Man on Film: Fast Five

It's been far too long. My apologies for that. Having seen this well over a month ago, I can assure you that it is only lack of free time that has kept me from writing this up.

If one were to generalize how 2011 has been for movies, words like "lackluster," "unimpressive," or "shitty" would surely come up and with cause.

Fast Five does not fall under the umbrella of those descriptors.

Simply put, Fast Five was awesome. It delivers exactly what you would expect it to, and then some. Sure, it's thin on plot, but who gives a shit? There are awesome car chases, great stunt driving, sweet-ass explosions, and massive amounts of destruction. The already winning combo of Vin Diesel and Paul Walker (that is such a weird sentence to write) gets an infusion of Dwayne Johnson. As we have come to expect since director Justin Lin took the helm, this is a well-oilded machine. Where the first two Fast movies were clearly messy, Lin reined things in, tightened up the action, got the sound mixed properly*, and improved the franchise.

*Try watching one of the first two again. Now try watching them without having to adjust the volume every 30 seconds.

This is a huge fucking movie, and it works really fucking well. It's perfectly escapist, and enjoyable all the way around. Sure, it won't win any Oscars, but this is not a film that needs to be working on that level. One could even argue that the film sometimes seems to disregard the laws of physics altogether. These things do not matter. After all, this is a series in which the third film, Tokyo Drift actually happens after the fifth one. One needn't think too hard about these films.

More importantly, though, at the time of its release Fast Five was most pleasing of any movie that had come out in 2011. It was a dark spring with two disappointing Nic Cage releases and not much else. Fast Five was a shining beacon of adrenaline-fueled bombast in the best possible way.

Looking at the trailer, what isn't to love?

Now if you have seen this and haven't for whatever reason, checked out the Bill Simmons/Adam Carolla BS Report podcast on Fast Five, you probably should.

I think I speak for the entire free world when I say that I cannot wait for the sixth installment.

Man on Film: Your Highness

First things first, this is a David Gordon Green film written by Ben Best and Danny McBride. This means a few things. It will look good. It will be lewd. It will not be possible to have a trailer representative of what the movie is actually like that can actually be played in any theaters that most people are going to. Here's the redband trailer:

More Your Highness Videos

Now that looks significantly lewder than this:

Make no mistake, this is a lewd damn movie. If it wasn't, it would just be Monty Python and the Holy Grail*. Not only have we already seen this, but it wouldn't be funny now. Instead, Best and McBride did what they do best, created a hero who is a completely selfish, unredeemable asshole. They then throw the man best equipped to portray this character into the role, McBride himself. He is dragged kicking and screaming along on a journey to make himself better, and while he ultimately ascends to some higher level of honor through battle, he remains largely unchanged. This is what has made Eastbound and Down so great. This is also the part that worked about The Foot Fist Way.

*I know this is heretical, but I really don't see how MPatHG is as revered as it is. It simply doesn't strike me as being that funny and certainly doesn't deserve to be quoted as often as it is.

Your Highness also provides James Franco a platform to act comedically, something he doesn't get to do often enough. Hell, he basically went from when Freaks and Geeks went off the air until Pineapple Express without doing any comedies (unless you count Spider-Man 3), despite the fact that he clearly has an aptitude for comedic acting. Yes, he plays the straight man here, but his comic timing is spot on.

This leads us to the riskier proposition of adding Natalie Portman to the mix. Another actor much more well known for their dramatic turns, Portman's limited range when coupled with the extremely limited range of Zooey Deschanel put Your Highness at great risk of having two actresses ill-suited to hold their own in nearly anything because they have an inability to match the tone of what they are in because they can basically play themselves.

Shockingly, Portman did not bother me. Even more stunning to me was the fact that Portman was actually hot. It's not often that I say that.

As was the case with each of the Best/McBride screenplays brought to the screen, the film was a bit uneven, but this was definitely another step in the right direction. As was bound to be the case, David Gordon Green's hand at the wheel leaves us with a film that looks much better than most of its ilk would. This is much appreciated. Hopefully, this kicks off a slew of Green/Best/McBride films.

