You'd Be Surprised What an Old Man Remembers

should be on coney island.

2011-03-26T19:59:00.000-07:00

It's Kind of a Funny Story (*1/2)

Focus Features

Dir: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck

Str: Keir Gilchrist, Zach Galifianakis, Emma Roberts

I get the feeling that the movies I've seen about mental patients, and there have been a few, have in no way prepared me for a stay in an institution. I highly doubt that it would be full of calm, rational people who are always waiting with an amusing "how I got in here" anecdote and some sage like advice. I'm almost certain there would be no surprisingly easy one day escapes or wacky misadventures on the recreational grounds. In fact, I imagine there wouldn't be much wackiness at all, just sad, lonely people, who would really prefer to be anywhere else. Movie audiences prefer zaniness and pathos to real illness and depression though, which has left most "mental hospital" movies, with a few exceptions, remarkably toothless. There can't be many with less bite than It's Kind of a Funny Story, the new film from the writing/directing team of Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson).

Craig (Keir Gilchrist) is a 16 year old student at a magnet school for business in New York City, and one Saturday night, after dreaming of attempting suicide, he decides to check himself into a mental institution. Once he convinces the doctor that he is clinically depressed, which is surprisingly easy, Craig is admitted. The teen ward is undergoing renovations, so Craig is put in the same ward with the adults. This is where he meets Bobby (Zach Galifianakis) a friendly, but troubled middle aged man who shows him the ropes. Bobby is due to be released soon. He's nervous about finding placement in a group home, and is trying to maintain a relationship with his young daughter. There's also a girl of about Craig's age named Noelle (Emma Roberts) on the ward. They become immediately interested in each other, probably because they are the only two people in the hospital under 30.

Over the course of the film we also learn a bit about Craig's parents (Jim Gaffigan and Lauren Graham), Craig's best friend (Thomas Mann), and Nia (Zoe Kravitz), who is Craig's best friend's girlfriend. She also happens to be the girl that Craig's been in love with for years. Most of the characters in the film are completely disposable, with the notable exception of Bobby. Galifianakis (not an easy name to type) plays Bobby with a mixture of his usual clowning, and a surprising adult sincerity. I found myself smiling whenever he walked on screen, not because he's funny (even though he is), but because when he was around at least I had someone to care about. Emma Roberts isn't bad as Noelle, but she isn't really given much to do. The film only tells us three things about Noelle- she's in a mental institution, she's a cutter, and she thinks she's funny looking. The character plays like the creation of some 4o year old housewife, who wrote the part based only on information she heard from her local news. If you bother to put much thought into it, it's actually kind of offensive.

The real problem with the film though, is Craig. Boden & Fleck hint that Craig may not really be depressed, but just kind of stressed out and wants to get out of the house for a few days. Now, far be it from me to pass judgment on somebody, but faking sad to get admitted into a mental hospital, where people have real problems, is a pretty crappy thing to do, and I found myself really, really disliking Craig. Especially when you place him next to Bobby, who's pain is so sincere. It doesn't help that Keir Gilchrist is not a very good actor. His performance is wooden, and he spends a large part of the film providing some of the dullest voiceover narration in recent memory.

Boden & Fleck are fine filmmakers, Half Nelson and Sugar are both very good, but It's Kind of a Funny Story is a swing and a miss. If they were going for dark comedy than the film is neither dark enough or funny enough, if they were going for some sort of coming of age tale than the central character is neither interesting or likable enough. There are also some moments of extreme predictability in the film. For instance, Craig's roommate is introduced as a man who "hasn't left his room in weeks", now if you can't tell me what is going to happen with that character by the end of the film, than you have never seen a movie before and might actually enjoy It's Kind of a Funny Story.

noises in night vision.

2011-03-24T19:55:00.000-07:00

Paranormal Activity 2 (*)

Paramount

Dir: Tod Williams

Str: Sprague Graydon, Molly Ephraim, Katie Featherston

In retrospect, I can say only one good thing about 2009's Paranormal Activity, it had a really great trailer, maybe one of the best I've ever seen. The trailer was so good in fact, that it had most people scared out of their minds before they even sat down in the theater, and it's a good thing because if you didn't come to the theater already scared, Paranormal Activity had nothing to offer. I think I remember giving it some credit for ingenuity, I was probably just being nice, but I can't give the 2010 sequel any credit at all.

Like the original, Paranormal Activity 2 presents itself as real found footage, from a series of security cameras this time, and opens with the words "Paramount Pictures would like to thank the families of the deceased, and the Carlsbad police department", or something like that. In what world would the police allow a movie studio to charge admission to watch video of a murder?! The whole notion is ridiculous, but might be ignored if you didn't put it on screen, in writing at the head of the film. 5 seconds in, and I'm already annoyed.

If you will recall the first film followed the haunting of a home owned by Katie and Micah (pronounced Meeka). Most of Paranormal Activity 2 takes place around two months prior to the first film and follows the family of Kristi, Katie's sister, as they are tormented by a similar evil presence. I think the ghost,which I guess is technically a demon but who really cares, must be on a greatest hits tour because he's sticking to just the classics in this one, you know what I mean, doors closing, pots and pans rattling, and of course, that old favorite, creepy footstep noises. The man of the house, Daniel, reacts to this the exact same way every man has ever reacted in a haunted house movie, by refusing to believe it and telling everyone to shut up.

The pacing of the film is absolutely deadly. Something happens at night, everybody talks about it the next day. Something happens at night, everybody talks about it the next day. There are no real scares in the movie, but the one jump comes when something "scary" actually happens when the sun is out. It's this one exception that really proves just how predictable the rest of the film is. The psychology of the characters is also bizarre. Of course they don't leave the house 30 minutes into the film like any sane person would, but that's to be expected. What really sends this film into truly rare levels of stupidity is the climax, which features a character making perhaps the most drastic, brash decision I've ever seen made by anyone in a movie, ever.

I have one more piece of evidence to present in an attempt to prove just how dull Paranormal Activity 2 is. When I was looking for still images to put at the head of my review, the one above is the best one I could find (which should already tell you something), but I couldn't remember seeing it in the movie. After some searching I realized what I should have known all along. I couldn't remember this image, this image that on it's own is probably more menacing than anything else in Paranormal Activity 2, because it's not from the movie. It's from the trailer.

contraband. (netflix instant pick of the week)

2011-03-23T18:18:00.000-07:00

No One Knows About Persian Cats (***1/2)

IFC Films

Dir: Bahman Ghobadi

Str: Negar Shaghaghi, Ashkan Koshanejad, Hamed Behdad

The need to create is fundamental. From music, to carpentry, to conversational lying, at some point, everybody feels the need to make something out of nothing. To take ideas and emotions that can't be seen, and to turn them in to something tangible. It's a rush. When someone can't get enough of this rush, we call them an artist. In many places, though not nearly enough, artists are revered and respected, or at the very least tolerated, and can share their creativity whenever and, to a certain extent, wherever they want (maybe even when they shouldn't). In Iran, on the other hand, one must have a permit. Bahman Ghobadi's film No One Knows About Persian Cats serves as a walking tour through the underground music scene of Tehran, which is full of people who have been cursed with the need to create in a place where creativity can land you in jail.

The film, which is fictional, though it does feature a cast full of real Iranian musicians playing themselves and leading what must be very close to their real lives, follows two indie rock musicians, Negar and Ashkan (collectively Take It Easy Hospital) as they attempt to fill out their lineup, get a permit to play a show, and acquire passports and visas so they can get to the UK, where they have a gig. They acquire the help of a local DVD bootlegger, Nader (Hamed Behdad, the film's only professional actor), and the three of them spend the rest of the film sneaking through hallways, shoddily soundproofed basements, and secret recording studios looking for any help they can get. Nothing comes easy for a musician in Iran. We are introduced to one band who waits all day for their neighbors to leave their apartments so they can practice for 10 minutes.

No One Knows About Persian Cats was filmed entirely in Iran and entirely without permits, not to mention that everything they were filming was also illegal, so the film has a wonderful, natural rebelliousness that you couldn't fake if you tried, and plenty of films have. The performance by Bahdad is joyously manic, and the real musicians seemed very natural on camera as well. It's not as easy to play yourself as some might believe. Ghobadi shoots the film with an interesting mixture of documentary realism, and stylish cinematography that gives the film a definite intimacy without ever reining himself in.

I did have one problem with Ghobadi's direction though and it is this, whenever a new band was introduced, and there must be at least a dozen (from heavy metal to jazz to hip hop), the director gave them each a brief sort of music video, usually quick cutting between the band and images from the streets of Iran. I suspect that Ghobadi wanted to create a sense of the world that inspired each band's music, but it doesn't really work and it only serves to pull the audience out of the narrative for a minute or two. If he wanted to give each band a time to shine, it probably would have been more effective and interesting to simply point the camera at the musicians, and let them play.

Aside from these moments, I was absolutely fascinated by No One Knows About Persian Cats. It's always an interesting experience to be pulled into a world you didn't even know existed. The film is frustrating and inspiring in equal turn. Frustrating to watch people have to work so hard for something that should come so easily, I should point out that most of the bands are really quite good, but inspiring in that, none of the musicians ever even mention quitting. It's like the though of giving up never even enters their mind.

the maddening crowd.

2011-03-22T20:27:00.000-07:00

Tamara Drewe (***1/2)

Sony Pictures Classics

Dir: Stephen Frears

Str: Gemma Arterton, Luke Evans, Dominic Cooper

When I read that Tamara Drewe was a film based on a comic strip, I cringed. Maybe because I've never read a comic strip that seemed suitable for further exploration. I've never really wondered what else might be going on with The Lockhorns, or how an actor might interpret the character of Funky Winkerbean. Maybe it was because the only film I could think of based on a comic strip is Garfield. When I saw that it was directed by Stephen Frears (High Fidelity, The Queen), and the comic strip itself was based on Thomas Hardy's Far From the Maddening Crowd, I decided to give it a shot. I'm glad I did. Tamara Drewe is an intelligent, well acted, well executed British ensemble romantic comedy. Maybe I should get to work on that Beetle Bailey script after all.

Gemma Arterton stars as the titular character, an attractive young journalist who has recently undergone a rather drastic bit of rhinoplasty. When Tamara, and her new nose, heads back to her hometown in the British countryside she awakens a series of long dormant passions that upsets the lives of all those around her. Her nearest neighbors are the residents of a nearby writers' retreat run by hard working Beth (Tamsin Greig), who splits her time evenly between running the retreat and looking after her sleazebag husband Nicholas (Roger Allam), who is also a successful pulp novelist. Tamara had a crush on Nicholas as a teenager, but now it seems to be the other way around. The other man in teenage Tamara's life was Andy (Luke Evans), who is now the gardener at the writers' retreat. The most prominent guest at the retreat is the awkward and sincere Glen (Bill Camp), who is working on a biography of, none other than, Thomas Hardy.

The film takes place over the course of a year, during which time Tamara enters into a relationship with pampered rock star Ben (Dominic Cooper), who is also the object of affection for two, very bored, local teens Jody (Jessica Barden) and Casey (Charlotte Christie). The performances by Barden and Christie are two of the more effective in the film, although the entire cast is solid. The two of them do a great job of being rambunctious, without being annoying, which is not always the case for young actors. I was also very impressed by the performance of Bill Camp, who I don't remember seeing in anything else, as Glen. When actors, even good actors, need their character to come across as likable they can quite often fall back on manipulative "nice guy" acting tricks, but Camp's character here is totally sympathetic, while remaining completely genuine at the same time.

Tamara Drewe reminded me, in some ways, of the works of the great Robert Altman. Frears handles a large, although not Altman-sized, cast very well, keeping all the plotlines fresh in our mind, and giving each of his actors a time to shine. I also get the impression that many directors would have taken this film in a much sillier direction, something that Frears wisely avoids. The film's only really noticeable flaw would be the pacing of the first 30 minutes. It does take a little while to hit it's stride, and there is definitely some stuff that could have been trimmed from the early parts of the film.

Tamara Drewe is a film of small pleasures. For example, early in the film it becomes quite apparent that two characters are falling in love, and instead of giving us scenes of obvious flirtations and longing stares, Frears holds back, and simply allows their story to unfold. Tamara Drewe is not any kind of masterpiece, but it is a very enjoyable piece full of well drawn characters and fine performances, helmed by a director who knows when enough is enough.

dinner parties and swimming lessons.

2011-03-21T19:30:00.000-07:00

Jack Goes Boating (**1/2)

Overture/Relativity Media

Dir: Philip Seymour Hoffman

Str: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Ryan, John Ortiz

Human beings are quite possibly at their best when they are falling in love. You will never meet someone more giving, more positive, or more open to suggestion than someone full of the certainty that is new love. It's easy to be noble and good when the world has been so good to you. On the other hand, when life takes away that certainty, it replaces it with fear, self loathing, and anger. Human beings are quite possibly at their worst when they have lost a love they were once so sure of. Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut Jack Goes Boating examines this duality through the relationships of two middle aged couples in New York, one relationship just beginning, the other at an end.

Jack (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a limo driver. His best friend is Clyde (John Ortiz), also a limo driver. Clyde is married to Lucy (Daphne Rubin-Vega) who works at a mortuary with Connie (Amy Ryan). Jack and Connie are both affable, quirky loners, and since people love to watch affable, quirky loners get together the two of them naturally hit it off when they are introduced by Clyde and Lucy. On the other hand, Clyde and Lucy are in a relationship that has pretty clearly been dead for quite some time, though she seems to be the only one willing to admit it.

Hoffman's performance as Jack is a bit obvious. He relies pretty heavily on standard awkward guy shtick - he clears his throat often, mumbles, stutters, looks at his shoes. One has to wonder if the added pressure of directing weighed on the usually solid actor. On the other hand, Ryan is outstanding as Connie. She plays her as the sort of sweet, fragile personality, who can so often be a magnet for trouble and abuse, but manages to, somehow, keep an open mind and an open heart. Connie is the kind of person that it is hard work to be friends with, but is always worth the effort in the long run. John Ortiz delivers a performance on par with Ryan as the put upon Clyde. He is endlessly loyal to the people he loves, admirably so to his friend Jack, pathetically so to his unfaithful wife, even when he turns to self medicating, as he consistently does.

The characters of Connie and Clyde are both interesting and well developed, but unfortunately the film doesn't manage to look as closely at their partners, Jack and Lucy, in the film's brief 91 minute running time. It's hard to feel involved in their relationships when the film itself only seems really interested in half of each couple. There is no history given to Jack, we have no idea how he got to be so lonely and awkward. So little attention is paid to the character of Lucy that she is left looking downright monstrous next to Clyde, and I really don't believe that was Hoffman's intention.

The film is based on a play by actor Robert Glaudini, and in adapting it to the screen it is clear that there was a definite attempt to keep the film from feeling "stagey", something that can happen quite often to plays sent to the big screen. This may have been a mistake, albeit an understandable one, as a few more extended scenes may have given us more of a feeling of living with these characters, and maybe shined some more light on the forgotten characters. Much of the blame falls on first time director Philip Seymour Hoffman who, although I did get some sense of visual style, relies too heavily on musical montage and clearly has someway to go as a storyteller.

I was reminded at times during Jack Goes Boating of one of last year's best films, Blue Valentine. That was a film focused on many of the same ideas as Jack Goes Boating, but solved the problem of spreading itself too thin by focusing on just one couple at the beginning and end of their relationship. Jack Goes Boating isn't even in the same league as that film, but it does feature some nice performances and a few touching moments, though it never really gels as a whole.

support your local sheriff.

2011-03-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

Rango (****)

Paramount

Dir: Gore Verbinski

Str: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin

Rango is the first must see wide release of 2011, and I will be very surprised if there is a better animated film all year. Director Gore Verbinski (The Ring, the first 3 POTC movies) and writer Josh Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator) have created a true cinematic rarity: a big budget, big studio, family film that isn't concerned with being for everybody. The story is detailed and multi-layered, the film's cinematic IQ is very high (if more than three people in your theater get the Once Upon a Time in The West reference, you are in a very cool theater), and the talking animals that populate the world of the film, who in any other film would be all cute and cuddly, are ugly, dirty, and generally unpleasant. Rango works as a comedy, a western, and an animated lark. For every person who comes out of the theater loving it, there will be two who leave totally lost and annoyed, but this should be expected. Modern movie audiences like to be coddled, and Rango is too cool to coddle anyone.

I hope I haven't given the impression that Rango is some sort of think piece, it's not, but it's smarter than any movie about a talking chameleon in a Hawaiian shirt has any right to be. Said chameleon is voiced by Johnny Depp, and finds himself thrown from his former home in the family aquarium, to the burning sand of the Mojave Desert. He soon stumbles into the aptly named town of Dirt, where, after some hilarious scenes of braggadocio, he is made the new sheriff, and is expected to solve the town's water crisis and deal with any snakes or birds of prey who might come along.

The town of Dirt is populated almost entirely by rodents and reptiles who all look about as beat up and discarded as any animated characters you will ever see. There's Beans (Isla Fisher), a high strung salamander who's in danger of losing her farm, Priscilla (Abigail Breslin), a young cactus mouse who's looking to "gut shoot" someone, and a host of other townsfolk who skillfully walk the line between Western cliche, and inspired absurdity. The film gets, not one, but two proper villains in the town's evil mayor, a tortoise voiced by Ned Beatty, and Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy), an outlaw brought into town by the mayor to put an end to Rango.

This is the first animated film from George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic, and I really hope it will not be their last. Visually the film contains both a wonderful sense of grandeur, and an exhaustive attention to detail. On a purely aesthetic level it is at least equal to anything Pixar has done, and at times may be more interesting than any computer animation ever done by anyone, anywhere. Rango is directed by Gore Verbinski, who has been hit and miss (mostly miss) in his career thus far, but probably gets better work from his cast here than in any of his previous films, albeit strictly vocal.

Screenwriter Josh Logan's script borrows heavily from 1974's Chinatown (there are not many better places to borrow from), and manages to have a sharp edge without ever losing the silliness that animation allows you. The film is also surprising in that unlike any big family film in recent memory, Rango is never afraid to go very, very weird. The film has a slightly longer running time (107 minutes), than most animated features, but I felt like I could have watched it all day. Rango is the most fun I've had watching a movie in quite some time, and a definite highlight of the recent boom in great animation.

Conviction (***)

2011-03-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

Conviction (***)

Fox Searchlight

Dir: Tony Goldwyn

Str: Hilary Swank, Sam Rockwell, Melissa Leo

In 1983 Kenneth Waters (Sam Rockwell) was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the brutal murder of a woman named Katharina Brow in Ayer, Massachusetts. At the time of his conviction, his sister Betty Anne (Hilary Swank) didn't even have her high school diploma, but made it her mission to get to and through law school, and have her brother's conviction overturned. The film is based on a true story so, I don't really feel it necessary to hide the fact that she succeeds in freeing Kenneth. Not because you've probably already heard the true story, but because, if you know anything about the movies, you know they generally don't make movies about real women fighting their way through the academic and legal systems for 20 years, only to fail and send you home depressed.

The film begins with some rather brief backstory to get us acquainted with the Waters siblings. They grew up under a neglectful mother before being split up and put into separate foster homes, which, in many ways, probably only made them closer. They remained inseparable into their adult years, each of them starting families at a young age, until that fateful day when Kenneth is arrested for murder, picked up at his grandpa's funeral no less.

The cop who arrests Kenneth is a hard woman named Nancy Taylor (Melissa Leo), who seems to have it out for him from the get go. Leo's Nancy Taylor could quite possibly be the sister of her angry, vindictive Alice Ward character from The Fighter. Taylor is assisted in sending Waters up the river by testimony from Kenny's white trash ex-girlfriend (Juliette Lewis), and his baby mama (Clea DuVall).

The early years of Betty Anne's struggle are moved through very quickly by Goldwyn, she goes from deciding to go to law school, to going to law school, to passing the bar, in a very short time. This is a missed opportunity, a woman of limited means, and with little education, pushing her way through college and law school is really enough material for a film on it's own, especially when played by someone as talented as Swank. Of course more focus on this area would have made the film somewhat longer, but I'm not sure that a bit more length wouldn't make Betty Anne's struggle seem that much more epic in scale.

Swank in many ways is a one note actress, but she plays the hell out of that one note. She specializes in outgunned, but doggedly determined outsider characters (it's no wonder she was once cast as The Karate Kid), and could quite possibly be the most intrinsically likable actor this side of Tom Hanks. Rockwell's performance is interesting in that he manages to play Kenneth Waters as charismatic, but not particularly likable. This keeps his character fresh in moments when a lesser actor might fall into cliche.

In the end, Conviction proves the "King's Speech" rule that, no matter how much of a foregone conclusion the end of a film might be, it is always enjoyable to watch a character we like over come the odds and succeed. There are some faults in the pacing and structure, but Swank and Rockwell carry Conviction past these rather smoothly and give us a very solid legal/family drama.

The Last Exorcism

2011-03-08T12:54:00.000-08:00

The Last Exorcism (*)

Professional exorcist/con man Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) heads to rural Georgia with a handheld camera and a two person crew in order to prove that exorcism is nothing more than an elaborate hoax. The exorcee (probably not a word) is a teenage girl named Nell (Ashley Bell), who lives with her probably crazy fundamentalist dad (Louis Herthrum), and her creepy brother (Caleb Landry Jones). Before I slam the movie, I would like to say that Ashley Bell is very good in the role of the possessed, a role which I’m sure is not particularly easy to play.

That being said, Patrick Fabian is grating and just plain annoying as Marcus, a character we should be relating to, and the film tries (and fails miserably) to juggle two villains - are we afraid of the devil or the scary dad? The answer I’m afraid is neither. In addition, some of the behavior of the demon is just ridiculous. This includes, but is not limited too, stealing the camera to film itself killing a cat and attempting to play “Greensleeves” on the recorder.

I would also like to point out, and I know I’m putting more thought into this than anyone who worked on the movie, that the film is presented as a documentary, entirely on a handheld camera, and yet, it has a music score. This means that somebody must have found this footage of terrible, violent, and demonic things happening, and thought - “Boy, this thing sure could use some ominous tones and loud bangs at the scary parts.”

Required Viewing: The Grapes of Wrath

2011-01-09T16:25:00.000-08:00

The Grapes of Wrath

20th Century Fox

Original Release Date: March 15th, 1940

Dir: John Ford

Str: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine

Running Time: 2 hours and 8 minutes

"I wouldn't pray just for a old man that's dead, 'cause he's all right. If I was to pray, I'd pray for folks that's alive and don't know which way to turn."

It's amazing how little time it seems has passed since the release of John Ford's film version of The Grapes of Wrath, or John Steinbeck's original novel the year prior. It's amazing how little the story seems to have aged, amazing how the struggles of the Joad clan don't seem distant in our modern age, amazing how the caravan of jalopies heading west to look for work seems like something you could be seeing in full color on one of the 24 hour news networks, and not in 20th Century Fox's glorious black & white, but in all actuality we shouldn't be so amazed at all. The Grapes of Wrath just might be the greatest American novel, John Ford just might be the greatest American director, and Henry Fonda just might be the greatest American movie star. No, maybe I shouldn't be amazed that 7o years on The Grapes of Wrath still feels like a fresh piece of passionate, personal, political, poetic filmmaking, but I am anyway.

The undertaking of putting The Grapes of Wrath on the big screen fell not only on the shoulders of John Ford, but also on those of 20th Century Fox headman Daryl F. Zanuck, and screenwriter Nunnally Johnson. Most people considered the novel too controversial, and too provocative to put on the screen in the puerile times of pre-war America, but after a trip to see the work camps described in the novel, and discovering that the conditions may have actually been even worse than those described, Zanuck decided to take a chance. However, once you got past the hurdle of getting the film funded, how on Earth would you get it past 1940s censors? The novel's famous ending would certainly have to go, as well as anything that showed policeman or a government official in a negative light. The fact that Johnson, Zanuck, and Ford managed to make these concessions, and others, while keeping the spirit of the novel in tact, is nothing short of a miracle.

The film is centered around an Oklahoma farming family, The Joads, guided for all intents and purposes by the matriarch of the family, Ma Joad (Jane Darwell). They are forced off the land they have share cropped for over 50 years by the banks, the Great Depression, and the wind, which after several bad years had turned the midwest in to a place, a Dustbowl they called it, where nothing could grow. Just before the Joads clear out, they are joined by Ma's son Tom (Henry Fonda) who just got out of jail after serving time for a homicide charge, and Casey (John Carradine) a drunken former preacher who has lost his faith.

The group is optimistic though, for they plan on heading west to California, as thousands of families did in the 1930s, certain they would be able to find work in the fields of The Golden State. After their arduous cross country trek, which is moved through rather quickly in the film, The Joads find that there are no good jobs left in California, and just as little food and shelter. So, they, along with the thousands of other farmers who have come in search of a living, gather themselves in to camps, where you try to keep you and your families alive through the meager wages you make, if your lucky enough to get work, or maybe through the kindness of your neighbor.

The major plot lines of the novel and the film versions of The Grapes of Wrath are very similar, though there are minor discrepancies, but the major difference is in the film's tone. Steinbeck's novel is a very bleak, as it should be, account of the economic conditions of the day. Ford's film, on the other hand, is a bit more uplifting, a kind of ode to the spirit and resiliency of working people. This is what keeps the film from aging. While it's true that the Dustbowl and the Depression were problems of the 1930s, there will always be hard times, and there will always be a need for assurance that we can pull through. Hope is something that Ford's film provides, that Steinbeck's novel does not, or at least not as absolutely.

The "hero" of The Grapes of Wrath is Tom Joad, played by Henry Fonda, who over the course of the film is turned into a sort of working class icon, a guy who can't catch a break, but refuses to roll over for anyone. Fonda is perfect for this role. The consummate under actor, Fonda never lunges for a big moment, instead letting the material and his sense of innate integrity, something he brought to many of his roles, do the heavy lifting. Jane Darwell won an Academy Award for her role as Ma Joad, but it's Fonda's performance that has become legend. Fonda was beaten out for the Oscar for 1940 by his lifelong friend James Stewart, and even Stewart expressed regret for winning the award, when it was Fonda who deserved the accolade.

