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Reviews
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)
Money Never Sleeps but the Audience Did
A previous reviewer stated: "... if you liked the first Wall Street it probably won't disappoint you." Au contraire. Fans of the first film will be very disappointed basically because, unlike the original, "Wall Street--Money Never Sleeps" fails to engage the audience on any level. If you weren't a trader and didn't fully understand the story line of the first film, you at least were drawn into the drama by Sheen's and Douglas' fine portrayals of good and evil. In the updated version, it is a whole new world, both economically and technologically, so the story is more complicated but obtuse. I'm sure more than half the audience walked out of the theater not having a clue what this movie was about. But comparisons aside, the current version is flat beyond belief. The music, the editing, the script all conspire to put the audience to sleep. Shia LaBouef, while a fine actor, was grossly miscast as Jake. He couldn't carry off the ambitious, arrogant young lion, and physically he had no presence. Carey Mulligan's lackluster performance was probably the victim of a lethargic script; let's wait to see more of her before passing judgment. Susan Sarandon manages to rise above the fractured writing and turns in a fine supporting performance as Jake's wheeler-dealer real estate mother forever in need of a handout. Ditto for Frank Langella as Jake's mentor. Plot-wise, Douglas' Gekko keeps saying that prison changed him but he never really says how, nor does his return to his old ways act as testament to his alleged transformation. Furthermore, who out there believes that Winnie would choose to allow her father back in her life? He let her down her whole life and then swindled her out of what was rightfully hers. Yeah, so at the end of the day Gekko makes a donation to the cause Jake and Winnie are so passionate about, but he betrayed her in the process. How can she ever trust him again? Bottom line: if you need a good nap, then go see this film. In addition to boasting some beautiful shots of Manhattan, this movie only serves to demonstrate that everybody is getting up there in years--most notably Douglas, Langella, Eli Wallach, and the ancient Sylvia Miles. Take a real close look at her index finger when she's showing Jake where to sign. It looks like it belongs to the Wicked Witch of the West. The biggest letdown is that this is an Oliver Stone film. We used to get our money's worth when he was at the helm.
Fame (2009)
No Hot Lunch
Did this remake want to be a remake? It was hard to tell. The characters were different but some of their stories were similar, the fantastic musical score of the original film was largely ignored, and the film seemed to go out of its way to cover up the fact that Performing Arts is a New York City institution. None of the kids had New York accents, the girl who played Jenny was so miscast as the Doris Vinsecker mimic she should have sprouted pigtails and been jet-packed to middle America where she obviously belonged, and the street scenes pinpointing New York as the locale for this movie were minimal. There was a shot of Webster Hall and some karaoke venue I'm not familiar with, but the bright yellow taxis and the lights of Broadway were mostly kept under wraps.
Don't get me started on character development!! There was none. Did you care when the girl who gets the gig with the modern dance company dumps her brokenhearted fellow PA student boyfriend? Why should you? They only appear together in 2 scenes prior to their breakup: when he is admiring her from afar as she dances a solo and when she invites him to a dinner with her parents to annoy them. When the black girl (loosely modeled after the Coco character in the original) breaks into "Out Here on My Own," you want to laugh because she's all the opposite: the product of a domineering father and passive mother who forbid her to do anything but continue on the classical pianist career path they launched her on. She's not out there on her own; she's being double-teamed by her stuffy parents and left to suffocate in an oppressive home environment. Ditto for other characters as well. We are left to wonder about many characters' emotional states because we haven't been made privy to what led up to them.
Embracing the original score (with added genres to be true to present day) might have saved this flick. Including "Out Here On My Own," erroneously crooned in the middle of the movie, and the feeble salute to its namesake at the end when "Fame" plays over the credits, didn't do it for me. The new music introduced in this film isn't remarkable or memorable, just like the film itself.
I'm surprised that such talented actors as Kelsey Grammar, Debbie Allen, Bebe Neuwirth, and Megan Mullally wanted to appear in this swill of a film. And maybe they didn't, because their portrayals of the four key administrators at this school were half-hearted and lifeless. For a school overflowing with creativity, the faculty had the personalities of sponge mops.
And speaking of creativity, the original film was dead on depicting the students as lovable narcissistic ego maniacs passionate about the craft they hoped to perfect. There was none of that here. The film passes through these students' four years at PA without even a hint that they've mastered their craft or matured in any way.
