Misogynist, anti-capitalist, and class-conscious, novelist Chuck
Palahniuk’s “Fight Club” takes a "Trainspotting" brand of glee in
dismissing lifestyle mores and materialist limitations of American
social existence. It plays like a boys-only video game where male
audience members are players encouraged to kick over the machine that
ate their quarters at the end of the game. For all of the controversy
surrounding the movie for fear that young males will begin setting up
fight clubs of their own all around the world, the theory is countered
directly in the movie as Ed Norton’s nameless character comes to view
his dimwitted, class-conscious Fight Club cohorts as complete morons —
who, in Lou Reed's words, follow the first thing that comes along that
allows them the right to be. Indeed the Fight Club cult that Norton
sets up under the tutelage of his brutal disenfranchised alter
ego/evil-twin, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), digresses into a flesh-chewing
tombstone that gets dumped on the floor like so much brain matter. "Fight Club" is Fincher's cinematic Hail-Mary pass that the audience desperately wants to catch.
Pedro Almodovar does an end-run around his own checkered career with an oddly constructed but nevertheless stylish genre blender colored with self-referential narrative splashes that fail to create a sufficiently clear vision. Famous for finding his stories and developing them as he works, Almodovar only half-articulates this film's idea's about passion, fidelity, jealousy, and the filmmaking process. Lluis Homar plays director-turned-screenwriter Harry Caine--formerly "Mateo Blanco," before a car crash that has robbed him of his vision while dating an actress (Penelope Cruz) behind her director-boyfriend's back. Almodovar takes liberties by setting Cruz's character Lena in "Chicks and Suitcases," a film-within-the-film loosely drawn from his 1988 "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown." During these over-prioritized scenes of situation comedy the audience is left to ponder the ineffectiveness of the film's thematic emphasis on the significance of editing. There might very well have been a good movie lurking between Almodovar's final cut and the cutting-room floor, but what we see here is a flawed sampler of comedy, noir, melodrama, and luscious compositions. Rated R. 128 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)
John Woo delivers on "Red Cliff's" reputation as the most expensive Chinese-language film ever made. "Red Cliff" is a mesmerizing war epic that concentrates on ancient techniques of military strategy as played out on a grand stage. Set in 208 AD, the 131-minute film hits the ground running as general Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) asserts his power over the Han Emperor Xian (Wang Ning), leading his troops south to conquer regional warlords Liu Bei (You Yong) and Sun Quan (Chang Chen). But Liu Bei has a secret weapon: a skilled advisor Zhuge Liang (Takeshi Kaneshiro), whose brilliant counsel makes for some dramatic plot twists. The ensemble of actors including Vicki Zhao and Tony Leung Chiu-wai give stellar performances in a lush piece of mythic history. The balance of natural beauty, complex characters, wartime drama, and epic scale, makes "Red Cliff" a must-see movie. And you'll have something to look forward to afterward: the second half of the two-part series ("The Battle of Red Cliff") comes out in January.
The naturalistic black-and-white noir compositions that writer/director Leonard Kastle captures in the only film of his career are augmented by a stark soundtrack punctuated with music by Gustav Mahler. Based on the real-life exploits of a pair of money-hungry serial killer lovers, the suspense follows Alabama-born nurse Martha (played with brooding hostility by Shirley Stoler) and her Elvis-haired Latin gigolo boyfriend Ray (Tony LoBianco). The couple pose as brother and sister while Ray conducts marriage proposals with unsuspecting widows that the couple eventually kill to take their life savings and life insurance. Made in 1969, "The Honeymoon Killers" presaged elements of David Lynch's filmic approach, and clearly informed John McNaughton's similarly-themed stomach-churner film "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer." Romantic dysfunction never looked so banal, brutal, and ugly. The real Martha Beck and Ray Fernandez were executed by electrocution on March 8, 1951.
You can tell by the audience's inevitable disdainful laughter with you in the theater that, on a narrative level, "2012" is a flop. So ham-and-cheese heavy is the dimwitted dialogue (by Harold Kloser and Roland Emmerich) that half the time you feel like you're watching a remedial screenwriting project. Naturally, there is plenty of guilty pleasure in watching a twin-engine plane flown by an amateur pilot between two falling skyscrapers, and impossibly passing through the falling rubble without being hit. Essentially, the story describes a shift in the Earth's crust that comes sooner than White House-connected scientist Adrian Helmsley (Chewetel Ejiofor) predicted. Divorced author/part time limo-driver Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) borrows his son and daughter from his ex-wife Kate (Amanda Peet) to take them on a vacation in Yellowstone National Park. Once camped, Jackson meets Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson), an apocalypse-predicting whacko living in a mobile home from which he broadcasts his doomsday ravings. Mother Nature's proverbial poo hits the fan as volcanoes erupt, earthquakes shake, California slips into the ocean, and lots of people die without a drop of blood shown on-screen. Think of "2012" as global-apocalypse-lite. You get all of the disaster without any of the gore. Sure the blu-ray DVD will look great on your home theater as ambient background for your next house party, but that's about it.
Even the most enthused Democrat will become fatigued with Glenn Silber's softball documentary (funded by the self-promoting Service Employees International Union) about the concerted efforts of blue collar workers coming together to rally support for Obama votes. There's only so much rah-rah-sis-boom-ba you can take about a President elected on the premise of ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, who has followed in his predecessor's footsteps of starving the country into dirt. If anything, "Labor Day" just goes to show how wrongly optimistic most people are. "Labor Day" put my feet to sleep.
