Gone Girl

David Fincher’s 2014 shockingly good film version of “Gone Girl” is the date-night movie of the decade for those who want to destroy one another. This must have huge at the box office. Peter Travers said in his review, “Gone Girl is a movie of its cultural moment, an era when divorce won’t cut it if there are options for lethal revenge and aggravated assault.” In the toxic marriage of Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) and Amy Elliott (Rosamund Pike), both who are equal-opportunity liars and cheats. Or almost equal. Arguments between the genders are going to be intense.

Travers noted, “In her 2012 bestseller, Gillian Flynn made wicked sport of marriage in the new millennium. Working from an incisively shaped script by Flynn herself, director Fincher (Fight Club, Seven, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) goes right for the jugular. No one does moral rot like Fincher. And with Affleck and Pike around to put a beautiful face on Mr. and Mrs. Wrong, the stage is set for diabolical fun that stings like a person.”

Affleck’s Nick is a New York journalist jobless because of the economy and forced to move back to Missouri, where he opens a bar with his twin sister, Margo, played by Carrie Coon, and goes to seed. Travers noted, “Pike’s Amy, Nick’s socialite wife, is a trust-fund baby who’s also out of a writing career and way out of place in the Midwest.”

Travers continued, “Flynn, downsized from her trade as a writer and critic (a good one) for Entertainment Weekly, knows from the job-and-money squeeze. She structured her book as a he-said/she-said, starting on the day of the Dunnes’ fifth anniversary.” It’s also the day Amy disappears within signs of a bloody struggle at home, and Nick becomes a suspect in the alleged murder of his missing, pregnant wife. Got it? Spoilers would kill the mystery, for those not among the more than 6 million who’ve read the book.

Travers noted, “What you can know is that Gone Girl has the impact of a body-slam, hitting home in every scary, suspenseful, seductive particular. It’s a movie inferno with combustible performances.” Affleck is terrific, deflating his good looks to suggest the soulless ridges that define Nick. Travers credited, “For Pike, a Brit best known for supporting roles (Pride & Prejudice, An Education), this is a smashing, award-caliber breakthrough you’ll be talking about for years. Does she possess the role of Amy, or does the role possess her? Either way, she’s dazzling, depraved and dynamite.”

All the actors have their highlights – Tyler Perry as Nick’s shark lawyer, Kim Dickens and Patrick Fugit as the cops on the case, and a stellar Neil Patrick Harris, who miraculously finds the romantic soul in a stalker creep from Amy’s past. On the production staff, Fincher veterans, including cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, editor Kirk Baxter and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, cleverly escalate the boiling tension.

Travers mentioned, “Like the book, the movie begins with a man wanting to crack open his wife’s skull to find out, among other things, “What have we done to each other? What will we do?””

“Gone Girl” gives us a painting of two vipers spitting venom at each other across the landscape of a recession-broken, morally bankrupt America. Even with Fincher’s unflinching look and Flynn’s burning fun, pieces of humanity remain. Pieces where we might even see ourselves. It’s not a pleasant movie.

What a movie. I cannot believe what I had seen when I watched this. It was one of the best movies of 2014, and I didn’t see it in theaters. I saw it as a DVD rental and I was blown away. And how this left us on a cliffhanger makes me wonder are they going to make a sequel. I have not heard of anything, but we’ll see. If you have not seen this, you should. You will love this and be on the edge of your seat throughout the entire film.

Thank you for joining in on “Ben Affleck Month.” I hope everyone liked my reviews. Stay tuned next month for the next installment of “Black History Movie Reviews.”

Jersey Girl

“Jersey Girl,” released in 2004, is a romantic comedy written and directed by a nicer, gentler Kevin Smith. Roger Ebert noted in his review, “It's the kind of movie Hugh Grant might make, except for the way Smith has with his dialogue, which is truer and more direct than we expect.” There are a couple of scenes here where a video store clerk goes straight to the bottom line, and it feels like every type of romantic rules and regulations are being rewritten.

The movie stars Ben Affleck as Ollie Trinke, a big-time Manhattan publicist whose beloved wife Gertrude, played by Jennifer Lopez, is great with child. Ebert admitted, “I would hesitate to reveal that she died in childbirth if I had not already read and heard this information, oh, like five hundred times, so obsessed is the nation with Ben and J. Lo. Lopez is luminous in her few scenes, helping to explain why Ollie remains so true to her memory that he remains celibate for many years.”

