fourthrowcenter's Xanga

Hello, old friends.

Tue, 19 May 2009 15:56:40 GMT

Just wanted to pop in here with a couple of updates:

About seven months ago, I started writing reviews for the site DVD Talk; here's a list of the reviews I've written for them.

And then a month or two ago, I started a new blog, cross-posting my DVD Talk reviews with some blog only exclusives. It's easy to remember: www.jason-bailey.com.

And I'm on the twitter: @jasondashbailey.

So read and follow and stuff.

Packing it in...

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:25:13 GMT

So (and some of this is double-posted), I'm gonna fold this blog into my regular one, Bailey's Big Ass Blog. I started this one in order to keep my reviews seperate, but since the City Paper folded and I started working full-time (instead of trying to pick up writing work), it has kind of stopped serving any purpose and become a bit of a pain to maintain. Plus, I don't get a lot of hits.

So, if you're not already tuned in to it, boomark and/or subscribe to the other blog. I'll start throwing reviews up there, along with my uninteresting musings and 7th-grade-diary-like ramblings and pictures of our cats.

-bailey

Theatre Hopping: "Lake of Fire" and "My Kid Could Paint That"

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 02:54:54 GMT

Let’s get this out of the way, right up front: Tony Kaye’s epic documentary on abortion, Lake Of Fire (*****) is hard, hard, hard to watch. It runs over two and a half hours and is an utterly unflinching look at the abortion debate—including the depiction, twice, of the abortion procedure itself. It is also an incredibly accomplished documentary, even-handed and unbiased, beautifully shot and masterfully constructed.

In its (mostly) lack of bias, Kaye’s film has been compared favorably to the works of Michael Moore, but it did, in fact, remind me of Bowling For Columbine—not in its point of view, but in its stream-of-consciousness approach to examining a complicated issue for which there are no easy answers and understandable points of view on all sides. Make no mistake, there are plenty of foaming fanatics shooting off their mouths (and some cringe-worthy moments of blatant hypocrisy), but there are moments of astonishing humanity—particularly the extended closing sequence, following a young woman though the entire process. Lake of Fire is a difficult film, but it must be seen and digested.

Amir Bar-Lev’s My Kid Could Paint That (*****) is a considerably lighter undertaking for filmgoers (it runs about half as long and concerns the world of modern art), but it is no less riveting and thought-provoking. It tells the story of little Marla Olmstead, a four-year old girl who made national news when her paintings were taken up by modern art connoisseurs, who began paying thousands of dollars for her work. Alas, a profile on 60 Minutes espoused the theory that Marla was not the artist (or sole artist, at least) of her paintings, and the walls came tumbling down.

Director Bar-Lev was there throughout the entirety of the story, and his extensive access to the entire family gives a near-voyeur quality to much of the footage. As the filmmaker begins to have his own doubts about the story, the film generates genuine suspense and real pathos. My Kid Could Paint That is mesmerizing filmmaking.

This Week on DVD: "Evan Almighty", "Reign Over Me", and "You Kill Me"

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 22:25:47 GMT

Evan Almighty **
I laughed (and more than once) at Evan Almighty, but to be honest, I wasn’t really laughing at the dialogue or situations supplied by Steve Oedekerk’s thin screenplay; I was laughing at the pre-existing personalities brought to the piece by Steve Carell or Wanda Sykes or Jonah Hill. Lauren Graham is wasted, Morgan Freeman spins his wheels, and the whole thing ends with a nausea-inducing "dance sequence". All in all, a mighty underwhelming picture.

Reign Over Me ****
Virtuoso performances by Don Cheadle and Adam Sandler help spackle over the flaws in writer/director Mike Binder’s sloppy script. It is mostly about a performer’s film, and their work is skillful and memorable. Reign Over Me has got some real problems, but it’s got some real power too.

You Kill Me ****
You Kill Me is darkly funny and has a unique voice in spite of its obvious Sopranos leanings and some obvious gags; The love story is warm and sweet, the leading performances by Ben Kingsley, Tea Leoni, and Luke Wilson are engaging, there are fine turns from terrific character actors like Philip Baker Hall and Dennis Farina, and the climax is a beut. You Kill Me is well-crafted and fun, which is exactly what I’ve come to expect from director John Dahl (The Last Seduction, Rounders).

