Trollhunter (2010)

June 10, 2011Posted in2010, 2011, Authors: Jon Thibault, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Norway, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

Troll Hunter
Trolljegeren
*/****
starring Otto Jespersen, Glenn Erland, Johanna Mørck, Tomas Alf Larsen
written and directed by André Øvredal

Trollhunterby Jon Thibault According to WIKIPEDIA, the "found-footage" genre was invented with 1980's Cannibal Holocaust, but it didn't pick up steam until 1999's The Blair Witch Project, which gained notoriety owing to its miniscule budget and profound, lasting creepiness. In the language of film, handheld, sloppy camerawork is associated with documentaries, making its use in horror particularly effective. Cannibal Holocaust is still considered a gore classic, and 2003's direct-to-DVD August Underground's Mordum is the most disturbing movie ever made, suspending the disbelief of the most sophisticated moviegoer with its potent coupling of brilliant special effects and the shittiest production values imaginable. But only Blair Witch's perfect storm of lo-res video, unscripted dialogue, and egregious camerawork won a massive audience, landing directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez on the cover of TIME and setting the standard to which everything remotely similar has been compared. It took almost ten years before audiences had forgotten enough about Blair Witch to be scared shitless by Paranormal Activity.

X-Men: First Class (2011)

June 3, 2011Posted in2011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Sci-Fi, Superhero, Theatrical

**/****
starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, Kevin Bacon
screenplay by Ashley Edward Miller & Zack Stentz and Jane Goldman & Matthew Vaughn
directed by Matthew Vaughn 

Xmen4by Walter Chaw The half of Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class (hereafter X-Men 4) involving Erik “Magneto” Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) and Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) is spellbinding pulp; the other half is puerile bullshit. The starkness of that division is evidence of a screenplay with six credited authors, expectations of a franchise that went astray when it abandoned Bryan Singer (as all potentially great franchises seem to abandon Bryan Singer, to their detriment), and a director who’s capable of giving good genre (Kick-Ass) saddled with material that’s at least fifty-percent garbage. Start with the good in an Auschwitz prologue that handily reclaims Magneto’s origin story from that idiot Brett Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand while introducing energy-absorbing supervillain Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), the future-leader of the Hellfire Club, which includes among its members Emma Frost (January Jones, eternally in lingerie–not that I’m complaining) and teleporting Azazel (Jason Flemyng). Shaw plans in the present day (1962) to engineer nuclear war via the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it’s up to an avenging Magneto and bookish Professor X to stop him. Unfortunately, the team they assemble is composed of a few non-descript punks with stupid mutant powers (the one who “adapts”; the one who screams; the one with little fairy wings; oh, and Beast (Nicholas Hoult), the one who’s smart and has prehensile feet) whom Vaughn puts through the paces of frat/sorority shenanigans. CIA agent Moira McTaggert finds another way to waste Rose Byrne, and then there’s a young, image-tortured Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), who carries the load of the “mutant and proud” trope Singer pulled off so intimately and effortlessly.

The Tree of Life (2011)

May 27, 2011Posted in****/****, 2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: Terrence Malick, Drama, Esoterica, Palme d'Or Winner, Theatrical

****/****
starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken
written and directed by Terrence Malick 

Treeoflifeby Walter Chaw Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is his attempt in a secular way (a very Romanticist way), much like Milton attempted in a religious way, to explain the ways of God to men and, more, to further define God as something created in the heart of Man. It's immensely mysterious, and immensely grand. In scope, its only parallel might be the mysterium tremens at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but even that doesn't try to get at the heart of what made the Monolith so much as why. The Tree of Life is about how fathers disappoint their sons and how sons perceive that they disappoint their fathers, and it may along the way be about why a religion revolving around a Father who never has to explain why He disappoints His children has taken the hold that it has (the film opens with a passage from The Book of Job). But that's ancillary to the topic at hand for Malick, because really what he's interested in is the way that sons will always fail to be at peace with their relationships with their fathers and how maybe, maybe that sense of loneliness, confusion, abandonment, and shame is the true and secret mark at the centre of what it means to be a creative being in a world forever in the act of being created. The struggle against the Father, the simultaneous struggle for His approval, is the fuel that fires Man's desire to make–and excel. It's Freud, isn't it, and Nietzsche, and every German/Austrian smarter than me (Kirkegaard and Wittgenstein and Heidegger, whom Malick translated and studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in pursuit of his doctorate), as filtered through Malick's naturalism, which, far from the chaos of Antonioni's relationship with nature, reflects a more harmonious, metaphorical kinship–like D.W. Griffith's. Very much, too, like the dream sequences in John Ford's How Green Was My Valley, which see the past as impossibly resplendent because they are a creation in the mind of the virgin Eden of childhood.

