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Posts Tagged ‘Guy Pearce’

SHORT TAKES: “A House of Dynamite,” “John Candy: I Like Me,” “The Woman in Cabin 10”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Anthony Ramos, Rebecca Ferguson

“A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE” My rating: B+ (Netflix)

112 minutes | MPAA rating: R

This Halloween season’s scariest movie has nothing to do with ghosts and ghoulies.  It will nonetheless induce nighmares.

Kathryn Bigelow’s  latest directorial effort takes the same 20-minute time frame  and retells it repeatedly from different perspectives. 

 It begins with American military personnel in Alaska detecting an incoming ICBM and ends with the President faced with an impossible decision that could determine the fate of mankind.

Noah Oppenheimer’s screenplay — created with the assistance of former military types who know their stuff — exudes an aura of helplessness that not all our high-tech weaponry can dispel.

The incoming missile was launched from the Pacific, but we don’t know from where, exactly.  Without knowing who fired it, our military cannot know against whom to retaliate.  The Russians? The North Koreans?

Also. how could it be launched undetected by our surveillance capabilities?  Maybe someone inside our defense system is a saboteur?

Two of our missiles are sent to stop the intruder.  One breaks down in flight.  The other hits its target, but without effect.  The missile just keeps coming.  The most likely target is Chicago.

With each iteration of the story things get more dire, more tense. How will it end?  

“A House or Dynamite” has been crammed with familiar faces (Idris Elba. Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, Jason Clarke, Greta Lee, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Kaitlyn Dever), many of whom are on screen for only a minute or two.

They’re all solid, but I found myself being drawn to many of the background characters, soldiers and White House staffers caught in the awful realization that the horrors they trained for have now come to pass. Some maintain their by-the-book demeanor. Others come close to panicking.  Many call their families and friends with dire warnings to evacuate or simply to say “I love you.”

Bigelow cannily employs handheld cameras to capture a documentary feel; as the film progresses the tension reaches near unbearable levels.

Maybe don’t watch this one before going to bed.

“JOHN CANDY: I LIKE ME” My rating: B (Prime)

113 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

The late John Candy was a very funny man, but the overwhelming feeling percolating through this documentary is one of profound loss.

Director Colin Hanks (yes, Tom’s son) seems to have interviewed virtually everyone who moved in Candy’s orbit.  Among the famous talking heads represented here are Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Dave Thomas, Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Steve Martin, Conan O’Brien, Mel Brooks and Macaulay Culkin.

Not to mention Candy’s widow, children and siblings. 

To an individual they describe a prince of a guy  — warm, empathic, considerate.  Bill Murray struggles mightily to find something negative to say (conflict is vital to drama, right?) but in the end can’t deliver.

But we learn a lot about Candy here.  His father died of a heart attack when he was just a boy…ironically Candy would die of a heart attack at age 43.

He wasn’t comfortable with his image as a jolly fat man; interviewers back in the day subjected Candy to a not-terribly-subtle form of fat shaming that would get them fired today.  He never struck out at them…just smiled thinly and carried on.

There are, of course, a ton of clips from his stint with “SCTV” and from his many feature films, including “Planes, Trains & Automobiles,” in which Candy delivered a performance of such humor and humanity that in retrospect you’ve got to wonder what the Academy folk were thinking in not giving him a nomination.

All in all this is a warm tribute to a very good man.

Keira Knightley, Guy Pearce

“THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10” My rating: C (Netflix)

93 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Reporter Laura Blacklock (Keira Knightley) is invited to cover the maiden voyage of a super yacht whose owners — a dying billionairess and her husband (Guy Pearce) — want to draw attention to their new charity.

The proletarian Laura feels painfully out of place among these rich creeps (Hannah Waddingham, David Morrissey, etc.), and when she reports that the woman in the cabin next to hers has fallen (or was thrown) overboard, she becomes the object of suspicion and ridicule.

Apparently Cabin 10 was never occupied.

I was kinda bored by the  first third of Simon Stone’s thriller (the screenplay is by Stone, Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse).  The middle section, in which Laura hides on the boat from unseen killers, has a sort of “Die Hard” tension going on.

