Tag Archives: Gwyneth Paltrow

TV Spot: The Avengers “Head Count”

Posted on by Arleigh

We’re just a month away from the release of Marvel Studios’ long-awaited superhero team action film The Avengers. It’s a film that’s been many years in the making with five other Marvel Studio films released prior to it introducing the many characters who will form the ensemble for this project.

It’s not going to be much of a surprise to see many tv spots and on-line releases of 30-second clips to help hype a film that needs no more hyping. While it seems all these incoming tv spots just rehash the same scenes from the several trailers already released once in awhile we see a quick new scene that should help excite the fan-base even more. This time around that new scene is one of the Hulk himself taking on a couple of Loki’s alien army. All that is missing is the Hulk saying “Hulk Smash!” as he simply smashes one of these alien bastards.

The Avengers (retitled Avengers Assemble to differentiate itself from the awful The Avengers film adaptation of the British spy tv series of the same name) will have it’s world premiere on April 11, 2012 in Hollywood with a general wide release on May 4, 2012 starting in the US.

Quick Review: Contagion (dir. by Steven Soderbergh)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

Note that this isn’t the only review for Contagion.

Arleigh has an in-depth review of the film, which is also available to see, whereas this is more of a summary. As it’s for the same film, I’ve used the same tags that were in Arleigh’s post.

Before I start, I have to say that I haven’t had a theatre be so quiet during a film since I went to see Mirrors, and that was because there was no one there. My showing for Contagion was packed, but no one made a sound throughout the film. I coughed twice (because I had to), and you wouldn’t believe how many heads turned in my general direction. If nothing else, it shows that the movie had some impact to the audience, and that’s always (okay, usually) interesting to see. By the time the movie is over, you will probably pay attention to how many times you touch your face or the objects around you.

If there’s one thing I can give director Steven Soderbergh, it’s that he has a great ability to work with ensemble casts. He did a great job in getting everyone to work together on the Oceans Eleven remake and sequels. He also walked away with a Best Director Oscar for Traffic. His films have the ability to avoid having his stars chew up enough screen time that they appear to be an actual center character. Catherine Zeta-Jones’ had a character who’s story was just as strong as Benecio Del Toro’s.

On this, Contagion is no different. In essence, it’s almost like watching cameos in a miniseries.

Although the film is peppered with various actors, no one person can be considered the main character of the film. Soderbergh is able to get them all to play their roles well. He and Scott Z. Burns – one of the writers on The Bourne Ultimatum and a collaborator with Soderbergh – give us a number of perspectives for this story and damn, the whole thing is very tight overall. The movie has very little wasted space.

Like the story itself, the movie moves at a great pace, opening with Elizabeth Emhoff (Gwenyth Paltrow) on her second day after exposure to the virus after returning from a trip to Hong Kong. This eventually escalates to other infections reported in other areas around the world. In an effort to contain and understand what they’re dealing with, the Center for Disease Control starts an investigation. Lead by Dr. Ellis Cheever (Lawrence Fishburne), he sends Dr. Erin Mears (Kate Winslet) to Minnesota to determine the scale of the problem.

In addition to the CDC’s efforts, the World Health Organization also gets involved, sending their own field agent to Hong Kong, played by Marion Cotillard. Both doctors come up with information that appear to be helpful for the overall investigation in various ways.

The other two angles in the film are through a conspiracy theory blogger / investigative reporter played by Jude Law and Mitch Emhoff (Matt Damon), who has to deal with the impact of his wife’s sickness. Enrico Colantoni, Brian Cranston, Sanaa Lathan, Elliot Gould and Jennifer Ehle round out the cast. It should be noted that Ehle is the daughter of Kenneth Branaugh’s Hamlet actress Rosemary Harris, who looks remarkably like her mother. That’s just something that caught my eye.

In terms of the Kid Factor, I would be hesitant to take kids to see this unless they had a pretty clear handle on death or getting sick. Teens and adults could probably handle the film, but anyone under than that may freak out a little. Mind you, there’s very little gore in this film. When I think about it, there’s not even a whole lot of blood. There is some violence though as the story escalates and humanity goes wild, but it’s not that far a cry from many zombie movies. It’s up to the parents discretion on whether their kids should see this.

