Mexican Vacation Day 7: Remembering James Gandolfini With KILLING THEM SOFTLY

"America's not a country, it's a business.  Now fuckin' pay me."

Our exit out of Mexico went smoothly.  We returned our rental car after racking up close to a thousand fresh kilometers, grabbed a few bottles of mescal from the duty free shop, burned off our remaining pesos at the Bubba Gump Shrimp in our terminal and then flew home largely without incident.  We had a brief layover in Baltimore where we were able to grab some rich, delicious mac & cheese at an airport wine bar (a nice change of pace after a week of fried fish and tortillas) and then arrived home to find that our luggage never made it out of Maryland.  Considering that we handed off our suitcase after going through customs and then had an hour delay before finally heading back to Boston, I'm still rather mystified as to how our bag didn't make it onto our plane.  But Southwest was very accommodating and delivered the stray suitcase before I had left for work the following morning, so it certainly could have been much worse.

On the flight home I watched Andrew Domink's Killing Them Softly, which was actually somewhat appropriate since, unbeknownst to me, the film is actually set in Boston.  Strangely, no one ever actually says this out loud, probably because the film was shot in Louisiana.  So while there are plenty of local accents on display, there are no actual locations to be seen which makes the film feel reminiscent of the 90's, when there were plenty of Boston-set films but no one could afford to actually come shoot here.

I was a big fan of Dominik's verbosely titled The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, with its beautifully composed vision of the American west and a wonderfully nuanced performance from Brad Pitt.  I was therefore pretty psyched at the prospect of a crime drama with Pitt as a mob hitman going after a few low-level criminals who knocked over a protected card game.  Unfortunately this isn't nearly as strong an outing for either Dominik or Pitt.  While there are a few scenes that feature strong stylistic choices from Dominik, (notably Ben Mendelsohn's heroin-induced stupor, Pitt pulling a drive-by and the only scene/shot featuring Sam Shepard) most of the film is albatrossed by the near constant blaring of televisions featuring George W. Bush, John McCain and then-candidate Barack Obama discussing the impending financial collapse of 2008.  While the newsreels are supposed to mirror the same economic strife taking place in the organized crime world, which is now run by a group of hand-wringing, violence-averse white collar types personified by the always great Richard Jenkins, unfortunately the whole thing feels incredibly clumsy in its execution.  Everytime I heard a politician's voice, it was like Dominik was screaming at me, "These guys are like criminals!  And the criminals are like politicians!  Right?  GET IT?"  It also doesn't help that the script can't seem to settle on a protagonist, focusing first on Scoot McNairy's criminal Frankie and then largely abandoning him in the second half in favor of Pitt's Jackie Cogan, who spends most of his time on screen sitting around looking greasy and exasperated.

But the chief reason I wanted to watch Killing Them Softly when I did was because it was one of the last films featuring the recently departed James Gandolfini.  I've always been fascinated by the idea of an actor's legacy, particularly when someone dies unexpectedly and we're left with a final performance that doesn't exactly live up to the talent and reputation of a performer's full career.  (See: Farley, Chis and Almost Heroes.)  Gandolfini will obviously be forever remembered as Tony Soprano, but I never really got into that show, mostly because I didn't have HBO for the majority of the time it was on the air.  And yet I've always been a tremendous fan of Gandolfini's feature work.  He's just one of those guys who's always stood out, someone with an incredible capacity for both warm affability and deep, seething menace.  Gandolfini first popped for me as Bear, the stuntman turned bodyguard in the adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty.  He's really only got a few scenes, but even with his bushy beard and ridiculous ponytail he managed to hold his own against both Delroy Lindo and a resurgent Travolta.  No easy feat.  He had some nice turns in stuff like Fallen, A Civil Action and Tony Scott's Crimson Tide, but the moment where I really bought into Gandolfini was when I first saw The Last Castle, where he played the sadistic commander of a military prison who engages in a mad power struggle with an inmate played by Robert Redford.  The film itself isn't amazing by any stretch, but it's one of those movies that I'll stop and watch whenever I find it playing on TV just to see the incredible mental chess match between the two leads.  It's really something.

Gandolfini's work in Killing Them Softly is strong as ever, playing an aging hitman facing a third strike and the end of his marriage who's all but given up on life and succumbed to the simple pleasures of booze and prostitutes.  Unfortunately the film utterly strands him, giving him two scenes to spin his wheels entirely independent of the plot.  As riveting as Gandolfini's performance is, he could be cut from the movie completely and it would have absolutely no impact whatsoever on the rest of the story.  It's a nice bit of character work, but in service of nothing.

Thankfully this isn't Gandolfini's last hurrah.  He also appeared in Sopranos creator David Chase's film Not Fade Away, (which I hear is an underrated gem) and he's got a fairly cute looking romantic comedy coming up in Enough Said, where he stars opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfuss.  But more than anything else, I'm excited to see what looks to be his final film performance, next year's Animal Rescue by director Michael Roskam.  Gandolfini stars alongside Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and Roskam's Bullhead star Matthias Schoenaerts.  Here's hoping it'll be a fitting tribute to an actor who certainly had many riveting performances left in him before his tremendous heart finally gave out.


And thus ends my weeklong Mexican travelogue.  All in all, it was an excellent trip full of delicious foodstuffs and plenty of much needed relaxation.  It seems absurd that after living in Los Angeles for five years, I never actually made it south of the border until after I moved back to Boston.  But the important thing is that I went, and now I can't wait to go back again.


