Wonderful World

"Wonderful World" is a faulty independent drama which adds up to less than the sum of its underdeveloped parts. Matthew Broderick is Ben Singer, a cynical divorced guy who can't even manage to cheer up when he has custody of his quirky daughter Sandra (Jodie Ferland). Living with a roommate in a small apartment, Ben drives his tiny car to a dreary day job proofing legal briefs. Ben, it turns out, was once a successful singer/songwriter of children's folk songs, with at least one popular album under his belt. When his Senegalese roommate Ibu (Michael K. Williams) slips into a diabetic coma, Ben comes to the rescue and soon strikes up a romance with Ibu's visiting sister Khadi (well played by Sanaa Lathan). Writer Joshua Goldin makes an inauspicious directorial debut with a malnourished script that never resonates because the author is seemingly afraid to express any ideas beyond its don't-worry-be-happy theme. Ben's vague sense of defeated idealism sparks to life briefly under the threat of hot romantic attraction, but the story refuses to catch fire.  

Rated R. 92 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Youth in Revolt

Director Miguel Arteta adapts C.D. Payne's 1993 novel to predictably comic--if not full-blown--outrageous effect. Michael Cera is well cast as Nick Twisp, the precocious lust-driven teenage son of separated low-life parents played by Steve Buscemi and Jean Smart. Nick hopes to end his virginity when he runs into the similarly nerdy but super-cute Sheeni Saunders (Portia Doubleday). Some Ill-conceived advice from Sheeni--become a bad boy--prompts Nick to create a dual identity in order to win over Sheeni. Thanks to a pencil-thin mustache and Euro-chic clothes Nick reinvents himself as François, an alter ego with a penchant for various criminal shenanigans involving cars, drugs, and fire. That Sheeni's parents happen to be religious freaks (played by Emmet Walsh and Mary Kay Place) only adds to the kookiness of the  adult world that Nick navigates like a bull in a china store. Over the course of just a few films, Michael Cera has established himself as one of the most enjoyable young comics of his generation. Cera's scenes with Ray Liotta (as a local cop dating Nick's mom) are priceless. He may not be Holden Caulfield, but in this day and age Nick represents a fresh breeze of youthful rebellion.

Rated R. 90 mins. (B) (Three Stars)

Daybreakers

Sibling Australian filmmakers Michael and Peter Spierig flip the teen-friendly vampire trend on its mushy head with a sci-fi take on a world run by greedy bloodsuckers. By 2019 vampires outnumber humans; blood is running out. Taking a page from HBO's "True Blood," Sam Neil plays a sharp-toothed corporate villain (Charles Bromley) who runs a monopoly that harvests blood from human bodies connected chockablock to a vast milking system. Hematologist vampire Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) is working on a vampire cure. Naturally—or preternaturally-- Bromley and his armed minions want to stop him at all costs…even though they face extinction. The satirical parallel between blood and oil is obvious as war breaks out between the vampires and a group of survivalist humans led by Willem Dafoe in full badass mode. The pacing misses a few beats and the satire never pops, but "Daybreakers" arrives as a welcome retort to the bubblegum vampire genre.

Rated R. 98 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Episode 100

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Posted by Cole Smithey on January 2, 2010 in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Cabiria (Classic Film Pick)

At 9pm on Saturday, May 27th of 2006, in the Salle Bunuel screening room of the Cannes Palais des Festivals, I saw Giovanni Pastrone's 1914 historical epic masterpiece "Cabiria" in its full restored glory. It was an experience I'll never forget. Onstage, a pianist dressed in a black tuxedo played classical musical accompaniment to the 180-minute story, set during the Punic Wars of the third century B.C. when a young girl named Cabiria is kidnapped with her nurse while Mount Etna erupts in the background. Sold off to be sacrificed at the temple of Moloch, Cabiria's only hope for rescue lies in the hands of Fulvio Axilla (Umberto Mozzato), a Roman spy, and his muscle-bound slave Maciste (Bartolomeo Pagano). To watch Pastrone's seminal film is to understand how the Italian violinist-turned-filmmaker invented grand spectacle cinema with the use of enormous scale and a long running time--it was the first film to be over three-hours long. For "Cabiria," Pastrone pioneered the use of deep-focus filming and the since-ubiquitous "tracking-shot"--two years before D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" would employ similar techniques. There isn't much in a modern director like James Cameron's bag of hi-tech tricks that can take your breath away the way "Cabiria" does. The exotic drama, suspense, and daring stunts on display in Pastrone's film of "12,000 shots" is every bit, if not more effective, than that of modern filmmakers whose use green-screen CGI is frequently used more as a crutch than a meaningful storytelling technique. "Cabiria" sits comfortably alongside such grand scale silent films as Sergei Eisenstein's "The Battleship Potemkin" (1925), Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" (1927), and Abel Gance's "Napoleon" (1925). If you ever have an opportunity to view any of these great films in their restored state, don't hesitate to witness the creation of cinema's rich vernacular at its source. 

