Tag Archives: Cliff Martinez

Drive (2011, Nicolas Winding Refn)

Posted on 1 June 2012 | Leave a comment

It’s amazing how much mileage Drive gets out of its soundtrack–not Cliff Martinez, though he does a great Tangerine Dream impression, but the licensed songs from Kavinsky and College. They deserve opening titles billing.

Drive is an eighties L.A. crime thriller with a slight seventies sensibility and some ultra-violence. It’s unclear why director Winding Refn thought it needed ultra-violence because, after the first instance, everything else pales. He even goes too far with a later scene of Carey Mulligan discovering the violence her Romeo, Ryan Gosling, is capable of. Otherwise, Winding Refn does an excellent job. He’s aping eighties Michael Mann (Drive was better when it was called Thief and starred Jimmy Cann) along with some John Woo, not to mention Walter Hill’s The Driver.

While there are some slightly unpredictable details, Drive is utterly predictable. There’s one question to the entire film–is Gosling going to make it? He’s a precise, successful criminal who breaks the rules because of his emotions. Of course things go wrong. Of course he turns out to be tougher than John Rambo.

Since it’s not an exercise in originality, Drive‘s mostly just a good excuse to be impressed with Gosling and Albert Brooks. Ron Perlman’s great in it, but he’s playing Ron Perlman. Mulligan’s okay, though somewhat unbelievable as the wife of a dumb criminal. She’s too delicate. Bryan Cranston is utterly wasted.

But Gosling and Brooks? They’re both outstanding.

Drive‘s not bad, but Winding Refn has nothing original to say.

CREDITS

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn; screenplay by Hossein Amini, based on the novel by James Sallis; director of photography, Newton Thomas Sigel; edited by Matthew Newman; music by Cliff Martinez; production designer, Beth Mickle; produced by Michel Litvak, John Palermo, Marc Platt, Gigi Pritzker and Adam Siegel; released by FilmDistrict.

Starring Ryan Gosling (Driver), Carey Mulligan (Irene), Bryan Cranston (Shannon), Albert Brooks (Bernie Rose), Oscar Isaac (Standard), Christina Hendricks (Blanche), Kaden Leos (Benicio) and Ron Perlman (Nino).

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Posted in 2011, Color, Crime, Drama, English, FilmDistrict, Thriller, USA

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The Lincoln Lawyer (2011, Brad Furman)

Posted on 18 April 2012 | Leave a comment

The Lincoln Lawyer is—in addition to being, besides the cast, a great pilot for a cable series—a standard legal thriller. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a new one of these, probably because there are so many decent old ones to go through. Nothing in the film is a particular revelation, which might explain my lack of enthusiasm.

Star Matthew McConaughey is a basically good defense attorney who believes in justice. No surprises in his character. McConaughey essays the role fine.

Marisa Tomei’s his ex-wife (they’re still seeing each other) and an assistant district attorney. Tomei’s fine too.

Actually, wait. Josh Lucas stands out. As McConaughey’s opposing counsel, with more ambition than brains (and aware of it), he does a great job. Oh, and Michael Paré. He’s great.

The supporting cast is decent. No one excels—it’s a legal thriller, why bother? Ryan Phillippe, William H. Macy, John Leguizamo, Michael Peña, Laurence Mason, Frances Fisher—They’re excellent actors; they all give fine performances. But they’re just pieces in the wheel, not particularly important. The twists and turns are what’s important in Lincoln Lawyer and, like I said, it’s strictly television material.

One problem is John Romano’s script. I imagine he faithfully adapts the bestseller source material, but he doesn’t bring anything special or filmic to it. It’s a legal thriller. Why bother?

Director Furman has some decent composition, but he can’t bring personality to the L.A. setting.

It should probably be watched—and appreciated—on TV.

CREDITS

Directed by Brad Furman; screenplay by John Romano, based on the novel by Michael Connelly; director of photography, Lukas Ettlin; edited by Jeff McEvoy; music by Cliff Martinez; production designer, Charisse Cardenas; produced by Sidney Kimmel, Gary Lucchesi, Tom Rosenberg, Scott Steindorff and Richard S. Wright; released by Lionsgate.

Starring Matthew McConaughey (Mick Haller), Marisa Tomei (Maggie McPherson), Ryan Phillippe (Louis Roulet), William H. Macy (Frank Levin), Laurence Mason (Earl), Josh Lucas (Ted Minton), John Leguizamo (Val Valenzuela), Michael Peña (Jesus Martinez), Bob Gunton (Cecil Dobbs), Frances Fisher (Mary Windsor), Bryan Cranston (Detective Lankford), Michaela Conlin (Detective Sobel) and Michael Paré (Detective Kurlen).

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Posted in 2011, Color, Crime, Drama, English, Lions Gate Films, Thriller, USA

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King of the Hill (1993, Steven Soderbergh)

Posted on 11 April 2008 | Leave a comment

Two major things about Soderbergh’s approach to a memoir adaptation. They’re somewhat connected, so I might not manage to separate them out. King of the Hill has no frame, it has no narration. It has no context. It does not feel, at all, like a “true” story because there’s no attempt to classify itself as a true story. It drops the viewer right in, gives he or she a subtitle notating the setting and time and nothing else. Soderbergh creates, at times, a stylistic euphoria–starts right at the beginning doing it even, maybe the third or fourth scene–and the approach makes King of the Hill different. Even though it’s based on a memoir, by never involving “reality,” Soderbergh makes the plot’s conclusion unsure. Anything could happen.

