A lurching, zigzag tale of serial murder, killer
apprenticeship, malevolent reverence and cat-and-mouse investigation, Kevin
Costner’s Mr. Brooks puts a
deliciously warped spin on what are by now many prim and proper thriller
conventions. A throwback to a certain breed of wildly plot-driven thrillers
from the 1980s, the film surfs along on its own crest of rising ridiculousness
before slowly — and somewhat surprisingly — becoming something a bit more
interesting than it’s able to convincingly sell in its single-hook television
ads and marketing campaign.
Costner stars as Earl Brooks, an extremely successful and
highly regarded Portland businessman
whose family life masks a habit for serial murder urged on by his gum-chewing,
murderous id, “Marshall” (William Hurt). Glimpsed by a peeping Tom photographer
(Dane Cook) who plies him with a bizarre blackmail demand, Brooks accedes to the
request, perhaps taking up a protégé or perhaps biding his time before erasing
all of the incriminating evidence, and then the interloper himself. Against this backdrop of uneasy partnership, Brooks’ daughter returns home from college
with a secret, and Brooks also takes an interest in the detective (Demi Moore)
attempting to catch him, working to erase an escaped killer convict who is stalking
her.
If elements of the movie’s execution are very occasionally
derisible, Mr. Brooks makes up for it
with sheer narrative audaciousness, spinning to its benefit the advantage of
genuine surprise (both good and bad) and arriving, comfortably in its own skin,
at a final resting point more wildly entertaining than good. It may be hooey, in other words, but it’s inventive and sugary sweet.
Scripted by director Bruce A Evans (Kuffs) with writing partner Raynold Gideon (Stand By Me), Mr. Brooks is full of feints, but also, and more notably, bold choices. In a market full
of more slickly crafted movies that make safe selections, that has to count for
something. For the full review, from Screen International, click here.
There’s hay to be made even in parsing advice on films on
which there’s generally going to be some sort of critical consensus, but an
entirely different sort of really pleasant sensation one gets from being able
to recommend an off-the-beaten path indie flick. Unfortunately, penning a
review ofKill Housedoes not summon
forth that feeling.
Written and directed by Beth Dewey (Tweeked, starring Independent Spirit Award nominee Darling Narita), Kill House’s cover (a close-up of a
giant hatchet) augurs a splatter-fest horror flick, but the back cover copy
promises “a modern day tale of bloodlust, rivalry and greed” set against the
cutthroat backdrop of the Southern California real estate market. In truth, the
film is neither fish nor fowl, and fairly poorly done all the way around, whether
it’s trying to pass itself off as a blithe black comedy or something a little
edgier.
The movie opens with news of a brutally murdered San
Francisco realtor, which throws Los
Angeles’ Connor Real Estate firm — consisting of Marta
(Susan Artigas), Marc (Oliver Elmore) and Sunny (Dewey again, pulling
multi-hyphenate duty) — into a bit of a tizzy. Left by their vacationing dad
and stepmother to fend for themselves while their house is still on the market,
Lucille (Toni Breen, above) and her stoner brother Kyle (Paul Mocey-Hanton) quickly
set about doing whatever they please, much to the consternation of Marc,
assigned to move the property. Sexually impetuous young Lucy makes moves on handsomely
burly ex-con handyman Jimmy (E. Shepherd Stevenson), who spurns her advances.
When other bodies start piling up, though, Jimmy of course becomes a prime
suspect in the slayings. As the aforementioned agents turn on one another and
Jimmy’s parole officer gets involved in the investigation, all sorts of crazy
paths start intersecting, in a perhaps twisted homage to Short Cuts
that Robert Altman
would likely find most headache-inducing.
Kill House’s casting
frequently doesn’t really match the parts, and the hair, make-up and costumes
give the movie a junky, thrift-store feel, even for left coast bohemia. There
are a few funny, offbeat moments courtesy of some canted line readings; I’m
thinking of Stevenson and Mocey-Hanton in particular, though only the former
really gives a full performance. But Dewey can’t stage a convincing scene to
save her life (the killings are all rendered in discrete close-ups, like a
middle school video project) and the film overall is a clanging, incongruous
mix of desperate tonalities; jokes about “butt implants” land with a heavy
thud.
Presented in 1.77:1 widescreen with a Dolby digital stereo mix, Kill House at least has a somewhat decent slate
of supplemental extras going for it. The DVD comes with a grab-bag of 10
deleted scenes and a 21-minute, making-of featurette that’s really a bunch of random
behind-the-scenes footage, from B-roll close-up material of the staging of a
murder victim bleeding out to rehearsal footage, special effects make-up tests
and application and some first AD bitchery. Trailers for Kill House and the even bloodier Bachelor Party Massacre round things out; thankfully we’re spared a
pontificating commentary track from faux-auteur Dewey. D- (Movie) C+ (Disc)
Writer-director Judd Apatow scored a knockout success in 2005 with his
feature debut, The 40-Year-Old Virgin. With Knocked Up, he’s again come up with an
enjoyable movie of distinct personality — a heady cocktail of hilarity,
heart and light raunchiness. In telling the tale of two virtual strangers carrying a pregnancy to term, Apatow never over-polishes his story’s
premise; he establishes a few key parameters and instead relies on
smartly placed supporting players in bit parts (Harold Ramis, Joanna
Kerns, Alan Tudyk and large chunks of the casts of Saturday Night Live and The
Office) to bring individual scenes to a full boil. For a little capsule review on the film, from CityBeat, click here and scroll down. More to follow in the coming days…
Watching a loved one physically suffer can be torture, with
the survivors experiencing greater agony than those fighting death. But what
happens when the patient finds their care lacking — even if they are burned
beyond recognition? From the twisted minds of director Rob Schmidt (Wrong Turn) and writer John Esposito (Graveyard Shift) comes Right to Die, a film sure not to spark spirited debate among
lawmakers regarding euthanasia.