It should also be noted that the film's stunning black & white cinematography was done by Gregg Toland, who one year later would turn cinema on it's ear forever with his work on Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, a film now considered by many to be the greatest film of all time. At the time of their release on the other hand, it was The Grapes of Wrath to which the "Greatest of All Time" title was bestowed. The weight of a film as challenging as The Grapes of Wrath would have crushed lesser Hollywood filmmakers, of that time and of today, but with men like Ford, Fonda, Zanuck, and Toland working together, not only is The Grapes of Wrath one of the great movies ever made, but required viewing for anyone who really loves film.

The 20 Best Films of 2010

2010-12-26T14:52:00.001-08:00

20. The Kids Are All Right

Dir: Lisa Chlodenko

Annette Benning and Julianne Moore carry a strong supporting cast, in a sharply written comedy/drama about a dualmommed family.

19. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Dir: Niels Arden Oplev

Pulp, but headstrong and entertaining. Features a great performance by Noomi Rapace as the titular Girl in this Swedish thriller.

18. Shutter Island

Dir: Martin Scorsese

Scorsese is the not the important filmmaker he once was, but he still knocks out an entertaining and accomplished film every couple of years. Shutter Island is no exception.

17. The Exploding Girl

Dir: Bradley Rust Gray

Maybe the best mumblecore film ever made (faint praise indeed), The Exploding Girl is a standout thanks to warm direction by Gray and a magnetic central performance by Zoe Kazan.

16. The Secret of Kells

Dir: Tomm Moore & Nora Twomey

Mystical animated tale from Irish filmmaker Tomm Moore. The entire film carries the tone of a lullaby and the animation is some of the most breathtaking in years.

15. Please Give

Dir: Nicole Holofcener

Catherine Keener stars in a smart study of how we manage to justify and ignore the horrible things we see and do everyday. Great supporting performance from 82 year old Ann Morgan Guilbert.

14. Inception

Dir: Christopher Nolan

Not quite as ingenious as it might seem on first viewing, Nolan's film still has more ideas in place than any 10 other blockbusters combined.

13. I'm Still Here

Dir: Casey Affleck

Get past the fact that I'm Still Here is a fraud, and you're left with a brilliant, bold performance by Joaquin Phoenix and one of the funniest and most audacious films of the year.

12. Splice

Dir: Vincenzo Natali

The most overlooked "big" movie of the year, Splice is a twisted smart tale of science gone wrong.

11. Chloe

Dir: Atom Egoyan

Erotic thriller from Atom Egoyan, who specializes in such. Julianne Moore is excellent, as she always is, but the real surprise here is Amanda Seyfried who gives her best performance to date in her first real adult role.

10. Kick-Ass

Dir: Matthew Vaughn

The best action movie of the year...and nobody saw it. Nicolas Cage and Chloe Mortez steal the show as a violent, father/daughter crime fighting duo in this comic book movie gone insane.

9. Winter's Bone

Dir: Debra Granik

20 year old actress Jennifer Lawrence dominates this grizzly tale of backwoods redemption. This performance will not get Jennifer Lawrence on Oscar (though she will probably be nominated), but to me this is the finest performance by an actress in 2010.

8. True Grit

Dir: Joel & Ethan Coen

A beautiful homage to the classic Western from the brothers Coen. Jeff Bridges' performance as Rooster Cogburn is far and away more enjoyable than the one that won him an Oscar last year for Crazy Heart.

7. A Prophet

Dir: Jacques Audiard

A tour de force from French director Audiard, and an all encompassing central performance by Tahar Rahim. The best prison movie since Shawshank.

6. Toy Story 3

Dir: Lee Unkrich

Tearjerker of the year award. The franchise that has grown up with it's audience gives Woody, Buzz, and the gang the send off they deserve.

5. Exit Through the Gift Shop

Banksy

Street artist Banksy's first film serves two purposes, 1. to serve as a document of the rise and spread of street art, 2. to rub the art establishment's face in their own absurdity.

4. Restrepo

Dir: Tim Hetherington & Sebastian Junger

National Geographic's cameras were giving staggering clearance in this Afghan war documentary. Will someday be seen as the ultimate document of this generation's war.

3. Fish Tank

Dir: Andrea Arnold

A biting and brutal piece of British neorealism, Andrea Arnold crafts a coming of age tale for the ages, and gets a brilliant performance from first time actor Katie Jarvis.

2. Mother

Dir: Joon-ho Bong

Joon-ho Bong (The Host, Memories of a Murder) continues to be one of the most interesting filmmakers in the world and with Mother has crafted a murder mystery bizarre enough to draw comparisons to both Alfred Hitchcok and Stanley Kubrick.

1. The Social Network

Dir: David Fincher

Not since Easy Rider has a film so fully defined it's generation. Hits on themes personal, political, and technological while still being a blast to watch. David Fincher has made his finest film.

Quick Reviews: 12/16/10

2010-12-16T11:21:00.000-08:00

Exit Through the Gift Shop (****)

A Banksy Film

The first film by street art legend Banksy is either the best documentary of the year, or the most ingenious bit of prankery ever recorded on film. It tells the story of a shopowner named Thierry Guetta (who is definitely real) who sets out to make a documentary about street art (which seems real), even befriending the illusive Banksy (who is real, but nobody knows who he is). When Banksy discovers that Guetta is not a filmmaker as much as he is some sort of bizarre interloper/doppelganger, Banksy tells Guetta that he should make his own art, and leave the documentary footage with him so he can finish the film. This is the point where the truth gets murky. Guetta gives himself a new name, Mr. Brainwash, hires a crew of artists to help him actualize his ideas (aka do all the work), and rents an old television studio to hold his first show. The results are both hilarious and tragic as Exit Through The Gift Shop ends up being an incredibly biting attack on the idea of the "art star", and a brutal assault on the art establishment in general. In the end, what's real and what's hoax doesn't matter, the results are all real, and Banksy has made one of the smartest and most subversive film debuts in a very long time.

I'm Still Here (***1/2)

Dir: Casey Affleck

Unlike Exit Through the Gift Shop, the validity of Casey Affleck's directorial debut, I'm Still Here, is not in question- it has none. The film "documents" actor Joaquin Phoenix's struggle to leave acting, and pursue a career in hip hop. Upon it's release so many people seemed to be wondering whether or not the movie is a hoax (it is), that the content of the movie was largely ignored. This is unfortunate, because I'm Still Here is a movie with a very sharp and dark sense of humor. It is also bold, audacious, disgusting, and maybe even a little bit enlightening. It also features, now that we are sure the film is an act, Phoenix's finest performance. He portrays the spoiled, self centered "artist" in a way that is both comical, and at times, legitimately frightening.

The Kids Are All Right (***1/2)

Dir: Lisa Chlodenko

Strongly written, well acted family drama about a lesbian couple (Annette Benning and Julianne Moore) who have two teenage children (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson). When the children meet the man who had donated the sperm from which they were born (one by each mom), a restaurant owner/organic farmer (Mark Ruffalo), it throws their normally loving, tight family unit on it's ear. Despite some jokes that don't really work and one very unnecessary plot turn, The Kids Are All Right is uniformly well acted, particularly by Benning and Moore, and a well rounded look in to what makes a family work.

The Tourist (*1/2)

Dir: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Angelina Jolie is the sexy lover of an international criminal, and Johnny Depp is the innocent math teacher that she pulls into the middle of a worldwide manhunt in this frivolous and dull thriller. The two stars do have good chemistry, but anytime the two of them start to gather any kind of momentum, the plot kicks back in, and we are reminded what a silly and unnecessary movie we've been watching. The Tourist is also high in the running for worst ending of any film this year.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (*)

Dir: Edgar Wright

All the snazzy graphics and video game references in the world can't disguise the fact that Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is half an hour too long for it's premise, and wastes a very talented young cast (Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Anna Kendrick to name a few). Edgar Wright is a talented director, but this film is essentially 7 cartoon fight sequences strung together by a plot so thin it couldn't have carried an episode of Saved By the Bell.

Unstoppable

2010-11-30T16:38:00.000-08:00

Unstoppable (***1/2)

20th Century Fox

Dir: Tony Scott

Str: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson

Unstoppable is a throwback to action movies of the pre-CGI era. A film about two guys down on their luck who get a chance to become heroes. They are railroad workers, one is "the new guy", one is "the veteran". They exchange some combative dialogue to start, but, hey, what do you know, maybe they aren't so different after all. It's a film where a guy gashes his foot open and duct tapes it closed without a hint of irony. It's a film so unafraid to rush headlong into cliche and hyperbole that I am really surprised that there isn't an exclamation point after the title. That being said, it's also one hell of an enjoyable movie, and will probably end up being the best action movie of this holiday season.

Denzel Washington stars as Frank Barnes a veteran railroad man who is given the task of taking a new trainee, Will Colson, played by Chris Pine (Star Trek), out on his first run. Barnes is a single dad of two daughters who are working their way through college at Hooters (oldest one in the book). Colson is recently estranged from his wife for reasons unclear at first, although we do find out that there is a restraining order involved. The two of them spend the early parts of the film winding through the railways of Southern Pennsylvania, trading expositional information and wise cracks.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the state, yardmaster Connie Hooper (Rosario Dawson) shows up to work to find that a couple of dopey employees have sent a train, a half a mile long, into oncoming traffic at full power (whoops!). Not only that, but the train is carrying 8 cars of molten phenol, which turns out to be a chemical used to make glue that is both highly explosive and highly toxic. Some words sound exactly like what they are, molten phenol are two of them.

Barnes and Colson are able to narrowly avoid the runaway train themselves, but when they find out it's on a direct path for Stanton, Pennsylvania, home to two hot daughters and one estranged wife, the boys decide to run it down.

To say that Washington carries Unstoppable would be an understatement. This is his sixth film with director Tony Scott, and in those films Washington has really settled in to the heroic, yet down to earth "every man" type of role. He has a screen presence and charm way beyond most modern "movie stars". He makes every actor that works with him so much better, and makes every movie that he appears in immediately more interesting. To say that I am a Denzel Washington fan would also be an understatement.

The supporting cast is nothing spectacular, which is not really the fault of the actors since everyone is playing a pretty stock character. Chris Pine is pretty good as "the new guy in way over his head", just like he was in Star Trek, and he could have a future as a Bruce Willis type of action star. Rosario Dawson is a good actress who has never been given the kinds of parts she deserves. Her character here is a total throw away, other than the fact that she is easily the best looking railroad yardmaster in the history of trains.

Unstoppable is formulaic without a doubt, but instead of leaning on cliches, the film barrels right through them at a quick enough pace, and with just enough style to let us know that the filmmakers weren't being lazy, they were just having fun. It's not a great movie by any means, and it won't even sniff an award, but I had a really good time watching Unstoppable, and sometimes that is more than enough.

Quick Reviews: 11/26/10

2010-11-26T19:12:00.000-08:00

Toy Story 3 (****)

Dir: Lee Unkrich

The third installment of the Toy Story franchise is exactly the kind of touching, clever comedy we've come to expect from Pixar Animation Studios, the studio responsible for Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Up just to name a few. The plot of the newest film is essentially the same as the first two, the toys (Woody, Buzz Lightyear etc.) get separated from Andy, their owner, and need to find their way back home. The wrinkle that Toy Story 3 presents that the first two Toy Stories do not, is that even if the toys do make it home, they may not be wanted anymore. Andy, as all kids do, has grown up and is now ready to go off to college, and his toys may be exiled to the attic or even worse...the trash bin. There are some new characters joining the group, including an evil purple teddy bear (voiced by Ned Beatty), and a very funny, if somewhat confusing representation of Ken (of Barbie & Ken) voiced by Michael Keaton. Toy Story 3 is not perfect, the set-up is a bit rushed and the film might rely too heavily on nostalgia and not enough on any kind of storytelling ingenuity, but it is still a completely enjoyable animated experience.

The Karate Kid (**)

Dir: Harald Zwart

This 2010 remake of the 1984 mega hit, which had already spawned three sequels (and wasn't really that good to begin with), casts Jaden Smith (son of Will) in the role of the oft picked on, new kid in town, and Jackie Chan as the wise old man who will teach him to fight back. This karate kid hasn't just moved to a new town though, he's moved all the way to China, and the film does feature some very nice location photography. The movie also benefits from the fact that Jackie Chan is becoming a much better dramatic actor he gets older (see also The Shinjuku Incident). Unfortunately, the film crumbles under the weight of too many "underdog" cliches (think multiple training montages), and an inexplicably long runtime of 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Predators (*)

Dir: Nimrod Antal

A direct sequel to 1987's Predator, I guess we're going to pretend that the 2 Alien vs. Predator movies never happened, that finds a group of soldiers and criminals, led by a ruthless mercenary (Adrien Brody?), dropped on an alien planet where they are being hunted by the unstoppable killing machines that are The Predators. Predators features all the bad things about B action movies, and almost none of the silly, escapist, fun. The dialogue is clunky, the logic is transparent, Brody is horribly miscast, and the pacing is jarringly uneven. The only bright spots in the film for me were the over the top insanity of Laurence Fishburne's 10 minute performance, and a bizarre human versus Predator sword fight that defies all description.

The Social Network

2010-10-02T11:59:00.000-07:00

The Social Network (****)

Columbia

Dir: David Fincher

Str: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake

There is a line in the great 1950 film Harvey where Jimmy Stewart's character Elwood P. Dowd espouses the virtues of being pleasant over those of being smart. Mark Zuckerberg has never seen this movie, or if he has perhaps he was only half listening as he checked his email or pined for a girl across the room that still has no idea that he even exists. This is the kind of man Mark Zuckerberg is, obsessive, and convinced of his own genius even if nobody else is, or at least that's how he's portrayed in David Fincher's brilliant new movie The Soocial Network.

In 2010 most people know Mark Zuckerberg's name, and even if they don't they certainly know what he created. Facebook, the now ubiquitous social networking site that seems to infiltrate a different aspect of our lives everyday. The feds have used it to find terrorists and spies, businesses use it to get the skinny on potential employees, Facebook, it seems, can do it all. In 2003, on the other hand, when Zuckerberg began work on what he then called "The Facebook" in his Harvard dorm, his main concerns were his girlfriend who had just dumped him, and gaining acceptance to one of the university's prestigious final clubs.

The Social Network follows Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and The Whale, Zombieland), from these humble beginnings to a pair of well furnished deposition rooms where he finds himself on the other side of lawsuits from a set of hulking, row boating twins, and a man he once called his best friend and the "co-creator" of Facebook, Eduardo Saverin.

Along the way Zuckerberg falls under the spell of a charismatic Internet mogul named Sean Parker, played to the hilt by Justin Timberlake (those SNL digital shorts, *NSYNC). Parker had already changed the way people listen to music when he invented Napster in the late 90s, and he's determined to help Zuckerberg make Facebook the next big thing. It doesn't take long for the audience to realize that Parker is actually a drugged out, paranoid, and apparently homeless wreck, but all Zuckerberg sees is a man who can get any girl he lays eyes on and is telling him everything he wants to hear.

All three leads give award worthy performances. Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg with a nebbish confidence that veils a pool of self doubt/loathing, Garfield gives Saverin a baby faced charm to mask the tragedy of his character's betrayal, and Timberlake plays Parker with the kind of reckless abandon that can only be achieved by someone who hasn't done much acting...or Nicolas Cage.

Despite the universally strong performances, the real star of The Social Network is Aaaron Sorkin's (The West Wing) remarkable screenplay. I can't remember the last time I heard this much dialogue in a mainstream film, let alone dialogue this crisp and exciting to listen to. You could sit in the theater with your eyes closed and The Social Network would still be an enjoyable experience. Sorkin's words zig when they should zag, crack a joke when they should cry, and cry when most would crack a joke.

Director David Fincher's (Se7en, Fight Club) wisest choice in The Social Network is to take a back seat to his material. As he did with his great 2007 film Zodiac, Fincher puts his signature jerky, dark style on hold and allows the film to find it's own tone instead of inserting himself where he doesn't belong. During the entire 2 hour running time of the film, there is maybe 1 shot that anybody might notice. The film is also well scored by Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor who fills the film with dark and pulsing tones that underline Sorkin's incendiary dialogue.

The Social Network does have some things to say about the nature of big business, and the Internet generation, but really this is the tale of one man, who not unlike Orson Welles' Charles Foster Kane, comes in to great wealth at an early age, and sees less value in his money than he does in the admiration and adoration of others. Unfortunately, as we have all heard, there are some things that money can't buy. It's a story as old as time told in a refreshing and entirely modern way, and it is far and away, the best film I have seen this year.

Inception

2010-07-16T19:22:00.000-07:00

Inception (***1/2)

Warner Bros.

Dir: Christopher Nolan

Str: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page

Inception will probably be the only "big" movie you see this year that is based on an original idea. In an age when every blockbuster film is based on a comic book, or a video game, or some crappy young adult novel, or, at the very least, a litany of cinematic cliches (I'm looking at you James Cameron), Inception is truly the work of an individual. That individual is Christopher Nolan, who with Inception cements his place as the finest filmmaker working in big budget pictures today. Inception is not his best film, Memento and The Dark Knight still fight for the top of that list, but it is a truly inspired and original piece of work. Even more than that it's downright miraculous that he somehow got this made, if you consider the fact that Hollywood hasn't put this kind of money in to a film this smart, or this bold, in years.

At the center of Inception is one of the more brilliant cinematic capers I have ever seen. Leonard DiCaprio stars as Cobb, a man who uses the technique of shared dreaming to enter the subconscious of another person, and steal whatever secrets or ideas he is being paid to steal. It's a process known as extraction. Cobb is also haunted, both in dreams and reality, by his recently deceased wife Mal (Marion Cotillard). We know that for one reason or another Cobb can't return home to his children, but when a wealthy Asian business man (Ken Watanabe) offers to help him get back to his family in exchange for his particular skills, Cobb jumps at the chance. The only catch, instead of stealing an idea from someone's mind, he wants Cobb to plant an idea in a competitor's subconscious, a process known as inception.

I will not go in to the details of the ideas introduced in the film (shared dreaming, extraction, inception) as I would surely only goof them up, but I do think Nolan does a fine job of firing a lot of information at his audience very quickly without ever allowing the film to become confusing, challenging certainly, but not confusing. What is explained is explained very well, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't left with some questions. How exactly does shared dreaming work on a scientific level? How do they know they're going to end up in the same dream? What exactly is that strange machine in the briefcase that seems to control the process? Why is Marion Cotillard so fly? But these are really only minor quibbles, and to be quite honest I didn't think of them at all until after the movie.

To complete his mission Cobb assembles a team to help him navigate the mind of his mark, a wealthy young heir (Cilian Murphy) who he must subconsciously convince to break up his father's company, and that team just so happens to be made up of some the best young actors in Hollywood. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is Arthur, Cobbs right hand man, Ellen Page is a college student brought in to construct the landscape of the dream (yet another facet of the film I could have no hope of explaining adequately), and Thomas Hardy shows up as Eaemes, a sort of neurological con-man.

The performances in the film are uniformly strong. Leonardo DiCaprio is quickly becoming the most reliable movie star in the business. He is one of the few actors out there who never seems to choose a project that doesn't at least have the potential to be very interesting. Page, Levitt and the others all give strong performances, but to me the best performance in the film comes from Cilian Murphy who in a lot of ways is the film's most sympathetic character. I mean, here is a man who has done absolutely nothing wrong, and yet he is having his thoughts and dreams, the very fabric of being, manipulated for reasons that have very little to do with him. Murphy's surprisingly touching performance, in what is a pretty small role, helps us to see the ideas of the film in another light.

Unfortunately, the film does have one structural flaw, that looms larger and larger as the film goes on. Cobb's relationship with the memory of his wife , at times, brings the electric momentum of the film, to a screeching, if elegant, halt. The scenes are well written, and DiCaprio and Cotillard have good chemistry, but there are just too many of them, and with each one we are only left more confused (the exact opposite of the surprising clarity of the other storyline). This relationship should really have only been used for exposition. All the audience interest in the film is invested in the ingenious plot Nolan has set up, and unfortunately, at times, the inception storyline is overshadowed by the wayward ruminations of a deceased lover.

Without these scenes Inception is a brilliant, original, and surprising 2 hour sci-fi/crime procedural hybrid, and easily the best film of the year so far. As it is, Inception is a very, very good, original, and surprising 2 and a half hour sci fi/crime procedural hybrid, and will almost definitely be the high point of the cinematic summer of 2010.

Quick Reviews: 6/19/10

2010-06-18T22:50:00.000-07:00

The Vicious Kind (****)

Dir: Lee Toland Krieger

Str: Adam Scott, Brittany Snow, Alex Frost

Adam Scott, who you might remember as Will Ferrell's brother in Step Brothers, gives the performance of a lifetime in this indie flick about a heartbroken small town man in the throws of a psychosexual obsession with his brother's girlfriend. Scott plays Caleb Sinclaire an angry, insomniac construction worker who has just been dumped by his girlfriend. When his brother, Peter (Alex Frost), brings his new girlfriend, Emma (Brittany Snow), to town, Caleb feels an immediate passion for her that teeters between undeniable lust and violent hatred. Scott's performance is bold, energetic, and full of a macabre humor that casts a thin veil over some of the sick thoughts in Caleb's mind. Former Disney style teen queen Brittany Snow is also very good here as the seemingly perfect Emma who, we find out, has problems of her own. This is the first feature from writer/director Lee Toland Krieger, and it is a very engaging and promising debut. The Vicious Kind actually premiered at Sundance in 2009, but didn't find some distribution until earlier this year. This is a movie that should not be missed.

Youth in Revolt (***1/2)

Dir: Miguel Arteta

Str: Michael Cera, Portia Doubleday, Jean Smart

Miguel Arteta does not make many films, Youth in Revolt is his first since 2002's brilliant The Good Girl, but he has definitely shown he excels at character driven pieces with a darkly comedic tilt. Nick Twisp (Michael Cera) is a nerdy, sensitive, high school virgin, and it would seem that we have seen this character before but there is an interesting twist to Twisp, he is quite obviously mentally unstable. He creates a mustachioed "altar-ego" for himself named Francois Dillinger who advises him in how to be cool and dangerous (aka he has split personality disorder), and seems to have no problem committing serious crimes to get what he wants. Not only do we believe in this bizarre behavior, but, thanks to Arteta's deft direction and Cera's inherent believability, we don't even really notice them for most of the film. What Nick wants is to be with his first true love Sheeny Saunders, played by newcomer Portia Doubleday. Doubleday's performance is pleasantly sophisticated as the young actress displays more screen presence than many performers twice her age.

The Killer Inside Me (*1/2)

Dir: Michael Winterbottom

Str: Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba

Britsh filmmaker Michael Winterbottom's (24 Hour Party People, A Mighty Heart) The Killer Inside Me divided audiences at this year's Sundance due to it's graphic depictions of violence toward women. The film is the twisted tale of deranged lawman Lou Ford (Casey Affleck) and his downfall after he murders a local prostitute (Jessica Alba). The violence in the film is brutal, but I found those scenes to be quite well handled. It's amazing how when filmmakers show violence as terrible and repulsive (which it is), people seem to be quite upset, but when movies show violence as fun and harmless (which it is not), nobody points out just how irresponsible that can be. The problem with The Killer Inside Me isn't the violence, it's the lack of character development, Winterbottom's relentless assertion of tone over story, and other than the chilling performance by Casey Affleck, the fact that The Killer Inside Me is really just a dull movie.

When in Rome (*)

Dir: Mark Steven Johnson

Str: Kristen Bell, Josh Duhamel, Anjelica Huston

The first 15 minutes are quite promising. There are some surprising laughs, and the ultra-beautiful leads seem to have actual chemistry. The rest of the film is such contrived, unfunny, stupid rom-com crap that it doesn't even deserve to be explained. I would like to take this chance to remind Anjelica Huston that her dad directed The Maltese Falcon, and she was in This is Spinal Tap, Prizzi's Honor, and The Dead, since she seems to have forgotten.

The A-Team

2010-06-12T11:46:00.000-07:00

The A-Team (**1/2)

20th Century Fox

Dir: Joe Carnahan

Str: Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, Sharlto Copley, Jessica Biel, Patrick Wilson

Meh. This is the word that I find myself saying nearly every week as I leave my local movie theater. In a summer where the box office returns for the blockbuster factories in Hollywood have been notably low, the films themselves have been a remarkable exercise in mediocrity. Action movies, maybe the occasional frat boy comedy, and kids movies (which lately have been the best of the bunch), most of them drawing on talented casts, and even the occasional skilled filmmaker, are sent out every week, and more and more these films are starting to look all the same. Action scenes in the comedies (Date Night, Killers), comedy in the action movies (Iron Man, The A-Team), the kids movies are getting more grown up and the grown up movies are becoming more childish. Movie formulas have been around as long as movies themselves, but it's quite possible that we are heading toward a time where there is only one kind of mainstream movie. An amalgam of everything mindless, where everybody knows exactly what is coming, and nobody could possibly be offended, and wouldn't that be fun.

On the other hand, when you have talented people and take absolutely no chances it is very hard to make a really bad movie, and this brings me to my review of The A-Team. A sort of post dated prequel to the 1980s TV show about a group of Army Rangers who are framed for a crime they didn't commit , and are forced to live as soldiers of fortune, always on the run. The film deals essentially with the story of the crime they didn't commit, and not with the soldier of fortuning, so what you've really got here is a 117 minute film about the opening credits of a TV show. What does the film have that the TV show didn't? Money, and money can buy you two things. 1. Explosions, 2. Movie Stars. It, unfortunately, can't but you love (or at least that's what I've been told).

