Zach Galifianakis Hosts Special Withnail & I Screening

Screenings

Exercising his inner film programmer, Zach Galifianakis has tabbed Withnail & I as one of his favorite movies, and slated it for a special screening as part of the Cinefamily’s Comedy Death-Ray series at the Silent Movie Theatre in Los Angeles, on Monday, August 2, at 8 p.m. Richard Grant gives a great, underrated comedic turn — also one of the best on-screen drunk performances ever — in Bruce Robinson’s criminally underseen film, which comes to the Cinefamily in a rare 35mm print. Tickets are $14; for more information, including a clip from the movie, click here.

Countdown To Zero

Film Reviews

A coolheaded yet still quite frightening nonfiction exploration of the inherent dangers of nuclear weapons and proliferation, Lucy Walker’s sobering Countdown to Zero makes a strong case, in non-polemical fashion, that political myopia is perhaps helping ink humankind’s eventual obituary.

The details make the thing. Much talking-head discussion centers around so-called loose nukes, but it’s also fascinating to hear former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (above) reflect regretfully on the 1986 Reykjavik summit breakdown, which could have possibly eliminated all nuclear weapons, or at least ballistic missiles (something many saber-rattling Reaganites are now too confused with anti-Obama rage to remember).

And there are, of course, many horror stories of nuclear disaster barely averted, plenty not widely known. One that was reported on was a 1995 American missile test over Norway that tripped all the signal wires of a preemptive attack. The Russians were informed of it in advance, but somehow failed to pass the message along up the chain of command, resulting in Boris Yeltsin (thankfully not intoxicated… or perhaps thankfully so?) being awoken in the middle of the night and given only a couple minutes to decide how to respond. If he’d followed established governmental protocol, he would have launched nuclear missiles at a dozen American cities. With so many threats in the world, it seems insane to continue to exist in a state of alert so open to malfunction, corruption and error. And yet if there’s anything that human history has taught us, it’s that we typically don’t truly learn a lesson until it’s we’ve paid disastrous consequences. (Magnolia, PG, 90 minutes)

Winnebago Man

Film Reviews

Cult infamy and accidental celebrity take a turn under the microscope in Winnebago Man, an intriguing documentary from Ben Steinbauer that takes a look at Jack Rebney, the foulmouthed “star” of a viral sensation. Hired in the late 1980s to host a series of industrial videos for Winnebago’s RV campers, Rebney repeatedly lost his temper in the sweltering Iowa summer heat, and his crew — half out of irritation at his antics, half out of bemusement — left the camera rolling.

The outtakes became an underground sensation, traded around on VHS tapes, and, starting around 1995, became a huge hit on YouTube, generating millions of views worldwide. For his movie, Steinbauer tracks down the heretofore unexamined Rebney living in semi-seclusion in northern California, where he initially claims to know nothing of his strange demi-celebrity. Again given a stage, though, Rebney soon roars to life.

The original clips are funny because in them the savvy viewer recognizes, perhaps on a subliminal level, the public presentation of a very private anger (“Why don’t I say it fucking right? My mind is just a piece of shit!”). Steinbauer, though, never really seems to work up either a cogent thesis statement or tack of inquiry — his work bears the marks of a serial noodler. Early, promising strands seeming to offer some greater contextualization give way to little more than a travelogue, in which Steinbauer and a longtime friend of Rebney’s coax and cajole him into attending a special San Francisco festival screening of other video curios.

Even as Steinbauer becomes closer to his subject, and tries to inject biographical details of Rebney, the essence of the man remains curiously distant. Still, the emergent portrait is at least entertaining, offering a glimpse forward at the next generation of Andy Warhol’s famous assertion regarding fame, when one person’s 15 minutes can now become a frozen-in-time, perpetual humiliation — either good-naturedly owned, or forever an irritant. For more information, click here. (Kino, R, 85 minutes)

Great Directors

Film Reviews

Standing unabashedly on the shoulders of giants, director Angela Ismailos pays homage to her favorite filmmakers in the documentary Great Directors. The worthy subjects? David Lynch, Richard Linklater, Stephen Frears, Bernardo Bertolucci, Todd Haynes (below, middle), Agnes Varda, John Sayles, Ken Loach, Liliana Cavani and Catherine Breillat.

