Michael Keaton’s haunting, intelligent directorial debut comes to DVD November 10.
One of our favorite films of the past year, The Merry Gentleman is a fascinatingly opaque bit of filmmaking that lingers with you long after its credits fade. You will sometimes wish it moved faster and that it would open itself more, and reveal something besides only the tantalizing amount of information that its very shrewd and deliberate script wants to divulge. The ending will haunt you, not in a satisfying sense but rather in a way that compels you to make sense of its painstakingly-wrought ambiguity. And you might actually love the film for all of those reasons.
Directed by Michael Keaton – an intelligent leading man long overdue for a major comeback - from a script by relative unknown Ron Lazzeretti (The Opera Lover), the film often manages literary feats of structure and innovation while remaining grounded in a concrete sense of place and tone, with a premise that’s familiar but no less well-executed. Keaton also stars as Frank Logan, a solitary and antisocial tailor who also (though we’re never told why) moonlights as a contract hit man. Yet he is not the real star of the film. That place is occupied – gracefully, charmingly - by Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald (No Country For Old Men) as Kate Frazier, a woman escaping her abusive policeman husband by escaping to a nondescript (though vaguely Chicago) major city.
Their solitary existences bring them together, of all times, at Christmas. Following a hit on someone in Kate’s office building, Frank attempts to throw himself off a neighboring rooftop, after glimpsing her in a wonderfully constructed moment of grace. But she sees him instead and screams, averting his suicide. Later, the two formally meet as Frank shows her a small kindness, and their friendship slowly begins to percolate. Kate is the type of person you suspect would rather not risk inconveniencing anyone with her company. She’s strong but vulnerable to even the basic ruthlessness that most people take for granted; her attempts at isolation only bring other lonely souls into her path, including an emotionally needy co-worker (Darlene Hunt) and Dave Murcheson, the police detective (Tom Bastounes) investigating the shooting.
But she’s drawn to Frank, probably as much because he asks nothing of her and doesn’t seem ready to offer anything for which he might expect gratitude down the line. “I think we’re good for one another,” Kate tells him. When minutes later she explains, “You’re possibly the sweetest man I’ve ever met” you get a sense of how bad her life must have been to that point. The script moves ahead in time, cleverly, and there’s a sense as spring rolls around that the two are making progress helping one another emerge from their respective shells. Then of course their respective pasts close in on them. Kate’s husband (Bobby Cannavale) tracks her down, spouting born-again Christian rhetoric that, not surprisingly, makes the skittish Kate even more terrified. Meanwhile Murcheson and his partner dog the shooting investigation as well as the apparent suicide of one of Frank’s associates. Frank is unafraid, permanently removing Kate’s husband from her life and continuing his tailoring business.
The pivotal scenes arrive as Murcheson visits Frank’s store. The two men size each other up, instant dislike getting submerged by going-through-the-motions polite conversation. “I tend to see the suit, not the person inside it,” Frank tells the detective, a pretty unsubtle way of explaining that life is often meaningless to him. Murchison ambles off, ready to confront Kate – the object of his affection as well as a potential witness and accomplice alike – of his concerns. His clumsy, well-intentioned effort pushes Kate and Frank into a confrontation that’s minimal on dialogue but no less emotionally resonant. Kate is ready for them to admit the truth about each other but Frank’s not there yet, setting up an ending that leaves more questions than it’s prepared to answer.
Even when playing the comic buffoon (Beetlejuice, Mr. Mom), Keaton the actor has always prioritized reserve, holding something back from the audience that gave his characters nuance and depth. In directing a film his greatest flaw may be following that impulse with too much trust. The film is slow-paced, and there are times when the script begs for elaboration – even a hint or line of dialogue would suffice. And as good as Lazzeretti’s script is at building suspense and giving its characters lines worth saying out loud, it also often explains something (such as in Kate’s dialogue mentioned above) that’s obvious to anyone paying attention. As the film dares its audience to think, the occasional lapse in artistry feels too much like “gimme” questions. The narrative skips ahead at least once, leaving details in its timeline unresolved.
But these complaints are petty grievances. Keaton knows how to direct himself and (with one exception) his actors, mining fascinating complexities out of virtually every role. MacDonald gives Kate layers of anxiety and innocence, letting her be paranoid in one scene and carefree the next. Bastounes is exceptional as the self-sabotaging Murheson, a man at once reaching out for someone’s warmth but retreating into his police authority whenever challenged. He’s the third part of Frank and Kate’s lonely constellation, dimmer by comparison but no less sincere despite his lack of self-awareness. Only Cannavale fails to impress, bringing too much ham to his rambling fire-and-brimstone monologue. We understand that his character is a petty and vile man because Kate has already sold us on the idea. Cannavale’s overacting only sets her own efforts back.
And the ending: vague, inconclusive, maddeningly open to interpretation. There are dozens of pat endings possible, and if you’ve been watching movies for any length of time you can imagine probably half that many without really trying. If the last five minutes are flawed, they’re still not enough to undermine the beauty and intelligence of the 105 minutes preceding them. The Merry Gentleman is in that sense daring right until its wide-open end.
-Michael Kabel
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(Note: Parts of this review originally appeared for the film’s theatrical release.)
Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire and Nathalie Portman in a drama about war and those it leaves behind.
When decorated Marine Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) heads off to his fourth deployment in Afghanistan, his wife Grace (Nathalie Portman) and their two daughters go through the motions of readjusting to life without a husband and father. But when Sam disappears after a helicopter crash while on a mission above the Afghan desert, his estranged ex-con brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) assumes the role of caretaker for the family, even romancing the lonely Grace as the two share their grief. In time, all three Cahill girls come to accept, even embrace Tommy as a surrogate for the presumed-dead Sam. The four move on with their lives until Sam returns home, scarred and shaken after his time spent as a POW.
Brothers remakes the 2004 Sundance favorite Brodre, reinterpreting writer-director Susanne Bier’s script to an American perspective and setting. Director Jim Sheridan’s brooding and forceful earlier dramas, including In The Name of the Father, The Boxer, and The Field, dealt as this film does with sweeping political themes on the level at which they affect individual lives, and the aftermath of events which were bigger than the people involved in them. Bier’s original script is adapted by David Benioff, who previously adapted The Kite Runner and his own novel The 25th Hour.