First things first, the explosions. The A-Team is a film about an elite army unit trying to clear their name so, as you can imagine, the film does feature it's fair share of action scenes. These sequences are so quick cut though, that they are essentially just an aural experience. Director Joe Carnahan, who once upon a time made a very good cop drama called Narc, does manage to keep things as fresh as they can be with his quick pacing, the first 90 minutes of the film just fly by, and the same sense of inspired ridiculousness that made the TV show fun to watch. Example, The A-Team at one point attempts to fly a tank.

Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper are both charismatic actors who are convincing in the roles of Hannibal (the mastermind) and Face (the ladies man). Sharlto Copley, who made such a strong acting debut in last year's District 9, is effectively, if occasionally obnoxiously, zany as the group's loose cannon pilot Murdoch. UFC fighter Quinton "Rampage" Jackson fights valiantly, in what turns out to be a losing battle, to make us forget that Cpl. B.A. Baracus was once played by the great thespian/philosopher Laurence Tureaud. Jessica Biel is fine (in more ways than one) as Captain Charisa Sosa, even though she's given little to do except look longingly at Face and sternly at everyone else. Patrick Wilson delivers what is probably the film's finest performance as the villainous CIA agent/preppy jerk who goes only by the name of Lynch.

In the end, I have to concede that the film does accomplish what it sets out to do, it is certainly loud, occasionally funny, and usually entertaining. I'm just not sure that what it wants to do is worth doing. I do find it odd that The A-Team, a childish action movie, was defeated by the remake of The Karate Kid, an action movie for children, at the box office this weekend. I was already worried that all mainstream movies will soon be all the same, maybe I was wrong, maybe they already are.

Quick Reviews: 6/12/10

2010-06-11T21:50:00.000-07:00

The Secret of Kells (****)

Dir: Tomm Moore

This animated Irish import was nominated for the Oscar for best animated feature last year, now it has finally made it's way to the States and proves itself to be a beautiful tribute to imagination and the power of knowledge. The Secret of Kells tells the tale of a young boy named Brendan in medieval Ireland who must find a way to finish writing a magical book that will become the ultimate weapon against an invading group of barbarians. Along the way he befriends a shape shifting fairy called Aisling, and a mischievous cat named Pangur Bon. The animation of the film is beautiful and involving, like the living wallpaper of a childhood dream. At 75 minutes, The Book of Kells is a swift and rich visual experience, that is full of wonder and features none of the adult oriented pandering that so many American animated movies put front and center.

Shinjuku Incident (***1/2)

Dir: Tung-Shing Yee

Str: Jackie Chan, Naoto Takenaka, Daniel Wu

Jackie Chan made a name for himself by performing suicidal stunts in countless Hong Kong action films, but in Shinjuku Incident he tries his hand at what has become Hong Kong's most successful cinematic export in recent years- the gangster film. Chan stars as Nick a Chinese man who has just illegally immigrated to Japan in search of his former love, only to find that she has married a sleazy yakuza boss. Nick quickly becomes head of a gang of Chinese immigrants who are determined to make a life for themselves in their new home. The story here is not particularly original but the film is well directed and well acted, especially by Chan. In a performance that features no stunt work and no kung-fu, he gives a convincing performance of a man who finds himself living a life that he never wanted. I was thoroughly entertained.

Get Him to The Greek (**)

Dir: Nicholas Stoller

Str: Jonah Hill, Russell Brand, P.Diddy

2008's Forgetting Sarah Marshall was a very funny movie, and one of the funniest things about it was the performance of Russell Brand as British rock star/lothario Aldous Snow. Well, in that film Snow was 7 years sober, but in Get Him to The Greek he's back on the bottle/pipe/needle, and young music intern Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) is given the task of getting him from London to LA in 3 days. Brand and Hill are both funny guys, and they do deliver some rather clever one liners, but ultimately Forgetting Sarah Marshall gave us all the Aldous Snow we ever need to see. Also, in the last act of the film, the story moves in to some more serious territory and it becomes quite clear that everyone involved is waaaaaay out of their depth.

Downloading Nancy (*1/2)

Dir: Johan Renck

Str: Maria Bello, Jason Patric, Rufus Sewell

Maria Bello is one of the best actresses alive, the fact that Sandra Bullock is a movie star and Bello is not is one of the many mysteries of American culture that I will never, ever solve. Here, Bello's performance as a damaged, masochistic, suicidal housewife is raw, and vibrant, and powerful. Everything else about the film, be it the direction, the writing, or the supporting performances, is horribly mishandled. Bello manages to rise above with her performance, but a bad movie is still a bad movie.

Quick DVD Reviews: 6/5/10

2010-06-04T23:42:00.000-07:00

Somers Town (****)

Dir: Shane Meadows

Str: Piotr Jagiello, Thomas Turgoose, Elisa Lasowski

The newest film from British filmmaker Shane Meadows is an endearing look at the friendship between two teenagers, one a young runaway (Thomas Turgoose) and the other a Polish immigrant (Piotr Jagiello), who are left more or less on their own to roam the streets of London. The bond between the two young men is based less on any kind of affection and more on a shared loneliness, and at least a little bit on their mutual attraction to a local Parisian waitress named Maria (Elisa Lasowski). Filmed in beautiful black and white, Somers Town immediately reminded me of Francois Truffaut's New Wave classic "The 400 Blows", and like that film Meadows uses his young characters to explore the way that children in modern societies can be robbed of a childhood when they have no one to love or look out for them. It's a touching film and filmmakers like Meadows are the reason why the United Kingdom is home to one of the most interesting independent film communities in the world.

For My Father (***1/2)

Dir: Dror Zahavi

Str: Shredi Jabarin, Hili Yalon, Shlomo Vishinsky

In this Israeli political melodrama, a young suicide bomber (Shredi Jabarin) finds himself stranded for a weekend in Tel Aviv when the bomb strapped to his chest fails to detonate. He finds himself staying with an aging repairman (Shlomo Vashinsky) and intrigued by Keren (Hili Yalon), the girl who runs the newsstand across the street. Keren has recently cut off ties with her Jewish Orthodox family following an unplanned pregnancy. The film doesn't have quite the political punch that it is hoping for, and filmmaker Dror Zahavi does give way to a few cliches, but the drama in the film is treated with sincerity and the film is full of strong performances. On a more human note, I have to admit that it's quite possible that my enjoyment of the film was enhanced by the fact that Israeli actress Hili Yalon is one of the more beautiful women I have ever seen.

Alice in Wonderland (**1/2)

Dir: Tim Burton

Str: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland isn't so much a retelling of the classic children's tale as it is a sequel, featuring an Alice in her late teens (Mia Wasikowska) who finds herself back down the rabbit hole and amongst the colorful characters of Wonderland. The landscapes of this Wonderland look far too much like a video game, and Burton insists on hanging the film to a plot that feels far too much like an action movie, but he does get strong performances- particularly by Wasikowska as Alice and Helena Bonham Carter as the evil Red Queen. Burton's handling of Alice reminded me of Ridley Scott's recent version of Robin Hood in that it appears to be a man attempting to destroy a story that proves to be indestructible.

The Wolfman (*1/2)

Dir: Joe Johnston

Str: Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Blunt

This remake of the classic monster movie The Wolfman gets everything right, up until the guy turns into a wolf. The wolfman in this film doesn't act like much of a wolf or a man, but more like a very hairy Incredible Hulk. The film did feature some moments of jovial gore, but once you figure out where the story is going there is not a single surprise in The Wolfman.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

2010-05-29T19:47:00.001-07:00

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (**)

Walt Disney

Dir: Mike Newell

Str: Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arteron, Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is an instantly forgettable bit of summertime fluff, but it is probably the best video game movie ever made. That's right it's even better than Double Dragon. Why do these video game movies not work? Well, there are two very simple answers to that question. First of all, the fun in playing a video game is that you're in control of the action. It's no fun to watch somebody else play a video game, and that's basically all your paying for with one of these movies. Secondly, in most video games whenever you get to the bits where people are talking or they're trying to move the story along, aka the boring part, there's usually a button you can push to skip right over all that and get back to the action. There is no such button in a motion picture.

Well, actually there is kind of a button like that in Prince of Persia, but it only works in the movie. See, the film is about an ancient prince named Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal), and after he and his brothers are tricked into attacking the peaceful city of Alamut by his evil uncle Nizam (Ben Kingsley), Dastan comes into posession of a magic dagger that, when a button on the handle is pushed, can stop and reverse time. This is a pretty amazing weapon, so as you can imagine it's kind of in demand. Tamina (Gemma Arteron), Queen of Alamut, wants the dagger so she can return it to the gods who made it, and Nazim wants it so he can go back in time and make himself King or Persia.

Along the way, Dastan gets some help from Sheik Amar (Alfred Molina) who runs a city inhabited entirely by former slaves, and makes a fortune off of rigging ostrich races. On a personal note, I would like to say that I've managed to go this far in my life without ever really paying attention to how ostriches look when they run. It's quite entertaining. There is also some romance afoot in Prince of Persia, I won't tell you who is involved in this love affair, but I will give you a hint. It's the star and THE ONLY GIRL IN THE MOVIE.

Prince of Persia plays out almost exactly like a video game. Dastan maneuvers his way through levels of would be pursuers who get more and more difficult to defeat as the game, I mean movie, goes on. In between the fight sequences the dialogue is made up almost entirely of characters explaining the plot- telling you who they are, why they are doing what they're doing, and what they think will happen when they do it. There's not really anytime to get to know any of the characters because by the time they get done explaining where we are in the story it's time for some more sandbound swashbuckling.

The only thing that saves Prince of Persia from being a real dud is it's very talented cast. Jake Gyllenhaal is a fine actor who manages to bring a personality to a character as bland and earnest as Dastan, and it's nice to see someone starring in an action movie who isn't pushing 50. He also has fine chemistry with his love interest Gemma Arteron, dammit I gave it away, who is certainly very beautiful but is given little more to do than scream "Dastan!!!". Sir Ben Kingsley is one of the few actors who can appear legitimately villainous without ever speaking a word, and Alfred Molina provides some lively interludes as the king of the slaves.

Surprisingly, the film's "subtle" political message, now a prerequisite in all action movies, is one of the few aspects of the story that actually worked. At the beginning of the film, the princes are deceived into attacking an ancient city in search for mysterious weapons that, surprise, aren't really there. The Iraq parallel is obvious from the get go, and one of the threads of the film has to do with Dastan realizing he should not have allowed himself to be lead blindly in to war, and he shouldn't have, and neither should we, and that is a point worth getting across. Sometimes you have to take responsibility instead of just spreading the blame.

Unfortunately, this one strong idea is given about five minutes of screen time amongst two hours of contrivance and action movie cliche. Not even actors like Gyllenhaal and Kingsley can save Prince of Persia from the bowels of summer blockbuster mediocrity.

Quick DVD Reviews: 5/29/2010

2010-05-29T00:40:00.000-07:00

The Road (***)

Dir: John Hillcoat

Str: Viggo Mortenson, Kodi Smit-McPhee

This defiantly bleak adaptation of the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy is a hard film to evaluate. It's the story of a man (Viggo Mortenson) and his son (Kodi Smit-Mcphee) trekking their way across a post apocalyptic America where the food is scarce, but the cannibals are bountiful. We see visions of the man's (the characters in the film are never named) former life in dream sequences that star Charlize Theron as his troubled wife. We are never told just what cataclysmic event has turned America (and presumably the world) in to this barren wasteland, and the film is certainly not your typical "end of the world" picture- there will be no spaceships or miracle cures coming along to save the day. The film is well directed by Hillcoat, and exceedingly well acted by Mortenson, McPhee, and Theron, but is it really a good film? I'm not so sure. Hillcoat, whose previous film The Proposition is one everybody should see, is clearly more interested in how people treat each other in dire situations, and for a good portion of the film he explores this idea, but as the film draws to it's end it becomes apparent that The Road might not have much to say. A film doesn't necessarily have to beat you over the head with it's message, but The Road doesn't feel cryptic or subtle so much as it does noncommittal. So, in the end, even though everybody in front of and behind the camera are on top of their games, and I certainly enjoyed watching the move, it's quite possible that McCarthy's novel (great as it may be) might have lost it's conviction in the move to the screen.

Mystery Team (**)

Dir: Dan Eckman

Str: Donald Glover, D.C. Pierson, Dominc Dierkes

Mystery Team is the first film from sketch comedy troop Derrick Comedy, it's the story of three friends: Jason, Duncan, and Charlie, who, when they were 7, started their own detective service for kids (think Ghost Writer or Babysitter's Club). Now, they're 18, but they still act like they're in elementary school and they've just been given their biggest case- solving a murder. This is a thin premise, but it holds together surprisingly well for much of the film, and for a moment even had me wondering how the case would turn out. Unfortunately, this is supposed to be a comedy, and it's just not funny. Most, not all, of the jokes fall completely flat, and the performances are amateurish to say the least. The one exception is young comedienne Aubrey Plaza, she plays the daughter of the murder victims, who is quickly developing a knack for being the best thing about bad projects (Mystery Team, last year's Funny People, NBC's Parks and Recreation).

Dear John (*1/2)

Dir: Lasse Hallstrom

Str: Channing Tatum, Amanda Seyfried, Richard Jenkins

John Tyree (Channing Tatum) has a lot on his plate: he's just fallen in love, he has an autistic dad, and he's being shipped off to Afghanistan. This is the newest film based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks, and if you're familiar with Sparks I shouldn't need to describe the story to you, and if you aren't familiar with Sparks then I envy you. The performances here are actually not so bad. Tatum and Seyfried are both better than they usually are, and Jenkins has been one of Hollywood's best character actors for years, but whatever good will the cast can create for the film is immediately killed by the trite and disgustingly melodramatic script.

The New Daughter (*)

Dir: Luis Berdejo

Str: Kevin Costner, Ivana Baquero, Samantha Mathis

A formulaic "evil kid" movie that features absolutely no scares, and more than a few unintentional laughs. Costner was once a very good actor, but he's been phoning it in for well over a decade now, and The New Daughter features some of the clunkiest dialogue I've ever heard in a motion picture.

Akira Kurasowa's Ran

2010-05-26T16:05:00.000-07:00

Ran

Japan/France

Dir: Akira Kurosawa

Str: Tatsuya Nakadi, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu, Mieko Harada, Yoshiko Miyazaki, Hisashi Igawa, Peter, Masayuki Yui

Running Time: 2 hours and 42 minutes

Ran could have been a victory lap. In 1950 Akira Kurosawa turned the conventions of film narrative on their ear with Rashomon, a film so unlike anything before it that Kurosawa's producers and actors insisted it didn't make sense (it did), and in 1954 he made The Seven Samurai which is not only the most influential action/adventure movie of all time, but is one of the 4 or 5 best movies ever made by anyone. With a handful of other classics thrown in for good measure (Ikiru, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo), Kurosawa's place as one of the masters of cinema is undeniable. By 1985, he had absolutely nothing to prove, except maybe to himself.

By the late 60s Kurosawa's native Japan had turned on him, declaring that his style had become too westernized and he was essentially banished from the Japanese studio system. He was signed to work on his first American film in 1970, but was fired by 20th Century Fox. He attempted suicide, his eyesight was going, and nobody wanted to finance his films. To make things worse, at the ripe age of 65, Kurosawa had his biggest idea yet, a massive adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear set amongst the warlords of 15th century Japan. He spent ten years storyboarding the shots for the film he would call Run (which translates to chaos or revolt), designing the costumes, and most importantly, trying to rustle up the money to make what would eventually be the most expensive production in Japanese history. After this decade of preparation, he would team with French film producer Serge Silberman, and Ran would finally get off the ground.

Like Lear, Ran begins with a man dividing his land among his children. Lord Hidetora has spent his whole life taking over all the land he could see, and killing everyone who stood in his way. Now, in his 70s he has given his land to his three sons in hopes that this will allow him to live his remaining years in peace. What he's actually done, is given everybody access to an army. This is Kurosawa's bleakest film, a sense of dread hangs over all the proceedings. This may also be Kurosawa's deepest work thematically: madness, honor, death, war, sex, God, and family are all within the auteur's wide grasp.

Visually, Kurosawa has few equals. He fills every inch of the frame with his unique mixture of authenticity and artistry. It's not just the cinematography, which is of course exhilarating, it's the production design, the costumes, the make up. Ran is a complete visual experience. Kurosawa's battle scenes are a reminder of just how poorly most battle scenes are filmed. Instead of obsessing over trying to make the audience feel like we're in the middle of the action (which we never really will anyway) Kurosawa pulls back and let's us see the whole gruesome spectacle. The majesty, the violence, the hatred.

What stands out about Ran for me, as it does for all Kurosawa's work, is his purity as a storyteller. He's the undeniable master of the cinematic epic (David Lean is #2 and then it's a long way down to #3), and you can't make films with the weight and length that he does without perfect pacing. A Kurosawa film is never rushed, never hectic, but also never boring and never lethargic. He always moves at just the right speed, and for the life of me I can't point out an example of this aspect of his genius. So, how did he do it? Why did his films move so much more smoothly then other filmmakers? It must come from inside of him. No, tricks, no techniques, this is the only way he knew how to tell a story. He probably never even thought about it, and that is the sign of a great filmmaker.

Ran is brilliant in every way a film can be brilliant. It strikes us in our hearts, our heads, and our eyes. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the philosophy that Kurosawa so tastefully sprinkled through all of his movies. His films were always full of interesting questions, and in Ran he poses one of his toughest. Is God somehow permissive of human atrocity or having created human beings is He Himself powerless to stop us?

MacGruber

2010-05-23T14:40:00.000-07:00

MacGruber (*1/2)

Universal

Dir: Jorma Taccone

Str: Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, Ryan Phillippe, Val Kilmer

Films based on Saturday Night Live sketches are traditionally a mixed bag. Sure, they've given us such crap as It's Pat and The Ladies Man, but who can forget classics like Wayne's World or The Blues Brothers. The latter examples are unfortunately the exceptions rather than the rule. Most SNL films feel and look like elongated versions of their base sketches, some of which are too long already. MacGruber certainly isn't the worst of the bunch, but in the SNL canon I'd have to put it somewhere between Stuart Saves the World and Superstar. I chuckled a couple times, and smiled a few more, but I'm not sure that there is one real laugh in MacGruber.

Will Forte reprises his character of MacGruber, a federal agent who dresses like it's 1990 and has a pension for making gadgets out of ordinary household items. MacGruber is a pretty straight forward spoof of MacGuyver, obviously, but to be quite honest I find the SNL sketches pretty funny, but they only last for about 90 seconds. The MacGruber movie is 88 minutes, roughly the length of 59 MacGruber sketches. So, the real question with Macgruber, as it is with all films based on television characters, is can it sustain itself for the length of a feature. The answer is almost always no, and that does not change here.

The film, co-written by Forte, offers some perfunctory back story to the MacGruber character which leads us to believe that he's actually a very skilled soldier, but he's not. He's a bumbling foul mouthed idiot, not that that's necessarily a bad thing. MacGruber's nemesis is a man named Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer) who 10 years ago killed MacGruber's bride to be, and sent MacGruber into hiding. Now, Cunth has stolen a nuclear warhead, and Grubes has been called back into action to stop Cunth before he can carry out his diabolical plan.

To do this, MacGruber puts together a team, an A Team if you will, that is made up of large, mean looking men who all happen to be played by professional wrestlers. In one of the film's few surprising moments (which I will now ruin) MacGruber accidentally blows up his cohorts before they can carry out their mission, and he is forced to turn to his old pal Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) and hot shot youngster Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillipe) for support in his mission to take down Cunth.

Forte and Wiig are classic examples of actors who belong on television, they have enough presence to fill up a TV, but look absolutely lost on the big screen. Forte's irreverent title character may inspire a few chuckles, but Wiig's deadpan sidekick St. Elmo is a dead fish. Surprisingly, the closest thing to real laughs in the film are provided by Ryan Phillipe who plays Lt. Piper like somebody who has been transported from the real world in to the bizarro world of the film. His interactions with Forte are the freshest thing in a mostly stale movie.

The funniest thing about Kilmer's Dieter Von Cunth is his name...and that's not funny.

The film is directed by Jorma Taccone from the comedy troupe The Lonely Island, and this is symptomatic of MacGruber's problem. The film has 2 stars who belong on TV and a director who has previously specialized in YouTube videos, none of these people have any business making a motion picture at this point in their career. MacGruber won't be the worst comedy I'll see this year, in fact it's probably better than Hot Tub Time Machine, but it is a film that never, ever needed to be made, and absolutely no one needs to see.

Quick DVD Reviews: 5/23/2010

2010-05-22T22:35:00.000-07:00

The Messenger (***1/2)

Dir: Oren Moverman

Str: Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton

Ben Foster (3:10 to Yuma, Alpha Dog) is incredible as a man both hardened and completely shattered by war in this Oscar nominated drama. Foster plays Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery who, after being injured in Iraq, is assigned to serve the rest of his hitch on a Casualty Notification Team along with Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson). The scenes of the two men delivering the news to the families of deceased soldiers are notably tense and play incredibly real. Samantha Morton is also excellent, as she always is, as a recently widowed mother with whom Montgomery shares a strange but heartfelt relationship. It was a bit of a surprise that the performance of Harrelson was the one nominated for an Academy Award as it was easily the weakest of the three. That being said, it's still a strong performance, and the film is a remarkable directorial debut for Oren Moverman, who himself served in the Israeli army.

The Girl on The Train (***1/2)

Dir: Andre Techine

Str: Emilie Dequenne, Michael Blanc, Catherine Deneuve

Strong performances also highlight the new film from veteran French director Andre Techine. The Girl on The Train is an interesting character study and effective morality play about a cycle of guilt and dishonesty in the life of an apathetic young Parisian, Jeanne, played by Emilie Dequenne. Dequenne is exceptional in a form of what I call the "Dirk Diggler" role, meaning she plays a character who needs to be sympathetic while still being quite dull witted. The legendary Catherine Deneuve also gives a strong performance as Jeanne's conflicted mother. Techine has always had a strong visual sense, and though the film may have some structural flaws, on a whole it is still an intersting look at how dishonesty can permeate every aspect of our lives.

Invictus (**1/2)

Dir: Clint Eastwood

Str: Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon

Clint Eastwood directs his films so proficiently and with such tact that it seems almost impossible for him to make a really bad movie. That being said, they're not all standouts either. Invictus relays the true story of Nelson Mandela's fight to unite the races of South Africa through it's national rugby team. Despite the political overtones, the film is really just a "big game" sports movie that is bolstered by a very good performance from Damon and an excellent portrayal of Mandela by Morgan Freeman. The rugby scenes are filmed well enough that I could follow them despite the fact that I, like most Americans, don't know the first thing about rugby.

Extraordinary Measures (*)

Dir: Tom Vaughan

Str: Brendan Fraser, Harrison Ford, Keri Russell

A "sick kid" movie that at some point seems to forget about the kid and turns into some sort of medical procedural that could have possibly been held together by some strong actors, but Harrison Ford's prime was 20 years ago and Brendan Fraser never had one.

Robin Hood

2010-05-17T08:40:00.000-07:00

Robin Hood (**1/2)

Universal

Dir: Ridley Scott

Str: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Max von Sydow, William Hurt, Mark Strong, Oscar Isaac

In the last decade, the films of Ridley Scott have ranged from the grossly overrated (Gladiator), to the criminally overlooked (Matchstick Men), to the deservedly forgotten (A Good Year). For a man who's career started out so promising, with iconic films like Alien and Blade Runner, Scott has become remarkably hit or miss. His newest film, the umpteenth cinematic take on the mythical Robin Hood, is a bit of both. It features many of the unfortunate cliches that have hurt his recent films, but a strong cast manages to hold everything together, and the natural intrigue that is ingrained in a story like Robin Hood does shine through at times.

It's a rough time in 13th century England. Most of the men have been called off to fight in the Crusades, those who remain are being taxed into poverty, and bands of orphans in masks roam the forest (seriously). To make matters worse England's King Richard has been murdered on his way back to England, and his crown has been given to his evil brother Prince John. The death of King Richard is an interesting change in the classic Robin Hood tale since he is usually the one who shows up to save the day at the end.

Robin Longstride (Rusell Crowe), one of King Richard's many archers, has returned to England, and makes it his mission to stand up to the evil King John (Oscar Isaac), as well as the invading French. The film is technically a prequel to the other versions of Robin Hood we've seen, but most of the familiar names of the story do pop up. He still has to deal with the Sheriff of Nottingham, he still hangs out with the good natured Friar Tuck, he is still being accompanied by a group of merry men, and he is still smitten by the lovely Marion (Cate Blanchett). The romantic aspect of the film, which is usually just an also-ran in this kind of movie, is surprisingly, one of the strongest parts of the picture.

Cate Blanchett is one of the great living actresses. I can't think of another working performer who brings as much dignity to every role they play. Russell Crowe's strength as an action star has always been the warmth he is somehow able to display underneath even the toughest exterior. It is the relationship between these two talented actors that forms the heart of the film. The legendary Max von Sydow shows up for a bit as Marion's father, and Oscar Isaac's turn as King John finds just the right combination of whiny and vindictive that makes for a very good villain.

Scott's greatest strength as a filmmaker has always been his visual sense, particularly in the area of production design. From the futuristic visions in Alien and Blade Runner, to the streets of Somalia in Black Hawk Down, Scott has always been good at setting the stage for his films. That does not change here, he recreates the backwoods, palaces, and villages of Old England wonderfully, and there are some real moments of beauty scattered throughout the film.

Robin Hood contains it's fair share of battle sequences, naturally, which are pedestrian almost without exception, and actually manage to drag the film down just when the story and acting are starting to pick things up. The movie is saved from mediocrity in some ways by it's ending, which does do a good job at putting all of the pieces of the film in place, and gives an interesting interpretation of just how the legend of Robin Hood became what we know it as today. It's this bit of innovation, mixed with a bit of artistry, and some good performances that puts Robin Hood a leg up on a lot of Hollywood action movies, but, at the same time, it has nowhere near enough substance to be the kind of sprawling historical epic the filmmakers were obviously hoping for.

