A small stable of recognizable faces in supporting roles cannot save When in Rome, a vapid romantic comedy fable pitched at some fantasy
demographic of young professional women who value love seemingly only
as a commodity, another box to check off on a very long and modern
to-do list. That the movie’s plot is malarkey through and through is
perhaps expected, but that it is delivered in such thunderously obvious
strokes pushes it from merely bad to nearly intolerable in certain
stretches.
Saddled with clunky expository dialogue, lame humor and baffling character motivations, When in Rome
has two settings: broad, and broader. Easy-on-the-eyes leads Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel mostly escape judgment on the
strength of their smiles. A litany of strange cameos, along with a fervently pitched dance-along by the entire cast over the end credits, all seems
desperately designed to create the impression that someone is having
fun. It’s certainly not the audience, however. For the full review, from Screen International, click here. (Disney, PG-13, 91 minutes)
Possibly no actor working in movies today looks better in rumpled cotton than Clive Owen. George Clooney gives him a run for his money, but from Closer, Derailed and his series of BMW shorts all the way through to Children of Men, The International and Duplicity, the sheer volume of screen material featuring Owen looking fashionably weary and rundown helps make this slice of cut-rate domestic fatigue seem a bore by comparison. Owen’s trademark tousled charm carries stretches of The Boys Are Back, a too-loose widower’s tale, but otherwise overly familiar dramatic plotting elicits lukewarm positive feelings at best.
Owen plays sportswriter Joe Warr, who, in the wake of the tragic death of his wife Katy (Laura Fraser), finds himself suddenly thrust into single parenthood. Baffled and overwhelmed, Joe embraces instinctual exuberance, trying to chase down some sort of a return to normalcy by simply saying yes to everything. This works for a while with six year-old Artie (Nicholas McAnulty). But when Joe invites Harry (George MacKay), his teenage son from a previous marriage, to fly in from England and stay with them, the household’s slovenly masculine vibe and unabashed lack of rules prove problematic for all involved, including a young single mother (Emma Booth, sort of an Aussie Gretchen Mol) whom Joe is circling, seemingly as much for free childcare as romance.
Australian director Scott Hicks, who burst onto the scene with 1996’s Oscar-winning Shine, returns to film his homeland for the first time since that movie, but can’t achieve satisfying emotional liftoff. It’s both a bit of a surprise and somehow not shocking at all to learn that the film is based on a 2001 memoir by Simon Carr, since The Boys Are Back feels rigidly constructed to hit every potential beat of conflict, from general emotional withdrawal and friction with the in-laws to a poor decision to leave the kids home alone. The story meanders to and fro, and could have used much more connective tissue between the two boys, which would have made the come-stay-with-us connection that the movie eventually sells on the back of Joe’s younger son’s burgeoning feelings for Harry that much more believable. The stunning South Australian countryside, as captured by Hicks and cinematographer Greig Fraser, gives The Boys Are Backan achingly convincing sense of place, and the acting is OK, certainly. But the film’s small moments of acutely sketched heartbreak arrive with such infrequency as to leave one mostly daydreaming of a Vegemite sandwich.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Boys Are Back comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 widescreen, preserving the aspect ratio of its original theatrical exhibition. English and Spanish language audio tracks are presented in Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound, and optional English and Spanish subtitles are also included. Supplemental features are fairly spare, with a photographic slideshow of material that includes an optional overlaid commentary track from Hicks, and a brief making-of featurette that includes on-set footage and EPK-style interviews with cast and crew. No word from the costume designer on Owen’s devastatingly handsome dishevelment, though. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C- (Disc)
Michael Jackson’s This Is It, the hagiographic concert documentary hastily cobbled together from behind-the-scenes footage of the late pop star’s planned series of 50 London concerts that of course never came to fruition, arrives on DVD with no actual, concrete mention of his passing on the cover box. This is slightly strange but, in its own way, also makes perfect sense. After all, for his diehard fans, Jackson the entertainer was always someone who existed outside of and apart from the tabloid frenzy that engulfed his personal life. He was simply a showman, and therefore his corporeal death — while grievous in that it robs them of new material — is almost of little note or consequence in relation to the creative celebration that this glimpse behind the curtain provides.
On a personal level, I think it’s never really a good sign if your film’s title is an anagram of Shit, It Is, but This Is It recovers from this unfortunate fact to provide a somewhat humanizing portrait of its legendary star. A box office smash for distributor Sony upon its rushed release late last fall — the movie bowed to $23 million en route to $72 million domestically, and raked in another $187 million worldwide, where Jackson’s, umm, offbeat personal life hadn’t dented his commercial viability in quite the manner it had Stateside — This Is It works, on a very simple level, because you get to see Jackson doing what he truly loves, and almost inarguably was born to do. Stripped free from his garish, almost willfully bizarre public persona, you’re able to just fall in love with the man’s music all over again, or at least appreciate his talents and work ethic.
Directed by Kenny Ortega, who was also spearheading the rehearsals for the aforementioned concerts, This Is It offers hardcore Jackson fans and noobs alike a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the performer as he developed, created and rehearsed for shows that would have taken place in London’s new O2 Arena, beginning in July 2009 and continuing through March 2010. Chronicling the months from April through June of last year, the film is culled together from more than 100 hours of private footage, featuring Jackson rehearsing a number of his songs for the show.
The results are almost always interesting, and in a couple instances fantastic. Celebrating the singer’s love of Old Hollywood, “Smooth Criminal” found Jackson seamlessly sharing the screen with some of the greatest movie stars of all-time in a new black and white vignette that was a nod to its original music video. “Thriller” was getting a thrilling new 3-D treatment, with video featuring a whole new cast of zombies, ghosts and ghouls falling prey to Jackson’s dance moves. There were plenty of live, on-stage theatrics and pyrotechnics planned, as well. “Beat It” was to feature Jackson on a cherry-picker, extended out over the crowd, and end with him setting a jacket on fire, in a seeming homage to Jimi Hendrix. And, based on the pre-visualization animation, the heal-the-planet message of “They Don’t Care About Us” was apparently to end with Jackson facing down a bulldozer on stage.
