Not too long ago, Newsweek
did a story, part feature piece, part analytical, business-minded op-ed, in
which they identified Will Smith as the most powerful actor in Hollywood,
calling him “the $4 billion man,” in reference to the combined (rounded
slightly down) worldwide gross of his films. In an industry where an actor’s staying power is determined largely
by opening weekend numbers, Smith represents the surest bet out there — a bankable
star with pan-gender and pan-ethnic appeal, and testable experience in almost every
major genre: action-comedy, science-fiction thriller, romantic-comedy and drama.

His latest film, I Am Legend, represents Smith taking his big-time summer credibility (Independence Day, both Men in Black flicks, I, Robot) out for a test-drive spin
during the December-to-remember holiday season, which heretofore has been used
to showcase only his more overtly dramatic fare, inclusive of The Pursuit of Happyness, 2001’s Ali and 1993’s Six Degrees of Separation, an early crossover effort from director
Fred Schepisi and playwright John Guare.

Still, it’s not quite as strange a seasonal placement as it
seems at first blush. I Am Legend has
a science-fiction-inspired premise, and some very active and tense moments that
I suppose you could characterize as action scenes. But it’s also a very
expensive character study. To that end, despite its rich screen heritage (the
movie is the third adaptation of Richard Matheson’s original post-apocalyptic
story, which also birthed Vincent Price’s more forthrightly titled The Last Man on Earth and Charlton
Heston’s The Omega Man) and the fact
that over the past decade many different possible director-star iterations were
kicked about for an update, I Am Legend
is distinctively suited to Smith’s extremely likeable star wattage, very much not unlike
Tom Hanks’ turn in Cast Away (incidentally
a fellow holiday season release, in 2000). The uniqueness and extent to which
the film is a head trip solo show has marketers at Warner Bros. reaching deep
into their playbook, pulling out little-used gambits that sound and feel like
part of the star system of Hollywood of yesteryear. (Says one set of TV
trailers: “There are not enough words to describe the power of… I Am Legend”.)

Set in 2012, the film stars Smith as Robert Neville, a brilliant
soldier-scientist who, despite being present at “Ground Zero,” could not
contain a terribly lethal, human-engineered virus, the result of research work
to cure cancer. Somehow immune, Neville is now the last (wholly) human survivor
in what is left of New York City,
and maybe the entire world. For three years, Neville has faithfully sent out
daily radio messages, desperate to find any other survivors who might be out
there. He’s also continued research on mutant victims of the plague, vampiric
creatures who lurk in the shadows, watching Neville’s every move and waiting
for him to make a mistake. As mankind’s last hope, Neville is driven by only
one remaining mission: to find a way to reverse the effects of the virus using
his own immune blood. He knows, however, that he’s both outnumbered and running
out of time.

Directed by Francis Lawrence (Constantine), I Am Legend makes ace usage of its
locale, an evacuated Manhattan.
Think of the eerie Tom Cruise/deserted Times Square sequence in Vanilla Sky and Cillian Murphy wandering
about a desolate London in 28 Days Later,
add them together and you have just about half of the total unforgettable
effectiveness of I Am Legend’s
expansive outdoor passages, which are both wondrous and downright eerie.

The jointly remarkable and unremarkable thing about the
movie, then (unremarkable in that it’s the best, most natural way to tell the
story, yet remarkable in that they actually got away with it in this day and
age) is the fashion in which this visual desolation and dereliction dovetails
and works so well with Smith’s superb work as the understandably stressed-out
Neville, who has only his dog for companionship. There are scenes in which we see that, in order to
psychologically cope with the complete destruction of humanity, Neville has set
up clothed mannequins (with whom he chats), and includes pedestrian rituals
such as going to the video store in his daily routine. For most of the movie it’s
not quite an Apocalypse Now-type
descent into madness — Neville sleeps in a bathtub with a shotgun, but also
recites Shrek from memory — yet a
little past halfway in, there’s a galvanizing scene which becomes even more chillingly
effective when you realize that your first instincts, of a trap being sprung on
Neville, are incorrect.

Without giving away twists of the final act, including two
bits which require a significant acquiescence to convenience, I Am Legend fits comfortably among a
spate of recent films — inclusive of dramas, thrillers, action pictures and
anxiety-infused comedies — which all can be boiled down, without much
difficulty, to an underlying theme: we
are lost. That’s the predominant American screen narrative of our
times, and it’s at the core of this engrossing apocalyptic drama about one man
trying to stave off human extinction and “light up the darkness,” as Bob Marley
sings on the CD to which he faithfully listens. Of course, for an audience, being lost with Will Smith helps
make that quest more than a little easier and palatable. He may soon yet be
“the $5 billion man.” For the full original review, from FilmStew, click here.

