Movie Review - 'Revolutionary Road'

Revolutionary Road Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, and Michael Shannon Directed by Sam Mendes Rated R

Is it enough to commend the look of a production like Revolutionary Road? Does it suffice to acknowledge that Sam Mendes directs this very specific type of human warfare with unflinching honesty and that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet go to those dark places only great actors can find?Some will say yes, but I just can't recommend Revolutionary Road. The problem is not the actors or the period production design or Mendes' very measured work behind the camera or Thomas Newman's score. The problem is the principal characters, Frank and April Wheeler. They're both so incredibly detestible that you can't side with either one of them, you can't feel for them, and you can barely relate to them. The opening of Revolutionary Road is an argument. The middle is another argument. And the ending is some other argument, this time with enromous consequences. What's curious about the first confrontation is that Frank Wheeler (DiCaprio) pulls his giant 1950s sedan over to the side of the road, he and his wife April (Winslet) storm out of the car mid-fight, fight some more, and then get back in the car. If, at that point, the car had burst into flames, we would've felt some sadness that we had never gotten to know Frank and April, but once you get to know them, you might wish for the car-in-flames solution instead. Frank and April met at a party as two city kids right out of college. They fell in love with the idea of each other. Their marriage is unhappy and unending. Frank works in advertising, while April stays at home with the kids. The miserable bastards decide that to put life back into their marriage, they'll move to France. It's an idealistic approach to a very real problem, and France won't fix what's wrong, because what's wrong is Frank and April. These characters aren't just bad to each other, they're just bad people. So moving them to France would only mean that they'd bound from a tiny red Renault when they begin arguing on the Champs- Élysées.

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Count the F-Bombs in 'Burn After Reading'

I watched one of my favorite 2008 flicks again over the holidays, the Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading. Joel and Ethan Coen are so well-regarded for their writing that we might not realize just how ideally suited they are to make a movie with Samuel L. Jackson.

Check out just how loaded Burn After Reading is with f-bombs from Malkovich, Clooney, Pitt et al. But these aren't just any f-bombs; two-time Oscar-winning screenwriters painstakingly and purposefully placed them in those sentences. Burn After Reading is out on DVD now, and I sense a drinking game coming on.

'Spider-Man' Musical Will Feature New Villain, But Will It Star Jim Sturgess?

We already know that director Julie Taymor wants to reunite her Across the Universe stars for the upcoming Spider-Man musical on Broadway. Evan Rachel Wood has already committed to playing Mary-Jane, and now she's talking a little bit more about what we can expect , no matter who plays Peter Parker.

"It's a year commitment," says Wood. "I did the workshop with Jim Sturgess, but he's not sure if he can make that year commitment but we're trying to get him to do it. I want him to do it so bad." That would be ideal for Taymor, and perhaps even for Sturges, who has kind of been lukewarm on the idea all along. If he can prove he can play a superhero on stage, that could set him up nicely for a film franchise of some kind down the line, if he's looking for that kind of thing. Of course, it would help if the Spider-Man musical is worth its salt. Wood says "stuff from the first and second films and some stuff from the comic books" have been used to create the story, and we'll have a new villain, as well, plus music by Bono and The Edge. And that all sounds great but...Spider-Man singing?

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Fifteen Movies Worth the Wait in 2009

Tomorrow morning, I'll recap 2008 in movies and look ahead to 2009 on our local Fox affiliate here in Phoenix. It's at 9:45am Mountain Time if you're interested. But I was asked to pick the five best and worst movies of the year, which we've already talked about (the best)/(the worst). But the five movies I'm looking forward to the most in 2009? Well, I hadn't given that too much thought.

And then I started looking over the list of 2009 releases, and while there might be another eight or ten movies I came across that would be second teamers, plus the Sundance and Toronto hits yet to come that will shake up everything, I really only found maybe 20 movies I was anticipating. Is that normal? Yeah, probably. I'd think it would be a tremendous year if you could find 30 movies you were completely amped about. There are few obvious ones - Watchmen, Transformers, Trek, Terminator, Wolverine, and Harry Potter - but what about stuff not released between May 1st and July 17th?

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Box Office - Second Verse, Same as the First

There are no new nationwide releases this weekend in theaters, meaning we're probably going to see a repeat of last week's top movies at the box office. Marley & Me has continued to do surprising business and will be over the $100 million by the end of the first weekend of 2009.

In fact, if we step back a little bit, everything in the top five is a little surprising. In addition to Marley, you've got Benjamin Button, which came out of the gates with a $39 million weekend and will probably be over $80 million by next Monday. That's good news for everyone involved, because three-hour David Fincher movies don't sound like box office gold. It still has a long way to go to make money, but as the only film like it at all on the schedule for months and months, the Golden Globes and the Oscar nominations will help create more buzz for it, keeping ticket sales afloat well into February. Bedtime Stories was the movie most prognosticators had winning the Christmas weekend: It's a family flick, it's got Adam Sandler. But it opened in third place over the four-day holiday, and though it's beating Button on the weekdays so far this week, it probably won't overtake the film this weekend, simply because it's an opening weekend kind of curiosity. People still want to see Button and will find ways to do it.

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