44 Days of Paranoia #12: Burn After Reading (dir by Joel and Ethan Coen)

Posted on November 29, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For today’s entry in the Days of Paranoia, let’s take a look at Joel and Ethan Coen’s wonderfully satiric look at espionage, greed, lust, and stupidity, 2008’s Burn After Reading.

Like most Coen Brothers films, Burn After Reading tells the dark story of a group of obsessives who all think that they’re far more clever than they actually are. Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) is a CIA analyst who, because of his alcoholism and generally sour personality, is demoted. Cox angrily quits his job and then starts working on his memoirs. Meanwhile, Cox’s wife Katie (played by Tilda Swinton) is having an affair with the handsome but idiotic Mark (George Clooney). On the advice of her divorce lawyer, Katie secretly downloads copies of all of Osborne’s records, including his memoirs. Katie gives the disc to her lawyer’s secretary. The secretary then proceeds to accidentally leave the disc at Hardbodies Gym.

This is where things, in typical Coen Brothers fashion, start to get complicated. Two trainers at the gym — Linda (Frances McDormand) and her fitness obsessed friend Chad (a hilarious Brad Pitt) — find the disc and mistake Osborne’s very mundane files for national security secrets. Linda, who is obsessed with raising enough money to get a boob job, convinces Chad that they should blackmail Osborne and demand that he pay them before they return his disc. Osborne, who has no idea that Katie copied his records, refuses to pay so Linda takes the disc to the Russians. This leads to a series of misunderstandings that eventually lead to several murders, all of which have to be covered up by the CIA, despite the fact that both the director of the CIA and his assistant agree that there’s no way to understand how any of this happened and that, in the end, neither one of them has learned anything from the experience.

Perhaps because it was released between the Oscar-winning No Country For Old Men and the Oscar-nominated A Serious Man, many critics tend to dismiss Burn After Reading as just being an enjoyable lark and nothing more. While it’s true that there’s not a lot going on underneath the surface of Burn After Reading, the surface itself is so fun, vivid, and vibrant that it seems rather petty to complain. Burn After Reading finds the Coen Brothers at their most playful and snarky.

The Coen Brothers have made films in several different genres and styles but all of their work has one thing in common. The Coens tell stories about obsessive characters who aren’t anywhere close to being as smart as they think they are. When critics complain that the Coens tend to view their characters with a rather condescending attitude, they’re usually talking about films like Burn After Reading. Fortunately, in the case of Burn After Reading, the Coens assembled one of their strongest casts. From the insanely focused Frances McDormand to the perpetually smiling Brad Pitt to cynical John Malkovich, everyone does such a great job that you can overlook the fact that they’re all essentially playing idiots. Perhaps the film’s best performance comes from George Clooney who, in the role of Harry, proves himself to be a very good sport by satirizing both his own reputation as a womanizer and his career as an old school movie star. In one of the film’s best moments, Harry, gun drawn, dramatically leaps and then rolls into an empty bedroom. Like almost all of the characters in Burn After Reading, Harry is just a big kid playing action hero and Clooney’s performance here is perfect.

As for Burn After Reading, it may not be perfect but it’s certainly a lot of fun.

Other entries in the 44 Days Of Paranoia:

Horror Film Review: Warm Bodies (dir by Jonathan Levine)

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I did not see Warm Bodies when it was first released back in February. I was certainly aware of the film, having been bombarded with the trailer since December of 2012. and I assumed that I would see the film but, for whatever reason, I simply could not work up the enthusiasm necessary to actually see it.

Perhaps it was because the concept — a zombie love story — simply seemed too cutesy and, as much as I love zombie movies, they’re not exactly what I want to watch on Valentine’s Day. The fact that the movie was being called a “zombie twilight” didn’t help. (Don’t get me wrong. The Twilight films are a very guilty pleasure of mine but that still doesn’t make the comparison a selling point.)

As a result, as much as I thought I would end up seeing Warm Bodies in the theaters, I never got around to it. Instead, I waited until Warm Bodies premiered on Cinemax earlier this month to watch it and you know what?

I was surprised to discover how much I loved it.

Warm Bodies takes place after the zombie apocalypse has decimated America. The undead wander through the ruins of society while the few remaining humans have barricaded themselves in a heavily guarded enclave. Leading them is Col. Grigio (John Malkovich) who continually tells his citizens that the only way to survive is to kill every zombie that they see. As Grigio explains it, the zombies may look human but they have no humanity left.

This would probably come as news to R (Nicholas Hoult), a zombie whose day consists of wandering around an airport, looking for people to eat, and occasionally acknowledging his friend M (Rob Corddry) with a grunt. R spends most of his time thinking about how bored he is with being a zombie and wondering who he once was. That’s one reason why R enjoys eating brains because, by doing so, R gets to enjoy the memories of his victims and, for just a brief few moments, he can know what it’s like to be human.

Things change for R when he and a group of zombies come across humans that are searching the city for medical supplies. R spots one of the humans, Julie (Teresa Palmer), and finds himself immediately drawn towards her. However, R is also shot in the chest by Julie’s boyfriend, Perry (played by Dave Franco, the younger brother of my beloved James Franco). R responds by attack Perry and eating his brain, which causes R to experience all of Perry’s memories of Julie. Now in love with Julie, R saves her from the other zombies and takes her back to the airplane where he makes his home.

As Julie and R bond, R finds himself slowly becoming more and more human. Yes, that’s right — the cure to the zombie apocalypse is love. Now, that may sound predictable or simplistic and I guess it is. But you know what? I’m a romantic and I loved it! It helped that both Palmer and Hoult have a really likable chemistry. Even before R’s heart starts to beat again, they make a really adorable couple.

