The Screengrab : eric bana

Screengrab Review: "Star Trek" - Scott's Take

Scott Von Doviak — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:30:00 GMT

As J.J. Abrams’ mega-hyped, blockbuster-in-waiting reboot of the Star Trek franchise begins, we might be watching any other movie in the series. The usual massive space behemoth posing a threat to the continued existence of the galaxy has materialized, and Starfleet is racing to the rescue. As the responding vessel is not named Enterprise, it’s all reduced to fireballs and cinders in a matter of minutes. But something is different: the captain of the destroyed starship is named Kirk…George Kirk, whose son James Tiberius is born on an escaping shuttlecraft even as his father heroically goes down with the ship. There’s your back story: roguish adventurer Jim Kirk can’t help what he is – he was literally born into it.

All right, so there’s a little more back story than that. There’s the half-human, half-Vulcan Spock’s tormented youth at the hands of his cold, emotionless peers, and the tween Kirk joyriding in a borrowed “vintage” convertible, and smoking hot space cadet Uhura (Zoe Saldana) fending off the advances of twentysomething townie Kirk (Chris Pine) while slumming in a bar outside the Iowa-based Starfleet Academy.

It all sounds like the makings of a feature-length fanwank, but Abrams is nothing if not a clever fellow and he has a few tricks up his sleeve. It’s not just that the mega-threat is a vengeance-seeking Romulan from the future named Nero (Eric Bana) – that’s just another day at the office in the Star Trek realm – but that he’s seeking his vengeance against the future version of Spock we all know and love, played by Leonard Nimoy. And that the youthful Spock (Zachary Quinto) is unable to prevent the cataclysmic first phase of Nero’s revenge, an epic event that may have hardcore Trekkies shaking their fists at the screen and howling in outrage, “That never happened!”

They’d be wrong, however, because Abrams and his writers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman have come up with an ingenious loophole that allows them to clear the decks of all the clutter comprising four decades worth of Trek mythology. Abrams doesn’t have to worry too much about being reverent, which allows him to rev it up and have some fun. And Star Trek is an undeniably fun summer ride – it’s got the big thrills, big laughs and special effects that blow away any and all earlier incarnations of Trek, and only rarely insults the intelligence. (You won’t want to give too much deep thought to the “science” involving black holes and red matter.)

The cast is game, although Abrams comes up against the same stumbling block that often bedeviled the original series and its spinoff movies: finding enough for the supporting characters to do. Uhura has a beefed-up role (and there’s a nifty piece of misdirection involving her character) and Simon Pegg makes the most of his brief screen time as Scotty, but the crotchety Bones (Karl Urban) gets short shrift, and Sulu (John Cho) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) are still just a guy who can fence and a Russian with a funny accent (“Enemy wessels approaching!”) respectively. (And let’s not even speak of the regrettable stunt casting of Winona Ryder and Tyler Perry in minor roles.)

As it ever was, the focus is on the Kirk/Spock dynamic, which is where the turning-back-the-clock element really pays off. There’s a sharper edge to the relationship here, as the hotheaded man of action and the cool, logical half-alien size each other up as both rivals and potential allies. Quinto has inherited Nimoy’s knack for infusing his matter-of-fact pronouncements with almost subliminal dry wit, and while there’s really no replacing the Shat Man, Pine is surprisingly adept at evoking the bravado and bluster of Kirk without devolving into parody. As unlikely as it once seemed, it looks like the ol’ Enterprise has a few more light-years left in it after all.

Nick's Take

Screengrab Review: "Star Trek" - Nick's Take

Nick Schager — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Hardcore Trekkers can debate whether J.J. Abrams has committed heresy with his franchise-restarter Star Trek. For those not deeply invested in Gene Roddenberry’s humanist sci-fi series, however, this summer spectacular will prove a largely thrilling surprise, its blend of humor, romance and action so kinetically orchestrated that calling out its shortcomings feels like excessive carping. By constructing a story around planet-devouring black holes that function as time-travel portals, Abrams not only affords himself a premise fit for grand intergalactic conflicts but also a handy explanation for why Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), McCoy (Karl Urban) and their fellow Starfleet peace-keepers only sort of resemble themselves. It’s an alternate reality Star Trek, and all the better for it, serving up the type of breakneck thrills and operatic excitement that’s been absent from this sci-fi universe since 1982’s Wrath of Khan. A distinctly modern blockbuster that comes on like gangbusters and rarely lets up, it re-confirms that Abrams – after energizing Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible saga in 2006 – is a director tailor-made for event pics, his sleek, lens-flared cinematographic style and vigorously to-the-point pacing well-suited for the demands of mega-budgeted tentpole extravaganzas.

