Reviews by JxSxPx

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is an examination of one man’s struggle to achieve personal happiness while being weighed down by familiar obligations and co-dependence. Lasse Hallström brings together a gifted ensemble and a tender but tough screenplay to craft something of a minor classic. It doesn’t hurt that Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio are placed into the main roles – do they look like brothers? Not really, but they create a believable and lived in rapport that overcomes that obstacle. In fact, the main reason to watch the film is to see the two of them play these brothers and watch how they interact with each other.

It is primarily a character study, but the film does branch out into the wider scope of life in a small town. Details like the strip mall takeovers of America are handled with a nice touch of real, honest emotion and humor. The major subplot of frustrated infidelity gives Mary Streenburgen a chance to shine as she plays an unhappily married woman desperate to get out of the town and taking this anger out upon herself in a go-nowhere “romance” with Depp’s character. It’s a sad cry for help and reinforces the character’s struggle to get out of this town and remove himself from the co-dependency of his family.

And his family is a well-acted ensemble of actors who create a believable and lived-in unit. Darlene Cates as the obese, emotionally damaged and slightly manipulative mother creates a beautifully realized character. Her speech, late in the film, in which she apologizes for damaging her children due to her mental illness and emotional neediness then confesses to not wanting to be seen a joke is a sight of an actor laying out their truth, going beyond the character, acting and line reading to lay bare a naked emotion that is harrowing and touching in equal measure.

But Gilbert Grape belongs to Depp’s soulful eyes and innate romanticism, qualities which he frequently manipulates into grotesqueries (which is part of the fun of watching him as an actor). It’s nice to see Depp play a normal person, and he keeps Gilbert Grape’s various strands and tones afloat. And DiCaprio proved himself an incredibly talented actor at the tender age of nineteen (although he looks far younger). DiCaprio’s vocal tics and body contortions feel authentic to the character, but it’s the sly twinkle in the eye and intelligence that he keeps simmering beneath the surface that make his performance so extraordinary. So many actors treat characters with disabilities as showboating devices to prove what great actors they are at the expense of the truth and reality of someone in that situation, instead crafting a series of strange choices and calling it a character. Not DiCaprio. He never loses sight of the emotional truth of the person he is playing. And that seems like a great concise way of describing the film – tender yet emotionally moving, no one involved condescends to the situations or people. They’re treated with respect, careful observation and warmth.

Two hours have rarely felt like two or three times that length as consistently as they do during Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It’s hard to completely write off the film as a total loss, but only just barely so. Terry Gilliam can craft a visually arresting sequence with tremendous ease, but he doesn’t always attach a reason for that visual’s existence. And Fear & Loathing is nothing but that – a string of visuals with no rhyme or reason for their existence with no development in story, character or interest in any of the mechanics of a successful narrative. So what we’re left with is a film that plods along repeating the basic conceit that we see in the very beginning – our characters get very high, hallucinate some weird shit, get into trouble, get out of trouble, move on to the next location, repeat for two incredibly long hours that become an exercise in tedium.

Much of the interest generated in the film is from rubbernecking at random bit parts played by a host of stars – Ellen Barkin, Camerona Diaz, Tobey Maguire, Gary Busey, Flea, Mark Harmon, Katherine Helmond, Lyle Lovett, Christina Ricci and Michael Jeter all have small parts which range from glorified cameos to minor supporting roles. It does become a little bit like “Spot the star” as we amble from one scenario to the next, but it is interesting debating about who is going to show up next and what they’ll be doing. It’s a pity that pretty much all of them are wasted though, with the lone exception possibly being Barkin in a horrifying scene late in the film in which the drugs come down and the violence goes up.

The only other thing of interest, and the lone reason why the film manages to stick together and not come ripping apart into a million pieces, is Johnny Depp’s central performance. Often giving a one-man show, or acting off a barely recognizable Benicio Del Toro, Depp forsakes vanity to appear frequently balding, bug-eyed and with a lizard tail. It’s a strange performance, even on the bell curve of strange Depp performances. But it’s also a reminder of how exciting and original an actor he is that this offbeat character is played by the same man who gave such soul to Edward Scissorhands. Now that is range.

I cannot in good conscious recommend this film for many reasons beyond Depp’s performance, some of Gilliam’s visuals and the parade of random cameos from big name stars. Outside of these three things, Fear & Loathing is a film that goes nowhere slowly, content to just mumble to itself and walk in circles without bothering to develop the characters beyond our initial introduction to them or give a reason for the insanity. Unlike, say, Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream, it crafts realistic drug-induced imagery but doesn’t give it an aim or a purpose. There is no “why” to any of this, but if you’ve got two hours to spare and are a big fan of either Depp or Gilliam, I suppose there are worse films to watch?

