Forgot to mention Morning Glory. This is certainly a better movie than Burlesque, and pleasant enough way to spend the time. Very good chance will be at second run theatres over Xmas! Yet I don't know if I enjoyed it as much as Burlesque.
Certainly this is better cast. Harrison Ford can still chew on a line and does plenty of it. Diane Keaton, I wouldn't say she chews, but whatever she does she usually does well. And Rachel McAdams is pleasantly right for her role as a fired TV producer who talks her way to a gig running the distant 4th morning network show and sets out to save it by putting a no-way-do-I-want-to-be-here Ford with an I-don't-need-this Keaton together as anchors. Jeff Goldblum is also on hand as the network exec who gives her the job and isn't so sure of the call. All good in their roles, though Harrison Ford has been directed to sound so gruff in some scenes you'd think he either had a tracheotomy right before going on or throat cancer.
Lots of good local color. A scene at Elaine's with Elaine (who passed away right -around the time of the film's release), Ford having a drink with Chris Matthews and Morley Safer, the network is based in that curved wall building across from Bryant Park where the characters hang out.
But less than the sum of all its parts. For the movie to work the Rachel McAdams character has to be inept and inspired as convenient. The morning show concept is probably enough for a movie but not enough for this one, which has a romantic comedy subplot with McAdam and Patrick Wilson that I just found to be the most boring thing. McAdam's love is with her TV show. This isn't one of those May December romance movies that would drive my sister crazy, but the climax of the movie is Harrison Ford saying a platonic yes to the show/McAdams, not Patrick Wilson, in fact one of the good NY color things is the handling of the traditional race against no that every romantic comedy has to have, so why hae Patrick Thomas at all.
Ultimately, acceptably entertaining in acceptable ways while Burlesque is fascinating. Weird, but fascinating. I can rent or watch on TV at least twenty movies that would entertain me similarly. Not Burlesque, definitely not that.
Showing posts with label Harrison Ford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harrison Ford. Show all posts
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Ghost Writer
This review will have plenty of spoilers, so don't read on if you think you're likely to see Ghost Writer, which I saw Saturday March 6 2009 at Clearview's Chelsea, Aud. #2.
This is the newest film from Roman Polanski, the director of Tess and Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby. And the fugitive from justice.
Ewan McGregor is a ghost writer, hired to assist a former British Prime Minister played by Pierce Brosnan after the original writer dies, apparently by accidental drowning or suicide in a ferry accident. Off Ewan goes from London to Martha's Vineyard (or an analog thereto) where the manuscript is holed up in the publisher's house with the PM. No surprise if you've seen the coming attraction that it wasn't an accident or a suicide, and of course Ewan McGregor's character will be coming in for the same before two hours are over.
I was primed to like the movie from the start. There's a certain puckish charm to Ewan McGregor's performance that we haven't seen from him often enough in recent years, certainly not in the Star Wars movies. It's the second nice score I've heard from Alexandre Desplat over the past week; he also did the music for A Prophet. There's a sheen to the movie, a lot of craft. The opening scene of the ghost writer being interviewed for the job at the publisher's office --they got the publisher's office right.
Alas, good movies are not made from bad scripts, and this script by Polanski and novelist Robert Harris, on whose novel "The Ghost" the film is based, is not good.
There's a subplot torn from yesterday's headlines and today's that doesn't have much to do with the movie. The British PM is accused by a former cabinet minister of his of being complicit in torture. This tracks somewhat but not entirely with the allegations against Tony Blair by Claire Short and other such things. However, all of this has absolutely nothing to do with the spy thriller. You could totally remove every bit of business related to these allegations and have a very similar movie.
The reveal -- and here's the big-time spoiler -- is that it looks like the British PM might actually be a CIA agent, recruited by a professor in the early 1970s. But again, this doesn't hold up to a lot of scrutiny. All it takes is a few quick Google searches for this to get figured out. If it was figured out, would anyone believe it? Could it really be proven? I don't buy that it could or would. Would it do lasting damage to UK/US relationships even if it were proven? I'm just not sure it's worth killing anyone over.
