When Stephen King heard of a new remake for Carrie, his reaction was this: “The real question is why, when the original was so good?”
Right you are Mr. King and he’s pretty much written my movie review of Kimberly Peirce’s rehashing of the 1976 Brian De Palma classic with Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, based on King’s first published novel. It’s not that the 2013 version is terrible. It’s not that Chloe Grace Moretz doesn’t deliver a solid performance as the telekinetic teenager who has a very tragic prom. And Julianne Moore is incapable of giving a bad performance and manages respectably taking on the supremely creepy mother role that Piper Laurie perfected nearly three decades ago.
It’s just that this feels so unnecessary. Since De Palma’s work 27 years ago, an unwanted sequel came out in 1999 and an unwanted NBC TV remake was released in 2002. Now this. None of them performed too well and that’s easy to understand. 1976’s Carrie holds up remarkably well and any generation can simply revisit it.
There are tweaks here and there in the remake, but none of them add much of anything. The basic story is intact and the most famous lines from the original remain. The biggest difference is the ending which is a bit surprising because the ’76 version had a terrific one. For those unfamiliar with the plot, I’ll save you some trouble. Just go watch the De Palma flick. It’s worth your time and this version isn’t. I can’t put it any better than the source material’s author. So listen to Stephen King, kids!
If Seth MacFarlane lent his considerable talents to doing an audio commentary for an old western film, it would probably have the same effect as watching A Million Ways to Die in the West. Yet it would probably be funnier.
The “Family Guy” creator and maker of the wildly successful Ted in 2012 hits a sophomore slump here. West is set in the Old West of 1882 and MacFarlane’s Albert Stark is well aware of his surroundings. He is an aimless and wimpy sheepherder whose only ability seems to be noticing that the era he lives in is a real bummer. Outlaws kill for no reason and there is a myriad of diseases that can kill you, not to mention even the old timey cameras and blocks of ice that can humorously lead to violent ends. He meets his sarcastic counterpart in Anna (Charlize Theron), who also is highly cognizant of the miserable time period they’re stuck in. Unbeknownst to Albert, she is married to a notorious gunslinger Clinch (Liam Neeson) and trying to get away from him. Meanwhile, Albert is trying to get over his ex (Amanda Seyfried) who just left him for the proprietor (Neil Patrick Harris) of a successful mustache grooming shop titled The Mustachery.
The first hour of West presents us with the idea of its main characters aware of their bad luck in being stuck in the West and stretches the premise about as far as it can possibly go. The second half is at times more of a traditional Western, albeit one with an extremely generous heaping of bodily fluid gags and occasional drug humor. As you’d expect, no ethnic group of religion is spared from the constant quips, but they often feel like they’d be about the 12th most amusing line on a “Family Guy” episode.
Unlike his TV show and Ted, MacFarlane moves from voiceover work to being in front of the camera. Unfortunately, MacFarlane the screen presence is surprisingly dull much of the time. Neeson has little to work with in his menacing bad guy role, but it is odd nowadays to see the actor searching for a family member that actually left him intentionally. Part of the problem is that MacFarlane saves most of the funniest lines for himself and leaves little for Neeson, Theron, or Seyfried to work with. Harris has his moments and there is a subplot with Giovanni Ribisi and Sarah Silverman that has its share of genuine laughs.
By now we’ve come to expect plenty of non PC lines and gross out moments from MacFarlane. There’s much of that to be found here yet it doesn’t come close to the comedic heights of “Family Guy” at its best or Ted. The supporting cast doesn’t have enough to do and even a couple of well done cameos don’t help much. I will, however, admit that watching Ribisi repeat his dance moves from Ted had me laughing hard, even it was only for about five seconds.
MacFarlane and his cowriters Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild seem to believe the Albert character’s ongoing musings about the Old West and its nastiness are uproarious enough to make this worthwhile. Too often, those jokes play out like Albert’s firearm shooting abilities in the picture – some hits but plenty of misses.
The sacred wedding vows that couples take are taken to glorious extremes in David Fincher’s Gone Girl, based on the bestselling phenomenon of a novel written by Gillian Flynn. She also wrote the screenplay and I am pleased to report she remained faithful to her work.
While author Flynn’s faithfulness to her novel will undoubtedly make her readers happy, unbridled devotion is not a trait the principal characters of Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) share with one another. Their romance starts on a positive note, but the complications of life eventually wear their union down. Jealousies arise. The everyday boredom of an existence in the Midwest away from her native New York takes its toll on Amy.
And on their five-year anniversary… Amy becomes the title character. She’s gone. There are clues to what may have happened. Blood samples. Notes left by Amy that she always made for Nick as kind of a scavenger hunt to retrace the history of their relationship. In this case, they may serve as something more.
Nick quickly becomes a suspect as the husband in these instances usually do. The tabloid media feasts on the tale of the missing woman and her significant other who dares to smile at the missing persons press conference. Along the way, Flynn’s screenplay gradually reveals more and more about this couple. For those unfamiliar with the source material, it won’t be what you expect.
Writing a review of Gone Girl is complicated, to say the least. Just as you didn’t want to reveal the many twists to one about to read the book, the same holds true for its film adaptation. So I’ll put it this way – David Fincher was the right guy for this project. Through Seven and The Game and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there is perhaps no director better at this kind of dark material. As you’d expect, Gone Girl‘s technical aspects are flawless, from the cinematography to the score (by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross) to the production design and so forth.
There are details about Amy and Nick’s personas that couldn’t possibly be fully explored in the way the book manages, but the picture come awfully close. The casting is key here and Affleck and Pike nail their roles. Nick is neither your typical panicked husband whose wife has vanished nor the sinister monster who may or may not have done the unthinkable. And Amy is far from just the victim. Pike’s performance in particular is something else with the range of emotions she must go through. Expect her to get a Best Actress nod come Oscar time.
Fincher has a habit of unconventional casting choices and there are two here worthy of special mention: Neil Patrick Harris as a former stalker of Amy’s and Tyler Perry as a brilliant criminal defense attorney. Both shine in their against type casting parts. Carrie Coon also merits a shout out for her strong work as Nick’s twin sister.
Gone Girl, more than anything, is about the facades people put on to get into their relationships, maintain them, and possibly lose them. It’s about asking the question of whether or not you ever truly know the individual you call your soul mate. For better or worse, Nick and Amy take a journey in Gone Girl to find out. The results are often shocking and consistently enthralling to the audience.
There is probably a fascinating motion picture to be made about the seedy underworld of online gambling (a thriving multi-billion dollar industry), but Brad Furman’s Runner Runner isn’t it. To add to the disappointment, we have two lead actors involved that clearly have better things to do and have spent the last several years doing them. Runner Runner isn’t worth their time or ours.
Justin Timberlake plays Richie, a poker whiz who’s going for his Master’s Degree at Princeton when his financial woes lead to him to Costa Rica to seek out Ivan Block (Ben Affleck), who runs the largest online gaming site in the world. They become friends and business partners, but Richie soon learns his new glamorous life is a lot more dangerous than he thought. In short, Ivan is Gordon Gekko. Richie is Charlie Sheen’s character. In the Daryl Hannah role of the girl who’s caught between both men is Gemma Arterton of Quantum of Solace and Hansel&Gretel: Witch Hunters fame. And there’s Anthony Mackie as a FBI agent hot on Ivan’s trail.
The most memorable item about the pic is its lovely scenery with Puerto Rico doubling for Costa Rica. That’s about where my praise ends. The performances aren’t bad, but the actors aren’t given much to work with. Affleck is essentially recreating his character from a stronger effort, 2000’s Boiler Room. Timberlake is serviceable, but we’ve seen him much better in The Social Network when he has a character that’s more fully developed. Arterton’s thinly written love triangle with the two principles is perfunctory.
Runner Runner‘s main failure is the director and writers utter failure to generate any suspense. Ivan Block is a bad guy, but the audience never feels that Richie’s life is truly in danger. As mentioned, the picture’s subject is ripe for examination but you won’t find it in this by the numbers and lazy effort. 2008’s 21, with Jim Sturgess and Kevin Spacey, focused more on blackjack and it’s nothing special either, but at least it was directed with energy.
