Comedy Archives - Page 37 of 78 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

The Band’s Visit (2007)

February 8, 20082000s, 2007, 2008, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, France, Israel, Music, Romance, Theatrical

Bikur Ha-Tizmoret
***½/****
starring Shlomi Avraham, Saleh Bakri, Ronit Elkabetz, Sasson Gabai
written and directed by Eran Kolirin

by Walter Chaw I’ve been reading a lot of Thomas Friedman lately, mostly because I have glaring, embarrassing gaps in my education and popular, contemporary scholarship about our Middle East imbroglio is chief among them. I’ve read a good bit on the Crusades and on the wars we’ve waged during the two Bush administrations; what I haven’t read is any extensive insight into the psyche of the Arab Street. Where better to start than through the erudition of a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner? I approached Eran Kolirin’s The Band’s Visit in a different way, I realize, than I would have prior to my dip into Friedman’s headspace–and was gratified, as I seldom have been, by how a juncture in my interests resulted in what could only be a richer film experience. The Band’s Visit is already remarkable for its sensitivity and patience, but knowing a little of the tragic intractability of Israeli/Arab relations lends it an implacable weight of sorrow. I’m convinced that there’s already a latent melancholy in the picture, but armed with just a gloss of Camp David, the Israeli/Egyptian conflict, suddenly all of the picture’s travails–being shut out of the Cairo film festival and, at the last minute, the Abu Dhabi fest as well–take on this terrible weight of irony and hopelessness. Without showing anybody coming over to “the other side,” as it were, The Band’s Visit is about communication, understanding, and acceptance, its characters united in their difference in the quest for the indefinable sublime. It’s the best kind of political film in that it’s a work, without pretension, of essential humanity–and the best kind of sentimental film in that it earns its sentiment.

Family Guy: Blue Harvest (2007) – DVD

February 4, 20082000s, 2007, 2008, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD, Television

*/**** Image N/A Sound A Extras C+
written by Alec Sulkin
directed by Dominic Polcino

by Ian Pugh Born the year after Return of the Jedi came out, I was left in limbo as far as the behemoth of popular culture that is Star Wars was concerned: too young to have seen the films when they exploded into the public consciousness, I was also a little too old to experience a religious awakening with their “Special Edition” revivals in the late-Nineties. I bore witness to a hundred “I am your father” jokes before any formal viewing of The Empire Strikes Back, and so, like other movie references I was not yet intellectually mature enough to piece together on my own (Rosebud is a sled, the Planet of the Apes is really Earth), I was more apt to laugh because the television kept telling me to laugh. It’s a poisonous mentality, this vicarious sense of entertainment, and its infiltration of my generation is manifested in our exaltation of “Family Guy”. Though the show brilliantly attacked social mores and narrative conventions, we were more impressed by its far-reaching knowledge of pop culture–mostly the kind of stuff we had only seen on Nick at Nite and the Internet–than by any of the subversive material therein. Ergo, once the fanbase had successfully rescued the series from premature cancellation, Seth MacFarlane and his crew became lazy, too often resorting to facile name-dropping.

Sundance ’08: The Wackness

February 1, 20082000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Romance, Sundance, Teen, UK

**/****
starring Josh Peck, Ben Kingsley, Famke Janssen, Olivia Thirlby
written and directed by Jonathan Levine

by Alex Jackson In the opening scene of The Wackness, teenager Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) is having a session with his psychiatrist, Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley). Dr. Squires tells him that a “quarter bag” will buy him forty-five minutes. Luke produces the requested pot and goes on to discuss his problems as Dr. Squires fills and lights up a bong. In one of the film’s closing scenes, Luke is having dinner with his family when an uncle asks him what he wants to be once he finishes college. He responds that he’s thinking he’d like to be a “shrink”–after all, he should be an expert, having been surrounded by so many fucked-up people. These two scenes go far in illustrating both the film’s sickly sentimentality and its muddled perspective towards adolescence. Not to get moralistic on you, but Luke is essentially being exploited by his psychiatrist: instead of trading sex for a sympathetic ear, he’s trading drugs. It isn’t that great a leap. But rather than growing to realize that Dr. Squires is a user and a loser (the humour of seeing Sir Ben Kingsley toke up is rooted in the incongruence of such a prestigious actor behaving so immaturely, right?), he ultimately views him as a figure to emulate in a sea of unworthy adult role models. I’m not saying that The Wackness is morally bankrupt, exactly, just that its values are confused. Luke at times comes off as an omniscient demigod who sees through the corruption and hypocrisy of the adult world, and at other times comes off as a complete fucking idiot who overuses “mad” in its colloquial form. Dr. Squires is sometimes a wise and loving mentor and sometimes a total mess who needs Luke to rescue him.

