Billy Connolly

Great Cast Receives Winning Showcase in Dustin Hoffman’s ‘Quartet’

mattmovieman — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 06:31:36 -0500

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – There are few things more fragile than an actor’s ego. It must be treated with the utmost care in order to prevent a split-second meltdown. The enormous pressure of audience expectations coupled with the piercing eye of an ever-present media is enough to send sensitive folk to a sanitarium. Thick skin is a necessity in show business, but what happens when that skin begins to age?

No one knows about this sort of anxiety better than Dustin Hoffman, who memorably witnessed it up close and personal on the set of David O. Russell’s gloriously messy satire, “I Heart Huckabees.” His screen partner Lily Tomlin delivered her reliable brand of deadpan genius on camera, but behind the scenes, she was an explosive time bomb of insecurity that ended up being immortalized online, courtesy of leaked footage. Her expletive-laden rant at Russell was a potent illustration of an aging icon whose paranoia had caused her to doubt her obvious abilities (though, to be fair, Russell proved to be every bit as unhinged).

The F-bomb is dropped only once in Dustin Hoffman’s otherwise warm and cuddly adaptation of Ronald Harwood’s play, but it is used for maximum effect. It is placed in the mouth of former opera superstar Jean Horton, a veteran diva not a million miles removed from Tomlin. She’s been asked by some old colleagues to reunite in a quartet that will perform at the annual gala concert of their new picturesque abode, Beecham House, a home for aging musicians. Instead of reacting in delight, Horton is deeply offended—convinced that her supposedly backstabbing friends are setting her up for humiliation. This culminates in a classic bit of naughty language, delivered with saucy glee by Maggie Smith, an actress who is surely the grandest of all Dames. Her portrayal of Horton’s anguished vulnerability is all the more remarkable considering how far removed it is from her own. For Smith, acting has always seemed as effortless as breathing. From her peerless work in the ’50s and ’60s, culminating in her brilliant Oscar-winning performance in “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (a startling inverse of the “Dead Poets Society” formula), to her crowd-pleasing, razor-sharp comic timing in seven consecutive “Harry Potter” films and every episode of “Downtown Abbey,” Smith has only gotten better with age and shows absolutely no sign of slowing down. If anyone seemed destined for immortality, it’s her.

Maggie Smith stars in Dustin Hoffman’s Quartet.
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

Hoffman’s “Quartet” is worth seeing first and foremost for the pleasure of watching Smith perform alongside a gallery of first-rate character actors. Tom Courtenay has several bittersweet interludes with Smith as her ex-husband whose romantic life never recovered from the breakdown of their marriage. Billy Connolly steals all of his scenes as a tireless ladykiller whose eyes naturally exude unprintable mischief, while Pauline Collins is agreeably dotty as an Edith Bunker-like life force gradually drifting into dementia. One of the film’s biggest letdowns is also one of its most inevitable: as formidable as these actors might be, none of them can quite carry a tune. Thus, the picture is one long build-up to a big musical number that remains offscreen, though the ensemble is littered with a gallery of renowned opera stars, all of whom receive special mention during the end credit roll. Yet as anti-climactic as the film’s finale may be, it also poignantly reflects the film’s overarching message that life is about the journey, not the destination.

Aside from his uncredited work co-directing 1978’s crime drama, “Straight Time,” “Quartet” marks Hoffman’s first time in the director’s chair, and he appears to be right at home. He brings a light touch to even the most melodramatic sequences, though he does linger on a few arresting images, such as a sudden stream of petals flowing over a bannister, signaling the imminence of tragedy. What shines through each scene is his genuine compassion for artists, even those whose ego knows no bounds. Perhaps Hoffman’s comfortable perch at the top tier of American actors has allowed him to observe his colleagues with an uncommonly clear-eyed gaze. He portrays Horton not as a monster nor as a cartoonish caricature, but merely as a prideful woman privately terrified by her own mortality. She’s been on the stage so long that her acting tricks have seeped into her offstage life—she recites planned lines to deliver in the presence of Courtenay as if memorizing a script. It’s in her decision to perform with her fellow entertainers that Horton is making her last-ditch effort to embrace life rather than wait around for her final curtain call. It’s a triumphant moment, and Smith makes it sing (even if she, alas, does not).

Michael Gambon and Tom Courtenay star in Dustin Hoffman’s Quartet.
Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

The demographic of audiences aged 60 and over is neglected far too often by Hollywood, and “Quartet” is guaranteed to delight those seeking a reprieve from bombastic blockbusters, as well as a pleasing alternative to “Amour,” Michael Haneke’s infinitely superior yet far more wrenching portrait of old age. Hoffman’s film may be no more or less than substantial than Fox Searchlight’s geriatric escapist lark, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” which transformed India into a playground for crusty Brits (including Smith), yet it’s considerably more effective. Hoffman knows that these actors don’t need broad gags and contrived hijinks to bring down the house. Sometimes all they need is a well-enunciated F-bomb.

