The Ace Black Movie Blog

Showing posts with label James Franco. Show all posts

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Movie Review: Homefront (2013)

A basic action drama about an ex-government agent tangling with small-town drug pushers, Homefront brawls through predictably satisfactory territory.

In a messy operation, New Orleans-based Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) undercover officer Phil Broker (Jason Statham) disrupts the methamphetamine lab of gangster Danny T (Chuck Zito). Disillusioned with unnecessary bloodshed, Phil retires to the small rural Louisiana town of Rayville to raise his young daughter Maddy (Izabela Vidovic) in peace.

Maddy tangles with the school bully, and Broker humiliates the bully's parents Cassie and Jimmy Klum (Kate Bosworth and Marcus Hester). Cassie turns to her brother and local meth manufacturer "Gator" Bodine (James Franco) to settle scores. Gator and his girlfriend Sheryl Marie (Winona Ryder) uncover Broker's background and conspire with the imprisoned Danny T to cause more trouble for Broker and Maddy.

A solid, unspectacular, and eminently calculable drama, Homefront delivers exactly what should be expected from a film starring Jason Statham with a screenplay by Sylvester Stallone. Regardless of the plot's progress, about every 10 minutes Broker gets to display his superior combat skills, taking on one or many foes with a near-certain outcome: Broker standing tall, everyone else crumpled in a heap. It's an almost comforting level of normalcy in action film making.

Stallone adds enough notes of humanity between Broker and his daughter Maddy to surround the skull bashing with familial warmth. And the character of drug addicted redneck mama bear Cassie, with Kate Bosworth in excellent form, injects a welcome variability.

But otherwise director Gary Fleder manages to bungle many of the action scene with barely rational angles and lazy editing, while the plot fills several cliche bingo cards: father and daughter lamenting the loss of the idyllic wife/mother, the horse-riding child placed in harms way, the pet in peril, the Black sidekick (Omar Benson Miller), the corrupt local cop (Clancy Brown), and the hints of a romance between the tough protagonist and the perky school psychologist (Rachelle Lefevre, way too perky for this backwater of a little town).

Star charisma helps navigate the routine terrain, Jason Statham's stoic heroism and Dave Franco's slimy villainy creating worthy adversaries. Winona Ryder is too good for the fast-fried role of a trashy errand girl on the cusp of finding a conscience. Homefront wins no awards for originality, but is too busy breaking bones to care.

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Monday, 30 December 2019

Movie Review: Pineapple Express (2008)

A stoner buddy comedy, Pineapple Express is an uneven effort, with lightweight comedy, vulgarity and over-the-top bloody action uncomfortably rubbing shoulders.

Stoner Dale Denton (Seth Rogen) has a job serving court-issued subpoenas, but spends his time smoking pot he buys from dealer Saul Silver (James Franco) and hovering around his much younger girlfriend Angie (Amber Heard), who is still in high school. Dale witnesses a murder at the home of Ted Jones (Gary Cole), the master supplier of drugs in the area. Complicating matters is corrupt police officer Carol Brazier (Rosie Perez), who is on Ted's payroll.

Hitmen Budlofsky (Kevin Corrigan) and Matheson (Craig Robinson) are soon attempting to eliminate Dale and Saul. They seek refuge with drug dealer Red (Danny McBride), but he gets his supply from Ted, and so has divided loyalties. Dale and Saul have to save their lives and their friendship while finding a way to stop Ted's evil plot.

Pineapple Express opens with a black and white prelude set in 1937 at a secret facility, featuring the US military trialing a marijuana joint on a test subject and concluding pot should absolutely be illegal.

The rest of the film is a humorous call to decriminalization, the screenplay by Rogen and Evan Goldberg portraying pot users and dealers as laidback and harmless bros. Meanwhile the criminal underworld profits, the supply controlled by evildoers like Ted Jones who is not only corrupting enforcement officers but also engaged in a violent turf battle with a heavily armed asian gang.

