Saturday, October 5, 2013

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet (2013)

PG-13 - 118 min - Drama, Romance - 11 October 2013
Big Blue Sky Rating : 4.8/10

Director : Carlo Carlei
Writers : Julian Fellowes, William Shakespeare
Stars : Hailee Steinfeld, Douglas Booth, Damian Lewis, Laura Morante

Romeo and Juliet secretly wed despite the sworn contempt their families hold for each another. It is not long, however, before a chain of fateful events changes the lives of both families forever.

Woe is me.

"For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo." Count Paris (Tom Wisdom)

The "woe" in this umpteenth adaptation of Romeo and Juliet over the last 400 years is that the titular lass, as played by Hailee Steinfeld, is weakly acted with immaturity, poor elocution, and disappointing physical presence. Add to that another woe: Douglas Booth's Romeo is prettier than Steinfeld with only slightly better articulation.

So, the outdoor production I saw this summer outflanked director Carlo Carlei's uneven take. However, for sets and cinematography, his production is beautiful, having been lovingly filmed in Verona. The ancient estates are astonishingly effective as horses race past old bricked walls and lovely ladies act beneath frescoes and columns that boast of nobility.

Yet the real reason to see this new production is Paul Giamatti's Friar Laurence, a benign manipulator undone by forces beyond his control. Giamatti's range from sweet confessor and cupid to perplexed operative is masterful. Look for his Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.

Lesley Manville as the Nurse is second only to Giamatti, a loving servant with a twinkle and a deep understanding of the lethal games. In fact, most of the supporting players such as Damian Lewis's Lord Capulet are welcome pros next to the amateurish leads.

The film, while featuring the besieged friar, also does a successful job highlighting the egregiously intense hormonal urges of young men: Tybalt (Ed Westwick) and Mercutio (Christian Cooke) have the feral ferocity of doomed warriors. Even the more placid Count Paris is waiting to let his inner soldier take over in the revenge category.

Writer Julian Fellowes bastardizes some of Shakespeare's glorious dialogue (why would anyone try to improve on the best?) and even adds rogue lines, albeit in the Elizabethan mode, such as "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Now that is not Shakespeare!

But the basic story is still the essence of intelligent soap opera, and for its endurance, even with weak leads, I am grateful. And that cinematography makes me long to return to fair Verona.

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Killing Them Softly

Killing Them Softly (2012)

R - 97 min - Crime, Thriller - 30 November 2012
Big Blue Sky Rating : 6.3/10

Director : Andrew Dominik
Writers : Andrew Dominik, George V. Higgins
Stars : Brad Pitt, Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins, Scoot McNairy

Three amateurs stickup a Mob protected card game, causing the local criminal economy to collapse. Brad Pitt plays the hitman hired to track them down and restore order. Killing Them Softly also features Richard Jenkins , James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, and Vincent Curatola. Max Casella, Trevor Long, Slaine and Sam Shepard also make appearances.

Talky, tedious and very, very violent

Softly is NOT how the killings are done. Before Brad Pitt starts pumping lead we see Ray Liotta subjected to one of the most brutal beatings I have seen on screen; you hear his teeth and ribs crack. The killings are equally visceral; this is not a film for the faint-hearted.

Brad sheds his Adonis persona for the grunge look he wore in FIGHT CLUB, although the character he's playing is a darker version of Tom Cruise's in COLLATERAL. Liotta reprises his role in GOODFELLAS. James Gandolfini builds on his Tony Soprano character to play another hit-man burnt out by too much booze and too many hookers. Richard Jenkins's creepy saturnine Mob Boss seems to extend his (dead!) undertaker from SIX FEET UNDER. There are lengthy talk scenes in cars and bars that bring PULP FICTION and GET SHORTY to mind. The background TV election campaigning by George Dubya and Barack Omaba is presumably meant to emphasise that this is a Serious Movie we're watching, but it's as unsubtle as the hurricane footage.

KILLING THEM SOFTLY shows its sources (or its "hommages") too blatantly. The whole thing is like a hyped-up Guy Ritchie or Quentin Tarantino: some good acting, stunning cinematography, a profanity-rich script, but overall a talky, pretentious and very, very violent movie - and quite tedious.