Meanwhile, his career falls apart. Under pressure to hold a job while raising a daughter, he breaks down one day, brutally offending his employers by causing a scene at the opening of a Hard Rock Café. He fails to understand why he should take Will Smith seriously (“Yeah, like the Fresh Prince of Bel Air is ever gonna have a movie career”). By the time the movie continues, he has moved back to New Jersey and is living in the same house with his father Bart (George Carlin) and his beloved daughter Gertie (Raquel Castro), who is now about 7. He’s not in public relations anymore. He works with his dad in the public works department.

Because Ben Affleck is a movie star and looks like one, you might expect him to start dating eventually, but no. You might expect that he could find another high-paying PR job, but no. he doesn’t, because then there wouldn’t be a movie. When a movie isn’t working, we get all logical about things like this, but when it works, we relax.

Several times a week, Ollie and Gertie go to the local video store, where she wonders the children section while he makes a quick jolt through the bamboo curtain to grab an adult film. One night he’s confronted by Maya, played by Liv Tyler, the clerk who claims she’s taking a survey about the usage of adult films, and asks Ollie how many times a week he satisfies himself. She is seriously disturbed by his reply, shocked to find out he has not made love in seven years and tells him, “We’re gonna make some love.”

And it’s in a scene like this that Kevin Smith shows why he’s such a good comedy writer. There is a bedrock of truth in the scene, which is based on embarrassment and shyness and Maya’s disconcerting ability to say exactly what she’s thinking, and when Ollie tries to explain why he has remained celibate (except for his relationship with countless adult titles), she patiently explains about intercourse: “It’s the same thing only you’re saving the $2 rental fee.”

Inarguable logic, but he objects, finally giving in and agreeing to a lunch date. And thus, does love reenter Ollie’s life. For Maya may be bold about intercourse, but she is serious about love, and soon like Gertie is saying, “Hey, you’re the lady from the video store” at a moment when it would be much, much better had she not walked into the room.

Liv Tyler is a very particular talent who has sometimes been misused by directors more in love with her beauty than with her suitability for their story. Here she is perfectly cast, as the naïve and sincere Maya, whose confidence is not a conquest technique but an act of generosity, almost of mercy. It takes a special look for a woman to convince us she wants to sleep with a man out of the goodness of her heart, but Tyler finds it, and it brings a sweetness to the relationship.

Ebert said, “Kevin Smith I believe has spent almost as much time in video stores as Quentin Tarantino, and his study of ancient cliches is put to good use in the closing act of his movie, which depends on not one but three off-the-shelf formulas: (1) The choice between the big city and staying with your family in a small town; (2) the parent who arrives at a school play just at the moment when the child onstage is in despair because that parent seems to be missing, and (3) the Slow Clap Syndrome. Smith is a gifted writer and I believe he knew exactly what he was doing by assembling these old reliables. I'm not sure he couldn't have done better, but by then we like the characters so much that we give the school play a pass.”

Besides, without the school play, we wouldn’t get a chance to see the set made for little Gertie by two of the guys who work with Bart and Ollie in the public works department (Stephen Root and Mike Starr). Let it be said that the Lyric Opera’s set for “Madama Butterfly” was only slightly more elaborate.

This is a good movie that I think everyone should watch. You will love it because it is a movie where Ben Affleck learns a lot from the people he is surrounded with and how he needs to settle down. Kevin Smith did a great job with this and you will love it if you’re a Kevin Smith fan, I promise you.

Sorry for posting this late. I’m not feeling too good, so that’s the reason why I put this off since I was sleeping a good majority of the day.

Next week I will be finishing “Ben Affleck Month” with a movie that was quite a surprise.

Daredevil

The origin is usually similar: A traumatic event in childhood, often due to a loss of parents, make future superhero traumatized in some ways but with supernatural powers in others. “Daredevil,” released in 2003, came out of the Marvel Comics story in the same period as “Spider-Man” and both were changed by accidents, which gave Peter Parker his spidey-sense, and blinded Matt Murdock but made his other four senses oversensitive. They grew up together in Marvel comics, sometimes sharing the same journeys, but you won’t seem them socializing in the movies because their rights are owned by different studios.

Roger Ebert said in his review, “"Daredevil" stars Ben Affleck as the superhero, wearing one of those molded body suits that defines his six-pack abs but, unlike Batman's, doesn't give him dime-sized nipples. His mask extends over his eyes, which are not needed since his other senses fan out in a kind of radar, allowing him to visualize his surroundings and "see" things even in darkness.”

By day, he is a lawyer in the Hell’s Kitchen area of Manhattan. By night, he tells everyone, he stalks the alleys and rooftops, seeking out villains. There is no shortage, however most of the city’s more profitable crime is controlled by the Kingpin (the late Michael Clarke Duncan) and his chief minister, Bullseye (Colin Farrell).

There must be a woman, and in “Daredevil” there is one (Ebert noted, “only one, among all those major make characters, although the fragrant Ellen Pompeo has a slink-on).” She is Elektra Natchios, played by Jennifer Garner, who, like her classical namesake, wants to avenge the death of her father. By day, she is pretty much the same she is by night. Ebert said, “She and Daredevil are powerfully attracted to each other, and even share some PG-13 sex, which is a relief because when superheroes make love at the R level, I am always afraid someone will get hurt.” There is a really beautiful scene where he asks her to stand in the rain because his ears are so sensitive they can create an image of her face from the sound of the raindrops.

Matt Murdock’s law partner is Franklin “Foggy” Nelson, played by Jon Favreau. He has little suspicion of who he is sharing an office with, although he picks up fast. Another main character is Ben Urich, played by Joe Pantoliano, who works for the New York Post, the newspaper of choice for superheroes.

Daredevil has the ability to jump off tall buildings, leap through the air, bounce off things, land lightly, etc. Ebert admitted, “There is an explanation for this ability, but I tend to tune out such explanations because, after all, what do they really explain? I don't care what you say, it's Superman's cape that makes him fly.” However, comic fans study the mythology and approach with the same amount of academics. It is uplifting, in the realm of inexplicabilities, to ace a limited topic within a self-contained universe. Really understand why Daredevil defies gravity, and the location of the missing matter making up 90 percent of the universe can be put on hold.

Ebert said, “But these are just the kinds of idle thoughts I entertain during a movie like "Daredevil," which may have been what the Vatican had in mind when it issued that statement giving its limited approval of Harry Potter, as long as you don't start believing in him. Daredevil describes himself as a "guardian devil," and that means there are guardian angels, and that means God exists and, by a process of logical deduction, that Matt Murdock is a Catholic. Please address your correspondence to Rome.”

The movie is good. Ebert credited, “Affleck and Garner probe for the believable corners of their characters, do not overact, are given semi-particular dialogue, and are in a very good-looking movie.” Most of the tension takes place between the characters, not the props. Of course, there is a fancy formal ball where everyone is invited (Ebert noted, “Commissioner Gordon must have been at the rival affair across town”).

Affleck is in his area in stories this large, having before tried to save Baltimore from nuclear annihilation and the world from “Armageddon,” but Garner, Farrell and Duncan are actually newer to action films, despite Garner seeing Affleck off at the station when he took the train from Pearl Harbor to New York, and Duncan was Balthazar in “The Scorpion King.” They play their roles more or less as if they were real, which is a novelty in a movie like this, and Duncan mainly has a presence that makes the camera want to take a step back and protect its barrier.

To summarize, the movie is worth seeing, better than we expect, more fun that we deserve. Ebert said, “I am getting a little worn out describing the origin stories and powers of superheroes, and their relationships to archvillains, gnashing henchmen and brave, muscular female pals.”

Ebert continued, “They weep, they grow, they astonish, they overcome, they remain vulnerable, and their enemies spend inordinate time on wardrobe, grooming and props, and behaving as if their milk of human kindness has turned to cottage cheese.” Some of their movies, like this one, are better than others.

People really thrashed this movie when it came out. My brother and cousin went to see it in the theaters, and they didn’t like it. I saw it as a DVD rental from the library, and I found myself enjoying it. I don’t understand why people hated this movie. I liked the action, the main actors did a good job, and it was a nice origin movie. I’m not really familiar with the actual comics, so I can’t say if it stayed true to the comics or not. Still, I say give this movie a chance and judge it based on your own thoughts. Because I believe people will enjoy this movie if they just enjoy themselves.

Next week, I’m going to look at a Kevin Smith movie that I really enjoyed in “Ben Affleck Month.”

Dazed and Confused

Happy New Year everyone. Can you believe that this year is my tenth year blogging on movie reviews? Where has the time gone? I had difficulty deciding what I was going to review for this month, so I decided to review all the films that I have seen that starred Ben Affleck. Let’s start out this month with the 1993 classic, “Dazed and Confused.”

Consider this: it’s been longer from the release of “Dazed and Confused” to now than it was between the film’s release almost 20 years ago and the time which it was set. To audiences of the 90s and afterwards, “Dazed and Confused” is more than just one of the great teen comedies, although it absolutely is. It’s also, hands down, as influential as any film in influencing the way modern audiences who weren’t around for the 1970s remember them. Dominick Suzanne-Mayer said in his review, “It’s a piece of the pop cultural lexicon that’s achieved an influence greater than itself, all while defining the “hangout comedy” while also being one of the most easygoing examples of the form.”

