You’d think people who get paid to recite lines, hit their cues and say the right thing would do some, if not all, of the above during a gala ceremony honoring their peers.

Anyone who so much as channel surfed onto the 69th annual Golden Globes telecast last night spotted one bumble or another. Maybe more.

Meryl Streep dropped an “F” bomb during her acceptance speech for her work in “The Iron Lady.” Natalie Portman walked to the wrong podium. The teleprompter had a hiccup, leaving Rob Lowe to stare at the screen as if he had never ad libbed a second in his life. Johnny Depp looked like it was his first time speaking before a live audience.

“Modern Family” star Sofia Vergara had trouble with multiple names, but we’ll cut her some slack since one of them was “The Artist” director Michel Hazanavicius.

It’s a good thing Robert De Niro or Warren Beatty, two of the worst public speakers in Tinsel Town, weren’t in the building.

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Supposedly based on a true story, director Gary McKendry’s  “Killer Elite” boasts a terrific premise. After a close call involving a child, Danny (Jason Statham) decides that it’s time to get out of the elite assassin-for-hire business. After a year of bliss in the wilds of Australia with a lovely blond lovely and innocent enough to save any man’s soul , Danny’s friend and mentor, Hunter (Robert De Niro), is kidnapped, and the ransom is a job. An Omani sheik promises to execute Hunter unless Danny avenges the death of the sheik’s three sons at the hands of a trio of British SAS officers. The sheik not only wants the three deadly and highly-skilled SAS agents killed, he wants them to confess to their crimes on tape. In exchange, Hunter will be freed, carrying six million in cash as a bonus.

Danny’s also up against the clock. He has to finish the job before the aged and ailing sheik dies, so he quickly assembles a team of fellow mercenaries to track down the three men and figure out a way to not only get them to confess but also to make their deaths look like an accident. The hitch in the plan is Spike Logan (Clive Owen), the leader of a secret organization of  former SAS-types who have banded together to protect themselves from outside forces… such as Danny.

The set-up is solid; in fact, it’s inspired — not only in its simplicity but in making the audience understand immediately both the stakes and how difficult the mission will be. The problem is the execution, which is nowhere near as exciting or clever as you anticipate. The killing of these SAS agents is absurdly easy, as is extracting their confessions. Once the second act kicks in, you sit back expecting the script to take us into the fascinating details of how assassins who work at the highest level operate. Unfortunately, nothing that follows even rises to the level of a standard “Mission: Impossible” episode.

De Niro looks good in the role of a grizzled mercenary unwilling to give into age, but he’s barely in the movie. Statham, a genuinely charismatic action star who needs to pick better scripts, is perfectly capable of carrying a film on his own, but all he’s given here is a choppy plot disguised as an international thriller, plus a few unexciting action sequences filmed with the shaky-cam and edited for maximum confusion.

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There’s something that can be said for the subtlety of emotions. A knowing glance. An inconspicuous nod. A slight glare. All of these things show how emotions can be depicted onscreen in films that create complicated characters. “New Year’s Eve” is not one of those movies.

Director Garry Marshall’s latest comedy merely seeks superficial satisfaction from its characters and finds them displaying their emotions overtly, with no hint of depth or subtlety. If a woman is angry, she throws eggs at the wall. If a person is nervous, they mug for the camera during a radio interview. There’s no texture to these actions. And it’s not a surprise to see them in a movie like this which celebrates celebrities at the expense of its characters.

As I predicted several months ago, “Eve” looked like a carbon copy of Marshall’s latest film, “Valentine’s Day.” Despite its numerous and abundantly clear flaws, I enjoyed Marshall’s earlier film. It was fluffy but satisfying. Compared to “Eve” though, “Day” was “Citizen Kane.”

As the title suggests, all of the characters in this new film are preparing for the new year. Ingrid (Michelle Pfeiffer), who is by far the most likable character, is writing a list of her New Year’s resolutions. She recruits a young bike manager (Zac Efron) to make her wishes come true. Meanwhile, a young couple (Seth Meyers and Jessica Biel) are preparing for their first child when they realize that there’s a cash prize if their baby is the first one born in 2012. Once they find that out, these wannabe parents become obnoxious psychos as they spend their day trying to induce labor. With parents like these, it’s no wonder the baby is so wary of coming out. In the meantime, the woman who manages the ball drop in Times Square (Hilary Swank) finds out that the ball is stuck with only hours to go before the new year.

