First Man - Movie Review

Starring Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Corey Stoll, Patrick Fugit, Ciaran Hinds, Olivia Hamilton, Shea Whigham, Pablo Schreiber, Lukas Haas and Ethan Embry.
Written by Josh Singer.
Directed by Damien Chazelle.

★★½

The good stuff first. Everything in space is great. This movie makes you feel like you are in that shuttle. That creeky "are you sure this thing will hold up?" shuttle. So half of the movie is good stuff.

The other half is a real drag. Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) was a depressed guy, and here he is making history, but there doesn't seem to be much joy or wonder. Buzz Aldrin (Corey Stoll) is portrayed as a jerk, but at least he's stoked about space travel.

A lot of Neil's tightness is around the death of his young daughter. There's also the issues of accidents that kill some of his friends. Outside pressures ask NASA, "Is space travel really worth the cost?"

I saw it in IMAX, and that's the best way to see it. It has a lot of positive qualities, even if it's low on actual joy.

Golden Globes Winners

Best Motion Picture – Drama:
“Moonlight”

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy:
“La La Land”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama:
Casey Affleck – “Manchester By The Sea”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama:
Isabelle Huppert – “Elle”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy:
Ryan Gosling – “La La Land”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy:
Emma Stone – “La La Land”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture:
Aaron Taylor-Johnson – “Nocturnal Animals”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture:
Viola Davis – “Fences”

Best Director – Motion Picture:
Damien Chazelle – “La La Land”

Best Original Screenplay:
“La La Land”

Best Motion Picture – Foreign Language:
“Elle” – France

Best Motion Picture – Animated:
“Zootopia”

Best Original Song – Motion Picture:
“City Of Stars” – La La Land

Best Original Score – Motion Picture:
Justin Hurwitz – “La La Land”

Best Television Series – Drama:
“The Crown”

Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy:
“Atlanta”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Drama:
Billy Bob Thornton – “Goliath”

Best Performance by an Actress In A Television Series – Drama:
Claire Foy – “The Crown”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy:
Donald Glover – “Atlanta”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy:
Tracee Ellis-Ross – “Black-ish”

Best Limited Series:
“The Night Manager”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
Tom Hiddleston – “The Night Manager”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
Olivia Colman – “The Night Manager”

Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
Hugh Laurie – “The Night Manager”

Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television:
Sarah Paulson – “The People v O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story”

Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Acheivement Award:
Meryl Streep

Reaction:

- Really enjoyed Jimmy Fallon's opening number.
- The Globes is known for surprises, but one thing you can guarantee. TV shows in their first season have an advantage when it comes to winning. See also: The Affair, Mr. Robot, Mozart in the Jungle.
- Guess I need to watch The Night Manager now.
- Best presenters were Steve Carell & Kristin Wiig, about seeing their first animated movies.
- La La Land now has the record for most Golden Globes wins for film.
- It was weird to have an In Memorium for Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds but not for anyone else.
- My favorite part of Meryl Streep's speech was actually the end when she paid tribute to her friend Princess Leia. Streep and Fisher became friends after Streep played her in Postcards from the Edge.

La La Land - Movie Review

Starring Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend, Rosemary DeWitt and JK Simmons.
Written & Directed by Damien Chazelle.

★★★★

An original musical in this day and age? Yep, and under Chazelle's direction, it works. Nice to see Gosling let his charm show.

He plays Sebastian, a jazz musician who dreams of owning his own club. Emma Stone plays Mia, an aspiring actress. Both are struggling to make ends meet in Los Angeles, a city that the movie romanticizes and criticizes at the same time. Many people come to L.A. to have their dreams fulfilled, but it's very aware that most people don't make it.

The singing and dancing won't make you forget Gene Kelly, but that's part of the charm. Anyone with a dream can star in their own musical. And that bittersweet ending is perfect.

The Place Beyond the Pines - DVD Review

Starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Ray Liotta, Dane Dehaan, Emory Cohen, Bruce Greenwood, Mahershala Ali, Harris Yulin, Ben Mendelsohn and Robert Clohessy. Directed by Derek Cianfrance.

