The Cinephile New York: Writing on Film

Exclusive Interview: Filmmaker Jon Russell Cring

2012-01-26T14:33:00.007-05:00

by Brett Parker

Most people wouldn’t usually consider upstate New York to be a thriving haven of independent film, but over the past decade, there have been an increasing amount of passionate cinephiles who have taken to the latest video technology to bring cinematic labors of love to cheerful life. Around the Capital Region area, an underground community has certainly grown of technical devotees who network endlessly with each other to take big screen ideas from obstacle-ridden drawing boards to cheerful cinematic life. One of this happening scene’s most prominent figures is Jon Russell Cring, a writer/director originally from Centerburgh, Ohio whose been making movies in upstate New York for the past 2 years under his production banner, ExtraOrdinary Film Project. His latest project, Creeping Crawling, is being planned as an independent horror anthology in the vein of Creepshow. The first installment, R.I.D., will be premiering February 1st in Albany, NY at WAMC’s The Linda @ 7 P.M.

I met with Cring to talk about his career, his filmography, and his latest film. From one conversation with Cring, its clear that he’s not only a dedicated cinephile, but one of the more clear-headed and wiser independent filmmakers I’ve encountered in my experiences. His enthusiasm for directing, his fine knowledge of film history, and his eager willingness to share significant tips of the trade gives off the delightful vibe of a man who relentlessly pushes himself creatively and genuinely loves what he does. As we sat down one chilly January afternoon to discuss Creeping Crawling, we touched down on everything from the richness of ordinary lives, why E.T. is inferior to Pink Floyd The Wall, and how sex and bugs can co-exist in the same movie:

BRETT PARKER: When most people think of independent film, they tend to think of films that were made around L.A. or New York City. What most people don’t realize is that theres a prominent underground film scene thats been slowly developing over the past few years in upstate New York around the Albany area. How would you describe your personal experiences within that scene? How do you feel about its cinematic output?

JON RUSSELL CRING: I do see that there are mechanisms in place that have been created by some really very cool people, like Kevin Craig West and the people at Upstate Independents, where you have an opportunity to meet with other filmmakers, you have someplace that you can show what you do on a regular basis. And that’s great! Thats absolutely fantastic! As far as the quality of whats actually going out, you know, I’ll let smarter people than me give their opinion on that. All I know is, we have to reach a certain kind of a standard that people accept. You know, that its not a Hollywood film. The sound, the acting, the writing basically have to reach par before you can actually start to be judged and if it doesn’t do that, then we can’t just pretend, you know, ‘well we’re in Albany, it doesn’t really make any difference if its good enough!’ Yeah, it does make a difference and you have to feel like you’re competing not with the people around you but with the people in Hollywood and New York City.

BP: Well it does seem like so many people are interested in getting into the film game yet are completely oblivious to all the hard work that goes into it. Based on your own experiences, if someone were starting out in independent filmmaking nowadays, what advice would you give them to start off with?

JRC: The first thing I tell anybody is to go make something! Don’t plan it, don’t think about it, don’t talk to your friends about it, just do it! There are a lot of things that are going to try and stop you from making your movie. I’m of the opinion that everything in the world is conspiring against you when you’re making an independent film. There’s timing issues, there’s people interest level, there’s money, obviously. The only way you’re going to learn is by doing it. You’re not even going to learn by going to school, you’re not going to learn by taking classes, you learn by making movies. And watching movies. If you’re not a cinephile, if you’re not somebody who love movies that, you know, knows things older than ten years old, if you’re not somebody who loves talking about film, then you’re going to make a bunch of mistakes that you didn’t need to make if you had just watched what Stanley Kubrick had done.

BP: Are there any specific genres you gravitate towards or are there any filmmakers who directly inspire your own work?

JRC: I’m inspired by anything thats story-driven. The movies between 1968-1978 were pretty much the greatest films in almost every genre of filmmaking. You had the greatest horror film, which is considered by most to be The Exorcist. You had the greatest war film, which for anyone smart would be Apocalypse Now. It goes on and on: the Clint Eastwood westerns, obviously The Godfather movies. It’s because the director was king. It’s because they didn’t necessarily care about what the public wanted, they gave the public what they wanted, and I find when you give the public what you want, usually thats what they want, too. People will see movies. They will see Transformers: Dark of the Moon if thats what you give them. But if you give them Last Tango in Paris, they’ll see that, too.

BP: Living in this time we call The Great Recession, people aren’t so enthusiastic these days to throw their money around on film projects. Have you found it more difficult to get projects funded these days? Has it put certain limitations on what you can achieve cinematically?

JRC: [sarcastically] Not for me, Brett, I’m independent wealthy! I have all the money I need to make movies! I don’t know what you’re talking about! [laughs] No, man, are you kidding me? I’ve had to do a Kickstarter for this movie Creeping Crawling, and I’ve never done that before. I’m trying to raise $7500 so that I can get a ‘name’ for the film, because whether you like it or not, there are two things that people notice when you show them a film: 1) what the story is, 2) who’s in it. And when you take away one of those things, you lose half their interest. If they don’t know thats in it, you’ve lost half the interest. So you’re trying to take fifty percent of their attention span and get them to go ahead and watch your movie. Thats the way its always been. Obviously, people don’t have a lot of money, and what they have they don’t want to give up to making a movie, so I try to give people as much value as I possibly can. I try to give them bells and whistles and a whole lot of fun, and hopefully people rally behind it and we can get this thing made. But if you let money stand in your way, then you’re never going to do anything.

BP: Most of your film work can be found on the website for ExtraOrdinary Film Project. There’s a nice quote I found on the site which reads, “people considered to be ordinary, everyday folk often have extra-special stories to tell that are even more captivating than the ones produced in Hollywood.” This quote really serves as a key to your films, for you seem to be compelled by the idea of everyday people having their lives challenged by unpredictable circumstances and trying to hold onto their ideals. What is it that draws you to these kinds of stories?

JRC: Brett, everybody’s life is Ben-Hur! That’s something that people have just forgotten! Every single person has an epic, EPIC experience in their life! They just think ‘oh yeah, yeah, I went through that...’ But when they’re at parties and telling stories, people are enthralled, like ‘oh my God, how did you get through that accident?’ Or, ‘I can’t believe you were able to survive that molestation!’ ‘How did you make it out of Europe alive?’ They tell those stories and that to me is the fodder for great filmmaking. If you can take your worst pain, your worst experience, and turn that into art, thats exactly what it becomes...it becomes art. A lot of my films have contained personal tragedy...there’s one about my brother being hit-and-run by a car and we never found out who hit him. The film is basically about what that person’s life could’ve been like after he hit him and we basically say that he had a downward spiral that led him to becoming a homeless person. Thats the power of art! That probably didn’t happen, but thats a cathartic experience to imagine that that might’ve happened to this person.

So I always tell people to start with their own personal experience. Start with a conversation you had, start with something that already happened to you. Creeping Crawling actually started with my house being infected with fleas. [laughs] Thats how the movie began! We’re planning it as a entomological trilogy of terror, so this is an anthology film right now. Our cat came in and got the whole house completely covered in fleas! My wife was just being driven crazy by it because she couldn’t get rid of them! There was something sucking on her and biting on her all the time! She goes in the shower and fleas are in the water! They were coming out of her hair! It was maddening! And that sort of quality, that maddening quality, led us to coming up with the idea for this first story R.I.D. Your horror, your experience is the straw that we spin into gold.

BP: As I looked over your filmography, I noticed that your earlier work tended to deal with rather religious themes such as sin, repression, guilt, and morality. Yet with your later works, such as Tattitude and now Creeping Crawling, it feels as if a darkness and edginess is creeping into your work. There’s a certain sense of chaos present, with more ambiguous motivations. Do you feel yourself now wanting to explore more uninhibited and darker territory?

JRC: You’re absolutely right! My first thirteen films were written by my father [Jonathan Richard Cring], a man who traveled around the country and was a very spiritual man. But I kind of realized that while I loved my earlier work, I wasn’t making the kind of films that I wanted to see. You know, I was making the kind of movies that he wanted to see. Even though I really enjoyed those films, there was territory I wasn’t getting an opportunity to explore. So I’ve been a little bit more collaborative now, working with a guy by the name of Joshua Owens who is one of the writers on one of the Creeping Crawling stories and who also wrote Tatititude.

You know, there are no black cats in white hats...that is one thing I absolutely believe. There is no good, there is no evil, we are all capable of amazing generosity towards each other or we’re capable of cutting each others throats. We need to stop portraying in film that there’s always a right and there’s always a wrong in every situation. Creeping Crawling to me is a horror film, but nothing supernatural happens in it. All of the horror is self-inflicted. Plus, there’s a lot of fetish in this film because I was interested in seeing more eroticism. That was something I enjoyed in the 1970s well into the 1980s and we sort of lost that. Sexuality sort of became like a joke. Think of the girls in the Friday the 13th movies who would take off their shirts then get stabbed. I think sexuality and nudity should be taken seriously because its part of life, just like spirituality is part of life. So I want to mix those ideas and explore a lot of different themes and make the movies I want to see.

BP: Whats interesting is that the themes you explored earlier are still there, its just now they’re being explored from the view of the sinners. Tattitude, for example, highlights certain morals and sins by showing characters who rail and rebel against them.

JRC: I think there is a certain segment of society that doesn’t really get their stories told. You know, you can call them the working-class, blue-collar, what-have-you. They get forgotten, except maybe for comedies. Tattitude appealed to me because I couldn’t think of a movie about tattoos artists. You’d literally have to go back to The Illustrated Man with Rod Steiger to see a movie that featured tattooing or tattoo artists. And that was all the way back in 1969. Are you kidding me? So that was really kind of an interesting idea for me.

In Creeping Crawling, there’s the story of a model, an unsuccessful one who has to pay for her own pictures and struggles. A beautiful model, but she also had to grow up with an eating disorder that was given to her by her father. And that came from my wife [Tracy Nichole Cring, who is also the film’s Cinematographer/Editor]. She doesn’t have an eating disorder, but her father used to literally not let her off a treadmill until she did 30 miles a day. And he would say things to her like ‘a man doesn’t care if you’re smart, he cares what you look like,’ or ‘if you ever want to get a husband, you better lose that ass.’ When my wife told me that, that went in the script. I mean, that’s the fodder right there! There’s something horrible that somebody says and what is the root of horror but the horrible? So in this story, the model eats tapeworms in an attempt to lose weight. Thats the interaction between human and insect that highlights perversion and feelings of never being good enough. I wanted to do those kinds of stories about the have-nots and the forgotten people. I guess in a way, Orson Welles sort of felt that way, he was trying to do it....but I want to be a little more entertaining than that. I don’t think you have to make The Grapes of Wrath necessarily, I think you can do something thats fun and has a Hollywood mindset. I don’t have a problem with summertime films, I really don’t. I love entertaining films. I just think they could be a little more relatable.

BP: I wanted to delve more into the basic ideas behind Creeping Crawling. The title and the basic premise would have you expecting a gross-out creepfest, but there’s a raw eroticism in the film I think will surprise most audiences. Its almost as if Adrian Lyne directed a Roger Corman production.

JRC: [laughs] Well you mention Roger Corman....he’s a very classy filmmaker. What he did on those Edgar Allen Poe movies has never really been beat. If I could fashion a successful career for myself after anyone, I’d fashion one after Roger Corman. You know, the idea of making yourself available to all these other filmmakers. I never really made a horror film before, I’ve produced them. One of the things you may not know about my background is that I was the founder of something called Ghost Ship Films in Tennessee where we did four or five horror films that I basically produced. I learned a lot from that, mostly about what I wasn’t interested in doing. All I was really doing was giving amazing locations for really, really crappy movies and I got totally sick of that. That’s why I wanted to get involved in directing my own movies, writing my own scripts, and that type of thing. With this film, I was inspired by The Legend of Hell House, Burnt Offerings, and Don’t Look Now. I wanted something that was beautiful, aesthetically creepy....its not a gross-out movie, its not even necessarily a ‘scary’ movie. Its a moody movie and a sexy movie. I wanted to put all those elements together and I think we really achieved that.

BP: The funny thing with watching the movie is that you don’t know whether to be creeped out by the insects or turned on by all the pretty people getting it on....

JRC: And that’s what I wanted! The bottom line is that I want the audience to have a good time and for them to have an emotional connection to the film. We’re dealing with dark subjects, like madness and perversions of sexuality....but if the character is not humanized, if the character is not someone I can relate to and understand, all of it kind of goes out the window. One film I really, really enjoy is Angel Heart, a great film but kind of a forgotten film because it got all wrapped up in the whole Lisa Bonet thing with the sexuality and whatever. But you want to talk about a gorgeous movie, one with a fantastic performance by Robert DeNiro, whose one of the best devils you’re ever going to see in a movie! Although it does have a really bad ending....

BP: I always thought it was a nice showcase for Mickey Rourke’s talents. Plus, Alan Parker is such an underrated director....

JRC: I was talking about Pink Floyd’s The Wall the other day...did you know it only has a 65% Fresh Rating on Rotten Tomatoes? I was like, are you kidding?

BP: Well it certainly is a polarizing film. I remember that famous story where Steven Spielberg saw it at the Cannes Film Festival [the 1982 one where E.T. premiered] and was extremely perplexed by it, allegedly exclaiming ‘what the f--k was that?’

JRC: Ok, Steven Spielberg can suck my c--k, because The Wall as a film is so far superior to E.T. in the history of film...I mean yeah, a lot of kids still watch E.T. and that’s cute, but The Wall, you wanna talk about the combination of imagery, music, and ideas, and its just BIG filmmaking, and I love BIG filmmaking! I love the idea of someone pushing the envelope so far and totally captures what Roger Waters does, which is explore these wonderful issues of money, power, sex, religion, all the issues you should be exploring in art. He does that in his music, they did that in the film, and I aspire to do that, too.

BP: Well at this point in your carer, you’ve made over 20 short films, you’ve dabbed in television and music video projects, and Creeping Crawling marks your 14th feature in the independent film world. Where do you see your career heading? What trajectory do you feel it on?

JRC: Right into the toilet! It’s over, Brett! I peaked! [laughs] No, I feel I’m in the right place right now. I don’t know how long I’ll stay in Albany, if I’m supposed to stay in Albany. I’m starting to get some interesting offers, stuff that often surprises me! I got an offer to act in a movie, two offers actually. I have some really interesting work that we have some scripts for that are not huge films as far as budgets are concerned, there in the $50,000-70,000 range, but that’s still a ridiculous number to me right now. So I’m always looking for the Angel, you know, that person who gets interested in what we’re doing...the one big step I have to take is getting a semi-big name actor into one of my films. If you don’t take that step, you’ll never get beyond that step. If you never make a $7,500 film, you’ll never make a $70,000 film, or onto a $700,000 film, and on and on and on. Right now, every film I’ve ever made has been within the $1,500-2,000 range. Even our first Creeping Crawling installment cost $1,000 to make, although it doesn’t look like it. I know how to stretch a dollar, I know how to find a location that can blow people’s minds and make it look like something Hollywood came up with themselves. You call in a lot of favors! I know how to collect favors! [laughs]

For more information about Creeping Crawling, check out its official movie site at www.creepingcrawling.com

For more information about Jon Russell Cring's work, check out www.extraordinaryfilmproject.com

Wahlberg Offers Up Some 'Contraband'

2012-01-16T21:24:00.002-05:00

by Brett Parker

In the traditional Bruce Willis vein, the appeal of Mark Wahlberg as an action hero comes from his effortless fusion of tough guy gravitas and everyman appeal. From one angle, Wahlberg has a lived-in, rugged exterior that gives off an authentic vibe of testosterone, yet one can’t also deny his guy-next-door vibe, which is the tip-off to his likeability. From his rough-and-tumble upbringing to his mature ascent into fatherhood, Wahlberg is like a guy whose a delight to have over at a suburban BBQ yet could handle himself aggressively in a gritty bar brawl. He’s a thinking man’s brute avatar, and that makes you want to follow him into almost any action-movie enterprise. The proof of this appeal is evident in Contraband, a vapid yet sustainable action product that ultimately overcomes its frivolous nature with a great assist from Wahlberg’s no-nonsense professionalism.

Contraband stars Wahlberg as Chris Farraday, a former contrabandist who now lives a quiet life in New Orleans with his beautiful wife, Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and his two children. Chris used to be an expert at smuggling illegal goods in shipping boats, but now spends his days installing security alarms for paying customers. Things take a turn for the worst, however, when its revealed that Kate’s brother, Andy (Caleb Landry Jones), was involved in a smuggling job gone wrong. While smuggling drugs on a cargo ship, he was forced to drop the product in the ocean to avoid pressure from customs. This infuriates Tim Briggs (Giovanni Ribisi), the psychotic gangster who recruited Andy for the job, and he demands that Andy pays him back for the lost goods or he’ll be killed. Chris realizes that he must return to his old criminal ways to save Andy.

The plan: smuggle $10 million in fake bills from Panama to New Orleans with the help of Chris’ old crew. Soon enough, Chris finds himself and his comrades on a cargo ship under the strict, watchful eye of Captain Camp (J.K. Simmons). Once the ship docks in Panama, Chris and his crew will have very limited time to obtain the money and sneak it onto the ship without anyone noticing. Of course, things don’t go as originally planned, throwing Chris into the clutches of a ruthless crime lord (Diego Luna) and in the midst of a personal betrayal he didn’t see coming.

Compared with other flicks in the pantheon of heist films, Contaband is pretty dense, but its rarely boring or obtrusive. It’s not the most exciting play on the One-Last-Heist picture, but its quite far from being the worst. One unique angle here is the use of the cargo shipping world as the backdrop for the film’s shenanigans. The day-to-day life of a ship crew and the clever ways Chris and his cohorts hide their ulterior motives on the boat adds crumbs of interest, yet this angle probably isn’t as lived-in and atmospheric as it could be. Plus once the complicated time table of this heist starts counting down, the race-against-the-clock isn’t as tense and dangerous as it should be. If the heist had the pulse-pounding urgency of, say, Inception’s head-spinning time frame, then a serious jolt of adrenaline could’ve livened this routine exercise up.

One odd tidbit of Hollywood deja vu reveals that the film’s director, Baltasar Kormakur, was also the star of the original film that inspired this American incarnation, Reykjavik-Rotterdam. Why would an actor repeat himself in the same movie scenario, with a Hollywood actor filling his shoes no less? Perhaps Kormakur wants to finally make his mark on Hollywood and he figured indulging in a world he was ultra-familiar with would make him look like a confident pro. I personally enjoyed Roger Ebert’s theory that Kormakur is using this remake as “a demonstration that many stars believe they could direct this crap themselves if they ever had the chance.” As an action director, he proves to be competent and inoffensive. He moves things at a brisk pace, never lingering or dragging things out. He gets the logical economy out of each scene, then hurries along to the next one with little fuss. Even the script’s action-junkie indulges seem surprisingly grounded. He has quite a ways to go if he wants to reach Kathryn Bigelow’s status, but at least now he’s sobering and sensible.

Wahlberg, as usual, proves to be a worthy tour guide through a tough guy enterprise. He’s a lot more stoic and relaxed here than usual, but thats part of the appeal. He is keenly aware of the fact that trying too hard to look tough very much produces the opposite effect, so his levelheaded focus is rather refreshing. What obviously got him jazzed about this project is the fact that his smuggling soldier is also a devoted family man. Planning a heist can resemble planning a Hollywood production in more ways than one, so Wahlberg here gets to work out his stresses of being both a Hollywood player and a loving patriarch. A scene in which Chris discusses details of his heist plan while helping his kids with their homework definitely holds a special resonance with him. It takes a delightful cinematic understanding to find real life resonance in a preposterous heist scenario, and Wahlberg’s dedication to the material makes things all the more enjoyable.

Wahlberg is also helped by the fact that he’s surrounded by supporting players who are trying on generic roles and overcompensating with their efforts. Giovanni Ribisi is in full method display as a southern fried sleazebag, and his dedicated sliminess makes him a lot more fun here than he is in most pictures. Ben Foster is a troubled head-case as always, but he’s more lightened-up here than usual. It’s always wonderful to see Diego Luna in anything, and him convincing us he’s a psychotic crime lord just allows us to delight in his resourcefulness. Of course Kate Beckinsale is beautiful and effective, for she’s way overqualified to play such a thankless role. I kind of wonder why the producers didn’t just give the role to an up-and-coming pretty face who could have used the screen time.

January is notoriously regarded as a dumping ground for mediocre releases, allowing Oscar-hopefuls of the previous year room to breathe at the box office. If you’re a sentimental moviegoer like myself, then you probably can delight in such hokey nonsense the way Quentin Tarantino used to relish grindhouse garbage. As far as early-year trash goes, you can do a whole lot worse than Contraband. You can’t say it was made without motivation, and you kind of dig its aspiration towards dignity. When he’s out to be a serious actor, Wahlberg can dish out treasures like in The Departed and The Fighter, yet Wahlberg with a gun can be a hell-of-a-lot-of-fun as well, something Contraband effectively vindicates.

A Romance That'll Drive You 'Crazy'

2011-11-29T13:07:00.001-05:00

by Brett Parker

Like Crazy purports to be an honest look at genuine love pummeled by the hardships of life, but from where I sit, its about a miserable dude who doesn’t know what he wants in life and puts not one, but two beautiful women through emotional hell because of it. And since the one girl poised to be the love of his life is as close to a modern-day Audrey Hepburn as you’re most likely to find, you wonder what the hell his problem is. Perhaps he holds some of the same issues Clint Eastwood highlighted in J. Edgar Hoover? Here’s a movie that wants to hold the final word on young romance in a post-millennial world, yet finding out what exactly that word is turns pretty befuddling pretty fast.

The film tells the story of Anna (Felicity Jones) and Jacob (Anton Yelchin), college students who first meet in Los Angeles. Anna is a British exchange student studying journalism in the states. Jacob is a design student who hopes to design chairs one day. After encountering him in one of her classes, Anna gives Jacob her phone number and the two begin a courtship of infatuation which consists of conversations over coffee, montages at the beach, and plenty of pillow talk. Anna falls so hard for Jacob that she decides to overstay her visa and spend the summer with him before returning to the U.K.

This decision turns out to bring serious consequences to their relationship. Overstaying your visa is a big no-no with immigration officials, so when Anna returns months later to visit Jacob, she is denied entry into the U.S. Anna is so in love with Jacob that she’s determined to find a way for them to be together. So Jacob visits her in England, but seems reluctant to move his entire life over to another country. Jacob tries marrying her into America, but immigration rules don’t exactly make it that simple. Fate keeps tearing these youngsters apart, and the fact that they occasionally fall into the arms of other lovers doesn’t exactly help matters either. Both parties wonder (and so does the audience) if this delicate love is meant to last in the real world.

There are some movies that are such realistic slices-of-life that you wonder why they even bother being movies in the first place. Director Drake Doremus wishes to strip a young romance down to such a nitty-gritty, naturalistic style that you wonder why he just didn’t hire a documentary crew to follow a real-life couple around. Even then, he’d probably get more livelier dialogue out of that couple instead of the one he’s got here. Jones and Yelchin reportedly improvised their own dialogue based on broad outlines, but nothing they say reveals any true wit or imagination. The result is like endlessly watching that lovey-dovey couple you used to hang with in college, and how entertaining is that? The film lacks the finesse and inventiveness of smart romantic fiction.

So the set-up is True Love facing difficult obstacles, but the uneasy realization that Jacob may not be fully-invested in the relationship harmfully contradicts the initial tone of the film, and not in a terribly insightful way either. Jacob is curiously reluctant to say “i love you” back to Anna for reasons that are never made clear. There’s really no tangible reason why Jacob can’t move to the U.K. so they can live happily ever after, yet he quietly dismisses such an idea. Even after getting married doesn’t get Anna into America, Jacob instantly goes running back to his blonde and leggy ex-girlfriend (Jennifer Lawrence) he went to the last time Anna and him were having issues.

The film leaves us clueless as to what makes Jacob so special in the first place. He’s a self-absorbed mope who doesn’t know what he truly wants and doesn’t have the courtesy to inform the women in his life about this realization. He holds no wit, minimal charm, and no emotional stability. The only thing he’s passionate about is his chair-making business, but even that seems like a contrived trait cooked up by desperate screenwriters. The film makes it very clear that Anna is the pursuer in this relationship, but we can’t figure out for the life of us what she sees in this guy. The biggest mystery within the film is how such a humorless downer of a man could pull both Felicity Jones and Jennifer Lawrence into his orbit (life must be so tough, right?). I have nothing against Yelchin, but not even Paul Newman could act like this with women and expect to get away with it.

At least the performances are spot on though, and not even ill-conceived characters can bring these performers down. Felicity Jones proves to be a real treasure here. With a winning smile and a fragile beauty, you can see why any man would cross an ocean for her. In a time when phony screen-love can be dangerous for any action, she completely sells us on deep romantic-yearning, even if the guy she’s yearning for isn’t worth a damn. A scene where she empties her emotions on a phone-call to Jacob, proclaiming how desperately she needs him, truly is gut-wrenching and touching. And for as useless as I found the Jacob character, I must say that Anton Yelchin is more relaxed here than he is in most films. Yelchin has always come packed with a built-in sensitivity that makes it hard not to like the everyman characters he typically inhabits. I must admit that his gifts here make Jacob less insufferable than he probably deserves to be.

Aside from the performances, and some impressive editing by Jonathan Alberts, theres really nothing of any true substance to take away from this film. There are certain arthouse zealots who reject any traces of commerciality in their art and think that true cinema is films that are as realistic as humanly possible without any technical bells and whistles at all (which is sort of a contradiction when you think about it, for movies inherently can never be real life, ya know?). Those people will probably find much pleasure in this film, although Blue Valentine, a more realized and intelligent flick on the same idea, is actually the movie they’re looking for. Believe me, I can appreciate a film that observes the downside of relationships, but when the characters’ actions defy reason, empathy, and true heart, things can be more baffling than insightful.

Getting to Know 'Marilyn'

2011-11-29T13:01:00.003-05:00

by Brett Parker

Its not difficult to see how perhaps Colin Clark lionized one of the most noteworthy passages of his entire life. In two of his memoirs, he claimed to have an affair with Marilyn Monroe while working as an assistant on her film, The Prince and the Showgirl. A glamourous movie star cozying up to a low-level assistant is the kind of fantasy only a rabid romantic could conceive of, or perhaps even a Hollywood screenwriter (which can be the same thing sometimes). Watching My Week with Marilyn, the film adaptation of Clark’s memoirs, one realizes that it doesn’t really matter how true his story is or not. For he arrives at the very same conclusions about Monroe that most modern cinephiles have: she was a breathtaking bombshell who concealed a quiet dignity, a crushing vulnerability, and an enigmatic inner-life.

The film follows the events that took place during the 1956 summer filming of The Prince and the Showgirl, a Studio concotion produced, directed, and starring Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh). Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), a privileged young chap with a love for the movies, finds his way onto the film’s set as a glorified errand boy, thrilled to be working on a major studio picture. Through his eyes, we see how him and everyone else on the set was entranced by the film’s dazzling star, Marilyn Monroe (Michelle Williams). With her sex-kitten mystique and bouncy charms, its not hard to see how anyone on that set could resist falling in love with her. Yet tensions arrive as Olivier grows frustrated with Marilyn’s notorious flakiness with lines and tardiness. While she undoubtedly held an electrifying screen presence, Monroe wasn’t the most secure with herself as a serious actress and felt intimidated in the presence of an acting legend such as Olivier.

In the midst of Monroe’s increasing vulnerability, Clark finds himself striking up a curious friendship with the movie star. Marilyn frequently begins requesting his presence whenever she’s feeling down, and pretty soon she's whisking him away to her countryside cottage for a getaway. After heavy flirtation and a bout of skinny dipping, Clark starts to convince himself that he just might be the guy Marilyn’s been looking for, in spite of her famous husband, Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott). But pretty soon, the rest of the cast and crew catches on and warns Clark relentlessly that such a movie star will only break his heart. Clark himself also sees the crushing anguish and severe depression that lurks beneath Monroe’s beauty, not helped much by her constant pill-popping. How far can their “courtship” realistically go? Does Clark have what it takes to reach Marilyn as a person?

In telling the story of how a classical Monroe picture was made, My Week with Marilyn slightly takes on a classical Hollywood tone itself. Although showbiz stories can have a certain stuffiness about them, Director Simon Curtis pours a wide-eyed innocence into the tone, completely turning the camera’s gaze into Clark’s giddy own. This heart-bursting romanticism may come as a jolt to an era that knows nearly all of Hollywood’s inside dope, but it sure keeps the plot breezy and snappy. We quickly realize that a more sobering tone could make this seemingly tall-tale more insufferable and take the air right out of Clark’s claims. His sunny optimism absorbs the film’s membrane so much that even if you don’t believe he romanced Monroe, you believe that his situation was spellbinding enough to inspire two memoirs.

Its easy to see how Clark’s gaga naivety could grow corny on a modern audience that knows well enough not to trust a movie star at first sight, so its rather impressive that Eddie Redmayne sells us so much on the character. With a strapping joy that avoids being pathetic, Redmayne brings as much sensibility to Clark’s wild desires as possible, gaining a surprising sympathy as he tries to convince Marilyn, and himself really, that they can run off and be happy together. Another welcome surprise is Branagh’s performance as Olivier, one that superbly showcases the humility and inadequacies within the thespian-god image we remember him for.

Playing Marilyn Monroe seems like such an impossible task because she was such a one-of-a-kind creature (in spite of Tony Curtis’ claims). To dismiss Monroe as a simple blonde is to admit that you’ve been worked over by a magician without noticing any slight-of-hand tricks. She had the curvaceous come-on of a sex object yet possessed an unmistakable feminine independence. She had a bubbly comic persona paired with a self-contained intelligence. Very few actresses with a pin-up body had such precise calculation and exuberant command of the screen. So its some kind of miracle that Michelle Williams embodies Marilyn so flawlessly. Not only does she bear an erie resemblance to the icon, but she nails every single mannerism we remember from her screen image, all while masterfully hinting at the undercurrents of depression that plagued her heart. The beauty here is that you quit that biopic habit of grading the performance with a red pen and just fully accept that you’re staring at Marilyn. Even the most die-hard of Monroe obsessives have to admit that Williams delivers all the goods you could possibly hope for.

Whats ironical here is that watching men fall head-over-heels for Marilyn hints at why most men never really understand most women in the first place. With Monroe, men projected onto her their hopes, desires, and fantasies without really stopping to regard the true human being underneath it all. When you project idealism onto a person, its more a reflection of your needs for the person instead of what that individual actually wants for themselves. Even Clark, who passionately believes he loves Marilyn, maybe more concerned with the idea of being her romantic hero than digging into the depths of her troubled soul. The biggest insight the film delivers is how men so desperately wanted to see Marilyn as a movie star, a sex fantasy, a business product, and a romantic ideal instead of the lost, helpless woman she truly was.

If you consider yourself something of a dedicated Marilyn Monroe scholar, you’ll probably know more about her than the film reveals here. But you can’t help but notice how phenomenal Williams’ performance is and how tactfully the script handles Monroe’s legacy. For average moviegoers, the jolly behind-the-scenes peak at classical studio filmmaking will be damn near irresistible to them. Especially considering how limiting and tiresome a showbiz-weary cynical version of the same story would be. There are virtually no bad reasons to simply regard Marilyn Monroe, a fact Michelle Williams all too wonderfully reminds us of.

A Boneheaded 'Heist'

2011-11-06T20:21:00.002-05:00

by Brett Parker

While no one will ever mistake Brett Ratner for Orson Welles, I must admit that I have a certain fondness for the man’s films. The major crimes he’s been charged with by most cinephiles is his broad tastes for commercial formulas and the lack of any depth, or even focus, in his execution. But I find that in his sloppiness, a certain liveliness and color comes shining through in a way that a more serious director would be too self-reserved to let loose. While his empty romps are predictable from start-to-finish, that usually doesn’t stop him from dishing out nifty character bits, outrageous gags, and inspired uses of pop music. With formulaic trash, you have to find the fun wherever you can, and Ratner isn’t without a few treats in his bag.

