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Posts Tagged ‘Robin Wright’

“DAMSEL”: “Princess Bride” meets “Die Hard”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 28, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Millie Bobby Brown

“DAMSEL” My rating: B- (Netflix)

110 minutes | MPAA: PG-13

The female-centric actioner “Damsel” is, in a weird way, a twisty homage to “The Princess Bride.”

Except that whereas the title character that 1987 classic was an imperiled  beauty who relied on brawling menfolk for a rescue, in “Damsel” it’s the princess who kicks ass.

Bonus points: Robin Wright, who of course played Princess Buttercup back in the day, is this time around cast as a beautiful/evil queen in the classic Disney tradition.

“Damsel” stars Millie Bobby Brown as a fairy tale princess who  singlehandedly takes on a fire-breathing dragon. Brown became a near-household word for her work (beginning at age 12)  in the “Stranger Things” series, had a supporting role in “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” and proved quite charming as a Victorian-era teen sleuth in “Enola Holmes.”

One hopes that some day soon she will tackle a role commensurate with her talent.  But for now we’ll have to be content with lightweight diversions like this one.

Brown’s Elodie is the daughter of the provincial Lord Bamford (Ray Winstone) who rules a fairly inhospitable region of the film’s Middle Earth-ish world.  Bayford’s realm is always on the verge of starvation/bankruptcy, so when a marriage proposal arrives from a much more wealthy kingdom he jumps at the chance to benefit his people by marrying off Elodie.

In due course Elodie and Prince Henry (Nick Robinson) are wed in an elaborate ceremony in the crazily ornate castle lorded over by Henry’s Mom, Queen Isabelle (Robin Wright). 

Elodie finds herself falling for Henry…until she finds herself falling literally down a chasm into the dragon’s lair.  Seems that Isabella’s family has for centuries been placating the dragon with sacrificial virgins…Elodie discovers the remains of earlier brides as she navigates a labyrinth of tunnels and chambers.

“Damsel” plays something like a “Die Hard” parody, with Elodie overcoming her panic to get down to the task of evading and hopefully eliminating the great beast. Think of the dragon’s mountain lair as a Medieval version of a high-rise office building.

Despite some gruesome fiery deaths, this film from director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo may be too sanitized for hard-core action fans.  The ideal audience appears to be young girls, who will glom onto the sword-waving heroine while overlooking some of the more creaky plot points.

No biggie, but a decent enough way to pass a couple of hours.

| Robert W. Butler

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“LAND”: Walden woman

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 13, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Robin Wright

“LAND” My rating: B- (Select theaters)

89 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Who hasn’t harbored a dream of retreating to a mountainside home far from the hassles, fears and frustrations of civilization?

Americans seem particularly prone to this Thoreau-esque  fantasy; undoubtedly it has something to do with our shared consciousness of pioneers coming to terms with the wilderness.

It’s all very romantic…until it isn’t.

“Land,” actress Robin Wright’s film directing debut, unfolds in a primitive cabin  where a city dweller, working through an unnamed grief, has taken up residence.

It’s a minimalist effort — very little dialogue, no plot to speak of — that attempts to compensate for its dramatic thinness with gorgeous outdoor cinematography (the d.p. is Bobby Bukowski). If it sometimes seems there’s actually less here than meets the eye…well, at least the eye candy is first class.

Early on we see Edee (Wright) consulting a psychologist and arguing with a woman (Kim Dickens) — her sister? — about her desperate need to get away.

Next thing you know she’s rented a car and a trailer, loaded up on foodstuffs and essentials, thrown away her cell phone and relocated to rural Wyoming.  Basically she’s bought a property — no electricity, no running water — about as far away from other humans as she can get.

To ensure her isolation she hires someone to return the rental car…that way she can’t bail at the first sign of trouble.

As Edee gets used to her new environment she is subjected to visions of a man and young boy (her late husband and son, we assume).  Occasionally, in the midst of breathtaking beauty, she breaks down in helpless tears.

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“BLADE RUNNER”: Breaking the world

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 3, 2017| 1 Comment »

Ana de Armas, Ryan Gosling

“BLADE RUNNER 2049”  My rating: B 

163 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Making a sequel that will satisfy three generations of “Blade Runner”-obsessed geeks isn’t easy.

