BuzzSugar

Burn After Reading: A Smart and Sinister Spy Comedy

BuzzSugar — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 06:31:51 -0700

As the opening credits of Burn After Reading blip across a satellite image of Washington, DC, viewers may find themselves wondering if they've wandered into the wrong movie - a Bourne Identity type thriller filled with high-tech secrets and evil intentions. But for every spook with high-security clearance in DC, there is a goofball at Jamba Juice, waiting for his afternoon smoothie. And when that iPod-wearing dude wanders into the tropes of a spy movie, the results are wonderfully absurd and fraught with a different sort of intelligence.

The Coen brothers have given us stories of bumbling criminals time and time again, but with Burn After Reading, the filmmakers approach the familiar theme in an entirely fresh way. The "criminals" in this case are more accidental than bumbling, their deceptions adorably mundane against an ominous, thundering soundtrack and spy-camera cinematography. For all the details, read more.

Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand play Chad and Linda, two gym employees who find a CD in the locker room that contains data belonging to a former CIA analyst. Assuming that someone will pay big bucks for the return of the sensitive info, they attempt, with childlike naivete, to blackmail the analyst, a Princeton man named Osborne Cox (John Malkovich). But old Ozzy is far more concerned about his recent unemployment and impending divorce from his wife (Tilda Swinton), who's having an affair with a pinhead womanizer played by George Clooney.

When Cox doesn't bite on the blackmail, Chad and Linda attempt to sell the secrets to the Russians, inadvertently setting off a series of plot twists that entangle everyone and provide plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. At one point, a CIA boss (played by JK Simmons) is briefed on the case - and utterly baffled: "Just report back to me when - I don't know. When it makes sense."

The way the story unfolds makes perfect sense, and at the same time, it's entirely senseless. Like kids playing spy games, the characters talk like actors trying to up the drama while waiting for something to happen. But when things happen - and believe me, some serious stuff happens - it is simply real, without cinematic spectacle, and more powerful as a result. Where other filmmakers hold might back in the name of mystery or add a cheeky twist, the Coen brothers just give us mundane reality at its most absurd.

Photos Courtesy of Focus Features

What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday

BuzzSugar — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:32:02 -0700

All of the new DVD releases hit stores (and Netflix) on Tuesdays. So each week in What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday, I sort through the best of the batch and tell you what to add to your queue. In addition to the selections below you can also check out the fourth season of House, Street Kings starring Keanu Reeves, and the HBO movie, Recount which I chatted about with Citizen here.

Gossip Girl: Season 1
Try to ignore for a moment that nobody on that DVD cover looks like a character I recognize from the show. Am I right? That is some wacky Photoshopping there. But anyway, the first season of Gossip Girl is now out on DVD so you can get your collection started and catch up if you haven't seen all the episodes. I'm sure some of you will appreciate this as the CW was not great about putting all their episodes on the Web, especially during the latter part of the season, so you may have missed some pivotal episodes.

I'm excited to relive the early GG days - especially the pilot - but I'm most looking forward to the special features. They include unaired scenes, featurettes titled "The Beginning, XOXO: Concept to Execution," "Gossip Girl Couture," "A Gossip Girl Wedding," and "LOL: Gag Reel." The DVDs also include music videos from The Pierces. How sweet is that?

Three more good ones, so read more.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
What do you get when you blend Frances McDormand with Amy Adams and sprinkle in Lee Pace? A no-brainer Netflix pick!

I adored this little movie about Guinevere Pettigrew (McDormand) an out-of-work governess who sort of accidentally becomes the social secretary of American cabaret singer Delysia Lafosse (Adams). The energy of the two women plus the solid acting from the men who make up the rest of the cast make this movie a total delight. If you didn't catch it in the theaters, it's high time you treated yourself.

Special features include deleted scenes and featurettes titled "Making an Unforgettable Day" and "Miss Pettigrew's Long Trip to Hollywood."

