Holiday Season Cinema Roundup 2012 Part 2

Continuing Film Babble Blog's end of the year roundup (check out Part 1 here), we now take a look at several more movies currently playing this holiday season:

LES MISÉRABLES (Dir. Tom Hooper) 

I was surprised at how many of the songs that I was familiar with in this adaptation of the wildly popular musical based on the 1862 Victor Hugo novel. I had forgotten that a long time ago an ex-girlfriend had the CD set of the Original Broadway Cast Recording from the late '80s, so much of it came flooding back as the film unfolded on the screen.

As my memories and the movie coalesced, I took in this French revolution era tale about Hugh Jackman as an escaped convict, who after becoming mayor of a small town, agrees to take care of deceased factory worker Anne Hathaway’s daughter (played by Isabelle Allen as a child; Amanda Seyfried as an adult). As sleazy innkeepers, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron-Cohen bring on the bawdy and steal the movie whenever they appear.

Jackman, Hathaway, and Seyfried, who all sing their parts live, are in fine voice, but Russell Crowe, as a ruthless policeman who’s hunting Jackman, has a rough warble that can be painful to endure - especially when the songs go on and on, which they often do. Hooper’s epic production, which clocks in at 157 minutes, wonderfully wallows in the muck of its dark, grotesque imagery, but its messiness can be overwhelming at times. Folks who aren’t fans of the musical, or musicals in general, will find it hard to take, but for the most part, I took it just fine.

JACK REACHER (Dir. Christopher McQuarrie) 

Looks like Tom Cruise wants another franchise as this is an adaptation of one of seventeen in a series of novels by Lee Child. This action thriller formula is competently constructed, but its story - Cruise as an ex-army military police investigator tries to get to the bottom of a case involving a trained military sniper who shot five random people - isn't very compelling. 

Some excitement is there in a few set-pieces, but its climax containing a shoot-out at a construction site, only hammers home how routine a genre exercise it is. Still, Cruise fans should love it as he makes a convincing unshakable badass, and Werner Herzog makes a great villain. Read my full review here.

THIS IS 40 (Dir. Judd Apatow)

Judd Apatow’s glorified home movie is his third film to feature his wife (Leslie Mann) and kids (daughters Maude and Iris), so you know he thinks they’re funny. To his credit, for a lot of its running time (another long one at 134 min) they are funny, but this is a big sloppy comic drama with too many storylines that never really get resolved. Paul Rudd and Mann, reprising their married couple roles from KNOCKED UP, have good chemistry together, and Albert Brooks, as Rudd’s father dealing with new triplets, is highly amusing, so there’s enough here to satisfy most comedy fans. Folks who aren’t fans of heavy amounts of profanity, or Apatow’s brand of man-boy humor in general may want to skip it however. Read my full review.

ANNA KARENINA 
(Dir. Joe Wright) 

Leo Tolstoy's 1868 novel has been adapted many many times, but Wright, in the third of his “literary trilogy” with Keira Knightly, has a meta take on the material involving setting the late 19th-century Russian story in a lavish old theater that evolves within the production into whatever backdrop is needed. Knightly, as the title character, works around the ropes, pulleys, curtains, footlights, and appropriate props, to portray a virtuous woman in a loveless marriage to an imperial minister (a balding, bearded, and quite boring Jude Law) who has an affair with Aaron Taylor-Johnson as a dashing cavalry officer. It can get a bit strained at times in its second half, but Wright's inventive reworking of the well worn material makes it recommendable. Read my full review here.

Well, that's it for this not bad Holiday season. By the way, I appeared on a Special Christmas Edition of fellow Raleigh, N.C. based critic Craig D. Lindsey's podcast Muhf***as I Know last week. We recorded a commentary (of sorts) for what Craig calls “one of the shittiest sex comedies ever made: THE HAPPY HOOKER GOES TO HOLLYWOOD (1980). The movie is available on Netflix Instant, so queue it up, go here, and listen to us babble all over it.