I should also point out that the music in this film is also very good. Cliff Martinez, who also worked on the score for Drive (also out this month) did an impressive job with an electronic score that sits in the background of the film, but also fits the pacing of the film well. It’s worth giving it a listen if at all possible. This quick review was actually written to the Contagion score.

Contagion is definitely worth seeing, easily recommended, but if you happen to be particular about germs, note that this may not be the most comfortable film to watch. Don’t be shocked if you end up hugging yourself while watching this in the theatre. With Soderbergh moving away from film directing to pursue other interests, Contagion is a nice final bow to his career.

Review: Contagion (dir. by Steven Soderbergh)

Posted on by Arleigh

In a world where almost every season news media both traditional and on-line warn the population of what could be an outbreak of a new super-virus that could cause a new pandemic similar to the Spanish Flu of 1918. This was a pandemic which occurred before transcontinental travel was the norm and the virus still managed to kill 1% of the world’s population. Now, it’s 2011 and with warnings of swine flu, bird flu, Ebola, SARS and any number of infectious diseases still in the public’s consciousness we get a new film from filmmaker Steven Soderbergh which seriously explores a world discovering a new deadly disease and how the world responds and deals with the crisis.

Contagion begins with a simple “Day 2” caption as we see one Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) awaiting her flight to board in O’Hare at Chicago. There’s a bit of character building about this character who we see as already in the early stages of what looks to be the flu. From there Soderbergh does an interesting bit where he lets the camera linger for just a split second longer whenever Beth touches something. Soderbergh does this many times that the audience will soon get used to it and forget the significance of the act. We see Beth get a ride home from a colleague back to her home where she’s welcomed home by her husband Mitch and her young son Clark who runs to her and gives her a big hug.

The story really hits the ground running as Beth and soon those she has come into contact with begin to show similar symptoms and quickly die. The CDC and it’s head administrator, Dr. Ellis Cheever (Laurence Fishburne), soon begin to see a pattern to the deaths and the similarity to their symptoms. We soon see another aspect of the story begin with the arrival of Dr. Erin Mears whose job is to investigate the circumstance which seems to be leading into a cluster case starting with Beth and the area she lives in.

The third aspect of this film throws in internet news blogger Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law) who begins to suspect that several deaths around the world looks to be interconnected in someway and that the government, the CDC and the WHO (World Health Organization) are trying to hide these disturbing facts from the general public. Krumwiede becomes the purveyor of unfiltered news which seems to do more harm than good as more and more people begin to believe his conspiracy theories about what looks to be a growing global pandemic cause by an unknown virus every expert brought in to help cannot seem to figure out.

Let me just first say that to call Contagion a thriller in the traditional sense would be flimsy at best. Soderbergh and the film’s writer, Scott Z. Burns, have made a thriller but in a sense that it skews heavily on using realism and an almost docudrama style to push the film’s narrative. The thriller aspect comes from the notion that this film’s plot is not far off from actually becoming a real event. There’s no usage of dramatic tropes from past disaster and apocalyptic films to manipulate the audience. The film as a thriller would be quite mundane when stacked up against films like Outbreak and The Andromeda Strain. It’s the realness of the story, the events taking place on the screen which gives the film it’s dramatic heft.

We begin to see what Soderbergh is trying to accomplish with this film. How transcontinental travel which took weeks during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic now can spread a highly infectious disease in a manner of less than a day’s plane flight over one ocean. The film shows in disturbing detail just how easily we as a people can spread a disease just by doing the most innocuous thing like absently touching one’s face many times a minute then transferring whatever we had to any surface we touch. Contagion definitely will add to the paranoia of those who already have an unhealthy habit of disinfecting everything before they even touch it.

