Click here for my list of the Top 15 Movies of 2011: part one, part two, and part three, and here for my list of the Top 15 Comic Book Series of 2011: part one, and part two.

Now let’s dig into my list of the Top 10 DVDs/Blu-Rays of 2011!

10.  The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret: Series One – As a huge fan of Arrested Development, this six-episode IFC series that reunited Will Arnett (Gob Bluth) and David Cross (Tobias Funke) was something of a disappointment.  More agonizingly awkward than actually funny, it’s on this list because that fact that this weird, short little series exists at all on DVD is one of the reasons that I love this format!  I had missed this series when it aired on IFC, so I was so pleased that it was released on DVD.  The show isn’t without merit, but it’s nowhere near the genius of the late, great (and now possible resurrected!) Arrested Development.

9.  Marvel’s super-hero movie blu-rays: Thor, Captain America: The First Adventure, and X-Men: First Class – I praised these three Marvel super-hero movies in my list of the Top 10 Movies of 2011, and I was equally taken by their blu-ray releases.  Not only do all three films look absolutely gorgeous on blu-ray, but all three are accompanied by some fairly in-depth featurettes exploring all aspects of the films’ production.  None of these are super-elaborate special editions, and I do wish that, for all of these films, the featurettes had been edited together into one longer, comprehensive making-of documentary.  But these are very, very solid releases, with a lot for fans of these films to dig into.  Extra props for the wonderful “Marvel One-Shot” shorts included on the Thor and Captain America discs, that further connect the Marvel films leading up to The Avengers.

8.  Louie: Season 1 – I’d been reading about this show for a while, and having now finally watched the season one set I can say that this show deserves all the praise it’s been getting, and more.  In it’s structure, the show resembles Seinfeld: clips of Louie C. K. performing stand-up are intercut with vignettes of his life.  But in other respects the show is the exact opposite of Seinfeld.  Whereas on Seinfeld all of the story-lines would wind up beautifully dovetailing by the end, on Louie the individual scenes on the show often have little or nothing to do with one another.  We’ll watch a seven-minute sequence of Louie and his buddies playing poker, and then after some more stand-up we’ll shift to an entirely different scene that has absolutely nothing to… [continued]

At this point in Woody Allen’s amazing career (and whether you love or loathe the filmmaker himself, you must acknowedge that the man’s writing and directing a film a year for the last forty-some odd years is an amazing achievement) I think that my level of enjoyment of his new films rests largely on which side of the familiar I feel his new films land.

Many critics object to the been-there, done-that feel that they get from Woody’s films these days. And I certainly feel that way myself, sometimes. But, on the other hand, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a great artist continuing to explore certain themes or ideas throughout his work. Painters do that, as do musicians, so why not filmmakers?

Woody Allen’s latest film, Midnight in Paris, opens to a gorgeous montage of images of Paris, set to a piece of jazz music. This is a device that Mr. Allen has used before in his films, most notably in the opening to Manhattan (click here for my review of that seminal film), in which we’re presented with a montage of images of New York City, set to a wonderful piece of music by George Gershwin. Watching the opening of Midnight in Paris, one might sigh and say, “been-there, done-that, this is just the same as the opening of Manhattan.” But, despite the similarity, I still loved this device as a way to open the film. It felt like a stylistic echo of Mr. Allen’s previous work in a way that was like spoons fitting comfortably together in a drawer, rather than repetition done by an artist out of ideas. (It helps that the images of Paris in the opening to Midnight in Paris are so beautiful, and the jazz music so wonderful.)

On the other hand, when we’re presented with scenes, in the early part of the film, in which we meet Gil (Owen Wilson)’s shrewish wife Inez (Rachel McAdams) who is hassling him about his pursuit of “artistic integrity” and who thinks he should just relax and take the easy pay-check (that his Hollywood screenwriting job affords), or when the two argue about Paul (Michael Sheen), with whom Inez is enchanted but who Paul dismisses as an airhead intellectual, I felt that we were on the BAD side of the familiar.

I’ve seen those character types, and those arguments, time and time again in Woody Allen’s films, and I was disappointed to see those same “talking points” returned to here. These character dynamics were interesting to me in Woody’s films from thirty years ago, but now, to me, they feel played out. I would have rather seen Mr. Allen push himself a little bit… [continued]

I’m very excited for the new film adaptation, starring Gary Oldman, of John le Carré’s 1974 spy novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. (I haven’t seen the film yet, but really hope to get to it soon.)  But the release of this new film adaptation spurred me to at last track down something that had been on my “to-watch” list for years: the BBC’s 1979 six-part television adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy starring none other than Sir Alec Guinness in the lead role as George Smiley.

(I wrote six parts because that was how the show was presented in the DVD that I have.  I am aware that the show was aired in seven parts on the BBC, and re-edited into six parts for the American release back in 1980.  I actually didn’t know that until reading up on the mini-series after I’d watched it and, while watching it, I didn’t notice anything that would have lead me to suspect that the series had been re-edited.  Nothing seemed to be truncated, and the end-points of each of the six episodes felt natural to me.  In hindsight, the film-purist part of me wishes I’d seen the original British seven-part version, but the six-part American version certainly worked for me so I have no complaints.)

George Smiley is a getting-on-in-years British intelligence expert who was forced out of the British secret intelligence service (which all the characters refer to as “the circus”) following a power-play in which his mentor, the head of the agency who was known as Control, was pushed out.  But Smiley is brought back into the game when a government official becomes aware of the existence of a possible mole deep within the Circus.  It turns out that Control had been aware of the existence of the mole, and had narrowed down the possibilities to five suspects, nicknamed “tinker,” “tailor,” “soldier,” “poorman,” and “beggarman” (from the words of a British children’s rhyme).  Smiley is given the near-impossible task of spying on the spy-masters.  He must infiltrate the circus and uncover the identity of the mole, all under the noses of the current head officers of the circus, any of whom could be the mole.

I absolutely adored this mini-series, but it’s not for the casual viewer.  One has to pay very close attention to the story to suss out who everyone is and what exactly is happening.  Although it’s very languidly paced, the mini-series doesn’t stop to hold the viewer’s hand to explain who the different characters are, or what the heck they’re talking about.  All of the information you need to understand the story is there, but the viewer has to do a lot of the work to… [continued]

Click here for my thoughts on Carrie (1976) and here for my thoughts on The Fury (1978)!

Well, one thing’s for sure: the opening of Dressed to Kill isn’t one I’m going to be forgetting any time soon.  I’m not sure what I was expecting, but an extended shower scene featuring full frontal nudity of the lead character (played by Angie Dickinson, though apparently the actual nude body on display was that of a body double) who, after getting herself nice and soaped up, begins masturbating and is then surprised and raped.

Oh, it all turns out to be a dream, but it’s an eye-opening sequence and that’s putting it mildly.  In my review of Carrie, I commented that I felt the opening shower scene was totally gratuitous and really weakened what was otherwise a strong start to the film.  Well, this opening shower scene is WAY more graphic (in terms of the nudity shown), and while it feels a bit more of a piece with the erotic thriller that follows, it still feels totally gratuitous.  In mean, it isn’t even an event that actually HAPPENS in the film, it’s just a dream!  I suppose one could suggest that the dream is an introduction to the weird sexual inner life of Angie Dickinson’s character, Kate.  And the concept of dreams and the line between fantasy and reality is a major theme of the film.  But it’s hard to argue that this opening isn’t just a way to start one’s movie off with a bang and titillate the audience.  I guess that’s not a bad thing, necessarily, but (and I made the same comment about Carrie), it makes it hard to take the rest of the movie seriously.

Kate Miller (Angie Dickinson) is a wealthy housewife unsatisfied by her husband.  She admits her desire to have an affair to her psychiatrist, Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine), and eventually does pick up an unnamed guy in a museum.  I’m reluctant to spoil what happens next, so I’ll just say that a spree of sex-related murders begins, and eventually a call-girl, Liz (Nancy Allen, returning from Carrie) and Kate’s young son, Peter (Keith Gordon) team up to try to stop the killer.

