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Monthly Archives: June 2009

The Human Contract

Jada Pinkett Smith makes her feature debut as both a writer and director with The Human Contract, a deeply weird stab at a sort of humanistic erotic thriller, in which an emotionally stolid businessman becomes entangled with a seductive stranger.

Set in Los Angeles, the story centers on Julian Wright (Jason Clarke), a “brand management expert” at a company competing with another boutiqe agency for a $5 billion merger deal. Against this backdrop, and with his own divorce pending, Julian meets a mysterious, sultry woman, Michael Reed (Paz Vega), who challenges him with raised eyebrows, revealed legs and mock-philosophic banter, and by pressing him to reveal to her the entry code for his locked-up darkroom vault. Michael turns out to be not all that she first seems — she has an ill-tempered former lover, a husband who may or may not be aware of and OK with her philandering, and her own scarred past. When these facts lead to several very public incidents that threaten the potential of said mega-deal, it understandably worries Julian’s corporate lawyer pal, Larry (Idris Elba), and also complicates matters between Julian and his mother (Joanna Cassidy) and sister Rita (multi-hyphenate Smith), the latter of whom is suffering through an abusive relationship.

Excepting that the financial stakes of the underpinning plot device feel totally out of step with the times, Smith certainly sets up some interesting themes to explore, and has a smart sense of parallel construction. She seems drawn to the sort of jarring catharses that result from adult awakenings, when personal or professional upheavals require people to confront the fact that for perhaps too long they’ve been governed by complacency, and living out someone else’s vision (be it that of a family member or loved one, or just society in general) for them. Undoubtedly assisted by her husband Will Smith’s longstanding relationship with financier/distributor Sony, Smith surrounds herself with top-shelf below-the-line talent, and her exacting touch is evident in many of the film’s small details, extending on down to some of the bit player supporting roles. It’s also fantastically shot — for the most part in fairly straightforward fashion, but with a few twinkly embellishments during some nighttime sequences. As both a writer and director, though, Smith falls in love with too-long montages, overly precious cross-cutting and scenes that really shouldn’t be in the final cut; at 107 minutes, the film undeniably drags, particularly in trying to underscore Julian’s warped obsession with Michael.

Chiefly, though, The Human Contract‘s problems relate to its miscasting of the leads. First off, Clarke — who resembles Colm Meaney crossed with Patrick Wilson, if that hybrid offspring then lost a fight with a skateboard — simply doesn’t cut it in any way, shape or form as a corporate shark. Smith somewhat tries to get around this fact by pitching his disheveledness as in keeping with his particularly current harried state (“You look like shit,” a friend offers), but at his core Clarke just looks like a beady-eyed, period flick n’er-do-well, or the sort of chap who should be hired as the voiceover inspiration for some cartoon weasel bad guy. It certainly also doesn’t help matters that Clarke plays Julian as a hothead, and entirely lacking in self control. (In fact, with four separate and distinct punched items/people, one wonders if the movie should instead be called The Human Contact.)

Vega, meanwhile, is just much more effective in her native tongue, as in Julio Medem’s erotically charged Sex and Lucia, or in a role like Spanglish, where she’s playing a character whose unfamiliarity with English as her primary language is part of the point. Here, and damningly, she seems to recite some of her lines phonetically, and in general just comes across as a poor man’s Penelope Cruz, during the portion of Cruz’s career in which she was just starting to dabble in English roles. She’s especially in over her head since so much of Michael’s dialogue — from her initial pick-up conversation with Julian to a couple spitfire exchanges — are majorly dependent upon emotionally evocative or descriptive language.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with carved out interior spindles in an effort to cut down on plastic usage, The Human Contract comes to DVD presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen, with English and French language 5.1 Dolby digital audio tracks that more than handle the title’s meager, conversationally rooted aural requirements. Subtitles are also available in the aforementioned languages. Supplemental extras consist of a feature-length audio commentary track with Smith and cinematographer Darren Genet, a four-minute chat — dramatically intercut with manipulated film stills and footage — in which cast and crew weigh in with thoughts on the movie’s title, and a fairly solid, 21-minute making-of featurette in which Smith talks about life’s “buried jewels” existing in the places we typically don’t want to go. A bit coolly oversimplifying, this bit of philosophizing from the perch of a Bel-Air estate, but point taken nonetheless, because Smith comes across as genuine. Previews for additional Sony home video titles are also included. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Couples Retreat Books Autumnal Laughs

The trailer for Peter Billingsley’s directorial debut, Couples Retreat (Universal, October 9), is online just now via Apple, and looks like a good bet to wrangle the lion’s share of fall comedy dollars. Notwithstanding the domestic underperformance of The Heartbreak Kid, exotic-set laffers that splurge a bit with scenery and setting have obviously worked out well recently, from Tropic Thunder to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Couples Retreat has a gorgeous, crystal-clear backdrop — the sort that causes women to start nudging their boyfriends and husbands to call travel agents — to go with a solid, hell-in-heaven conceit that allows for plenty of good-time opposites-of-the-sexes friction. Malin Akerman‘s auburn dye job will help hold at bay awkward memories of Watchmen emoting, and the rest of the cast (Kristen Bell, writer-actor Jon Favreau, Kristin Davis, Faizon Love, Kali Hawk, Vince Vaughn and Jason Bateman, clockwise from top left) shows no evidence of a weak link. Color me stoked, in moderate-to-high fashion. Vaughn isn’t a huge international draw, but I don’t see how this does under $140 million worldwide.

Eddie Murphy: Delirious

It’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years since Delirious, Eddie Murphy’s trailblazing HBO stand-up comedy special. After all, has anyone charted quite as strange a career trajectory as Murphy, who went from deriding watered-down family entertainment in his blistering stand-up sets to starring in virtually nothing but those sorts of films? His star has fallen even more In the last several years. What, of mainstream, zeitgeist-shifting relevance, has Murphy done in the past half-decade, other than bang one of the Spice Girls, endlessly circle a return to the Beverly Hills Cop franchise, and release a string of terrible movies? Even the Dreamgirls post-Oscar nomination bump didn’t materialize, perhaps chiefly because he didn’t actually win, but also in part because of the perception that, 1) his performance was part an update/re-do of his old James Brown-in-a-hot-tub Saturday Night Live shtick, and 2) he was surly and ungrateful the entire awards season, and especially after his Oscar evening loss.

The red jumpsuit — everyone remembers the red jumpsuit (above). What about Murphy’s actual routine, though? Standing back and squinting a bit, one can appreciate the groundbreaking nature of Delirious, certainly. But while portions of the 70-minute special, taped live at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., still play, a lot of what’s been labeled by some “the defining moment of comedy in the 1980s” (at least per the video box blurb) comes across as dated, wan and crassly calculated in its offensiveness. The opening of the show, in which Murphy announces, “Faggots are not allowed to look at my ass!” introduces a bit of sigh-inducing discomfort, but even more unnerving is the raucous audience reaction. Later, when Murphy dissects the current-day climate of sexual fear by opining that a woman who cheats on him or is promiscuous might “come home with that AIDS on their lips” after kissing a gay man, he comes across as stupid but, somewhat terrifyingly, knowingly so — like he’s stoking audience ignorance merely for holler-back yelps of affirmation.