The good news is that Mr. Timberlake and Mr. Affleck have been doing remarkable work over the last few years, in their respective musical and directorial careers. Runner Runner is the type of movie that they don’t need to waste their time with anymore, but unfortunately they did. My advice is just to ignore it and pop in Argo or look forward to Gone Girl or cue up “Mirrors” and “Suit and Tie” to appreciate what they’re capable of.
Upon its release in 1991, Cape Fear had the unique and odd distinction of being both Martin Scorsese’s most conventional picture and his most experimental. Here the master filmmaker was working in the mainstream world of crafting an audience pleasing thriller. Yet Scorsese was most known for titles that weren’t developed for mass consumption and were made with a more personal touch. Some of them turned out to be masterpieces – Mean Street, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, GoodFellas.
Cape Fear was a different animal. A remake of a 1962 B movie thriller that starred Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum. This would allow Scorsese to pay homage to it and Hitchcock’s catalog while modernizing it. Robert De Niro stars as Max Cady, a recently released convict with plans to exact revenge on his defense attorney Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte), who hid evidence that could have exonerated him. Unlike the 1962 predecessor, Sam’s family is not near picture perfect. Far from it. His wife Leigh (Jessica Lange) is still scarred from her husband’s past infidelities. Danielle (Juliette Lewis) is their bored and sometimes rebellious teenage daughter. One of the things that makes the picture most interesting is that Max is not just going after Sam for vengeful purposes. He has designs to emotionally wound the family even more and he succeeds.
The film is filled with nods to genre pictures that Scorsese undoubtedly feasted on as a young man. Anyone who’s read about him knows he’s an encyclopedia of the trade he’s exceled in for nearly half a century. And Cape Fear‘s greatness is due to the infectious joy that we feel due to Scorsese’s joy in creating it.
Yes, it’s a mainstream thriller with all the conventions we’ve come to expect. A phone ringing unexpectedly during a tense moment. Cady disguising himself in a manner which I still recall had crowds understandably gasping in the theater. However, Cape Fear comes equipped with a brilliant director and first-rate actors participating. De Niro (Scorsese’s go to actor before DiCaprio) is often terrifying in the role of the Southern menace wreaking havoc on the Bowdens. The actor infuses his character with a demented religious fervor and a workout regiment that shows him in a way you’ve never seen him before or since. He received an Oscar nomination and deserved it.
Nolte’s work is worth lots of praise, too. He successfully strays away from making the character heroic and it’s a great twist to have the protagonist written and portrayed in that way. Lange is equally impressive as the frustrated wife and Lewis is a revelation as Danielle. The most famous sequence in the pic involves Max’s first encounter with her. It’s been noted that the scene is improvised and it isn’t your typical scary movie scene, but it might be the most chilling thing of all. For those who’ve yet to see it, I won’t spoil it. The subplot involving Sam’s law clerk (Ileanna Douglas) and her encounter with Max is unforgettable and horrific as well. Their pairing provides our first glimpse of what our main character is capable of.
In a nod to the ’62 original, its stars Robert Mitchum, Gregory Peck, and Martin Balsam all appear in welcome cameos. Joe Don Baker (one of the terrific characters actors of our time) provides some fine and often humorous moments as a P.I. trying to help Sam out.
As you’d expect in a Scorsese pic, the technical aspects from music to cinematography and so forth are impeccable. Cape Fear may not get mentioned in the same conversations as the director’s beloved group of classics. That’s OK, but it’s a remarkable viewing experience in its own right. And on this Throwback Thursday – it’s one you need to seek out if you haven’t watched it. Or watch it again for that matter to see one of cinema’s best directors put his delicious spin on a well-worn genre.
When we are of a certain age such as 16-18 as the main characters in The Fault in Our Stars are, everything seems to be of a bigger consequence than perhaps it is. Your emotions are magnified. We experience feelings that are truly for the first time. Love is one of them. And there are lots of movies where we see teens go through that journey for the first time. Yet few of them get it right. Few of them manage to capture the almost indescribable significance of discovering love at an age when you’re just beginning to understand it. Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything achieved that rare feat. There are several moments in Josh Boone’s picture that do, too. That’s it greatest strength in a story that follows patterns we’ve seen before to be sure. That said, Fault finds ways to make them seem fresh with lots of credit going to the actors.