I mean this as the highest form of praise, but what the fuck is going on in Rango? It’s like taking acid then watching Once Upon a Time in the West. Needless to say, I adore every single minute of this bizarre, strange trip through spaghetti western tropes seen through the prism of an animated film that’s allegedly for children.

Rango plays on two levels, if I was much, much younger then it would play as a normal movie. It would simply tell its story, get me involved with the characters, have some funny jokes and bring some originality to my eyes by offering an antidote to the kiddie animals and singing princesses bumbling around in 3D. But since I’m a twenty-six-year-old adult viewing this film, it plays out like a kitsch-loving satire of Sergio Leone’s deconstructed epics, filled to the brim with bright colors and an imagination that has been missing from so many recent animated films. (Pixar hasn’t been batting a terribly high average since Cars, DreamWorks only hit it out of the park with How to Train Your Dragon, only Studio Ghibli consistently presents smart films which play well to both audiences.)

And it’s not just Leone’s films that get sent through this film’s warped perspective and arrive on the other side in distorted angles. Apocalypse Now, Chinatown, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are just a few of the sight-gags and comic setups that I remember vividly. But it lovingly pokes fun at these movies, and while it’s a gonzo take on the western it’s clearly coming from a place of great admiration and love. The basic plot line could easily be borrowed from any of John Ford’s seminal classics, and numerous characters bare a resemblance to some famous cowboy. There’s a feast for your brain and eyes going on at the same time as you wash yourself in the gorgeous animation and laugh at the razor-sharp wit and satiric glee.

And, oh, what gorgeous visuals Rango possesses! Its characters are lovingly detailed, looking at once like photo-realistic lizards, rattlesnakes, vultures, turtles, rabbits and moles while still being highly stylized creations. It’s an impressive trick, and the animators pull it off incredibly well. I must admit, there was a point at which I did become incredibly uncomfortable watching Rango and look away from the screen. You see, I’m afraid of snakes, and the big bad in the movie is a rattlesnake. A giant, talking rattlesnake that likes to bare its fangs and ensnare our hero in its scaly body, and this freaked me out. I can only imagine how scared some kids must have been watching this character slither upon the screen. Yet still, the animation was beautifully done as he throws all the weight of his body this way and that with a weight and force that seems incredibly detailed and believable.

When you think about it, it makes perfect sense that Johnny Depp is the central role. His lizard is a former household pet with daydreams about being an actor who accidentally finds himself in the desert, then in the western, stumbles into being the hero and continually recreates his identity and backstory as he falls into ever larger and crazier lies. His western hero is a self-made part, the role of a lifetime, and Depp finds all of these colorful shades in his vocal tics. Supporting him are a great bunch of actors – Ned Beatty doing a John Huston impression that’s all honeysuckle charm and lurking menance, Harry Dean Stanton, Abigail Breslin, Isla Fisher, Alfred Molina, Ray Winstone, Timothy Olyphant, Bill Nighy and Stephen Root. Look at that tony cast! It’s a fantastic group of character actors finding the creepy, campy undertones in these characters and playing the hell out of them.

Perhaps Rango is more of an adult animated feature masquerading as a children’s film parodying westerns? It’s hard to describe, and maybe I’m just more wrapped up in the sheer giddy weirdness of the whole thing, but I think American animated films could use more adult, more weird and wild films like this. I say the unending sequels which dry the creative wells and tarnish the reputation of the beloved first film need to stop. We need more daring and bizarre voices in the field and within the past decade or so, more of those voices appear to be making themselves heard. So thank god for films like Rango. Just don’t ruin it and make a sequel.

A screwball comedy that takes aim at the life of an actress and the business of publicity within the studio system, Bombshell is a perfect example of Jean Harlow’s particular screen goddess persona and comedic greatness. The story of Bombshell is said to have been inspired by Clara Bow, but there’s more than a hint of autobiography in this tale of a screen goddess seeking to tone down the sex, be treated as a serious actress and find someone to love her for who she really is. Not to mention the various machinery in place to keep her image as a brazen bad girl, a wanton sexual dynamo in play and the lechers (also known as family members) who tag along and waste all of her money.

