Chad Liffmann – Page 10 – Spinning Platters

Spinning Platters Interview: Anne Norland & Scott Hayes, Silence! The Musical

Silence! The Musical opens at the Victoria Theatre in San Francisco on Friday, February 3rd — tickets here. The “unauthorized parody of Silence of the Lambs” is a show you are not to miss. In eager anticipation for the show, I got the opportunity to ask the two leads, Anne Norland (who plays Clarice Starling) and Scott Hayes (who plays Hannibal Lecter), some questions…

Before landing your roles, had you seen “Silence of the Lambs” and what were your thoughts on the film?

Anne: I am such a scaredy-cat when it comes to scary films or images. I was familiar with Jodie Foster’s accent and style in the movie, but I actually only really sat down and watched the movie start to finish in preparation for my callback for Silence! It scared the shit out of me. Psychological dramas are the scariest for me. It’s not gore-y or sneak-out-of-the-closet-and-spook-you like a slasher movie, but it’s freaky because that Giallo style gets under your skin (…no pun intended?). Any minute, someone might try to shove me in a well or bite into my face.

Scott: I actually saw the film the night after it opened back in 1991. Not only do I recall it being terrifying, but also remember the audience as a whole responding with gasps and screams. It was a genuine collective experience in the best way.

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Film Review: Split

Shyamalan works really hard to avoid his own traps, and manages to deliver an entertaining thriller.

I really wish M. Night Shyamalan would share a writing credit for once. His screenplays are constantly in need of supervision and a seasoned story writer to cut the fat. The stunted dialogue, contrivances, and lecture hall exposition can sometimes take precedent over plot progression. The same is nearly the case in Split, Shyamalan’s newest film and the most promising return to his mid-late 90s form after many disappointing tries. Split is a tense thriller and features a tour de force from James McAvoy. The film still succumbs to a few stereotypical pitfalls of the thriller genre, but the final product is still an entertaining, and at times chilling, experience featuring shades of Hitchcockian tactics.

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Film Review: Silence

Scorsese has, at long last, delivered his faithful long-lasting delivery on faith

Bless me Andrew Garfield, for I have sinned.

I’m not opposed to a film with a 160+ minute running time. What I do mind is when that movie doesn’t utilize its extended running time properly. It’s hard to fault Martin Scorsese for ensuring that his new film, Silence, runs a simmering 160 minutes. After all, he had wanted to film this story for nearly thirty years. If you were to finally fulfill a 28 year journey to make a film, it’s likely you wouldn’t want to sacrifice one bit of your efforts onto the cutting room floor, either. There is an arguable purpose to Silence‘s slow pace and narrative repetition, which I’ll get to, but it’s ultimately not enough to warrant the length of the final cut. That being said, the film is more of a cinematic triumph than a failed attempt. Yes, it is a historical religious epic, fraught with troubling but effectively choreographed depictions of religious persecution, but Silence is also much more invested (to the point of fallible self-indulgence) in exploring our contentious personal connections to human nature, faith, and spirituality.

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Film Feature: Chad’s Top 10 Films of 2016

Spinning Platters film critics present their top 10 films of 2016

Spinning Platters film critics Carrie Kahn and Chad Liffmann each share their ten favorite films of 2016. Here is Chad’s list, presented in descending rank order. And check out Carrie’s list!

10.) Hail, Caesar!


Tatum goes full Coen.

It takes a few viewings to fully appreciate the tremendous wit and satirical humor in Hail, Caesar! When the Coen Brothers released their latest film earlier this year, it was met with a lukewarm reception from audiences and critics, partially due to the Oscar-worthy brilliance of their previous three films — A Serious Man, True Grit, and Inside Llewyn Davis. Compared to those three, Hail, Caesar! is a silly comedy, yet it’s actually both an entertaining throwback and a salute to the unseen Hollywood players of the 1950s studio system, specifically the Hollywood fixer, played here by a confident Josh Brolin. Mix in a few Golden Age film sets, including those of an elaborate synchronized swimming musical number, and a Roman sandal epic, and cap it off with a phenomenal straight-out-of-the-’50s song and dance number with a handful of handsome seamen (led by Channing Tatum), and you’ve got a colorful, slightly absurdist take on Hollywood yesteryear that only the Coen Brothers can manage and deliver. Hail, Caesar! also puts Alden Ehrenreich on the map; here he plays a lovable typecast singin’ cowboy, and you’ll see him again soon as a young Han Solo. (You can also read my full-length review here.)

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Film Review: Assassin’s Creed

The long wait for a good video game adaptation continues.

Atop a perch, the assassins wait to figure out what the heck is happening.

Callum Lynch sits in the mess hall of a secret lab, having just been ported into the memories of a master assassin, his ancestor. He holds an apple firmly in his hand and says, “what the fuck is happening?” Mr. Lynch, you took the words right out of my mouth! His question is one I felt throughout at least 4/5 of the new adaptation of the popular Ubisoft video game series, Assassin’s Creed. There has never been a good video game adaptation (see the list here for proof). There have been entertaining tries and near misses, like the Resident Evil series and Prince of Persia, and there have been lousy ones that have aged into cult classics, like Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter. There has yet to be a universally respected video game adaptation — a film that both audiences and critics enjoy. Some thought the drought would end with Prince of Persia. Nope! Some thought it would be Assassin’s Creed. Nope! The wait continues. Maybe it’ll be the new Tomb Raider film, ’cause it ain’t gonna be the Rampage film, and likely not the final Resident Evil installment. Nevertheless, Assassin’s Creed is a total mess, lacking a coherent story, engaging characters, and even the visuals are disappointing, which is a bummer coming from such a beautifully cinematic game series.

