O Brother Where Art Thou - ***1/2
Excellent period piece by the Coen bros. Everything works here, the cast, even the smallest characters are classic, hilarious dialogue, the music, the cinematography, the setting and the many great set pieces. Coens have such a talent for taking you to another time and place. I don't know anyone who dosen't like this movie.
The Player - ***1/2
Man, I'm falling in love with this movie. I had to pause it countless times just to observe it's many moments of brilliance. This is a great horror movie and Hollywood is the monster.
Robbins is excellent as a snarmy studio executive, I rarely see an assh*le played with such expertise, Griffin Mill is a legend among movie assh*les, it's the little things too, how he rudely tells a waiter to serve him water in a different glass and then abruptly leaves or that smirk on his face when he passes on a project to his rival because he thinks it will bomb, this is a "protagonist" you just love to hate. The whole cast is great though, Peter Gallagher as Griffins even slimier rival, Whoopi Goldberg as a witty cop, Fred Ward as a chief of security who has to protect Griffin at every cost and Cynthia Stevenson as the girlfriend who Griffin disposes of like a worn out car. This is the story of a man who is in the movie business, but has absolutely no knowledge or appreciation for it except for the profit. A man who is a bigwig just because he can say "yes", a man who can literally get away with murder.
This movie has so many great scenes. The scene where Gallaghers character convinces his colleagues about the uselessness of writers and how to make a movie pitch just from reading the headlines, the scene when Griffin falls under pressure at the police office while Goldberg slings a tampon, the hillarious movie within a movie starring Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts and an ending that awesomely parodies the cliche happy ending, and of course the many "pitch" scenes. It's all pure, classic Altman. It's not the most scathing satire, but when it's funny it's mad funny, and theres a lot of great inside jokes too. This is a great satire of the very Hollywood bigwigs Altman had to deal with throughout his career.
Ed Wood - ***1/2
Love this movie, just like any biopic it's not entirely accurate, but it's not REALLY a biopic, it only focuses on a certain period in Woods life. Depp gives a hilarious, brilliantly hammy performance as Wood and Landau is perfect as Legosi. Jeffery Jones is also great as Criswell and Bill Murray as Bunny Breckinridge.
What with his reputation for films about weirdos and outcasts, Tim Burton was undeniably the right guy for this, and it's great that he shot it in black and white, the entire film looks beautiful, and Howard Shores awesome score (which includes some nods to Swan Lake and the scores from Wood's own films) adds further to the experience. This is great as a period piece, and while it's funny, it dosen't condecend to it's cast of outcasts, the real events were hilarious as they were, and the way Burton recreates them is brilliant. As aways, Burton goes for romanticism rather than realism, and that's just fine. This is highly recommended to any aspiring filmmaker and a great film about a weird little guy with a dream, who laughed in the face of criticism. Surely one of Burton's finest moments.
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