More later...

ANNA KARENINA: The Film Babble Blog Review

   
Now showing in the Triangle area at the Rialto Theatre in Raleigh, at the Chelsea Theater in Chapel Hill, and in Durham at the Carolina Theatre:

ANNA KARENINA (Dir. Joe Wright, 2012)

I have to say upfront that I am “Anna Karenina”-illerate. 

I have never read Leo Tolstoy’s 1868 novel, nor have I seen any of the 1,056 TV and movie adaptations (I think this is an accurate number; I’m too lazy to confirm it on IMDb or Wikipedia). All I knew going in was the basic premise, and that this is the third in director Wright and Keira Knightly’s “literary trilogy” (previous installments were 2005’s PRIDE AND PREDJUDICE, and 2007’s ATONEMENT).

Wright’s new adaptation of ANNA KARENINA largely sets the tale of a love triangle that ripples through Moscow’s high society in a lavish old theater that evolves within the production into whatever backdrop is needed. The effect is mesmerizing in the choreography of the players, and the camera work that includes several stunning unbroken shots - at least I think they were unbroken, some cuts may have been invisible to my eye.

So Keira Knight, as the title character, works around the ropes, pulleys, curtains, footlights, and appropriate props, to portray a virtuous woman in a loveless marriage to Count Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin (a balding, bearded, and quite boring Jude Law). Knight meets Aaron Taylor-Johnson (KICK ASS, John Lennon in NOWHERE BOY) as the dashing Count Vronsky, and they begin an affair together.

In a secondary storyline, Domhnall Gleeson as Konstantin Levin, retreats to working along with the peasants after his marriage proposal was rejected by the young blond beauty Kitty (Alicia Vikander), who gets involved with Taylor-Johnson. You see, it’s complicated.

Obviously, since this is a 2 hour and 10 minute adaptation (written by legendary screenwriter/playwright Tom Stoppard), of a 864 page book, the movie has to gloss over a lot of story details, but the last half of the film got a bit too jumbled for me narratively. It was also got harder and harder to be immersed in these people’s lives, as Knightly goes a bit over the top at times, Law is overly-passionless, and Taylor-Johnson’s pretty boy pose mostly just blends into the scenery.

However, overall the film casts a pleasing spell with its intriguing theatrical framework even though that concept gets dropped for a bit in the middle of film. A ballroom dance sequence is one of the most striking, though I’d be hard pressed to name that arm movement dance they’re doing. Background dancing couples freeze as the principals pass, with the exquisite choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui again coming into play. It’s an incredibly inventive way to tackle one of the most standard scenes in all of historical romance drama.

A horse race scene comes close, but I’m not even going to try to describe how they pull that off.

Maybe if I was as in love with the aching close-ups of Knightly as cinematographer Seamus McGarvey’s camera is, I would be into the poetry of these people’s plight, but really caring about how this woman is shunned by the aristocracy was really beyond me. 

Still, ANNA KARENINA has considerable merits, and folks who have a history with this material will surely get a lot out of it. It does make me want to read the book, and maybe check out another adaptation (I hear the 2000 miniseries is good), so I consider it a success for introducing me to one of Tolstoy’s most loved works, and for its meta theatrical take on this oft-told tale.

More later...

Ledger’s Last Film: Good But Not Great Gilliam

THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS 
(Dir. Terry Gilliam, 2009)

Terry Gilliam is infamous for problems plaguing (and sometimes halting) many of the productions of his fantastically far-fetched films, but as I'm sure folks reading this well know, none have been hit harder than this one. The untimely death of Heath Ledger midway through shooting threatened to squash the project, but Gilliam came up with a solution to cast three of Ledger’s acting peers to fill in for his remaining scenes.

It helps the conceit that in the story Ledger’s character steps through a magic mirror into another world in which he could be somewhat plausibly changed into another person. It also helps that the 3 actors filling in just happen to be very big names in the business: Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell.