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Film Review: Passengers

Half male fantasy, half space actioner, all catastrophic.

Pratt and Lawrence fulfill their space fantasies.

Bro, imagine you have your own giant resort space ship and you can do whatever you want, right!? Now imagine you get this hot chick with you and then you both get to do whatever you want. WHATEVER. YOU. WANT! How sweet would that be?! Okay, so this stupid male fantasy is the basic premise for the blundering sci-fi actioner, Passengers. It’s all visuals and little substance, complete with mega plot holes and one silly occurrence after another. Passengers isn’t without its thought-provoking moments however (not to be confused with head-scratching moments), it just decides to pass them by and not look back, wasting the charisma of its two talented leads.

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Film Review: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Star Wars goes rogue and leaves strong character development behind.

rogue-one-gallery40_8c244519 — When Felicity Jones goes rogue, we all go rogue.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the fifth best Star Wars film! Now that I’ve gotten my controversial statement out of the way, let’s continue. We can have the ranking argument later. For now, let’s just concentrate on what’s good and what’s not so good about the first ‘standalone’ Star Wars film, aka the first one to focus a story outside of the Skywalker saga. Except, it’s not exactly a standalone film, nor is it completely focused outside the aforementioned Skywalker saga. In fact, its central storyline comes from the iconic opening crawl that begins the original 1977 Star Wars film, Episode IV: A New Hope. Thus, the odds were always stacked against Rogue One. After all, its story is one in which we, more or less, know the fate of the central characters. So how can a film make us care for characters when we already know how their fates will be sealed? Well, in the hands of director Gareth Edwards (Monsters, Godzilla), Rogue One is full of impressive visuals and gripping action and just enough interesting characters to get by. There are easter eggs and callbacks aplenty in Rogue One to fully satisfy traditionalist and hardcore Star Wars fans, and enough stylistic changes to fulfill Disney’s initial attempt to launch a series of films meant to explore the expanded Star Wars universe in a way that is new but familiar. Rogue One is far from perfect, but it’s a fantastic movie-watching experience thanks to its exhilarating war movie feel and robust scope.

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Film Review: Collateral Beauty

Collateral Beauty is steeped in laughable melodrama, and not much else.

Will Smith and Edward Norton aren't too happy about anything. — Will Smith and Edward Norton aren’t too happy about anything.

Collateral Beauty could’ve been a great comedy. I have an untested and non-researched theory that ensemble casts are always better suited for comedies, and not dramas. Having numerous A-list stars in a film means that the story will attempt to give each one of them ample time for their characters to develop, change, and come to a satisfying conclusion. You don’t require those per-character time commitments in a comedy, and therefore ensemble dramas suffer from an abundance of promise and not enough deliverables. There are many other things that went wrong for Collateral Beauty. It’s a bad movie, for one. It’s an embarrassing script that somehow made it to the desks of Hollywood execs, who in turn should be embarrassed that they green lit the project. With a total overhaul of the story and characters, the film could’ve and should’ve been a hilarious new spin on the classic Christmas Carol story. Instead, Collateral Beauty is a plodding, preachy, melodramatic piece of manipulative filth. The more I think about it, the more I’m mad at myself for initially thinking that a few scenes were acceptable to watch.

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Film Review: Jackie

Jackie isn’t a normal biopic, allowing for a deeper understanding of its subject.

Natalie/Jackie gives us a tour of the White House

It’s only due to my familiarity with Natalie Portman, having seen so many of her films, contrasted with Jackie Kennedy’s unique accent and vocal delivery, that it took me a few scenes to grow accustomed to Portman’s version of the former first lady’s speaking style and mannerisms. At first the attempt sounds forced and peculiar, but then again (and you should do some quick YouTube research), so did Jackie’s actual voice. Overall, Portman does an excellent job, with her imitation utilized to great effect. There’s also very impressive art direction by White House production set veteran Halina Gebarowicz (House of Cards and Veep), an impactful and memorable film score by Mica Levi (Under the Skin), and sensible editing to keep Jackie to-the-point and flowing. But we’ll get to all of that a bit later. Jackie isn’t your normal biopic. Rather than a sweeping account spanning decades covering her upbringing, political life, the JFK assassination, and her life after, the film focuses solely on the assassination, including the days before and after it. It’s a risky move that completely pays off.

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Film Review: Office Christmas Party

This party is less than the sum of its party-goers.

OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY

Office Christmas Party must’ve been conceived when the six writers credited with the story and screenplay (red flag!) compiled a list of “Crazy sh-t that can happen at a Christmas Party!” Unfortunately, they then attempted to create a plot to surround the list of items in order to package all of it into a film. A better idea would’ve been to integrate the items directly into the story — like, say, having the main characters do these crazy things in order to advance the story. Nope. Thus, Office Christmas Party is a raunchy, foul-mouthed, sometimes funny holiday R-rated comedy that doesn’t fully utilize the amazing comedic chops of its extensive cast. It fights for laughs and prefers to show us an assortment of inconsequential montages of crazy party antics. They’re fun, but not funny. There’s just enough charisma from a few of the cast members to make Office Christmas Party worth attending. Just barely, though.

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