In this reconfigured Star Trek, whose mythos occasionally recalls Star Wars, Kirk’s dad dies saving his starship’s inhabitants and, specifically, his wife and newborn baby, and Kirk himself grows up to be a devil-may-care bad boy squandering his potential in cornfielded Iowa. Convinced by paternalistic Captain Pike (Bruce Greenwood) to follow his father’s footsteps by joining the Starfleet Academy, he immediately finds himself in conflict with Spock, a rather disagreeable know-it-all struggling to reconcile his dual heritage as a logical Vulcan and (thanks to human mom Winona Ryder) an emotional Earthling. Much of Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman’s script centers on Kirk and Spock’s combative relationship, though along the way it also deftly provides introductions to the rest of the iconic Enterprise crew, including amusingly grouchy McCoy, mini-skirted sexpot Uhura (Zoe Saldana), tough Sulu (John Cho), goofy Chekhov (Anton Yelchin), and witty Scotty (Simon Pegg). As befitting an origin story, Abrams lavishes most of the attention on establishing his characters’ various relationships, a guiding directive that he admirably pulls off, with the writer/director sneaking in trademark catchphrases and allusions to signature moments in Star Trek history while allowing his new cast to make the revered characters their own.

Pine channels William Shatner’s ladies-man egomania with a playfulness that makes light of the legendary Kirk’s machismo, Urban’s McCoy grumbles with a gusto that would make DeForest Kelly proud, and Quinto gives Spock a smarty-pants attitude that differentiates him from that of Leonard Nimoy’s original Vulcan, who [spoiler alert] eventually figures prominently in the narrative proper. That plot involves Romulan madman Nero (Eric Bana) traveling back in time to exact revenge on Spock and the Federation for his home world’s demise, a scheme to destroy Earth that inevitably feels shoehorned into a film whose primary concern is setting up interpersonal dynamics that can be further developed in sequels. Thanks to the tacked-on nature of Kirk’s battle with Nero, as well as a few too-curt editorial choices that don’t maximize the scenario for thrills, Star Trek falters slightly during its climax. Yet it’s a minor speed bump on an otherwise brisk ride, one that avoids indulging in the franchise’s characteristic social/political allegory in favor of straightforward, uncomplicated sci-fi melodrama and mayhem. Light on its feet, free from the self-seriousness of its predecessors, and shrewd enough to keep one wanting more by not overstaying its welcome, Abrams’ breathless reboot achieves the improbable, forcefully reviving a series that many, including myself, believed had deservedly been left for dead.

Scott's Take

Screengrab Salutes The Best & Worst Comic Book Movies Of All Time! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:00:00 GMT

It’s Watchmen Week here at The Screengrab as the greater Geek-iverse (and the studio executives who love it) await the opening of Zack Snyder’s much-anticipated, much low-expectations-generating adaptation of Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’ beloved, game-changing graphic novel about a bunch of asshole “super” “heroes” fighting crime, mental illness and erectile dysfunction in a scary alternate reality where Richard Nixon never went away. (And by the way, does everyone out there already know Silk Spectre II: Electric Boogaloo is portrayed by the same actress who played Valerie Cherish’s little blonde protégé on The Comeback? I just found that out, like, yesterday and was momentarily confused because I thought all the Watchmen were supposed to be kinda middle-aged -- but then I checked the Internet Movie Database and, much to my surprise, Malin Akerman’s actually 31, which is somewhat middle-aged, I suppose)...

Anyway, our own Scott Von Doviak and Paul Clark have already weighed in with their reviews of Hollywood’s latest attempt to wring a little KA-CHING! out of the POW! ZAP! BAM! of the funny book aisle, a strategy that’s been serving the Suits pretty well in recent years. I could pontificate here on the way America’s fascination with caped crusaders panders to infantile, imperialist empowerment fantasies, crowding more intelligent, adult material from the multiplex...but not only would that be annoying, it would also be hypocritical, since (A) I like a good funny book movie as much the next geek, (B) another movie about masked superheroes battling supervillains is a helluva lot better than another movie about masked sadists chopping up teenagers and (C) I keep hoping they’ll someday finally make that Wonder Woman movie I’ve been waiting for since I was 12. Mmm...magic lasso...

In the meantime, though, please enjoy the following list from Nerve.com’s very own Legion of Doom as we salute truth, justice, the American way and THE BEST AND WORST COMIC BOOK MOVIES OF ALL TIME!

The Best:

IRON MAN (2008)

True, it’s only been a few weeks since I wrote about Jon Favreau’s rock ‘em sock ‘em revival of the venerable Marvel Comics rust magnet for my Best of 2008 list...but (unlike certain awards-distributing Academies I could mention), I wanted to make sure this excellent film was recognized among the best of the best!

