Posts Tagged ‘based on a magazine article’
Tuesday, June 11th, 2024
HIT MAN (2024) is on the more crowdpleasing side of Richard Linklater movies, a sort of comedy, sort of romance, sort of noir, sort of true story that’s good enough to sort of make me forgive the “based on a true story… sort of” disclaimer and related dad joke vibes. For me it doesn’t quite live up to the hype from the Toronto International Film Festival, where it apparently blew the roof off, but it’s definitely worth watching if you already get Netflix, where it ended up.
This is really a star vehicle for Glen Powell, an Austinite who worked with Linklater in FAST FOOD NATION, EVERYBODY WANTS SOME!! and APOLLO 10 1/2 (an animated/rotoscoped movie that’s also on Netflix, and quite good) before blowing up in TOP GUN: MAVERICK and ANYONE BUT YOU. Now the two of them teamed up to co-write and co-produce this showcase for Powell doing more than just his usual cocky hunky guy thing (but also that). He plays Gary Johnson, a New Orleans psychology professor who lives alone with two cats, enjoys bird watching, and tucks his polo shirts into his cargo shorts. He’s a dabbler who moonlights as a tech guy for the police, recording undercover stings busting people who were asking around about putting a hit out on somebody. When Jasper (Austin Amelio, The Walking Dead) is suspended for excessive force, Gary is pushed into playing the hitman, digs deep to create a macho character, and turns out to be very good at it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adria Arjona, Austin Amelio, based on a magazine article, Evan Holtzman, Glen Powell, Retta, Richard Linklater, Skip Hollandsworth
Posted in Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Thriller | 24 Comments »
Wednesday, July 12th, 2023
1983: SUMMER OF NUB supplement: SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (1977)
I was born in the ‘70s. Between you and me, it was a week after JAWS came out. So I don’t remember the release of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, or Disco Demolition Night, I was busy with other shit. Mister Rogers, STAR WARS, Popeye cartoons, learning to tie my shoes, etc.
So growing up there was this idea of “the seventies” that was really funny. Ha ha, they had bellbottoms, they listened to disco, the movies had wah wah guitars. A big joke. The high-pitched Bee Gee vocals, white polyester suits, light up floors and dance moves of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, as parodied in AIRPLANE!, on Sesame Street and elsewhere, were part of that impression.
But when I was a teenager, hip hop samples opened a path to P-Funk, and 99 cent records at Goodwill introduced me to Innervisions and Headhunters. Film appreciation led me to SHAFT, SUPER FLY, DOLEMITE and THE MACK (with a side order of TAXI DRIVER and all that). Suddenly “the seventies” weren’t as much of a joke in my mind, they were becoming a legendary period. But disco still seemed like some bullshit. As smooth jazz was to jazz, disco was to funk, I thought. Still kind of do, to some extent. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Barry Miller, based on a magazine article, dance movies, David Shire, disco, Donna Pescow, Fran Drescher, John Badham, John Travolta, Julie Bovasso, Karen Lynn Gorney, Martin Shakar, Norman Wexler, Robert Costanzo, Sam Coppola, Val Bisoglio
Posted in Reviews, Drama | 30 Comments »
Monday, May 30th, 2022
Before TOP GUN: MAVERICK, director Joseph Kosinski did a movie with a few of the same actors that did not receive as much attention. Released in 2017, ONLY THE BRAVE is the true story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, an elite fire fighter crew in Prescott, Arizona specializing in clearing fire-fueling plants and starting controlled burns to cut off the spread of wildfires. Warning: the story is tragic, and this is a crier. But it’s a great movie.
