SUMMER 2011. The Movies.

I know I’m a bit late to the party- two jobs, a film gig, & life can get in the way- but I figured it’s now time to throw out my opinions on the summer movies of 2011.  I won’t go too depth into the films themselves (knock on wood) but these are the summer movies of 2011 I’m looking forward to see &/or are curious about.

And so it begins!

MAY 06:  Marvel’s THOR (Kenneth Branagh) 

The summer kicks off (once again) with another superhero flick.   I’m one of the few filmgeeks I know who ISN’T pumped about Marvel’s whole Avengers spiel.  Marvel officially became a movie studio back in 2008 when they released Iron Man which is by far their best film.   Since then, Marvel has been pushing on knocking out these Superhero flicks rather quickly with them all leading to their 2012 mega-blockbuster superhero team-up The Avengers.  The films have been set up to all take place in one expanded universe & 2011 is the last summer before everything they’ve been working for comes to fruition.   Now, I’m guessing this means The Avengers is going to be an incredibly fun feature (& hopefully embraces the magic stupidity of a superhero team) but I’ve felt it’s all been detrimental to the individual films themselves.   Regardless, I’m curious about Thor because this film, if it embraces it’s inherent goofiness, could be their best standalone hero flick! The trailers sell it as some kind’ve odd hybrid of superhero shenanigans & hyperbolic Shakespearean drama.  Now, I’ve openly admitted my weakness for Oliver Stone’s Alexander– a terrible movie that is so overblown & goofy it becomes good again- so if Thor could aim for a tone like that I’d be sold!  I’m more curious about Marvel’s 4th feature than I am anticipating it.      (Update: I saw THOR.  It was decent BUT completely forgettable.  It was not the overblown wonky tale I was hoping for.  Kinda bland.)

MAY 13: BRIDESMAIDS (Paul Feig)  

Two words:  Kristen Wiig.  I haven’t actively watched SNL in years but when I catch an episode here & there I don’t laugh (the new cast is just soooo smug) but when I do it’s all thanks to Kristen Wiig.  Doesn’t hurt she’s cute as hell too!  Besides, I love chicks & I love flicks.  Why shouldn’t I love chick flicks?  Especially if it’s as vulgar as this one is promised to be?  Sold!  (Update: Yeah. It’s great! Favorite film of 2011 as of Mid-May)

MAY 20: MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (Woody Allen)  

I have a intense affection for the works of Woody Allen.  It’s such a welcome treat when a film of his sneaks into theaters once a year.  Woody has over 40 films to his name (written & directed) & he shows no signs of aging.  Now he doesn’t always hit it out the park; going to the theaters to see a Woody Allen film is like going on a blind date- you’re either going to uncover a gem or a total drag.  His 2010 film, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger– even with Josh Brolin was a total bore.  Thankfully though, based on reviews this year’s Woodster flick is one of the good ones & with that cast I’m not surprised, I mean I am literally in love with the entire female cast (Rachel McAdams & Marion Cottilard in one film?  Be still my beating heart).  Not to mention I’ve always loved the look of Woody’s films & it’s such a treat to know at least once a year I’ll have the chance to see a movie that is shot on film & has zero digital elements.  With Darius Khodnji (Seven, Alien Resurrection, Funny Games 2008) acting as cinematographer this one should look INCREDIBLE.

Note:  Pirates of the Caribbean 4: In Need of More Money is NOT on this list cause it looks terrible.  You take Gore Verbinski out of Pirates & all you have is Johnny Depp collecting a paycheck.

MAY 26: THE HANGOVER PART II (Todd Phillips)  

I can’t analyze why I’m looking forward to this film… I just am.   I though the first film was utter genius & I’ve experienced a lot of Hangovers.  Could the film be bad?  Sure, the biggest worry I have is they’ll just repeat the first film beat by beat except in Thailand now but hell, this should be a damn good night at the movies regardless.

MAY 27: THE TREE OF LIFE (Terrence Malick)  

If there is another legendary American filmmaker whose work is so out of tune with the summer movie season I’d like to meet him. Terrence Malick is a legend.  The man makes films that are wholeheartedly his vision & lately I have found The Thin Red Line has gotten excessive plays on my BD player.  The Tree of Life is anything but a summer blockbuster & yet it is… it’s a summer blockbuster for the art crowd.   When I look back at 2011 I would not be surprised if THIS is the movie I most look back on.  The summer season is an odd one for cinema because the movies that come out between May & August are usually the most hyped flicks of the year but also the most forgettable.  I mean can anyone honestly tell me what movies came out last summer BESIDES Inception, Toy Story 3, & Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World?   Either way, Malick’s 5th film is destined to be a pure cinematic experience that I can’t wait to partake in!  There’s a whole 20 minute segment that portrays the “Birth of the Universe” & is apparently Douglas Trumbull equaling or one-upping his work in 2001:A Space Odyssey.  May 27th can’t get here soon enough!

