Logan (2017)

Logan (2017)

Director: James Mangold

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Richard E. Grant, Stephen Merchant

In the spirit of James Mangold’s new X-men movie: Logan (2017), let’s start this review straight to the point shall we? Logan is a swift kick to the nuts to all these comic book movies that we’ve been seeing as of late. You know the ones. The computer generated fuck-a- thons that we’ve gotten so accustomed to. The truth is that we’ve had enough of those haven’t we? Movies in which computer effects have taken over human emotion, they’ve taken away that feeling. You walk out a lot of those movies with numbness in your head. Logan is the complete opposite of that and it’s so goddamn refreshing!

Logan is the story of Wolverine in his last days, when he finds no pleasure in being alive. His “dad” is Professor Xavier, an aging empath who can’t control his powers. In comes a woman named Gabriela who wants’ the famous ‘Wolverine’ to help her find a place called ‘Eden’, a supposed heaven for mutants somewhere in North Dakota. Can Old Man Logan still do this? Will he agree to helping Gabriela and Little Laura reach ‘Eden’?

I honestly thought people were exaggerating about how good Logan was, because recent films that people have raved about have disappointed the hell out of me.  John Wick Chapter 2 (2017) I’m looking at you kid. So I went to see Logan with some trepidation, yet the first ten minutes of this film quickly put me in my place! It wasn’t long before I was saying things like “What. The. Fuck.” Should I put things in perspective? The films first words are “Aw fuck!”. On this film, Logan is a limo driver trying to forget his past with the X-men, he’s trying to live the life of a regular Joe. Basically, he just wants to be left alone to die in peace. Mutants are going extinct and Professor Xavier is a senile old man who doesn’t know where he stands. Holy bajeezus! What the hell is going on here? I wasn’t ready to see Wolverine and Prof. Xavier in such dire straits! It is this level of gravitas that makes this film stand apart, it’s not afraid to mess with the status quo, in fact, it throws the whole X-men universe out the window! Fuck that shit! Awwww I love it!

The great thing about this film is that it is a cliché breaker; it takes everything you expect from a Wolverine movie and turns it upside down. This is why it works so well, on this movie nothing is sacred and anything can happen. So you feel unsafe, you don’t feel like you can predict the film every step of the way, like you’d be able to predict a film like Kong Skull Island (2017) for example. I mention Kong Skull Island because I actually did a double feature of Logan/Kong and went from the ultimate anti-cliché movie (Logan) to a cliché by the numbers movie (Kong). So trust me, Logan is like a bucket of cold water being thrown down your back. It’s the ice bucket challenge, but for X-men fans!  

Why does this movie work so well? Various factors play an important factor in this. First, moviegoers in general are tired of computer generated special effects, specially the kind that take over an entire film. You know how it is. Suddenly, nothing that is happening on screen is real; it was all created on a computer. This can go on for minutes and minutes on end. I mean, suddenly it’s been ten minutes and not a single actor, not a single set, not a single real location has been seen on screen and then you have to wonder, am I watching a live action film or an animated one? Wolverine keeps its visual effects to a minimum. This is not to say that it doesn’t have them, but it keeps them to a minimum, to enhance a moment. And even then, they don’t take over. They are simply used to enhance an illusion. Beautiful. It’s the way effects should be used. Second. This is a strong screenplay. Why? Well, because its not about saving the universe from another whole that’s opening up in the middle of New York City (again), rather, it’s a very personal story about Logan and Proffessor Xavier dealing with getting old and coming to the last stage, coming to terms with the end of their lives.

The third and final point is that the cast Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and newcomer Dafne Keen out do themselves performance wise! They all bring their ‘A’ game here. I’ve heard some people talk about giving Patrick Stewart a nomination or something. That might be stretching it a little? It probably has to do with how different this take on Professor Xavier is. It’s great to see Logan playing the father figure to X-23, the scenes with both of them together, road tripping? Sweet.  One little thing though, I did feel that Logan turns suddenly into Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1984). Was director James Mangold paying tribute to that film? The reason I mention this is because the similarities are staggering. So that’s it ladies and gents. What we got here is a fantastic film that shakes the very foundations of the X-men universe. Wolverine fans should be pleased. Question is, who’s gonna be playing Wolverine next? Whoever he is, he’s got big shoes to fill.