For nearly 50 years, in various incarnations on the small
screen and in other forms of media, lively chipmunks Alvin, Simon and Theodore have
been delighting young audiences around the world, wreaking havoc upon the house
and possessions of their caretaker, Dave Seville, and crooning in distinctively
high-pitched, three-part harmonies. From the moment they sprung into being, the
creative brainchild of singer/songwriter Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., the chipmunks’
catchy sound has been a strange yet consistent pop cultural mainstay. Now, a
colorful but uninspired CGI/live-action hybrid film of the same name seeks to capitalize
on that dormant franchise power.

After the tree that is their home gets cut down for a
Christmas decoration, three chipmunks — rascally, impetuous Alvin, bespectacled voice-of-conscience
Simon and tubby, friendly Theodore — take up residence with frustrated, aspirant
songwriter Dave Seville (Jason Lee). Dave’s life is a wreck; his girlfriend
Claire (Cameron Richardson) recently left him, and he’s struggling to come up
with a hit for his demanding agent, Ian (David Cross).

At first thrown for a loop when he finds the trio in his
house, Dave catches the chipmunks and tosses them out. He changes his tune,
however, when he discovers that Alvin and the gang can carry a tune of their
own, so he strikes a professional deal with them: he’ll write the music, and they’ll
sing for their supper. Soon, tangentially inspired by their unintentionally
destructive antics, Dave has that elusive hit song — a Christmas-themed ditty
that launches Alvin and the
Chipmunks into the pop stratosphere. As Ian peddles the perks of stardom to his
new clients, Dave labors to convince them that he has their best interests at
heart, and awakens to the notion of a new surrogate family.

Director Tim Hill (Muppets
from Space, Garfield: A Tail of Two
Kitties) delivers streamlined, inoffensive and unmemorable work — a movie
full of pat set-ups and close-ups. The script, cobbled together from drafts by The Simpsons veteran scribe Jon Vitti
and Will McRobb & Chris Viscardi, is a desultory affair that seems to conform
to the notion that children’s films don’t require quite as much creative heavy
lifting. Littered with wan jokes that seem like placeholders for future
revisions, the story seems chiefly constructed from a checklist of narrative
elements associated with the characters (toaster waffles, paper airplanes, a
remote control car), all designed to elicit Dave’s signature exhortation of
exasperation (“Alvvvvin!”).

There’s no explication of why the chipmunks sing, and while
Dave originally expresses understandable bewilderment that Alvin and the gang
can even talk, this isn’t addressed in the context of the group’s meteoric rise
up the pop music charts. The film instead relies on the convenience of zippy
montages here, which makes the notion that the audience then instantly turns on
the chipmunks when they’re revealed to have been lip-synching at a concert all
the more ridiculous. Musical bits, obviously a big part of the characters’ entire
appeal, give the movie a bit of fleeting pop here and there, but there also
seems a lot of wasted comedic opportunity in terms of the chipmunks’ nesting
and acclimation to their new human surroundings.

The film’s glossy CGI production value is decent and
certainly of a piece with the intended demographic — Alvin, Simon and Theodore
look suitably cuddly and appealing — yet also irrevocably hamstrung by problems
of consistency with regards to size and perspective. Sometimes the chipmunks
are the size of a coffee cup, sometimes as big as Dave’s head. Disney’s recent
hit Enchanted, which also featured a
talking chipmunk integrated with human characters, handles these issues with
much more grace and panache. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here.

Part gentle coming-of-age story, part whimsical animal
flick, The Water Horse: The Legend of the
Deep tells the story of a young Scottish boy who serves as both friend and
parent to a mysterious newborn creature that he eventually has to return to the
nearby Loch Ness. Mixing live action and CGI, and anchored by solid
performances, the film seems poised for deservedly decent holiday returns from core family
audiences.

Utilizing a modern-day flashback device to frame a story and
pitch us back to World War II, The Water
Horse unfolds in 1940s Scotland,
where young Angus MacMorrow (Alex Etel, above right) lives on a lake-set rural estate with
his older sister and mother Anne (Emily Watson), waiting on his father’s return
from the war. Not long after Angus finds a mysterious egg on the beach, troops
are billeted at his home, and Captain Thomas Hamilton (David Morrissey), a
blueblood soldier placed purposefully far from the frontlines, sets out to
impress discipline upon him.