---------------------------------------
Title: Killing Them Softly
Director: Andrew Dominik
Starring: Brad Pitt, Scoot McNairy, James Gandolfini, Richard Jenkins, Ben Mendelsohn, Ray Liotta, Sam Shepard
Year Of Release: 2012
Viewing Method: Redbox DVD

Mexican Vacation Day 6: The Search For My Own PROMISED LAND

"The land just turned brown and died."

Our last full day in Mexico.  After sleeping in a bit, we drove down the street to visit the Ik-Kil cenote, which is a naturally occurring underground freshwater pond located in a limestone cavern that's open at the top...essentially a giant sinkhole, but much prettier than it sounds:

You can swim freely among the small black catfish in the clear spring water or jump from a series of platforms carved into the cave walls.  We spent half the day floating about and diving from the highest platform, which was about 18-20 feet high.

I even tried a few cannonballs, and got the bruised, purple thigh to prove it.

Jamie took a brief siesta in the afternoon before we drove back to Valladolid in search of a new pair of aviators (success!) and one last local meal.  We found a lovely spot with an outdoor courtyard and an old stone fountain, and after sampling some mescal...

...I decided to dine on some conchita pibil, which is a slow roasted pork served on a bed of banana leaves in a small tin box.  It's possible I was inspired by the truck full of live pigs we were driving behind on the road there.

After dinner and some tasty ice cream (pumpkin Oreo!) we returned to the hotel for the saddest of all vacation activities: packing to go home.  While we loaded up our suitcase, I put on Gus Van Sant's Promised Land, written by and starring Matt Damon and John Krasinski.  It's a cautionary tale about the dangers of fracking and the extreme lengths that large corporations are willing to go in order to make a buck at the expense of ordinary people, all while claiming to be working to help the little guy.  The movie rightly acknowledges the frustrating double standard of natural gas, namely that it's a cleaner, more abundant alternative to oil and coal, but that the actual method of extraction is both environmentally and morally questionable at best.  At the same time, it's an issue that doesn't get much attention in the national media for the exact same reason that natural gas corporations have been so successful: those most directly impacted are often small town, under-educated folks who live in rural communities facing dwindling and/or failing financial situations.  In that light, it's nice to see guys like Damon and Krasinski use a little of their star power to shed light on on a topic that is both important and largely ignored.  It helps that the story is pretty entertaining, with lots of talented folks in supporting roles and a decent twist ending.

But something about Damon's Steve Butler really struck a chord with me.  Butler is a guy who grew up in a small farming town but saw the writing on the wall and left for a fast-paced, big city life.  He's now a salesman of sorts, using his small town bona fides to convince people to sign over the rights to their property so that his company can get at the natural gas underground.  The thing is, he's drastically short-selling these people without a trace of remorse because his utter disdain for the rural farming lifestyle outweighs any potential guilt he might feel.  In a way he thinks these people have brought it on themselves by clinging to a lifestyle that is clearly unsustainable, and the more time he spends there, the more frustrated he becomes.  But there's clearly a healthy dose of unspoken self-loathing behind Butler's eyes; the fact that he can still easily relate to these people he doesn't respect probably frustrates him more than anything.

The decision to leave home is never easy, and once you've left and you've settled into a new life, you can romanticize your roots to a certain degree.  It's always easier to deal with those conflicted emotions when they're boiled down to an abstraction from the past, but to return to that life and confront those frustrations that initially drove you away...well there's a reason they say you can never go home again.  In a way it's something I deal with on a frequent basis; I left home to pursue a certain career and lifestyle, and yet I now find myself living in the same city I grew up in, working the same job I had in college with only an amorphous plan to leave again sometime in the future.  There are things about Boston that I absolutely love and always will, but there's also plenty that drives me up the wall and, quite frankly, leaves me terrified that I'll become stuck here.  Emotionally I've come back around to a place of needing to get the fuck out of dodge, but for a number of practical and logistical reasons I know that's not going to happen anytime soon.  And so I guess that feeling of constantly being surrounded by all those things you thought you'd already put behind you, those things that fill you with simultaneous adoration and revulsion, those things that make you want to smile while running away as fast as your legs will take you, that's a feeling that really resonated when I saw it in Steve Butler.  While  Butler eventually chooses to embrace his roots in light of the Machiavellian practices of his employer.  I find it unlikely that I'll make a similar choice.

I still want to run.  It's just a matter of when and how far.

---------------------------------------
Title: Promised Land
Director: Gus Van Sant
Starring: Matt Damon, Frances McDormand, John Krasinski, Rosemary DeWitt, Hal Holbrook, Titus Welliver, Scoot McNairy, Lucas Black
Year Of Release: 2012
Viewing Method: Redbox DVD

Mexican Vacation Day 5: Take Pity On RISE OF THE GUARDIANS

"Please not the Groundhog..."

Jamie roused me awake at approximately 3 AM because our A/C had stopped working.  I tried to turn it back on but it appeared to have lost power, even though our other devices were still plugged in and charging.  I turned on our ceiling fan and went back to sleep.  When I awoke in the morning, I discovered that not only had the whole room blacked out but we also had no running water.  The same was true for the entire hotel.  An auspicious start to the day.