Rating: 5 out of 5

  

Hudson Hawk (1991)

Title: Hudson Hawk (1991)

Director: Michael Lehman

Cast: Bruce Willis, Danny Aiello, Andie McDowell, Sarah Bernhard, Richard E. Grant, James Coburn

Sometimes we like a movie even though everybody else thinks its crap, and Hudson Hawk is one of those movies for me. Lambasted by critics when it was first released, Hudson Hawk was deemed “unspeakably awful” by Rolling Stone magazine and “implausible” by AMC Film Critic; to that I say “where’s your sense of humor people?” Yeah it’s silly and over the top, but when was that a sin? Last time I checked there’s room in the universe for films like this; in fact, sometimes it’s exactly what I need to watch. Bruce Willis was part of the group of writers that were responsible for the film; that’s right my friends, Bruce Willis partially concocted the story for this film. The film was such a horrendous flop that Willis never dabbled in the script department of any film ever again. The thing is that I perfectly get what Bruce Willis wanted to convey with Hudson Hawk, I get the vibe, I get the style of comedy, I get the tone of the flick, what I don’t get is why other people don’t find it as entertaining as I do! Really this movie is tons of fun!

Eddie Hawkins a.k.a. ‘Hudson Hawk’ is a master thief who has just gotten out of jail. He’s done his time, it’s over, he’s out. Problem is that he is such a great burglar that the minute he steps out of jail, he is immediately offered an irresistible job to steal a famous work of art from an auction house. The piece? None other than Davinci’s ‘Sforza’. And so the tale unfolds, soon Hudson Hawk learns that the ones who want to steal these famous works of art are the head honchos of a corporation known as Mayflower Industries; a corporation run by two genuine whackos know as Darwin and Minerva Mayflower, a husband and wife duo who want nothing more than to destroy the very economical foundations of society! So once Hudson Hawk realizes what the deal is, of course, he has to stop these two power hungry megalomaniacs.

So Hudson Hawk is the kind of movie that doesn’t really care much for logic and reason, it simply wants to be fast paced, tell a couple of jokes and one liners along the way, maybe put a smile on your face and finally entertain ya. This isn’t Shakespeare and it never tries to be; this is a heist movie tinted with a little bit of adventure and  sprayed with a little bit of gangster film shenanigans for good measure. You see, Hudson Hawks best buddy is a guy called Tommy Five Tone, the owner of a bar where gangster go to talk shop, eat and drink. Cool part is that Tommy Five Tone is played by Danny Aiello and what says “gangster movie” more than Danny Aiello right? There’s a group of actors out there who always end up in gangster movies because they have that Italian gangster face and Aiello is one of them. So anyways,  Tommy Five Tone runs this bar, but on the side he sometimes organizes a heist or two, and Hudson Hawk is his right hand man. Here’s an element of the film that lets you know how lighthearted it is: Tommy and Hawk pull off their heists while singing Bing Crosby and Paul Anka songs! They actually time their heists to however long the song lasts. The chemistry between these two characters is one of the elements that keeps the movie entertaining, the one liners, the jokes, the funny back and forth. Listen carefully; the subtle word play is hilarious on this one. I mean, one of the crime families in the film is named The Mario Brothers! 