It’s all wrapped up with a posh gala on a Norwegian fiord that deteriorates into a sort of soggy Velveeta pizza.  Didn’t believe a word of it.

| Robert W. Butler

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“THE BRUTALIST”: Money and artistry

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 20, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Adrien Brody

“THE BRUTALIST” My rating: B+ (In theaters)

205 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Some filmmakers spend a lifetime to become merely competent at their craft.  With only his third feature Brady Corbet has delivered a masterwork.

We’re talking Orson Welles-level talent.

“The Brutalist” is the saga of a Holocaust survivor’s post-war life in the U.S.A. It features an indelible sense of time and place, two Oscar-worthy performances, a running time of more than 3 1/2  hours, and contains perhaps the fiercest indictment of capitalism ever proffered in an American film.

That Corbet and co-writer Mona Fastvold (they’re a couple) pull this off without resorting to strident polemics or soapbox  grandstanding is nothing short of miraculous.  The film doesn’t tell us. It shows us.

And it was shot in just 24 days on a budget that could hardly accommodate  a chamber piece, much less an epic.

Adrien Brody is Lazlo Toth, a Hungarian architect who survived the Nazi death camps and has now been sent to live with an Americanized cousin (Alessandro Nivola) who operates a Philadelphia furniture store.

Lazlo’s transition to his new home isn’t easy.  For starters, his wife Erzsebet (Felicity Jones) and niece Sofia (Rafael Cassidy), who were sent to a different camp,  are still in Europe, tangled up in red tape.  It will be several more years before they are reunited.

After an existence marked by imminent death,  Lazlo is uneasy in this land and of security and plenty. Surely something bad will happen. Not to mention that everything about him quietly shouts “alien”  and that in Eisenhower-era America his deeply-held esthetics are viewed as useless affectation.

His cousin’s wife (Emma Laird) is a Catholic uneasy with having a Jew under her roof.

And of course Lazlo is desperate to resume his architecture career, the one thing in which he is free to reveal his true essence.  

Once the preliminaries are out of the way, “The Brutalist” (the word, never spoken in the film, describes a school of monumental modern architecture  reliant on blocky forms and raw concrete construction) settles on its major theme, that of Lazlo’s relationship with an American millionaire who hires him to design a community center.

Guy Pearce gives the best performance of his career as industrialist Harrison Van Buren, a man so rich he has to work overtime not to come off as an entitled asshole. The film’s major theme is the minutely detailed power struggle between the man with the money and the man with a vision.

Guy Pearce

It’s an old saw that money corrupts (“Citizen Kane,” anyone?), but I’ve never seen a film — or a performance — that depicts that idea so succinctly or with such insight.  Van Buren tries desperately to present himself as open minded and progressive. He makes of show of treating Lazlo as a friend — an honored guest, in fact — but the imbalance in their relationship (and it goes deeper than just employer/employee) is ultimately ruinous. 

For starters, Van Buren is a mercurial character whose enthusiasm for the project waxes and wanes. He’s all too eager to make compromises on design and materials that violate the architect’s ambitions.

Brody’s Lazlo must walk a fine line between deference and assertiveness.  How much personal dignity and professional standards can he cede to achieve his dream of concrete and glass? 

The marvel of Brody’s work here is that we’re in Lazlo’s corner even when his actions are counterproductive and  self-destructive (early on he discovers the potential for escape in heroin). I know of few performances that so perfectly distills the fire of artistic ambition in all its pain and triumph.

The film’s big flaw (it’s what keeps me from giving the movie an A rating) is a plot development well into the third hour that struck me as contrived and wholly unexpected.  It involves a heinous act by Van Buren that feels totally out of whack with what we’ve seen up to that point.  It’s as if Corbet and Fastbold were desperate to wrap things up with a shocker and pulled this one out of thin air. 

(Yeah, I get it from a thematic point of view…the millionaire does to Lazlo literally what he does to the world figuratively on a daily basis…but it still feels like a weak Hail Mary effort.)

