Unstoppable reviewed by Two Buck Chuck

Properly aged films at a discount 

The Fighter reviewed by Tony Freitas

The Fighter - 
In Boxing & Hollywood Timing Is Everything

While August is the dumping ground for delayed films and low expectations, December in Los Angeles is the onslaught of awards contenders and critical darlings. After months of constipation, movie studios and distributers are finally shitting diamonds. Oscar hopefuls are dropping from the ether like manna from heaven to appease awards voters with short memories. This year's Golden Globe nominations in the Best Film Comedy or musical Category reads like the line-up at your local $2 discount theater - The Tourist, Alice in Wonderland, Red, Burlesque - and with the exception of "The Kids Are Alright" nary a one  seem to involve any other thought than what uber celebrities the Hollywood Foreign Press would like to see drink too much in the Beverly Hilton ballroom on January 16th. In the Bizarro World universe of the HFP, celebrity trumps taste once more.  

I'm getting to it here, in a round about way. That movie The Fighter. Speaking of The Golden Globes, last week a friend asked me if Mark Wahlberg is the new Pia Zadora.  At first I was totally lost. Then a dawning; it's the day, that day. Golden Globe nods. (Back in 1982 virtual unknown Pia Zadora was voted New Star of The Year by The Hollywood Foreign Press for the stateside unseen film Butterfly.  Kathleen Turner and Elizabeth McGovern were nominees in the same category. Critis everywhere were up in arms. That was pretty much the extent of Zadora's film career. A blank stare and sheer nightgowns can only get you so far.) Mark Wahlberg, I am informed, has been Golden Globe nominated for Best Actor in A Drama. I recall an earlier conversation with the same friend, months ago regarding Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Lovely Bones and the blank stare on Mark Wahlberg's face as he gazes out a window lost in thoughts of his missing, murdered daughter. He's suppose to be conveying something with that empty gaze, but there's nothing there, nothing in the eyes, nothing below the surface.  Peter Jackson replaced Ryan Gosling for this?  So the question is, is Mark Wahlberg the heir apparent to the Pia Zadora torch? Read on.  

The Fighter is the "based on a true story" story of welter weight boxer Micky Ward (Wahlberg). His older brother Dickie Eklund (Christian Bale) also a former welter weight contender (with a disputed knock down of Sugar Ray Leonard years earlier), is a full blown drug addict.  Despite his crack house blues, residents of Lowell MA. see Dickie as a local hero. If Dickie is "The Pride Of Lowell" then Micky is "The Silent Sufferer". Struggling as a junior welter weight boxer, a divorced weekend dad, Micky is trained by parasite brother Dickie while mother Alice (Melissa Leo) acts as Micky's booking manager. It's a family act all 'round. Or maybe more precisely a family circus. There's also the grotesque chorus line of Micky's sisters and half sisters, laying about, offering their unwanted two cents worth. With all that sturm und drang Micky's a bit of a cellophane man. He's a meal ticket and little else. Micky needs to find a way to cut the family loose if he's ever going to be a contender. And then along comes college drop-out bartender Charlene (Amy Adams), into Mickey's bed and head, filling him with notions and stuff. Maybe there's another way. Micky develops a voice. But does he have the balls to back it up, and cut the familial cord?


Director David O' Russell turns in a very workmanlike product.  The script credited to writers Scott Silver, Paul Tamsay and Eric Johnson is an uneven mix of family melodrama and traditional sports drama expectations. The film is divided  in two; The first two acts dealing with family crisis and the final act a rousing Rocky-esque crowd pleaser. There's nothing wrong with either, but here they seem glued together with the final third barely paying notice to what has transpired in the previous hour and twenty.

Bale is the standout performer. His Dickie Ward is a funny, frightening, pathetic mess, his wheels spinning in the glorious mire of his boxing days. He is the chaos that the other characters satellite around.  And Bale's transformation is not just physical.  His Dickie wears his heart on his sleeve and carries his pain around in a glass crack pipe. Oscar chances 100%.


Amy Adams fits nicely as potty mouthed bartender Charlene. Playing romantic second fiddle to the lead can be a thankless task, but Adams creates a memorable character from what could have been a by-the-numbers add-girlfriend-here role. 

Melissa Leo, so terrific in 2008's Frozen River, is solid as well. Her co-dependent relationship with son  Dickie feels authentic and pained. Once you get past the external - hair, nails, tight clothes - of Leo's Lowell Massachusetts matriarch, what lies beneath is motherly guilt and regret.


