Killing Them Softly

Killing Them Softly reunites mega-actor Brad Pitt and Indie director Andrew Dominik in a treatise on  the chaotic underworld of hit men. The movie plays like scenes within a mob movie rather than a whole movie. The conversationist approach combined with a good story make for a very interesting and absorbing movie, IF you are fan of the genre. The meditative dialog runs like a metaphor for the economic and political collapse of the last four years in this country. Organic, at times indulgent, the tense conversations ramble and enthrall all at once. 

James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta, and Richard Jenkins are brilliant foils for Pitt's tough guy hit man, played by Pitt with the right degree of intensity, wit, and his inherently drop dead gorgeous looks. And when the hits come, they don't disappoint with beautifully shot slow-mo visuals. 

No traditional mob movie here but worth the hit. 

 

LINCOLN

DIRECTED BY STEVEN SPIELBERG, this by the "book" (Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin) movie is flawless in every way. The historical context is monumental in America's history, the team of seasoned actors are exceptional, the sets and costumes of Washington D.C. in 1865 are beautifully accurate, and the intelligent and emotional dialog is riveting. The month long battle in the House of Representatives to amend the Constitution and abolish slavery, Lincoln's prerequisite to ending the Civil War, is finally won by the Republicans. Euclid's axiom serves as a bridge to racial equality for all men. Griping, moving, a must see.

Les Miserables

What sort of fare is this? Cats meets Chicago? Dreamgirls crossed with West Side Story? Sweeney Todd bred with a War Horse? Romeo and Juliet?

The monumental task of taking this epic musical to the big screen by Tom Hooper must be applauded.

The musical sensation soars on stage and mostly succeeds as a movie. 

This is the story of Jean Valjean, who for decades has been hunted by the ruthless policeman Javert after he breaks parole, who agrees to care for factory worker Fantine's daughter, Cosette. The fateful decision changes their lives forever. Set in early 19th century France, the movie is based on the classic historical novel by Victor Hugo which ranks among one of the greatest novels of all time. Within this dramatic story are themes of crime and punishment, desperation, amorality, oppression, and the possible prison which is the desparate mind. All this and set to the music of Claude-Michel Schonberg makes for an extravagant spectacle that dazzles the senses and touches the heart. 

Hugh Jackman is fantastic and carries the film. Anne Hathaway has neither the voice nor the acting chops to play Fantine. It is during the second half when the ensemble cast takes over that the movie is best. Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter add sufficient humor to the film. Daniel Huttlestone steals the show during the June uprising of 1832. And I must defend Russell Crowe who can't sing yet can act circles around anyone and is ultimately believable as the relentless Javert. 

I laughed, I cried, I wet my pants (if it was any longer I might have). 

Look Down! Viva La France! Who Am I? Jean Valjean!

"He is asleep. though his mettle was sorely tried. He lived, and when he lost his angel, died. It happened calmly, on its own, the way night comes when day is done." Les Miserables

The Dark Knight Rises

Will the 10am show at The Fenway be safer than the midnight show in Aurora, Colorado? Will The Dark Knight Rises deliver the goods? Yes and no. Each Batman movie seems to be tainted by a tragedy of one sort or another. Loosing the talented Heath Ledger before the opening of The Dark Knight, and now the insane shooting in Colorado. These tragedies highlight the fact that as bad as it is, and it's bad, this is still only a movie.

Beyond the creative opening scene, reminiscent of a James Bond opening, The Dark Knight Rises is a long, dark slog through Gotham (aka Manhattan). With a cast including big name Hollywood talents like Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Marion Cotillard, Gary Oldham, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway and The Batman, how could Christopher Nolan have gone so wrong?

The movie's back and forth between subplots and scenes can make one batty. Is it day or night? What season is it? Are we in the city or a hole in the desert? How long do we have until that nuclear bomb goes off? The use of space & time is erratic. The action is diminished by the constant scene changes.

The shots of lower Manhattan with it's bridges blowing up and New York's finest trapped underground in the subway are reminiscent of 9/11. Yet any connection is lost in the confusion of this big, brash movie. The nuclear ending is contrived and serves only to set up the Batman and "Robin" sequel.

