralizing beginning, like out of Reefer Madness. Obsession. Guns; phallic. Exile and return. Mad love; like Bonnie and Clyde racing around the country. Banks and meat packing plants. A couple as viewed from the backseat. Contradiction. She'll kill in a panic while he's blocked from shooting any living thing. They're bound together, a mutual detour. It circles back home and to the mountains. What is the moral? Does it need one? Grade: B
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
The Damned United (2009)
Actor Michael Sheen continues his apparent project of playing every interesting Englishman of the last fifty years. Here Sheen is Brian Clough an ambitious and brilliant football coach whose career is almost ruined by an obsessive rivalry with Leeds United coach Don Revie. The revelry is born of a perceived slighting of Clough by Revie at a 1968 soccer match. Clough becomes obsessed with beating and bettering the legendary coach, and through a combination of talent and will, as well as his extremely capable assistant coach Peter Taylor (played by Timothy Spall, who I've come to highly admire as an actor) brings the struggling Derby County Football Club from the bottom of the 2nd Division in 1968, to winning the 1st Division cup in the 1971/72 season.
The movie is based on author David Peace's largely fictionalized novel centering on Clough's disastrous 44 day tenure as the coach for Leeds United. Clough took the position after Revie retried to take the coaching spot for the English National Football Team, but the residue of their rivalry alienated Clough and the teams players resulting in his swift outre by the clubs board. Afterword Clough reunited with his old friend Pete Taylor and the two went on to win the First Division Cup, the League Cup, The European Cup, the FA Charity Shield, and the European Supper Cup, for Nottingham Forest.
Clough comes across as an egomaniac and an ass at first, but as we learn the back story from flashbacks we begin to kind of understand his behaviour, and in the end Clough seems to learn his lesson and his career gets back on track and even soars. I didn't expect that I'd like this movie that much, I don't really care about English football, but this film is a great character study and consistently engaging with strong performances and fine writing. A welcomed surprise. Grade: A-
The movie is based on author David Peace's largely fictionalized novel centering on Clough's disastrous 44 day tenure as the coach for Leeds United. Clough took the position after Revie retried to take the coaching spot for the English National Football Team, but the residue of their rivalry alienated Clough and the teams players resulting in his swift outre by the clubs board. Afterword Clough reunited with his old friend Pete Taylor and the two went on to win the First Division Cup, the League Cup, The European Cup, the FA Charity Shield, and the European Supper Cup, for Nottingham Forest.
Clough comes across as an egomaniac and an ass at first, but as we learn the back story from flashbacks we begin to kind of understand his behaviour, and in the end Clough seems to learn his lesson and his career gets back on track and even soars. I didn't expect that I'd like this movie that much, I don't really care about English football, but this film is a great character study and consistently engaging with strong performances and fine writing. A welcomed surprise. Grade: A-
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Dick Tracy versus Cueball (1946)
Cueball has a tendency to strangle people with hat bands, also he's got a bunch of hot diamonds he's trying to unload; and that's about it for this entry. Also 'Vitamin' seems really gay. Grade: D+
Friday, June 3, 2011
Phantom of the Opera (1943)
This version boasts Claude Rains as a violinist secretly paying for the voice lessons of aspiring opera singer Susanna Foster, that is until he gets acid thrown in his face and becomes The Phantom. Policeman Edgar Barrier and opera star Nelson Eddy compete for Fosters attention, Hume Cronyn and Fritz Feld have bit parts. Very nice cinematography and set design (for which the film won Oscars); the refurbished opera house set from the original 1925 version looks amazing. Film also contains sequences of two 'operas' created for the film to get around a difficult copyright situation because of the Second World War (opera copyright holders in Europe could not be contacted). Solid rendering of oft repeated story. Grade: B-
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)