Rounders

1998 poker movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A law student quits playing poker after John Malkovich takes all of his money. When an old friend just released from prison gets into a little trouble because of some gambling debts, the law student has to get back in the game to help him.

What's with that poster? I'm not sure any of the actors look exactly like their characters in this movie. It's almost like they photoshopped them all in there or cut and pasted them from other movie posters.

I love this movie and have seen it several times. It's a movie that inspired me to start playing cards, and even though it's obviously movie poker that they're all playing, it's still the most realistic Hollywood poker I've ever seen although The Cincinnati Kid ain't bad. When I saw this the first time, I loved the sleazy underbelly that these characters wallowed in, and I also loved Damon's narration, surprisingly since I don't usually like narration outside of the noir genre. I'm not sure if this movie is quoted way too often or if the screenwriter just lifted from a book of poker cliches, but the narration really helps the uninitiated understand the game.

An aside: I remember playing poker at a guy's house once, and this 20-something named Shawn strolled in with a bag of fast food. "Boys," he announced as he stacked his chips, "you better watch out. I watched Rounders today." From the right mouth, that would have been kind of funny, but Shawn was being completely serious. And then he lost something like 40 bucks.

Look at that cast! Damon's great even though I don't always like how his mouth looks in this movie. It kind of looks like it does in all of his movies. It's that one expression he makes, like tortured acceptance or something. You know the one. John Turturro is used just enough, but like a lot of his smaller roles, you almost wouldn't mind seeing a movie made with his character as the protagonist. Loved his answer and subtle shrug when answering a "How have you been?" question. Edward Norton is fantastic. There's a physicality here that is just perfect, even the way he eats a hot dog. He's just so good at creating this slimy character. "Depends on the grip" is such a great line, and his first scene where he's gambling with cigarettes in his waning moments at the prison really tell you all you need to know about the character. Martin Landau's also really good as a judge. And then there's John Malkovich, playing a fucking Russian. I'm not sure if his accent is terrible or spot-on, but I don't really care. I just know you don't want to touch his cookies. There's a note on them and everything! "Just like a young man coming in for a qvuickies." "I am still up 20 grand from the last time I stick it in you." (That one with a really awkward pelvic thrust which is my current favorite movie scene ever.) "Mr. son ov a beech, let's play some cards." "In my club, I will splash the pot whenever the fuck I please." Oh, he's just so perfect.

The Great Buck Howard

2008 comedy

Rating: 14/20

Plot: The titular washed-up illusionist hires a new assistant who has disappointed his father Forrest Gump by not finishing law school. Buck Howard isn't the nicest of employers or the easiest to deal with, but Troy does his best to help him in his attempts to make a comeback and get back on The Tonight Show.

Love seeing Malkovich in comedy roles, and although he might not have a lot to work with here--the writing, the other performers--he's a lot of fun here as the illusionist, especially when he becomes unglued. The dopey handshake, the piano performances, and the magician showmanship that paint Buck Howard as this almost deliriously unhip fellow who is not really likable at all but still manages to be somebody you want kind of almost want to root for. The real main character--with his narration, the conflict with his father, the love interest--didn't interest me at all. That's Tom Hanks' boy, and he doesn't seem to have much of a future in this business. You do have to give credit to a movie that establishes Jay Leno as a "dimwit" and manages to include a scene with Gary Coleman, a juggling little person, and a ventriloquist in the same room without making my television ejaculate. Worth watching for Malkovich fans.

Being John Malkovich

1999 head trip about somebody's head

Rating: 18/20

Plot: A loser puppeteer gets a real job and discovers a portal leading to the inside of actor John Malkovich's head. He tells the cute woman he's crushing on at work about it, and she begins dreaming of ways to exploit it and turn a profit. The puppeteer's life begins to spiral out of control.

Here's a John Cusack movie that I like. I remember watching this when it came out and just digging how fresh it all seemed. It made me laugh, it made me think, and it made me fall in love with Catherine Keener. She's just so playful and cute here, and yes, I'm typing that fully aware that my wife is going to be reading it. Her response of "We'll see" to the question "What happens when a man goes through his own portal?" might be my favorite moment in any movie ever. I already loved John Malkovich although I can't say I was exactly in love with him, and this performance is brave and inspired. It's hard enough to play yourself accurately but when you're playing this satirical inflated version of yourself? Now that I think about it, my favorite moment in any movie ever might actually be when some random driver-by yells, "Hey, Malkovich, think fast!" before hitting him in the head with something. But yeah, Malkovich is brave here. Doing an interpretive dance in a towel, poking fun at his celebrity, possibly convincing audiences of this movie that he's good friends with Charlie Sheen. Actually, that's one of my favorite tidbits from this--learning that Charlie Sheen gets Malkovich's leftovers. Who knew? My favorite moment (and quite possibly the best few minutes of any movie in the history of cinema) is the delirious trip Malkovich takes through his own head. I giggled myself to the point of exhaustion, passed out, and woke up a week later facedown in the mud during that scene. Bonus points given for Keener, a monkey, and puppets, but most of these points come from the raw, arguably film-school-quality creativity and the willingness everybody involved had to take this wild concept and run with it.