The Life Before Her Eyes
I was so intrigued by the trailer for this film adaptation of Laura Kasischke's book, I made the novel my April Buzz Book Club selection. House of Sand and Fog director Vadim Perelman paints a beautiful portrait with this movie starring Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood as the older and younger versions of the same woman. The plot might leave you a bit dissatisfied, as it did me (though he changed some aspects of the book that I found jarring, so I may be biased), but it's visually lovely, and not a bad choice for a thought-provoking movie at home.

Special effects include deleted scenes, a behind the scenes featurette and, most intriguingly, an alternate ending.

Dexter: Season Two
If you missed this season (or the entire series thus far), now you can catch up with the new second season DVDs - and not with the neutered episodes on CBS . Dexter (Michael C. Hall, who was nominated for an Emmy for this role) continues with his serial killing - but only picking off the truly evil ones, of course. Meanwhile, he works to maintain a pristine image at home. This season, FBI agent Frank Lundy's (Keith Carradine) work threatens to expose Dexter.

It's worth catching up with Dexter before the new season starts on Showtime September 28.

Movie Preview: The Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading

BuzzSugar — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:41:35 -0700

OK, now this is a movie trailer! The Coen Bros. latest venture, Burn After Reading, now has a red-band trailer (which in this case means they're using some NSFW language) and it is funny-goofy-weird-dark. Which is to say, awesome. The people in this movie are so fantastically talented, and combined with the Coens' dark and bizarre direction, this movie looks totally promising.

The trailer is a little confusing, but the IMDB plot description puts it like this: "A disk containing the memoirs of a CIA agent ends up in the hands of two unscrupulous gym employees who attempt to sell it."

I could watch Brad Pitt act like a total goofball all day.

Burn After Reading opens in theaters September 12. To check out the trailer and tell me if you think there are more Oscars in the Coen family future, read more.

Photo courtesy of Focus Features

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day: A Sweet Cinderella Story Remix

BuzzSugar — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:30:26 -0800

The most accurate way I can describe my feelings about Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is by gushing that it's just so dear. It's darling. It's funny, tender and charming. It's a Cinderella story for adults who want a movie that's not ridiculously cheesy or stupid. It's gloomy in spots but always quickly uplifted, either through the toe-tapping music of the 1930s or the silly wit of the writing. After an awards season in which the most acclaimed movies were across-the-board bleak (with the exception of Juno), Miss Pettigrew is a breath of fresh air.

We are introduced to Guinevere Pettigrew (Frances McDormand) as she is fired from yet another governess position and shuffles her way to the agency that has found her each of her ill-fated jobs. When the stern agency woman refuses to find Miss Pettigrew more work, she grows desperate, having no money and no home. She swipes the business card of a client in need of a social secretary: the American cabaret singer Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams). She arrives at the sprawling London flat to Delysia frantically trying to get rid of one man before another man comes home. Immediately Miss Pettigrew proves herself a helpful ally, smoothly navigating Guinevere's potentially disastrous dealings with the several men in her life. In this way, the title of the film seems like it could be Miss Pettigrew Saves the Day, but things get a little bit more complex than just this, so read more.

In the arrangement the women swiftly fall into, everyone wins: Miss Pettigrew helps to sort out Delysia's complicated personal matters and gently shows her what's most important in life. Miss Pettigrew herself obtains both a sense of self-worth and a glimpse into the dashing, glamorous life of the wealthy. She is also introduced to a handsome lingerie-maker her own age who, despite the nubile young women around him, finds himself drawn to Miss Pettigrew's maturity and honest nature.

The pairing of the two women, however, is what makes this film pure satisfaction to watch. The humble, gentle Miss Pettigrew on her own might be a somewhat one-note character without the wriggly, shimmery Delysia Lafosse. Yet, lest Delysia's silliness get to be a bit too much, there are many sobering references to the imminent war, often revealing the great divide between Guinevere and Delysia's generations. Guinevere wearily recalls the previous war while Delysia is distracted by mannequins wearing gas masks in a store window - not because of the gas masks, mind you, but the "hideous" cap sleeves on the mannequins' dresses.

