REEL ACTION Tomorrowland
Anthony Kelley makes his film debut in The Gambler
actor to take small parts and work their way up to stardom, others jump right in. Plucked from obscurity for a big role in the Rupert Wyatt directed film, Anthony Kelley makes his feature debut in The Gambler. Picked from an open casting call to co-star alongside Mark Wahlberg, Michael Kenneth Williams and Jessica Lange in the crime thriller, Kelley, who claims to be “camera shy,” has experienced fame in a breathtaking fashion.
Michael by my side coaching me through the process was a big help.” An L.A.-based story written by William Monahan, the screenwriter for Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, The Gambler aptly portrays the seedy world of gambling. The dark crime drama follows Wahlberg’s character, Jim Bennett, a nihilistic English professor and a high-stakes gambler who offers his own life as collateral when he borrows money from a dangerous gangster (Michael Kenneth Williams). With seven days till the debt is due, Jim creates a plan to absolve himself of his debt, and reaches out to his star athlete student Lamar (Anthony Kelley) to help. “A lot of people deal with addictions, and I think people are going to understand and relate to this movie,” adds Kelley who is working on perfect-
“It’s a dream come true,” says the 22-year-old Los Angeles native who answered a local casting call seeking real basketball players to star in the film. Kelley, who has been playing basketball since he was three years old, says he was convinced by an uncle to audition for the role of Lamar Allen, a basketball player who becomes entangled with a gambler. “My uncle called me about the open casting call they were having in Watts, as they were looking for real basketball players. I have been pursuing basketball my whole life and I was at a crossroads. At first I didn’t want to do it, but I ended up going down there and got the part.” Working alongside Wahlberg and Williams, Kelley got his crash course in acting on The Gambler, which is adapted from a 1974 film of the same name. “Acting is new to me and the most difficult thing was trying to portray the right emotion and learning how not to use my hands a lot,” says Kelley. “The emotion part was the hardest part, but having Mark and
ing his acting craft and has placed basketball on the back burner to focus on his acting career. “Michael sent me a list of different acting classes and acting coaches which I am going to look into as I am in love with acting and love portraying another character.” One of the greatest concerns of any actor is the possibility of being typecast as a certain character. At 6 feet 4 with an athletic build, Kelley could easily be typecast, but it’s something the charismatic actor clearly isn’t worried about. “I have a movie about a penitentiary in Louisiana and have been getting roles that are veered away from basketball and athletic stuff. They have been real acting and gritty movies and it’s going to really stretch me to a different dynamic that I have never done before as far as acting and take me out of my comfort zone.” The Gambler is rated R for language throughout and for some sexuality/nudity; and is available on Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD and VOD and features over an hour of bonus content, including an extensive look at the filmmaking process.
By Samantha Ofole-Prince
While it’s more common for an
together. Whedon juggles the characters so that they all get ample screen time. That’s no mere feat with all those superheroes in the same movie. A word of warning: IMAX and 3D are just revenue makers for the studio. 3D should be treated like fine silverware and brought out on special occasions, and not every time there’s a summer blockbuster like this one. Be pennywise and see the movie in the afternoon and in 2D, unless you’re “stupid rich.” You’ll thank me later.
Tomorrowland
By Samantha Ofole-Prince
W
hat if all the smartest people in the world got together and created something? What if you knew when you were going to die? These are some of the questions Tomorrowland poses, but sitting through the nearly two hour running time, the one question I had was; What if I could go back in time? Would I spare myself the increasingly tedious ordeal of having to sit through this film? It’s not that Tomorrowland is a terrible movie, but films about traveling to the future and saving the present are plentiful and this one, with its convoluted plot, offers nor delivers anything new. As the story goes, the genius French structural engineer Gustave Eiffel, who designed and built the famous Eiffel Tower, built himself a private room where he could conduct meteorological observations and perform scientific experiments. Legend has it that he gathered three of his smartest peers – the American Thomas Edison, Frenchman Jules Verne and Serbian Nikola Tesla to discuss the future and they hatched a plan to build a city of the future that couldn’t be controlled by government or corporate interests. It’s a future world called Tomorrowland. Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) stumbles across when she discovers a strange pin secretly handed to her by an
android called Athena (Raffey Cassidy). When the pin is pressed, it reveals a glimpse of the futuristic city and Casey will do anything to get there. Introduced to Frank (George Clooney), a cranky inventor who is monitoring transmissions from the futuristic city, they discover that an unscrupulous bad guy who runs the city (played by Hugh Laurie) is planning to destroy Earth. With several bad robots armed with colorful zappers on their tail; Casey, Athena and Frank join forces and traipse to the inside the Eiffel Tower to track the signal to Tomorrowland and save the present world from future destruction. Produced and directed by Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol), Tomorrowland is an exceedingly slow boil. It’s a good 45 minutes before we get to see Tomorrowland. It’s also never fully explained what went wrong with this dystopia nor why Casey is the chosen one who gets the mysterious pin. Sure she’s tenacious, but is that the only merit? Adding, the message about global warming, saving the earth and human selfishness seems a tad too familiar – been down that cinematic track a few times too many. On the flip side, the young Raffey Cassidy (Athena) is a delight to watch and is the film’s performing highlight. Keegan-Michael Key and Kathryn Hahn play two odd characters who own a memorabilia emporium and rounding out the cast is Tim McGraw, who plays Casey’s Father, a NASA engineer. Visually, the film with its retrofuture look fulfills the promise of futuristic fiction. It offers strange costumes, flying cars and stunning structures. Maybe kids will find this fantasy escapist sci-fi to their liking, but I didn’t feel the lure of the future. An intricate plot weighs it down, the special effects are tepid and it simply borrows from far too many other original films.
Denver Urban Spectrum — www.denverurbanspectrum.com – June 2015
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