OK, he’s not the star. Nor is James Caan. Not Ving Rhames or Talia Shire or Armand Assante, either.
Justin Baldoni plays hustler/millionaire Barry Minkow in this “true story” con and crash bio-pic, about the “carpet restoration king” who morphed into…a preacher. Make your own titular jokes about that, as I’m above it. “Con Man” was due out in March, but the trailer’s new, so…
The actor and director Stanley Tucci read journalist/essayist and biographer James Lord’s account of “sitting” for acclaimed sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti and saw a movie in it, a simple “two-hander” in the parlance of pictures, a comic war of wills and dueling vanities.
“Final Portrait” is the film he gleaned from that biography, a tale of mismatched equals bantering and wrestling over something both of them desperately want. The famous artist wants to paint the pretty, pretty man. The pretty pretty man wants yet ANOTHER famous artist to immortalize him on canvas.
Geoffrey Rush plays Giacometti as a shambling slouch of a genius — cavalier about the cash raining down on him for his clay sculptures and abstract paintings. It’s 1964, and the Italian-Swiss artist is at the peak of his fame, one of the few people Picasso would call a “peer.” But outside of the art world of the day, outside of Paris, who knows him? He never achieved Pablo’s notoriety.
But Lord (Armie Hammer), a dashing gay swain with published travel writings and artist profiles, appreciates the master. He has, as he would title a later memoir (one of many), “A Gift for Admiration.” And as Giacometti would like to repay that flattery with a portrait, and promises “two, three hours, an afternoon at most” for Lord to collect another vision of himself as seen by a great artist, why not?
It’s only when sitting for the great artist that his future biographer gets a taste of the “real” Giacometti. He dabs a bit on the canvas, and CURSES. He dabs a bit more, and wanders over to admire, criticize or tinker with a clay sculpture in progress. He drops the brush and suggests “Lunch?”
“It is impossible to to ever finish a portrait,” the old man grumbles.
“So what we’re doing is meaningless?”
Lord listens to the comical expletives, the grousing insecurities, and has the effrontery to ask, “Have you ALWAYS been like this?” He answers each Giacometti “That’s a start,” signalling the end of the work for the day, with “I was supposed to leave tomorrow.” He watches Giacometti toss an inferior sculpture on the floor, shattering it, with “What a ham!”
“What?”
“I thought you were WITHOUT affectation!”
Tucci has read this memoir and picked up on Lord’s own inflated self-regard, the filter of the egotistical author remembering his younger self as an equal to the great artist and carrying and comporting himself as such. Hammer, sharing his scenes with an accomplished Oscar winner, holds his own as well. His patrician physical perfection decked out in the lounging classes’ dapper shirt, tie, blue sport coat and chinos, he endures Rush’s closer-than-close-up examination of his physical features with a stifled grin.
“From the front,” Giacometti, who looked a lot like Geoffrey Rush, grouses “you look like a brute. From the SIDE, you look like a DEGENERATE!”
Tucci’s “Big Night” muse, Tony Shalhoub, plays another brother figure here, the artist’s wry, indulgent assistant, a man who builds the frames the sculptures are molded onto, who stretches canvases and boxes them up when finished.
“I’m reading a good book.”
“Is it one of mine?” Again, Lord’s ego.
“No, it is ‘The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.'”
“What’s it about?”
“A spy. Who comes in…from the cold.”
Lord observes the long-suffering former muse (Sylvia Testud) who shares her life with Giacometti, and the giddy, spendthrift prostitute (Clemence Poesy) who has his attentions now. And he sits. And waits.
“Don’t SCRATCH your nose.”
“It itches.”
“Don’t ITCH.”
“Final Portrait” is a slight little nothing of a story, but I delighted in its wordplay, its depiction of a Paris as imagined in the mottled greys and dull browns of Giacometti’s art. Tucci’s production designer creates a drab ruin of a studio, all mud spattered floors and walls, grey light coming in from above.
Tucci uses his camera as the artist’s eye, exploring in tight close-up the tiny details of Hammer’s perfectly sculpted face just as Giacometti/Rush leans in to get a feel for his subject. The painting, starting with the eyes and working outward, gives us a new appreciation for the artist and his technique.
And “Final Portrait,” coming close on the heels of all the Oscar attention for “Call Me By Your Name,” lifts Hammer out of the league of lightweights he’s been trapped in.
Or anoints him their king. Either way, a delicious pas de deux for these two.
MPAA Rating: R for language, some sexual references and nudity
Cast: Armie Hammer, Geoffrey Rush, Tony Shalhoub, Clémence Poésy, Sylvia Testud
Credits:Written and directed by Stanley Tucci, adapted from James Lord’s memoir, ” “A Giacometti Portrait.” A Sony Pictures Classics release.
Running time: 1:30
Saturday turned into the make or break day for the incredibly violent, laughably stupid “Rampage,” which looks as if it will hit that magical $34 million mark it was projected to achieve pre-release.
Can’t bet against The Rock.
“A Quiet Place” only owned the top spot for one weekend, but it will finish a very-respectable second, with over $32 million. That’s a VERY impressive 35% drop on its second weekend.
Speaking of horror, the inferior coeds-get-killed-off “Truth or Dare” did a dazzling not-quite-$20 million. For a horror movie not built on a franchise, that’s the sweet spot.
“Isle of Dogs” reached its peak screen count this weekend, which wasn’t enough to lift it over $5 million. Wes Anderson’s movie now stands at over $18, and won’t reach $35 by the time it’s done.
“Beirut” has about half as many screens, is one of the better pictures of the weekend, but Jon Hamm’s best big screen outing won’t make him a movie star. Didn’t come close to the top ten. The per screen average bears out a crack I made in my review of it — “Bleecker Street (the distributor) couldn’t market merlot to a wino.”
“Chappaquiddick” added a bunch of screens, and still lost 50% of its audience, but cracked the top ten.
“I Can Only Imagine” is now over $75, “Ready Player One” fell short of a big third weekend and is running out of gas at $114, “Black Panther” is finally losing screens and fading. It won’t quite reach $700 million domestic. Not that anybody at Marvel is crying over that.
He won two Oscars, for directing “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus.”
He acted, on occasion, too. Remember “Heartburn?”
Milos Forman, Czech child of World War II, famed director of 19 films, “A Walk Worthwhile” was the lastest, has died. He was 86.
“Taking Off” was his early English language hit (Thanks, Buck Henry). Even “Ragtime,” bloated as it seemed at the time, holds up.
A larger-than-life figure, gregarious as many of his characters, he didn’t work much (“Valmont” and “Goya’s Ghosts” were later credits), but when he did, invariably it was a big deal.
Alice Eve? We get it.
Three brothers, separated at birth, who find each other in college.
It’s a feel good miracle of a story! Or IS it? WHO separated them?
Neon has its hands on a winner, here.
A big carryover Friday points toward “A Quiet Place,” that rare critically-acclaimed horror blockbuster, pulling in another $34 million this weekend at the box office.
Deadline.com is notoriously light in predicting the Saturday take for “family” oriented movies of every stripe, so they figure “Rampage” still has a shot at overtaking “Quiet.”
Early projections had “Rampage” earning a solid $34 million, sort of holdover “Jumanji” audience for the film’s star. That was the consensus.
But if families are reading reviews of Dwayne Johnson’s jokey, incredibly violent thriller, they might stay away. “It’s every bit at stupid as it looks.”
Families should be pouring into theaters for “Isle of Dogs,” a wonderful Wes Anderson stop-motion animated film that added 1400 or so screens and is earning another $4-5 million in its third weekend of platformed release.
“Truth or Dare” is the other wide-wider-widest release opening this weekend, and is doing a more respectable (for horror) $18.5 million. Bad reviews didn’t hurt it.
“Beirut,” a more grown up thriller about the Middle East, spies, terrorists and an alcoholic negotiator trying to keep the lid on things, got good to great reviews. It’s opening on enough screens to crack the top ten, but isn’t. Under $2 million. As I’ve said before, Bleecker Street is where good movies go to die.
“Chappaquiddick” added 85 screens and has lost half of its opening weekend audience, but still made the top ten.