Intercutting among these filmmakers in a fairly freely associative way, Ismailos (above right) explores each director’s artistic evolution, and, variously, the roles of politics, history, opportunity and peers on their work. The reflections are often revelatory, if in glancing fashion. Sayles discusses his writing-for-hire mindset and Haynes assays the “culturized, homogenized” version of screen gayness spawned by the ’90s New Queer cinema, while Linklater ruminates on the flipside benefits to the imagination that a (relative) lack of privilege breeds. While Ismailos lets a couple big opportunities for follow-up go unexplored (Lynch’s interesting assertion, in one of his few self-analytical moments, that Eraserhead is his “most spiritual work”), her film is still an inviting illumination on the struggles of being an artist, and attempting to achieve a singular vision in a creative medium that is also, and perhaps foremost, an industry. (Paladin, unrated, 86 minutes)

Middle of Nowhere (Blu-ray)

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

A pleasant enough dramedy about shaking free of teenage obligations and working to secure one’s own future, or at least a better sense of that path, director John Stockwell’s Middle of Nowhere is the filmic equivalent of a solid mid-tempo rock track — free of many of the preordained grooves of more discretely defined comedic or dramatic young adult genre pieces, and yet destined, for all its buoyant low-grade, character-fed quirkiness, to never really land a lasting emotional blow.

The story centers on a rebellious, 17-year-old screw-up from a wealthy family, Dorian Spitz (Anton Yelchin), who finally exhausts the patience of his adoptive parents. They ship him off for the summer break to live with his strict, disciplinarian uncle, who promptly bans Dorian from driving, advising that “walking builds blisters, and blisters build character.” Henceforth, Dorian lands a job at a local water park and, ever in need of transportation, strikes up a
friendship with the slightly older Grace (Eva Amurri), who’s spent the last half dozen years looking after her
younger sister Taylor (Willa Holland) following their father’s suicide. Grace’s mother Rhonda (Amurri’s real-life mom, Susan Sarandon) is a self-centered force of nature who sees
herself as a martyr for the sacrifices she’s made to keep her family
together.

In reality, though, she’s a steady stream of roadblocks for Grace, too busy trying to impress her dreams of a modeling career on Taylor to tend to Grace’s educational future. In fact, by taking out credit cards in her daughter’s name and neglecting to make payments, Rhonda has seemingly doomed Grace’s chances of going to college, unless the latter
raises a cool $12,000 in three months to cover tuition. Enter Dorian, ever the schemer. Hatching a plot to sell pot, he strikes a business deal with the practical-minded Grace, who sets aside her objections but soon finds her arrangement with Dorian complicated by burgeoning feelings for rich boy Ben (Justin Chatwin).

At its core, Middle of Nowhere is about realizing that familial bonds don’t always translate smoothly into functional relationships, adult or otherwise, and finding a way to manage those relationships while also surrounding oneself with (nominally) more positive influences who support your goals. The problem is that while it’s anchored by likable young performers, there’s not quite enough of a dark streak here to give the material some weight, and a honest sense of lurking disaster. While it’s understandable that she would want to escape the destructive clutches and impulses of her mother, Grace’s ambition are fairly lightly sketched, and Amurri consistently plays to the sunnier instincts of her character, even in emotional moments.

Michelle Morgan’s script deserves points for realistically showcasing how quickly the swirl of teenage feeling can inform decision-making (and allowing Stockwell to further indulge his under-recognized appreciation of the female backside), but, without getting too far into the specifics, the movie’s ending fundamentally ignores the most basic libidinal impulses of adolescence, and how male judgment and kindness come online, as it were, typically much later than their female counterparts.