Beyond its basic message Pineapple Express is stuck in a field of mediocrity. The plot is a bedraggled affair mainly serving to stitch together outlandish low-brow humour. Many scenes drag on well beyond what is necessary, director David Gordon Green prolonging the flimsy film to 112 minutes. The final gunfight battle is particularly endless, and earlier Dale's first visit to Saul's apartment also overstays its welcome, with a lot of their dialogue carrying the whiff of improv.

The better sequences feature a three-way brawl at Red's apartment, a most awkward intrusion onto a family dinner at girlfriend Angie's house, and a not-bad manic car chase.

Pineapple Express serves up a few sweet laughs, but has trouble cutting through all the surface roughness.

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Tuesday, 4 December 2018

Movie Review: Why Him? (2016)

A culture clash comedy, Why Him? contains a few over-the-top laughs but runs out of ideas quite quickly.

In the San Jose area, Stanford University student Stephanie Fleming (Zoey Deutch) is the girlfriend of slightly eccentric tech millionaire Laird Mayhew (James Franco). Stephanie is close with her dad Ned (Bryan Cranston), and invites him along with her mother Barb (Megan Mullally) and younger brother Scotty to come for a visit and meet Laird.

The conservative Ned runs an old fashioned printing business in Michigan, and is now struggling to make ends meet. Upon arrival the Flemings are taken aback by Laird's wealth, lifestyle, gadget-filled house and constant vulgarity. However Laird is also kind hearted and honest. Despite having nothing in common, Laird insists on gaining Ned's approval to marry Stephanie.

Directed by John Hamburg and co-produced by Jonah Hill and Ben Stiller (among others), Why Him? riffs on the familiar Meet The Parents theme. Here instead of the happy young couple being intimidated by overbearing parents, the tables are turned as Ned and Barb find themselves out of their depth in Laird's domain. The young (but still too old for Stephanie) tech success story is a heavily tattooed millionaire without a filter but with a dream house, and culturally on another planet from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The sheer presence of James Franco letting loose as Laird is the source of most of the film's humour, with Bryan Cranston providing the perfect foil as the often speechless Ned. They clash over food, language, money, technology, and Stephanie's future career plans, with Ned never finding a level of comfort and Laird mostly wondering what all the fuss is about.

The cast also includes Keegan-Michael Key as Gustav, Laird's friend, sparring partner and house manager. His presence never quite clicks, in a sign of the film's lack of depth.

Once the tone is set in the first third Why Him? starts to lose momentum. Few new elements are introduced, several concepts are half-baked and abandoned altogether, and many of the vulgar jokes loop for the third and fourth time. A hacking sub-plot is hurriedly introduced to no great purpose, and Hamburg blandly steers the movie towards familiar platitudes, without answering questions as to why a profanity-laden comedy would seek a cuddly family-friendly resolution.

Why Him? laughs at mutually incompatible first impressions, but does not progress much beyond that.

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Saturday, 3 November 2018

Movie Review: Third Person (2013)

A multi-story drama and romance, Third Person explores themes of loss and trust. While enjoying a spectacular cast in fine form, the pacing is lackadaisical and the narrative commonalities emerge too late.

The film presents three seemingly unrelated stories set in three different cities. At a Paris hotel, Michael (Liam Neeson) is a Pulitzer Award winning writer working on his latest book. He is separated from his wife Elaine (Kim Basinger) as they both deal with a family tragedy. Michael is joined in Paris by his lover Anna (Olivia Wilde), a vivacious aspiring writer. The relationship between Michael and Anna is passionate and tumultuous as she deals with a secret of her own.

In Rome, Scott (Adrien Brody) is an underhanded garment businessman, specializing in stealing and copying haute couture designs. Scott is still grieving a personal loss, and at bar he meets single mom Monika (Moran Atias). She needs money to rescue her daughter from human smugglers, and Scott finds himself irresistibly drawn to her plight.

In New York, Julia (Mila Kunis) is a perpetually late mother desperately working with her lawyer Theresa (Maria Bello) to win back the right to visit her young son. Julia was accused of harming her child, a charge she denies, but her artist husband Richard (James Franco) now has sole custody. Julia accepts a job as a hotel maid to make ends meet and to prove to a court psychologist that she deserves a chance to spend time with her son.