The film doesn’t just touch upon the medical side of solving the growing crisis, but also explores how the governmental response and sociological reaction to the epidemic. For the former we see how protocols and the need to slowly disseminate information to the public only adds to the public’s mistrust of the very agencies created to help them in case of such an event. Soderbergh doesn’t condemn or praise these agencies for their bureaucracy. We see the reason why places like the CDC take their time to finally inform the public as we get the unfiltered and manipulative news blog side of the news media in the form of Krumwiede’s blog. While he does dare to ask the questions other more traditional news organizations fail to ask he also becomes too enamored with how many people read his blog that he’s willing to manipulate the news itself in order to gain more followers.

Contagion hits the second half of the film with the world in full crisis mode and the film taking on a more apocalyptic tone. We see streets in San Francisco full of garbage bags as agencies who used to pick them up have either gone on strike or have stopped their daily runs in fear of infection. Then there are the riots at pharmacies and stores as interstate commerce grounds to a halt and no new supplies of goods and sundries make it to stores. Society itself begin to devolve as everyone and every group start to look after their own and begin to turn on others for the dwindling supplies.

It’s here in the second half that we see the film take on some of the more traditional aspects of a thriller, but even here Soderbergh doesn’t seem to want to linger on the more sensational side of the story. He continues, for good or ill, on the narrative style he began with and that’s to see the epidemic from beginning to conclusion in as clinical a manner as possible. It’s for this reason that at times the more intimate and personal side of the film’s story involving the Emhoff family seemed like it was from a different film. The Emhoff’s end up becoming the heart of the film, but it’s this emotional center that never seemed to fit with the sterile and cold narrative style Soderbergh chose to tell the film’s story.

The performances by the star-studded cast was quite good, but no one person really stood out. If I had to choose one it would have to be Kate Winslet’s Dr. Mears who goes out into the field early in the crisis investigating the early stages of the epidemic. We see her frustration at having to deal with local governmental agencies who fear the hit a quarantine would put on local economies (as if people dying in droves wouldn’t be a bigger hit) and the very danger of contracting the disease itself since having no knowledge of how it works she must use means of protection that may or may not protect her. While her story-arc in the film was just one of several it was her’s which really showed a major impact at how impersonal can be and how no one is truly safe.

Contagion is a film that tells a story about the possibility of such an event occurring and does it well, if not in a very clinical way, but it also shows just how unprepared we truly are when it comes to the smallest of creatures who sees us as nothing more than living forms of intercontinental travel. It’s exploration of such a global crisis in all it’s aspects (medical, research, governmental, media and sociological) makes it seem more like a docudrama more at home in the Discovery Channel, The Science Channel and the like instead of a cinema multiplex. It’s all due to Soderbergh’s storytelling skills that he’s able to pull off such a non-traditional thriller and make people more afraid about their surroundings coming out of the film than they were going into it. It’s not one of Soderbergh’s best films, but it’s a strong offering from him and one of the better films to come out in 2011.

Trailer: Contagion (Official)

Posted on by Arleigh

If there’s one type of genre film I always will end up watching (sometimes to my regret if they turn out to be awful) it will be the apocalyptic-themed film. It doesn’t matter if the apocalypse about to hammer down on the planet in the film is nuclear war, some cosmic event, zombies, the Rapture, etc. As long as the world is in the brink of snuffing out I will watch it.

To find out last year that Steven Soderbergh was going to make his next big project just such an apocalyptic film was exciting. He was to take the worldwide, multi-subplot storyline and a huge cast like he did with Traffic and substitute an lethal pandemic virus for the drug war. It’s cast was to include Matt Damon, Marion Cotillard, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Laurence Fishburne, John Hawkes and Jude Law to name a few. The film was going to be filmed around the world to truly give it that international feel to it.

Contagion will have a release date of September 16, 2011 and if any film really could benefit from a really great viral marketing it would be this.

Scenes I Love: Seven

Posted on by Arleigh

[MAJOR SPOILERS!!!!!]

My weekend was full of sleep, coughing and just vegetating in front of my bedroom tv as I tried to get better from my bout of the cold and flu. For some reason or another AMC channel decided to hold a mini-marathon of David Fincher’s classic neo-noir thriller, Seven, and I must say that I probably saw all three straight showings before sleep finally took over. It surely made for some very unusual, drug-induced dreams.

