Movie Review: Pawn Sacrifice (2015)

by Tony Dayoub


The intrigue of a monarch marshaling his forces against an insurgent has been fodder for exciting movies stretching back for decades. When the soldiers are only an inch high and the battlefield is a chessboard the chances of eliciting the same thrills are much, much lower. Fascinating as it is, Edward Zwick's Pawn Sacrifice misses the mark often enough to keep it from being a full-on masterpiece. On occasion though, this spare biography of tormented chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire) and the performances of its dynamic ensemble cast are riveting.

Movie Review: A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


The last time we saw private eye Matthew Scudder, he had a sunnier disposition and resembled Jeff Bridges. This was in his first film appearance, 1986's nasty 8 Million Ways to Die (Hal Ashby's muddled final movie, written by Oliver Stone and a pseudonymous Robert Towne). Nearly 30 years on, Liam Neeson plays the detective in the unbelievably grimmer A Walk Among the Tombstones. It's a serviceable throwback to cult detective thrillers from the 70s like The Long Goodbye or Night Moves, movies with a flawed antihero at the center of a mystery that's really just an excuse to meet a cast of quirky supporting characters. So who better to direct it than Scott Frank, screenwriter for a number crime films based on literary potboilers and chock full of such eccentrics: Get Shorty, Heaven's Prisoners, Out of Sight, and the never-aired pilot for Hoke.

TV Review: Houdini (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Houdini begins with master escape artist Harry Houdini (Adrien Brody) in chains, plunging into a frozen river from St. Louis's Eads Bridge. It's a representative flashpoint the miniseries will go back to at the end of its first half and at the start of its second. In between, Uli Edel's miniseries scrutinizes the enigmatic Houdini's personal life more than previous projects. Using the framework of a relatively obscure book, Houdini: A Mind in Chains - A Psychoanalytic Portrait, it tries to explain some of what actually motivated the man.

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Movie Review: A Most Wanted Man (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

As far as a match-up of material and filmmaker goes, I can think of no better one than that promised by A Most Wanted Man. Director Anton Corbijn's last feature, The American, was an existential thriller that kept George Clooney's introspective hitman squarely in its crosshairs. So what better director to take on John le Carré's typical contemplative spy thriller than Corbijn and here with the added feature of the late, gifted Philip Seymour Hoffman as the lead in one of his final roles.

Movie Review: The Purge: Anarchy (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Let's talk about Frank Grillo. For years, Grillo has been toiling at the edges of the screen in many noteworthy movies. In the first movie I remember seeing him in, Warrior, he was That Guy Who Trains the Boxer Brother. So natural was he in the part that I thought this was some MMA fighter making the jump to movies. In The Grey he was That Guy Who Keeps Mouthing Off. And in Captain America: The Winter Soldier he was That Paramilitary Thug Who Betrays the Good Guys. Apparently, Grillo's been acting for years, gradually coming to the foreground. Yeah, he's still kind of That Guy Who _______, but with The Purge: Anarchy Grillo gets his best opportunity yet to show he's up to carrying a major motion picture.

Movie Review: Transcendence (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Remember that Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk has to free some aliens on a planet controlled by an all-powerful, omniscient computer? And those aliens have these tiny antenna on their necks that allow them to be networked with that computer, Vaal, essentially making them physical instruments for it to conduct whatever activities necessary for a planetary makeover suited to his specifications. That's Transcendence in a nutshell, only with even more hokey, far-fetched ideas thrown in to complicate the simplistic story a bit.

Movie Review: In Secret (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Think The Postman Always Rings Twice in period costume and you'll instantly get what In Secret is all about. It is based on Émile Zola's novel, Thérèse Raquin, a kind of proto-noir. Elizabeth Olsen stars as Thérèse, an illegitimate cousin to the sickly Camille Raquin (Harry Potter's Tom Felton), who earns her keep as his sort of nurse. Camille's overprotective mother, Madame Raquin (played by the 1981 Postman's femme fatale, Jessica Lange) thinks she is doing all a favor by proposing a marriage between the two cousins. But Camille comes up short in the sexual heat department. Enter Laurent (Oscar Isaac), Camille's horny, hunky, childhood pal. It's not hard to figure where this is going from there.

