Henry Saw: I Love You Phillip Morris

Ugh...what the hell was the point of this?


What a weird and confused movie. I Love Phillip Morris was supposed to come out early last year, it has already been released and come out on DVD throughout Europe, but was delayed for myriad reasons here in the States. Finally getting a release in December, I was able to watch a European copy of the film and can now understand why it has taken so long for the movie to hit screens. It stinks and no one here in the States will want to see it.

IMDB's summary: Steven Russell is happily married to Debbie, and a member of the local police force, when a car accident provokes a dramatic reassessment of his life. Steven realizes he's always been gay and decides to live life to the fullest - even if it means breaking the law. Steven's new, extravagant lifestyle involves cons and fraud and, eventually, a stay in the State Penitentiary where he meets sensitive, soft-spoken Phillip Morris. His devotion to freeing Phillip from jail and building the perfect life together prompts Steven to attempt, and often succeed, at one impossible con after another.



I Love You Phillip Morris, which is based on a true story, was directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa who previously wrote Bad Santa together. Bad Santa was a surprisingly winning movie, unpleasant at times but always darkly funny, and was very aware of what kind of movie it wanted to be. I Love You Phillip Morris is all over the place. It is technically a comedy, Jim Carrey plays it all very broad and it's cut together as if we are supposed to be laughing, but it's just not funny. At all.

Jim Carrey is incredibly irritating, Ewan McGregor continues his run of lame performances in Hollywood movies, and the script is just horrible. Repetitive, aimless, condescending, smarmy...the movie just goes nowhere. While I respect how frank the film is about gay sex, there's a lot of man-on-man action in this one, I am not sure it helps the movie. It's like the filmmakers were so happy they got to shoot Ewan McGregor performing oral sex on Jim Carrey that they forgot that there's no comedy to be found in that.



This movie reminded me of another movie I disliked: The Informant!. Both are true stories, both are retold in a "quirky" manner, and both have an unreliable narrator at their center. Did I smirk a few times? Yes, there are a few clever lines and transitions. Overall though, I found I Love Phillip Morris a wholly unlikable film, and have no question it will bomb in December. Americans will not only be uncomfortable with the homosexual scenes, probably the main reason why it has taken so long to be released in the United States, but will just not like the movie. I certainly didn't.

Grade: D+

Best Scene: "My word is my mother ****ing bond!"

Ben Saw: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

One of the nerd-crush movies of the summer. So how was it?



I went in to ‘Scott Pilgrim’ with some trepidation. Having read the series of graphic novels, and really enjoying them, I had deeply mixed feelings when the movie was first announced. Edgar Wright was undeniably an inspired choice to helm the project, but whom would they cast for the title character? On my reading, it had to be someone fairly young, semi-scrawny, capable of a hyperactive slacker charm, a goofy sense of humor and enough charisma and good looks that you understood why a woman would ever be drawn to this man-child dunce of a character. Someone like..........

Michael Cera?

Really?

That rang false for me from moment one. It screamed ‘oh crap, we have a no-name genre-blending property that will be hard to summarize in a trailer! What young comic actor can make this more commercially viable??’ And so they said Cera. Because Hollywood is usually stupid and, despite it all, Cera’s star has shone modestly bright for the past few years.

Admittedly, I don’t like Cera in the first place. No, I didn’t like ‘Arrested Development’. I watched a number of episodes and I found it poisonous; smug, self-satisfied, sneering non-jokes that weren’t half as clever as the folks involved thought. That was the writing’s fault more than Cera’s, but his performance as a stuttering jellyfish did nothing for me. And that’s always the character he plays. Cera was intolerable in his bad movies (‘Nick & Nora’, anyone?) and a neutron rod in the good movies (‘Juno’, ‘Superbad’). So, like I said, I don’t like Cera in the first place, but I just couldn’t see how someone read 'Scott Pilgrim' and thought of him or the simpering character that he plays in everything he ever does.

I say all this because, while I tried to go in with an open mind and a willingness to not judge the movie in comparison to the books, I’d be lying if I said it probably didn’t influence me. As you can perhaps guess from all of the above, I wanted to like ‘Scott Pilgrim’ a lot but it ultimately didn’t work that well for me.



I’m assuming you know the plot already (if not, feel free to check IMDB’s summary: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446029/synopsis), so let’s talk about the movie itself. (Finally, right?) There’s a lot to like about the movie. The creative team clearly LOVED its source material and tries to be a faithful channelling of the source material’s tone and themes in to a new medium. They put a busy, scattershot aesthetic to good use by packing the movie full of gags, asides and clever references.

