Simple Men (1992)

A low budget art-house indie flick by Hal Hartley, a writer-director auteur who came up in the new wave of independent filmmakers like Tarantino, Lynch, Jarmusch. Unlike those guys, Hal seems to focus more on his voice - dialogue/script - than he does a vision - creating a cinematic experience. Because there's not really one here.

The collective get together and expertly frame their shots and time their deliveries. But the result is less of watching a story unfold on film and more of an Obsession cologne commercial. Each line of dialogue is carefully annunciated and while there is some interest there, it's still too careful of a direction to get lost in.

Bill is a criminal, but otherwise a nice guy. His little brother is a naive student. Their father was a famous baseball player who later became a political activist that has been named as a bombing suspect. Dad is also on the lamb and the brothers are trying to find him. During the trip, they meet a couple of women, neither of which are strangers to criminal men. One of the more clever dynamics is that Bill, whose character as a thief is in question already, is also recently broken-hearted. So while his relationship with Kate develops, the audience gets to guess if he dares to sabotage it out of spite.

And the film did well in its initial run, getting nominated for a Palme d'Or. But in my opinion, outside of a "Kool Thing" dance sequence. the production is too stiff, calculated with emotional dialogue delivered at a syncopated pace.

  

The Purge (2013)

This film is getting unfairly maligned. It's understandable. The reason is because the premise of the movie is so excellent- and as you may have heard - the film doesn't follow through on that promise. You've seen the premise. It's 2022 and after a crippling era of violence and depression, the US has formally adopted one night each year, 12-hours on March 22nd, in which all crime, including murder, is legal. Ethan Hawke plays Jim. The guy who has sold the most security systems on his block. He's a little smug, but altogether a nice guy who loves his family. Wife - teen daughter - and an ultra-sensitive tween son, with a completely unexplained medical condition which is never really addressed after it is introduced.

After lockdown, the sensitive kid sees a man running for his life down the street and opens the door to help him. So now we have a stranger in the house, the girl's boyfriend has snuck in, and what's worse is that the crew who wanted to kill the street guy is stalking the house.

The criticism comes in that while we could have spent much more time on the politically tinged storyline that got us here, we instead are treated to more or less a home invasion movie. Just like the next one coming which we saw a trailer for, "The Animals". And it's fine, not that bad, exciting enough. It's just a letdown.

There's plenty of eye-rolling to be had, though. The women and the kid could never ever be trusted to make a good decision. "...but this is wrong..." is something that you say in the planning stages. When the gun-wielding crew are beating down your door, I'm sure that everyone shuts their mouth and throws the feed to the pigs. And about those crew, they needlessly wear creepy masks. Except for the leader, who may as well be wearing a Joker mask, because he is clearly channeling Heath Ledger.

Rhys plays that guy fine otherwise. And we see a glimpse of the cult of America that this faction of society has become. I mean, he's clearly a psychopath, but when he takes action, he seems like he's having a genuine religious experience, thanking his victims for their sacrifice and praising the cleansing effort of mankind's true nature.

The Purge could have explored these psychological and political themes more, but it strayed to the mere violent. And it died less dignified.

Now You See Me (2013)

A heist movie with a twist. That twist being... * "MAGIC" (jazz hands)*. The magic element (and maybe the 1% political subtext) is the funnest thing about this movie. And also, that any money stolen is not kept by the thieves. They're Robin-Hooding it out to the public. So while we the audience is wondering HOW things are done, we also find ourselves asking WHY? If only they focused on THAT more...

We start the movie by meeting our four magicians. The slight-of-had card shark, the escape artist, the mentalist-hypnotist and the pickpocket acrobat. We meet them as amateurs wowing the public that they can muster. They are each given a mysterious card. An invite. And while they never meet the host, they are apparently given some kind of direction, because our next view is one year later. Now a team, they have a rich benefactor and huge Vegas production. Whatever leads them up to having an audience at all is not seen. The only magic shows we see are the three heists that are attempted. The first in Vegas, the second in New Orleans, the third in Brooklyn.

When I said that this team is the funnest part, it's not that the magic is so spectacular. It's not. Certain things are explained by magic debunker Morgan Freeman. Others are clearly CGI effects that even magicians aren't doing (jumping in a bubble and floating). But their rapport is fun. Eisenberg, clearly content at making a career out of talking fast, is performing not unlike his Zuckerberg character. I believe that each movie had him sitting behind a desk and proclaiming himself the smartest guy in the room. Isla Fisher gets to be sexy. Dave Franco is naive puppydog. And Woody Harrelson, while criminally underused here, is 100% hilarious. Together, they make for a skillful and fun set of bank robbers.

