Telluride Film Festival Lineup

The Telluride Film Fest starts today and goes through Saturday, and as per usual they just revealed their lineup on the opening day. This is where Argo premiered last year and recent Oscar winners The Artist and The King's Speech also made their U.S. debuts in Telluride.  

Oscar contenders set to hit the Festival: 

  • Gravity; dir. Alfonso Cuaron; starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney
  • Labor Day; dir. Jason Reitman; Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin
  • Inside Llewyn Davis; dir. Joel and Ethan Coen; Oscar Isaacs and Carey Mulligan
  • All is Lost; dir. J.C. Chandor; Robert Redford
  • The Past; dir. Asghar Farhadi; Berenice Bejo
  • Nebraska; dir. Alexander Payne; Bruce Dern and Will Forte

I can't wait to hear the reaction for Gravity, my number one most anticipated movie this fall by far. I'll be posting the early reactions and reviews as they come in.

REVIEW: Mud (2013) Matthew McConaughey, Tye Sheridan. Dir. Jeff Nichols

Writer-director Jeff Nichols' third feature, Mud, is a movie that boasts some outstanding cinematography and some fine acting, but the overall experience of the film is, I'm sorry to say, unsatisfying, thanks to a muddled screenplay that lacks focus and never quite knows what it wants to be about.

Set on a riverboat house in the Arkansas swamplands, two boys named Ellis and Neckbone go searching for an abandoned boat they found stuck in a tree, presumably after a flood has taken place. When they find their boat it bears traces of evidence that someone has been living in it, and that someone turns out to be Mud, played by Matthew McConaughey, a fugitive on the run from bounty hunters and the law after having murdered a man. The boys, especially Ellis, grow enamored of him and Mud recruits them to help him fix up the boat for use, so that he can whisk away his girlfriend Juniper (Reese Whitherspoon), whom he's come there to find. This is clearly a Boo Radley inspired situation, but I only wish Mud were that interesting. The character as written is rather uncomplicated and dull, and on the screen is sold purely on the basis of McConaughey's usual charisma. Which is there in spades, and I don't mean to diminish him as he continues his career comeback by turning in one serious performance after another in interesting, smaller films for the past two years, but Mud's troubled relationship with his girlfriend is only vaguely touched on and never given closure, which is something you can say about several of the plot threads in this movie.

Of the two boys participating in Mud's home project, Ellis is the protagonist, and he's played very well by the appealing Tye Sheridan. He comes from a home where his parents are splitting up and he's feeling disillusioned about love, so he tries to find it elsewhere by helping to reunite Mud and Juniper, and trying to find a girlfriend for himself. The girlfriend story is something that's introduced and then tossed aside, while the parent's marriage is similarly focused on for singular moments but not addressed in any meaningful way. The script meanders between a series of only vaguely connected scenes without pulling the various threads together so that there's an impact to what we've been watching for two hours- and the violent climax near the finale feels particularly tacked on and out of place, as though Nichols didn't quite know how the film should end, and thought that missing impact might as well be an action scene. There's also another abrupt moment near the ending that endangers Ellis's life in a sequence that to me was very nearly completely ripped off from The Coen's True Grit a couple of years ago, and the mimicry robs that scene of its dramatic impact as well.

It's a shame that the story never comes together tightly, because all of the performances are excellent in the film, from the two young boys to McConaughey, to the parents played by Sarah Paulsen and Ray McKinnon, and even Reese Whitherspoon as Juniper, despite her character being the most elusive. But none of these people are ever explored in depth and just when we seem on the verge of getting to know them, Ellis wanders off into another disparate scene, taking the opportunity away from us. I should mention that the film is gorgeously photographed, and the locations (in Nichols' home state of Arkansas) are astounding to look at, placing us in an atmospheric South that feels vividly alive. Unfortunately I can't say the same about the people in it.

* *

The Butler Made Obama Cry

President-Obama-Sybil-Wilkes-Tom-Joyner

Cute story today from an interview the President gave today to radio hosts Tom Joyner and Sybil Wilkes of the Tom Joyner Morning Show. Here's the quote:

Tom Joyner: "Ok, before were get out of here, did you see 'The Butler' and did you cry?" 

The President: "You know, I did see 'The Butler' and I did tear up. I teared up just thinking about not just the butlers who've worked here in the White House, but an entire generation of people who were talented and skilled, but because of Jim Crow, because of discrimination, there was only so far they could go. And yet, with tenacity and dignity, they got up and worked every single day and put up with a whole lot of mess because they hoped for something better for their kids." 

Aww. The tearjerking ending is pretty powerful- people in my theater were sniffling too. President Obama went on to say that Oprah can really act, lol.

