This red band trailer gives us a look at the boxing biopic starring Édgar Ramírez as Roberto Durán and highlighting the boxer’s rivalry with Sugar Ray Leonard (Usher). Robert De Niro, Ellen Barkin, Ana de Armas, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, and John Turturro also star. Hands of Stone opens in theaters in select cities on Friday.
Coming Soon – Hands of Stone Read More »
Based on the lives of English gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray (both played here by Tom Hardy), director Brian Helgeland’s film is as unengaging a crime drama as I can remember. I gave the film multiple chances but other than offer Hardy the chance to play dual roles the movie has nothing going for it. In terms of nuts and bolts, Legend is competently made but lacks the heart to make us care about either of the Kray brothers or those whose lives were effected by their choices.
Helgeland wastes a solid supporting cast (Emily Browning, David Thewlis, Christopher Eccleston, and Chazz Palminteri) on a story that doesn’t have much to say about gangsters we haven’t seen before. Legend isn’t an awful film, just a lifeless one (which in someways is actually worse than a truly awful film which can, on occasion, be entertaining for all the wrong reasons).
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Love & Mercy gives us two separate looks at the life of Brian Wilson (played by Paul Dano in the 1960s and John Cusack in the 80s). While the past deals with the beginning of Wilson’s mental instability the later storyline picks up years later with Wilson being taken advantage of by therapist Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti).
Although both stories are interesting by themselves, for me the two parts never came together. Dano is intriguing as the younger version, especially while struggling to create Pet Sounds. Cusack’s doped-up older version of the musician is far less interesting, but that plotline does give us Elizabeth Banks in one of the actress’ best performances. Several pieces and performances of Love & Mercy work well, including how director Bill Pohlad incorporates the Beach Boys‘ music, but the script struggles to merge the two-parts into a compelling whole while simplifying Wilson’s mental illness and Landy’s villainy for dramatic effect.
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Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) has been the subject of several movies and documentaries in recent years. Aaron Sorkin‘s screenplay, based on the book by Walter Isaacson, isn’t your typical biopic. Rather than a look through the man’s life, Steve Jobs is instead a series of conversations between Jobs and the people closest to him behind-the-scenes at various product launches. Given how much has been covered about the man’s career, life, and personality the film’s choice skips over well-covered events such as the creation of Apple computers to focus on Jobs’ continual struggle to deal with the people closest to him.
Filling in gaps with montages and dialogue, the script focuses in on the Apple Macintosh launch in 1984, the NeXT Computer launch in 1988 following Jobs’ removal from Apple, and the launch of the iMac following Jobs return to Apple in 1998. Through these events we see Jobs’ relationships with longtime assistant Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg), and Chrisann (Katherine Waterston) and Lisa Brennan (played by Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, and Perla Haney-Jardine).
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Adapted from the autobiographical story of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, Clint Eastwood offers an old fashioned character study with strong patriotic leanings and not as much introspection as one might ultimately like. Bradley Cooper is terrific in the starring role of a soldier obsessed with serving his country and protecting his brothers-in-arms overseas while struggling with even the idea of life back home with his wife (Sienna Miller). The result is an engaging, if incomplete, story as Eastwood careful cuts away anything that doesn’t quite fit Kyle’s heroic narrative including an ending that leaves much unsaid.
Following the soldier’s own interests, the scenes that take place during Kyle’s four tours of Iraq which made him the most lethal sniper in U.S. Military history work better than the limited amount of time we witness him back home. While acknowledging the character’s hero complex, Eastwood mostly shies away from how the length of Kyle’s service effected him emotionally choosing instead to celebrate (one might even argue glorify) the man’s war record. Eastwood tells the story he wants well, even if the result begins to feel a bit too much like pro-military propaganda.
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