The Silent House (2011) + Rubber (2010)

May 24, 2011Posted in2010, 2011, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, France, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller, Uruguay

La casa muda
***½/****
starring Florencia Colucci, Abel Tripaldi, Gustavo Alonso, María Salazar
screenplay by Oscar Estévez
directed by Gustavo Hernández

RUBBER
½*/****
starring Stephen Spinella, Roxanne Mesquida, Jack Plotnick, Wings Hauser
written and directed by Quentin Dupieux

by Walter Chaw Billed as being filmed in a single shot (though the skeptical–and those taken in by the "unedited" long takes of Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men–should wonder why an editor is credited), Gustavo Hernández's zero-budget conceptual experiment The Silent House (La casa mudi) has found a way not only to suggest a gimmick successfully carried through, but also to weave that gimmick into a richer thematic tapestry. Here, the digital camera isn't carried by a protagonist, Blair Witch-like, but instead floats around the victim of the movie's horrors, one Laura (Florencia Colucci), who's endeavouring with father Wilson (Gustavo Alonso) to clean up an old abandoned house in preparation of its sale. The camera does take on the point-of-view of someone at some point, then jumps back to an objective place, then plays that trick Evil Dead II plays with perspective in the scene where Ash wakes up in a clearing and looks around in a panning 360-degree take, only for the audience to discover that the camera eye is both character and commentator, more physical in its way than a first-person point-of-view could ever be. In a genre dependent on cutting for its scares, in fact, The Silent House's accomplishments are all the more impressive. It's suffocating (I'd never considered how liberating edits were from a complete immersion into a film) and at times unbearably tense–and though some will point to the airlessness of Hitch's Rope or the fluid choreography of Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark, The Silent House is a different beast altogether.

Midnight in Paris (2011)

May 20, 2011Posted in****/****, 2011, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Fantasy, France, Romance, Spain, Theatrical

****/****
starring Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Carla Bruni, Marion Cotillard
written and directed by Woody Allen

Midnightinparisby Ian Pugh Midnight in Paris begins with a Manhattan-esque montage of the titular city, and after so many consecutive duds, Woody Allen has finally rediscovered (and relocated) the vital essence that traces back to his very best films. Don't mistake his latest for a nostalgic throwback, though–in fact, it's something of an essay on the dangerous intoxication of nostalgic throwbacks. Take it, too, as fair indication that Allen has shared our frustrations with his recent output and knew that the only way to get out of his rut was to confront the spectre of his earlier work. While he probably hates himself for it, it was bound to happen sooner or later: The pull of the past is simply too great to resist. Here, Manhattan becomes Paris, Paris becomes Manhattan, and we're left to wonder what, exactly, that's supposed to mean in the long run. Allen projects himself onto a younger avatar, who in turn projects himself onto the artists who came before him, who in turn have their own projections to deal with. As usual, Allen stops the action cold to explain his theses in a brief monologue, but for the first time in a long time, it feels necessary. It feels like legitimate self-criticism.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

May 20, 2011Posted in2011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Fantasy, Theatrical, UK

½*/****
starring Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Ian McShane, Geoffrey Rush
screenplay by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio, suggested by the novel On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers
directed by Rob Marshall