If it is worth killing someone over... well, on the way to the Google searches, McGregor is able to retrace his predecessor's footsteps by following the GPS on the guest car that was being driven night of the murder. I figured out "hey, maybe he can check the past destinations in the GPS" the moment Ewan starts driving the car and finds out that it has one built-in. Ewan doesn't figure it out, rather he lucks into it, has the GPS hand him the big clue on a silver platter. Now, maybe in the wake of the surveillance photos of the assassination in Dubai of a Hamas leader I should have less confidence in the abilities of the bad guys. But this is a movie. Top CIA people. Nobody could figure out to wipe the GPS? And on this trip, another reviewer pointed out that they get the ticket buying wrong, that on a ferry in Martha's Vineyard in the United States you'd buy a one way or round trip ticket, while here he's given the Brit-style option of a single or return.
The ultimate big reveal...
Well, you know those anacrostic puzzles in the paper, where the first letters of each clue spell out the author's name and source of the quote? This sort of thing has lots of antecedents, as an example there are a number of prayers in Jewish liturgy where the first letters spell out the alphabet or the name of the composer or such as that. Well, that's where the ultimate big clue is hiding here, in the beginning words of chapters of the manuscript left behind by the original ghost writer. This I find to be one of the stranger places to hide your big secret.
And -- the big secret is that it wasn't the PM who was recruited by the CIA, but rather his wife.
But if it isn't even the PM who was the agent but his wife, then it's yet one more big step away from the possible direct harm in discovering that the British PM was a CIA agent, which means it's one more big step away from requiring the ghost writers to be murdered.
The ending of the movie is torn straight from the ending of Kubrick's The Killing. It's trying for irony, but there's been too much silly stuff en route for this to be ironic instead of one more silly thing.
Instead of seeing this, I'd suggest renting Polanski's 1988 Frantic, starring Harrison Ford.
And a quick demerit to the management of Clearview's Chelsea. Ghost Writer was playing and selling out on the relatively small screen #2. Shutter Island was playing on 2 larger screens upstairs, and no way could it have been doing twice the business this was in its 3rd weekend. The theatre management should have swapped screens and had Ghost Writer playing in a larger auditorium. No excuses for this.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Mongol Raiders
Mongol. Seen Tuesday evening June 3, 2008 at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square, Aud. #9 (the Majestic). 1 Slithy Toad.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Seen Tuesday evening June 3, 2008 at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square, Aud., #2 (The Kings). 2.5 Slithy Toads.
So to do the obscure movie first... Mongol is a Russian movie depicting the Adventures of Genghis Khan as a Young (and Not so Young) Boy, ending after he has united the Mongol empire but before he has conquered the world. It blames everything on the fact that Genghis lost his sled Rosebud (excuse me, his father) when he was a young boy. I hate not to like it because I got to see a preview screening via the Museum of the Moving Image, and the direct Sergei Bodrov was there and did a Q&A afterward, but I don't think it's very good. That being said, give the movie an extra toad if you liked Lawrence of Arabia. This movie is a real wonder to look at, filmed on exotic locations all over the world and picturesque in virtually every frame If you like watching camels ride across the dessert, how can you not like watching horses roam across the steppe? And give the movie another extra toad if you liked the abysmal 300. This movie too has the nicest digital specks of blood flowing during the many battle scenes. If you liked both Lawrence of Arabia and 300, you'd probably love this movie with every fiber of your being.
Why didn't I? Well, it has that generic historical movie music with male chorus. All Mongols look alike (at least a lot of the ones n the movie), so it was hard to tell who was who, and this was exacerbated by the jumps in time which meant you were just getting used to one look of the young Genghis when all of a sudden it was six years later and he looked six years older. It really does seem facile to try and explain away Khan on account of youthful trauma, and having him lose his sled probably would have made just as much sense. And you still can't root for the guy so much. There's also a farcicial romance which we are supposed to find deeply moving even though it mostly consists of very brief visits between captures or campaigns full of sweet words that don't mean much and one silhoutted sex scene that maybe we're supposed to find funny.
