Act of Valor

Film Reviews

The long history of cooperation by the United States military with Hollywood productions lionizing their professionalism and technological/weaponry superiority reaches new heights in Act of Valor, a movie being marketed chiefly via its hook of using real, active-duty American special forces personnel. The relative strengths and weaknesses one might attach to such a tack are in abundant supply throughout. If the word propaganda strikes some as too punitive or uncomfortable a description, then the dramatically inert but generally well captured film, in its unerring, square-jawed patriotism and tidy action-oriented conflict resolution, is certainly the most expensive and exclusively sourced military recruitment video to date. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Relativity Media, PG-13, 101 minutes)

Why Aren’t Movie Aggregators Getting Better, and Smarter?

Irritations, Musings

Over at The Wrap, Joshua Weinstein has up a piece on movie aggregators, and whether they “matter,” looking at Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and Movie Review Intelligence. It’s a nice but not particularly deep or instructive thumbnail-type read, mainly because it doesn’t get into the substantive failings — or shortcomings, at least — of each aforementioned site.

Aggregators are enormously important, of course, because they can both help connect readers to new writers and allow them to more easily follow their favorites. The oldest, biggest and unarguably most populist is Rotten Tomatoes, of course, in which all critics (500-plus, they say) are created equal. Metacritic (which is owned by CBS Interactive) assigns scores to its 44 polled critics, as well as to their reviews; the greater a critic’s stature, the more influential that critic’s opinion is on the overall Metacritic score. Movie Review Intelligence, meanwhile, rates and weighs its supposed 51 polled publications (though there seem to be a lot more on its site) by readership.

While providing some modicum of sifted elitism that places it above the riff-raff of bloggerdom (one assumes no honest Tea Partier could check either of these sites), neither of the latter two sites seems to have hit upon quite the right formula. While the more manageable numbers allow for greater shades of grey in their filmic rankings (as opposed to Rotten Tomatoes’ yea-nay system), they hardly seem inclusive or representative enough, geographically or culturally, for a true, digital-age canvassing.

And what of their measurements — for MRI, how frequently are readerships audited, and by what means? Is a print subscription base the same as readership, and/or how is that stacked up and weighed against more discretely measured web traffic? (Their critics roster, meanwhile, is littered with infrequent contributors to name-brand publications.) Even more elusive is Metacritic’s somewhat dodgy notion of “stature.” Is it a zero-sum game? As one critic’s stature or star rises, does another’s have to necessarily wane? Who watches the watchmen, in other words — sitting astride the cultural world as arbiters of approved opinion?

The best formula, as yet untapped, seems somewhere in the middle. Like it or not, as full-time single outlet perches further dwindle, film critics and those otherwise professionally assaying culture will become de facto free agents, employed full-time by a small(er) number of outlets but also free (and wise) to write on their own, and/or pitch out special pieces. Rotten Tomatoes might do well to bring in a nominal multiplier to its formula, to apply to heavy-volume reviewers who see and write about more films annually. But its system (even with more rigorous application standards than it first had in its heyday) is still the most egalitarian and useful, and ergo not by accident the most popular with consumers. It astounds me that, given all the hyper-generational advances in SEO and other arenas on the web, movie aggregator sites have not done a better job in tweaking their formulas and managing their own growth. Hopefully they turn an eye toward that in the short-term future, because social media massage is not a skill set with which all writers are naturally equipped. For The Wrap’s full read, click here.

Blank City

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

The angry, dirty and unforgiving streets of New York City have over the course of several generations taken on an almost mythical role in American independent cinema, fueling some artists, creatively bankrupting many more, and driving others into the arms of more lucrative, mainstream projects. An exhaustively comprehensive oral history of outsider cinema from the late 1970s and into the mid ’80s, Celine Danhier’s Blank City unfolds in all the hazy, erudite specificity of some breezy, memories-laden conversation between your parents and a bunch of their friends at some holiday party from your youth. Meaning, you ask? Meaning it’s kind of interesting in retrospect, or on a theoretical level, but also somewhat impenetrable, given everyone’s penchant for inside jokes and thorough (and thoroughly unedited) recollection.