JUNE 03: X-MEN FIRST CLASS (Matthew Vaughn)   

Should I know better?  Yes.  I should know better than to get excited about a 20th Century Fox summer blockbuster made under the cinema crushing gaze of Tom Rothman.  Rothman for those not in the know is a murderer of cinema, a studio executive who never met a movie he couldn’t screw over in the story or production department in order to make another buck.  But, I can’t help it.  X-Men: First Class looks aces!… & I’m not even a fan of the damn franchise.  In fact, I’ve been actively bored by ALL OF THEM except for X2 (I understand Bryan Singer’s original started the current superhero craze but it’s just not that interesting of a movie.   The less said about Last Stand & Wolverine the better).   Really I should be mocking this film for even existed.  This is X-Men 5. A prequel put into production not because there was a story here dying to be told BUT because the original cast is too damn expensive now!  When first announced I did mock the film but then Fox hired a real director (Matthew “Kickass” Vaughn) & hired my New Favorite Actor Michael Fassbender to play Magneto.  Over the past few months my outlook on the film has changed from repulsion to fascination.  I’m now fully sold on X-Men: First Class from the cast to look to swinging 60s time period &  if Vaughn has been allowed to make a genuine character based actioner then this might be an excellent flick!   Hell, it’s not even in 3D!

JUNE 10: SUPER 8 (J.J. Abrams)  

I have big hopes for this one.   I’m not the biggest fan of J.J. Abrams but I do appreciate his talent for crafting successful mainstream entertainment & even I fell head over heels in love with his Stark Trek 2009, perhaps the perfect example of how to make a brainless summer movie.  Anywho, Super 8 is Abrams ode to his own history of backyard filmmaking & the cinema of Steven Spielberg.  Could there be a summer movie more geared to tickle the hearts of all independent filmmakers?  It’s the story of some young whippersnappers making a Zombie movie (awww) who suddenly find themselves caught in the middle of a huge event.  Apparently Aliens are involved, mucho lens flares, that awesome guy from Peter Jackson’s King Kong 2005 as a Sheriff (could there be any more perfect casting& much Kodak Ektachrome 8mm stock is to be shot.  I’ll be there opening night for sure.

JUNE 17: GREEN LANTERN (Martin Campbell)   

ANOTHER Superhero movie?  Sweet Baby Jesus, whatever happened to summer movies like Speed & The Matrix– you know, original movies that didn’t require extensive back knowledge on who is who in the films respective universe.  But, I’m sold on this film because of one unsung factor- director Martin Campbell.  Campbell has three genuine action movies to his name- Goldeneye, The Legend of Zorro, & Casino Royale, all perfect pieces of massive audience entertainment.  Still, I wasn’t sold on Green Lantern until the most recent trailer showcased the massive scale of this flick that I found my interest piqued.  Since I have zero foreknowledge of the comic book- what are the Lanterns powers again- I have no qualms with Ryan Reynolds in the role of Hal Jordan & aside from his suit being all CG (it just looks odd) I have no complaints about the look of the film.   It’s another stupid case of post-conversion 3D so like all the other movies on this list I’ll be seeing this CLASSIC (film is anything but 2D so don’t call it that).

JUNE 22: CARS 2 (John Lasseter & Brad Lewis)  

I’m not looking forward to this at all… but after so many good films Pixar earns a viewing off me out of goodwill.  The original Cars was a “one-er” for me- I.E. watched it once, thought it was cute & never cared to view it again- & I expect the sequel will be the same deal.  Will there be some strong elements in the film?  Sure.  But is there anything about the Cars universe that demands a second story (or second viewing?).  No.  But I guess after $5 billion in merchandise even Pixar couldn’t say “No to a sequel”.  Anywho, I really don’t trust the Cars universe for many reasons (here’s Two:  1. anything that gives Larry the Cable Guy work is bad in my book  2. It can’t just be coincidence the original film was George Carlin & Paul Newman’s last film, it must’ve killed them) but I’ll give it a shot… even though I am bummed this is Pixar’s 2nd sequel in a row.

JULY 08: HORRIBLE BOSSES (Seth Gordon)   

Black comedy.  Murder.  Great cast.  Directed by the guy who did King of Kong?  I’m sold.   This looks like a solid piece of dark humor.  I really hope this film delivers because it’s coming after a long dry spell in the summer (Cars 2 as previously said looks bland & I refuse to sit through another Michael Bay Transformers film after paying to see the dogshit 2nd movie).  I’ll keep my fingers crossed on this bad boy.

JULY 15: HARRY POTTER & THE DEATHLY HALLOWS- PART 2 (David Yates)  

I haven’t missed a Potter flick yet.  I don’t intend to start now.  You know, when all is said & done the Harry Potter franchise is really going to be the stuff of legends!  Warner Brothers put this series into production way back in 1999 & have actually kept the same cast & crew ever since!  It’s really amazing.  Keeping Daniel Radcliffe & the rest in their respective roles helped define the series & I look forward to the day when I can look at the first & last film back to back.  Now do I find any of the Potter films to be particularly fantastic?  No, not really, the biggest problem with the franchise has always been that each entry is just another small piece of the whole & not it’s own standalone film.   This means I don’t really expect Harry Potter 8 to be a fantabulous piece of work but it might be the strongest flick in the franchise because it’s all climax.  Either way, regardless of what I think of each film individually the Harry Potter franchise should be one of the best epic stories ever told when viewed in it’s entirety.   It’s gonna be weird when July 16 comes around & there will no longer be another Potter flick on the horizon.  It’s the end of an era.