His latest film, Tower Heist, reeks with crowd-pleasing studio calculation. We’re talking big stars in a big heist film, with a New York City backdrop and working-class timeliness to burn. In this time we call the Great Recession, with working-class protestors occupying Wall Street, Ratner is clearly hoping to dish out a blue collar Ocean’s Eleven, with a big entertainment that speaks to the hardships of the masses. Yet in trying to nail a sociological empathy, I’m afraid Ratner ends up limiting Tower Heist from the cockeyed fun he’s typically at ease with. The film is seriously lacking in comic inspiration and it doesn’t help matters that the film’s big heist is too clumsy and preposterous to stand on its own feet. Of course asking for clever wittiness in a Brett Ratner flick is like asking for no violence in a Quentin Tarantino film, but given Ratner’s adolescent need to please, as well as the fact that the screenwriters here were responsible for some of the finest crime capers to ever grace the screen, we expected a little more than what we’re ultimately given.

The film takes place in “the Tower,” a luxury high-rise residence that bears a thinly-veiled resemblance to the real life Trump Tower. Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) is the building manager who looks after all of the staff and rich residents who make up the Tower. The wealthiest resident is Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), a Wall Street businessman who once helped Josh put his staff’s pension plan into a lucrative investment opportunity. This proves to be a troublesome decision the day its revealed by FBI Agent Claire Dunham (Tea Leoni) that Shaw is being investigated for a Ponzi scheme and all of the Staff’s investments are perhaps lost for good.

Depressed and devastated by his mistaken judgement, Josh grows desperate for a way to make things right for his staff. Agent Dunham lets it slip that Shaw may have millions of dollars secretly stashed away in his apartment. This allows Josh to hatch a plan: he’ll enlist the aid of his disgruntled staff, which includes his brother-in-law (Casey Affleck), the bellhop (Michael Pena), the Jamaican maid (Gabourey Sidibe), and a bankrupted squatter (Matthew Broderick), to help rob Shaw’s apartment. Since Josh’s crew appears to be incompetent as criminal masterminds, he also enlists the aid of a neighborhood criminal (Eddie Murphy) to help teach his staff the art of the steal. With this ragtag group of would-be thieves, Josh dives headfirst into a plot to rob Shaw’s penthouse, yielding outrageous and life-threatening results.

Its obvious this film wants to play on the working class stresses of most moviegoers, as well as the duped enragement of Bernie Madoff victims, to deliver a wish-fulfillment fantasy of sticking it to greedy big wigs. The problem is that the filmmakers play all this up without any insight whatsoever. They keep highlighting blue collar grievances without articulating the mechanisms or personal afflictions that come with such a situation. Nor is any of the characters’ hardships used for significant laughs. Little-people scrappiness and yearnings for revenge can be aptly harnessed for hilarious laughs, but the film does very little to even get a snicker out of this angle.

We at least look forward to the climactic heist scene being a complicated spectacle, but it turns out to be one of the sloppiest and dumbest heist scenes I can remember. Most cinematic swindles are preposterous by definition, since rarely could they actually happen in the real world, but at least most filmmakers create their own precise logic and shrewd calculation to make them feel involving. The big heist here is completely useless, skirting between tired slapstick and vapid burlesque. The details of the heist prove highly vague and implausible, and the main characters, except for one, don’t appear to have any visible skills or humorous personality traits that would serve them in a giant scheme. Of course the film is trying to (ineptly) poke fun at well-calculated heist flicks, but considering that Ted Griffin wrote Ocean’s Eleven, one of the finest heist films ever made, and Jeff Nathanson wrote Catch Me If You Can, one of the finest con capers in film history, its shocking how little brain power they show when they wrote this script together.

The big news with this film is the return of Eddie Murphy in a role that can showcase his edgy humor and allow him to, you know, swear quite a bit. Unfortunately, Murphy’s outing proves to be mediocre at best. His role is a victim of diminished screen time-a lot smaller than advertised-and a lack of powerhouse one-liners. Aside from a hilarious bit about lesbians, Murphy’s role doesn’t deliver the big laughs we expected. I think the problem is that Murphy’s street-wise criminal is made into too much of a zany weirdo where as most of Murphy’s best material pits him as the Smartest Man in the Room who has the stones and resourcefulness to tell off the bozos surrounding him.

Although Murphy fumbles, the rest of the cast skillfully conveys a delicate balance between working world anxiety and comfortable comic charm. Stiller brings a nice tension and weight to his usual shtick of a befuddled fool, although I wish his unhinged zaniness busted out here a lot more. Of course Alan Alda could teach a master class on loathsome condensation and pretty much does so here. Matthew Broderick does his best work in years as a canned-and-penniless Wall Street Insider who masks a lived-in intelligence under a shell-shocked self-pity. Tea Leoni is surprisingly lively as an FBI Agent, proving that she's at her most fun when she works with Ratner. And it must be said that Michael Pena playing a lovable goofball here gets more laughs than Murphy does.

Since Ratner has indulged in a bromance (Rush Hour), a crime procedural (Red Dragon), a star-wattage ensemble (X-Men: the Last Stand), a silly romp (Money Talks), and a heist flick (After the Sunset), even the most bitter cynics could hope that Ratner has grown as a filmmaker and could put everything he’s garnered into Tower Heist and make it an absolute blast. But even a casual fan like myself, who fully braced himself for a mindless romp, can’t help but notice what an empty experience this flick turns out to be. While most audience members may take some pleasure in the sticking-it-to-corporate-greed subtext, too many moviegoers will be rolling their eyes over the action and yearning desperately for more laughs.

'Moneyball' Strikes Out

2011-09-27T10:21:00.003-04:00

by Brett Parker

The beauty of cinema is the way it can take ordinary and mundane things and make them more exciting than they appear in real life. What’s curious about Moneyball is the way it takes a fascinating subject matter and drains it of any serious kicks or vibes for the big screen. As far as baseball stories go, this one offers a very complex and meditative reflection on the modern state of the game. It’s just too bad that the filmmakers bog down the story’s perceptions with a tiresome vibe of self-importance.

Moneyball tells the story of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), the General Manager of the Oakland A’s who was once a promising player but couldn’t buck his talents on the major league fields. Beane once again suffers wounding defeat after his team loses to the New York Yankees in the 2001 postseason. To make matters worse, the Yankees end up buying three of the A’s star players once they go to free agency. At the time, the A’s have one of the lowest payrolls in baseball and can’t afford big name players like the Yankees can. For the 2002 season, Beane struggles to assemble a team that can actually win on a bargain budget.

Beane finds hope in the form of Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a Yale economics graduate with a gift for mastering baseball statistics. Brand points out that players are better to be evaluated by their on-base percentage as opposed to their position performance. For walks and singles can lead to on-base runs, runs can lead to good numbers, good numbers can lead to high rankings, and so forth. With this newfound philosophy, Beane decides to fill his roster with cheap and flawed players who at least have the ability to get on base. Not only is this strategy unorthodox, but it threatens years of traditional baseball scouting. Can Beane pull off his newfound science in such a rigorously structured institution? Will this crazy new plan actually help the A’s obtain significant wins?

Although its a story composed mainly of stats and numbers, Moneyball is endlessly compelling in the way a traditional system was uprooted and changed on outlandish new terms. Even non-baseball fans can marvel at the shrewd calculation in which this system challenged the big business mentality of its own sport. So it’s a real shame how much this film slugs along, never realizing how lively its membrane could actually be. It’s clear that the film aspires to the system-changing excitement of The Social Network (obvious from Aaron Sorkin’s re-write of this script), but it lacks the wit, energy, and sparkle of that earlier film. Both movies take detailed looks at revolutionary systems of information, but The Social Network had a wicked humor and breathless inventiveness that Moneyball crucially lacks.

Perhaps the problem lies within the direction of Bennett Miller. Miller’s previous directorial effort was Capote, which also examined the bruising emotions beneath an America-shaking story. Miller highlighted such harrowing gloominess within that material, he made a disturbing story even more unsettling. Unfortunately, he appears to bring that same downer attitude to this movie. I noticed there were an abundance of shots featuring Brad Pitt sitting alone in turmoil. Miller sees Moneyball more as a disintegration of a pure game rather than a liberating rage against the cash machine. Too bad his vision doesn’t seem as entertaining as the latter avenue would be. It doesn’t help matters that Miller trucks in doses of sentimental profundity that befalls most baseball flicks. It’s movies like this that make me realize why Bull Durham is the Great American Baseball Film: it understands that baseball is typically more quirky and ironical than it is profound.

To understand that Steven Soderbergh was the original director of Moneyball is to understand the playful inspiration his version could’ve been loaded with. Soderbergh specializes in systems of manipulation and tends to enjoy the rogues and outcasts who get off on playing with them. While being a rebel can be isolating and taxing, Soderbergh understands that it can also be electric and exhilarating. If Beane and his cohorts held the smirking joy of Ocean’s Eleven or the goofball audacity of Mark Whitacre, then Moneyball would truly be a hoot of astonishing uniqueness.

What Miller does, in fact, get out of his version is fine performances from seasoned pros. Pitt always enjoys showing cracks in seemingly golden boys, and he’s superb here at exploring Beane’s wistfulness and desperation to win. Philip Seymour Hoffman is wonderfully convincing as A’s Manager Art Howe, conveying a poker-faced masculine authority thats great to relish. The best performance here comes from Jonah Hill as the shy-but-brilliant statistics nerd. It’s easy to see how Hill could’ve played up his usual geeky-shtick routine to milk laughs, but he instead puts forth a thoughtful performance based on masterful nuances and restraint. A scene in which he must break the news to a player that he’s been traded is a thing of subtle beauty.

The initial story and great performances would almost be enough to recommend this film, but its hard not to imagine the funny and liberating movie lost in translation. As it is, Miller’s Moneyball holds a competent bottom line that tells a complicated story in a thankfully coherent manner. I can imagine die-hard baseball fans getting a significant fulfillment out of this. Yet if the filmmakers were able to recognize the anarchic spirit and bruising humor apparent in the material, this could’ve been one of the finest baseball movies ever made.

A Movie That Needs 'Help'

2011-08-15T22:26:00.003-04:00

by Brett Parker

Norman Jewison was the original director slated to take on Malcolm X, but a public outcry from the black community demanded that a black director take on a film regarding one of its biggest cultural heroes. Spike Lee eventually took the helm, stating that black stories should be told by black filmmakers. Indeed, whenever white directors take on stories of minority struggles, it feels as if touches of human experience seem to be somewhat lacking. There’s a certain authenticity that isn’t exactly there. White filmmakers can sympathize, empathize, and preach all they want, but at the end of the day, they’re still going home to a white world. There’s nothing wrong with a filmmaker stepping outside of his ethnic zone, but since there are many talented black filmmakers who would kill for a chance to tell their own stories with a Hollywood budget, why in God’s name would you not let them do so?

I propose these thoughts because they seem to represent the fundamental problem with The Help, a Hollywood-produced peak into racial struggles during the Jim Crow-period of the South. Here’s a movie centered on the hardships of black women thats been directed by a white man. Sure, Spielberg pulled off such a feat with The Color Purple as did Jonathan Demme with Beloved, but director Tate Taylor has only one other feature-length credit to his name (the comic dud Pretty Ugly People) and hardly seems experienced enough to pull of the tricky nuances this material demands. Taylor reportedly got the job because of his close friendship with the source novel’s author, Kathryn Stockett. It’s always great to help out your friends, but thats usually not the ideal way to have your writing translated to the screen. I love my friends, but if Hollywood ever comes knocking for my material, I’ll be begging for Crowe, Coppola, or Scorsese to helm.

The film takes place in 1960s Mississippi during racial segregation. Aibileen (Viola Davis) is a black housekeeper who looks after white families in the town of Jackson. Aibileen notices a pattern in her work: she raises her employers’ children with all the TLC she can give, yet they grow up to become ungrateful and obtuse adults like their parents anyways. Worse off than Aibileen is her best friend Minny (Octavia Spencer), who works for the cruel socialite, Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard). Hilly regards Minny as a soulless entity and heartlessly fires her over some racial nonsense.

Most of the white homeowners don’t regard their black staff as human beings with souls, a fact that catches the attention of Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone), a young aspiring journalist from the town of Jackson. In spite of opposition from her white peers, Skeeter decides to write a book about the everyday trials of the black maids, exposing their racial hardships to the world. The maids would love to finally tell their story, but they’re afraid it may anger their white bosses to the point of termination or worse. Can the maids vent their anger and concerns without endangering their well-being?

All the materials for a powerful film are staring us dead in the face, but Taylor has no clue how to make them pop with any cinematic energy. To be fair, the screenplay does bring dimensions to the Maid characters and highlights their amorally corrupt dilemmas rather adequately, but the film has a curious lack of urgency in presenting this story. Taylor claims that he grew up in Mississippi and was “co-raised” by black housekeepers, but the film doesn’t burn with the passion of a man who has seen a lot and has an important story to tell. He treats it as a familiar period story that should play out to its natural course with little fuss, as if Brett Ratner were directing a Henrik Ibsen play. Even a made-for-TV version employing maudlin sloppiness would grab a better reaction from us. Perhaps Taylor is trying to avoid racial awkwardness by being subtle, but it just makes the film more of a bore as it slugs along.

Whats telling is how excellent actresses with ace performances to burn occupy the forefront, yet are left hanging by incompetent direction. At a time when actresses complain about a lack of intelligent roles, here’s a bundle of them delivered with fierce independence yet without significant shape. Emma Stone, the patron saint of down-to-earth beauties, has all the pluck, wit, and irrelevance to pull off Skeeter, but too little a point is made of her rebelliousness and resourcefulness. Bryce Dallas Howard, who’s carved a career out of playing fragile sweethearts, excels impressively as a racist meanie, but she is simply drummed up to be a White Devil. Jessica Christensen shows wonderful comic timing in a very clunky creation of a not-all-white-people-are-bad role. Viola Davis shows grace and dignity as Aibileen, but the film only hints at the wells of her resentment and perceptions. The best performance comes from Octavia Spencer as Minnie, allowing the smarts, humor, and resentment of her soul to come shining through in a graceful manner you wish the film understood more.

Whats frustrating about Taylor’s incompetence is the fact that there’s an over-qualified candidate out there who would’ve made The Help way more entertaining than it turned out to be. Her name is Kasi Lemmons, and not only would her experiences as a black woman better serve the material, but so would her affectionate eye for dramatic material and the lyrically superb ways she presents them. Her work on the wonderful Talk to Me serves as a prime example of all the energy and identification she could’ve brought to this adaptation. Talk to Me was also a period piece revolved around black identity that was hilarious, bold, irreverent, insightful, heartbreaking, and enormously touching. These are traits The Help’s screenplay cries out for and Lemmons surely would’ve turned it into a powerhouse dramedy.

Of course the cinema would be a very boring place if filmmakers stuck only to stories centered around their own races and ethnicities. Since empathizing with other people is what cinema is all about, it can be vastly interesting when people bring their point-of-views to other races, pointing out certain specifics we may never have brought attention to. I’m just mystified that there’s a shortage of working female and black filmmakers at a time when great female and black stories are getting their chance to be told (is anyone else bothered by the fact that the Sex and the City movies were directed by a man?). There appears to be a curious double standard at play in Hollywood. No one made a fuss when Taylor Hackford decided to make Ray, but, as Charles S. Dutton pointed out, “if Spike Lee wanted to direct the story of Jackie Onasis, the idea would never make it out of the office where it was proposed.”

At the outset, The Help proposes healthy ideas about racial tolerance and does, in fact, put the audience in another person’s shoes. It’s how it puts you in those shoes that I have a problem with. If you like seeing live-wire actresses strive for great performances, then perhaps you’ll find some interest here, but a more heartfelt and provoking film could’ve come from this material. The most pleasure I took from this film is knowing that it will probably fuel one of Spike Lee’s kick-ass rants in the future!

'Rise' of a Fun Prequel

2011-08-08T22:57:00.005-04:00

by Brett Parker

One of the more shrewder business tactics of recent studio filmmaking has been the ideal of a franchise reboot. As Batman Begins demonstrated, if a specific franchise stalls out on creative juices to keep sequels going, all you need is a prequel that takes things back to the beginning to start over fresh. That means any franchise, no matter how preposterous, can be jump-started again to see if audiences will follow it into a new dawn.

Since Tim Burton’s lackluster remake of Planet of the Apes, audiences haven’t exactly been crying out for a new installment in the series Hence when early previews of Rise of the Planet of the Apes surfaced, people suspected they were in for a tiresome CGI romp coasting on a brand name’s mileage. Yet the surprise here is that the film is actually rather good: patient, confident, involving, not without thought, fascinating in its special effects, and with present-day relevance to burn.

The film stars James Franco as Will Rodman, an impatient scientist who is racing to find a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease. He is testing an experimental drug on chimpanzees that he one day hopes to use on his father, Charles (John Lithgow), whose been diagnosed with the disease. A scary lab accident causes Will’s experiment to be shut down, but not before rescuing a baby chimp from being disposed of like the others. Naming the small monkey Caesar, Will decides to take the infant home until he can decide what to do with him.

Years go by and Caesar grows into a teenaged ape being raised as a surrogate son by Will and his girlfriend, Caroline (Freida Pinto). Having his genes altered by Will’s serum, Caesar shows remarkable signs of human behavior, including advanced communication skills and a great understanding of human emotions. But pretty soon, Caesar reveals his animalistic nature through violent outbursts and gets himself placed in an unpleasant ape shelter overseen by John Landon (Brian Cox) and his vile son, Dodge (Tom Felton). The cruel treatment of Caesar by this father-son duo reveals to him a horrible side of human nature he never knew existed.

Caesar decides to use his resourceful intelligence to rebel against his human captors. He creates a bond with the other abused primates at the shelter and finds devious methods to allow his fellow inmates to become as smart as he is. Pretty soon, Caesar and his simian army plot not only an escape from the shelter, but a rebellion against all human kind!

Since this is a plot based on Nature’s Way vs. Man’s Ignorance, you can expect the usual fixings of greed damaging science and the bizarre consequences of tampering with nature. Most of the film’s musings suggest a low-rent Project Nim or Project X. What actually keeps us involved every step of the way is the mesmerizing CGI performance of Andy Serkis as Caesar. Serkis is the actor famous for using motion-capture technology to uncover the tortured souls in CGI characters. From Gollum to King Kong and now Caesar, Serkis had made himself a Boris Karloff of our times by bringing human dimensions to other-worldly creatures. His acting efforts bring an enormous amount of sympathy to Caesar’s plights, blasting startling feelings and emotions into a special-effects concoction. The computer-assisted performance has the amazing effect of making Caesar the most human character in the entire film.

Perhaps Caesar’s surprising humanity is assisted by the one-note simplicity of the human characters. The film’s casting strangely traps gifted actors into wooden characters far below their usual potential. James Franco can be such an imaginative actor that he could play one of the apes with no problem. Yet here he is plopped into a straight-faced scientist role that greatly underuses his talents. His presence probably makes the role more compelling than it deserves to be, for we keep expecting his inherent strangeness to peak out from behind his poker face. Pinto radiates with such beauty and can convey such intelligence that its rather jarring to see her character have absolutely nothing of any consequence to do. The best human performance comes from Lithgow as Will’s Alzheimer’s-stricken father, nailing every nuance the role demands. This is the second movie this summer (after Friends With Benefits) that showcases this disease in a silly Hollywood outing, bringing weight to a plot that might not deserve it.

The diminished human characterizations, however, conveniently make the apes the most sympathetic characters in the entire film (which is why PETA is endorsing the prequel). Considering what obvious CGI creations they are, this is a rather remarkable feat. One of the widespread criticisms of CGI animation is that it makes seemingly-real entities appear way too cartoonish. Indeed, the apes at first glance look about as real as Jar-Jar Binks. Yet the special effects department give such rich detail to their behavioral patterns and expressions that the apes take on a heightened fascination, which makes sense for primates evolving towards humanity. The apes’ movements take on a jaunty, visceral quality thats especially exciting in a climactic sequence where the simians take over the San Francisco Bridge. As the primates swing through the air and attack police vehicles, the scene develops a fierce energy that makes this bouncy CGI ballet good fun to relish. Would real stunt men and puppeteering have made these apes appear more realistic? Perhaps. Would they still be as thrilling and ferocious? I have my doubts.

One of the kicks of good science-fiction is the creative ways it can comment on real world issues within a wildly imaginative realm. I suspect if this film ends up becoming a big hit, it won’t be because audiences just want to see packs of apes running amuck. Present day America has seen the lower and middle classes dealt hurtful blows from the greedy and incompetent politicians in power. So perhaps this tale of powerless creatures rebelling against an oppressive power is providing a release anxiety that’ll hit home harder than most people realize. You’d have to be mighty obtuse nowadays not to get a certain wish fulfillment out of a battered group overthrowing greedy businessmen and a system of harsh conformity. This may sound outlandish, but remember that Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, the most direct influence on this new Apes flick, got its violent imagery from the Civil Rights movement and other social rebellions. I may sound crazy, but you have to ask yourself why this film ends on such a positive note.

But don’t expect this flick to be the deepest societal statement. If you truly just want to see mad apes stick it to human bozos, then Rise of the Planet of the Apes will give you your money’s worth. Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay it is that it does away with any bad memory you may have of Burton’s misguided remake. Planet of the Apes was a franchise founded on curious ideas regarding nature and society, and this new installment doesn’t betray those ideas.

'Friends' Worth Having

2011-07-25T22:31:00.002-04:00

by Brett Parker

Friends With Benefits is a romantic comedy that aspires humorously to transcend the conventions of its genre and ends up embodying them at the same time. By calling out the cliches on its own territory, the film shrewdly proves that certain ingredients must be present in order for a romantic comedy to even exist. Yet if other ingredients include a cheerful director, super-charismatic leads, and killer jokes rooted in peculiar human truths, you can have a wonderfully enjoyable time observing such a recipe.

The film stars Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis as Dylan and Jamie, two busy professionals living in New York City who strike up a quick friendship. Both have been jilted by relationships in the past and have grown weary towards the concept of romance. Since both of them are highly attractive individuals who wish to avoid commitment, they strike up a deal: they will have sex every time their hormones demand it without the inconvenience of emotions or promises. So the pair conducts their friendship as they normally would, only now with outbursts of hot and outlandish sex.

Their arrangements seems to be serving both their needs quite nicely, that is until romantic feelings start bubbling towards the surface. The more time they spend together (especially after Jamie meets Dylan’s family) the more they suspect that they’d make a perfect couple. Can the two overlook their jaded views on love to have a healthy relationship? Can their professional and personal lives allow it? Can they just get over themselves and live happily ever after?

Its realized very early in the opening scenes that Friends With Benefits strives for the rat-tat-tat playfulness of classical Hollywood romances (the poster for It Happened One Night doesn’t make an appearance for nothing). The early scenes are so rapidly paced and frantically edited that you wonder if trouble lies ahead for the narrative. You wonder if the film should be allowing more reality-based humanity into the forefront the way Cameron Crowe does. But thankfully, director Will Gluck gets a grip on his tone like a guitarist clamping down on a wild riff. It is then we are able to delight in the old school charms of the whip-smart dialogue and electric chemistry between the sharp leads.

While the film doesn’t achieve the profound insights and bruising truths of (500) Days of Summer, the most superior of recent romantic comedies, it doesn’t stray very far from the shores of modern behavior and does prove to be smarter than the average Hollywood product. For a film based on no-strings-attached sex, the film actually gets a lot right when it comes to rolling around in the sack. Anyone who’s ever hit the sheets will be able to recognize the peculiar quirks and odd detours here that can awkwardly and hilariously occur in sexual activities. It also helps matters that this movie contains one of the funniest oral sex scenes I’ve ever seen.

Whats really a blessing is how the film doesn’t rely on phony contrivances to truck in conflict but finds its complications within the interior of the character’s psychologies. The story accurately observes that when most people are faced with romantic satisfaction, they habitually allow their inadequacies and paranoia to ruin everything. I’m not sure how I feel about a subplot involving Dylan’s Father (Richard Jenkins) who has a condition more serious and grim than a film such as this is prepared to deal with. Still, it adds a genuine, real-world weight to Dylan and Jamie’s dilemma.

Of course a film like this wouldn’t work quite as well without lead actors who are both attractive and hilarious, two traits that don’t exactly walk hand-in-hand with every performer nowadays (whens the last time Katherine Heigl made you chuckle?). Timberlake and Kunis are pitch-perfect in the forefront, making you feel like they’ve been smoking this genre for years. They exude goofiness, sexiness, likeability, and yearning so seamlessly and effortlessly that they seem immune to any contrivance this genre could possibly throw at them.

It helps that Timberlake and Kunis get hilarious assistance from a supporting cast of wonderful comic actors. Instead of employing unknowns in thankless roles, Gluck employs the old-school studio tactic of surrounding the background with masterful comic actors. The beautiful Emma Stone and the silly Andy Samberg make short but effective impressions as jilted exes. Woody Harrelson excels in a role I’ve been waiting years to see: a gay sidekick with more masculinity than most of today’s leading men. In perhaps the film’s funniest moment, Jason Segel and Rashida Jones take a hatchet to rom-com sappiness in an awesomely silly way. And it must be said that even though Richard Jenkin’s character is too serious for this material, he does what the plot requires of him with great tact.

Friends With Benefits is another infectious touchdown for Will Gluck after the enormously enjoyable Easy A. From his filmmaking endeavors so far, it appears Gluck likes to tackle messy and taxing aspects of human experience by shining positive insights on them within the craftsmanship of a studio comedy. His movies don’t quite resemble the real world, but rather those heightened, sunny worlds often found within the Hollywood artifice. Nonetheless, Gluck displays that classical sense of using the artifice to scratch at human truths while neatly sidestepping the discomforts they could come with. The result is a shrewd message on how to deal with life’s stresses, basked in an earned positivity that’s hard to resist.

Friends With Benefits isn’t exactly a deconstructive masterpiece or mind-blowingly original, but it slides a hip freshness into tired cliches and rarely takes a false step. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun watching a lightweight romantic comedy. I can’t decide if its sneaky or miraculous the way Gluck makes us cheerfully relish age-old Hollywood conventions, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t really like it.

A Mighty Movie For 'Thor'

2011-05-08T22:16:00.010-04:00

by Brett Parker

Since the very concept of superheroes was founded from the blueprints of ancient mythology, it only makes sense that a mythical God like Thor would make a perfect fit as the star of a comic book. For superheroes are made up of infinite powers, fantastical back stories, and exploits with otherworldly creatures, something Thor holds in Aces. With his superhuman strength, viking demeanor, and giant hammer that pounds on monstrous nasties, the myth of this Old Norse concoction is so filled with dizzying flights of wild imagination that the comic book reincarnation has an inherent fun-factor thats damn near impossible to diminish.

Of course a movie adaptation of Thor would also have built-in pop treats so delicious that not even Tommy Wiseau could screw it up. However, the big surprise with Thor’s trip to the silver screen is that prestigious director Kenneth Branagh has taken this essentially preposterous material and aspires quite admirably toward theatrical dignity. Branagh highlights the underlying links between the Norse God’s mythical universe and the world of his Shakespearian epics, giving off classical dramatic jolts that could even have theatre snobs rooting for the film. The effect makes the comic material more compelling than you might first imagine. And since Branagh isn’t a slave to mindless action and pop funkiness, the action scenes even have something kind of special about them.

As the film opens, we are introduced to the magical world of Asgard, which is like Mount Olympus re-imagined by the Apple Company. Asgard is a world where the ancient Norse Gods live in their kingdom under the rule of King Odin (Anthony Hopkins). Odin is getting ready to bequeath his kingdom to his son Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the God of Thunder who appears to be a brash, arrogant warrior hungry for battle. At what is supposed to be Thor’s crowning ceremony, cold-blooded villains from a rival land known as Frost Giants are caught trying to break into Odin’s Kingdom but are quickly vanquished. Odin thinks some kind of misunderstanding has happened, but Thor sees this as an early sign of a turf war. Odin forbids Thor from acting on his impulses, but the blood-thirsty warrior ignores his father’s orders and attacks the Frost Giants on their own land, breaking a truce and igniting a heated war.

Outraged at his son’s actions, Odin strips Thor of his powers and banishes him to Earth, where hopefully he can learn empathy and humility among the Humans. He crash-lands literally in the New Mexico dessert and is discovered by a lovely scientist named Jane Foster (Natalie Portman). Jane tries to convince her fellow colleagues (Stellan Skarsgard and Kat Dennings) that perhaps this strange visitor has strong ties to recent solar disturbances, but before she can pull any information from him, it is discovered that Thor’s jealous half-brother, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is wreaking havoc in Asgard and is plotting not only to take over the kingdom but to wipe out Thor on his newfound home. Can Thor protect himself and his human friends from other-worldly forces without his powers? Does he have any hope in returning to Asgard and restoring peace?

Kenneth Branagh may not necessarily be the first person you think of to helm a superhero picture, yet the more you reflect on the very nature of Thor, the more you realize what a perfect fit he actually turns out to be. A look over Branagh’s directing endeavors reveals a taste for Shakespearean adaptations (five to be exact) on a grand scale. Not only does he give talented actors room to find real depth and feeling within the Bard’s ancient language, but he creates wonderful visual schemes that prevent the material from becoming a talking heads show. It’s this knack for grand traditional drama that Branagh brings to Thor’s old-prose world, so therefore the material rises above pop silliness. Thor’s universe is one of inter-family turmoil, royal complications, and ancient battle glory, something Branagh’s work certainly makes him an expert in. Therefore, scenes on Asgard have a tragic weight and golden grandiosity that draw us in as if Shakespeare himself had written Flash Gordon.

Since Branagh fundamentally will never stoop to Michael Bay tricks to sell an action picture, he also knows how to build action scenes with a nice economy. Even for all the monstrous villains and booming lights that rock the characters, Branagh still keeps the action rooted in the character’s emotional states and therefore the epic poundings never grow boring. But it isn’t just character drama, for Branagh knows how to use that camera to deliver big, alluring visuals. For my money, Thor pounding his hammer away on the giant, rainbow-tinged Bifrost Bridge is one of the great visuals of modern comic book movies and certainly one of their most original climaxes.

If the movie has a failing, its that Branagh doesn’t bring as much weight and attention to the Earth scenes as he does with Asgard. If Thor does in fact learn big things about humility, then we have to take the movie’s word for it because his scenes of human development feel curiously skimpy. Plus I think a lot more laughs regarding Thor’s god-out-of-water situation could’ve been milked from the plot, not only putting us in stitches but giving Thor the grand dose of humanity he needs. I’m not saying I wanted the Old Norse Encino Man, but Branagh establishes such exquisite drama in Asgard that it would’ve been okay to have a few hoots down on Earth. For example, a scene of Thor knocking down pints at a bar is a dud-on-arrival with zero laughs. A million hilarious scenarios could’ve been presented at the barstool considering Thor is occasionally regarded as one of the great boozers in norse mythology.

Not all of the Earth scenes are a waste though, for Branagh manages to squeeze a surprisingly touching romance out of Hemsworth and Portman. Like Downey and Paltrow in Iron Man, the two leads build a romance on subtle gestures of affection that produces astonishing engagement. It helps that Portman has found a role that, not unlike Black Swan, finds wonderful ways to make her waifish femininity surprisingly sexy while Thor interacting with an Earth girl inspires an old-fashioned gallantry in Hemsworth thats a real treat to behold. The two do such a sweet job that when it’s finally time for their close-up smooch, it produces a classic electricity that makes it hands-down the best big screen kiss I’ve seen in many a moon.

At first glance, Hemsworth appears to have the look of that arrogant jock in high school who used to pick on you all the time, but its a testament to his skill that he quickly blows such an insufferable image right out of the water. Thor is Hemsworth’s first starring role after small parts in Star Trek and A Perfect Getaway, and he proves to be an extremely resourceful leading man. Like Christopher Reeve in Superman, Hemsworth knows how to use a chiseled physique and masculine grace like a classical movie star. And whats surprising is that he pulls this off all while serving the macho id of being a Viking God. His layers inspires many layers in Thor, and the role packs great notes of command, warmth, humility, and heroics. The other big find in the film is Tom Hiddleston as the villainous Loki. Playing on a Peter O’Toole-slyness to convey reptilian calculation, Hiddleston works hard to deliciously display the resentment and wounds that pulsate ferociously through his character’s icy veins. He energizes the tragic schemer into being one of the most fascinating villains of the Marvel Movies.

