Review – Taylor Hackford’s Ray (2.5 out of 3 stars)

I like the music of Ray Charles when I hear it, but I’ve never actually gone out and acquired a CD. This film has convinced me that I need a Ray Charles Robinson compilation in my music collection. It’s also a pretty good film with one annoying flaw. And Jamie Foxx will win an Academy Award for his performance in this film. (Update: He did; it wasn’t a hard call.)



Ray covers the life of Robinson from his childhood, when he lost his sight, all the way to the end of his successful music career. (Ray died in 2004.) It’s not an unusual path. From his beginnings as a bit player in a band, to being signed by Atlantic Records and finding his sound, to becoming an international icon with ABC Paramount Records. Ray has the almost obligatory bout with drugs expected of musicians and actors. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Ray was blind since the age of seven.

His blindness produces the fatal flaw that weakens the film considerably. There was a choice to tell the story of Ray’s childhood and relationship with his mother in flashback. These flashbacks are triggered by Ray’s psychosis, which was caused by his heroin addiction. This little device ruins the flow of the film. There’s this scene towards the end of the film in particular that really should have been left on the edition room floor.

Jamie Foxx is excellent in Ray, which at this point should be no surprise. Everyone has him winning the Oscar. He becomes Ray Charles – anyone who’s seen the real McCoy perform can see the mannerisms he’s become identified with.

Finally, the music is fantastic. I need the soundtrack. Or better yet, I should hunt down a double-disc greatest hits compilation or something.

Bottom line: Good show with a fatal flaw. See it anyway, but you can wait to rent it on DVD. Hope your DVD is hooked up to a nice sound system.

The 77th Annual Academy Awards

It's Oscar night. I haven't seen all the the relevant films, but I've seen a few and I guess I can make a stab at predicting the winners. I'll post a scorecard once the dust settles.

Best Picture: I'm not betting against Clint Eastwood, who's a favorite among the Oscar jury. Make mine Million Dollar Baby.

Best Director: Eastwood.

Best Actor: Jamie Foxx. I saw Ray, and yeah that was good enough.

Best Actress: Hilary Swank rides Dirty Harry's coattails to another Oscar.

Supporting Actor: I want to say Clive Owen, as he was pretty good in Closer, but that's rather remote. Morgan Freeman via the Eastwood steamroller.

Supporting Actress: This is a dead vote. It won't happen, but I'm going with Nat Portman. Just because.

Animated Feature: The Incredibles cannot lose. Too bad though, because Shrek 2 was fun.

Adapted Screenplay: Million Dollar Baby

Original Screenplay: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Review - Alexander Payne's Sideways (3 out of 4 stars)

I must be on some find of buddy film trip. At least this one isn’t as twisted as the last two. Sideways, winner of the several awards and nominated for the Oscar, is a buddy road trip film. Miles is a schoolteacher who has aspirations to be a published writer. He’s also two years into a depression stemming from his divorce. Miles has a manuscript submitted for the consideration of a publisher. Jack is Miles’s best friend, and he’s to be married in a week. Jack used to be an actor in television series, but now he’s just doing commercial work. He’s chosen Miles, his roommate from college days, to be his best man. Miles takes Jack on a “bachelor road trip” through California’s Wine Valley for the week before the wedding.



Miles is a wine geek. He’s not a connoisseur, he’s a geek. He talks about wine like tech geeks talk about gadgets, sports stat geeks talk about their fantasy leagues and comic book geeks talk about super heroes. He adores pinot noir, despises merlot, and has been getting drunk on wine since his divorce. Jack appears to be an average Joe looking for a good time before he gives up his bachelor freedom.

Sideways, like my recent subjects Training Day and Collateral, has a lot of interaction going on in the car as Jack and Miles talk on the long drives. They feel very real. Thomas Hayden Church plays the level headed, everyday man Jack well. It’s easy to find something in Jack that’s in all of us. However, the star of the show is Paul Giamatti, who’s received rave reviews for his portrayal of Miles. In a life that’s going nowhere fast, Miles drowns himself in his love of wine, and everything can be traced back to the grape on the vine. Geeks will find a sense of kinship with Miles, as he struggles to get his life on track while trying to rationalize why his life is so shitty.

Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh are the love interests of Miles and Jack, Maya and Stephanie. Maya is another divorced wine geek, which you’d think is the perfect setup for Miles. However, Miles is a geek in a two-year long depression, so that predictably affects his approach towards the whole thing. Steph is the girl that makes Jack, like so many men, question whether he’s ready to tie himself down to one woman.

Truth to tell, I expected a lot from Sideways due to the accolades that the film was receiving. I was mildly disappointed. Alexander Payne does a good if safe directing job, and there aren’t any surprises. The film comes across as sincere and intimate and real. The shots range from pretty to gorgeous. The script leans a lot on wine jargon, and it’s easy to get immersed in the Miles’s passion for the stuff. (Reports have a 16% increase in the sales of pinot noir in the aftermath of Sideways. Merlot grew by a modest 3%.) Still, Sideways didn’t appeal to me as much as Lost in Translation and Before Sunrise/Sunset. I liked the interaction of Miles and Maya, but it didn’t have the spontaneity or spark of the aforementioned films. Still, Sideways is a very good film, and well worth the viewing. However, I don’t think that it’s Best Picture material.

Bottom line: Fine film, take time to catch it

Review - Mike Nichols's Closer (3.5 out of 4 stars)

Closer is a damn tough film to watch. It’s a talky relationship-driven film, but the emotions and actions of the characters toss you under a speeding truck, pick you up, then dump you on the rails in front of a freight train. I guess it’s even tougher because we know that we’re capable of the same things. Heck, some of us may have done these things in the past or are doing them in the present or are thinking of doing them in the future. God forbid.



Jude Law and Natalie Portman (finally done with Amidala) are Dan and Alice, a couple who have a chance meeting, hit it off and become a couple. However, Dan keeps a torch burning for Anna, played by Julia Roberts. Finally, Clive Owen is Larry, who meets Anna as a result of a practical joke set up by Dan. Larry and Anna become a couple. The real problems begin when Dan and Anna commit an indiscretion.

This is a Mike Nichols film, so one shouldn’t expect anything ordinary or easy to digest. Nichols makes films on difficult subject matters, and in this one, he showcases just how much people who supposedly love and care deeply for each other can hurt each other. You open your heart to someone, you give them license to take a meat cleaver and chop your heart and soul into itsy-bitsy pieces in the most painful ways possible. Of course, many of us do just as the characters in Closer and utilize the meat cleaver appallingly well and often.

Natalie Portman and Clive Owen won Golden Globes for their work here. I only remember Clive from his horrid turn as King Arthur, and I still don’t really care for his gravelly voice, but he’s definitely and appropriately vicious here. I think he cut far deeper with words than he ever did with Excalibur. Now, as a card-carrying Natalie fan I’m happy to see her finally get to sink her teeth into something substantial. Her Alice is a complex character, needy and clingy but capable of being steely cold. She’s also a fantastic cocktease. Fans of Padme Amidala won’t recognize the stripper who gets one a table, strips naked, turns around and bends over for Clive Owen’s pleasure. Lucky bum. If they indeed excised a strip sequence from this segment, there are a lot of guys out there praying they add it back into the Closer Director’s Cut. That’ll sell like hotcakes.

I’m still not a Jude Law fan, and his work in Closer doesn’t do much to impress me more. Of the four characters, Dan was the blandest despite getting the most screen time. Very little texture to the character; very little development. Now, it’s always jarring to see Julia Roberts in anything but a romantic comedy. At the beginning I was half-expecting Hugh Grant to walk through the door. However, Julia does a credible performance as Anna, so I give her props for that. That’s how you do it, Meg Ryan. Show us your boobs and bush doesn’t make you a serious actress.

Bottom line: Closer is on my “need to see again” list, but it’ll have to get in line. It’s an excellent film, one that I can recommend to anyone who wants to see something thought-provoking.