Iron Man 2

2010-05-10T09:18:00.000-07:00

Iron Man 2 (***)

Paramount

Dir: Jon Favreau

Str: Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sam Rockwell, Mickey Rourke, Samuel L. Jackson

2008's Iron Man was a film that gave up on itself. After an hour and change of strong performances, sharp dialogue, and interesting exposition Iron Man switched in to neutral for it's final act and became your typical summertime slice of explosion pie. Was is a terrible film? No, it was not, but in the end it was a promising, ultimately uneven stab at comic book cinema from director Jon Favreau (Swingers, Elf). What the film did do very well, on the other hand, was make money (over $500 million worldwide), so now, two summers later, blockbuster season is kicking off with the continued adventures of Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, and the gang. I must admit, I was pleasantly surprised.

The film is once again anchored by Robert Downey Jr.'s witty, energetic portrayal of the title character- the billionaire playboy Tony Stark who's become a one man keeper of world peace since he turned himself into the ultimate weapon in the first film. There is an interesting dichotomy in the character of Tony Stark/Iron Man in that even though he's all bravado and power when he's in the public eye, he is keeping it secret from the world that he is dying, and has been since he was kidnapped by terrorists in the 2008 edition of the series. Downey's performance accentuates this duality much more than in the previous film.

Director Jon Favreau has done his fair share of big studio movies (Elf, Zathura), but his best work is still the pair of indie comedies that he co-wrote and directed with Vince Vaughn (Swingers, Made). He is very good at working with his cast and creating the tone of his film through performance, and he has a great cast to work with in Iron Man 2.

Gwyneth Paltrow returns as Stark's plucky assistant Pepper Potts, and the chemistry between she and Downey is just as palpable as in the first film. Don Cheadle replaces Terrence Howard as Stark's BFF Lt. Col. "Rhodey" Rhodes, and Scarlett Johansson also joins the cast as Natalie Rushman, a mysterious new employee at Stark Enterprises. Mickey Rourke is somewhat miscast as the brooding Russian villain Ivan Vanko, and Samuel L. Jackson shows up for a bit as Dr. Nick Fury to once again tease the upcoming Avengers movie.

With the exception of Rourke there isn't a poor performance in Iron Man 2, but the real standout is Sam Rockwell as Tony Stark's rival, weapons manufacturer Justin Hammer. Rockwell, in case you didn't know, is one of the two or three best actors working in American film today. From his turn as the psychotic Wild Bill in The Green Mile to his portrayal of cloned astronaut Sam Bell in last year's Moon, I have never seen him be anything less than stellar. Here, he plays Justin Hammer as a sort of bumbling dork on a power trip. It's hilarious and inspired.

Favreau seems much more at ease with his material in Iron Man 2 than he did in the first film. He moves in and out of the action sequences leisurely instead of sticking them in a glut at the end, which was ultimately the downfall of the original film. The overall pacing of the film is very tight, and even though it is a shade over two hours long it doesn't overstay it's welcome. Favreau may never be on the level of the really great "popcorn" movie directors like Spielberg or Nolan, but if this is the direction he wants his career to go, he has the ability to make very solid, very entertaining action movies

Iron Man 2 is not a perfect picture, there is some clunky dialogue, and even a couple downright silly lapses in logic (woman uses her hands, feet, a rope, and some mase to fight a hall way full of henchman, gets to an empty room...pulls out a gun), but thanks to it's performances and the continued growth of Favreau as a director it is a very solid, and extremely watchable chunk of comic book cinema.

A Nightmare on Elm Street

2010-05-02T19:27:00.000-07:00

A Nightmare on Elm Street (*)

New Line Cinema

Dir: Samuel Bayer

Str: Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara

One evening last fall, I set out to see the ultra low budget horror film Paranormal Activity, a film that my T.V. had told me was terrifying audiences all across the country. The film definitely seemed to terrify the audience around me, one lady nearby even declaring that she "couldn't take anymore" before exiting the theater, but I was left notably unafraid. I remember wondering just what it was about Paranormal Activity that scared so many people, and as I watched the newest retread of A Nightmare on Elm Street I think I figured it out. Paranormal Activity may not have scared me, but at least it was trying to scare somebody. The majority of Hollywood horror movies these days don't even try. It just seems that someone has told the major studios that these formula slasher films work, and so they uncork a few every year, each one more generic than the last. A note to producers: these films don't work anymore, and haven't for nearly 20 years.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is a remake of Wes Craven's 1984 classic of the same name, and tells the story of a Mr. Freddy Krueger, a disfigured and (even worse) deceased child molester who has the ability to kill people (usually high school students) in their dreams, which in turn kills them in reality. This is an interesting premise for a horror movie no doubt, but after 9 films we have now spent (if my math is right) 14 hours and 9 minutes on a character that probably only had about 90 minutes of movie in him to begin with.

The story, as it is, concerns Freddy terrorizing the dreams of a new batch of teenagers until the last couple have to try and figure out a way to stop him. I can't even see a reason to mention the names of these kids since we know next to nothing about them, I think one of them liked to draw? Maybe? At one point one character says to another "I don't know if you've noticed, but I don't fit in." I had to restrain myself from replying, "No, as a matter of fact I hadn't noticed because I don't know anything about you."

It should be mentioned that the teenagers in the original Nightmare weren't developed any better, but that was overshadowed by the brilliant technique of Wes Craven and the very clever portrayal of Freddy Krueger by Robert Englund. Jackie Earle Haley, who is a very good actor, has taken the role of Freddy for this film and plays it with absolutely 0% of the black humor or macabre charm that made Englund's Freddy so much fun to watch. Haley has been in so many good movies lately, Little Children, Watchmen, Shutter Island, that it seems odd to me why he would take on a role in a film like this. Perhaps playing a character as iconic as Krueger was just too much to pass up. His straight forward version of the character might be effective in a different film, but here it's just one more bleak facet of an already bleak film.

From the "CGI still isn't as good as people think it is" department, one of the most effective moments of the original Nightmare on Elm Street is the scene in which Freddy drags a female victim up the wall of her bedroom and across the ceiling, buckets of blood flying around the room. It was a truly incendiary moment of violence on film. The 2010 big budget special effects version of this scene features the victim being thrown from one side of the room to the other like she was in a wind tunnel, not a drop of blood in sight (despite what you may have heard today's horror films are far less gory than those of 25 years ago). A scene that was once frightening, or at the very least awe inspiring, elicited laughs from the audience on the afternoon I was in attendance.

As previously mentioned, 1984's Nightmare on Elm Street was directed by one of the most undervalued American filmmakers, Wes Craven. 2010's Nightmare was directed by Samuel Bayer, a guy who used to direct music videos for The Cranberries and Sheryl Crow, and was produced by Platinum Dunes the production company run by America's worst filmmaker Michael Bay....'nuff said.

Maybe it's unfair to constantly compare this film to it's predecessor, but to be honest, if I didn't there would be very little to write about. The film is just a cycle of dream sequences and murder without a surprise or an idea in sight. It's the opposite of entertainment. The end credits of the film roll to the sounds of The Everly Brothers singing "All I Have to do is Dream". I was so glad to hear the song that I almost instantly forgot everything about the movie I had just seen. This might say a lot about The Everly Brothers, but I'm afraid it says even more about A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Super Quick Reviews: 4/24/10

2010-04-24T10:29:00.001-07:00

I've fallen behind on my blogging, so I'm going to knock out a bunch all at one time.

An Education (****)

Dir: Lone Scherfig

This lovely little British coming of age story is probably one of the three best "mainstream" films of last year. You can add Carey Mulligan's star making turn as Jenny to the list of leading female performances that are better than the one that won Sandra Bullock an Oscar. That brings that list to an even 150.

Kick-Ass (***1/2)

Dir: Matthew Vaughn

A fearless slice of summer entertainment, and a rather hard hitting twist on the superhero movie. It's the performance of 12 year old Chloe Mortez as the mass murdering "hero" Hit Girl that has everyone talking, but the real gem here is Nicolas Cage as her bizarre, brain washing father. This makes two great performances in a row for Cage, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans being the other, so that means his next film will probably be reeeaaaalllly bad.

The Young Victoria (***)

Dir: Jean-Marc Valle

Queen Victoria had just turned 18 when she took the throne, and this is an interesting look at the psychological and political struggles that came along as a result of that. The performance by Emily Blunt as the titular queen is very strong, and the film looks brilliant, but I would have liked it if the director would have allowed the film a little more grandeur. I like the scenes of people sitting in bedrooms talking, but why quick cut your way through the spectacle of a coronation or a royal wedding? A little more pomp and a little less circumstance can be a good thing.

Crazy Heart (**)

Dir: Scott Cooper

The Hallmark version of 2008's best film The Wrestler. Jeff Bridges won an Academy Award for a less courageous version of the performance that should have won one for Mickey Rourke. Maggie Gyllenhall does show up in a supporting role, and she has always had a way of lighting up every scene she is in.

The Clash of The Titans (*1/2)

Dir: Louis Leterrier

One of the more instantly forgettable films in recent memory.

Hot Tub Time Machine (*1/2)

Dir: Steve Pink

A less funny clone of the already unfunny Hangover. You know a film is in trouble when it's funniest moment is when a character looks into camera and says the title of the movie.

44 Inch Chest (*)

Dir: Malcom Venville

A seemingly endless, but actually only 95 minutes, British gangster flick that wants to ask interesting questions about misogyny and vengeance, but the only question I asked was "What the hell is that Ray Winstone grumbling about?"

Date Night

2010-04-13T17:49:00.000-07:00

Date Night (*** out of ****)

20th Century Fox

Dir: Shawn Levy

Str: Steve Carell, Tina Fey

Date Night as the title of a film , is not particularly intriguing. Especially, in this day and age when the idea of a "date night" is something relegated to couples, sometimes married but always bored, who's lives have become so mechanical that they actually feel the need to schedule fun. I haven't been on this Earth very long but I have been here long enough to know that premeditated fun turns into actual fun roughly 10% of the time. Luckily, Date Night as a film is much more enjoyable.

Phil and Claire Foster (Steve Carell and Tina Fey) are just the kind of couple that feel the need to schedule a "date night", but even those seem to have gone stale. They spend all of their outings at the same old local restaurant, scarfing down potato skins and salmon and mocking the other couples. They quite clearly care for each other, but things just aren't what they used to be. So, in an attempt to spice things up again Phil decides to take Claire to a trendy Manhattan sea food joint. When they can't get a table the duo lies about their identities and lay claim to the table that should rightfully belong to someone called the Tripplehorns.

Unfortunately for the Fosters, the Tripplehorns are wanted by one of the towns biggest mobsters, and when a couple of thugs confuse the innocent couple from New Jersey for the mysterious Tripplehorns, a series of events unfolds that can only be described as madcap. Over the night that follows the Fosters are involved in chase scenes and shootouts from one end of the big apple to the other. They also happen to run in to a lot of big stars in small roles. Mark Wahlberg, Taraji P. Henson, Common, Kristen Wiig, Mark Ruffalo, James Franco, and Mila Kunis all stop by to get in on the action.

The plot of the film is outlandish, and isn't exactly breaking new ground. It's basically just a big budget extension of the great screwball comedies of the 1930s. Seeing Shawn Levy's name listed as the director doesn't exactly inspire confidence either. Movie buffs will remember that this is the same man behind The Night at The Museum movies, and Cheaper By The Dozen. So, what is it about the film that makes it so damn enjoyable? Simply put, Tina Fey and Steve Carell carry this film.

Carell and Fey, the stars of two of the best sitcoms on television, are two of the best comedic performers working in American film today. The chemistry between them in Date Night is palpable, and they seem right at home together almost from the moment they appear on screen. They are both naturally funny, and come from similar backgrounds in improv, but the real key to their performances is the innate humanity they bring to the Fosters. The most effective scenes in the film come when the two of them are left alone on screen, and are allowed to just be themselves. They hit a tone of sincerity together that is really quite touching.

Date Night is a nice change of pace from the recent wave of "get drunk and screw" comedies with which we've been bombarded (The Hangover, Hot Tub Time Machine). The performances of Carell and Fey propel the film out of mediocrity and help turn Date Night into a highly enjoyable and consistently funny bit of summer entertainment.

An Alphabetical Guide to Every Film You Ever Need to See (Vol.8): All About Eve

2010-04-13T00:50:00.001-07:00

All About Eve

USA

Original release date: October 13, 1950

Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Str: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders

Running Time: 2 hours and 18 minutes

In 2010, Broadway is little more than a tourist attraction, a place you can go to see kitschy musical versions of your favorite movies. Bette Davis? She's just another dead movie star, probably best known for a song that was written about her eyes, even though many people still couldn't put her name with her face if they had to. In 1950, on the other hand, the Broadway theatre was the highest echelon of the dramatic arts, every writer a genius and every actress a muse, and Bette Davis? She was the epitome of charm and romance on the silver screen, even though the years of '47, '48 , and '49 had not been her best. Joseph L. Mankiewicz took these two wonderfully romanticized notions, put them together, and...cut them into tiny little pieces with a sardonic scissor of a screenplay that to this day, remains one of the finest ever written. He called it All About Eve.

"Margo Channing, is a great star, a true star. She never was or will be anything less or anything else." This is the grandiose introduction we are given to Margo Channing (Davis), an actress worthy of such praise. Even in her 40s she stars as characters half her age in some of this biggest plays on Broadway. She plays muse to the theater's hottest young writer Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), and is dating Bill Simpson (Gary Merrill) one of New York's most respected directors.

It would be easy to dismiss Davis' performance as self parody, the bitchy actress who is quickly approaching the twilight of her career, but she brings so much more than that to the character of Margo. Margo's insecurities about her age and her looks are treated with striking seriousness by Davis, and she allows us to catch a glimpse into the heart of someone who's lived their whole life in the spotlight.

After a performance of her latest hit play, Margo is introduced to a young lady named Eve (Anne Baxter) by her best friend Karen (Celeste Holm). Eve, a war widow, has been to every performance of Ms. Channing's new play, and waits outside every night to watch her leave the building. Margo takes an almost immediate liking to Eve, and invites her to become a kind of personal assistant to her, before that term was fashionable.

It's not long though,before the relationship between Margo and Eve begins to sour. Margo suspects Eve of trying to take over her life, and even worse take her man. Is Eve really up to no good, or are time and insecurity finally getting the better of the great Margo Channing? It's also about this time that Eve begins to become friendly with smarmy theater critic Addison Dewitt, an Academy Award winning role for George Sanders. Sanders. in case you didn't know, is possibly, the greatest prick in film history. He is obtrusively smug.

Joseph L. Mankiewicz had already won an Oscars for best director and best original screenplay the previous year for his film "A Letter to Three Wives" and he would repeat that feat with All About Eve. Mankiewicz's dialogue is intelligent and biting in a way that is hard to find in any film, from any time period. He creates no fewer than six complete and totally realized characters in All About Eve, when most films have a hard time creating one. He also must have had an eye for talent. Mankiewicz cast a then unknown actress named Marilyn Monroe to play a bit part as a beautiful young actress plying her feminine wiles in an attempt to advance her career, quite a stretch I'm sure.

Mankiewicz moves his characters through finely tuned scenes and subplots that successfully obliterate the romance of the Broadway stage, and to a certain extent the notion of celebrity itself. All About Eve is one of the great gems of Hollywood's golden age, and a monument to the art of screenwriting.

An Alphabetical Guide to Every Film You Ever Need to See (Vol.7): Aliens

2010-04-08T00:29:00.001-07:00

Aliens

USA

Original Release Date: July 18, 1986

Dir: James Cameron

Str: Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn

Running Time: 2 hours and 34 minutes (Director's Cut)

Aliens is a bulldozer of a movie. It would be nice to say that it defines the action genre, but unfortunately I can't think of another film that can keep up. The pacing, the intensity, and the all around bad assery are cranked to 11 for at least the last 90 minutes. Don't get me wrong, there are other films that move with this kind of speed, but most of them become mind numbingly stupid after about 45 minutes at best, but in Aliens, director James Cameron somehow keeps a story, a consistent tone, and a definite sense of character development all through the picture. It just might be as good as an action movie can be. Period.

Aliens is , as I'm sure you know, the sequel to Ridley Scott's sci fi horror classic Alien, and we begin the film right where the previous one left off. Or at least, so it seems. Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has just blown the alien creature that has killed all her former shipmates into deep space, and has gone to hyper sleep inside her old ship's, The Nostromo, shuttle in hopes of being picked up. 57 years later, she is rescued, but of course since she was in hyper sleep she has not aged a day.

Her story is met with skepticism by the company she works for and she is quickly brushed off as a loon. To make matter's worse she is haunted by nightmares of the events that happened on the Nostromo, and her daughter, who was only 11 years old when she left, has been dead for three years.

Aliens, even more so than the previous film, is carried by the performance (Academy Award nominated this time) of Sigourney Weaver. The great strength she portrayed in the first film is tempered in this film by the fragility and sorrow she feels upon her arrival home. It's this show of tenderness in her tough exterior that compels us to root even harder for Ripley once she's put back in the line of fire.

Meanwhile, on the distant planet where the alien was discovered in the first film, a group of colonists are hard at work creating an atmosphere, however the hell they do that, when a couple of them see something strange off in the distance. I don't think I need to tell you what it is. Soon, the marines and her former employee come back to Ripley asking her to help them find out what has happened to these settlers, and after she is promised her old job back, she agrees.

She is joined on this trip by smarmy businessman Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), and a group of marines that include: the foul mouthed Pvt. Hudson (Bill Paxton), the dreamy Cpl. Hicks (Michael Biehn), and a suspicious robot called Bishop (Lance Henriksen). Once they've reached their destination they find just one survivor of the alien attacks, a little girl named Newt (Carrie Henn), who has escaped death by hiding out in the air ducts. There is an almost instant mother-daughter bond formed between Ripley and Newt, and their relationship becomes one of the focal points of the film.

In Alien, the crew of the Nostromo had to deal with just one of these malicious extra terrestrials, this time, as Ripley and the marines quickly discover, they are dealing with many, many more. See, if you remember your alien reproductive process from the first film you'll know, that the more victims the aliens have, the more new aliens they can spawn, and they have already killed a lot of people.

Once the stage is set, James Cameron gives us what may be the longest climax in modern cinema. For almost 90 straight minutes Ripley and her crew are doing battle with countless alien assailants. The film, despite it's length (it's a half hour longer than the original Alien) never loses the intensity of Ridley Scott's 1979 film, and James Cameron manages this by keeping the framework of the story very tight. Fundamentally, it's not that much different than the original. It's just a group of people in a confined space, trying not to be killed by aliens, but what he does do, is cram a whole lot more stuff into said space. This film is louder, longer, and faster than the first, and it's a credit to the talent of James Cameron that we don't get lost in all the effects and explosions. Before he decided he was so important, James Cameron was a truly great director.

Does Aliens qualify as a great film? Who's to say really, but it may very well be the best film of it's kind ever produced. Action films have a habit of becoming dated quicker than most, and the fact that this film holds up after over twenty years is a testament to both it's director and it's star. If you look at it alongside the original, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and Sigourney Weaver have stretched one story into two of the most entertaining films ever made, and there must be some greatness in that.

An Alphabetical Guide to Every Film You Ever Need to See (Vol.6): Alien

2010-04-05T23:18:00.000-07:00

Alien

USA

Original Release Date: May 25, 1979

Dir: Ridley Scott

Str: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Ian Holm

Running Time: 1 hour and 57 minutes

Go into any multiplex in the country, at any time of the year, and you are guaranteed to see two things staring you down, a giant advertisement for the next blockbuster action movie and an equally sizable ad for the next big horror flick. These two genres have become the cornerstones of Hollywood, and the modern forms of both genres can each trace their roots back to two films from the 1970s. One would be Steven Spielberg's 1975 mega hit Jaws, and the other would be Ridley Scott's brilliant, sci-fi horror concerto Alien.

The seven person crew aboard a commercial towing spacecraft called the Nostromo have been awakened from hyper sleep by their all knowing computer- which they call Mother- because the ship has received an unidentifiable signal from a nearby planet. The crew of the Nostromo are, naturally, sent out to investigate.

The first thing one notices about Alien is the design of the Nostromo. This is not a slick shiny space station like you have seen in most science fiction films. The Nostromo has been around the block, it's beat up, it's the 18 wheeler of the great beyond. Likewise the characters aboard the ship, from the cool Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) to the creepy Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm) to the Nostromo's cantankerous engineers (Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton), feel lived in and real. Scott encouraged improvisation among his actors for the early scenes in the film to help develop an easy going rapport among them. Small touches like these help us, the audience, feel right at home on the Nostromo very early on in the film, and since I've never been on a spaceship (and I'm guessing you haven't either) these choices are very important in that they help us identify with the surroundings even though we have nothing to compare them to, except of course other movies.

Then of course there is warrant officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). It's her who discovers that the signal their hearing is not a distress signal as originally thought, but a warning. She tries to tell the others, but when one of the members of the crew, Executive Office Kane (John Hurt), returns from a search of the seemingly deserted planet with some sort of creature connected firmly to his face, it is too late.

It's about this time that Ridley Scott turns from Arthur C. Clarke into John Carpenter. Once this alien creature is on the ship it begins an incubation process inside of the still breathing Kane that culminates in the infamous "chestbursting" scene, one of the most iconic moments in film history, and all hell breaks loose. The aforementioned John Carpenter may have invented the slasher formula with 1978's Halloween, but Ridley Scott perfected it in Alien. The crew of the Nostromo are picked off one by one by the murderous alien invader, who thanks to the film's ambiguous cinematography seems to consist of little more than slime and teeth. The final hour of Alien is relentless in it's intensity, and seems to play off of two seemingly adverse fears, as the crew is simultaneously trapped and in the middle of nowhere.

Like any good slasher flick, Alien ends in a one on one showdown between killer and potential victim, unlike most slasher flicks we actually give a shit who lives or dies. A lot of this has to do with the familiarity and warmth Scott creates among his characters but even more of it has to do with the performance of Sigourney Weaver as Warrant Officer Ripley. Weaver's strange mix of toughness, sexuality, and purity has remained consistently inexplicable to me over the years, and all I can really say is that as an actress she is blessed.

The special effects in Alien are still very strong after 30 years, and Scott's extensive handheld camerawork gives the film a very modern feel. Like many great horror movies there is not nearly as much violence in Alien as people seem to remember, and this is emblematic of the great strength of the film. Scott takes a story that most would try to exploit and injects it with a great deal of humanity, add to this his flawless technique, and an iconic performance by Weaver, and what you are left with is one of the greatest cinematic thrill rides of all time.

An Alphabetical Guide to Every Film You Ever Need to See (Vol.5): Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

2010-04-05T23:11:00.000-07:00

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

Germany

Original Release Date: March 5, 1974

Dir: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Str: Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem

Running Time: 1 hour and 33 minutes

I have designated this spot in the series to the German classic Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, but I would like to watch it again before writing about it, and since I won't be able to obtain a copy until later in the week I will have to save this one's seat.

*I'm still waiting...

An Alphabetical Guide to Every Film You Ever Need to See (Vol.4): Alexander Nevsky

2010-04-03T11:25:00.000-07:00

Alexander Nevsky

USSR

Original Release Date: November 25, 1938

Dir: Sergei Eisenstein

Str: Nikolai Cherkasov

Running time: 1 hour and 52 minutes

"Die where you stand."

To put it lightly, Sergei Eisenstein made the best out of a bad situation. He had the misfortune of being a Russian with an artistic soul in the early days of the Soviet Union, a time when creativity and individualism were, to say the least, frowned upon. So, Eisenstein did the only thing he could do. He put his talent to work for the government and he changed the world of cinema through the vessel of propaganda. His early films Battleship Potemkin and October helped to create the visual blueprint of narrative cinema, and his 1938 classic Alexander Nevsky would change the art of the "war" movie forever.

In the 13th century, Russia was facing invaders from two sides: from the east the Mongolians and from the west the German Teutonic Knights of The Holy Roman Empire. The citizens of Novgorod, the last free Russian city, are in dire need of help, so they call the one man hat can save them, Prince Alexander Nevsky. Nevsky assembles his troops, gets the locals fired up, and heads out to battle.

This remarkably simple premise is very similar to that of Akira Kurasowa's The Seven Samurai, but when Kurasowa turns over every stone of the story to see what's underneath, Eisenstein blows right through it to get where he wants to be. Where he wants to be is on a frozen lake outside of Novgorod, and it's on this lake that one of the most rousing scenes in cinema history takes place.

Alexander Nevsky is built around a 36 minute battle scene on the icy surface of Lake Chudskoye. Eisenstein's pioneering use of montage and sound are both on display here as he orchestrates one of the great dust-ups the cinema has ever seen. Eisenstein's quick cutting, massive wide shots of a seemingly endless sea of warriors, and even a brief use of the now omnipresent shaky cam, all serve as a reminder that while the art of the battle scene has certainly been refined, this is still the blueprint. You can see a little bit of Alexander Nevsky in films as diverse as Doctor Zhivago, Braveheart, and Lord of The Rings.

If the film only consisted of this battle scene it would still deserve it's place among the great films of all time, but the cinematography of the film throughout only serves as further proof that Sergei Eisenstein was probably the first great visual artist of the cinema. He is especially successful at making the German Knights look downright evil, their eyes peering threateningly through the crucifixes on their helmets.

The film, naturally, was commissioned by the Kremlin, and Stalin ordered it be placed in every movie theater in the country in hope that it would rile up the people when it came time to fight the Germans once again, which everyone knew would be very soon. Though the political intentions of the film are still apparent, so is the unmistakable film making technique that Eisenstein possessed. He took the politics of a nation, and turned it into the legacy of one man.