Posted by Cole Smithey on January 2, 2010 in Silent | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond

Actress-cum-director Jodie Marshall brings a studied adaptation of Tennessee Williams unpublished and unproduced screenplay that lays bare the material’s less than cinematic trappings. Even as a minor work however, the story retains Williams’s consummate mastery at conveying a Southern Gothic philosophy that was his stock and trade. Set in the era of Fitzgerald’s early ’20s “Great Gatsby,” the story follows poor-little-rich-girl Fisher Willow (Bryce Dallas Howard). Fisher’s ruthless father has earned the scorn of the Mississippi Delta by flooding a levee on his plantation, causing the death of several farmers. Intent on reinventing herself, Fisher hires Jimmy Dobyne (Chris Evans), the stud son of a drunk that runs her father’s plantation store, to escort her to the debutante ball in the guise of the grandson of a past governor. Upon arrival, Fisher loses a high-priced diamond earring borrowed from her disapproving aunt, and Jimmy feels accused in spite of Fisher’s protestations. The drama deflates as Fisher takes a break from the party to visit with Miss Addie (Ellen Burstyn), the mansion’s bedridden matriarch who begs Fisher to assist in her suicide. Carrying some complimenting bodily heft, Bryce Dallas Howard convinces in the role of Williams’s “mad heroine,” while Chris Evans fails to fill his character’s potentially light loafers.

Rated PG-13. 82 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on December 27, 2009 in Drama | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Sherlock Holmes

Fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s mystery series of novels who blunder in not knowing it’s a Guy Ritchie film will it futile to reconcile Ritchie’s nonsensical tour of endless anachronisms. You’d need a special magnifying glass to identify any elements of  Doyle’s original literary source material that lends the title character his name. Snappy repartee between Robert Downey Jr.’s Sherlock Holmes and his irrelevant sidekick Watson (Jude Law) creates an illusion of character development even if no such thing exists. Outrageous action set pieces--complete with cheesy slow motion foreshadowing--jump from gratuitous martial arts fights to revved-up foot chases. What little mystery there is arises from Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), a serial killer of women, whose court appointed execution by hanging kicks off the story. A practitioner of Black Magic, Blackwood outsmarts his warders and Sherlock Holmes with the aid of high ranking officials who are secret members of Blackwood’s New Order. Screenwriters Anthony Peckham ("Invictus"), Simon Kinberg ("Mr. and Mrs. Smith"), and newcomer Michael Robert Johnson conspire with Ritchie to dumb down Sherlock Holmes for a film franchise aimed at a modern youth that they must view as less intelligent than the generation Arthur Conan Doyle wrote for between the late 19th and early 20th century.

Rated PG-13. 128 mins. (Warner Brothers Pictures) (C) (Two Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on December 22, 2009 in Action/Adventure | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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December 18 Episode

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Posted by Cole Smithey on December 20, 2009 in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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The White Ribbon

Winner of the Palme d'Or, director Michael Haneke's masterful drama about the origins of fascism unfolds in a rural German village in 1914 and leads up to World War I. A local schoolteacher (Christian Friedel) comes to believe that a rash of accidents, some deadly, may be the work of one or more of his eerily withdrawn pupils. Over the story, the teacher gradually hones in on the source of the violence that disrupts the town's placid Protestant surface. Shot in austere black-and-white and featuring a sprawling cast of characters reminiscent of a 19th century novel, "The White Ribbon" marks Haneke's most ambitious and unsettling investigation yet into the evils transmitted from parents to children. The ribbon of the title is a Lutheran symbol of innocence and purity the pastor makes his two oldest children wear as a constant reminder of their moral obligations. Haneke packs the film with suspense but methodically transfers the onus of responsibility for its thematic source to the audience, as he does with all of his films. Michael Haneke is one of modern cinema's most effective provocateurs. Alongside filmmakers like Lars von Trier, Abbas Kiarostami, and Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Haneke displaces narrative conventions to awaken the unconscious. There are no answers in Haneke's cinema, only questions--very big questions.

