By Jason Apuzzo. The first trailer for the Clint Eastwood-Leonardo DiCaprio J. Edgar was released yesterday, and I wanted to say a few words about it.
Regular LFM readers know that back in July I did an in-depth script review of J. Edgar, and for the time being I’d rather not recapitulate what was said then in terms of the film’s basic storyline and themes; suffice it to say that if you read this site routinely, you already know in great detail what J. Edgar is going to be about. What I’d like to comment on instead, because for the first time in the trailer we’re get an extended look at it, is DiCaprio’s performance as Hoover. And based on what I’m seeing in the trailer, I’m not terribly impressed.
DiCaprio as Hoover.
Here is how I evaluate DiCaprio: over the years he’s evolved into a stylish leading man, best suited to films like Catch Me If You Can, The Aviator or even Inception (a film I otherwise disliked) in which he can trade off his smooth good looks and impish disposition to nice effect. Truth be told, DiCaprio at this point is more of a European, Alain Delon-type lothario than a gritty, James Cagney-style brawler, which is really what the J. Edgar Hoover story needs. DiCaprio temperamentally belongs in sophisticated, Transatlantic fare like Delon’s Once a Thief (1965) or The Leopard (1963), rather than in a big, sprawling, boisterous biopic about America’s top cop.
In the J. Edgar trailer, DiCaprio is still coming across to me as too youthful and soft to carry a picture like this. This film needed someone like a Jack Nicholson (think Hoffa), a young Robert De Niro (a la Raging Bull) or even a younger Clint Eastwood himself (circa Heartbreak Ridge) to pull off a character of this scale – to make the character feel truly grand, fearsome, just and tragic. As things stand, this is looking a little bit like high school drama hour.
By David Ross. In Catcher in the Rye, Holden goes down to Greenwich Village and hears Ernie the piano player and says:
“You could hardly check your coat, it was so crowded. It was pretty quiet, though, because Ernie was playing the piano. It was supposed to be something holy, for God’s sake, when he sat down at the piano. Nobody’s that good. About three couples, besides me, were waiting for tables, and they were all shoving and standing on tiptoes to get a look at old Ernie while he played. He had a big damn mirror in front of the piano, with this big spotlight on him, so that everybody could watch his face while he played. You couldn’t see his fingers while he played – just his big old face. Big deal. I’m not too sure what the name of the song was that he was playing when I came in, but whatever it was, he was really stinking it up. He was putting all these dumb, show-offy ripples in the high notes, and a lot of other very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass. You should’ve heard the crowd, though, when he was finished. You would’ve puked. They went mad. [ …] In a funny way, though, I felt sort of sorry for him when he was finished. I don’t even think he knows any more when he’s playing right or not. It isn’t all his fault. I partly blame all those dopes that clap their heads off – they’d foul up anybody.”
Whenever I hear Oscar Peterson, this passage goes off like a firecracker in my head. I’m sure this is terribly unfair, but there it is.
Peterson, in any case, is indeed “that good.” He’s preposterously good, impossibly good, infinitely over-the-top in every way relating to the intersection of the piano and human fingers. This heated blues romp – an encyclopedia of forms and variations and cute little subversions thereof – is typical. If you happen to play the piano, be advised that whatever little self-regard you’ve developed over the years will be completely crushed. This is for non-players only.
By Joe Bendel. Prepare to watch the themes and motifs of the Marvel superhero universe get put through a Hong Kong action blender. (And as the Marvel editors used to say in the 1980’s: ‘nuff said.) Produced before his recent epic Shaolinas well as the blockbuster Captain America (that it parallels in unlikely ways), Benny Chan’s clobbering City Under Siege (trailer here), screens this Saturday as part of the San Francisco Film Society’s Hong Kong Cinema series.
In a secret bunker in Malaysia, the Imperial Japanese military was perfecting their super-soldier formula. The results were not pretty to look at, but undeniably effective. Fortunately, an Allied bombing raid halted the program in its tracks. In more or less present day, Twin-Dagger Sunny is a terrible circus performer, stuck playing the sad clown because nobody trusts him throwing knives. A bit Gumpish, Sunny is forced to help some of his less savory circus colleagues looking to plunder gold from the secret Japanese bunker. Of course, the knuckleheads accidentally let loose a major dose of the mutant soldier formula.