Angie Dickinson is terrific in the film, with her star-wattage turned up high.  She’s electric in her early scene in Dr. Elliott’s office, and also in the extended near-wordless sequence in which she picks up a guy (or allows herself to be picked up) in the museum.  It’s great fun to see Michael Caine in the film, and he brings great dignity and presence to the role of Dr. Elliott.  Having these two movie-stars in the film really elevates the… [continued]

Last month I wrote about the terrific first season of Party Down. I wasted little time in devouring the show’s second season, as well.  Sadly, these two short seasons represent the entire run of the show, but I can’t recommend them highly enough to you.

To re-cap, Party Down focuses on the sad-sack employees of Party Down, a small Hollywood catering business.  Pretty much every single one of the Party Down staff are wannabe actors, hoping for their big break while toiling away at a menial job they detest.  The genius of the show’s structure is that every episode is set at a different Party Down event/party.  So each episode becomes its own self-contained little movie, with totally different locations and guest-stars.  It’s a brilliant structure for a TV show, and one that could have provided endless story-telling opportunities.  Sadly that was not to be.

Season two of Party Down begins a few months after the end of season one.  Ron (Ken Marino)’s Soup R Crackers franchise has failed, and he slinks back to Party Down as a depressed, angry slacker.  With Henry (Adam Scott) now team leader, the first few episodes of the season revels in the reversal-of-roles.  (Now Ron is the difficult one, and Henry is the exasperated boss trying to keep him and the rest of their motley crew in line.)

The only major cast change is that Jane Lynch had left the series (to appear in Glee), so season two introduces us to a new character Lydia (Megan Mullally).  Ms. Mullally is phenomenal as the loopily deranged Hollywood mom, trying to guide her pre-teen daughter to super-stardom.  The show’s creators wisely chose to create an entirely different character from Lynch’s Constance.  While I missed Jane Lynch, of course, Megan Mullally is so entertaining that I quickly accepted her addition to the cast.

Season two of Party Down again blesses us with some terrific guest-stars.  J.K. Simmons, Joey Lauren Adams, and Kristen Bell all return from season one.  Dave (Gruber) Allen (guidance counselor Jeff Rosso on Freaks and Geeks) gives a memorable turn as a sci-fi author having a brush with Hollywood.  But the season’s best guest star, and the star of arguably the season’s best episode, is Steve Guttenberg.  That’s right, Police Academy’s Steve Guttenberg.  In the episode “Steve Guttenberg’s Birthday,” Mr. Guttenberg hires the Party Down crew to cater his birthday.  But his friends throw him a surprise party the day before, and he forgets to cancel the booking.  So when Party Down shows up at his house, Mr. Guttenberg (playing himself) decides to invite the gang into his house to have a party with him.  It’s a crazy premise, but the half-hour that follows… [continued]

My journey back through the films of Brian De Palma continues!  Click here for my thoughts on Carrie.

Two years after Carrie, Mr. De Palma directed The Fury, another story of telekinetic teenagers.  But while the initial description of the film does sound a bit like more of the same, The Fury is actually quite different from Carrie in terms of tone and execution.

Carrie was focused on the telekinetic teenager in question.  It was very much a coming-of-age story (albeit a very bizarre, horrific one!)  But The Fury is more of an espionage story.  And while we do follow the telekinetic girl Gillian (Amy Irving) throughout the story, I felt the main character — and the heart of the film — was the adult character, Peter.  In the film’s opening, Peter’s son, Robin (who we learn has telekinetic abilities) is kidnapped by mysterious men who try to kill Peter (and, indeed, Robin believes they succeed).  Throughout the rest of the story, we follow Peter in his increasingly desperate attempts to locate his son.

Peter is played by Kirk Douglas, and he’s terrific in the film.  We don’t learn a lot about Peter’s background, but he clearly has experience and training in the military.  The script doesn’t give Peter too much character — the story is far more concerned with the plot mechanics of twists and double-crosses, rather than character development — but Mr. Douglas’ performance fills in all the blanks we need.  He plays Peter’s friendly charm and charisma, as well as the tough-as-nails, willing-to-do-whatever-it-takes side of him.  He’s a ton of fun to watch, and frankly whenever the film cut away from Peter’s story I was impatient for it to get back to him.

That’s not to criticize Amy Irving (returning from Carrie), who is lovely and endearing as Gillian.  In the movie’s early-going, Gillian discovers that she possesses unusual gifts.  She eventually winds up checking into the Paragon Clinic, a boarding house devoted to young people with special abilities (shades of Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters!).  The clinic’s director (Charles Durning) seems friendly, but it is soon revealed that he has connections to the shady operative (John Cassavetes) who arranged for Robin’s kidnapping.

I enjoyed watching this non-super-hero take on kids with special powers unfold, and I enjoyed how the script and (by John Farris, adapting his novel) and Mr. De Palma’s direction treated the story seriously, without camp.  As I wrote above, The Fury is structured like a spy/suspense film, and I think that was a very successful choice.  (This distinction is made clear right from the film’s opening, an energetically staged assault on an Israeli beach designed to mask the effort to kidnap young… [continued]

I’ve often enjoyed here, on the site, taking some time to watch or, in some cases, re-watch, a series of films by the same director.  One of my very first blogs on the site was a look back at several of the films of David Mamet, and more recently I re-watched the last decade and-a-half of the films of Steven Spielberg (click here for my reviews of AI: Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, Catch Me if You Can, The Terminal, The War of the Worlds, and Munich) and took a look back at the first three films by director Terrence Malick (click here for my reviews of The Thin Red Line, Badlands, and Days of Heaven).

I’ve decided now to turn to a prolific director whose films are very well-known, and yet somehow I’ve only seen a few of them: Brian De Palma.  Of his lengthy filmography, I’d only ever seen Scarface, The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible, Snake Eyes, and Mission to Mars. There are a ton of other famous films, directed by Mr. De Palma, that I’ve been meaning to see for years: Carrie, Blow Out, Casualties of War, Carlito’s Way, Femme Fatale, and more.  So I was excited by the opportunity to finally check out those films.  I was also intrigued by Mr. De Palma’s reputation, in that he seems to be a filmmaker who some love, while others loathe.  Personally I didn’t yet have a strong opinion on Mr. De Palma, having seen so few of his films.  That’s about to change.

I decided to start with one of Mr. De Palma’s most famous films, and the one I had been most wanting to finally check out: Carrie.

The film is based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name.  Sissy Spacek (just three years older than she was in Badlands) stars in what might be her most famous role as young Carrie White.  Raised by her single mom, a religious fanatic (Piper Laurie, dialing the crazy all the way to eleven), Carrie has lived a sheltered life.  Now, as a teenager, she is almost completely clueless as to the simple social realities of how to connect with the other kids at school, and in the movie’s still-shocking opening, Carrie is horrified when she has her first period in the school gym’s shower.  Carrie has no idea what is happening to her, and in the film’s first step into weirdness, that traumatic incident provides the spark that ignites Carrie’s burgeoning telepathic powers.

The opening scene in the girls’ locker room encapsulates everything that works, and doesn’t work, about this film.  Stephen King’s original idea, of taking the terror inherent in a young… [continued]

Ok, so it took me a little longer than I’d anticipated to get to the next installment in my “Days of Terrence Malick” series, looking back at the films of this acclaimed director.  Re-watching The Thin Red Line (read my review here) made me want to watch the two films that Mr. Malick made in the 1970′s: Badlands (read my review here) and Days of Heaven. Both films are considered masterpieces by many, and I was eager to finally see them.

In Days of Heaven, a young and very handsome Richard Gere plays Bill, a poor worker forced to flee his steel-mill job in Chicago after he knocks down his boss in a moment of anger.  So he and his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams) and young sister (Linda Manz) hop a train out of the city.  The threesome eventually find themselves in the Texas panhandle, where they find work (along with hundreds of other migrant laborers) in the wheat fields of a wealthy farmer (Sam Shepard, who I’ll always associate with his role as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff).  The farmer takes a liking to Abby, and Bill urges her to move in with him, so that the three of them can take advantage of the farmer’s wealth.  Needless to say, things don’t turn out well for anyone involved.

There is very little dialogue in Days of Heaven. At times it feels like a silent movie, or a tone poem in which the beautiful imagery is called upon to carry the weight of the story.  There are moments in Days of Heaven in which Mr. Malick is able to harness the awesome power of cinema to create some truly breathtaking moments, all the more notable for their near-total lack of dialogue or narrative exposition.  There are long stretches in which the film lets the absolutely gorgeous shots of the rural Texas landscape carry the viewer along, and I found myself endlessly fascinated by the scenes showing the men and women hard at work harvesting wheat.  Those moments have a poetic beauty that surprised me.  Then, most notably, there is the sequence, late in the film, in which a fire spreads through the farmer’s wheat fields, eventually building to a mighty conflagration.  The escalation of this sequence is incredible and terrifying, a bravura achievement.

