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Confessions of a Film Critic - John Maguire

Square Pegg


Nobody has a good word to say about Toby Young, including Toby Young. In his memoir of a failed career as a New York society writer, How To Lose Friends And Alienate People, he boasts of his “negative charisma”, the same bad vibrations that reportedly drove Robert Weide to remove him from the set of this film adaptation when he began to offer the director notes on the actors performances. Since his book was published in 2002, Young has made his name as a writer by chronicling his own inadequacies. By his own admission he has no shortage of material to work with but the same is not true of the film, which starts in a muddle and quickly exhausts itself.

We first meet Sidney Young (Simon Pegg) as he struggles to publish another issue of his London based satirical magazine. His desperate attempts to make a success of his hip but penniless London magazine have somehow come to the attention of Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges), the floppy haired editor of New York’s prestigious Sharp’s magazine (all the names have been changed to protect the guilty, but Bridges is essentially a lawyer-friendly clone of Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter).

Badly dressed and bathed in a panicked sweat, Sidney is quickly brought up to speed on life in the Big Apple. Only a chosen few will rise above the herd so if Sidney wants into what Harding calls “the seventh room”, he’d better learn to pucker up. His only friend on the magazine is the clued-in Allison (a disappointingly remote Kirsten Dunst) who claims she hates him and is only marking time before finishing her novel. Sidney is too infatuated with beautiful but dim actress Sophie Maes (Megan Fox, playing herself essentially) to notice.

A fish out of water, Sidney duly flops about on deck in a series of dim-witted set-ups spiked with celebrity cameos and media-friendly references. The story proper starts when Sidney learns the secret to success is access so cosies up to all-powerful publicist Eleanor Johnson (Gillian Anderson). A photo by-line, a Park Avenue apartment, an open invitation to celebrity parties and a swanky watch all arrive in quick succession. You don’t need to have seen The Apartment, The Sweet Smell Of Success or it’s imitators like The Devil Wears Prada, to know that Sidney will eventually come to realise that his toadying has cost him his integrity.

Struggling writers have been the jumping off point for countless comedies, from Adaptation to Barton Fink, but HTWFAAP simply isn’t smart enough to tackle the theme, taking instead the easy route of lengthy montage, eye-rolling slapstick and some derivative nonsense with a Chihuahua. It is all tinged with a snide sense of injustice and a curious reverse snobbery, some of which manages to be faintly amusing, but the remainder decidedly less so.

Pegg has proven himself to be a nimble comic presence, using his mobile, expressive face to fill the frame with gurning despair or wrinkle-nosed self-loathing. Underneath the buffoonery, there is a performance but Sydney is so obnoxious, even in the scenes where we are supposed to like him that Pegg fails to win us over. This inability to connect with our odious anti-hero, or to feel anything for his inevitable conversion, is the film’s most significant flaw but it is not the only one.

Director Robert Waide, whose resume includes episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, has form when it comes to unlikeable, spiky characters but his treatment of the material here is anonymous and lumpy. He pushes the one-directional story along at a fair clip but Peter Straughan’s script gets too distracted along the way. Allison’s covert romance with the pompous sub-editor Lawrence Maddox (Danny Huston) is hastily established and even more quickly resolved. Neither actor can do anything with it. Sideshows from Miriam Margolyes as the elaborately moustachioed Eastern European landlady and Bill Patterson as Sidney’s estranged intellectual father are abandoned once they deposit their narrative burdens. The greatest waste is Bridges, presented with a few illuminating moments as the taciturn mentor but inelegantly squashed into the remainder of the story.

Read my interview with Pegg and compadre Nick Frost for Hot Fuzz here
...
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Wed, 08 Oct 2008

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Latest Movie Blog from D.C Girl @ The MoviesLatest Movie Blog posts by
D.C Girl @ The Movies

CITY OF EMBER


Well, it isn't quite the hidden gem I'd hoped for, but it is a pretty stone. Ember itself is an imaginatively designed world, with plenty of rusty bits and steam-punky pieces. That's what attracted me to this film, in the first place. Think low-rent City of the Lost Children.

The young people here, lead by Saoirse Ronan deal with a dilemma that's relevant our political situation, right now. My friends also noted the heavy Orwellian influences. ...And that's as far as I'll go into the plot.

The flaw that keeps it out of the "really good film" category for me is the rushed feel of this thing along with some overly-simplistic dialogue, common to kids' book-to-movie translations. The ending was also pretty abrupt.

But the idea? The actors (Tim Robbins, Martin Landau, Marie-Jean Baptiste, Toby Jones, Bill Murray)? And ESPECIALLY the set-design? Wonderful. I can even see this becoming a minor cult-classic in the future.

The kids behind me were definitely feeling this, talking at the screen-characters in a way that let me know they were really involved with the outcome. And there is a brilliant bit of creature-design that I can see leading to some unexpected nightmares for the kiddies.

...Yes, this a good thing, in my opinion.

...WHAT?!

I'm just saying, if I had to endure the Poltergeist clown and this ish...


 I think it's okay for a matinée or rental, but I have a feeling the book's much better.


PARENTS: There is creeper of a creature, but I think a little scariness for the kids is a good thing. Your little ones, who have read the book will likely be disappointed, another good thing. :)

DCMovieGirl
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Mon, 13 Oct 2008

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Latest Movie Blog from Denerstein UnleashedLatest Movie Blog posts by
Denerstein Unleashed

A belated look at a football hero

A RUNNING BACK AND RACISM


I attended graduate school at Syracuse University, which is why I was interested in "The Express," the story of Ernie Davis, the first black football player to win the Heisman Trophy. With Rob Brown as Davis and Dennis Quaid as coach Ben Schwartzwalder, the movie serves as a kind of primer about racial attitudes in the late '50s and early '60s, as well as a look at Syracuse's football culture. Director Gary Fleder draws in bold, sports-film strokes, but he gets the job done, alerting young audiences to the problems Davis faced when he arrived at Syracuse. Although I hate to climb on a high horse and say that a movie might do some good, maybe this one will. It could help educate younger viewers unfamiliar with racial attitudes in the world in which Davis grew up. Reasonably entertaining and put together with sufficient displays of craft, "The Express" crosses the goal line as a winner.


EXCITEMENT BURIED IN THIS UNDERGROUND CITY

"City of Ember", a big-screen adaptation of a 2003 novel by Jeanne Duprau, is a mishmash of a movie that seems aimed at younger audiences. After an apocalypse (what else?), Earth's human population moves into an underground city. People have been living underground for more than 200 years when the film opens. Despite the presence of Bill Murray (mostly negligible) and Tim Robbins (seemingly uninvolved), the movie feels as if it's aimed at the most gullible of younger audiences. The sets are elaborate, but depressing. An uninspired plot follows two teen-agers (Saoirse Ronan and Harry Treadaway) as they search for a way out of their failing underground city. After about 10 minutes, I wanted out, too....
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Fri, 10 Oct 2008

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Latest Movie Blog from Daily Film DoseLatest Movie Blog posts by
Daily Film Dose

THE NEW CENTURIONS

The New Centurions (1972) dir. Richard Fleischer Starring: George C. Scott, Stacy Keach, Jane Alexander, Clifton James, Scott Wilson, Erik Estrada, Rosalind Cash, Isabel Sanford, James Sikking and William Atherton **1/2 Guest Review By Greg Klymkiw It’s always a pleasure to extol the considerable virtues of Richard Fleischer, one of the most overlooked and underrated American directors, even when the picture in question is not one of his best works. “The New Centurions” is a movie that, at least for me, plops squarely into the category of work I loved as a kid that sadly, has not held up as well as I’d hoped. It’s certainly not awful, though, and it has much going on to recommend it –...