Yet, for reasons never coherently explained, the chemical compounds do not affect Sunny in the same manner as the others. Washing up on the Hong Kong shore (through a set of circumstances borrowing heavily from Dracula), Twin-Dagger finds himself in the Klump fat suit, but once he dries out he resumes his normal skin-and-bones body weight. Somewhat relieved, he happily stumbles across Angel Chan, the gorgeous newscaster who captures his improvised super-heroics on film.
Jingchu Zhang in "City Under Siege."
Suffering from the criminal mayhem of Sunny’s freaky-looking fellow mutants, Hong Kong needs a hero. Seizing the opportunity, Chan becomes his agent, putting the affable Sunny on a full media tour (Steve Rogers, can you relate?). They also have the dubious protection of permanently engaged Men-in-Black, Sun “Old Man” Hao and Cheng “Tai” Xiuhua, who are using him as bait to draw in the marauding mutants. Right, good plan.
It is important to understand Aaron Kwok is a huge pop star in Hong Kong, because his underwhelming screen presence does not help Siege anymore than it did Christina Yao’s otherwise striking Empire of Silver. Still, Siege’s all-star ensemble and Benny Chan’s razzle dazzle largely compensate for the weak protagonist.
Frankly, martial arts up-and-comer Wu Jing almost usurps Kwok’s Twin-Dagger, capably carrying the film as Agent “Old Man,” while the charismatic Jingchu Zhang holds her own kicking butt as his intended. Their weaponized acupuncture is also a cool twist, neatly choreographed by action directors Ma Yuk-sing and Li Chung-chi. With Shu Qi looking radiant enough to convincingly inspire the monstrous chief mutant’s beauty-and-the-beast affections and enough pyrotechnics to level a mid-sized city, Siege pretty much hits all the bases.
Sure, Siege can be a touch melodramatic and over-the-top. It is a HK genre film. Viewers have to check their film snobbery at the door and get down with the chaos. There is definitely a lot of the latter, rendered with appropriate adrenaline – and the film also suggests the action pairing of Wu Jing and Jingchu Zhang is worth repeating in future films. Highly entertaining for fanboys, Siege screens Saturday afternoon (9/24) and Sunday evening (9/25) at the New Peoples Cinema as part of SFFS’s Hong Kong Cinema showcase.
•
From "Echoes of the Rainbow."
Fifty years ago, there were still quiet family neighborhoods in Hong Kong, where everyone knew everyone’s business. Writer-director Alex Law pays tribute to this innocent world of his youth gone by in the unabashedly sentimental Echoes of the Rainbow, Hong Kong’s recent official submission for best foreign language Oscar consideration, which screens during the San Francisco Film Society’s Hong Kong Cinema showcase.
Shot on-location around historic Wing Lee Street, Rainbow saved that last remnant of “old” (meaning 1960’s era) Hong Kong from redevelopment after his partly autobiographical feature won the 2010 Berlin Film Festival’s Crystal Bear in the children’s division. Run down but respectable, it is a neighborhood where a cobbler’s family might live. Times are difficult, but the Law Family sacrifices for the sake of older brother Desmond’s education. A star in the classroom and on the track field, all their hopes rest in him. Continue reading Hong Kong Cinema Triple-Header @ The San Francisco Film Society: City Under Siege, Echoes of the Rainbow, Punished
By Joe Bendel. “Dueling Banjos” must be expensive music to license. It’s about the only thing missing from the formerly indie Rod Lurie’s Red State-phobic remake of Sam Peckinpah’s career-defining film, Straw Dogs. Transferred from the English countryside to the Deep South, the once edgy examination of violent human nature is now a standard issue killer hillbilly movie, which opens today nationwide.
The prodigal television ingénue Amy Sumner tells her screenwriter husband David her hometown of Blackwater, Mississippi is properly pronounced “Backwater.” There you have the film’s flash of wit. It also tells viewers what to expect of the locals. Everyone watched her cancelled show, including her former high school beau Charlie Venner, whom her husband hires to fix their hurricane damaged barn. In retrospect, this is a bad idea.
