Posts Marked Drama

  • Winter’s Bone review by Tim Hayes

    July 9th, 2010

    Mr. Hayes is not only the ALMT publicist and lead editor,
    but also contributes film journalism and reviews to Critic’s Notebook and Cinemattraction.

    Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    Winter’s Bone (2010) dir. Debra Granik

    Screenwriter: Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini
    Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Lauren Sweetser, Kevin Breznaha, Isaiah Stone, Shelley Waggener, Ashlee Thompson, William White, Casey MacLaren
    Genre: Drama
    MPAA Rating: R (for some drug material, language and violent content)
    Official Website: wintersbonemovie.com

    “Winter’s Bone” won big at this year’s Sundance festival, where according to the cliche only grim indie films about miserable people in trouble go down well. And at first glance this one fits the bill: It is indeed a dour story of a determined young woman stuck in a jam with hardly a friend in sight. But it’s also tense, full of atmosphere, very well acted, and tough to forget. As downbeat and menacing character studies go, it’s one of the best.

    The young woman is Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), whose teenage life in the bleak Ozark hills consists mostly of looking after her mother and being a surrogate parent to her younger brother and sister, so it’s already no stroll in the park. Then an eviction notice arrives, and Ree really needs to find her absent dad in a hurry. But he, like most of the neighbors, is practically an outlaw, and finding him means asking a lot of very dangerous people about things they really don’t want to talk about.

    This is not the action-packed kind of thriller, but the sort that works up a head of unstoppable slow-burn tension and then just keeps going. Ree is unstoppable too, sticking to her guns and refusing to stop asking questions, even as the folks she’s asking get bigger, scarier, angrier, and more heavily armed. She’s ignored, warned off and casually beaten up, and that’s just by the wives of the local hard men. But it’s the wives who ultimately point Ree towards her goal and a grisly midnight discovery.

    That and Ree’s wish to put herself in harm’s way to protect her kids give the film a strong feminine aspect alongside its hard edges, and director Debra Granik has no trouble keeping “Winter’s Bone” firmly in position as a woman’s picture without giving up an inch of toughness. Jennifer Lawrence makes Ree seem like a thoroughly normal teenager from the school of hard knocks, tough and self-reliant, whose problems suddenly include her in-laws discussing whether to feed her to the hogs.

    READ THE FULL REVIEW AT The Critic’s Notebook

    July 9th,2010 Blogging, Film Reviews by Tim Hayes, Theatrical Thursdays, Video | Sections: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

  • The Runaways Review by Tim Hayes

    July 1st, 2010

    Mr. Hayes is not only the ALMT publicist and lead editor,
    but also contributes film journalism and reviews to Critic’s Notebook and Cinemattraction.

    Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    The Runaways (2010) dir. Floria Sigismondi

    Studio: Apparition
    Screenwriter: Floria Sigismondi
    Starring: Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, Michael Shannon, Danielle Riley Keough, Scout Taylor-Compton, Stella Maeve, Tatum O’Neal
    Genre: Biography, Drama, Music
    MPAA Rating: R (for language, drug use and sexual content – all involving teens)
    Official Website: Runawaysmovie.com

    As if the dripping cherry on the poster wasn’t a big enough pointer, the first shot in “The Runaways” is of menstrual flow. Don’t be fooled. Yes, the hormone levels start off high and rise higher as the film charges through the formation of the famous band by young women going through all sorts of self-discovery. But it’s also a terrifically well-made fable of what happens when the right people meet in just the right places, a film that knows the difference between passion and sleaze.


    Visually the film is a knock-out. Director Floria Sigismondi has a track record of borderline-disturbing music videos for people like Marilyn Manson and Bjork, but in “The Runaways” she uses color as a weapon. Every shot is a riot of bold colorful textures and electric hues, but the style never comes close to pop-art or an ice-cream headache. Instead it energizes the film right off the screen, a visual echo of the sparks that start flying when The Runaways form.


    On top of that the acting is uniformly awesome. Kim Fowley, the moderately unhinged producer who put the band together, is played by the always brilliant Michael Shannon as a hyper-camp madman, fully able to deal with a musical crisis while banging a passing secretary or hanging upside-down from the ceiling. The fun Shannon is having can only be guessed at.


