RULES DON’T APPLY: A Warren Beatty Bomb Decades In The Making

Now playing at mostly empty theaters across the country:

RULES DON’T APPLY (Dir. Warren Beatty, 2016)

By this point it’s pretty apparent that Warren Beatty’s return to the big screen has failed to make a big splash. Beatty’s long gestating Howard Hughes project was released last Friday to mixed reviews and terrible box office returns, which is sad because it’s his first acting role in 15 years (his last was in Peter Chelsom’s dreadful TOWN & COUNTRY), and his first directing job in 18 years, his last being 1998’s far from brilliant BULWORTH.

Beatty first had the idea for the film in the early ‘70s when he found himself staying in the same hotel as the famously reclusive billionaire, but it didn’t have a screenplay until the ‘90s when he drafted Academy Award-winning screenwriter Bo Goldman to co-write what was then titled “Hughes.” It was intended to be Beatty’s follow-up to his last big hit, DICK TRACY, but things didn’t work out and the project was shelved.

Since then, it’s been in development hell, and many have thought it would never be made. Yet, here it is – just in time for awards season, now called RULES DON’T APPLY, starring Beatty as Hughes, and featuring a fabulous supporting cast including Alden Ehrenreich, Lily Collins, Matthew Broderick, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, and Beatty’s wife of 24 years, Annette Bening.

Actually, Ehrenreich and Collins are the real stars, as Beatty’s Hughes is largely in the background here, sometimes even in the darkness of sparsely lit hotel rooms or holed up in a curtained bed.

It’s 20 minutes before Hughes even enters the picture as we learn about Collins’ fictitious character, Marla Mabrey, who has come to Hollywood in 1958 to make it in show business. Marla signs a contract with RKO, in which she is provided with a posh house, and a chauffeur named Frank Forbes (Ehrenreich). Both Marla and Frank are waiting for a chance to meet their employer – she wondering when she will get to do a screentest, while he wants to get Hughes to invest in a real estate deal involving housing in Mulholland Canyon.

When Hughes finally makes his entrance, it’s in the aforementioned darkness of a Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow, in which the nervous Marla has a prepared spiel, but Hughes ignores her questions.

Frank also gets his meeting with Hughes over burgers at the end of the Long Beach dock where Hughes’ ginormous flying boat, the Spruce Goose, is stationed, in the middle of the night.

Despite having a fiancée (Taissa Farmiga) back home in Fresno, Frank has the hots for Marla and things get heated between them when she sings him a song she wrote called “Rules Don’t Apply.” The couple engages in a make-out session, smashing a glass table in the process. However, Frank’s coworker Levar Mathis (Broderick) interrupts and ends their lustful moment by showing up at Marla’s house to drive her to an engagement.

Meanwhile, the paranoid Hughes fears that he’ll be committed to a mental hospital so he figures that if he gets married the powers that be can’t put him away without his wife’s approval. When Marla sings her “Rules Don’t Apply” song to Hughes, it triggers the same smitten reaction, but this time her tryst gets consummated.

I bet Beatty thinks that the song, an original composition by Lorraine Feather and Eddie Arkin, is sure to get an Oscar Nomination, but, despite it not being bad, I'll be really surprised if it does.

It’s weird to say that a movie that has been in the works in one form or another for decades is underwritten, but it certainly is the case. Beatty nails the collection of ticks that Hughes was famous for including the habit of repeating the same phrase over, (though Leonardo DiCaprio did that better in Martin Scorsese’s far superior Hughes biopic THE AVIATOR), and his performance is one of the best things about the movie, but it’s in service of a extremely lightweight storyline.

It’s easy to see why Beatty was attracted to Hughes’ persona, as Beatty himself is an eccentric, reclusive, control freak. In Peter Biskind’s 2012 biography Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America, journalist/politico Bill Bradley speaks of Beatty’s original concept being one that “could be a movie that really explains power and money in America.” That’s not what we have here at all. What this is a drawn out, largely dull tale of a love triangle that oddly resembles what Woody Allen did better in his period piece CAFÉ SOCIETY last summer.

