Film Babble Blog's Top 10 Movies Of 2018 Part 2

And now Part 2 of Film Babble Blog’s Top 10 Movies of 2018. Included are memorable lines, or exchanges from each film. For Part 1, featuring entries 10-6 click here.

5. THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS (Dir. Tim Wardle)

Robert Shafran: “I guess I wouldn't believe the story if someone else were telling it, but , I'm telling it and it's true, every word of it.”

4. SORRY TO BOTHER YOU (Dir. Boots Riley)

Langston (Danny Glover): “Let me give you a tip. You wanna make some money here? Use your white voice.”

3. COLD WAR (Dir. Pawel Pawlikowski)

Zula (Joanna Kulig): “Are you interested in me, because I have a talent or in general?”

2. BLACKKKLANSMAN (Dir. Spike Lee)

Ron Stallworth (John David Washington): “Then why you acting like you ain’t got skin in the game, brother?”

1. FIRST REFORMED (Dir. Paul Schrader)

Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke): “The man who says nothing always seems more intelligent. Why couldn't I just keep silent?”

So that's 5-1 of my Top 10 of 2018. Next up, my Oscar predictions. Stay tuned to this space.

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Paul Schrader’s Profoundly Powerful FIRST REFORMED

Now playing:

FIRST REFORMED (Dir. Paul Schrader, 2018) 

Paul Schader’s 21st film as director is his most vital work since 1997’s AFFLICTION (though I do admire his somewhat wacky 2002 Bob Crane biopic, AUTO FOCUS). FIRST REFORMED tells the intense tale of Pastor Ernst Toller, a minister at a tourist church (historical because it was once a stop on the Underground Railroad) in upstate New York where he preaches sermons to pews with only four or five people.

Toller’s temple of the title is figuratively in the shadow of a megachurch that owns it, Abundant Life headed by celebrity preacher Pastor Jeffers (Cedric The Entertainer, credited as Cedric Kyles). A young pregnant woman, Mary (Amanda Seyfried) seeks out Toller in hope of having him counsel her husband, Michael (Philip Ettinger), an environmental activist who wants his wife to have an abortion because he can’t stand the idea of bringing a child into such a doomed world.

After their first discussion, in which we learn that the Pastor lost his son in the Iraq war and that destroyed his marriage, Toller researches what Michael is tormented by – the overwhelming scientific predictions of environmental disaster - and it triggers an existential crisis that gets worse the more glasses of whiskey he downs (he drinks more than his character in the 2012 horror film SINISTER, and that’s saying a lot), and comes to a horrible head when Michael commits suicide.

A 250th Anniversary celebration is being planned for Toller’s church, but Jeffers and one of Abundant Life’s corporate sponsors, represented by CEO Edward Balq (Michael Gaston) are concerned about the troubled chaplain after has his choir sing Neil Young’s Young’s pro-wildlife/anti-fracking anthem “Who’s Gunna Stand Up?” at Michael’s funeral.

Having found out that Balq is a climate change denier whose oil company is responsible for much of the area’s pollution, Toller plots a deadly end to the Anniversary event involving a suicide vest over his body wrapped in barbed wire.

From this description, I’m sure you can grasp that is a seriously dark and disturbing experience, but it’s a fascinating, immersive one as well that’s as watchable as it is unpleasant to process.

I originally wasn’t a fan of Hawke (his work in such films as DEAD POET’S SOCIETY and REALITY BITES didn’t rub me well), but he’s really grown into one of the most interesting actors of his generation. His work here is intricately stoic, but with instances of emotion (such as when he tells a woman, played by Victoria Hill, that he once had an affair with that he despises her), that can really get you in the gut.

FIRST REFORMED is the first movie in a long while that I want to read the screenplay of as it plays like a piece of literature in its thoughtful depiction of a complete crisis of fate.

The ending may baffle many audiences – it did a number on me – but it’s a profoundly powerful one. Many critics are comparing the film to Martin Scorsese’s 1976 landmark TAXI DRIVER, which Schrader wrote, a valid comparison for sure, as the films’ themes and tones are close in feeling. But Toller is a different kind of creature than Travis Bickle, created to reflect an even more dangerous world.

It’s impossible for Schrader’s incredible work here to make the same mark as that undeniable classic as the cinematic landscape is infinitely more cluttered, but I predict that in time, FIRST REFORMED will be considered as being in the same class.

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THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN: Not The Most Magnificent Remake But A Purty Good Time

Now playing at a multiplex near everyone:

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

(Dir. Antoine Fuqua, 2016)

How much of a remake exactly is Antoine Fuqua’s new familliarly titled western?

Well, it shares the same name with John Sturges’ 1960 American classic, which was itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 Japanese classic SEVEN SAMURAI, and it has basically the same premise, but the names have been changed and one of the film’s principal leads, Chris Pratt, has said that “it’s probably a lot more ‘Wild Bunch’ than ‘Magnificent Seven.’