Sundance ’08: What Just Happened

February 1, 20082000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Robert De Niro, Sundance

**½/**** starring Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, Sean Penn, Catherine Keener screenplay by Art Linson, based on his book directed by Barry Levinson by Alex Jackson Already pegged as another legendary fiasco for Man of the Year helmer Barry Levinson, What Just Happened strongly suggests that Levinson is trying to Peter Bogdanovich himself into unemployment. Ben (Robert De Niro) is a fading Hollywood producer torn between two projects in need of salvaging. One is an action film starring Sean Penn that the director, Jeremy (Michael Wincott), has ended by having the villains shoot Penn's dog point-blank in the head, spraying…

Sundance ’08: Be Kind Rewind

January 30, 20082000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Esoterica, Film Festivals, France, Sundance, UK

***/****
starring Jack Black, Mos Def, Danny Glover, Mia Farrow
written and directed by Michel Gondry

by Alex Jackson Michel Gondry has said he always wanted to make a film like Back to the Future (i.e., a quirky, funny, big-budget movie), and I guess this is his version of it. It has science-fiction, toilet humour, a lovable man-child (à la Adam Sandler or Jerry Lewis, here played by Jack Black), slapstick, romance, and a classic storyline involving evil developers with plans to pave over the community hangout unless the heroes can stop them in time. Gondry clearly wants to break the one-hundred-million-dollar mark with Be Kind Rewind–and who knows, he just might do it. Much worse films have made the cut. There’s something wonderful and crazy about Gondry’s utter lack of cynicism. He treats crowd-pleasing blockbuster filmmaking like a genre on which he’ll put his personal stamp. I mean this lovingly, but you might need to be French to be this wacky. Be Kind Rewind is a thrift shop and video store in urban New Jersey that has yet to transition from VHS to DVD. It’s owned and operated by Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), who, having learned that his building will be demolished and his business relocated to the projects, takes off to figure out how to save the store, leaving Mike (Mos Def) in charge. After Mike’s best friend Jerry (Black) becomes magnetized and erases every tape on the shelf, the two decide to replace them with their own homemade recreations.

Sundance ’08: Good Morning Heartache

January 29, 20082000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Film Festivals, Italy, Sundance

Riprendimi **/**** starring Alba Rohrwacher, Marco Foschi, Valentina Lodovini, Stefano Fresi screenplay by Anna Negri and Giovanna Mori directed by Anna Negri by Alex Jackson Broadly speaking, bad movies come in two distinct flavours: boring and obnoxious. I'm always conflicted as to which is worse, but as of this moment, I feel like it would be faint praise to say that Riprendimi (the preferred English title is Good Morning Heartache) is just plain boring. Small-time actor Giovanni (Marco Foschi) and television editor Lucia (Alba Caterina Rohrwacher) are a young Roman couple who have agreed to appear in a documentary about…

Sundance ’08: Choke

January 28, 20082000s, 2008, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance

*½/****
starring Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Kelly Macdonald, Brad Henke
screenplay by Clark Gregg, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk
directed by Clark Gregg

by Alex Jackson Choke lost me in the very first scene. The hero, Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell), is at a support group for sex addicts and describing all the regulars for us. There’s the housewife who put mayonnaise on her crotch for her dog to lick off. There’s the guy who had to have a gerbil removed from his anus. And then there’s the cheerleader who needed a stomach pump after swallowing too much semen. I want to talk about the cheerleader. I think Victor said that doctors pumped two quarts out of her stomach. Considering the amount of semen in a typical human ejaculation is about 1.5 to 5 millilitres, that’s a lot of blowjobs! Two quarts is around two litres, right? So she would’ve had to service at least 400 men. Assuming this would take about three minutes apiece, she’d have to have been at it for twenty hours straight, without vomiting up or digesting any of the semen–which, by the way, is completely non-toxic and would not require the use of a stomach pump–in the meantime. What kind of dipshit expects me to buy this? I admit I haven’t read Chuck Palahniuk’s source novel. I might very well be alone on this–the critics at my press screening were buzzing with anticipation, and the gang over at my message board instantly recognized the title.

