Tag: hope davis

Ric Roman Waugh’s Greenland

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

Ric Roman Waugh’s Greenland is an uncommonly superb, heartbreakingly intense, strikingly subversive disaster film, the best of its kind in probably decades, to be honest. Usually when I see a Gerard Butler disaster film coming down the pipeline I promptly step to one side and let it pass by without taking notice, like the lame-brained Olympus Has Fallen series or GeoStorm. Let’s face it, the guy’s agent hasn’t been the best at landing decent projects for him, and for a long time too. Let’s hope this is the start of something new in his career because it’s a staggering work that uses its big budget not for flashy, glossy CGI or needlessly elaborate but ultimately hollow blockbuster set pieces. This is a much more intimate disaster flick that uses character, emotion, spacing, nighttime, growing mass hysteria and poignancy to get its point across. Butler plays a Florida structural engineer trying to get his wife (Morena Baccarin) and kid (Roger Dale Floyd) out of Tampa as a disintegrating comet pummels earth with fragments and the countdown to the end of the world begins. The powers that be have a plan to shelter those with good genetics and useable skillsets in fortified bunkers located in Greenland through a selective process using iPhone emergency alerts and Butler’s family has been chosen but there are many elements that make their journey difficult, mainly the widespread chaos and panic as well as the continued decimation of their planet by falling debris. Butler is fantastic here and sells the frenzied desperation well, while Baccarin has never been better and I never would have thought that Deadpool’s girlfriend was capable of such an affecting, raw performance as she gives here. Others give vivid impressions including Hope Davis, Holt McCallany, Madison Johnson, Gary Weeks, Merrin Dungey and many more. Special mention must be made of Scott Glenn as Morena’s father with whom they briefly take shelter with. He brings his usual gritty gravitas and shares a scene with her that brings out the best in both actors and is the film’s emotional lynchpin. The scenes of disaster aren’t obnoxious, grating or show-boaty like many films of this kind; there’s a haunted, celestial quality to the visuals of the descending comet that is both beautiful and terrifying, like ethereal dying stars entering our atmosphere and lighting up our skies in one final display of sustained, painterly cosmic reverence before the inevitable destruction. If Big Hollywood took notes from Waugh and his team on what they’ve achieved here and employed such creative wisdom into all of their disaster films then maybe the genre overall would be taken more seriously because this is one gorgeously produced piece of work that, for me, now sits as the disaster movie gold standard. Great film.

-Nate Hill

Gore Verbinski’s The Weather Man

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

It’s always nice when a film as bizarre, unconventional and downbeat as Gore Verbinski’s The Weather Man gets approved by the big studio system, but the flip side of that is that when it inevitably gets a wide release and considerable marketing, score of reviewers and audiences are going to talk shit about it because it’s ‘different’ and ‘depressing.’ It is definitely those two things, but it’s also a painfully funny, insightful piece with fantastic work from Nicolas Cage, brilliantly placed dark humour, the briefest glimpses of pathos and an offbeat indie pulse. Cage is Chicago TV weatherman Dave Spritz, a guy whose swanky six figure salary and cakewalk career hide a disturbed, dysfunctional family life and a deep, cultivated self loathing that Cage pours out from every anguished glance and hangdog piece of inner monologue. His ex wife (Hope Davis) can’t stand him, his kids (Nicholas Hoult in an early career turn and Gemmenne De Le Pena, a great find) have a laundry list of their own issues and their interaction with him is strained for starters, while his Pulitzer Prize winning author dad (Michael Caine trying an American accent on for size and kind of struggling with it) frequently points out his shortcomings with measured acidity (“You don’t even have a degree in meteorology”). In short, his life has become one big absurdist joke punctuated by awkward altercations, passive aggressive jabs, misdirected anger, frequent instances of fast food being thrown at him by angry passersby and an overall blanket of deadly hilarious, glumly enlightening moodiness that you can’t decide whether to laugh or cry about. So who would want to watch a major movie filled with such rampant, cheekily deliberate unpleasantness? I would, and I for one totally loved this film for what it is. You could say it’s an acquired taste or you have to ‘get it’ or whatever smug, flavour of the month platitude that well travelled cinephiles like myself are peddling this week, but the plain truth of it is that not every Hollywood film can be a traditional ‘Hollywood’ film and there has to be room for off killer, weirdly staged stuff like this or the recipe is just too boring. Roger Ebert understood that, he gave this a glowing review and made particular mention of how slightly inaccessible stuff like this needs to be given a chance more often. In any case it’s an excellent film thanks to Cage’s reliably hilarious work, he almost seems to have been tailored for this role and you can tell he’s having a blast with every tortured mannerism and inappropriate outburst. I love and appreciate every single film that director Verbinski has made in his eclectic, unpredictable dervish of a career, the guy has done everything from Pirates Of The Caribbean to slapstick period piece to Hammer horror throwback to south of the border romance end even an animated film for adults which you don’t see too often. He always approaches us with something different to offer, and with The Weather Man he’s come up a winner again, I love this sad, self aware, pathetic yet touching portrait of a man adrift in his own inadequacy, his frequent attempts to swim serving as our entertainment, however much we pity or feel for the guy and his oddball family. Great film.

