Tape

Seen 23 August 2006 in my living room
* * (out of 5)

Tape is a film that shows that even greatness has limits. Based on a play written by Stephen Belber, who also penned the nearly word-for-word screenplay, the dialogue is just higher than realism, the performances just a bit over the top, the set nicely confining, and the directing very invasive. And it all works very well. On stage.

Seriously, there’s not really any reason for this to be blown up to the screen. The play is just about as perfect a script as one can find for the stage. But Richard Linklater decided to push longtime collaborator Ethan Hawke a little further, so I decided to give it a shot.

Hawke plays Vince, a drugged out deadbeat. He is the renter of the Lansing, MI hotel room where the entire film takes place. We see him pouring one beer down the drain as he drinks another, and decorating his room with them – making him look much worse off than he is. He’s soon joined by Jon Salter (Robert Sean Leonard), who we soon find out is his best friend from high school, and who is premiering a film at the Lansing Film Festival, which Vince has apparently come to support. As they chat, you get a good idea of how their friendship in high school worked – Vince was off the wall, and Jon was the quiet guy – neither benefiting more from the friendship, but each bringing something very different. Eventually, Vince moves away from beer and onto pot, and once he convinces Jon to smoke with him, talk turns to Amy Randall, a high school girlfriend of Vince’s who John slept with at the end of their senior year, ten years earlier. Vince is convinced that something happened that was less than consensual, and he’s determined to get it out of John… something that gets even more complicated when Amy (Uma Thurman) shows up at the door as well.

It’s a great little premise, and Belber’s script is fun to listen to for awhile. Leonard and Hawke certainly sound like they’ve known each other for some time – there’s a pretty decent established history between the two guys, though less so once Thurman enters the picture. Performance-wise, Hawke is great… it’s a very high-energy role for him, a little different from what I’m used to seeing. Leonard is less so, as there’s not a huge amount of difference between Jon Salter and his current Dr. Wilson on House, MD. Not that that’s a bad thing, since I love that show, but… it gets kind of bland for 90 minutes when there’s nothing else to look at.

Read the rest at HBS!

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Seen 14 August 2006; Coolidge Corner Theater (main screen)
* * * * * (out of five)... can I make this go higher?

Very few films get better as they age. It’s a subjective media, and most are made with immediate returns in mind – the audience they’re looking to wow is the audience that will see the film at the time of the theatrical release. “Raiders of the Lost Ark” is one of the few things I’ve seen made before I was born that still delivers everything I’m looking for.
I recently had my first opportunity to see Raiders at the Coolidge Corner Theater last week. I “dragged” my girlfriend as well, who isn’t as big a movie dork as I am, but she was more than a little psyched about this one. I mean, it’s Indiana Jones! Who doesn’t love Indiana Jones?

As everyone is aware, the film introduces us to Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr. (Harrison Ford), a quiet college professor by day, “acquirer of rare antiquities” by… other days. His lectures are completely packed and his students smitten, thanks to rumors about his other life. We meet him deep in South America, searching through the jungle for some lost treasure. After narrowly escaping death arrows, a giant friggin’ rolling boulder, and betrayal by his guide (Alfred Molina), Indy emerges from the cave victorious… only to have the business end of a bunch of guns and bows pointed at him. They are commanded by Belloq (Paul Freeman), a rival archaeologist who has a tendency to be a pain in Indy’s backside. Belloq removes the idol from Indy’s possession, and sends him running for home.

Back at his university, Indy is approached by his friend Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliot), who makes him the offer of a lifetime – search for the Ark of the Covenant on behalf of the United States. The only snafu? He’s gotta find it before the Nazi’s do, and they already have a significant head start (and they have Belloq). Naturally, Indy takes the challenge, and heads off. Before hitting Egypt, he stops in Nepal to find Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), the daughter of one of the foremost Ark scholars on Earth. Marion tells Indy that her father is dead, but as it turns out, she has what he needs to further his quest. So naturally, she joins him on his trip to Cairo… can we say hostage bait? At this point, I’m sure most of you know what goes on, but if you don’t, I won’t spoil it for you.

What struck me most about the film is that there are so many sequences that are so well known, and yet those sequences refuse to get old or fall into cliché (or maybe it’s just excusable, since as far as I know this movie STARTED the clichés). Those sequences drew applause from the entire crowd – a packed house, ranging from ten-year olds to seniors.

Read the rest at HBS!

Snakes on a Plane

Seen 18 August 2006 & 20 August 2006; AMC Fenway 13 & AMC Loews Boston Common

* * * * (out of 5)

Pay very careful attention to the first half hour of Snakes on a Plane. If you don’t, you won’t be able to remember what happened come the end of the first hour. The plot is completely transparent, with only one purpose – to get Sam Jackson and a whole bunch of poisonous snakes onto the same plane. And it works, just like the rest of this ridiculous, always hilarious gore-fest.

