By Breanne Brennan
It's that time of year where I compile my picks for the best movie trailers of 2013! Enjoy! 10. Boxtrolls http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOKou-3TuVQ Laika has solidified itself as the maker of excellent stop-action animation, and it's really neat to see the filmmakers creating everything in the process in this somewhat non-traditional trailer. 9. Maleficent http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrQLLcOgSmY Movies geared at kids tend to shy away from their dark and scary aspects, but this trailer lays it on thick. The music choice is apropos to the shadowy Maleficent in the woods to the sharp thorny briars. 8. Interstellar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WzHXI5HizQ Teaser among teasers. While it relies on McConaughey voiceover and stock footage of American historical milestones, we also get a glimpse at a dusty shelf and the prospect of traveling to space and beyond. It leaves us wanting to know more. 7. Man of Steel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6DJcgm3wNY The choice of shots are expertly used, and we also get a taste of Hans Zimmer's terrific score throughout. 6. Nebraska http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT5tqPojMtg It captures the mundane life of Dern's character, as well as the dry humor of the film with the voiceover. 5. Godzilla http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBwsUD7jYCI It seems to take a cue from CLOVERFIELD where we don’t see the creature until the end. But not only that, it is an impressive use of music, sound, and shot choice that crank up the tension. 4. Gravity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufsrgE0BYf0 You don't get much from the trailer other than a peaceful look at space and then all hell breaking loose, but it’s enough to put you on the edge of your seat. Plus, the final shot with Bullock spinning away is one of the best end tags a trailer could have. 3. The Grand Budapest Hotel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Fg5iWmQjwk Captures the quirkiness and wry humor of an Anderson film to a tee. 2. Don Jon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6615kYTpOSU An excellent use of rhythm, repetition, and cutting on beat to introduce the titular character and the energy of the film. 1. The Wolf of Wall Street http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iszwuX1AK6A It's the one and only trailer and/or advertisement that utilizes "Black Skinhead" to the fullest. Midway through as the music and the excess build, up come the terrific titles of "More...is never enough." Needless to say, this trailer is a fine example of pacing and cutting in relation to the music choice. With that, we get an idea of character, and a touch of story, but it's enough to make me want to see this movie.
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By Brett Blake Another decade, another attempt to re-launch Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan character as a viable franchise-leader. While I don’t expect JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT will be the film to establish a new Clancy-verse cinematic franchise (based solely on the film’s rather tepid box office performance over its opening weekend), I do think it is a very solid and entertaining espionage thriller with good performances, decent action and suspense, and a fun villainous plot that feels moderately realistic… if not entirely plausible. Although the film provides a prologue establishing how Jack Ryan (Chris Pine) is recruited into the CIA by his mentor, Harper (Kevin Costner), the bulk of the story involves Ryan’s attempt to stop an attack on the United States economy by elements within the Russian government, personified by Cherevin (director Kenneth Branagh), an influential and shady Russian businessman. Other than a subplot involving Ryan’s fiance, Cathy (Keira Knightley), and her concerns about Ryan’s fidelity, the story is very straightforward, offering the kinds of spy tropes we’ve seen before (i.e. We have to hack the villain’s computer network! There’s a bomb somewhere in the city! I’m not a field operative!), but SHADOW RECRUIT somehow manages to feel at least moderately fresh, and there’s an almost nonchalant, mundane quality to the actual espionage that is a hallmark of Tom Clancy’s writing. The Ryan character has been the focus of three previous movies: 1990’s THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER (featuring Alec Baldwin as Ryan), 1992’s PATRIOT GAMES (with introduced Harrison Ford as the character), 1994’s CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER (Ford again), and 2002’s THE SUM OF ALL FEARS (where Ben Affleck took on the role). Those first three films are excelllent-to-very-good (I’m not too big on SUM OF ALL FEARS, personally), and while the acting continuity was not maintained, the continuity of the character was, in the sense that Jack Ryan has always been defined by a couple very key traits - a sharp intellect and a Boy Scout-ish sense of honor and duty to country. Those traits are carried over into SHADOW RECRUIT quite effectively by Chris Pine; he plays Ryan as a fundamentally “good” man operating from a very decent place, and even though the