LOVE AND MERCY

LOVE AND MERCY, a flick about the travails and artistry and in a sense comeback of The Beach Boy's founder Brian Wilson, is a good solid story told in an interesting way.

The film jumps back and forth between young Brian in the mid 1960's during the recording of PET SOUNDS showing the different pressures put on him and his deteriorating mental state and Brian in the 1980's under the control of evil psychiatrist/guardian Dr Eugene Landy and his meeting his second wife Marilyn Ledbetter who helps him escape Landy's clutches and get back on track.

Paul Dano is very good as the 60's Brian as he looks a bit like him. As the 80's Brian, John Cusack has down the twitches and inflections of a man struggling with mental illness but looks nothing like Wilson.

Both actors almost have the movie stolen from them by Paul Giamatti's show stopping turn as Landy. He is often (within the same scene) manipulative, charming, narcissistic, scary. A Best Supporting Actor nomination should have gone his way for this. Elizabeth Banks also does an adequate job as Ledbetter helped by her astonishingly perfect good looks.

I also really liked how this film dealt with the onset of mental illness. The scenes where Dano begins to lose control and hear voices is handled subtlety and with a subdued drama at first that makes the impact more powerful when everything explodes.

The studio scenes wherein they are putting together PET SOUNDS have enough music nerd minutia that it should satisfy the Wilsonphile.

My only complaint about this film is how historically accurate it is 1.) While Marilyn Ledbetter did lay a part in Brian's rejuvenation, my recollection from reading different bios is that it was Carl Wilson who actually was the one who led the charge against Landy and not because Marilyn prodded him 2.) While Mike Love does come across a jerk, every one who was witness to these times and Love in general has cast as him as the biggest asshole of all time which is common knowledge in pop culture. It's a Love lite - perhaps he had some say on the movie's content?

In any event, good film especially for Brian Wilson fans.

HOW TERRIBLE ARE ANT-MAN AND FANTASTIC FOUR?

ANT-MAN is not very good. It's like a bag of cheetos - some taste going down, an unpleasant residue left behind, and in an hour you've completely forgotten about it and are hungry again.

Henry Pym is old (and played by Michael Douglas), Ant Man is someone else, and the villain is Yellowjacket (who in the comics is just another persona of Henry Pym once he stops being Ant Man and Giant Man). Henry Pym is an important character in the Marvel Universe especially as part of the Avengers. The story arc wherein he was framed by Egghead and went to prison and was divorced by his wife the Wasp is one of the greatest in Avengers history. It would have made sense to introduce him in the last Avengers film especially since Ultron, the villain of the most recent Avengers film, is his creation in the comic.

Here the story they've come up with is not weighty enough to carry a film. Paul Rudd is beyond irritating (The only film I 've ever liked him in is ANCHORMAN and almost anyone could have played that role) and like most comic book origin movies nothing really happens until the end.  A lot of padded out backstory composed of equal parts cardboard exposition, lazy sentimentality until then

So that's the verdict a younger Hank Pym should have been introduced with the Wasp in The Avengers series. No need for a separate movie and especially not this one. Also the costumes look terrible and the special effects get numbing after awhile.

However, ANT-MAN looks like LA DOLCE VITA compared with the latest FANTASTIC FOUR film which aside from its complete lack of connection to any of the four's comic book history is just a terrible movie, maybe one of the worst I've ever seen. Boring, sloppy, uninteresting, poorly acted, poorly paced....I honestly can't say even one good word about it other than it's over.

Their new origin story which now involves alternate universes and all manner of other Sci Fi tropes is an uninteresting mess and the casting? An African American Human Torch? Well okay I guess. Sue Storm is a badly dyed blonde redhead? Ben Grimm, The Thing, is played by the dancing boy from BILLY ELLIOTT? Reed Richards looks nothing like Mr Fantastic – More like Robert Carradine’s character Lewis Skolnick from REVENGE OF THE NERDS. The worst is what they have done to Dr Doom. He appears for ten minutes at the end (in Doom form, the rest of the time he is a sullen nerd) and retains nothing of his iconic super villain status from the comics. Let’s make a rule – You have to know something about comics to make movies about them featuring their characters..