So “The Brutalist” isn’t perfect.  But the very fact that it got made is a miracle. The movie is in a class by itself…the only other films I can compare it to are those of Paul Thomas Anderson.

I cannot wait to see what Brady Corbet comes up with next.  But even if this is a one-shot deal, it will be regarded as a cinematic landmark.

| Robert W. Butler

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“TOM CLANCY’S WITHOUT REMORSE”: Colorful killer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 3, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Jodie Turner-Smith, Michael B. Jordan

“TOM CLANCY’S WITHOUT REMORSE” My rating: C (Amazon Prime)

109 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Critical reaction to Netflix’s “Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse” has pretty much centered on the fact that leading man Michael B. Jordan is WAY too talented to be wasted on this sort of superficial action drek.

I cannot argue with that analysis — putting Jordan in this “John Wick”-ish clone is like using a thermonuclear device to get rid of a wasp nest hanging from your eaves.

Yet even mediocre movies can be significant within a larger social context, and “Without Remorse” (a cheesy, generic title) feels like the right film at the right time in our intensifying national discussion about race.

Not that the film overtly addresses race. Outwardly, anyway, it’s color blind. But it doesn’t take much reading between the lines to find other stuff going on.

Clancy’s 1993 novel introduced readers to John Kelly, a Navy Seal who in 1970 is sent on a Rambo-is mission to recover an American intelligence officer from a North Vietnamese POW camp. He uncovers a high-level government plot to smuggle heroin into the US in the bodies of slain soldiers and instigates a murderous cleanup spree.

Eventually he’s recruited by the CIA, changes his hame to John Clark, and goes on to recurring appearances in a slew of Ryanverse novels.

Presumably the John Clark of the novels is white. Indeed, during the many years that the film version was in preproduction limbo, white actors like Keanu Reeves and Tom Hardy were considered for the role.

The ultimate choice of a black actor probably had less to do with ulterior motives on the part of the filmmakers than on Jordan’s widespread popularity. He is a draw for audiences of all colors.

Watching the film — which has shed its Vietnam-era trappings and takes place in the present; about all it has in common with the novel is the title — one is struck by its seeming color blindness. No mention is made of Kelly/Clark’s race. He’s an elite fighter, a devoted husband and soon-to-be father. But race doesn’t figure into it.

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“THE LAST VERMEER”: Patriotic decadence

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Guy Pearce

“THE LAST VERMEER”  My rating: B-

117 minutes | MPAA rating: R

In “The Last Vermeer” Aussie Guy Pearce delivers a hugely entertaining performance as Han van Meergren, a charmingly decadent artiste and all-round roue in post-war Copehagen.

Oozing hedonistic hubris, intellectual arrogance and casual amorality through his Einstein-level frizzy gray hair and mustache, Pearce’s van Meergren is the center of attention whenever he appears on screen.

Which, sad to say, isn’t nearly often enough. For though he is arguably the most important character in
Dan Friedkin’s “The Last Vermeer” he — like Orson Welles’ Harry Lime in “The Third Man” — gets relatively little screen time.

The screenplay (credited to John Orloff, James McGee, Mark Fegus and Hawk Ostby…very nearly a case of too many cooks) is based on real events.

The Nazis have been defeated and Jospeh Piller (Claes Bang), a Dane who fled the occupation to fight in the Canadian army, has been assigned the task of tracking down art masterpieces stolen by the Germans. His job is to return these priceless objects to their rightful owners (in may cases Jewish families) and prosecute the  collaborators who made the pillaging possible.

A previously unknown Vermeer painting — recovered from a Berlin-bound train and intended for Herman Goering’s personal collection — sets Pillar on a quest.  He’s accompanied by thuggish aide Esper (Roland Moller) who provides muscle when it’s needed and by the investigative genius Minna (Vicky Krieps).

Their sleuthing leads them to van Meergren, a failed painter who was known to have partied with the Germans and who somehow became fabulously rich during the war — presumably by selling pilfered masterpieces to the enemy.   If that is indeed the case, van Meergren faces the death penalty. Collaborators are daily being executed in Copenhagen’s public squares.