Unfortunately, the more R tries to act human, the more the other zombies want to eat him. This is especially true of the Boneys, zombies who have decayed to the point of just being skeletons and who prey on anything that happens to have the slightest trace of a heartbeat. Meanwhile, Julie’s father — Col. Grigio — remains firmly convinced that the only cure for zombification is a bullet in the head.

Though there are moments of horror in Warm Bodies (mostly involving the Boneys, who are genuinely scary), the film is mostly concerned with telling an audience-friendly love story. As I watched the film, I occasionally found myself wishing that the movie has been directed by someone like James Gunn, who would have brought a bit more of a satiric bite to the film.

And yet, despite being occasionally frustrated by how (literally) bloodless the film was, I loved Warm Bodies.

What can I say? It’s an incredibly sweet and romantic movie and, as much as its fashionable to be cynical, who can resist a good love story? If anything truly elevates Warm Bodies above being just another supernatural romance, it’s the performance of Nicholas Hoult. Even when he’s just stumbling around with a blank face and uttering meaningless groans, Hoult makes R into a likable flesh eater. As sweet as the idea of love bringing life to the dead may be, it’s Hoult’s intelligent performance that makes both the idea and the romance feel real.

And that’s why I loved Warm Bodies.

Trailer: Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Official Theatrical)

Posted on April 28, 2011 by Arleigh

OK, this latest trailer for Michael Bay’s third entry in the Transformers film franchise looks to try and ask forgiveness from it’s fans about what had transpired with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (cough, cough…Twins). This latest trailer looks to mine the current alien invasion trend happening in Hollywood for the last year or two.

I’m not going to say that Transformers: Dark of the Moon will be in the running for Best Picture, Best Screenplay or even Best Acting awards come awards season, but I do get a feeling from this trailer that this third entry will be darker and infinitely more fun and watchable than the second film. I actually think that Dark of the Moon is the true first sequel to the first film and that Revenge of the Fallen never occurred.

The look of Shockwave (one red-eye) is pretty awesome as are the look of the invading Decepticons (or are they another faction). I remember talk of Unicron (the giant planet transformer) was to appear in this film but I’m not sure if Unicron will appear as a planet or that giant snake-like transformer that was giving that Chicago high-rise a major case of the hugs.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon is set for a July 1, 2011 release date.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Super Bowl TV Spot)

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Arleigh

I think most everyone will admit that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen wasn’t very good and to some people it was just one piece of turd. Even Michael Bay himself has admitted that the first sequel just tried to do too much without any sort of plan on how to pull it off.

Now, we have the third film and what looks like, at least from the trailer, may be a tad better. There seems to be more focus on the transformers themselves and the two sides fighting it out with lots of human collateral damage.

I sure hope this third film is not going to be like the second and more like the first but this time with invasion to make it more epic. The film comes out on July 1, 2011.

A Quickie With Lisa Marie: Red (dir. by Robert Schwentke)

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Red (which I saw at the dollar theater this previous Monday) is a lot like the boy who took you to Homecoming: likable, occasionally enjoyable, but ultimately rather forgettable. It’s a movie that you enjoy for what it is but, at the same time, it’s hardly a film I could ever imagine watching twice. I never went out with Taylor again after Homecoming either.

Anyway, the movie itself is about a retired CIA agent (Bruce Willis) who spends all of his time flirting on the phone with Sarah (Mary Louise Parker) who works for the company that sends Willis his pension checks. (Willis always rips the checks up so he’ll have an excuse to call Parker.) As the Christmas season approaches, Willis is paid a visit by a bunch of men dressed in black who proceed to blow up his house. Willis escapes death, kidnaps Parker (under the pretense that her life is in danger because of how much they talk but mostly just so he can date her), and sets about getting all of his fellow retired spies (Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren) together. Meanwhile, a determined, young, and hot CIA agent (Karl Urban) has been assigned to track Willis down and kill him.

The plot is really pretty standard but director Robert Schwentke keep things interesting by both playing up and acknowledging just how ludicrous the standard action movie is. If nothing else, this is a film that respect its audience. It undesrstand that we understand that we’re watching an action movie and it assumes that we’ve seen enough action movies that we know how the genre is supposed to work. And while Schwentke pulls off all of the standard action moves like a pro, what makes the movie memorable are the small moments where he plays with and subverts our expectations.

He’s helped by his cast, a solid group of professionals who could play these roles in their sleep but yet, to their credit, still appear to invest themselves in the film. All of the performers make strong individual impressions yet still manage to gel perfectly as an ensemble. As opposed to most films of this sort, you really believe that these characters are old friends and that they do have a shared history. One of the film’s main strengths comes from observing how all the different characters respond to each other — nobody has the exact same reaction. This is kind of what Sylvester Stallone tried to pull off with The Expendables. The difference here, I suppose, is that Red features John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, and Bruce Willis while Stallone had to work with Jason Stathan and Terry Crewes.

Among the cast, Malkovich is probably the real crowd pleaser as a former MK-Ultra experiment. He is convincingly insane in his role and he gets almost all of the film’s best one liners. He also has a scene where he deflects an incoming rocket in a way that made the audience cheer. However, for me, the best part of the film was the unexpected chemistry between Parker and Willis. Through all of the action sequences and self-referential humor, you really do hope they end up together.

That said, there’s still something missing from the film. It never quite goes as far as you would like in embracing the inherent absurdity of the action genre and, after a strong start, the film does have some trouble maintaining its frantic pace. Add to that, Richard Dreyfuss shows up and and throws the whole ensemble out of whack by attempting to chew any piece of scenery he can get his teeth on. Still, for what it is, Red is an enjoyable little movie and sometimes, that’s enough.