screenplay is keen to throw him head-first into fight and chase scenes, the writers are also careful to show Ryan analyzing and breaking-down information. The character as envision by Clancy is meant to be something of a “thinking man’s reluctant action hero,” and I think this film strikes as nice a balance as you could hope for from a mainstream thriller. As the mentor/authority figure in the story, Kevin Costner does good work with a cliched character, the kind of figure we’ve seen literally in dozens of films and novels in the past decades. What make Costner interesting here are the little acting choices and semi-off-beat line readings that he gives; he brings a real sense of old-school world weariness to the part that goes a long way towards offsetting the fact that we’ve seen this character before. It seems Costner is in the middle of something of a mini renaissance (given that he’s starring in no less than three films over the next three months, SHADOW RECRUIT included), and I’m happy to see him back in a big way. Keira Knightley’s role is a somewhat thankless one by design, as there’s only so much you can do with the character within the confines of the kind of story that’s being told, but she’s fine, and is able to keep the character from being irritating, which - on the page - she could easily have been. And that brings me to Kenneth Branagh, both the director and co-star of the film. I’m not sure I’ve gone on record with my feelings vis-a-vis Branagh, so let me take a moment to do so. I’m a fan of his, both as an actor and a director. I think his directing filmography is admirably eclectic and interesting (who else could say that they’ve directed some of the finest Shakespeare adaptations of all time, plus the first film based on Marvel Comics’ Thor character, and now a high-tech spy thriller?), and in terms of performance, I’ve never seen him give anything less than his best effort (heck, one of his most fun performances is in WILD WILD WEST; a cinematic atrocity, to be sure, but he’s a blast to watch in that movie). With SHADOW RECRUIT, both of Branagh’s facets acquit themselves quite well. In his role as the villain, you can clearly feel Branagh relishing the part (particularly the Russian accent), and though he does come close to chewing some scenery - in an entertaining way - there are also a couple of moments that hit upon a modest sense of pathos surrounding the character, which fleshes him out in a nice way. (Brief digression: the villainous scheme presented in the film posits that high-ranking officials in the Russian government and business world are attempting to torpedo the American economy; given that Russia seems determined to oppose the United States on the world stage over almost every geopolitical issue of note, I found the movie’s plot to be not too terribly far afield from the sort of crazy maneuver some in Russia might wish they could pull off. I suppose that’s just my way of saying I don’t think Russia currently operates in good faith, and this movie plays right into that notion. I'm now stepping away from the soapbox.) Branagh-as-director seems to have taken his cue from several different sources, from Clancy’s novels (obviously), to films like THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR and the BOURNE series. Indeed, the action feels particularly Bourne-inflected, in the sense that it’s frenetic and exciting… if perhaps just a tad too jittery. That said, Branagh’s trademark ability to stage dialogue and conversations in interesting ways is very much evident in the movie’s best scene, where Pine, Costner, and their CIA team attempt to piece together the evidence pointing towards an imminent attack in New York City. It’s a classic Clancy-esque scene, and Branagh treats it with appropriate weight and energy. All things told, JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT doesn’t quite hit the heights of THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER or PATRIOT GAMES, but it’s right on par with CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, and as a spy yarn, it could have been a whole lot worse. All around, it's a solid entertainment. By Brett Blake Here at the Celluloid Dog Blog, we've been toying with the idea of producing a podcast to expand on our views about movies. Well, we've finally made the plunge. Below you will find the first episode of what we're calling "The Cinematic Confab," an informal film discussion podcast featuring Breanne Brennan, Brenton Thom, and - as the de facto master of ceremonies - me. As I said, this is our first attempt at doing a podcast, so the audio isn’t quite as pristine as we might like, but it should get the job done. For some reason, it sounds like I was recording in front of a roaring fireplace, so ignore the occasional pops and snaps; or, I suppose, you could just pretend that this is an old-fashioned fireside chat - pour yourself a warming beverage of your choice and get cozy. We cover several key areas, including noteworthy trends/stories from 2013, the question of where the future of blockbuster filmmaking will take us, our most surprising and disappointing movies of the year, and finally our favorite films of the year. Along the way, you'll learn why Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg might be talking about retirement, you'll discover the reason STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS is such a flawed film, and Brenton Thom will explain to you why it is that BATTLE OF THE YEAR 3D just might be one of the worst movies he's ever seen. All that PLUS in-depth discussion of our favorite movies from 2013. Enjoy our mostly-coherent ramblings! Disclaimer: The Cinematic Confab is a non-profit entertainment and analysis podcast. All audio clips and music cues used are the property of their individual copyright holders. They are presented here under the banner of “Fair Use,” for the purpose of analysis, criticism, entertainment, and/or humor. No infringement of copyright is intended. By Brett Blake It’s no big secret that I love movies, and love discussing them (really, it’d just be weird if I wrote for a movie blog and hated movies, right?). So, naturally, one of my favorite things to do is create a list of the films that I enjoyed most from the past year. Despite the fact that I’m not sold on 2013 being an amazing year for cinema (read my article on that subject here), I do think it was a very good twelve months, all things considered. What I’d like to do here is give a quick shout-out to some “Honorable Mentions,” then single-out my favorite documentary of the year, and - finally - list my ten favorite films of 2013. Before I begin, in the interest of full disclosure, these are some of the major films from the year that I haven’t had a chance to see yet: HER, NEBRASKA, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, PHILOMENA, DALLAS BUYERS CLUB, and THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY. Honorable Mentions In addition to the seven “overlooked” films I discussed in this article, here are some other films that I really enjoyed from 2013 but couldn’t squeeze into my top ten:
Documentary of the Year STORIES WE TELL (directed by Sarah Polley) An engrossing, delicate, and moving look at the way a family’s accepted version of events may not be the full truth, and I think it comes close to illuminating some fundamental truths about human nature and the meaning of family itself. That there’s a bit of a legitimate mystery flavor to the way Polley lays everything out is a big plus, too, and in that sense, it feels pretty unconventional, at least by documentary standards. And now, on with the main event… My Ten Favorite Films of 2013 10. THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG (directed by Peter Jackson) A grand, smashing piece of escapist entertainment. Huge in scope, yet packed with detail, this film is every bit a worthy companion piece to the LORD OF THE RINGS films, and while it lacks those films’ sense of import, it compensates with an energetic sense of fun, and several setpieces that display Peter Jackson’s trademark inventiveness. Smaug, the dragon, is also a remarkable creation, and when he finally shows up in the third act, it’s a really impressive sequence. This is the finest action/adventure film of 2013. 09. THE WORLD’S END (directed by Edgar Wright) The capping installment of the Cornetto Trilogy (whose other entries are SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ), THE WORLD’S END may not be as outwardly funny as its predecessors, but it certainly has a lot more on its mind, thematically-speaking. There’s legitimate weight to the antics going on in this film, and I think it has some really interesting things to say about nostalgia, as well as about how both people and places change (or don't change) over time. Plus, the movie’s also kind of an homage to stories like INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, which gives the proceedings a fun, sci-fi flavored backdrop. 08. THE CONJURING (directed by James Wan) The year’s best horror film, and also one of the strongest American horror tales in years. Yes, it covers familiar territory, but it does it with style and with total conviction; there’s no winking at the audience, no inside jokes about the genre. The movie’s mission is to frighten, and though personal mileage will always vary, I think it’s enormously effective, with some of the best executed jump-scares I’ve ever seen. The film’s a roller coaster ride, and one that could be destined for “classic” status. It’s certainly miles ahead of most of the uninspired horror offerings to come from the major studios in recent years. 07. RUSH (directed by Ron Howard) Ron Howard’s RUSH is easily his best film in years. There are some exciting race sequences, to be sure, but the movie’s really more concerned with being a character study, one involving the competitive relationship between two polar-opposite Formula One drivers. Their clash of personalities, styles, and techniques is fascinating (even for somebody pretty unfamiliar with Formula One racing), and both Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bruhl are fantastic, with Bruhl giving one of my favorite performances of the year. Hopefully a few Oscar nominations are thrown this movie’s way, which might entice more people to check it out, because it really deserves a larger audience than it got upon initial release. 