.:.
Cover photo by Federico Mauro, used under Creative Commons license
Category: Movies
“Maybe in America, Irish. Maybe in America.”
I’ll admit, when I saw the ads for Captain Phillips (imdb | rotten tomatoes) I thought it was going to be lame. Mediocre. A studio cashing in on a rah-rah story of Navy SEALS saving a hijacked ship captain, with Tom Hanks getting the paycheck. But then it was scoring great reviews, and I realized it was directed by Paul Greengrass. Then it was getting nominated for Golden Globes and Oscars.
So last night we watched it, and yeah…it was really good. I mean, the whole thing was good, but the last fifteen minutes were about as tense and impactful as anything I’ve seen in a movie recently. The film by which I measure all tension crescendos is United 93, also directed by Greengrass, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Tom Hanks was his usual amazing self and, frankly, those final minutes gave him a chance to flex in a way I haven’t seen in years. And all four actors playing the Somali pirates, but especially Barkhad Abdi, were tremendous.
Highly recommended.
.:.
Cover photo by Cliff, used under Creative Commons license
“I’ll tell you what: I’m never eating at Benihana again. I don’t care whose birthday it is.”
Welp, The Wolf Of Wall Street (imdb | rotten tomatoes) isn’t gonna make my best films of 2013 list. It’s not even in the ‘near misses’ category. It was overlong, excessive (even by Scorsese standards), and swung for the wrong fences. I wanted about ten more scenes of a mental battle with Kyle Chandler’s character, along with — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — about ten fewer extraneous scenes of naked women. They gambolled about like lost lambs and were just as disposable to these guys as their bags of Quaaludes and it was depressing.
The only things that almost saved the movie for me were 1) Matthew McConaughey’s cameo, and 2) Jonah Hill, who was flat-out amazing. With the fake teeth I actually kind of forgot it was him. So, bravo to two guys who a few years ago were just in no position to play these kinds of parts.
.:.
Cover photo by Patrick Bell, used under Creative Commons license
Lost inside her captain station
Every year the Academy Award nominees are announced, and every year the lists are picked apart. There’s always a name or two from each category that the punters think should have made it, but this year I noticed one that struck me as particularly off: best actor in a leading role. The actual nominees are:
- Christian Bale for American Hustle
- Bruce Dern for Nebraska
- Leonardo DiCaprio for The Wolf Of Wall Street
- Chiwetel Ejiofor for 12 Years A Slave
- Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club
But really, would anyone have been surprised if the list had been these five?
- Tom Hanks for Captain Phillips
- Oscar Isaac for Inside Llewyn Davis
- Michael B. Jordan for Fruitvale Station
- Joaquin Phoenix for Her
- Robert Redford for All Is Lost
Or Matthew McConaughey for Mud, come to that?
.:.
Cover photo by Rachel, used under Creative Commons license
“If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it’s a folk song.”
Last night we sat ourselves in the stellar TIFF Bell Lightbox theatre to see Inside Llewyn Davis (imdb | rotten tomatoes), the latest from the Coen Brothers. In addition to always wanting to see anything they do, I was interested to see the (loose) telling of the story of Dave Van Ronk. I only knew of Van Ronk from my dad’s stories, about how he was such a big part of the burgeoning early-60s NYC folk music movement but never became widely known. Stories of insider-respected but mostly-unknown people fascinate me, and they seem right in the Coen’s wheelhouse too.
I didn’t love the whole movie at first: there were parts I absolutely adored (Adam Driver during a studio session, for example, or the astonishing Oscar Isaac’s final verse of “The Death Of Queen Jane”), but other parts where it lost me (like the weird side trip to Chicago, or any time Carey Mulligan was on screen…we were being made to hate her character so much that it felt false and inorganic). Still, the parts that missed are fading quickly while the most moving moments — mostly centred around Isaac singing — won’t leave my mind. I even had “Please Mr. Kennedy” — the lone song played for laughs, no less — stuck in my head this morning for hours. I felt compelled to download the soundtrack immediately, and am listening to it as I write this. You should really buy it. I could never wish for the Coen brothers to stop making films, but if they decided to do nothing but musical collaborations with T Bone Burnett, I could live with that.
.:.
Cover photo by dhelling01, used under Creative Commons license
“There are fierce powers at work in the world, boys. Good, evil, poor luck, best luck.”
