Tropic Overview
Tropic Cinema Fills your Calendar with Great Films
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Film Critic, Cooke Communications
Flip your calendar ahead to Labor Day. Or back, as the new Jason Reitman film titled “Labor Day” starts off in the year 1987. That weekend a ten-year-old boy and his mother are held hostage by an escaped prisoner ... or are they? Depression is lifted off the mother (Kate Winslet) as their captor (Josh Brolin) touches her heart. But will this unexpected romance survive the manhunt for the stranger who came into their life? Los Angeles Times calls it “a lovely, intimate film about longing and love.” And New Yorker observes, “It looks swell, and Winslet adds another portrait of pained watchfulness to her gallery of suffering heroines.”
The recent death of Pete Seeger reminds us of the early days of folk music. And the Coen brothers’ pay homage to those folk singers who haunted the stage of the Gaslight Club in NY’s Greenwich Village with a film titled “Inside Llewyn Davis.” Oscar Isaac personifies this egocentric musician who treks from McDougal Street to Chicago with a yellow cat named Ulysses … and back. Ending up in the same place. Richard Roeper declares, “The Coen brothers have crafted another unique period piece.” New Statesman sees “its ability to evoke unease or melancholia.” And Atlantic City Weekly says it’s “a movie you chew over days after seeing it.”
Sandra Bullock takes us into space with “Gravity,” the story of astronauts marooned when the space station gets hit by errant debris. Can this medical engineer and her commander (George Clooney) make it back to earth? Denver Post calls it “Nerve-racking, sentimental and thrilling.” And the Verge says, “We’ve seen films set in outer space before, but nothing has ever felt this real.” That’s reinforced by the Tropic’s state-of-the-art 3-D.
Leonardo DiCaprio gives us a shocking portrait of a penny-stock wheeler-dealer in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” With this biting Martin Scorsese satire, we find a rapacious guy who makes Gordon Gekko look like a philanthropist. Hookers, cocaine, stolen money -- it’s a blueprint for a life of debauchery. Until the FBI steps in. Passionate Moviegoers calls it “a modern operatic debauch that leaves its viewer is woozily addicted.” And the Atlantic sees it as “a magnificent black comedy: fast, funny, and remarkably filthy.”
And with “August: Osage County” we visit an out-of-control Oklahoma family. Meryl Streep screeches and screams as the soured-on-life matriarch, while Julia Roberts challenges her as the embittered eldest daughter. Contactmusic.com notes that “Tracy Letts adapts his own prize-winning play into a blistering depiction of one of cinema's most dysfunctional families ever.” And Daily Mail says, “There is more than enough misery to wallow in, a few good laughs, and lots of marvelous acting to enjoy.”
So put these movies on your calendar. They are all playing at the Tropic.
srhoades@aol.com
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Labor Day (Rhoades)
Front Row at the Movies
“Labor Day”
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Nicholas Sparks, watch out. Instead of his usual smart comedies (e.g. “Juno,” “Thank You For Smoking,” “Up In the Air”), director Jason Reitman gives us a heartbreaking romantic drama titled “Labor Day.”
As one moviegoer said, “It is a little like a Nicolas Sparks book except with Oscar level acting, directing, cinematography, and screen writing .…”
That translates as Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin being directed by Reitman in a film based on a book by Joyce Maynard.
“Labor Day” is currently playing at the Tropic Cinema.
Although mainly aimed at women, guys in the audience will like it too. The story’s about a tough guy who finds love.
Here we have an escaped convict (Josh Brolin) making a connection with the family he’s holding captive.
Adele (Kate Winslet) and her seventh-grader son Henry (Gattlin Griffith) have pretty much given up on their happiness after Adele’s husband abandoned them for a younger wife. But along comes a guy on the lam who highjacks the woman and her son at a discount clothing store, forces them to take him to their ramshackle farm home, ties them up to a chair, and then proceeds to lure mother and son into his own surprisingly emotional world.
No, we’re not talking Stockholm Syndrome. Adele is certainly needy, depressed, and lonely. And Henry wants a father. But they sense something more in Frank than hardened criminality or their own wish fulfillment.
After all, Frank makes a delicious (read: sensuous and gooey) peach pie. He teaches Henry how to play baseball. And while doing odd jobs around the house, he passes himself off as the family’s handyman ... but is obviously becoming more than that on that long Labor Day weekend in 1987.
Steadily, the film moves from “Desperate Hours” territory, closer to the landscape of “The Bridges of Madison County.” Or “Far From Heaven.”
Yet there is plenty of tension as we ponder the outcome. Is this man accused of murdering his wife dangerous? Are there dark secrets to be revealed? Will the cops catch this killer on the loose? What will happen to the mother and son?
This love story is narrated by a grown-up Henry (Toby Maguire), always the outsider looking in. Having become a successful baker, he’s there to give us the film’s sentimental, but satisfying denouement.
At times predictable, the film is also intimate and touching. Remember that it’s based on a same-named book by Joyce Maynard, the writer who lived with J.D. Salinger as a young woman. Among numerous books and essays, she wrote a syndicated column called “Domestic Affairs.” She penned “Labor Day” in 2009, a coming-of-age story that Reitman snapped up for his fifth feature film.