For all this sizzle, though, one of the more interesting segments in This Is It is just a fairly straightforward run-through and presentation of “Billie Jean,” in which Jackson dusts off some old dance moves, without the benefit of a choreographed dance troupe behind him. This run-through, and “Man In the Mirror,” which closes the 111-minute movie, are among the strongest impressions made. There’s not really a sense of whether the material presented here represents the concert’s actual run order, and a bit more commentary or explication of some of the attendant creative decision-making going on would be of value. That said, the editorial imperative is clearly to get as much footage of Jackson shoehorned into the film proper as possible; a lot of that other stuff about which I was wondering ends up in the supplemental material.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, This Is It comes presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English and French subtitles. Two solid documentaries, “Staging The Return: Beyond The Show” and “Staging The Return: The Adventure Begins,” anchor the bonus material, which shows Jackson developing and overseeing technical elements and music mixes, in addition to actually rehearsing. If his on-stage perfectionist nature — even only half-assing it on vocals, in order to conserve his voice — didn’t clue you in, watching these featurettes will give you a sense of Jackson’s unerring attention to detail with regards to his professional presentation. While on a purely physical level it seems hard to believe his body could have withstood the challenges he was laying out for himself with this series of concerts, This Is It leaves no doubt that he was swinging for the fences.
Another featurette illuminates more specifically some of the concert’s specially designed costumes, while “Memories of
Michael” collects cast and crew tributes, many of the teary-eyed variety. There’s also a segment which spotlights the search for the show’s 11 incredibly talented back-up
dancers (from a pool of more than 5,000 applicants), as well as the film’s theatrical
trailer, which did a crackerjack job of not only selling the movie to
its hardcore fan base, but also making it seem both exciting and like
more than a chintzy cash-grab. Oh, and according to press material, additional features exclusive to the
movie’s Blu-ray release include the complete and uncut versions of “Smooth Criminal” and “Thriller,” along with a special making-of featurette on the accompanying video content for “Smooth Criminal,” and a BD-Live enabled “movieIQ function,” which lets viewers
add their favorite songs from the film to an emailable playlist. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here; to purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) A- (Disc)
Based on the 1956 film noir of the same name directed by Fritz Lang, Peter Hyams’ Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
tells the story of an indefatigable, wildcard journalist’s
out-of-the-box plan to expose a corrupt district attorney, and how his
scheme takes an unexpected turn. The problem is that the movie is defined by stock characters, and totally caught up in pedestrian notions of thrills rather than the sort of intellectual chess moves that would make this sort of story robust and satisfying.
Relatively new to the area, ambitious television news reporter C.J. Nicholas (Jesse Metcalfe, who could surely star in a hypothetical Matt Leinart biopic if you just surrounded him with a couple bikini-clad girls) begins investigating hotshot district attorney Mark Hunter (Michael Douglas), convinced that his string of murder case victories can’t be a coincidence, or the result of, you know, hard work and guilt defendants. Hunter seems professionally pointed toward politics, in the form of an upcoming gubernatorial election, but C.J. thinks he’s tampering with evidence to
secure his convictions. In an effort to bolster his suspicions, C.J. turns to assistant district attorney Ella Crystal (Amber Tamblyn), for whom he also has the hots, and somehow convinces her to slip him a copy of the interrogation tape in the latest Hunter case.
A risky game of cat-and-mouse ensues, as C.J., with the assistance of friend and colleague Cory Finley (Joel David Moore), frames himself as a murder suspect in order to try to catch Hunter and his former police partner in
the act of cooking up evidence. Ella’s own life becomes endangered, however, when she discovers incriminating proof that puts the fate of both
Nicholas’ innocence and Hunter’s reputation in her hands. In the background, cop Ben Nickerson (Orlando Jones) tries to make sense of everything.
This material seems an odd fit for writer-director Hyams (Timecop, The Relic, End of Days), almost from the start. Part of it is budgeting, to be sure, but everything in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt feels at once too slick and on-the-nose, starting with Metcalfe’s performance, which offers no subtlety or sense of lurking restraint. In lieu of honest cat-and-mouse narrative give-and-take, however, Hyams also litters his script with great wastes of time, like a protracted, stakes-free second act car chase that ends with the death of a character we knew to be doomed from roughly half an hour earlier. We also find out pretty early on that Hunter is at least a top-shelf scumbag, even if we’re not yet certain of his guilt, so the one possible “twist” that remains isn’t a particularly surprising one. It furthermore doesn’t help that the movie is a de-fanged PG-13, so all its amped personal confrontations and physical imperilment plays kind of like a polite high school play. In short, this is a yawning small screen programmer, through and through.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt comes to DVD presented in 1.85:1 widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track. A hilarious new trailer for Ashton Kutcher’s Spread, cut to make it look like a more conventional romantic comedy, auto-starts upon disc playback, for what it’s worth; for those who have seen the aforementioned movie, it’s good for a couple giggles. At any rate, anchoring the DVD’s bonus features is an audio commentary track with multi-hyphenate Hyams (who also serves as his own cinematographer) and
actor Metcalfe. While there are a few nice production anecdotes here — including some talk about the trims in lovemaking scenes between Metcalfe and Tamblyn — there are also far too many huge gaps in the chat, making for a sporadic, uninteresting listen. Apart from the theatrical trailer, the only other supplemental material are a pair of three-minute-plus featurettes — one a staid making-of promo puff-piece that slices and dices film clips and EPK-type interviews, the other a scantly informative look at criminal forensics, featuring retied investigator Richard Pfaff. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) C- (Disc)
Working from a screenplay by writer John Collee, director Jon Amiel delivers a waterlogged look at Charles Darwin with Creation, a muttenchop enthusiast’s delight that’s part historical drama, part hysterical drama. While the film doesn’t span decades, but instead concentrates on a moretightly prescribed patch of time in Darwin’s life, it still proves true an old maxim regarding cinematic postscripts: the more you feel it necessary to say in pre-end credit crawl text, the less you’ve probably said during the entire rest of your movie’s running time.
