Movie Review: The Proposition

The Proposition (2005) 

Directed by John Hilllcoat 

Written by Nick Cave 

Starring Guy Pearce, Richard Wilson, Ray Winstone, and Danny Huston 

Released March 10th, 2006 

Published March 8th 2006

A house is riddled with bullets. Inside, a group of supposed outlaws fights for their lives. Most of the homes inhabitants are killed save for two. These two are members of the famed Burns Gang, middle Burns brother Charlie (Guy Pearce), and youngest brother, Mikey (Richard Wilson). Captured by the Captain (Ray Winstone), the brothers are given death sentences but with a caveat.

Mikey will be taken into custody with a noose waiting for him on Christmas day. Charlie can save Mikey's life if he travels to a remote part of the Australian outback, where even aborigines fear to tread, and track down his older brother Arthur (Danny Huston). Arthur is wanted for the brutal rape and murder of a close friend of the Captain's wife (Emily Watson). The proposition that the Captain offers is a dangerous gamble, a mob waits back in the small Aussie village where the captain presides. If they find out the Captain had captured Charlie and released him, no reason will be a good enough explanation.

That is the plot outline of The Proposition, a brutally violent morality play set in early 20th century Australia; a place with more than a passing resemblance to the old west of American legend. The Proposition shares more than a passing resemblance to the western legends of John Ford and the Italian westerns of Sergio Leone, only darker and more violent. The Proposition is graphically violent with a purpose. 

Directed by Aussie video director John Hillcoat, best known for the early videos of INXS, from a script by rocker Nick Cave, who also composed the films eerie, old west soundtrack, The Proposition is stylish and often breathtakingly so. With the help of cinematographer Benoit Delhomme, director Hillcoat crafts gorgeous images of the outback juxtaposed against ghastly violence and gore.

Danny Huston has never had such a meaty role. Often left with mustache twirling villains or officious corporate worms, Huston defies his type casting with this twisted but oddly soulful killer. At one moment musing poetry and another twisting a knife into a man's chest, it is Huston's wild far away eyes that communicate his malevolent character. Much of the violence that Arthur Burns performs, his most sadistic actions, happen off-screen, out of our view. His true, vile, criminality is left to our imagination which allows it to become as twisted as we make it.

Guy Pearce creates Charlie Burns from his bones. Slimming his already skinny frame down to the pulpy, knotted muscle, Pearce is a feral animal with cold dead eyes who has somehow retained a shred of humanity that his older brother has not. His moral dilemma over the proposition is really a coming to grips with his own crimes. His puzzlement over killing his brother comes from the question of whether the murder will be enough to save his own tortured soul.

Ray Winstone rounds out the three leads with a performance that early on feels very one note. Winstone is introduced as corrupt cop who is torturing Charlie and Mikey into doing his bidding. However, as the story progresses, the Captain becomes the films moral compass and Winstone deepens the role with grace and sadness. 

The Proposition is not for everyone. It is not classically entertaining like the kind of film you catch on late night cable and can watch repeatedly. For true film buffs and fans of hardcore westerns, The Proposition is the kind of movie you go to the movies to see. For the average moviegoer, I would say find something else to rent on Saturday night. For those who appreciate film technique, a director in complete control of tone and pace and violence that has the purpose of leaving a mark in your imagination, The Proposition is the movie for you. 

Movie Review: The Proposal

The Proposal (2009)

Directed by Anne Fletcher 

Written by Peter Chiarrelli 

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Sandra Bullock, Betty White, 

Release Date June 19th, 2009 

Date Published June 18th, 2009

It's the definition of a hackneyed premise. An immigrant desperate to stay in the country enters into a sham marriage in order to pull a fast one on the government. Good movies, bad movies and trite sitcoms have bounced this premise around for years. Thus, the new comedy The Proposal doesn't exactly excite those looking for some original laughs. Oh how I love to be surprised. Yes, the premise is hackneyed beyond belief, but with talented stars and a smart director, The Proposal turns this cliched premise into a wonderfully fresh and funny comic romance.

Sandra Bullock stars in The Proposal in the role that is traditionally given to a man in movies like this, a high powered New York executive. Bullock is Margaret a publishing magnate who is hated and feared by her subordinates. Ryan Reynolds is Andrew, Margaret's desperately put upon assistant anointed with the ugly tasks of being Margaret's everyday punching bag.

