Reviews by JxSxPx

River of No Return is beautifully shot, contains gorgeous scenery, and offers up two of the greatest and grandest of all movie stars for our viewing pleasure. But, how to word this delicately?, the script needed a lot of work before it could be considered anything other than slight.

Mitchum plays our tortured hero in need of the redemption that only a reunion with his son and love of a good woman can provide. He's stumbled back in to town from who knows where, and meets back up with his long lost son. When we first meet Monroe she's a saloon singer strumming on a guitar. She stares off in the distance, looking vulnerable, tired and plaintive. They’re both given grand movie star entrances, and they deserved a better script to work with.

Of course by the end of the film they’ll have forged a nuclear family, and both of the adults will be redeemed, smoothed out and domesticated by their love for each other and the little boy. It’s as limp as a script can get. But there’s something entertaining and watchable about River of No Return. Most of it is the absolutely splendid natural beauty, which manages to make one forget about the obvious and shoddy looking green screen work with Monroe and Mitchum on the life raft. It’s so painfully obvious that it’s a rear projection and that their raft is being held up by crewmembers.

And Mitchum and Monroe were both endlessly watchable doing just about anything. They elevate the clichéd script with their sheer force of will and animal magnetism. Mitchum positively reeked of alpha male sexual force, and Monroe is a luminous goddess equals parts tough survivor and fragile creature. If for nothing else, River of No Return is worth watching just to see how they interact with each other, and how they fill the screen just by standing in front of the camera and seemingly do nothing. That’s a kind of charisma and power that’s lacking in today’s cinema.

Howard Hawks was probably the most versatile director of his era, capable of making such distinct films as Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Each is technically a comedy, but each is vastly different from each other. Baby being a slapstick-centric screwball comedy with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn throwing themselves into their roles head-over-feet. Friday being a workplace romance and war between the sexes comedy mixed in with a murder-mystery sub-plot. And Blondes being a musical about two gold-digging, smart, sexual women. The man knew how to direct comedy, which is to say nothing of the great films he made in genres such as noir, western or straight-up drama.

So, we can forgive him for Monkey Business being less than the sum of its parts. The opening half hour drags a little, and by the end it’s rapidly devolved into improbable zaniness and inanity, but it remains charming and likable thanks to those involved. Cary Grant, Mr. Movie Star who has never been equaled, gives a delightfully broad performance as the scientist looking for a miracle drug to combat the aging process. In every film he made there seems to be a moment when the real person behind the Grant persona gets to do a little trick that he learned. Usually it’s some wonderfully acrobatic feat, and here Grant gets to go full-out slapstick when he mentally jumps back and forth from swinging ladies man to a little boy and back to ladies man again.

Ginger Rogers also gets in on the fun as Grant’s wife. She’s still pretty, but she’s started to look a little mature. Doesn’t matter how old she is though once she starts to take a pratfall or dance around. Then the magic from her days with Fred Astaire comes roaring back. Charles Coburn and Marilyn Monroe do perfectly fine with what little they’re given to do. It’s fun, but a minor entry in everyone’s filmography.

Jane Eyre, Charolette Bronte’s tri-fold genre novel, is a compulsively readable novel but covers so much territory that it proves highly problematic when trying to condense and adapt it into anything less than a mini-series. It requires a sure-footing in both writing and directing and an extreme pruning to focus in on certain aspects at the expense of others. Sad, but true. So it was with a great awe that I viewed this version of Jane Eyre which directly lifted the novel’s romantic literature trope of nature as an emotional template and reaction to the characters interior lives. While it has chosen to focus in on the romance between Rochester and Jane at the expense of the rest of the novel’s storylines, I didn’t mind since it excavated their interior lives and erotic underpinnings so expertly.

So much of the success isn’t just thanks to director Cary Fukunaga unique handling of material that’s in direct opposition to his debut feature, the indie feature Sin Nombre that’s a harrowing immigration drama. While the way that he sets up and films the characters is wonderful, without two great actors like Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender it wouldn’t have amounted to much. Think of the way that so much of Wasikowska’s clothing looks so grey and dowdy, drained of color and stiff during the earliest parts of the film and seems to bloom and melt into lighter colors and textures once the romance with Fassbender awakens her to her latent sexuality. A scene that immediately springs to mind is the montage of their courtship which features a delicate and shy kiss underneath a cherry blossom tree. Wasikowska – so stern and stubborn from the beginning – seems to melt, giggle, and smile as if for the first time. Her mousy hair and dowdy dresses seem more chipper and put together. It’s a combination of beautiful cinematography and a actress of tremendous depth and talents.