Wishing we had showered the previous night, we got dressed and grabbed a quick breakfast at the hotel restaurant before walking over to check out the Mayan ruins.  We'd been told to get there early to beat the tour groups, so we were on the grounds by 8:30, just as the various local merchants were starting to set up tables and unpack their crates of wooden masks, stone figurines, ceramic dishes and whistles that mimc the sound of a jaguar.  The ruins themselves are nothing short of incredible to behold, the kind of thing that absolutely gobsmacks you and makes you marvel at the power of human ingenuity.  (Or, depending on your particular fancy, makes you grateful that aliens decided to visit primitive man.)  There are a number of partial structures still standing but it's the main pyramid that really knocks you back, especially considering the Mayans' incredible mastery of acoustics.  We walked around on our own, but we overheard multiple tour guides demonstrating how the sound of clapping hands from different positions around the pyramid would reflect back and actually change in pitch, even to the point of mimicking the name of the ancient serpent god just by clapping in a particular way.  I was suddenly glad I had watched Q: The Winged Serpent before I left.

After examining the rest of the ruins, including this ancient Tic Tac Toe board...

...we walked back to the hotel to discover that the water and power had been restored.  By now it was pretty hot so we decided to spend some time poolside before lunch.  Now, when we traveled to Egypt on our honeymoon, our biggest problem (other than food poisoning) was that we felt locked down in our hotel whenever we weren't with our tour guides.  Granted that country was in the midst of a contentious run-off election at the time, but we were constantly warned not to go into the city by ourselves.  It was a big shift from our time in Greece, where we were able to wander freely and find a delicious meal just about anywhere we went.  We were now experiencing a similar feeling at Mayaland, which we quickly dubbed Mexican Epcot.  Chichen Itza is pretty small and far removed from civilization, so the hotel is essentially designed so that you never have to leave the grounds.  But after an overpriced, cafeteria-level lunch buffet, we were starting to feel a bit stir-crazy.  So Jamie looked up some places in the nearby town of Valladolid, and, after finally showering, we drove 45 kilometers in search of some local grub.  The trip was made slower by extensive highway construction and numerous giant speed bumps which required you to come to a full stop before crossing and were all but invisible until you were right on top of them.  But we managed to find a place right in the town square with some live music, so it was worth the drive under the low-hanging full moon.  (Sidenote: I bet the ruins looked bad-fucking-ass with the full moon overhead.  They should definitely re-open the grounds on those nights.  It's what the aliens would have wanted.)

We got back pretty late and wanted to go with something short and light, so we chose Dreamworks' Rise Of The Guardians, a movie I feel was unfairly maligned because its title was so similar to Zack Snyder's weird animated owl movie.  This was the one with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Sandman and Jack Frost as a sort of Justice League who defend the world's children from Pitch Black, a.k.a. The Boogeyman.  It's an outstanding voice cast, including Chris Pine, Hugh Jackman, Isla Fisher, Jude Law and an unrecognizable Alec Baldwin as a very Russian Santa Claus.  There's not a whole lot to say except that the film is very endearing with a great message for kids and plenty of stellar animation, (especially the Sandman and his awesome dream creations) and lots of clever but not winking humor for adults.  It's the kind of movie that encourages wonder in children and that's kind of great.  And for parents, it's something you wouldn't mind watching with your kids each and every day without end, as kids are wont to do.  I know it's based on a series of books and Dreamworks certainly considered it potential franchise material, so it's a shame the film didn't really catch on with audiences.  I blame the marketing for never rising above the cynical sounding premise of childhood myths as superheroes and failing to push the more wholesome, optimistic elements.  I also feel bad for David Lindsay-Abaire, a writer whose work I fell in love with in high school (partially because he was an alumni of my high school) and who's has had limited success in Hollywood.  I highly recommend Rabbit Hole, based on his Pulitzer Award winning play, but Guardians is certainly one of his better written films and I really wish more people had seen it.

If you've got kids, grab a copy on DVD and thank me later.


---------------------------------------
Title: Rise Of The Guardians
Director: Peter Ramsey
Starring: Chris Pine, Alec Baldwin, Hugh Jackman, Jude Law, Isla Fisher, Dakota Goyo
Year Of Release: 2012
Viewing Method: Redbox DVD

Mexican Vacation Day 4: Goodbye Tulum, Hello HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS

"Whatever you do, don't eat the fuckin' candy."

After our late night tortuga adventure, we awoke to find our clothes partially dry and our shoes still soaking wet.  But there was no time to let them dry out, ad this was the day we were scheduled to check out of our hotel in Tulum and drive about two hours north to the city of Chichen Itza, where we'd have the chance to see ancient Mayan ruins and dive in underground cave lakes called cenotes.  Since we had another two days for all that, we were really in no hurry to leave Tulum, whose beautiful beaches and cheap, tasty food had totally won us over.  So after we checked out of our hotel we returned to Diamante K, the secluded beach from the previous day, for a few more hours of lying in hammocks and diving in the waves, which had now grown so big that they knocked the aviators I bought on our honeymoon clear off my head.  I actually managed to spot them on the sea floor and almost retrieved them before another wave churned up the silt and they vanished.

After leaving the beach we drove back through town for one last local meal at a seafood place called El Captian's, where Jamie had fish tacos and I had a whole fried fish.  The carnovore in me loves the idea of having the entire animal sitting right there on my plate, but fish have so many small bones that I feel like I always end up leaving a lot of meat on the plate.  That might be more perception than reality, but either way it's goddamn delicious.

We made a quick stop for gelato (Bailey's for me, lime basil for Jamie) and a brief but fruitless search for new sunglasses before finally hitting the road for Chichen Itza.  It was a complicated series of directions that involved a lot of resetting the odometer at specific intervals, but a few rounds of 20 Questions later we pulled into the Mayaland Resort, a sprawling estate adjacent to the ancient ruins, which had long since closed by the time we arrived.  We checked into our room, drank some delicious hibiscus flavored beverages, then moved down to the bar for drinks and a late snack.  We immediately started chatting with the only other couple at the bar, a pair of newlyweds from San Francisco who sucked us into watching a Discovery Channel show on the bar TV called Naked And Afraid, in which two strangers with survival training are dropped into a remote jungle location with no food, no water, no clothes and one object of their choosing (e.g. machete, matches, goggles) and they have to survive for 21 days.  I still can't believe that this is a real show that airs on television, except yes I totally fucking can.

Eventually we made it back to our room and threw on Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, a movie that is stupid and fun and bloody and also stupid.

"What kind of stupid," you ask?  The kind of stupid where Gretel has an automatic double barreled crossbow and Hansel has diabetes because the witch made him eat too much candy as a kid.  And let's not forget Edward, the soft spoken troll with a penchant for crushing dudes' heads with his bare hands.

There's a lot of really awesome, gory violence to be had and it's the only thing that keeps the movie even vaguely interesting for most of its running time.  The actual plot is simplistic and dumb beyond measure with few real surprises.  Jeremy Renner is basically on automatic pilot while Gemma Arterton is making a real effort to finally pop for American audiences.  Famke Janssen is fine but spends about 80% of her scenes under almost unrecognizable make-up, as do most of the witches.  But there are some amusing flourishes there - a giant witch jamboree at the end features lots of hilarious witch designs including Old Chinese Lady Witch, Dwarf Witch and Conjoined Twin Witch(es), most of whom get cut down by the hunters' crazy modern weaponry, like a tripod-mounted gattling gun or Hansel's ornate blunderbuss.  At one point a character asks where their arsenal comes from and the question is summarily ignored.  In a way, that moment sums up the whole movie: reasonable explanations are unimportant so long as something looks "TOTALLY FUCKING COOL."  That model has certainly worked in the past, but the ratio of "cool" to boring and/or idiotic is woefully unbalanced here.

I'm still fascinated by the movie's origins though.  It started as an outright comedy, a premise that I kind of loved when I first heard it.  Aside from the continued presence of Will Ferrell and Adam McKay as producers, you'd never know about the film's alternative roots, although it feels like some of those initial comedy elements managed to sneak their way into the finished product, stuff like the heroes' propensity for fuck-laden one liners or the fact that Hansel suffers from Wilford Brimley's disease.  That shit is seriously hilarious, especially considering he has to take an insulin injection whenever his watch alarm goes off or he'll die, seemingly in a matter of minutes.  Like I said, HILARIOUS.

If the idea of fairy tale children as grown-up, gun-toting badasses appeals to you, then there's plenty of entertainment value to find here.  If that all sounds really moronic, then nothing in this movie is gonna change your mind.  I will say this much: the movie ends with a clear sequel setup and I kind of hope that movie really happens.  But that's mostly because I want to see more of Edward the troll.

That guy fucking rocks.


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Title: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
Director: Tommy Wirkola
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen, Derek Mears, Thomas Mann, Peter Stormare
Year Of Release: 2013
Viewing Method: Redbox DVD

Mexican Vacation Day 3: The SIDE EFFECTS Of Turtle Watching

"It doesn't make you anything you're not.  It just makes it easier to be you."

Knowing that we had some late night activities planned, I opted to start the day with a movie rather than end it with one.  I've been on a real Soderbergh kick recently, mostly due to the spectre of his apparent retirement from filmmaking.  Assuming he maintains his inactive status,* Soderbergh actually ended up with a sort of double swan song; while Behind The Candelabra is his last film, the fact that it was made for HBO means that his final theatrical release is the psycho-pharmaceutical thriller Side Effects.  The trailers went pretty far out of their way not to reveal a lot of specifics about the plot mechanics, but it's essentially about a depressed, potentially suicidal woman who stands accused of murder but claims that one of the side effects of her anti-depressants rendered her completely unaware of her own actions.  Her shrink (Jude Law) is held responsible in the court of public opinion and launches his own investigation in order to clear his reputation, which leads to the revelation of either a criminal conspiracy or his own psychosis.

I'm not a big fan of the thriller genre, as I feel it's been largely watered down by a glut of generic, boring films (mostly starring Ashley Judd) around the turn of the century.  But I have to admit that Side Effects is actually pretty cleverly constructed; whereas most thrillers are built around some specific lack of information, thus forcing the audience to guess at what happened off screen during a key scene, Soderbergh instead goes the other way, showing us everything as it happens until the viewer is sure of what's going on and then pulling the rug out and revealing that was what it seemed.  It's a very strong choice, essentially forcing you to empathize with Jude Law even as you begin to question his sanity.  The film also has a lot to say about our cultural dependence on medication to solve all our problems as well as some curious double standards in terms of gender in the doctor/patient relationship.  While the final few turns of the plot felt a bit murky, it's still thoroughly engrossing.  Over the course of watching Side Effects, Candelabra and Magic Mike, I've come to seriously fall in love with Soderbergh's camera work and visual style.  If the man really does stop directing films, I think it's a pretty crushing blow to the community at large.

Once Jamie woke up and we'd had breakfast, we decided to return to the northern beaches of Tulum, but this time we'd learned our lesson.  We drove instead of walking and we settled into a more secluded spot, complete with shady lounge chairs, purple hammocks and many, many grande caipirinhas delivered right to the beach.  We basically had the place to ourselves for the day, a gorgeous little inlet that stayed largely shallow until you reached some decent sized waves out past the rocks.  Eventually we went back to Charlie's for a late lunch/early dinner, opting this time for a chorizo quesadilla (my favorite) and chille rellenos.

We took a brief siesta and then drove back out to Akumal to observe sea turtles climbing out of the ocean to lay their eggs up on the shore.  The turtles are afraid of white light, so we brought headlamps with red bulbs in order to see in the dark.  We were a little worried that the turtles might be a no show due to the bright glow of the an almost full moon and the frequent flash of lightning bolts all along the horizon.  But not only did we see multiple tortugas crawling in and out of the surf, but we saw multiple nests and even a little hatchling that Jamie got to hold in the palm of her hand.  Apparently the number of turtle nests rises and falls on alternating years, but this year has seen a record high despite being a scheduled low year.

After walking about a kilometer down the beach to see all the nests, we decided it was time to head back around 10:30.  We got halfway back to our starting point when suddenly the skies opened up and we were caught in a torrential downpour.  The wind whipped the water at us from every angle and the lightning struck so close that it momentarily bleached out my entire field of vision, as if someone had set off a camera flash an inch from my eyeballs.  I saw one guy on the beach calling out for his daughter and I could barely hear him over the wind, despite the fact that the was only standing about three feet away.  We ducked under a thatched roof mean to provide shade for a couple of lounge chairs until the wind died down and made the remainder of our walk bearable.  It was still raining but by then we were soaked to the bone anyway, so we didn't really mind.

But it did make for a soggy drive home and a musty smelling car the next day.




*Turns out we may have little to fear.  Since I first wrote this, Soderbergh has already announced that he'll be producing and directing all 10 episodes of Cinemax's new Clive Owen series The Knick, about the Knickerbocker Hospital in downtown New York in the year 1900, before the advent of antibiotics.  

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Title: Side Effects
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Rooney Mara, Jude Law, Channing Tatum, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Vinessa Shaw, Ann Dowd
Year Of Release: 2013
Viewing Method: Redbox DVD

Mexican Vacation Day 3: Getting Burned By GANGSTER SQUAD

"Always knew I'd die in Burbank."

Pro Tip: If traveling to Mexico in July, you may want a stronger sunscreen than SPF 30.

I've got some pretty strong Sicilian roots, so I've always tanned pretty easily.  I usually go with an SPF 15 if I use sunscreen at all and reserve the 30 for the times I've taken a cruise to the Bahamas or the Caribbean.  But I got a bit too much sun on our last vacation in February, so this trip I'd been slathering on the 30 from day one.  Despite my careful precautions, my long shirtless walk on day one plus the next morning spent snorkeling on the beach in Akumal, a.k.a. the land of sea turtles, resulted in my shoulders becoming pretty much roasted by the afternoon.  After a quick snack of empanadas and mojitos, we staked out a new beach spot in the shade of a palm tree and did our best to stay out of the sun for a few hours before grabbing a late lunch of fish tacos and cervezas and then driving back to Tulum.  By then we both had a hankering for air conditioning so we stayed inside and watched Reuben Fleischer's Gangster Squad.

Jamie probably summed it up best: "I wouldn't have been so disappointed if the trailers for that movie hadn't been so awesome."

On paper the movie sounds brilliant: a 40's yarn based on a true story about a small band of honest cops led by Josh Brolin who take on Jewish gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) as he tries to cement his hold on organized crime in Los Angeles.  Throw in a romance between Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone plus a supporting cast that includes Michael Pena, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Nick Nolte as the chief of police and T-1000 himself Robert Patrick as an aging gunhand and tie it together with a creative up and coming director (Fleischer) who's demonstrated a talent for fun, well staged action in flicks like Zombieland and 30 Minutes Or Less and you should have a recipe for success.  Unfortunately the script by Will Beall simply never delivers on all that promise.  The trailers had me expecting L.A. Confidential 2.0, but instead I got a poor man's Untouchables.

Penn is a worthy successor to DeNiro's Capone, in that he absolutely tears up every frame he's in; Penn doesn't so much chew the scenery as he devours it whole.  But other than one good fist fight with Brolin at the end, he doesn't really have a whole lot to do.  Brolin's John O'Mara is surly and bullheaded but not exactly the kind of guy who can out-think Cohen, to the point that after a while it feels like his success is due mostly to dumb luck.  Ribisi is the squad's Jiminey Cricket and we spend a lot of time with him and his family that would have been better served fleshing out the barebones romance between Gosling and Stone.  Both are phenomenally talented and they demonstrated an abundance of chemistry together in Crazy Stupid Love, but the two are given precious little screen time together.  Most of their relationship is basically left to the viewer's imagination, as the film cuts from the first time they meet and sleep together to their first fight weeks later.  The whole thing feels sloppy and I wouldn't care except that their relationship becomes crucial to the plot very late in the game, so it's not exactly the kind of thing you can brush off.

