Sour Christmas, Part One

Not feeling the holiday spirit? Here’s the first of a dozen movies and TV shows to help you avoid the season.

Spend the holidays with friends.

Bah, humbug. With Christmas finally arriving this weekend, some of us aren’t feeling the holiday spirit, despite all the efforts of the media and our economy to get us in line. Still, the cold weather and ready supply of DVD’s and Blu-Rays, combined with some long, bleak days off from work, make the next week or so a perfect time to catch up on some movie watching.

This week we’ll profile ten great movies and two superb television series, none of which have a damn thing to do with Christmas, New Year’s, or any of the other reasons to “celebrate.” As always, they’re ranked in no order or importance or quality. Where possible we’ve included trailers or other video clips that were available on YouTube when we looked for them.

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) – Say what you will about his later films, Guy Ritchie’s debut feature about bratty gangster wannabes hustling the London underworld remains an irresistible whirlwind of style, violence, and swaggering retro cool. The shaggy plot, about a crooked poker game, two vintage musket rifles and a strain of greenhouse grown super-pot, is almost incidental to the brazen energy and gritty atmosphere. The film’s ugly, smart, witty, and honest – all the things Christmas ain’t.

The great cast of (then-) up and coming actors includes Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng, Nick Moran and Vinnie Jones, but it’s Lenny McLean who frequently steals the show as mob enforcer Barry the Baptist.

The New World (2005) – Terrence Malick’s fourth feature follows the romance between 17th Century lovers John Smith (Colin Farrell) and Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher) as the Virginia colony of Jamestown gets off to a shaky start. Sent on a reconnaissance mission by colony chief Christopher Newport (Christopher Plummer) to look for trade partners among the area’s “naturals,” Smith is capture by a local tribe and sentenced to death until the chief’s daughter saves him. The two fall in deep – if star-crossed – love.  

Malick uses the setting and time to explore some of his favorite themes – the moral capacities of the human spirit, mankind’s relation and place within nature, individual will against tightening social norms – and creates a tighter story than 1998′s more expansive (and less cohesive) The Thin Red Line. Farrell is somewhat miscast as the fundamentally restless Smith, but Kilcher, Plummer, and Christian Bale are all just about flawless.

Magnolia (1999) – Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling, overreaching saga about interconnected Los Angeles lives at the end of the millennium remains amazing a decade later if only for its sheer audacity and scope. Long, complicated, and at times self-indulgent (the film concludes with a biblical “plague”), Anderson nevertheless keeps things moving by keeping small-scale but taut suspense brewing for all his many characters; some storylines resolve tidily and some don’t, but you have to think a while to determine which ones do which.

The ace cast – the names of which read like a Who’s Who of late-90s talent – keep the events from getting too cumbersome or letting Anderson’s reach exceed his grasp (as it has in both of his films since.) All of that and a career-best performance by Tom Cruise, too.

Ruthless People (1986) – For those who want a snarky holiday, this pitch-dark comedy from the creators of Airplane! showcases both Danny DeVito and Bette Midler’s scene-chewing gusto while still remaining a clever comic thriller.

Fashion marketer Sam Stone (DeVito) plans to murder his wife Barbara (Midler) until she’s kidnapped by a hapless couple (Judge Rheinhold and Helen Slater) that Stone cheated out of millions. But Barbara’s an impossible hostage, and Stone’s attempts to negotiate the ransom demands – the better to provoke the kidnappers into killing her – cause a storm of comic mishaps. Ugly, misanthropic, and shrill but quotably funny, it’s the right movie for the day after Christmas.

Night and the City (1950) American grifter Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) moves through the post-war London underworld scheming to get out from beneath his employer’s (Francis L. Sullivan) iron grip. Pulled into his tragic plans are his kind girlfriend (Gene Tierney), an ageing champion wrestler (Stanislaus Zbyszko) and his employer’s wife (Googie Withers).

Noir auteur Jules Dassin (Brute Force) adapts Gerald Kersh’s novel by making London’s underbelly both the film’s antagonist and its explanation for the desperation of its inhabitants. Widmark is criminally underrated as a leading man, and he’s at his best here. The downbeat ending remains as haunting as any story put to film.

Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (2006) – dismissed as an epic white elephant by critics and media virtually upon its debut, Aaron Sorkin’s follow-up to The West Wing easily holds its own against contemporary Emmy-bait fare like Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

When the veteran showrunner (Judd Hirsch) of a Saturday Night Live-like variety show has an on-air meltdown, a newly hired network executive (Amanda Peet) replaces him with the writer-director team (Matthew Perry and Bradley Whitford) fired from the show’s staff several years before. Complicating the teams’ return are the writer’s pious, gorgeous ex-lover (Sarah Paulson) and the wrath of the network chief (Steven Weber) who canned them.

