Tag Archives: Woody Harrelson

Halloween Countdown

Halloween Countdown, Day 28: Zombieland

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Zombieland (2009)

Zombieland is quite possibly the perfect movie. Just when Shaun of the Dead convinced me that those Limey Brits had create the best-ever zombie romantic comedy, it turns out they’d only created the most British zombie romantic comedy. The Yank counterpart is even better, and with this amount of artillery, it’s certainly a more American vision.

Let’s start with the effervescently clever writing. Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick take the tried-and-true zombiepocalypse premise and sprint with it in totally new and awesome directions.

And the cameo. I cannot imagine a better one. I mean that. I’m not sure a walk on by Jesus himself could have brought me more joy.

That’s not true. Plus, in zombie movie?! How awesome would that have been?!

The performances kick ass, also. Thank you Rubin Fleischer for respecting each character enough to allow them a good balance of stupid mistakes, solid decisions and laughs.

Jesse Eisenberg anchors the film with an inspired narration and an endearing dork characterization. Yes, we’ve seen him dork before. One dork nearly won him an Oscar. Still, this is one of his finer dorks.

But Woody Harrelson owns this film. His gun toting, Twinkie loving, Willie Nelson singing, Dale Earnhart number wearing redneck ranks among the greatest horror heroes ever.

I give you, a trip to a loud and well-lit amusement park is not a recommendation Max Brooks would make during the zombiepocalypse. Still, you’ve got to admit it’s a gloriously filmed piece of action horror cinema.

Listen weekly to MaddWolf’s horror podcast FRIGHT CLUB. Do it!

Outtakes

Countdown: Best (and Worst) Actors Playing Athletes

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Major League‘s 25th anniversary meets Draft Day‘s opening weekend, and it got us chatting about the more and less convincing onscreen athletic performances. Remember Chelcie Ross as Eddie Harris, veteran Tribe pitcher and Jobu hater? How old was that guy, a hundred? (Fun fact: he was 47.) We believed he was a MLB starting pitcher almost as much as we bought Denis Leary playing a grizzled NFL coach. But is anybody worse? And does anybody do it well?

Most Convincing

Kevin Costner

It really doesn’t matter the sport. He’s convinced us as a baseball player several times, and a golfer. And it’s not just the easy athleticism or the mechanics, but his comfort with lingo and team relationships. We’re sold.

Jamie  Foxx

Any Given Sunday lacks a lot. A lot. But one thing it absolutely possesses is a realistic athlete in the form of Jamie Foxx. He has grace and skill and his onfield performance is almost enough to compensate for Al Pacino’s screeching.

Woody Harrelson

The guy can play basketball. Hustling on a playground or finishing a semi-pro career, Harrelson has some skill on the court. Dunking or not, tell Aunt Bea we said he can ball.

Chadwick Boseman

He had some big shoes to fill in 42, and not only does he look the part off the diamond, he actually swings a bat and throws a ball with the confidence of a man brave enough to play Jackie Robinson.

Charlie Sheen

Sheen’s passion for baseball is well-known, and he took his role as an MLB pitcher seriously. Whether he was throwing just a bit outside or right down the plate, Sheen had pretty smooth delivery. Hell, maybe he Tribe should sign him up.

 

Least Convincing

And we’re not talking about Will Ferrell, who put his lack of athleticism to excellent use as a basketball player (Semi-Pro), skater (Blades of Glory), soccer coach (Kicking and Screaming), NASCAR driver (Talladega Nights). Ditto for Will’s buddy Danny McBride, whose casting as a 100 mph fireballer in East Bound and Down is equally ludicrous. No, these are the folks who were wildly miscast as serious athletes.

There are a lot of options here. Rob Lowe in Youngblood as hockey player who clearly cannot skate. Or Madonna in A League of Their Own. Or pint sized Michael J. Fox playing basketball in Teen Wolf – sure it’s a comedy, but is it the basketball itself that was meant to draw giggles?

There are other real standouts, though.

Wesley Snipes

Snipes wins. The guy was forever being cast as an athlete, and though he looked good in a uniform, team sports were clearly not his bag. You might not know it from casual viewings of Major League – yes he made that catch at the wall but notice you never see him throwing – but between The Fan and White Men Can’t Jump, you do.

Bernie Mac

In Mr. 3000, Mac plays an unlikeable, retired hitter planning to skate into the hall of fame on just his career hit total:  3000 exactly.  But when an error in the stats reveals he’s short, he goes back to the diamond regardless of the fact that Mac had clearly never held a bat in his life. Usually it’s the throwing motion that gives an actor away, but Mac was so unconvincing at the plate we actually missed the technique of Wesley Snipes.

Anthony Michael Hall

In 1988, Uma Thurman was still unknown, Robert Downey, Jr. was still high, and Anthony Michael Hall was still a 90 pound weakling. So whoever decided to cast him as the number one high school football recruit in Johnny Be Good was clearly sharing  Downey’s brownies, because Hall wasn’t just far too small to be taken seriously. He looked like he was playing with his eyes closed.

Anthony Perkins

Three years before his breakout brilliance in Psycho, Anthony Perkins played another character with mental illness. Mental illness he handled well. Unfortunately, in Fear Strikes Out, that character – Jimmy Piersall – was also a Major League center fielder. Tee ball players show a more commanding grasp of the game. It’s hard to imagine anyone looking more lost than Perkins looked at the plate, in the field, heck, in the building.

Tim Robbins

While Bull Durham may be the greatest sports movie of all time, with much of its success due to casting, choosing Tim Robbins to play pitching phenom Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh clearly had nothing to do with his presence on the mound. Robbins is a limby, wobbly mess and that was the ugliest windup in sports movie history.

 

 

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Tough Time for a Brother’s Keeper

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Out of the Furnace

by Hope Madden

Just in time for the holidays, a bleak look at desperation, blood ties, masculinity and loyalty. Welcome to Braddock, PA and Out of the Furnace.

Part Deer Hunter, part Winter’s Bone, Scott Cooper’s new film casts a haunted image of ugliness scarring natural beauty, whether it’s the steel town petering out and leaving a rusted carcass in a Pennsylvania valley, or the human nastiness up in the hills on the Jersey border.

The tale follows a pair of beleaguered brothers in America’s disappearing rust belt. It’s a deceptively simple story of being your brother’s keeper, but Cooper’s meandering storyline keeps you guessing, often entranced. Nothing is as simple as it seems, although there is an inevitability to everything that makes it feel strangely familiar.

Cooper’s camera evokes a palpable sense of place, and his script positions the film firmly and believably – but without a heavy hand – in a clear time period. The setting itself is so true and absorbing that many of the film’s flaws can almost be forgiven.

At the core of Furnace’s many successes are some powerful performances. Both Christian Bale and the endlessly under-appreciated Casey Affleck, as Russell and Rodney Baze, respectively, dig deep to uncover the anguish and resilience at the heart of the siblings’ relationship and struggles. Bale, in particular, smolders with a tenderness and deep love that is heartbreaking.

On the other hand, Woody Harrelson is just plain scary. As the villain (and excellently named) Harlan DeGroat, Harrelson goes all out, leaves nothing behind. Harlan is a Bad MoFo, no doubt, and Harrelson leaves no scenery unchewed.

Cooper stumbles here and there with his storytelling, though. There is some heavy-handed symbolism, and a letter written from one brother to another that’s almost too clichéd and trite to accept in the otherwise articulate piece of filmmaking.

Just four years ago, in his feature film debut Crazy Heart, Cooper led Jeff Bridges to his first Oscar, and Maggie Gyllenhaal to her first nomination. His sophomore effort is less assured, as if he’s trying too hard. His ability to conjure such a vivid place and time impresses, and both Bale and Affleck are characteristically wonderful, but the director can’t seem to reign in the entire cast, and he borrows too freely from other (excellent) movies.

While the stumbles aren’t crippling, they keep Out of the Furnace from the greatness it otherwise might have reached.

 

Verdict-3-5-Stars

 

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State of the Art Gaming

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by George Wolf

 

When a movie runs two and a half hours, yet the ending arrives as an unwelcome surprise, you know that film has done something right.

The Hunger Games:  Catching Fire is that film, one that manages to do just about everything right.

From the start, it raises the stakes from last year’s franchise debut. While The Hunger Games was certainly a competent adventure, it was content (perhaps understandably) to work within the “young adult” parameters of Suzanne Collins’s source novel.

Catching Fire deals in more mature themes and sophisticated ideas, weaving an intelligent script, impressive direction and superlative performances into a massively entertaining blockbuster that leaves you anxious for the next chapter.

The story picks up with Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) on their victory tour, accompanied by their ever-present handlers Haymitch (Woody Harrelson) and Effie (Elizabeth Banks). While the group is away, President Snow (Donald Sutherland) and new chief game maker Plutarch (these names!) Heavensbee (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) worry that Katniss has become a symbol of hope for the common people, a symbol which could spur another uprising.