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Jayne Mansfield's Car

Jayne Mansfield's Car (2012)

R - 122 min - Drama - 20 August 2013
Big Blue Sky Rating : 5.9/10

Director : Billy Bob Thornton
Writers : Billy Bob Thornton, Tom Epperson
Stars : Tippi Hedren, Kevin Bacon, Ray Stevenson, Robert Patrick

A young man in the 1940s raises a family in Alabama after his wife leaves him for an Englishman and moves to England. When the wife dies, she leaves a request to be brought back to Alabama to be buried, and at that point the man hasn't seen her in nearly 30 years. The two families - her original family she abandoned and her English family - meet and make an attempt to adjust to each other, with uneven results.

Jayne Mansfield's Car

I watched this movie with a group of regular movie goers. One person stood up and said, "If I had seen this in a theater, I would have stood up and booed"-- Two people fell asleep. Another said, this makes Ishtar look like a compelling masterpiece. The movie was painfully slow, with dreadful dialogue, shameful use of great talent, boring to the audience and a pity the director never made it to the set. Whatever was paid to the cast....next time could Billy Bob s spend less money on a dyed red wig and a few more on a script and director. The use of Jayne Mansfield's name in the title was a con to drag us in--thinking it would be clever and edgy. Beyond disappointing.

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Kai po che!

Kai po che! (2013)

NOT RATED - 120 min - Drama - 22 February 2013
Big Blue Sky Rating : 7.6/10

Director : Abhishek Kapoor
Writers : Chetan Bhagat, Abhishek Kapoor
Stars : Amit Sadh, Sushant Singh Rajput, Raj Kumar Yadav, Amrita Puri

Three friends growing up in India at the turn of the millennium set out to open a training academy to produce the country's next cricket stars.

You won't make a mistak !

This week has basically two releases for 'Bollywood' and I opted for 'Kai Po Che'. The reason behind my choice is crystal clear that's one and only for 'Abhishek Kapoor' – the man who delivered the best musical film of 'Bollywood'. So now an inevitable question rises that – Did Abhishek really succeed again with his adaption of a book which I felt was filled with many potholes and flaws like 'Ali swashbuckling the deliveries of the Aussies'. Did Abhishek again sensitively handle the newly derived success formula of 'Bollywood'- male bonding ??

STORY - As most of us know that it is an adaption of 'Chetan Bhagat's' novel – 'The Three Mistakes Of my Life', sorry I have to correct myself 'It is an successful adaption'. Yes my friends this flick is really enjoyable. The director has handled with care every genre that passes along this movie and gives it a nice 'Bollywood' touch. The central theme that is bro-mance is one of the best. It reminds me of '3-idiots' but it would be quite daring to say that it outranks '3-idiots' in that field. From the cryptic trailers everyone would have got a silhouette of the movie but don't go with your intuition. Because the movie demands a watch. Unlike other directors this one has not spread himself too thin in an attempt to please the audience. For instance the seduction by Vidya to Govind isn't stretched to an obscene amount. The setting of the story in 'Gujarat' is one of the big highlights of this movie as you will love the cinematography. This movie plays and reflects the stereotypes of this so-called 'Modern India'. The movie's character are from middle class so it does play a staple dish .

PERFORMANCES -'Raj Kumar Yadav' excels and 'Amit Sadh' too but the man of the movie award goes to 'Sushant Singh Rajput'. It's no doubt that the three of them were good but at the end of the day someone is best.'Vidya' played by ' Amrita Puri' is cute with a tinge of joviality and naughtiness . She is a perfect sister and a lover. Little 'Ali' does look strong and playful. Others are good. I can't through the whole list in one word I will label the cast 'very good'. The transition made by the three lead characters seems like a facile victory. I won't dig enough cause I don't want to spoil it for you.

MUSIC- 'Gujarat' means 'Garba' and thus means 'beautiful'. The songs are good . Unlike the previous venture 'Rock On' this one is a bit traditional and you will love it. If I will go for the best song I will vote for 'Shubharambh'. God! You will love it. Music is too good.

OTHER ASPECTS -The cinematography is really fitting. You will surely succumb to the depth of 'Gujaratiness'.Editing is good and I'm not that kind of aficionado in film-making so I did like the other aspects too like camera work , editing and blah,blah,blah.

FINAL VERDICT -Go for it. You won't make a mistake.