And yet so much of the film feels to me as if Mr. Malick was purposely trying to make his film difficult to understand.  I continually found myself struggling to understand the dynamics between the characters, or the simple set-ups of what was going on.  Bill and Abby make a decision, in the early minutes of the film, to pretend that they are brother… [continued]

I’d been reading about Joe Cornish’s directorial debut, the British sci-fi/horror/comedy film Attack the Block, all year.  The low-budget film was a hit on the festival circuit, and was trumpeted by several of my favorite on-line film reviewers, notably Drew McWeeny at Hitfix.com and Devin Faraci at badassdigest.com.  It received a U.S. theatrical release, but sadly came and went from theatres pretty quickly.  When the film was released on blu-ray last month, I was excited to track it down.

The film is terrific, and I’d wager that if you enjoyed UK-based action/comedies such as Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels or Layer Cake, then you’ll really dig Attack the Block.

The titular “block” refers to a low-income housing unit in Kennington, England.  The film’s main characters are a small band of kids from the block who try to escape their lives of poverty and boredom at home by wreaking havoc on the streets.  When we first meet them, they’re egging on their leader, Moses (John Boyega in a star-making role), to beat an unidentifiable creature to death.  Then they mug Sam (Jodie Whittaker), a young single nurse who also lives in the block.  It’s the start of a fine evening for the boys, until an alien invasion spoils all their fun.  Yep, turns out the creature they beat to death was a little alien, who has a lot of angry friends.

The genius of Attack the Block is the way it marries sci-fi alien invasion movie conventions with the street-level young-tough humor of Guy Ritchie’s early films.  Generally these types of alien invasions strike New York City, not a run-down English inner city.  But, of course, watching these street hudlums face an alien apocalypse is the deliriously clever premise of the film, and the source of all the fun.

Not that Attack the Block is all fun and games.  In fact, the early-going isn’t that funny at all.  The gang’s mugging of Sam is an unsettling sequence, not the type of scene you’d expect to find in a film with comedy on its mind.  But writer/director Joe Cornish cleverly sets the stakes of the film to be very high right from the beginning.  This is a world in which bad things happen.  That mugging scene demonstrates that the characters in this film face real peril, thus escalating the dramatic tension.  It also gives a real character-arc to the boys in Moses’ gang.  I intensely disliked the boys at first, but absolutely grew to love them by the end.  It’s a pretty impressive achievement of story-telling, and is a critical reason that the films works as well as it does.

The other is in the way in which, while the… [continued]

Wow!  Add this series to the list of brilliant, cancelled-before-their-time TV shows!

I don’t think I even heard of Party Down during the two seasons it was on the air, on Starz, in 2009-10.  But every now and then, since it’s cancellation, I’d hear or read a mention of it, mostly in connection to being a prior great role of Adam Scott’s, who I’ve been so enjoying as Ben Dywer on the terrific Parks and Recreation.  A sale on Amazon lead me to buy the first season on DVD, and I was blown away!  I’m already almost finished with season two, and deep in mourning that there are no more episodes of this fantastic show!

The series focuses on Party Down, a fairly low-quality Hollywood catering company, staffed primarily by out-of-work actors and actresses.  The show is a true ensemble, but if I had to identify a lead character it would be Adam Scott as Henry.  Henry was once a struggling actor whose big break came on a commercial, saying the catch phrase “Are we having fun yet?”.  Sadly, that break-out role also destroyed his career, forever type-casting him as the “are we having fun yet?” guy.  His dreams pretty much crushed, Henry is fairly rudderless when we first meet him, having sworn off acting, but not sure what he should do with his life instead of that.

He’s hired to work with Party Down by an old friend, Ron, played by Ken Marino.  The two used to party together, back in the day, but Ron partied too hard and too long.  He’s sworn off all booze and drugs now, and he sees his job as Party Down team leader as a stepping-stone towards his dream of one day owning a Soup ‘R Crackers franchise.  While everyone else treats their gigs catering with Party Down with apathy or downright loathing, Ron takes things totally seriously, leading to a lot of (very funny) butting heads with his team of misfits.  Ron is so sincere, he’s pretty impossible not to love.

The only part of working for Party Down that is remotely appealing for Henry is the presence of Casey, played by Lizzy Caplan.  Although Casey is married when we first meet her in the pilot, the show wisely avoids any prolonged will-they-or-won’t-they Ross/Rachel tension by immediately getting the two together.  Casey is struggling mightily to succeed as a stand-up comic, and though she’s been pretty beaten down by rejection she sees right through Henry’s “I don’t care anymore” attitude.  Lizzy Caplan had a very small role in Freaks and Geeks, but I recognized her most from her role as Marlena in Cloverfield.  She’s absolutely dynamite here, tough and cynical but also… [continued]

I had previously seen Mimic once, back when it was originally released to theatres in 1997.  I think I went to see it because the trailers looked interestingly creepy, and because I had so enjoyed Charles S. Dutton in Alien 3.  (I still think that Mr. Dutton is one of the best aspects of that sadly misguided Alien sequel.)  I remember thinking Mimic was OK, but it wasn’t a film I was ever drawn to re-watch.

Years later, when I began to discover the films of Guillermo del Toro, and I realized that he had directed Mimic, I began to think it might be interesting to go back and re-watch the film.  That desire to rediscover an early del Toro film was counteracted by what I’d periodically read or hear, in interviews with Mr. del Toro, about how difficult an experience making Mimic was for him, and how many of the decisions represented in the finished film did not at all represent his intentions.

I started hearing rumors, a few years ago, about a possible director’s cut of Mimic, and so I was thrilled when this was finally released to DVD and blu-ray this past summer!  It’s rare — and so always a cause for celebration — to see a filmmaker given an opportunity to go back and try to restore a film that was taken away from them (I’m thinking of the Richard Donner version of Superman II as one example — click here for my review).  As Mr. del Toro describes in the DVD’s special features, there were many things that he had wanted to film but was unable to, so many aspects of his original plans for the film are not represented in this new director’s cut.  What he has done is to go back and trim out much of the second-unit footage that was included in the original edit, footage which he did not direct.  He was also able to re-incorporate into the film many scenes and plot-threads that had been excised from the theatrical cut.  The result, Mr. del Toro describes, is a film that is as close to “his” as we’re ever going to get.

Mimic is, at its heart, a B-movie.  (The plot does involve bugs that grow to mimic humans!)  Mr. del Toro readily admits that in his commentary, and he discusses how his filmmaking strategy has always been to elevate B-movie ideas by taking them 100% seriously and applying as much care as he possibly can in the telling of those stories.  It’s a technique that has served Mr. del Toro very well.  Mimic, though, even in this new director’s cut, never really breaks out of it’s B-movie essence.  Nevertheless, I… [continued]

OK!  As I wrote about last week, after re-watching Terrence Malick’s 1998 WWII film The Thin Red Line, I decided the time had come for me to track down Mr. Malick’s first two films, both of which had gotten so much acclaim when they were released back in the ’70s.  The first of these was Badlands, Mr. Malick’s debut film which he wrote and directed.

Set in the 1950′s, Badlands centers on two main characters: Kit and Holly.  Holly, played by Sissy Spacek, is a fifteen year-old girl living with her father in a quiet South Dakota town.  Her life changes forever when she meets Kit (played by a ferocious, impossibly young Martin Sheen).  Kit is the epitome of cool to her: he is quiet and enigmatic, he’s older (Kit is twenty-five), and he looks and dresses sort of like James Dean.  What’s clear to the audience, though not to Holly, is that something is definitely off about this young man.  During the scene in which we first meet him, working his route as a garbage-collector, Kit seems socially awkward and more than a little weird.  But what I did not see coming was Kit’s tendency towards violence.  That tendency explodes when Holly’s father forbids Kit from seeing her, and only grows from there.  Once Holly finds herself in Kit’s orbit, she gets swept up in an American odyssey of violence and murder.

