Jake Gyllenhaal’s Lou Bloom shows that you don’t have to be a journalist or a photographer to make it in the news business, you just have to have a nose for blood and a really strong stomach. In fact, tracking down the goriest, most gruesome deaths and crimes (especially those committed in rich neighbourhoods and against white people) seems a perfect fit for an enterprising but morally vacant soul such as Bloom, and thanks to a partnership with ratings-whore Nina (Rene Russo), he’s encouraged not only to continue, but to blur the line between finding and creating mayhem to “report.”
Gyllenhaal is gaunt, like a hungry animal prowling the night, his unblinking stare reminding me of Donnie Darko’s. He gives an increasingly chilling performance, cold but needy. You can never quite get a handle on just how intelligent this guy is. He studies the internet voraciously and comes off sounding like a wikipedia page, but the one thing you can’t learn online is feelings, and those are in short supply. Watching footage of a brutally murdered family, Lou has a self-satisfied smirk on his face, and Nina is practically salivating. These are not good people. There isn’t even a question of privacy, or of going too far. There is no too far.
Lou is pretty much irredeemable, as far as I can tell, unlike any other character I’ve seen on screen this year. It will give you the willies. First-time director Dan Gilroy will have you watching this movie with dread; with no ethics or scruples, anything can and may happen. Lou’s a dirty scavenger at best, and an unapologetic predator at what he would consider his best. Morality doesn’t factor in, which makes for a fascinating if disturbing character study of a man, who as near as I can tell, is void of any character to study.
Matt and I are still cramming to bring the best Globes coverage we can, and I’m putting up thoughts and predictions as I complete the categories. Please chime in with your own vote, we always love the feedback!
I watched Pride this morning and The Grand Budapest Hotel probably 10 months ago, so this category is a little uneven for that reason. I’ve enjoy ed all of these movies to some extent, but of course there are some stand-outs.
St Vincent is a fun movie if you love Bill Murray but probably a little flat if you don’t. It’s a star vehicle but not much more. Pride is a feel-good movie that everyone should watch and anyone would have some good take-away feelings. It’s just not that deep. The Grand Budapest Hotel is my baby. I’m a Wes Anderson nut and I love everything he does. He probably poops glitter. And this movie is great even among Wes Anderson films, with an all-star cast that blows you away (and a little Bill Murray to make me swoon), and a thousand little details that will have you licking your lips in delight. Don’t miss it. You may, however, give Into the Woods a miss. The cast is great but the story’s inconsistent and the musical numbers just aren’t that memorable. Plus there’s the whole pedophilia angle. Birdman has a great cast AND a great, fresh story. It somehow blends a gritty realism with a gothic surrealism quite seamlessly, leaving the audience to guess and to fill in the blanks. It’s the most daring of the nominees, and the most exciting to watch.
Apologies to Wes Anderson (and with confidence that you have many more great movies to come), I’m giving it to Birdman. It just makes you excited about what is possible in filmmaking. I’m gushing, but Birdman deserves it, just as it’ll deserve the golden Globe on Sunday.
Score one Birdman. But do I think the Globes will agree? I hope so. I wouldn’t be disappointed to see it go to The Grand Budapest Hotel, another deserving movie from a director who’s been criminally snubbed in the past. What I’m worried about is the celebrity power of Into The Woods, a movie undeserving but perhaps irresistible to the people doing the voting. Fingers crossed that they do the right thing.
I have nothing bad to say about any of these movies, they’re all watchable and enjoyable. It’s not easy to compare inflatable robots with Mexican representations of death, or sentient toys with mute dragons, but the Golden Globes (and soon the Oscars) forces us do so, and this year, there’s no contest.
This category holds one of my favourite movies of 2014, period. The Lego Movie is a triumph in detail. Every piece of the movie is virtually built with bricks, bricks that are blemished and scratched, bricks that appear to be played with. The nostalgia factor runs deep in this movie, with several familiar faces popping up in cameos throughout the film. Emmett, the hero of the movie, voiced by Chris Pratt, is a likable doofus that appeals to all audience members. Liam Neeson voices good cop\bad cop brilliantly and steals every scene he’s in. The movie shows a pig explode into sausages – I mean, there’s just no beating that. And any kid movie that can sneak in themes of Orwell’s 1984 AND The Matrix has got to be awarded. We’ll start with the Globes, but we’re not stopping until the Oscars.
