Sundance ’09: Stay the Same Never Change

January 20, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, Esoterica, Film Festivals, Sundance, Teen
***½/****starring Tate Buck, Dirk Cowan, Matthew Faber, Mary Nicholswritten and directed by Laurel Nakadate by Alex Jackson In the first five to ten minutes of Laurel Nakadate's Stay the Same Never Change, a beautiful blonde teenage girl eats a bowl of Trix in a surreally white kitchen. Nakadate gives us a series of close-ups of lips moist with milk and cutaways to the Trix box art. We then see the girl lounging around in her pyjamas, sometimes watching TV but mostly doing pretty much nothing at all. While she doesn't do anything overtly sexual, there is something almost pornographic about…

Miracle at St. Anna (2008) – DVD

January 20, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Directors: Spike Lee, Drama, DVD, Italy, War

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, Laz Alonzo, Omar Benson Miller
screenplay by James McBride, based on his novel
directed by Spike Lee

by Ian Pugh Beginning with a moment of vocalized contempt for the John Wayne-ification of World War II in popular culture, Miracle at St. Anna thoroughly establishes its primary aim to give credit where credit is due to the unsung black heroes of the era. Director Spike Lee brings a broader sense of humanism to the table as well, though, orchestrating innumerable moments of fear and sympathy across several languages to impress upon viewers that there were, indeed, honest-to-gosh people on each side of a conflict not typically remembered for its moral ambiguity. If it's been done before, considering that Valkyrie subtly co-opted righteous, intelligent rebellion as an exclusively Anglo-American invention just a few short months after St. Anna's release, it's something of a necessary evil. Yet the picture is finally done a near-fatal disservice by Lee's often-painful (and, some might say, trademark) didacticism, with plenty of telegraphed prophecies on hand to reiterate that faith is more important than religion and that the common link of humanity overrides any national divisions. Messages well worth repeating, no doubt, but the film feels the need to drive them home with talking heads spouting heavy-handed philosophical ruminations that subtly give the mind license to wander. Sure, whether or not God exists, we should all act like He does–what else ya got?

Swing Vote (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

January 15, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring Kevin Costner, Paula Patton, Kelsey Grammer, Madeline Carroll
screenplay by Jason Richman & Joshua Michael Stern
directed by Joshua Michael Stern

by Walter Chaw Another simple-minded liberal screed that does more harm to the liberal cause than the whole of Fox News could possibly dream, this salvo from the left positions itself as a wagging finger to the non-voters of the United States–so long as those non-voters are earnest (literally: the hero of the piece is named Ernest) and have precocious, politically-savvy preteen daughters. Yes, it's the Homer and Lisa Simpson dyad reproduced with Kevin Costner and Abigail Breslin 2.0 Madeline Carroll. This year's Man of the Year, Swing Vote is the kind of lefty pinko wet blanket that can't take a stand without providing narration for it, until finally it reveals itself as a public-service announcement for the sanctity of casting a vote that's properly counted. Hooray, Constitution! This doesn't preclude a few potshots at the press, natch–take that, stupid First Amendment! Every scene of the film is an exclamation point delivered from atop a worst-of-Capra soapbox; those bemoaning that they don't make 'em like they used to, take a big, heaving bite of Swing Vote, compared to which the Pollyannaism of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington reads like P.J. O'Rourke snark. Maybe it's better to see the picture as a scary-prescient prediction of what would happen if someone like Ernest were not only tasked with choosing the next President of the United States, but moreover tabbed as the vice-presidential nominee of a major candidate. Think of Swing Vote as the mother-loving Sarah Palin story and suddenly the movie's every bit the frightening satirical comedy it wasn't upon initial release.

