Ocean's 8

Tonight I got to see “Ocean’s 8,” released 11 days ago, at work and I will let everyone know what I thought about it.

Recreating the story of Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s” trilogy but lacking their smooth style, “Hunger Games” director Gary Ross creates this all-female remake that is nonetheless enjoyable thanks to the amazing performances from its female cast. Joseph Walsh said in his review, “Ocean’s 8 shows Hollywood’s glass-ceiling is cracking, but begs the question – could this have been better achieved with an original story?”

Danny Ocean has passed. Here comes Danny’s younger, equally sinister sister Debbie, played by Sandra Bullock. After being framed by her evil ex-boyfriend, art dealer Claude Becker, played by Richard Armitage, she’s just been released after a five-year sentence in prison. Not too long after her release, she reunites with her friend Lou, played by Cate Blanchett, and forms a female team of thieves – played by singer Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, rapper Awkwafina, the hot Sarah Paulson and Helena Bonham Carter – to work on a well-planned robbery. The plan is to steal an antique Cartier necklace worth $150 million during New York’s most famous event, the Met Gala, from the beautiful neck of actress Daphne Kluger, played by Anne Hathaway.

The film’s greatest success is on the fourth wall-breaking one-liners evaluating the treatment of women in Hollywood. Walsh said, “Nothing goes unscathed, including celebrity culture and the portrayal of women in the media – journalists get a minor roasting, bloggers worse. This critique crescendos with a scene where Lou suggests a male hustler who could join the team.” Debbie rejects her with: “I don’t want a him. A him gets noticed, a her gets ignored, and, for once, we want to be ignored.” It’s a strong line, cleverly said.

The film’s East Coast setting is also a great decision. Bullock and team take the subway and plan their robbery in an abandoned pool hall. Walsh noted, “This echoes the film's message that unlike their male counterparts that swaggered around the neon lights and up-market hotels of Las Vegas in tuxes, these women’s antics are sidelined to the margins, and they have to hustle twice as hard for what is a given for men (criminal or not).”

Sadly, the formation and scheming of the film proves to be damaging to its moral. Walsh said, “The heist scenes are functional, lacking the pizzazz and slick high-jinks of Soderbergh’s original.” Disappointingly, the film’s pacing shatters when James Corden comes in the film as a clumsy insurance investigator. This then goes even worse because of having a revenge plot involving Claude, discouraging the message of female power.

“Ocean’s 8” does have a strong suit when it comes to Anne Hathaway, who steals the film as the grouchy but annoyingly liking Kluger. Her character is described as having “eyes like Bambi” and “the best neck in the business,” and you can’t help but make the reference to the meta-joke of “Ocean’s Twelve,” where Julia Roberts’ character disguised as Julia Roberts. Walsh said, “Hathaway is clearly having fun alluding to her own career, and there’s even a touch of her Selina Kyle from Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises in here. Hathaway makes her point with grace and elegance: she’s more than a pretty neck.”

However, the film’s message is only as good as the way it’s told. Walsh complained, “The so-so heist and hop-scotch plotting lacks polish. There's also that nagging question – why not give a cast of this calibre a film that allows them to shine without the male baggage?” Maybe that’s just the increase of noticing the industry seeing the misogyny and gender-swap reboots are the best we can see for right now, but more exciting is to think the films this cast will be making next, together or alone.

Now, as much as the complaints are when it comes to telling the message of noticing how strong women are, this film is actually a lot of fun. I found myself enjoying this film when I was watching it, and if you liked the “Ocean’s” trilogy, then you might enjoy this one. However, if you want to wait until this comes out on DVD to rent it, then that’s fine. I think it wouldn’t hurt to go the theater to watch it, but the decision is yours.

Thank you for joining in on my review tonight, stay tuned next Friday for the continuation of “Coen’s Brothers Month.”

Ocean's Thirteen

Well, it’s time to wrap up the “Ocean’s Trilogy” with the final installment, “Ocean’s Thirteen,” released in 2007. The basic story is after the team’s member Reuben Tischkoff, played by Jack Geller from "Friends," Elliott Gould, is double-crossed in a business deal and is hospitalized; Danny Ocean joins his old team and heads to Las Vegas to execute revenge on the man who put Reuben in the hospital: shark-like hotel manager, Willy Bank, played by Al Pacino. Their plan is simple: break the Bank by ruining his new multi-billion dollar hotel. However, this isn’t easy.