NBC cancelled the big-budget affair after 22 episodes, though lately the DVD box set has reached clearance sale prices. The first half-dozen episodes especially are simply unmissable, as this clip from the pilot illustrates.

We’ll be back later this week with five more films and another late, lamented television series that was long before its time. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: Crazy Heart

Jeff Bridges’ Oscar-winning performance redeems an otherwise bland melodrama.

Though sometimes overshadowed by his iconic turn as Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, Jeff Bridges’ career stretches across almost four decades and dozens of accomplished performances. He’s the quintessential American actor’s actor, consistently bringing more to any given part than was written into the script while making each performance distinctly his own. He’s played aliens, serial killers, U.S. Presidents and cattle rustlers, among many other roles, but remained himself throughout. He’s made some bad movies, but he’s never been bad in a movie – an important difference.

For many years Bridges’ lack of Oscar recognition was held not against him but rather as proof of the Academy’s fallibility. “The Oscars aren’t perfect,” the argument went. “Hell, they’ve never given one to Jeff Bridges.” This month, after four previous nominations, he won the statue for his turn as washed-up Country & Western singer Bad Blake in writer-director Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart. He deserves the recognition, even if the film isn’t one of the best in which he’s participated. For that matter, it’s not even very good.

At least the story, and its lead character, play directly to Bridges’ strengths. Once many years ago Blake was a performer with both fame and riches, but those times were long enough ago that now he’s reduced to playing gigs in bowling alleys and multi-night engagements in cheesy storefront bars. Blake endures the deprivation with a kind of threadbare resignation, saving his hostility for angry phone calls to his manager (Paul Herman). “I’m fifty-seven years old and I’m broke,” Blake bellows. He’s angry at his circumstances, mostly because he’s unable to cement a collaboration with former protegé Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), a modern C&W star who may be betraying Blake’s lessons of hard-living sincerity for the glitzier artifice of the current music industry. In the meantime Blake roams the Southwest in his battered Suburban, living more or less hand to mouth and from bottle to bottle. “I used to be somebody,” goes one of his songs. “Now I’m somebody else.”

His fortunes improve somewhat when the piano player in a Santa Fe pickup band asks for an interview on behalf of his niece Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Jean’s a single mother, vaguely lonely but devoted to her son Buddy (Jack Nation) and trying to make a living as a reporter. As their romance begins, halting and driven by Blake’s squinty charm, Blake is finally able to make inroads with Sweet, accepting a degrading but lucrative opening slot on Sweet’s tour and writing new songs for Sweet’s next album. 

But Blake is unable to gracefully accept even tentative victories. When a lapse in the sobriety he promised Jean gets Buddy lost in a labyrinthine Houston shopping mall, the romance breaks apart, leaving Blake disconsolate. Aided by longtime friend Wayne (Robert Duvall), he eventually seeks treatment in a rehab clinic before rejoining Sweet on the road. Determined to start his whole life over, he attempts a “look at me now” reconciliation with Jean, but she refuses. The denouement, set sixteen months later, finds Blake sober and prosperous, with a now-married Jean ready to extend forgiveness.

The problem with all these story points is their vacuum-packed dearth of spontaneity. Cooper’s script, based on the 1987 novel by Thomas Cobb, doesn’t follow Blake’s predicament and eventual redemption so much as it lays out a course and bends everything around him to its own dramatic purposes. For a film ostensibly about someone’s life, there’s very little sense of unpredictability, or circumstances beyond the characters’ control. Instead the story moves itself along, each scene building explicitly on the one before. The most telling instance revolves around Buddy’s temporary disappearance in the mall. A riskier script might have it happen for no reason at all, simply an accident that Blake the diminished guardian was powerless to prevent; instead, it’s used as a plot point to propel the script into its third act, getting Blake from point B to point C with as little chance as necessary.

Such lack of nerve applies to the characters, as well. Though a talented actress with a resume full of provocative (if not thought-provoking) films, Gyllenhaal barely manages to get her character raised above the level of plot device. Jean is practically a life-spirit trope as much as an actual personality, all smiles and alluring femininity, with compassion and sex appeal and a cute Southwest cottage full of comfy furniture. The screenplay has her explain her every thought in concise sentences, all of which serve only to clarify the drama unfolding. Farrell’s Sweet is also underwritten, like Jean more of a destination for Blake than a fellow person. Duval, who starred in the similar but far more assured Tender Mercies (written by the great Horton Foote), plays the same “Gus” character you’ve seen him do dozens of times already. His scenes are limited, and they’re fine, but nothing revelatory.