The wit comes fast and quick, and often at a very loud volume, as Lee Tracy’s scheming publicity man ensures that Harlow’s constantly in print. He forsakes her private wishes and out-right sabotages her goals to be seen as less of a brassy blonde sexpot and as a more fully realized human being. And whenever Harlow catches Tracy’s schemes we can’t help but smile and root her on as she verbally cuts him down and physically assaults him. The bastard deserves it. After all, Harlow’s starlet is a bit of screwball, but her heart is in the right place and she generally tries to do right by herself and those around her.

Though for all of its strengths, Bombshell is never the great screwball comedy that it could have been for two reasons. One is the central romance between Harlow and Tracy. Tracy may truly love Harlow and perform many of his nefarious schemes as a subversive kind of mating display, but he doesn’t deserve to wind up with Harlow in a love embrace. He needs a good sock in the jaw more than anything. Second is the direction by Victor Fleming, he gets great performances from his actors, but he also frequently just has them yelling over each other without the comic finesse necessary to really hear their lines or land their jokes. Howard Hawks would have been an ideal choice for this kind of film, look at what magic he spun out of Twentieth Century. And imagine what kind of great work he could have gotten out of Harlow, who is already giving a great piece of work here, but would have gotten a similarly wondrous performance out of her like her work in Dinner at Eight, still her finest film moment.

But none of those problems really matter when we get to sit back and watch Harlow blow the roof off the place. She’s magnificent here. Believably playing, and not just for laughs, every nuance and development her character takes. She makes her starlet a classic screwball heroine because she probably so innately understood her struggles. And everything that made Jean Harlow a great star in the 1930s is on full display. Her natural sense for comedy, her tough-girl exterior wrapped around a dangerously curvy body that protected a very sweet, traditional girl underneath it all, and, of course, her platinum blonde sex goddess persona. It may not be perfect, but Bombshell is a very strong, funny vehicle for Harlow. If you’ve ever wondered what her appeal was, this isn’t a bad place to start.

Entertaining, occasionally smart and featuring four of the greatest stars of the studio era, Wife vs. Secretary is a fun little melodramatic comedy from MGM’s hey-day. It may not be an out-and-out classic, but Wife offers Myrna Loy and Jean Harlow to do something different with their personas. It’s just a pity that the film was made after the Production Code had taken a stranglehold, because this would have made one hell of a naughty little Pre-Code gem.

The plot is pretty flimsy, mostly an excuse to hang a series of misunderstandings that are roughly sitcom-level around the likes of Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy and James Stewart. And that’s a group of stars who could sell anything through charisma, talent and charm. Gable and Loy are a happily married, very wealthy couple; Harlow is Gable’s secretary and Stewart is Harlow’s longtime boyfriend. Naturally, idle rich with dish out idle gossip, and word begins to spread through a first misunderstanding that Gable and Harlow may be having an affair, and the plot naturally follow through from there.

What’s so wonderful about Wife is that Loy and Harlow are playing a bit against type here. Loy played a lot of supportive or long-suffering wives in her career, but aside from her work with William Powell was rarely allowed to play up the sexuality that lurked beneath the surface in these roles. Her character undergoes a complex range of emotions, and Loy modulates them very well. Harlow, her hair toned down to a brownish color, is allowed to play an intelligent woman who is supremely competent at her job. It’s a nice change of pace from the brash, tough girls she made a career out of. It’s a pity she died so young, because her more muted performance here shows great promise to the all-around actress she could have become outside of the comedienne. There’s a tender scene where she tucks in a drunken Gable, and the scene plays up Harlow’s real-life maternal instincts and wifely ambitions without a hint of sexuality to be found. Of course Gable is Gable, and James Stewart is doing a variation on the sweet boy-next-door roles that populated his early career. While it may not be a classic feature in any of their careers, it’s still pound-for-pound a very sweet, entertaining dramedy.

As long as you don’t pay much attention to the script, Du Barry Was a Lady is a great movie. This really isn’t too hard since there’s very little in the way of plot to deal with, and the film is padded immensely with comedic shenanigans and random performers filling up screen time with musical interludes that have little to nothing to do with the story proper. Just think of this as MGM’s musical department stuffing a film to bursting because they considered it a trial-run for up-and-coming talent.