Pirates4by Walter Chaw The mermaid effects in a nasty little sequence that falls around the midway point of Rob Marshall's disastrous, deadening Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (hereafter Pirates 4) are the only thing to recommend about this death march, and even those are almost too dark to make out. It's a situation aided by taking off the "real D" glasses, though not entirely ameliorated because Marshall's an assclown and this fourth instalment in the exhausted franchise is composed almost entirely of groups of people trudging and swooping aerial shots of pirate ships. It's the longest three days I've spent in a theatre this year. Of course, there's also Johnny Depp, content, it seems, to move into his movie dotage doing shtick for which the film stops and chuckles appreciatively at machine-calibrated intervals. It's comfortable stuff–boring stuff–so resigned to regurgitating its bird's dinner into the mouths of a nation of idiot babies that it rips off Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade instead of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Embarrassing? You bet. Not the least for its inevitable fate as one of the top-grossing films of the summer.

Hesher (2011) + Everything Must Go (2011)

May 13, 2011Posted in2011, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Drama, Theatrical

HESHER
***½/****
starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Devin Brochu, Rainn Wilson, Natalie Portman
screenplay by Spencer Susser & David Michôd
directed by Spencer Susser

EVERYTHING MUST GO
*½/****
starring Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, Michael Peña, Laura Dern
screenplay by Dan Rush, based on the story "Why Don't You Dance?" by Raymond Carver
directed by Dan Rush

by Ian Pugh You could say that Spencer Susser's Hesher is about the desperate search for philosophical guidance during times of grief and how it can come from the unlikeliest of places…but that's the easy-to-digest version. The eponymous longhaired, frequently-shirtless metalhead makes for an intentionally obvious allegory; less obvious is Hesher's message that Christ was probably nothing like the Fonz. Troubled young lad T.J. (Devin Brochu) is still reeling from his mother's death, and during one of his frequent temper tantrums, he runs afoul of Hesher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who responds by moving into T.J.'s house uninvited. Hesher's a profane slob prone to bouts of unprovoked violence, but Dad (Rainn Wilson) is too depressed to care and wacky old Grandma (Piper Laurie) takes Hesher in senile stride. So, T.J. is forced to live with this new houseguest under threat of a "skullfucking." Admittedly, the picture boils down to a series of wacky vignettes (in which Hesher hounds T.J. and fucks up his life accordingly), though anyone looking for a genuine moral centre is bound to be disappointed. While Hesher inevitably teaches the characters about the virtues of moving on, the very fact of Hesher himself throws doubt on the intentionality of his lessons. Offering advice in the form of vulgar, half-assed metaphors, he is perhaps best described as an out-of-control golem conjured by an adolescent's directionless rage.

13 Assassins (2010)

May 13, 2011Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2010, 2011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Japan, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

****/****
starring Koji Yakusho, Takayuki Yamada, Yusuke Iseya, Ikki Sawamura
screenplay by Daisuke Tengan
directed by Takashi Miike

13assassinsby Walter Chaw 13 Assassins, Takashi Miike's costume-period retro-cross-cultural updating of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (and more horizontal homage to obvious antecedents by countrymen Kurosawa, Kobayashi, and Chushingura), initially seems a surprise choice for someone who's made his name (80+ times in the last twenty years) with transgressive, flamboyantly outré Yakuza and horror pictures. But Miike hinted at this exact marriage of a specific Spaghetti Western tradition and the Samurai flicks that were its inspiration with his arch Sukiyaki Western Django–choosing this time around to present the material "straighter," allowing his cast the language and trappings of late-Feudal Japan. The result is possibly the best Samurai movie since Yoji Yamada's Twilight Samurai (and its unofficial sequel, Hidden Blade), a picture meticulous in its details that is nonetheless only possible to fully appreciate within a working conversation with the traditions (including those of Miike's own work) that inform it. It's like a Coen Brothers film in that respect: very much the post-modern artifact, very much the solipsistic auto-critical exercise in genre, but also so technically brilliant and thematically rich that it's possible to enjoy it without much of that prior knowledge.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011) + I Am (2011)

April 29, 2011Posted in****/****, 2011, Authors: Ian Pugh, Canada, Directors: Werner Herzog, Documentary, France, Germany, Theatrical, UK

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS
****/****
directed by Werner Herzog