Man on Film: Source Code

Clearly, this is an attempt at catching up. At least this is still in the theaters...

Having quite liked Duncan Jones's 2009 directorial debut Moon, there was certainly cause for hope that Source Code would be better than its trailer may have let on. That isn't to say that the trailer was bad, per se, but well, here.

There's room there for a good movie, but more often than not a film with a trailer like this falls flat and ends up seeming to be derivative of substandard sci-fi fare. Thankfully Source Code is in the former grouping. While the film can hardly be qualified as a masterpiece, it keeps your undivided attention for its entire 93 minutes

While much of its success can be tied to its marriage of Groundhog Day to the dystopic world of Philip K. Dick, Source Code would not have worked without its leads, Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan.

Here Jones has thrown Gyllenhaal into a role in which he could succeed, capitalizing on his  general amiability and boyish charm. In his other ventures into big budget fare, the characters Gyllenhaal was called upon to portray were either outside his wheelhouse or one-dimensional cardboard cut-outs. In Colten Stevens, he has found a character that he can imbue with his special brand of affably manic desperation. For some reason, Gyllenhaal seems best suited for roles in which he's tilting at windmills, not quite insanely but holding fast to an irrational hope.

In the form of the female lead, Jones cast a woman who is somehow equal parts model and girl next door, Michelle Monaghan. Having held her own opposite such actors as Robert Downey Jr. and Casey Affleck, she plays well off of Gyllenhaal. Theirs is a chemistry that is instantly believable. The love story is earned and feels natural.

Without giving away too much, the film does manage to tug at the heartstrings from time to time--with Colten's phone call to his father striking a particularly affective chord--while exploring some interesting ethics of science questions not dissimilar from the issues at the heart of Moon. That Jones has now managed to make two science fiction films that are thought-provoking, entertaining, and rife with lighter comedic moments. Each of his films have featured likable protagonists trying to free themselves from the shackles of an ultimately Calvinist state of being, their fates appearing to have been predetermined. This makes for interesting films, two flicks into his career, although a different theme to explore would probably be advisable the third time out so as to not rehash those ideas.

Man on Film: The Hangover Part II

All right, I quite liked the first Hangover movie. If you need proof, look no further than this review. If you liked The Hangover, you'll love The Hangover Part II. If you don't remember anything about The Hangover. 

Zach Galifianakis, Bradley Cooper, and Ed Helms acting in a film that is beneath them

If you do remember the first film in the franchise, however, nearly every joke, gag, or plot twist is repeated in Part II in a slightly more extreme fashion. This is a bad thing. This is the filmic equivalent of The Red Hot Chili Peppers' album Californication--it is essentially an instance of an uninspired artist ripping off their own greatest hits, changing everything just a enough to make sure it isn't just a cover but remaining similar in an extremely unsatisfying and obvious manner.

I would spend the time picking the film apart, but what is the point? They didn't bother writing a new movie. Almost every scene outside of the prologue and epilogue were interchangeable with scenes from the first film.

All I have to say is that if there's a third movie--and given its box office numbers in its first week, there will be--I hope someone decides that it might be a good idea to write a second movie that could stand on its own because they failed to do it here. And I would love it if someone did because I like a lot of the talent involved with the series.

Man on Film: Thor

As I started to assess what lay ahead of me in my attempt to catch up here, I was bowled over by how far behind I've fallen. Some of this is related to baseball. Some the added distraction that my new iPhone has brought to my life. Regardless my attention has been drawn elsewhere over the past month or two.

In my attempt to get back up to speed, I'll start with the easiest film for me to review: Thor.

To sum it up in a word?

Unimpressed.

As is often the case for the first outing in a superhero franchise, much of the first hour is spent setting up that hero's origin. In some instances, like Spider-Man or Iron Man, this is the best part of the film, after which the hero is clumsily pitted against his foe who makes an appearance in the first act but whose true, evil nature is merely alluded to through foreshadowing. While the conflict with the villain is actually set up pretty well in this film, Thor's origin story is neither compelling nor entertaining.