Score one The Lego Movie. But do I think the Globes will agree? Yes, I do.
Matt really disliked this movie but I couldn’t disagree more. The Book of Life is dazzling and vibrant and steeped in beautiful Mexican culture, even if it does fudge the facts a bit. Yes the accents are a bit wonky and the movie embraces stereotype – but that’s just it. They own it. There’s a real sense of pride but it’s never alienating. It may occasionally poke fun at itself but I thought it was sensitive and illuminative.
And finally an animated feature that, when most people would rather show another talking dog or a cuddly dragon rather than a person of colour, brings us a whole host of Mexican heroes that teach a lesson in love and diversity to a group of white schoolchildren. I thought it was refreshing. I thought it was electrifying to look at, Day of the Dead has inspired so much art and this movie is a real testament to all that came before it, and sorry Matt, but I even loved the mariachi-inspired covers of Radiohead’s Creep and Mumford & Sons I Will Wait. I thought it was a brilliant way to incorporate Mexico’s modernity into a film mostly set in the 19th century.
The story had lofty ambitions but didn’t quite live up to its own goals. The female character balks at her hand in marriage being given away for her. She seems an independent sort, strong, dare I say a feminist, but is sadly animated in the disgusting tradition of cartoons – her eyes are bigger than her hands, her ponytail is wider than her waist, and she’s about half the size of her male counterparts (who are glamorously styled after traditional marionettes). A real disappointment, not to mention the fact that the plot relies on a wager placed between gods as to which of two childhood friends will marry her, because offering a girl as a prize to be won is apparently necessary even when we’ve already established that this girl can think for herself.
The pacing is quick, maybe too quick. Adults, at least, will want to soak in the artistry and the legends but the momentum is unrelenting. The voice work is pretty great, although some of the casting did give me pause. Why are Channing Tatum and Ice Cube voicing Mexican characters? Did they get lost on their way to a 23 Jump Street rehearsal? I mean, I’m relieved that Channing Tatum at the very least isn’t affecting a disingenuous Mexican accent, but I feel that with so much Latino talent, they could have easily found someone better and I can’t think of any reason why they chose to go with a whiteboy. I realize we’re already stretching our imaginations to include a Mexico where the people speak English (some accented, some not). And I also realize that I probably don’t even have the right to comment on this. And while this movie isn’t a perfect representation of Mexican tradition, it’s a friendly start. It’s familiar enough that American audiences, even American kids, won’t be put off, while bridging a cultural gap that I hope will lead to more family movies doing the same.
The Boxtrolls really seizes the opportunity to create a universe unlike any we’ve either seen. It’s a bit more macabre than we’re used to in a children’s movie, dark and gritty, but immersive and satisfying in its stop-motion animation.
In the town of Cheesebridge, an evil exterminator vows to kill off every boxtroll, spreading lies and ugly myths about them to win public approval (“Hide your delicious babies!”). The boxtrolls live underground, basically in hiding, clothed (or disguised?) in cardboard boxes, where they use pilfered materials to build all sorts of magical things. They only come out at night to snatch unused, unwanted things, but to do so is to put themselves in peril of being caught. Their number dwindles steadily until a young boxtroll named Eggs discovers you can go out into the light, and he must try to rally the timid boxtrolls into standing up for themselves.
The boxtrolls don’t speak, but that doesn’t stop them from each having a unique character (not unlike the Minions, come to think of it), or from communicating what they feel. The humans in the story are a sorry lot – sure Mr. Snatcher, the dastardly exterminator, is evil, but the others aren’t much better. The troll “monsters” are eminently easier to root for in their sweetness and earnestness. There is also real sorrow here, and stabs at profundity. One human wonders if the boxtrolls “understand the duality of good and evil” while murking up the concept himself.
We have come to expect big things from the animators at Laika (think Coraline) and this film looks just as cool, and even more textured. And I love seeing an animated film where the little girl is not sexed up, and isn’t even crazy skinny. She has little girl proportions! Disney, you’re totally busted: turns out it IS possible to make a girl who looks like a girl. And if you stick around after the credits, you’re in for a treat: there’s a bit of existential animation that’s enlightening and entertaining.