The Assassination of Jesse James (2007) + Johnny Suede (1991) – DVDs

January 28, 2008****/****, 1990s, 2000s, 2007, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Music, Romance, UK, Western

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD
****/**** Image A Sound A
starring Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard, Sam Rockwell
screenplay by Andrew Dominik, based on the novel by Ron Hansen
directed by Andrew Dominik

by Walter Chaw Kiwi director Andrew Dominick’s heroically pretentious The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (hereafter Jesse James) is a deflated anti-western in the tradition of Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand and Terrence Malick’s Badlands. Broadly, it’s a magnification of the Nixonian malaise that infected the early-Seventies, its suggestion that things aren’t much worse now than they were then complicated by three decades of cynicism. As a piece, it’s almost completely sapped of energy, though it isn’t deadpan like Jarmusch’s Dead Man. No, think of it as more of a dirge: not ironic, but post-modern; not a death march, but mournful. It’s how J. Hoberman once (derisively) described Body Heat, a “remake without an original”–Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid corrupted by McCabe and Mrs. Miller, the whole of it shot through with an autumnal soft focus that looks exactly like the reunion sequence that pushes the third act of Bonnie and Clyde. It vaguely resembles an insect caught in an amber sepulchre. Yet despite its obvious pedigree, it is all of itself, infused with the spirit of the now, suffused with author Ron Hansen’s transcendental prettiness (the film is based on his novel), and, as framed by DP Roger Deakins’s painterly eye, overwhelmingly beautiful. Deakins is given the keys to the kingdom here and every moment of Jesse James looks like mythology pulled through a cinematic loom, often leaving the edges of the frame lanolin-indistinct as they trail off into history. I hadn’t thought it possible to see our current crises of faith cast as romantic, but there it is.

The Game Plan (2007) – Blu-ray + DVD

January 25, 20082000s, 2007, 2008, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Sports

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Kyra Sedgwick, Morris Chestnut, Roselyn Sanchez
screenplay by Nichole Millard & Kathryn Price
directed by Andy Fickman

by Bill Chambers Maudlin trash, The Game Plan makes The Pacifier–one of the prototypes for this slop–look like No Country for Old Men. Again we have a beefcake bachelor (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) in a macho profession (football) learning to stop worrying and love the Devil’s spawn. The Rock plays star quarterback Joe “The King” Kingman, whose cushy, Elvis-accessorized lifestyle is interrupted by the sudden appearance of a little girl claiming to be his long-lost daughter. Named Peyton (not after Peyton Manning or Walter Payton, as a leatherhead would hope, but Nobel Prize-winning M.D. Peyton Rous–an early herald of her precocious pretentiousness), she invites herself to stay for a month while her mother ostensibly does philanthropic work in Africa. In the meantime, Mother or some facsimile is fed the lie that Peyton is away at ballet camp (in January?! The film opens on New Year’s Eve), and Joe becomes a pawn in maintaining this illusion by striking a Faustian bargain with Mater Suspiriorium, er, Monique Vasquez (Roselyn Sanchez), the compulsory love interest and gatekeeper of the local prestigious dance academy. (The Game Plan takes place in a Boston so generic it may as well be Metropolis.) Ingratiating herself with Joe’s clownish team-mates (no “Playmakers”-style conflicts for these guys), if not his pragmatic–and flatulent!–agent (Kyra Sedgwick, of all people), Peyton ultimately, predictably, succeeds in her kamikaze campaign to be crowned “the best thing that ever happened” to Joe.