At the end of the day, Thor can’t really elevate it’s comic nature towards grand significance. Like the old myths, it’s simple morals can be truly relished, but its fantastical nature can’t exactly penetrate the human soul. It doesn’t have the hip peculiarities of Iron Man nor does it have the weighty subtext of The Dark Knight, but what it does have is a glowing innocence and romanticism that wonderfully reminds one of the early days of this particular film genre. It’ll gain a beloved mileage not just from its epic imagination, but also because Hemsworth proves he can be a fantastic movie star and Branagh can prove that the drama of a superhero movie could fit in on any stage in England.

A 'Limitless' Supply of Entertainment

2011-03-21T14:33:00.004-04:00

by Brett Parker

Whenever our country faces hard times of economical depression, movies about rags-to-riches stories tend to thrive in their popularity. We can always obtain a great fulfillment fantasy from watching ordinary Joes having fame and fortune dropped into their laps. And even if they are threatened to lose it all, important humanist values come shining through in the end, helping us to realize that theres more to life than fame and fortune. Limitless more or less follows this mold, except for the typical moralistic ending. Instead of renouncing fame and fortune, here’s a film that curiously defends it. The hero of this story resorts to preposterously shrewd methods to avoid the repercussions of his actions, commenting deliciously on the relentless ambitions of our culture today.

Bradley Cooper stars as Eddie Morra, a down-on-his-luck struggling writer. With the appearance of a shaggy vagabond, Eddie can’t seem to overcome his writer’s block, financial woes, and the fact that his girlfriend Lindy (Abbie Cornish) just dumped him due to his laziness. Things, however, take a whopping turnaround the day Eddie bumps into his ex-brother-in-law, Vernon (Johnny Whitworth), on the streets of New York. Vernon is a former drug-dealer turned big business consultant who tells Eddie that he has a magic pill that can cure all his ills. If humans can only access 20% of their brains, then this pill can help you access all of it, bringing you to extreme heights of awareness and intelligence thats almost superhuman. Figuring things can’t get any worse, Eddie decides to take the pill.

Almost instantly after ingesting it, Eddie’s brain lights up like a pinball machine and he transforms into a super genius. He finishes his book in record time, he learns to play instruments and speak foreign languages in a matter of days, and he uses new-found mathematical skills to rack up millions in the stock market. Of course these millions help turn Eddie from a broke sap into a suave, dapperly-dressed, good-life-living smoothie, the kind that even wins back Lindy.

Yet going from zero-to-hero overnight is bound to bring an awful lot of attention with it, something Eddie hopelessly draws on himself with dangerous consequences. A financial big shot (Robert DeNiro) grows anxious to find out Eddie’s secrets-to-success, a scary loan shark (Andrew Howard) discovers Eddie’s secret drug and demands more, and Vernon isn’t able to reveal the source of the pill, making Eddie’s supply limited. Not only will Eddie lose all of his intelligence and insights when the drug runs out, but he learns that deadly things can happen to people who’ve abused this pill before.

Limitless is not only a dizzying entertainment but also comments on the way we live now in very peculiar ways. Through Eddie, we can identify with an American need to seek fame and fortune instantly without putting in any of the apparent hard work. Most of us would probably swallow that pill, consequences be damned, faster than Eddie would. Even as it becomes blatantly clear that Eddie’s success and drug-use can cause deadly repercussions for himself and others, his chief concern appears to be the loss of his fortune and entitlement. The obsessive lengths Eddie goes to to protect his lavish lifestyle eerily reflects the relentless American need to protect our egos and assets by any means necessary. Out of the desperation of poverty comes a Machiavellian need to achieve the ultimate success and keep it.

Eddie’s behavior also mirrors modern day people’s mentality of justifying their bad habits. Limitless appears to be one of the few, if only, films that “justifies” drug abuse. From the outset, the film appears to be a zany play on the structure of a “drug addiction” film, for Eddie gets hooked on a pill, is marveled by the way it makes him feel, and crashes into the dark abyss most drugs takes its users. Yet instead of halting to a tragic ending, Eddie finds ways to beat the drug’s side effects and ultimately ends up with a “if you don’t abuse it too hard, it can’t kill you” argument. A drug abuser’s justification fantasy is just one of the loony things lurking within this busy plot.

Despite the dark and despairing depths the film flirts with, director Neil Burger (The Illusionist) plays everything as if it were an energetic hoot, which it more or less is. I admire the way he pushes for visual creativity to express the fireworks show going on inside Eddie’s brain. We’re treated to elaborate zooms that cover a spectacular amount of area, animated numbers and letters that bounce around the screen, and jumps in Eddie’s memory that appear to make the screen bounce. Since Eddie’s brain is whirling with an overload of information and adrenaline, Burger makes the film appear in the same vein. It can feel a bit messy at times, but its never boring and certainly generates some excitement.

It’s good that Bradley Cooper can convey a natural likable quality, for it helps sell us on Eddie even when he's doing unlikeable things. Cooper has a gift for making preening narcissists appear to have a charming soul (something he employed superbly in The Hangover and The A-Team), and he teleports a great deal of sympathy as we go about Eddie’s journey. The big disappointment here is Robert DeNiro’s performance, which is completely phoned-in and half-asleep. DeNiro appears to be coasting on just memorizing his lines and doesn’t even bother giving his character any sinister sizzle, or even any energy. He may be growing older, but there are plenty of aging pros who could relish such a part (I think of the way Michael Douglass kept the juiciness going in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps). As for Abbie Cornish, she brings as much sweetness as she can to her small role, in spite of the fact that Eddie treats her more like one of his capitalist trophies instead of true love.

Limitless is one of those enjoyable entertainments that asks you “What Would You Do?” The film gets its big kick from the fact that most Americans probably would do it just like Eddie did it. There are endless subplots popping up all over the place to keep you on the edge of your seat, and the script actually finds devious ways to tie everything up. Plus, it’s a true testament to Bradley Cooper that while Eddie isn’t the most admirable of characters, you certainly don’t mind spending two hours on the big screen with him.

A 'Lawyer' Worth Hiring

2011-03-20T12:02:00.004-04:00

by Brett Parker

Crime procedurals are a dime a dozen on TV land these days. The big homework assignment of one that finds its way to the silver screen is to be cinematic enough to distinguish itself from just another prime-time episode. The Lincoln Lawyer passes that test mainly due to the intricate plotting and colorful characterizations of Michael Connelly, the author of the source novel, and from the leading man wattage of Matthew McConaughey, a born charmer whose stabs at prestige and fun with fluff shouldn’t skewer the true-blue movie star he is.

The film stars McConaughey as Mick Haller, a California lawyer who specializes in representing the sleaze and low-lifes caught up in their seedy ways. Due to a DUI incident and a need to save on office fees, Haller conducts business out of the backseat of his Lincoln town car while the trusty Earl (Laurence Mason) chauffeurs him around. Haller’s chief clients appear to be bikers and drug-abusers until the day Louis Roulet (Ryan Phillipe) is brought to his attention. Roulet is the son of a wealthy family whose been accused of raping and beating a prostitute after a night of clubbing. Roulet proclaims to Haller that he’s innocent and that it’s all a set-up to extort money from him.

Haller decides to take on the case even though he suspects not everything is what it seems. An old private investigator friend (William H. Macy) reveals that Roulet’s story is full of holes. Haller’s own suspicions leads him to believe that Roulet is lying to him about something. He digs deeper only to find a large web of deceit filled with bending twists and turns. This web not only challenges Haller’s well-being but gets the people around him caught up in elaborate gambits to seek true justice.

Author Michael Connelly has become a hot property with his potboiler legal thrillers, putting him in the same stratosphere of popularity as John Grisham. If his stories are even half as appealing as The Lincoln Lawyer’s big-screen adaptation, then I can certainly see why. This story covers an ocean of compelling characters basked in the California sun, challenging the moralities of low-level players and the lack there-of within the higher class. The Lincoln Lawyer doesn’t get its kicks from big courtroom scenes, but the chess game that happens outside of the legal system, where the heroes’ economy of wacky and valuable acquaintances aids him in elaborate schemes to beat the system and deliver justice in bizarrely existential ways. It’s a testament to screenwriter John Romano (Intolerable Cruelty) that the script gives affectionate time to each of the fun characters while still giving apt attention to the carefully calculated plot, sometimes before we even realize it.

Director Brad Furman (The Take) may not have mastered expert-handling of the camera, but he knows how to make this delicious story pop and sizzle. The weakest thing about the film is the shaky-cam style most of the scenes are basked in, hopelessly stamping the film with the shooting style of gritty-television dramas. It also doesn’t help matters that flashback scenes are filmed like the ones on CSI. Television shows can be dizzying and crude, but movies should be wonderfully shrewd with the camera to create a strong sense of atmosphere and tone. Still, Furman knows enough when to let the camera sit back and regard the behavior of the characters. I’m thankful for the patient observations within this busy plot, and I also loved the soulful r & b soundtrack which helps convey how Haller is a man of the streets, something he cheerfully agrees to. And wouldn’t you know it, Furman even treats us to some good old-fashioned movie sex!

With all the different styles of movie acting out there, it seems we have a shortage nowadays in the Paul Newman department. You know, genuine leading men in the classical mold who ooze with effortless charm and charisma. The kind who seduce the audience with their abilities to smooth-talk the ladies and tough-talk the baddies. The kind who could teach a master class in how to work your way around the barroom and the bedroom. At this point in his career, Matthew McConaughey has proven to be that kind-of-actor. The Mick Haller character gives him the perfect opportunity to show off his rascally charm, likable ease, and tact intensity, and we should all be thankful for a character that allows a movie star to hit on all cylinders. Haller is a man who goes from roguish schemer to moral crusader, and sometimes these traits blend in nicely with each other. Watching McConaughey infuse such a character with his laid-back smoothness is great fun to relish. I hope this character shows up in many more movies.

In the old Studio days, big stars were given great assists by a supporting cast of invaluable character actors who stole the occasional scene or two. The Lincoln Lawyer follows that tradition by employing seasoned pros to make up the compelling characters in Haller’s life. Ryan Phillipe brings a nice ambiguity to a spoiled rich kid, William H. Macy conveys a great lived-in scrappiness as a private investigator, Michael Pena hits very intense bases as one of Haller’s wrongly-imprisoned clients, Josh Lucas wisely ditches pretentious smarminess as a prosecuting attorney, and Marisa Tomei brings such warmth and sunniness to her role as Haller’s ex-wife that you wonder why they even bothered getting a divorce in the first place. From a biker gang to sleazy rich people, Haller is surrounded by a motley gallery of characters, and these experienced actors help bring heart and dimensions to each person we see. We care about these seemingly disposable characters, even when the plot begins to make us realize that they aren’t disposable at all.

The Lincoln Lawyer arrives at the same moral musings as countless other thrillers in this genre and in the end, it can’t transcend its pulp trappings. Still, Connelly’s elaborate plotting and McConaughey’s electricity make this one more fun than most others. The Mick Haller character has appeared in two other Connelly novels I haven’t read, but judging by the enjoyment I obtained from his first big-screen outing, I hope to see Haller’s other adventures find their way to the silver screen. This lovable rascal and the craziness he gets himself involved in would help bring jolts of fun to a tired genre.

The Top 10 Movies of 2010

2011-01-31T16:56:00.013-05:00

by Brett Parker

2010 was a year in which people created great optimistic views of the way the world could improve upon itself, in spite of the fact that the very problems plaguing our society in recent years are still very much present. Everyday people, seemingly rooted in either Democratic or Republicans viewpoints, have been vigorously holding onto idealistic visions of a greatly improved world in spite of the way it clashes with the harsh realities of how the world must actually deal with its problems. While it’s great to see people wholly dedicate themselves to ideas full of hope and vision, it was rather unpleasant to see them defend them in an aggressive, uncivil manner towards any that opposed their views as the absolute way. Instead of being greatly empathetic towards others standpoints, we found comfort and justification by staying in our fantasy worlds.

The cinema of 2010 perhaps strongly reflected this societal concept, for a consistent theme throughout the films of the year was an idea of rooting one’s self in a fantasy world while the problems of the real world fester relentlessly outside of it. On the big screen, we saw a thief stuck in a vivid-dream landscape who refuses to wake up to reality, a teenager imagining his life as a comic/video game adventure to put-off a self-analysis of his inadequacies and faults, a detective caught in a feverish charade meant to combat tragic truths from his past, a bank robber caught up in ideas of a quiet family life in spite of his violent criminal environment, a movie star who bought into the trappings of fame in spite of the emotional void it brings along with it, and a boxer who must overcome his family’s grand delusions of athletic glory to become a champion himself. If the cinema is a place where everyday people can go to dream, then it was rather surreal to watch movie characters perhaps dream too big.

But in these characters’ carefully-constructed delusions came a catharsis of hope, for as their fantasy worlds dissolved and washed away, overwhelming realizations of awareness and humanist values came shining through. While some characters found triumph and others got stuck with tragedy, each one found a world of truth that allowed them to discover what really matters and how they can function properly in their realities. If this is, in fact, the inevitable end to such a trajectory, then perhaps we can take comfort in the fact that through all the craziness going on in our society right now, a grand moment of clarity is on its way for everyone. So, with that in mind, let’s examine my top ten choices for the best movies of 2010. If some of these movies weren’t the greatest evocation of this concept just explained, then, if nothing else, they were executed to perfection and entertained greatly:

1) INCEPTION

Christopher Nolan is a filmmaker who likes to create cinematic games that deeply challenge the psyche of the characters that play them. Inception is his most elaborate and creative play on this cinematic theme yet. In crafting the tale of thieves who can enter dreams to steal, and plant, people’s ideas, Nolan has proven that breathless big-screen action and complex, challenging ideas can walk hand-in-hand superbly. It’s hard not to get intoxicated by the elaborate universe Nolan has constructed with intense detail, a universe that overlaps between dreams and reality in a beautifully vibrant manner. Inception may not be the deepest film about the world of dreaming, but it’s certainly one of the most adventurous and exciting movies on the subject ever made.

2) SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD

When most men recall the stories of their lives, they most likely cast themselves as the hero and all those opposed to them and their goals as villains. It’s also probably true that young men of this generation will allow the music, movies, comic books, and video games they cherish to help write the history of their stories. No film has a greater understanding of this than Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a sight and sound extravaganza that takes emotional matters of everyday life and heightens them to the level of a breathless comic adventure. As youthful hipster Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) imagines his quest to win the heart of beauty Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) as a comic book journey, we lay witness to a sublime live-action video game, a cockeyed love letter to modern hipster culture, and a laugh-a-minute comic masterpiece that doesn’t let up with the laughs for one single second. This film proves that director Edgar Wright is a new-age master of screwball comedy and that pop culture is a worthy tool to unearth the emotional needs of today’s youth. For all its fantastical and hallucinatory elements, what so surprising about Wright’s work is that it’s one of the most accurate portraits of youthful yearnings and emotions in recent memory.

3) THE SOCIAL NETWORK

It’s been generally acknowledged that the Facebook era spawned a public escalation in social narcissism, self-importance, defamation, isolation, and pure nonsense. What makes The Social Network so fascinating is its argument that the very creation of Facebook was rooted in the same kinds of troubling traits. In telling the story of how a Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg (brilliantly played by Jesse Eisenberg) created the online phenomenon, with all the backstabbing that allegedly entailed, director David Fincher has found an unlikely fit into his themes regarding the peculiar obsessions of young men and how they clash with a claustrophobic society. While the creation of a web site and the lawsuits that followed it may not sound like the most exciting movie, Fincher employs expert cinematography, editing, musical scoring, and casting to make a seemingly dull story thrive with electricity. By capturing the heat and dizziness of the real life story, Fincher allows us to reflect on the startling truth that the cut-off isolation of an angry nerd may have caused the cut-off isolation of the modern internet age.

4) SHUTTER ISLAND

The ideals of a Martin Scorsese protagonist can take on a wild reality of their own, in constant threat from the morals and formalities of normal society. Shutter Island could very well be Scorsese’s most deranged and unsettling exploration of this theme, and that’s saying something for the guy who made Taxi Driver. For all the things he has presented throughout his legendary career, this is his first plunge into classical macabre (although his Cape Fear remake held tinges of it), and the result is a deliciously startling display of his most burning obsessions. As a Detective (a wickedly riled-up Leonardo DiCaprio) fights through hallucinations to find a missing woman on an island insane asylum, Scorsese crafts a disturbing clashing between the uneasy evolution of modern psychology and post-World War II Trauma and Paranoia, sprinkled with his usual themes of sin and guilt. The story may flirt with the preposterous, yet Scorsese gives it a disturbing resonance with slow-burn creepiness. Any director can evoke things that go bump in the night, but when a filmmaker like Scorsese roots those bumps in the scariest recesses of the human mind, the result is guaranteed to shake you.

5) THE TOWN

Ben Affleck pulled effective drama from the Boston underworld in Gone Baby Gone and he returns to that landscape with The Town, a more exciting follow-up to his last crime endeavor that is an expertly-crafted heist flick with a killer hook and near-flawless execution. Yet what allows the film to resonate strongly is the yearning for a stable family life and purity through love that Affleck makes present within each of his main criminal characters. Affleck casts himself as Doug MacRay, a career thief who falls for Claire (Rebecca Hall), the manager of a bank he recently robbed. Doug lost his mother at a young age and feels Claire can fill a great void in his heart while offering him a better life. Affleck also goes to expert length to show how Doug’s best friend (a pitch-perfect Jeremy Renner) and jailed father (Chris Cooper) also have suffered from a lack of feminine nurturing and family values. It are these observations that gives The Town its strength, for Affleck penetrates deep to find the wounded children within hardened criminal archetypes.

6) SOMEWHERE

Sofia Coppola once again follows a privileged character facing a great emotional void amidst a lively environment of grand offerings in Somewhere, a film that examines the lifestyle of a Hollywood movie star with the straight-forward attentiveness of a wildlife documentary. Coppola employs her subtle, observant tone to capture the emptiness of an actor named Johnny Marco (a wonderful Stephen Dorff) as he mulls about aimlessly in the famous Chateau Marmont of California until the day his lovely daughter Cleo (a charming Elle Fanning) brightens things up. Through this tale of a Hollywood player and his daughter enjoying the good life, perhaps we are seeing shades of Coppola’s own relationship with her legendary father, Francis Ford Coppola, making this film a sublime love letter to the joys and complexities of their relationship. The film’s messages may not herald brand new revelations-fame may be lacking spiritual fulfillment, life is better with company-but Coppola uses wonderful images, enjoyable pop music, and surprising warmth to bring her emotional tale to life.

7) NOWHERE BOY

Before he became a Beatle, a revolutionary, and a rock legend, John Lennon was once a scared and defenseless Liverpool teenager who felt lost in the world, plagued by self-doubt, and in search of his own identity. Sam Taylor-Wood’s Nowhere Boy examines these early years in Lennon’s life, revealing the personal turmoil and turbulent family life that embedded in him the personality traits that would make him a legend. It isn’t so much interested in his literal path to eventual fame but his emotional path to creative genius, rooted in both contagious joy and unsettling torment. Through the acting revelation that is Aaron Johnson, we see Lennon develop the famous traits- wit, exuberance, irreverence, resourcefulness, and insight- that would catapult him from awkward teenager to vibrant musical artist. As we witness him finding his long-lost mother (Anne Marie-Duff) and forming his first rock band with Paul McCartney (Thomas Sangster), we find ourselves wrapped up in the utter-fascination of seeing one of the great personas in rock history being molded through primal emotions. Taylor-Wood employs an expert tact and power as she allows us to peak into the turmoil, creativity, and exuberance that lied within Lennon’s heart.

8) 127 HOURS

Aron Ralston is a real-life hiker who had his arm trapped under a gigantic boulder while hiking in an isolated canyon in Utah. He was stuck under the boulder for nearly six days, as his resources and chances for survival were quickly running out. The one thing he never ran out of was hope, and it eventually led to a grisly tactic that finally set him free. It’s easy to see how this story could’ve been made into a straight-forward survival tale of economic grittiness, yet Oscar-Winner Danny Boyle heats things up towards a wildly-unique cinematic experience. Boyle decides to tell Ralston’s story with an intense focus to detail, employing his usual tastes for frantic editing, peculiar musical choices, youthful intensity, fantastical visualizations, and existential musings. Boyle keeps things completely rooted in Ralston’s predicament, yet going the extra mile to show the hallucinations and fantasies in his head that both tormented and encouraged him. It’s a surprisingly entertaining experience that employs Boyle’s theme of young people searching for their place in the universe only to discover that human connectedness is the way to go. Of course none of this would be as nearly effective without the wonderful performance from James Franco, who brings an unlikely humor and grace to Ralston’s predicament, making his search for hope a truly unique cinematic triumph.

9) THE FIGHTER

On the surface, The Fighter appears to hold all the trappings of a typical sports-underdog tale, yet director David O. Russell brings such richness to the broken dreams and wildly hopeful spirits of the characters that the film takes on a unique life all its own, filled with lively kicks that’s hard to resist. Russell once again shows us how the peculiarities and eccentricities of a group dynamic can create a fantastical situation with the story of Mickey Ward (a superbly-focused Mark Wahlberg), a quiet young man who was always forced to follow in the footsteps of his troubled, crack-addict brother Dickie (a remarkable Christian Bale) by becoming a boxer. Mickey has reservations about his family’s boxing dreams, but once Dickie is humiliated in an HBO Documentary about Crack Addiction, Mickey sets out on a touching quest to restore the family name through boxing glory. Russell shows great honesty in Mickey’s athletic journey and gives the underdog formula a heartfelt jolt with strong ideas of family loyalty, neighborhood pride, and brotherly love. The tears Dickie sheds for his brother’s success in the film’s final moment makes the entire experience worth it.

10) THE KING’S SPEECH

The King’s Speech does so many things in such an expertly executed manner that it’s easy to miss just how unique it is on the first viewing. In telling the story of how King George VI of Britain (Colin Firth, in top form) overcame a stuttering problem with the help of an unconventional speech therapist named Lionel Logue (a wily and resourceful Geoffrey Rush), director Tom Hooper takes a conventional genre and turns it on its ear. With a fascinating true story in place, Hooper uses visual creativity, wonderfully atmospheric photography, and sharp dialogue to tell one of the most unlikely tales of middle-aged masculine friendship to ever grace the big screen. Yet the film isn’t just a juicy historical account, but has real uplift to spare. For its truly inspiring to know that even Royalty has their human vulnerabilities, that a working-class man can help do great things for great people, and that anyone can overcome any handicap or obstacle standing in their way. Why these may sound like typical messages, Hooper and his actors bring them a heart and freshness that’s impossible to resist.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

-Black Swan

-Easy A

-Solitary Man

-Toy Story 3　

Those 'Fockers' Stole My Money!

2010-12-27T19:24:00.003-05:00

by Brett Parker

There are certain movies that leave room for sequels to be made and others that leave moviegoers scratching their heads as to how their premise could possibly live on from its self-contained state. Back in 2000, no one could’ve possibly guessed that a sequel could be made to the hit romp Meet the Parents. It was a likeable enough comedy, one that played upon anxieties and awkward feelings over meeting a loved one’s family. As the neurotic nurse Ben Stiller clashed with Robert De Niro in the form of his sweet girlfriend’s totalitarian father, madcap hijinks and manic slapstick put domestic formalities through the ringer. Yet the film had an undeniable American appeal, for almost every American can relate to the tension and peculiarities of interacting with another suburban family. It was a slight comedy, but cherished for its poppy and light-hearted appeal. It rung every laugh it possibly could out of its clever social angle.

The film’s shrewd use of Stiller’s awkwardness and De Niro’s self-kidding seriousness generated big bucks at the box office, leading Studio Executives to demand a sequel, creative juices be damned! This eventually led to Meet the Fockers, an inferior yet engaging sequel that threw De Niro in the whimsical and zany clutches of Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand as Stiller’s oddball parents. It almost goes without saying that the sequel was less-than-inspired from the first time around, but our attention was sustained from the quirky jolts Hoffman and Streisand added to their roles. Not only was Fockers another hit, but it also became surprisingly cherished in hindsight from the moviegoing public. Countless suburbanites could relate to the plights of in-laws co-mingling and trying to function as one dysfunctional unit. The Meet the Parents series had emerged as a fun-house mirror of comic release anxiety for domestic anxieties.

Fockers box office run also hit the jackpot, leading to the announcement of yet another sequel. This announcement not only caused intelligent moviegoers to groan with dread but even the Fockers most devoted fans to scratch their heads. How could you possibly squeeze any more comic juice out of a worn-down premise? Are there any more stories to tell? Any gags that might’ve gone overlooked? When the title of the new film was revealed to be Little Fockers, it became instantly assumed that the film would deal with Stiller and De Niro tackling the world of child rearing. A little bit of hope was sensed, for Stiller and De Niro clashing over parenting methods was bound to produce….something.

As it turns out, Little Fockers has little interest in the subject of raising children. Its real aim is to revel in sitcom clichés of the lowest order. It’s a frivolous, laughless trudge in search of any kind of comic inspiration. To call the film’s gags unfunny and mind-numbing would be an understatement. The saddest sight is seeing such a talented cast sleepwalking through tired roles with such low energy. You can literally see them both yearning for and deeply regretting their apparent paydays. If the film does one thing effectively, it’s to demonstrate the epitome of shameless, money-grubbing sequel-making in all its bare essence.

The new sequel further follows the misadventures of the Fockers clan, in which trusty Nurse Greg Focker (Stiller) is trying to raise his own family with his wife Pam (Teri Polo). This time around, they’ve welcomed the addition of twins: the intelligent Samantha (Daisy Tahan) and the goofy Henry (Colin Baiocchi). While trying to raise their youngsters, they are constantly under the watchful eye of Jack Byrnes (De Niro), Pam’s overprotective father who tries to impose his retired CIA tactics on his family life. This time around, Jack’s health appears to be fading and he is hoping Greg fully has what it takes to be the new main patriarch of the family.

Greg wants very much to be a confident leader of his family, but complicated wrenches start to get thrown into his life from all different angles. He tries hard to get his twins into a distinguished boarding school, but Henry’s intelligence doesn’t seem to be up to par. He tries to get his newly-purchased home furnished, but a sneaky contractor (Harvey Keitel) is slow to get the job done. Greg has also been asked to front a new Erectile-Dysfunction drug by a sexy pharmaceutical rep (Jessica Alba) who plagues him with cheating thoughts and erection hijinks. Plus the re-emergence of Pam’s former fiancé, Kevin (Owen Wilson), doesn’t help matters either.

I suppose one could see the potential in a sequel such as this. If the first two films covered courtship and integration, then the only fruitful base left to cover is parenthood. Since raising kids can be a tricky, stressful, and delightful aspect of life that most moviegoers can strongly relate to, then this subject is ripe with comic opportunities. Getting ready for school, dinnertime hijinks, dealing with snooty teachers, teaching youngsters adult ways-all of these aspects could certainly supply big laughs for a suburban sitcom. Yet Little Fockers fails at every turn to find such laughs within its plot. The scary thing is that it doesn’t even appear to try. It seems more content with going through the motions of routine gags we’ve seen done endlessly and more confidently in past films. That the filmmakers think the audience is dumb enough to buy these flat routines is rather unsettling.

Most pointless sequels usually have a desperate need to jump-the-shark once the filmmakers realize there is little originality left to unearth. They typically find preposterous ways to go over-the-top, hoping we don’t notice how far the material has drifted away from the wit and charms of the original film. As Little Fockers begins, things seem grounded enough and there’s hope for a sequel that keeps things down-to-earth and about the characters. Stiller and Alba have a bizarrely sweet moment involving an uncomfortable medical procedure while De Niro and Keitel hold a small, heated argument that faintly recalls Mean Streets. But pretty soon, the plot jumps off the deep-end and we’re hit with a chorus line of stupid gags. There’s vomiting, blood-splattering, sexual nonsense, and, I kid you not, a scene in which Greg injects a shot of adrenaline into Jack’s penis. I’d explain how this comes about, but since there are no laughs or joy to be held from this development, why bother?

As I watched this super-talented cast doggedly go through the motions, desperately wishing they were elsewhere, unsettling thoughts began to creep through my mind: are big Hollywood paychecks really worth it to these actors for enduring crap like this? Can a price truly be placed on an actor’s dignity? For every Greenberg Stiller wants to make, does he also have to make a Little Fockers? In our youthful years, the idealists within us promise to always stick by our morals and tastes while never selling out to a big paycheck. Yet if you grow older, and fame and fortune is thrust upon you, must you compromise those very ideals to upkeep the paychecks and the lifestyle? Is it really worth it to do so? I ask because the Cast obviously could’ve been doing much better work and was obviously doing this strictly for the money (Hoffman tried to resist, but he was swayed by the studio into a minimal amount of screen time). I know this is deep thinking for a disposable sitcom, but so empty is Little Fockers that such troubling thoughts are bound to enter your mind.

So as we throw Little Fockers in the cinematic trash bin, let’s be optimists here. Let’s hope Ben Stiller recovers from this thud and goes on to deliver uproarious comedy as he’s done in the past. Let’s hope Robert De Niro wakes up, reclaims his artistic integrity, and stops sleepwalking through such laughable nonsense. And let’s hope Director Paul Weitz returns to the skill and inspiration he displayed with About A Boy, one of my ten favorite films of all time. And let’s hope and pray that the Focker clan is done once and for all with the big screen.

BY THE WAY: It’s become a thing of legend how dedicated a method actor the young Robert De Niro used to be. In his younger years, he slept in an open grave, mastered the Sicilian language, gained untold amounts of weight, and paid a dentist to mess up his teeth in order to get into various characters. If the younger De Niro had shown up in Little Fockers, he probably would’ve put a syringe in his penis for real! Then again, the younger De Niro would’ve balked at appearing in such dreck in the first place! Oh, the things time does to us!

The 'Soul' of a Misguided Slasher Flick

2010-10-21T21:47:00.001-04:00

by Brett Parker

It is Wes Craven who will be remembered in cinematic history as a main maestro of the slasher flick. While most films of this genre can be callow, nihilistic, and uninspired, Craven has demonstrated more thought, creativity, and shock with his endeavors. He first made his mark with the gritty viciousness of The Last House on the Left, shocking audiences into realizing what a horror film could potentially evolve into. His made a name for himself with A Nightmare on Elm Street, creating a juicy fantasy premise to milk all kinds of grotesque horrors never seen before in this subgenre. And Craven wasn’t above putting his own genre through the self-reflexive ringer, brilliantly dissecting its parts in the Scream series and playfully poking fun at it with Cursed.

My Soul to Take is Craven’s first feature-length horror endeavor since 2005’s Red Eye, and on the surface, it appears to hold more thought and creative juice than the mindless slasher flicks haunting the multiplex these days. Yet to endure the film on viewing curiously proves to be a daunting and empty experience. This juicy idea of a blood fest is hopelessly skewered by an over-complicated central plot and seriously misguided performances. It wanders around in a lack of humor, irony, or relevance and it lacks the fun jolts of excitement and terror Craven certainly knows how to dish out.

In the sleepy American town of Riverton, seven teenagers are bound by the fact that they all share the same birthday: there’s the psychologically troubled Bug (Max Thierriot), the quirky Alex (John Magaro), the blind Jerome (Denzel Whitaker), the religious Penelope (Zena Grey), the cruel jock Brandon (Nick Lashaway), the class crush Brittany (Paulina Olszynski), and the…well…average teen Jay (Jeremy Chu). The dreadful fact about the day of their birth was that it was also the day that the Riverton Ripper, a serial killer who preyed on the town, had died. Before his death, the Ripper vowed to one day come back, in some kind of form, and murder each of the seven children born that very night.

The day after their 16^th birthdays, Jay is found brutally murdered under a bridge and it is believed that the legend is, in fact, coming true. Pretty soon, each fateful teens becomes picked off one-by-one, meeting their ends by grisly, blood-soaked deaths. The surviving teens begin to ponder the tangibility of the Ripper himself: did the Ripper truly live on after the supposed night of his death, or does his soul inhabit the body of one of the kids from beyond the grave? A way to unlock this mystery may lie in the mind of Bug, who appears to suffer from schizophrenia and sees disturbing hallucinations related to the ripper. Can Bug find out who the Ripper truly is, or could he perhaps be inhabited by the Ripper’s soul himself?