We continue to work our way through the best-reviewed films of 2013, and yesterday we watched two which immediately found their way onto my revised best-of-2013 list. Highly recommended if you can find them.
Mud (imdb | rotten tomatoes) flew completely under my radar. I don’t even remember hearing about it when it came to Canada last May. What a damn film, though. Textured, real, with this feel of being so familiar but practically on another planet (or, I guess, southeast Arkansas). Also: I don’t know what spirit quest Matthew McConaughey went on in 2010, but man did it do him some good. After a whole string of shite romantic comedies (culminating with Ghosts of Girlfriends Past in 2009) he started a tear in 2011 that included The Lincoln Lawyer (not great, but not bad either), Bernie, Killer Joe, Mud, Dallas Buyers Club, and The Wolf Of Wall Street. OK, fine, The Paperboy and Magic Mike happened in there too, but at least they were edgy. Ish.
Fruitvale Station (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was director Ryan Coogler’s first feature, though you wouldn’t know it. He told the story of Oscar Grant‘s shooting at the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland so expertly — fiction and fact intermingled, certainly, but skilfully — that you’d think him a veteran director. Also very impressive: Michael B. Jordan, who I only knew from Friday Night Lights, Chronicle, and (vaguely) The Wire. He pulled off something amazing: despite knowing what happens — the film opens with the now-public cellphone footage of the shooting, which can also be found on YouTube — Jordan makes us, over the course of the flashed-back day prior to the shooting, understand and like and empathize with Grant so much that we root for time to unfold differently, for the shooting never to happen. But then Coogler guides you through it, and it’s just wrenching.
.:.
Cover photo by Wayne Hsieh, used under Creative Commons license
Best movies of 2013
It feels very, very strange to write this list this year because — for the first time that I can remember — I can barely put together a serious top-ten list. That’s always my target, and I usually have no trouble doing it, but seriously…of the 31 films released this year which we’ve seen, I can only just say ten of them were good enough to be on my ‘best of’ list at year’s end. And frankly, I’m not even sure Pacific Rim is of the same calibre as films I’ve recommended in previous years.
Now, keep in mind that I haven’t yet seen any of Mud (update: amazing), Gravity (update: stunning), 12 Years A Slave (update: good, and important, but not a great film), American Hustle (update: disappointing), The Wolf Of Wall Street (update: disappointing), Dallas Buyer’s Club, Inside Llewyn Davis (update: fantastic), Captain Phillips (update: great), Her, Frances Ha, Blue Jasmine, In A World… (update: loved it), Nebraska, Blue Is The Warmest Color, Stories We Tell, The Act Of Killing, A Hijacking, War Witch, Fruitvale Station (update: incredible), Sound City (update: good), Muscle Shoals (update: excellent), The Square, 20 Feet From Stardom, All Is Lost, Call Me Kuchu, or Room 237. So I might be short-changing 2013.
Here’s what I have as of now:
UPDATE: on second thought, I didn’t like how this was working out. I felt like I had to split it up. There are movies which drew me in and affected me as I watched them (the first list) and others which, while enjoyable, won’t really stick with me (the second list). As we continue to catch up on 2013 I expect both lists to grow. Or not?
The best
- Before Midnight
- Blackfish
- Captain Phillips
- Drinking Buddies
- Fruitvale Station
- Gravity
- In A World…
- Inside Llewyn Davis
- Mud
- Muscle Shoals
- Why Don’t You Play In Hell?
Near misses
- 12 Years A Slave
- Don Jon
- Miss Violence
- Prisoners
- Watermark
- The World’s End
.:.
Photo by Clint McMahon, used under Creative Commons license
“Now, if you will excuse me, I have to not speak to you people any longer.”
I guess our DNA leads us to binge-movie-watch in the month of December, because we went on a tear this weekend. The most recent four:
- Olympus Has Fallen (imdb | rotten tomatoes): actually, Nellie watched this one without me a while back…I just watched it one evening while I was sick, but recovered sufficiently that I could look at a backlit screen without puking. Anyhoo: it was far from a great movie, but it was an order of magnitude better than the pile of Die Hard-thieving shit that was White House Down. Usually film violence seems either brutal or stylized to me, but in this one the violence felt brutal and stylized.