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It’s been 14 years since ‘Cop Land’ first hit movie theaters, but director James Mangold distinctly remembers his first reaction to casting Sylvester Stallone as the film’s heroic sheriff.

“I was dead set against it. I was horrified by the idea,” says Mangold, who would later go on to direct Oscar-winning films like ‘Walk the Line’ and ‘Girl, Interrupted.’ “He played a superhero so often. I didn’t want to make a movie about Judge Dredd.”

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Mangold graciously went to dinner with Stallone all the same and laid out his vision for the role.

“You have to let your body go. I mean let it go … gain at least 40 pounds” the director told the erstwhile Rocky Balboa.

‘He agreed immediately,” Mangold recalls. “He took the leap, and he delivered.”

Stallone’s sensitive performance in the tale of a New Jersey town teeming with dirty cops reminded us he’s more than just a slab of muscle for hire. The film, out this week in a Director’s Cut Blu-ray edition, also proved Mangold could handle a veteran cast led by Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta.

“I have a memory of being a young man with this ridiculously heady cast all around me… it’s like pretty big boots to be strapping on in your second movie,” he says. “It demystified working with really important actors.”

The film also taught him that his complete vision won’t always make it to the big screen.

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Expectations were sky high after Quentin Tarantino stunned the film world with the double barrel greatness of ‘Reservoir Dogs’ and ‘Pulp Fiction.’

It’s one reason why his third directorial effort, the slow and soulful “Jackie Brown,” was met with indifference in some quarters.

The 1997 film, out this week on Blu-ray, deserves a second, longer look. Tarantino had more up his sleeve than simply reviving the stalled careers of Pam Grier and Robert Forster. ‘Jackie Brown’ is a tribute to patient, clear-eyed storytelling as much as it is a wet kiss to the blaxploitation era.

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It must be difficult to adapt a nonfiction book into a movie. A good screenwriter would likely try to capture all of the story’s important details while ensuring that all of the real-life figures were portrayed accurately. If that sounds like a difficult task, it must be even more treacherous to adapt a book that some believe people is a true story and others believe is absolute nonsense. That was the assignment given to Gary McKendry and Matt Sherring, who wrote the screenplay for the new film, “Killer Elite.” I recently conducted a phone interview with McKendry, who also directed the film, about his new movie and the story behind it.

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The film focuses on a British mercenary named Danny (Jason Stathham), who retires early in the story. His former partner, Hunter (Robert De Niro), continues to take assignments while Danny lives a quiet life in Australia. However, a year later, Danny discovers that Hunter has been kidnapped. The hostage-taker is a sheik who wants Danny to avenge the death of his three sons who were killed by members of the British Special Air Service (SAS). The sheik has two specific requests: he wants videotapes of the soldiers confessing to the murders and he wants their deaths to look like accidents.

The film is based on “The Feather Men,” a book written by Ranulph Fiennes. The title refers to a group of individuals who work behind the scenes in England and organize assassinations and complete dirty work that the government doesn’t want to be involved in. When the book was released, the British government adamantly denied the story while Fiennes insisted on its veracity.

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As if the capitulation of the Republicans in Washington was not depressing enough, it too often seems like we can’t even find a decent movie to look forward to seeing.  Of course, most of us are not in Hollywood’s target demographic – we’re older, have jobs, and aren’t dead-eyed, drooling morons who yearn to clap our flippers like trained seals at the hackneyed antics of third rate “stars” splashed across out-of-focus screens while seated in moist, sticky chairs that we paid close to $15 each to occupy.  

But I still love movies, and I still have hope that Hollywood is going to accidentally let slip though its paws at least a couple films this year that don’t insult my intelligence, that don’t hector me with pinko propaganda, and that don’t derive from some obscure comic book beloved by a cult of social misfit fanboys whose idea of a romantic evening is a hi-speed Internet connection, a two-liter bottle of Pepsi, and an old tube sock.  

And I love trailers too.  I hate commercials in front of movies, but there can never be too many trailers.  Each new trailer is like a bright new dawn or a just-poured pint of draft Dos Equis lager – full of hope and promise.  Sure, most of the time that hope and promise fades when Kevin James waddles on-screen to make a fart joke, but still….there are moments where something awesome blows your mind.  

