PASSENGERS Left A Bad, Creepy Taste In My Mouth

Now playing at multiplexes from here to Homestead II:

PASSENGERS (Dir. Morten Tyldum, 2016)

Despite that the screenplay has been floating around online for a while, and because I didn't click on anything that went into more detail about the plot, all I knew going in was this sci-fi movie’s basic premise - i.e. two spaceship passengers played by Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence on a 120 year voyage to a new earth-like planet wake up out of hibernation 90 years early, fall in love, and work together to solve the mystery of why they were woken up.

What I didn’t know was that Pratt’s character, Jim Preston, actually wakes up from a pod malfunction a year before Jennifer Lawrence’s Aurora Lane, and because Jim is taken with Aurora (he’s never met her; he’s just watched her passenger profile video over and over) he sabotages her sleep pod so that she’ll wake up and they can be together.

Sounds pretty creepy, huh? No wonder the film's trailers, and TV spots gloss over that crucial plot point.

The film, written by Jon Spaihts (DOCTOR STRANGE, PROMETHEUS, THE DARKEST HOUR), bends over backwards trying to justify Jim’s actions. 

It shows us that Jim, a mechanic back home, goes through months of desperately trying to break into the ship’s control room, becoming suicidal from loneliness as he wanders drunk and pantless around the corridors of the ship, which is named the Starship Avalon, where his only friend is a robot bartender named Arthur played by Michael Sheen (a role that in dress and demeanor largely recalls Lloyd, the hotel bartender in THE SHINING).

Jim also doesn’t just wake up Aurora on a whim; he goes back and forth about it for weeks, and talks it out with Arthur, but from him he only gets responses like “Jim, these are not robot questions.”

When he finally decides to wake up who he thinks is his dream girl, he tells Arthur not to tell her, and he makes sure he hides the tools he used to tamper with her pod.

Lawrence’s Aurora is in a daze at first, going through some of the same motions that Jim did involving desperately trying to come up with a solution to being “stranded in space with a stranger” as she puts it.

Aurora is a writer and her plan was to travel to this new world, dubbed Homestead II, live there for a year then return home after another 120 year journey back – that’s right, she bought a round trip ticket – so that she could write the first book about the earth’s distant twin.

Finally, after giving her space, Jim asks Aurora out and before long they are in love – eating at the fancy restaurant facilities, engaging in holographic dance-offs, and going outside the ship in spacesuits where they knock helmets in place of their first kiss.

Then Arthur, that damn robot bartender has to go and ruin it by telling Aurora that Jim deliberately woke her (Arthur misunderstands it when the couple agrees that they “have no secrets”) and Aurora is livid.

Equating it to him murdering her, Aurora angrily withdraws all contact with Jim and ignores his pleas – one of which is broadcast around the ship – for understanding.

This all changes when somebody else wakes up - Laurence Fishburne as Chief Gus Mancuso, one of the Avalon’s high ranking staff members, and they all find out that the vessel is in extreme danger due to more major malfunctions, so the last act is a high octane fiery climax in which our leads fight to save the ship.

PASSENGERS goes from funny (Pratt’s early one man show scenes before he commits his questionable act) to creepy (the couple’s icky, yet stylish, courting scenes) to a routine sci-fi action thriller scenario, to creepy again (the ultra stupid ending, which I won’t spoil).

Lawrence and Pratt are two attractive, likable movie stars whose talents deserve a better, more thoughtful sci-fi platform than this, or at least one that doesn’t leave such a bad, creepy taste in my mouth.

It feels like Morten Tyldum (THE IMITATION GAME) and Co. took the standard rom com narrative, in which the male protagonist does something unforgivable and is rejected in the first half of the film, but redeems himself in the eyes of the female protagonist with a heroic feat in the third act, and they tried to go all GRAVITY and INTERSTELLAR on it.

The aforementioned screenplay for this film has been around for nearly a decade, and at one point was almost made with Keanu Reeves and Reese Witherspoon, and that alone should confirm the rom com-iness of this material.