It’s technically impeccable. As on his previous movies TRON: LEGACY and OBLIVION, Kosinski has Claudio Miranda as his director of photography. Miranda also shot THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON and LIFE OF PI, so obviously he has chops. I don’t know what amount of pyrotechnics vs. cg they use, but many fire scenes are much more convincing than THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD (though I liked that movie). It’s a high level of filmmaking craft, but the thrills and adventure and shit are honestly backdrop for a story about people, with uniformly strong performances and very effective characterization in the script adapted by Ken Nolan (BLACK HAWK DOWN and, uh, TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT) and Eric Warren Singer (THE INTERNATIONAL, AMERICAN HUSTLE, an episode of Æon Flux) from the GQ article “No Exit” by Sean Flynn. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andie MacDowell, based on a magazine article, Dylan Kenin, Eric Warren Singer, firefighters, forest fire, Geoff Stults, Jake Picking, James Badge Dale, Jeff Bridges, Jennifer Connelly, Joseph Kosinski, Josh Brolin, Ken Nolan, Kenneth Miller, Miles Teller, Natalie Hall, Rachel Singer, Ryan Michael Busch, Scott Foxx, Scott Haze, Taylor Kitsch, Thad Luckinbill
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, September 21st, 2021
ZOLA tells a wild road trip story that, I feel, doesn’t amount to much, but it’s worth it for the ride, and for the telling. The big hook is that it’s based on the 2015 “now iconic series of viral, uproarious tweets” (source: A24films.com), something that’s not only emphasized in the marketing, but noted on screen at the beginning. The official onscreen title is @zola (which is actually the Twitter handle of some wedding company, not author/protagonist A’Ziah “Zola” King), the main characters are often looking at their phones and monotonously speaking aloud their texts to each other, and there’s a notification sound heard frequently throughout the movie – I was never really sure if it was meant to be diegetic or not. Admittedly all that sounds stupid, but when it comes down to it this is really just “based on a true story.” Not even entirely based on a true story told in an unusual medium, because a Rolling Stone article about the whole affair…
https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/zola-tells-all-the-real-story-behind-the-greatest-stripper-saga-ever-tweeted-73048/
…is also credited as source material.
The story is about Zola (Taylour Paige, MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM, soon to be in the TOXIC AVENGER remake), a Hooters waitress and sometimes stripper, agreeing to take a road trip to Florida to get some money dancing with a crazy white girl she just met named, in the movie version, Stefani (Riley Keough, MAGIC MIKE, MAD MAX: FURY ROAD). Turns out this bitch (get used to it, that’s what they call each other, both lovingly and not so much) is also planning for them both to turn tricks when they get there, and things get out of hand. It’s a true crime story, but not of a crime normally considered significant enough to get a movie, even including the two most harrowing parts, which were fictional. But that kind of makes it cooler. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: A'Ziah King, Ari Wegner, based on a magazine article, based on a Twitter thread, Colman Domingo, David Kushner, Janicza Bravo, Jeremy O. Harris, Mica Levi, Nicholas Braun, Riley Keough, strippers, Tampa-core, Taylour Paige, Ts Madison
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Crime, Reviews | 39 Comments »
Wednesday, December 18th, 2019
HUSTLERS is a true crime movie with some grit and some emotion and some style. It stars Constance Wu (ALL THE CREATURES WERE STIRRING) and Jennifer Lopez (ANACONDA) as the center of a ring of dancers (they don’t call themselves strippers, according to the source material) who started hanging out with rich guys so they could drug them and run up their credit cards. Wu’s character Destiny tells the story from seven years later, when she seems to have settled down, and is cautiously, suspiciously answering questions for a magazine writer (Julie Stiles, SAVE THE LAST DANCE).
When Destiny starts working at Moves she’s green, rubbing up on guys all day and going home with less money than that’s worth. There’s a great introduction to the place where the camera follows her and the other new girls from the back, out onto the stage to be introduced and down a ramp onto the floor where some asshole gets her attention by calling her Lucy Liu. Reminded me of one of my favorite shots in CREED, when it follows him to the ring and makes you feel like you’re there in his entourage, practically giving you stage fright. This has a similar feeling. You feel like you’re her, as much as a movie can do something like that.
