Tag: Brian De Palma

Nocturnal Animals Movie Review

Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals is centered on a woman living in a fancy world surrounded by her own boredom and regret at certain life choices. The film is an often fascinating mash-up of Hitchcock, a little De Palma inspired Hitchcock, and most surprisingly, a West Texas crime tale that looks and feels like this year’s earlier Hell or High Water. We also have a more conventional tale of a romance gone astray and the emotions involved with that. It’s a concoction that sometimes is a little messy, a tad campy at moments, veers in tone shifts, and is also directed a fashion designer who seems to know exactly what he wishes to fashion.

L.A. art gallery owner Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) is living a wealthy life in an unhappy marriage and a career she’s grown to believe is purposeless. One day, she receives a manuscript. It’s from her ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) that she was only married to for a couple years around college. The novel grabs her. It’s the aforementioned High Water looking story of a remarried Edward on a West Texas road trip with his wife and daughter when they are terrorized by bad guys led by a disheveled and effectively menacing Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Their encounter takes a dark and tragic turn and soon Edward is teaming up with a ranger (Michael Shannon, in a terrific performance) to deal with its aftermath.

The story cuts back and forth between the actions of Susan’s ex-flame’s West Texas narrative (is it real or not?) and her unhappy life on the West Coast. We also witness the courtship of them in college. This juxtaposition creates an often dream like quality (a little David Lynch thrown in for good measure) and it’s rather intoxicating. We basically get to know everything we need to know about Susan’s character in a great short scene with Laura Linney as her debutante mom. Other key characters and their motivations don’t become clear until later.

Nocturnal Animals looks gorgeous as you might expect from a designer that Jay-Z made a song about. The cinematography is stunning and the musical score is often reminiscent of something we’d hear in an old Hitch pic or perhaps De Palma homage. There are moments that recall Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon in plot had that movie actually succeeded. Tom Ford wears his influences proudly and unabashedly in his sophomore effort. It’s anything but boring.

***1/2 (out of four)

The Bonfire of the Vanities Movie Review

For over a quarter century, I’ve known Brian De Palma’s The Bonfire of the Vanities only by its reputation. Its very, very bad reputation. The picture belongs in a category along with Heaven’s Gate, Ishtar, Last Action Hero, Waterworld and others as The Giant Hollywood Bomb. Some (Gate, Waterworld) have gained a better reputation as time has gone on. Bonfire, on the other hand, is barely discussed at all.

I recently had the pleasure of viewing the documentary De Palma, which is a serious treat for movie lovers. In it, the director basically talks for two hours about every one of his features in order. Some are classics or near classics (Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Scarface, The Untouchables, Carlito’s Way). Some are not (Snake Eyes anyone?). Others received mixed reviews upon initial reaction such as Casualties of War. There’s mainstream hits like Mission: Impossible and mainstream flops like Mission to Mars. Curiosities like Raising Cain and Wise Guys.

Then there’s this. Based upon a celebrated novel by Tom Wolfe, a bulk of the Bonfire criticism came from its significant departures from its source material. Having never read it, I had the benefit of not having to compare it. Unfortunately, it didn’t help much.

After watching this for the first time, it’s easy to get why this was ballyhooed in 1990 as a misguided and miscast effort. The other thing about famous flops is that years later, it’s kind of cool for cinephiles to say it was actually pretty good. For the purposes of this post, I’m not cool.

The star power is significant. Tom Hanks is Sherman McCoy, a yuppie NYC bond trader with a socialite wife (Kim Cattrall) and a southern belle mistress named Maria (Melanie Griffith). One night out with his girlfriend, they take a wrong turn into the Bronx where Maria accidentally hits a young black male and puts him into a coma. They leave the scene but the story doesn’t end there. An intersection of political ambition, religious leader ambition, and journalistic ambition land Sherman in a world of hurt. Chronicling it all is reporter Peter Fallow, played by Bruce Willis with all of his smarm and none of his charm.

Bonfire wants so badly to be an indictment of 1980s greed and shallowness. However, it goes so far in the direction of farce that you can’t take those overtones seriously for one second. By the time a virtuous judge (Morgan Freeman, getting to demonstrate his heavenly voice in one monologue) lectures all the characters on their indecency, we already feel that the message has been browbeaten into us.

One of the biggest complaints of the book to pic adaptation was the softening of the Sherman character into a sympathetic figure (he apparently wasn’t much of one in Wolfe’s writing). While I can’t speak to that, I can only say that Hanks at least has somewhat of a character to work with instead of the caricatures he’s onscreen with. That includes Griffith’s annoying seductress and Cattrall’s nails on chalkboard work as his ultra privileged wife. It includes F. Murray Abraham, yelling his way through the role of the district attorney who wants to be Mayor and John Hancock as a sleazy and media hungry pastor.

Bonfire is an ugly film about mostly ugly people that goes for laughs in an over the top way that isn’t pretty. It was badly received in 1990 and hasn’t aged well due to some racial aspects that couldn’t fly today.

Now… having said all that, I’m glad I finally witnessed what all the mostly forgotten fuss was about. And even in this quite disappointing experience, there are De Palma touches to be appreciated including a fabulous continuous opening shot of Willis entering a party in his honor. Of all the bombs in Hollywood lore, I bet it has the most entertaining and technically impressive first five minutes of them all. Sadly, there’s still two hours that follows after that and most of it solidifies the fire that greeted it.