The film, as shot by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, ARGO, BABEL), is as good looking as its leads, and there are a number of amusing moments, but overall PASSENGERS is a A-list actors lost in space letdown.

If you want to see a great movie starring two talented good looking A-listers, there’s a certain musical opening on Christmas day. I’ll fill you in about it soon.

More later...

David O. Russell's AMERICAN HUSTLE Pulls A Scorsese On ABSCAM

AMERICAN HUSTLE (Dir. David O. Russell, 2013)

  
“Some of this actually happened...” a title tells us up front and then we're off into one of the impressive approximations of the intoxicating style of Martin Scorsese that I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of them.

David O. Russell's follow-up to his home runs THE FIGHTER and last year's SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK presents a darkly funny take on the ABSCAM sting of the late '70s and early '80s by way of a couple of con artist caricatures, portrayed by Christian Bale and Amy Adams, who are blackmailed into working for Bradley Cooper as an unhinged over-permed FBI agent.

Our intro to Bale as Irving Rosenfeld (loosely based on convicted con man Melvin Weinberg), takes us through how he applies what his girlfriend/partner-in-crime Adams calls “an elaborate comb-over,” gives us all we need to know about this small-time loan scammer.

Of course, Bale and Adams' documentary-style voice-overs aren't the only allusions to GOODFELLAS going on in all the set-ups, as dead-on Carter-era song choices (Steely Dan's “Dirty Work” serves as a perfect opening theme song), and grainy chaotic camerawork relishing all the garish wardrobes and decor of the surroundings, keeps a Scorsese-ian sweep going from start to finish.

There's also a good bit of Paul Thomas Anderson's BOOGIE NIGHTS embedded in the structure, but since that also had massive debts to Scorsese, I digress.

Cooper's Richard “Richie” DiMaso, who's based on FBI Agent Anthony Amoroso, Jr. can come off as much as a speeding spaz as the amped up movie around him at times, but look deeper and you'll see one of the most electric performances of the year.

More colorful caricatures (I call them that because everybody looks like they stepped out of the pages of Mad Magazine movie satires from the era depicted) crop up in the form of Jennifer Lawrence (Cooper's SILVER LININGS co-star) as Bale's bawdy wild card of a wife who may accidentally blow everyone's cover (Lawrence acts her ass off), Jeremy Renner as the idealistic mayor of Camden, New Jersey (with a very Joe Pesci-ish pompadour) who gets up in the scam, and comedian Louis C.K. as Cooper's uptight FBI supervisor.

A running bit about Cooper needling C.K. about both approving more money for the operation and guessing the moral of an aborted ice-fishing anecdote is a successful strand of silliness that kept me laughing alongside all the other in-your-face absurdity here.

Many will say its more rip-off than homage with such lame bon mots as “Scorsese-lite” to “Rhinestone Scorsese,” but I liken it to how people call a song that's in the vein of the Beatles but still has its own groove: “Beatle-esque.”

AMERICAN HUSTLE is definitely Scorsese-esque, but it has its own grooves going in its riffing on '70s cinema vibes. At one point when schooling Cooper on the art of the con, Bale asks “Who's the master: the painter or the forger?”

I'll still go with the painter, especially as we're on the verge of a major Marty release (THE WOLF OF WALL STREET opens on Christmas day) that more than tops this, but when it comes to what Russell and his crack cast are going for here, to quote Christopher Walken in a classic SNL sketch: “It's a Hell of a forgery.”

More later... 

It's the 5th Anniversary Of SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, So Here's The Top 5 Game Show Films

This is a guest post by Elizabeth Eckhart:

Today is the fifth anniversary of Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan's iconic Best Picture Oscar-winning SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (reviewed on 12/16/08). The film, which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30th, 1998, follows Jamal, played by Dev Patel, from his less-than-humble beginnings in the slums of Mumbai, India to his appearance on the Indian version of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

Though he was raised with little to no formal education, Jamal is able to correctly answer every question, resulting in Jamal’s torture and interrogation -- which is how the film opens. The show’s host and other authorities are convinced that Jamal has cheated, but through a series of flashbacks we discover the life experiences which gave Jamal every answer to the show.