Margaret happens to be Canadian and in the country on a visa. She has put off renewing her visa so often that she has accidentally allowed it to expire and she is about to be deported. That is when she gets an idea, she will just tell her boss's and the American government that she is in love and is marrying Andrew. For his part, Andrew is desperate for a raise and a promotion and this is just the opportunity to get ahead at this company. 

If Andrew agrees to marry Margaret she gets to stay in the country and he gets what he wants, the chance to move up the corporate ladder. It's also quite motivating that if Margaret goes, Andrew is likely to get fired. In order to convince the government they are a real couple they agree to travel to Alaska for a weekend of meeting all of Andrew's relatives including his mother (Mary Steenburgen), father (Craig T. Nelson) and Gammy (Betty White).

If, from the above description, you cannot figure out that the hard hearted exec will be won over by the wacky Alaska clan, then you are just not trying. However, what's great is how she is won over and how well she fights it off... for a little while anyway. Director Anne Fletcher, who charmed her way through the equally formula charmer 27 Dresses last year, deftly works the typical into something unexpected and terrifically funny.

Take for instance Margaret's secret love of rap music or the clever use of the great Betty White not for awkward laughs but honest warm, unexpected belly laughs. A character like White's Gammy would, in a lesser movie, be used to score cheap points with inappropriate humor or oddly sexual asides. There are some iffy jokes sent Gammy's way and batted right back, but White is so winning that things never enter that uncanny valley of ungainly vulgarity.

White is a scene stealer but even she loses a couple scenes to one Oscar Nunez. Best known for his quiet, dignified gay man on TV's The Office, Nunez plays Ramone a ubiquitous presence in the lives of Andrew's family who takes an immediate liking to Margaret and delights in shocking her with his ability to be seemingly everywhere.

As for the leads, Bullock hasn't been this good since While You Were Sleeping yet the characters couldn't be more different. Where Sleeping's heroine was all cuddly insecurity, Margaret is a real ballbuster. Blustery and bossy with a steely manner concealing an honest slightly wounded soul, Bullock's Margaret is the rare romantic heroine whose inner life fuels her outward action.

The care taken to give life to Margaret beyond the plot and the obvious character type is what sets a movie like The Proposal apart from other formula romances that rely on the premise to invent the character. The same could be said of Reynolds' Andrew whose daddy issues and innate good nature fuel his actions toward Margaret and make believable the idea that he could in the course of a plot that unfolds in three days, fall for Margaret in ways that make us want them together.

Even with its trite premise The Proposal is fresh, funny and joyous. Sandra Bullock is the Sandra Bullock she was always supposed to be before bad choices like Miss Congeniality 2 and a couple ugly looking thrillers knocked her off of stardom's path. Ryan Reynolds is only a box office hit away from establishing his star presence. With last year's exceptional Definitely Maybe and now The Proposal his chops are unquestionable.

The Proposal may be the best romantic comedy of the year.

Movie Review: Beautiful Boy

Beautiful Boy (2018) 

Directed by Felix Van Groeningen

Written by Luke Davies, Felix Van Groeningen 

Starring Steve Carell, Timothee Chalamet, Maura Tierney, Amy Ryan 

Release Date October 12th, 2018 

Published October 9th, 2018 

Beautiful Boy stars Steve Carell as David Sheff, a very successful freelance reporter living in California. When we meet David he appears to be at a desperate moment. He is interviewing a doctor, played by Timothy Hutton, about addiction. The doctor assumes this is for an article but David informs him that this research is personal. David’s son, Nic (Timothee Chalamet), is addicted to Meth and David has turned to the only thing he can imagine to make sense of things, in-depth research of the kind he’s done as a reporter. 

Indeed, research is the one way in which David Sheff is able to deal with the futility of his son’s addiction. We watch as David takes this research to varying extremes from trying to talk with Nic, to interviewing a young addict over lunch, to interviewing the doctor. He even goes as far as trying methamphetamine himself to understand the appeal. He’s lucky that he didn’t begin his own addiction with that move. 