Then she sees Ramona Vega (Lopez) entering the room like a pharaoh, dropping every jaw in the room, leaving the stage looking like it snowed one dollar bills. The Michael Jordan of the pole. Later, Destiny takes a rooftop smoke break at the same time as Ramona, who’s up there laid out like she’s doing a calendar shoot, and introduces herself. Destiny is in lingerie and it’s cold, so Ramona has her come curl up inside her big fur coat. I felt this was maybe a love story, but if so it always stays at or below this level of unacknowledged sexual chemistry. So they might just be friends who cuddle. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: based on a magazine article, Cardi B, Constance Wu, Devin Ratray, Frank Whaley, Jennifer Lopez, Jon Glaser, Julia Stiles, Keke Palmer, Lili Reinhart, Lizzo, Lorene Scafaria, Steven Boyer
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 15 Comments »
Monday, December 9th, 2019
A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD has been promoted as a Fred Rogers biopic, and it it is true that Tom Hanks (THE LADYKILLERS) tackles the challenge of portraying the famously gentle Neighborhood of Make-Believe resident. But it’s not his life story, or even the smarter kind of biopic that focuses on one period as a microcosm of his life. Instead it makes him a supporting character in the story of a journalist coming to terms with his estranged father while working on a magazine profile of Rogers. I guess it’s kind of like SAVING MR. BANKS, where Hanks played Walt Disney as co-lead with a highly fictionalized P.L. Travers, but it’s probly more comparable to if MILES AHEAD was mostly about Ewan McGregor’s character dealing with family issues and Miles Davis occasionally gives him good advice that he rejects until the end of the movie.
So it doesn’t matter much that this is coming on the heels of a popular documentary (WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?) that it could never equal – it’s not the same thing at all. They do manage to work in a few re-enactments of famous moments (a couple seconds of his congressional testimony) and remixes of scenes from the documentary (a crowded cafe – and therefore the theater you’re sitting in – goes silent when he asks our protagonist to stop and think about “the people who loved you into being”). But if I remember right the documentary had a part where writer Tom Junod said that writing a profile on Rogers for Esquire changed his attitude toward life, and this is mostly extrapolated from that idea, with Rogers as guest star guru to writer Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys, TITUS). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: based on a magazine article, Carmen Cusack, Chris Cooper, Christine Lahti, Jessica Hecht, Maddie Corman, Marielle Heller, Maryann Plunkett, Matthew Rhys, Micah-Fitzerman Blue, Noah Harpster, Susan Kelechi Watson, Tom Hanks, Wendy Makkena
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 21 Comments »
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2019
Well, it’s a new year, and I’m keeping my tradition of kicking things off with a Clint Eastwood review. I think Warner Brothers may know about this practice, because they keep releasing his new movies at the end of December. (It’s not for Oscars – I heard they didn’t even screen this one for critics.)
Clint has been directing for almost 50 years. You don’t think of him as a guy who changes with the times, but he’s doing something to stay relevant at least some of the time. Here’s a guy from a couple eras ago still working while we have a cultural movement toward taking stock of our pop culture heroes, in some cases realizing that they were assholes the whole time, or worse. We find out about some horrible shit they’ve gotten away with or they say some shitty thing that makes us reconsider our respect for them.
This accountability is a good thing. Nobody should get away with abusing others just by being a movie star or rich or whatever. Personally I try not to have an itchy trigger finger on the “cancel” button though because I think there needs to be room for context and growth and making amends, if and when possible. But if you start to think some movie star has been a toxic force on the earth maybe it’s harder to enjoy watching them, say, appear in a weirdly titled Chinese propaganda movie starring Mike Tyson. I understand separating the art from the artist, but I can’t always do it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alison Eastwood, Andy Garcia, based on a magazine article, Bradley Cooper, Clifton Collins Jr., Clint Eastwood, Dianne Wiest, Eugene Cordero, Ignacio Serrichio, Laurence Fishburne, Lobo Sebastian, Michael Pena, Noel G., Robert LaSardo, Taissa Farmiga
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews | 23 Comments »
Sunday, September 29th, 2013
“Well, I didn’t think it was terrible or anything.”
