Category Archives: Features

SPOTLIGHT: George Clooney

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George Clooney is the essential American. The essential white American upper class male to be politically correct, because being politically correct is something Clooney takes quite seriously. His nature is calm, collected and suave, being as cool and crisp as a Labor Day afternoon. He delivers his lines with poetic insistence and looks at the other actors with sharpening charm. His onscreen talents are limited to a character that can match up with his own personality, but he plays them so damn well it doesn’t matter. Though his range is limited, he smartly remains diverse in his characters, avoiding becoming a one note pretty face actor like a similar storied Jenifer Aniston. After making his break for being a hunk on the hit show ER in the late 90’s, Clooney slowly evolved his career by working with Steven Soderbergh in the Ocean’s series and the Coen brothers along with other notable directors, turning his off-screen GQ cover aura into living characters with the same wowing affect. A handful of philanthropy efforts and notable directing, writing and producing jobs which won him awards.  But lately, Clooney has brought back the kind of class movie stars used to carry and embody in the 40’s and 50’s. Though it may not appear so, Clooney’s talent is making it look so easy with the utmost esteem and adoration, making him the original class act of the new Hollywood. Continue reading →

SPOTLIGHT: Cate Blanchett

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Cate Blanchett has come a long way in a short period of time.  One of the actresses to gain momentum in the 2000’s and rise quickly to critical praise, she has become an actress that everyone has seen in at least one movie.  It was probably Lord of the Rings, but in no way does that tiny part reveal to us the extraordinary skill this woman posseses.  She garnered much of her fame for playing Queen Elizabeth, and became the first person ever to win an Oscar for playing an Oscar-winning actress (Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator.)  She selects roles that will take her somewhere new, and by extention she takes us with her.  Whether she is a school teacher drawn into an affair with one of her students or Bob Dylan, Blanchett never hesitates to go to places other performers would stumble.

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BLACKLIGHT: Jennifer Aniston

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There are a few reasons Jennifer Aniston is a household name and an adored dame, and none of them have anything to do with acting. Her break came in the early 90’s from the sitcom phenomenon Friends, which followed the lives of six 20-something New Yorkers trying survive the repressions they had from their wealth families- getting higher education, being beautiful and oversexed and living in an area of economic and political stability. Aniston quickly became a favorite in the cast and a star on the big screen because of the damsel qualities she showed as Rachel Green, a color she got used to seeing in her pockets with her then-record $1 million per episode price tag plus hair product endorsements. And hair was the second thing that launched her career, influencing female style for nearly a decade and earning her the cover of every magazine in tinsel town. The fame monster grew even larger once Aniston started a relationship and married movie star and mega stud Brad Pitt. Continue reading →

SPOTLIGHT: Laura Linney

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Few actresses stay under the radar and still garner as much acclaim as Laura Linney.  She hit her hot streak in the 2000’s with rich, respectable roles in small movies.  However, she has transcended the “indie darling,” label with struts onto the small screen in John Adams and her new headlining act on Showtime on The Big C.  Linney doesn’t just pick movies to make bank.  She does projects where the female characters she plays aren’t jokes, even if they tell them.  She has a knack for both comedy and drama, but her real gift lies in the middle ground (The Squid and the Whale, The Savages).  Few actresses can garner a chuckle and gasp in the same scene, but she does it expertly.  Though she often shares the spotlight with gifted male counterparts like Liam Neeson or Phillip Seymour Hoffman, she never lets them steal it.  She’s that rare actress that doesn’t try to steal scenes but still ends up doing it quite often.

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If they were in television… Lars von Trier

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Notable films: Europa, Dancer in the Dark, Antichrist, Dogville, Breaking the Waves, and The Idiots.

Famous for: Shocking his audience, controversy, female lead performances, depressing idealism, anti-religious undercurrents, beautifully unique visuals, low budget hand-held camera angles, talking about his fears and emotions, and refusing to watch his own movies.

Hypothetical title: Heaven’s Highway

Hypothetical premise: After being set up for a misdemeanor and kicked out by her polygamist family, lonely widow Gretchen kills her abusive father and flees her small west-coast mountain town.  Emerging from the mountains a completely new person, she begins rebuilding her life for herself, learning her sense of individuality and coming into her own.  However, the past catches back up to her, and she is soon on the run from the law as well as her haunting, abusive past.  She begins seeing delusional crimes committed in everyday life, mimicking both the ones her father did and the way she killed him. When the police catch her, there is no proof that her father was the patriarch of a repressive polygamist regime because nobody in it will talk but her.  She is sentenced to life in prison, but commits suicide after reflecting on how good her life was for those few months.

Cross between: Thelma and Louise, Dancer in the Dark, Big Love, and Dogville.

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Five misleading movie covers

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A movie’s poster is often one of the biggest selling points outside of the trailer.  For this reason, studios release movie posters with a less-than-true representation of what we’re about to see.  This is especially true with small-budget films that they feel they can market to certain groups.  Comprised here are a list of 5 really blatant attempts to get you to watch a movie that isn’t what’s on the cover.

1. Kramer vs. Kramer-  This is a bitter movie about a mom (Meryl Streep) hopping town to deal with her life, leaving dad (Dustin Hoffman) with young kid.  The poster makes it seem like that family movie where the stakes are too low for the themes to mean anything, but this one hits hard.  When mom’s gone and dad’s bonding with the son he forgot he had, sentiment makes its way into the script’s veins.  In the bitter beginning and the grueling court cases though, the poster becomes a relic of something that died a long time ago.   It’s a terrific movie with terrific actors, but its charm only goes so far.

