(Gary Ross, 2003)
The choice of David McCullough - his voice probably best known from a variety of Ken Burns' documentaries - as narrator is instructive about Gary Ross' aims for this film, and also about its flaws. The first act - and brief passages later on - is dominated by McCullough's narration over black and white photographs of the period. This was real, Ross seems to be telling us, this is important. This is no silly made-up story. This matters.
The story of the rise of the champion US racehorse Seabiscuit explicitly treats him as a metaphor for America itself during the great depression, seemingly taking a tip from the horse's owner (played here by Jeff Bridges) who publicised him as the horse of the people, an underdog who represented the way every American has a second chance.
That first act is problematic - Seabiscuit takes a long time getting to its actual story, so busy is it with context and background. After that, Ross hits a series of classical, reliable old beats. This film is handsome - too handsome in a rich, oaken way for a film set partly during the depression - has a classy score, courtesy of Randy Newman, a great cast, all of whom are good; and doesn't miss out on any sports movie cliches at all. So there are slow-motion climaxes, disappointments at crucial junctures, last minute comebacks, personal demons resolved through sporting effort, etc etc.
It works in the way that such films always work. Those cliches are so popular entirely because of their efficiency. But that is somewhat at odds with the straining for seriousness of the documentary passages.
And the closing narration, courtesy of Maguire, about fixing each other, is an embarrassment.
Showing posts with label Elizabeth Banks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elizabeth Banks. Show all posts
Friday, 21 August 2015
Monday, 3 August 2015
WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER
(David Wain, 2001)
Something just a little off about Wain's parody, which is perhaps what has given it enduring appeal and made it a cult film, while so many movie spoofs date quickly and are never thought about again.
The sense of humour here is more Anchorman than Scary Movie - there is a decided strain of absurdism and an anarchic sensibility informing many of the jokes, which makes it feel like anything can happen (the trip into town that ends up in a crackhouse montage is the best example of this) -and the writing is generally very strong, and clever, making sure there is a variety of comic material throughout.
Firstly, it works as a spoof. Set on the last day of summer camp in 1981 and focused on a disparate group of characters mainly concerned with pairing off before they all go their separate ways, the plot could come verbatim from some lost American teen movie from that era. The music is hilarious, the hair and fashions just right, and the photography and montage sequences are note perfect. The obsession with sex of more or less every character also tunes into tasteless '80s teen cinema in a way no modern teen comedy can ever really approach.
Then there are the flashes of surrealism, absurdism and post-modernism, with talking vegetable tins, psychic powers and falling satellites all part of the story.
Lastly, the characters are frequently hilarious, most notably Paul Rudd as a rebellious camp counsellor given to gurning and posing, Amy Poehler as a pretentious drama teacher, and Ken Marino as a desperately virginal colleague who embarks on an odyssey to lose his cherry.
The cast seems incredible in retrospect, which perhaps says enough about how good most of them are here.
Something just a little off about Wain's parody, which is perhaps what has given it enduring appeal and made it a cult film, while so many movie spoofs date quickly and are never thought about again.
The sense of humour here is more Anchorman than Scary Movie - there is a decided strain of absurdism and an anarchic sensibility informing many of the jokes, which makes it feel like anything can happen (the trip into town that ends up in a crackhouse montage is the best example of this) -and the writing is generally very strong, and clever, making sure there is a variety of comic material throughout.
Firstly, it works as a spoof. Set on the last day of summer camp in 1981 and focused on a disparate group of characters mainly concerned with pairing off before they all go their separate ways, the plot could come verbatim from some lost American teen movie from that era. The music is hilarious, the hair and fashions just right, and the photography and montage sequences are note perfect. The obsession with sex of more or less every character also tunes into tasteless '80s teen cinema in a way no modern teen comedy can ever really approach.
Then there are the flashes of surrealism, absurdism and post-modernism, with talking vegetable tins, psychic powers and falling satellites all part of the story.
Lastly, the characters are frequently hilarious, most notably Paul Rudd as a rebellious camp counsellor given to gurning and posing, Amy Poehler as a pretentious drama teacher, and Ken Marino as a desperately virginal colleague who embarks on an odyssey to lose his cherry.
The cast seems incredible in retrospect, which perhaps says enough about how good most of them are here.