Once titled "The Boat That Rocked," Pirate Radio" is a victim of over-editing for a loosey-goose '60s rock 'n' roll period piece set around a pirate radio station on board a ship large enough to have a basketball half-court on deck. Philip Seymour Hoffman coolly plays the Count, an American DJ with a heart of gold who enters into a cold war of sorts with British DJ rival Gavin whose cruel-to-be-kind personality proves less toothy than the Count imagines. Intended as a celebration of a more innocent yet swinging time when the music of The Beatles, the Stones, Hendrix, and The Kinks promised a world of endless reverie, "Pirate Radio" is missing enough character reference points--ostensibly left on the cutting room floor--to allow the audience to share in the random festivities of the ship's fun-loving inhabitants. Still, there's some great music and a the movie sustains a groovy vibe that might have you imitating Bill Nighy's British accent as the boat's undemanding owner Quentin. Rated R. 116 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)
Riffing on a Twilight Zone-themed morality tale, writer/director Richard Kelly ("Donnie Darko") sets the table for a three-course meal of supernatural events but serves up an anemic narrative entree instead. Period costumes and set-designs place Richmond, Virginia couple Norma (Cameron Diaz) and her NASA scientist husband Arthur (James Marsden) in a mid '70s era of bad ties and polyester pants. Arthur and Norma receive a dubious opportunity to improve their financial status in the form of a surprise package containing a wooden box with a big red button on top. A promised visit from a horrifically disfigured but impeccably-dressed Arlington Steward (Frank Langella) explains that the couple will receive $1 million dollars if they choose to press the button that will cause the death of another human being that they do not know, somewhere else on the planet. Of course there would be no story if the couple didn't press the button, but the oddly related incidents that follow never add up to a cohesive story. Although based on a short story by television's "Twilight Zone" contributor Richard Matheson, "The Box" is an over-inflated mess that doesn't come up to snuff.
Neglecting cinema's compulsory three-act structure, writer/director Olatunde Osunsanmi ventures into shallow narrative waters that puddle around the foundation of his unbalanced shock docudrama, set in the remote corners of Nome, Alaska. Redundant split-screen compositions compare grainy "actual" interview footage of spaced-out-looking psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler, and her better-looking movie twin, played by Milla Jovovich. A reenactment of the unsolved stabbing murder of Dr. Tyler's husband as he lay in the bed next to her, casts some doubt on the mental faculties of our would-be heroine in an alien abduction story that comes with more than a few UFO-sized plot holes. The perpetually miscast Elias Koteas tries visibly to infuse some realism into his marginal character, Dr. Tyler's psychologist peer Dr. Abel Campos, but serves only as a nagging distraction. It doesn't help matters that "The Fourth Kind" follows so closely the other recent surveillance-camera-enabled fright fest "Paranormal Activity." Both films reflect an attempt by their filmmakers to play off the wobbly verite formula that "The Blair Witch Project" utilized to impressive box office results. The "actual" footage clips, that include Dr. Tyler's patients levitating and screaming, all frizz out in an analog corruption of images not possible with modern-day digital cameras. However, even if "The Fourth Kind" came out ten years ago it still wouldn't stand up to overrated "Blair Witch Project."
Scott McGhee and David Siegel--the filmmaking duo behind "Bee Season"--follow two equally problematic parallel stories about a young New York couple. Pregnant Kate (Lynn Collins) and her loyal boyfriend Bobby (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) flirt with extracting a large ransom from an unknown gangster for an especially significant cell phone (think "Burn After Reading") while their more domestic dopplegangers visit Kate's family for a contemplative Fourth of July fiesta. Neither story is engaging enough to work on its own, and there isn't any resonance between them if there was. For all of the earnest effort that Collins and Gordon-Levitt exert on characters that they created much improvised dialogue for, you're always aware of the narrative artifice surrounding them. Two half-baked stories don't add up to a whole movie no matter how much dialogue the actors wrote.
Although he might argue against it Wes Anderson, famous for his quirky sense of absurdist humor, seems to have found his forte in animation vis a vis Roald Dahl's 1970 children's book. With a script co-written by Anderson and Noah Baumbach, Anderson creates a magical stop-animation world inhabited by a fox family, various other woodland creatures, and a group of nasty human farmers who don't take kindly to having their livestock and cider stolen. George Clooney applies his signature leathery voice to Mr. Fox, a snappily-dressed family guy whose animal nature sits at direct odds to his family's safety in their peaceful foxhole. Meryl Streep voices Mr. Fox's even-keeled wife, and Jason Schwartzman speaks for the couple's bratty son Ash, who tries to compete with his athletically-prone cousin Kristofferson (Eric Anderson) who has come to stay with them. The nearby industrial farms of Boggis, Bunch, and Bean prove too much of a temptation for Mr. Fox whose burglary plan brings down more human wrath than he is prepared to handle. There are significant coincidences between Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are" and Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox" in that both stories feature themes of an untamed animal nature in all of us. To that narrative end Anderson's film better satisfies, perhaps because Dahl's book presented a more developed source material than Maurice Sendak's book. Anderson's lavish attention to visual detail supports the dry wit on display in a highly original animated film geared to appeal equally to adults and children.
