Man on Film: Silver Linings Playbook

In spite of its grating name--a trait it shares with some of David O. Russell's other films, namely I Heart Huckabee's and Spanking the Monkey--Silver Linings Playbook stands out as one of the year's best films. This should come as no surprise, of course, as Three Kings, the aforementioned I Heart Huckabee's, and The Fighter were all amongst the best films released in the years they came out as well, but the fact remains that no matter the subject, David O. Russell's touch is a deft and sure one.

If you want an idea as to how good this film is, let us just start with the statement that David O. Russell restores hope in the form of the romantic comedy. After all, that's what Silver Linings Playbook is: a romantic comedy. Somehow, though, it doesn't fall into the trap that nearly every other film of the genre does, a trait that speaks to its director, who seems to be able to work within a genre while being entirely his own man each time out. Just as he did with The Fighter and Three Kings, Russell sets up shop in a genre only to make that genre his own.

Where Silver Linings Playbook sets itself apart is in having its romantic leads need each other to make them right. Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) had such emotional issues that he was institutionalized on orders of the court after beating the man with whom his wife was having an affair. Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence) took to feeding her widow's grief with an endless string of self-destructive sex. The two are wrecks, but in each other's company, even though it is on a platonic basis, they work and begin to piece their  shattered lives back together. Each character is broken but outspoken, giving Cooper and Lawrence roles full of opportunity. That Lawrence kills it is hardly a shock. She's clearly one of the most (if not the most) promising young actresses working. Hell, she's probably looking at her second Academy Award nomination at the age of 22. It's Cooper whose performance is revelatory. Whether of his own choosing or not, Cooper's talents have been wasted for nearly a decade (Midnight Meat Train notwithstanding, obviously). Here, the untapped potential fucking geysers without ceasing. Cooper is great, putting his name in the mix for a Best Actor nomination while making us remember why we--at least those of us who watched Alias when it was still good--had hope for him in the first place.

While Cooper and Lawrence are at the film's center, the supporting cast augments the leads well. Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, and Shea Whigham are all great in small roles, and Robert DeNiro actually gets to play a role he hasn't played before, hearkening back to a time in which he was a top-notch actor. It's like the audience gets a taste of 1976. It is so nice to see DeNiro playing a role that isn't beneath him for once. We have to go back to Ronin or The Score to find a film in which DeNiro's talents aren't squandered. If you give him The Score, that's still over a decade in which he has floundered in substandard roles. In Silver Linings Playbook, he gets a chance to flash brilliance once again. It's fucking glorious.

Really, though, it's David O. Russell's vision, his ability to hand-craft screenplays with cherry roles for his actors, that make Silver Linings Playbook the fantastic film that it is. It is imbued with a working-class charm and a genuinely loving respect for the downtrodden. As always, Russell actually treats his subjects (at least most of them) with respect, rather than sneering down at them from a lofty perch. And when all is said and done, you'll be hard-pressed to think of a movie that's made you feel better this year.

Man on Film: Killer Elite

While not high art by any means, Killer Elite is an entirely enjoyable (if not altogether memorable) exercise in action film-making. Set in 1981 and presumably based very loosely on events detailed in Ranulph Fiennes's 1991 book The Feathermen, Killer Elite is Gary McKendry's first feature-length film with his only other directorial credit being the Academy Award nominated short Everything in This Country Must. With oil contracts and unrest in the Middle East being integral to the story, it seems like the events in the film could just as likely happen today.

Killer Elite pits Jason Statham's Danny Bryce, a mercenary, against an ex-SAS shadow group employing Clive Owen's Spike Logan as the chief operative. Using the captured mentor Hunter (Robert DeNiro) as leverage, an Omani Sheikh coerces Bryce to avenge the deaths of his three sons by taking out the SAS agents who killed them during the Dhofar Rebellion.

The justification for what follows is present, and for the most part earned. To qualify this motivation as original or interesting would be going a step too far, but the most important aspect of the film works: the action sequences. Whether chase sequences, elaborate hits, or hand-to-hand combat scenes, these elements of the action flick are convincing and well-choreographed. They aren't game-changers, but it's enough to feel like your time is warranted.

Is this a great action film? Probably not. Fortunately, it has the aptly cast Statham in his typical role with a suitable foe in the form of Clive Owen, whose role is underdeveloped but has the gravitas to hold his own against the prototypical Statham hero. With these two in tow, it's hard not to at least enjoy the ride.

Man on Film: Machete

If anything, Machete may be cursed by three years of expectations being built up. When Grindhouse first was released, nearly everyone I knew thought that the then-faux Machete trailer was the best part of the film. Lord knows Death Proof was unbearable, and Planet Terror was simply not awful when held up against its shittier counterpart. But, independent of the original presentation, the trailer held up well. When Machete became closer and closer to becoming an actual film*, a certain subset of the populace was abuzz (and I really am not exaggerating).

*I, for one, was not entirely convinced it would actually get made, assuming the project's fate would ultimately lie in pre-production limbo for eternity.

Well, it took more than three years, but Robert Rodriguez has finally delivered on his promise to give his cousin, Danny Trejo, a star-vehicle.

And for the most part it works.

Such a long time waiting for something is bound to have the detrimental effect on one's enjoyment of the film. In Austin, it was damn near impossible to avoid little bits of news regarding the film. Either your roommate was behind Jessica Alba in line at Whole Foods or your friend heard her throwing up in the bathroom after eating a salad at a local restaurant, but waiting for Machete, at least in Austin, was somewhat agonizing.

When a movie that cannot come out fast enough takes three-plus years, your imagination begins to run wild. While Rodriguez is clearly cognizant of this (as is evident in the opening minutes as an already severed head is chopped in half again as it sits on its owner's shoulders and a cellphone is procured from a vagina), there simply isn't enough fucked up shit in the world that could happen in a movie to exceed what my fucked up imagination has conjured up.