A little slow to start, it’s still a solid movie that will capture children, especially those inclined to gross-out jokes (so, pretty much all). But this was a competitive year in terms of animation, which is great. Everyone’s bringing their A game. It’s just that movies like Big Hero 6 and The Lego Movie earned an A+.
Hollywood’s biggest party-slash-awards ceremony is happening this Sunday, January 11th 2015 at the Beverley Hilton in Beverly Hills and as usual, Matt and Jay are cramming like crazy in order to bring you their predictions, hopes, and outrage, but mostly to just compete between ourselves.
The Golden Globes are handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press, “journalists” who report on American film and television to other countries. Why they felt qualified and entitled to start up their own award system I’ll never know, but the Golden Globes are an excuse for the industry to come out and party. Everyone’s eating dinner and drinking heavily, which often leads to more interesting acceptance speeches (and also more absences due to bathroom breaks). The Golden Globes celebrate both film and television but these Assholes will be concentrating on the movie side of things. The tricky thing with the Globes is that they’re handed out quite early in the award season, before general audiences have really had the chance to see all of the nominated films because wide release hasn’t happened yet. So, bear with us. We’re trying our best.
There are 5 films nominated for best original song, a new song written and recorded specifically for a movie. The award goes to whoever wrote the song, not who performed it. This year, however, the nominees are all known to the music industry and to your radios.
For the film Noah: Mercy Is, by Patti Smith & Lenny Kaye
For the film Annie: Opportunity, by Sia, Greg Kurstin & Will Gluck
For the film The Hunger Games Mockingbird: Yellow Flicker Beat, by Lorde
For the film Big Eyes: Big Eyes, by Lana Del Rey
For the film Selma: Glory, by John Legend & Common
The Patti Smith one is more of a sweeping theme along more traditional movie music. It’s beautiful and solemn enough for the film but it’s kind of forgettable and the truth is, I just can’t bring myself to predict even a hypothetical win for the movie Noah.
The Lorde song is kind of good, and she’s certainly a darling at the moment. It’s cool to have a song written by a strong young woman for a movie about a strong young woman. The lyrics are good, and appropriate (“the fires found a home in me”) but the sound just doesn’t seem to match the mood of the movie.
Lana Del Rey wrote a very suitable piece for her movie, Big Eyes. It’s haunting and ethereal, much like most of the stuff she does on her own time. It’s not much of a departure for her and frankly, it’s just not that interesting to listen to as a stand-alone song.
That leaves my top two contenders, the song from Annie and the song from Selma, about as different as two songs can get. Annie is of course a musical, but anything used in the first movie can’t be nominated, so they’ve written new material to keep the movie feeling fresh and to be eligible for accolades, which they just might receive. Sia is already a decorated song writer who has a whole catalogue of hits to her credibility. This one probably wouldn’t get a lot of play on the radio but does manage to incorporate all the best bits of the movie, all while being believably sung by a little girl with great pipes. It’s sweet and mildly catchy and a good representation of the movie. My favourite, and my vote, for what it’s worth, go to John Legend and Common for Selma. It’s a great song, strong lyricism (“Freedom is like religious to us’), catchy beat, radio-worthy. It’s quite powerful and with reference to Ferguson, it ties the historical to the present and makes the song not just good, but relevant.
Score one for Selma. But do I think the Globes will agree? I’m not sure. But they should.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I read this book way back when it was first published and didn’t overly love it. I’m wondering right now whether I hold books to an even higher standard than I do movies and believe that this is probably so. The book was written by Cheryl Strayed herself – an account of her time spent solo-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in order to slam the brakes on her self-destruction. I don’t think I liked the voice of Strayed, didn’t like her haughtiness, didn’t connect with her unapologetic ways. Luckily, this movie has undergone the Nick Hornby treatment and as a result, Strayed is a little more tolerable and the story a little more cohesive.
