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Posts Tagged ‘Hugh Jackman’

“THE SON”: Bad seed

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 23, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Zen McGrath, Laura Dern, Hugh Jacckman

“THE SON” My rating: C+ (In theaters)

123 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

The performances are strong. The subject matter is important. The execution is, well, fine.

But “The Son” is the most unpleasant, upsetting two hours I’ve spent watching a movie in months. For all of its strong elements, the damn thing is so disheartening and joyless that I’m loathe to revisit the memory just so I can write this review.

The latest from director Florian Zeller (like last year’s “The Father” it is adapted from a Zeller play, once again with an assist from Christopher Hampton) addresses the issue of teen depression. It’s almost brutally insightful, and not the least bit encouraging.

Peter Miller (Hugh Jackman) is an executive with a Manhattan-based charity. He has recently married his second wife, Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and together they have welcomed to their lives a baby boy.

But Peter’s cozy world comes crashing down when he is approached by his ex, Kate (Laura Dern), who reports that their teenage son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) is in trouble at school. More specifically, he hasn’t been to class in a month. The kid leaves home every morning and God knows where he spends the day.

Peter doesn’t need this, but he’s a decent guy who genuinely loves his firstborn and wants to do the right thing. He invites Nicholas to move into his place (new wife Beth is surprisingly amenable…she’s a decent person, too) and enrolls him in a new school.

But here’s the thing. Nicholas is tormented, unhappy, friendless. He cannot find words to express his feelings, and rather than share them he prefers isolation.

Peter tries to put an optimistic face on all this, but he’s simply denying the inevitable. And the pressure is starting to unravel both is career and his marriage.

Zeller’s narrative nails the pain and frustration of parents incapable of alleviating their child’s misery. And young McGrath delivers a borderline brilliant depiction of a kid whose unhappiness has led him down an antisocial path (among other things he’s a genius at parental manipulation). Watching this performance we’re jerked back and farther between compassion and indignation — exactly the emotions the adults in his life are experiencing.

Though Nicholas is the clockwork that makes the movie tick, “The Son” also serves as a personality study. Jackman has spent so much of his career in Spandex that it’s easy to forget that he’s a solid dramatic actor. A scene in which Peter visits his semi-estranged father — played by Anthony Hopkins as a sarcasm-dripping capitalist elitist — goes a long way towards establishing why Peter operates in the not-for-profit sphere and why he’s determined to be a genuine father to Nicholas.

But sometimes broke cannot be fixed.

“The Son” does contain one spectacularl improbability. Ask yourself…if you were the parent of a suicidal adolescent, would you keep a loaded firearm in the laundry room?

Didn’t think so.

| Robert W. Butler

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“REMINISENCE”: Don’t play it again, Sam

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 21, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Hugh Jackman

“REMINISENCE” My rating: D (HBO Max)

116 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

“Reminisence” has one hell of a pedigree.

It is the feature writing/directing debut of Lisa Joy, the co-creator of HBO’s “Westworld.” A while back her “Reminiscence” screenplay was included on the Black List, an annual survey of the Hollywood’s most promising unproduced scripts.

The cast includes heavy hitters like Hugh Jackman and Thandiwe Newton, with assists from the likes of Rebecca Ferguson and Cliff Curtis.

And yet the film is borderline unwatchable, a clumsily assembled pastiche of sci-fi and film noir cliches that fails to generate excitement or emotional involvement. After devoting two hours to watching this project I can see what Joy was going for, but she didn’t come close to getting me there.

Jackman stars as cynical, world-weary Nick Bannister, who in the not-too-distant future lives and works in Miami…or what the filmmakers imagine Miami will be like after a few decades of global warming and rising ocean levels.

Now the city resembles Venice with high rises. Streets are flooded. Dams keep out some, but hardly all, of the encroaching waves. The rich reside in “dry” areas, while everyone else must resign themselves to perpetual sogginess.

Nick and former Army buddy Watts (Newton) run a service that employs futuristic tech to recover the dreams and memories of their clients. Folks in this watery future are so bummed out that many prefer to live in the past; while in Nick’s immersion tank they can be guided back to the happiest moments of their lives and, for a few minutes and a few dollars, dwell there.

Their memories are projected via hologram, allowing Nick and Watts to eavesdrop on what is usually a very private experience.

Enter super hot Mae (Rebecca Ferguson), a nightclub chanteuse (of course) who wants to use Nick’s machine to discover where she misplaced her house keys. Uh huh.

Anyway, he falls. Hard.

Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson

We know because he tells us. And tells us. And tells us.