Swamp Thing: The Series (1990-1991) – DVD

January 8, 20081990s, 2008, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD, Sci-Fi, Scream/Shout! Factory, Superhero, Television

Image B- Sound B Extras C
“The Emerald Heart,” “Falco,” “Treasure,” “From Beyond the Grave,” “Blood Wind,” “Grotesquery,” “New Acqaintance,” “Natural Enemy,” “Spirit of the Swamp,” “Legend of the Swamp Maiden,” “The Death of Dr. Arcane,” “The Living Image,” “The Shipment,” “Birthmarks,” “The Dark Side of the Mirror,” “Silent Screams,” “Walk a Mile in My Shoots,” “The Watchers,” “The Hunt,” “Touch of Death,” “Tremors of the Heart,” “The Prometheus Parabola”

by Ian Pugh In many ways the anti-Darkman, Wes Craven’s Swamp Thing also saw a comic-book scientist irrevocably transformed into a monster at the hands of hoodlum saboteurs. Alas, unlike Sam Raimi with his masterpiece, Craven is unable to strike a balance between seriousness and silliness, falling too far in the latter direction before the picture finally collapses under its own snarky weight. It is, however, the film that enlightened me as to why B-movie anti-appreciation is such a worthless endeavour, since Swamp Thing never bothers to pretend that it’s anything more than a couple of dudes in rubber suits wailing on each other. When you’re making a movie in the “MST3K” mindset, as Craven appears to be, you don’t really have a movie in mind, per se–you’re just positioning actors as they recite lines from a script.

My Best Friend (2006) – DVD

January 4, 20082000s, 2006, 2008, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, France

Mon meilleur ami
**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Daniel Auteuil, Dany Boon, Julie Gayet, Julie Durand
screenplay by Patrice Leconte & Jérôme Tonnerre
directed by Patrice Leconte

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover François (Daniel Auteuil) is an obnoxious antiques dealer without a friend in the world. This rather extreme fact lets you know he’s about to get his comeuppance, a life lesson in the form of an opposite number who will set him straight. Enter Bruno (Dany Boon), a far-too-nice cabbie who strangely volunteers to teach François sociability. That the plot hinges on a boring odd-couple helping each other is all you need to know about My Best Friend (Mon meilleur ami), the kind of thing Rob Reiner would make if he were French. Although it gamely suppresses the more bathetic elements of the story, they’re there just the same: we’re supposed to feel the warm good feeling of a jerk redeemed, and to that end, the film deploys every heart-tugging mechanism in the feel-good manual. That it doesn’t milk them visually is less a tribute to the restraint of director Patrice Leconte than to his skill at playing a shell game with the audience.

Underdog (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

January 3, 20082000s, 2007, 2008, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Family, Sci-Fi, Superhero, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Jim Belushi, Peter Dinklage, John Slattery, Patrick Warburton
screenplay by Adam Rifkin and Joe Piscatella & Craig A. Williams
directed by Frederik Du Chau

by Bill Chambers Whereas the gigantic Underdog balloon that hovers over New York City during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade is at least conceptually interesting (American commerce’s idea of a Stalin statue), Underdog, Disney’s charmless live-action resurrection of the beloved super-mutt, has no subtext, just a bunch of mercenary actors and technicians who can barely disguise their contempt for the film’s screenplay, which lazily embellishes the extraordinary-pet genre with scatology while weaving a maddeningly derelict patchwork of recycled tropes like the grieving widower/orphan, the unattainable hottie, and the disgraced cop. It’s fair to say I hate Underdog, but I hate it because it doesn’t even have the will to finish what it starts. Only two things about it are kind of fascinating, and only then from a largely extratextual standpoint. The first is that in taking the title character out of the cartoon realm, the digitally-manipulated slapstick pratfalls and clumsy landings look grotesquely painful for the beagle(s) playing Underdog. They should’ve gone the Scooby-Doo route and fashioned a 3-D likeness of the 2-D prototype, since the sight of man’s best friend hurtling through panes of glass really has no intrinsic comic value.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Seasons 1 & 2 (2005-2006) – DVD

January 2, 20082000s, 2008, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD, Television

Image B Sound C+ Extras D+
“The Gang Gets Racist,” “Charlie Wants an Abortion,” “Underage Drinking: A National Concern,” “Charlie Has Cancer,” “Gun Fever,” “The Gang Finds a Dead Guy,” “Charlie Got Molested,” “Charlie Gets Crippled,” “The Gang Goes Jihad,” “The Gang Gives Back,” “Dennis and Dee Go On Welfare,” “Mac Bangs Dennis’ Mom,” “The Gang Runs for Office,” “Hundred Dollar Baby,” “Charlie Goes America All Over Everybody’s Ass,” “The Gang Exploits a Miracle,” “Dennis and Dee Get a New Dad”

