Author Archives: natezoebl
Daredevil (2003)
Not as bad as it could have been. That’s the best way to sum up Ben Affleck in tights.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003)
Andie Anderson (Kate Hudson) is a fashion magazine writer with the juiciest column of her up and coming career. She will catch herself a man then torture him for ten days by subjecting him to mistakes women make in relationships (calling too much, tampons in the medicine cabinet, asking if you look fat). Benjamin Barry (Mathew McConaughey) is a hotshot ad exec convinced he can make any girl fall in love with him. His confidant colleagues put him to the test and select a girl he has ten days to fall in love with him. Any guesses which lucky lady gets picked?
Hudson and McConaughey have a weirdly effective chemistry that seems to grow on you as the film continues. The over animated and cutesy antics of Hudson gel nicely with McConaughey’s sly charm and syrupy drawl. Their battle of the sexes doesn’t really reach the simmer and zip of classic screwball comedies but the journey along the way to the predictable coupling is rife with healthy gender-crossing doses of humor.
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days plays its proceedings very close to the chest, following the well-worn path of romantic comedies that have come before. I guess it’s what to be expected when the source material is a picture book. Seriously, look into it. The movie even ends with the Man running against time to stop the Woman leaving on some vehicle set to a moderately upbeat, Top 40 pop song. Yes, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days has its formula down: initial clashing and trashing leads to lip mashing that’s just smashing. This is the kind of film where they hold the leads apart as long as they can and then let ’em at each other.
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is a decent date for you and your honey, especially if romantic comedies are really your bag. For me, the lack of surprises gave me much time to think and three things kept circulating in my brain: 1) Aren’t too many romantic comedies today built upon some premise of deceit? Isn’t this a bad idea to start a relationship?, and, 2) Does Mathew McConaughey always act this stoned?
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)
The premise is undeniably amusing: game show host and creator Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell) in between escorting Dating Game couples and introducing Gong Show losers, was a hired killer for the CIA. The directorial debut by George Clooney is impressive on a technical level. Clooney is inventive with scene changes, camera angles, lighting, editing, color palettes … I don’t know whether to champion him or credit his excellent cinematographer, but hats off to whomever designed the look of this movie. Rockwell is great and carries the film well, though I think he lacks the proper ability for self-loathing that the character needs. The brilliant weirdness of the story is tempered by famed scribe Charlie Kaufman’s astute sense of the intricately bizarre. Kaufman is a master of the offbeat, but he does more with his story structures and the ability to keep surprising than any other screenwriter. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is a cheeky diversion into the unauthorized autobiography written by Barris himself. The movie itself is one big joke and Clooney tells it like a pro.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Better Luck Tomorrow (2002)
This film shows a fascinating side to the underbelly to suburban malaise. The story centers on a group of Asian-American friends that are social delinquents and petty criminals that can get away with it because theyre star students. Its an interesting dichotomy in Justin Lin’s directorial debut. The cast is strong and the pacing is brisk. The opening five minutes yanks you into this world and places you in the hands of a confidant voice. Familiar elements abound like unrequited love, jealousy, crashing lows, but Better Luck Tomorrow gives them a mildly fresh spin. The films familiar territory gets the better of it in a languid final act, but the ride is still an enjoyable and entertaining one at that.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Catch Me If You Can (2002)
January at the theaters is a tale of two kinds of films. One type are the studio bombs (take Just Married and Darkness Falls, please take them far away). The other type are the prestige pictures expanding their releases in hopes of garnering some of that Oscar magic. A lot of prestige films were released around the holidays and though not every one could be a winner, they were all better than Kangaroo Jack. Well, except for The Hours.
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
Premise: Successful true-life con artist Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leo DiCaprio) zips across the world posing as a pilot, doctor and lawyer all before the age of 18. A mousy Tom Hanks provides the chasing.
Results: Breezy and light-hearted, Catch is an entertaining and fun romp that works with a charming Leo (unlike in Gangs), a jazzy score and a skillful recreation of the 1960s life and mood. Spielberg hasn’t made a film under two hours since 1989, so Catch is a tad long.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Chicago (2002)
January at the theaters is a tale of two kinds of films. One type are the studio bombs (take Just Married and Darkness Falls, please take them far away). The other type are the prestige pictures expanding their releases in hopes of garnering some of that Oscar magic. A lot of prestige films were released around the holidays and though not every one could be a winner, they were all better than Kangaroo Jack. Well, except for The Hours.