Against the backdrop of scuzzy, economically bombed-out Lower East Side landscapes, powered by cheap dope and speed, and inspired by the cinematic rules-breaking of the French New Wave, a certain DIY ethos took root in the latter days of the Ford Administration. A renegade collection of aspirant filmmakers, musicians, amateur actors and other artistically-minded misfits would, over the next dozen years or so, crank out all sorts of stark and provocative outsider films, in what would come to be known as the No Wave. Some filmmakers and performers (including Jim Jarmusch and Steve Buscemi, the latter pictured above) would go on to greater fame with more accessible work, while others (Deborah Harry) would almost reluctantly find success in other arenas. Most, however, found their potential careers (to the extend they regarded them as such, and anything more than a way to fill their time) eventually derailed by jealousies and recklessness. The quirky work they left behind, though — long on alienation, often short on production value, rich in deadpan humor, and blurring the lines between fiction and nonfiction — holds some interesting lessons for would-be independent filmmakers of future generations.

Neophyte French director Danhier has an obvious passion for the material, but lacks the ability the form a cogent narrative spine from all of her interviews. As such, the movie unfolds in largely lurching fashion. Some of the anecdotes are amusing, and fascinating for the simplistic yet radical notions they hold at their core. Director James Naren talks about craftily arranging to see a property he had no intention of renting (or of course even the means to afford), then surreptitiously leaving the windows unlocked, coming back later that evening, climbing up the fire escape with his friends and cohorts, sneaking in, and shooting part of his avant-garde Rome 78. Later, Naren also talks about a lack of overt manipulation being of paramount importance to he and most of the rest of his filmmaking peers, and if bad acting or filmmaking was resultant from that, so be it, that was fine.

The widescale (at least within this group) embrace of this sort of seat-of-your-pants filmmaking makes for some interesting sidebar speculation amongst cineastes, especially if there had been more formalistically and narratively adventurous parties pushing back against some of their peers. But Danhier has trouble taking this microclimate (one interview participant describes the area between 14th Street and Houston, and Avenue B and Bowery as his entire world) and making it matter to the layperson, or connecting it in meaningful and convincing fashion to the cinema of today. Bolstered by film clips from literally dozens of No Wave offerings, Blank City proves itself several times over a vital document of this outsider movement, even if mainstream interest in such a trip down memory road is likely to remain at a significant remove.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Blank City comes to DVD presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track. Director Danhier submits to a 10-minute interview chat, in which she credits a compilation album from Brian Eno as first tipping her off to the existence of the No Wave scene. She also offers her own perspective, somewhat academic and removed, as to some of the figurehead personalities of the movement. The perspective and presence of an additional film historian would have been a nice touch here, but Danhier is obviously well versed enough of the subject to give it a fairly good framing. The big bonus feature, though, is a nice 40-minute collection of deleted and extended interviews, which allows even further indulgence for those really into this era and sub-genre. Outtakes and the movie’s theatrical trailer, meanwhile, round out the supplemental slate. For more information, visit Kino’s web site; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) B (Disc)

Thin Ice

Film Reviews




A kind of mash-up, slightly more poker-faced version of some of the same snowy ethical dilemmas faced in A Simple Plan, Fargo and The Ice Harvest, crime dramedy Thin Ice delivers a winning, if rather drolly underplayed, black comedy that tosses its protagonist into a pit of moral quicksand, and then chronicles his flailing attempts to extricate himself. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Art Takes Over, R, 94 minutes)

Rampart

Film Reviews



By all accounts, Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster and director Oren Moverman developed an unusually strong bond during their work together on 2009’s The Messenger, a gritty, character-rooted drama about the difficulties and emotional turbulence faced by a pair of soldiers — one a veteran, one new to the assignment — who work as part of the Army’s notification team for the next of kin of deceased soldiers. The film netted Harrelson a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination (and a Best Original Screenplay nod to boot), and so the trio reteamed for Rampart, co-written and directed by Moverman, starring Harrelson, and co-produced by Foster, who also pops up in a small supporting role.

A “bad cop” drama somewhat in the vein of Street Kings and Narc, and a sort of West Coast companion to (either version of) Bad Lieutenant, Rampart, set in 1999, centers on an arrogant, chauvinistic and otherwise prejudiced police officer who finds the sins of his hotheadedness and long accepted procedural shortcuts finally closing in and crumbling down around him. If a bit short on psychological perspicacity, Moverman’s movie at least provides a solid vehicle of display for Harrelson’s squirrelly, off-kilter intensity. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Millennium, R, 107 minutes)

Nothing Like Chocolate

Film Reviews


With the lead-up to Valentine’s Day comes the requisite flood of commercials for teddy bears and flowers, yes, but especially Whitman’s Samplers and other boxed chocolates. In fact, probably more chocolate is gifted on February 14 than on any other single day of the year. But how many happy recipients will necessarily spend much time thinking about where their chocolate came from, and whether it was produced in a fashion that ethically compensates the farmers who harvest the cacao beans used in that manufacturing? The humane and engaging new documentary Nothing Like Chocolate, fresh off a much buzzed-about Santa Barbara Film Festival presentation, shines a light on the gulf between first-world manufacturers and consumers of chocolate and the for the most part third-world growers and producers of said delights.



