THREE FILMS - INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, HIDE AND SEEK, COLD COMES THE NIGHT

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS is not the Coen Brothers best work nor is it their worst.  It looks great – The brothers really get the look and feel of the pre-Beatles early NYC 60’s folk scene right.  It’s an earnest film that seeks to build rapport for the characters in the audience’s eyes but in the end the characters (with the exception of a comedic long cameo by John Goodman) are unengaging and the film is inconsequential.  Pleasant but not in any way memorable.

HIDE AND SEEK

The Korean film HIDE AND SEEK starts off as a taut mystery full of foreboding and the first hour or so contains a number of genuinely creepy, memorable scenes.  It also sets up what seemed to be an interesting mystery.  However, after that it falls apart as the director seems  to have no experience how to bring a mystery/horror to a satisfying conclusion and instead shows the big reveal too early and with enough foreshadowing you’d have to be mentally disabled in some way not to get what was happening before the finale.

COLD COMES THE NIGHT

COLD COMES THE NIGHT is a bad movie but not a bad bad movie that is dull and stupid but rather a good bad movie stupid yes but so thoroughly saturated with its own badness it’s sort of entertaining.  This is a failed noir – forgettable and predictable with the stand out stinky part being Bryan Cranston’s Rocky and Bullwinkle Boris Badanov Russian accent.  It’s truly awful.  Stick with an American accent, Heisenberg! 

FOUR FILMS - GOOD OL' FREDA, RAZE, HERE COMES THE DEVIL, AMERICAN HUSTLE

GOOD OL' FREDA

No great Beatles insights but an extremely warm witness to history documentary about The Beatles secretary and fan club president, Freda Kelly.  The most interesting part was the relationship between The Beatles and their growing fan base in the early 60’s.  Lovingly chronicled, an enjoyable film.

RAZE

If you enjoy women beating the crap out of each other than this film is for you.  The fight scenes are well-choreographed, the set-up is handled well, the whole thing is paced competently leading to a satisfactory if downbeat conclusion.  The unpleasantness level is high which puts off the notion of repeat viewings.  Sherilyn Fenn has not aged well.

HERE COMES THE DEVIL

The ferocious and tense and highly imaginative first 20 minutes of this Spanish horror film unfortunately gives way to a predictable minor league PET SEMETARY storyline.  A lesser horror film.

AMERICAN HUSTLE

The phrase “style over substance” was made for this film.  Excellent care was taken with the 1970’s setting, the clothes, Christian Bale’s combover, Bradley Cooper’s beard but the end result is really a nothing film – no interesting characters, clichéd action, dull convoluted story.  Don't quite understand how their semi-fictionalized version of the ABSCAM scam figured into the overall film.  

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

There were times that I felt THE WOLF OF WALL STREET was trying to bully me into liking it as it is so full of energy and striking visual moments and high volume acting.  It is a film that makes me conflicted as far as how to review it.

Martin Scorcese is one of my favorite directors of all time if not my favorite and WOLF is visually dazzling full of wild scenes that come and go quickly as well as excellent narration that brilliantly sets up these scenes and lays on the irony thickly.  The story is told well.  Despite the almost three hour length, I was never bored.

However, it is a hollow film.  Unlike in past Scorcese films, the connection is not made between the actions and any sort of moral absolute.  An FBI agent investigating Leonardo DiCaprio’s character is introduced but is not given enough to say or do and so never really becomes the moral center.  As a result, the film feels just like decadence for the sake of decadence with no theme to tie it all together other than excess and greed.

Leonardo DiCaprio is an actor I’ve never cared for.  He just doesn’t have the acting weight or the talent to pull off challenging roles.   One of the themes running through WOLF is that the character he’s playing, the real-life Jordan Belfort, was from a working class family not from a wealthy old money family but DiCaprio, despite his heavy Brooklyn accent, looks much more like a blue blood elitist than the ambitious and self-made narrator.  Many of the secondary actors especially the always noxious Jonah Hill and an overacting Rob Reiner are extremely annoying.

In DiCaprio’s favor, he’s working from an excellent script.  In particular, the sales pep talks he gives his brokers were realistic and funny.  

The wall to wall sex, multiple orgy scenes, prostitutes, gay sex, DiCaprio with a candle in his ass along with the copious drug use (I don’t think I’ve seen drugs used as much and their use explained in such great detail as in this film) are linked to the amoral business dealings of Belfort but we need more of an explanation of the connection.  Money laundering is shown in great detail but to what end?

Still, I was never bored and, as I noted earlier, this film is so well made that I hardly noticed my complaints until it was over.  Greed isn’t just good, it’s addictive and necessary to the act of making money itself.  Okay maybe that’s the movie’s moral center.  A movie for further thought and review (which by provoking this means THE WOLF OF WALL STREET was a success).