Middle of Nowhere comes to Blu-ray presented in 1.85:1 widescreen 1080p high-definition, with a DTS-HD master audio 5.1 sound mix, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. In the bonus material, Stockwell (Blue Crush, Into the Blue) jokes about being unable to escape from water, as location scouting turned up a water park on the edge of Baton Rouge that ended up being a much more visually engaging place of employment for Grace and Dorian than what was originally written, a grocery store. The cast and crew interviews, including with producer David Lancaster, are engaging, but there’s unfortunately an awful lot of yawning plot recap in the 25-minute making-of featurette that accompanies the disc. Six minutes of deleted scenes find Dorian sketching out some of his uncle’s spartan rules in conversation with Grace, and also extend laundry room dance sequence in which Dorian impulsively plants a kiss on Grace. The film’s trailer rounds out materials. To purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, click here; to purchase the regular DVD, meanwhile, click here. B- (Movie) B- (Disc)

Worse Than War

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

When I first grabbed a copy of Worse Than War out of the stacks for review, I assumed, just based on the title, that it was a Black Eyed Peas concert DVD, or perhaps a sequel to Inbred Redneck Vampires. Whoops, my bad. It’s actually a sobering look at the history and causes of ethnic cleansing (the gut-punch subtitle is “Genocide, Eliminationalism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity”), which touches on religion, skin color and our all-too-human tendency to only care about those who (most outwardly) look like us, but also spends a bit of time digging deeper into the human psyche, and examining the parts of us that seem driven to try to eradicate others from the face of the Earth.

Running just under two hours, director Mike DeWitt’s adaptation of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s book of the same name manages to be at once a personal exploration of the horrors of genocide, while also a more academically-inflected disquisition on the nature of ethnic cleansing and large-scale mass murder. Documenting Goldhagen’s travels, teachings, discussions and opinions, Worse Than War offers insights into genocide’s dimensions, causes and patterns — and the ongoing role it plays in politics and human affairs. What makes the movie — what truly gives it its emotional punch — is its broad scope, and range of interviewees. Goldhagen speaks with victims, perpetrators, witnesses, politicians, diplomats, historians, humanitarian aid workers and journalists, all with the purpose of understanding and explaining the critical features of genocide, and how it might be prevented and stopped.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Worse Than War comes to DVD presented in 16×9 widescreen, with an English language stereo track. Its sole bonus feature, apart from a menu screen touting PBS’ web site, is an extended interview chat with author Goldhagen on the making of the film, and what first sparked him to pen his book. To purchase the DVD, phone (800) PLAY-PBS, or simply click here. Or, if Amazon is totally your thing, click here to purchase. B+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)

The Final Films of 25 Dead Actors

Ephemera, Musings

Over at the Bullz-Eye Blog, in an interesting and ruminative glimpse over the shoulder, Will Harris et al take a crack at 25 final films from no-longer-living legends, complete with trailers/clips. It’s an interesting lens through which to filter actors and actresses, and to a certain extent how they choose to cap their careers — whether they’re protective or mindful of “legacy” issues, or just like to work until they’re almost ready to keel over into a pine box kept at set’s edge… the “Jay Leno model,” it would seem. At any rate, a quick, fun read — though a tipster rightly points out that a funnier if perhaps slightly less tasteful article would have concentrated solely on the roster of well-known actors whose final films were, shall we say, significantly “lesser” than their work at the height of their careers (think Anthony Perkins, Rock Hudson, Kirk Douglas, Donald Pleasence, etcetera).

Videocracy

Film Reviews, Politics

Americans used to the pretzel-twisted prevarications and market-tested, advance-scouted, carefully groomed speeches and appearances of Stateside politicians would be rightfully baffled by the behavior and robustly embraced public persona of current Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is the tangential figure at the center of Erik Gandini’s Videocracy, an interesting documentary examination of tabloid culture, the pursuit of fame for fame’s sake, and tech-age information management that isn’t quite a forceful enough inquisition into the go-go, power-grab pop intersection of said disparate elements to connect in lasting emotional fashion.



A selection at both the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals, Gandini’s movie plunks viewers down in the middle of the high-glitz, low-information, skin-baring media culture promulgated by Berlusconi, and then slowly works its way backward, showing how, with three personally owned commercial channels as well as state television at his disposal, the gregarious prime minister owns a grip on 90 percent of Italian television.

We first meet 26-year-old Riccardo, a would-be entertainer who professes to combine the singing and dance moves of Ricky Martin with the martial arts skills of Jean-Claude van Damme, and rages against the injustice of a talent-promotion system that elevates veline, or arm-candy girls who perform wriggling, 30-second dances as TV commercial break bumpers and stand smiling by their hosts, but aren’t ever allowed to speak. (It sounds like hackish, deluded sour grapes until one hears about how Berlusconi tabbed one such ex-showgirl as his cabinet’s “Minister of Gender Equality.”) Later, Videocracy delves into the story of Fabrizio Corona, a sort of paparazzi pimp who lands an eight-month prison stint in a labyrinthine photo extortion case involving well known public figures, and then emerges from jail ready to capitalize on his own demi-celebrity by pitching himself as a pumped-up, himbo entrepreneur.

