Movie Review: Catch and Release

Catch and Release (2007) 

Directed by Susannah Grant 

Written by Susannah Grant 

Starring Jennifer Garner, Kevin Smith, Timothy Olyphant, Sam Jaeger, Fiona Shaw, Juliette Lewis 

Release Date January 26th, 2007

Published January 25th, 2007 

Jennifer Garner is a stunner. Those lips; perfectly bee stung. That body honed from spy play on TV's Alias. And that perfectly indefinable quality that stars have, the effortless ability to be ephemeral. She's got all the assets necessary for stardom and she needs every trick in the bag to make the light breezy romance of Catch and Release work.

A romantic comedy that desperately wants to be more than it is, a female Cameron Crowe movie, an examination of life, death and grief, a sexy romp. The thin characters and thinner premise can only manage a surface level affability that, with a lesser actress in the lead would fail miserably.

Gray (Garner) has lost the love of her life. Her fiance Grady decided to go skiing days before their wedding and died in an accident on the slopes. At his funeral she is trapped with his family and their mutual friends and desperately wants to escape. Hiding in a bathroom she is mortified to accidentally witness Grady's best friend Fritz (Timothy Olyphant) hooking up with the caterer. Gray never liked Fritz before and this does little to improve things.

Unfortunately for Gray; Fritz is staying at the same place she is. Unable to move into the home she was to share with her fiancee, Gray moves in with their closest friends Sam (Kevin Smith) and Dennis (Sam Jaeger). Over the course of the week after Grady's death these four characters each deal with grief in their own unique ways and are tested by revelations about Grady's life that no one, except maybe Fritz might have expected.

The story of Catch and Release wants to be smarter and deeper than it is. Director Susannah Grant, a screenwriter (Charlotte's Web, In Her Shoes) by trade, directing her first feature, at times evokes a lighter version of the warm, nostalgic prose style of Cameron Crowe. What she lacks is Crowe's wit and ear for great dialogue.

The subject of Catch and Release is grief and how different people deal with it. But this is a romantic comedy so, much more time is devoted to developing roadblocks to romance than to delving deeper into the psyches of these characters where director Susannah Grant really seems to want to go. Why else would the movie devote so much time to each characters own quirky way of dealing with their friends death.

Romantic comedy formula tells you that when a male and female character loathe one another; they will eventually fall in love. This leaves the writer-director the challenge of finding ways to put up roadblocks to the couples eventual happiness. In Catch and Release, writer-director Susannah Grant has few new tricks up her sleeve.

There is nothing new here. Grant follows the romance formula. Her only hope was that her stars would be likable enough for us to feel comfortable inside the formula. And we are comfortable. Jennifer Garner is warm and sensitive and easy to fall for. Timothy Olyphant is roguish and charming and we root for him to redeem himself after his wretched introduction.

Then there is the movie's secret weapon, writer-director Kevin Smith. The man behind Silent Bob isn't much of an actor, as he readily admits, but trading off his famously self effacing personality, Smith's self deprecation and vocal mannerisms are terrifically funny. Whenever the film seems to lag a little Smith energizes things with a good joke. It's a bit of a cheat, Smith's Sam threatens to become more of a comic device than a character, but Smith is so much fun that you are unlikely to notice.

Catch and Release teeters on the verge of complete collapse. However, thanks to the megawatt smile of star Jennifer Garner and her unending likability, Catch and Release is a passably entertaining romantic comedy worth your time on DVD or cable in a few months.

Movie Review: Fracture

Fracture (2007) 

Directed by Gregory Hoblit

Written by Daniel Pyne, Glenn Gers

Starring Ryan Gosling, Anthony Hopkins, David Straithairn, Rosamund Pike, Embeth Davidtz, Cliff Curtis, Billy Burke, Fiona Shaw 

Release Date April 20th, 2007

Published 19th, 2007

There is plenty of Oscar related gravitas to go around on the new thriller Fracture. Star Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for Silence of the Lambs. His young co-star Ryan Gosling is fresh off of his first nomination for Half Nelson and David Straithairn isn't long from his Best actor nomination for Good Night and Good Luck. With all of that Oscar gold shining  it could be easy to miss how shallow and unworthy a movie like Fracture is.

This movie of the week, sub-Law & Order-CSI, thriller wastes a group of great actors on a plot full of minor cracks and imperfections or fractures if you will.

Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling) has one foot out the door. Having just landed a big paycheck; corporate law gig; Willy is leaving behind the district attorney's office and his 100% conviction rate. He just has one case left on the docket and it looks like a slam dunk. A wealthy older man, Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), has attempted to murder his much younger wife (Embeth Davidtz). Crawford confessed to shooting her. The police on the scene found the gun in his hand. They were the only people in the house. This guy is guilty.

So how can this guy Ted plead not guilty? And why did he decide to represent himself in court. If Willy weren't already out the door on his way to that new job; he might have asked these important questions and maybe he wouldn't have been ambushed in court and made to look like a fool when it's revealed that the lead cop on the case, detective Rob Nunnally (Billy Burke), the man who took the confession and found the murder weapon, was sleeping with the victim.

Now, a case that should have been a slam dunk; is now a case that could cost Willy his career.

With the Oscar pedigreed cast and a complicated thriller plot, Fracture should work. Unfortunately, director Gregory Hoblit and writers Daniel Pyne Glen Gers can't get out of the way of these remarkable actors. Placing them in an untenable maze of cop and lawyer show garbage, Fracture unfolds like an average CSI or Law & Order episode, only less believable.

Despite a plot that betrays him, Ryan Gosling turns in a surprisingly good performance. Watching him work is like watching a young Newman or Redford as they came into their own as actors. Gosling has the looks and the brains of those legends and most importantly that classic smolder of a leading man. There is a scene in Fracture with Gosling and Rosamund Pike who plays his very brief love interest. They meet for the first time at an opera and sitting down the aisle from one another; Gosling gives Pike a look that has more heat than your average sex scene. It's a look that only a great leading man could give.

Anthony Hopkins can't help but be entertaining but in Fracture he seems a little more tired than we've ever seen him. Sleepwalking through this underwhelming plot' Hopkins falls back on a gleem in his eye and a forced creepy smile to sell this malevolent character. He also has Hannibal Lecter to fall back on and there are plenty of laconic Lecter-isms in Ted Crawford. Hopkins is still watchable but there is a cruise control feel to this performance.

What the creators of Fracture fail to realize is that modern audiences in the age of Court TV, CSI and Law & Order audiences are more savvy and knowledgeable about the law and law enforcement than ever before. So, when Willy misses an obvious bit of legal maneuvering, the cops seem to ignore pertinent information, or the killer makes an obvious forensic mistake, we notice and it takes us out of the movie.

I spent more time in Fracture pulling apart its legal logic, or lack of knowledge, than I did watching these two wonderful actors work together. It's a shame, because the few minutes I did watch the actors, they were very good.

Two great actors, one not so great movie, Fracture fails to take advantage of a seriously good pedigree. Instead we get a sub-cop show thriller that relies on ill logic and poor decision making by characters who should no better.  The creators of Fracture underestimate the intelligence of their audience and think they can play fast and loose with the rules of law enforcement. However, in the day and age of Court TV and Forensic Files, we know more than they give us credit for and the ill-logic of Fracture shows through.

Movie Review The Black Dahlia

The Black Dahlia (2006) 

Directed by Brian De Palma 

Written by Josh Friedman 

Starring Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson, Hilary Swank, Mia Kirschner, Fiona Shaw 

Release Date September 15, 2006 

Published September 14th, 2006 

Director Brian De Palma is one of the bravest filmmakers in the business. Each of his films are perilous high wire acts deftly treading the line between masterpiece and utter disaster. His last film, 2002's Femme Fatale, was a disaster of lurid exploitation in which the director became more enamored of his scenery than even his often nude starlet. On the flipside, his Untouchables, Dressed To Kill and Raising Cain are masterpieces, by De Palma standards, of trashy, entertaining, style.

De Palma's latest picture The Black Dahlia, based on the Elmore Leonard novel, again walks that razor's edge between masterpiece and disaster and finds De Palma once again on the side of the masterpiece. The Black Dahlia is a lurid, shocking, exciting noir mystery that uses real life brutality to tell a stunner of a fictional detective story, one worthy of the 30's and 40's noir that inspired it.

For anyone going into The Black Dahlia with ideas about learning more about the famed death of Elizabeth Short; be prepared, this is not her story. This story, based on Elmore Leonard's fictional take on Hollywood's most notorious unsolved murder, is more about the fictional L.A cops created by Leonard and the various shocking and devastating twists that Leonard smartly crafted and now De Palma and screenwriter Josh Friedman adapt.

