The Kid Stays In the Picture

Grade: C

My, oh my, how Hollywood Insiders seem to LOVE this movie. My, oh my, how Hollywood Insiders seem to LOVE themselves. Robert Evans’ story is a fascinating one – mediocre actor to studio head to independent producer to down and out drug addict who bounces back in the final reel – it is the stuff of old time Hollywood, full of drama, melodrama, pathos, and laughs. Told entirely from Evans’ perspective, in constant voice-over, one can’t help but enjoy his self-aggrandizing, self-indulgent, bigger than life perspective, even if we can’t help but know this perspective is so one-sided it’s surely mostly fiction. Some of his best lines are right out of a bad James Cagney movie, and so sincerely delivered you just have to laugh and wonder what planet this guy lives on. I have little doubt his book is a juicy, gossipy, pulp page turner.

Unfortunately, movies are not about turning pages, they are about moving images, and this film simply doesn’t have enough footage to make a feature length movie. Never-ending cut-out photographs, shots of Evan’s estate, old Hollywood film stock, and long roads against a desert landscape simply do not a movie make. By the tenth time we hear Evans’ voice-over with a shot of his Hollywood fireplace, or bedroom, or swimming pool, or naked female statue, we truly learn the meaning of the word egotistical. It simply isn’t interesting, in fact, it gets to be downright tedious. The film is indeed fun when we get to see old Hollywood movie openings and award shows, and the clips from all the movies he’s made are indeed impressive, but the rest of the picture is slow slow going.

My recommendation? Read the book, or listen to the book on tape, and wait for the E! True Hollywood Story – it’s free.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0303353/

Road to Perdition

Grade: B+

Sam Mendes demonstrates his over-directing chops in this nicely effective yet way too overly-produced gangster melodrama.

Tom Hanks delivers yet another quietly solid performance here, playing against type as a gangster struggling to protect the son he barely knows from the forces of evil. He can be forgiven the fact that there are moments in his performance reminiscent of those in “Saving Private Ryan,” especially in the film’s final reel – few actors can make stoic a noble and moving characteristic quite like Hanks can. Yet it is Paul Newman who provides the film its richest performance – he just keeps getting better and better, and is brilliant here as a mob leader and Hanks’ surrogate father figure. It is a performance both intensely passionate and strikingly subtle, and it is impossible not to watch him when he is on screen. Like most great performances, it’s played all in his eyes, and his willingness to transition from leading man to character actor (from Best Actor Oscar to a well-deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar as it were) is very much to our good fortune. Jude Law is delegated to total caricature here, playing a hired gun who photographs his victims, replete with yellowing teeth, haunched walk, and the old coin over the fingers trick. This is not his best work.

It is clear that Sam Mendes is extraordinarily gifted and takes enormous care as a filmmaker. This film looks gorgeous, and there is some majestic camera work from cinematographer Conrad Hall (a scene between Hanks and Newman toward the end of the film, replete with pouring rain, umbrellas, figures in silhouette, and flashing lights as gunfire is the stuff of celluloid dreams.) Unfortunately, every single frame of film feels so meticulously planned, so exact, so painted, that some very needed warmth and spontaneity is drained from the final product – it is impossible not to place directorial flourish above telling the story here, and Mendes should take care not to become an egomaniacal filmmaker (can you say “Oliver Stone”?). It’s all in the screenplay, Sam.

The story here is indeed a solid one, although there is little here we haven’t seen many times before. Make no mistake this is indeed a gangster melodrama, which by its very nature calls for heightened scenes of love and revelation between father and son, gunshots fired all over the place over and over again, dogs running through fields, waves coming to shore, pools of blood and brain matter, way to much rain, and a need for several hankies for the tearduct challenged. But the growing relationship between Hanks and his son (also well acted by Tyler Hoechlin), made parallel to the decaying father/son relationship between Hanks and Newman, are both lovingly told and beautifully portrayed by a fine cast of smart actors.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0257044/

Reign of Fire

Grade: C

Also known as “Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey need a new swimming pool.” Why else in god’s name would they have made this dreadful Road Warrior style rip-off?

Young British-boy Bale sees his mother murdered by fire-smiting dragon. Years later, after peoplekind have been pretty much exterminated by a glut of the nasty creatures, American macho Matthew shows up with a convoluted theory that, for all the thousands of fire-breathers on the planet, only one of them is male. Of course, you can tell which one it is cause it’s bigger than all the others and, of course, it happens to be the one that killed Christian’s mama. You can guess the rest.

Good special effects overall, but the story is so stupid, unconvincing and uninteresting, that it’s all pretty darn laughable even for this sort of thing.

More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0253556/