While it’s often garish and comedically inflected, there’s also a telling, thin undercurrent of wonky dread to the film. Gandini (Gitmo: The New Rule of War), however, seems content to present discrete dots, without ever really attempting to sketch in any grander lines of connection. Sometimes, too, his technique is just lazy; he at one point showcases Berlusconi making a foreign speech, but crucially fails to source the material. Somewhat ironically, given its focus on the idea of image trumping substance, Videocracy needs more talking heads, and a stronger authorial presence.

Media control is unarguably a powerful tool in shaping public opinion,but Gandini’s colorful film, while at times fascinating, is vague, and less than the sum of its parts — a sort of proudly casual, offhand rumination on the desperate impulses of an ambitious Italian underclass. When a television producer opines that “this flow [of glossy, quasi-sexist imagineering] is a mirror of the presidential personality,” one senses the depth of feeling behind this sentiment — its “truthiness,” per Stephen Colbert — but there isn’t enough evidence to render a conviction. To view the film’s trailer, click here. (Kino Lorber, unrated, 85 minutes)

Trailer For The Town Gives Good Blue-Collar Crime Drama

Trailer Watch

Out this week is the trailer for The Town, Ben Affleck‘s directorial follow-up to Gone Baby Gone, and it gives good, gritty, blue-collar crime color, character and stakes. Top shelf stuff, this. Well polished, I mean. Not exactly startlingly new, plot-wise, though the melted-face nun get-ups and Rastafarian-Matrix-twins-meets-Ghostrider-skull-masks are a bit unnerving, and could spawn a mini-Halloween trend on particularly Northeastern college campuses. So many films reach in their marketing when they tout “From the studio behind/that brought you…” But the name-dropping here of The Departed by Warner Bros. is actually the rare such associative credit that doesn’t come across as crass and/or empty. That’s the target they’re aiming at, and they seem to have another authentic-ringing product, so they’d be stupid not to bang that drum loudly.

Benise: The Spanish Guitar

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

The Spanish guitar used in flamenco is an epic instrument, and its story is weaved throughout Benise: The Spanish Guitar. Integrating live performance with real footage, viewers travel with American-born Roni Benise as he trips across the globe. If, owing considerably to the worshipful cinematography and framing, one can’t help but snicker a little bit and envision him as some sort of Saturday Night Live sketch character, the title still connects in fairly robust fashion because of its music.

From the cobblestone streets of Old Havana to an Arabian desert, from the romantic canals of Venice to the oldest bullring in Spain, from a quaint Paris café to a 2000-year-old sacred Buddhist temple in India, watch as the enchanted Spanish Guitar becomes a treasure chest of inspiration — the keeper of stories of glory and tragedy through times and worlds gone by. Benise’s masterful guitar playing, brilliantly choreographed dance numbers and moving orchestral pieces — as well as the unparalleled beauty of some of the Gitanas dancers — give Spanish dance and music a luminous makeover.

The disc’s musical selection rundown is as follows: Act I is comprised of an overture, followed by “Lovers Theme,” “Strings of Fire,” “Gypsy Nights,” “Spanish Guitar” with Kimberly Locke, and “Malagueña.” There are also two vignettes, “The Quest” and “The Duel.” Act II is comprised of vignettes from “The Masquerade” and “The Marionettes,” plus “Mi Amor,” “Café Paris” (with Nick and Lena from Dancing with the Stars), “The Prince” and “Arabesque Aranjuez.” The third act, meanwhile, includes “The Sun” (a Havana-set vignette), “Cuba Libre” (with Dave Koz), “Tango de Besame,” a club mix of “Bamboleo,” “The Priestess” (another Havana-set vignette), “Firedance” and “Evermore (The Wedding Song),” with Giorgia Fumanti.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Benise: The Spanish Guitar comes to DVD in 1.78:1 widescreen, with an English language Dolby stereo audio track. Five bonus world music videos are included. To purchase the DVD, phone (800) PLAY-PBS, or click here. B- (Concert) B (Disc)

