Martin's Musings

If Law & Order, with its ripped-from-the-headlines plotlines, was ever made into a movie, it might be a bit like Tower Heist. The film tells the story of a bunch of luxury residence employees who plot to steal from the Bernie Madoff–like jerk who has defrauded them and left them without pensions. No doubt, the film will be like a wish-fulfillment fantasy for so many moviegoers. But here’s my wish: I wish Tower Heist was a better, funnier movie. After all, the cast is top-lined by Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy, and it also includes Casey Affleck (no stranger to funny heist films, having been in all three of the Oceans movies), Matthew Broderick, and Alan Alda.

Actually, if you want to see a robbery, then this is the movie you want to see, because it’s Gabourey Sidibe (yes, Precious herself) who steals the thing right out from under Stiller, Murphy, et al. Playing a Jamaican cleaning woman, Sidibe delivers her lines with perfect deadpan and impressive comic timing. She’s a hoot. What a difference a couple years makes in her choice of big screen roles.

Tower Heist does have its moments — the plan comes together and is impressively staged during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade — but the whole thing is far-fetched, even for someone like me who can typically suspend his disbelief pretty easily. Put simply: I expected more from the film overall. Like Madoff’s victims (though to a much much much smaller degree), you may feel defrauded too. I’m giving Tower Heist a B–.

Creepy, unnerving, well acted, and just plain ole beautifully made, Martha Marcy May Marlene is a must-see movie that you won’t soon forget.

That’s mostly because of the subtle, heartfelt, and heartbreaking performance by Elizabeth Olsen (who has the unfortunate luck — for now, anyway — to be best known as Ashley and Mary-Kate’s younger sister).

It’s the same kind of performance that made Carey Mulligan a star in An Education two years ago.

Thanks largely, but not completely, to that fine work, MMMM is one of the year’s best movies. Continue reading →

Attractive to look at but not particularly exciting to watch, The Rum Diary finds Johnny Depp in one of his more personal projects, one that won’t likely find a large audience — and deservedly so.

Based on the novel by Hunter S. Thompson, a close friend of Depp’s, the film tells the story of writer Paul Kemp (Depp), who relocates from New York to Puerto Rico, where he hopes the lifestyle will be less stressful and the drinks more plentiful. There, he meets Sanderson, a shady businessman (Aaron Eckhart), who involves Kemp in a deal of questionable legality. As if that’s not enough, Kemp is distracted by Chenault, Sanderson’s beautiful fiancée (Amber Heard, sexier and more alluring here than she ever was on The Playboy Club). Continue reading →

Cancer isn’t funny.

Anyone who’s been touched by the disease knows this.

And yet, sometimes the only thing you can do to cope is laugh. That’s the crux of the new movie 50/50, the story of Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who at 27 learns he has cancer.

The film was written by Will Reiser, and is loosely based on his own experience — both with the disease and with his best friend Seth, who had a hard time dealing with it too. Continue reading →

What is Drive?

From the font treatment used on the poster and in the opening credits, as well as the songs on the soundtrack, you might think it was either an ’80s movie or a throwback.

With a star like Ryan Gosling, and a cast that also includes Albert Brooks and Bryan Cranston, you might think it would be an award-worthy, must-see movie.

And with a plot that centers around a movie stunt driver who is a getaway car driver in his spare time, you might think Drive would be an exciting action film.

Wrong on nearly all counts. Continue reading →

If you were to make a mashup of Munich and Inglorious Basterds, you would have The Debt. Like Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated film, this movie explores the toll revenge takes when Israeli agents seek to even the score with enemies of their people, and features a cast that includes Ciarán Hinds. And like Quentin Tarantino’s also-Oscar-nominated film, it features Jews kicking ass (specifically, a strong female Jew kicking ass), and a revenge plot involving Nazis. With direction by Oscar-nominated John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) and a cast that also includes Oscar winner Helen Mirren, The Debt takes a rightful place with those other films.

The Debt flashes back and forth between two time periods: 1966 and 1997. In that later year, we meet retired Mossad agents Rachel (Mirren), Stefan (Tom Wilkinson), and David (Hinds), who are brought together because of a new book about their mission in 1966, when the trio (played, respectively, by Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas, and Sam Worthington) tracked down and kidnapped Dieter Vogel, the former Surgeon of Birkenau (Jesper Christensen), in East Berlin, and killed him. Or did they? In 1997, developments call their successful mission into question, and send one of the three back into secret duty.

A tense thriller, The Debt is carried by strong performances across the board. But it’s the ethical and moral issues that left the greater impact on me. The trio’s mission is simply to kidnap Vogel and bring him home to stand trial. That is how it is decided they will right the wrong. But when things go awry, the trio has other options, ones they don’t want. As at least one character says, they are not murderers, they are people of peace. No matter how many deaths Vogel caused during World War II, how great must the crime be to merit an equal response? As noted, this is a similar issue covered in Munich, and here it is no less an intense conflict, especially as Vogel, now held prisoner and a witness to the interactions and frustrations between the trio, begins to exploit the situation, playing anti-Semitic mind games with any of the three who listens.

Chastain, whose Rachel is not just caught between right and wrong, but is also the focal point of a love triangle, shows how challenging the dilemma is. Her simultaneously tough and fearful performance is a mile away from the ones she gave in The Help and Tree of Life. And in Rachel’s later years, Mirren communicates less through words than by facial expressions how that answer never gets easier.

Right and wrong is not as simple as black and white. And in The Debt, our “heroes” earn your support and your sympathy. That doesn’t make what they do any easier to watch. I’m giving the movie a B+.

If you’re anything like me, you’re gonna need to take a long Purell shower after seeing Contagion, Steven Soderbergh’s thriller about a mysterious airborne illness that wipes out a significant portion of the world’s population.

And that’s just for starters.

You won’t be able to touch a glass or piece of silverware in a restaurant, put your hand on a subway pole, or pass along a folder in your office.

You won’t want to eat bacon, or give another person a hug, either.

Heck, you may as well just stay home and contain yourself so you don’t incur any risk of catching a similar virus. Continue reading →