JULY 22: CAPTAIN AMERICA- THE FIRST AVENGER (Joe Johnston)       Or how Steroids saved America.   The final Marvel movie before their 2012 mega-blockbuster The Avengers hits next year, this is their last chance to educate filmgoers about who’s on the team.  Hence the terrible moniker The First Avenger (they never called Iron Man the 2nd Avenger).   Anywho, despite being shot digitally in 3D (all the visuals in the trailer look rather soft & flat) this is Marvel’s best chance to deliver a solid A-class piece of work.  After Inglorious Basterds I really hoped Hollywood would take the hint & start making more off-kilter films about WWII.  I’m a huge WWII buff & it’s one of the best represented periods of history on film (& for damn good reason) but seriously, how many times can we watch men behind enemy lines or Oscar bait Holocaust flicks?   The idea of a superhero World War II just floats my boat.  If Marvel & Joe Johnston just set out to make a kickass 2 hour WWII with a superhero then this might very well be my film of the summer!  If they’ve set out to just make another goddamn commercial for The Fucking Avengers than fuck them… I mean, it might make for a fun but forgettable two hour trip to the movies but there’s no reason to settle for low goals.

JULY 29: COWBOYS & ALIENS (Jon Favreau)  
Is 2011 the year of the Alien?  Battle: Los Angeles.  Paul.  Thor.  Super 8. Green Lantern. Transformers 3: Fuck You TicketBuyers.  The Thing 2011.  Etc.  We are two years after District 9 now so the Alien craze is in full invasion (haha).   Anywho, with my undying love for the Western & Alien invasion flicks it’s only right that I should be interested in this Jon Favreau mashup.  The trailers look nice & it seems like Harrison Ford is ready to be BA again.   So sign me up, short of horrid reviews, I’m there.

CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE (Glenn Ficarra & John Requa)    
Color me intrigued.  After watching Blue Valentine I can’t help but wonder how Ryan Gosling will work in a manipulative Hollywood romance flick.  I liked look of the recently released trailer & am always curious to see what will be done with Steve Carell on film.   Call this my wild card of the summer.  My opinion could change the closer we get to release but until then, I’ll gladly check it out at the cheap theater.

AUGUST 05: RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (Rupert Wyatt)  

Way to early to tell with this flick.  I am a fan of the franchise but if the early reviews are negative this could very well be a “Wait for BD” title.   Interesting to learn that Andy Serkis is the monkey (again) but selling your movie as “From the CGI team of AVATAR” isn’t too comforting.   Nor is James Franco as a scientist… I think I’m over my Franco appreciation & have gone straight to disinterest.

AUGUST 12: 30 MINUTES OR LESS (Ruben Fleischer)                                    All I can say is: “This movie is fucked up!”  It’s a buddy comedy flick based off a real-life 2003 robbery case only in real-life the Goofy Pizza Guy’s head blew the hell off his body!   Either way, despite the kinda sleaziness behind it all the cast rocks (Danny McBride) & as long as the film delivers should be a nice sendoff to Summer 2011.

& that’s a wrap.  Now do I expect all these films to deliver on the promise I’m hoping for?  No.  Most won’t.  They’ll either be terrible films made promising by fantastic marketing OR they’ll just underperform & be mediocre fluff.  BUT one or two of these films should deliver on my expectations & be those great summer movies that are replayed again & again at home!

….  In a final closing note; As promising as Summer 2011 looks, leave it to Christopher Nolan to show them all up a whole year in advance.   Meet one of my favorite villains ever to be introduced in next year’s The Dark Knight Rises-BANE!!   

SCREAM 4

(SPOILERS FOLLOW)

It took me a while but I finally got around to catching Wes Craven & Kevin Williamson’s Scream 4 in theaters this week.  Question is: Was it everything I hoped for?   Well, Yes & No.  YES because for the first time since 1997 a Scream film is concerned with telling a story that takes place in the real world & is about normal people.  NO because the movie isn’t all that good.

While the trailers & ads sell Scream 4 as a sequel the film really functions more as a reboot than anything else.  If the first film was about horror movies, the second was about sequels, & the third about trilogies, then this is the Remake entry in the Scream franchise.  The series reflective eye is turned towards the common malaise in horror cinema when a series is taken back to the very start in hopes of starting anew.  Problem is this Hollywood trend has always been a flawed concept in my eyes since it’s truly impossible to ever REALLY go back to the beginning.  Thankfully, Williamson is aware of this & doesn’t attempt to restart the franchise fresh but instead creates a hybrid of sequel & remake.  Thus the old cast- namely Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell),  Dewey Riley (David Arquette), & Gale-now-with-the-surname-Riley (Courtney Cox) – find themselves involved in a murder spree centering around a bunch of teenagers that closely mimics the original killings.  It turns out Someone wants to remake the original Woodsboro murders now that Sidney has finally/foolishly returned to her hometown.

