With these first three reviews though I give you my insights on quality films that are in theaters right now. These are films that can very easily appeal to both sides of the spectrum so if you haven't seen them and are deciding on whether or not you should, here's my input.
Silver Linings Playbook
I went into this film with very high expectations from get-go with all the buzz surrounding it since it premiered at the Toronto film festival back in September. Of course I was interested in the film back early in the year when I read about the pedigree of actors working on the film (Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, etc) and wanted to see if David O. Russell had the capabilities of pulling out another solid film (Three Kings, The Fighter, and I Heart Huckabees). Even though David O. Russell is a royal prick, he managed to put together another pretty damn good movie.
I guess I should probably actually talk about what the movie is about since it isn't necessarily clear from the few commercials you have caught on TV, and I'm writing a movie review for it and I think that's what other people do...
Synopsis
Bradley Cooper plays a nutcase. At the beginning of the film he is released into the custody of his parents from a mental hospital after serving an 8 month stint for beating up a man he found his wife making it nasty with in the shower. The emotionally unstable Bradley Cooper refuses to take his medication because it makes him look "bloated" and he is determined to win his wife back. Unfortunately his wife has issued a restraining order and is absolutely terrified with him, which he just can't get through his bi-polar brain.Bradley Cooper's father, played beautifully by Robert DeNiro, is a part time bookmaker who can't bet against his precious hometown Philadelphia Eagles. He too has problems with anger but has managed to eek by without having to spend time in a looney bin. His sweet loving mother played by the ever so sweet Jacki Weaver, seems to just be a nice lady who puts up with everyone's shit.
At a dinner Bradley Cooper is seemingly set up by his friend, with the recently widowed and undeniably gorgeous Jennifer Lawrence. Bradley Cooper has no filter and continually brings up J-Law's dead husband while she has the thick skin to call him on all his shit. Two broken souls in the same place at the same time: let's see where this goes.
Jennifer Lawrence says she can try and help Bradley Cooper get back with his restraining order wife only if he competes with her in a big Philadelphia dance competition. Not passing up on the opportunity to hopefully reunite with Ms. Restraining Order, he decides it's worth the hardships of having to train with yoga pants wearing Jennifer Lawrence every day... What a tough break.... Must've been really hard for him to decide...
And that's where I'll leave it because I don't like to play spoiler and ruin the ends of movies for people especially for one like this. The film is sold as a love story, but it's also about finding yourself, coming to terms with who you are and accepting that. Both B-Coop and J-Law have had a tough go of it and they both manage to find themselves which leads you to a great climax at the end of the film.
- The Negative -
(I chose to go with the negative first because Ledyard Class Pessimist 2007 represent)The technical aspects of the film are a bit sloppy. Once again I felt like David O. Russell either rushed the post production or hired assholes to put it together because the cinematography isn't anything special, the editing is poor, and the sound mixers and editors should find a new profession. The screen time is bit lengthy and the film gets laggy at points. They should've found a better way to transition between scenes instead of using these weird coverage shots. After the big climax at the end they want the great moment to sink in so they used these cheesy transition coverage shots where the camera zooms in on shit and it just doesn't work. They have no place being in the film and they could've easily found better transition shots. The film also has lots of cheap plot devices and cheesy lines that are meant to fuel the climax.
+ The Positive +
Even with all those negative thoughts on the film doesn't really end up mattering when it's all said and done once those last 10 minutes of the movie finally get there. All the muddled plot, and poor production aside, Silver Linings is a film with a great emotional payoff, that leaves you walking out of the theater with a smile, while feeling warm and gooey on the inside. It's an unconventional love story but you really root for them and you're satisfied to the point where all that technical stuff becomes an after thought.What really makes that emotional payoff possible is the strong performances by the cast. It's that great ensemble performance that makes the whole story possible. David O. Russell definitely knows how to get his actors to act so I commend him on that.
All those technical issues I bitched about only really crept back into my mind because I was on such an emotional high when I exited the film that I took a left and walked all the way back to my apartment where I noticed my car was missing from my spot and realized that I drove to the theater.... So I probably got a little over analytical since I had the whole 10 minute walk back to the theater to keep thinking about the movie.
Look for some nominations from this film this awards season. Especially from DeNiro and Lawrence who don't have too stiff of competition this season. Bradley Cooper is also a contender for a best actor nomination but that field is stacked this year with already established big names who've either won or been nominated. He has a good chance of getting snubbed. If the film itself gets nominated for best picture O. Russell will probably find another best director nomination. I hope it doesn't get nominated for any other technical aspect of film because that is the only real thing holding the film back. I felt very much the same way about The Fighter in that regard.
