“Blade Runner 2049” was my favorite film of 2014, mostly because “Blade Runner” is one of my most cherished movies ever, and I did not expect any sequel to do it justice. So I was gobsmacked to encounter a film that is a completely seamless revisit to the dystopian future envisioned by author Philip K. Dick, now 30 years further down a dark road.
Two things usually doom sequels: being too bold, or not bold enough. Most go the latter way, simply trying to reboot all the elements that made the first movie a success, without really moving the ball downfield from a storytelling example. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is a good recent example, as it’s basically a remake of “A New Hope.”
When other filmmakers take over a franchise, they often want to put their own stamp on it, coming up with crazy concoctions that don’t mesh with the original material. This was the danger with “Blade Runner 2049,” with Denis Villeneuve taking over the director’s chair from Ridley Scott.
And yet the new movie looks, feels and sounds very much like the child of “Blade Runner.” Once again, it’s set in a world where bioengineered “replicants” serve as the virtual slaves of an uncaring human populous. Ryan Gosling plays K, a replicant Los Angeles police detective who’s really little more than a paid assassin of other “skin jobs” like himself who have wandered off the plantation.
He uncovers a plot that takes him right up to the very top of the corridors of power, where mega-tycoon Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) wants to launch the replicant trade to off-world markets. His very able assistant, Luv (an arresting Sylvia Hoeks), is put onto the case.
Harrison Ford returns as Deckard, the iconic blade runner from the first film, whom K encounters about halfway through in a clash of generations that’s every bit as electric as we’d hoped.
Ana de Armas plays Joi, K’s holographic “wife.” Manufactured by Niander’s omnipresent corporation, we suspect that Joi is merely another construct designed to keep the replicant workforce docile. But their love seems very real, indeed.
Beautifully shot by cinematographer Roger Deakins – his long-delayed Academy Award seems finally assured – “Blade Runner 2049” is a beautiful, disturbing look into a future that at times seems all too plausible.
Video bonus features are quite expansive, with a decent amount of goodies on the DVD version and even more for the Blu-ray combo pack.
The DVD includes six making-of mini-documentaries that combine together to form “Blade Runner 101.” These include “Blade Runners,” “The Replicant Evolution,” “The Rise of Wallace Corp,” “Welcome to 2049,” “Joi” and “Within the Skies.”
Upgrade to the Blu-ray, and you add another special feature, “Designing the World of Blade Runner 2049.”
Most intriguing are three prologue pieces that explore the world between 2019, when the original “Blade Runner” was set, and the new one we see. They are “2022: Black Out,” “2036: Nexus Dawn” and “2048: Nowhere to Run.”
The truth: I didn’t really want a “Blade Runner” sequel.
Just as I did not want to see a live-action version of “The Lord of the Rings,” or a reboot of the “Mad Max” franchises. And yet I love those movies now, offshoots of things I cherished as a youngster -- edging to the point of favoring the new over the old, if my middle-aged self was unflinchingly honest with my teen me.
So: “Blade Runner 2049” is the finest film I’ve seen this 2017.
It’s brilliant, disturbing, sad, beautiful, tragic and filled with tempered joy. It continues the journey of a dystopian, not-so-distant future of bioengineered humans made to be servants of genuine ones, and how each struggles at the shackles that bind them together.
This is the rare sequel that is an extension which is both logically and emotionally sound. Having watched it, I can’t imagine it beginning, or ending, another way.
The film manages to introduce us to a new hunter of replicants, played by Ryan Gosling, while reuniting us with Deckard, as Harrison Ford reprises one of his most indelible roles. “I had your job once… I was good at it,” Deckard taunts upon their first meeting. It’s a titanic clash of generations, quite literally.
My suspicion arose chiefly because the sequel, which is set 30 years later than the original and arrives 35 years after, is not directed by Ridley Scott, who’s still around and quite busy at nearly age 80. Yet Denis Villeneuve (“Prisoners”) has perfectly captured the qualities that made the 1982 film so vivid and groundbreaking -- the sense of alienation, the way life is devalued simply because of its origin, the invasion of commerce into every corner of our lives.
Things are helped immensely by the return of original script man Hampton Fancher, joined by Michael Green, working from the novel by Philip K. Dick. (Though ever more loosely, it must be said.)
In this version, there is no question about the nature of Gosling’s blade runner: he is a replicant who hunts his own kind. Known by his serial number, KD6-3.7, or simply “K,” he moves freely among normal humans with a gun, an LAPD badge and all the powers that come with those tokens. Though he is (almost literally) spat upon by other police officers.
While on a routine “retirement” of an old-model replicant (Dave Bautista), K makes a discovery that sets off a world of strife. The old Tyrell corporation that created the first replicants, aka “skin jobs,” is long defunct. But Niander Wallace, a power-mad blind oracle played by Jared Leto, has crafted new replicants more pliable and palatable, which makes his otherworldly ambitions possible.
K’s boss, Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright), whom he addresses as “madam,” wants K to cover the whole thing up. But Niander’s right-hand replicant, Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), is ordered to follow the follower. She possesses an arresting combination of contempt and empathy for the humans who created people like her.