It’s a beautifully simple setup & it’s not surprising to learn Dimension Pictures had plans for a Scream 5 & 6 in mind when they put this movie into production since the project very much feels like it’s supposed to be the start of a new series.  (Shame about those box office returns though)  The new characters are given ample screentime & while they aren’t particularly fleshed out or well developed, they do receive the brunt amount of the narrative & do all the heavy lifting.  The returning characters, meanwhile, are regulated to the sidelines & mostly act as window dressing to appease the already established fanbase.

Pictured Above- Window Dressing

It’s 2011 & it’s been an eon since the last Scream & truthfully this IS the best way to restart a once dead franchise.  The returning characters in their 40s are “far past their ingenue days” & the younger characters offers the audience some fresh faces who believably be caught in the various slasher scenarios necessary for this genre.  (Can’t imagine many 40 year olds being chased around a drunken house party.)  There’s a real sense throughout the movie that this might be a “passing of the torch” moment & that any future flicks would exclusively follow the younger cast.   Sure, none are as interesting as the old batch but hey, they’re attractive & ripe for the slashing.   Maybe the creators even have the balls to kill off the old cast!   Alas…. they don’t.   They don’t even have the cojones to scare you.    Scream 4 is without a doubt the least “scary” entry in the franchise to date. It’s less “what is familiar isn’t scary” & more that they don’t even try.  The film comes off like a goofy IMDB forum posting with some gore laden murders thrown in for good measure.  The movie makes the same mistake the 3rd entry did- the creators so heavily focus on being cute & witty that they forget to try their hand at scaring the audience.

Nowhere is this self-aware “cuteness” more apparent than in the opening scene.  Scream 4 opens rather classically with two cute girls being threatened by Ghostface- so far so hum- & after some snappy dialogue & a good “boo” moment, the two hotties are killed off.  Nice.  Now just wait just a minute there, happy slasher fan!  You see, what you just watched was actually the opening of STAB 5!  (the one with time travel).  Well, with that out of the way NOW the movie starts proper with two blonde, fan-appeasing cameos talking about horror movies.  The more talented of the two is quickly  killed off in a very cute way & …. oh wait…. that was actually the opening of STAB 6!….  & we now find ourselves with two NEW cute girls.  We MUST be in the real movie now, right?   Well, I really don’t know.  The performances & dialogue with this third set of girls is reeaaaalllly awful.  Not to mention the filmmaking itself is pretty weak to boot (I’m certain I spotted some equipment in the background).  This has to be the opening of STAB 7!.  We’ll know when the movie really begins because everything will be so much more technically polished & the dialogue will sound far more natural & unforced.  It won’t come across like the tired nth entry in a tired franchise but will feel like a real film!   … Oh… wait… that WAS the real opening of Scream 4?  Ergh…   The idea of making an opening scene about opening scenes is a very ingenious concept (it’s Inception with a dozen Ellen Pages) but the execution is quite flawed.   It hurts there is zero differentiation between the “fictional world” of STAB! & the “real world” of Scream especially since the real world bit is the worst executed portion of the opening.  Honestly though, the real problem with the opening of this movie is there’s nothing there BUT cute meta-commentary.  This isn’t the pure terror of Drew Barrymore’s murder OR the tragic irony of Jada Pinkett-Smith dying in front of a paying audience or even the narrative heavy execution of Liev Schreiber from Part 3… this is pure indulgent self awareness.  There’s no real filmmaking to be found here; no placing people in character’s emotions or any of that jazz, it’s just a series of “witty” reveals.  It’s like watching Wes Craven give up on horror & creating real emotions in lieu of being cute.   It’s just uninvolving once you understand what’s going on.

Yo, this ain't real!

Ok, I’m being far too hard on the opening really.  It is very cute, I was just upset there was zero human involvement present.   For a genre that’s built on being actively afraid of what’s around the corner starting the film on an emotionally cold opener is never a good start.  With a sigh of relief though, from then on the film does remember from time to time to BE a movie!  The narrative kicks in, the characters are developed (badly…but still), the murders come along & you actually WANT to know what happens next.  Unlike the previous Screams though it is weird to see how out of date the new movie is.  While dated, the previous three entries are all movies that perfectly define their time.  The new one studiously attempts to be as modern as possible but the whole affair comes across like your parents trying to get in on that “LiveJournal”.  I was shocked to see Ghostface never texted his victims (lots of potential there), Twitter was only mentioned once, as was Facebook, etc.  For a film that ultimately reveals itself to be ABOUT social networking & the Internet the flick sure feels unaware about how it all works.  The less said about the cluelessly inserted idiot with the webcam on his head the better.  Also- a Cinema Club?   I understand the movie needs THAT SCENE where the film geeks spells out the rules but do Cinema Clubs exist anymore?  Wouldn’t an Online Film Forum or Blog be a more sensible & “of the now” way to give across the same info.  I mean there’s a chance to introduce tons of red herrings thanks to the anonymity of the Internet- I.E. a forum member who knows way too much information about what’s going on & could show up in the 2nd half of the film or reveal himself to the be killer.  It’s a far more timely way of getting across the necessary information & adds some much needed mystery to the proceedings.

