Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton face-off for one final bout in "Warrior"
Warrior: Two brothers, both with the weight of the world and their past on their shoulders, enter the cage. Only one may leave with the five million dollar prize.
"Warrior" is an action-packed drama about a pair of brothers both traumatized by their shattered childhoods, who now are trying to redeem themselves in the tumultuous and dangerous ring of mixed martial arts. One brother, Tommy (a mercurial Tom Hardy), a shaken, returning veteran from the
Iraq War, and the other Brendan (Joel Edgerton) a
high school physics teacher haplessly trying to pay the mortgage.They
along with their father (played with sweet sadness and unbridled fury by
Nick Nolte) try to use fighting to fix their troubled pasts, but also to
embolden their fleeting futures.
In an age when more and more people whine and complain that the movies they see don't reflect their regular American values, and that things like "The Blind Side" are the only antidote, "Warrior" goes a long way to remind that movies with heart need not check their intelligent dramatic tension or their fierce emotional performances at the door. This film written and directed with great blue collar gumption by Gavin O'Connor ("Tumbleweeds" and "Miracle") is muscular, taut film with some amazing performance to buoy even its silliest moments.
Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) doing everything she can to win back her man
Just imagine that worst-case scenario version of seventeen year-old yourself. Think of all of your little quirks you had then, those annoying and frustrating habits that you've been able to lessen or eliminate from growing up or gaining some life experience.
Now just imagine that version of yourself is 37 and completely unchanged from that petulant and socially inappropriate teenager, and even worse, blithely oblivious that that kind of behavior is not expected or even wanted anymore. This is a good starting place to try to describe the ballsy, slightly manic, and always delusional Mavis Gary, Charlize Theron's protagonist in the new comedy "Young Adult" from writer Diablo Cody ("Juno," TV's "United States of Tara") and Jason Reitman ("Up in the Air" and "Juno").
Mavis is a mess. As a writer of a series of young adult "Sweet Valley of the Traveling Pants"-style novels (that was recently canceled) about popular blonde girls whose intelligence and smarts are like obviously ignored because they're so popular and beautiful, she spends most of her time recovering from her hangover from the previous night, drinking vast amounts of Diet Coke, and procrastinating from finishing her final book by online shopping and watching "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" for inspiration. It's not a full life, but she's so happy if for nothing else then to be living in the Big City (Minneapolis) and not in her tiny little hometown of Mercury, Minnesota.
When I was younger, my family had an old VHS tape my parents had recorded of, "The Muppets: A Tribute to Jim Henson," that aired on CBS during November sweeps in 1990. This one-hour special honored the legendary genius, puppeteer, and innovator behind the Muppets, Sesame Street, and Fraggle Rock, amongst other things, who had died only months earlier of a strep infection. The tribute was a mix of old footage from past Henson programs and films, interviews with colleagues plus, a continuing skit where the Muppets tried to plan a tribute to Henson without knowing who he was.
The mood was appropriately somber with testimonials from the likes of Carol Burnett, Harry Belafonte, and Steven Spielberg waxing poetically about Henson's creativity, his artistic pursuits as a storyteller, and his integration of education into children's television programming. But, despite these moments of sobriety, the Muppet characters themselves, with their whoopie cushion jokes, delightful plays on words, and silly musical numbers, were not letting any amount of melancholy or sadness spoil the pursuits Henson had for his singular creations--to laugh, sing, be silly, and simply, just make everyone happy.
Writer/star Jason Segal ("Forgetting Sarah Marshall," TV's "How I Met Your Mother") hasn't forgotten this same joy and this same exuberance when creating his own film titled simply "The Muppets." Unlike in the most recent cinematic, Muppet efforts ("Muppet Treasure Island" or "Muppets in Space"), where the film relied heavily on a high-concept, this film goes back to the old-fashioned "put-on-a-show" style movie.
The show in question is a benefit concert for the Muppet Studios which, unless they raise the money, will be taken over by an evil oil baron (played with reckless abandon and obvious fun by Chris Cooper). Segal plays Gary, who along with his girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams), and his Muppet brother Walter (a gaga fan of the Muppets), travel across the country to Hollywood, see the dilapidated studio, and then try to get the gang back together for one last event.
High Shakespeare it most certainly is not, but it doesn't matter because between the new original songs (written by Brit McKenzie of "Flight of the Conchords" fame), the great running gags, and the verve from the lead actors (Amy Adams!!) as well as the celebrity cameos the film delivers exactly what it's supposed to.
But that's also the problem. There's nothing new, nothing fresh. There's nothing as startlingly perfect as Kermit singing "The Rainbow Connection" at the beginning of the first film or a cameo as well played as Orson Welles or Steve Martin. Yes, a running gag involving how the Muppets are has-beens is funny and has good mileage for jokes, but it can't be the whole film. I wish Segal would have pushed for a more original way to tell the same story. Everyone was obviously apt to do, and the songs (especially "Life is A Happy Song" and "Man or Muppet") are as catchy as ever, but the film as a whole feels just rather flimsy.
Gripes aside, I don't think it's possible to leave the theater with anything less than a smile on your face. You go to the theater for 98 minutes, smile, laugh, and beam from ear-to-ear; can you possibly do better than that? It's been twelve years since their last film, and more than anything I'm just so glad there's a whole generation of kids and families that can get excited and be happy to see the Muppets on the screen. Grade: B
Well it's that time of year again. After yesterday's mainstream and baffling list of Screen Actors Guild Award nominees, maybe the Globes will help clear up the picture for the Oscars next month. In the last few years, the Globes have become less and less predictive. They have their own wild tastes (The Tourist? really, really?) so it's still unsure where their allegiances lies this year. One thing we always know for sure. The Globes like their stars. So any chance of getting bigger stars into a room, they're going to take it. So here are my "foolproof" predictions. I'm not predicting a couple big stars so maybe I'll be the one looking like a fool, but here we go.