Rated R. 144 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on December 13, 2009 in Foreign | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Nine

In 2005 director Rob Marshall had a runaway hit with his film version of the Broadway musical "Chicago." Let's hope he enjoyed it. If a Broadway musical loosely based on Federico Fellini's 1963 deconstructionist masterpiece "8 1/2" sounds like a recipe for disaster, it is. As if 2009 needed one more nine-related movie title--we've already suffered through "$9.99," "District 9," "Cloud 9," and the animated travesty "9"--Marshall and his crew run through every musical set-piece as though checking off a list that leads to the grave. Where "8 1/2" captured the zeitgeist of '60s Italian tedium, "Nine" is a self-conscious, wrongheaded attempt at riding Fellini's coattails with musical numbers that fawn over every Italian cultural touchstone satirized by the original. "Nine" is constructed around Daniel Day-Lewis's knock-off of Marcello Mastroianni's Guido Anselmi (here the Fellini alter-ego is named Guido Contini). The seven muses in Guido's rudderless life each get a chance to sing and dance their reason for existence, namely their love of Guido. As Guido's haughty mother Sophia Loren strikes museum-quality poses, Stacy Ferguson (a.k.a. Fergie) goes hog wild as a half-remembered and half-dressed nymphomaniac from Guido's childhood. Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, and Marion Cotillard attempt to out-hot one another in steamy routines filmed with clinical precision. By trying to reconstitute the essence of Fellini during a crucial period of artistic anxiety, the writers of "Nine" have missed the point entirely. Bad enough that such a mockery was presented on Broadway, but now there's a film that mocks Fellini's genius with confused reverence for his seminal work. Daniel Day-Lewis's weak embodiment of Marcello Mastroianni is disconnected from what should have been a man with too much imagination. Very sad.

Rated PG-13. 118 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on December 13, 2009 in Musical | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Avatar

The most expensive film ever made leaves much to be desired. Paralyzed from the waist down, former Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) voices several movies worth of tell-don't-show narration for the benefit of audiences who like being read to when they watch a movie. With no oil resources left on Earth, a battalion of outsourced military bozos have set up camp on the moon "Pandora" with a group of optimistic scientists in order to incite a tribe of native aliens called the Na'vi. They want to drive the Na'vi out of their giant tree home to extract an energy-producing mineral called Unobtainium (yes, really). Jake's lack of scientific training nevertheless allows him to rest in a coffin-like bed from which he projects a walking-talking avatar in the form of a Na'vi creature. Jake's mission is to earn the trust of the blue-skinned Na'vi and report back to the colonizing military forces, who want to dispossess the aliens rather than kill them all outright. The Na'vi are primitive aliens who wear loin cloths, do battle with bows and arrows, and fly around on winged four-eyed creatures with which each Na'vi bonds for life. Naturally, Jake falls for a cute Na'vi named Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who returns his affection. The inevitable David-and-Goliath war that transpires delivers a familiar tale: boy meets alien, boy goes native, boy betrays his past to do what's right. For an ostensibly anti-imperialist war movie written in all caps and splashed with every primary color in the Maxfield Parish color wheel, "Avatar" ends up being a toothless rollercoaster of eye candy that sexes up war, the very thing it professes to detest. "Avatar" is the perfect film to desensitize young audiences before they get the call-up.
 

Rated PG-13. 160 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on December 11, 2009 in Sci-Fi | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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It's Complicated

No one cries like Meryl Streep. And no one can make you laugh harder when she's pumping out tears than the guileless icon who has defied Hollywood's inclination for putting actresses out to pasture at 40.
Streep plays Jane Adler, a fiftysomething owner of a Santa Barbara bakery shop who bumps into her ex-husband Jake (Alec Baldwin) at a party with his much younger second wife Agnes (Lake Bell). But the ten years since their 17-year marriage ended hasn't extinguished the torch of desire Jake still carries for Jane. With her youngest daughter going off to college and the other preparing for marriage, Jane's defenses are down. So when busybody Jake makes his move on Jane, cheating on his wife with his ex-wife, she's bound to tumble, at least for a while. Though overweight, Baldwin's happily rotund Jake easily outpaces the dopey charms of Jane's romantically famished architect Adam (Steve Martin), who throws his hat into the ring as well. Writer/director Nancy Myers ("What Women Want") couldn't create a more white-bread vision of upper class ennui if she tried, but Baldwin and Streep rise above their one-dimensional roles with an intoxicating lighthearted lust for life. "It's Complicated" is a middle-aged romantic comedy that accomplishes what it sets out to do. Older people need to laugh at dumb stuff too.

Rated R. 114 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on December 11, 2009 in Romantic Comedy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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The Young Victoria

The secret to any period romance drama lies in making it seem effortless. Without emitting so much as a sigh Emily Blunt owns the role of Britain's young Queen Victoria. Looking suspiciously like Orlando Bloom's evil twin, Rupert Friend eventually hits his stride in the supporting part as Prince Albert, the love of Victoria's life. Director Jean-Marc Vallee renders screenwriter Julian Fellowes's meticulous script with an open approach reflected by the film's framing (courtesy of Hagen Bogdanski - "The Lives of Others") and vibrant dramatic tone. The story jumps from Victoria's life as a precocious child to 1837, when she ascended to the throne despite the machinations of her mother the Duchess of Kent (well played by Miranda Richardson) and her sketchy advisor Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong). Victoria's uncle, Belgium's King Leopold (Thomas Kretschmann), busily teaches his nephew Albert (Friend) how to court Victoria. But the queen's personal advisor Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany) has a romantic agenda of his own--one that conflicts with Albert's grand plan, a campaign that includes carefully planned visits and gushing love letters. "Young Victoria" is a well crafted period-romance made personal by Emily Blunt's disarming performance.

