2013-05-24T04:37:47-04:00 Marshall Fine http://www.news.moviefone.com/author/index.php?author=marshall-fine Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Marshall Fine Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3325942 2013-05-23T11:04:23-04:00 2013-05-23T11:37:17-04:00

Marshall Fine http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/ Before Midnight, if squirming in your seat can be considered a form of enjoyment.

The third in a trilogy that began with Before Sunrise (1995) and continued with Before Sunset (2004), this film picks up with the same two characters: Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy). They're married now, with twin girls; he divorced the wife he had in the second installment. He's a successful author, she's still trying to be an environmental activist and they're just finishing a month-long sojourn on an island of Greece.

They put his son -- visiting from Chicago -- on a plane home, then deposit their girls with friends and take off for a night on their own, a kind of mini-honeymoon. But, as with all married couples, each of them has certain triggers that the other unerringly finds ways of touching off. The main one: His guilt at not spending more time with his son because Jesse lives in Paris, versus Celine's refusal to even consider the possibility of moving to Chicago.

That's the film's final half-hour: a wonderfully chatty, tense marital spat whose waves each surfs cautiously, not wanting to succumb to the undertow.

This review continues on my website.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3317979 2013-05-22T06:58:01-04:00 2013-05-22T08:13:00-04:00

Marshall Fine http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/ Fast & Furious 6:

It's not in 3D.

That's apparently the only restraint that the makers of this high-end piece of cinema junk-food indulged in.

Otherwise, as exercises in preposterous mayhem go, Fast & Furious 6 is, well, preposterous. And full of mayhem.

That's not meant as a compliment.

I'll admit that I have a predisposition to dismiss any movie with the number "6" in the title. It smacks of the assembly line.

Except, of course, that these movies are like the latest model muscle cars, with newer and more souped-up special effects. Gee, we've hijacked semis and buses in the past - how about if we stop a tank? Whee.

The cars, in fact, show more expression than most of the actors. But acting is beside the point. So, for that matter, are narrative sense and character development.

Really, they should just put out a stunt reel and call it good.


This review continues on my website.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3312182 2013-05-21T09:55:11-04:00 2013-05-21T09:51:55-04:00

Marshall Fine http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/
We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks is Gibney's second documentary in less than a year, after the upsetting and revealing Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, about the sex-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. In taking on the story of Julian Assange and his sometimes misguided career, Gibney keeps the focus where it should be -- on the concerted efforts by the U.S. government to shroud its most unfortunate practices in secrecy.

Those secrets -- about the way war was conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan by American forces -- were at the center of Assange's biggest triumph: the release of a bushel of war records and diplomatic cables that had been provided to him by Spec. Bradley Manning. The U.S. government reacted as though it had been stung by a bee, swatting at the perpetrators with rage beyond proportion.

As a result, Manning is sitting in jail, awaiting a military hearing that could result in the death penalty. (In a massive overreach, the U.S. Army wants to try him for giving aid to the enemy -- in this case, the press.)

Assange, meanwhile, is under a kind of self-imposed house arrest, living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has taken asylum. Because, as Gibney shows, Assange put himself in legal jeopardy with an act of arrogance and ego, having to do with his refusal to wear a condom.

It's maybe the most shocking fact in the film -- that the man who would shame governments by revealing their secrets was brought low by his own unwillingness to reveal himself (through an HIV test).

Gibney is telling several stories here.

This review continues on my website.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3306838 2013-05-20T11:50:03-04:00 2013-05-20T15:26:37-04:00

Marshall Fine http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/ The Great Gatsby did solid business, despite some unjustly vicious reviews.

I was even more uplifted when I read that, in placing a strong second to Iron Man 3, Gatsby only earned one-third of its box-office take from people who saw it in 3D.

Which, I guess, brings me to my annual rant about how 3D remains the major boondoggle of the 21st century.

My heart sinks every time I show up for a screening of some big summer movie (or any other movie, for that matter) and they hand me the 3D glasses. As you may have noticed, I wear actual glasses for vision correction -- which means that I have to wear the 3D glasses over my own.

As it happens, I'm a scuba diver -- and if I want to see more clearly underwater, I can get vision-corrected lenses for my mask. But it's not like you can get prescription 3D glasses because there are, apparently, several different systems of 3D.

That, however, is beside the point -- the point being that 3D is an unnecessary special effect. It doesn't enhance the movie-viewing experience in any significant way. It's just a naked money-grab by the studios and theater chains, which jack up ticket prices to reap even more of a profit than they already do by selling you 50 cents worth of soda for $5.