by Ian Pugh When confronted with the inescapable, unfunny vacuum that is Carlos Mencia, I used to tell people I hated that which was self-consciously controversial. I soon realized, though, that any property that genuinely pushes the envelope has to be aware of its material on some level; it’s probably more accurate to say I hate that which features controversy as its only selling point. Hostel Part II‘s DVD cover may sport an obnoxious stamp guaranteeing that it is “shocking and explicit,” but the film puts those qualities to use in a capitalist redux of The Wicker Man. “The Sarah Silverman Program.” may touch on taboo subjects, but it does so to question the self-aggrandizing persona of its star. Then you’ve got “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” (hereafter “Sunny”), which parades the horrible actions of its lead characters as if they meant something on their own, believing that its toe-in-the-water venture into forbidden territory exempts it from criticism. Take a long, hard look at the episode list above, and know that just about every teaser sequence in “Sunny”‘s first two seasons is followed by a smash cut to one of those titles–and in this brief moment, find everything you need to know about the episode and its comedic trajectory. The quality of the writing itself is ultimately summed up by the subsequent opening-credits montage showcasing the various sights and non-sights of Philly by night. While personal experience dictates that sunny days and dispositions are indeed hard to come by in that city, the fact that the series must directly invert the implications of its name reeks of desperation to have its weak antics seen as darkly ironic.

Sunshine (2007) + The Simpsons Movie (2007)

December 17, 20072000s, 2007, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

SUNSHINE
***/****
starring Rose Byrne, Cliff Curtis, Chris Evans, Troy Garity
screenplay by Alex Garland
directed by Danny Boyle

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE
**½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B
screenplay by James L. Brooks & Matt Groening & Al Jean & Ian Maxtone-Graham & George Meyer & David Mirkin & Mike Reiss & Mike Scully & Matt Selman & John Swartzwelder & Jon Vitti
directed by David Silverman

by Walter Chaw I had the great fortune to revisit Michael Almereyda’s astounding Hamlet the other night with a smart, engaged audience, and more than once during Danny Boyle’s Sunshine it occurred to me that Almereyda should’ve directed it. Almereyda, after all, would’ve made the movie beautiful and intelligent–wouldn’t have leaned on genre conventions like a late picture boogeyman too much like Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty (and Blade Runner‘s just one of the dozens of pictures the film cribs from). He would’ve had sufficient faith in the premise to not muck it up with one metaphor for the fall of man too many. Sunshine is gorgeous for much of its run, however, good enough to merit comparison to Soderbergh’s Solaris (though not Tarkovsky’s, mind you–it’s never that introspective) in its careful juxtaposition of human frailty against the awesome, insensate inscrutability of the universe. Set in a not-too-distant future where the sun is suffering from the need for a little jump-start, the picture opens seven years after the first expedition to save the world, the badly-/poignantly-named “Icarus I”, has disappeared and a second expedition carrying the last of Earth’s fissionable material (“Icarus II”, natch) has been dispatched. Once they’ve encountered the rescue beacon of their predecessor, the ship’s crew of seven–three of them Asian, which is really kind of amazing (a fourth is Maori)–gradually comes to realize that they’re on a mission to touch the face of God.

License to Wed (2007) – DVD

December 11, 20072000s, 2007, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Romance, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras F
starring Robin Williams, Mandy Moore, John Krasinski, Christine Taylor
screenplay by Kim Barker and Tim Rasmussen & Vince De Meglio
directed by Ken Kwapis

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover License to Wed is one more piece of roadkill on the path to Hell that Hollywood has mistaken for normalcy. The idea of a wildly intrusive minister manipulating the lives of two aspiring marrieds is bad enough, but what’s worse is that one of the lovebirds in question is a suspicious jerk who doesn’t use his brain, while the other is an airhead who turns on her man with the slightest suggestion from a totalitarian cleric. Watching these people do their stuff isn’t just unfunny, it’s downright creepy–a freakshow of gruesome embarrassments and gender politics that will have you covering your eyes at regular intervals. The filmmakers think that hateful attitudes and grotesquely inappropriate behaviour are somehow going to be smoothed over by feigning good intentions and a boring, brightly-lit aesthetic that squeezes anything eccentric out of the frame. Although License to Wed comes across like your favourite boring uncle, rest assured there’s something under its raincoat you don’t want to know about.

Juno (2007)

December 7, 20072000s, 2007, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, Teen, Theatrical

*/****
starring Ellen Page, Michael Cera, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman
screenplay by Diablo Cody
directed by Jason Reitman

by Walter Chaw Brutally overwritten, smug, and self-indulgent to no discernible point, Jason Reitman’s disappointing Juno is an unfortunate attempt to marry Judd Apatow’s sleazy morality plays with a Kevin Smith pop-cultural gabber–the result being a ventriloquism tract in which virgin screenwriter (formerly blogger) Diablo Cody crams so many unlikely gluts of verbiage into so many sterile, undeveloped characters that the whole production is the ultimate act of masturbatory puppetry. The movie would be twice as funny with half as many wisecracks–it’s so stuffed that there are long moments of zero interplay as one person or another acts as mute sounding board to whoever’s reeling off a Dennis Miller-ism. Red-flag time when a film acts as both main attraction and audience. Ellen Page stars as the titular Juno McGuff, a Soupy Sales-referencing sixteen-year-old who finds herself pregnant by her nebbish boyfriend, Bleeker (Michael Cera). Exactly: What 16-year-old references Soupy Sales? What 66-year-old? Look to something like Heathers for how to write absurdist dialogue–that film along with Clerks the chief antecedent for Juno, which isn’t as good as either because it wears its hipster cred like a chip on its shoulder. It’s also not very good because even though it’s about teen pregnancy, abortion, and adoption, it’s about nothing so much as quirky teen romance, revealing itself to be inclined towards mining laughter from dorkiness and thus allaying itself, too (and in the worst possible way), with Napoleon Dynamite.

The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006) – Blu-ray Disc

December 5, 20072000s, 2006, 2007, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Christmas, Comedy, Disney, Family, Fantasy

*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Tim Allen, Martin Short, Elizabeth Mitchell, Judge Reinhold
screenplay by Ed Decter & John J. Strauss
directed by Michael Lembeck

by Bill Chambers Much like a TV show that’s been on the air too long, the Santa Clause films have accrued an unwieldy supporting cast (including those old harbingers of cancellation: grandparents and babies) and begun hitting the reset button on characters thought to be at or near the end of their arcs. Here, workaholic Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) is reminded via the frustrations of his second wife that he might not be husband material–which, all things considered, isn’t a bad direction for the series to take, if only because we rarely see remarriage grappled with in any context on the silver screen. Still, as the house style has evolved such that it can no longer accommodate even the quasi-realist, Oh, God! Book II trappings of the original, we get that reductive trope about a family man who takes pride in his work being a man who’s asking for karmic retribution. Never mind that he’s fucking Santa Claus and the needs of the many would appear to outweigh the needs of the few in this case. I suppose it’s progress or innovation that Mrs. Claus (Elizabeth Mitchell, whose role as one of the child catchers in Running Scared retroactively renders her a subversive presence in these films) is expecting and in her third trimester at that, thus upping the asshole quotient when Santa allows his attention to drift towards other impending deliveries for five-nanosecond stretches–but at the risk of applying logic where it isn’t wanted, why would Santa impregnate his wife nine months before Christmastime? It’s counterintuitive at best. And if it was an accident, surely there’s an ‘Abortion Clause’ he could’ve invoked. Maybe they’re saving that for a future instalment.

Margot at the Wedding (2007) + The Savages (2007)

November 30, 20072000s, 2007, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Theatrical

MARGOT AT THE WEDDING
***½/****
starring Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black, John Turturro
written and directed by Noah Baumbach

THE SAVAGES
**½/****
starring Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Bosco
written and directed by Tamara Jenkins

