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February 17, 2006
Movies where they phone it in
I can think of three right off the bat: "Cellular," which I watched last night on DVD; "Phone Booth," with Colin Farrell; and "Sorry, Wrong Number," with Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster.
The older the better, in this sequence anyway.
"Cellular" just seemed all wrong from the get–go, with Kim Basinger sort of walking through her lead role as a terrorized mother and wife who's violently kidnapped for reasons completely unfathomable to her.
The bad guys in the film are excellent: believable cops gone bad, entirely realistic.
The hero, some mindless high school kid who's thrust into the role of rescuer, is almost like a joke on the audience, he's so lightweight.
Jessica Biel makes an appearance as the hero's ex–girlfriend: man, I had no idea how radical a surgical intervention had been performed on her face before she got famous: she now looks more like a videogame character or action figure than a human.
But I digress.
The script of "Cellular" is as dumb as the acting.
I watched to the end for no reason, really; I guess I just wanted to see how they'd resolve the thing.
But I saved the best for last: William H. Macy.
He plays an ordinary, everyday cop who finds himself unwillingly thrust into the role of the hero's sidekick.
Every second Macy is on the screen the movie becomes watchable and really good.
A excellent actor really does make a difference.
And he's just great in this film.
But then, have you ever seen him in anything where's he's not?
"Phone Booth" I found gripping from the get–go: way underrated and trashed by many reviewers who simply couldn't get over the fact that you really can have a guy trapped in a phone booth for the duration of a movie and create an eminently watchable film.
I thought Colin Farrell was superb in it and even better in "Tigerland," a 2000 movie that went direct to home video and is essentially unknown.
"Sorry, Wrong Number" is a blast from the past (1948).
I saw it on TV years ago and I've got the DVD.
One of these nights I'll watch it.
What a great movie, especially the final, chilling line which doubles as the film's title.
Gore Vidal once said that there is no such thing as a bad American movie from the 1940s; I'm inclined to agree.
February 17, 2006 at 10:01 AM | Permalink
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Comments
Oooohhhh, I have a good school play story too (which has absolutely nothing to do with Sorry, Wrong Number but which I thought Flutist might enjoy). A friend and I wrote a play in the seventh grade and we convinced the English teacher to let us put it on for our class for extra credit. We convinced our friends - none consummate actors - to play the different parts. But no one could hear the cues once the heavy classroom door was closed and it turned out to be quite a mess - with characters missing various and sundry cues in the hallway.
The funny part? When we asked the teacher afterwards how much extra credit we would get, she said that we would be lucky if she didn't deduct points for wasting class time! It still makes me laugh.
Posted by: Shawn Lea | Feb 17, 2006 4:37:10 PM
When I was in eighth grade we did "Sorry, Wrong Number" as our class play (yeah, it was a little advanced, but then we did "Riot in Cell Block Eleven" in elementary school) and I was sort of forced to play the Barbara Stanwyck role after the original lead (oooh, this all sounds so grown-up and show-bizzy!) dropped out due to extreme fear. I had two days to learn my lines, which I didn't, and so I cleverly had the script hidden in various places so I could literally read from it, and a draft kept blowing pages around and I kept reading the wrong lines at the wrong times and picking up and hanging up the phone at times when it would've been impossible in the action of the play to do either. It was terrible. However, the audience thought it was hysterical and we got big laughs. Boffo in the gymnatorium!
Posted by: Flutist | Feb 17, 2006 3:33:48 PM
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