This week on the HomeVideodrome podcast, Hunter reviews Liam Neeson’s death-obsessed wolf-fighting-fest “The Grey,” Jim discovers “Blubberella” and extols on the greatness of “Adaptation” and the week’s releases get the usual treatment. Head on over to The Film Thugs and give it a listen.

Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive” is the essence of crime cinema cool boiled down to its bones, combining the spartan feel of Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Le Samourai” with the sheen of Michael Mann’s ’80s output like “Thief.” Throw in a protagonist reminiscent of Ryan O’Neill’s strong silent wheelman in Walter Hill’s “The Driver,” and you’ve got a shiny movie buff confection.

Ryan Gosling completely owns the nameless lead role, shiny scorpion jacket and all. The year Gosling had in 2011 effectively silenced his critics who wrote him off as a pretty face in “The Notebook,” with “Drive” standing at the head of the pack. His soft exterior makes his cool-yet-vicious character in “Drive” all the more potent whenever he has to stomp some poor henchman’s head in.

I love grizzled, masculine action heroes like Liam Neeson and Lee Marvin as much as the next red-blooded American, but Gosling steps up to the plate, points to the outfield, and knocks the ball straight into the spark-spewing lights. Don’t let his soft features or feathery surname fool you. Gosling brilliantly channels the brand of cool perfected by Alain Delon in Melville’s quiet heist & hitman sagas.

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Acclaimed television creator/writer David Milch’s latest HBO offering, “Luck” should be an easy favorite.

It’s about horse racing and the characters the sport attracts. It’s filmed largely at California’s Santa Anita race track and tells the story of racing from so many potentially fascinating points of view: gamblers, owners, jockeys and trainers. It stars a cast that on paper can’t lose, including Dustin Hoffman, Nick Nolte, Dennis Farina and real-life Kentucky Derby-winning jockey Gary Stevens. The co-executive producer is Michael Mann, who understands light and sound and color as well as anyone in Hollywood.

But that’s on paper. As bettors know, the horse with the winningest record, the best times, the richest purses and the bloodline for the distance doesn’t always win. There’s no such thing as a sure thing.

Stumbling out of the gate, “Luck” turns out to be a one-trick pony. It hurts to write that, because this show has the pedigree of a champion.

“Luck” begins with a peek behind the daily workings at a busy track. There’s the Peruvian trainer Turo Escalante (John Ortiz) described in press materials as “brilliant but disreputable.” And there’s the hard-luck grinder Walter Smith (Nolte), a good horseman and a good man who deserves the big win.

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The unlimited checkbook. That’s how Big Tobacco wins every time on everything, they spend you to death. Six hundred million a year in outside legal – Chadbourne-Park, uh, Ken Starr’s firm, Kirkland & Ellis? Listen: GM and Ford, they get nailed after eleven or twelve pickups blow up, right? These clowns have never, I mean EVER… 

Why it’s a left-wing film

Once again, like “A Civil Action,” we’re presented with a left-wing film using the cover of a true story to further an overall message. And once again I’m not going waste time and energy digging into the weeds of arguing for or against the facts of this particular “true story.” So let’s stipulate the story is true and get to the bigger issue: The True Stories Left-Wing Hollywood Chooses to Tell. But first, my own biases up front…

Believe it or not, I don’t hate Hollywood. People think I do and I take complete ownership of that misconception but my feelings towards today’s movie industry are something more along the lines of the parent of a bad seed. I love Hollywood, wish it would do better (both morally and creatively), forever hope it will, and for my troubles am constantly getting my heart broken. Also, to their credit, on the field of political battle, Hollywood is at least something of an honest broker. Like Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher, and the Huffington Post, leftists in Hollywood make little to no attempt to disguise their agenda. Yes, it’s unfortunate that too often they stand against good, but they’re also fairly upfront in presenting themselves as who and what they really are. On the other hand, there’s the left-wing media…

As far as the Washington Post, New York Times, Politico, Jon Stewart, the broadcast networks, the wires, and sites like Mediaite, etc…  Well, let me put it this way, the only way I’d piss on any of them is if they weren’t on fire. Yes, on a human level there are no doubt some genuinely nice people who work within these completely corrupted institutions, but as a whole they are committed leftists willfully lying and manipulating the truth to further an agenda and most unforgivably, doing so under the guise of sanctimonious elites who puff themselves up as pillars of objectivity.

There just isn’t a corner of Hell hot enough to stack the legacy of the whole bunch.   (more…)

There are certain things that make you a man.  It’s not a matter of mere plumbing or chromosomes.  A man is more than that.  A true man defeats his enemies.  A true man can make it happen with the ladies.  A true man can repeat, verbatim, all of the classic dialogue from Heat.

