Tag: Mary Steenburgen

The last time we got a Guillermo del Toro film is when he directed the one about fucking a fish.

Will someone fuck a different creature in Nightmare Alley? Hard to say based on the title alone. I did not know until a little bit before hand that Nightmare Alley was an older book, and also an older movie from 1947. So we are getting a remake. And honestly, this is the exact reason for remakes in my mind. Often remakes are made for successful film that they just want to try again because people liked the first one. They should do more remakes either based on films that failed, or at least just more unknown work to give them a new fresh light.

Not to insult those of you who know and love the original Nightmare Alley film, but honestly, it isn’t super well known now, regardless of how big it may have been in the past.

This new version promised to be closer to the book. Alright, whatever, I am just hear for the movies. Specifically, Guillermo del Toro movies.

No, this isn’t a screengrab from the next Indiana Jones flick…Who is that mysterious stranger, Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper)? The one with the smooth outfit, the clean face, the twinkle in his eyes, the hat? The one who burned down that house for some reason and is willing to just…drift.

Stan finds himself at a traveling show, a carnival, full of lies and deceit. But he sees a geek show, and agrees to help load up for the night for a small payment. And then he gets offered a job to stay along more, because he looks like someone who just needs to be there.

So he stays, he listens, and he learns. Quickly. He learns the tools of the trade. He has plans and ambitions. He has been kept quiet and hidden for so long, he thinks he can take some of these skills and become famous. A celebrity. But if he becomes a man who deals with deceit, eventually, he will be deceited right in the ass.

Also starring Cate Blanchett, Clifton Collins Jr., David Strathairn, Holt McCallany, Mary Steenburgen, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, Rooney Mara, Tim Blake Nelson, Toni Collette, and Willem Dafoe.

I bet his eyes aren’t even closed under there. He is using those eyes and his blindfold eye. He is a phony!

Nightmare Alley is so damn aesthetically pleasing to look at. It is polished (some would even say, polished as fuck). I know it is getting harder and harder to really tell how much of a movie is made in front of green screens, but it feels as if this film was mostly main in real places and scenes, using fine cameras to make everything pop. That is what I truly hope and believe, especially since I know del Toro is a fan of using as many practical effects as possible, generally. But maybe most of it is CGI’d, who knows. It looks wonderful.

The big cast works really together. Some in much smaller roles than expected, but still bringing in their all to tell this strange story. It was good to see Perlman get some work in a non straight to video film. Blanchett is in particular quite a force, basically stealing the movie away from Cooper’s character after she walks into it. She is given a really strong role and one that is hard to top. Cooper also does a wonderful job. It takes awhile before his character starts to talk. I wondered if he would be a silent protagonist for the whole film (like Cage was recently in Wally’s Wonderland) but once he started to actual talk, getting him to stop was the harder part.

The actual story for the film is also a pretty good one, if not slightly familiar in some ways. The ending is the type of thing you can see miles away, because they foreshadow everything really hard. However, it is okay knowing how it ends up, because finding out the lengths someone can fall and also rise is often the most exciting part of a film.

Nightmare Alley, shockingly, has no puppet animals, or strange creatures, or any non humans getting fucked. Is this growth? Nah. That was a one time thing for del Toro. Until it isn’t.

3 out of 4.

Something must be in the water, because this is my second “made for TV” movie in a few weeks. Not to spoil the surprise, but I have a third one next week as well.

To give 7 Days In Hell some credit, it is at least an HBO movie, so it won’t be restricted by what stay at home moms want to call the network to complain about if it gets too violent, sexy, grotesque, or angry. They can do what they want!

The release of the film of course is due to Wimbledon about to finish, so why not have a quick mockumentary about a game that never happened. This film is of course inspired by the Isner-Mahut Wimbledon match up in 2010, that went for over 11 hours over 3 days, and was the real game that would never end. It is not based on the Wimbledon romantic comedy from 2004, which (screw you haters!) is actually one of my favorites of the year.

Paul Bettany just needed better hair, like these folks.

