Paramount Summer Classic Film Series- Oceans 11 (2001)

A good heist story is always entertaining as long as it is executed effectively. Stephen Soderberg's Oceans 11 is a big screen remake of a heist film from the 1960s, that had a hip reputation but was not a terrific heist movie. The remake corrects that. A heist movie depends on a clever plot, multiple complications in the execution of the heist, and usually a twist the audience didn't see coming. This version of Ocean's 11 has all of those in abundance, and it also has a great cast of characters to round out the story.

It may be true the George Clooney is not the star he once was, because his films have not drawn the box office numbers that they did Once Upon a Time. However he still has charisma, and this 23-year-old film demonstrates that in spades. Along with "Out of Sight" from two years earlier, Clooney was at the apex of charming criminal masterminds at the turn of the century. The plot here, involves a complicated intrusion into the vault that contains the cash flow of three major casinos in Las Vegas. The crew is attempting to steal the money from that vault, which is impenetrable and is protected by a vast security force. How will they do it, and will they get away with it?

The first two acts of the film set up the characters and the situation that they are faced with. We are given as much as possible to sympathize with them. The mark they are after appears to be a brutal, heartless, chiseler who has double crossed one of their team, and is stealing love of the team leader. Clooney, as Danny Ocean, is cool calm and collected as he assembles his crew with the assistance of his friend played by Brad Pitt. The two of them create enough cool in this movie to make it competitive with the Frank Sinatra movie that it's based on. When you layer on top of it, Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Elliott Gould, and as the villain, anxious cold-eyed Andy Garcia. You can put your beer in the refrigerator now because this film is cooler than anything you're going to see this year.

The twists in this movie are fun, and well plotted. Like all movies of this ilk, the plot depends a little bit on certain characters behaving in a way that is anticipated by the other characters, to a T. Other than that old trope, the movie works well in disguising what's really happening, both to the characters in the film and for us the audience. When we realize how they're going to get away with it we smile with indulgence because we have been fooled by the cleverness of the master criminal. It's just too much fun.

The screening was packed with a variety of people, many of whom had not seen the movie before, as you could tell by the way they were reacting to some of the twists. Don Cheadle's accent, Elliott Gould's cigar and robe, and Casey Affleck and Scott Caan bickering with each other, all add humorous moments to the film, that aren't necessarily cool but are clearly a lot of fun. The film combines some really basic physical comedy, with some sophisticated dialogue and plot devices which amuse us in a completely different way.

Matt Damon is sort of the standout in the film, because he's a young buck on the rise, but he's still naive enough to fall for some of the bits that the older duo of Pitt and Clooney engage in. He's capable of playing comedy given the right material, and boy is this the right material. I shouldn't neglect that one of the characters in the film, is played by Julia Roberts, and although she's not one of the 11, she is critical in the execution of the heist. When the follow-ups of "Ocean's 12" and "13" appear, she finally gets counted as a member of the team. I'd be perfectly happy if they counted to 20 in the next few years, so we can enjoy these clever heist movies in greater abundance.

Hail, Caesar!

I like Coen Brothers movies as much as the next person. I do think they have a sense of humor that fits their film making skills well, when there is a coherent plot driven story that has a solid end point in mind. When they have stretched out into comedy, they are a little more hit and miss. "Raising Arizona" and "O Brother Where Art Thou?" are examples of their success with straight comedy, solid home runs. "The Hudsucker Proxy" and "The Lady Killers" are illustrations of a swing and a miss. Sticking with the baseball metaphor, "Hail, Caesar!" is a foul tip. It makes contact but never reaches the field of play enough to create any sense of it being an essential film.

The story, as it is, mostly follows the travails of Eddie Mannix, the "Head of Physical Production", whatever that means , at Capital Pictures. This is the same real life character played by Bob Hoskins in "Hollywoodland" a decade ago. Instead a a sober and somewhat ominous figure as he was presented in that film, here as played by Josh Brolin, he is a guilt ridden workaholic who has doubts about the value of his job but does it extremely well. Although there are comic aspects to what goes on, Brolin never plays him as a fool, and it is the circus around him that provides most of the laughs. As straight man to a variety of insane people, Brolin still manages to be occasionally funny while remaining a realistic character. The same cannot be said for most of the other featured players.

Scarlett Johansson is barely in the film, and her character has almost no personality except for boredom. George Cloony seems to be reprising his role as a dimwit with delusions of deep thought like his character from "O'Brother". His very last scene he actually does what a movie star should do, but the purpose is to subvert the moment for a laugh. Ralph Fiennes has one solid scene and then another where he is mostly background. Tilda Swinton is playing dual characters, who are basically the same person anyway, and the part requires no real talent except being bitchy and tall. Francis McDormand and Jonah Hill each have one scene, and neither of them is connected to the main story [Main story being a euphemism for "plot point used to sell the movie"] . This film is all over the place, it leaves the biggest stars struggling to find something to do and it never develops any sense of urgency.

