Trouble with the Curve

“Hey, Alex.  Whatcha watchin’?”

“Trouble with the Curve.  Clint Eastwood plays a salty old baseball scout whose eyesight is going.  Amy Adams is his daughter.  She works for an uptight law firm, has issues with her dad, and has a boyfriend who is clearly The Wrong Guy.  Justin Timberlake just showed up; he’s going to be her new love interest and win her heart from The Wrong Guy.  I’m not sure whether it’ll be before or after she works things out with Clint and quits her job at the firm.”

“Oh.  How far along are you?”

“About ten minutes.  I know where the movie’s going, but that’s ok.  A movie like this, it’s all in the execution.”

And I’m happy to report that Trouble with the Curve executes very nicely.  Featuring a supporting cast led by John Goodman and some of the best character actors in the business (Ed Lauter, George Wyner, Bob Gunton, Matthew Lillard, Robert Patrick, etc.), this by-the-numbers family drama succeeds on the basis of its unobtrusive direction, solid production values, and excellent performances.  It isn’t flashy, but it looks nice, covers the bases, and gives us an excuse to spend ninety minutes or so with a bunch of good people who are trying to do the right thing.  Heck, it even features a “roadhouse” scene in which Adams and Timberlake try to convince us that they can’t really dance.  

This film played out just as I thought it would, but it did so with satisfying professionalism.  If you’re tired of watching computer animations of demigods punching one another, you can’t go wrong with Trouble with the Curve.

Man of Steel

Man of Steel is a solid 90 minutes of story crammed into 144 minutes of running time. The film begins with a half hour - long prologue telling us just why Ma and Pa El put baby Kal in a spaceship and sent him to Earth (Hey, comparative religion nerds: look up “El” on Wikipedia!), and why General Zod is gonna come and get him. This could've been handled with a three-minute montage.

Fast forward to Kansas, which is populated by jerks, bullies, and fat people. Oh, and the improbably attractive Ma & Pa Kent (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane), who teach Baby Kal, now named Clark, that America is full of jerks and bullies, and that he'd better keep his head down.

Now, I know that each storyteller gets to tell the story he wants, but a Superman who wasn't raised on Truth, Justice, and The American Way is just some bodybuilder in blue long johns.

Back to the story: Clark grows up into Henry Cavill and decides to be in a Christopher Nolan movie, one loaded with deep blues, blacks, and grays (with one exception: the caressing, golden light that seems to envelop him whenever he turns his head). He's afraid of intolerant Americans, so he keeps his head down. But look out: here comes Lois Lane (Amy Adams, lit and photographed by people who don't seem to like her), and she's about to blow his cover!

Great. By now, we're an hour and a half into this movie, nothing interesting is happening, and Superman's still just some bodybuilder shopping for blue long johns.

Eventually, Zod shows up and things get interesting. He brings lots of minions, and Superman fights them all, one by one. This is still an ugly movie with a blue and grey palette, but the super-fights between (our hero? I guess. The movie is named after him and there's all that golden lighting.) Kal and the evil Kryptonians do a wonderful job of showing us what single combat between super-beings might look like. They're incredibly fast. They pack walloping punches. When they throw things, those things have weight and do damage. No kidding – these sequences are spectacular, and they raise the film from two to three stars in my estimation.

And then it ends in a surprising twist on the standard “Hero spares villain, but villain tries one last trick that backfires and kills him, thus satisfying audience bloodlust while leaving heroic consciences unsullied.” It shocked my kids, showed some bravery on the part of the production team, and worked.

But a solid last hour in a two-and-a-half hour movie doesn't cut it. Man of Steel is too long, too ugly, and too dour to make for a good Superman movie. I loved those big fights, but I'm still disappointed.

Short Takes

Here are some short responses to some of the films I've managed to see over the last couple of weeks:

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN

I’ve never cared about Marilyn Monroe one way or another.  Sure, I enjoyed Some Like it Hot as much as the next guy, but she never lit my fuse like, say, Barbara Stanwyck does.

That said, My Week with Marilyn made me care about Marilyn Monroe quite a lot.  The story reminds one of My Favorite Year: a show-business neophyte befriends a star, to mutual benefit.  Michelle Williams plays Marilyn in the full flower of her stardom, every bit as dazzling and insecure as history remembers her.  Lawrence Olivier (the brilliant Kenneth Branagh) has hired her to come to England to film a movie, and she’s so intimidated she can barely function.  Enter Colin Clarke, the neophyte and audience surrogate, who finds himself in the Star’s confidence.  

Soon enough, I was in.  Through Clarke’s eyes, I came to see Marilyn as an impossibly tough, delicate, and ultimately inscrutable woman entirely worthy of fascination.  So much did this film pique my interest, I’m queuing up the Olivier/Monroe pairing The Prince and the Showgirl.  I want to spend more time with Marilyn.

THE MUPPETS

Hey, you.  Yeah: you.  You like big production numbers?  Silly jokes?  Evil villains?  Boom: here you go, then.  The Muppets is for you.

Here’s the story: Jason Segel and Amy Adams help the Muppets reunite and put on a show.  That’s it.  Have at it.

So, enough about The Muppets.  Let’s talk about Amy Adams.  If ever an actress could lay claim the to the title, “The Next Julie Andrews,” it’s her.  She can sing.  She can dance.  She can act.  She can do all three at the same time, and do them well.  In fact, I’m kind of sorry that she was born too late for the era of the Great Hollywood Musical.  Given the right material, she could have passed in to legend, like Andrews.  She’s young, still, and she has plenty of time.  I loved watching her in The Muppets, I think she’s the real deal, and I hope someone out there is building a musical around her. 

I’d be there.  Opening day.