Heat (1995) is more than just a heist film – it’s an epic, a shambling three-hour monster of a movie that soars and frustrates, leaves your jaw hanging in awe and you scratching your head wondering what the hell is going on.  The star power it unleashes is literally unparalleled, the direction by Michal Mann is superb, the music is incredible (go buy the soundtrack now), and the cinematography creates a vision of Los Angeles that is more real than the reality.

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I will not insult your manhood by recapping the plot.  Actually, it’s so dense and convoluted it would take forever anyway.  Plus, there are the tangents that I still don’t fully get – what the hell is that whole Natalie Portman subplot doing in there anyway?  And some parts you just have to see for yourself – think Waingro’s plot line.  Bottom line: if you have never seen Heat, go buy it immediately.  Until you do, if you are biologically male, you are not entitled to stand while urinating.

For many of us, Heat has a personal connection that comes from both its time and place.  I saw Heat in Houston the day it came out (December 15, 1995), having been waiting for it for months thanks to the remarkable trailer.  I was there for a buddy’s wedding the next day; at that wedding, I would meet my hot wife for the first time.  About a month after, the giant law firm I was then slaving away for moved into the 444 South Flower building.  You probably know it best as the bank De Niro’s crew robs.  Before I quit (I had more business than many of the partners but they offered me the same crappy $500 bonus they gave to the guy caught sleeping under his desk, so I counter-offered that I’d keep everything), I must have walked past the spot where Val Kilmer first opens up with his CAR-15 a hundred times thinking, “Dude, I know where you’re coming from.” (more…)

Ben Shapiro’s recent list of the ten most overrated directors has kicked up quite the controversy: Disparaging blog posts (including one from myself) and more than 300 (mostly negative) comments from Big Hollywood’s lovely readers took Mr. Shapiro to task for, amongst other things, daring to label Alfred Hitchcock as the most overrated director of all time.

My problem with the list wasn’t so much the subjective nature of it. Taste is personal, and our likes and dislikes are informed by our life experiences. If he had made a list of critically acclaimed directors that he didn’t much care for, well, that would’ve been different. But by framing his list as an assault on the auteur theory and a discussion of which directors have been unduly praised, Mr. Shapiro changes the game. Furthermore, by placing Alfred Hitchcock at the top of that list – a man who directed a half-dozen of the greatest films in the history of the American cinema, helped reinvent the language of cinema and is one of the most widely imitated directors in the history of filmmaking – Mr. Shapiro’s list mutates from purely subjective to (at least partially) objective, and opens him up to some serious criticism. (more…)

Ever since the advent of the modern motion picture industry, critics have praised directors as the key to great film.  The auteur theory of cinema is idiotic, since writing is truly the key – no director could make a masterpiece out of “The Ugly Truth.”  It is one of the great travesties of artistic justice that no one remembers the writers of great movies – nobody knows Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, for example, but everyone remembers Frank Capra.  Together, those three wrote It’s a Wonderful Life.  (Together, Goodrich and Hackett also worked on The Diary of Anne Frank, The Thin Man, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Father of the Bride.) 

Directors get too much credit when a movie goes right, and too little blame when a movie goes wrong.  There are certain directors, however, who get credit even when movies go wrong.  Here, then, are my top ten overrated directors of all time… 

10.  Ridley Scott:  Ridley Scott has, for some odd reason, received accolades that far outpace his actual accomplishments.  He’s made one entertaining film, Gladiator, and a host of second rate films masquerading as masterpieces.  Blade Runner is a bizarre and massively overpraised mess.  Thelma and Louise is liberal tripe, although it does provide the best imagistic summary of modern feminism: two irritating “independent” women driving themselves off a cliff.  White Squall is the single most depressing film ever made.  Black Hawk Down is loved by conservatives because it isn’t anti-military, but that’s about the only praiseworthy element to a film that is an endless series of quick cuts between white guys who look alike in their helmets.  Who’s been killed?  Who’s still alive?  You have no way of knowing.  Then there’s Kingdom of Heaven, which is an homage to the “religion of peace” and a slap at Christianity through and through.  Alien is slow.  GI Jane is hysterically terrible.  Plus, it’s got Orlando Bloom, who has about as much charisma and credibility as Al Gore.  Scott is a key player in the rise of the infernal shaky-cam, which is not only biologically inaccurate (the human eye adjusts for bodily movements), but incredibly annoying.  For that alone, he should be exiled to a land without cameras.  (more…)

I think we were all surprised and disappointed when Michael Mann’s $100 million ode to the midwestern bank robbers of the 1930s, Public Enemies, misfired at the box office, A Nightmare on Elm Street or no Donnie Brasco. After all, Captain Jack Sparrow meets Edith Piaf in Capone-era Chicago directed by the man who put De Niro and Pacino together for the first time at Kate Mantelini’s on Wilshire: what’s not to like?