Suzanne-Mayer continued, “But to wax poetic for too long is to look past what’s made Dazed and Confused so endearing over time, more than anything: the slice-of-life, everyday commonality of its tone, story, and filmmaking. The follow-up to Richard Linklater‘s auspicious 1991 debut Slacker, Dazed and Confused took that film’s sprawling Austin eccentricity and rewound the clocks back to the mid-’70s, before technology became omnipresent and Jimmy Carter validated America’s anxieties regarding the nation’s uncertain future.” Linklater’s film occasionally looked at the outside world, but it’s only in outer ways, the ones that matter in high school. Alpha male cruelty. Love desperation and anxiety. Worries about the unknown future that’ll inevitably drain the enjoyable present. It’s also about the funny, desperate, embarrassing, memorable stuff that happens in between everything, but it’s there, and scary in a little more each day.

However, first, it’s 1976. Before the various criminals of “Dazed and Confused” go off to cruise the streets, break down mailboxes, and not forget that you’re celebrating a group of white males not wanting to pay their taxes on the 4^th, it’s the last day of school. Suzanne-Mayer said, “Linklater’s film breathlessly dives in from this moment on, never stopping for hoary plot contrivances or adult interference (they barely exist in this Austin) on the roads to nowhere in particular, with the right tunes and the right buds. In addition to Foghat‘s “Slow Ride” becoming the U.S. national anthem of laying back and smoking a joint thanks to Wiley Wiggins‘ final moment onscreen, a passing listen to modern-day classic rock radio will cement just how many of the films have been entrenched in the national consciousness thanks to Linklater.” Alice Cooper, Bob Dylan, Aerosmith, Peter Frampton, Steve Miller, and a lot of other bands managed to connect the first major generational gap through Linklater making them universal, and timeless.

That timelessness carries over to the film at most. It’s no accident that some of the film’s best-remembered lines are made while driving around town in search of something to do, or loitering outside different nightlife areas and liquor stores and high schools. Suzanne-Mayer noted, “Dazed and Confused, in its rambling way, captures one of the things that all people actually miss most about youth: the ability to be completely aimless, at least here and there, without any kind of consequence. There’s an air of immortality that goes hand in hand with youth, a notion that sitting in the back of your friend’s car and blasting some tunes and messing around is as grand and important as life will ever get. It’s untrue in most ways, and it’s unwise to get stuck in that place as time passes on, but you always yearn for it even when you know it’s unattainable. Like so much of Linklater’s best work, the film is profound through its being deliberately unassuming. It’s sincere without being dopey, honest without being mean, optimistic without being oblivious of how hard the future can be.” Life can’t stay this way forever, but it’ll never be this easy again.

Importantly, the movie also remembers that life isn’t as easy from time to time, whether it’s in Pink (Jason London) finding out that people have expectations and demands of him won’t end with high school, or in guys like O’Bannion (Ben Affleck) who’ve grown early and won’t be sober enough to realize it for far too many years. Linklater’s screenplay clearly knows who the heroes and villains are, but it doesn’t necessarily attack any of them. Every character in a great Linklater movie has a clever inner life, and “Dazed and Confused” separates itself from so many cliched high school stories of social castes clashing by harassing out those lives in little moments.

Suzanne-Mayer describes, “Talking to people who love Dazed and Confused is like watching them work through a Rorschach test. It offers such a wide swath of personalities that every audience member connects with their own facets of it, from the uncertain Mitch (Wiggins) to Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey), a charmer who’s slowly growing into a Texas burnout more and more conspicuously by the hour. Yet it also renders its tiny ecosystem with such earnest affection that you can’t help but be seduced by all of it, even the gross parts or the unpleasant ones.” Everybody has their own favorite part, because everybody can find at least of part of themselves in someone, somewhere in “Dazed and Confused.” After all, it’s the experience of the American teenager in miniature. We all just had to , or have to, keep living.

What everyone knows about this movie is the famous Matthew McConaughey line, “That’s what I love about these high school girls. I get older and they stay the same age.” Also, this is what made him famous for “Alright, alright, alright.” If you haven’t seen this film yet, you’re missing out. You should see this because I think everyone will find it relatable.

Next week I’m going to look at a comic book movie that people really bashed on, but I actually enjoyed, in “Ben Affleck Month.”