But the up-and-coming talent featured here is Red Skelton, Gene Kelly and Lucille Ball working alongside the underrated Virginia O’Brien as a sardonic cigarette girl, Zero Mostel as a hammy swami, and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameos from Lana Turner and Ava Gardner. In only his third film Kelly’s screen persona seems locked into place, and he’s one of the few performers who required no transition from one persona to another before finding something that highlighted his talents the best. He came onto the screen fully formed, and while he doesn’t get too much to do here, he looks handsome as ever and the basic outline of most of his character’s predicaments are falling into place. Ball, on the other hand, isn’t given too much to do, but she has never looked more glamorous or beautiful. She looks positively stunning, and it’s easy to see why both Kelly and Skelton are head-over-heels in love with her. It’s a shame that she’s not allowed to let loose and be funny until the very end, but she plays her gold-digger showgirl for all its worth. Skelton is a presence I’ve never understood. Sure, he does fine work here, but I just don’t grasp his appeal.

So while the script is fairly inconsequential, the cinematography, bold colors and lavish costumes are stunning to behold. It’s a shame they couldn’t graft a better story to all of these lovely details and really made something classic. Du Barry is also smart enough to keep things charging forward at a quick pace, so it never bogs down and it knows it’s featherweight entertainment and never aspires to anything more. So taken for what it is – all-singing/all-dancing/all-vaudevillian comedic interludes – it’s pretty successful, but it had so many ingredients to be something much more. Ah well, that’s discussing the film that could have been made and not the one that was though.

Well, if you’ve watched just about any episode of I Love Lucy then The Long, Long Trailer can offer you no surprises. It basically grafts what amounts to an extended episode of that brilliant, still-hilarious series and adds in enough dead weight to make it feature length. The fact that Vincente Minnelli directed this is a bit of a shocker. Sure, his obsessive use of bold colors is left intact, but where is his elegant touch that made such films as Father of the Bride or Meet Me in St. Louis such classics? It’s hard to say what went wrong, but the episodic nature doesn’t help. But Long, Long Trailer is still an enjoyable film thanks in large part to the chemistry between Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. But everything comes together beautifully for two scenes which makes the film worth watching. The first is a silly slapstick scene in which Ball gets to do her patented blend of elegant pratfalls and hilarious facial contortions while trying to make dinner in the trailer while Arnaz drives over some rough terrain. The other is a brief musical moment in which the two of them sweetly cuddle together during a drive and sing “Breezin’ Along with the Breeze.” If Trailer had more sequences like this it would have been a classic, but, as is, it’s an overly long 96 minutes but still enjoyable.

In retrospect, Gosford Park is a bit of a dry-run for Downton Abbey, except there was no drop off in quality in its second season. Or maybe Julian Fellows only has one story that he can write about? No matter, Gosford Park is wildly entertaining and a great showcase for numerous respected actors from the U.K. And with Robert Altman at the helm, we know that we’re in for a bit of a treat.

Falling somewhere between a stately Agatha Christie-esque whodunit and a very British comedy of manners, Gosford Park presents to us a giant manor house and all of the guests, servants and owners who are going to be there for an extended weekend. When the man of the house winds up dead we transition into a mystery, and there’s only about, oh I don’t know, twenty or so suspects that seem to have logical reasons for wanting to kill him.

This allows Altman to do what his entire career was built upon, create a panorama of a time and place by observing roughly twenty-five characters at a time. Think of what he accomplished with Nashville, but transfer that to the English countryside in the 1930s. Now you’re roughly in the ballpark. But the murder at the heart of the story isn’t really a chance for Altman to indulge into playing with the tropes of murder-mysteries, but rather a chance for him to examine the characters reactions to it. To take a step back and observe the symbiotic relationship between master and servant, and watch as characters reach epiphanies in their lives and choices.

These scenes of epiphany are towered over by Helen Mirren’s closing sequence in which she cries over the son she gave up for adoption. Throughout the rest of the film she has been a reserved, efficient housekeeper. A woman who does her job and does it well, but who remains a mystery to those she works with on a daily basis. To see her humanity finally crack through is a stunning achievement and Mirren plays it beautifully. Maggie Smith, is this the beginning of her tart-tongued grand dame mode?, is also a hoot as an acid tongued wealthy matron. Prone to gossip and priding on decorum and being pragmatic, while also being hilarious with a quip, it isn’t hard to see the character she plays here eventually leading to her role on Downton, as they are remarkably similar.