This is because the experience has to do with watching so many A-list actors having a grand-ole time; the Ocean’s movies have always felt like an enjoyment. Sadly, since “Ocean’s Eleven” was an all-complete affair, “Ocean’s Twelve” felt like we had our faces pressed up against the screen watching Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Matt Damon in the VIP lounge have considerably more fun than we were having. Well, thank goodness, the trilogy (of sorts; it’s more a series of films that apparently has the same characters) is complete with “Ocean’s Thirteen,” and the invites are definitely back in the game.

Empire stated in their review, “In fact, Thirteen occasionally feels like a two-hour apology for the French New Wave noodling of Twelve, with a dialing down of the smugness that alienated so many last time around, a recalibration of focus onto the gang themselves (no love interests here; Catherine Zeta-Jones and Julia Roberts’ absences are explained very early doors), and a return to the Vegas milieu.” Besides the first half, as transvestite English comedian Eddie Izzard’s electronics genius Roman Nagel arrives, with a plan already in the blueprints, to receive a very detailed meeting from Danny and Rusty, who have become seriously stuck in their attempts to break The Bank, Willy Banks’ hotel-casino. This extended segment, twisted in flashbacks within flashbacks, shadowy camerawork in dimly-lit rooms and reams of machine-gun explanation, feels as tentative as anything Soderbergh has done in the series so far. However, besides from an absolutely cracking opening one-liner, it’s worryingly flat and difficult to make sense of.

Empire went on to say, “But by frontloading the spadework, Soderbergh ensures that the second half of the movie is bright, breezy and sumptuously entertaining.” The camerawork is improved (one astounding tracking shot, covering a series of crash zooms and pans across a casino floor, is a technical miracle), the performances get tastier and the movie virtually jumps towards its finale as their complicated plotting come together like clockwork, with twits upon twists, punchline following punchline and pay-off following pay-off. In a summer filled with darkness, this movie’s late lightness of touch is a huge sigh of relief.

It’s also a masterclass on how to film an ensemble work, with each actor of the gang given their moment to shine (Casey Affleck’s inspired diversion down to Mexico in particular) as they exchange ironic one-liners, mean-looking grins and nonsensical con artist mockery about Bellinis, Billy Martins and Susan B. Anthony. Of the real A-listers, Pitt and Damon are once again enjoyable, but this is Clooney’s movie. As he gets older, the former ER cast member just becomes more charming and commanding, quietly dominating with two standout moments – an intelligently-developed joke about Oprah that is the movie’s funniest scene, and a commanding parting shot to Andy Garcia’s Terry Benedict – that remind you why you’re not watching, Empire states, “Rusty’s Thirteen.”

In such memorable company, you’d still expect Pacino to shine but – a few quiet moments aside – Willy Bank is not fully developed into the cold enemy he could have been. His dishonest planning does timely a lovely and vaguely poetic frequent logo about ‘shaking Sinatra’s hand’ (the only direct reference in the franchise to the star of the original “Ocean’s Eleven”), but really, the honor amongst thieves subtext is almost an afterthought. Empire described, “Ocean’s Thirteen is about gloss and glitz; here, the style //is// the substance, and the result is the first genuinely enjoyable movie of the summer.”

Final verdict: I agree with Empire when they say, “You can beat the house and you can break the bank, but sequels always get long odds on defeating the law of diminishing returns – yet Ocean’s Thirteen just about pulls it off.” I personally think this is better than “Ocean’s Twelve,” but “Ocean’s Eleven” just can’t be topped. I don’t think there will be a fourth movie in this series, seeing how much time has passed since the last one and plus Bernie Mac has passed away. Anyways, check the “Ocean” movies out when you get the chance because they are enjoyable. I personally liked them, and I think you will too.

Thanks for joining in on my reviews of the “Ocean Movies.” I hope you enjoyed them as much as I have making them. Stay tuned for Monday on the finale of “The Nutty Professor reviews.”