Written and directed by Paul Haggis, Third Person is tantalizingly close to being a good film, but unfortunately lands on the wrong side of emotionally static. The exploration of loss, yearning and the search for healing is worthwhile and handled with sensitivity. But all three stories start saddled with the heavy baggage of guilt, misfortune and grief, and that is where they stay. A few revelations work their way into the narratives, but the overarching cloud of gloom settles in early and never yields.

Given the prevailing lack of forward progression, at 137 minutes the film is too long. Haggis labours towards a final twist knotting the three stories together, but this is a case of genuinely bad timing. The final revelations tumble forth a few minutes before the end credits, and while the resolution is decent, it arrives well past the point of rescue.

Michael's fierce relationship with Anna is the central story, and works its way to the film's one startling moment. Scott's descent into Monika's world is more of a slow burn and a protracted case of who is playing who, and suffers from too much repetition. With more dedicated exposition, both chapters could be imagined as the basis for fine stand-alone films. In contrast Julia's struggle to prove herself worthy of visiting her son is remarkably slight and a relative mismatch in depth and quality.

The cast almost rescues the film, and the one benefit of the long running time is that many of the stars get to sink their teeth into the characters. Neeson and Wilde are most prominent, but Brody, Atias and Kunis all grab the substantive opportunities to shine.

Third Person looks for balms to help heal open wounds of guilt and regain lost trust. Regrettably, the long-winded routes to salvation prove to be tortuously dour.

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Sunday, 26 August 2018

Movie Review: The Disaster Artist (2017)

A comedy and drama about an exceptional character self-producing a horrible film, The Disaster Artist is a worthy homage to unique individuality.

In San Francisco, aspiring actor Greg Sestero (Dave Franco) meets enigmatic fellow performer Tommy Wiseau (James Franco). The men strike up a friendship, although Wiseau reveals little about himself. He has a strange accent, claims to be from New Orleans, and refuses to reveal his age or the source of his seemingly impressive wealth. The two men move to Los Angeles, where Wiseau just happens to have an apartment, to pursue their common acting dream.

Greg's good looks help him find an agent, but the roles don't follow for either man. Undeterred, Wiseau decides to write, finance, direct and star in his own production, titled The Room, an incomprehensible drama and romance about betrayal and lost love. He assembles a ramshackle crew including script supervisor Sandy (Seth Rogen) and cinematographer Raphael (Paul Scheer), and marginal acting talent including actresses Juliette (Ari Graynor) and Carolyn (Jacki Weaver). When Greg starts spending time with his new girlfriend Amber (Alison Brie), a chasm develops between the two men, further compounding Tommy's erratic behaviour.

The Room (2003) is considered one of the worst movies ever made, and as such has achieved admirable cult status. The Disaster Artist, directed by James Franco, is an adaptation of Sestero's book, chronicling his experiences with Wiseau. In many ways, this is the prototypical American story, the underdog outsider who plays by his own rules, faces adversity and obstacles at every turn, pushes ahead regardless, takes his creative lumps, but unexpectedly emerges victorious after paying the necessary price.

In a compact 103 minutes, Franco delivers a sterling film. The Disaster Artist is brisk, and draws phenomenal energy from Wiseau's character, at once impenetrable and irresistible. His passion is authentic, his friendship genuine, his accent just about incomprehensible. Franco brings Wiseau to life as a rounded person worth knowing, a marvellous example of singularity contributing to society's rich fabric.

The film is neatly divided into three parts, and each works well. The opening introduces the characters and their initial interactions in San Francisco, including discovering a shared appreciation for all things James Dean. The middle segment focuses on the struggles to make it in Los Angeles, the city of mostly unfulfilled dreams. The final and funniest act features the making of The Room, as Wiseau strides into a world of movie creation he knows nothing about, throws money at everything and haphazardly creates a masterpiece in his own mind.

On the screen, James Franco disappears into Wiseau and delivers a wonderful acting performance, free of irony or self-awareness and yet full of humour. Franco nails the deadpan self-belief of a man marching to the tune of his own drummer.