“Some people don’t want to feel uncomfortable,” he says. “And perhaps they’re only going to understand the movie once they’ve had a conversation with a friend about it. This is the kind of movie where it’s not just going to settle immediately. You don’t walk out the door and go, ‘Yay! I wanna go buy the t-shirt,’ you know? I think for some it might be a couple days of talking to your friends who have also seen it or convincing your friends to see it so you can talk about it.”
As it turns out, “Labor Day” is a gorgeous mood piece. The cinematography by Eric Steelberg makes each image look like a Hallmark card. In fact, the film veers awfully close to becoming a Hallmark TV movie. But Jason Reitman carefully brings it in as an art film, deserving of our applause for Winslet and Brolin’s performances.
srhoades@aol.com
“Labor Day”
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Nicholas Sparks, watch out. Instead of his usual smart comedies (e.g. “Juno,” “Thank You For Smoking,” “Up In the Air”), director Jason Reitman gives us a heartbreaking romantic drama titled “Labor Day.”
As one moviegoer said, “It is a little like a Nicolas Sparks book except with Oscar level acting, directing, cinematography, and screen writing .…”
That translates as Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin being directed by Reitman in a film based on a book by Joyce Maynard.
“Labor Day” is currently playing at the Tropic Cinema.
Although mainly aimed at women, guys in the audience will like it too. The story’s about a tough guy who finds love.
Here we have an escaped convict (Josh Brolin) making a connection with the family he’s holding captive.
Adele (Kate Winslet) and her seventh-grader son Henry (Gattlin Griffith) have pretty much given up on their happiness after Adele’s husband abandoned them for a younger wife. But along comes a guy on the lam who highjacks the woman and her son at a discount clothing store, forces them to take him to their ramshackle farm home, ties them up to a chair, and then proceeds to lure mother and son into his own surprisingly emotional world.
No, we’re not talking Stockholm Syndrome. Adele is certainly needy, depressed, and lonely. And Henry wants a father. But they sense something more in Frank than hardened criminality or their own wish fulfillment.
After all, Frank makes a delicious (read: sensuous and gooey) peach pie. He teaches Henry how to play baseball. And while doing odd jobs around the house, he passes himself off as the family’s handyman ... but is obviously becoming more than that on that long Labor Day weekend in 1987.
Steadily, the film moves from “Desperate Hours” territory, closer to the landscape of “The Bridges of Madison County.” Or “Far From Heaven.”
Yet there is plenty of tension as we ponder the outcome. Is this man accused of murdering his wife dangerous? Are there dark secrets to be revealed? Will the cops catch this killer on the loose? What will happen to the mother and son?
This love story is narrated by a grown-up Henry (Toby Maguire), always the outsider looking in. Having become a successful baker, he’s there to give us the film’s sentimental, but satisfying denouement.
At times predictable, the film is also intimate and touching. Remember that it’s based on a same-named book by Joyce Maynard, the writer who lived with J.D. Salinger as a young woman. Among numerous books and essays, she wrote a syndicated column called “Domestic Affairs.” She penned “Labor Day” in 2009, a coming-of-age story that Reitman snapped up for his fifth feature film.
“Some people don’t want to feel uncomfortable,” he says. “And perhaps they’re only going to understand the movie once they’ve had a conversation with a friend about it. This is the kind of movie where it’s not just going to settle immediately. You don’t walk out the door and go, ‘Yay! I wanna go buy the t-shirt,’ you know? I think for some it might be a couple days of talking to your friends who have also seen it or convincing your friends to see it so you can talk about it.”
As it turns out, “Labor Day” is a gorgeous mood piece. The cinematography by Eric Steelberg makes each image look like a Hallmark card. In fact, the film veers awfully close to becoming a Hallmark TV movie. But Jason Reitman carefully brings it in as an art film, deserving of our applause for Winslet and Brolin’s performances.
srhoades@aol.com
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Labor Day (Brockway)
Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway
Labor Day
"Labor Day" a new retro-set melodrama directed by Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) could be plucked right out of a Lifetime network movie.
Kate Winslet is Adele, a traumatized single mom caring for her spunky and compassionate 13 year old son Henry, played by Gattlin Griffith. One day while Adele and Henry are grocery shopping they have a fateful run-in with desperate prison escapee, Frank embodied by the rugged Josh Brolin. Frank is bleeding and forceful and Adele is shaky, sweaty and worried, giving lots of panicked looks. Frank won't take no for answer and Adele agrees to give Frank both a ride and access to their house, (and all without a weapon) even though this makes little real-life sense.
There is some entertaining and well done tension between Frank and Adele. Are they prisoners? Is Frank a dangerous man?
There is some mystery and nervousness here.
But soon it becomes apparent that Frank is a sensitive and caring man with little rage or poison in him. Frank does household chores, he maintains the gutters, takes an interest in Henry and is a very sensual baker. In one semi-poetic scene, (which will remind some of the film Ghost, albeit not as corny) Frank mixes fresh peaches with syrup and unleashes dashes of angelic sugar to blend within a caramel toned pie.