Angus’ hatched discovery, though, proves to be a most
unusual creature — a pudgy, slug-like beast with expressive eyes, fins, a quick
chomp and a love of water. Angus deems him Crusoe and takes care of him, feeding
him potatoes and other odds and ends. But the loveable sea monster quickly
outgrows both trashcans and bathtubs, so Angus enlists the aid of handyman
Lewis Mowbray (Ben Chaplin, above left) to keep it a secret from both his mother and
Captain Hamilton. It soon becomes apparent that Crusoe is too big to live
anywhere but nearby Loch Ness, so Mowbray and Angus secret him away and set him
free. But with the army testing their equipment in preparation for a possible defense
against an attack by Nazi submarines, Crusoe’s future is anything but secure.

Despite being based on a book by Dick King-Smith, the same
author behind the source material for the hit movie Babe, The Water Horse curiously
isn’t exploiting that connection in its marketing. That fact, combined with a
lack of familiarity and/or cultural identification with the source material and
legend of Loch Ness, will likely help ding the movie’s chances for breakout Stateside
success. Still, director Jay Russell, who last helmed Ladder
49, showed his touch with fairytale whimsy in 2002’s Tuck Everlasting, and also has trustworthy experience in another
period piece tale of a boy and his pet via My
Dog Skip, both of which come in handy here. Also, owing to its roots as a 1990
children’s novel, The Water Horse has
a solidly sketched backdrop of setting, and Russell and his team convincingly
create the chaotic adult world around Angus, which makes his identification
with Crusoe more believable and affecting.

It certainly helps that Etel, so arresting in Danny Boyle’s Millions, is the perfect sort of child
actor to hang a film’s appeal on; gifted with expressive eyes and an inviting
countenance, he exudes naturalness and an easygoing sincerity. One feels the
swallowed pain of his separation from his father, and wants very much to
indulge this adventure with him.

If there are knocks on The
Water Horse, foremost among them would be that Crusoe’s growth comes in
discrete, awfully big spurts; one good meal seems to cause him to swell and
double in size. Practically, for a budget, it may not be feasible to show the
creature at 10 to 15 different sizes, but these huge jumps in bulk and
dimension are distracting, even though they’re often featured for comedic
effect. Certain segments, too, including a dog chasing Crusoe around, feature a
needlessly goosed-up, cartoonish sound mix, which is out of step with the rest
of the movie’s adherence to practicality.

Tech credits are nicely polished all around. Bringing Crusoe
to life, the visual effects teams of Weta Workshop and Weta Digital, who
previously oversaw the effects work for The
Lord of the Rings, King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia, craft a
seal-like creature that actually undergoes some noted facial maturation — no
small feat in CGI. Deep exteriors and beautiful vistas of a mostly on-location New
Zealand shoot (Scotland
provides key exteriors for the MacMorrow’s estate grounds) are nicely
contrasted with cluttered interiors by cinematographer Oliver Stapleton. Composer James Newton
Howard’s swirling score, meanwhile, gives the movie a nicely proportioned sense of
emotional uplift, hampered only by some desultory work in the aforementioned
dog chase sequences. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here.

Spanning two-plus decades and a couple continents, director
Marc Forster’s adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner tells a culturally specific émigré’s tale
that still manages to locate the universality of the long shadow of adolescent
trauma.

Unfolding in flashback fashion, the story covers three discrete
time periods. In 1978 Afghanistan,
12-year-old Amir’s friendship with Hassan, the son of his father’s most
faithful servant, dissolves in the wake of an act of ethnically-motivated
violence and the shameful silence that follows. A decade later, after relocating
to California following the
Soviet invasion, the now adult Amir (Khalid Abdalla, above left), an aspiring writer, meets
and marries Soraya (Atossa Leoni), the daughter of another Afghan expatriate, in
an old-fashioned courtship. Another decade on, Amir’s successful life is thrown
into disarray when he discovers that the now-deceased Hassan had a young son
(Ali Dinesh, above right) who is now an orphan. The still-guilt-ridden Amir travels to Kabul
in order to rescue the boy and bring him to America.

