Tom Tykwer
Availability: DVD Blu-Ray; Amazon Instant
By Rob Fagin
HOLIDAY BUFFET
Five Easy Pieces: Karen Black and Jack Nicholson
Watching the right pair of movies back-to-back
can illuminate wildly different details, create a
whole new viewing experience and, just maybe,
totally BLOW your MIND. Plus, it's fun!
Here's your monthly guide:
F
rost on the windows and pine needles
in the rug - it's that time of year again,
when we stuff ourselves senseless on
rich, fancy, indulgent buffets:
Beginning 12/6, we've got the Coen
Brothers' '60s folk scene flavored Inside
Llewyn Davis, and also a taste of last year's
Silver Linings Playbook with David O.
Russell's '70s con-artist morsel American
Hustle.
We clean our palates on 12/20 with bites
of both "funny ha-ha" and "funny weird"
with Anchorman: The Legend Continues and
the Spike Jonze/Joaquin Phoenix sorbet,
Her.
On Christmas day: Ben Stiller's escapist
dramedy meal, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,
pairs with Martin Scorsese's fifth Leonardo
DiCaprio spiced sauce, The Wolf of Wall
Street.
Another Hobbit movie (The Desolation of
Smaug); Tom Hanks as Walt Disney (Saving
Mr. Banks); Pulitzer Prize-winning play
August: Osage County adapted into, from
what I hear, Acting! The Movie!; a Mark
Wahlberg Navy SEAL tear-jerker (Lone
Survivor); a Keanu Reeves samurai adventure (47 Ronin); and, yes, frigging Robert De
Niro and Sylvester Stallone in a freakin'
boxing comedy, Grudge Match.
With vacation blockbusters and Oscar
bait yolked into one month, we begin here:
First up:
Cloud Atlas (2012)
Dir. Andy and Lana Wachowski
16 illinoisentertainer.com december 2013
Six entrees fight for space on a plate eye-candy sci-fi, comedy of errors, maritime
spine-tingler, Merchant Ivory romancetragedy, funked-up mystery and grisly
voodoo fable.
The adaptation of David Mitchell's seemingly unadaptable novel Cloud Atlas could
have been a crowded, heavy-handed mess,
but instead it trips with an agile grace
between six centuries of stories that connects
the future and past, either directly or just by
playing the same electric tune:
A woman retrea ts from a door that hides
a murderous gunman, and suddenly we're
in another story watching a slave worker
retreat from captivity. Tom Hanks (ridiculously entertaining and game for anything)
is a dastardly doctor menacing his victim in
one shot, and in the next he is a tribesman
rescuing a person he barely knows.
Particularly fun, and unrecognizable at
times, are Hugh Grant and Hugo Weaving
embodying a bevy of villains - from a slimy
politician to a cannibalistic warrior chief;
from a Nurse Ratched-type to a
creole-like demon.
Polymorphous personalities extend even
to this rare team of three directors: Tom
Tykwer (who exhilarated with both Run Lola
Run and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer)
also doubles as co-composer for the film's
score; and The Wachowskis (creators of The
Matrix) were once known as The Wachowski
Brothers before Larry became Lana.
Next Up:
Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Dir. Bob Rafelson
Availability: DVD; Amazon Instant
Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson made
their fortunes by dreaming up a kitschy
American television version of The Beatles'
A Hard Days Night with The Monkees. But, of
course, the mood changed in the late '60s,
and bubblegum fads were spit to the street.
So, Schneider and Rafelson reinvented
themselves as serious film producers, and,
just as the cranky film industry was drowning beneath family-faire musicals like Doctor
Doolittle, they developed a string of movies
that ignited the most aggressively transformative decade in American film history.
Easy Rider ('69) and The Last Picture Show ('71)
tapped into the seedy disillusionment and
hopeless anger of Vietnam-era rebels lost in
their homeland, each story building to a climax of crushing emotion and loneliness.
Five Easy Pieces, however, takes all those elements and slips them into something exceptionally deceptive. In fact, it starts off as a
boisterous good ol' boy rollicker. And then
becomes a wily road trip flick. But that's still
just the beginning.
Jack Nicholson is in wild man mode as
Bobby Dupea - a drinking, screwing oil field
worker who indulges every appetite. Then,
out of nowhere, we're stuck in traffic with
him when he notices a battered piano
strapped to a truck bed. When he presses his
fingers to the keys, it is with such a forceful
somberness and quiet elegance that it's
shocking. This is not the man we've been
following.
His shatteringly divergent lives soon
crash together as he turns his eyes to a new,
clean one. Does he hunger for so many lives
because he's a glutton for them - good or
bad? Or does he really hope that the next one
will satisfy his fickle tastes?