Film Review: Jane Got A Gun (dir by Gavin O’Connor)

Posted on September 3, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Jane Got A Gun, which was released with little fanfare in January and is now available on Netflix, could just as easily have been called This Bishop Boys Are Coming And Who Gives A Fuck?

In fact, I like that title better than Jane Got A Gun. As far as I’m concerned, I am no longer reviewing Jane Got A Gun. Instead, I am going to tell you about a film called The Bishop Boys Are Coming And Who Gives A Fuck?

The film is a western, taking place shortly after the end of the Civil War. (Isn’t it interesting how every western recently produced has taken place shortly after the Civil War? Way to avoid awkward historical truths, Hollywood.) Jane (Natalie Portman) lives on an isolated farm, with her daughter and her husband, Bill Hammond (Noah Emmerich, who is wasted both figuratively and literally). Hammond used to be an outlaw but now, he’s a pretty good guy. But the Bishop Boys are still after him!

Who are the Bishop Boys?

Well, John Bishop is Ewan McGregor. He’s an evil businessman and a bounty hunter and he used to be in love with Jane but now it seems that he mostly just wants to collect the bounty that’s on Hammond’s head. I love Ewan McGregor but, as we all should have learned from his performance in Haywire, he doesn’t make the most convincing villain. McGregor is one of those actors who radiates an inner humanity. No actor falls in love as convincingly as Ewan McGregor. That’s what makes him a compelling actor but it also means that he’s totally miscast as a bounty hunting sociopath.

Anyway, the Bishop Boys end up putting five bullets in Hammond so he goes home to die. “The Bishop Boys are coming,” he says and Jane has to prepare for the upcoming siege. Fortunately, her surly neighbor, Dan (Joel Edgerton, who seems to be bored with the whole thing), just happens to be her former fiancée and he’s still in love with her, though he tries to hide his love behind bitterness and pithy one-liners. It also turns out that Dan was a hero in the Civil War but he’s weary of violence.

Don’t worry, though! Dan is still willing to kill. After all, not much would happen in the movie if Dan wasn’t willing to shoot people…

Anyway, The Bishop Boys Are Coming And Who Gives A Fuck only lasts for 98 minutes but there’s a lot of hints that there was originally supposed to be a lot more to the movie than actually showed up on screen. We get a few lengthy flashbacks, all of which hint at a story that actually explores what it means to be a woman in a patriarchal society and which, if properly handled, would have made The Bishop Boys Are Coming And Who Gives A Fuck the feminist western that it’s attempting to be. Watching this movie, you get the feeling that a lot of the original storyline was either not filmed or left on the cutting room floor.

To be honest, I really wanted this to be a great movie or, at the very least, a decent showcase for Natalie Portman, who was one of my favorite actresses even before Black Swan. However, I officially gave up on this film after 50 minutes. That was around the time that Dan started to ramble about life, death, and doin’ the ratt thang. It was all just so clichéd and the rest of the film wasn’t any better.

The Bishop Boys Are Coming And Who Gives A Fuck? did receive some attention because its screenplay was included in the Black List, which claims to be an annual survey of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. The Black List is one of the greatest con jobs ever perpetrated by the film industry. While it’s true that American Hustle and The King’s Speech appeared on the Black List, a typical Black List screenplay usually turns out to be something like The Beaver, Broken City, or Cedar Rapids. You can add The Bishop Boys Are Coming And Who Gives A Fuck? to the long line of Black List scripts that became utterly forgettable movies.

Film Review: Focus (dir by Glenn Ficara and John Requa)

Posted on March 1, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The snow and ice finally melted today so, this afternoon, Jeff and I went down to the Alamo Drafthouse and we saw the just released Will Smith/Margot Robbie film, Focus.