Director Kum-Kum Bhavnani gives voice to boutique chocolatiers who either cannot or won’t wade into this ethical pool (Gary Guittard provides an eloquent defense), and also illuminates the complicated process by which chocolates and other items achieve “fair trade” status. Still other interviewees, including former Grenada Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, speak intelligently about both central subject Mott Green (locals call him “Smilo,” the name under which Green’s company markets its chocolate powder) and the larger considerations driving him, making for an engaging movie that provokes both the brain and the taste buds. For more information about the film, click here; for more information about the Grenada Chocolate Company and Cooperative, meanwhile, click here. And for the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Nothing Like Chocolate LLC, unrated, 63 minutes)

This Means War

Film Reviews

A mirthless, preening action comedy populated with gorgeous caricatures, This Means War isn’t so much an imitation of life as it is a setpiece-focused aping of other movies that have more sincerely attempted to commingle spy or assassin hijinks, gunplay and romance, like Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Knight & Day, Bad Boys and The Whole Nine Yards. Directed by McG, it’s indefatigably paced but consistently insulting to viewers’ intelligence.

This Means War bears much in common with the slick, colorful fantasy worlds of McG’s Charlie’s Angels movies, as well as work he has overseen on the small screen, like Fastlane, The O.C. and Chuck. The look is polished, and favors kinetic movement and unremarked upon opulence over sense. The action “sizzle” arrives via occasional cheery blasts of brainless, bloodless, consequence-free shootouts, designed so as not to challenge or offend. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (20th Century Fox, PG-13, 97 minutes)

Jean Dujardin, Nicolas Cage Provide SNL Uplift

Amusements, Ephemera


The “Les Jeunes de Paris” segment on Saturday Night Live last night, offering a tip of the cap to The Artist by way of Jean Dujardin’s guest spot with host Zooey Deschanel, was a fantastic little slice of referential show business self-love. Great Nicolas Cage cameo, too, in the show’s “Get In the Cage” segment with Andy Samberg. It’s that self-awareness and embrace of the outlandish that prevents so much of the stink of some of his film choices from sticking to him.

Director Liza Johnson Talks War Drama Return

Interviews

A lot of military stories ladle on audio-visual artifice, in an attempt to create impactful audience identification with the disorienting nature of war or its psychological after-effects. Return, however, is a subjective document that plays out against the banality of everyday existence, wherein crisis unfolds in slow motion, and sometimes almost imperceptible strokes. The film stars Linda Cardellini as Kelli, a Rust Belt supply line soldier who comes back from a tour of duty and experiences a vague, free-floating sense of dislocation from her plumber husband Mike (Michael Shannon) and two young girls, and in the din of domestic homecoming dramas, it’s a striking, humane, low-fi offering. Speaking recently by phone with director Liza Johnson from her home in Brooklyn, I had a chance to discuss the 25-day shoot of her narrative debut effort, as well as her path to filmmaking, her planned next project, and the secrets of playing drunk on screen. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the full read. For a review of the movie, click here.

Wim Wenders Talks Pina, the Future of 3-D

Interviews

While many directors are all too content to mine a seam, German-born filmmaker Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire, The Buena Vista Social Club, Paris, Texas, the ambitious Until the End of the World) has enjoyed a delightfully diverse career, jumping back and forth between narrative and nonfiction works. His latest film, the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar-nominated documentary Pina, taps into his decades-long friendship with the late, lauded choreographer Pina Bausch, imaginatively exploring her work in 3-D by utilizing the dancers of her Tanztheater Wuppertal ensemble. In a wide-ranging half-hour chat — with Dave Matthews Band, the Yeah Yeahs and other light rock tunes unfolding at a remove in the background of the lush outdoor trappings of a Hollywood hotel — I had a chance recently to talk to Wenders about his friendship with Bausch, the challenges of capturing dance on film, what he learned from a terrible working experience with Francis Ford Coppola, how he’s ready to start thinking in 3-D, and what comment from Mel Gibson he wishes had gotten stuck in the actor’s throat. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the full read.