The film’s biggest obstacle, we imagine, is the wall of indifference American audiences have consistently demonstrated for films regarding America’s presence in either Afghanistan or Iraq. The larger Hollywood studios and smaller independents alike have tried for years to bring any number of true- and fictionalized stories related to either Gulf War to the screen, but all have met with little to no success. In fact, Gyllenhaal himself has starred in two: Sam Mendes’ little-seen adaptation of Anthony Swofford’s memoir Jarhead and Gavin Hood’s 2007 drama Rendition, though neither could be considered a box office hit. Most other war-focused efforts have found a mixed critical reception, with only Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker getting almost unanimous praise as its release crept across the country last summer.
For its part, the cast is qualified and competent, even if all three principals have seemed on the edge of their emergence as adult stars for years now. Maguire, once so promising in The Cider House Rules and The Ice Storm, has spent most of the last decade devoted to the Spider-Man franchise. Likewise Portman, another rising star of the 90s who (as we’ve said before) in recent years seems to only make films that are based on books with their own cardboard display at Barnes & Noble. Gyllenhaal earned his acting credentials with memorable turns in Brokeback Mountain and Zodiac, though controversy overwhelmed the one film as much as public confusion undermined the other, blunting his arrival in either case.
All of this is only important in that, for the film to work for most audiences, all three will have to grow into their roles onscreen, asserting a maturity that audiences would take for granted in older actors. Judging from the trailer below, it’s apparent they’ve managed with Sheridan’s help to do exactly that. Also appearing are the great Sam Shepard as the Cahill boys’ career Marine father and Mare Winningham as their mother.
Dreary, disappointing prequel arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray this week.
Since his introduction as an adversary for the Incredible Hulk thirty-five years ago, the Marvel Comics character Wolverine has come to symbolize a particular type of comics storytelling. Far from the gifted aliens, self-improving millionaires or brilliant scientists who traditionally make up the bulk of comics’ protagonists, the mutant known simply as “Logan” had powers thrust upon him, not once but twice. He was born a mutant and later subjected to military experiments that enhanced his natural abilities even further. His adventures are violent, uncomplicated, and thick on the spy/military tropes found in drugstore paperbacks and B-movie combat actioners.
Wolverine as a superhero is not a genius, not a strategist and not even much of a thinker, really. He’s a brute force of nature with no end of machismo, a lowbrow hero for our ever-increasingly lowbrow culture. So if X-Men Origins: Wolverine is not an especially well-thought movie, if it places its expensive emphasis on action over clarity of plot and characterization, then in a shabby sense it’s true to its subject. Does that make it a good movie? No, though its vast array of flaws and mistakes makes it a bad one.
Directed by Gavin Hood (Rendition), the film opens with a visually and narratively murky prologue that shows Logan (Hugh Jackman) as a young boy escaping the murder of a man who may be his father. He’s abetted by his playmate Victor (Liev Shreiber), who also may or may not be his brother. Possessed of special healing powers that make them both more or less immortal, the two go on to serve in every major conflict of the next 130 years, depicted in the film as a thrilling opening credits sequence. In time they’re recruited into a special military unit composed of mutant soldiers whose leader, Colonel Stryker (Danny Huston), encourages their bloodlust. Logan quits the group when their – and Victor’s especially – savagery pushes him to his ethical threshold.
He finds solitude in a new life working in Canada’s logging industry, and romancing a local school teacher (Lynn Collins). But her apparent murder at Victor’s hands drives Logan back into Stryker’s influence. Offered the chance to have all memory of his dead love erased, he volunteers for an experiment to coat his bones with a special alien metal called “adamantium,” that will make him virtually indestructible. Once so empowred, the rest of the film is Logan seeking revenge against Victor and Stryker, and liberating Stryker’s gulag of mutant prisoners on Three Mile Island.
As their most popular character, Marvel has revised and re-imagined their hero’s origin story multiple times over the years, the better with which to entice audiences into buying “now it can be told…” comic “events.” Possibly as a consequence, the script by David Benioff (Troy) and Skip Woods (Swordfish) has a lot of complicated and tangled back story to address while keeping the action moving. But like the recent Watchmen, their screenplay puts spectcle above narrative, so that fight scenes (or, more frequently, Victor’s cruel execution of his targets) are constant and prolonged. That’s at least true enough to the genre: the basics of the superhero story has always boiled down to “come for the action, stay for the pathos.” Comic books are by design a visual medium, and character depth is actually a fairly recent development in their history.
Still, for an action movie the special effects should be better – really, they have to be for the film to be worth the audience’s time and money. And for a film both prefacing and expanding on the already profitable X-Men movie franchise (composed so far of two good movies by Bryan Singer and one terrible one by Brett Ratner), they should be better still. Instead, the fight sequences – and there are many - are redundant and blurred, with CGI that’s convincing only about half the time. It’s hard not to think that with such an expansive cast, many of whom also have super powers, the money was spread too thin. A scene in which Logan toys with his new metal claws while at a bathroom counter is especially unconvincing. Likewise the effects showing many of Shreiber’s leaps and twists and the powers of Will.i.Am’s teleporting soldier John Wraith. Most unconvincing, given the carnage, is the lack of blood onscreen, obviously removed for the sake of that crucial PG-13 rating.
Jazz hands, with claws: Jackman
Making his fourth screen appearance as the hirsute Logan, Jackman is serviceable as always, but he’s seldom given anything to do except respond to events surrounding him. For an action hero he’s curiously passive until circumstances demand his attention. He’s also never entirely sympathetic as a character, as there’s no explanation for why he fought in so many wars or why he feels repulsed by his “brother’s” violence in the first place. After 150 or so years together, you’d think he’d know his constant companion better. Jackman is also given to striking dubious poses before running at his enemies, throwing his arms and legs into weird Tai Chi-like contortions that often look mannered.
Shreiber, playing the borderline feral Victor as a method exercise in animal snarl and pent-up menace, nevertheless shows again why he’s among the most underrated American actors working right now. Ryan Reynold’s (Definitely, Maybe) charm is underused as the wisecracking ninja Wade, while the normally wooden Kevin Durand (3:10 To Yuma) is effective buried beneath layers of fat suit padding as The Blob. Collins (True Blood) as Logan’s doomed love Kayla Silverfox does the best she can with a stock role that begs for further development. Despite an intermittent gumbo drawl, Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights) overachieves as the fan favorite mutant Gambit, a character whose appearance in a Bourbon Street nightclub is one of the film’s few truly suspenseful moments.
It’s no coincidence the film appears on home video so quickly. It debuted at the top of the box office with a strong $87 million opening weekend but sank quickly thereafter as comics fans gave only lukewarm response. And no wonder. Wolverine is not a good film, but perhaps more importantly it is not a good film even for the kind of movie it is. Logan may not be a genius, but his long-awaited solo feature shouldn’t be so dumb.