From everything I just described, it would seem as if My Soul to Take has a distinctive concept that isn’t as mundane as most disposable slasher flicks. Indeed, I noticed that the film spends a lot more time focused on character dialogue than it does on blood-splattering. The problem, however, is that the film spends way too much time discussing its overly-complicated backstory instead of letting the apparent horror of the situation soak in. The film’s plot has more details and set-ups than a Russian novel and we never get a full handle on the Ripper’s legend. Most details come across pretty vague or spelled-out in a casually confusing manner. Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street may have had an elaborate backstory as well, but the concept of Freddy Krueger was rooted in a simple-enough concept of primal fear to connect with audiences. Freddy Krueger was a simple monster explained in an expertly complicated manner while the Riverton Ripper is a complicated monster explained in too simple of terms.

The cast offers up the usual archetypes of the high school slasher hierarchy, but they suffer mostly from miscasting or clunky characterizations. Lashaway is too much of a stick-thin creep to be an intimidating bully while Olszynski is too baby-faced and innocent to be a carnal sexpot. Grey looks her part and tries to flow with conviction, but her character is inflated to too many caricature extremes. Same goes for Emily Meade as Fang (Yeah…seriously! You tell me!), Bug’s bad-girl little sister. To say her angry beating of her older brother is overwrought would be a tremendous understatement. As for Bug himself, Thierriot seems like a fresh-faced and sincere-enough actor, but he lacks the eccentric angles that could make his looney character really come to life. Perhaps a more brooding and dangerous actor was needed to breathe authenticity into an inauthentic character.

While most slasher flicks of today are handed over to cheap and inexperienced directors, the good news here is that Craven has developed a tact and skill through his experience that at least shows in the film’s look and feel. The film’s look, from Director of Photography Petra Korner (The Wackness, The Informers) demonstrates a texture and sense of atmosphere most slasher flicks don’t even bother with. And while most of the film’s plot is hokey nonsense, Craven at least tries to make it vibrate with a sense of dread and urgency. Too bad the acting and writing isn’t there to back him up. Perhaps if Craven had more experienced actors and a more biting, whip-smart script (two things he had with Scream), we could see ourselves caring about his latest outing.

Wes Craven has delivered many pivotal things to this genre and I believe he still has it in him to make a few more gems (Scream 4 is on the horizon…that promises to be interesting), but My Soul to Take proves to be an instantly forgettable entry into his filmography. I love the Halloween season and I always relish a good horror movie during this time, but the real terror is the fact that I can’t get my money or time back from this dud.

The 'Boy' Who Would Be John Lennon

2010-10-21T21:37:00.003-04:00

by Brett Parker

In the 1950s, a young Liverpool teen named John asks his mother, “why couldn’t God have made me Elvis?” Her answer: “he was saving you for John Lennon!” And what a wonderful thing being John Lennon would turn out to be! He gets to be the lead singer of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed rock band in musical history. He gets to be one of the most seminal songwriters of all time, forever revolutionizing pop and rock. He gets to be a champion to free spirits everywhere, who celebrate his eternal message of “love is all you need.” He gets to be a rock legend, an icon, a force of nature.

But there was a time when John Lennon was not fully aware of the important man he would one day become. There was a time when he was just a defenseless and confused teenager like so many are. There was a time when he was lost in the world, plagued by self-doubt and in search of his own identity. Nowhere Boy is a fascinating new film that examines these early years in Lennon’s life, revealing the personal turmoil and turbulent family life that embedded in him the personality traits that would make him a legend. It isn’t so much interested in his literal path to eventual fame but his emotional path to creative genius, rooted in both contagious joy and unsettling torment.

We first meet Lennon (Aaron Johnson) as a playful yet guarded teenager growing up in the Liverpool home of his Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Uncle George (David Threlfall). When he isn’t skipping school and pulling hijinks with his friend, Pete (Josh Bolt), John enjoys fun activities with his Uncle George, who is a wily joker compared with the no-nonsense Mimi. One night, tragedy strikes and George drops dead of a heart attack. At the funeral, John spots a noticeable woman at the funeral. This woman may or may not be his birth mother. After some inter-family investigating, John not only discovers that the woman is, in fact, his mother, but lives only a few blocks away in the same neighborhood.

John is completely floored by this revelation, but decides to finally seek her out anyways. Soon enough, he’s at the doorstep of Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), the childlike sister of Mimi who gave up her son for ambiguous reasons. Despite the ocean of unresolved tension between them, John and Julia lovingly embrace each other and soon enough spend every afternoon together living it up. The bouncy and free-spirited Julia even introduces John to the sexual and dangerous allure of rock and roll (once he lays eyes on Elvis Presley, he’s hooked). Although Mimi voices serious concerns over this maternal interaction, John has found a lively new outlet in life; there’s no turning back.

Caught in a whirlwind of confusing and liberating emotions, John decides the best way to channel his energy is by forming a rock and roll band. A great confidence is instilled in him after Julia gives him extensive musical lessons in piano and guitar. He rounds up a group of eager youths like himself and forms The Quarrymen, a rock band that mostly covers the tunes of Elvis, Buddy Holly, and other groups from the era. A crucial meeting occurs when he meets Paul (Thomas Sangster), another talented young guitarist. Despite their personality differences, they are united by their inner-wounds and songwriting talents. As The Quarrymen have a jolly good time taking off, family drama threatens to undo Lennon. Not only does Mimi and Julia’s maternal rivalry heat up, but shocking revelations about Julia’s abandonment of John resurface that forever leave a mark on his heart.

Even if you aren’t much of a fan of The Beatles, Nowhere Boy still works as a careful character drama depicting the effects a turbulent family life can have on the shaping of an adolescent and how those effects can fuel an artistic outlet with great relish. However, if you’re a Beatles maniac like I am, you’ll be completely enthralled by witnessing the young Lennon transforming from awkward teenager to vibrant artist. As he bounces between the conflicting throes of Mimi and Julia, we can see the famous Lennon persona beginning to take shape: he inhabits Julia’s zestful free-spirit and rock and roll energy while also absorbing Mimi’s brutal bluntness and headstrong logic. Director Sam Taylor-Wood wisely doesn’t pound us over the head with these significant changes in Lennon’s life but allows the tactful subtlety of the performances to implicate how one of the great personas in rock history was formed by the heat of primal emotions.

Of course there’s great delight in watching the Young John Lennon forming his legendary partnership with a Young Paul McCartney; the film hints exquisitely at the ying-yang tensions that helped spark the creativity of one of the greatest songwriting duos in history. Paul is the clean-cut sweetie to Lennon’s brash wild card, but they were linked by parental voids and the emotional catharsis of songwriting. The young actors playing them may not terribly resemble them closely, but they vibrate with the distinction of their souls and its great fun watching them foreshadow the greatness they will one day embody. If the film has one big misstep, it’s in the casting of Sam Bell as George Harrison, the other crucial member of The Quarrymen. Bell completely lacks the look, demeanor, and personality of Harrison that was so distinctive to true fans. Harrison just happens to be my favorite Beatle, and Mr. Bell, you are no George Harrison!

The film would indeed implode if it weren’t for the brilliant and revelatory performance from Aaron Johnson. Johnson may not resemble the Lennon we all remember, but it would be wrong for this film if he did. Johnson wisely imagines an early Lennon in the midst of discovering his gifts and its quite remarkable how his performance slowly picks up on each trait that made the man so fascinating and unforgettable. Armed with his long-faced sincerity, Johnson starts off wounded and internalized until he slowly develops the wit, exuberance, irreverence, resourcefulness, and insight that would launch Lennon towards legendary status. What’s most impressive is how Johnson burns with the creative waves that forever crashed within Lennon’s heart. There’s a wonderful scene towards the end where The Quarrymen are in a studio recording the song “In Spite of All the Danger.” As he sings the song, Lennon’s face and voice vibrate with such emotion and yearning that it elevates the tune. The inner-wounds it hints at is spellbinding.

I’m so fascinated by stories such as Nowhere Boy, stories within the “Boy-Who-Would-Be-King” Mode. We get to witness a young man on his journey towards greatness, only he doesn’t realize it yet. He will one day become an important man who will change the world, but in the meantime, he is plagued by the same inadequacies and confusion as everyday people, not realizing how important his actions and relationships will serve him in the future. Such was the story of the young John Lennon, who had to go through crippling heartbreak before liberating himself towards legendary creativity. The final scene shows Mimi asking about the new name of The Quarrymen. “Do you care?” asks Lennon. We don’t care. We already know what it is. We already know how big they will become. The fact that Lennon doesn’t quite know yet demonstrates the beauty of this film.

'It's Kind of a Funny' Movie

2010-10-12T21:52:00.003-04:00

by Brett Parker

It’s tricky business to make a dramedy regarding mental patients at a mental hospital. If you make the patients too broad of goofy comic caricatures, then you risk dealing a great insult to those actually suffering mental disorders. If you make things too deadly serious, then you risk basking the audience in a gloomy downer. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest pretty much wrote the book on how this balancing act is done. Now comes It’s Kind of a Funny Story, a film that pulls off this balancing act so carefully that it doesn’t even try to go for the jugular. It tiptoes between depression and hilarity while attempting to dish out a strong cinematic dose of optimism. That we’re able to accept this dose without dismissing it cynically demonstrates the effect of the film.

As the film opens, we meet Craig (Keir Gilchrist), a young high schooler from New York City in the midst of great emotional anguish. He feels enormous pressure from his father (Jim Gafigan) to get into a great college or be branded a failure. He finds that he’s hopelessly in love with Nia (Zoe Kravitz), the girlfriend of his over-achieving best friend, Aaron (Thomas Mann). He is more or less consumed by the existential angst that puts its grip on most teenagers at some point in their young lives. Feeling extremely anxious, Craig contemplates suicide but suspects that’s not the answer. He decides to turn to a local Brooklyn hospital for help.

Craig is under the impression that the hospital will simply give him extra-strength meds and send him gingerly on his way, yet he is surprised to discover that he must stay in the hospital’s psych ward for a five-day period so he can be properly evaluated. It’s in this kooky ward in which Craig meets a chorus line of colorful eccentrics. His roommate hasn’t left his bed or room for months. A schizophrenic man howls endlessly throughout the building. A drugged-out rabbi begs endlessly to keep the noise down. Craig even finds a mentor of sorts in the form of Bobby (Zach Galifianakis), a shaggy depressive who seems slightly more level-headed than the other patients (not by much).

Bobby decides to show Craig the ropes of the mental ward, which include excitement-free Ping Pong games and dreams of an epic Pizza Party. While in the ward, the patients help Craig discover what a special individual he is. Activities revolved around arts, crafts, and music reveals that he has more hidden talents then he gives himself credit for. He also gains confidence through the affections of Noelle (Emma Roberts), another troubled teenager occupying the ward. They begin a fragile romance based on a kind of wounded sympathy. It’s though her sweetness, and the ward’s offbeat brand of encouragement, that Craig is able to take on his inner-demons.

Writer-Directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson, Sugar) have etched out a name for themselves in the indie-world through raw character studies that showcase complex human types with unflinching honesty. Their work is celebrated for its avoidance of clichés and formulas as it allows the behavior of its subjects to reach their logical conclusions without resorting to melodrama. This time, adapting from a semi-autobiographical novel by Ned Vizzini, they appear to be reveling in formulaic territory to show off a hipster creativity their earlier films were immune to. We know from their earlier work that they are fully capable of making a vivid and authentic portrayal of an actual mental ward, yet they decide to play with some colorful exuberance here, just to show they can do it if they want to. While the scenes in the ward are fairly grounded, Boden and Fleck treat us to some zestful visuals packed with an appealing playfulness. We see an animated cityscape within Craig’s wild imagination as he draws out a map of his own city on paper and, in the film’s most fun sequence, we witness a dream sequence where the patients imagine themselves in a Glammed-Out performance of David Bowie & Queen’s “Under Pressure.” Of course, this material could still work in a down-to-earth, subtle manner, but these wild strokes help flesh out the hidden optimism waiting to burst out of the ward’s inherent dreariness.

Alongside the creative visual strokes, one of the best reasons to see the film is the revelatory performance by new-age goofball, Zach Galifianakis. The key to Galifianakis’ gifts thus far can only be described as a sublime subtlety. He’s one of the few performers who can generate a large response from doing next-to-nothing. To regard his oafish shell and laid-back demeanor point blank is surprisingly appealing. Here Galifianakis uses that gift to hint at the troubled depths of Bobby, a mysterious depressive too deep in his own turmoil to return to the wife and daughter that despair achingly over him. Bobby can be a level-headed voice of reason or a sealed bottle of rage, sometimes within the same moment. Indeed, he has a shocking display of hostility in the ward’s library in which he needs to be restrained by numerous staff members. Galifianakis’ employs his subtlety to convey all of Bobby’s complexities quite superbly. He tones down his goofy shenanigans to a certain degree but connects strongly with the tragic depths lurking just beneath Bobby’s surface. It’s an eye-opening performance, one that suggests Galifianakis could effortlessly handle meatier dramatic roles in the future.

It’s Kind of a Funny Story is essentially a teen angst picture set within the confines of a quirky mental ward. Through the vessel of Keir Gilchrist, who is like Jesse Eisenberg trapped within a young Keanu Reeves, we regard the everyday plights of the teenage emotional experience, which can seem like such devastating travesties as teenagers actually experience them. Craig goes through the usual motions of dealing with parental pressure, romantic yearning, and personal inadequacy before his journey makes him realize that he should learn to believe in himself and the joys of life. Boden and Fleck have both cited a John Hughes influence on this film and indeed employ Hughes’ device of dissecting the roots of a high schooler’s angst and ultimately suggesting that sunny optimism and being true to thy self is the best way to combat it. The film’s sly joke is that a mental ward is a cathartic place to take a break from being an American teenager, a joke that feels more true the more you think about it.

When all is said and done, It’s Kind of a Funny Story feels like more of a slight enterprise then it probably intends to be. Its insights are appreciated, but not highly original. The jokes are charming, if not uproariously hilarious. Plus I was kind of annoyed at the way the narrative condescends the formulaic ending while it embodies it. Yet I couldn’t help but admire the smile-inducing sunshine the filmmakers pulled from what could’ve been a troubling downer. A lot of sunniness packaged in the movies nowadays can come across as transparent and manipulative, so it’s nice to see a movie earn it through effective character development and simple emotional honesty. Like Zach Galifianakis himself, you can’t help but be charmed by the silliness. 　

A 'Social' Revelation

2010-10-05T14:53:00.004-04:00

by Brett Parker

The film opens with a young Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) being rejected at a bar by a woman named Erica (Rooney Mara). She has grown so tired of Mark’s ramblings about wanting to be part of the Harvard elite that she thinks he is too egotistical to stomach any further. Mark is so oblivious to Erica’s feelings that he feels the reason he was truly rejected is because he’s an unimportant nerd. This causes him to drunkenly write mean-spirited things about her on his blog from his dorm-room computer. During that same night of blogging, Mark’s anger grows tilted towards all of the women at Harvard and he decides to create a website in which you can rate the hotness of various girls on campus. By hacking into the numerous websites of campus housing, Zuckerberg obtains photos of almost all the campus females and creates his sexist website. The site becomes such an on-campus sensation that it gets over 20,000 hits in two hours, crashing the campus servers.

Zuckerberg’s site not only gets him a slap on the wrist from the disciplinary board, but the attention of the Winklevoss Twins (both played by Armie Hammer, thanks to marvelous CGI tricks). The WASP-Y brothers enlist Zuckerberg to help them with an idea they have for a campus website: they want to create an online social network in which students of Harvard can each have their own individual profile pages containing personal information and photos, allowing the other students to check them out. Zuckerberg considers their ideas and grows one himself: why not make a website in which students everywhere can check out each other’s pages. This site would not only deal with college information, but individual likes, dislikes, and relationship statuses. Thanks to the bankroll of his best friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), Zuckerberg is able to fund and create the social website that would come to be known as Facebook.

Facebook rapidly becomes a giant hit across colleges everywhere and Zuckerberg can barely keep up with its increasing success. Seeking to expand and capitalize as greatly as he can, Zuckerberg and his cohorts end up in the clutches of Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the inventor of Napster. Sean is an out-of-work schemer who quickly seduces Zuckerberg with his charisma and convinces him to move his enterprise to Silicon Valley in California. Eduardo sees Sean as nothing but a leach but Zuckerberg decides to make the move to Silicon Valley as Facebook just keeps growing larger and larger. But big trouble brews for Zuckerberg as major law suits flesh out all around him. Eduardo is eventually forced out of the company by Parker’s conniving strategies and sues for co-ownership of Facebook. Meanwhile, the Winklevoss Twins feel there idea was completely stolen by Zuckerberg and they sue to prove that they were the true inventors of Facebook.

A movie centered around computer programming and lawsuits may not sound like the most exciting picture, but a good filmmaker knows how to make any story feel exciting on the big screen, something David Fincher demonstrates wonderfully here. His masterful camera tricks, along with the rapid-fire heat of Aaron Sorkin’s script, allows the mundane speak of computer talk sparkle with excitement. Like the case theories within Zodiac, Fincher knows how to make speeches of elaborate technical details more compelling than they probably deserve to be. Here Fincher is helped by Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth (who knows how to make low-level campus lights feel unsettling), Editors Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall (who allow us to match up the film’s events with the deposition testimonies superbly), and Score Composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (who elevate a techno-score away from being a gimmick and towards real art) to make this story a dazzling centerpiece that far exceeds a piece of straight-forward investigative journalism.

There has been much speculation regarding the authenticity of The Social Network’s claims. Fincher says it’s a work of fiction while Sorkin claims it’s rather factual. Zuckerberg has disowned the film while the Winklevoss’ claim its an excellent portrayal of what actually happened. It doesn’t really matter how authentic the film’s claims are, for the real triumph is how Fincher captures the undeniable heat and dizziness that went into the website’s creation and the logical motivations that must’ve been lurking beneath. Fincher is a filmmaker who specializes in the bizarre obsessions of peculiar men and the claustrophobic societies that clash with them, allowing Zuckerberg’s story to fit perfectly into Fincher’s aesthetic mold. We sense how Zuckerberg’s creation spilled out grandly into society the way Tyler Durden’s fight clubs did. Zuckerberg’s fierce need to be recognized as a genius is eerily not to far off from John Doe’s delusions of grandeur from Seven. Plus its obvious that Zuckerberg is bottling up wounded emotions the way Benjamin Button’s condition forced him to. The Social Network could’ve been a happy-cheery movie about an optimistic idealist trying to bring young people together, but Fincher wisely realizes that more unsettling masculine ideals generate this story.

Of course the crackling dialogue wouldn’t pop as well without the sensational performances from the film’s young cast. Andrew Garfield is wonderful in showing us a kid who’s sincerity and niceness quickly made him a victim in this cutthroat world. A teary-eyed moment during a lawsuit deposition in which Eduardo reminds Zuckerberg that he was his only friend truly does strike you in the heart. A real livewire performance comes from Justin Timberlake as Parker, who lights up the film like a pinball machine every time he walks on screen. It’s a layered, inspired performance as Parker is both cool but paranoid, smooth yet reckless. Timberlake shines as this devilish operator, owning the screen and having a ball.

The jewel centerpiece of the film lies in Jesse Eisenberg’s performance as the enigmatic Zuckerberg himself. Eisenberg has etched out a place for himself on the silver screen playing ultra-shy nerds coasting their way through social situations. Here he jazzes up his nerd persona to channel one with supreme arrogance and strict determination. Eisenberg has played nervous and repressed for so long that watching him dish out cold cynicism and intellectual cockiness is truly liberating to watch. A tongue-lashing he dishes out towards the Winklevoss Twins and their lawyer is wickedly delicious. Eisenberg can often wear his soul on his sleeve, but here he keeps Zuckerberg curiously sealed-off, with subtle hints of a nerd’s anger and Asperger’s syndrome. It’s through this performance in which Zuckerberg transcends being a historical figure to become a great enigmatic loner of the silver screen. It holds grand promises of major awards to come.

The small yet crucial performance of Erica, may just be the key to the entire film. In the beginning, Zuckerberg creates to spite her, while in the end, he quietly seeks her approval. Perhaps Zuckerberg really did want to change the way people connect with each other, yet Erica’s presence suggests that the creation of Facebook may be rooted in one nerd’s wounded determination to feel accepted, appreciated, relevant, loved. There is no anger or drive that runs deeper than an outcast who feels scorned or unnoticed by the real world. That ends up being the most haunting revelation within The Social Network: the cut-off isolation of a lonely nerd spawned the cut-off isolation of the Internet Age.

A Return to the 'Street'

2010-09-27T22:06:00.003-04:00

by Brett Parker

Many consider the character of Gordon Gekko to be the original Shark of Wall Street and our fascination with him isn’t much different from those aquatic predators themselves. Both are creatures that dominate their domain with the utmost confidence and damn near sparkle in their shiny and sharp exteriors. Their chain of command is reassured with an aura of fear, for all the underlings know when pushed, this creature can become a relentless killing machine, destroying all those around him to remain dominant. Some predators can be undeniably sinister in their nature, but it is the fact that they can know no other demeanor that fascinates us. The same can be said of Gordon Gekko.

Of course it was Michael Douglas’s hypnotically calculating and smooth portrayal of Gekko that was the crown jewel of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, a penetrating and hellfire-tinged expose of the corruption lurking within the cracks of the New York Stock Trading Game. Through the morally-ambiguous vessel of Charlie Sheen’s Bud Fox, we were given an entry point into Gekko’s glamorous and shady world of insider trading and bloodthirsty financial competition. While the film was meant to warn us of the cancerous greed and rotting morals that could flourish in our capitalist system, it’s a sad fact that too many moviegoers were taking by Gekko’s flashiness and confidence, swaying them to become financial pirates themselves. As a colleague of mine once quipped, “no film has done more social damage than Wall Street. Here was a satire of the business world, boasting ‘Greed is Good,’ and all these idiots took it seriously! Now look at the mess we’re in!”

Most of us are fully aware of the current financial mess we’re in, in which Greed proved, in fact, to not be good. The economy is at a devastating low with the real estate and job market at record lows. Because of our capitalist tastes for excess, countless businesses have gone under and millions of Americans are unemployed. There are people in some circles who feel the root of all our current economic problems can be traced back to Gordon Gekko’s popularized philosophies (it’s a dramatic theory, but an existing one nonetheless). With this in mind, Oliver Stone has decided to return to the stocks game in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, a sequel to show us just what Gekko would think of the current situation and how he would conduct himself against the anxiety-ridden brokers who now play the markets in desperate attempts at survival.

The film opens in 2001, with Gekko being released from prison after serving a sentence for insider trading and security fraud. Standing alone with no one to pick him up, Gekko leaves the prison armed with his old suit, giant cellular telephone, and a giant wad of notes, undoubtedly observations regarding the financial world that has grown troubling in Gekko’s wake. Seven years pass by and Gekko becomes the author of a best-selling book entitled Is Greed Good?, a financial expose that accurately predicts the problems that will cause our capitalist economy to collapse beyond prepare. If Gekko was the reptilian tycoon who started economical problems, he is now a wise old prophet here to prepare it.

Gekko’s rehabilitation back into the world continues with his crusade to make amends with his estranged daughter, Winnie (Carey Mulligan). Winnie blames her father with every negative thing that has befallen her family, most particularly her brother’s suicide, and wants nothing to do with him. Gordon thinks he has found a way in with her through Jake (Shia LeBeouf), her ambitious fiancé. Jake is a young stockbroker who hopes to do good in the world by assisting the growth of an Alternative Fuel Plant in California. Both Jake and Winnie are so virtuous and good-natured that they highlight the brewing viciousness around them, which there is plenty of. Jake’s boss and mentor, Louis Zabel (Frank Langella), was forced out of his own company and driven to suicide by the ruthless billionaire Bretton James (Josh Brolin) who has fashioned himself as the top dog of Wall Street. Jake sympathizes with Winnie’s pain, yet he can’t help but realize the financial genius Gordon possesses. Perhaps if Jake can help Gordon reconnect with his daughter, then Gordon can help Jake take revenge on Bretton amidst a collapsing market.

Money Never Sleeps adequately acknowledges the current issues plaguing Wall Street and finds shrewd ways to incorporate Gekko back into this world, yet we never feel the film reaches the hotbed boiling point it needs to. The current economic crisis has induced so much frustration, anxiety, depression, and unease into today’s country that the film’s great failing is that it does not strongly induce those same feelings into a film audience. Oliver Stone is known for a gonzo style of filmmaking that takes no prisoners and induces controversy at the drop of a hat. Yet here he keeps things too subdued, too formal. He curiously displays more hopeful idealism that cynical realism. He acknowledges the current mess and strives for an optimistic future when what we really want him to do is revel feverishly in the mess. If this film had the paranoia of JFK and the sloppy anger of Natural Born Killers, we would’ve really had a scorcher on our hands.

The brilliance of the original Wall Street was the way Robert Richardson’s cinematography dived right into the water with the Shark’s, giving off a devilish glee as we rubbed elbows with nasty predators. The camera had a head-first, bystander’s view into this world, so we got the experience of being at ground level with these new age pirates. The excessive and shadowy nature of this shiny new world came at us from all sorts of unseen angles and only occasionally stood back to take a breather from the amorality at hand. We were standing in the center of the Lion’s Den with no easy exit, and we were hypnotized by their predatory behavior the entire time.

The cinematography this time around, by the Oscar-nominated Rodrigo Prieto (Brokeback Mountain, Babel, Alexander), keeps things very tidy and formal. The camera has a classical formalism that exposes the crisp shininess of the New York Cityscape but puts a considerable damper on the ominous trouble lurking beneath the Markets. Stone is usually fearless in letting his camera pound relentlessly on the loathsome depths of human nature, but here he keeps things curiously simple, even resorting to old-school Hollywood techniques (perhaps he’s demonstrating that this tale of capitalist greed and falling-from-grace is a timeless one). On a surface level, Stone keeps things moving in a smooth, subtle manner, but let’s face it: we don’t go to an Oliver Stone movie for smoothness and subtlety.

Of course the best thing about the film is the return of Michael Douglas to the Oscar-Winning role that launched a thousand traders. When a famous actor becomes strongly associated with an iconic role, they have a tendency to walk through the performance on revisiting. Not Douglas, he’s just as focused as ever. He plays up his soothing voice and confident precision to show that Gekko is just as intelligent, detached, and calculating as he ever was. The screenplay teases us with the idea that Gekko may be seeking a genuine redemption, but then pulls the rug out from under us when Gekko commits an act that’s astonishingly conniving. It’s only then that we realize that asking Gekko to change his ways is like asking a Shark not to kill another creature ever again. Predators are incapable of changing their natures. It’s that essential fact that haunts this sequel. To stare into the abyss that is Gekko’s soul is to stare into the abyss that caused are financial problems in the first place.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a competent display of Hollywood formalism that spells out the mechanisms of our financial doom and gives us satisfying answers to questions we’ve wondered about Gordon Gekko over the years. It plays with our anxieties half the time, making us wish the film plugged deeper into the hellish fires of our financial nightmares. Much disappointment has been voiced about the film’s upbeat, sentimental ending, but I feel it’s extremely interesting that Oliver Stone, of all people, is showing us a little sentiment. While we always expect Stone to highlight the negative for us, I find it oddly compelling that he’s pointing us towards the positive for a change. He hopes that maybe in this crazy, mixed-up world, two people can learn to favor values such as love and family above financial warfare. And maybe, just maybe, a sinister schemer like Gordon Gekko could grow a heart after all.

Any 'Takers' For A Routine Heist Flick?

2010-08-31T21:57:00.005-04:00

by Brett Parker

Takers is a routine heist flick that borrows so heavily from past films that you half-expect it to site its sources out loud, something that one character, in fact, ends up doing. The film strives for both the glamorous flashiness of Ocean’s Eleven and the gritty realism of Heat, yet these two sensibilities weigh down on each other and prevent the film from fleshing out a distinct significance all its own. It’s a heist flick as lightweight as can be, yet if your willing to meet its ladmag swagger and noir-tinged pretensions halfway, you might just be able to enjoy yourself.

The film begins by introducing us to a team of highly-skilled and super-stylish thieves who conduct their crimes in the Los Angeles area. There’s the mastermind Gordon (Idris Elba), point man John (Paul Walker), hardheaded Jake (Michael Ealy), athletic Jesse (Chris Brown), and stone-cold pro A.J. (Hayden Christensen). We first see them robbing a high-rise bank in the downtown L.A. area equipped with machine guns, ski-masks, and a helicopter escape. The job is pulled off with such skill that the no-nonsense detective Jack Welles (Matt Dillon) can’t find the smallest lead to bring the team down. With their hot cars, sexy women, and classy threads, these thieves appear to be living quite the outlaw lifestyle.

That is until the day Ghost (Tip “T.I.” Harris) drops back into their lives. Ghost was a member of the crew until he was shot and jailed during one of their heists. He did five years in jail without ratting out any of his crew members, something he feels deserves payback. His plan: assemble the crew to pull off a highly-dangerous armored car robbery right off the streets of L.A. The crew feels they don’t have the time, or the foresight, to pull off such a tricky heist, yet fearful of Ghost’s betrayal, they decide to go through with it anyways. As motives grow more ambiguous and moves escalate towards danger, Detective Welles works frantically to take down the crew before they pull off yet another extraordinary steal.

Takers shows little trace of originality or dimensions to elevate it from being a routine genre piece. The characters are one-dimensional stock personalities who don’t really have any memorable lines nor contribute any dramatic depths. It shows the players and moves of a crime plot, yet holds no revealing thoughts about the nature of crime itself. While the film tries to emulate the penetrating feel of a Michael Mann crime picture, it forgets that Mann always digs to find the poignancy and suppression within hunter-gatherer stories. Director John Luessenhop keeps things so by-the-numbers that searching for deeper meanings feels irrelevant. If it weren’t for the films pretentious style, perhaps the cast could’ve let loose with some of the ring-a-ding fun of the Ocean’s Eleven pictures. With their Rat Pack activities and dandified confidence, the Takers could’ve displayed the same sense of playfulness and exhilaration as Clooney’s boys if the film’s tone wasn’t so dominantly somber.

Yet deep down, I’m a huge sucker for a heist flick. It’s one of my favorite genres (with Ocean’s Eleven being one of my all-time favorite movies) and I can get so caught up in the hulking fronts, the elegant styles, the confident masculinity, the high-octane heists, and the over-the-top dangers that can be found in these films, especially if its done with a con artist’s smirk. Takers can’t live down the better crime films that have gone before it, but it seems perfectly content with the clichés it revels in. It puts up a front even though we suspect a lack of confidence underneath. The whole enterprise is disposable pulp, but if you can fine tune yourself to all the stylish testosterone and slam-bang trashiness that entails, you might just be able to have the silly good time I had.

Takers has such a shameless need to please that it doesn’t attempt to hide its lifts from earlier films such as Reservoir Dogs, Casino Royale, True Romance, and countless others. Even Ghost fully admits that the film’s climactic heist is a complete rip-off from The Italian Job remake. Yet if you’re willing to forgive the film for its cinematic thievery, a little fun can be had from a few of the action scenes. There’s a silly-cool scene in which the string-bean A.J. pounds mercilessly on gigantic brutes trying to beat him out of money, proving that camera angles and editing can make any skinny guy look tough. Chris Brown lacks a promising future in acting, yet his breathless foot chase through the Los Angeles area holds our attention rather efficiently. My favorite scene shows the Takers showing an amazing display of teamwork as they strategize their way through a frantically deadly hotel room shootout. It’s really the only scene in which gripping danger and the crew’s slickness truly shine.

The film was lucky enough to assemble a varying range of talented pros, yet the script gives them zero room to display any hints of character development. It’s great to see talented character actors Ealy and Elba get time to shine in a Hollywood vehicle, yet their characters have nothing significant to show off. Walker and Christensen have found a nice outlet to show off some cinematic coolness, but they fall victims to diminished screen time. Still, the guys show they can hold it down in a crime piece, displaying smoldering confidence and hulking shells quite nicely. The two meatiest performances come from Dillon, who treads heroically through an ocean of cop role clichés, and Harris, who miscalculates as the sinister Ghost. His character is meant to be a shadowy criminal mastermind, yet Harris’ street thug demeanor feels all wrong for the role. It diminishes the character potential for more authority, complexity, and ambiguity. A more thoughtful actor like Terrance Howard would’ve scored an absolute touchdown in this role.

