Weapons of War: Volume 1

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Along with America’s fascination with flexing its military might, there is a correlative interest in celebrating said fascination, albeit in nothing necessarily more than the fashion of an armchair general. This is the reason for the entire existence of the History Channel — so that those who never paid attention in high school history class can regale their coworkers with newly learned facts about World War II and the Vietnam War. Ergo, there’s also a highly receptive audience for something like the three-volume Weapons of War: Volume 1, which examines in fetishistic detail the history of warfare and how new technologies have changed the ways battles are fought.

Ground War is the first title, a two-part feature film, narrated by R.J. Allison and co-directed by Roger Finnigan and James
Millar, which explores the key technological advances that have defined ground warfare through the ages. With classic examples like the stirrup and lesser known innovations like the gunner’s quadrant, the series reveals how even the smallest innovations can have a wide-ranging effect on not only the way armed conflicts are waged, but also their outcomes. Next up is Warplane, narrated by Stacey Keach. As one might surmise from the title, this sprawling title shines a light on the 100 years since the Wright brothers first took to the air, and how the airplane has evolved from a tentative eye in the sky into the ultimate weapons delivery system, via unmanned drones. Finally, narrated again by Keach, Warship tells the story of the evolution of the warships, right up to the United States’ current cutting-edge navy battle groups — made up of nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines, and a range of other high-tech and immensely powerful ships.

While the technological and spec detail here is sometimes wonky, Weapons of War also does a good job of locating enough personable in-points to make military culture and infrastructure make sense (and even seem appealing, in its just-the-facts-and-mission rigidity) to the average layperson. It would be nice — or at least more honest, and challenging — if there were a correlative look at how military industrial complex spending has both sometimes helped spur private industry offshoot technological advance and innovation, and also sometimes drained needed resources from other government programs and budget necessities, but that’s not what this set of movies is about, clearly.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with a snap-in tray, Weapons of War comes to DVD spread out on three discs, in 1.78:1 widescreen, with an English language stereo track. The meaty length of its feature presentations — totaling almost a dozen hours — renders the set’s lack of supplemental bonus features a bit less distressing. To purchase the DVD, phone (800) PLAY-PBS, or click here. Or if you need a DVD with public performance rights, click here. Finally, if Amazon is totally your thing, click here. B- (Movie) C- (Disc)

Growth

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

There are any number of ways to commit a cinematic fumbling — to fritter away a decent concept or creepy set-up or what have you — but one of the more common, at least in the direct-to-video genre realm, is to not trust your story, writing and characters, but instead double down on a reliance on special effects, which too often come across as chintzy when delivered on a budget-level basis. Such is the case with Growth, which features absolutely great DVD cover art and an effective trailer to boot, but, alas, doesn’t deliver the squirmy horror goods.

Written and directed by Gabriel Cowan (Breathing Room), Growth opens in 1989, when a breakthrough in advanced parasitic research on remote Kuttyhunk Island gives scientists a jump in human evolution, endowing subjects with heightened physical and mental strength. Naturally, though, the experiment goes horribly wrong, producing a lethal parasite that kills off three-quarters of the island’s population. Cut to 20 years later, when Jamie Akerman (Mircea Monroe), who lost her mother in the outbreak, returns with her boyfriend Marco (Sleepwalkers‘ Brian Krause), step-brother Justin (Christopher Shand) and best friend Kristin (Nora Kirkpatrick) to sell the family property. There, they uncover details about Jamie’s disturbing past, and horrifying secrets long suppressed by the town’s leader, Larkin (Office Space‘s Richard Riehle). Just when the past seems to be finally buried, a slithering new strain of parasite emerges, and threatens the island and its visitors once again.

An intriguing set-up and some effectively delineated backstory put Growth in a good spot to wring elemental dread out of the inherently human fear of things getting under our skin, and/or otherwise invading unintended orifices (as Star Trek II aptly demonstrated, with those earwigs). Cowan doesn’t fully trust the material, though, and Growth thusly pivots from a movie with the potential to unnerve to a shambling film of goosing provocation and little insight. Without the budget to pull off big-level special effects, the narrative leans on them to an unfulfilling degree.

Growth comes to DVD housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover with raised lettering and artwork. It’s presented in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 audio track and optional English SDH subtitles. Its package of ample bonus material is anchored by a feature-length audio commentary track from Cowan and fellow producer Amiee [sic] Clark, as well as a separate audio commentary track with actors Monroe, Krause, Shand and Kirkpatrick. There is a nice little behind-the0scenes featurette built around interviews with cast and crew, and there’s a separate featurette look at how Cowan — via online camera, from Los Angeles — directed one scene shot in South Korea. A clutch of deleted scenes and the movie’s trailer round out bonus materials. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Film Reviews

Directed by Oliver Stone, Wall
Street: Money Never Sleeps is the rarest of Hollywood sequels, in that it seemingly has
an artistic rather than financial motivation for its birth. This is all the more
ironic given the subject matter of the first film, a financial drama of spotlighted moral decay, and that it saw life in the go-go 1980s, both deftly encapsulating the mantra of its setting-sun era (“Greed is good”) but also, and perhaps much more tellingly, providing a fleeting glimpse into the future (“I create nothing — I own“), and the working mindset of financial services wizards and captains of industry for whom the American economy and electorate are seemingly little more than their grown-up sandbox and toys.

