I have friends with connections. LOL, not really that mysterious. A lot of retail stores in Scottsdale receive passes from the studios to free screenings. I have a friend who works in Scottsdale and picks them up for me when they come in. Screenings are usually at Scottsdale Fashion Square or Tempe Marketplace. A lot of bookstores carry them.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: LadyHathor25,

quote:

Originally posted by LadyHathor25:
I have friends with connections. LOL, not really that mysterious. A lot of retail stores in Scottsdale receive passes from the studios to free screenings. I have a friend who works in Scottsdale and picks them up for me when they come in. Screenings are usually at Scottsdale Fashion Square or Tempe Marketplace. A lot of bookstores carry them.

Yes, yes. They are often advertised in the NEW TIMES. Unfortunately I lack a network of Scottsdale folk to pick then up for me and rarely feel like making a trip the various retail locations in Tempe/Scottsdale on a weekday evening. I usually assume they will be out of passes by the time I might get to them.

Ah, sorry. I am a book addict. I am friendly with some bookstore employees. One of whom is a good friend of mine. (And lurker here. Hello!) She usually scores the free passes for me.

quote:

Originally posted by LadyHathor25:
Ah, sorry. I am a book addict. I am friendly with some bookstore employees. One of whom is a good friend of mine. (And lurker here. Hello!) She usually scores the free passes for me.

A fellow book addict, eh? If you knew the ridiculous number of books I had bought in the last week or two you would think I was a damn millionaire... or at least someone completely unaffected by the current economy. Neither is true.

I love to buy the hardcover books that are in the bargain section because they have transitioned to paperback. Only you know you spent a pittance on it while everyone else thinks you are spending like a goddamn king ($25 for a book- how decadent!). Poor, envious fools!

Oh, I understand completely. The amount of books I have is ridiculous for my income level. And this is even with me constantly trading in books to used bookstores.

Anyway, I was really excited to get this pass to Public Enemies. This is exactly the kind of film I like to see for free. I am not sure I would have gone to see it if I had to pay for it. Then again, it does have Johnny Depp in it. So, maybe I would have seen it.

These screenings are also interesting because they are always completely full. I'll see if I can gauge the crowd tomorrow night.

I thought Billy Crudup looked awesome in the trailer, but the film on the whole seemed kind of boring.

Yeah, that is kind of why I am looking forward to seeing it for free. It'd be nice to see Crudup give a good performance in something. I wish he would get more higher profile roles.

He has the voice down pat - I haven't really heard many other actors manage to pull off that kind of 40s/50s vocal style. I hear that Marion Cotillard worked her butt off to learn a French-Canadian accent for this role, too. Christian Bale, on the other hand, looks like he didn't even try to sound or act authentic.

Well, I saw it last night. My friend and I both thought the movie was a little too cold for our tastes. It felt a little too technical, too clinical.

I felt like the movie never really said anything. I didn't understand why I was supposed to care about Dillinger or Purvis, or anyone really. I guess I kind of wanted to movie to go a bit more in depth about who Dillinger was. Also, I am not entirely sure I liked Johnny Depp in this role. Shockingly, he didn't display much charisma or magnetism. I didn't understand why any of the gangsters or Cotillard's character really liked him. I felt zero chemistry between Depp and Cotillard. It is truly amazing to me that Depp could produce such incredible charisma for freaking "Pirates of the Caribbean" but felt so flat in this. Bale is similarly flat. But, the movie doesn't really give his character much to do but say "I am going to capture John Dillinger!" in various ways throughout.

I guess I was just hoping for something with a bit more depth than a flashy gangster movie.

Things I did really like were all the action scenes. There is a particularly great shoot out scene near the end of the film. It takes place at night at a lodge. Wow, this scene is great! Wonderfully choreographed. Great sound. Fantastic visuals. Definitely the highlight of the film for me.

Edited to add: I wanted to add that the digital filming of this doesn't do it any favors. It looks a bit shallow and almost fuzzy in places. Also, I think Mann used the hand-held camera a bit too much.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: LadyHathor25,

Here are 25 reviews from Metacritic:

http://metacritics.com/film/titles/publicenemies

They are all over the place - the score is 69 (mildly favorable), but two critics I tend to track with most (Manohla Dargis and Scott Foundas) love it.