An Alphabetical Guide to Every Film You Ever Need to See (Vol.3): Aguirre: The Wrath of God

2010-03-31T22:48:00.000-07:00

Aguirre: The Wrath of God
Germany

Original Release Date: December 29, 1972

Dir: Werner Herzog

Str: Klaus Kinski

Running Time: 1 hour and 33 minutes

"That man is a head taller than me. That may change"

These people do not belong here. This is the thought that runs through one's head during the opening moments of Werner Herzog's 1972 masterpiece Aguirre: The Wrath of God. The film opens with a seemingly never ending line of 16th century conquistadors descending some South American peak. Many of them wear armor, the women are dressed in long flowing gowns, slaves drag cannons and do there best to keep the livestock moving. Women are carried in large sedan cars that teeter vicariously when ever the land is a bit unstable. In these opening shots lies the essence of the film. These people do not belong here.

Aguirre: The Wrath of God is an adventure story that rolled around in the genius mud of Werener Herzog's brain and came out the other side as some kind of bizarro political allegory. The film gives a highly fictionalized account of a trek led by legendary conquistador Pizarro as he and his men search for the lost Inca city of El Dorado. When the terrain gets too rough Pizarro sends out a group of his men to scout the land and report back to him with their findings. Among these men is the deranged, violent Don Aguirre (Klaus Kinski).

Among men who are merely trying to stay alive a murderous man can get nearly anything he wants, and that's exactly what Aguirre does as in the span of a day he has taken over the group and has murdered or maimed those who might stand in his way.

Very few people have ever had as striking facial features as Klaus Kinski. He has the cheeks of a prisoner, the jaw of a movie star, and the eyes of a mental patient. His character is defined as much by his face as by the things he says, even without his insane proclamations ("I, the wrath of God, will marry my own daughter and with her I'll found the purest dynasty the Earth has ever seen") we know just by looking at him that this man is demented. What makes his character even more frightening is that Kinski is able to display such power without uttering a word. It is obvious from the beginning that no man is going to be able to stop Don Aguirre.

As the men move farther down the Amazon River the film's tone becomes more and more surreal. We see a large wooden ship stuck in the top of a tree, we see a man who has been beheaded finish his sentence. It becomes quite clear that as the characters in the story are getting further from the reality they know, Herzog is leading his audience further and further from the reality they know. The ever changing mood is remarkably effective, and Francis Ford Coppola would use a very similar technique in his film Apocalypse Now just 7 years later.

Aguirre: The Wrath of God is more than anything a study in the political consequences of natural selection. The men on this journey are slowly being picked off by natives who know the terrain, but Herzog only briefly shows these attackers. Instead what he shows are arrows coming seemingly out of nowhere, almost as if the jungle itself is on the offensive. This brings us back to the opening shots of the film, and the underlying theme of the whole film. These men do not belong here, and nature has a way of dispatching of those who attempt to take what is not theirs. It would be hard for me to believe that Herzog was not at least slightly influenced by America's participation in the Vietnam War, which would have been ongoing at the time of filming.

The filming of Aguirre is almost as legendary as the film itself. Herzog led his troupe of actors down the real Amazon and through very harsh conditions for the film. He also allegedly directed Kinski at gunpoint after he threatened to leave the film. All this adds up to remarkable authenticity in the kind of picture that is usually lacking in that department. The cinematography is stunning from beginning to end, and the final shot of Aguirre The Wrath of God gives us one of the great, iconic images of the cinema. It's the perfect ending to one of the best movies ever made.

An Alphabetical Guide to Every Film You Ever Need to See (Vol.2): L'age d'or

2010-03-30T19:19:00.000-07:00

L'age d'or

France

Original release date: October 28, 1930

Dir: Luis Bunuel

Str: Gaston Modot, Lya Lys

Running time: 1 hour and 3 minutes

"What joy, what joy in having killed our children."

There is a cow in her bed. She doesn't seem surprised, more annoyed then anything, and she quickly shews it out of the room. The bell the cow wears around it's neck rings as it clamors off the bed and out the door. As it leaves we can see that this cow is in dire need of milking, it's utters sag noticeably. Even after the cow leaves the room we can hear it's bell ringing loud and clear. The girl sets down and looks into her mirror. At first she sees her lover, who she has so recently been torn away from, (a dog barks) but then her looking glass is filled up with clouds in a beautiful sky. She smiles now, and all the while we can hear that bell ring.

The above paragraph means nothing, but it could mean everything. It's confusing, but enthralling. It's ridiculous, yet seems oddly sincere. It is also my attempt to describe one of the many magical moments in Luis Bunuel's 1930 surrealist classic L'age d'or (The Golden Age). A film that ultimately defies description. L'age d'or is the second film from Bunuel and his co-writer the legendary Salvador Dali, and it remains one of the crowning achievements of the surrealist movement.

Surrealism is, in it's broadest terms, an artistic attempt to engage the subconscious, often times through the confounding of the consci0us. In L'age d'or Bunuel and Dali do this by using imagery that entices a reaction on both of ends of the spectrum. It's a film made to delight and disgust, and in the end it does both.

At it's base level L'age d'or is the story of two lovers, filled with lust, who are held apart by society, but the "story" of the film is irrelevant. It's just a wire for Bunuel and Dali to hang their imagery from while it dries in the sun, and the meaning behind these images may be just as unimportant to the filmmakers as the story. Bunuel and Dali are using their dreamlike imagery to open the minds of the audience, so it only bears to reason that their intent is just as unpredictable as the audiences response. A proper surrealist uses his dreams like a crowbar to pry away the preconceptions of his public. Bunuel and Dali are proper surrealists.

After it's initial release in 1930 the film was banned for many years, not gaining a legal US release until 1979. Protesters threw ink at that the screen during it's initial run in Paris, and the film was pulled from screens by the censors who cited the film for "anti-religious material". Of course, it's not hard to find anti-religious material in L'age d'or, particularly in a sequence that places a Messianic character in an unspeakable situation, because it is there. Luis Bunuel was a well known atheist and in his memoir My Last Sigh he writes- "God and Country are an unbeatable team, they break all records for oppression and bloodshed."

Still, in the end, surrealism is a communal experience, and even artists as talented as Bunuel and Dali can't strike a nerve in your subconscious that wasn't already there. This is one of the beautiful things about the surrealist movement, and L'age d'or is one the best examples of that process.

An Alphabetical Guide to Every Film You Ever Need to See (Vol.1): The African Queen

2010-03-30T00:21:00.000-07:00

Note: Faithful readers, as if there are any, may remember that I actually started this series last week with Billy Wilder's Ace in The Hole, but that entry has mysteriously disappeared completely from my blog, and since I'm an idiot and don't save things it looks like I'm starting back at one.

The African Queen

USA

Original Release Date: Decemeber 23, 1951

Dir: John Huston

Str: Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn

Running time: 1 hour and 45 minutes

For director John Huston, The African Queen was his chance to make a proper adventure movie on the rivers of the Congo, and to a certain extent (maybe even to a larger extent) was an opportunity to shoot at some wild game on off days. For Humphrey Bogart, this was the film that would finally earn him a long overdue Academy Award, and it was a chance to work with his pal Huston again after they had teamed so successfully on films like The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of The Sierra Madre. It would take an extraordinary woman to wrestle this film from the grasp of these two drunken juggernauts. Katharine Hepburn was that woman.

The African Queen opens in German East Africa, in the straw hut that serves as the church for the services of Rev. Samuel Sayer (Robert Morley). His sister Rose (Hepburn) mans the organ as the two of them sing hymns over the wail of tribesmen who clearly don't have much command over the English language, but Rose's voice remains strong and clear as she pounds on an instrument that has clearly seen better days. Later in the film, we find out that Rose and her brother have been in Africa for 10 years. 10 years of preaching to people who may or may not understand a word she's saying is exemplary of the kind of blind determination that Rose possesses, and it's this aspect of her character that drives the film.

Not to say that she comes off as tough, quite the opposite in fact. When riverboat captain Charlie Ullnut (Bogart) arrives to deliver the duo their mail Rose seems downright demure, but that won't last for long. Unfortunately, Mr. Ullnut isn't just delivering the mail on this trip. He also has news that war has broken out in Europe (that would be WWI) and the Germans might be raiding the colonial villages to try and turn tribesmen into soldiers. They do, and after Samuel loses a bout with malaria Rose is left alone in the burnt out shell of the village that she and Samuel spent a decade building. When Mr. Ullnut returns he offers Rose passage on his ship, The African Queen, but a trip home will not be enough for Rose Sayer.

She soon devises a plan to use The African Queen to sink the fabled Geman gunship The Luisa. All they have to do is figure out a way to build a torpedo, navigate the boat over some rapids, sneak past a German base without being shot, and try not to get eaten alive by a vast assortment of wild animals. Here in lies the importance of the casting of Hepburn and Bogart. There is no reason why Ullnut should go along with Rose's plan, but if any woman was ever strong enough to convince a man to take this risk it was Katharine Hepburn, and if there was ever a guy cool enough to say "what the hell, let's give this thing a shot" it was Humphrey Bogart.

No film actress has ever had the physical range of Katharine Hepburn. She could throw herself around like a rag doll one minute, and be the picture of elegance the next, and neither one would seem forced. In The African Queen her character undergoes more of a subtle unwinding. Rose is as prim and proper as The Queen of England at the beginning of the film, but after she pilots the boat over a set of rapids she seems to undergo a profound, almost sexual, awakening. It's not long after this that her relationship with the gin swilling Ullnut takes a romantic turn- something we couldn't' imagine the buttoned up Rose at the beginning of the film doing, and by the end of the film she is down in the muck pulling the African Queen through the reeds, a roughneck on an equal par with her male counterpart.

John Huston's direction is not flashy, but it is solid. He keeps the pace moving along nicely, never slowing down but never moving so fast that we lose sight of where we are, and he wisely never lets the tone of the film get too dark. This is after all an adventure story, it should be fun to watch, and it is.

The film was shot almost entirely in Africa so it looks much better than other nautical adventures of the era which were sometimes quite obviously filmed in swimming pools. The special effects used are quite archaic, but they come off as more quaint than laughable, and let's face it they are not the star of this show. The African Queen is a chance to see two of the greatest, if not the absolute greatest, movie stars of all time on a trip through the jungle. Hepburn. Bogey. Huston. This is Hollywood royalty.

The Crazies

2010-03-21T19:53:00.000-07:00

The Crazies (*1/2 out of ****)

Overture Films

Dir: Breck Eisner

Str: Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Joe Anderson

It's easy to write about a good film: to speak of directorial intent, visual idiosyncrasies, or another brilliant performance by Nicolas Cage. It's even easier to write about a bad film: to denounce the dumbing down of cinema, the mediocrity of the mainstream, or another horrendous performance by Nicolas Cage. But, how does one write about a film as thoroughly unremarkable as The Crazies. A film that inspires no emotion on either end of the spectrum. I don't know, but I'm going to try.

It's opening day for the local high school baseball team in Ogden Marsh, Iowa and there's a man in center field with a shotgun. Not surprised? Me either, but it turns out this isn't your typical Otis the Town Drunk type situation, and before long Sherrif David Dutton (Timothy Olyphant) is noticing that all over town people are acting a little bit....crazy.

It should be pointed out that The Crazies is not technically a zombie movie because the assailants have not actually risen from the dead, but all the same rules apply. I could tell you why the town's people all start to act like the flesh hungry undead, but does it really matter? I can't think of one zombie movie where it actually matters why the dead (or in this case the infected) are on the prowl. What matters is they are, now what the hell are we going to do with them? Shoot 'em probably.

Once the film gets going the government steps in to try and prevent the spread of this stupefying epidemic, and it's pretty much business as usual in zombtown. Dutton, his smokin' hot wife (Radha Mitchell), and his local yokel deputy (Joe Anderson) are a desperate band of survivors roaming a desolate countryside, dodging attacks from zombies and government agents, and yada yada yada.

The Crazies is a horror movie released in 2010 so you should already know that it's a remake of a much better film. In this case it's a 1973 film of the same name by the zombie master himself George Romero. Romero's film was a fun little B movie with some decidedly twisted plot turns and even a little political bite. The 2010 version loses all of that and settles for being another in a long line of Hollywood's newest favorite subgenre, the apocalyptic thriller- albeit on a smaller scale.

I think something needs to be pointed out to the filmmakers of the world, and luckily for them I'm here to do it. Zombies are not scary. They only look scary in big groups, which is true of everything, but as a movie monster they just simply do not inspire the kind of fear necessary to carry a horror movie. This is precisely why all the best zombie movies have to have an extra card up their sleeve, the political satire of the early Romero films, and the comedic elements of Shaun of the Dead and The Evil Dead series, just to name a few.

The Crazies might have worked as a real nuts n' bolts straight to DVD thriller at 80 minutes, it is efficiently made and does feature one scene of truly incendiary gore, but as it stands the film is 20 minutes too long and features at least two too many "How the hell are we going to get out of here?" type situations. I can't say I hated it, but I wish I could. At least that would be something. Call me crazy.

The World Ignores Genius (3/19/10)

2010-03-20T01:08:00.000-07:00

Bandslam

Summit Entertainment

Dir: Todd Graff

Str: Gaelan Connell, Alyson Michalka, Vanessa Hudgens

So, I couldn't help but notice that the retail stores in town had big Twilight: New Moon DVD release parties tonight, so I thought I would take a moment to promote a film aimed at the same audience as that pile of crap. Bandslam is the story of a high school outcast (G. Connell) who gets recruited by the hottest girl in school (Alyson M.) to manage her new band as they prepare for a nationwide competition called Bandslam. Yes, this story is every bit as lame as it sounds, but filmmaker Todd Graff treats it like it's the most important thing in the world which is exactly how his characters feel about it, and to a further extent is exactly how teenagers feel about everything and that lends the film a surprising authenticity. Graff also gets very good performances from his three young leads, at least two of which star on Disney Channel TV shows, and there is even an excellent supporting performance by Lisa Kudrow as the mom of the teen aged Brian Epstein. This is not a film to be watched from a high horse, and to most jaded adults this will look like just another teen film, but in a world of Twilight and High School Musical it's nice to see a film aimed at young people that features characters with actual working hearts and minds. O, and by the by, there's also a cameo by David Bowie.

P.S.: I know there are also older people who like Twilight, but there is nothing that can be done for them.

Fish Tank

2010-02-28T19:59:00.000-08:00

Fish Tank (**** out of ****)

IFC

Dir: Andrea Arnold

Str: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fasssbender, Kiersten Wareing

In an era when films like Avatar are lauded for creating such "convincing" depictions of alternative realities it's nice to see a film like Fish Tank, a film that understands that actual reality is just as difficult to create on film, and will always, ALWAYS be more interesting. Much of Fish Tank takes place in a British apartment project in a place called Essex, now I've never been to England, but I am certain that Fish Tank is one of the more brutally honest films I've seen in quite some time. How can I be so sure? Well, because there are places like Essex everywhere. It's the kind of place where your dreams die daily, but your mistakes can stick with you forever.

Mia Williams (Katie Jarvis) is the 15 year old girl that Andrea Arnold's film follows around Essex and it's surrounding areas. Mia lives with her mother (Kiersten Wareing), who looks like she was probably around 15 herself when she had Mia, and her younger sister Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths). Mia's mother, Joanne, is the kind of mother you see alot in places like Essex. Robbed of a youth by her young motherhood, she spends more time trying to pretend that she's still young and care free than she does paying any attention to her children. Mia's father is not even mentioned.

When a child is made to feel alone in the world at such a young age, they get scared, and when they get scared they lash out and become hostile. So is the case with Mia, she's already been booted out of school, seems to have very few if any friends, she's constantly screaming, and is usually drinking any form of alcohol she can get her hands on. She does have one dream though, to dance. I guess you would call her style hip hop, although alot of it looks more like 1980s break dancing, but the dancing is not the point- the dream is. In fact it becomes quite clear to the audience early on that Mia is not even that good of a dancer, but in a place like Essex a dream can get you from sun up to sun down, and that's all Mia can ask for.

Early in the film Joanne brings home a new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbinder), he and Mia begin to form a very strange relationship. At times his intentions toward Mia seem perverse or at the very least inappropriate, and at other times it seem like she might finally have a friend.

The film is anchored by an incredible performance by Katie Jarvis, an 18 year old first time actress who comes from the same Essex projects depicted in the film. Jarvis had a child at 16, and was discovered by Andrea Arnold when she noticed her in a shouting match with her boyfriend at a train station, but it shouldn't be misconstrued that this is a case of somebody just playing themselves. Jarvis' portrayal of Mia is a real performance, she is unflincihngly hostile, but in the end you can't help but sympathize with her situation.

One of the reasons we identify with Mia so strongly is because Andrea Arnold directs the film entirely form Mia's shoes. She is the focal point of every scene, and we never stop even for a moment to get somebody else's point of view. I don't doubt that a character like Mia's mom could easily be seen in a different light if we were to look at the situation from her end, but that is not the film Arnold is trying to make. Fish Tank is a brilliant character study, and a heartbreaking and disturbing story. In a place like Essex being a teenager isn't a soap opera, it's a fucking tragedy.

Shutter Island

2010-02-21T22:13:00.000-08:00

Shutter Island (***1/2 out of ****)

Paramount

Dir: Martin Scorsese

Str: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley

First of all, let me just say that I live in a very small town in Ohio that has one theater, and that theater has but seven screens, and those seven screens are usually filled with schlocky horror movies, sappy romantic comedies, or kids movies, but about half a dozen times a year the work of a real filmmaker sneaks in. Last year I got Jason Reitman's Up In The Air, Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Sam Raimi's Drag Me To Hell, and a few others. Two months into this year I get the new film by the greatest living filmmaker, Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island.

Martin Scorsese LOVES the movies. He's told countless stories about how as a boy he had terrible asthma and wasn't allowed to play outside. So what did he do? He went to the movies. Scorsese's love for the cinema and zest for the art of film making radiates in everything he creates, and his newest picture is no different. Shutter Island is a definite throwback to the great noir and mystery pictures of the 40s and 50s, and owes a certain debt to the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock.

Like a Hitchcock movie, the less you know about the film going in, the better, so I won't go in to the details of the plot here. I can tell you that the island in the title is home to the Ashecliffe Mental Institution, and I can tell you that U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) have been sent there to investigate the case of a missing patient. I can also tell you this, as if you couldn't put it together by now, things are not as they seem.

Teddy Daniels, a World War II veteran haunted by the savagery of war, is played very well by DiCaprio. Much like his character in Scorsese's Departed- this is their 4th collaboration- Daniels is a character that requires DiCaprio to remain constantly on the edge of breakdown and discovery, and he handles this easily without ever giving in to silly histrionics. Ben Kingsley and Max Van Sydow (who is 80 now but really doesn't look any older than he did in The Exorcist almost 40 years ago) are superbly cast as the institutions stately, if possibly deranged, head physicians, and Michelle Williams is also strong in her few scenes as DiCaprio's late wife.

Like all Scorsese pictures, you could write pages about the direction of Shutter Island (I plan on seeing it again later in the week and may do just that), but for this review I will try to keep my praise brief. Scorsese isn't afraid to do what so many directors these days forget about, and that is take his time to create an atmosphere. During the opening scenes of the film Scorsese makes the actual island itself into a character in the film, watching the Marshalls approach on the rough water of the Boston Harbor, move slowly through the many gates of the institution, their car always moving along the edge of what seems to be a never ending cliff. All of this gives the Island the feeling of a sort of impenetrable fortress. We're only 5 minutes into the picture, but, without anybody saying it, we already know we're never getting off this rock.

I will probably write another spoiler filled entry about the visual style of Shutter Island later in the week, but I will just say that if you've ever seen a Scorsese movie, you know what he can do behind a camera, and he does not disappoint. That being said Shutter Island is not a perfect film, it is a little baggy in spots and some of the twists don't pack the wallop you would hope for, but it is still an exceedingly well made film by one of the greatest heroes of cinema, and definitely the best picture of this young year.

Your Eyes Are Always Sayin' The Things You're Never Sayin'

2010-02-16T20:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.esquire.com/features/roger-ebert-0310

Esquire Magazine has published a very interesting and touching piece this month on Roger Ebert and his struggle with cancer. Ebert, the only film critic ever to win the Pulitzer Prize, has long been a champion of great cinema, and deserves all the recognition he's received. He has never been afraid to take a moral stand on a film, something you don't see enough from film critics, and never shies away from going against the grain of critical consensus. His online journal is one of the more enlightening things I have ever read on a computer screen.

The World Ignores Genius (2/15/10): The Devil, Zombies, and The Devil

2010-02-15T13:04:00.000-08:00

This is the first of a series I'm going to call "The World Ignores Genius", a look at films recently released for home viewing that have not received the attention they deserve.

Mainstream horror has been dead for years. Maybe forever. Since John Carpenter popularized the slasher film in 1978 with "Halloween" the number of horror movies produced every year has steadily risen, and not surprisingly the ratio of well thought out, real attempts at something horrific (or at the very least fun to watch) has declined , while the number of gruesome, mindless, by the numbers killfests have been on the rise. If you don't believe me let's take a look at the top 10 grossing horror movies of last year.

1. Paranormal Activity- an achievement in public relations, that was more than a little disappointing, the film equivalent of someone sneaking up behind you and saying "Boo"

2. The Final Destination 3D- Sequel + 1 Dimension

3. Friday The 13th- Remake

4. The Haunting in Connecticut- Hilarious attempt at a haunted house movie

5. My Bloody Valentine 3D- Remake +1 Dimension

6. The Unborn- Never saw it, but according to Rotten Tomatoes 12% of the critics in the country gave it positive reviews which is ridiculously low, also it was produced by Michael Bay

7. Drag Me To Hell- Sam Raimi's return to horror comedy is the only really good film on this list

8. Orphan- The second best film on this list not that that says alot, but it could have been much worse

9. Halloween II- Sequel to a remake

10. The Last House on The Left- Remake

So, there you have it. 1 really good movie, 1 pretty good movie, and 8 clunkers- 5 of which are either remakes or sequels, and that doesn't even include Saw VI which bombed but will still be followed this Halloween by Saw VII in 3D.

However, in the last two weeks I have seen three indie films that have reminded me that there are still people who care about the horror genre- a genre that has been around as long as film itself.

1. The House of The Devil

Magnet Releasing

Director Ti West's newest film has a set up as cliche as any lame slasher movie you can think of- a girl, in need of money, takes a babysitting job only to find that the people she's sitting for are not what they seem. But in the cinema, it's not what you say, it's how you say it, and by taking his time and never giving in to temptation West gives us one of the best spooky house movies in years. Features some incredibly tense sequences, even one set to the 1980s hit "One Thing Leads To Another" by The Fixx.

2. Pontypool

IFC Films

Based on a novel (how often do you hear that about a horror movie) by Tony Burgess this Canadian zombie flick takes an interesting approach to the genre.....more dialogue, fewer zombies. This entire picture takes place inside of a radio station in the small Ontario town of Pontypool, and follows the crew of a morning radio show as they slowly receive information of a disease that is taking over their little town. A disease that is spread in a way far too cool for me to mention here.

3. Triangle

Icon Film Distribution

British filmmaker Christopher Smith takes the story of a group of friends stranded at sea and turns it into a wicked, blood splattered Twilight Zone episode. When the shipwrecked group is taken aboard by a deserted ocean liner an absolutely bizarre series of events begins to unfold. This is probably the creepiest of the three films because what Smith does is he puts the characters and the viewer in a trap, and then shows you that not only are you in a trap, not only is there no way out of the trap, but you've been in this trap for much MUCH longer than you realize- maybe your whole life.

So, if you're in the Mid Atlantic this week like me, there's already a foot of snow on the ground and more on the way, why not rent all 3? Even if you have bad taste and end up not liking them, it's still better than going outside.

From Paris With Love

2010-02-14T12:59:00.000-08:00

From Paris With Love (**1/2 out of ****)

Lionsgate

Dir: Pierre Morrel

Str: John Travolta, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Kasia Smutniak

Producer Luc Besson and director Pierre Morrel seem to be doing everything they can to hurt the tourism industry in Paris. In their previous film together, Taken (2009), a teenage girl goes to The City of Light without her parents, and is kidnapped by sex traders WITHIN AN HOUR OF HER ARRIVAL. This of course led to her father hopping a plane and killing everyone in sight for the next 90 minutes. That film was a surprise hit during 2009's Super Bowl weekend, so this year Besson and Morel have joined forces once again for From Paris With Love.

James Reece (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) leads an interesting life. He is an American living in Paris, he is the assistant to an American diplomat, and he is shacking up with his sexy and free spirited Parisian girlfriend Caroline (Kasia Smutniak). Although lets face it, if you're in a movie and have a Parisian girlfriend, she's going to be sexy and free spirited. Aren't there any girl's in Paris who look like housewives, and like to spend their evenings on the couch watching T.V.? Guess not.

Oh, I forgot to mention that James also has the coolest night job ever.......secret agent. For his latest assignment he has been teamed with a loose cannon, American, super spy type named Charlie Wax (John Travolta). Their mission? To take apart a French drug operation from top to bottom, or at least I think that's their mission.

The film really makes no apologies for the fact that it's plot is paper thin. In fact it almost seems to revel in it. So much so, that during the scene when Wax is finally explaining what's really going on, the filmmaker drops Travolta's voice way down in the mix, and I am still not 100% clear why any of this was going on, but in a strange way the film benefits from this lack of attention to detail. Yes, I just referred to the plot of the movie as a detail because in a movie likes this, which strives to be nothing more than a good old fashioned shoot-em-up, that's exactly what it is. Also, it should be noted that if it weren't this film's lack of seriousness, the fact that it is, like Taken (which I hated by the way), a film about white guys shooting every minority that comes within a 5 mile radius, would be very offensive.