Rated PG. 104 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on December 11, 2009 in Biopic | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino has matured as an auteur even if he's as prone as ever to creating funny-ha-ha sequences of joyous cinematic revelry just for the sport of it. Tarantino deploys virtuosic use of character, dialogue, suspense, and surprise in each of this film's five chapters. A tense opening sequence titled "Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France" sets the filmmaker's darkly comic yet heavily dramatic tone with Nazi Colonel Hans Landa's (diabolically played by the incomparable Christoph Waltz who won Best Actor at Cannes for his performance)—and his small group of soldiers— visit to a remote farmhouse inhabited by dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet) and his three daughters. The objective, naturally, is to search for Jews whom LaPadite may be hiding. A polite battle of wits and willpower between the two adversaries plays out with a savory drama that is astounding for its layers of subtext, precise execution, and originality. The following chapter introduces Tennessee-born Lt. Aldo Raine (played with gusto by Brad Pitt), who indoctrinates his elite squad of Nazi scalpers (Aldo is part Apache Indian) with a speech spun of richly-humored narrative gold. The remaining chapters--each reflecting a different film genre-- build on one another toward a new kind of World War II fantasy climax that is cathartic as it is bittersweet for its inevitable collateral damage.

Rated R. 152 mins. (A+) (Five Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on December 9, 2009 in Fantasy, War | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Crazy Heart

Jeff Bridges' dazzling career has led him to "Crazy Heart," a truly virtuosic tour de force performance as an old-fashioned cowboy singer. With some damn fine filmmaking courtesy of writer/director Steve Scott, Bridges plays Bad Blake, an aging, alcoholic, country music troubadour who gets a last chance at love and success. Rugged Bad leads a lonely lifestyle on the road, driving from motel to motel across the South playing gigs with pick-up bands in dive bars and bowling alleys. An interview with a local Santa Fe reporter, Jean Craddock (brilliantly played by Maggie Gyllenhaal), blossoms into a romance that prompts Bad to move in with Jean and her four-year-old son Buddy. Bridges is a natural--singing and playing country songs with the sweat of authenticity and the spit of a tipsy factory worker. Based on Thomas Cobb's novel, "Crazy Heart" is a bookend to Robert Duvall's great 1983 cowboy-singer movie "Tender Mercies." Duvall's presence as Wayne, a bartender and friend to Bad, is a hat tip to that film's influence. "Crazy Heart" is the best American film of the year. Jeff Bridges smokes--big time.

Rated R. 111 mins. (A+) (Five Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on December 6, 2009 in Drama | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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The Lovely Bones

"The Lovely Bones" is a cross between "What Dreams May Come," "Stir of Echoes," and director Peter Jackson's own "Heavenly Creatures" (1993). Jackson's visionary filmic adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel packs a worthy punch of haunting esoteric pathos. But casting blunders weigh down the film's marginal appeal. Saoirse Ronan does few favors as 14-year-old Susie Salmon, an unfortunate girl murdered by Mr. Harvey (Stanley Tucci), a serial killer residing in Susie's suburban Philly neighborhood circa 1973. The story hop-scotches between events, leading up to Susie's murder, while giving eye-candy visions of a heavenly waiting-room limbo of rainbows, verdant fields, and hyper-natural spaces. Casting disasters ensue. Nikki SooHoo is irredeemable as Holly, a sort of woodland nymph mascot for Susie's colorful between-worlds wonderland. Reece Ritchie cracks a clam as Susie's unlikely would-be hunky boyfriend prior to her untimely death. Still, Susan Sarandon sets herself apart as Grandma Lynn, a self-medicating matriarch who brings some much-needed humor to the story. Sarandon has aged like a fine bottle of single-malt scotch, and her instinctive ability to ground scenes is out of this world. In spite of its obvious flaws, "The Lovely Bones" carries an inertia of unmistakable tension, care of Peter Jackson, that makes it a suspenseful and entertaining film.