And then there's Mark Wahlberg, he of the thousand yard blank stare. Wahlberg is well suited to the role of Micky Ward. When he has the right vehicle and support (Boogie Nights, The Departed) he's just fine. That out-of-his-element quality serves him well sometimes. He doesn't reinvent the acting wheel here, but his constant low key demeanor, and soft spoken ways are a welcome contrast to the brash, loud and often cartoonish tumult swirling around him. Anymore histrionics and the film might implode. I rememeber Pia Zadora, and Mr. Wahlberg, you are no Pia Zadora.


Had The Fighter been released earlier in the year, before the "Oscar Season" I question whether it would have received as much attention and accolades. It's a gem in some ways, but not a diamond. Like Wahlberg, The Fighter is a prime example of well-timed Hollywood product placement. Just in time for Christmas. Just in time for academy voters.

Hereafter reviewed by Two Buck Chuck

Two Buck Chuck Review
Properly aged films at a discount

Hereafter

review by Anton "Chuck" Aguiar

Love Clint Eastwood. Good actor. Great filmmaker... Usually. In the past five years, the prolific director has given us the WWII double blast epics Sands of Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers, Gran Torino, Invictus, and the under appreciated The Changeling.

Hereafter seems to be a reversal of fortune for Clint with more in common with clunky earlier efforts True Crime and the true crime that was Blood Work.

Matt Damon is George Lonnegan, a retired psychic counselor trying to leave the pain of that life behind and begin anew, free of visits from your dead Aunt Betty. George enrolls in a cooking class that's peopled with lonely souls who aren't quite desperate enough yet to try okcupid or craigslist. Maybe oenophilia and the perfect two minute egg can cure what ails him. He meets cute with fellow lonely heart Melanie (Bryce Dallas Howard) and a paper thin montage romance is begun. Howard is so wooden and unreal that all I could think about was her frighteningly shiny red locks with the severe bangs. Do you blame lead hair stylist Frederique Arguello or assistant hair stylist Holli Doherty? 

"Don't touch my hair, it might hurt you"

There's a scene where they feed each other while blindfolded that is nauseating and hilarious in equal doses. But this is just part of the story.

The film's a triptych with three story lines across continents that deal with love and loss and the hereafter. The stories are uneven, some moving, some cloying. There's something attempting to surface here  about the way we deal with death as a society but the end result is trite and cloying. There's a fun CGI Tsunami to get the ball rolling (is that even legal to say?), but little else in the way of action, humor or pace.

Clint's next effort is the biopic J. Edgar with Leo DiCaprio as the cross-dressing head of the G-Men. Here's hoping that Eastwood gets back to his A game and that Leonardo DiCaprio twirling in an a pencil skirt has more energy and life to it than the underwhelming Hereafter.


Now Playing at The Pasadena Regency 6

Easy A reviewed by Two Buck Chuck (premiere review)

Properly aged films at a discount

Introducing Two Buck Chuck

Introducing Two Buck Chuck 

Properly aged films at a discount

by Anton Charles "Chuck" Aguiar  (guest blogger)

If you're like me and your love for movies outweighs your need for a super-tilting, aero-dynamic down-filled lounge chair and IMAX, super surround sound, THX, 3D, HD, DTS, with a front of the line pass for the DMV thrown in for good measure, then read on. I'm Two Buck Chuck, guest reviewer here at hardonmovies.blogspot.com and I'll be keeping you up to date with what's happening at LA area discount movie houses. 

I'm a cheap bastid as they like to say in Boston, and there are great savings to be had in a metropolitan city like LA. Some of you stuck up Cinema Snobs may be used to dishing out yer wads at the beloved Arclight Cinemas, and the west side also ran Landmark Theater,  but when you see as many movies as I do, you gotta save a little while still supporting the arts - If I'd signed up for the AMC membership 15 years ago, I'd probably have enough points for a small house in Boyle Heights by now - and yourself. 

For two bucks you can see several recent movie releases. For what it costs to see a single movie at the Arclight (with parking) a family of five can see a matinee at the Regency Academy 6 in Pasadena for the same price. And did I mention that total would include five $1.00 hotdogs to keep those shrinking recessionary bellies full. All movies before 6pm are only two bucks. Pasadena Regency Academy 6 is nothing fancy; It's clean,  staffed by mostly high school age kids that are eager to please, and the concessions are reasonably priced .

The Regency 6 also has an eclectic line-up of films. A few art house flicks mixed in with aging blockbusters and maybe that big budget movie that tanked two weeks ago. An example of flix currently playing: Red, Megamind, Easy A the well reviewed doc Waiting For Superman, Hereafter, and Jackass 3D (2D here). That's a fair mix of highbrow, lowbrow and points in between. Movies after 6 pm are $3 ( Three Buck Chuck just didn't have the same ring), and if you arrive at the right time, you may just find free street parking in the neighborhood. 

