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Sibling Felony: LOGAN LUCKY & GOOD TIME

18 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by cinepam in Reviews

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Adam Driver, Benny Safdie, Channing Tatum, Daniel Craig, Good Time, Josh Safdie, Logan Lucky, Robert Pattinson, Steven Soderbergh

Sibling Felony

How funny to have two films out at the exact same moment in which siblings—mainly brothers—resort to committing felonies as a career choice. Not that the two have much in common beyond that. Steven Soderbergh’s “comeback” after his insistence that he was retiring from feature filmmaking, Logan Lucky, is a joyful, rural romp as Channing Tatum’s Jimmy Logan masterminds the takedown of the Charlotte Motor Speedway during a NASCAR race and enlists his brother and sister (among others) into the scheme. Benny and Josh Safdie’s Good Time is a gritty urban crime drama in which Robert Pattinson’s Connie Nikas masterminds a Queens bank robbery—although it is quickly apparent Connie is no master nor does he have much of a mind. Each in its own, very different way is a completely captivating, tremendous achievement. Each stands to get lost in the late summer box-office doldrums. Which would be a tragedy.

And Introducing Daniel Craig as Joe Bang

The credit reads like a joke. After all, movie fans know Craig. Who doesn’t know James Bond? But, then, that’s the point. With his hair bleached white and sporting Strother Martin’s accent, Joe Bang is a Daniel Craig we’ve never seen before, a Southern reprobate who seems to have stepped right out of the 1967 classic convict drama Cool Hand Luke (the hardboiled eggs in the scene in which Joe Bang is introduced is no coincidence). Recruited for the job Jimmy has in mind while he is serving a prison sentence, the explosive expert looks askance at Jimmy, “I am in-car-ser-ray-ted.” To hear Craig draw out those syllables is worth the price of a movie ticket alone. This is an actor having fun playing a guy who no doubt prefers moonshine to martinis.

In fact, the entire cast seems to be having a blast—save for poor Katie Holmes, saddled with playing Jimmy humorless ex-wife Bobbie Jo. But then Bobbie Jo doesn’t have a lot to do, whereas most of the rest of the cast gets to enjoy taking part in the Rube Goldbergian plot machinations as Jimmy, a one-time West Virginia coal miner and frustrated at not being able to provide for his young beauty pageant-crazy daughter Sadie (Farah Mackenzie), hits on the idea of robbing the racetrack. His one-armed war vet brother, bartender Clyde (Adam Driver), is dubious—the Logans are noted for their terrible luck. But his ebullient hairdresser sister Melly (Riley Keough) is all for it. And once Jimmy agrees to bring Joe Bang’s idiot brothers Fish (Jack Quaid) and Sam (Brian Gleeson) into the operation, Joe’s down with it, too.

Logan Lucky seems to have been inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1956 noir The Killing, in which Sterling Hayden’s Johnny Clay similarly plans a racetrack robbery, but the similarities end there. For one thing, there is not even a hint of noir in the script credited to Rebecca Blunt—apparently a pseudonym for perhaps Soderbergh himself or his wife Jules Asner or maybe someone else entirely. The tone is light and breezy. For another, the details of the heist are far more complicated with a lot of moving parts and ancillary characters, such as Dwight Yoakam’s prison warden, who have no idea that they are playing a part in Jimmy’s grandiose scheme.

It is all a blast to watch. At the same time, for all the complex mechanics of the plot, the characters are not forgotten. Jimmy, in particular, is sharply etched, introduced describing to Sadie how the John Denver song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” came to be written. The song is his mantra, the daughter keeps him tethered. He has no prospects in his home state, but he can’t leave. His motivation in turning to a life of crime couldn’t be clearer. Tatum, looking a good deal heavier and far less fit than he did in his previous Soderbergh collaborations as Magic Mike, is pitch perfect as a good ol’ boy with a brain and an eye for the main chance. And he is surrounded by one heck of an ensemble. Every single one of the actors, even those in the tiniest of roles, delivers a knockout performance.

Really, Connie, You’ve Never Heard of Dye Packs?