-Michael Kabel :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
(Note: A previous version of this review appeared for the film’s theatrical release.)
Raunchy used-car comedy isn’t a classic, but it’s not a clunker either.
When we previewed this movie a few weeks ago, we talked a lot about how The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard might – if it was good enough - become more than an end-of-summer diversion, how it might make itself a touchstone for America circa 2009, when the car industry and local dealers nationwide are literally begging for customers. Though the film never quites reaches that level of relevance, first-time director Neal Brennan and second-time screenwriters Andy Stock and Rick Stempson manage to create a reference point for something else: the archetypal adult comedy of the late 00’s. Because of that, and sometimes despite it, the film is often riotously funny.
Like Talladega Nights and seemingly dozens of other Will Ferrell movies (Ferrell and frequent collaborator Adam McKay co-produced), The Goods puts an alpha dog personality in a working-class situation for trashy comic effect, relying on a barrage of potty language, sexual innuendo and slapstick violence to crowd-surf the audience from one gag to the next. Thrown in for good measures: a cast of misfits, some lovable but most weird; an improbably warm-hearted romantic interest; and a shaggy plot hinging on either family or personal honor. In fact, the film doggedly follows that blueprint, moving its characters from one gag or situation to the next while barely slowing down to establish context or meaning to the jokes. You laugh a lot while it’s happening, even as you’re aware the film could be doing better.
The saving grace is that most of the jokes are funny – sometimes very funny, with at least three extended gags that detonate with explosive comic payoff. ”Used car mercenary” Don Ready (Jeremy Piven) and his team of high-pressure sales experts are hired by failing Temecula, California car patriarch Ben Selleck (James Brolin) to get rid of 200 cars over the Fourth of July weekend. Because the process of inventory liquidation only has so much comic potential, the script comes fully loaded with character baggage: Ready is haunted by a previous failure that ended in the death of his best friend. His teammates are bizarrely distracted by various sex-charged problems: oversexed Babs (Kathryn Hahn) lusts after Selleck’s man-child son (Rob Riggle); sensitive Jibby (Ving Rhames) longs to “make love” to a woman (as opposed to just having sex); financial wizard Brent (David Koechner) finds himself the reluctant object of Selleck’s homosexual advances.
Ready himself woos Selleck’s daughter Ivy (Jordana Spiro), despite her engagement to weaselly import car salesman/boy-band vocalist Paxton (Ed Helms). The film knows – and we know it knows – that the two are going to end up together, and their courtship has a going-through-the-motions quality despite Spiro’s effortless charm. Ready also finds a potential son in Selleck’s youngest employee Blake (Jonathan Sadowski), a junior salesman with all of his signature moves. While the potential in that setup abounds with character and gag potential, the film never really gets the story thread moving. As with the other plotlines, it’s one more thing in the circus of the film’s action.
But despite all the characters and the bevy of jokes the film still somtimes manages to lose its momentum, especially during a plot twist late in the second act that feels forced to the point of snapping. Amplifying this problem is another issue, one of comic pitch: rather than lose additional time by going for depth, director Brennan chooses instead to make the movie louder, ever louder. When Ready has his most sincere moment, it’s at the top of his lungs; characters incessantly shout at one another. Such zeal works in skit comedy, but repetitive scenes in a 90 minute film drag on the audience’s patience, raising the bar for the next gag to regain the comic momentum.
Piven charges Ready’s character with sleazy confidence, probably the only way to play such a outsized-by-design personality. Yet he sometimes stumbles giving Ready vulnerability or warmth. Hahn, Rhames and Koechner all make the most of their parts, each of which comes down to a single character point: the horny one, the sweet one, the smart one. Charles Napier, Tony Hale, and Ken Jeong are all endearing as Selleck’s beleaguered employees, while Craig T. Robinson steals his scenes as a defiant disc jockey in charge of music for the three-day sellathon. By contrast, Helms plays the smug Paxton as a variation of Andy Bernard, his character on The Office, while Riggle xeroxes Steve Carrell’s turn in Anchorman to play the childish Steve Selleck.
Ultimately, reviewing the theatrical release seems an almost academic exercise, given the inevitable unrated DVD version that’s sure to arrive mere months from now. The Goods is that kind of film, and when watching this current iteration you can often pinpoint which edits trimmed additional material from various scenes. That’s not entirely a bad thing. Like Anchorman with its companion movie and the “unbearably long, self-indulgent director’s cut” of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, an enlarged Goods is probably a better film all the way around, with greater character development and more patience at developing its setups. Which is not to say you should wait for the rental so much as consider this release a demo for the souped-up version still to come. America has a love affair with cars and movies both, and unrated editions and director’s cuts have become just next year’s model of the same make. Still, this version of The Goods is good enough to deserve seeing now.
Writer-producer-director was chronicler, inspiration for much of 1980s youth culture.
John Hughes, the filmmaking mastermind behind such seminal 1980s teen-friendly works as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off , died Thursday of heart trouble while visiting family in New York City. He was 59 years old.
Besides his cluster of teen-friendly comedies and dramas, his hit films also included National Lampoon’s Vacation, Home Alone, and Mr. Mom. He often directed his own screenplays, and his realistic representations of teen angst led fans and critics alike to consider him an auteur, the cultural voice of the shopping mall generation.
A native of Lansing, Michigan, Hughes began his career as an advertising copywriter in Chicago, later branching out into writing material for stand-up comics including Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers. He joined the staff of National LampoonMagazine in the late 70s, writing humorous essays and reminiscences including “Vacation ‘58.” Hughes broke into screenwriting composing scripts for the short-lived sitcom Delta House, an adaptation of the magazine’s hit film Animal House. His second feature-length screenwriting effort, based on the vacation essay, became the 1983 smash National Lampoon’s Vacation. The following year he made his directorial debut with Sixteen Candles, a bittersweet comedy that launched leads Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall to stardom.
A string of other teen-specific films followed, though each took an increasingly restless turn. The Breakfast Club (1985), Pretty In Pink (1986), and Some Kind of Wonderful (1987) all centered not just on the frustrations of teen romance but also on class and social divisions among teens and adults like. Hughes wrote and directed arguably his most well-received film, Planes, Trains & Automobiles, in 1987. A buddy/road movie starring Steve Martin and frequent collaborator John Candy, the film was a mild success upon release but has since come to recognition as a classic, with perennial airings each Thanksgiving. Its comic majesty rests on a melancholy undercurrent brought by Candy’s widowed salesman Del Griffith, in what was that late actor’s finest performance.
