‘Ocean’s Thirteen’ is a Better Than Expected Sequel

Posted on June 10, 2018 by The Ultimate Rabbit

Oceans Thirteen movie poster

“Ocean’s Thirteen” was one of the few threequels from 2007 which really delivered without any frustration, and I was relieved how it did not suffer from an overabundance of plot and characters. True, the story and twists in plot are a bit hard to follow at times, but this was also the case in the last two movies in this trilogy, so why should this one be any different? This is a movie which invites you to sit back and relax and to have some fun, and for me it delivered.

The gang is back with the exception of Julia Roberts who was in the previous two movies, and Catherine Zeta-Jones who appeared in the last one. It’s just as well because there really is not much they could do here. They would have been wasted in bit parts which would not have required much from their presence. As George Clooney and Brad Pitt point out at the beginning in regards to the characters Roberts and Jones played, “IT’S NOT THEIR FIGHT!”

This one starts off with their friend Reuben Tishkoff (Elliot Gould) in the hospital where he is recovering from a nasty heart attack. This was brought on when he got screwed out of a partnership by the devious Willie Bank (Al Pacino) who is legendary in Las Vegas for stabbing everyone who ever worked for them in the back without any remorse. None of Ocean’s gang is happy about this, and they quickly begin to plot their revenge against him. Their plan is to essentially bankrupt Willie on the opening night of his new casino, and whether or not they win is irrelevant as long as he loses big time.

Clooney and Pitt are as cool as ever in returning to Las Vegas, the scene of their insidiously clever crime from the first movie. They never miss a beat as their confidence remains unbreakable while they attempt to screw over Pacino’s character. Matt Damon is great as always as Linus, the guy who always wants to put more into the plan, and he remains convinced of how he can pull it off if those around him would just give him a chance. However, I could easily spot who his character’s father was from a mile away. Don Cheadle has some great scene stealing moments as Basher Tarr, especially when he tries to divert Pacino’s attention in one key scene.

Pacino has been ridiculed for some time now as he is constantly accused of giving the same bombastic performance over and over again. Ever since his Oscar winning turn in “Scent of a Woman,” people keep saying he overplays every role given to him, and while there is a lot of evidence to this fact, I don’t think it’s always the case (“Donnie Brasco” anybody?). He succeeds in underplaying his role here, and his usual bombast is not on display as much. He has a quiet menace in some scenes which really works, and Clooney plays off of it very effectively to where they both generate some good chuckles along the way.

It’s also great to see Ellen Barkin again and reuniting with her “Sea of Love” co-star Pacino as his chief assistant, Abigail Sponder. She still looks very hot, and it’s nice to see her acting again instead of hearing about all those divorce stories between her and her millionaire ex-husband. She is a lot of fun to watch here, and there is a great moment where she ends up getting seduced by Matt Damon’s character, and the way she plays her inevitable seduction is both hilarious and quite believable.

Carl Reiner and Elliott Gould return as well to the Ocean’s franchise, and their presence is very welcome. Hollywood is as always obsessed with youth, so it’s nice to see two older guys still being allowed to make their mark in a big Hollywood movie like this. And I don’t want to leave out Shaobo Qin who plays Yen. Qin gets more to do here than he has in the other Ocean’s movies, and his acrobatic skills come into focus when he has to make his way across a very unpredictable elevator system.

Andy Garcia is also back as Terry Benedict, and the Ocean crew is forced to partner with him in order to complete their revenge against Pacino’s character. How Garcia’s character gets done in is too good to spoil here, and it results in one of this sequel’s most inspired moments.

Steven Soderbergh, or Peter Andrews if you really want to call him that, keeps the coolness factor up and running, and he provides us with what this movie is supposed to give, a good time at the movies. With a movie like this, you can’t ask for much more. This must serve as a vacation for Soderbergh from all his more serious movies like “Traffic” and “The Good German,” and it is always great to see him jumping from one genre to another.