You know how there’s some films that you see and you know that you had a good enough time while you were watching it and then, a few hours later, you realize that the movie itself is quickly fading from your memory? It’s not that you just saw a bad movie as much as you just watched one that was not exceptionally good. To a large extent, that sums up how I felt about Focus. I watched it. I was mildly entertained. And I have a feeling that, 6 months from now, I’m going to come across this review and say something like, “Oh yeah, I guess I did see that movie.” It gets the job done but it doesn’t do much else.

(I was actually tempted to start this review by saying that Focus was good for a “March movie” but then I remembered that last year, The Grand Budapest Hotel came out in March and proved that the date of release is no longer an excuse.)

In Focus, Will Smith plays Nicky Spurgeon. Nicky’s nickname is Mellow but he didn’t get that nickname for the reason that you probably think he did. (Though, rest assured, we do find out the exact reason why Nicky is called Mellow and yes, it does factor into the film’s final twist.) Nicky is anything but mellow. Instead, he’s a professional con artist who is always scheming, who always considers every detail, and who is always focused on getting what he wants.

The film is split into two parts and the first part is actually pretty good. An inexperienced con artist named Jess (Margot Robbie) attempts to rob Nicky and gets a lecture as a result. Nicky isn’t so much upset that Jess tried to con him as much as he, as a professional, is annoyed that Jess did such a bad job of it. This leads to Nicky eventually becoming Jess’s mentor. Nicky teaches Jess all the tools of the trade, introduces her to all the properly quirky members of his crew, and he even goes against his own advice (which is to never get close to anyone) when he and Jess become lovers.

The highlight of the first part of the film is a football game where Nicky and a compulsive gambler (B.D. Wong) end up making a series of increasingly ludicrous bets. B.D. Wong gives such a memorably unhinged performance that he briefly made the entire film seem more interesting than it actually was. In fact, as I look back over Focus, I find myself wishing that the entire film has just been about his character.

But, unfortunately, the film isn’t about B.D. Wong. Instead, it’s about Nicky and Jess. The second part of the film, which takes place three years after the first part, features Jess and Nicky as equals and it feels like almost an entirely different movie. Whereas Smith and Robbie had a nice chemistry as teacher and student, that chemistry vanishes after the time jump. Unfortunately, that’s not all that vanishes. The film’s pace and playful sense of fun disappears as well. If the first half of the film felt like an above average first episode of a quirky TV show, the second half felt like a long-running sitcom on which the show runner had been fired and suddenly replaced. It was similar to what had come before but, ultimately, it felt very different.

Focus does end with a big twist but, long before it was revealed, Jeff and I both guessed what it was. The problem is that we’ve seen so many movies about con artists that we know that all of them are destined to end with a big twist that reveals that there was another con going on that we didn’t know about. It’s impossible to be surprised by the eventual twist because we all know that it’s coming. For a “con movie” like Focus to work, it has to either be so cleverly written or so much fun to watch that we actually stop thinking about the inevitability of the upcoming twist. But, since Focus is never as clever as it thinks it is, we instead spend our whole time thinking about the twist and, seeing as how you’re a clever and experience filmgoer, you probably won’t have much trouble predicting it.

But here’s the thing: I think it’s possible to be too critical of a film like Focus. Focus may not be good but it does have it fun moments. Will Smith could play Nicky in his sleep. (And, to be honest, he occasionally seems to be doing just that.) Margot Robbie looks like she belongs in an old film noir. The settings are glamorous. The clothes are to die for. Ultimately, Focus is both moderately enjoyable and extremely forgettable. If you don’t see it in a theater, you won’t regret it. However, when it show up on cable in December, it’ll make for inoffensive background noise.

6 Late Film Reviews: 300: Rise of Empire, About Last Night, Adult World, Jersey Boys, Ride Along, and Trust Me

Posted on November 23, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, the year is coming to a close and I’ve got close to 50 films that I still need to review before I get around to making out my “Best of 2014” list. (That’s not even counting the films that I still have left to see. December is going to be a busy month.) With that in mind, here are late reviews of 6 films that I saw earlier this year and had yet to get around to reviewing.