Reese Witherspoon plays the title character. She’s good. She’s good but she’s not great. It doesn’t feel like an overly-challenging role. As she hikes along, some loose association will jar her memory and we’ll receive another piece of the puzzle via flashback. She’s entirely believable in every scene, it’s just that no scene is particularly gripping. I enjoyed seeing her bare face exposed to us (did anyone else feel she looks like an Olsen twin without makeup?) but I didn’t really feel like it translated enough to an emotional vulnerability that seemed necessary in telling such a story. In fact, the “Nick Hornby treatment” that I started out being grateful for began to seem just a little too trite. The puzzle pieces fit together just a little too snugly. No one’s life path is that linear, and I felt that Witherspoon struggled with the script’s limitations.
Perhaps so did the director, because neither did I feel a connection with the vast and probably very beautiful landscapes. We never dwelled on them. They only existed as backdrop. The terrain was rough, certainly, but we never get a sense of it because the camera is always maddeningly smooth. None of the 1000 miles she treks through seem to be all that “Wild” but the thing about this movie is that the land should be Reese’s costar. Richard Brody, reviewer for The New Yorker, put it about as well as anyone could: “they don’t give Oscars for Best Mountains.” True. And after last year’s success with Dallas Buyer’s Club, it certainly feels like Jean-Marc Vallée is gunning for the Oscar by any means necessary.
I criticized the book for being too smug and the movie for being too glib. And maybe I’m just hard to please but there was a lot of story here, a lot of layers and potential depth but for some reason we stayed safely near the surface, and while I’d still place this film in the top 20% of 2014, I think it failed itself because it had all the ingredients to be much much better and wasn’t.
This movie picks up exactly where the last one left off, with a rousing musical number about how this is a sequel, and as we all know, the sequel’s never quite as good.
The gang is lured into a world tour by Ricky Gervais playing Mr. Badguy, an agent who’ll give them everything they want, but is secretly the number two to Constantine: world’s most dangerous frog (!). Constantine and Badguy are on a crime spree and are using the Muppets as a front, except for poor Kermit who’s been sent to a Russian gulag as a stand-in for his look-alike, Constantine. Jean Pierre Napoleon (Ty Burrell) and Mr. Eagle are on the case (Interpol, CIA), and as soon as Napoleon’s leisurely European 6 hour lunch break is over, they might actually solve it and save the day.
Gervais looks like his appearance in this film is court-mandated. He’s not having any fun and he sucks the life out of all the scenes he’s in. Burrell is made for this stuff, and has actual chemistry with a big blue eagle. Tina Fey, playing the gulag’s strict warden, is the stand-out. The moment Kermit is rolled into the prison wearing a Hannibal Lecter mask, you know the Siberian scenes will be your favourite. Fey’s number “In the Big House” seals the deal; it’s the best of the bunch. And the fact that she’s backed up by doo-wopping prisoners played by Danny Trejo, Ray Liotta and Jemaine Clement wearing a crown of sporks just cements it. In fact, seeing Ray Liotta with wagging knees and jazz hands just might make the movie. The only problem with that is that these most cherished scenes are virtually muppet-free, and if muppets are upstaged by humans in a Muppet movie, you’re sunk.
Bret McKenzie, (the other half of Clement’s Flight of the Conchords) is back again after winning the Oscar for his work on the first film (“Man or Muppet”, best original song), but the music has lost its lustre. It’s a lustreless film in general. Maybe we’re just missing the magic that Jason Segel brought, his fandom really breathed life into the franchise and nostalgia played high for us all.
Muppets Most Wanted is just as chock-full of cameos as the its predecessor. Blink and you’ll miss them: Tony Bennett, James McAvoy, the dude from Downton Abbey, Christoph Waltz dancing the waltz, Salma Hayek, Stanely Tucci, Zach Galifinakis, Puff Daddy. And the list continues! It feels a little like more time was spent on lining up cameos than thinking up plot, and that’s too bad, because on paper this film had all the potential of the 2011’s The Muppets, but this is a sequel, and as we all know, the sequel’s never quite as good.
Tom Cruise plays Major William Cage, an officer used to in front of a camera rather than in the front lines. He is forced to join in combat against the invading alien race and is killed in the mission, though he “wakes up” to find himself in a time loop, repeating the battle in which he dies over and over again. It’s a military, sci-fi Groundhog Day with fewer jokes but buffer bodies. Cage teams up with Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) to improve his fighting skills so that he may live long enough on battle day to defeat the alien invaders.