In the adolescent recollections of family barbecues and chasing down the ice cream man, one can see the template for Murphy’s multiple-Klump turns in the Nutty Professor comedies. That comprises the sweet portion of Murphy’s material, easily balanced out by the spiciness of his bizarre sexual fantasies, and vocal parodies of top American entertainers like Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, Stevie Wonder, James Brown and Mick Jagger. Delirious provides a snapshot of Murphy, then only 22 years old, as he was transitioning into movie roles, before films like Beverly Hills Cop, The Golden Child and Coming to America would cement his status as an iconic cross-over star that white audiences would pay to see on screen. Viewed through this lens, and interpreted strictly as a piece of time capsule entertainment, it still more or less holds up. But it also provides a glimpse of the hubris and meanspiritedness that would come to characterize latter-day Murphy, not to even mention tabloid-type gossip about his sexual predilections and hang-ups.

Housed in a regular Amaray case in turn stored in a bright red
cardboard slipcover that, truth be told, doesn’t exactly match the hue
of Murphy’s suit, the two-disc, 25th anniversary edition of Delirious comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital stereo audio track. Five minutes of excised concert footage kicks off the bonus material, though it’s mostly Murphy lacing into a woman in the crowd who at various points keeps interrupting him, with a little bit of extra Buckwheat imitation sprinkled in for good measure. A 28-minute making-of/historical overview featurette offers genuflection and reminiscence from an impressive roster of comedians and actors, including Keenan Ivory Wayans, Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Chris Tucker, Katt Williams, Cedric the Entertainer, Sinbad, Wayne Brady, Anthony Anderson, David Alan Grier, John Witherspoon and, naturally, Arsenio Hall, who would go to costar opposite Murphy in several films. There’s also a 35-minute chat — though it’s the interview equivalent of a reach-around, really — between Murphy and hand-selected pal Byron Allen, who lobs him softballs in genial fashion but at least has some of-the-era anecdotes to interject. The callousness with which Murphy dismisses protesters of his show’s content is a bit disconcerting, but he does provide one affable moment of guard-down introspection, sharing that he took as his early acting inspiration for 48 Hours and other films none other than… Bruce Lee? It’s all in the eyes, Murphy says. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Concert) A (Disc)

In the Sign of the Virgin

Writer-director Finn Karlsson’s 1973 film In the Sign of the Virgin, also micro-released Stateside in some cities under the title Danish Pastries, is a top-shelf sex comedy — fun, flirty and unabashedly horny. Balancing a completely boilerplate swapped-aphrodisiac storyline and stereotypical settings with vividly sketched characters, lighthearted montages and solid production design, the movie — part of a whole series of astrologically-themed, period piece T&A romps just now seeing a release to DVD — makes a convincing case that there is a market for goofball couples erotica.

Unfolding, of course, at a private boarding school for delinquent girls, In the Sign of the Virgin introduces an astrological imperative right from the get-go: the school’s board of directors has discovered that on the eve of “Nulpolitterorden,” the planet Venus is aligning with Earth in a manner that will spark all sorts of carnal behavior. Naturally, they want to keep things in check, and they’ve come up with a powder that, when added to water, curbs all erotic desires. Professor Armand (Ole Soltoft, a sort of Danish cross between Lee Evans and Mark Ruffalo) is dispatched to administer the curative substance to all the girls, but before he can complete his assignment he bumps into Professor Bomwitz (Bent Warburg), who just so happens to have invented an aphrodisiac powder. After they accidentally exchange briefcases containing the powders, randy mayhem ensues; Bomwitz gives the girls their powdered water and empties the rest into the town reservoir, unleashing all sorts of sexual hijinks. The frumpy headmistress (Mette Von Kohl) tries to control her girls by locking them in the basement, but in the end everyone ends up at the local brothel, run by Madame Gine (Lone Helmer) and Rufo (Benny Hansen).

I haven’t heard the term used before, maybe I’m the first, but I would dub this film and those like it “middle-core” sex flicks; there is graphic material (insertion, a small amount of intercourse, even one ejaculation), but it isn’t hammered home (if you’ll pardon the expression) like modern pornography, and at no point does the explicit nature of this material compromise the movie’s buoyant tone. Karlsson has plenty of nubile young women (including Anne Bie Warburg, below center, as the requisite corrupted innocent) to put on display, but he also actually makes a movie that hangs together properly, and has a sense of genuine playfulness.

It helps, certainly, that both Soltoft and Bent Warburg are skilled comedic performers, but everything about Karlsson’s treatment of the material lends the otherwise incredibly silly story credence. The music here is also of note, and worth mentioning; before wah-wah effects ruled the 1980s or aggressive percussive beats took over American porn, jazzy, horn-inflected rhythms ruled softcore flicks, and it’s that sense of goofy musical experimentation — balanced by looped hi-hats and keyboards — that drives In the Sign of the Virgin‘s music and helps anchor the film. Only a slightly-too-nasty girls-on-girl assault colors darkly what is otherwise a pleasant, lightly erotic flick that male and female cinephiles alike could enjoy.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with a screen-captured cover (top photo) that features strategically placed hearts, In the Sign of the Virgin comes to DVD on a region-free disc in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a native language Dolby digital soundtrack, English subtitles, and an animated top menu screen (above) with additionally animated chapter selections. The video transfer is remarkably free from grain, other debris, or any edge enhancement, but there are of course some issues with color consistency. The only bonus feature, alas, is a two-and-a-half-minute slide show of stills from the movie — some of which are behind-the-scenes material, but most of which are not. Director Karlsson passed away in 2003, alas, but surely there must be other players that, if the effort were made, would be available and interested in talking for some sort of retrospective overview. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Surveillance

It’s been a decade since Jennifer Lynch, daughter of noted filmmaker David Lynch, made her directorial debut with the wildly divisive Boxing Helena, and her return behind the camera, the thriller Surveillance, has on the surface the trappings of something much more traditional and straightforward. Naturally, though, because it’s filtered through the younger Lynch’s canted, nurture-influenced prism of warped “normality” and co-existing extremes, there’s a ghoulish, off-kilter quality to the proceedings. A sort of dread-heavy, wholly engaging partial misfire — the film feels awkwardly stitched together, and it ultimately bites off more than it can chew — Surveillance still tackles a provocative premise: that truly nasty violence can be birthed from wildly different sources, even marginal places of flattened affect, proper order and limited means.

The story centers around FBI agents Elizabeth Anderson (Julia Ormond) and Sam Hallaway (Bill Pullman), who are dispatched to a ghostly highway town to investigate a string of grisly unsolved homicides. The chief witness is a nine-year-old girl, Stephanie (Ryan Simpkins), who saw her family murdered in the open daylight by a pair of masked marauders. Other participants in the trauma include tweaker Bobbi (Pell James, above left) and her equally spun-out boyfriend (newcomer Mac Miller), Ryan’s older brother and parents (Cheri Oteri and Hugh Dillon), and two sociopathic cops (French Stewart and co-writer Kent Harper) who twistedly assert their authority over random passersby by shooting out their tires and engaging in self-satisfied games of psychological manipulation. As Elizabeth and Sam partition the survivors and query each one with the assistance of closed-circuit video units, the bulk of the rest of the film unfolds in this flashback structure, studded with lies and whitewashes absolving participants of culpability.