“Reminiscence” relies heavily on Nick’s angsty, tough-guy voiceover narration. It’s so clumsily overwritten that after a while I started to wince every time Jackman’s disembodied voice flooded the soundtrack. Perhaps it’s meant to be a playful parody of pulp fiction first-person navel gazing; whatever…doesn’t work.

Anyway, one day Mae vanishes. To Watts’ dismay, Nick starts spending countless hours in his own machine, mining his reminiscences of their affair. Eventually he decides to get off his ass in an attempt to track Mae down.

Along the way he runs afoul of a New Orleans gangster (Daniel Wu) from Mae’s past, a crooked cop (Curtis) and a family of wealthy creeps who are rapidly taking over what’s left of society.

And he discovers that his beloved may have been playing him all along.

Joy’s plot is so full of twists that I cannot begin to explain what actually happens in the film’s second half. It may have something to do with the fact that I felt nothing for any of the characters, was totally uninvested in their fates.

“Reminiscence” does a fair amount of cinematic name dropping. Mae is the mysterious femme fatale of countless potboilers; Nick is an updated Bogie. The script Nick employs to guide his clients through their memories sounds uncannily like Rod Serling’s spoken introduction to the old “Twilight Zone” episodes.

The film’s version of Miami is right out of “Waterworld” and countless other movies about a dystopian future. The whole memory machine gimmick seems to have been inspired by “Total Recall” and there’s a slugfest with hammers that Joy has stated is her homage to the hallway brawl in “Old Boy.”

None of it worked, at least not for me. In the end I felt as numbed and bummed as Jackman’s character, but for all the wrong reasons.

| Robert W. Butler

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“BAD EDUCATION”: Too good to be true

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on April 28, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney

“BAD EDUCATON” My rating: B 

108 minutes | TV-MA

In the world of public education Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman) is a rock star.

The superintendent of the Roslyn School District in a posh corner of Long Island, Frank has over a decade ratcheted up his district’s reputation. Currently the high school he oversees is rated as the fourth best in the country; Frank promises his cheering fans that he won’t stop until Roslyn is Number One.

Moreover, Frank melds educational excellence with personal charisma. His wardrobe is right out of GQ. As are his daily ablutions. Like a veteran pol, he knows the names of innumerable students, their parents and civic supporters. He’s charming and selfless and handsome…small wonder this widower periodically must gently turn aside the romantic ministrations of newly divorced soccer moms.

His teachers and staff adore him and the city fathers are no less enthusiastic.  Like school board member Big Bob Spicer (Ray Romano), a real estate broker who knows that a top school district is a magnet for rich, upwardly mobile families looking to buy in the ‘burbs.

And behind closed doors with his confidants — especially business administrator Pamela Gluckin (Allison Janney) — he enjoys a good cussing session.

In short, Frank Tassone is too good to be true.  And you know where that can lead.

Scripted by Mike Makowsky (who was a Roslyn student during Tassone’s celebrated tenure) and directed by Cory Finley, “Bad Education” emerges as a black comedy so seductive that, like most of the folks in his orbit, we don’t want to believe that Frank Tassone could be anything but the white knight he appears to be.

(more…)

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“THE FRONT RUNNER”: Fair game

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

Hugh Jackman as Gary Hart

“THE FRONT RUNNER” My rating: B-

113 minutes | MPAA rating: R

It is easier to appreciate “The Front Runner” as a pivotal point in our political history than it is to warm up to it as a film.

The subject is Sen. Gary Hart’s 1988 run for the Democratic nomination for President,  the allegations of sexual impropriety that brought him down, and the media’s recognition (however reluctantly) that from here on out a candidate’s private life is fair game for coverage.

It’s been well acted and incisively directed by Jason Reitman (“Up in the Air,” “The Descendents”), yet even as it carefully lays out the parameters of the Hart affair “The Front Runner” seems remote and chilly. Perhaps there are no warm fuzzies in the film because there were no warm fuzzies in the true story.

Hart (Hugh Jackman) was a charismatic liberal with all the right responses. For those who swung left he hit the mark on race, economic disparity, the rapidly evaporating Cold War and other matters.  He might very well have made a great President, one who, according to an admirer, could “untangle the bullshit of politics so anyone can understand.”

Problem is, Hart was far easier to appreciate as a policy wonk than as an individual.  His marriage to Lee (Vera Farmiga) seemed solid — children, rustic home in the Colorado Rockies — but Hart bristled at any attempts to plum the depths of their relationship.  He insisted that the reporters covering him stick to the issues; his life behind the public image was off limits.