Those rare, fleeting moments where a trailer teases you with the promise of a great story, an exciting adventure, a hilarious romp…where you think “Wow, that looks cool!”…where you just know that as funny as the jokes the trailer reveals are, the ones that await in the movie itself will be even funnier…they make sitting through the crap worth it.  That’s what makes me love trailers – trailers have the power to remind us that movies don’t have to suck.  

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What’s to Like

From director Garry Marshall to stars like Ashton Kutcher, Jessica Biel, and Hector Elizondo, “New Year’s Eve” feels like a carbon copy of last year’s “Valentine’s Day.” It seems clear that the producers of this new film  are trying to replicate the success of that  earlier comedy, which also explored a variety of romantic relationships on one specific holiday. Like its predecessor, it’s hard not to be impressed with this stellar cast that also includes Robert De Niro, Seth Meyers, and Hilary Swank. I actually enjoyed “Valentine’s Day” so this film has potential if it follows a similar formula.

What’s to Dislike

A similar formula is one thing but if this film becomes a bland carbon copy of “Day,” it could easily become a waste of time. If this story is only as good as its predecessor, why shouldn’t people just rent last year’s hit instead of paying ten dollars to see this new picture?

The Verdict

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Read part one of this series here.

In William Strauss and Neil Howe’s Generations, the babies born 1925-1942 are classified as members of the “Silent Generation.” These were the kids who grew up during the crises of the Great Depression and World War II, entered young adulthood at the postwar high of the 1950s, and hit middle age during the cultural chaos of the late 1960s and ’70s. This life sequence puts them in Howe and Strauss’ “Adaptive” archetype, a recessive generation less populous in numbers than the ones before (the GI Generation) and after (the Baby Boomers.)

When this generation started making movies they transformed Hollywood. Peter Biskind’s 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and Rock ‘N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood lays out the popular narrative. The tail of the Silent Generation and the beginning of the Boomers (filmmakers born 1939-1946) put out major dramatic work that challenged the more bland conventions of mid ‘60s Hollywood cinema. The 1970s were the R-rated decade. Francis Ford Coppola made “The Godfather.” Martin Scorsese released “Mean Streets” and “Taxi Driver.” New serious actors like Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Jon Voight, and Robert De Niro delivered legendary performances. This was a film generation inspired by the French New Wave to treat movies as serious art.

Oscar Nominated-screenwriter, award-winning mystery novelist, and now Pajamas Media CEO Roger L. Simon was a member of this clique. Born in 1943, Simon is like others born at the edges of generations, a blending of both appears in his re-titled memoir Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine, recently released in paperback with new material. (more…)

Hollywood, hear our plea:  Could you make some mainstream movies that don’t suck?  There’s nothing worse than a Christmas season where going to the movies seems about as appealing as sharing a straw with Lindsay Lohan.

Throw us a bone – how about more than just one or two flicks a year not targeted to the demographic that thinks Lady Gaga is a boundary-pushing icon of limitless creative vision?  Maybe a couple that are not focused on shiny supernatural creatures who chat about their feelings and stare longingly into the eyes of dead-eyed starlets acting as the surrogate for the millions of lonely shut-ins who adore them?  Just a few films not aimed squarely at creepy man-children dwelling in their moms’ Kleenex-strewn basements wishing they too could winch their bloated tushes into tights and fight crime just like their cinematic heroes.

How about more than just a handful of movies for men and women who need more than five hands to count out their age, who breathe through their noses, who have lives?  I have some dough – well, at least until the President and his fellow travelers declare me rich too – and I’d like to take my hot wife out once in a while to see a movie.  I used to go a lot, a few times a month.  But it seemed that five years ago there were always at least a few movies that piqued my interest.  Perhaps it’s me – perhaps I’m too demanding, what with my stubborn insistence on interesting stories told in a coherent manner by competent actors.  Or perhaps it’s just that the recent crop of movies is exceptionally crappy.

Let’s address the curmudgeon question here and now – yes, I have occasionally turned my hose on those damn kids when they messed up my lawn, but hobbies aside, the fact is that Hollywood is both leaving money on the table and sacrificing what little artistic credibility it has left by ignoring the normal adult demographic.  It appears that Hollywood has simply thrown in the towel and decided to focus on feeding formulaic moron fodder to a waiting cohort of slack-jawed ninnies eager for the next story about a magical robot or a superhero with issues. (more…)

If the real world was like a Hollywood movie, Julian Assange would step onto a rain-drenched sidewalk, insert the key into his Prius and be blown into several thousand pieces of blond Australian jerk.  From their observation post high above on a building, a pair of sinister CIA assassins would smile as they squelch yet another voice of freedom. 