1) 300: Rise of an Empire (dir by Noam Munro)

Last night, I watched 300: Rise of an Empire for the second time and I still couldn’t figure out what exactly is going on for most of the film. I know that there’s a lot of fighting and a lot of bare-chested men yelling and, whenever anyone swings a sword, they suddenly start moving in slow motion and dark blood spurts across the screen like Jackson Pollock decorating a previously blank canvas. The style of 300 has been co-opted by so many other films that 300: Rise of an Empire feels more like an imitation than a continuation.

At the same time, I’m resisting the temptation to be too critical of 300: Rise of the Empire for two reasons. First off, this movie wasn’t really made to appeal to me. Instead, this is a total guy film and, much as I have every right to love Winter’s Tale, guys have every right to love their 300 movies. Secondly, 300: Rise of an Empire features Eva Green as a warrior and she totally kicks ass.

2) About Last Night (dir by Steve Pink)

Obviously, I made a big mistake this Valentine’s Day by insisting that my boyfriend take me to see Endless Love. (I still stand by my desire to see Winter’s Tale.) I say this because I recently watched this year’s other big Valentine’s Day release, About Last Night, and I discovered that it’s a funny and, in its way, rather sweet romantic comedy.

About Last Night tells the story of two couples, Danny (Michael Ealy) and Debbie (Joy Bryant) and Bernie (Kevin Hart) and Joan (Regina Hall). All four of the actors have a very real chemistry, with Hart and Hall bringing the laughs and Ealy and Bryant bringing the tears. The film itself is ultimately predictable but very likable.

3) Adult World (dir by Scott Coffey)

In Adult World, Emma Roberts plays Amy Anderson, an aspiring author and recent college graduate. Despite her own overwhelming faith in her own abilities, Amy struggles to find a job outside of college. She is finally reduced to working at Adult World, a small adult bookstore. Working at the store, she befriends the far more down-to-earth Alex (Evan Peters) and eventually discovers that one of her customers is also her idol, poet Rat Billings (John Cusack). Amy proceeds to force her way into Rat’s life, volunteering to work as his assistant and declaring herself to be his protegé. However, it turns out that Rat is far less altruistic than Amy originally thought (and with a name like Rat, are you surprised?).

Adult World is a flawed film but I still really enjoyed it. The story has a few problems and the film never really takes full narrative advantage of Adult World as a setting but the entire film is so well-acted that you’re willing to forgive its flaws. Cusack gives a surprisingly playful performance while Evan Peters is adorable in a Jesse Eisenberg-type of way. Emma Roberts shows a lot of courage, playing a character who is both infuriating and relatable.

4) Jersey Boys (dir by Clint Eastwood)

Clint Eastwood’s upcoming American Sniper has been getting so much attention as a potential Oscar contender that it’s easy to forget that, at the beginning of the year, everyone was expecting Jersey Boys to be Eastwood’s Oscar contender. In fact, it’s easy to forget about Jersey Boys all together. It’s just one of those films that, despite its best efforts, fails to make much of an impression.

Jersey Boys is based on one of the Broadway musicals that tourists always brag about seeing. It tells the true story of how four kids from the “neighborhood” became the Four Seasons and recorded songs that have since gone on to appear on thousands of film soundtracks. The period detail is a lot of fun, Christopher Walken, who has a small role as a local gangster, is always entertaining to watch, and the music sounds great but Eastwood’s direction is so old-fashioned and dramatically inert that you don’t really take much away from it.

Hopefully, American Sniper will be the work of the Eastwood who made Mystic River and not the Eastwood who did Jersey Boys.

5) Ride Along (dir by Tim Story)

School security guard Ben Barber (Kevin Hart) wants to marry Angela (Tiki Sumpter) but Angela’s tough cop brother James (Ice Cube) doesn’t approve. In order to prove himself worth, Ben goes on a ride along with James and the results are just as generic as you might expect. Probably the only really funny part of the film was the way that Hart delivered the line, “You’re white! You don’t fight!” but we all saw that in the commercial so who cares?