This is one of the last releases from Picturehouse, an indie-ish imprint of Time Warner that's just been killed. I will try and remember Picturehouse for the wonderful King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, and not for this.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a good example of one difference between making a movie and writing a book. Books, you want to grab the reader quickly. Sample chapters are read on line, opening pages read in the bookstore, agents like me may read only a few lines or paragraphs before rejecting something. Movies, if you want to have one half of a good movie why not make it the second half so people will leave the theatre with fond memories. Once someone has gone to a theatre, paid to see a movie, sat in a comfy rocking chair, there's a reluctance to walk out, so if you're willing to take your chances that the audience will still be awake, have 'em leave happy.
Crystal Skull is OK in its first half, but comes to life in its second when Karen Allen makes her return to the series. More wit, more fun, more to the relationship between Mutt and Jones. There's a wonderful scene with cars racing along the edge of a cliff that manages, much to my surprise, to work. It's artificial but done just well enough to avoid the sfx overkill that marred the Narnia movie or Peter Jackson's King Kong. In fact, any critic who bemoaned the artificiality of this Indy movie while praising the Jackson Kong should be excluded from the critics circle. It was only in the closing scenes that I felt this movie went a little bit too far in showing off the technology. I'm not quite sure what little Ewoks were doing in this movie, or why they the extended capuchin relatives of the monkey from the first movie? Did Indy get in trouble for passing thru Cuba on his way to Peru? Or was this taking place before the embargo?
I'd like to give special praise to John Williams, and I would urge anyone who sees this movie to stay thru to the last notes at the end of the credits. We're nearing the end of a special time and era of film music that was best practiced by Jerry Goldsmith, who has departed, and John Williams, who is in his 70s and not working so much any more, and occasionally a Randy Newman or other composer. Movies that had instrumental music with powerful themes, hummable melodies, recurring motifs. In the best of these movies, the end credit score was a work of art unto itself, and Williams may be the best practitioner of all times. Yeah, the Williams end credit was and is somewhat of a formula in its place. Usually leading out of some kind of triumphant moment, reprising all the main themes and motifs, a bit of a quiet stretch in the middle with the softer stuff, and then building exuberantly near the end. One of the things I might like most about the Superman score is that it has more of a fade-out in the closing moments, the gorgeous music drifting away in the ear just as the Warner logo appears at the end. It's been almost four years to the day since I last heard a great John Williams finale, over the excellent final credit sequence of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azbakan, which was one of the final movies to play my beloved Loews Astor Plaza. Just long enough to have forgotten how good John Williams can be. Overall, I don't think this is one of his better scores, but those final five minutes are up there in any and every way. I guess you can experience it on DVD, but you can't experience it on TV any more with the end credits of a movie rushed and crunched and hidden behind ads, and music like this might do well on good home theatre but does way more than that in the large experience digital sound of your local theatre. I don't see anyone coming along who can do what Williams does.
I'd also seen Temple of Doom and Last Crusade at the Astor Plaza. My first experience with Raiders was at the Sack Cinema 57 in Boston. Bottom line on Crystal Skull ils that it's no more or less forgettable than Doom and Crusade were, and thanks to Karen Allen maybe a tad better. Seeing the original Raiders for the first time, which any of us can only do once, will always be the best Indy experience.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Seen Tuesday evening June 3, 2008 at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square, Aud., #2 (The Kings). 2.5 Slithy Toads.
So to do the obscure movie first... Mongol is a Russian movie depicting the Adventures of Genghis Khan as a Young (and Not so Young) Boy, ending after he has united the Mongol empire but before he has conquered the world. It blames everything on the fact that Genghis lost his sled Rosebud (excuse me, his father) when he was a young boy. I hate not to like it because I got to see a preview screening via the Museum of the Moving Image, and the direct Sergei Bodrov was there and did a Q&A afterward, but I don't think it's very good. That being said, give the movie an extra toad if you liked Lawrence of Arabia. This movie is a real wonder to look at, filmed on exotic locations all over the world and picturesque in virtually every frame If you like watching camels ride across the dessert, how can you not like watching horses roam across the steppe? And give the movie another extra toad if you liked the abysmal 300. This movie too has the nicest digital specks of blood flowing during the many battle scenes. If you liked both Lawrence of Arabia and 300, you'd probably love this movie with every fiber of your being.