There is also a deft shot of Adele and Frank reflected on the screen of Henry's handheld computer game. Such scenes illustrate a visceral time as the action is set in the 1980s when E.T. and Donkey Kong ruled childhood imaginations.
As we might guess, under some Spielberg-speckled stars, Adele and Henry begin to bend and sway under a new half-bliss of domesticity.
Yet given this development, why the ruse of Adele's being bound by rope with her hands taped behind her back? Not to mention the predictable feeding of the captive? Is it so odd that Adele would have a boyfriend stay over at some point?
Winslet and Brolin are solid and convincing in their roles. It is the plot that runs out of room, seeming constricted and all too flat. Brolin is the Wanted Man, Public Enemy #1 it would seem and a good two thirds of the action is spent watching the police and wondering if the large but sweet faced Frank is going to get caught or become a solid family man, not to mention an attentive father.
Such plots have been rendered many times before from Clint Eastwood's "A Perfect World" to countless "bad guy with a heart" TV movies.
By the time the third unwelcome knock on the screen door comes, with Brolin stifling Winslet behind the door, it all appears a matter of course and all surprise evaporates. Of course the townspeople whisper and of course there is a troublesome very unsympathetic neighbor, Evelyn (Brooke Smith) who horribly slaps a teen in a wheelchair (Micah Fowler) for not being able to control his alert in seeing Frank on TV. I doubt this would have happened in reality and especially not without criticism.
Frank, for one, would not have stood for it.
Everything gets all sewed up sentimentally with bittersweet ginger as an aged Frank writes a "Dear Henry" letter and the young son evolves into Tobey Maguire with peach pies in a nationally famous oven.
The actors all do well and good (Kate Winslet in particular) but in such a hum-drum rectangular plot, the players feel as if they are their own narrative prisoners.
With all the sirens, officers and suspicious glances, including a limp natural father (Clark Gregg) there is little to drive us forward.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
Labor Day
"Labor Day" a new retro-set melodrama directed by Jason Reitman (Up in the Air) could be plucked right out of a Lifetime network movie.
Kate Winslet is Adele, a traumatized single mom caring for her spunky and compassionate 13 year old son Henry, played by Gattlin Griffith. One day while Adele and Henry are grocery shopping they have a fateful run-in with desperate prison escapee, Frank embodied by the rugged Josh Brolin. Frank is bleeding and forceful and Adele is shaky, sweaty and worried, giving lots of panicked looks. Frank won't take no for answer and Adele agrees to give Frank both a ride and access to their house, (and all without a weapon) even though this makes little real-life sense.
There is some entertaining and well done tension between Frank and Adele. Are they prisoners? Is Frank a dangerous man?
There is some mystery and nervousness here.
But soon it becomes apparent that Frank is a sensitive and caring man with little rage or poison in him. Frank does household chores, he maintains the gutters, takes an interest in Henry and is a very sensual baker. In one semi-poetic scene, (which will remind some of the film Ghost, albeit not as corny) Frank mixes fresh peaches with syrup and unleashes dashes of angelic sugar to blend within a caramel toned pie.
There is also a deft shot of Adele and Frank reflected on the screen of Henry's handheld computer game. Such scenes illustrate a visceral time as the action is set in the 1980s when E.T. and Donkey Kong ruled childhood imaginations.
As we might guess, under some Spielberg-speckled stars, Adele and Henry begin to bend and sway under a new half-bliss of domesticity.
Yet given this development, why the ruse of Adele's being bound by rope with her hands taped behind her back? Not to mention the predictable feeding of the captive? Is it so odd that Adele would have a boyfriend stay over at some point?
Winslet and Brolin are solid and convincing in their roles. It is the plot that runs out of room, seeming constricted and all too flat. Brolin is the Wanted Man, Public Enemy #1 it would seem and a good two thirds of the action is spent watching the police and wondering if the large but sweet faced Frank is going to get caught or become a solid family man, not to mention an attentive father.
Such plots have been rendered many times before from Clint Eastwood's "A Perfect World" to countless "bad guy with a heart" TV movies.
By the time the third unwelcome knock on the screen door comes, with Brolin stifling Winslet behind the door, it all appears a matter of course and all surprise evaporates. Of course the townspeople whisper and of course there is a troublesome very unsympathetic neighbor, Evelyn (Brooke Smith) who horribly slaps a teen in a wheelchair (Micah Fowler) for not being able to control his alert in seeing Frank on TV. I doubt this would have happened in reality and especially not without criticism.
Frank, for one, would not have stood for it.
Everything gets all sewed up sentimentally with bittersweet ginger as an aged Frank writes a "Dear Henry" letter and the young son evolves into Tobey Maguire with peach pies in a nationally famous oven.
The actors all do well and good (Kate Winslet in particular) but in such a hum-drum rectangular plot, the players feel as if they are their own narrative prisoners.
With all the sirens, officers and suspicious glances, including a limp natural father (Clark Gregg) there is little to drive us forward.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Inside Llewyn Davis (Brockway)
Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway
Inside Llewyn Davis
Joel and Ethan Coen break exotic ground once again with "Inside Llewyn Davis" partly based on the misadventures of folk singer Dave Van Ronk but the film is more concerned with a young man's will to create within an urban circus while nebulous forces conspire against him.
