Sideways (2004)
Cert: 15 / 122 mins / Dir. Alexander Payne / Trailer
And here we are with another film which has been recommended many times to me over the years, but usually by people whose cinematic opinions I don't entirely trust, somehow. A comedy about mid-life crises and wine-tasting always seemed a little... well, middle-class frankly, and I have a hard enough time reining in my snobbery as it is.
I'll say right away that I enjoyed Sideways, even though I rarely felt entirely comfortable with it*1. The melancholic-comedy about a stag-week for two 40-something fuck-ups often feels like Clerks for the middle-aged, and the romance and bromance threads don't always gel as neatly as they're intended to, almost like the scripts for two entirely different films have been spliced together.
What really sets the film on edge is that the comedic moments themselves elicit more winces-of-recognition than outright laughs; by no means a bad thing, but it's not the escapism I usually look for in a stag-party movie. That said, director Alexander Payne certainly knows how to get the best from his cast, and the dependably marvellous Paul Giamatti is supported with great turns from Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh and Thomas Haden Church (who appears to be playing the 17yr-old-in-a-45yr-old's-body from a bodyswap comedy, but plays it so well that it doesn't matter).
As admirable as Sideways is, I can't hand-on-heart rate it as the classic that everyone else seems to, but it's certainly worth watching in a Sunday-afternoon/bottle-of-wine sort of a way.
Although the film will also make you feel inferior about the wine you've chosen to drink…
Nope.
Yep.
To some, but not to all.
There isn't.
Paul Giamatti appears as Rhino in Amazing Spider-Man 2; a film which also stars Felicity Jones, who'll be appearing in the upcoming Star Wars standalone, Rogue One.
*1 And probably because I didn't feel entirely comfortable with it. The film proudly bears its indie-roots, despite looking and feeling like a studio-flick.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
I'm not really a fan of Johnny Cash as such*1, not really a fan of old-Country, and not really a fan of music biopics if I'm being honest. With that in mind, I didn't think that 2005's Walk The Line would really be for me. And, as Obi-Wan Kenobi once said, my insight served me well. It's not that I wasn't open to being swayed by James Mangold's portrayal of the man-in-black, but more that it just didn't convince me anyway.
The film starts slightly awkwardly, if traditionally for a biopic, but gains its footing as it goes, covering Cash's early life from his childhood on an Arkansas cotton-farm, through his military service and into the music industry. The problem I had is that the storytelling is probably too traditional for its own good, and the further it goes the more pleased with itself it becomes, and more mawkish as a result.
Walk The Line may be a two and a half hour journey, but it spans 24 years, resulting in The Exposition Express stopping only at the major stations along the way for some explanatory dialogue, red-letter events and origin-stories of The Hits. One of the pitfalls of this sort of thing, of course, is ensuring that your recurring characters age appropriately over the course of the film (cf Jersey Boys), and it was so challenging in this particular film that 20th Century Fox decided best not to bother, leaving Mummy (Shelby Lynne) and Daddy (Robert Patrick) Cash in perpetual middle-age, with only Lynne's hairstyles illustrating the passage of time.
It also probably didn't help matters that I'm only casually familiar with Cash's back-catalogue, so the heavily-telegraphed moments which feature the genesis of those songs didn't cause the tingle that James Mangold intended. In fact, he may as well have been standing in the background with a placard reading 'this is that song you know'. In many cases they're interesting, but they take the place of actually hearing the song being performed in their familiar way.
Walk The Line is a whistle-stop biography that does little to win new fans for the man in black. Despite the scattergun chronology, there are some damned fine performances in there. They're just damned fine performances of characters the film had already convinced me not to like.
And when a biography of a singer makes the viewer like him less than when they'd started watching..?
Nope, really not.
Not particularly, if I'm being honest (although you may have already gathered that).
I'd recommend it to people who enjoy watching afternoon true story tv-movies about unlikeable protagonists.
There isn't.
Joaquin Phoenix lent his voice to the 2003 Disney animated film, Brother Bear, as did Mr Greg Proops, who voiced Podrace commentator Fode in The Phantom Menace as well as Death Watch sympathiser Tal Merrick in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
*1 And yeah, the obvious retort is 'well if you're not a fan, what were you expecting to get out of the film?'. While it's true that I'm not a fan, I'm not not a fan, either. Walk The Line is the equivalent of introducing someone to your friend for the first time, then telling them stories of the times your friend was an aimless, substance-abusing (but highly successful) egotist. There's humanity in Phoenix's performance, but very little warmth.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Home (2D)
Cert: U / 94 mins / Dir. Tim Johnson / Trailer
Like many cinema-goers of my generation, I have a warm, nostalgic love for Steve Martin. But hey, even I'm realistic enough to know that they can't all be Cheaper By The Dozen 2. Or The Pink Panther 2. Or Father Of The Bride 2…
Glib comments aside, Home nonetheless relies on the stunt-casting of Martin (in a supporting-role, to be fair), Jim Parsons, Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez to paper over the not-inconsiderable cracks in the storytelling. The film's prologue shows the entire population of Earth being pseudo-benevolently relocated to Australia while a race of aliens (The Boov™) inhabits the planet, and the story-proper begins like I Am Legend for the under-5s, with young protagonist Tip being the only human left in her city, sneaking around with her pet and trying to avoid aliens whilst looking for her mother. Oh, don't worry, the U-certificate and lack of narrative-depth mean that the younger members of the audience won't be distressed at all.