I’ve always seen Seven as Fincher at his most exploitative best. If there was ever a modern grindhouse exploitation film of the past twenty years I would have to consider Seven as one of them. From start to finish the film just felt grimy and made one feel dirty just for having seen it. Take away all the gloss and veneer afforded Fincher due to modern film technology and techniques this film was grindhouse to its core. No better scene exemplifies and solidifies Seven as a grindhouse exploitation film than it’s shocking, nihilistic ending which bucked traditional Hollywood happy ending (or at least and ambiguous one).

It’s been made famous due to the powerful performances from the three leads who dominate the scene. It is almost played off like a stage play with some gorgeous camera work from cinematographer Darius Khondji switching from Morgan Freeman to Kevin Spacey to Brad Pitt with mathematical precision as the scene unfolds through very strong dialogue by screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker.

The performances shown by Spacey is both chilling and otherworldly as the sociopathic John Doe urging Pitt’s Det. Mills to become wrath and punish him for his sin of envy. Looking helpless and desperate is Freeman’s Det. Somerset trying to talk some sense and decency to the rapidly unraveling Mills who has just learned that what is inside the box he’s been screaming for is his wife’s head.

The fact that the unfolded and ended the way it did honors the grindhouse sensibilities of past exploitation films where the good guys never always win and even when they do it’s at a very heavy cost to the victor. This climactic ending to Seven is so nihilistic that when the film was first shown in 1995 many walked out grumbling at such a dark and heavy ending. Where was the Hollywood happy ending everyone was so used to. There was no cavalry charging last second to save the day. No deus ex machina intervening to show that Mill’s wife was still alive. No, Fincher and crew knew they had something special in their hands and went full tilt to see it through.

It’s no wonder I still consider Seven to be David Fincher’s best film to date.

Review: Iron Man 2 (dir. Jon Favreau)

Posted on by Arleigh

In 2008 Marvel Comics released it’s very first in-house financed film through it’s Marvel Studios. That film was called Iron Man. It was a film that definitely was given buzz and hype by the comic book crowd, but wasn’t highly-anticipated by the general public. Even the prospect of Robert Downey, Jr. as the character of Tony Stark was received by the fanboys with trepidation and by the rest of the film-going public with apathy. When the film finally came out the reaction wasn’t what industry experts had expected. The film became a bonafide hit and it was all due to one man. That man happened to be the very person people thought was wrong for the part: Robert Downey, Jr. His performance as Tony Stark and as Iron Man was one of those which makes a franchise. Robert Downey, Jr. was born to play Tony Stark and it showed on the screen. The film was a major success not just for RDJ but for the fledgling Marvel Studios.

It is now 2010 and the follow-up to Iron Man has finally come out. The road to this second film wasn’t as difficult and mired in trepidation as the first, but now people wondered whether the first film was just a fluke and would lightning be caught once again in the proverbial bottle. The complaints this time around prior to the film’s release was that there were too many new characters both villains and allies being introduced. Would the action scenes be as average and all-too-brief as they were in the first film? Would Robert Downey, Jr. be able to handle the pressure of being the foundation of a world Marvel Studios was building with not just the Iron Man franchise but the other films coming down the pipeline like Thor and Captain America then the big boy in the room: The Avengers. These were all credible worries, but in the end this sequel made a great leap forward into calming down these fears. Iron Man 2 definitely lives up to the first film and improves on certain weaknesses of the first film, but not all which just keeps this sequel from being on the same level as past Marvel superhero sequels like Spider-Man 2 and X2.