Speaking of the killers- it’s nice that the people behind the Ghostface masks are finally characters INVOLVED with the overall narrative but they’re both kinda frail.  Which one of the 5’2 tall 110 pound killers was the 6’5 200 pound man in the mask again ?   All joking aside I did the like the killer reveals.  Charlie (Rory Culkin) was the less interesting of the two since the character already had a dozen red flags against him- I.E. he looks like a Trench coat Mafia member AND he’s the movie’s resident film geek a.la. Stu & Mickey.   The nicer surprise was Emma Roberts being the second killer.  Here was a character who in the marketing & for the first half of the film had been set up as Sidney’s replacement.  Jill had just the right amount of attractiveness & blandness that would make her an ideal horror lead.  Making Jill the mastermind behind the murders was a nice surprise & I greatly enjoyed every aspect of her character.   ….At least regarding the writing & plot machinations.  I gotta say as far as talent is concerned, Emma Roberts is a VERY limited actress.  She comes across more whiny & adorable than terrifying & insane.  It’s a good thing Roberts is very cute & Julia Robert’s niece otherwise I don’t where she’d be.

"Don't Fuck With the Original" was a great line though!

Ultimately though, for all it’s flaws (and it has a TON OF FLAWS), Scream 4 is a fun & passable fluffy piece of entertainment.  If you’re a casual viewer of the series there is much fun to be had & there are worse ways to spend an afternoon at the movies.   Really, I’m just so hard on the film because I’m such a diehard fan of the Scream world & can’t look past many of the crippling problems (dozens of which I didn’t name here).    It’s better than Scream 3 though, that’s for DAMN sure.

MVP ONSCREEN: I’ve never watched “Heroes” before but a little research told me Hayden Panettiere is kind’ve a known actress.  Well, I can’t say anything about her previous work but she was quite enjoyable on screen.   Of all the teen characters hers came across the best because she really added some charm to the affair.  While the other teens (well…actors in their early to mid 20s) too heavily focused on fitting their archetype, Panettiere added a real sense of life & vibrancy to her thin character of Kirby.  The character was a bit of a hard sell (she’s a walking 12 year old nerds wet dream) but she pulled it off.

MVP OFFSCREEN:  I was so certain I’d be giving this credit to Kevin Williamson.  I mean he IS the real brains behind the first two films & all.   Alas, the script just isn’t there to make me honestly feel it’s worth the praise.  I know Williamson wrote the opening sequence & that sure wasn’t good.  I’d argue the offscreen most valued player was the cinematographer Peter Deming.  The new film has a glossier aesthetic & sheen than the previous three flicks but it looks so good I can’t complain.  It will be interesting to watch the series back to back one day & see the whole Scream world changes so drastically.

If Scream 5 ever happens I hope Dewey gets to DO something.

I Wish The Taxi Driver WAS Limitless

I miss Robert DeNiro.   A lot.

I recently had the pleasure of visiting my local theater to catch a fresh, newly scanned (4K) 35mm print of TAXI DRIVER.  It’s a cliche line to be sure but “It was like seeing it again for the first time”. Colors I’d never noticed before just popped out of the screen, Bernard Herrmann’s final score was so clear it just seeped right into my brain, Martin Scorsese’s exquisite pinpoint direction is still breathtaking & unmastered when it comes to expressing crushing loneliness, last of all the aesthetic textures of everything from an NYC far past were just awe-stounding.   This was not the NYC I find myself walking through from time to time (this missing New York is both a curse & a blessing), this was a whole different universe from the one I know.  But above all else, what really exploded off the screen was the hypnotic Travis Bickle, performed by Robert DeNiro.   On the big screen Travis had life I hadn’t seen before in Taxi Driver (& I’ve watched the film on multiple MULTIPLE occasions).  There was added nuance in DeNiro’s eyes, more menace was present in every breath & false smile given.  Truthfully, I don’t think I’ve seen seen a performance that strong on the silver screen in years! Just off the top of my head the only recent performances that come to my mind that could even exist in the same level of class are Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood & Nicolas Cage in The Wicker Man 2006 (don’t laugh! It truly is a perfect performance….for all the Wrong/Right reasons!)

Yet, the crazy thing is performances of this type were commonplace for Robert DeNiro back then!  Four years later after Taxi Driver he arguably surpassed this performance by playing Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, still one the most nakedly bare emotional performances ever committed to film even without the incredible weight changes he underwent.  Back then, DeNiro also showed us how to NOT be friends with Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter, made us forget to laugh in The King of Comedy, haunted us in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America (my favorite film of all time!), finally let people laugh in Brazil, carried out The Mission, made us realize how dangerous baseball can be in The Untouchables, gave a tear-jerking performance in Awakenings, turned our mind into mush in Goodfellas, made us realize sometimes you just “gott-to-git” in Cape Fear 1991, was the perfect bad dad in This Boy’s Life & ran a casino in coincidentally enough, Casino.   Hell, before Taxi Driver he won an Oscar playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II even though he barely uttered a word in English!  Robert DeNiro had the balls to take risks & push the art of giving a performance on film into an almost unchallenged calibre of excellence.