But that kind of criticism is true of the whole script.  Everything feels a bit out of whack, like Beal was so scared of shortchanging one character that we're left with only broad sketches of everyone and really care about no one.  For example, we're constantly reminded that Robert Patrick is an amazing sharpshooter but the only time we see him display his marksmanship is when he shoots a tin can six times in the air.  The movie is constantly telling us stuff like this without giving us the chance to see any of it play out naturally.  That being said, it's not really a bad flick.  Everyone's clearly giving it their all and Fleischer does a solid job staging most of the gunplay (he relies a lot on speed ramping but that's never really bothered me) and his recreation of 1940's Los Angeles is just gorgeous to look at.  It's a time and place that feels nothing short of magical.  It's actually kind of goofy and fun in a way, and I'm convinced a slightly tighter script would have really put this thing over the top.  So long as you're not expecting a prestige period film and you just surrender to it's frothy, wannabe pulp, then Gangster Squad is not half bad.

After the movie we walked down to El Asadero, where we had the specialty of the house:

That's arrachera (a grilled, marinated flank steak) with chorizo, a roasted jalapeno, grilled cactus and a roasted potato with cheese and grilled chicken.  The cheese on the potato was sort of gloppy and strange, but everything else was fantastic, served with homemade corn tortillas.

Because everything is better wrapped in home made corn tortillas.

---------------------------------------
Title: Gangster Squad
Director: Reuben Fleischer
Starring: Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Emma Stone, Nick Nolte, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Pena, Robert Patrick, Anthony Mackie
Year Of Release: 2013
Viewing Method: Redbox DVD

Mexican Vacation Day 2: THE LAST STAND In An Orthopedic Hell

"You fucked up my day off."

It's ironic that my second movie of the trip was titled The Last Stand, mostly because by the time I turned it on at the end of the day, I could barely walk.

We started with a delicious breakfast of chilequiles, which is basically a pile of fired tortilla chips smothered in a spicy red chile sauce and topped with a fried egg and onions.  Perfection.  The beach was located a few kilometers away, which meant a significant but not totally harrowing walk.  To be fair, we could have driven but we felt that the walk would be a good spot of exercise between bouts of gorging ourselves on piles of the tasty Mexican food we'd both grown so fond of in L.A. but was much harder to come by in Boston.  Now, generally speaking, I find flip flops to be uncomfortable and the sound of a rubber slab thwacking at my heel with every step is incredibly annoying, but I recently came across a pair that I didn't totally hate and figured they'd come in handy at the beach.  But considering the lengthy walk ahead of us with no promise of evenly paved ground, sneakers seemed the wiser option.  So I donned my red hightop Converse All Stars, the lighter weight option of my two pairs of sneakers.  What I did not don, however, were socks.  This was a bad call.

The temperature was flirting with triple digits, so by the time we reached the beach my feet were so sweaty that I had a blister forming on one toe and cuts on the backs of my heels.  I had also shed my t-shirt, as it had become little more than a dark sweat rag by that point.  We found a lovely, quiet spot with lounge chairs and drink service, so we laid outside and soaked up the sunshine for a few hours.  Tulum's beaches are divided into the north and south sections, so after spending the morning on the south side I laced up my Chucks so we could walk up and check out the north.  I realized after a few steps that I simply couldn't continue to walk comfortably in my shoes, but the path was actually paved smooth so I figured, "Fuck it, I'll just walk barefoot."  This was also a bad call.

I had sizable blisters on the balls of my feet before we were even halfway to the northern beaches, and whereas the walk to the south side had seen dozens of cabs passing by and honking to solicit a fare, now the traffic was virtually nonexistent.  Eventually we managed to hail a taxi which took us to a crowded resort/beach club, and while the shore was far less rocky, the sky soon became overcast and far less "beachy."  So after some fairly underwhelming nachos from a surly bartender, we laid on the sand and napped for a while before grabbing another cab (thankfully they were lined up outside the resort) and went back for dinner.  While we dressed and cleaned up, we turned on the local TV and found a plethora of American movies and TV shows dubbed in Spanish, (always entertaining) so we watched a little Scott Pilgrim before heading into town for fresh fried fish, octopus tacos and a small mountain of shrimp ceviche.

The waiter tried to convince us to get a small order instead of a medium, but we ignored his warnings at our own delicious peril.  This was a good call.

We retired back to our room and while Jamie slept I watched The Last Stand, Arnold Schwarzenegger's first starring role after exiting his political life as governor of Kalee-For-Neeya.  Arnold plays a former LAPD narcotics officer who, after a particularly bloody showdown, became the sheriff of a small town just this side of the Mexican border.  When a violent drug lord escapes federal custody and makes a beeline for Arnie's town in a supercharged Corvette, it's up to the sheriff and his ragtag collection of deputies to stop the cartel boss from escaping the country.

There's a lot to love about The Last Stand, so much so that I kind of can't believe it had trouble finding an audience in theaters.  Peter Stormare's bizarre southern accent alone is worth the price of admission, but I'd think the return of Schwarzenegger to action filmmaking would at least arouse some interest.  It probably helps that I'm a total sucker for quasi-elderly action stars embracing their age and making "I'm old, but I can still kick your ass" movies, which is why I love stuff like Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, but get frustrated by the middling quality of the Expendables franchise.  (Also, I heart Stallone.)  Arnie does not disappoint here, maintaining a sort of world-weary tone with the people in his town while giving an "I'm too good for this shit" attitude to the FBI, personified by Forest Whitaker who cruises through the movie in paycheck-seeking autopilot.  (Henceforth I will refer to this as "pulling a Eugene Levy.")  Special props go to Johnny Knoxville as the local gun nut who operates a munitions museum and provides the local cops with all sorts of amusingly anachronistic firepower.  It's the kind of role that Knoxville was born to play, a gung-ho, would-be badass who gives his hand cannon the name Georgietta and shows up for the final gunfight wearing a medieval helmet and shield.  He's excited to use his weaponry but also has no sense of the actual danger involved, like a sort of motor-mouthed Wile E. Coyote.  Luis Guzman gets a few nice moments as Deputy Luis Guzman while Friday Night Lights' Matt Saracen shows up as the sacrificial lamb whose death spurs everyone to action.  (This isn't really a spoiler, as his inevitable demise is telegraphed within his first two scenes.)  Also featured is Harry Dean Fucking Stanton as an ornery farmer for one totally awesome scene, and how can you not love a movie that has the good sense to cast Harry Dean Fucking Stanton?  But make no mistake, it's Schwarzenegger's show and he's just fantastic.  Now firmly entrenched in his mid-60's, Arnold smartly doesn't attempt a lot of physical ass-kicking, although he does have one helluva bareknuckle brawl with the bad guy at the very end.  And even though the fisticuffs directly follow a clever car chase scene through a cornfield, it actually feels like a natural progression to the ultimate showdown, as opposed to so many of this summer's big releases which seem to shoehorn in one boring foot chase or fist fight too many after ten minutes of explosions.

Most of The Last Stand's violence plays out as intense gunfights in the streets of the largely abandoned town or car stunts that rival the Fast & Furious franchise in their clever staging and insanely pliable physics.  The destruction on display is my absolute favorite kind: bloody and bordering on cartoonish, including a few sound effects that are lifted right out of Looney Tunes.  This is the kind of movie where gunshots result in sanguine explosions that knock guys clear across the room.  Aside from the obvious influence of late-stage Tarantino, The Last Stand often feels more like a Korean film which happens to star American actors.  That's hardly a surprise since it's the English language debut of director Kim Ji-Woon.  Much like Park Chan-Wook's Stoker, it's nice to see the Korean filmmaker maintaining so much of his own cinematic voice.  Hell, Johnny Knoxville spends most of the movie wearing the same goofy hat and goggles that Song Kang-ho wore in Ji-Woon's The Good, The Bad & The Weird.  Ji-Woon's obvious fondness for the Western genre makes this simple, modern take a perfect way for him to shake hands with American audiences, but it's the director's playful style that really elevates the material from dreary DTV fare to a solid B+ action tale.  I look forward to seeing where Kim Ji-Woon goes from here.

Oh yeah, and welcome back Arnold.


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Title: The Last Stand
Director: Kim Ji-Woon
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Forest Whitaker, Luis Guzman, Jaimie Alexander, Zach Gilford, Peter Stormare, Johnny Knoxville
Year Of Release: 2013
Viewing Method: Redbox DVD

Mexican Vacation Day 1: Your In-Flight Movie is TO ROME WITH LOVE

"I call that futile feeling, 'Ozymandias Melancholia.'"

Right now I'm sitting on a beach in Tulum, sipping on a lime daiquiri and staring out over the water.*  This is my current view of the beach (and my hairy-ass legs):

I want every day to be like this.

Yesterday was the first travel day of our belated first anniversary trip to Mexico.  (Our anniversary is in May, but the life of a teacher doesn't exactly encourage weeklong vacations during the school year.)  Our flight was scheduled to depart at 6:45 AM, but fortunately we live about five minutes from the airport, so after we cruised through security we started our day by eating breakfast burritos in the terminal, sitting in rocking chairs and watching the sun rise over East Boston.  Not a terrible way to kick off a vacation.  Since it was an early flight on a Wednesday, the plane was not particularly crowded and we boarded pretty swiftly, but after we pulled out from the gate we almost immediately turned around and went back, with the pilot citing some sort of ambiguous "mechanical failure."  After sitting at the gate for 15 minutes, they told us that the issue was something that could, "get a waiver for," (incredible reassuring) and that we would take on extra fuel for a backup generator (also reassuring) and then be on our way.  We pulled back from the gate a second time and were then treated to a repeat of the required safety announcements because we had taken on two new passengers while waiting at the terminal.  As we taxied to the runway, the plane emitted a new, rhythmic banging sound, which is exactly what you want to hear after being told that were flying on a mechanical hall pass.  But we made it to Atlanta without incident, where we got to have a quick bite with our friend Billman and his adorable son Henry, who spent most of the time running laps around the airport rotunda and staring in rapt fascination at the white SUV on display in the seating area.  I tried to steer his attention to the giant dinosaur skeleton located 50 feet to the left, but to no avail.  What can I say?  Kid knows what he likes.