The film opens up literally just as the first film ends as we see a Russian TV rebroadcasting Tony Stark declaring himself as Iron Man in front of a crowd of reporters. It’s who is watching this broadcast that moves the story along from start to finish. We meet Ivan Vanko (played with inherent menace by Mickey Rourke) who finds out from his dying father that Tony stark and Iron Man was to blame for their family’s hardship and lost legacy. That very theme of patriarchal and familial legacy becomes a running theme throughout the film. This opening intro sequence shows the audience that Tony Stark wasn’t the only one capable of creating the very power source keeping him alive and powering up the Iron Man suit. The extended intro also does a good job of introducing a main character right from the start and giving us his background, motivations and skill set and why he makes a credible opponent for a one-man army which Iron Man truly has become. But Ivan Vanko, or Whiplash as the credits have dubbed him, won’t be the only problem Tony Stark has to face throughout the film. All the problems he’s having to deal with since becoming Iron Man and publicly declaring himself as such comes from that very declaration.

The U.S. government now sees Iron Man as a problem, despite having stabilized the world by his very existence, and has been trying to force Tony Stark to relinquish the suit and the technology necessary to operate and replicate the Iron Man suit/weapon. Whether it’s his self-inflated and fame-fed ego or his new-found ideals to rewrite his family’s warmongering and war-profiteering past, Tony Stark refuses to give up the suit and even embarrasses the senator (played by Garry Shandling) heading up the subcommittee trying to get Stark to relinquish the suit. The other more immediate and personal problem Stark now has to find a solution for happens to be the very thing keeping him alive. The minituarized ARC Reactor in his chest is gradually poisoning him due to it’s palladium core. While the poison levels slowly builds as he continue to wear the reactor it jumps up in levels whenever he uses the suit. Without a suitable replacement to the toxic palladium all the good work Tony Stark thinks he has done will be for naught as death was something he couldn’t fight against.

Right in the middle of both Vanko and the US government sits one Justin Hammer of Hammer Industries. Hammer (played with weasly and loser aplomb by Sam Rockwell) runs a competing arms manufacturer to Stark Industries. A company who took the opportunity of Stark ending all arms manufacturing and sales to become the government’s newest primary defense contractor. Hammer also looks to replicate the Iron Man suit and arc reactor technology either in-house or through less reputable means. Hammer is instrumental in giving Vanko and the government the resources needed to take on Tony Stark. Most of the comedic aspect of the film involves Hammer trying to help out these two competing antagonists with hilarious and, in the end, lethal results.

Not everything about the film centers on Stark’s problems. The film also works in further building up and rounding out the cast of characters supporting Tony Stark. Pepper Potts has now turned from being Tony’s personal aide and secretary to actually becoming Chairman and CEO of his company by his choice. His military liaison and best friend Lt. Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle replacing Terence Howard for this sequel in the role) returns with conflicted agendas as he’s caught between his friendship to Stark and his commitment as an Air Force officer to the military and this to the U.S. government. We get more screentime with S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Nick Fury as he appears in the middle and very end of the film. Another ally to join this core group is Natasha Romanoff as the Black Widow (played by Scarlett Johannson). These people try their best to keep Tony Stark grounded and focused throughout the film.

Iron Man 2 pretty much equals what the first film did in providing the audience with some very good performances from all the actors. Great performances despite another script which definitely needed some help in tightening up the story and it’s many converging subplots. While the screenplay done up by screenwriter Justin Theroux is not bad it does fail to capitalize on the very good origin story of the first. The dialogue was pretty average with some lines bordering on uninspired. The adage of great actors making even the worst script sound great definitely stands with the one for this film.

Robert Downey, Jr. returns to elevate the script and dialogue with his very presence and personality. RDJ is Tony Stark and once again proves that he was born for to play the character and personify it on-screen. Every screentime he has with the rest of the film’s actors pop and sizzle especially those with the two female support of Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts and Scarlett Johannson as the Black Widow. The chemistry between RDJ and Paltrow has improved even though it was already one of the strongest positives of the first film. We see their relationship evolve beyond the mutual attraction from the first film to something much stronger this second time around. Paltrow’s performance was more defined as she goes from being just Stark’s gal Friday to one in a position of power. She becomes the everyman/woman who bears witness to the fantastic going-ons of a world suddenly becoming full of superheroes and the subsequent villains and enemies.

