Review of "Lisztomania", "Get Him to the Greek", "Date Night"
Lisztomania (Russell, 1975)
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The movie is based on the life of 19th century composer called Franz Liszt.
Loosely based.
Extremely loosely based, unless there was ever a time where Liszt's daughter had a voodoo doll of him which she could put pins in to hurt him and the daughter was in love with Richard Wagner, the revolutionary German composer, who had vampire teeth and sucked on Liszt…energy?...and had little nazi soldier and was trying to create the ultimate soldier and turns into a Frankenstein Hitler with a guitar that is also a machine gun.
Well, it's Ken Russell directing, so what do you expect?
The title is interesting, because it was a phenomena back in the 19 century. Women reacted widely to Liszt's concerts, shouting and fainting, so basically he might have been the first pop star. From Wikipedia, " Lisztomania was characterized by a hysterical reaction to Liszt and his concerts.[3][2] Liszt's playing was reported to raise the mood of the audience to a level of mystical ecstasy.[3] Admirers of Liszt would swarm over him, fighting over his handkerchiefs and gloves.[3] Fans would wear his portrait on brooches and cameos.[2][4] Women would try to get locks of his hair, and whenever he broke a piano string, admirers would try to obtain it in order to make a bracelet.[4] Some female admirers would even carry glass phials into which they poured his coffee dregs".
Russell takes this idea and makes a weird movie out of it. He casts Roger Daltrey as the handsome, lion-haired, almost always bare chest Franz Liszt. The movie is very surreal but surreal in Russell's own extremely fun way. In one scene, Liszt gets a big boner, his penis bigger than his whole body, and that musical sequence is very enjoyable to watch (not that I enjoy watching huge penises…)!
Like a lot of Russel's movies, I don't enjoy it that much, but at least I'm happy knowing that I've watched it.
3/5
Get Him to the Greek (Stoller, 2010)
IMDB Link
Anything that Judd Apatow touches feels like a Apatow film. Even if he is neither the director or the writer. Does he choose films and scripts that appeal to his style or does have such a direct influence on the films? Maybe the people involved just try to appease him by copying his style.
"Get Him to the Greek" has the main ingredients by now. Platonic love between men, mixture of gross-out human with some sprinkles of dick-flick drama, and finally characters that feel like nice enough people.
This time, the hetrocouple is fat, nerdy music industry guy, Aaron (Jonah Hill), with Aldous Snow (Russell Brand), a has-been, drug-addicted rock star. The plan is to have a comeback anniversary concert with Aldous Snow, and it's up to Aaron to make sure he gets there on time and stay out of trouble. Through the journey, they will face many high jinks, but they will find that bro love is the backbone of a modern society and solves all world problems. Or something like that.
3/5
Date Night (Levy, 2010)
IMDB Link
I will admit that the movie was sweet, but not really that funny. Both Steve Carell and Tina Fey are good comedians, but they are more of TV show comedians than film comedians. They don’t bring anything exceptional to the table, the way I would have imagined they would, given that I’m speaking as a fan of them.
Both Fay and Carell usually do an exceptional job if the lines written for then are very good, but in “Date Night”, there is only a few scenes where they really shine. When the movie turns into an action comedy, with the married couple they play are on the fun from bad guys, it does not work that well. They aren’t really physical comedians, so I don’t see them bringing much to the table in a action-comedy sequence.
Likable actors playing likable characters in a likable movie. Just nothing more than that.
3/5