At the Movies - Patrick Hall

By PATRICK HALL
Special to The  Wilson Post 

Let me preface by saying I consider The Great Gatsby to be one of the greatest American novels ever written, and I never expected Baz Luhrmann’s film to live up to that standard.

With that being said, Luhrmann definitely “gets it,” and his film is a decent adaptation, depicting Gatsby’s world vividly, but tries too hard to include modernity within a facade of green screens and vibrant colors.

In case you aren’t aware, “The Great Gatsby” is the story of elusive Long Island millionaire Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his neighbor, bond salesman Nick Carraway (Tobey MaGuire).

The two meet up at one of Gatsby’s illustrious parties and Gatsby persuades Carraway to set up a meet with Carraway’s cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan), whom was in love with Gatsby just five years prior.

The story is all opulence, parties and the attempts of one man to regain a love he once had, through the material world. Lurhmann’s vision is bright and the film runs with a breakneck pace that is exhausting for the first hour.

Lurhmann seems to pound the “roaring” part of the “Roaring 20s” into the audience, with sensory overload. That overload is also a message about the decade’s overflowing wealth, alcohol and possessions.

By PATRICK HALL
Special to The Wilson Post

The 85th Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, and while I spent quite some time mulling over the most deserving films, I am settling on the fact that “Lincoln” will be the winner in the big categories, despite the fact that I don’t see it as the best of the nominees.

Directed by Steven Spielberg, and based on a book by Doris Kearns Goodwin, “Lincoln” received rave reviews, most notably for the otherworldly performance by Daniel Day-Lewis as President Abraham Lincoln.

The film was truly outstanding and a wonderful look into one of our greatest Presidents, as well as the political fight over the death of slavery. It is nominated for a whopping 12 awards: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Cinematography, Costume Design, Best Directing, Film Editing, Original Score, Production Design, Sound Mixing and Best Adapted Screenplay.

All things considered, I’m guessing “Lincoln” wins four awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Day-Lewis and Best Director for Spielberg and Best Supporting Actress for Sally Field, as Mary Todd Lincoln.

To me, “Lincoln” was mind-blowingly good upon first seeing it. Day-Lewis’s performance as the embattled and depressed, but resolute President was transcendent. With subtly of movements and facial expressions alongside moments of power and charisma, in "Lincoln", Day-Lewis continued to make his case as one of the best actors to ever step in front of a camera.

By PATRICK HALL
Special to The Wilson Post 

Best Picture nominee “Silver Linings Playbook” is a genuine and emotional look into the lives of two individuals, mostly described as “crazy,” but the truth is, the film succeeds in pulling back the curtain on all our lives and the truth that we all have flaws and depend on those around us to love, forgive and accept our particular brand of “crazy.”

Pat (Bradley Cooper) is bipolar, and in a psychiatric hospital thanks to him nearly beating a man to death when he found his wife having an affair. But really, what’s the big deal? After all, his father, Pat, Sr. (Robert De Niro) is banned from Philadelphia Eagles football games for fighting too many people in the stands.

But at home, Pat struggles to accept his condition and overcome it, with the help of his family and an unlikely companion, Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence). She’s not without her own emotional baggage. Tiffany’s husband, a police officer, was killed, and she was fired from her job for sleeping with “everyone in the office.”

Pat has no filter when speaking. Tiffany is angry, lonely and struggling to cope with her life. Together, Cooper and Lawrence are fascinating and mix together in a beautiful play of emotional tension, hilarious outbursts and heartbreaking struggles.

By PATRICK HALL
Special to The Wilson Post 

Captivating and beautiful, while also at times, littered with grit and destruction, “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is a fantastic film tribute to those who chose to stay the course and not leave their homes during Hurricane Katrina, and the performance by its lead actress is downright amazing.

“Beasts” is a film not many around here had the chance to see, and thankfully, it is available to rent now, but it is one of nine films up for Best Picture at the 85th Academy Awards on Feb. 24. Directed by Ben Zeitlin, the film follows little bayou resident “Hushpuppy,” played brilliantly, and captivatingly by Quvenzhané Wallis, as she struggles with her father’s declining health and the apparent destruction of the physical world around her.

The first thing that will jump out at you is the setting. Taking place in a tiny bayou community, “the Bathtub”, at the very southernmost edge of Louisiana’s coastline, the community is simple and its residents are content with their lives and find joy in life.