And there’s also that Washington, the film’s star in his third collaboration with the director, has said that he’s never seen the original.

So, after taking it in, I consider Fuqua’s film to be a re-imagining of an established title in the wake of more modernist takes on the western genre, like say Quentin Tarantino’s THE HATEFUL EIGHT, but despite its black lead, it’s a pretty old fashioned affair without a single N-word in ear range.

In its prologue, we are introduced to the villain, industrialist Bartholomew Bogue, perfectly played by Peter Sarsgaard at his most sinister, as he crashes a small town meeting in the fictional Rose Creek which is supposed to be in the desert of Texas, but we know it’s Louisiana with a bit of Arizona mixed in because you’ve got to have Monument Valley in every Western. Bogue’s goons kill people, including the protesting husband (Matt Bomer) of Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett), the film’s only female lead.

Seeking revenge, Emma rounds up a posse made up of Washington as bounty hunter Sam Chisolm, Pratt as gambler Josh Farraday, Ethan Hawke as the grizzled sharp sharpshooter Goodnight Robicheaux, a delightfully drunk Vincent D'Onofrio as tracker Jack Horne, Byung-hun Lee as assassin Billy Rocks, Martin Sensmeier as Commanche warrior Red Harvest, and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Mexican outlaw Vasquez, to take down Bogue.

The crew outfits the town by digging trenches, rigging explosives, and equipping the townspeople with guns in a way that heavily recalls ¡THREE AMIGOS! more than its actual source material, for the movie’s massive shoot ‘em up climax.

That’s basically it plot-wise. It’s ultimately a Denzel Washington indestructible bad ass scenario crossed with a Chris Pratt action comedy under a commercial western banner. Not that there’s anything wrong with that as there are plenty of laughs and quickfire thrills on screen.

Fuqua and Washington have done good work previously in the 2001 cop drama TRAINING DAY, which also featured Hawke and won Washington a long deserved Osccar, and in the 2014 action thriller THE EQUALIZER (another remake!), and the third time definitely has its charms here, but don’t expect any awards season activity this time.

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN ’16 is a good not great update * of one of the principles study subjects of Westerns 101. It’s a solid piece of pop entertainment, but it doesn’t go very deep – don’t go looking for fully fleshed out characters or new takes on time worn plot devices - nor does it justify political interpretations (don’t give me any the villain symbolizes Trump tripe). “I just wanted to see Denzel Washington on a horse” Fuqua has been quoted as saying in more than one interview.

Maybe more than anything else, this film succeeds as a forum for that sure to become iconic image, but the rest of it is a purty good time as well.

* “Good not great update” is a registered trademark of Film Babble Blog (see the GHOST BUSTERS ’16 review for one of many examples).

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Move Over Miles, Let Chet Baker Take A Solo

BORN TO BE BLUE (Dir. Robert Budreau, 2015)

There are obvious similarities that Robert Budreau’s Chet Baker film shares with Don Cheadle’s Miles Davis film, both in current release.

They are both unconventional biopics about legendary jazz musicians, both trumpeters who struggled with drug addiction. Both center around the artist being on the verge of making a comeback. Both have film noir-ish black and white flashbacks to previous glories in younger years. And both take the facts and riff on top of them in an attempt to make the films feel like jazz itself, man.

But writer/director Budreau – a Canadian film maker that’s made nearly two dozen Canadian features, none of which I’ve seen – has fashioned a meta angle for his portrait of Baker, that involves him filming a movie in the ‘60s about his life in the ‘50s, and having a relationship with an actress who’s playing his first wife in that film.

While it is true that producer Dino De Laurentiis did approach Baker about playing himself in a movie, the project was abandoned long before any shooting took place, and the actress, named Jane Azuka, is a fictional character, a composite of several women in Baker’s life.

In possibly his finest performance, Ethan Hawke is fearlessly fragile as the used to be hot mess that was Baker, a heroin-addicted, almost toothless shell of a man who we first meet doing hard time in an Italian prison in 1966.

Jane, played by Carmen Ejogo (SELMA, THE PURGE: ANARCHY), helps Baker to stay clean and get work but his mouth injury from a beating by drug dealers (something that really happened albeit in a different way) has made it painful to play (he constantly fiddles with his ill-fitting false teeth). Slowly, Baker begins to get his groove back and with the help of his producer Dick Bock (Callum Keith Rennie) scores a special studio session for a small audience of record execs in which he nails the standard “My Funny Valentine.”

Hawke does his own singing on that and the film’s climatic “I’ve Never Been in Love Before” and it’s an effective interpretation of Baker’s vocals that nicely doesn’t come off like a self conscious impression. Kevin Turcotte beautifully plays all of Baker’s trumpet parts as none of Baker’s actual music is in the film for some reason (I assume it’s a legal matter).

