Tag Archives: Colin Hanks

Jumanji: The Next Level

I admit I was pleasantly surprised to have genuinely laughed during Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle. Even the first (Robin Williams) one didn’t appeal to me but I was happy to take the win. I was expecting significantly less this time around and that’s exactly what it delivered – but The Next Level wasn’t entirely without its charms.

Now, you would think that after last time, Spencer (Alex Wolff) would have learned his lesson: a very definitely do NOT play Jumanji. Don’t look, don’t touch, don’t keep it around for a rainy day. But there’s one little flaw in the plan. Spencer is a dude. And you won’t have failed to notice that every single person who has played and failed at Jumanji is, in fact, a man. Men are stupid. They do not learn. Spencer’s tenuous reason is that life was going just a little too swimmingly, which caused him to lose confidence. As you do. So to cure his insecurity, he goes back into the game. What, it doesn’t make sense? Doesn’t matter! He’s a white male: he doesn’t need one, no one will ever really question him, and don’t you dare to start to think you’ll be the first.

The thing is, last time Spencer got to be Dr. Bravestone (Dwayne Johnson) but this time his avatar is Ming (Awkwafina), a master cat burglar even though Spencer’s an anxiety-riddled little mouse. And once his loyal friends jump into the game to save him, they too will get assigned avatars they aren’t prepared for and never could be. And it’s not just the original foursome, but Spencer’s arthritic Grandpa Eddie (Danny DeVito) and his longtime frenemy Milo (Danny Glover) as well. It’ll be a real challenge to survive the game with these two dead weights slowing things down, but what choice do they have? The game’s afoot.

Jack Black is very good at pretending to be inhabited by all manner of teenager. Kevin Hart does an entertaining Danny Glover impression. Even Nick Jonas does a passable Colin Hanks. But The Rock? Poor Dwayne Johnson, he CANNOT do a DeVito. Like AT ALL.

The movie attempts to justify itself by being more, and it is – more characters, more whackadoodle scenarios, more adventure – but it’s also considerably less – less funny, less sensical.

By all rights Sean should be reviewing this movie but the poor guy had to leave the theatre at exactly the film’s climax (our sweetheart dog Gertie has been ill, and we were expecting a call from her vet; Sean held his phone in his hand the whole film, waiting for the merest vibration, whereupon he dashed out of the cinema to get the news). If you think it was difficult for him to tell me her results, you don’t know how hard it was for me to tell him how the movie ended. I’ve never felt more idiotic reciting simple facts.

Anyway, there are a few laughs to be had in this Jumanji, but not even enough to fill a 30 second trailer, so multiply that level of discomfort by 246 and you’ll have a general idea of your tolerance for this film.

Tribeca: Elvis & Nixon

30 Replies

True Story: in December 1970, Elvis’s dad and his wife, Priscilla, were mad that he’d spent $100K on guns and Mercedes-Benzes for Christmas gifts, so he threw a fit worthy of a teenage girl, stormed out, and caught the next plane going anywhere. Anywhere turned out to be Washington. Elvis had a large collection of police badges, but his Moby Dick, the Indelible-Nixon-Elvis-631.jpg__800x600_q85_crop one he coveted the most but could never land was a badge from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (he believed having one would mean he could travel to any country with drugs and guns). Unable to convince the bureau, Elvis being Elvis went over their heads and straight to the top – to President Nixon. He showed up at the White House in a purple velvet suit with a huge gold belt buckle and his trademark gold sunglasses, and a white-house-warming gift—a Colt .45 pistol mounted in a display case, which was of course confiscated at the gate. Elvis got his badge though, and asked that the meeting be kept secret. But once he died, the Archives made a fortune selling the official photo, the most-requested Archive photo in the history of the world.

It’s a pretty fucking crazy story, so of course someone had the bright idea to turn it into a movie. Joey Sagal, Hanala Sagal, and Cary Elwes share writing credits – yes, that Cary Elwes, who thought he might direct the thing, with Eric Bana as Elvis. That version fell elvis-nixon-michael-shannon-kevin-spacey apart but Michael Shannon was soon onboard, maybe not the most obvious choice to play The King, but he waved his magic wand of executive productionship, and convinced Liza Johnson who’d previously directed him in Return to helm the whole damn thing. With Shannon filling the King’s rhinestoned shoes, it just made sense that Kevin Spacey would slide into the President’s shiny loafers.

Although there’s no official transcript of what happened inside the Oval Office, Johnson somehow captures the moment perfectly, both in tone and within the context of the times. It’s a trifle of a film, its only point to get these two towering and seemingly opposite figures in the room together. But with powerhouses like Spacey and Shannon, that’s more than enough. I took a lot of pleasure from the lack of prosthetics or makeup tricks on hand – neither of these men particularly look like the figures they are playing, and neither lower themselves to impressions. The script even pokes fun at how much taller Shannon is than Elvis. The script is generally pretty breezy, a little satirical, and heaps of fun. The director is quick to point out there aren’t any real jokes in the film, but the absurdist tone earns consistent laughs from the audience.