Right to Die stars
Martin Donovan as Cliff Addison, a man harboring a guilty secret from his wife
Abby (The Dead Zone’s Julia
Anderson). He’s committing adultery, you see. When a car accident on a lonely
country road results in Julia being horribly burned over most of her body, however,
Cliff additionally carries the emotional and legal burden of helplessly
watching over his comatose wife — barely living, but still legally and
medically alive. Conflicted, but also motivated by self-interest, Cliff is
determined to get a court order to put her out of her pain. With her condition
worsening, Abby repeatedly flat-lines and is revived. But each time she
clinically “dies,” Abby’s apparition seeks vengeance on those who stand to
profit from her suffering, including a slick attorney (Corbin Bernsen). Pricked
by his conscience, Cliff now searches for a suitable skin donor to save Abby.
As the clock ticks off precious minutes, a race ensues, with souls as well as
lives hanging in the balance.
The Masters of Horror series, written
and directed by some of the genre’s leading practitioners, debuted on the
Showtime cable network in October 2005 to critical and public acclaim, but Anchor Bay has also been pumping out high-quality DVDs of these one-hour features,
and this release is no different in its wide array of bonus offerings. Housed
in a cardboard slipcover and presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9
televisions, Right to Die comes with
an audio commentary track with director Schmidt in which he discusses the
limited production means of the project, and how this was a freeing inspiration
of a sort. A solid little making-of featurette is also included, while a
segment entitled “Flay-O-Trish” takes a more focused look at the movie’s bloody
special effects. Rounding things out is a scrollable image gallery. B (Movie)
B+ (Disc)
Need further proof that Rupert Murdoch is a lightning bolt-wielding quasi-deity who probably already owns either the company you work for or you outright? You mean other than the fact that he has someone on staff at $195,000 a year whose sole job it is to follow him around and make his movie studio’s little trumpeting theme song, and do the Bartman at any time he chooses? Dude just bought the American quarter.
Well, sort of. As part of its promotional campaign for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, 20th Century Fox has apparently teamed with (read: punched in the face, and taken the keys to their press) the Franklin Mint to create a limited edition run of 40,000 quarters which feature the titular baddie (and the film’s URL address, of course) emblazoned on the coin’s back, plastered over that pesky bald eagle. What the Christ is next… Die Hard dollars, with Bruce Willis’ smirking visage and, “In ‘yippee ki-yay’ we trust” stamped on the reverse? Umm… hey, Rupert — if you use that idea, actually, could you just cut me a small, tiny creative license fee? Yes, you can pay me in quarters.
I know they’re just teaser posters, but I can’t think of a worse way to market Good Luck Chuck than the above images of Dane Cook, Jessica Alba and Dan Fogler that Lionsgate used to tout the movie at the recent Cannes Film Festival.
The movie’s concept notwithstanding (Cook plays a guy who’s the perennial perfect lucky charm for women; they meet Mr. Right and get married after sleeping with him), a shirtless Cook doesn’t have the “wow” factor to matter to a large percentage of ladies, and there’s absolutely nothing about that shot appealing to dudes, which comprise most of his fan base. Alba is Alba, sure, but the off-camera glance doesn’t match the melting ice cream cone. Then there’s Fogler… wait a second, who?
Granted, these are international posters, and presumably they would be clustered around one another, lacquered to panel wood surrounding construction sites and what not (they still have construction like that abroad, right?), but if you’re not a comic book movie with a lot of characters and/or don’t have huge stars that you’re trying to flaunt separately, all this does is draw attention to your movie’s shortcomings, from a marketing point-of-view. I didn’t go to advertising school, but that much I know…
UPDATE 5/30: Apparently, I really need more blowjobs, as, per the comment below, I totally whiffed on the visual joke in the picture with Dane Cook. In my defense, though, the above image is fairly small, and the original impetus for this post was actually a set of text-less one-sheets without that, umm, portion of the photo. Funny.
I still maintain, though, that this is a strange way to sell what’s being billed as essentially a raucous love story (for the movie’s trailer, click here) and not a gross-out or full-fledged sex comedy (yes, yes, despite the nookie-charm hook). What exactly about those pictures appeals to women? This also answers my question about these being international posters, and not destined for American subways, etcetera.
Directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1971’s How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman
is a filmic document of a very particular time and place. In fact, it might best
be described as an anthropological curiosity that just happens to be captured
in film form. Originally banned in its native Brazil,
and rejected for official competition at the Cannes Film Festival due to the “excessive
nudity” of its aboriginal cast, the movie is a sort of docu-style, very
tongue-in-cheek black comedy, rich with a vein of political metaphor that no
longer holds the same market value.
