Premium Rush (2012) - by French Stewart

In a surprise move, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, star of the much anticipated film Premium Rush, has refused to challenge allegations that he engaged in doping for his role.  When asked to affirm or deny the charges, Gordon-Levitt abstrusely answered, "Look, people are gonna talk - I'm not Heath Ledger."  Though very likely referring to the late actor's death from overdose, Gordon-Levitt unintentionally sent a shiver of girlish giggles through the assembled crowd of entertainment reporters promised free drinks, with one journalist snarkily shouting from the back of the Howard Johnson lobby, "Yeah, no shit 3rd rock!"  

At that well-timed (and well-delivered) sarcasm, the half dozen men of letters representing TMZ, Entertainment Tonight, and The Paris Review erupted into raucous laughter, forcing the young actor to seek refuge in his entourage - Unfortunately, Joseph Gordon-Levitt does not himself have an entourage of hangers-on as he is, himself, a member of several entourages belonging to much more famous celebrities.  Realizing this, Gordon-Levitt began frantically scrolling through his cell phone for the number of Leonardo Di Caprio, but soon stopped, having remembered that Leo blocked his number on account of the numerous drunk dials and late-night booty calls - The sting of their last exchange still pains the star of Angels in the Outfield: "Damnit, Joey, you’re no longer that ambiguous, brunette-Taylor Hanson anymore – I don’t wanna pound Billy Crystal; you get it, right? ” 

With no options available, Gordon-Levitt sat down at the HOJO bar, ordered a Long Island Iced Tea, and fielded questions from the now collected and composed entertainment reporters: "Joseph Gordon-Levine, how would you describe Premium Rush for someone who, let's say, doesn't want to blow his money on a movie he's certain sucks hairy ball sack; I mean really just sucks the junk - How would you describe your movie to this person?" Considering the question, Gordon-Levitt thoughtfully replied for this reviewer, "It's like Speed.  Yeah, it's like Speed; Speed meets The Transporter.  It's like Speed meets The Transporter meets...My Dinner with Andre... or maybe Muriel's Wedding... but definitely like Speed."

Tribute to Harry Morgan

Perhaps a bit sentimental... but heartfelt.

Sweet Smell of Success (1957) - by Faro

OUTDOOR SUMMER MOVIES OF NYC:


The sun is setting slowly. We are perched on a hillock of grass, looking over the southern end of the City, with its spires of steel and stone. The Brooklyn Bridge is behind us, along with several local food vendors who can’t utter a sentence without including the buzzword “organic”. Cops are wandering in endless circles around us, watching to see that we don’t open any adult beverages, thus ensuring that real crimes can be committed elsewhere. The stage is set, the movie screen is ready to reflect images of light captured 50 years ago, and we are primed for another Outdoor Summer Movie in New York City.


And what a great movie! Smart and fast and dialogue-driven, Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis pummel away at each other and everyone around them in the madness of self-promotion and urban-journalistic jockeying that is the arena in which these amoral characters claw at each other. Make no mistake about it, these are not immoral characters who know morality and have lost their way… no, these are amoral characters who have no interest in notions of right and wrong. All of them are willing to flip the story and turn the screw on someone else to get what they want, and all of them want success.


Perhaps the pretty boy jazz guitarist escapes this harsh description, but he is so tied up in knots with his immature notions of honor that we can immediately sense that he doesn’t belong in this world of hustle and hucksterism. When the corpulent and crooked cop cuts him down, we don’t complain, we know he had it coming. Not that we see the violence… that is one of the greatest joys of watching this film is to realize that you have rarely watched something so harsh and nihilistic, and yet there is no cursing, no violence, and no easy display of the dark facets of humanity. Instead it must all be shown, even the queasy overtones of the incestuous desires of Hunsecker for his sister, with wicked wit and suggestive subtlety.


We know the title is sarcastic even before the film starts, but after the director has pushed us down into the surging and sickly crowds of Times Square for two hours, we know that he is telling us that nothing smells less sweet than success purchased at the cost of our ideals. Then the film ends. The well-satisfied crowd blinks, stretches, and looks again at the walls of stone and steel glittering in the night sky just past the screen and across the river… and as we all disperse and head back to our cramped little apartments, there are those who wonder why they ever came to this crazy and frequently foul-smelling city, and there are others of us who remember with a wry smile that we came here for something other than the smell.