-Nate Hill

Hearts In Atlantis: A Review by Nate Hill

by natewatchescoolmovies, posted in Film Review

  
The one great benefit that any film based on a Stephen King story has is just that: it’s based on a Stephen King story. The guy is just such a prodigy of fiction that even if the film version of one of his books doesn’t deliver, one can still see the brilliant blueprint lurking beneath the frames. When the filmmakers are successful, however, we get a visually stimulating project founded on the tale he has weaved to support all the other elements. Hearts In Atlantis is based on an anthology volume of his, and in fact the story the film follows isn’t even called that, it’s actually ‘Low Men In Yellow Coats’. I can see why the director went with Hearts In Atlantis though, as it’s much more akin to the ethereal, sentimental tone he was going for, and less of an ominous hook. The story itself follows a mysterious man named Ted Brautigan (Anthony Hopkins), a recent tenant in the home of young Bobby Garfield (Anton Yelchin) and his wayward mother (a miscast Hope Davis). The setting is Midwestern America, in the dead heat of a 1950’s summer. Bobby spends his days cavorting in the local woodlands with his fastest of friends, Carole (Mika Boorem) and Sully (Will Rothhaar). He takes a shine to Ted though, who pays him a dollar a week to read to him, and warns him of shadowy ‘low men’, threatening figures who doggedly pursue him for nasty reasons. Ted becomes a father figure for young Bobby, whose mother has questionable ideas about not only raising a son, but taking care of her own affairs. Now the film may seem a bit thinly plotted to some, and there’s a reason for that. This story is actually a tiny fragment in a much larger tale, King’s magnum opus The Dark Tower. Ted and Bobby have important parts to play in that saga, in which the events of this film are but a sentence long. Some viewers may feel slighted by a lack of context, but the filmmakers here still find a way to make this its own story, crafting a touching coming of age story melded with whispers of otherworldly intrigue. The fusion of beguiling nostalgia and the vague menace that advances on Bobby and Ted makes for a unique tone, something just south of a thriller which can’t quite be pinned down by genre labels. Hopkins can be both terrifying and tender depending on the role. Here he is kindness incarnate as a man whose worldly intuition goes beyond telekinesis into the kind of qualities reserved for the best and brightest. Yelchin and Boorem, who would star alongside each other again a few years later in the lacklustre Along Came A Spider, are the superb heart of the film. Yelchin has shown a constant progression of strongly realized, believable work and the quality of his craft can be traced back to this stunning genesis role. Boorem is highly underused these days, and one need only watch her light up the screen with emotional sincerity in this to see why she should be working far more. There’s neat supporting work from Tom Bower, Celia Weston, Alan Tudyuk and David Morse as an older version of Bobby who yearns for days gone by. I found myself deeply enjoying this one whilst constantly drawing back to the knowledge and context I have for it via The Dark Tower, but the film on it’s own is enough to provide a rewarding experience for anyone who isn’t familiar with the multiverse. Amid King’s favourite topics and settings are Midwest adolescence, idiosyncratic nooks of Americana and the ever present supernatural aspect, dynamics which Hearts In Atlantis gives us aplenty, along with an open invitation to explore the universe farther, should one want to venture along the path to the Tower. I’d recommend it.