I AM
**/****
directed by Tom Shadyac

by Ian Pugh The introduction to Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams is unforgettably right. Ever the inquisitive narrator, Herzog tells us that, upon its rediscovery in the mid-'90s, France's Chauvet Cave did not appear to be of unique significance, "other than being particularly beautiful." But, say they hadn't found the prehistoric cave paintings within (the oldest on record, with some dating back 32,000 years)–would that 'particular beauty' have been enough to inspire Herzog? What is it about this specific cave that made it, and makes it, such a hotbed for creativity? So begins anew our search for mankind's place in the universe and, moreover, a human imprint on nature, even where one isn't readily apparent. The skeletons contained in the cave (all animal bones, none human) beg further questions to that end. Was this an altar, perhaps? A refuge for ritual sacrifices?

Water for Elephants (2011)

April 22, 2011Posted in2011, Authors: Ian Pugh, Drama, Romance, Theatrical

*½/****
starring Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson, Christoph Waltz, Hal Holbrook
screenplay by Richard LaGravenese, based on the book by Sara Gruen
directed by Francis Lawrence

Waterforelephantsby Ian Pugh Genre hack Francis Lawrence moves into Twilight territory with the trashy forbidden-romance flick Water for Elephants, in which the opposing forces contriving to keep our lovers apart prove to be minor obstacles at best. Despite its circus setting, this is a thoroughly familiar and perfunctorily-told tale. Feel free to blame Lawrence's typically meat-and-potatoes direction. Go ahead and blame screenwriter Richard LaGravenese for an adaptation that, on the surface, leaves no room for complexity or ambiguity. And, sure, blame Robert Pattinson for his infallibly bland delivery. Maybe hold off on blaming Witherspoon, whose charms seem diluted by the woodenness of onscreen beau Pattinson. Just, whatever you do, don't blame poor Christoph Waltz, who brings his "A" game to this sorry affair and is rewarded with one of the most patently ridiculous send-offs ever bestowed upon a character actor. You thought Inglourious Basterds was brutal? Man, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Your Highness (2011)

April 8, 2011Posted in2011, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Fantasy, Romance, Satire, Theatrical

*/****
starring Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel
screenplay by Danny R. McBride & Ben Best
directed by David Gordon Green

Yourhighnessby Walter Chaw David Gordon Green continues his burnout trilogy with the medieval stoner swords & sorcery flick Your Highness, a sharp, incisive satire that rips the lid off the long-held secret of smart people-in-the-know that Red Sonja is a piece of shit. It's an extended, hostile slam of stuff like Clash of the Titans, and just because it's better than, say, Excalibur, that doesn't excuse it for being the kind of movie "Mystery Science Theater" would make if it made movies instead of taking shots at them from a privileged position. There's no love in Your Highness–replacing Harryhausen's clockwork Bubo with an animatronic crow that's resurrected from a trash heap in an offhand rejection of the Clash of the Titans remake doesn't go nearly far enough towards convincing me that Green and his writers, Danny McBride and Ben Best, actually give a damn about the genre or any of its key films. I'm not sure the genre merits much respect, frankly, but all I'm really certain of after this one is that the filmmakers thought Ladyhawke would be a lot better with a fat slob saying "fuck" and wearing a penis around his neck. Indeed, in case you were wondering, Your Highness is in the same family as the asshole who writes "faggot" on your forehead in Sharpie while you're sleeping.

Insidious (2011)

April 3, 2011Posted in2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

*½/****
starring Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye, Barbara Hershey
screenplay by Leigh Whannell
directed by James Wan

