Netflix Movie Review: Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)

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A satirical horror movie set in the modern art world, whether you're looking for a late night thrill or don't mind working a little harder to engage with a film on a deeper level, Velvet Buzzsaw will surely do.

Filled with witty wordplay and morbid metaphors brought vividly to life, in the weird and wonderful multi-layered third work from writer-director Dan Gilroy, even the character names are entertaining.

From Jake Gyllenhaal's taste-making art critic Morf Vandewalt, whose body language, voice, and taste morphs from one scene to the next to Rene Russo's gallery owner Rhodora Haze, whose Lolita-esque last name alludes as much to her younger days as a sexy, hard-living punk rocker (in the titular band) as it does her hazy business ethics, there's a lot here to savor.

Rather than opt for a traditional first person narrative, Gilroy's film takes a cue from Altman's oeuvre with its approach to storytelling. Set at the intersection of art and commerce where creativity is overshadowed by talk of demand, money, and the market, Buzzsaw revolves around a handful of characters who play very different roles in the industry from assistants and installers to artists and museum curators.

Led by Gyllenhaal and Russo (who co-starred in Gilroy's feature filmmaking debut Nightcrawler), Buzzsaw co-stars Toni Colette, John Malkovich, Zawe Ashton, Daveed Diggs, Natalia Dyer, Tom Sturridge, and Billy Magnussen who all seem to delight in Gilroy's mischievous script, which satirizes the commoditization of art in a way that could just as easily apply to film, publishing, or music.

Though undoubtedly anchored by Gyllenhaal's Vanderwalt, who looks like he had the time of his life on this film, Buzzsaw's real breakout turn is Zawe Ashton as Russo's ambitious assistant Josephina, who stumbles onto an apartment filled with art after her elderly neighbor dies with no heirs.

Initially entering the apartment to find and feed his cat, even though the man had left explicit instructions to destroy his art upon his death, Josephina can't resist bringing some to Morf to evaluate.

Fascinated by her discovery, with Morf's ecstatic approval, she teams up with the scheming Rhodora Haze to curate a show, destined to make her a superstar.

Soon after, the deceased Vitril Dease becomes the hottest name in art but as Morf digs into his past for a book and uncovers one disturbing story after another, he realizes a bit too late that the darkness pouring off the canvas and into the lives of those around him, which has resulted in multiple deaths, might be connected to Dease.

Lensed by Robert Elswit, the There Will Be Blood cinematographer makes the most of Gilroy's inventive frames right from the start as we explore a bizarre modern art convention in Miami where certain phrases (either in lights or spoken by an art installation robot) add another layer of foreshadowing and character revelation to the film. Needless to say (and fortunately for Netflix), Velvet Buzzsaw is designed to play even better on repeat viewings when we can take in every element.

Sure to be Netflix's next big post-Bird Box hit, with darkly comedic witticisms, up-to-the-minute satire, and shocking comeuppances performed by its stellar cast, Gilroy replaces the pre-credit shock sequence and familiar jump scares of retro horror fare with something irresistibly, thrillingly new.

Dare I say, I think Morf Vanderwalt would approve.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Blu-ray Review: The Penguins of Madagascar (2014)

Now Available to Own   

  Photo Slideshow
   

Tired of simply listening to the unofficial but oft-repeated Madagascar franchise theme song, the trilogy's scene-stealing penguins take the lyrics to "I Like to Move It" literally – launching themselves out of the circus setting of the third film (by cannon no less) and into their very own adventure in their eponymous debut feature, The Penguins of Madagascar.

Moving quickly once again, we flash back to the cocky characters’ more humble beginnings marching for the cameras aimed by documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog, who uncharacteristically encourages a member of his crew to give his adorable subjects “a shove.”

And once the Herzog described "frisky little snow clowns" tumble a long way down to rescue an egg, the trio of quick-witted penguins make like three men in an '80s movie and take it upon themselves to raise a baby.