‘Quartet’ stars Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins, Sheridan Smith and Michael Gambon. It was written by Ronald Harwood and directed by Dustin Hoffman. It opened January 25th at Landmark Century Centre Cinema and Landmark Renaissance Place. It is rated PG-13.

By MATT FAGERHOLM
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
matt@hollywoodchicago.com

Gorgeous ‘Brave’ Connects While Not Matching Pixar Standard

BrianTT — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 12:16:56 -0400

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Pixar’s 13th film has been lauded as a major first for the company – the inaugural adventure aimed squarely at young females. Luckily, there’s nothing here that diminishes that goal in any way. “Brave” features a strong, well-designed, interesting heroine, perfectly voiced by Kelly Macdonald, and it doesn’t pander to its demographic, proving that girls can play with the big boys while also giving them a fable of their own. Beautiful character/environment design and spectacular voice work keep “Brave” a notch above much of the animated competition even if a straightforward story and lack of personality make this one of Pixar’s least accomplished screenplays.

Princess Merida (Macdonald) is the rebellious daughter of Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson) and King Fergus (Billy Connolly), a fiery redhead who refuses to bundle up her hair like her conformist mother. When will Merida settle down? When will she stop bringing bows to the dinner table and start acting like a “lady”? Perhaps a husband can settle her down and Elinor and Fergus bring in three semi-suitable suitors to win the young girl’s heart.

Brave
Photo credit: Disney

Of course, Merida is too good for any of the Scottish stereotypes who try to win her heart and flees the castle after winning an archery competition. She runs into the woods and finds herself in a mystical ring of stones where some will-o-the-wisps guide her to an important figure in her fate – a wood-carving witch (Julie Walters) who gives her a spell baked into a cake that’s designed to “change” her mother. Merida clearly hasn’t yet learned that when a witch tells you someone will “change,” you should take her seriously.

The rest of “Brave” is a good-natured tale about how we learn what’s important to us. It’s a turning point in any young person’s life – and it often doesn’t come until they’re parents themselves – when they discover that their parents aren’t perfect. They’re trying to do what they think is best. And, at its core, “Brave” is not a story of a defiant daughter or an overbearing mother but a parent and child who come closer to a deeper understanding of each other’s needs through what is basically a Scottish fable.

Brave
Photo credit: Disney

Sadly, the fable aspect of “Brave” is its least successful and most underdeveloped. The film had a notoriously tumultuous behind-the-scenes process (three directors and four writers are credited, never a good sign) and the second and third acts feel somewhat cluttered and unfocused. The opening half hour (which is what the trailers have consisted of almost entirely) is a beauty on every level – storytelling, voice work, visually – but it’s easy to start to lose interest in the narrative once one realizes that this is not quite the transcendent script that we’ve come to expect from Pixar or that it could have been with the great set-up. I was with “Brave” through its running time but the genius of Pixar has been how often its best writers could twist a classic story into something completely different. In no way is “Brave” completely different. One of its creators told me in an interview that you could take the fable elements and drop them right into Scottish lore and I have to say that I’m not sure that’s a good thing. “Brave” could have been more than just another Scottish fable, especially when one compares it to not just Pixar but “How to Train Your Dragon,” a film that took similar themes and delivered something that felt far more original.

Whatever narrative flaws one finds in “Brave” are off-set by the remarkable technical accomplishments of the film. It’s stunningly beautiful, finding a storytelling aspect to the natural world that is too often missing from feature films. Most of the critics I know who don’t like the film saw it in 3D and I saw it in one less dimension. I wonder if that’s not the way to go since I was more entranced by the visuals. Yes, kids, believe it or not, sometimes 3D can take something pretty and make it look like a gimmick.

Brave
Photo credit: Disney

I also think that what Macdonald and Thompson bring to the entire experience can’t be under-valued. Macdonald finds the perfect balance of adolescence and growing womanhood. Merida is a SPECTACULAR character and I think the flaws of the storytelling are amplified mostly because one wishes she had been given a more interesting narrative in which to play.

“Brave” comes at a turning point in Pixar’s filmography. They’re coming off their biggest disappointment (“Cars 2”) and not only facing articles that wonder if the other creative shoe has dropped but delivering an audience their first non-sequel in three years. Add that to the fact that it’s being billed as an “important film” for young girls and it feels like all of this pressure led to something common in the creative world but something we’ve rarely seen from Pixar – playing it safe. It’s too well-made and enjoyable to dismiss but these are the kinds of moderated praise that we haven’t often had to use in terms of Pixar. If only the studio had found the courage to deliver a great adventure instead one that’s merely good.