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Many theories have been offered as to why the public made b.o. enemies of John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd, but the real reason, I think, has yet to be articulated.  And it’s this: Mann, perhaps our greatest living director, taught his cast how to do everything – fight, handle firearms, rob banks, ogle Marion Cotillard… (more…)

Michael Mann’s Public Enemies was one of the most anticipated films of the year (Read my Parcbench review here, John Nolte’s slightly opposing view here). However, it seems that many critics are drastically underrating this film. This is unfortunate because even though the film may not be the gangster movie we are used to; it sure has hints of perfection throughout. After reading many reviews panning this film, I decided to give it a second look.

There were still some obvious flaws. There are a couple of choppy edits as well as questionable music in the scene where Dillinger walks into the cop shop. But the flaws most people discuss don’t seem to be a true flaw at all. I’ve heard and read many people say the film has no depth and the characters are shallow. This is simply not a fair assertion.

The film may appear shallow to some, but it doesn’t give us anything we don’t need to know. That is exactly what makes this film enjoyable; there is no abundance of useless information. It is about Dillinger’s short time as public enemy number one, nothing more. (more…)

Striving for cinematic greatness is always a risky proposition. The risk is that when you fall short there’s no mistaking the swing-and-a-miss. To his credit, this is the position Director Michael Mann loves to put himself in. He always strives, always puts himself out there and the result is a number of unforgettable films but also a few obvious and glaring misses. “Public Enemies” misses. Not as badly as “Miami Vice” or “Ali,” but other than a couple of sequences, “Enemies” never gels, grabs, bites or takes hold. Instead, the narrative just kind of rolls along hitting insistent beats en-route to the inevitable.

Johnny Depp is John Dillinger, a criminal before crime was organized who specializes in bank robberies and jail breaks. His dash, audacity and refusal to steal from the common folk has made him something of a folk hero to Depression-weary America, but J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) sees an opportunity to use Dillinger’s exploits as a way to firm up his fledgling national police force (the F.B.I.), but first he’ll have to prove his modern, centralized methods work. (more…)

Note:  Part 1 of this 4 part interview can be found here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here.

J.R. Head:  I felt that one of the most important things about the film was that it allows the folks that are left behind, the friends and loved ones, to get a glimpse of a soldier’s everyday life.  I served during relative peacetime but, even for me, it was difficult to explain what my day was like to my girlfriend, to my family… They were always imagining something bad happening.  And, let’s face it, peacetime or wartime, sometimes bad stuff happens.  We train hard, there are accidents and sometimes people die but for the most part you’re just doing your job.  I felt like “Brothers at War” gives folks a good look at what really goes on and allows them to relax a little bit.  Y’know, there’s not, say, a mortar attack every five minutes. 

“Brothers at War” Director, Jake Rademacher:  It’s a great tool for a soldier to allow loved ones a window, a good look at what life is like for them during a deployment. (more…)

That is one outstanding trailer and the first footage I’ve seen.

This era’s always proved difficult for present-day filmmakers to credibly recreate.  One major exception is “L.A. Confidential” (1997), but the rest, most notably Scorsese’s ridiculously over-praised “The Aviator“ (2004), overtax your suspension of disbelief with a sense that everyone’s play-acting with clothes found in grandma’s attic. Director Michael Mann appears to have figured out that stylizing the hell out of it is the way to go. The music and atmosphere make you want to dive right in. (more…)

No matter how frustrated, disappointed, or outright disgusted Hollywood makes me, all is forgiven during that brief moment just after the trailers finish and just before the film begins. When those lights dim the chip dissolves from my shoulder and all the filmmaker need do to win me forever is tell one helluva story.

Politics shmolitics… Just take me away.

For we hopeless movie lovers, each year hope (if you’ll pardon the expression) springs eternal with a fresh offering of pull-out-the-stops-studio-balance-sheet-in-the-crosshairs slate of tent poles. And for that reason, this is my favorite part of the movie year because all I want for my ten bucks is to get lost for a couple hours, and from May 1st through the end of August filmdom at least attempts to put the political nonsense on hold to do just that. (more…)