Last Vegas – This Ain’t Kid Stuff

     Unlike actors, who contrary to popular belief are just flesh and blood, there are a few film subjects that never get old. Love, friendship and the unstoppable onset of age are a handful of such timeless themes and all three are presented with warmth, humor and respect in Last Vegas.

     This low-key yet flashy film presents four of the finest actors of the past thirty years: Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman and Kevin Kline, as four childhood pals from Brooklyn who gather in Las Vegas to celebrate the marriage of the last bachelor among them. Michael Douglas plays Billy, an aging west coast big shot who finally breaks down and proposes to his much younger girlfriend during his eulogy for a deceased business mentor. Robert De Niro plays Paddy, Billy’s best friend who is still holding a grudge over the LA impresario’s failure to appear, or even call, when his wife died a year earlier. There are deep, long standing animosities between Billy and Paddy, and these threaten not only the Vegas weekend but their 60 year friendship. Morgan Freeman appears as Archie, a man struggling to regain his freedom after suffering a mild stroke that has sent his son Ezra (Michael Ealy) into full blown panic protection/control mode. Rounding out this venerable quartette is Kevin Kline as Sam, a man with his wife Miriam’s (Joanna Gleason) permission to fool around in Vegas so long as she doesn’t hear about it – what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

While Archie and Sam at times seem little more than comic relief to the heavier drama between Billy and Paddy, their stories do get enough attention to afford them satisfying resolutions. All told, the stories and characters complement each other well in this light-hearted film about grown-up quandaries.

Also featuring in this old-timer’s weekend in Vegas film is Mary Steenburgen as Diana, a lounge singer who attracts the romantic attentions of both Billy and Paddy. Diana’s presence not only complicates the old buddies’ already tense times, but also plays an important role that drama’s ultimate outcome. Ms. Steenburgen herself proves by playing Diana that a woman 60 years young can still be charming and sexy.

There’s a lot of fun to be had watching Last Vegas – even the two tween-agers sitting behind me occasionally laughed out loud. (I’m pretty sure they walked into the wrong theater, Ender’s Game was playing in the theater next door.) When the climactic party scene gets too wild in the guy’s penthouse suite none other than rap star Curtis Jackson III, a.k.a. Fifty-Cent, makes a cameo as himself, first complaining about the noise, then asking if he can come in… “Fiddy” is refused entry by the party’s gate-keeper. While nowhere near the same class as On Golden Pond or even The Sunshine Boys, this picture, written by Dan Fogelman (Cars, Stupid Crazy Love) and directed by Jon Turteltaub (The Kid, National Treasure), knows better than to even attempt such lofty melodramatic heights and stand on its own merits. Those merits are multiple, a good time at the movies with some great actors playing people to whom grown-ups can relate and its all set in the town that has become – for good or bad – a giant theme park for grown-ups.

Perhaps the most satisfying aspect to this film is its genuineness in dealing with the issues of aging and loneliness. Even though these issues are dealt with in comic fashion no punches are pulled. A stroke would be a serious mortality wake-up call to most people, as would the loss of the woman you’ve loved since you were children in the same Brooklyn neighborhood. Last Vegas confronts and comforts those cruel realities as well as any film, and does so while keeping the schmaltz meter set squarely at zero.

Watching Last Vegas made me realize that I’d rather spend 90 minutes watching Robert De Niro and Michael Douglas barely talk to each other than watch 100 minutes of $150Million in CGI special effects. Those tweeners behind me may someday realize themselves they feel the same way. I hope so at least, and that’s coming from a guy who was the kid who saw Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom five times in the summer of ’84. Last Vegas is definitely a must see, I’m still smiling thinking of it, although admittedly it’s a wistful smile.

Gravity Pulls You In And Never Let’s Go!

