James Gray Tagged Articles at Cinematical

(We're reposting our Two Lovers review from the Cannes Film Festival to coincide with the film's theatrical and VOD release.)

By: Kim Voynar

It's so exciting -- literally exciting; pulse-quickening -- to watch a monumental new talent emerge and begin to edge toward what will eventually be his rightful place among the filmmaking greats. After watching his fourth film, Two Lovers (which opens this weekend and which I'll just comment on obliquely here) I'm ready to call it: James Gray is the next... well, the next something. I'm tempted to say Scorcese, which seems absurdly hyperbolic, but I'm kind of serious. He's that good: that ambitious, that interesting, that attuned to the details of human behavior. Watch this guy. He's gonna be important.

Almost no one saw The Yards (though you should), even I haven't seen his debut feature Little Odessa, and Two Lovers hasn't seen release yet, so I'll talk about We Own the Night: plot-wise a fairly ordinary cops-and-mobsters drama, but one that's pitched at the emotional wavelength of an epic Greek tragedy and as finely observed as any work of arthouse "naturalism" you can think of (Chop Shop? Flight of the Red Balloon?). Scene after scene, the film teeters on the edge of becoming corny and laughable, but it never quite tips over. Part of it is Gray's total conviction, completely committed to an almost absurdly grandiose screenplay. Even more important is how real the movie feels, how almost tactile: 1988 Brooklyn comes alive in front of you; the club scenes seem populated with hundreds of real human beings, not just extras; there's an important scene in a cavernous church that just deposits you in that church in an extraordinary way I can't quite articulate. It's the attention to detail, the rich sound design, the sense of geography and space -- in other words, skilled filmmaking. And then there's that justly renowned car chase in the pouring rain. Wowza.

It's been a while since word hit earlier this year that Brad Pitt had picked up the rights to David Grann's upcoming book called The Lost City of Z. But after months of silence, the ball is rolling once again. Variety reports that Paramount has tapped James Gray (We Own the Night) to adapt Grann's work and then helm it with Pitt definitely taking the starring role as British explorer Percy Fawcett.

Lost City follows the true story of Fawcett, a man who "left Victorian society" in the '20s to explore the Amazon, obsessed with the legendary, advanced city Z. He made his way into the jungle with his son in search of this legend, and disappeared. Over the years, even Grann himself have tried to retrace Fawcett's steps. There are a number of rumors and possibilities, but as with any expedition many years later -- none have been verified.

There's no word on whether this will stay back in time, or merge Fawcett's quest with Grann's later discoveries. But either way, Fawcett is an icon who not only inspired Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, but is also rumored to be the inspiration for Indiana Jones. That Crystal Skull was a fiasco, so maybe it's time to hand the reigns over to the original explorer and get a whole new taste of archaeology.

In James Gray's Two Lovers, Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix) is torn between two women, each of whom is right for him, and wrong for him, in different ways. When we meet Leonard, he's jumping into the river in a suicide attempt; he changes his mind at the last minute, struggling to the surface and gasping for air.

It's a scene that tells us much of what we need to know about Leonard: This is a man torn between the desire to end the pain in his life, and the equally strong desire to fight against it. Leonard, we come to learn, was engaged to be married, but when he and his fiancee both tested positive for the gene that carries Tay-Sachs syndrome, her family called off the engagement and she disappeared. Leonard's mother, Ruth (Isabella Rossellini), hovers protectively over her only child, trying to help him move on, while at the same time clinging to him with a fierceness that may not be in his best interest.

James Gray's The Yards (2000) opened in the U.S. to fairly mixed reviews, many politely recommending it and many politely panning it. Nobody got too excited about it either way, and neither did audiences. According to boxofficemojo.com, it grossed less than $1 million on a $24 million budget. But Europe was a different story. European film critics generally are geared more toward artistry and personal expression than they are stories and subject matter, and I often agree with their assessments, but for some reason they really latched onto The Yards. I caught up with the film later, when Miramax released a special edition DVD in 2006, and I found myself agreeing with my American colleagues. It has a kind of nostalgia for the 1970s, with James Caan, Ellen Burstyn and Faye Dunaway in rich supporting roles, and so perhaps it gives the illusion of grit and risk. But the leads Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron placed it squarely in the present when risk is better in theory than in practice.