Rated PG-13. 135 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on December 5, 2009 in Drama | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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The Blind Side

If ever Sandra Bullock had Oscar nomination potential, it comes in her canny performance as a Southern Republican with a heart of gold. Bullock nails the Memphis accent and attitude of her character Leigh Anne Tuoughy, a white family woman of privilege who takes into her home African-American Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), an over-sized high school senior athlete from a broken home in the ghetto. With the help of her family, and a few friends, Leigh Anne gives Michael the academic and home life he needs to be a successful college football player. Writer/director John Lee Hancock's formulaic adaptation of Michael Lewis's book "The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game," isn't above slipping into music video sequences, but the script's recipe works seamlessly with sound ensemble performances and high production values all around. "The Blind Side" expresses a racially and emotionally charged portrait of coded Southern mannerisms and passive aggressive politeness. Although it's ostensibly a sports movie, it's moreover a character study of how families take care of one another. Sandra Bullock deserves that Oscar nomination if she gets it. 

Rated PG-13. 128 mins. (B) (Three Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on December 5, 2009 in Drama | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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December 4th Episode

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Posted by Cole Smithey on December 5, 2009 in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Invictus

Morgan Freeman's brilliant performance as Nelson Mandela is the kind of transformation that Academy Award members aggressively reward come Oscar season. Whether or not they'll be as impressed with Anthony Peckham's airy adaptation of John Carlin's book "Playing the Enemy" is questionable. The story is set in 1995, during the early days of Nelson Mandela's presidency, after he served 27 years in prison. Settling into his office, Mandela makes a point to meet with a black nationalist group that has voted to abolish the Springboks, South Africa's popular Afrikaner rugby team. With calm resolve Mandela explains to a crowd of apartheid victims that it is better to lead by example than to mimic their former oppressors. Viewing the Springboks as an ideal tool for promoting multiracial unity, Mandela invites the team's level-headed Afrikaner team captain Francois (Matt Damon) for tea. There Mandela plants seeds of encouragement about Francois leading his team to World Cup victory. Mandela mentions William Ernest Henely's poem "Invictus" to Francois as a fount of inspiration that kept him sane in prison. "Invictus" is a beautiful snapshot biopic that lacks dramatic significance in its subplots. Still, the film makes its points by way of Eastwood's usual assured direction and Morgan Freeman's considerable portrayal. 

Rated PG-13. 134 mins. (B+) (Four Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on December 5, 2009 in Biopic | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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A Single Man

Fashion designer Tom Ford makes a credible filmmaking debut. Ford co-wrote with David Scearce this adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel about a tragic crisis of personality. Set over the course of one day in the life of tightly-wound British college literature professor George Falconer (Colin Firth), age 52, we witness George's escalating misery at having lost his life partner Jim (Matthew Goode) in a car accident. George's clock ticks down as he prepares to commit suicide while going about his normal daily routine. While teaching his English class, George goes into a telling discussion about living as a minority in a deeply bigoted country. In the parking lot after class George's student Kenny (well played by Nicholas Hoult) engages his teacher in a provocative conversation that seems to go nowhere. On his way home George shares dinner with his best friend and neighbor Charley Jullianne Moore, an alcoholic casualty of the American dream. Carefully composed flashbacks give clues about George's close relationship with Tom. Unfortunately, Isherwood's novel breaks a fundamental rule of dramaturgy that doesn't translate from literature to the film's mandatory three-act structure. I'm sure there's a way to view the film as somehow life-affirming. I just didn't.

Rated R. 99 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on December 4, 2009 in Drama | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Brothers

Jim Sheridan's muted remake of Susanne Bier's 2004 film with the same title is an imperfect but well-acted examination of the after-effects of a traumatic experience in the war in Afghanistan. Tobey Maguire plays Captain Sam Cahill, a loving family man who begins a second tour of duty., He leaves behind his wife Grace (Natalie Portman) and their two young daughters. At the same time Sam's brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal) is released from prison after serving a stretch for bank robbery. The film's thematic centerpiece act of brutality relays the vicious cycle of war that the American government perpetrates on its own people. Sam Shepherd is squandered with a script that hamstrings his role as military father to Sam and Tommy. Natalie Portman gives a delicate performance as Sam's tortured wife. As Sam, Tobey Maguire undergoes a complete transformation into a mentally traumatized individual, but his excellent performance isn't adequately supported by David Benioff's sporadically amateurish script.

Rated R. (104 mins.) (C+) (Two Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on December 4, 2009 in War | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Crazy on the Outside

Posted by Cole Smithey on December 3, 2009 in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Ninja Assassin