Ocean's Twelve

I first want to apologize for posting this late for I was out for about the whole day. Let’s not waste any time and start my review on “Ocean’s Twelve,” released in 2004.

Josh Bell started off his review by saying, “Steven Soderbergh's 2001 remake of the Rat Pack caper flick Ocean's Eleven was a light, fun romp with little substance but plenty of style, an excuse for big-name actors like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and Julia Roberts to play dress-up and prance around Las Vegas as cool, suave thieves. Coming on the heels of serious, intelligent Soderbergh films like Erin Brockovich and Traffic, Ocean's Eleven was a bit of a trifle, but it was an exceedingly well-made trifle, and a ton of fun to watch.”

“Ocean’s Twelve,” Soderbergh’s 2004 sequel, is not a lot of fun to watch. It may have been fun to direct – the actors spend their time smiling and laughing at one another, and the movie was filmed in several gorgeous European locales – but it’s a difficult movie-going experience, full of pointless in-jokes, with a terrible 130-minute running time and more characters that you can possibly keep up with. There are a few laughs occasionally, but they’re little comfort among the stupid plot and aimless set pieces.

A little over three years after stealing $150 million from Las Vegas casino owner Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia going way overboard with the villain chatter in this sequel), Danny Ocean and his team are having a great life with their loot, when suddenly Benedict locates all 11 members and issues a threat: Pay him back all his money, with interest, in two weeks, or they will be murdered.

So the entire team reunites, led by Danny and his right-hand man Rusty. Too infamous to work in the U.S., they fly to Europe, where they first plan to steal a rare historical document from an outsider. However, they are stopped by two enemies: police detective Isabel Lahiri (the drop dead gorgeous Latina that Nostalgia Critic is crazy over, Catherine Zeta-Jones), who once was in a relationship with Rusty, and a master thief called the Nightfox (Vincent Cassel), who hates Ocean and his team for becoming bigger stars than he is.

Unlike the first movie, which focused on one big plot, the sequel shows several smaller plots that never play out as planned. As a result, a film about thieves has very little stealing, as writer George Nolfi focuses instead on plot twists that come out of nowhere and leave the viewer puzzled rather than open-minded. Bell noted, “Nolfi's script originally had nothing to do with the Ocean's characters, and the retrofitting certainly shows.” The Benedict connection to the first movie comes off as little more than an excuse to get the characters to Europe, and many characters traits feel ill-suited to the people we got to know in the first film.

Matt Damon’s immature Linus Caldwell gets a bigger role this time, and the biggest addition is Zeta-Jones as Isabel. Where the first movie was all about Danny trying to get back Tess from Benedict, this one is all about Rusty trying to get back Isabel from the control of respectability. Brad Pitt and George Clooney, who sold a comfortable, long-standing friendship between their two characters in the first movie, get only one convincing scene together this time around. Or else, it’s like Danny and Rusty are working on two separate ways.

Bell goes on to say, “It's possible that Nolfi's initial treatment had the core of a good thriller, but it's been stretched so far to accommodate the Ocean's characters that whatever might have been exciting about it is no longer recognizable. The filmmakers seem unsure of what kind of movie they're making, and instead of sticking to the stylish thievery antics that gave Eleven its charm, they throw in self-indulgent Hollywood in-jokes, including an awful, interminable sequence in which Roberts' Tess must pose as Julia Roberts to facilitate a theft.” Julia Roberts, as a character imitating herself, runs into a Bruce Willis cameo, who mistakes the character for the real Roberts, and at one moment calls Roberts on the phone, so that Tess can talk to Roberts herself (doing her own voice). It’s enough for you to rip the hairs out of your head.

I think Bell said it best when he said, “Furthermore, it's smugly, annoyingly self-congratulatory, the kind of meta-textual nonsense that critics hated in Soderbergh's experimental Full Frontal (which also featured Roberts in a role skewering her own personality). At least there it was in context, as the whole film was about the self-reflexive nature of storytelling. Here, it's just jarring and narcissistic, an especially wrong note in a movie full of wrong notes.”