Set in the mid-1550s in the coastal jungles of Brazil, the film
tells the story of a nameless French adventurer (Arduino Colassanti) who gets
captured alongside a bunch of Portuguese mercenaries by a cannibalistic tribe of
native Brazilians, and then tries in vain to convince his captors — who are in
fact loosely allied with the French, but don’t understand his language — of his
nationality. Sold out by a portly trader who disingenuously tells the tribe he’s
Portuguese, the Frenchman is informed of plans to eventually eat him, months
down the line. Still, the tribe treats him well, bequeathing him a wife, and
including him in the group’s agricultural activities and rituals. The movie,
then, is a picture show of indolent ceremony, custom and idyll, punctuated by
panicked bursts of argument and attempted persuasion.
How Tasty Was My
Little Frenchman is a very loose adaptation of German explorer Hans
Staden’s celebrated and infamous 16th century first-person chronicle, which
details a similar experience that he (obviously) escaped to tell about. As is,
it plays a bit like a foreign cousin of Wicker
Man, one man
raging in culturally isolated vain against a collective who regards him with no
small bemusement. The big problem, though, is that How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman is robbed of its contextual rooting.
The film was made in a dark time in Brazil’s
military rule, and regarded as a veiled societal critique. From the outside
looking in, one can appreciate this vantage point, but not be swayed by it. The
construction of the film — with classical music blaring over its opening 10
minutes, and intermittently throughout — comes across as arbitrary, and there’s
too much narrative slack in the second and third act, no matter the 80-minute
running time. Only in the movie’s interestingly staged last 10 minutes — in which
the Frenchman’s wife confesses a sadness at his impending death, but nods when
he asks if she will then still eat him — is there any real downhill momentum or
lastingly memorable drama.
Housed in a regular Amray case and presented in 1.33:1 full
screen, How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman
comes with an entirely adequate audio track, which is a mixture of French, Tupi
and Portuguese. The problem is that the movie’s English subtitles sometimes lag
distressingly behind the dialogue, leaving one to suss out who is saying what. Boasting
a new digital transfer from a restored negative, the picture for the film is
superb, with only a very small amount of grain occasionally popping up. The
disc’s supplemental extras consist of two interviews, the longest of which is
an 11-and-a-half-minute, rambling and frequently incoherent chat with a
modern-day member of the Krenak tribe, which is depicted in the film. This bit
scores high marks for potential, but there’s no authorial hand here to shape
the material, which actually seemingly begins in mid-thought. The other chat
is, therefore, the best. A nine-and-a-half-minute, direct-address mini-lecture
from ColumbiaUniversity
film studies professor Richard Peña, this monologue makes up for in insight
what it lacks in flair of presentation. There’s also a gatefold insert with a solidly
informative essay penned by Darlene Sadlier, a professor of Spanish and
Portuguese and an adjunst professor of Communication and Culture at Indiana University. To order the movie via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)
In the wake of her arrest on suspicion of DUI, the trailer for Lindsay Lohan’s I Know Who Killed Me has bowed, and is available online here, to complement the low-fi, in-character video blog site that distributor Sony has set up. The trailer offers up a few story point clarifications (Lohan’s Aubrey Fleming is a student, while her post-abduction alter ego Dakota Moss is the stripper and doppelganger), but also raises more questions. I guess that’s the point, really, but they’re also not necessarily questions that seem to have any haunting hold beyond the trailer’s two-plus-minute running time.
Lohan’s dual characterizations seem of such bland, split-the-difference tonalities, and some of her line readings sound like drama class exercises. (Also, her ability to play around her age isn’t helped by the fact that her voice, shredded by cigarettes, already sounds like that of a 40-year-old.) Finally, I’m awaiting word from a source this weekend on a copy of the movie’s script or, failing that, confirmation on a plot detail that would, um… prove fairly interesting. Watch carefully for the glimpses of prosthetic limbs, that’s all I’m saying for right now.
Late in the summer of 2005, Steve Carrell’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin defied
conventional wisdom about R-rated comedies — helped in part, no doubt, by a
self-effacingly chipper poster
— and in the process became a $100-million-plus smash, pretty much allowing
writer-director Judd Apatow the autonomy to do whatever the hell he pleased as
a follow-up.
Apatow smartly diversified his holdings as a producer, but chose
to center his next own feature film around Freaks
and Geeks alum and The 40-Year-Old
Virgin costar Seth Rogen. The subject: a harmless if mismatched one-night stand gone awry
between a driven career gal (Katherine Heigl) and amiable loafer — and thus, by
extension, the onrushing traumas of adulthood and all its attendant responsibility.
Further, proper reviews will follow later this week, but it suffices to say
that Knocked Up, anchored by a very
funny breakout performance from Rogen, is rightly poised to inherit the mantle
of this summer’s great, lasting comedy.
Part of the genius talent of Apatow lies in the manner in
which he seemingly sublimates his own comedic voice to that of his star or
stars. It’s only upon further reflection that you realize how crafty of a
marionette master he really is. While his lack of allegiance to a strict narrative
drumbeat means his work very occasionally drags (Knocked Up’s second and third acts have essentially three or four
tent-pole moments around which everything else is constructed), his scenes aren’t dumb (they refreshingly have
intros and outros), and Apatow is also
not afraid to let improvisational runs extend into idiosyncratic terrain,
confident that the law of averages will bail him out.