What’s surprising is how close director Denis Villeneuve and his screenwriters (Hampton Fancher, Michael Green) have come to pulling it off.

Of course this pronouncement is coming from a guy who admired the original 1982 “Blade Runner” (great film technology and a brilliant evocation of a dystopian future) but didn’t actually like it (one of Harrison Ford’s clumsiest performances…plus the movie should have been about Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty, a vastly more interesting character).

“Blade Runner 2049” finds me reversing my original evaluation — I like it but don’t exactly admire it.

Explaining one’s reactions to this eye-popping, ear-shredding futurist epic (the running time is nearly three hours) is made considerably more difficult by Villeneuve’s request  — read to critics at advance screenings — that we not discuss the new film’s plot in our reviews.

Well, that’s kind of limiting.

But here goes.

Once again we have a film about the conflict between replicants — artificially engineered humanoid slaves who are born as adults with phony memories of childhood — and their human creators.

The film centers on “K” (it refers to the first letters of his serial number), a replicant played by Ryan Gosling. K, like Ford’s Deckard in the first film, is a blade runner who hunts down renegade replicants. (The character’s name may also refer to Josef K., the existentially-challenged hero of Kafka’s The Trial. Allegorical names are big here; the principal female characters are called Joi and Luv.)

In the  years since the events of the original film there have been major societal upheavals:  A “great blackout” that destroyed most digital records; the bankruptcy of the Tyrell Corporation which invented replicants; and the rise of mad scientist Niander Wallace (Jared Leto, as irritatingly weird as ever), who has perfected technology to ensure that his new generation of replicants obey their human masters.

But there are still some aging Tyrell-era replicants hiding out in Earth’s less-hospitable neighborhoods, and it is K’s job to track them down and eliminate them.

In his off hours the silently suffering K takes much abuse from his human neighbors, who contemptuously refer to him as a “skin job.”  At least he has a wife at home…well, sort of.  What he is has is Joi (Ana de Armas), a computer-generated hologram who can change her clothing and hair instantaneously to match K’s mood.  She loves him; sexual congress,  though, seems beyond her technology.

No wonder K seems so sad.

Running throughout Fancher and Green’s screenplay are hints that man’s inventions — holograms, replicants — are at least as “human” as their creators, struggling against their programming to express emotional needs and intellectual curiosity.

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“THE CONGRESS”: Brilliant and maddening

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

Robin Wright

Robin Wright

“THE CONGRESS” My rating: B- (Opening Sept. 5 at the Alamo Drafthouse)

122 minutes | No MPAA rating

Masterful and maddening, spectacularly original and hugely frustrating, Ari Folman’s “The Congress” is unlike any other film I can name.  Though it dabbles with elements explored by fantasy epics like “The Matrix,” it has its own distinct personality.

Some of us are going to love it. Some will be irritated by it.  And some — like me — will experience both emotions.

Folman’s film (he was the creator of “Waltz With Bashir,” the brilliant animated effort about PTS among former Israeli soldiers) opens on the aging but still-beautiful face of actress Robin Wright.

Wright is playing herself here — or rather an alternative universe version of herself — and she’s reduced to tears as her long-time agent (Harvey Keitel) tells her that at age 44 her acting career is all but kaput.

She’s made too many bad choices in men, movies, and friends, he says. She’s thrown up too many obstacles about the kind of work she’ll do (no science fiction, no porn, no Holocaust movies) and she has earned a rep for not showing up on the set. Yes, yes, usually it’s because she has to deal with yet another emergency involving her son (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who is slowly going both blind and deaf. But that excuse has gotten old.

A meeting with a bullish exec (Danny Huston) at Miramount Pictures provides a last-ditch solution.

The movie biz has been so changed by digital technology, the desk jockey explains, that  actors are obsolete. Most stars have allowed their faces, bodies, voices and emotions to be scanned into a computer where they can be reanimated by skilled CG artists.

The avatar actors thus created can be made younger or older, fatter or thinner. They’re never late. They make no demands or complaints. They never throw tantrums — unless the script calls for it.

“I need Buttercup from ‘The Princess Bride’,” the exec says. “I don’t need you.”

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