In 2000, Bryan Singer‘s adaptation of the X-Men comic book series gave the modern superhero genre a kick in the pants, seeding action thrills with deeper ethical conflicts, and laying the groundwork for both the commercial success and some of the more artistic-minded noodling of a wide variety of genre followers. A prequel to the original films, and presumably the beginning of a story arc that could stretch out over a trilogy of its own, X-Men: First Class doesn’t quite touch the inspired blend of brain and brawn that the best of its predecessors had to offer, but neither does it embarrass itself. It’s a slick piece of pop entertainment marked by smarter than average characterizations and some solid performances, and it shows that mainstream studio films can indeed, with some effort, accommodate muddied heroic intentions.
In particular, McAvoy and Fassbender each deliver fine, captivating turns. The former ably communicates Charles Xavier’s goodheartedness with a bit less on the written page than one might like, while burgeoning talent Fassbender, showcasing an appealingly dangerous, quicksilver charm as the man who would become Magneto, forever settles the actor-versus-movie-star argument surrounding him: he’s both. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (20th Century Fox, PG-13, 132 minutes)
For all their amazing feats, athletes, even those of ferocious
competitiveness and incredible and finely honed individual skill,
sometimes evince a lack of joy, perhaps because their profession is
dictated to some degree by body shape and size, pedigree, or simply the
fact that it was drummed into their head long ago that their self-worth
was entirely tied to this game or that. For me, that’s why amateur
sports — particularly something like college basketball, where rivalries
often span generations — possess such a special allure. There’s an
innately human joy in bearing witness to someone doing something they
truly and deeply love, no matter the money, and also do it well — especially if they’re a youngster. And that joy is on ample display in Make Believe: The Battle to Become the World’s Best Teen Magician, a
superlative new documentary that absolutely radiates a positive energy.
Of a piece with 2003’s Spellbound and 2007’s The Kong of King: A Fistful of Quarters (no surprise, since it’s executive produced by Seth Gordon, the man behind that hit documentary), Make Believe puts a death grip on one’s attention not because of any grand understanding about the allure of magic that it imparts, but because these are bright if somewhat differently focused kids with a depth of insight and a remarkable amount of self-awareness. Ergo, it’s rewarding to listen to them talk about their interest in magic, and how it makes them feel.
As with any number of other comfortable, more conventional teen narrative features, the dramatic arc here tracks a few months of practice leading up to a contest — in this case the teen-classification finals of the prestigious World Magic Seminar in Las Vegas, sponsored and endorsed by various organizational bodies and world-famous magician Lance Burton. Of the five subjects on which the film focuses (one is actually a pair, from South Africa), there’s not a rotten apple in the bunch, including 14-year-old Colorado native Derek McKee (above).
The winner of the Best Documentary Prize at last year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, Make
Believe could be more comprehensive and detailed with regards to its putative subject of inquiry, certainly. Still, watching the movie, one’s heart sings, caught up as it is in the dreams and aspirations of these talented kids. It’s a reminder, too — removed from the harsh glare of peer judgment — that all the kids with the quirkier interests and hobbies in high school were probably actually the coolest at the time, and stand a far better chance today of making their own unique way in the world as adults. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Level 22/Firefly, unrated, 91 minutes)
Base-line expectations, just as in real life, can sometimes be a
powerful determinant when it comes to movies. Given that the Twilight
craze has made all things vampire hot once more, one could certainly be
forgiven for settling into We Are the Night with a sleepy yawn, thinking it no
more than a hollow, hyped-up European genre exercise owing its entire
existence merely to a recent trend. On the contrary, German filmmaker
Dennis Gansel’s movie is an engaging, well sketched, punky romp that, in
telling the story of a hedonistic all-female vampire clan whose
delicate balance is upset when they add a new member to their cabal,
actually has some interesting things to say about feminine
competitiveness and relationships.
Not to be confused with We Own the Night, the New York-set crime film starring Joaquin Phoenix, Eva Mendes and Mark Wahlberg, Gansel’s film centers around Lena (Karoline Herfurth), a 20-year-old Berliner and petty thief who in a pinch could stand in for either of the protagonists of Run Lola Run or La Femme Nikita. When the audience first meets her, she’s fleeing a cop after pinching a wallet. When the police officer, Tom (Max Riemelt), finally catches her after she tries to change guises, she smashes him in the face and makes a daring leap to safety off of a bridge, flashing a victorious middle finger to add insult to injury.