Venner, his brother Darryl, his other brother Darryl, and their wacky next door neighbor, the unmistakably psychotic Norm, do not exactly hustle on the job, taking plenty of breaks to leer at her and deride his manhood, such as it is. Things quickly escalate when one of the good old boys strings up the family cat in their closet. Yet Sumner will not confront them directly, preferring to confuse them with his cryptic beating around the bush. Eventually though, things get way out of hand, forcing Sumner to defend home, hearth, and Jeremy Niles, a developmentally disabled grown man with an implied history of inappropriate behavior – whom the gruesome foursome and their former football coach, Tom Heddon, are out to lynch.
Strangely, Lurie’s adaptation hardly ever deviates from the basic structure of Peckinpah’s original, yet he clearly has no clue what made the original so effective. For one thing, the 1971 film pulled a cultural reverse, unleashing a violent maelstrom against the picturesque backdrop of Cornwall, while casting a Yank as the pacifist victim. However, a city slicker terrorized by a pack of southern hicks is a real dog-bites-man story in Hollywood.
As a nebbish mathematician, the responses of Dustin Hoffman’s Sumner also made more sense in the context of Peckinpah’s film. It is not hard to imagine that he might have been bullied before, and was reverting to old survival strategies in his attempts to befriend his antagonists. In contrast, James Marsden’s snobby, Jag-driving, outspokenly atheistic screenwriter never seemed to have a bad day in his life before he got to Blackwater. Frankly, Venner might be a knuckle-dragging neanderthal, but he has a point when he tells Sumner it was rude to walk out during the pastor’s sermon. Of course, in real life he should not be brutalized for such boorishness, but in a sleazy exploitation film (which is really what the new Straw is) it is a close call. Continue reading Exploiting Peckinpah: LFM Reviews The Straw Dogs Remake
By David Ross. I offered a little paean to the independent film here, but what would such a paean to the contemporary Hollywood comedy look like? The Hollywood comedy is, if not dead, at least writhing on the floor and gasping for breath and rapidly turning blue. Netflix’s selection of new comedies is a flotilla of cliché-ridden, two-starred dreck, of which a film like You Again (2010) is representative. Kristen Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Sigourney Weaver head a mildly promising cast, but the film is a mire of clichés. Here’s the plot in Netflix-speak:
History – make that high school – may repeat itself when Marni (Kristen Bell) learns that Joanna (Odette Yustman), the mean girl from her past, is set to be her sister-in-law. Before the wedding bells toll, Marni must show her brother that a tiger doesn’t change its stripes. On Marni’s side is her mother (Jamie Lee Curtis), while Joanna’s backed by her wealthy aunt (Sigourney Weaver).
Every character is a deliberate incarnation of cliché: the nerd-turned-LA-public relations-whiz-who’s-still-a-nerd-at-heart, the head cheerleader who sadistically delights in tormenting her social inferiors, the salacious granny who says things like “If you don’t go for him I will” (this an attempt to reverse the eighteenth-century cliché of Mrs. Grundy, never mind that this cliché was killed off decades ago, possibly by Auntie Mame), the eye-rolling, wise-ass younger brother whose sarcastic sallies are affectionately disregarded. And of course the film ends with psychotherapeutic reconciliations and teary hugs. Comedy depends on surprise and sudden anarchic subversion. Cliché is anathema to surprise and the reverse of subversive. Thus a film like You Again is, by definition, dead on arrival.
I’m interested in You Again only as an example of the countless comedies that go quietly to the doom of bored trans-Atlanticists who watch thirty minutes and decide to snooze or fiddle with their iPhones. Movies like this don’t even bother to resist their fate; they may even seek it on the principle that formulaic death-in-life is less culpable than risk.
