(2.5/5)Sometimes I think there are reasons why some Shakespeare plays remain largely unknown among his vast repertoire – I have never read Coriolanus or seen it performed, but assuming this is a fairly faithful adaptation in terms of the text itself, it’s just…not that interesting. Caius Martius (Ralph Fiennes, who also directs) is a great military leader in Rome (here modernized in everything but language, and acting styles to some degree) whose contempt for anyone not born patrician makes him no friend of the commoners rioting over their lack of food. After a successful war against the invading Volscian army, he’s granted the honorific “Coriolanus” and encouraged to run for the consul, which he does, even briefly gaining the support of the commoners before a pair of conniving tribunes double-cross him and, with the support of the crowd, call for his banishment. He joins the Volsci, becoming the right-hand man of his former blood enemy Aufidius (Gerard Butler) to attack Rome, until his wife and mother (Jessica Chastain and Vanessa Redgrave) beg him to stop.
All of the twists and turns in the plot seem to come out of nowhere, with people changing sides or points of view at the drop of a hat. The script is probably abbreviated from Shakespeare’s play (the film runs just over two hours, about an hour less than most Shakespeare done in full), which might explain some of the disjointedness, but unfortunately it also feels longer than it is. It’s hard to relate to Coriolanus, who has a highly developed sense of honor but is also a total dick a good portion of the time – his shifts from speechifying the commoners to get their support to denouncing them as unworthy to vote are practically bipolar, and so is the crowd’s instant reversals from distrust to support to anger. These may all be problems inherent to the source material, but the overwrought and unintentionally comical acting styles in this section don’t do anything to help it.
Director: Monte Hellman
Screenplay: Rudy Wurlitzer, Will Corry & Floyd Mutrux (uncredited)
Starring: James Taylor, Warren Oates, Laurie Bird, Dennis Wilson
Producer: Michael Laughlin
Country: USA
Running Time: 103 min
Year: 1971
BBFC Certificate: 15
(4/5)Two-Lane Blacktop is a film I’ve been keen to watch for a long time. Being a big fan of 70′s cinema and road movies (well, car chase movies more so) I’ve had this on my radar for years, but it keeps passing me by for whatever reason. Well with Eureka releasing a finely polished Blu-Ray of the film under their prestigious Masters of Cinema banner, I leapt at the chance of firing it up. Now that I’ve finally watched the film I’m pleased to say I thought it was very good and it stood up to the hype for the most part, but I’m finding it difficult to articulate why.
Two-Lane Blacktop follows The Driver (James Taylor) and The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson) as they drive aimlessly across America in their lovingly suped-up ’55 Chevy, challenging other petrol-heads to drag races to fund their travels. Along the way they pick up The Girl (Laurie Bird), an irritable youngster who seems to be drifting around just looking for kicks. Following the same route across the nation is GTO (Warren Oates), a middle-aged city-slicker driving a bright yellow 1970 Pontiac GTO, straight out of the lot. The two cars eventually meet up and set a race across the rest of the country, meant to end in Washington DC with the winner taking the pink slips of the other car.
Maybe taking the award for most provoking one-sheet from recent horror shlock (The Human Centipede 2, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Nurse) is this nevertheless rather tasteful (design-wise, anyway) Hungarian festival poster for Steve McQueen’s Shame. Yes, the title is spelled out with what you think it is…
Sometimes we watch stuff that we want to talk just a little bit about, not a full review worth. These are those films. If any of the films reviewed are available on Netflix Instant Watch (US or Canada) HuluPlus (US only) or just on You-Tube, we’ll note that by putting a direct link below the capsule.
(4/5)1973 USSR. Director: Richard Vicktorov. Starring: Misha Yershov, Aleksandr Grigoryev, Vladimir Savin.
Clearly, in the early 1970s, episodes of Star Trek, The Prisoner and prints of 2001: A Space Odyssey were sneaking through the Iron Curtain and finding their way into the impressionable minds of filmmakers. Every strange in-camera technique – from the Alien3 Wide-Dolly shot to the kaleidoscopic lens to a fish-eye shot (actually from a fishes eye in this case) – was used in conjunction with some pretty spiffy production design to yield a fun feast for the senses. The film is aimed at children, as the protagonists are 15 year old kids trained up on earth and sent on a 50 year space mission to the star system Cassiopeia such that they will be 40(ish) when the vessel arrives. But these kids are smart, and the script is smart; Einstein’s Space-Time relativity is discussed at length (maybe too much), as is the concept of folding space, and Star Trek’s Holodeck and Q are both effectively used here 16 years before the ST: THe Next Generation Show even was made! It may be a kids adventure, but it is never dumb-ed down. Even sweeter is that the thrust of the character development of this young space crew centres around a folded sheet of paper love note passed around in school. It’s a superbly acted (by actual 15 year olds) and well told story that a lot of care and money were invested – the soundtrack alone is wonderful – and very much worth your while looking up the DVD or watching in 8 parts on Youtube.