Given these circumstances, the finished film works better than it has a right to. Working with a much lower budget than before, Gilliam knows how to draw an audience in to a strange setting, one that’s familiar to fans with its ratty stage folk and tall tales that just might be true. 

In the title role, Christopher Plummer, made to look ten times scragglier than usual, leads a group of show folks making their way around modern day London in a make-shift stage vehicle. The group is made up of the Doctor’s daughter (Lily Cole), a clever but neurotic magician (Andrew Garfield), and an out-spoken dwarf (Verne Troyer) who has many of the films best lines.

Plummer tells his daughter (and us) his bizarre back story (well, bizarre if you’ve never seen a Gilliam film before) involving a deal with the Devil (a terrific Tom Waits) and the darkening of his visions. When crossing a bridge in the middle of the night the traveling troupe comes across Ledger hanging from a noose. They get him down and find he’s still alive. 

When he comes to the next day he asks where he is. Troyer answers: “Geographically, in the Northern Hemisphere. Socially, on the margins. Narratively, with some way to go.”

Ledger has no memory of his life before his suicide attempt so he joins the Imaginarium players, soon making changes to their set and presentation. A crumbled newspaper page blowing around the rubble of the seedy dank underworld they call home reminds Ledger of his shady background, but he continues to go along with the troupe especially after learning that the Doctor’s Imaginarium is no scam.

The film beautifully builds up to when Ledger first goes through the mirror and the transition to Johnny Depp is successfully smooth. Depp has the briefest bit of the guest replacement actors, but makes the most of it with his patented eyebrow exercises and dance moves. 

Jude Law and Colin Farrell are well suited for the smarmy greedy parts of Ledger’s personality that emerge in further mirror excursions if indeed that’s what they were supposed to symbolize.

Such errant elements in the second half don’t gel well and key plot points are muddled or clumsily glossed over, but that Gilliam was able to complete this film to as coherent as it is makes up for a great deal of defects.

THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN is the closest relative IMAGINARIUM has in Gilliam’s canon. 

Both deal with wizened old men spinning legends out of their outrageous realities; performing their fables on the sideshow circuit, laying in wait for fortune or death - or both. IMAGINARIUM has a much lower budget that MUNCHAUSEN, yet it benefits from less aesthetic indulgence and its smaller scale gives it more intimacy.

It’s far from Gilliam’s best movie, and it’s far from Ledger’s best performance, but as a salvaged final project, I’m glad THE IMAGINARIUM exists. 

It’s a mixed bag of a movie (and may still have been had Ledger lived), but it’s a still a fairly fun film and a fitting tribute. At the end we are told that this is “A film from Heath Ledger and friends.” I know it's lame to say that 'it's the thought that counts', but dammit - it counts the most here.

More later…

High Concept Holmes

SHERLOCK HOLMES (Dir. Guy Ritchie, 2009)

The recreation of the career of Robert Downey Jr. as a bankable action hero continues with this expensive explosive epic that re-casts Arthur Conan Doyle's classic character as, well, a bankable action hero.

It's a conceit that works grandly for considerable chunks of Guy Ritchie's period production, but an unfortunate feeling remains that such a literary icon as Sherlock Holmes shouldn't be shoehorned into James Bondian conventions or Indiana Jones-ish set-piece progressions. The thinking behind this is understandable (or elementary) - who wants to see stiff sitting room scenes filled with exposition? Audiences want high octane action and that's what they're going to get here. Holmes was a martial arts master in Doyle's books and short stories so that's an element Ritchie and Downey Jr. run with. Through stylized breakdowns of his fighting strategies we get into Holmes' head blow by blow. However the attempts to get into his head clue by clue are less successful. 

The movie begins with Holmes and trusty sidekick Watson (Jude Law) preventing a human sacrifice by the dark treacherous Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong). Though Blackwood is jailed and sentenced to death, he still inspires fear with threatening prophecies of terror that he'll orchestrate from beyond the grave. 