I had a real big problem with the hand-held camera work. I felt like I couldn't focus on anything and it kept me out of the movie for about half of it since the shaking started immediately and didn't cool off for a long time. The performances seemed okay from what I could get out of it. I don't know why they used digital with such a gorgeous cast. I just feel like the look of it ruined it when it should have been one of the best things about it. And I really can't get past that to critique the other elements of the film.

But someone please tell me what was up with Claire from LOST? I mean really she just ran by. What gives?

A so-so review from EW.com:

Movie Review
Public Enemies (2009)

Credits
Release Date: Jul 01, 2009; Rated: R; Length: 95 Minutes; Genres: Crime, Drama; With: Christian Bale and Johnny Depp

By Lisa Schwarzbaum
Lisa Schwarzbaum is a film critic for EW

The massive financial rip-off masterminded by Bernard Madoff, an extended crime spree that harmed thousands, is proof enough that public enemies still walk among us. But Madoff the man is as dull a figure as his crimes are vivid. Not so John Dillinger, the brazen Depression-era bank robber. His fabled career busting into Midwestern banks and out of jails was brief — he was 31 years old when he was shot to death by FBI agents led by steely G-man Melvin Purvis in Chicago in 1934. But during Dillinger's reign, the outlaw designated by FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover as Public Enemy Number One played his part with aplomb, happy to fill the bill as a tommy-gun-toting folk hero for a public who saw him as a defiant celebrity suitable for down-and-out times. As filmmaker Michael Mann takes pains to emphasize in his handsome, underheated gangster drama Public Enemies, the gent may have been murderous, but he had style.

In case there's any doubt, the gangster-in-chief is played by Johnny Depp, one of the most effortlessly elegant, intriguingly self-contained American movie stars on screen today. But that mystery comes with a price. By the end of this arm's-length study, Depp's Dillinger comes across as an interesting cat, but never a knowable man — he's a pop cultural phenomenon because the movie asserts he is, not because we believe it. We don't feel the bank robber's heartbeat the way we felt the agonies of Russell Crowe's whistle-blower at the end of The Insider — 
or even grooved on the rhythms of cops Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs on Mann's stylish Miami Vice.

Dillinger the gun-waving daredevil is first seen finessing a prison break with his henchmen — one of the director's famously crisp, complex, assertive males-in-extremis transactions. Shooting in HD, Mann's frequent collaborator, cinematographer Dante Spinotti, conveys the sense that the flat location landscape signifies both limitless opportunity — and the impossibility of escape. Later, the wanted man dines, dances, and romances his lady love Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard, the French Oscar winner from La Vie en Rose, working studiously in newly acquired English) when not busy taking the (bank's) money and running. Throughout, Depp talks softly, making the most of those refined feminine features that once looked great in eyeliner as a pirate of the Caribbean, and now look swell framed by hats. He projects seriousness — and also telegraphs a hint of delight, as if Dillinger is tickled by what he's getting away with, hooked on the romance
 of outlaw stardom.

Mann, meanwhile, suggests that every character in this very masculine story is similarly beholden to individual obsessions; his upscale gangster pic is intent on making intellectual connections, sacrificing depth of character in the process. Purvis, played with a buttoned-down agent's tight jaw by Christian Bale, is obsessed with an efficient, clean pursuit of justice, and as he and his team hunt Dillinger and his accomplices, the lawman is distressed to realize that purity of purpose isn't easy to maintain in the new, modern
 Federal Bureau of Investigation. In contrast, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, played with terrific bursts of ornate, egotistical menace by Billy Crudup, is shown to be hooked on — well, on something slightly rotten and certainly ruthless, something Purvis can't quite understand and eventually can't condone.