Genuinely funny films like David O. Russell’s Flirting with Disaster (1996), the Coen brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty (2003), Borat (2006), and Greg Mottola’s Superbad (2007) are exceptions that prove the rule. Ben Stiller in Flirting with Disaster reminds us of Ben Stiller in Zoolander, Dodgeball, Envy (don’t even remember this stinker, do you?), Starsky and Hutch, Night at the Museum (1 & 2!), The Marc Pease Experience, and so forth. Jonah Hill in Superbad reminds us of Jonah Hill in calibrated conventionalities like Knocked Up, Saving Sarah Marshall, and Get him to the Greek. Rowan Atkinson in Black Adder – perhaps the funniest turn in all of contemporary comedy – reminds us of Rowan Atkinson in The Lion King, Johnny English, and Mr. Bean’s Holiday.
In the last twenty or thirty years, Hollywood has spent billions of dollars on comedies that have produced a few sniggers among thirteen-year-olds, but left this rest of us with a sense of having been gypped and maybe even insulted. It has also serially wasted the talents of generations of not untalented comedians. To those mentioned above, we can add countless others, beginning with Eddie Murphy, a legitimate comic genius (v. Delirious) reduced to whooping it up with barnyard animals. How does this happen?
A comprehensive explanation probably has a few components. There is of course the quest to hedge one’s bets and play it safe, which is part of the innate economics of the modern film industry, in which star vehicles begin $10 or $20 million in the salary hole. There is also the coarsening of the film audience along with the rest of the culture. Verbal high-wire acts like Ball of Fire and His Girl Friday assume audiences conditioned by the mordant witticisms of Mencken and the bright sophistication of Broadway show tunes and the lively bloodsport of cities with numerous daily newspapers. Audiences reared on video games and public school political correctness tend to go glassy-eyed while trying to follow a baseline rally of ironic badinage. Here’s a test: show a young person “Duck Amuck,” the most manic and zanily postmodern of the Loony Tunes. I bet they don’t laugh. Continue reading Whither Comedy?
By Jason Apuzzo. • If you needed any more evidence that the 80s are back in a big way, word comes this week that Top Gun is being retrofit into 3D and should hit theaters in 2012. This is big news because so far as I’m aware it represents the first time a ‘library’ film title not made by James Cameron (Titanic) or George Lucas (the Star Wars saga) is being converted into 3D for theatrical release. If Top Gun 3D performs well, expect more such conversions down the line and a lot of classic film titles coming back to your local theaters – a very welcome development, in my opinion. It’s certainly better than paying $15 to watch a stereoscopic version of Green Lantern.
But lets talk Maverick. Regular LFM readers know how highly I think of Top Gun, a signature film from my youth – not to mention a watershed moment in my relationship with aviator sunglasses. Why did people of my generation love that film so much? Was it the appeal of being a hot-shot jet pilot? Was it the beach volleyball? The Kawasakis? The girls? Sunsets in San Diego? Maybe it was Iceman’s sweet flat-top haircut. Or Tom Skerritt chewing out Tom Cruise, slyly motiving him by implying he wasn’t as committed as his father. Maybe it was Cruise’s great line about flying “inverted,” or the angry bald guy in the flight-ops center barking, “Damnit, Maverick!” every five minutes.
Whatever it was, Top Gun was the movie from the 80s that romanticized American military life – and did so without having to demonize any particular enemy nation. It was a film that hit the sweet spot, made a dull teenage summer exciting, and incidentally launched Tom Cruise’s career. How good was Top Gun? I personally have a friend whom I strongly suspect was pulled into a career in Naval aviation – not to mention beach volleyball – at least in part due to this film. And who could blame him? Top Gun paints an appealing, glamorous picture of serving your country. I’ll definitely be first in line when Top Gun 3D arrives next year. [Btw, whatever happened to Berlin?]
HUNTER KILLER, based on the book “Firing Point,” follows an untested submarine captain who must work with a Navy SEAL team to rescue the Russian president, who has been taken prisoner during a military coup, in an effort to stop a rogue Russian General from igniting World War III.
There seem to be a lot of ‘rogue Russian generals’ in the movies these days, all trying to re-ignite the Cold War. Wasn’t there one in X-Men: First Class? And Salt? If Putin’s the Alpha Dog he pretends to be, he really should put the kabosh on these people. In any case, even without a director or star, Hunter Killer is apparently hot enough to have a release date of Dec. 21st, 2012.