The soundtracks to Hughes’ movies were often as popular as the films themselves, and the music he used was an important part of his narrative presentation. The bestselling soundtracks to Pretty In Pink and The Breakfast Club helped paved the way for the alternative music explosion of the early 1990s: The Breakfast Club’s theme, “Don’t You Forget About Me,” was an international number one single for Scottish band Simple Minds, while OMD’s “If You Leave,” from Pretty In Pink, has become something of the default anthem for reminiscences of the era’s pop culture.
Though it’s tempting to say Hughes’s success ended with the decade he so adroitly portrayed, he closed the 80s on a high note, writing and producing the 1990 blockbuster Home Alone. Sometimes considered a salve for American anxiety about the then-brewing Operation: Desert Storm, it became the third-highest grossing motion picture of all time. Yet its success was to prove the climax of his career. Subsequent efforts such as Dutch (1991), Curly Sue (1991), and Dennis The Menace (1993) failed to capture critical acclaim or public attention, while two Home Alone sequels garnered only diminishing returns. Hughes’ filmmaking voice, always earnest and seldom reliant on sarcasm, seemed antiquated in the post-ironic snark that dominated 1990’s attitudes, and as a touchstone of 80s fashion and culture he shared in that decade’s disdain for all things related to its predecessor. His last screen credit, for 2007’s Owen Wilson vehicle Drillbit Taylor, was for story only and listed him as Edmond Dantes.
Hughes was a giant influence on our youth, both for the respect he accorded teenager’s emotions and for popularizing music leagues deeper than the lumbering rock and roll and inane synth pop then popular. Our condolences to his friends and family, and by way of tribute here’s a sizable clip from Planes, Trains & Automobiles:
Mike Judge’s new comedy puts Jason Bateman and Mila Kunis in a sex-charged workplace comedy.
Arriving as something like a gourmet dessert after a summer more loaded with junk food than usual, September’s Extract returns animation guru Mike Judge to the big screen for the first time since the whip-smart genius of 2006’s Idiocracy. Judge’s films, such as that one and the now-classic Office Space, have a tendency to run a bit ahead of their time, only getting their due recognition once the rest of our culture catches up to their subversive wit. If five years from now we all remember Extract as a classic, remember you heard about it here first.
Recalling Office Space’s hapless Peter Gibbons, the new film follows a well-meaning everyman as his life goes through some professional and personal rejuvenation. Joel (Jason Bateman) owns a factory that makes and bottles flavor extract for cooking, a job that’s every bit as exciting as it sounds. Bored with his job, his life, and especially his marriage, he spends a lot of time complaining to laid-back bartender pal Dean (Ben Affleck) and trying to woo his wife Suzie (Kristen Wiig) into bed. Suzie’s lost interest in herself and her marriage, it seems, leaving Joel shut off from getting any despite earnest efforts to play by her romantic rules.
Things change after a freak chain-reaction mishap leaves a male factory employee hurt in a bad place and on the hook for a giant insurance settlement. The injured worker’s replacement, a sexy temp named Cindy, gets Bateman worked up enough to start pondering a potential affair.
Though none of that sounds like groundbreaking comedic material, remember how Office Space used the same plot contrivance as Superman III to potent comic effect. Judge has never shared the killer instinct that fellow animation auteurs Seth MacFarlane, Trey Parker and Matt Stone frequently exhibit, and while that means his humor is often more nuanced it’s also likely cost him a degree of edginess. His films are more about performance and observational satire more than invention, not poking fun so much as holding the already ridiculous up to light and letting it speak for itself. King of the Hill has served as the SCTV to Family Guy’s more aggressive early years-Saturday Night Live for years now.
In that regard Extract is a perfect vehicle for Bateman, who’s been honing his John Ritter-esque ordinary guy charm in films like Hancock and The Break-Up. Likewise Kunis, who apparently plays the same tempting sweetheart she was in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Seeing as she didn’t get the attention she deserved for that performance, we can’t really fault her taking another stab at perfecting her luminescent romcom potential. The film also stars the mighty J.K. Simmons as Bateman’s partner, continuing the wily comic snark that let him steal all his scenes in darker comedies like Burn After Reading and Thank You For Smoking.
Judge himself has described the film as a flip side to Office Space, this time making the boss the nice guy and the owners the troublemakers. Given the hip star power of his tight ensemble cast, which also includes Clifton Collins, Jr. (Sunshine Cleaning) and the ubiquitous David Koechner (Anchorman), maybe this new film will escape the unfair fates that befell his previous efforts.
Our semi-regular compendium of movie, TV and DVD news of general interest.
The summer movie season is just around the corner
Something we didn’t realize when this blog started up a year ago: it takes more time to research and keep up with what’s forthcoming than it does just watching and reviewing films. That makes us think sometimes that we should narrow our focus. But where’ s the fun in that? Trailers, after all, are the only good reason (besides good seats) to get into the theatre early.
Every month or so we make a list of items and news stories that maybe don’t warrant a full blog post of their own. Some excite us, some bore us, one or two irritate or even piss us off a bit. But they’re all worth mentioning at least for their conversational value.
1. Though there’s not much going on by way of new releases lately, the good news is that the summer movie season starts three weeks early this year, with the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine on May 1, followed by Star Trek just a week later and Terminator: Salvation only two weeks after that. That’s three blockbusters before Memorial Day, traditionally the kickoff of the summer blockbuster avalance.
He also once played Orson Welles
2. Speaking of the Wolverine movie, we can see both sides of the flap about its illicit appearance online this week, but on the other hand it’s not that hard to predict some things about it. Based on what we know, we can assure viewers that 1. Hugh Jackman will give a very good (but not great) performance, 2. Ryan Reynolds will have all the best lines and 3. Liev Shreiber will act circles around everyone else. And the ending will remain open for a sequel.
3. Rescue Me, FX’s series about a New York City Fire Department crew and the families that love but often fall victim to their angst, premiered this week after an eighteen-month hiatus. The episode was entertaining but not quite exceptional, about as good as the show ever was during its uneven first season. Still, it had the fesity energy that later seasons lacked, abetted in no small part by charismatic performances from Robert John Burke as an alcoholic ex-priest falling off the wagon and a show-stopping turn by Michael J. Fox as a new boyfriend for Janet Gavin (Andrea Roth), the oft-separated wife of main character Tommy Gavin (Denis Leary).
4. Recent news stories show that movie theatre attendance has risen significantly since last October, when the worldwide economy more or less went to Hell in a bucket. To quote the Propellerheads and Shirley Bassey, it’s all just a little bit of history repeating: the movie business has traditionally thrived during hard times, and no wonder. People looking for diversions from their circumstances have lots of time to kill, and movies are nothing if not an escape. With a summer loaded with science fiction and action franchises just around the corner, Hollywood could be in for a banner year.