Paul Bettany stars as British scientist and author Charles Darwin, a brilliant and deeply emotional man devoted to his religious wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) and the rest of his family, but also somewhat increasingly removed from them. Part of that distance stems from a burgeoning conflict between his (flickering) faith and the rooted reason of science, which is driving a wedge between he and a longtime family friend, Reverend Innes (Jeremy Northam). Charles and Emma have also lost a child, which has understandably strained their relationship. As his health begins to falter and Thomas Huxley (Infamous‘ Toby Jones), a strident comrade-in-reason, urges him on, Darwin struggles to finish his legendary book On the Origin of Species, which would of course go on to lay the foundation for much of evolutionary biology.
The movie is built around multiple conversations with the deceased Annie (Martha West, above), and then additionally flashes back in time to various stories Darwin relates to her. Collee’s script is based on Annie’s Box, a biography penned by Darwin’s great-great-grandson Randal Keynes using personal letters and diaries of the Darwin family. Perhaps this insider-ish access compromises any sense of independent thinking that would give this project some definition and perspective, it’s hard to definitively say. Regardless, Collee, and by extension Amiel, are so heartily invested in showcasing Darwin’s descent into near-madness, and injecting overwrought emotionalism into their story, that they dip into dream-sequence-within-dream-sequence nonsense, to the detriment of any accrued interest and narrative momentum in Darwin’s scientific research and writing. In so hammering home the guilt Darwin feels over having married and had children with his first cousin, the filmmakers render secondary (perhaps even tertiary, behind interpersonal relationship histrionics) the importance or modern-day relevance of his work.
Consequently, Creation feels slack and inert, its stakes shrunken and collapsed to the point of near-pointlessness. There are certain personal details here (Darwin’s affinity for bracing water therapy, for instance, which provides Amiel with the chance to get a bit arty) that are obviously fascinating to consider as they relate to Darwin’s work. But the film connects the dots in only the most obvious and perfunctory ways. The personal overwhelms any deeper consideration of the professional in Creation; gimmicky, surface-level grieving and hand-wringing gives way to pitched, plaintive and downright grating voiceover narration, and one just knows at some point that Connelly will look beautiful but get all emotional, screaming and crying about how she’s had enough and can’t take it anymore. By the time the movie posits that the impetus for Darwin’s writer’s block being cured is a simple act of coitus, however, well, one could be forgiven for thinking that Creation bears no evidence of evolution in storytelling nuance. (Newmarket, 108 minutes, PG-13)
Ian Somerhalder has eyebrows that will always guarantee his employment in certain types of straight-to-DVD titles. I first noticed this in The Rules of Attraction, in which he seemed to play the surliest, most outrageous Abercrombie & Fitch model of all time. There’s just something about his eyes, the depth of his stubble and, most certainly and strikingly, the definition and angle of those peeper-toppers that make Somerhalder, formerly of Lost, the perfect “get” for the producers of swashbuckling genre movies that can’t quite get Matthew McConaughey to return their phone calls. Like Casper van Dien before him, Somerhalder has a dependable, soap opera-level skill set and matinee idol looks, meaning he can comfortably draw TV and movie-of-the-week paychecks for the next quarter-century easily, recession be damned. Ladies like that look, and he obviously puts in enough time in the gym to keep things working.
Wait… what were we talking about? Oh, right… the inherently employable features of Somerhalder’s visage. Which brings us to Lost City Raiders, a paint-by-numbers genre exercise to be sold off to foreign TV networks looking to pad their weekend schedules. The plot? In the near future, global warming has caused water levels rise to unfathomable heights, destroying port cities and consuming more than half of all land. With matters only getting worse, two treasure-hunting brothers (Somerhalder and Jamie Thomas King) must team up with their daring father John (James Brolin) to retrieve a lost artifact that will restore Earth to what it once was. Also in pursuit of said artifact is callous, brutal real estate tycoon Nicholas Filminov (Ben Cross), who really should change his name if he wants his villainy to be less conspicuous. With Al Gore nowhere in sight but eye candy Giovanna Becker (Bettina Zimmerman) thankfully in tow, brothers Jack and Thomas find themselves in a race against time to save the world from its end days.
In promotional text on the DVD’s cover, Marshall Fine is credited with tagging Lost City Raiders as “Waterworld meets Raiders of the Lost Ark,” which is accurate only in the broadest sense of that mash-up — there is an archeological-based quest, and lots of water. Not surprisingly, the special effects work here isn’t quite up to snuff with the sort of material with which master-of-disaster Roland Emmerich stuffs his frames, and consequently those predisposed to really get into and off on the material will likely find their fanboy enthusiasm dampened from the start. All in all, though, this is just a shrug — no better or worse than it sounds, or one might reasonably expect, given its players, production means and storyline. Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Lost City Raiders comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English and Spanish subtitles. A gallery of preview trailers is the only supplemental feature. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) D (Disc)
The gut-level fit of ensembles mean almost everything for Hollywood studio laffers, and John Cusack, Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry and Clark Duke make for a sweet cocktail of laughter in the trailer, now online, for high-concept comedy Hot Tub Time Machine, releasing in March from MGM. It seems like The Hangover cross-pollinated with Dude, Where’s My Car? and a pinch of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
Holding a copy of Inalienable in my hand, the first thing that crosses my mind is that whole argument over the word (i.e., inalienable versus unalienable) that, according to some long-forgotten secondary source from high school history, nearly caused a dust-up between Thomas Jefferson and another one of the Founding Fathers (John Adams?) during the penning of the Declaration of Independence. That amusing anecdotal remembrance and all its what-if off-shoots, unfortunately, is of more entertainment value than anything in Inalienable — a weird, pedantic, sci-fi courtroom/social drama which could also be called My Octopus Son.
