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Family Jewel

11 Nov

Plain and simple, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is one of the best movies of the year. Or maybe it would be were it not 5 or 10 minutes too long, and didn’t have as much time-shifting. But that’s minor quibbling when you have such a fantastic acting ensemble and a crackling plot. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke play down-on-their-luck brothers who decide to rob a jewelry store to get themselves out of dire straits. Of course, nothing goes as planned, and complications arise involving their parents (Albert Finney and Rosemary Harris) and Hoffman’s character’s wife (Marisa Tomei), and soon the boys are in more trouble than before the heist. Director Sidney Lumet keeps the action moving, employing the aforementioned time-shifting device to further shade the characters and reveal their varied motivations, and that works quite well for the first half. But after the first few flashbacks, the device gets tired and it made me roll my eyes. Hoffman and, most surprisingly, Hawke are both excellent, giving performances of intensity and turmoil. Things don’t all go as you expect them to, and when the film reaches its eventual conclusion, not everything is resolved and you’re left wondering what will happen to the characters next. Sometimes that’s frustrating. Here, with all kinds of questionable moral activity going on, it feels appropriate. I’m going to give BtDKYD a strong B+.

Escape Claus

9 Nov

Ho ho holy crap, is this a bad movie. Fred Claus makes me feel like the Grinch and it’s only November 9. I’m not even sure what to mention here to illustrate why this movie isn’t enjoyable — Vince Vaughn’s tired schtick? bad writing? awful special effects? — so I’ll stick with my initial thought, which is that the biggest waste of all is a jolly soundtrack that includes such gems as the Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping” and the Jackson 5’s “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” You know a holiday movie is bad when even tunes like that can’t lift your spirits. I’m giving Fred a D, for don’t bother.

All Talk, No Action

7 Nov

If you’re going to go see Lions for Lambs, you’d better bring a shovel, or a first aid kit, because when it’s over you’re either going to need to do a lot of digging to get out of the heavy handed speechifying and verbosity, or you’ll be on the mend from being hit over the head with so much righteousness.

No, Lions isn’t a subtle film, and I guess when you’ve got Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, and Meryl Streep headlining, how can it be?

Continue reading →

Real Nice Movie

1 Nov

On the movie spectrum, there are the awesome, award-caliber films on one end, the truly awful ones on the other end, and then, somewhere in the middle, there are the merely pleasant ones — movies with no great agenda other than to provide a diversion for a couple hours.

Dan in Real Life is one of those middle-of-the-road pictures, and it’s meant as no slight to call it pleasant.

Actually, the movie could have been much worse with less talented creative folks involved. Continue reading →

The Real Thing

22 Oct

It would be all too easy to dismiss Lars and the Real Girl as a quirky comedy.

After all, it’s a movie about a guy (Lars, played by Ryan Gosling) who buys a Real Doll and treats it like she is legitimately real and his girlfriend.

But Lars is much better than that description.

In fact, it’s one of my favorite movies of the year. Continue reading →

Local Boy Makes Good

20 Oct

In the opening scene of Gone Baby Gone, Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) talks about how the neighborhood you grow up in is what makes you who you are. And clearly, that pedigree is all over Ben Affleck’s film.

I’m a Brookline kind of guy, and I don’t know Dorchester from anything, but this movie just feels, looks, and sounds authentic. (And for the record, yes, I know Ben’s from Cambridge, not Dorchester. Close enough.)

From the accents (though they’re stronger at the beginning than at the end) to the shots of the streets and people of the neighborhood, there’s no mistaking that this is a set-in-Boston movie.

Hell, Ben even gives a special thanks to Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz in the closing credits.

Gone tells the story of the search for a missing four-year-old Dorchester girl. Early on in the search, the girl’s frantic aunt hires Kenzie, an investigator who gets people to talk because he’s a local boy and knows the neighborhood and, most importantly, works independently of the police.

Kenzie works with his girlfriend, Angie (Michelle Monaghan), and the two initially feel like they are in over their heads because the cases they typically get involved with don’t ever involve the possibility of a dead body.

But they uncover some details the police weren’t paying attention to, and soon they’re also collaborating with two cops (including one played by Ed Harris) and their Chief (Morgan Freeman).

And that’s just part of it.

Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane (who also wrote the book Mystic River), and adapted by Affleck and Lehane with Aaron Stockard, it’s a layered plot with twists and turns that I didn’t see coming.