‘16-bit’, ‘nerdy’ and ‘arty’ clearly served as the watchwords in cinematography and post-production; as a result, the movie has a striking visual style that tries to blend the fantasy of video games in to real life. Scott ‘levels up’ on screen. ‘POW!’ flashes on screen when someone gets punched. Not everything works (‘Bollywood dance fight’ sounds more amusing than it turned out to be) but it is fun and not overly intrusive. The visual guys should probably get an Oscar nod because it’s just so different and fully realized than anything else out there today. And the cameo by Clifton Collins Jr. and Timothy Jane was genius.

That scattershot aesthetic I mentioned is part of what makes the movie so hard to market. It’s a love story! It’s a comedy! An action movie! A rock band flick! There are trippy asides! Bi-sexual ninjas! Psychic vegan rock stars! Did I mention Jason Schwartzman is running around here somewhere? And the new Superman? But the movie finds that tone and often makes it work well, especially in the first half.



The supporting cast deserves props for this. Most of them understand the silliness of the movie they’re in and are willing to be a part of the joke as opposed to recoiling from the ridiculousness of it all. ‘Great’ is too strong a word, but ‘very good’ is spot-on for the cast’s high points: Chris Evans, Brandon Routh and (to a lesser extent) Jason Schwartzman all stand out as the most enjoyable of Ramona’s evil exes (keep an eye out for hilarious fake promotional materials for Evans’ movie star character) and Kieran Culkin kills as Scott’s roommate.

But as much as there were many things to like, the movie fell flat for me. There were two problems: Cera and the script, and if either of them had been better, ‘Scott Pilgrim’ could have really soared. Let’s start with the script. It tries to distill the 1000+ pages of the graphic novels in to movie form and that caused a lot of problems. Not as an adaptation (I’m trying not to judge on that basis), but as a story in its own right. That supporting cast that I had such nice things to say about...? Diluted by the fact that the film tries to cram about 20 fairly relevant characters in to a two-hour narrative. So as much as I liked Culkin’s witty, acerbic and sometimes off-kilter performance I didn’t get to see much of it because the movie gave itself very little time to let any one aspect of the film develop. The script tries to bring so many things in that lots of characters and interactions feel perfunctory, notably Scott’s fights with the fifth and sixth evil exes, as well as virtually every female character. It’s worth an aside: In retrospect I was struck by just how the female roles, often with talented actresses filling them, are given no room to breath due to the script’s race through the material. Anna Kendrick, Brie Larson and Ellen Wong are particularly poorly treated.

This compression not only prevents most of the cast from airing out their characters, it also forced the writers to pick different themes than the book to focus on, and introduce ‘neat’ resolutions in to the narrative. The former is only a problem because of the latter; there’s nothing wrong with a new focus, two hours is not a lot of time, but if you want to make this about Scott’s emotional maturity then let us see a somewhat believable arc. I know it’s a silly movie, but it’s ultimately grounded in pathos and not action, so telling us the whole thing takes place over a week or so rings incredibly false. I don’t think of ‘declaring love for someone after a week’ and ‘emotional maturity’ as particularly compatible. And some of the ‘neat’ decisions carry the hallmarks of bad writing: What makes Ramona so desirable? Why does the band make certain sacrifices for Scott? Why is Knives necessary in the climactic fight? Stuff like this makes the script feel like an early flying machine: it’s full of admirable, inventive and clever things, but bumps along on the ground without ever taking flight for more than brief spurts.



To really soar, the movie needs to give the audience something to latch on to, so a choppy script would be less of a problem if we had a charming, likeable lead who helped us be more inclined to overlook the problems. Instead we get Cera who is, by far, the weakest aspect of the cast. He’s not awful, that would be unfairly harsh since he is surprisingly fine in the fight scenes and does sell some of his better material fairly well, but he has much less energy than the rest of the cast and gives no sense of depth or interest to his character. The story is about Scott winning over Ramona, so it rests on Scott Pilgrim being eminently likable despite his obvious flaws. Michael Cera is not likable, making ‘Scott Pilgrim’ fall back on it’s admirable creative energy and crackling supporting cast. It’s not enough, making this a movie to rent unless you are curious about the imagery or really, really like Michael Cera...........although I can’t imagine why.

Grade: B-

Best scene: The movie is filled with more great split-second moments than great scenes, but if I had to pick one it would probably have to be the battle against Brandon Routh.

Henry Saw: Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child

An interesting but paint-by-numbers documentary...





Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child is a documentary made by one of Basquait's friends Tamra Davis. Opening with a reading of the Langston Hughes poem Genius Child, The Radiant Child is a fairly straight-forward documentary. It tracks Basquiat's rise from a graffiti artist named SAMO, to being the star of the New York art scene, to his friendship with Andy Warhol, to his premature death due to heroin abuse. Using mostly narration, archival footage of New York in the early 80's, interviews, and shots of Basquiat's artwork, Davis presents a linear presentation of Basquiat's life and career.