In short, the writing was bad, the acting was worse, the direction was missing in action, the editing was in sleep mode, and the score was a snore. Go rent the original. It might be a little dated but it's one fantastic ride. When the students regale the graduation audience at the end with "The Body Electric," you are moved because you've come to care about the kids and their angst-filled four years at the High School of Performing Arts. Furthermore, you want to celebrate their triumph with them. If not, "The Body Electric" is one dynamic musical piece and worth the price of admission alone.
61* (2001)
The Reluctant Hero
Billy Crystal can be accused of presenting a heavily biased view of the Yankee summer of 1961, and his accusers would be right. Biased on the side of the truth, biased on the side of fairness to the characters, and biased on the side of historical integrity, "61" tells the story of one of the greatest seasons of all time for the New York Yankees--with admiration, with respect, and, above all, with a keen eye for how it really came down.
If you didn't witness first-hand the character assassination that plagued Roger Maris in his pursuit of Babe Ruth's home run record, "61" holds no resonance for you. You can't possibly understand what Maris went through that year just because his prowess for hitting home runs blossomed at record-breaking speed. You can't sympathize with him or the way he acted either. The more homers he hit, the more he was pursued, and the more he retreated. When Mickey Mantle tells Roger that he's the one making it hard on himself in his dealings with reporters--"I told you how to handle those guys. You don't want to listen."--it reveals the core of Maris' struggle with the press. Roger Maris was not a media darling--he shied away from the spotlight and he tried to protect himself and his family from the media circus that the 1961 season became for him. It was no contest, but he continued to fight for his privacy. He was just a guy doing his job and he wanted his privacy respected. It didn't help that he was threatening the greatest sports record of all time achieved by one of the most beloved sports figures in New York or anywhere. It didn't help that he was competing against another beloved and accomplished New York hero to break that record. This hick from North Dakota. What nerve. "Mickey should be the one to do it. He's a real Yankee." Many Yankee fans and baseball fanatics everywhere felt that way in the summer of 1961. Maris didn't deserve to be vilified because he wasn't the "proper" Yankee to break this record.
By now you must have surmised that I rooted for Roger Maris in the summer of 1961. That notwithstanding, all of what you see in "61" is true. There's no poetic license taken, no stretching of the truth for dramatic effect, no embellishments to make it a more interesting story (see "It Could Happen to You" and "Under the Tuscan Sun" for that). We can never know how close the relationship was between Mantle and Maris, but I trust Billy Crystal to have done his homework in his depiction of them as very good friends, not bitter rivals, as fabricated by the press. I trust Billy Crystal to have done his homework about every situation, every relationship, every line, and every detail in this movie. You can see that it was a labor of love for him. I thank him for setting the record straight where Roger Maris is concerned because it was about time.
If this movie doesn't pull at your heartstrings for any reason, then consider the irony of having gone through all that Maris did to break this record and have it noted in the record book that he did it in a longer season and the final irony of having that decision reversed after his death. "Roger Maris died 6 years earlier, never knowing that the record belonged to him." Maris died of cancer at the very young age of 51. He didn't deserve that either.
Beyond the Sea (2004)
Spacey Hits All the Right Notes
Kevin Spacey paints a bittersweet picture of a tortured young man with a big talent who lived every day knowing it could be his last. The film, obviously a labor of love for Spacey, hits the bullseye by capturing with chilling resonance that quality of imminent finality that permeated Darin's music and his life. The film bears a strong resemblance to "All That Jazz," the biopic about Bob Fosse's life and career starring Roy Scheider, minus the lunacy and fantasy scenes. "Beyond the Sea" rings true at every turn, and if the ending doesn't tug on your heartstrings, you just don't get it. Spacey silences the critics who complain he is too old to play Darin by turning in a performance that relegates age to a footnote. Not only that, he sings, he dances, he does it all. If you're just curious about seeing Spacey totally out of character from previous roles, you won't be disappointed. No matter your opinion of Kevin Spacey's portrayal of a rock n' roll icon, this is a film not to be missed. The only place I can fault it is in the casting of the supporting characters: his family, Sandra Dee, his promoter. None of them holds a candle to Spacey's performance, but maybe they don't have to.