For all you Andy Dick completists, he is in this one.

In the Line of Fire

1993 live-action Tom and Jerry cartoon if Jerry was an old man and Tom wanted to kill the president

Rating: 16/20 (Dylan: 12/20)

Plot: Secret Service agent Frank is getting old. It's been almost thirty years since he failed to save President Kennedy, and he probably should have been fired. I know it's not the same thing, but if a bunch of my students die while in my classroom (enough to equal one president), then I'd probably end up losing my job. It's all silly with Frank's situation anyway because everybody knows that Kennedy didn't really actually die, and he lived to see the broadcast of the fake moon landing while hiding out in Italy with Marilyn Monroe, Lee Harvey Oswald, and an alien thirty years before they started planning out the September 11th Twin Tower attacks with their crazy neighbor Osama. But I digress. This movie is all about some really smart nutcase who wants to kill the current president. Frank's too old for this shit, but he really has no choice.

So this maybe wasn't as good as I remembered. Rene Russo's character is distracting, but I guess the girls have to have something to watch in this movie, too. Assassination plots don't appeal to most females, but all gals enjoy watching an old guy putting the moves on some younger broad. Guys will dig the cat-and-mouse game between Eastwood and Malkovich. With the former, you get an intriguing good guy with a meaty background and a tired old pro's attitude that makes him unafraid to stick his middle finger up to bureaucrats who try to stand in his way. Some moments he's funny; others, he's just pissed off. This was the movie that made me a huge Malkovich fan. You got to love those villains who are smarter than everybody else, and it's great hearing him taunting his opponent and cracking-wise. This movie has some action--a short foot-chase, a longer rooftop chase, some shooting--but the real action takes place in the lines between the dialogue, and Eastwood and especially Malkovich are terrific and creating these suspenseful on-the-edge-of-your-seat chilling moments with nothing but conversation. You've got two actors who are at their best when their characters are pissed off, and there's enough going on in their characters' lives to give them plenty to be pissed off about. There's not really anything new in this movie, and I suppose you could point out more than a few cliched moments if you really wanted to. But if you just focus on those two characters and their riveting little chess match, it makes for an engrossing thriller.

Two questions I'll ask any of you have seen this movie: 1) Is Frank really a heroic character? 2) Was anybody else rooting for Malkovich to succeed?

Red

2010 geriatric action film

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Frank is retired and extremely dangerous. RED! He lives a boring little domestic life, the highlight being when he gets to flirt with Sarah over the phone when he makes calls to the government pension people about his checks. Life's boring until one A.M. when some people show up to kill him. He picks up Sarah in Kansas City and then rounds up some old old friends to help him figure out who is behind the attempt on his life.

How do you make yourselves a serious stack of dough in Hollywood? Do what the makers of Red did and just hire a bunch of big-name actors--action superstar Bruce Willis, Mr. Cool (and black) Morgan Freeman, the always-fascinating John Malkovich, the currently hotter-than-hot Helen Mirren--add a pile of explosions and gunfights, throw in a little romance with cute-as-a-button Mary-Louise Parker, and watch the magic happen. I guess the hook is that they're a bunch of old farts, and watching a bunch of old farts kick ass is a hoot. The characters have such a lack of depth, and their story seems derivative and tired. Improbable gun battles, some lazy dialogue, and a plot constructed from cut-and-pasted cliches. Throwing in any amount of Morgan Freeman acting like a badass doesn't wash all that away. Some of the action sequences are beyond stupid. As with a lot of these dumb action movies, none of the bad guys can shoot very well at all. There's a scene with Malkovich's character shooting a bullet at a missile thing that doesn't make any sense, and another slow-mo step from a spinning crashed car that I think made my wife ultimately decide to give up on this one. I did almost like Malkovich's character. He plays psychotic and paranoid very well, but his Marvin becomes less interesting as the movie goes on. Don't tell my wife, but I have the hots for Mary-Louise Parker. And don't you worry. I can type that here because she only skims this crap. Parker's "straight man" character here is nothing more than an annoying distraction though. It's my wife who skims this crap, by the way. As far as I know, Mary-Louise Parker has never visited this blog. That's about as likely as. . .oh, I don't know. Bruce Willis's character surviving this movie?

Summer of Nicolas Cage Movie #1: Con Air

1997 explosion movie!

Rating: 14/20 (Dylan [saw only the last half]: 4/20)

Plot: Former U.S. marine Cameron Poe had a bad night and killed a man in self-defense outside an Alabama bar. He's sent to the pen for seven years where he befriends a black man, misses his hot wife, and writes letters to the daughter he's never met. Finally, he's to be released, just in time for his daughter's birthday. He even has a crappy stuffed bunny to give her. In order to get back home, however, he's got to take a plane ride with some of the most dangerous criminals imaginable. And after those cons take control of the airplane, poor Poe knows he's in for a bumpy ride. Con air! Explosions!

Jen and I saw this in a theater, likely the Indiana Theater, when it came out, probably because I really liked John Malkovich and wanted to see him play a bad guy again like in In the Line of Fire. For thirteen or so years, I've not really thought much of this movie, but seeing it again, I can appreciate its genius a lot more. I don't think I realized it was a comedy the first time I saw it.

It gets off to a bad start--Nicolas Cage doesn't do anything badass for the first five minutes. But you know what happens if you call one of Nicolas Cage's characters a "pussy" or "Captain Dick"? You will unleash the badass! Cage is, this being the Summer of Nicolas Cage, the reason I saw this movie, and he doesn't disappoint. Here, we get calm-under-pressure action hero Cage, a Cage with a mullet and a southern accent that sounds like he's auditioning for a role as a Civil War plantation owner. The accent sort of fades in and out, but it's probably intentional because this is Nicolas Cage and he knows what he's doing. There are a few great Nicolas Cage moments in this including one of those trademarked moves where he transitions from calm to completely freakin' out with a giant "Ha-haaaa! I'm goin' home, son!" that he says to his friend with the same emotion he'd have used if his friend had set his character on fire.

Speaking of that, a character is set on fire in this movie. And unless I'm just confused, the character is just fine later in the movie. But I digress.

There's also a shot of Nicolas Cage leaving a bus, and the smile he gives to the camera should be enough for him to win a lifetime achievement award. He talks about black cherry Jello, threatens various people, says, "Put the bunny back in the box" likes it's the toughest thing a person can possibly say, and mentions his little hummingbird. See? With Nicolas Cage as a tough guy, you don't get all-tough-all-the-time. He's not Chuck Norris. No, you get to see the tender side of his tough guy character, too. Cage does have a weird thing he does with his lines in this one. He starts a lot of sentences with the interjection well followed by a lengthy pause. You know what that is, dear readers? It's called acting.

Despite how good Nicolas Cage is, he's not really the main attraction here. Look at this cast: the great John Malkovich, the generally worthless John Cusack, Steve Buscemi, Dave Chappelle, Machete's Danny Trejo. It's like a Who's Who of Cool. Malkovich is as Malkovichian as he gets, and say what you want about the writing of Con Air, but his Cyrus the Virus gets some lines that are better than anything Shakespeare ever wrote. "Do you fly, Johnny? Cause if your dick leaves your pants, you jump off this plane." "If you say one word about this over the radio, the next wings you see will belong to the flies buzzing over your rotting corpse." "I don't like him. If he talks again, this conversation is terminated." Singing--"Oh, nothing makes me sadder than the agent lost his bladder in the airplane." "The next time you pick a human shield, you're better off not picking a two-bit negro crackhead." Great stuff. And I think that last line might be in a Shakespeare play, probably Othello. I also liked Steve Eastin, a guard who gets to call people "Nazi muffins" and say things like "your testicles will become mine."

This is the type of movie that gets more and more ridiculous as it goes. It's like the producers (of course, Jerry Bruckheimer) and director Simon West (this Lara Croft director's first movie) finally just said, "You know what? This is already pretty stupid. Implausibility galore! Let's pile on the stupid!" and just went nuts. You don't think this can get any more ridiculous? Well, boom shacka, how's about another gigantic explosion! How's about Nicolas Cage saying, "What do you think I'm gonna do? I'm gonna save the f-in' day!"? How about Buscemi's cannibalistic serial killer playing Barbie with a little girl who for some reason is hanging out in an abandoned and empty swimming pool next to an old air base? Boom shacka! You see all that fire on the poster up there? That's what the last 1/4 of this movie is. Fire! Forget the other classical elements. Fire is the only one this bad boy needs! Con Air is the type of movie you watch and instantly feel more like a guy. It's the type of movie that can put hair on your chest!