That being said, this is a Mexploitation explosion of crazy deaths and crazier characters. The motivation of the villains is pretty timely and their cutthroat nature raises the stakes for the hero. Steven Seagal is great in all the best ways. Jessica Alba doesn't have to stretch too far. Jeff Fahey is surprisingly maniacal* and makes it hard to believe that he hasn't gotten a lot more work in the past 15 years. And while Michelle Rodriguez usually irritates me, even she didn't bring me down.

*Was it just me, or was it hard to believe his diatribe against anti-immigration when you knew that it would just be putting the Lawnmower Man out of work?

What was surprising to me was that I was a little disappointed in the man I was most pumped about: Danny Trejo. Maybe he doesn't actually have what it takes to carry a film. Maybe the role was too heavy on the stoicism and not heavy enough on the badass one-liners, but the one thing that detracted from the film for me was Machete. Don't get me wrong, when the blades are a swinging and the action sequences are in full gear, Trejo is pretty sweet, but in the down time the film does drag a bit because the hero is too one-dimensional.

Yes, it's a Mexploitation film. The delicious trashiness is great. The cheeky dialogue elicits more than its fair share of laughs. The film is a success for the most part. I suppose the hero is sort of the exploitation archetype, but it just seems like someone like Richard Roundtree was bringing a little more to the table, and that is not a sentiment that I was expecting to have if we're being totally honest.

Man on Film: Worst Films of the Aughts - Honorable Mention

When getting down to the business of compiling decade's end lists, there is the obvious issue that there is no way for the writer to have seen all of the films released in that window of time. So while this list will obviously be incomplete for that reason, I can say that I have seen a fuckload of movies over the past ten years.

Now in most places doing these lists, you'll find a best-of list pounded out by some fanboy eliciting arguments from other fanboys about how Oldboy should have been higher than Audition or how the Lord of the Rings trilogy should have held the top three spots (even though it wasn't even the best trilogy of the decade). Obviously, my list would have been Rambo and then everything else, and where's the suspense in that?

Putting together a list of the worst movies of the decade is a lot more fun, and you know it.

Now since we're talking about awful movies, it will be hard for me to dial back the language to an even remotely family friendly standard, so if you are sensitive to harsh language, this is the post that you should probably avoid. There is also the obvious shortcoming of not having seen movies like Daddy Day Camp, Malibu's Most Wanted, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, White Chicks, Dracula 2000, Wild Hogs, Saw VI, or The Love Guru*, so this list will be mostly comprised of movies that it will have made sense for someone to have seen. This means that these films had some sort of expectation of being more than they were, meaning they failed much more than a Jamie Kennedy star vehicle, which was obviously going to suck from Jump Street.

*There is also the curious phenomenon of the Tyler Perry catalog. I saw 20 minutes of Madea Goes To Jail and was horrified. I'm not sure what to make of these films and how they would fall into this list. Don't get me wrong that 20 minutes was painful and transvestism for comedic effect rarely works, but I wonder if it's really worth my time to write anything about them. And if I did, I would be afraid that my favorite person to make the BALCO investigation list would come after me...

It also should be noted that I have not seen From Justin to Kelly, Crash, Van Helsing, or either of the Fantastic Four films--all of which I fully believe would contend for spots on this list. I have seen the first 20 minutes of Norbit, and I am confident that it would make the top two if I had been able to finish it. Unfortunately for this list, fate and work intervened, and I have not seen the entire film.

I also feel like there is a very good chance that I will hate Avatar and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, both of which come out as the Aughts come to an end.

Without further ado, here is the list of the Worst Movies of the Aughts...

Honorable Mention:

These films were all terrible in their own right. They just do not happen to have been so bad as to make the cut.

America's Sweethearts - 2001


Holy shit. There was a time when Billy Crystal was funny. Seriously. Well, he co-wrote and co-starred in this shit heap. It starred Julia Roberts (who only Steven Soderbergh can coax a remotely bearable performance out of) and Catherine Zeta-Jones (who sucks outright), stacking the deck on the "this is going to blow" side of the argument from the get-go, but also managed to make the inherently likable John Cusack come across as unsympathetically whiny.

Battlefield Earth - 2000


Do I really need to say anything about this? If this came out more recently, maybe this would crack the top ten. If I hadn't missed 45 minutes of it while a roommate was watching it on cable, it might make the top of the list. Having missed one-third of the film did not dull the pain enough to have BE not make this list.

Death Proof (The Grindhouse cut) - 2007


So I'm cheating a little bit here, but there is no fucking way I was going to sit through the director's cut that meant I was going to get to hear more shameless name-dropping of Austin landmarks and poorly written dialogue for female characters. The car sequences were decent enough to exempt this from the top ten, but it still makes the honorable mention cut. It somehow manages to waste Kurt Russell, which I thought was impossible, but casting against type doesn't automatically make something good.

Righteous Kill - 2008


Al Pacino and nuance have been estranged since at least 1983. He hasn't carried a decent movie since 1992*, if we're being generous. Robert DeNiro hasn't been in a strong serious film since 1998's Ronin. You could tell from the trailer that it was going to be awful. It didn't disappoint. Given their decade-plus track records of churning out garbage, it was hardly a surprise. If the honorable mentions were being ranked this would be wrestling with Battlefield Earth for making the top ten.

*Michael Mann's Heat is the shit, but that is absolutely an ensemble piece.

Swordfish - 2001


How does a movie containing the first Halle Berry topless scene on celluloid become the most boring Heineken ad ever? Ask Swordfish because it accomplished that feat.

Complete and utter shit, and it solidifies John Travolta as this generation's Al Pacino.

Check back Monday for the bottom half of the top ten.