COUNTRY STRONG

Written and Directed by Shana Feste

Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim McGraw, Garrett Hedlund and Leighton Meester

Kelly Canter: Well, I remember that day / when our eyes first met / You ran into the building to get out of the rain 'cause you were soaking wet / And when you held the door / you wanted to know my name / Timing is everything.

There isn’t anything sadder in the world than a good country tune, except for maybe the booze-soaked, sleep-deprived, emotionally impossible days and nights that are the inspiration behind these great songs. Writer/Director Shana Feste’s COUNTRY STRONG is one of those true tragedies. One of the genre’s biggest stars falls off a Dallas stage, five months pregnant and wasted, killing her child and her spirit at the same time. A year later, she is checking out of rehab earlier than she should to return to that same stage and reclaim her career as well her own self. People are fighting, cheating and both breaking and making up, but by the time its done, everyone is crying tears into their beers.

Gwyneth Paltrow is Kelly Canter, a Faith Hill type country superstar, except with a slew of public problems. While her troubles are all very adult, her demeanor is still that of a child. Paltrow plays Canter as a little girl, lost in a big world, who would much rather be tending to a baby bird she found in a field than performing in front of thousands of screaming fans. She isn’t sober for long once her husband checks her out of rehab, as it becomes painfully clear the public is not going to let her forget her own personal hardships. She loses herself in anything and everyone she can in order to avoid her own self, until that’s all she has left - and Paltrow’s got a mess of mascara on her face most of the time to prove it.

COUNTRY STRONG, which also boasts a surprisingly strong supporting cast, culminates into a somewhat simplified commentary about celebrity and people as products. Feste pulls out every country punch she can think of, but lucky for her, Paltrow knows how to roll those punches into something real so that you too can have a silent sob in your beverage.

IRON MAN 2

Written by Justin Theroux

Directed by Jon Favreau

Starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Dona Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell and Mickey Rourke

Ivan Vanko: If you could make God bleed, people would cease to believe in him.

When the lights went down at the sold out opening night screening of IRON MAN 2 that I attended, there was a particular energy in the air.  It was that moment when you realize that what you’ve been waiting for for so long is really about to take place.  The hushed anticipation was infectious and, as exciting as it was to feel it build, it was just as disappointing to feel that energy die off as the film unfolded.  Iron Man may have a brand new suit but his heavier armour ultimately just weighed this new adventure down.

I had no knowledge of Iron Man before the first film, other than the fact that he existed anyway.  When director Jon Favreau introduced him as an irresponsible billionaire who learns that his legacy would be essentially ensuring continuous and unnecessary destruction until there was nothing left to blow up, I instantly loved the guy.  Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), as privileged as he was, was still human and still had a soul that he didn’t want to see damned.  Super ego still intact but changed nonetheless at the end of the first film, Stark re-emerges now as narcissistic and oblivious again, almost as if to satisfy what test audiences liked most about him after the first film.  It gives the film itself an air of arrogance that it is difficult to recover from.  The Iron Man people know they did good last time out and like Tony Stark, it seems to have gone to their heads a bit too much.

Justin Theroux, the writer of TROPIC THUNDER, is a new addition to the Iron Man team and, despite his clear ability to be laugh out loud funny, he takes Iron Man and Tony Stark to some pretty dark places.  There is nothing wrong with going to these places in a superhero movie but with Stark coming off more smug and callous from the beginning, there isn’t as much sympathy to go around when Theroux finally reveals why Stark is acting this way.  Downey Jr. still nails Stark but despite having some serious mortality issues to deal with this time, he never seems to get to the core of where Stark is coming from.  And, correct me if I’m wrong, but Iron Man is nothing without his core. 

Other newcomers to the Iron Man world include Mickey Rourke as a sinister Russian physicist bent on revenge, Sam Rockwell as a less successful version of Stark himself, Scarlett Johansson as a sultry new member of Stark’s team and Don Cheadle as a replacement for Terrence Howard in the Rhodey role, Stark’s best buddy.  Rourke is certainly scary but he seems to be trying too hard to redefine evil, much like Heath Ledger did as The Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT.  Rockwell is hilarious and stylin’ in the three-piece suits he wears to cover up his inferiority issues.  Meanwhile, Cheadle does nothing with the opportunity that fell in his lap and I would really like to see Johansson do something other than just look sultry for a change.