K has a quiet, constrained life, complete with a hologram wife to keep him from wanting more than the routine of ceaseless murder. Joi (Ana de Armas) is fully emotionally connected to him, even though she’s another product of Wallace’s omnipresent corporation. K uses his bonus for successful retirements to buy Joi an “emanator,” which allows her to leave their apartment and have some semblance of corporeal existence.
Slaves of slaves -- so where do the boundaries of servitude begin and end? These are the sorts of vexing thoughts the film raises for us.
Appropriately, this is one of the most hauntingly beautiful films ever made. Cinematography legend Roger Deakins gives us slants of organic light contrasted with inky pools of darkness, vivid colors, blasted landscapes and tactile displays of proffered flesh. Nominated 13 times for an Oscar without winning, Deakins may finally get his due.
At nearly three hours long, “Blade Runner 2049” is not an endless parade of action. People who have not seen the original movie in a while may be surprised in revisiting it how deliberate and contemplative the film is. Likewise, its cinematic inheritor blends moments of gripping violence with languid stretches where the characters just look, and are looked upon, think and react.
Rather than slowing things down, these sequences give the movie its rightful sense of weight and purpose. Here is the uninvited sequel, now indispensable.
For the record, I’ve adored all the Star Wars movies -- even the much-maligned “prequel” trilogy. So when I say that I liked Episode VII, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” about as much as I did “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace,” is not the intended insult most people think.
I would put both near the bottom of any ranking of the franchise. Which is to say I think they’re still very good science fiction/fantasy films. But their flaws are more glaring than the others. I won’t belabor those of “Phantom Menace,” as they’re well-known -- kooky trade war plot, Jar Jar buffoonery, etc.
The biggest problem with “TFA” is that it’s not terribly original. It’s essentially a reboot of the first film: a nobody on a desert planet rises to glory through the mystical Force; bad guy in a black mask; cantina of bizarre aliens; roguish smuggler Han Solo sets aside cynicism to join the rebels; world-destroying space station threatens the galaxy; plans for its destruction are embedded in a perky little robot.
Director J.J. Abrams, who co-wrote the script with Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt, seemed more intent on making a greatest hits compilation for the fans than a logical and satisfying extension of the Star Wars saga.
Like: how is it that 30 years after its defeat, the Empire has reconstituted itself into the First Order, complete with Stormtrooper armies and a new Death Star (er, Starkiller Base). What were Leia (Carrie Fisher) and the Galactic Senate doing all this time?
The setup is that Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) was training a new generation of Jedi Knights when he was betrayed by his chief pupil, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), who was seduced to the dark side despite his good parentage. (Which I’ll not reveal here, for the 0.2% of readers who didn’t see the movie in theaters and are still innocent of the Internet.)
The plans for Starkiller Base come into the possession of Rey (Daisy Ridley), a mysterious scavenger living the quiet life on barren Jakku, and Finn (John Boyega), a Stormtrooper who betrayed his dark conditioning. They meet up with Han Solo (Harrison Ford), searching for his long-lost ship the Millennium Falcon, as everyone scrambles to get the plans before First Order wipes out the resistance.
It’s a delightful space adventure, with plenty of dogfights, scary critters and lightsaber duels. Kylo Ren is a new iteration of villain – self-aware, unbalanced, petulant. Rey remains an enigma, including to herself, but there are hints of great destiny ahead. The weakest character is Finn, who transforms overnight from emotionless soldier to hootin’ rebel cheerleader without even the barest of emotional journeys. (Boyega’s often over-the-top performance doesn’t help, either.)
But it’s easy to overlook the failings in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” because they don’t detract from the immediacy of the thrills. I’m just hoping future films in the series will harbor a little more ambition.
Bonus features are pretty good, mostly represented in seven featurettes that touch on special effects, John Williams’ musical score, building BB-8, etc. There’s also a lengthy making-of documentary, “Secrets of The Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey,” plus several deleted scenes.
A bit of romantic trifle with a science fiction twist, “The Age of Adaline” is most hurt by its main star, and most helped by a late-arriving supporting player.
Blake Lively isn’t given enough to do by the script, which posits her as a San Francisco woman whose strange, electrified car crash in 1929 prevents her from aging any more. She wanders through time, trading identities every decade or so to prevent suspicion, her only permanent connection being her daughter, who today has become an old lady played by Ellen Burstyn.
Still, Lively’s performance is drab and emotionally unaffecting. She becomes a Zelig-like figure, someone who shows up everywhere but leaves little trace of their passing.
Adaline has been careful to avoid romantic entanglements for obvious reasons, but now a new beau (Michiel Huisman) has wandered into her life and knocked over some emotional furniture. Soon they’re an item and making long-term plans together – longer, perhaps, than he knows.
It’s a pretty straightforward story, with some flat, dry narration to make things even duller than they might already be.
Then Harrison Ford turns up about halfway through the movie as Adaline’s boyfriend’s dad, and suddenly the movie takes off. Ford, not exactly known as an overly emotive actor, shows us all kinds of vulnerability and doubt that we don’t usually see from cinema’s most reliable heroic everyman.
I won’t give away the details of what transpires, other than to say some old painful memories are dredged up.
Despite the slow start and the underwhelming protagonist, “The Age of Adaline” eventually finds its footing.
Director Lee Toland Krieger provides a feature-length commentary for the special features, which are the same for both DVD and Blu-ray editions. There are also deleted scenes and three featurettes: “A Love Story for the Ages,” “Style Throughout the Ages” and “Discovering Young Harrison Ford: Anthony Ingruber, An Online Sensation.”
Note: Ingruber gained notoriety for his YouTube impressions of Ford and other famous actors, which eventually led to this gig. He is indeed eerily reminiscent of a 1970s Harrison Ford.
One of my favorite things to do in this space is consider movies I saw contemporaneously and assess how they've aged. Some films are universally lauded or dismissed when they first come out. But a great many more need the remove of 20 years-plus to see how they stack up.
Which is not to say Father Time is always fair.
For my money, "Presumed Innocent" is one of the best crime dramas of its era. It features a Harrison Ford performance that ranks among his top two or three. It's got a magnificent supporting cast, led by Raul Julia in perhaps his most affecting screen role. And it was a capstone on the career of writer/director Alan J. Pakula, whose work included "All the President's Men" and "Sophie's Choice."
And yet "Presumed Innocent" has faded nearly to the vanishing point in the public consciousness. It hardly ever gets talked about these days, and it failed to receive a single Academy Award nomination -- in a year in which "The Godfather Part III" and "Dick Tracy" got seven nods apiece.
It's not available on any of the major streaming services, and the only DVD I could find was a shitty transfer that was not even enhanced for widescreen televisions -- meaning the image only occupied the center portion of the screen.
Still, I found it just as enthralling as I did 25 years ago.
It was based on a best-selling novel, the first by Scott Turow, a lawyer-turned-novelist whose books put John Grisham's to shame in terms of storytelling and prose. Producer Sydney Pollack bought the rights for a million bucks before it was even published. Add in Pakula's name and the cast they assembled, and the film had "prestige project" written all over it.
Narratively, it's pretty straightforward. Rusty Sabich (Ford) is a career prosecutor investigating the murder of a female colleague, who finds himself caught up in poisonous political intrigue and accused of the crime himself. The first half is taken up with the inquiry -- and the circle of buzzards slowly gathering over Rusty's head -- while the second half more or less all happens in the courtroom.
In the book, Turow undertakes the considerable challenge of a first-person narrative in which the guilt of the main character is left open to question until the final pages. Turow burrows very deep into his main characters' psyches, revealing complex thoughts and emotional patterns you don't usually see in popular fiction.
The film adaptation -- Pakula wrote the screenplay with Frank Pierson ("Dog Day Afternoon") -- doubles down on this storytelling device, leaving it until the final scene before heavily implicating Rusty as the murderer, before revealing it was his jealous wife who did the deed.
(Sorry, the sell-by date on spoilers expires somewhere well south of a quarter-century.)
In 1990 Harrison Ford was very much a heroic leading man, edging up to 50 -- an age at which many of Hollywood's more ambitious stars have felt the urge to explore morally ambiguous material. The best example is James Stewart, capped by his portrayal of a sexually obsessed policeman in "Vertigo."
I think Pakula was making a very conscious decision to leverage the fundamental decency of Ford's star persona -- using it to make the audience root for Rusty, even as all the evidence points to his guilt. The fact that Rusty previously had an affair with the victim, Caroline Polhemus (a terrific Greta Scacchi), and his wife, Barbara, is endearingly played by Bonnie Bedelia, further stack the deck in making it hard for audience to convict or acquit him in their own minds.
If they'd tried this with another actor with a retinue of villainous roles in his past -- say, Jeremy Irons, to pull a name out of a hat -- I don't think the picture would've worked nearly as well. The main dynamic Pakula has going in is making the audience wonder if Rusty is a victim or a victimizer.
Ford gives a masterful performance, playing weak and angry with the same
aplomb he did dashing and valiant. Though his part is largely reactive
in the second half -- graciously ceding the spotlight to Julia, who plays his attorney -- you can always see the animation going on behind
Rusty's face. His Roman-style haircut, so popular at that time, lends him a touch of the martial.
"You always kept the cork in too tight," is how a (supposed) friend describes him.
Having reread the book again recently, I was struck by how closely the film follows its plot. Still, there are a number of notable divergences.
The movie shows some things not depicted in the book, such as Caroline's funeral, while eliminating tertiary characters and story threads, such as her son, a disaffected college student who barely knew her. Pakula & Co. pump up the sex considerably -- including a steamy romp in the office that never happens in the novel -- while also adding scenes with Rusty's son, Nat (Jesse Bradford), to humanize him as a devoted father.
The character of Barbara is probably the biggest alteration, transformed from a shrewish harpy into a deeply depressed housewife who still clings needily to the shredded fabric of her marriage. Asked by Rusty how she would testify if put on the witness stand, she practically pleads: "I'd say you're the only man I ever loved... and still do."
An important flashback involves the case of Wendell, a 5-year-old boy tortured by his mother by putting his head in a vise. It's discussed in the book but vividly depicted in the movie. It's vital because this is the event that brings Rusty and Caroline together, first as co-counsel and then as lovers. Joseph Mazzello -- best remembered as half of the terrified siblings in "Jurassic Park," aka the kid who gets zapped on the electrical fence -- is pitch perfect as the terrified little boy.
John Williams' restrained musical score, highlighted by a trill of single piano notes, adds greatly to the claustrophobic atmosphere of the proceedings. Ditto for the stark cinematography by the great Gordon Willis, notable for its noir-ish use of sharp, almost harsh layers of contrast.
