Tag: david mamet

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Howard and Williams, Kazan, Mamet, Penn, Weber

Dan Seeger

The Missouri Breaks (Arthur Penn, 1976). The film has Marlon Brando at the very beginning of his anything goes, deliberate insanity phase, and Jack Nicholson still wrapped in the energy of his wild genius phase (this film arrived in theaters almost exactly six months after One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and just a couple months after he won his first Oscar). It’s a revisionist western, a style and genre that Arthur Penn had done quite well with a few years earlier. All this makes it equal parts surprising and sad to report that the resulting film is drab. The … Continue reading Howard and Williams, Kazan, Mamet, Penn, Weber

FilmLeave a comment

Pivotal film, selling out your monkey

Dan Seeger

In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, 2008). The acclaimed Irish playwright follows up his Oscar-winning short film with a feature debut about a pair of hitmen laying low in a Belgian tourism mecca. The film is enjoyable, charged by a flinty wit and features a pair of winning lead performances by Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell. It’s also fairly inconsequential, structured with the shrewd storytelling insight of a seasoned dramatist but somewhat wanting in depth. All of the characters feel like pieces instead of completely realized creations. None of the relationships have resonance, causing problems as the twists of the plot require … Continue reading Pivotal film, selling out your monkey