Short Review: "Lust, Caution"

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 01:55:06 GMT

Bad buzz is starting to circle Ang Lee’s new film Lust, Caution (****), which is a shame, because it is a flawed movie but still a pretty goddamned good one, difficult and slowly paced and too damn long but fascinating all the same. The buzz going around (particularly in the less enlightened New York papers) is that it’s long and slow and (here’s the killer) boring—the buzzword which, in today’s movie-going climate, can most effectively kill a picture (people will see a movie that they hear is stupid—witness the killer box office for Transformers—before they’ll see one that they hear is boring). The “long and boring” buzz is also circling the brilliant Assassination of Jesse James, which deserves the label even less than this film does.

The film has also gained some notoriety for its graphic sex scenes, which earned it an NC-17 rating that Focus Features has admirably stuck with. Indeed, if there were ever a solid argument for that rating’s existence (why it should be there, and why it should be practical for Hollywood’s use—which it unfortunately isn’t), it would be this film, which in its best moments recalls Last Tango In Paris—insofar as the sexuality is neither gratuitous nor intended (solely, anyway) for titillation, but is a vital component in understanding its leading characters and their relationship with each other. Things are said in their sex scenes that can’t be stated in dialogue; they enrich the story, instead of taking us outside of it.

Performances are strong across the board, from the always-reliable Tony Leung and Joan Chen to an astonishing newcomer named Wei Tang, whose work as the film’s heroine is legitimately Oscar-worthy. So is the gorgeous cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto (Alejandro González Iñárritu's regular DP, who also shot 25^th Hour and Lee’s previous film, Brokeback Mountain). But the screenplay by Hui-Ling Wang and Lee’s frequent collaborator James Schamus takes entirely too long to get going (its first act is noticeably flabby), and Lee occasionally lets the pace slack a bit too much. Which is not to say Lust, Caution isn’t worthwhile; Lee’s made plenty of masterpieces (Brokeback, Crouching Tiger, The Ice Storm), so I think we can let him get by, once in a while, with one that’s merely very good.

Short review: "Michael Clayton"

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 01:36:23 GMT

It is rare to come across a directorial debut as supremely confident as that of one Tony Gilroy, the screenwriter behind the Bourne films and such well-made studio pictures as Proof Of Life and Extreme Measures. The opening frames of his film Michael Clayton (*****) suck you in and never let go; this is a superbly crafted, masterful film, entertaining and thought-provoking, thrilling and heartbreaking.

In its broad strokes, the story sounds like pseudo-Grisham; the titular character (played by George Clooney in perhaps his finest performance to date, which is no mean feat) is a “fixer”, employed by a powerful law firm to clean up messes and make things happen. He is dispatched to Milwaukee when a senior partner goes off his meds at a deposition, and slowly finds himself sucked into a corporation’s messy cover-up of a ghastly mistake.

But the story is not the thing here; although its thriller elements are effective (and come to a rousing, terrific climax), Michael Clayton is a thoughtful character study masquerading as a Michael Douglas movie, a beautifully written and delicately acted examination of what happens when smart people get in over their heads. There is not one false note played in its entire cast—not Tilda Swinton as the corporation’s head of legal (impeccably groomed but falling apart), not Sidney Pollack as Clayton’s boss (who’s seen it all twice), not Tom Wilkinson as the man who seems, to everyone but himself, to be falling apart.

Gilroy’s direction (and the stunning cinematography by the gifted Robert Elswitt, who lensed Good Night and Good Luck and Syriana with Clooney and all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films) is flawless; watch how superbly he opens the film, how he effortlessly plays with the timeline, and the frightening scene in which a man is brutally but efficiently killed, quietly, in a single unbroken take. And then marvel at his superb final scene, in which the credits are seen simply, without music, over a haunting shot of the face of an enigma that we’ve somehow grown to know.

See Michael Clayton. It’s one of the year’s best films.

