Review: "Sunshine State" is Another Great John Sayles Ensemble Drama (Happy B'day, Edie Falco)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 53 (of 2003) by Leroy Douresseaux

Sunshine State (2002)
Running time: 141 minutes (2 hours, 21 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for brief strong language, a sexual reference, and thematic elements
EDITOR/WRITER/DIRECTOR: John Sayles
PRODUCER: Maggie Renzi
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Patrick Cady

DRAMA

Starring: Angela Bassett, Edie Falco, James McDaniel, Timothy Hutton, Bill Cobbs, Miguel Ferrer, Ralph Waite, Jane Alexander, Mary Alice, Gordon Clapp, Mary Steenburgen, Alex Lewis, and Tom Wright

The subject of this movie review is Sunshine State, a 2002 drama (with humorous undertones) from director John Sayles. An ensemble character drama, the film has subplots about family secrets, race relations, romance, and commercial property development.

Watching a John Sayles movie is to observe the work of a genius. Of course the word is often misused and overused, but not in John’s case. He is a genius film director. Very few directors could write the kind of dense character pieces that he does with so many players and still make the resulting film visually absorbing. That is what the master does yet again in his 2002 film, Sunshine State.

As usual, when a Sayles film begins, there is already a lot of backstory. The characters have highly involved lives before we fade in to the first scene, so we essentially come into a story that’s already begun. In a northern Florida coastal town, encroaching land developers force the separate lives of the town’s residents to intersect as the developers make a hard sell, by hook or by crook, the buy the land which they intend to transform into a swanky residential and resort area.

Old family business also rears its head for the two female leads. Desiree Perry (Angela Bassett) returns to visit her mother, Eunice Stokes (Mary Alice). Desiree left decades earlier because of an unwanted pregnancy and because she had a hard time living up to the public legacy of her father. She returns with her husband, Reggie, to find her mother now responsible for a troubled young relative (Alex Lewis) and seemingly nursing a grudge against her daughter.

Meanwhile, Marly Temple (Edie Falco) manages her father Furman’s (Ralph Waite) restaurant and hotel, but she’s ready to give it up. She listens to the slick and deceptive deals of the land developers and falls for one of their employees, a wandering landscape architect (Timothy Hutton).

Sayles’s film is a complex, but yet straightforward story, that details the complicated issues of business and of family business. You almost need a scorecard to keep up with all the characters, but Sayles creates a rhythm with his plot and story that a patient and savvy viewer will eventually catch. Visually, it’s like a shell game, but once you catch onto who is who, who is connected to whom, who wants what, you get a grasp on the film. After a while, you even have a good idea of the motivation of even the bit players. Sayles’s films are verbose, but not like those pretentious uppity foreign films, especially those high-falutin’ British period pieces. The spoken accentuates the visual. The better you understand the dialogue and that it’s communicating the story to you, the easier it is to watch the movie.

The acting is quite good all around. Many viewers are already aware of Angela Bassett’s dramatic prowess, but Ms. Falco, mainly known for “The Sopranos” is a revelation here. Her Marly Temple is one of the best performances by an actress, lead or supporting, in 2002, and one of the best in last few years. Like many of those earlier excellent performances, Oscar passed Ms. Falco by even for a nomination.

For many complex business and socio-political reasons, not excluding his talent, Sayles continues to create some of the best ethnic characters currently seen in popular cinema, especially African-Americans. Many black directors and writers show less affinity than Sayles in creating complex, three-dimensional black characters. Many black filmmakers are content to churn out the same drivel as the rest of the film industry except they populate their movies with cardboard, stereotypical Negroes.

As usual, a Sayles film ends before the story is “over.” He’s given us a small slice in the long rich lives of his characters who are so seemingly alive that they might just live on past the end credits. Sunshine State is John Sayles best film since Lone Star, in which he also takes the same lovingly novelistic approach to the story. It’s a career highlight from the oldest and the strongest maverick filmmaker in America. He’s the last great independent spirit, and by remaining so, every few years, he gives us a work of simple brilliance.

9 of 10
A+

NOTES:
2003 Black Reel Awards: 1 win: “Theatrical - Best Actress” (Angela Bassett)

2003 Image Awards: 1 win: “Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture” (Angela Bassett)

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Review: "The Good Shepherd" is Overstuffed and Stiff (Happy B'day, Matt Damon)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 65 (of 2007) by Leroy Douresseaux

The Good Shepherd (2006)
Running time: 167 minutes (2 hours, 47 minutes)
MPAA – R for some violence, sexuality, and language
DIRECTOR: Robert De Niro
WRITER: Eric Roth
PRODUCERS: Robert De Niro, James G. Robinson, and Jane Rosenthal
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Robert Richardson, ASC (DoP)
EDITOR: Tariq Anwar
Academy Award nominee

DRAMA/HISTORICAL/THRILLER

Starring: Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, John Turturro, Billy Crudup Tammy Blanchard, Kier Dullea, Michael Gambon, Martina Gedeck, Timothy Hutton, Lee Pace, Joe Pesci, Eddie Redmayne, John Sessions, Oleg Stefan, and Robert De Niro

The Good Shepherd is the first film Robert De Niro has directed since 1993’s A Bronx Tale, which was his directorial debut. The film, which is partially fact-based, examines the early history of the CIA.

It’s 1939, and Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is a sharp-minded Yale student and patriotic American. His keen sense of discretion, the value he places on secrecy, and his commitment to honor earns him the attention of Yale’s infamous secret society, Skull and Bones. His acute mind gets him recruited to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA, and he serves his country during World War II. After the war, he becomes one of the founders of the CIA, and his decision to play a part alters his life even as he helps to shape the most powerful covert agency in the world.

Wilson is loyal to his country, but he begins to feel the job eroding his ideals and filling him with distrust because, as he’s so often told, he can’t really trust anyone. Meanwhile, his stoic personality and reticence about saying much shuts his wife, Margaret (Angelina Jolie) out of his life and starves their marriage. Wilson’s steely dedication also doesn’t do much for his relationship with his son, Edward Jr. (Eddie Redmayne), who wants to follow his father into the murky world of the CIA.

De Niro certainly demands your full attention with The Good Shepherd, and he gives the viewer so much to mull over. The problem with this film is that it is an epic PBS, Masterpiece Theatre-like, mini-series squeezed into a quarter hour short of three hours. De Niro’s narrative, like the script by Eric Roth, lumbers through domestic and international intrigue with an occasional stop at Edward Wilson’s way-unhappy home, yet neither Wilson’s covert work nor his home life get the fair treatment they need.

In Roth’s script, characters come and go like ghosts, and a quarter century of history darts by as we go back and forth in time. Nothing really sticks, and if it weren’t for some memorable moments (the brutal murder of a gay British spy and the senses-shattering end of another spy via a plane), The Good Shepherd would be an entirely cool exercise. The acting is fair to good, but Edward Wilson is too stiff and unemotional, and Matt Damon, who is best when he’s animated, a man of action with a plan, plays Wilson as a robot.

Is The Good Shepherd about loyalty, or is it about how a select group of men create and perpetuate the myth of foreign boogeymen as a justification for the careers and the existence of their organizations? It could be both, but likely we’ll remember The Good Shepherd as a film about a man who walks through his life and history as if he were a ghost. Everyone sees him and acts as if he were alive, while he acts as if he were dead. Both sides are only half right.

5 of 10
B-

NOTES:
2007 Academy Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Achievement in Art direction” (Jeannine Claudia Oppewall – art director and Gretchen Rau and Leslie E. Rollins – set decorators)

Monday, April 16, 2007

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Review: Roman Polanski Spins Thrills in "The Ghost Writer"

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 74 (of 2010) by Leroy Douresseaux

The Ghost Writer (2010)
Running time: 128 minutes (2 hours, 8 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for language, brief nudity/sexuality, some violence and a drug reference
DIRECTOR: Roman Polanski
WRITERS: Roman Polanski; from an adaptation by Robert Harris (based upon the novel The Ghost by Robert Harris)
PRODUCERS: Robert Benmussa, Roman Polanski, and Alain Sarde
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Pawel Edelman (director of photography)
EDITOR: Hervé de Luze
COMPOSER: Alexandre Desplat

MYSTERY/SUSPENCE/THRILLER

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams, Timothy Hutton, Tom Wilkinson, Jim Belushi, Robert Pugh, Jon Bernthal, Tim Preece, and Eli Wallach

In the film Green Zone, director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Ultimatum) and Oscar-winning screenwriter Brian Helgeland presented their critique of the run-up to the Iraq War within the framework of a military action thriller starring Matt Damon.

Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski (The Pianist) and co-writer Robert Harris also have something to say about Iraq. They present their criticism of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cooperation with the U.S. invasion of Iraq as a murder mystery and political thriller entitled The Ghost Writer, based upon Harris’ novel, The Ghost.

In the film, Ewan McGregor plays a successful British ghostwriter, a professional writer who is paid to write books, articles, reports, etc. that are credited to another person. He is hired by a giant American publishing house to ghostwrite the memoirs of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan). McGregor’s character is unnamed in the story, but he refers to himself and is known to others as “The Ghost” or “Lang’s Ghost.”

The Ghost’s agent sees this job as the opportunity of a lifetime, but this project seems doomed from the start. The Ghost’s predecessor on the project, Mike McAra, a long time aide to Lang, drowned in an apparent suicide. The Ghost arrives at Martha’s Vineyard (near Cape Cod, Massachusetts), where Lang is staying in an oceanfront house. It is the middle of winter, and The Ghost finds Lang under siege. He has been recently accused of possible war crimes by a former British foreign secretary, Richard Rycart (Robert Pugh), and now faces the threat of prosecution by the International Criminal Court.

As The Ghost works with Lang and researches the project, he discovers that Lang is surrounded by untrustworthy people, and the circle of shifty characters seems ever-widening. Lang’s political controversies bring a swarm of reporters and protestors, eventually forcing The Ghost to move into Lang’s home. There, he uncovers clues suggesting that McAra may have stumbled onto a dark secret about Lang, and The Ghost wonders if he will ultimately share McAra’s fate.

Polanski can certainly write and direct a thriller. This film is tense, and stylish, but not in a showy way. The Ghost Writer is almost always mesmerizing and often riveting. Polanski teases his audience with just enough tidbits about the characters and their pasts to keep their brains on overdrive trying to decipher the players and their actions. Sometimes, this movie is too coy about the characters and their motivations, but the atmosphere of paranoia and deceit will make you overlook any faults. The film’s smooth pace belies its ability to keep the viewer on the edge, never settled, and too busy to nitpick.

Ewan McGregor executes the perfect turn as the laconic Ghost, who views everything with a critical eye, but is also always on the lookout for clues. Olivia Williams is both vicious and vulnerable as Lang’s erratic wife, Ruth Lang, and the underrated Kim Cattrall gives a clever performance as the red herring chanteuse, Amelia Bly, Lang’s personal assistant.

Your politics or your opinions of the director may affect how you feel about this movie, but this confident thriller is perfect for those who love political intrigue. The Ghost Writer makes other recent political thriller/murder mysteries (like Edge of Darkness with Mel Gibson) look positively anemic. I won’t say that The Ghost Writer is as good as Polanski’s classic Chinatown, but this is good stuff.

7 of 10
B+

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Queen Latifah Lovely in "Last Holiday"

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 28 (of 2006) by Leroy Douresseaux


Last Holiday (2006)
Running time: 112 minutes (1 hour, 52 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for some sexual references
DIRECTOR: Wayne Wang
WRITERS: Jeffrey Price & Peter S. Seaman (based upon the screenplay by J.B. Priestley)
PRODUCERS: Laurence Mark and Jack Rapke
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Geoffrey Simpson, ACS
EDITOR: Deirdre Slevin

COMEDY with elements of adventure/drama/romance

Starring: Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Timothy Hutton, Gerard Depardieu, Alicia Witt, Giancarlo Esposito, Susan Kellermann, Jascha Washington, Michael Nouri, and Ranjit Chowdhry

Georgia Byrd (Queen Latifah) lives a quiet life in New Orleans, La., where she is a shy cookware salesman for Kragen department store. Suddenly, one day, a company doctor diagnoses her with a rare and terminal disease of the brain, and she only has three weeks to live. Georgia, who has always lived her life in a box tucked inside her big dreams, decides to go out with a bang. She quits her job, cashes in her bonds and retirement accounts, and embarks on a vacation to the central European resort village of Karlovy Vary.

Georgia arrives at the Grandhotel Pupp having undergone a metamorphosis that, in turn, affects everyone around her, and her new, uninhibited personality shakes up hotel staff and guest alike. Georgia makes a bond with the hotel’s venerated chef, Didier (Gerard Depardieu), and even attracts the attention a Louisiana Congressman, Senator Dillings (Giancarlo Esposito), who is from her neighborhood. Coincidentally, Georgia also runs into her old retail magnate boss, Matthew Kragen (Timothy Hutton), and his besieged assistant/lover, Ms. Burns (Alicia Witt), who are both convinced that she is a business rival. In spite of all the attention she draws, Georgia enjoys the hotel’s snowy slopes, spectacular spas, delectable dinners, and midnight balls. Living a lifetime in the span of a few weeks, Georgia is about to get an even bigger surprise on New Years Day, as an old coworker, Sean Matthews (LL Cool J), arrives with a shocking announcement.

Last Holiday, a remake of a 1950 starring Sir Alec Guinness, is the perfect vehicle for Queen Latifah’s talents. Her abilities as a comic actress and her friendly, opening personality shine in this film, which might seem like piffle, but has some meat on it. Director Wayne Wang, known for his independent films like Smoke and Chinese Box, and for such mainstream, family friendly fare as Maid in Manhattan and Because of Winn-Dixie, smartly plays up to Latifah’s strengths, so where the film might falter on script or characters, it revives whenever the Queen is on stage.

And there are some weak characters. Timothy Hutton’s Matthew Kragen is the typical narcissistic antagonistic billionaire wannabe who, of course, has lost sight of what really matters in life; heck, it would be nice if he could just be nice to people. It’s no surprise that it is Georgia Byrd who will eventually help him see the light. Alicia Witt’s Ms. Burns is Kragen’s typically put upon assistant and sweet stuff on the side. I’ve always liked Alicia, and she does indeed give Ms. Burns, as she does with any character she plays, a bit of her distinctive personality. That’s kind of the same thing LL Cool J does. He may not be an A-list movie star, but the man is a good actor and belongs in movies. Giancarlo Esposito also makes the most of his underutilized character, Senator Dillings, just by doing his usual good work.

Ultimately, this is Queen Latifah’s show, and if you like her, you’ll really dig the charming Georgia Byrd with her effervescent personality. You’ll probably get a champagne kick out of this poignant, but more-sweet-than-sad film. The drama in Last Holiday might come across as a bit phony, but there is something honest and true about Georgia’s plight to finally stop waiting for life to happen and try to at least live part of her fondest wishes.

7 of 10
B+

Saturday, February 4, 2006