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Quik Flix Hit

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Danny Collins (2015)

Rated R

danny-collins

Big Indie Pictures

Danny Collins isn’t as famous as Al Pacino, who plays the fictional aging rock singer in this film, but Danny’s type of fame will do well enough. He’s recognized nearly everywhere he goes, not just by long-time fans but also youths familiar with his celebrity.

In the BloghouseBefore he was a celebrity living off his name and long-ago hit songs, he was a talented singer/songwriter. So talented, in fact, a circa ’70s interview he did for a Rolling Stone-like periodical caught the attention of John Lennon.

It transpires that Lennon was moved by the interview and wrote an admiring and encouraging letter that included Lennon’s phone number. The skittish Danny, who was eager for success but apprehensive of stardom, could have benefitted from such a letter. Alas, through couldn’t-believe-it-if-it-weren’t-based-on-true-events circumstances, Danny wouldn’t receive the letter for more than 40 years. By the time it’s gifted to him by his steadfast manager (the great Christopher Plummer) he’s going through the motions of fame. Trophy girlfriend, fair-weather friends, casual drugs, expensive gated home and sports cars. He slogs through his performances as best he can, singing songs he’s long since tired of, resigned that he is more celebrity than singer.

The letter blasts him free of absorbing thoughts that he’s in the final throes of his life, sending him on a new trajectory. He packs up, dumps the girlfriend and sets off on a quest to find the life he should have had, and tie up some loose ends.

Up to this point the film has moved briskly and Pacino keeps Danny engaging, no doubt. When Danny checks into a rinky-dink New Jersey hotel to get back to writing the songs that Lennon-endorsed Danny Collins was supposed to have written years back, Danny’s likeable personality really comes into focus. In quick order he charms the hotel valet (Josh Peck), the young concierge, and more intentionally the hotel manager (a wonderfully low-key Annette Bening).

The loose ends involve wriggling himself into the life of his adult estranged son. The son (Bobby Cannavale) has a wife (Jennifer Garner) and daughter and no intention of having a relationship with his long-absent father. Danny’s well-written introduction to the family (Garner shines) effectively sets the stage for the first father-son encounter.

The film’s not so much about the plot, but there are key twists I will not spoil. And it’s not even about whether Danny will succeed in writing and singing this comeback song, though Pacino makes us root for him.

Cannavale, Garner, Bening and Plummer are all wonderfully realized character and each has at least one well-written scene that allows them to shine. This is one of those movies where you don’t mind spending time with any of the characters because they’re all interesting and say interesting things. But it’s all held together by grandmaster Pacino who knows this character inside and out. I like that Danny’s smart (he’s often taking notes) and is remarkable at reading people and assessing situations. The flashy-but-outdated clothes, hair style and cheesy songs don’t keep us from seeing what a good heart the man has, or what a warm-hearted, humorous film this is.

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Quik Flix Hit

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It Follows (2014)

Rated R

it-follows

Radius-TWC

With Oculus (2013), The Babadook (2014) and now It Follows, I’m beginning to believe again in my beloved and disappointing mistress, the horror genre, which for years has left me with heartache and heartburn. These recent gems bring hope that there are writers, directors, producers mining this genre who aren’t simply beholden to teen-demographic pandering, PG-13 half-assery and unnecessary remakes.

In the BloghouseHow’s this premise strike you? Jay (Maika Monroe), a post-high school teen whiling away waning autumn days with her sister and friends, goes out on a date with a cute guy she’s had her eye on. After a sexual encounter in the backseat of his car, cute guy informs her that during sex he “passed” something on to her. If that isn’t a horrifying setup right there, then what he’s passed on certainly is: a creature that can look like anyone, even those she loves, will begin to pursue her at a leisurely, but determined pace. “It’s very slow, but not dumb,” Jay is warned. It will unceasingly stalk her by slowly walking toward her—day or night, in empty places or crowded rooms. Only Jay (and those who have/had the curse) can see it, but it’s real. The brief and brutal opening scenes involving a previous female victim of this curse informs us of what this thing might do if it gets ahold of Jay. Cute guy tells her that if the creature kills her, it returns its attention to the last person to pass it on, and so on. It’s in his and Jay’s best interests, he says, for her to quickly sleep with someone else to move the curse on down the line.

With that setup, taking the teen-sex-equals-death horror trope to new extremes, It Follows builds up more tension than I would have imagined. It’s easy to outrun the thing, unless you’re unfortunate enough to allow yourself to get trapped in a corner, but its relentlessness is what terrifies. Jay can’t ever let her guard down to sleep, to attend classes at the community college. Even being surrounded by loving friends who can’t see the creature offers little comfort. It’s always out there, in some form—familiar or hideous, naked or clothed—walking toward her.

Somehow, director David Robert Mitchell’s film is able to evoke fear simultaneously in wide-open, populated areas and closed-off, isolated spaces. Think about that for a moment. When was the last time a horror film got you coming and going like that? At a park, in school hallways, at the beach, someone among the throngs of people is walking toward you—only you—with the intention of doing things to your body and mind you can’t dream up in nightmares. Hiding away in a sealed-up room or boathouse doesn’t leave you with an exit plan when something comes wrapping at the door or crashing through a window. So effective is the director’s use of wide shots (who or what is that moving in the distance behind Jay?), that any time he moves in for close-ups and tight shots, I tensed up wondering what’s occurring just out of frame. Poor Jay. She wasn’t a virgin to begin with, but was sex worth this? And as things become increasingly hopeless will she turn to sex again as a means to sidestep this curse? Certainly a pair of lustful friends are more than willing to help out. But Jay understands that sleeping with someone could condemn him to death.

Adding to this tense and intense film is the director’s sure hand at fashioning a dreamlike atmosphere. Sure, there’s the intrusive sync score that’s an intentional homage to ’80s soundtracks from horror maestro John Carpenter. Sure, Mitchell tries to affect a timeless quality by giving the film a retro look: tube televisions, phones with cords, cars your father drove. But above all, I think the director’s efforts are in service of tapping a visceral nightscape of inescapable terror that ultimately wears you down. This film: not only does it follow, it lingers.

I like how the kids give simple, natural performances; the lack of snarky, meta-dialogue that passes for cleverness these days is actually refreshing. When the finale at an abandoned public pool brings us to the head-on confrontation we’ve been awaiting and dreading, it’s a bit of a letdown only because everything else has been so effective. Turns out, what the creature might do is a more unnerving prospect than what it actually does.

I don’t need a sequel to this, which I’m sure is coming, but I would like to see more genre films strike out for original territory and tone, even at the risk of alienating the demographic that doesn’t seem to have a problem throwing money at mindless, gory, easily forgotten horror films.

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Quik Flix Hit – Summer Movie Roundup

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In the Bloghouse

 

Time for a look back at the summer’s best and worst in the 2014 Summer Movie Roundup.

 

 

 

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

The Edge of Tomorrow

Godzilla (2014)

Guardians of the Galaxy

Lucy

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

X-Men: Days of Future Past

 

RELATED: See all of Marvin Brown’s reviews from his film archive.

Quik Flix Hit

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Summer Movie Series

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Rated PG-13

guardians_of_the_galaxy

Marvel Studios

This summer superhero action flick is going to be a hit because its emphasis is on humor and music—two elements that enhance any film when done well. We get to see things blown up real good, but mostly we like the songs and the banter and brawling between the Guardians. Marvel smartly gambled that audiences needing a respite from the onslaught of first-string superheroes might give this a try.

In the BloghouseThe Guardians is a ragtag team of, you guessed it, outlaws forced to combine its talents and snarky comments to take on a force bent on the destruction of, you guessed it, the galaxy. The enemies, the instruments of destruction, the far-flung interstellar locales, the double-crosses all fall within the scope of this kind of movie. But when Star-Lord pops a worn cassette tape into his Walkman and starts jamming out to earthbound hits circa 1970s, you smile at the absurdity and go along with it. Why not? Sure, we’re light years from earth and decades ahead of modern times, but why should that hinder our love for The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”?

Each of the five Guardians left an impression on me, but for my money I liked Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), a genetically altered raccoon who’s sadly aware of his manufactured nature and really into heavy weapons. That he doesn’t look ridiculous piloting starships or blasting away with guns at least as large as himself is a testament to the f/x team. I also like human Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), aka Star-Lord, who’s handsome, skillful, arrogant—the qualities always evident in superheroes—but more importantly good-hearted and repeatedly willing to make bold sacrifices for others. The kids will like Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), a treelike being whose mode of communicating consists entirely of the phrase “I am Groot!”

There’s a sad-sweet prologue of young Peter confronting his dying mother that’s well executed but gains depth when we return to the moment late in the film and truly recognize its value. I also like how the movie established pretty quickly that each of the Guardians for the most part like and accept each other. It’s a time saver. We know they’re going to make good teammates, they know they make good teammates so why waste time pretending like they’re not?

Guardians of the Galaxy goes down easy and certainly leaves space for a sequel—that’s the Marvel way. I suspect it’ll do even more business on video when those who didn’t think they had a taste for it finally see it at home and realize how much fun it is. And the music? Come on! “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” “Ooh Child.” “Cherry Bomb.” “Come and Get Your Love.” And its use of “Hooked on a Feeling” steals away that song’s long association with Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.

