ST. VINCENT

Reviewed By Patrick Gibbs



GRADE:  B+
Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, Naomi Watts, Jaden Leiberher, Chris O'Dowd, Terrence Howard, Scott Adsit, Dario Barasso
Written and directed by Theodore Melfi
Rated PG-13 (for mature thematic material including sexual content, alcohol and tobacco use, and profanity)

If there is one person in Hollywood who wants an Oscar even more desperately than Leo DiCaprio, it's Bill Murray. He's been fishing for one since The Razor's Edge back in 1984, and he finally came somewhat within reach with his nomination for Lost In Translation (although everyone knew that he would never beat Sean Penn, with the exception of Murray himself, who was caught looking less than gracious in defeat on camera.). While I delight in every performance he gives in a Wes Anderson film, and still think he deserved a nomination for Groundhog Day, I confess that I find the Oscar grubbing tedious, and I have a lot of trouble getting up enthusiasm for his yearly bid (having missed the press screening, I still have not worked up enough interest to see Hyde Park On Hudson, even though FDR is one of my personal heroes.). That being said, he does indeed deserve a recognition for his multi-layered and beautifully nuanced performance in St. Vincent, and it's very easy to get behind him on this one because the movie is more than just a showcase for Murray the serious actor. While he is the lead, he shares the spotlight with young newcomer Jaiden Leiberher, and the film is a strong ensemble piece.

Vincent (Murray) is a drunken, gambling, misanthropic war veteran who lives alone in his house, with his only company being the occasional paid visit from Daka (Naomi Watts), a Holllywood Russian prostitute and stripper who's career is in a bit of slump thanks to an increasingly noticeable baby bump.  But Vincent's life of intentional isolation is interrupted when new neighbors move in next door.  Maggie (Melissa McCarthy), a very recently divorced single mother, and her pre-teen son Oliver (Leiberher.).

They get off on the wrong foot when the moving van damages Vincent's fence and tree, but when Oliver is bullied at the Catholic school he attends and his wallet and keys are stolen, he has no choice but to ask the neighbor if he can use his phone to call his mother. Oliver ends up staying with Vincent until Maggie's shift at the hospital ends, and when she arrives to pick her son up, she is met with a surprising proposition: Vincent will look after the boy every day after school, for $12 an hour. Having nowhere else to turn for babysitting, and talked into it by Oliver himself, who is badly in need of a friend and finds Vincent strangely interesting, she accepts.

Oliver and Vincent become an unlikely dynamic duo, as Vincent takes the kid along with him to the race track, to bars, and to a nursing home where he regularly visits one of the patients. He even coaches the boy in self defense. Maggie is so overwhelmed at work that she doesn't pry into their activities. Meanwhile, at school, Oliver is learning about the saints, and is given the assignment to observe someone in real life and determine if they possess the qualities for sainthood.

Nothing about the premise here is exactly cutting edge, and elements of it feel a litle bit forced, but the sincerity of the performances and the witty, understated screenplay make it thoroughly enjoyable. The chemistry between Murray and Lieberher is nothing short of perfection, and every time they are on screen together the movie soars, even in the simplest of moments. 

If there is one thing that generally gets me even less than excited than a Murray Oscar bait flick, it's a Melissa McCarthy comedy. It's not that I don't recognize her talent, but I don't find the crass slob character doing all of the fat jokes and the bathroom humor funny when it's a man, so the hilarious twist of making a woman be the boisterous fool is lost on me. That being said, McCarthy really shines as Maggie, breaking away from typecasting a bit to play a complex character that is equal parts loving, devoted mother and self pitying, angry divorcee (she does get to cut loose in one particularly hilarious scene, but it's still very low key compared to what we've come to expect.) You genuinely grow to to love this trio as if they are real people, because they feel so real. By far the most outlandish abd silly character is Daka, and the only reason she manages to work is because Naomi Watts is such an outstanding actress that she managed to bring some level of truth to performance in Movie 43.  Still, the character is intrusive and a bit out of step, and one can't help but wonder if writer-director Theodore Melfi had a chance to work with Watts and grafted her into the script at the last minute.

St. Vincent is a feel good movie that is just dark enough to appease the more jaded moviegoer, and touching enough to win over those who find Murray's hedonistic antics initially off-putting. It may not be a gut buster, but its genuine laugh out loud moments are duly earned. This is definitely not a family movie, per se, but if you are an adult looking to for a movie to take your mother to see, you'll  likely both leave happy that you chose St. Vincent, which truly does posses all the qualities needed for a solid and moving piece of entertainment. 

The only level on which the film completely fails is as a showcase for the increasingly declining Terrence Howard, who is wasted in a small and thankless role (and Marvel geek in me couldn't help but find it amusing that the film was executive produced by his Iron Man replacement, Don Cheadle, which is almost certainly as irrelevant as the fact that Moon was directed by David Bowie's son and produced by Sting's wife, but I notice these things.).

