Opening in Dallas, 02/09
by Brian
I suppose that after I see the two Weinstein movies (i.e., the top two, although Hannibal Rising is also Weinstein Co.) this week, I'll be able to consider 2006 closed, and start writing a year in review post. In mid-February! At least I'll still beat the Oscars.
Factory Girl (trailer): I don't get all the skepticism about the idea that Sienna Miller is good in this movie. I've seen Layer Cake, Alfie, and Casanova (ugh), and she seems perfect for this kind of role to me.
Breaking and Entering (trailer): I'd consider myself an Anthony Minghella fan, having really liked The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley, and even Cold Mountain to a lesser extent. I don't expect this one to be all that great, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't well-shot and well-acted enough to roll with it.
Hannibal Rising (trailer): Weinstein Overload Week (W.O.W., ironically) continues with a movie that can't possibly be any good. Can it?
The Last Sin Eater (trailer at official site): Yes, I want to see Norbit so little that I'd rather go see something from Fox Faith. Neat title, though.
Norbit (trailer): Hard to think of something that's come out recently that I've wanted to see less. This looks worse than any of the Wayans brothers stuff, cheap-ass horror movies, stupid crass kids comedies, the last three years of the Weinsteins' output, Pokemon movies, direct-to-video American Pie sequels, that movie that tried to make Dennis Rodman an action star, or even anything else that Eddie Murphy has been in over the last five years or so.
Factory Girl (trailer): I don't get all the skepticism about the idea that Sienna Miller is good in this movie. I've seen Layer Cake, Alfie, and Casanova (ugh), and she seems perfect for this kind of role to me.
Breaking and Entering (trailer): I'd consider myself an Anthony Minghella fan, having really liked The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley, and even Cold Mountain to a lesser extent. I don't expect this one to be all that great, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't well-shot and well-acted enough to roll with it.
Hannibal Rising (trailer): Weinstein Overload Week (W.O.W., ironically) continues with a movie that can't possibly be any good. Can it?
The Last Sin Eater (trailer at official site): Yes, I want to see Norbit so little that I'd rather go see something from Fox Faith. Neat title, though.
Norbit (trailer): Hard to think of something that's come out recently that I've wanted to see less. This looks worse than any of the Wayans brothers stuff, cheap-ass horror movies, stupid crass kids comedies, the last three years of the Weinsteins' output, Pokemon movies, direct-to-video American Pie sequels, that movie that tried to make Dennis Rodman an action star, or even anything else that Eddie Murphy has been in over the last five years or so.
Labels: Openings
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6 Comments:
Factory Girl is an above average movie. I agree with you about the unfair lashing Miller has been receiving. Likely it's a Jude Law effect by association. And she's good here, but she is not awards-worthy. More charming and complex in Casanova, actually.
The performance to check out the movie for is Guy Pearce. I despise Warhol's work as an artist, but studying it is fascinating in what it said about art and commercialism. Pearce manages to make him a pitiable monster, with a sense of humor. The Guy is very cool in basically whatever he's in, but especially here.
Hayden Christensen, on the other hand, did an affected Bob Dylan performance that was all wrong. His 'Bob Dylan speech' was cringeworthy. How does he manage to always seem like a stuck-up yet whining brat? Amazing. I bet he's a great dude once he's away from the camera.
that movie that tried to make Dennis Rodman an action star
There were two, actually. Double Team and Simon Sez.
Norbit made 33 million US over the weekend. I weep for my country.
Saw Breaking and Entering over the weekend, kind of a bore. First off, I'm not so sure that this is a good role for Law. I think his character was supposed to be basically good, if a bit of a weasel (or fox), but that's not really what Law does very well. He seemed like a total asshole from frame 1, and didn't seem any less of one at the end despite obvious plot contrivances to make him seem like a misguided saint.
Second, my God, is it ever ponderous. Been a while since I've seen a movie that was so in love with it's Deep Moral Choices and Class Awareness.
Saw Factory Girl last night, was underwhelmed. I thought Sienna Miller was fine as far as it goes, especially in the early scenes, but really it was an impossible role to play. The mental hospital scenes especially really hurt her; no actor ever looks good doing that first-person-talking-into-the-camera thing. And they was shot so close up that she never had a chance. Those scenes were so unnecessary anyway that I don't even know why they were there.
Agreed on Hayden, but what can you do. I thought that his character was misconceived in a way - Dylan good, Warhol bad. May have been true for all I know, but it seemed way too simplistic and it didn't allow Hayden to make much of an impression either way. He not only had to play an icon, but an icon that had been allegorized (if such a word exists) on top of that.
Pearce, playing the bad guy, naturally came across as being more interesting. Plus, he's a better actor, so he had that going for him. But again, the character just wasn't conceived in such a way that allowed for much impact. He was a Bad Influence, but other than that, what did the movie have to say about his place in the world? It seemed like an extended cameo, almost.
Have to agree with Brian on this one, very underwhelming. Sienna does her best to carry this film, but she's undone by the direction and a script that doesn't really let us know who she is, other than a Warhol plaything that he gets tired of and throws away. She's more a catalogue of symptoms than a character.
Agree that Pearce's Warhol is interesting, and that the whole Hayden/Dylan thing is laughable. It's like he wants to do a Dylan impersonation without doing one. The meeting between Warhol and Dylan, two of the architects of our perception of the 1960's, certainly can't have been that banal, could it? Maybe it was, but if so it they should have taken some artistic license and livened it up.
I actually kind of liked the Warhol/Dylan meeting, and thought it was one of the better moments in the film. I thought it mirrored the meeting between Warhol and Fuzzy. Both Fuzzy and Dylan regarded Warhol with absolute contempt, but where Warhol could blow off Fuzzy as someone who didn't get it, he knew Dylan saw right through him.
And notice how Warhol's treatment of Edie changed after that - he basically started calling her BS in the same way, culminating with the "I made you famous" scene when she confronted him in the restaurant.
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