If you don’t get out much to see many heist films, than Takers will probably work a lot better for you than it will for most. There are countless other films of this genre that are way better and Takers will have a tough time distinguishing itself from the rest. Yet if your in the mood for disposable heist thrills, which entails great suits, tough guy posturing, and outrageous action, Takers just might be able to fill your cinematic sweet tooth for a couple of hours.

'The Expendables': The Big Muscle Man Reunion

2010-08-17T22:03:00.004-04:00

by Brett Parker

Action films of the 80s could most accurately be described as the “muscle man” era, an era in which testosterone, explosions, and the war-hungry mindset of the Reagan era spilled out across movie screens everywhere. Our heroes were grizzled hulks armed with gigantic biceps, guns, and attitudes. They annihilated countless weaklings who stood in there way, usually by pumping them full of countless lead or tearing their limbs clean apart. Bloodiness was guaranteed!. Subtlety and political correctness were nowhere to be found; these films reveled in ridiculous excess. There was, in fact, a competition amongst the era's action stars to see who could have the bigger guns and explosions in their individual films. It was brawny, it was gritty, it was masochistic, and it was so much fun!

No specific brand of action films lasts forever, for changing times brings forth changing heroes. In a post-9/11 world, a world that saw everyday people commiting truly heroic acts, a new brand of action heroes emerged filled with more vulnerability and humanity. From Spider-Man to Jason Bourne, our new crop of heroes possess everyman qualities in the face of extraordinary situations. Brains our now in higher demand than biceps; we want to relate more instead of envying. It says something that the two best action stars of this past summer were Robert Downey, JR. and Michael Cera.

Sylvester Stallone certainly feels nostalgic for the macho man bravado of yesteryear and senses a good amount of action junkies feel the exact same way. This led to the creation of his latest acting-directing feat, The Expendables, a throwback extravaganza if ever there was one. Stallone has assembled nearly every aging tough guy from the 80s into one big action vehicle, proving that these old school hulks still got what it takes to deliver big bangs for your buck! Of course, if your looking for relevance, reflection, and deep philosophies regarding the very nature of those muscle man movies, you've come to the wrong place! Stallone and his cohorts have precisely one goal in mind and one goal only: to blow up stuff real good!

The Expendables focuses on a rugged group of macho mercenaries who hire themselves out to do dirty work government agencies are afraid to touch. The team includes fearless leader Barney Ross (Stallone), blade enthusiast Lee Christmas (Jason Statham), kung-fu expert Ying Yang (Jet Li), bruising brawler Toll Road (Randy Couture), trigger-happy Hale Caesar (Terry Crews), and blood-thirsty giant Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundren). The film opens with the guys lighting up a group of pirates who've kidnapped a cargo ship, slaying them with effortless expertise. Despite their old age, these pros appear are at the top of their game, until a real challenging mission comes their way at the hands of a mysterious contact named Mr. Church (Bruce Willis). Their assignment: infiltrate a South American island and take out a ruthless drug lord named Monroe (Eric Roberts).

Ross goes to scope the place out and runs into an intel expert named Sandra (Giselle Itie) who has grown up on the island and conveys how nightmarish her environment has become. Monroe used his vast wealth to buy out the island's army and he rules the place with an iron fist. He single-mindedly pursues his drug crops and profit and isn't afraid to destroy anyone or anything in his past. Monroe's rule over the island is quite deadly and Ross realizes that to go after him could very well be sudden death for him and his comrades. Yet after a lifetime of bloodshed, Ross begins to wonder if he can redeem himself by risking his life for those in need of liberation. The other Expendables begin to feel the same way and this leads to a deadly mission that will challenge the team to the extent of their abilities and just might rescue their souls.

It really is a miracle of scheduling that Stallone was able to assemble all the big marque names of yesterday into one kick-ass action movie! The only problem is that Stallone doesn't really give them anything deep or challenging to do. The Expendables was a great opportunity for Stallone & Company to dissect the finer points of the muscle man genre or expose the plights a tough guy experiences in growing older (something Stallone did superbly in Rocky Balboa). Instead, Stallone reduces their characters to one-dimensional types that run through the motions of a mindless shoot-em-up. Of course, no one can run through those motions like these guys, but surely these aging pros have more depths to reveal than the territory they've already mastered in the 80s.

So the plot is lightweight, the dialogue is horrible, and the characters show more attitude than personality. That's because Stallone's main focus is the ferocious action scenes, ones that demonstrate the shoot-em-and-slice-em velocity that was so prominent in the 80s. Stallone shows off a bloodthirsty glee as bones crunch, limbs fly, and bullets zing. The flimsy plot is all really just a transparent build-up to the film's violent final act, which is an all-out orgy of death and destruction. As our gritty heroes pound on countless bad guys mercilessly, we realize this is what we truly paid a ticket for and jump on on the ultra-violent band wagon. Technically, we can't help but admire the fact that the editing work by Ken Blackwell and Paul Harb frantically presents this ballet of blood as an assault on the senses while the musical score by Brian Tyler surprisingly gives off a classical feel.

Ironically, the only transcendent moments in the film are the ones revolved around no action at all. There's a killer moment where Mickey Rourke, as Ross' old friend and tattoo artist, speaks of searching for his soul after a lifetime of violence. It's the only revealing and convincing moment in the film thats out to prove that tough guys, do in fact, have feelings too. Of course the best scene in the film has become the most talked about one: the scene in which Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis share the screen for the first time in film history. Of course, these three were the biggest superstars of this genre and have always been something of fierce competitors, always trying to outdo each other in their movies. Well now they're finally together in a scene that not only sets up the plot for the film but shows off an electrifying peeing match where their egos bounce off each other quite nicely. It's probably the most logical way they could've shared the frame, with biting wit and a giddy subtext.

In the end, we're willing to forgive the film's flaws and emptiness because, essentially, it feels so good to see all the old guys again! They all, in fact, can still do it as good as they used to! Stallone proves that he can still dish out the attitude and the agility to lead his way through an action vehicle, Statham has shown no softening in his intimidation factor, Li still has all the right moves for an aging little guy, and Crews is cheerfully delightful as a man who loves to show off obnoxiously-outsized weaponry. My favorite performance comes from Lundren, who gives his dim-witted, hulking brute a psychotic edge that's surprisingly startling. It's been years since the big guy has shown up on the silver screen, yet his towering and tragic Frankenstein who dominates every scene that he's in!

Stallone has spoken out in recent years about how society can be neglectful towards it's elderly population. He feels there isn't really a forum for them to speak anymore despite the fact that they can be just as willing and able as all the younger citizens. The Expendables, like the last Rambo and Rocky Balboa demonstrates Stallone's single-minded goal of proving that the old guys can still get things done in a youth-obsessed society. It also may demonstrate the old school message that cultural and global problems can be solved by blowing away all our enemies, but we're willing to smirk and let that slide. After all, we're just staring at lightweight fun. The Expendables may not transcend it's genre, but at least it can stand with the mindless romps that ultimately led to the film's very creation. As long as you check your brain at the door, you can have yourself a bloody good time!

A Comedy For 'Schmucks'

2010-08-02T20:15:00.005-04:00

by Brett Parker

Its one thing if a bumbling geek happens to be annoying. Its another if a geek goes out of his way to intentionally evoke great annoyance. This idea represents my main problem with Dinner for Schmucks, the Hollywood remake of the hit French comedy, The Dinner Game: we're asked to feel sympathy for a hapless loser who causes chaos for no clear reason besides his own twisted amusement. That Steve Carell is cast in the role of this idiotic hellraiser shows that the filmmakers want us to connect with the likeability within this nightmare nerd, but the evidence onscreen makes us curiously feel put-off. The rest of the movie has a cast that can do no wrong and a killer comic premise, but it settles too easily into mundane slapstick instead of realizing the fullest potential of its biggest jokes.

The film opens with a corporate man named Tim (Paul Rudd) seeking a promotion in his company. He dreams of swimming with the big sharks on the higher-floors in order to impress his loving fiance, Julie (Stephanie Szostak), and upkeep their lavish lifestyle. After an impressive presentation, Tim is allowed to rub elbows with the corporate big shots, led by the arrogant Lance Fender (Bruce Greenwood). Fender even invites Tim to an annual dinner hosted by the company cohorts. Yet this is no ordinary dinner: each company man has to bring a clueless idiot to the dinner as their guest for the sole purpose of making fun of them. Whichever man brings the biggest idiot to the party wins a first-prize trophy. If Tim really wants to secure his promotion, he'll have to go through with this mean-spirited meal.

Julie becomes appalled at the news of this dinner and Tim debates whether or not to go through with such a cruel activity, that is until he accidentally runs into Barry (Carell) with his car. Almost anyone can tell that Barry is a goofy loser, a socially awkward weirdo whose main hobby is stuffing dead mice and dressing them up in artistic displays (Barry has mice riding a Ferris Wheel, dining at restaurants, flying kites, etc.). Tim thinks running into Barry was an act of fate and that he'll be a lock to winning the biggest idiot prize at the dinner. Yet as Tim invites him to this deceptive event, Barry now feels he has a new friend and turns up unexpectedly in Tim's home life. Barry proves to be a tornado of mayhem and causes gigantic problems for Tim over the course of one crazy night. He drives away Julie, he brings an insane former fling (Lucy Punch) back into Tim's life, he has him breaking into the apartment of a zany model (Jemaine Clement), and he causes him to be audited by an IRS weirdo who believes he can control minds (Zach Galifianakis). Can Tim survive long enough to make it to the dinner with Barry?

Steve Carell has crafted a career out of oblivious weirdos who remain likeable in spite of their acts of stupidity. His goofballs can't help their own oafishness and accidentally cause headaches for everyone around them. This time, however, Barry appears to be wreaking havoc on purpose, using his idiocy as a shallow excuse. Take, for example, a scene where Barry notices an Instant Message on Tim's computer from a scary former fling. In the moment, Barry decides to respond, pretends to be Tim, and invites this crazy woman over even though he's fully aware that Tim has a serious girlfriend that he lives with. Why do such a thing? Why intentionally cause hell for someone you're trying to become friends with? We're supposed to believe that Barry is so dumb that he's oblivious to the chaos he's causing, but you'd have to be way more incredibly dumber than Barry to not realize that you're brewing up a bad situation. He's clearly doing this to watch Tim suffer for his own twisted amusement.

Its this mini-mean streak from within Barry that is barely acknowledged by the film and is written off as hopeless dorkiness. It's hard to buy and it's even harder to buy later on when Barry turns on the self-pity routine and we're supposed to connect with him once he turns to marshmallow. It's at this point in the script where Tim is ordered to stop being mad at him and start warming up to his vulnerable side. Yet Tim really should be infuriated by this man's behavior, he really is annoying, for him and for us.

Can a movie character be chaotic and unrelenting yet still be likeable in our eyes? I point you to the supreme example of Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, the finest screwball comedy ever made. As Susan, the lunatic heiress hopelessly in love with Cary Grant's Dr. David Huxley, Hepburn shows us a nutty madwoman showing no mercy in trying to stay close to her dream man, whether it be stealing his car, hiding his clothes, getting him arrested, and putting him in the path of an unpredictable leopard. Susan is unmistakably relentless, but thanks to Hepburn she also has a sweetness and romantic yearning that's hard to dismiss. She may cause serious mayhem for David, but it's all out of a lovestruck devotion built on genuine affection. The film's most touching moment comes when Susan, after being scolded by David, pours her wounded heart out to him, declaring her maddened love for him. She wins us over and she eventually wins over David too, for all that chaos was just what he needed to stir up his humdrum existence. It'd be nice to think that Barry also has a desperate need to be liked, but surely he could've thought up more sincere ways than destroying Tim's apartment and relationships on purpose.

The rest of the film has the usual slapstick hijinks you'd expect in such a sitcom, although most of the gags seem watered down and never break loose towards anything truly hysterical. Part of the problem is that the plot drifts away from the central business at hand and towards the tornado of Barry's comic destruction. The plot would've benefited more hilariously if it deeply dissected it's main ideas more prominently. To what level of shame does Tim truly feel as he carries out his amoral agenda? What exactly is Barry's point of view on his own behavior? What could these two really get out of their relationship together, considering the deceptive motives behind it? How do they both really feel about the actual dinner? The film tries to force contrived answers to such questions without earning them through character development.

Considering the talent on-board, especially Director Jay Roach's comic experience (the Austin Powers series, Meet the Parents), there are some moments of interest to be found. Although the script miscalculates with the characterization of Barry, Carell holds a bug-eyed devotion to his character's zaniness that is a true testament to his comic gifts. Even though Tim's motives aren't exactly likeable, Paul Rudd allows us to empathize nicely with his journey of frustration and redemption. My favorite performance comes from Galifianakis as the IRS Mind Reader. I can't remember the last time a screen comic could be so utterly hilarious while doing little to nothing. The small, wheezy laugh he lets out while reading a tax record is the single funniest moment in the entire film. It must also be said that the film's climactic dinner scene, in which a room full of idiots are allowed to cut loose, does produce genuine laughs through delightful characters. We meet several strange cases such as a man who communicates with birds, an animal psychic, and a blind fencing champion (yes, you heard me). I was touched by how much these fools cherish their own quirky antics, revealing the corporate sharks behind this dinner to be the true sleaze that they are. It leads up to a wonderful moment where Barry seems generally confused as to why such fascinating people were invited to a party as “idiots.”

Dinner for Schmucks falls short because it holds a biting premise that grows too soft and a softy character with too much bite. The plot could've let loose with a dose of nastiness while the sweet and likeable Barry helped to deflect it. Curiously, the opposite appears to happen. It seems like comic gold to have Carell's sincerity bounce off of Rudd's frustration, but this outing proves to be a waste of a pairing and idea.

A Geeky Yet Charming 'Apprentice'

2010-07-20T07:18:00.002-04:00

by Brett Parker

Growing up in my youth, my favorite kind of fantasy films were the ones where extraordinary things happened to ordinary kids just like me. It was great fun watching ordinary young people, who had crushes on girls, massive amount of homework, and big dreams, being whisked away to breathless adventures in which they faced perilous danger, nail-biting chases, and otherworldly sights. Titles like The Goonies and Flight of the Navigator spring to mind. I was thrilled by the idea that normal dudes like me could quite possibly be plucked from suburban normalcy and thrown into the kind of fantastical adventure that could only happen in the movies. Of course, it was always reassuring to know that no matter what threats or dangers the young hero faced, he would always end up safely back at home with a big smile and an even bigger sense of confidence.

As we arrive at mid-summer in the blockbuster movie season, it's easy to label The Sorcerer's Apprentice, the new fantasy ride from Jerry Bruckheimer and the National Treasure team, as a disposable, CGI-heavy moneymaker, which it more or less is. However, I found the film had a nostalgic charm reminiscent of the very fantasy films I just described from my younger years. As the film centers on the nerdy everyman charms of the shy string-bean Jay Baruchel, I was reminded of the protagonists of the live action Disney movies I enjoyed back in the day. Here's a soulless popcorn movie revolved around a dude who wears his soul right on his sleeve. His geeky charm becomes the movie's saving grace.

The film opens with a prologue in the King Arthur days centered around the legendary wizard Merlin (James A. Stephens), with his apprentices battling over his mystical powers. The evil Horvath (Alfred Molina) wants to be the most powerful wizard, leading him to team up with an evil sorceress named Morgana (Alice Krige). The virtuous apprentice Balthazar (Nicolas Cage) vows to put a stop to the evil duo and does so by encasing them in an ancient doll that will serve as their prison. As he carries out this plan, however, his lady love Veronica (Monica Bellucci) becomes trapped in the doll along with the villains and Merlin becomes fatally wounded in the process. Before he dies, the powerful wizard tells Balthazar that a successor containing Merlin's powers shall materialize one day and must learn his sorcerer ways in order to protect the universe. Merlin had cast a spell on all of his apprentices to stay young forever, allowing Balthazar to carry out his search for the next great sorcerer over the next few centuries.

Time passes and Balthazar has searched over many continents for the one who fits the profile of Merlin's successor. His search ends in New York City when he meets Dave (Baruchel), a painfully shy college student who is an expert in physics and social awkwardness. Dave lacks tact and self-confidence but nonetheless shows every tell-tale sign of being the next great sorcerer. In Dave's private studying quarters, Balthazar decides to teach Dave everything he knows so that he can get in touch with his inner-Merlin. Dave will have to learn quickly, for pretty soon Horvath is unleashed from his ancient prison and plans to destroy life on this planet as we know it. Can Dave overcome his personal defects and find his inner-sorcerer? Does this science nerd have what it takes to defeat one of the most powerful sorcerers in history?

The idea of modern-day sorcerers could make for a very plucky movie, but The Sorcerer's Apprentice only allows the simple thrills you would expect from a PG-rated-live-action-Disney summer-blockbuster ride. That means everything is reduced to candy-coated CGI effects that would only be of great excitement to kids under 10. The idea of evil dragons and giant eagles flying around could be exciting but have a mundane feel to it this time. Even the film's climactic save-the-world battle is reduced to a hand-grown laser beam fight that hasn't been original since Superman II. One effects sequence I really enjoyed was a trip through Mirror World, where everything is reversed as it would be in a mirror (in this case: all of Times Square). For those who haven't figured it out yet, this film is inspired by the Mickey Mouse sequence in Fantasia and there's a fun little scene here that pays homage to it. Like Mickey, Dave tries to magically make mops and brooms clean up his room without any human hands touching them. The music may be a bit different but the hilarity of the results are about the same.

Nicolas Cage, of course, has developed into one of the most eccentric actors we've ever known. In the past, he's gone so far over the top that he's sailed past the Milky Way while eating a banana. I think only Cage could make a whacked-out ancient sorcerer from Manhattan feel lived in. Here's a guy who's never had to strain to look cooky, and that serves this role perfectly. But this being Disney and all, he's not allowed to let his freak flag fly as wildly as you wished he could. Don't want to scare the kiddies. Could you imagine if Cage was as whacked out here as he was in Bad Lieutenant? Children would be running for the Exit while the grown-ups laughed hysterically! But hey, I'm sure it serves the role well that Cage could let loose bizarre insanity but holds back to keep a straight face. That's probably true of most sorcerers.

I never would've thought that Dustin Hoffman's performance in The Graduate would plant the seed for our current crop of Hollywood leading men, but let's face it, we are living in the shy-guy era! Geeky actors like Michael Cera and Jesse Eisenberg are flinging their inadequacies and awkwardness in every direction and audiences are eating it up. Leading men used to get all the girls, now they have no idea how to even talk to girls. I suppose John Cusack helped spawn this trend with his everyman earnestness, but at least he had, you know, game! Anyways, of this current crop of dweebs, I would have to pick Jay Baruchel as my champion. He's certainly the funniest-looking and appears to have the most depth of comic charm. The important thing is that he conveys a genuine nice-guy quality; you want to root for him. It says something that for all the film's magic and effects, the most interesting scenes are the ones where he tries to court his biggest crush Becky (Teresa Palmer, conveying equal measures of beauty and sweetness), an adorable blonde who is eventually won over by the big goof. As are we.

Even though we're on the level of a PG-rated pop ride, at least everyone involved holds steady rank. Director Jon Turtletaub (Cool Runnings, National Treasure) knows he's just having some Hollywood fun and keeps things on a poppy, inoffensive level of formalism. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer demonstrates his usual relentless need to please the audience, from it's reliable New York City location to the hipster-rock soundtrack. Alfred Molina attacks his cartoonish role like a true, dignified professional while Toby Kebbell brings the same sense of zany silliness he possessed in Rocknrolla to the role of Horvath's magician sidekick, Drake Stone. Plus it's always nice to see Monica Bellucci in focus, so there's something!

So The Sorcerer's Apprentice may be a disposable family-friendly flick, but you know what? So we're many of those fun fantasy flicks I saw as a kid. I ate them up with an intense joy and I suspect young kids just might do the same with this one. It's hero acts like a kid again, which in turn made me feel like a kid again, and its not every movie that can do that well, so I'll give this one the pass! It may get tiring watching flying creatures and magical powers over time, but it may never get old watching the nice guy win the cute blonde.

'Inception': Mind-Blowing Head Trip

2010-07-20T07:08:00.003-04:00

by Brett Parker

Christopher Nolan is a filmmaker who likes to create cinematic games that deeply challenge the psyche of the characters who play them. Whether it's a man battling short-term memory-loss or a cop suffering from insomnia, Nolan's characters obsessively trudge through his mazes while complexities of the human mind fester underneath. His latest film, Inception, has to be the most elaborate and creative play on this cinematic ideal. As Nolan paints characters who can literally walk through dreams buried within the subconscious, he unleashes his most brilliant and literal exploration yet of the dark recesses of the human brain.

Inception imagines a world in which technology exists to enter people's minds through the dream state. If a person is heavily sedated, then a suitcase-sized device can allow outsiders to invade the subjects' dream and create an environment in which their deep secrets can be discovered. An extractor named Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) abuses this technology by stealing people's ideas and selling them to big businesses. Cobb can work his way around the unstable environments of lucid dreams better than almost anyone and, along with his expert aide Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), can find almost any secret buried within the subconscious. However, Cobb's experiments within the dreamworld created big problems that has made him a fugitive in his home of America and estranged from his two children.

One day, Cobb encounters a wealthy corporate man named Saito (Ken Watanabe) who promises to help repair his past. Saito assures Cobb he can make his charges in America disappear if he performs an act of Inception; instead of stealing an idea from a subject's mind, an idea is to be planted there. The mark is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the wealthy heir to a corporate empire. Saito wants Cobb and his associates to plant an idea in Fischer's head that will dismantle his worldwide empire. However, Inception is a highly risky and dangerous procedure, for it involves delving deeper into levels of the subconscious than most players can handle. With the help of a forger thief (Tom Hardy) and a brilliant architect (Ellen Page), Cobb and his team plunge deep within the world of Fisher's head, a world that involves lethal shoot-outs, zero-gravity, a snowy fortress, and the ghost of Cobb's deceased wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), stirring up deadly trouble. Can Cobb and his associates plant an inception before being trapped in a deep subconscious limbo?

What is first and foremost impressive about Inception is how wholly original this world appears to be. Even though specific shades of other films can be hinted at (particularly The Matrix), we truly do feel like we are looking at a cinematic landscape we've never seen before. Nolan has brought to the unstable and abstract nature of the dreamworld a strict logic that uses everything we've even researched or realized about human dreams to create a specific universe filled with detailed and fascinating rules. Even though this film plays on formalities of a heist film and certain action-thriller standards, it'd be such a gross disservice to confine this film to broad genre outlines. Here's a film that doesn't depend on “killing the bad guy” or “disarming the bomb” but instead focuses on penetrating multiple levels of the subconscious and synchronizing your actions so that you can simultaneously awaken throughout all layers and return to complete consciousness. Sound confusing? Well Nolan maps out the logic of the plot with great attentiveness. Sure, you have to pay close attention to every minute detail, but so fascinating is the world Nolan has painted, you'll be absorbed by every exciting aspect thrown your way.

Since pretty much anything can happen within a dream, almost anything can happen within the world of Inception, liberating it from mundane predictability. As these brainy thieves run amok through other people's dreams, we're treated to such wild visuals as a train pummeling through a city street, a Parisian street folding upside down on itself, a hotel hallway tilting sideways, sleeping bodies floating in zero gravity, and a decaying city crumbling at the edge of an ocean. These visuals complement the elaborate logic of the plot wonderfully, and since these strokes of creativity can come from any angle, the film constantly keeps us on our toes and glued to the screen from start to finish.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays up his finely-tuned confidence and intensity to fit the mold of a Nolan protagonist quite nicely. Like all of Nolan's flawed heroes, Cobb is a man obsessive in his quest, consumed by guilt, haunted by heartbreak. Nolan's men are usually haunted by a past love, one that puts a heavy strain on both their hearts and their already clouded minds. The ghost of Mal constantly taunts and haunts Cobb in his dreamworld as he battles constantly with the blurred lines between dreams and reality. The men in Nolan's world hope that their rigorous journey to make sense of things will bring them some kind of closure, but the brilliance of this filmmaker is the idea that the end result is always shrouded in some kind of ambiguity. There's no easy way out from heart ache and the darkness that haunts the mind (The film's final shot puts a serious skewer on any idea of a complete happy ending for Cobb).

Indeed, each film of Nolan's deals with a specific aspect of the mind that can plague most men. He's dealt with revenge (Memento), guilt (Insomnia), fear (Batman Begins), jealous egotism (The Prestige), madness (The Dark Knight), and now with Inception, he has covered the idea of perception. Cobb is a man so caught up in the dreamworld that he himself has confused it for his actual reality. What constitutes reality? If something feels deeply tangible to us, is that enough to justify it as reality? What if there is a deeper level of truth we haven't perceived yet? The main conflict within the Mal character is the idea that maybe everything is a projection from our minds and there is underlying levels of revelations we have yet to perceive. If our idea of reality is built within our minds, then whats to say that dreams aren't as tangible as our reality?

These questions probably only scratch the surface of Inception's underlying ideals. The beauty of the film is that endless analysis can be sprung from within the subtext. Dream logic, in itself, has inspired many broad theories and specific ideas over the years. Since Inception is so intuitive to a wide range dream research, countless theories and ideas can be pulled from this film for years to come. You'll be deeply rewarded on repeat viewings and will probably find new things that will redefine the film for you each time you watch it. Since the film takes place mostly within dreams, you can never be too sure that everything is what it seems or that it even takes place in reality at all (a climactic conversation between Cobb and Mal as well as a shot of an old couple walking through a dream city threw me for a loop and will certainly need revisiting).

Since the very nature of dreams can be surreal and trippy, part of me wonders if Inception could've been more surreal and trippy. Should this material have gone way more off-the-rails? Shouldn't it have dealt with the erotic and the nightmarish aspects of dreams more? Could abstract directors such as David Lynch or Richard Kelly go further down the rabbit hole than Nolan does? Perhaps, but it's important to realize that Nolan is not out to confuse, but to challenge and entertain; two things that can be rarely seen in the same package. The great achievement of Inception is the way it presents a supreme challenge to our intellect while still delivering an adventurous and exciting thrill ride. The film could be a turning point in proving that audiences can handle complex and ambiguous philosophical thoughts within the context of a Hollywood action-thriller. Here's a rare action-adventure where the ideas are way more exciting than the action.

The 'Airbender' Needs Acting Lessons

2010-07-06T07:05:00.014-04:00

by Brett Parker

The usual arc for most filmmakers shows that their films improve as their work increases. Unfortunately for M. Night Shyamalan, his quality of work seems to be digressing considerably. After the enourmous success of the horror hit The Sixth Sense, he unveiled Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village, three supernatural dramas I found to be powerhouse wonders. Shakiness began brewing for Shyamalan when he brought us Lady in the Water, a fairy tale of of creativity and ambition, yet one that crumbled under its own incoherency and absurdity. Shyamalan tried to return to form with The Happening, but it instead showcased Shyamalan losing his grip when it comes to acting and dialogue.

Now the Hollywood helmer is attempting to reclaim his glory in a genre he has never dealt with before: the fantasy epic. The Last Airbender is his adaptation of the popular Nickelodeon cartoon series in which mythical people can control the four elements. From observing the cartoon's premise, we see how it can serve Shyamalan's themes of ordinary people dealing with the extraordinary and the acknowledgment of a spiritual universe and the forces it provides. What could have been a wonderful display of growth for Shyamalan has turned into something of a mess; an example of how he would probably be better off staying far, far, away from this genre for the rest of his career. It could've elevated his gift for fusing the emotional with the supernatural, but the acting, the dialogue, and the essential plot give us nothing to sink our hooks into.

The film takes place sometime in the future, where the modern world as we know it has crumbled and the Earth has been redivided among nations that represent the four elements: earth, wind, fire, and water. There are certain numbers of humans who have the special ability to manipulate these elements to their will; these people are called “benders” and hold the most power on the planet. It is said that a being known as the Avatar can bring ultimate harmony between the nations, for it is the only one who could master all of the elements at once. However, the Avatar has been missing for quite sometime and this has allowed the fearsome Fire Nation to rise up and try to conquer the world, Evil Empire style.

We meet two sibling waterbenders named Katara (Nicola Peltz) and Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) who one day find a mysterious boy named Aang (Noah Ringer) unconscious below a layer of ice. It turns out that Aang is the last of the airbenders who has been mysteriously frozen in time while his own people vanished at the hands of the Fire Nation. It is believed that Aang was meant to be the Avatar before his emotions got the best of him and he ran away. Katara and Sokka make him realize that he must learn and obtain the powers of the Avatar of the world as they all know it shall be destroyed. As Aang and his new friends go off in search of his mythic destiny, a vengeful firebender named Prince Zuko (Dev Patel) furiously pursues him for his own selfish needs.

I sure hope I got everything I just wrote correct! The Last Airbender doesn't exactly feel like the most comprehensive epic I've ever seen. Of course the first rule to presenting any fantasy universe is to make that specific world as entertainingly comprehensive as possible. Sometimes fantasy worlds can get way too caught up in their own mythical logic, alienating innocent moviegoers. What makes fantasy series like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings so popular and enduring is the fact that they focus on the human elements first and allow the elaborate plots to take care of themselves. They prove that a film can be stuffed with elves, goblins, ewoks, wookies, and hobbits, yet still hold a human dimension of emotions with universal appeal. Lord of the Rings, especially, may have had fantastical visuals and enormous adventure, but it was the fact that almost all of the mythical characters held the same fears and vulnerabilities as us humans that truly made it a special work.

The Last Airbender shows traces of humanity but they seem impossible to engage mainly because the main child stars, our essential guides through this world, give really bad performances. I'm talking really bad! This has to be among the worst collective child star work I've ever seen in a Hollywood film. Part of the problem is that the dialogue is meant to be presented in an ancient world dialect yet the kids use their modern world voices, making every piece of dialogue sound like a train wreck. These kids show all the mastery of a sixth-grader in their very fist school play. Perhaps in a more contemporary, simplistic film, these kids could be engaging, but they come across as jaw-droppingly horrid here. Perhaps the fault for these performances could be placed on Shyamalan. Spike Lee once alluded that directors are directly responsible for any bad performances in their films. Shyamalan certainly doesn't provide any colorful dialogue or human dimensions for his characters. The most developed and most interesting performance comes from Patel as the sinister Fire Prince, but even he seems like too much of an everyman to master an operatic villian.

Shyamalan's greatest strength as a filmmaker has been to sneak supernatural elements into the everyday world of realistic characters. Here he tries to sneak realistic emotions into a supernatural environment and fails miserably. He usually presents things from a human standpoint, allowing the supernatural elements to absorb us as they would in reality. There isn't a trace of that skill here and the film suffers considerably. Shyamalan seems too caught up in this preposterous plot and its shallow genre elements to engage us with his trademark technical mastery. The alluring moods he is known for conveying feel curiously absent this time out and had they been present, we might actually care about this world. Traces of Shyamalan's earlier work can be sensed in the plot: an everyman's journey towards becoming a superman reminds us of Unbreakable while the characters unease and philosophizing about destiny and faith has the feeling of Signs. Yet those earlier films had an intimate attention to character detail and tension-building pacing that is completely non-existent here. Perhaps Shyamalan bit off more than he could chew when took on this commercial vehicle.

If there's one element of the film that does hold dazzling creative juice, it's the action scenes. As the benders shape their elements to attack their enemies in a mystical kung-fu style, the action scenes take on a kind of new-age-martial-arts-for-the-CGI-era that does, in fact, work on the big screen. Shyamalan films these elaborate effects sequences in wide-angle long-takes that allows us to actually take in the action instead of chopping it up into a frantic quick-cutting style. As these child warriors bounce around their enemies throwing glowing orbs of their forceful elements, we actually find some excitement within this fantasy muck. We realize that if Shyamalan held a more wicked sense of humor, then The Last Airbender could've been one hell of a cheesy B-Movie kung-fu flick. Kung-fu movies were founded on preposterous plotlines that served as an excuse to serve elaborate fight scenes shrouded in mythic energy. Perhaps if Shyamalan devoted more energy and screen time to the fight scenes instead of the ridiculous plotting, then we might have had some giddy popcorn fun!