Movie Review: Escape Plan (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

I can't ignore that my kneejerk reaction to just about any Sylvester Stallone movie is, "This is gonna be good." So I'm putting that out there. But Escape Plan is just the kind of well-executed high concept thriller that I believe demonstrates how canny the actor's instincts have become, especially in his middle age. Here's a man who didn't listen to casting directors who wanted to pigeonhole him in stereotypical thug roles early in his career, wrote the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for Rocky to showcase his leading man potential, then after working with some notable filmmakers got sidetracked by movie star excesses in the 90s before returning to late stardom with The Expendables, a franchise which he humbly shared with action star friends and rivals, figuring that a rising tide lifts all boats.

Movie Review: Prisoners (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Few of us who have children could imagine how we would react if they had been kidnapped. Would we crumble under the emotional pressure, or would we keep enough of our wits about us to try to somehow deal with the situation? Denis Villeneuve's harrowing Prisoners presents us with a spectrum of parental reactions, ranging from that of an utterly broken mom spending most of her time weeping in bed to that of a bitter father charging through crime scenes at suspects who might not even have much to do with the disappearance at all.

Movie Review: You're Next

by Tony Dayoub

After a terrifying prologue, You're Next begins with ultra-cute Erin (Sharni Vinson) and her pudgy boyfriend Crispian (AJ Bowen) on their way to a weekend at his parents' secluded vacation home. They're to join a family reunion to celebrate Mom and Dad's anniversary. The conversation in the car is about what you'd expect. Erin asks if Crispian's parents are as "loaded" as she's heard. A visibly nervous Crispian admits this is true. But what's really creating the unspoken tension is Crispian's reticence for Erin to meet his complicated family. Who hasn't been in that situation? "What's wrong with them?" Erin asks. After a moment of silence that lasts for what seems like eons, Crispian says two words.

"You'll see."

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: The Wolverine

by Tony Dayoub

Up until its over-the-top, meta-power-laden ending, The Wolverine is so unlike the prototypical superhero genre film one wishes it were as good in execution as it is conceptually. As dark and exotic as its setting in Japan promises, much of The Wolverine plays like a 70s style crime thriller with the feral Logan (Hugh Jackman) in the role of the gaijin outsider in over his head. Echoes abound of Sydney Pollack's The Yakuza (1974) and Ridley Scott's Black Rain (1989), both films featuring a world where ritual is inextricably tied to methods of conducting business and clan warfare starring deceptively low-key Japanese actors who outflank their iconic American co-stars. And at least in this role, after his unprecedented fifth outing as Wolverine (sixth if you count his X-Men: First Class cameo), Jackman has crossed over into something close to superhero icon.

Lost in the Inky Blackness of Fear

by Tony Dayoub

The softly lit visage of fortune teller Mrs. Bellane (Hillary Brooke, pictured above) is a reminder, mid-way through 1944's Ministry of Fear, that director Fritz Lang's films frequently (and almost obstinately) take place in dread-suffused, self-contained worlds. The setting for this noir is no different. An anti-Nazi propaganda film adapted from a novel by Graham Greene, Ministry of Fear plays out as if it were a dark nightmare in the head of protagonist Stephen Neale (Ray Milland). There are markers from the real world sketchily providing a backdrop that is vaguely lifelike. But much like in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, in which the labyrinthine New York streets don't resemble any Manhattan we're familiar with, Neale's London bears only the remotest affinity to its real-world counterpart.

The Game (1997): Fincher Flips Mission: Impossible on Its Head

by Tony Dayoub

Long unavailable (domestically) in a proper home edition, David Fincher's unsung puzzle thriller The Game finally gets its due this week thanks to Criterion's shiny new Blu-ray upgrade of their own 1998 laserdisc release. The new Criterion release confirms that Fincher's film—and its hokey premise of a 1-percenter put through his paces in a punishing experiential game—plays as well if not better than it did when I first saw it theatrically fifteen years ago. After all, is there any way to watch Michael Douglas' shallow, well bespoke Nicholas Van Orton—a lonely investment tycoon with a pile of human debris (an ex-wife, a recovering addict for a brother) left behind in his wake—and not think of Mitt Romney? Especially in one scene where his car gets a flat, and he asks his ne'er-do-well brother Conrad (Sean Penn), "Do you know how to change a tire?" Van Orton’s investment banking career, the way he addresses his underlings, his slicked-back hair and expensive taste in suits . . . even his pinky ring, all reek of a privileged upbringing. Then there’s the long, powerful shadow cast by his late father. Van Orton’s similarities with Romney rob him of a little of the sympathy I'd normally reserve for a movie protagonist.