"The Men Who Stare at Goats" falls into the politically impotent sub-genre of lightweight satire of which "Charlie Wilson's War" and "The Informant" are recent touchstones. Based on Jon Ronson's book about the American military's most arcane practices, the movie focuses on an elite unit of special-ops soldiers trained to use psychic powers. They're most infamous for having developed the ability to kill dogs by staring at them. George Clooney plays mind-over-matter US spy (a.k.a. "Jedi Warrior") Lyn "Skip" Cassady. Skip allows an adventurous young journalist named Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) to tag along with him on a black-ops mission into Iraq. Foamy flashback comic set pieces run parallel to a meandering plot in which Skip and Bob get lost and kidnapped, then lost again. Particularly unfulfilling is a dead-end subplot about the military's New Earth Army led by new age hippie Bill Django (Jeff Bridges). A Viet Nam vet, Django dropped lots of LSD in order to develop the skills of a "warrior monk." Needless to say, these skills aren't what they're cracked up to be. Here is satire with all of the edges rounded off, a movie in love with the idea that the U.S. military spends buckets of money on things like generating 12-inch houseflies to ruin the morale of our "enemies." The filmmakers might imagine that they're dancing on the same floor as "Catch 22" or "Slaughterhouse Five" but they're much closer to a Steve Martin "Pink Panther"-remake. Rated R. 95 mins. (D+) (One Star)
Chris Smith's fiery and provoking documentary provides a searing platform for police-officer-turned-reporter Michael Ruppert to articulate his gloomy vision and, in his view, doomed fate of the world. With parents who worked "above top-secret intelligence" in Washington, Michael Ruppert draws upon his knowledge of Beltway backchannels to draw the conclusion that the U.S. military never intends to leave Iraq, as evidenced by the new American embassy built in Baghdad. It's larger than Vatican City. Describing the world's entire economic system as a giant Ponzi scheme, Ruppert talks with authority, intensity, and passion. Ruppert lays out his vision of a global economic freefall culminating with collapse after oil prices ultimately hit a price no one can pay. Unfortunately, the filmmaker makes a fatal misstep by choosing to film his subject in a darkly-lit warehouse basement that visually and conceptually marginalizes his own subject. "Collapse" is a gripping documentary that would have been better served with some set design and lighting.
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans Just as ludicrous as its over-worked title , this insultingly ill-conceived sequel to Abel Ferrara's masterpiece ("Bad Lieutenant" - 1992) picks up a few grains of muscular grit from the unlikely guidance of hired -gun director Werner Herzog, but ultimately flails every step of the way. Nicholas Cage briefly threatens a return to acting form as New Orleans police Lieutenant Terence McDonaugh. Cage's character suffers from a chronic back injury he got during a rescue; his ensuing addiction to drugs impairs his judgment and sets up the film. But Cage loses control of the character. He slips into an off-putting vocal delivery late in the story, further distracting from an annoying patchwork plot. Whereas Keitel's character in Ferrara's original had as little to redeem him as cinematically possible, his violent death delivered a kind of ritualistic miracle. But with Cage's drug-addicted-cop-with-a-hooker-girlfriend (Eva Mendes), the audience is supposed to pull for him despite his huge ego--because being a hero made him that way. Cage even goes so far as to tear a page from Klaus Kinski's relationship with the camera, but the tribute is as inappropriate as making a sequel to a film to which there could never be a follow-up. A disaster.
Peter Greenaway steps into his professorial shoes as an art historian to present a documentary-lecture-investigation-essay on Rembrandt van Rijn's 1642 masterpiece "The Night Watch." The piece is listed as the fourth most celebrated painting in the world, behind the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Greenaway keeps his judicial study of the corruption-filled story that "The Night Watch" tells, peppy with all sort of cinematic gymnastics at his command. Split-screens, specifically composed musical background pieces, starkly staged reenactments, and the frequent appearance of Greenaway's talking head gives the feeling that you're enrolled in a glorious cinematic correspondence art course. Playing detective, Greenaway examines at length each of the 32 characters of the painting who face the audience from a proscenium stage representation to blow the whistle on a tale of conspiracy and murder in the Dutch Golden Age. Commissioned for the work by a "Christian Pope," the last major work of Rembrandt's career--he died a pauper because he was unable to find work after painting "The Night Watch--is filled with some 35 clues that Greenaway gleefully divulges like someone who has a collection of the world's best kept secrets. More than merely a resource for art historians and students, "Rembrandt's J'Accuse" is a gift from an underestimated genius of cinema. You might just might want to see it a second time.