With its measured, team-produced screenplay by Mann, Ronan Bennett, and Ann Biderman, Public Enemies makes heavy business of the notion that Hoover ushered in
 an era of ethically elastic law-enforcement procedures still recognizable today. Purvis is the existentially anxious 20th-century man caught in the middle of change he doesn't like. Dillinger represents the end of a desperate golden era when poor people cheered for robbers who gallantly called female hostages ''sister.'' But as a murderess and a jailhouse matron sing in the musical Chicago — another study of celebrity criminals — ''What ever happened to class?'' Throughout his own
 heinous career, Bernard Madoff wore only gray suits. John Dillinger wouldn't have been caught dead in a costume so drab. Public Enemies re-creates clothes, but doesn't fully fashion the man who wore them. B-

***1/2 Review from Roger Ebert.

Public Enemies

/ / / June 29, 2009

Cast & Credits
John Dillinger Johnny Depp
Melvin Purvis Christian Bale
Billie Frechette Marion Cotillard
"Red" Hamilton Jason Clarke
Agent Carter Baum Rory Cochrane
J. Edgar Hoover Billy Crudup
Homer Van Meter Stephen Dorff
Charles Winstead Stephen Lang
Alvin Karpis Giovanni Ribisi
"Baby Face" Nelson Stephen Graham
Anna Sage Branka Katic

Universal presents a film directed by Michael Mann. Screenplay, Ronan Bennett, Mann and Ann Biderman, based on the book Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34, by Bryan Burrough. Running time: 140 minutes. MPAA rating: R (gangster violence, some language).

by Roger Ebert

"I rob banks," John Dillinger would sometimes say by way of introduction. It was the simple truth. That was what he did. For the 13 months between the day he escaped from prison and the night he lay dying in an alley, he robbed banks. It was his lifetime. Michael Mann's "Public Enemies" accepts that stark fact and refuses any temptation to soften it. Dillinger was not a nice man.

Here is a film that shrugs off the way we depend on myth to sentimentalize our outlaws. There is no interest here about John Dillinger's childhood, his psychology, his sexuality, his famous charm, his Robin Hood legend. He liked sex, but not as much as robbing banks. "He robbed the bankers but let the customers keep their own money." But whose money was in the banks? He kids around with reporters and lawmen, but that was business. He doesn't kid around with the members of his gang. He might have made a very good military leader.

Johnny Depp and Michael Mann show us that we didn't know all about Dillinger. We only thought we did. Here is an efficient, disciplined, bold, violent man, driven by compulsions the film wisely declines to explain. His gang members loved the money they were making. Dillinger loved planning the next job. He had no exit strategy or retirement plans.

Dillinger saw a woman he liked, Billie Frechette, played by Marion Cotillard, and courted her, after his fashion. That is, he took her out at night and bought her a fur coat, as he had seen done in the movies; he had no real adult experience before prison. They had sex, but the movie is not much interested. It is all about his vow to show up for her, to protect her. Against what? Against the danger of being his girl. He allows himself a tiny smile when he gives her the coat, and it is the only vulnerability he shows in the movie.

This is very disciplined film. You might not think it was possible to make a film about the most famous outlaw of the 1930s without clichés and "star chemistry" and a film class screenplay structure, but Mann does it. He is particular about the way he presents Dillinger and Billie. He sees him and her. Not them. They are never a couple. They are their needs. She needs to be protected, because she is so vulnerable. He needs someone to protect, in order to affirm his invincibility.

Dillinger hates the system, by which he means prisons, that hold people; banks, that hold money, and cops, who stand in his way. He probably hates the government too, but he doesn't think that big. It is him against them, and the bastards will not, can not, win. There's an extraordinary sequence, apparently based on fact, where Dillinger walks into the "Dillinger Bureau" of the Chicago Police Department and strolls around. Invincible. This is not ego. It is a spell he casts on himself.

The movie is well-researched, based on the book by Bryan Burrough. It even bothers to try to discover Dillinger's speaking style. Depp looks a lot like him. Mann shot on location in the Crown Point jail, scene of the famous jailbreak with the fake gun. He shot in the Little Bohemia Lodge in the same room Dillinger used, and Depp is costumed in clothes to match those the bank robber left behind. Mann redressed Lincoln Avenue on either side of the Biograph Theater, and laid streetcar tracks; I live a few blocks away, and walked over to marvel at the detail. I saw more than you will; unlike some directors, he doesn't indulge in beauty shots to show off the art direction. It's just there.

This Johnny Depp performance is something else. For once an actor playing a gangster does not seem to base his performance on movies he has seen. He starts cold. He plays Dillinger as a Fact. My friend Jay Robert Nash says 1930s gangsters copied their styles from the way Hollywood depicted them; screenwriters like Ben Hecht taught them how they spoke. Dillinger was a big movie fan; on the last night of his life, he went to see Clark Gable playing a man a lot like him, but he didn't learn much. No wisecracks, no lingo. Just military precision and an edge of steel.