FURY

Reviewed by Patrick Gibbs



GRADE:  A-

Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Pena, Jon Bertnthal, Jason Isaacs, Scott Eastwood 

Written and directed by David Ayer
Rated R (Violence, gore, profanity, sexuality, vulgarity, smoking, and Shia LeBeof with a mustache)

In the 1998 comedy Small Soldiers, Phil Hartman is watching an old war movie on TV and wistfully remarks "I think World war II was my favorite war." 

This has long been true of Hollywood and the average moviegoer/history buff. One of the reasons for this may be that it was the last major American war with a clear objective that we can all (at least to some extent) understand, and it easily has the best villain. Even those of us who are anti-war and anti-military can appreciate the need to stop Hitler from conquering the world. But there is still too much romanticism and hero worship attached to the war for my comfort. I'm not saying that that the soldiers who fought in Europe weren't heroes on a very real level: their sacrifice is immeasurable and they may very well have saved the world. But how do you fight a war without destroying yourself? How do you get right in the the thick of the most insane and appalling of enterprises, blowing people up left and right, and manage to stay alive inside, even if you manage to stay so on the outside? David Ayer's new film argues that maybe you don't. Maybe you can't. You have to kill yourself before you can kill others.

Fury is set during the last few months of the European Theater of War in April, 1945. As the allies make their final push into Nazi Germany, a battle hardened U.S. Army Sergeant named Collier (Brad Pitt) in the 2nd Armored Division commands an M4A3E8 Sherman Tank nicknamed "Fury," and the five men who serve aboard it. One of these men has just been killed, and a last minute replacement gunner is needed. Enter Norman (Logan Lerman), a clerk typist who hasn't seen any action, who somehow gets assigned to this post. Norman is a scared, mild mannered and very moral young man who could not possibly fit in less with his comrades, who are all seasoned killers, and not the most pleasant of people. In fact, at times they seem downright evil, and Norman just might be more terrified of them than he is of the Nazis.

The two obvious and inescapable comparisons here are Saving Private Ryan, in particular the character of Corporal Upham (portrayed by Jeremy Davies), and Training Day, the police drama that won Denzel Washington an Oscar and brought writer David Ayer to prominence in the first place. In many ways,  this is Training Day goes to war, as we follow the baptism by fire of a naive young man who is being trained by the toughest of the tough and having his squeamishness and ideas about morality beaten out of him in the process. The arrogant machismo practically drips off of these guys, and ostensibly, they are trying to "make a man out of Norman," but in reality they are taking that away from him. They make him clean the gruesome remains of the man he is replacing out of he tank; they force him to kill, and even talk him into taking a young German girl to bed during a brief moment of R&R. This interlude is extremely uncomfortable but riveting, as we try to figure out if this is a shared moment of happiness between two strangers or a peer pressure rape.

What makes the movie work is the realization that we do indeed see moments of humanity in all of these guys. In one of the film's most memorable dialogue scenes, Jon Bernthal, as the toughest member of the group, apologizes to Norman for the way he's treated him "You're a good man, Norman," he says. "I think maybe we're not, but you are."

No one one in this film is black and white good or bad. They are so far removed from the people that they used to be, in a place where doing the right thing is so contrary to their mission that they are really all just becoming machines. We see a lot of atrocities committed: imagine if the "Look: I washed for supper!" guys in Saving Private Ryan were the main characters. This may be the least flattering portrayal of American soldiers in Hollywood since Casualties of War, but it stops short of completely judging them. The war itself is the monster.

The tank battle scenes are pulse pounding, and the level of violence and destruction is truly grotesque, at Saving Private Ryan or Black Hawk Down levels but treated more casually. Especially in its final section, Fury almost falls into the horror genre, which is a surprisingly effective choice.

It's very hard to make a war movie, especially a WWII movie, that doesn't recycle cliches and formulas (even Private Ryan abounded in them), and there is definitely a strong "I've seen this before element" to the film. But as both writer and extremely skilled director, Ayer tries hard to balance that with just enough "I've never seen that before" to keep you feeling both satisfied and completely assaulted at the same time.

The acting is strong all around, with Lerman as the clear standout, but Bernthal is an incredibly strong presence, and we are reminded that all of the hype, backlash and self destruction put aside, LeBeouf really can act. Of course the movie is selling itself on the strength of Brad Pitt, who delivers an enigmatic but engaging performance, and of course gets the requisite scene where he takes his shirt off to show us a physique that makes you wonder how he manages to fit all of the Nautilus equipment inside a Sherman, and also show the obligatory scars burns all over his back that make us realize that this man has been through hell and back, and we can't judge him until we've walked a mile in his combat boots and that we should never judge a book by its haircut. What makes this over the top and cliched character work is the choice not to play it as a scenery chewing role but with a detached sense of melancholy.