This commentary continues on my website.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3292212 2013-05-17T09:16:30-04:00 2013-05-17T09:16:33-04:00

Marshall Fine http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/ The English Teacher, which opens in limited release today (5/17/13) and already on VOD.

Like a witty update on Jane Austen, the script by Dan and Stacy Charlton details the life of a single woman, Linda Sinclair. As played by Julianne Moore with deliciously mousy energy, she's a high school English teacher who, at 45, is a dedicated spinster (though we see her various abortive - and judgmental - attempts at dating).

Linda gets her satisfaction from the small pleasures in her life: opening young minds to the joys of literature, eating health-conscious meals for one while watching A Room With a View on DVD. But her life changes one night at an ATM when she pepper-sprays what she thinks is a mugger (despite the fact that she lives in cozy, tiny Kingston, Pa.).

The mugger turns out to be one of her former students, Jason (Michael Angarano), a promising writer who has come out of NYU with a finished play and no prospects for producing it. He's ready to chuck writing altogether and go to law school. But Linda, for whom Jason's talent is a shining moment in her teaching career, reads his play and decides she can't let that happen.

So she shows his script to the high-school drama teacher, Carl (Nathan Lane), who falls for it as hard as she does. Or maybe it's that he's tired of directing Our Town and The Importance of Being Earnest. Jason's play is dark and heavily symbolic, which disturbs the high school's principal (Jessica Hecht) and her Number Two (Norbert Leo Butz). But Carl promises (falsely, just to keep things moving) that he will cut the play's double-suicide ending.


This review continues on my website.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3292002 2013-05-17T09:03:13-04:00 2013-05-17T12:10:53-04:00

Marshall Fine http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/ The Freebie, actress Katie Aselton suffers the sophomore slump with her second film as a director, Black Rock.

Written by her husband, Mark Duplass, Black Rock is meant to be a Deliverance-style thriller, a girls-vs.-boys tale set on a deserted island off the coast of Maine. The girls have boated out there for a weekend getaway, a chance to reconnect and sort old personal grievances.

They're played by Aselton, Lake Bell and Kate Bosworth. Then they run into three men who are returned Iraq war veterans, also out for a little r'n'r. One of the women decides to hook up with one of the men -- but when he gets too frisky, well, things go too far -- and suddenly the men are hunting the women, who are just looking for a way off the island.

Oh, and did I mention that the men reveal themselves as having been dishonorably discharged for violence they perpetrated in Iraq?

That set-up seems perfunctory -- and the action goes downhill from there. It feels amateurish, as though it was made up as they went along. Aselton has worked in the past from an outline rather than a script, and it's hard to know just how scripted this film is. But it feels improvised in all the worst ways.

There's not a lot of acting because it's mostly about the action. Action is supposed to define character but, in this case, the characters are not fleshed out enough for us to care about any of them.

The women have their personal issues with each other, but that only feels like filler once the actual plot kicks in. The men are brutish and then mad and dangerous. The violence -- because that's what most of the action consists of -- feels phony.

As does the entire film of Black Rock, which is both formulaic and as inert as the titular geological formation.

Find more review, interviews and commentary on my website.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3284886 2013-05-16T09:27:08-04:00 2013-05-16T09:27:11-04:00

Marshall Fine http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/ Real Housewives shows. Well, OK, bad example.

Anyway, Kim Ki-Duk's Pieta, opening in limited release tomorrow (5/17/13), is as twisted and unexpected as much of the Korean cinema that has reached this shore. With its dazzlingly cynical story and intensely squalid setting, it's a trip to the dark side -- indeed, the darkest side.

Lee Jeong-jin plays Gang-Do, a loan shark's debt collector who seems to prey on the most unfortunate of fringe workers in an industrial area of Seoul. He works as enforcer for a money man, who makes the loans under one condition: The borrower sign a disability-insurance policy, with the loan shark as beneficiary. Then, if the debtor fails to make a payment, Gang-Do comes and cripples them, collecting the insurance to settle the loan.

It's a cruel and ruthless business but Gang-Do, an orphan who obviously has lived a brutal life, seemingly has no conscience. Or any sort of feelings at all - at least until a woman, Mi-Son (Jo Min-soo) shows up on his doorstep claiming to be his mother. She's a sorrowful sort, chagrined at the embarrassment of an unwanted pregnancy, contrite about giving up the baby, eager to reestablish a relationship with Gang-Do.

Gang-Do, however, is unconvinced.