*1/2 (out of four)

The Ethan Hunt Files – Mission: Impossible II

Over two years ago on this here blog, when it was in its infancy, I did the 007 Files where I wrote individualized blog posts on all 23 Bond flicks. That got me thinking about other series I could do the same with and in January 2013, I started The Ethan Hunt Files and wrote about the first Mission: Impossible pic from 1996.

https://toddmthatcher.com/2013/01/31/the-ethan-hunt-files-mission-impossible/

I had every intention of writing about the other three in short order. For whatever reason I did not follow up. With the fifth M:I picture Rogue Nation debuting in July, I decided it was time to resume this series of posts and we continue with Mission: Impossible II from the summer of 2000…

And what an interesting film it is, especially considering the franchise entries that preceded it and followed it. M:I II stands out as the strangest pic in the series and the one that fits in least with the rest. Two words explain the main reason for this: John Woo. The acclaimed action director took over directing duties from Brian De Palma for the second picture and didn’t have an ounce of hesitation about turning it into a bonafide Woo affair with all the slow motion shots, quick cuts, and (yes) doves that come along with it. There are certainly some similarities to the original – foremost of which is the continuation and multiplication of those fancy face masks.

Unlike Mission 1, here we have Tom Cruise’s Ethan in a romantic relationship with the gorgeous Nyah (Thandie Newton), a jewel thief who is the ex of Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott), an IMF agent gone bad who Ethan is after. Ambrose has stolen a nasty virus called Chimera, as well as its antidote, in an effort to make billions on the pharmaceutical market. Nyah is enlisted to get back in the good graces of her evil ex to get information, but not before she falls in love with Ethan first. They do so during a car chase in which Ethan nearly kills her, then kisses her. It happens.

Ethan is given his mission by the new head of IMF, played by Anthony Hopkins in what is essentially a glorified cameo. Our hero is conflicted by sending Nyah into such a dangerous mission. This all might’ve worked a bit better if the chemistry between Cruise and Newton felt authentic. We simply have zero investment in their romance and by the time Nyah bravely infects herself with the virus, you don’t really mind if Chimera wins. And a lot of the film could have been improved if Scott’s performance as our head villain wasn’t so utterly unremarkable. Some may know that M:I II’s production went into overtime and it forced Dougray Scott to be dropped from playing Wolverine in that same summer’s X-Men. An unknown actor named Hugh Jackman stepped in at the last minute. This is a good thing and Scott went from the next potential Wolverine to that dull M:I II villain that kinda looks like Ewan McGregor.

Ving Rhames returns as Luther, Ethan’s fellow agent who excels in counting down the clock as Hunt performs those impossible stunts. Rade Serbedvija gives a somewhat delightfully off kilter performance as the doctor who created Chimera and Brendan Gleeson is the nefarious owner of the corporation exploiting the virus for financial gain.

The De Palma Mission was a rock solid spy thriller anchored by three first rate action centerpieces: the aquarium sequence, the Langley infiltration and the train finale. In part two, there’s the bio chem lab sequence and the motorcycle chase finale that are front and center.

Neither are as memorable as anything from the previous effort. There’s also the Cruise rock climbing business in the beginning which basically exists so its stunt loving star can look cool rock climbing.

In hindsight, M:I II is easily the weakest link of this franchise. It doesn’t much feel like a Mission feature anymore as much as a John Woo movie with Ethan Hunt in it. Acclaimed screenwriter Robert Towne (who cowrote the first) has sole credit here and a hefty portion of the dialogue, particularly Newton’s, is a bit cringe worthy. Mission: Impossible II has enough fairly cool action to satisfy your average teenage boy, but it pales next to the rest of the Missions. And there’s no excuse for Limp Bizkit reworking that classic TV series theme either.

So while its reputation has deservedly soured in recent times, that didn’t stop part two from becoming a huge global success and earning over half a billion worldwide. It also was the highest domestic grosser of summer 2000 and virtually guaranteed a third go round for Hunt and his IMF team.

Here are the facts:

Film: Mission: Impossible II

U.S. Release Date: May 24, 2000

Director: John Woo

Screenplay: Robert Towne

Budget: $125 million

Worldwide Box Office: $546.3 million

The Ethan Hunt files will return with Mission: Impossible III

Carrie (2013) Movie Review

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!

** (out of four)

Carrie Box Office Prediction

2013 marks the first time in a long time that no horror movie prefaced with Saw or Paranormal Activity sees an October debut. Instead, the only genre flick meant to capitalize on Halloween month is Carrie, which I suppose was the inevitable remake of Brian De Palma’s 1976 scare fest.

Based on Stephen King’s first novel, the ’76 version earned Oscar nominations for Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie. This time around it’s Kick-Ass star Chloe Grace Moritz and Julianne Moore taking over the lead roles. The remake was originally set to debut in March before it was pushed back.

One big question keeps popping up in my mind here: do audiences really want to see a Carrie remake? The original is a genre classic. Yet unlike the remakes of Friday the 13th or Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street, there was never a franchise spawned from it to keep it constantly in the public’s mind. Actually there was a “sequel” in 1999 called The Rage: Carrie 2 that earned a weak $17 million domestically. The fact that no horror flick opens this month could certainly help and, frankly, horror movies often open much bigger than people like me say they will.

However, I don’t sense much excitement for this one. The familiarity with the original and the October release date should guarantee it a $20 million plus opening (if it falls below that, it’ll be considered a major letdown). I don’t think it’ll get much over that number though and it will likely fade quickly.

Carrie opening weekend prediction: $22.4 million

For my Escape Plan prediction, click here:

https://toddmthatcher.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/escape-plan-box-office-prediction/

For my prediction on The Fifth Estate, click here:

https://toddmthatcher.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/the-fifth-estate-box-office-prediction/