Insidiousby Walter Chaw A fairly well-done, old-fashioned child-imperilment/haunted-house movie until it falls completely off the rails and starts playing like Phantasm II (but not in a good way), James Wan's jump-scare-athon Insidious is chiefly influenced, for what it's worth, by Poltergeist, though it also references that "Twilight Zone" episode where a girl falls into a parallel universe. It sports a spirit medium and a crack team of ghost-hunters, naturally, as well as a little kid lost and a bombastic third act about braving the Other Side that deeply dishonours whatever minor pleasures there were to be had in the previous two. All of which would be more the pity if that dreary, extended set-up amounted to much more than the real dread of a child fallen mysteriously ill surrounded by the usual crap about doors creaking open, phantoms visiting the half-asleep (in the film and in the audience), and a baby crying for an hour before she disappears when the film no longer feels it can continue to exploit it without actually killing it. It's that unwillingness to present bigger stakes that hamstrings Insidious; a lot like the creeping morality underpinning Wan's Saw (and the DIY sequels it spawned), the picture reveals itself to be pretty safe in its worldview, therefore freeing it of dread in favour of non-stop startle that fades, quickly, into fatigue. If it's not going to go there, it's only ever going to be what it is.

Source Code (2011) + Certified Copy (2010)

April 1, 2011Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2010, 2011, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Belgium, Canada, Drama, Esoterica, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Mystery, Romance, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

SOURCE CODE
****/****
starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright
screenplay by Ben Ripley
directed by Duncan Jones

Copie conforme
****/****
starring Juliette Binoche, William Shimell
written and directed by Abbas Kiarostami

by Walter Chaw The one part of Source Code that isn't duck-ass tight poses so many questions about the nature of our hero's heroism and the aftermath of the film that it opens up what initially seems a hermetically-sealed conceit into something of real depth and fascination. Far from the solipsism of failures interesting (Timecrimes) and not (Primer), different from marginal successes like 12 Monkeys and Déjà Vu, Duncan Jones's sophomore feature (after the similarly thorny Moon) plays most like a child of Last Year at Marienbad and a companion piece to Abbas Kiarostami's contemporaneous Certified Copy. It speaks in terms of quantum physics and string theory, but without pretension, achieving the almost impossible by introducing difficult concepts at the same pace with which its characters–not a dummy among them–are able to understand them without gassing (or worse, falling well behind) the audience. That it presents itself as a mainstream, popular entertainment is more to its credit, giving lie to the notion that Hollywood is bankrupt of ideas. Rather, it's the destination for gifted filmmakers–some of them smart enough, and resourceful enough, to hold fast to their idealism and intelligence for, if not an entire career, then at least long enough to set a bar.

Sucker Punch (2011)

March 24, 2011Posted in2011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Drama, Fantasy, Musical, Theatrical

*/****
starring Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Carla Gugino
screenplay by Zack Snyder & Steve Shibuya
directed by Zack Snyder

Suckerpunchby Walter Chaw Another exercise in incoherent pomo douchebaggery from Zack "I'm Going to Mess Up Superman, Too" Snyder, Sucker Punch is maybe about female empowerment but works more like Tank Girl with a budget: the flexing girl-muscles and punk/fetish/sneering sexuality aren't fooling anyone. It sports a great soundtrack full of cover songs (everybody from The Pixies to The Eurhythmics gets a trip through the revamp machine) and Björk to comment (cleverly, I guess) on how every idea in the film is ripped off from other flicks as varied as Ghost in the Shell, Hellboy, the Lord of the Rings flicks, Kill Bill, Sin City, and–why not?–Fame. Its chief inspiration seems to be Brazil, sharing with that film Gilliam's giant Samurai thing as well as the fantasy parallel-world and framing conceit. It also borrows Gilliam's penchant for overdoing it and making something that's initially arresting into something that's irritating, cluttered, and ultimately hard to watch. By its third or fourth music-video-length set-piece, I was willing to declare Sucker Punch the winner and curl up in the fetal position. This is cinema as endurance test.

Limitless (2011)

March 23, 2011Posted in2011, Authors: Ian Pugh, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

**½/****
starring Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish, Andrew Howard, Robert De Niro
screenplay by Leslie Dixon, based on the novel The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn
directed by Neil Burger

