It shouldn’t matter that it’s really Tom Cruise climbing the actual tallest building in the world, leaping out of windows and sprinting horizontally across the face of the Burj Khalifa, a half-mile above the ground in Dubai.
With today’s special effects, the filmmakers could have recreated that scene shot for shot using models and green screen and the viewer would be none the wiser. Hell, most viewers of Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol probably assume that’s how it was done anyway.
Woody Allen has written and directed 44 feature films over the past 45 years, a streak that would be amazing even if all of those films sucked.
They don’t, of course. I consider five of them flat-out masterpieces (I’ll let you speculate as to which five in the comments). Another dozen or so are various degrees of excellent, and five or ten others are various degrees of good to great.
In a sense, Allen is not just a filmmaker but a genre unto himself. And as genres go, he’s one of my very favorites.
However, the new millennium hasn’t been very kind to Woody Allen. Following a nice one-two punch with 1999’s Sweet and Lowdown and 2000’s Small Time Crooks, he released a string of mediocre, forgettable films — starting off with a duo that represent the nadir of his career to date, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Hollywood Ending.
In the month or so leading up to the release of Fast Five, I made fun of my wife’s increasing excitement. She has a soft spot for big dumb action movies, and an even softer one for big dumb Vin Diesel.
From my ivory cinephile’s tower, both she and the film felt like easy targets. And when The Onion serves up a gem like ‘Today Now! Interviews the 5-year-old Screenwriter of Fast Five‘, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
But in the aftermath of my smug superiority, it is with great humility that I report that Fast Five turns out to be one of the best times I’ve had at the movies in ages. It’s big and dumb, yes, but it’s also fun, funny and exciting — exactly what the summer ordered.
Matthew McConaughey has earned a lifetime pass from me for his performances as two very different but equally iconic characters in two of my very favorite films. I’m referring, of course, to Wooderson in Dazed and Confused and Sheriff Buddy Deeds in Lone Star. That’s a career right there, man, and no amount of shirtless People covers or bland romantic comedies can diminish it.
I root for McConaughey the actor to shed the heartthrob thing and get more selective about the films he makes. He’s had memorable turns in many quality movies (among them A Time To Kill, Contact, U-571, Frailty, We Are Marshall and Tropic Thunder) but I believe he’s more instantly associated with the likes of The Wedding Planner and Failure to Launch.
It’s my hope that The Lincoln Lawyer will change that perception. This is a smart, fun, adult crime drama of the sort you don’t see made very often these days, and it contains some of McConaughey’s best work.
Meet Me In Montauk 