But there’s also the way that the film opens in the middle, in a harsh, barren and stark landscape with a single solitary figure, so tiny and ready to be devoured by the surrounding landscape, running. Her frail body looks like it is ready to fall over and die at any moment. But within Jane there is a reservoir of strength which makes our first impressions feel so silly. She’s a bundle of contradictions which can make for messy human explosions and emotions – more succinctly: she’s a real person. And Wasikowska, a young actress who I admire with each new role that I see her in, nails every subtlety and nuance. But her Jane can only be so good without a great Rochester, and Fassbender walks a fine line between a romantic daydream of a hero and charismatic untamed and un-caged animal.

The way he swings back and forth between these two extremes during the grand reveal (which is always faintly ludicrous once lifted off the page, and even on it) is a wonder to behold. I hear a lot of talk of X-Men: First Class being the big movie for Fassbender, but he’s been so good for so long that it seems silly to ignore his work in this movie. While trying to wed Jane he’s as eager to please and lovesick as one could imagine the lust object for our heroine, but once things start to sour on their big day he flips the switch with but a frown and a growl. I hope the history books will point to his performances in Fish Tank and this film to explain why he became a mega-movie star.

It seemed incredibly odd that Kenneth Branagh, known mostly for his 90s Shakespearean adaptations of varying quality, would tackle a comic book property. But Thor based on the Marvel comics series, and very loosely on the Norse mythology that preceded it, has something vaguely in common with the Great Bard in its character archetypes and story machinations. With numerous plot lines containing warring kingdoms, fallen sons trying to regain their birthright, jealous usurpers trying to create general havoc, it’s a wonder that Branagh had enough self-restraint to not go all-out and make something as loud, dumb and inert as his version of Frankenstein.

At some point in time action films forget that the action was supposed to be in service of the story and the characters, and we’ve all become accustomed to carbon-copied grunting he-man’s running away from unnecessary explosions. Even in the current state of Marvel adaptations, they’ve been guilty of this. X-Men Origins: Wolverine was the worst offender to date. Thankfully, mercifully, Thor sidesteps those issues. Every time we’re launched into a battle sequence, which isn’t edited within an inch of its life and filmed so we can clearly see who is who and where they are in relation to one another, it’s a natural outgrowth of the story or the character. In this regard, Thor trumps the noisy but dull Iron Man 2.

It also trumps Iron Man 2 in its casting choices. While Iron Man 2 went for movie stars with little attention being paid to whether or not they could actually play the role or were right for the it in the first place, Thor is happy to fill the screen with little-known actors in some big roles. Sure, Anthony Hopkins is playing Odin, but he’s got the right kind of gravitas needed to carry off the role. And yes that’s Natalie Portman as Jane Foster, a research scientist. But doesn’t she seem smart and warm enough to be a scientist? I’m talking about choosing newcomers Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston as the anchors for your (hopeful) new comic book/action franchise. And both of them are sensational in their respective roles. Hemsworth, for whom the term ‘beefcake’ seems to have been invented, injects some much needed humor into the Viking warrior prince. It’s also a testament to his performance that he manages to say such faintly ridiculous and make you not want to die of laughter. And Tom Hiddleston as Loki is a richly complicated character. He’s not a villain in the traditional comic book movie sense, he’s got far too many identity and daddy issues to be truly evil. He’s damaged and only wants to bask in the same glory that his older sibling gets so easily.

But Thor does suffer greatly in the story department. It can generally overcome its shortcomings, but its speed bumps are highly pronounced. For one, the love story between Thor and Jane Foster is rushed and practically anemic. It’s a nice addition to Thor’s rehabilitation on Earth, but it’s artificial and forced. Not every superhero needs a damsel-in-distress to fall in love with. And generally, the story lines on Earth aren’t given as much time and attention as the Asgardian family drama. This should come as no surprise since the Asgardians are a far more interesting – visually and plot-wise – than the dull earthlings. With the presence of SHIELD, certain moments in Thor recall the same problems in Iron Man 2, that this is just an extended trailer for the eventual Avengers movie. And, I know I’m in the minority on this, but I just don’t like or care for Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. And Thor’s friends, the Warrior’s Three and Sif are also given little to no real development. They’re played mostly for laughs, which is fine, except that we’re consistently told how great, valiant and tough they are as warriors and they get taken out so easily.