“Brave” features voice work by Kelly Macdonald, Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly, Robbie Coltrane, Craig Ferguson, Kevin McKidd, and Julie Walters. It was written by Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman, Steve Purcell, and Irene Mecchi and directed by Andrews and Chapman and Purcell. It opens on June 22, 2012 and is rated PG.

By BRIAN TALLERICO
Content Director
HollywoodChicago.com
brian@hollywoodchicago.com

Jack Black, Emily Blunt Think Big in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’

PatrickMcD — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 11:00:32 -0500

Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Call it too much holiday eggnog, but the re-imagining of the immortal classic “Gulliver’s Travels,’ starring Jack Black, Emily Blunt and Jason Segal, has a little Yuletide fun and hurts no one. If you like Jack Black, you’ll enjoy the film. If you don’t, find another way to spend 93 minutes this tinsel time weekend.

Black is Lemuel Gulliver, a manchild who works in the mailroom at a popular travel magazine (soon the publishing industry will cease as a movie glamour profession, but I digress). He is thirtysomething, stuck on post pubescence and has an ambition-less path in his life, having been the mailroom manager for 11 years. His one distraction is the crush he has on an editor, the fetching Darcy (Amanda Peet).

When a new guy is given his manager position, a distraught Gulliver takes some action. Forging some distinct travel writing, he manages to get a Bermuda Triangle assignment from Darcy. He goes into the nebulous region via a small boat, and proceeds to get sucked into a watery vortex. Knocked out and washed ashore, when he awakens he finds himself confined by ropes. Ropes that have been affixed by an army of tiny men.

Gulliver has landed in Lilliput, a kingdom of industrious and miniature people. He is now a giant among men, and with the help of Princess Mary (Emily Blunt) and commoner Horatio (Jason Segal) he becomes the protector and rock star of the new land. Lilliput becomes a virtual shrine to Gulliver’s glory, as he takes credit for every invention and entertainment from his old world.

Wrapped up for the Holidays: Jack Black in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’
Photo Credit: © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

When war looms with a rival island, Gulliver is forced to get into the middle of the scrum, and a jealous general (Chris O’Dowd) switches sides and helps build a robot opponent. Can giant Gulliver survive the fight, a temporary banishment to another land and the loss of trust from the citizens of Lilliput? No worries, there are no sad endings at Christmas.

The story began as a book by Jonathan Swift published (amazingly) in 1726, and has never been out of print. The elements of the book – it was a take-off at the time of popular travel pamphlets and a sharp satire of human nature – are somewhat preserved in the film. The travel magazine is Gulliver’s ticket to Lilliput, and his mega-maniacal ego as a “giant among men” has some very sharp moments (a staging of the film “Titanic,” in which Gulliver is the main character, is hilariously debated).

The story, of course, lives or dies through the Jack Black “character,” the arrested developmental man who has not shook his rock and roll attitude. He pays a bit in this scenario, as his caught-in-the-mailroom life is suddenly upended. But the character creates a havoc in Lilliput, the re-creation of Times Square with nothing but Gulliver billboards is strange and funny. The citizens of Lilliput are incredible inventors (in the gears and pistons sense of the early industrial revolution) and their constructed accommodations for the giant man are quite weird.

The supporting characters give a nice balance to the hard sell of the story. The royal court of Lilliput, with the King (Billy Conolly) and Emily Blunt’s Princess Mary play it mostly straight, as innocents sucked into the Gulliver vortex. Blunt also gives the impression that she is tremendously bored in her gilded castle, practically begging to be kidnapped by the rival kingdom just for something to do. Jason Segal makes a practical and eventually heroic best friend, but seems a bit uncomfortable talking to a green screen.

“Green screen” refers to the special effects, and the whole film probably was constructed inside a computer. The look is epic, but perhaps the human characters has a hard time understanding where to look. Most of the cast handles it well, especially Jack Black, but you can actually see the difficult transition that the human performers have to make in this process. Acting classes, begin to teach your kids how to act to the orange ball on a stick.

Things are Looking Up: Jason Segal as Horatio and Emily Blunt as Princess Mary in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’
Photo Credit: © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

This is also the second film, after the Chronicles of Narnia, that features a watery tunnel as a portal. The screenwriters from Harvard must be taking psychology classes now, or maybe they miss their mothers. Sigmund Freud gets to dance a Christmas jig over the trend of the watery tunnel.

There are worse ways to spend Christmas than dancing with Freud and Jack Black. There is an epic dance at the end of Gulliver’s Travels, so silly and random that it closes the subject of the film quite marvelously. Imagine, a wish for Peace on Earth.