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UPDATED: NYFF50 Review: Passion (2012)

by Tony Dayoub

Twenty years since their last collaboration, director Brian De Palma and composer Pino Donaggio reunite in their latest work, Passion. The reunion both recalls the virtuosic filmmaker's best period—the late 70s/early 80s—and revitalizes the career of a master, whose recent filmography's quality has been spotty at best. Redacted (2007) was an interesting experiment in utilizing found footage to tell a story about the Iraq war that collapsed under the weight of its propaganda-like liberal agenda (and I say this as someone who leans considerably to the left). And the postwar neo-noir, The Black Dahlia (2006), should have been a slam dunk for a director who's always shown an ease for crime stories, but instead, it felt oddly inept at delivering its admittedly sprawling, complicated plot. Not since 2002's Femme Fatale has De Palma manipulated his audience so boldly or so wittily as he does with Passion.

Savages (2012)

by Tony Dayoub

On the worst end of the Oliver-Stone-is-batshit spectrum you get a dated movie like Natural Born Killers (1994), and on the best you get the sublimely absurd U-Turn (1997). The mediocre Savages plays it safely down the middle. Based on the crime novel by Don Winslow, Savages follows burnt out war vet Chon (Taylor Kitsch) and stoner-botanist Ben (Aaron Johnson), pot-growing partners who must safely recover their mutual lover O (Blake Lively), kidnapped by desperate cartel queen Elena (Salma Hayek) and her henchman Lado (Benicio del Toro) after the buddies rebuff an offer to merge. John Travolta plays Dennis, a corrupt DEA agent working both sides to his favor.

For the Love of Film III: Rear Window (1954)

by Tony Dayoub

This post is a considerable reworking of a piece I posted on 3/20/09. It's also a contribution to For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon III being led by Marilyn Ferdinand of Ferdy on Films, the Self-Styled Siren, Farran Smith Nehme, and Roderick Heath of This Island Rod.

For movie-watchers with an analytical bent, Alfred Hitchcock provides a wealth of material to dissect. Rear Window is a great example. Much of the analysis focusing on Rear Window highlights the most immediately apparent of the film's metaphors, that of L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart) as audience surrogate while the different dramas playing out in each window of his apartment's courtyard serve as his personal movie theater. Laid up with a broken leg, the convalescing photo-journalist—bored with routine visits by his socialite girlfriend Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) and home care aide Stella (Thelma Ritter)—turns to his window for entertainment. But the movie's titular rear window isn't just a proscenium allowing Jefferies to play peeping tom. Each of the courtyard's individual apartments are a physical manifestation of Jefferies' fears of seriously committing to Fremont.

DVD Review: Marlene Dietrich Directed by Josef von Sternberg

by Tony Dayoub

The collaboration between director Josef von Sternberg and his muse, Marlene Dietrich, is one of cinema's most fruitful. One can actually see Von Sternberg build the slight, tentative Dietrich from a starlet to a tempestuous, formidable screen icon over the course of seven films between 1930 and 1935. And neither artist would quite hit the career highs they did when they worked with each other. Von Sternberg would only be credited with eight more films before retiring in the late fifties. Dietrich would appear in many more, but her output was a relatively paltry one compared to actors of her day.

Movie Review: The Grey

by Tony Dayoub

In the American movie landscape, the early part of the year usually means a few things. It's when the rest of the country gets to start catching up on Oscar hopefuls that opened at the end of the previous year in New York and L.A. It's also the season when unworthy films get dumped on an unsuspecting public (Man on a Ledge, anyone?). And finally, it's the designated release window for the semi-annual middle-age-action film by the lumbering Liam Neeson (Taken, Unknown). But this upcoming weekend's entry, Joe Carnahan's survival nightmare The Grey (based on a short story by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers), resembles Neeson's previous simplistic thrillers only from a marketing standpoint. Though the story of a man fighting against nature in a snowy wilderness is unabashedly straightforward, Neeson and Carnahan (who previously collaborated on the dumb A-Team remake) plumb the depths of The Grey's central character, Ottway, and come up with some fascinating stuff.

Movie Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

by Tony Dayoub

I was one of many who wondered about the wisdom of remaking a film which was an international phenom only one year after it played domestically. After all, there was no way a prudish Hollywood version would be able to dive into the depths of the type of depravity that the Swedish adaptation of Stieg Larsson's novel sinks the viewer into. As was the case with the American remake, Let Me In, though, David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo goes all in and maybe even further in both sexual explicitness and thematic scope. Surprisingly, it also provides further insight into Fincher's growing preoccupation with the breakdown of secrecy as a result of the increasing advances in information brokerage.