Shyamalan is a director who can make the fantastical feel plausible and the ridiculous seem gripping, so it's somewhat surprising that he can't pull off that hat trick with The Last Airbender. I wouldn't so much call it his worst film yet as much as the one most devoid of his acquired cinematic gifts. I'm afraid only real young fans of the cartoon series will find any interest in the adaptation. It's almost like an M. Night Shyamalan movie for people who don't like M. Night Shyamalan movies at all. And even those people would still probably reject this movie.

A Wasted 'Day'

2010-06-30T07:47:00.003-04:00

by Brett Parker

Knight and Day is an uninvolving, laughless trudge through what should have been a firecracker fusion between action and romantic comedy. Through Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, we are given two accomplished movie stars certainly capable of the tasks at hand, yet seem hopelessly lost and uninspired. Here is a film based around sensational action scenes, spy games, and a delicious romantic courtship, and the filmmakers don't have the slightest clue how to make us care about anything in the foreground.

The film opens with a beautiful woman named June (Diaz) yanking her heavy luggage through an airport. She is trying to catch a flight to her younger sister's wedding when she runs into Roy Miller (Tom Cruise), another traveler apparently heading for the same flight. June takes an instant attraction to Roy, for he appears to be handsome, smooth, well-groomed...and a cold-blooded killer! Every passenger on their flight, including the pilots, try one-by-one to kill Roy, yet he dispatches each one with an assassin's efficiency and even finds time to land the plane safely!

Roy explains to June that he is a secret agent who has gone rogue in order to protect a young science whiz named Simon (Paul Dano) who has concocted what could be the most important invention of the 21st Century. Roy claims his government colleagues tried to steal the invention and threaten Simon's life, so he hid him and the invention in a safe place and has gone on the run. Reasonably spooked by all this, June tries to avoid Roy and go about being a bride's maid to her sister. However, a fellow agent of Roy's named Fitzgerald (Peter Sarsgaard) shows up to inform June that Roy is in fact the bad guy and is out to steal the invention for himself. No matter what June believes, Roy eventually sweeps her up in an adventure filled with car crashes, gun fights, and motorcycle chases that spans all the way from Austria to Spain.

Knight and Day wants both to be a high-octane action ride and a fetching romance yet it comes up considerably short on both accounts. The action scenes here come equipped with all the tricked-out CGI effects and slam-bang moments you could expect, but after a while it all feels very redundant and unimaginative. It's been said that this film is meant to parody Cruise's Mission: Impossible stints, yet those films had an absurdest need to push the envelope towards action we'd rarely seen before. Perhaps if the film was more playful about over-the-top chaos, there would be more fun to relish. Say what you will about The A-Team's quick-cutting implausibilities, but at least that film had a cheerful need to mix things up in a insanely grand way.

Having Cruise and Diaz play off each other with smoldering and humorous romantic tension could provide a well of cinematic inspiration. However, the script doesn't provide them with any significant dialogue or touching moments. The script wants to unearth big laughs and deep yearning within their characters, but there are zero laughs to be held or any real romantic moments to hook us. Diaz looks beautiful as always and has a natural girl-next-door-quality perfectly suited to being a romantic lead, but her character is never fleshed out as more than a shrieking girly-girl. If she was given more pluck and intelligence, we could've had a strong feminine figure to care about. Cruise could play a character like this in his sleep (it's pretty remarkable that he could play a depth-defying super-agent in his sleep at this point in his career) and he does, in fact, appear disappointingly subdued. Perhaps the joke is that Roy has been at this gig for so long that he's grown casual about it, but we feel it's Cruise whose being too casual about the apparent humor of the situation. Even with a straight face, his performance lacks the deep yearning and intensity of his more memorable roles.

Director James Mangold (Identity, Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma) is a director known for tackling mythic situations with a great patience in pacing, almost too patient. I wouldn't exactly call his style low energy, but there's a faint subtlety to his work that can be a tad unnerving at times. He has a tendency to slow things down just when you wish the energy would get cranked up. Perhaps he was the wrong director to tackle this material, for he keeps things way too formal and straight. This movie demands frantic energy, whiz-bang pacing, and cockeyed hilarity, three things that have never been his strong suit. I'm thinking a director like J.J. Abrams (Cruise's Mission: Impossible 3 cohort) could've pulled it off, for he can deliver a warp-speed thrill ride without sacrificing an ounce of humor or heart.

The original and obvious model for Knight and Day has to be Charade, the 1960s Stanley Donen caper that found Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn conducting a compelling courtship amidst a shadowy thriller plot. The earlier film was essentially a romantic comedy that was occasionally interrupted by the thriller genre. The film made the wise decision of putting the Grant-Hepburn romance in the forefront and letting the dangerous aspects of the plot take care of itself. If Knight and Day had put more thought into its romantic aspects instead of it's well-calculated spy plot, it probably could've been more heartfelt and involving. Charade was also brilliant in the sly way it spoofed Grant's star image as well as the Hollywood thrillers he made over the years. It's such a shame that Cruise is afraid to let such vulnerabilities show on the big screen. He seems persistent in upholding his youthful, golden boy image just when he should be mischievously dissecting it. He should take a cue from Paul Newman, who showed us that revealing the cracks in your aging could provide a prosperous path to richer roles. Didn't Cruise learn from Tropic Thunder that poking fun at himself is a great way to go?

A movie like Knight and Day is usually a harvest for big-time Hollywood thrills, naughty sexual tension, and brutal genre self-reflection, yet this time everything comes up surprisingly bland. It's plays things to straight-laced and by-the-numbers when the subtext could've been endlessly fascinating. I admire it's old school yearnings for Hollywood charms and movie star wattage, but Cinema has grown too sophisticated to take such things at such a shallow face value anymore.

'Toy Story 3': Breathless and Heartbreaking

2010-06-30T07:38:00.002-04:00

by Brett Parker

The very idea of toys is an invite to the vivid imagination and childlike playfulness deeply rooted within all human beings. That explains the universal appeal of the Toy Story movies, a series that devised clever and hilarious ways to depict the logical universe of Toys if they actually existed. As you would imagine in the nature of a toy, they worried about being played with enough, getting lost, being broken beyond repair, or worst of all, being neglected by their owner. These Pixar hits not only highlighted the ingenious plights of being a toy but even revealed startling human depths along the way.

The first Toy Story is one of the best and most inventive of all animated films, computer-animated or hand-drawn. It captured the childlike glow of playing with toys while dissecting their very nature in humorously philosophical ways. It was also an exceptional buddy comedy, a thrilling adventure, and a sly meditation on adolescent anxieties over feelings of change. Toy Story 2 didn't exactly live up to the excitement and humor of the first film, but it was surprising how it deepened the series' themes of neglect and heartbreak.

Despite the exceptional quality of the first two films, there was an appropriate air of cynicism when it was announced that Pixar would be making a third Toy Story film, in 3-D no less. Despite Pixar's streak of magic, there was reasonable suspicion that this would be an assembly-line sequel that aimed for wallets instead of hearts. I'm achingly happy to report that this is certainly not the case and Toy Story 3 could not have found a better way to bring the adventures of Andy's Toys full circle and towards a satisfying conclusion. The filmmakers have discovered the most logical and fulfilling way to end this series with a cinematic experience that is almost exactly on par with the original film. The result is a surprisingly heartfelt and devastating experience to behold. Make no mistake about it, this one will punch you straight through the heart.

The film continues the story of the toys that live in Andy's bedroom, toys that come to life and discuss their existence whenever their beloved owner is not around. These toys include wise Cowboy Woody (Tom Hanks), action-ready spaceman Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), wise-cracking Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles) and his faithful wife Mrs. Potato Head (Estelle Harris), nerve-wracking dinosaur Rex (Wallace Shawn), and a trio of three-eyed Aliens ready to help out wherever they can. As the film opens, the gang faces a crisis: Andy (John Morris) is all grown-up and heading off to college. His mother is forcing him to get rid of all his childhood toys. For the gang, this means either living in the attic or, worst-case nightmare, getting put out in the trash!

Through a mishap involving cardboard boxes, Andy's Toys are accidentally donated to a day-care center to be played with by toddlers. All of the toys at the center are overseen by the seemingly warm teddy bear, Lotso (Ned Beatty) who is aided by the hilariously ambiguous Ken Doll (Michael Keaton). The center has the relaxing come on of a joyful retirement community and Andy's gang decides to settle in and give things a try, all except for Woody, who decides to set out and track down Andy. On his journey, Woody runs into another gang of toys who reveal deep, dark secrets about the day-care center and warn him that his friends may be in imminent danger. This leads Woody to set off an adventure to rescue his friends and return to Andy's house once and for all!

What is so appealing about the characters in the Toy Story series is that they aren't just a celebration of the plastic nature of toys but reflect sympathetic feelings and anxieties within human nature. Like the toys, we too have an intense need to fulfill our roles in life and feel loved and accepted. Whenever we feel like we're not living up to our potential, we also feel inadequate and worrisome. When our loved ones neglect us the way Andy often neglects his toys, the level of sadness and heartbreak is surprisingly equal to that of the toys. Like most humans, the toys are constantly analyzing their place in the world and the meaning of their existence only to discover that strong bonds through friendship and family are the best way to go.

These ideals and emotions have always been strongly present throughout the series but in Toy Story 3 they are brought to their absolute breaking point, demanding a catharsis. The fears and pain these toys feel come across as startlingly real. Take for example the character of Lotso, at first he is set up to be the typical animated baddie, yet the film slows down to reveal the wounded past that made him so vile and spiteful. This makes all of his actions come not from a standard place of evil, but from a broken one filled with heartache. He is not so much a villian as he is a tragic figure, one filled with such strong feelings of abandonment and existential loneliness that it's jarring how much we can relate to it. When was the last time an animated villian could be analyzed so deeply?

Even with its sly, dramatic subtext, the Toy Story series is always a reliable source for break-neck cinematic adventure. To me, the climactic race to the Moving Truck from the first film is the most thrilling moment in the entire series, an adventure sequence that could rank with any from the Indiana Jones films. Yet Toy Story 3 keeps its action just as fresh and exciting as the first time around. As Andy's Toys race to bust out of the shady day-care center that threatens to destroy them, the film settles into the mold of a prison-break film, one that can stand with any of the real ones. As the gang executes a calculated and thrilling plan to hurtle themselves out of their elaborate prison, we are witnessing an escape just as brilliant and exhilarating as the one Steve McQueen planned. This all leads to the most horrifying and powerful visual moment of the whole series, as Andy's Gang find themselves in a garbage incinerator, heading towards a giant flame that resembles the fires of hell. The toys feel this will be their last moment together and decide to hold hands and face hell with the entire strength of their friendship. In the moment of their ultimate nightmare, they fight it with the ultimate heart. The terrifying beauty of this scene truly levels you.

By now, much has been written about Toy Story 3 being a film that can make anyone cry. Not just women and children, but grown men as well. I admit I cried as the film's final moments allowed me to say farewell to each one of Andy's toys and realize just how special each and every one really is. For me, the film's end made me confront the fleeting passage of time that effects all our lives. I was 11-years-old when my Aunt Patty took me to see the original Toy Story and I was still young enough to let my sense of imagination and wonder completely take over as the film washed over my young mind. Of course, I've grown up and like most adults, I may have lost some of that childlike wonder. We often find ourselves living in a dark and cynical world and Toy Story 3 brings us face-to-face with a sense of innocence we once had and now lost. What is so heartbreaking about the film's ending is the realization that our childlike innocence just might be forever out of our reach. How could it not be? I kid you not, if you're a member of my generation who saw the first film in theaters, then watching Toy Story 3 will be one of the stronger Benjamin Button moments you'll ever have in your life.

Since the first Toy Story hit theaters back in 1995, Pixar has been on a creative roll that have made them one of the most influential forces on animated movies in cinematic history. The key to their success is that instead of shrouding their plots with junky sitcom hijinks, they root it in aspects of human nature that can touch about anyone's heart. While Toy Story 3 could've been a disposable, money-making sequel, it's an emotional powerhouse that ranks with the first Toy Story and Wall-E as Pixar's very best. It's almost a jaw-dropping surprise how hard this one tugs on the heartstrings. Even if animated flicks aren't really your thing, this is one not to be missed.

You Should Hire 'The A-Team'

2010-06-12T09:15:00.004-04:00

by Brett Parker

Most males from my generation have an affectionate nostalgia for the 80's Tv Show The A-Team, for it embodied a sense of reckless adventure and gung-ho machismo most adolescent men favor in their entertainment. It followed the exploits of rogue mercenaries who carried out a dangerous mission each week, and each episode promised car crashes, wisecracks, and Mr. T in all his gold-chain and fool-pitying glory. With it's heavy-duty action scenes and playful, pulpy feel, it was a TV Show that, let's face it, was meant to show up on the big screen sooner or later.

Hollywood producers are hoping to cash in big time on The A-Team's nostalgia and the most successful thing about the big screen update is how it honors the action-packed excitement and cheerful testosterone of the original show. Director Joe Carnahan directs with the same sense of frantic chaos and looney humor he displayed with Smokin' Aces and his big screen take on the classic series comes crashing into theatres with the same sense of thrill-a-minute bravado and smirking swagger the show embodied so well. It is said of the main characters that they "specialize in the ridiculous" and the same can certainly be said of this film. Thankfully, I mean that as a compliment.

The film follows an elite unit of Alpha Army Rangers who are bound together by dangerous military missions no ordinary soldier could touch. There's Hannibal Smith (Liam Neeson), the all-knowing leader, "Faceman" Peck (Bradley Cooper), the suave point man, "Howling Mad" Murdock (Sharlto Copley), the shell-shocked pilot, and B.A. Baracus (Quinton "Rampage" Jackson), the brooding bruiser. They meet on a deadly mission in Mexico and end up forming a bond that holds them together through the Iraq War. In the final days of that war, Hannibal learns of a secret assignment to intercept the engraving plates of a money counterfeiting scheme in Baghdad. It's a super-secret mission no soldier should be allowed to touch, but Hannibal knows his team can pull off just about anything, so he decides to take it.
As the mission is carried out, the A-Team is set-up and framed for the murder of their superior and for trying to keep the engraving plates for themselves. They are tried and found guilty in a Military Court and are sentenced to ten years in separate prisons. Of course, being the super-soldiers they are, each member of the team busts out of their individual prisons and re-groups to carry out a mission of revenge and name-clearing. This mission comes packed with twists, double-crosses, and mind-blowingly excessive action!

At one point, Hannibal states how "overkill is underrated." That might as well be the filmmaker's mantra for the film's action sequences. The A-Team is one of those action flicks where the filmmakers put realism, plausibility, and logical thought straight into a fire and laugh while it burns. It's the kind of movie where jeeps go driving through buildings, war planes can be evoked at the drop of a hat, giant ship crates get shuffled around like legos, and four men can fall 20,000 feet from the sky in a tank, crash safely in a lake, and drive off towards their next mission. All of this is presented in a dazed, quick-cutting style meant to cloak the ridiculousness of the action's logic. Either you're one of those moviegoers who finds this kind of action to be hopelessly exciting or a terrible bore. This time, I consider it the former.

Insanely over-the-top action can be sold to us if we have a genuine investment in the characters and their situation, and it's ultra-hard to resist the charms and attitude of the A-Team. If there's one thing the film does to perfection, it's to find actors that fully embody the personas of the original cast. It's the best TV-to-big screen casting since Miami Vice. Neeson is an effortless display of militant wisdom as he builds on the wonderful action momentum he started with Taken. With his devilish grin and big cigars, the seasoned veteran has great fun with the role. Cooper cranks up his movie star charisma to make Faceman's charms and smoothness wickedly compelling. Copley brings Murdock's madness such a lived-in sunniness that he transcends goofy caricature acting and brings a cockeyed conviction to the role. Baracus was perhaps the most memorable character from the original series and Jackson embodies everything we cherished about the hulking brute in a seamless manner, although Jackson is allowed to bring more thought and depth to the role than Mr. T was ever allowed to.

Other supporting characters make crucially memorable impressions. Brian Bloom, with his sinister eyes and grizzled voice, was born to play a villain and does so wonderfully as Pine, a Black Ranger nemesis to our heroes. Jessica Biel both embodies sexiness and smarts as Sosa, the government agent hot on the trail of the A-Team who also happens to be Faceman's ex (they have a tense and alluring scene in a photo booth). A surprising performance comes from Patrick Wilson as Lynch, a snarky C.I.A. agent with ambiguous motives. Wilson typically specializes in straight-forward, white bred lunks and to see him inject a knowing nastiness into this persona is rather jarring. He still presents a clean-cut Americana image while playing with a self-kidding sliminess that's great fun to relish.

A small joke is made with the Lynch character and his C.I.A. cohorts: they are presented as incompetent and misguided duds who don't live up to the high standards you'd expect from government figures. They're trigger-happy but don't exactly know how to work a gun. They can't see all the angles, they can't out-think their enemies, they're pushovers. It's as if Carnahan is commenting on the current crop of action heroes, who obviously lack the he-man bravado and war-hungry mindset of yesteryear's warriors. The A-Team are obviously a throwback to the Reagan-Era tough-guy mindset and there's almost a vintage feel to their sense of blow-stuff-up-and ask-questions-later. There's a point to be made with these Frat Boy-turned-C.I.A. buffoons: they're wussies compared to with the audacity and fortitude displayed by these old-school hulks.

So if you have an action sweet tooth and your in the mood for mindless thrills and super-cool characters, then maybe you should hire the A-Team! It's not one of the more intelligent, polished, or plausible action movies you'll ever see, but there's great fun to be had with it's crude, crash-everything style. For all it's melodramatic and dangerous developments, you'll often catch the main characters cracking delightfully mischievous smiles. You'll find yourself doing the same thing in the theatre.

A Bomb 'MacGruber' Can't Diffuse

2010-05-25T07:12:00.002-04:00

by Brett Parker

It's one thing to make a movie based on a Saturday Night Live skit, it's another to make a movie based on a bad SNL skit. MacGruber is a recently concocted SNL character that is meant to parody the hit 80s TV show, MacGuyver (talk about a joke that's 25 years too late!). Like the show's title character, MacGruber is also a specially-trained secret agent who tries to escape from deadly situations with meticulously-crafted inventions. Unlike MacGuyver, however, MacGruber is a deeply incompetent and disturbed individual who doesn't have the intelligence or confidence to follow through with his plans. This skit doesn't really produce killer laughs, only mild amusement. An entire movie with this character could grow tiring.

When the MacGruber movie got a greenlight from Hollywood, the brains from SNL did, in fact, come up with a clever objective: instead of simply spoofing an 80s television character, why not spoof all the over-the-top, macho man action movies from the late 80s-early 90s? SNL star Will Forte and his cohorts said they would look to films like Rambo, Die Hard, and Lethal Weapon for comic inspiration. It sounded like they were on the right track, but the final product misses the mark in producing consistently big laughs. It only hits its comic targets half the time, settling for misguided, lowbrow gags instead of really taking action cliches to the self-reflexive cleaners. In the end, the film is only slightly more amusing than the very skits it's based on.

The film opens with a nuclear warhead being stolen by a mysterious villain named Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer) who sports a silly pony tail and pitch black clothing. U.S. Colonel James Faith (Powers Boothe) learns of Cunth's actions and realizes that the only agent who can stop him is his sworn nemesis, MacGruber (Will Forte). Cunth tried to kill MacGruber on his wedding day by rigging a bomb at the ceremony. MacGruber survived the explosion but his beloved fiance, Casey (Maya Rudolph), died horribly. In the aftermath of the explosion, MacGruber decided to fake his own death and go into seclusion. Yet once Faith tracks him down to tell him of Cunth's reappearance, MacGruber wants back in action!
Faith explains how MacGruber is a highly decorated agent with several prestigious honors under his belt, yet in action he appears to be one of the most incompetent and lame-brained agents to ever stumble onto the field! He is constantly fumbling with his homemade weapons and brings about more chaos then he tries to prevent. His style and musical tastes also suggest a man stuck in the past: he sports a mullet, rocks flannel shirts with a tan vest, and listens to 80s soft rock constantly. Nonetheless, MacGruber carries a fierce determination to carry out his mission. After a hilarious mishap with his old soldier buddies, he recruits Faith's aide Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) and Casey's sister, Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) to help him defeat Cunth.

In a time of quick-cutting CGI frantic action surrounded by athletic pretty boys, I feel a certain nostalgia for the 80s-90s action films that MacGruber sets out to spoof. The kind of action movies that Joel Silver used to produce constantly. They used to feature grizzled he-men with troubled pasts and a cynical outlook on life. They drank, they womanized, they didn't care. They got caught up battling eccentric villains with outlandish styles and strange accents. They had interludes with women who could be just as tough, vulgar, and unforgiving as they were. There was grotesque and gratuitous violence. Limbs and blood flew around everywhere. There were explosions every other minute. There were shamelessly melodramatic developments with a wonderfully dramatic musical score to accompany it (Michael Kamen was the go-to-guy for such a score back in the day). It was a glorious era, one that I feel was inadvertently unraveled by the self-reflexive overkill of Last Action Hero and the shockingly vile violence of Ricochet. If you crack an affectionate smile whenever you hear the names John McClane, Martin Riggs, or John Cutter, then you know exactly what I'm talking about.

I admire MacGruber for targeting this brand of action films, for its ripe with juicy jokes. The film really comes alive when it highlights the formulas and conventions of these outsized action standards with the same height of frantic energy. MacGruber has a strong awareness of the genres delicious overacting and bloody overkill. It follows the same developments of a throwback action picture with both a wink and a nudge. There's melodramatic flashbacks, declarations of vengeance, bloody fistfights, shameless slow-motion shots. First time feature director Jorma Taccone really has a strong sense of the look and feel of this kind of testosterone atmosphere, he just doesn't push the jokes as far as they can go. The genre's cliches are highlighted, but they are never played with in an exceptionally clever way. They are poked at from the most lowbrow level, and this spares MacGruber from being a significant spoof.

There was a dangerous air of silence in the theater where I watched MacGruber and the film's undoing is from a lack of strong gags. Aside from two uproarious sex scenes scored to Mr. Mister's “Broken Wings,” this film fails to produce any memorable or wildly hilarious gags. It's all to content with being a lame-brained stupid comedy. Stupid comedies can work wonderfully for producing great laughs, for if people hold low expectations for your film, you can get away with bloody murder in your jokes without anyone stopping you. That was the sly genius behind comedies like Dodgeball and Zoolander. In spite of Will Forte's admirable comic energy, MacGruber's childish insanity far outweighs its comic sensibilities and the result is a dud.

Part of the problem is that MacGruber himself is not fleshed out as a cooky character we can care about. The joke is that he's a relic from the 80s completely incapable of handling government missions in the present day. The film barely highlights any decade-different culture shocks, making MacGruber's 80s bravado a lifeless joke. In a time of iPods, smart cars, and Facebook, a man of the Mullet and Walkman trying to function in this era could be very funny. The first Austin Powers, for example, knew how to wonderfully milk fish-out-of-water jokes from the idea of a 60s secret agent transported to the 90s. It's jarring that the writers here could overlook such a comic opportunity.

My opinion on MacGruber's comedy reflects my same opinion on the current generation of Saturday Night Live's writers and players: they present good ideas for comic gags, but they don't mold them into true hilarity. Saturday Night Live used to be a reliable haven for live wire comic talents and uproarious gags, yet the skits nowadays are extremely limp and lame. They have the potential to be killer gags, yet the new age SNL talent are clueless when it comes to making something that really cooks. It'd be nice to believe that these players could improve over time, but the current SNL team have a curiously smug, self-congratulatory air about themselves; they think they really are creating legendary gags. They seem to think that being on SNL automatically makes them comic legends. Back in the day, SNL legends had to work harder and think smarter to etch their names in the public eye. Before guys like John Belushi or Adam Sandler became household names, they had to labor to come up with hot jokes and characters that people would actually give a damn about. Those kind of giant efforts feel lacking in SNL nowadays and those efforts are crucially missing in MacGruber as well.

It's generally acknowledged that movies based on SNL skits make for awful comedies that scrape the bottom of the barrel. As the saying goes, what works for two minutes won't exactly work for two hours. The Blues Brothers and Wayne's World are considered the exceptions, and I must admit I have a strange fondness for Coneheads. MacGruber truly had the tools and mindset to break this cinematic curse, but it fails to do so. It will unfortunately join the weaker SNL movies in comic oblivion. Now I hope that a cool film team will come out and make the MacGuyver movie, showing the YouTube era just how cool this cat really is!

A Decent 'Iron Man' Sequel

2010-05-11T09:18:00.002-04:00

by Brett Parker

Jon Favreau's Iron Man, with its hedonist's bravado and bruised heart, was the best superhero movie I'd ever seen. While the film contained familiar strokes from the superhero genre, Favreau brought a sense of quirky humor and Altmanesque formalism that elevated the material. Of course the key to the movie's charms lied within the main performance from neurotic goofball Robert Downey, JR. While most superhero characters come across as comic misfit sweeties, Downey made his Tony Stark a narcissistic, womanizing, hard-partying cynic in desperate need of redemption. While most actors use skilled method techniques to bring superheroes to life, it appears Downey merged his inner-demons and character defects within the comic book archetype, and the result was spellbinding. While most superheroes draw us along with their flashy costumes and amazing powers, it was the hurt behind Downey's eyes that hooked us from start to finish.

It's such a disappointment, then, that Iron Man 2 doesn't build on the wonderful momentum set forth by the first film's originality but chooses instead to be a slam-bang popcorn ride. It's all too content with it's pop funkiness, and it sidesteps the strong character strokes and subtle drama of the first film to pile up on action thrills and big effects sequences. The blockbuster junkies will certainly eat this serving up, but those who cherished the uniqueness of the first film will feel that something is seriously missing this time out.

Tony Stark (Downey) has certainly been busy since the last time we've seen him. Since he revealed his secret identity as the combat robot known as Iron Man, he's been policing injustices of the world to apparently great success. It is vaguely hinted at that world peace has been materializing quickly and that Stark Industries is flourishing prosperously. Stark has appointed his personal assistant, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) to be the new CEO of his company while Stark assures the U.S. Government that his technology cannot be duplicated.
While Stark basks in his newfound superhero status, trouble brews on the horizon. An evil Russian genius named Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) believes that the Stark family stole powerful ideas from his father and he plans to take Tony out with a deadly pair of electric whips. A weapons tycoon named Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) is also jonesing for a way to defeat Stark and thinks an alliance with the brilliant Vanko just might benefit them both. Tony's best friend Rhodie (Don Cheadle) wants the Iron Man technology to fight as the War Machine. Stark's mysterious new secretary named Natalie (Scarlett Johansson) also brings him unease. With everything going on, Tony must also contend with the fact that the very life source that's keeping him alive may also be poisoning his blood, killing him bit by bit.

Iron Man 2 is by no means a bad sequel, it just seriously derailed from the sensibilities that made the first one feel so significant. It suffers from that Hollywood habit of making sequels more bloated and outsized than the first film. New faces and several subplots are stuffed into the plot and the film never slows down long enough to develop things significantly. Favreau no longer has a grip on the patience and elegance he possessed the first time around and now frantically bounces around trying to keep every subplot afloat. Things never get boring and there are certainly very impressive action scenes, but it was scenes of attentive character details that made the first film so special. I'm reminded that for all the explosions, robots, and fights the first one contained, it was Stark being nearly brought to tears explaining his newfound ways that proved to be the most exciting moment in the entire movie.

The sequel has attracted a lot of famous faces to play iconic characters from the comics, but so busy is the plot that we never get close enough to care about any of these new additions. Scarlett Johansson radiates with sexiness as Natalie Rushman, and she has killer kung-fu movies, yet she is given zero character depth; she's merely window decoration. Terrance Howard was wonderful as Rhodie in the first film, yet this time he's been replaced by Don Cheadle. It's a long and complicated story behind Howard's departure, but essentially Favreau did not like his performance in the first film. I don't know what Favreau was thinking, for Howard is one of the most interesting actors we have and, with his physique and demeanor, he was born to play War Machine. Howard had a grace and command with the character that his replacement fatally lacks; Cheadle is humorless and lifeless in the role.

The most exciting addition to the cast turns out to be the film's biggest disappointment. The newly-resurrected method darling Mickey Rourke shows up as the vengeance-ridden Russian badie Vanko, in what is essentially a stroke of casting brilliance. Rourke's lived-in and brooding shell is perfectly suited for a villainous exterior, and Rourke worked extra hard to research Russian criminals and their lifestyle, but the performance is wasted. Rourke fought to bring layered depths to a one-dimensional character, but the screenplay won't allow them in. Vanko is given rather little to say and he is curiously absent from most of the film. The script also fails to flesh out the apparent tension between Stark and Vanko. These are damaged geniuses, bounded by the sins of their fathers, yet their relationship never elevates beyond cheap comic book psychology.

The most livewire and satisfying addition to the cast is the energetic Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer. Rockwell seems tuned to the offbeat humor and peculiar emotions of the first film and jolts things up everytime he's on the screen. He revels in being a conniving slimeball and he gets high on his character's spoiled antics. A hilariously-grabbing scene shows Hammer spewing a bratty temper-tantrum towards Vanko over his failure to deliver a perfect breed of Iron Man suits. Vanko is a scary man to behold, yet Hammer never flinches in his adolescent rage. In the role of a pure snake, Rockwell shines.

Iron Man 2 is one of those flicks where sparkling individual moments outshine the whole, as they say. Iron Man and War Machine have a breathtaking battle not only with each other in Stark's home, but with an army of sharp-looking Iron Droids courtesy of Hammer. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) wonderfully scolds Stark in a Donut Shop in a scene that resembles a high school principal chewing out a classroom bad boy. I enjoyed the heartfelt and poignant riddle Howard Stark leaves for his son in old film reel footage (John Slattery from Mad Men plays Howard, although James Caan should've been allowed to reprise this role from the first film. Caan would be a perfect fit as Tony Stark's Dad). My favorite moment is the final romantic moment between Stark and Pepper, fusing the quirky character play of the first film with the dewey-eyed sweetness of the Superman-Lois Lane romance.

Iron Man 2 holds steady thanks largely to the wildly-appealing performance from Downey. His hard-living, hellraising billionaire is one of the most original superhero characters to ever grace the screen and this merging between damaged actor and comic icon is a silver screen wonder to behold. I'll follow this Tony Stark into any cinematic territory, even a mediocre sequel. I just hope when it comes time to make Iron Man 3, Favreau returns to the first film and realizes what made it work so wonderfully.

BY THE WAY: Remember how Iron Man had a really cool scene placed after the end credits? So does the sequel and it's also worth waiting to check out after all the credits have played. You thought you were fired up for the Avengers initiative before? Wait until you see this!

A Really Bad 'Date'

2010-04-13T07:02:00.002-04:00

by Brett Parker

Steve Carrell and Tina Fey are undoubtedly two of the most gifted comedians working in showbiz today. That their new movie, Date Night, is so painfully unfunny comes as something of a shock. These two pros labor extra hard to jolt hard laughs into a promising concept, yet the hilarity never manifests. I feel the blame should go to director Shawn Levy, whose career thus far has proven that he is content with lame-brain jokes on a ridiculously lowbrow level. Date Night proves that sometimes even the best of comedians can't fully rescue a shaky script.

Carrell and Fey star as Phil and Claire Foster, a seemingly happy married couple who begin to feel bogged down by their daily suburban routine. Their marriage has become an endless cycle of 9-5 work, taking care of their kids, constant exhaustion, and uneventful date nights at a bland steak house. Once the Fosters discover that their married friends are getting a divorce (Mark Ruffalo and Kristen Wiig in wasted cameos), they begin to question the strength and spark of their very own marriage. Wanting to spice things up, they decide to have a special date night at a trendy restaurant in New York City.

The Fosters get all spruced up and travel to the Big Apple to check out a high-class venue called Claw. It turns out the restaurant has a monumental waiting list and its damn near impossible for the Fosters to suddenly grab a table. Feeling spontaneous, Phil decides to lie and claim a reservation for a couple called the Triplehorns all for himself. The Fosters claim the Triplehorns' table and that's when the mayhem begins. They are approached by two gun-toting shady characters (Common and Jimmi Simpson) who demand that they hand over a stolen hard drive or be killed. The Fosters try desperately to explain that its all a case of mistaken identity, but the thugs grow more threatening as they think they're dealing with the real Triplehorns. The Fosters make a daring escape with their lives and this sets off a wild night in the city in which the married couple will deal with corrupt cops, security intel, hostile con artists, car chases, a big-time gangster, a private gentleman's club, and the N.Y. District Attorney himself.