★★★

Ryan Gosling's been playing a lot of screwed-up guys lately. It must feed some need inside him. I picture him with a summer cabin with a torture room in the basement.

Here he plays a desperate father who turns to bank robbery to provide for his son.  His path will eventually cross with Bradley Cooper, a cop with a young son of his own.  We see their story for the first two-thirds of the movie, and I enjoyed every aspect of that.

Then it flash-forwards sixteen years to follow the sons, and we see how the choices of the fathers have affected their sons, and here's where the movie went a little sideways for me. It puts together some events that felt too contrived, and it took me out of the movie. There's a real cinema-verite vibe going on with it, and overall I liked it. I just thought the last third weakened the power from the first two acts.

Only God Forgives - DVD Review

Starring Ryan Gosling, Kristin Scott Thomas, Vithaya Pansringarm, Rhatha Phongham, Gordon Brown and Tom Burke.
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn.

★

I get the feeling this is a movie that Refn and Gosling just had to get out of their system. I had higher hopes for their second collaboration, after they'd made the excellent Drive, but my guess is that Drive was more of the exception than the rule for the rest of Refn's career.

This movie is all macho posing while dark lights put actors in music-video scenes. Ryan Gosling is Julian, a gangster who runs a boxing ring in Thailand. When Julian's scumbag brother Billy is killed, Crystal, the matriarch of this crime family (Kristin Scott Thomas), flies in and demand some heads roll.  There's no reason to root for Julian, since Billy pretty much deserved what he got, but in a film where almost everyone's evil, well, people are going to suffer.

The antagonist here is Chang, head of the local police force, and the man who condoned Billy's murder. He likes to dispense justice with a sword. So while a showdown with Julian seems inevitable, the showdown with Crystal was more intriguing to me (even though it stank). After all, Julian looks like he's barely awake through most of the movie. That look on his face in the poster? he has that expression the entire movie.

People walk slowly in this movie, and it usually feels like Refn is trying to pad the runtime, which is a mercifully short 89 minutes.

Gangster Squad - DVD Review

Starring Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Emma Stone, Nick Nolte, Mireille Enos, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Pena, Robert Patrick, Troy Garity, Sullivan Stapleton, Jon Polito and John Aylward.  Directed by Ruben Fleischer.

★★

This is a pulpy True Detective dime-store cops-and-mobsters movie.  As such, it's attracted a stellar cast. I imagine the talent all in one room, looking at each other, and then saying "Since we're here, should we try to make an actual good movie? Nah, let's just have fun!"

Remember Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy?  Remember Christian Slater and Patrick Dempsey as Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky in Mobsters? This movie has more in common with those ventures than, say, The Untouchables.  Josh Brolin is assigned by the LAPD chief (Nick Nolte) to go after gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), a man who enjoys killing apologizing underlings more than Darth Vader.

Meanwhile Cohen's dame (Emma Stone) is having an affair with another cop (Ryan Gosling), who joins Brolin's crew.

Everyone in this movie looks like they're having a blast, but it follows the old Siskel rule. "Is this movie better than just watching these actors sitting around talking over lunch?" The answer is no.

Penn's Cohen seems like he came out of the Sin City sequel, both in stylized overacting and make-up.  Gosling takes this amusing soft-slide to his voice, reminiscent of Mickey Doyle from Boardwalk Empire.  Stone's too modern to comfortably walk in her moll's shoes.

The whole thing though is relentlessly shallow.  It has no desire to leave an imprint. It just wants to shoot Tommy guns and cackle like Cagney.

Random Movie Stuff - 5/14/12

- Warner Bros. has scheduled The Gangster Squad to open September 7. The film stars Ryan Gosling and Josh Brolin as agents leading a team to take down gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). It also reunites Gosling with his Crazy Stupid Love co-star Emma Stone. The trailer's below. Meanwhile they've moved back the space thriller Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, to some time in 2013.

Personally I don't understand why they'd open Gangster Squad the week after Lawless, another ensemble period law-and-order movie.