–Vern, outlawvern.com
For the most part PAIN & GAIN is not that bad in the usual ways that Michael Bay movies are bad. Check this shit out: I honestly had no major stylistic problems with this one, other than some late-in-the-game freeze frame/on screen graphic things that are supposed to be funny (listing the side effects of cocaine use, saying “this is still a true story” during a crazy part, etc.) Even the action scenes are fine and have a good energy to them. I think maybe when Bay is limited to what he considers a low budget ($26 million) he has to do more planning and less shooting everything from a hundred different angles to slap together later.
What I really expected to be deadly in this movie was the jokes. Of course I hold a grudge against Bay for the way his and Simon West’s editing and framing began the crumbling of the visual language of action cinema that led to the current state of things where only a very small percentage of American action movies are worth watching if you are hoping for there to be action scenes in them. That’s what he’s gonna have to answer for when he gets to the Pearly Gates, but it’s definitely not the worst thing about his movies – that would have to be his terrible sense of humor. BAD BOYS 2 and the TRANSFORMERSes especially can’t go a minute without some unfunny ad-libbed jibber jabber, or a cut away to a dog fucking something, or a sassy black lady swearing at somebody (or vice versa), or a cartoonish service person or government stooge being an asshole for no reason other than to reflect Bay’s world view. So when this joker said his next movie was gonna be a comedy I heard the JAWS music.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Mackie, based on a magazine article, Mark Wahlberg, Michael Bay, The Rock, Tony Shalhoub, true crime
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 68 Comments »
Tuesday, July 16th, 2013
It’s a crazy story, and it really happened pretty much like this: a group of well-off high school kids in the Valley, obsessed with celebrities and their clothes, decided to start robbing them. Using Google to find their addresses, and TMZ and Twitter to find out when they were out of town to host a party or attend an awards show, they’d show up at their mansions, let themselves in, then have the run of the place like it was the mall in DAWN OF THE DEAD. They stole clothes, handbags, jewelry, cash and (they say) cocaine. They chose Paris Hilton as their first victim because they thought she was “dumb” and might leave a door unlocked – sure enough they say they found the key under the welcome mat. Others (Lindsay Lohan, Brian Austin Green, Orlando Bloom, some reality show people I never heard of) left doors or windows unlocked. These kids chose celebrities whose fashion they admired, and they happened to be people with so much shit that they didn’t even notice when it was gone. Not until more experienced criminals got involved and knew to take the most expensive jewelry. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: based on a magazine article, Harris Savides, Katie Chang, Leslie Mann, Lifetime movies, Paris Hilton, Sofia Coppola
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 47 Comments »
Monday, January 7th, 2013
ARGO is based on an amazing true story, recently declassified and told in this great Wired article. During the Iran hostage crisis, it turns out, the CIA managed to rescue a group of stranded American workers using an unusual cover story: they were part of a Canadian film crew scouting exotic locations for a STAR WARS inspired sci-fi fantasy epic. John Chambers, the genius makeup artist behind the PLANET OF APES series (and played by John Goodman here), had done “some contract work” for the CIA according to the article (let’s hope he gets a whole series of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE style thrillers) and helped to set up real Hollywood producers and offices for the fake movie. The now-worshipped-by-nerds comic book artist Jack Kirby (seen only in a cameo here, played by DEATH WISH V’s Michael Parks) provided the artwork that they used as pre-production set and costume designs.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adrienne Barbeau, Alan Arkin, based on a magazine article, Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Christopher Denham, Clea DuVall, Iran hostage crisis, Jack Kirby, Jack Pierce, Jimmy Carter, John Goodman, Kerry Bishe, Michael Parks, Philip Baker Hall, Rory Cochrane, Scoot McNairy, Tate Donovan
Posted in Reviews, Thriller | 48 Comments »
