Posts tagged ‘AFI Film Festival’
AFI Film Review – The Brothers Bloom
This capriciously offbeat sophomore offering from director Rian Johnson (whose film Brick is an inarguably brilliant must-see) starts off in the tradition of good old-fashioned Hollywood screwball sillies. Rian Johnson’s The Brothers Bloom has charm and charisma and plenty of promise with its premise. Two brothers who have spent their lives telling stories as con-men are in pursuit of two very different endings: the elder (Mark Ruffalo) in search of the perfect con and the younger (Adrien Brody) in search of a life free of his brother’s scripted bondage. Toss in a highly eccentric heiress (the excellent Rachel Weisz) as their final mark and a mysteriously sexy assistant known appropriately as Bang Bang (Runko Kikuchi) and you’ve got a recipe ripe for some terrifically offbeat cinema. And for the most part, Brothers Bloom is indeed a sassy, smart screwball of yesteryear–unpretentious, sweet and delightuflly outrageous. The problem is that Johnson doesn’t stick with his own formula and allows the film to convolute itself into an anti-climactic melange of plot hoops and hurtles that are meant to be clever, but by the limping third act, end up robbing the film of the magic it was oh-so close to conjuring.
AFI Film Fest 2008
Thursday night marked the first of the 11-day 2008 AFI fest here in Hollywood. I’m a wishful would-be writer with a highly undeserved AFI press pass who watched last night’s red carpet gala from out of my foggy bus window (the disagreeable No. 217) while Nouvelle Vague’s ‘Making Plans For Nigel’ wistfully whispered through my earphones. LA traffic, vile on its best days, was at a complete standstill on that three block stretch past the Arclight’s Cinerama Dome where blazing flood lids blinded drivers and fans alike. And I smiled–me– sitting next to my overgrown fellow metro companion with the grinding teeth and rather offensive body odor, thinking how exceptionally comedic life is. This week I’ll be sipping wine with these pearly-white specimens, even though I’m nothing myself, but it won’t matter: because here we are all in the same boat.
Here, we are all willing and wanting concubines of that flickering celluloid darkness …
… for the next 11 days this blog will be my home … sometimes sober, mostly not, but my haven nonetheless … so do me a favor, won’t you? Take everything I say with the saltiest grain.
For who am I … who are any of us, really … whether a misty-eyed outsider on a smelly LA bus or a manicured beauty under a paparazzi flash …