It's 1951, and the studio system can see the future, and so can a group of communist writers. Those forces clash against a background of studio intrigue, none of which seems to be particularly connected to anything else going on in the film. The location however does give us an opportunity to see some fun parodies of film making from the era. Alden Ehrenreich should be the breakout star of the movie. He plays a Singing cowboy star who is cast in a sophisticated drama and becomes incidentally tied up with the kidnapping plot highlighted in the trailer. He is quite good playing a guy out of his depths in some circumstances but at the top of the heap in others. Had his story been the centerpiece of the film, I think the movie would have held together a lot better. The other high point of the film is Channing Tatum, lampooning the star system with a turn as a movie hoofer with a secret. The dance number he stars in is the best moment in the movie, it is well staged, funny as heck and should get a laugh from all those who see homoeroticism in every 50s film.

I'm glad that artists as successful as the Cohen Brothers are, can take chances and work in different film genres and experiment. I just wish that this film had been more successful. There are several great scenes and good laughs, but it barely resembles a film and it is clearly full of indulgences that feel like someone is taking advantage of their position. I would never tell people to stay away, but unless you are a completest, you will be perfectly fine waiting for their next attempt. No one wants to be disappointed with a movie they chose to see and I think most people will find this film to be just that.

Tomorrowland

This movie is a mess. It has a dozen different strands of ideas that it wants to follow, it's tone is all over the place, and the rules of the story seem inconsistent. The idea of making a Disney attraction into a film is not of course new, but as a whole "land" is involved this time, I think maybe the stitching required to get it all to hold together is just more obvious this time out. George Clooney is a movie star that can't really open a film on his own without a strong premise, and he is invisible from this movie for most of the first hour.

Director Brad Bird has made some of my favorite films over the last fifteen years. He is capable of telling a coherent story but this one is just not quite there. You can see the ideas right there in front of you, tantalizing us with the notion that there is something deep and worthwhile in this experience. It just does not come together. It reminded me several times of the movie "Toys" with Robin Williams. There are things to look at, there are good performers giving it their all, but the premise is too fuzzy in the end to be anything more than mildly likable when it is all over. I ended up wanting to see the movie that they tell this story around, rather than the book ends that make up this structure. I think even the story of Casey, the young protagonist played by Britt Roberston, would have worked a bit better. At the end, the conventional issues all undermine the creativity of the imagination that the promise of "Tomorrowland" is supposed to hold.

The opening section that tells the back story of Clooney's Frank Walker was excellent. The setting at the New York World's Fair in 1964 is picture perfect. The Fair contained all sorts of advanced gizmos and concepts and a few of them are illustrated here. We never see the "Carrousel  of Progress" but the song makes an appearance and promises us a great big beautiful tomorrow. Raffey Cassidy is an interesting young actress who may very well have been cast because of her resemblance to Angela Cartwright of "the Sound of Music" but more importantly Penny from "Lost in Space". Baby boomers will see her freckles and the dress she wears in those early scenes and think immediately of the time period being evoked. Casting here went a long way in setting the scene, I think even more than all the special effects. The kid who plays young Frank is also very well cast to give a sense of those hopeful, early sixties dreamers of the New Frontier. His answer as to why he made the jetpack he has brought to the Inventions Hall at the Fair is a great encapsulation of America's can do spirit. The contrast with the heroine's project, to keep the launch pad at Cape Canaveral from closing down, is a little heavy handed but it is clear. We stopped being dreamers.

So I'm settling down for an uplifting movie about how we lost our way and might get it back again, when evil robots try to kill the pretty little science terrorist, and then they disintegrate three police officers out of nowhere and do it with a creepy mechanical smile. Wow, this is a PG rated family film? It features the same kinds of blue guts splattered we saw in "The World"s End" only from humans rather than robots. Watch out for the sudden car accident that also runs over a little girl. Nothing says family entertainment like that. Suddenly our whimsical fantasy film has become an action picture complete with a pint sized Terminator to lead us to the resolution. By the time Clooney comes back to the screen, the film feels completely different. The pursuit of the two science dreamers across different dimensions includes dismemberment of the  robot pursuers in several grim but amusing booby traps. Then it is followed up by a Coke joke. The story meanders around trying to show us background material, but this is one of the few times I can think of where an exposition laden conversation between the two leads might have helped the movie move forward rather than slowing it down.

When story returns to Tomorrowland, it is never clear why things there have gotten as bleak as the other dimension we occupy. The macguffin that is referred to is incompletely explained and the visionary technologies that exist seem to be put to no better use than tracking kids down to kill them. Yep, that's the joy of Tomorrowland. At the very end of the story, the characters try to redeem all we have experienced with a renewed promise, but they have not explained how the same problem cannot occur again or why a new set of dreamers will make any difference. Hugh Laurie's Governor Nix asks at one point how we managed to have the dual problems of obesity and starvation simultaneously? It's a pretty reasonable dilemma, I've got another one for you, How are we supposed to expect the future to be a place for our dreams, when it is trying to kill us at the same time?