Day of the Dead (2008) + Lost Boys: The Tribe (2008) [Uncut Version] – DVDs

January 14, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Canada, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Vampire, ZERO STARS, Zombie

DAY OF THE DEAD
ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Mena Suvari, Nick Cannon, Michael Welch, Ving Rhames
screenplay by Jeffrey Reddick
directed by Steve Miner

LOST BOYS: THE TRIBE
*½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras D
starring Tad Hilgenbrinck, Angus Sutherland, Autumn Reeser, Corey Feldman
screenplay by Hans Rodionoff
directed by P.J. Pesce

by Walter Chaw As I'm an avowed fan of George Romero's severely underestimated Day of the Dead, imagine my unsurprised chagrin when über-hack Steve Miner's remake of Romero's third zombie outing falls far nearer in quality to Tom Savini's dishonourable remake of Night of the Living Dead than to Zach Snyder's better-than-the-original Dawn of the Dead. A mess from conception to execution, the picture's first misstep is to turn the splatter effects over to cheap-o CGI phantoms and allow the ridiculous cardboard stencils played by Mena Suvari and–horrors–Nick Cannon to run roughshod. The soul of Romero's flicks–of all good zombie flicks–lies in their social awareness and in the ultimate feeling that whatever chills and thrills enjoyed along the way, it was all a metaphor for something more interesting than an end-of-days high concept.

Touch of Evil (1958) [50th Anniversary Edition] – DVD

January 12, 2009Posted in****/****, 1950s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Crime, Directors: Orson Welles, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Thriller

****/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
starring Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles, Joseph Calleia
screenplay by Orson Welles, based on the novel Badge of Evil by Whit Masterson
directed by Orson Welles

mustown-9381168 by Alex Jackson Particularly in light of its 50th Anniversary DVD reissue, which gathers together all three extant versions of the film, I find myself grouping writer-director Orson Welles's Touch of Evil with multiple-incarnated masterworks like Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, and, to a lesser extent, Dawn of the Dead and Brazil. Moreover, I don't quite see it as a 1950s noir thriller from Universal, or even really as an Orson Welles picture–rather, I look at Touch of Evil as a canonical part of every young (male?) cinephile's indoctrination. It occurs to me that you should be able to buy one-sheets for it at your local record store. So I was mildly surprised to hear Jonathan Rosenbaum admit in his audio commentary that he disliked the picture when he saw it as a teenager. He explains that he tied it too closely into the film noir genre and found it an unpleasant specimen. David Edelstein, in his theatrical review of the 1998 restoration, writes that he initially regarded it as one of the worst movies ever made. The picture neatly conformed to his preconceptions of what bad movies are like.

Che (2008) + Milk (2008)

January 9, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Directors: Gus Van Sant, Directors: Steven Soderbergh, Drama, France, Mexico, Spain, Theatrical, War

CHE
***½/****
starring Benicio Del Toro, Demián Bichir, Santiago Cabrera, Vladimir Cruz
screenplay by Peter Buchman, based on the memoir Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Ernesto "Che" Guevara
directed by Steven Soderbergh

MILK
*½/****
starring Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna
screenplay by Dustin Lance Black
directed by Gus Van Sant

by Walter Chaw Steven Soderbergh's Che is the curative to the Hollywood biopic formula that insists on reducing interesting/important historical figures to their workshop elements. It sees Ernesto "Che" Guevara as a charismatic figure but no T-shirt deity, as a guerrilla fighter with blood on his hands but also a revolutionary almost holy in his single-minded conviction that things weren't fair in the world and that one man–or one small group of heavily-armed men–could affect change that mattered. It's not a political film in the sense that it takes sides, rendering it a political film by the fact of it having no agenda except to make it difficult to condemn or celebrate first the events leading up to the success of the Cuban Revolution, then the failure of the Bolivian Revolution (which ended in Che's death). Soderbergh goes from close and medium shots in the first half–known as Che Part One in its marathon "roadshow" incarnation and as The Argentine in parts of the country where it and Che Part Two (a.k.a. The Guerrilla) are being treated as unique films–to an increasing distance for the second, a subtle, evocative move away from Che's idealism.