Science-fiction legend Walter Koenig, of the original Star Trek, is the writer-actor most responsible for this mess, though Timequest writer-director Robert Dyke helps him carry out the celluloid crime by helming, and staging scenes with the unimaginative flatness of some moralizing sketch from a small town bank’s Christmas party. The production was obviously mightily strapped for cash (hence the ridiculously spare production design, which results in unadorned hallways and entire offices and “scientific” research areas free of anything except gaudy metal furniture), but that doesn’t excuse the lame dialogue, flatly sketched characters and oscillating tone. Inalienable wants to explore the intersection of science and moral justice (hence the comparisons to slave-era blood laws, and the dubious, unintentionally hilarious invocation of the word octoroon), but Koenig never makes convincing case that he’s the best party for that job.
The story? Oh, right. Sorry. It centers on Dr. Eric Norris (Richard Hatch… no, not that jack-off), a scientist who discovers his body is host to a parasite from another world. With the shocking revelation that this microscopic intruder also carries his DNA, Norris confronts the possibility that he might give “birth” to a new son to replace the one lost in a tragic accident years earlier. Flash forward a bit, and Norris, his lawyer Howard Ellis (Erick Avari), and this new, tentacled fusion of human and alien find themselves at the center of legal battle involving Norris’ dickish boss, Shilling (Koenig).
Owing to Koenig’s avuncular sci-fi status, Inalienable boasts a recognizable cast of mostly genre favorites: Battlestar Galatica‘s Hatch, Avari and Star Trek: The Next Generation alumnus Marina Sirtis, in addition to Alan Ruck, Richard Herd and Gary Graham. But the screenplay is an emotionally half-baked collection of capital-I ideas and scenarios, all just shoved up against one another. There’s the awkward romance between Norris and much younger coworker Amanda (Courtney Peldon), in an effort to give the movie some domestic mooring. There’s the desperate infusion of a reckless, fear-mongering press, to try to give the story some social depth. And then there’s the genre “sizzle” — the special effects that, in the words of Butt-head (or was it Beavis?), just aren’t that special. These include practical creature effects for Norris’ son that make him look like a cardboard Hellboy. None of this works, sorry. Multiple “FAILS,” across the board.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a complementary, foil “O-card” slipcover, Inalienable comes presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio, with a Dolby digital 2.0 audio track. Its static main menu screen features a weird (and factually inaccurate, given the rest of the narrative) Photoshopping of Peldon holding said octopus baby, and the feature is divided into a dozen separate chapters. A version of the film’s trailer is the sole bonus item; no one wants to step forward and take credit for the birthing of this Inalienable baby, it seems. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D- (Movie) D (Disc)
I’m sort of torn when it comes to musician-turned-director Rob Zombie; in a landscape littered with genre fakers, filmmakers who seemingly embrace affect for no other reason than to simply further their careers, he’s a not-untalented guy who comes across as the genuine article, and someone who obviously has a well-honed knowledge and appreciation of the exploitation and horror genres in which he likes to trade, as the unrelentingly brutal The Devil’s Rejects amply demonstrates. Visually and tonally, he’s made savvy use of his devil’s minion image, finding a way to marry that tattooed, “hellbilly,” devil-may-care outsider sensibility to the film projects — derided limited release castoffs at first, but increasingly commercial fare — he’s managed to mount.
The plot doesn’t take us too far afield; it’s that time of year again, and adolescent killer turned hulking slasher Michael Myers (Tyler Mane), powered on by visions of his mom Deborah (Sheri Moon Zombie), has returned home to sleepy Haddonfield, Illinois, to take care of some unfinished family business. Picking up at the end of Zombie’s first film, with a dead Myers in hand, Halloween II concocts a resurrection/car crash escape, and then flashes forward a bit, following the aftermath of Myers’ latest murderous rampage through the eyes of heroine Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor Compton), who herself is suffering from trauma, nightmares and possibly delusions. While Sheriff Lee Brackett (Brad Dourif) tries to protect both his daughter, Annie (Danielle Harris), and Laurie, who is living with them, things go terribly wrong, naturally. Myers’ antagonist/surrogate father figure, Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), is also back (and nuttier than ever), having penned a new cash-in book on his famous patient.
Zombie is hellbent on trying to make the body counts in his movies mean something, but all the merry depravity and over-the-top gore in this film (unsurprisingly, it was not screened for critics) doesn’t particularly aid one in a more sophisticated reading of its narrative. What Zombie is good for is a certain collagist sensibility that is refreshingly out of lockstep with modern horror conventions; he’s also not afraid to let our putative heroes, or more redemptive characters, show a nasty side, or dark streak. That makes his narrative miscalculations in both armchair psychology and churned-up viscera (the more violent the killing of an innocent or passerby, the more deeply an audience will feel it, he seems to posit) all the more disappointing. His touch with actors also seems uneven; Compton is allowed to rant and rave to the point of drama class embarrassment, and various over-articulated, spat-out iterations of the word “fuck” are liberally sprinkled throughout the dialogue, which has the weird effect of giving greater dramatic heft to small arguments over larger scenes of physical imperilment. Taken together, Zombie’s Halloween films achieve a certain air-quote modernity, in that they are gritty, vulgar, and showcase an analytical preoccupation with cause not present in slasher films of years gone by. They do not, however, haunt or unnerve like John Carpenter’s original films.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Halloween II comes to DVD presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track that captures the sounds of plunging knives and bloodcurdling screams with sickening volume and clarity. The ample slate of supplemental material makes for slow navigation on most DVD players, with several seconds elapsing between many menu screen selections. A hearty collection of deleted and extended scenes, 25 minutes worth, seems to run counter to the assertions of slashed scheduling and fine-tooth comb budget consciousness that Zombie mentions in his audio commentary track (more on that in a moment), but you have that material if you want it; a lot of it is of the slightly tweaked variety, with a couple clipped, inessential (often vulgar) dialogue exchanges within a given scene. There is also audition footage, make-up test footage, a couple music videos and a bit of stand-up routine footage (seriously — it’s part of an outdoor festival that figures into the movie’s final act), in addition to the requisite collection of preview trailers. Oh, and there’s also a scored, four-and-a-half-minute blooper reel, which includes footage of McDowell eating it outdoors, tripping on a branch, as well as Dourif giving the slow burn to a day-player who fails to hear her cue for entrance.