Shockingly, "Ninja Assassin" is a legitimate martial arts fantasy movie. Multiple storylines support shadowy noir settings for gallons of thick red-paint blood to splatter behind swords, fighting stars, and bullets. Korean pop star Rain is believable as Raizo, a discliplined ninja abducted as a small boy by the underground Ozunu Clan (a.k.a. the Clan of the Black Sand) and trained by the brutal Ozunu (Sh Kosugias) as an outsource assassin to kill for wealthy governments and private individuals. Hotshot Berlin Europol agent Mika Coretti (Naomie Harris) connects the Ozunu Ninja to a political assassination and conspires with her associate Maslow (Ben Miles) to blow open the secret ninja organization that none of her military-prone peers believe exists. For all of its cartoon-graphic body slicing, the film's centerpiece kill in a public bathroom between a young ninja and a British Kingpin (Stephen Marcus) is handled with sickening verite. An especially exciting chase/fight scene between Raizo and a gang of ninjas, happens on a main road in heavy traffic. Screenwriters Matthew Sand and J. Michael Straczynski might not have created a masterpiece, but they do effectively dodge cliches by going for some less obvious plotting. James McTeigue ("V for Vendetta") directs this unpredictable acrobatic display of violent spectacle that carries its themes of loyalty and skill in a slick flatpack of fast-twitch precision.

Rated R. 99 mins. (B) (Three Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 29, 2009 in Martial Arts | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Up In The Air

George Clooney's intentionally ambiguous character Ryan Bingham is a poster boy for America's lack of ethical direction in this thought-provoking satire about the nation's unemployment epidemic. Unfortunately, this film fails to swing its hammer of simmering revolution hard enough. Smarmy Ryan loves his city-hopping lifestyle--he loves collecting frequent flyer miles--doing paid gigs as a motivational speaker with a cynical message. He also works as the number-one hatchet man for an outsourcing company that fires employees for big companies. Wanting neither marriage, kids, nor commitment, Ryan happily slips into a low-key affair with Alex (Vera Farmiga), a flight attendant who shares Ryan's shallow worldview--at least on the surface. A big snag appears in the form of upstart corporate spitfire Natalie (Anna Kendrick), whose attempt at making Ryan's job obsolete with the use of video conferencingtransforms the ambitious-but-callow Natalie into Ryan's personal traveling trainee. Based on Walter Kirn's novel, the reliably humorous script is co-authored by Sheldon Turner and director Jason Reitman. After making "Thank You for Smoking" and "Juno," Reitman attacks socio-economic satire with a combination of verité sequences, light slapstick, and earthy sex appeal. The movie finds its level whenever Reitman's camera depicts the outspoken responses of people being fired from jobs where they've toiled for years. The film seems to say, "It's okay that we're all losing our jobs, because it will invariably lead us to our own individual bliss."  

Rated R. 98 mins. (B) (Three Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 28, 2009 in Black Comedy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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November 20, 2009 Episode

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Posted by Cole Smithey on November 26, 2009 in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Everybody's Fine

"Everybody's Fine" is a thoughtful holiday movie that teaches us how to appreciate differing definitions of success. The story revolves around recently widowed Frank Goode's grown and scattered-to-the-four-winds children (Goode is played by Robert De Niro). De Niro grounds the story as a father whom not everyone necessarily wishes they had had. Frank's high expectations for his kids--David, Amy, Robert, and Rosie--create revealing consequences when Frank hits the road to reunite with each of his progeny. Frank is unable to locate his youngest son David, a Manhattan-based artist whose recent arrest in South America has the other siblings talking in hushed tones about how to keep David's troubles secret from their dad. Frank next heads for Chicago to visit his distracted daughter Amy (Kate Beckinsale) at her plush home before going to Denver to reconnect with Robert (Sam Rockwell), a tympani drummer for a symphony orchestra. Last on Frank's list is Vegas, where Rosie (Drew Barrymore) pretends to work as showgirl. A dose of disappointment accompanies each visit as Frank comes to a realization about his identity as a father. Based on Giuseppe Tornatore's 1990 film "Stanno tutti bene," writer/director Kirk Jones fulfills the material's dramatic demands without putting too fine a point on Frank's emotional awakening. But De Niro's naturalistic performance is what captures your imagination.

Rated PG-13. 95 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 26, 2009 in Drama | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Terry Gilliam is popularly considered the victim of a terrible curse that brings disaster down on his nearly every film. Gilliam's editing battles over his masterpiece "Brazil" are the stuff of legend. So hellacious were the director's attempts at making "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote," with Johnny Depp in the title role, that a documentary ("Lost in La Mancha") was made as a sad document of that film's doomed fate.