Later that week, at an underground club, Lena meets the striking if vaguely Aryan Louise (Nina Hoss), who turns out to be a 250-year-old vampire. An unfortunate bathroom encounter leaves Lena bitten but alive, so she becomes one of them, later cautiously seeking out and joining up with Louise and her two other friends — wild child Nora (Anna Fischer, above left), who likes to collect fancy sports cars, and ex-silent film star Charlotte (Jennifer Ulrich, above right), who smokes cigarettes through a long-stemmed holder and seems to harbor a swallowed disdain for everyone around her. Louise lays out the particulars of their situation: the only vampires left, numbering around 40 in Europe and 100 worldwide, are females. The men were “too loud, or too stupid,” more easily hunted by humans and then finished off by the peeved lady vampires.
After a brutal training session acclimates her to her new reality, Lena for a short while basks in the unadulterated glow of consequence-free excess. Her tattoos melt away, and her short, closely cropped hair blossoms beautifully, as if from a shampoo commercial. Lena is also privately heartbroken, though, when her mother doesn’t seem to even notice that she’s been gone for two full days. And while Louise seems to think destiny has brought she and Lena together, Lena isn’t so sure. Things get more complicated when Tom locates Lena, and starts asking questions. After she and the rest of the girls are linked to a recent murder, a police dragnet threatens to rip the group apart — if not literally then certainly in terms of the bonds that keep them together.
A spunky mash-up of vampire flick and police procedural, with just a dash of doomed romance courtesy of the burgeoning relationship between Lena and Tom, We Are the Night feels like it could be a Luc Besson genre movie; it’s smart, well photographed and thoughtful without being too serious. The plotting eventually succumbs somewhat to genre expectations, and a more direct conflict between Louise and Lena, but the acting is strong and consistent enough throughout to more than make up for the familiarity of the movie’s third act pivots. If there’s a big drawback, it’s that the film arrives Stateside in dubbed form. While this in theory may widen its potential audience, in reality it robs We Are the Night of a piece of its original voice — literally and metaphorically. Some things translate quite well universally, and vampires are one of those things. No need to switch the language. Note: in addition to its theatrical release, the film is also available nationwide on VOD. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (IFC, unrated, 100 minutes)
One of the downsides of the digital revolution and shrinking production costs is that the removal of various financial and technical impediments to feature filmmaking makes every emboldened Tom, Jane and Harry think that their ideas truly need to be shared with the world, and that their genius is now only one festival screening away from being discovered, launching them into a stratosphere of artistic embrace and appreciation. This is often manifested in gimmicky dramatic conceits that fail to possess much in the way of intellectual examination. Witness State’s Exhibit A in this line of reasoning: The Abduction of Zack Butterfield. A woefully inept and entirely pointless air-quote psychological thriller which throws together two characters in a potentially hot-button narrative design and then does absolutely nothing of consequence with them, the movie is a wince-inducing, across-the-board collection of substandard elements.
After a bit of scene-setting teenagedom to sketch out 14-year-old Zack’s innate decency as compared to his hornball friends, the film, set in upstate New York, plays its abduction card and pivots, ostensibly, into a kidnapper-hostage drama, wherein the victim begins to (possibly) display signs of affinity for his captor. A former Army solider and Blackwater — excuse me, Dark Creek — independent contractor who served several tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan as some hot-shit commando, April (Brett Helsham, above) nabs Zack because men are pigs and, as she puts it, “I figured those teachers you see on the news are on to something.” Putting a necklace rigged with explosives around his neck and locking Zack up in a room filled with a strangely substantial number of miniature sports balls, April proceeds to try to woo him in a naughty schoolgirl outfit, before finally proceeding to tell him all about her damaged childhood.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Butler (co-writer Stephen Ryder), ever the investigative genius, has a series of increasingly (unintentionally) hilarious conversations with Zack’s parents (Aaron Letrick and Lisa Gunn), and two FBI agents show up on the case and advise them to “move on.” Of course, Zack can only resist the power of his adolescent boner for so long, so he eventually yields to April’s amorous advances, which leads to one of those sex scenes where the camera stays locked on the bed’s edge for 90 seconds, while articles of clothing are tossed into frame. There’s also (seriously) a two-minute guitar sing-along, before things eventually culminate in a close-quarters “fight scene” that’s no more complex than the scuffle you and your seven-year-old brother once had over who ate the last piece of Black Forest cake.