Three days after he's hanged and pronounced dead by Watson, he appears to have torn through the walls of his tomb and is back among the living. 

Holmes is, of course, back on his trail with distractions such as Rachel McAdams as the infamous Irene Adler and Watson's bromance blocking bride to be (Kelly Reilly) muddying up the waters. Muddy is apt for it's a muddled mess of a mystery - a fast paced muddle, but a muddle all the same. 

For most moviegoers it won't matter as there is fun to be had with Downey Jr.'s almost contagious satisfied smirk of a performance. His accent is much the same as it was in CHAPLIN (that is - not very convincing but still adequate) and his jovial demeanor does much to carry the film through dark passages dealing with black magic and a perplexing plot to overthrow Parliament. 

Law doesn't make much of an impression as he just seems to be along for the ride and his fiancée subplot could be dropped completely with no complaints. Strong's steely faced Blackwood is a worthy adversary, but his evil plans fail to fascinate making the murky mechanics of the third act bog down the proceedings. 

Its ending obviously broadcasts that SHERLOCK HOLMES wants to be the first of a franchise, club sandwiched between IRONMAN efforts, primed for event movie seasons but I pray that it's a one off. 

Downey Jr. is one of the most capable and interesting actors working today, but I fear his hipster appeal will make for major miscasting in future famous icon reboots: Robert Downey Jr. as Tarzan/The Shadow/Buck Rogers/etc. Maybe I'm being too cynical, but as much as I enjoyed particular parts of this film and would like to write it off as pure escapism, I couldn't quite escape the notion that it's a glorified waste.

More later...

SLEUTH & A Few New DVD Reviews

"The film was a sadd'ning bore, 'cause I wrote it 10 times or more." - David Bowie from the song "Life On Mars"

Bowie's couplet above could serve as perfect criticism of the following film. I wanted to see it on the big screen last fall but it played for only a week at a local theater and was roundly panned. I loved the original so I put it in my queue and wished for the best. 

Well, what I got was the worst:

SLEUTH (Dir. Kenneth Branaugh, 2007)

This entire production screams "high concept!" It's a slick streamlined remake of the much beloved 1972 mystery which pitted Sir Laurence Olivier as a wealthy novelist against Michael Caine as a gold digging hair salon manager who is having an affair with Olivier's wife. 

The high concept here is that Caine now plays the wealthy novelist and Jude Law, fresh from remaking ALFIE, again steps into Caine's old shoes as the young gold digger.

The gothic old house of the original has been transformed into a high tech palace with surveillance cameras and monitors in every corner - a cold and sterile museum of a house that Caine says was designed by his wife but it's hard not to think he took some notes from Batman.

Taking the concept higher is a new screenplay by noted playwright Harold Pinter which throws out all of the original's dialogue and replaces it with even more twisted mental trickery. Branaugh's sharply stylised direction inhabits every frame - the film actually looks shiny like an expensive ad in GQ magazine. So why doesn't any of it work?

Hmm, It's not because it's ridiculous, contrived, and over the top - the original was all those things and even more unbelievable in its conceit.

The conceit being that these 2 men perform a series of double crossing mindgames over the never seen wife. There is one giant plot device that I won't give away, though if you watch the trailer you can probably guess what it is, that is handled so horribly it should have been discarded all together.

Caine has sleepwalked through better material than this but he does give it the old college try. Jude Law, is well...just what I expected - glib but hiding overwhelming insecurities but just like with Caine we never believe these are people with lives outside of this movie. They're both constrained by their empty caricatures.

Like I said before - the film looks great, the actors are apt, and the direction is solid so I guess I can only really blame the script. Pinter's dialogue is simplistic yet over-reaching - he uses all of the original's hot premise points but retains none of their humorous charms. 

If the plan was to break down a grand theatrical melodrama down into a souless modern psychological thriller package with as much depth as a Tom and Jerry cartoon then Pinter is indeed a genius as he's been often called. 