Having served more than eight years in prison for securities fraud, disgraced Wall Street tycoon Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) emerges in 2001, just after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Seven years later, he’s peddling a half-apologetic, half-prophetic book forecasting doom for the American economy. Young Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf), meanwhile, is an ambitious proprietary trader whose affection for both green energy as well as the green of money gets tested when his company fails. Against a backdrop involving both opportunity and jostling related to an old rival, venal trader Bretton James (Josh Brolin), Gordon tries to use his professional knowledge base to arm-twist Jake in friendly fashion into helping him reconnect with his estranged daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan), to whom Jake is engaged.

Stone’s sequel to his 1987 zeitgeist hit, which won Douglas a Best Actor Oscar, would seem positioned to really sink or soar, given both its unique standing as a Hail Mary-type throwback drama, and its desperately au courant status given the nation’s newfound focus on its economic maladies. Thankfully, Stephen Schiff and Allan Loeb’s script is admirably rooted in character, so the drama pulls one along fairly naturally, abetted by performances that don’t forsake the human element. Whether by cajolement, threat or end-around obfuscation, Stone squeezes out of LaBeouf so much of the nervous-chatterbox energy and too-cool-for-school insouciance that characterize the bulk of his work. Similarly, Douglas taps into nicely layered reserves of an alpha dog brought low, and in significant ways reformed — but someone who still has a burning, hardwired ambition for relevance, above all else.

There’s a pinch of ridiculous alpha-male jockeying (involving a scene of motorcycle racing), but overall Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is engaging and slick without ever coming across as pompous — its story hinging on believable twists and turns born of personality, not wildly fluctuating narrative convenience. Take note, Hollywood moguls. For more on the film, click here. For another, longer take, meanwhile, from Telly Davidson, click here. (20th Century Fox, PG-13, 131 minutes)

Paranormal Activity 2 Works Hard To Whip Up Fan Demand

Musings

Paramount is doing a fairly wise thing with the sequel to its 2009 low-fi smash hit Paranormal Activity. Dolling out a handful of viral clips to horror flick sites, certainly — that’s a given. But also debuting the movie for fans that “demand” to see it first, via the movie’s web site. The top 20 cities with the highest registered online demand for the film will be invited to attend a free screening on Wednesday, October 20, before the movie’s nationwide October 22 release. Buzzy word-of-mouth from rabid fans of the first film and other genre diehards will be key in trying to deliver commercial success, since this sequel is bucking the slow-build, platform-release strategy of its surprise $108-million-grossing predecessor, which didn’t top 1,000 screens until its fourth week of in theaters, and finally hit the #1 spot at the box office in its fifth weekend frame. For the movie’s teaser trailer, click here; for more on the film, click here.

That Evening Sun

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

In the autumnal stretches of each year, it seems, there’s at least one spare, micro-budgeted indie film, a la Starting Out in the Evening or Venus, that features a ruminative, calling card performance by an aging actor. Last year that film was That Evening Sun, and that actor was Hal Holbrook, Oscar-nominated a few years back for his supporting turn in Sean Penn’s adaptation of Into the Wild.

Based on a short story by William Gay, and gracefully adapted for the screen by director Scott Teems, this movie might best be described as a coming-to-terms-with-age tale — part mournfully rustic, part delightfully crotchety, and entirely a fitting vehicle for Holbrook’s under-appreciated talents. The erstwhile big screen “Deep Throat” stars as Abner Meecham, an aging Tennessee farmer who absconds from the assisted living facility he’s been set up in by his lawyer son (Walton Goggins), and catches a ride back to his country farm to live out his days in peace. Upon his return, though, he discovers his property has been leased to an old enemy and his family. Not one to either suffer fools or be dictated to, Abner moves into the old tenant shack on the property and declares he will not leave until the farm is returned to him. But Lonzo Choat (Raymond McKinnon), the new tenant, has no intention of giving in to Abner’s demands, and so an increasingly edgy and dangerous battle of wills ensues.

Trading in slow pans, simple set-ups and outdoor locations that match the material, Teems doesn’t try to showcase a bunch of directorial razzle dazzle. Southern characters are frequently woefully misrepresented in American film, but, if you ignore the molasses-dipped names, That Evening Sun has an easy, unforced sense of authenticity that takes it a long way. There’s a Faulknerian specificity here, and Holbrook doesn’t overplay the emotion, expressing the grace notes of a man swallowed up by both frustration and regrets he won’t as readily admit. Abner’s decisions are sometimes a bit more impulsive than seem genuine for a man of his age, no matter the heart behind them. But That Evening Sun poignantly reminds us that feeling is often stronger than thought, in adolescence and old age alike.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, That Evening Sun comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, preserving the aspect ratio of the movie’s theatrical exhibition. Its audio comes in the form of an English language Dolby digital 5.1 mix, with optional English and Spanish subtitles. Cinematographer Rodney Taylor and editor Travis Sittard sit in with Teems for a feature-length audio commentary track that’s somewhat amusingly dubbed an “anti-commentary track,” part of Teems’ only-half-kidding protest at not simply letting the movie stand by itself. There’s also a nine-minute, somewhat impressionistic making-of featurette, set to music from the movie; over 70 minutes of cast and crew interviews; the film’s theatrical trailer; and a 30-minute scene-specific look at the production design and overall collaborative construction of the movie. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here; to purchase the film on Blu-ray, meanwhile, click here. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Catfish

Film Reviews

Co-directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the absorbing, low-fi Catfish is a very generational cinematic offering, a digital-age mystery about identity, human frailty and social connection. Less is truly more when heading into the film, but in the broadest strokes the movie centers on a 24-year-old New York City photographer, Nev Schulman (Ariel’s brother), who is contacted on Facebook by an eight-year-old Michigan girl who asks permission to paint one of his pictures, and then falls headlong into a complex online relationship with the girl and her family.

