"The Other Guys"
Richard's Review: 3 1/2 stars
The idea to pair up over-the-top comedian Will Ferrell and movie tough guy Mark Wahlberg was hatched three years ago during the Academy Awards. During the show's opening number Jack Black and Ferrell sang a song about comedians never winning Oscars followed by some vicious roasting of the dramatic actors seated in the front rows.
Jack Black told Peter O'Toole he was going to beat him "down with my Nickelodeon Award!" and Ferrell insulted Ryan Gosling.
But when he got to Best Actor Wahlberg Ferrell feigned fear and said, "I won't mess with you. You're actually kinda badass. Once again, I hope we're cool. You are very talented."
Wahlberg's unscripted reaction convinced director Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers) that the mismatched pair would work well together on screen.
One thing is for sure, the Academy's record of handing out Oscars to comedians is unlikely to be changed by the resulting film. Ferrell and Wahlberg play New York City detectives Allen Gamble and Terry Hoitz. The two do not get along. Gamble is a forensic accountant content to push a pencil and avoid doing any down-and-dirty-and-dangerous fieldwork. Hoitz, on the other hand, is sick of riding a desk and desperately wants a chance to prove himself and win the respect of station hotshots P.K. Highsmith (Jackson) and Christopher Danson (Johnson) after the embarrassing incident -- he accidentally shot Derek Jeter during a Yankees game -- that landed him Gamble as a partner.
He gets his chance when Gamble uncovers a Madoffesque white collar conspiracy.
Will Ferrell has been on a bit of a big screen losing streak lately. His last film "Land of the Lost" was a total bust both comedically and commercially and for a while it looked like the glory days of "Anchorman" were a high point he wasn't likely to ever top. His work had become excessive, as if every director he worked with was too enamored of his improvisational style, allowing him do whatever he wanted, no matter how long he milked a joke or held an uncomfortable silence.
In Adam McKay he has found someone unafraid to yell cut and rein him in. With McKay behind the camera Gamble becomes Ferrell's most restrained comedic character since "Stranger than Fiction." He's still extremely silly, but in much smaller doses than usual. A little Ferrell absurdity goes a long way and "The Other Guys" never lets him or his silliness overstay its welcome.
He balances nicely with Wahlberg who dials up his usual tough guy intensity about 25 per cent, spitting out lines like "I am a peacock! I need to fly!" as though he isn't in on the joke. He rides the line between serious and absurd and pulls off a lot of laughs in the process.
It's also nice to see Michael Keaton back in a comedy. He's slowly been easing his way back in after doing a string of dramas, but this is the funniest we've seen him since "Beetlejuice." As the precinct captain who works part time at Bed, Bath and Beyond to make ends meet he displays the kind of way with a joke that made him a star in the first place.
"The Other Guys" is an enjoyable piece of summer fluff, that may revive not only the buddy cop comedy (after "Cop Out" mortally wounded it earlier this year) but also interest in Will Ferrell's brand of absurdity.
"Hugh Heffner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel"
Richard's Review: 2 1/2 stars
When most people think of Hugh Hefner visions of silk pajamas, the Playboy mansion and naked Bunnies with a staple in their middles come to mind.
For more than 50 years Hefner has been the hedonistic symbol of sexual liberation, publishing his monthly girlie magazine and living a life that would make some envious and others blush.
A new documentary from Oscar winner Brigitte Berman titled "Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel" aims to paint him not as simply a dirty old man but as a leading general in the 20th century culture wars. The slickly produced doc combines rare archival footage, cleverly manipulated still photographs and loads of talking heads to lead us through Hefner's life.
Berman is more concerned with Hefner as an agent for social change than the grotto dwelling Lothario he‘s so often portrayed as in the press. We learn that he bought back two segregated Southern Playboy Club franchises, reversed their admittance policies to fully integrate them; we're also told how he shattered the powerful House of Un-American Activities blacklists by hiring members of the infamous "Hollywood Ten" to write for Playboy and appear on his late night chat show "Playboy's Penthouse."
His track record of funding legal battles over birth control and abortion are also carefully detailed as is his early support of gay rights. In 1955, when homosexuality was still illegal in many states he published "The Crooked Man," a short story by Charles Beaumont which depicts a world where homosexuality is the rule and heterosexuals are a persecuted minority.