The thread that really holds the movie together is the performance of John Travolta. He's over acting his ass off here and clearly having a heck of a time doing it. He's about as evil as a character can be and still get away with you liking him. In all honesty, if this script was better, this could be one of the better roles of Travolta's career, but let's face it, I don't think a whole lot of effort was put into the script of From Paris With Love. Meyers and Smutniak, who I had never seen before but apparently she was in something called Goal! 3 (I didn't even see Goal 1), are fine in their roles, but they quickly take a backseat to Charlie Wax, as they should.

There are some other funny little touches in the film, an omnipresent vase filled with cocaine being one, the fact that Travolta and Meyers actually keep track of how many people they kill during their day long rampage (roughly one an hour) being another. From Paris With Love isn't anything you need to rush out and see, but it is perfectly acceptable, B Movie style entertainment.

The 10 Best Films of 2009

2010-01-03T18:40:00.000-08:00

*Note: I haven't seen all the "awards" type pictures that fill most top 1o lists, but that's ok because it clears up space for some films that have been overlooked. I think I've written about all these movies on here before, so I didn't feel the need to add anything. 2009 was a really good year for the movies.

10. I Love You, Man

9. Tokyo!

8. Up

7. Away We Go

6. Zombieland

5. Two Lovers

4. Coraline

3. The Cove

2. Inglourious Basterds

1. Sin Nombre

Sherlock Holmes

2009-12-26T22:15:00.000-08:00

Sherlock Holmes (2 out of 4 stars)
Warner Bros.
Dir: Guy Ritchie
Str: Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law, Rachel McAdams

In 1887, Arthur Conan Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet" first appeared in the British literary magazine Beeton's Christmas Annual, it was the world's introduction to Detective Sherlock Holmes. 112 years later director Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels) is reintroducing the brilliant Londoner, along with his faithful sidekick Dr. Watson, to audiences across the world.

The story is still set in turn of the century England- recreated very authentically by the way, but this is not the same Sherlock Holmes that Mr. Doyle knew. Robert Downey Jr. plays the detective as the rough and tumble type who is just as likely to be seen in a bare knuckle boxing match as he is practicing his violin or conducting science experiments.

Holmes' latest adventure begins with he and Dr. Watson thwarting a human sacrifice being attempted by an evil serial killer known as Lord Blackwood. Blackwood is hanged for his crimes, but is soon seen roaming the countryside, and as the bodies mount up so does the pressure on our man Holmes to solve The Case of The Black Magic Murders! I just made up that name for the case, not bad eh?

At the same time, Dr. Watson, Holmes' longtime companion and personal physician, has become engaged, and has announced that he will be leaving the detective game. Holmes', not anxious to see his dear friend leave, keeps drawing Watson back in to the life that we all know he was destined to live.

The relationship between Downey's Holmes and Watson- played brilliantly by Jude Law, is without a doubt the most effective aspect of the picture. Holmes brings his typical wild eyed charisma to Holmes, and Law adds depth to what could easily be just a typical "go get 'em" sidekick. The two have great chemistry together and do a wonderful job of creating the impression that they have been friends for a very long time. There has always been a strange homoerotic subtext between these two characters, and there is no change in that here- it's not a focal point of the film or anything, but it's there if you care to see it. On the other hand, Rachel McAdams' performance as Holmes' criminal minded love interest is a bit bland to say the least.

Even though the two leads work exceedingly well together, Sherlock Holmes is ultimately an unfulfilling experience. The film is lacking in the one thing that a Sherlcok Holmes movie should be overflowing with- mystery. I like a good action scene as much as anyone, and the ones in this movie are pretty well done- despite some shoddy CGI, but they kept pulling me out of the story. Just when the clues are piling up, and the plot is really beginning to unfurl there is another fight or chase scene that, no matter how well done, is not nearly as interesting as watching Downey and Law put together the pieces of this elaborate tale...or argue like an old married couple.

Sherlock Holmes is Ritchie's best film since Snatch, which is not much of a feat if you consider what has come since (Swept Away, Revolver), and he certainly has a firm grasp of the material, but a mystery story without a mystery is not much of a story at all. If this movie makes much money they'll definitely be looking to franchise it, and if they do I hope they realize that Holmes is an interesting enough character without trying to turn him into a 19th century version of Jason Bourne.

A Christmas Message

2009-12-23T14:12:00.001-08:00

Avatar

2009-12-20T13:34:00.000-08:00

Avatar (2 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

20th Century Fox

Dir: James Cameron

Str: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver

To begin with, what you've heard is true, Avatar looks awesome. As a visual spectacle, the film is very effective. Director James Cameron, the man that brought us Terminator 2, Aliens, and that stupid boat movie, has once again created a world all his own, but once we get there does he have a story worth telling?

The world he has created is a distant moon called Pandora in the year 2154. Pandora is the universe's most abundant source of unobtanium- very silly name-the most precious resource in the galaxy, and we Earthlings want all of it. Pandora is also home to a race of 9 foot tall, blue beings known as the Na'vi, and they are none too anxious to give up their home.

In an attempt to infiltrate Na'vi society Earth's scientists have developed a system in which human beings can inhabit Na'vi bodies, or avatars, in hopes that they can convince the Na'vi to relocate. Due to the unexpected death of his brother, a paraplegic former marine named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) is tagged to enter an avatar and head to Pandora. Not long after he arrives he is taken in to the tribe by a foxy Na'vi called Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and finds himself in the middle of the battle for Pandora.

New motion capture techniques and stereoscopic cameras were used by and sometimes invented for Cameron's return to science fiction, budget estimates run anywhere from $200 to $500 million bucks, and the results are spectacular. The Na'vi are remarkably realistic digital versions of the actors portraying them, and the world of Avatar is the closest anyone's ever been to the original Star Wars films in terms of imagination. Around every corner is a new creature or breathtaking landscape, IT IS A BEAUTIFUL THING.

Sam Worthington is a bit sketchy as Scully, but they're are some good performances scattered around Avatar. Sigourney Weaver, as the head Earth scientist, is as strong a presence as she ever was, Zoe Saldana brings an undeniable intensity and sexuality to Neytiri, and Giovanni Ribisi as the man in charge of the invasion of Pandora, although I'm not quite sure what his actual job is, revels in his dislikability.

Cameron spent ten years developing Avatar, unfortunately I have a feeling that very little of that time was spent on the script. The plot, if you didn't put it together from my earlier synopsis, is completely predictable, and is the kind of thing we've seen a million times before (Pocahontas, Dances With Wolves). The dialogue is very clunky, and dare I say corny at times, and the first act of the picture runs an hour and twenty minutes- it would have been just as effective at half the length.

Is Avatar truly the future of cinema as it has been advertised? Mmmaybe, but people need to realize that just because this technology exists now doesn't mean everyone will be able to use it like James Cameron does. It's not his best picture by a longshot, but I'm very glad I saw it, and can't imagine that anyone's eyes would not light up for this beautiful, groundbreaking imagery.

The 10 Best Films of the Decade

2009-12-14T10:03:00.000-08:00

The 10 Best Films of The Decade

10. You Can Count on Me

The best acted film of the decade, directed by playwright Kenneth Lonnergan, follows a formula that most movies avoid these days. Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo play smart people making tough decisions in real situations.

9. Sin Nombre

Sin Nombre is the best kind of political movie, and the best movie of this year, the kind that doesn't lose it's story in it's politics. First time director Cory Fukunaga's beautifully filmed immigration story is one of the most promising debut features in years.

8. The Devil and The Daniel Johnston

Even if you don't love Daniel Johnston's music, and many people won't, his passion for it will undoubtedly draw you in to this movie- the best documentary of the decade. Once you've been drawn in, there is no escape. The story of Daniel Johnston is hilarious and heartbreaking in equal turn, and in the end it's more than just a little bit inspiring.

7. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

I have never laughed harder than the first time I saw Borat.

6. United 93

The one great movie about 9/11, the most important event of the decade, is surprisingly, the one film that takes no political stance on the subject. Director Paul Greengrass simply tells the story as it happened. It's harrowing, but still twice as exciting as most action movies.

5. Talk To Her

Director Pedro Almodovar has made a career of making films about dynamic female characters, but in Talk To Her he turns his camera on the men who love them. The story of two men who both love women in comas goes from romantic to sick and back again.

4. No Country For Old Men

The umpteenth great movie by the Coen Brothers is about at as smart as an action movie can be, and Javier Bardem's character of Anton Chigurh is certainly the best villain of the decade (sorry Heath).

3. Y Tu Mama Tambien

Possibly, the best teen movie ever made. Director Alfonso Cuaron's stylish road trip across Mexico compares the turmoil of growing up and the sorrow of death in beautiful fashion.

2. Mulholland Dr.

The first 2 times I watched Mulholland Drve I thought it was the worst movie I had ever seen, the third time I didn't know what to make of it, and by the fifth time it was one of my favorite movies ever. Here's a tip- don't try and figure the story out, just take it all in. It works on a totally subconscious level.

1. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days

The story of a black market abortion in 1980s communist Romania is a beautiful ode to friendship and an interesting look at real life under an oppressive government. The movie won the Palm D'or at the 2007 Cannes film festival, and it's a testament to the power of cinema that a movie from a country with only 200 theaters could win the most prestigious film prize in the world.

Sandra Bullock Turns Homeless Kid Into Killing Machine

2009-12-06T19:38:00.000-08:00

The Blind Side (1 out of 4 stars)

Warner Bros.

Dir: John Lee Hancock

Str: Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron

The cheesy sports drama is one of my biggest cinematic guilty pleasures. Remember The Titans,Varsity Blues, Rocky 4- I love 'em all. I'm not sure why. I never really played sports, apart from a thoroughly mediocre little league career, and I don't even really watch sports. Maybe it has something to do with watching Hoosiers like a million times with my dad. Who knows? No matter what caused my loved for the athletic twinged melodrama, The Blind Side should have been right up my alley.

Sandra Bullock stars as Leigh Anne Tuohy, a well-to-do interior designer. She has an equally successful husband, played by Tim McGraw, and two perfect children. Quinton Aaron plays Big Mike Oher who's life could not be more different from Leigh Anne's. He's a very large, shy, homeless high schooler from the other side of town- that town is Memphis by the way....y'all. Through a series of coincidences she takes him in, gets him on the football team, they have some good times, some bad times, yada yada yada.

This story is based on the real life of Baltimore Raven Michael Oher, but something about it rang horribly false to me. I know that a tough upbringing can leave a child emotionally stunted, but Bullock and her clan treat the 18 year old Oher like he's a kindergartner. Are you gonna tell me that NFL coaches are instructing him to pretend that the quarterback is his mom like they do in this movie? Or that his fellow offensive linemen read him the story of Ferdinand the bull at night like Miss Congeniality does back home? it's ridiculous. The Blind Side takes Oher, a very sympathetic character, and turns him into a buffoon.

There are some absolutely horrid attempts at humor in the film, at one point Tim McGraw says the line "Can you believe we had to have a black son before we knew a democrat?"-sure I'm taking it out of context, but if you can think of a context in which that's funny I will give you my hand in marriage. The democrat in question is a tutor played by Kathy Bates, who shows up in the third act for no damn reason, and Jae Head, who plays the Tuohy's youngest son, is one of the more annoying child actors to come along since Alex D. Linz.

It is nice to see Sandra Bullock try and play a serious character for once, but it's too bad it had to come in such a misguided film. I know The Blind Side has been well received by critics and is a box office success story, going #1 this weekend in it's third week of release, but I'm going to have to rain on it's parade. The sports drama formula is so simple that you really have to try to screw it up, and that's exactly what The Blind Side does. Now to get the bad taste out of my mouth, I'll pop in my VHS copy of Mighty Ducks 2 (a proper film), relax and enjoy. Quack...quack...quack...quack...

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

2009-11-23T21:58:00.001-08:00

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (1 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Summit

Dir: Chris Weitz

Str: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner

Vampires, werewolves, young lust- these might sound like the ingredients for an enjoyable cinematic romp. Wrong. They are the main components of the new teen melodrama that is The Twilight Saga: New Moon. That's right the love affair of Bella and Edward continues, featuring all of the moping of high school, and none of the fun "stuff" that makes it all bearable.

Kristen Stewart plays the sullen Bella Swann who has just turned 18 (score), and is celebrating with her 109 year old vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Like most teen couples they claim to be in love, but seem to be miserable all the time. This might have something to do with Bella's desire for Edward to turn her in to a vampire too. A request that Edward will not abide. So, in order to spare Bella's feelings, Edward decides to leave her, and promises that she will never see him again- a prospect which I was very excited about.

Unfortunately for us, Eddy is a dirty, blood sucking, liar, and he soon begins to reappear to council Bella in times of danger. Which, logically, entices Bella to place herself in increasingly dangerous situations so she can see her missing lover. It's also around this time that a new romance begins to spark between Bella and her old friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). Jacob is a Native American who we happen to find out is also a werewolf, a werewolf who hates vampires. As you can imagine, this will all come to a head...kinda.

One of my biggest problems with Hollywood's love affair with franchising is that it kills a films chance of having a satisfying ending because you always have to leave the door open for a sequel. With New Moon this is to be expected of course since it's taken from a series of four books, but that doesn't make it any less annoying.

The ending, frustrating as it may be, is only a minor problem in New Moon. The real problem is that the story is suffocated under the weight of it's own self worth. There are many references to Romeo and Juliet in the picture, and I really think the filmmakers believe that this "saga" is somehow Shakespearean. It's not. It's a teen movie about vampires and werewolves, and there's nothing wrong with that, but until the people involved with the production of Twilight realize what this material really is, these movies will continue to be dull, self serious crap.

On the plus side, Kristen Stewart's portrayal of Bella Swann continues to be one of the few redeeming qualities of the series.With her natural screen presence and interesting phrasings she's kind of like a young, female Christopher Walken. Also, Nikki Reed, as Edward's sister Rosalie, gives her character more depth in just two lines than anyone else in the supporting cast.

New director Chris Weitz (American Pie) gives the movie a visual sense that was lacking in the first movie. The action scenes are much better here than the laughable sequences in Twilight, and all around he has made a movie that is, not surprisingly, better than it's predecessor. Twilight was terrible. New Moon is just very, very bad.

2009-11-14T17:14:00.000-08:00

2012 (3 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Columbia

Dir: Roland Emmerich

Str: John Cusack, Amanda Peet. Chiwetel Ejiofor

2012 should certainly be the last disaster movie ever made. I mean, there's just nothing left to destroy. The Earth has never been punished so thoroughly before on film. Everything about 2012 is huge, the destruction, the budget- $250 million, the running time- 2 hours and 40 minutes, and of course the subject matter- the end of days. Unfortunately for director Roland Emmerich, the cinematic master of disaster- his previous films include Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow, he may have just ended his own career.

For Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), life was tough enough. A struggling sci-fi novelist/part time limo driver with 2 kids and an ex wife (Amanda Peet), he was a bit of a mess, but when the ground begins to open up and swallow California he does what any man would do. He scoops up his family, drives his limo through a skyscraper, commandeers a plane, and is headed for China. Why China? Well, because a loony radio host (Woody Harrelson) who lives in the woods has supplied him with a map. A map that will lead Curtis to gigantic arks that the world governments have constructed deep in the Himalayas.

Why is the earth turning against it's inhabitants you ask? Well, due to increased solar activity the Earth's core has heated up, causing the tectonic plates to shift, which then results in devastating earthquakes and destructive tsunamis. This activity is first brought to the attention of Washington by a young government scientist named Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is then given a big promotion and a seat on one of the aforementioned arks. However, he also must deal with the president's (Danny Glover) evil chief of staff Carl Anhueser- hmm wonder why they called him that?- played by Oliver Platt.

From this point on the picture consists of these two groups racing to China to secure a place in the future. Oh, also we get to see the destruction of at least a dozen famous landmarks from across the globe.

Emmerich has a tendency to cast "normal guy" actors in his hero roles, Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day and Matthew Broderick in Godzilla, and the casting of John Cusack here is right on the money. He is well suited for this kind of schmuck in over his head character. The dialogue he is asked to deliver is almost always either ridiculous or cheesy, but hey, this is a ridiculous and cheesy type of movie. Chiwetel Ejiofor is also effective as the scientist with the heart of gold.

So, what is it that, for me, makes this movie stand out above other action movies this year? Well, there are two things. First, it has heart. It's theme of unity is neither original or particularly deep, but in an age when even movies about giant toy robots have become mean spirited (you know the one I mean) it's nice to see a movie that at least tries to be positive. Secondly, you can actually see what is happening! In every action movie for the last ten years the camera has bounced around so damn much, the "shaky cam" technique, that you can never be sure what action is happening to who and how or why. Emmerich keeps his camera still, and allows you to actually see the special effects, and why not, he spent a quarter of a billion dollars on them.

I have a tendency of looking at the time while a movie's playing, whether I'm enjoying it or not, just to get a sense of where I am in the story. Usually, I find that I check for the first time about 45 minutes into the movie. If it's before that, it's a sign that I'm not exactly enthralled by what's happening on screen. If it's after, it's a good sign that what's going on is effective. I didn't check the time in 2012 untill 110 minutes into the picture. 2012 is far from brilliant, but it sure is fun.

This Is It

2009-11-07T21:20:00.000-08:00

This Is It (3 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Kenny Ortega

There's a moment about 20 minutes in to This Is It in which Michael Jackson is asked how he will know when something is happening on the projection screen behind him, he replies "I'll just have to feel it". It's at this point he begins performing Smooth Criminal, it is also at this point that This Is It turns from a pseudosanctimonious bit of rubbernecking into an enjoyable look at an artist doing what he does best.

This Is It starts as a collection of half assed music videos, cobbled together from 3 months of rehearsal footage for what was to be his last series of live shows, and to be quite honest it ends as a collection of half assed music videos, but out of all that half assedness rises an interesting portrait of an intensely professional, but never rude, man, who is working to put together a show that he undoubtedly felt would be his legacy. For us, this is probably only the beginning of M.J. memorabilia that we will be pushed on us, but for him, this really was it, and it's pretty sad to know this show will never be.

Honestly, I don't have too much to say about this picture, it is what it is, if you're a big Jackson fan (which I don't think I would call myself) this movie should deliver just about everything you could want. He does all the hits, he busts a move- there is no sign of his alleged drug use, he does the Thriller dance, he moonwalks, he does everything you could want out of Michael Jackson. For much of the film he is saving his voice (these were only rehearsals after all) and only singing at about 70% intensity. This is a bit distracting at first, but once the hits start rolling, you barely notice.

As I said before, I'm not the biggest Michael Jackson fan, but there were a couple musical elements of the film I really liked. First, it was nice to see that, even in rehearsal, all the instrumentation and vocals were live- no backing track b.s., also, in an age when pop music is at it's most vapid, it's refreshing to hear Michael Jackson sing songs about race relations and environmental responsibility. Sure, he was no Woody Guthrie or anything, but at least he was trying. I've always had a problem with Jackson being referred to as 'The King of Pop"- Paul McCartney and Phil Spector could both easily challenge that throne, but after watching This Is It, even I have to give him a spot in the royal family.

Paranormal Activity

2009-11-02T18:53:00.000-08:00

Paranormal Activity (2 out of 4 stars)

Paramount

Dir: Oren Peli

Str: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat

Paranormal Activity is more than anything an achievement in the field of marketing, and I don't mean that in a bad way. Once upon a time, the movies sold themselves, movie stars were infallible deities, and you had to make reservations weeks in advance to see the movie you wanted, but those days are all over. In the age of illegal downloading it takes a bit of ingenuity to get people in the theater, so when Paramount purchased this tiny indie horror movie they placed it in very few theaters around the country, only allowing it to be shown at midnight screenings. By doing this they created the idea of a "phenomenon", which led to big ticket sales and public demand, and by the time it's all over this $15,000 horror movie will have mad them close to $100,000,000, and for that I say well done. The actual movie on the other hand is somewhat less impressive.

Strange things have happened to Katie since she was 8 years old. She wakes up and feels something breathing on her, or sees an inhuman form at the foot of her bed. She now lives with her boyfriend Micah, and he has bought a digital camera in hopes of capturing on film whatever it is that stalks his lady love. The characters are named after the actors, and the movie presents itself as if this were all found footage of an actual event, not unlike The Blair Witch Project did ten years ago. The two actors, Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, are consistently uncharismatic in their roles as the hauntees, and their performances yet again show that there is a reason why movie stars are movie stars.

The film relies very heavily on static camera sequences of the couple sleeping as the events in the house crank up the dial on the spook-o-meter, and these scenes are effectively creepy, never really terrifying, but certainly creepy. These bedroom scenes are fine examples of audience conditioning. By consistently going back to the same setting we are conditioned to feel scared as soon as we enter that room, or at least that would be the plan. However, the effective spookiness is spread pretty thin, and at 90 minutes the film feels at least 20 minutes too long. I will say that the ending of Paranormal Activity was somewhat effective for me, and it's made all the more effective by the fact that there are no closing credits, which I have always thought would make every ending much better. Why shouldn't the last thing you see before you leave the theater be the end of the story you were being told?

I wouldn't doubt that Paranormal Activity was somewhat more enjoyable at one of those packed midnight screenings, but those are all over now, so if you haven't seen it yet I wouldn't bother. It might have high hopes of doing something more artistic with the oft-maligned horror genre, but in the end it's still just a movie of loud noises in the dark- sometimes creepy, often dull, and ultimately unfulfilling.

Saw VI

2009-10-26T18:51:00.000-07:00

Saw VI (2 out of 4 stars)

Lionsgate

Dir: Kevon Greutert

Str: Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Betsy Russell

The town that I live in seems to have a certain disdain for anything even remotely artistic, so, even though it was the number one movie in the country this week, my local theater still refuses to get Paranormal Activity. This should help to explain why I've just gone and seen the first Saw movie I have seen since the original, which was terrible- no matter what anyone who saw it when they were in jr. high says. That being said, Saw VI is as good as it can be. It takes a surprising political stance and even flirts with real suspense a few times.

Saw VI is the continuing story of a murder spree masterminded by a man named John Kramer aka Jigsaw, played by Tobin Bell, who has a tendency to murder his victims in extremely elaborate scenarios, that usually involve torturing themselves or others, under the pretense of teaching them the value of life and showing them what big jerks they are. Jigsaw is so proficient at this that he is now controlling these murders from beyond the grave through messages left to his widow and a dirty cop, who are helping for some reason, although I'm not too sure what that reason is. I actually quite like Bell's portrayal of Jigsaw, he seems much more relaxed than your usual psychopath. He also seems to have access to an unlimited amount of abandoned warehouses, the location for all the bloodshed in the picture.

I was a few minutes late arriving to the movie and when I walked in there was a woman on screen cutting her arm off whilst she had something that looked like a bear trap on her head. Who was this woman? Well, her real name is Tanedra Howard and she, according to IMDB, won a VH1 game show to gain the honor of hacking off a limb on film, but in the picture her name is Simone and she works for...a health insurance company. That's right, Jigsaw is setting his sights on the issue of health care reform, I think we can all guess what his idea of reform entails. The health insurance workers are shown as totally despicable, and there's nothing wrong with that, but by making them the targets of the crimes, it effectively makes Jigsaw, a mass murderer, the hero of the picture, and there in lies my issue with Saw VI.

I don't have a problem with violence on film, but I do have a problem when people who commit violent acts are shown as somehow righteous or commendable. In the 1990s there was quite a run of crazy genius killer movies, Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs and David Fincher's Seven come to mind, that depicted serial killers as somehow more intelligent, possibly even on a higher plain, than us regular old peaceful folks. While Demme and Fincher are talented enough filmmakers to work in that subject without it becoming problematic, the makers of Saw VI are not. Their portrayal of Jigsaw in this picture is far too romantic for my liking, and I would like to go on record as saying that I don't think there has ever been a smart serial killer. Anyone who thinks that murder is a valid response to a situation, any situation, is an idiot- no exceptions.

While it does kind of have the psychology of a mixed up teenager who's just read Mein Kampf, I can't really say that I regret watching it, it moves very quickly and kept my interest for it's 91 minute running time, but I can't say I would recommend it either. I can say this, the six fellows in backwards hats seated in the aisle across from me were heard to say "sweetest Saw yet" upon it's completion, so if you liked the first 5 movies you'll probably enjoy this one as well.

Where The Wild Things Are

2009-10-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

Where The Wild Things Are (1 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Warner Bros.

Dir: Spike Jonze

Str: Max Records, Catherine Keener, James Gandolfini

From staging a Weezer concert inside a Happy Days episode to giving us the long awaited dream of twin Nicolas Cages in Adaptation, Spike Jonze has always been an interesting visual artist. That does not change with Where The Wild Things Are, based on the beloved children's book by author Maurice Sendak- which I must have read about 50 times in Mrs. Warner's second grade classroom, but the question must be asked. Can an entertaining 90 minute feature film be made out of a book that was 9 sentences long ? The answer- of course it can, anything can be done with good writing, however Where The Wild Things Are is not that film.

The story is that of a child named Max, played by a child named Max Records (very cool name), who feels, as many children do, put upon and ignored. Records' performance is actually quite good, he's bratty, cute, and adventurous in equal measure. His mother is played by Catherine Keener, and on a night when she has a date, played by Mark Ruffalo, Max has what can accurately be described as a temper tantrum and runs away from home. The roles of Keener and Ruffalo, two very good actors, are essentially cameos, and Max's home life is never very well established. There is a certain profundity to the anguish of childhood, but I never got a sense of it here.

On a nearby shore Max finds an unmanned sailboat, which he naturally boards and sails to a distant island. It is on this island where he meets the wild things. Max's first encounter with the wild things is undeniably magical as for at least one scene Jonze captures the joy of the source material, and it must be said that the wild things do look incredible. A combination of CGI and actors in very large suits does give you a sense that Max is really there, but of course he's not really there and this is all taking place in his imagination. The wild things, who are so recognizable to so many that I don't feel the need to describe them here, are, as in the book, all representative of different psychological facets of the child. There's one who feels ignored, one who gets angry and says things he doesn't mean, one who wants everyone to be happy, etc.