I liked this so much more than I was supposed to. It’s an action-y-science-fiction-y movie that should appeal to Assholes like Sean, not Assholes like me. But it did. Probably because Emily Blunt is so fantastic, beautiful and feminine and tough as hell and totally believable as a feted warrior. And because for once, Cruise portrays this inept guy who has to be trained and guided by a woman in order to become the soldier they need him to be. It’s probably the most feminist action flick made in years. Or ever.
The movie is really cool to watch. The special effects contribute to a video game feel (and now that I mention it, I guess the constant re-levelling of the characters might have something to do with that too). The editing is pretty brilliant: the battle scene is overwhelming and unrelenting and although Cruise and Blunt relive it many times, it never feels as repetitive as it should. Actually, I felt moved and heartbroken by how much of their lives were spent on a mission no one would ever credit them for.
I mentioned earlier that this movie had fewer jokes than Groundhog day, and I stand by that statement, but this movie is not without its own brand of (dark) humour. And maybe we’re also slightly laughing at Tom Cruise, perma-action-hero, who in this one, has to take the back seat. It’s a war action movie that doesn’t glorify war. It’s got more storyline than weaponry. It feels like effort has been made, and for me, someone who doesn’t appreciate “cool” explosions for no apparent reason, this was a clever gem in the genre. It made me remember why Tom Cruise is a movie star and realize that Emily Blunt is just at the start of an amazing career.
In the sprawling Du Pont family home, there is a room referred to as the trophy room. Its walls are lined with ribbons and medals and a bounty of trophies featuring gleaming silver horses. “Horses are stupid” says John Du Pont (Steve Carrell), who prefers wrestling, though his dear, ultra-wealthy mother considers it a “low sport.” It’s funny he has such a disdain for horses since he seems to treat his own pet wrestler no better than a dog.
Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) is an Olympic gold medal winner but has lived his life in the shadow of his older brother, Dave (Mark Ruffalo), also an Olympian, and arguably the better wrestler. Mark’s living the unglamorous life of an amateur athlete, surviving on one $20 cheque at a time when Du Pont swoops in to offer him not just sponsorship, but mentorship. Desperate, Mark accepts.
Steve Carrell is nearly unrecognizable as Du Pont, and I don’t mean the prosthetic nose. I mean he walks Du Pont and talks Du Pont and hunches his shoulders and has this stillness and almost emptiness about him that’s kind of chilling and really restrained and very well done. Matt played the Oscar card in his review and I can’t help but agree. Every time he’s on screen, he’s giving out a vibe that makes you uncomfortable but prohibits you from looking away. Du Pont is basically soulless and he attempts to buy himself a biography with cash. He’s got an interest in sports but no qualifications – luckily, as long as you embroider ‘coach’ on your jacket, no one second guesses you when you’ve got millions in the bank. Carrell and Tatum both spend much of the movie in silence, so much so that a coked-up scene on a helicopter where the two repeat polysyllabic words is one of the “funnest” scenes in the movie. For the most part, it’s slow and mumbly and dark, dark, dark.
I actually think Tatum was the perfect choice to play the physically strong but emotionally stunted athlete. He comes alive in the gym, on the mat, but seems subdued and uncomfortable in almost any other setting. We see him as vulnerable and feel that somehow Du Pont has taken advantage of him, even though it’s clear he’s an adult. The movie relies on what’s not said between these two, because Du Pont is socially inept and Schultz is a dull bulb. But wordy or not, I needed something more from this movie. We never know the true nature of the relationship between Du Pont and his protégé. There’s a lot of tension and creepiness and stuff we don’t feel good about, even some erratic behaviour from Du Pont, but nothing that can really explain the drastic event at the end. I mean, what the hell? It’s not fair to spring that on us, you need to earn it, even if we knew all along we were in for some violent end.
The movie works best as a commentary on America and on social inequity than as a true-crime caper. Director Bennett Miller makes his movie as if he’s a journalist, not a story-teller. We are presented with facts; emotions are observed but not delved into. The whole thing is cold. And when shit hits the fan, we knew it was coming, but we still don’t know why.
ASSHOLES WATCHING MOVIES