Some of Knocked Up’s
funniest bits, to me (Rogen’s character remarking that Paul Rudd’s hapless
married guy looks “dressed up like a cholo on Easter,” say), might barely register
in Nebraska, but Apatow isn’t overly
precious about his jokes, which is why Serpico, Matthew Fox, pink eye and Robin Williams’ knuckles all come up. He instead crafts relatable characters who
demonstrate a real investment in their angst and panic, establishes a few loose
parameters and then pitches all around a theme. A bit bawdy but mostly
heartfelt, the results — in the case of both of his movies — are pieces of equal enjoyment and distinct personality. For a full review of the movie, click here.
Those “Vote Pedro” T-shirts got a lot of attention a few years back, but if the award-winning, Spanish-language teen comedy Casi Casi had anything to say about it, there would be plenty of “Vote Emilio” T-shirts out there as well. Roughly cut from the same sort of satirical cloth as Mean Girls and Election, the movie centers on Emilio (Mario Pabon), an
average teen who finds himself in the principal’s office every week. He nurses a crush on Jacklynne (Maite Canto), the most popular girl in school and, in a rash attempt
to impress the girl of his dreams, he decides to run for Student Council
President. Soon after declaring his candidacy, though, Emilio discovers, much to his
horror, that Jacklynne will be running against him. Emotions fly high as
campaign fever intensifies; not wanting to not lose his chance at winning
Jacklynne’s heart, Emilio devises a risky plan that could end in disaster if the school
principal gets wind of his scheme. The winner of multiple festival awards — including honors at the
San Diego Latino Film Festival, the Boston Latino International Festival, the
New York International Latino Festival, the Vistas Film Festival, the
Philadelphia Film Festival and the Chicago Latino Film Festival — Casi Casi is rated PG for language and some crude humor. The film’s DVD comes presented in a regular Amray case, with an audio commentary track from writer-directors Jaime and Tony Vallés, as well as a brief making-of featurette. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here.
The teaser trailer for producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Jon Turteltaub’s National Treasurefollow-up, Book of Secrets, is online and in theaters, and though extremely short on action, it does a decent enough job dizzying up a plot of conspiracy centering around Abraham Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, and 18 missing pages from his diary — pages which doubtlessly do not include a simple list of family muffin recipes.
Starring Nicolas Cage, the original National Treasure, from 2004, was a throwback treat — one of those rare PG-rated adventure flicks that still legitimately work for audiences above 14 years of age. It was also something of a surprise smash hit, nearly perfectly halving its $347 million box office haul between domestic and international receipts, despite the fact that its plot centered around desperately American items and contrivances, like stealing the Declaration of Independence. Future trailers will no doubt pump up the adventure in leaping fashion; full of shots of Cage pulling open shelves and peeking around, this one was for the parents. To that end, the cast, too (Harvey Keitel, Ed Harris and Oscar winner Helen Mirren, plus a returning Jon Voight), gives this project a sheen of respectability that helps mark it as terra firma for adult audiences.
Pushed back a month from the Thanksgiving perch of the original, Buena Vista will release Book of Secrets on December 21, and hope that the aftertaste of The Blair Witch Project follow-up Book of Shadows has abated. Again, to access the film’s teaser trailer, click here.
It’s a happy birthday to erstwhile Dawson’s Creek troublemaker Monica Keena today, who turns 28 years old. Not sure what Monica is up to these days, really. I heard she popped up on Grey’s Anatomy, but her ship may have sailed with the unfortunate failure of 2002’s Undeclared, actually. I know she did have a small turn in Fifty Pills, which went straight to DVD; she played a dominatrix named Petunia who lives with her grandmother and scores ecstasy tablets for her clients from Lou Taylor Pucci. Wait a second, I just made that movie sound much more interesting than it is. Just stare at the above picture until the desire to rent it passes… there. Good job.
The trailer for The Golden Compass has bowed, and while it has some visual effects pop, I’m not sure that, to the uninformed masses, it could look any more like a reactionary knockoff of The Chronicles of Narnia without actually being accused of nipping footage from either that film or Epic Movie.
The film — the first adapted work from yet another series of fantasy adventure novels, these by Philip Pullman — centers on a 12-year-old orphan, Lyra (Dakota Blue Richards, no doubt rocking the three names in an attempt to differentiate herself from young Ms. Fanning), who tries to rescue a kidnapped friend and ends up on an epic quest spanning parallel worlds. Nicole Kidman (above), Sam Elliott, Eva Green and Daniel Craig costar, with Ian McShane providing some burly voice work. Chris Weitz directs, (the Weitz brother not responsible for American Dreamz, but the co-director on American Pie, Down to Earth and About a Boy), and if there’s precious little in his filmography to indicate he’s particularly well versed in this sort of level of effects work, all the right strings seem to have been pulled in securing the proper state-of-the-art support staff.
Still, this is pretty baldly New Line’s grand attempt to reclaim the holiday fantasy throne, wrestled away in 2005 by Walden Media and Narnia after The Lord of the Rings series became a genre mainstay for three seasons. I mean, we’ve got the inclement weather, young children, shape-shifting creatures, a talking polar bear, et al. With the next Narnia tale not due until 2008, there’s a bit of an opening here, purely in terms of scheduling, but will moviegoers beyond fans of the book series bite? After all, audiences have a way of punishing late-comers to the party that they deem too overtly similar to previous hits. (Take 1993’s Menace II Society, for an out-of-field example; though superior in many ways to 1991’s Boyz N The Hood, it grossed $27 million to $57 million for John Singleton’s debut film.) I have a glossy advance mailing packet around here somewhere, sent to me as a teaser last holiday season, so I’ll try to dig that up and post some thoughts on it in the next week or so. In the meantime, to access The Golden Compass‘ trailer, click here. And, of tangential interest, meanwhile, for a review of Kidman’s Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, click here.