David Benioff’s script strips the movie of a first-person
narrator but otherwise artfully condenses a difficult tale, and Forster’s
direction is for the most part wonderfully understated; particularly affecting
are the film’s adolescent performances. The homestretch run of Amir’s visit to
war-torn Kabul offers up melodrama and some dubious twists, and the setting and
subdued nature of the material additionally make this film a tough sell beyond
the upscale lit-market crowd that made a bestseller out of Hosseini’s tome. Still,
if one submits to the quiet rhythms of this slightly overlong tale, there is certainly
some measure of reward to be found, particularly in a time when smart
cross-cultural audits are important as well as enriching. For the slightly redacted capsule review, from CityBeat, click here. (Paramount Classics/DreamWorks, 123 minutes, R)

Personality goes a long way in film. In fact, there have
over the decades been many movie stars who’ve leaned on their own inherent
individual personas far more than any tradecraft secrets for success. Guile and
changeability count for something, but so too does simply being comfortable in
one’s skin and having some small measure of charm or grace to share.

John Cusack is a wonderful case in point. Known for his intelligence,
sense of humor, slightly mannered delivery and yet still offbeat nature, he’s
crafted a damn fine career mainly in the shadows, playing wary unconventional
types with dry wit and, occasionally, drier ambition. Along the way, he’s
scrupulously avoided the tabloids. Hair slicked back, he’s also nursed a monochromatic
fashion sense (“the artist wears black”) born of his upbringing in the bosom of
the Chicago theater scene — where
he grew up, along with his siblings, on the fringe of the industry under the
tutelage of his actor-filmmaker father. Since then he’s parceled out just
enough dollops of conventionalized charisma to keep a loyal fan base
(particularly the women) hooked. While he hasn’t merely played the same
character over and over (movies like Max, Being
John Malkovich and Cradle
Will Rock are proof of that), Cusack has traded heartily on iterations
on a theme, leaning on an off-screen personality equal parts enigmatic and
genial.

In two movies this fall, though, Cusack has taken
significant strides away from the quietly easygoing, “Johnny Trenchcoat”
persona that has earned him his bread and butter — first in November’s Martian Child, still
in release in some areas, and now in writer-director
James C. Strouse’s Grace Is Gone,
which played in competition at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year,
and picked up the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. In the latter, Cusack is nearly
unrecognizable. Combing his hair forward in a conservative ’do, and sporting
owlish Aviator-style glasses that would have last passed for fashionable in
perhaps the first Bush administration (and only then in traditionalist circles),
Cusack plays Stanley Phillips, a father who must figure out a way to deliver
the news to his two daughters that their mother, a soldier serving in Iraq, has
been killed in action.

Although a loving father, Stanley
is unable to conform to the more affectionate role of maternal caregiver, and is
equally out of sorts away from home and his girls — conveyed in an early scene (above) where he sits
uncomfortably in a deep-set, plush chair at a support group meeting for
military spouses, avoiding sharing his feelings. The sudden news of his wife’s
death merely casts everything in starker detail. Desperate to delay telling the
children, he takes 12-year-old Heidi (Shélan O’Keefe) and 8-year-old Dawn
(Gracie Bednarczyk) on a spontaneous road trip to Enchanted Gardens, a Disney-esque theme park
in Florida. Along the way they stop off to visit the girls’ grandmother,
who isn’t home; instead, the trio crosses paths with Stanley’s
shiftless brother John (Alessandro Nivola, delivering some fine work), who has
significant disagreements with his brother about politics and life in general.
With their father abandoning his taskmaster ways, Heidi intuits something is
wrong, and eventually begins to figure out more of the specifics, but not
before one last day of sunshine for Stanley and the girls.

In the end, Grace Is Gone is a solid but
still somewhat flawed film, most notable for how it serves its star, and vice
versa. Part of the unwritten contract of a movie that centers around a
character who’s internalized all their emotions is that said character then
must be confronted with other characters aggravating and contradicting that
desire for quietude, and for just a bit too much of its brief running time Grace is Gone doesn’t present us
with front-burner interpersonal conflict. The movie’s ending, meanwhile, tells us how to feel rather
than showing us a moment it’s earned on its own.

What we have, then, is a curious case of a sort of “grief
peep show,” an episodic drama with a lot hidden in its middle. Still, with his too-short pants and understandably frazzled
countenance, Cusack delivers in this film something different than we’ve seen
from him before, or at least in a long, long time. Both the fact that Grace Is Gone picked up the
Audience Award at Sundance and was amongst the most hotly bid upon films
seeking out distribution at the festival are indicative of just how
much effectively poignant weight this sort of change-up from Cusack carries.
Pinning its inaugural Oscar season hopes on the movie, the Weinstein Company
hopes mainstream audiences feel the same. For the full review, from FilmStew, click here.