The Room was not the film Wiseau intended, but he nonetheless achieved his dream. Thankfully, he proved to be both a disaster creator and an artist. In the often stale filmmaking world, Wiseau's off-kilter brand of clueless determination is a welcome bolt of lunacy.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Friday, 20 January 2017

Movie Review: Lovelace (2013)

The sad story of the porn industry's first celebrity, Lovelace is cautionary tale of exploitation and abuse. The film is cleverly constructed but lacks any emotional breakthroughs.

It's 1970 in Florida, and 20 year old Linda Boreman (Amanda Seyfried) is living with her oppressive parents Dorothy and John (Sharon Stone and Robert Patrick). Her rebellion is enabled by the sleazy and much older Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard), who claims to maybe own a strip joint. Soon they get married, Chuck teaches Linda all about oral sex, and she is remarkably good at it. Claiming money pressure, Chuck pressures Linda into the pornography industry and Lovelace is created.

They connect with producers Anthony Romano (Chris Noth) and "Butchie" Peraino (Bobby Canavale), director Gerard Damiano (Hank Azaria) and co-star Harry Reems (Adam Brody). Over a matter of six days in 1972, Damiano films Deep Throat, a relatively artistic porn film capitalizing on Linda's abilities. The film becomes an unexpected breakout hit among mainstream audiences and helps to kick-off the porno chic trend. Linda becomes a household name and travels in celebrity circles, including a meeting with Playboy's Hugh Hefner (James Franco). But behind the surface glamour there is a very dark side to Linda's life involving rampant abuse by the domineering Chuck.

Co-directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Lovelace is a worthwhile companion piece to Boogie Nights. While the Paul Thomas Anderson film rides the breezy waves of pornography's golden era, Lovelace dives beneath the surface to poke at the visible bruises. Lovelace is too emotionally detached and conflicted in its messaging to be the better film, but it nevertheless places on record the horrific price paid by the performers exploited to serve a sordid industry.

As for the film, Epstein and Friedman do try something different. The first half breezes through Lovelace's rapid transition from rebellious young woman to porn celebrity. There are hints suggesting the hell created by Traynor, but without details. The second half retraces some of the same steps and fills in the blanks, exposing the oppressive brutality of his treatment and the degradation she faced. It's a thought provoking structure forcing a comparison between public image and private agony, but Lovelace also emerges as an unbalanced film, hitting discordant notes and mainly moving sideways.

The denouement shifts focus to Linda years after her brief foray into the industry, fighting to reclaim her dignity and identity by publishing a book. It's another shift in cinematic gears, and while the loop is closed, the film is tonally fragmented.

Lovelace delivers one devastating scene, in the least expected context. At her lowest point Linda flees back to her childhood home, and her encounter with her mother is a study of the void exposed by mutually unmet expectations.

Amanda Seyfried displays excellent breadth to convey first adventurous naiveté and then a gradual awakening to abuse. Peter Sarsgaard is fully committed to the role of Chuck Traynor, and sustains the required menace.

Lovelace tells an important story with competence but at the expense of dramatic flair.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Tuesday, 25 October 2016

Movie Review: The Interview (2014)

A mindless raunchy bromedy, The Interview carries its limited premise well past the funny stage and into exceedingly tedious territory.

Entertainment television show host David Skylark (James Franco) and his producer Aaron Rapaport (Seth Rogen) land an interview with North Korea's Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un (Randall Park). Before they can travel to Pyongyang, CIA agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan) recruits them to assassinate the dictator by pressing poison into his palm.

Once they arrive in North Korea, nothing goes according to plan. First they lose the poison, then Aaron tangles with a tiger. David spends time with Kim and they strike up an unlikely friendship, causing David to question the mission. Aaron falls in love with Sook-yin Park (Diana Bang), the dictator's chief propagandist. When Kim reveals his true colours, David and Aaron have to make their move and their troubles multiply.

The Interview caused an international incident, with the humourless North Koreans giving the project much more publicity than it ever deserved by issuing all sorts of threats ahead of the film's release and perpetuating the hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment's servers.

