The Ace Black Movie Blog

Thursday, 30 November 2017

The Movies Of Zooey Deschanel

All movies starring Zooey Deschanel and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Almost Famous (2000)

The Good Girl (2002)

Big Trouble (2002)

Elf (2003)

Failure To Launch (2006)

The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (2007)

Yes Man (2008)

Gigantic (2008)

500 Days Of Summer (2009)

Rock The Kasbah (2015)

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

Wednesday, 29 November 2017

Movie Review: Runner Runner (2013)

A drama thriller set in the world of gambling, Runner Runner deals a potentially intriguing hand but folds early.

Richie Furst (geddit? played by Justin Timberlake) is a financially struggling mature student at Princeton. Richie was on the fast track to Wall Street wealth when the 2008 financial crisis destroyed his prospects. Now he makes money on the side by channeling fellow Princeton students to online gambling sites. Threatened with expulsion, Richie tries to win his entire tuition playing online poker on the Midnight Black site. He loses everything, but not before spotting signs of a sophisticated cheating scam.

Richie travels to Costa Rica and confronts Ivan Block (Ben Affleck), the charismatic head of the Midnight Black online gambling empire, with proof of the scam. Impressed, Ivan offers Richie a job, and the money starts pouring in. Richie meets and starts a relationship with Rebecca (Gemma Arterton), one of Ivan's associates, but also starts to get exposure to the dark underbelly of Ivan's business, including massive extortion of local Costa Rican officials and dodging threats from FBI Agent Shavers (Anthony Mackie).

Directed by Brad Furman, Runner Runner has the kernels of a good story, even carrying echoes of no less a classic than Gilda. The film looks slick, capturing the vivid decadence of life with the super rich operating marginally legal but massively profitable gambling businesses from off shore havens. Furman mixes glitz and glamour with earthy Costa Rican surroundings, and Runner Runner is nothing if not a colourful and visually immersive experience.

Furman also deserves credit for avoiding the temptation to suddenly turn Furst into any kind of action hero. Runner Runner remains reasonably grounded in reality, and the thriller elements are drawn from a battle of wits and influence, rather than the more typical surge into cheap action.

But little else works. Timberlake offers bored and unnecessary narration, and the story only starts off with promise. It is quickly apparent that little will actually be explained, and so the nature of Furst's job with Block is incoherent, the relationship between Rebecca and Ivan is barely sketched in, and Richie has a couple of buddies who seem to be essential to the story but hardly register. Richie's father (John Heard) pokes his head into the margins of the story, seemingly from a whole other movie.

The deeper the film gets into the sub-plot of grafting local politicos, FBI Agent Shavers' hissing agenda, and the inner workings of Ivan's business and his grand plan, the less useful information is provided. By the time the third act arrives and true colours start to be revealed, it's impossible to care about any of the characters.

The performances are predictably stoic. Timberlake maintains the same tone throughout, Affleck mails in an easy turn as the slick mover and shaker, and Arterton is never quite sure what her role in the movie really is.

Runner Runner starts with a decent sprint but quickly runs out of steam.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Tuesday, 28 November 2017

Movie Review: Less Than Zero (1987)

A coming-of-age drugs-and-sex morality tales, Less Than Zero oozes style but reeks of plastic music-video superficiality.

Classmates Clay (Andrew McCarthy), his girlfriend Blair (Jami Gertz), and Julian (Robert Downey Jr.) were best friends from wealthy families at their Los Angeles high school. After graduation Clay heads out to college, Blair stays in LA to pursue a modeling career, and Julian dreams of successful business investment ventures using his father's money. At Thanksgiving Clay discovers that Blair and Julian are sleeping together, and at Christmas he returns home for another visit at Blair's request.

Clay finds Julian broke, addicted, and descending into a spiral of hard drugs supplied by slick dealer Rip (James Spader). Julian is still charismatic and dreaming of his next big venture, but running on empty, and owing Rip a lot of money. Clay reconnects with Blair and they rekindle their relationship as they try to help Julian break out of his destructive cycle.

A loose adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' celebrated book about life among LA's decadent teens, Less Than Zero is loud but exceedingly tedious. Self-consciously directed by Marek Kanievska, the film looks sumptuous, with every frame an attempted work of art, Kanievska particularly fond of symmetrical framing and glitzy hyperactive lights puncturing the LA nights. The music, for better or for worse, is the other notable achievement, Less Than Zero featuring a nonstop soundtrack of what passed for cool rock and party tunes in the mid to late 1980s.