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Children of Men

Children of Men (2006)

R - 109 min - Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller - 5 January 2007
Big Blue Sky Rating : 7.9/10

Director : Alfonso Cuarón
Writers : Alfonso Cuarón, Timothy J. Sexton
Stars : Julianne Moore, Clive Owen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Caine

The world's youngest citizen has just died at 18, and humankind is facing the likelihood of its own extinction. Set in and around a dystopian London fractious with violence and warring nationalistic sects, Children of Men follows the unexpected discovery of a lone pregnant woman and the desperate journey to deliver her to safety and restore faith for a future beyond those presently on Earth.

A thinking person's thriller

Alfonso Cuaron has given us a very clever rendering of a very English dystopian novel. P D James, the "Baroness of Bad" is famous for her well-written and absorbing police procedural novels ("Inspector Dalgliesh") but in the early 90s she produced a vision of a world only 20 years into the future in which for unspecified reasons all the women on earth have become infertile and no babies have been born for the last 18 years.

The rest of the world has lapsed into chaos but the British, stoically, have put the remainder of their civil liberties into the fire and have settled down under an oppressive dictatorship to ward off foreign boarders and await inevitable extinction, though there are some violent dissidents called the fish.

Theo (Clive Owen), a journalist with connections to the top, is "persuaded" by his ex-wife and fish member Julian (Julianne Moore) to obtain some exit papers for Kee (Claire Hope Ashity) a young black woman, who, it turns out, is pregnant. Theo is swept up in Kee's escape across a grim decaying landscape. Not only are there the security forces to contend with, but some equally ruthless insurgents. Cuaron builds the tension exquisitely, interspersing the adrenaline fueled bits with quieter bits.

Kee' projected saviors are a mysterious group called the Human Project who conveniently sail their well-maintained Greenpeace style ex-North Sea fishing trawler past offshore light buoys in the hope of rescuing the human race. But the improbability of this doesn't matter much because by the end of the movie Cuaron has effectively demonstrated what the world would be like if humankind suddenly stopped reproducing. Having children is our way of cheating death, without them there is nothing but death, and in this future there are none about but the living dead.

The casting is pretty well perfect. Clive Owen as Theo puts his haunted good looks to good use as he turns from cynical reporter to a hunted enemy of the state. The motley characters he meets along the way – his ex-wife, the fish rebels, the refugees who help him, the "fascist pig" border guard and above all Michael Caine's aging hippie are all wonderfully realized.

It has been suggested that Cuaron has really made a film about today, not 20 years into the future. The rampaging security forces we see might as well be in Bosnia or Iraq, or even Northern Ireland. In an age of terrorism, order without law very quickly becomes tyranny, which has never been the answer to terrorism. What he and PD James do demonstrate is just how fragile our civil society is.

As a film this is a very fine piece of work. The sets exude grimy Britain, the battles are hair-raising, the quieter moments intense. Cuaron would do a great James Bond movie. He has turned a rather rarefied novel into an exiting and engrossing thriller without obscuring the original message. He is a very versatile and enterprising film-maker and I'm sure he's going to do lots more good stuff.

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Blue Caprice

Blue Caprice (2013)

R - 93 min - Crime, Drama - 19 January 2013
Big Blue Sky Rating : 6.0/10

Director : Alexandre Moors
Writers : R.F.I. Porto
Stars : Isaiah Washington, Tequan Richmond, Tim Blake Nelson, Joey Lauren Adams

An abandoned boy is lured to America and drawn into the shadow of a dangerous father figure. Inspired by the real life events that led to the 2002 Beltway sniper attacks.

Tough to understand the motives of those snipers.

"Who knows the secrets of the human heart?" The Crying Game

The strength and weakness of the docudrama Blue Caprice are the same: It does not attempt to explain the reasons two human beings would randomly kill 10 unknowing victims. So be it. Yet, if a drama, inspired by the true events of the 2002 sniper killings in the D.C. area, recreates, then depth, even if speculative, would seem in order.

Otherwise, I'm left with a hollow feeling that I could have researched the Internet in less time to get the story as it really happened with no "In Cold Blood" insight. Lee (Taquan Richmond) is the lost young man (abandoned by mom and dad), John (Isaiah Washington) is the father figure who harbors resentments against more than one person in his life. John has Lee learn to shoot guns and then channels him into slayings, many without resentments but overcast with the urge to cause chaos.