As someone who was not familiar with Basquiat's life, or artwork, this film had a lot to offer. I had seen Julian Schnabel's film Basquiat, but not in a long time, and had forgotten much of Basquiat's story. Unlike Shnabel's film, which was not granted the rights to Basquiat's art, Davis is able to accurately track Basquiat's progression as a provocative graffiti artist to a painter who's works now sell for over 12 million dollars.

The film's best attributes are its footage of New York during Basqiuat's time, Davis really manages to recreate the era, and the discussion of Basquiat's art by his peers and critics. There is nothing that, fundamentally interesting in Basquiat's story, being the first truly famous Black American artist and befriending Andy Warhol are his most famous "attributes", so Davis wisely lets the art and history speak for itself.



Where Davis fails is in portraying what was so innovative about Basquiat's work. We hear that he was a genius, and ground-breaking, and brilliant...but Davis just trusts us to agree with these ideas via the art we see. While that's fair, the man was clearly talented, I think we could have used more information about why his art was significant. She also fails to make the film interesting beyond Basquiat's life, it's such a "standard" documentary, and shows little creativity for a documentary about an artist.

If you're interested in Basquiat then you should definitely see The Radiant Child. If not, it's still worth watching, but more for the art and archival footage than anything else. The production values are on the level of a History Channel documentary and the insight is not much deeper. I was very interested in learning about Basquiat, so I enjoyed the film, but I cannot fully recommend it on it's own merits. The best historical documentaries, such as The Times of Harvey Milk, When We Were Kings, One Day in September, etc., manage to convey to the audience a reason these films needed to be made; I never got that with The Radiant Child. Perhaps it was made in a response to Schnabel's film, which as one critic said should have been called "My Basquiat", but that's just an inference.



It's good that the The Radiant Child exists. It's a new way to share Basquiat's art, most of which I found fascinating, and I hope it does so. Unfortunately, as a film, I cannot give it a high recommendation. It's just too flat, too standard, and too shallow. I'm glad it's out there...but you don't have to see it.

Grade: B-

Best Scene: The early footage of New York in the late 1970's...

Henry Saw: The Other Guys

A quick look at Adam McKay and Will Ferrel's new comedy The Other Guys which is quite funny...



NYPD Detectives Christopher Danson and P.K. Highsmith (Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson) are the baddest and most beloved cops in New York City. They don't get tattoos - other men get tattoos of them. Two desks over and one back, sit Detectives Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) and Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg). You've seen them in the background of photos of Danson and Highsmith, out of focus and eyes closed. They're not heroes - they're "the Other Guys." But every cop has his or her day and soon Gamble and Hoitz stumble into a seemingly innocuous case no other detective wants to touch that could turn into New York City's biggest crime. It's the opportunity of their lives, but do these guys have the right stuff?



The Other Guys is McKay and Ferrel's fourth film together, they previously teamed up for Anchorman, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, and Step Brothers, and I would argue it is their most successful movie. That's not to say it's their funniest, Anchorman is more quotable and has more memorable scenes, but The Other Guys holds together the best. Anchored by the most restrained performance Ferrel has ever given in one of his silly comedies, and Mark Wahlberg doing a wonderful send-up of his own overly intense persona, The Other Guys is the cop movie parody that Cop Out and Starsky and Hutch wanted to be.

The Other Guys has some great little moments, whether it is Sam Jackson and Dwayne Johnson's final scene, a highly enjoyable Derek Jeter cameo, Wahlberg's interaction with Will Ferrel's wife Eva Mendes, or Michael Keaton continuous references to a certain R&B group...there's a lot to like here.



The flaw with the film, as with many comedies, is the last third of the film. The comedy starts to drain out of the movie as they feel the need to wrap-up the unsatisfying and uninteresting Bernie Madoff based plot. I understand that a comedic movie should not be a series of skits with out a plot-line, that's my main problem with Anchorman, but a comedy should never stop being funny just because it needs to wrap up a dull storyline (I'm looking at you Wedding Crashers).



All in all I would recommend The Other Guys. We don't review many comedies here on Pitaoe, they are not much fun to write about, and humor and comedic taste is so subjective. I wanted to get the word out about this one. Critics mostly ignored it, and its only done modestly well at the box office given the pedigree, but it is well worth a watch. You don't need to see it in theaters, but give it a shot (this one might work well as an airplane movie), and I hope you find it as funny as I did.

Grade: B+

Best Scene (or line): What someone calls Derek Jeter after finding out what Mark Wahlberg did to him...

Henry Saw: Centurion

An entertaining, if forgettable, historical action film from director Neil Marshall...

Centurion, currently available via cable On Demand, and also coming to theaters near you, is a perfectly enjoyable romp. Directed by the man who made the nearly perfect horror film The Descent, Centurion more closely resembles his other films Dog Soldiers and Doomsday, but is a definite improvement on those pictures. Centurion is easily Marshall's second best film, is very capably made, and entertained me both times I watched it on my TV.

