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Colin Carman

~ Jane Austen Scholar & Culture Vulture

Colin Carman

Tag Archives: sally field

Review: “Lincoln”

30 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by colincarman in Film Reviews

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

bruce catton, civil war, confederacy, daniel day-lewis, doris kearns goodwin, drama, james spader, joseph gordon levitt, lincoln, politics, sally field, thirteenth amendment, tommy lee jones, tony kushner

Lincoln

“This American Life”

Grade: B+ (RENT IT)

ABRAHAM LINCOLN ISN’T just a man but a monument.  Meanwhile, the movie inspired by his commitment to ending slavery and the Civil War is a mixed bag, a union, as it were, of playwright Tony Kushner’s talky script and Steven Spielberg’s love of spectacle.  What happens when you pair the intensely verbal with the intensely visual?  Sadly less than the sum of its parts, “Lincoln” is a mathematical equation as tricky to decode as “four score and seven years ago.”

Sally-Field-LincolnOn the plus side, there are the performances.  Daniel Day-Lewis is a titan of serious cinema, from “My Left Foot” to the best American film tragedy of the 2000s, “There Will Be Blood.”  This is a Method actor so focused and unfunny that he makes Anthony Hopkins look like Robin Williams.  He nails Lincoln’s reportedly reedy voice and effortless erudition. Reviewing “A Room with a View” back in 1985, Pauline Kael wrote of the actor: “In some scenes I wished the camera were at a more discreet distance from Day-Lewis, because you can see him acting and you’re too conscious of his black hair and mustache – you suspect he’s made up to be ascetic and all profile.” All these years later, Day-Lewis’ profile finally gets the close-up of its career.

On the surface, the casting of Sally Field as Mary Todd seems questionable given that the actress is eleven years D-Day’s senior, but dress any actor in Lincoln’s chin curtain beard and top-hat – and any actress in a hoop skirt and greasy hair curls – and their ages somehow find equilibrium.  The Lincolns’ youngest son Tad (Gulliver McGrath) is seen before the fireplace, studying pictures of slaves disfigured by their masters’ whips. Mary is agonized over the enlistment of her older son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) into the Union Army while, beyond the domestic, Republican abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones) and Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn) are busy strategizing how to squash the Southern delegation.  “Lincoln,” at its heart, is not a biographical portrait but a study in political procedure. Seward has hired a group of Falstaffian fellows to cajole members of the House of Representations into passing anti-slavery legislation. The stand-out is W.N. Bilbo (a greasy James Spader) who brings some much-needed levity to “Lincoln” as he struts right through the front doors of the White House and delivers some deliciously salty language.

On the other hand, there are elements that subtract from “Lincoln,” or, at least, oppositional elements at work that make the film wobble like a house divided. Thanks to Kushner, “Lincoln,” inspired by Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals,” limits its scope to the political wrangling involved in the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery and put one more nail in the Confederate coffin.  As the famed1ea284fabeb8cb8df6779196e5615d49b08dcbaafd7f816ff5ce83b6 Civil War historian Bruce Catton wrote, “To save the Union the North had to destroy the Confederacy, and to destroy the Confederacy it had to destroy slavery.”  Given the misnomer of its title, one expects from “Lincoln” a sweeping biopic that begins with the sixteenth President as a young prodigy growing up in a cramped log-cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm in Kentucky and ending with a very bad night at the theatre. The maximalist Steven Spielberg is no doubt up to the task.  So, too, is Kushner, the Pulitzer prize-winner who co-wrote the screenplay for Spielberg’s 2005 “Munich” and, oh, just a little play called “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.”  Whether Kushner and Spielberg are a match made in heaven should remain in question.  There’s a palpable tension between Spielberg’s love of the panoramic (i.e. the coast of Normandy, the Atlantic Ocean, space) and Kushner’s theatrical impulse to withdraw to the musty interiors of the White House and other Washingtonian halls of power. Regardless, “Lincoln” is destined to dominate next year’s Academy Awards; they might as well host the ceremony at the foot of Mount Rushmore.

Have no fear: there will be Oscars.