Date Night is certainly a good idea for a comedy with a plot ripe for comic opportunities, yet the potential is wasted and the film becomes a deadly haven of silence. The jokes are incredibly lame and no one says anything of any intelligible wit. Perhaps any hope for a comic edge was skewered by the film's PG-13 rating. Perhaps if the talent here was allowed to riff without any inhibitions they would've really unearthed some worthwhile laughs. Of course there's nothing wrong with a comedy that the whole family can enjoy, if it respects the intelligence of the family. New York City is more fun in a comedy that plays with its devilish tendencies instead of one that smooths them over to grab a broader audience. Its as if the filmmakers wanted Date Night to be a reworking of After Hours for the Family Channel. Doesn't sound too fun, does it?

Carrell and Fey have certainly earned their now-iconic status as two of the funniest comedians around. They've etched out quite a name for themselves in television, where Carrell's The Office and Fey's 30 Rock have proven to be two of the funniest television shows ever produced. Of course these stars aren't just TV wonders; Carrell was rip-roaring hilarious in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Fey brought a sharp wit to Mean Girls. It's rather jarring that their efforts fail miserably this time out, but I think Levy's own lack of a comic edge most likely put a damper on things. A look over his filmography (Just Married, The Pink Panther) shows that he revels in tame comedies with dim-witted gags. He has the cinematic sensibilities of a clean-cut 13-year-old. He seems to offer up movies for the kiddie matinees. Screwball romps are more fun when the director bears an anarchic spirit themselves. That's why Judd Apatow and Ben Stiller are such fine comic directors.

One positive aspect of Carrell and Fey's casting is their lightning rod for attracting top talents to this project. The film is wall-to-wall with famous faces (Mark Wahlberg, James Franco, Mila Kunis, Mark Ruffalo, Kristen Wiig, Olivia Munn, Will i Am, Taraji P. Henson) who most likely took their roles out of respect for Carrell and Fey's brilliant comic work. Yet the screenplay gives none of these actors anything of real wit or intelligence to say and it becomes a sad display of a wasted cast. Despite the film's fatal lack of laughs, a few juicy performances still manage to spark some interest. Franco and Kunis bicker wonderfully as a criminal couple, displaying an energetic and uproarious tension that Carrell and Fey crucially lack. Wahlberg is oddly convincing as a rakish security expert who constantly shows off his flawless abs. The film's funniest performance comes from J.B. Smoove as a frantically terrified Cab Driver who gets caught up in a high-speed chase with the Fosters. His school-girl squealing and howling hysterics generate the only laughs I really had in this film. Smoove frequents television a lot ('Til Death, Castle, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Everybody Hates Chris) but now its time to put him in more movies!

Carrell and Fey have done wonderful work in the past and they will continue to do great comedy in the future and one day we will all forget about Date Night. It's a disappointing reminder that they are not invincible. So if you want to check out a laugh-a-minute comedy of biting hilarity with a cast that hits on all cylinders, check out Hot Tub Time Machine. I saw it for a second time with a group of friends and I laughed even harder than I did the first time! It has everything that Date Night wanted to have, but couldn't quite grasp.

Old School 'Titans' Hold New School 'Clash'

2010-04-03T11:31:00.002-04:00

by Brett Parker

Clash of the Titans is a pop feast madly in love with the outsized aspects of Greek mythology. There is almost zero modesty in the film's depiction of the dandified Gods of Olympus and the havoc they wreak on the paranoid humans below. This film is an ancient peacock of unapologetic fantasy. This stark raving adventure is basked in hopelessly fun CGI work that essentially makes this film an excuse for dazzling eye candy. If you're romantic for the more fantastical elements of Greek mythology and have a sweet tooth for blockbuster effects spectacles, Clash of the Titans will certainly put a delighted smile on your face.

The film takes place in ancient Greek times within the city of Argos, where a bitter war is brewing between the humans and the gods. The inhabitants of Earth have grown tired of the Gods messing around with their fates and they begin a misguided revolt against their spiritual rulers (their efforts appear half-baked and clueless; how do you stand up against almighty Gods?). This angers Zeus (Liam Neeson), the head God of Olympus who loves his human creations and cannot fathom why they would betray him. Wanting desperately to restore the order of things, Zeus agrees to let his estranged brother and god of the Underworld, Hades (Ralph Fiennes) launch a sinister plot to terrorize the people of Earth with demonic monsters. Angered primarily by the people of Argos, Hades offers them a deal: offer up the Princess Andromeda (Alexa Davalos) as a sacrifice or he will unleash the Kraken, a gigantic demon beast of devastating destruction, on Argos and have everything and everyone destroyed.

An ageless woman named Io (Gemma Arterton) informs the people of Argos that hope may be in their midst in the form of Perseus (Sam Worthington). Perseus was raised as the son of a simple fisherman, but it is revealed that he is the illegitimate child of Zeus, who impregnated the wife of his human enemy, Acrisius (Jason Fleyming) just to spite him. Acrisius retaliated by casting Perseus off to sea, only to be scooped up by the fisherman Spyros (Pete Postlethwaite), who claimed him for his own. The people of Argos believe the demigod nature of Perseus makes him the perfect candidate to help save their land from the angry Gods. He is then whisked away on a perilous quest in which he must defeat creatures of the underworld, take the head of the snake-like Medusa (Natalia Vodianova), and battle the colossal Kraken as it inches towards its mission of annihilation.

Clash of the Titans is, of course, a remake of the 1981 Desmond Davis cult classic that was beloved for its special effects work, supervised by the now legendary Ray Harryhausen. The film employed a skillful display of stop-motion animation, considered dazzling at the time, to bring its colorful creatures to life. The effects work seems dated compared by today's state-of-the-art standards, but it is nonetheless an example of stop-motion animation as an art form. These visuals, along with kitschy acting, makes the original a candy-coated B-movie adventure too fun to be denied.

Director Louis Leterrier (The Incredible Hulk) essentially wants to retain the original film's sense of zestful adventure while making the effects work sleeker, shinier, and more aggressive. Most effects spectacles can come across as redundant and relentless, but Clash of the Titans really knows how to pump its sequences with juices of excitement and visual creativity. Letterier films his action scenes as if they were theme-park rides and they end up containing the same sense of urgent adrenaline as a result of this. Perseus has an intense battle with lobster-like creatures that holds us in a surprisingly intense grasp. A hellish confrontation with Medusa in her alluringly deranged Underworld lair provides a dark well of thrills. The film's ultimate money shot comes with the appearance of the Kraken, the outsized sea monster from hell who is sixty stories of slimy tentacles, horrifying jaws, and scaly wrath. The design and execution of this aquatic demon is truly awesome!

With effects as grand and compelling as this popcorn ride dishes out, it can be hard for actors present in such a venture to keep their heads above water and generate interest. This cast doesn't have that problem; we're intrigued by their daring efforts to make this over-the-top story believable. Worthington makes good on the promise made in Avatar that he is a compelling and human action figure with the sort of brutish exterior that will serve him well in future action vehicles. You could call him a Russell Crowe lite. Neeson and Fiennes bring an effortless prestige to the godlike mystique their characters demand. All that's left for one to really ask for is a strong female sexpot in a suggestive toga, and Gemma Arterton supplies that with great success!

Since most of modern storytelling derived from the formalities of Greek Myth, we can see the origins of treasured movies within the film's plot. Shades of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are painfully obvious while the Perseus dilemma of being half-man/half-God is clearly an early model for Superman. These recognitions bring a surprising delight to the audience as the film unfolds. In his various writings, American mythologist Joseph Campbell often claimed that almost every mythical story can be traced back to the same structure: an ordinary man with special abilities gets a call to adventure and must endure a perilous journey to restore order against evil and prove themselves as heroes. Along the way, they will meet an older mentor, various sidekicks, and a loved one to protect. In the end, evil forces are defeated, order is restored, and the hero can live happily ever after with a loved one by their side and enlightenment in their heart. With Clash of the Titans, we can certainly recognize the formalities of this timeless structure and we're deeply pleased to see that it still holds up when done efficiently.

I could write on about how the film's plot evokes contemporary ideals regarding man vs. religion, government, or foreign invaders, but too much intelligent thought should not really be applied to Clash of the Titans. It is essentially an excuse to roll out dazzling spectacles of CGI thrills and on that level it succeeds quite deliciously. It proves that computer effects can still excite us in a B-movie, that Worthington and Arterton are game for more leading and interesting roles, and that Greek mythology will always be an inspiring source for cinematic fun.

A 'Hot Tub' Worth Dipping In

2010-03-30T07:00:00.003-04:00

by Brett Parker

What happens when you cross The Hangover with Back to the Future? You get Hot Tub Time Machine, a comedy armed with what has to be one of the funniest titles in cinematic history. It rings with a goofball's invite to ultra-silly kitsch. All you can really hope for in such a venture is for the film itself to live up to the playful jolliness of the title. It does, and it even makes sincere efforts to surpass it.

The comedy follows a group of four friends who are all facing serious boughts of inadequacy in their lives. Adam (John Cusack) has just suffered a toxic break-up with his girlfriend and is in a miserable rut. His nephew, Jacob (Clark Duke), lives in his Uncle's basement and wastes his days on the internet. Nick (Craig Robinson) is stuck in a dead-end dog grooming job and suffers a demanding wife who may be cheating on him. Lou (Rob Corddry) is a reckless boozer with nothing of substance in his adult life. One night, he has a drunken mishap with his car in his home garage that looks very much like a suicidal act. Lou swears it was a drunken mistake, but the other three still have their concerns and try to devise a way to cheer him up. Their plan is to spend the weekend at a ski resort they used to populate in their youth. The foursome pack up and head to the resort, only to discover that it has been seriously run down over the years to become one of the most loathsome ski resorts in existence.

Despite their shabby surroundings, the four decide to make the best of their trip and they booze it up in their hotel suite's hot tub. After a night of binging heavily in the tub waters, the guys awaken to discover that the hot tub has magically transported them back to the 1980s. The ski resort is overrun with leg warmers, jerry curls, and giant cell phones! It turns out the gang has magically inhabited their younger selves during the last trip they took to that lodge in their youth (Jacob wasn't even born yet, but he is still present in this blast from the past). While stuck in the past, the gang contemplates whether its better to follow the same path their lives have taken or use their knowledge of the future to make things better for themselves. Hijinks ensue, time gets altered, and a mysterious Repair Man (Chevy Chase) tries to help them to get home.

It is said that John Cusack received a phone call to help contribute to a comedy script from MGM. Once he heard the title, he laughed out loud and agreed to help out on the condition that Steve Pink (his collaborator on Grosse Point Blank and High Fidelity) got to join him. MGM made the right move, for we can sense how Pink's direction and Cusack's co-producing and script contributions helped save this comic romp from being callow trash. Like their earlier works, Pink and Cusack bring a feeling of middle-aged angst, romantic sweetness, and strong masculine insight to the material. You can certainly see the ways in which this deranged sitcom strides towards grown-up material. It's an on-screen struggle between screwball and maturity, a battle that screwball wins!

The comedy starts off a bit slow; the jokes and expositions are a bit weak, yet things get more colorful (literally) once the foursome finds their way to the 80s. It's in this pastel-colored decade where the film finds its comic momentum and takes off running. Whats most impressive, and surprising, is the various and thoughtful ways the main dudes discuss matters of the Space-Time Continuum. Most comedies revolved around time leaps usually take their sci-fi concepts for granted. Here we see hilariously active discussions about time travel: should the guys relive their past the exact same way? Should they alter the course of their futures? Should they invent stuff before its meant to be invented? Its refreshing to see time travelers asking the very same questions we would ask in such a situation.

The film actually produces ingenious gags to play off of the logic of the plot's timeline. There's an inspired bit involving a bellhop (Crispin Glover) who is fated to suffer a severed arm sometime in the 80s. Another hilarious scene shows Lou betting on a Super Bowl using his foresight of the future (this scene produces a surprise cameo from a deliciously 80s movie star, who shows up with one of the most beautiful women in showbiz on his arm). A funky fun sequence shows Nick stealing from the Black Eyed Peas to dazzle during a musical set at a nightclub. And I really enjoyed the film's over-the-top play on Back to the Future's slightly-superficial yet undeniably-satisfying ending.

Hot Tub Time Machine is a mixture between the current cinematic trend of bromance movies and the 80s trend of men finding their true selves in a cynical and confusing time. The highly likeable cast hurtle through the gags with a heroic sincerity and conviction while the filmmakers treat us to more brain cells than we'd expect. It may be a slight enterprise, but it's a wildly fun comic ride that successfully makes you laugh harder at the film than you did at the title.

'Men' to Avoid

2010-03-23T07:02:00.002-04:00

by Brett Parker

In the midst of American health care reform comes Repo Men, a harrowing sci-fi fable that suggests horrid and disturbing ways insurance companies can dominate and tamper with our medical care in the future. The good news is that technology will be so advanced that any body organ can be artificially replicated to replace a faltering one. The bad news is that these organs are so astronomically expensive that the insurance company holds the right to gut you and repossess their property if you fall behind on payments. It's a wickedly clever premise for a sci-fi parable, one that's a bloody nightmare to behold. The great failure of this film is that it spends way too much time depicting the bloody aspects of the story instead of contemplating the nightmarish angles.

The film opens by introducing us to the inner-workings of The Union, the elaborate health care company that provides replacement organs for American citizens of the future. Need a new heart, kidney, or liver to stay alive? The Union can provide a technologically advanced replacement in no time. The only problem is that a typical organ is usually in the minimum pricing range of six figures. The Union assures its customers that efficient payment plans can be set up to suit any citizen's financial situation, but its an unspoken fact that most customers can't keep up with such gargantuan monthly installments. If a customer falls about three months behind payments, The Union dispatches their highly-trained repo men to reclaim their hardware. These agents track down their quarry, render them unconscious with a stun gun, and slice open their skin to reclaim The Union's blood-soaked property. They more or less leave their former customers to die. It's a gruesome business, but one that appears to be booming.

The film centers on a repo man named Remy (Jude Law) who is mainly considered the top man on the job. He comes from a military background that helps give him the poise, discipline, and detachment to be so good at his assignments (“A job's a job,” he keeps reminding himself). Joining him on his jobs is his lifelong friend and partner in repossession, Jake (Forrest Whitaker), a tough cannon who loves his job just a little too much. Remy's job has become something of a strict routine until the fateful day when he has an accident with a defibrillator on the job. The accident causes him to have his heart replaced by The Union while he's unconscious, bounding Remy to the company's overwhelming payment system.

This changing of hearts literally causes Remy to have a change of heart and he finds he no longer has the stomach to carry out his repo jobs. This leaves him without work and without a way to pay for his expensive new heart. Pretty soon, it becomes painfully clear that Remy is going to be tracked down by his very own comrades and have his heart ripped out. He realizes he must go on the run in order to stay alive. He tries to hide out and figure out ways to defeat the very repo technology he used to live by, all with the help of a street woman named Beth (Alice Braga). Remy must also prepare for his eventual confrontation with his tough-as-nails best friend.

In the back of my mind, I found Repo Men somewhat similar to Minority Report, Steven Spielberg's wonderful sci-fi thriller about predicting murders before they happen. That film also depicted an advanced futuristic technology that betrays its key player, forcing him to try and defeat his own system. While Minority Report touched on anxieties over post-9/11 security, Repo Men stirs up nightmares over current health care issues. Minority Report is a shining example of all the qualities Repo Men appears to lack: command in tune, fluidity, strongly-realized themes, masterful action sequences, alluring suspense, thoughtful meditations. Minority Report was a tight masterwork that weaved all its ideas and themes together in a focused flow. Repo Men appears to wander shapelessly between its excessive action scenes and casual ideas.

The best thing the film has going for it is the performances. While this cast easily could've been made up of B-Movie pop faces, we're actually given seasoned pros who've treated us to powerhouse drama in the past. Jude Law is an actor who can weave effortlessly between charm and anguish and its these qualities that sell us on Remy. He also makes for a durable action figure. I loved the scene where he takes on a office full of airport security guards without getting a scratch on him. Forest Whitaker brings his unsettling tics and eccentric bravado to Jake and brings him more depth than we'd expect from such a character. These are two actors who can never be accused of sleepwalking through roles. Also adding devilish fun to the cast is Liev Schreiber as Frank, the apparent head of The Union. He's a wily and quick-witted pencil pusher who would easily dismiss his shady dealings as “business-as-usual.” He humorously doesn't take the film's plot as a matter of life or death, but plays it more as if it were simply an annoying nuisance to a businessman.

If a character is about to die in a movie and is shot dead with a gun, that's effective violence. If a character is about to die and he gets his head cut off with a chainsaw when a gun could've accomplished the same point, that's gratuitous violence. Repo Men is one of the most gratuitously violent movies I've seen in a long time. Of course the repossession scenes necessarily calls for blood and body parts; fight scenes later in the film consist of stabbings, decapitations, slit throats, and blood splattering for no apparent reason other than fodder for action junkies. It's obvious that director Miguel Sapochnik wants to borrow The Matrix's ideal for fusing big ideas with big action, but the action here is so bloody excessive that it looks creepily out of place with the rest of the film. Perhaps Sapochnik is trying to demonstrate a demented karma by showing how Repo Men who live by the sword must also die excessively by it, but the action scenes are too overwrought to focus on such an idea. There's a scene towards the end where Remy uses two knives and a hacksaw to slice and dice security guards and repo men blocking his path in a hallway. This scene is so excessively gory and over-stylized that it becomes hopelessly distracting. A warning to the faint-of-heart: if you get queasy over blood, guts, and human dissections, stay far, far, away from this movie!

Repo Men is a cautionary tale laced with big ideas and a compelling enough premise, but it all doesn't hold together in the end. There are likeable stand-alone moments (I love how Remy infiltrates his old job once he's a wanted man...and the way Frank, Jake, and even Remy laugh about it) but too many aspects of this movie don't deliver. The production design by David Sandefur (Journey to the Center of the Earth) feels half-hearted and doesn't deliver a futuristic landscape that holds up when compared to the great ones we've seen in the past. The soundtrack songs are meant to evoke a disjointed irony but are too distracting and doesn't serve the material in an effective way. Plus the film forces a ludicrous twist ending on us that comes straight out of left field and doesn't fit at all. I appreciate how this film makes us contemplate the horrors our society could face if health care reform were to never intervene, its just too bad that it doesn't appear in an entertaining enough package.

BY THE WAY: The film is based on a novel by Eric Garcia called The Repossession Mambo, a title that is literally referenced in this movie. It's a wonderful title and it sounds way better than Repo Men. Besides, it would've avoided confusion with Alex Cox's 1984 cult classic, Repo Man.

Familiar Yet Wacky 'Cop' Business

2010-03-01T10:14:00.003-05:00

by Brett Parker

Kevin Smith is a filmmaker known for directing dialogue that not only delivers raunchiness and vulgarity in a delightful symphony, but reveals staggering insights into pop culture. The characters in Smith’s world heavily discuss comic books, constantly reference movies, and even know all the words to Run DMC songs. Sometimes they take on the bizarre, self-reflexive feat of criticizing the very cinematic situation they find themselves inhabiting. His characters spend so much time dissecting clichés in entertainment that his films often manage to become devoid of them in the process.

When Kevin Smith revealed that his latest project, Cop Out, was to be a throwback to the buddy cop comedies prominent in the 80s, I half-expected a thoughtful spoof that put the tired conventions of the genre through the ringer. How entertaining it would be to see buddy cops discussing buddy cop clichés as they were enacting them! To lace all that with Smith’s trademark wit and color would truly be a delight. But unfortunately, Smith has long-strayed from his raw indie wagon and has settled into a comfort zone of creating formulaic Hollywood comedies devoid of his sharpest instincts. Cop Out is, disappointingly, no exception. Smith doesn’t really bring creative insights to the material but essentially tries to recreate a typical cop flick from the 80s, although one that’s not nearly as good as its predecessors. But Smith is no sleepwalking zombie, however, and this sitcom isn’t without some juice. Smith’s greatest strength here is that he knows just how to unleash Tracy Morgan’s side-splitting zaniness on the big screen, producing consistent laughs throughout.

You’ve heard the scenario a million times: one’s a straight-arrow cop who plays by the book and has a no-nonsense approach to his job. The other is a wise-cracking loose cannon with a knack for creating effortless mayhem anywhere he goes. Together, this duo teams up for a fragile partnership that produces high tension and big laughs. Things heat up with their alliance, however: people get shot, cars crash, things get blown up, the Captain wants their suspension with their badges on his desk, etc. The only way the duo can redeem themselves is if they work out their differences and take down an elaborate criminal ring all by themselves. In the end, guns get fired, the bad guys get taken down, and the bond between the unlikely partners grows much deeper.

It’s an all-too familiar plot that Cop Out cheerfully revels in. We have Bruce Willis as Monroe, the straight-arrow tough cop, and Tracy Morgan as Hodges, the comic relief cop. They’re partners who’ve been serving the NYPD for nine years, as Monroe smacks around the bad guys while Hodges showers them with jokes. We follow Monroe as he hopes to sell a valuable baseball card to help pay for his daughter’s lavish wedding. As he goes to a collectibles shop to cash in the card, two robbers knock over the joint, subdue Monroe, and escape with the card. The long-time partners must now set out to recover the stolen card by any means necessary. This sets off a chain of events in which the duo gets caught up in an elaborate crime plot that involves a Latin crime lord (Guillermo Diaz) and a kidnapped Mexican mistress (Ana de la Reguera). From there, action explodes, laughter ensues…you know the drill!

Kevin Smith has undergone a curious transition in his career. He used to create gritty indie comedies that were treasured for their defiance from typical conventions. Now he seems to be celebrating the clichés and churning them out enthusiastically. You can see how recent films like Jersey Girl and Zack and Miri Make A Porno bear some of his signature trademarks, but they seem to be lacking the freshness of his smirking edge. His recent works seem more adherent to genre formulas then to his own flights of anarchic fancy. Cop Out suffers from the same problem; Smith doesn’t really put his own distinctive stamp on the material. This is his first film with a script not written at all by him (the screenplay was concocted by the TV writing duo of Mark Cullen & Rob Cullen), so the film lacks his naughty sparkle and colorful inspiration. There’s no clever hook or variation to the premise, the whole idea is to bring deranged wackiness to a familiar plotline. Still, this one feels inferior to its earlier influences.

Part of the problem is that Smith has no idea how to stage an action scene properly. Both the camera and the editing are way too jumpy and frantic, never allowing the viewer to get a full grasp of the character’s movement in relation to their space. The action scenes are so clumsy and weightless, they evaporate rapidly from the mind. It’s almost as if Smith knows he can’t do action properly so he hurries past it in hopes that no one will notice. Smith has often been accused (sometimes unjustly) of having a poor sense of camera framing. Never before has that been stronger felt than with his shaky work here.

If there’s one thing Smith knows how to do wonderfully, it’s let the camera settle on scenes of wacky and hilarious dialogue. It’s scenes like this that give Cop Out its strength. Occasionally we come across routine scenes that are played for extensive silliness and it generates enough laughs and smiles to keep us delighted. There’s a frantically cockeyed opening sequence in which Hodges violently interrogates a witness while hurling countless movie quotes at him with great intensity (“NOBODY PUTS BABY IN THE CORNER!”). Both Monroe and Hodges present an inspired telephone gag meant to insult their rival detectives on the force (played by Kevin Pollack and Adam Brody). And there’s a great bit where Hodges imagines his wife (Rashida Jones) cheating on him, inspiring what sounds like a very funny Cary Grant impression.

Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan seem like the unlikeliest of duos, and indeed they don’t have the easiest chemistry, but they do generate a fascinating interest and it keeps the movie alive. Willis can play a role like Monroe in his sleep, and he appears to be humorously half-asleep this time out. This is essentially Morgan’s movie to steal, and he does so with great comic insanity. Morgan is one of the funniest comedians working in showbiz today. Read any random interview with the 30 Rock star and you’re guaranteed at least five laughs. He conveys the image of a sugar-high adolescent enjoying a goofball spree in the adult world. His outsized silliness is just what this script needs to shake things up. Watching the straight-edged Willis bounce off of the stark raving lunacy of Morgan is a well of twisted amusement, and it all but saves this flick.

Cop Out is commercial pop with occasional delights that hold up if you care to remember it. You’re not as contemptuous of its familiarity as you’d expect to be. The film has a lot of nice little touches. Sean William Scott has a funny walk-on as a stoner thief and I absolutely loved the throwback score from genre veteran Harold Faltermeyer (Beverly Hills Cop, Tango & Cash). His nostalgic 80s sounds are worth the price of admission alone. So if you want an exceptional buddy cop flick, check out 48 Hours, Rush Hour, and Starsky & Hutch. If you want to see Kevin Smith at his most biting and intelligent, check out Chasing Amy. Now if you have two hours to kill and want to have a laughing fit at the hands of that loveable maniac Tracy Morgan, Cop Out just might be for you.

Scorsese's 'Island' of Insanity

2010-02-24T12:37:00.003-05:00

by Brett Parker

Martin Scorsese is a master filmmaker who shows, among other brilliant things, the delusions people construct for their lives to combat realities of the harsh real world. Think of the undercover moles’ deceptions in The Departed, Travis Bickle’s bloody need for redemption in Taxi Driver, Rupert Pupkin’s fever dreams of stardom in The King of Comedy, or Henry Hill’s outlaw lifestyle in Goodfellas. The ideals of a Scorsese protagonist can take on a wild reality of their own, in constant threat from the morals and formalities of normal society.

Shutter Island could very well be Scorsese’s most deranged and unsettling exploration of this theme, and that’s saying something for the guy who made Taxi Driver. For all the things he has presented throughout his legendary career, this is his first plunge into classical macabre (although his Cape Fear remake held tinges of it). The result is a deliciously startling display of his most burning obsessions. Even when the film’s third act takes a shocking turn towards an old-school horror story gimmick, his masterful evocation of his themes blasts away any doubts towards the material.

The time is 1954 and two U.S. Marshalls are assigned to investigate the disappearance of a mental patient on a hospital off the coast of Massachusetts called Shutter Island. Teddy (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a seasoned detective with a troubled past while Carl (Mark Ruffalo) is his straight-faced rookie partner. After a fog-ridden ferry ride, the duo arrives at the elaborate mental compound and overwhelming feelings of unease quickly strikes them. The head doctor, Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) gives off an unsettling vibe of uneasy as he explains that a female patient escaping such a secure island appears highly fishy. Of course the twitching and unnerving mental patients add no comfort to the situation (one warns Teddy to RUN!)

Stirring up matters further is the fact that Teddy has his own hidden motives for being on the island. He reveals to Carl that the hospital may be harboring the violent lunatic who burned down his apartment complex, killing his beloved wife Dolores (Michelle Williams). Teddy pulled strings to be assigned this case in the hope of confronting his wife’s killer. But soon Teddy is suffering hallucinations within this island of insanity, haunted by visions of his wife and horrific memories from his tour in World War II (he helped to liberate a Nazi death camp). Teddy develops a hard time separating fantasy from reality and he begins to feel no different than the other mental patients. What exactly happened in his past? What suppressed memories are fueling his madness? Just what exactly is going on amidst this asylum?

Shutter Island is Scorsese’s whirl through pulp noir and classical horror stories. Adapted from the Dennis Lehane novel, this is a world of fedoras, asylum weirdoes, and living nightmares. Scorsese uses this landscape to explore the clashing between his usual themes of guilt and hostility, all basked in a Hitchcockian Technicolor. As his vessel of intensity, Scorsese once again looks to DiCaprio, his new age muse. He physically embodies Scorsese’s suppression of sins, as he furiously and frantically tries to deal with broken memories from his scarred past. This is the familiar Scorsese protagonist turned up to new levels of insanity. Also turned up intensely in the director’s eye for hostile environments. Not only do we trudge through murder, war, and psychopaths, but we see the shockingly unorthodox ways in which doctors try to fend off borderline-torturous forms of psychotherapy.

Scorsese plays with ideals of delusions not just with the asylum world but with the era of the story itself. If Shutter Island is trying to put up a healthy front while disturbance festers among the facility underneath it all, then perhaps post-WWII America suffered the same problem. The film employs nightmarish surrealism to show how certain characters are dogged by post-war disillusionment and post-traumatic stress disorder. One character, specifically, goes to horrifying lengths to bury the tragic realities of his world.

This film has an explosion of a twist ending; a mind-bender that forces you to reexamine everything that has gone before. This ending brings suspension of disbelief to the red zone and flirts with the preposterous. Some might find it too much of an asylum-story cliché. With any other filmmaker, this plotting might feel cheap, but Scorsese pumps it with such cinematic force and personal resonance that it feels more masterful than it probably deserves to be. I’ve seen the film twice now and I’ve noticed the impressive ways Scorsese and screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis (Alexander) conceal the secrets with great suspense, all while small evidence of them stare us straight in the face. The twist adds such a heated intensity under Scorsese’s themes that any holes that could very well be present in the plot go strongly overlooked.

You can see the ways Shutter Island could’ve simply been a haunted horror story; a pulp gimmick of cheap thrills. Yet watching Scorsese employ his sublime expertise into such material is exciting beyond belief. The film is a startling historical account like Gangs of New York while also displaying societal criticism like Taxi Driver. Any director can evoke things that go bump in the night, but when a filmmaker like Scorsese roots those bumps in the scariest recesses of the human mind, the result is guaranteed to shake you.

The Top 10 Movies of 2009

2010-02-24T07:18:00.018-05:00

by Brett Parker

As I look over my inevitable list for the Top 10 Movies of 2009, I couldn't help but notice that a romantic comedy, a Star Trek movie, and a Judd Apatow comedy dominate the top of it. This could seem very unusual in any other year, but it comes across as strangely appropriate for 2009, a year of overwhelming pop comforts. At a time when the country is still trying to pull itself out of grueling struggles, it made sense that most of our big screen entertainment was edible pop nourishment; movies that played creatively on generic comforts to lure us back into theaters. And why not? In its elemental form, movies are meant to present dazzling distractions from our personal problems and the mundane tendencies of the everyday world.

While heavy indulgence in commercial comforts can often be a rather unsettling thing, the works of 2009 managed to add delightful jolts to the cinematic universe. James Cameron's Avatar not only re-imagined and rejuvenated the thrill of 3-D movies, but altered long-discussed concerns over theater attendance by becoming the highest-grossing film of all time. It seems that award shows also played off of comfort food to razzle things up: The Hangover won best picture (comedy/musical) at the Golden Globes while hit crowd pleasers like The Blind Side, District 9, and Up nabbed Best Picture nominees in the Oscar's transparent “ten-nominee” expansion. It's obvious these awards shows are desperate for higher ratings, so they're taking a cue from Hollywood's current rake of appealing commercialism.

I don't feel 2009's cockeyed pop drunkenness, however, calls for great concern or controversy. I had a notably wonderful time at the movies this year. These waves of pleasantness were extremely alluring and made narrowing my favorites down to 10 choices exceedingly difficult. I adored my personal favorites like a wild lover and I want to shine an obsessively romanticized light on just about all of them. If you haven't seen any of the following 10 films, then seek them out immediately and hug me later:

1) (500) Days of Summer

The best movie on the subject of breaking-up I’ve ever seen. First time director Marc Webb has crafted a superior romantic comedy that is not only brutally honest and uncompromising, but has a zestful and playful spirit. It’s a vivid relationship movie that also employs a wildly creative visual style. Stars Joseph-Gordon Levitt and Zoey Deschanel wonderfully create distinct personalities that evoke great sympathy from us. We can greatly see ourselves and the people we’ve dated in their performances. For a film to be an achingly realistic portrait of breaking-up that manages to sneak a bright-eyed optimism into the material is some kind of wonderful. This film is quite simply an accumulation of everything I’ve ever wanted to see in a romantic comedy.

