All Coen
Brothers fans in the house raise your hands!!!! And once you have done that,
check your list of movies to confirm that you have seen Inside Llewyn
Davis. A few of us (about a 500 I am
guessing) were lucky enough to see the movie at the Mumbai International Film
Festival. For the rest, PVR Director’s
Rare has been kind enough to release it after several delays – 10th
January 2014 is the day.
Showing posts with label Joel Coen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joel Coen. Show all posts
Wednesday, 8 January 2014
Sunday, 11 March 2012
Burn After Reading
A CIA employee with a level 3 clearance called Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) is married to an extremely painful doctor called Katie (Tilda Swinton). All Katie does 24 x 7 is question Osbourne’s existence and demean him by the minute. Also, she is having an affair with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) who is a US Marshall / Treasury Agent. Harry is in turn married to Sandy (Elizabeth Marvel) who is a hugely successful children’s book author. Sandy and Katie cannot see eye to eye although the families are supposed to be friends. They just hate each other – and this without knowing about the affair – wonder what would happen then.
When Osbourne gets pushed to a desk job, he gets quite peeved and decides to quit the CIA much to Katie’s chagrin. But he also starts working on his memoir. A book that will expose some of the not so pleasant secrets of the CIA – or so Osbourne believes. In between all of this, a CD with the memoir finds its way into the hands of Gym Trainer Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) who starts believing that he can make a quick buck by blackmailing Osbourne. His partner in crime – Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) who wants to get some plastic surgery done which will set her back by quite a bit and is not covered by insurance.
Burn After Reading is a rip roaring hilarious comedy if you like the dark variety. It is not in your face slapstick or filled with smart one liners. It is just the entire story and situation that ensures that you cannot help but find it hilarious. Honestly, I could have avoided giving you guys a spoiler by narrating the broad outline but believe me, this was a difficult review to write. I couldn’t figure out where to start. Such is the layered nature of the movie – atypical of the Coen brothers.
The brothers seem to have kind of mastered the art of building up the tempo of a movie gradually, inch by inch, beat by beat through a 100 minutes. Very few who can do that. There are movie makers who can fluctuate between the fast and slow well and there are movie makers who can maintain a consistent pace and yet remain totally intense. And there are the brothers who have their own brand of movie making which is building the tempo from the extremely slow to the absolutely frenetic. Burn After Reading is no different and therefore thoroughly enjoyable.
That Brad Pitt is a phenomenal actor and not just eye candy is an aspect that hasn’t really been acknowledged by too many people. Unlike George Clooney. Both of them are superb here. But it is John Malkovich who takes the cake with his absolutely acidic brand of acting. And brilliant performances from Tilda Swinton & Frances McDormand is just the icing. You will like BAR only if u like Dark Comedy. Else avoid it. 7 on 10.
Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1155268889/
When Osbourne gets pushed to a desk job, he gets quite peeved and decides to quit the CIA much to Katie’s chagrin. But he also starts working on his memoir. A book that will expose some of the not so pleasant secrets of the CIA – or so Osbourne believes. In between all of this, a CD with the memoir finds its way into the hands of Gym Trainer Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) who starts believing that he can make a quick buck by blackmailing Osbourne. His partner in crime – Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) who wants to get some plastic surgery done which will set her back by quite a bit and is not covered by insurance.
Burn After Reading is a rip roaring hilarious comedy if you like the dark variety. It is not in your face slapstick or filled with smart one liners. It is just the entire story and situation that ensures that you cannot help but find it hilarious. Honestly, I could have avoided giving you guys a spoiler by narrating the broad outline but believe me, this was a difficult review to write. I couldn’t figure out where to start. Such is the layered nature of the movie – atypical of the Coen brothers.
The brothers seem to have kind of mastered the art of building up the tempo of a movie gradually, inch by inch, beat by beat through a 100 minutes. Very few who can do that. There are movie makers who can fluctuate between the fast and slow well and there are movie makers who can maintain a consistent pace and yet remain totally intense. And there are the brothers who have their own brand of movie making which is building the tempo from the extremely slow to the absolutely frenetic. Burn After Reading is no different and therefore thoroughly enjoyable.
That Brad Pitt is a phenomenal actor and not just eye candy is an aspect that hasn’t really been acknowledged by too many people. Unlike George Clooney. Both of them are superb here. But it is John Malkovich who takes the cake with his absolutely acidic brand of acting. And brilliant performances from Tilda Swinton & Frances McDormand is just the icing. You will like BAR only if u like Dark Comedy. Else avoid it. 7 on 10.
Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1155268889/
Thursday, 3 March 2011
True Grit
Its been quite a while since I have seen an authentic western. And after Jeff Bridges got his 2nd nomination for the Oscars in as many years, I was even more keen to watch True Grit. Add to it the fact that it has been directed by Joel & Ethan Coen who have very rarely put a foot wrong in most of the movies that they have given us. The combination was sufficient to get me up @ 7 am on a Saturday morning and make it to the 9 am show @ PVR Phoenix (no they are not paying me for this…. Although I do wish they would). I have to confess that I owe all of you an apology for not having posted a review in a while. Have been bitten by the cricket bug myself and didn’t go the distance to make time for putting my thoughts down for the past 4 days. Having said that, I have finally managed to and intend to get it back on track.