The film takes away much of the tension that might have been aroused watching Jamal in the hot seat since audiences are aware he succeeds. However, this allows for more attention to be given to Jamal’s story, much of which still needs to be resolved after the game show concludes.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE was famed for its cross-cultural music, vivid imagery, and unique game show plot line. Game show movies, though rare, have a special ability to create an introspective audience. While watching the cheering audience on screen, real viewers are given the opportunity to become quite self reflective. One audience may be cheering, while the other nervously sits on edge, waiting for the unavoidable catastrophe.

In honor of SLUMDOG’s anniversary, let’s look at five more of the best game show movies available today:

THE RUNNING MAN (Dir. Paul Michael Glaser, 1987)

It is the year 2017 (oddly close to us now) and the world economy has collapsed. In this new, military controlled police state where everything from TV, movies, art, and communication is censored, the government has discovered a new way to deal with criminals: prisoners can either serve jail time, or take part in a violent game show called The Running Man. Based off of Stephen King’s novel by the same name (written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman), we follow Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger), a former LA police officer who has been framed for murder, and then forced to compete on the show. As a contestant, he is viciously followed by “Stalkers,” the futuristic version of a bounty hunter.

Though Arnold disliked the way director Paul Glaser shot the film, claiming he “shot the movie like a television show,” some may argue this is the very factor which makes the film exciting. The look and feel of the film does feel similar to television shows, heightening our own anxiety as we wait to see if Ben succeeds in revealing the government’s secrets and proving his own innocence.

QUIZ SHOW (Dir. Robert Redford, 1994)

QUIZ SHOW is based on the 1950s game show scandal, when the show Twenty One was discovered to have been rigged. Though not completely accurate, the film stays pretty true to form, only adding slight embellishments to dramatize and turn the movie into an appropriately exaggerated version.

If we can recall, Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) is the more physically appealing contestant. It’s discovered that Charles is being fed answers in order to defeat his less-attractive competitor, Herb Stempel (John Turturro). Herb, who had been the legitimate reigning champ, is setup to fail due to his approval ratings being leveled out. After Doren defeats him, Herb fades into the background and Doren becomes an instant celebrity. Doren’s winning streak begins to take a toll, though, as he becomes more dependent on producers to feed him correct answers. Herb Stempel, in the meantime, brings in a lawyer that begins to investigate the show. From there, the secrets of Twenty One slowly begin to fall apart.

The film is definitely worth a watch, as it provides a surprising look at the crumbling and downfall of multiple men, both the contestants and those running the show.

STARTER FOR TEN (Dir. Tom Vaughan, 2006)

Possibly one of the least known films on the list, STARTER FOR 10 is a British film set in 1985 about a young student named Brian Jackson (James McAvoy) who wins a place on the University Challenge quiz team. While on the team, Brian deals with a hopeless crush on a teammate and the clashing worlds of Bristol University and his less posh friends and family back home. Brian represents that trivia geek and information sponge everyone knows (or possibly is himself).

Though James McAvoy is enough reason to give this film a shot, it was also produced by Tom Hanks. The film is wittier than most rom coms, since the leads are all intelligent people and their romantic entanglements are set against this unique, competitive atmosphere.

CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND (Dir. George Clooney, 2002)



Directed by George Clooney who also stars in this film as the CIA operative Jim Byrd who recruits Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell), a TV producer and game show host of The Gong Show, to become an assassin. It’s unclear if the spy life of Chuck is real or imagined, but in reality Chuck Barris did exist, and did claim to work for the CIA. The real Barris was heavily involved in the production, ensuring that the film accurately reflected his memoir and point of view.

The plot follows Barris as he becomes increasingly successful in the realm of game show hosting, while at the same time lives out his double life as a spy. Though odd, and difficult to take as an honest biography, the film is fun to watch and features large names like Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymore, and Michael Cera.

THE HUNGER GAMES (Dir. Gary Ross, 2012)

The most recent and popular game show film today, THE HUNGER GAMES is the only film here advertised to a younger audience. The plot, as many know, follows young Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) after she takes her sister’s place as a chosen tribute for the only game show that exists in a dystopian future.

