Movies Watched The Week of 3/1 - 3/7

Hello everybody.  We got a new post for y’all, the first post Oscar update.  And we got some good stuff lined up for ya.  If you don’t know, I got a concussion recently so excuse any rough(er than usual) writing from me as I’m still dealing with that.  I tried to keep it short, but the bottom movie this week got a lot from me, as it is a frustrating movie all around.  But, hey.  Good vibes.  Take a look at what we got here.  Should be fun. 

Chef (March 1st, 2015)

Director: Jon Favreau

Starring: Jon Favreau, John Leguizamo, Sofia Vergara, and Scarlett Johansson

Jon Favreau is an interesting director.  He's gone from little indies all the way up to the biggest of movies.  Hell, he's in part responsible for the cinematic takeover that Marvel has achieved, thanks to his work on Iron Man and Iron Man 2.  He's gone from those, to little flicks like Made, to family films like Elf and Zathura, to big bombs like Cowboys and Aliens (a movie I like, shut up).  He's had amazing success, but he's basically had no real voice coming through in the big budget stuff.  He's had a deft hand with the visuals and making it light/fun.  But unlike Nolan or Shane Black or James Gunn, they didn't feel like him or something he's too into.  And watching Chef, you can see what his feelings are on the subject.  Favreau stars as Carl, a big hot shot chef with all the talent in the world.  He’s got a cushy job at a high end restaurant, where the owner (a nice appearance by Dustin Hoffman) claims to let him do what he wants, but pulls on the leash whenever Carl shows signs of wanting to do new things.  This comes through when a hot shot food critic gives Carl a bad review, saying he once had promise but is now a lazy cook going through the motions for the money.  Carl doesn’t take it too well and is fired.  So he has to make a way for himself, going to a low rent food truck and making what he wants.  So essentially, Favreau made a little biopic about his career in film, but changed it to a cook.  It’s really hard to argue that this is not what he’s doing.  And it gives the movie that little edge, the personal touch with some real emotion going into it that’s been missing.  It doesn’t help that the movie has a low key charm, with a great cast having fun and Favreaus absolute joy in showing the art of cooking.  He just absolutely gives us a cinematic exercise in food pornography, just daring people to watch this on an empty stomach.  It’s not a world changer of a movie, but it is fun.  Now, it’s a little easy when it comes to the climax.  Everything works out in the end (literally everything).  But for fluff like this, that’s fine.  And it has a nice little relationship between Carl and his son, a reconciliation working through the narrative.  That in and of itself feels like Favreau saying he feels like he wasn’t there enough for his kids.  Again, this feels like a personal film and it helps make it work.  Fun, funny and enticing, this is a good time at the movies.  

Rating: 9/10

The Lone Ranger (March 2nd, 2015)
Director: Gore Verbinski
Starring: Armie Hammer, Johnny Depp, Tom Wilkinson, and William Fitchner