Calling this movie implausible, as a critic called it is simply stupid, because plausibility is not something I look for in a movie like Hudson Hawk, in fact, in this kind of tongue in cheek movie, plausibility is the last thing on the list. On this kind of movie you get the complete opposite, which is why I enjoy the elements in Hudson Hawks that border on fantasy, I like the over the topness. I like seeing Willis pulling off a heist while singing ‘Swinging on a Star’. I like how the fights and the action where pulled off in a cartoonish fashion, it at times feels like you’re watching a Three Stooges short. And speaking of over the top, out of all the performances, Sara Bernhard’s ‘Minerva Mayflower’ stands out as the most over the top character of all! Bernhard has been a comedian for many years, even performing to sell out crowds in Broadway. I remember her the most from her role in Martin Scorsese’s  The King of Comedy (1983), a film in which she played opposite Robert DeNiro and Jerry Lewis. On this one she is loud, intimidating and larger than life. It is obvious she relished playing the lead villain. As a suggestion, if you feel like checking out the special features, check out this really funny featurette in which Bernhard explains how she loved playing Minerva, its hilarious!

The film was directed by Michael Lehmann, the same director behind such films as Heathers (1988) Airheads (1994) and Meet The Applegates (1990), here he does a good job, in my opinion the film has slick production values, they even shot some scenes in Rome which was pretty cool. Unfortunately for Lehman, Hudson Hawk was shot down from the skies, it was a bomb, probably because it was a very misunderstood film. It was marketed as an action adventure film, and so people were probably expecting something along the lines of what they’d seen Willis successfully pull off in Die Hard (1988) and Die Hard 2 (1990) and so that probably caught people off guard. They weren’t expecting a goofy, cartoonish action/comedy, heist movie, they wanted more of John McClain! Instead they got John McClain via The Three Stooges, not a bad combo if you forget all about expectations!   

Just how cartoonish was this film you ask? Well, during some of the fights you’ll hear cartoon sounds, just like you’d hear in those old Warner Bros. cartoons that’s how cartoonish this movie was! The fights? Very slapstick in nature, usually, the main characters will be in peril, but everything turns out good in the end, it’s that kind of movie. I say that if they had marketed the film for what it was, it wouldn’t have disappointed audiences and it might have had a chance. When released in theaters, it was marketed with the tagline “Catch the Adventure, Catch the Excitement, Catch the Hawk!” which suggests it’s a full blown action flick. Yet, after the film tanked, they switched the word “Adventure” for “Laughter” for the films Home Video release, but by then it was too late. My take on it is that audiences don’t like to be lied too. I’ve seen this happen with many other movies, the first one that comes to mind is Nicholas Cage’s Vampires Kiss (1989) which was marketed as a comedy, but was actually a dark, weird film. Lesson for Hollywood: don’t lie to your audience just to get their butts in the theater, your film will suffer for it. Now here’s The Film Connoisseur telling it like it is, now you know what kind of movie Hudson Hawk is, go check it out, you’ll more than likely have a good time.

Rating:  3 ½ out of 5

Withnail and I (1987)

Title: Withnail and I (1986)

Director: Bruce Robinson

Cast: Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann, Richard Griffith. Ralph Brown

Review:

My interest in Bruce Robinson’s Withnail and I came because Bruce Robinson (the films director) was recently in Puerto Rico filming The Rum Diary, a film which I am eagerly looking forward to not only because it was filmed in Puerto Rico (my country) but also because it’s based on Hunter S. Thompson’s novel of the same name, and I love that novel. It is partially based on Hunter S. Thompson’s own experiences while living in Puerto Rico and writing for a now defunct local newspaper called ‘The San Juan Star’. Robinson’s Withnail and I is a film that has that same whacked out, ‘grim and dark’ world perspective, it has that bleak sense of humor that we’ve come to expect from all things Hunter S. Thompson. Actually, it was the bleak sensibilities of Withnail and I that got Johnny Depp to ask Robinson to write the script for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). Robinson declined writing that script because he didn’t know how to adapt that novel into a film; I’m guessing he thought the book was too incoherent to be adapted into a film, he wasn’t the first to think that way. But the fact remained in Johnny Depp’s mind that Robinson was a guy who ‘got’ what Hunter S. Thompson was all about. So of course, it came as no surprise to me when Bruce Robinson ended up directing The Rum Diary, a film based on Thompson’s own life. The Rum Diary also stars Johnny Depp, yet another great fan and close friend of Thompson’s life and work. These are the reasons why I can’t wait to see The Rum Diary, it will be a film made by people who really understood who Hunter S. Thompson was, they really got how his brain worked. And it’s Robinson’s involvement in that film that got me interested in exploring the rest of his filmography starting with the film I’ll be reviewing today: Withnail and I.