For those in Southern California, capping off a weekend of moviegoing with a classic cinematic experience just got easier, with the Rialto Theatre‘s announcement of its slate of midnight summer screenings. One of the last remaining single-screen movie palaces in the Los Angeles area, the beautiful and
historic Rialto is located in the heart of South
Pasadena, and has been operated by Landmark Theatres since 1976. Built in 1925 and sporting a unique blend
of Spanish Baroque and Egyptian stylings, the Rialto
was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. It has been
featured in many films and commercials, most notably Robert Altman’s The Player
and, more recently, Scream 2.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window will screen on Saturday, June 2, The Rocky Horror Picture Show will screen the following week, on June 9, and Steven Spielberg’s Jaws will screen on June 16. Ticket prices are $8.75. For tickets by phone, call (626) 444-FILM; for regular engagement showtimes and other information, call (626) 388-2122, or simply click here.
As embodied above, let’s all pause to remember the good times with Lindsay Lohan. The, umm… more innocent times? Well, sort of, actually. In news that comes as a shock to only… well, no one, Lohan was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence after her 2005 Mercedes SL-65 (how’s that for a product plug?) convertible struck a curb and crashed on Sunset Blvd. at 5:30 a.m. She was subsequently released from custody because she was admitted to the hospital, police said. The rub is that investigators also found what they suspect is cocaine at the scene; they declined to say where the drug was found other than to say Lohan was not carrying it. (Two other passengers were with her at the time of the crash.)
On a personal level, I’m mainly really irritated because this ruined by planned July 2 post for Lohan’s 21st birthday, which was to be an open letter to her explaining all about alcohol, and what she could expect from her first libation. Confirmation of what deep down many already knew (that Lohan was into some harder stuff) takes the edge off of such dry, beautifully crafted sarcasm.
In other Lohan news, I previously touched on the in-character video blog that’s serving as the first wave of Sony’s promotional push for its July release, I Know Who Killed Me, and as of right now the site is still active. I was talking with a friend recently about someone who worked on the project, and his sense was one of a movie in some tonal trouble. He reported that the film’s first cut was well over three hours, and while a first-pass “assembly cut” of significantly longer length isn’t atypical, it does seem curiously long for a genre film of this sort. I also gleaned a very interesting plot detail that I’ll look to re-confirm and post again on next week.
The eye-popping excesses of the third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean
franchise are, well, vast, but perhaps most easily summarized by a
watery tumble that puts Venezuela’s legendary Angel Falls and certainly
the United States’ Niagara Falls to shame. No simple metaphor, this
title:At World’s End literally takes its players to and over
the edge of the Earth (presumably, Sam Brownback is a fan), all in only
the first act of a blowout extravaganza that provides thousands of
special effects artisans a solid (if hardly exclusive) résumé credit.
That this film is essentially review-proof is a foregone conclusion, of
course, and not merely because of the $17 million it generated in
Thursday night previews, on its way perhaps to a record weekend take of
close to $200 million. So one needn’t dote much on the plot. Still, At World’s End might provide some interesting lessons
yet, as it could serve as the summer’s biggest and most lasting
reanimation of the age-old, oft-quarreled-over divide between critics
and the film-going public. The third installment of Spider-Man,
it’s true, split critics and fans (it’s currently teetering at 61%
positive on Rotten Tomatoes), but did so in interesting fashion. It was
precisely the emo-Peter Parker subplot and fanciful musical sequences
that beguiled many, if not all, writers, but proved toxic to every
avowed franchise fan boy. Because of its ambition and reach, as well as
some admittedly accrued goodwill, a lot of critics were willing to give
director Sam Raimi and the film a pass, essentially, while most comic book fans lashed out
at the movie’s atypicality and creativity, crying out for a simpler,
streamlined narrative. The battle lines here are of a different sort.
The first Pirates of the Caribbean
was a great and exceedingly well-colored, self-contained romp that had
just enough clever plot gambits and deftly interwoven supporting
characters. The sequels have then spun these off into empty theater.
What rings so inherently false about the putative conclusion of the Pirates
franchise is that there is no true or satisfying conclusion to speak of. Sure, things
“end,” much in the same fashion that one’s day does with sleep… only to
begin again. Leaving open (and openly encouraging the notion of)
separate franchise avenues for all major characters is, to be blunt, a
rather righteous and cynical cop-out. It smacks of weakness and not
knowing what to do save pad a running time with more visual hellfire, this
sort of desperate angling to be all things to all people. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.
Bug stars Ashley Judd as a haggard small town waitress caught up in a spin cycle of poor choices and revisited consequences. She hooks up with a quiet and nervous but kindly drifter (Michael Shannon, above right) who turns out to be an Army deserter, and it’s not long before his paranoid rantings about parasitic bugs in his blood stream have rubbed off on her, and they’re feeding off of one another’s wide-eyed, rampantly increasing obsession.
