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Filtering by Tag: George Clooney
Brad Pitt and George Clooney play a pair of lone Wolfs (sic). (Apple TV+)
Eighteen years after my debut as a Washington Post contributor, my debut was a WaPo film critic comes with a fun piece on Wolfs, the pluralization-punking reunion of lions-in-winter George and Brad.
Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac exchange unpleasantries. (Paramount)
I'm an admirer of all the principals involved, so it brings me no joy to report to you that Suburbicon—cowriter/director George Clooney's deeply misguided retread of a Coen Bros. script from 30 years ago—is the biggest embarrassment to Hollywood's liberal piety since Crash. At least Oscar Issac is having a good time.
Josh Brolin as an Eddie Mannix who only superficially resembles the historical Eddie Mannix.
No one in the world can possibly appreciate the way the narrator of the new Coen Brothers picture, Sir Michael Gambon — the man who once declined the role of James Bond because, quoth he, "I've got tits like a woman" — says "in westerly Malibu" as much as I do. But just about everyone seems to like the movie. I do, too. My NPR review is here.
Channing Tatum and Mila Kunis in Jupiter Ascending (Murray Close/Warner Bros.)
I was happy as always to join my buddies Linda Holmes, Stephen Thompson, and Glen Weldon on this week's Pop Culture Happy Hour, wherein we dissect Jupiter Ascending, the "original" sci-fi epic from auteur siblings Lana and Andy Wachowski from which audiences flocked away in droves last weekend. (I reviewed the film for The Dissolve.) We also try to figure out what people mean when they talk about "chemistry" among performers onscreen.
As always, I thought of more stuff I could've mentioned after we taped. I must disagree with my Pal-for-Life Glen we he praises Jupiter Ascending as being light on exposition, wherein stuff is "asserted, not explained," but I do believe in leaving some stuff on the table vis-a-vis world building.
One of the consequences of having sequels and prequels and reboots to almost everything now is that it's very difficult to sustain any sense of wonder or mystery. (We really didn't want to know about the Midichlorians, did we?) But the Matrix spinoff The Animatrix – shorts written and directed by animators handpicked by the Wachowskis – builds out the world of The Matrix much more satisfyingly than its own feature sequels do. These shorts are on DVD; they were released online for free in the run-up to the release of The Matrix Reloaded in May 2003, and you can still watch four of them gratis – including the best one, Mahiro Maeda's "The Second Renaissance."
For our chemistry experiment, I brought in a few more clips than we could use. This is an inexhaustible topic, but these are the ones I thought I might have something to say about on this particular day.
William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick & Nora Charles in 1934's The Thin Man and its five sequels. File under: Chemistry, romantic and spousal.
Patrick MacNee and Diana Rigg as Steed & Mrs. Peel, from The Avengers, circa 1965-7. The show ran from '61 to '69, giving MacNee a succession of partners during that span, but the Rigg Era seems to be the most fondly remembered. It's certainly my favorite. File under Chemistry, Professional and Sexual.
And of course, the Riggs & Murtaugh of film criticism, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. File under Chemistry, Professional and Adversarial.
Finally, I can't believe I misidentified my own Justified viewing club, The Justified League of America, as the Justified Society of America. We're Silver Age, not Golden Age. Chalk it up to nerves.