(ContentFilm International) Not Rated. 86 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)
Adam Goldberg embodies Adrian Jacobs, a pretentious avant-garde composer and leader of an experimental musical trio called New Sound Ensemble in Jonathan Parker's send up of Manhattan's art world. Adrian is a kind of ultimate artsy poseur--he has an especially selfish passive aggressive personality--whose cacophonous compositions include John Zorn-inspired touches like popping bubble wrap and rattling chains in tin buckets. His successful artist brother Josh sells his bland style of corporate art through his girlfriend and local gallery owner Madeleine Gray (Mary Shelton). After a performance by Adrian's trio, attended by Josh and Madeleine, she strikes up an affair with Adrian and gets him a well-paying sound instillation commission for a upcoming prestigious art showing at her gallery. The performances are perfectly deadpan and the overall comic tone cohesive in a satire that dares to show multiple sides of the art industry. Egos, etiquette, and envy go a long way in this atypical comedy of manners. In showing the sincerity beneath the absurdity of the experimental art world, Jonathan Parker gives a window of empathy for the brittle characters on display. Not Rated. 96 mins. (B) (Three Stars)
Headache-inducing, and featuring one of the worst D-movie performances of the aughts from Costas Mandylor as Detective Hoffman, the latest "Saw" franchise addition is more of the same torture-punishment-rehab-porn audiences have come to expect. The filmmakers make a pathetic stab at political poignancy with an anti-health-insurance-company--cartel theme, but do little to tweak the series' chambers-of-horrors formula that regularly digresses to grainy flashback sequences an dares to dip its toe into a parallel subplot. Yes, my friends, this is a crash-course in acting, directing, editing , and screenwriting mistakes to never make. Ribs pop, necks choke, and blood splatters, all in a orgiastic humping of gears and flesh that expel the red liquid of life, all in the interest of proving the significance of life by testing the limits of a cannibalistic instinct for survival. Forget that the series gave up all continuity with Tobin Bell's alternately dead villain Jigsaw long ago. The funniest thing about this edition of the Saw crapfest--I do, however, like the poster you see here--is that it comes out during an outstanding year for great Halloween-timed horror films to run out and see. If you are a horror movie fan--full disclosure, I am a rabid horror fan myself--then, do not pass go, do not collect $200, but go see "The House of the Devil" as an opening act to Lars von Trier's "Antichrist." I can't imaging a better way to spend Halloween, 2009 than to take in that double-feature before going to costume party with friends. Juicy. Rated R. 91 mins. (D)(One Star)
Debut director Anthony Fabian places the complexities of South Africa's self-image during the 1960s under a cinematic microscope in this engaging film based on the real-life experiences of Sandra Laing. Born with black skin to white Afrikaner parents due to a genetic condition, Sandra (Ella Ramangwane) finds herself caught in a crossfire of ideologies after her parents send her to an all-white boarding school when she is ten. Rampant racism among the staff and students at the school make for a short stay before Sandra is senselessly expelled and escorted by police officers back to her parents' care. Sandra's shop-owner father Abraham (Sam Neil) takes the issue to the Supreme Court to try to get his mulatto-looking daughter officially classified as "white." Years pass and the young adult Sandra (Sophie Okonedo) is tempted by the affections of a black delivery man named Petrus (Tony Kgoroge) to whom she relates better than the local white men with whom her parents set her up. Disowned by her father after being caught with Petrus, the couple starts a family in Petrus's impoverished shanty town. Okonedo plays her character's lack of worldly knowledge too much on-the-nose , wielding quizzical facial expressions seemingly intended to exonerate Sandra from her plight. Nevertheless, "Skin" is an Apartheid-era drama made with conviction and perspective by a promising filmmaker. Not Rated. 107 mins. (B) (Three Stars)
The House of the Devil Ti West's "The House of the Devil" sent chills down my spine. The film is a perfectly pitched old-school horror homage to a '70s/'80s-era of cinema that should have been. Jocelin Donahue plays Sam, a college sophomore who takes on a high-paying babysitting job in a creepy mansion on the night of a full lunar eclipse. Former Warhol Superstar Mary Woronov is wonderfully sinister as the matron of a cult of Satan worshipers who have special plans for Sam. An unintended cousin to Scott Sanders' lovingly executed Blaxploitation homage "Black Dynamite," "House of the Devil" is an entertaining work of disciplined filmmaking where emotion, period, style, social conventions, and fear squeeze together in a knockout punch. Between Lars von Trier's "Antichrist" and "House of the Devil," Halloween at the movies is looking especially good this year. Rated R. 93 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)
"Ong Bak 2" is so obviously contrived for the sole purpose of showing off Tony Jaa's martial arts weapons expertise that the film soon wears out its welcome. Set in Thailand circa 1431 when the slave trade was doing brisk business, young Tien witnesses the murder of his parents by the royal army. Later, wild child Tien is captured by slave traders and made to fight a crocodile in watery gladiatorial combat. When bandits break up the traders' violent fiesta, Tien is rescued by the group's leader Chernang, a master who takes Tien under his wing and (you saw this coming) train him as a warrior. The film's many fight scenes are well shot but devoid of impact because there isn't enough character development to support the mind-numbing volume of violence. As in the original film, Tony Jaa performs some amazing stunts--not the least is running across the backs of a herd of stampeding elephants--but lacks the charm needed to capture your imagination. This is martial arts movie is a chore. Rated R. 97 mins. (C) (Two Stars)
