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The Producers (2005)
A fun and fantastic musical extravagance.
I'm a big believer in judging movies on what they want to be. A lot of the criticisms of The Producers seem to be forgetting that this is an intentionally OTT, gaudy, camp and ridiculous musical, which puts it's strength in the audience's ability to play along and enjoy the bizarre ride accompanied by some fantastically elaborate musical numbers. So yes, Broderick, Lane and everyone else in the cast completely overacts to a cringeworthy degree, and there isn't much of an adaptation from the stage to the screen. In addition to this, the film is also pretty stupid and zany. But for all these reasons and many more I absolutely love the musical adaptation of The Producers.
I think Nathan Lane plays his role perfectly, and I couldn't see anyone else in his role (in terms of musicality. I'm well aware of how good a job the original Max played his role). Matthew Broderick is slightly more replaceable, but he has a good voice and he does the sweet bits in his songs really well. Uma Thurman is the only person who I would say is actively miscast, but she was a big star at the time. Not to mention, as I said in my reviews of Chicago and Les Miserables (both of which I also love), that my appreciation of these films hinges entirely on the songs, and everything else is just extras. There's a number of standout songs in The Producers, especially in the first half. Then obviously there's Springtime For Hitler, and Betrayed, and yeah, there's only really two stinkers and they're the two slow ones (That Face and 'Til Him).
So add to that the fact that I laughed out loud at a lot of the jokes in The Producers, more so than usual for either a comedy or a musical, and the fact that there was barely a minute I wasn't enjoying myself watching a movie that's over two hours long. Yeah, I love The Producers. It's a proper old school musical with a sense of fun, great jokes, a great cast and great songs. I really don't see what everyone's problem is.
My Dinner with Andre (1981)
Tell, don't show.
I am a very big fan of very talky movies, to the extent where I believe that the phrase "show don't tell" is the worst thing that's ever happened to cinema. Take the first fifty minutes of this movie for example, where Andre is recounting his experiences. If we were to employ the "show don't tell" rule to this section of the movie, we would follow Andre from experience to experience as he tells of his hedonistic voyages that all roughly outline the point of his argument, and at least in my eyes it would be very boring. Without dialogue and expression to provide context, what we're left with is simply attractive or unattractive images. While it's possible to derive meaning from these images inferred from visual metaphors, these are almost always employed after the fact by audiences searching for meaning where there is none. While I don't want this review to stumble into the area of hatred, suffice to say the one connecting factor of all my least-favourite directors is the priority they place in storytelling by showing and not telling.
So I believe with that off my chest I can talk about My Dinner With Andre more specifically, beyond the reach of it being a film full of dialogue and me loving the correct usage of dialogue in films. The pace of this movie is something to be admired in the sense that it has a gradual incline throughout. Unshackled from the need to provide plot beats or a three-act structure, the film is free to travel as it wants, and due to the conversation (as most intimate conversations do) becoming more and more personal, the pace of the film naturally slowly speeds up and becomes more enjoyable throughout as the conversation becomes less trivial and more insightful. By the end of the movie I was thoroughly enraptured because what the two characters were saying genuinely felt like it meant something to me. This may have been due to the characters in the movie reflecting mine (Wallace) and my father's (Andre) views on consumerism and spirituality, but I also think it speaks to the quality of the film's insights.
But beyond what the characters say, which is the most attractive aspect of the movie, there is also something to admire in the world around the characters. While we are being sucked into this discussion just as the two people involved in it are, we forget that the world is moving around them (ironically a topic of discussion in the movie itself). I felt the natural passing of time in the movie just as it was in real life, which is a strange thing to say unless you too have seen the movie and understand what I mean. It's a rare feat, and one that is common in many of my favourite films (Before Sunrise in particular). By the time the final scene started and the beautiful song 'Gymnopedie No. 1' started, I felt like I had been naturally transported into the film itself and I had been through the exact same experience as the characters. Again, it's such an odd thing to see written down that I feel like you can only understand what I mean if you sit down, focus and spend 110 minutes watching these two people talking.
And I think that's my point. The reason that I'm giving this movie five stars is that it's an experience unlike any other. When people say that about certain movies (and again, I won't go into detail) it has a tendency to frustrate and annoy me. Indeed, in my most recent review of Rachel Getting Married, my favourite film of all-time, I said that I refuse to speak of a film as if it's an experience that goes beyond simply sitting down and watching a movie. Well this is my exception that proves the rule, as My Dinner With Andre has an almost unsettling ability to cause even the most brutally non-spiritual to wax transcendent.
Leatherheads (2008)
Perfectly likable.
I think, as they often do, The AV Club put my opinion of 'Leatherheads' more concisely than I ever could. They say the following about the film:
"If amiability equaled greatness, Leatherheads would be destined to become a classic."
Nevertheless, I am very surprised at the largely negative reputation this film has and believe it to be somewhat underrated. Clooney's directorial filmography reads like a list of films I've always meant to get round to seeing and although Leatherheads was probably a rather odd place to start, I'd be more than happy to watch it again. It is a fun, zippy comedy with a slightly misplaced romantic subplot that dulls the film when it takes center stage in the second act. In addition to this, John Krasinski's character was evidently a nightmare for the screenwriters, as he is required to be almost a villain while also being actively likable and sympathetic. Although Rick Reilly (the film's scriptwriter) somewhat pulls this off, it's one of the more difficult balancing acts I've seen in a lighthearted comedy.