To read the remainder of this fine article, please click on 'view original post', or go to www.dailyfilmdose.com...
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Sun, 12 Oct 2008

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Latest Movie Blog from I don't like Renee ZellwegerLatest Movie Blog posts by
I don't like Renee Zellweger

"Body of Lies"



Shit blows up real good in Ridley Scott’s “Body of Lies,” a purported attempt to make a slick, big-budget entertainment about our country’s ongoing war on terror and the futility/effectiveness of it. Somewhat surprisingly, though, the movie doesn’t seem to have much to say other than the mild imposition of “war is no good for anyone,” and it’s not anywhere near entertaining or compelling enough to compensate for the lack of thematic heft. Inexplicably written by William Monahan (who won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for “The Departed”), the rote thriller focuses on Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio), a CIA operative, as he globetrots throughout the Middle East, narrowly escapes explosions and gets shot at, all while getting orders barked to him via cell phone by his fat, Southern-accented boss (Russell Crowe). Oh yeah, and he, along with everyone he works with, is trying to locate and capture Al-Saleem (Alon Aboutboul), an Osama bin Laden stand-in. The plot is plenty complex, verging on convoluted, throughout, but the movie doesn’t seem to be as morally conflicted and substantive as it wants you to think it is. We just keep waiting for it to get to its point, but instead get an overbearing score and two or three explosions too many.

DiCaprio is reliably strong, despite the fact that he seems to still be stuck in “Departed” mode, and his facial hair looks noticeably awkward (it’s vaguely Brillo pad-ish). As for Crowe, I have no idea why he chose to be in this movie. His character’s connection to the film’s story is tenuous as best, he doesn’t have much to do, and for all the public attention paid to his 50-pound weight gain for the part, his character’s girth serves no purpose and contributes nothing. I’m half-convinced Crowe just got fat and said it was for the role. In terms of the performance, he’s trying ever so hard to be a scene-stealer, but I found his peering over his glasses and inconsistent accent increasingly grating. The best performance in the movie turns out to be Brit Mark Strong (also currently in “RocknRolla”) as Hani, head of the Jordanian secret police. In the realm of geopolitical romps, “The Kingdom” is certainly a more mainstream, entertaining film than this, but despite “Body’s” best efforts, it’s also a more thoughtful, ambiguous one. Down to the truly lame, trite final reel, this all plays like a dumber, lifeless version of “Syriana.” The movie’s not particularly boring, but it’s also never exciting or the least bit provocative. The last thing a film tackling our country’s complex relationship with the Middle East should be is “forgettable,” but “Body of Lies” never does anything to distinguish itself from a dozen other geopolitical thrillers....
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Sun, 12 Oct 2008

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Latest Movie Blog from Edward Copeland on FilmLatest Movie Blog posts by
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Body of Lies (2008) Movie Review

Body of Lies Movie review: C

Review by Robert Bell (C)

Attempting to be a geopolitical thriller that emphasizes the smug and detached perspectives of the men, both Western and Eastern, who manipulate and exploit those within the line of fire, Body of Lies has some aesthetic heave but is so structurally inept and contrived that it is difficult not to groan at every creaking turn.

Exacerbating this issue is some slightly outdated terrorist intelligence that tries to reveal the new age of information intelligence that simplifies the issue and ignores both Palestinian pride in martyrdom and the global filtration of terrorist information and funds that reaches much farther than America and the Middle East.  It is not a lack of knowledge that creates these issues, as clearly a great deal of Intel and research went into the story when it was written, but more an issue of overlooking some glaring realities for the sake of a dramatic arc that, as mentioned, should only fool the foolish with its obvious intentions.

Based on David Ignatius's 2007 novel about a CIA operative, Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio), who learns of a terrorist ringleader operating out of Jordan, Body of Lies examines his efforts to infiltrate the ring while being used and manipulated by both his own government, which is embodied by Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe), and Jordan criminal intelligence, which is embodied by Hani (Mark Strong). 

In between the many life-threatening scenarios, Ferris develops a hard-on for an Iranian nurse living in Jordan named Aisha (Golshifteh Farahani), which as one can only imagine has a purpose outside of showing what a charming guy Roger Ferris can be.

Scott's borderline fetishistic obsession with slow-motion explosions, aerial tracking shots and purposefully juxtaposed colour schemes matches the material well, as many of the action sequences are really quite tense and impressively crafted but his slatternly attempts at emotional urgency are often amusing. 

Visually oriented individuals looking for some inherently male knuckle-dragging antics should be pleased with the on-screen pissing contest but everyone else will have to make due with minor amusements and a better-than-usual performance from DiCaprio....
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2008-10-12

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