A documentary pieced together like a thriller, Catfish highlights, in ways funny as well as squirmy and uncomfortable, the parasitic nature of parasocial relationships, and how technology can feed intimacy in ways both new and exciting and also inherently false. (For all the shrugging ease that the use of the Internet provides in terms of facilitating lies or mistruths, the film also shows the flipside — that the Internet makes it that much easier to investigate people, and their claims.)

Catfish hums along and works on several levels, not the least of which because Nev (above) is both engaging and vulnerable. Its few missteps are less outright failings, and more sins of omission. For all the ghastly ruminations summoned forth by what Nev and his filmmaker friends uncover when they finally trip to Michigan to uncover the truth, it would be equally legitimate to more deeply assay the need for connection that drove Nev in the first place. Of course, that’s something that resides in all of us, which perhaps cuts a bit deeper to the bone than is comfortable for both those involved as well as an audience, who naturally like to retain the right to pass judgment. For more information, click here; for an interview with the directors, meanwhile, click here. (Universal/Rogue, PG-13, 86 minutes)

Teenage Paparazzo

Film Reviews

Actor Adrian Grenier is most famous for playing a young, famous actor on HBO’s Entourage, so that gives him a somewhat unique perch from which to assay the curious nature of celebrity and the often aggressive shutterbugs that, in symbiotic if frequently somewhat diseased fashion, make their living off of snapping as many pictures as possible of actors, athletes and other figures in the public eye. And it’s just that high-ground perspective that informs and elevates his entertaining and thought-provoking new documentary Teenage Paparazzo.

The movie, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and makes its bow this week on HBO, jointly documents
the actor’s well-mannered exasperation and irritation with paparazzi, and his burgeoning personal relationship with 14-year-old Austin
Visschedyk, a home-schooled shutterbug whose parents routinely let him troll around Hollywood streets until midnight and beyond, stalking dining and partying celebrities like Grenier. Further contextualizing this vivid, unusual relationship are interviews Grenier conducts with other celebs (Paris Hilton, Eva Longoria, Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg and Matt Damon) as well as psychologists and historians, who weigh in on the changing nature of fame, notoriety and gossip in the New Media age.

Young Austin is precocious, characteristically self-centered, and possessing of the same type of moppy-haired bangs that Justin Bieber has recently made all the rage, but he’s also a more complex figure than on the surface he might seem. The title conjures up very specific (and not at all positive) notions of parental neglect and failure, but in the beginning Austin seems less obsessed with celebrities than merely excited by the thrill of a chase — in getting a picture of a personal moment. He’s something of a snob (“Hell no, I’m not following anyone from Dancing with the Stars!”), but more because of the monetary value of his work. Yes, while not yet able to drive, Austin rakes in hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars for his photos.

The inherently navel-gazing nature of Teenage Paparazzo sort of cuts both ways. While on the surface it seems like it could come off as little more than a well-funded incursion into woe-is-me self-analysis — and it very occasionally tilts in this direction — Grenier’s film doesn’t merely spotlight the antagonism between paparazzi and their subjects, it also digs into the mutual-use nature of their relationships. (Hilton is an especially interesting and enlightening interview subject on this front, even if a segment in which Grenier explains the story of Narcissus to her comes off as unintentionally hilarious.) If Grenier is a bit hands-off with Austin’s parents — wanting to retain their participation and cooperation, and so approaching their son with a bit of a clinical, “hey-that’s-cool” alien distance — his subject eventually obliges him, exhibiting increasingly bratty behavior, and morphing into a miniaturized version of some of the same prissy, entitled rich folks he spends his time shooting. (A proposed E! reality show centered around Austin helps fuel this fire, and provide an ironic production-crew-pileup that Christopher Guest would surely appreciate.)

Grenier has a certain laconic charm, and so his movie is incredibly spry and facile, and thus entertaining in a base-level, empty-caloric sort of way. But it’s also at its best when really, substantively trying to dig into the nature of falsely intimate, one-way connections between massively marketed celebrities and their fans, or “parasocial” relationships — as it does in a conversation between the filmmaker and a social scientist at Fenway Park that is interrupted by a (slightly inebriated) fan who tells Grenier, “I’m not trying to be gay, but I love you,” and, “This’ll get me so much ass on Facebook, you have no idea!”

This candid, unplanned interaction, and other moments in the film, seems to lend credence to the idea that unlike past generations, or milennia ago — when we would each achieve some measure of notoriety and recognition within our smaller social structures — fame for fame’s sake is in the digital age, with connected societies and worldwide economies, now its own surging currency, and something to be valued over more tangible personal qualities, like talent or intelligence. (Italian import Videocracy, another documentary, also has some interesting insights in this regard.) It’s an unsettling thought, perhaps, but ultimately also a humanizing one; as Teenage Paparazzo shows us, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but it ultimately cannot capture a human being in all their complexity. For more information on the film, click here. (HBO/Reckless Productions, unrated, 100 minutes)

Howl

Film Reviews

Years before the infamous obscenity trial of comedian Lenny Bruce,
counter-cultural icon and Beat poet Allen Ginsberg also stood trial — or,
more accurately, the publisher of his long-form poem that gives this
film its title did — for deigning to hold up a mirror to American
hypocrisy. Co-written and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman,
Howl isn’t a commercial work, or satisfying on any predictably plotted
dramatic level. But, like a great song one surrenders to, its
tangential, multi-varied approach captures the urgency and dread of
Ginsberg’s groundbreaking, semi-autobiographical work, which recounts in
searing detail various underbelly road trips, love affairs and his
search for personal liberation.

