Review: "Draft Day"

"Draft Day" has a reliable veteran star (Kevin Costner) and an old-hand director (Ivan Reitman) but a pair of rookie screenwriters, and it shows.

Rajiv Joseph and Scott Rothman fall into the newbie trap of thinking more is more. They've got a great, uncomplicated premise: the general manager of the Cleveland Browns football team is desperately scrambling to make a splash on NFL Draft Day, furiously working the phones and making seemingly desperate trades as the minutes tick by.

Made with the full cooperation of the National Football League and ESPN, plus the participation of dozens of football luminaries and media figures, it has the authentic feel of a peek behind doors than remain largely closed to fans. Now, that's an intriguing enough premise out of which to milk plenty of drama, laughs and tears.

But the screenwriters keep going, and going ... and then they go a little further. They pile challenge after interpersonal challenge atop the head of their protagonist, Sonny Weaver Jr. (Costner). It's supposed to ratchet up the tension, but the story ends up with so many distractions it's hard for the main narrative to gain traction till the end.

Start with the fact that he's got an overbearing team owner (Frank Langella) who'd like nothing better than to can his GM if the day doesn't play out right. And Sonny's dad, the legendary coach of the Browns, died last week ... after Sonny fired him the previous season. He's got his brittle mother (Ellen Burstyn) butting into his affairs. Plus he's been having an affair on the sly with an underling (Jennifer Garner), and now she wants to be more than the secret girlfriend ... oh, and they've just learned they're having a baby, too.

And that's before we even get into the minutia of the actual football draft, with the various potential players, their parents and agents, and assorted intrigues.

Sonny suspects the sure-fire #1 quarterback (Josh Pence) is a bust. He's rather pick the lower-profile defensive player of proven character (Chadwick Boseman). There's also pressure to choose a sleek running back (Arian Foster) who's the son of a favorite Browns player.

The movie finally comes through after a very slow start, and the last 45 minutes or so are extremely engaging as the actual draft drama plays out. Just when you think he's done, Sonny whips out another card from up his sleeve.

Frankly, Costner is probably about 15 years too old for this role. (A maverick guy in his mid-40s contemplating fatherhood and putting down roots is fascinating; pushing 60, it's just pathetic.) But he brings a well-worn, no-nonsense solidity to the role. His Sonny feels put-upon and doesn't carry a big ego, but there's a well-tended fire in his belly. He's a naturally cautious guy desperate to throw one long bomb and hope for the best.

I also enjoyed Denis Leary as Vince Penn, the new-ish coach of the Browns who's constantly knocking heads with his boss. Puckish and manipulative, a guy who clearly thinks he's the big fish in what he considers a small pond, Vince has his own ideas about who to draft. And if that means throwing his GM under the bus to get his way, then that's what winners do.

Reitman, better known for comedy and lacking a genuine hit for 20 years, hits his stride just when the material does, when the actual draft starts. You've got that built-in pressure of having to make your pick before the time runs out or getting leapfrogged by other teams, a tension that Reitman uses well to his advantage.

(That made sound like showbiz hooey, but it's actually happened a couple of times in recent years.)

This movie would have been much better served, though, by winnowing down the side characters and subplots and focusing on the meat of what is a really compelling story. That's playing to your strengths, something every good veteran should know.

Review: "I'm Still Here"

This film review is too late. Hours before I saw "I'm Still Here," director Casey Affleck admitted to the New York Times that it was all a hoax. Affleck called Joaquin Phoenix's "retirement" from acting to star in a mockumentary about the collapse of his life a bit of "gonzo filmmaking" after the style of Hunter S. Thompson, who blended journalism, fiction and pharmaceuticals.

There is plenty of all three in "I'm Still Here." It starts out as a raw documentary in late 2008, right after Phoenix abruptly announced he would make no more films, opting to become a hip-hop artist instead. He grows progressively shabbier, his hair and beard approaching caveman proportions, he snorts prodigious amounts of strange powders, his middle grows thick, and the sunglasses he wears constantly anywhere outside his house become swathed in progressive layers of tape meant to hold them together.

These humble wrappings cannot mask the disintegration behind them, nor can the revelation the whole thing was a sham repair the irreparable damage Phoenix has done to a once-promising career.

Here's why: "I'm Still Here" is a practical joke, and not a very good one, either in conception or execution. I'm still confused about why Affleck would make his revelation now, when the film was just expanding beyond a few cities. It seems he gave away the punch line before most people heard the set-up.

Affleck and Phoenix thought they were playing a gag on everyone else. At one point after his disastrous, mumbling, incoherent performance on the Dave Letterman show, Phoenix breaks down in tears: "Now I'm going to be a joke forever."

