Movie Reviews: THE SECRET OF KELLS & CITY ISLAND

THE SECRET OF KELLS (Dirs. Tomm Moore & Nora Twomey, 2009)

It was a bit of a surprise that this was nominated by the Academy for Best Animated Feature Film of last year, because in the current computerized cartoon climate it looks distinctly out of place with its old school hand drawn design.

THE SECRET OF KELLS concerns a curious kid (voiced by Evan McGuire) in the 9th century living in the Monastery of Kells. His stern uncle, Abbott Callach (Brenden Gleason) fearing Viking attack, forbids him to leave the protective walls enclosing them and venture into the mystic forest.

Of course, that's where he's gonna go - especially now inspired by the elderly Brother Aidan (Mick Lally) who requires the boy's help to finish his mighty magical book. Our intrepid lad journeys into the glowing lush forest to gather berries for ink and meets a playful yet spooky fairy - Aisling (voice of Christen Moony). She guides and aids the boy also adding some cryptic warnings. Moony breathes considerable life into the piece, that is until she starts to sing (thankfully there's just one song).

The pace is tight as it winds through its earnest storytelling, but unfortunately the flat look of its animation, and the fact that its chosen style makes it look like The Powerpuff Girls gone green, detract greatly from the earnest sincerity and its otherwise stable sense of wonder.

Its admirable nobility is what got it Oscar nominated, but its lack of tension and grip to its tale, elements that the winner UP had in spades, left it deservedly on the sidelines. At least since it has no thematic intensity, it's one you don't have to fear about taking the kids to, unless you fear that they'll fall asleep.

Don't consider this a complete pan though. THE SECRET OF KELLS does contain a lot of pretty imagery and the story is fairly solid, I just wish it had more oomph.

Speaking of needing more oomph:

CITY ISLAND (Dir. Raymond De Felitta, 2010)

Nearly every member of the Rizzo family, a working class Bronx family, has a secret.

Father and correctional officer (he hates being called a prison guard) Andy Garcia is taking acting classes which he doesn't tell his wife (Julianna Margulies) about, causing her to believe he's having an affair. Their daughter (Dominik Garcia-Lorido) is working as a stripper at a sleazy club because she got kicked out of her first year of college.

Their wise-cracking son (Ezra Miller) has a fetish for overweight women and is eyeing their next door neighbor (Carrie Baker Reynolds) who just happens to have a website catering to people who, uh, have fetishes for overweight women. Also add to the mix Steven Strait, Andy Garcia's long-lost-just-out-of-prison son, who, of course, Garcia hasn't told anybody about - not even Strait knows he's Garcia's son.

Garcia brings him into their home and then we fret as his wife and daughter are attracted to him - something that could have been avoided if he just told them the situation. This movie is something that could be avoided in one swift family meeting. As it goes each scene is a joke on the scene before it and not a very well timed or funny joke.

The addition of Alan Arkin as a crusty acting teacher (at least he's not a quipping grandparent who dies in the last third) just confirms the contrived and quirky nature of this tired material.

At one point, Garcia gets an audition for a Martin Scorsese film (don't worry - Scorsese wisely doesn't appear). Only his acting partner Emily Mortimer, who yes, he didn't tell his family about, knows this and encourages him. These scenes are sort of sweet as Garcia has a believability about him and Mortimer makes the most of an underwritten (and unnecessary) role.

If the sitcom sensibility and overreaching comic tone could have been dropped and the characters were given room to be people and not sketch premise devices, CITY ISLAND could've really been something other than just a watchable throwaway.

More later...

A Few Random Blu Ray Reviews

Recenly released on Blu ray/DVD:

BIGGER THAN LIFE (Dir. Nicholas Ray, 1956)

Missing in action from the home video scene, Nicholas Ray's disturbing domestic drama is finally released on Blu ray and DVD.

Starring James Mason as a cultured school teacher and family man, it concerns his downward spiral from abusing the prescribed drug cortisone. Mason begins taking the drug because of painful attacks and at first all is peachy - his strength and energy increases as does his intense focus.

This escalates into psychosis scaring his wife (Barbara Rush) and son (Christopher Olsen) into submission until they realize it's gotten out of hand. Mason (who also co-wrote and co-produced) delivers a performance that is a tour de force; it's remarkable work coming from an actor who specializes in suavity - even his iconic flustered Humbert Humbert in Stanley Kubrick's LOLITA is more a study in restraint than this character.

The film moves with Mason aesthetically evolving from brightly colored small town tranquility into dark shadowy behind closed doors oppression. Its ending is a bit too pat but BIGGER THAN LIFE is a movie milestone now restored to a proper place in the cinematic canon thanks to the Criterion Collection.

Insightful featurettes from author Jonathan Lethem ("Motherless Brooklyn"), the director's widow Suzanne Ray, commentary by critic Geoff Andrew, and a half hour interview with Ray from the 70's (which is mostly about REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE) make for a great package for this all too long absent near masterpiece.