It is 1961. Davis (Oscar Isaac) is a Beat singer who has an uneasy rapport with The Gaslight's owner Pappi (Max Casella). After Llewyn does a very striking Van Ronk number "Hang Me, Oh Hang Me", he goes out to see an acquaintance and is assaulted by a shadowy man with a hat and a cigarette.
Davis has no fixed address and he crashes at a professor's house. The house Tabby cat latches on to him and he is unwittingly locked out.
Davis takes the cat by default and haplessly goes from place to place, from his curmudgeonly agent Mel (Jerry Grayson) to his nasty ex-girlfriend, Jean (Carey Mulligan). Each experience is increasingly more deflating, but Davis resists the mainstream pull at every turn ("If you think music leads to marriage and a house, that's careerist, it's a little square, and a little sad...") and he takes a small gig playing backup on a pop folk song about the current space race. The song (with Justin Timberlake playing a romantic rival) includes silly baritone voice effects. Needless to say, the song is produced, but Davis agrees to record it without royalties.
One day, at his ex's house, the cat escapes; it is lost in the Village streets. After a deadly emasculating visit with Jean in which she says that she wants an abortion just in case she is pregnant with Davis' child ("Everything you touch turns to shit.") he sees the lost cat at The Cafe Reggio. He returns the cat to the professor's house, but insults the family when asked to play for his supper. Mrs Gorfein (Robin Bartlett) begins screaming hysterically when she realizes it is not the right cat.
Taking the Tabby back, Davis trudges on through every withering look and happenstance.
John Goodman gives another excellent turn as a slimy and effeminate ne'er do well musician with an acidic tongue. Goodman's character of Roland is as rich as something by Flannery O' Connor and he is as toxic as he is comical in a gallows humor tradition.
Taking a cue from their previous film "A Serious Man" the Coen Brothers expand their own brand on a Kafkaesque condition. Throughout the film, Davis faces identical apartment doors positioned right up against the other, knob to knob while the cat seems to personify guilt, baggage and choices not taken.
Davis is surrounded and confined by innocuous musical pablum with little social commentary, and inept managers.
At the film's end, Davis learns that the owner, Pappi (whose name could symbolize status quo as the word "pap" means "food staple") had sex with his girlfriend.
Thus the noose tightens around Llewyn Davis' guitar with the shadow man cyclically pursuing him along with a passive orange cat.
The final joke might be the sight of one damp and dirty Davis getting kicked in the stomach as a young Bob Dylan takes the stage. But while this portrait is very much Coen and Kafka, it is also a stirring and pointed journey of a man with a guitar, be he Van Ronk or someone you conjure up on your own.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
Inside Llewyn Davis
Joel and Ethan Coen break exotic ground once again with "Inside Llewyn Davis" partly based on the misadventures of folk singer Dave Van Ronk but the film is more concerned with a young man's will to create within an urban circus while nebulous forces conspire against him.
It is 1961. Davis (Oscar Isaac) is a Beat singer who has an uneasy rapport with The Gaslight's owner Pappi (Max Casella). After Llewyn does a very striking Van Ronk number "Hang Me, Oh Hang Me", he goes out to see an acquaintance and is assaulted by a shadowy man with a hat and a cigarette.
Davis has no fixed address and he crashes at a professor's house. The house Tabby cat latches on to him and he is unwittingly locked out.
Davis takes the cat by default and haplessly goes from place to place, from his curmudgeonly agent Mel (Jerry Grayson) to his nasty ex-girlfriend, Jean (Carey Mulligan). Each experience is increasingly more deflating, but Davis resists the mainstream pull at every turn ("If you think music leads to marriage and a house, that's careerist, it's a little square, and a little sad...") and he takes a small gig playing backup on a pop folk song about the current space race. The song (with Justin Timberlake playing a romantic rival) includes silly baritone voice effects. Needless to say, the song is produced, but Davis agrees to record it without royalties.
One day, at his ex's house, the cat escapes; it is lost in the Village streets. After a deadly emasculating visit with Jean in which she says that she wants an abortion just in case she is pregnant with Davis' child ("Everything you touch turns to shit.") he sees the lost cat at The Cafe Reggio. He returns the cat to the professor's house, but insults the family when asked to play for his supper. Mrs Gorfein (Robin Bartlett) begins screaming hysterically when she realizes it is not the right cat.
Taking the Tabby back, Davis trudges on through every withering look and happenstance.
John Goodman gives another excellent turn as a slimy and effeminate ne'er do well musician with an acidic tongue. Goodman's character of Roland is as rich as something by Flannery O' Connor and he is as toxic as he is comical in a gallows humor tradition.
Taking a cue from their previous film "A Serious Man" the Coen Brothers expand their own brand on a Kafkaesque condition. Throughout the film, Davis faces identical apartment doors positioned right up against the other, knob to knob while the cat seems to personify guilt, baggage and choices not taken.
Davis is surrounded and confined by innocuous musical pablum with little social commentary, and inept managers.
At the film's end, Davis learns that the owner, Pappi (whose name could symbolize status quo as the word "pap" means "food staple") had sex with his girlfriend.
Thus the noose tightens around Llewyn Davis' guitar with the shadow man cyclically pursuing him along with a passive orange cat.
