Last year Joel and Ethan Coen returned after a nearly four year absence from the screen following two underwhelming films (Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers) with the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men. This career-best film from the duo wasn’t flawless, but it had so much power and such commanding dramatic scenes that it made us all re-think the capabilities of these enormously talented filmmakers. And now, less than a year later, a new film of theirs has already come and gone from theatres, the frantic dark comedy Burn After Reading. Kudos to these guys for following up the somber No Country for Old Men with a very funny (if somewhat trite) piece of entertainment that gathers old friends (Frances McDormand, George Clooney) with new faces (Brad Pitt, John Malkovich). Opening with an uncomfortable and hilarious scene involving (more…)

Throughout the 1950s and particularly the 1960s there was a renaissance of big epic musicals, many of which went on to win Academy Award nominations or even the big prize of Best Picture themselves. While a handful of 60s Disney musicals have managed to take hold of my imagination, most notably Mary Poppins, a few big titles have somehow passed me by, including My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and, thankfully (so I hear), the original Doctor Dolittle. One that I also hadn’t seen that I was really looking forward to finally taking a look at was West Wide Story, starring Natalie Wood, and despite a little bit of slowness and repetition here and there, I enjoyed it immensely. The film cheats a little bit in the end with an ending that’s a little bit more Hollywood happy ending than William Shakespeare’s tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, but such a finale was to be expected. Robert Wise, who would next go on to direct a completely different kind of movie in The Haunting (!), blows through this material like a musical master, staging one ingenious number after another (more…)

A great travesty of the last decade or so has been the decline in quality of Steve Martin movies, and, even worse, the decline in Steve Martin movies. The man had a small role in the funny Baby Mama and has the Pink Panther 2 coming up in early 2009. Yawn… Thankfully great news was dealt last week when it was announced Martin was joining the cast of the new Nancy Meyers romantic comedy, co-starring Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin. Apparently Martin and Baldwin will be fighting over Streep in that typical weepy The Holiday & Something’s Gotta Give kind of way. At the very least it will be great to see him in a leading role again. Martin has apparently been working more lately on the written page, as he’s written some novella and most recently a non-fiction book about his younger years as a comic. He also came up with the idea for today’s movie entitled Traitor. Martin’s coming up with the idea of Traitor is about along the lines of Wes Craven directing a Meryl Streep drama about violins (oh, wait, that happened) (more…)

Before he would go on to make such classics as Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, and The Shining, Stanley Kubrick was just a hired director, taking over for Anthony Mann by the recommendation of star Kirk Douglas on the big, bloated, but ultimately pretty fun Spartacus. It’s probably the least “Kubrick” kind of movie ever made, as there is very little of his later styles seen in the movie. It’s long, and a little bit sporadic, but there are also moments of greatness, and strange moments where you go, “huh?” A particularly memorable scene involves Spartacus having to battle an African-American man in front of various up-scale voyeurs, who relish in watching two men destroy each other. (It’s basically their version of reality television.) And then there are really bizarre moments, like when Tony Curtis’s character Antoninus is seduced by Marcus Licinius (Laurence Olivier), and we hear dubbed lines from an older Curtis and Anthony Hopkins, of all people, over this extremely homoerotic scene (more…)

In Woody Allen’s freshest and funniest comedy in over a decade Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Scarlett Johanssen and Rebecca Hall play best friends who take a trip to Spain and meet an exotic and forward man played by Javier Bardem who entices the two to spend a weekend with him in Barcelona. One main problem: The man has an ex (Penelope Cruz) who comes back to stay with him and who doesn’t exactly approve of these younger women hanging around her man. Woody Allen has always managed to assemble terrific actors for his films (see Hannah and her Sisters or Bullets Over Broadway), and here he outdoes himself again. Who’s more impressive? Johanssen, giving her strongest performance yet in an Allen film, or Hall, a new-comer, in a compelling star-making performance. Hall’s character is the one we identify with the most in the beginning, and the arc her character goes through is unexpected and completely natural. Bardem, hot off his Oscar win (more…)