Hopefully, there won't be a sequel.

What's frustrating is I do think it is possible to make a good Fantastic Four film adaptation - just follow the comic book. The 2005 film was not bad. Maybe it would be better as a TV series?

FOUR FILMS - ATTACK ON TITAN, I AM CHRIS FARLEY, HARBINGER DOWN, EXTINCTION

ATTACK ON TITAN

First a Japanese manga then an animated series now a two part movie (the second part comes out in September). While they have compressed what is quite a long, confusing story into a more manageable narrative, they have not sacrified anything. This is an exciting, visually inventive often times gross walking cartoon about the last survivors of Earth fighting against giant human cannibals with extra wide mouths and no genitals. I enjoyed this adaptation tremendously even if I felt no connection to any of the characters. The special effects are awesome. Perhaps I would feel differently if I was into the original manga or cartoon.

                                                  

I AM CHRIS FARLEY

This documentary really tries hard to strike a balance between loving remembrances of Farley as a good kid whose poor self image was essentially taken advantage of by fame and Farley's predisposition to overindulgence and addiction. We get a clear picture of his comic roots and influences and how talented he truly was as well as his family life. At times, I feel this film is too cautious (considering they had access to almost all of Farley's family). I don't need lurid details but it would have been clearer to the audience to show exactly where some of Farley's demons came from. Still fun and nostalgic if sad with all the great SNL/TOMMY BOY etc. clips.

HARBINGER DOWN

I recall seeing when this film was being advertised on kickstarter for donations to finish it. What they had completed looked like a total THING rip-off with all the transformations. The final product is exactly that - THE THING set on a fishing boat trapped in ice although this monster doesn't mimic people. It takes over them and transforms them. Scene after scene of grotesque shape shifting. Not very good unless you like a lot of FX monstrosities. A plus - The always reliable Lance Henricksen chewing up the scenery.

                                       

EXTINCTION

28 Days Later zombie movie hybrid that is more interested in the human drama side of things. Two brothers (one played by Matthew Fox of LOST) who don't speak but share a remote facility with a little girl one takes care of in the wake of an epidemic a number of years before are forced to join together when the monsters find them. Jumps back and forth from past and future to show us the origin of their dispute. I appreciate their effort in trying to tell a different type of story but this is overlong and the monsters have the same tired derivative look. Surely one can think of a different way to show these type of creatures by this point.

  

LEE VAN CLEEF - AN APPRAISAL

Been on a Lee Van Cleef kick lately. Blessed with a great countenance but also a very good understanding of how he looks in a scene, how to move and present expressions on film - A combination of biology and talent and self-awareness. He made a lot of other films besides the Sergio Leone collaborations.... Saw DEATH RIDES A HORSE (Solid Spaghetti Western revenge film with an overpowering score from Morricone), THE STRANGER AND THE GUNFIGHTER (half-comic, cheesy fun with Van Cleef teaming up with a martial artist in the old West) and DAY OF ANGER - great film! Really needs to be more famous. Oedipal complex tale of a gunfighter taking a young outcast, town simpleton under his wing, good dialogue and plot twists....