V FOR VENDETTA (2006)

Don't tell Alan Moore, who has never seen it but took the trouble to bad-mouth it anyway, but this adaptation of his Thatcher-era anarchists' fable, directed by Wachowski brothers proxy James McTeigue, does better than pretty good by its source material. The most important changes the filmmakers made from the original text, notably the transformation of Eve's (Natalie Portman) blokey boyfriend into a sardonic gay TV host played by Stephen Fry, actually work well: Fry's performance gives the film some heart, and film is clearly better suited than the printed page when it comes to paying gratuitous tribute to Benny Hill. The movie even inspired David Denby to apoplexy by seeming to present a terrorist as a political hero. Annoying David Denby is always a public service.

HULK (2003)

Remember how last year’s Edward Norton re-boot of The Incredible Hulk was going to prove that the relatively disappointing box office take of the 2003 Hulk was all Ang Lee’s fault? That audiences would embrace a louder, faster, dumber Hulk movie in a way they never did Lee’s artsy-fartsy one? How’s that working out for ya? The 2008 edition racked up almost exactly the same box office total as the 2003, so maybe it’s just that nobody likes poor ol’ Hulk. Or maybe the 2003 version wasn’t so bad after all, which is what I’ve been saying all along. Yes, it has its flaws; Eric Bana doesn’t exactly light up the screen, the CGI star isn’t quite up to snuff in some scenes, and things do take a little longer to get percolating than was perhaps necessary. But Lee brings a lyrical, haunting tone to the picture that may seem at odds with the whole “HULK SMASH!” ethos, but actually taps into a vein of melancholy the character has always possessed. The innovative editing scheme, with its cascade of digital wipes and split screens, is a far more clever and entertaining cinematic analog to reading a comic than anything Zack Snyder does in Watchmen, and the CGI effects do mesmerize at times. Hell, I could have watched this Hulk bouncing his way across the desert for hours.

X-MEN 2 (2003)

Ushering in the modern age of Marvel superhero films, Bryan Singer’s X-Men helped prove that the sight of men in tights – or, in this case, men and women in leather body suits – didn’t have to doom a comic adaptation to cartoonishness. It was Singer’s 2003 sequel, however, that truly elevated the genre by cannily marrying romantic drama, vigorous action and social-intolerance subtexts (here reconfigured from the source material to address sexuality more than race). Aside from Halle Berry’s still-awful wig and Alan Cumming’s grating Nightcrawler, X2 is sharper, smarter and more exhilarating than its predecessor, remaining true to the spirit of its heroes, villains and Dark Phoenix-ish storyline, buoyed by Brian Cox’s superbly villainous William Stryker, and smartly placing as high a premium on character as on spectacle. Which isn’t, however, to say that the spectacle itself isn’t reason enough to check out Singer’s sequel, since an early Stryker-led attack on Professor Xavier’s school, as well as Wolverine’s climactic throwdown with Lady Deathstrike, more than ably deliver the super-skirmish goods.

BATMAN (1989)

A genuine pop culture behemoth in the summer of '89, Tim Burton's blockbuster comic book movie probably did more than any other to make comics adaptations an accepted Hollywood genre, if only for proving that the success of the first couple of Superman movies hadn't been a fluke. This is not one of those accomplishments that nobody can see a downside to, and despite its hellacious popularity, the movie has always had enough attackers to count as controversial, including those who think it's a clumsy piece of storytelling to comics geeks (including Kevin Smith) who think it blasphemed its source material in any number of ways. But Burton's graphic sense and gothic sense of humor always made it a striking, strikingly funny piece of work, and facts are facts: no actor has ever been more compelling or convincingly haunted in a superhero role than Michael Keaton. The passage of twenty years and umpteen sequels and reboots (including Burton and Keaton's deeply flawed but often lovely Batman Returns) has thrown its defects and pluses into sharp relief: it's hard to remember that, in 1989, when Christopher Nolan was all of nineteen years old, many critics were appalled because they thought this picture was too dark.

SUPERMAN II (1980)

The 1978 Christopher Reeve Superman was an outlier, and probably the earliest example of filmmakers at least trying to make a genuinely good superhero movie. But it wasn’t entirely successful, and one sticking point for a lot of fans was the performance as Lex Luthor by Gene Hackman. The role has as many passionate defenders as detractors, but many thought that it was overly campy and unserious, and a superhero movie is generally only as good as its villain. The 1980 sequel would change all that. Introducing three Kryptonian supervillains escaped from the Phantom Zone – the hulking Non, the ice-cold Ursa, and best of all, the fantastic Terence Stamp as the megalomaniacal General Zod – Superman II gave us villains for the ages, and culminated in one of the most exciting fight scenes we’d seen to date. But it still wasn’t a great movie, and longstanding rumor placed the blame on the firing, when production was nearly complete, of Superman director Richard Donner and his replacement with Richard Lester. Lester, while a talented director, didn’t much care about the job and had little affection for the material, and the results are right there on screen. A few years ago, however, the Richard Donner cut was released commercially, and it finally became clear how good Superman II could have been if its original director had been allowed to pursue his vision all along.