5. Some of the most vivid examples of films that both reflected and capitalized on the nation’s Depression-era restlessness got a DVD release this week with Universal’s Pre-Code Hollywood Collection box set. Turner Classic Movies has already released several similar box sets celebrating Hollywood before the sanitizing Hays Code, though we’re tempted to get this newer package just for its films’ lurid titles: The Cheat, Torch Singer, Hot Saturday, Murder At The Vanities, Search For Beauty, and (our favorite), Merrily We Go To Hell. The various films include performances by Fredric March, Tallulah Bankhead and Cary Grant.
6. From the “lurching into self-parody” desk comes news of Sam Raimi’s latest, which if nothing else boasts a title that would right in with the aforementioned set: Drag Me To Hell dusts off the “gypsy curse” conceit for a thriller about a loan officer (Matchstick Men’s Alison Lohman) stalked by bad juju after foreclosing on an old woman’s mortgage. The stunningly cheesy trailer below seems to include its entire first act. Now, wait and see if somebody doesn’t trot out the old “zeitgeist” and “cultural barometer” arguments to validate the film’s existence. It opens nationwide May 29.
Really, Life On Mars creators? Really?
7. Two shows that fought continuous battles for survival came to a conclusion over the last couple of weeks, with at least one serving its definite coda. Life, a hypnotically offbeat cop drama starring the singular Damian Lewis, aired its second season finale (and likely series conclusion) that efficiently wrapped up (almost) all its open plots and subplots while bringing closure to Lewis’ tortured Detective Charlie Crews. By total contrast, a week before ABC’s Life On Mars aired a series finale that packed an explanation for its time-lost Detective Sam Tyler (Jason O’Mara) so out-of-left-field, so contrived, that the show’s creators might just as well have walked on camera and given their audience the finger. Look for details in articles with names like “Worst Show Finales” in the years to come.
8. There’s a logic that goes you can remake a film only if the original wasn’t very good. But what about films we love for their weaknesses? A remake of 1981’s Bullfinch’s Mythology-via-Star Wars cult classic Clash of the Titans is up for remaking, this one reportedly co-starring no less than Liam Neeson as Greek god patriarch Zeus and Ralph Fiennes as his villainous brother Hades. Sam Worthington (Terminator: Salvation) will star as the heroic Perseus, and Alexa Davalos (Defiance) plays his true love Andromeda. The film is slated for release next March.
9. If you’re not already familiar with DC Comics’ long-running hero Green Lantern, get ready to hear a lot more about him over the next twenty months. The comics company plans a massive summer crossover, ominously titled The Blackest Night, about Green Lantern Hal Jordan and the far-ranging Green Lantern Corps (a kind of interstellar police force) waging a “war of light” against the reanimated dead heroes of the DC Universe (And that body count is a lot higher than you’d think). July sees the release of Green Lantern: First Flight, a straight-to DVD animated feature film about Jordan’s recruitment into the Corps, with voice talent by Law & Order: SVU’s Christopher Meloni and Battlestar Galactica’s Tricia Helfer. Finally, a live-action feature directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) is slated for a December 2010 release.
10. Finally, something that actually rates at least one blog posting of its own. A couple of weeks ago we ran a long article hoping for, among other actors, a career rebirth for Michael Keaton. May 1 sees the limited release of The Merry Gentleman, a moody neo-noir with religious overtones that marks the errant leading man’s directorial debut. Keaton also stars as Frank Logan, a contract hitman who moonlights as a tailor while contemplating suicide. He becomes involved in a low-heat romance with Kate Frazier (No Country For Old Men’s Kelly MacDonald), a woman fleeing her abusive husband (Bobby Cannavale, The Ten) and pursued by a cop with bad intentions. The trailer’s evocative atmosphere and deliberate tempo look promising for fans of such films (like us), as well as its premise, which reminds us an odd bit – in a good way – of John Dahl’s dark comedy You Kill Me.
We’ll be back next week with previews of some of those summer blockbusters. Have a good weekend.
Seven cool things about the Star Trek universe we hope to see in the new movie.
The long-awaited new “reboot” of the Star Trek franchise opens in just 30 days (Update: Read our review of the new film here) and the previews growing ever more pervasive on television and online have just begun to reveal the new film’s rollicking story. We expect that’ll continue up until its opening, but in the meantime – being somewhat neophyte Trekkers ourselves – we’ve come up with a list of people, places, and things we’d like to see shown or at least visually referenced. Each one, we think, could ramp up the cool factor even further.
The following list isn’t in any particular order, and we apologize in advance for any gaps in our knowledge. These are ideas and concepts we’ve come across over the years, and we’ve taken what we could from Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki, to fill in the blanks. Also, what’s below doesn’t necessarily include everything from the semi- and non-canonical expanded universe of Trek novels, video games, comic books, cartoons, and role playing games. We’ve barely dipped a toe into that ocean.
Romulan birds-of-prey in formation
The Battle of Cheron and the defeat of the Romulan Star Empire: The Romulans (like Mr. Spock’s Vulcans, but craftier and far more malicious) are the bad guys of the new film, but in Star Trek continuity Earth and its allies fought a long and mutually devastating war with their vast Empire a century before. Little is known about this conflict’s climactic battle except that the defeat was a humiliating loss for the Romulans and led directly to the formation of the Unied Federation of Planets.
If other franchises like Star Wars and Battlestar: Galactica have anything on Star Trek, it’s a well-known space battle. Showing such an event as a Midway-in-space-style slugfest would fix that once and for all.
Robert April, the Enterprise’s “first” captain: When Gene Roddenberry wrote the first Star Trek treatment for MGM in 1964, the ship was called the Yorktown and was captained by Robert April, a part reportedly meant for Jack Lord or Lloyd Bridges, among others. Over the years a number of canonical and non-canonical sources have incorporated and fleshed out April’s character, establishing his British heritage and giving him a more militaristic bearing than his successors Christopher Pike (played in the new movie by Bruce Greenwood) and James T. Kirk (Chris Pine). Seeing this earliest of Star Trek creations, possibly in his later career as an ambassador, would make a great tribute to the mid-20th Century bravado of the original series.
The legacy of Star Trek: Enterprise: Arguably the least-loved of the six series, Enterprise was nevertheless exciting and remarkably well-acted TV sci-fi. Especially in its later seasons, when the show’s storylines and tone took a profoundly darker turn, the prequel series offered multi-episode arcs that settled a lot of long-running fan debates while also fixing inconsistencies in the overarching Trek timeline and universe. It managed all that while still remaining the most action-oriented Trek yet.