Beatty’s co-writer Bo Goldman who once called himself “the world’s greatest living expert on Howard Hughes,” and who penned the also Hughes-related 1980 comedy drama MELVIN AND HOWARD, wrote a version of the screenplay 20 years ago that Beatty appears to have rewritten and rewritten until whatever spark that may have been there is gone.

RULES DON’T APPLY strains and fails to be an amusing and charming romp as there’s a severe lack of chemistry between its leads, and an indefinable purpose to the proceedings. It's a passion project without any passion.

There are a number of stylish touches that I enjoyed, such as the use of archival footage in establishing shots and in rear projection driving scenes, and the film is beautifully shot by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, but that is just the pretty packaging for a shallow, insightful-less premise.

At the very least, if this is indeed the swan song that Beatty has claimed, even though it bombed, it’s still a better movie to go out on than TOWN & COUNTRY. In many ways, that’s all it really needed to be.

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Faulty TOWER HEIST Has A Few Laughs

TOWER HEIST (Dir. Brett Ratner, 2011)

This began life as a notion Eddie Murphy had for a “black OCEAN’S 11’” but they threw some money at it and made it into a concept, and then later turned it into an idea.

That idea is a Ben Stiller movie with Murphy as a supporting player, ganging up with Matthew Broderick, Gabourey Sidibe (PRECIOUS), Michael Peña, and Casey Affleck to rob a billionaire (Alan Alda) who stole their pensions.

Unfortunately, even with that incredibly capable cast and that promising premise, TOWER HEIST is a half baked comic crime caper that comes close to bringing big laughs, but never quite delivers.

There are a fair amount of small laughs throughout the film, and I caught myself smiling at the shenanigans onscreen a few times, but the all-too-familiar construction of the material kept holding back the funny.

The first half is all set-up with Stiller as the by-the-book building manager of a luxurious Manhattan high rise (obviously modeled on the Trump Tower) realizing how evil Alda is after the Ponzi scheming penthouse owner is charged with financial fraud.

With the help of small-time crook Murphy, Stiller enlists his co-worker co-horts (Sidibe, Peña, and Affleck) and Broderick, as a down on his luck Wall Street broker just evicted from his tower apartment, to pull off a big-time job – stealing 20 million from Alda’s penthouse safe.

The film has been touted as a comeback for Murphy, and while there’s an undeniable charge to seeing him again assume the foul mouthed quick tempered persona that he had abandoned for family fare over a decade ago, too many scenes have no payoffs.

In one scene in which Murphy is training the crew to be thieves he gives them bobby pins and locks them on a building’s roof in the extreme cold. Once Murphy says his lines (like “here’s your punk ass bobby pin”) and leaves, the scene is over – we don’t get seeing the guys attempting to pick the lock because I think screenwriters Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson couldn’t come up with anything funny there and thought Murphy’s shtick would be enough.

This is a method they seem to employ throughout: let’s just get these guys bickering in set piece after set piece and people will be laughing so hard they won’t notice the predictable plot mechanics.

Director Ratner doesn’t provide a strong enough balance between laughs and thrills to make TOWER HEIST anything special - at its best it’s likably perfunctory. I also could’ve done without the Téa Leoni as an FBI agent who is on to both good guy Stiller and bad guy Alda subplot, but usually I can do without Téa Leoni so there’s that.

Like I said, I did lightly laugh here and there (not just at Murphy as Broderick, Sidibe and Peña also have their moments), and I felt a little excitement during a scene involving Alda’s Ferrarri (allegedly once owned by Steve McQueen) being dangled from a cable from the top of the tower, but with its many plot-holes and lack of payoffs this is nowhere close to how good it could’ve been.

