The Place Beyond the Pines is a movie that is greater than the sum of its parts.\u00a0 And there are three of them; parts, I mean.\u00a0 And that\u2019s probably the first thing you should know.\u00a0 The writers Derek Cianfrance (who also directed), Ben Coccio and Darius Marder don\u2019t really do that strong a job in preparing you for that so when the first part ends, you don\u2019t really realize it\u2019s just the first of three separate, but strongly connected stories and it can be a bit confusing for awhile until you figure it out (or unless you read reviews of the movie beforehand, which I didn\u2019t).<\/p>\n
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The first part of the film concerns Ryan Gosling as a carnival motorcycle daredevil.\u00a0 When he finds out he has a kid he never knew about, he does what anyone in his position would naturally do: he quits to become a bank robber.\u00a0 Yes, it has about that much logic.\u00a0 In fact, when the idea of robbing banks is presented to him, all you can think is, what could possibly go wrong with this plan; I mean, it\u2019s genius, man, genius.\u00a0 Actually, it is kind of.\u00a0 The MO Gosling and his partner use is quite clever and they could have gotten away with it for a long time, until something happens that shouldn\u2019t have.\u00a0 But at the same time, this section is a bit too much been there, done that.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s a fairly typical story of a petty criminal that works out the way stories about petty criminals generally work out in movies like this.<\/p>\n
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In the second story, Bradley Cooper takes over as an ambitious police officer who brings Gosling down and Gosling is out of the picture (no, I\u2019m not spoiling anything\u2014I think you really, really need to know that Gosling is only in the movie for a short period; and my revealing it isn\u2019t remotely the same thing as telling people that Janet Leigh gets killed off in the first part of Psycho\u2014okay, maybe I shouldn\u2019t have revealed that about Janet Leigh, but you get what I\u2019m trying to say).\u00a0 Anyway, this section is a bit more interesting, especially due to a cameo by Ray Liotto doing his psychotic bit as a dirty cop.\u00a0 At the same time, I also think this section is a little off because it doesn\u2019t focus on Cooper\u2019s relationship with his son, which is basically what the movie as a whole is supposed to be about, fathers and sons.<\/p>\n
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Then there\u2019s the third story in which the two sons of Gosling and Cooper (doe eyed, pouty Emory Cohen and sharp featured Dane DeHaan) meet and this section is deeply moving and powerful and almost makes the first two parts seem better than they are.\u00a0 When the movie comes together here, it fills you with a sense of wonder and excitement as these two teenagers try to work out their fate without the benefit of knowing any of their true history, without the benefit of knowing they even have a fate.\u00a0 We know so much that they don\u2019t which gives their actions even more meaning than the characters realize they have.\u00a0 And as the story works itself out in unexpected ways, there are times when the emotions are at times nearly overwhelming.<\/p>\n
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Early on in the movie The Company You Keep, Susan Sarandon, as a former domestic terrorist now in custody, tells ambitious reporter Shia LaBeouf that he is younger than she expected.\u00a0 When he thanks her, she says it wasn\u2019t a compliment.\u00a0 In the same way, The Company You Keep is the Argo of this year.\u00a0 Before Ben Affleck says thank you, it\u2019s not a compliment.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing that wrong with The Company You Keep except that the best thing you can say about it is that there\u2019s nothing that wrong with it.\u00a0 It\u2019s entertaining enough and rarely boring.\u00a0 But like Argo, it\u2019s a movie that never really rises above what it is.<\/p>\n
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The story itself never exactly makes a lot of sense.\u00a0 Thirty years before, a bunch of radicals, including Robert Redford, went into hiding after robbing a bank in which one of them shoots and kills a bank guard.\u00a0 It\u2019s all in protest of the Viet Nam War, but thirty years from 2013 is 1983 and the whole thing seems a bit out of whack with the space time continuum.\u00a0\u00a0 And the logic of the whole story never really gets much better (by the time the movie is over, it\u2019s a bit muddled just why Redford\u2019s character went into hiding since he was never guilty, he wasn\u2019t even at the bank\u2014it\u2019s sort of like the actor in him wanted to have his cake and eat it too\u2014play a bad guy without ever playing a bad guy).<\/p>\n