Bug tangentially recalls certain thrillers of containment like Cube,
movies which are constructed, at least to some degree, around a plot
device or setting that explains their limited production means. Another
movie Bug recalls in fits and starts, actually, is director Richard Linklater’s Tape, another stage-born, three-character piece, unfolding in a single dingy hotel room, in which old transgressions and recrimination are dragged out into the ugly, fluorescent light. Like Tape, Bug courses with a similar airborne tension born
of unreliable characters and shifting rationales. Unlike Linklater’s
film, though, Bug‘s act breaks are hard and
discrete, and if many of its set pieces individually contain a queasy, goosing
energy, in aggregate there’s not a smooth plane of ascension to all the
dizzied-up paranoia. Things become panicky, but remain willfully ambiguous. For director Friedkin, these buggy characters are enough of a reason to submit to the film. Those who enjoy arthouse character studies will likely agree, but mainstream audiences looking for the next big psychological disturbance
will have to wait a few weeks until Hostel II. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.
I’m steadfast in my blaming of both TiVo and my girlfriend for this, but I admit that I recently caught part of Oprah Winfrey’s show, I believe from May 14, with most of the cast of Hairspray. On it, Oprah indulged her longstanding crush on John Travolta by batting her lashes and goofily hoofing it with him, and there was a nice casting bit with Nikki Blonsky, who was plucked from ice cream shop obscurity to star in the film by director Adam Shankman.
As detailed here, from a peek at advance footage last month, the movie actually looks good, or at the very least of a piece and consistently energetic. What rankles, though, or at least stands out as ridiculous, was Travolta’s on-air assertion, when lobbed an obviously tipped-off Winfrey softball about its advance testing with audiences, that Hairspray was the “highest scoring movie in history.”Really?
Look, I can’t immediately summon to mind all the other examples, but in around 10 years of film reportage, I’ve heard this very statement about, no lie, probably 15 or so different movies, from producers, directors and stars alike. It always struck me as somewhat desperate — something to talk about it lieu of the actual content and artistry of the film. Distributor New Line is obviously enthusiastic about the finished product (you don’t trot out footage this far in advance if you’re not), but is pushing cotton, as it were, over the prospect of selling a grand-gesture musical to a summer audience conditioned to look for more spoon-fed explosions and thrills.
Ergo, this sort of attempt at pre-selling word-of-mouth. Travolta’s comment was partially qualified (as in prefaced by, “I think it was”) — cloaked in blithe, movie star-ese — but in my view it’s still a goddamned stupid thing to say. I get that this tack is a consequence of a world where weekend box office grosses get mainstream press coverage, but it’s cynical and it devalues, in ways both specific and less concrete, the creative and aesthetic achievements of films, even if one accepts the false supposition that such rendered statements are always true. Hairspray is currently set
for wide release on July 20. For more information, click here.
Just as Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You, Babe” took on its own special hell in 1993’s Groundhog Day, so too does the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun” in 1408, a thriller of containment, based on a short story by Stephen King, set for release this summer, June 22.
The film stars John Cusack as Mike Enslin, a cynical writer with a shattered past. Enslin has penned a a string of bestselling “spooky travel” tomes, centered around the most infamous haunted houses and graveyards around the country. He takes as his latest challenge the titular suite in New York City’s Dolphin Hotel, as part of a book project entitled Ten
Nights in Haunted Hotel Rooms. Defying the warnings of the Dolphin’s manager (Samuel L. Jackson), Enslin checks in and quickly becomes plagued by visions both general and unnervingly specific.
He’s also intimidated by a clock radio that, even after being ripped from the wall, occasionally blares out “We’ve Only Just Begun,” as it counts down the hour that he ostensibly has left to live. It’s a characteristically sardonic sort of detail from King, not played for laughs like with “I Got You, Babe,” but also not without its tongue-in-cheek amusement. Besides, the Carpenters’ “I Won’t Last a Day Without You” or Hall & Oates’ “Maneater” would’ve been a little too on the nose, I reckon. I’ll have more discrete thoughts on the film itself later next week, but in the meantime, for 1408‘s trailer, click here.
For its crime thriller I Know Who Killed Me, Sony Pictures is the latest company to go quasi-viral and underground in its web marketing approach, eschewing the usual gimmicks and moody evocations of such a genre piece’s Internet shingle in favor of a low-fi site built around only an in-character video blog. This is all the more unusual since the movie stars Lindsay Lohan, who plays a stripper that is abducted and tortured by a serial killer, rescued — and then returns claiming she is someone else. The question, then is: understandable trauma, split personality or something else even more sinister?
Five bits are posted so far, with 15 more teased in picture form — around one new posting each week until its scheduled late July release. The problem here is not the concept, but rather the execution. First off, the mouthy title is actually pinched from a rather famously whispered line of dialogue from Twin Peaks. The greater problem, though, is that the ridiculous, willfully vague, pseudo-intellectual ramblings (“Our nature is to go deeper, to find calmness, quiet, answers.
And questions. It’s why you’re here in my hallowed place, learning”) that are laid over the killer’s hand-held footage (which itself consists of abattoir atmospherics and peeping Tom long-distance shots), as well as their gravelly, Jigsaw-esque tone, make the project seem like a slightly tonier Saw knockoff. I have no doubt that it all (in theory, at least) builds to something, but right now the site conveys neither chilly menace nor greatly guarded mystery. I’ll try to check back on it in the coming weeks…
Fox Searchlight is taking a double-barreled approach to the promotion of Day Watch, Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov’s follow-up to the edge-dancing, apocalyptic fantasy action thriller Night Watch — so much so that they’re holding a series of free screenings in more than a dozen cities across the country.
