We knew him then.

In
his one-man stage show, the late Charles Nelson Reilly would talk about
his mother. It wasn’t exactly a loving tribute: This is a woman whose
favorite word was "no," who shouted racial slurs out their Bronx
window, and who was supposedly so hated in the neighborhood that she
carried around a baseball bat whenever she ran an errand. During one
battle with her son, Mrs. Reilly shouted, "I should have thrown out the
baby and kept the afterbirth!"

You can hear the crowd gasp after that line in The Life of Reilly,
an 84-minute film that captures highlights of the comedian’s
three-hour-plus monologue. And Reilly rebukes them: "Did you think it
was all going to be game shows?" That gets a laugh;
subsequent stories about how his mother’s dream-crushing stubbornness
ultimately landed his father in an institution silence the theater.
It’s not far into Frank Anderson and Barry Poltermann’s documentary
before you realize that no, this surprisingly poignant performance
won’t be burbling over with Match Game–ready froth. 

At
first, you probably won’t recognize Reilly—instead of a clown in a bad
toupee, Rocket Man glasses, and sailor suit on stage, he’s a
frail-looking, balding senior swimming in a button-down and khakis.
There’s a reason, and it’s not sudden aging: It’s probably been forever
since you’ve seen the guy. This show, Reilly’s final one before his
death last May, was filmed at a North Hollywood theater in October
2004, and the directors realized the actor had fallen into obscurity,
inserting footage at the start of the movie of a street poll asking
people if they knew who Charles Nelson Reilly was. (The majority
replied that the name sounded familiar, but few could definitively
say.) Reilly himself was aware that his star had significantly dimmed,
beginning his monologue by gently proclaiming he’s at the "twilight of
an extraordinary life." He uses the word "twilight," he continues,
based on run-ins with fans, such as the excitable lady in a supermarket
who saw him and shrilled, "Oh! I thought you were dead."

So
the performer may not resemble the guy who shows up on GSN in the
middle of the afternoon, but the voice—whether he’s doing the
grocery-store lady or just ad-­libbing an aside—hasn’t changed a whit.
And that distinctive sound, borderline-hysterical and always used for
laughs, makes some of the tales Reilly chooses to share even sadder.
Co-written by actor Paul Linke, Reilly’s monologue is, as the title
suggests, an autobiography, and it took a while until his life became
bearable. After his artist father was institutionalized, having started
to drink heavily after his wife forced him to turn down a job
opportunity with a then-unknown Walt Disney, the Reillys were broke and
moved to Connecticut to live with a relative who was a recent lobotomy
patient. ("Eugene O’Neill would never even get near this family!"
Reilly says.) His mother discouraged his desire to act. So did an NBC
exec, who told him, "They don’t let queers on television," cutting
short a meeting that Reilly was certain would be his break. 

The Life of Reilly
isn’t all bad news, of course, but even when Reilly is talking about
his fascination with film or his first steps toward success, it’s with
a reverence only occasionally punctuated by a quip. This is a story
about all wide-eyed dreamers as much as it is about him: When Reilly
reads off the roster of his classmates in a New York acting class for
the dirt-poor—Jack Lemmon, Frank Langella, Hal Holbrook—it’s a simple
act that’s hugely inspiring. (It’s particularly so when he mentions
that Holbrook, carrying a white wig in a paper bag, was doing Mark
Twain even then.)

There
are several components to his set—some living-room furniture, theater
seats, a podium, and a prop table—but you get the feeling that the
performance would have the same effect even if the stage were empty.
(More distracting, however, is the directors’ insertion of random
footage throughout the monologue—there are more grainy shots of trains,
it seems, than clips from Reilly’s television career.) One-man shows
are deceptively relaxed; a good performer makes you feel as if you’re
just catching up with an old friend over drinks, unaware that there’s a
script feeding the recollections. In this regard, Reilly’s an ace,
appearing to simply make conversation while effortlessly re-creating
characters from his past, sometimes preceding his descriptions with a
"C’mere!" or "See her?" You do, and with all his affectations stripped
away, you see the genuine Reilly, too.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

By the end, your mouth will be hanging open, too

There are a few things to be feared when a fog rolls into a New England town in The Mist—monsters,
for one. But as a group that gets trapped in the local supermarket
quickly discovers, the neighbors aren’t exactly nurturing bosoms of
warmth, either.

