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Category: Movies Page 44 of 48

Humor But No Frivolity In “Inside Llewyn Davis”

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On April 22, 2014

In General, Movies

Llewyn and Ulysses

Llewyn and Ulysses (Photo credit: vapour trail)

It is a little hard to see the girl played by Carey Mulligan in Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) as a slut, as she presumably is, but easy to believe she herself has a point in considering Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) a “loser.”  A merchant mariner struggling to become a professional folk singer in 1961, Llewyn has very little money, is possibly the father of Mulligan’s soon-to-be-aborted child, constantly lets other people down and is in turn let down by other people, and even receives an absurd beating by a mysterious stranger.

Joel and Ethan Coen’s film is a black comedy—too black.  Undeniably amusing, it is also rather specious.  As is well known by many, to deny the light is as much a lie as to deny the dark, and here the Coens deny the light.  All they care to offer us is pessimism and (usually so-so) music, which makes for an undistinguished film—or would if it weren’t for the reasonably well-written script.  For the Coens have penned an integrated story less contrived than that of their No Country for Old Men.  Good going, guys, but . . .

it sure isn’t perfect.

Other assets are here, too, and in truth Inside Llewyn Davis is a modest success.

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” Is No B.S.

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On April 13, 2014

In General, Movies

Standing Proud |Captain America: The Winter So...

Standing Proud |Captain America: The Winter Soldier Review (Photo credit: BagoGames)

The noise made over drones and the NSA may well be fatuous,* but Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) projects these things into the future to do its scrutinizing, if that’s what it is, of What Could Come About (beware).  In light of this and the powerful action, the pic is a no-b.s. concoction (though not without humor).  Highlights include a slick, smashingly fine auto chase and a tense bait-and-switch followed by gunfire within a government building.

Robert Redford is in the film, playing an intelligence director, a glorifier of security over freedom.  Subtly commanding, he is still a remarkable actor—unlike Chris Evans, who is just okay as Capt. America.  Scarlett Johansson, on the other hand, is inspired enough to make Natasha/Black Widow (who?) more or less interesting.  Winter Soldier has two film editors and two directors, which was perhaps requisite for its technical perfection.

*Or maybe it isn’t.

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I Won’t Take A Bullet For Stallone: “Bullet to the Head”

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On April 6, 2014

In General, Movies

Presumably the makers of the 2013 crime thriller Bullet to the Head hoped to fashion something as entertaining as 24—a TV series which is flawed, exciting, good.  Unfortunately, the movie they cranked out is flawed, exciting, bad, without any of the elements that immediately save 24.

Sylvester Stallone is an arrogant actor here and is miscast as a hired killer.  He and his fellow hit man do their snuffing out, but are set up by the villains who hired them; and the reason for the set up is as dumb as everything else in the film.  Why does the double crosser try to kill Stallone and his partner with a knife instead of a gun?  Later on, Stallone grudgingly teams up with an Asian-American cop (Sung Kang) to root out Adewale Akinnoye-Agbaje’s international thug (Stallone’s betrayer).  But the film has the chutzpah to make Akinnoye-Agbaje a complete idiot—not much of a match for the hit man and the cop.  Why, for example, does the thug allow a muscular baddie played by Jason Momoa to become a loose cannon?

Bullet is based on a graphic novel, which is often asking for trouble.  Yes, it is exciting . . . and raw . . . but it ain’t TV.  NOT EVEN THAT!

The Old Masterpiece, “Mutiny On The Bounty” (1935)

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On April 4, 2014

In General, Movies

Cropped screenshot of Charles Laughton from th...

Cropped screenshot of Charles Laughton from the trailer for the film Mutiny on the Bounty. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve never read Mutiny on the Bounty, but the ’35 film version, for all the sappy-silly Tahiti material, seems a well-made and even felt adaptation.

Captain Bligh is an expert seaman but also a mean fool, wanting only to impose his ruthless will.  Charles Laughton plays him with astonishing aplomb, frighteningly. . . Second in command Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable) simply refuses to have men at Bligh’s mercy any longer, uncondonable though some of the Bounty’s sailors find the mutiny.  Incontestable here is an urgent need for the liberalization of the English navy, with the navy itself seen as utterly honorable and necessary by the filmmakers.  It becomes almost palpable that the film is liberal—though certifiably separate from today’s liberalism—because it is conservative.  It wants what is best for a timeless institution.

A great deal goes on in Mutiny on the Bounty, which is two hours and ten minutes long.  Frank Lloyd directed with a fine sense of seafaring adventure and of grandeur.  It is, I think, a masterpiece.

 

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If It Must, It Must: “Night Must Fall,” From 1937

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On March 14, 2014

In Movies

Night Must Fall (1937 film)

Night Must Fall (1937 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In 1937, what I assume to be a suspenseful play by Emlyn Williams became a suspenseful motion picture.  I mean Night Must Fall, superbly directed for the screen by Richard Thorpe and featuring crisp and clever acting from Robert Montgomery, Dame May Whitty and Rosalind Russell. 

In it, an extroverted page boy (Montgomery) wins the heart of, and is hired to work for, a nasty old woman and pseudo-invalid (Dame Whitty) who is daily disappointed by the ministrations of her live-in niece (Russell).  The page boy is sexually attracted to the niece and she to him, except that a news report of a missing girl in this English vicinity induces the niece to suspect that the page boy is in reality a Jack the Ripper.  Of course this leaves her cold but also fascinates her.  In fact both characters are eccentrics, one of them creepy and the other, the niece, repressed.  The latter makes the claim, in effect, that the page boy has taken away her reason.

Night Must Fall is about a world of ordinary petty spite (the old woman’s) and ordinary vulnerabilities when it confronts a devilish phenomenon.  It has to do with when there arises a perversion greater than your own—greater, that is, than the old woman’s, but also greater than the niece’s temporary perversion when she loses her “reason.”  Moreover, it is about the mystery of human motives.  It is a thriller about terror, made by Thorpe with an eye for cinematics.

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