On the plus side, Ice Cube has a lot of screen presence and is well-cast as James. As for Kevin Hart — well, he should probably be thankful that About Last Night came out a month after Ride Along.

6) Trust Me (dir by Clark Gregg)

In Trust Me, Clark Gregg both directs and stars. He plays Howard, a fast-talking but ultimately kind-hearted talent agent who mostly represents children. After losing some of his most popular clients to rival agent Aldo (a hilariously sleazy Sam Rockwell), Howard meets Lydia (Saxon Sharbino), a 13 year-old actress. Soon, Howard is representing Lydia and trying to land her a starring role in a major production. Howard also finds the time to tentatively date his next door neighbor (Amanda Peet). However, there’s more to Howard than meets the eye. He is haunted by the death of one of his previous clients and his guilt leads him to become especially protective of Lydia. When Howard concludes that Lydia is being sexually abused by her crude father (Paul Sparks), he attempts to protect her from both him and the Hollywood system that’s threatening to corrupt her. It all leads to an oddly tragic conclusion…

I say “oddly tragic” because Trust Me is, in many ways, an odd film. As a director, Gregg gets good performances from his cast but he never manages to find a consistent tone. The film starts as a Hollywood satire and then it becomes a romantic comedy and then it turns into a legal drama before then becoming an all-0ut attack on the way the entertainment industry treats child actors and then finally, it settles on being a tragedy. As a result, Trust Me is undeniably a bit of a mess.

And yet, it’s a compelling mess and the film itself is so heart-felt that you can’t help but forgive its flaws. If nothing else, it proves that Clark Gregg is capable of more than just being Marvel’s Agent Coulson.

Lisa Marie Goes To Rio (dir. by Carlos Saldahna)

Posted on July 17, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Rio is one of those films that I missed when it had it’s initial run at the theaters. However, last week, I finally got a chance to see it at the “dollar” theater. Now, I have to admit that I consider the dollar theater to be something like the sixth ring of Hell and, before the movie started, I posted the following to twitter: “Wow, there’s a lot of ugly and obese children in this theater.” And indeed, that was the case. What I forgot to mention is that a lot of them were there with equally ugly and obese parents, the types who talked loudly through the film in accents that carried the dual twang of ignorance and stagnation. Despite the surroundings though, I found Rio to be a perfectly pleasant little animated film.

Rio is the story of Blu (voice by Jesse Eisenberg), a blue macaw who, though originally from Brazil, has grown up in Minnesota and, as a result, has never learned how to fly. Blu returns to Brazil with his owner (Lesley Mann) so that he can mate with another macaw, Jewel (Ann Hathaway) and keep the species from dying out. However, things don’t go exactly as planned as 1) Jewel is more interested in escaping captivity than in mating and 2) both Rio and Jewel are abducted by a psychotic Cockatoo named Nigel (Jermaine Clement). Nigel works for a bunch of poachers and soon Jewel and the flightless Blu find themselves on the run, looking for their owner while the Rio Carnaval goes on all around them.

As one of my old theater teachers one said about me, Rio “is not without a certain fun charm.” The film’s storyline of neurotic animals getting lost in an exotic locale and eventually finding the strength to believe in themselves is pretty much standard animation fare but the action moves along quickly and the movie takes full advantage of the whole Rio mystique. The film’s animators create the Rio de Janeiro that everyone hopes they’ll discover if they ever make it down to Brazil. Perhaps most importantly, Rio is child-appropraite without ever being so childish as to inspire adults to start drinking while the little ones laugh.