This historic match took place in the early 2000s, but before one can find out why they battled hard enough to play tennis for 7 days straight, one has to see where the men involved came from.

Aaron Williams (Andy Samberg) had a reverse Blind Side situation, where he was a white kid on the streets and he got adopted into a black family. Note the last name, yes, he was the adopted brother of the Williams sisters. So it is no wonder he too became great at tennis. Never great enough unfortunately. Because after a huge accident one serve away from winning Wimbledon in the 90’s, Aaron has never been the same. His game was off, he had to turn to other careers and eventually wound up in prison. His hot head personality is missed on the court for many years until he gets out of jail.

On the other side, we have Charles Poole (Kit Harington), a child prodigy, starting to play tennis at the age of three. Some say his maybe abusive mom (Mary Steenburgen) forced him to be the star he is, but it worked and he became the youngest pro ever. He is also the best chance of a British person actually winning Wimbledon in a long time, coming into the tournament at the 2nd overall seed. He is also close to retarded, having no real schooling outside of tennis and graduating from a truck driving school.

Needless to say, due to (plot), these two gentlemen find themselves playing each other in the first round, Aaron to get back to the top, and Charles for his country and to be the very best.

But then rain delays were just the beginning of the issue, in this back and forth match where a player could rarely hold an upper hand, until, you know, it finally ends and stuff.

Any documentary of course has people to tell the story, so we got a few of those! Including a few tennis historians (Will Forte, Fred Armisen), a Jordache Executive (Lena Dunham), the girlfriend of Charles’ at the time (Karen Gillan), and a creepy TV interview host (Michael Sheen). But that isn’t it, the story is also told by David Copperfield, John McEnroe, and Serena Williams!

This is bullshit, they should be playing overnight as well. Who gave them breaks?

I tend to try and have some sort of time criteria for a review. If a movie isn’t an hour long, is it really a movie? Or is it a strange television episode? This in particular has made documentary watching harder, because there are a lot of made for TV documentaries that include commercials leaving the viewer with 40-45 minutes of material. Most notably in this group would be the ESPN 30 for 30 documentaries, which this mockumentary is actually styled after. So it makes sense for the movie to only be about 43 minutes in length, and hey, I will let it pass, because the teaser for it made me giggle. Damn it.

I was surprised at how many jokes it could cram into one tiny documentary. A lot goes on with their lives and with the game, and it feels good not really spoiling any of it. In particular, after Samberg, Forte and Armisen provide the most laughs as the historians.

This is a tiny project and it definitely works for what it is. If anything, Harington is actually the most disappointing aspect. I don’t think it is him, but they gave him a lame character to play. Either way, I hope they do more movies in this style in the future, as they can provide easy entertainment probably relatively cheaply for the channel.

3 out of 4.

I was just as shocked as everybody else that The Book of Life and The Lego Movie didn’t get nominated for Best Animated Film. But also, I did give the former a 2 and the latter a 3, only. The two I gave 4’s made it and the other was a 3. So clearly, I was really on my game with the Academy.

But how was I to suspect that some foreign animated films would make it?! Crazy talk!

The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a Studio Ghibli movie, which tends to mean quality. I didn’t even know they did movies without Miyazaki, but there ya go!

I would describe this animation style as “moving painting.”

The story begins with an old bamboo cutter (James Caan), being in the forest, cutting bamboo. He sees a glowing plant, and from it drops a tiny little princess girl that can fit in his hands. Shit that’s weird. He obviously brings it back home to his wife (Mary Steenburgen), and bam. That tiny thing turns into a regular sized baby. And hey, his wife suddenly has milk inducing boobies!

That stuff is crazy. The baby grows quickly too, so the local village kids nickname her Little Bamboo. Soon, the princess (Chloe Grace Moretz) is running around with all the kids, singing songs, playing games, going on adventures. Her best friend is Sutemaru (Darren Criss).