With all due respect to the Nobel Laureate, the original was an amusing trifle; this is high concept tripe.

The 2007 model SLEUTH only has 2 good things going for it: 

1. At 86 minutes it is an hour shorter than the original so at least they didn't try and stretch what was already as thin as Shelley Duvall as Olive Oil. 

2. The prospect that because this film was a critical and financial failure we can be spared any future Jude Law remakes of Michael Caine movies. Though come to think of it though, in the right hands Law could maybe pull off DEATHTRAP - if they stick to the original script, that is.

This next film isn't new but I'm writing about it because there is a recent English language remake that just came to my area. It's not playing in Chapel Hill however possibly because in the light of the tragic death of UNC student Eve Carson it could be seen to be in bad taste. Hearing that the remake is a shot-by-shot replay of the original from a decade earlier by the same director I got it from NetFlix and do strongly feel that yes the timing would be bad.

Not sure though, if the time will ever be right for:

FUNNY GAMES (Dir. Michael Haneke, 1997)

                                         

In a calm soothing manner we are introduced to a cultured Austrian family (A husband and wife played by Ulrigh Mühe and Suzanne Lothar with their son played by Stefan Clapczynski) arriving at their lake house.

10 minutes into the film a couple of creepy young men dressed in white clothes with white gloves appear - the first (Frank Giering) innocently asks to borrow some eggs from Lothar which he supposedly accidentally breaks. He asks for more, breaks those too and an awkward confrontation occurs when the second (Arno Frisch) assaults Mühe with a golf club severely injuring his right leg. 

The home invasion is in full swing now with the family taken hostage and a series of sadistic mind games with rules and deadly consequences set in place by Frisch. Frisch "breaks the frame" early on by winking at the camera then later asking the audience to bet on the fate of his victims: "You're on their side so who will you bet with?" 

Many critics have labeled FUNNY GAMES - high art disguised as torture porn (or vice versa) and point out that we don't actually see much of the violence because it occurs off screen. That may be true but there is still enough voyeuristic violence with screaming and blood in sight to disturb not just the squeamish. Haneke has said that he intended to make "a film about the portrayal of violence in the media, in movies... an attempt to provide an analysis of the work within the work." 

I'm afraid that even with that lofty purpose and artsy asides to the camera we still just have another violent piece of work here - a pretentious and tedious one at that. Repeatedly the suffering family asks their tormentors "why?" - "Don't forget the entertainment value" Giering responds and it is the only thing that ever comes close to a sincere answer. The entertainment value of this pointless exercise however is non-existent. 

If Haneke is making a statement critical of the mass consumption of media violence and he is ideally chastising viewers with his own work then as someone identifying themselves as Fuckhead on a Onion A.V. Club message board * asks "I guess the way to pass this film's test is to not see it? Is that it?" 

Yes, that's it. I failed that test by watching the original. But I expect to pass with flying colors when it comes to the remake. 

* Actually from the comments on the article "A funny response to Funny Games" by Steve Hyden (March 17, 2008) 

I AM LEGEND (Dir. Francis Lawrence, 2007)

                                         

I was planning on skipping this flick but some friends thought it would be good mindless fun one recent eve. They were right - this Will Smith fighting zombies spectacle (big enough to warrant an IMAX release) isn't too dumb for fun. Mind you, it considers itself to be too highbrow to call them zombies or mutants - they're called The Infected or Darkseekers. 

Based on the 1954 novel (which took place in the 70's) by Richard Matheson, the story is simple - in 2012, 3 years after most of the world's population is hit by a massive plague a man (Smith) who believes he may be the last alive on Manhattan Island struggles to find a cure for the virus. 

Dodging constant attacks, Smith talks to himself and his trusty dog Sam (who you just know won't make til the end) as he stockpiles food, broadcasts radio transmissions in hope of finding other survivors, and has several flashes to backstory about his departed family.

Smith captures Infected ones in order to test treatments and thinks he may have found a possible anti-dote.

