Movie Review: Jodorowsky's Dune (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Among the most fascinating movies never made is the one that lends a new documentary its title, Jodorowsky's Dune. Alejandro Jodorowsky is the passionate Chilean filmmaker behind surreal cult movies El Topo and The Holy Mountain. As his admirers grew, especially within the cinematic and pop cultural elite, Jodorowsky expressed his desire to make a film adaptation of Frank Herbert's complex, sci-fi epic Dune his next project. Jodo, as his friends called him, wanted his Dune to move the medium forward with the same verve Kubrick's 2001 did. But he intended it to more explicitly alter a viewer's state of consciousness, in effect doing Kubrick one better by offering a moviegoer the same effects as LSD without the need to take the hallucinogen.

Movie Review: Two Jacks (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Underrated director Bernard Rose (Candyman) buries his tendency to sex things up in Two Jacks, his latest update of a Leo Tolstoy tale. In this case, it's Tolstoy's short story "Two Hussars." The movie contrasts father and son scoundrels, one somewhat more lovable than the other, in a Hollywood setting. Familiar incidents and people link the two in mirror storylines differentiating Old Hollywood in the form of dad, famed filmmaker Jack Hussar, Sr. (Danny Huston), from New Hollywood in the person of his son, novice director Jack Hussar, Jr. (Danny's nephew Jack Huston of Boardwalk Empire). Though the opportunity is there for Rose to indulge in his usual eroticizing, the casting of the gorgeous Sienna Miller as Diana, a young actress who has a memorable fling with Jack Sr., is the extent of the director's foray into sexual territory. What the ultra-low budget Two Jacks does well is allow Rose to continue liberating himself from the regimented stylistic flourishes he had mastered in films like Immortal Beloved.

Movie Reviews: In a World... (2013) and Things Never Said (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

As Carol Solomon, Lake Bell plays a vocal coach whose only work prospect at the moment is coaching actress Eva Longoria on a cockney accent for a movie she has to completely re-loop.

Longoria: Is that what you think you stupid slapper?
Carol: "Fink." Switch out the "t-h" for an "f'."
Longoria: Is that what you fink you stupid slapper?

It's a thankless task, made worse by the fact that Carol's dad Sam (Fred Melamed) believes it's the closest she'll come to following in his famed footsteps. Dad is a semi-retired movie trailer voice-over artist operating under the stage name Sam Sotto. His assertions of few opportunities for women in his line of work are constant and dispiriting. But Carol makes her own breaks, and is soon pursuing a career holy grail, to resurrect the cliché opener for many film previews, "In a world...", words that haven't been uttered over a trailer since the passing of the man most associated with the phrase, Don La Fontaine. The slight yet ingenious premise of In a World... allows Bell, who also wrote and directed, to craft a hilariously original comedy that feels like a Christopher Guest-directed mockumentary with an eccentric Annie Hall-type at its center.

Movie Review: The Canyons (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Paul Schrader gets no respect. After considerable trouble mounting his newest film, The Canyons, detractors seem to be delighting in pointing out how shallow the film is, taking particular aim at his casting of porn star James Deen and troubled actress Lindsay Lohan as the leads. It's another instance, a la The Lone Ranger, of critics taking part in a bit of schadenfreude. Months before its release, a journalist examines a movie's troubled production history ad nauseam and the zeitgeist signals rough times ahead for said film. But those looking only for evidence to support their pre-conceptions are missing or willfully ignoring the underlying tension Schrader explores in The Canyons, an elegy for traditional cinema and its filmmakers in the advent of fractured world of digital moviemaking.

Movie Review: Somewhere (2010)

by Tony Dayoub

As many of you have noticed, this blog has lain fallow since just before Thanksgiving. Initially, a vacation was to blame but recently, the cause has been the overwhelming amount of end-of-year movies I've had to watch (not a bad thing). In the next few days I hope to publish a few catch-up posts that will address all the movies I haven't had time to write about. Meanwhile, everything old is new again, especially if you weren't able to read it the first time. Many of you have complained about your inability to successfully click through to my work for Nomad Editions: Wide Screen. So now that the magazine folded I will begin reposting the columns I wrote for Wide Screen (in their entirety) to plug holes in my writing schedule. This review was originally published on 12/22/2010.

It's disappointing to conclude that writer-director Sofia Coppola’s latest, Somewhere, causes me to reassess her earlier film, Lost in Translation, in addition to her own potential as an artist. It's not that Somewhere is bad, or even dull. The strong performances by its two leads, Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning, along with Harris Savides’s handsome photography of a lustrous West Hollywood give one plenty to admire. But the superficiality of a tale rooted in the privileged director’s navel-gazing overwhelms the tender story of the relationship between a young actor and his daughter.

Nicholas Ray Blogathon: In a Lonely Place (1950)

by Tony Dayoub

In a Lonely Place is a coincident film within the careers of Humphrey Bogart (Casablanca), Gloria Grahame (The Bad and the Beautiful), and director Nicholas Ray; despite being an adaptation of a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, it is the most personal film for each of the three. For Bogart, the character of alcoholic screenwriter Dixon Steele revealed the real-life vulnerability and mercurial temper that afflicted the actor. In Graham's case, the film highlighted some of her insecurities vis-a-vis her marriage to Ray. And in regards to Ray, its story of a romance gone off the rails paralleled the slow disintegration of his relationship with Grahame while giving us a glimpse into Hollywood's early days.

Somewhere, My First Piece for Nomad Editions Wide Screen

by Tony Dayoub

It's disappointing to conclude that writer-director Sofia Coppola’s latest, Somewhere, causes me to reassess her earlier film, Lost in Translation, in addition to her own potential as an artist. It's not that Somewhere is bad, or even dull. The strong performances by its two leads, Stephen Dorff and Elle Fanning, along with Harris Savides’s handsome photography of a lustrous West Hollywood give one plenty to admire. But the superficiality of a tale rooted in the privileged director’s navel-gazing overwhelms the tender story of the relationship between a young actor and his daughter.

So begins my latest review. Posting here has been light this past month, but it doesn't mean I haven't been writing. My piece on Somewhere appears in a new digital weekly, Nomad Editions Wide Screen, edited by MSN's chief film critic, Glenn Kenny. I am pleased that Wide Screen allows me to share the company of such highly regarded writers as Simon Abrams, Kurt Loder, Farran Smith Nehme, Vadim Rizov, and others.

Here's the concept behind Nomad Editions (which also offers both a food and a surf weekly, with other titles on the way), as explained by founder Mark Edmiston:

Blu-ray Review: A Star is Born (1954)

by Tony Dayoub

Warner Home Video again does a fabulous job in bringing a "classic" film to Blu-ray with the second version of A Star is Born. If you're wondering why I placed the word classic in quotation marks, it is because this popular movie (especially in this restored version) has some deep flaws worth discussing.

Movie Review: In a Lonely Place (1950)

by Tony Dayoub

In a Lonely Place is a coincident film within the careers of Humphrey Bogart (Casablanca), Gloria Grahame (The Bad and the Beautiful), and director Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause). Despite being an adaptation of a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, it is the most personal film for each of the trio. For Bogart, the character of alcoholic screenwriter Dixon Steele reveals the real-life vulnerability and mercurial temper that afflicted the actor. In Graham's case, the film highlights some of her insecurities vis-a-vis her marriage to Ray. And as regards Ray, it parallels the slow disintegration of his relationship with Grahame while giving us a glimpse into his early days in Hollywood.