It is 1880 in the WWW – Wild Wild West for the un-initiated . Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) is a fourteen year old who finds herself in a position that most of us would not want to. Her father has just been murdered and she has to collect the body. She may be fourteen, but she is extremely strong minded and not willing to go back till she gets to the bottom of all of this. She packs her father’s body off back home on the train with a message to her mother that she will be back soon. On finding out that her father was killed over a petty fight by a wanted outlaw Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) who is out scott free, she decides to seek justice. And justice in the WWW follows only one pattern – an eye for an eye. But she also knows that the law will take its own course. If she needs a quick decision, then she needs to find a bounty hunter or a marshall who would do it for some more money (structured corruption makes it legal ). But she doesn’t have any money left with her and so has to use her intelligent ways to wriggle her late father out of a deal that he had made with a local business man and gets enough to hire the services of Reuben J “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) who is said to be a marshall who has “True Grit”. Someone who really doesn’t care much about Outlaws and would rather the world is rid of them. He has to date taken care of 23 of them and is coincidentally being tried for them in a court of law – the WWW version of dealing with Human Rights Violation. He is quite surprised when a spirited fourteen year old approaches him with an offer of a princely sum of $50 – a lot of money at that time – and reluctantly agrees to take up the search for Tom Chaney. The kid wants to join but Rooster gives her the slip and takes off with a Texas Ranger La Beouf (Matt Damon) who is also on the lookout for Chaney for shooting a senator in Texas.
True Grit is about strong performances. You would need to listen to the dialogues extremely closely since they are all in an extremely Southern accent – any further south and it would be Spanish. For most of us, it would be extremely difficult to pick up the heavily accented speech. So listen very carefully or better still watch it somewhere that has sub titles. That however doesn’t change the fact that Jeff Bridges, Matt Daman and Hailee Steinfeld have all come up with scintillating performances to say the least. And most of all Steinfeld, who with an Oscar nomination for her performance as Mattie Ross has come into Hollywood with a bang to say the least. The confidence with which she holds her own in front of two of the best actors of our time is eerie to say the least. What a way to debut I say!!! Jeff Bridges would have picked up the Oscar this time if not for one Colin Firth and another Javier Bardem. That True Grit returned home empty handed from the Oscars can be only explained by the fact that it is a damn good movie but not the best in the 10 categories that it was nominated in. But 7.5 on 10 it is an absolutely must watch. Just watch out for the accents and the pace that could be perceived as slow by some of us.
Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1984862489/
It is 1880 in the WWW – Wild Wild West for the un-initiated . Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) is a fourteen year old who finds herself in a position that most of us would not want to. Her father has just been murdered and she has to collect the body. She may be fourteen, but she is extremely strong minded and not willing to go back till she gets to the bottom of all of this. She packs her father’s body off back home on the train with a message to her mother that she will be back soon. On finding out that her father was killed over a petty fight by a wanted outlaw Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) who is out scott free, she decides to seek justice. And justice in the WWW follows only one pattern – an eye for an eye. But she also knows that the law will take its own course. If she needs a quick decision, then she needs to find a bounty hunter or a marshall who would do it for some more money (structured corruption makes it legal ). But she doesn’t have any money left with her and so has to use her intelligent ways to wriggle her late father out of a deal that he had made with a local business man and gets enough to hire the services of Reuben J “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) who is said to be a marshall who has “True Grit”. Someone who really doesn’t care much about Outlaws and would rather the world is rid of them. He has to date taken care of 23 of them and is coincidentally being tried for them in a court of law – the WWW version of dealing with Human Rights Violation. He is quite surprised when a spirited fourteen year old approaches him with an offer of a princely sum of $50 – a lot of money at that time – and reluctantly agrees to take up the search for Tom Chaney. The kid wants to join but Rooster gives her the slip and takes off with a Texas Ranger La Beouf (Matt Damon) who is also on the lookout for Chaney for shooting a senator in Texas.
True Grit is about strong performances. You would need to listen to the dialogues extremely closely since they are all in an extremely Southern accent – any further south and it would be Spanish. For most of us, it would be extremely difficult to pick up the heavily accented speech. So listen very carefully or better still watch it somewhere that has sub titles. That however doesn’t change the fact that Jeff Bridges, Matt Daman and Hailee Steinfeld have all come up with scintillating performances to say the least. And most of all Steinfeld, who with an Oscar nomination for her performance as Mattie Ross has come into Hollywood with a bang to say the least. The confidence with which she holds her own in front of two of the best actors of our time is eerie to say the least. What a way to debut I say!!! Jeff Bridges would have picked up the Oscar this time if not for one Colin Firth and another Javier Bardem. That True Grit returned home empty handed from the Oscars can be only explained by the fact that it is a damn good movie but not the best in the 10 categories that it was nominated in. But 7.5 on 10 it is an absolutely must watch. Just watch out for the accents and the pace that could be perceived as slow by some of us.
Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1984862489/
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