Let's Not Listen: Film and TV reviews

Hitman

Buyer beware: This product has zero warranties, is unreturnable.

Have you ever seen a video-game-based movie that was really good? Decent? Anything more than an utter embarrassment? OK, maybe a handful of pixels-to-pictures transitions—Resident Evil, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Silent Hill—can be considered a tolerable way to waste a couple of hours, though those were saved mostly by the star power of Milla Jovovich, Angelina Jolie, and Radha Mitchell, respectively.

In Hitman, we get Timothy Olyphant. Olyphant, who most recently played an often ludicrous villain in Live Free or Die Hard, scowls with similarly blank concentration here as Agent 47, a bald killer-for-hire with a bar code on his head. (That's clearly the look to go for when you want to get away with murder.) The script, by Swordfish writer Skip Woods, doesn't help the actor any: As the story goes, Agent 47 was not only trained as an assassin, he was cloned for the job. It's somewhat understandable, therefore, that the guy's meant to be more machine than life of the party. But even the Terminator killed with one-liners as well as with robot fists, and Olyphant's resemblance to the Transporter, aka Jason Statham, will only remind audiences how far a more charismatic actor can get with a cue ball and a grimace.

Hitman's plot is so murky it quickly gets boring. French director Xavier Gens appropriately stages a lot of shootouts, the most ridiculous of which entails a double-fisted Mexican standoff in a subway car. Agent 47's assignments, which he receives from a sexy-voiced computer, take him all over the world, but the action primarily takes place in Russia and involves an allegedly botched assassination of an official and, yes, a setup. Interpol's looking for him, as are a couple of 47's hitman-school chums. (Also bald, also tattooed.) The only memorable part of all this mind-numbing running about is Nika (Olga Kurylenko), a good-looking hooker who had a relationship with the is-he-or-isn't-he dead politician in question, though she's most notable for being naked for no reason (when 47 tells her to get dressed, she asks, "What for?") and for wildly unsympathetic laments such as, "You don't want to fuck me, you don't want to kill me. I've never felt so much indifference in my life!"

Olga's right; 47 doesn't even want the girl. What kind of action movie is this? A skippable one, ultimately, though even if it doesn't reach the dubious heights of Tomb Raider, et al., it's still not quite awful enough to keep company with Uwe Boll's worst.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

The Life of Reilly

We knew him then.

In his one-man stage show, the late Charles Nelson Reilly would talk about his mother. It wasn't exactly a loving tribute: This is a woman whose favorite word was "no," who shouted racial slurs out their Bronx window, and who was supposedly so hated in the neighborhood that she carried around a baseball bat whenever she ran an errand. During one battle with her son, Mrs. Reilly shouted, "I should have thrown out the baby and kept the afterbirth!"

You can hear the crowd gasp after that line in The Life of Reilly, an 84-minute film that captures highlights of the comedian's three-hour-plus monologue. And Reilly rebukes them: "Did you think it was all going to be game shows?" That gets a laugh; subsequent stories about how his mother's dream-crushing stubbornness ultimately landed his father in an institution silence the theater. It's not far into Frank Anderson and Barry Poltermann's documentary before you realize that no, this surprisingly poignant performance won't be burbling over with Match Game–ready froth. 

At first, you probably won't recognize Reilly—instead of a clown in a bad toupee, Rocket Man glasses, and sailor suit on stage, he's a frail-looking, balding senior swimming in a button-down and khakis. There's a reason, and it's not sudden aging: It's probably been forever since you've seen the guy. This show, Reilly's final one before his death last May, was filmed at a North Hollywood theater in October 2004, and the directors realized the actor had fallen into obscurity, inserting footage at the start of the movie of a street poll asking people if they knew who Charles Nelson Reilly was. (The majority replied that the name sounded familiar, but few could definitively say.) Reilly himself was aware that his star had significantly dimmed, beginning his monologue by gently proclaiming he's at the "twilight of an extraordinary life." He uses the word "twilight," he continues, based on run-ins with fans, such as the excitable lady in a supermarket who saw him and shrilled, "Oh! I thought you were dead."