The screenplay, credited to three scribes--Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz (the writing partners who brought you Agent Cody Banks and six episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), and Don Payne (one of the two credited screenwriters of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer)--starts off with Thor crashing down to the New Mexican desert in the midst of an aurora. After a ten-minute teaser, the film takes a leap back to Thor's home planet, Asgard. For what felt like an hour. All of this time is spent showing the young Norse God to be the equivalent of the dumb fucking jock who wants to crush everything and who everybody hated in high school (unless, of course, you were that dumb fucking jock). Not only is Thor an ill-mannered, spoiled rich jock, but he is gifted with all of the entitlement issues and egotism of J.D. McCoy, the pissant quarterback who unseats Matt Saracen in the third season of Friday Night Lights.

Not only is the Thor we get to know for the first 90 minutes of the film all of these things, but the set-up of the origin of Thor happens to take place in a place that looks, well, ridiculous. Asgard looked like shit. Take all of the things that you hated about the "sets" in the Star Wars prequels and lump them together. That's Asgard. 45 minutes of film are shot in green screen and the backgrounds are added later. Maybe I'm being excessively purist, but the complete and utter lack of anything real for that long is simply exhausting.

When the audience is finally granted exit from the puerile happenings in Asgard, the next 45 minutes is some amalgamation of Crocodile Dundee, Project X, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat with a dash of Donnie Darko-wormholery sprinkled in. By the time Thor has discovered the error of his ways and redemptively reinvented himself, it is hard to believe that a director with as much storytelling skill as Kenneth Branagh was at the helm for this mess of a movie. They shoe-horned a love story into the film while only giving themselves 60% of a film to lay the groundwork for it. Then the audience is supposed to believe that Thor and Jane Foster (Natalie Portman, whose post-Black Swan releases have really been cashing in on that Oscar that she had to have thought she was going to get) fell in love after having spent part of three days together.

These films aren't supposed to be flawless. If anyone understands that, it's me. It just seems that they got almost nothing correct here. For starters, is there anyone who would have been better suited to play Thor than Alexander Skarsgard? Hell, they even cast his father in the film. Instead, they get some Australian soap star, probably to appeal to the Crocodile Dundee demographic. Then the film is constructed in such a way that it is hard to actually give a damn about the protagonist until the 90 minute mark. Everything that happens in any of the worlds other than Earth looks stupid and will only look worse as more time passes and the effects look more and more ridiculous. And I haven't even touched the anticlimactic climax of the film.

What else is there to say? Thor is a lackluster superhero flick that fails to engage until it is far too late.

Rediscovering the Past: A Little Bit of Chris Elliott

I think I speak for the world when I say that Cabin Boy may have been the most important film of our times. If you loved that film, here's a little bit of Chris Elliott goodness that you may have missed.

The Swinger - watch more funny videos

Man on Film: Drive Angry [3D]

Jesus, it's been a long damn time since I actually saw this. I went on opening weekend, keeping my streak of consecutive Nicolas Cage movies seen in the theater alive at nine--a feat that may be my proudest accomplishment.

While my accomplishment is something to behold, Drive Angry was unfortunately disappointing. Don't get me wrong, this was markedly better than Season of the Witch, but it failed to go as far as I had hoped it would. It played things just a little too safely, shackling Cage with a script that lack enough imagination and a foil not up to the challenge of giving an opposing 110% in the form of Billy Burke.

With Cage playing it up as only he can, he is complimented quite nicely by William Fichtner, playing The Accountant, whose mission is to bring Milton (Cage's protagonist) back to Hell, from where he had broken out to save his daughter. Fichtner plays it pitch-perfect, calm in destruction, dry in wit.

Adding to the film is eye-candy in the form of the insanely hot Amber Heard and the much less clothed Charlotte Ross. Ross does not look her age to be sure, and Heard, while not prancing about in various stages of undress as she did in The Informers, sure looks good. I can't decide whether her choice of accent works or not, as it's insanely thick and possibly bad but over-the-top is the name of the game here. Any shoddy accent work can probably be excused given the circumstances.