Starring James Franco as
Ginsberg, Howl unfolds in a fractured and cerebral style, interweaving
four stories: a Socratic courtroom drama that follows the aforementioned
landmark 1957 obscenity trial, with Jon Hamm’s prosecutor and David Strathairn’s defense attorney squaring off against one another; an imaginative, feverish animated ride
through some of the text’s stories; a chat between Ginsberg and an
unseen interviewer; and a slightly more conventional,
black-and-white-lensed biographical portrait of a man who strove for
new ways to express himself and capture the aching ambivalence of those
he encountered.

There’s a quite contradictory nature, a fiery
reticence, at the soul of Ginsberg and his confessional writing, and in
his virtuoso performance Franco captures that quite well, especially in
his vocal timbre, which swells and recedes like an ocean tide. The
inclusion of animation — another potentially tricky thing — connects in a
certain roundabout way like similar footage from Ari Folman’s Waltz
with Bashir. Neither flat-out surreal nor entirely subjective, it
instead aims for (and captures) the heat of feeling, for those
unfamiliar with and/or resistant to the text. We all have to howl, from
time to time. For more information on the movie, click here. (Oscilloscope, unrated, 90 minutes)

The Locksmith

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Originally titled Homewrecker when it bowed at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, The Locksmith, from brother writer-directors Brad and Todd Barnes, is a rough-around-the-edges screwball comedy, offering up charms fleetingly similar to the Martini brothers’ Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire, which was one of the toasts of the 1999 Toronto Film Festival, back when they still handed out awards.

A quirky romantic comedy that unfolds mostly over the course of a single day, the film follows Mike (Anslem Richardson, of Life on Mars), a rehabilitated felon who, after a four-year stint in jail for selling drugs, gets out and tries to start putting his life back together, including reconnecting with his ex-girlfriend Monique (Michelle Krusiec). After taking a job as a locksmith, however, Mike unsuspectingly gets dragged into the neuroses of a desperate customer, Margo (Ana Reeder), when she recruits him to help her spy on her supposedly cheating art gallery owner boyfriend, Charles (Stephen Rannazzisi). Madcap zaniness ensues.

Margo’s obsessive, chatty, force-of-nature personality drives The Locksmith, and New York stage actress Reeder makes her sing — a bundle of contradictions that convincingly fit together. If she’s the octane, meanwhile, the subdued Richardson is the project’s oil, and his steadiness gives The Locksmith a much-needed counterbalancing presence. The Barnes brothers’ experience in a New York filmmaking collective entitled the Institute of Magical Dance (yes, seriously) gives the project a shared sense of unanimity and positivity rare to independent productions. Some audiences will definitely want more “meat,” or conventional dramatic substance here, but The Locksmith is a pleasant little surprise.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The Locksmith comes to DVD presented in a fine 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, with an English language 5.1 Dolby surround sound audio track, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Apart from a slate of previews for other First Look titles, there are unfortunately no supplemental extras. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) D (Disc)

Client 9 Trailer Serves Up Sex, Power, Politics, Revenge

Politics, Trailer Watch

The trailer for Alex Gibney’s Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, is online, and the documentary detailing the ex-New York governor’s tumble from elected office in the wake of his dalliance(s?) with high-end call girl Ashley Dupre looks to be a crackling piece of entertainment, just based on all the narrative gristle. Sex, money, power, politics, revenge — it’s all there, as on the surface as it is on the poster. This thing should be a Beltway/arthouse smash. For the trailer, click here.

You Again

Film Reviews

Yet another contrived, manically pitched romantic comedy centered on forcedly farcical nuptial hijinks, the wearyingly unfunny You Again — in which Kristen Bell discovers her older brother is marrying the same girl, Odette Yustman, who made her life completely miserable in high school — is the cinematic equivalent of a loud, sugar-fueled kid desperately
calling for his or her parent’s attention from a pool. There’s an interesting and even quite possibly very funny movie to be made about the manner in which women filter their competitiveness with one another through men, but You Again is so divorced from the real world as to immediately negate the possibility that this is it. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Disney, PG, 105 minutes)

The Social Network

Film Reviews


A $25 billion idea began with something to which almost everyone can relate: a sense of drunken aggrievement. One night in October of 2003, having just been dumped by his girlfriend, status-obsessed, socially maladjusted Harvard sophomore Mark Zuckerberg hacked into the university’s computers to create a site that featured a database of all the women on campus. An instant viral hit, the stunt crashed Harvard’s servers, but provided the underpinnings for Facebook, which today has over 400 million users.

All this is chronicled in director David Fincher’s wildly involving The Social Network, which deftly intercuts the story of this creation with depositions from two separate lawsuits that would spring up — one by a pair of blonde, preppy, upper-crust rowers, the Winklevoss twins (Armie Hammer, pulling double duty), who argue that Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) stole their idea, and one from Zuckerberg’s friend and business partner, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), eventually forced out of the company via the gamesmanship of interloper Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), Napster’s co-founder.