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“DISTURBING THE PEACE”: Just goofy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Guy Pearce

“DISTURBING THE PEACE” My rating: C- 

90 minutes | MPAA rating:

Apparently Aussie star Guy Pearce is the newest member of the don’t-send-the-script-send-the-check club. That’s the only explanation for his presence in the laughably inept “Disturbing the Peace.”

In York Alec Shackleton’s unintentionally goofy actioner, Pearce plays Jim Dillon, who left the Texas Rangers after accidentally shooting and paralyzing his partner in a hostage standoff. Now he’s the law in the tiny burg of Horse Cave. Apparently the place has a very low crime rate, because Jim has for years refused to carry a gun.

This proves problematical when a gang of rogue motorcyclists invade the place, robbing the local bank and hanging around so that they can rip off an armored car bringing big bucks from a nearby casino.

With many of his fellow residents being held captive, Jim must use his wits (we’re talking MacGyver-style booby traps) to foil the baddies; it’s just a matter of time, though, before he picks up a firearm and gets down to serious business.

Chuck Hustmyre’s screenplay is a mashup of ideas from “High Noon” (a more-or-less real-time narrative), Brando’s “The Wild One” (bad boys on bikes) and “Die Hard” (with a small town instead of a high-rise office building).

Hustmyre’s bio claims he’s a retired federal agent who has written several crime books, yet there’s nothing even remotely authentic about “Disturbing the Peace.”  Its depiction of small town life and law enforcement plays like the work of someone whose entire world view has been shaped by watching straight-to-video crime thrillers in his mother’s basement.

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“MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS”: Let the machinations begin!!!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 20, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Saoirse Ronan as Mary Stuart

“MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS” My rating: B-

124 minutes | MPAA rating:R

The story of Mary Stuart, the Scottish Queen, and her long-running rivalry with England’s Elizabeth I  is one of history’s great dramas. Heck, it even ends in a beheading.

So why do cinematic treatments of the yarn always feel so hidebound and emotionally remote?

In part it may be because the two women never laid eyes on one another. Their stories run on parallel tracks, but there is no intersection.

The new “Mary Queen of Scots,” with which storied stage director Josie Rourke makes her feature film debut, solves that problem (sort of) by inventing a meeting between the two monarchs. This allows two terrific actresses — Saoirse Ronan and Margo Robbie — an opportunity for a bit of hand-to-hand thespian combat.

But it’s not enough to make this big fat slice of history dramatically compelling.

Which is not to say there’s nothing to like here.  The film is filled with spectacular scenery and some of the dankest, dimmest castle interiors in movie history. The costuming is lavish.

And then of course you have these two actresses playing a long-distance game of diplomatic chess with the future of the English monarchy at stake.

The film begins with Mary (Ronan) returning to Scotland after a long sojourn in France, where she had married a prince who promptly died on her. She reclaims her throne from her brother James (Andrew Rothney), who will launch a civil war against her.

Mary poses a real threat to her cousin Elizabeth (Robbie), who is unmarried and indifferent about producing an heir.  Should Elizabeth die childless, the Roman Catholic Mary would inherit the throne of Protestant England.

Let the machinations begin!!!

(more…)

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“THE CATCHER WAS A SPY”: Enigma with a gun

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 21, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Paul Rudd as Moe Berg

“THE CATCHER WAS A SPY” My rating: C+

98 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Crammed with famous faces and centering on a bit of real-life WW2 cloak-and-dagger that almost defies credulity, “The Catcher Was a Spy” is both a thriller and a flawed character study of a man who refused to be characterized.

Indeed, even before he was recruited by the O.S.S. and trained to be an assassin, Morris “Moe” Berg (portrayed here by Paul Rudd…probably too boyish for the role) was a bundle of puzzling contradictions.

Berg had degrees from Columbia, Princeton and the Sorbonne; he spoke seven or eight languages fluently and could get by in several others.

Yet he made his living as a professional baseball player, serving as the second string catcher for the Boston Red Sox.