Four-plus minutes into Surveillance, we’ve glimpsed a coffee percolator in close-up, as well as inter-departmental law enforcement friction the sort of which marked Twin Peaks and its film prequel. A bit later antlers are glimpsed on a wall, and we also see a fetishistic depiction and almost orgiastic enjoyment of cigarettes. In other words, there’s plenty of markers to link back to some of Lynch’s father’s favorite visual touchstones. There are some definite flashes of dark humor, too. Still, this isn’t merely Lynch Lite — there’s a transgressive foreboding largely unchecked and unbalanced by virginal positivity — and anyone investing too much energy into a direct, biologically correlative reading will eventually come to a wheels-spinning resting place.

Lynch’s film is most evocative of her father’s work in the broadest sense; there’s inherent risk and verve in the project, despite a narrative premise that on the surface seems simple, and possessing of a certain doom-glam cachet. Lynch does a good job juggling the movie’s puzzlebox qualities, and its third act features a boffo twist, the extra-narrative implications of which are a pleasure to swirl around in your mind. Yet Surveillance doesn’t quite fully add up, or completely align, both because it feels slightly off in its editing and construction, and because some of its characters remain ciphers. It’s in this sense that the film is a misfire, albeit one you wouldn’t trade for more conventionally telegraphed American indie product.

Its hiccups and unravelling are more sins of excited commission than laziness, and don’t mitigate the weird pleasures of Surveillance‘s cross-cast performances, with experienced comedic performers Oteri and Stewart going dark places and Ormond playing more cool and kinky than perhaps we’ve ever seen from her before. The film looks fantastic, too. Working on the Saskatchewan plains of Canada with cinematographer Peter Wunstorf (the second unit director of photography on Brokeback Mountain), Lynch crafts a work of spare desperation, where unchained menace blows in with the wind. In the end, just pondering that fact may be more chilling than the laboriously crafted backstories of a new crop of backward-looking horror slashers. (Magnet, R, 97 minutes)

In the Loop

War may indeed be hell, but on screen the polarity of its heightened stakes can make occasional fodder for some wicked comedy, which is certainly the case with the very funny In the Loop, a feverishly pitched political satire in which low- to mid-level British diplomats and their American counterparts all try to advance their own contrasting agendas during the lead-up to a preemptive war in the Middle East. It’s rare, the movie that consistently delivers this much towel-snapping pleasure in its dialogue, and it’s rarer still that it comes attached to something that wants to make you think. For that reason, In the Loop is the perfect indie antidote to so much droning, effects-laden summer fare.

Iraq is never explicitly mentioned, and so In the Loop vaguely unfolds in a nebulous, alt-universe present day, though clearly its narrative is a farcical stand-in for the prelude to that invasion. Against this backdrop, the movie throws together nearly a dozen clashing personalities, almost all arguably jockeying for some degree of personal glory and/or taking delight in the stumbles of a rival while also happening to execute their official duties.

While their respective heads of state (never glimpsed) seem set on a path to war, dovish American Lt. General George Miller (James Gandolfini) doesn’t think invasion is the answer, and neither does the British Secretary of State for International Development, Simon Foster (Tom Hollander). After Foster accidentally seems to rule out military action in an innocuous TV interview, he suddenly has some new friends in Washington, D.C., including Assistant Secretary for Diplomacy Karen Clarke (Mimi Kennedy) and her aide, Liza Weld (Anna Chlumsky).

Meanwhile, as Foster and his harried new political advisor, Toby Wright (Chris Addison, above right), try to repair his image, a pros-and-cons-of-war memo penned by Liza, an old college friend of Toby’s, leaks out and is misconstrued by various parties. All of this frustrates to no end the Prime Minister’s chief communications spin-doctor and pit bull, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi, above left), who’s helping push a war resolution vote at the United Nations.

Co-written and directed by Armando Iannucci, In the Loop is delightfully acerbic, and well acted across the board. There’s an effervescence and manic, wheels-spinning charm to all the turmoil and dressings-down that is reminiscent of Michael Frayn’s Noises Off, and the entire thing is cut together with the energy and verve of a top-shelf action movie. Over an hour into the film, there’s a jarring moment of silence for an establishing shot, and it’s here that one most fully realizes just how crammed with whip smart, overlapping banter almost every other nook and cranny is.

Overall, the narrative focus skews toward the British side; its humor (or perhaps that should be spelled humour) leans a bit more heavily on across-the-pond notions of bureaucratic gear-grinding, as evidenced by Foster’s continuing inability to speak in bland, safe aphorisms (never really a problem for American politicians), and an arguably extraneous story strand involving Steve Coogan as an English constituent angry about a collapsing wall near his mother’s property. Hubris, workplace rage, and CYA-protectionism is universal, though, and accordingly In the Loop translates smashingly well. (IFC Films, R, 106 minutes)

Step Up 3 Commences Filming, Funky Popping-and-Locking

Per press release, the third film in the Step Up franchise has begun its scheduled 10 weeks of dance-infused principal photography, in Manhattan and Brooklyn. I don’t know about its digital 3-D presentation — though I guess that’s the next logical step for this type of film, and a lot of youth-skewing genre pictures in general — but after returning director Jon Chu’s work on Step Up 2 the Streets, I can legitimately endorse another installment in pop-and-lock, coming-of-age theatrics. Adam Sevani and Alyson Stoner both reprise their roles from the second and first films, respectively, and are joined by newcomers Rick Malambri, Sharni Vinson, Keith Stallworth, Kendra Andrews, Stephen Boss and Joe Slaughter.

LAFF: Spike Jonze Premieres New Short Film with Kanye West

In breaking news pegged to the Los Angeles Film Festival, Spike Jonze’s new short film, We Were Once a Fairytale, starring Kanye West, will screen before tonight’s 8:30 p.m. screening of Jonathan Caouette’s All Tomorrow’s Parties at the Ford Amphitheatre. Special guests are expected, and self-packed picnics are welcome for the event. Also, just on a festival-related note, Examiner.com’s Marvin Miranda takes a swing at four flicks: Harmony & Me, Zero Bridge, Dear Lemon Lima, and For Those Who Remain.

The International

The Bourne Identity was released in the summer of 2002, and owing to both the changes in the real world post-September 11 as well as the commercial success of that film and its subsequent sequels, since then every spy thriller worth its salt has had to ground itself in greyer times. Even the James Bond franchise — notoriously stingy about embracing change — brought in Daniel Craig after Die Another Day, and OK’ed a grittier franchise reboot that returned to the secret agent’s roots.

It’s in this murkier, tough reality that The International unfolds, directed by German-born Tom Tykwer, who in 1999 set film school imaginations afire with the adrenalized import Run, Lola, Run. A moderately tough sell because of its ambition, complexity and the fact that almost all of its action is contained in a single mid-film burst, The International is a globe-trotting law-and-action hybrid that melds investigatory procedural maneuvering with some covert head-crowning.

Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) is a disgraced Scotland Yard detective turned Interpol agent working from afar with Manhattan district attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) on a case involving one of the world’s most powerful banks, and the impending sale of missile guidance system technology. It looks like there’s a compelling claim to be tried in court, until both Louis’ partner and a potential witness separately turn up dead. Louis and Eleanor have their suspicions, but can’t prove anything. Spurned for direct information at their imposing Luxembourg headquarters — a perfect metaphorical stand-in for the evil machinations of this huge corporate machine — Louis starts working a separate evidentiary strand, a mysterious assassin (Brian O’Byrne) believed to be used by the International Bank of Business & Credit, with the hope of eventually using him to bring down the head of the company (Ulrich Thomsen).

With its skittery keyboard score and cabal of moneyed string-pullers, The International is a mega-corporate take-down thriller, a modern-day The Parallax View by way of Syriana and Michael Clayton. It completely skulks, in other words. Yet if the film, as conceived, is at its core a rendered judgment on the nature of man — with Louis having to grapple with the essential question of whether he should abandon his own ideals, and playing within the system, for the greater good of society — it takes a step back in its finale, afraid to let its protagonist fully, individually come to grips with the weight of his decisions.

In this sense, as penned by debut screenwriter Eric Singer, The International is a perfectly good and engrossing adult-level film that doesn’t really take a full, hearty swing at greatness. It toes the line, but in the end blinks. Overall, the dialogue is fairly unexceptional, but the performances here are engaging, and Tykwer’s staging is smart and crisp. There’s a fun “New York City moment” that fuels one close escape, when Eleanor and Louis honk their way out of a traffic jam, and Tykwer turns an incidental clandestine meeting into a fantastically over-the-top shootout at the Guggenheim’s main rotunda, amidst a massive video installation. The moment is more than just a bit silly; upon reflection, it’s bat-shit crazy, plain and simple. It’s also the brawny set piece that pays for the rest of the chess match. So I didn’t mind, and you might not either.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The International comes to DVD presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen, with English and French language audio tracks, the former in 5.1 Dolby digital and the latter in Dolby surround. Optional English, French and Spanish subtitles are also available. Bonus features consist of a single, 11-minute extended scene that delves more deeply into Louis’ paranoia, a feature-length audio commentary track with Tykwer and Singer, an engaging 31-minute making-of featurette, and a trio of smaller, six-minute looks at the Guggenheim and other spots from the movie’s location production. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) A- (Disc)

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

The arrival of Michael Bay‘s latest film needs no real introduction. A sequel to 2007’s global smash hit Transformers, it’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and it is a posed, pop-art, cinematic ejaculation of instinctive, unthinking extremes.



I can’t fathom exactly how its works as a toy-spewing, collectible-spawning franchise marker, given the lack of anything resembling emotional investment in the material, but huge worldwide grosses again seem likely given the film’s state-of-the-art special effects. On its own merits, though, as a stand-alone movie, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a clamorous, metallic mess. In aping convention and breathlessly sprinting out ahead of itself to get to the next Big Moment — setting fire to Shanghai with a battle! an evil robot disguised as a sexually aggressive babe! the springing of an old Transformer from the Smithsonian Museum! the destruction of Egyptian pyramids! — the movie confirms its basic soullessness. It’s further proof that when Bay has someone (a producer, or studio) to really sit on him, his kinetic style can be harnessed for good-time pop thrills, as with The Rock, or Bad Boys. When given free reign to dictate length and shape tone on a whim, however, as with Bad Boys II, say, Bay’s worst instincts almost invariably win out.

The plot finds Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf) leaving California, improbably, for college on the East Coast. This means goodbye to his slinky girlfriend Mikaela Barnes (Megan Fox), whom he won’t come out and say that he loves, as well as his doting Autobot car, Bumblebee. With Megatron, the leader of the evil Decepticons, buried in the ocean, Optimus Prime, the leader of the good-guy Autobots, scours the Earth popping caps in the asses of “punk-ass Decepticons” (the movie’s words… sigh) looking to somehow reform and regain power. In short, their plan involves recovering an important key/fragment and harnessing Sam’s knowledge, which will in turn allow them to activate a long-buried machine and destroy our sun. Globe-trotting mayhem ensues.

Paradoxically, for a movie designed from the get-go to be a 2,000-calorie, sugar-infused, summer movie snack cake, there’s actually an awful lot to say about Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen; it’s just arguable whether any of this advances any particular noble or notable agenda, beyond raising the hackles of a fan-boy set who will largely do anything to avoid not seeing the emperor’s new clothes. Bay aims for fleeting topicality with the insertion of a swine flu joke, and finally goes meta by having Sam’s room adorned with a poster for Bad Boys II. And there’s plenty of air-quote humor, though instead of a minutes-long sequence in which Sam’s parents think he’s masturbating in his room while Autobots rampage outside, as in the first movie, this time it’s two jive-talking Autobots (one with a gold tooth) who seem nipped from some traveling minstrel show.

Everything about this sequel is bigger-better-faster-more, to the point where any sense of nuance or naturally building tension that writers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Ehren Kruger might have tried to worm into the narrative is blasted to holy hell. Not content with your run-of-the-mill staging for a brief underwater sequence in which Megatron is resurrected, Bay throws in CGI octopi to ostensibly emphasis depth. Ergo, it makes total sense that Sam’s new college roommate has a Mountain Dew drink machine in his room — after all, that’s extreme! It’s also therefore a somewhat telling metaphor that when Sam, his roommate and Mikaela flee a marauding Decepticon and take refuge in the university library, books are blasted to and fro. An indictment of the intelligentsia and their critical snobbery, or just a middle finger at outmoded entertainment? Take your pick.

As one might expect, there are a handful of moments of dazzling technical proficiency, but the brawn here is never really thrilling, and the supposedly climactic desert battle sequence seems to drag on forever. Part of this is because, for me at least, there’s still something less than wholly engaging about anthropomorphized hunks of metal stabbing one another through the face, or ripping out each other’s “hearts.” The metal blends together, in a way, and there’s no nervous, cathartic charge the way there can be in other fight sequences. All the humans in this story feel unnecessary, in other words. Which may make this the ultimate example of Bay’s technical filmmaking prowess. (Paramount/DreamWorks, PG-13, 149 minutes)

Solos

A realistic but smartly stylized portrayal of the selfishness of love, Solos narrates the tale of a 15-year-old (Loo Zihan, below right) consumed by a torrid first love affair with his thirtysomething high school teacher (Lim Yu-Beng, below left), and the pained, smothering affection of a mother who fears her son will never return to her. Solos is a naked and brave story for young Singapore co-director Loo to tell in a country where homosexuality is not even legal — banned in his home country, and withdrawn from the Singapore International Film Festival after the nation’s censors demanded that graphic scenes of homosexual lovemaking be cut. But Solos is a daring film not just in subject matter, for it runs against most of the current trends of modern cinema. With no dialogue, no moving camera, long takes and few edits, the story is told through only sound and body language, resulting in a powerfully elemental work that makes one lean forward in nervous anticipation.