Chicago (2002)
Premise: Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger), hungry for fame, finally grasps it when she kills her lover and is put on trial. Silver-tongue lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere) stirs up the media in her defense, as well as for another starlet killer, Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones).
Results: A song-and-dance picture thats quite toe-tappin with imaginative numbers, even if I can only remember like two songs. A surprisingly steady Zeta-Jones really shines and Gere can cut a rug. Chicago is just lively fun. Blink and youll miss Lucy Liu in it.
Nate’s Grade: B
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About Schmidt (2002)
January at the theaters is a tale of two kinds of films. One type are the studio bombs (take Just Married and Darkness Falls, please take them far away). The other type are the prestige pictures expanding their releases in hopes of garnering some of that Oscar magic. A lot of prestige films were released around the holidays and though not every one could be a winner, they were all better than Kangaroo Jack. Well, except for The Hours.
About Schmidt (2002)
Premise: Retired and recently widowed, Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) must learn to live his own life for the first time. Warren travels across the country to rediscover himself and stop his resentful daughter from marrying a man-child with a mullet.
Results: Nicholson downplays his usual shark grin to deliver one of his best performances in a funny, tragic, savage yet warm-hearted film. About Schmidt, from the creators of Election and Citizen Ruth, is one of the best films of 2002.
Nate’s Grade: A
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The Hours (2002)
Okay, after watching the Golden Globes award show and seeing The Hours crowned with the highest prize, and hearing incessantly about Nicole Kidman’s fake prosthetic nose in the movie, it was time to venture into that darkened theater and see how good the awards-friendly The Hours was. Little did I fully realize what I was getting myself into.
Nicole Kidman plays Virginia Woolf, who is in the midst of writing her novel Mrs. Dalloway, where she proposes to display a womans entire life through the events of a single day. Julianne Moore plays Laura Brown, a housewife in 1951 having difficulty adjusting to a domestic life that she feels ill equipped for. Meryl Streep plays Clarissa Vaughan, a gay copy-editor in 2001 planning a party for a poet and former lover (an emaciated Ed Harris), who is suffering from the late stages of AIDS. These three storylines will be juggled as the film progresses, with each womans life deeply changing before the end of the day.
The Hours is a meandering mess where the jigsaw pieces can be easily identified. The attempt at a resolution for an ending, tying the three storylines together, is handled very clumsily. The film spins on and on that you start to believe the title may be more appropriate than intended. What this movie needed was a rappin kangaroo, post haste! The film is wrought with victimization and screams ”Give me an award already!” Before you know it youre being bludgeoned to death with what is profoundly the most over serious Lifetime network movie ever assembled. And there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with Lifetime movies but The Hours does not share the sensibilities of its TV brethren.
Kidman, nose and all, gives a strong performance displaying the torture and frailty of a writer trapped within her own mind but too often relies on wistful staring or icy glares. Moore is effectively demoralized but cannot resonate with such a shallow character. Streep is the least effective of the three and fizzles among an over-stuffed assembly of characters.
The supporting cast is unjustly left for dead. The characters are seen as parody (Toni Collette as Moore’s un-liberated homemaker neighbor), extraneous (Claire Danes as Streep’s daughter, Allison Janney as Streep’s lover, Jeff Daniels as Harris ex-lover, you know what, almost anyone in the Streep storyline), one-note (the workmanlike John C. Reilly who plays yet another doting and demystified husband) or merely obnoxious (Moore’s brat child that refuses to separate from her). It appears The Hours is the three lead actress game, and everyone else is not invited to play along.
Stephen Daldry’s direction shows surprising stability and instinct after his art-house pandering Billy Elliot showed little. The technical aspects of The Hours are quite competent, especially the sharp editing and musical score, which just points out further how slickly hollow and manufactured the film is.
The Hours is an over-glossed, morose film that is too self-important for its own good. It sucks the life out of everything. And for all its doom and gloom and tsunami of tears, the only insightful thing The Hours is trying to pass off onto the public is that women are more depressed than you think.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Narc (2002)
Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A hard-nosed and diligent cop (Jason Patrick) gets taken off the force after in accident while serving in the field. The bureau brings him back in the help of solving a case collecting cobwebs, the death of an officer undercover. This cop gets teamed up with a hothead (Ray Liotta) who doesn’t play by all the rules who becomes increasingly more suspicious that said hothead breaks more rules than enforces. Oh, and diligent cops neglected wife and child incessantly worry over his well being as he becomes consumed by the work. Whats that, you want me to stop? Well okay then.