Julia, as attorney Alejandro "Sandy" Stern, makes the most of a magnificently constructed character. Turow is very specific and detailed in his descriptions of him, touted as the best defense attorney in Kindle County, the fictional setting for all of his novels (roughly akin to Philadelphia, in my reckoning). Stern has courtly manners, but a razor-sharp mind and an instinct for intimidating his opponents.
Pakula and Pierson play up the Stern character even more, letting him reveal bits of information contained elsewhere in the book, that elevate him almost to Jedi-like status. Indeed, Turow focused his next novel, "The Burden of Proof," entirely on Stern. (It was turned into a television mini-series, alas, starring another actor.)
The rest of the supporting cast is, simply, superlative. Paul Winfield is magisterial and funny as the judge, Larren L. Lytle. Unlike other courtroom dramas where the lawyers are allowed to holler and fume, Lytle keeps a tight control on the proceedings. And he is revealed to have his own dark past that affects his current case.
John Spencer, who's best known for playing authority figures, is solid and authentic as the pimpish Lipranzer, Rusty's right-hand man on the police force. Joe Grifasi, who like Julia is not introduced until about halfway through the movie, summons the fervent zealotry of Tommy Molto, the prosecutor heading up the case and Rusty's chief interlocutor.
Tom Mardirosian nails the facile, shallow charm of Nico Della Guardia, the upstart rival for Prosecuting Attorney who ends up defeating Rusty's boss, Raymond Horgan, in the impending election due in no small part to his chief deputy being accused of murder. It is a testament to the cleverness of the book and movie that the election, which hangs like a shroud over the film's first half, is disposed with off-screen after Rusty is charged.
Brian Dennehy brings a brash confidence to Horgan, a true believer who's been swallowed by 12 years in politics. "In the end, all you can do is try to hang on to the fuckin' job," he laments, anticipating the wake of his public career. Horgan is a classic Irish-American back-slapping politico, who always knows on which his side is bread is buttered.
A young Bradley Whitford has a small, key part as Stern's chief assistant, Jamie Kemp. (In Turow's creation, he's a former rock star-turned-apprentice lawyer -- who's begging for his own novel treatment.) And Sab Shimono is terrific as "Painless" Kumagai, the buffoon of a coroner who is firmly in Della Guardia's pocket.
"Presumed Innocent" ends its morality tale with Rusty Sabich a free man, yet imprisoned by the fate imposed on him by his own choices. Though he did not commit the murder, he committed the sins that led up to it, as revealed in Ford's emotionally roiling final narration:
"I am a prosecutor. I have spent my life in the assignment of blame.
With all deliberation and intent, I reached for Caroline. I cannot
pretend it was an accident. I reached for Caroline, and set off that
insane mix of rage and lunacy that led one human being to kill another.
There was a crime. There was a victim. And there is punishment."
And so why has this wonderful film been judged with the ultimate punishment that can be inflicted on a work of cinema -- being forgotten?
Perhaps it is something akin to our criminal justice system, which purports to favor letting 100 guilty men be acquitted rathern than convicting one innocent -- yet we know it still happens. Some forgettable films endure, while worthy ones languish in the prison of our failing memories. They just need a crusader to help bring them back it into the light.
"The Age of Adaline" is a movie with a little going for it.
It wants to be a lush romantic tale with a science fiction twist -- beautiful young woman suffers a strange accident and remains young and beautiful forever. Like Dorian Gray and Orlando, Adaline Bowman wanders the decades, eschewing love but eventually drawn into entanglements that inevitably end with pain.
Emotionally, though, it's a remarkably staid film, with neither lead actress Blake Lively or the story providing much in the way to cause our hearts to go pitter-patter.
Until, that is, Harrison Ford shows up in the second half and almost rescues the picture with his raw, naked vulnerability.
Which, I'm aware, is a strange thing to say. Whatever else you think of Ford's thespian skills -- I happen to believe he's been gravely underestimated over his four decades of acting -- he's never been known as a particularly emotive performer. Gruff, hard everymen who occasionally let their veneer slip is more his line.
So to see him stripped bare, stammering with eyes that seem just on the edge of tears, is quite a thing to experience.
The rest of the film picks up on his tragic energy, and concludes with a great deal more emotional momentum, even if the plot is a bit predictable. It's like the movie suddenly remembers to get out of its own way.
Lively plays Adaline, born to a wealthy San Francisco family in 1908. She led a pretty normal life, we're told -- the strangely flat, precise narration is a pure bust -- until the age of 29. During a rare California snowstorm, her car crashed into an icy river, where she went into hypothermia and was then revived by an electrical current from lightning.
All this caused her DNA to undergo "electron compression" and ... actually, don't bother trying to figure out the science-y gobbledy gook; it all just means that she stopped aging. She soldiered on with her life, raising her daughter, until it became clear that she could no longer fool others with talk of miracle Parisian face creams to explain her unaging appearance.
Adaline went on the lam, taking up a new identity and existence every 10 years. And never let her guard down, we learn, except once.
