OK, gangster movie fans, here’s a question for you. Which is the better Mafia movie, Once Upon a Time in America,
or The Godfather?
Once Upon a Time in America is showing on Film4 tonight at 11.15pm.
Archive for June, 2009
Set in 1950s Connecticut and New York, Sam Mendes’s classy period drama Revolutionary Road inhabits the world depicted so brilliantly by Mad Men, a world where middle-class men in grey-flannel suits troop off to meaningless jobs in the city while their unfulfilled wives go quietly (or not so quietly) bonkers at home in the suburbs.
Here, the man and woman in question are Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet’s young couple Frank and April Wheeler, who move into their new house on the titular suburban street in the first flush of marriage, full of hope for the future. They’re sure that they are a cut above their conventional neighbours, but in truth neither of them is as smart or as sensitive or as bohemian as they’d like to believe, and when their dreams turn sour they lash out bitterly at each other.
Based on the classic 1961 novel by Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road’s portrait of a disintegrating marriage is so unflinching, so unsentimental, and so bleak, that you really need to be in a buoyant emotional state to get through the movie. But the acting is excellent, with DiCaprio and Winslet, reunited on the big screen for the first time since Titanic launched the pair to stardom in 1997, both on top form. Winslet won a well-deserved Golden Globe for her portrayal of the furiously disappointed April and DiCaprio matches her for intensity. See the film, if you feel up to it, and do read Yates’ book: it really is as good as its classic status suggests.
Released on 29th June.
To activate the sound in the trailer: hold your cursor over the screen to reveal the control panel and click on the volume control in the bottom right-hand corner.
Oh look, they’ve wheeled out this tale of on court courting between Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany. That means it must be tennis season again.
Wimbledon is showing on ITV1 tonight at 10.35pm
I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer is a great title, writes our special sports correspondent Jim Fone, but unfortunately it’s also the funniest thing about this Australian cricketing horror comedy. That’s right, a cricketing horror comedy, a genre that’s as rare as an attacking shot from Geoffrey Boycott.
With his sharpened stumps, nail-embedded cricket balls and razor-fingered batting gloves, a Pommie bastard psycho serial killer is out for revenge on the now-grown-up kids who bullied him after a school cricket match.
With the one-time bullies holed up in a remote farmhouse, the cricketing killer is determined to wreak bloody revenge with bat and ball.
In the opening scene, the contrast between the horror and the idea of cricket as the epitome of fair play is quite funny, but as gruesome killing follows gruesome killing you’ll find the joke wears off as quickly as the shine on a new ball.
Released 29 June
Yesterday, two of my friends tied the knot and held a good old knees-up to mark the occasion. That’s the best sort of celebration in my opinion - simple, yet romantic.
Simplicity, however, is not a characteristic of movie marriages, is it? Getting hitched has to be as complex and dramatic as possible when it’s taking place on the silver screen. Matrimony in the movies is about the good, the bad, or the unexpected.
The Good
The ‘dream come true’ movie wedding has to be Love Actually’s nuptials between Juliet and Peter (Keira Knightley and Chiwetel Ejiofor). Could it be more perfect?
The Bad
If Richard Curtis ever wanted to make an extra few pounds he could easily moonlight as a wedding planner, considering how many movie marriages he’s dreamt up. The fourth wedding in Four Weddings and a Funeral where Charles (Hugh Grant) acknowledges his lack of love for fiancée Henrietta (Anna Chancellor) at the altar surely has to be THE biggest nuptials nightmare on film.
The Unexpected
Carrie Bradshaw gets carried away with planning her dream wedding in Sex and the City, but when she finally does get hitched, it’s nothing like the big day of her fantasies; it’s better.
What do you think? Which movie marriages make you smile, groan or gasp?
There are four wedding movies showing today to help you decide, each with their good moments…
their bad moments…
…and a few moments that may be a little unexpected.
Love blossoms in the wedding hospitality world in quirky feelgood romcom The Wedding Singer on Comedy Central at 10.50pm.
A gawky Abba-loving misfit yearns for the perfect wedding in Australian black comedy classic Muriel’s Wedding on Watch at 10pm.