So the performer may not resemble the guy who shows up on GSN in the middle of the afternoon, but the voice—whether he's doing the grocery-store lady or just ad-­libbing an aside—hasn't changed a whit. And that distinctive sound, borderline-hysterical and always used for laughs, makes some of the tales Reilly chooses to share even sadder. Co-written by actor Paul Linke, Reilly's monologue is, as the title suggests, an autobiography, and it took a while until his life became bearable. After his artist father was institutionalized, having started to drink heavily after his wife forced him to turn down a job opportunity with a then-unknown Walt Disney, the Reillys were broke and moved to Connecticut to live with a relative who was a recent lobotomy patient. ("Eugene O'Neill would never even get near this family!" Reilly says.) His mother discouraged his desire to act. So did an NBC exec, who told him, "They don't let queers on television," cutting short a meeting that Reilly was certain would be his break. 

The Life of Reilly isn't all bad news, of course, but even when Reilly is talking about his fascination with film or his first steps toward success, it's with a reverence only occasionally punctuated by a quip. This is a story about all wide-eyed dreamers as much as it is about him: When Reilly reads off the roster of his classmates in a New York acting class for the dirt-poor—Jack Lemmon, Frank Langella, Hal Holbrook—it's a simple act that's hugely inspiring. (It's particularly so when he mentions that Holbrook, carrying a white wig in a paper bag, was doing Mark Twain even then.)

There are several components to his set—some living-room furniture, theater seats, a podium, and a prop table—but you get the feeling that the performance would have the same effect even if the stage were empty. (More distracting, however, is the directors' insertion of random footage throughout the monologue—there are more grainy shots of trains, it seems, than clips from Reilly's television career.) One-man shows are deceptively relaxed; a good performer makes you feel as if you're just catching up with an old friend over drinks, unaware that there's a script feeding the recollections. In this regard, Reilly's an ace, appearing to simply make conversation while effortlessly re-creating characters from his past, sometimes preceding his descriptions with a "C'mere!" or "See her?" You do, and with all his affectations stripped away, you see the genuine Reilly, too.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

The Mist

By the end, your mouth will be hanging open, too

There are a few things to be feared when a fog rolls into a New England town in The Mist—monsters, for one. But as a group that gets trapped in the local supermarket quickly discovers, the neighbors aren’t exactly nurturing bosoms of warmth, either.

Those who haven’t read the Stephen King novella upon which writer-director Frank Darabont’s script is based are surely curious about what exactly is the source of the horror lurking in the fog (and no, this is not a rip-off of The Fog) that envelops the rural area after a violent electrical storm. It’s scary stuff—bug-, slime-, and blood-phobes, you’re going to squirm—but often it’s not nearly as brutal as the humanity that tries to contain it. And therein lies King’s triumph as a horror writer who emphasizes earthly characters—in this case, most notably a dad and young son (Thomas Jane and Nathan Gamble), a religious zealot (a fierce, frightening Marcia Gay Harden), and a young teacher (Laurie Holden) who believes—heh—in the goodness of people instead of supernatural ones, a shrewdness that ultimately elevates The Mist into the tense, wrenching, watchable film that it is.

Darabont, who also crafted big-screen adaptations of King’s writings for The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption, deserves a big credit, too: For one, monster movies aren’t exactly in vogue, considering that a cheesy-looking tentacle, pterodactyl, or giant spider (and all three make appearances here) generally send modern audiences laughing out of the theater. These otherworldly creatures look pretty good—weird and repellent, and they attack with such ferocity and speed (though not what-the-hell-just-happened speed) that you’ll be putting a vice grip on your popcorn bag before you have the chance to scoff.

Darabont also elaborated on King’s ambiguous ending. King himself called the new twist “shocking”; I’d add devastating, though it’s undoubtedly going to be a love-it-or-hate-it thing. The ending reinforces the strength of The Mist, which meshes its killer-beasts concept with a Lord of the Flies-like dissolution among their waiting victims. The bugs are sickening, but the bile underneath the townsfolks’ surface friendliness will turn your stomach as well.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

Enchanted - August Rush

Really: Not at all as retch-inducing as it looks

Enchanted begins with “Once upon a time” and ends with a happily-ever-after. There are forest creatures, a princess in need of rescue, and problems that are readily solved with a saccharine tune. That it’s a Disney production is unmistakable, but the presumption that it’s enjoyable to no one older than 5 is wrong. This modern-day, partly animated fairy tale is a cheery love story, yes, but it’s also a little Scream and a lot of Hairspray, cleverly sending up its shamelessly feel-good genre yet sending you off with a fizzy high nonetheless.