Flash to 2015. Adaline, now going by the name Jenny, celebrates her 107th birthday with her daughter, Flemming (Ellen Burstyn), who is now quite elderly, and her only confidante. She's preparing to spend her next decade on a farm in Oregon, until she runs into an effusive man named Ellis, played by Dutch actor Michiel Huisman, who pronounces his name as "Alice."
He isn't a particularly interesting or engaging character. He's that tiresome cinematic canard, the charming guy who got fabulously rich at a young age but doesn't make a big deal out of it because, y'know, it's just money.
(Axiom: the only people who say they don't care about money are those who already have gobs and gobs of it.)
Ellis/Alice woos Adaline/Jenny with a fierce urgency bordering on creepiness. She eventually succumbs, of course, because otherwise there wouldn't be a movie. They go on a trip to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his parents, played by Ford and Kathy Baker ... and there I'll have to stop, to prevent giving away too much.
It may seem an odd comparison, but this movie reminded me in some ways of "Funny People." That 2009 Judd Apatow comedy started out very strong, but then about halfway through we stumbled upon a new character and storyline that knocked the whole movie off its rails.
"The Age of Adaline" is the opposite: it wanders the wilderness for nearly an hour, then Harrison Ford rides in like a white knight. Neither film winds up a total success, but it's better to gain vigor than watch it dissipate.
The first “Anchorman” movie was spectacularly overrated, and the sequel is a heaping helping of seconds.
Oh, you’ll laugh during “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.” Probably chortle quite uproariously on a half-dozen or so occasions. The rest of the time, though, is waiting around for that next big ROFL moment to arrive. During these portions, which make up the bulk of the overlong 119-minute runtime, the movie barely edges into tolerable.
Will Farrell returns as Ron Burgundy, the worst newscaster in history (circa 1980). As the story opens he loses his job and his marriage simultaneously, but gets a second chance at the then-new enterprise of television news broadcast 24/7.
Relegated to the wee hours of the morning, he and his crew of nitwits (Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, David Koechner) soon make a splash by giving the audience exactly what they want – car chases, cute critters and jingoistic patriotism.
As a critique of TV news, “Anchorman 2” is pretty weak tea, hitting all the obvious notes without much originality or flair. So the movie has to rely on its characters and humor, which are the very definition of scattershot.
Director Adam McKay, who co-write the script with Ferrell, favor an ad-lib approach in which actors do take after take, and (supposedly) the best stuff is used for the movie. Ferrell & Co. stand there, barking out absurd dialogue until something sticks.
Their comedy mantra seems to be “Try, try again.” But is one hit to every 20 misses worth your time?
This zany M.O. does, however, allow them to try something truly audacious for the video release. They are giving us three different versions of the film, including a “Super-Sized R-Rated Version” that reportedly includes 763 new jokes.
It’s essentially an alternative edit of the theatrical version (also included), with different lines swapped out. It also includes an unrated version with even filthier gags and language.
Is the “new” version of the movie better than the one we saw in theaters? You’ll have to decide for yourself.
The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack also includes a making-of doc, gag reel, table read by the cast, deleted and extended scenes, audition tapes and more.
You have to spring for the Blu-ray pack to get all these goodies, though; the solo DVD contains only the theatrical version of the movie, and that’s it.
I admit I never got what the big deal was about "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy." The 2004 comedy was a modest commercial hit that somehow went on to gain near-iconic status as a comedic masterpiece. Word of a long-delayed sequel set off a flurry of rapturous attention, followed up by a marketing campaign so omnipresent that folks living in the Himalayas must be thinking Will Ferrell & Co. are becoming a tad overexposed.
The first film had a few uproarious laughs interrupted by long dull spaces in between, and the sequel is much the same.
I will further admit that I laughed three or four times during "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues" as hard as anything I've seen this year. But it's a hard slog in between those wonderful moments, particularly in the dull-as-toast second half.
Are a handful of truly great comedic moments enough to make a movie worth a dollar bill with Andy Jackson's face on it, plus two hours of your time? I vote no, and I got to see it for free.
If you're a novice to the world of Burgundy: he's the world's worst newscaster, a dim-bulb egomaniac played by Ferrell with trademark obliviousness. Ron's the sort of guy who can be offending everyone in the room and not even be aware of it.
His look is pure late 1970s: neon-hued suits with ties as wide as a Buick, cheesy mustache, sideburns and a hairdo that's over-primped into ridiculousness.
As the story opens, Ron gets dumped by his San Diego network and his wife (Christina Applegate) in one fell swoop, and ends up as an announcer at the local Sea World. His drunken binges doom even that job, until a new gig lands in his lap with a crazy idea: news 24/7.
Of course, their Global News Network is a barely-concealed spoof on the early days of CNN and the fracturing of the news audience into a thousand little pieces.
Burgundy assembles his old crew and heads to New York, only to find he's relegated to the 2-5 a.m. slot, while slimy top dog Jack Lime (James Marsden) gets the primetime slot and becomes Burgundy's chief tormentor.
They respond by giving people what they want -- cute animals, car chases, jingoistic patriotism and other pap. The audience eats it up, vaulting Burgundy into the stratosphere.
The M.O. of Ferrell and Adam McKay, his director and co-screenwriter, is pretty familiar by now. The characters stand there and spout ridiculously off-the-wall nonsense in the hopes that some of it will be click with the audience.