Left alone, the lame film would have likely died a quick death. Co-directed by Rogen and Evan Goldberg, The Interview suffers from a lazy script that relies almost solely on frat boy humour intended to appeal to impressionable 12 to 16 year old boys. Every other joke surrenders to a mention of body parts, excretions or pornography, with Franco delivering the majority of his lines with an over-the-top wide-eyed maniacal zealotry. When merely mentioning the anatomy is not enough, The Interview resorts to on-camera hacking of body pieces in the name of fun.

Rogen mostly stands back and allows his co-star to careen out of control. Lizzy Caplan as agent Lacey, Randall Park as Kim Jong-un and Diana Bang as propaganda officer Sook deliver by far the more controlled and watchable performances. The two good moments in the entire movie involve the out-of-place tiger and a Soviet-era tank.

The Interview may have made for a useful 15 minute sketch. Stretched to a seemingly endless 112 minutes, the film is disqualified for aiming low and hitting nothing.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Sunday, 11 September 2016

Movie Review: 127 Hours (2010)

A biographical survival story, 127 Hours is a glossy treatment of a harrowing incident. The film successfully transforms a tale of claustrophobic confinement into a wild journey of a deeply stressed mind.

Aron Ralston (James Franco) is a confident mountaineer, adventurer and canyoneer. He sets off for a solo hike through Utah's Canyonlands National Park, without telling anyone what his plans are. During the day he meets and befriends two other hikers, Kristi (Kate Mara) and Megan (Amber Tamblyn), but they part ways and he continues on his own.

While traversing a narrow slot canyon in an isolated area of the park, a small boulder gives way, Aron stumbles and falls deeper in the crevasse, and the boulder smashes onto his right arm, trapping it against the canyon wall. With his one free hand Aron cannot move the boulder, and with limited food, water and equipment, he faces diminishing prospects for survival. After several days trying to free himself, Aron has to consider the drastic option of cutting his own arm off to free himself.

Directed by Danny Boyle, 127 Hours is based on real events that took place in 2003, later chronicled in a book by Ralston. Any story constructed around a single and well-known torturous event affecting one individual is by definition narrowly delineated. The film's main challenge is to create a drama out of an ordeal of confinement, with most of the trauma occurring in Aron's head. Thanks to a committed James Franco performance and an audacious, often hallucinatory style, Boyle succeeds in fully maintaining interest, and smartly limits the running length to a compact 93 minutes.

Boyle co-wrote the script, and the build-up is carefully constructed to convincingly convey a man running out of options. Aron stays mentally strong and tries everything at his disposal to free himself, but with supplies running out and his mind increasingly hallucinating, his choices narrow down to dying of dehydration or attempting the unthinkable.

The film sets up the pivotal arm amputation scene with perfect timing, and when it arrives it is nothing short of harrowing. Amateur self-administered limb-chopping surgery using a blunt knife is not for the faint of heart, and the film's climax requires a strong stomach. Using a combination of clever editing, realistic make-up, gruesome sound effects and Franco jumping all-in to the agony pool, director and star create an unforgettable sequence, fully worthy of all the carefully designed anticipation.

127 Hours does not shy away from criticizing Aron's action in setting off into the canyon alone and without telling anyone what his plans are. Cockiness meets comeuppance, and trapped by the boulder, he comes face to face with his limitations. The film's other theme is the mind's ability to travel when the body is trapped. Many of Aron's thoughts and emotions veer towards family and girlfriend memories, regrets, and aspirations, recreated by Boyle along the seam where sleep-deprived dreaminess holds hands with the consciousness of a nightmare in progress.

The duel between immovable obstacle and irresistible determination took 127 Hours to resolve, and ended in partial compromise: the boulder got to keep a piece of Aron Ralston, but he reconfirmed the phenomenal human desire to survive under all circumstances.

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Tuesday, 23 February 2016

Movie Review: Nights In Rodanthe (2008)

A romantic drama, Nights In Rodanthe brings two damaged souls together in an idyllic beachfront house, but the film overflows with frothy emotions at every turn.