Whereas a lot of sequels have underwhelmed mostly because of constant overhyping, this one is smart enough not to fall victim to that. I was always surprised when I heard they were going to do a sequel to “Ocean’s Eleven,” and then another sequel after “Ocean’s Twelve.” Each one delivered for me, and this one does as well.

*** * * out of * * * ***

Peter Weller and Company Revisit ‘Buckaroo Banzai’ at New Beverly Cinema

Posted on October 30, 2017 by The Ultimate Rabbit

Buckaroo Banzai poster

Looking back at some of the articles I have written about screenings at New Beverly Cinema, I kept saying or implying that you could never expect any screenings showing there to sell out. But now it looks like that’s becoming less and less the case. Ever since Quentin Tarantino bought the building where the theater is located and saved it from becoming another Supercuts, more and more movie geeks have descended on this establishment, the last standing movie reparatory theater in Los Angeles. Jason Reitman did a movie program there which featured “Election,” “Boogie Nights” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and it brought out huge crowds of people. Torgan and company ended up having to do something they almost never do; turn people away!

Well, the line around New Beverly once again snaked around the corner as actor Peter Weller was scheduled to introduce a screening of the 1984 cult classic, “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension,” on March 29, 2010. Every single was taken, and the screening got delayed because the line at concessions threatened to snake around the theater as well. Weller brought along two other players from Buckaroo’s crew: Billy Vera who played the bass guitarist for Banzai’s rock band the Blue Blaze Irregulars, and Gerald Peterson who played Rug Sucker. The Q&A was moderated by Jeremy Smith, Mr. Beaks from Ain’t It Cool News, and he proclaimed this to be “the nerdiest movie ever made.” Upon saying this, he got a huge applause from the audience.

Weller did look a little ragged, and he later explained it was because he didn’t go to bed until about 2 a.m. the night before as he just got through 86 hours of PhD exams at UCLA. Furthermore, he said he has been wearing the same clothes for several days straight which reek of cigar smoke as he was smoking 10 of them in a day.

“Buckaroo Banzai” turned out to be a lot of fun, and this is despite the fact I have no idea of how to explain what it’s exactly about. However, it turns out the most ardent fans of this movie and the actors who starred in it can’t really explain what the plot is about either.

“I didn’t understand it (the script) actually, and I think no actor in it does understand it. I don’t think Billy or Gerald understood it, but it was fun,” Weller said.

“If you say you understood it, you’re a liar,” Vera said.

Weller went on to say 20^th Century Fox didn’t know how to market “Buckaroo Banzai” at all. The studio executives came to the set around the time they were finishing principal photography and asked him, “Is it an action movie?” Later on, the editor of the movie, Oscar nominee Richard Marks, said, “That film is a comedy! It’s a comedy and they should have known that from the jump!”

But perhaps the best way to describe “Buckaroo Banzai” is its half comedy and half drama. Vera added many television shows later took on the half comedy and half drama formula, but he couldn’t think of any which came before this movie. To this, Weller added, “Or after.”

Weller was actually not sure if he was going to do this film because he had his eye on a romance movie around the same time. But this same romantic movie was getting bounced around from studio to studio, and his agent convinced him to take “Buckaroo Banzai” since it looked more and more like the other flick was not going to happen. With a cast which included Christopher Lloyd, Ellen Barkin and John Lithgow, this could not have been easy to turn down.

“The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8^th Dimension” marked the directorial debut of screenwriter W. D. Richter who was best known for writing Phillip Kaufman’s version of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and also “Brubaker.” Richter was also responsible for co-writing another movie 20^th Century Fox had trouble promoting, John Carpenter’s “Big Trouble in Little China.” Weller described Richter as a beautiful and really laid-back guy, and that he was also an intellectual from the east coast. Richter didn’t have the get up and go Hollywood thing going on, and Weller said this made him perfect for the actors to work with. Also, Richter was a musician as was Weller and several of the cast members, and Weller said his heroes have always been musicians.