Two elements that worked in this year’s Hairspray also elevate Enchanted: songs whose bounciness hides parodic lyrics, and James Marsden. Marsden, who’s sleepwalked through dramatic roles in Superman Returns and the X-Men series, is proving to be a natural comedian, once again exploiting his shiny good looks for laughs as Enchanted’s Prince Edward (né Charming). He starts off, as most of the main characters do, as a cartoon, but even then his booming “Ha-ha!” and exaggerated, princely delivery perfectly poke fun at the syrup onscreen. The story begins with Giselle (Junebug Oscar nominee Amy Adams), a princess who’s surrounded by a gaggle of cute animal helpers and who dreams of her ideal mate. The next day, she sings for him—a song about his requiring just the right pair of puckers, “for lips are the only things that touch”—and, naturally, they immediately find each other. “Oh Giselle, we shall be married in the morning!” Edward pronounces. But his mother’s the queen (Susan Sarandon), and she doesn’t like the idea of having to eventually give up her throne, so she tosses Giselle into a rabbit hole that whisks her off to a place “where there are no happily-ever-afters.” Giselle emerges, now fully human, from a manhole cover in the middle of Times Square.

Enchanted’s script is a clever surprise from Bill Kelly, whose previous work, this year’s Premonition, was not so clever. Once in Manhattan, Giselle bumbles about, thinking it’s just an unfamiliar version of her home, Andalasia. So she runs into a little person and happily exclaims, “Grumpy!” And climbs up a castle-depicting billboard for the Palace casino and knocks on the door. And after she’s spotted by divorce lawyer Robert (Patrick Dempsey), who lets her crash on his couch, and sees what a disaster his apartment is, Giselle takes her usual action: opening a window and trilling for furry maids. It still works, only this time the creatures that respond aren’t exactly chipmunks and bunny rabbits.

Giselle stays with Robert longer than he (or his cold fiancée, played by Broadway star Idina Menzel) would like, prompted by his enraptured daughter, Morgan (Rachel Covey), and the fact that Giselle is just too clueless to make it on her own until Edward finds her. It doesn’t hurt that she’s also quite endearing: Adams once again does an excellent job portraying a young woman whose smarts peep through her gee-gollyness, and the character, while never quite abandoning her romantic notions, does absorb a bit of Robert’s cynicism. (It’s not spoiling anything to say that Robert is softened by their friendship in turn.) Adams and Marsden outshine the bigger stars, with Dempsey a competent if unremarkable straight man and Sarandon also coming off as a rather quotidian witch.

Kevin Lima, a Disney vet who also directed 1999’s Tarzan and 2000’s 102 Dalmatians, fills the film with touches that are whimsical in just the right doses (for instance, a chipmunk doing charades has no business being as entertaining as it is here). There are an unexpected number of special effects, the spectacular, fiery kind that often makes the movie feel like Spider-Man’s little sister. You may know how Enchanted begins and can guess how it ends, but the fun lies in the formula-twisting that comes in between.

 

Now here's the one that'll make you gag.

August Rush is everything cynics might have expected Enchanted to be—cloying, insipid, straining with fake wonder—but its chief offense is taking itself too seriously. Even its outline is precious: A rock star and a cellist produce a prodigy after a devil-may-care night of making sweet music (on the roof of a Manhattan skyscraper, no less). The cellist’s daddy forces her to give up the child, but mother and son can “hear” each as they live separate lives. A reunion is inevitable.