I knocked out my film for the day on the first leg of our trip, Woody Allen's To Rome With Love.  Allen is pretty much the definition of a prolific filmmaker, literally having churned out a new movie every year of my life.  With that kind of frequency there are plenty of misses among his various hits, but he's still a filmmaker I really appreciate.  Certain writers have a cadence and rhythm to their dialogue that hits you on a base, visceral level.  For me, that list includes Aaron Sorkin, David Mamet and Neil LaBute; they have a style that's so specific that you can usually tell you're watching one of their movies even without seeing the credits.  Allen sort of drifts on and off that list depending on the film.  To Rome With Love is basically half on and half off.  The film consists of four separate storylines, two of which did nothing for me.  One has Roberto Benigni as an average Italian citizen who turns into a celebrity overnight for no reason at all, enjoys the benefits of fame, falls prey to all of the typical trappings of notoriety, then loses his status just as abruptly as he acquired it and finds himself suddenly craving the attention which had previously annoyed him.  The whole thing is essentially a fable demonstrating that old Vulcan proverb, "Having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting.  It is not logical, but it is often true."  It all feels very trite and, moreover, a waste of Benigni's talents.  Another story follows a newlywed couple honeymooning in Rome.  The husband gets caught in a case of mistaken identity and has to pretend that a prostitute (Penelope Cruz) is his wife while his actual wife gets lost in the big city and is wooed by a film star.  It's like low-rent Shakespeare but sadly kind of pointless.

The other two plots fare much better.  One has Allen himself as a retired opera producer who travels to Rome to meet the family of his daughter's fiancee.  He discovers that the future groom's father is actually a startlingly talented singer, but only when he's in the shower.  Allen pushes him to perform in public, eventually staging a performance of Pagliacci in which his future in-law is wheeled on stage in a portable shower.  The story is okay, marked by Allen's typical neurotic performance and the incredible singing of real life opera performer Fabio Armiliato.  I've never been a big opera fan, but you have to be basically dead inside not to appreciate such beautiful music.  The real winner is the last story, featuring Alec Baldwin as an architect who's reliving a former romance from his younger days living in Rome.  He tags along and watches his former self (Jesse Eisenberg) slowly fall for the best friend (Ellen Page) of his current girlfriend (Greta Gerwig).  Baldwin acts as his own spirit guide, offering the wisdom of 20/20 hindsight and trying to talk Eisenberg out of making the same mistakes again, though in the end he's content to watch it all play out and simply appreciate his younger point of view.  The performances of all four leads are absolutely enchanting and the give and take between Baldwin and Eisenberg is both sharp and hilarious.  Someone put these two in a full length story together, STAT.

We eventually landed in Cancun and, after making our way through customs, we walked across the street to acquire our rental car.  The attendant, a young guy named Carlos was extremely friendly and helpful despite having to deal with two different American assholes, one of whom rudely barged up the counter to interrupt me because the agency had the temerity to give him a Nissan Versa instead of a Volkswagon Jetta.  After the man and his shrill wife berated poor Carlos over something that was clearly out of his control (and also utterly inconsequential), I felt so embarrassed on behalf of all Americans that I immediately apologized to Carlos for the couple's awful behavior.  He just shrugged it off and said that he'd upgrade us from the compact car we'd reserved to the full size car the other man had refused.  In other words, their dickery was our gain.

It was about a ninety minute drive to the beachside town of Tulum and our adorable hotel, Posada Luna del Sur.  It instantly reminded me of the hotel we stayed at in Santorini during our honeymoon, complete with a sitting area, kitchenette and a patio.  It was extremely charming and homey.  We walked out into the town and hit up a local restaurant called Charlie's, where we loaded up on strong margaritas, guacamole, lime soup, mole enchiladas and fish tacos, along with a basket of chips and the greatest, spiciest house salsa I've ever tasted.  (Sidenote: all that deliciousness cost about $30, which would have been a steal just for the five margaritas.)

By the time we were finished with dinner, our utter lack of sleep had caught up with us so we crashed for the night, dreaming of beaches and delicious frozen beverages...





*Not actually.  Due to a pronounced lack of reliable wifi access in our Mexican travels, I ended up handwriting all of my entries over the course of my vacation.  There was actually something incredibly satisfying about properly writing with pen and ink in a hardbound leather book, even if it does mean I'm going to have to spend a lot of time transcribing what I've already written.


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Title: To Rome With Love
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Alec Baldwin, Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Paige, Greta Gerwig, Woody Allen, Penelope Cruz, Roberto Begnini
Year Of Release: 2012
Viewing Method: Digital Copy (iPad)

PROGRAMMING NOTE: Mexico Bound!

So tomorrow I'll be waking up at the ass-crack of dawn and getting on a plane bound for Mexico.  Jamie and I are taking a belated first anniversary trip since she can't exactly travel during the school year.  Much like our honeymoon, our trip will be split between beach lounging in Tulum and exploring Mayan ruins in Chichen Itza like the ones pictured above.  I'm really looking forward to getting out of town for a few days and enjoying some badass enchiladas with multiple margaritas.

I expect that I'll also be more or less off the grid while I'm gone. I'll certainly have to neuter the data plan on my phone and I don't yet know what the WiFi situation will be at our two hotels, so in all likelihood I won't be posting anything until late next week.  But fear not!  I've loaded up my laptop and iPad with more than enough movies to get me through the trip, so my viewing regimen will continue unabated. I also plan on trying to catch up on some writing while soaking in the sun, although I'll probably be doing it with pen and paper and then transcribing it back later.  If all goes according to plan, I'll come home with a bevy of new material for your reading pleasure.

Sidenote: I know I've been doing this big ramp-up to Pacific Rim, but I want to try doing something a little different for that piece that's going to require a little time.  I'm therefore going to wait and tackle it after I get back to the States.  But suffice it to say it's easily my favorite new release of the summer thus far and I'm really looking forward to a second screening.

So enjoy the next week (I certainly will) and I'll see you all when I return. Now to pick out a movie for the plane...