All the hype that’s been piled upon this film really doesn’t seem fair, because the film doesn’t seem to have ever had lofty aspirations. It’s not complex, it’s not inspired, it’s not trying to say anything particularly profound. This is the product of someone saying, “Wouldn’t it be scary/weird/awful/funny as hell if someone put a whole bunch of snakes on a plane, and the passengers had to try to deal with them?” And if this is the best scenario they could come up with the fit that mold, I’m certainly not going to hold it against them.

And New Line seems to have stumbled upon the most amusing – though apparently not most effective – marketing campaign possible: let Sam Jackson play in a film, and then unleash him onto the talk show circuit in all his giddiness. I swear, Sam on the Daily Show, with both him and Jon Stewart giggling every 15 seconds, is one of the most entertaining interviews I’ve ever seen.

Sam plays Nelville Flynn, an FBI agent investigating an LA mobster named Eddie Kim (Byron Lawson). In Hawaii, he’s finally found what he needs – an eyewitness to Kim’s murderous crimes – in the form of Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips), an X-sport enthusiast who stumbled upon the crime scene. Flynn, his partner and Jones commandeer the first class section of South Pacific Air flight 121, much to the anger of some of the other passengers on the flight. But it’s all soon equaled out when a series of events leads to hundreds of poisonous snakes, hidden in the cargo hold by Kim’s men, find their way into the cabin and cockpit of the plane. After the snakes off the pilot and the majority of the passengers right away, the remaining passengers and crew must find a way to stay alive and land the plane using only what’s available to them 35,000 feet in the air.

It’s just so silly you have to enjoy it. Again, the complexities are very limited. Beyond Flynn, who fits the “Samuel L. Jackson” type perfectly, all of the passengers are restricted to specific but necessary types. There’s the ditzy rich girl, the celebrity, the helpless kids, the unexpected hero(es), the complete asshat (foreign asshat, no less!), the sexually explicit snake fodder… they’re all here. And they all play their roles as well as they need to, making sure not to get in the way of the two draws of the film – ridiculous snake-induced deaths and Jackson chewing scenery.

Read the rest at HBS!

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Seen 31 July 2006 at AMC Fenway 13
* * * * (out of 5)

This, paired with Anchorman, can be held up as the reason DVDs were invented. Sure, the initial release of the film was pretty decent, but I can only imagine that the quality will jump a little more when Will Ferrell, Judd Apatow and Co. release a DVD with every take of every joke. Someday, there ought to be a format that just gives a string of one-liners that the viewer can piece together. That’s basically what Ferrell did.

It’s a funny movie, to be sure, but humor is such a subjective thing that I can imagine the sections that didn’t work for me in execution probably had something much funnier (in my opinion) left on the cutting room floor.

The premise is fertile enough for comedy. Ferrell plays Ricky Bobby, a man who has wanted to “go fast” for his entire life. He finally gets his opportunity when working on the pit crew for a dead last NASCAR racing team; the normal driver basically gave up, and Ricky jumped in the car and finished the race, placing surprisingly high. From there on out, he’s a NASCAR sensation, even getting a driving gig for his best friend, Cal Naughton, Jr. (John C. Reilly). Together as “Shake n’ Bake,” they are the best driving duo in the business. All that changes when Ricky comes up against Jean Girard (Sacha Baron Cohen), a top French Formula 1 racer who has come to challenge Ricky. After a fairly horrific crash that leaves Ricky completely unscathed physically (despite what he might think), Ricky has to rebuild the life that got stolen from him – Cal’s with his wife, his sponsors dumped him, and his issues with his never-there father (Gary Cole) begin to emerge when his father does. To reclaim his title as king of NASCAR, he has to get back in the driver’s seat, beat Cal and Girard, and prove to his father he really is a driver.

Yep. All kinds of silliness, and all kinds of potential fun, too. In my mind, when you start with a premise like this, it’s better to keep it completely over-the-top for the entire runtime. Keep people consistently giggling, and they won’t notice the giant lack of a reasonable plot or cheaper-than-cardboard characters. And Talladega Nights does pretty well with that, though not quite as spot-on as its predecessor Anchorman did. The biggest downfall is that there are moments when everyone, even Ferrell, felt subdued, something that’s entirely against the grain for this group of talent. I have to wonder if they were nervous about the obvious stereotypes they were playing off of – popular to mock, but when you’re making a movie with so many NASCAR sponsors and promoters signing off on it, that’s not a crowd you want to alienate by being overly abrasive.

Read the rest at HBS!