Rightly billed as a dazzling mix of state-of-the-art visual effects, nail-biting horror and rousing action sequences set in contemporary Moscow, Day Watch (Dnevnoi Dozor) revolves around the conflict and balance maintained
between the forces of light and darkness — the result of a medieval truce
between the opposing sides. To RSVP, click here, then click the “attend a free screening” box on the righthand side. New York’s screening is May 29 at the AMC West 34th Street 14, Los Angeles’ screening is May 31 at the ArcLight and San Diego’s screening is June 5 at the AMC La Jolla, but there are also screenings slated for Austin, Washington D.C., Portland, San Francisco, Chicago, Sacramento, Houston, San Antonio and Tampa, among other cities.
The $80 million worldwide gross of 2006’s down-and-dirty
horror flick Hostel, and in particular its $19.5 million Stateside opening weekend, guaranteed writer-director
Eli Roth (above right) a couple more pictures, and he hasn’t been shy about exercising options
on a full slate of announced projects that, at times, has included up to a
whopping eight movies. Naturally, though, Roth can’t direct 24/7, nor in a
bubble (one thinks… that would present some practical hurdles), so he’s had to
trim his slate a bit.
Roth and a pair of his Hostel:
Part II leading ladies, Bijou Phillips
and Vera Jordanova,
appeared recently at the Los Angeles Fangoria Convention, and amidst information
about that movie’s production — shot primarily in Czechoslovakia, but including
location work in Iceland and the south of France — were plenty of questions about
Roth’s recent and upcoming work. Apart from exercising a pretty spot-on impression
of David Lynch (“OK, here’s the deal: rabbits!”), for whom Roth worked prior to Cabin Fever, Roth shared his thoughts
on making the Thanksgiving trailer,
as well as other tidbits. To wit, a brief sampler:
Roth said that making the Thanksgiving trailer for Grindhouse
was the most fun he’s ever had filming anything, and that he took particular
glee in corrupting an entire town’s schoolchildren for the outdoor processional
gone terribly wrong. “If you ever have a chance to film a parade scene where
you cut off a giant turkey’s head,” said Roth, “do it!” Asked if he would
consider extending Thanksgiving to a feature-length
production, as Robert Rodriguez has talked about doing for his trailer for Machete, Roth said he’d like to make a Thanksgiving feature, but
that the less-than-hoped-for theatrical grosses for Grindhouse have
cooled some at the Weinstein Company and elsewhere on the idea. “I made a pact
that Edgar (Wright) that if I did Thanksgiving, he’d do Don’t!,” says
Roth, in reference to Wright’s trailer contribution, before adding, “But it
would have to be, like, Dogshit ’95… instead of Dogme ’95 — shoot it down-and-dirty,
in like seven to 10 days, for under $1 million. That’s the only way it would
work. We’d have to put those limitations on ourselves.”
As widely detailed, Roth’s next directorial project is an
adaptation of Stephen King’s Cell,
penned by The People Vs. Larry Flynt’s
Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. And Roth doesn’t have any involvement in the Cabin Fever sequel,
directed by Ti West, beyond taking an executive producer credit. But the Thanksgiving experience got some other
creative juices flowing, and according to Roth he’s also going to direct an entire film,
called Trailer Trash, consisting of
20 to 25 phony, stylized previews. No word yet if these would be shot in consecutive
fashion either before or after Cell,
but one can imagine that a few of Roth’s friends will likely get involved as
well.
For those on the left coast, following several sold-out
shows in December, the American Cinematheque
at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles presents a three-day, exclusive encore engagement of
Crispin Glover’s What Is It? later this
summer, June 22-24. Known for a variety of memorably quirky characters in everything from Back to the Future to Wild
at Heart, Glover’s first effort as a feature director tangentially assays the stigma of
disability, and is bound not to disappoint fans of his offbeat sensibilities
and eccentric taste.
What Is It? features
a cast largely comprised of actors with Down Syndrome, and Glover describes the
taboo-smashing work thusly: “Being the adventures of a young man whose
principal interests are snails, salt, a pipe and how to get home, as tormented
by an hubristic, racist inner psyche.” Preceding the film is an hour-long live
dramatic presentation of Glover’s “Big Slide Show,” which features illustration
and commentary from eight of Glover’s books. Glover will appear for an extended
Q&A session following all screenings, and each evening will end with a
signing of his books Rat Catching, Oak Mot, and What It Is, And How It Is Done. Special ticket prices for this
engagement only are $12 for Cinematheque members, $15 for students and seniors, and
$20 general admission. For more details visit Glover’s personal web site by
clicking here, phone (323) 466-FILM, or visit the Cinematheque’s eponymous
Web site by clicking here.
Its debut animated offering, Igor, is more than 17 months from release, but the Weinstein Company has already announced plans for a sequel, and that they have
formed a strategic alliance with Exodus Film Group to jointly develop, produce
and finance a multi-picture slate of CG-animated feature films, DVDs and
television series, with TWC distributing the titles worldwide.
The joint
announcement was made today by Harvey Weinstein, Co-Chairman of The Weinstein
Company and John D. Eraklis, CEO of Exodus Film Group. “With our first collaboration Igor looking so strong we thought the timing was right to further the relationship,
and to begin work on an Igor sequel,” Weinstein stated. “John Eraklis and his team, led by Max
Howard, have the unique ability to create dynamic animated entertainment that
attracts kids, parents and everyone in between.”