"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" automatically receives the status of a notable film as the late Heath Ledger's final performance. That this trippy movie opens with Ledger's character hanging by a noose from a London bridge inevitably lends a ghostly air to the proceedings. Ledger's character Tony Shepherd is on the run. Some angry men want to kill him, which is understandable since his work overseeing a children's charity was conducted in less than savory ways. Doctor Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is the aged leader of a small traveling performance troupe that includes his nearly-of-age daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) and Anton (Andrew Garfield), Parnassus's assistant. Anton is hopelessly smitten with Valentina. The troupe doesn't know that Tony (Ledger) has perfected faking his own suicide when they "rescue" him from the aforementioned bridge. Doctor Parnassus is a gambling addict and devout Buddhist monk who makes bets with the Devil, a.k.a. Mr. Nick (Tom Waits). Mr. Nick being Mr. Nick, lures Parnassus into a pernicious bet with Valentina as the unwitting prize. The first bettor to collect five souls wins. With Tony's help, the Imaginarium attracts four unsuspecting women to enter a surreal land through a magic mirror. It's in this abstract dimension that souls are claimed, and where Ledger's character takes on different qualities as performed alternately by Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law. For the first time in a decade, since 1998's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," Terry Gilliam has made a film that delivers on his reputation as a master of cinematic fantasy. While he hasn't made a flawless film, Gilliam manages to preserve the memory of Heath Ledger in an appropriate and inspired way. He takes us on a journey we're happy to take for every surprise--large and small--that the film has in store.     

Rated PG-13. 122 mins. (B) (Three Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 26, 2009 in Fantasy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Disney's A Christmas Carol

Richard Donner's enjoyable "Christmas Carol"-update "Scrooged" (1988) popped with endearing comic pizzazz by way of Bill Murray's adorably cruel television network biggie who gets rehabilitated by ghosts. There's so much magic between the likes of Carol Kane, Karen Allen, and David Johansen that it's easy to fall in love with the movie. Sadly, there isn't much to fall in love with in Robert Zemeckis's visually overpowering motion-capture-animation fiesta with its trademark cardboard-looking "human" appearance to the animated characters. Jim Carrey inhabits a Dickens-era version of Ebenezer Scrooge, the wicked banker that gets spirited away by the ghosts of Christmases "Past," "Present" and "Future." The same animation techniques that made Zameckis's 2004 movie "Polar Express" a disaster, shrouds the actors here in a similarly thick sheen of immutable alien cardboard. Gary Oldman is spry as Scrooge's assistant Bob Cratchit, while Colin Firth's performance as Scrooge's nephew is muffled beneath the animation. The film stays reasonably true to Dickens's book but clashes with itself in outrageous chase sequences that overwhelm Dickens's much more human-scaled thematic message. The 3-D aspect of the animation goes largely unnoticed amid all of the graphic bombast on screen. There's just something about this particular style of animation that, while impressive at first glance, acts as an impenetrable wall between the audience and the story. It's a bubble where empathy and emotion don't register. Go watch "Scrooged" instead.

Rated PG. 95 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 25, 2009 in Animation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Michael Jackson's This Is It

A piecemeal attempt at putting a bow on Michael Jackson's overblown and bankrupt career, this clinical behind-the-scenes collage of the rehearsal process for MJ's doomed London performance schedule is more propaganda than documentary. From a dancing perspective, MJ's signature pop-lock-point-and-crotch-grab dance moves come off as embarrassing relics of an '80s era hip-hop style that doesn't stand up against, say, Fosse's defining Jazz dance moves of the previous decade. We see Jackson coaxed into nervously riding a "cherry-picker" crane that elevates him above the empty seats of an arena rehearsal space where he performs obligatory renditions of "Thriller," "Billie Jean," and "The Man in the Mirror." "God bless you," Jackson repeatedly replies to every tech advisor as if exerting a passive benediction of cultish authority. Brief interview clips with the show's excitable theatrical director Kenny Ortega (doubling as the film's director), back-up singers, and musicians provide a stream of adulation for the man who would die before the show could open. The filmmakers insert plenty of computer generated imagery--pulled from video aspects of the stage show--as hamburger-helper for a smoke-and-mirrors portrait of a controversial performer whose musical career was eclipsed by allegations of habitual pedophilia that will forever mark the books of history.

Rated PG. 111 mins. (C) (Two Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 24, 2009 in Documentary | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

Based on her own novel, Rebecca Miller directs this wallowing tale of bad people doing bad things. Unfortunately, the film comes apart at its emotionally precarious seams. Robin Wright Penn plays Pippa, who martyrs herself for her much older (by 30 years) husband Herb (Alan Arkin). The generational divide between this spring/winter couple comes to the fore when his medical condition demands that they move out of their posh beach house to a retirement community in Connecticut. The story flip-flops between Pippa's current tribulations and disingenuous flashbacks which depict Pippa's helter-skelter youth at the mercy of her unfit mother (Maria Bello), whom she escaped at 16. Young Pippa (played by Blake Lively) briefly crashes with her lesbian aunt. Said aunt's fetish photographer girlfriend Kat (played by Jullianne Moore) takes a shine to Pippa before sending the lost young soul packing. With two grown children out of her perennially mussed hair, Pippa finds herself attracted to her neighbor's son Chris (played by Keanu Reeves). An act of adultery by Herb gives Pippa license to pursue Chris but there isn't much rhyme or reason to their coupling. "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" doesn't know whether it's a drama, a comedy, or a random slice-of-life expose. Neither will you.