The game is a duel to the death between preteen and teen competitors from each of the twelve poor districts and the wealthy Capitol. The Hunger Games is used both as a vehicle for gruesome entertainment, but also as the means of controlling disenfranchised districts, employed by the Capitol dwelling authority figures who rule in this bleak, post-apocalyptic future.

Though marketed toward children, the movie deals with heavy themes, such as starvation, government abuse, the role of reality TV and the media in societal mores, and of course, murder. Based off the trilogy written by Suzanne Collins, THE HUNGER GAMES follows Katniss as she first tries to survive the games, then subsequently spurs a rebellion, whether she wants to or not.

Author Bio: Elizabeth Eckhart is an entertainment and film blogger for DirectTVcomparison.com where she covers everything from new releases to retrospectives on forgotten cinema classics. She is highly anticipating the release of the next HUNGER GAMES sequel.

More later...

Holiday Season Cinema Roundup 2012 Part 1

This hasn’t been the strongest holiday movie season I’ve experienced (how could it be without the Coen brothers or George Clooney?), but it’s a pretty strong one with a few entertaining epics, a couple of decent comedies, and one big overwrought musical competing for movie-goers attention.

So let’s take a look at what’s currently playing as the year is ending:

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK 
(Dir. David O. Russell)

Although it must be stressed that this is ultimately a best-case scenario rom com, this tale of a bio-polar Bradley Cooper getting together with Jennifer Lawrence as a neurotic widower has a punchy screenplay that’s energetically (and very loudly) delivered by the leads, including Robert De Niro, in one of his most invested performance in years, as Cooper’s Philadelphia Eagles superfan father. Chris Tucker, who keeps popping up after repeatedly escaping from Cooper’s former mental institution, adds to the film’s already plentiful laughs. Director and screenwriter Russell's last film, 2010's THE FIGHTER, was a winner as well, so here's hoping he's on a roll.

HITCHCOCK 
(Dir. Sacha Gervasi)   

Sacha Gervasi’s (2008's rock doc ANVIL: THE STORY OF ANVIL) second film as director boasts a stellar cast - Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Toni Collett, and Danny Huston – but a not so stellar story. The conceit that every good idea that went into the making of the classic 1960 thriller PSYCHO came not from the Master of Suspense, but from his wife Alma falls flat in the midst of these fine actors being put through T.V. movie-ish motions. Read my full review here.

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Dir. Peter Jackson)

Peter Jackson takes us on another sweeping slog through Middle Earth in this prequel set 60 years before THE LORD OF THE RINGS series. Martin Freeman, best known as Tim on the mockumentary sitcom The Office [UK], stars as Bilbo Baggins who reluctantly finds himself on a quest with an unruly band of dwarves to overtake what looks like the Paramount mountain. I saw it in HFR (Higher Frame Rate) 3D, but, although it looked exquisitely sharp, it wasn’t as immersive an experience as I’d heard. Probably would’ve been just as well off with the 2D version.

There are some amazing heavily CGI-ed sequences, including battles and chases inside an elaborate underground city that comes off like THE TEMPLE OF DOOM times 100, but you can really feel its length (169 min.), and the idea that this is just part one of another trilogy seems to come more from greed than pure inspiration. 

But that's too cynical of me. This is really for the legions of Tolkien fans who can’t get enough of this stuff and will love spending more time with Ian McKellen’s Gandalf, and getting cameos from Frodo (Elijah Wood), and Ian Holms as the older incarnation of Bilbo who presents the story as a flashback. What I enjoyed most was Bilbo's cave encounter with the slimy creature Gollum (once again beautifully played by motion-capture specialist Andy Serkis), which is nicely faithful to the original Tolkien text.

 DJANGO UNCHAINED 
(Dir. Quentin Tarantino)

Tarantino’s blaxploitation Western is also a long-ass film (165 min!) that could’ve been served by better editing (sadly his long-time editor Sally Menke died in 2010), but it’s still a hugely entertaining epic that tackles revenge, slavery, and possibly contains the most excessive use of the “N-word” in cinematic history. 