If you can't handle heavy dramatic issues for a couple of hours that lead to a huge emotional pay off then this is not the movie for you. The movie I can most compare it to is last years 50/50, a film that I actually caught the ending of today on television oddly enough. That film is another one with heavy dramatic issues, with witty dialogue laced throughout, and a great emotional payoff. If you've seen 50/50 and liked that film then you would definitely like Silver Linings. If you like not-so-simple minded love stories that aren't written by Nicholas Sparks then this could also be a great movie for you. I myself have always really enjoyed love stories but the problem is they are rarely told in creative ways. This film definitely breaks the mold on romance but still leaves you rooting just as hard as any other love story and I think that makes it a pretty special movie.
I give it an 8 out of 10.
Lincoln
It's Spielberg and it's a movie about Abraham Lincoln... If I wrote a negative review about this movie I would be seen as a heretic and would probably get sentenced to be stoned publicly. The truth is there really anything bad to say about it. That being said there isn't anything in this film that makes it a great piece of modern cinema. It's great story telling, not grand story telling.
Synopsis
Instead of focusing on Lincoln's whole life it focuses on the time just after he was reelected to a second term and was working hard to pass the 13th Amendment which would free slaves and bring the Civil War to a close. That's really all I need to describe the film.
- Negative -
The film is kind of boring. While the subject matter is extremely interesting, we have stale, pallet-less sets, with simple stagnant shots. The camera movement is slow and subtle throughout, between the panning side to side in the courtroom, to the ever so slow zoom in on Lincoln, any time he started saying anything moderately inspirational (which was like fucking every time he spoke apparently).Side note: I wish there was a scene in the movie where Lincoln described a bowel movement and the camera slowly zoomed in on him as everyone eagerly listened in the room. That would've been amazing.
The film opens on a gruesome scene on the battle field of men fighting the mud and then you only see the battlefield once more in the film when Lincoln rides a horse through the battle field to talk to Ulysses S. Grant. That's pretty much it for excitement.
+ Positive +
Daniel Day Lewis is terrific as Lincoln. Despite my reservations on seeing the film because every fucking trailer ended with the cheesy line "Shall we stop this bleeding" he managed to not over-act it and put a great tone to the character. We got to see the sensitive, hard, cold, powerful and funny sides of Lincoln and Daniel Day put on another amazing performance. The rest of the cast is pretty solid as well. Between Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, and James Spader we could see another few nominations. I like James Spader a lot more in this film then I do TLJ but they will probably choose him over Spader because they are dumb.The other big positive is that they chose a specific period of time of his life to focus on. All encompassing biopic films don't tend to work as well as the ones that focus finite periods of time. If they did a full biopic film it would be far less effective to the audience and not necessarily give you the emotional feeling you should have when leaving a movie like that. I walked out of the theater feeling proud to be an American, and even got a little teary eyed at a few moments during some of his speeches. If the film just used small tidbits of those moments it wouldn't have been nearly as effective. Also it's an interesting look into the 13th amendment and how hard they had to work to get it passed. When looking back in history class in middle school we probably barely glossed over a paragraph explaining the difficulties of getting it passed so if we aren't history buffs we probably didn't know the whole store behind it.
The film isn't perfect by any means but if you can handle a lot of bland colors for 2 and a half hours at the price of maybe learning something about our nations history, it's well worth your buck. Either way it's probably the most historically accurate film about Abraham Lincoln that hit theaters this year unless you really thought he was a Vampire Hunter.
I give it a 7.5 out of 10.
Skyfall
I remember back in the summer of 2010 when they were really pushing for this movie to be made. I was at my internship between my junior and senior year of college reading up all I could on the project instead of reading scripts like I was supposed to one day. I was pretty upset because they already attached Mendes and Bardem to the project but MGM just didn't have the money to fund it even though it was going to be a sure fire success. MGM almost killed the Hobbit films as well during this time while they were on the precipice of bankruptcy.
Luckily they found their feet, and in time to keep the big names attached to Skyfall, the 23rd film in the 50 year old film franchise. To this point it's performing the best out of any Bond films in history and for good reason.
Synopsis
Bond gets shot and people think he's dead at the beginning. Turns out he's not and he decides to come back and help M find the guy who blows up part of MI6. Blah blah blah.... It's a James Bond movie. You don't need a synopsis.