He wasn’t even on board with the usual photo ops, complaining that he was caught smiling “like some game show host.”

The screenplay by Reitman, Jay Carson and Matt Bai (on whose book it was based) runs on two parallel tracks.

There’s the insider workings of the Hart campaign, with an emphasis on tough-as-nails manager Bill Dixon (J.K. Simmons) and a host of young volunteers who see in Hart a politician who reflects their generational concerns.

(more…)

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‘THE GREATEST SHOWMAN”: Long con

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on December 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »

P.T. Barnum (Hugh Jackman) and his band of oddities

“THE GREATEST SHOWMAN” My rating: B-

105 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

The most memorable utterance attributed to P.T. Barnum — “There’s a sucker born every minute”  — appears nowhere in the original film musical “The Great Showman.”

This is understandable. The quote is thick with contempt/condescension for the everyday idiot.  Michael Gracey’s film, on the other hand, is all about openness and a childlike sense of wonder.

Ostensibly a biography of the 19th-century con man and entertainment entrepreneur, “The Greatest Showman” is a passion project from Aussie actor Hugh Jackman, who has long wanted to tackle the role. (Aside from subject matter, the film is in no way related to the fine 1980 Broadway musical “Barnum.”)

The real Barnum was a wart of a fellow and a self-proclaimed “humbugger,'” certainly not the dashing charmer we get in this production. But then “The Greatest Showman” has been conceived and executed not as history or actual biography but as a colorful commentary on dreaming big and embracing diversity.

The characters are paper thin and the historic details iffy (there appear to be electric lights in a house in the 1850s, the women’s costumes are all over the place).

But it is undeniably entertaining, especially in several of the musical numbers and in a garish presentational approach that reminds of Baz Luhrmann’s work on “Moulin Rouge,” with maybe a touch of Bob Fosse-inspired choreography thrown in for good measure.

Zendaya

We follow the rise of Jackman’s Barnum from struggling shipping company clerk to national prominence. He woos and wins a wealthy young woman (Michelle Williams), in the process alienating her family, who find his work very low class.

He buys a run-down museum in NYC and goes on a world-wide hunt to stock it with human and animal oddities. Before long Barnum can claim among his attractions the world’s smallest man, Tom Thumb, a bearded lady (Keala Settle), Siamese twins, the Dog Boy, the Tattooed Man and  a fellow with three legs.

Far from presenting Barnum as an exploiter of these unfortunates, the film depicts him as a father figure who creates an outcast clan whose members band together for mutual support in defiance of a cruel world.

(more…)

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“EDDIE THE EAGLE”: Defying gravity

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 25, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Hugh Jackman, Taron Egerton

Hugh Jackman, Taron Egerton

“EDDIE THE EAGLE”  My rating: B- 

 144 minutes  | MPAA rating: PG-13

In the movies, a great story trumps just about every other consideration.

“Eddie the Eagle” is a stolidly inartistic effort burdened with washed-out cinematography, just-OK special effects and a faux-Vangelis soundtrack.

But the more-or-less real-life yarn it tells is such a laugh-inducing, lump-in-the-throat-producing audience pleaser that criticism is beside the point.

The 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, gave us the Jamaican bobsled team, subject of the 1993 film “Cool Runnings.” But another oddity of those games was Eddie Edwards, a geeky Brit who showed up as the sole member of his country’s ski jumping team.

Eddie, who had taken up the sport only a year earlier, was clearly out of his league competing against the world’s best. But his goofball personality and obvious love of the sport won over the crowds, who dubbed him Eddie the Eagle and made him a celebrity.

In Dexter Fletcher’s film, Eddie is played by Taron Egerton, who in “Kingsman: The Secret Service” played the street punk who becomes a sophisticated James Bond-ish spy. Here he’s virtually unrecognizable, hiding behind a blond mop, bottle-bottom eyeglasses and an expression of earnest bewilderment.

Far from being a suave secret agent, Egerton’s Eddie is more like Forrest Gump. He’s not feeble-minded, exactly, but he’s childlike enough to believe that dreams come true. And just bright (and lucky) enough to figure out how to get there.

The screenplay by Sean Macaulay and Simon Kelton plays fast and loose with the facts of Eddie Edwards’ life and quest for Olympic immortality. What it gets right, though, is their subject’s never-say-die determination.

In a brief prologue we see Eddie as a boy with “weak knees” and a leg brace that squeaks with every step. Despite a near-total lack of athletic ability, he obsesses about competing in the Olympics. (more…)

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