That sounds like the plot of an exciting action film, but Mr. Malick was after something entirely different.  Badlands is as quiet and weird a film as Kit is as a character.  There is not an inordinate amount of dialogue in the film, and what little there is is fairly banal stuff, not really connected to the incredible events that are transpiring.  Both Kit and Holly are rather still, quiet, almost passive characters.  (Somewhat paradoxically, Kit’s passivity only lasts until he picks up his shotgun.)  Though Kit and Holly are the main characters, the film does not go out of its way to get us to like, or even to sympathize at all with, either one of them.  That cold, almost dispassionate way in which Mr. Malick’s film presents the events we watch unfold is quite striking, and part, I think, of what makes this such a unique piece of work.

Even on the battered version of the film I watched (the image on the old DVD I got from Netflix was a far cry from the gorgeous, newly-restored image of the Criterion Collection’s blu-ray release of The Thin Red Line!), I still found Badlands to be a beautifully shot film.  Mr. Malick’s camera takes the time to explore the incredible vistas of the American… [continued]

I was really disappointed by this summer’s Green Lantern.  I had high hopes for the epic space adventure promised by the trailers, but what we got instead was a lame, Earth-bound mess.  (Read my full review here.)

I wondered if the “Extended Cut” of the film released on DVD and blu-ray would address any of my criticisms of the film.  Sometimes I find that extended versions of films can really flesh out the stories and characters in a way that alters my opinion of a film that I had previously disliked.  Sadly, that is not the case here.

Basically, the only change made to Green Lantern in this new, longer version is an extended flashback, set at the beginning of the film, in which we get to see Hal, Carol, and Hector as kids, and we witness firsthand the death of Hal’s test-fighter pilot.  It’s a great sequence, and never should have been excised from the film.  It’s a much more coherent way of presenting this important back-story than the laughably ridiculous Airplane!-style stress-induced flashbacks that Hal gets, in the theatrical version, when trying to out-maneuver Ferris Airlines’ new pilot-less drones when we first meet him.  It also enables us to start the movie by sympathizing with Hal, which is far better than starting the movie thinking he’s a jerk the way we do in the theatrical cut.

After watching that long new introductory sequence, I was jazzed — this movie is already a whole lot better, I thought!  Sadly, if there were any further changes or extensions to the film after that point, I didn’t notice them.  The rest of the film is as turgid as before.  They even left-in the ridiculous flashbacks in Hal’s test-flight early in the film!!  That makes that whole sequence even MORE stupid than it was in the theatrical cut, when at least the flashbacks were presenting us with some new information.  In this version, we just saw ALL of those scenes literally minutes beforehand!!  Having to sit through those scenes again is beyond stupid.

But Green Lantern is afflicted by this sort of ham-handed story-telling from start-to-finish.  Take the whole introduction to the film, and the escape of Parallax (the film’s main villain).  We hear, in prologue, all about the Green Lantern Corps and about their great enemy, Parallax, who only the great Green Lantern Abin Sur was able to defeat, and imprison in something called “the Lost Sector.”  First of all, as much as I loved Geoffrey Rush’s voice in the narration, and the cool sci-fi imagery on display, I think telling the audience everything we need to know about the villain right off the bat deflates all of the tension… [continued]

Terrence Malick directed two highly acclaimed films in the 1970′s (Badlands and Days of Heaven, neither of which I’ve seen, but I plan to remedy that soon — more on this later), and then he dropped out of sight for twenty years.  Mr. Malick finally returned to the world of filmmaking in 1998 with the release of The Thin Red Line, his lengthy adaptation of James Jones’ novel, set during the battles of Guadalcanal during World War II.

I had previously seen The Thin Red Line once, in theatres back in 1998.  It had nowhere near the effect on me that Steven Spielberg’s WWII film, Saving Private Ryan (which had been released earlier that year) did.  (I still remember my shell-shocked, emotionally drained reaction after seeing Saving Private Ryan in the theatre.  My friends and I sat silently in our seats for a good while after the film ended, and it took a while into the car-ride home before we began to unwind a bit and find ourselves able to discuss the film we’d seen.  These days I am well aware of the film’s narrative weaknesses and tendencies towards over-emotionalities, but I still bow before Mr. Spielberg’s skill in crafting a film that, upon my initial viewing, on the big-screen, left me so emotionally devastated.  The only other film that’s affected me quite that way, when seeing it for the first time on the big screen, was Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.)

But even though I didn’t have anything like that reaction upon seeing The Thin Red Line for the first time back in 1998, I remember thoroughly enjoying the film.  I was entranced by the gorgeous imagery and beguiled by the dense, inter-weaving inner monologues of countless characters, each sharing some of their own insight and reflections on the conflict and on larger issues of human nature and mankind.

When the Criterion Collection released a new blu-ray edition of The Thin Red Line, I was eager to see the film again.  The blu-ray, no surprise, looks and sounds absolutely immaculate.  The barrage of imagery in what I once read described as Mr. Malick’s “tone-poem” remains as sumptuously gorgeous as I remembered.  The juxtaposition of the jaw-droppingly beautiful landscapes and imagery of animals and nature with the unspeakably brutal realities of human conflict during war gives the film a potent and heart-rending thematic punch.

I do find myself wishing, though, that the film’s dense ideas and philosophical musings — not to mention the sheer amount of filmmaking mastery on display as one watches the film’s gorgeous imagery unfold — could have been melded with a narrative that was more effectively coherent.  Because we’re constantly jumping around from character to character, because many… [continued]

Back in 1986, Frank Miller turned the comics world on its ear with the release of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.  This four-issue prestige-format limited series, which Mr. Miller wrote and pencilled (with inks by Klaus Janson and gorgeous colors by Lynn Varley), told the story of a bitter, middle-aged Bruce Wayne.  In Miller’s story, Bruce had retired from being Batman following the death of Jason Todd (the second Robin, who was actually killed in-continuity in the Batman books a year or so later in the “A Death in the Family” story-line).  But disgusted by the cess-pool of crime and corruption that Gotham City has become, Bruce puts back on the cape and cowl and resumes his one-man war against crime, leading to his final confrontation with the Joker and, ultimately, with Superman, who is now in the employ of the U.S. Government.  Violent, gorgeous, and compelling, The Dark Knight Returns blew my mind when I read it (at far too young an age, back in 1988), and it still stands today as one of the finest comic book stories ever made (and certainly as one of the very best Batman stories ever told).

One might have thought that such a work could never be equaled, but the following year, in 1987, Frank Miller returned to Batman and told a story that is as good — if not even better — than The Dark Knight Returns.  For four issues in the regular Batman comic (#404-407), Mr. Miller and David Mazzucchelli retold Batman’s origin in the story called Batman: Year One.  Whereas The Dark Knight Returns was a huge, epic saga, Batman: Year One is a street-level, entirely stripped down Batman story.  In fact, the genius of the story is that it isn’t really Bruce Wayne’s story at all.  The focus is on a young James Gordon, as he attempts to survive his first year on the force in Gotham City.  Batman: Year One is a tough, violent, gritty tale, populated by the corrupt and the broken.  Even our heroes, Bruce Wayne and James Gordon, are presented as being far from perfect — but their heroism derives from their striving to battle past their flaws and imperfections and attempt to do the best they can in a city without hope.  It’s one of Frank Miller’s very best-written tales, and David Mazzucchelli’s art continually takes my breath away with its gorgeous stylization (the man knows how to spot blacks better than pretty much anyone else in the business) and astonishing detail.

Like The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One sits at the very top of the heap of comic book story-lines.  It’s been mined for inspiration by several of the big-screen versions… [continued]

As you’re probably aware, back in 2010 Conan O’Brien’s stint as host of the Tonight Show was unceremoniously cut short when he refused to comply with NBC’s plan to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 AM in order to give Jay Leno back the 11:30 PM time-slot.  After just seven months as the Tonight Show host, Conan was out.  (The whole crazy business was chronicled in the book The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy, by Bill Carter, which I reviewed here.)  Conan eventually started a new late-night show on TBS, though his agreement with NBC prevented him from appearing on television until his new show launched in the fall of 2010.

So in the intervening months, Mr. O’Brien and his crew of writers and producers launched the “Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television” tour, a mad-cap series of live shows all across the country.  The documentary Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, directed by Rodman Flender, chronicles the tumultuous several months of the tour.

Having been unable to get tickets to any of the sold-out shows, I was first and foremost interested in a glimpse at what the shows were like.  In that, Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop delivers in spades.  Throughout the film we get to see a lot of hysterical footage of the live shows — the song parodies, the big production numbers, the comedy bits with visiting guest-stars (like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert), and more.

