Step Brothers was bad. It was just plain bad. I had heard from three disparate sources that it was going to be good. It wasn't. It felt like a series of jokes that didn't make the cut for the other Will Ferrell/Adam McKay collaborations, strung together by a stretched-thin plot. I would actually warn people away from wasting their time.
Stars: 0/5
Open Range. I haven't seen this since it was in the theater, and I remember being pretty enthusiastic about it. I'm happy to say that it has survived the years as a well thought-out Western that avoids the usual brouhaha of action films. It is instead about older people whose misspent pasts ensure that they have more to lose if they continue to play out their time left-- lifetime-wise as well the time they have left in a changing world as land is bought up and cordoned off. The cast is superb, and I know people give Kevin Costner a lot of shit, as they usually should, but he does a good job in this film as a taciturn trailhand employed by Robert Duvall, who plays a gruff codger type that I don't get tired of seeing Robert Duvall play.
Especially appreciated is the film's ability to use social norms (women and men's relationships, especially) in a neutral way, rather than highlighting the differences between our times and "then." This ensures the film isn't focusing on creating a world meant to comfort our own temporal position; rather, the attention to detail without playing it for big laughs or shock means the movie can use those fleshing-out notes without distracting from plot, character, or narration. Also, the palette is muted and works really well. Maybe it's because they're still using that color scheme, but it keeps it from looking dated, at least for the time being.
Stars: 4.5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment