The MacGuffin

Another Top 5 segment from The MacGuffin. This time Allen and Brandi share their top 5 letdowns.

This segment is also available on Stitcher and iTunes. The audio version can be downloaded directly from here. After you’ve watched the video please vote in our poll and share which one you think is the best.

Last Man Standing

Much of my adolescent movie-watching years were spent during Bruce Willis’s tough guy box office reign. Films like Die Hard, The Last Boy Scout, and even the rather disappointing Striking Distance were top priority for my film watching time. When the film Last Man Standing opened in 1996, I had just graduated high school earlier that year, and it was my birthday: exactly what I wanted, a new Bruce Willis action film.

In modern society, technology has made privacy something of a rarity. Even if you choose not to participate in the hubbub of social networking and other various internet activities, chances are something about you is somewhere online. Privacy is something society has cherished for a long time. The option to intermingle with others but be able to always retreat to where one is not seen by anyone is to some societies just as important as it is an enigma to other societies. In privacy is where we can be who we feel we really are, without the judgment of others; where we can indulge the desires we feel might be deemed shameful by the people around us. In artist-turned-director Steve McQueen’s latest film Shame, he turns the camera’s eye on this concept and what happens when the privacy we rely on to indulge ourselves is stripped away.

There are many reasons to dislike Sleeping Beauty, the new film from first-time writer/director Julia Leigh, but at least being sick of half-hearted fairy tale updates is not one of them. This is because the film has almost nothing to do with the traditional Charles Perrault tale, or any of the versions that have come since. If you were hoping for a smart commentary on one of the ultimate damsel-in-distress scenes, or even just a satisfying re-telling of the much-loved story, look elsewhere. What we have here is oblique randomness in which, yes, at several points a beautiful girl does catch a few winks. That’s about it.

Here is a way to know you’re watching a great film: every scene contains both an element of surprise and a sense of inevitability. Surprising a savvy audience that has seen every trick in the book is tough; doing it while following the rule of inevitability—but not predictability—is tougher. It’s master-level storytelling. It’s what fills every moment of Tyrannosaur, the new film from writer/director Paddy Considine.

Marilyn Monroe has been a mystery for me—mainly, what it was that made her leave such an impact on film. I have only seen two of her movies, The Seven Year Itch and Some Like it Hot, and in both she seems to be just simply a blond bimbo with little range, and based on what was said about her on set (that she had to have lines written on blackboards while filming) seemed to confirm that. I still do not get what her appeal was, but there is no denying that she captivated people and there were complexities and pain inside her. The new film My Week with Marilyn is not a biography of her, though. We are getting to see her closer than most, but there is still a distance to her.

Matthew Lillard is a talented actor who is unfortunately often overlooked. Despite a long career, he hasn’t received many opportunities to be the lead in a film, at least in part because he is known for playing over the top characters. It is hard to not think of some of the misses he has been involved with, most notably Scooby-Doo, but I would argue that he is usually the best parts of those films (his portrayal of Shaggy was certainly the best part of that film). Occasionally he has received an opportunity like SLC Punk—a project that has a lot more heart than people give it credit for—and he has proven that he can handle subtly and nuance.

Another Top 5 segment from The MacGuffin. This time Allen and Brandi share their top 5 child performances.

This segment is also available on Stitcher and iTunes. The audio version can be downloaded directly from here. After you’ve watched the video please vote in our poll and share which one you think is the best.

The Muppets: So, there’s a new Muppet movie. You may have heard of it; it’s called The Muppets. I LOVE The Muppet Show, but the only Muppet movie I have every really cared for is Muppets From Space. (I am fully aware that this is an unpopular choice for favorite Muppet movie. There are some who would like to forget this film was ever made. Pshaw, I say to them. It’s lovely.) My husband nagged me and nagged me to go to this, and since I force him to watch an unusually large number of Bob Hope movies, I graciously complied.

“…I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am”

Perhaps no other name in film acting is equated to that of an icon quite like Marlon Brando. He has been referenced and pointed to countless times, and his practice of the Method approach has become legendary. Brando has influenced actors who can be identified by their last names: Dean, DeNiro, Pacino, Nicholson. To say that someone is the “greatest” in anything is a hyperbolic statement, because an idea like that could never be truly measured. But it can be said that Brando, in his laidback, naturalistic, and even quirky manner of performance, helped transition screen acting to how it is seen in the modern day. You can even see the difference in approach in the films themselves, with other actors boldly gesturing against his more unorthodox style. That’s not to say that either is right or wrong, but one thing is undeniably certain: Brando stood out from the rest.