Scattershot and comically unbalanced, "Cirque du Freak" is a wannabe horror film that feels like it was filmed underwater. Teenage best friends Steve (Josh Hutcherson) and Darren (Chris Massoglia) buy their way into a troop of freaks performing at their local small-town theater. Mr. Ribs is so named because his internal organs are exposed. There's also a monkey girl--a tribute to her simian tail. Miscast as the show is John C. Reilly as the show's vampire-about-town Larten Crepsley. Steve recognizes Crepsley as an immortal bloodsucker from a book that Steve values because he aspires to undead status. A visit from the nefarious Mr. Tiny and one misplaced psychedelic-colored giant tarantula later, and the boys choose mutually-exclusive paths into evil. Darren suffers the ultimate insult in order to become a vampire--death--to save Steve from a coma induced by the spider's bite. Steve teams up with Mr. Tiny, whose close ties to a less sophisticated tribe of vampires known as the "Vampaneze" play into his plot to provoke a long-simmering war between the Vampires and the Vampaneze. A pot-shot subplot romance between Rebecca (Jessica Carlson) and Darren turns out to be the most redeeming aspect of this woefully misguided film, based on a series of books by Darren Shan. Rated PG-13. 108 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)
Sad evidence of the perennial appeal of square-jawed men who talk nice (in this case he's a serial family killer played by Dylan Walsh), this update of the 1987 cult horror classic is a stone cold dud. With little back-story, no psychological context, and gaping plot holes screenwriter J.S. Cardone ("Prom Night" - 2008) mucks up his own paint-by-numbers-formula. After murdering his picture-perfect family, chameleon-psycho David Harris finds easy-pickings in divorcee Susan Harding (Sela Ward), whose reformed bad boy son Michael (Penn Badgley) returns home from a private military school to find his new would-be step dad calling the shots. That's right, David is not really even a "stepfather" because he and Susan are just shacking up inside her fabulous Portland home. After a couple of obvious murders it's time for Michael and his teen-dream girlfriend Kelly (Amber Heard) to confront the papa poseur with a dose of his own violent medicine. Shallow and inert, "The Stepfather" goes through the motions of a suspense film without ever broaching the horror genre that director Joseph Ruben employed in the original. Talk about "unclear on the concept," this remake doesn't even get the genre right. Rated PG-13. 101 mins. (D-) (Zero Stars)
Director F. Gary Gray's ("Be Cool") disappointing urban suspense potboiler shares the same unsalted narrative soup as Spike Lee's bone-headed "Inside Man," albeit with a dash of horror copped from the "Saw" franchise. Philly detective Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) and his office are so busy negotiating with freshly jailed revenge killer Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler)--he's out to teach the justice system a lesson--that they barely get around to researching his the extent of his professional background. Clyde was a top-secret engineer for the government whose wife and daughter were murdered before his eyes ten years earlier. Try as the filmmakers might to create a sympathetic character out of Foxx's oxymoronic rule-breaking-but-honest investigator, Nick's hypocrisy runs as deep as Clyde's--or is it "Clive"? There's some confusion about pronunciation of Clive's first and last names, and even more about an unintended disappearing pair of handcuffs that precedes a jail cell murder. This is one continuity mistake that really does kick the willing suspension of disbelief out the window. Gerard Butler's scene-chewing performance holds interest even as the story alternately melts and congeals like a mobile bowl of poorly mixed Jell-O. Come to think of it, "Inside Man" might have even been half a letter grade better than this flop from screenwriter Kurt Wimmer. Rated R. 108 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)
A particular truth of understanding architecture lies in its context as a subject for photography to measure its scale and spatial impact. No one has a better eye for architecture and landscapes than documentarian Eric Bricker's subject, the preeminent Modernist photographer Julius Shulman. "For every person who visits a private house, there may be 10,000 who only view it as a photo." This reality plays into Schulman's influence as a photographer working since the '30s, and responsible for introducing "form-follows-function" Modernism to the world. As a subscriber to the "church of nature," the candid Shulman reveals his thought processes during plentiful interview clips. Bricker's by-the-doc-book editing approach easily handles an enormity of photos, archive clips, and interviews with friends, family, and associates that make up the film. Just as its evocative title promises, "Visual Acoustics" offers a history lesson, biopic, and visually harmonic essay via Julius Shulman's gifted focus.
Animation mastermind Adam Elliot's adult absurdist film is a droll stylistic comic vision that's anything but conventional. Audiences familiar with "Wallace & Gromit" will adapt easily to Elliot's painstakingly detailed clay world orchestrated with thought-bubbles, catchy musical themes, and spot-on vocal performances. The story is about a couple of unlikely pen pals--Max (Philip Seymour Hoffman) suffers from Asperger syndrome and lives in Manhattan circa '76, and Mary (Toni Collette) is a lonely 8-year-old girl living in Australia. The movie comes at you like a kaleidoscope collage of neuroses, fears, and misunderstandings. Deaths and near-suicides are narrative colors that Elliot paints with a scatological brush--there are so many poo references that you'd think "Max and Mary" was a Korean film. A narrator (Barry Humphries) adds another gear of our mutual protagonists' inner thoughts as they age across a decade that finds Mary getting married, and Max grappling with his many obsessions. "Mary and Max" is a highly inventive claymation tragicomedy told from a very personal perspective. It's not intended to be everyone's cup of bittersweet tea.
