New DVD Releases - June 8, 2010

Shutter Island

From Paris With Love

Thoughts on Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2 is as good as the first.

And I really liked the first one. 

The Iron Man movie series is about character more than plot. It lacks the set pieces found in such classics as Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark. But it matches them in character. 

Robert Downey, Jr. portrays a completely realized Tony Stark. As a comic book reader, I have never found Tony Stark particularly engaging, but Downey finds the character. He holds this movie together as its center. No one outshines him, and he is engaging to watch in every scene.

Mickey Rourke as Whiplash, not so much. I mean, Rourke brings what is needed to each scene. And we are confident that he’s going to bring Tony Stark down a few notches. But once he attacks Stark in Monte Carlo with only fragments of a plan, its obvious that this is not the man who is going to kill Iron Man. There’s vengeance there, but no overarching plan. Rourke’s character is a thug and an engineer and that’s possibly all he was supposed to be — but I wasn’t caught up in the performance. I was much more impressed by

Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer. He and Tony Stark could have been separated at birth. Tony’s path has been more affirming than Hammer’s and Justin is suffering from extreme issues. His quest is for respect. Rockwell gives the character so many interesting quirks that I couldn’t help but like him, and enjoyed watching him onscreen just as much as Downey.

Gwyneth Paltrow. I’ve never been an admirer of her work until the first Iron Man movie. It is her back and forth with Downey, Jr. is really the heart of this film. They do it so well that I could watch an entire film with just those two in the room. Her attraction to Tony Stark is so apparent in their dialogue that it doesn’t ever need to get physical, though it does.

Don Cheadle is the straight man here. Though he’s proven in previous roles that he is more than equipped at comedy and can also play leading man, he is support here, and does it well. He’s a better fit to the cast than Terrence Howard, and more intimidating as the character’s function in Stark’s life changes.

Scarlett Johansson falls just into the small pocket within this cast where she can prove useful. She plays the Black Widow, a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent assigned to help Tony Stark, though its unknown to him for half the movie. The Black Widow is personal assistant and silent pit-bull.  We know little about her and that’s all we should know. She hasn’t the acting chops to go toe-to-toe with Downey, Jr. and doesn’t need to — she is also there for support and maybe a touch of guidance.  My favorites scenes of hers were where she interacted with Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan.

Jon Favreau has directed another great film. I particularly love the way he lets his character scenes breathe. He lets the actors really converse with one another. Their dialogue speaks over one another, just like it would in real life. He seems to trust them implicitly and that trust is well held. These are the scenes that stand out and place Iron Man over the usual blockbuster fare.

There are a few weak spots. Certain action clips seem to cut out to early, and the Black Widow’s fight in the Hammer installation is shot in a speed that distracts from the action. Tony Stark’s drunken repulsor target blasting at the party seems a touch too much. One slight misfire and the party-goers would have been fried, which was probably the point, I just didn’t think Tony would ever let himself risk something like that.

The real good stuff - Downey, Jr. The drone battle, especially where Iron Man levels them with those two red lasers. John Slattery as Howard Stark and all that vintage footage. 

I do realize that the villains in this movie were playing second fiddle to Stark himself. Tony is really the big bad guy in this one, and that foe is defeated at the beginning of the third act. Perhaps that’s where many of the so-so reviews are coming from. Many may feel that Whiplash and Hammer were never a match for Tony and the outcome was inevitable from the beginning. I think that it’s a logical step that Tony must come to grips with his responsibilities so that he can now focus on what’s to come. And I hope that what’s to come is a much more threatening antagonist for the next film. A mastermind, if you will. Perhaps the Mandarin. Perhaps M.O.D.O.K. and A.I.M. Perhaps someone I’m not thinking of.

One cause for alarm, though. Nick Fury says that he’s sold on Iron Man as a member of The Avengers, but only wants Tony Stark as an advisor. Does that mean someone else would be calling themselves Iron Man, wearing the suit and it not be Tony Stark? Tony Stark is Iron Man. Just like Peter Parker is Spider-Man and Bruce Wayne is Batman. Not having Tony Stark in the Iron Man suit is a mistake. My two cents.

Anyway, Iron Man 2 — Great!

Klute (1971)

Klute

Klute (1971)

Starring: Donald Sutherland, Jane Fonda, Roy Scheider, Charles Cioffi

Directed by: Alan J. Pakula

There are many movies from 1970s I have not seen, and I constantly have to remind myself that I’m looking at them through Modern Day Glasses. There are certain expectations I have that are just not going to happen because the films that formed those expectations had not been made yet in 1974. All of the twist endings I have been absorbing over the last decade were not the trend at the time the Klute script was written. So I have to check myself.

The setup: When Tom Gruneman disappears, John Klute (Sutherland), is hired by his Tom’s friend and co-worker Peter Cable (Cioffi) to carry on the investigation once the police have given up. Klute’s only trail is a call girl, Bree Daniels (Fonda), whose name appears in letters addressed to her by Gruneman.