The Dark Knight rises is an action film of epic yet empty proportions.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Movies of a certain age in Harvard Square. Who knew this was in our backyard for 28 years? Drunken, scantily clad crowd makes up for Security lines. Show sufficiently sexual. Muppets meet porn meets Fuck Your Mother. The Time Warp is the Hokey Pokey with grinding. Miss Saradon (slut), "I loved you in The Rocky Horror Picture Show". There are no phones in castles, only tranies. You'd know the script too if you attended 250+ times. I am no longer a virgin. For the rest of you who have not popped the cherry, the show re-opens in Boston on 8/4/12. Gary will in Spanx, I'll be in Hanky Panky. RHPS lives, if you can stay awake.

SAVAGES

Savages, the sex and drugs hyped thriller from three-time Oscar winning director Oliver Stone, can not sustain the high. Who took the meeting when it was decided to put an all star cast, including John Travolta, Salma Hayek, and Benicio Del Toro, around Gossip Girl airhead Blake Lively? The girl can't act, how can she be expected to generate any sort of empathy when captured by the Mexican drug cartel! Ben & Chon, her boutique boyfriends from Laguna Beach, grow designer grass and are shocked when the big guys want a split. The cross and double cross as they jockey to free lovely Ophelia falls flat. No buzz here. Any homage to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction goes puff. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly-esque shoot out ending is a drag. Stone's double ending bone bombs. Savages blows a lot of smoke and never hits pay dirt. A weed kill if I ever saw one. Inhale at your own risk.

TED

Ted is the perfect mix of childhood fantasy, bad taste, and Boston! When I heard myself guffawing at fart jokes, pot jokes, and pussy jokes, I realized I was channeling my inner 13 year old boy. I was thoroughly enjoying Mark Walhberg (still hot), a teddy bear (Ted), and shots of my hometown (South End, Hatch Shell, Cambridge).


The movie premise being that as the result of a childhood wish, John Bennett's teddy bear, Ted, comes to life and has been by John's side ever since - a friendship that's tested when Lori (Mila Kunis), John's girlfriend of four years, wants more from their relationship. This comedy by "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane keeps the bad jokes coming while taking you on a visual tour of Boston not seen since The Town. (Ted also utilizes fabulous Fenway for it's tragi-comi ending.) Somehow there is a sweet love story thrown in the mix. 

Ted, unlike Trix, is not for kids but rather adults who still have some juvenile at haaart (sp).

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, discovers vampires are planning to take over the United States. He makes it his mission to eliminate them. The premise may have worked in print as written by Seth Grahame-Smith but it fails miserably on the big screen. Filmmakers Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov take themselves far too seriously while the cast is wooden and bland. The terrifying creatures of the night are visceral and bloodthristy but not really all that scary. Apparently the undead made up the entire southern army. The special effects are decent and reminiscent of Burton's Dark Shadows, which at least had Johnny Depp and a few good jokes. Vampire Hunter should have a stake through it!


Personal Note: I did see this weak and laughable movie. I went as an homage to the Harvard Square Cinema, an institution for 28 years in Cambridge, which closes 7/8/12. Why? So Apple or another large chain can open? The Square has lost it's eclectic flavor and mirrors every vanilla mall across America. Freddie Taylor I salute your vision. I will miss the broken seats and lack of a first floor bathroom. See you on the 7th for the last Rocky Horror Picture show. 

Fenway 100 Celebration

Taped the most wonderful hour of TV I have seen in a long time. Reality TV at it's best and I'm an expert. The Fenway 100 Celebration on 4/20/12. I cried. We all have our favorite Fenway moment.

Beautiful day at the park with 100 old timers (Pesky, Yaz, Rice, Ekersley, Tito, Nomar and 94 more), the Pops on the field directed by "Maestro's" Williams and Lockheart, fans cheering, and then Petey and Millar with a Cowboy Up champagne toast at the end. We are really lucky to have Fenway, the heart of Boston, and be Sox fans, even if they then lost to the Yankees. I loved the way they did the celebration!

Yes, I am still a fan. I may even go back to stalking.

I did feel bad in a way that Theo was not there. He built those two WS Championships.