Co-directed by Loo and Kan Lume, Solos was an official selection at a dozen major gay and lesbian film festivals over the past several years, and enjoyed its American premiere at AFI Fest in 2007, where Variety‘s Bob Koehler rightly praised the film’s “ability to imply complex entanglements and shifting emotional states without a shred of language.” It’s a big swing for the fences, the radically low-fi telling of an experiential story like this, and it doesn’t work if the filmmakers’ artistic chops aren’t up to snuff. Here, they are, thankfully.

Shot in deep focus black-and-white, with a few moments of desaturated color thrown in for emotional effect, Solos is totally different in subject matter, but reminiscent of the quiet hold of movies like The Story of the Weeping Camel, or Jacqueline Condinotti’s experimental Rivets, America. Although it’s a film that shifts back and forth between
reality and surrealism, the unifying factor underlying them is the depth of emotions expressed by the characters, and in this regard Solos is able to sustain a grip on an open-minded audience’s attention, once they submit to its rhythms. Aided by Darren Ng’s sound design and moody musical compositions, Loo and Kan convey — in a way that music captures much more frequently than film — the heady swirl of love, and in fact long passages of their work have the same sort of energy that marks the erotic, breathy, full-bodied tension of a pre-sexual encounter.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Solos comes to DVD presented in 16×9 widescreen, and spread across two region-free discs. Supplemental features consist of a clutch of deleted scenes and, running 100 minutes, two separate conversations between multi-hyphenate Loo Zihan and Sir Ian McKellen and John Cameron Mitchell, both fans of the movie. These long-form chats reflect quite positively upon each McKellan and Mitchell, revealing plenty of insight about not only the vocabulary of filmmaking, but also their own coming-out stories, encounters with prejudice, and other personal experiences as gay men, both inside and outside of Hollywood. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) A- (Disc)

MMC Buys Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily

Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily has been acquired by Mail.com Media Corporation, presumably for a nice payday. MMC, a digital media company that owns and operates the Mail.com portal and email service as well as a growing portfolio of lifestyle brands — including HollywoodLife.com, MovieLine.com and OnCars.com — announced its acquisition and long-term, multi-year partnership today. “We’re thrilled to be working with Nikki. As a world-class journalist, she is unequivocally recognized by the entertainment and business community as a unique voice and leading authority on news coverage of major media, especially Hollywood,” said Jay Penske, the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of MMC. “With this acquisition and partnership now complete, Deadline Hollywood Daily can continue to extend its reach and
influence, and finally have the web platform it deserves. Ever since the first scoop of Nikki’s that I read, I quickly realized that she has raised the bar on — if not changed the game of — entertainment journalism, and her work perfectly embodies our mission at MMC: to provide the most original and most authoritative content on the web.”

Yeah, It’s That Kind of Monday…

On the run all day today, with multiple interviews for Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, and the rather striking Los Angeles Film Festival documentary competition film Branson. Plus a couple other screenings that’ll keep me out past midnight. And I’ve already been up for over two hours. Huzzah!

Gaffe-Laden End Credits Help Reinforce Year One’s Goodwill

It’s worth noting that Year One deploys the old “goodwill end credits” tack, displaying a montage of gaffes under its closing credits.

This is nothing new, per se, of course, but crucial to any theatrical blooper reel is the fact that it must be funny, of a piece with the tone of what preceded it, relatively fast-moving (repeatedly flubbed lines from a single sequence often serve to undercut this dictum) and, if it wants to really stand out, cast one or more of its stars in a marginally bad light (e.g., Chris Tucker’s cell phone repeatedly going off during the filming of Rush Hour 2). In this sense, the end credits for Year One really work, crammed as they are with Jack Black ruining a scene by accidentally farting, and the sounds of a train in the distance repeatedly disrupting shots; the latter especially connects, because it underscores in winking fashion the movie’s mock-period setting, which is faithfully if not exactingly rendered.

Incidentally, of arguably the same genus if not family is the leave-’em-dancing credit sequence. Going back at least a decade, the Farrelly brothers pioneered the use of an end-credit, out-of-character, cast and crew sing-along montage set to a single, particularly peppy song (was this part of 1996’s Kingpin? I can’t remember), a move which has on occasion been appropriated by dreadful films like Lethal Weapon 4, in an attempt to erase any memory of the previous 100 minutes or so of pain and suffering. Will Smith’s Hitch, with its shut-down set to Heavy D’s “Now That We Found Love,” worked fantastically in this regard, since there was both a wedding closing the film, and the instruction of rhythm and appropriate dancing figured at least nominally into the movie’s plot.

The Answer Man

In The Answer Man, Arlen Faber (Jeff Daniels) is the hermetic author of Me and God, an internationally bestselling book that in the late 1980s redefined spirituality for an entire generation. On the eve of the 20th anniversary of his still wildly popular tome, a Q&A dialogue between the Holy Creator and a man wracked with pain, Arlen faces an editor (Nora Dunn) who’s looking for some public accessibility after indulging his seclusion for two decades.

In this crucible, Arlen’s back seizes up, and his sheltered life suddenly intersects with two people who slowly begin to erode his caustic worldview. First there’s Kris (Lou Taylor Pucci), a bookstore owner fresh out of rehab, and searching for both stability and meaning in life. Then there’s Elizabeth (Lauren Graham), a massage therapist and single mom who puts up a facade of progressive properness for her 7-year-old son — feeding him protein shakes and classical music as she herself sneaks cigarettes and rock ‘n’ roll — even as his behavior at school indicates he’s starting to feel the effects of his absentee father.

Owing to Daniels’ starring role as a cranky, screwed-up intellectual, first-time writer-director John Hindman’s film will doubtlessly spawn comparisons to Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, and there are some similarities between the two erudite works. Honestly, though, the point of comparison that first leapt to my mind was As Good as It Gets, another movie in which ingrained personality issues mark and color a fitful romance between an older man and a younger single mother. There’s also a pinch of Finding Forrester, in the reluctant bloom of a gruff flower kept too long indoors.

In the most immediate sense, though, there’s plenty of fun, philosophically-tinged pleasures all around the edges of this barbed, humanistic, romantic comedy, both in the dialogue and the tenor of its performances. There’s some smart, quietly affecting work from both Graham and Daniels, and Pucci gets to showcase a bit more of an adult sensibility than he has in movies like Thumbsucker and The Go-Getter. But The Answer Man will also connect with those who have a soft spot for “show-up-wounded”-type love stories, adult and otherwise. We are all hurt or searching, the film essentially posits, but it’s how we focus ourselves and help others that most defines us.