Putting the brakes on all of this fun, though, is Mark Ruffalo. Tragic, because he's generally great. But here, his character is written in the most cliche way and he plays it as cliche as possible. Gruff, unshaven, stressed out FBI agent, whose work is way too important to deal with silly kid magicians, is forced to investigate- when clearly he is left with no evidence and is tricked at every turn. It could only have been worse if this was supposed to be his last day before retirement. And somehow he becomes the center of this movie's attention. It becomes about his lack of faith in "magic" and his new partner, a French Interpol agent where the first robbery occurred, tries to soften him up and see the bright side of life. Who gives a shit?

Well like any heist movie, someone who should know better probably gets tricked, someone is probably hiding a secret, there's probably a twist near the end. All of this is true here too. And of course, you'll have to suspend some logic to enjoy the whole thing as plausible. Gotta give it up for one thing though. The movie opens on a card trick. Flip through the deck, focus on a card, think of it. The audience gets the view of the flip. When "is this the card you were thinking of?" is revealed, it WAS in fact, the card I was thinking of. I'm sure there was a trick there. But really... I believe that Hollywood somehow read my mind.

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Shamefully, I have not read the great novel that this film was adapted from. I trust most of you have.  Which is why I'm keeping plot synopsis to a minimum and withdrawing all attempts at book/movie comparisons. Do you want to see the movie or not? That's what you'll come to me for. The answer is yes, but don't worry about the 3-D version. There's some fun quirks here and there, but for the most part, the 3-D will not enhance your movie going experience.

But Baz Luhrmann,  who does not work very often, again manages to paint a lavish, colorful, majestic against a time period and a place which has been historically romanticized to absurd points. Like "Romeo + Juliet", any story at this point could have had the romance squeezed out it long before you viewed the first frame. And, like R+J, while Baz uses every CGI effect in the bucket to coat his palette, the film still wonderfully balances a classicism with its modernity. It feels like movies filmed in the thirties, where the wealth the ratcheted up higher than what was ever probably realistic, because people really did go to escape from the great depression with these tales of excess and true love at all costs.

It's hard to think of anyone better suited to play Gatsby than Leo. Pitt/Clooney are too old. Gosling lacks that over-the-topness, or maybe I just think that because he broods so much. Leo seems to understand that Gatsby is a little bit of everything. He IS a hopeless romantic. He IS also a self-obsessed wacko- who these days would be called a stalker. He's powerful, and the conceptions as to why he has wealth are loudly speculated and only quietly truthed, we can gather that behind his mansions, some people surely got hurt. Aside from that, Gatsby, the man that we know, the man that Nick describes to us, is kind. And his means will justify the end of returning Daisy to his life.

I understand that justification. If I had the drive that Gatsby had, I too would have a grandiose house across a harbor. I could have eight or nine of them. The motivation is there. Gatsby is described as a man who has so intently defined himself as being in love with Daisy at a moment in time. His efforts are not merely to obtain a woman, but to erase the five years that kept him away from her to seamlessly change tomorrow into the day after he first left her.

So I relate. I can think of my life as moments in time with several women. Women with whom I have no future, but I have a past. And I develop the plans in my head with each start of a new vision. And when reality diverges from that, I surely spend too much time obsessing about the past. The past vision of a future that will never come. Why can't Gatsby just be content with the present? Why can't Daisy just be honest about what she wants? Was she so cynical about the failure in this attempt that she would sabotage the entire effort?

I'll be in the pool.

That Thing You Do! (1996)

Tom Hanks' directorial debut is a great story of a sixties one-hit wonder band. My favorite thing about that thing is the pacing of the story. Hanks has written some quality characters and hired a great cast to play them. The focus though is completely on the rise of a rock band. No one is an addict, no one has dark secret, there isn't a love story overwrought with ridiculous melodrama.

I had totally forgotten that Charlize Theron played the drummer's bitch girlfriend. Oh, and look out for an early Bryan Cranston cameo. Oh... and if you're watching the extended version, Howie Long plays a (gay?) escort of Mr. White.

But the film moves expertly from Midwest garage band to regional movers to bona fide hit makers. Their growth is completely organic and their demise feels as natural. When Tom Hanks enters the picture as the record company manager, he plays cold. Talent ass-kisser while at the same time shouting drill sargent orders as he's done a million times before for a million different bands in the same spot.

The rest is cast is mostly led by Tom Everett Scott's Guy Patterson. The wide-eyed drummer who is 100% at ease with the most genuine about playing. The singer's a primadonna "artist", the bassist a naive kid. Steve Zahn is perfect as the smart-ass guitar player who's only motivation is to meet the next girl. Liv Tyler is Faye, the lead singer's girlfriend/groupie-slave who is actually not that important to the story. She plays it great though, giving the audience another perspective of excitement seeing these guys reach outstanding levels of fame.

While the title song is played over and over to the point of nauseum, it's perfectly in line with the nature of one-hit oneders. And that helps when they end, that you don't have any expectations that they even had much more to give. An honest and fun rock and roll movie.