- Negative -
I read an early interview with Sam Mendes who talked about how the film is heavily influenced by The Dark Knight. Not just in the way it looks, but in the story as well. I didn't think too much into it until I saw the movie and it was literally the exact same story at points. I guess it's not necessarily a bad thing to copy The Dark Knight and I still think it's really good, but I was definitely thinking about it the whole time during the movie kind of took me out of it a little.I guess the only other negative thing is that it's a movie that resides in the shadows of the superior Casino Royale. The hardest problem for this new Daniel Craig era of Bond movies is going to be holding up to the standard set by the first installment, Casino Royale. It's a nearly perfect film, and many people consider it to be the finest Bond film out of all the 23. I happen to agree with those people. I think it was the first film to really delve into James Bond and actually presented the first layered Bond. The old Bond was mostly portrayed as a cold, flat character with predictable emotions, the new Bond has complex emotions that lead to clearer motivations.
With a better Bond comes a better Bond girl, which is exactly what you had with Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale. Another complex character who melted Bond's cold heart. Vesper may be the best Bond girl all around, and the most important one when you look at him as a character. She was the one girl he would throw it all away for and he got burned badly. While the Bond girls in this new film are good in their own way they had no way of being better than Vesper.
+ Positive +
Still, Skyfall is damn close to Casino Royale in it's execution and deserves to be in the top tier of Bond films. There's no arguing that this film has probably the most talented group of filmmakers behind the camera in the history of the franchise. You have academy award winning director in Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition), working off a script co-penned by academy award nominee John Logan (Gladiator, Hugo, Rango), with a 9 time academy award nominated cinematographer in Roger Deakins (No Country for Old Men, Shawshank Redemption). You pair Mendes and Deakins with the set and costumes designers and you have easily the best looking Bond in the franchise.
When Bond goes to Shanghai they use the light of the city to set the scenes. Bond tails a man from the airport and along the way the road they drive on is engulfed in blue light which makes it all feel natural. Bond then follows the man up a sky scraper and they have a very Kill Bill-like fight silhouetted by the lights from the city. That scene however short, was one of the prettiest on screen. The camera never goes shaky, even in scenes that would warrant it. Unlike Quantum of Solance, which looked more like a bad Bourne movie than a Bond movie. The fight scenes in Casino Royale may be a little more explosive, but the ones in Skyfall are oozing with style.
Since this is the 50th year of Bond, the costume designers wanted to mix a little bit of the new style in with the retro Sean Connery 1960's Bond look. This made it look as well as feel like a classic Bond film.
While the technical aspects of this film alone made it enjoyable, the casting is what made it a truly good 007 film. Of course Danny Craig came back with his role of Bond, but the ever so wonderful Javier Bardem played the ever so terrifying villain. You're well past half way through the movie before you even meet his character and the first scene he's in quickly becomes the best scene in the movie. It's hard to believe that the man can reinvent his terrifying-ness this well, but he does. His performance quickly cemented his legacy in the Bond franchise as one of the best villains ever.
Dame Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Noamie Harris, Ben Whishaw, Albert Finney and Bérénice Marlohe make out the rest of the cast. Ben Whishaw's turn at Q was pretty witty and whimsical. Bérénice is a very good Bond girl but she doesn't get much screen time unfortunately (more shower time please). Same goes for Naomie Harris who seems to know her way around sexual innuendos and straight razors. In all the cast is great and will continue to be great as the series moves forward from this point forward.
Still the biggest positive is where they are taking Bond in this series. In Casino Royale Bond is effectively broken, a place we rarely see him. Even though Quantum wasn't the movie it could've been had their not been a writer's strike, Bond's character is probably the darkest in the series. In Skyfall Bond must revisit his haunting past in order to defeat the bad guy. This causes us to see another side of Bond that we never knew existed, peeling another layer off of what we once saw as a flat character. Above all things, Bond is loyal to his country and MI6. We see that at the beginning when he reports back to MI6 to help find the bad guy behind a terrorist attack, after living the dream on a beach somewhere with lots of booze and lots of poon-tang. Bond has always valued country, and you see it the most in this film.
Really if you haven't seen this movie, go check it out. I had a conversation with some dumb buy who was wearing a fedora the other day and I mentioned how good Skyfall was. He said he heard good things but he doesn't really like Bond movies. It's not just a great Bond movie, it's a great movie in general. Either way though, that guy was such a fucking asshole.
9 out of 10.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Well I regretted writing all three of these at once as I now find myself awake at 6 am. I apologize if the writing diminished a bit as you went through. At times I was really motivated, and at other times I just wanted to play "Dikembe Mutombo's 4 1/2 weeks to save the world."
Here are the final ratings for each movie I reviewed out of 10.
Silver Linings- 8
Lincoln- 7.5
Skyfall- 9
Ps. If you have the strange urge to watch a Bruce Lee movie like I did yesterday it's probably because today is his birthday. So that's a fun thing to wind down your Tuesday evening if you don't want to check out any of these three flicks that I've told you all about in detail, and highly recommended to you.
No comments:
Post a Comment