It doesn’t matter if you love music or inspirational stories or Robin Williams (anyone?)—this is enough to make your teeth ache, and neither director Kirsten Sheridan (2000’s Disco Pigs) nor scripters Nick Castle and James V. Hart fill in the blanks in a manner sufficient enough to cut the sugar. The story is one coincidence after another, often “magical” and more often unbelievable. After Lyla (Keri Russell) and Louis (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) meet at a party and spend that blissful night together, her father (William Sadler) forbids her to see him the next day as planned. Later, Lyla discovers she’s pregnant, but when an argument with Dad ends with her running into traffic and being hit by a car, he takes advantage of her coma and an emergency delivery to have the baby adopted (nice!). Lyla believes she lost the child.

Eleven years later, Lyla’s a schoolteacher, and her son (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Freddie Highmore) runs away from his orphanage, “following the music” to New York, air-conducting all the sounds he hears along the way. He’s drawn to a child busker who brings him to his Dickensian home: an abandoned theater in which “Wizard” (an abrasive Williams, clearly imitating Bono) pimps out a horde of musical urchins. Now, this kid has never touched an instrument, but as soon as he finds his way to a guitar, he’s a mini Django Reinhardt. Wizard dubs him August Rush and assigns him his best corner. Soon, August discovers that he can compose, too—cutely, he wanders into a Baptist church, where a tiny choir girl with a giant voice teaches him to read music in about five seconds—and before you can say “yeah, right!” August is studying at Juilliard and the New York Philharmonic plans to perform one of his symphonies.

There are more fortuities that boggle the mind—Manhattan may as well be a three-block neighborhood the way these characters keep running into one another. But the script isn’t the film’s only weakness. The cast, assets in their other work, share the blame, too. One can’t imagine an actress with a more appropriately ethereal look to play a cellist than Keri Russell, and her leading turn in this year’s Waitress proved the depth she’s capable of. As Lyla, Russell’s far-off stare does at times make her look the part of a dreamer; more often, though, she looks kinda nuts. Rhys Meyers’ somewhat sinister blankness also may be suited to a rock-god role, but his Louis isn’t exactly the torch-inspiring fall-into-his-arms type. And poor Highmore—he does his best to express the joy August gets from cultivating his gift. But a single giddy, open-mouthed expression can only carry a scamp so far before it makes you want to cram his sense of wonder down his throat, kind of like this movie does to its audience.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

Southland Tales - Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

It's OK, Stiff, we're confused, too

Like The Wizard of Oz, Pink Floyd: The Wall, or most David Lynch movies, Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko has a reputation among certain viewers for practically begging to be watched while under some influence or another. Kelly's Southland Tales is no different—except that while Donnie Darko is a fine film regardless of your level of sobriety, the writer-director's sophomore effort most definitely is not. It's nearly intolerable, so when the mess comes out on DVD, sooner rather than later, here are a couple of games to speed oblivion for those who rent it: For a more intense experience, drink/smoke/drop whenever "neo-Marxism" is mentioned. Otherwise, simply imbibe whenever a character puts a gun to his or her head. Unenhanced, you'll sympathize with such desperation soon enough.

Southland Tales debuted disastrously at Cannes in 2006, prompting Kelly to trim 19 minutes from what must have been an excruciating 163. He claims to have streamlined the story, but it's still unwieldy, difficult to comprehend, and nearly impossible to tidily sum up. Here goes: It's 2008, and a nuclear attack on Texas has set off World War III and turned the United States into an Orwellian nightmare, with a comprehensive surveillance program called USIDent instituted by those pesky Republicans. (One of whom, a politician's wife played by Miranda Richardson, uses it to assassinate people at her whim.) Access to oil is a thing of the past, leading a deeply weird man named Baron Von Westphalen (Wallace Shawn) to invent a perpetual-motion machine that allows for fuel-free transport (and, apparently, world domination, though that part's less clear).

Meanwhile, there's a movie star, Boxer Santaros (Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson), who disappeared shortly after the attacks and was later found in the desert with his memory erased. He doesn't remember that he's married to a presidential candidate's daughter (Mandy Moore), so Boxer takes up with Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a porn star and talk-show host, and they write a screenplay about an apocalyptic future that involves a L'Engle-like tear in the space-time continuum. There are a couple of war veterans who are mentally fucked after their involvement in a friendly-fire incident (Justin Timberlake, who also narrates, and Seann William Scott, who actually plays twins, but that's too nonsensical to get into). And then there are the neo-Marxists, quite oddly played predominantly by Saturday Night Live stars such as Amy Poehler, Cheri Oteri, Jon Lovitz, and Nora Dunn. The gist of it is that the apocalypse is at hand, and that the world will end, as it's repeated ad nauseam, "not with a whimper, but with a bang."

