One nice thing about Public Enemies (there are more of them, but not enough) is that Johnny Depp palpably loves being a movie star and loves wearing wide-brim fedoras and long black coats and spats and firing tommy guns at G-men. And I ask you, friends: Who wouldn’t? It’s a happy confluence of actor and role, since Depp’s John Dillinger palpably loves being a gangster and hiding among the people, who regard him as a folk hero. (Without the threat of America’s Most Wanted, Twitter, or Gawker Stalker, the fugitive Dillinger travels the Midwest with relative nonchalance.) Depp also gets to woo a luscious Marion Cotillard (whose attempt at an American accent sinks somewhere in the mid-Atlantic) with a killer comeback — She: Boy, you’re in a hurry. He: If you were looking at what I’m looking at, you’d be in a hurry, too. So smooth. Yes, half his face is sometimes shadowed to suggest that Dillinger has a dark side, but Depp is so jaunty you could easily dub him “Sunny John.”
6/30/09
6/23/09
Posted 6/23/09 at 10:40 PM
Trans Fats
Although it’s endless and eardrum-buckling, the Hasbro-sanctioned toy-tie-in Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen will pack them in, because guys all over the world dream of manipulating those amazing parts. And that’s just Megan Fox — there are also those cool robots. Actually, the camera lingers more lovingly on the Fox than the ‘bots, which transform so cartoonishly fast that any pretense of reality is instantly vaporized. Much of the movie is computer-generated hash, weightless even with nonstop BOOMS and METAL GROANS and THUDS. Fox’s jugs, in contrast, have verisimilitude — and heft.
6/17/09
Posted 6/17/09 at 1:34 PM
Pop What You Preach!
You can read my brief but pointed review of Food, Inc. here, but there’s something I didn’t have room to say in the mag. Film Forum, one of New York’s (and the country’s) most vital exhibitors — good guys who show good movies that contribute to the social good — would have you and your kids watch Food, Inc. while munching on Orville Redenbacher popcorn. That’s baaad. That's the product made by ConAgra, one of the movie’s several super-villains, named after a guy who never existed and was designed to look like a nerdy Midwestern farmer turned small entrepreneur. Alas, as the movie shows, no corn product is untainted by misplaced government subsidies, but switching to Newman’s Own (organic) would make sense on so many levels. And that goes for the rest of you indie exhibitors!
UPDATE: A Film Forum rep has responded that the theater will look into the matter and consider its options. Excellent. Drop them a line if you are so inclined. Among its other virtues, Food, Inc. has inspired me to become a film critic/popcorn activist. But I would be remiss if I did not admit to my hypocrisy in one regard: I would be mighty upset if they stopped selling my beloved diet cola, however vile, unhealthful, and politically tainted. So let's not take this too far...
6/ 5/09
Posted 6/ 5/09 at 12:18 PM
Obit
David Carradine: Ode to an Existential Hero
When we talk about an actor being “hip,” it’s often subjective: He or she embodies what we’re not but on some level long to be. To me, David Carradine was the apogee of hipness: not my favorite actor, not even in the top 50, but my existential hero, and a man who looked like he got laid a lot — a sort of B-movie Jack Nicholson. His vaguely Asian physiognomy made him suited to kung-fu and Zen masters, and his acting had that same alert detachment. You rarely got the sense that his roles cost him emotionally: Unlike his brother, Keith, who has been known to take risks, David had an inviolable sphere of privacy. But he never condescended to his material, even when it was risible, and his amusement was contagious. Like his dad, John, he made his mark in a socially conscious epic (The Grapes of Wrath for the father, Bound for Glory for the son), then settled contentedly into B and C genre pictures. (He never dropped to the D level of his dad, who ended up making scores of movies like Astro Zombies, but he might not have minded that so much: His old man worked until the end, reportedly with no complaints.) David Carradine didn’t seem given to advance planning, career calculation, control. He was the anti–Tom Cruise.
