At the Cinema April 2013

Oblivion – 9
You’ll like this movie if you like
a.  Space Operas
b.  Tom Cruise
c.  Dazzling effects

There are certain things you can usually count on in a Tom Cruise movie.  You’ll usually get a good script that he’s paid top dollar for.  You’ll get high production values.  You’ll get the Tom Cruise smile.  You’ll get at least one scene where he takes his shirt off.  You’ll get plenty of close-ups of Tom as he tries to convey his character’s story. 

All this is present in Oblivion, a mesmerizing view of earth’s future.  It seems earth won a war with some invading aliens, but the battle pretty much destroyed the planet.  The population is being moved to a moon of Saturn, and Tom’s character Jack Harper and his girlfriend are part of the mop up crew, repairing the scary drones that protect big machines that are sucking up the earth’s resources for transport to the new home. 

The war with the scavengers is over, but a few roam the earth, and the drones and Jack do some eradication from time to time.  It won’t be a spoiler to tell you all is not what it seems to be.  As Jack’s mission is coming to a close, he winds up in some landmark locations which trigger memories. 

Cruise famously never flew an airplane for Top Gun, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t fly a spaceship here.  But the effects are so well done, and the plot is original enough to provide some cool entertainment for a couple of hours, you’ll just go along for the ride. 

Cruise is 51 now and his high profile success has of course made his private life not too private.  Three divorces and a religion that’s even crazier than most, has left him scarred in the public eye.  Not Woody Allen-scarred mind you, but still not as popular as he once was.  None of this has kept him from delivering top notch films and roles year after year.  He gets no awards, few accolades, plenty of grief,  and buckets of money.  We should all be so lucky.

Sound City – 9
You’ll like this movie if you like
a.  Rock n Roll
b.  Rock History
c.  Great Soundtracks
My attempts to see this rockumentary in a theatre were futile, so I was thrilled to find it out quickly on blu-ray.  I’m glad I got to see it in my home theatre, blasting as loud as I wanted.

Dave Grohl directs and navigates us through the story of the legendary Sound City studio in Van Nuys California, where analog greatness was recorded from 1973’s legendary Buckingham-Nicks to Nirvana’s Nevermind.  Through interviews and rare footage Grohl takes us on an amazing musical journey.  There were so many great albums recorded here, that the first half of this doc will be a thrill for any rock and roll music geek.  Odds are one of your favorite albums was recorded here.  For me it was the Buckingham Nicks album, which I’ve been listening to for 40 years, and the way they bumped into Mick Fleetwood one day, and pretty soon there was a whole new level of magic at Sound City.  You still can’t buy BN on compact disc, and you’ll wonder why after watching this. 

The second half focuses on the star of the studio, the Neve mixing console, which Grohl eventually buys  and moves to his own studio.  Some recorded sessions with the likes of Trent Reznor and Paul McCartney are filmed.  If you don’t like rock, you won’t like this.  If you do, don’t miss it.  Terrific stuff.

42 – 7

You’ll like this movie if you like
a.  Terrific Acting
b.  Languid Pacing
c.  Historical Drama

The amazing story of Jackie Robinson deserves better than this languishing treatment.   His story would have certainly been worthy of a mini-series.  What we get here is a just a peek that ends with his first season.  It’s a glossy once-over of a rich and critical story essential to the evolution of modern America.  What could have been epic is rather pedestrian. 

Most of the problem in this movie is in the pacing.  Director Brian Helgeland won an Oscar for his script of L.A. Confidential, which is one of the great scripts and great movies of all time.  Had he utilized the amazing speed of that movie, this would have been a classic.  Instead the movie, particularly in the baseball scenes, moves so slowly, that I couldn’t help worry about the future of baseball.  If it were really this slow, nobody would ever go to a game.  If Jackie Robinson’s home run trots were really this slow, he’d have been hit by even more pitches.  Pitchers don’t take kindly to being “shown up” with leisurely trots.

The story of the breaking of the color barrier in Major League Baseball has always been as much about Brooklyn Dodger General Manager Branch Rickey as it was about Jackie Robinson.  By signing terrific Negro League ballplayers Jackie Robinson, then shortly after that Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe, Rickey achieved a trifecta of social justice, team improvement, and monetary success.  The story of baseball in the 50’s is largely the story of the intercity rivalry of the Dodgers, the New York Yankees and New York Giants.  It was a golden age of baseball.  Rickey accurately anticipates what Robinson will go through with teammates, opponents, and fans, wisely requiring Robinson to have the “courage to not fight back.”  The scenes of harassment and discrimination are jolting and while they’re difficult to watch at times, there is a little bit of an echo of current times and the treatment of our President when one of the players says, “this isn’t the America I know.”

Harrison Ford plays Branch Rickey, and disappears into the role.  Ford has always been a box office success, but never considered a great actor.  The gamble of casting him in this role pays off, as he delivers the best performance of his career.  Also terrific is Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson.  Many sports pictures suffer from unrealistic skills of the actors.  That’s not the case here, as Boseman and everyone else looks like they’ve actually played baseball.

The baseball scenes are mostly accurate but there are some quibbles.  The late jumps Robinson gets when he steals a base would have gotten him thrown out every time.  A baseball film editor was needed.  If you are going to CGI Forbes Field in Pittsburgh (where I feel like I grew up), why not do it accurately?  The hardest thing to recreate in a baseball movie is the speed of a thrown pitch.  The best film pitcher was Charlie Sheen in Major League – the worst was Tim Robbins in Bull Durham, and the movie pitchers here fall somewhere in between.  More accurate in the movie was the depiction of the attitudes of those who tried to derail the progress, from umpires, to policemen, to a vile manager.  The manager, played here to great risk by a fantastic Alan Tudyk, exemplifies the resistance Robinson endured.

