One Of Woody’s Worst Films May Be His Best Looking

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WONDER WHEEL (Dir. Woody Allen, 2017)

The most striking thing about Woody Allen’s latest film, his third project for Amazon, is how lushly lit it is. Leading actresses Kate Winslet and Juno Temple’s red and blonde hair appears to always be glowing in golden light, whether in day or night scenes; and the gorgeousness of the color schemes employed by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro is palpable in every scene.

It’s too bad that it’s all in the service of the tired themes and clichéd characters that make up WONDER WHEEL, yet another nostalgic period piece from the Woodman - one that recalls the aura of his previous works CAFÉ SOCIETY (which Storaro also shot) PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, RADIO DAYS, and that fantasy flashback in ANNIE HALL where Allen’s Alvy Singer reminiscences about being brought up underneath the roller coaster in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn.

In very Allen-esque opening narration, Justin Timberlake sets the scene: “Coney Island, 1950s. The boardwalk.” The camera pans over a crowded beach until it hits Timberlake, as Mickey Rubin, a lifeguard who identifies himself as an aspiring playwright, breaking the fourth wall to tell us he’s got a story to tell, “in which I am a character so be warned as a poet I use symbols and as a budding dramatist, I relish melodrama and larger than life characters.”

Mickey introduces Carolina (Juno Temple), who has unexpectedly come back into the lives of her carousel operator father Humpty (Jim Belushi), and her stepmother Ginny (Winslet), because she is seeking refuge from the mob due to being marked by her never seen gangster husband.

Humpty and Ginny live in a shabby apartment, which used to house a freak show, with big open windows that has a great wide ranging view of the park including of the towering ferris wheel of the title. This is all back-drop to a well worn narrative involving a love triangle between Mickey, Ginny and Carolina.

Ginny dreams of running off with Mickey, but then Mickey falls for Carolina, despite the threat of a mafia hit job, which is made clear in a bit that has Sopranos regulars Tony Sirico (in his sixth film for Allen) and Steve Schirripa come to question Humpty about his daughter’s whereabouts.

There’s also a subplot about Ginny’s pyromaniac son that doesn’t really go anyhere, but it does provide shots of fire that go along with the rest of the movie’s orange bathed in blue glow.

Perhaps in the same vein that Andrew Dice Clay gained cred for his role in Allen’s BLUE JASMINE, Belushi puts in a great supporting performance as an angry, broken down working class slob who trying to stay on the wagon. I wouldn’t say it’s quite worth a Oscar nomination, but it nicely continues the ‘hey, Jim Belushi isn’t bad!’ vibe from his appearance on the Twin Peaks revival early this year.

Winslet’s acerbic Ginny is the dominant character here as the film seems to focus on her neurosis over her stepdaughter’s impending involvement with Mickey, and her frazzled attempts to thwart their romance. Winslet puts her all into her acting and anchors the film until it and she goes off the rails.

Timberlake’s Mickey wasn’t lying when he said he uses symbols as he even says “The heart has its own hieroglyphics” when trying to chose between Ginny and Carolina. He also speaks of “the tragic human condition” while giving Ginny a book of Eugene O’Neil’s plays for her birthday - an example of Allen’s screenplay laying it on a bit thick.

All this is transparent decoration around another one of his ‘women be crazy’ plotlines. The repetitive and overly drawn out dialogue doesn’t help either.

WONDER WHEEL’s melodramatic (Mickey wasn’t fooling there either) mix of hefty philosophizing with an all too typical tale of ill-fated infatuation makes for one of Allen’s least satisfying films of his later career.

But while it’s far from his best work, it may be his best looking movie. With hope, the Woodman, in his next film, A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK in which he’s again working with cinematographer Storaro, will come up with a story that’s as good as the visuals.

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DVD/Blu Ray Review: RUNNER RUNNER

  
RUNNER RUNNER (Dir. Brad Furman, 2013)

Remember the slick Justin Timberlake/Ben Affleck movie RUNNER RUNNER, that came out and died last October? No? Wait – a few of you do?

Well, it’s one of those first class flops that made me wonder if it was really as bad as its 9% Rotten Tomatoes rating says it is so I queued it up on Netflix.

It starts off intriguingly with a coolly confident Timberlake as a Princeton grad student, who’s an affiliate for an online poker site on the side. A flashy opening credits montage fills us in with snazzy graphics and TV news sound bites that online gambling on college campuses is on the rise.

Amid the headlines about Ponzi schemes, bribery, and racketeering, we catch a glimpse of Affleck as e-Casino tycoon Ivan Block, identified as “King of online gaming on FBI list.” This scene they're setting up here is certainly very different to today’s gambling and poker scene with the recent legislation changes and legal options for USA players.

After Timberlake loses a lengthy game to double his tuition money to a cheater on Affleck’s “Midnight Black” site (in a circling camera sequence that cribs off Fincher’s dorm room brainstorming scenes in THE SOCIAL NETWORK), he travels to Costa Rica to seek out Affleck, and show him that he has proof that his system swindled him.

