If dancing ever needs a propaganda film, Footloose is it. The plot is as much a wonderfully told story as a well-built argument: people will dance, whether they're permitted or not, because humans can't help but wiggle. John Lithgow, one of the best antagonists ever (ever), plays Reverend Shaw Moore, a preacher whose benevolent, but misguided control over a rural town has led it to ban dancing. Until Kevin Bacon, as Ren McCormack, shows up from Chicago with his charmingly uncombed hair, New Wave-y tie, and a set of acrobatic dance moves, and proceeds to shake loose Moore's anti-dancing arguments with his skilled hip isolations. While I'm not sure that dancing is in need of any defending, the film's structure also creates the opportunity for fantastic angst-filled and liberating dance sequences. Most famous is Bacon's iconic Volkswagen pounding sequence in the old train depot, but maybe more fantastic, his bumpkin friend Willard (the late Chris Penn) in his learning-to-dance montage, which ends with his doing some lite-break dancing on the back of a flat-bed. When McCormack finally forces the town to confront the demons that caused it to ban dancing in the first place and sets up the first school dance in years, we realize how important the town's liberation was for as soon as they overcome their jitters, it turns out that at least half of the student body dance at a high if not professional level. This final dancing sequence is an appropriately joyful ending to a movie that is well acted throughout with a breakout performance from Bacon, an exuberant performance from Lori Singer as his love interest, and a marvelously sympathetic villain who finally sees the light in Lithgow's preacher.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Friday, September 14, 2012
Lincoln Lawyer recommendation the day after
Lincoln Lawyer
This is an addendum to my movie suggestions from last night. I checked out this recent Matthew McConaughey vehicle after making my recommendations. McConaughey plays Mick Haller, the kind of amoral lawyer he would have likely become had his movie career not taken off, taking him away from his pre-law studies (For more McConaughey playing a laywer see this and this). The movie feels like it was made ten or even twenty years ago. Video cassettes and home answering machines play pivotal roles in the plot and the movie has a breezy, uncomplicated approach to crime and courtroom drama that I only see now on incredibly gory t.v. shows (Perhaps there are other lawyer movies coming out these days. I feel like it's been a while since we had movies like A Few Good Men or My Cousin Vinny coming out regularly). Regardless of when it's set, I thoroughly enjoyed the courtroom rhetoric in this one, with Mathew McConaughey playing his scenes as a defense attorney simply and with great skill. He fairs worse when the drama spills out of the courtroom and into his personal life, substituting his clear, direct presence in the courtroom with a lot of huffing, puffing, and letting his jaw hang open for extended periods of time. That's unfortunately something he seems to do in almost every movie I've seen him in when his character's dealing with confrontation. I assume it's just because, in real life, he really is a mellow guy and getting up in people's faces is out of his comfort zone. He'd rather be smoking a joint and playing his bongos in his birthday suit. What he can do, though, is carry a movie like this with his energy, like a Southern, handsome Nicholas Cage, always driving the action, even if we don't always believe his emotional state. The plot never slackens and despite its frequent implausibility, most people will be anxious to see if and how McConaughey seals the deal in the last 20 minutes.
This is an addendum to my movie suggestions from last night. I checked out this recent Matthew McConaughey vehicle after making my recommendations. McConaughey plays Mick Haller, the kind of amoral lawyer he would have likely become had his movie career not taken off, taking him away from his pre-law studies (For more McConaughey playing a laywer see this and this). The movie feels like it was made ten or even twenty years ago. Video cassettes and home answering machines play pivotal roles in the plot and the movie has a breezy, uncomplicated approach to crime and courtroom drama that I only see now on incredibly gory t.v. shows (Perhaps there are other lawyer movies coming out these days. I feel like it's been a while since we had movies like A Few Good Men or My Cousin Vinny coming out regularly). Regardless of when it's set, I thoroughly enjoyed the courtroom rhetoric in this one, with Mathew McConaughey playing his scenes as a defense attorney simply and with great skill. He fairs worse when the drama spills out of the courtroom and into his personal life, substituting his clear, direct presence in the courtroom with a lot of huffing, puffing, and letting his jaw hang open for extended periods of time. That's unfortunately something he seems to do in almost every movie I've seen him in when his character's dealing with confrontation. I assume it's just because, in real life, he really is a mellow guy and getting up in people's faces is out of his comfort zone. He'd rather be smoking a joint and playing his bongos in his birthday suit. What he can do, though, is carry a movie like this with his energy, like a Southern, handsome Nicholas Cage, always driving the action, even if we don't always believe his emotional state. The plot never slackens and despite its frequent implausibility, most people will be anxious to see if and how McConaughey seals the deal in the last 20 minutes.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Thursday Thriller: Netflix recommendations
Because Netflix can be both wonderfully surprising and remarkably disappointing, I'm going to happily sift through various genres and new releases to find the movies worth watching. Hopefully I'll get some recommendations in return.
Tonight, in honor of the dark and stormy night we're having in Chicago, I'm going to go through some of the Thrillers available.
This is an odd, but very satisfying modern murder mystery featuring Charlotte Rampling as a hard-working mystery writer getting some rest and relaxation in Southern France at the home of her publisher. This plan is complicated when the publisher's daughter (Ludivine Sagnier) ends up crashing at the house as well. It starts as a funny confrontation between a young, sexually adventurous French girl and an old, staid Englishwoman; the carefree Mediterannean French and the hardworking English who own all of the big estates (those being the stereotypes played with here). This is a thriller though and the story takes off once the real-life murder mystery develops at this fiction writer's retreat. The movie is quirky, but a winner: well acted, compellingly plotted, and frequently fun and sexy.
What a fantastic movie! Chinatown was Roman Polanski's first Hollywood film after the death of his wife Sharon Tate at the hands of Charles Manson's gang and it is a twisted picture. Conceived as a mystery with a happy ending in the screenplay, Polanski altered the ending into a far more painful conclusion. It's a great story about early Los Angeles, a great tragic love story, and a heartbreaking story about family, greed, and desire.
Before there was The Dark Knight Trilogy and Inception, Christopher Nolan was directing smaller, but no less fascinating mind-bending thrillers like Insomnia and Memento. Guy Pearce plays Leonard Shelby, a sensitive revenge seeker, who, we piece together as the movie settles in, has lost the ability to form new memories, which is making it difficult for him to find his wife's killer. The movie begins as an exhilarating puzzle as we seek to figure out things along with Leonard, but, as we begin to put together the mystery while he still can't, it becomes a terrifying character sketch of a deeply lost individual. Fascinating throughout.
There's quite a few more goods ones that I've seen in the Thriller list, and I'll go through some of my other recommendations next week hopefully. In the meantime, I'm going to watch a movie starring an actor no one expected to have a mid-life renaissance, Mathew McConaughey, in The Lincoln Lawyer. If he is half as good as he was in Magic Mike, I think I'll really enjoy it. I'm serious.
Feel free to suggest any movies back.
Thanks,
Mike
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