Apple TV+
“Wolfs” is the new action-comedy starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney and directed by Jon Watts, who is responsible for the last three “Spider-Man” movies. It should get some butts in seats on these names alone; here we have two of Hollywood’s surviving movie stars who’ve earned their stripes before the industry’s almost complete pivot to IPs in an effort to draw box office. But these household names and their screen personae can be a blessing and sometimes a curse. Case in point: “Wolfs.”
Continue reading “The Odd Couple” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Counselor (2013)
Kerry Brown/20th Century Fox
Some movies are made to stir the intellect and demonstrate what humans are truly capable of. Some movies are made to arouse the senses and explore every nuance of physical and emotional sensation. Some movies are made to astonish with colossal danger and showmanship, whether through real stunts or incredible virtual effects. And some movies are made to be watched by horny virgins who are stoned out of their gourds. “The Counselor” is most definitely the latter.
Not since “Blue Velvet” has Hollywood gone so high- and low-brow in a single movie. “The Counselor” looks great, has outstanding costume design and a real feel for the interior design tastes of midlevel drug dealers in Texas and Mexico. It has Cameron Diaz — with a perfect manicure and covered in cheetah tattoos — doing unspeakable things to her boyfriend’s Ferrari (more on which later). It also has Rosie Perez offering to give Michael Fassbender a blow job. THIS MOVIE HAS ROSIE PEREZ IN IT. And it is so bad it will undoubtedly become a classic like “Showgirls.”
Continue reading “White Powder on the Scales of Justice” »
MOVIE REVIEW
World War Z (2013)
Jaap Buitendijk/Paramount Pictures
The movie adaptation of Max Brooks’s “World War Z” has lowered expectations time and again. For starters, Hollywood’s indisputably most overrated director, Marc Forster — fresh off ruining James Bond for everyone — was attached to the project. Extensive rewrites and reshoots then followed, resulting in a bloated budget and a yearlong delay. All indications were that it would turn out terrible, so it’s a relief that the film is even remotely watchable. This is not to say “World War Z” isn’t the embodiment of filmmaking-by-committee of the worst kind. In fact, it is pretty much the cinematic equivalent of a zombie: brain-dead, soulless and merely going through the epileptic motions.
Continue reading “Nighness of the Moviemaking Dead” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Moneyball (2011)
Melinda Sue Gordon/Columbia Pictures
Steven Soderbergh was unceremoniously fired from “Moneyball” about two years ago after revising an alleged grand slam of a screenplay from Steven Zaillian into a quasi-documentary that would devote 10 percent to interviews of real-life figures and another 10 to “reenactments of real events as remembered by the people playing themselves.” Those who read his script confirmed it was that bad, although we’d like to give Mr. Soderbergh the benefit of the doubt after seeing what he did with “Erin Brockovich.” At the very least, this biopic about Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane starring Brad Pitt could have been inspired and fun in Mr. Soderbergh’s hands. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the final score achieved by his late-inning relief, Bennett Miller.
Continue reading “Legends of the Ball” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Tree of Life (2011)
Merie Wallace/
Fox Searchlight Pictures
It’s the new Terrence Malick! It’s the Palme d’or winner! It’s Harmony Korine-meets-Stanley Kubrick! It’s the entire “Lost” series pared down to two hours and 18 minutes! Or — as some loudmouth overheard at another press screening put it — it’s two hours and 18 minutes of computer screen saver! Granted, the said loudmouth also believed Dominique Strauss-Kahn was set up. All joking aside, it’s interesting to see that even after his heirs apparent — namely, Mr. Korine and David Gordon Green — have respectively moved on to experimental video and Hollywood trash in the time span between two Malick projects, the old maestro continues to bear his own torch.
Continue reading “As the New World Turns” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Francois Duhamel/The Weinstein Company
First and foremost, “Inglourious Basterds” is better than “Death Proof” – but then it would be some feat if it had actually been worse. This time, Quentin Tarantino's self-indulgence is relatively corralled, thanks to a bunch of voluntary narrative restraints that pretty much force the director to calm down. In “Death Proof,” Mr. Tarantino was in your ear constantly, fidgeting and giggling and nudging you in the ribs. There are whole stretches of “Basterds” where he shuts up. It must have been an almighty effort.
The problem is that he's achieved this zen condition by being relatively conventional. Or as conventional as a man with his crazy ear for speech patterns and keen eye for the female instep could ever be, when making a WWII epic set in a Nazi-occupied sector of the Twilight Zone.
Continue reading “Triumph of the Ill Will” »
MOVIE REVIEW
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
Merrick Morton/Paramount Pictures
Like Danny Boyle, David Fincher is a filmmaker whose stylish sensibility almost always leaves moviegoers cold. But also like Mr. Boyle, Mr. Fincher has this year stumbled upon a movie with a heart and excelled. Based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” would most likely have been a horrific, vomit-inducing train wreck in the hands of a Steven Spielberg or a Ron Howard. The aging-backward premise notwithstanding, the film is basically “Forrest Gump” meets “Legends of the Fall” meets “Meet Joe Black,” complete with Gumpian historical anecdotes (Teddy Roosevelt instead of JFK this time!) courtesy of “Gump” screenwriter Eric Roth. Thank goodness Mr. Fincher has the clinical precision of a music video director, and here counterbalances the otherwise go-for-broke sappiness of all the separations and deaths in the “Benjamin Button” screenplay.
Continue reading “A Box of Chocolates Is Like Life” »