Magnolia Buys Rights to Joaquin Phoenix Documentary

Ephemera

I don’t know if I’ll make the final cut — I was interviewed briefly at the Two Lovers junket, after an interesting interview — but Casey Affleck’s feature directorial debut on a very strange year in the life of brother-in-law Joaquin Phoenix will be released on September 10, as Magnolia Pictures has wrapped up a deal for worldwide distribution rights. Titled I’m Still Here, the movie charts Phoenix’s announced retirement from acting, growth of a crazy prospector’s beard, and launching of a rap career.

“When It’s a Number Two, I Look Like Number One…”

Amusements, Trailer Watch

Yes, this is real, and not a Saturday Night Live sketch. I saw it with my own eyes, and then proceeded immediately to an emergency chemical wash station. Actually, scratch that… it’s brilliant in its own way. I can admit that. I admire the mind that conceived it and the oral persuasion that went into getting a client to pay (presumably top dollar) for it. I just don’t know about the target audience. I mean, who digs jean shorts, let alone mock-denim diapers? Outside of Kentucky, I mean.

Inception

Film Reviews

To try to completely distill filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s sprawling sci-fi chessboard action-drama on the fly and in short-form would be something of a fool’s game, so a longer review will likely follow, in some form, somewhere, but suffice it to say that an admiration and understanding of the mind-bending Inception rests largely in one’s appreciation for and tolerance of the idea of esoteric feeling fueling an action film rather than merely corporeal concerns.

Still plagued by the death of his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard), freelance corporate espionage agent Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) extracts ideas from dreams, tilling his victims’ subconscious for valuable information. Busted by a businessman (Ken Watanabe) who offers him a chance for amnesty by planting an idea deep in the mind of his ascendant rival (Cillian Murphy), Dom and his team plunge deep into a multi-layered dreamscape.

Rangy and intellectually muscular, Inception is flawed in the ways that only a brilliant, overreaching work can be. While almost always involving, it doesn’t have a suitably engaging antagonist, and its grander emotional strokes don’t quite pack the emotional wallop Nolan thinks they do, mainly because Mal remains a cipher, a placeholder of peaceable tranquility rather than a full-blooded character.

What’s most heartening and invigorating, though, is the sheer, staggering theoretical and philosophical ambition on display, and the amount of studio muscle and capital thrown at it, when pablum is so often Hollywood’s default setting. At its core, Inception is a rumination on the very human and appealing idea of utter stability, and arrested happiness. For plenty of film geeks, that will be achieved this summer. (Warner Bros., PG-13, 148 minutes)

Inbred Redneck Vampires

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Inbred Redneck Vampires has exactly one thing going for it, in the form of its DVD cover, in which a “tramp stamp” Confederate flag tattoo rises alluringly over a pair of jeans, blood trickling down the bare back of its cover model. Unfortunately not even this potentially lucrative one-sheet image is clearly rendered; it’s awash in muddy grey, which is a telling metaphor for the across-the-board failure of what could otherwise be a stupid-fun romp through an exploitative, made-for-video premise.

A micro-budgeted, schlocky 2004 comedy only now receiving a home video
release, the provocatively titled Inbred Redneck Vampires finds sexy vampire Catherine (Felicia Pandolfi) and her lackey/underling Lendel (Werewolf Tales‘ Warren E.B.B., impressively preserving the anonymity of three-quarters of his name) on the run from a ruthless vampire hunter. After stumbling across Billy Joe Barney Bob (Robert Olin), they take refuge in the small rural burgh of Backwash, where Catherine hatches a plan to turn the backwoods folk into an army of vampire slaves. Beer drinking, bean eating, tripe cooking, shower peeping (above), competitive farting, terrible puns, and all other manner of forced line readings and sigh-inducing inanity ensue, leading up to the town’s annual Tripe Days Festival.

The back of the DVD cover box touts the movie as “combining the gross-out and physical comedy of Animal House and American Pie with the country humor of Hee Haw,” but that’s sort of akin to saying Fear Dot Com shares a lot in common with The Exorcist since they’re both horror films. Director and co-writer Joe Sherlock may be a veteran of over two dozen independent features and anthologies, but his work here doesn’t even have any sleazy sexploitation value for avowed fans of off-the-beaten-path regional video. (The movie was shot in Washington and Oregon, with a cast of largely local non-professionals.)