The entirety of the action takes place in one day, which makes for one incredibly eventful 24-hour span. But such is life with Delysia Lafosse, played with that wide-eyed beauty and energy that we're starting to expect from Amy Adams. I predict some people will grow tired of Adams' endless chattiness and blithe innocence but I'm perfectly happy to sit back and watch her light up the screen with her sparkling presence. She is a natural-born entertainer, of the old-fashioned, all-smiles, song-and-dance variety. In this way, she slips easily into the role of an aspiring actress in 1939, and we willingly give her all our attention.

There's a lot going on in this film. Lessons on true love and compromising one dream to attain another. The theme that a woman can do anything if she puts her mind to it. The incredibly refreshing message that love knows no age. The whole, "be yourself and love will find you" thing. And yet it never feels overwrought or cheese-filled. It may be a lot at once, but I loved it all.

Photos courtesy of Focus Features

Movie Preview: Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day

BuzzSugar — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:30:35 -0800

Okay, last Amy Adams-centric post of the day - promise! This trailer for Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is just too darn cute and Adams is so delightful in it I simply had to share. The movie also features one of my favorite movie ladies ever, Frances McDormand, as a frumpy nanny who gets a kind of life makeover when she falls in with the lively, free-spirited and girlish Delysia Lafosse (Adams).

It all takes place in 1939, a time period for which both McDormand and Adams seem to have the appropriate look. Miss Pettigrew is scheduled to start living at a theater near you March 7, so to check out the preview, read more

A Serious Man: Seriously Hard To Wrap Your Head Around

BuzzSugar — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 15:00:10 -0700

I like the Coen brothers. I loved No Country For Old Men, I still enjoy quoting Frances McDormand lines from Fargo - I even appreciated their most recent project, Burn After Reading despite lukewarm reviews. So I went into A Serious Man with high expectations. Perhaps a bit too high.

The Coens go incredibly dark and thought-provoking this time around, and unfortunately without any big-named stars attached like Clooney a la Reading or O Brother, Where Art Thou?, A Serious Man probably won't live on as one of their more memorable films for viewers. In fact, many people will probably feel put off by it. To see what I mean, read more

A Serious Man opens like a horror movie, which isn't surprising given the Coen's propensity for heavy themes (and often a few stab wounds) in their stories. The music is a big player, creating tension that doesn't let up for the audience even when the screen goes to black. But the antagonizing score fits well within the nightmare existence of Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a professor and devoted family man in '60s suburbia. First, his wife announces that she's leaving him for a touchy-feely close-talker; his unemployed brother spends entire 24-hour periods in his bathroom; and one of his foreign students is threatening to sue him. Really, the only thrill Gopnik ever gets in life is when his neighbor Mrs. Samsky sunbathes nude.

Poor Gopnik is a wound-up guy, and you feel for him and with him. (It's true; I had to decompress after this movie.) His world is spiraling out of control, so he seeks out three rabbis for a solution. Does Gopnik get the enlightenment he seeks? Not exactly, and neither do we as the audience.

There's not a single bad thing I can say about any of the actors. Each one was believable and charmingly offbeat in their role. The Coens are brilliant with character nuances - even some of the small two-minute parts managed to get laughs - but the larger picture just seemed murky from the get-go. The first five minutes of the film starts with a man in a village who accidentally invites a ghost home for dinner. It's all in Yiddish with subtitles, and it's almost like watching a stand-alone play, but I'm still not sure what it had to do with the rest of the plot, other than the Jewish religion and setting a dismal tone. So right away I felt semiconfused, but entertained nonetheless - which is pretty much how the duration of it went for me.

The film does have some great scenes - I loved the interaction between Gopnik and his foreign student, and his wife's new boyfriend Si is particularly funny - but trying to piece it together is a bit like banging your head against the wall (just like in the movie's trailer). I get that Gopnik's life sucks, but other than that, it's hard to tell exactly what we're supposed to glean from the story. I think that was sort of the point the Coens were trying to make - Gopnik doesn't get the answers he seeks, and neither do we.

Go see it if you're a hardcore Coenaholic, and enjoy the funny scenes without trying to analyze it too much. But if you prefer to dissect your movies, I'd say rent this one at home, because you may need to watch it twice.

What movies are you seeing this weekend? Review them in our Movie Review Group!

Photos courtesy of Focus Features