While the two leads in RDJ and Paltrow continue to do a great job in their roles, and the rest of those returning and even the newest faces keeping up with their own performances, the one actor who almost steals the film has to be Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer. Some have called his performance as being too campy and over-the-top. I think his work as Justin Hammer was actually one of the best in the whole film. It’s right up there with RDJ’s work as Tony Stark. Where people saw a character that seemed over-the-top was actually an actor playing the role exactly how it should be played. Hammer was a character always in the shadow of the more popular, charismatic and confident Tony Stark. Hammer thought himself equal to Stark in every way when in truth his mannerisms and affectations only made him seem more the loser each and every time he was on-screen.

One thing which the film improved on over the first was the staging of it’s action sequences and the length with which they lasted. In the first film, the action was quite minimum to say the least as the film really focused on Iron Man’s origin. While the action in the first film wasn’t bad in any way the fact that they didn’t last long was a sore point for even the ardest fan of that film. This time around the action had better staging and a much improved choreography. The visual effects work by Legacy Effects Studio (formerly known as Stan Winston Studios) improved on the original with the different Marks of Iron Man suits looking distinct whether it was the newest Mark VI worn by Stark in the climactic battle or the “pimped-out” War Machine worn by Rhodes.

One thing which should excite comic book fans, and especially those who fanatically follow the Marvel line of titles, is the many little references to future Marvel Studios titles. While the script itself could be seen as average with some above-average moments it still was coherent enough that all the little easter eggs about Thor, Captain America and The Avengers didn’t seem out of place. This sequel played less like a sequel to a stand-alone franchise, but more like another piece to the world Marvel was building and adding to with each new film. It is for this very reason that I’m more than willing to give some of the deficiencies in the story and dearth of new characters a break.

I think it would be difficult to look at any Marvel Studio film as a stand-alone or even for a franchise to be self-contained. Both Iron Man films belong in a world where other characters with their own films will inhabit and interact with each other. Thus we get all these little references even though it may bloat up the particular film they appear in. The final judgement will come once all the films planned have been released and the overall effect and payoff has been met or not.

In the end, Iron Man 2 was a sequel which more than matched it’s predecessor but still had problems in its screenplay work to keep it from being great. The performances were excellent from everyone involved with some even elevating their roles to higher levels. The action was better than the original with some great work from the visual effects studios whose task was to keep the action coherent and easy to follow (unlike Michael Bay’s action work). For those who follow the comics this film should definitely be a must-see and shouldn’t disappoint. For the casual viewer the film should be a fun and action-filled two-hours that also happens to have some very great actors doing good to great work. I must also recommend that people not leave the theater once the end credits begin to roll. Like the previous film in the franchise there is a suprise scene at the very end of the credits which should be seen as it hints at a future Marvel superhero film and one that will tie in with this particular franchise.

Iron Man 2: Second Official Trailer

Posted on by Arleigh

May 7, 2010 is still two months away but it sure is a long wait after seeing the second official trailer for this summer’s most anticipated blockbuster. I am talking about Marvel’s Iron Man 2. The trailer premiered on the post-Oscar Jimmy Kimmel Show episode and I will say that it was the highlight of the night.

There’s been some concern about Iron Man 2 after the release of the first official trailer. Some said that trailer gave them feelings that the sequel was going to be way over-the-top and almost crossing the line into ridiculous. Others thought there may have been too many bad guys involved. Then there are those who are still bitching about the look of the main villain, Mickey Rourke as Whiplash.

I’d like to say that the second trailer went a long way in dispelling some of the concerns. There were more scenes about Tony Stark and the Iron Man suit (in its many variations). There seemed to be more explained about Whiplash and his role as the main villain. Even Sam Rockwell’s Justin Hammer character comes to the forefront. The clincher was the sequence when the Hammer Iron Men showed up to battle not just Iron Man but the War Machine. This sequel may not be all about the Iron Man story-arc called “Armor Wars” but it sure seems to borrow a lot from that arc and, for that, this self-confessed comic book geek is giddy. GIDDY I SAY!

Oh yeah, one last thing: On-The-Go Mk. V Iron Man suit!