In a summer where people started to turn against blockbusters, this movie was the poster child of the big budget whipping boy.  In a year with Star Trek Into Darkness, World War Z, and Man of Steel, The Lone Ranger managed to come out on top of movie that everyone just fucking hated.  And it seemed like right out of the gate too.  Before it even came out in that hateful summer.  From a super serious trailer that promised all the grim dark origin explorations that people were growing less and less fond of, to a overblown scale and another seemingly irritating makeup performance by Johnny Depp, things looked grim.  It had a big hill to climb with those, in addition to being made by the guy who made 2 abysmal Pirates Of The Caribbean movies.  But in spite of all the vitriol and anti hype this movie had garnered, it isn’t the abysmal train wreck everyone claimed.  It’s not a good movie, by any stretch.  The middle is where this movie lies, a movie of absolute mediocrity.  Of all the problems the movie has, none is more harming than the awful framing device.  Having a ludicrously old Tonto telling the story to a young boy is just ridiculous, killing any potential momentum that the story could hope to maintain.  The rest of the movie could have been great, but this intercutting between this and the story is so misguided to be crippling from the get go.  But the rest of the movie doesn’t help.  For one, it is an origin story that feels like it’s embarrassed by it’s characters.  John Reid (a game Armie Hammer) is more of a bumbling ninny than a hero in training until he just becomes a hero.  Tonto is a blank void of annoying ticks in place of characteristics, not surprising due to being played by Johnny Depp.  In all fairness to him, this is the best of his bad performances.  Instead of being obviously and obnoxiously bad, he’s subtly bad.  He’s a blank for the most part, with brief moments of mugging for the camera.  Tonto is a typical crazy person in the movie way.  He’s not interesting, just there. There’s a lot of humor stemming from how goofy and campy the entire property is, making it kind of smug and making us feel like jerk offs for even watching it.   And the relationship between John and Tonto is really just so antagonistic to be ham fisted that they become friends at the end.  It’s such an ugly relationship at first.  Then there’s the plot, which the movie takes it’s damn time actually getting to.  It’s typical action western fare, with double crosses and greed the play of the day.  William Fichtner gives a good performance, but one that is completely not of this movie.  He belongs in something else entirely.  Which is another problem this movie has.  It is such a tonal nightmare, whiplashing from goofy comedy to super gritty/violent action flick to over the top cartoonish action to longing love story, it’s a headache.  And for an action movie of this size and budget, it has surprisingly little action aside from the beginning and end.  I will say that even though the beginning is a miserable slog with a bland action sequence, the movie picks up a bit at the halfway point and gets some momentum going (despite adding a new villain for no damn reason with no real character).  It picks up until a very enjoyable train sequence set to the old Lone Ranger theme, basically becoming an actual Lone Ranger story at the very end for 20 minutes.  There’s two apt comparisons I could make here.  John Carter and Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood.  John Carter in the big budget failure with too much cartoony CGI and no heart, and Robin Hood in the super serious reboot that isn’t interesting and isn’t really a story that fits with the property until the very end (literally the last minute for Robin Hood).  This is better than both of them, but only a little bit more than John Carter (a fuck ton better than Robin Hood).  What kills this to me is the lack of passion, an overwhelming feeling of antipathy.  Verbinski doesn’t really bring a spark to the movie for the most part, wasting Armie Hammer and allowing Depp to make another wacky character.  It’s a shame, but it’s what we got.  So while it is still the worst of those big budget blockbusters that summer, it isn’t cinematic cancer equivalent to Tusk.  

Rating: 6/10

Foxcatcher (March 3rd, 2015)
Director: Bennett Miller
Starring: Channing Tatum, Steve Carrell, Mark Ruffalo, and Anthony Michael Hall

Bennett Miller has a very specific tone.  He is a very deliberate film maker, making slow pace character pieces with an icy detachment to them.  It worked fine for Capote and hindered the ok Moneyball.  But it seems like filmmaker has met the perfect story to apply his icy sensibilities.  Based on the true story of the De Pont murder story in the 90s, Miller really bites into the story in his way.  I’ll just get the negatives out of the way quick.  The makeup appliances are pretty terrible.  It looks fake and doesn’t do the suspension of belief any favors.  Channing Tatum, ostensibly the main character, is sidelined a bit in the final stretch of the movie.  And while it doesn’t bother me, the very slow and deliberate pace doesn’t bother me, I can absolutely understand why people would be bothered by it.  It’s very trying, but that’s the point.  Now, onto the good.  The cast is superb.  The obvious highlight is Steve Carrell, completely as far away from a comedic performance as could be, bringing the creeping insanity out in Du Pont.  But he steals the thunder from Tatum and Ruffalo.  Tatum as Mark Schultz has never been better, a seething wound of a man who bristles at living in anyones shadow.  Desperate to prove he can be his own man, he fails at every turn, proving he needs others.  And Ruffalo proves yet again what a talent he is, making Dave Schultz a really good guy.  There’s not a bad bone in his body.  He’s honorable, filled with love for his family and an intelligence that pores out.  He truly is a good man.  A weaker movie could have made Dave a bit of a dick, excusing Marks shit heel behavior.  But it doesn’t, making Mark come off even worse for inadvertently putting Dave in De Ponts cross hairs.   The Miller pacing/tone work great here, because it brings out the creeping rot in the story, and in Mark and Du Pont.  The relationship between the two is very creepy, in an unobviously/subtextually homoerotic way.  The movie doesn’t spell it out, but the homosexual underpinings are there under the surface.  So much so that at a certain point, Mark starts acting like a rape victim.  A pretty good movie all around that elevates what could have been a run of the mill crime thriller.  Miller really did earn his Oscar Nomination.  It’ll be interesting to see what he does next.