06. SAVING MR. BANKS (directed by John Lee Hancock) A pure delight on multiple levels. Fundamentally, this is another character study, concerning the battle author P.L. Travers undertook to protect her Mary Poppins character from Walt Disney. Emma Thompson is great as Travers, an outwardly chilly and difficult woman who’s concealing some deep, inner pain. She’s matched by Tom Hanks’ Walt Disney, an affable and folksy (and deceptively savvy) guy who won’t take “no” for an answer. The movie’s depiction of this relationship - and the creative process that brought MARY POPPINS to the silver screen - is very entertaining, and there’s a real heart to it all that makes it a quite uplifting, satisfying experience. 05. ALL IS LOST (directed by J.C. Chandor) Robert Redford gives one of his best performances as a sailor fighting the very sea itself as he tries to find a way to survive. This is a remarkably simple story, but it’s imbued with great meaning by director Chandor and Redford; we fully invest in Redford’s struggle, and while it’s agonizing to watch at times, there’s a dignity to the character that is striking and affecting. The movie’s a wonderful mood piece, almost a tone poem, but it’s also suspenseful and scary, too. The drama is aided in no small part by the excellent sound design, which is incredibly detailed and rich, and which also makes an extended storm sequence as scary as anything in THE CONJURING. 04. AMERICAN HUSTLE (directed by David O. Russell) A film that wonderfully evokes the 1970s, both in style and substance. Period details are spot-on, and the soundtrack is a killer compilation of songs from the era. The story itself (a fictionalized version of real events) adheres to a caper/con man kind of structure, and while it covers a lot of the kinds of narrative beats we’ve seen in other films, there’s a confidence and a lightness to this movie that makes it a lot of fun. The cast is uniformly excellent (all five of the central actors are awards-worthy in their roles), but it’s Christian Bale’s work as a con man with a big heart that ties everything together, and his relationship with Amy Adams is the true core of the film. 03. CAPTAIN PHILLIPS (directed by Paul Greengrass) A tense procedural of modern-day piracy featuring Tom Hanks at the top of his game. This is a true story, but I won’t assume everybody knows the outcome, so I’ll tread lightly here: Hanks’ final scene in the movie is enormously powerful, and it’s one of the most moving sections of film from 2013. Beyond that, the editing of this film is outstanding, which helps turn the third act into a masterclass of suspense, even if you know the outcome of the story. Also, the movie strikes the perfect balance between showing how dangerous the pirates are while still allowing them to be seen as fully fleshed-out human beings, and Barkhad Abdi (portraying the pirate leader) makes an extraordinary debut, and more than holds his own against Hanks. 02. GRAVITY (directed by Alfonso Cuaron) GRAVITY is a spectacular, jaw-dropping piece of work. Yes, the story is a simple one, and the script doesn’t really attempt to add much great depth or substance (though I’ve seen readings of the film that suggest otherwise), but as an example of what Alfred Hitchcock would call “pure cinema,” the movie is a rousing success. The special effects and the cinematography are remarkable, the action/disaster sequences are both terrifying and thrilling, and the sound/music design is incredibly effective and inventive. Much like ALL IS LOST (and even CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, to an extent), the film follows the human will to survive, and as the personification of that idea, Sandra Bullock delivers a fantastic performance - perhaps her best performance - and amidst all the mayhem going on around her, she’s able to keep the audience focused on her, and on the question of whether or not she’ll make it home alive. As an example of the purely visceral power of the movies, there was no better film released in 2013. 01. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (directed by Martin Scorsese) This is the movie I was waiting for through all of 2013. Not in the sense that I was waiting for this particular film (though I was certainly anticipating it), but more in the sense that I’d been waiting for some movie - any movie! - to come along and really knock me out of my seat by being the total package. My thoughts on 2013’s semi-underwhelming (for me) nature are on the record, so it was something of a genuine relief to see Martin Scorsese come riding in on a white horse to save the day. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is a masterpiece. A flat-out, unequivocal, end-of-story masterpiece that is right up there with the best work Scorsese’s ever done. It’s a hilarious, merciless, and riveting look at greed and addiction, and special credit must be given to Leonardo DiCaprio for completely throwing himself in the depraved madness and showing us a comedic side of himself that we’ve never seen before; who knew he could be this funny? The movie’s a wild ride, and the frankness with which it depicts its drug and sexual content is not for all tastes, surely, but it’s a necessary element to show the unhinged lifestyle these real-life characters (read: scumbags) led during the late 1980s and the early 1990s. It’s a brilliant movie.