Those who haven’t read the Stephen King novella upon
which writer-director Frank Darabont’s script is based are surely
curious about what exactly is the source of the horror lurking in the
fog (and no, this is not a rip-off of The Fog) that envelops
the rural area after a violent electrical storm. It’s scary stuff—bug-,
slime-, and blood-phobes, you’re going to squirm—but often it’s not
nearly as brutal as the humanity that tries to contain it. And therein
lies King’s triumph as a horror writer who emphasizes earthly
characters—in this case, most notably a dad and young son (Thomas Jane
and Nathan Gamble), a religious zealot (a fierce, frightening Marcia
Gay Harden), and a young teacher (Laurie Holden) who believes—heh—in the goodness of people instead of supernatural ones, a shrewdness that ultimately elevates The Mist into the tense, wrenching, watchable film that it is.

Darabont, who also crafted big-screen adaptations of King’s writings for The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption,
deserves a big credit, too: For one, monster movies aren’t exactly in
vogue, considering that a cheesy-looking tentacle, pterodactyl, or
giant spider (and all three make appearances here) generally send
modern audiences laughing out of the theater. These otherworldly
creatures look pretty good—weird and repellent, and they attack with
such ferocity and speed (though not what-the-hell-just-happened speed)
that you’ll be putting a vice grip on your popcorn bag before you have
the chance to scoff.

Darabont also elaborated on King’s ambiguous
ending. King himself called the new twist “shocking”; I’d add
devastating, though it’s undoubtedly going to be a love-it-or-hate-it
thing. The ending reinforces the strength of The Mist, which meshes its killer-beasts concept with a Lord of the Flies-like
dissolution among their waiting victims. The bugs are sickening, but
the bile underneath the townsfolks’ surface friendliness will turn your
stomach as well.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com

Really: Not at all as retch-inducing as it looks

Enchanted begins with
“Once upon a time” and ends with a happily-ever-after. There are forest
creatures, a princess in need of rescue, and problems that are readily
solved with a saccharine tune. That it’s a Disney production is
unmistakable, but the presumption that it’s enjoyable to no one older
than 5 is wrong. This modern-day, partly animated fairy tale is a
cheery love story, yes, but it’s also a little Scream and a lot of Hairspray, cleverly sending up its shamelessly feel-good genre yet sending you off with a fizzy high nonetheless.

Two elements that worked in this year’s Hairspray also elevate Enchanted: songs whose bounciness hides parodic lyrics, and James Marsden. Marsden, who’s sleepwalked through dramatic roles in Superman Returns and the X-Men series, is proving to be a natural comedian, once again exploiting his shiny good looks for laughs as Enchanted’s Prince Edward (né Charming). He starts off, as most of the main characters do, as a cartoon, but even then his booming “Ha-ha!” and exaggerated, princely delivery perfectly poke fun at the syrup onscreen. The story begins with Giselle (Junebug
Oscar nominee Amy Adams), a princess who’s surrounded by a gaggle of
cute animal helpers and who dreams of her ideal mate. The next day, she
sings for him—a song about his requiring just the right pair of
puckers, “for lips are the only things that touch”—and, naturally, they
immediately find each other. “Oh Giselle, we shall be married in the
morning!” Edward pronounces. But his mother’s the queen (Susan
Sarandon), and she doesn’t like the idea of having to eventually give
up her throne, so she tosses Giselle into a rabbit hole that whisks her
off to a place “where there are no happily-ever-afters.” Giselle
emerges, now fully human, from a manhole cover in the middle of Times
Square.

Enchanted’s script is a clever surprise from Bill Kelly, whose previous work, this year’s Premonition,
was not so clever. Once in Manhattan, Giselle bumbles about, thinking
it’s just an unfamiliar version of her home, Andalasia. So she runs
into a little person and happily exclaims, “Grumpy!” And climbs up a
castle-depicting billboard for the Palace casino and knocks on the
door. And after she’s spotted by divorce lawyer Robert (Patrick
Dempsey), who lets her crash on his couch, and sees what a disaster his
apartment is, Giselle takes her usual action: opening a window and
trilling for furry maids. It still works, only this time the creatures
that respond aren’t exactly chipmunks and bunny rabbits.