In bookending scenes at New York’s iconic Birdland nightclub, Miles Davis * (Kedar Brown) and Dizzy Gillespie (Kevin Hanchard) watch Baker on stage and feel his genius but they also seemingly know that he has to have smack in order to perform. Jane definitely knows this, and whether or not he will yet again succumb to addiction is what the film ultimately hinges on.

Hawke has put in a lot of solid work in his career (particularly in the films of Richard Linklater), but his turn here as Baker is an Oscar-worthy piece of work. He terrifically plays off of his own image of a post prime pretty boy, and his scenes with Ejogo, which have a real desperate undertone to them, are as pointed as they are sometimes painful to watch.

BORN TO BE BLUE, which takes its name from a 1946 Mel Tormé song that Baker covered in 1965, may strain from its over artsiness at times but it’s largely a soulful , sad ballad about trying to reclaim past glories. It may be too on the nose that the fictional female love interest here is named Azuka, which she says means “past glory,” but Budreau’s Chet Baker biopic, which I liked quite a bit better than Cheadle’s Miles Davis movie I have to say, has the gumption to get away with it.

* That's right, Miles Davis is in Chet Baker's movie, but unsurprisingly Baker isn't even mentioned in Davis's.

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A Bunch Of Blu Rays & DVDs That Have Been Stacking Up

I haven’t posted as much as I would’ve liked this summer because of two big distracting factors: #1. My wife and I moved from our house in Raleigh to Clayton (roughly 20 minutes outside of Raleigh), and that was really exhausting. #2. I’ve had a few health issues over the last few months including an inflammation and a blood clot – and that’s been pretty painful.

While I’ve been recovering I’ve been making my way through a bunch of Blu rays and DVDs that have stacked up in my office over the last few months. Most of them are from the world of VOD (Video On Demand), and had either limited or no theatrical release, so you may not have heard of them. Most of them aren’t very good either, but there were a few halfway watchable ones. Let's take a look at a handful of 'em, shall we?

First up, there’s Philip Martin’s THE FORGER, starring John Travolta as, yes, a master art forger who makes a shady deal to get an early release from prison, but in return he must pull off “one last job.” So it’s a heist movie, and with Christopher Plummer as Travolta’s father, and Tye Sheridan as Travolta’s dying son both in on the caper, it highly resembles FAMILY BUSINESS, a less than stellar ‘80s comic thriller that starred Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman, and Matthew Broderick in the grandfather-father-son roles. 

Set in Boston with bad accents to boot, THE FORGER is a competently dull collection of clichés that’s a good example of how much Travolta’s been treading water in his film career since, well, probably HAIRSPRAY (his hair was more realistic in that too). It also resembles FAMILY BUSINESS in that it deserves to be forgotten.

Another fail of a thriller follows - this one coming from Canada - Atom Egoyan’s THE CAPTIVE starring Ryan Reynolds, Scott Speedman, Rosario Dawson, and Mireille Enos. Reynolds and Enos play a couple whose daughter is kidnapped by a pedophile trafficking ring. Dawson and Speedman play a pair of detectives that are on the case that lasts over 8 years. The more than capable cast try their darnedest, but the material is crazy convoluted, and the score by Mychael Danna overreaches as it annoyingly builds suspenseful strain on top of suspenseful strain only calling attention to how unsuspenseful the whole thing is. The fractured narrative that skips back and forth in time just makes it confusing too. A murky misfire on every level. Next!

Matt Shakman’s CUT BANK is a more inspired thriller than THE CAPTIVE, but it’s no great shakes either. The directorial debut of Shakman, who has directed episodes of scores of notable TV shows including Six Feet Under, The Good Wife, Weeds, House M.D., and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, it stars Liam Hemsworth as a small town dreamer – dreaming of getting out of the small town naturally – who accidently captures the murder of the local mailman (Bruce Dern) on videotape. Hemsworth hopes to use the reward money offered by the U.S. Postal Service to finally escape with his girlfriend (Teresa Palmer) from their dead end existence there in Cut Bank, Montana, but, of course, things aren’t that simple. 

John Malkovich as the town’s sheriff, and Billy Bob Thornton as Palmer’s father have their suspicions, and a creepy taxidermist who everybody thought was dead (Michael Stuhlbarg) starts looking into the matter as well. It twists and turns through a mess of schemes and scams in the tradition of both the movie and TV show versions of FARGO (Shakman directed two eps of that too), but it never twists and turns itself into anything but a watchable throwaway. Shakman should stick to TV.

Henry Hobson’s MAGGIE, another directorial debut, is one of the few here that got more of a theatrical release (it actually came to my area), and it’s obviously because of its star, Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s another zombie apocalypse scenario, with Schwarzenegger as a farmer in the Midwest taking care of his daughter (Abigail Breslin) who’s been bitten. 

The father struggles with how to handle the situation as the country doctor (Jodie Moore) tells him he has three options: take her to quarantine; give her a drug cocktail that leads to a slow, painful death; or “make it quick.” It largely feels like a stand-alone episode of The Walking Dead - one of the uneventful ones on the season set on the farm maybe - but it has a nicely restrained performance by Schwarzenegger in his uncharacteristic role, there’s a lot of genuine effort by Breslin in embodying her infected character, and the eerie grey tone is effective. I got fairly bored in the last half hour, but fans of the genre and of Ahnold will probably be more into it.

At the beginning of this just under feature length (68 minuntes) documentary a scroll tells us that HATING OBAMA is an attempt to document the pure hate towards President Barack Obama while asking the central question: “Is Obama hated more for his policies or because he’s black?” It’s a fair question, and there’s some interesting chitchat from a bunch of articulate talking heads here, but Marquis Smalls’ doc doesn’t elaborate on anything we didn’t know already. It mainly plays like a greatest hits of the times Obama has been disrespected, touching on such incidents as when Republican House member Joe Wilson yelled “you lie” during the President’s Healthcare speech, with interspersed commentary mostly from supporters who do indeed think there’s racism at play.

There is significant time given to some anti-Obama voices, such as conservative political activist Derrick Grayson and Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson, but it’s telling that at the end writer/director Smalls shares with us his poll of all his interviewees and 82% of them approve of Obama. A doc like this can’t help but be biased, but the thesis needs more work. HATING OBAMA is a watchable, well constructed conversation of a video essay, but it has no real conclusion - it just throws the question back at us at the end.

Finally, there’s Michael Almereyda’s CYMBELINE, which is another one of those gritty modern adaptations of Shakespeare much like Baz Luhrmann’s ROMEO + JULIET, Ralph Fiennes’ CORIOLANUS, and Almereyda’s own HAMLET, as this re-unites the director with that film’s star, Ethan Hawke. The setting is again New York, but this time in the world of urban gang warfare with the ever crusty Ed Harris in the title role of the king of the Briton Motorcycle Club, who are battling the corrupt cops of the Roman Police Department. Hawke plays the villainous, agitating Iachimo, Milla Jovovich plays Harris’s queen, Anton Yelchin is her son, and, of course, there’s a pair of star-crossed lovers - Dakota Johnson (FIFTY SHADES OF GREY) as Harris’s princess daughter and Penn Badgley (Gossip Girl) as her secret commoner husband. 

All the film's dialogue comes from the original text, albeit trimmed down to the essentials, and it’s fun to see folks like John Leguizamo (as Badgley’s servant) put such effort into their recitations. The old school manner of speaking is an amusing anachronism in this Brooklyn crime-lord context, but you really have to pay attention to follow it or it can get pretty confusing - especially with all the bloody, layered plotting. I appreciated several of CYMBELINE’s set pieces, particularly one in which Jovovich sings Dylan’s “Dark Eyes” (much in the manner of Patti Smith’s version), but it’s far from an easy, entertaining viewing. Like his HAMLET, Almereyda’s take on the Bard here is initially an interesting experiment but one that’s hardly essential.

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BOYHOOD: The Film Babble Blog Review

BOYHOOD (Dir. Richard Linklater, 2014)

Richard Linklater’s much buzzed about BOYHOOD is the best, and most real feeling film of the year so far. It takes us on an engrossing journey through the life of a boy from age 5 to age 18, covering the significant events in that timespan with powerful poignancy.

It’s able to tell its simple coming-of-age tale so well for one simple, astounding reason: writer/director Linklater shot the film intermittently over 12 years, capturing actor Ellar Coltrane stretch by stretch as he grew into early adulthood.

Along for the real-time ride is Patricia Arquette as Coltrane’s beleaguered mother, Linklater regular Ethan Hawke as his flighty father, and Lorelei Linklater (the director’s daughter) as his sister.

When the film begins in 2002, to the tune of Coldplay’s “Yello,” parents Arquette and Hawke have been separated for some time.

Despite his estranged wife taking the kids and moving away to Houston, Hawke hopes for reconciliation, but it doesn’t seem likely as he’s an unemployed musician, and Arquette has eyes for her new psychology professor (Marco Perella).

Like everything else in the film, this is seen through Coltrane’s eyes so at times we only get glimpses of such and such event – something that effectively conveys how kids’ memories can be.

Arquette marries Perrella, but he turns out to be an abusive alcoholic so after some appropriately unspecified period of time she uproots the family again. Meanwhile Hawke sheds his deadbeat dad skin, and marries a nice Christian lady (Jenni Tooley) whose mother (Karen Jones) gives Coltrane his first Bible (personalized!), while her father (Richard Andrew Jones) gives him a rifle for his fifteenth birthday.