At a glitzy party that Timberlake talks his way into, Affleck thanks him for bringing this data to his attention but has him escorted out. The next day, Affleck invites Timberlake aboard his yacht The House (as in “the house always win”) and offers him a job at his website with a guaranteed 7 figures in the first 18 months, guaranteed 8 figures in the first three years. Of course, it’s an offer he can’t refuse and we’re off running running.

Brian Koppelman and David Levien’s screenplay follows the template of Oliver Stone’s WALL STREET with Affleck being Gordon Gekko to Timberlake’s Bud Fox – even utilizing the lady love interest that used to be the bosses’ scenario - but with a bit of the gambling with other people’s fortunes stakes from Ben Younger’s BOILER ROOM (which featured an Affleck cameo) getting thrown around here like bouncing dice on a craps table.

Timberlake gets predictably more and more caught up in the dangerous dealings of Affleck’s corrupt corporation, and has an FBI agent (Anthony Mackie) breathing down his neck, so he sets out to outsmart everyone, win the girl (Gemma Arterton, who as one IMDb commenter put it “has never looked hotter”), and perform a highly engaged, impeccably choreographed, show-stopping song and dance number climax. Okay, everything except that last one happens but, dammit, it’s Justin Timberlake so forgive my wishful thinking.

Affleck is so convincing as the top dog douche here that it’s easy to see what fuelled the Great Batman Backlash of Summer ’13. With his slimy character’s pretentiously spoken speeches and his demented delight in feeding his enemies to crocodiles (or threatening to), Affleck isn’t even up to subpar Bond villain standards; he’d barely cut it as the bad guy in a LETHAL WEAPON sequel or Miami Vice episode, or at least with this material.

As it checks off all the routine thriller clichés, including the one about the deadbeat gambler father (played here by John Heard) whose life is on the line in the big game, RUNNER RUNNER is one of those terrible yet terribly watchable movies. It’s fun to guess what the next line is, and ridicule the lame attempts at twists.

Those into gambling online will be disappointed because after the film’s set-up, it’s really not about the world of internet gaming at all. It just uses that as an unsuccessful springboard into another tired student-becomes-the-teacher face/off between two big names.

Director Furman, whose much better 2011 crime drama THE LINCOLN LAWYER helped spark the McConaissance (you know, the current era in which Matthew McConaughey is an heavy-hitting Oscar winning dramatic again after a lost period of rom coms?), has made a competently structured narrative but with little inspiration or depth. With hope, the next time out he’ll take a riskier gamble than this vacuous vehicle driven only by star power.

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The Cornball Charm Of TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE

TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE 

(Dir. Robert Lorenz, 2012)

Sure, every critic will mention it, but Clint Eastwood’s embarrassing crazy-old-man-yells-at-chair speech at the RNC a few weeks back doesn’t at all get in the way of his new film being a good old-fashioned cornball crowd-pleaser.

Eastwood, with his crotchetiness played to greater comic effect than say in GRAN TORINO, plays a baseball scout for the Altlanta Braves who is going blind, so he may be in his final season on the job. As his daughter, Amy Adams (also in THE MASTER opening today) joins him on the trip against his wishes, to help out.

Meanwhile, back at the home office, Matt Lillard, as obviously a jerk for the audience to hate, wants Eastwood out of the game, and his boss, a grimacing Robert Patrick, might agree. But luckily Eastwood has a friend in the Braves’ organization in the form of John Goodman pulling for him.

Another friend, Justin Timberlake as a retired pitcher now doing the scouting thing too, runs into Eastwood at a game, and immediately has eyes for Adams.

It’s a comfortable ole baseball glove of a commercial movie, where everything falls exactly in the place you’d expect. With only a few current topical references, its script, by first time screenwriter Randy Brown, feels like it was written in the ‘90s when old people were first becoming troubled by the idea of a computer run world. Clint’s line about the “interwebs” attests to that.

In that way it’s like a gruff counterpoint to last year’s MONEYBALL, in which old school on the spot skills are favored over statistical analysis. So much so that I expected Clint to take a baseball bat to a laptop OFFICE SPACE-style.

TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE, throws no curves story-wise, is full of cheesy clichés, and was completely filmed in Georgia, despite being mostly set in my home-state North Carolina, yet I still found it highly likable.

Eastwood’s growling and grunting through his part is amusingly affecting, and Adams, along with Timberlake both put in warm and fuzzy performances. And if you want your film to be more likable, casting Goodman is always a good idea.

Robert Lorenz, whose first film as director this is after many assistant directing duties, provides Eastwood and co. with a sturdy vehicle that has plenty of cornball charm, and isn’t too sappy. It’s not a home run, but it’s a perfectly pleasant stroll around the bases.