Rating: 9/10

Dressed To Kill (March 4th, 2015)
Director: Brian DePalma
Starring: Angie Dickenson, Michael Caine, Nancy Allen, and Keith Gordon

Brian DePalma has an obvious love for Hitchcock.  And it’s obvious because he had been unofficially remaking the man and cribbing his style all throughout the 70’s/80s.  And this movie may be the most obvious Hitchcock influenced, and by influenced I mean straight up based on.  This is basically Psycho, but with all the weird sexual stuff the center of the movie and dialed up to 11.  From structure and plot to motivation, this is all his riff on Psycho.  And it’s a pretty solid flick, with the weird DePalma-isms making it a worthwhile watch.  It’s got his technical acumen, really great looking compositions and production design.  It’s a big movie, not subtle at all.  It opens with Angie Dickinson pretty much jerking it in the shower in a dream sequence.  It’s DePalma, one couldn’t expect any less.  But it all works as a heightened reworking of Psycho.  Now, it isn’t exactly perfect.  Some of the acting doesn’t gel to the DePalma style.  Dickenson mainly makes it a bit harder to connect, but when you got Caine, Allen, Arnie from Christine (Gordon), and Dennis Franz it’s fine.  The plot is a little jittery and 80s style chopped.  It goes from a slow burn to rushing immensely to the end.  But even that is ok, not great, until an ending scene where you have some of the surviving people in a circle explaining the plot to us because it goes by so quickly.  Now, if you can handle the DePalma style and want to see a new take on Psycho, this is a good little flick.  It’s no Blow Out or Scarface, but it’s a worthwhile little flick.

Rating: 8/10

Justice League: The New Frontier (March 7th, 2015)
Director: Dave Bullock
Starring: David Boreanz, Miguel Ferrer, Neil Patrick Harris, and Jeremy Sisto

This was a nice little change of pace within the DC Animated slate.  For one, the animation style is significantly different than the rest of the movie, taking the look from Darwyn Cooke’s graphic novel this is based on.  Another, being set in the 50s gives the movie a fresh look at everything.  There’s a sort of innocence to everything that has a creeping rot seeping in.  Some bad shit is on the edges, everything on the cusp of change.  But the heroes (aside from Batman of course) are all nice guys just trying to do the right thing.  And unlike the last one I watched (Crisis On Two Earths), the voice casting is really on point here.  The standouts for me of this great cast is Ferrer of the Martian Manhunter, my most underrated super hero.  But the surprise is Sisto, giving the best Batman performance outside of Kevin Conroy.  Now the plot is typical end of the world alien shit.  It’s a bit convoluted and big.  But the movie works on the micro level, the little moments between characters and what they’re going through.  It’s a much smaller scale movie for the most part compared to other Justice League movies, taking its time to get to the big finale.  It’s a gorgeous movie with a great style and a great tone, giving us a unique take on the world.  Gotta give it to them for shaking it up a bit.  It’s still an adult take, with some really hardcore violence showing up.  But for the most part, this is not like the newer crop of stuff.  Great stuff.

Rating: 9/10





Top Movies

1. Chef
2. Justice League: The New Frontier
3. Foxcatcher
4. Dressed To Kill
5. The Lone Ranger

- Tom Lorenzo