Fury is a  little bit longer than it really needs to be, and it is definitely not for all tastes, and especially not for those easily bothered by blood and gore. It has its moments of over the top, "damn the torpedoes" heroics, but there is a feeling of misguided futility to it all.  I'm not against supporting the troops by any means, but after more than a decade of unquestioned flag waving and country music propaganda songs, I really liked seeing a film that does for the American G.I. what Unforgiven did for the wild west gunfighter, and dares to say that if war is hell, at some point you're going to find yourself embracing the devil.

THE 10 MOST INTRUSIVE SUBPLOTS IN MOVIES THAT AREN'T "THE JUDGE"

by Patrick Gibbs

The 1933 classic Duck Soup is one of the Marx Brothers most beloved films, and easily my personal favorite. Part of this is attributable to the sly political satire,  part of it iconic bits such as the sequence where Harpo, disguised as Groucho, matches the other's every movement in perfect synchronization in order to pass himself off as a mirror. But truth be told, perhaps the biggest reason I have revisited this movie more times than any other of the brothers comedies is the total absence of an intrusive and syrupy romantic subplot.  These studio imposed staples of most of the comedy team's films were the reason Zeppo left the act, as he was tired of being stuck in them while the others got to go for the laughs, and they became even more painful to sit through once Zeppo was gone and the labored interludes were passed on to B grade "up and coming" players that Paramount Pictures were trying (and perpetually failing) to groom for stardom.

Sub plots can be a an effective tool when used properly; they can ad levity to an intensely serious film (the romance between Jeffrey Hunter and Vera Miles in The Searchers),  unexpected dramatic depth to a comedy (Charles Durning, as Jessica Lange's good hearted, widowed father, becoming an unplanned victim of Dustin Hoffman's schemes in Tootsie) and an extra level of heart to family film (the friendship between Kris Kringle and Alfred the janitor in Miracle On 34th Street.). But when they are ill conceived or poorly executed, they can be the bane of an otherwise good film, or standout as the most wretched part of a bad one. This weekend, The Judge, starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Robert Duvall, has set to set the al time world record for the number of intrusive subplots that can be included in one film, and I'm pretty sure it succeeded at that (which is literally the only level on which it succeeded.).

Following are my choices for the 12 Worst subplots in the past 25 years of Hollywood movie making, not including The Judge. It's important to note that this not merely a list of bad films. What makes some of these subplots so egregious is that they mar otherwise solid movies.
                                                                   
                                                                     
1. BRAVEHEART (1995)

I seduce this Princess in the name of my wife.

William Wallace goes from farmer to warrior in this beloved 1995 Best Picture Winner. Braveheart is a rousing and entertaining action/melodrama/sadistic bloodbath that remains a favorite of many (I personally saw it 10 times in theaters), though its place of esteem in the Hollywood pantheon has certainly gone down a bit since its director/star, Mel Gibson, fell so far from grace after a number of controversies, most notably his ant-semitic remarks when he was arrested on a DUI charge, and his infamous recorded drunken phone call to his ex-girlfriend. But the movie built far too loyal a fan base to be completely erased by that, and Gibson's talent and artistry are absolutely still worth appreciating nearly 20 years later, regardless of his off screen behavior. But elements of the film really need to be called out.

Historically speaking, the movie bares almost resemblance to the truth:  the real Wallace was born to aristocracy and was most likely already a Knight by the the time the battle of Stirling took place; the wearing of kilts did not start until about 400 years after the movie takes place; not only is it a falsehood that Edward I instituted the practice of Primae Noctis (allowing English Lords and other nobles to demand sexual intercourse with any bride of common birth on the night of the wedding), but historians agree that the practice itself is almost certainly an urban legend or myth, as no historical evidence exists of it ever being practiced in real life; Wallace was never betrayed by Robert The Bruce; the battle of Bannockburn was not a spontaneous, unexpected charge (The Bruce had in fact been leading armies in battle for 8 years prior). But the fact is, at least on some level all of these elements play well in the movie. But the affair between Wallace and Isabella of France (Sophie Marceau) is not only ridiculous on a historical level, it's detrimental to the film.