In The Fault in Our Stars, the consequences of first love are heightened due to the bond that Hazel Grace (Shailene Woodley) and Augustus (Ansel Elgort) share. They are both diagnosed with cancer and meet in a support group that Hazel’s parents make her go to. Unlike most teens who fall for one another and believe their time together will never end, they know their relationship will be different and not timeless. Upon their meeting, Hazel has Augustus read her favorite book which chronicles a little girl’s battle with their disease. Augustus is frustrated when the book ends with no clear cut conclusion and it leads him to seeking out the reclusive writer (Willem Dafoe) in Amsterdam to get some answers. Once overseas, Hazel and Augustus may not achieve the resolution they’re looking for with the alcoholic author. However, the trip brings them closer together and deeper in love – even though the filmmakers (and author apparently) choose a rather odd location for them to share a first kiss.
While I am not familiar with the picture’s source material, I’m well aware that the John Green novel is widely read and beloved by many. There’s no doubt the cancer themes certainly strike a chord with so many for obvious reasons, but I suspect the Fault phenomenon may lie with my first point. So few screenplays and written works get first love right.
Part of the film’s success in that manner is due to Woodley and Elgort. They’re quite good together and Woodley, especially, has proven herself to be one of the most exciting young actresses working today. Between The Descendants, The Spectacular Now and this – she’s put together quite a remarkable resume of performances in short order. This movie would crumble if the chemistry between the two stars didn’t work and luckily it does. As Hazel’s parents, Laura Dern and Sam Trammell are understated and effective and Nat Wolff provides some often needed comic relief as Augustus’s friend who’s been blinded by cancer.
The Fault in Our Stars could’ve easily veered into overt melodrama, but it mostly avoids it. Much of this is thanks to the wonderful casting, but also the writing which realizes Hazel Grace and Augustus as smart and thoughtful teenagers (something many screenwriters know nothing of). Yes it’s a tearjerker, but the actors and writers earn them by rarely pandering to the audience and capturing the young true love emotions of its two stars.
Let’s say you got invited to a party and were told that Godzilla, the king of movie monsters, was going to be in attendance. You get there and for a while, you hear quite a bit of backstory about him. There’s even a celebrated TV actor who you’re so happy is appearing, even though he overacts almost laughably from time to time. Also, other monsters show up who you’re not as familiar with and feel a little ambivalent towards. Godzilla doesn’t even bother showing up until halfway through the event. Yet when he does it’s pretty cool. You decide that it was worth it.
And so it is with Godzilla and that’s the kind of party director Gareth Edwards chose to throw bringing back the iconic character to the screen. The last time an American studio featured the jolly green giant, it was with Roland Emmerich behind the camera and Matthew Broderick starring in the summer of 1998. That flick was a “disaster movie” in more ways than one and despite its $379 million worldwide total, it was considered a huge critical and commercial disappointment.
The glass is more half full sixteen years later. That celebrated TV actor is Walter Freaking White himself, Bryan Cranston! And, yes, his performance is a touch over the top. Contrary to what its TV spots might lead you to believe, he doesn’t even stick around the party as long as you’d think either. Cranston plays an engineer at a Japanese nuclear power plant who’s been monitoring troubling seismic activity. One of his coworkers is his wife (Juliette Binoche) and she tragically perishes when the seismic activity turns into a full-on disaster at the plant.
Flash forward to fifteen years later when Cranston’s son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is now a military bomb technician with a family of his own, while overacting Daddy is still in Japan trying to track what killed his wife. Circumstances bring them together and in contact with other scientists, led by Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins. And after about an hour – not only is Godzilla checked in at the party, but so are two MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms). And as scientist Watanabe waxes philosophical about, our title character might be around to stop those other monsters from wreaking even more havoc. The military, led by David Strathairn, naturally disagree.
Godzilla does take its time to get going, but when it does we’re rewarded with some ultra cool action sequences. A MUTO in Las Vegas is a fun sight to see, as is Godzilla’s initial appearance in Hawaii where vacationers are treated to far more than they paid for.
