01st Feb2020

Uncut Gems, Richard Jewell, The Lighthouse, A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, Queen & Slim (Film)

by timbaros

Uncut Gems

Uncut Gems (superb) – and other film reviews

Uncut Gems

An Adam Sandler movie connotes bad acting and a stupid plot. Not ‘Uncut Gems’ – it’s fast, furious, heart pounding and brilliant.
Shockingly and shamelessly ‘Uncut Gems’ has been ignored by the people who give out film awards – its Sandlers’ best film ever as well as one of the years top movies.
The action and plot in ‘Uncut Gems’ builds and accelerates into hyperdrive – a feeling probably akin to being on meth with the high becoming more and more intense until an explosive ending.
Sandler plays Manhattan gem dealer Harold Ratner, a man known to place a few bets in his time. He comes across a rare black opal which he wants to sell for a big score. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. Other people (criminals) also want their hands on the opal, meanwhile Ratner owes money to loan sharks, he’s been cheating on his wife (Idina Menzel) with his sexy and saucy mistress who is his assistant in the jewellery shop (Julia Fox). Also involved is a professional basketball player dangling lots of money in his face to spend on jewellery. Combining all this and what you have is a man whose life is spiralling out of control to a point where it’s do or die for Ratner.
To say Sandler is brilliant is an understatement. I saw this film last year at the BFI London Film Festival and didn’t know what to expect going in. When I left the cinema 135 minutes later, my head was spinning and my mind took hours to process what I had just seen. The ending is such a crescendo it’s so unlike anything you’d expect from a Sandler movie. 
Directors (and brothers) Benny and Josh Safdie (who did the award winning 2017 film ‘Good Time’ starring Robert Pattison), with a script by both of them (and Ronald Bronstein), bring us a superb film that’s thrilling, intense, and will have you on the edge of your seat. And while all the cast is brilliant, ‘Uncut Gems’ is Sandlers’ movie. Go see it just for him, and expect the ending to just blow your mind.
‘Uncut Gems’ is on Netflix but is also currently playing in local cinemas.

 
 
Other films opening this weekend include:
 
Richard Jewell
 
89-year old Director Clint Eastwood shows he’s still got it. In ‘Richard Jewell’, he tells the story of the man who was initially blamed for the bomb that exploded in Atlanta, Georgia during the 1996 Summer Olympics. Paul Walter Hauser is fine as Jewell, an overweight security’s guard who still lives with his mother (Kathy Bates in overacting mode). A back story of a reporter (Olivia Wilde) who will do anything to get her story (including sleeping with FBI agent Jon Hamm) did not happen so take this film with a grain of salt. Sam Rockwell is very good as usual as the man who never doubted Jewell’s innocence. 
 
The Lighthouse
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Powerful acting by both Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, and superb cinematography by Oscar nominee Jarin Blaschke, are the highlights of this film about two men sent to a remote location to take care of a lighthouse in the middle of nowhere. As boredom, heavy and continuous rain, and monstrous waves take their toll on both men, they start grating on each other after too many meals and too much time together, and it all comes to a head as Pattinson’s Ephraim Winslow starts getting annoyed as Dafoe’s bossman character Tom Wake barks one order too many. A bit on the homoerotic side, ‘The Lighthouse’ is visually so unlike any film you’ll see this year, or even this decade. 
 
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
 
Going into this film I expected a story of the lovable Mister Rogers – the man who, for decades hosted the U.S. childrens’ television show ‘ Mister Rogers Neighborhood’, but it’s not a story about him. It’s the story of writer Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) doing a magazine article about Mister Rogers. Of course, Mister Rogers hypothetically stands in for Vogel’s father, a man he never got a long with and was never able to please (played a bit over the top by Chris Cooper). Hanks is superb as Rogers but after leaving the cinema I felt a bit ripped off as I didn’t get the film that was advertised. 
 