Instead, the Wikileaks revelations and the pathetic aftermath demonstrate that far from being the omnipotent cadre of high-tech avengers, our leaders have apparently been reduced to hoping that the Swedes’ bizarre sex crime laws will do the dirty work for us.  Capping this twerp might be a bit harsh, but it’s not unreasonable to expect that we be able to come up with some better options for dealing with Wikileaks than cancelling his credit cards and leaving the rest up to Sven and Inga.

For decades, Hollywood has depicted the US intelligence establishment as some sort of all-seeing, all-powerful collection of high-tech killers in expensive suits hunting down those who interfere with America’s imperialist designs.  Hollywood has pushed the notion that our government officials are able to implement conspiracies of such ridiculous scope and audacity that they would embarrass a Truther – well, maybe not Hollywood Truther Charlie Sheen, who apparently doesn’t possess a shame gene.  And the lefties seem to buy that image –a preeminent lefty sight has revealed that the Swedish sex charges were trumped up by a Uppsula University feminist gender equity officer in cahoots with Cuban freedom fighters and the CIA.  The role of the Trilateral Commission is left unclear.

We wish we could pull that off!  In reality, instead of weaving exquisite tapestries of deception or launching waves of vicious kill-bots, we have an Attorney General whose Plan A was offering a searing condemnation of Wikileaks as “arrogant, misguided and ultimately not helpful.”  Wikileaks is “unhelpful” – shockingly, this harsh language somehow failed to deter Julian and Co.  After that smashing success, the AG has initiated Plan B and is promising to possibly consider perhaps contemplating maybe reviewing a number of options designed to somehow do something of some sort.  That is, if he’s not still preoccupied springing some New Black Panthers or failing to convince FIFA not to hold its 2022 shindigg in Qatar.  Figuring out how to lose sponsoring a soccer tournament expecting thousands of Brit, German, French and Italian fans/hooligans to a part of the world that frowns on alcohol probably took all of his attention.  (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…)

We’ve all watched well-known, highly regarded actors for the umpteenth time on screen — perhaps even raucously enjoying both their performance and the movie — and thought about how painfully derivative and self-referential they’ve become. Somewhere along the way, over a period of many years, these talented thespians stopped surprising us. They ceased bringing to life fleshed out individuals and  began using and reusing tired sets of predictable quirks and tics.

Mind you, they’re still charismatic and entertaining to watch, but in an almost clownish way. We now go to see them not to be wowed by their acting, but to be entertained by their chewing the scenery and hamming it up. Whereas in the past they lost themselves in a part, now their well-known, theatrically overblown personalities overwhelm everything else on screen.

Who are the worst offenders? My own Top 5 list was compiled with two ground rules: each candidate had to be alive (so James Dean and Marlon Brando each get a reprieve), and they have to have won at least one Academy Award for acting (which spares modern, less-laurelled hams such as Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Depp, Woody Allen, Jeff Goldblum and Mel Gibson.) Again, the following actors are not necessarily unpleasant to watch — raw charisma goes a long way — but they have become predictably one-note parodies of themselves. (more…)

If there’s one thing criminals generally do well, it’s instinctively spot another’s inner demons and then mess with their minds to exploit them. In “Stone” (in theaters now), that street psychologist is the incarcerated arsonist Gerald “Stone” Creeson (Edward Norton) and his prey is Jack Maybrey (Robert De Niro), the prison parole officer who will decide whether Stone gets out early or stays in the bar hotel for his full stretch.

But while their mind game is going on between characters in front of the camera, there’s another one playing the audience from behind the lens. For the words the actors are saying and the situations they are in have been intentionally scripted by director John Curran and writer Angus MacLachlan to sell their own apparent nihilism, according to Norton at a Q&A I attended.

“John told me we have to do this film now while things are bad,” Norton said. “We have to show that traditional establishments like religion and marriage that people have relied on for truth have failed them.” Curran does that by showing those institutions as hypocrisies that are the refuge of hypocrites like Maybrey, a deeply flawed, nasty man who, in his heart, may be little better than the convicts he judges for early release. (more…)

There’s no confusion about who the villain is in Machete – it’s you.

More specifically, it’s you and the other 69% or so of American citizens who agree that we should have a say in who does and doesn’t come into our country by enforcing our immigration laws.  There’s been a lot written about the race war angle of Machete, including a lot of back-pedaling from writer/director Robert Rodriguez himself.  But it’s hard to see this script as anything but a sick MEChA-approved fantasy in which every Anglo man is a slobbering borderline savage who tortures Mexicans when not slaughtering them outright, and every Anglo woman a nymphomaniac yearning to strip down and have a crack at our hero Machete’s macho Mexican manhood.

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Perhaps Rodriguez isn’t making an explicit plea for racial warfare, but Rodriguez’s crude racial stereotypes make Hitler’s Der Stürmer propaganda look like a subtle, sophisticated and affectionate commentary on Jewish culture.  The script does not bat an eye as Machete butchers nearly every Anglo, innocent or “guilty,” who is unfortunate enough to cross his path.  In the end, there is no doubt that Rodriguez is making the most overtly, outrageously and unrepentantly racist film in modern Hollywood history.

But Rodriguez does deserve props for one thing – in purely technical terms, this is one of the best-written scripts I’ve ever seen.  It is vivid, coherent and flows smoothly, unlike the majority of unreadable Final Draft failures out there.  There is not an ounce of flab.  The “jokes” mostly fall flat, but Rodriguez will likely direct it with flair and style.  It’s just too bad this movie combines the racial insights of a 1942 Robert Byrd with the collective moral sense of Enron’s Board of Directors. (more…)

In an industry notorious for wasteful pretentiousness — directors shooting a hundred takes, crews taking all day to light a single shot, gazillions spent on the latest effects — Hal Needham was a rebel. Directing? “There is no magic to it, you know. All you have to do is look through the camera and see if it’s got the lens on it that you want. . . I don’t really think it’s that tough.” Cinematography? “We’re not doing Gone with the Wind or Fiddler on the Roof. It’s action/comedy. . .don’t give me none of this artsy-fartsy stuff, just shoot the film.” Expensive locations? “I like to get outside whenever I can. I think it gives a film energy to be outside. . . and beauty.”

And so Smokey and the Bandit was made fast and loose, outside, on a low budget. In Reynolds’ words, they worked “lightning quick,” with first-time director Needham “reigning over crew and camera with instincts that made him, in my humble opinion, the best action director in the business.” The entire film was shot on location in the South. “We moved all over Georgia. . . It was a screwy chase picture, but Hal’s fun, outlaw, hell-bent-sensibility made it sparkle.” (more…)

It’s time to take on the most important issue facing American conservatives today: Can a self-respecting right-winger be a fan of Alec Baldwin?

The answer is “yes.”  Allow me to demonstrate why:

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Now, that clip from 30 Rock is, without a doubt, one of the funniest damn things I’ve ever seen.  Bizarre, obnoxious and unbelievably politically incorrect, it’s a welcome reminder that television need not be a soul-sucking void of mindless time-killing.

Baldwin was awesomely amoral in Miami Blues.  He was awesomely arrogant in Malice.  He was just plain awesomely awesome in Glengarry Glen Ross.  And as NBC Vice-President of Television and Microwave Cookery Jack Donaghy, he continues his track record of awesomeness and fully deserves his multiple awards and nominations.  But does he deserve a conservative’s appreciation? (more…)

As Carson Daly demonstrates on a nightly basis, you don’t have to be funny, engaging or a good interviewer to have your own late-night talk show on NBC.  Jimmy Fallon continues that tradition, this week taking over the 12:30 time slot vacated by the newly-promoted Conan O’Brien. 

Though Monday’s inaugural  Late Night with Jimmy Fallon seemed serviceable on paper─featuring Robert De Niro, Justin Timberlake and  Van Morrison─the jittery, sweaty, nervous and not-so-endearingly timid Fallon could not execute, making the show unbearable before the first guest ever appeared.  Of course, it’s not fair to judge Fallon based on the first show.  Keenan Ivory Wayans, Magic Johnson and Chevy Chase each had awkward late night debuts as well, and they lasted for several weeks.  (more…)