As mentioned, there’s also an engaging (and, naturally, spoiler-heavy) feature-length audio commentary track with Zombie, who talks about the movie’s Georgia shoot, and explains how the loss of several scheduled filming days informed some of his choices, most notably in two third act chase/kill sequences, in which he uses a cross dissolve and slow motion to skip ahead from Myers’ final two kills. He also shares a couple amusing anecdotes, including one about how balsa wood was apparently trimmed from the budget, leaving a very pissed-off Mane to get in touch with his inner method actor, and break through a real door. Most explicitly, though, I’m sorry to say, for my friend Luke, Zombie dismisses the notion that his movie is a paranoid fantasy of any sort. Yes, he says, the film is about Laurie’s increasingly tenuous grasp on reality (hence the kiddie version of Michael that she hallucinates at film’s end), but in Zombie’s mind, it was always his intention to show that Laurie dies, and that that is the closure of the homicidal Myers narrative. The final shots in the movie do not represent an institutionalized flash-forward, but a dying Laurie’s attempt to sort through her family scrapbook, and make peace with it. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) B- (Disc)
He incorrectly swore I gave a negative review to 2001’s Conspiracy (on which he was an executive producer) when I met him, but I can’t be mad at 84-year-old, Oscar-winning screenwriter Frank Pierson, who will appear in person for a Q&A conversation at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica following a special screening of Dog Day Afternoon on the evening of Thursday, January 28. The Aero Theatre is located at 1328 Montana Avenue in Santa Monica. Tickets for this, as well as other special events, are available through Fandango, but for 24-hour recorded information on directions and the Aero’s upcoming schedule, phone (323) 466-FILM.
It is now not a matter of if but rather only when Avatarwill unseat Titanic as the highest-grossing film of all time, according to The Wrap, besting the latter’s $1.84 billion global haul. Does this mean Hollywood will take note of the fact that it is an original story, without the putative source material/fanbase safety net of a comic book or videogame title? No, not at all. Hollywood will spark only to its 3-D exhibition, because that is something they can implement in piecemeal fashion, in lieu of actually taking more creative chances.
Ben Foster and Dennis Quaid headline Pandorum, an effectively moody but also fairly frustrating sci-fi mash-up of Supernova, Event Horizon and Cube, among other films. A more action-oriented cousin of spare, fellow paranoid space opera Moon, Pandorum could slot decently as part of a double-dip couch festival with that movie, depending on one’s level of interest in either slipping into something spooky and meditative after a well intentioned but essentially romper-style genre flick that feels shruggingly compelled to include snarling beasties, or vice versa.
The latest collaborative effort by Robert Kulzer, Jeremy Bolt and Paul
W. S. Anderson, the producers behind the hugely successful Resident Evil movie franchise, Pandorum — like Unknown, Cube and the basic plot hook for the original Saw — revolves around people who wake up in strange places, and in various stages of pain, abuse and amnesia. In the year 2174, two astronauts, Bower (Foster) and Payton (Quaid), awaken in a hyper-sleep chamber aboard a massive, seemingly
abandoned spacecraft known as the Elysium. They’re massively disoriented, and the only sound
is a low rumble and creak from the belly of the ship. Trying to piece together bits of their own respective identities along with mission specifics, Bower ventures deep into the ship, with Payton staying behind to guide him via radio transmitter.
Before too long, however, Bower comes across some nasty, pale, toothy creatures who, unsurprisingly, do not have much of a penchant for cultural dialogue, or even exchanging pleasantries. These mysterious creatures — where did they come from, Bower wonders — are lightning-quick, and they like to kill, even if they don’t seem entirely carnivorous. In scrambling for his life, Bower comes across Nadia (Antje Traue) and Manh (Cung Le), and the three of them form an uneasy alliance, continuing their trek deeper into the Elysium.
Directed with a nice attention to background detail by German-born Christian Alvart, who traded in similarly grim subject matter in his underappreciated 2005 film Antibodies, Pandorum is an interesting study in contrasts. Much of the tech-jargon dialogue (“The reactor timing is offset in the core!”) and all the get-to-the-center-of-the-ship plot mechanics are yawningly familiar, to the point of almost paralyzing disinterest. And yet the movie is constructed with such style, and makes use of a couple nice slick directorial tricks, that it keeps you leaning forward a bit, always wanting to like it a bit more than you in the moment are, but never entirely giving up on it. The engaging authenticity of the film’s settings and production design — which nip piecemeal inspiration from some of the aforementioned genre efforts, but also movies like Dark City — go a long way toward holding an audience’s interest.