After retrofitting their Caprice to be a murder machine, the gruesome duo cause mayhem in the D.C.-Virginia area until caught napping in a parking area-- hardly romantic. But then this is hardly a romantic drama. Its greatest virtue is an unwillingness to posit motives, although the boy's missing parents and the adult's bitterness about the loss of his children and the neighbor who testified against his custody are contributors, no doubt.

As the Beltway snipers got the attention they sought, this comment from a citizen best reveals the panic that ensued: "We'd run through parking lots. I'd try not to get gas when I was with family. Once while I was pumping gas, I said to my boys, 'You have to get down on the floorboards.' "

The horror is that the massacre could happen at the hands of such inconsequential losers whose actions would be most difficult to predict. The reasons are probably many, but maybe the most telling is what Lee shouts to John, after he has punished the boy: "Dad, Dad, what did I do?"

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All Is Lost

All Is Lost (2013)

PG-13 - 106 min - Action, Drama - 18 October 2013
Big Blue Sky Rating : 7.1/10

Director : J.C. Chandor
Writers : J.C. Chandor
Stars : Robert Redford

Deep into a solo voyage in the Indian Ocean, an unnamed man (Redford) wakes to find his 39-foot yacht taking on water after a collision with a shipping container left floating on the high seas. With his navigation equipment and radio disabled, the man sails unknowingly into the path of a violent storm. Despite his success in patching the breached hull, his mariner's intuition and a strength that belies his age, the man barely survives the tempest. Using only a sextant and nautical maps to chart his progress, he is forced to rely on ocean currents to carry him into a shipping lane in hopes of hailing a passing vessel. But with the sun unrelenting, sharks circling and his meager supplies dwindling, the ever-resourceful sailor soon finds himself staring his mortality in the face.

Redford Commands Our Attention

I'm going to call it "The Artist Effect".

In 2011, director Michel Mazanavicius brought a black and white silent film called The Artist to the Cannes Film Festival. The film dazzled the French crowd, but bringing a silent film into the trend-setting North American market was anything but a safe bet. Released domestically in January of 2012, the film went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture proving that American audiences were willing to accept films with limited speaking roles.

As a result of the critical success of The Artist, we have seen some daring and spectacular projects of scripts with limited dialogue. Ang Lee's Life of Pi was basically a boy on a boat talking to a tiger with little verbal sparring after their ship capsizes. And this week, Alfonso Cuaron opened Gravity to $55 plus million despite the film having but two characters drifting alone in space with limited conversational communication. Both films proved to be both a critical and commercial success and The Artist Effect may have paved their way to box office glory.

The Artist Effect is next to be realized in J.C. Chandor's All is Lost. Starring Robert Redford (and ONLY Robert Redford), All is Lost showcases the story of a sailor who after a freak collision with a floating shipping container must use his resources to stay afloat and alive against both the odds and the elements that harshly attack survival.

With the ship taking on water, Redford's character must use his resourcefulness as a seasoned boatman to counter the inevitability of his sinking vessel. With limited tools and a survival kit that can provide for a single person a handful of days on the ocean, we watch engrossingly as the elements take their toll both physically and mentally on the deteriorating sailor. With food dwindling, fresh water unavailable and a life raft being torn apart with each impending storm, all is but lost for the seaman and a message in a jar seeking forgiveness tossed to the sea might be the only lasting connection to the loved ones left behind.

J.C. Chandor showed that he could handle the complexities of multiple characters in a complex financial market with 2011's Margin Call. With All is Lost, Chandor strips away subplots, multiple character developments and compounded locations for a simpler story that rides the back of the credible Redford who commands the screen in a dazzling performance that will be considered one of his best.

The script, also penned by Chandor, stays away from many of the usual clichés and easy jump scares or moments of awe that would be easily picked from the Stereotype Tree by a less confident director. The story is not fed to its audience with narration or a man talking to himself to education the audience on his thought process. Instead, All is Lost trusts that the audience will be able to understand the decisions and actions of the protagonist and in this venture the film succeeds admirably.

Robert Redford shines as the sole actor on the call sheet and only once before Academy nominated actor (for 1973's The Sting), might finally get his due with his riveting portrayal of a man that slowly loses hope in his survival.

Simple and without plot edges, All is Lost was worth the excursion.

www.killerreviews.com

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