AICN Downunder: Latauro on RATS AND CATS! LEATHERHEADS! And More!
Published at: May 23, 2008, 1:12 a.m. CST by quint
You're only as young as the woman you feel.
AICN-DOWNUNDER
Hey kids, slow news fortnight. A few reviews for you, though, plus a clickable link to my INDIANA JONES IV review if you missed it the first time around.
NEWS
Simon Wincer, the director who made both his name and a film with 1983's PHAR LAP is returning to the race track with THE CUP, about the famous Melbourne Cup win that took place days after the 2002 Bali bombings. Stephen Curry (TAKE AWAY, ROGUE) will play jockey Damien Olivier, and Ray Winstone will play trainer Dermot Weld. Filming will begin at some point in the future, and conclude at a point even further into the future.
AWARDS, FESTIVALS AND SCREENINGS
ASIA PACIFIC SCREEN AWARDS
Bruce Beresford will serve as the president of the International Jury for APSA this November. The awards will be held on the Gold Coast.
WOMEN IN FILM
Mandy Walker, the Aussie cinematographer who lensed LANTANA, SHATTERED GLASS, and Baz Luhrmann's upcoming NEW HOLLAND, will receive the Kodak Vision Award for cinematography at the Women In Film's Crystal and Lucy Awards in LA this June.
BOX OFFICE
The inclusion of IRON MAN pretty much makes up for the rest of this list. Oy gevalt.
1. IRON MAN
2. WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS
3. 21
4. MADE OF HONOUR
5. SHUTTER
RELEASED THIS TWO WEEKS
Audiences get conned, I'm unable to sum up this film in one witty caption, the makers of a dog show switch animals, Joshua Jackson cleverly revives his career with a remake of a Japanese horror film, Diane Keaton stars in a film that apparently needed two writers, this film has (I swear to god) a Salman Rushdie cameo, and I don't think the opposite of "secret" is "un-secret" -- lolz @ French ppl!!!
LEATHERHEADS opens around Australia next week, and I feel a little unqualified to review it. See, there are films that you feel are so wildly geared against you, you don't even bother with them. I mean, I literally don't bother with them. AICN doesn't require me to see every film that comes out, and so a few weeks ago I skipped the MADE OF HONOR screening, avoided the WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS screening, and went straight to IRON MAN. There, I was greeted with a large contingent of upset film critics who looked as if they'd wasted their entire day up until this point. (Then, some of them told me they'd wasted their entire day up until this point. My ability to read faces is unparalleled.) It's only the stuff that looks unwatchable that I avoid. I mean, I'm not just going to the "important" films, or the slam dunks. I know to avoid formulaic Hollywood drivel or anything that has Ashton Kutcher in it, but I'll always do my best to make the effort for films I know nothing about other than the title. Last film I did that for was MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY, and I loved the hell out of that.
I tell you this, because LEATHERHEADS is the opposite of those films. It's one of those films that seems like it's so perfectly in tune with my own sensibilities, there's no question I'll love it. George Clooney? Renee Zellweger? John Krasinski? A 1930s screwball comedy? Good god, you may as well have called it LATAURO, COME SEE THIS FILM NOW.
So, with the semi-apologetic qualifying out of the way, you know where I'm coming from when I say how much I loved this film. It's directed by Clooney, and he's somehow managed to infuse his charm into every frame. It's quite honestly the filmic equivalent of Clooney being charming at you for two hours.
That, by the way, is its only real flaw. Two hours is a bit too long for this film, and the lag it experiences at the end of its second act and the start of its third bears this out. Despite this, I never really got sick of it. There's such a glory to the world it's showing us, both realistic and utterly constructed at the same time, that makes it so delightful for anyone who enjoys this style of film.
The highlights are, of course, the banter between Clooney's Dodge Connelly and Zellweger's Lexie Littleton. The film soars whenever these two begin trading barbs like they're Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, and they maintain that tradition flawlessly.
The third act "twist" is fairly predictable, but enjoyable nonetheless, and I came out of this film more satisfied than I have with many others. And, it's worth saying, that my appreciation of the film has increased in the week since I saw it. Don't know if that'll happen to everyone, though.
So, with my absolutely pro-screwball bias confessed, I tell you that LEATHERHEADS is funny and charming in the ways it absolutely should be.
RATS AND CATS
I'm not sure what to make of new Australian film RATS AND CATS. Having not seen "Wilfred", the lauded series from RATS AND CATS writers/stars Jason Gann and Adam Zwar, I wasn't sure how to prime myself for their big screen debut.
And having seen it, I'm still not sure. The film begins in a gripping way, seems to drift into tedium, and then wins you over by the end. I say that as if that's going to be everyone's journey, but really, that's just how I reacted to it. I don't think the film fluctuates as much as my reactions suggest, but its style is very much of that laconic Australian bent, where it charms you through laid back alienation.
Director Tony Rogers (also from "Wilfred") knows how to point a camera, and if the budget is as low as I've heard, then he'd to be commended for not letting that show on screen. Similar kudos to Anna Howard, who eschews the low budget Australian film tradition by actually giving every shot a real depth, and developing a character for the township that the film is set in. I can't find the name of the composer, but the score for the film is also unusually high class; the comparisons in tone and pace to Cliff Martinez's score for THE LIMEY are impossible not to make.
The film is currently in cinemas, but the copy I watched was a DVD screener. I started watching it with a very disengaged, uninterested manner, which I know is completely unfair to any film, but worth mentioning because of how much harder it took to win me over. And win me over it did.
Last week, I couldn't figure out how I felt about the new INDY film, and hoped that the process of writing my review would sort that out. It didn't. (I still don't know how I feel about it. Intensely ambivalent is the phrase, I think.) Starting my RATS AND CATS review, I didn't know how I'd end it, but the process of writing and reflecting on it has definitely landed it in the positive category. Surely, that's high praise indeed.
NEXT WEEK
- Tony Gilroy to direct George Clooney in an intense drama about an Australian university campus, MONASH CLAYTON
- Nick Nolte and Paul Schraeder will reunite for a film about the making of GONE BABY GONE in AFFLECKTION
- Cameron Crowe makes a return to directing with the ill-advised sequel ELIZABETHTOWN: THE GOLDEN AGE
