I Love You Phillip Morris

The first memory I have of I Love You Phillip Morris was from about four years ago, when I noticed it as an announced project on Ewan McGregor's IMDb page.  Not knowing anything about it, I assumed it would be something along the lines of Thank You For Smoking.  I was wrong, if only because there is an extra "L" in this title's "Phillip;" for the record, though, I still think you could make a pretty scathing comedy about someone in love with Philip Morris products.  Being a fan of McGregor and a supporter of Jim Carrey's more artistic efforts, I looked forward to seeing I Love You Phillip Morris.  Despite getting good reviews at Sundance in 2009 (January '09, specifically), it was not released in American theaters until December of 2010, almost two years later.  What could possibly explain such a long delay for a picture that, if critics were to be believed, did not require an overhaul?

Ah.  Gay.  Gotcha.  It probably didn't help that Carrey had A Christmas Carol about to come out and Mr. Popper's Penguins in the works around the same time, either.

Isn't it funny when actors take chances instead of conforming to their brand?

I Love You Phillip Morris is the true story of Steven Jay Russell (Jim Carrey).  When the movie begins, Steven is a married police officer with a young daughter.  It's pretty obvious that he's not as happy with his life as his wife is; Steven's facial expressions during sex reminded me of Halloween in elementary school, when someone handed you a bowl of cold noodles in the dark and told you they were intestines --- ewww!  Pretty soon, Steven has come to terms with his unhappiness and decides to stop living a lie.  He swaps hetero- for homo- with his acknowledged sexuality and starts a new life.  Good for him, right?  Everybody deserves to have some joy in their life.

An example of "gay" and "happy" being synonyms

Steven's change isn't just acknowledging his sexuality, though.  This was a life change for him; he's not just the same guy who is now openly attracted to men, he's now really, really flamboyantly gay.

Note: personal style does not denote sexuality

That's not particularly noteworthy.  What is, though, is Steven's perception of what he needs to be a happy gay man.  He moves to Miami and finds himself a sexy boyfriend (Rodrigo Santoro), and everything seems to be working out just fine --- but the life Steven wants is beyond what his finances can support.  So, he puts his years of experience of living with lies to good use and becomes a con man.  While he's a pretty good criminal, he has to commit a lot of fraud to support his lifestyle and eventually gets caught.  However, in this story, that's where things hit their stride.  In jail, Steven meets the love of his life, Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor), and they fall in love.  And that's great.  But when Steven can't stop lying and conning, he starts to risk losing Phillip.  Being a fairly unconventional thinker, though, Steven always has a plan to win Phillip back.

Phillip's reaction to most of those plans

The acting is what makes I Love You Phillip Morris engaging.  When you think about it, the story balances on how likable Jim Carrey can make a man who lies to everyone, whenever he can; it's kind of like Liar, Liar, only with repercussions.  It doesn't help that this is a movie about gay men that are not cross-dressers, played by famous Hollywood actors; that's not a concept that Hollywood seems to have accepted as a remote possibility.  The script isn't exactly razor sharp, either.  To put it another way, if you don't like gay jokes, awkwardness, and innuendo, there might not be much here for you.

And if you're homophobic, you'll want to take notes.  You know, on what you don't like.

If, however, the idea of Jim Carrey taking his over the top skills in another direction intrigues you, you'll be pleasantly surprised.  Carrey is actually quite good.  Naturally, his gift for physical comedy provides some of the easiest and most frequent chuckles, but his timing on deadpan jokes is much improved, too.  What impressed me the most about the acting is how good Carrey and Ewan McGregor were as a couple.

It's adorable when couples match

McGregor plays a much smaller role than his titular status indicates, but he was also good.  I think he was at his best in quieter moments; his dramatic chops were well-used as the frequently heartbroken and disappointed Phillip and his best jokes were understated.  Rodrigo Santoro wasn't funny, but he was better than his role of (essentially) Handsome Man Number 1 required.  Leslie Mann was fine as Steven's ex-wife; she had some good lines, but she was also the character that asked the obligatory ignorant gay questions. 

Example: "If gay means happy, then why do you cry so much?"

I Love You Phillip Morris is the directorial debut of co-writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa.  I have trouble assessing the direction in comedies sometimes, because it is so easy (and usually rewarding) for a director to go for a joke instead of the story.  That trouble is amplified when the directors are also the writers.  Still, I think Ficarra and Requa did a pretty good job with Phillip Morris.  They obviously got along with the principal actors well and were smart enough to balance abrasive sexual jokes with some solid emotional content.

My favorite raunchy joke: "Golf?  Why don't you just eat pussy?"

What limits the movie is that the script isn't that great.  Yes, it is balanced (for a comedy), but there were an awful lot of jokes that were more shocking than funny.  I like dick jokes as much as the next guy, but I'm also over the age of thirteen and can handle more complex material.  Ficarra and Requa stuck with what got them the gig --- writing Bad Santa and the Bad News Bears remake --- but they need a little bit more to make the transition from "decently amusing" to "genuinely funny."

Fancy underoos are a start

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting with I Love You Phillip Morris.  Once I figured out that it wasn't about cigarettes, I mean.  It was pleasantly raunchy in a way that I haven't seen in mainstream movies in a while.  It had a protagonist with realistic and understandable obstacles to overcome.  The supporting cast was good.  I would even call it "cute" if there were fewer audible moments of fellatio.  I guess I was hoping for something that was trying to be funny more than shocking.  I know, I know...the shocking parts are the funny parts.  They just weren't funny enough for me.

Nightwatch

I stumbled across Nightwatch as soon as it came out on DVD, back in '97 or '98.  I had never seen a preview for it, was completely unaware of its box-office performance, and knew nothing of its plot.  I did, however, recognize Ewan McGregor from Trainspotting, and that was good enough to warrant a rental.  It was the first real “thriller” I had ever seen --- I had still not experienced a true horror movie yet, either --- and the novelty of discovering a film on my own, free of the mass media and the recommendations of others made this a personal favorite for a few years.  Now, I hadn't watched Nightwatch in years, but I never forgot the positive impression it left on me.  As the years have passed, I have occasionally wondered why nobody else seems to fondly remember this pic.  Was I just a stupid kid with terrible taste in movies when I first watched Nightwatch, or is this an under-appreciated gem?  Only one way to find out, I suppose.

Martin (Ewan McGregor) is a student in law school, who enjoys typical law school things, like going out drinking with friends and laughing loudly.  He shares a gigantic loft apartment with his busty girlfriend (Patricia Arquette) and hangs out with his asshole best friend, James (Josh Brolin), and his smart-mouthed girlfriend (Lauren Graham).   The big difference between Martin and the others is that he doesn’t have any money.  And, apparently, “no money” is a relative term, because he still goes out to bars with his friends and has that badass apartment.  To fix that problem, Martin decides to take a job as a night watchman at a morgue.  

This was after a failed attempt to open a casino

 Because he is a normal college kid, and that is what normal college kids do, right?  Anyways, the job pays well and will give him ample time to study.  The morgue is, predictably, a creepy place, and everyone who works there is bizarre and horrible.  No surprises there.  It is weird, though, that the watchmen have to go into every room in the morgue every hour and essentially get a time punch to prove they were there.  There seems to only be one entrance to the building, which means that the only time anyone could get in without being noticed is when the security guard is doing his hourly rounds; I suppose that policy is in place only to mess with the minds of the employees. 

The labels on the bottles read "amorphous blob in formaldehyde"

A body is brought into the morgue one night, an apparent victim of a serial killer.  Martin meets Detective Cole (Nick Nolte), who lets him in on some of the grisly details; the victims have been hookers, and the killer is sadistic and has some knowledge of surgery.  Around this time, James starts acting bizarre; his actions appear to be those of a bored rich kid looking for adrenaline kicks.  He gets a particular rush from bar fights and hiring prostitutes to degrade themselves.  Sounds suspicious, doesn’t it?  This naturally leads the police to assume that James Martin is the serial killer.  That would suck on its own, but it is pretty obvious that the killer also has his/her eye on Martin, too...

McGregor's homage to "Scream"

The acting in Nightwatch definitely has its highs and its lows. Unfortunately, the highs fall in the realm of acceptability, while the lows are just incomprehensibly odd.  I liked Ewan McGregor’s natural charm and thought he was pretty likable, although a little dumb.  His character’s logic isn’t very impressive, but McGregor did a good job playing up some of the more childish aspects of his character.  Patricia Arquette was her typical self; she’s fairly blank for most of the film and when she has to act distressed, she sounds a little moronic. 

This would have been a great opportunity for her to say "These aren't my clothes"

Still, she has a very background role, so that never becomes problematic.  Lauren Graham had an even smaller part, which left even less of an impression.   That’s too bad, because I usually like her.  I liked Brad Dourif as the least sympathetic doctor ever, even if the character was hilariously unrealistic. Oh, and John C. Reilly had a very small role as Nolte’s partner/underling. Remember when he was an outstanding dramatic actor?  Man, those were the days.  Nick Nolte, though, was just bizarre.  