Hushpuppy lives in a run-down mobile home on stilts, connected to her father’s home by a rope and bell, which he rings when he’s prepared supper. Her father, Wink (Dwight Henry) lives in a shack, almost like a tree house, and together they traverse the bayou in a boat that is an old truck bed on oil barrels with a motor attached.

By PATRICK HALL
Special to The Wilson Post

From voices crying out in terror on Sept. 11, 2001, to SEAL Team Six sifting through computer hard drives and a Central Intelligence Agency operative confirming his identity, “Zero Dark Thirty” is a tense, heart-pounding and thrilling look at the search for Osama bin Laden.

Director Kathryn Bigelow’s film opens with its disclaimer, “based on first-hand accounts,” and shifts to a haunting sequence of 911 calls from people inside the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Anyone who experienced that day will immediately have the myriad of feelings they’ve had over the past 10 years resurface, which is exactly what makes “Zero Dark Thirty” so compelling.

Cut to CIA operatives Maya (Jessica Chastain) and Dan (Jason Clarke) as they interrogate a suspected Al Qaeda agent in Pakistan. It’s brutal, humiliating and in-your-face. Dan has done this all before. He wholly believes in his mission, to bring justice, his means are completely justified.

In the back of the room, Maya is tentative, it’s her first interrogation. She can barely watch; she struggles with Dan’s order to get a bucket of water for a round of water boarding.

By PATRICK HALL
Special to The Wilson Post

I checked out the announcement of the nominees in the 85th Academy Awards over breakfast Thursday morning and, deservedly so, “Lincoln” leads all films with a grand total of 12 nominations, but it faces stiff competition in several categories.

The nominations for Director Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” include: Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Daniel Day-Lewis), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Tommy Lee Jones), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Sally Field), Best Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published (Tony Kushner), Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Original Score (John Williams) and Best Sound Mixing.

My kneejerk reaction has “Lincoln” taking home one written-in-stone lock and that is Best Actor in a Leading Role, because as great as Denzel Washington was in “Flight” and Joaquin Phoenix was in “The Master,” this award is Day-Lewis’ hands down, without question.

From there it really is a tight race this year.

By PATRICK HALL
Special to The Wilson Post

There were definitely some huge hits at the theaters in 2012, and it was certainly a much better year at the movies than 2011, and looking back, “Lincoln” and “The Master” stand as the year’s most outstanding films.

With the Academy Awards coming up next month, nominees for categories will soon be announced and you can bet these two films will be in the running for Best Picture, but they are not without their flaws.

“The Master” was written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, who is becoming a force to be reckoned with and whose films truly speak volumes. In “Master,” Anderson created a tragic waltz between wayward drifter Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) and charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd (Phillip Seymour Hoffman).

From its opening sequences, “The Master” was the only film I saw this year where the entire theater sat in complete silence until the credits rolled. It was mesmerizing, beautifully acted and filmed and something I simply couldn’t take my eyes from for a second.

By PATRICK HALL
Special to The Wilson Post 

There’s no sugar-coating anything in Quentin Tarantino’s new film “Django Unchained,” nor should there be, and the movie is downright awesome, hilarious and so brutally honest that it is impossible to ignore when looking for the best movie of 2012.

In 1858, German bounty-hunter Dr. King Shultz (Christoph Waltz) encounters the slave Django (Jamie Foxx) and sets him free to help find three outlaws to collect the bounty. Along the way, Django and Shultz turn to freeing Django’s wife Broomhilda from the brutal Mississippi plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

Right from the get-go we get no apologies from Tarantino on the manner of this revenge-film, similar to his 2009 film “Inglourious Basterds.” Like that film, “Django” is one in which the oppressed are given the chance to pay back their oppressors.

For Django it means, “Kill white folks and pay you for it? What’s not to like?” The film spares no expense on its brutality with the deaths of countless slavers, plantation owners, overseers and more. To be honest, it didn’t bother me in the least.

By PATRICK HALL
The Gallatin News

Despite a slow start, “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” is really an outstanding adventure that is likely to thrill fans of the book but presents problems for the casual moviegoer.

Directed by Peter Jackson, and based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel, “The Hobbit,” the film is the first of three, and tells of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and his journey with 13 dwarves and the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellan).

Of course, the films opens with a prologue on how the dragon Smaug destroyed the dwarves’ homeland of Erebor and the surrounding region, setting up the film’s plot. The first 45 minutes drag on, despite the prologue showing off stunning landscapes and dwarf cities common to Middle earth.