Seven years later, Gray has returned with his third film (his first was 1994's Little Odessa), and I've slowly begun to understand Gray's brand of low-key skill. Certainly the premise, about two opposing brothers, one in law enforcement and the other hovering near the underworld, has been around for some time, and could have been told in any early D.W. Griffith or Raoul Walsh silent picture. John Woo made a masterpiece from the idea with his A Better Tomorrow (1986). And Clark Gable and William Powell played out the idea -- as best friends instead of brothers -- in Manhattan Melodrama (1934). But Gray takes the tale, shakes it out and makes it compelling once more.

Since his 1994 debut, Little Odessa, filmmaker James Gray has been sparse with output. It took six years for him to deliver his follow-up, The Yards, and another seven years to give us We Own the Night, which premiered earlier this year at Cannes and opens in theaters on October 12. However, there won't be such a long wait for Gray's fourth film; titled Two Lovers, the film begins shooting in November with Gray regular Joaquin Phoenix and possibly Gwyneth Paltrow, who is in final negotiations. Two Lovers marks a third collaboration with Phoenix, who starred in both The Yards and We Own the Night. If there's a part somewhere for Mark Wahlberg, it could be a perfect reunion. Our own James Rocchi reviewed We Own the Night at Cannes, highlighting the performances of Phoenix and Wahlberg, who also co-starred in The Yards.

According to Variety, Two Lovers will star Phoenix as a Brooklyn man torn between two women. There's the family friend who his parents are trying to set him up with, and then there's the beautiful new neighbor who he prefers and with whom he falls in love. I'm going to go ahead and guess that Paltrow is being cast as the neighbor. The script is by Gray and Ric Menello, who wrote the Run-DMC vehicle Tougher Than Leather and who received a 'Thanks' credit for The Yards. It will be produced by Oscar-winner Donna Gigliotti (Shakespeare in Love) and Anthony Katagas (We Own the Night), while being overseen by 2929 Production's Todd Wagner, Mark Cuban and Marc Butan. If all goes well, Gray could have only a year between his third and fourth films -- we would have settled for anything fewer than five -- which will very good for his career if We Own the Night performs a lot better than his prior work.

A few months back Monika brought you some info on an international trailer for James Gray's crime thriller We Own the Night -- but now we've got a brand-new domestic trailer to check out ... and I'd say the flick looks pretty solid! (Maybe not all that startlingly original, but certainly something worth seeing.) Click here to check out the trailer at IGN Movies, and then take a second to wonder if Mark Wahlberg really likes playing a cop. (I'd say he does.)

Based on what I saw in the promotional clip, We Own the Night is about two brothers: one a decent cop (Wahlberg) and the other a nightclub owner (Joaquin Phoenix) who (unwisely) gets involved with some big-time Russian drug dealers. Cue conflict. Also on board are (the fantastic) Robert Duvall as the patriarch and (the rather attractive) Eva Mendes as the worried girlfriend.

You may remember James Gray from The Yards and Little Odessa, both of which are definitely worth a rental some night. The film played the Cannes Film Festival a few months back, prompting Variety's Todd McCarthy to write the following: "Adequately acted and flecked with the required quota of action to satisfy genre fans, pic recalls numerous good police dramas of the 1970s, but mostly in superficial ways that bring nothing new to the table." Our own James Rocchi had this to say: "May feel curiously at odds with itself, but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad movie; if Gray's movie excels at one thing, it's how it takes the title phrase and makes a boast into something like a curse."

Sony looks poised to release Night on October 12.