In the film, Isabella is a young bride married to Prince Edward II as a power play by his royal father to seize control of France. She is dismally unhappy in the marriage, and her husband is portrayed as a pasty, prancing openly gay man who parades around the palace with a boyfriend who bares an astonishing resemblance to Donny Osmond. When she is sent as an envoy to meet with Wallace, she is instantly enamored by this smoldering volcano of virile manhood, and assists him until the two finally meet up for a night of passion, at which point she becomes pregnant with Wallace's child. Now, in reality, Isabella was 3 years old and living in France at the time of the battle of Falkirk, did not marry Edward II until he was already king, and Edward III was not born until 7 years after Wallace died. But lets put all that aside for a moment: even if you can forgive the "dramatic license" taken, the fact is, this subplot does nothing at all for the film Whenever we cut away to Isabella the film degenerates into a cheap Harlequin romance. Wallace, whom the film portrays as an "Uncompromising man" (another way of saying larger than life superhero not subject o any of the flaws of mere mortals) is motivated entirely by his undying love for his murdered wife, Murron, and believes that she looks down on him from heaven. And yet we are supposed to admire him just as much after he takes time out to get jiggy with the hot young Queen (hoping that Murron's view of him from heaven is obscured by cloud cover that night.). Everything we know about the character makes this affair an act of infidelity, and the justification that it was all part of a master plan to get his progeny on the throne hardly makes any sense nor does it make his actions sympathetic. Wallace tells Isabella that he "sees his wife's strength in her," yet there is nothing strong about her. She's a spoiled brat who's seen too many Disney movies and seems far more motivated by disappointment over the fact that her Prince Charming is a "weakling" than the fact that her new country is an evil empire, and her efforts to undermine this totalitarian regime seem to be motivated entirely by her need to get laid by a real manly man. There is no love or believable romance between the two, and on top of Isabella being an incredibly sexist characterization, her husband's homosexuality is at best treated as an illness that makes him unfit to rule and incapable of understanding love, and at worst, a qualifier that makes a violent murder a moment of comic relief.

Braveheart would lose nothing without this intrusive story, apart from about 25 minutes of its epic runtime.


2.  SPIDER-MAN 3     

Peter Parker parts his hair on the evil side.

Peter Parker gets covered by space tar, which causes him to rebel against his "nice guy" persona, and give in to his inner bastard, The usually capable Tobey Maguire is laughable in the "bad boy" scenes, and when he starts strutting down the street as if he can hear his own theme music, audiences everywhere groaned. The least of the problems with this whole interlude is that it's really just a lame rehash of the "red Krytonite" Superman in Superman III, which is hardly the comic book based film you want to be emulating in the first place. All of this is a set up to introduce Venom, the dark Spider-Man, into a movie that is already overcrowded with too many characters, but as much as I would love to blame this one all on the studio (as would director Sam Raimi), the execution is even worse than the idea, and more than any other factor this excruciatingly bad subplot managed to kill one of  the most financially successful franchises of the past decade.


3. HEAVEN IS FOR REAL (2014)

 One picture is worth a thousand lies.     

Writer turned director Randall Wallace  tells the supposedly true story of Colton Burpo, the four-year old son of Nebraska Pastor Todd Burpo (Greg Kinnear.). Colton claims to have visited heaven while in the hospital for emergency surgery. He talks about lookng down and seeing his father in the hospital chapel, yelling at God while his mother sat in the waiting room calling everyone in town asking them to pray. He describes meeting Jesus, a blue eyed, light brown haired American riding a white horse, alongside a faithful Indian companion wearing white grease paint ant a dead bird on his head (I may have embellished part of that just a little.). Meanwhile, the movie is framed around a young girl painting a picture of the great white King of the Jews, who ares an astonishing resemblance to '80's rock star Kenny Loggins. At the end of the film, the girl, Akiane Kramarik, who lives is Lithuiana with her parents, is featured on television. She claims to have seen Jesus is visions and been devinely inspired to paint him. Colton, seeing only part of the story, points to the painting and says "That's him."  Insert Twilight Zone theme here. She lives on the other side of the world, but she painted the very same Jesus that Colton saw, down to the last Anglo-Saxon detail (stop me if I'm beating that point into the ground.).

This is all fine and dandy, but the real life Kramarik was born to Lithuanian parents in Mt. Morris, Illinois, and while she does indeed say that she has received visions, the fact is that her Jesus painting used a local carpenter as a model.  She saw the man ad, like Max Bialistock is The Prodcuers, declared "That's our Hitler!"  and talked him into modeling for the painting. And while Colton Burpo and Akiane Kramarik have appeared together on TV as children who claim to had brushes with the divine, at no point did Colton identify the man in the painting as the Jesus he saw.

Now, this is a movie. I get that. And even "true stories" are always dramatized. But as a person of faith myself, I believe that if you are going to tell a "true" story that testifies that God lives and loves us all, you can't make stuff up. Ever.

4. FREQUENCY (2000)

The serial killer.

Just because Field of Dreams and The Silence Of The Lambs were both hit movies does not mean they should be combined into one.

In New York City during October 1999, John Sullivan (Jim Caviezal), a 36-year-old homicide detective, is still haunted  by the death of his fireman father Frank (Dennis Quaid). Still living in the same house where he grew up, he discovers his father's  ham radio and begins transmitting.. Because of highly localized electro-temporal spatial effects caused by unusual aurora borealis activity, John somehow makes contact with his father exactly 30 years in the past on the day before his death in a warehouse fire. Despite being the silliest scientific explanation this side of Mel Gibson developing the ability to hear women's thoughts after he drops a hair dryer in the bathtub in What Women Want, this plot actually plays quite well, in no small part due to the likable performances of the leads.