After attaining superstardom as the dreamy vampire Edward in the Twilight movie, Robert Pattinson continues to reinvent himself as a character actor. To such films as David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis where he played a psychopathic, master-of-the-universe businessman and James Gray’s The Lost City of Z, in which he played a 20th-century explorer, he adds Good Time’s fast-talking, thickheaded Connie Nikas. This is Jimmy Logan’s opposite, a guy who doesn’t think things throughs. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have insisted that his mentally disabled brother Nick (Benny Safdie) accompany him to something as high risk as a bank robbery. Oh, and he would’ve done a little bit of research into banks and their theft deterrence methods. Really, Connie, you’ve never heard of dye packs?

The robbery portion of Good Time only takes a few minutes of screen time. Heavily disguised, the siblings might’ve stood the chance of getting away the robbery if only Connie had done a little bit of due diligence and considered contingencies. Poor Nick is the one who gets pinched, leaving Connie to figure out some way to get his brother out of the joint. He doesn’t have enough money for bail. But he does have an inflated ego, a mistaken belief in his own competence, and a half-baked plan to spring his sibling that eventually involves him with a naïve teenager (Taliah Webster) and Ray (Buddy Duress, who made his acting debut in the Safdie brothers’ 2015 junkie drama Heaven Knows What), a parolee who introduces Connie to a cache of liquid LSD they can sell. As with the bank robbery, the question looms, “What could possibly go wrong?” That is followed by the same answer, “Connie.”

Pattinson is brilliant playing a guy who is not even half as smart as he thinks he is. This is an actor without vanity, delivering the goods as a guy not quite bright enough to get out of his own way. Working with the Safdies was a wise choice. The brothers with their very specific take on their native New York and the hardscrabble characters that populate their films are building an independent cinema that can stand with the best of those gritty urban thrillers of the 1970s. It is easy to imagine Good Time on a double bill with something like Across 110th Street, The French Connection, or Mean Streets. Or better yet, Dog Day Afternoon. And not just because both movies are about bank robberies. No, it’s just that Dog Day Afternoon’s Sonny Wortzik and Good Time’s Connie Nikas are brothers from another mother, and unforgettable characters in indelible movies. –Pam Grady

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All hail HAIL, CAESAR!

05 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by cinepam in Reviews

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Alden Ehrenreich, Barton Fink, Channing Tatum, Coen Bros., Frances McDormand, George Clooney, Hail Caesar!, Josh Brolin, Ralph Fiennes, Roger Deakins, Scarlet Johansson

Hail, Caesar!

The last time Joel and Ethan Coen visited vintage Hollywood, it was the 1940s and John Turturro was the Clifford Odets-like Barton Fink (1991), who finds his talent, sanity, and very life threatened by a diabolical, soulless town and industry. The siblings’ strike a more buoyant tone with their return to Tinseltown’s Golden Age, Hail, Caesar!, set in the 1950s during the fading days of the studio era. Cheeky, exuberant, and salacious, this is a behind-the-scenes comic fable that allows the Coen Bros. to experiment with numerous styles while spinning several stories seemingly inspired by Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon or maybe a tattered, yellowing cache of Confidential magazines.

Josh Brolin stars as Eddie Mannix, guilt-ridden Catholic, head of production at Capitol Pictures, and designated company fixer when scandal rears its head. Putting out fires is what he does best and with the studio about to be consumed by flames, he is in for a busy 24 hours: Production on the titular Bible story (subtitled “A Tale of the Christ” a la Ben-Hur) screeches to a halt when leading man Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) disappears from set. Musical stars DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) and Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum) have potentially career-killing skeletons rattling around in their closets. Effete director Laurence Lorenz (Ralph Fiennes) is none too happy that congenial, but dimwitted singing cowboy star Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) has been thrust upon his sophisticated, English drawing-room romance despite the boy’s disastrous accent and inability to use his words. If that weren’t enough, a cadre of Communist writers (played by a group of ace character actors including Fisher Stevens, Patrick Fischler, David Krumholtz, and Fred Melamed) are putting the squeeze on the studio and twin gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker (Tilda Swinton) are circling like sharks sensing chum in the water.