Of course, this plot seems designed as an elaborate laundry line on which to hang a series of immense bombastic set pieces including a scene involving the Brooklyn Bridge which cost $5 million (the most expensive scene ever filmed in the city at the time according to Wikipedia). 

The CGI demon dogs and Darkseekers provide some genuine scares, while the shoot-out scenes (as one-sided as shoot-outs can be) are actually fairly compelling. 

Despite the sci-fi action formula limits, Smith is able to build upon his acting standard set by THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS last year and again shows he can carry, pretty much on his shoulders alone, another overblown blockbuster with poise. Don't get me wrong though - it's no movie masterpiece; I AM LEGEND is a brisk 1 hour and 40 min. piece of populist entertainment - nothing more. So just put a cork in your brainhole and sit back and enjoy.

More later...

The Failure Of The ALL THE KING'S MEN Remake

The IMDB reported this the other day - "Oscar-winning screenwriter and director Steve Zaillian was clearly stunned by the critical and box-office failure of his latest film, ALL THE KING'S MEN, which opened with only $3.8 million in its debut and fell out of the top-ten in its second weekend. Zaillian told the Los Angeles Times that it was "like getting hit by a truck. ... I don't know what to make of it. Maybe down the road I'll figure it out". Well maybe I can help figure it out - Since it is leaving my home town theater after a barely attended 2 ween run I decided to see the movie last night and it is one of the most boring movies I've ever seen!! Not since I almost went into a coma watching HOFFA has my time in the theater been so deadly dull. Hard to say exactly where Zaillian and crew went wrong - it is well photographed, the screenplay hits the right points, and the cast is A-list (Sean Penn, Anthony Hopkins, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Patricia Clarkson, etc.) - it just doesn't work. Most critics have blamed Sean Penn's overwrought performance and yes it is true he does deserve to be one of the patients in Monty Python's Hospital For The Over-Acting sketch but the blame lies elsewhere I believe. I got the original 1949 version of ALL THE KING'S MEN (Dir. Robert Rossen) from Netflix and watched it this morning. It had won the best picture Oscar and for good reason - it is a good well crafted interesting exercise in good taste and restraint. Everything the re-make tries in vain for the original accomplishes with much more class. I'll take Broderick Crawford's believably flawed Willie Stark over Sean Penn's wretched over-the-top spastic Willie Stark any day. So it was just another unnecessary remake. I can't think of one worthwhile remake that has been produced lately. Can you? More later...

Movies And Books, Movies And Books...

Pony-boy (C. Thomas Howell): “All I did was walk home from the movie.”

Darrel (Patrick Swayze): “Movies and books, movies and books! I wish you could concentrate on something else once in a while”

Sodapop (Rob Lowe): “Try girls and cars. Works for me.”

From Francis Ford Coppola's movie adaptation of S.E. Hinton's 1967 novel THE OUTSIDERS.

A recent Time magazine article titled Books Vs. Movies (I'd link it but it's premium content - greedy corporate bastards!) again put up the ancient argument - "which is better" in the context of such event movies coming out before this years end like THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA and MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA as well as the already released HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE, SHOPGIRL, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, and even WALK THE LINE which was based on two Johnny Cash autobiographies, Man in Black and CASH: The Autobiography.

I've only seen a few of the movies I mentioned above (SHOPGIRL and WALK THE LINE) but lately I have noticed I have a tendency to read or re-read the book before I see the new movie version.

Anticipating CAPOTE a couple of months ago I bought a paperback of Truman Capote's 1966 true crime novel "In Cold Blood" and also watched the 1967 movie version - I guess as a way of doing some homework on the subject or maybe just a geeky habit of wanting to know all the source material available. Sigh. This makes me recall that back in '92 I read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" a few months before Spike Lee's epic cinematic rendition hit the screens. Jeez! I guess I got it bad.