IRON MAN 2 does get better as it goes on.  I don’t want to make it sound like it’s a bad time.  It’s just easier to focus on what isn’t working when everything worked so well in the past.  Favreau does his best to keep things smooth and fresh; Downey Jr. delivers as expected but ultimately, IRON MAN 2 just isn’t as much fun as the first.  You might say it has an iron deficiency.  You might.

DVD Review: IRON MAN

Written by Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway
Directed by Jon Favreau
Starring Robert Downey Jr, Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges and Gwyneth Paltrow


With summer behind us and the dark night finally lifted, it is easy forget where it all began. Where that was, was with IRON MAN. Marvel Comics’ first independently financed feature was sure to do well but no one expected it to resonate as loudly as it did. This is a superhero that essentially flies around in a pretty funky suit. There is nothing particularly super about him so how does this guy compete with the spiders and the bats? Under Jon Favreau’s dichotomous hipster/fan boy direction, the answer is pretty simple. If you want Iron Man to connect with the every man, you highlight what makes him a real man. Robert Downey Jr. plays Tony Stark, the man inside the suit. Stark is a billionaire prodigy by day and a billionaire playboy by night. He is also a man who has come to see through his life’s work as a weapons manufacturer for what it is, a warmonger. As Stark learns to rebuild his life from the ground up, Favreau births the Iron Man myth from the same point. With the lore solidly grounded, it’s time to fly!


I don’t know if you remember but the original trailers for IRON MAN were fairly unimpressive, or at least I thought so. By the time it was released in theatres, I had zero interest in seeing it. I know I can’t be the only one with that opinion so expectations for this film were certainly not soaring but people were definitely ready for summer. IRON MAN opened to over $100 million in North America but the real surprise was just how great it really was. Downey Jr.’s performance was so brilliantly suited to his sharp, sardonic character. The chemistry between him and Gwyneth Paltrow as his assistant, Pepper Potts, is quick but vulnerable. The film is even so bold as to make pointed attacks against the arms industry and war profiteering. People were not expecting what they got and what they got was explosive entertainment with a fresh approach to both the superhero and the effects-driven Hollywood film. Now that it is available to own, what the legions of fans will get is an incredibly complete look at these effects and the film itself. Each stage of production is broken down with plenty of secrets revealed – from the making of the Iron Man suit to how he flew to Downey Jr.’s screen test. Yet somehow, giving away all the tricks takes nothing away from the magic. Instead, it serves as a remind for just how awesome it is that they pulled this off.


Before the bat, Favreau’s IRON MAN was the summer super hero. Audiences were heralding it as the next Spider-Man. Then the dark night fell, the hoopla (albeit deserved hoopla) followed and people quickly forgot IRON MAN had happened. Let’s face it though, THE DARK KNIGHT is precisely that, dark. With a cold fall about to descend upon us, now is the time to remember that man of iron and have a little more fun while we still can.

FILM


DVD

IRON MAN

Written by Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum & Matt Holloway
Directed by Jon Favreau
Starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard and Jeff Bridges


Tony Stark: I love peace. Peace will put us all out of a job.

What is Iron Man anyway? Can we really call him a superhero? As far as I can tell, he’s just a guy with a bum heart that happens to be pretty handy in the shop. His superhero development falls more in line with Batman’s as neither necessarily has any special power (Wait, my bat-sense is tingling?) but rather relies on strength and gadgetry to get the job done. Even Batman has the dark history to fuel his passion though. What does Iron Man have? His day job is as an arms manufacturing tycoon named Tony Stark. He’s got all the money in the world, women throwing themselves at him and the worst part is, he inherited everything from his dad. This silver spoon baby has been set his whole life and now he gets to be admired and adored as a superhero too? Ordinarily, I would give in to my jealousy and scoff at this supposed superhero but Robert Downey Jr., under the fresh direction of Jon Favreau, just makes him too damn cool for me to do anything other than love him.