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BAD TEACHER: The Film Babble Blog Review

BAD TEACHER (Dir. Jake Kasdan, 2011)

If you've seen the trailer for this crude Cameron Diaz classroom comedy, you've already witnessed all the best lines and all the relevant plot-points. But since none of that stuff was that great to begin with, it's quite a tiring task to make it through this 90 minute mess of a movie that has maybe 3-4 solid chuckles in it.

Daez plays the foul mouthed, hard drinking, pot smoking, gold digging, and completely immoral title character who gets dumped by her rich boyfriend (Nat Faxon) at the beginning of the movie. She has to return to the job she doesn't give an "F" about, as the movie's tagline goes, teaching at John Adams Middle School (JAMS).

Diaz gets through the day by putting on DVDs for her students of movies about teachers (STAND AND DELIVER, LEAN ON ME, DANGEROUS MINDS, etc.) while she drinks from mini liquor bottles or sleeps at her desk.

As the school's gym teacher, a smirking Jason Segel clearly has the hots for Diaz, but she's got her eyes on a Justin Timberlake as a nerdy substitute teacher. Lucy Punch plays a goofy goody two-shoes rival colleague of Diaz's, who is also after Timberlake's affections.

The sloppy narrative concerns Diaz trying to raise money for breast implants. That's right, that's the plot. She puts on a sexy car wash complete with a rock video (or beer commercial) style montage. She steals standardized test answers so her class can get the highest scores and she can receive a large cash reward. She, uh, does wacky corrupt stuff for her own selfish purposes - you got it, right?

Unfortunately, precious little of this is funny. Diaz doesn't really bring anything but the bare minimum effort to her role, Timberlake is likable but not believable, and only Segel seems to have the right laid-back approach to this lazy lackluster material.

BAD TEACHER feels like a series of deleted scenes on a lame comedy's DVD special features menu. The kind you watch and think 'I can see why they cut that. Because it didn't work.'

That pretty much sums it up - much like its superficial protagonist, BAD TEACHER rarely works.


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THE SOCIAL NETWORK: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

(Dir. David Fincher, 2010)

This is the film that asks - is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg a computer nerd visionary or just an arrogant a--hole that ripped off his friends?

A bit of both appears to be the answer - but THE SOCIAL NETWORK, courtesy of Aaron Sorkn’s screenplay as realized by David Fincher, is far from a smear job on the world’s youngest billionaire.

Jesse Eisenberg, at his most coldly focused, plays Zuckerberg who we meet in a darkly lit Harvard college tavern in 2003 having an intense and intimidating conversation with his girlfriend (Rooney Mara).

It’s a back and forth that runs rings around your head, so much so that Mara takes the opportunity to break up with Eisenberg. He sulks back to his dorm room and blogs that she’s a bitch and that he needs a new project to get his mind off of her.

Drinking beer after beer, Eisenberg throws out errant ideas to his best friend (Andrew Garfield) before he settles on creating a site called “Facemash” – a Hot Or Not-like site featuring pictures he hacked from campus computer databases.

Eisenberg finds that in addition to making his fellow female students very angry, it gets him noticed.

He’s approached by a couple of preppy crew rowing twin brothers (Josh Pence and Arnie Hammer) and their business partner (Max Minghella ) who want him to help them build a new social networking site called HarvardConnection.

“I’m in.” says Eisenberg and the film cuts to his deposition 3 years later where under oath he states that he doesn’t recall saying that.

You see, he’s being sued by the brothers for intellectual property theft in Federal court at the same time he’s being sued by Garfield over ownership of Facebook.

We bounce between flashbacks and testimony exchanges that detail Eisenberg devising the famous Facebook format while dodging email requests from the brothers.

When the site goes public Eisenberg and Garfield attract many followers, groupies and the attention of Napster founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake).

Timberlake seduces Eisenberg with his schmoozy charm, but not Garfield. Ties get even more tangled when Eisenberg rents a house in Silicon Valley which appears to be a nonstop party central despite the “wired in” employees working 24/7.

It’s easy to get caught up in the flow of this film. Sorkin’s dialogue is sharp, Fincher’s craft is on the scale of his best work (that includes FIGHT CLUB, SE7EN, and ZODIAC), and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth’s swift camerawork frames it all with a minimum of flashy tricks.

The cast is pitch perfect. It’s Eisenberg’s best work to date, Garfield’s worrywart tone clashes correctly, and Timberlake predictably steals every scene he’s in.

Also Rashida Jones (Parks And Recreation), Bryan Barter, and the convincing brother duo of Pence/Hammer all chime in with sublime supporting roles.

There’s plenty on the internet about what’s accurate and what isn’t in this film, but the movie on its own is a storytelling gem.

You can see the point of view of the allegedly wronged parties and feel sympathy for the character of Zuckerberg even as he works overtime to hide his emotions.

Fincher, Sorkin and Co. obviously want us to see the irony in an anti-social guy who screws over the few friends he has in order to build one of the biggest and most profitable social internet websites in history.

A piece of supreme entertainment, THE SOCIAL NETWORK does indeed accomplish that task with relish. The only thing it’s missing is a big “Like” button for me to click at the end.

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