Hannah Montana: The Complete First Season (2006-2007) + Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007) [Special Edition] – DVD

January 7, 2009Posted in2000s, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Music, Musical, Television

HANNAH MONTANA: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
Image C Sound C+ Extras D+
"Lilly, Do You Want to Know a Secret?," "Miley Get Your Gum," "She's a Super Sneak," "I Can't Make You Love Hannah If You Don't," "It's My Party and I'll Lie If I Want To," "Grandma Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Play Favorites," "It's a Mannequin's World," "Mascot Love," "Ooh, Ooh Itchy Woman," "O Say Can You… Remember These Words?," "Oops! I Meddled Again," "You're So Vain, You Probably Think This Zit is About You," "New Kid in School," "More Than a Zombie to Me," "Good Golly, Miss Dolly," "Torn Between Two Hannahs," "People Who Meet People," "Money for Nothing, Guilt for Free," "Debt it Be," "My Boyfriend's Jackson And There's Gonna Be Some Trouble," "We Are Family–Now Get Me a Water!," "Schooly Bully," "The Idol Side of Me," "Smells Like Teen Sellout," "Bad Moose Rising"

ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS
½*/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras D+
starring Jason Lee, David Cross, Cameron Richardson, Jane Lynch
screenplay by Jon Vitti and Will McRobb & Chris Viscardi
directed by Tim Hill

by Ian Pugh Contemplating the factors that pushed Hannah Montana into the limelight is automatically more interesting than devoting the least amount of attention to the eponymous Disney sitcom that introduced her to her gullible constituency. The concept behind the show, a kind of rock star wish-fulfillment that teaches its tweener audience that if you tell enough people you're famous, you'll get there eventually, has proved the foundation on which to make a mint. But sit down to watch "Hannah Montana" itself and you won't see much more than the same episodic drivel from the Disney Channel–standardized junior-high antics cushioned by lame slapstick. Any significance you cull from a deeper reading invariably leads back to the construction of the carefully-groomed personality that serves as its centrepiece. Flanked by her best friends (Mitchel Musso and Emily Osment) and supported by her manager/father (Billy Ray Cyrus) and brother Jackson (Jason Earles), Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus) divides her time between a typical teenage life and a tour through fame as bubblegum diva Hannah Montana. What she actually does with that time hardly matters.

Revolver (2005) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

January 6, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, DVD, France, Mystery, Thriller, UK

*/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras C-
BD – Image A Sound A Extras C-
starring Jason Statham, Ray Liotta, Vincent Pastore, Andre Benjamin
written and directed by Guy Ritchie

Revolvercapby Walter Chaw Give Guy Ritchie a little credit for being ambitious and take a little away from him for being so relentlessly pussy-whipped that Revolver, his return to the neo-Mod gangster genre that made his name, is one part rumination on the mystical mumbo-jumbo of his then-wife's Kabbalah, one part exploration of the self-actualized ego, and every part pretentious, pseudo-intellectual garbage. It's so fascinated with itself that the yak-track on the film's DVD and Blu-ray releases finds Ritchie periodically consulting his assistant as an augur of whether or not Ritchie has gotten too complicated for the audience of nitwits not put off enough by the movie to avoid watching it again with the commentary activated. He believes he's created something of such vast, far-reaching, ungraspable, existential implication that this cheap, showy action pic is the ne plus ultra of modern experience, with Ritchie our schlock Zoroaster, guiding us through avatar Jake Green (Jason Statham) as he emerges from years of solitary confinement, during which he learned the parameters of the perfect con by intercepting the chess moves of the two prisoners on either side of him. Jake has claustrophobia, something Ritchie helpfully offers is a "metaphorical fear," by which I think he means that it's a metaphor for all fear; his clumsiness with the articulation of this single concept illustrates how it is that the rest of it is such a godawful mess. Consider Revolver's interesting only to the extent that Ritchie's self-absorption is ironic when applied to a picture about the internal struggle between Freud's personality strata–never mind that Jake's Super-Ego is André Benjamin and his Id appears to be motherfucking Big Pussy. Jesus, this is a stupid movie.

