Jun 20, 2011
(rated R, 115 mins.)
The Halibut fishing capital of Nightmute, Alaska doesn’t get dark. So, light doesn’t help when baggy-eyed big-shot detective Will Dormer (Al Pacino) arrives to town to investigate a young woman’s murder and can’t get any sleep. Eager-beaver local detective Ellie Burr (Hillary Swank) witnesses Dormer’s smooth skills as he explains how the killer cleaned his victim and even cut her toenails. But what if the murderer is a mystery writer who learns something of the detective trying to trap him? When something goes wrong, control-freak killer (Robin Williams) taunts sleepless Pacino. The story has the big fish in the small town appeal with an aging Pacino who doesn’t seem to age at all, still holding fast to his usual sex appeal. Swank starts off underused, but manages to come through in a surprising conclusion, while Williams steps away from his Morkish-Doubtfire roles to deliver something dark and effective. The three Oscar winning stars make for a weird movie combination, but surprisingly and smoothly they work. Directed by Chirstopher Nolan who’s had a creepy experience delivering “Memento”, this one produced by the Clooney/Soderbergh team of Section 8. While a couple of plot issues were bothersome, overall, Insomnia will keep you – wide awake!
Jun 20, 2011
Clive Owen is a smart bank robber. He disguises his hostages by dressing them in the same attire as his posse of thieves. This confuses the police, led by Denzel Washington, on who’s a target, and who isn’t. Spike Lee directs an unusually mainstream studio film but with his typical stereotypical history – the hostages are a dark-skinned man in turban mistaken for an Arab, a young ghetto boy seeking violence, an annoying woman too loud on her cell phone – and the clichés continue. Yet the story holds our interest mainly because of its seemingly intriguing plot. Jodie Foster is the mayor’s right hand girl who can connive her way into anything, including a held-up bank, and Christopher Plummer is the dignified man on the stationary of the bank’s board of directors. Yet for all its great actors, the cast comes off as very one dimensional. Denzel is the only defined character, in a story that will make you wonder two things in the end: Why was such damaging contents of that safety deposit box in the bank in the first place? And why (we are never fully explained) does Owens want it? With this Oscar worthy cast, you’ll get your money’s worth, because while it never adds up, there is at the very least, some form of emotional pay-off.
Jun 20, 2011
From its misspelled title, to its man’s-man Sergio Leone style, to its “Kill Bill” quirkiness, writer/director Quentin Tarantino is back on his game with a masterpiece (and happy to admit that in the last line of the movie.) It’s Nazi-occupied France during WWII, and the Germans “Jew Hunters” brutally kill the family of young Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent). On the other side of the fence are “The Basterds” led by Lt Aldo (Brad Pitt) who’s in the business of “killing Nazis” as he explains in his amusing southern trailer-trash accent (a deadpan style he carries effectively through the entire film.) His gang of soldiers – a sort of “Oceans 11” of WWII bad boys – are on a mission of instilling fear into the Third Reich. Sometimes they even kill and scalp them. There’s Sgt Hugo (Til Schweiger) who killed 13 Gestapo officers. There’s the killer soldier “the Bear” from Boston with a fetish for Ted William’s swings and a wooden bat across a German’s forehead. But, no matter who they are, each unknown actor acts the hell out of this movie! Even Diane Kruger as a German actress turned spy carries her weight among the boys as the sexy Bridget von Hammersmark.
But when the Basterds cross the path of the very French-Jewish girl (whose family was murdered) and she now runs a Paris cinema, they’ve found the perfect place to premiere a movie that Hitler will assumedly attend. There’s lots of Oscar worthy acting of no-names here, but the king of them all is German actor Christopher Waltz as Colonel Hans Landa. His scenes lend a tick tock factor of tension; men confronting men (Sergio Leone) and a slow pacing that tells you that at any given moment everybody will most likely get their heads blown off. Tarantino draws his own conclusion through ongoing sensationalism in bringing us to his version of a history lesson on the Third Reich and how it ends. Tarrentino utilizes the irony of great German cinema (including G.W. Pabst and Emil Jannings in his movie) but at the same time longing to burn the Germans. The film is about twenty minute too long but somehow forgiven and worth every second. Three and a half tiaras
Jun 20, 2011
-the name might be a little off, but what’s right on, is the performance of Toby Jones as Truman Capote. Yet despite his direct-from-the-grave-spooky-resemblance and larger than life depiction, one can’t help but compare this to last year’s version “Capote” starring Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who took home the Best Actor Oscar. And so the first question is which actor did a better job? The answer: Both. Jones is Capote, but at times his over-the-top animated antics, make the seriousness of investigating material for his book “In Cold Blood” feels like he suffocates the dramatic aspect. On the other hand, Hoffman’s dark and solemn performance matched the mood of the subject matter – a murdered family in Kansas – what Capote endured at the crime scene and with the prisoners. “Infamous” focuses on the fish out of water angle – a New York socialite decides to head out to the Midwest sniffing out a potential story for a magazine. And what a socialite he is! The society scenes of this movie are right on the money (no pun intended). I could almost feel what the velvety-sofa, of an upper east side apartment, circa 1960 felt like! Sigourney Weaver as Babe Paley, Gwenyth Paltrow as Peggy Lee and Juliet Stevenson as Diana Vreeland have their roles nailed. Even Sandra Bullock does a fine job as Capote’s best friend, novelist Harper Lee, though we can’t help but feel we prefer last year’s performance by Catherine Keener. As for the directing, Douglas McGrath tends to be all-over-the-place beginning with a movie that’s light and frivolous before getting comfortable in the more serious tones. His movie – while about the making of “In Cold Blood” – is more about the transition that comes over Capote as a man. Last year’s newcomer director Bennett Miller got more out of his actors. He seemed to track the movie with the right dose of pacing and visual artistry. Of course in the end, the biggest thought is if only the real Truman Capote were alive to see two movies made about him. How many legends can say that? He’d have thrown quite the soiree for both. Three tiaras
Jun 20, 2011
One of the most eagerly-awaited sequels – but can it live up to the first rate 1981 original “Raiders of the Lost Arc?” Yes and no. After seeing Henry (Harrison Ford) in his famous fedora opening, the plot immediately subjects us to 20 minutes of intense action that involves a Russian Officer, Irina (Cate Blanchett) lovely to look at, but not necessarily needed in the plot. Translation: If you need to use the rest room clock it at about 1 hour into the film, when it dips in the middle act. That said, the uplifting and unusual ending delivers a solid third act complete with scorpions, snakes, killer ants, monkeys and even a space ship and aliens that might have you thinking Spielberg rivals Harrison Ford for old age wise-cracks. Perhaps team Spielberg/Lucas forgot that this isn’t a sequel to “Close Encounters of the Third Kind!” Harrison Ford has no trouble resuming his role as the whip cracking Jones. The movie’s plot is set in 1957 when KGB agents have taken over a top-secret plant in a Midwest desert where Jones (a professor by day, Indie by night) is aware that the military has stored artifacts blah,blah, blah. It’s fun to hear the flirty annoying banter of Karen Allen resuming her role as Ford’s lover with the introduction of a young Mutt William (Shia LeBeouf) who turns out to be more than Indiana Jones bargained for. The technology and the cinematography are pure magical and the script is true to the Indiana Jones history, but the only downside is that Ford spends so much time running around to survive, that he doesn’t stop to take a breath and deliver enough of that golly-shucks charm we loved in the last one. That said, it’s fun to see his posse of friends survive ridiculous death-defying feats that make us belly-laugh out loud. It’s pure entertainment – the old action adventure kind – and isn’t that what summer movie going should be all about? Three tiaras