Chronicle

Film Reviews

A low-fi genre hybrid that attempts to cash in on both the burgeoning trend of “found footage” thrillers and superhero origin stories, Chronicle only scratches the surface of its junior-level Magneto narrative. Leaning on an increasingly ineffective patchwork blend of diegetic sources, the movie opts for showy theatrics and set pieces over more honest character investment, and ultimately fritters away a quite promising concept. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (20th Century Fox, PG-13, 84 minutes)

Life, Interrupted

Ephemera

Hampered by a few jury duty curveballs courtesy of the criminal justice system, which are presently gracing me with some 17-hour days. Case in point: set to conduct an interview this morning via cell phone, with recorder jacked into earpiece, while I’m driving to Van Nuys, as that was the only mutually convenient time I was free. We’ll see how that works out. Exhausting, yet it’s also interesting to be thrown together with a random cross-section of folks — a reminder of what’s out there, as Jack London might not say.

After Fall, Winter

Film Reviews

Writer-director-actor Eric Schaeffer has made a career out of more or less channeling his offscreen insecurities, foibles and sexual appetites into what could loosely be categorized as slices of desperate-plea entertainment. His filmography behind the camera — which includes If Lucy Fell, Wirey Spindell and 1997’s critically lambasted Fall, to which his latest film is a quasi-sequel — is littered with movies in which he plays articulate, misunderstood, down-on-their-luck guys (often cabbies or writers, sometimes both) who bag chicks consistently out of their league and then get wound up about the impending implosion of said relationships.

Bittersweet, Paris-set romance After Fall, Winter (or just Winter, as it was at one point known) finds Schaeffer again trying to navigate a miasma of commingled narcissism and human frailties, with a pinch of the unlikely and wounded romance on display in Never Again, which was both his most streamlined and mature, well-observed work. Characteristically dawdling and certainly a bit implausible, the film invites a certain low-fi connection for a stretch before fumbling it away with phony details and ham-fisted sexual theatrics. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. For video on demand from its distributor, click here. (FilmBuff, R, 131 minutes)

One For the Money

Film Reviews

A deeply vapid movie which puts no sincere care or thought into how its slapdash story choices interact with the real world, One For the Money fancies itself a spunky action comedy with a spitfire heroine and a will-they-or-won’t-they romance at its core. Instead, it’s inane (and unfunny to boot) wish fulfillment of the most dreadful variety — an utterly phony tale of empowerment whose leading lady is repeatedly rescued and enabled by men. Starring Katherine Heigl, this mishmash defies logic as an adaptation of author Janet Evanovich’s first in a series of bestselling novels, so across the board tone-deaf is it. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Lionsgate, PG-13, 91 minutes)

The Theatre Bizarre

Film Reviews

Six discrete stories of varying levels of effectiveness come together in The Theatre Bizarre, a macabre horror anthology that eschews the laborious weirdness of something like Christopher Landon’s Burning Palms, and instead focuses more forthrightly on crafting and sustaining a mood of uneasiness. The main commingled narrative ingredients are genre staples — sex, compulsion, paranoia and obsession — which work well for a movie that doesn’t shy away from gore, but is generally interested in more psychologically rooted fear. If, in the end, The Theatre Bizarre suffers from the same main problem that plagues so many anthology efforts — a couple weak entries weighing it down — it still compares relatively favorably to the qualitative mean established by Anchor Bay’s “Masters of Horror” series from a few years back. For the full review, from ShockYa, click here; for The Theatre Bizarre‘s trailer and more screening information, meanwhile, click here. (W2 Media, unrated, 111 minutes)

Special Treatment

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

French actress Isabelle Huppert, nominated for a record 13 Cesar Awards, has made a career out of playing nervy characters with all manner of sexual foibles or secrets. In Special Treatment, she’s a high-class prostitute with dormant issues fueling a desire for a career change. The eighth feature offering from cult filmmaker Jeanne Labrune, this generally well sketched and set-up drama cashes in too soon on its early intrigue, though, abandoning darker overtones for rather wan interpersonal revelations. Those seeking kinky erotic drama of the sort found in early David Cronenberg will be sorely disappointed.

The story centers on Alice Bergerac (Huppert, above right), a well-to-do fortysomething who serves up high-end sexual fantasies for her clientele, from schoolgirl submissiveness to S&M dominance. Neurotic psychologist Xavier Demestre (Bouli Lanners), meanwhile, is stuck in a marriage in which he and wife Helene (Valerie Dreville) can no longer conceal their distaste for one another, lobbing open attacks in front of mixed company at a party. When a friend recommends Alice to Xavier, he gives her a call, just on the heels of Alice suffering a nasty incident with another client. They meet, and she explains that she only offers bundled packages of a minimum of 10 sessions, and so they embark on a professional relationship in which Alice gamely tries to coax out of Xavier his preferences, and get to the root of his unhappiness. In doing so, each party learns a little something.