Cooper’s direction is methodical, workmanlike, proficient, with scenes constructed so as to serve the story no more or no less than they need. It’s painting by numbers, if not exactly artistry. Many scenes are saved by T-Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham’s dusty, winsome score, with the original songs both sounding fresh and defiantly part of the vanished authenticity that Blake doggedly, self-consciously represents. Like Bridges, the composers turn in Oscar-caliber work that was rewarded as such.

Through it all Bridges anchors the movie, and following Blake through the motions is entertaining for as much as the actor invests him with enough texture and nuance to carry the movie on his weathered back. To say the performance breaks new ground for the actor is to overstate the matter – a succinct appraisal might label Blake as “The Fisher Dude.” Nevertheless, there’s an old theory that being great at something means making it look easy, and there’s no denying Bridge’s ease at defining a character whose chief fault may lie in his refusal to ever work too hard. He’s the heart of a movie that’s far from crazy in taking chances.

- Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: Pride and Glory

Uneven family cop drama now available on DVD and Blu-Ray.

Not to get too theoretical, and not to oversimplify, but in most cases genre pieces qualify for their genre by exhibiting or implying a certain amount of elements that are recognized as elements, or “forms,” of the genre in question. Identifying these elements, sometimes called “tropes,” is for movie critics and fans often simply an act of intuition. There are also cases where a film carries so many tropes that they’re unmistakably part of their genre and nothing else. By extension, it’s possible to theorize that a film that carries more tropes than any other might be said to be the “most” of its genre.

On that basis, Pride and Glory ought to be recognized as the ultimate family-of-Irish-American-New York-cops-in-moral-quandary genre film. Except there’s a giant difference between “done” and “done well,” and the film manages to successfully pull off almost none of its elements, though pretty much each one evokes memories of better films where they were used with greater grace and less amateurish abandon. A loud, copying, and unconvincing movie with no real point except its own bombast, its combined effect isn’t just bad – it’s actually a discredit to the genre to which it aspires.

 Edward Norton plays Ray Tierney, a NYPD detective lying low in the Missing Persons division because of a sketchily drawn episode two years in his past (The audience is never told exactly what.) When four detectives in the department’s 31rst Precinct – captained by his brother Frances (Noah Emmerich)  – are killed in an arrest gone awry, Ray’s father (Jon Voight) demands Ray join the task force assigned to swiftly catch the drug dealer (Ramon Rodriguez) believed responsible. But the investigation, through a series of coincidences and scenes apparently intended to give the cast something to act about, quickly expands to include the family’s brother-in-law Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell) and his three squadmates.

What ensues is the kind of plot that’s not so much a story as an amalgamation of other stories blended together without regard for structure. There’s betrayal, and murder, and of course innocent people caught in the middle. But Gavin O’Connor’s (Miracle) direction puts one scene right after the other with little in the way of mounting suspense: one thing happens and then another and another. The plotline is straightforward, even if the tension is thin. And with a 125-minute run time, there’s a lot of scenes, many of which mostly contain people staring laser beams into one another or swearing as if vulgarity was getting outlawed the next morning. Ray and Jimmy’s final confrontation in a deserted Irish bar is laughably forced, as is Jimmy’s death at the hands of an angry mob minutes later.

One thin sliver of beauty arrives about halfway through, when Francis presents his dying wife with a Gaelic band promising “love eternal.” It’s a sweet scene, played expertly and without bathos by Emmerich and actress Jennifer Ehle, that detracts from the rote events happening elsewhere in the plot. In fact, coupled with a later scene of Francis defusing a hostage situation, you might wish the movie was about Francis and starred Emmerich’s perfectly-tuned performance, instead of Norton’s and Farrell’s faux macho histrionics. Emmerich (The Truman Show, Beautiful Girls) has made a career of playing non confrontational beta male types; his performance here is a revealing breath of fresh, unmannered air.