But the film is far more than that.  It’s a compelling warts-and-all depiction of Conan O’Brien at a very stressful point in his life.  The film highlights Conan’s incredible work ethic and easy charisma, both of which helped to make him such a successful entertainer.  We also see how difficult he could be, at times, to work with (such as in the much-written about scene in which he mercilessly mocks 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer without any apparent justification, or in the many times we see him be curt with his assistant, Sona, among other examples).  Mr. Flender told the New York Times that he said to Conan, before beginning the project: “I don’t want this to be U2 Rattle and Hum. I don’t want to deify you. I want this to be honest.”

And honest the film is.  But Mr. Flender’s documentary isn’t out to get notice just by depicting a big star at its worst.  Mr. Flender is clearly a fan of Conan’s (in addition to their being friends since the two were at Harvard together), and over-all Conan comes off as a hard-working performer trying hard to make the best of a tough situation.  Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop is a fascinating peak behind-the-curtain… [continued]

After having such a good time re-watching David Fincher’s films Se7en (click here for my review) and Fight Club (click here for my review), I decided to take another look at Zodiac.

It was Zodiac that cemented David Fincher in my mind as one of the most amazing directors working today.  I knew he was associated with Alien 3, but that he had that film taken away from him.  (I have a warm spot in my heart for the third Alien film, even though I still see it as a total betrayal of everything that made James Cameron’s Aliens so great.)  I knew he had directed Se7en and Fight Club, but while I immediately recognized that both of those films were clearly made by people with an enormous amount of skill, neither was a film I really loved.  (I have since come to really, really dig Fight Club, but that first time I saw it I think I was a bit overwhelmed by it.)

Something about Zodiac really intrigued me when it was released, but despite that I never got to see it in theatres.  It was only when the film was released on DVD that I tracked it down and watched it.  (I own the Director’s Cut DVD.  This is the version I’m reviewing now, and the only one I’ve ever seen, so I can’t compare it to the theatrical version.)

It blew me away, and I am still in love with it when re-watching it now.

Every frame of the film feels like the result of an incredible amount of focus and creative effort.  It’s clear that an extraordinary amount of detail was pored into the sets, the costumes, the cars, the props, everything, all guided by the skilled eye of a visionary director: David Fincher.  Set over several decades, Zodiac beautifully captures the feel of the different eras, both through subtly altering the look of key sets (like the San Francisco Chronicle office set) and through some stunning visual effects shots (such as a shot made to look like a time-lapse reconstruction of the building of the Transamerica Pyramid).

Speaking of the film’s visual effects, the DVD’s top-notch special features reveal that Zodiac is awash in incredibly subtle, absolutely photo-realistic visual effects that were used to recreate key real locations in the San Francisco area from the ’60s and ’70s.  Most notably, in my mind, is the corner of Washington and Cherry at which the Zodiac killer murdered an unfortunate cab-driver.  The scene when inspectors Toschi and Armstrong arrive at Washington and Cherry to investigate the murder is a tense scene, but when watching it I didn’t give one thought to the scene’s environment.  I was… [continued]

This was a fun one!  Last week I watched The Sting, the 1973 film starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, for the first time.  I’m a big fan of David Mamet’s con-man films (like House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner – click here for my thoughts on those films and several more by the great Mr. Mamet), so it was fun to go back and watch this terrific Best Picture-winning film.

Robert Redford plays Hooker, a street-tough grifter who, one day, working with his partner Luther (Robert Earl Jones — and yes, I did recognize his voice so I wasn’t surprised to look him up on-line and discover that he was James Earl Jones’ father!) scam a mob runner out of a lot of cash.  This, of course, brings all sorts of heat down on the pair.  Hooker winds up in Chicago, and tracks down a man he’s heard is the master of the long con: Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman).  Together, the two hatch down a scheme to take down one of Chicago’s major gansters: Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw).

It’s easy to see why the pairing of Robert Redford and Paul Newman made this film such a hit back in 1973.  The two movie-stars are in top form, and the film gives these two charismatic and handsome actors plenty of room to play.  There were a few moments when I felt Mr. Redford laid it on a bit too thick in his portrayal of the young, stubborn Hooker, but for the most part he’s an engaging lead, and his charisma is potent.  Mr. Newman is an absolute pleasure to watch from start-to-finish, absolutely smooth as silk as the seasoned confidence man.   Mr. Newman is able to convey enormous intelligence and cunning behind Gondorff’s poker-face, and the first time we see Gondorff in action (during the poker-game on the train), it’s clear that he’s a master at his trade, played by a real master of his trade!

Robert Shaw is probably most famous for playing Quint from Jaws, but I’ll always think of him as Donald Grant from From Russia With Love (click here for my review) and also as Mr. Blue from The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three (click here for my review). He is absolutely fabulous as the mean, take-no-prisoners gangster Lonnegan.  Mr. Shaw puts on an Irish brogue that might not be entirely convincing, but which I loved nonetheless.  This man plays the bad-guy like nobody’s business, and he presents a real, credible threat to Hooker and Gondorff.

Hooker and Gondorff surround themselves with a cadre of fellow con-men in order to pull off the scheme, and I particularly enjoyed the performances of Ray… [continued]

Last week I wrote about the disappointingly mediocre Me and Orson Welles, and I commented that the film covered familiar ground as Cradle Will Rock, the 1999 film written and directed by Tim Robbins.  After writing that blog post, I realized that it had been years since I’d last seen Cradle Will Rock, and I was in the mood to give it another viewing.

Set in 1937, Cradle Will Rock focuses on the tumultuous production of the musical written by Marc Blitzstein (Hank Azaria), directed by Orson Welles (Angus Macfadyen) and funded by the Federal Theatre Project, a division of the depression-era Work Progress Administration that helped bring theatre to millions of people nation-wide.  The play Cradle Will Rock depicted the struggles of working-class union members, and as such was seen as extremely controversial by some.  But the sprawling story of Tim Robbins’ film covers far more than just the production of that one play.  It also tells the story of the artist Diego Rivera (Ruben Blades)’s creation of an enormous mural for Nelson Rockefeller (John Cusack) that was destroyed when Mr. Rockefeller disapproved of the left-leaning imagery of the mural.  We also see an elderly ventriloquist’s struggles in the face of the demise of vaudeville, the House Un-American Activities Commission’s assault on the Federal Theatre Project, and more.  Through all these stories, Cradle Will Rock tells the stories of artists struggling in the face of economic depression, and the collision between art and politics.

Mr. Robbins has assembled an incredible, enormous ensemble for his film.  Each one of these characters could be the headliner in a film focusing solely on them.  (If I have any criticism about Cradle Will Rock, it’s that it might have been nice to have spent some more time with some of these characters, had the film had a narrower focus.  But they’re each so good, and their characters’ stories so interesting, that I can’t really complain.)

When the film opens, we meet Olive (Emily Watson), a beautiful young singer who has been forced to sleep in movie theatres because she is broke and homeless.  She eventually finds work as a stagehand in Orson Welles’ production of Cradle Will Rock. Mr. Welles is portrayed by Angus Macfadyen.  It’s a much broader, comical portrayal that that of Christian McKay in Me and Orson Welles, and watching these two films in such short succession I found that I preferred Mr. McKay’s portrayal.  But that’s no knock against Mr. Macfadyen, who is still one of the best things about Cradle Will Rock. He is a hoot as Orson, loud and vivacious and argumentative and brilliant.  It’s a really fun performance to watch.  He bounces beautifully off of Cary… [continued]

Charlie Kaufman wrote Being John Malkovich, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (one of my very favorite films, and the film that made me forever a fan of Sam Rockwell), Adaptation (click here for my review), and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He also wrote the 2008 film Synecdoche, New York, which he also directed.  (To this day, that is the first and only film Mr. Kaufman has directed.)  Based on Mr. Kaufman’s pedigree, I was of course eager to see Synecdoche, New York when it was released.  But I missed it in theatres, and when I read mixed reviews of the film, my enthusiasm to see it dimmed a bit.  It remained on my list of movies-I-want-to-see, but that is a very LONG list, and so it was only last month when I finally sat down to watch Mr. Kaufman’s movie.

