BOFCA REVIEW ROUNDUP: 8/31

OSLO, AUGUST 31ST

“A devastating film. Anders moves through the picture like a ghost, while Danielsen Lie’s performance grows increasingly closed off and enigmatic.” – Sean Burns, The Improper Bostonian

“The movie captures moments of lyrical beauty. As the final shots mirror the first, you reflect on how life goes on, with and without us.” – Brett Michel, The Boston Phoenix

“You leave the film overwhelmed by the skill behind its craft and simultaneously demolished by its stark, compassionate, yet ultimately hopeless vision of the struggle against the darkness within.” – Jake Mulligan, The Suffolk Voice

 

LAWLESS
 
“A strong cast and a fresh spin on the gangster film help overcome a script that occasionally lapses into cliché.” – Daniel M. Kimmel, NorthShoreMovies.net

 

“One of those curious misfires in which a lot of talented people are nowhere near their comfort zones. And I still couldn’t understand a word Tom Hardy said.” – Sean Burns, Philadelphia Weekly

“What should be a classic modern-western gets derailed by schizophrenic direction in John Hillcoat’s hilariously uneven depiction of a lawless world.” – Jake Mulligan, EDGE Boston

“Pearce’s role is a perfect example of the over-the-top theatrical performance that Awards Voters love, because Awards Voters are usually stupid.” – Greg Vellante, The Eagle Tribune

“It’s curious, but we now seem to find ourselves waxing nostalgic about times when the people in power were merely corrupt. Nowadays, they’re practically cannibalistic.” – Kilian Melloy, Kal’s Movie Blog

“LAWLESS is not going to win any prize for breaking the story mold, but that’s okay because it revisits this well-trod ground enthusiastically.” – Bob Chipman, The Escapist

 

FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL…

“Other than Kevin Smith, is there anyone more toxic to a film than Nia Vardalos? Well, get ready, because first-time feature director Jamie Travis has them both.” – Brett Michel, The Boston Phoenix

“A movie so unfunny it makes SCHINDLER’S LIST look like SUPERBAD. The characters swear and talk about sex like young kids who just discovered both things exist.” – Greg Vellante, The Eagle Tribune

“It constantly ducks away from any semblance of adult sexuality, while director Travis indulges in garish colors and giggle fits.” – Sean Burns, Philadelphia Weekly 

 

 THE BULLET VANISHES

“As far as cheap knock-offs go, it’s a fairly flattering imitation.” – Brett Michel, The Boston Phoenix

 

 

SLEEPWALK WITH ME

“But you don’t need to spend $11.75 to see an infomercial. It’s under-thought, overdone, and presented without the slightest hint of visual panache. It’s repellent.” – Jake Mulligan, The Suffolk Voice

“And while the deadpan delivery of the series of unfortunate events is amusing, it can grow tiring. It’s also easy to feel frustrated with Mike’s character, as the leading man, he doesn’t quite mature from the start of the film.” – Monica Castillo, Paste Magazine

“Nobody bothered to outsize this interior monologue into an actual motion picture. So, from the get-go, it’s like we’re watching some overblown, under-photographed version of a story we’ve already heard.” – Sean Burns, Philadelphia Weekly
 
 

BOFCA INTERVIEW: 8/30

 

Matt Bondurant’s 2008 bestseller THE WETTEST COUNTY IN THE WORLD was based on a family legend that his family never told him about. This wild historical novel chronicling Prohibition Era moonshine wars in West Virginia’s Franklin County has just been adapted for the big screen by director John Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave as LAWLESS, with Shia LeBeouf starring as the author’s grandfather, Jack.

Bondurant sat down a couple of weeks ago with BOFCA members John Black and Sean Burns. Here are some highlights from their conversation:

Q: Loved the book. But it’s billed as “a novel based on a true story.”  So how autobiographical –or I guess maybe just biographical– is it, really?

A: Well, there are several incidents that we know to be historically accurate that the book is sort of framed around. There’s not a lot of evidence what any of these guys were doing on any given day from 1920 to 1935, unless they show up in the newspaper. And that happens when they get shot, so that’s kinda all you have.

 Q: It was such a closed community, and these guys barely talk to each other.

 A: They’re tight-lipped people. We had a vague sense that my grandfather was involved in moonshine growing up, but nobody talked about it. It wasn’t really until about fifteen years ago we found out that he was shot, and that’s when we found the newspaper article. They’re quiet, stoic people. There’s not much of a storytelling urge.

 Q: So after all those years working on this book, what does it feel like handing it over to Nick Cave?

A: It’s very impersonal, the transaction. Your agent calls you from L.A. and etcetera, etcetera. Then you sign contracts and it kinda goes away. It’s happening somewhere else and you don’t think anything of it for a long time. And then when Hillcoat becomes attached, then Nick Cave… like a lot of people, I loved THE ROAD but I wasn’t aware of THE PROPOSITION yet. I was of course aware of Nick Cave as a musician, but not as a screenwriter. It was really cool because from the very beginning I felt like I was in good hands, with Hillcoat and Cave as a team? And Shia LeBeouf was attached, so I thought that was great because he has some weight to pull around and maybe he could make things happen. And he did. He stuck with it. Even after people came on and dropped off, and it went into turnaround and Columbia Pictures dropped it. I don’t understand how this stuff works.

Q: We were going to ask you to explain it!

A: Yeah, I have no idea. There were four or five production companies, and somehow somebody picked it up, but really Tom Hardy started the snowball effect when he signed on. All of the sudden everybody else jumped on there too. I think a lot of people wanted to work with Hillcoat and Cave. I saw a couple of iterations of the script, and I thought it was pretty cool. I don’t have much experience looking at scripts. They’re kind of weird to look at. I’m used to novels so it’s a weird sort of framework of a story and it’s all abbreviated and shortened and it seems strange. But I could tell that he had some good lines in there, and he used a lot of my lines, too – so I was really happy about that!

Q: What did you make of that Guy Pearce performance?

A: It’s pretty wild.  That’s probably the most significant change from the book. Hillcoat explained to me that they wanted to demonstrate the difference between Charlie Rakes and everybody else — bringing in an outsider from Chicago and making him more menacing. Of course, as films do, they amped him up and made him a straight villain. In the book I tried to provide a more complicated picture, that he was a person who was troubled by his own personal demons. But you can’t really do that in the film. They’re already trying to get these three brothers down, so the villain’s just gotta be the villain. It’s a crazy sort of look Guy had going on there, and apparently he came up with a lot of that on his own. Hillcoat told me Pearce just came out of the bathroom one day with this shaved line in his head. The eyebrows were gone and they were like, “Holy shit!”

Q: It looks like he’s doing PINK FLOYD: THE WALL.

A: Oh yeah! It was pretty freaky. He chews up the screen. You can’t take your eyes off him.  It seems like the reactions from audiences – they hate him, they want him dead.

Q: So back to the tight-lipped people, what does your family think of the movie?

A: My Dad’s the only living person who is in the film, and he’s that little boy sitting on Shia’s lap at the end. When I was doing this in D.C. last week he came to the screening and saw the film for the first time, then participated in the Q&A, which was pretty cool.

Q: How’d he like it?

A: My Dad’s eighty years old and hasn’t seen a movie in a theater in thirty years, easy. My Mom said she can’t remember the last time he stayed awake through an entire film. But he stayed awake through this one!

LAWLESS opened yesterday in Boston area cinemas.