Tayl0r-Johnson (of Kick-Ass fame) is the human star of these proceedings and we get some familiar scenes of him keeping in touch with his wife at home (Elizabeth Olsen) and young son. Home is San Francisco and that means an action set piece located at the Golden Gate Bridge, which brings me to an important point. Can we get a moratorium on the Golden Gate Bridge for big action spectacles??? After X-Men: The Last Stand and Rise of the Planet of the Apes – enough already. There are other bridges in this country.
Nevertheless, director Edwards brings to the table what Roland Emmerich didn’t – a genuine respect and understanding of the monster genre he’s playing in. And the second half of this party in particular has lots of solid moments that make it worthwhile. For the first time in a long time, we have a Godzilla done mostly right.
And now for a new feature on the blog which I’ll call my Throwback Thursday reviews where I revisit an older film title or perhaps watch it for the first time and offer my thoughts. Being that I gave this new category the fancy title I did, I’ll do my best to post such reviews on that alliterated day following Wednesday and before Friday.
We begin with Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans, which I hadn’t watched since it came out 22 years ago. Since then, Mann has gone onto to direct such great films as Heat and The Insider, as well as disappointments (in my view) like Ali and Public Enemies. And of course lead actor Daniel Day-Lewis has become one of the greatest actors of his (or all) time and won two Oscars in recent years.
This was actually Day-Lewis’s follow-up feature since winning his first Best Actor Academy Award for 1989’s My Left Foot. It’s based on the James Fenimore Cooper novel and the original 1936 picture of the same name. It is set in 1757 during the French and Indian War with Day-Lewis as Hawkeye, a Caucasian raised by the Mohican Tribe. They are drawn into the British/French conflict when their friends are murdered. Circumstances dictate Nathaniel and his tribal family members escort British Major Heyward (Steven Waddington) and the two daughters (Madeline Stowe, Jodhi May) of a colonel to a fort.
Their journey becomes treacherous when the British’s Huron Tribe guide Magua (Wes Studi) betrays them. Turns out he’s working for the French – sort of. Along the way, Nathaniel and the daughter Cora, played by Stowe, fall in love and that doesn’t sit well with Major Heyward, who plans to marry her.
I must admit that I remembered very little about The Last of the Mohicans before my re-watching of it other than generally liking it over two decades ago. And, today, that statement still holds true. There is much to truly admire. First off, the picture is stunningly gorgeous from its landscapes to terrific art direction and cinematography and set design. The battle sequences are well-choreographed and often thrilling. Day-Lewis, unsurprisingly, makes for a rock solid leading man.
His performance is matched only by Studi’s, whose Magua is a fascinating character. Even though he may be the villain, we can at least understand his perspective on things and it elevates him to more than just your typical bad guy. In fact, if screenwriters Mann and Christopher Crowe had gone even further in exploring Magua’s story, Mohicans would have perhaps been better off for it. They could’ve easily filled that screen time and jettisoned the pic’s main flaw: a boring and uninspiring love story between Hawkeye and Cora.
The fault lies nowhere with either Day-Lewis or Stowe, who’s perfectly adequate in the part. It’s just that their romantic subplot is never interesting and their dialogue together is clichéd. I never fully understood why they fell for one another so quickly and passionately other than movie rules dictate that it be so.
Having said that, there’s more than enough good in Mohicans to outweigh the not so good. And if you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth a look.
*** (out of four)
And that’s my inaugural Throwback Thursday movie review, folks! Look for the next one Saturday… or, wait… how does this work again??
Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station doesn’t focus on the true life homicide of Oscar Grant as much as it tells the story of his life. A life that is still forming like any 22 year old man’s is. And yet the end result of Grant’s young existence permeates the whole picture because we know finality is very near.
On New Year’s Day 2009 at the title train station in Oakland, Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan) was killed when a police officer shot him while he was unarmed and handcuffed. The film opens with actual cell phone footage of the incident. We then move back hours before to New Year’s Eve and watch Oscar’s day and night unfold. There’s a birthday party for his mother (Octavia Spencer). His worries about recently losing his grocery store job and whether or not he’ll fall back into the trap of dealing drugs (he’s been incarcerated before and is on probation). His relationship with his girlfriend (Melonie Diaz) and young daughter (Ahna O’Reilly). And a fateful evening to go see fireworks in San Francisco and a return trip home that never occurs.