He would prove right, as a short time later Ben Stiller nailed Phoenix with a dead-on impersonation at the Academy Awards ceremony, which cemented the image in the public's mind. Having intentionally set up himself up as a punching bag for pop culture, Phoenix may find it hard to shake that persona.

Curiously, Stiller appears earlier in the documentary -- or mockumentary, I guess we should now call it -- to pitch Phoenix a role in his movie "Greenberg" (which was ultimately played by Rhys Ifans, brilliantly). This begs the question of whether Stiller was in on the joke.

In fact, once we know the film is a hoax, the only possible remaining entertainment value it has is in trying to guess which interactions are real and which are faux.

Certainly Phoenix, who comes across as a whining, colossally narcissistic brat, manages to fool a lot of people. He spends much of his time chasing around Sean "P. Diddy" Combs to convince him to produce his album. Combs, who is wary that he's being played, seems like the smartest person in the film.

I don't know much about rap music, but Phoenix is just terrible at it. He has no instinct for the rhythm and cadence of the lyrics he has (supposedly) written.

There's a lot of abuse directed at Antony and Larry, Phoenix's friends/assistants. No one who is really your friend accepts a paycheck for being one, but Phoenix apparently doesn't understand this. The film also contains a copious amount of frontal male nudity, and at one point Antony defecates on Phoenix while he's sleeping (or at least mimes doing so) in retaliation.

That could be an apt metaphor for the contempt Affleck and Phoenix are showing the audience with their grand, silly stunt. But the movie actually contains a better one: Attempting to flee the premiere of his "last" movie, "Two Lovers," Phoenix stands in a lonely stairwell in the bowels of the theater, vainly pushing on a door marked with huge letters, "Not an Exit."

Having faked his exit, Joaquin Phoenix may find people unmotivated to welcome him back in.

1.5 stars out of four

Review: "Get Him to the Greek"

I was not expecting much out of "Get Him to the Greek." It's a quasi-sequel to "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," which I was only too eager to banish from memory. And the appeal of British comedian Russell Brand had so far eluded my senses.

But "Greek" is one of the consistently funniest movies I've seen in a good long while, and it's got some genuine heart, too.

Consistency was actually my biggest beef with "Sarah Marshall": It had three or four uproarious moments, and a whole lot of drag in between. "Greek" builds laugh upon laugh, to the point where you're missing jokes because the audience is hooting so loud at the previous one.

This film is a coming-out party for Jonah Hill, who's been a reliable comedic sidekick closely associated with Judd Apatow (who's credited here as a producer). Now Hill moves to the front of the stage, and proves an engaging and witty leading man.

Hill actually has quite handsome features underneath all that blubber, and his liquid blue eyes are capable of seeming meek one moment, hard and brazen the next. He plays Aaron Green, a nebbish who comes out of his shell when he's assigned to escort a notorious rock star to a big gig, and it's to Hill's credit that the shy guy doesn't lose his innocence even when he's wallowing in sex and drugs.

Sean "P. Diddy" Combs plays against his smooth persona as egotistical record mogul Sergio Roma, who cares only about sales, not making quality music. At first he rejects Aaron's suggestion of a 10th anniversary concert of Aldous Snow's watershed show at Los Angeles' Greek Theatre, since everyone seems to think the drug-addled rocker is on the downside of his career.

Snow (Brand) is still famous and fabulously wealthy, but has lived inside the celebrity bubble for so long he isn't even aware that his last single, "African Child," was an embarrassing piece of condescending pop puffery. After seven years of sobriety, he's fallen hard off the wagon after being dumped by his special lady, Jackie Q (Rose Byrne), a fellow star singer.

Part of the film's appeal is the hard shots writer/director Nicholas Stoller takes at the music industry -- not just its excesses, but the sheer awfulness of so much of what it produces. (One of Aldous' hits is "I Got the Clap.") Watching Jackie Q or Aldous writhe and bluster in some music video, blurping out lunkhead lyrics to overproduced techno beats, one can't help be reminded of some of the drek that's popular on the air waves.

A ton of celebrities make cameos, including Lars Ulrich, Pink, Christina Aguilera and Billy Bush.

Sergio eventually signs off on the show, and it's Aaron's job to get Aldous safely and soberly from London to the Greek in 72 hours, stopping off to appear on the "Today Show" along the way. Of course, the rocker is much more interested in drinking, doping and partying.

Soon enough Aaron is flying high, rubbing up against strippers and puking all over himself. He sobers up long enough to remember his duties, and frets at his lapses -- and what effect they'll have on his relationship with Daphne (Elisabeth Moss).

We learn that Aldous, despite his asshat front, actually has a little soul to him, underneath mounds of narcissism.

Even though it's kind of a modern-day knockoff of "My Favorite Year," I still loved spending time with the duo of Hill and Brand. "Get Him to the Greek" rocked my funny bone -- hard.

3.5 stars out of four