Author Topic: I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS  (Read 61830 times)

Offline oilgun

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Re: I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS
« Reply #110 on: December 03, 2010, 07:05:27 pm »
I really want to see it now!

From:
http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/2606

"It's taken almost two years for the bonkers, exhilarating same-sex romantic comedy I Love You Phillip Morris to finally reach theaters," writes Melissa Anderson in the Voice. "Premiering at Sundance in January 2009, the movie was a near-casualty of nervous-nellie US distributors — more comfortable with innocuous gay genres like the homosexual weepie or the martyr biopic — and countless release delays. In the interim, we've bided our time with such high-profile, big-screen depictions of man-man love as Brüno pantomiming oral on the ghost of Rob Pilatus and Colin Firth's suicidal fusspot furtively nuzzling Matthew Goode in a Single Man flashback. Save it, Mary: Nothing tops ILYPM's Jim Carrey as a top, sweatily, giddily ass-plowing a mustached muscle-daddy in the most gloriously raunchy, unrepentant moment in the an(n)als of Hollywood A-listers doing gay-for-pay."

For Bill Weber, writing in Slant, the film "suggests both a middle-aged queer rewrite of Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can and how one of Jean Genet's thieves might've aspired to an Out magazine photo-spread lifestyle in 1990s America.... Written and directed by Bad Santa scribes Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, and adapted from a true-crime chronicle ('Really,' insists an opening title), I Love You Phillip Morris gets off on gender-fucking the conventions of romantic and caper comedies while reaping subversive moments of tenderness from its committed central performance. Carrey, whose candidacy as one of the best film actors of the last 20 years may go unspoken due to anti-comedy snobbery, gives Steven's devotion to Phillip a rapt authenticity right from their moony meeting, attired in lemon-yellow jumpsuits, in their Texas prison's library.... As shy, almost dainty Phillip, [Ewan] McGregor mostly yields the spotlight to his co-star; that he's the naïve, moralistic scold of the couple ('Did you do something?!' he nags when the police come knocking) is a pretty neat casting joke, given his history of studly bad-boy roles."

"There's one scene of them chatting in their prison cell — viewed overhead in bed, Phillip's head in the crook of Steven's arm — that's so affectionately intimate you can see exactly why the movie took two years to get a US release," writes Dennis Harvey in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "Even the prior scene of Carrey riding a different man's ass like a bucking bronco isn't as half so threatening as this, an utterly unguarded moment with two famous faces that both happen to be male conveying a perfectly synched love."

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS
« Reply #111 on: December 03, 2010, 10:04:35 pm »



Good one!   8)




Movie Review:
Jim Carrey’s Gay Con Man Actually Great!
By: David Edelstein
12/3/10 at 6:15 PM




The actor who adopts a series of masks but has no core has been a tired existential trope since (at least) Sartre’s Kean,  but as Steven Russell, a gay con man in I Love You, Phillip MorrisJim Carrey makes it sing. Carrey is the least filled-in of modern clowns, the most desperate, as if he’d dissolve if he stopped doing (or turning) tricks. That desperation takes on an astonishing emotional resonance when the character is gay and forced to live and work in a homophobic culture. “Normal” is nonsensical, deceit the deepest logic. Subterfuge, compartmentalization—they become second nature. This is where Carrey triumphs, by playing Steven as a man who plays other people.

When he impersonates a successful business executive with a joshing, how’s-your-golf-game façade, the ironic quotation marks around every hearty back slap are terribly funny and terribly sad—because you know, as Steven knows, that he’ll push it and push it and push it until he’s exposed. His Achilles Heel is a fair young man (Ewan McGregor) he meets in prison with the name Phillip Morris. There’s no artifice there. He loves Phillip Morris.

Based on the non-fiction book by former Houston Chronicle  investigative reporter Steve McVicker, I Love You Phillip Morris  has been splendidly written and almost consistently misdirected by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. They wrote the excellent gonzo script of Bad Santa  and had the luck of having Terry Zwigoff direct it fresh off his R. Crumb documentary. For Zwigoff, as for Crumb, there is no line between the realistic and the freakish—freakishness is realism of the purest kind. But Ficarra and Requa have a low-camp aesthetic that’s tiresome and dated and, for actors, a kind of anti-straitjacket, forcing them into cartoon mode. That doesn’t affect the leads, though. Carrey’s particular mania transcends camp, and McGregor goes in the opposite direction: He makes Phillip so passive and low-key that he seems to exist in a different realm from the other actors. It’s not an especially compelling performance, but you can see why Carrey’s Steven would find Phillip a balm.