-KURT
(4.5/5)1974 USSR. Director: Richard Vicktorov. Starring: Misha Yershov, Aleksandr Grigoryev, Vladimir Savin.
Not wasting any time, and arriving with clearly a lot more money and strange ideas, the sequel to Moscow-Cassiopeia finds our 15 year old crew accidentally breaking the barrier to faster-than-light travel (a fortunately placed worm hole, or the films “Q” – named ASA – meddling again) and arriving at their destination 25 years too early. Here they discover more The Prisoner references (those white security balls), but also a race of albino-bipeds that have been conquered and ousted by their own created machines. The machines want to make their creators so happy that they relieved them of responsibilities, creative impulsiveness, and eventually, the will to live. Looking like Daft Punk (with bell bottoms, and freaky dance moves to boot) the machines split up our intrepid adolescents until they can figure out a way to escape and thwart the fascist/Cylon/AgentSmith regime. Something tells me the production design team for David Lynch’s DUNE spent as much time with Adolescents in the Universe as they did with H.R. Geiger’s concept art. For all the remake-itis going on in Hollywood (in TV land), nothing makes a stronger case for a modern update in long-form TV than Vicktorov’s pair of films. It could be made into the greatest ‘smart-kids’ television, period! As it stands this is a true cult-kid-cinema experience. Watch for the ‘defective obsolete robot ‘husband and wife’ in this one, they are great.
-KURT
Now, hear me out: this may not be an instant classic, but regardless, keep watching the trailer for Lockout beyond the first 30 seconds of awful voiceover. Then keep this in mind: Lockout is co-written by Luc Besson (The Professional, The Fifth Element). It stars the awesome and desperately underused Guy Pearce. It takes place in space – and it is going to be about Guy Pearce going into a super space prison to save the president’s daughter (Maggie Grace). Saving the president’s daughter in space!
Yes, this is going to be some campy sci-fi awesomeness. One character even refers to Guy Pearce’s character – a witty line spewing John McClane of the future – as a “loose canon.” Granted, I may be purely by my love of Guy Pearce (seriously, I fucking love this guy) and true, this post would have a completely different tone were the actor involved, say, Channing Tatum or Dwayne Johnson, but whatever. This film comes out on April 20, 2012 and I will be there to see it – reviews be damned.
Check out the trailer and let us know if you are on board – or if you’d rather save quenching your sci-fi hunger with Ridley Scott’s more upscale Prometheus.
Director: Asger Leth (Ghosts of Cité Soleil)
Screenplay: Pablo F. Fenjves
Starring: Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks, Jamie Bell, Edward Burns, Ed Harris, Genesis Rodriguez, Anthony Mackie, Kyra Sedgwick, William Sadler
Producers: Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian
Running Time: 102 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
(3.5/5)It’s amazing what you miss even when you don’t realize you’re missing it.
It’s been a number of years since the release of Spike Lee’s Inside Man and since then, there have been few notable entries into the heist drama. Enter Pablo F. Fenjves, a TV writer with a story pitch that pits a desperate man, an escaped convict no less, on the ledge of a Manhattan building. The unfortunately titled Man on a Ledge stars Sam Worthington as Nick Cassidy, a man desperate for attention but more than that, he’s desperate for someone to believe in him. As his suicide note explains “I will go out of this world as I entered it. Innocent.” He requests Lydia Mercer (Elizabeth Banks) as his negotiator, an ostracized cop who seems a strange choice for the job but Nick has a plan and he hopes Lydia will help him unearth the truth behind the crime that led to his incarceration.
There’s more to this tale than a wrongly convicted man clearing his name; it’s also the story of sweet revenge. While Nick talks circles around Lydia, slowly revealing his identity and the history that has led to his perilous situation, he’s also buying time for his brother to break into a safe in a nearby building. The grand plan is simple: prove Nick’s innocence and steal a huge diamond but getting there is a little more complicated than either of them bargained for especially when you’re dealing with dirty cops, David Englander – a ruthless real estate mogul (Ed Harris) who is willing to kill to get his way and a vault room directly lifted from either James Bond or Mission Impossible.