I brought you news yesterday that Martin Scorsese will be teaching a Masterclass, presenting an award, and unveiling a new film preservation foundation at the upcoming Cannes festival. Today brings more confirmation that this is going to be a pretty amazing year for Cannes, which kicks off on May 16th. Guest of honor Scorsese will also be putting his Rolling Stones documentary up for sale, and more rocking will be heard at the screening of Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington's 3D U2 documentary U2 3D. New Line will be premiering scenes from the highly anticipated The Golden Compass with Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman. James Gray's We Own the Night with Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix, (who also co-starred in Gray's last film - The Yards), will premiere. And there will also be a screening of No Country for Old Men, which is written and directed by the Coen Brothers and therefore moves it to the tippity-top of my "must-see" list.

Ocean's Thirteen and Tarantino's Death Proof had already been announced for the fest, and Robert Rodriguez may do a special midnight screening of Planet Terror. The rest of the lineup is still unconfirmed, as the Cannes team still has many films to watch, but insiders are reporting that strong contenders include: Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park, Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream starring Ewan McGregor and Colin Farell, Todd Haynes' Bob Dylan project I'm Not There, Michael Winterbottom's Angelina Jolie film A Mighty Heart, City Of Men - a sequel to the mindblowingly excellent City of God from a different director - Paulo Morelli, Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely (with a cast that includes Werner Herzog and David Blaine!), Michael Moore's health care documentary Sicko - which Moore is racing to finish in time, and Julian Schnabel's Diving Bell and Butterfly. It is rumored that David Fincher's very cool Zodiac will be the closing-night film. Of course Cannes can't only be about American films and there are a lot of exciting foreign contenders as well, including the new movie from celebrated Chinese director Wong Kar-Wai: My Blueberry Nights, which has a phenomenal cast. So, ah -- anybody got an extra Cannes ticket? Maybe I'll try Craigslist.

Between writing for sitcoms, co-creating Who Wants to be a Millionaire and penning the screenplays for Dirty Pretty Things and David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, British writer Steven Knight also found time to write some novels. He even adapted one of them, Alphabet City, for the screen, though nothing originally came of his early draft. Now, though, Universal has hired gangland specialist James Gray (just off We Own the Night) to rewrite and direct the movie, which is already slated to go into production next spring.

Alphabet City is long out of print, so it's hard to find a reliable summary of its plot. What everyone does agree on is that it's set (shockingly) in the part of New York's Lower East Side known as Alphabet City (it's so far east that the avenues go below First, so they're given letter names, instead), and centers on a journalist who investigates gangs and drugs use there. According to Variety, the journalist goes undercover to get a look at what's really happening in the area. What's weird, though, is that a web search for the book's title brings up descriptions that suggest the journalist is either making things up, or finds the events he's writing about in his (fictional?) book coming true. So, it's either going to be a gritty story about New York City, or a movie about a writer who gets caught in a big lie and has to face the consequences.

I don't suppose any of you guys have read the book and can shed some light on the plot?

Joaquin Phoenix looks set to follow up his critically-acclaimed work in Walk the Line by reuniting with his The Yards director, James Gray. The two will collaborate on We Own the Night, a thriller set during in the 1980s struggle between Russian organized crime and the NYPD. The story, which Gray also wrote, will focus on a night-club manager (played by Phoenix) who struggles to save his cops brother and father, both of whom are being targeted by gang hitmen. (It sounds exciting, but why is a nightclub manager trying to save cops? Can't, I don't know, other cops help them out?) Also in the cast are Robert Duvall (hopefully playing the dad) and Eva Mendes whose role is undefined, though she'll surely spend some time wandering around looking hot.

Interestingly, this movie marks a return of sorts for Gray to the subject matter of his first film (Little Odessa), which was also a crime story involving New York's Russian immigrant community. Though We Own the Night will be only his third film, Gray - who also writes all of his projects - has shown in the past that he's very good with small, emotionally intense stories. He also tends to get very strong performances from his actors, all of which make this latest effort sound awfully promising.