Honestly, we expect this black sheep of the Trek franchises to get short shrift in the movie, but it deserves some kind of acknowledgement for its efforts to explain the backstory of every series set after it.
Gary Mitchell, Captain Kirk’s best friend: The pilot to the original series featured helmsman (and possible First Officer) Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell, Kirk’s buddy from their days at Starfleet Academy and as wily an officer as Kirk himself. Driven mad from psychic powers gained on a faraway world, he attempted to kill Kirk and the Enterprise’s crew before meeting his own death at Kirk’s hands. Mitchell was played by Gary Lockwood, who two years later starred as the astronaut murdered by the HAL-9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
There’s no mention of a Lockwood character in IMDB’s listing of the new film’s cast, which is kind of a shame. Introducing a character that died in the series’ first episode would have lent a grim in-joke to the crew’s “first” adventure, if indeed the new film works as a prequel to the 1960’s series.
Andorians, the warlike anti-Vulcans: Blue-skinned inhabitants of a frozen moon that orbits a ringed gas giant, Andorians are fiery-tempered warriors who pride themselves on letting emotions guide their decisions. The historical enemies of the dispassionate Vulcans (who live on a world of deserts and volcanoes), they were among Earth’s strongest allies in the war with the Romulans and a founding member of the Federation.
They’re also among the most prominent aliens in the Trek galaxy, appearing in all its three time periods. It almost wouldn’t be the same without one or two of them manning a station aboard the Enterprise or filling in the ranks at Starfleet Command. And speaking of cool alien races…
Caitians, the Federation’s cat-people: One of two feline-derived species in the expanded, non-canon universe, Caitians were also briefly glimpsed in the gallery shown at the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Various stories and sourcebooks published over the last two decades describe them, somewhat ironically, as a peaceful, vegetarian, and spiritual people who value loyalty above all else.
An interplanetary civilization like the Federation can’t have too many aliens interacting with humans. And cat-people are cool by definition.
A map of the Neutral Zone from the original series
The Neutral Zone, the no-man’s land between Federation and Romulan space: Part of the bitter peace created at the end of the Earth-Romulan War, the Neutral Zone was established as a no-fly zone between the two warring powers. That didn’t stop both sides from heavily fortifying their boundaries, with the new Federation building massive stellar fortresses out of hollowed-out asteroids towed into formation for that purpose.
Actually, of everything on this list we give the Neutral Zone the best odds of making an appearance. Not for nothing, but the Zone and the Romulan Star Empire were introduced in the episode ”Balance of Terror,” considered by many (including series creator Gene Roddenberry) to be among the best of the original series.
Star Trek opens nationwide May 7, with international release dates varying through that week.
Seven actors we want to see return to the Hollywood A-List.
Fame, it’s often said, is a fickle bitch. Increasingly so in the movie industry, where for many stars their time at the top amounts to a couple years or even just several months. The bitter truth is that plenty of so-called “stars” these days deserve the brevity of their acclaim. But plenty of others don’t.
Hollywood is hardly a meritocracy – it never was, it will never become one – but every now and then an actor makes it based on hard work, attention to their craft, and of course a great big dose of talent. The right part is important, too, but most actors have a body of work that shows a rise through the rank and file. Sometimes, unfortunately, they spend more time climbing than they do reaping the benefits of their work; conversely, very few overnight successes have long runs of quality stuff.
Presented below are seven actors that at one time (predominantly the previous decade) or another sat atop Hollywood’s A-List but have slipped a bit in recent years. They’re all still working, and in fact at least one is furiously productive. But we think they deserve bigger roles in better projects than what they’re doing now. We’ve included video clips to show them playing against type , or at least public image, and included some “unsung” performances where their work deserved more recognition than it actually received.
1. Ray Liotta: The tough guy with the icy blue eyes got his break leading DeNiro and Pesci in Goodfellas (1990) but he’d actually been making films for more a decade already, including 1998’s underrated gem Dominick & Eugene (a kind of moody, less precious Rain Man). Best unsung performance: as a world-weary father to Johnny Depp’s drug kingpin in Ted Demme’s Blow (2001). Possible career tipping point: The knee-jerk answer here is 1995’s Operation Dumbo Drop, though it’s more likely he just played the psycho asshole bit (Turbulence, Something Wild, Unlawful Entry) once too many times. Career advice: Stop making so many films with Guy Ritchie and broaden your screen persona. Alternately, find the right premium cable project.
2. Andy Garcia: Elegant and reserved but with a smoldering charisma, Garcia outshone both Kevin Costner and Sean “I’m using my Scottish burr to play an Irishman” Connery in Brian DePalma’s The Untouchables (1987). Best unsung performance: as a cop-turned-prosecutor getting his idealism crushed by political reality in Sidney Lumet’s Night Falls On Manhattan (1996). Possible career tipping point: Garcia made solid work through the 90s, including perfect turns in the period classics When A Man Loves A Woman (1994) and Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead (1995). The same year he headlined the epic turkey Steal Big, Steal Little, however, and despite subsequent quality performances in Hoodlum (1997) and Desperate Measures (1998)the career damage was done. Career advice: Find a project that appeals to his romantic charm. Also, he and Liotta somehow keep winding up in the same B-movie action flicks. As with Liotta, take a break from the gun-crazy stuff.
3. Michael Keaton: The deceptively intelligent Keaton was the king of working class comedies in the 1980s, with winning turns in Mr. Mom (1983) and Gung-Ho (1986). He also headlinedthe cult favorites Johnny Dangerously (1984) and Beetle Juice (1988) before finishing the decade in Tim Burton’s two Batman films, both of which are aging now like medical waste. Best unsung performance: as a sleazeball coke addict stumbling towards clarity in 1988’s little-seen Clean And Sober. Possible career tipping point: Somewhere in the 90s Keaton’s screen persona shifted from blue-collar everyguy to white-collar media smartass in lukewarm fare such as The Paper and Speechless. Playing a rock singer-turned-living-snowman in 1998’s Jack Frost amounted to career hemlock. Career advice: Channel the darker side of his acting repertoire already used to great effect in Desperate Measures and Pacific Heights (1990). By all means find a way to reprise the role of Ray Nicolette, the scene-stealing cop he played in both Jackie Brown (1997) and Out of Sight (1998).
