Archive for year: 2014

The fact that it struck me as unrealistic that Malcolm was able to revive a hydroelectric plant while the rest of the movie featured talking apes says how convincing was the overall illusion. The special effects were indeed special, but it was the humanity of Caesar and his cohort, as well as the performance of Jason Clarke and Keri Russell as the humans that carried the film. The story was predictable, but seeing it performed by apes gave it enough novelty; and the one philosophical thought – can one bad ape, like one bad human, ruin things for everybody? – gave it a modicum of depth. My major criticism: there seemed to be an infinite number of apes, no matter how many got shot and despite the finite resources of nature.

It must be a half-hour into the movie before we get what we came for – Sherry, Baby – and all the music before that, including a screechy Silhouettes, is pretty execrable. That’s only one of several confounding choices by director Clint Eastwood, making this movie much more than a singalong, although that’s where the main pleasure is found. Christopher Walken’s mob boss and the Bob Crewe character are great fun, and Tommy DeVito is a convincing problem. It’s also a great touch to have Bobby from the Sopranos running the barber shop in the opening scene, establishing the Jersey milieu. There are problems: the failed safe heist is absurd, and the early 1950s seem to run well into the 1960s. But all is forgiven as the boys run through the catalogue (ex-Marlena) and the Slumdog Millionaire-style finale kept us happily in our seats well into the credits. [smoking – lots]

A total misfire. Seth MacFarlane’s jokes missed their target as often as his character’s bullets. Many reminded me of the kind of things one heard in a 6th-grade lockerroom. All that raised this above a zero were the steely presence of Liam Neeson and the soap-bar beauty of Charlize Theron.

An unrelentingly dark picture of the Lower East Side in 1921 and the unrelentingly dark life facing penniless immigrants in New York. The story, which suffers from loose ends all over, depends on three skilled actors, all seemingly miscast. Jeremy Renner, so intense in The Hurt Locker, hardly seems the lightfooted magician. Joaquin Phoenix, a world-class brooder, is unconvincing as a nightclub impresario. And Marion Cotillard seemed about ten years too old. Nor did I see why both men were willing to throw away their lives for her, but that may be a matter of taste. In short, I was hoping for a European film but got a less subtle American. [smoking 1 – incidental]

It was interesting to compare this to Turn!, the AMC serial about the Revolutionary War, in which the occupying British forces are automatically the bad guys, to be slaughtered without compunction. Here, the occupiers were Americans – hence, the good guys – although it was not otherwise explained why they were in Afghanistan and we were to cheer for the local inhabitants who were killed by the dozens. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Stylistically, this was a total throwback to World War II or cowboy-Indian movies, where our heroes miraculously evade round after round while picking off the enemy with almost every shot of their own. Instead of a movie of some subtlety or plot leading up to a big shoot-out, this one jumped right to the shoot-out and achieved its length only by having each of Mark Wahlberg’s platoon mates gradually picked off, one by one, leaving alive, somewhat incredibly, only the title character. [No smoking!]