A lot can be forgiven by way of shoddy technical execution if there’s just a little pop to the material — some snarky fun to be had in the tangled weeds of the dialogue, or a performance that’s wild, zonked and/or enjoyably amusing. Inbred Redneck Vampires simply doesn’t have any of those things going for it, however. (There is a dwarf [also above, leering], if that matters to anyone.) The set-ups are mostly flat, the framing and camerawork is atrocious, the performances uniformly cringe-inducing (broad, without benefit of a backdrop and pacing that tonally matches), and the nature of the material unsettled and very much up in the air. Don’t judge a book by its cover, they say. The same applies to shlocky B-movies, if anyone needed a reminder.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Inbred Redneck Vampires comes to DVD presented in 16×9 widescreen, divided into 29 chapters, with an English language stereo audio track. Bonus material arrives by way of 10 minutes worth of bloopers (in which tubby guys reveal some man-cleavage and one gal mock-fellates a microphone), a trailer for the movie, and an 11-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, which reveals the movie’s original title as Bloodsucking Redneck Vampires, and spotlights the nature of DIY indie film production, by way of a wardrobe story involving a panicked run to the nearest Target, one town away. There are nine trailers for other Sub Rosa Studios releases, too, including for movies entitled Ski Wolf and, ahem, Terror at Blood Fart Lake (yes, seriously). A braver critic would have perhaps given due diligence and investigated the latter; I skipped it, alas. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. F (Movie) C- (Disc)

In Regards to Interviews and Sequels That Never Were

Ephemera, Musings

In a newly published essay, Mark Twain assays the art and experience of the interview, while over at PopMatters, Monte Williams takes a flight-of-fancy look at sequels that never were. The latter is of particular interest to me in that I too feel often feel intrigued or interested most by what’s out-of-frame in sequels; I’d love (at least in theory) to see genre pieces spin-off and follow characters in more talky, urbane directions. If you give me an interesting character, I’m perfectly happy to follow them into new terrain. The mathematical studio formula of apportioned excess (e.g., Bad Boys II) makes for some absolutely terrible follow-ups, just on a very basic conceptual level.

Predators

Film Reviews

A spirited and slickly mounted production that suffers more from sins of omission than commission, Predators gives distributor 20th Century Fox good reason to believe there’s life yet left in their alien hunters franchise.

Directed by Nimrod Antal (Vacancy), from a script by Alex Litvak and Michael Finch, Predators opens with Adrien Brody awakening in a mid-air free-fall, dumped from up high on what turns out to be an alien planet, with a parachute that (naturally) barely opens in time. Brody’s square-jawed Royce, it turns out, is an experienced mercenary. In a matter of minutes, he’s soon surrounded by Isabelle (Alice Braga), an Israeli Defense Force sniper, and a set of assorted killers, scumbags and underworld enforcers (Danny Trejo, Oleg Taktarov, Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, Walter Goggins and Louis Ozawa Changchien), with Topher Grace’s wimpy Chicago doctor apparently the odd man out. They quickly squash their beef, this group, rightly assuming that greater dangers lurk not too far around the edges of their strange new environment.

Firefights with boar-like beasties ensue. It seems that these alien predators apparently value the very sport of death-hunting, and having dangerous human game helps keep them on their toes, and adapt to new strategies of defense. At least that’s what the group eventually finds out from Noland (Laurence Fishburne), a cracked veteran they stumble across who’s been surviving on his own. As the predators’ hunt commences, the humans scramble to stay alive, and Royce hatches a long-shot plot to try to locate and commandeer the cloaked alien spaceship.

Other than a token fealty to the variable degrees by which characters’ actions are governed by some sense of human connection instead of purely self-interest, Predators doesn’t offer up much in the way of subtext or nuance. Instead, it’s mostly about action and letting viewers get a (nostalgic, for some) kick from seeing aliens using their heat-signature vision, and making their now characteristic gurgley-clicking noises. Its technical execution is fairly slick, but, damningly, the movie leaves untapped intrigue and tension on the table.