The Coens and their cast are clearly having a blast as the brothers pay homage to a Hollywood that hasn’t existed in well over half a century, capturing the feel of a big studio’s back lot when the place was still a company town. The riffs on various genres—Biblical epic, oater, and Esther Williams-style swim spectacular, among them—are spectacular. The highlight is Tatum’s big dance number, taking the lead as one of a gang of sailors in a production number that wouldn’t be out of place in a Gene Kelly musical—well, except for the homoerotic spin on it. The Coens clearly know their classics and what makes them tick.

The acting is superb, particularly from Brolin as long-suffering master juggler Mannix; Johansson as brassy screen siren DeeAnna; Ehrenreich as sweet, thick, and sincere Hobie; and in a delicious cameo, Frances McDormand as the studio’s no-nonsense editor CC Calhoun. Production design and costuming are superb, reflecting the glamor of that bygone era. The Coens’ longtime collaborator, cinematographer Roger Deakins, is back in the fold after a nearly 10-year absence and his compositions and gorgeous lensing add yet another layer of gloss to the film.

Hail, Caesar! Is a glorious piece of work. The Coens are firing on all cylinders in their recreation of Hollywood as it never quite was. How this will play to a wide, general audience is a question—is it a little too inside baseball for its own good? But for anyone who loves classic Hollywood and those willing to follow the siblings down whatever twisted path they forge, the movie is pure delight, comic gold to brighten up a dreary winter.—Pam Grady

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A search for the truth: Bennett Miller on FOXCATCHER

21 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by cinepam in Interviews

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Bennett Miller, Channing Tatum, Foxcatcher, Mark Ruffalo, Steve Carell

FOXCATCHER

“There is an old Chinese proverb: “There is your truth, my truth, and the truth.”

Director Bennett Miller has made three narrative features—Capote, Moneyball, and now Foxcatcher—inspired by real people and real events. How does he know when he has found his particular truth?

“It’s almost too good a question, because if I could answer that perfectly, maybe I wouldn’t make movies,” Miller says.

“I was seeking some sort of experience of what feels truthful to me about these sorts of relationships. For me, movies are most compelling when you can look at them and say, ‘That’s right. That’s life as I know it. That illuminates something I’m familiar with that had never been expressed.’”

Foxcatcher spins an American tragedy out of a true-crime tale, the 1996 murder of Olympic wrestling gold medalist Dave Schultz (Mark Ruffalo) by John Du Pont (Steve Carell), a deeply disturbed heir to an old money dynasty. Miller’s film traces the path to the killing beginning with Du Pont luring Dave’s younger brother Mark (Channing Tatum), who, like his sibling, won a wrestling gold medal at the 1984 games, to his Pennsylvania estate, Foxcatcher Farms, to train.

“I came to believe certain things about the story, including how lost and lonely John DuPont was and the discomfort of the lie he was living and the inability to process the unacceptable that life confronted with him as he tried to play this role,” says Miller.

“Those moments when you see him trying to charade as a coach in front of his mother, and not have one person acknowledge it is a different kind of loneliness. He was so friendless.”

Miller points out that there is a difference between what is factual and what is the truth. The latter is what he attempts to present in “Foxcatcher.” The film is not documentary; it is drama.

“There are all kinds of little details. This particular thing happened to a different wrestler, but this kind of thing happened to Mark. It’s a similar type of thing, but this works better in the story,” Miller says.

“This is cinema. It’s a narrative film and you’ve got actors playing roles and it’s necessarily fictionalized. There’s no way around it, period…There is some kind of truth to be derived from this story that can only be derived via cinema. Film can do something no other medium can do and in order to do it, it does employ artifice. That doesn’t diminish the validity of the truth that the medium can expose.

“Where do I draw the line? To the best of my ability, there’s nothing within the movie that violates the sense of who these characters were and the decisions that they made and the events that happened, so it’s essentially true. That’s my feeling about it.”—Pam Grady

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