The best that can be said about Southland Tales is that Kelly apparently intended to ramble: The film is divided into three parts, but it begins with the fourth chapter. (The first three installments—the "prequel saga," according to the movie's Web site—are available in graphic-novel form.) Donnie Darko also inspired companion literature—and was also at times incomprehensible—but its rabbit holes were controlled, thoughtful, and intriguing; Southland Tales feels like, to quote one of its characters, the "nervous breakdown of the century." Its tone is all over the place. One minute, Timberlake is quoting from Revelation; the next, Gellar offers porn-star wisdom such as "Scientists are saying the future is going to be far more futuristic than they originally predicted." The casting of SNL vets exemplifies the film's confusion: It's doomsday. (Even Zelda Rubinstein, Poltergeist's don't-go-into-the-light lady, is here.) But then you see the comedians and chuckle. But then they start blowing people's heads off. Kelly's attempt to force humor into the story is so awkward it quickly becomes as ridiculous as the tangled plot itself.   

With such absurdity, it's futile to analyze the worth of anyone's performance—one imagines that the Rock was encouraged to do odd, girly things like tap his fingers together nervously, for example, and that Gellar actually nailed her character's stiff, dumb-blonde motivation. One of the better scenes involves a Timberlake musical number. But it's mostly compelling because it's a friggin' song-and-dance sequence in the midst of a bunch of Internet feeds and newscasts, and because he's only lip-syncing…to the Killers' "All These Things That I've Done," and ultimately it's the great song that gives the movie a lift. It's a brief respite, but I'll drink to that.

Mr. Retardorium and His Stupid Store

 

 

If you've seen the trailers for Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, you probably noticed it bears a resemblance to Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Or Johnny Depp's remake, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Or, perhaps more accurately, Troy McClure's "The Contrabulous Fabtraption of Professor Horatio Hufnagel." In other words, this Dustin Hoffman-led tale of wonderment looked not only like a rip-off but a pretty bad one at that, and you might have guessed that subtlety was not going to be one of its strengths.

But it's rated G, and everyone knows kids are dumb, so maybe they need to be hit over the head when they go to the movies. The film's promise lies in its creator, Zach Helm, who makes his directorial debut here but also wrote 2006's unusual, excellent Stranger Than Fiction. No dice: Although the film deals with worthy subjects—death, appreciating life as a gift, believing in yourself—it too-cutely glosses over the first while strenuously emphasizing the second and third. The result, for all its swirly colors and surrealism, is alternately dull and irritating, an experience akin to learning that you're going on a field trip only to discover that it's to the box factory. 

Hoffman's performance is, unsurprisingly, a significant reason the movie fails. As the 243-year-old proprietor of a magical toy store, he affects a lisp and tight smile to match his wild hair and eyebrows. He's not childlike—he's childish and dopey, with none of the deliciously dark weirdness of either Wilder's or Depp's Wonkas. The plot involves Magorium's "departure": He's choosing to die because he's on his last pair of a lifetime supply of his favorite shoes. He wants to leave the store to his manager, Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman), a piano prodigy who actually has been wanting to quit because she feels stuck, unable play like she used to as a kid. The store, a living thing whose toys animate themselves each morning and whose rooms can be changed with a dial, doesn't like this plan and rebels by turning its bright walls gray and having its merchandise malfunction.

In addition to the always-happy Magorium and self-doubting Mahoney, there's a humorless accountant (Jason Bateman) and a boy who doesn't know how to make friends (Zach Mills). Gee, do you think they'll each learn a lesson by the time the story's through? Yes, a million times over, and every instance in which the script's life-is-grand message is repeated is accompanied by the kind of incessantly crescendoing score that slimes holiday movies. It's not quite terrible; the main character's demise, however sugar-coated, is touching, Mahoney's quarter-life crisis is sympathetic, and OK, some of the toys are pretty cool. But it's never nearly as enchanting as Helm intended, which makes his foray into children's entertainment an ironic failure.



copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

I...am...Beowulf!