As a whole, Thor is fun and enjoyable. It’s got a sense of humor about itself, which is nice in these times of mirthless super heroics on the big screen. It never truly achieves greatness, but it’s a very fun and well-crafted introduction to the character and his mythology. Here’s hoping that the inevitable sequel will flesh things out more properly since it won’t be shackled down to an eventual crossover film. I say bring on the Enchantress and the Executioner in Thor 2.

I’ve voraciously eaten up each and every single one of the direct-to-DVD DC animated films, and I’ve generally never bothered with the Marvel ones. Perhaps it’s the bias that’s inherent because the DC films come off of an entire, singular universe that began with Batman and ended with Justice League Unlimited. While Marvel’s forays into animation brought out varied results. For the very great series like Spider-Man or X-Men, there was an Avengers: United They Stand or Iron Man. But I finally decided to give these a shot, and started with their first release: Ultimate Avengers.

I really wish that next year’s live action foray for this superhero team possesses a script as interesting, characters as dynamic, and action sequences as exciting as this one. Growing up, I loved comic books. X-Men, Batman, the Avengers – those were my favorites. I’ve suffered through good and bad video games, movies, cartoons, and I can safely say that this is a very good incarnation of the heroes. While it mostly sticks to the Ultimate Marvel franchise, certain characters have been given the traditional Marvel polish to smooth out some of the rougher edges and nasty streaks that they were given. And this animated film has the live action one beat in a very specific area: it’s got a better, more dynamic and interesting core group of characters. Sure, the live action one has a better group of actors portraying most of these characters; this one has founding members Ant-Man and Wasp in addition to Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow and Nick Fury. It’s not a terribly big difference, but the team feels better-rounded and more complete this way.

I also appreciated how the film so closely focused on Captain America and his journey through reawakening in a world that has marched on without him and how he tries to reevaluate and discover his place within it. There are several small, quiet, intimate moments that don’t forcefully move the overall plot along, but they had depth to his character and flesh him out as a person to care about. Perhaps if it had been longer the pacing problems with the last half of the film could have been easily avoided by maintaining a healthy mixture of character development and explosives.

Like many superhero movies, the last few minutes of the film descends into non-stop action sequences seemingly as an apology for all those scenes of talking that we’ve been forced to sit through. I always prefer the scenes of the characters interacting to the loud-busy action scenes. And Ultimate Avengers has to wrap up the Hulk storyline and the alien invasion storyline in quick succession. The resolution to this problem is two scenes: one action sequence in which the Avengers take down the alien invaders and another one where the Avengers reunite to take down the Hulk. It gets a little busy, cluttered and noisy, which is in direct opposition to the languid and perfectly paced first two-thirds.

But Ultimate Avengers is better than the first DC animated film (the just-average Superman: Doomsday). The animation is gorgeous, the voice acting is nice, and it features a storyline that’s engaging and appropriately large to summon together Earth’s mightiest heroes. Here’s hoping the live action one tops this. I have faith.

A co-production of PBS’ American Playhouse and Showtime, this 1984 made-for-television version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof presents an unedited visual document of the play. But it’s missing a certain something in the translation. As a Williams’ fan it’s an absolute treat to see a filmed version of the complete play. While I love the film version with Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, it does take a certain amount of the sting out of the play by neutering the overt dialog about the possible homosexual relationship at the center of the story. But the main problem I have with this version is how lazily filmed and shoddily acted it can be in parts. Oh, don’t get me wrong, Jessica Lange is all fiery, neurotic, carnal glory as Maggie. And Rip Torn and Kim Stanley deliver the best performances as Big Daddy and Big Mama, especially Stanley as the naïve, tough and burdened matriarch of the family.