This film was made right around when he stopped playing romantic leads and began to embrace his creepy aging face.  And he definitely brought the creepy with this role.  It’s one thing to play a bad cop, or even a disturbed cop, but his Detective Cole immediately strikes you as the type of person who makes neckties out of human flesh.  Who would trust this guy?  That would be a more pressing question if it wasn’t for Josh Brolin’s character.  Here is a character that is all things to all people, depending on the needs of the script.  Do you need someone to be brash and fun?  How about unsettling and abrasive?  Maybe a murderer?  Or a voice of reason?  No problem --- JB will fill that role!  Honestly, I don’t think it is possible for Brolin to look remotely competent playing such a poorly written character, but I think he did as good a job as he could with what he was working with.

"Your motivation here is to want to punch Ewan in his damn face...for some reason"

I was shocked to find that Steven Soderbergh was responsible for co-writing this film.  I don’t know if there is some sordid behind-the-scenes story about the making of this film, but this is truly awful writing.  The characters are immune to logic, the police do not follow even the most basic of investigative steps, and the serial killer menacingly sings “This Old Man.”

Well, I suppose it's a bit creepier if you interpret "played knick-knack" as "made molesting motions with his hands."  Actually, the story isn't really Soderbergh's fault; Nightwatch is an American remake of the Danish film Nattevagten, so it's pretty obvious that Soderbergh was hired primarily to translate the script into Americanese.  The original story (and the Danish script) was written by Ole Bornedal, who also directed both the Danish film and the American remake.  As frustrated as I was watching the characters act so damnably odd, I have to give Bornedal some credit --- he does a nice job building the suspense in this film.  He doesn't do it artfully, so it isn't subliminal like clever camera shots can be.  Instead, he slowly builds the tension and makes even the smallest and stupidest plot point seem threatening.  

"Actually, I am interested in changing my long distance.  Very interested..."

Thankfully, he focused almost entirely on Ewan McGregor's character --- the only one in the movie that is even remotely believable --- so you might not notice just how ridiculously over the top the entire supporting cast is.  I'll give Bornedal an "A" for effort and execution, but a "D" for his actual script and characters.

I don't know...it almost feels like I am being a little too harsh on Nightwatch, like I'm overcompensating for having such a high opinion of it as a youngster.  But then I glance at my notes and feel a whole lot better.  Sure, I can look the other way on some of the dumb stuff in this movie --- like the fact that the police apparently do not check alibis because it builds suspense, or the acreage of the allegedly college apartments --- but there are some things I just can't ignore.  For example, I can sympathize with Martin when he is audibly confused when a prostitute starts to give him a surprise handjob in a fancy restaurant --- that would be a little weird and socially awkward --- but I don't think yelping repeatedly like she was wearing a joy buzzer was a natural reaction. 

Although it does explain his attraction to that alarm...

I also doubt that a tough, muscle-bound guy at a bar who apparently likes to fight would be wearing a Jennifer Beal's torn sweatshirt from Flashdance.  And then there’s the final confrontation between Martin and the killer.  It works perfectly well as a sadistic killer preying on an innocent, but when you remember that the killer is trying to frame Martin, the weapons being employed make a whole lot less sense; you can make it look like Martin is a killer who committed suicide if you use, say, a gun, but not if you're attacking him with a bone saw, moron.

Man, what a letdown.  I remembered this movie being so cool.  Now, I see it as just an exercise in how to do the best you can with a crappy script.  The suspense is genuinely well done.  The script is genuinely wretched.  If it wasn't for McGregor's energy, this movie would be nigh-unwatchable.  And it's really too bad, because this movie comes very close to being genuinely creepy.  Sadly the lack of believable characters makes this a promising movie that just isn't very good.

Haywire

Let's cut to the chase.  If you are the sort of person who watches zombie movies just to enjoy one awesome headshot, if you watch martial arts movies just for that final scene where the hero beats up a dojo, or if you watch crappy action movies in the hopes of a single awesome sequence, you need to watch Haywire.  Like, right now.  There is one really good fight scene and a fantastic fight scene (so, that's two recommended fight scenes) in this movie.  If that's all you need to know, go rent it now; both take place in the first half of the movie, so you can catch before the 45 minute mark.

...but if you love cornrows, you'll have to wait until the end

If you're the sort of person who cares about little things like plot and acting, here's the rest of my thoughts.

Meet Mallory (Gina Carano).  Mallory is a a spec ops contractor who takes dirty jobs for the American government.  She's not an assassin, because that would make her unsympathetic; she is the person you put on a high difficulty job to save lives and kick asses.