Synecdoche, New York is a very bizarre film.  It is very difficult, at times, to watch (both because of the somewhat confusing narrative but also because I found much of the film’s subject matter to be incredibly depressing).  But it is also very funny in places, and I found the film’s wonderfully weird, almost dreamlike structure to be quite unique and engaging.

From the very beginning, the film is constantly, subtly playing with the idea of what is reality.  At first it seems like we’re watching a sad, quiet relationship drama, not unlike many other small-budget indie films.  We can see that the marriage between the playwright Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his painter wife Adele (Catherine Keener) is crumbling.  But, without fanfare, in the early scenes there are several blink-and-you’ll-miss-them moments when the film seems to slip into Caden’s head, and what we see on-screen is not reality but rather what Caden is thinking and feeling.  I’m thinking, most notably, of several amusing instances in which Caden imagines himself in the middle of whatever he is watching on TV.

As the film progresses, the line between reality and fantasy begins to blur.  After Adele leaves Caden and heads to London without him, we see Caden reading a magazine, and he comes across a spread in the magazine all about Adele.  At first I assumed that was a moment of fantasy, in which Caden was imagining Adele being completely happy and successful without him in London.  (It must be fantasy, because how could she have a lengthy article written about her only a week after she went to London?)  But later scenes caused me to question my interpretation of that scene.  The sit-up-and-take notice moment, for me, came a few minutes later (about 30 minutes into the film).  We see Caden meet Hazel (Samantha Morton) for… [continued]

In Me and Orson Welles, directed by Richard Linklater, high school student Richard Samuels (Zac Efron) somehow finds himself cast in a small role in Orson Welles (Christian McKay)’s 1937 production of Julius Caesar at the Mercury Theatre.  As the brash, brilliant, egocentric Welles struggles to realize his vision for the production, Richard enters a master class in theatre and life as he struggles to hold his own in the production while also finding himself attracted to Mr. Welles’ pretty, driven young assistant Sonja (Claire Danes).

Whenever Me and Orson Welles focuses on Mr. Welles, and his efforts to mount his production called Caesar, the film soars.  Christian McKay is wonderful as Welles.  He commands the screen whenever he is on it, just as the real Orson Welles did.  As Welles, Mr. McKay is dynamic, funny, and outrageous — an oversized personality, bursting at the seams with brilliance and ego.  There’s an element of caricature in the performance, but it never falls over into silly parody.  Mr. McKay shows us the beating, human heart of the man — his failings, and his burning desire to succeed in his endeavors despite all the obstacles in his way.  It’s an incredible performance, and I hope that Mr. McKay goes on to have a long, successful career.

I was fascinated by the film’s glimpses into Welles’ production: the way he turned constraints into creative devices (choosing to set the film in modern day because he didn’t have money for costumes), and I thrilled to the glimpses we were given into the staging of certain scenes and Mr. Welles and his actors’ debates as to how to bring certain moments from the play to life (such as the death or the poet Cinna).  He ensemble of actors in the film who portray Welles’ ensemble at the Mercury Theatre are very strong (James Tupper, Eddie Marsan, Ben Chaplin, Leo Bill, and more) and could each almost be the lead of their own film.

Unfortunately, where the film falls flat is in the story of the main character, Richard, played by Zac Efron.  While I’m certainly not a fan of Mr. Efron’s (I’ve never seen High School Musical or any of his work), I not a hater, either.  I was eager to see what this young actor/musician could do in this serious role.  Sadly, he’s just terrible.  Mr. Efron plays his scenes with an arrogant smirk that caused me to have an immediate, visceral dislike for his character.  Throughout the film, it’s impossible to tell when Richard is being genuine or when he’s just spinning lies to get the girl or to get a job.  (When Richard first meets Orson Welles, he clearly lies through his… [continued]

After re-watching David Fincher’s 1995 film Se7en (click here for my review), I couldn’t resist taking another look back at Fight Club.  As with Se7en, I had seen Fight Club only once before.  I’d really enjoyed it, but because of the violence and the extraordinarily down-beat tone, I’d never been driven to revisit it.

The first thing that struck me upon re-watching the film is that, while the film is just as violent and anti-social as I’d remembered, it’s also incredibly funny.  Maybe my shock at the brutal, casual violence that runs through the film had blinded me to this when I first saw it, or maybe I’d just forgotten.  But Fight Club is very, very funny.  Based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk (which I really need to read one of these days), the script by Jim Uhls (which was apparently rewritten by an uncredited Andrew Kevin Walker, who also wrote Se7en) is very sharp.  Fight Club is a tough, take-no-prisoners social satire.  The film has quite a lot to say about our commercial society, and the way advertising holds so many of us in its thrall.  (I love the pan, in the film, of the main character’s apartment, when we can suddenly see on-screen the labels for each purchased-from-a-magazine item of furniture.)

Through the character of Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), the audience is swept along in the appeal of this society-rejecting rebel.  Tyler has abandoned commercialism and the accepted ideals of how we should be living our life.  Rather than a fancy, well-furnished apartment, he prefers to live in squalor in an abandoned, decrepit building.  When he discovers this do-what-you-want, live-how-you-want lifestyle, Edward Norton’s character (and, by extension, the audience) finds it to be incredibly freeing.  With no one living within a mile of him and Tyler, the two can do whatever they want, whether that’s hitting broken bottles with golf clubs or beating the snot out of one another.

The film — and Tyler — slowly drags Edward Norton and the audience along into weirder and weirder places.  At first, the idea of a fight club — where men find themselves by engaging in brutal one-on-one fistfights — might be horrifying.  But Tyler — happy, sexy, joyous Brad Pitt — is able to sell it to Edward Norton’s character, and to us, as a way to throw off the smothering curtain of “civilized” behavior.  There’s an appeal there that Norton’s character grabs ahold of with both arms, and which the audience can understand.

The fun of the film, of course, is the way Tyler Durden’s behavior eventually causes the viewer to question, and perhaps (or maybe I should write “hopefully”) ultimately reject his philosophies and his… [continued]

I saw Se7en on the big screen back in 1995, and it freaked the hell out of me.  I’m not sure what prompted me to go see it in the first place, but I know that I was entirely unprepared for the brutal film that unfolded before my eyes.  It was tough, shocking stuff, and while I really respected the film I never felt any desire to go back and watch it again.

Almost a decade and a half later, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and The Social Network have cemented my opinion of David Fincher as one of the finest American directors working today.  With the release of Se7en on blu-ray, I thought it would be interesting to give the film another look.

Even so many years later, Se7en remains as punishing a movie-watching experience as it was back in 1995.  There is some truly vile, stomach-turning stuff on display in the film.  Some of which we see on-screen (I remember my first glimpse of that horribly obsese corpse — the first murder victim discovered at the start of the movie — from 1995, and I found it just as unsettling the second time around), and some of which is just discussed (such as the terrible fate of the prostitute).  But the two blend together into an almost unrelenting parade of horrors, from the first frame to the very last.

All of which, of course, was certainly the intention of David Fincher and his collaborators.  Watching the film, today, I can step back a bit from what I’m watching on-screen to recognize the extraordinary skill on display by the filmmakers.  On crisp blu-ray, Se7en is absolutely beautiful in its unremitting ugliness.  The filmmakers have created a word of unending gloom, from the seemingly never-ending rain in the unnamed city in which the action takes place to the sickly yellow light of Detective Somerset (Morgan Freeman)’s refrigerator.  The oppressive urban decay and the constant rain remind me distinctly of Blade Runner, and there’s even a great shot of Brad Pitt running across a street and jumping over cars, his weapon drawn, while the rain continues to pour down, that is a direct quotation of an iconic shot of Harrison Ford from that film.  But Mr. Fincher and his team have gone beyond homage to create a distinctly real, potent environment that is unique to this film.  This city breathes and sweats, and we (and the film’s characters) feel it as an oppressive force.  In Se7en, the city is as much the enemy as the serial-murdering John Doe.

Mr. Fincher has come to be well-known for his meticulous attention to detail, and that is on fine display throughout this… [continued]

In the biting, acid film Roger Dodger, Campbell Scott stars as Roger, a handsome, well-off, and very arrogant New York advertising executive who seems able to use his sharp tongue to talk any women he wants into having sex with him.  One day his 16 year-old nephew, Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) shows up in his office.  Nick is in town looking at Columbia, and while he’s there he wants his smooth-with-the-ladies uncle to teach him how to talk to women.  Although he’s at first put-off by the idea of having to deal with this kid, Roger quickly agrees to school Nick in That Which He Knows Best, and the two begin a crazy night that will take them all over the city and in and out of the lives of several fascinating and beautiful women.