COCOON (Dir. Ron Howard, 1985)

A ton of older titles are hitting Blu ray every day it seems which can be a good excuse to revisit forgotten films. However, In the case of this film the pristine picture quality hinders rather than enhances the dated special effects and its other cheesy attributes.

Being about a group of seniors who stumble upon a fountain of youth in the form of a swimming pool which happens to have ancient alien cocoons resting in its water, this movie appeared to exist so that there could be at least one sci-fi film in the '80s that you could take your grandparents to.

Don Ameche (who won the Oscar for his role), Hume Cronyn, and Wilford Brimley (who was only 51 at the time) are the old timers who find the inside pool located on property rented by Brian Dennehy as the leader of the visiting aliens disguised as humans.

The aliens hire Steve Guttenberg, taking a break from the POLICE ACADEMY series, and his boat to help them move the cocoons. Meanwhile the old folks (including Jessica Tandy, Maureen Stapleton, and Gwen Verdon) show off their new youthful power in a standard era montage - one of many hammy scenes that made me wish this film remained in the dusty VHS section of my mind.

Watching it again after all these years, it looks like Howard too closely followed Spielberg's alien handbook - when revealed as the generic glowing loose-limbed life forms that became the norm after CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, a good deal of the charm and fun is drained from the project. Likewise for big reveal of the alien's mother ship too.

Some of its corny charm is still there, but COCOON is really just a footnote from a period populated by much better fantasy film offerings. It's by no means a classic, shiny Blu ray notwithstanding.

Among the ample special features that ignore this, there's a trailer for COCOON: THE RETURN which is more than I want to see of one of the most unnecessary sequels ever again.

WONDERFUL WORLD (Dir. Joshua Goldin, 2009)

 Much like John Cusack, the work of Matthew Broderick over much of the last decade has suffered from weak material. So it's great to report that his film is Broderick's strongest film since ELECTION.

Broderick plays a former children's folk music star that lives a sorry existence as a cynical divorced man toiling in jobs he believes are beneath him. When his roommate (Michael K. Williams - Omar from The Wire) falls ill and needs hospitalization, Broderick contacts his family back in Senegal. Sanaa Lathan arrives as Williams' sister and a romance blooms between her and Broderick.

WONDERFUL WORLD could be seen as a more accessible version of THE VISITOR - an over educated socially withdrawn white man meets a foreign woman who re-ignites his spark while they both try to help a brother in need with culture clashes becoming revelations. It may be predictable in parts, but this is a film with a lot of heart and just the right amount of comic edge to make it satisfyingly worthwhile.

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GREENBERG: The Film Babble Blog Review

GREENBERG (Dir. Noah Baumbach, 2010)

"I'm really trying to do nothing for a while," Robert Greenberg (Ben Stiller) says repeatedly throughout this low key independent film that matches his nothing scene by scene.

Stiller's acerbic misanthropic New Yorker title character is house-sitting for his brother (Chris Medina) in LA and starts and stops, and starts and stops again, an awkward romance with Greta Gerwig as his brother's personal assistant. That's basically it plot wise. It's a series of scenes in which we cringe anticipating how exactly Stiller will socially sabotage every given situation.

And that really doesn't make for entertaining movie going. It seemed so promising at first. The possibilities of tapping into Stiller's talent for comic anger without cheap laughs, a la what PUNCH DRUNK LOVE did for Adam Sandler, could make for a iconic assessment, but the discomfort that supporting cast members Rhys Ifans and Jennifer Jason Leigh (who is credited for the story - a baffling credit since there barely is one) convey is contagious.

Greenberg, the character, is simply not interesting. He was once a musician that botched a record deal for his band that he's never owned up to, and his so called friends barely tolerate him. He writes complaint letters to every commercial institution that he comes across from American Airlines to Starbucks. And now he can't figure out if he wants to pursue a relationship with a 26 year old woman who is also floating through life with no direction.

You'd think that she'd see that this guy is just an asshole and move on, but maybe there's some actual realism there. Realism may be the film's problem. I mean, Greenberg all too well reminds me of former friends who I stopped hanging out with because they were way too negative and boring.

Many of Stiller's jerk wad exchanges just brought to mind the many times I disgustedly hung up the phone with such folk. When I realized halfway through that this guy was never going to change, and there was no point to this slice of his dull life, I wanted to hang up on the movie.

Underwritten and un-affecting; it's a charmless movie about a charmless man. It has echoes of James L. Brook's AS GOOD AS IT GETS which similarly dealt with a socially inept curmudgeon begrudgingly accepting love. That film though had more witty life to it - GREENBERG just sits there. Oh, I should say that Baumbach tries to combat the underlining nothing with a desperate party sequence with snarky kids, drugs, and loud music in the last third.

I like the work of Noah Baumbach a lot more than say Armond White, but here this particular spotlight on self absorption really needed more going for it than just these bare bones slightly spruced up with James Murphy's (LCD Soundsystem) soundtrack (which isn't bad actually).

When asked how he's doing early on, Stiller quips: "Fair to middling, Leonard Maltin would give me 2 and 1/2 stars." If I used a star rating I'd be way less generous.

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