Here’s hoping Murphy’s newly proposed project that remolds his original black ensemble comedy notion into something titled JAMAL AND TYRELL AND OMAR AND BRICK AND MICHAEL'S WACK-ASS WEEKEND gets a lot further past the idea stage.

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A Few Random Blu Ray Reviews

Recenly released on Blu ray/DVD:

BIGGER THAN LIFE (Dir. Nicholas Ray, 1956)

Missing in action from the home video scene, Nicholas Ray's disturbing domestic drama is finally released on Blu ray and DVD.

Starring James Mason as a cultured school teacher and family man, it concerns his downward spiral from abusing the prescribed drug cortisone. Mason begins taking the drug because of painful attacks and at first all is peachy - his strength and energy increases as does his intense focus.

This escalates into psychosis scaring his wife (Barbara Rush) and son (Christopher Olsen) into submission until they realize it's gotten out of hand. Mason (who also co-wrote and co-produced) delivers a performance that is a tour de force; it's remarkable work coming from an actor who specializes in suavity - even his iconic flustered Humbert Humbert in Stanley Kubrick's LOLITA is more a study in restraint than this character.

The film moves with Mason aesthetically evolving from brightly colored small town tranquility into dark shadowy behind closed doors oppression. Its ending is a bit too pat but BIGGER THAN LIFE is a movie milestone now restored to a proper place in the cinematic canon thanks to the Criterion Collection.

Insightful featurettes from author Jonathan Lethem ("Motherless Brooklyn"), the director's widow Suzanne Ray, commentary by critic Geoff Andrew, and a half hour interview with Ray from the 70's (which is mostly about REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE) make for a great package for this all too long absent near masterpiece.

COCOON (Dir. Ron Howard, 1985)

A ton of older titles are hitting Blu ray every day it seems which can be a good excuse to revisit forgotten films. However, In the case of this film the pristine picture quality hinders rather than enhances the dated special effects and its other cheesy attributes.

Being about a group of seniors who stumble upon a fountain of youth in the form of a swimming pool which happens to have ancient alien cocoons resting in its water, this movie appeared to exist so that there could be at least one sci-fi film in the '80s that you could take your grandparents to.

Don Ameche (who won the Oscar for his role), Hume Cronyn, and Wilford Brimley (who was only 51 at the time) are the old timers who find the inside pool located on property rented by Brian Dennehy as the leader of the visiting aliens disguised as humans.

The aliens hire Steve Guttenberg, taking a break from the POLICE ACADEMY series, and his boat to help them move the cocoons. Meanwhile the old folks (including Jessica Tandy, Maureen Stapleton, and Gwen Verdon) show off their new youthful power in a standard era montage - one of many hammy scenes that made me wish this film remained in the dusty VHS section of my mind.

Watching it again after all these years, it looks like Howard too closely followed Spielberg's alien handbook - when revealed as the generic glowing loose-limbed life forms that became the norm after CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, a good deal of the charm and fun is drained from the project. Likewise for big reveal of the alien's mother ship too.

Some of its corny charm is still there, but COCOON is really just a footnote from a period populated by much better fantasy film offerings. It's by no means a classic, shiny Blu ray notwithstanding.

Among the ample special features that ignore this, there's a trailer for COCOON: THE RETURN which is more than I want to see of one of the most unnecessary sequels ever again.

WONDERFUL WORLD (Dir. Joshua Goldin, 2009)

 Much like John Cusack, the work of Matthew Broderick over much of the last decade has suffered from weak material. So it's great to report that his film is Broderick's strongest film since ELECTION.

Broderick plays a former children's folk music star that lives a sorry existence as a cynical divorced man toiling in jobs he believes are beneath him. When his roommate (Michael K. Williams - Omar from The Wire) falls ill and needs hospitalization, Broderick contacts his family back in Senegal. Sanaa Lathan arrives as Williams' sister and a romance blooms between her and Broderick.