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The basic cast is made up of the old guard versus the new.\u00a0 The ex-radicals are played by such luminaries as the aforesaid Sarandon and Redford, as well as Julie Christie, Richard Jenkins, Nick Nolte, Sam Elliot and the ubiquitous Stephen Root.\u00a0 Jesus, it\u2019s like an episode of Murder, She Wrote, but filled with A list actors who are still working rather than B-list actors desperate for a job.\u00a0\u00a0 Only Susan Sarandon really comes off well, with a mesmerizing scene with LaBeouf where she defends her role in the protests of the, well, I was going to say 1960\u2019s, but with that space time continuum thingy, I\u2019m not sure, but at any rate, she\u2019s hypnotic and really delivers.<\/p>\n
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The young guard is made up of LaBeouf, Anna Kendrick and Terence Howard, and all I can say is that Kendrick and Howard need to get a new agent.\u00a0 Both are well respected actors with Oscar nominations, but if the best their managers can do is get them work playing second fiddle to LaBeouf, then drastic measures need to be taken.\u00a0 At the same time, LeBeouf, himself, acquits himself well.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what it is about him, but lately whenever I review him, I always seem to start with, he acquits himself well.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s because I\u2019m never really convinced he is cast right; but he\u2019s a solid actor, and he carries the movie on his unbroad shoulders rather well here.<\/p>\n
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It would be remiss of me not to mention that there\u2019s also the inbetween guard with Chris Cooper in a nice quiet performance as Redford\u2019s brother and Stanley Tucci as a rather odd newspaper editor who doesn\u2019t think that the FBI somehow obtaining a warrant to search a reporter\u2019s apartment isn\u2019t remotely a news story.\u00a0 \u00a0I didn\u2019t know how to react to that.<\/p>\n
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The screenplay is by Lem Dobbs and is often quite witty with a lot of clever dialog.\u00a0 It\u2019s directed by Redford in his usual bland style.<\/p>\n
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Eddie: the Sleepwalking Cannibal (no, I\u2019m not making that up, that is the title) is a horror movie about a painter who is blocked but gets inspiration after a ten year dry spell when his housemate, Eddie, a mentally slow man he has taken in, starts sleepwalking at night and eating people.\u00a0 The artist is so inspired by this muse (the violence brings out the creativity in him), that he starts manipulating Eddie to repeat his nocturnal activities.\u00a0 It\u2019s Roger Corman material, but with more style, wit and marginally better production values.\u00a0 It\u2019s a lot of fun and the story works itself out in a very satisfying manner.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s ridiculous and silly, but that\u2019s the point (at least I hope it is).\u00a0 The clever screenplay is by Boris Rodriguez (who also directed), Jonathan Rannells and Alex Epstein.\u00a0 The painter is played by Danish transplant Thure Lindhardt who, to his credit, manages to take the whole thing quite seriously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Place Beyond the Pines is a movie that is greater than the sum of its parts.\u00a0 And there are three of them; parts, I mean.\u00a0 And that\u2019s probably the first thing you should know.\u00a0 The writers Derek Cianfrance (who also directed), Ben Coccio and Darius Marder don\u2019t really do that strong a job in […]","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[540,529,538,275,533,530,528,537,532,539,536,535,531,24,218,534,527,541],"series":[],"class_list":["post-1200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alex-epstein","tag-ben-coccio","tag-boris-rodriguez","tag-bradley-cooper","tag-dane-dehaan","tag-darius-marder","tag-derek-cianfrance","tag-eddie-the-sleepwalking-cannibal","tag-emory-cohen","tag-jonathan-rannells","tag-lem-dobbs","tag-robert-redford","tag-ryan-gosling","tag-shia-labeouf","tag-susan-sarandon","tag-the-company-you-keep","tag-the-place-beyond-the-pines","tag-thure-lindhardt"],"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/www.rumblespoon.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/REAL-Short-Box-New-Logo-FINAL-scaled.jpg","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":{"amazon":{"key":"amazon","url":"","label":"Amazon","class":"amazon","icon":"amazon.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/www.rumblespoon.com\/wp\/feed\/podcast\/the-real-short-box","embedCode":"
Movie Review of THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES, THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, EDDIE: THE SLEEPWALKING CANNIBAL by Howard Casner<\/a><\/blockquote>