The Hunger Games

Skip dinner, pass on dessert, run to The Hunger Games which is playing on every screen at every theatre near you. You will be on the edge of your seat for the entire 2 hour & 20 minute spectacle. The film is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a tyrannical government stages an annual televised competition of  young people fighting to the death. The Hunger Games is Mad Max meets Gladiator at the Olympics. I am not usually a fan of young adult or series literature (and I use the term "literature" lightly). I have never read a Harry Potter, The Girl with..., or Twilight novel. Yet the marketing for this movie was brilliant and "reaped" my interest. Casting is terrific featuring Elizabeth Banks, Woody Harrelson, Stanley Tucci, Lenny Kravitz, and Donald Sutherland as the "President". Hunks Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth are sufficiently hot and easy on the eyes. Costumes and make-up are outrageous, Nazi-esque futuristic sets are wonderfully overdone, and even the multiplying hairless Rottweillers are original. Yet the movie belongs to the talented Jennifer Lawrence. Any of you who saw her in Winter's Bone knew she had talent. A heart pounding race from start to finish. Bring on Hunger Games 2, I'm starving for this type of original action film!

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Long, grey, confusing and yet somehow intriguing! If you don't fall asleep you'll be riveted to the screen. Cast amazing, Gary Oldman Oscar worthy and Colin Firth always brilliant. "I know who he is."

The Iron Lady

"The Iron Lady" is a portrait of Margaret Thatcher, the first and only female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. One of the 20th century's most famous and influential women, Thatcher came from nowhere to smash through barriers of gender and class to become the Leader of the Conservative Party, a party which does not believe all men are created equal, but rather men--and women--are created to achieve, and achieve she does. Thatcher's "Just get up and do" ethic is evident to a fault as she leads England through a tumultuous time of union strikes, IRA bombings, a downturn in manufacturing, and mortgage defaults (sound familiar?).


The story swings chaotically between her humble beginnings as a grocer's daughter and Oxford graduate to head of Britain, and her later years filled with paranoia and hallucinations. Meryl Streep is dramatic and full of costumes & make-up as "MT". Yet, it all seems somewhat shrill, staged, and stiff, as if we are watching a wax figure from Madame Tussauds. You never loose Meryl in Margaret. The movie has no substance other than endless newsreels of Britain burning and/or warring in the Faulklands. The men who surround Margaret are one-dimensional, and terribly English, stiff, cold, and remote. 


Meryl plays Thatcher's sad descent into Alzheimer's with a mix strength and courage, yet it all seems horribly forced. Jim Broadbent, who is usually brilliant given a meaningful screen play, appears silly and foolish as Dennis Thatcher, her pompous husband. The performances are an effort rather than a gift. This was not Meryl's best role and the movie is a dud.

HUGO

Best said by the late Amy Winehouse, "They tried to make me go to HUGO and I said, no, no, no." Unfortunately, the good press on Martin Scorsese's fantasy piece, HUGO, drew me in. What is this movie about? Inventions, clocks, trains, movies? How likely is it that two kids will meet and both be orphans? Does it really snow that much in Paris?

Living in the walls of a 1930's Paris train station, which might actually be the present day D'Orsay, thirteen year old Hugo is wrapped up in a mystery involving his late father and an automaton. An automawhat?
Fantasy is not my preferred genre. Ben Kingsley was wasted, Sasha Baron Cohen was ridiculous, only the doberman seemed real. I think I'd prefer rehab!

The Descendants

The Descendants is a wry, somewhat moving, slightly entertaining snapshot of hell in paradise. The Hawaii of this movie is at times idyllic, at others a mirror of American society in distress. George Clooney adeptly plays the distant father coping with two daughters, while Mom lays in a coma from which she never recovers. (If you've lost someone you loved in the past year, this may not be the movie for you.) There is some funny dialogue as well as poignant moments along the path of sorrow, illness, old age, and adultery, while Dad and his girls find their way back to each other. Overall the supporting cast may be better than George, though best actor nominations will surely come his way.

The Artist

From the stylized opening credits to the last tap, The Artist is thoroughly clever, completely enjoyable, and tearfully touching. A smartly played black and white film about silent films, The Artist pays homage to cinema's golden age. This film may turn out to be the best movie of the year, while 2011 boiled over with hangovers, bridesmaids, girls with tattoos, twilights, and horses. The Artist is more imaginative than nearly every other entry. Don't be put off by the lack of sound and color, plenty of laughs and emotions are on hand, free from anything other than a delightful soundtrack and handsome shades of black and white. Step out for a lively rendezvous with the past, the older you are, the more you'll enjoy it!