The final joke might be the sight of one damp and dirty Davis getting kicked in the stomach as a young Bob Dylan takes the stage. But while this portrait is very much Coen and Kafka, it is also a stirring and pointed journey of a man with a guitar, be he Van Ronk or someone you conjure up on your own.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Gravity (Brockway)
Tropic Sprockets by Ian Brockway
Gravity
"Gravity" at first appears to be an otherworldly tango between Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. The dance quickly becomes one of survival.
Clooney is astronaut Kowalski with a sharp wit and Bullock is the isolated and tomboyish Ryan. They are sent to initialize and repair a space station. Both of them hotfoot around the bars and levers, Ryan seems a participant in a pratfall, while Kowalski spins about in a jet pack La-Z-Boy chair. He jokes that their fellow spaceman is doing the macarena.
From the very first, you are stuck by the sheer depth and beauty of this film. This is what it might feel like to be in space. Earth is literally suspended in the sable ink, an endless void. While the textured landscape of earth is seen as expressionist swaths of jade green, topaz brown and tangerine paint. Aloft in his chair-like vehicle, Kowalski is far off in the distance, little more than a collection of bone white dust. Closer in view, he takes on the shape of an origami paper box. Then, abruptly upon us, he transforms into the form of an aluminum giant with huge vice-grips for hands.
"Gravity" is one film like "2001" which portrays space and its unknowables as a realm of loneliness and silence.
The sound of country music from Kowalski's headset and Ryan's busy fretting are the only human utterances.
Suddenly within the coziness of duty and work, danger is sounded without warning: some troubling satellite debris is in orbit and on its way.
Kowalski and Ryan batten down the hatches and abort the mission quickly enough it would seem, but they don't count on the sheer onslaught of irregular metal shards that tear at the NASA craft.
Ryan becomes unhinged from the station and spins like a top in black abysmal reaches. She hyperventilates. The situation of the film parallels "All Is Lost". These are characters adrift and fighting for their very survival through happenstance and luck, both good and bad.
There is some humor to be found in Clooney and Bullock lashed together in space, swirling and bouncing in a hellish purgatorial Pasodoble . "Stop staring at me!" Clooney advises, as if to make an inside joke about his Hollywood looks. The two could be lovers on an interplanetary Titanic.
The scene is comical and wrenching at once.
"Gravity" is no gimmick novelty. The 3D is holistic and all encompassing. It enhances the circumstance of Ryan as she attempts to get to safety and ultimately to earth, rather than being a round of visual rings and tricks. The hull of Ryan's space station is shown as nothing less than a white and corded womb. Wires pulse with life like umbilical cords. Once enclosed, our Superwoman Ryan sheds her skin and becomes reborn. She undulates and stretches her body taking sensual breaths of oxygen. This scene echoes Sigourney Weaver undressing on board in "Alien". It may be eye-candy but this too, is meaningful.
In addition to some teasing, there is also a bit of existentialism. Ryan is left in a metal cork, but the sight of Clooney's vodka-sipping Kowalski spurs her on in a device that contains something of Kubrick and Camus.
Alfonso Cuaron's "Gravity" is a visceral and emotional experience that will take you to far limitless visions, not the least of which shows Sandra Bullock as a Saul Bass silhouette, a dark black purple cutout that falls into further darkness. It is a fitting cousin to "2001: A Space Odyssey" where help in rescue is a rare star.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
Gravity
"Gravity" at first appears to be an otherworldly tango between Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. The dance quickly becomes one of survival.
Clooney is astronaut Kowalski with a sharp wit and Bullock is the isolated and tomboyish Ryan. They are sent to initialize and repair a space station. Both of them hotfoot around the bars and levers, Ryan seems a participant in a pratfall, while Kowalski spins about in a jet pack La-Z-Boy chair. He jokes that their fellow spaceman is doing the macarena.
From the very first, you are stuck by the sheer depth and beauty of this film. This is what it might feel like to be in space. Earth is literally suspended in the sable ink, an endless void. While the textured landscape of earth is seen as expressionist swaths of jade green, topaz brown and tangerine paint. Aloft in his chair-like vehicle, Kowalski is far off in the distance, little more than a collection of bone white dust. Closer in view, he takes on the shape of an origami paper box. Then, abruptly upon us, he transforms into the form of an aluminum giant with huge vice-grips for hands.
"Gravity" is one film like "2001" which portrays space and its unknowables as a realm of loneliness and silence.
The sound of country music from Kowalski's headset and Ryan's busy fretting are the only human utterances.
Suddenly within the coziness of duty and work, danger is sounded without warning: some troubling satellite debris is in orbit and on its way.
Kowalski and Ryan batten down the hatches and abort the mission quickly enough it would seem, but they don't count on the sheer onslaught of irregular metal shards that tear at the NASA craft.
Ryan becomes unhinged from the station and spins like a top in black abysmal reaches. She hyperventilates. The situation of the film parallels "All Is Lost". These are characters adrift and fighting for their very survival through happenstance and luck, both good and bad.
