Monday 27 February 2017

The Movies Of Eric Bana





All movies starring Eric Bana and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:









































All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Sunday 26 February 2017

Movie Review: Hitchcock (2012)


A peak inside the mind and private life of one of cinema's greatest ever directors, Hitchcock is a fictionalized account of the period leading up to his career's greatest triumph.

Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) should be basking in the success of 1959's North By Northwest, but instead he is experiencing anxieties about his age, his weight, and finding his next project. Despite the objections of studio bosses, he decides to adapt the book Psycho by Robert Bloch, a horrific story of murder, mutilation and unburied corpses based on real-life murderer Ed Gein. With the studio refusing to fund what appears to be a salacious horror film, Hitchcock and his wife and frequent collaborator Alma (Helen Mirren) take the biggest risk of their lives by mortgaging their house to self-fund the production.

Alma starts to work on the script, while Hitchcock's loyal assistant Peggy (Toni Collette) leads a campaign to buy every copy of the book to increase the shock value of the film. Alma recommends Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson) for the lead, and Hitchcock is smitten with his latest blonde leading lady, much to Alma's disgust. Also cast are Vera Miles (Jessica Biel), who previously disappointed Hitchcock by placing her family first, and a tentative Anthony Perkins (James D'Arcy). The pressure on Hitchcock mounts and affects his health, especially once Alma starts to spend a lot of time with screenwriter Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston).

Directed by Sacha Gervasi, Hitchcock is compact and tightly focused on the turmoil that often accompanies the creative process. Running at just 98 minutes, the film packs in the ups and downs of the journey from idea to final film, and reveals plenty about the man by zooming in on a short pivotal period in his life.

Remarkably Hitchcock dissects Psycho without showing a single frame of the celebrated film. The boundary-bashing elements of the film are revealed through clashes with the Motion Picture Production Board, while a stellar highlight is achieved as Hitchcock conducts every frame of the shower scene, alone in the empty theatre lobby outside an early screening.

But this is a film as much about the man as the movie. Hitchcock hints strongly at the director's character weaknesses, including an inability to control his appetite. Perhaps related is a blatantly wandering eye, and a lust to dominate women manifested in a search for an idealized vision of a perfect blonde. In Alma Hitchcock has found and married his perfect life partner, but now looks past her and cannot help but flirt shamelessly with younger women while displaying obsessive and manipulative traits.

The film stops short of veering towards anything darker in Hitchcock's observed behaviour towards women. Gervasi instead chooses the more imaginative route, getting into Hitchcock's head for fantasy scenes of interaction with murderer Gein (Michael Wincott), and suggestions that the financial and artistic stresses triggered suppressed thoughts of violence towards the finally fed-up Alma. And her essential role in Hitchcock's success is a key theme of the film, Alma indeed emerging as the rational creative force balancing his arrogance and showmanship.

Anthony Hopkins grows into the role as the film progresses, capturing Hitchcock's well-known mannerisms. Mirren matches Hopkins as the less showy and more grounded Alma. Scarlett Johansson and Jessica Biel provide adequate support in smallish roles representing different dynamics between Hitchcock and his actresses.

The success of Psycho as a seminal cinematic achievement is now taken for granted. Hitchcock pulls back the shower curtain to reveal the self-doubt, determination and strife holding hands with genius.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Saturday 25 February 2017

Movie Review: Parental Guidance (2012)


A family comedy, Parental Guidance offers healthy doses of playfulness and sentimentality as it explores generational shifts in attitudes towards parenting.

The aging Artie Decker (Billy Crystal) is fired from his job as sports commentator for a Fresno minor league baseball team for being behind the times on social media. Artie and his wife Diane (Bette Midler) are soon asked to babysit their grand kids in Atlanta for a week. Artie's daughter Alice (Marisa Tomei) and her husband Phil (Tom Everett Scott) are a busy modern day couple with three kids: daughter Harper (Bailee Madison) is a tightly wound over-achiever, middle son Turner suffers from a stutter, and the youngest son Barker has an imaginary kangaroo friend.

Artie and Diane have a distant relationship with Alice and her family, and Diane seizes on the babysitting opportunity to try and become a better grandparent. But Alice does not trust her parents, and for good reason: Artie bumble his way into disrupting the kids' routine and undoing Alice's careful parenting methods, as his more blunt and old fashioned values clash with more modern touchy-feely upbringing attitudes.