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Quik Flix Hit

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Summer Movie Series

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014)

Rated R

sin_city

Aldamisa Entertainment

I was gobsmacked as I watched the first Sin City in 2005. Not only was it visually sumptuous, but its noir-drenched characters were smartly drawn and its bleak interconnecting stories, individually and collectively, engaged. Every frame of the Robert Rodriguez–Frank Miller codirected effort vibrated with originality and purpose.

In the BloghouseI was deflated watching this sequel. Not only was there nothing new to the proceedings, its visuals seemed to rest firmly on its laurels. No real effort seemed to be made to one-up the masterful look of the original. The films boast crisp, hyper-real black-and-white cinematography, with color splashed in here and there for effect. To recreate the look of Miller’s groundbreaking graphic novels, the films employ stylized camera angles and movement, smoke and shadow, jump-cuts, smash-cuts, projection, animation—everything.

Watching the first film, I remembered thinking a lot of effort went into how and when to apply color in an essentially colorless landscape. Blood or lips or eyes and teeth or eyeglass lens tipped the viewer to method and motive. This time there’s a randomness to the use of color, like there was a mission to put some color somewhere in every frame, without thought of why (or if) it’s needed.

The plot is a rehash of tales better told the first time around. We return to Basin City, a lethal, sess-pool metropolitan city inhabited by hardboiled lowlifes and dames in distress. In the first film, we spent time with the characters before the mayhem began; this time characters are tripping over each other with nary an arc between them. And remember the visit to Old Town, the red-light district where even the cops are afraid to go? In the original film, it’s populated and protected by prostitutes, several of whom are given names, personalities and things to do. This time, there’s a perfunctory trip to Old Town that renders the nameless women as relevant as any number of thugs running throughout the film.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception, 300 Days of Summer) brings bluster and consideration to a role that ultimately is much ado about nada. His plight and fate seemed completely avoidable and he seemed smart enough to sidestep all of it. Jessica Alba’s stripper character Nancy worked better the first time when she was a minor player; this time her expanded role underscores the character’s thinness. Josh Brolin (Oldboy, 2013), who usually engages, here is wasted in a snarling role that’s one note; at least Clive Owen had fun with the same character in the original film. Eva Green as the oft-nude femme fatale is ridiculously obvious from the moment she slinks into a bar until her final moments on screen. I never believed her character. Even Mickey Rourke’s fan favorite Marv (he returns out of chronology) can’t get this mess off the ground. Only Powers Boothe’s power-mad senator brings energy to the proceedings.

What a bust.

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Quik Flix Hit

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Summer Movie Series

Lucy (2014)

Rated R

lucy18-1

Canal+

Director Luc Besson (The Professional, La Femme Nikita, The Fifth Element) has been off his game for some time now. Lucy is a step back to form, but he doesn’t quite get there. The film wants to have more depth than its screenplay allows. In addition to being an action film, a fight film, a philosophical and literal take on the evolution of man, quantum ideas of consciousness, the film wants to explore the end of human existence and what may lie beyond it. Right. But mostly it’s an action film.

In the BloghouseLucy (Scarlett Johansson, Her) is an American studying in Taiwan who hooks up with Mr. Wrong, who inadvertently pulls her into a synthetic drug ring. Forced to be a mule for an improbable narcotic that will either kill you deader than dead, or jumpstart your brain function beyond its known capabilities, Lucy—through a ruptured implant—gets the latter.

At first we know the drill: we’ve seen Johansson as the Black Widow in three Marvel movies now. She can dispatch roomfuls of armed men using martial arts and various weaponry. But once the drug improves her brain function exponentially, who needs weapons when you can control matter … then read minds … then sense emotion in its purest form … then visualize human souls … then affect space and time itself?

Morgan Freeman’s on hand as a renowned scientist whose theories on the mysteries and depths of the human mind are validated by Lucy’s existence. She seeks him out after reading his life’s work in mere minutes. Meanwhile, the leader of the drug ring Min-sik Choi (Oldboy, 2003) wants his product back—by any means necessary. There’s something to be said about a man who continues to pursuit a woman who has stopped bullets midflight and can reverse time itself. He’s pretty cocksure.

All of this can be fun, and if you’ve come to this for the action and fight scenes alone, you’ll get your fill. But in trying to be more than an action film, while not really taking its philosophical components full weight, the movie feels disjointed.

It’s Besson’s incredible La Femme Nikita crossed with 2011’s Limitless (which itself bites off more than it can chew) but isn’t as good as either of those films.