Its characterizations are thin (no great shock there) and its dialogue rarely more than functional, but also, crucially and unrealistically, there’s a level of basic unexamined human interaction to the movie that’s pretty baffling. When Royce and the others, all strangers, somewhat suss out that they’re each familiar with violence, let’s say, to put it euphemistically, no one ever glares at Grace’s character, points, and says, “Hey, what about this whitebread kid with glasses?” They just don’t have the conversation, which could be accomplished in a minute of screen time. Coming on the heels of the conclusion of small screen phenomenon Lost, which similarly made hay out of a group of strangers thrown together into an insane and intense situation in a remote environment, Predators seems especially lacking in this regard — in its steadfast, almost allergic avoidance to any sort of intellectual reasoning regarding the group’s surroundings and who might have put them there. Even if — as correctly ascertained and certainly born out through immediate experience — it’s basically just a survival-hunt obstacle course, wouldn’t all the gun-toting-types recognize the one not like the other, and voice something about that? Part of this, in theory, is to preserve a slight twist near the movie’s conclusion, but it doesn’t pass muster. It’s lame to (exclusively) have characters this plugged-in, reflexively unanalytical and ready to go.

What gives Predators its kick and pull, then, is its casting. The inking of Brody to the film (along with that of Grace) initially drew plenty of raised eyebrows from fans, but he handles the crypto-macho thing with aplomb, and steely nerve. Even though he’s beefed up a bit (20 pounds, say feature interviews, but that seems a bit generous), it cuts against the grain to see a somewhat lean, normally proportioned guy wading into the breach in a movie like this, and it comes off as refreshing. Braga, meanwhile, is solid, in the role that would have surely been given a bit too much sneering surface toughness by Michelle Rodriguez. And then there’s Fishburne, who wanders into the film deep in its second act, and absolutely owns a whispery-crazy scene in which he imparts some of the wisdom he’s gleaned from 10 “seasons” of hunting and being hunted. These three performances — in addition to the creative misfire that was 2007’s Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem — are a shared reminder that while otherworldly hunters may be the slaying stars of the show in the Predator series, humans still matter most in the equation. (20th Century Fox, R, 106 minutes)

Eyeborgs

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

The idea of mechanized roving security cameras that go schizoid and start slaying people — perhaps at the behest of nefarious establishment masters, perhaps not — inescapably aligns with surging modern fears about privacy, and technological intrusion. That’s Eyeborgs, in a nutshell. There’s delicious potential here, if it’s in the right hands — someone like Paul Verhoeven, perhaps, or David Cronenberg. But Highlander‘s Adrian Paul and some kid who looks like he might be cast as Robert Pattinson in a high school production of some emo Twilight fiction… well, they’re not the right hands. That’s all I’m saying.

Set in the near future, when the fear of terrorism has escalated into absolute, media-stoked hysteria (i.e., after the next successful Stateside terror attack), Eyeborgs posits a world where, in order to deal with the paranoia, robotic cameras are everywhere — in people’s homes, on the streets, in the workplace — in order to monitor things, and keep everyone safe. But are the cameras really being used to keep America safe… or to safekeep Americans?

Federal agent Gunner Reynolds (Paul, perhaps operating under the assumption that he’s being paid in per-ounce emoting) becomes suspicious of this prowling, precautionary system after a series of murders occur in which the video records don’t seem to align with the physical evidence. Recruiting the help of TV news reporter Barbara Hawkins (Megan Blake) and the President’s punkish, purple-haired nephew, Jarett Hewes, (Luke Eberl), Gunner angles to discover who’s really controlling the eyeborgs, with reclusive political dissident G-Man (Danny Trejo) providing the valuable initial assessment that the little buggers seem to be weaponized.