I’d been looking forward to Gravity since the first teaser trailers appeared last year, teasers that became more frequent as the launch date for Alfonso Cuarón’s space opera drew ever nearer. Usually, when I see a film giving such advanced notice my skeptical nature expects the worst. If a film is good it will speak for itself, no hyping necessary. Today however, after seeing Gravity in 3D I’m made to wonder if that campaign begun so many months ago was hype or a warning to all other films this fall, saying: “Don’t Bother – We’ve already got you beat!” From its breathtaking opening shot to the final, awe-inspiring frame, Gravity is that truly great film of 2013 for which many of us have been waiting.

The story itself could not be simpler: stranded astronauts must survive and find a way to safely return to Earth. Resources are scarce for Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Kowalski (George Clooney), who find themselves adrift 600 km above the Earth after a catastrophic cascade of debris pulverizes their shuttle and cuts off all communications with mission control. The two embark on a desperate journey through a vacuous non-environment to the International Space Station where they hope to use a Russian space craft as their life boat down to terra firma. Sounds simple enough, but the themes of isolation and re-birth after tragedy are explored and superbly integrated into Stone and Kowalski’s characters.

Sandra Bullock deserves high praise for her performance as mission specialist Dr. Ryan (her father wanted a boy) Stone. Dedicating herself to a six month fitness regimen, spending countless hours reviewing the script with Cuarón while blocking this picture’s sometimes intricate action; Bullock proves she’s not just a movie star, she is an actress. One scene that stays with me has no eye-popping visuals or intensely implied danger; it is simply Bullock, as Stone, communicating with someone on Earth who cannot speak English. A cinematically sedate scene, it is nevertheless emotionally charged. This unknown inhabitant of planet Earth plays with his dog and sings his daughter to sleep while Dr. Stone listens and we feel her loneliness, her torment, hopelessness. A well-written scene beautifully performed by the talented Miss Bullock. I can’t help but wonder whether she can look forward to a second Academy Award for this performance as the resilient Dr. Stone.

Visually, Alfonso Cuarón – whose films include 2006’s Children of Men and Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) – has crafted one of the most striking visions I’ve seen since the passing of Stanley Kubrick. Utilizing top drawer CGI and green screen compositing, Cuarón takes us on a ride that goes well beyond convincing; it comes precariously close to inducing vertigo! The opening scene, for example, is roughly 15 minutes of drifting into close-ups and out to long shots while orbiting high above Earth. If these uncompromised, gracefully dynamic visual stylings have a drawback, it is one shared with films like The Blair witch Project: the non-stop motion becomes almost nauseating at times. That said though, there is absolutely no other downside to the experience of Gravity, it is truly a cinematic masterpiece whose imagery aspires to, and handily achieves, epic proportions.

Gravity’s innovative sound design must be celebrated hand-in-hand with its’ outstanding visual achievements. There is no sound in space because there is no air to carry the sonic waves. Yet rather than have a film that lapsed between dead silence and tinny radio transmissions - with their cliché *beep*s – Cuarón challenged accepted norms. He recognized that while sound may not travel in space, it would certainly travel within the confines of spacesuits. The result is a new aural concept: motors and impacts, large and small, can now be heard in space, but they sound like motors and impacts underwater, muted by a medium not altogether friendly to the conveyance of sound. Brilliant. I can’t decide whether Cuarón deserves an Oscar or a Nobel Prize for this film. 

At the time of this writing Gravity has conquered its’ third straight weekend ruling the box office. Small wonder. Sure, there are some liberties taken with the distances between orbiting objects and platforms, but let’s just call that poetic license. Cuarón’s 90 minute epic is an edge-of-your-seat adventure that has reset the standards of space-borne drama. The man’s vision is an intimate tale played against the grand canvas of space. Gravity is a big screen must-see, because no television DVD, Blu-Ray or VOD viewing will ever do this spectacle justice. If fact, I may see it again myself, and I haven’t doubled-up on a film since I was a teenager. My compliments, Senor Cuarón, bravo!