Sky Movies Comedy presents chick flick fluff about a serial bridesmaid who dreams about becoming a bride in 27 Dresses at 6pm.
Watchable but unmemorable variation on the My Best Friend’s wedding theme Made of Honour is showing on Sky Movies Prmeiere at 8pm.
I don’t like action movies for three key reasons:
1. They glamourize violence.
2. They don’t stimulate thought or imagination.
3. They threaten the future of the screenwriter by relying on fast-paced spectacle at the expense of narrative.
Hmm, controversial I know. I’m sure loads of you strongly disagree, and if that’s you then you’re in luck. Fire the remote at the TV tonight and you’ll be guaranteed to see on screen explosions galore.
ITV1 gets explosive at 10.15pm with Lethal Weapon 3.
ITV2 delivers glossy action thrills with Tom Cruise on at 11.10pm in Mission: Impossible.
There’s bloodsucking action on Five USA at 9pm with Blade .
Sci-fi presents road racing thrills at 9pm with the The Fast and the Furious.
More sci-fi comedy than action, but not my cup of tea nevertheless, G.O.L.D’s Men in Black double bill will see plenty of people tuning in to see Michael Jackson’s brief appearance in Men in Black II at 9.50pm. The first Men in Black film starts at 8pm.
With the TV schedule rammed with all these high-speed car chases, explosions, guns and other lethal weapons, I’m feeling extremely relived that I’m going out.
Where am I going?
Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you.
More Michael Jackson movie moments can be found on Five today at 1.35pm. The channel have changed their schedule to pay tribute to the King of Pop with his 1988 musical fantasy Moonwalker.
We’ve had our fair share of death in the world of celebrity in the last 24 hours. First Farrah Fawcett, who died of cancer yesterday morning, swiftly followed (and overshadowed) by the sudden death of Michael Jackson. Jordan is however still alive and well, although she must be chewing her own hair extentions in fury over being shoved off the tabloid covers after her (painfully) long stint.
Another person who is totally NOT dead is Jeff Goldblum. Poor Jeff! Yesterday, internet rumours were spreading faster than norovirus on a cruise ship, saying that he had died while shooting a movie in New Zealand. Must be mighty annoying when people do that, presume you’re dead when you’re actually in LA, as was in Jeff’s case. So in case you’re out there praying for Jurassic Park IV, there is still hope.
The next actor who has received a lot of media attention in the past few days is the fabulous Johnny Depp. His new movie, Public Enemies, is out in the UK on Wednesday.
Deppster has said that he’d really fancy playing Captain Jack Sparrow in another Pirates of the Caribbean sequel. And he’s also expressed interest in taking on the role of The Riddler in a future Batman movie. But his Public Enemies co-star Christian Bale has said that he can’t see there being a Batman 3 because he can’t imagine it without Christopher Nolan, who is reluctant to return to direct. However, Bale is contractually obligated to do the third movie so I suspect it will be made, with or without Nolan.
Johnny is indeed a busy man. He has hardly finished shooting Alice in Wonderland and he has already announced that he will be doing yet another project with Tim Burton - a big-screen adaptation of supernatural 60’s soap Dark Shadows - which should start shooting in 2010. Speaking of Alice in Wonderland, new images have been released from the movie and you can trust Burton to make everyone and everything look totally creepy. I’d soil my pants if I ran into Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter.
Finally, guess who was having a meal with whom in LA a couple of days ago… Hugh Jackman and Miley ‘Hannah Montana’ Cyrus! Don’t worry, it wasn’t all candle lit and romantic. More like business talk with producer-types - and Miley’s mum. I predict a new musical project sometime in the nearish future. Boy, I love to watch that man sing and dance. Swoon!
And so the King of Pop has left the building for good. We here at Movie Talk would like to pay our filmic tribute to Michael Jackson with this recap of his quirky movie career, which allowed him to brush shoulders with some big (and some rather small) names in the industry:
In 1978, Sidney Lumet directed the musical The Wiz, an African American version of The Wizard of Oz, starring Diana Ross as Dorothy and Michael as Scarecrow:
In 1983, John Landis directed the mega-hit music video to the mega-hit single Thriller. Landis also directed the music video for Black or White in 1991.