Kicking ass in 3...2...1...

Mallory worked a job in Barcelona with, amongst other people, hunky Aaron (Channing Tatum).  There, they saved a dissident of some sort from mean people.  When she arrived home, her boss/ex-lover/soulless ginger, Kenneth (Ewan McGregor), coaxes her into another job, one where she and an agent she had never worked with, the hunky Paul (Michael Fassbender), have to assure the safety of a VIP.  While babysitting isn't her favorite thing to do, Mallory complies because plot advancement.  At the end of their mission, though, Paul tries to kill Mallory.  What the hell is going on?  Is it a double-cross?  A triple-cross?  It's a suspenseful/thrilling mystery!

Haywire's lead actress, Gina Carano, is not a professional actress.  She's an MMA fighter.  In other words, she performs her own (awesome) stunts, but she hasn't exactly been to acting school.  That doesn't necessarily mean she's a bad actress, but...well, calling her mediocre would be generous.  This is the sort of film where the heroine's dialogue is terse and tough.  Carano's delivery is tough, but tough like wood, instead of tough like MMA.  How important is that to the overall quality of this film?  I'll get back to that later.  The rest of the cast is solid all around, with a few impressive performances.  I can't believe I'm writing this, but Channing Tatum was pretty good in Haywire.  He delivered is lines in a pretty natural way, had some solid conversational humor, and a really good fight scene.  When I see Tatum in a film, I assume he's going to be the dumb twin of the Matt Damon puppet in Team America: World Police, but I was shocked at how much I didn't hate him here.

"Maaatt Day...Day...***sigh***  LINE?"

Michael Fassbender was even better.  Fassbender has charmed onscreen before, but his fight scene with Carano was completely awesome.  Sure, he did the whole "acting" thing beforehand, but he looked really good in a very physical way here; his scenes were definitely the highlight of the film. 

Not as sexy as it looks, trust me

After those two, the bad-assness of the supporting cast takes a definite dive, although the acting is still good.  Michael Angarano gave a fantastically genuine performance as a fairly superfluous character --- he wasn't quite useless, but Angarano's line delivery was some of the most natural I've seen in a long while.  Michael Douglas shows up and reminded me more of his character in Traffic than of a corpse, which has been my experience with him for the past decade.  Ewan McGregor was surprisingly good as a bureaucratic jerk; it's been a while since I've actually enjoyed McGregor in a movie --- and I don't know if this role really enters into "enjoyment" for me --- but it was refreshing to see him playing against type.  Who knew he would make a good heel?  Antonio Banderas was solid in a limited role, but he did have an impressively dense beard.  So there's that. 

"The password is 'Nasonex'"

Bill Paxton played Mallory's father and, aside from having a mustache, was about what you should expect from Paxton.  Oh, and if you're an Amélie fan, Mathieu Kassovitz makes a rare English-speaking appearance.

The supporting acting was pretty good, I think that's pretty obvious.  How about the direction?  Steven Soderbergh was the man in charge of Haywire, and he brought with him some definite stylistic choices.  Are you tired of Paul Greengrass-type action movies, where the camera is a little shaky and the fight scenes have a lot of close-ups cuts?  Soderbergh apparently was.  Haywire is filmed primarily in long shots with minimal editing.  That means you definitely can tell that the actors do most of their own stunts (and Carano almost all of them), and that is extremely impressive.  Soderbergh also takes pains to not over-explain the plot; this isn't as dense as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but the lack of exposition can make it a bit hard to follow at times.  I liked that Haywire was told in an intelligent fashion that respected the audience.  Unfortunately, Soderbergh's style for the film led to a lot of the non-action scenes to drag.  It's one thing to watch a cool fight sequence that was clearly made without edits, it's less enthralling to see Mallory walk into a store and buy a cell phone from a distance. 

Soderbergh's stylistic choices could have worked.  It's a ballsy play, making a movie that treats espionage in a moderately realistic and unexaggerated way; there is a fine line between suspenseful intrigue and monotonous staring.  Casting Gina Carano was another interesting choice.  Unfortunately, the film's style and the actor's talent didn't quite mesh.  Don't get me wrong --- Carano was absolutely the correct person for the fight scenes.  My problem is that Haywire has far too many non-fight scenes to make up for Carano's awful delivery.  To put it in plain terms, she was clearly out-acted by Channing "I'm a freaking coin" Tatum.  That's a sick burn.  Maintaining the longer scenes with fewer obvious editing cuts made the film feel fairly realistic, but this also emphasized Carano's lack of charisma.  I also felt bored by the excessive chase scenes in this movie.  Again, Soderbergh's choice to film scenes from farther away took away some of the immediacy and scenes that should have felt tense or quick were puzzlingly dull (the car chase scene in the snow, for instance).