For a low-fidelity spooky house movie involving only a boyfriend and girlfriend, "Paranormal Activity" does a lot with a little. However, that's not to say that debut writer/director Oren Peli goes far enough in his shallow transition from squeaky doors to full-on demonic possession of twentysomething monster-bait Katie Featherston. College English major Katie and her day-trader guy Micah (Micah Sloat) have been living in their comfy San Diego house long enough for the demon that's been following Katie since she was eight to catch up with her again. New to the enigmatic horror that follows Katie, Micah purchases a video camera to digitally capture evidence of the apparition that makes noises, turns lights off and on, opens and shuts doors, and gets under the sheets with Katie. In the same family of low-budget suspense movies as "Open Water" and "Blair Witch Project," "Paranormal Activity" musters roughly the same level of 8th grade audience torment as those films. Compared with a precision horror film like Lars von Trier's terrifying upcoming shocker "Antichrist," "Paranormal Activity" is just kid's stuff. Rated R. 86 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)
The only enjoyment of watching inarticulate modern day American love birds Peter (Jason Ritter) and Vandy (Jess Wexler) interacting in Manhattan, comes from deciding which one is more insufferable. With slightly better camera work than you'd expect from a home movie, director Jay Di Pietro's interminable addition to the nearly dead "mumblecore" genre, of which Jason Ritter is a poster boy, follows overworked time-flipped vignettes wherein Ritter and Wexler do the things that young couples do, shop, argue, and break up. The trouble is that they do things all wrong and slow. Just because two people are staring at the other one's navel instead of their own, doesn't mean they're not still staring at a navel.
Soft-peddled father issues, and race relations get coasted over like so much conveyor-belt product in director William Dear's oh-so-safe kids' romantic sports drama. Corbin Bleu (of "High School Musical" fame) plays Cale Bryant, a 16-year-old motocross racer who spends his time working two part-time jobs to help take care of his mom (Penelope Anne Miller) and feisty little sister. Cale is vying for a spot on a motocross tour but loses to his best friend just as he loses his girlfriend Crystal (Tegan Moss) to his biggest rival. A new girlfriend (Sandra Echeverria) and a refurbished motorcycle later, and our pretty boy protagonist is ready to take on all the obstacles life can throw at him. "Free Style's" made-for-television production values make it a big screen movie to avoid. The film's wrongheaded approach to the real issues in American life that it pretends to confront, comes out in an exchange between Bleu's character and his little sister when she asks him if their family is black or white. "We're whack" he tells her.
Lee Daniels (producers on "Monster's Ball) unleashes an urban drama pressure-cooker steeped in verite realism. "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" follows 16-year-old Claireece "Precious Jones" (well played by newcomer Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe). Jones is a 300-pound high school student, pregnant with her second baby by her own father. Precious's cruel mother Mary (Mo'Nique) humiliates and physically attacks her daughter--when she isn't giving orders from her permanent place in front of the television. Daytime reveries of red carpet fame and the adulation of her imaginary fans allows Precious to block out her stressful reality. The lighthearted vignettes also allow the audience a chance to breathe in the midst of an unbelievably devastating story of traumatic family abuse. Precious finds hope and support when she gets into an alternative school. Paula Patton adds some much-needed optimism as Blu Rain, an altruistic teacher whose dedication to her students enables their intellectual growth. Significant too is Mariah Carey's disarming performance as Ms. Weiss, a no-nonsense welfare counselor who listens to Mary's explanation of her treatment of her daughter. "Precious" is an unforgettable drama whose intrinsic truth outweighs any exploitation or politics that might attend such material. If you're looking for a gritty socially-conscious movie, this is it. Rated R. 109 mins. (A) (Five Stars)
Chilean director and co-writer Sebastian Silva creates an elegant observation of class distinctions between a repressed maid named Raquel (wonderfully played by Catalina Saavedra) and the upper class Valdez Chilean family for whom she works. The film begins with the Valdez family celebrating Raquel's 41st birthday around the dinner table at their home where Raquel occupies a small room. Rachel suffers from fainting spells that cause the family to hire an additional maid. The hiring process does implodes with Rachel going out of her way to scare off what she sees as competition for her job. But when spry free-thinker Lucy (Mariana Loyola) takes up the position, she treats Raquel with a respect that enables Raquel to transform into a happier person. Here is a profound story of a woman who breaks out of a social cage that she maintained as much as her perceived masters. Not Rated. 96 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)
Aside from one truly inspired comic scenario involving Bill Murray, "Zombieland" is a flat horror spoof that wears out its welcome well before its abysmal third act gets started. In his role as "Columbus," one of the last surviving humans, Jesse Eisenberg further brands his casting type as Michael Cera's ("Youth in Revolt") main competition for the nerdy-teen-virgin leading guys that are in high demand these days (skip "Splinterheads"). Director Ruben Fleischer slathers on screenwriters Rhett Reese's and Paul Wernick's presentational voice-over narration from Columbus's perspective as a loner with a list of some 30 odd rules that have kept him alive--rules like, beware of bathrooms, always buckle up, and always shoot a zombie a second time in the head (a "Double tap") to ensure that he's really dead. Far from the canny social satire of George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead," and from the zany zombie movie homage of "Shaun of the Dead" (2004), "Zombieland" exists only to show zombies getting shot in the head, run over with SUVs, and generally murdered in fast and bloody ways. Columbus teams up with Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), a zombie-killing pro, and the duo go on a zombie killing spree while meeting up with their duplicitous female rivals Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). Watching a 12-year-old Abigail Breslin killing zombies with semi-automatic weapons doesn't do much for me, but I'm sure there are many audiences that will remark, "cool." Gratuitous violence never seemed so cheap. Rated R. 81 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)
In 1992 Quentin Tarantino did something that hadn't been done since 1986 with David Lynch's "Blue Velvet;" he reinvented cinema. A deft application of an originally voiced time-flipping narrative, Tarantino's "action" script is a filmic illusion that Hitchcock or Welles would applaud. The main conceit of Tarantino's bank heist story is that the film's "action" occurs after the heist, with well-constructed flashback sequences and monologues to impose an emotional undercurrent of back-story. Each of the six black-suited robbers is known to the others only by his color coded pseudonym. Eddie Bunker plays Mr. Blue, Tarantino is the chatty Mr. Brown, Harvey Keitel is Mr. White, and Steve Buscemi is Mr. Pink. Suffering from a belly gunshot wound sustained during the heist, Mr. Orange (perfectly played by Tim Roth) is an undercover cop sincerely befriended by Keitel's character. Left bleeding in the gang's where house, Mr. Orange witnesses the psychotic Mr. Blonde (manically played by Michael Madsen) torturing a young cop named Marvin Nash (Kirk Baltz) to the funky lyrical strains of "Stuck in the Middle With You (Stealers Wheel). Tarantino doesn't just sucker punch his unsuspecting audience in the solar plexus; he goes for the heart and groin as well. "Reservoir Dogs" is a flawlessly conceived concept film that's theatrical in nature, with a bit of Grand Guignol thrown in for dramatic effect. The film created a sub-genre of crime suspense copycats, of which Troy Duffy's "The Boondock Saints" (1999) is one of the most embarrassing examples. Over his career, Tarantino's films have proven everything that "Reservoir Dogs" seemed to promise and still achieves. Freshness.
