cult film freak: paul dano

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Written by James M. Tate / 6/10/2015 / No comments / 2015 , biopic , john cusack , paul dano

PAUL DANO & JOHN CUSACK AS BRIAN WILSON IN LOVE & MERCY

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2015 rating: **1/2</td></tr>
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Brian Wilson played an immense part in making The Beach Boys timeless and legendary. Their catchy Southern California pop defined the early 60’s before psychedelia took over the entire counter culture, and the best scenes in LOVE & MERCY provide a glimpse into Wilson working with studio musicians to create the few important tracks that bridged the Boys from (in symbolic terms) HAPPY DAYS to PURPLE HAZE. <br />
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Paul Dano does a good job as the young Brian, guiding us through the process of creating a new sound, butting heads with fellow bandmate and stubbornly nostalgic Mike Love, not making him look too good in the process while shedding<i> </i>a worse light on Wilson's bullying father, who eventually sold the Song Rights for pennies…<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brian Wilson's Sgt Peppers</td></tr>
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Which doesn’t fully explain why Brian, played by John Cusack as the older, not so mentally stable icon… was still a millionaire. Thus the chief villain exists in the "present time" 1980's as Paul Giamatti takes on Wilson’s manipulative, controlling Dr. Landy with the kind of spiteful venom usually given to a Bond villain – and it’s not the medicated rock god on a short leash his paranoid sites are locked on…<br />
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Thus the LOVE in LOVE & MERCY is entirely channeled onto classy car saleswoman Monica played by Elizabeth Banks. Her sporadic scenes with Cusack’s vulnerable man-child provides more of a flashback vibe to the 1960’s than vice versa, often making their budding relationship an intrusion rather than a focal point. Meanwhile, we don’t get enough of either time period to put the film into a genuine Rock Biopic category or that of a Disease of the Week/Middle-Aged Romance, which this seems like a watered-down... yet still breezily entertaining... Lifetime Channel version of.

2015, biopic, john cusack, paul dano

PAUL DANO & JOHN CUSACK AS BRIAN WILSON IN LOVE & MERCY

2015 rating: **1/2 Brian Wilson played an immense part in making The Beach Boys timeless and legendary. Their catchy Southern California...

Written by James M. Tate / 10/25/2013 / No comments / 2013 , benedict cumberbatch , biopic , chiwetel ejiofor , michael fassbender , paul dano , paul giamatti , steve mcqueen director

12 YEARS A SLAVE

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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp9Lg4ndxemUkVyk4eiymXdtS4zzauCZux9BdlIDJJHCtSZMUy7gszpmHC82gOnQb5M_6HRfC7So6f_ZGuyO3kU67yE0a70HZyyH61WAN-ZRcGSi6Vw9kTvnchnHP79cEzBYwqjbdxGEs/s1600/12-years-a-slave-chiwetel-ejiofor-600.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp9Lg4ndxemUkVyk4eiymXdtS4zzauCZux9BdlIDJJHCtSZMUy7gszpmHC82gOnQb5M_6HRfC7So6f_ZGuyO3kU67yE0a70HZyyH61WAN-ZRcGSi6Vw9kTvnchnHP79cEzBYwqjbdxGEs/w640-h320/12-years-a-slave-chiwetel-ejiofor-600.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><u>year: 2013 cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch rating: **1/2</u></td></tr>
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The<i> </i>best<i> </i>thing about 12 YEARS A SLAVE is Chiwetel Ejiofor as 
Solomon Northup, a free man from New York who was abducted and sold into
 slavery... With limitless potential, the African American actor 
deserves this starring role. The worst thing is he’s mostly stuck 
providing stock reactions to other characters, ranging from beaten 
slaves to formidable slavers.<br />
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Director Steve McQueen (who should add a middle initial to separate him from the legendary actor because he will NEVER BE AS FAMOUS) <i>might</i> have
 been influenced by Spielberg’s holocaust epic SCHINDLER’S LIST… There's already a score of comparisons between both films. What’s missing in 
12 YEARS are the reasons and/or motivations for showing the atrocities 
other than being a true story about the infamous Antebellum South.</div>
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In
 LIST, Ralph Fiennes's Goeth commits random acts of unfathomable 
violence that are not only examples of Nazi rule, but cause the 
protagonists to counterbalance in a mental game of cat and mouse. Here all Solomon Northup's left to do is witness the maniacal madness of Michael 
Fassbender’s sexually-driven plantation owner after surviving 
over-the-top henchmen Paul Dano and Paul Giamatti. One good 
scene has Solomon outsmarting a bullying overseer, coming up with a more
 useful idea that winds up benefiting the plantation owner. But this is 
too soon followed by a prolonged and torturous beating that keeps the 
story dragging within an exploitative and limited storyline. And while
 it's ultimately moving and historically significant, and Ejiofor does 
have moments to rise above the increasing and unceasing torment, Solomon
 Northup's plight feels more like a single prolonged experience with 
various characters and locations than a multi-layered biopic for the 
audience to get <i>completely</i> lost in, making those grueling 12 YEARS seem more like months... even days.</div>

2013, benedict cumberbatch, biopic, chiwetel ejiofor, michael fassbender, paul dano, paul giamatti, steve mcqueen director

12 YEARS A SLAVE

year: 2013 cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch rating: **1/2 The best thing about 12 YEARS A SLAVE is Chi...