Hawke’s birthday present to Coltrane is much more important: a three CD compilation he put together entitled “The Beatles: Black Album,” a collection of the best tracks from the solo work of the fab four (See the track listing here). This especially touched me because as a Beatles fan, I’ve made a likewise mix and have known so many others that did the same thing – i.e. try to make a new album by the band from the highlights of their post Beatles' careers. 

Since DAZED AND CONFUSED, Linklater has expertly blended music into his movies – here, with a soundtrack of 40 songs by such seminal artists as Bob Dylan, Arcade Fire, Yo La Tengo, Gnarls Barkley, The Black Keys, and Wilco – he’s made the a stirring soundtrack to a life; an awesome mix that gives that gives Chris Pratt’s coveted “Awesome Mix Vol. 1” cassette in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY a run for its money.

Within the naturalistic flow of BOYHOOD, Coltrane develops skills as a photographer, gains and losses a high school girlfriend (Zoe Graham), and has to deal with another of his mother’s drunk spouses, lastly a Afghanistan war veteran played by Brad Hawkins (“I’ve made some bad life choices,” Arquette says).

Through all these events, large or small, Linklater’s exceedingly well constructed film says a lot about the passing of time. It’s never preachy or pretentious about it, it just observes how people and times change yet still stay the same in a way that many movies have tried but never pulled off as touchingly.

Linklater's gamble that this would be movie-making time well spent really paid off in Coltrane's understated performance, matched with some of Arquette and Hawke's best acting.

Longtime Linklater cinematographers Lee Daniel and Shane F. Kelly really outdo themselves here too – the film is full of striking shots of Texan locales, and crisp close-ups of Coltrane and the cast.

Its 2 hour and 45 minute length may put some people off, but remember Ebert: “No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.” 

Linklater has done something really special here, something he’s come close to in his excellent BEFORE films, which also well utilize Hawke and the passage of time, he’s shown how much genuine, overpowering emotion can be triggered by a such a cleverly sincere cinematic experiment.

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Blu Ray/DVD Review: BEFORE MIDNIGHT

Out today on Blu ray and DVD:

BEFORE MIDNIGHT
(Dir. Richard Linklater, 2013) *

“Where did you think your life would be at this point, Missy?” Ethan Hawke flippantly asks Julie Delpy early on in the third installment of Richard Linklaters’ ongoing saga of Jesse and Céline, the star-crossed lovers that we first met back in 1995’s BEFORE SUNRISE.

From Delpy’s remarks throughout BEFORE MIDNIGHT, we can guess that she didn’t expect that in her early 40s she’d be married to somebody she calls an “American teenager,” and that she’d be the mother of his curly haired blonde twin seven-year old girls (Charlotte and Jennifer Pryor).

But since they came together that afternoon in Paris they spent together in 2004’s BEFORE SUNSET that’s what happened, and now, nine years later, on vacation in Greece, they come to another crossroad in their relationship. Hawke’s successful novelist Jesse, is aching to spend more time with his teenage son (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) who lives with his mother in Chicago, but the French Delpy’s politically-minded Céline doesn’t want to leave France because of a government job offer.

Linklater (SLACKER, DAZED AND CONFUSED, BERNIE) effectively gets us back into the tone and the talkiness of the couple’s world with a long unbroken shot (taken from a camera mounted on the hood of their automobile) of the two chatting while driving through the Greek hillside while their children sleep in the back seat. We then meet a group of locals including Walter Lassally, Xenia Kalogeropoulou, Athina Rachel Tsangari, and Panos Koronis that join the leads for a lively dinner party, in which life and love is discussed with much wit and warmth.

This is a fine appetizer, but the real entrée is the last two thirds that concern Delpy and Hawke alone. They have a long walk and talk through Grecian ruins (another unbroken shot), in which Hawke notes that it’s been a long time since they’ve “walked around and bullsh*ted.” Then it’s on to an evening at Westin Resort Hotel at Costa Navarino which starts off romantically, but then becomes an edgy argument that could end their marriage.

Their heated hotel room feud put me through the emotional ringer, as it probably will anybody who’s enjoyed and/or suffered a long term relationship. Being the same age as they are (Hawke is 42; Delpy - 43), I can heavily relate to them as I’ve experienced almost identical arguments.

In both career best performances, Hawke and Delpy alternate between being funny, deeply frustrated, and heart-broken, never taking an inauthentic step (the fact that Delpy spends a good chunk of their hotel room spat topless is somehow organically present). Along with Linklater, Hawke and Delpy co-wrote the screenplay, so you often feel the overlap of real life in their exchanges and that makes the material sting and resonate greatly.

Some folks may be turned off by how talky it is – and it’s all talk; a series of constant conversations - but fans of these films are going to be elated to spend more time with these two, who, I believe, are in the running for greatest screen couple ever.

In a world full of major studio sequels and re-boots, it’s a beautiful treat that every nine years we can catch up with Jesse and Céline in an intelligent indie shot at another picturesque location. As BEFORE MIDNIGHT is on excellent par with the first two films, that prospect is even more appealing. Delpy recently said in an interview that they plan on making these films into their 60s, “then we’ll be like the couple in AMORE.” Amen to growing old with these characters.

Special Features: Commentary with Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy, a 7 minute featurette “Revisiting Jesse & Celine,” a 37-minute Q & A with Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy conducted by Film Critic Elvis Mitchell, and the theatrical trailer.

* Except for the last bit about bonus material, this review originally appeared in the June 14th, 2013 edition of the Raleigh News & Observer.

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A Few Fine Films Keep The Summer Movie Season From Sucking

Although summer doesn’t officially start until later this week (Friday, June 21st), the summer movie season has been long underway. So far we’ve had a slew of big ass sequels (IRON MAN 3, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS, FAST & FURIOUS 6), a few flops (AFTER EARTH, THE INTERNSHIP), and a couple of surprise hits (NOW YOU SEE ME, THE PURGE). 

Some okay popcorn picture action there (and some suckage), but nothing that notable.

But this last weekend, while all eyes were on the mammoth Superman re-boot, MAN OF STEEL, one of the best films of the summer (and of the year so far) snuck into local theaters: Richard Linklater’s BEFORE MIDNIGHT. 

The art house indie, which as the third in a series is actually another sequel, is a charmingly talky romantic drama that continues the story of Jesse and Celine (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy), a couple of star-crossed lovers who first met in 1995’s BEFORE SUNRISE. 

Read my review of BEFORE MIDNIGHT in the Raleigh News & Observer last week: “‘Before Midnight’ talks a blue streak and that’s a good thing” (June 14, 2013).

Another movie that opened last week that I quite enjoyed, albeit in a completely different way, is Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s THIS IS THE END.

Unless you’ve been hiding out in a hole in the ground you should know from the massive advertising that the outrageous and über crude comedy concerns Rogen and a bunch of his Hollywood player pals, including James Franco, Jonah, Hill, Craig Robinson, Jay Baruchel, and Danny McBride, playing themselves dealing with the world literally going to Hell while they’re all partying at Franco’s fortress of a mansion.

Read how funny I thought it was in the Film Babble Blog review: “The Apocalypse Hilariously Hits Seth Rogen & Gang In THIS IS THE END” (June 11, 2013).

The summer movie season continues this week with the most expensive zombie movie of all time, WORLD WAR Z, a Pixar prequel, MONSTERS UNIVERSITY, and a few interesting looking indies: Zal Batmanglij’s ecological thriller THE EAST, and Josh Whedon’s modern-day adaptation of William Shakespeare’s MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

Here’s hoping that there’s something there that will join BEFORE MIDNIGHT and THIS IS THE END in keeping this summer movie season from being a suck-fest.

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New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD 2/19/13

Just in time for the Oscars comes the Blu ray/DVD release of one of the major contenders: Ben Affleck’s ARGO. The 2-disc Blu ray edition contains such Special Features as a commentary by director Affleck, Feature Length Picture in Picture: Eye Witness Account, and several featurettes including “Rescued from Tehran: We Were There,” “Argo: Absolute Authenticity,” “ARGO: The CIA & Hollywood Connection,” and “Escape From Iran: The Hollywood Option.”

Read my review of ARGO (it was #3 on my Top 10 of 2012 BTW), and check out the movie that should have gotten Affleck a nomination for Best Director (and that I hope will win Best Picture). The Blu ray/DVD combo also includes an UltraViolet digital copy. 

ANNA KARENINA, nominated for four Oscars, also drops today in a Blu ray release with the obligatory DVD, and digital copy add-ons. I was “Anna Karenina”-illiterate when I saw it last December, but appreciated the artsy approach to the material that Joe Wright took, which involved an old theater backdrop that evolved with the production (my review here). Perhaps the best of Wright and Keira Knightley’s literary trilogy, it looks like a shoo-in to win the Best Costume Design Academy Award on Sunday night. 

Special features: Deleted Scenes, commentary with Wright, and a batch of featurettes (“Anna Karenina: An Epic Story About Love,” “Adapting Tolstoy,” “Keira as Anna,” “On the Set with Director Joe Wright,” “Dressing Anna,” and “Anna Karenina: Time-Lapse Photography”).

Another big new release today is the second season of HBO’s hit show Game of Thrones on Blu ray and DVD. My wife and I are about halfway through this new 5 disc box (seems like they only put two or so episodes a disc to make it a more expensive set), and I’m enjoying the war of the Lannisters and Starks families a lot more than in season one. Some of the effects stand out unconvincingly, and I may get a few of the characters confused, but the lavish landscapes, spectacular battles, and wicked wit in the wordplay (especially coming from Peter Dinklage as "The Imp" Tyrion Lannister) more than suffice.