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five & Six

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent, Scott Von Doviak, Nick Schager, Leonard Pierce

Trailer Review: Funny People

Paul Clark — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Judd Apatow might have become one of Hollywood’s reigning kings of comedy by making hard-R, foul-mouthed laffers, but the films he’s directed so far have stuck to a reliable mix of laughs and lessons. More specifically, the trademark Apatow storyline involves a man who experiences a life-changing event (whether it’s getting a woman pregnant or being outed as an overaged celibate), and learns important lessons about living as a result. And while Funny People looks like he’s stuck to this same formula again, I find it interesting that he’s split his usual schlubby leading man into two this time around. While a movie star played by longtime Apatow pal Adam Sandler gets the terminal disease and the estranged wife he tries to win back, Seth Rogen is the young comic on the make who falls into Sandler’s orbit and is forced to grow up, despite a Greek chorus of sailor-tongued young dudes (another favorite Apatow meme). It’s hard to say whether this twist on the usual Apatow formula will work as well as The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up did, but this trailer has me curious to see if Apatow can handle the more serious undercurrents he’s set up for himself. Also, it’s nice to see Eric Bana in a role that doesn’t require him to be dour and tortured- as anyone who’s seen Chopper can tell you, Bana’s a funny dude, and I welcome the chance to see him cut loose again.

Your First Look at Star Trek 90210

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:30:00 GMT

The new Entertainment Weekly cover story has the scoop on J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, and while the cover photo doesn’t exactly set my phasers to stun (Kirk looks like he should be leading panty raids at Starfleet Academy), at least fans can be reassured that Abrams never much cared for Trek anyway. “‘All my smart friends liked Star Trek,’ he says. ‘'I preferred a more visceral experience.’ Which is exactly why he accepted Paramount's offer in 2005 to develop a new Trek flick; creatively, he was engaged by the possibility of a Star Trek movie ‘that grabbed me the way Star Wars did.’” Oh boy!

What Abrams does like about Star Trek is its “unabashed idealism. ‘I think a movie that shows people of various races working together and surviving hundreds of years from now is not a bad message to put out right now,’ says Abrams, whose infectiously upbeat energy and disdain for cynicism are among his most marked attributes… In a world where a movie as incredibly produced as The Dark Knight is raking in gazillions of dollars, Star Trek stands in stark contrast…It was important to me that optimism be cool again.’”

The EW piece goes on to drop a few hints about the story. “Star Trek's time-travel plot is set in motion when a Federation starship, the USS Kelvin, is attacked by a vicious Romulan (Eric Bana) desperately seeking one of the film's heroes. From there, the film then brings Kirk and Spock center stage and tracks the origins of their friendship and how they became officers aboard the Enterprise…. The adventure stretches from Earth to Vulcan, and yes, it does find a way to have Nimoy appearing in scenes with at least one of the actors on our cover — and maybe both… The opening sequence, for example, is an emotionally wrenching passage that culminates with a mythic climax sure to leave zealots howling ‘Heresy!’” Admittedly, I was always more of a Trek guy than a Star Wars partisan, but I checked out long before the parade of spinoff series in recent years. A little heresy doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. Here’s the full article if you want more from Abrams and his cast (including Leonard Nimoy) and some photos from the bridge and beyond.

Related:
Star Trek Showdown: Shatner Fires Back
Star Trek Teaser Follow-Up: The Real Deal

When Good Directors Go Bad: Hulk (2003, Ang Lee)

Paul Clark — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT

In recent years, as “sequel” and “remake” have become dirty words in the minds of moviegoers, Hollywood studios have scrambled to come up with new, less offensive alternatives. How many blockbusters based on previously-adapted properties have been tagged with descriptions like “re-invention”? Yet even by these standards, the efforts made by Universal and Marvel Studios to distance their new, more “crowd-pleasing” version of The Incredible Hulk (“You’re going to like him when he’s angry!”) from Ang Lee’s 2003 film Hulk have been particularly aggressive. And for good reason, as Lee’s take on the classic comic left most viewers disappointed or even pissed off. Does Hulk deserve its reputation? Not really. But just because it’s not that bad doesn’t mean it’s all that good either.

In the early part of his career, Ang Lee was known primarily for his modestly-budgeted films which deftly mixed domestic drama with light comedy. Titles like Eat Drink Man Woman and The Wedding Banquet helped to make the NYU grad’s reputation in the States even before he began making movies here, and Sense and Sensibility and The Ice Storm only served to further this reputation. But while 1999’s Ride With the Devil was widely considered Lee’s first disappointment, he quickly recovered by returning to the Far East to make Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the critically-acclaimed martial arts epic that brought Lee the best reviews of his career to date and his first Oscar, as well as record-breaking U.S. box-office for an Asian film. It was Crouching Tiger that caught the attention of Universal Studios, who were looking for a fresh voice to bring Hulk to the screen.