As I say, the film is at it's best when it's attention is away from Renee Zellwegger and the tired love triangle tropes. Obviously the high points of the film come during the interactions between Clooney and Krasinski and when the characters take to the field to actually play football. This may be somewhat unsurprising given my prior stated love of both screwball comedies and underdog sports movies, but I think I may be on the side of general consensus with that one. The AV Club's quote highlights the fact that this film is a lot of fun to watch and had me constantly smiling throughout, even if it was somewhat lacking in full- on gut laughs. There were a number of set pieces that just felt like a loving embracement of a kind of sweet wackiness at the film's core, and none more so than the film's final football match which is somewhat predictably the highlight.
But alas, the sting in the tail of that initial quote is still present too. Whilst I had a lot of fun watching Leatherheads I'd struggle to recommend that it'd be anyone's favourite movie. While it does most of what it does well it lacks lofty ambitions and mostly plays it's humour where it knows it is close to the surface. I'm confident that if it dug a little deeper the edges could've perhaps been sharper and the characters could've maybe been deeper. Were that the case we may have been looking at an extra half-star but as it is Leatherheads is a respectable, enjoyable film that I'd thoroughly encourage anyone to check out if they like watching a film to feel like they're being hugged by a time period.
Serbuan maut (2011)
The best real action movie out there.
In my argument for the banning of guns in action movies, this would be Exhibit A. This movie gets about 1000x more badass once they put down the weapons and do some hardcore martial arts, and it's even better when they manage to fit in some swordfighting sequences. I'd watch way more action movies if they all featured sword fights. But I've gotten some stick in the past for not liking action movies, and the reason I don't is because most of the time they feature two dudes standing on each side of the room firing boring bits of metal at each other until one of them falls down. Hell, that was the main problem that I had with the Dredd movie last year. The Raid shows how to make an action movie that I actually like because the action is actually entertaining.
And that's like, it by the way. The action is the sole reason to watch this movie. I mean the acting is great in the sense that people react to getting punched in the face pretty well, and the story is good in that it doesn't totally fall apart at any point. But let's face it, the action is what brings The Raid to people's attention, including mine, and the director knows that. Although, as I say, the movie gets way better once the characters put down the guns, it's still a lot of fun until that point, it's just not as much fun. Seriously though, I refuse to believe anyone can show me a better fight scene than the invasion of the meth lab about sixty minutes into this. Seriously, I actually dare you.
So this movie's awesome. 100 minutes flies by and it gets even better on rewatch when you realise you really don't have to be paying attention to the plot outside of the basic premise. Although the occasional emotional moment is dampened slightly by not knowing the context, I honestly think no-one who watches this film will care. So yeah, everyone can keep their "just a proper action movie" films and next time I want to chill out with beer and pizza and watch people fight each other for some reason or another I'm gonna put on this slice of badassness.
In Bruges (2008)
An example of perfect dark comedy.
I remember getting really angry at an article in either Total Film or Empire that featured a list of films that were supposedly Quentin Tarantino ripoffs. As you can probably guess, In Bruges was on said list. Being of the opinion that In Bruges is better than any Tarantino movie (and significantly better than any one that isn't Inglorious Basterds) this really annoyed me. The list seemed to be based on the idea that if a movie features swearing, violence and a lot of dialogue then it must be a Tarantino-wannabe. That's stupid for a number of reasons, the main one of which being that swearing, violence and dialogue-heavy scripts were not invented by a guy whose first film came out in 1992. Another reason is that whilst Tarantino's films often seem so desperate to adhere to the boundaries they've set themselves, they often suffer as a result. Without these boundaries, In Bruges is a very different, and much better movie.
Obviously it's funny. That doesn't need to be said. Look at literally any review of this movie and people will tell you how hilarious and quotable this movie is. I think one of the things that's most impressive though is how ballsy it is when it comes to rooting the characters in real emotion. Every character in the movie spends at least 95% of it's runtime being super depressed. In addition to this, half the scenes end on a depressing silence, rather than a witty punchline. The combination of these two elements, along with the obvious choices of music and setting, add up to a film that is evidently trying, and succeeding, to make the audience do more than laugh. It's an incredibly courageous move on the part of Martin McDonagh, a man who I'd name as the greatest writer living today. The trailers advertise In Bruges as some kind of wacky gangster comedy, but in fact it's something much more raw and deep than that, delving into much more complex themes than any other comedy I've seen.
But that's not all. This is my second favourite movie of all-time so obviously I'm going to be enamoured with pretty much every frame of it. From the perfectly-maudlin intro to the script letting the jokes come naturally instead of forcing contrived situations down the viewers throat. In fact, another thing, I love the way that there's not a single bit of fat on the script. By this I mean that every single scene is intrinsic to a full understanding of the final scenes of the film, both in terms of understanding the plot and to a greater extent reading the thematic elements of the movie. Credit goes to the editors for this more than McDonagh, as the DVD shows around 30 minutes of deleted/extended scenes. I feel like In Bruges is a pretty much perfect movie, in that it's genuinely funny, smart, deep, imaginative, well-acted, and so many more things that I've forgotten to mention. So yeah, screw anyone who would even consider this to be in any way Tarantino-inspired.