Acting across the board is excellent, from Casey Affleck on down. Clearly, working with his brother suits Casey (though he was also good in The Assassination of Jesse James …).

But Ben’s made a compelling movie that is a great compliment to Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River, with its working-class neighborhood setting and missing person plotline.

It’s pretty exciting that the movie turned out so well, because I think deep down Affleck’s a good, decent guy (and he certainly has great taste in women), and he was due for something to turn out so well. I mean, you could say the guy didn’t really stretch himself, given that this is such a Boston-centric film. But Gone Baby Gone more than that, more than Good Will Hunting too, and it’s a very impressive achievement.

I’m giving Gone Baby Gone an A–.

It’s Torture

17 Oct

The tagline for the movie Rendition is “What if someone you love … just disappeared?” Well, it seems apt to paraphrase it for this review: What if a movie starring Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Meryl Streep … one that dealt with a topical subject like torturing suspected terrorists … one where the two apparent leads apparently fell in love off-screen … suddenly disappeared? I mean, did you know the movie was being released this Friday? I haven’t seen a single ad, article, TV spot, or heard anything about it. It’s almost as if the New Line doesn’t even want you to know it exists.

Well, you should thank them. Rendition is actually a pretty awful movie. Reese’s Egyptian husband is taken into protective custody and shipped off to North Africa after he’s suspected of being involved in a terrorist bombing. Jake’s on the team that does the torturing, but apparently he’s conflicted about it (I say apparently because he doesn’t show any emotion at all). Streep is the apparently Southern CIA agent who orders and then covers up these torture interrogations, known as extraordinary rendition. (Oh, and I say apparently in Streep’s case because it took about half the movie for me to realize she was speaking with a twang in her voice. It’s definitely the worst accent she’s ever done.) Peter Sarsgaard plays an aide to a Senator (Alan Arkin); apparently, Sarsgaard’s character went to school with Reese’s. (Again, apparently because they don’t look at all like they’re the same age — in fact, Sarsgaard is five years older than Reese.) Oh, and did I mention that Reese’s character is pregnant and at one point when she goes into labor after a tense confrontation (you knew that would happen, didn’t you?), someone actually stops to ask her, “Are you alright?” And all this is without mentioning the film’s chronology of events, which is totally confusing and jumbled up just to make it seem more “artsy.” (And if you’re interested, Reese and Jake never once act together here. It’s like they’re in two different movies.)

Reese’s husband is the one being tortured, but really, it’s the moviegoers who are enduring the worst of it. I’ve definitely seen worse movies, but this one surely ranks as one of the worst of this year. No wonder you’re not hearing anything about it. I give Rendition a D.

A Real Bang Up Job

14 Oct

Jesse James was like the evil Brad Pitt of his day, and with no US Weekly or Perez Hilton around to immediately document his exploits, his legend only loomed larger because of how stories of his crimes were passed on.

So it makes perfect sense that in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, James is played by the male half of Brangelina himself, Mr. Pitt.

In this very Terrence Malick–esque film, Robert Ford (the very good Casey Affleck) works his way into his idol’s gang and attempts to befriend James. But Ford learns that the legend and the man are two very different things, and soon he’s plotting against James to bring him down. Continue reading →

Get on the Train

6 Oct

You’ve gotta love Wes Anderson.

When he’s on, when he’s great — i.e.: Rushmore — he’s awesome.

About half of his new film, The Darjeeling Limited comes close to reaching the same comic heights of Rushmore (but in a very different way).

And the second half, well, it’s not bad, but it’s not as good either. Continue reading →

A Real Fixer-Upper

6 Oct

It’s no secret that I’m a George Clooney fan, and have been for a while.

So the night that Michael Clayton opened, I was there.

And I’m happy to say, the man does not disappoint.

Here he plays — well, he’s a lawyer, but he’s the kind of guy that high-powered law firms have on staff to fix things in their clients’ favors, not necessarily to get involved in the actual law.

But Clayton’s feeling off his game lately thanks to a bad business decision and a messy divorce, and he says he’s more of a janitor, cleaning up messes.

Either way, he gets enmeshed in a case involving supposed environmental giant U/North and in assisting a colleague who is losing his grip, he finds all is not as it seems with his firm’s prized client. Continue reading →

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