But Tommy Lee Jones as Brick is a terrible casting decision. As an actor he is limited in the scope and roles that he can play, and alcoholic, possible homosexual with a combination of daddy issues and a guilt complex isn’t one of them. His performances mostly just lies there not doing much of anything while Lange throws herself head first into her scenes. And the direction is lazy, never really escalating the tension, paranoia and claustrophobia that we’re supposed to feel in the household by the time the play comes to its emotionally draining conclusion. Elizabeth R was a series of filmed plays, and it’s direction managed to break free of the some of the inert and stuffy direction that sometimes happens when they point-and-shoot at a literal stage. But, ultimately, there’s more good than bad here. Even if the 1958 film version is an abridged version it's a more spirited and engaging reenactment of the play than this version.

Once most of the founding members of the Ramones passed away in the early 2000s, it came as no shock that tribute albums would come out of nowhere to pay their respects and try to line the pockets of grave dancing music executives. Mercifully, We're a Happy Family sidesteps those issues by choosing artists that mostly seem like left-field choices and including Johnny Ramone as an executive producer of the compilation.

Obvious descendants like Green Day, Offspring and Rancid stick very close to the tried and true formula of these songs, but bands like Garbage, Pretenders and Red Hot Chili Peppers deliver true standout re-definitions of the band's songbook. I've never been a fan of Marilyn Manson, but his cover of "The KKK Took My Baby Away" is without a doubt a Ramones song done in his style, as any true cover should be. But I adore the Latin-tinged boogie that the Red Hot Chili Peppers gave "Havana Affair," the melancholic rendering that the Pretenders gave "Something to Believe In," the electronic-rock that Garbage gave "I Just Wanna Have Something to Do," and the avant-garde back-swamp blues rock-dirge that Tom Waits did to "The Return of Jackie & Judy."

It's in those moments that the strong, expertly crafted compositions of the Ramones' songs becomes crystal clear as they're twisted and distorted from their purposefully primitive originals. Like any good tribute album We're a Happy Family marries what made the original artists so distinctive to the specific sounds of the artists paying their respects. DOWNLOAD: Garbage's "I Just Wanna Have Something to Do," Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Havana Affair," the Pretenders' "Something to Believe In"

A dated and unintentional hilarious relic from the 1950s, The Wild One features a Marlon Brando who still gave a damn about acting and oozed sexuality, and not much else. The plot is a campy thing about hysteria involving a biker gang in a quiet small-town that is more Americana movie studio than believable hamlet. And for a film which is supposedly to have signaled the generational divide between the rebellious Beat Generation and their Depression-era survivor parents, the film is against them from the start. It even comes complete with a typically 50s scare-tactic warning about how bikers will come to your town, rape your women, hypnotize your youth, and generally be against the wholesome All-American goodness of small-town America. Just remember, even the smallest and most mundane rebellions will lead to all-out anarchy before descending into a barren wasteland of death, sexual abandon, violence and lawlessness. So we must always obey the rules and keep our laws in perfect order. Well, that’s the message I got from the film anyway. It’s a pity then that the ‘bad boys’ (who don’t do much to really qualify as such) are so visually appealing. Brando’s moody anti-hero, resting against his bicycle, a toothpick dangling from his full lips, hat slightly askew is more than enough for me to take up with the bikers. Overwrought, clichéd, badly acted, poorly written and incompetent on several levels, The Wild One is a classic undeserving of the term. But it’s great as campy "entertainment."

I read the novel Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell and felt like I could smell the mountain air, see the grey landscape and knew every psychological problem and feeling of main heroine Ree Dolly. In a novel that’s relatively short, with simple vocabulary but tense and disturbing atmosphere, Woodrell recreated an entire section of the country that most people never even give a second thought. It was not a pretty sight. I thought that a film adaptation would be doomed to fail. It couldn’t possibly find an actress to accurately play Ree, it wouldn’t capture the way that time seems to not exist in the Ozarks. Too much of the subtle minutia of the unwritten laws and hermetically sealed societies couldn’t possibly be translated properly. I was dead wrong.

Maybe it’s because the movie was made with a small budget and by a woman that it succeeded so strongly. Debra Granik, writer-director, never condescends to her characters or sentimentalizes their predicaments. In a style that brings to mind a journalistic distance and nonpartisan documentation, Granik presents this world, complete with the laws that have governed this world without the intervention of the outside, as it is. In a storyline that features a main character who isn’t wise beyond her years but forced to fake like she is, the most depressing thing is probably the proof that poverty is its own kind of generational violence (as if any were truly needed). And this is a film about methamphetamine addiction, cruel violence, isolation and one girl who’s a solid and stubborn presence throughout.