As presented in Ben Lewin’s film, he is well spoken, erudite and bisexual, augmenting his domestic life with a live-in girlfriend (Sienna Miller) with visits to underground gay nightspots.

Shortly before the beginning of the war Berg was named to an all star team (Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig participated) on a good will tour of Japan.  While there he became convinced that war was inevitable and, on his own, climbed to the roof of a Tokyo skyscraper so that he could film military installations and harbor facilities.

He later presented his reels to William “Wild Bill” Donovan (Jeff Daniels), then running the O.S.S., the precursor to the C.I.A. Donovan was sufficiently impressed by Berg’s intellect, patriotism and facility with foreign languages to give him a job…but not before asking: “Are you queer?”

Berg’s answer sealed the deal: “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

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“THE ROVER”: Junkyard dog

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on June 19, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Guy Pearce, Robert Pattinson in "The Rover"

Guy Pearce, Robert Pattinson in “The Rover”

“THE ROVER”   My rating: B- (Opening Jan. 20 at the AMC Town Center)

102 minutes | MPAA rating: R

There must be something about the wide open spaces of Australia’s outback that drives its filmmakers to post-apocalyptic nihilism.

George Miller and the “Mad Max” films.   John Hilcoat with “The Road” and “The Proposition.”

And now David Michôd with “The Rover,” a sweaty, dusty saga about a man in search of his kidnapped car.

Michôd scored a minor coup in 2010 with “Animal Kingdom,” an intimate portrait of a low-level Aussie crime clan that introduced to American audiences the great Jackie Weaver (who nabbed an Oscar nomination). It  was a dark, generally hopeless look at the ties that bind its characters to an evil enterprise.

Now  Michôd goes full-tilt dystopia. The opening credits of “The Rover”  informs us that the story takes place 10 years after “the collapse,” a worldwide economic meltdown that has left most of humanity struggling with chronic poverty.

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“HATESHIP LOVESHIP”: The dignity of little things

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on May 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Kristen Wiig, Guy Pearce

Kristen Wiig, Guy Pearce

“HATESHIP LOVESHIP” My rating: B (Now playing at the Screenland Armour)

104 minutes | MPAA rating: R

It seems that inside every comic genius there lurks a tragedian just itching to break out.

The latest funny person to make the leap into seriousness is former “SNL” star Kristen Wiig, who in “Hateship Loveship” excels at poartraying a lonely woman who risks all on a last desperate attempt at happiness.

Wiig plays Johanna, who as the film begins is a care-giver for an old lady in small-town Iowa. Johanna has no family and has been with the old lady since she was 15 — or more than half her life. As a result she is emotionally and intellectually naive, not to mention painfully shy.

With her employer’s death Johanna finds a new job in the household of lawyer McCauley (Nick Nolte), a widower caring for his teenage granddauther Sabitha  (Hailee Steinfeld, an Oscar nominee for the Coens’ “True Grit”). Her arrival coincides with a rare visit by Sabitha’s father Ken (Guy Pearce), an alcoholic and druggie whose irresponsible driving led to the death of his wife.

Now Ken is trying to convince his father-in-law to invest in his latest get-rich-quick scheme, refurbishing a run-down motel in Chicago. McCauley isn’t buying; besides, he’s never forgiven Ken for the death of his daughter.

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New DVDs: Killers, role players, surfers and Fidel

Posted in Cinema Espanol, Documentaries, New on DVD, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »

“God Went Surfing with the Devil”

The surfing documentary has been a cinema staple ever since Bruce Brown’s “Endless Summer” back in 1966, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything quite like “God Went Surfing with the Devil,” professional skateboarder Alexander Klein’s heady blend of Middle Eastern politics and wave-catching abandon.

Klein’s doc follows activists with Surfing4Peace who are attempting to do their small part for world peace by shepherding a shipment of surfboards into Gaza. They envision Arab enthusiasts joining their Jewish counterparts in riding the waves of Gaza’s sandy beaches.

Sounds like an easy enough task, (more…)

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