Written by James M. Tate / 9/22/2013 / 1 Comment / 2013 , drama , hugh jackman , jake gyllenhaal , neo noir , paul dano

PRISONERS

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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiclk0svElJHM3_aEulKWZ1RfzHMxY-FVCeXYwLoW0I8oM6GIkvn_pjAeyApu7kRsPQ2T62eR-8rEDHdONlZRvZElwc-gQwQWrHZKG58M__VDBSZ67vEf1YVltPF0UqpPeikMh86d2f5v5R/s1600/Prisoners.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiclk0svElJHM3_aEulKWZ1RfzHMxY-FVCeXYwLoW0I8oM6GIkvn_pjAeyApu7kRsPQ2T62eR-8rEDHdONlZRvZElwc-gQwQWrHZKG58M__VDBSZ67vEf1YVltPF0UqpPeikMh86d2f5v5R/s640/Prisoners.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">year: 2013 cast: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Paul Dano rating: ***</td></tr>
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Within the first half of PRISONERS it’s obvious the title fits just about every character, and not all in the literal sense…<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5jXPu9SRIX60NbIR9N9tsBXD9KS9LghClcQdtcgI14QNxiHXseXmYBl5K2QJq9NeOkYoWBZwukxYeuyU6AIAiTr32z7gTlBBNIlfSATw5lJzcw3SQGp1mm-KwRwpvMIXDpBVepMwWBwQ/s1600/Prisoners-film-still-008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5jXPu9SRIX60NbIR9N9tsBXD9KS9LghClcQdtcgI14QNxiHXseXmYBl5K2QJq9NeOkYoWBZwukxYeuyU6AIAiTr32z7gTlBBNIlfSATw5lJzcw3SQGp1mm-KwRwpvMIXDpBVepMwWBwQ/s1600/Prisoners-film-still-008.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hugh Jackman</td></tr>
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Hugh Jackman’s Keller Dover is an extreme, narrow-minded carpenter, father of a son and daughter: the latter abducted (along with her friend) in mysterious circumstances, throwing several people into emotional and mental chaos...<br />
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Emotional for the Dover family and mental for the officer in charge of the case, a tattooed, rapidly blinking Jake Gyllenhaal as Detective Loki, who spends more time following Keller – who has his mind made up – than the few possible leads.<br />
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All the characters are flawed, troubled. This makes Loki’s treadmill search more interesting within the film's contained, claustrophobic atmosphere forcing our withered hero to feel as captivated, or rather, captured as Paul Dano’s Alex Jones, a simple-minded young man that Keller holds hostage, resulting in bouts of grueling torture to get answers for his daughter’s vanishing.<br />
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While there are an abundance of red-herrings to distract Loki (and the audience) from the real culprit, prolonging a two-and-a-half hour melodrama that could have fit in a more fashionable two, and many of the side-characters eventually become peripheral and insignificant, the intensely sparse performances of Jackman and Gyllenhaal exceed the villain-revealing/monologue-spouting climax, resulting in yet another (semi) ambiguous ending: only this time it doesn’t seem artsy or pretentious.   <br />
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2013, drama, hugh jackman, jake gyllenhaal, neo noir, paul dano

PRISONERS

year: 2013 cast: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Paul Dano rating: *** Within the first half of PRISONERS i...

Written by James M. Tate / 3/31/2012 / No comments / 2012 , biopic , drama , paul dano , robert deniro

BEING FLYNN

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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqRBRWu51Qp05EKZlsrkqN9Sewy2ujzLlCRGdb6HNSfzTpO9I0louKVUpjOoDLGyfPDj8WSuyIj6ZPkkOFDxXMCsjUQIeORiDkmqGfbySWcbTIzeLdCsOqYUjFK-lv8svHhNbCvztOW7Z6/s1600/e-being-flynn2-web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqRBRWu51Qp05EKZlsrkqN9Sewy2ujzLlCRGdb6HNSfzTpO9I0louKVUpjOoDLGyfPDj8WSuyIj6ZPkkOFDxXMCsjUQIeORiDkmqGfbySWcbTIzeLdCsOqYUjFK-lv8svHhNbCvztOW7Z6/s320/e-being-flynn2-web.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">DeNiro verses Dano as Dad and Son</td></tr>
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<b>title:</b> BEING FLYNN<br />
<b>year: </b>2012<br />
<b>cast: </b>Robert DeNiro, Paul Dano<br />
<b>r</b><b>ating: </b>***<br />
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There are familiar characters within Robert DeNiro’s Jonathan Flynn. For starters, he’s a closed-minded TAXI DRIVER. And he’s in his own world and fancies himself a famous author – much like THE KING OF COMEDY dreamt of being a famous comedian. But this Flynn only pretends to be narrating a true story as he, after being thrown out of his apartment and losing his job, wanders the streets in the freezing cold New York City nights. It’s his son Nick, a twenty-something who had grown up with a single mother (Julianne Moore in sporadic flashbacks) with only dad’s letters and pictures, with a legit narration guiding us.<br />
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Nick resides in a closed-down strip bar and works at a homeless shelter where his father, a barking, opinionated bully, eventually resides. The inter-workings of the shelter gives the viewer an involving, realistic yet somewhat watered-down experience of how the other half lives. But when Nick, played with dependable pathos by Paul Dano, morphs into a cocaine habit... strung-out one minute and clean the next... the real story sidetracks. It's the relationship with pop that keeps the movie grounded and interesting. And for DeNiro fans, while this isn’t one of his top-shelf performances, it far exceeds the mediocre grimacing cop roles he’s sleepwalked through for the last decade.

2012, biopic, drama, paul dano, robert deniro