Christian Bale plays Melvin Purvis in a similar key. He lives to fight criminals. He is a cold realist. He admires his boss, J. Edgar Hoover, but Hoover is a romantic, dreaming of an FBI of clean-cut young accountants in suits and ties who would be a credit to their mothers. After the catastrophe at Little Bohemia (the FBI let Dillinger escape but killed three civilians), Purvis said to hell with it and made J. Edgar import some lawmen from Arizona who had actually been in gunfights.

Mann is fearless with his research. If I mention the Lady in Red, Anna Sage (Branka Katic), who betrayed Dillinger outside the Biograph when the movie was over, how do you picture her? I do too. We are wrong. In real life she was wearing a white blouse and an orange skirt, and she does in the movie. John Ford once said, When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. This may be a case where he was right. Mann might have been wise to decide against the orange and white and just break down and give Anna Sage a red dress.

This is a very good film, with Depp and Bale performances of brutal clarity. I'm trying to understand why it is not quite a great film. I think it may be because it deprives me of some stubborn need for closure. His name was John Dillinger, and he robbed banks. But there had to be more to it than that, right? No, apparently not.

I was really really disappointed with this movie. I walked out shaking my head, and I rarely ever walk out of a movie feeling like that... I think this film had the makings to be a good movie, but it just missed the mark.

The story was off, it seemed very confusing, the camerawork was very shaky, especially at scenes which shouldn't have been shaky at all, and it was hard to hear what some of the actors were saying because it sounded like they were constantly mumbling, with the worst offender being Bale...

The only good part about the film, with the exception of the set decoration and costume design, was Marion Cotillard.

SPOILER ALERT

That one scene where she is getting beat around by that investigator proved to us why she is such a great actress! I would say that she kinda saved the film... now if only the film could have been like that scene! I know it's terrible to say that I liked a scene where she is being beaten around, but Ms. Cotillard gave a master-class in acting there! I would say, based on that scene alone that she should get a nomination for Best Supporting Actress, BUT... the only thing that will be dragging her down will be how terrible the film is...

It really was a disappointing film. I didn't even like Johnny Depp...

Bottom Line: DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS FILM! It's not worth it... I mean unless you want to see that one money-scene with Cotillard, but everything else about the film just isn't worth it...

Grade: C/C- (Cotillard saved it from going much lower...)

quote:

Originally posted by puxzkkx:
I thought Billy Crudup looked awesome in the trailer, but the film on the whole seemed kind of boring.

Trust me, there was absolutely nothing special about his performance in this film...

Well, it's really a matter of taste. The great things in the film were the costumes, the art direction, the sound and the sound editing, the score, and I was impressed with Depp and Cotillard. Also it was nice to see so many actors in this film that, I havent seen in a while. Imagine Leelee Sobieski in a film that didnt completely "stink", for example.

For a Michael Mann film, I thought it had some great moments. And, I generally feel ill during hand-held camera scenes, and this one didnt do that to me.

quote:

Trust me, there was absolutely nothing special about his performance in this film...

I won't see this for months, but scanning the reviews at Metacritics I noticed several made special mention about how strong Crudup's performance was, enough to make me wonder if he might be a supp actor nominee contender.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: seanflynn,

I guess that's possible; he certainly nailed that J Edgar Hoover personna; but I doubt any nominations are forthcoming. Imo he was overshadowed by several of the other supporting cast. And Depp is usually very good, and he was good here too.

He's such a versatile actor - anyone who can pull off both J. Edgar Hoover and the Stage Manager in Stage Beauty (their both being cross-dressers doesn't count) is a major talent, and he is playing a real-life character, which never hurts.

quote:

Originally posted by seanflynn:

quote:

Trust me, there was absolutely nothing special about his performance in this film...

I won't see this for months, but scanning the reviews at Metacritics I noticed several made special mention about how strong Crudup's performance was, enough to make me wonder if he might be a supp actor nominee contender.

He was overshadowed and barely had any scenes... maybe 2 or 3 really... In my opinion, he was kind of annoying... His performance is no where near anything special to garner him a nomination for Supporting Actor...