    Kristen Stewart gets top billing as Joan Jett and she’s a good physical match with the guitarist, especially when copying Jett’s head-down loping stride. But the film is based on singer Cherie Currie’s book, so it’s Dakota Fanning who gets to plot a character arc and unleash her wild-child.


    The results could burn the paint off a door frame. In perfect sync with her (female) director, Fanning cavorts in her underwear, revels in the character’s jail-bait sex appeal and flies straight off the rails, without once being demeaned by the camera or turned into a cliche. Fanning was 15 years old when this was filmed – bear that in mind when she climbs into fishnets. Bear it in mind again when the character’s mournful, fierce eyes are still with you the following day.

    July 1st,2010 Blogging, Film Reviews by Tim Hayes, Theatrical Thursdays, Video | Sections: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

  • Bad Lieutenant Review by Tim Hayes

    June 10th, 2010

    Mr. Hayes is not only the ALMT publicist and lead editor,
    but also contributes film journalism and reviews to Critic’s Notebook and Cinemattraction.

    Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009) dir. Werner Herzog


    Release Date: November 20, 2009 (NY, LA; expands: Dec. 4)
    Studio: First Look Studios
    Director: Werner Herzog
    Screenwriter: William Finkelstein
    Starring: Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Fairuza Balk, Jennifer Coolidge, Vondie Curtis Hall, Shawn Hatosy, Denzel Whitaker, Xzibit, Shea Wigham, Katie Chonacas, Brad Dourif
    Genre: Crime, Drama
    MPAA Rating: R (for drug use and language throughout, some violence and sexuality)
    Official Website: BadLt.com


    Apart from its title, which sets a new low in meaningless labels, everything about the new “Bad Lieutenant” fizzes with life. Just not any kind of life you’d actually want. With a plot borrowed from the murkier end of “Hill Street Blues”, a lead actor convincingly off his rocker and a maverick director in his late sixties behind the camera, it’s a wild and crazy mixture and the sparks do fly.


    It’s not even close to a remake of the Abel Ferrara “Bad Lieutenant” from 1992, which is just as well since Harvey Keitel’s searing religious agonies in that film couldn’t possibly be reproduced a second time. Instead it’s got Nicolas Cage as Terrence McDonagh, a police officer in post-Katrina New Orleans whose instincts for doing the right thing are being worn down by eternal back pain and addiction to the drugs he steals from the evidence locker. “Everything I take is on prescription,” he claims at one point. “Except the heroin.” And the rest.


    Werner Herzog makes great documentaries, and the best bits in “Bad Lieutenant” are the ones where the battered characters and their equally wrecked home bleed together into a snapshot of a city that’s jumped the tracks. This being Herzog there are some nutty diversions, involving imaginary lizards and a dead man’s breakdancing soul, but the film’s atmosphere is wonderfully clammy and gets into your pores. Fine character actors like Brad Dourif and Michael Shannon turn up along the way, and Fairuza Balk, one of Hollywood’s true live wires, returns to the screen after too long away. It says something for the tone of “Bad Lieutenant” that she fits right in.


    But the main man is Cage, who between this and “Kick-Ass” is having quite a year. In “Bad Lieutenant” he adjusts his walk, his posture, every glance, every word, to reflect a man whose thought processes are fogged up and whose spine does not work. It’s a master class in on-screen shambling, and if falling foul of the IRS was going to inspire him to charge headlong into parts like this I wish it had happened years ago.



    June 10th,2010 Blogging, Film Reviews by Tim Hayes, Theatrical Thursdays, Uncategorized | Sections: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments

  • Whip It review by Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    April 22nd, 2010

    It’s Thursday, which means it’s…

    Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    Mr. Hayes is not only the ALMT publicist and lead editor,
    but also contributes film journalism and reviews to     Critic’s Notebook and Cinemattraction.

    Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    Whip It (2009) dir. Drew Barrymore


    Studio: Fox Searchlight Pictures
    Director: Drew Barrymore
    Screenwriter: Shauna Cross
    Starring: Ellen Page, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, Juliette Lewis, Eve, Jimmy Fallon, Daniel Stern, Drew Barrymore
    Genre: Action, Comedy, Drama
    MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for sexual content including crude dialogue, language and drug material)
    Official Website: Whip-It.net

    Girl power takes to the roller rink in “Whip It”, Drew Barrymore’s boisterous film about small-town life and the appeal of bodychecking your problems sideways into the cheap seats.

    The empowered girl is Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page), high-school student, reluctant beauty pageant regular and frustrated free spirit. Stuck with the kind of job you’d expect from an employer called the Oink Joint and locked into a spiky relationship with her mother Brooke (Marcia Gay Harden), Bliss lucks into an audition for local no-hope roller derby team The Hurl Scouts. And turns out to be a natural.

    That doesn’t sound so fresh, a sports-themed coming-of-age story through a young girl’s eyes. No big surprise that Bliss has a quick-witted best friend and acquires an indie boyfriend with a floppy fringe. But novelty isn’t really “Whip It”‘s game. Instead it gets by on klutzy charm, which it’s got in spades.

    A lot of that comes from the cast, sharp performers like Harden and Kristen Wiig and Daniel Stern who know how to underplay for effect. And the roller girls are a fun bunch of maniacs, with the director herself in the thick of things and staying emphatically Not Cute. Barrymore clearly keeps in touch with her inner teenager, which considering the things she got up at the time must be quite a conversation.

    But the real charm comes from Barrymore and writer Shauna Cross running through the plot without a flicker of condescension or scorn. “Whip It” ridicules no one, not even Brooke. Sometimes it tries too hard, and the needs of the soundtrack album control things once or twice, but the film is determined to be an honest low-fat chick-flick about young girls’ lives, inspirational but malice-free. There’s a whole female demographic entitled to feel that Hollywood doesn’t have a clue how to do such a thing, and “Whip It” deserves to find them.

    Plus it has Juliette Lewis, still untamed after all these years, barrelling around a roller rink in bare skin and neck tattoo, battering the crud out of people – an inspirational sight on so many levels.

    April 22nd,2010 Blogging, Film Reviews by Tim Hayes, Theatrical Thursdays, Video | Sections: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

  • The Lovely Bones review by Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    March 4th, 2010

    It’s Thursday, which means it’s…

    Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    Mr. Hayes is not only the ALMT publicist and lead editor,
    but also contributes film journalism and reviews to     Critic’s Notebook and Cinemattraction.

    Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    The Lovely Bones (2009) dir. Peter Jackson

    Release Date: December 11, 2009 (limited; expands: Dec. 25; wide: Jan. 15)
    Studio: DreamWorks Pictures (Paramount)
    Director: Peter Jackson
    Screenwriter: Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens
    Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci,Michael Imperioli, Saoirse Ronan
    Genre: Drama
    MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for mature thematic material involving disturbing violent content and images, and some language)

    Official Website: LovelyBones.com


    “The Lovely Bones” tackles deep emotional questions, and then pours on fairy-dust from a CGI paintbox. And then decides to try and be a thriller. Whether that makes it powerful or unbearable might depend on your taste, but it’s not a comfortable mix. Peter Jackson’s ten-year detour into spectacular creature features courtesy of Tolkien and a big gorilla hasn’t rubbed out his darker side, but he doesn’t stop this film clogging up with marshmallow. I don’t think he wants to.


    The story should make anyone wince. Teenager Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is murdered by a creepy neighbor, and observes her parents, her friends, and her killer from a candy-bar afterlife of shifting landscapes and flocking wildlife. Exactly why she’s stuck there isn’t clear until the end, but it lets Jackson find several inventive ways to meld poor dead Susie into the continuing lives of her parents.


    But those lives never become as vivid as they should. Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz do their honorable best, and Wahlberg gets one electric scene opposite Oscar-nominee Stanley Tucci as the killer, but their characters keep doing things that don’t feel right. Weisz is even shunted offscreen for large chunks of the plot, making the mother an incidental figure – a ridiculous move.

    Susie’s afterlife is where the real action is, a place where big chunks of symbolism roll across the landscape while Brian Eno’s music wafts dreamily by. Saoirse Ronan was only thirteen years old when the film was made, but has a gift for making acting look effortless. The film she’s in doesn’t feel effortless at all.


    March 4th,2010 Blogging, Film Reviews by Tim Hayes, Theatrical Thursdays, Video | Sections: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment
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