There is some humor to be found in Clooney and Bullock lashed together in space, swirling and bouncing in a hellish purgatorial Pasodoble . "Stop staring at me!" Clooney advises, as if to make an inside joke about his Hollywood looks. The two could be lovers on an interplanetary Titanic.
The scene is comical and wrenching at once.
"Gravity" is no gimmick novelty. The 3D is holistic and all encompassing. It enhances the circumstance of Ryan as she attempts to get to safety and ultimately to earth, rather than being a round of visual rings and tricks. The hull of Ryan's space station is shown as nothing less than a white and corded womb. Wires pulse with life like umbilical cords. Once enclosed, our Superwoman Ryan sheds her skin and becomes reborn. She undulates and stretches her body taking sensual breaths of oxygen. This scene echoes Sigourney Weaver undressing on board in "Alien". It may be eye-candy but this too, is meaningful.
In addition to some teasing, there is also a bit of existentialism. Ryan is left in a metal cork, but the sight of Clooney's vodka-sipping Kowalski spurs her on in a device that contains something of Kubrick and Camus.
Alfonso Cuaron's "Gravity" is a visceral and emotional experience that will take you to far limitless visions, not the least of which shows Sandra Bullock as a Saul Bass silhouette, a dark black purple cutout that falls into further darkness. It is a fitting cousin to "2001: A Space Odyssey" where help in rescue is a rare star.
Write Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com
Friday, January 24, 2014
Week of January 24 to January 30 (Rhoades)
Tropic Overview
Catch the Oscar Buzz at the Tropic Cinema
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Cooke Communications Film Critic
As the 86th Academy Awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science draws near, we are astounded by how many nominees have played at the Tropic Cinema. Does this mean the Tropic has been showing more “mainstream” films? Or that more “non-mainstream” films are getting award nods?
No matter. The point is, you can see all these great films at the Tropic.
This week we get the new Coen brothers offering, “Inside Llewyn Davis.” While I think it’s a flawed film, it’s one you’ve gotta see -- the story about the early days of folk music in Greenwich Village. Oscar Isaac sings his own song as the titular musician. He’s joined by Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, and Garrett Hedlund -- plus John Goodman as an irascible jazzman. Little White Lies says, “Cold exteriors and warm interiors combine in the Coen brothers’ rhapsodic portrait of a ‘60s folk singer.” 3AW calls it “beguiling, beautiful, funny and sad.” And The List dubs it a “portrayal of male neuroses and failure.”
What goes up must come down … even in space. That’s due to “Gravity,” as Sandra Bullock’s sci-fi adventure is titled. It could have been called “Lost In Space.” Bullock and George Clooney are stranded when their space station is hit by debris. Can they get back to earth? As New Yorker says, “Gravity is not a film of ideas, like Kubrick's techno-mystical 2001, but it's an overwhelming physical experience -- a challenge to the senses that engages every kind of dread.”
Another sci-fi delight is Spike Jonze’s “Her,” the romance between a young man and his computer OS. Joaquin Phoenix falls for the human-like voice in his smartphone (who happens to sound just like Scarlett Johansson). A profound contemplation about relationships. Detroit News sees it as “Delightfully entertaining, if slightly unnerving.” The Mercury says, “In Jonze's hands it is beautifully philosophical and heartfelt.” And Moviedex opines that the film “Poses some big, complex questions, about consciousness, free-will and the limits of human understanding.”
An insightful look at relationships -- the dynamics of a dysfunctional Oklahoma family -- is explored in “August: Osage County.” Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tracy Letts, we find Meryl Streep as the drug-addled matriarch at war with her three daughters follow their father’s suicide. Julia Roberts as the elder sibling match Streep scene for scene in this prairie fire of great acting. ReelViews says it’s “all about the acting.” And Commercial Appeal notes “The grande dame demiurge presiding over this Dust Bowl carnival of souls is, of course, La Streep, who channels the stoned fury of Liz Taylor in ‘Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ and the ghoulish glee of Bette Davis in ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’”
“The Wolf of Wall Street” makes Gordon Gekko look like a puppy dog. Leonardo DiCaprio approaches his title role as if greed is Gr-r-reat! Nonetheless you will see it as a cautionary tale despite director Martin Scorsese’s obvious glee. Passionate Moviegoer calls it “a modern operatic debauch that leaves its viewer is woozily addicted.” Los Angeles Times observes, “Man, does this movie have a savage bite.” And 2UE That Movie Show concludes, “Scorsese's mastery is undeniable.”
All of these films are up for Oscars in one category or another. Better go see them if you want to know what all the Oscar buzz is about.
srhoades@aol.com
Catch the Oscar Buzz at the Tropic Cinema
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Cooke Communications Film Critic
As the 86th Academy Awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science draws near, we are astounded by how many nominees have played at the Tropic Cinema. Does this mean the Tropic has been showing more “mainstream” films? Or that more “non-mainstream” films are getting award nods?
No matter. The point is, you can see all these great films at the Tropic.
This week we get the new Coen brothers offering, “Inside Llewyn Davis.” While I think it’s a flawed film, it’s one you’ve gotta see -- the story about the early days of folk music in Greenwich Village. Oscar Isaac sings his own song as the titular musician. He’s joined by Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, and Garrett Hedlund -- plus John Goodman as an irascible jazzman. Little White Lies says, “Cold exteriors and warm interiors combine in the Coen brothers’ rhapsodic portrait of a ‘60s folk singer.” 3AW calls it “beguiling, beautiful, funny and sad.” And The List dubs it a “portrayal of male neuroses and failure.”
