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Runaway Jury (2003, Gary Fleder)
I thought there were no anti-conservative Hollywood films for a long while after 9/11, so I guess Runaway Jury went under the radar. It appears to have been a significant bomb and, watching it, it seemed strange to see John Grisham’s name on screen. It’s been a long time since adaptations of his novels have been blockbusters… about as long as it’s been since Michael Crichton’s name was on blockbusters.
Runaway Jury went under my radar because I figured it wasn’t going to be very good and it isn’t. The plot’s unbelievable and annoying in its false complexity. Director Fleder and his four credited screenwriters play it like Coppola never succeeded in making Grisham good with The Rainmaker and… eh. Fleder is a mediocre director. His composition isn’t bad, he likes dumb editing and he shoots New Orleans poorly. Someone had a New Orleans guide book for the shoot and Fleder barely let the city, it being one of significant character, do anything. There’s more personality from the city in the background dialogue than in Fleder’s shots. But he’s not as bad as I assumed.
The acting is questionable. Dustin Hoffman can’t keep his New Orleans accent, Gene Hackman is playing a goofy bad guy from one of his 1990s movies–though the scene with Hoffman is nice, since Hackman lets loose with some Lex Luthor style fun lunacy (even though Hoffman just stands there). John Cusack is fine, playing John Cusack once again. Rachel Weisz is okay, if occasionally dubious in her emoting.
The best thing about Runaway Jury is the supporting cast–Guy Torry, Luis Guzmán, Nick Searcy, Cliff Curtis, Bill Nunn, Leland Orser and Bruce McGill. Joanna Going suffers from a bad accent as well. The supporting cast almost makes Jury feel like it’s a big event movie (like The Rainmaker). Almost.
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Now You Know (2002, Jeff Anderson)
So, Now You Know is an odd mix. It’s one part romantic comedy (where the problems between Jeremy Sisto and Rashida Jones aren’t just conveniently solved, but shallowly too), one part talking comedy a la Clerks, and one part low budget inventive movie. The last part is the most interesting–Jeff Anderson gets some familiar faces who are in it for a scene or two, but leave a lasting impression, not to mention the invisible parents (Jones, for example, stays with her never on-screen parents).
It’s unfortunate, in most ways, the film’s an abject failure. Anderson is, very oddly, a far more ambitious director than Kevin Smith ever was on Clerks or any of his subsequent films until Clerks II (and then only because of the musical number). Visually, he’s not bad. It’s where the inventiveness comes through. But, as a director of actors, Anderson is bad. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume soap actor Todd Babcock did not do comedy well, but having seen Sisto and Jones in other things… there’s no reason they should be so bad. Well, actually, I’ve never seen Sisto emote very well… but Rashida Jones is a very good comedic actress and she’s terrible in this film. The problem could be Anderson’s dialogue, but I think it’s got more to do with the film’s tone. It never decides–of the three parts–to steer strongest toward. Probably because Anderson knew the scenes with he and Trevor Fehrman, at their best, would play like Clerks scenes.
Unfortunately, though the scenes do play well, Anderson seemingly failed to realize his character had the most interesting character arc.
Oh, and Paget Brewster shows up in a poorly acted–Paget Brewster acting poorly, something I never thought I’d see–small role. But Stuart Pankin is great for his three scenes, in one of Anderson’s more creative gags.
★CREDITS
Written and directed by Jeff Anderson; director of photography, Marco Cappetta; edited by Jerry A. Vasilatos; music by Lanny Cordola and Matt Sorum; production designer, Tonde Razooly; produced by Ray Ellingsen and Jean-Luc Martin; released by The Weinstein Company.
Starring Jeremy Sisto (Jeremy), Rashida Jones (Kerri), Heather Paige Kent (Marty), Jeff Anderson (Gil), Trevor Fehrman (Biscuit), Todd Babcock (Shane), Paget Brewster (Lea), Stuart Pankin (Mr. Victim), Liz Sheridan (Grandma), Brendan Hill (Cliff) and Howard George (Hal).
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The Mexican (2001, Gore Verbinski)
No kidding The Mexican has a lot of the same score as The Abyss, Alan Silvestri composed both… oddly, I didn’t even think he was working anymore (or even back when The Mexican came out). Besides the Abyss rips, he turns in a good, funny score. But anyway….
The Mexican is kind of strange and kind of not. The Brad Pitt without Julia Roberts half, the doofus’s adventures in Mexico, plays a lot like a Paul Newman movie from the 1970s, only not as good. Pitt, unlike Newman, can play a doofus though and he does a great job here. The Julia Roberts on the road with gay hit man James Gandolfini is actually the stranger part of the film, because it’s Julia Roberts in a role beneath her movie star stature. Her role’s the girlfriend and while she and Pitt are good together, it’s really not a big enough part for her.
The film’s quirky in its handling of its mega-stars (though Pitt is a lot more comfortable) and it almost seems like a smaller movie, until the last act when the surprise guest star pops in and The Mexican becomes the standard Hollywood movie Dreamworks had so much trouble making. It’s an excellent standard Hollywood movie too.