Movie of the Day: "Malcolm X" (1992)

Continuing our weeklong remembrance of the March on Washington, the second movie to celebrate civil rights this week is Spike Lee's Malcolm X, the sprawling biography of the slain civil rights activist played brilliantly by Denzel Washington (and for which he should have won his first Best Actor Oscar). The movie dramatized every major event in Malcolm X's life, from his early life as a criminal to his imprisonment, his conversion to Islam, his eventual falling out with the Nation of Islam, his spiritual re-awakening and so on, all the way to his assassination. It's a terrific movie that should have been recognized more in its time, but has since come to be considered a classic and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2010.

Trailer: 

Blu-Ray Pick of the Week: "To Be or Not to Be" (1942)

The Criterion series has been great about producing the best cover art to go with their new releases. The film stars Jack Benny and Carole Lombard (one of the great comediennes who died in a plane crash shortly before it came out), as part of a theater troupe that has to imitate the Nazis in order to get out of Poland. Considered controversial at the time of its release, both for its satire (remember, the Nazis were currently occupying at the time) and Lombard's recent death, the movie found new life soon after and is now considered one of the best of director Ernst Lubitsch's career. It's a great movie, and you should definitely check it out.

Original Trailer from 1942: 

Chadwick Boseman to play James Brown

Variety reports that 42 star Chadwick Boseman has been cast as the legendary James Brown in the long awaited biopic that has finally been given the green light. Producer Brian Grazer has been trying to get it off the ground for years and the project finally picked up steam when Tate Taylor (The Help), came on board to direct. It sounds like a traditional biopic that's going to follow the singer from poverty in Georgia to stardom in the 60's and 70's, but presumably Boseman's going to be doing some serious performing in this movie, as you can see below (I wonder if his voice will be dubbed).

Here's the Godfather of Soul in 1966 singing one of my favorite songs: 

Happy Women's Equality Day

August 26th has been marked by Congress since 1971 as Women's Equality Day, celebrating the anniversary of women earning the right to vote 93 years ago. To mark that occasion in film, watch 2004's Iron Jawed Angels, which tells the story of the American women's suffrage movement, that fought for the right to vote in the 1910's.  The movie was an HBO production starring Hilary Swank and Frances O'Connor as second generation suffragettes who revolutionized the movement through new activist tactics inspired by suffrage in England. It's a good movie, and amazingly enough there are relatively few films that explore the figures of early women's suffrage, so, not to be cliche, but you might actually learn something from this one (as I did watching it).

Trailer (sorry about the blurriness): 

Movie of the Day: "The Long Walk Home" (1990)

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the historic March on Washington this Wednesday, I'll be posting 5 films about the Civil Rights Movement this week to mark the occasion, starting with today's entry, The Long Walk Home. This film starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek was set during the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, and chronicles the change of heart from an upper class white woman towards her black maid as she offers her rides home during the boycott. The movie is notable for its acting and one of the things I liked about it was the subtle way it incorporates how women were treated by their husbands in the 1950's as an avenue for Spacek's character to find a way to relate to the civil rights struggle. Whoopi Goldberg is great as the maid and the relationship between the women is moving in in its effectiveness.

Trailer: 

BOX OFFICE 8/23-8/25: Holdovers Dominate on a Solid Weekend

Lee Daniels' The Butler had a small drop off this weekend, holding on to the top spot and falling just 31% for a $17 million take.  That's a strong hold, if not as strong as 2011's The Help, and the film has a good chance of crossing $100 million in the coming weeks. That will of course, only help its Oscar chances this fall as more contenders roll out. In second place was We're The Millers, with another small drop in its third weekend of only 25%, pulling in $13 million and amassing a total of $91 million so far. It's on track to outgross Grown-Ups 2 to become the second biggest comedy of the summer, after The Heat, which took in $155 million.

The latest fantasy film based on a young adult novel failed to take off, with just $14 million since Wednesday for The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, which also received bad reviews and a so-so B+ Cinemascore, so don't expect much more out of this one. And in fourth place, the Edgar Wright film The World's End, third in the beloved Cornetto trilogy (comprised of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz), opened with $8.9 million, which is a solid number for its theater count of 1500, and a build on the last entry, Hot Fuzz, which opened with $5.8 million. Stateside, these films are the definition of cult favorites, that's for sure. The film also earned rave reviews (93% on Rotten Tomatoes), some of the best of the year, and will likely hold up well over the next month.

Top 5: 

  1. The Butler- $17 million
  2. We're the Millers- $13.5 million
  3. The Mortal instruments: City of Bones- $9.3 million
  4. The World's End- $8.9 million
  5. Planes- $8.6 million

Further down the chart, the well-reviewed horror film You're Next didn't make much of a splash, earning just $7 million over the weekend, and garnering a disappointing "B-" rating from the audience. Unusual for a horror film, but perhaps the comedic horror aspect was too high concept for fans of the genre. It's a soft weekend next time, with just the Ethan Hawke/Selena Gomez action movie Getaway coming out in wide release, along with the concert film One Direction: This is Us, so it looks like the openers are for the tweens only. Until then!