As for the rest of the sprawling cast, they all perform at a very consistent and high rate. Michael Gambon, Kristin Scott Thomas, Richard E. Grant, Emily Watson, Clive Owen, Kelly Macdonald, Bob Balaban, Derek Jacobi, Eileen Atkins and Ryan Phillippe are probably the most memorable faces in the ensemble, and they’re each doing fantastic work. Phillippe is a bit of a surprise to me, since I have often thought of him as mostly just a pretty boy actor, but he holds him own and does well enough with an accent and character that must switch about halfway through. This group barely scratches the surface of who is in the film, but they do tend to get the most screen time.

It’s not hard to see why Gosford Park enchanted critics and the Academy at the time. It is a solidly constructed piece of film-making. I don’t find it to be at quite the level of artistry that Nashville is, but is definitely a solid entry. The barbarism and war of words of the upper class in British society is well-known territory, but leave it to Altman to at least offer a few new details here and there.

The past few years have given Abraham Lincoln a bit of a moment on the big screen. There was Lincoln, which snagged Daniel Day-Lewis his third Best Actor Oscar, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which revised history to make him a supernatural character, and Killing Lincoln, which was a highly related mini-series. But before those three marched out in quick succession in 2012, there was The Conspirator about the fallout from Lincoln’s assassination. These have varying degrees of success with The Conspirator falling squarely in the middle.

The major problem with the film is that it’s so tasteful as to be bland. Each and every frame feels like it’s watermarked with “For Your Consideration.” There’s a great story to be told in here somewhere, but this reserved and overly tasteful approach leads to tedium here. This seems to be a common criticism with much of Robert Redford’s output as a director. A concluding scene at the gallows should pack an emotional wallop, but a hanging scene has never been so clinical and removed of emotional impact before. This blasé approach never allows for us to gain access or insight into the characters motivations,

The film feels more concerned with trying to make this case remind us of modern day discussions about war criminals, torture and the power of the government to do as it pleases. But these allusions are so protracted and tastefully removed that they never truly become anything more than window dressing. A distinct point-of-view about these talking points, or about the character’s actions, would have made for a better film. Or if it had bothered to really interaction with these political allusions beyond mere flirtation and placed more firmly in the moral quagmire it presents, we could have had a truly special film.

But Redford at least has a game cast that performs beyond reproach. James McAvoy and Robin Wright modulate their characters so that their growing disillusionment with their situation and slowly dawning realizations are effectively handled. A large supporting ensemble delivers solid work from top to bottom, with the notable exception being Justin Long who is too modern for a period film. But Kevin Kline, Tom Wilkinson, Alexis Bledel, Norman Reedus, Evan Rachel Wood, Stephen Root, James Badge Dale, Danny Huston all perform well in their limited roles. So the problem isn’t the script or the cast, it’s Redford’s direction which seems to aim squarely at a middle-of-the-road prestige format for a story that demands a point-of-view.

It isn’t enough that George Clooney is a tremendous movie star, but with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind he proves that he’s got great skill at this whole writer-director thing. Frequently he takes the film into highly stylized territory, at times the film looks incredibly bleached or overly saturated in its colors, but it always feels like a smart choice from a confident hand. Even as the plot goes into increasingly hard-to-believe areas (allegedly based on truth if you believe Chuck Barris), Clooney always keeps things entertaining and appealing to look at.

This is a great hand trick, because the plot is the one thing that’s hardest to swallow in the film. Was Chuck Barris really a CIA operative? Who knows, but Confessions takes his claim at face value. This leads to a fun and quirky first half but a second one that drags badly as it repeats to ever less-interesting effect the basic set-up of Barris trying to juggle his long-suffering girlfriend, game show work and assassination missions. His increasing paranoia is a chance for Sam Rockwell to deliver some great acting set pieces, but after the giddy head rush of fun and humor it’s a bit of a comedown.

Yet Clooney never loses sight of his actors, and gets some surprising work from movie stars Drew Barrymore and Julia Roberts. Barrymore is charming and effective as the long-suffering girlfriend. It’s nice to see her actually do some work in a part after years of scrunching her nose and being cute in romantic comedies like Never Been Kissed. And Roberts manages to make an effective femme fatale, being mysterious, dangerous and sexy in equal measure. This is a great surprise to me as I have more or less written Roberts off as a movie star who is only good in romantic comedies but lacks weight as a dramatic actress. Maybe she has depths that we have yet to see? But the film really belongs to Sam Rockwell, a great character actor who has yet to break the mainstream in a major way. He looks quite a bit like the young Barris, makes every twist and turn feel believable, and seems to be having a ball with a part this juicy. Sure, it’s not a great movie, but it’s very entertaining and compulsively watchable.