Where the film lives and dies is in its action sequences, and unfortunately this is where it comes up short. While promise is shown in the trailer, the action scenes simply lack the requisite verve to make the film what it should be: a trashy explosion-fest with crazy deaths and balls-to-the-wall energy.

Reading Rainbow: High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly by Donald Spoto

This may seem like a weird choice if you don't know me well and know why I was reading it. I can't really get into why I was reading it in this space, but whatever. I read it. It happened.

High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly

For those not familiar with Donald Spoto, he is one of the authoritative Golden Age of Hollywood writers. He wrote the seminal books on Alfred Hitchcock The Art of Alfred Hitchcock and The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock. It was while writing The Art of Alfred Hitchcock that he became friends with Princess Grace, who he was lucky enough to have interviewed at length.

Not relying solely on his aged notes from 25 years earlier, Spoto interviews seemingly everyone that has ever known Grace Kelly in completing an exhaustively researched biography of the captivating actress. Her spirit seems to have made its way to these pages largely due to Spoto's concern for honoring her memory. He never crosses a line into a tawdry realm. Taste and discretion are always observed if something cannot be corroborated by multiple accounts of events.

Obviously, most of you would only read this if you were interested in Grace Kelly. If you are, this is a damn fine book with effortless prose and passion for his subject.

Man on Film: Biutiful

If you have seen Alejandro González Iñárritu's other three feature-length directorial efforts, you likely understand what you are getting into with Biutiful. If one were to list Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel's shared traits, it would be that they are visually arresting, often bleak, and run perhaps a little long. While I happen to like those three films, I wouldn't necessarily cite the third trait as a strength, and the second limits his films' rewatchability. 

On Blu-ray May 31st

Biutiful marks the first feature that he has done since his public falling out with scribe Guillermo Arriaga, who got up on his soap box about authorship of films in the ramp-up to the Oscars when Babel was nominated for seven awards. While I happen to love Arriaga's work, both with Iñárritu* and without him, it is a little refreshing to see something different from Iñárritu himself. 


*The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada may have been my favorite movie of the past decade. 

Citing his father's life as inspiration for this film, this is clearly a very personal film for Iñárritu. More than any of his previous works, there are truly heartwrenching moments in this film. Uxbal, played to perfection by Javier Bardem, is a father of two in Barcelona living on the fringe, hustling to make a dime in morally ambiguous ways, and trying to get his affairs in order as terminal cancer is bearing down on him. As he scrambles to leave something for his two young children while their mother's grip on life loosens at every turn, your heart breaks. 


The film is deeply affective, in spite of its length. Bardem alone should get you excited about watching this film, as there are not many in the acting game who are as consistently amazing as he is. Uxbal is far from perfect and isn't above exploitation to serve his own benefit, but Alejandro González Iñárritu's world in film is not one of black and white. 












A quick formatting note, I updated the site to include the Amazon Associates widget. There will be links in some of the entries now. Apologies if this is a turn-off. I assure you, this will not affect what I write at all. 


And don't look now, but there are already three entries written for this week, and I'm starting another.

The Queue Continuum: Exit Through The Gift Shop

Sorry I've been so absent here. The start of baseball season sort of messes up my schedule for a few weeks until I can reacclimate/make myself care less about the Royals. Here's some catching up. I'll try to get another entry queued up for Friday, as well.

Available on Blu-ray as well

While it is hard to suss out whether or not this film is operating on the level or not, the message still comes through loud and clear: The art world is a messed up place.


Regardless of whether or not you buy the premise that to movie is operating under, the fact remains that the awful, awful crap that Mr. Brainwash produced sold for a veritable assload of cash based solely on the hype that they successfully built up around a nonsensical show lacking in theme, taste, and restraint.

Even if you elect to believe that Banksy was really punking the Establishment, the film is ultimately a compelling one, and given his and Shepard Fairey's involvement there is at least a little prominent insight into the street art movement.

If this isn't near the top of your queue, it should be. That's where John De Lancie would want it to be.