So there you have it, my 2013 cinematic experience in a nutshell. Please tell us what some of your favorite films were, and be on the lookout in the coming days for a podcast from the Celluloid Dog Blog gang going into even more detail about the movies of 2013. By Brett Blake As we start a new year, I feel it’s something of a responsibility to highlight films from the previous year that aren’t quite getting the appreciation they deserve, films that may have been well-received when they were released (in fact, all that follow were, for the most part), but for whatever reason are basically nowhere to be found in the big end-of-year conversation that’s taking place in the film community. I’m not just talking about awards consideration, either, but also the general “Hey, such-and-such was a really good movie” kind of discussion that takes place as one year rolls into the next. So, since nobody else is really talking about these, the task falls to me. Now, I’ll be completely honest, this is really just an excuse to highlight some good films that didn’t quite make it onto my “Best of 2013” list (still coming soon!). So consider this something of an appetizer to tide you over until the main event. With that said, here are seven films haven’t yet gotten their due… THE BOOK THIEF Despite appearing - on paper, anyway - to be something of an Oscar-bait film, THE BOOK THIEF has shown up on hardly any “Best of” lists, and awards pundits forecast it being essentially shut out from any significant nominations, save for John Williams’ lovely score (though he’s always nominated when he has an eligible score, so that really says more about respect for him than for the movie itself). I won’t make an argument that THE BOOK THIEF should be in major awards contention, but I will make the argument that it’s a high quality, genuinely affecting World War II drama. Yes, it plays with tropes we’ve seen before, but it does this extremely well, and Sophie Nélisse gives a remarkably accomplished performance for somebody so young. MY AMITYVILLE HORROR This documentary film is ostensibly a look the famed “Amityville Horror” haunting case from the 1970s through the eyes of one of the (now grown) children who lived through it, but the movie is actually much more than that, and it evolves over the course of its running time to become a portrait of deep psychological trauma. While the broad strokes of the haunting and its history are covered, the movie never loses sight of the damaged man at the center of it all, and more than anything else, it makes the case for how easily events can shape the entire outlook of the rest of a person’s life. PRISONERS PRISONERS is one more script draft away from a masterpiece of suspense. There are some spectacular sequences in this film, as well as a pair of tremendous performances from Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal. At times the movie is almost unbearably tense, and while developments in the third act come dangerously close to being too overwrought (and even silly), the film’s mastery of tone keeps everything from flying apart. Special mention must go to the starkly-beautiful cinematography (courtesy of the brilliant Roger Deakins), as well as the gutsy ending which won’t leave every audience member satisfied, but will get them talking about what they’ve just experienced. SIDE EFFECTS We have to go all the way back to February of 2013 for this one, and I really think that distance of time is the reason we’re not hearing more about SIDE EFFECTS at the end of the year. Director Steven Soderbergh claims this will be his final theatrical motion picture, and it’s a terrific note to go out on, a film clearly inspired by the works of Alfred Hitchcock - and, if we’re being honest, there’s a lot of Brian De Palma in here, too - that works as a top-flight suspense film of the sort that constantly keeps you guessing as to what the outcome will be. Soderbergh’s direction is as classy as ever, and the movie features Jude Law giving one of the performances of his career as a man whose life is slowly spinning out of his control. YOU'RE NEXT I think that 2013 was, all things considered, a fine year for mainstream (read: big-studio-released) horror films, and YOU’RE NEXT is one of the better poster children for that opinion. It’s a really clever spin on the “home invasion killers” subgenre (take THE STRANGERS, for example), and the way it both fulfills and subverts your expectations for this kind of movie is quite inventive on a script level. It’s a ton of fun, and it showcases a capable, badass female lead character rarely seen in horror films. The movie’s not particularly terrifying (it’s more of a dark romp, really), but it’s never anything less than completely entertaining. OUT OF THE FURNACE This film was released barely a month ago, and nobody is talking about it, which is both perplexing and a shame, since it features awards-caliber work from at least three of its cast members, the standout being Christian Bale. This could be the performance of Bale’s career so far (time will tell); it’s a performance of restraint, rage, and - ultimately - deep humanity that I found to be enormously affecting. OUT OF THE FURNACE is a pitch-black film, a tale of vengeance and crime, with a tone that some could find oppressive or hard to stomach, so I can understand it not being for everybody, but I hope people eventually do give it a look, because the acting is that good. ROOM 237 No movie this year - fictional or otherwise - was able to convey the power of cinema as well as this documentary. On the surface, it’s a deceptively simple film - we’re presented with several theories/interpretations/analyses of Stanley Kubrick’s seminal horror movie, THE SHINING. The proponents of these theories never appear on camera; we only hear their voices as they speak over the film itself, which almost serves to transform them into one of the many disembodied spirits occupying the sinister, haunted Overlook hotel of THE SHINING itself. Most of the theories put forth are, quite honestly, rather goofy (one involves Kubrick using THE SHINING as subtle means to confess his involvement in faking the moon landing in 1969), but they illustrate the unique property of cinema, which is the idea that you can sit a hundred different people down in front of this collection of moving images and you’ll get a hundred different perspectives on what it all means. As much as ROOM 237 is a celebration of the greatness of THE SHINING, it’s equally a celebration of the magic of cinema itself. |
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