Blu-ray Review: The Kid (2019)

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Stripped down tales of good and evil where legends loom large and men even larger against backdrops of dust, no genre puts an actor on display quite like a western.

Cutting through artifice to show us the performer without their bag of tricks, just like it took watching Red River for John Ford to realize that the Duke could act, it wasn't until I saw Val Kilmer in Tombstone and Ben Foster in 3:10 to Yuma that I discovered just how crazily talented the two really are.

Stealing focus from the film's marquee stars, it was Ben Foster's feral performance as a Yuma villain in fact that came flooding back to mind shortly after I started The Kid and the film introduced us to its titular Billy the Kid played by Dane DeHaan.

A mesmerizing turn by an actor I've seen before (but now am sure I won't forget), whether he's spinning an epic yarn or escaping from custody in a scene just dripping with charisma, DeHaan sizes up and plays on his costars and the audience for maximum impact.

Directed by one of Generation X's most accomplished performers in the form of actor turned acting teacher and filmmaker Vincent D'Onofrio, although it's narratively forgettable, The Kid is an actor's picture all around.

Hoping to keep DeHaan from easily running away with it all, The Kid plugs a traditional coming-of-age storyline about a teenage boy's fight to save his sister from their evil uncle into the middle of the otherwise fact based standoff between Billy the Kid and the law.

With D'Onofrio's Newton Boys and Magnificent Seven costar Ethan Hawke wearing the badge as Sheriff Pat Garrett and elevating the film from some of its bland and predictable plot machinations, The Kid flirts with occasional greatness as first Garrett and later DeHaan's Kid recall the story of the first person they ever fatally shot.

Two thematically similar monologues in two different sections of the movie that — when performed by these stars — sound like two choruses to the same song, the script by 2010 Nicholl fellowship winner Andrew Lanham might revolve around a familiar arc but it's punctuated with bright spots.

Bolstered by promising newcomers Jake Schur and D'Onofrio's daughter Leila George as the two siblings on the run from their menacing uncle played to sneering, unrecognizable effect by D'Onofrio and Hawke's Magnificent Seven costar Chris Pratt, the film struggles to find a balance between its A and B plot.

Relegating the two characters we know the best to the sidelines while simultaneously strengthening them with great speeches and star power, The Kid seems as torn as Schur's character is regarding which man's side he wants to be on.

Helping to heighten excitement and quicken the pace at precisely the right time, during The Kid's bold escape from custody, editor Katharine McQuerrey cuts on action repeatedly. Beautifully lensed by Cop Car cinematographer Matthew J. Lloyd, in the bravura sequence we follow DeHaan's character off a roof to the ground to the stirrups and over a horse in a series of inventive edits which give the film a much needed booster shot.

Pushing and pulling us from fact and fiction to and fro throughout, while we are never as fully invested in Schur's coming-of-age plight as I'm sure D'Onofrio (who helped conceive the premise) would have liked, The Kid's enviable star roster — especially MVP Dane DeHaan — ensures that our attention never strays from the old west for long.

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: Charlie Countryman (2013)

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Original Title: The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman

Hallucinatory and hypnotic – there is a masterpiece of a movie to be found in Frederick Bond’s ultraviolent, dark-as-night valentine Charlie Countryman. Unfortunately and no offense to Shia LaBeouf’s no-holds-barred portrayal of the eponymous lead who’d been sleepwalking through life and is now beginning to feel, the most memorable storyline of the entire movie has absolutely nothing to do with the title character.

Instead, told in flashback and voice-over by the always impressive Evan Rachel Wood, we’re filled in on the unexpectedly riveting back-story of her Beauty and the Beast like romance with the horrific underworld gangster Nigel (a terrifying Mads Mikkelsen).

Sidelined by a near-death encounter, Nigel convalesced in a flat above the Bucharest café where Wood’s gifted yet naïve and sheltered cellist played for customers from morning until night. Growing stronger day by day and note by note – Nigel not only found himself healed by the transformative power of her music but also falling in love with the woman whose playing saved his life before he’d ever laid eyes on her.

And (as Wood’s Gabi explains to Charlie) it was only after the two began a whirlwind romance did Gabi realize that although she saved Nigel’s life, by getting involved with Nigel, she’d forever jeopardized her own as once the afterglow wore off, she learned there was nothing beautiful about this particular beast.

Revealed late into Charlie, it’s only once we reach this point of explanation where Gabi tells LaBeouf’s hopelessly smitten American tourist just how on Earth she could’ve ever married a man who stalks and threatens the lives of her as well as anyone who looks at her twice that we realize what had been missing thus far in the film. Charlie Countryman's missing ingredient was anything resembling an actual and involving storyline.

While Bond’s feature filmmaking debut based on the screenplay by Matt Drake had been undeniably interesting for the first hour, it was ultimately salvaged thanks to his background as a commercial director who knows how to milk style over substance for all its worth and keep us watching for the eye candy alone.

Likewise, the meandering approach taken thus far had only proven why you can’t make great films out of books by Beat Generation authors in that they valued artistry and rhythm over structure and storylines.

Saddled with an uneasy hero in the form of LaBeouf’s American in existential crisis (following the death of his mother), Charlie’s main impetus for action in the film is reaction.

Constantly set in motion by outside stimuli (including conversations with two separate ghosts), Charlie is knocked down like a stack of dominoes from frame one and this process is repeated for a majority of the first act as he passively reacts to people, places and situations. It isn’t until he meets Gabi that he decides to make a decision in his own right, even going as far as to admit that he doesn’t “get feelings” very often.

Although LaBeouf commits himself fully to the role, the way his character bounces back from depressive funk to manic screwball in the blink of an eye, it’s almost as if the screenwriter was as uninterested in him as the audience and kept changing his persona stream-of-consciousness style as he wrote to see if Charlie would suddenly “get interesting.”

While thankfully the film and in turn LaBeouf’s character is augmented by a rather ingenious coda that symbolically harks back to the film’s opening imagery, adding a surprisingly deep layer of extra meaning to the circle of life motif and film’s original title of The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman, unfortunately it doesn’t make up for Charlie's divertingly creative if narratively all-over-the-place first two-thirds.

Nonetheless, Bond utilizes his commercial background to his credit, infusing Charlie Countryman with some infectious moments of true romance and stylistic breaths of fresh air (courtesy of his entire behind-the-scenes team including cinematographer Roman Vasyanov and editor Hughes Winborne) that come to life in this sparkling Blu-ray transfer.

With this in mind, Bond is undoubtedly someone to watch in the future of cinema. Nonetheless I can only hope that he’ll choose a far more solid screenplay and take the longer art-form of feature filmmaking into greater consideration to make a film that truly maximizes its running time rather than just passing time until its next out-of-this-world scene that makes it seem like it’s a group of short films strung together rather than a cohesive long one.

While Charlie is admirable for its artistic achievements alone (including the aforementioned mesmerizing segment that wouldn’t have been out of place in music themed film festival alongside The Red Violin and Three Colors: Blue),unfortunately the least fascinating thing about Charlie Countryman is Charlie Countryman.

While it’s hardly LaBeouf’s fault as Drake’s script is – just like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet – filled with far too many, richer drawn Mercutio-like figures (including scene-stealers Mads Mikkelsen and Til Schweiger), it is interesting how many times they name-drop Robert Redford characters and movies with regard to LaBeouf.

Perhaps covertly apologizing to his fans for the poorly written character, the film-in-film meta-modern reference to the actor’s far more stellar work acting alongside Redford in the recent The Company You Keep provides a great recommendation for LaBeouf enthusiasts wanting to see something that actually makes the most of his talent and charm.

Reminiscent of In Bruges and A Life Less Ordinary, not to mention the tripper sequences of Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe – which also has star Evan Rachel Wood in common – this official Sundance Film Festival selection is now available to rent or own on disc and download.

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 evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Happy Accidents

Director: Brad Anderson

For years I rejected the notion that I had a romantic type. In fact, it’s a theory I’ve always resisted since no two individuals are alike but after others have pointed out the recurring pattern to be found in men whom I find attractive (tall, typically dark haired, kind, creative, smart, funny, slightly older), there’s no use denying it any longer.