THE DESCENDANTS

 

The Descendants is one of those films that takes a basically likeable guy, piles a ton of manure on his head, and observes.  George Clooney (CDNW) plays the guy, nearly everyone else plays pilers, and we observe. 

The result?  A rich and rewarding character study of a man going through the hardest period of his life, told with tenderness and care.  The Descendants is worth your time.

BRIDESMAIDS

Bridesmaids revels in the comedy of the uncomfortable.  I found it so writhingly uncomfortable that I couldn’t wait for it to end.

ATTACK THE BLOCK

Attack The Block introduces us to a gang of young thugs in training, exposes them to an alien menace, and tries to get us to root for the thugs as they battle monsters.

I never could bring myself to care about the thugs.  Thus, I felt no tension.  Many of my friends laud this film as an innovative monster movie with a nifty hook, but to me it was just another chore.  Pass.

THE CAPTAINS

William Shatner is a terrific interviewer.  He’s so blithely self-absorbed that he puts his subjects at ease, comfortable in the knowledge that all they need to do for the next hour or so is sit back and hit the softballs he tosses between monologues.  And then they’ll inadvertently say something genuine, reveal a doubt or a weakness, and whammo!  He homes in, relentlessly questioning until he gets at its kernel, and we learn something.

In The Captains, Shatner interviews the actors who’ve played the Captain roles in the five Star Trek TV series, as well as the one who played Kirk in the newest movie.  Of the group, Avery Brooks is the most slippery and Chris Pine the least reflective (I’m not saying he’s callow or dumb, just that he’s not yet at that stage of his life path.).  They come across as a smart bunch, they know how to tell good stories, and Shatner really gets it out of them.

If you love Star Trek or if, like me, you’ve outgrown it but still love the idea of Star Trek, you’ll love The Captains.  As for me, I understand that William Shatner has an interview show on basic cable somewhere.  I’m going to look it up.  The man is really good at this.

The Fighter

Recently, I looked through a buddy’s photos from Afghanistan.  Mark Wahlberg had come to his base to premiere The Fighter, and one of the photos showed the movie star carrying all his own gear out of the back of the C-130 on which he’d flown in.  Wahlberg, apparently, was a great guy: eating with the junior Marines, making time for a word and a photo with all who asked, and generally making his momma proud.

I’m sure Wahlberg went all the way to Afghanistan because it was the right thing to do.  It also worked as a promotional strategy, because I rented The Fighter the day I saw those photos.

It’s a hell of a good movie, but it’s hard to watch.  Wahlberg plays Mickey, a small time boxer in a family devoted to small time boxing.  His older brother Dicky (Christian Bale, phenomenal here) may have knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard once upon a time, but now he’s a pathetic crackhead.  His mother (Melissa Leo, unrecognizable after Frozen River) seems intent on managing him into oblivion.  The rest of the circus that comprises his family doesn’t seem much better.  Then Wahlberg meets Amy Adams (Enchanted, Charlie Wilson’s War), a local bartender and very tough broad who shows him another way.

I know what you’re thinking: “Why would I see this movie?  If I want to spend time with a dysfunctional family, I’ll go home for Christmas.”  See it for the performances.  See it for Mickey, a fighter who must learn to stop worrying about making everybody happy.  See it for Dickey, an ex-fighter who may never learn that it’s impossible to be a cool guy who also smokes a little crack on the side.  See it for their mother, who believes she’s the proud matriarch of a noble clan when, in fact, she’s a 70-year-long train wreck that’s about 2/3 of the way through.

The Fighter works, and it works because of these great performers.  Seeing this movie is like seeing a master class in the art of acting, and I enjoyed it for that alone.  All that, and Mark Wahlberg’s a good guy.  What more do you need?

Charlie Wilson's War

Cinescene's Les Phillips hit the nail on the head with his review of CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR. Well, except for his impression of Julia Roberts's performance. I thought she was fine. With his permission, here's Les's review:

CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR (2007, directed by Mike Nichols). This is slight, but expert, and very entertaining. A playboy Texas congressman suddenly gets serious about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and works to channel a billion dollars into military aid to the mujaheedin. Nichols and the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin scrupulously avoid political content here; CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR is a fluffy slice of American political life in the eighties. Wilson's staff is all-female -- one of them is nicknamed "Jailbait" -- he parties with lobbyists in Vegas. He tells a newspaper that he's never been to rehab because "they don't serve liquor there." Nichols makes high comedy out of Wilson's lovable roguishness. There's one French-farce sequence set in Wilson's office, with entrances and exits and fast dialogue, that approaches comic genius.

CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR is rich in excellent small performances, and it also has Philip Seymour Hoffman as the crude, irascible, hardass CIA man who tutors Wilson in the works and ways of covert geopolitics. He's excellent, but the part isn't a challenge; Jack Black could have done it nearly as well. Tom Hanks captures Wilson's easy charm and humanity, but he doesn't signify Texas. Julia Roberts plays a savvy, steel magnolia millionairess and political operator. It's a terrific role, and Roberts isn't up to it. She doesn't have the self-possessed energy that the character needs, and she doesn't sound like she's ever been anywhere near Houston.

A bit of a one-off, but Nichols hasn't lost his touch.

Enchanted

The line has been used before, but I'm not above petty larceny. ENCHANTED is enchanting.

Everything about this movie, from casting to costumes to color palette to CGI, is perfect. So perfect, in fact, that even little boys can groove on it. Adams, Marsden, Sarandon, and Spall (the faery contingent) play their parts with delightful servings of innocence or evil or both. Dempsey, Menzel, and Covey (the New York contingent) manage to be both grounded and hopeful. Even the choice of narrator is spot on: Julie Andrews, the woman Adams (if she's lucky) might get to be when she grows up. There's danger, but no real sense of danger, the production numbers are absolutely top notch, and everyone seems to be having a good time.

What's not to love?