Otherwise this is a story about teenagers attending parties and dabbling in unconstrained sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll dreams, but unfortunately the film drops to the vacuous level of its protagonists. Clay and Blair attend party after party, usually looking for Julian as he struggles through his latest drug-induced haze, only to restart the same cycle the next day. Kanievska may have intended the endless succession of parties with throbbing music and stroboscopic lights to meld into one long 98 minutes as a metaphor for lives being wasted on indistinguishable highs, but as a viewing experience, the film dances up a sweat in one place and gets nowhere fast.

Apart from the insatiable appetite for all-night parties featuring flickering mountains of monitors as the decor object of choice, the film struggles to reconcile the main character interactions with their age. Andrew McCarthy, Jami Gertz, Robert Downey Jr., and James Spader represent core and loose affiliates of the Brat Pack, and here they fail to convince as 19 year olds six months out of high school. The actors range in age from 22 (Gertz) to 27 (Spader), and the dialogue, courtesy of a Harley Peyton script, suggests thirtysomethings rather than spoiled teenagers. McCarthy comes off worst in his perpetual dreamlike state. Downey Jr. and Spader are suitably intense and slimy respectively, while Gertz is adequate.

With plenty of throbbing ostentation, Less Than Zero is not wholly negative, but it is less than meets the eye.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Monday, 27 November 2017

Movie Review: I Ought To Be In Pictures (1982)

A comedy-drama stage adaptation, I Ought To Be In Pictures tackles father-daughter issues and comes up empty.

19 year old Libby Tucker (Dinah Manoff) travels from New York to Los Angeles to reconnect with her father Herbert (Walter Matthau), a writer who abandoned the family when Libby was three. Libby dreams of a career in acting and imagines Herbert to be a powerful Hollywood big shot, but instead finds him to be a washed-up gambling addict, unemployed and suffering from writer's block. His girlfriend is movie studio hairdresser Steffy (Ann-Margaret), who tolerates Walter but is growing weary of his lack of ambition.

Libby and Walter immediately clash, as he finds it difficult to connect with his headstrong and talkative daughter and she is unable to forgive his past sins. But gradually they warm up to each other, she moves into his apartment, and they construct a functional relationship. But Libby will not find it easy to carve out a new life.

An adaptation of the Neil Simon play directed by Herbert Ross, I Ought To Be In Pictures is smothered by over-embroidered prose dancing between cringe-worthy, needlessly profound and just plain embarrassing. Ross also directed the Broadway show and does not try too hard to transform it into a film experience. As is often the case, what works well on the stage appears ridiculously ceremonial on the screen, and the phrases coming out of the mouth of Libby and Herbert rarely carry a genuine warmth.

The movie is very much a two character study, and scene after scene feature Libby and Herbert carrying on long conversations, typically at his apartment. Ross throws in perfunctory excursions to the baseball park and the racetrack in half-hearted attempts to ventilate the claustrophobic setting. The topics of conversation range from her improbable career aspirations to his unforgivable abandonment of the family, and finally no less than the most awkward father-daughter non-talk about the emotions of sexual experiences. Simon's writing is undoubtedly clever, but when every other line has to be a zinger, the unrealistic quantity competes unfavourably with quality.

Dinah Manoff was the one stage performer allowed to recreate her character for the film, and she receives no help from Ross in modulating. The character of Libby is borderline irritating at the best of times as the talk-non-stop Quixotic daughter on a quest to conquer her father and the acting world, and Manoff's shout-it-to-the-rafters delivery does not help. Matthau is much better, and carries the film as the stooped writer long past caring in a town run by younger men. Ann-Margret is fine in a supporting role, although she is never able to properly explain why the seemingly smart Steffy is hanging out with an indebted has-been like Herbert.

Despite the many weaknesses the film does find a few highlights, and most of these arrive in the final act. Once father and daughter make the adjustments to accommodate each other, Ross finally finds a few poignant scenes. The shouting and recriminations are replaced by hushed, tender, and cinematic conversations, and finally emotions seep through. It's all too little and too late, the film having been well and truly pulverized by all the theatrical antics.

Despite the title, I Ought To Be In Pictures ought to stay on the stage.