Wait a second. Is Nicolas Cage considered a classical element? Earth, water, air, fire, and Nicolas Cage?

Favorite line (possibly ever): "Make a move and the bunny gets it." So badass!

Art School Confidential

2006 black comedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Jerome enrolls in an inner-city art college after high school graduation. He finds that art's a competitive game. He falls for a girl featured in the college brochure, a girl who, luckily for Jerome, does a little nude modeling for the drawing students in John Malkovich's Intro to Drawing class. An arch rivalry forms with another first-year student, Jonah, who seems to be standing in his way romantically and artistically. Meanwhile, a serial killer is on the loose. Oh, snap!

You have to look closely, but there is a brief Charlie Chaplin spotting in this movie.

This is 1/2 of a satirically fun comedy and 1/2 of a really dark satirical downer. Despite some foreshadowing, some dropped hints that things might turn uglier, it was still a little jarring. It forces you to switch the brain on though. So much of this centers on the main character, a straight man in a movie crowded with some more eccentric personalities. I liked the kid who played him, Max Minghella, a guy you almost recognize, then think you're just confusing him with Justin Long or somebody, and then later find out that he was in The Social Network. John Malkovich has a subtly comedic role as a drawing teacher/triangle artist. I enjoy Malkovich in comedies; of course, I think Malkovich actually might think all of his movies are supposed to be comedies. My favorite periphery lunatic is straight from the lunatic fringe, a failed Bukowski-esque artist played by Englishman Jim Broadbent. He's great and gets the best lines--"What are you laughing about, laughing boy?" and "I have to get back to my masturbation," a line followed immediately by The Facts of Life theme song. Despite this being a bit uneven and pretty thematically heavy, I enjoyed this enough to wonder if I really actually liked Zwigoff's Ghost World more than I think I did.

Jonah Hex

2010 comic book Western

Rating: 9/20

Plot: In postbellum America, Jonah Hex is Civil War hero turned ruthless bounty hunter. The government enlists him to help find John Malkovich and his posse, Wild West terrorist who hope to bring America to its knees by using the same weapon technology that Jar Jar Binks and his friends used in The Phantom Menace--glowing orbs. Hex is all over that because Malkovich is the guy who scarred his face and killed his family.

A lot of this movie is incoherent. The plot's easy enough to follow, and the characters are nothing but cardboard types, but the individual parts that made up this whole just didn't make a lot of sense. It has the kind of fight scenes where you lose focus and can't keep track of what's going on. It's almost like that feeling when somebody turns off the lights and you can't figure out what's happening until your eyes adjust. Watching the action sequences in this movie was just like that feeling. The ultra-modern look of the movie almost clashed with the post-Civil-War and dusty town settings, and the score, thick in rockin' electronic git-fiddles, really annoyed me. There were some moments here (I like the first gun fight scene that winked at predecessors) and Josh Brolin was pretty good as the anti-hero type although his character does seem like a composite of a handful of silver screen anti-heroes. And despite all the whining about Megan Fox lately, I liked it when she was on the screen. But I suspect Jonah Hex is a movie that should have stayed a comic book, a film that cries out, "Look at how fresh I am! I'm new!" while actually seeming like nothing more than a Sin City rip-off.

What do you think, Kairow? Comic/movie comparison?

The Man in the Iron Mask

1998 Three Musketeers movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: King Leonardo the XIV isn't a very good king. In fact, he's an asshole, and nobody in France likes him except for one of the four musketeers who is sleeping with the queen mother. When King Leonardo makes a military decision based only on his sexual desires (a move he must have learned from reading about King David and Bathsheba), Musketeer Malcovich's son is killed in battle. The three musketeers who aren't sleeping with the queen mother decide to bust the man in the iron mask, Leonardo's brother Leonardo, out of prison and pull an ol' switcheroo.