The accelerated trajectory of these characters — brilliant, brash and soon to be flush with cash — underscores the bullet train of progress represented by the collision of their imaginations with the immediacy of the Internet, where desire gets out ahead of reason, and sets moral compasses spinning. The natural inclination on the part of many filmmakers would be to ladle on artifice, in an effort to play up the movie’s zeitgeist quotient, but Fincher keeps the movie’s tech-y elements at the periphery, focusing instead on the time-honored dramatic elements of isolation, determination, avarice and betrayal.

Eschewing the sort of more naked play for emotionalism that marked his last work, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Fincher instead — with great assistance from Aaron Sorkin’s bristling screenplay, adapted from Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires — presents a consortium of tricky narrators, playing a delightful and engaging game of ping-pong with audience sympathies. The result is undeniably one of the year’s best films — an absorbing thriller for both Luddites and the plugged-in alike. (Sony/Columbia, PG-13, 120 minutes)

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Blu-ray)

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley and Gemma Arterton headline this action-adventure slice of period piece derring-do from producer Jerry Bruckheimer, filled with the sort of exotic locales and visual effects that Hollywood peddles quite well on an annual basis. Oh, and there are ostrich races, too.



So does Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time really catch fire? No, not really. It works reasonably well as a piece of escapist, forgettable small screen entertainment, but it’s not for nothing that the movie was seen as something of an under-performing theatrical dude domestically, grossing $30 of its $90million haul in its opening weekend (even though it would rake in an additional $224 million overseas). For all the Herculean effort expended to give this project lift and consequence, its stakes still feel small, its jostling banter familiar and all its punchy action-drama preordained.

Maybe it’s a result of the source material, and the film’s blindingly obvious franchise ambitions. Adapted as it is from the bestselling videogame series of the same name, the story here is pretty simple and straightforward, built up around fraternal/familial honor and distrust. Some ridiculously solemn opening crawl text and voiceover (“Where Persian sword went, order followed…”) plunks us down outside the holy city of Alamut, where adopted prince Dastan (Gyllenhaal) reluctantly teams up with a native princess, Tamina (Arterton), to safeguard a magical dagger that gives its possessor the power to reverse time and rule the world.

After the sudden death of his father, the king, Dastan finds himself at odds with his brothers (Richard Coyle and Toby Kebbell) and uncle, Nizam (Kingsley), and has to work hard to clear his name and uncover the truth. Adventure, desert escapes and backstabbing ensue (that fun with ostriches, too), all against the backdrop of a narrative that, believe it or not, manages to none-too-subtly sneak in some political statement. (The villain of the piece has secret government assassin squads, and his blundering invasion of a foreign land on trumped-up charges leaves the occupiers unsuccessfully searching for special weapons caches.)

Producer Bruckheimer has enough of a track record of success with these types of film that there are wads of money to throw at the production, and so there is plenty of color and detail in Prince of Persia, though for my money some of the lavish sets — constructed at great cost in Morocco, where the film lensed — actually look a bit chintzy, and too perfect and neat for what should be something a little more gritty and dirty. Or, strike that: could be more interesting if it were so.

Though he has some experience with spectacle in the form of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, director Mike Newell doesn’t have a natural sense of action rhythms — several of the sequences feature both slow-motion and quick edits, to mask deficiencies in coverage — and Prince of Persia suffers mightily in this regard. There’s plenty of swashbuckling and energetic, accented running about, but some of the movie’s comedic relief (in the form of Alfred Molina) feels like a heavy lift, and the film’s playful romantic bickering is fairly insubstantial, owing to a dispiriting lack of engaging chemistry between its leads.

At least technologically speaking, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a solid film to experience the cinematic magic of Blu-ray; Bruckheimer’s productions are nothing if not frame-stuffed, and the pristine 1080p picture and DTS-HD master audio sound quality definitely enhance the action and special effects more than an average action title. In addition to single-disc DVD and single-disc Blu-ray versions, Prince of Persia is also available in a three-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, stored in a cardboard slipcover, which also includes a digital copy of the movie. On DVD, the movie preserves the theatrical exhibition’s 2.40:1 widescreen aspect ratio, with Dolby digital 5.1 English, French and Spanish language tracks, and an English language 2.0 DVS track. On Blu-ray, the film is presented in a 1080p high definition widescreen transfer, with English 5.1 DTS-HD master audio (48kHz/24-bit), English 2.0 DVS, and French and Spanish Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound tracks. Optional English SDH, French and Spanish subtitles are available on each version, which leads to some amusing (and telling) translations of all the background din and clatter (“whooping rhythmically” and “clamoring all” are among the more memorable descriptions).

