This Week at the Movies: Untraceable & Michael Clayton is Re-Released
"Fresh off Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Actor (Clooney) and Best Director Warner Brothers is re-releasing "Michael Clayton" in hopes of cashing in a little and to make sure more people have seen this outstanding movie. This was # 3 on my top 10 of 2007---and here's the original review:
"Michael Clayton"--George Clooney stars in screenwriter Tony Gilroy's directorial debut as a "fixer" at big corporate law firm in New York City. He's a former prosecutor who now takes care of the dirty work. He's sent to Milwaukee to try to figure out why a lawyer in the middle of a class action suit against a big corporate farming operation has melted down in the middle of a deposition. That lawyer played by Tom Wilkinson is trying to sabatoge his own case and Clayton tries to figure out why. It's a moral dilemma for a guy who has a broken marriage, a less than fatherly relationship with his son and a gambling problem. It's a complex character and Clooney nails it. I wouldn't be at all surpised to see an Oscar nomination come from this role---he's often best in this movie in scenes where no words are spoken and you see the anguish on his face. Tilda Swinton is also strong here as the farming company's chief legal counsell Karen Crowder. "Micheal Clayton" is not onl one of the best movies this fall, but one of the best of the year. Strong acting, compelling drama lead to a captivating and suspenseful legal thriller from Gilroy, the guy who wrote the great scripts for all three "Bourne" movies. I loved this movie---and that's why it's the first film this year to score a perfect 5 on my scale. 5 out of 5!
"Untraceable"--Diane Lane plays an FBI Special Agent named Jennifer Marsh who's job is to track down sex predators in cyber crimes unit in Seattle. She's widowed and raising an 8 year old daughter while working the graveyard shift but her life takes an intense turn when a sociopath starts kidnapping people and torturing them live on the internet via his website "Killwithme.com". Whoever is doing it has masked the site so well not even the FBI can track him down---and to make things worse the more people who log on the faster the victim dies. Colin Hanks (Tom's son) plays her FBI partner and Billy Burke is the Seattle detective assigned to the case. Besides the fact that much of the plot is UNFEASIBLE this is a movie that suffers under the weight of falling under the same sensationalistic mentality that it's apparently trying to send a message about. Hollywood--like politicians---is particularly good about condemning something while at the same time exploiting exactly what it's preaching against! I suppose we're supposed to ask ourselves if we would click on a site like this if it really happened...but there's no creative intellectual challenge here. We're just forced to watch people get tortured in a more gruesome fashion each time the guy nabs his next prey. It's sort of CSI meets Saw and Hostel meets The Brave One. And the sum off all that isn't very good. Diane Lane certainly saves this one from being worse than it could have been, but director Gregory Hoblit choice to make a grainy not very well lit movie to set his mood only made me wish he would have turned up the lights a bit so we could see Lane. It felt like a violent R-rated TV movie, which isn't a surprise since Hoblit's main credits are network television like NYPD Blue. There's no purpose in picking away relentlessly at a movie that's purpose is solely to thrill and scare a little bit---but with so many of these type of films I get frustrated at how easy it would have been to take a few more steps to improve the product. 2.5 out of 5.
"Grace is Gone"--Another in a series of releases that use the Iraq war as a backdrop for the storytelling. In this one John Cusack plays a father who upon hearing that his wife was killed in the war is unable to tell his daughters and takes them on a road trip instead. We meet Cusacks character Stanley Phillips at a support group for Iraqi soldier spouses where he's the lone male in the bunch. Shortly after that he finds out his wife has been killed in a roadside attack he's so shocked by the news instead of telling his two young girls that they're mother is dead he loads them into the SUV and takes them to a theme park in Florida that the family has been wanting to visit. It's a road movie from here in which Stanley questions his entire belief structure while trying to come to terms with how to break the news to his daughters. Not overly preachy about the politics the main problem I had with "Grace is Gone" was Cusack's performance. He plays Stanley as a sort of a dim-witted dweeb and he never comes off as a guy who is suffering from the tragedy of just losing his wife. With all that experience on the resume he's just trying to hard and it doesn't work. What does work is the performance by Shelan O'Keefe who plays his older daughter. It's the type of breakthrough role for a newcomer that should earn her plenty of attention from other directors. This movie has gotten a lot of attention for it's original score by Clint Eastwood---which is decent---but not exactly anything that stand out more than any other score. I love Clint---but it's his name here more than anything that's garnering a Golden Globe and Critics' Choice nomination. There's really nothing special in "Grace is Gone"--2.5 out of 5.
Also this week:
"Rambo"-did not screen for critics. Shocking I know.