The voice actors all do a pretty good job distinguishing their individual characters. Jesse Eisenberg is perfectly neurotic as Blu while Anne Hathway’s vocals are properly headstrong as Jewel. The real stand-out here is Jermaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords. Clement, with his deep, wonderfully dramatic voice, brings a lot of flair to the villainous Nigel and, despite being a psycho Cockatoo, quickly became an audience favorite. Though the human bird owners don’t get much to do, Leslie Mann and Rodrigo Santoro are so endearing that you actually wish they had more screen time. On the other hand, if, like me, you found George Lopez to be grating before seeing Rio, this film isn’t going to do much to change your mind. (Lopez, not surprisingly, plays the know-it-all bird who helps Blu and Jewel make their way through Rio.)

As I watched Rio, I realized just how spoiled we all got last year as far as animated films were concerned. Last year, I got a chance to see Toy Story 3, How To Train Your Dragon, Shrek Forever After, A Town Called Panic, The Illusionist, Megamind, and Despicable Me. It was, in many ways, a banner year for cinematic animation. With the exception of Rango, there haven’t been any animated films so far that can really compare with what we were given last year. As a result, it’s easy to be dismissive of a straight-forward, relatively simple family film like Rio. That’s unfortunate because, taken on its own terms, Rio is a perfectly enjoyable way to spend 90 minutes. Just don’t go into it expecting to see Toy Story 3 and you’ll be fine.

Review: 300 (dir. by Zack Snyder)

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Arleigh

I will get it out of the way and say that this was not and was not meant to be a historically accurate depiction of Ancient Greece. It was never meant to be even when it was still just an Eisner-Award winning graphic novel from the mind of iconic graphic novelist and artist Frank Miller. With that out of the way I was able to watch and enjoy Zack Snyder’s film adaptation on its own terms without the criticism of historical accuracies looming dangerously over my head. 300 deserves the label of being an event film. From start to finish, Snyder’s film practically screams blockbuster and popcorn and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Frank Miller’s 300 was at its time an interesting depiction of one of history’s greatest military last stands. Miller already known for hyperstylizing the look and feel of the noir genre with his Sin City graphic novels, takes the same approach with his depiction of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans taking a final last stand against Persian God-King Xerxes at a narrow mountain pass called Thermopylae (literally meaning Hot Gates in Greek). Zack Snyder took this graphic novel and painstakingly stayed true to the visuals Miller and his colorist wife, Lynn Varley put on paper. Looking back at my memory of some of the panels and images from the graphic novel. Snyder and his crew of art directors, cinematographers and CGI-artists were successful in translating almost every page of the graphic novel onto the screen.

Like Robert Rodriguez’s adaptation of Miller’s Sin City, Zack Snyder’s 300 pretty much brings the graphic novel to moving life. This means he stuck to the source material quite literally which limits his own take on the graphic novel. Like Rodriguez, Snyder doesn’t really put his own signature stamp as a director to the film. It’s not too much of criticis since he does a great job of translating Miller’s work onto film, but one wonders what sort of personal touches he could’ve added to the finished look that wasn’t lifted from Miller’s style and whether it would’ve changed the overlook look and feel of the film.

The story is quite simple and just takes the basic summary of the historical event itself. Spartan King Leonidas (played with visceral gusto and machismo by Scottish thespian Gerard Butler) makes a decision to go to war and confront the encroaching and fast approaching massive Persian Army led by Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) intent on conquering the Hellenic city-states of the Greek Peninsula. Persian ambassadors ride forth to demand oaths of fealty from those city-states ahead of the army’s path. Sparta is one such city-state, but different from the rest of its Hellenic brethrens. Sparta has gone down in history as a word synonymous with unbending dedication to a strict, ascetic warrior code. Warfare and battle were what Spartans were born and trained to do from an early age. Weakness and physical imperfections weeded out from the time of birth (the film explains just what happens to male newborns with physical imperfections and deformities). The answer Leonidas gives the Persian delegation could be seen as somewhat extreme, but not contrary to his nation’s warrior-culture of never surrendering and seeing death in battle the greatest glory for a Spartan to achieve. From this sequence right up to the end of the film we get to see just how much of a warrior culture the Spartans were in extreme detail.