Pineapple Express (2008) [Unrated Special Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

January 5, 2009Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Gary Cole, Danny McBride
screenplay by Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg
directed by David Gordon Green

by Walter Chaw I'm willing to concede that I don't completely get it, but I'm still game to think about it because Pineapple Express has a peculiar pedigree. It boasts David Gordon Green as its director and his regular DP Tim Orr is in charge of shooting the gross-out gags and stone-faced stoner riffs. The union makes the most sense if we read the film as a throwback/homage to the Seventies cycle of grindhouse exploitation flicks (doobies and dismemberment), thus explaining the old-school wipes and funkadelic soundtrack, the mote-flecked cinematography, the cruel violence, and, if it's even possible, the air of reality throughout. Otherwise, the picture feels like a cynical patchwork stitching together this new comedy genre with a sensibility specifically designed to mock it. When über-stoner Saul (James Franco, in his Spicoli/The Dude breakout) runs through the dark woods, the flash I get isn't to Cheech & Chong but to the convulsive opening of Green's Undertow. And during an ending in an abandoned government research facility-turned-subterranean pot greenhouse, I couldn't shake Green's odd relationship with Asian stereotyping (remember the Feng Shui character from All the Real Girls?) in a troupe of black-clad Asian assassins clearly established as objects of derision. In truth, however, I don't know if the derision is levied at Asians or at the criticism levied against Green's perceived derision of the same.

Defiance (2008)

January 2, 2009Posted inAction, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Thriller, War

½*/****
starring Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell, Alexa Davalos
screenplay by Edward Zwick & Clay Frohman
directed by Edward Zwick

by Walter Chaw It's finally happened: Red Dawn with Russian Jews. It's not so much unthinkable as inevitable after the fact. You could go your whole life without conjuring something so perverse; it's the kind of thing "South Park" might have done at a quarter the budget, with thrice the ingenuity, and without the star power of über-studs Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber making a pretty convincing play for inclusion in the bad accent hall of fame. When Craig, as heroic bandit Tuvia Bielski, delivers his St. Crispian's Day speech in half-pidgin/half-Queen's English ("Uff vee shut die? Tlyin to liff? At least we die like human beings!") as director Ed Zwick ladles on the Fiddler on the Roof score and we get reaction shots of a Dickensian urchin all dirt and eyes, what choice do we have but to harden our hearts and wonder how it is that every "true story" run through this prestige mill ends up exactly the same grain. The moment when Tuvia and his woodsman brother Zus (Schreiber) take on the responsibility of two fine young lasses at the behest of a set-upon farm family, however, is the moment that it clicks that this piece of macho bullroar is a direct blood descendant of John Milius's stupidest movie of 1984. There but for the grace of Swayze and Sheen goes Defiance–a film so bad that it's not only worse than Red Dawn, but worse because instead of positing an imaginary occupation of heartland America, it sets itself smack dab in the middle of the Nazi occupation of Belorussia circa 1941–suggesting in the process that while it's not true there was no Jewish resistance in WWII, it might be true that the reason so many were killed is because they weren't as macho as Tuvia and Zus. Kind of a sticky wicket, that.

Film Freak Central’s Top 10 of 2008

January 1, 2009Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best-of Lists, Blog

Top102008graphicsmall

I'm going to call 2008 a "down" year, but not because there were fewer masterpieces produced–only because the theme that resonated for me the most was this sense of a cycle completing. If it's true that every generation flatters itself as the last one, it's equally true that every decade of film nears its completion with its full measure of anticipation/regret (liebestraum as zeitgeist, no?) in its eighth, sometimes ninth, year. Even films that on the surface seem filled with the fruit of human ambition and desire–like James Marsh's ebullient Man on Wire, in which the World Trade Center appears as the phantom lover of highwire artist Philippe Petit–take place, after all, at the ground zero of this epoch. What's dying throughout 2006 and 2007, all this sussing through father issues and the cult of masculinity and love and the courage of children, is dead now. It's not nihilism anymore, it's pragmatism. The dream is over, the insect is awake.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

December 29, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Sci-Fi, Star Wars

*½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C+
screenplay by Henry Gilroy, Steven Melching, Scott Murphy
directed by Dave Filoni

by Bryant Frazer Anyone over the age of 12 will quickly detect the distinctly secondhand elements comprised by Star Wars: The Clone Wars, a journey into George Lucas's ever-dorkier galaxy far, far away that panders relentlessly to the tween demographic so prized by the Lucasfilm empire. This is clearly a Star Wars movie, borrowing design elements, stylistic tropes, and even specific camera angles and editorial strategies from the live-action films. But the kid-friendly strategies sink it–there has to be some mileage in dramatizing the heretofore un-chronicled adventures of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, but there's a glibness to the execution that makes this cut-rate excursion among the least compelling hero's journeys in the Star Wars canon. Even the "Knights of the Old Republic" videogame is a more rewarding endeavour.

Into the Wild (2007) [2-Disc Collector’s Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

December 29, 2008Posted in2000s, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD

***½/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras C+
BD – Image A+ Sound A Extras C+
starring Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Hal Holbrook
screenplay by Sean Penn, based on the novel by Jon Krakauer
directed by Sean Penn

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Young and full of piss, Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsch, amazing) is an idealist brimming with the kinds of ideas that young men entertain fresh out of school: diploma in hand, bile in throat, knowing everything about the world that there could possibly be to know. His politics, stringently black-and-white, aren't that different from the very politics against which he'd rail; for as bleeding heart as kids can be, they tend to subscribe to the foundational belief that the United States is responsible for the welfare (and travails) of the rest of the planet, which is the basis for our self-declared status as moral policemen. In defense of Chris, whose saga has been documented in print by Jon Krakauer and now on film by Sean Penn, he doesn't presume to change the world, he only wishes to escape it–the idea of zero impact taken to its logical conclusion. But the ideal of rediscovering Eden is as illusory (naïve, retarded, you name it) as the idea that a young, educated man from a privileged background and a family who loves him could ever retreat to Walden Pond with nary a ripple to mark his submersion. Into the Wild sports as infuriating a cipher at its centre as Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man, and it's to Penn's credit that he doesn't shy away from presenting Chris as a first-class Pinko asshole living his dream with just enough hypocrisy to get him killed and not quite enough to get him saved. Prophet/fool. It's a manifestation of the smug maxim "Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains."

The Spirit (2008)

December 25, 2008Posted in2000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Gabriel Macht, Eva Mendes, Sarah Paulson, Samuel L. Jackson
written and directed by Frank Miller

Thespiritby Walter Chaw Frank Miller is something like a god in the modern comics era–at least he is to me. The guy who invented the graphic-novel form for most non-true-believers with his The Dark Knight Returns, he's recently been in the conversation because of the film made from his Sparta book (300) and Robert Rodriguez's excellent, Miller-driven Sin City, and he's the one who introduced to me the idea that comic books were a medium and not a genre. So when Miller reveals that he's taking the reins of a big-budget comic-book adaptation, there's reason for excitement that something from his extensive backlog could see the light of day under its creator's hand. (I have the same hope for that asshole Alan Moore, as well as Grant Morrison–and, hell, Sergio Aragones.) Astonishing, then, that he would first choose to adapt Will Eisner's seminal, 1940s comic inset "The Spirit", then to adapt it as an acid, unfunny ape on the kinds of films Miller himself has helped to popularize. It tastes like a bitter pill, like sour grapes masquerading as satire without a real clear indication of what Miller so dislikes about the recent hits based on his work. A waste of time to say that The Spirit is dreadful (and an understatement besides: The Spirit makes dreadful look like Van Gogh); and it's hardly more fruitful to poke holes in the whys and wherefores of its failure when those are obvious from the first five minutes of its benighted existence. Time is better spent, perhaps, trying to pull out of it some sort of insight into why no one called "shenanigans" on this abortion at any point. It's unbelievable, really. And far from dissuading me from the idea that Miller is a genius, I'd argue that it takes a special kind of genius to make something this full of bile, this incompetent, this unwatchable, this bad.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

December 25, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Directors: David Fincher, Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Theatrical

*/****
starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson, Tilda Swinton
screenplay by Eric Roth, based on the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald
directed by David Fincher