Thursday, 16 July 2015
LOVE & MERCY
(Bill Pohlad, 2014)
The urge to explain a person is the downfall of so many biopics, and Love & Mercy cannot avoid this flaw. People are complex and contradictory, and not everything can be explained by a few flashbacks. But some cinema has decided that they can, they must, they will, and so at the start of the third act here, we have a "brave" scene where we see Brian Wilson (John Cusack) in bed, and then Pohlad tries to take us on a tour of his brain. There are jump cuts, loads of trick editing, as we see a mix of memories, ideas, music, and fantasies all colliding. This is pop-psychology at its most basic and reductive, which attempts to explore what is "wrong" with Wilson and instead serves to caricature and over-simplify him.
Thankfully, much of the rest of the film is more sensitive and interesting. It tells parallel stories of Wilson at the peak of his powers in 1965-67, when he created Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations, after a panic attack on an airplane led him to quite touring with the Beach Boys. He is played in these scenes by Paul Dano, who is terrific, emphasising his childlike qualities and his melancholy with equal commitment and skill. These passages have the added bonus of using the sweet sweet music Wilson created in the '60s as their soundtrack, and probably the most enjoyable scenes in the film are those depicting him "playing the studio", directing session musicians to create his pop symphonies. As the film progresses these scenes darken as Wilson's mental problems begin, exacerbated by his drug use.
There are a few nice through-lines here: Wilson's attachment to abusive, controlling male figures is shown through his relationships with his father Murray, cousin and bandmate Mike Love, and finally with the Psychiatrist who became a sort of svengali for him, Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti).
But the heart of the story is his new relationship with Melinda (Elizabeth Banks) in the 1980s. She discovers just how monstrous Landy is and sets about releasing Wilson from his control, falling in love with this vulnerable man child and conflicted by how difficult his circumstances are.
Cusack and Banks have chemistry, and she is underrated as a dramatic actress, beautiful in a sunny, real way, her warmth and intelligence are always evident onscreen, and it is understandable that Wilson would be so instantly smitten. Cusack plays this older, damaged Wilson as a frightened, desperate shell, and allows a spark of life back into his eyes with the discovery of this woman.
Pohlad's direction is pedestrian, the script a little by-numbers, but the actors and that music carry it.
The urge to explain a person is the downfall of so many biopics, and Love & Mercy cannot avoid this flaw. People are complex and contradictory, and not everything can be explained by a few flashbacks. But some cinema has decided that they can, they must, they will, and so at the start of the third act here, we have a "brave" scene where we see Brian Wilson (John Cusack) in bed, and then Pohlad tries to take us on a tour of his brain. There are jump cuts, loads of trick editing, as we see a mix of memories, ideas, music, and fantasies all colliding. This is pop-psychology at its most basic and reductive, which attempts to explore what is "wrong" with Wilson and instead serves to caricature and over-simplify him.
Thankfully, much of the rest of the film is more sensitive and interesting. It tells parallel stories of Wilson at the peak of his powers in 1965-67, when he created Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations, after a panic attack on an airplane led him to quite touring with the Beach Boys. He is played in these scenes by Paul Dano, who is terrific, emphasising his childlike qualities and his melancholy with equal commitment and skill. These passages have the added bonus of using the sweet sweet music Wilson created in the '60s as their soundtrack, and probably the most enjoyable scenes in the film are those depicting him "playing the studio", directing session musicians to create his pop symphonies. As the film progresses these scenes darken as Wilson's mental problems begin, exacerbated by his drug use.
There are a few nice through-lines here: Wilson's attachment to abusive, controlling male figures is shown through his relationships with his father Murray, cousin and bandmate Mike Love, and finally with the Psychiatrist who became a sort of svengali for him, Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti).
But the heart of the story is his new relationship with Melinda (Elizabeth Banks) in the 1980s. She discovers just how monstrous Landy is and sets about releasing Wilson from his control, falling in love with this vulnerable man child and conflicted by how difficult his circumstances are.
Cusack and Banks have chemistry, and she is underrated as a dramatic actress, beautiful in a sunny, real way, her warmth and intelligence are always evident onscreen, and it is understandable that Wilson would be so instantly smitten. Cusack plays this older, damaged Wilson as a frightened, desperate shell, and allows a spark of life back into his eyes with the discovery of this woman.
Pohlad's direction is pedestrian, the script a little by-numbers, but the actors and that music carry it.