Review - Michael Mann's Collateral (3 out of 4 stars)

My second of two “twisted buddy flicks” involves a cabbie driving an assassin around town to do five hits. This was Jamie Foxx’s attention-getting role, which he followed up later with a show-stopping performance in Ray (which I still have to see). It’s not always easy to share equal billing with Tom Cruise, but Foxx does admirably here. He’s Max, an LA cab driver who aspires to save enough money for his own limousine service in Vegas. He’s been driving cabs “temporarily” for 12 years, trying to iron out all the risks before taking the plunge. Cruise looks great as Vincent, a phenomenal hitman hired to take out five witnesses for a local crime boss. I love Tom’s look in Collateral – salt-and-pepper hair, dark suit, silenced pistol, unflappable.



You’d think this was an action film, and it is in many spots, but I like it as a buddy film. Sort of like Training Day, the best parts of the film are when Max and Vincent are driving around town getting from hit to hit. Vincent talks about his outlook on life, and Max reluctantly divulges his. Max changes a lot in one night. Didn’t really care for the ending, and I’d have written it differently.

Director Michael Mann keeps the film moving along at a good clip. Again, I feel that the film could have been tightened up a bit and excised a few minutes from the scenes that didn’t involve Max and Vincent. The audience isn’t stupid – with the trail of bodies the cops were bound to pick up on Vincent’s trail of death. It didn’t need to be spelled out by wasting time on the relationship between the feds, the street-smart cop and his pussy of a boss.

Cruise has had better performances (Jerry Maguire, for one), but this one is memorable just because he makes a kick ass hitman. Much more believable than freaking Tom Hanks (Road to Perdition). Foxx did well in his role, though the changes that Max goes through were so drastic that it wasn’t easy to show the evolution in such as short time. I’m definitely seeing Ray.

Bottom line: Fine film. See it if you can.

Review - Antoine Fuqua's Training Day (2.5 out of 4 stars)

Ethan Hawke, an actor I usually enjoy watching, teams up with Denzel Washington in the first of the two “twisted buddy flicks” I got to see. Denzel’s narc Alonzo Harris, a decorated 13-year veteran with a long list of collars and with a reputation of getting the men on his team promoted quickly. Ethan is Hoyt, an ambitious, idealistic young gun who want to make detective in the worst way. Hoyt figures that becoming a narc on Alonzo’s team is the fastest way to get promoted, so he signs up. Harris meets Hoyt at the beginning of the day and tells him that it’s training day – Hoyt has just that day to convince Alonzo that he’s got what it takes to be a narc.

Alonzo’s a loose cannon, the “end justifies the means” kind of cop. Over half the film is used to establish Alonzo’s methods and his morality. Hoyt and Harris spend a lot of time in Harris’s car going from place to place. They get to talk about Harris’s methods being the only thing that works in the real world, versus Hoyt’s idealistic sense of how things should be done. Training Day is a struggle for Hoyt’s mind and soul.

Hawke and Washington provide their usual excellent performances. Denzel gets to play a character that’s a bit over the top at points, and he looks like he’s having some fun. Antoine Fuqua does a decent job with the look and feel of the film. He’s really in his element with city films, with close-in shots, street chases and guns. I feel the film could have been tightened up a bit more – it suffers from some pacing hiccups. The audience is probably two or three steps ahead of Hoyt in figuring things out, and many of the scenes used to spell out the situation were arguably unnecessary.

Bottom line: Good film, but nothing extraordinary.

King Arthur (2 out of 4 stars)

I avoided this film, despite subject matter that would normally draw me to it. The reviews were generally weak, and none of the names connected with the film gave any indication that my opinion would transcend what the critics were saying. Antoine Fuqua is known more for his city streets and cops. A medieval epic seemed like a reach. Anyway, I wanted a brainless show for a lazy evening, so I grabbed the DVD the wife had acquired and popped it into the player.

It’s a good thing life still can surprise just a bit.