- Still with locations central to Greek mythology, I was a little disappointed with Elysium (imdb | rotten tomatoes). The acting was too stilted too often — also, what the Jesus was with Jodie Foster’s accent? She speaks fluent French and was made up to look like Christine Lagarde…but then for some reason spoke like a bad-SNL-skit caricature of a French person speaking English — and the effects, while usually pretty stunning, drowned out the story.
- I wasn’t sure what to expect from Don Jon (imdb | rotten tomatoes), Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut. It ended up being less funny than I expected (down to my mistaken impression from the trailer, not a weakness in the movie…it was still quite clever) and more heartfelt, in spite of the subject matter. I’ve continued to think about it for the last day or so, and it gets slightly better in my mind each time.
- From the light and fun Don Jon we take a massive turn toward Prisoners (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which was intense and creepy. I really liked it, but probably couldn’t recommend it to my brother with kids. Or anyone who considers Hugh Jackman a heartthrob and wants it to stay that way.
.:.
Photo by Takashi H, used under Creative Commons license
“Not since Hall and Oates has there been such a team.”
I thought about doing a whole long sappy blog post about how thankful I am for this and that, but figured the whole fact that I can write a blog post while the place smells like turkey pretty much denotes how good my life is. So I’ll just point out the highlights of our weekend so far:
First of all, it’s always a good weekend when your colleague starts it off with a gift of some 1er Cru burgundy:
We took it easy Friday night, sneaking a spot at Richmond Station’s bar for some excellent food. Nellie had oysters and flank steak; I had beet salad and crispy duck. A bottle of Norm Hardie Cab Franc went perfectly with it all. We then just watched The Sessions (imdb | rotten tomatoes) at home, which was excellent. Lots of ex-Deadwood representation too.
Saturday morning we got up early and gathered all we needed from St. Lawrence Market for Thanksgiving dinner, traded in some old speakers for a pair of outdoor Sonance speakers that look like fake rocks, picked up some interesting beer, then walked to Volo where we enjoyed some pumpkin beer and ploughman’s lunch and quite possibly the last hot, sunny patio day of the year.
After that we picked up our Thanksgiving turkey (who we named Carl, in honor of The Walking Dead re-starting tonight) at Cumbrae’s, then watched The Place Beyond The Pines (imdb | rotten tomatoes) which I’m still having a bit of trouble sorting out and a hockey game (mostly me).
Sunday was a day-long exercise in relaxing and cooking, then eating, Carl.
We also slammed through half the first season of Orange Is The New Black, which is pretty good. We’ll likely finish it today, along with the rest of Carl.
It was a perfect, relaxing weekend — just what I needed with the week I have coming up.
.:.
Photo by Doug Kerr, used under Creative Commons license
“Mother Nature is a serial killer.”
This weekend is all about TV (Breaking Bad series finale, new season of Homeland starting) but we have watched a few movies leading up to it:
Drinking Buddies (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was fun to watch…it was low-budget and improvised, so it felt authentic. The chemistry between Jake Johnson and Olivia Wilde was scary. This isn’t a movie that would play in megaplex theatres. It’s too real.
I’d read World War Z recently and liked it, but know it doesn’t bear much resemblance to the movie that’s just come out (imdb | rotten tomatoes). The always-brilliant Oatmeal, for example, compared the two this way (but you shouldn’t read it if you plan to eventually read the book):
Still, Nellie loves her zombies, so we watched it. It wasn’t terrible, but it obviously lacked the nuance and sweep of the book. For the record, though, I didn’t remember Brad Pitt doing very much shooting himself. He throws a lot of things and makes several distressed phone calls.
Turning completely in the opposite direction last night, we went to the Lightbox to see Watermark (imdb | rotten tomatoes), the new documentary by Jennifer Baichwal and photographer Edward Burtynsky. Much like Manufactured Landscapes it’s predominantly visual, building on Burtynsky’s latest project about how water has shaped us and, more recently, how we’ve shaped water. It’s stunning and intriguing and more than a little worrying. Burtynsky said in a Q&A after the film that he wanted it to land somewhere between a Michael Moore-style polemic and a purely visual piece like Samsara, and I think it worked.
.:.
Photo by Bill McIntyre, used under Creative Commons license
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 