Even camped-up, the first two-thirds of the film is exhilarating. The last part, in which Steven is jailed and then escapes and is jailed and then escapes and is jailed, etc., is… audacious, but, as my synopsis implies, monotonous. Like the ongoing story of its real-life subject, the film doesn’t have much of a finish. But it must be seen for Carrey, for its portrait of a clown in agony—and in clover.
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Offline SFEnnisSF

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Re: I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS
« Reply #112 on: December 04, 2010, 02:52:56 am »
Landmark Theaters in Denver are the best!! That's where I saw 127 Hours. I'm also planning to see a movie there this weekend called VISION about a middle ages saint. I might go see ILYPM again; I saw it on a British Airways flight last June.

Oh and Landmark Theaters is planning to show BBM at midnight on Valentines Day next year.


Which Landmark are you talking about.  There are a few there.  When I came to visit in 2006 I saw Babel at the Mayan theatre.  I loved it.  I might have to fly out for Valentine's day and BBM.  I also loved that they had a bar in the theatre!  :D

Offline SFEnnisSF

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Re: I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS
« Reply #113 on: December 04, 2010, 02:59:32 am »
Well everyone, I drove up to the City afterwork to see it in the theatre at the AMC Metreon in SF.  I just HAD to see it in the theatre to see the crowd and the reaction.  

I found it much more enjoyable on the big screen!  I definitely felt the romance more this time!

There was only about 100 people in their largest 300 seater! Very low turnout. (This is certainly no Brokeback Mountain!) However, it wasn't advertised much so I'm not surprised. On the other hand, Black Swan was sold out all night, and will probably be moved to the 300 seater tomorrow.

We had some forgetable Focus Features trailer, The Green Lantern trailer, and then YOUR SOUL TO TAKE. WTF?? (That came out already months ago....)

We had survey cards given to us by studio folks upon entering the theatre. They said they wanted to know if they should open the movie wider or not. The survey asked questions about demographics, and then how we liked the movie, would we see it again, would we buy it on DVD, etc.   One of the questions was "gay or straight"... in retrospect, I should have answered "straight". LOL  :D

When the movie ended, there was applause. Not standing ovation, but some pleasant applause. Folks seemed to genuinely like it. Most were very into filling out their survey cards during the credits, so I didn't hear much discussion from folks. People are funny and like sheep, they really do what you tell them to... I found these survey cards hilairous for that reason. Everyone was so dillengently filling them out at the end. LOL

I'm happy to report that no scenes were cut for the USA release!  :)  :)  :)

The real test though, will be when it opens down here in San Jose next week.  I will very much like to see a "suburbian" audience's reaction!

Offline Kelda

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Re: I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS
« Reply #114 on: December 05, 2010, 06:09:08 pm »
Glad you enjoyed it on the big screen Eric!
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Offline delalluvia

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Re: I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS
« Reply #115 on: December 05, 2010, 09:29:48 pm »
Well, you guys filling out those forms will make or break the decision to release ILYPM to the rest of us in the Fly Over regions. 

Write positives!

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS
« Reply #116 on: December 05, 2010, 10:19:59 pm »
Mighty oaks from little acorns grow...this could get really big, friends!

I also loved the scene in prison when the couple were together and Steven had finagled for some romantic music to be played. While the couple danced together and their intimacy deepened considerably (to use a Prouxism) you hear the prison guards insulting each other in voiceover. It's hilarious and saddening at the same time.
"chewing gum and duct tape"

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Re: I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS
« Reply #117 on: December 06, 2010, 08:25:20 pm »
Listening to the NPR story about this, I finally found out why they called it "I Love You Phillip Morris"... because that is his real name!

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/03/131783406/con-king-steven-russell-he-still-loves-phillip-morris
"chewing gum and duct tape"

Offline delalluvia

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Re: I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS
« Reply #118 on: December 06, 2010, 08:56:29 pm »
I thought you guys knew that!

Yes, his real name is Phillip Morris.  I think the cigarettes only have one "L" in their name, but in the book, Phillip says that people think about the cigarettes a lot when they hear his name.

Offline delalluvia

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Re: I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS
« Reply #119 on: December 07, 2010, 12:17:54 am »
Finally!

A movie advert for ILYPM on cable TV.  On TruTV of all places.