WONDERFUL WORLD could be seen as a more accessible version of THE VISITOR - an over educated socially withdrawn white man meets a foreign woman who re-ignites his spark while they both try to help a brother in need with culture clashes becoming revelations. It may be predictable in parts, but this is a film with a lot of heart and just the right amount of comic edge to make it satisfyingly worthwhile.

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Helen Hunt's Directorial Debut & A Few New DVD Reviews

THEN SHE FOUND ME (Dir. Helen Hunt, 2007)



Best known as Paul Reiser’s wisecracking wife on the rom sit-com Mad About You, Helen Hunt has forged a cagey career on the big screen. 

Despite her Best Actress win for AS GOOD AS IT GETS her other roles have been less than stellar - her sideline spouse part in CAST AWAY could’ve been done by just about any actress and her tone and delivery in Woody Allen’s THE CURSE OF THE JADE SCORPION were so off the mark that I would consider it among the worst acting of the last decade. 

So, surprise surprise - I wasn’t looking forward to her first-time out as director but lo and behold, I actually ended up being won over.

Based on the 1990 novel by Elinor Lipman, it’s being marketed as a comic drama but I’d but the emphasis on drama and as such it's definitely a more genuine work than Noam Murro’s recent SMART PEOPLE - another piece about aging, pregnancy, and over educated middle-class white anquish. And it has a cameo by Mr. “Satanic Verses” himself Salman Rushdie as Hunt’s gynecologist!

Hunt casts herself as a withdrawn elementary school teacher and Matthew Broderick as her pensive husband. Shortly after their marriage he tells her he doesn't “want this life” and moves out after she isn't able to change his mind with some spontaneous kitchen floor sex. 

Within 9 hours of the break-up, Colin Firth as a befuddled divorced parent is hitting on her in the parking lot of her school but her biological clock is ticking so loudly that it barely registers. 

Then, if the timing couldn’t be any worse (or better for the sake of the drama) Bette Midler, as a local TV talk show host, shows up out of the blue saying she’s Hunt’s long lost Mother and drops another bombshell: Steve McQueen was her father. 

Hunt is skeptical of this, and rightly so, but charmed by Midler’s schtick - which is undeniably the funnybone of this film. Wanting to pursue a relationship with Firth is confounded by Hunt finding out she is pregnant with Broderick’s baby. 

Broderick, in a part that's more pathetic ELECTION-style than FERRIS BUELLER-ish, wants back into Hunt’s life...maybe. 

Hunt, using long takes and a good sense of lighting, effectively portrays the stressful pulling of her character’s sensibilities in every direction and does it with a nice lack of snarky one-liners and manufactured quirk. T

HEN SHE FOUND ME shows that Hunt has learned a lot from the film makers and actors she's worked with (James L. Brooks, Robert Altman, Nancy Meyers, Jack Nicholson, et al) and, weirdly enough, makes her a film maker to look out for. Never thought I’d be writing that. 

YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH (Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 2007) 

When Martin Scorsese finally won an Oscar last year the award was presented to him by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. 

That wasn’t just a group of honored directors walking off the stage afterwards, that was what was once called New Hollywood.

The surviving members of the maverick auteur movement that saved the movies in the late 60’s and 70’s were still majorly representin.’

Of course we know where Marty’s at with his DeCaprio epics and rock docs, and Spielberg/Lucas, of course, we know what’s going on with them with the #1 movie right now, sure but what of Francis Ford Coppola? 

Well, for his first film proper since 1997’s THE RAINMAKER it appears that he’s the modern movie maker equivalent to Sisyphus from Greek mythology. 

If you don’t know, Sisyphus was a King cursed to have to roll a huge boulder up a steep treacherous hill, only to see it roll all the way back down again and then have to repeat this action til the end of time. 

So Coppola, yet again at square 1 gives us this curious case - a movie about a 70 year old man struck by lightning that makes him young again and gaves him another chance at love and finishing his previous life’s philosophical work. 

