Pot Luck aka Three Chuck rants for the Price of One.
In the last week or so I’ve caught I’m Not There, There Will Be Blood, and Sweeney Todd in the theatre. Amazing and mildly exhausting in equal measure. These are films that should be seen, digested, and seen again. Not shoehorned into a few days and knocked over like dominos. Such is the situation though, and, particularly considering the traditional winter drought that’s approaching, it’s a nice situation to be in. Eventually maybe studios will realize that people like movies the other 3/4 of the year too, and everything will be easier to catch. Maybe the Academy will one day be able to recall films that are more than sixty days old. One can dream.
Here are a few other things that I’ve caught over this same week to ten day period, but didn’t really have a full post’s worth of musings to share.
Reign Over Me, the newest film from Mike Binder and the newest in which Adam Sandler tries to atone for the obnoxiousness he unleashes as an actor and producer on a more regular basis, is one of my candidates for Worst Movie of the Year. There have been films that are technically less competent, but Reign Over Me takes the cake in sheer self-righteous unwatchability. The film is strange and ambitious. I give it that much. And only that much. In dramatic roles, Sandler usually plays the castrated opposite of the psychotic frat boy that populates his comedies. Here he gets to have it both ways: he’s deranged and castrated, and if that wasn’t enough, he gets to court Oscar by speaking in a pointless Fraggle Rock lisp that annoys more than anything else. Don Cheadle, as the old buddy who tries to save Sandler from himself, is warm and appealing, and wisely never tries to out convulse Sandler. You care for Cheadle, and hope that he one day finds someone else to help. After the overrated The Upside of Anger, and the awful Man About Town, it may be time for Mike Binder to reevaluate himself in the same banal way that his leading characters always do. Hopefully he’ll come up with something more useful than leftover Cameron Crowe, and something less desperate than a 9/11 grief cash-in.
Unlike Reign Over Me, Mr. Brooks at least has conviction in its absurdity. I can say this about the new Kevin Costner-Demi Moore-William Hurt-Dane Cook serial killer film (you read that right); every single scene is as stupid as it can possibly be. The film is unwieldy in the best way, subplots multiply like fungus: every other suburban yuppy is a serial killer or serial killer in training, and Costner presides over the entire enterprise in a performance that almost has to be self-satire. Costner is playing the same kind of colorless leading man that made him a star (and that he transcended beautifully in Bull Durham and Tin Cup) only here he’s the man of the year and the killer of the moment in equal measure. Has to be a joke. If this is a joke, I can guarantee you that Demi Moore isn’t in on it. Hurt, carrying over his character from A History of Violence, sure is though, and his scenes with Costner are the few that are truly pleasurable in a way that isn’t ironic. Mr. Brooks is the “good bad” movie of 2007.
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is one of the unfortunate who knew? casualties of 2007. Some have speculated that the film may have stiffed because people are tiring of uber-comedy producer Judd Apatow’s sensibility and that the inevitable backlash has set in. I don’t buy it. I think the real issue is timing and the fact that Walk Hard is sending up something that people still take seriously: the Oscar bait musical biopic that, in it’s obligation to provide faux uplift and hope, is as false in it’s own way as anything Mr. Brooks is selling. Too bad. Walk Hard is the next evolution in the Anchorman, Talledega Nights line of hyperbolic farce, reining the shtick in just enough to magnify the bits of absurdity that drop in occasionally like hand grenades. Walk Hard is more concerned with cumulative effect than bits, and director-co-writer Jake Kasdan’s patience pays off. The music, like the music in Christopher Guest’s A Mighty Wind, is credible in its own right. The performances, particularly John C. Reilly’s, are as good as any to be found in more obvious Oscar bait. Hell the film, as an R-rated comedy, is actually a more credible examination of the self-destructive musician’s life than the real Mccoys who have to play cleaner to ensure that the kiddies can get in. Walk Hard also doesn’t, like most other Apatow movies, get soft and sentimental at the end. The sincerity and the sarcasm go together hand and hand here, in a more graceful way, no Act 1-crude, Act 2-crude and sentimental, Act 3-sentimental, story constructions here. This is one of the more pleasurable films of the Holiday season, and would make an interesting double bill, as others have suggested, with the more heavy duty life of the music man deconstruction I’m Not There.
Reign Over Me: ★
Mr. Brooks: ★★
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story: ★★★
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:31 am
Nice! I’d like to see this kind of coverage more often!
January 2nd, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Thanks Travis. I’m going to try to work this type of thing in more often, as well as that classics column that I discarded after one entry.
I may do another marathon thing in the next month or so too, we’ll see.
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:08 pm
You pretty much told me everything I feared about Reign. I’ll be skipping it.
Walk Hard is still a possibility. I’m not as fond of Apatow as some, but the musical biopic is ripe for the plucking. I like the idea of an I’m Not There/Walk Hard double feature.