And some of it does. Steve Carell puts the most points on the board as Brick, the innocent naïf weathercaster. As played by Carell, Brick has the social skills of an infant who was suddenly zapped into adult form. Because it's married to that sweet, dumb persona, his ramblings are funnier because it comes from a place of utter simplicity.
"A black man follows me everywhere when it's sunny," Brick says.
"I think that's your shadow," Ron offers helpfully.
At one point, the gang attends Brick's funeral, and he shows up to give the eulogy, and has to be convinced that he's still alive. He even gets a love interested in Kristen Wiig, who plays his female intellectual and emotional equivalent.
Other weirdo plot twists include having Ron date his black producer (Meagan Good), just so we can have a scene where he sits down to dinner with her family and spout one racially insensitive malaprop after another.
Things culminate in a massive battle between news teams that's more notable for the incredible number of celebrity cameos -- Will Smith, Kanye West, Jim Carrey and Tina Fey among them -- than for any actual humor generated. It's a fitting end for a movie that seems to have fallen in love with its own hype.
Give Hollywood credit for tackling a science fiction novel that contains few of the easy entry points the genre usually provides for cinematic endeavors. In "Ender's Game" there are no cute robot sidekicks, no cool aliens as allies, not even the lightspeed spaceships, laser weapons and other cool hardware that populate the background of such movies.
Instead, it's a grim and bleak look at a future where humanity is facing extinction at the hands of a hive-like race of creatures known as the Formics. Asa Butterfield plays Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, a young boy who is also a brilliant strategist, finding himself being trained to lead Earth's defense against the invaders.
(According to the film's narration, children make for better commanders because their ingenuity is not bogged down by straitlaced adult thinking. It's a storytelling conceit; just swallow it and move on.)
The film, based on the novel by Orson Scott Card, largely plays out as a long game of psychological warfare and simulated combat, with Ender attending the elite off-world Battle School, where he must go up against his fellow child recruits, his gruff and demanding commander, and eventually the aliens himself. He is forced to hone his instincts for warfare while balancing them against his human compassion, exemplified respectively by his psychopath brother and his compassionate sister (Abigail Breslin).
If you think just because the movie stars a cast of mostly kid actors that it's a good fit for young audiences, think again. While the violence is rather tame and there's no swearing, the mental duress placed upon Ender is quite extreme. Audience members under high school age would likely find it dreary.
(Incurious adults, too.)
As a cerebral exercise, though, I found the film challenging and complex, supplying many questions and few easy answers about the morality of waging war. Ender's tactics are genius, but his willingness to sacrifice allies to achieve a win earn him the grudging respect of his teachers and fellow students alike.
(I'm not surprised to learn the book is recommended reading for U.S. Marines officer training.)
As Colonel Graff, Harrison Ford tackles a much darker role than we're used to. Graff sees Ender as his shining star, potentially the savior of humanity, and if that means putting a tender boy through the crucible of harsh lessons, he's more than willing to do it. Viola Davis plays a psychiatrist chartered to nurture Ender's psyche, so naturally she finds herself butting heads with Graff.
Ben Kingsley has a small but vital role as the last of Ender's instructors, a man with a tatooed face and mysterious past. Hailee Steinfeld plays Petra, a fellow cadet who stands up for Ender when he's abused by their team leader.
"Ender's Game" will not suit everyone's tastes. Writer/director Gavin Hood's plotting is sometimes suspect, and the story bogs down a few times. And if you go in expecting a light, action-heavy ripping space yarn, you'll likely walk away disappointed. For me, the moral complexities of the tale were tantalizing and way more ambitious than expected. This is thinking man's sci-fi.
Saccharine and starry-eyed, "42" places Jackie Robinson on a pedestal and peers in awe at the baseball icon. Writer/director Brian Helgeland's biopic of the first African-American to play major league baseball tries and largely succeeds to get at the real man behind the myth. But it also ladles on the hagiography in portions too huge to choke down comfortably.
Chadwick Boseman aptly plays Robinson, one of the top players in the Negro League who was carefully selected to integrate baseball. Branch Rickey, the legendary general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, knew he needed a player who could not only hit and field, but also accept the slings and arrows of white society without showing any public protest.
The result was a trying rookie year for Robinson and his wife (Nicole Beharie) as he endured racial taunts and threats from fans, opposing teams and even his own dugout.
Helgeland takes us behind the scenes to show us what the constant assault on his dignity cost Robinson -- in one crackling scene, serenely accepting the racial epithets hurled at him by an opposing manager, then shattering his bat in frustration off the field.
Harrison Ford is excellent as Rickey, a crotchety wheeler-dealer with a secret sentimentality he labors hard to conceal. At first the performance seems cartoony and over-the-top. But Ford slyly shows us how Rickey used his outsized personality and kitschy mannerisms as a prop to get his way.
The movie's best moments are in exploring the relationship between baseball player and boss, the traditional power dynamic swaying and crumbling as the men development genuine respect and affection for each other.
"42" may too often indulge in hero worship instead of character development. But there's no denying this film packs a humdinger of a wallop.
Extra features are rather disappointing. The DVD edition comes only with a single featurette, "Stepping into History," about the integration of baseball. Upgrading to the Blu-ray version adds two more mini-documentaries: "Full-Contact Baseball" and "The Legacy of the Number 42."