"Meet the Spartans"-ditto
"How She Move"-screened, but on the same night as "Untraceable"
This week on DVD---"The Game Plan" with The Rock as a football player who finds out he has a daughter he didn't know about. Most critics hammered this Disney offering---and I'm not going to argue it's one of the better family films, but I my kids loved it and The Rock is a movie star with a ton of charisma. Plenty of funny moments and a darling performance by Madison Pettis who plays the little girl Peyton Kelly.
"Michael Clayton"--George Clooney stars in screenwriter Tony Gilroy's directorial debut as a "fixer" at big corporate law firm in New York City. He's a former prosecutor who now takes care of the dirty work. He's sent to Milwaukee to try to figure out why a lawyer in the middle of a class action suit against a big corporate farming operation has melted down in the middle of a deposition. That lawyer played by Tom Wilkinson is trying to sabatoge his own case and Clayton tries to figure out why. It's a moral dilemma for a guy who has a broken marriage, a less than fatherly relationship with his son and a gambling problem. It's a complex character and Clooney nails it. I wouldn't be at all surpised to see an Oscar nomination come from this role---he's often best in this movie in scenes where no words are spoken and you see the anguish on his face. Tilda Swinton is also strong here as the farming company's chief legal counsell Karen Crowder. "Micheal Clayton" is not onl one of the best movies this fall, but one of the best of the year. Strong acting, compelling drama lead to a captivating and suspenseful legal thriller from Gilroy, the guy who wrote the great scripts for all three "Bourne" movies. I loved this movie---and that's why it's the first film this year to score a perfect 5 on my scale. 5 out of 5!
"Untraceable"--Diane Lane plays an FBI Special Agent named Jennifer Marsh who's job is to track down sex predators in cyber crimes unit in Seattle. She's widowed and raising an 8 year old daughter while working the graveyard shift but her life takes an intense turn when a sociopath starts kidnapping people and torturing them live on the internet via his website "Killwithme.com". Whoever is doing it has masked the site so well not even the FBI can track him down---and to make things worse the more people who log on the faster the victim dies. Colin Hanks (Tom's son) plays her FBI partner and Billy Burke is the Seattle detective assigned to the case. Besides the fact that much of the plot is UNFEASIBLE this is a movie that suffers under the weight of falling under the same sensationalistic mentality that it's apparently trying to send a message about. Hollywood--like politicians---is particularly good about condemning something while at the same time exploiting exactly what it's preaching against! I suppose we're supposed to ask ourselves if we would click on a site like this if it really happened...but there's no creative intellectual challenge here. We're just forced to watch people get tortured in a more gruesome fashion each time the guy nabs his next prey. It's sort of CSI meets Saw and Hostel meets The Brave One. And the sum off all that isn't very good. Diane Lane certainly saves this one from being worse than it could have been, but director Gregory Hoblit choice to make a grainy not very well lit movie to set his mood only made me wish he would have turned up the lights a bit so we could see Lane. It felt like a violent R-rated TV movie, which isn't a surprise since Hoblit's main credits are network television like NYPD Blue. There's no purpose in picking away relentlessly at a movie that's purpose is solely to thrill and scare a little bit---but with so many of these type of films I get frustrated at how easy it would have been to take a few more steps to improve the product. 2.5 out of 5.
"Grace is Gone"--Another in a series of releases that use the Iraq war as a backdrop for the storytelling. In this one John Cusack plays a father who upon hearing that his wife was killed in the war is unable to tell his daughters and takes them on a road trip instead. We meet Cusacks character Stanley Phillips at a support group for Iraqi soldier spouses where he's the lone male in the bunch. Shortly after that he finds out his wife has been killed in a roadside attack he's so shocked by the news instead of telling his two young girls that they're mother is dead he loads them into the SUV and takes them to a theme park in Florida that the family has been wanting to visit. It's a road movie from here in which Stanley questions his entire belief structure while trying to come to terms with how to break the news to his daughters. Not overly preachy about the politics the main problem I had with "Grace is Gone" was Cusack's performance. He plays Stanley as a sort of a dim-witted dweeb and he never comes off as a guy who is suffering from the tragedy of just losing his wife. With all that experience on the resume he's just trying to hard and it doesn't work. What does work is the performance by Shelan O'Keefe who plays his older daughter. It's the type of breakthrough role for a newcomer that should earn her plenty of attention from other directors. This movie has gotten a lot of attention for it's original score by Clint Eastwood---which is decent---but not exactly anything that stand out more than any other score. I love Clint---but it's his name here more than anything that's garnering a Golden Globe and Critics' Choice nomination. There's really nothing special in "Grace is Gone"--2.5 out of 5.