Fruitvale Station does not make Oscar Grant out to be a saint. He’s a complicated young man who’s conflicted about his fidelity to his girlfriend and how to earn money to care for his family. In a flashback jail scene, we see a side of rage in Oscar that may sadly be necessary in order for him to survive in that world.
First-time director/writer Coogler is a USC grad just like John Singleton, who made his debut feature Boyz N The Hood over twenty years ago. Both movies are similar in this way – they know their environments and portray them with honesty. Where Coogler’s screenplay succeeds best is its subtlety. He recognizes that by showing us the sometimes mundane activities of Oscar’s last hours, it still packs an emotional punch. Oscar and the people he loves and who love him don’t know what’s coming, but we do.
Michael B. Jordan gives a fantastic performance that is an announcement of quite an actor that we’ll be seeing a lot of. His emotional state, in quiet moments with his daughter to truly frightening ones in that station, varies greatly at times and there’s a never a moment where Jordan’s work isn’t completely believable. Diaz and O’Reilly are quite good and Spencer is outstanding as always, with a wrenching scene after Oscar’s death.
There are only a few occasions where the script veers into unnecessary dramatization, such as when Oscar tries to save a dog from dying on the road. For the vast length of its running time, Station simply shows us Oscar’s day. To him, it’s just another one. To us, we know it’s tragically much more than that. And it shouldn’t have been.
It’s a feeling that I simply couldn’t shake when I watched 2012’s reboot The Amazing Spider-Man: this movie isn’t necessary. Yet it was. If Sony Pictures wanted to keep the rights to the Spidey brand (and did they ever), a new pic had to be produced. Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst weren’t interested in a fourth entry so the franchise was started over just ten years after it began.
However, that didn’t mean it felt necessary… Sony’s financial consideration aside. Too often The Amazing Spider-Man felt like a remake of 2002’s original and there was no reason to have one. There were silver linings. The chemistry between Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spidey and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy was stronger than the Maguire/Dunst dynamic. Come to think of it… that was about the only silver lining in director Andrew Webb’s playbook. The rest of the pic was reasonably entertaining but familiar… way too familiar.
This brings us to the inevitable sequel in which the filmmakers (Webb returns behind the camera) inexplicably make the same errors that sunk the original trilogy by the time the mediocre Spider-Man 3 entered multiplexes in 2007. Too many villains. Too many subplots you don’t care about. It’s the same problems that have hindered Batman and Iron Man flicks in their weakest entries, too.
New characters include Jamie Foxx as Electro/Max Dillon, an Oscorp employees who worships Spider-Man and then finds himself as his nemesis when an electrical accident turns him into a super villain. His character is not terribly interesting and Foxx’s performance is not among his strongest.
Dane Dehaan is Harry Osborn, who takes over his Dad’s corporation following his death. Harry finds out he’s terminally ill and believes he needs Spidey’s blood to keep him alive. He doesn’t know his best childhood friend Peter Parker is also… well, you know. Complications ensue and an iconic baddie from Spidey lore enters the picture. Dehaan gives the role his all, but by the time his metamorphosis occurs, you’re checking your watch.
There’s also Paul Giamatti in a curiously small role as a Russian mobster who you won’t care about and where the character’s incredibly talented and Oscar nominated actor hams it up pretty embarrassingly.
And Sally Field is back as Aunt May with Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz returning in flashback sequences as Peter’s parents. Denis Leary as Gwen’s late father is also seen, but not heard.
The picture’s only strength lies in the genuine chemistry of Garfield and Stone, just like in the first. It’s not enough. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has that unmistakable whiff of needlessness that plagued its predecessor. There’s a sequence in the beginning when Gwen and Peter are having a quarrel and she sadly says, “You have done this again and again, Peter Parker! I can’t live like this.” We’ve seen that scene between Spidey and his girl again and again… and again… and again. We’ve seen the breakup of Peter and Gwen… and Peter and Mary Jane. And we’ve seen it too much in the past 12 years. Sony Pictures needs to keep the gravy train rolling, but I can live without this fading franchise.
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