Aside from all this, Iron Man is also hilarious. Make no mistake; he most certainly gets himself into a number of perilous scenarios but he also manages to find something to laugh at no matter how dire the circumstances. While the original comic book found Stark in some life threatening Vietnam war situation (I am not a comic book junkie so I’m afraid I can’t get more specific than that), Favreau wanted today’s Iron Man to have a contemporary back story and what could be more appropriate than Stark being held prisoner in Osama Bin Laden’s former hood, the mountains of Afghanistan. At first, it feels all too easy to place Arab militants as the face of the bad guys but the film vindicates its initial racial vilifying by exposing Stark himself (and therefore, America) as the supplier of these terrorists’ entire arsenal. It is Stark’s realization that he truly is one of the great mass murderers in American history that wakes him from his comfortable, privileged existence to a new dawn of using his position for positive change. After all, a weapon is only truly a weapon when it is in the wrong hands.


IRON MAN is not without its clichés. Stark suffers injuries in the Middle East that requires him to have some form of electro-magnetic contraption lodged in his chest so that little bits of shrapnel don’t seep into his blood stream and eventually cut up the arteries in his heart. So what if the ultimate playboy/loner now needs help to sustain a healthy heartbeat when he has walked around for so long acting like he never had a heart in the first place. So what if the man who has everything doesn’t truly have anything of real value. These kinds of truisms are the foundation of comic book characters; what genuinely matters is how the men are portrayed and Downey Jr. was born to play to Tony Stark. After rising to critical fame with films like CHAPLIN, personal problems with drug abuse led Downey to years of type casting as characters with drug problems in films like WONDER BOYS and THE SCANNER DARKLY. With IRON MAN, it looks like he might finally be able to wipe his past clean and achieve the heights his talent has always warranted. Though his body is in noticeably better shape, it is his quick-witted delivery and cynical yet sympathetic duality that make Tony Stark the kind of guy everyone wants to hang out with or just plain be.


So, what is Iron Man anyway? Well, according to this adaptation, he is the superhero for the modern era. He is sarcastic and skeptical but still hopeful and genuine with those he is close with (most notably, his perfectly matched assistant Pepper Potts, played just as delectably by Gwyneth Paltrow). He is a man who is capable of admitting his failures, not dwelling on them and then fostering a new path for himself. He is the kind of man that is both envied and looked up to. He is building himself a reputation as a superhero that can manage tremendous feats through intelligence and perseverance rather than just brawn and dumb luck. And now, IRON MAN is also a movie that offers perspective on the world around us at the same time as some awesome exhilaration.

RUNNING WITH SCISSORS

Written and Directed by Ryan Murphy

In 2002, author Augusten Burroughs published his memoir, entitled RUNNING WITH SCISSORS. It went on to find success and praise, as well as skepticism regarding its authenticity. The book chronicles Augusten’s formative years where he was sent to live with his mother’s psychiatrist and his family (the Finches) while she dealt with her manic depression. The book has a dry humour that refuses pity for Augusten’s numerous woes. Reading it brings about many laughs but at no point in time does it come across as a factual retelling of events. One almost needs to distrust the author to find his humour. To ponder Augusten’s perils as if they were plausible would plunge any heart into deep pain. So we laugh instead. That is after all what Augusten’s style incites. What is lacking in the book finds even less presence in the film. Purpose. You can tell your own story and you can embellish it all you like but if your journey doesn’t lend any meaning to my own then it becomes more useful in serving your own ego than enriching mine. Writer/Director Ryan Murphy’s translation segments Augusten’s book into a visual compilation of his favorite literary moments that lead nowhere and reveal very little about the man behind the memoir.