Giselle stays with Robert longer than he (or his cold fiancée,
played by Broadway star Idina Menzel) would like, prompted by his
enraptured daughter, Morgan (Rachel Covey), and the fact that Giselle
is just too clueless to make it on her own until Edward finds her. It
doesn’t hurt that she’s also quite endearing: Adams once again does an
excellent job portraying a young woman whose smarts peep through her
gee-gollyness, and the character, while never quite abandoning her
romantic notions, does absorb a bit of Robert’s cynicism. (It’s not
spoiling anything to say that Robert is softened by their friendship in
turn.) Adams and Marsden outshine the bigger stars, with Dempsey a
competent if unremarkable straight man and Sarandon also coming off as
a rather quotidian witch.

Kevin Lima, a Disney vet who also directed 1999’s Tarzan and 2000’s 102 Dalmatians,
fills the film with touches that are whimsical in just the right doses
(for instance, a chipmunk doing charades has no business being as
entertaining as it is here). There are an unexpected number of special
effects, the spectacular, fiery kind that often makes the movie feel
like Spider-Man’s little sister. You may know how Enchanted begins and can guess how it ends, but the fun lies in the formula-twisting that comes in between.

It’s OK, Stiff, we’re confused, too

Like The Wizard of Oz, Pink Floyd: The Wall, or most David Lynch movies, Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko has a reputation among certain viewers for practically begging to be watched while under some influence or another. Kelly’s Southland Tales is no different—except that while Donnie Darko
is a fine film regardless of your level of sobriety, the
writer-director’s sophomore effort most definitely is not. It’s nearly
intolerable, so when the mess comes out on DVD, sooner rather than
later, here are a couple of games to speed oblivion for those who rent
it: For a more intense experience, drink/smoke/drop whenever
"neo-Marxism" is mentioned. Otherwise, simply imbibe whenever a
character puts a gun to his or her head. Unenhanced, you’ll sympathize
with such desperation soon enough.

Southland Tales
debuted disastrously at Cannes in 2006, prompting Kelly to trim 19
minutes from what must have been an excruciating 163. He claims to have
streamlined the story, but it’s still unwieldy, difficult to
comprehend, and nearly impossible to tidily sum up. Here goes: It’s
2008, and a nuclear attack on Texas has set off World War III and
turned the United States into an Orwellian nightmare, with a
comprehensive surveillance program called USIDent instituted by those
pesky Republicans. (One of whom, a politician’s wife played by Miranda
Richardson, uses it to assassinate people at her whim.) Access to oil
is a thing of the past, leading a deeply weird man named Baron Von
Westphalen (Wallace Shawn) to invent a perpetual-motion machine that
allows for fuel-free transport (and, apparently, world domination,
though that part’s less clear).

Meanwhile,
there’s a movie star, Boxer Santaros (Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson), who
disappeared shortly after the attacks and was later found in the desert
with his memory erased. He doesn’t remember that he’s married to a
presidential candidate’s daughter (Mandy Moore), so Boxer takes up with
Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a porn star and talk-show host, and
they write a screenplay about an apocalyptic future that involves a
L’Engle-like tear in the space-time continuum. There are a couple of
war veterans who are mentally fucked after their involvement in a
friendly-fire incident (Justin Timberlake, who also narrates, and Seann
William Scott, who actually plays twins, but that’s too nonsensical to
get into). And then there are the neo-Marxists, quite oddly played
predominantly by Saturday Night Live stars such as Amy
Poehler, Cheri Oteri, Jon Lovitz, and Nora Dunn. The gist of it is that
the apocalypse is at hand, and that the world will end, as it’s
repeated ad nauseam, "not with a whimper, but with a bang."

The best that can be said about Southland Tales
is that Kelly apparently intended to ramble: The film is divided into
three parts, but it begins with the fourth chapter. (The first three
installments—the "prequel saga," according to the movie’s Web site—are
available in graphic-novel form.) Donnie Darko also inspired
companion literature—and was also at times incomprehensible—but its
rabbit holes were controlled, thoughtful, and intriguing; Southland Tales
feels like, to quote one of its characters, the "nervous breakdown of
the century." Its tone is all over the place. One minute, Timberlake is
quoting from Revelation; the next, Gellar offers porn-star wisdom such
as "Scientists are saying the future is going to be far more futuristic
than they originally predicted." The casting of SNL vets exemplifies the film’s confusion: It’s doomsday. (Even Zelda Rubinstein, Poltergeist’s don’t-go-into-the-light lady, is here.)
But then you see the comedians and chuckle. But then they start blowing
people’s heads off. Kelly’s attempt to force humor into the story is so
awkward it quickly becomes as ridiculous as the tangled plot itself.   

With
such absurdity, it’s futile to analyze the worth of anyone’s
performance—one imagines that the Rock was encouraged to do odd, girly
things like tap his fingers together nervously, for example, and that
Gellar actually nailed her character’s stiff, dumb-blonde motivation.
One of the better scenes involves a Timberlake musical number. But it’s
mostly compelling because it’s a friggin’ song-and-dance
sequence in the midst of a bunch of Internet feeds and newscasts, and
because he’s only lip-syncing…to the Killers’ "All These Things That
I’ve Done," and ultimately it’s the great song that gives the movie a
lift. It’s a brief respite, but I’ll drink to that.

Mr. Retardorium and His Stupid Store

It’s OK, Stiff, we’re confused, too

Like The Wizard of Oz, Pink Floyd: The Wall, or most David Lynch movies, Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko has a reputation among certain viewers for practically begging to be watched while under some influence or another. Kelly’s Southland Tales is no different—except that while Donnie Darko
is a fine film regardless of your level of sobriety, the
writer-director’s sophomore effort most definitely is not. It’s nearly
intolerable, so when the mess comes out on DVD, sooner rather than
later, here are a couple of games to speed oblivion for those who rent
it: For a more intense experience, drink/smoke/drop whenever
"neo-Marxism" is mentioned. Otherwise, simply imbibe whenever a
character puts a gun to his or her head. Unenhanced, you’ll sympathize
with such desperation soon enough.

Southland Tales
debuted disastrously at Cannes in 2006, prompting Kelly to trim 19
minutes from what must have been an excruciating 163. He claims to have
streamlined the story, but it’s still unwieldy, difficult to
comprehend, and nearly impossible to tidily sum up. Here goes: It’s
2008, and a nuclear attack on Texas has set off World War III and
turned the United States into an Orwellian nightmare, with a
comprehensive surveillance program called USIDent instituted by those
pesky Republicans. (One of whom, a politician’s wife played by Miranda
Richardson, uses it to assassinate people at her whim.) Access to oil
is a thing of the past, leading a deeply weird man named Baron Von
Westphalen (Wallace Shawn) to invent a perpetual-motion machine that
allows for fuel-free transport (and, apparently, world domination,
though that part’s less clear).

Meanwhile,
there’s a movie star, Boxer Santaros (Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson), who
disappeared shortly after the attacks and was later found in the desert
with his memory erased. He doesn’t remember that he’s married to a
presidential candidate’s daughter (Mandy Moore), so Boxer takes up with
Krysta Now (Sarah Michelle Gellar), a porn star and talk-show host, and
they write a screenplay about an apocalyptic future that involves a
L’Engle-like tear in the space-time continuum. There are a couple of
war veterans who are mentally fucked after their involvement in a
friendly-fire incident (Justin Timberlake, who also narrates, and Seann
William Scott, who actually plays twins, but that’s too nonsensical to
get into). And then there are the neo-Marxists, quite oddly played
predominantly by Saturday Night Live stars such as Amy
Poehler, Cheri Oteri, Jon Lovitz, and Nora Dunn. The gist of it is that
the apocalypse is at hand, and that the world will end, as it’s
repeated ad nauseam, "not with a whimper, but with a bang."