So what do we get with Narc? Well, Ray Liotta yells. A lot. He’ll huff and puff until smoke blows out his ears and veins jump from his neck. Liotta eats scenery uncontrollably like Marlon Brando left alone at the Cheesecake Factory.
Narc attempts to tell a gritty police drama in the same manner of The French Connection but, instead, turns into every other gritty cop movie. The twists (I use this word lightly because every turn is easily telegraphed) do nothing to liven up this rote rogue copper flick. Let’s face it, every cop drama is plot driven, even the classics like L.A. Confidential and The French Connection. So if you don’t have a good story then theres no gas in this car. And Narc barely runs on fumes.
Writer/director Joe Carnahan tries to play window dressing with some superfluous camera tricks in an attempt to jazz up the proceedings. The opening handheld chase scene could give the makers of The Blair Witch Project motion sickness. The editing can at times simulate an annoying fly buzzing around your ear. The result of these tricks is like covering a turd with chocolate and selling it to the masses.
Narc won’t quicken any pulses or knock any socks out of their vicinity. So what will you get? Well Ray Liotta yelling at you, which, surprisingly, could lead to audience narc-olepsy. Even that horrible pun is better than watching the film. I think that says it all.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Gangs of New York (2002)
Watching Martin Scorsese’s long-in-the-making Gangs of New York is like watching a 12-round bout between two weary and staggering prize fighters. You witness the onslaught of blows, see the momentum change several times, and in the end cant really tell which fighter is victorious. This is the experience of watching Gangs of New York, and the two fighters are called Ambitions and Flaws.
The film begins in the Five Points district of 1840s New York among a vivid gang war over turf. Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio) witnesses the slaying of his father, Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson), at the blade of William Bill the Butcher Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his Native Americans gang. So what does this son of a dead preacher-man do? Well he grows up, plots revenge by making a name under the wing of the Butcher becoming like a surrogate son. But will vengeance consume him?
Watch Leo DiCaprio assemble toughs, rake heels, and ne’er do wells to his Irish gang of rapscallions with facial hair that looks to be tweezed! Witness a one-dimensional Leo suck the life out of the film like a black hole! See Leo become the least frightening gangster since Fredo. Watch the horribly miscast Cameron Diaz play pin-the-tail-on-an-accent! Witness as she tries to play a pickpocket with a heart of gold that falls hopelessly and illogically in love with Leo! Marvel how someone looking like Diaz would exist in a mangy slum! See the brilliant Daniel Day-Lewis upstage our stupid hero and steal every scene he inhabits! Witness one of the greatest villains in the last decade of movies! Watch Day-Lewis almost single-handedly compensate for the films flaws with his virtuoso performance! Admire his stove-top hat and handlebar mustache!
Witness a wonderful supporting cast including John C. Reilly, Jim Broadbent and Brendan Gleeson! Wish that they had more screen time to work with! Wonder to yourself why in all good graces this film took nearly two years of delays to get out! Speculate away!
Gangs has the sharp aroma of a film heavily interfered with by its producers. The whole exercise feels like Scorsese being compromised. Gangs is a meticulous recreation of 1860s New York that often evokes an epic sense of awe. The story has more resonance when it flashes to small yet tasty historical asides, like the dueling fire houses and the Draft Riots. But all of these interesting tidbits get pushed aside for our pedantic revenge storyline with Leo front and center. You know the producers wanted a more commercial storyline, which probably explains why Diaz has anything to do with this.
The script is credited to longtime Scorsese collaborator Jay Cocks, Steven Zallian (Academy Award winner for Schindler’s List) and Kenneth Lonergan (Academy award nominee for You Can Count on Me). So with all these writing credentials, dont you think one of them would realize all of the dumb things going on with the story? The ending is also very anticlimactic and ham-fisted. Just watch as we segue from a graveyard to present day New York, all thanks to the Irish rockers of U2!
I know this much, Day-Lewis needs to stop cobbling shoes and act more often. Gangs is his first visit to the big screen since 1997’s The Boxer. He spent part of this hiatus in Italy actually making shoes. I don’t know about everyone else but this man has too much talent to only be acting once every five years. Somebody buy his shoes and get him a script, post haste!
Scorsese’s Gangs of New York is at times sprawling with entertainment in its historic vision and at other times is infuriating, always dragging behind it a ball and chain called stupid revenge story/love story. I’m sure the film will get plenty of awards and Oscar nods in prominent categories, and this seems like the Academy’s familiar plan: ignore a brilliant artist for the majority of their career and then finally reward them late for one of their lesser films. So here’s hoping Scorsese wins the Oscar he deserved for Raging Bull and Goodfellas.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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