Most notably, a combo-pack-exclusive interactive “Sands of Time” feature gives fans control of the dagger of time, allowing them to rewind the movie and uncover spun-off, behind-the-scenes magic in over 40 separate segments, each lasting no more than three minutes. It’s a nice touch, certainly, for those given to repeat viewings of the film, or wanting to, say, immediately know more about Gyllenhaal’s workout regiment and the movie’s stunt work. Otherwise, there’s just a single deleted scene, though the DVD version also contains a behind-the-scenes featurette on the film’s production. Running under 20 minutes, the piece includes interview chats with the principal stars, plus all sorts of on-set footage, and interestingly delves into the handcraft work that went into prop making and set construction on site in Morocco. To purchase the three-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, click here. For an eight-dollar coupon off said combo pack, meanwhile, click here. C (Movie) B- (Disc)

Special Screening Set for Secretariat Foundation

Screenings

Walt Disney Studios announced plans yesterday for a special advance screening of director Randall Wallace and screenwriter Mike Rich’s upcoming film Secretariat, to benefit the Secretariat Foundation. The October 3 event, which takes place five days before the film’s mainstream October 8 theatrical release, will be held at the Kentucky Theater in Lexington, Kentucky, with a cocktail reception following the screening at Portofino Restaurant. For those in the area with means, tickets start at $125 per person, which includes general admission to the
screening and cocktail reception. A $250 ticket also
includes reserved seating at the screening and reception. Tickets are available at Secretariat.com, or by calling 502-893-7997. No word on if John Calipari will be attending.

Kristen Bell’s Movies Strip Away Sight, In Addition To Laughs

Amusements, Musings

It has many more noteworthy sins, certainly, but it’s interesting that Kristen Bell‘s You Again is her second film this year to feature sensory deprivation eating. The other was punishingly unfunny When in Rome, which also essentially had two settings: broad, and broader. That film’s one potentially amusing bit — in which Josh Duhamel’s character takes Bell’s character to a pitch-black restaurant, in which the lack of sight is supposed to heighten other senses, and an appreciation of the food and drink — is botched and rushed. In You Again, it’s Bell’s screen dad, played by Victor Garber, who’s undertaking a diet where he blindfolds himself, in order to let his stomach tell him more naturally when he’s full. No word yet on if this has worked or will work for any audience members, who might blindfold themselves in an effort to even more accurately gauge how full of shit the movie is.

GQ Takes a Look Back at GoodFellas, Minus John Malkovich

Interviews

Twenty years after the making of GoodFellas, GQ interviews nearly 60 members of the cast and crew, for a comprehensive look back at one of the most endlessly rewatchable American movies ever made. Sadly, there isn’t a knife fight about the various spellings of the film’s title. Money quote from the piece, from John Malkovich, who turned down the role of Jimmy Conway: “It sort of came at a bad time in my life, when I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to think about working. It’s hard to explain why you end up in Eragon and not GoodFellas. But Robert De Niro is fantastic.” For the full read, click here.

Jack Goes Boating

Film Reviews

The feature film directorial debut of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jack
Goes Boating is a characteristically morose wallow in indie-style
shoe-gazing that should only please the most dedicated fans of the
talented actor, along with devotees of somewhat similar sad-sack works like Todd Solondz’s
Happiness and James Mangold’s Heavy.

Hoffman stars as oafish limo driver Jack, who masks his sadness with the good-vibe positivity of reggae music, which he keeps in constant rotation on his Walkman. (Yes, Walkman — take that, Steve Jobs!) At the urging of his (only) friend and coworker, Clyde (John Ortiz), Jack awkwardly, elliptically pursues another brokenhearted New Yorker, Connie (Amy Ryan), learning to cook for her since she claims she’s never had anyone fix her a meal. Booze and weed come out, and lingering resentments between Clyde and his wife Lucy (Daphne Rubin-Vega) eventually come bubbling to the surface at an awkward dinner party.

Jack Goes Boating is adapted by Bob Glaudini from his own stageplay (which Hoffman and Ortiz, old theater chums, each have a history with), but the material lacks enough emotional punch to connect as either a more realistically rooted portrait of wounded-soul adult love, or enough sharp-tack detail to score as a searing musing on life’s accumulated miseries. To make up for relatively meager dramatic stakes and goose up the affected melancholy, Hoffman slathers on a jazz score and throws in some montages, to little lasting effect. “Everybody hurts,” R.E.M. once opined. True, but not all portraits of wallflower pain are created equal. (Overture, R, 89 minutes)

A Million Spokes Assays Annual RAGBRAI Adventure

Interviews

Iowa may not seem like the most logical destination for a film premiere, but when the movie in question is about one of the Hawkeye State’s longest-running sociocultural landmarks, it’s a good fit. Such was the reason and case that I found myself in Sioux City a bit over a month ago, just a couple miles from the Nebraska border, for the debut of A Million Spokes, an engaging independent documentary charting the annual RAGBRAI marathon.

RAGBRAI is an acronym for the Register’s Great Annual Bicycle Ride Across Iowa, since the event is sponsored by the Des Moines Register, and has been ever since it was first thrown together in late August of 1973, as part of a friendly challenge between feature writer/copy editor John Karras, a biking enthusiast, and Don Kaul, the newspaper’s Washington, D.C. bureau columnist. What began in modest fashion as an invited ride-along for Register readers has evolved into a sprawling seven-day event beginning the last week of July along the western border of the state and ending a week later along the eastern border. (Participants typically dip the back wheel of their bike in the Missouri River upon the event’s kick-off, and then celebrate completion by dipping their front tire in the Mississippi River.) The route changes every year, with overnight camping locations rotating among dozens of small towns, many of which understandably see a good portion of their burgh’s businesses enjoy a big boom in sales, since the event routinely draws over 10,000 week-long riders (some from as far away as Australia) and 1,500 or so “day bikers.”