Limitlessby Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Its plot follows a drably straight line and its Joe Gillis narration is tiresome; the most original idea that Limitless has is that, hey, maybe drug abuse isn’t such a bad thing after all. That snarky notion extends past the actual narrative into the presentation itself. Whether that’s enough to sustain your interest is, ultimately, up to you. Eddie (Bradley Cooper) is a down-and-out novelist when his ex-brother-in-law Vernon (Johnny Whitworth) introduces him to NZT, a miracle pill that increases his creative and intellectual prowess to the nth degree. With a wealth of suppressed knowledge suddenly at his disposal, Eddie is overcome with, yes, limitless ambition: he completes his long-stalled novel in four days and goes on to learn new skills, talents, and languages in the blink of an eye. As the drug’s power only increases with time and dosage and won’t let him stand still, he applies his newfound intelligence to the stock market (leading to an encounter with a corporate big shot (one of Robert De Niro’s trademark extended cameos)) and plans to further increase his wealth with money borrowed from the mob (leading to an encounter with a lowlife thug (Andrew Howard)). Then come the unexpected side effects–such as the random murders and hired goons who seem to follow him everywhere. If Limitless isn’t about the horrors of drug addiction, then what is it about? How the attempt to “enhance” one’s own identity removes that identity completely, perhaps? Maybe the overconfidence that attends brilliance? No on both counts, but it’s a wild ride while it lasts. And that, in itself, is sort of the point.

Paul (2011)

March 18, 2011Posted in2011, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, UK

*/****
starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jason Bateman, Sigourney Weaver
screenplay by Simon Pegg & Nick Frost
directed by Greg Mottola

Paulby Walter Chaw As talky and obsessed with Star Wars as a Kevin Smith joint and every bit as awkward and unfunny for extended stretches, Greg Mottola's Paul squanders a wonderful cast and a vaguely interesting concept in pursuit of the same pomo alchemy wrought in the kinds of movies Edgar Wright makes. Not all the blame can be ladled on Mottola, however, as he appears to be the patsy holding the camera for co-screenwriters/stars/buddies Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, engaged in what's probably some weak, last-ditch go at saving Frost's career. Pegg and Frost are British geeks Clive and Graeme, touring UFO landing sites in the American hinterland after a jaunt at the San Diego Comic-Con. One night outside Area 51, naturally, they pick up hitchhiker Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), a foul-talking "gray" who smokes doobies, drinks beer, and generally acts a lot like Howard the Duck. The premise paves the way for the usual stuff about a virgin (Buggs (Kristin Wiig)) wanting to fornicate and indulging in wacky-tobaccy; about fag-hating rednecks in a honkytonk with a band that plays a bluegrass version of the Cantina Theme from Star Wars; and about referencing everything from Capturing the Friedmans to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (with an assist from Steven Spielberg on the phone, no less). As the government suit responsible for Paul's capture, Sigourney Weaver gets her iconic "get away from her, you bitch" recited to her at Devil's Tower, while Jeffrey Tambor gets to do a devastating impersonation of Whitley Strieber–meaning that if there are chuckles to be had along the way, they're the asthmatic, superior kind that Comic Book Guy on "The Simpsons" enjoys.

Black Death (2011)

March 16, 2011Posted in2011, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Theatrical, UK

**½/****
starring Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, John Lynch, Carice Van Houten
screenplay by Dario Poloni
directed by Christopher Smith

Blackdeathby Walter Chaw Christopher Smith follows up his listless slasher-farce Severance with the handsome-looking Black Plague/witch-hunting flick Black Death–a well-played, well-conceived piece that's ultimately distinguished by a few sticky after-images, even as it doesn't quite get to where you hope it's going. Set in a pleasingly grimy, disgusting Dark Ages, the picture finds our hero, monk Osmund (Eddie Redmayne), besotted with comely Averill (Kimberly Nixon) and beset on all sides by the inexorable tide of the bubonic plague. Enlisted by Bishop-appointed Holy Roller Ulric (Sean Bean) for his familiarity with the countryside to locate a strange, untouched-by-plague village, Osmond becomes, er, plagued by crises of faith. The problem, besides his wanting to nail Averill in a most unholy way, is that the village in question appears to be untouched by disease because it doesn't believe in God.