Queen & Slim
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A Tinder date turns into a nightmare for Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith) and Slim (Daniel Kaluuya). Director Melina Matsoukas and writer Lena Waithe have taken their lead for this film from America’s racial problems by placing the titular black couple in a situation where they are, on their first date, pulled over by a white cop. It is just the beginning of their road trip that turns their relationship from strangers into lovers and partners in crime. A bit ’Thelma & Louise,’ ‘Queen & Slim’ will bowl you over by the very fine performances from the leads as well as the political message it sends about race, and the very dramatic ending.
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15th Oct2017

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) – Film

by timbaros

MeyerowitzStoriespic1-600x429A dysfunctional family deals with the illness of its patriarch in the new film ‘The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected).’

Including a cast of very famous actors, ‘The Meyerowitz Stories’ is, appropriately enough, about the Meyerowitz family, their lack of cohesiveness and irregularity in ways that gets a bit too much at times. There is constant yelling and a general unlikeability (and lots of continuity errors) in this film that could’ve been made by Woody Allen (it’s written and directed by Noah Baumbach).

Dustin Hoffman is Harold, the patriarch of a family with children who come from different mothers. The children include Adam Sandler, who is very good as Danny. With no place to live due to bad luck, he decamps back at the family home with Harold’s fourth wife Maureen (Emma Thompson). Danny has a daughter who is Eliza (Grace Van Patten), a college student studying film who makes raunchy and disturbing lesbian films, even though she’s straight. Matthew (Ben Stiller) lives in Los Angeles and is a powerful and wealthy businessman with a family of his own. Then there’s the miscast sister Jean (Elizabeth Marvel), whose awkwardness in appearance and behavior alludes to an abnormal upbringing. When Howard falls ill and is sent to the hospital, all hell breaks loose. Matthew flies in to be by his father’s side (with eyes on selling the family home for big bucks), and it’s him and Danny and Jean who practically fall apart and can’t cope, not only because their father is gravely ill, but also because of the mess their relationships, with each other, and with their father are in. Very bad shape doesn’t even come close.

‘The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)’, brought to us by master storyteller Baumbach, is one film that’s a bit hard to sit through. While all the actors are fantastic in their roles, the script is, as mentioned, a bit too much to take, and a bit unbeiveable. There’s also a scene where Sandler completely damages a car in broad daylight, in front of the hospital where his father is, but is not challenged or arrested. And it’s get very overdramatic in the hospital scenes where we know that all is going to be ok in the end. It’s worth a watch for the fine acting but that’s about all.

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07th Oct2017

London Film Festival Press Conference for “The Meyerowitz Stories: New and Selected”

by timbaros

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As part of the The 61st BFI London Film Festival, today there was a press conference held at London’s glamorous Corinthia Hotel for the film “The Meyerowitz Stories: New and Selected.” Attending were the film’s stars Dustin Hoffman and Adam Sandler, as well as writer and director Noah Baumbach.

“The Meyerowitz Stories: New and Selected” is the gala for the Laugh strand of the festival. In the film, Dustin Hoffman plays a moody patriarch in a film about a screwed-up New York family. To suggest that sculptor Harold Meyerowitz (Hoffman) is a model father would be pushing it. His adult children, like his artistic career, have not exactly met his expectations, but he has succeeded in selling them a rather delusional version of his own achievements. His eldest son Danny (Adam Sandler) is coasting through life while Harold’s daughter Jean (Elizabeth Marvel) enjoys being in the background. Matthew (Ben Stiller), who live on the West Coast, is very successful. Meanwhile, there is Harold’s drunk bohemian fourth wife Maureen (Emma Thompson). It’s pure dysfunction all the way, more so when Harold winds up in the hospital and everyone has to decide what’s best for Harold, together.

“The Meyerowitz Stories: New and Selected” is out in UK cinemas on October 13, 2017.
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03rd Jan2016

Precinct Seven Five and The Cobbler (DVD)

by timbaros

PSF_2D_DVDEntertainment One has just released two new films for the holidays, one (or both) of which may appeal to you.