Theatre Hopping: "The Kingdom" and "The Darjeeling Limited"

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 23:31:13 GMT

Peter Berg’s The Kingdom (****) is an action picture with a brain, a revenge movie with a conscience, a film that wants (admirably) to have it both ways, and mostly succeeds. It throws the crew-of-experts police-procedural into the blender with a Syriana-lite style political drama, and while it’s an occasionally lean mixture, it is well-made and superbly acted and often brutally effective.

Berg has become a reliable filmmaker; he’s done a fair amount of genre-hopping (his diverse filmography includes Very Bad Things, Friday Night Lights, and The Rundown) and he has yet to make a film that wasn’t at least entertaining. The Kingdom could have easily been a mindless, Rambo-style shoot ‘em up, but Berg and screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan have loftier ambitions, from the beautiful opening sequence (which is kind of mind-blowing) to the perfectly played ending, which is, in its own way, entirely satisfying and terrifyingly bleak. The Kingdom isn’t perfect, but boy is it engaging.

When I left The Darjeeling Limited (****) a couple of hours later, I was in a bit of a state, and I still am—I just haven’t figured out exactly how I felt about it (although apparently I’ve figured it out enough to attach a star rating, so never mind). I can’t decide whether its place as the fifth film of director Wes Anderson is a blessing or a curse, or both. Did I like the film more than I should have, because of the goodwill I brought into it and the high quality of Anderson’s previous works? Or was I holding it up to too high a bar? Would I have fallen all over myself, raving and praising, if it were the first film of some new talent?

It’s hard to say. As we’ve discussed before, film doesn’t exist in a vacuum; all I can venture is that if you liked Anderson’s other films, you’ll like this one, but probably not quite as much. It doesn’t approach Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums or Bottle Rocket, but it’s about as good as The Life Aquatic—though, in an interesting reverse of that film, its dramatic beats are more effective than its comic ones (while Aquatic worked better as comedy than drama, and his other films—particularly Tenenbaums—balanced both equally well).

But comparisons are probably lazy anyway—The Darjeeling Limited is what it is, a lovely looking movie with some nice quirky laughs and fine performances and a heartbreaking moment or two, well-made without being particularly exceptional, and a little slight at 91 minutes (a problem that would have been easily solved by rethinking the strange decision to put the lovely short film prequel, Hotel Chevalier, online instead of running it ahead of the picture). It’s a good film, but it doesn’t quite fill some big shoes.

This Week on DVD: "1408"

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 02:24:26 GMT

1408 **
For the first hour of its running time, 1408 is good, scary, creepy fun, but things go way off the tracks in the third act. 1408 isn’t content to see its haunted hotel room premise through—it delivers an execrable fake ending, followed by a woefully ineffective attempt some Sixth Sense-style emotion. These two diversions fail and fail. If 1408 stuck with what it clearly could do, they would have really had something. But in trying to be more than that, the resulting picture is considerably less.

This Week on DVD: "Bug", "Knocked Up", and "The TV Set"

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 02:42:04 GMT

Bug ****
William Freidkin's Bug is a really fine film, intense and well-written and disturbing and marvelously acted. Ashley Judd headlines, and it’s the best work she’s done in years, while stage actor Michael Shannon is just plain terrific, and (here’s a phrase I never, ever thought I’d write) Harry Connick Jr. is quite good. The film could be a tad tighter in the middle, but that’s a minor complaint; Friedkin’s direction is riveting, and God bless him for seeing the film through to its only logical (but definitely uncommercial) ending. Bug may have bombed in theatres, but look for it to discover its correct audience on DVD.

Knocked Up *****
Knocked Up is the kind of film that cheers the moviegoer’s heart, since it seems to break every sure-fire rule for mainstream success (it has no marquee stars, it’s not a sequel or a remake, and it runs about a half hour longer than most comedies), and it works anyway. Writer/director Apatow may not be (by anyone’s definition) an artsy or experimental filmmaker, but the guy cast Seth Rogen as the leading man in a summer studio comedy, so let’s not deny that he doesn’t mind taking a few risks.

