Excuse Me, Sir, Your Chemically-Induced Boner Needs Draining

Pacino and Walken. Walken and Pacino. If you want to know what’s great about Stand Up Guys, just look at this picture, which says it all. They have a natural chemistry, an indescribable watchability, that makes you wish they’d appear together in a movie that doesn’t require Pacino to get blood sucked out of his tumescent old boner. Yep, Stand Up Guys is that kind of movie. Dear Stand Up Guys Writers, CC: Hollywood: Not every movie about old guys needs a Viagra joke. Sincerely, Everyone. When Pacino started shoveling pills into his mouth while Walken cautioned, “Hey… VAL, maybe you… should slow DOWN a bit… those pills… are STRONG,” I thought to myself, “Ooh, the set up on this obvious joke is so labored, maybe they’re planning to flip the script on us!” Spoiler alert, they weren’t, and they didn’t, because this is a January movie. It’s like Pacino’s still trying to compete with DeNiro, who’s already old hat at boner stabbings after Ben Stiller stabbed his in Little Fockers. It makes you long for the days when DeNiro/Pacino was a Beatles/Beach Boys-esque rivalry that made them both better.

As you’ve gathered, Stand Up Guy‘s script is its achilles heel. Its achilles boner, say. We open with Christopher Walken (Doc) picking up Al Pacino (Val)  after a 28-year stint in the joint. The knock-around guys and former partners are each other’s only friends, making it that much sadder when we learn that Walken has been sent to kill Pacino, under penalty of death should he fail. Pacino knows he’s doomed, and they’ve got one last night together to make it count, which they do by banging hookers, boosting cars, and breaking Alan Arkin out of an old folk’s home. It’s sort of a poor man’s In Bruges. A poor, old man’s In Bruges, with bad Viagra jokes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Argo is not the kind of movie that expands the artistic possibilities of what a movie can be, but it’s just about the high-water mark of what you can do with skilled craftsmanship alone. It’s clever, competent filmmaking with lovable characters and catchy dialog, the kind of movie Aaron Sorkin might make if he was just a smidge less of a smarmy prick. And obviously, Affleck’s beard is the bomb.

Argo‘s going to clean up come award season. It’s a movie’s movie, and people love a movie. It’s what they look for when they go to the movies! A true story spiked with just the right amount of bullshit. Characters don’t talk the way real people talk, they talk the way we wish they would talk, an Affleck hallmark going all the way back to Good Will Hunting (“I figyah, why nawt just shoot my buddy, take his jawb, hike up gas prices, bawmb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Gaahd?”). It plays on our deep-seated desire for staircase wit, to see someone be as witty in the heat of the moment as we would be only when lying to our friends about it afterwards – I’m tellin’ ya, Tawmmy, you shoulda seen it, I gave that hahd on what fa! It’s not quite truth, but it’s catharsis, and Ben Affleck (the director) always delivers that solid B+ – a little hokey, sure, but a well-crafted collection of actors we love to watch, ballsily chewing scenes of Americans at our best, the way we like to think of ourselves, golden retrievers and apple pie go sawx and whatnot. It’s even probably a little better than The Town, because in Argo, even the stagiest lines are still cheeky and fun, without expository clunkers like “My brothah died on a day like this…”

Read the rest of this entry »

Argo, opening October 12th, rated Arg for Argo, just released its first trailer. Ben Affleck stars in his third directawrial effit, telling the true story of a CIA plot to pose as Canadian movie producers scouting locations for a sci-fi movie to help rescue American diplomats stranded in Iran after the Iranian revolution. After Gone Baby Gone and The Town, I’m through being surprised when Ben Affleck makes a good movie, and between that and supporting roles from heavy hitters Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, and Alan Arkin, I’m already sold.

Read the rest of this entry »

Check out the trailer here 

Constipated South African Gavin Hood has been hard at work directing Reese Witheredpoon and Meryl Streep in Rendition, a movie in which…

Witherspoon plays Isabella El-Ibrahimi, the American wife of Egyptian-born chemical engineer Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) who disappears on a flight from South Africa to Washington.

It also stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter Saarsgaard, so you figure they've got that whole "Silent A" thing covered.