12 Word Reviews: Hope Springs, Timothy Green, Premium Rush

 When you get too far behind on film reviewing, you have to condense. It's brief capsule time. Let's catch up on movies we left behind as summer waned. Did you see any of them?

HOPE SPRINGS
A senior citizen couple seeks marital counselling.
12 WR: Fine performances take intimacy seriously. Near gem but pacing problems, atrocious music.  B
Oscar: Streep always has a shot in Best Actress and she's the film's best hope (sorry) beyond a screenplay longshot but I'm doubtful that this quiet surprisingly nuanced take on marriage and intimacy will survive the louder grabbier Oscar films. Plus when Oscar ignores Meryl, which is admittedly not often, it's almost always when she's playing contemporary and relatively ordinary women (here's proof.)

KEEP THE LIGHTS ON
The story of a troubled 10 year gay relationship beset by sex and drug addictions
12 WR: Intermittently searing. Bruisingly repetitive. Cathartic for filmmaker (undoubtedly) but unshaped; needs dramaturg. C+
Oscar?: Not that kind of movie. 

THE ODD LIFE OF TIMOTHY GREEN
A childless couple (Jennifer Garner & Joel Edgerton) inadvertently create the perfect child over a teary conversation. A naked boy with leaves on his legs emerges from their garden. Life lessons ensue.
12 WR: Adoption plea framing device = unmitigated disaster. Played with realism it's entirely oogie. D-
Oscar?: As likely as children crawling out of the earth that aren't zombies. 

COSMOPOLIS
A money man is chauffered around Manhattan in a limo (read: coffin) seeking a haircut as his fortunes vanish and the world falls into chaos.
12 WR: Forgets to adapt heady prose but actress cameos pop. Pattinson finally vampiric! B
Oscar?: The Academy is deathly allergic to Cronenberg but damn that Howard Shore score is good. 

FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL...
Roommates (Ari Graynor and Lauren Miller) run a phone sex business which complicates their friendship
12 WR: Weirdly chaste, claustrophobic, over/under art-directed (?!?) but actors obviously enjoying themselves! C+
Oscar?: lolz 

PREMIUM RUSH
A bike messenger (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) delivering a package worth a lot of money is hunted by a dirty cop (Michael Shannon) down the crowded streets of Manhattan.
12 WR: Only works as found object: Lost 80s Film. Disposable (even to itself!) D
Oscar?: If they had a stuntman category...

Complete the Tuneful Sentence

 

"My favorite score of the year (thus far) is _____________ because ______________ .  Oscar's music branch______________."

I'll start. My favorite score of the year thus far is for Cosmopolis because it's absolutely addictive, sinister, and sinuous. Oscar's music branch should listen to it but they only seem to like Howard Shore when he's scoring Lord of the Rings.

Your turn! Go...

Podcast: Summer (Part 2) and Forward Into Fall

Part 1 -best films, moldy releases, nervous mormons, and summer crushes

For the second half of this Summer Jamboree Joe Reid, Nick Davis, and Nathaniel R (c'est moi) wrap up our summers at the movies and dream of the fall ~ Forward not back! 

Topics include but are not limited to:

• Alex Pettyfer in Magic Mike
• Princess Merida, Hawkeye or Katniss? Choose your favorite archer of 2012
• Jeremy Renner in The Avengers
• Movies We Hated
• Sleeping through Snow White and the Huntsman despite Charlize Theron!
• Adapting Cosmopolis
• Did The Dark Knight Rises get away from Chris Nolan?
• Movie Characters We'd Like To Introduce
• Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present
• Nick's newfound love of comedy: Ted, Wanderlust, 21 Jump Street
• Retro Screenings This Summer: Sorcerer, Dog Day Afternoon, and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte
• Fall Film Madness: Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Zero Dark Thirty, Zero Dark Thirty, Skyfall, The Hobbit, Flight, Amour and More...

You can download the podcast on iTunes or listen right here. Join the conversation in the comments. What's the best old movie you screened this summer? Which fall film are you most looking forward to and which two movie characters would you like to introduce?

I Know What You Saw... Part 2

Cosmopolis, or: The Absence of Feeling

Hello Readers!

Beau here, detailing my experiences with David Cronenberg's polarizing new feature, Cosmopolis. 

Let's jump right in.

Click to read more ...

Link Out Your Dead

My New Plaid Pants a funny exchange between David Cronenberg and Robert Pattinson regarding Cosmopolis' prostrate exam scene
Pajiba 7 performances that changed our minds about actors this year
Movie|Line hey girl, it's the Ryan Gosling coloring book 
Serious Film chooses his Oscar ballot for Best Actor if the awards were only once an... ever. 

Hollywood Robert Pattinson will play TE Lawrence (of Arabia) in a new movie about Gertrud Bell which will star Naomi Watts. She's really, suddenly, fighting for that Oscar again what with all these biopic roles.
Movies Now A Mary Pickford revival is on the way
Arts Beat Raiders of the Lost Ark gets a week on IMAX screens in September. Yay! That'll be fun.

Sad News About Dead Projects
/Film says that Eastern Promises 2 is probably dead. Ugh. I so needed more Viggo as Nicolai in my life. I really did. 
Empire Henry Selick, who did such an excellent job shepherding Coraline to the screen had been working on another stop motion film for Disney. They've pulled the plug. God, hadn't they seen Coraline or The Nightmare Before X-Mas? This man is an amazing talent.

Happy News About Dead Projects
Finally Fox has turned the rights to Daredevil back over to Marvel (who'd like all their characters back, thank you) after not getting it together for a reboot (Joe Carnahan had been mapping one out). Daredevil was obviously Fox's sacrificial lamb because they didn't want to give anything Fantastic Four related back and (contractual) time was running out on both properties. It's really too bad that Marvel can't get all their characters back because they're better at the superhero movie making than the other studios are. Plus, imagine the crossover possibilities. This might be shortsighted on Fox's behalf though because Daredevil is not a bad franchise concept at all. It was just that Fox did a T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E job translating it to screens, with horrible casting, horrible movie making, horrible visualization of Daredevil's radar (he's a blind superhero, remember) and horrible everything. Worse yet they sullied the property by pissing away its best story arc on a subpar movie. The Daredevil vs. Bullseye vs. Elektra arc was nothing short of classic scary exciting unnerving in Frank Miller's hands in the comic books. On screen not so much... or rather not at all. If I were in charge (lol. I'm *so* not!) I'd give up trying to reboot Daredevil as a movie but relaunch him with a TV series, part legal procedural, part organized crime drama, part superheroics.  You'd only get to Bullseye and Elektra once the series had found its voice and sure footing because you don't wanna be fucking that storyline up; it's gold.