Life During Wartime (at the 47th New York Film Festival)
Todd Solandz is back yet another time to beat his convoluted dead horse themes of schmaltzy pedophilia. A bookend to his 1998 feel-bad effort "Happiness," "Life During Wartime" repeatedly reminds us that indeed America is still enduring two wars that it would rather forget, or at least redirect the billions being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan on economic problems in the U. S. of A. The title is misleading because war is incidental to a gumball rally of "pervs," their victims, and not-so-innocent bystanders. Ciaran Hinds takes over the Bill Mablewood role that Dylan Baker played in "Happiness." Bill is on the brink of being released from prison as his ex-wife Trish (Allison Janney) is getting on her long belated romantic footing with a new guy, Harvey (Michael Lerner). Trish's youngest son Timmy (Dylan Riley Snyder) looks forward to his bar mitzvah, and is devastated to learn that the father he had been told was dead, is in fact a convicted pedophile. An uncomfortable reunion between Bill and Timmy's college-aged brother Billy (Chris Marquette) that Bill used to molest, is enough to curdle milk in your stomach. Solandz has worn out his welcome as an enfant terrible. He's too old for that pose. Todd Solandz specializes in capturing creepy scenarios between adults and children. A fumbled attempt at creating a thematic statement about forgetting but not forgiving, backfires on a film that elicits that very reaction from its audience. Not Rated. 98 mins. (D) (One Star)
Informed by films like Gus Van Sant's "Paranoid Park," Antonio Campos's character study of a prep school social misfit named Robert (Ezra Miller) is an intimate psychological journey into a coded juvenile mindset. The film's institutionalized atmosphere is all smooth surfaces and drab colors. In the room that Robert shares with a roommate, he watches cruel porn that will give him ideas about how to treat a sexual encounter with Amy (Addison Timlin), a girl he has a crush on. Robert's brief foray into bliss is negated when, during a student filmmaking project, Robert witnesses up close the death of twin sisters overdosing on cocaine that's been cut with rat poison. While the school employs grief counseling, Robert gets a would-be therapeutic video assignment to edit together a memorial video tribute for the deceased twins. Gus Van Sant could learn a thing or two from Campos whose assured direction is present in every frame of this thought-provoking art film. (IFC Films) Not Rated. 107 mins. (B+)(Four Stars)
Inspired as an American reply to his earlier story-collage movie "Paris, je t'aime," producer Emmanuel Benbihy extends his anthology oeuvre with another collection of various directors contributing a story set in a particular urban environment. Like "Paris je t'aime," "New York, I Love You" unrolls as a hit and miss proposition of weighing each (would-be) charming vignette against the last one in succession. Brett Ratner pulls out a plumb with his romantic coming-of-age segment staring Anton Yelchin, James Caan, and Olivia Thirbly. Director Yvan Attal kicks out a winner with his romantic reverie starring Maggie Q, Ethan Hawke, Chris Cooper, and Robin Wright Penn. However, less favorable efforts from filmmakers like Mira Nair and Shekhar Kapur throw off the film's otherwise innocuous sequence of mildly interesting dramatic bubbles. Grab bags are always fun, but the junk outweighed the goodies with this one. (Vivendi Entertainment) Rated R. 122 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)
Hilary Helstein offers a historically significant documentary reportage of Holocaust survivors who utilized art as their primary coping mechanism inside Hitler's concentration camps. Against newsreel footage, and the art itself, are Helstein's interviews with the artists--many are now deceased. The first-hand commentary proves deeply moving in the candid retelling of the horrors they witnessed and endured. A vast collection of touching drawings, sketches, and paintings made by Jewish prisoners during their imprisonment, exhibits a strength of human spirit and expression that is profound. The power of the art is astounding, and poet laureate Maya Angelou provides narration in this insightful prism of WWII experience. Not Rated. 70 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)
The Art of the Steal (at the 47 New York Film Festival)
A history and art lesson in one, Don Argott's engrossing documentary is an in-depth exploration of an ongoing political scheme for the city of Philadelphia to inherit the precious art (valued at over 15 billion dollars) owned and housed by the Barnes Foundation in Lower Merion, five miles from downtown Philadelphia. The film lays out Barnes's rags-to-riches story as a poor Philadelphia kid, born in 1922, who studied medicine and went on to amass the most impressive private art collection in the country. At his foundation, Barnes displayed his 181 Renoirs, 69 Cezannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos, 16 Modiglianis, and seven van Goghs for the primary purpose of providing a teaching ground for art students, but also to provide an personalized museum experience for the common man to appreciate. Political intrigue and money wrangling give way to full blown scandal as key players like the Pew Foundation resemble greedy corporate raiders using court rulings like ninja stars to defeat their already weakened opponent---in this case the museum's skeleton crew foundation board. Here is a clear-eyed look into a white-collar crime against culture being committed at the time of this writing. The good news is that the Barnes is still in operation through 2010 for hearty art fans to go see for themselves. Not Rated 101 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)