As for the stars, Norton’s performance is no more and no less than adequate to the task at hand. By this point in his career he’s forged a definite screen persona, made from equal parts of his turns in American History X and Fight Club, and now he’s beginning to stick by it. Farrell possibly took the part of Jimmy as an opportunity to play a bad guy; but why, then, is so much of his performance a weird, half-hearted Robert DeNiro impression? Farrell has also become the kind of movie star, it seems, that HAS to have a redemptive death, even when playing the heavy. It also doesn’t help that at least one scene seems shunted into the script by O’Connor and co-writer Joe Carnahan (Narc) in order to give Farrell more screen time. Voight, who should know something about difficult children himself, brings a definite weight to his scenes as the bewildered father, even if his dialogue is relegated to standard plot-facilitating exposition: “I want you on this task force!”; “He was always the thinker, always solving problems.”

I talked a lot at the start of this review about derivation and influence, and to close I’d like to recommend seven films whose influence on Pride And Glory was palpable and immediately obvious. Watching any of these – or watching them all – is certain to be a more rewarding use of time. They’re in no particular order, though I’ve listed three of Sidney Lumet’s films first, for obvious reasons: Serpico (1973); Night Falls On Manhattan (1997); Prince of the City (1981); Fort Apache: The Bronx (1981); Assault On Precinct 13 (1976); Force of Evil (1947); Monument Avenue (1998). I’m sure there’s more, but these came to mind first. And though it’s too contemporaneous to really act as an influence, the far superior We Own The Night, directed by James Gray (Little Odessa), used many of the same forms and the same influences to startling, virtuoso effect. Actually one of 2006′s best dramas, it’s worth looking at just for its own sake.

-Michael Kabel
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(Note: this review originally appeared for the film’s theatrical release.)

Review: Pride And Glory

Norton, Farrell in a clumsy genre exercise chock full o’ derivation.

Not to get too theoretical, and not to oversimplify, but in most cases genre pieces qualify for their genre by exhibiting or implying a certain amount of elements that are recognized as elements, or “forms,” of the genre in question. Identifying these elements, sometimes called “tropes,” is for movie critics and fans often simply an act of intuition. There are also cases where a film carries so many tropes that they’re unmistakably part of their genre and nothing else. By extension, it’s possible to theorize that a film that carries more tropes than any other might be said to be the “most” of its genre.

On that basis, Pride and Glory should qualify as the most Irish-American-New York-cops-in-moral-quandary movie ever. Except there’s a giant difference between “done” and “done well,” and the film manages to successfully pull off almost none of its elements, though pretty much each one evokes memories of better films where they were used with greater grace and less amateurish abandon. A loud, copying, and unconvincing movie with no real point except its own bombast, its combined effect isn’t just bad – it’s actually a discredit to the genre to which it aspires.

Edward Norton plays Ray Tierney, a NYPD detective lying low in the Missing Persons division because of a sketchily drawn episode two years in his past (The audience is never told exactly what.) When four detectives in the department’s 31rst Precinct – captained by his brother Frances (Noah Emmerich)  – are killed in an arrest gone awry, Ray’s father (Jon Voight) demands Ray join the task force assigned to swiftly catch the drug dealer (Ramon Rodriguez) believed responsible. But the investigation, through a series of coincidences and scenes apparently intended to give the cast something to act about, quickly expands to include the family’s brother-in-law Jimmy Egan (Colin Farrell) and his three squadmates.

What ensues is the kind of plot that’s not so much a story as an amalgamation of other stories blended together without regard for structure. There’s betrayal, and murder, and of course innocent people caught in the middle. But Gavin O’Connor’s (Miracle) direction puts one scene right after the other with little in the way of mounting suspense: one thing happens and then another and another. The plotline is straightforward, even if the tension is thin. And with a 125-minute run time, there’s a lot of scenes, many of which mostly contain people staring laser beams into one another or swearing as if vulgarity was getting outlawed the next morning. Ray and Jimmy’s final confrontation in a deserted Irish bar is laughably forced, as is Jimmy’s death at the hands of an angry mob minutes later.

Grand theft movie: Emmerich

One thin sliver of beauty arrives about halfway through, when Francis presents his dying wife with a Gaelic band promising “love eternal.” It’s a sweet scene, played expertly and without bathos by Emmerich and actress Jennifer Ehle, that detracts from the rote events happening elsewhere in the plot. In fact, coupled with a later scene of Francis defusing a hostage situation, you might wish the movie was about Francis and starred Emmerich’s perfectly-tuned performance, instead of Norton’s and Farrell’s faux macho histrionics. Emmerich (The Truman Show, Beautiful Girls) has made a career of playing non confrontational beta male types; his performance here is a revealing breath of fresh, unmannered air.