Tim Roth, as the old man turned young, has a gravitas and intensity apt for the part but the premise is far from satisfactorily played out. His tortured, and unfortunately tedious, time recovering in his hospital bed as too many headlines tell us the timeframe (World War II) takes away from the story’s momentum. 

Roth meets Alexandra Maria Lara, (a stunning woman even when speaking in tongues) who also plays his lover from his early life, who is overtaken by the same lightning shining (or whatever it is) and they form a bond which of course becomes something more. The fractured-ness of the film gets a bit tiring - right when I was thinking ‘hey, that last shot didn’t make much sense’ Coppola starts showing shots upside down. 

There's a lot that’s confusingly mismatched in the material here - I’m seriously unsure what the point was to a lot of it. I got that Coppola was trying make some sort of a new cinematic language (he says something like that on a “making of” featurette on the DVD) out of choppy yet beautful imagery interspersed with trying narrative introspection but come on! 

There’s very little here that someone who is not a hardcore film buff would care to follow. 

If APOCALYPSE NOW was a failed film experiment that still turned out to be a great movie, this is a failed film experiment that just ends up a puzzling curio. So come on Sisyphus - it’s time to start rolling that boulder again!

DELIRIOUS (Dir. Tom DiCillo, 2006)

 

As I wrote before (Buscemi Now? – Dec. 17th, 2007) Director Tom Dicillo doesn’t think his film, which got good reviews, didn’t get a fair shake at the box office.

Well having finally seen it upon its recent DVD release I can honestly say he’s right. While no masterpiece it is a better than average independent movie that surely deserved better distribution and surely would’ve gained some audience support. 

Michael Pitt plays Toby, a homeless 20something New York kid who by chance comes across a plethora of paparazzi waiting for a chance to photograph K’Harma Leeds (Alison Lohman) – the pop star flavor of the day. 

After that shoot goes awry, Toby makes an unlikely friend in Les the acerbic (Steve Buscemi) who doesn’t consider himself to be paparazzi but a “licensed professional” and declares: “Rule #1: There are players and there are peons – I am a player.” That becomes a running joke as there are many Rule #1’s throughout the film as in “Rule #1: Never let a hooker slip you the tongue.” Les, for all his cynical arrogance prides himself on getting photos of Goldie Hawn eating lunch and Elvis Costello without his hat. 

Toby as an unpaid assistant joins Les in his celebrity stalking quests and learns the tricks of the tawdry trade driving around in Les's beat-up station wagon, hauling around gear, and trying to crash into celebrity parties. 

At one such event Toby gets swept up into K’Harma’s entourage. K’Harma and Toby hit it off back at her hotel while Les is left in the dust. Toby and Les patch things up the next day but then Les blows it by taking photos at K’Harma’s birthday party (of Elvis Costello!) that he weaseled his way into. 

“Rule #1: Know where you belong” Les says but by this point Toby has tired of his teachings. Gina Gershon plays a sexy saavy sop opera casting director that helps Toby on to the ladder of actor success he longs for while Les (Buscemi in full bug-out mode) toils on the lowest rung. 

The themes of parasitic tabloidism and the trials of being a celebrity in the spotlight are obvious but it's the chemistry between Buscemi and Pitt that makes this work. 

Lohman’s diva issues with stardom are fairly transparent and there are some unneeded artsy interludes (such as the one with flower petals falling from the sky) but DiCillo has made a funny appealing film with a heart that beats through the equal measures of grime and glitter. 

It would make a good double flipside feature with INTERVIEW - Buscemi’s fine film about a serious journalist having to do a piece on a B-movie/TV star (Sienna Miller). In my before mentioned Buscemi Now? post I said that Buscemi pulls off the task of being “extremely creepy yet incredibly lovable at the same time”, the same could be said about DELIRIOUS. 

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