To watch a movie with James Stewart is to spend time with an old friend. He has the warmest voice and personality to have possibly ever appeared on the silver screen. In looking at his impressive filmography, I was surprised to see I haven’t seen too many of his films. Of the major ones he did over his entire career, I’ve seen Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Philadelphia Story, It’s a Wonderful Life, Harvey, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, plus, of course, the four films he did for Alfred Hitchcock. If he had been in half the classics he was in, he’d be considered a legendary star today. The fact that he’s in all these movies is astounding. And there’s another great one to add to the list. Anatomy of a Murder is famous for having the longest trial ever played out on film. At nearly three hours at length, this is not a brief picture by any means. It’s a very good film, although watching it so soon after the brilliance of 12 Angry Men brought it down in quality for me a little. I just wasn’t as compelled with the case as much in this film, dealing with a rape and a murder. But the good pacing and terrific performance by Stewart keep things moving (more…)

I was a little bit nervous about this one. The last movie Ben Stiller directed (which, somehow, has its fan) was Zoolander, one of the ten or so movies in my entire life I’ve given NO STARS. I hated that movie with a passion when it opened. I’d probably hate on it less all these years later, but maybe not. So I went into Tropic Thunder with some trepidation. While the cast was terrific, the premise was solid, and the trailer was fairly promising, I still had my doubts. While this is a decent comedy, definitely a step up for Stiller as a director, I rarely laughed, and found that most of the middle dragged on and on. The set-up is the best part, as we’re introduced to our three lead characters (played by Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr) with trailers promoting their new movies. A trailer with Downey Jr. and Tobey Maguire had me in tears. There was nowhere else for the movie to go but down from there, and down it went. The beginning scenes of the movie, showing the making of the production, are entertaining enough, but once the cast gets dropped down in the midst of the jungle and have to fend for themselves, we get scene after scene of people walking and talking, walking and talking, and it rarely includes material that I found funny (more…)

I’m just now beginning to look at the astonishing career of the late Paul Newman, but there’s no need to see a lot to know we have just recently lost one of the greats. I’ve taken a look at Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the Hustler recently, and I have previously seen Cool Hand Luke, The Sting, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid among a few others. His striking good looks and mesmerizing screen presence makes for one memorable performance after another (my favorite being his terrific work in The Hustler, so far). His break-out role in this stage adaptation, co-starring the lovelier than ever Elizabeth Taylor, showcases his great talent immediately, and he by far has the most interesting role, playing a guy who’s a mere shell of the ambitious football player of old who had his whole life ahead of him. Taylor, who is one of the few actors of this time period whom we really got to see grow up on screen (starting with National Velvet in 1944 and continuing into the 50s and 60s), is really great in this too, especially considering she was going through a loss at the time (one of those husbands of hers died during production). While I didn’t find this adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play to be nearly as memorable or incendiary as the 1951 film production of A Streetcar Named Desire (more…)

I walked into The Pineapple Express excited to see Seth Rogen head-line another comedy and I walked out praising the sheer genius of James Franco. This is another in a long line of successful comedies produced by Judd Apatow, and while I didn’t like it as much as The 40-Year Old Virgin or Knocked Up (and about on par with Superbad), I admired the addition of action and a little bit of a hard edge to the material in this one. It has that never-fail Hitchcock set-up in which an ordinary guy (Rogen), just kicking back in his car and smoking pot, witnesses a murder, and has to go on the run. Together with the pot dealer (Franco), they must survive as a large group of thugs and misfits (led by Gary Cole) follow close behind. It’s actually an unusually structured film, with the beginning feeling close to the slow, goofy tone of 40-Year Old Virgin; the middle feeling a little bit more fast-paced, with an emphasis on the buddy comedy like Superbad; and then an end that feels like something out of a Quentin Tarantino flick (more…)

A near-flawless masterpiece. Since I started watching classic films in May of 2007, I’ve been treated to some truly great films but absolutely nothing has affected me the way that 12 Angry Men did. For about 98% of the film, we’re in the presence of twelve men in a jury room debating a case that starts with eleven men saying “guilty” and ending with something entirely unexpected as these men deliberate back and forth with convincing argument and passionate debate for an hour and a half. Henry Fonda was the one “star” of the film back in the day, but it’s difficult to watch the movie now without recognizing at least a few others in the cast. Martin Balsam (Psycho), Jack Warden, and E.G. Marshall were familiar faces, to name a few. Every single actor in this movie is absolutely superb, but it’s the sparkling script by Reginald Rose that makes this movie so memorable. I was happy to learn that the case that these men debate is a lot more interesting than I thought it may be, concerning a young 18-year-old and a possible murder. The moment when Fonda (more…)