Now despite my moaning, there's very little to actively dislike in Home, but there's even less to like, somehow. The gorgeous animation just about excuses the blandly-designed characters, but the voice-work and poor characterisation have no such crutch to rely on (lead alien, 'Oh', is basically Jar-Jar Binks. Really). The most interesting thing about the film is the list of ways in which it doesn't quite work. The scattergun approach to the plot makes the film feel like a second-draft, and the slapstick gags (of which there are many) just aren't particularly funny. The film managed to keep the squawking miniature humans in the audience quiet, so it's certainly doing something right. Unfortunately, that silence was maintained throughout most of the jokes, too.
To add insult to injury, the whole movie is soundtracked with tepid R&B*1 throughout, which is a bit like receiving a half-finished present wrapped in beige wallpaper. I think the marketing phrase "From the creators of The Croods" is as much of a warning as an endorsement, sadly.
Amiable and inoffensive as it is, Home lacks the spark to capture the imagination even of its target audience. The film may have been dropped into the graveyard slot between Christmas and Easter but Dreamworks really need to raise their game. Any animated movie which isn't a hit in this day and age counts as a miss…
It ain't.
You can safely rent this, or wait until you see it for £3 in Asda. Which will probably be before this time next year.
Well with Rihanna and Jennifer Lopez on-board, it's difficult to say. And Steve Martin? …STEVE MARTIN?
Not really.
Not really.
I didn't hear one.
Steve Martin starred in 1999's Bowfinger; a film which also boasted among its cast a Mr Terence Stamp, aka Chancellor Finis Valorum from The Phantom Menace.
*1 And when I say "R&B", I'm not referring to Stevie Ray Vaughan et al, but that godawful bland elevator-music they have these days which you hear when you're walking past New Look. It pains no-one more than it does me to refer to this as "R&B", but apparently that's what someone's decided to call it. God, I'm old.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Y'know, snarky comments about Liam Neeson as an alcoholic estranged father, punching and shooting people in a leather jacket are becoming almost as clichéd as films featuring Liam Neeson as an alcoholic estranged father, punching and shooting people in a leather jacket. Although despite today's neatly-timed announcement*1, Liam shows no sign of stopping just now, so I don't see why I should either.
Mr Neeson's latest (well…) offering bestows upon him the honour of The Opening Line. As he lies bleeding and surrounded by shrubbery, his sonorous transatlantic grumble delivers the absolute gem, "I've done terrible things in my life… things for which I can never be forgiven", with either an over-indulgence of self-awareness, or none whatsoever. I can't be sure which it is. Poor Liam is on autopilot for the entire movie, and Joel (Robocop) Kinnaman can't seem to muster the likeability required to be An Actual Protagonist. The screenplay makes no attempt to offer us anyone else to really root for, so it's just a case of sitting back and watching the claret.
The plot of the film takes place over the course of 16 hours, and the episodic nature of the father/son adventure does make it feel a bit like a mission-arc from Grand Theft Auto (complete with expository cut-scenes, naturally). The script itself seems to have been compiled by a computer working from a database of action-movie catchphrases and platitudes, hoping that the mumbling of the actors will fudge the audience's aural déjà vu. Strangely, one of the best scenes is the downtown New York chase, in which Neeson tries to ram the patrol-car of corrupt police officers off the road. Coincidentally, it's also a scene with almost no dialogue for four minutes.
Despite my moaning, Run All Night isn't 'awful'. As bullet-ridden action-thrillers go, it's actually on the better side of alright until dear old Liam keeps playing His Film Character. He's supported by Ed Harris (who can't seem to believe what he's doing), Joel Kinnaman (see above) and Boyd Holbrook, who puts in a reasonably interesting turn until he's killed in the first act (that's a plot point. It's in the trailer. It's not a spoiler.) The cast are so elderly, listless, or elderly and listless that Common*2 has to be drafted in during the second act to do some of the heavy lifting (and in fairness, Liam and Common duelling with flaming table-legs was rather nice, I thought).
Despite some interesting stylised transitions between scenes, there's really very little here that you haven't seen before. The film doesn't do anything too badly, it just doesn't do anything new. Although it doesn't really promise to, either. And when you're asking people to hand over a tenner to watch it? That's going to be a stumbling block.
With a smarter script and more inspired casting, Run All Night could have been just the thing. As it stands, it's another also-ran in the Liam Neeson box set of mediocrity.
Actual fact: Run All Night's distributor, Warner Bros UK, have thought long and hard, and decided that a 15-rated violent revenge-thriller should be preceded by the trailers for Home, Spongebob and Cinderella. No, seriously. Who the hell do they think is watching this movie? Well, me, evidently since I plan on watching at least two of those three movies. Although I was going to anyway, so…
Oh, and by all means write your screenplay and call your hardened, grizzled mob-boss Shawn Maguire. But whenever he gets mentioned, I'll be thinking of Sean Maguire. Threat-central, yeah.
Not really, if I'm being honest.
Unless you star in the film, I can't see that you'll want to watch it more than once. Rental, it is.
Well I doubt it'll be in Ed Harris' obituary-reel, somehow.
It probably does, actually.
Not really.
There isn't. For shame.
Run All Night stars Qui-Gon Jinn himself, Liam Neeson, of course.
*1 Seriously though, "two years"? John Candy died and they were releasing 'his last film' for the next five years. Two years of Neeson actioners is like a decade in human-years, or something.
*2 He's one of those rapper-actors, I think. He's generally used as background-scowling in movies, but he's pretty good in this. Certainly better at action-movies than the rest of the cast, anyway.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