But the movies veers off course soon after John's words manage to save his father from dying in the fire.  Frank's survival creates a new timeline where John is the only one with two sets of memories, one of the new and one of the original timeline. At midnight, he tries calling his mother. To his surprise, a deli answers instead. Apparently, in the new timeline Frank had died of lung cancer, and John's mother, Julia Sullivan, had been murdered by a serial killer later in 1969. His mother's killer, called the "Nightingale Killer," had originally murdered three nurses before he vanished. Some event in the new timeline made it so his victims now numbered 10, with Julia as the sixth. Using information from 1999 police files on the impending seven killings, John and Frank work together across the gap of time to stop the murderer in 1969 in order to save Julia and the remaining six nurses.

The movie veers wildly from heartwarming family drama  to grisly murder mystery, and in the end it seems as if writer Toby Emmerich had ideas for two separate movies and decide that he could smoothly combine them into one. After our heroes foil the vicious killer and John's parents are both back from the dead, we cut straight from the scene of near multiple murders to a schmaltzy, slow motion baseball montage in a park, and soon after top psychiatrists diagnosed the movie with a severe case of schizophrenia.



5. THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004)

Who let the wolves out?

Roland Emmerich's global warming on fast forward epic is an incredibly silly guilty pleasure. It is by no means a good film, but it is a pretty fun one, featuring likable lead perfromances by Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaall, and top notch visual effects. It's certainly a big step up from the dreadful Godzilla, and it's more in step with Emmerich's sensibilities than the widely uneven The Patriot.

But the director's apparent obsession with the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, showcased in the aforementioned films by the baby Godzillas and Jason Isaacs, reaches its silliest level yet when Gyllenhaal and his friends try to find Penicillin on board a Russian cargo ship that drifted inland (into New York City), and run into a pack of arctic wolves that escaped from the Central Park Zoo.  Really? As if the world freezing over and cataclysmic destruction weren't peril enough? Wolves? On a Russian cargo ship? In NEW YORK???

Audiences laughed out loud at the stupidity of this tacked on sequence that was virtually howling to be left on the cutting room floor.


6. ANONYMOUS     (2012)      
                                      

I have had enough of this motherf**king Earl and his motherf**king plays. 

Speaking of Roland Emmerich . . .

What if Shakespeare didn't write his own plays? What if they were written by Edward De Vere, the Earl of Oxford? What if he wrote Henry V and Richard the III as part of an elaborate plan to incite revolution? What if he'd written a A Midsummer Night's Dream at the age of nine (despite the fact that one of the major arguments that the movie uses to support their conclusion that Shakespeare couldn't have written the plays is his lack of secondary education)?

I'm not buying any of this, Anonymous but I'm trying to go with you so far, purely as an entertaining "what if?" story. But the point where you completely lose me is where the teen Earl's seemingly irrelevant affair with Queen Elizabeth (who is portrayed as the most sexually active virgin this side of Wasilla, Alaska) turns out to be the inspiration for Hamlet's supposed oedipal complex, despite the fact that he does not learn that the Queen that he slept with was actually his mother until many years after writing Hamlet.

Literally the only interesting part of this who muddled subplot was the duel casting of Vanessa Redgrave and Joely Richardson, mother and daughter in real life, as the Queen, at different points in time.  For someone who specializes in destroying the world in such films Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012, it still took trying to pass this drivel off as an intelligent, thoughtful drama for director Roland Emmerich to create his grandest on screen disaster.



7. LIFE AS A HOUSE (2001)
Mom takes daughter's boyfriend for a test drive.

George Monroe (Kevin Kline), a fabricator of architectural models, is fired from the job he has held for 20 years when he refuses to fall in step and use computer technology. As he exists the building, he collapses in on the pavement and is rushed to the hospital, where it is revealed that the reason for his dramatic weight loss is that he wants an Oscar. Also he has cancer, which is so far advanced that his doctors believe that any treatment would be futile.

Liberated from a job he hated and funded by his severance package, George decides the time has come to demolish the ramshackle home left to him by his father and replace it with a bigger, better, stronger, more metaphorically significant house..  He decides to enlist the aid of his son, angst-ridden and self-loathing Sam (Hayden Christensen), a rebellious, suicidal, pill-popping, glue-sniffing teenager with blue hair, makeup, and a number of piercings. As time passes, George slowly reconnects with Sam, who's bad attitude and tendency to wallow in depressed self pity start to subside. This might be due to to reconnecting with his father, or it might just possibly have something to do with the fact the next door neighbor, Coleen (Mary Steenburgen) allows Sam to use her shower  instead of the makeshift one George has built outside, and every day when he takes her up this offer, Coleen's hot teenage daughter Alyssa (Jena Malone) gets in the shower with him . . . nah. It's all about his Dad. 

As Alyssa and Sam start to spend more time together, Alyssa's boyfriend starts to feel a strain on their relationship (you can't please some people) and Coleen, ever the hospitable hostess, starts sleeping with him, which is completely relevant to the story of a man dying of cancer and reconnecting with his family and not the least bit forced and lurid. As the affair escalates, Coleen gets impatient one day when her new boy toy is late due to trying to avoid being seen by Alyssa, George calls the house looking for Sam. Naturally. just as anyone would in real life, Coleen answers the phone "What are you doing? You are driving me crazy making me wait like this, I want you in my bed right now!" only to discover she is talking to the wrong person. Again, all of this absolutely essential to the story and we could not possibly appreciate the contrast between George's rapid physical deterioration and his spiritual rebirth without it, Kline and Christensen's genuinely terrific performances and touching emotional connection were simply not enough.

Life As A House could not be more heavy handed, contrived and obvious in is metaphors, but when it works, it does so quite well in spite of itself, simply because we genuinely care about George and Sam. It's either one of the worst good movies I've ever seen or one of the least successful attempts ever to make a worthless exploitation movie.

8. THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK   (1998)

When you want something, take it.

I don't mean to pick on Randall Wallace, but he is kind of the master of the bungled and superfluous subplot. In his directorial debut, he puts the "Dumb Ass" in "Dumas" with a love triangle King Louis XIV (Leonardo DiCaprio in the most awkward performance of his career) that seem to be perfectly timed  to come along and bring the movie to a grinding halt every time it seems to be on the verge of actually working.      

Just before the young soldier Raoul can propose, the king's eyes fall on Christine. He arranges for Raoul to be returned to combat, where he is killed by the Dutch cannons while leading ground troops in an attack en-masse.

In the wake of Raoul's death, Louis invites Christine to the palace where she sleeps with him, grateful for the medical assistance his doctors have given to her mother and sister (you gotta do what you gotta do when you fall into the insurance gap.).

King Louis's dastardly plans just keep going, although he never does learn the secret of "man's red fire." Christine receives a letter from Raoul, predicting his death and saying that he forgives her for becoming the king's mistress. Whilst in bed with Louis, Christine admits that she still loves Raoul and that she is not in love with him. Enraged, Louis forsakes Christine. She eventually commits suicide when she realizes what that she has been a pawn and betrayed her husband to be, and the audiences breathes a sigh of relief that this part of the story is finally over and we can get back to the mediocre swordplay.          



9. THE PRESTIGE (2006)

Send in the clones.

Every successful filmmaker has their moments when they stumble or even fall: Spielberg had 1941. Scorsese had New York, New York.. Shyamalan had The Village. And Lady In The Water. And The Happening. And The Last Airbender. And After Earth.  And Christopher Nolan had The Prestige.

Magician Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) is sentenced to death for the murder of rival Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) by drowning him in a water tank during Angier's performance. Both began their careers as shills for "Milton the Magician." But when Angier's wife Julia drowns in a tank during a water escape performance, Angier blames Borden, who cannot recall if he tied her with an experimental knot. The two go on to lead separate careers. Borden becomes "The Professor" and Angier becomes "The Great Danton."  The majority of he movie is dedicated to these two petty, arrogant men trying to be as barastardacious as possible to each other, unless there is no such word:
Angier sabotages Borden's bullet catch, costing Borden two fingers. Borden then ruins Angier's bird cage act, maiming an audience member and damaging Angier's reputation.

The movie suddenly gets really interesting when Borden unveils a new trick, "The Transported Man. " Angier an encrypted diary which supposedly contains the secret to Borden's trick. Angier and Cutter kidnap Fallon to force Borden to give the key to the cypher. Upon learning that the key word is "Tesla", Angier pursues Nola Tesla (David Bowie) to Colorado Springs, and begs him to make him a copy of the "teleportation machine" he believes Borden used, which is, of course, the Tesla coil.

At the end of the film we learn that Borden is actually identitical twins, but Angier explains used the Tesla Coil (a miniature version of which can be found under the hood of your car) to create a clone of himself each time he did the trick, while the original (or the next clone after that) dropped into a tank of water and drowned.

This insipid mixture of science and science fiction clashes wildly with the rest of the film and takes away from the rather interesting twist with Borden and his brother, and is one magic trick too many, ruining the entire show. Thankfully, Nolan followed this colossal misfire with The Dark Knight, Inception and The Dark Knight Rises, and can be forgiven one big bump in the road.

10. DIE HARD 2      (1990)                                                  
A first class coincidence.

In the 1988 action classic Die Hard, John and Holly McLane (Bruce Willis and Bonnie Bedelia) took an unconventional approach to couples therapy by reigniting the spark in the marriage by strapping C4 and a computer monitor to an office chair an tossing it down an elevator shaft, and tenderly holding hands again for the first time as a bruised, wounded and bleeding John saved Holly from being pulled out a window to her death by a German terrorist, all on Christmas Eve. To top all of this off, Holly is captured on video punching out tv reporter Dick Thornberg (William Atherton), who's relentless desire to get a scoop almost lead to her demise.

In 1990's Die Hard 2, we are asked to buy A LOT of coincidences.  It's Christmas Eve again, and John and Holly find themselves caught in the middle of a terrorist situation, this time with John waiting for Holly at Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., only to have her plane delayed when a group of mercenaries hijack the airport. This is the ultimate "should not have worked" sequel, as a huge part of the appeal of the first film (which changed the action genre forever) was putting ordinary people into an extraordinary situation. Putting them into a rehash of the same situation a year later is beyond prespostrous, but despite the ridiculous premise and some painfully bad dialogue, Die Hard 2 was a huge success, not only at the box office, but with critics (no less a scribe than Gene Siskel placed it higher than Dances With Wolves on his Top Ten List for 1990), due primarily director Renny Harlin's considerable skill with suspense and spectacular action, which had more than one major critic comparing the movie favorably to Raiders Of The Lost Ark (perhaps never before had a movie ridden so far based on being so much more entertaining than it had any legitimate right to be.). But of all of the coincidences we are asked to swallow, placing Holly and Thornberg together on the same plane, across from each other, is the one that doesn't even come close to working. There is no need for the Thornberg character to be in this movie at all, and he is recuded to a sniveling sitcom character. But even worse is the interplay between Holly and the old lady in the seat next to her, who (get ready to laugh) keeps a taser gun in her purse and (giggle) says words like "Bastard" and "Asshole" (Ha! get it? It's funny because she's an old lady!). Whenever the movie moves away from John's exploits on the ground fighting the bad guys and concentrates on Holly's hijack hjinks thousands of feet above, the movie, like Holly's plane, is very close to crashing and burning.

THE JUDGE

Reviewed by Patrick Gibbs

GRADE: C
Robert Downey, Jr., Robert Duvall, Billy Bob Thornton, Vera Varmiga, Vincent D'Onofrio, Dax Shepard, Jeremy Strong
Screenplay by Nick Schenck and Bill Dubuque 
Directed by David Dobkin
Rated R (profanity, violence, vulgarity and sexuality)

Henry "Hank" Palmer (Downey) is a successful lawyer not burdened with an overabundance of conscience ("I don't mind guilty people." he says. "Innocent people can't afford me."). One day, while in court, Hank gets a phone call that his mother has passed away. So he returns to his hometown of Carlinville, Indiana, for the funeral, seeing his estranged family again for the first time in 10 years. Hank and his father, Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall), a prominent Carlinville Judge, had a falling out a long time ago and can't seem to stand each other. After the funeral, Hank is anxious to get away as quickly as possible, but a problem arises: his father is accused to of killing a man in a hit and run. When a very clear motive is quickly established for Judge Palmer to have murdered the victim, Hank has no choice but to defend the father he can't even talk to on a charge of first degree murder. 

If you are thinking that this is an intriguing premise that provides more than enough melodrama for one movie, you would be correct. But sadly, screenwriters Nick Schenck and Bill Dubuque and director David Dobkin seem to disagree, and as such they went to the local library and check out a copy of The Big Book Of Hollywood Oscar Bait Sub Plots, and went through it methodically and incorporated as many as possible. Lead character on the brink of divorce? Check. Precocious but neglected daughter whom he realizes he can't live without? Check. Mentally challenged brother? Check. Reunion with old girfriend our antagonist should have married? check. Amnesia? Check. A history of substance abuse? Check. Someone dying on cancer? Big check. Prosecutor with an unconvincing ax to grind? Check. Family fight in the middle of a tornado (seriously)? Check. Vincent D'Onofrio? Check. And the list goes on and on and on like a Journey song  that you just can't believe. and just barely stops short of including cross dressing, elf on dwarf romance, and a hit man/mobster who wants out but they pull him back in. 

At this point, I feel the need to be clear that this isn't some cynical critic who can't cut a feel good movie a break talking. I'm a sentimental fool. I cried at Bicentennial Man. But this story is so artificial and overwrought that only a few scattered moments of genuine emotion shine through. At 141 grueling minutes, The Judge is the most unnecessarily long movie I've seen in a long time. It's not the longest one, but it certainly feels like it. The only truly interesting thing about this film is seeing how great actors who are "in the moment" can bring a certain level of truth to their performances when there is none to be found in the material or it's clunky direction  (Dobkin's background is in comedies, including Wedding Crashers and Fred Claus,  which my be why he feels the need to give each vomiting sequence his full attention. All four of them.) .  