Red Riding Hood (2011)

March 11, 2011Posted in2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Theatrical, Thriller, Werewolf, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Amanda Seyfried, Gary Oldman, Billy Burke, Julie Christie
screenplay by David Leslie Johnson
directed by Catherine Hardwicke

Redridinghoodby Walter Chaw That Catherine Hardwicke keeps getting jobs speaks to a deep, ugly dysfunction in the Hollywood dream factory. Not the thought that money talks, but the idea that people like Hardwicke and Adam Sandler and Michael Bay are handed the keys to the executive washroom because they understand what it is that certain critically-deficient demographics want and proceed to provide it in massive, deadly draughts. In other industries, there would be regulatory agencies–though it’s fair to consider that checking the poster for Red Riding Hood would give you all the nutritional information you probably need. Namely that Hardwicke is the main ingredient, and that had I remembered this before the screening, I never, ever would have gone, in exactly the same way I wouldn’t eat scrapple again. I’m sure a lot of people like that shit, but grey pig-mush is grey pig-mush. Red Riding Hood is easily the worst movie I’ve seen since probably all the way back to A Sound of Thunder, and in a lot of the same ways: horribly written; horribly performed (but they didn’t have a chance); directed by someone that cameras should file a restraining order against; and edited by a cast-iron moron (make that pair of morons: long-time Hardwicke accomplice Nancy Richardson and poor Julia Wong). At least there’s Gary Oldman along for the ride to order his Moorish henchmen to, at one point, “put him in the elephant!”

Battle: Los Angeles (2011)

March 11, 2011Posted in2011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, War

½*/****
starring Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Ramon Rodriguez, Michael Peña
screenplay by Christopher Bertolini
directed by Jonathan Liebesman

Battlelosangelesby Ian Pugh The action sequences in Battle: Los Angeles operate on a clockwork schedule. A group of Marines traverses the title city in search of civilians and/or shelter. Suddenly, aliens! The camera shakes for five minutes. The Marines find a safehouse and plan their next move. Suddenly, aliens! Lather, rinse, repeat. But, you will ask, what happened while the camera was shaking? How did they escape? And, as one character inevitably puts it, “What is that thing?” Fair questions, all. I’m pretty sure I caught a glimpse of a rocket launcher built like that BigDog robot, though I can’t be 100% certain. There’s actually a specific moment where you give up trying to distinguish one thing from another. At the beginning of this adventure, we’re told that the Marines have a mere three hours to recover their civilians before the military blows up Santa Monica. Time finally runs out with some folks holed up in a random liquor store, and your first impulse is to question why the movie would leave its final countdown to an analog clock on the wall–but then you realize that you have no idea who these people are, how they got there, who died in the interim, or whether this is a liquor store at all. (Maybe it’s somebody’s wine cellar? I think I saw wine bottles.) It’s not an interpretation of wartime chaos, it’s just plain incomprehensible.

The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

March 4, 2011Posted in2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Romance, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

½*/****
starring Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Anthony Mackie, Terence Stamp
screenplay by George Nolfi, based on the story "Adjustment Team" by Philip K. Dick
directed by George Nolfi

Adjustmentbureauby Walter Chaw George Nolfi, writer of Ocean's Twelve, The Sentinel, The Bourne Ultimatum, and other movies I can't really remember if I've seen returns to his "Renaissance Fair: The Movie" (a.k.a. Timeline) roots with this howler of a hyphenate debut. Somehow mushing together the worst elements of bad films as disparate as The Box and Return to Me with an uncannily bad ear for dialogue and the instincts of a twelve-year-old Catechism student, The Adjustment Bureau jollily romps through Christian quandaries of predestination vs. free will by pitting fedora'd Wim Wenders angels against milquetoast Matt Damon and his badly-slumming object of desire Emily Blunt during their Satanic (I guess) quest to be married to each other. It doesn't take a stand one way or the other, having its host and eating it, too, all the way through to a genuinely stupid conclusion in which it's revealed that the almighty DIRECTOR is neither and both male and female and appears to all of us in His/Her own way. I suppose you could say that The Adjustment Bureau is a Wim Wenders movie if Wenders were a douchebag given to sackless pop-Christianity musings scored (by the up-and-down Thomas Newman) with what sounds like the music from Field of Dreams as performed by an orchestra of baby deer.