I don’t know what on earth prompted me to rent this film on DVD five or six years ago, but it really blew me away as a unique, hard-to-define, I can’t quite believe what I’m watching film.  I’ve been meaning to see it again for ages.

Written and directed by Dylan Kidd, Roger Dodger is an extraordinarily well-written and well-made film that demonstrates the skill of an artist in his prime.  (I really want to know what the heck Mr. Kidd has been up to since 2002!!  I wish he’d made six movies in that time!)  The script is exquisite, with rat-a-tat dialogue that is fiercely intelligent, funny, and very biting.  If you told me that David Mamet had scripted this film, I would easily believe it.

Right away from the opening scene it’s clear that this is a movie unlike many others.  The film opens with a lengthy post-meal conversation over drinks and smokes between Roger and his friends.  In between some light banter with the people around the table, Roger unloads a lengthy monologue describing how he feels that evolution and technology are combining to gradually render the male species obsolete.  Roger’s dialogue demonstrates his keen intelligence and verbal skill, and also his arrogance and his close-minded, gender-focused worldview.  The scene is shot in a fascinating style that Mr. Kidd will utilize throughout the film.  There are never any master shots used (wide shots that show us the setting for a scene and where all of the characters are in relation to one another).  Instead, the scene plays out through a series of close-ups, filmed with a hand-held shaky cam that is continually moving around and observing the central characters through visual obstacles (over the shoulder of another character, obstructed by a glass or a table center-piece, etc.).  It’s a bit disorienting, but also extraordinarily vibrant and energizing, and a terrific way to make… [continued]

My friends and I discovered the Planet of the Apes films in college.  We’d taken to visiting the local rental store, trying to fill in the gaps in our movie-watching histories.  Basically, we rented films that we felt we really SHOULD see, since we considered ourselves movie-fans.  When we realized that none of us had seen Planet of the Apes, we decided to give that a viewing.  Suffice it to say, we LOVED it, in all its silly/serious glory.  When we realized that there were actually FOUR MORE Planet of the Apes films, we decided, well, we’d better watch them all too!  We had a great deal of fun watching the entire series, and the Apes films quickly became the movies we were prone to throw on, late at night, when in need of some entertainment.

So back in 2000/2001, when we heard that there was actually going to be a NEW Planet of the Apes film, and that it was going to be a big-budget version helmed by Tim Burton (a filmmaker we all held in high esteem), we were pretty much blown away with excitement and anticipation.  Though we were well out of college by then, several of us gathered together on opening weekend, to take in this new Apes film together.

Sigh.

I don’t think any of us HATED Tim Burton’s film, but we were pretty underwhelmed by what we saw.  I had such a dim view of Mr. Burton’s movie that, despite being a huge fan of the Apes series, and despite the many times I have re-watched the original five Apes films during the subsequent decade, I have never once been driven to sit down and watch Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes film again.

But I’d been having so much fun, recently, re-watching all of the Apes films in preparation for the new Apes movie that I decided, what the heck, it’s been ten years, let’s give Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes film another go.  Maybe now, removed from all of the hype and my built-up expectations, I’d think more highly of this film.

No such luck.  Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes is pretty much exactly the dud I remembered it being.

Things get off to a bad start right a way with a lugubrious opening credits sequence in which the camera slowly floats around an ornate object extreme close-up.  Gradually the camera pulls back, and we see it’s an ape helmet.  I thought this was cool when Mr. Burton did that with the Bat-Signal during the opening credits of Batman, but here it felt boring — been there, done that.

Things pick up somewhat during the sequence that follows.  In 2029,… [continued]

We have made it, at last, to the fifth and final film in the original Planet of the Apes series!  (Click here for my review of Planet of the Apes, here for my review of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, here for my review of Escape from the Planet of the Apes, and here for my review of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.)

Though released only a year after 1972′s Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, this final installment is set ten years after the events of that film.  In the intervening years, two key events have transpired: Caesar (Roddy McDowell)’s revolution of the apes has succeeded, and much of the planet has been laid waste by nuclear war.  The mute apes we saw in Conquest have now all gained the ability to speak (though whether this is due to education by Caesar and friendly humans, or to mutation from the nuclear radiation, is never clarified).  In a fairly primitive, jungle village, we see apes and humans living together, though tensions between the two species continue to run high.  A gorilla general named Aldo opposes Caesar’s wish for peaceful co-habitation and plots to kill all of the humans and take control of the ape society.  Caesar, meanwhile, is distracted by a quest to learn about his parents (the deceased Cornelius and Zira) by traveling into the radioactive Forbidden Zone and accessing the video-tape archives stored there.  Will Caesar and his new society be undone by the violent gorillas, or by the mutated remnants of human society living in the Forbidden Zone?

After the society-shattering events of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Battle for the Planet of the Apes seems fairly small in scale.  This is the cheapest-looking of the five original Apes films.  I can imagine that, by this point, the law of diminishing returns had set in, and this film probably had a smaller budget than its predecessors.  Battle also tells, to me, a far less interesting story than did Conquest. Whereas Conquest of the Planet of the Apes still stands today as a pretty shocking, envelope-pushing film, Battle for the Planet of the Apes covers pretty familiar ground: tension between the different species of apes, danger from radioactive mutants, and a few peaceful apes and humans who just want to find a way to get along.

That’s not to say that Battle for the Planet of the Apes is entirely without merit.  The film still boasts an admirable willingness to address some interesting, thorny issues in the way that the very best science fiction does: by presenting real-world issues in a different setting, the better to make a point about… [continued]

I’m entering the home stretch of my journey back through the Planet of the Apes film, as I’ve just taken in the fourth installment: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes! Click here for my thoughts on Planet of the Apes, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and Escape From the Planet of the Apes.

After the silliness of Escape From the Planet of the Apes, this fourth Apes film shifts back into serious mode.  VERY serious.  Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is, I think, by far the most grim and down-beat of all five original Apes films.

Which is not to say it isn’t also chock full of silly and ridiculous things.  Like the incident, at the start of the film, which sets the whole movie’s events in motion.  Kindly Armando (Ricardo Montalban) has secretly been raising Milo (who has choosen the name Caesar), the child of Cornelius and Zira.  All is well.  That is, until Armando decides, for no reason that I can fathom, to take Caesar right into the middle of a large human city.  Here, we see that in the years since the last film, mankind has begun to domesticate and enslave apes, forcing them to serve a servants and menial laborers.  Caesar is, of course, horrified by what he sees.  He promptly stirs up trouble, and finds himself on the run while Armando is arrested.  But why oh why did Armando take him on his little tour of the big city filled with enslaved apes, in the first place???  It boggles my mind.

Anyways, after a lengthy opening sequence that shows us all the horrible things the humans are doing to the apes, we follow Caesar as he finds himself mistaken for an ordinary ape and treated just like all the others.  But Caesar quickly gains control of the situation, and begins fomenting a revolution of all the apes, urging them to rise up and overthrow their human masters.

The film ends with a lengthy, violent sequence as we witness the fateful night that Caesar leads the apes in their successful revolution.  It’s a pretty shocking climax to the film.  The movie doesn’t pull any punches in depicting both the vast number of apes who are killed by the fearful humans, as well as the way many humans are brutally murdered by the throngs of rampaging apes.  We’re a long way from the scenes of Apes going shopping and sipping grape-juice plus in Escape From the Planet of the Apes! All of these films have had tragic endings, but I think this ending is the most brutal one of the whole series.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is a… [continued]

Last week I began my project to re-watch all five original Planet of the Apes movies by re-watching the original Planet of the Apes from 1967.  Today, we move to discuss the first sequel: 1969′s Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

For whatever reason, Charlton Heston only participates in this sequel in a very limited role.  We see him in reused footage from Planet of the Apes at the start of the film, and in a handful of new shots, and then not again until the end of the film.  But somehow, shockingly, I don’t find myself missing him all that much.