Sergio Leone On Lee Van Cleef

"The theme of FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE is friendship. The rapport between two so called negative characters: one of them young and vigorous, the other just this side of old age. Creating this relationship, I wanted to go beyond FISTFUL OF DOLLARS: in some fashion, to outdo myself. Lee Van Cleef had that physique, that way of moving which was perfect for the role of Bounty Killer. The Bounty Killer is a very ambiguous character in the old west, perhaps the most ambiguous of them all, for he demonstrates a law of the West and of America itself: that in order to live one must be inclined to kill. In the film, the relationship between these two characters was crucial, also due to the choice of just the right pair of actors.Lee Marvin seemed prepared to accept. Once again, I'd thought of Fonda, but he was unobtainable. But then, just as
I was flying to America to have him sign the contract, Marvin dealt me a cruel blow, committing instead to another film, CAT BALLOU, which went on to win him an Oscar. Then I recalled an actor who had struck me in small roles in HIGH NOON, and THE BRAVADOS. It was very difficult tracking him down, no one knew what had happened to him. His photo no longer appeared in the actors' annuals. Finally, I contacted a smalltime agent, who told me Van Cleef wasn't working anymore because he'd been in a clinic for alcoholics for three years, and all the studios had slammed their doors in his face upon his release. And so he'd changed his career. Now he painted and did carpentry, but if I wanted to meet him, the agent would have him come by to my hotel the following day. And so it came to be. He arrived on a day of torrential rain. He had traveled a great distance. He wore an old dirty raincoat. He tapped lightly on its buttons. From his raised collar emerged that head with its short-cropped salt and pepper hair, that face resembling a falcon's. He was even better than the character I'd dreamed of! I immediately had a check written up for a sum that I don't think was more than a thousand dollars.Lee, who didn't yet understand he was to be the costar in the movie, said to me: "You know, I'm not sure I'm convinced it's worth returning to films occasionally just to do two or three scenes. I'm deeply involved in my career as an artist. Somebody just paid me seventy dollars for a piece of work, and I don't want to be forced to give the money back. I don't want to jeopardize my career." When I gave him an advance of 1000 dollars, he almost fainted! I also remember with great tenderness Christmas Eve two years later. Van Cleef, famous by now thanks to the success of the film, wanted to offer me dinner at a Chinese restaurant in New York. His wife, a former nurse who had taken care of him during his spell of alcohol poisoning, joined him. He had just bought her a splendid wrap. Almost with tears in his eyes, he told me: "This fur, the opportunity to take you out to this restaurant, the life that we live now, all this we owe to you. You gave me the chance to redeem myself in every sense. Thanks to you, I now earn 25,000 dollars a film, and I do one right after another. Before meeting you, just two years ago now, we were struggling heroically to pay the light bill.""

JAWS 40TH ANNIVERSARY AND THE V.I.P'S

Watched JAWS with my wife's 14 year old nephew recently. I was spurred to do this by all the 40th anniversary hoopla. Hoopla that is deserved in this case as it is a damned good film.

To pigeonhole JAWS into a genre is a bit tough on the face of it as it is clearly an adventure film. You could even argue it is sort of a horror film I guess what with a giant killer shark that has seeming intelligence, enough to lure its would be killers out into the open ocean and to strike when and where no one expects.

But I would ague the word "thriller" is probably the best classification. Much of JAWS in terms of how it plants visual clues and foreshadows later events feels like it was directed by Alfred Hitchcock. One of my favorite scenes is the shark attack on the boy on the inflatable raft which occurs from Sheriff Brody's perspective over the shoulder of a complaining constituent and among many other bathers - amazing scene! I am not a Stephen Speilberg fan for reasons I've listed here https://rajdronamraju.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/why-i-wont-be-seeing-the-new-indiana-jones-film/ but this is one of the greatest films of all time - To bad he couldn't continue in that direction. In retrospect, it feels like an oddity in his directorial filmography.

                         

Also recently saw THE V.I.P.'s - A big budget soap opera with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor playing around with public perceptions of their relationship, one of the most famous of the twentieth century.

The 1963 film takes place mostly in an airport as a plane's passengers wait around to board a delayed aircraft. In addition to Burton and Taylor, we have Louis Jordan, Orson Welles, Rod Taylor, Maggie Smith, and Dame Margaret Rutherford (who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar.). Although Taylor/Burton is the focus, all the supporting actors cleave out portions of the narrative for themselves.

This is a big cheesy spectacle in which Taylor, playing with type as a famous actress, is planning to leave her husband wealthy tycoon Burton for Jordan, her oily gigolo lover (although it's implied they are aren't sleeping together yet which makes no sense to me). Nobody could chew up the scenery better than Liz and Dick ,an argument which WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? proves conclusively.

Throw in Welles's foreign producer (with an amusingly schlocky accent), Smith's pining away mousy secretary, Rutherford's wacky grand dame and you have a very fun movie. Taylor and Burton are the centerpiece - Never has the camera found two better subjects to embrace together, a happy confluence of celebrity and striking facial features and knowing how to act on film.