But her dad takes her away from the forest to the city. They get a big house with clothes and someone to teach her how to be a real princess (Lucy Liu). That means being a super obedient girl, basically. Seen but not heard. Never showing emotion. Never doing fun things. Terrible.

Kaguya doesn’t want that, no matter how pretty she is. She will avoid suitors at all cost and fight the good fight. You go Glen Kaguya.

Excitingly, the art matches the emotion really fucking well.

The story is actually based on a famous Japanese folk tale, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Clearly western influence made them focus more on the princess than the boring old wood cutter. It is very close to the main narrative, but in all honesty, this version is probably way better. I see there are tons of movies based on this tale already, mostly live action. But again, this is one is probably way better.

Because this one was fucking awesome!

Like, incredibly. I talked about how crazy The Wind Rises, using “Traditional 2D Animation” but feeling like a 3D CGI wonderland. This one instead felt like a living painting, like I was watching an artist make each individual scene in front of me. Just super quick. I guess actors were hanging around too to talk as the characters. The metaphor isn’t perfect, but the animation is.

4 out of 4.

If I learned anything about the advertising campaign of Last Vegas, it is that sometimes people don’t like seeing the same ad every fifteen minutes. Last Vegas was produced by CBS Films, so it has the benefit of being advertised on a channel that is watched by the millions during football games every Sunday.

Unfortunately for the movie, I know plenty of people who wrote it off solely on overexposure, a likelihood probably expressed around America.

At least the suits are colorful.

Last Vegas takes us into the lives of four kids who grew up best friends, but into their adulthood, their lives began to veer in different paths.

But Billy (Michael Douglas) is getting married, finally! To a girl half his age! So he wants to invite his old pals to the wedding: Sam (Kevin Kline), who is currently living a sad life in Florida in a sexless relationship. Archie (Morgan Freeman), who is living with his son (Michael Ealy), while constantly on pills. And even Paddy (Robert De Niro), who hasn’t left his apartment since his wife died a year ago and also really really hates Billy now.

Why does he hate Billy? Well, that is a spoiler. But he gets tricked into showing up for the bachelor party / wedding.

Thanks to pension funds and a little luck, the four gentlemen end up having one of the wildest weekends imaginable, while also allowing time to air out their grievances and fix their standing in life. How awesome is that?

Mary Steenburgen plays Diana, a lounge singer who helps create conflict, Romany Malco, their butler-esque character, and Jerry Ferrara, a recurring jerk.

Old dudes, doing young things. Hilarious!

I think I figured out a pattern in new comedies. First we had a group of guys in Vegas with The Hangover in 2009, then a group of girls in Vegas with Bridesmaids in 2011. Another two years later we were given old guys in Vegas, so I expect in 2015, we will get either old women in Vegas, or elementary school girls in Vegas. It depends on if this relationship is linear or a ramping sine wave, respectfully.

Overall, I guess this movie delivered exactly as the previews showed. A lot of old people jokes. Old people jokes are a subset of jokes, where everything is funnier, just because the characters involved happen to be old. So old people talking about drugs, going to clubs, flirting, being hungover. This movie has the bonus aspect of seeing Morgan Freeman do all of these things, one of the more revered older actors currently out there.

But after awhile, it becomes obvious that all of the jokes are basically the same, so it is hard to still find them funny across the entire run time. The movie also took its sweet time ending, with what felt like at least three endings thrown on.

Of our actors, Douglas was not at his best, which is a shame given his last role in Behind The Candelabra. De Niro was also hit and miss in this film. The best two were Kline and Freeman, arguably supporting actors in this movie.

Most of the plot lines for the characters went the obvious routes, so nothing felt surprising. Everything gets wrapped up by the end, the conflict presented isn’t too huge, and it is just a simple movie. It was odd to see E from Entourage, so thin. There were two cameos: LMFAO, an already outdated reference, and 50 Cent, who was a welcome surprise.

If you go into Last Vegas expecting a lot of cheap laughs and some touching moments, then you will overall enjoy it. Not a game changer by any means in the comedy genre, but an okay one all the same.

 

2 out of 4.