It’s hard to overstate how big of a disaster Warren Beatty’s film Rules Don’t Apply is. The man who ruled Hollywood for over two decades has delivered the first movie he wrote, directed, and starred in since 1998’s Bulworth, and it’s a complete mess. Beatty became an instant sex symbol in 1961’s Splendor in the Grass, and he won the Best Director Oscar for Reds, his 1981 ode to John Reed, one of only two Americans ever granted burial at the Kremlin in Moscow. Almost none of Beatty’s earlier successful filmmaking skills are visible in his latest project.
Like Reds, Beatty’s focus for Rules Don’t Apply is also a real-life figure, mercurial billionaire Howard Hughes. The legendary stories about Hughes, a man who inherited his father’s oil drill bit company and used his fortune to focus on his twin passions of aviation and filmmaking, are practically the makings of a fantastic movie all on their own. If you need proof, Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator is a remarkable example. Not only was Hughes an eccentric and mysterious figure of great renown from the 1920s through the 1960s, he was also plagued with mental health issues, most notably a serious case of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Beatty’s movie, by contrast, suffers from bipolar disorder.
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There’s a question about cinematic adaptations, sequels, and remakes that I’ve finally learned to stop asking: “Do we really need another movie version of a Shakespeare play?” or “How many Jane Austen movies can they possibly make?” I’ve stopped asking, because it’s the wrong question. Aside from purely economically driven choices in matters of art, which should always be open to harsh scrutiny, there are many reasons a filmmaker might choose to revisit well-worn source material. The right approach is to look at each film in its own right and ask, “Does this movie do something new and fresh?” Writer-director Whit Stillman’s Love and Friendship, an adaptation of Jane Austen’s comedic novella Lady Susan, certainly does.
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It’s been well documented, especially with the advent of the Twitter hash tag #OscarsSoWhite, that the make-up of the Academy is overwhelmingly old and glowingly white. Oscar voters love to reward films that treat the not-too-distant past with a loving soft focus. For every 12 Years A Slave that demands a reckoning with ugly truths, there is a Driving Miss Daisy that reaffirms things weren’t all that bad, really. Brooklyn is one of those. Set in 1952, the movie focuses on one of the many Irish citizens that came to America at the time. There’s a long history of Irish immigrants being looked down on by people who considered themselves “real Americans,” but the movie dispenses with this mentality by using it for a quick bit of comic relief. The main character Eilis (in the character’s home country of Ireland, it’s pronounced AY-lish) learns that all it takes to assimilate to the American way of life is grit and determination. Because this is a movie devoted to a rose-colored view of history, that’s all Eilis needs in order to succeed.
There is a sentimentality and nostalgia for a simpler time that permeates every frame of Brooklyn. As you might expect from a movie that completely romanticizes a bygone era, the filmmakers take great care in beautifully photographing their tale. The performances from the leads, too, are top notch. Those elements can’t overcome the simplistic and predictable story, though, or the movie’s slavish devotion to its idea of the good old days.
Brooklyn tells the story of Eilis Lacey, a young Irish girl who moves to the New York borough in search of a better life. Eilis experiences seasickness while aboard the steamship that transports her to America and, in an example of the easily digestible kind of symbolism Brooklyn employs, the suffering she endures on her first trans-Atlantic trip represents the crushing homesickness she struggles with while trying to adjust to life in a new world. During the journey, a more experienced traveler takes Eilis under her wing. The woman provides instruction on what food to avoid while on board and, more importantly, how to conduct herself once they arrive at the U.S. port of entry.
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