Eyeborgs might sound schlocky, but the potential for derisible special effects hampering its effectiveness actually ranks far down on the list of problems. Director Richard Clabaugh keeps things moving at a decent clip, and the CGI work is… adequate, at least. Let’s say that. Clabaugh doesn’t succumb to the feeling or need to feature a straight-on effects shot when something a bit more integrated and fleeting might work just as well. And if Eyeborgs doesn’t quite, on an intellectual level, fully dig into the provocative themes that its conceit raises, the film at least amply earns its R rating without dipping too far into over-the-top gore. Unfortunately, the movie’s dialogue is hammy and on-the-nose, and its acting simply not up to snuff. Repeatedly, the movie fumbles away any sense of accrued momentum or suspense, with screwball inflections and other oddly timed freak-outs.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Eyeborgs comes to DVD presented in a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and optional English and Spanish subtitles. Special features consist of a small handful of deleted scenes, the movie’s trailer, and a nice, lengthy behind-the-scenes featurette which blends cast and crew interviews, some on-set footage and clips from the film. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. In addition, the film is available via digital download. C (Movie) B- (Disc)

Happy Birthday, Alexis Dziena

Birthdays

It’s a happy birthday to Alexis Dziena, who turns 26 today. Dziena’s bikini and crotch, variously, made small snatches of Fool’s Gold (above) bearable. Of course, she first came to the attention of curious monkeys courtesy of her full-on nude scene in Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, which I’d wager was Google-searched by more people than actually saw the film.

Brooklyn’s Finest

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Movies detailing the lives of corrupt, disinterested and/or tempted New York police officers could and probably should constitute their own subgenre Netflix listing, and that’s where Brooklyn’s Finest, a very masculine, surface-level slice of familiar cop drama, slots. Those inclined to like this sort of thing will find enough about it to like; others will likely shrug.

Unfolding over the course of one chaotic week, the movie centers around three conflicted Big Apple cops whose discrete stories eventually come together in a massive drug sting operation. There’s burned-out veteran Eddie Dugan (Richard Gere), one week away from retirement; narcotics officer and family man Sal Procida (Ethan Hawke), who’s grappling with a gnarly house mold problem (yes, seriously) and struggling to make ends meet for his seven children; and equally stressed-out
Clarence “Tango” Butler (Don Cheadle), who’s been undercover so long his
loyalties might have started to shift from his fellow officers to old
friend Caz (Wesley Snipes), a drug dealer just out of prison. With
pressures bearing down on them, each man is forced to make some tough
decisions that have lasting consequences, both anticipated (to them) and
unforeseen.

It’s not a grade-A slur to say that Brooklyn’s Finest
feels entirely constructed from prefabricated parts, or like the
comeback single from a reconstituted band. There’s Fuqua and Hawke,
reuniting from Training Day; Snipes, playing a character who could be a
cousin of New Jack City’s Nino Brown; and Cheadle working undercover, as in
Traitor. Fuqua shoots the film with much style and pop-off energy, but the plotting here is
strictly by the book — except for Gere’s story strand, actually, which
flirts with intrigue in detailing his complicated relationship with a
hooker (Shannon Kane). Unfortunately, audiences can’t dictate which
story of the triptych to stick with, so the finest portions of Brooklyn’s Finest are forced to exist in timeshare lockstep with the more boring portions. That makes even a curious, look-see rental a 50-50 satisfying proposition, at best.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Brooklyn’s Finest comes to DVD presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen, with English stereo and Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Four separate behind-the-scenes featurettes run a combined 25 minutes, and track the film’s 41-day production schedule fairly well. Fuqua is an articulate guy who has a lot of thoughtful empathy for his movie’s characters, and Hawke also has some interesting things to say about how Fuqua has gotten even better as a director since their previous collaboration. Furthermore, screenwriter Michael Martin’s personal biography (he was working as a toll booth operator while penning the script at night, and eventually leveraged a second place finish in a script contest into a production sale) is an inspiration to those that would continue to pursue their dreams against considerable odds. A whopping 30-plus minutes of deleted scenes is also included. There’s also the movie’s trailer, and a small clutch of other previews, including for Pandorum, The Crazies and three other films. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. To purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. C (Movie) B (Disc)

As the Head Spins, the Heart Doesn’t Care…

Irritations

I don’t have to pay attention to any of the specific details of the $100 million libel suit against author and Daily Beast editor-at-large Randall Lane, who in his new book The Zeroes claims diminutive ex-baseball player Lenny Dykstra was secretly paid $250,000 by AVT, Inc. to plug its stock on TheStreet.com, the website owned and operated by CNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer, do I? I mean, once they come back from the holiday break I can pretty much count on Jon Stewart and company to wrap this one up for me with a bow on top, right?