2) Star Trek

Even though my original review nitpicked at its flaws, the new Star Trek reboot kept luring me back to the theater for repeat viewings and proved to me that it’s an undeniable rush of exciting adventure. It wonderfully employs a hip sci-fi rhythm that honors the celebrated traditions of the franchise while jazzing things up for a new generation. Avatar may have the more impressive effects, but Star Trek has more appealing, heart-felt characters. Chris Pine is the epitome of cool in his portrayal of Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto impresses with the emotional depths he reveals in Spock. This Star Trek is the best-looking, best-acted, most compelling, and coolest film in the franchise’s history. There is no denying the appeal, the energy, and the heart of this intergalactic thrill machine.

3) Funny People

Perhaps the most revealing film ever made about the inner-workings of the comedy trade. Funny People is fascinating in the way it lets us into the world of stand-up comedians, showing us how they compete with each other, infiltrate the varying aspects of show business, and use their humor to combat their deepest inadequacies. Director Judd Apatow gravitates away from being an exceptional comic director and towards an artist of humanism as he unearths complex and unsettling depths from star Adam Sandler, giving one of his best performances as a narcissistic comedy star. Sandler’s performance, like the film itself, knows how to make you laugh hysterically and shake you deeply at the same time.

4) Public Enemies

Michael Mann once again proves that he's a master of action drama with this unsettling and mysterious meditation on legendary crime figure, John Dillinger. In telling the story of the infamous prohibition-era bank robber, Mann highlights the underlying poignancy and emotional ambiguities present in his myth, once again denying audiences typical pop theatrics and asking them to examine the true depths of crime and its players. The great Johnny Depp plays up his roguish charms and rebellious spirit to lure us into his portrayal of Dillinger, yet he never flinches away from the man's cold and dark nature. Both Mann and Depp employ expert talent in unearthing troubled depths within criminal archetypes we never fully sensed was there.

5) An Education

When it comes to coming-of-age tales regarding young women, you'll be hard-pressed to find a more intelligent, exuberant, and entertaining tale than An Education. The film is a romantic celebration of life, a portrait of London on the brink of the swingin' sixties, and a thoughtful meditation on femininity all at once. Carrey Mulligan pours such radiant loveliness and glowing independence into her role that she has certainly earned comparisons with Audrey Hepburn. And while the American Peter Sarsgaard is probably the last person you'd think of to play a swingin' British hipster, he nails his role with astonishing conviction. An older man courting a younger girl may sound like a creepy and cynical concept, but the wonderful script by the great Nick Hornby brings out the wild romanticism and biting wit in this stylish and joyful story.

6) A Single Man

Fashion Designer Tom Ford makes an impressive effort with his debut film; an intriguing work that examines heartbreaking loss, unspeakable suppression, and the sly ways beauty and hope can sneak into our everyday world. Ford labors for sublime visual beauty in showing us the universe of George, a gay college professor trying to conceal his deep emotional wounds sustained after the death of his longtime lover. At the centerpiece of this hypnotic jewel is a fantastic performance from Colin Firth, one I wish wins him the Oscar for Best Actor. A Single Man is that rare film that knows how to endlessly dazzle your eyes while constantly jabbing at your heart.

7) The Box

Richard Kelly further proves that he is one of the most complex and enigmatic of filmmakers by once again presenting audiences with a mind-bending cinematic puzzle with no easy answers. Things start off simple enough: a financially-strapped married couple will be awarded a large cash reward if they push a simple button...but someone they've never met, somewhere in the world, will die. From there, Kelly casts off into his existential and trippy depths that examines conflicted people trapped between ominous doom and startling spiritual realizations in a supernatural purgatory. Audiences were baffled by this heavy-duty horror piece, but students of Donnie Darko and Southland Tales know that Kelly presents alluring challenges for the most intelligent of moviegoers that cannot be taken at face value. The Box is no exception; it's a tense and dizzying work of mystery that enticingly invites repeat viewings.

8) Up in the Air

Jason Reitman has crafted a masterful dramedy that is extremely of-the-moment yet has timeless ideals that will be strongly felt by future generations. In telling the story of a traveling corporate man who fires people for a living, Reitman explores hard truths and anxieties about the Great Recession we're currently in; illuminating employee lay-offs and technological detachment. The casting of George Clooney in the lead role also provides a hard-looking deconstruction of his star image; that of a care-free hedonist blind-sided by matters of the human heart. What is so touching, and sometimes bittersweet, about Up in the Air is its realization that the love and emotions deep within our souls will still thrive on even in the most detached and crumbling of societies.

9) The Brothers Bloom

Rian Johnson presents us with a quirky con caper that has the bouncy energy of a childrens tale and the yearning emotions of an adult melodrama. It's a con game where the bruised hearts of the con artists are given more attention than their strategies, proving more touching than you'd initially expect. Johnson, like his last outing Brick, dishes out old school charms packed with a colorful and playful elegance. With exotic locations, gorgeous fashions, and an absorbing folk-rock vibe, The Brothers Bloom is a whimsical romp way too pleasing to ignore.

10) Broken Embraces

Pedro Almodovar has always shown a masterful taste for both passionate melodrama and brilliantly complex self-reflexivity. Here he fuses the two into the same playful and illuminating ideal and the result is a spellbinder that ranks among his very best. By observing a beautiful cinematic starlet (played wonderfully by Penelope Cruz), Almodovar shows us how a love for a woman can strongly resemble a love for cinema. Both can inspire wild passion, crushing heartbreak, treasured memories, and gut-wrenching truths. Using his vibrant camera and lush colorings, Almodovar highlights with great cleverness how the formalities of cinema and passionate relationships can be driven by the exact same matters of the heart.

Honorable Mentions:
Avatar
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Paranormal Activity
Two Lovers
Tyson
Sherlock Holmes

A Cheesy 'Wolfman' Worth Watching

2010-02-15T09:45:00.002-05:00

by Brett Parker

The lights from the full moon cast an alluring and ominous glow on the shadowy forests of the Earth below. An increasingly-frightened villager shines the puny light from his lamp into the blinding darkness surrounding him as he stumbles his way through a forest. A bloodthirsty beast with long and lethal claws stalks this prey throughout the trees and taunts him with a terrifying growl that would be commonplace in hell.

I love this stuff. If I had to pick my all-time favorite movie monster, it would probably be the Wolfman. Through this hairy beast, we can see an intriguing symbol for the uninhibited and untamable recesses of the human soul. The idea of a mild-mannered man transforming into a rampaging and merciless monster invites Freudian ideas of repressed feelings and untapped urges allowed to run wild in a zestfully violent release. This beast could represent sexual urges, repressed anxiety, buried anger, nearly anything from the psychology books. The Wolfman represents pop release therapy of the goofiest kind.

Director Joe Johnston (Jumanji, Jurassic Park III, Hidalgo) brings us an update of The Wolfman that doesn’t really update that much at all. The new version is a rather straight-forward remake of the original, keeping the period setting and plot intact in its old school simplicity. Cinematographer Shelly Johnson (The Last Castle) brings the film a delicious horror glow while Production Designer Rick Heinrichs (Planet of the Apes, Hulk) brings a fun gothic tinge to the surroundings, yet Johnston lets us down in not unearthing a substantial point of view on this seemingly-rich horror premise. Everything is played for a simple spook show. On that level, it’s competently entertaining, but so much more could’ve been drawn from this material.

The film takes place in Victorian-Era England in the small hamlet of Blackmoor(which is just as well; it might’ve been straining to see the Wolf Man push off of the present day. Military and Computer technology might’ve diminished the plot’s fun). A nobleman named Ben Talbot (Simon Merrells) is viciously mauled and murdered by what can only be concluded as a giant beast of some sort. This sudden death prompts the return of Lawrence Talbot (Benicio Del Toro), Ben’s stage actor brother who has been estranged from the family for many years. Lawrence experienced a traumatic childhood at the hands of his wickedly mysterious father, Sir John Talbot (Anthony Hopkins) and still carries emotional scars from a horrifically traumatic past. Still, Lawrence promises Ben’s beautiful fiancé, Gwen (Emily Blunt) that he’ll solve his brother’s murder.

Lawrence’s investigation leads him into the local woods one night and he is horrified to discover an other-worldly beast galloping through the night. The creature violently attacks a band of gypsies before sinking its fangs into Lawrence’s neck. Lawrence survives the attack but feels that his body is changing in alarming ways. His suspicions turn out to be correct, for when the full moon occurs, Lawrence turns into a hostile werewolf that storms the landscape, causing death and destruction at every turn. As Lawrence tries to wrestle with his newfound mutation, he shockingly discovers that his werewolf curse just may have strong ties to tragic events throughout his family history.

On its elemental level, The Wolfman is packed with old school charms that can surely swoon horror enthusiasts on a ridiculously low level. The creature himself is certainly impressive in his rampaging endeavors and I applaud legendary Make-Up Artist Rick Baker for keeping the design of the Werewolf fairly close to the original Lon Chaney, JR. look. The Wolfman’s exploits are not staged for haunting scares or brooding tension, but to provide jabs of gore that supplies moviegoers with cheap thrills. Indeed, audiences are sure to cheer with laughter and mad awe as the Werewolf rips out intestines and decapitates his victims. It’s disappointing that Johnston has no ambition of horrifying audiences or framing scenes for strategic scares. It’s all a straight-up gore fest, laboring for what must curiously be intentional laughs.

When one reflects on the excessive hairiness he’s sprouted for roles in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Sin City, and Che, Benicio Del Toro seems like a perfect match to play the legendary demonic furball (Del Toro is reportedly a big collector of Wolfman memorabilia). His depiction of Lawrence may be a tad too modern, but it feels more acceptable than watching a stiff British actor strain to convey horror anguish. Nonetheless, Del Toro is appropriately moody and haunted in the role. You don’t doubt for one minute that a monster is weighing heavily on his soul. Hopkins and Blunt may be occupying thankless roles they can sleepwalk through, but they are still thankfully engaging. Hopkins brings us a welcomed hamminess while Blunt truly conveys a beauty that could tame even the wildest of wolves.

Even though the Wolfman’s violent rage is meant to represent repressed feelings of a traumatic childhood and dysfunctional family life, Johnston doesn’t really make grand artistic efforts to make the underlying themes feel substantial. The plot comes across too hokey to make that possible. Aside from an effective dream montage based in an insane asylum, the film’s premise is played for cheap thrills while promises of underlying philosophies fester away. Certain moviegoers, like myself, will probably feel robbed of a hard-hitting, significant horror classic. Just imagine if a director like Martin Scorsese got his hands on this material. To merge his ideals of guilt and hostility with the Werewolf myth would catapult this remake into a grand territory far beyond the ghoulish cheesiness Johnston is all too content with.

There are certain horror enthusiasts who celebrate the simple pleasures of the genre so religiously that to elevate them to more philosophical or artistic heights would seem like a huge miscalculation. The cheap thrills and the gore seem to be the point unto itself. Johnston’s Wolfman seems to be made with this same kind of regard and will, alas, please such horror fans. There will be those paying ten dollars to see a giant wolf tearing humans limb from limb, and they certainly won’t be disappointed. However, if you’re one of those moviegoers who question why the Wolfman would want to tear through limbs, they will be left wanting more food for thought.

'Crazy Heart': Country Boozer as Sexy Saint

2010-02-03T07:16:00.003-05:00

by Brett Parker

Crazy Heart is like a familiar country song played by a second-rate singer in an unflattering, laid-back rendition. In telling the story of a broken-down country star, we find ourselves in the presence of an all-too recognizable story, one that fails to add any surprising kicks or deep reasoning behind its developments. The plot hits a bunch of standard bases but without fully sensed character development. What the film has is a flawless performance from Jeff Bridges, a performance the screenplay can't support and isn't worthy of. He makes his booze-soaked country figure, Bad Blake, an interesting fellow, he just needs a stronger movie to see him all the way through.

Bad Blake used to be a considerably famous Country star, but problems with the bottle has caused his career to play out in the lower decks. As the film opens, he is driving around the country in a creaky truck, appearing for gigs at shabby bars and bowling alleys. Armed with a scruffy beard and a pot belly, Blake goes through the motions in a half-drunken daze. He still puts his heart into his stage performances, but other than that he's a numb soul playing for any run down venue that will have him. Anything to pay for the booze.

The film follows Blake at a point in his later life when things appear to be turning around for him. He wins the heart of Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a single-mother-journalist who falls pretty hard for him and is touched by how much he gets along with her son (Jack Nation). He also becomes sought out by Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), a country superstar who used to play in Blake's band. Sweet offers Blake not only the chance to open for one of his concerts but to write songs for him as well. Blake has finally been given a path to redemption, but he is hopelessly hooked on the bottle. Can he break his old patterns and enjoy his new gifts from fate?

You don't really know how to feel about Crazy Heart because it seems the filmmakers are unsure about how they feel about Blake. The wonderful Bridges is certainly game for anything, but the filmmakers don't really give him anywhere to go. This kind of story demands that Blake be a melancholy train-wreck, yet the film goes to painstaking lengths to paint him as sweet and likeable. They seem hesitant in showing his deeper flaws, so Blake comes across more like a sluggish oaf than a tragic figure. There's less drama to be held that way.

Take, for example, last year's The Wrestler, whose structure Crazy Heart's slightly reminded me of. Both films follow washed-up performers in the lower ranks of their profession while haunted deeply by their mistakes in life. Darren Aronofsky's directing and Mickey Rourke's performance were bruising and uncompromising in showing every minute detail that caused their protagonist to end up in spiritual and professional anguish. Even though the wrestling hero was a likeable fellow, the camera never flinched in showing us every wrong step he'd made and we felt every ounce of his bitter regrets and weary spirit. The Wrestler made us feel we were looking into the heart-wrenching depths of a tragic figure. Crazy Heart makes us feel as if we're looking at a lazy frat boy in post-college life.

Part of the problem is that none of the characters are willing to tell brutal truths to Blake's face. Blake is surrounded by a chorus line of astonishingly sweet and encouraging people and no one barely attempts to dish out the harsh criticisms he desperately needs to hear. His buddy Wayne (Robert Duvall, reminding us of Tender Mercies) has nothing but wonderful things to say about him even though its clear there's nothing wonderful going on in his life. Colin Farrell plays Tommy Sweet with such moody detachment and cold stiffness that nothing substantial comes out of his fragile friendship with Blake. And now let's look at Jean; she falls for Blake point blank and barely says anything about his flaws or lifestyle. Most of the movie is devoted to their tender courtship, but we can't figure out what kind of juice her heart is running on. The most interesting thing in the script is the fact that a hard-working single mother would hook up with an aging, beer-bellied, financially-strapped, alcoholic country singer so easily. By the film's end, when Jean is finally telling Blake what he needs to hear, we wonder what the hell took her so long.

The people around Blake are so accepting of his lifestyle because the filmmakers want to sell the ideal of country star as sex symbol. Despite his apparent flaws, women cling to Blake outright as a sensual beast while men are envious of his apparent mythic stature. If any actor can sell this myth, it's Jeff Bridges, with his easy charm and experienced nuances. Bridges throws a gloves-off zest into the role, throwing his crumbling shagginess and flab out in the open for all to see. With this script, it's easy to see how Blake could've been a self-pitying, melodramatic cliché, but Bridges employs expert subtlety in making Blake feel like a real, lived-in person. That Bridges is able to create such a vivid character in such a transparent script is a testament to his resourcefulness.

Bridges is convincing as a country singer not in the least because he pulls off the film's musical scenes so well. Bridges did his own singing for the role, and his aging voice suits the country tune's well and brings a significant layer of conviction to the role. He's not exactly ready for his own country album, but his voice has that right lived-in country twang, which is exactly what his role demands. I must say that I'm not particularly a fan of country music but I found the music here to be strongly engaging. The film's music was overseen by legendary producer T-Bone Burnett and he brings with him an authentic feel for the tunes that wonderfully hit the emotional bases of the film. I was surprised by how touched I was by the creation and the performance of the film's final tune, “The Weary Kind.”

Despite Bridge's exceptional performance and the surprisingly alluring country tunes, there's nothing really that gripping or fresh about Crazy Heart. It's actually pretty easy to predict the plot's developments as your watching it. It must be said that first time director Scott Cooper avoids a lot of melodramatic pratfalls, but he buys too much into the indie conceit that vivid observations equals great filmmaking. A fully realized script needs to be there first. The camera here is willing to observe a man from the depths, but the failure of the film is that its not willing to follow him all the way to the bottom.

A Ride Through 'Darkness'

2010-02-02T08:44:00.003-05:00

by Brett Parker

Edge of Darkness is an appropriately-titled film; the morbid opening shot reveals three dead bodies floating in a river and the ominous tone for the film is set. This one is dark and unsettling from beginning to finish without ever letting up. There’s not a moment’s ease. We’re held in a vice grip by sprits of vicious and unforgiving violence. Even the film’s ending doesn’t resolve everything in a tidy manner, but is disturbing in how much is not truly resolved. This isn’t one of the more significant thrillers you’ll ever see, but it has a creepiness that’s hard to shake.

The film stars Mel Gibson as Tom Craven, a Police Detective who lives by himself in Boston. We see him preparing for the arrival of his only daughter, Emma (Bojana Novakovic), who works for a mysterious corporation in another part of Massachusetts. Despite a loving relationship between the two, they’ve been estranged for some time and Tom is hazy on the details of Emma’s work. He picks her up at the train station and is alarmed to discover that she is showing signs of nausea accompanied with nose bleeds. After they arrive home, a masked assailant appears at their door step and shoots Emma dead with a shotgun.

The assailant makes a clean getaway and Police arrive on the crime scene thinking that Tom was the intended target. Devastated and enraged, Tom isn’t so sure of that and decides to investigate the case for himself. This leads him down a path towards Northmoor, the shadowy corporation Emma worked for. The company puts up a front about an environmental agenda but may really be working on nuclear weaponry for the government. The slimy yet elegant CEO (Danny Huston) assures Tom that they had nothing to do with her death, but it’s soon revealed that Emma may have been part of a conspiracy that involves eco-terrorism, government dealings, and national security cover-ups. Tom receives crucial information about these developments from a shadowy CIA figure (Ray Winstone) with an ambiguous agenda. Tom works relentlessly to expose all of this corruption and avenge Emma’s death, with violent results.

From the film’s early trailers, I expected an action serving in the vain of Taken, a vengeance thriller in which we relish a big name star smacking around villainous sleazeballs in slam-bang ways. The actual result is a patient and precise thriller that goes to pain-staking lengths to develop its characters and stretch out the plot’s inevitable dread. The busy plot hits its clockwork logic at a considerably slow pace, allowing the film’s dark underpinnings to seep into us stronger, holding us in an unlikely grip of tension. I suppose one could pluck contemporary relevance from the government developments, but this is essentially a one-man-revenge-drama that once again employs the ideal that all corporations are shadowy and corrupt, going to satanic lengths to protect their interests. The difference this time is that Northmoor is painted in such convincing and detailed strokes that their villainy feels realistic and it unexpectedly shakes us.

Great credit for this routine story’s unexpected hold goes to director Martin Campbell. Campbell originally directed the British TV miniseries from the 80s in which this film is based upon, yet he doesn’t coil backwards from the technical elegance he has nurtured so well in his Hollywood endeavors since then. His Casino Royale, one of the great James Bond pictures, displayed a wonderful attention to dramatic character depths while delivering expected thriller elements with effective excellence. He brings the same sense of both ideals to Edge of Darkness, almost bringing a Hawksian subtlety to the material. He films in a hushed and simplistic manner, giving the plot’s tragic undercurrents room to grab us.

Edge of Darkness marks Mel Gibson’s return to the big screen after an 8-year-hiatus following the smash hit Signs. Yes, he’s directed some controversial movies since then and yes, he had an embarrassing DUI incident, but that doesn’t really skewer the fact that he’s one of the most durable and compelling leading men we’ve ever had. Very few Hollywood stars possess both a matinee-idol handsomeness and an economy of boiling rage. When Gibson acts, he doesn’t appear to be relying on visible method tactics but is ripping his emotions from a deep anguished place within himself. Think of the fire in his eyes throughout Braveheart and his raging meltdown in The Bounty. Gibson is at his most fascinating when he’s riled up, something that the Craven role inevitably demands. What makes the performance interesting is the way Gibson tries to conceal his character's infinite anger underneath, only slipping it out in startling sprits (there’s a great moment where he tough talks an attorney). Gibson doesn’t shy away from disturbing flourishes, especially when he holds imaginary conversations with his daughter’s ghost. It’s a welcomed return to the big screen for Mad Mel.

While most thrillers try to cancel everything out for a neat ending, what’s most unnerving about Edge of Darkness is how much doesn’t really get cleaned up in the end. The finale is something of a mess, but the mess, in itself, turns out to be the point. Craven essentially wins the battle, but it appears he lost the war. The character receives a degree of vengeance, but our hearts sink when we realize that the evil corporation will thrive on and have its messes cleaned up eventually. The screenplay was shaped with assistance from The Departed’s Academy Award Winning writer, William Monahan, and like that film he also provides a story in which the ultimate catharsis is bloodshed. The script seems to be suggesting here that no matter how hard one tries, the big corporations of the world cannot be faltered by the everyman, and big business will always thrive on. The only real justice is mad brute justice.

Like Michael Mann or Kathryn Bigelow, Martin Campbell has become a master of action thrillers by putting the drama and the characters in the forefront. Our popcorn-movie cravings would’ve probably been satisfied by a Mel Gibson shoot-em-up, but we still appreciate Campbell’s sincere attempts at a thoughtful thriller. I would imagine the film’s length and murky view on current themes may be trying for some moviegoers, but it’s not enough to diminish the film’s cold classiness.

A 'Lovely' Mess

2010-01-19T08:09:00.009-05:00

by Brett Parker

I’m all for movies that try to put a sunny, positive spin on something dark and tragic. The key to pulling this off is to bring an authentic, substantial weight to the darkness. If this fails to happen, then the whole enterprise could likely be revealed as a shallow cartoon. Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones attempts to take an incredibly tragic premise, one that regards the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl, and brings it a glossy, almost Spielbergian sense of optimism. That Jackson’s vision never really grossly alienates us and sustains our attention throughout an uneven movie is perhaps the strongest thing this film does right.

The film takes place in early 1970s Pennsylvania and we meet a sweet 14-year-old girl named Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan). Susie is a happy child leading a simple suburban life with her loving family. She spends her days indulging in her love for photography and pining for an older boy (Reece Ritchie) at her school. Life is very pleasant for the pre-teen, until the fateful day she takes a shortcut home from school in a cornfield and encounters George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), an unsettling creepster from her neighborhood. George tricks Susie into entering a hidden ditch below the cornfield and it is there in which he rapes and murders Susie, covering his tracks and disposing the body in an expert manner.

We then follow Susie as her spirit enters into an “in-between,” a dreamlike universe in the afterlife in which Susie is able to live in a heaven-like existence while also keeping track of her loved ones on Earth. The in-between is a world of infinite beauty, ranging from exquisite beach, forest, and city landscapes, ones that can be magically altered by Susie’s mood. As she turns her attention back to Earth, she must watch helplessly as her father Jack (Mark Walberg) and mother Abigail (Rachel Weisz) battle their grief while her alcoholic grandmother (Susan Sarandon) tries to help out with domestic life. Also concerning Susie is the fact that her sister Lindsey (Rose McIver) tries to solve her disappearance and draws dangerously closer into George Harvey’s realm.

The Lovely Bones wants both to be an achingly revealing portrait of family mourning and a thoughtful meditation on what the afterlife might be like. The problem is that these two plot threads often interfere with each other instead of complimenting each other’s objectives. The film bounces so frantically between its two plots that neither one slows down to develop its ideas. This proves dangerous, for the film obviously has big emotional things to say, but the zippy pacing never allows them to be said. More patient and observant scenes of emotional revelations are desperately needed. When Susie eventually speaks of strong, beautiful relationships (which she refers to as “lovely bones”) being formed in the aftermath of her death, we have no idea what she’s talking about because no relationship we’ve witnessed on screen strongly supports her theory.

Whenever I take in an artistic work regarding the afterlife, I almost instinctively compare it to Richard Matheson’s What Dreams May Come, which is, in my opinion, the single greatest fictional work ever created regarding life after death. Matheson did an extensive amount of research regarding afterlife studies and produced a story that surprisingly provided plausible answers to every question we’ve ever had about existence and death. Filmmaker Vincent Ward adapted the novel into a superb 1998 film starring Robin Williams, but the movie understandably contained only a fraction of the novel’s wisdom (for mainly the usual reasons most movie adaptations don’t live up to their source novels). So awesomely detailed and alluringly drawn is Matheson’s vision that it exposes most heavenly works as preposterous.

In the face of Matheson’s brilliant work, The Lovely Bones does present a halfway-convincing, mostly-intriguing spiritual universe. Of course it’s not as exquisite as Matheson’s vision, but it’s not without its strengths. It supports the Vanilla Sky ideal that if we were to construct our own private world, it would be heavily basked in our pop sensibilities. As a pre-teen girl murdered in the early 1970s, Susie’s world is painted in post-Flower Power, pre-Disco flourishes. Giant beach balls, rainbow colors, hippie-tinged fields, and a Studio 54-flavored cityscape surround Susie’s new world and the visuals surprisingly engage us.

When people pass away, we are often told they are “looking down on us from heaven.” I’ve always wondered how a spirit, now free to roam the endless landscape of the infinite universe, would still be able to concern themselves with Earthly matters. The biggest delight of this film is that it presents a fascinating solution to that dilemma. Susie’s heaven is often infiltrated with symbols and undercurrents representing the emotional state of her loved ones on Earth. When one of her family members faces despair, for example, her sunny landscape instantly turns shadowy and chilly. The film’s best scene shows a beach in Susie’s world becoming surrounded by giant ships encased in gigantic glass bottles. These represent the model ships Susie’s Dad collected as a hobby. In a fit of emotional rage back on Earth, he smashes every one of these ships in his study, causing the ships near Susie’s beach to smash and crash all around her. Through this magnificent destruction, Susie is able to connect with her father’s emotional anguish as it is on Earth.

The inconsistencies within the script are skillfully smoothed over by the talented cast, especially Ronan. She plays Susie as a wise and thoughtful girl, helping us to deal with the fact that perhaps the film isn’t as wise and thoughtful as it sets out to be. After her performances in Atonement and now The Lovely Bones, Ronan is proving to be one of the finest child stars we’ve ever had. She holds an astonishing control of character and there are moments where her inner-tenderness flows so strongly through her face that it truly levels you. Elsewhere, Walberg and Weisz prove to be subtle and convincing in the face of diminished screen time while Sarandon is convincing as a comic caricature. Tucci is convincing as a serial killer who is less a tragic figure and more of a horror movie monster. The film has little empathy for him, yet Tucci is still able to convey his character’s unspeakable impulses. For what the role requires, Tucci is creepily effective.

I have not read the best-selling Alice Sebold novel on which the film is based, but faithful fans have informed me that it is more uncompromising and realized than Jackson’s adaptation. The film itself may be something of a mess, but I truly appreciated its sense of creativity and ambition. This is not an easy subject to tackle, and it’s kind of interesting how Jackson tries to bring a zestful cinematic energy to it. Jackson is a filmmaker always pushing for a unique aesthetic spirit, one that is defiant of traditional structures and aims for heart-tugging emotions. I still wonder if a more subtle director would’ve been more appropriate for this material (I think Brad Silberling, a maestro of death and mourning, could’ve done this story justice) but I found myself entertained and appreciative of Jackson’s bold creative strokes. It spares the film from being a solemn downer. The problem, however, is that this material just might demand such a tone.

A Mediocre 'Book'

2010-01-16T11:27:00.002-05:00

by Brett Parker

The Book of Eli is a clunky religious allegory masquerading as a limp post-apocalyptic Western. Thrown into the mix is a twist ending too preposterous to have the impact it desperately desires. The film follows a machete-wielding warrior who tries to spread the word of god in a hostile landscape; its biblical law as grindhouse theatrics. It’s difficult to buy a Christ figure as a violent action figure and even harder to buy a film that surrounds this character with heavy-handed self-importance.

The film takes place in the unspecified future, where a nuclear holocaust has turned the entire world into a grimy wasteland a’ la Mad Max (the cinematography is so skewered by solemn gray hues that it might as well be in black-and-white). A lone wanderer named Eli (Denzel Washington) roams this landscape packing a large machete and a mysterious leather book. It’s really no secret that this book turns out to be a King James Bible and Eli has a mysterious plot to use the book’s teachings to re-establish humanity, somehow. Eli’s days consist of scraping abandoned buildings for food and water while fending off thieving gangs who wish to rob and eat him. This doesn’t prove to be a difficult task, for Eli is a highly skilled fighter who can lay waste to vicious gangs in mere seconds.

Things heat up the day Eli comes across a sinister town gripped by a slimy ruler named Carnegie (Gary Oldman). Through a series of events, Carnegie comes to realize that Eli is in possession of the sacred bible that could salvage mankind. Carnegie tries to take the book from him, but Eli violently stands his ground and refuses to let anyone touch the book. This causes a chase to ensue between Carnegie’s vicious road army and Eli, who has teamed up with an eager young woman (Mila Kunis) to help protect the book at all costs.

With their fifth film, Albert and Allen Hughes continue their theme of unearthing decaying morals in dark and nightmarish environments. The Hughes’ earlier films benefited strongly from the fact that they were rooted in real-life environments, causing their tragic underpinnings to strike us in an achingly real place. Whether it’s the California Ghetto (Menace II Society), Post-Vietnam America (Dead Presidents), or Victorian Era London (From Hell), the Hughes Brothers use dark chapters of history to unearth startling truths and nihilistic ideals within human nature. We feel the brothers falter this time because it’s hard to find human depths in such a shallow fantasy environment. We can feel the brothers trying to harp on the message that a lack of faith (literally) can lead society straight into maddening chaos, but this idea lacks the conviction from the Hughes’ earlier work. How can you pull strong human truths from an environment that’s assembled out of clichés from the post-apocalypse genre?

End-of-the-world movies can be a very sturdy form of cinema, for scenes of disaster and despair can be used to reflect the current anxieties of the contemporary culture. Indeed, The Book of Eli’s collapsed society could very well be seen to represent our current economic and health care state. A good film from this genre offers helpful and insightful messages throughout the bleakness. The Road, for example, was touching in the way it suggested that a strong family bond can help overcome whatever hazards society produces. The Book of Eli tries to pedal faith in God as a survival tactic, but the message comes across as too hokey. The film never explains to us how the Bible can help humanity nor does it go to great lengths to explain why it’s so important. God is God and, like Eli, you’re supposed to accept it point blank. The movie thinks there’s a dramatic weight to its themes that aren’t really there. At one point, Eli recites Biblical verses before battle, and we almost want to laugh at the hollowness of it all.

Denzel Washington is impressive in his fighting sequences (the 55-year-old proudly performed his own stunts), yet is made to be brooding and solemn throughout his characterization. His character makes for a bland hero, and we barely buy his divinity, especially when he’s slicing heads off with his machete. This doesn’t appear to be a fault of Washington’s, but of the script. Would a man who abides strictly by God’s teachings really be such a violent warrior? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate if Eli knew clever ways to defend and not dismember? Is the film suggesting that a man of God has to lay down with the dirty dogs in order to spread the word of the Bible? That a strong man of faith would be broken down by a violent society and transformed into a violent man? The Hughes Brothers, nor Washington, spend much time trying to answer these questions, but instead just try to march through the action plot.

The film is basically a watered-down trudge through a tired Mad Max scenario, which includes motor gangs and fist fights and gun play, etc. In the end, the film tries to push on us a plot twist that re-defines all that has gone before. This twist is a pretty tough sell. I wanted to accept it, but it seems way too implausible. If the film’s message looked tacky before, then the twist causes it to crumble under its own silliness. Like The Sixth Sense, this twist invites you to view the film all over to see how well the hidden secret bounces off the main plot. In this case, however, it feels like sitting through The Book of Eli again just to spot a cheap gimmick would feel like too much of a chore.

Most people will probably want to see this film simply because they enjoy seeing Denzel Washington in an action thriller. They’re better off watching Inside Man, where Washington was actually allowed to be energetic and creative within a superb thriller plot. Others will probably expect a bleak view of the future containing thoughtful relevance. Children of Men is the one to check out. And almost everything the Hughes Brothers did before this film makes this one look like a pathetic cartoon. I’m usually weary of just firing off alternative DVD gems in a bad movie review, but The Book of Eli is such a surprisingly pointless and empty experience that you truly deserve something of weight and intrigue.