Directed by Andy Fickman, Parental Guidance aims for amiable and achieves it. The film stays well within a family-friendly domain, and allows Billy Crystal to do what he does best as a youngish grandpa providing caustic commentary on a world moving away from his level of comfort. The comedy is mild but constant, the emotions do creep towards mushy as everyone goes looking for a happy ending, but overall, the film squarely hits its intended if admittedly modest target.

Without breaking any new ground, Parental Guidance pokes away at some worthwhile themes. The clash between more strict, discipline-oriented parenting and the more modern values-based approach quickly comes to the fore, and the film wisely acknowledges imperfections in both philosophies. The story starts with Alice a continent and a lifetime away from her father, his methods clearly having been less than stellar in establishing a lifelong relationship. But Alice and Phil will also learn some lessons from Artie and Diane, with one week of grand parenting shock therapy sufficient to shake the kids loose from some coddled constraints.

Crystal, Midler and Tomei provide plenty of reliable adult talent, while the kids also deserve credit for achieving realism and avoiding excess cutesiness in favour of embracing the anxieties and pressures that come with growing up in a complex world.

Parental Guidance offers the one truth about parenting: everyone does it wrong, but with a sense of humour, that's alright.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Nine Months (1995)


A romantic comedy about transitioning from couplehood to parenthood, Nine Months showcases Hugh Grant's emerging talents and achieves big laughs with some slick slap stick.

In San Francisco, child psychologist Sam (Grant) and ballet teacher Becky (Julianne Moore) are in a seemingly perfect long-term relationship. When she announces an unexpected pregnancy, Sam is frazzled and feels unready. His attitude is not helped by constant accidental interactions with the chaotic family of Marty and Gail (Tom Arnold and Joan Cusack), who have three kids and a fourth on the way. Sam's friend Sean (Jeff Goldblum), a struggling yet sophisticated artist, is also not a fan of babyhood, having just broken off a relationship to avoid becoming a father.

As the pregnancy progresses, Becky becomes more committed to the idea of having a child, while all Sam can focus on is the loss of his independence and the fundamental changes to their lifestyle. The couple reach a crisis point, not helped by the seemingly incompetent efforts of Dr. Kosevich (Robin Williams), a recent Russian immigrant with limited vocabulary.

Directed and co-written by Chris Columbus, Nine Months was Hugh Grant's first studio-backed Hollywood production. The film is perhaps overstuffed with Grant's signature mannerisms of rapid blinking, eye-shifting, stuttering and off-handed cynicisms, but overall this is a comedy that benefits from his talent and establishes the Grant screen persona as the likable but boyish urbane man who refuses to grow up.

This is rom-com where the romance eventually takes a back seat to the comedy. Columbus firmly sets his focus on achieving crowning laugh-out-loud moments, and largely delivers. Some of it is pure slapstick, including an encounter with a Barney-type dinosaur at a toy store, but it works. And thanks to Robin Williams committing to the insanity of a veterinarian insecure about his first foray into human medicine, the film's finale is a frantic classic.

In its more serious moments Nine Months preys on the theme of men unwilling to mature. Sam is at the peak of his youth's fantasy, enjoying being in love, an emerging career, a new sports car and a beautiful woman by his side. The concept of abandoning what appears to be perfection to dive into the world of fatherhood is terrifying, and not made any easier by his superficial observations of what appears to be the anarchy of families in the full swing of parenting. His transformation is of course linear and predictable, but Columbus makes the most of a natural and widespread anxiety.

The cast members provide strong support. Moore registers as a woman fully embracing impending motherhood and unafraid to make difficult decisions when needed. Robin Williams has just the two prominent scenes but is unforgettable as Dr. Kosevich, while Jeff Goldblum delivers another version of his superficially smooth expert roles, gradually revealing Sean as a king of nothing.

Nine Months captures the emotional disarray of pregnancy: the gestation period is long, if for no other reason than to allow men to catch up with the drastic changes to come.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Movie Review: Always (1989)


A bland fantasy romance, Always has the wrong cast embarrassingly over-emoting their way through a banal story.