It’s just a shame, really, that Pandorum seems almost bound by convention to include such a clamorous external threat. This is by far the least successful and intriguing portion of the movie, in large part because Alvart and company have neither the budget to replicate the creature effects of an Aliens film, nor the imagination of someone like Guillermo del Toro, who can stage memorably unsettling and fantastical scenes for a fraction of the normal Hollywood cost. Part of the film’s initial appeal relies in its use of unreliable narrators, and in this way, it feels a bit like a jumbled-up, madcap, recast take on The Shining, which put eroding sanity and the effects of extreme isolation under the microscope. Pandorum starts to be this type of film, and fitfully returns to this theme, but it’s an ill-designed and ultimately unsuccessful match, on a cathartic narrative level, with a lot of what else is included in the story.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Pandorum comes to DVD presented in a 2:35:1 widescreen aspect ratio, with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. DVD special features are ample, anchored by a feature-length audio commentary track with director Alvart and producer Jeremy Bolt, in which the pair discuss Alvart’s late-in-the-game, pre-production idea of depicting the effects of years of hyper-sleep via sloughing skin, as well as the special challenges involved for Foster in crafting a performance out of reacting to Quaid’s disembodied voice, since more than half of his material was prerecorded, before the younger actor’s scenes.
The DVD also includes 16 deleted and alternate scenes, which run a total of 28 minutes, though there’s additionally a separate four-and-a-half-minute featurette, “What Happened to Nadia’s Team?,” that in actuality is an excised, direct-address in-character bit. Running 14 minutes, a behind-the-scenes featurette includes some solid interviews with both on-camera talent and director Alvart, who talks about blending together Travis Milloy’s original screenplay with an entirely separate yet thematically similar script that he was working on when producers first approached him about the project. After a brief, pointless “flight team training video,” a robust slate of picture galleries, including everything from pre-production storyboards, model work and conceptual monster sketches to on-set photographs, rounds out the material, along with the theatrical trailer and sneak peeks at five other forthcoming Anchor Bay DVD releases. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)
Old-ish news by just a couple days, but the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, in a poll of its members, has tabbed David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. as the Film of the Decade. Carving out a Top 10 list in any given year is tough, but picking from a decade’s worth of cinematic masterpieces is an especially brutalexercise. It’s always interesting to see how past favorites rise andfall in favor, and the personal unit of measurement in undertaking suchan endeavor is invariably subjective: Are they the films whose craftyou most admire, or those you most revisit? Are they films withpowerfully moving closed-circuit narratives, or need they leave youwith much to ponder?
I think the breadth of LAFCA‘s polling reflects the catholic tastes andintellectual engagement of our membership, but in so many ways Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. is an especially appropriate choice as Film ofthe Decade, and not only because it captures in elliptical fashion the polarizing extremes of life in Los Angeles. A beautiful, woozy mystery for the id, portions of itsmeaning are readily apparent, while others dance along its edges,deliciously up for substantive argument and debate — which is part ofwhat we as film critics love, after all. For some interesting reading/skimming, the full list of all 190 films receiving votes on 41 member ballots, as well as individual critic lists, is available by clicking here. Happy perusing!
Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize winner Fish Tank, from British writer-director Andrea Arnold, is a gritty, naturalistic drama that will slowly envelop patient arthouse audiences on the strength of its powerhouse performances. A slice of social realism in the vein of Ken Loach, this slow-boil, Essex-set tale of teen alienation and acting out is an example of character study done right.
Fifteen-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis, above) is in a constant state of war with her younger sister, her schoolmates and neighbors, without any constructive creative outlet for her considerable energies, save a secret love of hip-hop dancing. When her party-happy mother Joanne (Kierston Wareing), an across-the-pond version of Amy Ryan’s character from Gone Baby Gone, brings home a rakish new boyfriend, Connor (Inglourious Basterds‘ Michael Fassbender), the rudderless Mia is quietly amazed to find him return her attention. In fits and starts, she argumentatively pushes him away and seeks his approval, believing he can help her start to make sense of her life. Slippery slope inappropriateness ensues.
In Fish Tank, there’s none of the vanity so typically associated with American films centered on teen protagonists, and the performances are something special. Acting neophyte Jarvis shines, conveying a believable spitfire mixture of teen vulnerability and anger, while the charismatic Fassbender, a star in the making, puts a good sheen on a character whose actions label him a cad. At two hours, Fish Tank is a bit overlong, but part of its engagement lies in the inexorably mounting tension in wondering whether the narrative is really going where you think it might be headed. It goes without saying that Hollywood studios wouldn’t touch this material without benefit of a moralizing conclusion, but the American indie version of this story would also most likely find it necessary to ascribe explicatory backstory, motivation or revelation to Connor, which Arnold rather refreshingly does not. Men, like adolescents, Arnold seems to say, tend to take. The value judgment one places on that is not her primary concern. For more information, click here. (IFC, R, 122 minutes)
I weigh in as part of Vulture’s 43-critic sampling of the worst of film in 2009, with a from-the-hip ballot of five movies that supremely irked and rankled me. There are more, sure, but those are the ones that most came to mind when polled, perhaps because I skipped The Ugly Truth and Old Dogs. And hey, I even make the pull quote chart at Number Two, for their slideshow of the top 10 worst vote-getters.
Over at The Wrap, Steve Pond has up a nice interview with Louie Psihoyos, director of The Cove, which gets into details regarding the movie’s screening at the Tokyo Film Festival, and delves into the continuing fight regarding tainted marine mammal meat, and mercury poisoning levels.
I skipped Jennifer’s Body during its theatrical run, even with all the photos of Megan Fox in pasties and what not making their way around the internet. Perhaps appropriate, then, that as Jennifer’s Body arrives on DVD, I’m sent a review check disc that haphazardly skips around entire chapters, rendering any viewing of it some sort of crazy Memento-type experience. I tried viewing its two different iterations (theatrical cut versus unrated) on three different players, but the problems persisted throughout, so I finally just gave up and skipped to the end, probably catching in total 85 percent of the movie, with a few bits here and there out of order, or at least spoiled by said skip-glitches.