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- Kurt Russell has dropped out of Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained during filming. He'd replaced Kevin Costner, who'd cited scheduling conflicts. It'll be interesting to see who QT finds now.


- Jared Harris (Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows) and Sam Claflin (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) will star in The Quiet Ones, about a college professor who leads his best students to try to create a poltergeist using negative energy.


- Michael Scott may be gone, and Dwight, Toby, Kelly and Robert will be gone soon, but at least Jim, Pam and Andy will still be there. John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer and Ed Helms have signed new contracts to return to NBC's The Office.  Good thing too, since the anti-climactic season finale made it clear that Andy is here to stay.

Drive - DVD Review

Starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlman and Oscar Isaac.
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn.

★★★½

There's something very Steve McQueen-cool about this deconstructed actioner.  Down to the synth-soundtrack, this reminds me of old-school flicks where it took time with pace.  This movie may seem leisurely with said pace, but it's tense throughout and builds nicely for the explosive third act.

Ryan Gosling plays Driver. I don't think anyone ever says his name.  He's a Hollywood stuntman by day and a getaway driver by night.  We don't really know what makes Driver tick, or what he'll do next, but Gosling draws us in with his resolute focus.  When Driver tightens the gloves on his hands, we know something's about to happen.

Gosling will eventually win an Oscar.  He was good enough to merit a nomination here (didn't get one), and Albert Brooks should have been nominated for Best Supporting.

Drive takes a well-worn genre and makes it seem fresh.  I would love it if Drive 2 happened.

The Ides of March - DVD Review

★★★

Starring Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, Marisa Tomei, Jeffrey Wright, Max Minghella, Jennifer Ehle and Gregory Itzin.  Directed by George Clooney.

I'm a political junkie, so it's fun for me to watch politically-based stories. When they're realistic or accurate, they can be exciting (Primary Colors), and when they're not, they still provide their own howling amusement (The Contender).

Based on a play, this movie focusses on the campaign managers, and the down-and-dirty politics they have to play for their guy to win in the primary. It's about Democrats but it could really go to either party.

Ryan Gosling plays Stephen Meyers, a highly-skilled campaign operative who's finally found an employer he can believe in - Gov. Mike Morris (George Clooney). But before he can win the presidency, Morris must win the crucial primary of Ohio. The movie is more about Meyers convening with campaign manager Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) than it is the actual candidate. Meanwhile the campaign manager (Paul Giamatti) for their opponent would like to figure out a way to get Stephen to switch sides.

I tend to like Gosling in everything he does, but when you have two heavywrights like Hoffman and Giamatti, I wanted to see more of them, wanted to see them face off.

Clooney's directing job is solid, but once the credits roll, it lingers more as a good movie than a great one.

Random Movie Stuff - 9/1/11

- Albert Finney has joined the cast of the latest James Bond movie. Sam Mendes (American Beauty) will direct, and it stars Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem and Ralph Fiennes.

- Steve Buscemi's in talks to join Jim Carrey and Steve Carell in Burt Wonderstone. Buscemi would play Anton, partner to magician Burt Wonderstone (Carell) who decides to quit. This spins Burt into a crisis, and he must also deal with a rival magician (Carrey) out to dethrone him.

- Octavia Spencer (The Help) has joined the cast of (formerly titled) Lamb of God. It's the directorial debut for screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno), starring Julianne Hough (Footloose) as a conservative religious woman who loses her faith after a plane crash. She decides to move to las Vegas and live a life of sin, but in so doing, regains her faith. Russell Brand (arthur) co-stars.

- Ryan Gosling will star in Lawless, the next film from director Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life). It'll reunite Golsing with his Notebook co-star Rachel McAdams, as well as Cate Blanchett, Javier Bardem, Rooney Mara and Ben Affleck.

Penn, Gosling, Brolin in talks for 'Gangster'

Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling and Josh Brolin are in talks to star in Gangster Squad, about a secret force within the LAPD in the 1940's that focussed on organized crime, particularly Mickey Cohen.

Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) will direct.

Personally I love the idea of this project. They don't make enough noir films.