The script here is terrible, in both dialogue and exploration of the basic conceit, and director Rick Lancaster reveals himself to be… well, a less than masterful stager. Oh, then there’s actually the acting, too. While Helsham and Plunkett are both novices with technique, and thus have trouble in some of the scenes requiring more emoting, it’s the wildly amateurish supporting acting in particular that dooms The Abduction of Zack Butterfield to depths of risible mockery from which it cannot escape. If there’s a fate worse than being kidnapped, one feels by the end of this movie’s running time, it’s being kidnapped by these filmmakers, and forced to participate in one of their low-fi cinematic parlor games, which never should have escaped the realm of the theoretical. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Thunder Hill/Metropolis Films, unrated, 91 minutes)
The presence of a very recognizable ensemble cast can’t save The Big Bang, a colossally strange film noir misfire that plays like a TV pilot run amok, and is bound to go down in history — to the extent that it’s remembered at all — only as the stumper answer to the niche cinematic trivia question, “In what film doesAntonio Banderashave a sex scene with a waitress who spews jibberish about particle physics, and also share two separate scenes with a robe-clad Snoop Dogg and a robe-clad James Van Der Beek?”
Let me back up… that introduction makes The Big Bang sound much more interesting and engaging than it actually is. Framed in flashback, as captive Los Angeles private investigator Ned Cruz (Banderas) gets grilled by a trio of possibly dirty cops (Thomas Kretschmann, William Fichtner, Delroy Lindo), the movie centers on the labyrinthine business inquiries Ned conducts on behalf of a just-paroled Russian boxer, Anton Protopov (Robert Maillet, of Sherlock Holmes). Charged with tracking down Anton’s mysterious stripper pen pal Lexie (Sienna Guillory, above), Ned, after much difficulty and various encounters with many colorful characters, tracks Lexie to the New Mexico desert. There, he gets kidnapped by Lexie’s husband, a willowy-maned reclusive and eccentric billionaire, Simon Kestral (Sam Elliott), who has self-funded plans to conduct an underground semiconductor experiment to locate “the god particle.” Oh, and all that’s not even mentioning the aforementioned nutjob waitress (Autumn Reeser); an emotionally stunted, sexually kinky physicist (Jimmi Simpson); and a cache of hidden diamonds.
So, oh sure… it’s another one of those stories. Despite all this apparent narrative adventurousness, the sophomore directorial effort of TV-producer-turned-director Tony Krantz is far more labored than colorfully inventive. Erik Jendresen’s script is awkward and overwritten, a grab-bag of forced quirk for little more than it’s own sake. The dialogue basically falls into two discrete camps: ham-fisted exposition, and flighty, armchair philosphizing.
None of the characters are developed in a fashion that deepens them much beyond how they dutifully serve the story, and major players are still being introduced over an hour into the proceedings. At other times, the screenplay bends and contorts to set up some lame, air-quote witty joke, as it does with a brief and almost entirely unnecessary sequence focusing on a drugged-out playboy actor (Van Der Beek) who has an albino midget sidekick, seemingly only so Ned can quip, “It’s astrophysics — a white dwarf gone supernova” when the latter gets launched through a window after an explosion.
Far and away the most interesting and involving thing about the nonsensical The Big Bang is its cinematography, from Shelly Johnson, who also lensed Jurassic Park III, Hidalgo and the recent remake of The Wolfman. Trading in big, canted angles and other imaginative framing, Johnson sketches a neon-lit urban hellscape that gives the material an electric charge otherwise lacking in its story proper. Even a score by ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, seemingly a big deal and nice fit, fails to connect. The Big Bang tries to inject the soupy moodiness of the noir genre with a surfeit of cool and edgy thrills, but, ironically, it’s actually just a big snooze.
The Big Bang comes to Blu-ray on the heels of a brief theatrical engagement, and it’s presented in 1080p that at least rather strikingly captures the movie’s striking, evocative look. Audio comes by way of a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track, with optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Krantz and co-producer Reece Pearson submit to a feature-length audio track in which much praise is doled out to the actors, while a clutch of extended scenes gives a bit more face time to Van Der Beek. There’s also a 20-minute making-of featurette comprised of pretty standard stuff — clips from the movie mixed with brief chats from cast and crew. To purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) C+ (Disc)