Let’s be real: Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey are legitimately among the most talented working actors today. The film is worth if for their two names above the marquee. The fact that this offers up a bizarre little footnote in American history is just a bonus, and Elvis and Nixon – who is more fascinating or notorious than these two? Spacey and Shannon clearly delight in tackling these roles, and it’s beyond satisfying to watch them engage in a real battle of egos. Within the confines of the Oval Office, Shannon as Elvis has never been a more physical presence on screen, his every movement keeping the president on his toes but always one step behind. Shannon dominates the screen and keeps Nixon chasing after Elvis, and it’s a marvel to watch.

During the Q&A after the screening, director Liza Johnson said she was drawn to the Elvis-Nixon-Movie-Trailer-Billboard-650 “tonally eccentric” script and wanted the film to match and “embrace the absurdism of the situation. Michael Shannon, describing Elvis as “mysterious”, relied on interviews with Elvis from right around that time to inform his performance, but the film also benefited from Elvis’s good friend (played by Alex Pettyfer in the movie) Jerry Schilling and a White House staffer (portrayed in the movie by Colin Hanks) Egil Krogh to give invaluable insight. Johnson said that “Any day working with Michael Shannon is better than a day not working with Michael Shannon” and that Spacey was a natural fit being an equal in acting, and having previously worked on a Nixon portrayal when he screen-tested for Frost\Nixon.

Bottom line: I enjoyed this very much. There was real spirit, it was a cracking good time, and I found myself making those little smirky-snorty noises, those half laughs that you make unintentionally when you just can’t believe when you’re seeing. It’s unbelievable, but you’d better believe it.

Elvis & Nixon will be out in theatres this Friday, April 22nd – 22 years to the day of Nixon’s death.

That Thing You Do!

9 Replies

Imagine Tom Hanks on the whirlwind press tour for Forrest Gump. He’s tired of talking about himself all day long. He needs to recharge his creative juices. So what does Tom Hanks do? He spends a month doing press junkets by day and writing a script while eating room service in his hotel room every night. The pages were probably stained with ketchup.

That Thing You Do! was born unto us. It’s about a band of young dudes in 1964 who experience fame for the first time as their pop song rises up the charts. Band-467 It’s sweet and wholesome and damn if that song wasn’t catchy – it even got played on our 1996 radio waves for a brief blip in time. Real 60s music was too expensive (and it had been done well and to death in Forrest Gump, thought Hanks) so it was cheaper just to have stuff written. That Thing You Do! was the result of a competition for a “faux-Beatles” song, and it was Adam Schlesinger, the bass player from Fountains of Wayne, who won. When you hear the song in the movie (and BOY do you hear the heck out of that song in the movie!- 11 different times, and the song went on to be nominated for an Oscar but lost to You Must Love Me from Evita), the actors aren’t really playing, but they could have been. Tom Everett Scott, Steve Zahn, Ethan Embry and Jonathan Schaech all learned to play their instruments, and learned every note of every song that appeared in the movie.

Charlize Theron appears in the movie as an early groupie of the band: it was only her second movie credit. Tom Hanks auditioned her and knew instantly that she’d be famous one day. She was the first person he auditioned, and the first person he cast.”No matter what, I will always claim to have discovered you” he wrote in her script. She won her first Oscar in 2004.

Tom Everett Scott almost didn’t get the part because Hanks thought he looked too much like Hanks. The crew nick-named him Tom Junior and before every take Hanks would remind him “Don’t do it like me!” – but you know what saved him? Tom’s wife, Rita Wilson, thought he was cute.

Speaking of which, when we saw Tom Hanks at the Tribeca Film Festival, he said that this was the movie he was most proud of, because his whole family 2205573,9QsfDywp4n5t1ZzuCiZFMx1wAtqhZbnzpd6pe701UzN1Em+3vDb9zfon3uv_jNxJfz3ogxTr3jHE26akqhRXcA== showed up to work on it. Wife Wilson appears as a cocktail waitress, but Hanks was so tired from pulling 19-hour days the day she showed up on set, he didn’t even recognize her, merely noting that she was “an attractive lady” and he hoped she’d be nice to him. His son Colin also briefly appears in the film, and his daughter Elizabeth even brieflier. Unrelated but also of note: keep your eye out for Bryan Cranston playing an astronaut, and Jonathan Demme playing the director of a major motion picture.

So yes. Tom Hanks wrote, directed, and co-starred in this movie, and even composed some of the music (surprise! He’s also a drummer in his spare time). It was Sean Penn who encouraged him to direct (they were trick or treating with their kids at the time), saying it would ultimately make him a better actor. that-thing-you-do-whysoblu-7

Tom Hanks’ favourite part? Bruce Springsteen once told him that he nailed the scene when the band first hears their music played on the radio. And really, how much better of an endorsement can you get?