4/30/09
Posted 4/30/09 at 4:52 PM
A Flabby Wolverine, and an Empty Limits of Control
X-Men Origins: Wolverine stars a buff but much too nice Hugh Jackman as the talon-sprouting future X-Man and Liev Schreiber — preening entertainingly — as his evil, fanged half-brother. The first half-hour moves like a wolf out of hell and makes you think the dire advance word — based on millions watching the leaked work print — was nuts. It’s witty and well staged (if you don’t mind that every time someone so much as breaks into a run it turns into CGI): What do those fanboys want? Then the action shifts to Canada and the bloat creeps in: The twists and double-crosses come too fast to absorb, and Jackman and Schreiber — now at war — impale each other and regenerate so many times that you can’t wait for someone, anyone, actually to die. A little catharsis, please! But few of the main characters bite it for good because, you know, there’s a Marvel franchise to maintain. Wolverine is the lucky one because he ends the picture with amnesia.
4/27/09
Posted 4/27/09 at 1:47 PM
Dick Cheney: Scarier than Lon Chaney?
I don't have a movie column in the magazine this week but will post here soon on Wolverine, Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control, and a couple of Tribeca Film Fest screenings. Of what I've seen at Tribeca, I recommend the docs Racing Dreams* and Croxley and the Brit satire In the Loop--an absolutely divine dramatization of what has come to be known as the "Downing Street memo." You want to know how intel is "fixed around policy" rather than vice versa? Here it is--paced like a Marx Brothers movie with more f-words than the collected works of David Mamet. Dick Cheney isn't in it, but one of his henchmen is played by David Rasche--I assume he's meant to be David Addington. And speaking of Cheney, here are some thoughts on his place in the pantheon of our culture's supervillains. The list is evolving: By all means e-mail your suggestions to my address at the right.
*CORRECTION: Whoopsie. This was corrected... I originally wrote Racecar Dreams (the credits when I saw it were incomplete) and the title matters since I'm not sure there's a distributor yet. There should be! Actually, I like my Racecar Dreams better even though "racecar" might not officially be a word. It's about kids who are great junior drivers and there's something kid-like about the word "racecar" that is more evocative than "racing." On the other hand, NASCAR probably would think "racecar" is a wussy word.
4/16/09
Posted 4/16/09 at 9:50 AM
A Downey Softener
Saw The Soloist last night (I’ll reserve judgment on the movie for now), and it’s easier to see why Robert Downey Jr. bristled when asked what his character in Tropic Thunder would say about Jamie Foxx’s performance as the brilliant, schizophrenic cellist Nathaniel Ayers — easier to see and easier to excuse.
4/14/09
Posted 4/14/09 at 5:06 PM
The Full Douchiness
I should learn not to be disappointed by stars, the brightest and kindest of whom are still unstable and apt to be pissy when they’re not given due deference, but Robert Downey Jr. has thrown me for a loop. Vulture reprints this exchange from Movieline (welcome back, Stu!) in reference to the notorious “Full Retard” speech from Tropic Thunder:
4/13/09
Posted 4/13/09 at 4:49 PM
Notes on The Human Condition
That headline seems more ambitious than is warranted … Masaki Kobayashi’s ten-hour, six-part epic, The Human Condition (three features with breaks for intermission), has another few days at the Film Forum (it runs through April 16), and you can still commit to the long haul. Yes, it’s worth it, but more for the experience — for the commitment itself — than because Kobayashi’s humanism will rock your world. Chances are if you’re there in the first place you know that occupying foreign lands and abusing the locals is wrong; that killing people you can barely see for reasons you probably don’t agree with is not a design for living; and that struggling to survive while fellow soldiers, women, and children perish around you from starvation will destroy your capacity for empathy and take the ultimate toll on your humanity.
4/12/09
Posted 4/12/09 at 12:31 PM
‘Why Did You Stop???’ Observe and Report and Denounce
Well, it turns out that the gun-fetish aspect of Observe and Report hasn’t generated nearly as much debate as the so-called date-rape scene. All involved, we’ve read, should be ashamed, and anyone who endorses the film should recalibrate his or her (but presumably his) moral compass.
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