Planning to eliminating that threat, Snow declares the next Hunger Games will be played only by former victors,  which means Katniss and Peeta will again be fighting for their lives.

While this sounds like just another empty rehashing of a successful formula, Catching Fire‘s scriptwriters, following Collins’s lead, have more on their minds.

Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire/127 Hours) and Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine/Toy Story 3), both Oscar winners, fill their script with the emotional heft needed to create a sequel which immediately creates potential for a truly memorable trilogy.

We connect with the characters on a deeper level, the sociopolitical undertones carry greater nuance, and there are even some sly parallels offered between the superstar status of Katniss and the actress playing her.

Speaking of Lawrence, well, if you’re sick of hearing she’s great, call a doctor. She grounds Katniss in vulnerability while never relinquishing the character’s heroic status. Perhaps more impressively, she sells the love triangle, making Katniss’s conflicted feelings for both Peeta and Gale (Liam Hemsworth) totally believable. And not a shirtless wolf-boy in sight..who knew it was possible?

The strong supporting cast is peppered with new faces, such as Hoffman, Jeffrey Wright, and Jena Malone , who plays against her former child star type as the edgy Johanna. Keep an eye out for her elevator scene, one of the film’s lighter moments. It’s a scream.

All the separate elements are wrapped in a nice holiday bow by director Francis Lawrence (no relation). He smoothly guides the film from spectacle to solitude and back again, providing some arresting visuals in the process (see the IMAX version if you can). Despite director Lawrence’s heretofore lackluster resume (Constantine/ Water for Elephants), the choice to keep him at the helm for the Mockingjay finale (to be split into two films) now seems totally justified.

Okay, Catching Fire does stumble here and there. The scenes of Haymitch introducing Katniss and Peeta to their new opponents seems more fitting for an American Gladiators reunion and…well, that’s about it.

Fans of the book should expect a fantastic realization of the world they imagined, while those who haven’t read the novels (like myself) get to fully enjoy the delicious twist at film’s end, one that may invoke memories of a certain empire striking back.

Either way, The Hunger Games:  Catching Fire is rousing, epic entertainment.

 

 

Verdict-4-0-Stars

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keT5CRhhy84

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Nothing to See Here

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Now You See Me

By Hope Madden

In the fall of 2006 we saw back to back films about magicians – The Illusionist and The Prestige. I remember thinking, really? Why?

Well, with just two months separating the release of The Incredible Bomb about Burt Wonderstone from this weekend’s Now You See Me, it’s hard not to scratch your head again at Hollywood’s insistence on our interest in magic.

At least Prestige and Illusionist were half decent films.

Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson lead a group of magicians who seem to pull off a bank heist during their show, and promise more of the same. Mark Ruffalo turns into the Hulk and smashes up their hall of mirrors.

If only!

No, instead he teams with Inglorious Basterds’s Melanie Laurent – an INTERPOL agent – to prove there’s no such thing as magic and that these guys are plain old crooks.

Unless it’s all an illusion…

Cons, comeuppance, love and daddy issues crisscross with lackluster acting to keep you from wondering whether Michael Caine (who was also in The Prestige. Of course he was!) or Morgan Freeman have milkier eyes. They’re both getting quite old. Maybe they should turn down one or two of the films released in any given year. Perhaps see an ophthalmologist.

They both certainly deserve better than this undercooked mess, directed by style-over-substance maestro Louis Leterrier (The Transporter, Clash of the Titans). With his characters talking incessantly about sleight of hand, you’d think Leterrier might employ that particular tactic on his own. Maybe razzle dazzle us while the con happens right under our noses.

Instead, perfectly ludicrous tricks and schemes are re-enacted without regard to plausibility. Rather than lifting the curtain to unveil anything tricky, the approach only uncovers some very lazy filmmaking.

Wasting a cast that has accumulated a combined 3 Oscars and another 4 nominations is a trick in itself, but aside from Harrelson’s natural charm, nothing about the performers impresses. Workhorses Freeman and Caine come closest to delivering something akin to acting. When push comes to shove, the usually impressive Ruffalo is badly miscast, Isla Fisher flails against hideous dialogue, and Eisenberg phones in just another turn as a hyper-intelligent dick.

And on top of it all, they play magicians.

Seriously, who gives a shit about magicians?

Verdict-2-0-Stars

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNfiXZzmhjw