The Sopranos: Season 6, Part 2 (2007) Review

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(More customer reviews)So much of what's said abut the final season of The Sopranos refers to the last five minutes, as people unfortunately overlook the best nine episode string of the entire series.David Chase's last season of television's finest program is full of all the qualities that attracted viewers and critics for the past decade. Characters live in a world where death is a possibility each day, but aren't shown to be gods or royalty. Rather, viewers see in them all of the emotions experienced in every family, as Tony, Carmela, Christopher and the rest of the cast share their memorable loves, hates, dreams, failures...and meals.
Season 6.2 has three distinct parts.The first four episodes are "last moments in the sun" for some of the more important characters. Bobby and Janice retreat for a weekend on a lake with Tony and Carm; Johnny Sack battles a new enemy in prison; institutionalized Uncle Junior spends his last moments of sanity running a card game and mentoring a young killer; and Hesh fears for his safety when Tony owes him money and seems reluctant to pay.
Next, the season moves to the difficulties of AJ and Christopher and how both problems affect Tony. Tony takes a backseat to other characters in the opening episodes of the season, but he's never been more laid bare than in how he deals with his literal and figurative sons. As with the ambiguous nature of the show, Tony at times appears to be a heroic, thoughtful and brave, while other times, he's a monster.
Finally, the last two episodes end in the much anticipated war with New York, as successful and unsuccessful hits are targeted at the show's biggest players. A sense of closure is reached with Tony's relationships with his rivals, his crew, his family and the FBI, but as everyone in America knows, nothing concrete is declared about his future. Does he live? Does he go to prison? Will his crew survive? Those questions aren't answered, Chase`s last gift to his viewers, as people can continue turning this show over in their heads for years.
I wasn't there when The Tempest first played at the Globe, and I didn't see The Beatles at Candlestick Park. But Sunday Nights at 9pm on HBO, I saw my generation's finest contribution to pop culture and to literature, with the final season providing a closing act worthy of such a masterpiece.

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Last year, Tony Soprano cheated death when he was shot by his now institutionalized Uncle Junior. While Tony continues to muse about his second chance at life, he faces a myriad of immediate, stress-inducing crises at home, at work and from the law. Tony's wife Carmela plans for a future she's not sure will arrive, and son AJ and daughter Meadow find that adulthood holds its own surprises. Meanwhile, at work, Tony comes to doubt the allegiances of many of those closest to him ¿ no one, not Paulie, Bobby, Silvio or even Christopher is above suspicion. The clock is ticking. Time is running out. But on who?

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The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) Review

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(More customer reviews)Though Scott's uniquely frenetic editing has been toned down from his previous films, his unmistakable style still frequents the action and accentuates the tension-filled premise. Denzel Washington's quick-witted and moderately corrupt dispatcher plays off of John Travolta's Wall Street savvy sociopath with plenty of clever exchanges, and the dark humor and suspense that find its way into the bloodshed culminates in an engaging game of cat and mouse. Not quite as slick as the original, and perhaps a little too conspicuous in its efforts at exuding cool, this latest take on the subway heist story still accomplishes entertainment at break-neck speed.
When a New York City subway train is hijacked, Rail Control Center dispatcher Walter Garber (Denzel Washington) becomes an unwitting negotiator for the ruthless criminals aboard. Led by the uncontainable Ryder (John Travolta), the hijackers demand ten million dollars in exchange for the seventeen hostages and offer only one hour to deliver the ransom. As minutes quickly count down, Garber must utilize his cunning and resourcefulness to buy time and catch the mercenary off guard as the situation goes from bad to catastrophic.
The unusual, highly stylized, frenzied editing is assuredly a now permanent technique for Tony Scott films - it's a signature method that he ceaselessly experiments with, frequently going overboard, and only occasionally able to harness. In Pelham it looks familiar but doesn't detract from the story, even if some moments of suspense are dulled by the blurred colors of slow-motion and missing frames. The remaining stunt sequences are exciting and tense, but hardly necessary. The car chases are never about catching someone, but rather beating the clock. It's action for action's sake, and while enjoyably destructive, it's entirely apparent.
Most audiences will not know that The Taking of Pelham 123 is based on a John Godey novel, or that it's been adapted into a movie twice before with the same name. While Scott's version stands on its own as a big-budget action movie, the purpose of specifically remaking this story is puzzling. Shouldn't the reasoning behind the revisiting of a popular plot be to improve upon some outstanding aspect? The use of the internet, cell phones, snipers, bloodshed, crude language and more give this new vision a sparklingly modernized feel, but when the movie draws to a close, it just can't compete with the 1974 version. Washington and Travolta have an intriguing chemistry, but even that can't outdo the cat-and-mouse mindgames between Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw, who played their counterparts in the first feature adaptation. Perhaps a title change could have appropriately distanced Scott's take from being endlessly compared to an infinitely superior film.
- The Massie Twins

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Walter Garber (Denzel Washington) is a New York City subway dispatcher whose ordinary day is thrown into chaos by an audacious crime: the hijacking of a subway train. Ryder (John Travolta), the criminal mastermind behind the hijacking and leader of a highly-armed gang of four, threatens to execute the train's passengers unless a large ransom is paid within one hour. As the tension mounts beneath his feet, Garber employs his vast knowledge of the subway system in a battle to outwit Ryder and save the hostages. But there's one riddle Garber can't solve: even if the thieves get the money, how can they possibly escape?

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In the Loop Review

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(More customer reviews)"In the Loop" is a sharp and witty and funny and depressing take on the office politics of politics. Simon Foster is the ambitious but largely clueless and weak-willed British "minister for international development." When he makes the mistake of suggesting, contrary to the official British position, that an imminent war was "unforeseeable" on a BBC radio interview, he is colorfully and harshly reprimanded by the British press secretary who seems incapable of putting three words together without a creative interjection of expletives. Simon suddenly finds himself in the midst of a power struggle between hawks and doves (both UK and US) and interns and career politicians, some who care about whether the war (ostensibly the war in Iraq, which is never actually mentioned) proceeds and, mostly, others who care more about their own future in politics. The point is that even when it comes to matters of greatest urgency, the petty and small are never far off. It's a clever and very funny take on bureaucracy and international politics, that would be even funnier if it weren't so awfully scary. Shot in the kinetic documentary style made popular on the BBC's Office and its American remake - it may make you dizzy while the wordplay has your head spinning. Definitely worth watching.

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It s the razor-sharp smash that critics are calling brilliant (San Francisco Chronicle), blisteringly funny (USA Today) and "One of the best films of the year... a little piece of heaven (Chicago Tribune). Peter Capaldi stars as a foul-mouthed British government spokesman who must act quickly when a mid-level minister (Tom Hollander of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN) tells an interviewer that U.S. war in the Middle East is unforeseeable . But when they are both summoned to Washington D.C., the hapless politico quickly becomes a pawn of bureaucrats, spin doctors and military advisors, including a hardnosed General (James Gandolfini, in a performance Rolling Stone hails as slyly hilarious ). Gina McKee (WONDERLAND), Anna Chlumsky (MY GIRL) and Steve Coogan (TROPIC THUNDER) co-star in this hilarious satire from director/co-writer Armando Iannucci, the award-winning creator of the classic BBC sitcoms I M ALAN PARTRIDGE and THE THICK OF IT.

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Where the Wild Things Are (2009) Review

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(More customer reviews)It's a funny thing: adults have no problem loading films with whizzing bullets, raging flames and bellowing anger and slap a PG rating on it, but the moment the protagonist is a child they back off and claim "Whoa - this is too intense and scary!".
Nuts.
The claims that this film is a little intense are true - it IS intense because it's much more honest and real than any other films for children available in the last thirty years. By 'for children' I mean ALL children, any age.
Those who can't recall what it was like to be a kid aren't going to get it. They will be those who don't recall what it was like to be frightened, who don't recall how it feels to be second best to those they love most, who never had to carve out a slice of reality (or unreality) for themselves to make sense of the incomprehensible.
The world portrayed in the film is the real world where individuals live their own lives, sometimes at the expense of the feelings of those immediately around them, especially family. This may be the source of the films undeserved reputation as "scary" - while it is certainly no ghetto, "Max" the child protoganist lives in a realistically portrayed lower income neighborhood and his familial troubles are ones all too many children are accustomed to. He responds to these cares in ways that are well documented in child psychology. If this setting is considered by some as too scary for children then we have only ourselves to blame. This is how the real world is - it is not an Eighties family sit-com.
My nephew (5) and neice (9) are currently going through their parents divorce. Without spelling out the obvious overmuch, it was with a little trepidation that my Brother and I took them to see this yesterday. They're pretty resilient kids and they internalise more than they let on, acting out infrequently but we still weren't sure. They handled it fine and they "got it".
It seems to me modern American parents have bee brainwashed into believing that only a saccahrine sunny diet is suitable for youngsters - is this perhaps signs of guilt for the dangerous mess we've made of the world, that we must protect them at all turns, from life and living itself?
I've got news for you: the world has always been a scary place to kids, whether it was Indian attacks, Great Depressions, A-bombs or terrorists the world continues to turn and there's always a new bogey-man to shield our kids from. But to never let a hint of reality through is unhealthy.
For a hundred generations children have been told fairytales about death and loss and danger (sex and responsibility, too). Only relatively recently has the PC craze in American culture turned on this traditional method of exposing kids to reality. How many people in my generation (I'm 41) saw Gene Wilder in "The Little Prince" in the Seventies?
The film's lesson as it is given implies that immense things may crash around you, some of which may have been set in motion by yourself and you must cope as well as you can. Not everything is perfect and never will be; to expect such perfection is immature and unreasonable. And yet sincere contrition, empathy and love will help your world turn, turn it away from the dark scary things. Perhaps this also is a source of the negative impression of this film: the film accepts that the world is a dangerous, sometimes callous and frightening place. This is not a significant truism in the realm of modern juvenile entertainment where nine year olds easily defeat ninjas and aliens and are always smarter than those silly adults, yet it is difficult to deny. It's utilization by Spike Jonze is counter-revolutionary for the better.
A previous reviewer missed the point when they said that "Max" abandons his friends, the monsters, at the films end and what kind of lesson is that?
The monsters are not his friends - they are part of him, they are the facets of his own personality allowed to run amok.
When Max leaves the monster island at the end it is because he's a little wiser and more in control. He doesn't feel the need to act out and run wild.
He has seen firsthand that acts that are inherently violent, regardless of playful intent, have real and negative consequences, but he needed to see them in this fairytale place to understand his own responsibilty.
Only then is he ready to come home and be civil with the people who love him.
And yet, he loves the monsters and howls for them because they all are a part of him or of the systems that dictate the form of his life. They are his Id run wild and free as he would like to be, yet not wild with malice (destructive as they are) and thus worthy of mourning. They help save him from those self-destructive aspects in himself like the monster "Carol" because he isn't meant to live "Where the Wild Things Are". He grows more than most adults will in a lifetime by coming to terms with these violent emotional 'monsters'. He has seen them and he has seen them in himself. He will never be free of them but he knows what is important - his love for his family.
The dialogue in the film is fascinating and a key to the whole. It is kid talk. A mystery to adults, it has it's own logic and rules like "Faerie" or "Wonderland". One must navigate carefully to avoid catastrophe as Max discovers. I think my neice understood it better than I did, even if the metaphor escaped her. And so it is within ourselves if we might regard our own inner workings as "monsters" - the wrong inflection or phrasing, even when addressing ourselves, sets off whole chains of sometimes violent emotion.
In the end, my neice and nephew left the theatre understanding that with someone to love you and someone to love everything is alright - you may go away to confront your own demons and fears for a time but the ones you care for and that care for you will be there waiting, no matter what age you are.
And that makes the world and this film alright.
PS - A brief mention of the soundtrack is in order: it too is outstanding. It has what I can only describe as a 1970s 'feel' too it - it is a little wild, unpolished, honest, hairy, chirpy and sweet all at once.
The first thing I thought of on listening as the film progressed were the children's album by Marlo Thomas "Free To Be You and Me" and the end/closing titles song as a childrens version of Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" with all it's enthusiastic happy hoots and howls. It had me as choked up as I haven't been in a long time over a movie.
Thanks, Maurice, Karen, Spike et al.

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"Let the wild rumpus start!" Nine-year-old Max runs away from home and sails across the sea to become king of the land Where the Wild Things Are. King Max rules a wondrous realm of gigantic fuzzy monsters--but being king may not be as carefree as it looks! Filmmaker Spike Jonze directs a magical, visually astonishing film version of Maurice Sendak's celebrated children's classic, starring an amazing cast of screen veterans and featuring young Max Records in a fierce and sensitive performance as Max. Explore the joyous, complicated and wildly imaginative wild rumpus of the time and place we call childhood.

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