Withnail and I tells the story of two aspiring actors Withnail and Mawood (a.k.a. "I") two guys living in extremely poor conditions in a horribly disorganized filthy flat in Camden Town, London, 1969. These guys live in such a shit hole that they actually find "matter" inside of their kitchen sink, beneath piles and piles of dishes that haven’t been washed since forever! They suspect rodents living inside of the oven. They get visited by drug dealers and dead beats. This lifestyle of theirs isn’t meant to go on forever, this is the in-between before they make it to the big time. You see, they are both waiting for the proverbial "big break". In real life terms that means they are waiting for their respective agents to get them a part in something, anything! Unfortunately, nothing seems to be popping up at the moment in terms of acting and living in filth and poverty is getting to them; so much so that they begin to feel physically ill! In a desperate attempt to get away from the grime, they get this idea in their heads that a weekend in the countryside will clear their heads up and charge their batteries, so they can continue their struggles in life. So they go up to Withnail’s Uncle Monty to ask him for permission to stay at his country cottage. After lots of ass kissing, Uncle Monty finally says yes and off they go to the country side. Will the country side be all the hope it will be?

I don’t know how many of you guys and gals out there are city dwellers, but after a while living in the city can get to you. The cars and their exhaust, building on top of buildings, the never ending cement and pavement, the noise pollution, the drunks, the drug addicts, the people…you name it, in the city, there’s always a huge assortment of things that can drive you nuts. After a while, your body and mind will ask you to please, escape somewhere with clean oxygen and trees and nature. After a couple of years of living amongst buildings, you’ll yearn for nature. This is what happens to Withnail and Marwood. On top of all of this, they live in poverty, always surviving with the least of things, food being a rare commodity. To alleviate the pain of being poor and living under these inhuman conditions, they consume huge amounts of alcohol and drugs. Somehow, no matter how poor they are, there’s always money for drugs and alcohol. And if they don’t find it, the go nuts! They need something to help them forget their lives. The first few scenes of this film present us with characters who are desperately looking for some sanity. Their solution is nature. The question then arises: are these two city boys ready for nature?

The answer is a big fat no! I loved how the film portrays these two city guys trying to find sanity amongst nature and then being totally unprepared for it; as if modern living had rendered these two humans completely useless when it comes to depending on themselves for survival. When Withnail and Marwood first arrive to the country side, they are greeted by a thunderous storm, and a house with no light, not comfortable accommodations. They actually have to find wood to start up a fire and dig out potatoes to eat. When it comes to killing their own chicken, they can’t even achieve that properly. I love how the film addressed these issues because it is a question that I commonly ask myself. What if suddenly, for whatever reason, food stopped coming to supermarkets? How would you go about getting your food? People in the city don’t have time to grow their own food. Millions rely on the supermarket having everything they need to survive. What if you were suddenly faced with having to take a chicken, kill it, take off all its feathers, gut it and chopping off it’s head and legs? How about beef? No one knows how to go about killing a cow and slicing off a proper cut to eat! Hell, no one has cows in their homes! People are used to getting their meat neatly packaged at the supermarket. If people were to suddenly get cut off from that for whatever the reason, it would be a complete disaster, it would be chaos! City people are so used to having everything done for them; I found it interesting how the film addresses these issues.