This film might have erred by casting Johansson, who certainly has acting chops and action-film bonafides. Unfortunately, because she brings the expectations of a hide-kicking, name-taking superhero, we’re denied what should have been a jolt from seeing a vulnerable stranger in a strange land transformed into an awesome instrument of destruction and resurrection.

If Besson is trying to speak something to the nature of evolution and violence in society, it gets lost in the clutter.

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Campus MovieFest 2014

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Campus MovieFest 2014

Universal Studios

 

DAY 3: The Films

I’ll let my brother John Brown handle this:

“So seven hours later 71 short films seen. Lots of laughs, incredible cinematography, great writing and story lines some touching moments and all with the best movie watcher in the world — my big bro!”

cmf-brothers

John Brown, left, and Marvin Brown at the 2014 Campus MovieFest at Universal Studios. Photo credit: John Brown

Campus MovieFest 2014

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Campus MovieFest 2014

Universal Studios

 

DAY 2: Workshops

GrantHeslov

Producer-writer-actor Grant Heslov (Argo, The American) details the struggles and successes of the collaborative process. (Credit: Marvin Brown)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shadyac

Tom Shadyac, with Marvin Brown. Shadyac, director of hits Ace Ventura, Bruce Almighty and the Nutty Professor remake, shares his experience of walking away from commercial films. Shadyac, seriously injured in a bike accident, would reevaluate his life and career, culminating in his life-affirming documentary I Am.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JKasdan

Director Jake Kasdan (The Zero Effect, Bad Teacher) fields question concerning his career, while promoting his upcoming comedy Sex Tape. (Credit: Marvin Brown)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Up next: Day 3, The Films

Quik Flix Hit

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The Rover (2014)
Rated R

The Rover (2013) l-r: GUY PEARCE AND ROBERT PATTINSON,

Porchlight Films

In some dystopian future, 10 years after the “collapse,” a man (Guy Pearce) sits in his car on a deserted Australian highway. As flies buzz around him and he stares into nothing as the sun beats down on his shaggy, haggard form, we notice the shot is held for quite a while. So long, in fact, we begin to wonder if the reel is stuck. The soundtrack punctuates the silence with atonal chords that seem louder than usual.

The BloghouseThese things—the lingering shot, the abrasive sound—establish not simply tone, but theme. You’re going to be subjected to both for the rest of the film.

Pearce eventually gets out of the car and walks across dusty, sun-scorched road and into some kind of makeshift store. Its proprietors are silent, worn men and boys who can hardly be bothered by  Pearce’s presence.

While he’s in the place, a carful of panicked thieves wreck nearby and steal Pearce’s car as a substitute. The rest of the film concerns Pearce’s pursuit of the thieves.

This is a strange, uncomfortable film that repeatedly uproots expectations. The more we learn about Pearce the less we like him; it’s probably for the best that he’s hardly defined. We know he’s handy with a gun and he doesn’t blink at shocking violence. He just wants his car back.

Aside from deliberately held shots and grating ambient score, David Michôd’s film builds a creepy undertone by presenting women as scarce, while shirtless boys hover in the corners of many scenes.

Pearce is united with the abandoned brother (Robert Pattinson of the Twilight series) of one of the thieves. He’s a “half wit” who can’t decide if he wants to reunite with his brother or kill him.

Pearce brings his dependable intensity to the proceedings. He’s so hard externally we don’t know what to make of his character when he sheds tears. Pattinson, nearly unrecognizable and intriguing with his mumbling accent and vacant stare,  with this film and Cosmopolis (2013) firmly establishes capabilities beyond playing a brooding, glistening vampire.

The film is bleak and humorless, offering a convincing pull into its atmosphere. There’s a powerful scene of Pearce detailing the fate of his wife. And another in which a young girl becomes a causal victim of violence.

But you’ll wonder how, despite so much violence, death and a short runtime that it still feels like you’ve lived hours drifting in this dusty, dirty, sweaty, sticky off-beat film. I wanted to take a shower afterward.

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Campus MovieFest 2014

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Campus MovieFest 2014

Universal Studios

 

DAY 2: Bloodcast

Clarke Wolfe of Nerdist.com and Ryan Turek of ShockTillYouDrop.com participated in the Bloodcast workshop during the 2014 Campus MovieFest at Universal Studios.

The humorous duo can whip up engaging discussions out of thin air. That fact that they know their stuff, horror-wise, made this one of the best workshop sessions of the festival. Horror topics ran the gamut, from old school flicks to torture porn gross-outs to meta-rrific genre classics like Scream.

Great stuff.

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Clarke Wolfe, left, of Nerdist.com and Ryan Turek of ShockTillYouDrop.com

Up next: Workshops

 

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