But while Lee was an inspired choice for a comic book movie, I really don’t think he was the right one for Hulk. Lee is a gifted filmmaker, but he’s never had a strong, easily recognizable visual style, instead preferring to let his story determine the look of his films. But although other Lee films have benefited from this versatility- the chilly, sterile images of The Ice Storm bear little resemblance to the sweeping vistas of Crouching Tiger, but both are ideal for their respective films- Lee never finds the right look for Hulk. Although it’s not for lack of trying- attempting to accentuate the story’s comic book origins, Lee subjects the audience to a barrage of split-screens and snazzy wipes. Unfortunately, instead of creating any sort of kinetic excitement, the tricked-up style is merely distracting and, in the end, tiresome.

As for the individual shots themselves, Lee’s framing is rarely dynamic enough to make the images pop the way they should. All too often, shots are murky when they should be crisp. This is especially true of the film’s night scenes, which look dank and under-lit. Even worse, Lee insisted on shooting many of the film’s big action sequences at night. But whether this was an artistic decision on Lee’s part or a trick by the effects team to cover for some occasionally dodgy CGI, these sequences are often incomprehensible. This is especially true of the final battle between Hulk and his father- in a scene that serves not only as the action climax of the film but also the resolution of the lifelong conflict between father and son, the last thing you want is for the audience to wonder what the hell is going on.

In addition to the film’s stylistic shortcomings, the storytelling in Hulk leaves something to be desired. Part of the problem is that as far as comic book heroes go, Hulk is a strange case. Rather than being a hero who uses his powers for positive ends, Hulk is unleashed aggression personified- a man who has been cursed by fate and the sins of his father to expand and beat the crap out of anything in his way whenever he gets angry. The premise plays closer to tragedy than traditional comic book action, and to his credit, Lee takes the dramatic stuff seriously, rather than treating it simply as exposition and padding between the action scenes. However, the film’s broad-strokes-only storytelling and one-dimensional characters are less than compelling. Too much time and energy are expended on unlocking the mysteries of Bruce Banner’s past, a torturous bit of “dollar-book Freud” (thank you, Orson Welles) that stops the film dead in its tracks and makes the film less tragic than dour. Not helping matters is Eric Bana’s colorless performance as Banner. Bana came to the attention of Hollywood with his live-wire performance in Chopper, but he displays none of that volatility here. Shouldn’t someone as deeply troubled as Bruce Banner show some evidence of inner life?

Hulk is a strange creature, a film that attempted to be a stylish, kickass summer movie with a solid dramatic foundation but ended up satisfying almost no one. I admire certain aspects of the movie, like the way Lee counterpoints the restrained work by his leads with the unhinged mugshot-era performance by Nick Nolte, or Lee’s occasional use of quietness (a rare quality among most comic-book movies). But at the end of the day, the movie just doesn’t work. Yet I appreciate Lee’s efforts to make an honest-to-goodness art film out of a superhero movie. Hulk isn’t a success, but it’s more thought-provoking than most of the forgettable fare that has characterized the genre for years. It’s no Spider-Man, but I’ll take it over the likes of Fantastic Four- or The Incredible Hulk, for that matter.

Hebrew Hammers: The Top 12 Tough Jews in Cinema (Part I)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

“If any of us get laid tonight, it’s because of Eric Bana in Munich.”

So says Seth Rogen’s full-time slacker Ben Stone at the start of 2007’s Knocked Up, heralding a recent shift in the pop culture persona of the Chosen People from neurotic schlimazels of the Woody Allen variety to bad-ass playas like Bana.

But, although the concept of “Jewish action star” is a relatively new phenomenon, film history is filled with tales of Hebrew heroes (and heavies), from ancient Egypt to modern Israel.

And thus, in tribute to the upcoming June 6th release of Adam Sandler’s meshuga Israeli commando/hair-stylist comedy You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, we here at the Screengrab are proud to present...THE TOP 12 TOUGH JEWS OF CINEMA!!!!!

ERIC BANA AS AVNER IN MUNICH (2005)

Well, of course we had to start with this one. Bana’s Avner, a Mossad agent tasked with tracking down and executing the terrorists responsible for the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, isn’t a stone-cold, tough-as-nails killer like his fellow assassin Steve (a dead-eyed Daniel Craig). Not that he isn’t formidable in his own right, surviving explosions, raiding PLO compounds, dodging other assassins and negotiating tense Middle Eastern Mexican stand-offs. But Avner is more than a rage-fueled killing machine, leavening his combat skills with love of family and the mental toughness to question the wisdom of fighting violence and hatred with ever more violence and hatred. Plus, if we’re to believe the ill-conceived, much-maligned “climax” of the film, Bana’s character is tough enough to maintain his mojo during volcanic sex with his wife even while suffering vivid flashbacks of terrible murders he didn’t actually witness. Me, I usually just think of baseball.