These interactions are all kinds of interesting but as presented in Beautiful Boy the observations of David, the outcome of his research, have an obtuse quality. We get a vague insight into David, he lives for research, and that’s pretty much the one insight about the character that isn’t vague or assumed. He’s sensitive and he’s compassionate toward his son, he’s loving, but these are qualities we assume of a well to do parent and we wait for the story to tell us something different and it never does. 

David is reminiscent of Donald Sutherland’s character from Ordinary People minus the straw man villain provided in that film by Mary Tyler Moore’s harridan mother-figure. Like Sutherland, Carell plays a saintly figure of suffering but without the Moore character to play off of, Carell doesn’t have many notes to play here. Carell is certainly not bad in this role which leaves me to wonder what anyone thought was particularly cinematic about what David goes through. What is David’s arc? Suffering some to not suffering as much? 

Nic’s arc is to go from child to addict to recovery. That’s not a bad arc but it is off-screen a lot in favor of David’s less engaging lack of an arc. What are we to take away from Nic’s journey? What is special about what Nic went through? His family is wealthy, are we supposed to take away that addiction can happen to anyone regardless of privilege? The film doesn’t appear to have any insight or perspective, nothing really drives the narrative other than drugs are bad, don’t do drugs. 

The main takeaway I had from the movie is that Timothee Chalamet is a very charismatic and intriguing actor who is underserved by a role that doesn’t have a strong narrative engine behind it. Everything is surface level in Beautiful Boy, starting with the beautiful sets and cinematography which are at odds with the agony of Nic’s addiction and the toll it is having on his family. I have joked in the past about characters in disease of the week dramas who have what I call ‘Pretty Cancer,’ that strange type of disease that allows you to remain movie star pretty despite being on deaths’ door. 

Nic appears to have a case of ‘Pretty Addiction.’ Despite the years of meth abuse and living on the streets, the story appears to take place over 5 or 6 years or maybe a decade, now that I think about it, the movie is vague on this point. Regardless of however long Nic’s addiction has gone on, he remains a beautiful young man. Drugs don’t appear to take a toll on him aside from making him rather skinny but Chalamet even makes lanky look handsome. 

There doesn’t appear to be a baseline reality to the story of Beautiful Boy despite the fact that it is based, loosely, on a true story. The film shies away from the uglier parts of Nic’s addiction. For instance, in his book, “Tweaked,” Nic is very open about his years of trading sexual favors with men for money to buy drugs. This doesn’t get mentioned once in the movie and Nic rarely looks worse for wear despite the drugs and what we can presume he did to get them. 

Why did Nic get into drugs in the first place? The film has a scene of father and son sharing a joint and Nic opens up a little about how smoking weed makes life easier to deal with. What was wrong with his life? We don’t really know and perhaps we don’t need to. Kids try drugs all the time, some get a quick high and move on and some take on an addiction that can’t be explained. Brain chemistry makes some people more or less susceptible to drug addiction. 

This is a very specific story about a specific kid who got into drugs, got addicted and stayed that way for a while. There is one thing that stands out that appears insightful and instructive. At one point, Nic talks about being ashamed of being on drugs and how drugs were the only way to stave off the shame. That’s a strong notion, a vivid insight into Nic’s mindset. Beautiful Boy could have used more thoughtful asides like that but the film is dramatically inert. 

Beautiful Boy isn’t notably bad. Timothee Chalamet is incredibly talented and that talent shines through the moribund story being told here. Steve Carell, Maura Tierney and Amy Ryan are quite good at earning our sympathy but the story they are in lacks a narrative engine. The story unfolds in fits and starts that cause the film to drag and feel pointless even as it clearly has one point, drugs are bad, don’t use drugs. 

I don’t want to completely warn you away from this movie as it is not terrible. Beautiful Boy just isn’t quite as good as it should be. The scenery is lovely but the story has no movement. Nic is moving toward not being an addict but the rest of the story sputters along hitting the same note, drugs are bad, don’t do drugs. This does not make for much compelling drama or insightful commentary.

See Beautiful Boy for the performance of Timothee Chalamet but keep your expectations for the movie low. This is not the Academy Award contender that some would like you to believe that it is. It’s a big budget Lifetime Movie of the week at best, with an Oscar-caliber performance from Chalamet that is undermined by the rest of the movie’s lack of ambition.