4. Gabriel Byrne: The brooding and mysterious Byrne lit up screens in the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing (1990) as well as making similarly well-crafted performances in Smilla’s Sense of Snow (1997) and The Usual Suspects (1995). For a while in the 90s, Byrne had the career that these days the industry insists on giving to Clive Owen – the European tough guy desired by women but admired by men. Nothing against his starring role in HBO’s In Treatment, but we miss his film work. Best unsung performance: playing a lonely electronics expert working to blanket Los Angeles in surveillance coverage in Wim Wender’s The End of Violence (1997). Possible career tipping point: Back-to-back appearances playing a priest in Stigmata and the Devil in End of Days (1999), both terrible biblical-themed horror films cashing in on Millennial anxiety, seemed like an attempt at self-typecasting. Career advice: We’re curious to see what Byrne could do with some intelligent science fiction. Failing that, remind audiences how good he is at neo-noir.
5. Bill Pullman: Affable, easygoing Pullman broke through by upstaging both Danny DeVito and Bette Midler in the hilarious Ruthless People (1986). 90s-era turns leading giant ensemble casts in Singles (1992) and Independence Day (1996) established him as a solid if not exactly riveting leading man. But his under-the-radar turns in The Last Seduction (1994) and Lost Highway (1997) showed a depth that his higher-profile studio work didn’t. Best unsung performance: Daryl Zero, the world’s smartest man and most neurotic private detective, in Jake Kasdan’s weirdly endearing Zero Effect (1998). Possible career tipping point: Hard to say. Never a stranger to flops (Mr. Wrong, Brokedown Palace), Pullman’s career didn’t burn out so much as fade away. Lately he’s taken to strong character work in uneven indie fare like Bottle Shock (2008) and Nobel Son (2007). Like Dennis Quaid before Far From Heaven, he seems one good film away from a total career rebirth. Career advice: Getting slightly more selective in his indie work won’t hurt; find a project to direct as well as lead, as with 2000’s telepic remake of The Virginian.
6. Kevin Kline: Articulate, elegant, witty – Kline is an old-school movie star equally comfortable in dramatic and comedy roles alike. Never a bad performer even when appearing in bad movies, his good films are virtually legion, including semi-classics like The Big Chill (1983), Chaplin (1992), and of course A Fish Called Wanda (1988). Best unsung performance: Joey Boca, the philandering pizza parlor owner targeted for death by his wife (Tracey Ullman) and two drugged out hitmen (William Hurt and Keanu Reeves) in Lawrence Kasdan’s black-as-pitch I Love You To Death (1990). Possible career tipping point: A decline really began with his paycheck-grabbing turn in 1999’s Wild Wild West. Lately too many of his films look like ripoffs of more successful movies, including the American Beauty knockoff Life As A House (2001) and the poor man’s Dead Poet’s Society melodrama The Emperor’s Club (2002). Career advice: We’d watch Kline read the phone book if Kasdan directed it. Failing such a reunion, get back together on a project with John Cleese or William Hurt.
7. Billy Bob Thornton: Thornton has made a career out of defying or straight-up subverting public and industry expectations. He also often seems smarter than he lets on, hinting at a ferocious intellect even when playing the mentally challenged or emotionally crippled. His well-modulated, nuanced turns in underrated fare like Bandits (2001) and The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)go against the public’s expectations of his hard-partying redneck demeanor; audiences seem more comfortable seeing him play boozy curmudgeons in Bad Santa (2003) and The Bad News Bears (2005). Best unsung performance: Jacob Mitchell, the mentally challenged sidekick who makes a sacrifice to Bill Paxton’s life-changing scheme in Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan (1998). Possible career tipping point:There’s a case to be made for simple public and industry backlash. A string of odd film choices, including 2002’s Waking Up In Reno and 2006’s The Astronaut Farmer, make him hard to get a lock on. Career advice: Return to writing his own scripts, as he did in his Oscar-winning Sling Blade (1997). Also, take another stab at directing, both his own projects (Sling Blade) and for others (the 2000 Matt Damon vehicle All The Pretty Horses).
Next Wednesday we’ll unveil our list of seven former A-List leading women who should get the comeback treatment.
Our version of the old Movietone newsreels, but in blog form.
The green tint is the pollen.
Spring is just around the corner, and for those of living in the South that means soupy thick fogs of oak pollen and warmer temperatures occasionally punctuated by slick, sweaty rain. Lucky for us more movies start debuting, and that the theatres showing them are climate controlled. Seriously, if we lived somewhere with better weather we’d probably be doing something else (probably something outdoors.)
March means the downhill homestretch towards the summer movie season, with some distant beeps already popping on the radar for April and especially May. There’s a new Star Trek trailer airing before Watchmen, for example, and a fresh trailer for X-Men Origins: Wolverine is beginning to circle around online. Besides the geek culture stuff, April sees the release of Adventureland for the undergrad crowd and Gigantic for their hipster dorm mates. Grown-ups get State of Play with Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck as well as the long-delayed The Soloist with Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx.
The following items are just a roundup of some topics of interest, movies and news that either don’t merit a full blog post or will bear further previewing and reviewing as more information becomes available. But they’re all things worth talking about right now.
Who watches The Horsemen?
1. Our senses of pity and fair play alike compel us to mention that the movies The Horsemen, 12, Phoebe In Wonderland, and Tokyo! also open this weekend. Probably the coming-of-age Sundance favorite Phoebe In Wonderland and 12, a Russian version of 12 Angry Men, offer the most divergent counter-programming for those not looking for super-heroics. All four movies open “in limited release,” here meaning the arthouses of the larger cities even more so than that phrase usually does.
2. If and when you get tired of hearing about the genius of the original Watchmen graphic novel, Comic Book Resources.com offers an excellent critique and evaluation of the 1986 comics series by veteran comics writer Steven Grant. It’s a note of clarity and scholarship that’s both fair and balanced, to use the cliche. Definitely worth reading.
Man out of time: O'Mara
3. America’s long war of attrition against quality network television scored another victory this week with ABC’s cancellation of Life On Mars. An upstart show that realized its considerable potential by leaps and bounds with each passing episode, the atmospheric time travel mystery-drama never developed an audience despite repeated chances from the network. The show’s creators will be able to wrap up is outstanding plotlines, however, presumably revealing just exactly why main character Sam Tyler (Jason O’Mara) finds himself trapped in an often-hellish vision of New York City circa 1973.
4. While we’re on the subject of good television, AMC’s weird, addictive original Breaking Bad debuts its second season this Sunday night. Overshadowed by the elegant glare of AMC’s Mad Men juggernaut, this grimly sharp drama about a dying high school chemistry teacher (Emmy winner Bryan Cranston) manufacturing and dealing drugs to support his family consistently went in unexpected directions its entire first season. Small wonder, considering it was created by Vince Gilligan, the mad intellect who helped create some of The X-Files’ most memorable episodes.