If there’s a substantive knock, it’s that the Hindman’s end game feels, in varying amounts, pat, rushed, and false. It’s not entirely cheaply cathartic, but portions of the movie’s finale don’t jibe with what we’ve been told about the deeply rooted spiritual impact of Arlen’s book, and overall it doesn’t quite work. Even The Answer Man doesn’t have all the answers, it seems. But that’s OK. Life is an imperfect journey. (Magnolia, R, 95 minutes)

The Hostess Also Likes to Blow the Horn

The 1970 German sex comedy The Hostess Also Likes to Blow the Horn may have one of the greatest, all-time cheekiest titles of its under-respected sub-genre. A pleasure, then, that the film — a good-natured mix of ribald set-up, mock-offended patter and solid setting and production design — delivers on its promise, delivering an adult-themed tale that doesn’t aim to merely achieve blush at any cost.

Directed by Franz Antel, aka Francois Legrand, The Hostess… is set in Europe in 1814, against a backdrop in which soldiers scour the countryside for provisions both material and carnal. The story centers around bombshell redhead Justine Del Ber (Teri Tordai), a traveling French actress who thinks on her feet and escapes a sticky situation along with Ferdinand (Harald Leipnitz), a fellow actor. Together, they flee into the countryside, and seek refuge in the small burgh of Tursa. Overseen by the moralistic Baron Bierrechalet (Jacques Herlin) and his Committee of Decency, Tursa has taxes for everything — fornication, dancing, singing, drinking, bathing and even “previously lost virginity.” Plenty of people don’t like it, but seem powerless to overthrow the current system of governance.

Justine, though, has other plans. She and Ferdinand take possession of a local inn, change its name to The Innocent Lamb, and set it up as a mock-convent — a gathering place for everyone sick of the government’s incursion into their private lives. Ferdinand saves young Marika
(Andrea Rau) from the roving hands of the Baron’s lackey, and give her a position as chambermaid, and before long The Innocent Lamb is the hottest spot in town. While the Baron tries to find a noblewoman to marry, and consolidate his power, Justine and Ferdinand try to assist in the return of Count Valeriano Trenk (Glenn Saxson), the rightful heir to the area, who currently lives in Vienna. Later, Justine works up a scheme to trap the mayor in his own web of taxable behavior.

Co-written by Carlo Fuscagni and Kurt Nachmann, The Hostess… indulges in the sort of wild theatricality one might imagine, and is also powered by tongue-lolling, wolfish dialogue (sample: “I’ll let your britches down, but not you!”) that one can easily imagine in little thought bubbles alongside R. Crumb cartoons. Yet it also drops reference to the historical stageplay The Innkeeper, and generally does a good job blending behavioral comedy with a smidgen of historical satire. In fact, there aren’t many sex scenes, per se; most of the nudity is just a result of private behavior momentarily publicly exposed, and the bulk of it comes late in the movie, when Justine slips the Baron an elixir and rigs an “emperor’s new clothes”-type scenario. The cast is uniformly winning, and the production value fairly high, which helps mitigate some questionable visual framing. Rosalba Neri, Poldo Bendandi, Paul Lowinger and Paola Arduini also star.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Hostess Also Likes to Blow the Horn comes presented in anamorphic widescreen, with optional English subtitles and a motion-animated menu screen. Its only legitimate supplemental feature, however, is a 31-photo, self-playing slide show of production stills; some sort of historical contextualization, in the form of cast member/crew interviews or talking head analysis, is sadly lacking. Nevertheless, to purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here; to purchase via Half, click here. B (Movie) D+ (Disc)

Surveillance Trailer Spotlights Societal Rot

The trailer for Surveillance, Jennifer Lynch’s first film since Boxing Helena, is online, and does a pretty job of selling the movie’s Rashomon-like, B-movie egg scramble of n’er-do-wells, corrupted authority figures and vengeful sociopaths. Maybe too good a job, almost. I mean, only in the sense that the trailer comes across as streamlined, hook-y and conventional, while the final product is — in keeping with the writer-director’s surname — a bit more wildly unhinged. Full review to follow later in the week, along with some interviews probably early next week, coinciding with its limited theatrical release. Surveillance is currently available via VOD, by the way.

LAFF: Passenger Side

Writer-director Matt Bissonnette’s Passenger Side had its world premiere at the L.A. Film Festival Friday evening, with a handful of boutique distributor reps in attendance amidst the three-quarters-full crowd at the Mann Regent in Westwood.

A low-fi, California-set road flick of indolent, occasional charm, Passenger Side centers on Los Angeleno Michael Brown (Adam Scott, above right), an exasperated copywriter/unsuccessful novelist whose birthday begins with a telephone call from his estranged, drug addicted older brother Tobey (Joel Bissonnette, above left, the director’s brother). Tobey is without car, and needs Michael’s help ferrying him around on a series of mysterious but apparently vital errands. To this end, Michael puts his nebulous birthday plans on hold to embark on a sketchy Southland odyssey that crosses paths with a randy transsexual, a drunken party girl, a desert-dwelling pie server, an immigrant with lopped-off fingers and all other manner of oddballs.

It may sound positively Lynchian, that mix, but Bissonnette (Looking for Leonard, Who Loves the Sun) is much more interested in the rhythms of honest, forward-leaning conversation, and constructs his movie as a snapshot of swallowed fraternal standoffishness, where obvious mutual regard has been worn down by the cutting winds of life, and each brother’s disapproval over some of the other’s choices. In press notes the filmmaker describes Passenger Side as being about “the complex bonds created when opposites are bound together by life, family and blood… and also about different ways that a life can be lived: from the supposed safety of the sidelines, or deep in the middle of the mess.” With that in mind, Passenger Side is in some ways a (much) more plugged-in companion piece to Gus Van Sant’s willfully meandering Gerry; here, though, it isn’t modernity or so much man’s relationship to nature itself under the microscope, but the accumulated baggage that comes with dreams gone off-track, and how that can warp decision-making and breed stasis.

The problem is that Michael remains too much of a cipher; with no backstory as arguably turbulent and self-destructive as Tobey’s addiction, we’re left to get bits and pieces filled in along the way. While Scott’s engaging performance mitigates this somewhat, there is the lingering feeling that he’s just somewhat of a grumpy jerk. A bit more (non-familial?) shading of his personality would have helped nail down the character more concretely.

There’s also a girl at the center of Passenger Side, but the manner in which she looms over the narrative — played for a big twist at the end — feels lacking, or perhaps just overly coy. Damningly, there’s also no sort of exacting chronological/topographical honesty or logic, which undercuts at least a bit the way the movie plays to a film-savvy crowd, either comprised of Los Angelenos or New Yorkers who know the City of Angels and surrounding areas at least a bit. Events unfold in Los Angeles, and see Michael and Tobey then drive to Glendale, to Joshua Tree, back to Los Angeles, to Long Beach, back to the San Fernando Valley, and then to Hollywood. Given the timeframe, this is something of a stretch. Also, at one point theoretically leaving the Valley, we see the pair instead driving west past Universal City, presumably because it provides a more scenic backdrop.

The film’s chief selling point is the rapport between Scott and Bissonnette, which is delightful — powered by the
sort of masculine-sardonic patter that disaffected brothers, either
real or in feeling/name, use to keep each other at arms’ length. Leaning on ex-Superchunk frontman and Merge Records co-founder Mac McCaughan as a musical consultant, Bissonnette also constructs a fantastically evocative soundtrack for the tape deck of Michael’s beat-up, mid-1970s BMW. It’s those details that give Passenger Side the weight of knock-about authenticity, even if one wishes its conversational patter were a bit more honed toward the end target at which it’s aiming.