Bearing Burroughs’ weight is actor Joseph Cross. Cross plays Burroughs with a near-permanent face of silent awe throughout. He cannot comprehend how his life took such a bizarre turn. His youthful grin hints to his strong character while his conscientious eyes confirm his understanding that the path he has been forced upon will not lead to a fulfilling life. Augusten must bounce back and forth between his mother’s (Annette Bening) home and the Finch’s, where he is further bounced around from one psychological mess to another. Whether Augusten is sitting in the Finch parlor with feeble, subservient mother, Agnes (Jill Clayburgh) while she nibbles at dog kibble or passively accepting older daughter Hope’s (Gwyneth Paltrow) abuse towards her cat or hovering over a toilet bowl to observe the sign from God that has come in the form of Dr. Finch’s (Brian Cox) stool, he always looks lost. Going home doesn’t help either as what waits for him there is often just as outlandish but more so scarring as his mother’s psychoses could one day kill her or one day be his. As lost as he gets, at times joining in the mentally unstable fun, he never lets go entirely of the railing that has helped him maintain his balance all the while. Respectful but problematic as someone in his position needs to become mostly unrecognizable in order to find himself again, Augusten’s lines of sanity are much more blurred in print then on screen as Murphy does not construct any build in character, shuffling Cross around repeatedly as though his life took place in a pinball machine.


RUNNING WITH SCISSORS is both a dream and a nightmare for actors. It all depends on who you are and whom you’re playing. Bening and Cross get the most screen time by far. The rest of the cast drift in and out of the narrative, giving each of them very little time to make their mark. It also doesn’t help matters that everyone is playing a character with some degree of mental defect. As a result, Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes (as Augusten’s thirty something year old lover, Bookman) overact their characters into caricature. More veteraned actors like Clayburgh and Alec Baldwin (as Augustan’s father) have very little screen time but manage to subtly give humanity to their madness, making some of the most evident impacts on Augusten. Of course, Augusten is overshadowed by Bening as Deirdre. His mother needed to be the focus whenever she was in the room so it is only fitting that Augusten struggle for attention in a movie about himself. Thankfully, Bening delivers a performance that is as layered as her character is medicated, justifying the spotlight and delighting her audiences yet again.

The chemistry between the ensemble and a sundry soundtrack make RUNNING WITH SCISSORS reasonably enjoyable but it does not bring you anywhere near Augusten’s heart. A new hair style and a fashionable scarf are not character development. RUNNING WITH SCISSORS may amuse in its audacity but despite surrounding Augusten with psychologically damaging absurdities every step of the way, it fails to show any real insight into what made Augusten the man he became.

PROOF

Written by David Auburn
Directed by John Madden

What are we trying to prove?
Who are we trying to impress?
Why am I always looking for answers?

“Proof” answers all three of these questions in its first thirty seconds as Catharine (Gwyneth Paltrow) stares blankly at the television, her 27th birthday having just begun. She flips through channel after meaningless channel, settles on nothing and turns to look directly into the camera. Her eyes staring directly at me say, “Nothing, no one and it doesn’t matter.” Of course she’s disastrously unhappy but when did that stop anyone from pretending like they knew all the answers? Oops, I asked another question.

When the sun rises, she will celebrate both her birthday and the burial of her father (played by Anthony Hopkins), a mathematical genius who drastically changed his field three times before losing his mind. Before the day is out, her sister (Hope Davis) will fly in almost solely to push her further into her hole and she will take a chance on life by allowing a young man (Jake Gyllenhaal) to hold her through all of the crazy mess. The events of the day will give her the courage to share her own mathematical findings, her own proof. Now she’s really got something to prove because it isn’t clear she’s the proof’s genuine author.

A mathematical proof, one that checks out, shows that there is order in the world, that there are definitive answers. If Catharine wrote it, than she’s got plenty to prove. And whom does she need to prove this to? Her sister who spends all of her time completing mundane tasks from her meticulous “to-do” list to show that she is functional, structured, successful? Her boyfriend who’s got to get Catharine’s proof checked by the guys at the math department because he obviously doesn’t believe that girls can do math? To her father who was thrilled his daughter’s interests followed his own but only really wanted her to work along side him? And what of herself? If she proves that she wrote this proof, that she has the talent, the ability, the genius that may very well surpass her father’s, how long will it be until she begins to lose her mind? Does she want to know the answer to that last question?

Catharine ponders aloud that sometimes everything makes sense in her head and other times, it all seems crazy. Perhaps we don’t always need proof to say which of these realities is the true reality. Perhaps a little blind faith would do us some good.