Josh Hartnett leads an exceptional cast in The Black Dahlia as detective Dwight 'Bucky' Bleichert, a former boxing star turned L.A flatfoot. Bucky's partner is a fellow former boxer Leland 'Lee' Blanchard. Rising through the ranks together, using their boxing star status to impress superiors, the two end up partners in the robbery homicide division.

When the nude, bisected body of young Elizabeth Short is found, it is Bucky and Lee's celebrity that gets them on the Dahlia case, over Bucky's objections; he's concerned about a murder case they were already working and were nearly killed while investigating. The Black Dahlia case however is the department's top priority and they want their most high profile cops out front cracking the case.

On January 15th 1947 the body of Elizabeth Short (Mia Kirschner) was discovered on a side street by a woman with a stroller. Short was nude and her body bisected, cut at the waist. Her blood was drained and internal organs removed. There are other more gruesome details that even Elmore Leornard left out of his account of this real life murder that the papers called The Black Dahlia for the victims penchant for black clothes and flowers in her hair.

Who was Elizabeth Short? In the movie she is a wannabe starlet from a small town in Massachusetts who came to L.A, like so many young girls, with stars in her eyes. She was said, by friends, to have a number of gentlemen callers and was welcome in local lesbian bars as well. It is at one of these bars where Bucky follows a lead to a woman named Madeleine Linscott (Hillary Swank). A dead ringer for Dahlia, Madeleine was seen talking to Elizabeth and another woman not long before she disappeared.

Rather than arrest and interrogate Ms. Linscott, Bucky begins a dangerous affair with her and promises to keep her name out of the papers. The Linscott name is quite well known; Madeleine's father built much of the town. Finding daddy's little girl in a lesbian hangout and linking her to the Dahlia murder would be a media frenzy.

In parallel plot, Bucky and Lee share the attention of a beautiful former prostitute, Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson). Kay is Lee's girl, he rescued her from a violent pimp, but it's clear she and Bucky have an attraction. When Lee becomes engrossed in the Dahlia case, Kay and Bucky come dangerously close to crossing a line.

Josh Hartnett continues to grow into one of the most interesting actors working today. His style is shy and understated but it's the inner strength that he reveals just when the character needs it that makes him so interesting. His reticence as Bucky belies the toughness of a character that is shown to be quite a good boxer. He is gentle even as he is an invasive interrogator and by the end of the film his horror at all he's seen brings his character around to being a classic noir character. Hartnett has alot to play in The Black Dahlia and he pulls it all off extremely well.

As good as Hartnett is, the true showstopper performance in The Black Dahlia is that of Fiona Shaw. To give any details of who her character is or reveal anything about her is to give away a little more than I want to of this clever plot. Nevertheless, I can tell you that Ms. Shaw delivers an Oscar worthy turn with a speech near the end of the film that would make Norma Desmond blush.

Brian De Palma's style could be called classy trash. Look closely at his resume and you can find a number of movies that fit that description or atleast have moments that fit that description. In Femme Fatale, De Palma crafts a number of gorgeous visuals, classy architecture and the like. It's a great looking film even when it dips into trashy lesbian trysts and gratuitous displays of flesh. And Femme Fatale is one De Palma's lesser works.

Applying his style to material he actually seems invested in, De Palma is invigorated and his excitement translates to the screen with great enthusiasm. The macabre fascination that the public had with the Black Dahlia murder is a subject that suits Brian De Palma's dark, lurid, some would say trashy personality. Indeed he is quite fond of the darker side and expresses that dark side with glee in The Black Dahlia.

And yet for all of its ghastly fascination with the lurid details of not only the life of Elizabeth Short but for those of the cop characters, the rich family and the prostitute, The Black Dahlia manages to be both engrossing and highly entertaining. De Palma invites you down the path of the lurid back streets and somehow; you willingly and wantonly follow him to the movie equivalent of the red light district known as The Black Dahlia.

When he's on his game Brian De Palma is one of the most skillful and talented directors in the business and The Black Dahlia is his best work in nearly a decade. Stylish, mysterious, trashy yet kinda classy, The Black Dahlia is a cinematic smorgasbord that offers something for all audiences, true crime, mystery, sex, graphic violence and great performances. The Black Dahlia will, no doubt, divide many and unite many others. For my money, it's one of the best films of the year.