Rated R. 98 mins. (D+) (One Star)

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 22, 2009 in Drama | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Me and Orson Welles

Richard Linklater's lighthearted rendering of an imagined relationship between Orson Welles and a young would-be actor during Welles's famed 1937 New York production of Julius Caesar soars whenever Christian McKay takes the screen (as the great maestro). But the film backslides whenever McKay is absent. This is due to a severe case of miscasting. Zac Efron plays Richard Samuels, a young bit actor chosen for his professed ability to play the ukulele. With his "High School Musical" haircut and phony charm intact, the ever-smug Efron isn't equipped for the duality of qualities required for what should have been a fairly complex character. Claire Daines adds her own brand of off-key accomplishment as Sonja Jones, a personal assistant to Welles, whose "ice-queen" status provides the Mercury Theater's male populace with unwarranted lustful thoughts. Linklater does a good job of capturing the vibrancy of Orson Welles when he worked in public theater, but fails to underpin the material's Depression-era setting. The filmmakers would have done better to make a film called "Orson Welles at the Mercury," and construct it around Christian McKay's impeccable interpretation of the man he played on the New York stage in “Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles.”

Rated PG-13. 107 mins. (C) (Two Stars) 

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 22, 2009 in Drama | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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The Road

"The Road" is like the proverbial tree that falls in the forest when no human or animal is around. Whether or not it makes a sound is a moot point. Based on Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel, director John Hillcoat makes no attempt to convert screenwriter Joe Penhall's straight-line rendition into a narrative arc. It doesn't help that the characters don't have names. Viggo Mortensen plays "the Man." His 11-year-old son is "the Boy" (played blankly by Kodi Smit-McPhee). After being deserted by "the Wife" (played by Charlize Theron), Man and Boy wander a gray post-apocalyptic America where no explanation of what happed to wipe out most of the country is ever given. Determined to make it south to the ocean, our homeless duo encounter marauding gangs of murderers and cannibals. The baddies are menacing enough, but any attendant suspense is blunted by the movie's lack of narrative structure. The Man has only two bullets in his revolver, reserved for murder-suicide should the situation ever require such desperate measures. Robert Duvall plays the film's most empathetic character, a fellow traveler on the film's road to nowhere. "The Road" is a one-note road version of "Waiting for Godot," minus Samuel Beckett's brilliant sense of existentialist humor.

Rated R. 113 mins. (C-) (Two Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 22, 2009 in Drama | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Kristen Stewart's Bella Swan "needs to get some protein in her," but the 109-year-old vampire object of her moody affections (Robert Pattinson's Edward Cullen) doesn't want her "to come with him"--to the vampire world that is. It's this kind of not-so-subtle innuendo that vaguely maps out an interminable and poorly edited film that's further damned by its strictly 20th century use of CGI effects. For a story that pretends to celebrate unrequited love, there are enough pregnant pauses in every actor's similarly pained delivery to make you think the script was the result of artificial literary insemination. So much screen time is spent on shirtless gym-body boys that the intent of the filmmakers seems to be in establishing "impotent beefcake" as a new subgenre for its target audience of traditionally horse-obsessed tween girls. With the unwavering tempo of a dirge, director Chris Weitz ("The Golden Compass") drags out every soft soap plot point as if digging his own abysmal filmic grave with a teaspoon. Bella doesn't so much sulk about her absent boyfriend as substitute a degenerate of a different "monster" stripe in the guise of Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), a werewolf dude with ripped abs. For easily impressed audiences that equate big lowest-common-denominator box office receipts with quality, here is a perfect movie for them to constantly check their cell phones as they sit in the dark because there's nothing to miss while they're distracted with talking, texting, and checking the time.

Rated PG-13. 130 mins. (D-) (Zero Stars) 

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 21, 2009 in Romantic Drama | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
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Fight Club

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.

Rated R. 139 mins. (A) (Five Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 15, 2009 in Black Comedy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Broken Embraces

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)

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 15, 2009 in Foreign | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Red Cliff

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.

Rated R. 148 mins. (A-) (Four Stars)

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 13, 2009 in War | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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The Honeymoon Killers (Classic Film Pick)

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.

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 11, 2009 in Suspense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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2012

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.

Rated PG-13. 158 mins. (C-) (Two Stars) 

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 11, 2009 in Disaster | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Labor Day

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.

Not Rated. 76 mins. (D) (One Star)

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 11, 2009 in Documentary | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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Pirate Radio

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)

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 11, 2009 in Comedy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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The Box

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.

Rated PG-13. 115 mins. (D) (One Star)

Posted by Cole Smithey on November 11, 2009 in Suspense | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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