A 'Hot Tub' Worth Dipping In

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

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

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

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

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

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

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'

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

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'

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.