Beats, Rhymes & Life (2011) - by Font Leroy

Saw "Beats, Rhymes, and Life"* last night (the documentary directed by Michael Rapaport about A Tribe Called Quest). Was struck by the way Q-Tip comes across - over time as the group's career waxes, wanes, and then revives (although the motives for the latter seem nothing but pecuniary, even if driven initially by Phife's need to pay his medical bills) - as the lonely, egotistical genius of the group. Unlike the others, he seems to have no interest in regular human feeling or experience outside either excelling in the substantive craft of making incontrovertibly good music, or making savvy business moves (the exception that proves the rule in this movie are the hints of emotion regarding his father's having passed too early to witness his success and artistic splendor).

I was telling C how this felt like such a familiar narrative arc in group creative efforts -- you cling to your bandmates/fellow actors/whatever early on when your main challenge is the societal transgression of actually making a go at being an artist, at taking on the immense risk that might lead to renown and/or fortune and/or at least psyche-sustaining respect for your authenticity but involves deviating from the secure path of a steady paycheck as an honorable but undistinguished part of the middle-class column. But if success does come, different forces start to work -- outsiders hoping to gain themselves on your group's good fortune start to pick you apart, set you against each other, tell you you don't need to keep carrying the dead weight of your childhood friend -- that YOU'RE the real talent and you really got to get rid of Andy -- he's really just holding you back, etc.

The way this dynamic emerged with Q-Tip against Phife felt so familiar, and recently so -- I couldn't quite put my finger on what the comparator was, though. (I thought Lennon & McCartney -- Q-Tip is Paul, in this analogy, btw, which is the approach the NYT took in its review, but that didn't seem to fit very well -- I know some people suggest that Paul was the "leader" of the Beatles, especially later on, but John always seemed to me to have more executive charm than that, even if it wasn't applied towards keeping the band together from 1967 on. I digress.)

Then tonight it hit me -- what this movie reminded me of exactly was the Sorkin-soaked fraternal betrayal in the Social Network -- Phife is Eduardo -- all heart, sincerity, good faith commitment -- and Q-Tip is Zuckerberg -- ruthless and disturbingly unaffected, especially to those who thought they were close to him, but ultimately right on the merits of the enterprise. I guess this aligns with the uncomfortable proposition that history is made by the assholes -- the immortal Seamen's furniture reference aside, while it's difficult but not impossible to imagine A Tribe Called Quest earning the significance it has without Phife, you cannot say the same about Q-Tip.



*not entirely certain whether the Oxford comma is in the original.

Monogamy (2011) - by Rucksack

Director Dana Adam Shapiro takes us through the dark world of adult relationships in Brooklyn with his debut fiction feature, Monogamy. In his first feature follow up to his Oscar nominated documentary, Murderball, Shapiro shows a strong sense of craft in the Directors chair. Touches of Bergman and Hitchcock seem to inspire Monogamy with its exploration of relationships and sanity in decline.

Chris Messina and Rashida Jones star as an engaged couple living in a dreamy boho Brooklyn loft. (Kudos to production designer, Timothy Widbee.) Messina’s character, Theo, works as a wedding photographer but has a side project called Gumshoot where he endeavors to stalk and spy on his customers in order to provide them with a truly candid series of photographs. The idea is intriguing and the movie does well to sell the concept as something worth exploring both in fiction and in real life.

Things pick up when Theo becomes obsessed with a customer who engages in public sex for the benefit of his camera. This here is where I think the movie is kept from being a major success - had the subsequent psychodrama stemmed from an apparent danger involved in this seedy adventure, than I might have sympathized Theo’s mental breadown a great deal more than I actually did. Instead, the movie is true to it’s title and the catalyst for his breakdown is simply that he is being faced with his fear of commitment to his fiancé.

We all know fear and sex go hand in hand so for my money as a viewer, I would have enjoyed the visceral experience of the movie a great deal more if the stakes were higher than the simple breakup of two people who I don’t really think belong together anyway.

As usual, I found Jones quite boring but in this context, she wasn’t supposed to be exciting. She was supposed to portray the boredom that lazy Brooklyn couples can associate with monogamy. Still. . . that doesn’t really make for the steamiest of cinema.

I’m anxious to see what Shapiro does with his next movie, which I’m sure will come to be. This was probably the best movie of its budget that I’ve ever seen and despite the lack of suspense it shows real talent on all fronts.