After the Sunset (IMDB) (Netflix)
Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayak are two retired jewel thieves learning to enjoy the good life on a Caribbean island (Hayak is doing a better job of it than Brosnan), and Woody Harrelson is the FBI agent they humiliated on their last job. Lo and behold, the third of a series of mega-diamonds arrives on a cruise ship, and so does Harrelson, taunting Brosnan to try for it so that Harrelson can catch him. It's touted as a caper/romance/buddy flick.
Maybe so, but the pieces don't quite blend together, so the sum is less than the parts, which aren't so great in the first place. It's not hard to guess what's going on pretty quickly (my idea turned out to be more sophisticated than the script's), and the journey to the finish feels like, well, a journey. A nice bit part from Don Cheadle as the hyper-rationalizing gangster isn't enough to raise this one above stale popcorn level.
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Ray (IMDB) (Netflix)
The Ray Charles bio-pic, starring Jamie Foxx as the entertainer who once got banned from playing the state of Georgia, then was later honored by having "Georgia on My Mind" selected as its anthem. Although this project had the full cooperation of the recently late Mr. Charles, it doesn't gloss over the drugs, the women and the paranoia that were a big part of his life.
And picking Jamie Foxx to play him was a coup—this guy studied piano at Julliard and is a gifted mimic—you realize that his talent has been under-exploited through most of his acting career. Many biographies do a poor job of explaining why people are they way they are, but here we bounce back and forth between the adult Charles and the little boy growing up with a sharecropper mother, which makes the connections very clear (almost too clear). The themes mentioned above get a little repetitive and tip more to the cliche than the archetype, but then again, this was one of those people who created those cliches.
The Ray Charles bio-pic, starring Jamie Foxx as the entertainer who once got banned from playing the state of Georgia, then was later honored by having "Georgia on My Mind" selected as its anthem. Although this project had the full cooperation of the recently late Mr. Charles, it doesn't gloss over the drugs, the women and the paranoia that were a big part of his life.
And picking Jamie Foxx to play him was a coup—this guy studied piano at Julliard and is a gifted mimic—you realize that his talent has been under-exploited through most of his acting career. Many biographies do a poor job of explaining why people are they way they are, but here we bounce back and forth between the adult Charles and the little boy growing up with a sharecropper mother, which makes the connections very clear (almost too clear). The themes mentioned above get a little repetitive and tip more to the cliche than the archetype, but then again, this was one of those people who created those cliches.
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