pbayle3 Reviews

The Hollow Point (2016)

Intriguing but sloppy

[6/10 · 7 February 2017]

Like many other indie films, this one features excellent acting by its leads, but is deeply flawed in other respects. Patrick Wilson (Wallace) gives one of his best performances as a sheriff trying to break out of arrested development and Ian McShane (Lee) is hugely entertaining as his brutal predecessor. Lynn Collins (Marla), John Belushi (Shep), and John Leguizamo (Atticus)are also fine in smaller roles. The music is appropriately spare but haunting. The tone is unrelentingly gruesome and nihilistic.

Unfortunately the film's dramaturgy is such a mess that it could serve as a classic example of the ill-made play . We are repeatedly told that Wallace is an "asshole" but we don't see him act as such until more than halfway through. Characters move from place to place like chess pieces and have knowledge of key plot points seemingly by magic. There are conspicuous gaps in continuity. Wallace hides in a mobile home from the killer Atticus; we are never shown how he escapes. How does Wallace know there is a gun in Lilly's/Atticus's toilet? In the climactic scene, Lee's attitude toward Wallace's killing of Atticus changes diametrically in seconds. I don't believe Wallace and Marla can simply drive off into the sunset. The bloody stump that is Wallace's arm will become infected, and the murder he committed will come out once he is hospitalized.

In sum, while "The Hollow Point" has effective acting and music, it falls short of providing a satisfying experience due to sloppy plotting and characterization.

A Gifted Man (2011–2012)

Going in Circles

[4/10 · 26 December 2011]

The centerpiece of this show is Patrick Wilson. Besides being one of the most handsome men ever to step in front of a camera, he has shown real acting ability in films like Hard Candy, Lakeview Terrace, and Little Children. He has done some fine acting in this show as well, and his supporting cast does a good job as well. But that can't make up for repetitiveness and predictability. For several weeks, every episode has featured Dr. Holt saving a poor patient at the clinic and a rich patient at Holt Neuro. (I also can't help but notice the curious epidemiology of neurological conditions in this show's New York; they seem to afflict predominantly teenage daughters of overcontrolling parents.) There are two operation scenes in each episode, and they are almost interchangeable with each other and with every operation scene in every other episode. The show has failed to develop some promising themes from the pilot and the first two episodes. Its focus seems to narrow each week. Among the themes AGM could follow but hasn't yet: At the core of Dr. Holt's being is positivism. He is a deep believer in "the scientific materialist rationalism that is the unofficial religion of America's elite" (as Paul Campos put it). It might be interesting for Anna or Dr. Sykora, or a recurring patent to challenge that belief. This would take more learning and wit than the writers have displayed so far. Another tack would be to follow up on the theme hinted at by AGM's poster art and explore Dr. Holt's as illustrative of the professional white male who feels he has to bear the burden of less gifted and less dedicated folks. Clearly a very risky option. If this is not done with surgical precision, the whole cast could be consigned to the entertainment equivalent of Point Barrow, Alaska, for political reeducation. Less ambitious options include having Dr. Holt lose a patient now and then, in more ambiguous circumstances than infection by rabies or another invariably terminal illness. How about a patient who simply fails to respond, which happens all the time with skilled doctors who treat serious illnesses. Or he loses a patient at Holt Medical because he's treating a patient at the clinic. Or because another surgeon is performing the operation under his supervision. Or he's on vacation with a living girlfriend. Or he makes a mistake and gets sued. His activity at the clinic cuts into Neuro's income, so he has to choose between buying state of the art equipment and cutting staff. He gets a living girlfriend or indeed an interesting non work related friend of any kind. He does something actually or arguably irresponsible and faces down Anna's disappointment. (Like Bernard Show's Donna Anna, he could have been so much wickeder, and the show might be better for it.) Now since I am a big fan of Mr. Wilson's, I will continue to watch the show, at least until it becomes no more fun than a glioma, but I could not blame CBS for nonrenewing AGM. With all his admirable qualities and talents, Wilson has never shown the ability to put a production on "Cruise control." He will either have to do that and yank this show in a more productive direction, find someone who will, or run a big risk of losing his best opportunity to date.

Insidious (I) (2010)

Scary and Insidious

[9/10 · 7 April 2011]

Full disclosure: This is not an objective review. On the third of every month, I sacrifice a bullock without blemish to Patrick Wilson. That said, I would have liked this movie no matter who was had the lead roles. It is genuinely scary and uses horror conventions with insidious skill toward an ending that is both entertaining and unsettling. The humorous scenes are genuinely funny. I loved the way the movie turned "Tiptoe through the Tulips" into a counterpart to Schubert's Erl-King. The acting from both the leads and the character actors is excellent, especially the elderly exorcist. Wilson gives a selfless, rigorously character-based performance, and Byrne is moving as the grief-stricken mother. Insidious shows how our mood and sensibility has changed since Poltergeist was on the screen.