For more information on the film, which screens again on Thursday, June 25 at 4:30 p.m. as part of the Los Angeles Film Festival in Westwood, click here.

Music Documentary It Might Get Loud Cranks Amp to 11


I caught the music documentary It Might Get Loud earlier in the week, and yesterday interviewed director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth), as well as Jimmy Page and Jack White — who, along with U2’s The Edge, form the triumvirate of axe-men which the film takes as its subjects — for a feature piece a bit further down the line. Part compare-and-contrast piecemeal biography, part godhead gathering, the movie is in sum never less than in-the-moment engaging, even if there’s a lingering feeling that the moderator-less roundtable gathering that forms its spine could perhaps have used a bit more prodding or structure, to get at the marrow of exactly why and how even trite musical expressions sometimes achieve significant emotional lift-off. Nevertheless, music fans will jam on this title big-time, as the above trailer amply demonstrates. For those in the SoCal area, the film screens in the afternoon on Monday, June 22, at the Los Angeles Film Festival in Westwood.

Year One

The big, blustery physical comedy of Jack Black makes for a mostly amusing fit with Michael Cera’s quiet comedy of self-negation in Year One, a ramshackle banished-buddy picture which connects more on the strength of its scene-to-scene joke writing than a startlingly grand execution of its premise. Pushing far away from one’s brain any recollections of of historical or religious antiquity is of paramount importance given the historic license the story takes. Once that is accomplished, though, there’s airy delight in the mixing of slightly contemporized but socially inept consciousnesses with a primitive setting.

When oafish hunter Zed (Black) eats from the forbidden tree of knowledge and later accidentally sets fire to his village, he’s banished. Reluctantly accompanying Zed out into the wilderness is his reserved gatherer pal Oh (Cera, sporting a generally ridiculous wig that undergoes an unexplained metamorphosis three-quarters of the way through the movie); left behind are their respective crushes, Maya (June Diane Raphael) and Eema (Juno Temple). Discovering that the story of the world’s edge is false, the wandering pair comes across hothead Cain (David Cross), and bear witness to his murder of his brother, Abel.

Again fleeing, Zed and Oh come across Abraham (Hank Azaria) , who warns them of the sins of the nearby city of Sodom. This sounds like a great place to Zed, however, and so off they go, to partake of its pleasures. Once there, they again cross paths with Maya and Eema, who have been sold into slavery, as well as Cain. While Zed tries to devise a plot to free the ladies, Oh fends off the advances of the king’s creepy, flamboyant high priest (Oliver Platt).

Though somewhat similar in some of its targets to Monty Python’s Life of Brian or Mel Brooks’ sprawling History of the World: Part One, Year One is more assertively a hodgepodge of different eras, in this case commingling polytheism alongside Judeo-Christian Biblical stories separated by hundreds of years. Trying to hold onto and make any sense of the manner in which intersects chronologically factual human history or cognitive development is akin to swimming upstream into a headstrong current. It doesn’t help, either, that the movie can’t seem to decide whether Zed and Oh are accidental masters of their fate (upon arriving in Sodom, they briefly become royal guards), or habitual victims of circumstances and their surroundings. The sooner one relinquishes the notion that this is more than anything than just an unfettered spit-balling of widely generalized life in a dusty, bygone era, the more simply they’re able to appreciate the movie’s otherwise generally solid joke-writing and characterizations.

The lead performances certainly don’t differ wildly from the personas that the two actors have cultivated; Black plays a libidinal, instinctive chatterbox, while Cera trades in wallflower asides and nervous, awkward silences. In their juxtaposition and interplay, however, there’s something approaching a sincere freshness. This owes to age and demeanor, yes, but also size — something that director Harold Ramis isn’t afraid to exploit through both written material and physical gags large and small. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Columbia, PG-13, 96 minutes)

Food, Inc. Director Does Live Twitter Chat

For those interested, Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner will be part of a live Twitter chat this Friday, June 19. It’s simple to participate; at 10 a.m. Pacific time, log in to Twitter, put #foodinc in the search bar, and hit enter. You’re now following the conversation. If you have questions, be sure to include the #foodinc tag.

Revolutionary Road

A pure Oscar-bait type of movie, through and through — a period-piece drama starring awards-vetted actors, based on a respected novel, under the direction of an established filmmaker — Revolutionary Road centers on Frank and April Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, reuniting for the first time since Titanic), a young married Connecticut couple who, in the 1950s, have two kids and come to feel, each in their own way, irredeemably weighed down and oppressed by the monotony of suburban life they’ve default-embraced.

Neither Frank’s cushy, well-paying advertising job, nor a friendly relationship with neighbors Milly and Shep Campbell (Kathryn Hahn and David Harbour) can dull the tiny razors of ennui. In fact, over time, all that pre-formatted comfort and familiarity seems to be a big part of what wears Frank and April thin, and leads to the sort of emotional separation that eventually breeds infidelity. That the rest of the movie is generally paced like an ambling, summer night’s post-dinner stroll helps Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Michael Shannon blow in and steal a number of scenes, based on sheer energy. He plays John, the blunt-spoken, not-quite-right son of Helen Givings (Kathy Bates), the Wheelers’ real estate agent, and when eschews social niceties and upsets the prim-and-proper conventions of the time and place during a pair of afternoon tea sessions, it’s like a welcome electrical storm in an otherwise uninterrupted stream of muggy, overcast but rainless evenings.

Look, without launching into a more intellectually robust dismissal, or re-posting my original theatrical review, which came under contract for an outlet with whom I do not have reprint rights, Revolutionary Road is an ornate, full-bodied drama in which all the proper levers of the craft of filmmaking are pulled, with earnestness and passion. Its artistic execution is pretty much unassailable. It looks fantastic, courtesy of cinematographer Roger Deakins, who expertly uses light to capture both the sunny charms and eventual sense of preordained suffocation of upper-middle class white America, circa 1955.

“And yet” — well, those are the two words I found hanging around in my head for almost the entire running time of the film, and long afterward. I never felt fully persuaded or caught up in the dramatic stakes of the movie, and DiCaprio, a fine actor, can’t quite ever wrap his mouth around curse words in convincing fashion. When he swears — especially in frothy rage, as he’s required to here — he sounds like a kid who’s wandered into a group of his older brother’s friends, and is trying to impress some girl via blustery badassedness. Mostly, though, Revolutionary Road is damningly hamstrung by a presented fork in the road — Frank and April entertaining the notion of ditching suburbia and heading off to France — that we as the audience know is never going to happen. It would be one thing if the story hit this beat and moved on, but the movie chews up an awful lot of ground peddling this non-starter of a twist. Consequently, I just felt far out in front of it, wondering — if one will permit the indulgence of a Simpsons reference — when the film and its makers were going to quit jerking me around and get to the fireworks factory.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Revolutionary Road comes presented via a gorgeous 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, with English, French and Spanish Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks, plus optional subtitles in each of the aforementioned languages. A full-length audio commentary track with Mendes and screenwriter Justin Haythe kicks off the slate of supplemental features, and the pair have a nice rapport, sharing anecdotes and doling out major props to Deakins and the “happy accident” of capturing the loneliness beyond the characters, as rendered in flickering lights and a lakeside reflection on glass during a bout of automotive lovemaking.