While King Arthur was no masterpiece, it was a decent diversion. Clive Owen is Arthur. Arthur in this case is Arturius, a Roman officer assigned to the distant British garrison of the Roman empire. His knights aren’t Brits. They’re Semites who were “forced” to serve the Romans as cavalry as a result of a defeat on the battlefield in ages past. The story takes place on the day the Romans have decided to leave Britain, leaving it to the native Woads and the invading Saxons from the north. Merlin’s the Woad leader. Nope, no magic.

I have no idea if this is based on any real truth. It can’t be any less true than the Mallory Arthurian legends, and there’s never anything wrong with a good yarn. Turn off your “that’s bullshit” detector and enjoy the ride.

There isn’t enough time to develop all the characters, so chummy banter has to do. Bors gets all the good lines, and has some degree of backstory across the length of the film. Lancelot gets the voiceover point of view and gets to open and end the film, but doesn’t get much in between. Gawain, Galahad, Tristran and the “was he really a knight of the round table” guy that no one knows get short shrift. They all get decent action segments though. Merlin gets five minutes of screen time and doesn’t do anything of note. Guenivere is played by the usually smoking hot Keira Knightley, but she’s wasted in this film. Not a lot of screen time, a dozen lines, and they didn’t let her use her natural accent. Bleh. And for the fans – sorry, not a lot of Keira skin. There a brief, darkly-lit forgettable sex scene. Her ridiculous outfit for the final battle looks like a reject from a French fall collection. My reaction – she’s going to fight in THAT?

Clive Owen is really wooden in this film. I guess I need to see Closer for a better performance. But the worst person in this film is the usually decent Stellan Skarsgaard, who plays the Saxon leader. He’s talking like a refugee from the Sly Stallone school of enunciation. I don’t see how a charismatic leader of a great army can mumble like he’s got a mouthful of marbles all the time.

The action scenes are ok, nothing to write home about. They’re certainly not good enough to recommend the film on just their strength. You’ve seen better in Braveheart and The Lord of the Rings and even Troy. Fuqua is really much better in close quarters; the single battles were much better than the mass melees. The editing was a mess; the film as a whole felt jerky and laced continuity and pacing. It didn’t flow too well.

Couldn’t they have come up with a better title than “King Arthur”?

Bottom line – ok as a rental or as a bargain bin buy. You’ll watch it once, say “that wasn’t so bad” and forget it.

Queue

I've got a massive number of DVDs that I haven't seen yet, and now that I've started this blog I'll write a few words on each as I view them. There's really no rhyme or reason to which film I'll see first, but the ones that are within reach and will probably get screened first are:

Collateral
The Village
Cellular
Ray

There's still that small matter of attempting a continuous The Lord of the Rings Extended Trilogy screening, but realistically that's more of a three-day span kind of thing. I just realized that I hadn't watched The Two Towers Extended straight through yet - I just watched all the scenes PJ added back in. I also haven't listened to the PJ commentary.

So much to do, so little time.

Dark Knight vs. Dark Lord

The advance posters bear an uncanny resemblance don't they?





The Batman poster is better. If they let Bale play Bats as the dark, creepy, brooding type, and don't try to turn him into the DC version of a wisecracking Spidey, it should turn out ok. Even without Tim Burton.

Before Sunrise / Before Sunset

What makes these two films so good? I'd like to think that we all see a bit of ourselves in Celine and Jesse. A bit of idealism, a bit of adventurousness, a bit of world-weariness. We all hope that we're able to find an opportunity, as they did, to meet someone special. Just to be in their situation and have the chance to for that kind of bond is a wonderful thing. Of course, making the decision would be excruciating. It's always interesting to discuss what you would have done had you been in their situation.

The nine-year gap between Sunrise and Sunset also produced an authentic visual - Celine and Jesse look and sound so much more world-weary. Life put these two characters through a wringer over the time they'd been apart. The result is an intimate look into how two people, for all intents and purposes strangers, bond due to simply being people who are happy listening and talking to each other about each other.

Silverscreener!

Yet another blog for my film habit. I guess that's it for my hobbies. Maybe this'll get me writing a bit more.