Posts Tagged ‘Titus Welliver’

Live By Night

Director: Ben Affleck

Cast: Ben Affleck, Sienna Miller, Chris Messina, Chris Cooper, Zoe Saldana, Elle Fanning, Brendan Gleeson, Remo Girone, Titus Welliver, Max Casella, Clark Gregg, Anthony Michael Hall

Oscar winner Ben Affleck (Argo, Good Will Hunting) approaches another passion project with the cinematic adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s riveting gangster novel Live By Night about the rise of Irish mobster Joe Coughlin.

Set in Prohibition era America in the mid 1920’s, Live By Night features Affleck as the main character as well as him adapting the screenplay and directing the film version. To his credit, Affleck assembles a fine cast including an unrecognizable Sienna Miller as the gangster’s moll with a strong Irish accent, Emma Gould who Coughlin first meets in Boston.

Also in the cast are Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges) as Coughlin’s father Thomas who happens to be Boston police chief, Oscar winner Chris Cooper (Adaptation) as Tampa police chief Figgis, Elle Fanning (Trumbo, Maleficent) in a stand out role as a recovering heroin addict Loretta Figgis and Zoe Saldana as Cuban beauty Graciela whom Coughlin eventually falls in love with after he moves to Tampa, Florida after fleeing Boston.

If viewers have not read Lehane’s book they might find the film version of Live By Night drawn out with a screenplay which delivers but doesn’t elevate the film to such genre classics as The Untouchables, Casino or even Goodfella’s.

Whilst the gorgeous period production design of Live By Night can be applauded as well as some stunning sequences in Florida, where after the initial gloom of Boston, the film definitely brightens to show a much more diverse and fascinating world in the deep South, the overall effect of Live By Night is laboured but not exhilarating.

Personally I loved the film, but I had read the novel so knew ahead what was install.

Ben Affleck’s ambitious plans to write, direct and star in a big screen adaptation of the novel might fall short, although his effort in doing so is admirable. What does elevate Live By Night are the superb supporting cast including Sienna Miller who after Burnt and Foxcatcher has an ability to disappear into any screen role and certainly is one of the most underrated actresses in Hollywood. Fanning as a bible preaching morally conflicted young woman comes across as sacrificial, yet her performance is brilliant despite the minimal screen time.

The best scenes in the film are between Affleck and Chris Messina who is wonderful as Coughlin’s best friend and crime partner, the wise cracking Dion Bartolo, a role which he played against type. It is refreshing to watch Zoe Saldana (Guardians of the Galaxy) play in a period film as the gorgeous Cuban business woman Graciela although her role in the film is not as detailed as it is in the novel.

What Affleck does successfully is portraying America as a Fallen World, where as prohibition ends, there is nothing left except repression, bigotry and violence. Live By Night is a gritty, stylish and violent gangster film similar to Gangster Squad but not as brilliant as Bugsy or Public Enemies.

Audiences should only see Live By Night if they are ardent fans of gangster films, a genre which is difficult to get right at the best of times. Despite Affleck’s talent as a director, he is no Martin Scorsese or Brian de Palma. Although his evocative visual efforts should be commended.

Recommended viewing for those that enjoyed Gangster Squad.

Transformers: Age of Extinction

Director: Michael Bay

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Sophia Myles, Titus Welliver, Kelsey Grammer

Director Michael Bay extends his cinematic repertoire with the fourth instalment of the Transformers franchise – Transformers, Age of Extinction and this time goes a different route by centering the action on a more mature hero inventor Cade Yeager, played by Mark Wahlberg (2 Guns, The Fighter) who along with his daughter Tessa played by Nicola Peltz and her speed racer boyfriend played by Jack Reynor must battle out the brash and glossy war between the Deciptcons and Optimus Prime along with a band of Nefarious government agents represented by Kelsey Grammer and Titus Welliver.

Interestingly enough with the exception of megastar Wahlberg, the rest of the cast are little known character actors, which works well for the general feel of Age of Extinction as the cast is secondary to the dazzling and superb special effects which make this sci-fi Hasbro fantasy watchable and in parts even enjoyable.

Director Bay makes use of the fabulous and extensive locations in the film as the plot unfolds from the Arctic to Texas, from Chicago to Hong Kong. The Transformer action gets a bit much and whilst the narrative is deeply rooted in suspended disbelief, Age of Extinction is gorgeously shot with cinematic aerial shots of Chicago and Hong Kong, along with the plains of Texas and even Beijing, clearly showing a significant Chinese influence in mainstream Hollywood.

The classic father and daughter narrative featuring Wahlberg and Peltz makes a fresh change from the Sam Wikity trilogy with various gorgeous supermodels such as Rosie Huntingdon-Whitely and Megan Fox as his impossibly beautiful but vacuous girlfriends. Besides Shia LaBeouf wants to be taken seriously as an actor now and has thus starred in Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac.

Transformers, Age of Extinction is a pastiche of all former iconic Hollywood blockbuster movies from Jurassic Park, yes there is even a dinosaur sequence, to Aliens, to the more successful 007 films such as Tomorrow Never Dies and Skyfall, which is the film’s greatest asset but also detracts from a tighter more controlled narrative. With the duration at over two and a half hours at least 30 minutes of Transformers, Age of Extinction could have been swiftly edited although the Chicago and Hong Kong action sequences are impressive, outlandish and awe-inspiring.

Clearly director Michael Bay revels in the Hasbro universe and was given a massive budget to play with, for he is in his element recreating the fourth instalment of Transformers in a much slicker and glossier version with less focus on the human element but more on lavish spectacle of these digital machines which transform from cars and helicopters to giant menacing robots battling each other in equally spectacular urban locations like Chicago and Hong Kong.

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Look out for great performances by Stanley Tucci (The Devil Wears Prada) and with Sophia Myles (Tristan and Isolde) as the more sophisticated characters who work for a shady industrial organization based in Chicago which is out to hone the power of the Transformers and create untamed malleable matter. Transformers, Age of Extinction has superb location settings, gripping action sequences but if cinema goers hate sci-fi fantasy its best to avoid this clunky two and a half hour orgy of glossy carnage.

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Watch out for loads of neatly shot product placement in the film from Budweiser Light to Armani Exchange, Victoria Secret and Goodyear definitely proving that Transformers is aimed at the younger adult male target audience.