Curiouscaseby Walter Chaw Based on an evergreen F. Scott Fitzgerald short story that had the decency to be a short story, David Fincher’s extravagant, OCD-extruded The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is less one of this year’s astounding ruminations on loss, regret, melancholy, and the ephemeral nature of love than it is a remake–tonally, structurally–of Forrest Gump. It highlights just how good, how complex and ambitious, Coppola’s similar Youth Without Youth is–and it clarifies, if clarification were needed, how a high-concept becomes a gimmick without a core of gravity to keep it from spinning off into butter. The picture is thick with exploitive gestures, from its comic-relief mammy all the way through to Hurricane Katrina being used as the catastrophic backdrop that lends…what, gravitas?…to the melo-tragic love story that is the end-all of its Titanic framing story. How best to unite an ossified granny with her long-lost love than the mass-drowning and general devastation of a lot of people who don’t matter one iota to our central drama? It’s not deplorable in the traditional sense, I guess, but it’s so saccharine and dumbed-down that it’s aggressively offensive anyway. Benjamin Button painfully articulates everything subtle, melancholic, and beautiful about stuff like Synecdoche, New York, A Christmas Tale, and The Wrestler in broad pronouncements for the slowest students in class. When dealing with existential matters, it’s best not to go the Celestine Prophecy/Jonathan Livingston Seagull route with platitudes and easy solutions to thorny, baseline questions about what it is to love, to age, to die. There’s a scene in the film, probably more than halfway through, where one character says to the other that things pass too quickly and, more, isn’t that a shame. A little later, those same two hold each other in front of a mirror and one says he’d like to remember how they are, right at this moment, as time plays its tricks on our affections. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is Fincher’s own Se7en, except it shows the head in the box.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) – [Studio Classics] DVD|Blu-ray Disc

December 22, 2008Posted in1950s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, Sci-Fi

***½/****
DVD/BD – Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe
screenplay by Edmund H. North, based on a story by Harry Bates
directed by Robert Wise

by Bill Chambers Fusing charm and menace to singularly imposing effect, Michael Rennie is Klaatu, a man who falls to Earth bearing important news for humankind only to be silenced almost immediately upon exiting his flying saucer in a case of the U.S. army literally shooting the messenger. His entreaty to the leaders of the free world to put aside their "stupidity" and let him hold a global press conference having fallen on deaf ears, a healed Klaatu breaks out of the military facility in which he's being kept prisoner and embarks on a fish-out-of-water scenario, adopting the name "Mr. Carpenter" and landing in the home of single mother Helen Benson (Patricia Neal) and her excitable son Bobby (Billy Gray). Old-fashioned American jealousy soon jeopardizes Klaatu's "plan B"–to receive assistance in spreading his gospel from the Einstein-like Prof. Barnhardt (a haunted Sam Jaffe)–when Helen's boyfriend (Hugh Marlowe), feeling threatened by the new border, decides to play detective.

Seven Pounds (2008)

December 19, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Romance, Theatrical, Will Smith

*/****
starring Will Smith, Rosario Dawson, Woody Harrelson, Michael Ealy
screenplay by Grant Nieporte
directed by Gabriele Muccino

Sevenpoundsby Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. I'm gonna take a stab at the title: Seven pounds is how much an Oscar weighs, am I right? Will Smith reunites with his Pursuit of Happyness director Gabriele Muccino to fashion another awards-season failure that proves every bit as icky and misguided. An extended episode of "Secret Millionaire", Seven Pounds transforms a Melvin and Howard conceit into the story of an undercover Samaritan intent on changing the lives of seven worthy strangers. Why? It doesn't really matter, does it? Not when Smith, as Ben Thomas, a guilt-wracked IRS agent/aerospace engineer trying to atone for the tragedy that is his life, turns on the red-rims and the waterworks, all quivery lips like the box jellyfish Ben keeps as a pet. There's poor little Emily (Rosario Dawson), with a rare blood type and an enlarged heart (four sizes too big!); and poor little Ezra (Woody Harrelson), who can't get a second look from a truck-stop waitress because, eww, he's blind!; and poor Connie Tepos (Elpidia Carrillo), who's afraid to leave her abusive boyfriend even though her two small children are in peril. Enter Bagger Vance–er, Ben Thomas–to sweep Emily off her feet, insult Ezra to see if he has a temper (or a spine), and give Connie his house. Throughout, we're treated to flashes of the calamity that's brought Ben so low as Smith's charisma and innate likeability remain the only things keeping the film remotely compelling to the extent that it is. It's an old-timey melodrama at its heart, nothing on its mind except tugging at the heartstrings and bothering awards-season viewers with the irritating tickle that they're being diddled without their consent by another smooth-talking, empty-headed bit of unforgivable–and gross–treacle.