For over 20 years this was the most captivating performer in Western Cinema

….and then something happened.  Max Cady became that crazy dad in Hide & Seek.  Al Capone became that racist Senator in Machete.  Neil McCauley (Heat) became a cop named Turk (Righteous Kill).   Sure, every role can’t be a classic & I don’t think anyone expects that, but somehow the tough roles just stopped coming in total.  I’m still an avid fan of DeNiro to this day- point must be that he DOES star in two of my three favorite films of all time- & have closely followed his career even after he stopped trying!  Problem is it’s just getting to be too painful now.   It’s become like holding onto those good memories from high school- they were great experiences back then & helped shape who I am today but they just have no correlation to anything anymore.   Now why bring this up now in the futuristic year of 2011?  I mean, DeNiro HAS been off for a while now, arguably his last GREAT performance was as the moronic stoner Louis Gara in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (1997).  I  mean, with that one little performance DeNiro encapsulated everything an audience circa the late 1990’s NEVER expected to see Robert DeNiro do, I.E. be a stupid, lazy, absolutely out of touch & incompetent boob (which makes his one act of pure DeNiro violence in the third act that much more shocking) & then he delivered an excellent performance on top of that!

It’s been almost 14 years since he played Louis Gara & I’ve seen almost all of the roles he’s done since then.  More often than not I saw these roles for the first time in the movie theater!  I was there when he first Analyze(‘d) This, I sat in a dark theater when he first insulted Ben Stiller’s Greg Focker & even when he played a goddamned Mafia Shark.  I even paid to watch him unexpectantly have sex with Carla Gugino in Righteous Kill (probably the worst film of his career).  The performances weren’t great, most were barely passable, but I would always walk out of the darkened theater & say to myself “The next time he’s bound to be better!  He’s Robert De’Fuckin’Niro”.  But, the next time never came.  There’d be sparks here & there, like Stone where the DeNiro of old shows up once or twice but it was never enough.  Soon the work would go back to playing up that tough guy persona in a boner-based comedy or bad cop thriller.  It took a (essentially) back to back viewing of Taxi Driver & his newest film, Limitless, to make me realize enough’s enough.  The time has come for me to call it quits on hoping for the next great performance from DeNiro.

It’s not like I ever expected Limitless to be a great film, mind you.  The trailers were well-put together, selling the movie as Wall Street 2 without Shia LaBeouf (an improvement in any language), but it is a March release which isn’t the strongest release month for great movies.  Honestly, the most I expected out of the film was a flashy 2 hour visit to my local cinema. And that it was!  Don’t take my criticisms the wrong way, Limitless is actually a fun, if admittedly very brainless, little thriller that’s hilariously pro-drugs.  The film is light, frothy, full of cool little visual gimmicks (great lighting but they overused digital color correction IMO) & once or twice even teases a De Palma’esque set piece.  There are far worse ways to enjoy a night out at the theaters BUT it drove home how little DeNiro actually tries these days.   I can honestly say he was the dullest aspect of the entire film & I think it would have been a stronger overall feature if someone else had played the role of Carl Van Loon (a Bond villain name if ever there was one).  It’s not as if DeNiro was terrible, he wasn’t, it’s just the same schtick he’s pulled in every single film since… forever it seems.  For one second, the performance teases the audience that DeNiro is going to deliver something unique & then it just settles right back into the upset grandpa he’s been milking for years.  The performance just floats past you, leaving nothing to grab onto, which is a damn shame since the penultimate scene is an important back & forth discussion between him & Bradley Cooper, thus rendering the exclamation point of Limitless ineffective.   It was partially bad writing (repeat, the film is fun but the script is pretty bad) but the scene mostly fell flat because I was watching one performer (Cooper) give his all & the other just coast on his good name.  Limitless ended, the lights came up, I walked out the theater & once again said “The next time he’s bound to be better!  He’s Robert De’Fuckin’Niro”!

DeNiro is.... oh wait, that's Elias Koteas ... GREAT ACTOR!

Thing is, the next time he WAS better!  That’s because the next time was Taxi Driver on the big screen!  When the lights came up after 112 minutes of upsetting brilliance, I realized after over 10 years of paying to see DeNiro on the big screen I hadn’t once watched him deliver a great performance.  Ever.  It took a 35 year-old-film to make me realize that & it’s a damn shame too.   I’m pretty confident I won’t see a better film in the theaters this year than Taxi Driver, just like I’m confident that I won’t see a better performance than Robert DeNiro’s Travis Bickle.  It’s a real shame I can’t say that twice about DeNiro’s illustrious career.  The man is a cinematic legend, that’s a given, but the legend is gone & has been since he was in his early 50s (he’s currently 67).  Most likely his other activities- TriBeCa productions, the film festival, the various restaurants, etc- have stolen most of his energy on screen & I just gotta come to terms with that.  The man’s having a great life & doing great work but it’s just not present on screen.   I certainly don’t think New Year’s Eve or any of the movies on IMDB he’s currently attached are going to offer much in the way of above average entertainment.   Only film that does offer promise is Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, a video game adaptation he’s RUMORED to be on… & it’s only promising because David O. Russell (The Fighter) is directing.   Truthfully, from now on the only thing that could get me immediately pumped to see a Robert DeNiro film is if his 9th collaboration with Martin Scorsese, The Irishman, ever goes into production.  But, I don’t see that film happening anytime soon.

HUGO CABRET is going to be the best Harry Potter film that never was!