Jamie Fox stars as a slave who gets freed by a former dentist played by Christoph Waltz who offers Fox a new job as a bounty hunter. Together, they set off to rescue Fox’s wife (Kerry Washington) from the plantation of the brutal yet charming Leonardo DiCaprio. The film drags a bit in DiCaprio’s company, which includes Samuel L. Jackson as his cruel conniving house slave, but when its “on” it's a blast. Read my full review here.

Coming soon: Part 2 of Film Babble Blog's Holiday Season 2012 Roundup.

More later...

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS: The Film Babble Blog Review

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS (Dir. Matthew Vaughn, 2011)

Right off the bat it's clear that Matthew Vaughn is a much better fit for the X-MEN movies than the previous directors (Brett Radner and Gavin Hood respectively). A strong opening sequence set in a concentration camp in Poland in 1944 shows Vaughn getting the edgy tense tone right in introducing a captured kid (Bill Milner) who has untrained telekinetic powers.

A sinister Kevin Bacon plays German Scientist Sebastian Shaw who recognizes the powers the boy has, and kills his mother (Éva Magyar) in an successful attempt to unleash them. Meanwhile, a young boy (Laurence Belcher) encounters a young girl (Morgan Lily) who's broken into his Westchester County, NY mansion's kitchen. She can morph her form into anybody's with her true body being all blue and spiky, while he can read people's minds.

They live together as brother and sister, growing up into James McAvoy and Jennifer Lawrence as the movie shifts to 1962. After witnessing supernatural activity in Las Vegas involving a never aging dapper Bacon and his crystalized co-hort Emma Frost (January Jones), CIA Agent Moira MacTaggart (Rose Byrne) seeks out McAvoy, because of his expertise on mutation.

So the mutants hook up with the CIA (who take a little convincing), and are stationed in a facility to train under the supervision of Oliver Platt who's never given a character name. The concentration camp kid, now grown up into Michael Fassbender, tracks down Bacon to his yacht at the same time McAvoy does, but Bacon escapes in a souped up submarine.

There's an amusing recruitment montage with McAvoy and Fassbender rounding up other mutants which is slickly cut with '60s style and a Burt Bacharach-esque bounce to the soundtrack.

A sizable stable of characters is assembled including Nicholas Hoult, Álex González, Caleb Landry Jones, Zoë Isabella Kravitz, and Jason Flemyng, with the film juggling them capably. The film's second half concerns the crew confronting the Cuban missile crisis with Bacon's sinister Shaw, who's a mutant himself, being the one responsible for the missiles' transportation from Russia.

Like in all these comic book epics, the climax is an overblown battle. It's an explosive spectacle with battleships filling the sky full of warheads.

Oddly, it feels like the influential touchstones of this movie are the STAR TREK reboot, and INGLORIOUS BASTERDS; it's an origin story intertwined with an alternate history scenario, and I was surprised at how much of it worked.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS is a better than average summer sequel (actually prequel) that despite being cluttered with clichés, cheesy moments, and bad dialogue (Bacon even says "come with me, and you'll live like Kings...and Queens" at one point) offers a fair amount of fun.

The CGI is consistently top notch, as is the set design (I loved the complete replica of the War Room from DR. STRANGELOVE), and there's a satisfying sweep to the storyline.

Particularly in the passion of Fassbender's performance, the confidence of McAvoy, the angsty energy of Laurence, and Bacon having a ball with his Bondian villain of a role, it's an incredibly effective cast.

On the minus side, some of Hoult's mannerisms as Laurence's possible love interest are annoying and his origin as "Beast" is undercooked, the young recruits are obnoxious, and January Jones never seems to be all there, but as she's clad in white lingerie when she's not crystalized, she obviously wasn't hired for her acting ability.

Regardless this breathes fresh air into the franchise, especially after the lackluster X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE.

With this classy and exceedingly entertaining effort, consider the series rebooted.


More later...