The story behind this film is that its partially based on Bruce Robinson’s own life experiences, living in the 60’s, in Camden, trying to make it as an actor. Actually, the script was based on Robinson’s unpublished novel of the same name. so the film is a collection of all these experiences he and his friends had trying to make it in the entertainment world. Robinson is an actor himself (this often times makes for some great directors) and by that point he’d appeared in various films including Ken Russell’s The Music Lovers (1970) and Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968). But since he wasn’t making much money between each film, he decided to take up writing; many great directors have gone down this exact same route. One that comes to mind is Vittorio de Sica an actor who decided to get into directing and ended up making  The Bicycle Thieves (1948), one of the greatest films ever made. Withnail and I is considered one of the best British Films ever made itself, in fact, its considered one of the best British cult films out there. Some of the best films have a genuine feel to them, in the case of Withnail and I its realism stems from the fact that many of the characters in the film are based on Robinson’s own friends and acquaintances. For example, Uncle Monty, (Withnails gay uncle) who tries to seduce Marwood in a couple of hilarious scenes was partially based on Italian director Franco Zeffirelly who was constantly hitting on Robinson during the production of Romeo and Juliet. Many of Zefirrelly’s pick up lines were incorporated into Uncle Monty’s dialog. So it’s that kind of a film where the situations feel real, what makes it special though is that pitch black humor the film has!

Speaking of the films humor, it’s awesome. I mean, I had never seen this film before, but I’m sure I’ll be watching it a couple more times because the dialog is simply brilliant. It’s the kind of film you’ll be quoting from for years and years. My favorite line is when Withnail and Marwood enter this restaurant filled with conservatives and they sit on a table (obviously drunk) and say: "We want the finest wines available to humanity! And we want the now!" I mean, seriously? I think the dialog and situations are the real stars of the show. These characters come off as totally whacked out of their minds! They’ve been cooked up in their apartments for so long that they are becoming ill, so much so that at one point, Marwood says: "I don’t feel good. Oh my God. My hearts beating like a fucked clock! I feel dreadful!" and Withnail replies: "So does everybody. Look at my tongue! It’s wearing a yellow sock!" Those first few moments when they are going paranoid are awesome, on top of everything they have this friend who is a drug dealer played by Ralph Brown (who is pure genius on this movie by the way) he’ll have you cracking up with every single word he says! At one point he tells Withnail: "You have done something to your brain, you’ve made it high. If I lay you 10 mil of diazepam on you, it will do something else to your brain, it will make it low. Why trust one drug and not another? That’s politics isn’t it?" This dude was so hilarious on this movie that he was asked to play practically the exact same character in Wayne’s World 2 (1993)! In that one he plays Del Preston, the guy who had to find 10,000 brown M&M’s or Ozzy wouldn’t play! So as you can see, I totally dug the dialog in this movie, it’s got a lot of dark dark humor in it, if you appreciate that sort of thing, you’ll love this movie.

"We want the finest wines available to humanity, and we want them now!"

Currently, Robinson has said that he feels the film was badly shot and illuminated, but that it makes up for its technical faults with its great dialog. I don’t agree so much with that sentiment, I mean, yeah Robinson was making his first film. He even told the cast and crew that he didn’t know what he was doing, this was his first time as a director and that he was going to be making mistakes as they went along. That’s understandable, and I love the humility displayed in those comments, but I’m not so sure I agree with the part that it was badly shot and illuminated, I actually loved the way the film looks. The film looks so grey and dark that it fits the characters persona’s perfectly! These are not happy people! These people hate their lives, they want to improve desperately but don’t know how to go about it, and so that bleak look the film has fits it perfectly. Plus, it rains for 90% of the picture, which makes everything all the messier! Well, I’ve gone on long enough about this one. Basically, this is a film filled with biting, sarcastic, intelligent, black humor. It’s one of the most important British cult films ever made. If you like that acid, biting humor you find in Hunter S. Thompsons books and films, you’ll love this one for sure. Highly recommend it for a night of dark humor with a brain.

Rating: 5 out of 5