Haven’t explored the exclusive Blu ray features much since we haven’t finished the season, but they include an interactive guide “War of the Five Kings,” Hidden Dragon Eggs, featurettes such as “Histories and Lore,” “Creating the Battle of Blackwater Bay,” “The Religion if Westeros,” 12 audio commentaries, and a roundtable discussion of Game of Thrones’ Inner Circle. The thick book-like Blu ray box also includes DVD copies, and a Digital Copy of the complete season.

A lesser release, in my opinion that is, today is the Ethan Hawke horror movie SINISTER, directed by Scott Derrickson, on Blu ray and DVD. I wasn’t a fan of the film (my review), which has Hawke as a true crime writer who moves his wife and kids in into a house where a family of four was found hanged from a tree in the backyard, but some critics liked it (Ebert gave it 3 stars, Entertainment Weekly named it the best horror film of 2012) so decide for yourself. It’s your funeral. 

SINISTER’S Special Features include a commentary with director Derrickson, and a second one with Derrickson and C.Robery Cargill, a “True Crime Authors” featurette, “Living in a House of Death” featurette, Deleted Scenes (with optional audio commentary with Scott Derrickson), and the theatrical trailer.

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Tricks Not Treats In The Non-Scary SINISTER

SINISTER (Dir. Scott Derrickson, 2012)

Halloween is right around the corner, so how about an Ethan Hawke horror movie?

In Scott Derrickson’s SINISTER, which is being billed as “from the producer of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY and INSIDIOUS,” Hawke plays one of my favorite film character archetypes: the writer whose first book was a smash, but a decade or so later is struggling with the follow-up.

Here, Hawke’s genre is true crime, and he’s just moved with his wife (Juliet Rylance) and kids (Michael Hall D’Addario and Clare Foley) into a house where a family of four was found hanged from a tree in the backyard. Hawke’s plan is to re-ignite his fame by writing a book about the previous occupants’ murders, and solve the mystery of a missing fifth family member, a young girl named Stephanie.

“Sinister” opens with grainy Super 8 footage of the hanging, and Hawke finds that very film in a box of home movies in the attic, in a canister labeled “family hanging out.” Late at night, drinking whiskey, in his office covered with photos, maps, and newspaper clippings, Hawke watches the movies (other reels contain footage of the killings of other families) over and over looking for clues. His writing process mainly consists of jotting down questions on Post-it notes like “Where is Stephanie?” and “Who took the film?”

Strange, possibly supernatural, things start happening, some which are explained - the 12 year old D’Addario has night terrors and will scream for no reason, a big menacing neighborhood dog in the yard; some which are undoubtedly from a dark realm - ghosts of kids appearing here and there, images of an evil Pagan deity lurking in both Super 8 frames and around Hawke’s house.

Christopher Young’s none-too-subtle score tells us well ahead of time when the next scare is scheduled. With its constant swelling up to each attempted in-your-face jolt, it calls attention to some of the most forced instances of creepiness I’ve ever seen in a horror movie.

One ridiculous sequence has Hawke, wielding a baseball bat while scoping out his dark house, because his projector keeps coming on showing the same film of the family being hanged. Man, I got so sick of seeing that sick footage. Anyway, Hawke’s worried eyes work over time as he searches the shadows, but he misses the apparitions of dead kids that keep appearing around him, but disappear the second he turns around - you know, like in a cartoon.

A couple more clichés are present in the two local cops that show up to Hawke’s property. Fred Thompson (long-time character actor and former U.S. Senator) plays the gruff Sheriff, who’s not a fan of Hawke’s work, and James Ransone as the bumbling Deputy, who turns out to be smarter than expected. At least, there’s a welcome un-credited cameo by Vincent D'Onofrio as a professor of the occult, or some such, even if he only appears on a computer screen.

Hawke does his best to carry this macabre mess, and pulls off a few great hysterical moments, but the vain douchey nature of the character he’s embodying doesn’t cut it as one we should care about. The movie itself isn’t visually interesting - it’s too dark and dreary aesthetically, and there’s not much imagination in shot set-ups.

Derrickson’s (best known for THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE I guess) film fails to frighten so much that when its’ supposed-to-be shocking ending arrives, it pathetically falls flat.

It may be slim pickings for quality horror movies this Halloween, what with a fourth PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, and something called SILENT HILL: REVELATION 3D coming out, but that doesn’t mean one should settle for the embarrassingly non-scary SINISTER.