So pretentious it stinks from the screen, "The Blue Tooth Virgin" is a stillborn experiment in screenwriting 101. One-man-show Russell Brown (he writes, produces, and directs) records stagy discussions of the screenwriting idiom between bromance buddies Sam (Austin Peck) and David (Bryce Johnson). Sam is an out-of-work entertainment writer--he had a popular TV series called "Cat's Paw Print"-- working on a "character-driven" script that David thinks is complete garbage but can barely bring himself to tell Sam. "The Blue Tooth Virgin" bears all the marks of a navel-gazing attempt at drawing attention to an unrepentant void of mediocrity. Karen Black is squandered in one truly pathetic scene where she plays a New Age therapist to rich artsy-fartsy types like Sam. "The Blue Tooth Virgin" is more of a skeleton of a movie than ghost. It certainly won't haunt you, or anybody else.
In telling the story of the monopolized condition of America's beer sales, writer/director/producer Anat Baron (formerly of Mike's Hard Lemonade) compulsively errs on the side of Goliath beer companies (Anheuser-Bush, Miller, and Coors) over a vast number of David-positioned craft breweries that the documentary timidly approaches. Baron comes up short by following only two craft beer brewers, Sam Calagione (Dogfish Head Brewery) and Rhonda Kallman (Moonshot Beer), competing with 1400 other craft brewers busy eating away at corporate market share with a big variety of great tasting beers. Baron touches base with the Stone Brewing company but doesn't begin to explain that company's enormous impact on the current beer revolution. Nonetheless, "Beer Wars" is an informative and enjoyable documentary about America's arcane laws that control the shipment and delivery of beer, and about some of the ways that the corporate beer giants that own 98% of the market block out any and all competition. The film scratches the surface of showing the human passion that craft brewers and their fans apply to the beer they love so much. Even if "Beer Wars" works best as a brief introduction to craft beers, and inspires audiences to explore craft breweries in their area and beyond, then the film works. "Beer Wars" premiers on DVD
Bronson The casual physical brutality of "Britain's most notorious criminal," Michael Petersen a.k.a. "Charles Bronson," is depicted with unreserved commitment by impressive actor Tom Hardy. His performance is on par with Eric Bana's fantastic transformation in "Chopper" (2000). Hardy embodies the post-"Silence of the Lambs" archetype of the psychologically deranged prisoner--capable of writing poetry, painting, and facing his captors only with extreme violence. Director Nicolas Winding Refn wallows in fetishistic glee as he shows off the bodies of his male subjects engaged in the mano a mano battle rituals Bronson consistently instigates--even though (perhaps because) he loses every time. Stylistically, "Bronson" sustains a masochistic tone against a Sisyphian diary of this serious criminal badass obsessed with hurting his guards. Flashbacks reveal Bronson's troubled childhood and the crimes that landed him in the big house. The movie never comes together as much of a biopic, but does work as a darkly comic celebration of a dubious anti-hero. A sort of second cousin to Paolo Sorrentino's "Il Divo" (2008), "Bronson" shares that film's mechanical sense of ambivalent regard for its subject. This may be first true "video nasty" of the year. Rated R. 92 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)
French auteur Cedric Klapisch achieves a sublime use of the City of Lights as a living and breathing body of humanity. We get a historic sense of Paris from college professor historian-turned TV show narrator Roland (Fabrice Luchini), who struggles with desire for one of his female students. Roland's bumpy relationship with his architect brother Philippe (Francois Cluzet) introduces another way of seeing the beauty of Paris. At its core is a life-and-death story of sibling support between Pierre (Romain Duris), a dancer in dire need of a heart transplant, and his caring sister Elise (Juliette Binoche). It would not be an exaggeration to say that Juliette Binoche steals the movie as a workaday French woman taking care of her ailing brother. The humility of Binoche's Elise allows dramatic space for Klapisch's other subplots to be absorbed. Cedric Klapisch gets wonderful performances from his ensemble of actors. Robert Burke, Loic Dury, and Christophe Minck provide a haunting musical score. Rated R. 130 mins. (B) (Three Stars)