Nothing on TV: Voight, Farrell

As for the stars, Norton’s performance is no more and no less than adequate to the task at hand. By this point in his career he’s forged a definite screen persona, made from equal parts of his turns in American History X and Fight Club, and now he’s beginning to stick by it. Farrell possibly took the part of Jimmy as an opportunity to play a bad guy; but why, then, is so much of his performance a weird, half-hearted Robert DeNiro impression? Farrell has also become the kind of movie star, it seems, that HAS to have a redemptive death, even when playing the heavy. It also doesn’t help that at least one scene seems shunted into the script by O’Connor and co-writer Joe Carnahan (Narc) in order to give Farrell more screen time. Voight, who should know something about difficult children himself, brings a definite weight to his scenes as the bewildered father, even if his dialogue is relegated to standard plot-facilitating exposition: “I want you on this task force!”; “He was always the thinker, always solving problems.”

Serpico-esque: Norton

I talked a lot at the start of this review about derivation and influence, and to close I’d like to recommend seven films whose influence on Pride And Glory was palpable and immediately obvious. Watching any of these – or watching them all – is certain to be a more rewarding use of time. They’re in no particular order, though I’ve listed three of Sidney Lumet’s films first, for obvious reasons: Serpico (1973); Night Falls On Manhattan (1997); Prince of the City (1981); Fort Apache: The Bronx (1981); Assault On Precinct 13 (1976); Force of Evil (1947); Monument Avenue (1998). I’m sure there’s more, but these came to mind first. And though it’s too contemporaneous to really act as an influence, last year’s far superior We Own The Night, directed by James Gray (Little Odessa), used many of the same forms and the same influences to startling, virtuoso effect. Actually one of last year’s best dramas, it’s worth looking at just for its own sake.

-Michael Kabel
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Four films at the movies this weekend (besides HSM 3)

So if you’re older than fouteen consider seeing these new releases.

But did they learn anything?

High School Musical 3 opens this weekend, so as you read this the cineplexes are likely jammed with teens and tweeners all agiggle about the latest installment of the franchise based on a Disney Channel telefilm about singing and dancing. You know, ten years from now the HSM saga is going to be a cultural punchline, like the Frankie & Annette films of the 60s or Vanilla Ice from the early 90s. And because we couldn’t care less about such hokum, the following four films offer something for those of us past puberty who enjoy going to the movies.

 

Synecdoche, New York: Mad screenwriting genius Charlie Kaufman’s latest indie whirl-a-gig involves a regional theatre director (born again good actor Philip Seymour Hoffman) staging a play about “everything” inside a giant New York City warehouse. He builds a massive replica of the city, and in time becomes drawn into the play’s events. Early reviews claim the film is Kaufman at his most… Kaufman, really, and even he describes it as “creepy.” Hope Davis, Tom Noonan, Catherine Keener, and Jennifer Jason Leigh also star. Limited release.

Passengers: A grief counselor (Anne Hathaway) working with survivors of a plane crash finds her patients beginning to disappear under mysterious circumstances, while the best looking one (Patrick Wilson) has apparently developed supernatural powers. Director Rodrigo Garcia knows his way around intelligent but creepy stories after helming episodes of both Six Feet Under and Carnivale. The ensemble supporting cast is as good as they come: David Morse, Andre Braugher, Clea DuVall, and Dianne Wiest. Limited release.

Pride and Glory: NYPD cop Ray Tierney (Edward Norton, wearing the goatee he sports whenever the audience needs to see he’s “hard”) investigates the murders of four fellow officers – an investigation that may implicate his fellow policeman brother-in-law (Colin Farrell). Jon Voight plays the dad and Noah Emmerich (Beautiful Girls), the go-to guy for sidekick performances, plays Norton’s brother. Joe Carnahan (Narc) co-wrote the screenplay. Wide release.

Changeling: Based on a true story, in 1928 a Los Angeles phone operator (Angelina Jolie) loses her son to kidnappers. Months later, she’s told the child has surfaced but discovers the boy isn’t her own. Yet none of the male authorities involved in the case believes her. Director Clint Eastwood’s films are never accused of being too subtle, so Jolie’s acting-to-the-rafters style may settle in nicely alongside fellow Actor(!) John Malkovich. On the plus side, we’ll watch Amy Ryan (The Wire, Gone Baby Gone) in just about anything. Comics and Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski wrote the script. Limited release; opens nationwide October 31.

Monday we’ll publish our 100th post! Come back and see what we’ve learned since we reached our 50th post. (Hint: be nice to Skeet Ulrich.) Have a good weekend.

- Michael Kabel

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