Special Treatment is at its best when it’s mapping out and concentrating on the parallels between psychoanalysis and prostitution — the discreet locations, the exchange of money, the promise of anonymity, the establishment of rules, and specific time limits. Never mind that its inciting incident for Alice’s occupational second-guessing feels relatively tame, and for a moment seems a part of her extended role play. Once it settles into a more standardized groove of interpersonal blossoming, maturation and desired occupational flight — no matter how elliptically sketched, in achingly European fashion — the movie is considerably less interesting, because its big-picture plot movements and character decisions all feel staked out and predetermined. Alice will feel increasing frustration with Xavier’s inability to articulate his sexual wants, and Xavier will recognize her latent unhappiness and eventually start taking steps to try to help Alice ease out of prostitution.

Director Jeanne Labrune, working from a script co-written with Richard Debuisne, also does a fairly risible job of explaining the holes or conflict in Xavier and Helene’s marriage. If it were merely or only a matter of sexual incompatibility or stasis, the film could still exist fine as is, but the sheer glee with which Helene attacks Xavier in certain scenes raises all sorts of questions that go largely unanswered. As it moves toward its painfully French finale (it gives away nothing to say that the movie ends with a character staring off into the distance in reflection), awkward symbolism — in the form of an antique angel sculpture — is also visited upon the story, a sighing reality which seems remote in the quite solid opening act.

Through it all, Huppert has a sly technique, and an endlessly fascinating face. Ergo, Special Treatment never slips in holding one’s attention when she is on the screen. Unfortunately, the film’s intrigue unravels with each passing minute. There’s great promise in this premise — of a dissection of the value of arguably substitutive experiences, and how long they can or even should last — but this Treatment falls short, and delivers no special and lastingly memorable catharsis or insights.

Labrune’s film comes to DVD housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 2.0 stereo audio track. The transfer is a polished and clear one, if somewhat muted in color, absent any hiccups with edge enhancement. A shame, though, that there are no EPK interviews with Huppert or Labrune, or any other on-set or behind-the-scenes material. For more information, click here. C- (Movie) D+ (Disc)

Asghar Farhadi Talks A Separation, Life in Iran

Interviews

Relations between the countries of Iran and the United States may be ill at ease, but Iranian cinematic import A Separation — just off its Golden Globe Best Foreign Language Film win and a Best Screenplay feting by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the first such honor from the organization for a foreign film — is deservedly capturing the hearts and minds of plenty of American cineastes. The movie is a multi-layered familial drama about a married couple (Peyman Moadi and Leila Hatami) attempting to resolve elder care issues, their teenage daughter’s needs and the potentiality of a divorce when a misunderstanding turned legal problem with their new maid renders these problems secondary. Sophisticated and yet immediately knowable, the rapturously engaging A Separation belies cliched notions of how a foreign film must connect with American audiences in staid, formal tones. I recently had a chance to sit down one-on-one with writer-director Asghar Farhadi, to discuss (with the assistance of a translator) his award-winning movie, as well as life in general and his personal filmmaking future in Iran. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.

In Regards to the 2011 Oscar Nominations

Awards

Nominations for the 84th annual Academy Awards are out today, and apart from being thrilled at the lack of recognition for the dreadful Hoodwinked Too!, I’m heartened by the deserved love for Moneyball. A few other quick thoughts — it’s nice recognition for A Better Life‘s Best Actor nominee Demián Bichir, Best Documentary nominee Hell and Back Again, and particularly Best Original Screenplay nominee A Separation. Massively bummed about the lack of kudos for Drive and Martha Marcy May Marlene, though. Interviews with A Separation‘s writer-director Asghar Farhadi and Pina director Wim Wenders, also a Best Documentary nominee, coming later today. Hosted by Billy Crystal, the Oscars will be broadcast on February 26, live from the Kodak Theatre, on ABC.

Andrew Sullivan Diagnoses GOP Rage

Politics

Post-South Carolina, Andrew Sullivan tees one up and smashes it out of the park, playing the world’s tiniest violin for what is called the Republican establishment — which now consists of Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, Roger Ailes and their mainfold products and creations run amok — and a political party that is “angry at the new shape and color of America, befuddled by a suddenly more complicated world, and dedicated primarily to emotion rather than reason.” This is what happens when you habitually enable, and indeed encourage, gamesmanship for the sake of gamesmanship, and politics as war.