There could have been a much more organic way to familiarize the audience with the background, especially considering the entire company of dwarves show up unannounced at Bilbo’s house for dinner to recruit him for the trip.

But once the journey gets underway, the film is fantastic and a whole lot of fun. In keeping with the book’s theme, the characters and events are light-hearted and plenty of comedy is provided by the dwarves.

By PATRICK HALL
Special to The Wilson Post

With no major releases this past weekend, I started my anticipation for this weekend’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” by taking part in a Saturday marathon of all three “Lord of the Rings” films in theaters, and Director Peter Jackson can’t possibly outdo himself.

Of course, Saturday was the first time I had experienced the “Rings” films in a movie theater since I last saw the third installment, “Return of the King” on the big screen in 2003. It was a marvelous time, even though it took over 12 hours to watch all three (11:15 a.m. to 12:45 a.m. the next day, with 45 minutes in between the films).

This weekend, Jackson returns to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth for “The Hobbit,” which will be the first in another trilogy taking place in Tolkien’s fictional world. Based on the novel, “The Hobbit,” Jackson and New Line Cinemas decided to draw the story out into three films.

I had hoped Jackson would just stick to a two-part story, as was originally announced, but with the addition of a third film for “Hobbit,” I can’t help but think there’s no way it can live up to what Jackson achieved with “Lord of the Rings.”

That trilogy is easily the greatest film trilogy of all time and over the weekend I couldn’t possibly think of any other trio of films that could stand up to them, except maybe George Lucas’s original “Star Wars” films, if for no other reason than the cultural impact they had.

By PATRICK HALL
Special to The Wilson Post

In rain-soaked New Orleans, Director Andrew Dominik uses the collapse of the local criminal economy as a blatant depiction of the recession in America and paints a grim, nihilistic view of the current American landscape and creates a film that will only improve with age.

“Killing Them Softly” tells of two criminal screw-ups, Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russel (Ben Mendelsohn) are chosen by Johnny “Squirrel” Amato (Vincent Curatola) to steal money from a mob-run poker game. After the caper, the trio runs into trouble when the mob brings in Jackie (Brad Pitt) to clean up the mess.

From a startling opening set to then-Senator Barack Obama speaking about the 2008 election, the film uses its mob-poker game to parallel the economic ruin of New Orleans following Katrina and America in the grips of recession.

Dominik abandons all subtlety as politicians are everywhere, on radio, televisions and voice-overs. The images and constant reminders of economic conditions permeate virtually every scene.

When the poker game is hit, the mob roughs up the game’s keeper Markie Trattman (Ray Liotta) and use him as an apparent scapegoat to return confidence in the criminal community. The references to economic confidence from speeches by then-President George W. Bush make it impossible to miss Dominik’s message.

By PATRICK HALL
Special to The Wilson Post

It’s been 50 years since British secret agent James Bond hit the screen and for the first time in the longest film series of all time, an audience knows who that man is, where he came from, and in “Skyfall,” the franchise maybe has reached its apex.

The third outing for Daniel Craig as Bond is without a doubt his best and as a lover of every Bond film, short of a couple stinkers, “Skyfall,” is one of the best, right up there with “Dr. No,” “Goldfinger,” and other classics.

In “Skyfall,” Mi6 loses a computer hard drive that contains the identity of every agent embedded in terrorist organizations across the world. During the pursuit of the thief, Bond is shot and seemingly falls to his death.

When the devious and maniacal villain Silva (Javier Bardem) uses the list and begins to personally attack Mi6 leader “M” (Judi Dench), Bond returns and proves that he is the best at what he does, even when he has lost a step.

By PATRICK HALL
Special to The Wilson Post

Captain “Whip” Whittaker wakes up, inhales a line of cocaine, stumbles over countless bottles of liquor and beer and makes it to the airport in time to make another alcoholic beverage and fly a passenger jet to Atlanta, he also winds up saving the lives of 96 out of 102 people onboard.

Such is the life of Whittaker (Denzel Washington) in “Flight,” the latest film from Director Robert Zemeckis, which is absolutely one of the best of the year. The entirety of its success is built on Washington giving one of the best performances of his career.

When the plane goes down (which is obvious in the previews, if you’ve seen them), Whittaker is a hero for saving all but six people onboard as he miraculously crash-lands the plane in a field after a massive mechanical failure.

But when the investigation into the crash begins, Whittaker is forced to face his alcoholism and drug addiction. He hides from interviews and the public eye while they call him a hero, but the fact that his blood-alcohol level was 0.28, would land him in prison for years.

By PATRICK HALL
Special to The Wilson Post

Sitting in a very empty theater, I realized that “Cloud Atlas” is a film that’s less about conveying a singular idea or story, but rather more about the way in which the stories of six events spanning across thousands of years are relatable to one another through the human spirit.

It would be nearly impossible to convey what “Atlas” is “about” because it tells six different stories, from time periods ranging from 1850 to 2344 and everything in between. Based on the 2004 novel of the same name by David Mitchell, “Atlas” really is a wonderful experience, but most likely won’t make very much money as its form isn’t massively appealing.

Written and Directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer, the film opens with just enough from all six stories to get hooked on each of them. It bounces from one to the other, but not in an incoherent way.

They are all stories of love, freedom, finding the truth, overcoming society’s boundaries and how the actions of one individual can affect countless lives. I couldn’t possibly name every member of the amazing cast, nor the characters they play.

Since the stories jump from one time period to another, every actor portrays multiple characters and sometimes those characters are of different age, race or sex than the last. “Atlas” really is an unbelievable feat of acting and directorial skill, as well as writing.

By PATRICK HALL
Special to The Wilson Post

Dr. Alex Cross is a family man, an intellectual psychologist and above all, a good detective in the Detroit Police Department, but despite the role being a welcome change of pace for star Tyler Perry, the movie didn’t really stand out.

Based on books by James Patterson, the film follows the titular character played by Perry as he tries to uncover some brutal murders by an unnamed sociopath played by Matthew Fox. The villain hits Cross and his partner and childhood friend, Tommy Kane (Edward Burns), close to home and the film takes a revenge-flick tone.

Unfortunately, the plot of “Cross” doesn’t really move in any coherent direction for most of the film. The fact that nothing is known about its sociopathic villain, identified as “Picasso” in the end credits, or his motives is annoying and how he achieves some of his villainy is questionable.

For instance, he of course, knows the exact location and time Cross will be out to dinner with his wife. Well enough, in fact, that he’s able to position himself inside a neighboring building with a high-powered rifle with perfect line-of-sight to their table, which they sit down at after “Picasso” finds his position.

By PATRICK HALL

Sometimes stories in films are just too crazy to believe, but in the case of the based-on-a-true-story film, “Argo,” the reality is more entertaining than most of what Hollywood cooks up these days, and it finally tells a miraculous story that saved the lives of six Americans.

Directed by Ben Affleck, who also stars as Tony Mendez, “Argo” tells of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, where the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was stormed and 52 Americans taken hostage. But there were six who escaped the embassy to the Canadian Ambassador’s home.

Mendez devises a plan to get the six embassy personnel home, by disguising as a Canadian film producer and the six Americans as his crew on a location scout in Tehran. It was, as Bryan Cranston’s Jack O’Donnell put it, “The best bad idea we have.”

By PATRICK HALL
Special to the Wilson Post

With lines and situations pulled almost verbatim from its predecessor, the sequel to the surprising hit “Taken” (2008), aptly titled “Taken 2” is disappointing, too familiar and an indicator of the current recipe in Hollywood: if it makes money the first time, just make a sequel.

“Taken 2” picks up not long after retired CIA Agent Brian Mills (Liam Neeson) rescued his kidnapped daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) from Albanian human traffickers in the film’s predecessor. The first leap of faith is to believe Mills is still free to obsessively wash his car after the events in “Taken” that had him kill dozens of bad guys and cause mayhem all over Paris.

But, when Mills takes a job protecting a diplomat in Istanbul, Turkey, his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Jannsen) and Kim pay him a surprise visit for a vacation. Of course, the relatives of the guys Mills dispatched in the first installment come back for revenge, particularly, the father of one bad guy, who is actually never named in the film.

And for good reason because Mills goes on the same rampage with the same dialogue as was seen in “Taken” and unfortunately for Director Olivier Megaton and Writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, the novelty has worn off completely.

“Taken 2” carries on like any action circus, with gun play and violence galore and car chases filmed in the shaky style of the “Bourne” trilogy. Since those films became a huge success several years ago, it seems many films since have borrowed their style.

Repetitiveness seems to be the major flaw of “Taken 2” right down to rehashing the same dialogue as “Taken” and using music from other films while offering nothing new. Neeson is never depicted running or doing things beyond stand-still hand-to-hand combat, which is undoubtedly a product of his age.

The movie uses two songs from the 2011 film “Drive,” which is honestly a much better film all around and just made me want to watch that movie instead.

Neeson’s personality and acting chops as well as his gruff voice gave his Mills character surprising gravitas for the first movie. It was an odd change of pace for the otherwise outstanding actor who has played great dramatic roles in the past (most notably Oskar Schindler in 1993’s “Schindler’s List”).

The writers faced the daunting challenge of how to move the story from “Taken” into a sequel, but failed on almost all accounts. Of course it’s entertaining enough if you love action films, but you’d be better off just popping “Taken” in on your home DVD player.

In one scene, Neeson actually has to recite lines that have him counting out loud while uttering “birds” and “shift to second” when he’s kidnapped and blindfolded in a van trying to memorize the van’s movements.

Despite his age, Neeson is depicted as having almost no issues dealing with the impossible scenarios he’s put in, nor the bad guys with guns who are half his age. In “Taken” he was shot, stabbed and cut numerous times, but nothing of the sort happens here.

In the third act, when he growls, “I’m tired of it all,” I felt sympathetic. Frankly, by the time it reached somewhat of a climax, I was tired of it all too.

“Taken” was admittedly completely implausible but highly entertaining and actually interesting. It’s too bad Hollywood can’t leave well enough alone anymore.

“Taken 2” is now playing in local theaters and is rated ‘R’ with a runtime of 91 minutes.

Patrick Hall is the Editor of The Gallatin News and Hendersonville Standard and may be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . 

By PATRICK HALL
The Wilson Post

In 2044, an unnamed city in Kansas is ruled by the mob, filled with poor people in tent cities and zipping through this wasteland in fancy sports cars are brash, young assassins called “Loopers,” who work for the mob killing people sent to them from the future in the year 2074.

The film "Looper" focuses on the assassin Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who is billed as one of, if not the best at his job. In Joe’s world of 2044, time travel doesn’t exist, but 30 years in the future it does, so mobsters pay Joe and his fellow Loopers to kill those who cross them and the Loopers live a seemingly wealthy life.

That is until someone starts “closing the loops” by sending the assassins their older-selves to kill, meaning Loopers have a 30-year shelf life. When the mob sends Joe’s older self (played by Bruce Willis) for execution, older Joe is ready and waiting. He outsmarts the younger Joe and goes on the run.

While older Joe has a sinister motive for avoiding his death, other than self-preservation, his mission spins an interesting web of how he and younger Joe are able to completely change the future. Older Joe wants to preserve his life with his wife in the future while younger Joe wants to preserve his next 30-years of life.

By PATRICK HALL
The Wilson Post

Like its two main characters, “The Master” is enigmatic and engaging, but its message is lost in the wake of two outstanding acting performances and provides more questions than answers.

Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, “Master” is the story of World War II Naval veteran Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), an alcoholic drifter wandering the country following his discharge from the service, and intellectual cult leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), as they collide and their relationship fumbles through alongside the growth of Dodd’s cult movement “The Cause.”

First and foremost, Phoenix is phenomenal in his major acting return since his “meltdown” of a few years ago. Quell is an enigmatic disaster, destroying every situation he enters from a job as a department store photographer to a social outing with cult followers. His alcoholism shows no signs of soothing any pain but merely adds to his violent nature.

Hoffman delivers an extraordinary performance as Dodd, a.k.a. Master, who is jovial and charismatic, although when his cult is questioned, his anger always finds a way to briefly erupt. When he meets Quell, he sees him as the subject through which he can prove his theories.

By PATRICK HALL
The Wilson Post

Labor Day weekend is considered the end of the summer season for the film, and here is a look back and handing out some awards for this year’s movies that have come out so far, based on wholly subjective criteria.

Unfortunately, I’m going to start with this year’s Worst Movie, which would be “Battleship” hands down, although “Dark Shadows” and “Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter” sure gave the board-game-based film a run for its money.

Directed by Peter Berg, “Battleship” is the story of some international sailors left to defend against an alien invasion. It is loud and there are explosions galore, but they aren’t exciting at all, which is a shame. For a film that tried to follow in the footsteps of “Transformers” it did succeed in being pretty awful, like most of those films.

Star Taylor Kitsch is uninteresting as are all the characters, save for Col. Gregory D. Gadson, a double amputee U.S. Army veteran who played double-amputee  Lt. Col. Mick Canales. Out of all of this year’s movies coming out on DVD soon or already out, I’d avoid “Battleship” at all costs.