‘Precinct Seven Five’ tells the story of ‘the dirtiest police precinct ever.’ It was Brooklyn’s 75th Precinct, during the 1980’s, which was in one of the toughest neighborhoods in all of New York City. But it was the base for many dishonest and sleazy cops as well. And the sleaziest cop of them all was Michael Dowd – who was then called ‘the dirtiest cop ever.’ He was born and bred in New York from an Italian family and was a police officer for 10 years and 5 months. And he broke almost every police rule in the book.

Precinct Seven Five is all about Dowd and how he went from being a working class honest policeman to a criminal, both protecting and robbing drug dealers and lining his own pockets with cash and drugs. It was a time during New York City’s low periods, the 1980’s, when drugs were rife and the murder and crime rates were at an all time high. Dowd used his authority as a police officer to commit crimes and acts of corruption in violation of his sworn duty to uphold the law.

Precinct Seven Five begins after Dowd’s 1992 arrest on charges of racketeering and conspiracy to distribute narcotics. He agreed to speak on Sept. 27, 1993, at then New York City Mayor David Dinkins commission on police corruption where Dowd admitted to committing thefts, extortion, engaging in narcotics trafficking, protecting drug operations, engaging in personal drug use, pretty much breaking the law by his own estimation hundreds of times. This hard-hitting documentary has Dowd explaining his actions, alongside interviews with his police partner Ken Urell, Urell’s wife, police investigators, and a few real life criminals. Real footage of a derelict New York City and photos of crime scenes puts us right in 1980’s New York City. Director Tiller Russell successfully tells Dowd’s story from being a respectful police officer to his arrest and conviction in 1992. It’s a shocking tale of how one man got away with so much in his years as a police officer, and exposed how much crime was rife within New York City’s police precincts back then.
Precinct Seven Five is now available on DVD, Download, and On Demand

The Cobbler

Adam Sandler plays a cobbler in his latest film simply titled ’The Cobbler.’ Yes, it does sound like a silly premise, but the film actually works.

Sandler plays lonely and sad Max Simkin. He’s inherited his father’s shoe shop, hence carrying on the family business that’s been passed down generations. But Simkin doesn’t want to be there – he’s just going through the motions. Simkin shares an apartment in Brooklyn with his elderly mother and lives to work and to take care of her. His perspective changes a bit when a young woman by the name of Carmen (Melonie Diaz) comes to his shop (as well as the barber shop next door, owned by Jimmy – Steve Buscemi) asking for his signature on a petition to prevent developers from kicking long-term residents out of local buildings. Carmen is just one of many different types of people who come into Simkin’s shop. Other customers include the beautiful model who lives with her English boyfriend next door, as well as local thug Leon (Method Man). But when Simkin’s shoe stitching machine stops working while he’s fixing Leon’s very expensive shoes, he uses the machine in the basement that used to be his fathers. And when he’s done fixing Leon’s shoes, he tries them on because they’re the same size as him, and lo and behold Simkin becomes Leon! It’s a hilarious discovery, because Simkin continues to try on other people’s shoes that have been left in his shop, and he literally becomes his customers, from an obese black kid, to a transvestite.

This leads Simkin to become anybody he wants to be, in any situation. But he’s led back to wearing Leon’s shoes which leads him to becoming mixed up in Leon’s criminal activity. It’s activity that involves Simkin (as Leon) to go to the real Leon’s flat to investigate what the real Leon is up to, where he’s mistaken for Leon and then led around as Leon to handle his illegal activity. Simkin also becomes involved with Carmen and her orgazination in helping out an old man who is about to be kicked out of the apartment he’s lived in for 45 years. Thrown in Ellen Barkin as a rich criminalizing real estate socialite and Dustin Hoffman as Simkin’s father (who’s actually Simkin but then later is his real father), and you get a charming comedy drama that’s funny and cute. While the ending is a bit silly and oversentimental, it’s a magical ride. ’The Cobbler’ is written and directed by Tom McCarthy, who is now receiving rave reviews (and possible Oscar nominations) for his soon to be released film called ‘Spotlight.’

‘The Cobbler’ is available now to download and is out on DVD and On-Demand on 4th January 2016.


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