This review continues on my website.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3277570 2013-05-15T07:18:04-04:00 2013-05-15T07:56:15-04:00

Marshall Fine http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/ Star Trek movies starring the cast of the original TV show was that the even-numbered films were the good ones and the odd-numbered ones kind of sucked.

That began to change when the Star Trek: The Next Generation movies kicked in; most of them were pretty good. But now, with J.J. Abrams at the helm of the rebooted prequels, all bets are off.

His Star Trek, which was a kind of origin story for the U.S.S. Enterprise and its crew, was a whee of a film when it was released in 2009: smart, funny, exciting - and just plain fun. The latter term -- fun -- too often is overlooked by critics as they dive seriously into the movies they write about. Indeed, I find a certain level of distrust among the more sober-sided of my brethren for anything that provides too much giddy pleasure, as if to say: How serious can it be if it's fun?

But Abrams' second outing with the franchise, Star Trek Into Darkness, is, if anything, even more entertaining than the first one. Even as it calls back to Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (also the second film in the series), it charts new territory, utilizing old memes and new technology in a story that keeps unwrapping itself like a set of nesting dolls.

After a contrived opening sequence involving a nearly botched mission, Kirk and Spock find themselves called on the carpet, with Kirk (Chris Pine) demoted to executive officer to his mentor, Admiral Pike (Bruce Greenwood). But an act of terrorism in London -- and then an attack on Star Fleet headquarters in San Francisco -- leaves Kirk back in control of the Enterprise, with Spock (Zachary Quinto) as his second in command.

Their mission, assigned by Star Fleet commander Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller), is to track the terrorist, a man named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch), a Star Fleet insider apparently gone rogue. He's escaped to the planet of the Klingons - and that planet (that whole part of the galaxy, in fact) is off-limits, in order to stave off what is seen as a coming war with the Klingons.


This review continues on my website.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3271638 2013-05-14T09:37:56-04:00 2013-05-14T09:35:01-04:00

Marshall Fine http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/ Frances Ha, he loses me.

Never a filmmaker for whom story seemed particularly important, Baumbach collaborated here with his star, Greta Gerwig, for what feels like an amorphous and fragmentary story of a delusional young woman who doesn't seem to want to grow up. The visual and musical references are to the French New Wave, but while imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it's still just cribbing from someone else's test paper, isn't it?

Frances wants to be a modern dancer but can't quite catch on with the company where she apprentices. She is a flop with guys, never seeming to meet the kind of men who get her. Her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), also drifts away from her, having decided to actually marry the vague boyfriend she apparently has kept at arm's length for years.

Which leaves Frances ...where? Adrift in Manhattan, much as Gerwig was in the dreadful Lola Versus. Or the dreadful Arthur, in which she tried (and failed) to channel Liza Minnelli. (Doesn't she know that's what female impersonators are for?) Or ..

Well, OK, so I thought Gerwig was palatable in Baumbach's sourly compelling Greenberg. Beyond that, however, I'm not one of these critics who, in order to sublimate a crush on Gerwig, has proclaimed her an actual actress. Because she's not much of one.

Nor, from the evidence here, is she much of a writer. Baumbach is, but his brisk, acerbic wit seems to have been diluted by the watery Gerwig, who seems to have no flavor whatsoever. Her performances are weak tea, in the strongest sense of the term.

So is Frances Ha. Give it a miss and check into Baumbach's earlier films, which have an astringently pointed wit that this film lacks. Watching Frances Ha is like viewing the outtakes from a movie you don't want to see.


Find more reviews, interviews and commentary on my website.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3266647 2013-05-13T11:13:49-04:00 2013-05-13T11:32:57-04:00

Marshall Fine http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/
She's talking about Stories We Tell, the personal (and yet universal) tale of Polley's family, which opened in limited release May 10. The film -- Polley's third as a director -- looks at Polley's family history, focusing on the story of her mother, Diane, who died when Polley was 11.

But, instead of merely remembering her mother's dynamic life as a vivid, vivacious woman with a love of show business, Polley uses the film to explore the central mystery of her own life: her real parentage. Constructed almost as a detective story at times, the film first paints a loving portrait of Diane Polley's too-short life, then gets into family secrets.

Specifically: In her teens, Polley became the focus of a running family joke that she looked nothing like her father, Michael, and that, perhaps, he wasn't her biological father. As she got older, she learned more about her mother's life -- specifically, a six-week stint as an actress working in Montreal (the Polleys lived in Toronto) that preceded her pregnancy with Sarah. Though Michael visited Diane in Montreal and rekindled their marriage, Sarah's paternity remained a subject of jokey speculation.

