Archive for October, 2011

REVIEW: ‘Rum Diary’ may serve as the true birth of Hunter S. Thompson

Much like the previously reviewed film “The Tree of Life” from two weeks ago, “The Rum Diary” is a tale years in the making. In this case, the journey of “The Rum Diary” from the mind of Hunter S. Thompson to the silver screen was fifty years. Thompson wrote the novel in 1961, though it wasn’t published until 1998, and brought to the screen this year. It’s also been a journey for director Bruce Robinson, who directed his last film in 1992 (“Jennifer 8”). The novel and subsequent film is loosely based on Thompson’s time as a journalist in Latin America, making it difficult (and fun) to discern fact from fiction.

Unable to support himself as a novelist, American journalist Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) takes a job with the floundering San Juan Star newspaper in Puerto Rico. As a young talent among washed out employees at the paper, Kemp catches the eye of local real estate mogul Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart, “Thank You for Smoking”). In the midst of witnessing what Americans have done to cripple the island economy and its population, Sanderson asks Kemp to help create a favorable public opinion of developers with plans that will further encumber the locals. Kemp must choose between accepting the posh island life offered by Sanderson or exposing him and the men who look plan to ruin the island.

“The Rum Diary” is gritty, rum-filled adventure through the Caribbean with plenty of twits and turns. Kemp is not your typical protagonist – he carries an air of indifference with him throughout most of the film that paints him as a borderline anti-hero. A predictable and somewhat forced love story drives the narrative a smidge too much and leaves you wondering if Kemp is truly driven by righteousness or the quest for personal revenge. Despite that flaw, the film is an antithetic yet personal coming of age story, and something you would expect from the imagination/reality of Hunter S. Thompson.

This is the second time Depp has brought Thompson’s work to life onscreen. In 1998 he played quirky journalist Raoul Duke in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Depp says he found the pages of “The Rum Diary” while living with Thompson during filming of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and convinced him to have it published. It is extremely fitting that Depp – longtime friend of Thompson – took the role of Demp in the film version of the story.

Depp is joined by a talented cast that includes Aaron Eckhart portraying the greedy antagonist Sanderson (though one could easily argue that American apathy, greed and capitalism are the true antagonists of the film), talented “that guy” Michael Rispoli (“The Sopranos”) as Demp’s trusty sidekick Bob Salas, and the always-on and extremely versatile Giovanni Ribisi as the peculiar and slightly insane Moburg (a far cry from his early work on TV’s “My Two Dads” back in the mid-1980’s). Amber Heard (“Zombie Land”) rounds out the cast as Sanderson’s girlfriend and Demp’s love interest.

“The Rum Diary” reveals perhaps a softer side of Thompson. The film shows not the hard drinking, outspoken writer and founder of Gonzo journalism, but rather an idealist fighting the changing capitalistic and politically-influenced world around him. The film’s denouement features a text overlay stating “This is the end of one story and the beginning of another…” – it’s almost as if “The Rum Diary” serves as the true birth of the Hunter S. Thompson that the world knows today.

Travis Yates

YATES: The film will have a different meaning for everyone

Eclectic director and screenwriter Terrence Malick is a man of great patience. In a career that spans five decades, Malick has directed only five feature films — and waited twenty years between his second and third films (the critically acclaimed “The Thin Red Line”). New to DVD is “The Tree of Life,” a project that Malick began writing in 1978 after completing his second film. “The Tree of Life” is meant to explore the origins and meaning of life through the eyes of a middle-aged man dealing with the relationships of his past.

Jack O’Brien (Sean Penn) find himself disillusioned as an adult and attempts to reconcile with the world around him by examining his tumultuous relationship with his father (Brad Pitt). Jack’s father, a hard-nosed company man who feels he settled in life, tries to instill discipline in his three sons with unrealistic expectations and physicality. Jack questions his own motives as well as those around him while losing his innocence during his childhood days in the 1950s.

“The Tree of Life” is incredibly abstract with a fractured linear structure. It qualifies as an experimental film as much as it could a traditional narrative. The film is described as having a non-linear narrative – but that would imply that there is some sort of narrative to begin with. The film jumps between three planes of time – the present, Jack’s days as a young boy during the 50’s, and imagery representative of the origins of the universe. You have to wait through 45 minutes of a collection of random images and memories before a nugget of narrative structure appears in the form of Jack and his three brothers growing up.

It is unfortunate that Malick chose to go the route of the abstract. Though the childhood angst story has been done many times over, Jack’s childhood is heavy in verisimilitude with scenes featuring polar contexts as the boys experience the joys of childhood purity while under the heavy constraint of their father. Malick scratches the surface of Jack’s struggle with the burden of protecting his family from his father’s abusive hands, only to yank us back into his world of the unknown with adult Jack wandering through an urban jungle as he reconciles with the aforementioned scenes from his past.

There is a highly interpretable climax to the film that features not only Jack and his family but a score of others, presumably on their own spiritual quest. Whether this plane exists as Heaven, purgatory, or perhaps a single synapse firing inside the mind of Jack is up to the individual viewer to decide. The sequence does offer the film some form of resolution – somewhat of a surprise given the hypothetical nature of the film.

If you are a fan of the abstract, “The Tree of Life” is worth a view. It is the stylized work of a philosophical auteur who invites you to join him in a transcendental experience. The film will have a different meaning for everyone due to its complex and abstruse construct, but I suppose twenty years of pondering the meaning of life will do that to a film.

Travis Yates

YATES: ‘League’ crowning achievement for director Penny Marshall

I was recently talking with my screenwriting students about creating a character type. When discussing films featuring characters with a strong arc, someone mentioned Tom Hanks in “A League of Their Own.” When I admitted I had never seen the film, I was met with several pairs of astonished eyes. With classics week upon us, the baseball playoffs beginning and a promise to my students to fulfill, what better time for a baseball-themed week?

I’m not sure how “A League of Their Own” has escaped me since 1992. On the surface alone, the film is intriguing as a period piece set during World War II and based on true events — something that always piques my interest. It is an interesting case study to examine how Hollywood fictionalizes real events for the silver screen. Nineteen years after the film’s release, I stepped into the cinematic batter’s box to finally watch “A League of Their Own.”

When World War II threatens to cancel Major League Baseball, the Chicago Cubs owner creates an all-women baseball league to fill the void. Harvey recruits the country’s most talented and appealing female players to fill out the four-team league. Led by Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis) and her sister Kit (Lori Petty, “Tank Girl”), the Rockford Peaches begin to capture the country’s attention. When the threat of war ends, the ladies must prove they belong in baseball — just as personal drama and family strife begin to pull the Peaches apart.

Much like the ladies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the actors are an eclectic collection — from the great Tom Hanks and Geena Davis to Rosie O’Donnell and Madonna — who really shows off her acting chops in the film, albeit playing a character not far from her real life personality. Hanks goes from gruff alcoholic to redeemed coach in a somewhat uninspiring arc — no fault of his own, we simply don’t see enough of his character. Davis plays a reluctant hero, torn between baseball and starting a family, and though it goes unsaid, she gives us enough subtext to know that deep down Dottie wants to remain on the diamond forever.

Penny Marshall — probably best known to my generation as Laverne from TV’s “Laverne and Shirley” — is an accomplished director, with a filmography that began in 1986 with “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and includes “Big” and “Riding in Cars with Boys.” This movie is sandwiched in the middle and may be her crowning achievement. She brings the 1940s to life by incorporating mainstream mediums of the day (newspapers and cinema newsreels) as part of the narrative. The film’s most challenging task appears to be the mise-en-scene, which accurately reflects the era, where every outfit and every piece of the set was created in the mold of a day gone by. The combination of the mise-en-scene and use of period-relevant mediums allows the audience to get lost in the past, just as protagonist Dottie Hinson does in the exposition of the film.

Two things caught me off guard in the film. I had a preconceived notion that the film was a drama, but it really falls under the comedy genre, and often times cheesy at that. It works due to the quirky collection of characters (and the actors who portray them). I was most surprised to find myself a blubbery mess during the third act. I easily admit that I am a crier — sometimes a well-crafted Folgers commercial can get the waterworks going. The film’s resolution is a reunion of the ladies of the Rockford Peaches, and after following the girls during the prime of their lives, the juxtaposition of them as elderly is quite gripping. Perhaps it’s just me — “The Notebook” had the same effect and changed the way I look at the elderly forever. That is cinema at its best, when it can change your worldly outlook. Be sure to stick around during the closing credits to see reunion footage from the ladies of the real All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Judging by the looks of it, the girls can still play!

Travis Yates

WIEGENSTEIN: Thrill of the game runs deep in ‘Eight Men Out’

Happy playoff season, everyone! Now let’s talk about the biggest scandal in professional baseball history. (Well, until “Juiced” got published, I guess.)

“Eight Men Out” is a baseball picture in which actual ball-playing is only partially featured. Its game montages often play like a “greatest errors” blooper real, which is of course the point. In telling the story of the 1919 Chicago White Sox, there’s a cap on how much talent can be on display — not too much of it was present in the World Series it depicts, after all.

Based on Eliot Asinof’s book of the same name, “Eight Men Out” offers a beginning to the ongoing saga of gambling in baseball (later chapters authored by Pete Rose, among others) with the recounting of the “Black Sox” scandal that expelled almost an entire starting lineup. The Chicago White Sox are the finest team in the country as the film begins, but this apparently means nothing to the team owner, Charles Comiskey. He sends them flat champagne in lieu of a bonus payment.

It’s this undervaluing, so says Asinof at least, that leads several Sox players to turn toward the shadier side of the gambling ring and decide to throw the year’s World Series (and lose to Cincinnati, ugh). From there, it becomes a question of which players are fully showing up to play the games and who attempt some of the most blatant false errors possible. Meanwhile, two sportswriters operate as the Statler and Waldorf of the film — writer/director John Sayles himself, and the great Studs Turkel, chomping into his dialogue almost as enthusiastically as he does his cigars.

Largely told from the perspective of disapproving third baseman Buck Weaver (John Cusack), the actions of the other players are viewed through lenses both compassionate and harsh, depending on the player. Poor Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn, who’s consistently excellent), an aging-but-brilliant pitcher, needs money for his kids’ college fund. Chick Gandil (Michael Rooker), on the other hand, is completely underhanded and so oily he almost leaves a sheen on the camera lens. (Speaking of which, Charlie Sheen shows up here too, though his presence is dramatically overstated by the film’s promo material.)

Perhaps the biggest question surrounding the Black Sox scandal — the potential participation of all-star player “Shoeless” Joe Jackson — is waffled on by the film. D.B. Sweeney plays the slugger as a man slow as molasses and heavily influenced by those around him. While the performance is notable for its understatement, it doesn’t speak too highly of the man himself. The rest of the Sox are offered a significant test in their acting: can they retain a true sense of character, or do they let the costumes and gimmicky accents do the heavy lifting for them? Luckily for “Eight Men Out,” the majority of the cast winds up in the former category.

Sayles is a tad too fond of 1900s nostalgia for much of the film; several scenes featuring some grating child actors are in desperate need of trimming. But the truly important part — the thrill of the game — runs deeply through “Eight Men Out.” It’s that passion that makes the story of the Black Sox so steeped in melancholy, and the resulting combination remains potent nearly a century later.

Anna Wiegenstein