It’s difficult to get too furious about, though, since none of the movie pieces together, anyway. Soderbergh directs the film like he’s bored, throwing in freeze frames, wipes, adorable titles and strange camera angles just to keep himself awake. He’s a successful stylist, but the style doesn’t have a purpose here. Like the rest of the film, it looks like fun, but the audience is never in on the joke.

Overall, the beginning is slow, the plot is just a clichéd revenge story that we’ve seen so many times before (and why did he wait three years to locate and threatened the team), and the final twist that really hurts the final action sequence. Soderbergh actually admitted that this was his favorite amongst the trilogy, but I personally think it’s the weakest. But I don’t think that this is one of the worst sequels ever made, because there are good things about it, even though there are more cons than pros. Check it out, but you will not enjoy this one as much as the first one.

Well, look out for Monday when I look at the Murphy “The Nutty Professor” sequel.

Ocean's Eleven

Alright everyone, today it's time to start more famous "Ocean's Trilogy," directed by the great Steven Soderbergh. Let's get started with the first installment, the 2001 remake, "Ocean's Eleven."

Roger Ebert started out his review by saying, "Serious pianists sometimes pound out a little honky-tonk, just for fun." That's what it looks like Soderbergh was doing with this remake. This is a basic genre movie, a remake of the 1960 Frank Sinatra version, and Soderbergh, who mostly shoots bigger, does it as a kind of fun. It's polished, obviously: directors this good don't normally handle material this process. It has longing above its usual level, as if wishing to redeem itself and change into a very good movie.

The movie stars Hollywood's ladies man George Clooney, who can be amazingly emotionless better than just about anyone, as Danny Ocean, out of prison and dying for a new job. He's a slick operator who, his parole tells him, has a handful of investigations that he was charged with. He calls his old friend Rusty Ryan, played by Brad Pitt, with a plan to steal millions from three Las Vegas casinos. Amazingly, the movie tells and films in real casinos (the Mirage, MGM Grand and the Bellagio) and combines the destruction of the Desert Inn.

Running the job, Rusty sees the casino owner, played by the great Andy Garcia, with a woman he is familiar with: Tess Ocean, played by Julia Roberts, Danny's former wife. "Tell me it isn't about her," Rusty asks Danny. Obviously it is. Danny wants to get Tess away from her new boyfriend and get her back. They form a team, including Matt Damon, the late insult comedian Bernie Mac, Don Cheadle, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan (James Caan's son), the great Carl Reiner, Elliot Gould, Eddie Jemison, and Shaobo Qin. Ebert noted, "I suppose there are 11 in all, although even during a long tracking shot I forgot to count."

The outlines of these types of movies are long and well established: the scary outer shot of the impervious targets, the inside information, the voice-over as we see the guards still attending to their work, and the plan with a limited timing. "Ocean's Eleven" even has a detailed full-scale mockery of the strong room used by the three casinos, leading to legitimate questions like:

1. Why does this need to be this detailed?
2. How much did this cost? and
3. Who contracted them it for them, or did they put it together themselves overnight?

The movie transcends in its delivery of the dialogue. Ebert said, "The screenplay by Ted Griffin is elegantly epigrammatic, with dialogue that sounds like a cross between Noel Coward and a 1940s noir thriller."

Tess: "You're a thief and a liar?
Danny: "I only lied about being a thief?"
Tess: "You don't do that anymore?"
Danny: "Steal?"
Tess: "Lie."

Ebert confessed, "They do this so well I was reminded of the classic exchanges between Bogart and Bacall." Notice the conversation between Danny, Tess and the Terry Benedict, the owner of the casino, when Terry finds Danny at Tess' table in the restaurant. The two men obviously loathe one another, but are so smooth and cool we see it only in the accuracy of their timing and word choices, getting up to a final moment where Danny, leaving the table, says "Terry" in a way that uses the first name with inappropriate freshness, and Terry responds "Danny" on exactly the same note.

Rusty has a nice dialogue passage as well, when he's instructing Linus Caldwell, played by Damon. The jargon is all about strategy and completely in modern words, but listen to the music instead of the words and you realize it's a situation on Hamlet's instructions to the actors.