The best that can be said about Southland Tales
is that Kelly apparently intended to ramble: The film is divided into
three parts, but it begins with the fourth chapter. (The first three
installments—the "prequel saga," according to the movie’s Web site—are
available in graphic-novel form.) Donnie Darko also inspired
companion literature—and was also at times incomprehensible—but its
rabbit holes were controlled, thoughtful, and intriguing; Southland Tales
feels like, to quote one of its characters, the "nervous breakdown of
the century." Its tone is all over the place. One minute, Timberlake is
quoting from Revelation; the next, Gellar offers porn-star wisdom such
as "Scientists are saying the future is going to be far more futuristic
than they originally predicted." The casting of SNL vets exemplifies the film’s confusion: It’s doomsday. (Even Zelda Rubinstein, Poltergeist’s don’t-go-into-the-light lady, is here.)
But then you see the comedians and chuckle. But then they start blowing
people’s heads off. Kelly’s attempt to force humor into the story is so
awkward it quickly becomes as ridiculous as the tangled plot itself.   

With
such absurdity, it’s futile to analyze the worth of anyone’s
performance—one imagines that the Rock was encouraged to do odd, girly
things like tap his fingers together nervously, for example, and that
Gellar actually nailed her character’s stiff, dumb-blonde motivation.
One of the better scenes involves a Timberlake musical number. But it’s
mostly compelling because it’s a friggin’ song-and-dance
sequence in the midst of a bunch of Internet feeds and newscasts, and
because he’s only lip-syncing…to the Killers’ "All These Things That
I’ve Done," and ultimately it’s the great song that gives the movie a
lift. It’s a brief respite, but I’ll drink to that.

Mr. Retardorium and His Stupid Store

In lieu of a Beowulf review, enjoy pictures of the closest I’ve gotten to the movie: A lush brown
blankie courtesy of Paramount. I’ve gotten some weird swag in my day –
say, that Heartbreak Kid pillow with Ben Stiller’s face
fake-embroidered on it — but this was right up there. I  must say,
though, that it’s pretty cozy, and came in handy when I discovered my
furnace wasn’t working.

(FYI, a crazy schedule this week kept me
from actually seeing Beowulf, unfortunately. So now it joins my
year-end resolutions list.)

Yes, I really want to hurt you
(AP photo)

Don’t go modeling at Boy George’s place: The former Culture Club crooner and winner of the Letting Yourself Go award was arrested today for falsely imprisoning a 28-year-old Norwegian man who claims to have gone to the singer’s apartment for a photo shoot — only to end up chained and threatened.

And the world’s been thinking Britney is crazy. A little perspective, people!

Yes, I really want to hurt you
(AP photo)

Don’t go modeling at Boy George’s place: The former Culture Club crooner and winner of the Letting Yourself Go award was arrested today for falsely imprisoning a 28-year-old Norwegian man who claims to have gone to the singer’s apartment for a photo shoot — only to end up chained and threatened.

And the world’s been thinking Britney is crazy. A little perspective, people!

Hair tip: This cut works best on dudes scary as fuck.

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, one of the good
guys in Ethan and Joel Coen’s unrelentingly punishing No Country for
Old Men, is a third-generation cop in West Texas. He’s been keeping
watch over his dusty, amoral, violent territory since he was 25 and
is thinking about retiring. But it’s not that Bell is angry, or even
apathetic. It’s more a sickness of the soul. Here’s Bell, scanning a
newspaper, aghast at the homicide reports he’s reading when he says
to his young partner: “My God, Wendell, it’s just all-out war. I
can’t think of any other word for it. Can’t make up stuff like that.
Couldn’t even try.” He admits to a relative that he’s quitting
because he feels “overmatched.” It’s a conversation that Bell has
with Roscoe, a neighboring, likewise old-school sheriff, about the
state of the world when they’re investigating a particularly brutal
murder, though, that really sinks your heart to Bell’s level. They
talk about the breakdown of society, and Roscoe marvels at the
gutsiness of a killer who recently returned to the scene of his crime
to kill again. “Who would do such a thing?” he asks. “How do
you defend against it?”

At this point in the film, you realize
that they can’t, and there but for the grace of God etc. No Country
for Old Men, which the Coens adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s 2005
novel, may take place in a 1980 version of the Wild West, and there’s
a certain chain of events that sets its villain, Anton Chigurh
(Javier Bardem), on a killing spree. But the character’s clear
psychosis and often random, don’t-think-twice murders will be just as
frightening to modern audiences who, like Bell (Tommy Lee Jones),
spend their mornings shaking their head at the daily news. Bardem’s
Chigurh isn’t deterred by daylight, or authority, or
how-can-I-help-you-neighbor? folks who make polite small talk with
the stranger despite his bizarre non sequitors and antagonistic
demeanor. And before they can notice how dead his eyes are, they’re
dead, too, courtesy of an air-propelled captive bolt pistol.
(Normally used to stun cattle for slaughter, it’s handy for blowing
out locks *and* brains.) Going home after this movie, you may find
yourself a little more suspicious about those shifty dudes you
usually ignore on the Metro.

McCarthy’s plot is a simple one. (In
fact, though it evokes the Coens’ own Fargo, it’s more reminiscent of
Sam Raimi’s Coen-esque A Simple Plan.) Money sets the chase
in motion: One hot afternoon, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is hunting
in the desert when he spies a circle of pickups in the distance and
bloodied corpses (including one dog) scattered in and among them. One
guy’s barely alive and begging for aqua. His truck bed is loaded
with heroin. Moss immediately starts looking for the person who did
this, on his way coming across another body – and a satchel full of
$2 million cash. He takes it, and it’s another game now. Moss goes
home, ignores his wife’s gentle queries and sarcasm. “I don’t even
want to know where you been all day,” Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald),
says. “That’ll work,” Moss replies, cracking open a beer.

But then he can’t sleep, and returns to
the scene to give the dying Mexican some water. Bad move: Another
pickup, its blaring lights against the dusk making it look like it
just escaped from a Truck-o-Saurus rally, bears down on Moss. Shots
are fired, and the hunter is now the hunted. Bell knows that Moss is
in trouble, and he knows that Chigurh, who killed one of his own men
while he was in custody for some infraction or another, is probably
after him. But Moss never told Carla Jean where he was headed to or
when he’d be back, and Bell’s as perplexed about what to do as he is
tired.

No Country for Old Men is the Coens’
masterful return to Miller’s Crossing and Blood Simple territory. The
biggest thing you’ll notice is the quiet: Whether it’s a lack of
soundtrack or a lack of dialogue, the silence in this film almost
comprehensively full of scenes in which someone is likely to die
often makes the tension unbearable. A transponder keeps Chigurh on
Moss’s tail, and really not a whole lot goes on besides Moss changing
motels and the lunatic knocking off people (and even a bird) as he
closes in. The script has its share of black humor, but this isn’t
Fargo. The only quirks you’ll find belong to Chigurh, and they
accentuate his psychosis rather than his eccentricity: challenging
his victims to live-or-die coin-tossing games. Small talk that
doesn’t quite make sense. Even the Prince Valiant haircut, goofy and
hideous, makes Bardem, a burly man’s man if there ever was one, look
dangerous instead of stupid. (Granted, Bardem’s low-key expression of
simmering, homicidal anger is the essence of what makes Chigurh so
damn unnerving.) And though the aw-shucks locals seem bused in from O
Brother, Where Art Thou?, their cornpone simplicity isn’t included to
make you laugh – it’s  to  break your heart, over the godlessness
that they don’t even know surrounds them. They can’t see it burbling
in the haze coming off the desert, a wasteland whose empty menace
frequent Coens cinematographer Roger Deakins captures well.

Jones and Brolin, who recently worked
together in Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah, are both naturals in
their roles here; even if Jones has played the frustrated,
no-nonsense, secret-softie authority figure many times before, Bell’s
humanity keeps the performance fresh. Brolin’s Moss is a bit
different: You don’t find out much of anything about him, though
there’s no doubt that he’s a decent guy, the kind who married and
provides for his high-school sweetheart. But he’s just a little too
good at strategizing after he finds the cash, a little too quick to
know just what to do next when he gets in a bind, and instead of
seeming uncharacteristic, it makes you that much more curious about
who he is. Guessing is a big part of what makes No Country for Old
Men compelling, and while some may be put off by its abrupt, open
end, many will be enchanted by its poetry. “You know how this is
going to turn out, don’t you?” Chigurh asks Moss during a phone
call. They both think they do, but you’ll have no idea.

copyright 2007 letsnotlisten.com