In lieu of a Beowulf review, enjoy pictures of the closest I've gotten to the movie: A lush brown blankie courtesy of Paramount. I've gotten some weird swag in my day -- say, that Heartbreak Kid pillow with Ben Stiller's face fake-embroidered on it -- but this was right up there. I  must say, though, that it's pretty cozy, and came in handy when I discovered my furnace wasn't working.

(FYI, a crazy schedule this week kept me from actually seeing Beowulf, unfortunately. So now it joins my year-end resolutions list.)

"I'm Boy George, bitch!"

Yes, I really want to hurt you
(AP photo)

Don't go modeling at Boy George's place: The former Culture Club crooner and winner of the Letting Yourself Go award was arrested today for falsely imprisoning a 28-year-old Norwegian man who claims to have gone to the singer's apartment for a photo shoot -- only to end up chained and threatened.

And the world's been thinking Britney is crazy. A little perspective, people!

No Country for Old Men

Hair tip: This cut works best on dudes scary as fuck.

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, one of the good guys in Ethan and Joel Coen's unrelentingly punishing No Country for Old Men, is a third-generation cop in West Texas. He's been keeping watch over his dusty, amoral, violent territory since he was 25 and is thinking about retiring. But it's not that Bell is angry, or even apathetic. It's more a sickness of the soul. Here's Bell, scanning a newspaper, aghast at the homicide reports he's reading when he says to his young partner: “My God, Wendell, it's just all-out war. I can't think of any other word for it. Can't make up stuff like that. Couldn't even try.” He admits to a relative that he's quitting because he feels “overmatched.” It's a conversation that Bell has with Roscoe, a neighboring, likewise old-school sheriff, about the state of the world when they're investigating a particularly brutal murder, though, that really sinks your heart to Bell's level. They talk about the breakdown of society, and Roscoe marvels at the gutsiness of a killer who recently returned to the scene of his crime to kill again. “Who would do such a thing?” he asks. “How do you defend against it?”

 

At this point in the film, you realize that they can't, and there but for the grace of God etc. No Country for Old Men, which the Coens adapted from Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel, may take place in a 1980 version of the Wild West, and there's a certain chain of events that sets its villain, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), on a killing spree. But the character's clear psychosis and often random, don't-think-twice murders will be just as frightening to modern audiences who, like Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), spend their mornings shaking their head at the daily news. Bardem's Chigurh isn't deterred by daylight, or authority, or how-can-I-help-you-neighbor? folks who make polite small talk with the stranger despite his bizarre non sequitors and antagonistic demeanor. And before they can notice how dead his eyes are, they're dead, too, courtesy of an air-propelled captive bolt pistol. (Normally used to stun cattle for slaughter, it's handy for blowing out locks *and* brains.) Going home after this movie, you may find yourself a little more suspicious about those shifty dudes you usually ignore on the Metro.

 

McCarthy's plot is a simple one. (In fact, though it evokes the Coens' own Fargo, it's more reminiscent of Sam Raimi's Coen-esque A Simple Plan.) Money sets the chase in motion: One hot afternoon, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is hunting in the desert when he spies a circle of pickups in the distance and bloodied corpses (including one dog) scattered in and among them. One guy's barely alive and begging for aqua. His truck bed is loaded with heroin. Moss immediately starts looking for the person who did this, on his way coming across another body – and a satchel full of $2 million cash. He takes it, and it's another game now. Moss goes home, ignores his wife's gentle queries and sarcasm. “I don't even want to know where you been all day,” Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), says. “That'll work,” Moss replies, cracking open a beer.

 

But then he can't sleep, and returns to the scene to give the dying Mexican some water. Bad move: Another pickup, its blaring lights against the dusk making it look like it just escaped from a Truck-o-Saurus rally, bears down on Moss. Shots are fired, and the hunter is now the hunted. Bell knows that Moss is in trouble, and he knows that Chigurh, who killed one of his own men while he was in custody for some infraction or another, is probably after him. But Moss never told Carla Jean where he was headed to or when he'd be back, and Bell's as perplexed about what to do as he is tired.