Jennifer Lawrence truly deserved her Oscar nomination for her lived-in performance. She doesn’t emote much, preferring to showcase to the world that has hardened her a steely-eyed squint and not much more. But her body language is so expressive. The smallest fluctuation in her squint speaks volumes. She’s smart, resourceful and bound and determined to go against the clan-like system and discover the whereabouts of her father. Her father put the house up as collateral for his jail bond and is nowhere to be found, her mother is a catatonic drug addict. Ree is the homemaker and care-provider for her two younger siblings. She’s also a high school student. And the way that Jennifer Lawrence portrays her as someone who is still a teenager, but far from a normal one is wonderful. Truly, she is a gifted and promising young actress. I look forward to watching her blossom and display her formidable talents in the future.

The Town doesn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to gangster films, but it doesn’t really need to. Sure it’s sacked with a woefully generic title, but it’s so smartly written, ably directed and expertly acted that it is a textbook case in how to do justice to genre filmmaking. If Ben Affleck decided to stick to writing and directing for the rest of his career, I don’t think that I would mind. Based on his two tries at bat it seems that his strengths are more behind-the-scenes then in front of the camera. He’s still learning and growing as a writer-director, he never successfully balances the existential crisis of the main character with the lean-mean-nail-biting anxiety of the crime procedural, but the promise is there.

The Town does two of its three goals very well. First, it’s a tense and gut-punch inducing movie about a group who keeps getting pulled further and further into the criminal demimonde of Boston. Second, as a blue-collar sociological examination of a particular group in a particular place it excels. We get a real sense of place, culture and the messy and murky ties which bind these characters together. Third, and the least successful, is the romantic relationship between Affleck and Rebecca Hall. This is the story point through which we see the change and emotional turmoil. The romance never ignited and felt real, and his emotional journey felt written in short hand and never given the development it needed, but it never derailed the movie in any way.

Despite never truly probing into the psychological edges and fragments that it tries to explore with some depth, The Town hits a truly special stride during some key sequences which show us how much better this movie could have been if it had been made for a smaller budget. Ain’t it the way that the bigger the budget the more demand there is for prototypes, clichés and story check points? Easy and pat character resolutions and developments that plug and chug into a formula and require little emotional or mental effort from the audience and the greatest sequences in The Town evoke a true emotion. It must be doing something right.

Think of the opening scene in which Rebecca Hall’s character is kidnapped and finally released during a routine bank robbery. Her shellshock reaction to taking off the blindfold and seeing the sunlight is wonderfully acted. Or the moment later when Hall and Affleck are having a lunch date and Jeremy Renner, on a career high and delivering a performance just as powerful and committed as The Hurt Locker, enters. He has a tattoo on the back of his neck, which Hall saw while being kidnapped. If she sees it, she’ll be able to put it all together. The way the three actors play the scene is amazing. Affleck straddles the line between trying to be chummy and passive-aggressively telling Renner to get lost. Renner is picking up the signals, but his character loves to live on the brink and push things as far as he possibly can. He toys with the two of them, but doesn’t know that the reason Affleck wants him gone is because of the tattoo. Renner is positively explosive, dangerous and sexy. And, in a very small role, Pete Postlethwaite plays a rose dealer and old-school gangster. He oozes charm and malice in equal doses. Each moment of screen time with him is unrelenting and unnerving. Especially in the casual and friendly way he sends the group to their ultimate demise.

And that brings us to the finale, a finale which is highly implausible but executed to technical and nerve-racking perfection. The gang has been commissioned to undergo one final score – rob Fenway Park. The very notion of robbing Fenway Park is fairly ludicrous, but the movies aren’t always about being probable or possible. And The Town makes it look real enough. Naturally, things do not go according to plan. This was a suicide mission orchestrated by Postlethwaite and none of them knew it.

In a fairly new sub-genre of crime films, that of the Boston-era criminal underworld, the best of them is still The Departed. But with The Town and Gone Baby Gone Affleck has shown a real eye and ear for the sub-genre and shows that it still has room to flourish. Maybe he’ll even top The Departed in one of his next directorial outings. I look forward to the future writer-director work from him.