I’m not done with DeNiro.  I am going to continue to watch his films.  My Taxi Driver Bluray shows up from Amazon tomorrow & it’s gonna get lots of attention on my player & will eventually sit on Bluray shelf right next to Once Upon A Time In America, Raging Bull & Goodfellas. Only, don’t expect to see me sitting in a theater anytime soon to see Meet the Parents IV: The Little Fockers Keep Focking.

If it's playing near you- SEE IT!

 

THE HORROR OF THE REBOOT… & WHAT I FEAR IT COULD CREATE

If there’s anything mainstream Hollywood cinema has taught us it’s that “Every good deed leads to a hundred knockoffs”.   There is absolutely nothing Hollywood loves more than repackaging the same story & charging you $10-15 to see it…. Again.   Well, that & giving awards to anything that is about British royalty.  Today, our movie screens are overloaded with sequels, prequels, remakes, 80s nostalgia, & spin-offs.  But, the worst thing to come out of all this repackaging is the REBOOT.   It’s the pinnacle of what Hollywood has been searching for since a bunch of Viacom executives took over Hollywood in the early 80s. It’s better than a sequel!  Offers more freedom than a prequel!  Best of all, it doesn’t have that dirty connotation that comes with being a remake.  Or does it?

First off, let’s specify what each of these terms mean.   A SEQUEL is relatively self-explanatory.  They’ve been around since forever.  All the way back to when a bunch of men with beards decided God needed a rewrite in the Bible & thus we got “The New Testament”.  A Sequel is the continuation of a previously existing narrative.  It carries the story on from where the previous work ended.  Homer’s The Odyssey continues the story of Odysseus’ after he left the battle of Troy, as told in The Iliad.  James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein continues on from the original 1931 classic, telling the story of how the Monster did not die in the windmill but lived & eventually killed himself after being rejected by the Bride built to be his mate.   Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II is… well; the Part 2 makes it pretty clear.   A sequel is the oldest & still most common form of continuing a popular work of fiction.  One of the great things about a sequel is with the proper determination & balls to take risks,  the story & characters can be taken into vastly different territories, I.E. James Cameron’s  Aliens or George Miller’s The Road Warrior.   Of course, a real problem is when you get never ending sequels, continually separating the following work from what made the original so great.  In the worst case scenario, this can lead to the Batman Credit Card or Indiana Jones & CG Prairie Dogs.

 

Not Pictured- An Indiana Jones movie

In recent years, Hollywood has become enamored with the PREQUEL.  It’s like a sequel, but even better because instead of having to tell a whole new original story, you just have to tell the audience how they got to the start of the film they ALREADY LOVE!  Best of all, you can cast younger, hotter, cheaper, less talented actors to play roles already established by the older, more experienced thespians that the audience already is willing to pay to see!  To quote sociologist Eric Cartman: “It’s like having your cake & eating it too.”  Now prequels existed in popular fiction in one form or another since at least the tales of Horatio Hornblower but in cinematic terms, blame for this new trend can largely be placed on George Lucas who found a way to milk Star Wars for a whole new Trilogy of films with just a few loosely defined ideas.   He really didn’t need to tell any interesting stories in the Prequels because fans were already going to go regardless on the hopes that Anakin Skywalker would be just as awesome a character as Darth Vader was.  (Spoiler: He wasn’t.)   The prequels made bank & Hollywood jumped aboard the concept.  Hannibal Lecter got not one, but TWO prequels (in a possible first, one of the prequels- Red Dragon– was also a remake of Michael Mann’s Manhunter).  Father Merrin got to excise demons in both a Renny Harlin & Paul Schrader flick.  Star Trek got to have Scott Bakula as a captain for a whole series & the X-Men franchise got to keep going after having The Last Stand back in 2006.  Truthfully, it’s a smart move on Hollywood’s behalf.  Hell, I want to see Michael Fassbender fall to the side of evil & James McAvoy hopefully lose his hair in X-Men: First Class!  I also want to see Ian McKellan be Gandalf the Grey again in The Hobbit.  I love those characters!  Thus, Hollywood’s villainous scheme has succeeded.  (Note: The Hobbit should work because the original book was written before The Lord of the Rings & is not “officially” a prequel.  I just hope they don’t weigh the new films down with too many “Look, there’s Legolas” moments.)

 

THERE'S LEGOLAS!