Ebert ended his review by saying, "As movie capers go, the specifics in "Ocean's Eleven" are not necessarily state of the art. I can think of more ingeniously executed plans, most recently in "The Score," but then this is not a movie about suspense but about suavity. Clooney and Roberts deliberately evoke the elegance of stars like Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, Garcia is as smooth, groomed, polished and tailored as George Raft, and the movie blessedly ends not with a shootout but with a complicated plot finesse. I enjoyed it. It didn't shake me up and I wasn't much involved, but I liked it as a five-finger exercise. Now it's time for Soderbergh to get back to work."

This is a fun movie, and you should check this one out. Look for next Monday for my review on "The Nutty Professor" remake.

Ocean's 11

This is a very special month because I will be looking at the entire “Ocean’s” series. Now the best way to start it off is with the 1960 original starring the Rat Pack, “Ocean’s 11.” TV Guide started their review off by saying, “A free-wheeling, uninhibited all-star romp, OCEAN'S ELEVEN set the pace for the "caper" films of the 1960s and 1970s.” Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, and Dean Martin performed their club acts at night and worked on this Las Vegas setting of the film during the day, and the good time they were having evidently shows and jumps off the screen.

Spyros Acebos, played by Akim Tamiroff, gives the team a plan to rob five of Vegas’s casinos – the Sahara, the Flamingo, the Riviera, the Sands, and the Desert Inn – on New Year’s Eve. His plan calls for the team, all 82^nd Airborne Division veterans, with Danny Ocean, played by Sinatra, as their leader to use their military knowledge and commando timing to barge the casinos in the dark by switching off their electricity. In order to follow through, they have to blow a power tower outside the city. Then the back-up systems at the hotels will be dispensed with so the electrical powered doors to the safes will open up. Next, all of the cash will be taken and thrown into garbage cans outside the casino, where they will be picked up by a disposal truck driven by Josh Howard, played by Sammy Davis Jr.

While the team is planning the crime, the film gives us the chance to learn a bit about each member of this crew. Jimmy Foster (Peter Lawford) is the son of much-married Mrs. Restes (Ilka Chase), who is about to make Duke Santos (Cesar Romero), a local gangster, her fifth husband. Missing his wife, Beatrice Ocean, played by Sergeant Leann “Pepper” Anderson from Police Woman, Angie Dickinson, but knowing that she will just be an obstacle, Danny sends her a telegram saying they can’t get together. This, obviously, has her immediately come to Las Vegas, where she is an obstacle. When Adele Elkstrom, played by Patrice Wymore, an ex-girlfriend of Danny, also arrives, flares erupt. Beatrice wants Danny to go back to New York with her, and when he refuses but can’t explain why, she leaves.

The big night arrives. The robbery goes well, but things start to fall apart – as that always seem to happen in this type of movie. Tony Bergdorf, played by Richard Conte, has a heart attack and dies. Duke finds out about the team and demands half of the amount, making it impossible to the team to get the money out of town. They figure out that running the money in Tony’s coffin, believing that no one will ever look in there. What they don’t know, however, is Tony’s widow, Gracie, played by Jean Willes. She decides to have Tony cremated, and Danny and his team look on in shocked silence as all of the money (and their friend) goes up in smoke.

Peter Lawford started the idea of “Ocean’s 11” when he found the story which this was based on. Then he and Sinatra made a production company, with Martin also pitching in. George Raft and Red Skelton have small cameos, as does Shirley MacLaine, in an unbilled bit as a drunken person. TV Guide noted, “MacLaine was busy making THE APARTMENT and took off a day to fly to Las Vegas and appear in a scene with Martin that reputedly took less than 10 minutes to shoot.”

There are several other interesting small performances in the film, including from Hoot Gibson, Red Barry, and Louis Quinn (from 77 Sunset Strip”). Other Rat Pack members in this film include Joey Bishop, Henry Silva, Buddy Lester, Richard Benedict, Norman Fell, and Clem Harvey.

If you are fans of the Rat Pack, like I am, then you should see this movie. It wasn’t well-received, but it’s very nice to watch just to see the Rat Pack sit around and be themselves, which is what they were good at. Separately and together, the Rat Pack never failed to disappoint their fans. This is a very underrated film, and I highly recommend everyone go out and watch it because it’s worth it.

Look out next week when I start the more famous trilogy directed by Steven Soderbergh.