There are problems with Man on a Ledge’s script, especially when one considers the story with any degree of scrutiny, but that’s only an afterthought because somewhere between the time Nick climbs out on the ledge and the moment he jumps off the roof to tackle Englander on the street corner, I was so wrapped up in the unfolding events, as unlikely as they might be, that I never considered how the final thirty minutes would fall apart if the diamond had been in the vault.
Would you like to know more…?
Director: Anh Hung Tran
Screenplay: Anh Hung Tran
Producer: Shinji Ogawa
Starring: Ken’ichi Matsuyama, Rinko Kikuchi, Kiko Mizuhara
Runtime: 133 min.
I find myself in an almost existential funk as a result of watching Norwegian Wood. It is almost as if the cast and crew sought to craft a film that would satisfy all of my aesthetic whims (through both my eyes and ears), while simultaneously grating against the very fabric of my analytical mind. In most reviews, I would save the following zinger for the end, hoping to glean a (hopefully genuine) smirk from each and every reader – that does not seem appropriate here, as the following ramblings will likely steer you away long before you reach my conclusions. That being said, there’s one rather simple term with which I may describe this film with startling accuracy:
Beautiful disaster.
Running Time: 300 min
MPAA Rating: NR
(3.5/5)I’m a romantic at heart, obvious by my passion for happy endings where the girl and the boy of her dreams end up together, and I’m certain it all started with an early introduction to King Arthur and his queen Lady Guinevere. Over the years I’ve come to realise that my idea of Arthur, Guinevere and the Knights of the Round Table are more myth than reality, stories and ideals popularized by early writers which then permeated through society and helped shape ideas of chivalry and courtly romance, but it’s a myth that still fascinates me and thousands of others who spend their time uncovering the history behind the myth.
For decades historians have been studying Arthur, looking for clues of the myth in our history and the results have yielded some fascinating bits of information. When it was announced that the History Channel would be releasing King Arthur and Medieval Britain, I knew I had to see what they had to offer and it’s a mixed bag.
Rather than a five part miniseries exploring Arthur, the set is a collection of five episodes, ranging from sixty to ninety minutes, taken from History Channel archives. There is no new material here but rather a collection of episodes on a similar subject packaged together and the result, though somewhat disappointing at first, does eventually surface as an interesting collection of historical material. The first three episodes “Quest for King Arthur,” “King Arthur: His Life and Legends” and “Ancient Mysteries: Camelot” are all excellent on their own but seen back to back, it’s clear that they all cover very similar material and in some instances, even using the same sources and though the episodes have aired years apart, together they seems a bit redundant.
Would you like to know more…?
All of our favorite 2011 films are posted here as a series of top ten lists, and we’re all busily discussing this year’s Oscar nominations, but there are, of course, plenty of films we watched in 2011 that were released in all kinds of other years. These are some of my favorites of the films I saw for the first time in 2011, regardless of what year they were originally released. Not limited to a specific number, nor specifically ranked, though films I liked the best are closer to the top.
What are some of the best things you saw in 2011, regardless of release date?
I had a feeling I was going to like this film, just based on how much I’ve liked Jean-Pierre Melville’s other films, especially Le samourai, which, if I recall correctly, topped my favorites list in 2010. I had no idea I’d like it as much as I did. Melville weaves several plotlines together, involving a criminal just out of prison, the mob he steals money from, a detective chasing a different escaped con, a former sharpshooter cop who’s now an alcoholic, and more. Each of them has their own narrative rise and fall, and each character has their own arc, but they all interplay in an incredibly intricate way, as different ones join up on a heist (one of the best heist sequences in cinema) and others try to track them down for their own reasons. It’s hard to explain, but very easy and clear to watch. Brilliant work on all levels.
The Boys of Mamo return on Oscar Nomination Tuesday to talk about what the hell just happened, i.e. the same thing that happens every year.
To download this episode, use this URL: http://rowthree.com/audio/mamo/mamo238.mp3
I like me a good survival horror/thriller. I think I may just pay $10 to see Liam Neeson punch nature in the face.
From this trailer, it appears that director Joe Carnahan has dropped the silly Smokin’ Aces shtick and gone back to that rough and weighty opening chase from Narc. The film has gotten solid reviews from those who care about this kind of genre, that is to say, fans of the David Mamet penned, Lee Tamahori directed The Edge.
Below is the red-band (bloody and language and all that) trailer for The Grey.