Gore Verbinski’s direction, much like the big movie stars, seems almost more than the script deserves. The Mexican‘s script is frequently way too cute for itself and way too contrived and it’s a shock no one thought to get a quick rewrite. John Sayles probably would have done wonders in a few weeks. But Verbinski really knows how to shoot Panavision, whether it’s conversation or action….
The other reason the film works is the casting. Pitt, Roberts and Gandolfini (Pitt does the most work in terms of range, though the performance is kind of like Twelve Monkeys, down to the mannerisms) are all good in the three biggest roles, but J.K. Simmons, Bob Balaban, Richard Coca and David Krumholtz are essential in the primary supporting roles. It’s very well-cast.
The Mexican is the kind of movie Hollywood doesn’t make any more and needs to… it’s unspectacularly okay.
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London (2005, Hunter Richards)
Movies with lots of conversation–made up primarily of conversation–used to be rare. Then came Reservoir Dogs and Clerks. While Tarantino and Smith can still make it work, the world now has to suffer through films like London, which appears to be ninety-two minutes of bad dialogue. It’s obvious the dialogue’s going to be terrible from the opening scene, when Chris Evans has a phone conversation. Only his half of the conversation is audible, but it’s clear auteur Hunter Richards didn’t write up the other side, much less have someone talking to Evans.
The direction is obnoxious. Fast forward editing, lots of jump cuts. The direction of the actors isn’t much better. I mean, Jessica Biel’s performance is shockingly bad, which isn’t indicative of Richards’s abilities. But he manages to get a charisma-free performance out of Jason Statham, which–previously–I would have said was impossible (I’m ignoring Crank to make the point). Evans is blah. His character is supposed to be unemotional and distant and the baseball cap doesn’t help.
Long-time casting director Bonnie Timmermann is one of London‘s many producers (most of the others either have no previous credits or direct-to-video nonsense) and I’m assuming she had a lot to do with it getting made. In the late 1990s, when people made these kinds of knockoffs, they were low budget and somewhat–from the production sense–interesting. London is likely low budget, but it’s glossy and visually incompetent, not interesting.
I should be mad at myself for even trying to watch it… but I really thought it was about a bunch of Americans living in London and that sounded, if not good, at least passable. But this intolerable drivel… I mean, Richards is so bad, I’m surprised he isn’t popular.
ⓏⒺⓇⓄCREDITS
Written and directed by Hunter Richards; director of photography, Jo Willems; edited by Tracey Wadmore-Smith; music by The Crystal Method; production designer, Erin Smith; produced by Ash Shah, Paul Davis Miller and Bonnie Timmerman; released by Destination Films and Samuel Goldwyn Films.
Starring Chris Evans (Syd), Jessica Biel (London), Jason Statham (Bateman), Isla Fisher (Rebecca), Joy Bryant (Mallory), Kelli Garner (Maya) and Dane Cook (George).
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Rambo (2008, Sylvester Stallone)
First, I need to get the theater-going experience out of the way. I do not remember the last time I’ve been in a theater filled with stupider people. They did not shower for the most part. Their girlfriends had to explain the complicated parts to them. I can only imagine what seeing Rambo III would have been like for people with IQs above eighty-five back when the series was popular.
On to the film.
Stallone tries hard to give Rambo the Rocky Balboa treatment and he succeeds on a few levels. He really gets across how awful things in Burma are going–the genocide. He manages to make it the setting, not turning the film into an infomercial. It’s impressive. The more important level is the character himself. In a very poorly constructed voiceover, Stallone eradicates the “Rambo the tortured Vietnam vet” thing he’s had going for twenty-five years. Rambo, Stallone decides, kills people because he likes it (which might not sound like much, but just imagine a Lethal Weapon or Die Hard featuring that thesis about its protagonist). Stallone’s observation, of course, would be a heck of a lot more profound if the movie worked out in the end….
Stallone doesn’t find the balance between action movie and thoughtful observation in Rambo, because he plays toward a general realism. It’s not Rambo running around the jungle trying to save the missionaries by himself, there’s a team of mercenaries with him. Of these mercenaries, Matthew Marsden and Graham McTavish give the best performances. As for the missionaries, Paul Schulze is surprisingly bad and Julie Benz is fine. Benz kind of plays Fay Wray to Stallone’s Kong. It’s a wonderful relationship to watch, because Stallone really gets how to make it work.
So, oddly, the problem becomes Stallone’s unwillingness to go the distance, to have a crazy action movie with Rambo running around killing bad guys (and these bad guys are bad… the worst bad guys I can remember seeing in such numbers in a movie). He goes for something resembling realism and the movie loses out. It’s not dumb fun. It’s dumb pseudo-realistic action violence. Stallone’s very big on showing how awful violence is in the film, it’s graphic and it’s intense.
Rambo, the character, doesn’t deserve the Rocky Balboa treatment–the redefined sequel treatment–because there’s just not enough of a character there. The proof is easily identifiable–Rambo‘s lame closing scene. But it seems like there’s a good mix–and Stallone finds it quite a few times in the movie… he just can’t sustain it.
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