Why didn't I? Well, it has that generic historical movie music with male chorus. All Mongols look alike (at least a lot of the ones n the movie), so it was hard to tell who was who, and this was exacerbated by the jumps in time which meant you were just getting used to one look of the young Genghis when all of a sudden it was six years later and he looked six years older. It really does seem facile to try and explain away Khan on account of youthful trauma, and having him lose his sled probably would have made just as much sense. And you still can't root for the guy so much. There's also a farcicial romance which we are supposed to find deeply moving even though it mostly consists of very brief visits between captures or campaigns full of sweet words that don't mean much and one silhoutted sex scene that maybe we're supposed to find funny.
This is one of the last releases from Picturehouse, an indie-ish imprint of Time Warner that's just been killed. I will try and remember Picturehouse for the wonderful King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, and not for this.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a good example of one difference between making a movie and writing a book. Books, you want to grab the reader quickly. Sample chapters are read on line, opening pages read in the bookstore, agents like me may read only a few lines or paragraphs before rejecting something. Movies, if you want to have one half of a good movie why not make it the second half so people will leave the theatre with fond memories. Once someone has gone to a theatre, paid to see a movie, sat in a comfy rocking chair, there's a reluctance to walk out, so if you're willing to take your chances that the audience will still be awake, have 'em leave happy.
Crystal Skull is OK in its first half, but comes to life in its second when Karen Allen makes her return to the series. More wit, more fun, more to the relationship between Mutt and Jones. There's a wonderful scene with cars racing along the edge of a cliff that manages, much to my surprise, to work. It's artificial but done just well enough to avoid the sfx overkill that marred the Narnia movie or Peter Jackson's King Kong. In fact, any critic who bemoaned the artificiality of this Indy movie while praising the Jackson Kong should be excluded from the critics circle. It was only in the closing scenes that I felt this movie went a little bit too far in showing off the technology. I'm not quite sure what little Ewoks were doing in this movie, or why they the extended capuchin relatives of the monkey from the first movie? Did Indy get in trouble for passing thru Cuba on his way to Peru? Or was this taking place before the embargo?
I'd like to give special praise to John Williams, and I would urge anyone who sees this movie to stay thru to the last notes at the end of the credits. We're nearing the end of a special time and era of film music that was best practiced by Jerry Goldsmith, who has departed, and John Williams, who is in his 70s and not working so much any more, and occasionally a Randy Newman or other composer. Movies that had instrumental music with powerful themes, hummable melodies, recurring motifs. In the best of these movies, the end credit score was a work of art unto itself, and Williams may be the best practitioner of all times. Yeah, the Williams end credit was and is somewhat of a formula in its place. Usually leading out of some kind of triumphant moment, reprising all the main themes and motifs, a bit of a quiet stretch in the middle with the softer stuff, and then building exuberantly near the end. One of the things I might like most about the Superman score is that it has more of a fade-out in the closing moments, the gorgeous music drifting away in the ear just as the Warner logo appears at the end. It's been almost four years to the day since I last heard a great John Williams finale, over the excellent final credit sequence of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azbakan, which was one of the final movies to play my beloved Loews Astor Plaza. Just long enough to have forgotten how good John Williams can be. Overall, I don't think this is one of his better scores, but those final five minutes are up there in any and every way. I guess you can experience it on DVD, but you can't experience it on TV any more with the end credits of a movie rushed and crunched and hidden behind ads, and music like this might do well on good home theatre but does way more than that in the large experience digital sound of your local theatre. I don't see anyone coming along who can do what Williams does.
I'd also seen Temple of Doom and Last Crusade at the Astor Plaza. My first experience with Raiders was at the Sack Cinema 57 in Boston. Bottom line on Crystal Skull ils that it's no more or less forgettable than Doom and Crusade were, and thanks to Karen Allen maybe a tad better. Seeing the original Raiders for the first time, which any of us can only do once, will always be the best Indy experience.
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