Vera said he got cast after Richter and Weller saw him perform at the Viper Room in Hollywood. After he was done, Vera said Richter got a hold of him and asked, “You know, I like the way you improvise on stage. Do you think you could do that in a movie?” “Yeah, I do it every night,” Vera said. ”Do me a favor,” Richter said, “kind of tell me where you’re gonna stand so that I can have a camera ready for you.” Weller, Vera and Peterson all agreed that this was the way Richter directed the whole movie.

Mr. Beaks then started taking questions from the audience, the first one coming from a guy who read somewhere that the producers of “Buckaroo Banzai” were not at all happy with the film. He asked if this dislike of theirs bled onto the set to which Weller replied, “Uh, yeah.“ It must really suck to make a movie while knowing those who got the ball rolling and spent so much money on it don’t believe in it after viewing the dallies. And like many cult movies, this one was a box office flop, but it eventually found a cult following on video, cable, and DVD. You have to wonder how this movie among others could inspire such fans to watch it at least 57 times. Weller summed it all up perfectly:

“The longevity of it is that it’s unique. There’s a uniqueness to it,” Weller said. “They (the producers) wanted it to fit into a mold. They thought that it would be more slapstick, overt action and humor. The humor, although I have to say I don’t understand a lot of it, was fantastic. The humor was so… Just under the radar man.”

“And that’s why they cut a half hour of it,” Vera added. “The movie was a half hour longer which gave the jokes more room to breathe, but the studio said they wanted to cut it short so that they can show it more times per day.”

Particularly fascinating was Weller’s take on Christopher Lloyd whom we all know best as Doctor Emmet Brown from “Back to the Future.” Weller talked about when Lloyd’s house in Montecito burned down during the devastating Malibu fires. Lloyd had gone on television to talk about what happened, and Weller described how he and his wife were so devastated over what happened to him. But during a conversation with one of Weller’s professors at UC Santa Barbara, who brought up how sorry he was for Lloyd losing his house, Weller quoted exactly what he said:

“You’re gonna be the first to know the truth… I was already selling the house and there was nothing in it at all. I was living in an apartment in Montecito!”

Stunned at hearing this, Weller looked right at Lloyd and said, “Chris! The world, not just LA, but the whole world! We even saw this news in Italy! You looked so sad…” Lloyd’s response to this really did turn the whole thing into a comedy:

“I know! Because when the fire was going and I walked up and they put three cameras in my face, and I didn’t know what to do except LIE!”

Weller also said he met Jeff Goldblum on the same night he lost his virginity, and then he brought up an almost insane story about Goldblum which took place when he was getting married. Weller had already been married at that point and was telling Goldblum how excited he was to see him settling down. What Goldblum told him after that made us see him in different light:

“We’re on the other side now Peter!”

Other tidbits about “Buckaroo Banzai” included how the montage of Buckaroo and his comrades coming together during the end credits was actually an addition made by Richter later on. While filming this, Weller admitted he and the actors were actually walking to the tune of Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl.”

Before those end credits began, there was also the promise of a sequel laid out for the audience entitled “Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League.” One audience member asked why this sequel never got made, and it turns out there was more to it than the movie dying at the box office:

“Well the one guy (producer) went to prison for bank fraud, and the other guy blew his brains out in Century City Plaza,” Weller said. “Both of those guys were really good guys and I stayed in touch with the one who went to the joint, and he’s out now.”

Just before they finally started showing the movie, Weller thanked the crowd for coming out and said that this turnout and excitement was what he had expected when he walked in to meet his professors at UCLA today. Instead, they just gave him more stuff to work on, and that was after the 86 hours of work he had already done. Suffice to say, this crowd was far more welcoming.

It was great to finally see “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the 8^th Dimension” after all these years, and it was even more fun watching it with a large audience. To see it on television is one thing, but there is nothing like experiencing it on the silver screen in a packed theater. Weller took a very unrealistic character who was a renaissance man, a top neurosurgeon, particle physicist, race car driver, rock star and comic book hero, and he made you buy into him without questioning the logic of how he found the time to take on all these disciplines.

Another memorable evening at the New Beverly Cinema!