He's the main character, folks.
5. Is it better to burn out than fade away? Besides Life On Mars, several other shows including Life, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and Pushing Daisies are all either cancelled or hearing bells toll for their renewal chances. Watching the slow deaths of other longer-running episodics, such as the ones we’ve come to call Name That Cylon and The Adventures of Ben Linus, Super Genius almost make us feel relieved these good shows will wrap before their creative half-lifes expire.
6. Pixar’s summer-debuting Up has a premise that’s ingenious in its simple whimsy and a trailer promising the same wonder-inspiring visuals as so many of the animation maestros’ other productions. Still, it seems at least initially doomed to become a footnote after last year’s masterpiece Wall*E, an approximate Barry Lyndon to that film’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Though such a dismissal is probably unfair, after Wall*E anyone would deserve a victory lap. And given Up’s septuagenarian protagonist – a dead ringer for Andy Rooney, to boot – it’s now fairly obvious that the animators aren’t even keeping up the pretense of making children’s films anymore.
Up opens nationwide May 29th.
Flavor Flav does not appear in this movie.
7. Looking farther into the summer, July 1st sees the release of Public Enemies, probably the biggest event of the year for crime movie junkies as well as anyone enamored of white-hot leading men Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. Based on the true-life pursuit of gangster John Dillinger (Depp) by FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Bale), the film’s also directed by crime auteur Michael Mann, meaning lots of structure and veracity in detailing Dillinger’s mythic crime career. Depp looks dashing as all Hell in the production photos that have leaked so far, but Bale has a talent for stealing films from his more celebrated co-stars (Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Colin Farrell), and a supporting cast that includes Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup and Giovanni Ribisi only sweetens the potential. Consider us stoked.
8. We’ve fired some stiff shots at The Office in blog posts past, but the show’s creative staff really needs to stop making such gripes so plentiful. In particular this season’s saturation with Dwight – a character that in the most versatile of performer’s hands would still only merit small doses - is slowly draining the show of the ensemble charm that was beginning to draw comparisons to classic TV like WKRP In Cincinnati and Cheers. Someone suggested that the creators are building Dwight up for a catastrophic fall. We hope that’s the case, because we miss the warmth and slice-of-life sweetness of earlier seasons. And we miss Amy Ryan a lot, too.
9. Sometimes the library of Blu-Ray titles reminds us of a HBO programming schedule circa 1984. Recent releases on the still-not-quite-America’s-format-of-choice medium include Escape From New York, The French Connection, Amadeus, and Gandhi. But overall Blu-Ray seems at times spasmodically self-sabotaging. Amid the marketing of tons of modern cinema drivel, there’s still no word on such all time classics like Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia, or even modern favorites like Schindler’s List and The Return of the King getting the big blue upgrade. The release timeline will likely (and we hope) follow the same paradoxical model as traditional DVD over the last decade: as the format becomes more mainstream, films of less general appeal will see their release. In the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt studios to release some high-profile classics in Blu-Ray now, at a loss, as a sign of good faith to more serious movie collectors.
We’ll return Monday with our review of – what else – Watchmen. Have a good time this weekend at the movies or anywhere else you find yourself.
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One of our favorite films of the past year, The Merry Gentleman is a fascinatingly opaque bit of filmmaking that lingers with you long after its credits fade. You will sometimes wish it moved faster and that it would open itself more, and reveal something besides only the tantalizing amount of information that its very shrewd and deliberate script wants to divulge. The ending will haunt you, not in a satisfying sense but rather in a way that compels you to make sense of its painstakingly-wrought ambiguity. And you might actually love the film for all of those reasons.
Their solitary existences bring them together, of all times, at Christmas. Following a hit on someone in Kate’s office building, Frank attempts to throw himself off a neighboring rooftop, after glimpsing her in a wonderfully constructed moment of grace. But she sees him instead and screams, averting his suicide. Later, the two formally meet as Frank shows her a small kindness, and their friendship slowly begins to percolate. Kate is the type of person you suspect would rather not risk inconveniencing anyone with her company. She’s strong but vulnerable to even the basic ruthlessness that most people take for granted; her attempts at isolation only bring other lonely souls into her path, including an emotionally needy co-worker (Darlene Hunt) and Dave Murcheson, the police detective (Tom Bastounes) investigating the shooting.
But she’s drawn to Frank, probably as much because he asks nothing of her and doesn’t seem ready to offer anything for which he might expect gratitude down the line. “I think we’re good for one another,” Kate tells him. When minutes later she explains, “You’re possibly the sweetest man I’ve ever met” you get a sense of how bad her life must have been to that point. The script moves ahead in time, cleverly, and there’s a sense as spring rolls around that the two are making progress helping one another emerge from their respective shells. Then of course their respective pasts close in on them. Kate’s husband (Bobby Cannavale) tracks her down, spouting born-again Christian rhetoric that, not surprisingly, makes the skittish Kate even more terrified. Meanwhile Murcheson and his partner dog the shooting investigation as well as the apparent suicide of one of Frank’s associates. Frank is unafraid, permanently removing Kate’s husband from her life and continuing his tailoring business.
The pivotal scenes arrive as Murcheson visits Frank’s store. The two men size each other up, instant dislike getting submerged by going-through-the-motions polite conversation. “I tend to see the suit, not the person inside it,” Frank tells the detective, a pretty unsubtle way of explaining that life is often meaningless to him. Murchison ambles off, ready to confront Kate – the object of his affection as well as a potential witness and accomplice alike – of his concerns. His clumsy, well-intentioned effort pushes Kate and Frank into a confrontation that’s minimal on dialogue but no less emotionally resonant. Kate is ready for them to admit the truth about each other but Frank’s not there yet, setting up an ending that leaves more questions than it’s prepared to answer.
But these complaints are petty grievances. Keaton knows how to direct himself and (with one exception) his actors, mining fascinating complexities out of virtually every role. MacDonald gives Kate layers of anxiety and innocence, letting her be paranoid in one scene and carefree the next. Bastounes is exceptional as the self-sabotaging Murheson, a man at once reaching out for someone’s warmth but retreating into his police authority whenever challenged. He’s the third part of Frank and Kate’s lonely constellation, dimmer by comparison but no less sincere despite his lack of self-awareness. Only Cannavale fails to impress, bringing too much ham to his rambling fire-and-brimstone monologue. We understand that his character is a petty and vile man because Kate has already sold us on the idea. Cannavale’s overacting only sets her own efforts back.
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Posted by Screaming Blue Reviews 
Posted by Screaming Blue Reviews 
Posted by Screaming Blue Reviews 