Despite the old cliche "the movie is always better than the book," there are a number of notable exceptions like BEING THERE, THE GODFATHER and FIGHT CLUB. Many people love certain movies never knowing there was a book and vice versa. I, for years, never knew that HAROLD AND MAUDE was originally a novella written by Colin Higgins who adapted it into the screenplay for the hal Ashby film.

A few movies I've seen lately that were based on books:

COLD MOUNTAIN  (Dir. Anthony Minghella, 2003)

Yes, I know just about everyone, especially here in N.C. read the 1997 Charles Frasier novel at the end of the last decade and then saw the movie a couple years ago, but I only just caught up with both. The book was elegantly written, with details that were almost too much to absorb (the food descriptions were crazy!), all of which I enjoyed immensely. The movie not so much. While well cast (Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renee Zelleweger, Philip Seymour Hoffman were all perfect for their roles) was icky, overly glossy, stupidly reducing the love story elements into romance novel fodder. Dammit! They TITANIC-ized it!

THE OUTSIDERS: THE COMPLETE NOVEL
(Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 1983/2005)

I read the S.E. Hinton book of this way back in Jr. High School in the early 80's like most people in my demographic I guess and was interested to hear that Coppola had restored footage to the movie to make it closer to the book. It does work a little better though despite its boys-club cast (Swayze, Cruise, Lowe, Estevez, etc) its still the feminine cheesy melodrama it will always be in our hearts. Or at least my demographic's hearts.

THE WARRIORS (Dir. Walter Hill, 1979) 

This is another one that I didn't realize til now was based on a book (by Sol Yurick) until recently. Though it was originally a pulp novel, the new Ultimate Director's Cut has wipes and transitions added to make the film look more like a comic book - characters morph into still frame cartoons contained in black border boxes at the end of sequences and then we are whisked away to another panel. 

The effect doesn't bother me but on this here internet there are many fan-boy complaints about Lucas-like tinkering and some such spoiling of a masterpiece. Yeah, its like someone painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa, sure.

More later...

I ♥ HUCKABEES = WTF?

Now playing at an art house near you:

I ♥ HUCKABEES

(Dir. David O. Russell, 2004)

This is the ultimate WTF? movie. It's been a few days since I've seen it and I'm still trying to process. Many critics don't even try to describe the plot or premise, but I'd just say it's about a poet activist (Jason Schartzman) who hires a married couple played by Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin who bill themselves as existential detectives to sort out problems with his soul.

Oh yeah, there's an overly slick spokesperson (Jude Law) for a Target/Wall Mart type chain and his flighty model wife (Naomi Watts), as well as Mark Wahlberg as a fireman who hates petroleum so much that he rides his bike to fight fires. That's as good as I can do.

The characters all run around spouting lines like "There's no such thing as nothing," and "Nobody sits like this rock sits. You rock rock. The rock just sits and is. You show us how to just sit here and that's what we need."

Some of this is fun, some of it is strained, some of it is just purely baffling. I mean at the end I was more confused than I was by the MATRIX sequels. I mean, now what am I see supposed to be reality and what isn't?

It also doesn't help that HUCKABEES seems stitched together from other movie's styles. The soundtrack by Jon Brion and the color scheme recall the work of Paul Thomas Anderson (MAGNOLIA, PUNCH DRUNK LOVE). The other Anderson, Wes Anderson, comes to mind of course from the casting of Schwartzman (RUSHMORE) and the eccentrically quirky tone.

Also, the screenplay appears to be heavily suggested by the work of Charlie Kaufman (ADAPTATION, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND). So did I like it? I didn't hate it. That's the best I can do.

More later...

New Movies On Both Big & Small Screens

Time for some reviews of recent release movies, both on the big and small screens that I can't wait to babble about.

Now showing at a theater near you:

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE (Dir. Jared Hess, 2004)

Funny or just funny looking? Hard to decide about a movie made by Mormons about a high school geek oddball (Jon Herder) in Idaho and his quirky misadventures. Quirky humor seems to be the rage in recent independent comedies so much so that one critic (Sean Burns from the Philadelphia Weekly) said that this felt like the work of "a lousy Wes Anderson cover band." I'm not sure I'd quite say that, but it's an amusing line. It's at least a good-hearted flick that a lot of displaced kids will take to, but it's also like a smirking breeze that just blows by. 

