Caught a sneak preview of
The Cooler last night, starring William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin and Maria Bello. It was a really great flick and if you're into well-acted dramas (like many of the others that Macy and Baldwin have been in), I think you'll like it.
The Cooler is a movie all about luck. Macy plays a character named Bernie, who works for Shelly (Baldwin) at the Shangri-La casino in Las Vegas. Bernie is a "cooler-" someone who has such terrible luck that all he needs to do is walk by a casino table and he spreads that bad luck on to players. He's almost infallible. During his last week at the Shangri-La, he meets Natalie (Bello), a cocktail waitress at the casino. He falls in love. And his luck begins to change.
I won't go into any more than that, as there were lots of twists and turns that really surprised me. The plot has its moments that seemed a bit unrealistic to me (just based on the principles of extreme luck in either direction), but this is a real acting movie, where it's really all about the performances. William H. Macy is touching as a man who has let a self-fulfilling prophesy get the best of him. Macy has always been good at playing vulnerable types. He follows in that tradition here, but we also get to see him agonizing with himself over some major decisions and we get to witness, from the very start, how he falls in love.
Alec Baldwin is best in supporting roles, in my opinion. This role reminded me, at times, of his work in Glengarry Glen Ross. In the movie, his casino is one of the only ones that has not modernized to take advantage of current culture, and a team of younger people (led by Ron Livingston from Office Space, holding his own quite well against Baldwin) have been brought in to convince Shelly that he needs to renovate and stop living in the past. Shelly is faced with many internal conflicts stemming from his inability to see past the business end of things. He is truly a scary character in this movie, and also quite sad. A fantastic performance.
Maria Bello also did a very convincing job. I haven't seen her in anything else. She is much younger than William H. Macy, and at first, it's a little jarring (as it is to the characters in the movie) to see someone so beautiful with someone like Macy. However, soon there's no question about how much she loves him and what she will do to be with him.
The movie has its humor, and there are a few nude scenes with Bello (yay!) and Macy (boo!). I read that the movie actually had to do some re-editing to duck an NC-17 rating. I saw the scene where presumably they were threatened with the rating, and as always, it really wasn't a big deal at all.
The movie doesn't hit NY and LA officially until November 26th, and won't be in all theaters until December 19th, so most likely this post will get lost in the shuffle. Just keep it in mind if you're looking for a drama (with sprinkles of comedy) that features some excellent acting.
Here's the
Official Website for more info and trailers and such.
I saw this movie after a one-hour Q&A with Maria Bello. Most of my thoughts on the Q&A aren't really about the movie, but they're in
my journal if you'd like to read them.