Because of the rich heritage of baseball and its impact and importance during this era, the magnitude of Jackie Robinson cannot be under stated.  The reaction to this movie has been positive so I still recommend seeing it.  I was just hoping for so much more.

The Place Beyond the Pines – 7
You’ll like this movie if you like:
a.  Ryan Gosling
b.  Bradley Cooper
c.  Melodrama
The best thing about this movie is the acting, as Gosling and Cooper are riveting in their portrayals of a bank robber and the cop who tracks him down.  Their brief and conclusive confrontation is the beginning of complications that reach far into the future.  Unfortunately, the films skips ahead 15 years so we don’t get to see Cooper’s transformation from beat cop to state political candidate. 

I can give a simple explanation of this movie.  It is a brilliantly acted, wonderfully scripted, perfectly edited, with a terrific score and production values and it interested me not one bit.

Scanning the Satellite
I swore I was done.  I resigned my American Idol viewership after last year’s tepid season.  But the final four sucked me in.  The four finalists, all women, are so terrific that I really don’t have a favorite.  They’re awesome, and I’m back on the bandwagon.

In case you don’t have Showtime, you probably didn’t get the memo that there are no taboos on TV anymore.  Shameless has shown everything I can think of to show.  No taboos left.

At the Cinema March 2013

All my thumbs up.  Goodbye Roger.  You made an impression.

For the first half of my life I wanted to be the successor to Bill Mazeroski.  What could have been better than spending 20 years or so playing second base for my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates?  For the second half of my life I’ve wanted to be the next Roger Ebert.  I was far from the talent level needed on both counts, but we can dream, can’t we? 

Roger Ebert was the first person to win a Pulitzer Prize for criticism, and his movie reviews were often more entertaining than the movies he was writing about.  Yet it was his syndicated TV show with Gene Siskel that cemented my love of film that had first blossomed in college.  Col Albers film class at The University of Southern Mississippi had me at hello, and Siskel and Ebert’s weekly love letters to film gave me sustenance, even if you often had to search for the show.  I remember when it was scheduled for midnight on Saturday night in New Orleans, which means I couldn’t hit the discos to almost 1 am.  Believe it.  I waited.

Roger Ebert joined Gene Siskel in death yesterday, both victims of cancer, and both too young.  Their unbridled love of movies made them beloved in the industry, and their influence made movies better and more popular.  They taught us how to evaluate and enjoy, how to critique and appreciate.  Roger had been unable to speak for years due to thyroid cancer, but his voice spoke loudly through his internet presence.  His writing and his insight never flagged.  I’ve read his stuff every week for years, and I’ll sure miss him.  There are only a few writers/pundits I’ve remained a fan of spanning decades.  Ebert, George Carlin, George Will, Dave Barry on the short list.  The ultimate compliment is this, even if Ebert went “thumbs down” on a movie, you could tell whether or not you would enjoy the movie.  I’ll always remember how much Ebert loved Apocalypse Now and Raging Bull, and Siskel loved Saturday Night Fever and Fargo, and how they both loved My Dinner With Andre, by themselves elevating it to prominence.  For many years I’ve averaged a movie a week, and that 2 hour escape was made more relevant by Roger Ebert’s insight.

So here’s what I loved this month:

The Call – 9
You’ll like this movie if you like
a.  Sustained Suspense
b.  Silence of the Lambs
c.  Halle Berry

It’s a small joy in the scheme of things, but a joy nevertheless, when you love a movie that you didn’t expect much from.  The Call is such a movie.   Imagine Silence of the Lambs with an extended kidnapping scene.  I guess it’s really not that hard to make a suspenseful movie about an abduction.  If you’ve seen 2 million CSI’s and Law and Order’s you’ve probably seen everything this movie has to offer, but for some reason that I can’t really explain, it just works.  About half of the movie is an abduction in progress, and the director sustains the suspense throughout.  You’re on the edge of your seat and you stay there.

Now anyone who has seen the gazillion TV crime dramas will immediately see and hear what Hero Halle Berry  picks up on that the police didn’t, and the ending is as far-fetched as it is strange in a way that deflates the drama just a little, but sometimes a movie just captures you.

Halle plays a 911 operator who makes a mistake and pulls herself from her job only to get sucked back in when a killer she is all too familiar with strikes again.  The “hive” where the 911 operators work is a cool setting (I can see a TV series coming) and there’s a realistic urgency as the crime unfolds.  Little Miss Sunshine Abigail Breslin is all grown up and as the victim of the kidnapping makes it all believable.  Thumbs Up

Olympus Has Fallen – 8
You’ll like this movie if you like
a.  Die Hard
b.  Action
c.  Patriotism
Gerard Butler is the John McClane character in this obvious retread of Die Hard taking place in The White House.  The similarities are funny after awhile, but it’s still so well done, you can’t help but get involved.  A North Korean terrorist (timely, huh?) captures the President (Aaron Eckhart), the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense and they have a foolproof plan to start a nuclear holocaust from the White House bunker.  They don’t count on Butler, but you should.    Not original, but cool nonetheless.  Thumbs Up

Dead Man Down – 7
You’ll like this movie if you like
a.  Revenge films
b.  Colin Farrell
c.  Killing bad guys
This is a well done revenge movie centered around a man, a properly intense Colin Farrell, trying to avenge the death of his wife and child.  It’s well done and effective, but the scene I’ll always remember because I could barely watch, was the scene where rats begin eating a man alive.  Whoa, was that really necessary?  Some ingenious plot twists and action sequences will have you trying to forget that rat scene.  Thumbs sideways.

Apocalypse Now - 10
Fargo - 10
Raging Bull - 10
Saturday Night Fever - 10
My Dinner With Andre - 10