To look more deeply into the issue, Polley decided to make a film about it, sitting each of her four siblings and half-siblings down to tell the family's story.

This interview continues on my website.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3254402 2013-05-10T14:22:45-04:00 2013-05-10T14:34:57-04:00

Marshall Fine http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/
But before emotional scenes in What Maisie Knew, Julianne Moore would often warn the other actor in the scene, "Now I'm going to cry here -- but I'm not really sad, I'm just acting."

And her co-star, then-six-year-old Onata Aprile, would smile, say, "OK," and knock the scene out of the park.

Aprile is the Maisie in What Maisie Knew, an adaptation of the Henry James novel, told in a modern milieu by directors David Siegel and Scott McGehee. Maisie is the young daughter of rock singer Susanna (Moore) and traveling businessman Beale (Steve Coogan), who becomes the pawn in their bitter divorce, as they battle over their daughter without really wanting custody.

"She was this very bright, present and trusting little girl," Moore says of Aprile. "She had a great sense of humor."

Aprile is, in fact, at the center of the film as Maisie, in an almost eerily natural, watchful performance. She always seems to be in the camera's focus, while the marital squabbles and romantic entanglements explode in the background. Which is a lot to put on a young actress.

"I've worked with kids before but this whole movie revolved around this little girl," says Alexander Skarsgard, who plays the amiable and caring bartender who marries Susanna after she divorces Beale, becoming Maisie's de facto caregiver and stepparent. "The movie won't work if you have the wrong girl."

Skarsgard spends a large chunk of his time in the film interacting with Aprile, as her mother abandons her to his care while she leaves for a rock'n'roll tour. When he was offered the role, he was concerned that the chemistry be right between him and whoever the young actress would be. The Swedish actor saw video of Aprile, then flew to New York from Los Angeles to meet his would-be costar.

"I remember heading over there, thinking, 'I hope there's chemistry,' because you can't fake that -- it has to be real," he says. "But I got there and after about three seconds, I wasn't worried. She had this phenomenal energy. She's so alive and present and real. She can't lie."

The film, which was one of the top-grossing independent films when it opened last weekend, transposes James' tale of 1890s England to 21st century Manhattan, but doesn't lose the essential narcissism of Susanna and Beale.

"Narcissists -- that's exactly what they are," Moore says. "They're in a struggle over the child. Neither of them want custody - but both of them want to win."

Maisie, meanwhile, seems to be the only one who sees things clearly. And she sees everything.

"She does notice things," Moore says. "Susanna tells Maisie, 'I used to be just like you.' Because, to me, that harked back to a mother that ignored Susanna, and her vowing to be a better mother to her own child. Instead, she's what she is. And that's the tragedy."


Find more interviews,reviews and commentary on my website.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3254171 2013-05-10T14:01:19-04:00 2013-05-10T14:24:28-04:00

Marshall Fine http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/ Aftershock. Think of it as a 1970s' disaster movie, spiked with 21st-century horror effects. Irwin Allen meets Robert Rodriguez.

Roth produced, co-wrote and stars in this film by Chilean filmmaker Nicolas Lopez, playing the appropriately named Gringo. He's an American on vacation in Santiago with a friend he met as a foreign-exchange student, Ariel (Ariel Levy). They're both under the influence of Ariel's childhood friend, Pollo (Nicolas Martinez), an unshaven, balding, pudgy party animal with a rich daddy.

For some reason, Pollo is the group's chick magnet, attracting women with his promises of outrageous VIP partying opportunities. The trio eventually connect with three women and head for Valparaiso, apparently even a better party town. Once there, they wind up in an underground nightclub -- when a massive earthquake hits.

Their first impulse is to escape from the club itself, then to figure out what to do. But that's complicated by the sudden imperatives of the disaster itself: One member of the party has lost a hand and is bleeding to death. And everyone around them is panicking. Suddenly, the principal characters become potential prey to accidents, falling chunks of debris and the increasingly lawless version of society that emerges in this crisis.

There's a low level of tension as you wait for the inciting incident; it takes more than a half-hour for the earthquake to hit. Then Lopez and Roth cram all the bloodiest action into the last 60 minutes -- and they do, vigorously.

Once the earth shakes (with subsequent aftershocks that rattle the buildings and sends more giant cement boulders tumbling), Roth and Lopez line up hazards like dominoes, tipping them one at a time toward the shrinking group of survivors. Meanwhile, there's also the threat of an impending tsunami.