Saturday, 8 February 2014
THE LEGO MOVIE
(Phil Lord, Chris Miller, 2014)
The Lego Movie is the most satisfying kids film since the period a few years ago when Pixar was still reliably great. It manages to be hilarious, bitingly satirical, exciting, thought-provoking, epic and consistently visually inventive throughout. Considering it's based on the brick construction system toys, that is an impressive feat.
Writer-directors Lord and Miller see the potential in the property to craft an ambitious, energetically tangential story which is full of references to other movies, in-jokes, post-modern gags and lots of nods to the adults in the audience.
At heart, its a remake of the Matrix, with its "chosen one" story focused on Emmet (voiced by Chris Pratt), a construction worker who is happy to conform, and ardent in his desire to be just like everyone else. He follows the "instructions", a book informing residents exactly how to live (buy overpriced coffee, listen to popular music - "Everything Is Awesome" is a horrific earworm after a single viewing of this film). These brief scenes are a dazzlingly paced, brilliantly funny satire on conformity and consumerism, and they quickly give way to a brilliant action scene after Emmet stumbles across a mysterious artefact which bonds to his body, is questioned and one the verge of execution at the hands of Bad Cop (Liam Neeson) before he is rescued by Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), a "master builder" who can create lego vehicles in seconds.
She explains the plot to him (in a scene which typically, cheerfully thumbs its nose at the very idea of such expository scenes): President Business (Will Ferrell) is set on destroying the Universe with his ultimate weapon, the Kangle (a tube of glue) which can only be stopped with the artefact stuck to Emmet's back. With Bad Cop on their trail, Emmet, Wyldstyle and her boyfirend Batman (hilariously characterised as a bit of a jockish dick, in love with his own dark and mysterious image and beautifully voiced by Will Arnett) jump across zones in this odd Lego Universe, from the Old West to "Middle Zealand" to Cloud Cuckoo Land, meeting a collection of recognisable pop culture characters and lego figures along the way.
From there it only gets more ambitious and epic, until a final act revelation which recontextualises and deepens everything we have seen suggests that this is actually that rarest thing; a transcendent kids film.
Besides that it is consistently laugh-out-loud funny, fantastically exciting, and truly beautiful in its inventive use of the possibilities of the lego-verse.
The Lego Movie is the most satisfying kids film since the period a few years ago when Pixar was still reliably great. It manages to be hilarious, bitingly satirical, exciting, thought-provoking, epic and consistently visually inventive throughout. Considering it's based on the brick construction system toys, that is an impressive feat.
Writer-directors Lord and Miller see the potential in the property to craft an ambitious, energetically tangential story which is full of references to other movies, in-jokes, post-modern gags and lots of nods to the adults in the audience.
At heart, its a remake of the Matrix, with its "chosen one" story focused on Emmet (voiced by Chris Pratt), a construction worker who is happy to conform, and ardent in his desire to be just like everyone else. He follows the "instructions", a book informing residents exactly how to live (buy overpriced coffee, listen to popular music - "Everything Is Awesome" is a horrific earworm after a single viewing of this film). These brief scenes are a dazzlingly paced, brilliantly funny satire on conformity and consumerism, and they quickly give way to a brilliant action scene after Emmet stumbles across a mysterious artefact which bonds to his body, is questioned and one the verge of execution at the hands of Bad Cop (Liam Neeson) before he is rescued by Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), a "master builder" who can create lego vehicles in seconds.
She explains the plot to him (in a scene which typically, cheerfully thumbs its nose at the very idea of such expository scenes): President Business (Will Ferrell) is set on destroying the Universe with his ultimate weapon, the Kangle (a tube of glue) which can only be stopped with the artefact stuck to Emmet's back. With Bad Cop on their trail, Emmet, Wyldstyle and her boyfirend Batman (hilariously characterised as a bit of a jockish dick, in love with his own dark and mysterious image and beautifully voiced by Will Arnett) jump across zones in this odd Lego Universe, from the Old West to "Middle Zealand" to Cloud Cuckoo Land, meeting a collection of recognisable pop culture characters and lego figures along the way.
From there it only gets more ambitious and epic, until a final act revelation which recontextualises and deepens everything we have seen suggests that this is actually that rarest thing; a transcendent kids film.
Besides that it is consistently laugh-out-loud funny, fantastically exciting, and truly beautiful in its inventive use of the possibilities of the lego-verse.
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