As innocuous as the story might sometimes get–since Jesse Bradford’s protagonist is so self-sufficient it’s hard to remember he’s thirteen–Soderbergh infuses the film with a constant danger. Sometimes the danger is age-appropriate, sometimes it’s a lot bigger. Around the midway point, I had to remind myself Soderbergh was not telling a story about his youth. I had to remind myself Soderbergh wasn’t alive during the film’s time period, it wasn’t based on his childhood–the film envelops the viewer. Soderbergh immediately establishes his characters and then everything else is experienced at Bradford’s pace. Characters enter and leave the story, with the entire story through Bradford’s perspective. The viewer occasionally gets other things, very brief glimpses from other character’s perspectives, but the whole show is Bradford, which might be why he’s never been able to follow it up.

The other performances are excellent too, with Adrien Brody in the film’s flashiest role. Soderbergh’s cinematic storytelling here is accomplished, there’s no other word. He incites the viewer to figure things out by a character’s presence, not to be cute, but because a successful King of the Hill viewer is a participatory viewer. It might by with the film did so terribly. Also good are Cameron Boyd as Bradford’s brother; Amber Benson as his friend–I find I’m not enumerating the adults as much, which is because of the way the film portrays them. It’s difficult to put them, having just watched the film, in an easy to discuss context. Spalding Gray is quite good in his small part as is Kristin Griffith in her two scenes.

The film’s character relationships are complicated and hard to unravel. Soderbergh manages moments of severe gravity with silence from the characters and Cliff Martinez’s delicate score. Martinez and Soderbergh seem to take some of the tone–and the music’s effect on the tone–from Badlands, which is an odd influence for a movie about a kid–King of the Hill is not a kid’s movie at all. It isn’t a feel good movie. It’s a sometimes unsettling film about survival and self-sufficience. Without ever using the word “depression,” Soderbergh has made one of the best films about the Great Depression.

It’s kind of like Maugham with kids (and in America and during the Great Depression).

CREDITS

Directed and edited by Steven Soderbergh; screenplay by Soderbergh, based on a memoir by A.E. Hotchner; director of photography, Elliot Davis; music by Cliff Martinez; production designer, Gary Frutkoff; produced by Albert Berger, Barbara Maltby and Ron Yerxa; released by Gramercy Pictures.

Starring Jesse Bradford (Aaron), Jeroen Krabbé (Mr. Kurlander), Lisa Eichhorn (Mrs. Kurlander), Karen Allen (Miss Mathey), Spalding Gray (Mr. Mungo), Elizabeth McGovern (Lydia), Cameron Boyd (Sullivan Kurlander), Adrien Brody (Lester Silverstone), Joe Chrest (Ben), John McConnell (‘Big Butt’ Burns), Amber Benson (Ella McShane), Kristin Griffith (Mrs. McShane), Chris Samples (Billy Thompson), Peggy Freisen (Mrs. Thompson), Katherine Heigl (Christina Sebastian) and John Durbin (Mr. Sandoz).

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Posted in 1993, Color, Drama, English, Gramercy Pictures, History, USA

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Kafka (1991, Steven Soderbergh)

Posted on 6 April 2006 | Leave a comment

I wonder how the producers sold Jeremy Irons on the film. It was his first major role after his Oscar and it immediately followed, so he probably hadn’t won when he started filming Kafka… however, imagine if they’d advertised the film as “Academy Award Winner Jeremy Irons running through the empty streets of Prague.”

Kafka’s Soderbergh’s first film after Sex, Lies, and Videotape and it’s an exceptional disappointment. All Soderbergh has to do in Kafka is set-up German impressionist shots to match the script’s built-in references–there’s a doctor named Murnau, a town called Orloc (from Murnau’s Nosferatu) and I think I saw a Metropolis poster. Soderbergh is a filmmaker concerned with the human condition and it’s entirely absent from Kafka. Kafka is a gimmick within a gimmick… There’s a certain cuteness–wink-wink–of Kafka in a Kafkaesque adventure, but the adventure is so incredibly lame–and derivative–watching the film is a chore. I suppose it did lead to Dark City–writer Lem Dobbs took whole ideas from Kafka and put them in that one–but it’s a lot like The Element of Crime.

Kafka did remind me–in its aloof and blatant humanity–a lot of Soderbergh’s Traffic. There’s a visible disconnect in some of Soderbergh’s films, when it’s obvious the material isn’t engaging him, so he just busies himself with the camera. Kafka has a lot of such busying. It does have some nice performances–Jeroen Krabbé is excellent, Joel Grey is mildly amusing, it’s one of Armin Mueller-Stahl’s good performances. Jeremy Irons is fine too (he doesn’t have to do an accent). Still, I knew there was major trouble from the beginning… Theresa Russell is the female lead and she’s terrible from her first scene.

I wonder if Kafka would have gotten a better critical response if it had come out before Barton Fink instead of after it. Lem Dobbs’s script–with it’s goofy characters and particular humor–is an obvious Coen mimic. It’s just a useless film… and, while I realize it’s not supposed to be a historically accurate portrayal of Kafka’s life, apparently, in the film’s world, the First World War never happened. That historical omission is much more interesting than anything else going on and it really shouldn’t be.

CREDITS

Directed and edited by Steven Soderbergh; written by Lem Dobbs; director of photography, Walt Lloyd; music by Cliff Martinez; production designer, Gavin Bocquet; produced by Harry Benn and Stuart Cornfeld; released by Miramax Films.

Starring Jeremy Irons (Kafka), Theresa Russell (Gabriela), Joel Grey (Burgel), Ian Holm (Doctor Murnau), Jeroen Krabbé (Bizzlebek), Armin Mueller-Stahl (Grubach), Alec Guinness (The Chief Clerk), Brian Glover (Castle Henchman), Keith Allen (Assistant Ludwig), Simon McBurney (Assistant Oscar) and Robert Flemyng (The Keeper of the Files).

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Posted in 1991, Black and White, Color, Comedy, Drama, English, France, Miramax Films, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller, USA

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