JEFF GOLDBLUM AS DAVID JASON IN DEEP COVER (1992)

This anti-Drug War crime thriller supposedly stars Laurence Fishburne (as a fast-rising drug dealer who's actually an undercover cop), but the movie belongs to Goldblum as the lawyer for the local head (Gregory Sierra) of the drug cartel. His character embodies his culture's traditional pursuit of success through education and hard work, but he's also at least half crazed from envy of the thugs he keeps out of jail with his motormouthed brilliance. Their hair-trigger willingness to give in to their violent urges makes him feel unmanly and overcivilized. (Sierra insults Goldblum by calling him "bar mitzvah boy"; Goldblum, in turn, naively thinks he's paying Fishburne a compliment when he likens him to "some beautiful panther or jungle storm...a dangerous, magnificent beast.") After Sierra beats a man to death in front of Goldblum, he asks him if it's the first time he's ever seen a person die, and Goldblum responds with a dreamy monologue about witnessing a fatal accident when he was a kid at summer camp. He sounds as if he 's remembering his first kiss. Goldblum finally snaps, joins Fishburne in toppling Sierra in a bloody coup, and winds up decked out in black leather and slicked-back hair, machine-gunning Clarence Williams III as if in retaliation for The Mod Squad.

JAMES WOODS AS MAX AND ROBERT DE NIRO AS NOODLES IN ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (1983)

Sergio Leone's final film is an opium dream of a gangster epic starring De Niro and Woods as lifelong frenemies, two products of the Brooklyn Jewish ghetto of the tenement era who grow up to become kings of New York during the Depression years. Part of the tension of their love-hate relationship comes from the fact that they represent clashing approaches to getting the most out of life. Max, the Bugsy Siegel figure, is an unstoppable bullet of wordly ambition, a volatile schemer who won't hesitate to shoot or bitch slap anyone who gets in his way, questions his plans, or looks at him cross-eyed. For most of the film he seems to roll right over the more careful, romantic-spirited Noodles. He ultimately fakes his own death, so that he can disappear into a new life as a respectable, rich businessman (and marry the woman--Elizabeth McGovern--who's the unattainable love of Noodles' life), leaving his old pal broke and stranded with survivor's guilt for thirty-five years. But after Max has played out his string and summons the now-aged Noodles to put him out of his misery, telling him that he's "the only one I can accept it from", we see that Noodles, the mother hen, is one of those people who was born to be sixty, and that everything up to now in his life has been preparation for the moment when Max comes begging, and he says no. It's all been worth it just to get to the end of their lives so that he can say, "I told you so."

CHARLES BRONSON AS BRIG. GEN. DAN SHOMRON IN RAID ON ENTEBBE (1977)

Though it may seem hard to believe now, there was a period of about ten years there where most of the Western world recognized the Israeli military as perhaps the last example of unfailing competence and dependable strength put at the service of a cause that was just--in a nutshell, the good guys. This glorious public relations phase began in the summer of 1967 with the Six-Day War and had its last great hurrah with the rescue mission to recover the hostages taken by Palestinian and German hijackers who sought refuge in Uganda. "Operation Entebbe", which happened to unfold in the early hours of July 4, 1976, as America was gearing up to celebrate its own Bicentennial, was such a movie-ready news event that it was dramatized in three separate movies that went into production practically overnight, including two films originally made for American TV and an Israeli feature that was directed by Menahem Golan, later of the notorious Golan-Globus Productions. The best of them, by miles, was Raid on Entebbe, directed by Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back) and released to theaters internationally after premiering on NBC TV six months after the actual events. The cast, which was very classy A-list by seventies TV-film standards, included Peter Finch (who died a week after the original broadcast, and who won an Oscar for his performance in Network shortly thereafter) as Yitzhak Rabin and Yaphet Kotto as Idi Amin, but it's Bronson who gives it that all-important shot of testosterone. He doesn't really have that much to do except fill out a uniform and bark orders into his walkie-talkie, but the important thing is that it's Charles fucking Bronson in his Death Wish-era prime who's in charge of this mission, bestowing upon it his macho gravitas and leathery glamor. By comparison, the 1986 Delta Force had to try to squeeze whatever juice it could out of the combination of a past-his-prime Lee Marvin and an not-yet-ironic Chuck Norris on a rocket cycle.

