The brothers Wachowski return to the fold with a bizarre new trailer for their live-action Speed Racer, starring Emile Hirsch, Christina Ricci, Matthew Fox, John Goodman, and Susan Sarandon. Ouch, my brain hurts…Not sure I see myself sitting through two hours of this one, even with the Wachowski imprimatur.
Tag: Susan Sarandon
No Country for Young Men.
[Review, take 2.] Every day I think I’m going to wake up back in the desert… I must say, I went in expecting not much more than an over-the-top “message movie” schmaltzfest, or at best a harmless helping of mediocre, inert Oscar Bait like Cinderella Man or A Beautiful Mind. But Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah, the first of four(!) movies I caught last Saturday, turned out to be quite a bit better than I expected. Rather, Elah is a melancholy rumination on the hidden casualties of (any) war and a somber inquiry into the heavy toll exacted on the wives, parents, and children of military men. (The families of military women will likely get their due in John Cusack’s forthcoming Grace is Gone.) The David and Goliath nonsequitur of its title notwithstanding, Elah more often brings to mind the questionable sacrifice for an unknown higher purpose in Abraham and Isaac, or the bloody fate of erstwhile brothers Cain and Abel. And, biblical parallels aside, the film showcases the best work Tommy Lee Jones has done in years. (Well, I didn’t see The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and have high hopes for No Country for Old Men.) And it’s probably the most engaging police procedural of the year this side of Zodiac.
“Dad?” Roused from a dream he can barely grasp the edges of, grizzled Vietnam Vet turned mechanic Hank Greenfield (Jones) is awoken one Tennessee morning by a call from faraway Fort Rudd, informing him not only that his son Mike is back from Iraq but has gone AWOL since getting back stateside. This doesn’t gibe with Hank, who’s been receiving image-laden e-mails from his second son during his tour (his first son already perished in his nation’s service), and so he packs his bags, kisses his wife (Susan Sarandon) goodbye, and drives straight through to New Mexico, looking to ascertain the score.
The sergeant on duty at Ft. Rudd (James Franco) and Mike’s returning platoon members all think he’s just shacked up with a good time woman somewhere…but Hank’s not so certain. And, just as he’s beginning to tease clues off Mike’s damaged cameraphone, a charred, mutilated, and dismembered body is discovered on the outskirts of town. Sure enough, it’s Mike, and as the ensuing homicide investigation slips into the jursidictional crack between local law enforcement (most notably represented by Charlize Theron) and the Military Police (headed by bureaucrat Jason Patric), Hank takes it on himself to bring his son’s murderer to justice. But, as Hank well knows, the dogs of war impart a moon-touched madness on those they’ve mauled, and Hank will be forced to confront some ugly truths about his son, and the man he became in Iraq, in order to get to the bottom of things.
Admittedly, the movie starts out kinda rocky (or perhaps I was just gunning for Haggis in the first reel.) Events occur early on that scream symbolic significance (you’ll know what I mean), people speak in characterization shorthand — “Someday, you’ll just have to trust somebody, Hank” — and some plot points just don’t hang together. How did Hank ever find that (symbolically-named) computer guru operating out of a van, and why does it take him so ever-loving long just to do a defrag? But, for whatever reason — my money’s mostly on Jones — Elah is a significantly subtler and more resonant film than I ever expected from the writer-director of the lamentable Crash. (Then again, a ball-peen hammer to the skull is subtler than Crash, a film which, as I noted in my review of Inside Man last year, feels like it was made by and for people who don’t get out very much.)
In any case, Tommy Lee Jones is really excellent here: Check out the scene where he has to ID his son’s body in the morgue, or note how his early military rectitude seeps away as he sinks into the slough of despond. And Jones isn’t alone. Sarandon is memorable in every short scene she’s in, Theron is surprisingly believable as an ordinary (albeit beautiful) cop, and Patric — a dependable actor who never quite made it as a lead — seems to relish the freedom of his oncoming, paunchy Val Kilmer/Alec Baldwin phase. His “on a need to know basis” character in particular could’ve been way over the top, but Patric underplays him as a guy who really just doesn’t want to do the paperwork. (There’s also a brief but solid turn by Josh Brolin, Jones’ Coen compadre, as the local sheriff.)
Elah isn’t the best movie of the year or anything. But it is most of everything you’d want out of a fall film — It’s timely, sober-minded, well-acted and well-made. And, if nothing else, it shows Haggis has the ability to reboot after Crash.
Oil & Smoke.
In the movie bin, Jake Gyllenhaal welcomes the suck in the full trailer for Sam Mendes’ Jarhead (teaser noted here) , and John Turturro directs an all-star cast to song and dance in this first clip from Romance & Cigarettes.
Leggy Maguire.