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No Lament For Lumet - The Guy's Still Got The Goods

It's been a very good week - reviewed below is the third film I've seen in a row at the theater that really lived up to its hype and may end up on my year end top ten. Also nice to report that it is the work of a director than many had long written off. So let's dig in:

BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD
(Dir. Sidney Lumet, 2007)

After the solid yet fairly unremarkable FIND ME GUILTY (2006) many (including me) expected the 82 year old Lumet, with a career behind him that included such undisputed classics as FAIL-SAFE, NETWORK, DOG DAY AFTERNOON, and SERPICO, to go gracefully into that good night.

There's nothing graceful about the characters and their actions in BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD though. With a economical pacing and frenetic fractured structure that youngsters like Tarentino and Soderbergh would kill for, this heist gone wrong parable is not only one of Lumet's best movies in possibly decades but is one of the year's best films. An emotionally detached Andy Hanson (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and his twitching down-on-his-luck brother Hank (Ethan Hawke) decide to knock over a mom and pop jewelry store located in a New Jersey strip mall. 

Thing is - it's their actual Mom and Pop's (Albert Finney and Rosemary Harris) store - Hanson's Jewelry - and oh, Hawke is having an affair with Hoffman's wife (Marissa Tomei). I don't consider any of that plot info to be spoilers since all of that is revealed in the trailer but don't worry I won't spill any more - the build-up and juicy interlocking of vignettes here are so swift and satisfying that nobody needs further briefing. 

Titles such as "The Robbery" and "Three Days Before The Robbery" assign sections of the film to the different players (Hawke, Hoffman, And Finney - seems like Oscar winner Tomei picked the short straw) and shifts our sympathies or animosities between them as the plot-lines pile up. There is a fair amount of humor but like in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN it hides in the darkness making audiences cringe at the same time they stifle a giggle. 

Hawke's Hank - a desperate dead-beat dad has such a cloud over his head and a wide-eyed puppy dog look (Finney says "he's still such a baby" at one point) that we are invited to laugh at him but there's nothing humorous about his older brother Andy. Hoffman's Andy - a jaded withdrawn real estate exec. with slicked back hair and fine tailored suits is disguising a desperation as deep and scarring as his brother's. 

Though Albert Finney, just a little younger than Lumet, appears pretty worse for wear (his mouth is always hanging open and he moves slowly and shakily) he can still bring the intensity as the most affecting character here - he alone may be the heart of this film (sorry again, Marissa). 

With Lumet's name attached as director to another project (GETTING OUT set for 2009) it looks like that good night will simply have to wait. 

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Listomania: Richard Linklater Edition

To celebrate that a spiffy brand new DVD of Linklater’s 1991 cult classic debut film SLACKER is now available as part of the Criterion collection, DAZED AND CONFUSED has just been re-released on DVD with some new special features as the “Flashback Edition,” and Linklater’s most recent film BEFORE SUNSET is also new out on DVD, I’ve decided to give the man his Film Babble Blog due.

So here it is, starting with:

Richard Linklater Filmography (and mini-guide to this post):

S: SLACKER (1991)

DAC: DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993)
BS: BEFORE SUNRISE (1995) 

SUB: SUBURBIA (1996)

NB: THE NEWTON BOYS (1998)
WL: WAKING LIFE (2001)
T: TAPE (2001) 
SOR: SCHOOL OF ROCK (2003)
BS II: BEFORE SUNSET (2004)

The Richard Linklater Repertory Company Role Call:

Julie Delpy: BS, WL, BSII 
Ethan Hawke: BS, NB, WL, T, BSII Adam Goldberg: DAC, BS, WL 
Charles Gunning: S, NB, & WL 
Nicky Katt: DAC, SUB 
Kim Krizan: S, DAC 
Richard Linklater: S, WL 
Michael McConaughey: DAC, NB 
Parker Posey: DAC, SUB 
Willie Wiggins: DAC, WL 

5 Great Lines From The Mouths Of Richard Linklater Characters:

1. “Withdrawing in disgust is not the same as apathy.” - This was written on a card handed to somebody in S (This line was quoted in R.E.M.’s “What's The Frequency Kenneth?” from their 1995 album “Monster.”

2. “George Washington was in a cult, and the cult was into aliens, man.” - Slater (Rory Cochrane, DAC)

3. “Your kids have all really touched me, and I'm pretty sure that I've touched them.” - Dewey Finn (Jack Black, SOR) (written by Mike White)

4. “Idealism is guilty middle-class bullshit.” - Jeff (Giovanni Ribisi, SUB)

5. “Did you ever have a job that you hated and worked real hard at? A long hard day of work. Finally you get to go home, get in bed, close your eyes. And immediately you wake up and realize that the whole day at work had been a dream. It's bad enough that you sell your life for minimum wage but now they get your dreams for free.” (Guy Forsyth, WL)

For the record: Film Babble Blog's Top 5 Richard Linklater Films:

1. BEFORE SUNRISE
2. DAZED AND CONFUSED
3. SLACKER
4. WAKING LIFE
5. BEFORE SUNSET


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