Best Picture- Drama
The Descendants
Extremely Loud, and
Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
War Horse
Best Picture- Musical/Comedy
The Artist
Beginners
Bridesmaids
Midnight In Paris
The Muppets
Best Director- Motion Picture
Michel Hazanavicius “The
Artist”
Alexander Payne “The
Descendants”
Stephen Daldry “Extremely
Loud, and Incredibly Close”
Like
Crazy: Remember in the final scene of The Graduate, when after Benjamin
Braddock crashing Elaine's wedding, they catch a bus, and go and sit
the back? Instead of cutting right to the credits though,
director Mike Nichols holds the camera on them, for what feels like an eternity in film time, showing the confusion,
bewilderment, and potential excitement of this new situation wash over their
faces. In, Like Crazy, writer/director Drake Doremus has been able to capture those feelings; those petulant, inconvenient, incredibly intense experiences of first love. Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones star as Jacob and Anna--her, an
exchange student from the UK, him a design student from the States--who
meet in college in a whirlwind romance that takes them both into only to
be tested by everything from her expired student visa and her
deportation back to the UK, the continued distance between them,
occasional temptations, and most poignantly, the fact that they are
growing up.
Now it may sound trite, but it's actually
quite moving. You can see the anxiety and indecision of what these two
are going through so stridently you can't help but relate. In Jones
especially as well as Yelchin, Doremus has found equals, actors with
equal parts whip smart emotional connection as well as enough
believability to make even the most cloying of moments (of which there
are a couple) avoid becoming schlocky. The continual
back-and-forth does get a bit grating after a while especially since
these two are in their early 20s and their estrangement doesn't seem to
hold the same weight that something like that of Ryan and Michelle in
Blue Valentine a year ago. Their lives separate seem disproportionately
better than when they are together, so I don't see why they want it so
badly. The script also needed to work on the characterization of the
alluring Jennifer Lawrence and Charlie Bewley as the estranged couples
significant others when they're apart. They are so underwritten, and
poor Lawrence is especially wasted despite being so astute in her few
brief moments. Like so many before it, Like Crazy is a rear view look into a
worldview we all remember all too well. It may be a little tough
sometimes to be confronted so brutally with ones own past. Grade: B
One
Day: Based on the widely popular and lovely novel by David Nicholls,
the film follows two young Brits Dexter (Jim Sturgess) and Emma (Anne
Hathaway) and drops in on them every year for the next twenty years on
the day they met. It's a cute concept, and it nearly works as a
film, but somewhere along the way, Nicholls in adapting his own work
and director Lone Scherfig (who directed 2009's An Education
with such delicacy and care) has taken the quirky and romantic and
tried to make it sweeping and expansive and it just isn't big enough to
fit that frame. For some reason, the filmmakers chose to focus
more of their attention to Sturgess' Dexter leaving poor Annie as just
this girl that pops in every few minutes to remind us she's there. She
does what she can (despite a pretty unsteady accent), but no matter how
much she wants us to think her socially awkward and idiosyncratic, I now
find it hard to believe Anne Hathaway bookish and homely. Kudos to
Patricia Clarkson (the screen's most dependable scene stealer) as
Dexter's mother The film has some swoony romantic moments and
gestures, and the last twenty minutes really sing. Ultimately though,
One Day is bogged down by a concept and doesn't seem to break free
leaving a group of very talented people stranded in a cage of their own
design. Grade: C+
After the jump.....the spotlight on the ever-declining newspaper industry, and on a film that slightly tarnishes the golden standard of Pixar Animation
As we've seen in many of the films of 2011 ("The Tree of Life, "Melancholia") there seems to be this new ever constant worry that
something bad is about to happen. With the floods, earthquake, tsunamis,
and even the supposed potential of the Mayan 2012 deadline, there is a
heightened paranoia that has permeated and ingrained itself upon our
lives and culture, and now into our cinemas. Two of this year's biggest Sundance titles, "Take Shelter" and "Martha Marcy May Marlene" tackle this obsession and fear in different and rather personal ways.
In "Take Shelter," writer/director Jeff Nichols looks at these prevailing insecurities through
the eyes of Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon), an Ohioan construction
worker, husband, and father to a young deaf girl, who begins having a
series of intense and vivid dreams involving the wild and disastrous weather, his dog, and
even his family turning on him. He tries to deal with these fears, much
to his wife's dismay, by buying gas masks, stockpiling canned goods, and even refurbishing the storm shelter in the
backyard of his small farmhouse.
Anonymous: An entertaining and well-made picture that suggests that Shakespeare wasn't actually responsible for the greatest literary career in the history of the English language. Jump off the cliff. Suspend your disbelief for 130 minutes (it is a bit long in the last third) and buy into the really fabulous frocks, the palace intrigue and the plotting, scheming, and cheating.
Rhys Ifans with real verve and strength of conviction plays Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, a nobleman who can't be seen writing poems and plays because that doesn't befit his station in life. So he hires first, a struggling Ben Johnson, but eventually an illiterate buffoon of an actor named William Shakespeare to do the job.