Oops…this has been languishing in the bookmarks for a few days — our first look at Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown, with Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, Jessica Biel, and Alec Baldwin. As several others have noted, it all looks a bit Garden State-ish, but I’ll probably still give it a spin.
Blockbuster Friday.
So this Friday, I finally caught up with a number of films I’ve been meaning to see, among them:
The Ring (US): A very scary premise, and after the teenage sleepover setpiece I thought this might be one for the ages. But, although the ending somewhat redeems it, this film feels like a missed opportunity. I haven’t yet seen Ringu, so I don’t know how it measures up, but turning the bulk of the film into a Nancy Drew mystery was a straight-up horrible call. After a truly frightening intro, the movie then spends most of its running time lining up all the images on the tape with the ghost story at hand, with all-too-frequent flashbacks in case you’re a short-term amnesiac or something. What everybody involved seems to have missed is that the movie would’ve been much scarier, at least to my mind, if some portions of the tape had just been left unexplained. Instead, the powers-that-be left unexplained key plot elements in the story, such as how little boy Watts sees dead people. I think in another director’s hands – a director unafraid to take risks and one who has a little more faith in her audience to put two and two together – this could’ve been very, very scary. (Although it’s not as bad a swing-and-a-miss as the US version of the The Vanishing.) So, with that in mind, I’m looking forward to seeing Ringu.
Igby Goes Down: I’m really not a big fan of the “unrealistically erudite young NY sophisticate” genre – I liked Rushmore a lot less than most people I know and I find Whit Stillman films to be absolutely insufferable. So when Igby suggests his brother’s a pedantic bore for liking Rilke and later wryly namedrops “The Island of Lost Toys,” I visibly shuddered. But, all in all, Kieran Culkin is rather appealing in the title role, and – with solid support from Susan Sarandon, Jeff Goldblum, Amanda Peet, Bill Pullman, and Jared Harris – this one turned out to be more enjoyable than I had earlier feared. Claire Danes seems miscast, and I just don’t get what it is about the one-note “clipped and distant” monotone of Ryan Phillipe’s delivery in every film that anyone finds appealing (he’s got less range than Keanu), but, in the end, this one made for a decent rental.
Far From Heaven: I’m hit-and-miss with Todd Haynes films – I thought Safe was splendid and bizarre, but didn’t vibe into the puzzling Velvet Goldmine at all (I am looking forward to his Dylan biopic project.) And, to be honest, this one suffered a bit from being the middle child in my Friday triple feature – I found my attention flagging quite a bit in the early going. Which is a shame, because in the end this turned out to be quite a good film, if a little on the slow side. I thought the retro look and feel started out rather gimmicky (for example, in the lime green police station where Julianne Moore picks up her husband), but settled down as the story took over. And I think I probably would have liked it more if (a) I hadn’t just sat through Igby and (b) if I were more well-versed in the films of Douglas Sirk. But, worth seeing, and Dennis Quaid and Patricia Clarkson were particularly good.
The Core: Without a doubt a poor, poor film, and yet I enjoyed myself much more than at the drab and slow-moving Dreamcatcher. It helped that this film is stocked with actors I generally root for – Aaron Eckhart, Bruce Greenwood, Delroy Lindo, and Stanley Tucci. (As for Hilary Swank…well, I haven’t yet seen Boys Don’t Cry, but I gotta believe she’s much better in that than she was in this, although Halle Berry won recently too and – frankly – she’s rarely any good either.) To be sure, the special effects are well on this side of lame – for example, when the crew get stopped somewhere in the center of the Earth and find themselves inexplicably on the Star Trek: TNG Away Team set…I half-expected Morlocks or Cave Trolls or something to show up. And the story makes very limited sense (as a friend of mine pointed out, how does gravity work on this ship? Everybody’s standing around normally while this bird is digging straight down.) But, as a popcorn film, The Core was reasonably entertaining for two hours, even though I really can’t recommend it.
Next up, I’d like to catch The Good Thief and Ghosts of the Abyss before the fanboy films start flying fast and furious on May 2, with the so-far-well-received X2.
The Republican Pastime.
I knew there was a good reason I didn’t like baseball. Apparently the Hall of Fame has cancelled a Bull Durham retrospective because (gasp!) Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon are against the war. (The Hall of Fame only allows in all-American racists, drunks, and wifebeaters, not peaceniks.) Tim Robbins wrote a nice reply: “Your subservience to your friends in the administration is embarrassing to baseball and by engaging in this enterprise you show that you belong with other cowards and ideologues in a hall of infamy and shame…Long live democracy, free speech and the ’69 Mets; all improbable, glorious miracles that I have always believed in.” You go, Tim. As Spike Lee pointed out in the first five minutes of He Got Game, basketball is the true American pastime nowadays anyway.