If you were magically transported via a magical remote control and a time machine into this movie and asked anybody in France, "Hey, how's King Leonardo XIV working out for ya?" you would fall to sleep before the answer was finished because the Frenchman or Frenchwoman answering your question would deliver a verbose answer so monotonously that you'd think, "Oh, man. Is this answer ever going to get to an endmark?" and then decide to close your eyes for a little bit, just a little bit like you do sometimes when you're driving, but then fall fast asleep. The Man in the Iron Mask needed some of that bumpy pavement they put on the shoulders of highways so that the bumbabra-bumbabra-bumbabra noise wakes you up before you hit a tree, a ditch, or a hobo. I don't know whether to blame the dialogue, the bland music, or the acting, but this was just so stuffy. I normally like John Malcovich, but his uninspired performance here typifies what's wrong with this. He always performs his dialogue in a very deliberate Malcovichian way that ends up making the movie a lot longer, but here, it just seems like his character is struggling to get the words out, almost like he can't believe he used to be a musketeer but now has to say such boring things. He and the other musketeers (Irons, Depardieu, Byrne) each have moments where they shine, but more often than not, they overtheatricize and get all actor-y and make me think I'm watching performances instead of characters. And the biggest problem of all? I might be able to tolerate a single Leonardo Dicaprio in a movie, but this one has two. He plays two characters who not only look identical but act identical even though the story would seem to require that they don't have that much in common. I don't even know if Leonardo Dicaprio is a good actor or not, but I don't like him here one bit. I don't think the part(s) suit him, and I thought his face was tedious. This movie did get better as it went along, but it unfortunately went along a little too much. Or maybe a lot too much.

Cannes Man

1996 comedy

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Big-shot producer Sy Lerner makes a bet with a buddy that he can take any individual his buddy picks and turn him into the talk of the Cannes Film Festival. Enter Frank, a cabbie with no film experience except for some work in a video store. Sy dubs him Sy Lerner and takes him to meet some other big shots, introducing him as screenwriter Frank Rhino, writing of Con Man.

Here's a cheap one. I'm surprised so many big names (Depp, Hopper, Del Toro, even Chris Penn!) agreed to be seen in something so crappy. As a parody, it falls flat. There's nothing especially biting here and not a single laugh. A lot of the crappiness, however, is because of sub-genre inconsistency. It's uneven as a mockumentary, seeming more like a traditional and cheaply-made narrative with a bunch of interviews and poor narration thrown in. Francesco Quinn (Frank Rhino in this and Anthony Quinn's son in the real world) provides that narration. His performance was awkwardly bad, terrible even. I looked him up because he seemed familiar, and I imagine that's because he was, in a completely different sort of performance, terrorist Syed Ali in season two of 24. He was also in Platoon. Seemingly, Cannes Man (or Con Man or apparently and goofily Canne$ Man) was filmed with a scant script. A lot of the interviews seem to be select samples from much longer improvisational ramblings, and a lot of the dialogue feels more spontaneous. But for the most part, it seems as if the director gave the talent an instruction to improvise but with a "Don't Even Think About Saying Anything The Least Bit Funny" rule. An extended cameo involving Sy and Frank visiting Jim Jarmusch and Johnny Depp is probably the funniest part of the movie, but that might be the reason why it seems to clash with the rest of the story. This movie thinks it's just so clever. It isn't.

Ripley's Game

2002 psychopathic character study

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Tom Ripley, an American with "too much money and poor taste," likes games. After being insulted at a neighbor's party, he discovers that the Jonathan, the insulter, is dying from cancer and figures that he's the perfect teammate for his latest game. A former associate comes to Ripley because he needs a guy killed, and he gives him Jonathan's number. A follow-up murder is then required because, just like you can't eat just one potato chip, you can't kill just one person. Ripley fights to remain in charge of his game.

At times, this seems to have the production values of a made-for-cable movie. And the characters' motivations are either far too complex for my weak mind to comprehend or just nonsensical. It's probably the former. I'm not Tom Ripley, ya know! But despite its flaws, this movie just works, mostly because it rests on the shoulders of John Malkovich, a guy who was born to play just this sort of psychopath. It's sexy stuff! Ray Winstone's also very good playing just the sort of character he's really good at playing. There's some great dialogue in this ("Hold my watch because if it breaks, I will kill everybody on this train."); I'm not sure if it's the writing or the delivery that makes the lines so much fun. But it's the dialogue and the performances that help you forgive the flaws in this movie. There's a great scene on a train (and I'm a sucker for great scenes that take place on trains!) that is both violent and comical. The movie even threatens to turn into an adult Home Alone movie near the end. It's amazing to me that this was essentially a straight-to-dvd release because John Malkovich really needs to be seen on the big screen. His eyes are too small for a normal-sized television.