It’s during the prolonged battle scenes between Leonidas’ Spartans and Xerxes army which will have everyone chomping at the bit. If you have to see this film for any particular reason outside of watching superbly-trained underdogs slaughtering and endless supply of enemy troops then you will most likely be disappointed by the slower scenes away from Thermopylae. Indeed, this film an its original source material would’ve worked even better without the extra filler Snyder and his writers added to give the film more depth. I’m all for more emotional depth and characterization in my films but when a movie is all about a bloody and heroic last stand of a few against the many, scenes which slow the story down does more to break the rhythm and tone of a film than add to it. Othe than a deeper understanding of the kind of partnership Leonidas had with Gorgo, his Spartan Queen, most of the subplots added by Snyder and his writers could easily have been left out and still ge a kick ass action epic.

It’s the action scenes which reall stand out visually. Some people might see the style tricks of speed ramping certain action sequences then slowing it down considerably to show the minute detail of the battle scene as being to gimmicky, but I would disagree and say it actually gives the movie a mythical quality in its storytelling. One thing I have to say about Zack Snyder as a director (his remake of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead better than what detractors have made it out to be) is that he knows how to film action and with special mention to bloody and gory action. He makes these scenes of dismemberments, decapitations, and disembowlments look like a piece of performance art.

These scenes of carnage would be considered extremely gratuitious if it didn’t look so made up good. Even the way the blood flows, spurts and splashes look like something Jackson Pollock would take interest in. The speed up and slow down of the sequences also gives the fight scenes a certain rhythm that once an audience picks up on will follow it through to the end. This is why the scenes back in Sparta with a duplicitous politician and his powerplay to assume control and power seem such a downer instead of enhancing the sacrifice of Leonidas and his men. Those scenes just feel tacked on and completely superfluous. Luckily, there’s not enough of them to slow down the frantic pace developed by the battle itself.

The performances by all actors involved really doesn’t require too much criticism or reflection over. Gerard Butler does a great and convincing job as the Spartan King and his conviction in confronting Xerxes and his army with so few seem very believable. It’s not a star-making performance but it does show that Butler can add a bit of gravitas to a character and role so basic in characterization. Lena Hedley is radiant as his partner and Queen. Despite the weird sounding name of Gorgo, Hedley plays the strong-minded and equally influential wife to Butler’s Leonidas. It’s only her scenes back in Sparta as she tries to rally her people to support their king which keeps these slower sequences from fully pulling down the film. The performances were good enough to keep the acting in the film from becoming too campy or too serious. It’s an action film and with enough action going on in the movie I could forgive the writers (both Miller and the screenwriters) from scrimping on character build up.

All in all, Zack Snyder’s film adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300 succeeds in bringing the book to moving life. Throughout the run of the film it was hard not to get lost in the beautiful visuals. Whether it was the muted color pallette which puts most of the scenes in an almost sepia-tone look to over-emphasizing certain colors to set a certain mood. From oversaturation of reds in one sequence to one where everything seem to be tinted with the many shades of blues at night. This is what 300 will be best remembered for. It’s technical use of CGI to paint the environment in unrealistic but beautiful ways which gives the scenes a lyrical and mythical look to them once the actors were superimposed over them. The film really was a painting come to life and it shows once again how computer and digital filmmaking technology have now afforded directors in making what used to be impossible technically to something that could be done with the limit being the artist’s imagination.

This film will not win many acting, directing and even screenwriting awards (which it didn’t once award season rolled around), but it doesn’t have to for people to enjoy it. It will entertain and pull its audience into a living and modern retelling of a legend. Whether all that happened on the screen was exactly as it happened in 480 B.C. doesn’t matter. What it does show is that through retelling down the years even all the embellishments added to the story of Leonidas and his men doesn’t diminish the fact that what they did and accomplished was how legendary heroes were made and remembered.