LENA OLIN AS MASHA IN ENEMIES: A LOVE STORY (1989)

In this adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel, Olin is a house on fire as a ferociously sexy Holocaust survivor who's having an affair with Ron Silver as a Polish Jew who's been transplanted to New York after spending World War II hiding in a hayloft. (He's now married to the girl, once his servant, who loaned him the layloft.) Fear and guilt have made Silver so nervous that he's a spectral wreck, but her time in Hell has left Olin disinclined to care what anyone thinks of her and determined to take whatever she wants and apologize to nobody; when she finally kills herself, it's her final "fuck you" to a world that doesn't deserve to have somebody as hot as her livening it up. Honorable mention goes to Anjelica Huston as Silver's first wife, who he meets again in New York years after having assumed that she'd died in a concentration camp. His first words to her after they'be been reunited: "I... I didn't know you were alive!" Her smiling reply: "This you never knew."

WOODY ALLEN AS DAVID DOBEL IN ANYTHING ELSE (2003)

I was going to include Ben Kingsley’s portrayal of Meyer Lansky in Bugsy here, but Kosher Nostra mobsters are well-represented elsewhere on the list, and since the Woodman was disparaged in the introduction as the personification of non-threatening Jew-hood, I figured it was only fair to mention his uncharacteristically empowered portrayal of gun-toting, windshield smashing, paranoid conspiracy theorist David Dobel in the underrated, unfairly maligned romantic tragedy, Anything Else. Like his work in the far superior Stardust Memories (which critics also hated), Allen’s performance here (as an unreliable mentor to the likeable, lovelorn Jason Biggs) is cranky and misanthropic, but also darkly funny and refreshingly prickly, with the courage of its own piss and vinegar convictions. Dobel may be just as much of a hard luck case as some of Allen’s previous incarnations, but this character would rather fight than mope, choosing anger over depression in his confrontations with the injustices of the world. Like his cool, successful Bizzaro World alter ego Nick Fifer in Paul Mazursky’s 1991 curiosity Scenes From A Mall, Dobel is the rare Allen character that strays from the comedian’s typical comfort zone to hint at the Tough Jew lurking just beneath the tsuris.

Click here for more Tough Jews!

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent

Take Five: Assassination!

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Ever since a November afternoon in 1963, a man in a high place with a rifle and a head full of malice directed at the President of the United States has arguably been our most persistent national nightmare. And from Abraham Lincoln's assassination by one of the nation's best-known actors to the appropriately ham-handed attempt on the life of the ineffectual Gerald Ford by a Manson Family hanger-on, the murder of famous politicians has absorbed our national attention in the news, so why shouldn't it equally influence the kind of movies we watch? Pete Travis' Vantage Point opens across the country this weekend; early buzz has it that the movie, about the assassination of someone pretending to be the president, is all style and little substance, wasting its interesting cast on a movie filled with jump-cuts and car chases. The assassination of a political leader, more often than not (especially in recent big-budget actioners like Shooter), is just a McGuffin to carry us to the punch-outs and crashes. Still, there have been a number of movies in which the killing of a high-profile politician has driven the plot with highly engaging results; today in Take Five, we'll look at a few of the best.

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)

One of the first post-Kennedy assassination films, John Frankenheimer's best film was actually released before that fatal day in Dallas; but its theatrical run was unluckily ill-timed with the events of November 22nd, 1963. It was pulled from release and remained unavailable for decades until Frank Sinatra, who played the movie's protagonist, personally intervened to help get it back into production in the VHS era. It was a generous decision: the original Manchurian Candidate remains a masterwork of suspense and intrigue, with a towering performance by Laurence Harvey as the doomed assassin of a presidential candidate. The movie's stunning fantasy sequences, bittersweet moments of drama and romance, constant air of paranoid menace, and final bloody ending make it an assassination classic.

NASHVILLE (1975)

It's easy to forget that Robert Altman's sprawling, brilliant evocation of the Great American Movie revolves not around the country music industry, but the assassination of a political aspirant. Hal Phillip Walker is the unnerving, straight-talking and possibly deranged populist running for president as a political caucus convenes in Tennessee, and if we can see the assassin (played as an enigmatic cipher by David Hayward) coming a mile away, we are at least allowed the final shock in his choice of targets. In the end, as Walker's ominous black limos swarm around and speed him to safety and away from the body of beloved country star Barbara Jean, the schmaltz-peddling Haven Hamilton shows a surprising degree of grace under fire, intoning the charged lines "This isn't Dallas, it's Nashville! They can't do this to us here in Nashville! Let's show them what we're made of."

TAXI DRIVER (1976)

Widely condemned upon its release for allegedly glorifying vigilante justice, Martin Scorsese's masterpiece in fact does something entirely more subtle. Travis Bickle is the perfect psychological profile of a crazed assassin: alone, isolated, alienated, a military veteran with a gun fetish and a desire to be something -- anything -- to someone. The scenes where he stalks the presidential candidate Charles Palatine (like Hal Phillip Walker, a somewhat mysterious populist) are highly influenced by the life of Arthur Bremer, are a terrible portent -- but our expectations are short-circuited when Bickle misses his chance, and a potential monster becomes a local hero simply by changing his choice of targets. Bizarrely, the performance eventually helped inspire John Hinckley when he shot Ronald Reagan four years later.