by Walter Chaw As a big fan of Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming and The Squid and the Whale, I find myself jarred by his Rohmer-shrine Margot at the Wedding–not so much by its prickliness, but by how much that prickliness brings into harsh relief the clothed knife-blades in his previous work. It’s easy to forget the young son in Squid telling his mother that she’s ugly; I wonder if it isn’t the lightness that tempers his first two pictures that’s led Baumbach to craft a film full of the kind of stuff that elicits only the blackest laughter. There aren’t any safety nets in Margot at the Wedding: though structurally (and a character’s named “Pauline” to boot) it’s Rohmer, in execution it’s more than a bit Fassbinder, which is to say that it’s a comedy of manners written with mean, acerbic precision, excoriating the educated bourgeois as intellectual leather freaks–sadomasochism as withering remarks and arch ripostes, a Dorothy Parker poem come to life. The Margot of the title, as played to alien, frostbitten perfection by Nicole Kidman, is a NEW YORKER contributor (and Jennifer Jason Leigh, as Margot’s sister Pauline, played Mrs. Parker herself once upon a time) who’s ventured out to wintry Long Island to talk her sister out of marrying schlub Malcolm (Jack Black). A tree growing onto the property of their bestial neighbours gives the film its trope and underclass antagonist, but Margot at the Wedding isn’t a satire of the gulf that divides the intelligentsia from the unwashed so much as an observation that psychological pissing contests are pissing contests by any other name. The interludes in the picture are moments where Margot’s boy Claude (Zane Pais) and eventually Margot herself peep on a couple engaged in mysterious carnal rites–sex of some sort, the dressing of a pig–that speaks to the idea that these hyper-educated people are divorced entire from their physical and native moral intelligence.

Metalocalypse: Season One (2006) + The Lair: The Complete First Season (2007) – DVDs

November 28, 20072006, 2007, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Horror, Music, Mystery, Romance, Television, Vampire

Metalocalypse: Season One
Image B+ Sound A Extras D+
“The Curse of Dethklok,” “Dethwater,” “Birthdayface,” “Dethtroll,” “Murdering Outside the Box,” “Dethkomedy,” “Dethfam,” “Performance Klok,” “Snakes n’ Barrels,” “Mordland,” “FatKlok,” “Skwisklok,” “Go Forth and Die,” “Bluesklok,” “Dethkids,” “Religionklok,” “Dethclown,” “Girlfriendklok,” “Dethstars,” “The Metalocalypse Has Begun”

The Lair: The Complete First Season
Image B+ Sound B Extras D
episodes 101-106

by Ian Pugh I never understood the appeal of Brendon Small’s “Home Movies”, a show I’ve always found more frustrating than anything else. Besides being hard on the eyes (its characters evolving from garish preschool squiggles to sharp-yet-shapeless Flash monstrosities), it gathers together a lot of smart, funny people to meander aimlessly through three or four of the same maddeningly droll scenarios. Teamed with “Conan O’Brien”/”TV Funhouse” alum Tommy Blacha, Small finally has a purpose to go with his aesthetic. Following the daily activities of death metal band Dethklok–idiot vocalist Nathan Explosion (voiced by Small), self-loathing bass player William Murderface (Blacha), balding Midwesterner Pickles the Drummer (Small), “the world’s fastest guitarist” Skwisgaar Skwigelf (Small), and Norwegian naïf Toki Wartooth (Blacha)–“Metalocalypse” certainly allows its characters to ramble incoherently, but its premise demands such focus that even the incoherent rambling has to lead somewhere.

Bad Santa (2003) [The Unrated Version and Director’s Cut] – Blu-ray Disc

November 27, 20072000s, 2007, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Germany

Badder Santa (The Unrated Version)
*/**** Image B Sound A- Extras B
Bad Santa (Director’s Cut)
**/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, Lauren Graham, John Ritter
screenplay by Glenn Ficarra & John Requa
directed by Terry Zwigoff

by Walter Chaw With a premise and producing credit for the Coen Brothers and direction by Ghost World‘s Terry Zwigoff, the film with the best pedigree of the season is Bad Santa, making its failure particularly depressing. Its tale of ace safecracker and dangerous drunk Willie (Billy Bob Thornton), brought on board an annual mall Santa scam by criminal mastermind Marcus (Tony Cox), isn’t all that inventive upon closer scrutiny, with Zwigoff’s interest in the peculiarities of loneliness exhibiting themselves this time as caustic to no end and displeasingly bitter. Worse, there are two shots in the film that appear to be direct cribs of Coen Brothers shots–the first a crash zoom into an alarm clock, the second a collapse by Willie identical to a shot of Frances McDormand falling into bed in Blood Simple; what alarms isn’t the instinct to borrow from innovative filmmakers, but rather the feeling of desperation that flashy camera movements in an otherwise statically shot film indicates.