Rule-breakers from the start, after mixing things up internationally – both with and without their Madagascar costars on screens big and small (given the success of their eponymous Nickelodeon spinoff series as well) – the black-and-white foursome put their love of orange on the line.

Breaking into Fort Knox to raid the Cheezy Dibbles snack machine of their dreams, the guys get much more than they bargained for than mere chips while attempting to satisfy not only their appetite but replish their arsenal as well, given their habit of turning the cheese puff-like chips into effective weapons via a form of salty self-defense you could call Crave Maga.

Suddenly hurled high into the air, the penguin army's food filled reverie is quickly interrupted when they're abducted by Dave, a former zoo-mate whose enthusiasm for cheese, mayhem and pop cultural witticisms rivals their own.

Tired of being given the cold shoulder by zoo attendees who perpetually marched past the overlooked octopus in order to visit the photogenic penguins instead – causing him to be sent from one zoo to the next like a baseball player traded from team to team – the John Malkovich voiced villain decodes to reinvents himself as Dr. Octavius Brine in order to exact revenge.

Whisking his enemies away by helicopter to Venice where we discover that he's been hard at work on an elaborate plot to declare war on the animal kingdom, Dave's ultimate showdown with penguin nation is put on hold when our heroes are intercepted by an "elite undercover interspecies task force" called the North Wind.

As organized and highly technical as the penguins are scrappy and bold, although the Benedict Cumberbatch led uber classified North Wind promises to be "dedicated to helping animals that can't help themselves," the ragtag penguins are eager to prove they have the guts and Dibbles to do the job themselves.

Fast-paced and frequently laugh-out-loud funny, Penguins features some highly quotable celeb driven punchlines including "Nicolas Cage them," "Hugh Jackman the battle stations and "Charlize Theron their way" employed throughout.

And although it gets increasingly outlandish as it continues, not realizing that it's at its best when it doesn't over-complicate and threaten to bog down its character rich plotline, it’s a great showcase for the Madagascar MVPs.

Gorgeously transferred to Blu-ray in a combo pack that also includes DVD and Digital Copy, this Madagascar spinoff more than stands on its own as a family film of equal interest to adults and children, which is an enviable feat in its own right.

From its James Bond infused paradigm as well as its spectacularly inventive animated fight scenes that ridicule the editing and cinematographic styles of contemporary live action movies made by Michael Bay and company, much like those Cheezy Dibbles, The Penguins of Madagascar leaves you hungry for more.

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

DVD Review: Burn After Reading (2008)

Scheming Onto Blu-Ray, DVD & Video on Demand
12/21/08

Experience the Full Dossier: Uncover the Screenplay, Soundtrack & More

Recently nominated for two Golden Globes including Best Picture-- Musical or Comedy and Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy for its star Frances McDormand, Universal Studios and Focus Features release Joel and Ethan Coen's wild mid-life crisis comedy disguised as a spy caper with the 12/21 DVD and Blu-ray debut of Burn After Reading. Par for the course for the camera shy and introspective Coen Brothers, the two provide a bare minimum of video interview footage in the three bonus featurettes but it's still a riot to hear them tell tales out of school about what it's like to turn handsome A-list stars Brad Pitt and George Clooney into first class dorks. Before we jump directly into the dossier of extras, I'll reprint the original review from September.

Burn After Reading

Public Service Announcement:

Don’t bring highly classified data to the gym.

Directors:

Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

Last year in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Oscar nominee Casey Affleck stole the entire film away from his leading man, Brad Pitt. One year later, it’s Brad Pitt’s turn to steal some thunder of his own in Burn After Reading from Focus Features (quickly turning into the new Miramax).

And that he does and more in the newest film from the Coen Brothers — managing to nail every scene he’s in, get the most laughs and keep us wanting more of his character as opposed to the assorted band of oddballs and amoral madmen assembled in the filmmakers’ nihilistically absurdist take on espionage comedy.

Coming off the heels of last year’s brilliant but bleak Best Picture winner No Country For Old Men, which David Edelstein noted Joel and Ethan Coen wrote at the same time as Burn, I wish I could say it was the antidote to the inevitable and pessimistic gloom that pervaded in their film about a country that’s hard on people. However, instead of the bright, cheery comedy advertised in one of the year’s best cut trailers (both red and green band), we get a comedy that’s more unsettling than laugh-out-loud funny despite some truly inventive work by Pitt and Frances McDormand as two ambitious gym employees who try to sell top secret CIA data from a dropped computer disc.

Anxious first to try and get a “Good Samaritan” type of reward for ensuring the security of the “highly classified shit” they’ve discovered, soon their phone call to former CIA employee Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) turns into blackmail. Although it’s McDormand who makes the threat, no doubt their case wasn’t helped by Pitt’s incessant explanation about the “security of your shit” which understandably frustrates Cox, whom — awakened in the middle of the night — has absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

And why should he? Although he’s been working on his memoirs after impulsively quitting the agency in a hilarious confrontational beginning as he’s officially downgraded for a drinking problem, it’s his unfaithful wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) who compiled the data on the disc as a preemptive strike before serving him with divorce papers. Unbeknownst to either of them, their moves are all being watched as the plot grows increasingly complex and chaotic when the link between the two stories — the kinky governmental employee Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) becomes involved — begins sleeping alternately with Swinton’s Katie and McDormand’s Linda Litzke. And when Osborne proves to be less than cooperative, Linda, desperate to have plastic surgery and oblivious to the earnest affection of her good-natured boss Ted (Richard Jenkins), leads Pitt’s Chad further into an international debacle as they try to sell the “secret shit” to the Russians.

You’ll notice I’m including Pitt’s phrase of choice throughout as indeed, his character is quintessentially Coen; more specifically, he’s funny as hell, fond of vague repetition of words and phrases like “oh my God” as he runs down a hallway or “shit” which he uses as a noun, adjective, and verb. And while he no doubt engages in unscrupulous behavior and is the instigator of the inevitable bloody violence that follows (it’s a Coen Brothers film after all), aside from Ted the human puppy dog, Chad is the most likable one of the bunch. Thus, much like Shakespeare’s Mercutio, he gets all the best lines, detracts from the film’s artistry, and one-ups Clooney (although they only share one fateful scene) at every turn, and unfortunately he’s the one who is used far too little throughout.

Meet Chad:

With an advertising campaign comprised of cool Saul Bass-styled posters echoing the classy spy films and Hollywood blockbusters of the late '50s and '60s (the lettering alone looks like Bass’s work on Vertigo), it’s evident that like No Country was sort of the Coen version of a western, this is their version of a spy comedy, yet it’s surprisingly devoid of humor. And that’s quite a shame as again, it had one of the best ad campaigns of 2008.

View the Trailer:

Even though initially one doesn’t think “funny” and the Coen Brothers, especially given their last film, they’ve definitely aced the genre before with not just their most-referenced cult hit The Big Lebowski but also in one of the most ridiculously hysterical chase scenes of the 1980s as Nicolas Cage tries to outrun authorities like a live action cartoon in Raising Arizona. Moreover, they’ve even inserted humor in the unlikeliest of situations from Fargo to No Country, yet when they attempt a pure comedy but don’t go all out in the execution by muddling it with nihilistic and brutal bursts of action, the results have been mixed.

Like The Hudsucker Proxy, Intolerable Cruelty, and The Ladykillers, the timing of this one is just plain off and it took a good twenty minutes to garner one genuine laugh, after Malkovich’s grand confrontation which opens the film. Although some audience members did chuckle, even at the oddest of moments as one character slices another in the head with an axe, it all seemed to be as half-hearted as the direction, more in appreciation of the directors themselves than what was actually served up to audiences. This being said, I wasn’t unprepared, knowing fully how “out there” they can go-- having seen, analyzed, and appreciated even some of their strangest works such as Barton Fink and the wood-chipper finale of Fargo. As a film host and critic I have probably explained, championed, and defended their work to friends, audiences, and strangers more than most.

And while granted that Clooney is no doubt familiar with their brand of humor — having done so phenomenally well with it in O Brother, Where Art Thou -- it’s ultimately his extremely unpleasant and repugnant character along with an under-written and icy Tilda Swinton (Clooney’s Oscar winning costar who, along with Tom Wilkinson stole his own film last year, Michael Clayton, away from him again) that bogs down the plot of Burn as a whole.

It takes far too long to introduce us to not only Pitt’s Chad but McDormand’s middle-aged Linda. Tired of half-heartedly sleeping with married losers she meets online after a dull day at work, she has made the foolish and entirely Hollywood-like decision that she’s gone as far as she can with her current body and has decided she wants to improve her looks with four drastic plastic surgeries. Obviously a commentary of McDormand’s profession no doubt cooked up by McDormand and her husband Joel Coen, this plot alone would’ve helped add to the humor and we feel shortchanged once again when, just like a final description of events featuring Clooney’s character, McDormand’s character finally finds a solution to her problems but it’s all discussed by a CIA operative played by Juno’s dad (J.K. Simmons).

If they truly wanted to make us laugh, we would’ve seen these events with our own eyes, rather than be “told” what happened and it’s not like they were overstaying their welcome with a roughly ninety-five minute running time. Ultimately, the Coens end Burn with the same type of similar dissatisfying aftertaste that became one of the biggest criticisms of last year’s abrupt end to No Country. And possibly to fix this, they could’ve found a way to delete the Clooney and Swinton plot altogether and just give us more of “The Chad” (to quote Charlie’s Angels) so we could relish in his childlike awe upon trying to discover all the “highly classified shit” he can get his hands on.

DVD Review: Bonus Features

Describing their tragicomedy as being essentially focused on the CIA and physical fitness and what happens "when those two worlds collide," in "Finding the Burn," the Coen Brothers discuss the film's inception as a film in which everyone is undergoing a bit of a midlife crisis.

Joking that "it's our Tony Scott Bourne Identity kind of movie without the explosions," that marks a welcome return to their "underrated" first Washington D.C. film made when they were tweens, Joel and Ethan Coen remind us of their status as filmmaking's resident mad geniuses and men of very few words who seem to know as the cast frequently explains-- precisely what they want at all times.

Although George Clooney laughs that they're so skilled at ego massaging that they make actors think they are actually contributing ideas and are willing to try letting them do their own thing, ultimately it's a Coen film after all and one they seem to have already chopped (under their mutual editing pseudonym of Roderick Jaynes) long before either one yelled "Action!"

In a funny analysis of Clooney's third moronic character that finds him returning to Coen land for his idiot trilogy, "Welcome Back George," (which goes hand in hand with Clooney's Intolerable Cruelty and O Brother, Where Art Thou? the filmmakers, Clooney, and the costumer all relish in what a treat it was to make the debonair leading man into a high-waisted jean wearing, bad beard sporting loser but one of the most interesting-- yet still far too brief extras-- celebrated the entire cast.

In "DC Insiders Run Amock," the Coens discuss their goal to write roles for those they either knew or longed to work with (such as Swinton, Pitt, and Malkovich) and it's great fun to see McDormand roll her eyes in recollection of her first read-through which described her character's introduction in the script consisting of "close up on a woman's ass. Bare. Pale. Middle aged."

While her wardrobe was inspired by post-makeover Linda Tripp and there's some great production insights about turning New York into Georgetown for the shoot and transforming the cast, it was also a treat to hear that even an Oscar winning pro like McDormand admit that on her first day shooting alongside the scene-stealing Brad Pitt, she couldn't remember any of her lines as he continuously cracked her up.

Although Pitt is largely absent-- perhaps because of his incessant shooting schedule and upcoming epics like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (which finds him re-teaming with his Fight Club director David Fincher) and we wish there would've been a feature length commentary, it's still a remarkable transfer from film to DVD with crystal clear picture and sound that was so impressive, for a moment, I mistook it for Blu-ray.

And true to form, leaving us to interpret just what exactly we all learned (or rather what we didn't) in a nod to J.K. Simmons line near the end of the film, it's only fitting that the Coens remain typically aloof, answering just enough for us to get a glimpse of insight but not so much that everything is spelled out which wouldn't be right for a Coen movie or a spy movie and especially for one that's a combination of the two.

Burn After Reading, Righteous Kill & The Women Links

Hello,

Due to an astute Feedblitz subscriber, it came to my attention that last Friday's new theatrical release e-mail didn't get sent out to everyone. While I'm not sure why that happened, I apologize for the inconvenience. And-- better late than never-- below you can find the links to my most recent reviews of the biggest movies at the multiplex.

Burn After Reading

Righteous Kill

The Women

Additionally, I'd also included a new DVD to Friday's publication so here's that link as well:

The Patriots (1994)

Thanks for reading and enjoy the movies!

- Jen

Burn After Reading

Public Service Announcement:
Don’t bring highly classified data to the gym.

Last year in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Oscar nominee Casey Affleck stole the entire film away from his leading man, Brad Pitt. One year later, it’s Brad Pitt’s turn to steal some thunder of his own in Burn After Reading from Focus Features (quickly turning into the new Miramax).

And that he does and more in the newest film from the Coen Brothers — managing to nail every scene he’s in, get the most laughs and keep us wanting more of his character as opposed to the assorted band of oddballs and amoral madmen assembled in the filmmakers’ nihilistically absurdist take on espionage comedy.

Coming off the heels of last year’s brilliant but bleak Best Picture winner No Country For Old Men, which David Edelstein noted Joel and Ethan Coen wrote at the same time as Burn, I wish I could say it was the antidote to the inevitable and pessimistic gloom that pervaded in their film about a country that’s hard on people. However, instead of the bright, cheery comedy advertised in one of the year’s best cut trailers (both red and green band), we get a comedy that’s more unsettling than laugh-out-loud funny despite some truly inventive work by Pitt and Frances McDormand as two ambitious gym employees who try to sell top secret CIA data from a dropped computer disc.

Anxious first to try and get a “Good Samaritan” type of reward for ensuring the security of the “highly classified shit” they’ve discovered, soon their phone call to former CIA employee Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) turns into blackmail. Although it’s McDormand who makes the threat, no doubt their case wasn’t helped by Pitt’s incessant explanation about the “security of your shit” which understandably frustrates Cox, whom — awakened in the middle of the night — has absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

And why should he? Although he’s been working on his memoirs after impulsively quitting the agency in a hilarious confrontational beginning as he’s officially downgraded for a drinking problem, it’s his unfaithful wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) who compiled the data on the disc as a preemptive strike before serving him with divorce papers. Unbeknownst to either of them, their moves are all being watched as the plot grows increasingly complex and chaotic when the link between the two stories — the kinky governmental employee Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) becomes involved — begins sleeping alternately with Swinton’s Katie and McDormand’s Linda Litzke. And when Osborne proves to be less than cooperative, Linda, desperate to have plastic surgery and oblivious to the earnest affection of her good-natured boss Ted (Richard Jenkins), leads Pitt’s Chad further into an international debacle as they try to sell the “secret shit” to the Russians.

You’ll notice I’m including Pitt’s phrase of choice throughout as indeed, his character is quintessentially Coen; more specifically, he’s funny as hell, fond of vague repetition of words and phrases like “oh my God” as he runs down a hallway or “shit” which he uses as a noun, adjective, and verb. And while he no doubt engages in unscrupulous behavior and is the instigator of the inevitable bloody violence that follows (it’s a Coen Brothers film after all), aside from Ted the human puppy dog, Chad is the most likable one of the bunch. Thus, much like Shakespeare’s Mercutio, he gets all the best lines, detracts from the film’s artistry, and one-ups Clooney (although they only share one fateful scene) at every turn, and unfortunately he’s the one who is used far too little throughout.

Meet Chad:

With an advertising campaign comprised of cool Saul Bass-styled posters echoing the classy spy films and Hollywood blockbusters of the late '50s and '60s (the lettering alone looks like Bass’s work on Vertigo), it’s evident that like No Country was sort of the Coen version of a western, this is their version of a spy comedy, yet it’s surprisingly devoid of humor. And that’s quite a shame as again, it had one of the best ad campaigns of 2008.

View the Trailer:

Even though initially one doesn’t think “funny” and the Coen Brothers, especially given their last film, they’ve definitely aced the genre before with not just their most-referenced cult hit The Big Lebowski but also in one of the most ridiculously hysterical chase scenes of the 1980s as Nicolas Cage tries to outrun authorities like a live action cartoon in Raising Arizona. Moreover, they’ve even inserted humor in the unlikeliest of situations from Fargo to No Country, yet when they attempt a pure comedy but don’t go all out in the execution by muddling it with nihilistic and brutal bursts of action, the results have been mixed.

Like The Hudsucker Proxy, Intolerable Cruelty, and The Ladykillers, the timing of this one is just plain off and it took a good twenty minutes to garner one genuine laugh, after Malkovich’s grand confrontation which opens the film. Although some audience members did chuckle, even at the oddest of moments as one character slices another in the head with an axe, it all seemed to be as half-hearted as the direction, more in appreciation of the directors themselves than what was actually served up to audiences. This being said, I wasn’t unprepared, knowing fully how “out there” they can go-- having seen, analyzed, and appreciated even some of their strangest works such as Barton Fink and the wood-chipper finale of Fargo. As a film host and critic I have probably explained, championed, and defended their work to friends, audiences, and strangers more than most.

And while granted that Clooney is no doubt familiar with their brand of humor — having done so phenomenally well with it in O Brother, Where Art Thou -- it’s ultimately his extremely unpleasant and repugnant character along with an under-written and icy Tilda Swinton (Clooney’s Oscar winning costar who, along with Tom Wilkinson stole his own film last year, Michael Clayton, away from him again) that bogs down the plot of Burn as a whole.

It takes far too long to introduce us to not only Pitt’s Chad but McDormand’s middle-aged Linda. Tired of half-heartedly sleeping with married losers she meets online after a dull day at work, she has made the foolish and entirely Hollywood-like decision that she’s gone as far as she can with her current body and has decided she wants to improve her looks with four drastic plastic surgeries. Obviously a commentary of McDormand’s profession no doubt cooked up by McDormand and her husband Joel Coen, this plot alone would’ve helped add to the humor and we feel shortchanged once again when, just like a final description of events featuring Clooney’s character, McDormand’s character finally finds a solution to her problems but it’s all discussed by a CIA operative played by Juno’s dad (J.K. Simmons).

If they truly wanted to make us laugh, we would’ve seen these events with our own eyes, rather than be “told” what happened and it’s not like they were overstaying their welcome with a roughly ninety-five minute running time. Ultimately, the Coens end Burn with the same type of similar dissatisfying aftertaste that became one of the biggest criticisms of last year’s abrupt end to No Country. And possibly to fix this, they could’ve found a way to delete the Clooney and Swinton plot altogether and just give us more of “The Chad” (to quote Charlie’s Angels) so we could relish in his childlike awe upon trying to discover all the “highly classified shit” he can get his hands on.