So...much...running...with...so...little...payoff...

Without the two early fight scenes, I would probably rip into Haywire with pleasure.  However, those scenes are totally awesome.  She even punches a guy in the dick with his own gun!

Yeah, that was my reaction, too

Aside from the final fight scene on the beach (which looked especially staged), all of the hand-to-hand combat was stellar.  It just doesn't really fit the tone of the rest of the film; Carano was performing like she was in The Expendables 2, but everyone else thought they were making The Spy Who Came In From the Cold.  Both styles have their charms, but they don't make for a tasty sandwich. I will grant that it does have a good supporting cast that gives an otherwise overlong (even at 93 minutes) and sterile plot life.  I also appreciated what Soderbergh was going for --- an intelligent bad-ass spy story --- but he didn't have the talent (or, honestly a script) that could make that happen.

The Men Who Stare At Goats

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a great title for a movie.  Maybe not as good as "The Men Who Do Things to Goats," but that's a flick that could go in all the wrong directions.  Oddly enough, goats play a relatively small role in this film.

This is the somewhat true story of a military program that was developed to harness the psychic power of the human mind.  The tale is told primarily through flashback, as George Clooney's character explains the events to Ewan McGregor.  This program began in the 1980s, headed by Jeff Bridges' character, and it attempted all sorts of paranormal stuff.  Traveling through the astral plane, invisibility, walking through walls, telepathy, and killing via only eye contact (which is how we get the title) are the tangible goals for this group.  The two star pupils are played by Clooney and Kevin Spacey; the two become rivals because Clooney likes the New Age-ish notions of expanding human consciousness, while Spacey is interested in the more practical (read: lethal) military applications.  It's appropriate that Bridges calls his men Jedi warriors, because Clooney and Spacey represent the light and dark sides of The Force.  Years after the military decides that the program is a wash, McGregor follows Clooney into modern-day Iraq, where they find a new program being run by Spacey and representing everything Clooney and Bridges hated.

This is a goofy plot.  You would expect the movie to be just as goofy, like maybe Big Lebowski- or O Brother Where Art Thou?-level goofy, but it's not.  Whose fault is that?  I blame the Coen brothers for not writing or directing this film.  Sure, you could blame Jon Ronson, whose book the movie is based on, but that just takes away from the solid fact that this should have been a weird, goofy Coen brothers movie.  It already had Clooney and Bridges!  What more enticing do those men need?  Well, parts of the film are as funny and goofy as you would want them to be.  The directing emphasizes weird, awkward moments and sometimes those moments pay off with funny.  However, every time the movie feels like it's going to finally get permanently weird, it stops and takes a cold dose of reality.  There are a lot of depressed characters in this movie and they are well-developed, so you feel for them.  Jeff Bridges, in particular, does a fantastic job with his dramatic scenes.  He's subtle, physical, and understated, but it is really worth noticing.

The acting in this film is as good as you would expect from three Academy Award-winning actors.  Bridges resurrects some of his laid-back surfer ways from Lebowski and Clooney performs with his usual deadpan confidence (although noticeably not a lady charmer here).  Kevin Spacey doesn't have quite as much opportunity to impress here, but he's always fun to see as a bad guy.  McGregor is good too, but he's stuck in the straight man role.  I'd like to see him take another stab at an outright comedy, because he's got good timing and I know he's a good actor.

The acting performances actually increase my frustration with this film.  These guys are usually enough to make me interested in a movie if even one of them is starring, but their presence here makes the movie's shortcomings more annoying.  The fact that the actors do so well might make you think that the direction was good, but this is the first major directing project for frequent Clooney collaborator Grant Heslov.  I think Heslov has friends that are awesome actors and they helped make him seem impressive.  It's a neat trick that I'd love to try.  Still, there are a lot of awkward moments that are not used for dramatic or comedic purposes and the pace drags at times.  Ultimately, the choice to balance the humor with so much realism had to come from the director.  I disagree with this choice because treating the ludicrous as reasonable for the sake of humor degrades any attempt at sincerity.  If Heslov wanted the dramatic moments to have a lot of impact (and, judging by the performances of Clooney and Bridges, he did), he would have necessarily had to tone down the deadpan comedy.  The other option would be to make the depressingly realistic portions of the movie more comedic.  It's not impossible for a comedy like this to have a point or to have heart, but it is a difficult task to accomplish with two styles (goofy comedy and sincere drama) that are so very different.