Directed by Varda Hardy and produced by Talia Rodriguez-Shakur and Ken Gorrell, A Million Spokes focuses on a handful of bicyclists, each of whom has a different motivation for taking part in the ride. Some are first-time participants drawn to the sociability of the event, others are hardcore biking enthusiasts (and even competitors) who enjoy RAGBRAI as a sort of late summer tune-up. The challenges facing independent film — of effectively and economically locating a given niche or submarket, and the audiences that are most likely to respond to that sort of storytelling — are myriad, but A Million Spokes, while playing a bit for the heartstrings, admirably encompasses a more robust humanity than a simple glance at its logline might indicate.

Ostensibly a feel-good tale of community spirit and familial bonding, the film does feature some moving narrative strands, including a young, widowed participant riding for his recently deceased wife, with whom he had enjoyed the trip the previous year. But there is also a subject who suffers from severe alcohol poisoning (visiting all sorts of assorted small town watering holes is a big tradition for many riders), and one of the couples in the movie, who good-naturedly joke about their widening personal differences during filming, have since split up, we come to learn in a coda. The movie, in other words, is by turns touching, funny, poignant and sad (like life, really), as well as just flatly curious about its backdrop.

In a lunchtime conversation with the Santa Monica-based Hardy — who was brought on to the project after Rodriguez-Shakur secured an exclusive term-contract window for film rights, and contacted her — the filmmaker confesses no great passion for cycling, per se. Instead, she comes off as someone for whom curiosity is just second-nature, even turning a little flip-cam on her lunchmates to query them about tangentially related matters. It’s that innate trait that helps power A Million Spokes; the level of thought and care that went into capturing the actual RAGBRAI ride, and conveying its experiential essence, rivals that of a production with a hundred times more means and man hours. For the filmmakers, it was important to be able to give viewers various and sundry engaging personalities with whom to identify along the trip, but also a sense of something a lot of us miss these days, in the hustle and bustle of our ever-connected, digital-era lives — of existing within nature and passing through a space not as a silent, distracted traveler, but someone actively doing, in this case quite literally, the legwork of locomotion. To achieve this tack, they commissioned the construction of a special rig which allowed for them to place a cameraman alongside bikers on the route, and also deployed mounted cameras in choice fashion. Finally, certain participants were also given mini-cameras and asked to record their thoughts along the trek, which are then woven artfully into the chronological narrative.

The film’s Friday evening premiere — at a local commercial theater near the Stoney Creek Inn, where an equally convivial dinner reception was held afterward — was a nice affair, attended by several of the film’s subjects, as well as participants and media covering the impending RAGBRAI 2010 launch. The Sioux City humidity — a throwback to childhood for this Southern-raised writer — dampened the enthusiasm not one bit, but instead just made it a bit thicker. Plans for A Million Spokes‘ distribution are currently up in the air, though several heartland-centric film competitions, in addition to other festivals, remain in the mix as possibilities. Stay tuned for updates. For more information on RAGBRAI, meanwhile, click here.

Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam (Blu-ray)

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

One doubts that a critical opinion will move the commercial needle too much with regards to a movie like Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam, but it’s always worth checking in on the tweens every once in a while, lest they start getting too uppity, and planning their Logan’s Run-type takeover of society more out in the open, in encoded entertainment.

Starring Sonny With a Chance‘s Demi Lovato and the Jonas brothers, this movie returns to the same-named summer music camp where little Mitchie (Lovato) previously came into her own. There, she meets up with friends she made the previous summer. At the same time, music stars Shane, Nate and Jason (Joe, Nick and Kevin Jonas, respectively) are excited to get off the road. Shane, who previously worked at Camp Rock, reconnects with Mitchie. Things are nice. What the campers don’t expect is the opening of a slick, new musical camp across the lake, Camp Star. Led by heady up-and-comers Luke (Matthew Finley) and Dana (Chloe Bridges), these rivals threaten the future of Camp Rock’s existence. Naturally, the only way to solve the differences between the two camps is with a knife fight to the death live musical competition where fans vote for the best camp.

Like all of Disney’s tween-targeted titles, Camp Rock 2 offers up an explosion of layered, color fashion, and lots of cheery noise; director Paul Hoen may not know of subtlety, but he and director of photography David Makin pack the movie’s frames with all sorts of peppiness. What’s kind of dispiriting about Camp Rock 2 is how pat talk of “following one’s dreams” is dragged out and wanly attached to music, without much of a deeper exploration of how songs truly can take the trite and make it soar — infusing hearts with joy and love, and thus actually opening and changing minds. That’s why music will always matter more — that is, deepest — to folks of a younger generation: because it so matches the intensity of feeling of adolescence, which feels like an inescapable sentence rather than merely a phase.

That Camp Rock 2 doesn’t treat this all that honestly isn’t a big sin of commission, really, but it does feel like something of a missed opportunity. The script, credited to Dan Berendsen, Karin Gist and Regina Hicks, doesn’t have a lot of punch in the dialogue, either. Still, the choreography, editing and production value of the musical numbers generally exceeds the quality of the original film. And in a movie like this, isn’t that what matters most, or at least most to the target demographic?

Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam comes to home video with a coupon that allows purchasers to save $6 when they buy the DVD or Blu-ray in tandem with another Disney kiddie-themed title, like any of the various DVD iterations of the High School Musical series. In addition to single-disc Blu-ray and DVD versions, the movie also comes in a three-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, including a digital copy of the movie. On Blu-ray, the movie is presented in 1080p high definition, in 1.78:1 widescreen transfer, with English 5.1 DTS-HD master audio (48 kHz/24-bit) and optional French (5.1 DTS digital surround sound) and Spanish language (Dolby digital 5.1) audio tracks. A selection of music videos (including “Different Summers” and “Walking In My Shoes”) and a behind-the-scenes featurette on the movie’s newest stars is also included, along with a rock-along function which lets viewers track the music in the film. For the younger Guitar Hero aficionado in your home, this title is a solid bet. To purchase the Blu-ray/DVD combo via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)

Held Hostage

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Held Hostage, which takes a home invasion siege as its leaping-off point, and charts the story of a single mother forced against her will to take part in a bank robbery, bills itself “a visceral portrait of what it takes to survive against insurmountable odds,” but given that it’s based on victims’ advocate Michelle Renee‘s straightforwardly titled memoir Held Hostage: The True Story of a Mother and Daughter’s Kidnapping, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the film plays as little more a small screen movie-of-the-week. What Held Hostage does have most going for it, though, is a great, evocative DVD cover.

Michelle Estey (Dexter‘s Julie Benz) is a single mother and a bank manager, living with her young daughter Breea (Natasha Calis). One fateful night, masked gunmen break into their home and bind both of them with duct-tape. The next morning, after wiring them both with explosives, they give Michelle an unnerving ultimatum: cooperate in a bank heist, or she and Breea will die via remote control, and along with them the extra “e” in Breea’s name. Michelle complies, and she and her daughter are left unharmed. Then the investigation begins, and with it new questions arise. Neither the police (mostly in the form of Bruce McGill’s investigator) nor her colleagues completely accept Michelle’s frightening story, and as details about her abusive, salacious and debt-riddled past come to light Michelle finds herself a suspect in what one apprehended culprit deems an inside job.

There isn’t a lot of epic scope to this material, granted, but director Grant Harvey goes himself and the audience no favors with the tight, unimaginative manner in which he shoots the script, and ridiculously emotive, on-the-nose (and loud) music further sullies proceedings. This is all Lifetime-type pablum, given that we already know the perpetrators of the crime, and so when Held Hostage transitions into courtroom he said-she said shenanigans (which is more than half the movie), things bog down quickly. Benz, who’s come a long way since Jawbreaker, does her best with the material, and it’s nice to see her get a chance to play a crusading, front-and-center lead. There’s just not nearly enough substance or nuance here to make it worthwhile for the average viewer.

Held Hostage comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, divided into a dozen chapter stops via a static menu screen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 audio track, and optional English and Spanish subtitles. There are unfortunately no supplemental materials, which kind of undercuts the title’s whole empowering-women/true-story vibe. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) D- (Disc)

Never Let Me Go

Film Reviews

Two young Oscar nominees and another ascendant star anchor this very curious project from missing-in-action filmmaker Mark Romanek. Based on the novel of the same name by The Remains of the Day author Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go is an air-quote sci-fi drama with absolutely none of the usual genre trappings, instead grafted onto a mopey period piece love triangle.

The year is 1978, and the setting is a seemingly idyllic English boarding school where the well-mannered kids all live in The Village-esque seclusion. The rub, as they come to find out too soon from a chatty teacher? They’re being raised for their organs, so when they come of age in their 20s or 30s, they’ll make their donations and shuffle off this mortal coil. Kathy (Carey Mulligan), Tommy (Andrew Garfield, newly cast as Spider-Man) and Ruth (Keira Knightley) eventually leave the shelter of their school, sent to a sort of halfway house. The latter two are a couple, and Kathy, crushing on Tommy but eventually taking work as a counselor of enablement, has to decide between moving on and reconnecting with Tommy, filing for a deferment that may give them a coupe years together.

In both his groundbreaking music video work and 2002’s One Hour Photo, Romanek has shown a remarkable gift for tapping into personal isolation and despair, which he plumbs with only mixed results here. Despite all the morose signposts, the film never really catches fire as a doomed love story, which is clearly the target for which it’s aiming. Furthermore, it seems antithetical to the very nature of the conceit that there’s no particular angsty rebellion over their forced expiration, but that’s the case here. (Even the language they use is divorced from any personal feeling; final mortal donation is “completion,” not dying.) Perhaps that’s part of the delicate, emotionally shattering nature of the source material, adapted by Alex Garland, but if none of the characters can be roused to try to truly escape their fate, why should an audience care? (Fox Searchlight, R, 103 minutes)

Does I Want Your Money Trailer Tip Its Hand?

Politics, Trailer Watch

I want to give Ray Grigg’s I Want Your Money, a new documentary about our national financial debt, runaway deficit spending, impending doom and all that, a fair shake, because its message is (or could be) an important one. I really do. Unfortunately, stupid, jerkily-animated Reagan-lecturing-Obama cartoons is just not a good start, nor is the whole “schools” versus “real life” strain of intellectual attack. Also, by making President Obama the focal point of caricature and by overtly pre-selling itself as controversial (code: the movie “they” don’t want you to see), I Want Your Money tips its hand, and indicates that it almost certainly will not be at all a serious thing, but instead a partisan Molotov cocktail designed to pump sunshine up the skirts of agitated diabetic mall walkers Tea Partiers. (Forget, even, for a moment, the dizzying reality of lectures on discredited supply-side economics from a talking head from the Heritage Foundation.) For more information on the film, which hits theaters October 15, click here.