And certainly, actor Robert Downey, Jr delivers in a big way, giving a performance that runs the gamut of emotions and pulls us in (even if he is just playing Tony Stark by way of Bloom County's Steve Dallas), and the interplay between Downey and Duvall, one of the most natural, honest actors to ever grace the screen, is undeniably a treat much of the time. But Executive Producer Robert Downey, Jr completely fails, letting his director completely lose control of the movie as each talented actor must be indulged, pacing and plot flow be damned, and the script is built around creating potential Oscar clips instead of telling a good story. In addition, for a film that is supposed to be a simple character drama based around people, The Judge features some really terrible C.G.I. visual effects. Ultimately, none of the sub plots hits the mark and the movie becomes so muddled that the whole thing should have been declared a mistrial by the studio.

As Ray Barone said, "I think there's something that can make it all better: editing." 

GONE GIRL

Reviewed by Paul Gibbs

GRADE: A+

Starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon, Scoot McNairy

Screenplay by Gillian Flynn (Based on her novel)

Directed by David Fincher

Rated R (violence, sex, nudity, profanity, vulgarity)

Gone Girl is the sort of film that forces me to point out that a straight-up rave review is not necessarily the same thing as an across-the-board recommendation. I have no reservations in declaring acclaimed director David Fincher's newest film one of his best, and one of the best films of the year. But no, it's not for everybody. It's harsh in content and dark in its themes, and takes a cynical look at the institution of marriage (though you don't have to agree with its view to be intrigued by the insight).

Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) is likable guy who runs a bar in North Carthage, Missouri. On the morning of his fifth anniversary, his beautiful wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) disappears. When detectives come to investigate Nick's home, they find signs of a struggle, and more and more the details of Nick's story don't seem to add up. As the case grabs headlines across the country, suspicious eyes are cast on Nick, making him "the most hated man in America". Meanwhile, excerpts from Amy's diary (played out onscreen) show a marriage that began as a fairy tale romance and descended to a point where Amy admitted "I am afraid of my husband."

Novelist Gillian Flynn has crafted a first-rate screenplay from her best-selling book, and has found the perfect director in David Fincher, whose dark, character oriented sensibilities elevate this dramatic thriller into the rare level of actually deserving comparison with some of the best films of Alfred Hitchcock. Fincher's visual and technical brilliance combine with gifts for storytelling, characterization and pacing to create a film that is completely gripping from beginning to end, even if you do know the film's second act twist going in (as I did).  And Fincher has assembled a superb cast. Affleck gives what may very well be the best performance of his career to date, anchoring the film with a confident, natural and layered characterization that exudes leading man charisma and yet is unsettling with the dark side lurking beneath the surface. This film definitively settles that Affleck is capable of showing greatness in front of the camera, not just behind it. Gigli was 10 years ago. Let it go.

But the revelation is Rosamund Pike as Amy. Pike has been more than adequate as a fairly generic leading lady in films such as Die Another Day and Jack Reacher, but her performances here is miles above anything we've seen her do before, and is likely to become one of the most iconic characters seen onscreen this year. She is the epitome of the Hitchcock blonde here, and her mesmerizing presence, range and ability to command the screen are first class, all the way. She's a shoe-in for an Academy Award nomination, and can be expected to be a highly sought after presence over the next couple of the years.

Supporting players such as Neil Patrick Harris (as vaguely creepy former boyfriend of Amy's) and Carrie Coon (as Nick's devoted twin sister) also shine. Easily the biggest surprise is Tyler Perry as Nick's lawyer, Tanner Bolt. The Madea star has never been taken very seriously as actor, and justifiably so, but Fincher has cast him so perfectly here that his oily charm and "look at me" performer charisma more than carry him through. Much like Justin Timberlake in The Social Network, this is a larger than life character that needed a larger than life presence, but not one who was interesting enough to pull focus away from the leads. Kudos to Fincher on another eccentric casting triumph.

Despite being quite a disturbing dramatic thriller, Gone Girl is also full of some very funny dark comedy. Comparing it to previous Fincher films, the ones that come to mind are the excellent performances and brilliant dialogue of The Social Network mixed with the dark intensity and realism of Zodiac. It's a huge bounce back from his so-so The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and reaffirms his status as one of the best directors working in Hollywood today.

In summary, this is a genuine work of art and a near perfect film, and though its appeal and acclaim are likely to be wide spread, it's definitely aimed at a particular audience, and definitely not aimed at another.  If you read this review and think "That doesn't sound like my kind of movie," you're probably right. This movie pushes the boundaries the same way classic Hitchcock did, but a lot of time has passed, and the boundaries have gone a lot further. Gone Girl is not a sleazy, torrid, Basic Instinct style film by any means: everything you see here is there for a reason that can be justified artistically and the story really could not be adequately told without it. But is is there. But it is very adult, in the true sense of the term. This is a very R-rated film, and if you have a tendency toward squeamishness with bluntly portrayed content, you are better of looking for lighter fare.