Pete Sandich (Richard Dreyfuss) and his pal Al Yackey (John Goodman) are aerial firefighters, experts in dropping retardant on raging forest fires from converted World War Two era bombers. A risk-taking daredevil in the sky, Pete has a long-term relationship with Dorinda Durston (Holly Hunter), a fellow pilot who works mostly as a dispatcher. She loves him and wants him to stop flying, but he cannot bring himself to express his love and insists that flying is his life.

Pete dies in an aerial mishap after saving Al's life, and the angel Hap (Audrey Hepburn, as elegant as ever in her final screen role) guides his spirit back to earth. His spectral mission is to be the inspiration for handsome pilot Ted Baker (Brad Johnson), who wants to earn his aerial firefighting wings to win Dorinda's love. Pete finds himself torn between helping his protege and still pining for the love of his life.

A remake of 1943's A Guy Named Joe and one of director Steven Spielberg's rare but comprehensive misfires, Always lands with a dull thud. Nothing works: the jokes are juvenile, the romance is not even close to being convincing, the casting is atrocious, and almost every scene is extended well past its usefulness as the movie lumbers its way to a completely unnecessary running length of over two hours.

Spielberg falls into the trap of wanting every little event to be grand and goes looking for Meaningful Moments at every turn, the John Williams score inflating the emotions to laughable levels. The drama and tension, whether in the sky or back on earth, are contrived and appear targeted towards a child audience.

Resetting the story from the original existential World War Two conflict to the much more mundane territory of fire fighting in the middle of nowhere severely undermines the drama and the characters, with the actors comprehensively defeated by the material and ham-fisted tone. Richard Dreyfus and Holly Hunter are lost for purpose and share no chemistry. Dreyfus turns on full braggart mode, making Pete singularly boring and unattractive. Hunter, a most down-to-earth actress, struggles to play an ethereal inspiration. John Goodman essentially plays a caricature, and Brad Johnson has the screen presence of a white wall.

Always aims for a flighty fantasy, but stalls on the taxiway, belching putrid smoke.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.



Movie Review: A Big Hand For The Little Lady (1966)


A comedy western, A Big Hand For The Little Lady is a fun and sweaty adventure that stays well within itself and plays a strong game.

Five rich men, including the gruff Henry P.G. Drummond (Jason Robards), gather in Laredo for their annual high stakes game of poker in the back room of a local saloon. Soon after the game starts, the humble family of Meredith (Henry Fonda), his wife Mary (Joanne Woodward) and their young son Jackie wander into town.

Meredith is a recovering gambling addict and perpetual loser who had promised Mary he will never play again. But the lure of the game draws him in, first to watch, then to join in. Before long Meredith is on a long losing streak, and has risked the family's $4,000 in savings. Things get a lot worse when Meredith collapses at the table while holding the strongest hand of his life. To the horror of Drummond and the other men, Mary takes over.

Produced and directed by Fielder Cook, who was better known for television productions, A Big Hand For The Little Lady is a tightly focused 95 minutes of solid entertainment. With a willing cast enjoying the theatre-like setting of just a couple of key locations, the film builds up its premise, sketches in the main characters with admirable efficiency, and stokes the fire of a family's future riding on a single poker hand.

Most of the action takes place around the poker table, and Fielder makes the most of a confined macho ambiance invaded first by the anxious and clearly emotionally fragile Meredith and then by the incredulous Mary. Meredith has the stamp of a loser on his moist forehead, Mary then has to display grim yet clueless determination to rescue their modest fortune.

Drummond leads the brusque howls of objection as a man who interrupted his daughter's wedding to attend a game now seemingly descending into farce. Meanwhile Habershaw (Kevin McCarthy), another of the rich men around the table, finds Mary attractive and is the only one of the players to extend her some sympathy.

Fonda excels in a relatively small role, exaggerating his worried eyes and luxuriating in gallons of sweat as the losses mount. Woodward is the perfect prim and proper wife, exasperated by her husband's addiction then holding her cards very close to her chest. Secondary characters become prominent as the film progresses, with the town doctor (Burgess Meredeith) then the local banker C.P. Ballinger (Paul Ford), a tycoon who despises poker, finding themselves sucked into the drama.

With plenty of humour and some added spice, A Big Hand For The Little Lady works its way to a moment of realization and growth for the rich men of Laredo. Drummond in particular gains new perspective on what matters in life as he returns to his daughter's wedding, even if the true identity of the sucker at the table remains a mystery.






All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Wednesday 22 February 2017