Harried mom Adrienne Willis (Diane Lane) is separated from husband Jack (Christopher Meloni), who had an affair but now wants to get back together. Adrienne agrees to help her friend Jean (Viola Davis) look after a scenic beachfront bed and breakfast in Rodanthe, North Carolina. The only guest is handsome plastic surgeon Dr. Paul Flanner (Richard Gere), who is going through a trauma of his own. Paul had an elderly patient die on the operating table, and he is in Rodanthe to meet the deceased woman's grieving husband Robert Torrelson (Scott Glenn). Paul is also planning a trip to Ecuador to try and reconnect with his estranged son Mark (James Franco in an uncredited role).

With a storm approaching, Adrienne and Paul start to get to know each other, and then fall deeply in love. He reawakens her to life's opportunities, and she helps him to come to terms with the Torrelson tragedy. But Adrienne still has to sort out her personal life and Paul needs to embark on his South American trip, causing a painful separation.

An adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel directed by George C. Wolfe, Nights In Rodanthe enjoys decent production values but cannot overcome the weak source material despite a talented cast. This is a romance where characters scream at each other one moment then fall into each other's arms the next, where the storm outside mimics the histrionics inside, and all the men, women and children, from the major characters to the minor, are quick to overflow with a display of overheated fervor at every opportunity.

There are some positives. The scenery at the character waterfront house makes up for some of the runaway emoting, and the search for an ending that avoids the obvious is laudable. There are hints of good intentions in exploring a troubled but evolving relationship between Adrienne and her teenaged daughter Amanda (Mae Whitman). Viola Davis shows up as Adrienne's best friend Jean (owner of the bed and breakfast) and adds an element of flighty fun.

In the central roles Richard Gere and Diane Lane do their best with the material, but are hampered with a script that emphasizes the obvious and shuns any attempt at nuance. The moods of Nights In Rodanthe are either black and stormy or bright and sunny, in a vivid demonstration of filmmaking by thick crayons.

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Monday, 4 May 2015

Movie Review: Spring Breakers (2012)

A stylish, almost hallucinogenic dive into the annual hedonistic party ritual in Florida, Spring Breakers is an unhinging experience, equally commanding attention and testing patience. Four girls set off to have fun in the sun, and find all that and a lot more.

At an unnamed nondescript college in an unnamed bland suburb, four girlfriends are looking forward to a spring break escape to Florida. Faith (Selena Gomez) is religious, while Brit (Ashley Benson), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens) and Cotty (Rachel Korine) are more fun-loving. Short of money to make the trip, Brit, Candy and Cotty borrow a car and rob a local restaurant, using toy guns. They are thrilled with the power-rush.

The girls make it to Florida and initially have a great time. But it all goes wrong when they are involved in a party with hard drugs, and soon find themselves under the influence of rapper / gangster Alien (James Franco).

Directed and written by Harmony Korine, Spring Breakers is less of a movie and more of a trip. Deploying various flashy techniques including repetitions of dialogue snippets, micro flash-forwards, and hand-held amateur-style filming of the party-soaked atmosphere, Korine creates his own break from the ordinary, the film becoming a metaphor for suspending the rules and soaking in a surreal environment.

There are few normal scenes in the film, and even fewer traditional conversations. The events unfold in a trance-like explosion of amplified colours, sounds and some truly unique images, a capturing of memories soiled by unnamed substances and the human need to exaggerate. There is only so much varnish that can be applied to a party culture, and like a magazine with too many glossy pictures and hardly any text, the film's style consumes its content.

And in the context of "if it's different fun you're looking for, it's different fun we've got", the film steers the four young girls towards a nightmare side road rarely traveled during any vacation break, a figurative dark alley where the dangerously seductive predator Alien resides, ready to financially manipulate, physically control and emotionally dominate his chosen victims.

With James Franco delivering a mesmerically crazed performance, Alien's charisma immediately defines him as attractive to girls bored with the ordinary, a wolf in rapper's clothing all too willing to bare his teeth and reveal his true intentions, confident that his unique divergence makes his danger irresistible. Alien represents the lure of breaking free from social laws, a journey that for the girls starts with an impulsive restaurant robbery and ends with mayhem, emotions blunted by an overdose of excitement. The loud music, free-flowing beer, endless beaches, sex and drugs parties: it's all so attractive until more becomes less, and the soul is lost in the blur of too much of everything.