What goes up must come down … even in space. That’s due to “Gravity,” as Sandra Bullock’s sci-fi adventure is titled. It could have been called “Lost In Space.” Bullock and George Clooney are stranded when their space station is hit by debris. Can they get back to earth? As New Yorker says, “Gravity is not a film of ideas, like Kubrick's techno-mystical 2001, but it's an overwhelming physical experience -- a challenge to the senses that engages every kind of dread.”
Another sci-fi delight is Spike Jonze’s “Her,” the romance between a young man and his computer OS. Joaquin Phoenix falls for the human-like voice in his smartphone (who happens to sound just like Scarlett Johansson). A profound contemplation about relationships. Detroit News sees it as “Delightfully entertaining, if slightly unnerving.” The Mercury says, “In Jonze's hands it is beautifully philosophical and heartfelt.” And Moviedex opines that the film “Poses some big, complex questions, about consciousness, free-will and the limits of human understanding.”
An insightful look at relationships -- the dynamics of a dysfunctional Oklahoma family -- is explored in “August: Osage County.” Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tracy Letts, we find Meryl Streep as the drug-addled matriarch at war with her three daughters follow their father’s suicide. Julia Roberts as the elder sibling match Streep scene for scene in this prairie fire of great acting. ReelViews says it’s “all about the acting.” And Commercial Appeal notes “The grande dame demiurge presiding over this Dust Bowl carnival of souls is, of course, La Streep, who channels the stoned fury of Liz Taylor in ‘Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ and the ghoulish glee of Bette Davis in ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’”
“The Wolf of Wall Street” makes Gordon Gekko look like a puppy dog. Leonardo DiCaprio approaches his title role as if greed is Gr-r-reat! Nonetheless you will see it as a cautionary tale despite director Martin Scorsese’s obvious glee. Passionate Moviegoer calls it “a modern operatic debauch that leaves its viewer is woozily addicted.” Los Angeles Times observes, “Man, does this movie have a savage bite.” And 2UE That Movie Show concludes, “Scorsese's mastery is undeniable.”
All of these films are up for Oscars in one category or another. Better go see them if you want to know what all the Oscar buzz is about.
srhoades@aol.com
Inside Llewyn Davis (Rhoades)
Front Row at the Movies
“Inside Llewyn Davis”
Traces Folk Music’s Roots
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Remember that definition of a musician? The guy sleeping on your daughter’s couch.
That’s Llewyn Davis.
Or as a drug-addled jazz player says: “Folk singer? I thought you said you were a musician.”
Fan of folk music know that it got its true start in the clubs of Greenwich Village in the early sixties, a time just after Woody Guthrie and right before Bob Dylan.
In this new Coen brothers film -- “Inside Llewyn Davis,” now playing at the Tropic Cinema -- we are given a biographical snapshot of a folk singer named (you guessed it) Llewyn Davis.
The story is told entirely from his egocentric point of view. We meet the titular Llewyn Davis (played by Oscar Isaac) onstage at the Gaslight singing a beautiful folk song. Next thing we know, Llewyn’s getting the crap beat out of him in the club’s back alley. Demonstrating early on that he just can’t catch a break.
Penniless, Llewyn sleeps on friends’ couches, travels with an orange tabby cat in search of its owners, and aimlessly pursues his lackluster musical career. The title comes from his album, which isn’t selling.
Oscar Isaac sings his own songs, as do his co-stars. Isaac’s sound is smooth and authentic. “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me, “The Death of Queen Jane,” and “Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song)” are memorable renditions. T-Bone Burnett (Oscar-winner for “Crazy Hearts”) arranged all the movie’s folk covers.
Carey Mulligan and Justin Timberlake are seen as folk duo Jean and Jim. They’re testing the waters of mainstream stardom, a life that Llewyn holds in little regard. He sees that dream of a house with a white picket fence as “rather sad.”
Garrett Hedlund plays a cool beat poet known as Johnny Five, Adam Driver gives us a cowboy singer called Al Cody, and Stark Sands delivers a simplistic folk singer named Troy Nelson (who is based on Tom Paxton).
Benjamin Pike makes an appearance as the young Bob Dylan.
F. Murray Abraham portrays a Chicago club owner (based on Albert Grossman, the man who discovered Peter, Paul and Mary.)
And Coen brothers regular John Goodman shows up in the personage of a blustery, coked-up, crutch-wielding jazz hipster named Roland Turner. He’s the one who challenges Llewyn’s claim of being a real musician, describing his talent as playing “three chords on an ukulele.”
While Joel and Ethan Coen may skip from genre to genre, their films often depict quirky outsiders. Llewyn Davis is such a complex and interesting outsider, albeit a character hard to love. He takes little responsibility for his life. His failures are self-made. You’ll find it difficult to root for this self-tortured, struggling artist.
In one scene, Llewyn Davis hits a cat with a car and watches it limp away. This is a mirror of his own existence, beaten up by still limping forward in pursuit of his ambition to become a successful folk singer. A dream that’s never quite fulfilled.