The violence is garish and explicit, running with blood like a horror movie, minus the elements of sadism that have informed Roth's previous films. It's graphic but rarely egregious, except in the sense that the filmmakers seem to derive a certain thrill from squishing likable people.

Compelling? I guess. Exciting? Less and less as the film goes on. You can only listen to so much screaming and crying before it stops having the desired effect (ratcheting up the viewer's stress level) and simply becomes grating.

Aftershock is competently made and effective at making you squirm. That's as much praise as I'm willing to dish out.


Find more reviews, interviews and commentary on my website.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3244957 2013-05-09T09:50:39-04:00 2013-05-09T09:49:29-04:00

Marshall Fine http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/ Stories We Tell is one of the year's best films: funny, moving, thought-provoking -- and so personal that it strikes universal chords.

While critics often score indulgent filmmakers by referring to their efforts as "home movies," Polley has turned that insult on its head. She takes her actual home movies and repurposes them as a documentary about the nature of how we tell the stories of our lives.

In doing so, she touches upon a common meme: that life is a movie and, while we think we're each starring in our own production, we are also supporting or bit players in scores of other people's personal tales as well. Then the question becomes: To whom do these stories belong?

In Polley's case, it's the story of her mother, the former Diane Buchan, who died when Polley was 11. Polley interviews her father, Michael, and her four siblings about her mother, apparently a woman for whom the word "vivacious" was invented.

A part-time casting director in Toronto and a would-be actress, Diane was a force of nature -- funny, disorganized, energetic. Her death from cancer left a void in the lives of all who were close to her. But her absence -- and Sarah's growing-up -- began to raise posthumous questions that eventually prodded Polley into re-examining her family roots.


This review continues on my website.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3238014 2013-05-08T11:33:29-04:00 2013-05-08T12:28:52-04:00

Marshall Fine http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/ Sightseers -- a mood that involves dark thoughts, perseverance and a grisly sense of humor.

If you ever imagine gruesome deaths befalling people who annoy you in the course of your day -- people you may not even know but who instantly rub you the wrong way -- well, this is the movie for you.

The patience comes in as you wait for director Ben Wheatley and the film's writers, Steve Oram and Alice Lowe (who are also its stars), to establish their premise and then yank it in an unexpected direction. Once they do, the laughs fall quickly into line.

Initially, this seems like a dry, quiet comedy about a doofus named Chris (Oram), who is taking his relationship with a woman named Tina (Lowe) to the next level. Despite her mother's misgivings -- and her mother (Eileen Davis) has plenty of those -- Tina sets off on a vacation trip with Chris in his prized caravan (a camper, to us Yanks).

Not just any vacation trip, however: Chris, who claims he's collecting material for the novel he plans to write, has mapped out a minute-by-minute itinerary that takes them to some of the cheesiest tourist attractions in the British Isles, including a tramway museum and a pencil factory. Meanwhile, the sheer romance of the excursion, he hopes, will propel him and Tina to a previously unattained state of bliss.


This review continues on my website.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3228473 2013-05-07T07:33:36-04:00 2013-05-07T08:17:43-04:00

Marshall Fine http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/ The Great Gatsby, which blasts off in 3D on Friday before opening the Cannes Film Festival next week. I have a hunch the knives have been out since it was postponed from its 2012 release date.

But don't believe the hate. The Great Gatsby is not a terrible film; indeed, it's a surprisingly affecting one.

I'm no Luhrmann apologist. I'm one of those who thought Moulin Rouge was silly and overrated. As for his indigestible Australia from 2008, well, at least the continent itself survived.

Yet I found myself pulled into the emotional world of Luhrmann's Gatsby, despite only a couple of really outstanding performances and an in-your-face phoniness to the imagery which the film wears as a badge of honor. In translating F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel about the 1920s, Luhrmann turns it into an indictment of conspicuous consumption and the erosion of the human spirit that inevitably results.

In spite of the trappings of 3D and a Jay-Z-infused soundtrack, Luhrmann does find the beating heart at the center of this overstuffed enterprise. It rests firmly in the person of Leonardo DiCaprio's Jay Gatsby, who single-handedly breathes life into a film that is nearly sunk by the glum Carey Mulligan and the lightweight Tobey Maguire.

The story -- in case you never took high-school English -- is about the attempt to reclaim lost love (and the past in which it existed). It is told by Nick Carraway (Maguire), recently returned from World War I and attempting to make a go of it in the financial world. He rents a small cottage on Long Island and finds that he lives next door to a fabulous mansion, home to extravagant parties.


This review continues on my website.]]>