Barry Munday (2010)

More Rom than Com

[7/10 · 23 January 2011]

This movie is so off Hollywood that most stores don't carry it. I sought it out because it gives a rare starring role to Patrick Wilson, a talented and amazingly handsome character actor. He has been my idol since I saw his co-star turn in Little Children, and if you like him you will want to check him out. Even with his looks muted by bad hair and a ridiculous goatee, he is a pleasure to watch. Barry Munday works better as a romance than a comedy, and better as a character study than either. Munday is a recognizable caricature of American men as seen by a resentful feminist like his co-protagonist Ginger Farley (Judy Greer). Much of the movie is amusing, but it is rarely LOL funny. Munday starts out the film as an unambitious schlub whose only genuine interest is chasing skirts. The father of one of his amours follows him into a theater and smashes his testicles with a trumpet, so that they have to be removed. Just as he recovers, Ginger, one of his last hookups, claims to be pregnant with his child. At first coldly contemptuous of Barry, she gradually warms to him, even as he grows to become a loving husband and father. Aware that he can have no other children, Barry uneasily bypasses several hints that he is not the real father. The first time I saw this, I was disappointed that Barry seems to react to his "accident" as if he lost an IRS refund check. But instead of becoming angry, Munday even more uncentered than he was before and uses different approaches to acting like an adult. Toward the end, as Barry and Ginger come to a mutually supportive relationship, he literally finds his voice and his face just glows. The movie is not entirely clear where Barry and Ginger wind up, however. It is clear that Ginger and Barry come to love one another. But their scene in bed ends in an unsatisfactory way, she doesn't marry him, and she doesn't give the daughter his name, even though he badly wants her to. At the end, we are told rather than shown that Barry, Ginger, and their respective families are happy. Greer appropriately repellent at the outset and handles her transformation convincingly. The supporting cast does well, especially Jean Smart as Barry's mother.

Inception (2010)

Hugely Overrated

[4/10 · 2 August 2010]

I have rarely hated a movie more while I was watching it than this one, especially because I expected it to be very good to great. Despite an abundance of arresting visuals and and some good performances (especially by Madeline Cotillard), which save it from a really low rating, it is a bad movie in many ways. It is unbearably talky, overcomplicated, pretentious and boring. The last hour cycles the same four scenes over and over, and the only sign the movie is moving toward resolution is that the van the dreaming characters are riding in falls five feet closer to the river at each cycle. By then I was drifting in and out of consciousness like the characters. The film score pounds at you with incessant Teutonic heaviness. The main character is so thinly characterized that you have little reason to root for him. I like Leo much better when he plays a character in reality and stays out of dreams.

The A-Team (2010)

A Chance to See Patrick Wilson

[7/10 · 19 June 2010]

I saw this film because it is the first chance in sixteen months to see that unmatched actor/looker Patrick Wilson, for the first time as an unmitigated scoundrel. And he's terrific--appropriately loathsome and yet adorable. His character is a plot hole you can drive a Humvee through, but that does not affect his performance.

The two-thirds of the movie where Wilson is not on screen has its ups and downs. It is well-paced, which is welcome, because nonstop action movies give me a headache. The members of the Team were fun to watch in their scenes together. Sharlto Copley stands out for his comical, bravura performance, and Liam Neeson is solid as usual, providing believable adult supervision. Bradley Cooper is not bad and has a great body, but he is too smug. Jessica Biel is formidable in the Ninotchka role that is obligatory in these movies; I give the movie an extra star for avoiding the usual cringe- inducing inter-gender fights.

As many others have said, the camera work in the action sequences is dreadful, and the movie liberally partakes of the annoying action movie clichés, especially the marksmanship gap: heroes are one-shot-kill-shot; bad guys can't hit Refrigerator Perry if they all shoot at him all day.

Riverworld (2010 TV Movie)

Only One Reason to Watch This

[6/10 · 22 April 2010]

There is really only one reason for anyone but a die-hard Farmer fan to be interested in this series, and if you keep that in mind, you won't be disappointed. And that is to see world- class hunk Tahmoh Penikett in his first starring role. He is handsome, built, a surprisingly good actor and a convincing fighter. The female sidekick has the Susan-Brownmiller's revenge role that we will probably be seeing for the next generation. With an accent that one might imagine used in real life only by Alberto Fujimori, she defeats an entire Spanish regiment with two swords and possesses the power to magically disable all their crossbows. We get a Pizarro and a Mark Twain who do enough mugging to bid for a contract with Starbucks. The hero's inexplicable love interest has a gaze blank and pitiless as Paris Hilton's. These can be seen as unbearably annoying, but do have a certain camp enjoyability. Another plus is the excellent performance by the hero's longtime friend.

The Guardian (I) (2006)

Decent Military Bildungsfilm

[7/10 · 21 March 2010]

This is a flawed but mostly enjoyable movie. It gives a believable account of the training that goes into making a crack rescue swimmer. Costner and Kutcher make an engaging team (Kutcher is really very good), and the rescue sequences are genuinely suspenseful. I usually don't like uplift movies or movies like Top Gun, where a rebellious but gifted young man learns to straighten up and fly (or swim) right. This was far better than I expected.

There are some flaws, however. The movie is too long, because it has to juggle among the relationship between Randall and his wife, exhaustively detailed training sequences, the relationship between Fischer and his new girlfriend, a third character who is desperate to succeed after having washed out three times before (pun only partly intended) and two rescue scenes at the end. The romantic episode between Fischer and his new girlfriend is not fully realized--there is not much chemistry between Kutcher's character and the girlfriend, who is not very alluring. The ending is not believable because everyone forgets that Coast Guard swimmers are under a chain of command.

If you can get past these problems, the movie is very much worth watching.

District 9 (2009)

Prawn and Brains

[7/10 · 8 March 2010]

This movie is well worth watching (I grade on scale where the midpoint between 5 and 6). D9 includes some of the most haunting images of any movie, especially that huge and creepy spaceship looming over Johannesburg, obviously symbolizing the legacy of apartheid. I also liked the gritty realism of the prawn ghetto and the Nigerian gangsters. For the first 90 minutes, D9 is amazingly inventive, featuring surprising but believable plot twists. I loved the idea of serving the prawns eviction notices that they are asked to sign to give a threadbare legitimacy to ethnic cleansing. Unfortunately the ending gets bogged down in an interminable Transformers-type scene. Sharlto Copley as Wikus gives a witty and kinetic lead performance, but I did not find him very emotionally involving, perhaps because his character commits an appalling act early on that makes it hard to sympathize with him.