I always park in the adjacent Target parking lot, where signs that threaten towing abound. But hey, I pop into Target and grab a soda for a buck, and then walk to the theater a 1/4 block up the street. "I've got my proof of purchase right 'ere." 

There's another discount theater in NoHo - The Regency Valley Plaza 6 - and  Alhambra (It's really not that far) has The Edwards Atlantic Place 10. Also, for a bit more, but not much, the historic Highland Theater on Figueroa @ Ave. 57 in Highland Park is $4 for movies before 6pm, $6 after 6pm and on Tuesday and Wednesdays, all movies are $3 any time. You may have to occasionally cope with a chatty teen, a text offender or a slightly off odor emitting from whereabouts unknown, but if you gotta have your movie fix it's a great way to go. Check out my first review: Easy A after the jump.

A Jock On A Rock With A Clock - Measuring a Life in 127 Hours

The real life character - Aron Ralston - James Franco portrays in Danny Boyle's 127 Hours

is the kind of man that alpha male types are drawn to. Admired and revered, he's the guy (a dude or bro) a guy (boss or bra) wants to hook up with in a beer garden during Octoberfest. In a non-sexual way of course. An easy smile, a way with the ladies and a complete lack of interest in what others think, he's the guy who does things on his own, in his own way and time without fanfare or a ticker tape parade to accompany his every achievement.

Some folks want their various deeds acknowledged, validated, lauded, hence reality television, facebook and blogging (insert wink here).  Not Ralston, he's the loner type, built for high risk adventure. And that's what he finds in Utah's deceptively serene Blue John Canyon while on a solo extreme canyoning getaway (sans cell phone no less). But it's what he'll ultimately lose that the audience is anticipating and that gives the film, with its forgone conclusion, its dramatic tension.

I don't think I'm giving anything away here if I mention that Aron Ralston is the man who in 2003, when faced with his own impending death, amputated the lower half of his arm with a dull pocket knife when said arm become trapped beneath an unmovable boulder in an isolated canyon chasm.

Is it entertainment?

Yes.

Maybe too much so.

Stylistically related to Slumdog Millionaire, with split screen action, super-saturated colors, and an eccletic pulsing (one might say pounding or grating) soundtrack, 127 Hours speeds speeds speeds along in warp overdrive and then abruptly comes to a halt. And that is when the film actually begins. But slowly and surely, the filmmaker's desire to entertain rather than allow the moviegoer to be entertained takes hold once again.

I'm a great fan of director Danny Boyle. From A Shallow Grave to 28 Days Later to Sunshine he's not a repeater, he switches between genres with ease. He's ready for the challenge here as well, but seems a bit more concerned with ADHD addled viewers than settling down and trusting that the material, the story and the character is enough. This is compelling stuff, but this constant intrusive amphetamine drip that Boyle infuses becomes a distraction rather than an enhancement.

I find myself imagining what it might be like if the arm rest of my theater seat was equipped with a viewer control like that that a hospital patient uses to self-manage pain. I  click the button on the arm rest when I choose to be stimulated, rather than the director forcing an overdose.

And still the film works and demands attention despite rather than because of these unnecessary flourishes.(Much like the one used above. Does it make you want to read this review any more?)

Franco's Ralston is never anything less (or more) than human. There is a facileness to the character, an unperturbed nature, that is unsettling. Notwithstanding a few minor meltdowns, for the most part, Ralston as channeled by Franco seems to have his emotional shit firmly packed away. There are controlled melencholy video diary monologues to his parents and musically inclined sister, and dehydration induced hallucinations, even a premonition. But where's the dark night of the soul?  This guy keeps his wits about him. It's in his very nature. At one point he repeats a mantra, "do not lose it"... and you know what,  he never does.  He is constantly reevaluating his situation and adjusting. It's not terribly theatrical, but it  feels authentic. Franco is a naturalistic actor and this role is ideally suited to his strengths: charm wit and compassion.

For a single character to hold an audience in thrall for an extended period of time in a film can be a perilous task.  It's a dream for an actor and a potential nightmare for most directors.  Robert Zemekis did it successfully with everyman Tom Hanks in Castaway, but to be comparable, Tom would have had to spend seventy percent of the film in a dinghy on a sandbar. Franco holds our interest within this claustrophobic setting with ease. It's a heroic performance in the non-heroic manner in which Franco embodies Ralston.  It is not my identification with the character that holds me, but rather my opposite nature. Trapped in that same situation, I'd put Pacino to shame with my wailing screaming and deal making with god. Hammy till the very end, I would chew my arm away along with the scenery. That Franco goes against histrionics is a credit to his good instincts as well as Boyles'. That Boyle feels the need to amp things up with fast edits, time lapse and carbonated urine bubbles in plastic bags ultimately does the film a disservice, but James Franco's grounded performance transcends the needling aural and visual frustrations and leaves a lasting impression. Has an Oscar host ever been awarded one in the same evening?