• Even though it doesn’t open until Dec. 9th, a major marketing push is being made for the new adaptation of John Le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I’m not a Le Carré fan (as for espionage novels, I’m more of an Eric Ambler man), but a dark, cerebral little Cold War spy thriller? With a superb British cast? After a summer of idiotic, deafening comic book movies, that’s sounding quite appealing. Besides, now that Gary Oldman is more or less done taking checks for Harry Potter and the Batman films, perhaps he can return to actual acting. Read about Tinker here, see new posters for the film (here and here) and a new featurette; John Le Carré will be making a cameo in the film; the film also has three new trailers (here, here and here), and here’s a clip from the film.
• Another project I’m excited about is something called Red Star that was picked up this summer by Warner Brothers for producer Neil Moritz (Battle: Los Angeles). The project is based on a comic series by Christian Gossett, and according to THR the story is “set in an alternate USSR where futuristic technology and magical elements co-exist. The main character is a soldier in the Red Fleet and his wife, who become keys to defeating a former brutal ruler and his minions.”
This would certainly have to be an alternate USSR, if ‘futuristic technology’ is involved. I still remember driving in a Russian Lada sedan on a trip to Moscow as a teenager, and my spine still hasn’t recovered. In any case, Timur Bekmambetov was previously attached to this project when it was at Universal – we’ll see if he stays with it at Warners …
• Some other promising new projects on the horizon include a $100 million Korean war-era epic called 1950, to be directed by Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious). The story follows a journalist who travels across the Korean peninsula with a platoon of Marines in the midst of a mass, Christmas Eve evacuation of 200,000 South Koreans escaping the oncoming Chinese communist and North Korean armies. Also: a new anti-communist drama called Closer to the Moon is being made starring Game of Thrones’ Harry Lloyd; the Cold War sci-fi classic Colossus: The Forbin Project is getting a remake … but the best news by far is that we may get a Danger Girl movie starring Milla Jovovich, Sofia Vergara and Kate Beckinsale! Do I believe these rumors? I’m not sure I do, but I can’t begin to describe what a great idea this would be. If you’re not familiar with Danger Girl, it’s a comic book series about a trio of impossibly curvaceous female spies sent on missions to retrieve mystic relics also sought after by a powerful international crime syndicate. Think Charlie’s Angels by way of Indiana Jones and James Bond. The stories are a lot of fun, inventive, playfully sexy, and it’s easy to imagine something like this working much better than even Angelina Jolie’s Tomb Raider films did. And since Sofia Vergara’s name is being thrown around, here’s hoping they do it in 3D.
Publicity still for the original "The Man From U.N.C.L.E."
• Speaking of Tom Cruise, Mission-Impossible: Ghost Protocol is rattling its way down the tracks. The film is now set to debut on Dec. 21st, there is a new poster out, along with new promo images (see here and here), and producer J.J. Abrams has been talking up the film’s stunts and the scale of the film in IMAX. I think MI4 actually had the best trailer of the summer, and the film opens with no less than the destruction of Red Square – not a bad way to grab your attention. I’m looking forward to this one, although this series hasn’t always worked before …
“You could hardly check your coat, it was so crowded. It was pretty quiet, though, because Ernie was playing the piano. It was supposed to be something holy, for God’s sake, when he sat down at the piano. Nobody’s that good. About three couples, besides me, were waiting for tables, and they were all shoving and standing on tiptoes to get a look at old Ernie while he played. He had a big damn mirror in front of the piano, with this big spotlight on him, so that everybody could watch his face while he played. You couldn’t see his fingers while he played – just his big old face. Big deal. I’m not too sure what the name of the song was that he was playing when I came in, but whatever it was, he was really stinking it up. He was putting all these dumb, show-offy ripples in the high notes, and a lot of other very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass. You should’ve heard the crowd, though, when he was finished. You would’ve puked. They went mad. [
…] In a funny way, though, I felt sort of sorry for him when he was finished. I don’t even think he knows any more when he’s playing right or not. It isn’t all his fault. I partly blame all those dopes that clap their heads off – they’d foul up anybody.”