A REMAKE ups the ante on a prequel by not even bothering to tell a new story at all.  It just has to repeat what already existed without pissing too many people off.    Once again, remakes aren’t anything new but in recent years have really taken a hold in popular entertainment.  I’d argue the match that lit the remake fire was Gore Verbinski’s well made The Ring (2002). A remake of a 1998 Japanese horror film, Verbinski’s The Ring took the often used horror tropes of another culture, threw an ethnic makeover on everything & was able to come across as a fresh & original work.  Even if you had seen the original film, the remake had the charm of being the first of its kind.  Verbinski’s The Ring introduced the Western world to the then-unique evil, pasty-faced little ghost girls with long black hair.  It also introduced Hollywood execs to the magic of millions in profit to come out of taking a pre-established successful film & turning a Japanese Reiko Asakawa into a Caucasian Rachel Keller.  One man was even able to take this simple concept & become an A level producer by repeating this process over & over & over again!  Seriously, look up Roy Lee (I) on IMDB.   I’ll wait.   You back?  Ok, so within six years pretty much every recent successful East Asian horror film (whether it was Japanese, Korean, Thai, etc) had been remade with pretty blonde actresses to varying critical & commercial results.  Soon enough the trend of pasty-faced-little-girls-with-too-much-hair-scaring-people grew tired but Hollywood had already turned their attention to remaking American horror films.  Hence, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003, Dawn of the Dead 2004, Amityville Horror…some year, Nightmare on Elm Street 2010, & far more than I even want to think.  If someone online has said it was a good film, it’s been remade it seems.   Hell, Rob Zombie got to rape Halloween twice…and it’s not as if the 1978 original hadn’t already been screwed over by some terrible (or TURR-IBLE) sequels.  In fact, Hollywood seems determined to remake every film in John Carpenter’s entire body of work by the year 2020.  I pity the fool who decides to remake Ghosts of Mars.

Truth that Jason Statham once had hair.

Now sure, some good has come out of this remake madness- they can’t always shoot blanks you know, filmmaking IS hundreds of talented individuals coming together & sometimes the art of filmmaking itself can shine through the bullshit.  Some of the previously mentioned remakes don’t suck (namely Texas Chainsaw & Dawn…though neither is as good as the original) & one of the best films of recent years is a flat out, unabashed remake!  Roy Lee even helped produce it!   Martin Scorsese’s The Departed is a remake of the Chinese gangster flick Infernal Affairs & while I do enjoy the original a fair amount, Scorsese’s flick wipes the floor with it.  So it’s not all bad, the great films do shine through the pointless repackaging but it wouldn’t hurt to have more original works. A few more Inception’s in place of a few The Wolfman 2010.

Which brings me to the worst & most shameless of these repackaging techniques.  The REBOOT.  I mean what the fuck?  Can anyone explain to me the difference between a Reboot & a Remake?   Even Hollywood doesn’t seem to know at this point anymore.  When A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 was coming out the director kept calling it a reboot but forget that, it was Wes Craven’s original just  remade with more “gritty realism” (i.e. pedophilia)!  To date, I can only think of two flicks that can actually qualify as genuine reboots.   Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins & Martin Campbell’s Casino Royale.  Both film’s reshaped their respect universes so drastically & had storylines so unconnected to the previous films that it made watching the others irrelevant.  Aside from Bruce Wayne being a bit of a bore, Nolan’s flick has no connection to Tim Burton’s 1989 flick & Daniel Craig’s first venture as Bond was as far from Die Another Day as you get…. short of Bond being a Chinese asexual midget.  Maybe.  Those two films took RISKS with their respective franchises.  Nolan dropped the comic elements for an adult  character story.   Campbell dropped the gadgets; world domination plans, & even had Bond NOT FINISH BANGING A CHICK!   When did Connery not bone a girl?

Boning is about to commence. Dirty 60s boning

In the end, the risks paid off for both films with Casino Royale being the best Bond film in over 20 years & Batman went on to become The Dark Knight.  And Hollywood knows that the audience is aware of that.  Hence, when they flat out remake The Pink Panther or Friday the 13^th (or The Punisher for the 8^th time) they can call it a reboot & you immediately think back to Batman & Bond instead of Gus Van Sant’s Psycho 1998.   The term reboot allows them to remake films super fast & most people won’t even complain.  You didn’t like Ang Lee’s The Hulk?  In 5 years you can see some guy’s The Incredible Hulk!   Not a fan of Spiderman 3?  Fuck it, we’ve got The Amazing Spider-man (an unofficial remake set to come out one decade after the original)!   Didn’t like Yogi Bear?  Too bad, it made money.  Lots & lots of money.

... Profit?

There’s a lot of reboots in discussion right now.  Pretty much any movie that was a success & had one sequel to it’s name, there’s a guy out there saying a bland reboot would be a smart move.  Mostly my concern is that most of our tastes in cinema are defined at a young age.  The movies that moved & inspired me as a kid were those from the 80s & 90s when mainstream filmmakers were doing original (though still highly commercialized, I mean the product placement in Back to the Future is insane) works.  Today, Hollywood seems focused on recapturing that 80s fame through whatever means possible (namely reboots) whether it’s a Wall Street 2, or a Tron 2, a “prequel” to The Thing (hint: it’s an unofficial remake) or a remake of Fright Night! I mean the best looking (& seemingly only) original blockbuster film of the summer, Super 8, still has a distinct 80s vibe to it.  We’re in a reboot-enforced remake of the 80s.   It just makes me wonder, 20 years from now in the far off year of 2031 will all popular movies be 5-D remakes of blockbusters from our time…. that in turn where sequels/prequels/remakes of blockbusters from the 80s… that in turn were inspired by the media of the 50s, 60s, & 70s…. which means cinema will be…that it has…  that … AAAAHHH!

& thus it was over.

(…  Wow.  First official post on blog was a rambler.  I enjoyed the write up & it helped me avoid doing soul-crushing work.   I’ll be certain to make them shorter from now.)