I guess as they say, not only am I one of many who have a type but-- after more than a decade on the dating scene-- I have just as many turn-offs as I do things that cause my head to turn. Whether it’s staying away from gun show enthusiasts, conservative Republicans, smokers, men who loathe foreign film, the devoutly religious, guys without a library card or voter registration, or those who have never been to a museum on an occasion other than a field trip, we all have our deal-breakers with some faux pas (of course!) being more serious than others.

Of course, dating is far more difficult when one is a recovering codependent and such is the case for Ruby Weaver (Marisa Tomei) in writer/director Brad Anderson’s high energy, romantic, fantastical mystery Happy Accidents. Not only has Ruby had her fill of men who were less than her ideal such as the bad actor, the artist who felt she was leaving his work more than him, the fetishist, and addicts and her friend had a scare dating a secretive Jew for Jesus, but as a notorious “fixer,” Ruby’s made it a habit of falling for the wrong men whom she feels she can mold into the best versions of themselves whether they’re interested in changing or not.

While I can assure you that as tempting as it is to try and change men-- even slightly from discouraging an overreliance on their typical wardrobe staples of interchangeable baseball hats-- the only way someone is going to change is on their own, so one needs to make peace with those damn hats and be thankful that (in comparison to the freaks Ruby has met) that’s the least of our worries.

With a therapist to answer to and still so determined to be everyone’s loyal girl Friday so much that she gets fired for being overly helpful and flirtatious as a directory assistance operator, Ruby tries to steer clear of relationships but as we all know, that’s precisely when they spring up like a flower or sometimes a weed in a garden we weren’t looking for.

When Ruby first meets the friendly, intelligent, earnest yet slightly old-fashioned and awkward Sam Deed (Vincent D’Onofrio) who rambles on addictively with theories of time, there seems to be an instant pull but she resigns herself to the fact that Sam is probably one of those men best fantasizing about rather than dating. Of course, this is before he shows up in her life again and after a literal whirlwind courtship complete with fast motion cinematography and quick cuts, we catch up with the blissfully happy couple one week into their relationship which finds them impulsively cohabitating.

However, once they’re sharing the same space, they learn they don’t have room for excess baggage but instead of the usual “getting to know you” discoveries, Ruby is thunderstruck by a revelation offered from the odd, easily confused Sam that he is from the year 2470. With a ridiculous yarn involving time-travel, false arrest, and freedom fighting, in which Sam explains his flight from the “Atlantic coast of Iowa” to come to the year 1999 and meet up with his contact Chrystie Delancey, Ruby grows far more concerned with his mental health, until his story begins to not only evolve as their relationship continues but starts to involve her own future story as well.

Ingenious, clever and unabashedly romantic with superb chemistry between the two leads and great supporting turns by Nadia Dajani and Sean Gullette (Pi), Happy Accidents which was released the same year as the forgettable by-the-numbers time travel love story Kate and Leopold was unfortunately overlooked by mainstream audiences before it was relegated to occasional showings on IFC and even fewer copies placed in video stores across the country.

Fascinating and filled with great screwball dialogue that’s at once so highly intelligent and awe-inspiringly creative it wouldn’t have been out of place in a classic Preston Sturges film, making Tomei’s earthy, caring Ruby seem like a modern take on a role that would’ve been played back in the 1930s and 40s by Claudette Colbert.

Additionally, it’s the type of film that plays even better on repeat viewings when the entire complicated plot can best be appreciated with all of its layers and thankfully without the fierce apprehension one experiences initially. Perhaps and most impressively, the talented work by Brad Anderson (Next Stop Wonderland, The Machinist) can just as easily be called a science fiction or fantasy work as it can a romantic comedy yet it doesn’t fall exclusively into one set genre, dazzling us by breaking both of the molds and constantly switching styles throughout so that it’s as irresistible as a breathtaking date with a man we’ve just realized, much like Ruby, is exactly our type.

In fact, Happy Accidents is not only highly recommended but it’s one of my favorite romantic indie films of the last decade and shouldn’t fail to strike a chord with those who enjoyed Amelie.

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