The film’s plot centers around “plain Jane” high schooler Needy (Amanda Seyfried) and her va-voomish best friend Jennifer (Fox), a fembot-type cheerleader in the small town of Devil’s Kettle. Ditching Needy’s boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons, of Hotel for Dogs) for the evening, the pair head out to see a visiting band fronted by Nikolai (Adam Brody, sporting guy-liner and having a blast); tragedy ensues, in the form of a fire that kills many of their classmates. Needy and Jennifer are separated, and when the latter turns up, she’s possessed by a sinister demon that requires frequent blood to keep her looking fresh and beautiful. Jennifer
Playing around a bit with both horror movie conventions and the hormonal spikes and surges of its adolescent male audience, Jennifer’s Body is scripted by Oscar-winning Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody, which of course means all sorts of outrageous details (9/11 “tribute shooters” at a bar) and over-articulated sassy dialogue, wherein jealous is slangified to “Jello.” Sometimes this works, but it also leads to false/hollow exclamations (“Oh cheese fries!”) that undercut the drama within scenes, however exaggerated their construction. In general, there’s some fun here, but under the direction of Karyn Kusama (Aeon Flux) it doesn’t seem to cohere in a meaningful way, either as an all-out Heathers-style satire or a more bloody genre-fueled take on the memes of Mean Girls, in which feminine competitiveness renders tumult upon relationships.
There are bonus features galore on double-disc and Blu-ray versions of the film — supposedly including deleted scenes, a gag reel, video diaries and a Megan Fox public service announcement, among other tidbits — but the review disc I received included only the aforementioned widescreen theatrical and extended cut versions of the film. The latter has a feature-length audio commentary track with Kusama, while the former has a separate audio commentary track with both Kusama and Cody. Naturally, more fun is had with some interplay, even if Kusama’s assertion that the script is about “facile ambition, and how that’s totally evil” comes off as a bit dubious. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie, Somewhat Speculatively) C+ (Disc)
Does anyone doubt that if Barack Obama had not been elected president in 2008, The Book of Eli would have a slightly fairly different advertising campaign, one that did not involve character-specific posters and billboards that make the entreaty to “believe in hope”?
Martial arts maestro Jackie Chan makes a play for adolescent embrace in The Spy Next Door, a mirthless, unimaginative piece of desultory entertainment that is neither well executed enough to elicit any substantive emotional response other than begrudging tolerance, nor hyper-realistic enough to work as a slice of silly, colorful fun, a la Robert Rodriguez’s recent Shorts. The Spy Next Door will benefit from a general lack of family film competition in the latter frames of January, but its poor word-of-mouth among Chan’s Stateside fans, familiar with the slightly more adult tones of his Rush Hour and Shanghai series, will quickly consign its best commercial prospects to home video.
The movie suffers from anemic follow-through on its most basic comedic set-ups, as well as an overall lack of imagination. While one blanches at passing too harsh a judgment on a film’s adolescent performances, the unfocused and uneven nature of the child acting further evidences Brian Levant’s poor direction. Chan, meanwhile, mugs mercilessly. The jokes all misfire, but there’s still something mildly amusing about Chan’s indefatigable effort and consistently sunny personality, which helps make the English-mangling outtakes which play over the end credits the film’s undisputed high point. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here. (Lionsgate, PG, 94 minutes)
With another $13.3 million on Friday and an estimated $40 million-plus over the weekend, Avatar, going into its fourth week of release, will pass Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen as the top domestic release. It’s now getting into heavily retrenched and/or typically disinterested audiences; I’ve been asked about it by bus drivers, deliverymen and, yes, a homeless guy.
It’s to be expected, really. As Amy Adams climbs the Hollywood ladder, and slots alongside dramas and prestige projects the sort of inevitable romantic comedy slop that studios believe women want to see, she’s going to be required to tread water in a few stinkers. Not every film that’s a studio “giveback” can be as enchanting and engaging as Enchanted, which actually had a premise, characters and smartly presented, believable conflict, within the confines of its world of heightened absurdity.
Yes, some movies are going to be like Leap Year, an undercooked confection which can most charitably be described as a moment-in-time measuring stick for how many box office dollars Adams can wring out of her burgeoning fanbase without alienating them into tuning out and ignoring her future choices. By attaching the “Sadie Hawkins” conceit to a mock Irish tradition — in which women are “allowed” to propose to dawdling boyfriends once every four years, on the Leap Day of February 29 — the movie at least becomes a bit of a travelogue, in the visual sense. There’s precious little else to recommend it, however.
Adams stars as Anna, a successful Bostonite property “stager” who is happy but feels a bit restless in her four-year relationship with surgeon boyfriend Jeremy (Adam Scott). They’re moving in together into an exclusive apartment community, but their anniversary passes without a marriage proposal, much to her consternation. When Jeremy’s work pulls him away to Ireland for a conference, Anna decides to traipse after him to get down on one knee herself, and pop the question. Waylaid by inconsiderate weather, however, Anna finds her airplane diverted from Dublin to a smaller burgh, where she must enlist the assistance of surly but handsome innkeeper/bartender Declan (Matthew Goode) to help get her to the big city. Naturally, romantic complications and second-guessing ensue.
Directed by Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie, Shopgirl), Leap Year is a film with warm, soft, rounded edges on all sides, designed to rake in modest eight-figure returns from undemanding audiences who just want to see a couple good-looking kids get together. The script, credited to Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont, endeavors to whip up some romantic chemistry by having Declan peg Anna as snooty and she regard him as provincial, but Bringing Up Baby or even Moonlighting this most assuredly isn’t. The quips, while delivered with zest, simply aren’t up to snuff. So what we have are two people bickering at one another through rain and mud while, given largely the absence of other people their own age, they fall for another. Modest points are credited for an attempt at a modulated ending that doesn’t favor grand-sweep romanticism over any degree of sensibleness… but only modest points.