Hefner has been at the forefront of twentieth century sexuality and for all the doors he helped open and for all the repression he managed to unbottle it is still hard to buy his steadfast claim that he is a feminist. Sure, he has backed many of the right feminist causes, but feminist writer Susan Brownmiller and others (although notably absent is Hefner's greatest fem foe Gloria Steinem) make the point that there is a difference between sexual objectification and sexual liberation.
Hefner has been treading this fine line for decades and his reasoning that the feminist movement considers sex the enemy rings as hollow here as it did decades ago when he first started spouting about it and sexual subjugation. It‘s even more of a clunker today as Playboy has degenerated into a symbol of female repression; exactly the opposite of Hefner's original dream.
It's hard to separate Hefner from the sexual politics he has made his life's work and Berman doesn't try. There is no doubt that the man is a cultural revolutionary, but the film plays simply like a timeline of his highs (the lows are conveniently forgotten). It's a gas to see the vintage "Playboy After Dark" footage and get a glimpse of the inner workings of the infamous mansion, but a bit more depth, a few harder questions would have made this an interesting cultural history instead of a collection of Hefner's greatest hits.
"The Ghost Writer" (DVD):
Richard's Review: 4 STARS
Given director Roman Polanski's recent legal troubles it's hard not to infer some deeper meaning into the plight of "The Ghost Writer's" ex-prime minister (Pierce Brosnan) accused of war crimes. In a moment of art imitating life Adam Lang's lawyer says, "I strongly advise you not to travel to any country with extradition policies."
If Polanski had listened to that advice he might not have had to finish editing this movie from a jail in Switzerland. Within Lang there are echoes of Tony Blair. He's a popular, if controversial ex-Prime Minister -- "He wasn't a politician," says the ghost writer, "he was a craze" -- with a ten million dollar book deal and a dead co-writer.
The late journalist was found washed up on shore near Lang's remote Cape Cod beach house under very mysterious circumstances. Pitch hitting for the late writer is Ewan McGregor's character -- he doesn't have a name in the film -- a professional ghost writer whose biggest hit was a biography of a magician called "He Came, He Sawed, He Conquered."
His job is to turn "incoherent rambling into a book." Soon, however, his job is complicated when Lang is accused of war crimes by a former colleague. Untangling facts that may (or may not) place his own life in danger he turns from writer-for-hire to investigative journalist.
There is so much to like in "The Ghost Writer" that the few lapses in credulity are easy to forgive. I mean, are we really to believe that a massive conspiracy could be figured out using Google? What's next? Sherlock Holmes using Ask Jeeves? Apart from that bit of silliness Polanski has crafted a film that can comfortably sit beside "Three Days of the Condor" and "The Parallax View" for political intrigue.
The pacing is deliberate, not slow, but deliberate. Clues are doled out carefully, keeping red herrings to a minimum and allowing suspense to build with each new nugget of information. Tension and paranoia build with every scene. This is the man who made "Repulsion" and "Rosemary's Baby," so he knows how to make the mundane sinister. Ringing phones and loud raps on doors create an ominous atmosphere where danger is around every corner. Add to that some interesting work to show the futility of the writer's job.
Watch in the background, the director places a gardener endlessly sweeping up dead leaves from the compound's many patios, only to have them blow out of his wheel barrel every time he makes any progress. It's a clever metaphor for the writer's Sisyphean search for the truth.
As he gets in over his head, trying to unravel years of twisted political strategy, I wanted to paraphrase Polanski's most famous movie, "Chinatown." "Forget it, writer. It's politics." McGregor, who has played a writer twice before in "Moulin Rouge," later in "The Men Who Stare at Goats," is convincing but really shines when he is working opposite Pierce Brosnan.
I'm willing to overlook Brosnan's recent turn as a half man / half horse in "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" when he can be this good. He looks like a politician, like he was made for photo ops in front of private jets, waving to his constituents, but it is in the cat-and-mouse dialogue between Lang and the writer that he does his best work. "The Ghost Writer" is Polanski's first film in five years, and for those willing to judge the art, not the artist, it is as satisfying a thriller as we'll see this year.
