My Review: Grand Piano (3/10)

"If you miss a note, you're dead."

Not only does Grand Piano miss a note, it misses on nearly every note beginning with a very laughable plot and some pretty bad performances. Directed by Spanish composer Eugenio Mira (Agnosia and The Birthday) and written by Damien Chazelle (who recently won at Sundance for his direction in Whiplash), Grand Piano is a thriller that has a Phone Booth vibe to it by centering the action in a single location. The problem I had with this film is that I never felt the tension or the suspense because I never believed these were real characters or believable situations. I am on the minority here because a lot of critics were impressed with the De Palma like style of the film, but I found the entire action and suspense scenes completely ridiculous. John Cusack is no Kiefer Sutherland and his voice work here didn't impress me at all. The script also explains everything to the audience so shamefully like if we were stupid and needed everything to be spelled out for us in order to understand. I can't believe the hype this film has been getting because I found it to be the first truly bad film of 2014. Despite some nice camera work and style, there is nothing else to recommend here.

Tom Selznick (Elijah Wood) is a very talented concert pianist who has kept away from the spotlight for more than five years after having messed up during an important presentation. He was playing one of his mentor's compositions which only he and his mentor were considered talented enough to play. However after his failure he decided to retire, but now has accepted to come back and face his stage fright in honor of his mentor who has passed away. He is accompanied by his wife, Emma (Kerry Bishe), a famous actress who also has an angelic voice. Once the concert begins, he discovers a strange note on his music sheet threatening his life. If he messes up a note he and his beautiful wife will be killed. Tom discovers that Clem (John Cusack) is the man threatening him with a sniper rifle aimed at him while he is given instructions by him through an ear piece. All he can do is keep on playing and try not to mess up a single note. 

Grand Piano at least has a good musical score, but every time Mira tried to build the tension I couldn't believe how ridiculous the premise was. I wasn't a fan of Elijah Wood's wooden performance either and didn't find any redeeming performance from the entire cast. The climax at the end was also extremely laughable, the facial expressions were completely over the top. The films is extremely short as well, if you don't include the long credits the running time is less than 80 minutes. This might have been an interesting idea for a short film, but at 80 minutes it felt extremely long.

My Review: Argo (9/10)

¨If I'm going to make a fake movie, it's going to be a fake hit. ¨

This is Ben Affleck`s third film as a director and he`s made yet another brilliant film. Not everyone may agree that he`s a good actor, but I think we can all agree that he`s one of the top directors of this century. His first film Gone Baby Gone was a huge success, and he followed that with an even greater hit: The Town. Both these films were set in Boston (Affleck`s home town), but now Ben went out of his comfort zone and directed a film set in Iran in the late 70`s. The general look of the film felt so real and authentic; it was as if Affleck transported us into the past and we were really there. The film has an authentic 70`s vibe that reminds us of other great films from that period. I had my doubts about Argo considering the subject matter. I didn’t think it would keep my attention for long, but I was wrong because Affleck was able to create so much tension and suspense that I was at the edge of my seat during most of the film. He also mixed that tension with some humor and movie industry satire. Arkin played a movie producer and Goodman an Oscar winning makeup artist; the scenes between both these actors were hilarious and they were on top of their game. Those scenes were probably among my favorite of the movie, I don’t know if I would`ve enjoyed the movie as much as I did if it weren’t for those two supporting actors. I still think Gone Baby Gone and The Town were both better films than Argo, but this will surely have more success with the Academy voters. Argo will be nominated for Best Picture and could be one of the favorites to win the Oscar.

The film is based on true events that occurred during 1979 while tension arose between the United States and Iran when Iranian revolutionaries invaded the American embassy in Iran and took several American hostages. Six American employees managed to secretly escape during the turmoil and found refugee in the residence of the Canadian Ambassador. The CIA then plans a secret mission to try to take them out of the country before the Iranians realize that six of the employees from the Embassy are missing. Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), a CIA exfiltration expert, comes up with a risky plan to bring them back home safely. He creates a fake Canadian film project and travels to Iran with the excuse that he is looking for locations to shoot his sci-fi film titled Argo claiming that Iran is the perfect spot. In order to make his plan believable the CIA begins to collaborate with some trusted Hollywood people: Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), a film producer, and John Chambers (John Goodman), a make-up artist. Together they prepare to produce the best fake movie Hollywood has ever made and has everyone in the industry fall for the lie. Meanwhile at the residence of Canadian Ambassador, Ken Taylor (Victor Garber), tension is beginning to rise as the revolutionaries are beginning to suspect that there might be some Americans hiding there. These Americans are Bob (Tate Donovan), Cora (Clea DuVall), Joe (Scoot McNairy), Lee (Rory Cochrane), Mark (Christopher Denham), and Kathy (Kerry Bishe). Tony Mendez provides them with Canadian passports and a fake identity and has them each passing for crew members of the film he`s producing. Bryan Cranston plays Affleck`s supervisor in the CIA who gives him the green light for the highly risky mission.

Saying that Argo is based on a true story doesn’t mean that everything that happened in this film was real. Of course you have several things that were made up in order to build up the tension. This isn’t a documentary and if you want to read about the real story there is plenty of information about what happened in Iran. The film is based on the article written by Joshua Bearman and the screenplay adapted by Chris Terrio. People familiar with the story already know the outcome, but Affleck is able to maintain the suspense and tension nonetheless. His real success here was the way in which he was able to recreate several scenes in such a believable fashion. The amount of attention he put into small technical details can be seen during the end credits where we have pictures of the real events along with the scenes from the film. Affleck also took a huge risk by mixing movie industry satire with suspense and tension, but it paid off really well and was the highlight of the film in my opinion. Argo is a truly satisfying film and without a doubt one of the best films of the year thanks to the technical aspects of the film, a strong performance from the cast, and the thrilling storytelling all supported by the great direction of Ben Affleck.  

http://estebueno10.blogspot.com