Of Mice and Men

Nominated for the 1992 Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, Pulitzer Prize and Oscar winning writer Horton Foote adapted John Steinbeck’s 1937 classic novella Of Mice and Men for the second and far superior cinematic interpretation from director/producer/star Gary Sinise. As he notes on the DVD, Sinise, who had first seen the play as a 16 year old at the renowned Minneapolis Guthrie Theatre, acquired the rights from Elaine Steinbeck while performing in the Broadway version of The Grapes of Wrath. After a breakneck year of planning, including solidifying the script which was approved on the spot by MGM studios, production was underway.

Having taken part in the play twelve years earlier at the Steppenwolf Theatre, Sinise once again tackled the role of the protective George Milton. In one of his smartest moves as a filmmaker, Sinise reunited with his Mice costar John Malkovich for his pitch-perfect characterization of the mentally challenged Lennie Small in the heartbreaking tale of two close friends who travel together during the Great Depression while working on California ranches as they try to save enough money to buy their own farm and secure a piece of the American dream.

Nearly as vital and timely as it was in its first printing given the state of our questionable economy with frequent discussion of recession, Sinise’s film has also stood the test of time with its painstaking attention to detail in bringing Steinbeck’s vision to life. And perhaps it's even more accessible thanks to Foote’s augmentation of his lean and muscular writing by adding more emotion to the tale in order to enrich Steinbeck’s theme of loneliness.

In addition to being controversial for conclusions made regarding disabled individuals such as Lennie, Steinbeck’s novel also caused a feminist outcry as female sexuality leads to the men’s undoing, in the form of the flirtatious wife of their boss Curley (Casey Siemaszko). However, in the 1992 version both of these oft debated characterizations are deepened without losing any of Steinbeck’s intent. In the DVD interview, Sinise argued that one of the most important things he wanted to address in the movie was the treatment of Curley’s wife by humanizing the woman (played by the lovely Sherilyn Fenn) and emphasizing her loneliness being the only woman on the ranch without a soul to talk to. In doing so, he considerably plays up audience sympathy as opposed to the book’s depiction of her as a dangerous, aggressive symbolic villain. In addition, as Sinise shared, this change of developing Curley’s wife into a fully realized character makes the film’s memorably shocking ending all the more tragic. Additionally, in my view, it makes her yet another one of the many lonely outcasts that populate Steinbeck’s world, inviting the audience to draw greater parallels between her character as well as the others, especially Lennie who is painted as the ultimate outsider, given his childlike innocence that’s contrasted with his dangerous strength and overwhelming size.

While it’s Malkovich that ultimately steals the film, I was especially touched by Sinise’s characterization in depicting George in a tenderer fatherly manner, and after viewing the film a second time around, began to realize that in truth, he had the more difficult role. Not only does George serve as the negotiator of both Lennie’s optimistic fairy tale like hope for a better future and the harsh realities of the ranch but he also served as the glue in the relationships with every character in a way that had me recalling William Hurt’s underrated, similarly all-encompassing role in Children of a Lesser God. While George is nowhere near as flashy or memorable as Lennie who holds our hearts for the entire running time, it’s ultimately George who serves as the contemplative stand-in for the audience as he’s the one we’re constantly judging throughout the movie.

Seeing the two great actors working together at the peak of their careers makes Of Mice and Men all the more precious and it’s this immediate bond the two share that wins us over from the start. This relationship is definitely heightened by Foote’s script which, under the guidance of Sinise who wanted to make his own Scarecrow like “buddy movie” (for lack of a better phrase), allows the two not only to shine but invites Steinbeck fans to look even deeper into the novella. And perhaps it's this more than anything that should be the true test of the success of adapting literature in whether or not it inspires us to go back to Steinbeck’s novella to compare and contrast while appreciating the similarities and differences of each instead of just choosing one over the other. In that regard and so many others, Sinise's Of Mice and Men is an overwhelming success.