After Max's first night on the island the film takes on a decidedly more somber tone. The narrative is thin at best, and mostly involves Max, who has been made king, trying to wrangle the personalities of his seven new subjects. Jonze makes some digressions into melodrama and political metaphor that are certainly bold, but ultimately misjudged and frequently dull. The soundtrack features songs written and performed by Karen O. of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and her joyous yelping and cooing seems out of place in a film with so little happiness on display. Where The Wild Things Are is less a rumination on the imagination of childhood, and more like a Jim Henson presentation of The Lord of the Flies. I know that Warner Brothers forced Jonze to go back and do some reshooting of scenes they considered not "family friendly" enough, and I would be very interested in seeing Jonze's original cut because what I saw in the theater just didn't have the life and energy of his previous films.

The cast and crew have said that this is not a film for children, but a film for adults about childhood, and unfortunately that's exactly how it felt, like the cinematic equivalent of an adult reading a children's book, looking for the subtext in the words, but forgetting the joy of looking at the pictures.

Classic Movie Review: Casablanca

2009-10-15T11:10:00.000-07:00

Casablanca (1942)

Dir: Michael Curtiz

Str: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Heinreid

Romance and politics always make for strange bed fellows- politics so bound to logic, while romance is always trying to rise above it- but the 1942 classic Casablanca melds the two so perfectly over it's 102 minute running time, that they become almost indistinguishable. Perhaps it's because in the heart of World War 2, when the film was made and set, politics had already become so romantic, there was no doubt in anyones mind that they were on the side of right, no matter which side they were on. This is the feeling that Casablanca so easily brings to the screen. It's patriotic in the best way- not in the accusing and violent manner that we are used to now- but in a confident and sincere way, that I think hits a very profound note inside of people. It's deep inside the human spirit to want to feel proud of where you're from, many people are blinded by this desire, but Casablanca revels in the pride of a time when you could be sure that you were on the side of good.

Casablana may be the ultimate example of old Hollywood studio filmmaking. The story comes from an unproduced play called Rick's Place by Murray Bennett and Joan Alison which was purchased by legendary Warner Brothers producer Hal B. Wallis for a hefty $20 grand. The screenplay was then passed around and rewritten by no fewer than four Hollywood screenwriters, the final draft containing elements from all 5 sources. Usually, this many writers on a film spells disaster, with each rewrite a new vision is added to the mix which tends to lead to a muddled and unfocused script, but Casablanca's couldn't be more the opposite. Casablanca's screenplay, finally credited to Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein, is widely considered to be one of the best, if not the best of all time. It's pacing and characterization are what really strike me. The film just flies by- well into it's the third act before you know it- and it features at least a half dozen iconic and perfectly crafted characters.

The most famous character is of course the strong, silent Rick Blaine played by the legendary Humphrey Bogart. Rick owns a nightclub in French occupied Casablanca, Morocco which had become a safe haven/waiting room for refugees fleeing from the Third Reich. Bogart's performance is perfectly layered. He's tough in a way that implies loneliness, cold in a way that hides sorrow, and when he's asked to help a famous refugee (Paul Henried) who just so happens to be married to the woman Rick loves (Ingrid Bergman), all these emotions are visible in a face that stays remarkably firm. It's Bogart's tenderness in his love scenes with Bergman that give the film it's heart, the fact that these two actors quite famously couldn't stand each other makes their performances all the more impressive.

It's been said that Casablanca is the one film of which there is no bad review, and I believe it because I'm not sure any critic would have had the courage to give any less than a rave. You see, in the long line of good luck that Casablanca had on it's way to history, no other film may have ever been released with better timing than Casablanca. The real Casablanca was taken by the Nazis just five days before the release of the film, and the movie was seen as a portrait of what we were fighting for. The famous scene in which the band at Rick's plays the French National Anthem to drown out Nazi soldiers makes my hair stand up, so I can only imagine how audiences at the time must have felt.

I've overlooked the many famous lines that Casablanca is famous for ("Here's looking at you kid", "We'll always have Paris" and many more), while these are all wonderful you barely even notice them in a story so perfectly constructed, and performances so beautiful. The late 1930s and early 1940s are considered to be the "Golden Age of Hollywood", and for my money this time offered no greater film than Casablanca.

Quick Reviews: October 10th, 2009

2009-10-10T18:09:00.000-07:00

Zombieland (4 out of 4 stars)
Dir: Ruben Fleischer

Str: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone

Zombies have always been funnier than they are scary, the way they flail and moan when you beat them about is really quite slapsticky (not unlike Dick Van Dyke), proof- Zombieland is the second really great zom-com in the last 5 years- following Edgar Wright's brilliant Shaun of the Dead. More than that, Zombieland is a big blockbuster film that seems to understand that the impact of an action scene is hugely amplified if we actually care about the characters involved. It takes the time to give all it's characters a past, a heart, and a brain- three crucial components usually ignored by big action type pictures. Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and The Whale) and Emma Stone (Superbad) are especially good here as the romantic interests (zom-rom-com?) in this land of the undead, and it's pretty well known by now that Bill Murray shows up and makes one of the best cameo appearances ever. Zombieland might seem like the kind of movie that would be easy to make, but it must not be, or else why wouldn't they do it all the time?

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (3 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Sacha Gervasi

In 1982 Canadian heavy metal band Anvil was on tour with the likes of Bon Jovi and Scoripions, they were beloved by members of Metallica, Slayer and Guns N' Roses, 25 years later singer/guitarist Steve "Lips" Kudlow is driving for a catering company and drummer Robb Reiner is, well they never really say what he's doing, but it involves a jackhammer. Kudlow and Reiner formed Anvil in 1977, and following they're very brief peak in the early 80s, have been trying to get someone, anyone, to notice them ever since. Sacha Gervasi's documentary follows them on a disastrous tour of Europe- where they play to fewer than a dozen people several times, and the recording of their 13th album. It's hilarious in a heartbreaking sort of way. I don't know if I've ever seen two people more committed to their music, or to each other, than the founding members of Anvil, and while it's not up there with the really great rock docs, it is a true testament to the determination of these two friends. It's the It's A Wonderful Life of Canadian heavy metal.

Management (2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Stephen Belber

Str: Jennifer Aniston, Steve Zahn, Woody Harrelson

Management started off as a perfectly nice romantic comedy. with some actual comedy thrown in which is always a nice change of pace. Aniston and Zahn work very well together, but about a third of the way in the movie derails and gets a bit ridiculous, but it was still pretty funny when Woody Harrelson showed up as a punk rocker turned yogurt mogul. Once the Buddhist monks showed up- out of nowhere, the movie really lost me and I can barely remember the last act.

Year One (1 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Harold Ramis

Str: Jack Black, Michael Cera

Superbad B.C., Michael Cera and an overweight, overbearing buddy go on wacky adventures to try and impress girls in hopes that said girls will have sex with them- except in this movie they call sex "lying with them" instead of "f-wording them" like in Superbad. You know, because they're cavemen, or something like that.

Dance Flick (1/2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Damien Dante Wayans

Str: doesn't matter

So, there's this one part in the movie where this pregnant girl is break dancing, and she's spinning around on her belly- oh, and you know the studio thought this was really funny, because it was in the trailer and on the DVD cover, and then her baby shoots out from in between her legs, and it slides across the dance floor, the umbilical chord snaps, and it's all covered in that weird baby goo, and then the baby strikes like a really cool break dance pose. Isn't that funny?

Classic Movie Review: Carol Reed's The Third Man

2009-10-07T10:42:00.000-07:00

The Third Man (1949)

Dir: Carol Reed

Str: Joseph Cotten. Alida Valli, Orson Welles

I'm not even sure what a zither looks like, but I know I'll never hear one again without thinking of Vienna circa 1949. Vienna, in all it's bombed out, post war glory, was already the perfect setting for a mystery story, and no motion picture has ever had a score that so immediately took you to a time and place like Anton Karas' all zither arrangements for Carol Reed's classic The Third Man. The score moves through the rubble in the streets of the city that was once the intellectual epicenter of the world, past the sense of loss in the story's main characters, beyond the mystery of the death of Harry Lime, and directly into your memory. When I think about The Third Man now, having rewatched the film just a few days ago, it is permanently scored by Anton Karas in my mind. This is what a great score can do, it gives the film a place in your memory before the opening credits are even over.

Joseph Cotten- a great and nearly forgotten movie star of the 40s and 50s- stars as Holly Martins, an American writer of trashy novelettes, who has just arrived in Vienna to visit his dear old friend Harry Lime, only to find, that Mr Lime is being buried that day. The officials say it was a freak accident, but Martins believes otherwise. Joseph Cotten's performance as Holly Martins is pitch perfect, he finds the perfect balance of dopey, drunk, and determined, so that you're not sure if he's destined to be the hero, or, as one character says, a man "born to be murdered". Cotten is aided in this role by a brilliantly crafted and clever screenplay by Graham Greene- perhaps England's finest post war novelist- who's cutting dialogue makes makes this movie as fun to listen to as Karas' score.

The direction and photography of this film are legendary. Carol Reed was a wonderful British film maker who is not given nearly the respect he deserves. He made a handful of really interesting pictures, and, in The Third Man, a film that is almost always listed as one of the greatest ever. The cinematography of this picture is just incredible. From the camera placement, to the lighting, to the backgrounds and the staging, Reed is always giving the audience something interesting to look at. He uses the shadows on the deserted streets of Vienna like a character in the film, like there yet another thing weighing down on Martins in his search for the truth.

Then a little more than halfway into the picture it happens. We see a large pair of feet, connected to an even larger shadow in a doorway, a light in a building nearby comes on, and there stands the most charismatic man ever to appear on a movie screen. Orson Welles. Welles in that scene and one other does effectively steal the picture from every other actor, from the photography, from the score, and from the screenplay, but it's really not their fault. That's just what Welles did. Welles plays, in a twist almost no one sees coming the first time they watch The Third Man, but you will if you read this, Harry Lime. The same Harry Lime we saw buried at the beginning of the picture. Welles' 10 minute performance as Lime is one of the most iconic in movie history, and contains maybe the best improvised piece of dialogue in any picture ever, which reads as follows:

"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

In this one stretch Welles introduces interesting questions about the nature of both fascism and creativity that were not there before, but are there to stay now.

The Third Man, perhaps more than any other, is a picture that is a sum of it's parts. From the performances of Cotten and Welles, to Greene's screenplay, to Karas' score, there is no facet of The Third Man that is not exceptional. As far as the director Carol Reed, some people might say tools like this would make it easy- but they are wrong, it takes a very special type of artist, to have the foresight it takes to put together a puzzle as intricate as The Third Man.

Quick Reviews: October 3rd, 2009

2009-10-03T10:37:00.000-07:00

Away We Go ( 3 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Sam Mendes

Str: John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph

What is romance? The modern romantic comedy would lead you to believe that romance consists of two people who love each other- but don't know it, who then end up hating each other- usually due to some wacky misunderstanding, and then realize the error of their ways just in time for the credits, so presumably anything actually romantic never makes it in the movie. Sam Mendes' (American Beauty, Revolutionary Road) Away We Go knows better. John Krasinski (The Office) and Maya Rudolph (SNL) play a couple in their 30s who are meeting with friends and family across the country (and Canada) in an attempt to find the best place to raise their rapidly approaching first child. They never go through the cliche break up- make up scenario- in fact they never even really fight. They are secure with their love for each other, it's the world that frightens them, and it becomes quite clear- both to the characters and the audience- that they have found the person best suited for them to move through this frightening world with, and there could be nothing more romantic than that. Could there?

The Girlfriend Experience (3 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Steven Soderbergh

Str: Sasha Grey, Chris Santos

Director Steven Soderbergh splits his time up quite evenly between big blockbuster type movies (Oceans 11, Traffic, The Informant!) and smaller more arty type pictures (Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Bubble). The Girlfriend Experience would certainly fall into the latter category. Sasha Grey stars as Chelsea, a $2000 an hour escort in New York City. Soderbergh does an excellent job of showing us new and interesting sides of this kind of life- we see Chelsea deal with her boyfriend, we see her on dates with her clients (who only seem to want to talk about the financial crisis), we see her navigating through what is, not surprisingly, a highly competitive field. We even- just for a moment- see her fall in love, but the one thing we never see her do is have sex, which is surprising considering that Sasha Grey's acting before this has always been of a more adult nature- previous titles include: Face Invaders 4 and the very clever Sasha Grey's Anatomy- but I find her performance here very compelling. She has such an icy demeanor in the early portions of the film that when she starts to show some cracks you are really taken off guard. She might be accused of underacting by some- like Marlon Brando and Robert Deniro both were in their early years- but she's not, she's just playing it cool.

Jennifer's Body (2 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Karyn Kusama

Str: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Simmons

The second film penned by Juno scribe Diablo Cody is another very clever look at teenage life- some people seem to have a problem with both Juno and this picture because "nobody really talks like that" but I imagine those people are all very boring and lame- and there is also a very interesting subtext about the way women sometimes fall in to looking at themselves, particularly after a traumatic experience. Unfortunately, the film never quite lives up to it's script, and surprisingly the problem is not Megan Fox, her performance as the flesh eatingest/ prettiest girl in school is just fine. The problem lies in both the direction of Karyn Kusama- who can't seem to decide if she wants to mimic The Evil Dead or Twilight so we end up with too much of both- and in Fox's co-star Amanda Seyfried, who just does not have the muscle to pull off the tortured teenage demon slayer role.

The Brothers Bloom ( 2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Rian Johnson

Str: Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo

The lovely Rachel Weisz plays an eccentric heiress who is about to be conned by the Brothers Bloom (Brody and Ruffalo), in the new film from Rian Johnson. I loved Johnson's first film Brick, but this one just doesn't work for me. There are some funny screwball comedy moments, but I just did not care about the actual con. The movie kind of told me in the first five minutes that there were going to be all sorts of wacky twists, so when they happened I just didn't care. If you're going to try and trick me, you have to make me trust you first.

Monsters vs. Aliens (1 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Rob Letterman and Conrad Vermon

Str: Reese Witherspoon, Seth Rogen, Hugh Laurie

Why can't kids movies just be for kids anymore? Why are there references to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Global Warming that no kid will ever get? Why does the animation look as good as The Sims for Playstation 1? I don't know the answers and I don't care. Monsters vs. Aleins is so cliche and boring that I can't even imagine kids liking it.

Classic Movie Review: Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window

2009-09-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

Rear Window (1954)

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock

Str: James Stewart, Grace Kelly

Alfred Hitchcock once referred to all actors as cattle. He has also been known to have stated that the story and content of a picture are irrelevant- as long as the film is well made. These are bold statements, but after rewatching Rear Window today for the umpteenth time I've come to this conclusion- anything Alfred Hitchcock says regarding film should be taken as fact. Nobody has ever really mastered the craft of film like Alfred Hitchcock. All his pictures are different and yet they're all the same, he's constantly moving over the same ground of his fears and perversions, but he never shows you the same thing twice. Other filmmakers may have more unique or varied filmographies than Hitchcock, but nobodies is more consistently entertaining.

That is not to say he didn't have some help. Based on a short story by great noir writer Cornell Woolrich, Rear Window is your classic detective caper, with one exception- the detective has had his legs taken out from under him- literally. Photographer L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) is stuck in a wheelchair in his New York apartment, after an accident while trying to photograph a auto race from radically different angles, with nothing to do but look out the window at his neighbors- and what neighbors they are. There's the young songwriter- who we actually hear composing the movie's theme as we go along, Ms. Lonelyhearts- the suicidal "old maid" (to use my 1950s speak), the friendly neighborhood dog, the newlyweds, and of course Ms. Torso- the barely clad ballet dancer who always seems to be practicing. Hitchcock manages to tell a story for each of these characters in very limited screen time. He depicts them as both totally normal and completely fascinating, which is probably how most people would look if you could watch there every move. Oh, I almost forgot. There's also the neighbor that Jeffries suspects of chopping up his invalid wife, putting her in a crate, and mailing her out of town.

It wouldn't be a Hitchcock picture without at least one blonde bombshell love interest, and L.B. Jeffries gets one of the best- Grace Kelly as (reading from left to right) Lisa Carol Fremont. At first glance Lisa is your basic 1950s socialite, but as the murder plot across the way thickens, and Jeffries discovers that- much like Kelly as an actress- there is more to her than meets the eye, we fall in live with her right along with him. Never to be overshadowed, James Stewart is exploring yet another facet of his nice guy character here- the crotchety old bastard side. He is flippant and sometimes just plain mean to the lovely Lisa, and to be quite honest it is pretty weird to look at your neighbors through binoculars- even if you do happen to see a murder, or at least think you saw a murder.

Voyeurism was always one of the main themes of any Hitchcock picture. You can spot very obvious references to it in nearly all of his films- Jimmy Stewart following Kim Novak in Vertigo, Anthony Perkins looking through his peephole at Marion Crane in Psycho- just to name a couple, but they all pale in comparison to Rear Window, which is essentially an entire film about voyeurism. And not only is the Jimmy Stewart character guilty of said ism, but the way Hitchcock films Rear Window he makes us all voyeurs as well. All but a handful of shots in the picture originate from the apartment of L.B. Jeffries, so what Hitchcock does is essentially put us right in the wheelchair with Jimmy Stewart. So much so, that at the moment when the alleged murderer finally realizes he's being watched, we actually feel- just for a moment- like we've been caught doing something we're not supposed to.

Let's face it, everyone, from the time you can speak to the day you die, loves to be in on a secret. Everyone gets excited form hearing something you weren't supposed to or seeing something nobody else knows you saw. Hitchcock takes this fact and uses for everything it's worth in making what- in my opinion- is not only his best picture, but the best "murder mystery" movie ever made.

Quick Reviews: September 26th, 2009

2009-09-26T10:45:00.000-07:00

Lymelife (3 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Derick Matini

Str: Rory Culkin, Emma Roberts, Alec Baldwin

The story of a couple of foul mouthed families on Long Island in the late 1970s as seen mainly though the eyes of Star Wars loving 15 year old Scott Bartlett - played by Rory Culkin. Culkin is very solid as the youngster dealing with his first love and his parents divorce, but he is largely overshadowed by an excellent supporting cast. Keiran Culkin (Rory's older brother) is great in a small role as Scott's older brother, Alec Baldwin always plays a creep but here he develops a much more realistic version of one as Scott's dad, and Timothy Hutton is quietly intense playing the Bartlett's cuckolded neighbor Charlie Bragg who is suffering from Lyme disease. The picture manages to show every member of the Bartlett and Bragg families as both sympathetic and deplorable and you believe it every time, probably because that's exactly how we'd see ourselves if we would take the time to look.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

Str: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan

I saw this movie about a week ago and I remember laughing at it a lot, but as I sit here thinking about it now I can remember very little about it- which might make it the perfect kids movie because they'll really enjoy it, but won't be annoying and talk about it for the next decade. Bill Hader (Superbad, SNL) voices a young inventor type fellow who builds a machine that makes it rain food from the sky- hilarity ensues. This movie was released in 3D - I saw it in 2D - and I have no desire to see it in 3D because.........3D sucks. I can't believe people are still impressed by the OH MY GOD THAT ARM IS REACHING OUT OF THE SCREEN thing. It's a distracting and transparent gimmick to sell more expensive tickets. I will say that Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs does feature an impressive voice cast- Al Roker, Doogie Howser, Mr. T, and Ash from Evil Dead just to name a few.

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Mark Waters

Str: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Michael Douglas

McConaughey plays a womanizer with a heart of gold- just like he always does- who is visited by three ghosts (although at least one of them is alive, and the deaths of the others are never really explained) who try to convince him to quit his jerkish behavior and go back to the girl he loves- played by Jennifer Garner. This movie is about as cliche as it comes, but the Christmas Carol formula is such a strong one that the movie really works for large portions. A lot of that is due to Jennifer Garner who has been quite good in everything she's been in recently. It seems like before Juno she was always trying to be sexy- which she doesn't do very well, but since Juno she's just been trying to be nice- which she does much better.

Observe and Report (1 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Jody Hill

Str: Seth Rogen, Anna Faris, Ray Liotta

Director Jody Hill has said he wanted to make Observe and Report the first comedy influenced by Martin Scorsese's classic Taxi Driver. He seems to have forgotten two things:

1. It's been done (Martin Scorsese's King of Comedy)

2. Comedy's are supposed to be funny

Seth Rogen seems to be trying hard as the deranged mall security guard, but Anna Faris is just annoying as his love interest, and Ray Liotta just yells a lot like he has in every movie since Goodfellas.

O' Horten (1 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Brent Hamer

Str: Baard Owe

Over contemplative, critically acclaimed, deadpan Norwegian comedy about a train engineer named Odd Horten who retires from his job at the beginning of the movie and does very little for the remaining 90 minutes. There is one funny sequence which involves Odd riding in a car driven by a blindfolded man.

Classic Movie Review: Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game

2009-09-14T13:39:00.001-07:00

The Rules of the Game (1939)

Dir: Jean Renoir

Str: Nora Gregor, Marcel Dalio, Roland Toutain

" I wanted to make a film about a society that was rotten to the core"- Jean Renoir

When one sets about to dissect something, be it physically or artistically, it is best that he knows his subject. So, when Jean Renoir set out to make La Regle du jue (The Rules of the Game), a complete indictment of the French upper class during the build up to the second World War, it certainly helped that he was part of this upper class himself. He had grown up around these kind of people. His father is the well known Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. This must have contributed to how easily Renoir inhabits La Coliniere, the estate where the majority of the film takes place, and how deftly he tells the stories of it's owners, it's guests, and even it's servants.

Renoir must have known the common denominator of life is love because in The Rules of the Game he uses love to show the duality and ugliness of a glamorous society. The film is centered around Christine (Nora Gregor), a young Austrian woman who declares her love for no fewer than 4 men over the course of the picture. When the film begins she is living happily with her husband Robert de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio), who has an ever expanding collection of fancy music boxes (which in an odd way makes him seem much more human than any other character.) He also has a mistress named Genevieve who is quite obsessed with getting married, which is certainly an undesirable trait in a mistress.

It's also just about this time that a man named Andre Jurieux, a national hero who has just completed his first solo flight across the Atlantic, shows up and confesses his love for Christine, and thanks to some meddling by his best friend Octave (played by Jean Renoir himself) they all end up under the same roof. This might sound like your average set up for a rollicking comedy of manners, something written by Noel Coward perhaps, but it is anything but. Once Renoir gets everyone in one place he proceeds to tear them apart. He watches them act like children, using love as a toy to keep them entertained when they get bored. When they fight they even fight like children, and it becomes quite clear that this society is in fact rotten to the core.

Visually, Renoir's camera moves through the crowd like a ghost, handling three or four different story lines in one scene, often in one shot. It's really quite amazing how easily the camera moves considering a 1939 movie camera was not known for being the most mobile. The actors move through the elaborate scenes like well choreographed dancers, acting when they are the focus of the camera and even when they are not. All this adds up to such a feeling of "really being there" that I wish I had a better way to describe it.

When The Rules of the Game came out France was quite quickly heading toward war with Germany, and mocking the ruling class was not looked at too kindly. There is a famous story of a man trying to burn the theater down at the first public screening, Renoir was the most prominent director French had ever had, but this film was not just disapproved of, it made people angry. The French labeled it disrespectful, nations always seem to want to protect there wealthy. Renoir himself made many cuts to it, he was so shocked by the reaction. A short time later, when the Nazis had invaded France, what was the first film they attempted to destroy? The Rules of the Game. The moral of this story: Those in control, no matter what their politics, do not like being shown for what they really are.

Quick Reviews: September 7th, 2009

2009-09-07T12:09:00.000-07:00

Sugar (4 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

Str: Algenis Perez Soto

Two excellent movies came out on DVD this week that feature American film makers taking a serious and sympathetic look at immigration stories. The first one tells the story of a young Dominican man named Miguel Santos (Algenis Perez Soto), his friends call him Sugar, who is brought to America, Iowa in particular, to play minor league baseball. In the Dominican Republic where even the guy selling cell phone chargers on the street corner has played some pro ball baseball has become the only way out, but Sugar centers on what happens once you've made that way out. Algenis Perez Soto gives an excellent and naturalistic performance in his first ever acting role as a young man dropped in the middle of Iowa with little education, knowing very little English, living with people who don't understand him, all to play a game that he only ever started to play because it was his only option.

Sin Nombre (4 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Cary Joji Fukinaga

Str: Paulina Gaitan, Edgar Flores

Sin Nombre takes a look at the part of the "illegal" immigration process that we never get to see, and is quite possibly the best picture this year, and one of the better first films by any director in a very long time. Sin Nombre shows the passage of a young girl named Sayra (Paulina Gaitan) ,with her family, from Honduras up through Mexico in an attempt to meet up with family members she has never met in New Jersey. Running parallel to the story of Sayra is that of Casper (Edgar Flores) a young man trying to escape form a huge and unspeakably vile Mexican gang. Fukinaga's direction, a mix of violence, tension, and beautiful photography, frames a harrowing and all too real journey that thousands of immigrants take. Watching the world these people are fighting to escape really hit me in an intense way when I think about how they are received when, or I should say if, they finally arrive.

State of Play (3 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Kevin McDonald

Str: Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams

State of Play is a very solid political thriller. It's not a great movie by any means, but Kevin McDonald (The Last King of Scotland) is a good young director who knows how to tell a story in images. The screenplay is based on a British miniseries of the same name, which I've never seen, and it's kind of your basic "evil government corporation" movie. The ensemble cast is strong (including the ultra hot Helen Mirren), and about two thirds of the way in Jason Bateman (Arrested Developement, Juno) gives an excellent five minute performance that almost steals the movie.

Earth (2 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield

Very nice nature photography that no doubt looks excellent on the big screen. However, since this came out on DVD this week you'll probably never get a chance to see that, so there's probably not much reason to watch this. I did enjoy James Earl Jones's narration though. It really takes you back to the nature shows they used to show on the Disney channel at like 1 am.