 

No Country for Old Men is the Coens' masterful return to Miller's Crossing and Blood Simple territory. The biggest thing you'll notice is the quiet: Whether it's a lack of soundtrack or a lack of dialogue, the silence in this film almost comprehensively full of scenes in which someone is likely to die often makes the tension unbearable. A transponder keeps Chigurh on Moss's tail, and really not a whole lot goes on besides Moss changing motels and the lunatic knocking off people (and even a bird) as he closes in. The script has its share of black humor, but this isn't Fargo. The only quirks you'll find belong to Chigurh, and they accentuate his psychosis rather than his eccentricity: challenging his victims to live-or-die coin-tossing games. Small talk that doesn't quite make sense. Even the Prince Valiant haircut, goofy and hideous, makes Bardem, a burly man's man if there ever was one, look dangerous instead of stupid. (Granted, Bardem's low-key expression of simmering, homicidal anger is the essence of what makes Chigurh so damn unnerving.) And though the aw-shucks locals seem bused in from O Brother, Where Art Thou?, their cornpone simplicity isn't included to make you laugh – it's  to  break your heart, over the godlessness that they don't even know surrounds them. They can't see it burbling in the haze coming off the desert, a wasteland whose empty menace frequent Coens cinematographer Roger Deakins captures well.

 

Jones and Brolin, who recently worked together in Paul Haggis' In the Valley of Elah, are both naturals in their roles here; even if Jones has played the frustrated, no-nonsense, secret-softie authority figure many times before, Bell's humanity keeps the performance fresh. Brolin's Moss is a bit different: You don't find out much of anything about him, though there's no doubt that he's a decent guy, the kind who married and provides for his high-school sweetheart. But he's just a little too good at strategizing after he finds the cash, a little too quick to know just what to do next when he gets in a bind, and instead of seeming uncharacteristic, it makes you that much more curious about who he is. Guessing is a big part of what makes No Country for Old Men compelling, and while some may be put off by its abrupt, open end, many will be enchanted by its poetry. “You know how this is going to turn out, don't you?” Chigurh asks Moss during a phone call. They both think they do, but you'll have no idea.

 

 

 

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

Boy, Step Away from the NyQuil

Hmm...maybe my next move should be going commando

Transformers star -- wait, let's start by pointing out his credibility -- Disturbia and Holes star Shia LaBeouf was arrested in a Chicago Walgreens in the wee hours of Monday for disorderly conduct. Allegedly, LaBeouf was drunk, and refused to leave the store when asked.

Weird, considering his comments to Entertainment Weekly in June about his career and how he doesn't plan on letting himself come off like a Lindsay-esque himbo:

"Part of me wants to go out and see my peers. But if I go to a club and get my picture in the press, then I am that young Hollywood asshole. That would shatter my world…. There's no way you get Tom Hanks' career without thinking about this stuff."

Well, getting wasted and stumbling around Walgreens isn't a terrific move, either, but I'm not convinced LaBoeuf is headed down that Hollywood-asshole rabbit hole just yet. Reports say that he was polite to the fuzz, which leads me to believe that the whole episode was a case of an employee being a dick and Shia calling him on it. Yeah, I'm sure he was drunk and loud, but have you ever been in a drugstore at 2:30 a.m. that wasn't full of kids who were totally bombed? (OK, maybe not everyone lives in a college town like I do, but CVS past 11 p.m. around here is a guaranteed date with jackassery.)

I know not everyone is down with LaBeouf -- you hate his name, you hate his voice, you hate the constant comparisons to Tom, whatever. But he's a talented actor, picks solid projects (Transformers and that golf movie excepted), and doesn't sound like a blockhead in interviews. From what I've seen, this hasn't been given a whole lot of attention in the news today, so my bet is it's forgotten as quickly as Colin Hanks.

Wanted: That Spec Script Your Auntie Mae Wrote for "The Young and the Restless"

Scabs: You gotta start somewhere.

Writers out:

LA Times: A Writers' Strike Nobody Wants