In 1986, Francis Ford Coppola made a rather weird musical sci-fi short for Disney called Captain Eo - the captain being… you guessed it:
In 1987, Martin Scorsese directed the much-spoofed music video for hit single Bad:
In 2002 Michael made a brief appearance in Men in Black II as Agent M:
Watch Men In Black II on G.O.L.D tomorrow at 21.50.
This role was spoofed in 2004 in adventure comedy Miss Cast Away where Michael played Agent M.J. (from the comfort of his own library):
And like any decent celebrity, Michael also made an appearance in The Simpsons, in an episode called ‘Stark Raving Dad’. He voiced bricklayer Leon Kompowsky, who thinks he is Michael Jackson and therefore lives at the New Bedlam Rest Home for the Emotionally Interesting.
And that he certainly was!
Bidding to repeat the success of Little Miss Sunshine, quirky comedy drama Sunshine Cleaning sticks closely to the formula that made its predecessor a breakout indie hit and a surprise double-Oscar winner at the 2007 Academy Awards.
It shares the same producers (who probably insisted on the word ‘Sunshine’ in the title) and an Albuquerque, New Mexico setting, as well as audience acclaim at Sundance and a role for Alan Arkin as a faintly disreputable grandfather. Above all, the new movie boasts a similarly winsome storyline about a kookily dysfunctional family trying to dig its way out of a financial hole by unconventional means.
Little Miss Sunshine’s misfits had a kids’ beauty pageant in California as their goal. By contrast, Sunshine Cleaning’s underachieving sisters go into the crime scene clean-up business to make some cash.
After Amy Adams’s single mom Rose and her moody slacker of a sister, Emily Blunt’s Norah, hit upon this scheme they soon find themselves scrubbing blood off the floors and brain matter off the walls. It’s a messy business, and the source of some pitch-black gags and a few gross-out moments that will get the more squeamish squirming, but by cleaning up the tragic mess in other people’s lives, the duo manage to get some order into their own.
If you adored Little Miss Sunshine, Sunshine Cleaning will probably charm you too – but only if you have a taste for movies whose dark and bittersweet coating hides a slightly gooey, feel-good soft centre.
To activate the sound in the trailer: hold your cursor over the screen to reveal the control panel and click on the volume control in the bottom right-hand corner.
Like Sunshine Cleaning, also released today, Rudo y Cursi is a story of squabbling siblings - and another film seeking to repeat the success of an earlier surprise hit.
Back at the start of the decade, in the sexy, bittersweet Mexican movie Y tu mamá también, Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal leaped to international stardom playing a pair of horny teenage friends who entice Maribel Verdú’s beautiful older woman into accompanying them on a road trip to an idyllic faraway beach.
This time around, the duo star as a pair of hardscrabble Mexican brothers who get the chance to escape from rural poverty when they are talent-spotted by a louche football scout and sent to play for rival big-city clubs. Bernal’s Tato becomes a star goalscorer for one team and wins the nickname ‘Cursi’ (which more or less translates as ‘corny’), while Luna’s Beto follows in his footsteps as a goalkeeper for an opposing team and gains the soubriquet ‘Rudo’, meaning ‘rough’.
This isn’t a simple rag-to-riches tale, though, more a cautionary moral fable: the duo are swallowed voraciously by modern celebrity culture and then spat out again. And it’s typical of the film’s playful irony that soccer isn’t even the boys’ biggest passion: Tato dreams of being a famous singer, while Beto is addicted to gambling.
Rudo y Cursi doesn’t have Y tu mamá también’s steamy sensuality (though Berna’s Tato does enjoy several romps with a leggy TV hostess played by the drop-dead gorgeous Jessica Mas) and director Carlos Cuarón, brother of Y tu mamá’s director Alfonso, lacks his sibling’s swagger as a cinematic stylist, but the movie jogs along entertainingly enough, even if its shots don’t always find the back of the net. And if you hate football, don’t worry: there’s barely any on-pitch action.
On general release from 26th June.
To activate the sound in the trailer: hold your cursor over the screen to reveal the control panel and click on the volume control in the bottom right-hand corner.