Julie & Julia (1 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Nora Ephron

Str: Amy Adams, Meryl Streep

When Julie & Julia is about the food it's very interesting, but unfortunately the damn characters keep getting in the way. Meryl Streep and Amy Adams are both fine actors but they really don't have much to work with here. Streep's Julia Child is very boring but you kind of don't notice cause she has a funny voice. Adams' Julia Powell is just boring.

Classic Movie Review: Elia Kazan's On The Waterfront

2009-09-05T16:17:00.001-07:00

On The Waterfront (1954)

Columbia Pictures

Dir: Elia Kazan

Str: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Eva Marie Saint

In the opening shot of Elia Kazan's On The Waterfront we see the massive shadows of New York Harbor. Within those shadows we see a group of men moving across the pier. They are the gang of a man named Johnny Friendly, portrayed by legendary character actor Lee J. Cobb (12 Angry Men, The Exorcist). Within that group of men we see a punch drunk boxer, his expression is solemn, but his eyes are alive. That man is Terry Malloy. A bum, as he is so often referred to, not in the common sense of the word, but in reference to his short lived prize fighting career. A career that was surely over before it ever started.

Marlon Brando is Terry Malloy. I don't want to say he plays Terry because that would be denigrating to the stature of this performance. He is Terry Malloy. Watching Marlon Brando's performance is both exhilarating and heart wrenching. Like a Beatles song Brando breaks your heart as you hum along. He's been told he's dirt for so long now it's become second nature, not only does he not refute these claims, but he makes them himself. Yet in those eyes, and in that furrowed brow, scarred from being opened up one too many times, we see a man dying to show the world what he can do.

The New York City waterfront is legendary for it's corruption and brutal tactics, and this is the world that On The Waterfront inhabits. The local union leader Johnny Friendly, with the help of his right hand man Charlie the Gent (Rod Steiger) who also happens to be Terry's brother, has a tendency of getting rid of anybody who would dare to question his supremacy on the docks. "You stand up, the lights go out, than you go out" explains one longshoremen. After Terry is tricked into helping Friendly dispose of one of his enemies, his conscience begins to get the better of him.

Director Elia Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire) is well known for getting great performances from his actors. Martin Scorsese once stated that anything he knows about acting he learned from the films of Elia Kazan, and while Brando's performance is astonishing it is supported by great performances on both sides of the coin. His past is represented by Cobb's Johnny Friendly, who is both frightening and obnoxious, which must be a difficult combination to pull off. As well as by Rod Steiger's performance as Charlie the Gent, a sort of reluctant henchman. He and Brando share one of the most iconic scenes in movie history in the back of a taxi cab as the movie nears it's climax.

Terry's possibility of a brighter future is personified by Father Berry (Karl Malden), a crusading priest, and Edie Doyle (Eva Marie-Saint), the sister of the man who's been murdered. As the tension mounts and the body count grows these actors have to match the intensity of the villainous characters if we are to believe that Terry would ever go straight. Malden, with his smoldering delivery, and Saint (in her first ever performance), with he baby faced sincerity are both up to the task.

As I re-watched Waterfront today a question popped into my mind. What is it about boxers that make them such interesting subjects for movies? There are great movies about athletes of all kinds of course but certainly no sport has reached the cinematic heights of boxing. Requiem for a Heavyweight, On the Waterfront, Rocky, Raging Bull, The Boxer, Million Dollar Baby, even the recent documentary Tyson, all great films centered on the sweet science. I've thought about it and my conclusion is this. Boxers make a living being punched in the face, it's a totally unnatural profession and should inspire natural sympathy from anyone with half a heart. In Rocky there is a line spoken by Burgess Meredith "Boxing is the one profession where you're guaranteed to end up a bum." No wonder I, and so many others, like watching these pictures. They're a great example of the magic of cinema. Making a work of art out of lives destined to be forgotten.

Quick Reviews: August 29th, 2009

2009-08-29T12:36:00.000-07:00

Inglourious Basterds (4 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Quentin Tarantino

Str: Brad Pitt, Melanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz

In a way, Quentin Tarantino is the most unique American film maker to come along in a long time. He clearly has all the skill of a classically minded director, there is no other film maker who takes there time in setting up a scene or telling a story like Tarantino, but for some reason he chooses to toil in the field of B Movies and genre films. Tarantino's World War 2 looks very little like the real World War 2 and more like it was created out of bits and pieces of other WWII movies, and within this world of preexisting parts Tarantino tells his own story. The result is an intelligent, funny, violent, and totally original motion picture. All the performances are strong, particularly Melanie Laurent's as the beautiful, revenge seeking Jew Shoshanna Dreyfus. Inglourious Basterds will probably end up being the best widely released movie of the year.

Goodbye Solo (3 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Rahmin Bahrani

Str: Souleymane Sy Savane, Red West

Goodbye Solo is Rahmin Bahrani's story of an older man named William who gets in to a taxi in Winston-Salem, North Carolina one night, and offers his driver, a Senegal born young man named Solo, $1000 to drive him to a cliff called Blowing Rock on a desired date, so he can jump off. What follows is a beautifully told story of a good hearted man trying to help a man who is beyond help. The acting by Savane and West is so realistic that at times this feels like a documentary. Bahrani's direction is completely engrossing and understated, and the film shows a small Southern town in a way that most motion pictures would not.

Sunshine Cleaning (2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Christine Jeffs

Str: Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin

The producers of Little Miss Sunshine have taken some of the lesser parts of that film (suicide, a conversion van, Alan Arkin), added two charming actresses (Amy Adams and Emily Blunt), and set it all inside one of those popular crime scene investigation shows. I really like Adams and Blunt, and the idea of them starting a crime scene clean up company is a good one, but the film just does not work. It's a dramatic comedy that's more dramatic than comedic, but to be honest it's really not much of either. The one character I did like was the one armed guy who ran the cleaning supply store, played by Clifton Collins Jr. (Capote), in his limited screen time he was much more interesting than anybody else. Probably, because I have never seen a movie about a one armed guy who runs a cleaning supply store.

Rudo Y Cursi (2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Carlos Cuaron

Str: Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna

Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna were the stars of one of the best movies of the last decade, Y Tu Mama Tambien. They have reteamed with the co-writer of that picture for this Mexican soccer (futbol) comedy. These two actors clearly work well together, but this movie is pretty much a typical cliche American sports movie set south of the border.

Adventureland (1 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Greg Mottola

Str: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Martin Starr

I think Adventureland thinks it's not a typical coming of age comedy because it's characters are all old enough to drink, but it's still just young people, getting drunk and screwing around, and it even ends (SPOILER) with the main character losing his virginity. It's a shame too because Eisenberg, Stewart, and Starr are three of my favorite young actors. These three will all be good in other things, but they have nothing to work with here.

Classic Movie Review: Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life

2009-08-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

It's A Wonderful Life (1946)

RKO Radio Pictures

Dir: Frank Capra

Str: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore

Director Frank Capra (It Happened One Night, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) once said that he made It's A Wonderful Life in an attempt to fight the growing trend of atheism in America following the second world war, and regardless of your thoughts on said -ism this is a most admirable goal. It seems all the more noble if you think of what motion pictures have become in the 60 years since, most of them designed to be forgotten immediately after viewing, but when an artist has belief in the power of his medium anything is possible. There may be no greater example of this than It's A Wonderful Life.

The picture opens with the prayers of a small town for a man named George Bailey. These prayers eventually make there way on up to the man upstairs and his archangel Gabriel-portrayed here by celestial bodies blinking at each other. Which if you think about it, is as good a way as any. We find out in there conversation that Bailey is considering suicide, and needs their help. They place an angel named Clarence in charge of the case and the first two acts of the movie are a recap of this mans life leading up to his suicide attempt.

Though It's A Wonderful Life is well known now as a family holiday classic the early portions of the film are decidedly grim. The life of George Bailey (James Stewart) is a frustrating one. For every high point in his tale there is a valley twice as deep. He meets the love of his life on the day his father dies and gets married on Black Friday. Bailey's story moves parallel with American history of the time, striding briskly through the roaring twenties, the Great Depression, and World War 2. However, the film is always more concerned with the personal aspects of these events than the political, and uses them more to create the illusion that you've been with this character for an entire lifetime. Even though it's more like 90 minutes.

A large part of the connection that people feel to this movie is due to the performance of Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey. Like many movie stars yesterday and today, Stewart seemed to play the same or similar characters in every picture, but what he did better than any other actor I know of was to use the public's perception to his advantage. He was well know for playing nice, wholesome, every man type characters, and people went to see his movies because they genuinely liked him. He was one of them, but in his great roles he held a world of darkness beneath this exterior; in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington its a fiery patriotism, in Vertigo it's a sick and bizarre obsession for women, and in It's A Wonderful Life it's all the sadness of a life time. By the time George Bailey is on the brink of suicide there is not even a shred of nice guy Stewart left, just a man who knows he's worth more dead than alive.

The final act of It's A Wonderful Life begins when Capra breaks the laws of logic, and sends Clarence to show George Bailey what is life would be like if he had never been born. No matter what your thoughts on faith and religion this seems unlikely, but we believe it because we want to believe it. We want George to see the error of his ways. We want him to see that his life has mattered. Because it has mattered, it matters to us. Therein lies the underlying theme of It's A Wonderful Life and all of the work of Frank Capra. Every individual on earth is important and unique and necessary to the time in which they live.

Quick Reviews: August 22nd, 2009

2009-08-21T23:27:00.000-07:00

Tyson (3 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: James Toback

Poetic is not a word most people would use to describe former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson, but placed inside James Toback's elegant new documentary, that's exactly what he is. Toback does the smart thing and doesn't try to jazz up what is already a great story with any fancy film making. There is no voice over, and there are no attempts to either discredit or approve Tyson's thoughts on his life. Iron Mike merely tells his story, and video accompaniment is added when it is applicable. What you are left with is a man spilling his guts on camera for 90 minutes, and for the life of me I can't think of anything more interesting than that.

Julia (3 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Erick Zonca

Str: Tilda Swinton, Aidan Gould, Saul Rubinek

Academy Award winning actress Tilda Swinton (Michael Clayton,Burn After Reading) is exemplary of what great film acting can be; using the magnifying glass of cinema to display the intricacies of the human condition. She is startling whenever she steps into frame, partially because she looks like no other actress in the world right now, but primarily because it is obvious she is throwing herself entirely into her character. She is fearless on film. In Julia we see a new side of Tilda, the drunken promiscuous side. Later, we see the alcoholic in way over her head side after she becomes involved in a kidnapping plot, but the side we never see of her is the woman learning a life lesson to succeed in the end side, and that makes this picture all the more interesting. It doesn't cop out by making it's troubled hero lovable in the end. She is who she is.

District 9 (2 and 1/2 stars out of 4)

Dir: Neil Blomkamp

Str: Sharlto Copley, William Allen Young, Robert Hobbs

The first act of District 9 is clever, original, captivating, and funny. The second act is kind of like Die Hard 4 meets Blood Diamond, which is still pretty cool. The third act is Transformers. Things shooting at things with other things running away. The concept for this movie is wonderful. I'm not going to explain it right now, but if you've ever heard of Apartheid it's like that, but with aliens. The first 30 minutes of the film move along really quickly with cool and interesting ideas coming fast and heavy, but as the movie goes on the ideas run out and your left with your basic summer action movie. All in all it's still good enough to recommend, and it's actually the one movie I would like to see a prequel of.

Surveillance (1 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Jennifer Lynch

Str: Bill Pullman, Julia Ormond, Pell James

Have you ever seen little kids trying to copy the things their parents do and it's kind of cute and funny? Well, here director Jennifer Lynch is clearly trying to mimic the films of her father David Lynch (Eraserhead, Blue Velvet), but it's not cute. It's boring. Stupid and boring. On the other hand it does have "Add It Up" by the Violent Femmes on the soundtrack, so that equals about 3 minutes worth watching.

The Last House on the Left (1/2 star out of 4)

Dir: Dennis Iliadis

Str: Tony Goldwyn, Monica Potter, Garret Dillahunt

Wes Craven's original Last House on the Left (1972) was an art house film disguised as a slasher movie. It was badly acted, poorly made, ultra violent, and frankly a little hard to watch. But what it did do was make a very interesting statement about the romanticism of violence in the world at that time and indeed today. The 2009 version of The Last House on the Left takes everything from the original except the art house quality and the social conscience. What your left with is 2 hours worth of violence draped over a very, very thin plot. There will not be a more depressing movie made this year.

Quick Reviews: August 15th, 2009

2009-08-15T01:17:00.000-07:00

I Love You, Man (3 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: John Hamburg

Str: Paul Rudd, Jason Segal, Rashida Jones

Fact-Paul Rudd is the finest comedic actor working in film today. Examples: Clueless, Wet Hot American Summer, Anchorman, 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up. End of story. In I Love You, Man Rudd plays Peter Klaven, a friendless, recently engaged nerd who realizes he has nobody to be his best man, as a sort of modern take off on the Woody Allen character. Jason Segal, writer and star of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" (which Rudd is also in), plays the would be best man and heads up a really cool supporting cast- Rashida Jones (The Office), Jane Curtin (original SNLer), J.K. Simmons (Juno, Burn After Reading), Jon Favreau (Swingers), and Thomas Lennon (Reno 911). The only person here who seems out of place is the consistently unfunny Andy Samberg, but the sweet Rush cameo cancels him out.

17 Again (3 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Burr Steers

Str: Zac Efron, Leslie Man, Thomas Lennon

There have been 3 good "body swap" movies- "Freaky Friday" with Jodie Foster, "Big" with Tom Hanks, and now "17 Again" starring Zac Efron. These movies only work if the principal actor can be believable at both ages, and Efron's performance as a grown man put back in his 17 year old body to try and right a failing marriage and reconnect with his kids is both confident and sincere. 17 Again is not any kind of revelation, in fact the first 20 minutes are pretty bland, but once the old switcharoo occurs it's both well acted and well constructed. Leslie Mann's (the wife) relationship with Efron, who is 23 years her junior, is much more believable than either of her relationships in the turdly "Funny People", and Thomas Lennon (earlier mentioned in I Love You, Man review), who plays Efron's lifelong friend who poses as his dad in order to get him back into high school, is always good for a laugh or two.

Paris 36 (2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Christophe Barratier

I'm usually a huge fan of French cinema, but the 2 movies I watched this week missed the mark. The first is Paris 36 about a group of commoners struggling to re-open a beloved music hall in the midst of France's political turmoil of 1936. The film has a very nice visual sense, but the politics here are about as hard hitting as the street gangs in "West Side Story", and I just found myself looking at the movie rather than watching it.

The Class (1 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Laurent Cantet

The 2008 Palme-Dor winner, which is the most prestigious award in all of film (in case you didn't know), seems to want to take an unflinching look at modern day teacher-student relationships. The teachers and students are both shown as selfish and disinterested, which I'm certain is not far from the truth. I got the idea of where it was going in about 15 minutes, and it is a good idea, but for the remaining 100 minutes very, very little else happens. In the words of Frank Capra "The cardinal sin of film is dullness."

Quick Reviews: August 8th 2009

2009-08-07T23:47:00.000-07:00

Tokyo! (4 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, Bong Joon-ho

Tokyo just seems like a wacky place, and this film does nothing to change my opinion of that. Three short films by three non-Japanese directors all taking place in the shangri-la of shimmering light that is Tokyo. The first film, "Interior Design", directed by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), is the story of a young couple searching for an apartment. As they search the female half of this couple begins to feel more and more the very basic human need to feel useful. Which she finally achieves in a manner too inventive and surprising to be described by me. The second film is a black comedy called "Merde" directed by Leos Carax about a dirty little jerk who lives in the Tokyo sewer system. It's a tale of crime and punishment which seems to carry equal disdain for both the crime and the punishment. The third film, entitled "Shaking Tokyo", is directed by Bong Joon-ho (The Host). It's the story of a hikikomori, or hermit, who finally decides to leave the house for the first time in ten years after an encounter with a beautiful pizza delivery girl. This is probably my least favorite of the 3 which means it's only very good instead of great. Put them all together and you have 3 wonderful short films which make for the best new movie I've seen all year.

Race to Witch Mountain (2 and 1/2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Andy Fickman

Str: Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, Alexander Ludwig

This is less like the old Witch Mountain movie and more like The Transporter for kids, but I think it works as a children's movie primarily because of the pacing. The first act of this picture takes roughly 8 minutes and the denouement is played out under the closing credits; in between it's all action all the time. The interactions between Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and the kids are good and the special effects are bad in a cool 70s kind of way. This thing is not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, but there are much, much less enjoyable kid movies out there. The question should be asked though; why is The Rock making kids movies at all? He's a big bad ass dude. Shouldn't he be in big bad ass movies? No? OK.

The Soloist (2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Joe Wright

Str: Robert Downey Jr., Jamie Foxx, Catherine Keener

The Soloist is a prime example of how bad direction can cripple a film. The true story of schizophrenic cellist Nathaniel Ayers (Foxx) and his friendship with reporter Steve Lopez (Downey Jr.) is a really uplifting story. Not only that but the acting here is all top notch too, but director Joe Wright (Atonement) can keep no sort of consistent tone to the movie. Sometimes it's realistic, sometimes it's a fairy tale. Sometimes it's political, sometimes it's not. Sometimes he likes the characters, sometimes he doesn't. It all adds up to a movie that will undoubtedly be shown on the USA network a million times. Oh, that means it's not very good in case you didn't know.

Obsessed (2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Steve Shill

Str: Idris Elba, Beyonce Knowles, Ali Larter

This movie is a very, very bad knock off of Fatal Attraction, but for large portions of it I just could not stop enjoying it. A lot of the credit for that goes to the fact that it's so bad it's funny, but at least some of it goes to the performance of Ali Larter (she's the one who's obsessed) as Lisa Sheridan. Larter seems to be the one actor here who apparently knows she's in a bad movie, probably because she's been in so many, so she's hamming it up all over the place and it's actually kind of fun to watch. On the other hand, whenever Beyonce steps into frame this movie dies. She is poison on a movie screen. My advice watch the Single Ladies music video. It's only three minutes long and Beyonce doesn't have to speak. It's actually better directed than Obsessed too.

Funny People (1 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Judd Apatow

Str: Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann

This movie was a huge disappointment to me because I liked Judd Apatow's first two movies (40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up) even more than most people, but he is way off course with this movie. It seems as if Apatow's idea of making a mature movie is just to make everyone a douche bag. And to make matters worse, the one likable character here, Ira Wright played by Seth Rogen, gets shit on for the entire move. There are two fundamental problems with this. First, it's not funny. One of Ira's "friends" (Jason Schwartzman) tells Ira he's going to have sex with the girl he likes. Then does it, and the movie thinks it's supposed to be funny. That's not funny. That is the opposite of funny. Second, there is no redemption for Ira at the end of the movie. It just ends with him right where he started. He's learned nothing, none of the other characters seemed to have learned anything, and I've learned nothing about them. Funny People is a depressing motion picture experience, and a turd of a movie.

Quick reviews: August 1st 2009

2009-08-01T00:09:00.000-07:00

Orphan (3 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Jaume Collet-Serra

Str: Vera Farmiga, Isabelle Fuhrman, Peter Sarsgaard

Surprisingly well made thriller that provides a nice twist on the whole evil kid genre, and features some cool homages to movies like The Shining and Alien. Isabelle Fuhrman is convincingly evil as the orphan Esther, and Vera Farmiga is quickly becoming one of my favorite actresses. I've only ever seen her in three totally bad ass movies- Orphan, The Departed, and the criminally undervalued Running Scared. Her co-star in Running Scared is Paul Walker, hey speaking of Paul Walker.....

Fast and Furious (1/2 star out of 4)

Dir: Justin Lin

Str: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster

Unusually bad fourth in the fast and furious series. There are actually two good action sequences in this movie, and they both happen in the first 15 minutes. Vin Diesel and Paul Walker act like they're messed up on xanax and keystone light (a Cambridge cocktail?) for this entire picture, also shouldn't there be more than one car race scene in this picture? And one more question, why do so many people stand around the starting line for street races in the movies? You'd never get to see the finish.

Bart Got a Room (2 out of 4 stars)

Dir: Brian Hecker

Str: Steven Kaplan, William H. Macy, Alia Shawkat

Very average indie teen comedy, about a kid who spends a lot of money on prom but has no date, that is saved by a hilarious performance by William H. Macy as the kid's afro'd daddio. MOVIE NERD NOTE: This movie seems to take alot of music from Guy Ritchie's 1997 guns and geezers picture Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, and for the life of me I cannot figure out the connection of these two movies.

An American Affair (1 out of 4 stars)

Dir: William Olsson

Str: Cameron Bright, Gretchen Mol, Noah Wyle

The first half an hour of this movie is actually quite good. It appears to be about a teenager who develops a crush on his adult neighbor. Then, it suddenly becomes about the CIA and the Kennedy Assassination and does not work at all. It's third act is remarkably dull, if that's possible. On a side note this movie has to be high in contention for most misleading DVD cover of all time. Take my word for it.

Queer as a Crazy: Bruno Review

2009-07-12T22:17:00.000-07:00

Bruno

Universal Pictures

Dir: Larry Charles

Str: Sacha Baron Cohen

4 out of 4 stars

I'm one of those people who really love Ron Paul. I like everything about him. I'm even a member of his campaign, although I don't know really what that means now that the election is over, but sometimes they still send me emails. So the moment I saw Ron Paul on screen in Bruno I instantly covered my eyes. The world of Bruno is not a world Ron Paul belongs in, but when he refers to Bruno as "Queer as a crazy" (after Bruno has attempted to seduce him) I couldn't help but laugh. Poor Mr. Paul.

I have been a big fan of Sacha Baron Cohen's for quite some time now. I loved his HBO TV show, and I think that his previous film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. Is Bruno as funny as Borat? No. Is it maybe the funniest movie I've seen since Borat? Yes.

What Bruno does is kind of like the cinematic equivalent of losing your virginity for the second time. You feel all the same things as the first time you see Borat, but in new and different ways. Where Borat made his victims (co-stars?) feel so comfortable they would say almost anything and have no fear of repercussions, Bruno does the exact opposite. He makes his victims feel so uncomfortable they feel the need to lash out, and watching all the different and amusing ways they do this is what really makes the film work. And it does work. My God does it work.

A lot of people have spoken about the cultural signifance of Cohen's work. How it shines a light on modern day prejudices. I've never really seen it that way. It might be because I'm too busy laughing, but it's even more likely that it's because I have grown up in a small, and rather sheltered area (Southeast Ohio represent), so I know it's not hard at all to get a redneck to say something racist. Hell, if you just leave the camera on them long enough they'll say something stupid.

The only thing that bothered me did not happen during the film's 84 minute running time. It happened when i got to the movie theatre and bought my ticket. Apparently the movie theatre had instructed the ticket girl to warn everybody that bought a ticket to Bruno that it's "really bad and could be conisidered offensive." For some reason that really bothered me. I mean theatres show hundreds of movies a year that depict, I don't know, maybe a thousand murders between them. Each with various degrees of brutality. And somehow Bruno is offensive cause it features a talking penis? I just don't get it. I mean everybody knows, or everybody should know, that no movie is offensive if it's good, and Bruno is great.

Deer and Dillinger: Public Enemies review

2009-07-06T22:06:00.000-07:00

Public Enemies

Universal Pictures

Dir: Michael Mann

Str: Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard

2 out of 4 stars

Walking home from the movies tonight a deer ran directly at me, stopped, then followed me for like 20 yards. I have never even heard of a deer acting this way. It was quite odd. The movie I was walking home from was Michael Mann's Public Enemies which I will talk about from here on in.

John Dillinger was a pretty intersting guy there is no doubt. He is credited with no fewer than ten bank robberies in a little over a year, he could break out of prison apparently any time he wanted (at least in the film), he became one of the most famous men in the nation, and a hero to many during the Great Depression. However, this movie contains very little of any of these things. The prison breaks are brief and not very well explained, and the bank robberies and his fame are seen as little more than afterthoughts. The film, directed by Michael Mann (Heat, Miami Vice), instead concentrates much more on Dillinger's relationships with others, and the F.B.I.'s year long manhunt for the man they called "The Jackrabbitt". Well, actually nobody in the movie calls him that, but they did in real life and I think it sounds pretty cool.

John Depp (I refer to no 46 year old man as Johnny) is quite good here as Dillinger. I've always liked him better in more realistic roles than in those Pirate Scissorhands type movies he's always making. You know the ones I mean. Marion Cotillard who plays his girlfriend Billie Frechette, and won an Oscar a couple years back, has a pretty thankless role in this picture. She spends the first half of the movie asking Depp questions so he can give snappy answers, and then spends the second half of the movie getting beat up. And, maybe it's just me, but I just can't in a romance that goes by this old formula:

man buys woman somthing expensive--->woman has sex with man---> they are in love

I think most people know there's a little more to love than that. Maybe I'm just cynical. Maybe there's no maybe about it.

For me, all the most effective parts of the movie involve the F.B.I.'s search headed by Agent Melvin Purvis (played by huge jerk Christian Bale). It's interesting to see the old school wire tapping and torture, put in place then by new top G-Man J.Edgar Hoover, that is still in use now. It's also nice to hear Bale speaking in a normal tone of voice for a change. As opposed to his Batman growling, and Terminator shouting.

Michael Mann's direction here is really all over the place and I think it hurts the movie. You never even for a moment feel like you're in 1933. O.K. the cars look old, and they're using tommy guns, but other than that this movie could have very easily been set at any time, and it certainly doesn't help that the picture keeps switching to handheld digital cameras at seemingly random points. It makes the movie seem less like a period gangster movie, and more like a youtube video.

The movie isn't a total loss. The performances by Depp and Bale help to keep you interested for the 2 hour and 20 minute running time, and the foregone conclusion ending is done pretty well I suppose. But with so many great gangster movies in the world there is really no reason to ever see this.