Pathé Productions' plot description: AD 117. The Roman Empire stretches from Egypt to Spain, and East as far as the Black Sea. But in northern Britain, the relentless onslaught of conquest has ground to a halt in face of the guerrilla tactics of an elusive enemy: the savage and terrifying Picts. Quintus Dias (Fassbender), sole survivor of a Pictish raid on a Roman frontier fort, marches north with General Virilus' (West) legendary Ninth Legion, under orders to wipe the Picts from the face of the earth and destroy their leader Gorlacon. But when the legion is ambushed on unfamiliar ground, and Virilus taken captive, Quintus faces a desperate struggle to keep his small platoon alive behind enemy lines. Enduring the harsh terrain and evading their remorseless Pict pursuers led by revenge-hungry Pict Warrior Etain (Kurylenko), the band of soldiers race to rescue their General and to reach the safety of the Roman frontier.



Centurion is hardly a work of art. It's simplistic, fairly simple minded, and never pretends to be anything but an action film. Though led by a truly gifted actor in Michael Fassbender, the movie is happy to revel in its ultra-violence and simplistic plotting, in order to present the most exciting product Marshall can provide. As an action movie it works quite well. The fight scenes are all exciting, and aside from a muddled concluding sequence, all quite easy to follow. Centurion balances a relatively light-hearted tone, Marshall knows what kind of movie he is making, with an appropriate level of semi-serious gravitas. In this vein, Dominic West hits the perfect notes as an unconventional general in the Roman army.



I really enjoyed Centurion. It's far from flawless, and hardly adds anything new to the genre, but it is a fun way to pass the time. Relatively well directed, solidly acted, and decently choreographed...Centurion is worth a watch.

Grade: B

Best Scene: The escape scene

Henry Saw: The Disappearance of Alice Creed

A little English film that strangely made it across the pond...




The Disappearance of Alice Creed is a very...limited movie. With a cast of just three, and about four different locations, it feels like a filmed play even though it is an original screenplay. It stars Gemma Arterton (Quantum of Solace and Clash of the Titans) as a young woman kidnapped by a pair of former convicts. The older man, played by Happy-Go-Lucky's Eddie Marsan, is the leader and dominates over his younger partner. Martin Compston plays the accomplice, a subservient and quiet man, who is hiding a key secret from his partner...

The Dissapearance of Alice Creed takes its time with it's plot, it's admirable with its pacing in the beginning, but never accelerates like a thriller has to. All three actors are good, very good in fact, but they're not given arcs or dialogue worthy of the performances.



To reveal too much about the plot, or character interactions, would be to spoil two big "turns" the movie takes. So I will keep this short and just say that The Disappearance of Alice Creed disappoints. It's a cool premise, and writer/director J Blakeson creates a fairly original work, but it's just never clever enough to carry the initial inspiration. Exploitative, semi-cheap, and after a certain point predictable, the film never rises above being a B-Movie but never seems to be having any fun.

There is no need to see this movie. It's sort of an art film but is devoid of any artistic value. It's sort of a thriller but offers no thrills. It's sort of a character piece but the character's never connect with the audience. Despite the best of intentions, and solid work from the actors, Alice Creed never quite comes together.

Grade: C

Best Scene: The opening scene showing Marsan and Compston preparing for the kidnapping...

Henry Saw: Salt

Perfectly good.


Just a quick word on Salt, the newest Angelina Jolie movie, which has been called a "female Bourne Identity".

First, a plot description via Sony Pictures: "As a CIA officer, Evelyn Salt swore an oath to duty, honor and country. Her loyalty will be tested when a defector accuses her of being a Russian spy. Salt goes on the run, using all her skills and years of experience as a covert operative to elude capture. Salt's efforts to prove her innocence only serve to cast doubt on her motives, as the hunt to uncover the truth behind her identity continues and the question remains: "Who is Salt?"

Salt was directed by Phillip Noyce, best known for films like Dead Calm, Patriot Games, and Rabbit Proof Fence, but whose best film is The Quiet American. Working with Jolie for the second time, he helmed The Bone Collector, Noyce has crafted an efficient and fun action film.



One of the most refreshing things about the film is how cleanly and classically it is directed. Noyce uses no shakey cam and no "MTV editing". Everything about the action and plotting is straightforward and clear.

Jolie is a solid lead, she looks great and sells the fight scenes surprisingly well, and you can't really argue with having Liev Schreiber or Chiwetel Ejiofor in the main two supporting roles. None of them are given much to do dramatically but, admirably, the film and the actors don't care. Some of the individual scenes don't work, and its not the most visually interesting movie ever made, but it all works. It's a solid action film, the kind they "don't make anymore", and well worth 100 minutes of your time.

Grade: B

Best Scene: Jolie's infiltration of the Vice-President's funeral...