“Blockers” is holding audience and headed towards another $10 million, “Ready Player One” is well over $100, but probably won’t reach much more than $150, when all is said and done.
“I Can Only Imagine” has been the week-to-week indie blockbuster of the spring, clearing $75 million in medium sized bites.
“The Miracle Season” isn’t quite making it.
A period piece with feminist cred and that classic sci-fi horror hook hanging over it, the very young lady who wrote “Frankenstein.”
This feels like an award’s season moment for Elle Fanning. Probably not, timing and all. But “Mary Shelley” has a sheen about it that feels like a classic. Yeah, I’m talking through my hat, so we’ll see.
The late Stanley Kubrick all but disowned his first attempt at making a feature film, saying “I finished it” was its singular achievement.
Something one keeps in mind with every first effort at making a movie. Even one as dismal as “The Escape of Prisoner 614.” You never know when you’re seeing the first flailings of “genius.”
The writing-directing debut of Internet phenom and self-published cookbook author Zach Golden, he of “What the F*@# Should I Make For Dinner?” fame, it is a comedy as free of laughs as any film that’s landed Ron Perlman in its cast and rented a train for its finale has a right to be.
It’s sort of a “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil,” without the evil, without charismatic leads, without any joke that plays like the first draft ATTEMPT at a joke.
Seriously, unless that cookbook is filled with hash brownie recipe variations, I defy even Golden’s fans and family to name one laugh-out-loud moment in it. It just leans on the screen, winded and motionless without anybody involved hinting that they’ve burned any calories to make it better.
Jake McDorman (“American Sniper”) and “Silicon Valley” vet Martin Starr are Thurman and Jim, two upstate New York rubes, sheriff’s deputies in a county with so little crime they spend their down time playing sheriff and robbers.
The sheriff (Ron Perlman) lays them off for never arresting anybody. But when the warden of Adirondack State Prison (Ralph Cashen) calls as they’re cleaning out the desks in their log cabin office, well, here’s their chance. Prisoner 614, “a cold blooded cop killer,” has escaped. If they can catch him, maybe the sheriff will give them back their jobs.
With these yokels target practicing away their ammo as they trek up the mountain where 614 has fled, dealing with insecurities, phobias and general stupidity as obstacles to their accomplishing this mission, what could wrong?
But in the “even a blind pig” logic of the movie, of course they catch the guy. All they have to do is convince him (George Sample III) to come along and not make any fuss.
“You’re a prisoner. Prisoners belong in prison.”
What do THEY know about it?
“Well, I seen ‘Cool Hand Luke’ a coupla months back. Seems alright. Lotsa eggs.”
OK, I grinned at that.
Perlman, sheepishly wearing the costume cooked-up for this 1960s period piece — Western cowboy-cut fedora, boots, dime-store “Sheriff” badge — has nothing remotely funny to say or play. The sheriff’s all about holding a newspaper photographer hostage so he can get a shot of himself holding the suspect in the paper.
Sample (of “Person to Person”) plays a guy blandly protesting his innocence and suggesting there’s a racist motivation for his imprisonment.
And McDorman and Starr mug for the camera, let their facial hair get away from them and try not to act disappointed that their lines never get any better than this.
“If we’re not deputies, then what ARE we?”
“Nothing.”
“We’re WORSE than nothing. We’re CIVILIANS.”
In Los Angeles and New York, it’s not uncommon for well-heeled student filmmakers to line up “name” stars for their projects, and that’s what this looks and plays like — a student film with a couple of gettable-movie “stars” in it.
Still, it got distribution. That’s almost more than Stanley Kubrick was able to say about his first film. Of course, he had more sense than to try for a comic period piece his first time out.
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for smoking throughout, and for language
Cast: Martin Starr, Jake McDorman, Ron Perlman, George Sample III
Credits:Written and directed by Zach Golden. A Saban Films release.
Running time: 1:37
Yeah. Holly Hunter’s Elastigirl is the breadwinner, Mr. Incredible is stay at home dad and the family is blowing itself apart.
Literally. Looks like a lot of fun. June 15.
Movie Nation 