For a movie that hits a solid double dramatically, it's a shame they saw fit to bunt on the video goodies.
The Jackie Robinson biopic, "42," is a worthwhile film, but it could have been a much better one.
Writer/director Brian Helgeland goes straight for starry-eyed hagiography in the story of the first black player to integrate major league baseball. Although it strives to show a complete picture of an icon, it still puts him on a pedestal so high the audience sometimes has trouble glimpsing the real man.
The movie is effective in showing the behind-the-scenes struggle endured by Robinson during his first year with the Brooklyn Dodgers, and especially in his relationship with Branch Rickey, the gutsy general manager who broke the color barrier by drafting Robinson.
I just wish Helgeland could have been a little more restrained in his idol worship. At nearly ever turn, his film takes a double-dip into gooey sentiment ... and then it spoons up some more.
Chadwick Boseman and Harrison Ford are a good pairing as Robinson and Rickey. Boseman is a decent physical match for Robinson, and his steel glare and clenched jaw muscles cue us in to how the player struggled to shrug off the taunts and insults he endured from fans, opposing players and even his own teammates.
As everyone knew, if Robinson responded to the provocations with anything more than quiet resolve, he would be blamed for the incident and the cause of integration set back for years. Helgeland and Boseman show us Robinson's on-the-field heroics, then take us back behind the dugout to show him splintering his bat against the wall in frustration.
Alan Tudyk has a terrific small part as a racist opposing manager who strides out onto the field every time Robinson comes up to bat to hurl a constant stream of vile epithets. Tudyk is pitch-perfect in representing the Jim Crow mentality, where white people thought it was their God-given right to put "coloreds" in their place.
Ford is very good in his first "old man" role. Yes, I know he played "old Indy" in the last Indiana Jones film, but that's not really the same thing -- he was still portraying a vibrant man defined by his physicality and manly confidence. Here he's playing a 66-year-old (that's actually five years younger than Ford himself) who is stooped and bent, his jowls working furiously underneath caterpillar eyebrows.
It's a patriarchal role, and Ford subsumes his superman persona completely. At first we think the performance is all exterior -- the way he worries his cigar, speaks with a distinctive accent and furrows his brow at young whippersnappers. But Ford goes deeper in later scenes, revealing a man deeply bothered about the way the sport he loves divides players unnecessarily, and determined to do something about it before his own time is up.
At first Rickey insists to anyone that asks that bringing in Robinson is simply a smart move, both in terms of baseball and business. Robinson is a terrific young player with a great future ahead of him, and more black people would be apt to buy tickets.
"Dollars ain't black and white," he teases. "They're green. Every dollar's green."
But in the end the relationship between manager and player becomes much more.
The script is filled with plenty of clunky, corny dialogue. "God designed me to last," Robinson intones during a low moment. His adoring wife Ray (Nicole Beharie) has little to do but smile fetchingly from the stands and spout her own tin-ear invocations: "Please God, let him be seen for what he can do."
The good definitely outweighs the bad in "42," and anyone who's a fan of baseball or history will likely be highly engrossed by this tale. I just wish this Cracker Jack of a movie had dialed down the sugar.
Perhaps I was expecting too much out of "Cowboys & Aliens" ... or at least, I was expecting something much different.
For a summer tent pole movie with a title like that, starring two actors -- Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford -- who have played iconic action heroes, and directed by admitted fanboy Jon Favreau ("Iron Man"), I was expecting something loopier. Wacky hi jinks coupled with slick special effects.
What we get instead is a fast-paced Western oater in which the bad guys happen to be crusty boogums from outer space. Imagine "War of the Worlds," except the invasion happens during the days of six-shooters and saddles.
The result is a movie that takes itself way more seriously than any film with a title like "Cowboys & Aliens" ought to.
It's still a fun ride, and Ford gets to play a more multi-dimensional character than we've seen in awhile. Craig is less fascinating, squinting his way through the movie and stumbling through an unconvincing American accent.
The movie opens without preamble. A man wakes up in the desert, lacking boots, a weapon or even a memory of who he is. He's the epitome of the spaghetti Western Man with No Name, since he doesn't even know it himself.
He does have a strange metal doohickey attached to his left wrist, and when some cowpokes try to roust him, he discovers a freakish ability at hand-to-hand combat.
The stranger rides into town, where he is soon identified as Jake Lonergan, a notorious bandit with a $1,000 bounty on his head. He runs into trouble with the son of the local ranch boss, and finds himself arrested by the sheriff. There's also a strange, beautiful woman who knows how to use a pistol and seems very interested in Lonergan.
Things come to a head when Col. Dolarhyde (Ford), the ranch boss, arrives to spring his boy. He's a hardened Civil War veteran, takes guff from no man, and always gets what he wants.
It seems things will go very badly when suddenly the town is attacked by spaceships, which blow people to bits or lasso them with metal contraptions and carry them away. Lonergan's bracelet suddenly comes to life and shoots down one of ships, so he's recruited for the posse to track down the kidnapped townsfolk.
Things go on from there, and there wasn't much that was very surprising, although it was executed well. The secret of Lonergan's amnesia and laser bracelet are uncovered, the creatures reveal themselves in all their googly-eyed, crustaceous glory, and of course some American Indians will ride in as some sort of reverse cavalry.