Klute’s a quiet guy, but Sutherland can emote more with just a look than most actors can with a full script page of dialogue. I love putting Klute in the position of taking over the investigation from “the professionals” who can only offer up abandonment as the reason of Gruneman’s disappearance. Klute goes forward, studying his only lead with quiet strategy, renting a room in her building and tapping her phone.

Jane Fonda won the Academy Award for this performance as Bree Daniels. This was probably due to the  two or three scenes with her psychiatrist (ugh), where Bree lays down the Hooker’s Manifesto. To me, it seemed over the top. Her character is a mid-class hooker who tries to land modeling and acting gigs during the day. Maybe she’s playing the character of a melodramatic person, someone who tries to give an award-winning speech even if they’re just ordering a cup of coffee. If not, she’s really hamming it up. I’ve never really picked this up in any of her other performances, save maybe On Golden Pond, but now I’ll have to go back and look. Any chance to watch Barbarella again.

What she did pull off were the quiet moments, moments that many audiences wouldn’t stand for today. The character arrives home. The character eats. The character reads. The character listens to the radio. Quiet scenes of the mundane that take up valuable minutes of screen time, and I love them. Filmmakers should really take the time when possible to let their characters just live. 

Other great things: Roy Scheider as Bree’s former pimp. The brief dialogue he shared with Klute had me smiling. Scheider was such a great actor. I also enjoyed much of the score in the film. It is very haunting and worked well near the beginning of the movie when we had so few clues and the mystery lay before us.

And then, the thriller is gone. The premise of the Gruneman’s disappearance and the journey through that mystery is — to me, at least — what should have fueled this film.

But it’s not. The movie seems to be about the power of the woman over the powerful man, and how that man reacts once his weaknesses are exposed. That’s a good theme. But I think the opportunity for a really good detective story was missed here. The answer to the plot’s question, or at least the “Who” portion of it, is given far too early in the film.

Which left me scratching my head. That couldn’t be it. They’re going to switch it up. They can’t be giving me the answer already.

They were giving me the answer already. Still, this is a good, well-paced film with an Oscar win attached, and it has some great performances by some classic actors. It is well worth checking out.

Just don’t expect the twist ending.

Casino Royale (1967)

Casino Royale (40th Anniversary Edition)

I’ve always wanted to see this movie. It’s a spoof of the Bond films, based loosely on the first Bond novel. The cast is that of legend. David Niven, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Orson Welles, Ursula Andress, John Huston, William Holden, and there’s even more after that. I almost missed Jacqueline Bisset as the agent who tries to kill Peter Sellers. I did miss David Prowse (the man underneath Darth Vader’s helmet), dressed like Frankenstein in the film’s climax.

There was a lot going on in this film.

I’ll start with the good. The aforementioned cast. It’s just exciting to see all of these well known faces interacting on the screen. Peter Sellers versus Orson Welles at the card table at Casino Royale — unfortunately, not so great. A little research revealed rumours that the two men didn’t get along, which would explain why the the scene is painfully short, and this is the only scene with the two of them. Still, seeing them together at all was quite a blast.

More good — the females. This film boasted an overload of femme fatales — Ursula Andress, Barbara Bouchet, Joanna Pettet, Jacqueline Bisset, Daliah Lavi. The percentage of beauty seemed a great deal higher than the real Bond films.

The art direction and set decoration. There are sequences in this film that are wonderful to behold. Colorful, dizzying rooms in which the agents jump in and out. Large dance sequences among palace columns. The Casino Royale, itself, bustling with rich gamblers and beautiful ladies.

The concepts. There were some ideas here I really liked. The idea of James Bond and Mata Hari hooking up and having a daughter — Mata Bond. And the thought of the James Bond identity being passed down like a legacy, and the original Bond returning to oversee MI6. I’ve never really thought of Bond too much outside the context he’s presented in his films.

Now the bad — the plot. The only way I knew what was going on here was to immediately refer to Wikipedia once the movie was over. I don’t need everything laid out for me, but throw me a bone every now and then. I understood that the film is lad out in chapters, and that the chapters focus on different characters. I liked this structure, but what I needed were better connections. The slapstick nature of the much of the movie clouded the character’s motivations to the point that I didn’t know where they were or what they were hoping to accomplish by being there.

This problem makes the movie a candidate for a second viewing. Most of the time, the pretty pictures carried me through these head-scratching moments. One segment that confounded me was Peter Seller’s capture in the later half of the film. This is when the post-movie research came in handy. Sellers left the production early, and the filmmakers had to cut the scene awkwardly without him available for pick-up shots. There are other things involving Sellers character which are also unclear, to me at least. Again, a second viewing might fill in the blanks.

The music by Burt Bacharach didn’t connect with me as much as the song by Dusty Springfield, “The Look of Love”, which was nominated for an Academy Award. This song was downloaded to my iPod immediately. It was also played in the first Austin Powers film.

Overall, I’m glad I took the time to watch this movie because it’s definitely something to experience. My satisfaction with the imagery and the actors involved far outweigh the lack of plot and the somewhat goofy slapstick humor.

Hello, I Must Be Watching

Well, my Netflix queue is completed filled. Time to get off my feet and sit on my duff and watch some movies. I've decided to chronicle my progress. The reads will be quick, but I hope to inform, if only slightly.