“Gulliver’s Travels” opens everywhere December 25th. Featuring Jack Black, Jason Segal, Emily Blunt, Amanda Peet, Chris O’Dowd, T.J. Miller and Billy Connolly. Screenplay by Joe Stillman and Nicholas Stoller (based on a book by Jonathan Swift), directed by Rob Letterman. Rated “PG”.

By PATRICK McDONALD
Senior Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com

No Matter How Hard You Believe Otherwise, ‘The X-Files: I Want to Believe’ Most Anemic Story Yet

HollywoodChicago.com — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:01:00 -0400

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Following an addictive TV series that spanned from 1992 to 2002, I wanted to believe “The X-Files: I Want to Believe” would more dynamically pay homage to its television success than Chris Carter’s first film attempt in 1998. In take two, though, it didn’t happen.

Carter – who serves as the writer, director and producer of the 2008 film “The X-Files: I Want to Believe” along with the TV series creator – not only has penned an even more anemic script than his film a decade ago but also manages to serve even less justice to a distinctly original TV series that has catered to people’s fantasies and curiosities everywhere.

Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) are drawn back into the world of the X-Files in “The X-Files: I Want to Believe”.
Photo credit: Diyah Pera

“The X-Files” series creator/executive producer Chris Carter directs “The X-Files: I Want to Believe”.
Photo credit: Diyah Pera

What bewilders the mind most blatantly about “The X-Files: I Want to Believe” – aside from the strong character interactions based on comprehensive character development dating back 16 years now – is that its central plotline hardly feels like something from “The X-Files” at all.

No UFOs. No aliens. Hardly anything supernatural. There’s just a psychic character who – while being a central slice in this story – isn’t such a wild stretch from today’s real world.

In reality, some people actually believe in psychic abilities. This as the one and only “The X-Files”-like plotline is tame in contrast to some of the outlandish theories and concepts typically explored in the TV series.

David Duchovny as Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully again reprise their infamous roles. This time, though, they’re both not working for the FBI. Scully’s employed as a doctor and Mulder’s just a hermit with a beard who again enjoys sticking pencils in his ceiling. That is, of course, until Carter’s pen starts dipping in Hollywood ink.

Father Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly) – a dark, complex figure with a haunted past – leads a team of FBI agents to a critical discovery in “The X-Files: I Want to Believe”.
Photo credit: Diyah Pera

Then a “mission” tempts them to come out of FBI retirement and back into the “darkness” of their former selves to thwart a serial killer and save people’s lives. Carter dreadfully transitions from Scully “not knowing where Mulder is” to all of a sudden hopping in bed with him, kissing him and even admitting that she loves him.

Unlike stories of yesteryear that flirted their physical and emotional magnetism, this time there’s no foreplay. Though things are still kept “G” rated, they do hop right in nonetheless.

FBI agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet, left), Fox Mulder (David Duchovny, middle) and FBI agent Mosley Drummy (Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner) pursue clues in wintry Virginia in “The X-Files: I Want to Believe”.
Photo credit: Diyah Pera

The reason Mulder is called on by an FBI team – led feebly by a miscast Amanda Peet – is because he has experience dealing with cases involving psychics. Despite grave professional differences between the bureau and the former agent, they welcome Mulder back out of urgent necessity. Of course, Scully joins him at the hip.

While the interactions between Duchovny and Mulder typically make for gripping screen time and their individual performances are again the most redeeming value of an otherwise underwhelming film, Billy Connolly’s supporting role as Father Joe is one of the brightest and most unexpected stars of the film.

He’s interestingly scripted as a pedophile Catholic priest who psychically sees visions that assist in current homicides all while internally brewing his own unfortunate condition. Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner as an FBI agent delivers among the most indicated and unconvincing performances seen on screen in recent memory.

RELATED IMAGE GALLERY
View our full, high-resolution “The X-Files: I Want to Believe” image gallery.

RELATED READING
More film reviews from critic Adam Fendelman.

Not to be underestimated, though, there’s another principal star in this film beyond Duchovny, Anderson and Connolly: the snow.

With the only valiant plotline centering around the ominous nature of the psychic and the always interesting professional and personal chemistry between Mulder and Scully, the decision to film in such wintery doldrums gave the film a much-needed personality where it was otherwise lacking.

While some avid followers of the TV series may feel vindicated by this second film and might appreciate some of the inside subtleties you’d only know from following its rich history, non-followers won’t be equally satiated.

Merely from the performances by Duchovny, Mulder and Father Joe in a film that’s deficient of a climatic reveal, “The X-Files: I Want to Believe” ultimately lacks enough meat to earn this critic’s recommendation.

“The X-Files: I Want to Believe,” which is directed by Chris Carter and stars David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Amanda Peet, Billy Connolly and Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner, opened everywhere on July 25, 2008.

By ADAM FENDELMAN
Editor-in-Chief
HollywoodChicago.com
adam@hollywoodchicago.com