The TV Set ****
The TV Set is a deliberately low-key, almost thin movie; it runs less than 90 minutes and tells the simple story of Mike, a hopeful writer/producer (David Duchovny, aces as always) who tries to bring his quirky, character-driven comedy/drama to fruition on a network that has just scored a huge hit with a reality show called Slut Wars. The TV Set is a little slight, but it’s got some genuine anger and some food for thought.

Theatre Hopping: "The Assassination of Jesse James" and "In The Wild"

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 23:26:53 GMT

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (*****) may have a long and unwieldy title, and a running time to match, but make no mistake about it: Andrew Dominik’s epic drama is fascinating, lyrical, and fucking spellbinding. Its mastery and confidence are established from literally its opening frames, where the stunning cinematography (the film was shot by Roger Deakins, whose films include most of the Coen brothers efforts, The Shawshank Redemption, Jarhead, Dead Man Walking, and last week’s In The Valley of Elah, so you can see that it is no faint praise to say this is his best-looking film to date) is perfectly married to Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ gorgeous music and Dominki’s narration (much of it reportedly pulled verbatim from Ron Hansen’s novel), spoken by Hugh Ross. These narrative interludes punctuate the film and are expertly used to set not only the scene, but the tone; they establish a poetic quality for a film that is something akin to if Terrence Malick made a cowboy picture.

Brad Pitt has earned justified praise for his charming (and occasionally scary) turn as James, but (as many a review has noted) the revelation here is Casey Affleck, whose sad, jittery performance is simply remarkable. The supporting performances are similarly engaging—aside from the always reliable Sam Rockwell, there are terrific turns by Sam Rockwell, Sam Shepard, Paul Schneider, Michael Parks (Tarantino and Rodriguez’s favorite Texas ranger), Ted Levine, and (no kidding) James Carville. Only Mary-Louise Parker and Zooey Deschanel are wasted in too-small roles.

To be sure, Assassination is a plenty leisurely film (about 2 hours and 40 minutes), and it’s in no hurry to get where it’s going. It is no doubt a film that will find many detractors (indeed, it has found plenty already)—many don’t have the patience, energy, or interest in a long, delicate film like this one. It’s their loss. The Assassination of Jesse James is one of the finest films in recent memory.

The stride across the hall led me to Into The Wild (***), a film that may have suffered in comparison (I recall the nine or so months that it took me to realize what a great movie Three Kings was, since I had the misfortune of seeing it the same day as American Beauty; that being said, Into The Wild is no Three Kings). Sean Penn directed Wild and wrote the screenplay from Jon Kraukauer’s nonfiction book, and it is a film that is consistently interesting and well-made, while simultaneously irritating and occasionally infuriating.

Our hero, Christopher McCandless (decently played by Emile Hirsch), is the kind of guy we can wax rhapsodic about in films and books, but who would probably make you crazy within five minutes if you ever actually met him. McCandless is a certain kind of angry young man of privilege, wounded by his steely parents and driven by his bookshelf into an entirely romanticized idea of living “in the wild”—leaving behind his material things, burning his money and ID, and “just livin’.”

So there’s hitchhiking and mountain climbing and river rafting and living in nature, and in all fairness, my disconnect with the film could have everything to do with my inability to idealize any of that; the title of Into the Wild might as well be 140 Minutes of Things Jason Would Never Do. But I did have trouble identifying with the hero, and by the end of the film, I was downright angry with him—fuck the Grizzly Adams fantasy, kid, and get to a goddamned doctor.

Which is not to say that there isn’t plenty worth recommending here; there are plenty of good performances by the ensemble that Penn has put together for Hirsch to encounter along the way, from Catherine Keener and Brian Dierker as roaming hippies to Vince Vaughn and (an unfortunately underused) Zach Galifianakis as roughnecks to Kristen Stewart as a young fellow traveler. There is an entire sequence with Hal Halbrook that’s genuinely wonderful (boy is he being wasted in all those TV movies), and even when the story isn’t working, Eric Gautier’s cinematography (and Eddie Vedder’s songs) keep things interesting. But I think, simple and plain, you have to be a lot like Christopher McCandless to be genuinely moved by his story, and I just didn’t fit that bill.