MALCOLM X (1992)

Spike Lee's epic biopic nicely answers a tricky question: how do you make the story of an important historical figure suspenseful and compelling when you already know what's going to happen to him in the end? It helps that Malcolm X -- played perfectly here by Denzel Washington in perhaps his finest hour as an actor -- had an endlessly compelling life story even before the hail of gunshots that ended his life. Lee likewise makes a difference by letting his opinions about the circumstances of Malcolm's death be clearly known and telegraphing the final moments with a deluge of high-pitched emotional moments, but never letting the entire thing slide into self-parody or triteness. Not only a terrific story about a squalid and unnecessary political killing, but also one of Hollywood's finest biopics.

MUNICH (2005)

Stephen Spielberg still doesn't seem to know how to make a movie without screwing it up somehow, and the sad truth is that Munich's ridiculously over-the-top sex scene just about sinks it; filmgoers and critics seem to be able to talk about little else. It's too bad, because you take that monstrous aberration away, and what you've got is a compelling and effective little psychological thriller. Spielberg has never been the most subtle filmmaker in the world, and there's no way he's not going to let you leave the theatre without being beaten over the head with the movie's central thesis that there's not much moral or psychological difference between the men who assassinate innocent people in the name of a cause and the men who assassinate the assassins, but the movie is still expertly done and well worth seeing as long as you close your eyes when Eric Bana takes his clothes off.

Trailer Roundup: Cloverfield, Definitely Maybe, The Other Boleyn Girl

Peter Smith — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Cloverfield

While the 1.18.08 teaser that played before Transformers this past summer appeared to simply be a brilliant piece of viral marketing, it now appears that the project, now titled Cloverfield, will actually be shot largely by characters wielding personal camcorders and camera phones, instead of in a conventional style. Frankly, I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I think it's a good idea in theory to make a kind of Godzilla for the YouTube generation. But a movie like this is tricky to pull off. The Blair Witch Project worked because you always got a sense that there were really three people lost in the forest and beset by forces they couldn't explain, but it'll be much harder to get that same vibe with a project this large-scale and effects-intensive. I'm not sure the director of the 1996 David Schwimmer vehicle The Pallbearer is the man for the job. Regardless, I'm curious to find out.

Definitely, Maybe

About the best thing I can say about this trailer is that Ryan Reynolds doesn't look to be as insufferable as he usually is. Plus his three romantic partners — Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz, and Isla Fisher — are all pretty smokin'. But otherwise, gag me. Much of the blame can be placed on little Abigail Breslin, who has taken over the mantle of Hollywood's go-to moppet from Dakota Fanning. Or maybe it's just that the character feels less like a precocious kid than a screenwriter's conception of same, a little girl who gives voice to all the clever, self-aware ideas on the scribe's oh-so-clever mind. How else to explain lines like "what's the male word for slut?" This is the kind of crappy Valentine's Day release that makes me glad to be single. And who signed off on that title?

The Other Boleyn Girl

Okay, who cast this thing? When your least problematic lead is Aussie Eric Bana (Henry the Eighth he ain't, he ain't), you know there's trouble. I'm not sure who's more ill-fitting in this story, emo pixie Natalie Portman as the defiant Anne Boleyn, or princess of pout Scarlett Johansson as her sister Mary. Based on her ignominious work in previous period films, I'm inclined to lean toward Johansson here, but it's a tough call. Either way, couldn't they find two English actresses who (a) suited their roles, and (b) were more convincing as sisters? With Elizabeth: The Golden Age and now this, Hollywood might want to consider laying off the British history for a while, lest our friends across the pond think we've got it in for them.

— Paul Clark

Morning Deal Report: Remake Watch

Peter Smith — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:00:00 GMT

Despite the (rightfully) tenuous status of the $100m+ comedy, Universal is adapting of Land of the Lost. The big-screen version will star Will Ferrell and a large number of Sleestaks. (Or is the plural still Sleestak? Not sure on that one.)

Eric Bana will play Uhura in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek. Wait, I'm sorry — he'll play the villain.

Terminator will be back, in the first film of a trilogy set in the post-apocalyptic future seen briefly in the original films. The budget, as Variety memorably puts it, will be. . . "event-sized." Arguably, no Terminator has been great since the first one, but if you have to do it, one request: bring back Eddie Furlong!

Videogame art director Jerry O'Flaherty will direct the film adaptation of Thundercats. The best thing to ever come out of Thundercats is this map. Top that, O'Flaherty.

— Peter Smith