A Failed Attempt At Redemption Through Puppetry

THE BEAVER (Dir. Jodie Foster, 2011)

So, here's this film's story - a toy company CEO is in a deep dark funk. He's uncommunicative with his wife and kids, and his business is faltering. His wife kicks him out of the house. While discarding some of his things, he finds an old ratty beaver puppet in a dumpster and puts it on his left arm, During a drunken night in his hotel room with 2 failed suicide attempts, he crashes onto the floor with a TV falling down on him.

When he awakes his puppet gives him a pep talk, and immediately he starts to get his life back together. "The Beaver," as it wants to be called, is now calling the shots to the puzzlement of his family and the employees.

Got that? Not sure I do. What makes it so hard to swallow is that Mel Gibson plays the despondent puppeteer. Gibson's popularity has waned in recent years because of famously controversial behavior, and part of this film's hype is that it could re-boot his career.

Don't count on it. This film, inexplicably directed by Jodie Foster (also appearing as Gibson's wife), is a dreary experience that has no insights into depression, delusion, or beaver puppets.

You might expect a comedy from a scenario where a man communicates only through a puppet, with a thick Cockey accent, but as The Beaver says at one point: "There's nothing funny about it."

There's a subplot involving Gibson's son (Anton Yelchin) dealing with teen angst through a budding romance with Jennifer Lawrence (WINTER'S BONE) as a valedictorian cheerleader who hires him to write her graduation speech. It really doesn't fit, but then nothing in this film fits.

The implausibility factor here is overwhelming, and not just from the basic premise. When Gibson develops and markets a bestselling wood-cutting kit, it hits such a false note that it's deafening. Likewise Foster's one-note reaction to her husband's dementia.

An unpleasant sex scene with Foster getting creeped out by the puppet is another scene that doesn't gel.

I'm not a fan of Gibson, but there were times his performance showed real effort and passion. However it's in vain as this is strained, self conscious material that never clicks.

In the last third, THE BEAVER takes some disturbing and drastic turns that don't add up, especially when considering how tidy the ending is.

What first time screenwriter Kyle Killen, and Foster were going for here beats me.

Basically this film is a bunch of bad ideas desperately assembled in a lame attempt to form an inspirational story.

It's a failure as a comeback project for Gibson, and will probably be only remembered as a weird misguided movie that came and went with little fanfare. That is, if it's remembered at all.

More later... 

WINTER'S BONE: The Film Babble Blog Review

WINTER'S BONE (Dir. Debra Granik, 2010)



A chill can be felt in the opening scenes of this spare backwoods drama. We meet 17 year old Jennifer Lawrence, who looks a little like a rough edged Renée Zellweger, living with her mentally ill mother and 2 younger siblings (Ashlee Thompson and Isaiah Stone) in a humble home in the Ozarks.


Lawrence is told by the local sheriff (Garret Dillahunt) that her drug dealing father has gone missing after putting up their house for bond. If he doesn't make a court date in one week's time they will lose the house. Lawrence is determined to find her father, dead or alive, no matter how treacherous and uninviting the terrain. 


Lawrence's father's meth head brother Teardrop (John Hawkes) warns her against sticking her nose in places it doesn't belong, but her fierce drive to protect her family keeps her going. "Talkin' just causes witnesses" she is told by Dale Dickey - just one of many scary folks she confronts on the trail. It's a washed out and grim looking film and for the first half it's such a slow burner that a strong sense of the inevitable is impossible to shake. 


Unfortunately its grueling build has little in terms of payoff. There are several effective scenes, including a greatly played exchange with a military recruiter that reveals the full extent of Lawrence's character's naivety, but the chilling mood can't withstand the glacial pace. Although it was based on a 224 page novel by Daniel Woodrell, WINTER'S BONE may have made for a better short film, but as a full length feature it feels stretched out with too many periods of dead air. 


It's a less than gripping non thriller that barely skirts by despite good performances by its cast (particularly the stoic Lawrence) and its stark cinematography by Michael McDonough. But if dead air and a hard to shake sense of doom are what you're looking for - WINTER'S BONE has it in spades. 


More later...