Step Brothers (2008) [2-Disc Unrated Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

December 16, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B+
starring Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Richard Jenkins, Mary Steenburgen
screenplay by Will Ferrell & Adam McKay
directed by Adam McKay

by Bryant Frazer The critical consensus is that Step Brothers is the quintessence of the ongoing cycle of American films that celebrate the adolescent man-child. Watch as it calibrates itself against the emotional needs of its now Apatow-habituated audience, first suggesting that a creepy, psychosexually retarded 40-year-old living in Mom's basement needs to grow the fuck up and join the workforce already, then–ha-ha, just kidding–drawing back to declare that what's really important is said 40-year-old reaching a meaningful compromise with the world (like pro karaoke!) that doesn't involve abandoning his no-doubt-considerable sense of wonder and capacity for joy.

The Heartbreak Kid (2007) [Widescreen] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

December 15, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Romance

*½/****
DVD – Image B- Sound A- Extras B
BD – Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Ben Stiller, Michelle Monaghan, Malin Akerman, Rob Corddry
screenplay by Scot Armstrong and Leslie Dixon and Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly & Kevin Barnett, based on the short story "A Change of Plan" by Bruce Jay Friedman
directed by Peter Farrelly & Bobby Farrelly

Heartbreakkidcapby Walter Chaw Elaine May used to be the comedy writing and performing partner of Mike Nichols, and because I like her 1972 film The Heartbreak Kid so much, I've always wondered how much better The Graduate would have been had May directed it. Indeed, a May-helmed Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? could be excruciating–well, more so. For a while, anyway, May was the brave one, ethnically and otherwise, and I don't know of many people who could've turned the premise that drives the original The Heartbreak Kid into such a delicate, even sensitive (certainly human) piece. If it were going to be remade (and it has, with Ben Stiller in the Charles Grodin role and Malin Akerman in the Jeannie Berlin role), Peter and Bobby Farrelly would seem to be the right ones for the job.

Timecrimes (2008) + Wendy and Lucy (2008)

December 12, 2008Posted in2000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Spain, Theatrical, Thriller

Los Cronocrímenes
**/****
starring Karra Elejalde, Candela Fernández, Bárbara Goenaga, Nacho Vigalondo
written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo

WENDY AND LUCY
**/****
starring Michelle Williams, Wally Dalton, Will Patton, Larry Fessenden
screenplay by Jonathan Raymond & Kelly Reichardt
directed by Kelly Reichardt

by Walter Chaw Timecrimes (Los Cronocrímenes), Nacho Vigalondo's zero-budget exercise in kitchen-sink quantum metaphysics, doesn't fuck itself with an unearned sense of smug self-satisfaction like Shane Carruth's Primer, but it does prove to be more tantalizing than satisfying. All garnish, no calories; take time travel and turn it into a series of unfortunate events that, although it plays with matter/anti-matter lore, doesn't go much farther in developing either its philosophy or its narrative. The result isn't pomo expressionism, but rather this taste of something, these suggestions of something other, that don't amount to a hill of beans once the whole thing morphs into a breakneck thriller. It makes some sense, then, that the hero of the piece is a non-descript schlub of a man, soft, no shoulders, falling over the edge into middle-age–enough so that when he spies a naked woman in the hills behind his house through his binoculars, of course he doesn't look away (who would, right?), and of course he doesn't tell his wife.