Final terms of the first-look, multi-year deal were not released, but to complement the strategic alliance with TWC, Exodus will establish
a New York presence, iin addition to their headquarters in Los
Angeles and European operations in Paris.Other CG-animated projects in the works for the Weinstein Company
include Escape From Planet Earth, Opus, Cricket In Times Square and Hoodwinked
2: Hood vs. Evil — the sequel to the surprise 2005 box office hit Hoodwinked, which pulled in more than $100 million-plus worldwide. Igor is currently slated for release on October 24, 2008.
The films of Guillermo del Toro are so memorable because he
combines storytelling acumen with the eye of a great visual artist. I still
vividly recall seeing Chronos in an
arthouse theater in Washington D.C. in 1993, and not merely because CBS News
reporter Bob Simon was there, looking for all the world like a European spy
making some sort of clandestine drop at the local cinema. Whether making
overtly commercial fare like Blade II
and Hellboy or more personal movies,
such as The Devil’s Backbone, del
Toro intermingles themes in fascinating ways.
Set in 1944, Pan’s
Labyrinth is a sort of gothic fairy tale set against the postwar repression
of Franco’s Spain.
The winner of three Academy Awards, the film takes as its protagonist the
introverted Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a quiet 10-year-old girl who moves to the
northern mountains with her pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) after being
summoned by the latter’s new husband. Ofelia’s cruel stepfather, Captain Vidal
(Sergi López), is a humorless fascist officer under orders to rid the territory
of a small group of rebels that fight on unbroken in the Navarra region.
Ofelia, who is fascinated by fairy tales, discovers an
overgrown tangle of brush behind the nearby mill. In the heart of the labyrinth
she meets Pan (Doug Jones), an ancient satyr who claims to know Ofelia’s true
identity and secret destiny as the reincarnation of Princess Moanna, and tasks her
with completing three clandestine assignments before the arrival of the next
full moon. Instructing Ofelia that no one must know about her mission — not her
ailing mother or her new friend Mercedes (Maribel Verdú) — Pan lays out a very
specific series of rules, and warns her that if she does not follow them there
will be harsh consequences. So time is running out, both for Ofelia and for the
rebels who stand in opposition to Captain Vidal. Each will have to battle
hardship and brutality in order to gain their freedom. But who can be trusted
in such a time of lies and danger?
Pan’s Labyrinth is
dreamy and at times unnerving, faintly recalling Alice in Wonderland and, in its own glancing way, The Lord of the Rings, all while still
retaining an inimitable style all its own — a style that might be called “fantastical
revisitation,” owing as it does to florid inner worlds of a creative adolescent
imagination. If the comparison to the latter film series seems far-fetched, it
has less to do with pure alignment of fantasy vision and more to do with the
fact that, as in that series, the conflicts seem at once intimate and grand.
Still, at its heart Pan’s Labyrinth
is an intimate and surrealistic fable, marked by historic underpinnings. There
is little majestic, surging questing; it’s a more intimate and idiosyncratic tale
of good and evil, bravery and sacrifice, love and loss — and to that end a film
that produces more variable reactions. Arthouse patrons with a healthy sense of
whimsy will most appreciate this film, “mere” foreign film aficionados likely
less so.
Available in both single- and double-disc versions, Pan’s Labyrinth comes stored in a
regular Amray case in turn housed in a sturdy cardboard slipcase. It is
presented with animated menu screens in 1.85:1 widescreen, preserving the
proper aspect ratio of its theatrical exhibition. And it’s a gorgeous transfer,
marked by consistent colors, deep blacks and no problems with edge enhancement
or grain. Audio unfolds in Spanish language Dolby digital 5.1-EX, stereo
surround 2.0, and 6.1 DTS-ES mixes, with separate English and Spanish
subtitles, as well as optional closed captioning. Del Toro provides a video
prologue introduction as well as an engaging feature-length audio commentary
track, and the guy approaches the DVD releases of his movies just as a diehard
fan would, as any owner or renter of Hellboy,
in either of its tricked-out iterations, can attest.
Four hearty featurettes kick off the second disc, beginning with a
15-minute look at the mythology and origin of the movie’s more fantastical characters.
Conceptual sketches and preproduction sculptures feed into a superlative,
30-minute look at the film’s visual effects, which points up the breathtaking value
of simple imagination over wads of cash and CGI. Del Toro’s use of colors and
textures are also examined, as is composer Javier Navarrete’s work on the
film’s music. Another big extra is a 50-minute chat from PBS’ The Charlie Rose Show, presented in
full-screen, featuring an interview with del Toro and friends and fellow filmmakers Alfonso
Cuarón (Children of Men)
and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel).
An interactive production scrapbook gives viewers a look at
the film’s design work, and del Toro also shares his own notes and sketches,
some dating back many years. Four, minute-long “DVD Comics,” meanwhile, offer
up comic book artists’ interpretations of Pan, the Giant Toad, the Pale Man and
the Fairies. A visual effects plate comparison and collection of trailers and
TV spots round out the bonus slate, along with DVD-ROM, dual-language versions
of the screenplay, synchronized storyboards and photo galleries. B (Movie) A+ (Disc)
Bug stars 
Fox Searchlight is taking a double-barreled approach to the promotion of 