2. Happy-Go-Lucky- Indie rom-com this is not.  Mike Leigh’s criminally underrated character study of a stubbornly optimistic woman (Sally Hawkins) challenged at every turn is uproarious, charming, and insightful.  She does not exactly fall in love, and the guy giving her the piggy-back ride on the front is not the same guy who does it in the movie.  By any means don’t let it deter you from seeing this great movie, it’s not the run-of-the-mill indie romance it’s sold as.

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SPOTLIGHT: Adrien Brody

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Nobody would’ve believed someone who said Adrien Brody would be the science fiction star of 2010.  But here we are, with Brody offering up two performances in Splice and Predators that, along with his work in movies like King Kong, The Village, and The Jacket earn him a place among the most unconventional science fiction/fantasy stars working today.  However, Brody does much more than sci-fi.  He has triumphed the Oscars (The Pianist), solved murder mysteries (Hollywoodland), and searched for himself alongside his brothers (The Darjeeling Limited); whether or not the movie is that great, you can rely on Mr. Brody to create a character that you’ll want to watch and learn more about.  Here are his five most interesting to date.

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Our (Belated) Best Male Performances of the Decade

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1. Daniel Day-Lewis- There Will Be Blood– Towering doesn’t even begin to describe Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic deconstruction of the American Dream.  He commands the screen with a ferociousness and method that makes him peerless among other living screen actors.  As Daniel Plainview, he creates a vision of greed as a replacement for love that is ferocious, haunting, and uncompromising.  Though Anderson was the visionary behind the camera, it would not have come to full fruition without the help of Day-Lewis.  Who else could belch the line “I drink your milkshake!” and make it sound like the coming of the apocalypse? Key Scene- In a three hour movie where he appears in every scene, it’s hard to choose one.  In the end, I decided between two confrontations between Plainview and the preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano).  The infamous “milkshake” scene actually takes second place the the excruciating baptism Plainview is ordered to endure to get the land he wants.  Now in Sunday’s arena, he is forced to pay for the sins of his past, namely humiliating the preacher by smacking him around in the dirt.  Now getting the sin slapped out of him and water thrown in his face in front of the whole congregation, Plainview loses that ever-important control.  In a surprising release of emotion, he appears to reach out to the son he abandoned.  Whether he likes it or not,  he’s been gotten to, and there will be… well, you get the idea.

2. Heath Ledger- The Dark Knight– A short-lived career bore many fruits for the late, great Ledger.  His performance in The Dark Knight won him a rare posthumous Oscar, though he would win the award almost any year he was nominated.  Nolan’s realistic retelling of Batman called on a new take for the Clown Prince of Crime, and Ledger answered with a vengeance.  Wielding a smile carved into his face, chipped paint, and mangy hair, he managed to create a definitive image of an already legendary character.  It’s an unforgettable performance that will haunt you forever.  Key Scene- The best scene in the entire movie is when Joker and Batman muse in a grim prison interrogation.  Ledger is terrifyingly real in the scene, laughing  as Bale’s Batman pummels him.  “You have nothing!  Nothing to do with all your strength!” he bellows.  It’s one of the best movie scenes in years thanks to his artistic dedication to this larger-than-life villain.

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SPOTLIGHT: Angelina Jolie

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As if she didn’t have enough cameras flashing on her, I’ve decided to shed even more light on the career, not private life, of one of America’s biggest obsessions.  As one-half of a Hollywood power couple, Angelina Jolie’s screen presence often takes the backseat to her personal life.  Like her husband, her career is full of impressive roles.  As I mentioned in my Salt review, Ms. Jolie seems to have two types of screen performances she excels at.  There is the emotionally charged Oscar contender, and the kick-ass action heroine.  While acclaim is shoveled upon her for the former, the latter brings home the bacon.  Jolie, like Meryl Streep, is an undeniable box office draw for the female market.  The number one success of a movie like Wanted will never be attributed to James McAvoy.  As Jolie’s career continues to grow, it will be interesting to see how she manipulates her public image and directs it towards a cause, or to making people feel something for that character on the page. Here are her current five best performances.

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Deception: The Conceptual Complexity of ‘Inception’

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Prior to its release Inception had a wave of good publicity that put it on track to become the masterpiece and game changer brought to you by Christopher Nolan, the visionary behind The Dark Knight and the storyteller behind Memento.

In The Dark Knight Nolan reinvented the blockbuster, merging old school visual techniques with the best equipment and talent along with magnificent thematic storytelling. In Memento Nolan rewrote the rules of Hollywood narrative structure. In Inception Nolan was supposed to combine big budget with big ideas, but did he succeed?

For the most part reviewers have been saying no, and for good reason. The movie is long and spends a great portion of the beginning explaining its plot complexities, the rules and regulations of dream hopping, which can be boring and tedious with the absence of real action. Some have attacked the premise as being not as original as audiences think, stating that Inception’s silent homage to The Matrix or Shutter Island are rip-offs. In fact most of the backlash coming from critics stems from concept, which is confusing because concept is the strongest asset to the film. Picking out the flaws in length, lack of action, miscasting of Page, the mild performances, poor characterization or underdevelopment of Cotillard’s Mal character would be more fair arguments. Continue reading →