Running just under a half-hour is a making-of featurette packed with insights from cast and crew, and some cool behind-the-scenes footage (over 200 extras being outfitted and handed reprints of commuter newspapers, and Deakins rigging up white sheets off of which to bounce light). Production designer Kristi Zea talks about the important selection of the movie’s house, albeit as if the notion of smaller domestic square footage in 1955 is a great shock to her. In mixed interview footage from the set and the movie’s promotional junket, Mendes, sometimes sporting a beard, sometimes clean shaven, describes the movie as a “tragic love story, set in the 1950s, but dealing with very modern concerns.” Winslet, meanwhile, says it’s “about marriage, and how honesty must be present in underpinnings.”

Of perhaps the most interest is the movie’s meandering path to the big screen, though. Producer John Hart played shepherd to the project, and Winslet initially read it over four years ago, when pregnant with her son. She began planting seeds with DiCaprio — plying him slowly, she says — and then pressured Mendes into taking it on. For his part, Mendes, who pulled in producers Bobby Cohen and Scott Rudin, and says he always loved the script, copped to needing to take some time to be extra sure of tackling the movie, because of the scrutiny involved in collaborating with his wife.

There are also five deleted scenes, including an argument in front of the kids while Frank is cutting the grass and, most notably, a scene in which a slightly buzzed Frank talks about a birthday he had during the war, and how he was sung to by an entire division. The quiet punch of the scene, underscoring the nodding suburban repetitiveness of Frank and April’s lives, comes when it turns out he told the same story previously, a year earlier. The film’s theatrical trailer is also included. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

The Hurt Locker

While its behind-the-scenes machinations are mined for laughs in another superlative film this summer, In the Loop, war is also very much at the heart of The Hurt Locker, a punishing, devastatingly well-made Iraq-set thriller with an implosive but no less powerful emotional impact. Eschewing the whirling, bird’s-eye helicopter shots of so many armed conflict flicks (this is most assuredly not a Tony Scott film), director Kathryn Bigelow tightens her focus in laser-like fashion, examining the effects of combat and danger on the human psyche.



Unfolding in Iraq in the summer of 2004, the movie opens on Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), part of a small, elite Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad specifically trained to handle the homemade bombs killing thousands of Iraqis and accounting for more than half of all American deaths in the country. A high-pressure assignment, the job leaves no room for mistakes, as they learn when they lose their team leader on a mission. When cocksure Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) takes over the unit, Sanborn and Eldridge are unnerved by what seems like his reckless disregard for both military protocol and basic safety measures. As chaos swirls around them, Sanborn and Eldridge try to come to terms with James’ behavior, even as it seems to endanger them during the dog days of their respective tours.

Based on the first-hand observations of journalist and screenwriter Mark Boal, who was embedded with a special Army bomb unit in Iraq, The Hurt Locker is scripted with such insight and tunnel-vision devotion to character that it could actually be retro-engineered as a stageplay and still retain much of its punch. This isn’t a big, swaggering conventional war drama; in some ways it’s almost incidentally one, save for the psychological toil of warfare under the microscope.

The wry, mordant banter of the soldiers is often revealing. “Aren’t you glad the Army has all those tanks parked there so if the Russians come along we can have a big tank battle?” one specialist asks his cohort. Yet Bigelow and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd — who similarly located the solemnity of courage and doom in United 93 — also find compelling shorthand images with which to seed their film, as with a hobbled cat limping along the dusty, war-torn roadside.

Through it all, there are set piece moments of exquisitely fine-tuned pressure-cooker tension, executed by Bigelow with a steely precision and skill that matches her protagonist’s on-screen bomb-defusing talents. One sequence finds James having to examine the body of a young boy that may have been booby-trapped; another scene finds him locating and disarming a hidden improvised explosive device, only to pull up a spider web of buried red ancillary wires, stretching 12 to 15 feet in every direction.

The Hurt Locker is perhaps most notable, though, for the manner in which much of its emotional impact lies outside the parameters of the picture and its contained, if ample, drama. Without giving away anything, suffice it to say that the film plays as a sort of tragic prequel to a post-traumatic stress disorder drama one might see five or six years hence. The greatest tragedy of war, you see, is that it isn’t really over when it ends. (Summit, R, 130 minutes)

Nobel Son

In Nobel Son, Barkley Michaelson (Bryan Greenberg) is struggling to finish his Ph.D. thesis when his father Eli (Alan Rickman), a long-striding, socially artless, egomaniacal bastard, wins the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. While Eli and his wife Sarah (Mary Steenburgen), a forensics specialist and fellow academician, travel to accept the award, the former’s indiscretions, past and present, complicate matters. After a late-night hook-up with a kooky artist chick (Eliza Dushku), Barkley is knocked unconscious and ransomed by Thaddeus (Shawn Hatosy), a bitter young man who turns out to have a long-held grudge against Eli. Soon, Barkley becomes complicit in Thaddeus’ scheme, and eventually everyone gets in on the kidnapping, philandering and blackmail. And Pat Benatar is quoted… twice.

The other indie films of director Randall Miller (Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School, Bottle Shock) have, to various degrees, been intriguingly sketched if fitfully misguided character ensembles, up-and-down affairs in which fantastic scenes abut awkward and/or pointless ones. Nobel Son is Miller’s most processed work, most concerned with self-satisfied style over substance, and it’s a misstep in a different direction. The movie wants to be a pulse-quickening genre knuckleball, part Zero Effect, part Lucky Number Slevin, part dysfunctional family dramedy. But the tone isn’t at all a match with the material, no matter the gameness of an intriguing ensemble cast, and imprinted upon almost every frame in the movie’s 111-minute running time, under the electro-throb score from Paul Oakenfold and Mark Adler, is effort, with a capital E.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Nobel Son comes presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a complementary English language 5.1 Dolby digital audio track, and optional English and Spanish subtitles. The disc’s supplemental features are anchored by a chatty feature-length audio commentary track from director Miller, wife/writing partner/co-producer Jody Savin, cinematographer Mike Ozier and on-screen talent Dushku and Greenberg. There’s an awful lot of cross-talk here, and plenty of vacuous self-congratulation, honestly, but some of the anecdotes (the problematic fiberglass on the roof of the love scene between Dushku and Greenberg, for instance) provide a bit of amusement.

Three deleted scenes — which only further underscore a couple narrative points, including a twisty ending, in declamatory fashion — each come with optional commentary from Miller and Savin. Finally, a 14-minute making-of featurette includes interviews with Miller and some of the cast, notably Dushku, Rickman, Greenberg and Steenburgen, who notes that it’s easy to detest her screen husband given the manner in which Rickman so magnificently embodies Eli. Both red-band and normal versions of the movie’s trailer are included, along with a couple other trailers for 20th Century Fox home video releases. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) B (Disc)

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