Black Swan - Dancing In The Dark

Striving to be better, oft we mar what's well.                                                    --Shakespeare (King Lear)

The push for perfection, the pull to perfection, the slow death in perfection; This is the cinematic dance of Black Swan. Ballet can be cruel and punishing. It's an exacting discipline that demands slavish devotion, acts of contortion, and like the career of a professional athlete, it has a short expiration date. Ballet ain't for sissys. 
Working from a twisted screenplay by the trio of Mark Heyman, Andre Heinz and John McLaughlin, director Darren Aronofsky's summation in the court of ballet seems to be transcendence through psychological self-punishment and physical torture.

Natalie Portman is Nina Sayers, a respected dancer with a ballet company at New York's Lincoln Center. As prima ballerina Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder) fades into (forced) retirement, Nina’s star ascends. She’s a front contender for the dual roles of Odette the Swan Queen and her doppleganger Odile - the Black Swan - in the troupe’s reinterpretation of Swan Lake. Artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) is confident in Nina's capabilities as the Swan Queen, but uncertain she can personify the enigmatic, carnal Black Swan Odile. In Leroy’s interpretation Odile is an all out She-Devil. Nina’s repression and pursuit of perfection are the very things that divide her from the role(s) of a lifetime.
       
When new company dancer Lily (Milla Kunis) of unrepressed San Francisco arrives on scene, Nina finds herself drawn to and repelled by her in equal parts. Lily represents the free spirited young woman that Nina is not; The one she must unearth to personify the Black Swan. If Nina can let go and dance with her dark side the Black Swan will come alive. However, Nina’s been dancing in the dark for some time now. If Hell is other people, in Nina’s case it is also ones self. Nina lives in a hell of her own making... with a little help from her friends.  

As tightly wound as Portman's Nina is, there's no alternative but to unravel. That unraveling is the engine that drives Black Swan. And thank Aronofsky for that. It's a Grindhouse/Grand Guignol mash up. It's All About Ev(il) It's Mr. Tchaikovsky's Wild Ride as re-imagined by Jean Paul Sartre.

Natalie Portman is haunting as the self-mutilating, perfection driven wraithlike Nina Sayers, shrinking in the shadow of her suffocating mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), a has been or never was of the ballet world. Nina is a fragile soul. She is raw nerves and sexual longing. But, eventually it pours out, hot hallucinatory and liberating. It’s the performance of Portman’s 17 year career.

Mila Kunis’ Lily is expressive, extroverted, provocative and perhaps dangerous. Kunis finds the perfect balance. We are never certain of her motives. Angel or Demon? Both?

Barbara Hershey as Nina’s mother Erica is truly frightening. Her controlling and suffocating need to micro-manage her delicate daughter reminds me of Piper Laurie’s religious zealot in “Carrie”. Hershey's is a more nuanced performance; Jealousy and malice, just below the skin.
   

Before the film, I overhear a conversation behind me in the box office queue. An older couple that couldn't get tickets to the sold out "The Kings Speech" have decided to take a chance on Black Swan. The man says to his lady friend "Rex Reed hated it. Is it a French director?" The woman struggles to remember the director's name. "No, he's not French," she says. She’s searching her memory banks and I'm going crazy biting my tongue. I turn back to them "His name is Darren Aronofsky, he's a Jewish American". Without a beat, the woman responds "Oy, who isn't". I usually don't read reviews before I write one, however, after the film I decide to read Mr. Reed’s review. Indeed a pan. "Overrated" "Overwrought" "Overhyped". The word that compels me is overwrought.
Black Swan is overwrought. Swooningly, thrillingly so. 
It is melodramatic and daring. Visually exciting. The characters are extreme.
Go big or go home. And no one’s going home. Aronofsky is true to himself, his vision, his players. This is a singular vision that does not suffer from filmmaking by committee. I doubt Black Swan went back for re-editing after a test screening audience found it confusing or down beat. That a film can still make it to the screen unblemished by public opinion is a minor miracle. Black Swan is beautifully overwrought, my review of it is overwrought as well. But, sometimes isn’t too much just right?
Black Swan goes to the cinematic edge and over it. A death spiral swan dive; This can't end well. The cliff is behind us and ahead is an unknown gaping maw, but for now I am satisfied to plunge into the unknown.