SHAUN OF THE DEAD (Dir. Edgar Wright, 2004) 

A British romantic comedy/killer zombie thriller that's like a spirited mixture of  28 DAYS LATER and HIGH FIDELITY (both the Nick Hornby book and the Stephen Frears/John Cusack movie), especially in the scene where slacker Shaun (Simon Pegg) and his deadbeat flatmate Ed (Nick Frost) throw old vinyl records at the blood thirsty undead. Ed: "Stone Roses?" Shaun: "Definitely not." Ed: "The Batman soundtrack?" Shaun: "Throw it." 

More hilarity than horror, with an infectious amount of energy and wit by the cast (mostly from the BBC sitcom Spaced), and Wright's inventive camera work all make this a comic blast. Some critics are predicting this may become a cult classic in years to come. They might be onto something. It's nice to see Lucy Davis and Martin Freeman from the brilliant BBC program The Office make appearances too.

SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW

(Dir. Kerry Conran, 2004)

More a cinematic display of the world that yesterday thought tomorrow would look like, Kerry Conran's debut feature film positions itself as the ultimate in retro cinema. Or maybe it's what Harry Shearer called "nowtro" in A MIGHTY WIND. 

Old school sci-fi ideals mingle with new school computer generated imagery to make a 2004 movie look like it could have come from the '30s or '40s. Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow star as the hero and heroine who go through a narrative as cribbed from old Flash Gordon and Dick Tracy as it is from James Bond and STAR WARS. 

For a number of amped-up sequences, SKY CAPTAIN works and is a fascinating experiment, but unfortunately it drags horribly in places and the sense of innocence it tries to evoke is so long gone that it may leave viewers puzzled. Still though such an ernest while overblown concept movie is hard to dismiss. Long live Nowtro!

Now out on DVD:

BADASSSSS! (Dir. Mario Van Peeples) 

Movies that are about making movies hold a certain interest but the claim that some critics have made that finally blaxploitation has it's DAY FOR NIGHT seems to miss the point.

This is about the making of a real movie, SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG (Dir. Melvin Van Peeples, 1971), so the whole 'movie within a movie' cliche doesn't really ring true. This is more interestingly about the struggle and satisfaction of the film making process as told by the son of the original film maker (and based on Melvin Van Peeples' book: "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song: A Guerilla Filmmaking Manifesto"). This completes a circle of sorts as Mario Van Peeples as a child had a small part in his father's film.

Funny, intense, and emotionally endearing in its last half hour this is exactly what it what it claims to be, that is, BAADASSSSS. It's also without a doubt the best project that Mario Van Peeples has ever been involved in.

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND 

(Dir. Michel Gondry)

A nearly flawless existential comedy with a Philip K. Dickensian kick! I don't need to recount the plot as just about everybody reading this has surely surely seen this flick. So now what's maybe the best movie of the year gets a splendid DVD release.

Commentaries, deleted scenes, and featurettes augment this disc, and they're all worthwhile, but the movie by itself would make a splendid DVD. Charlie Kaufman, while working with well trodden egghead memory erase concepts, wrings an imaginative free form story out of every day truths and it gets better with every viewing.

A thinking man's rom com, ETERNAL SUNSHINE is a delight in every way. Jim Carrey puts in the restrained every-guy performance that comes off as more impressive than his 'in-your-face' persona of the past while Kate Winslet gives a greatly confident spin to her impulsive artsy book store slave gal with her ever changing hair colors. 

Gondry's inventive visual style along with a wonderfully chosen cast supports Carrey and Winslet, that includes Kristen Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkinson, David Cross and Elijah Wood. So check it out, and consider giving your own existence a jump start, why doncha?!!?

More later...