A love story of two outlaws desperately trying to reunite, Ain't Them Bodies Saints chronicles Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck), his wife Ruth (Rooney Mara) and the sheriff that comes between them.
Showing posts with label rooney mara. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rooney mara. Show all posts
Friday, May 24, 2013
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Emily (Rooney Mara) has been putting on a brave face for the last four years. Her husband, Martin (Channing Tatum, a regular in these flicks now), was arrested for insider trading and spent a majority of their marriage inside of a jail cell. Martin is due out in a few days and Emily wants to be there for him to assist his transition back to regular life.
Emily really is happy to see her husband again, but the enthusiasm they shared when they first met in college just isn't there. Sex is spent staring at the ceiling and the rest of her day is like carefully treading through a trance. Her depression confuses her as everything can only get easier with Martin out of prison.
It is only when Emily drives straight into a parking garage wall that her outlook raises concern with Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law, doing his best Hitchcock leading man impression). Emily's condition could be easily solved, Banks presumes, and Oblexa should be the drug to do it.
A lot of Side Effects is lost if more elaboration is placed upon the synopsis, so I'll encourage viewers to just give it a go and see it in theatres.
Rooney Mara's follow-up to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was an anticipated one. Mara turned a lot of heads with her interpretation of Lisbeth Salander and after her nomination for Best Actress, we wanted to see what she would choose next. Mara does not disappoint and her half lackadaisical half fiery stint offers double meaning poised for introspection in every scene.
If Steven Soderbergh really does fold up the director's chair and call it a career then Side Effects is a fitting ending to the formalist auteur's filmography. Soderbergh has been hinting at retirement for the last couple years and while he may be tiring of the Hollywood system, his output has not reflected it, Haywire and Contagion were some of the better films of their respective years.
Operating as his own cinematographer under the guise of Peter Andrews, Soderbergh employs a variety of shots during Side Effects that rival some of the best lensers in cinema. The detached fashion in which most of Haywire and Magic Mike was captured in switches to close-ups here. At age 50, Soderbergh has everything in his repertoire calculated to fullest effect.
With any luck, Mr. Soderbergh's retirement is a short one. Few directors have mixed genres so effortlessly and with such panache. Please, come back soon.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
The Scene: Lisbeth (Rooney Mara), over the course of her dealings with Mikael (Daniel Craig), has grown close to another person. Despite everything in her life that has led her to believe otherwise, she has placed faith in a man. So much so that she bought him a Christmas gift.
What We're Thankful For: In a scene that many decry as a case of too many endings, Lisbeth goes to Mikael's home to share a present and intimacy. When Mikael walks out with his mistress hanging on his arm, the jacket she purchased finds a new home in the trash.
Gift under the tree/Coal for your stocking: This scene is darkly comic in only a way that David Fincher can pull off—don't forget this is also the same man who played Enya's "Orinoco Flow" during a torture scene thirty minutes earlier. Fincher couldn't have found a better way to include the spirit and love of the season than by showing Lisbeth throwing away her affections in the garbage. "Merry Christmas."
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
David Fincher doesn't need great source material to turn in celluloid excellence: The Social Network proved that if one does than something great will occur, but the original Dragon Tattoo novels are not such material.
The Swedish adaptation left me feeling cold back in 2009, but given Fincher's track record, I felt like I owed this film a shot. When the opening scene of the film opens with Vanger's phone call, I started to get antsy, is this going to be a shot-for-shot redux? No. No, it's not, the pulsing opening credits scored to Karen O's "The Immigrant Song" made me quite aware of that.
Harriet Vanger has been missing for the better part of forty years, given that piece of information the fact that Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) keeps receiving portraits from his niece is disconcerting. Enter Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig). Facing a major libel suit and perhaps jail time, the last thing the journalist wants to do is add another opportunity to be wrong again.
Before Vanger hands the investigation over to Blomkvist to find out why Harriet may have disappeared—or who made her disappear—he needs to have the disgraced man thoroughly vetted. Enter Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara). Her collection of piercings, mohawk, and goth attire may suggest she is not capable of such a profession, but she is the most successful investigator of the firm.
Mara's Salander is entirely composed of scar tissue. Don't get too close, or the urge to run becomes too much for her to resist. When Blomkvist offers her a chance to catch a "killer of women" the layer of tissue is torn again, but this time she doesn't run. She fights.
Noomi Rapace was good, but without her the rest of that cast could effectively be used to move furniture. The problem with Rapace's turn as Lisbeth is we are left behind the curtain as her transformation is unfurled. Here she is playing the victim, but it never seems in Rapace's milieu. The transformation is easier to accept with Mara. Seemingly demure, when Lisbeth finally snaps it shakes the audience. Watching, you think to yourself, "I never thought Mara could be this woman!"
In Seven, Fincher keeps evil faceless as to suggest that around any rainy street could lie a psychopath. Sweden's landscapes may not provide an abundance of rain, but the eerie feeling is similar. Whoever killed Harriet Vanger could very well be mere steps behind Blomkvist or Lisbeth. Fincher is a man of craft and by this point of his career he knows exactly what gears to put in rotation as the haunting score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross gently invites your paranoia to take control.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo presents an antithesis of Fincher's last genre outing, Zodiac. That 2007 opus illuminated that no matter the lengths men go to search for answers, they appear forever out of reach. Here, the chilly atmosphere of muted Sweden would suggest that with any digging at all, the answers lie just below the surface of the ice.
***/****
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
If you ever wondered what Wall Street would be like with Michael Shannon as Gordon Gekko, A Clockwork Orange with Rooney Mara, or Brad Pitt in Eraserhead, wonder no more. The New York Times has answered all of these questions and more.
(Courtesy: The New York Times)
Friday, December 2, 2011
It was mentioned online a few months ago, but we finally have it. The eight minute trailer for David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
In other 'Dragon Tattoo' news the Karen O cover of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" is available on iTunes and a 35 minute sampler of the soundtrack is below.
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