Mostly, though, this is all just a big shrug. Goode gets to add another accent to his grabbag. And Adams again displays an uncanny skill with small gestures; she knows how to convey inner uncertainty and subtle shifts in mood that many screenwriters needlessly labor over and overwrite. Unfortunately, the considerable charms of her company can’t sustain Leap Year, which, despite its name, putters along like any other normal, workaday cinematic offering, not a quadrennial breath of fresh air. (Universal, PG, 100 minutes)
In everything from Arrested Development to big screen hits Superbad and Juno, Michael Cera has traded mainly in self-negating humor and muttered, sardonic asides. He shakes loose of that character template (well, partially, at least) in Youth in Revolt, a picaresque booster shot of wily irreverence that puts a fresh, outrageous spin on adolescent obsession and rebellion.
Based on the acclaimed novel by C.D. Payne, and brought to the screen with flair by Miguel Arteta — who injects stop motion animation into the opening credits and works in a splashy palette of primary colors — the film stars Cera as Nick Twisp, an affable, artistically inclined, shoe-gazing teenager who doesn’t feel at home with either of his divorced parents (Jean Smart and Steve Buscemi). On vacation with his mom and her loser boyfriend, Nick falls hopelessly in love with the beautiful, free-spirited Sheeni (charming newcomer Portia Doubleday, above right). After he’s forced to return home, Nick abandons his buttoned-up niceties and, at Sheeni’s urging, initiates a campaign of revolt to try to get shipped off to stay with his father, closer to his new crush.
Certain elements of the story here don’t totally connect (the perfectly polite Sheeni’s encouragement of Nick’s pursuit despite the fact that she has a boyfriend, for instance), and the concluding narration reaches for a grand stab at self-actualization that isn’t there. Still, all the performances are terrifically funny, and the dialogue is smart and crackling without tipping over into the hyper-articulate style of Juno that that so rankled some.
The film most catches fire when it grants Cera permission to cut loose with “supplementary persona” Francois Dillinger, a mustachioed Casanova that the young actor plays with narrow eyes and a big cat’s stalking state of mind, as a sort of cross between Jean-Paul Belmondo and Fight Club‘s Tyler Durden. Understand that when Nick says to Sheeni, “I’ve never had something in my life I wanted to fight for so much” he’s really, subconsciously, talking about his quest to lose his virginity, and Youth in Revolt is every bit the same sort of raised-stakes love lust story that has teenage girls squirming in their seats during Twilight. (Dimension, R, 90 minutes)
While hackish, far lesser talents regularly scoop up studio jobs, and American audiences seem perfectly willing to spend money going to movies in which guys habitually debase themselves to the soundtrack of old Motown hits and Seth Green gets cradled in the arms of a gorilla, Mike Judge is perhaps destined to live out the prime years of his creative life — on the feature film front, at least — as a criminally underappreciated comedic talent. The writer-director of Office Space, which achieved cult-like status after its 1999 release, returned to theaters last fall with his first wide-release film in a full decade, only to see it unfairly sputter, pulling in only $10.8 million.
Extract centers around Joel Reynolds (Jason Bateman), a put-upon small businessman who seems to be sitting pretty, but is in reality a bit listless. Married and successful, with a comfortable home and an almost-finalized acquisition of the culinary extracts business he’s built from the ground up with his loyal lieutenant Brian (J.K. Simmons), Joel seems to have it all. His wife Suzie (Kristen Wiig), though, is about as interested in him as she is in her career (in supermarket coupon design); his bickering employees want a piece of the pie; and Cindy (Mila Kunis, who displays a prodigious amount of carefully shirt-taped cleavage in the movie), a flirty new temp with a seemingly unnatural interest in extract, is really a wily con artist. On the advice of drug-addled bartender pal Dean (a bewigged Ben Affleck, above right), Joel cooks up a scheme to cheat with impunity by hiring a dumb-as-a-box-of-hair gigolo, Brad (Dustin Milligan), to seduce Suzie. Unfortunately, Joel discovers the young object of his affection, Cindy, is behind a personal injury lawsuit by long-time employee Step (Clifton Collins, Jr.) that, if it goes through, will scotch the buyout deal and leave Joel penniless.
Extract doesn’t quite touch the zeitgeist brilliance of Office Space or Idiocracy, the latter of which was dumped by 20th Century Fox under suspicious circumstances, one presumes in large part because of its fiercely satirical skewering of corporate excess. But Judge makes comedies of a rare breed — those that don’t wink at audiences, and entirely telegraph their intentions and moves from about a hundred yards out. His films are rooted in character, but also mindful of just how frequently baser instincts, petty judgments and irrational grievances typically rule our behavior, no matter the income bracket. They’re lowbrow-highbrow flicks, of a sort, and Extract is no exception.
In fact, while the movie is pretty straightforward in its plotting, it wrings laughs and all sorts of squirmy delights from the edges inward — the frustration of an overly talkative neighbor, or in dealing with someone who is unable to follow the clearest, most plainly dictated train of logical explanation. For a film that turns on a character losing a testicle, and another arranging to pay a guy to have sex with his wife — both seemingly free passes for wild excess — Extract is oddly restrained, almost chaste. (And I mean that in a good way, really.) Its laughs are typically inwardly reflected, and played for slow-burn. It’s not a reinvention of the wheel, but Bateman, meanwhile, is an ever-pleasant guide to the sort of suburban malaise under the microscope here. In him we’re able to see and appreciate the silver lining that sometimes is hard to focus on in our own troubles.
Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Extract comes to DVD presented in 1.85:1 widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles. Its sole bonus feature is a 11-minute making-of featurette which interweaves footage from the set and film itself with interview chats with Bateman, Kunis, Judge and producer John Altschuler, and Judge mocks his acting cameo in the movie and shares that his inspiration for Kunis’ character was “a sociopath whom everyone happens to like.” Then Kunis goes and lets slip that she thinks her character was based on someone a friend of Judge’s (or he?) used to date, which interestingly shades things, and makes one wish that Judge ‘fessed up to his source inspiration a little more. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) C- (Disc)