Review: “The Amazing Spider-Man”

05 Thursday Jul 2012

Posted by colincarman in Film Reviews

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

alfred molina, andrew garfield, batman, campbell scott, christopher nolan, embeth davidtz, emma stone, kirsten dunst, marc webb, martin sheen, peter parker, philip seymour hoffman, sally field, sam raimi, spider-man 2, spiderman, stan lee, steve ditko, superhero, the amazing spider-man, the dark knight rises, tobey maguire

“Arachnophobia”
Grade: C+ (SKIP IT)

THE BOY WITH a serious case of sticky fingers returns to the summer blockbuster scene with something between a bang and a whimper.  Ten years have passed since Sam Raimi’s stellar start to the “Spider-Man” trilogy, and just five since “Spider-Man 3” bombed out the franchise and Toby Maguire hung up his blue-and-red tights 2.5 billion dollars later. Peter Parker by day and Spidey by night, Andrew Garfield is now in the title role with Emma Stone (“The Help”) as girlfriend Gwen Stacy.  These fine young actors keep director Marc [“(500) Day of Summer”] Webb’s take from being two-hours-of-bummer.  (Last month, I saw a truly amazing Garfield hold his ground in the face of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Willy Loman in a Tony-nominated role on Broadway.)

Nevertheless, since the arachnid is best known for its eight appendages, here are eight reasons that “The Amazing Spider-Man,” which doesn’t quite stick to its title, is a dead bug:

8.  At a longish 136 minutes, you’ll want an escape-hatch.  Oh what a lengthy web they weave.

7.  The plot’s contrivances pile up high and fast.  It isn’t enough that love interest Gwen Stacy is an intern in the very bioengineering lab (Oscorp) run by Dr. Curt Connors (“Rhys Ifans of “Notting Hill”), Peter’s departed father’s partner in biology.  Small world!  Oh no, Gwen Stacy’s father is also a Police Captain in pursuit of Peter, making the family dinner to which Spidey in plainclothes is invited awkward indeed.  That’s not so much a tangled web but an improbable one even by comic book standards.

6.  Total Recall.  The lady selling popcorn at the concessions stand said it all when, discussing “The Amazing Spider-Man” with me afterwards, said: “It’s just about new faces.”  Indeed, there is very little new or freshly inspired in this fourth  filmic take on the Marvel classic imagined by comic book artists Stan Lee and Steve Ditko back in 1962.  Eight long years elapsed between “Batman & Robin” and Christopher Nolan’s 2005 reboot; in the case of Spider-Man, we’ve experienced just five spider-less years since the negligible “Spider-Man 3.”  Too soon?

5.  Sally Field Never Leaves the Kitchen.  Peter Parker is the abandoned son of Richard and Mary Parker (Campbell Scott and Embeth Davidtz) left with his Uncle Ben and Aunt May (Martin Sheen and Sally Field).  The gender parity in this film is a throwback.  Not only does Gwen garner laughs rather than respect when she throws a lab-coat over her mini-skirt and knee-highs but the only other female figure in the film, Aunt May, surpasses the status of homebody: she’s a shut-in who offers only meatloaf and weak words of advice.

4.  Predictability.  After 30 minutes, you may be wondering who the villain will be and hiding in plain sight, herpetologist Dr. Curt Connors is a contender. The lizard nemesis here is a cross between the Hulk and Godzilla lacking the fire and muscle of either.

3.  Paging Dr. Ock!  The lack of real action in the film’s first hour left me thinking of Dr. Otto Gunther Octavius, that is, Doctor Octopus, so brilliantly embodied by Alfred Molina in “Spider-Man 2” (2004) with those mechanized tentacles that sent taxi-cabs crashing through coffee shop windows.  Importantly, it was Dr. Octavius’s grief over his dead wife that drove his rage, and in “The Amazing Spider-Man,” there is a total lack of pathos.  The villain in this instance is cartoonish.

2. Andrew Garfield’s pompadour.  As Parker and Mary Jane, Maguire and Kirsten Dunst had just the geeky vulnerability, not to mention working-class backgrounds, to fit the bill.  Here, Garfield and Stone are just too, well, pretty.  Mary Jane was the girl-next-door, literally behind the clotheslines strewn with Uncle Ben and Aunt May’s laundry, whereas Gwen Stacy…well, didn’t I already mention her costuming?  Part of Peter Parker’s appeal – say that seven times! – is that he’s a superhero by night but a lowly super-zero by day, and there’s no way Garfield could ever look the part.  He’s the lovechild of James Dean and a  No. 2 pencil.

1.   There’s a mightier superhero to anticipate this summer and that’s the bat-suited one in Christopher Nolan’s third and final installment to his noir series, “The Dark Knight Rises” (July 20).   What Nolan has done there – aided greatly, of course, by the fabulous horrors of Christian Bale and the late Heath Ledger – is retool the familiarities of the DC Comics series and give us something dark indeed.  It is not for nothing that twice in “The Amazing Spider-Man” you hear ol’ spidey say, after a fight: “You should see the other guy.”  Bring him on.

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