Dolarhyde is the most interesting character by far, and the small army of screenwriters (six, including story credits) give him plenty of layers. At first he's just a hateful old boss, pushing people around with his wealth and gang of armed cowboys. But eventually we discover him to be more haunted than hateful, especially in his relationships with a longtime Indian employee (Adam Beach) and a young boy who tags along with the posse.
I enjoyed myself at "Cowboys & Aliens," but it's not the sort of experience that will linger in the memory. Instead of genre-bending kitsch, we got a gritty Western with creepy critters.
"Morning Glory" got pasted at the box office and stomped by critics, but I truly enjoyed it. It's sort of the inverse of "Network" and "Broadcast News," where the main character doesn't fret about how television journalism is being watered down by infotainment, but wants to turn the dial on Lite News up to 11.
Still, it has top-notch actors in roles they inhabit with clear enthusiasm, exchanging whip-smart banter at a breakneck pace, alternating sweet and sad moments with unhurried efficiency.
Rachel McAdams plays Becky Fuller, a young, irrepressible producer given the thankless -- and most think impossible -- task of turning around "Daybreak," the last-place network morning show. The studio is literally falling apart, the field reporters are all castoffs, and the creepy co-host welcomes Becky by asking to take photographs of her feet.
After the fetishist is given a quick heave, Becky manages to land legendary anchorman Mike Pomeroy as his replacement. Played with grizzled charm by Harrison Ford, Mike is so disenchanted by his fall from grace that he takes it out on Becky, his brittle co-host (an underused Diane Keaton) and everyone else in his path.
Mike wants the show to pursue hard news, while Becky is committed to making things friendlier and zanier. As they eventually draw closer, Mike also provides a cautionary tale on what letting work dominate your life does to personal relationships.
Like the show it chronicles, "Morning Glory" ain't Pulitzer material, but it is entertaining.
Video extras are a bit skimpy. There is a feature-length commentary track by director Roger Michell and screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna. But the rest of the goodies are restricted to a single deleted scene.
Features are the same for Blu-ray and DVD formats.
"Morning Glory" is basically "Broadcast News" flipped on its head. Instead of valuing hard-edged journalism over TV showmanship, "Morning Glory" champions the fluff.
The set-up is that Rachel McAdams plays Becky Fuller, a hard-charging young executive producer brought in to turn around the moribund "Daybreak" morning show. She hires a downfallen Dan Rather-type anchorman, crustily played by Harrison Ford, to shake things up. They spend the rest of the movie battling over lightweight vs. substantive journalism.
As someone who started out covering politics and couldn't wait to jump to the features side of the newsroom, maybe I'm just a soft touch. But I found this movie delightful and often raucously funny, with sharp performances by McAdams and Ford.
McAdams draws a character as distinctive as Holly Hunter's Oscar-nominated turn in "Broadcast News," playing Becky as a borderline neurotic woman whose career consumes her whole life. After she's laid off from her job on "Good Morning, New Jersey," her mother unceremoniously dumps cold water on her dream of one day producing the "Today" show.
"At 8, it was adorable. At 18, it was inspiring. At 28, it's officially embarrassing. I just want it to stop before it becomes heartbreaking," she says.
But a harried network boss (Jeff Goldblum) gives her a shot at "Daybreak," figuring he's got nothing to lose. The show is perpetually in fourth place in the ratings, is stuck with a tiny budget and a shoddy studio where all the doorknobs fall off, and the on-air talent looks like the castoffs of every cheesy show that ever got cancelled.
Becky sends a signal by firing the creepy co-anchor (Ty Burrell) and encouraging veteran Colleen Peck to let loose a little during the cooking sessions and exotic animal segments. But she really lands her white whale when she convinces -- well, strong-arms, actually -- Mike Pomeroy into joining the show.
As Mike never fails to remind everyone, he's had one of the most storied careers in TV news: eight Peabody Awards, a Pulitzer and 16 Emmys. He only agrees to be on "Daybreak" so he can collect millions over the last two years of his contract, and oozes dripping condescension during his every interaction, on-air or off.
With his slicked-back hair and melodious grumble of a voice, Ford gives Mike some depth beneath the growl. Here's a man who's given his entire life over to his job, to the detriment of his personal relationships, and he's been rewarded by getting the boot.
When he watches his successor on the evening news, swilling pricey scotch from a tumbler, Mike glares at the screen and fumes, "That's my chair!" Ford shows us the man's bile.
Director Roger Michell ("Venus") keeps a delicate but firm hand on the film's tone, which combines generous helpings of funny and sad. The original screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna ("The Devil Wears Prada") is clever and zippy, though it apportions too much screen time to some things and not enough to others.
For example, I was disappointed that Diane Keaton has a much skimpier role than previews suggested. We only see Colleen's on-set diva act, and nothing more. There's one scene where she and Mike engage in some acid banter on the show, and we expect it to go somewhere, but it's quickly dropped.
Becky's romance with another producer (Patrick Wilson) similarly feels short-shrifted, trotted out just long enough to remind us what she's missing out on with her crazy work life.
Still, the strong far outweighs the weak in this spirited flick that, like its warring journalists, realizes that sweet and sour mix together quite nicely. See? You're reading a movie Web site right now, so obviously you enjoy a little fluff.