The cold, harsh winter in Greenwich Village emphasizes Llewyn’s weary struggle. Figuratively, he’s been left out in the cold. But it also reflects the tone of this movie, bleak and melancholy, deliberately gloomy.
A failed folk singer, Llewyn Davis is pretty much in the same place at the end of the movie as at the beginning.
That’s the Coen brothers’ existential message, but it’s not a very satisfying one.
Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel masterfully captures the dark and grey tones of the New York scene. Nominated for an Oscar, he was a last-minute replacement for Roger Deakins who usually shoots the Coens’ movies but was tied up filming the James Bond film, “Skyfall.”
The film was inspired by the memoirs of Dave Van Ronk titled “The Mayor of MacDougal Street,” however Llewyn's story is mostly fiction.
Even so, this is more of a moody, 105-minute character sketch than a movie. While Llewyn’s faux-odyssey has a great Mobius-like symmetry in its telling, there’s no transformation of the main character. In the end, the film goes nowhere. He ends up where he started.
“Inside Llewyn Davis” is at best a soulful and poetic portrait of a disgruntled, unyielding man and his music. But it’s slightly out of tune.
srhoades@aol.com
“Inside Llewyn Davis”
Traces Folk Music’s Roots
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
Remember that definition of a musician? The guy sleeping on your daughter’s couch.
That’s Llewyn Davis.
Or as a drug-addled jazz player says: “Folk singer? I thought you said you were a musician.”
Fan of folk music know that it got its true start in the clubs of Greenwich Village in the early sixties, a time just after Woody Guthrie and right before Bob Dylan.
In this new Coen brothers film -- “Inside Llewyn Davis,” now playing at the Tropic Cinema -- we are given a biographical snapshot of a folk singer named (you guessed it) Llewyn Davis.
The story is told entirely from his egocentric point of view. We meet the titular Llewyn Davis (played by Oscar Isaac) onstage at the Gaslight singing a beautiful folk song. Next thing we know, Llewyn’s getting the crap beat out of him in the club’s back alley. Demonstrating early on that he just can’t catch a break.
Penniless, Llewyn sleeps on friends’ couches, travels with an orange tabby cat in search of its owners, and aimlessly pursues his lackluster musical career. The title comes from his album, which isn’t selling.
Oscar Isaac sings his own songs, as do his co-stars. Isaac’s sound is smooth and authentic. “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me, “The Death of Queen Jane,” and “Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song)” are memorable renditions. T-Bone Burnett (Oscar-winner for “Crazy Hearts”) arranged all the movie’s folk covers.
Carey Mulligan and Justin Timberlake are seen as folk duo Jean and Jim. They’re testing the waters of mainstream stardom, a life that Llewyn holds in little regard. He sees that dream of a house with a white picket fence as “rather sad.”
Garrett Hedlund plays a cool beat poet known as Johnny Five, Adam Driver gives us a cowboy singer called Al Cody, and Stark Sands delivers a simplistic folk singer named Troy Nelson (who is based on Tom Paxton).
Benjamin Pike makes an appearance as the young Bob Dylan.
F. Murray Abraham portrays a Chicago club owner (based on Albert Grossman, the man who discovered Peter, Paul and Mary.)
And Coen brothers regular John Goodman shows up in the personage of a blustery, coked-up, crutch-wielding jazz hipster named Roland Turner. He’s the one who challenges Llewyn’s claim of being a real musician, describing his talent as playing “three chords on an ukulele.”
While Joel and Ethan Coen may skip from genre to genre, their films often depict quirky outsiders. Llewyn Davis is such a complex and interesting outsider, albeit a character hard to love. He takes little responsibility for his life. His failures are self-made. You’ll find it difficult to root for this self-tortured, struggling artist.
In one scene, Llewyn Davis hits a cat with a car and watches it limp away. This is a mirror of his own existence, beaten up by still limping forward in pursuit of his ambition to become a successful folk singer. A dream that’s never quite fulfilled.
The cold, harsh winter in Greenwich Village emphasizes Llewyn’s weary struggle. Figuratively, he’s been left out in the cold. But it also reflects the tone of this movie, bleak and melancholy, deliberately gloomy.
A failed folk singer, Llewyn Davis is pretty much in the same place at the end of the movie as at the beginning.
That’s the Coen brothers’ existential message, but it’s not a very satisfying one.
Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel masterfully captures the dark and grey tones of the New York scene. Nominated for an Oscar, he was a last-minute replacement for Roger Deakins who usually shoots the Coens’ movies but was tied up filming the James Bond film, “Skyfall.”
The film was inspired by the memoirs of Dave Van Ronk titled “The Mayor of MacDougal Street,” however Llewyn's story is mostly fiction.
Even so, this is more of a moody, 105-minute character sketch than a movie. While Llewyn’s faux-odyssey has a great Mobius-like symmetry in its telling, there’s no transformation of the main character. In the end, the film goes nowhere. He ends up where he started.
“Inside Llewyn Davis” is at best a soulful and poetic portrait of a disgruntled, unyielding man and his music. But it’s slightly out of tune.
srhoades@aol.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