Riddick The Inter-Stellar Bad-Ass Is Back!

            Previously, in The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), Vin Diesel’s outlaw anti-hero eluded capture, battled on inhospitable planets and became king of a gothic army of baddies known as Necromongers. Despite a massive budget, intensive marketing and a cameo by Dame Judy Dench, the picture was poorly received on all fronts. Diesel fans, including myself, looked forward to the strongly implied sequel to that film; however, when what was hoped would be the launching of a major new franchise fizzled, Riddick was left with his Necromonger  hoards, all dressed up and no green light to go. The ensuing scrapping of the franchise was, in my opinion, a blessing in disguise.

While it is intriguing to imagine what Riddick would do with his own army of darkness, the truth is this character is not a leader; he’s a loner outcast in the tradition of a High Plains Drifter or Mad Max. The first steps in rebooting a Riddick franchise had to be dumping the weird armored heavies and re-establishing the solitary anti-hero. Both tasks were accomplished quickly and believably in Riddick by having Vaako (Karl Urban) lure the outlaw king from his throne with the promise of finding his home world Furya, only to abandon him on a desolate planet we’ll call “Not Furya”. And so, Riddick is reborn, unchained from the problematic trappings of his last outing.

            The first half hour or more of Riddick is virtually a silent film, showing the man himself living a Robinson Crusoe existence on “Not Furya”. He sets his own broken leg, injects the venom of a giant scorpion-like creature into himself to become desensitized before vanquishing the beast; and through flashbacks and voice-over brings us up to date on Vaako and the Necromongers. This introverted first act was effective; it re-introduced the title character and his abilities while also distancing this story from the previous film’s baggage.

            The plot takes off in earnest when Riddick realizes that a slowly approaching rain storm brings serious trouble. He activates the distress beacon of an abandoned outpost and soon finds himself again evading capture from not one but two teams of bounty hunters. One is a group of scruffy bad asses loosely lead by Santana (Jordi Mollà). The other group is professionally uniformed, slick and lead by Boss Johns (Matt Nable) and the brawny Dahl (Katee Sackoff). Riddick plays it straight and tough from the start letting his hunters know they’re all in danger and need to vacate the planet...Why doesn’t anyone ever listen? Oh yeh, Santana wants the fortune offered for Riddick’s head and Boss Johns wants to know the fate of his son, William Johns (Cole Hauser), who died a coward’s death in Pitch Black (2000).

Riddick is good science fiction in that the alien worlds and creatures are imaginative, though it’s hardly on the same level as 2001: A Space Odyssey. It should go without saying that this is not the sort of film one judges by the same standards as Oscar contenders or small Indie Productions. Some films are watched for fun and escapism alone, or for some quick vicarious thrills. Riddick knows what it is supposed to be, and doesn’t try or pretend to be anything more than an action adventure film; and on that level, it succeeds.

Apparently Vin Diesel acquired the rights to re-boot the Riddick franchise himself as part of his agreement to appear in more Fast & Furious films; as a fan, I’m glad he did. I have also been following, for years Diesel’s plans to make an epic biopic about Hannibal, the Carthaginian who crossed the Alps to attack Rome in the third century B.C. Who knows, that picture could be Diesel’s Braveheart, though that’s a bold expectation. Until then, fans of the shaved-headed, Gen-X answer to Clint Eastwood will have to be content with Riddick, two solid hours of rock ‘em / sock ‘em entertainment.

It really shouldn’t be a spoiler to say that Riddick makes it safely off of Not Furya re-invested in the search for his home, leaving the door open for a new high-concept Sci-Fi franchise. Personally, I look forward to following Riddick on his odyssey to Furya. I doubt I’m alone, and I know it’ll be decent, escapist fun. Diesel’s third turn in one of his most famous roles is not just adrenalin-infused candy for his fans, though, but is truly for anyone who can enjoy a good ride at the movies.