In Chuck’s place, we meet a new protagonist: Brent (played by James Franciscus).  Brent is pretty much the exact same character as Taylor.  He’s a human from modern time who was catapulted through time and space to crash land on the Planet of the Apes.  (The film postulates that he was sent on a rescue mission to find Taylor and his crew, who never returned home.  But the first film told us that, due to the time dilation effects of space-travel, Taylor and his team weren’t supposed to have returned to Earth until 700 years after they left!  So I’m not quite sure when/why a rescue mission would have been sent after them, but whatever…)  Brent even LOOKS like a dead ringer for Taylor!  This is the type of thing that would usually have me groaning in agony at the stupidity of it all, but somehow when I watch this film I always find myself liking Brent — in many ways, even more than Taylor.  Mr. Franciscus’ performance has none of the scene-chewing histrionics that made Mr. Heston’s work in the original film so memorable, but in some respects that actually helps the story.  Brent seems like a much nicer fellow than Taylor, and he certainly acts more like one would imagine an astronaut would.  Mr. Franciscus isn’t a BIG STAR like Mr. Heston, but he does a fine job carrying the film’s story on his shoulders.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes expands on the world of the first film by playing up the differences between the different types of apes: the conservative, political-minded Orangatuns, the weaker, scientifically-focused Chimpanzees, and the war-like Gorillas.  I find this concept intriguing and it allows for a hint of the social commentary that was such a primary aspect of the first film’s narrative, though the idea that there are just three ape personality types is rather simplistic.

And, anyways, this installment — with its radioactive mutants and their perilous forbidden zone — is clearly far more of a pulp adventure than the first film.  Oh, yes, there are radioactive underground-dwelling… [continued]

In 1998, HBO aired From the Earth to the Moon, a twelve-part mini-series produced by Tom Hanks, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Michael Bostick.  The series chronicled the Apollo program, the massive American space-flight initiative that ran from 1961-1975 and which resulted in the first human being landing on the moon.

I am a nut for all things related to space-travel, so I eagerly devoured From the Earth to the Moon when it originally aired.  I have re-watched the series all the way through several times in the intervening years, and most recently re-watched it with my wife last month (who had never seen it before).  Although the series has nowhere near the intensity of Tom Hanks’ later HBO historical mini-series Band of Brothers and The Pacific, it still holds up as a phenomenal work of television, electrifying and informative.

What’s fun about the mini-series is that each episode has it’s own style and rhythms.  Obviously there is continuity from one episode to the next, as the stories have to fit together chronologically to tell the story of the developing Apollo program.  But each episode was written and directed by different individuals, and the creative team clearly took great pains to give each hour its own specific feel.  The first episode, for instance, titled “Can We Do This?” (which has to cover a lot of ground in setting up the story and summarizing the entire Mercury program — which was the focus of the superlative film The Right Stuff) is separated into a series of individually titled chapters — basically little vignettes that together paint a larger picture.  The third episode, “We Have Cleared the Tower,” is presented as the work of a documentary crew which was filming the preparations for the Apollo 7 mission.  Episode 5, “Spider,” (one of my favorite episodes of the mini-series) shifts the focus to the incredible amount of work done by all of the designers and engineers who constructed the lunar module.  Episode 10, “Galileo was Right,” focuses on all of the archaeological work that the astronauts had to accomplish (and the extraordinary amount of prep work that they needed to put in in order to do so).  These are just a few examples.  It’s a very clever strategy, as it keeps each episode fresh and new for the viewer.

There are a lot of visual effects throughout the series, and for the most part the quality is high.  There are several sequences of space-flight and Earth orbit that are very beautiful.  But this area is where the seams of this 1998 production show a bit.  I’m sure that today’s technology would have allowed for the creation of far more elaborate special effects.  But with… [continued]

I am a big, big fan of the original five Planet of the Apes films (released between 1967 and 1973).  They’re so marvelously ambitious and earnest and, at the same time, so laughably silly, that I’ve always held a great fondness for the series.  While all four sequels represent a steep drop in quality from the original Charlton Heston-starring film, the sequels go in such bizarre, unexpected directions, and they’re so filled with their own charmingly quirky touches, that I find an enormous amount to enjoy in all of them.  (I am not afraid to admit, gentle reader, that my enjoyment of all five of these films is assisted, and sometimes enhanced by, the consumption of generous quantities of grape-juice-plus while watching them.)  With the I-can’t-believe-it’s-really-happening arrival of a new Planet of the Apes film this summer (the ridiculously titled — and that’s saying something for this film series — Rise of the Planet of the Apes, starring James Franco), it seemed a suitable excuse to go back and revisit the five original films.  (I might re-watch Tim Burton’s 2001 Apes film — which I’ve only seen one time — as well, I haven’t decided yet.)

So let’s begin with the first and the best: the original Planet of the Apes from 1967.  Charlton Heston plays Taylor (not sure if that’s his first or last name), an astronaut who leads a deep-space mission that goes terribly awry — their ship is knocked off-course and crash-lands on a planet where Apes are the dominant species and humans are just mute savages and slaves.  (“It’s a madhouse!”)  Heston’s comrades quickly meet unfortunate ends, but Taylor himself befriends two brilliant and inquisitive chimpanzees: Zira (played by Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (Roddy McDowell).  He also befriends (if that’s what they’re calling it these days — wakka wakka!) a beautiful human girl (played by Linda Harrison) whom he decides to name Nova.  When Taylor’s ability to speak is discovered, he is put on trial by the incredulous ape leaders (including Dr. Zaius, played by Maurice Evans) who cannot believe that a human is capable of speaking the way apes can.  Taylor is eventually freed, and despite Dr. Zaius’ warning (“Don’t look for it, Taylor!  You may not like what you find.”) sets out into the “Forbidden Zone” in order to discover how it came to be that apes took over the planet.  What he discovers brings him to his knees, and has become an indelible image in our pop-culture ever since.  Just in case you didn’t know the surprise ending of the film, it’s spoiled on the DVD box cover art.  (And just in case you missed it on the front cover, the image is… [continued]

… [continued]

I really enjoyed the two Hellboy movies directed by Guillermo del Toro, and the exquisite Pan’s Labyrinth made me a fan of his for life.  Last year I tracked down his 2001 Spanish-language horror film The Devil’s Backbone, which I really enjoyed (you can read my review here), and I was delighted when, a few months ago, the fine folks at the Criterion Collection released a beautiful new edition of Mr. del Toro’s 1993 debut film, Cronos.

Jesus Gris is an elderly antiques dealer.  One day in his shop with his granddaughter Aurora, he discovers an ancient, scarab-shaped amulet hidden in an old relic.  The amulet turns out to be a powerful device that offers its user the promise of immortality — but at a great cost.  When Jesus inadvertently allows the scarab to prick him, he quickly finds himself drawn into a nightmare in which his humanity seems to rapidly spiral out of his reach.

Cronos is an impressive achievement for a first-time writer and director.  (Mr. del Toro wrote the script in addition to directing the film.)  While it’s clear that many of the ideas and stylistic techniques that Mr. del Toro would hone in his future films are, as yet, unpolished, Cronos is still a very competently made horror film.  There are some genuine scares in the film, and some suitably gross makeup effects.  But Cronos isn’t just a film designed to make you jump or squirm.  As with much of Mr. del Toro’s work, there’s a fascinating, original story that drives the film.  The kindly Jesus’ descent into, well, into events that I won’t spoil for you here, is tragic because of Mr. del Toro’s skill at establishing characters who you really care about.  I’m also continually impressed by the originality of Mr. del Toro’s stories and designs.  The scarab device and the other creatures and effects in the film are all singularly unique creations that aren’t in any way derivative of other films or other stories.  I was totally surprised when, late in the film, it becomes apparent that this story is actually Mr. del Toro’s take on a familiar genre of horror.  But because his approach to that genre was so new and clever, I wasn’t able to predict where the film was going at all.  Even in his first film, it’s clear that Guillermo del Toro possesses an unparalleled imagination, and the skill to bring his unique imaginings to the screen.

As with The Devil’s Backbone, I wasn’t at all bothered by having to watch this Spanish-lamguage film using the subtitles.  The story and imagery are so strong that the subtitles weren’t an impediment at all to my engagement with the film.… [continued]

After watching and enjoying Lost in La Mancha last month, I was in a documentary kind of mood, so I decided to track down a film I remembered reading really positive reviews about upon its release: Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!

This is a really crazy film!!

This documentary chronicles the Australian film scene of the 1970′s and 1980′s.  During those years, a large group burgeoning filmmakers in Australian produced scores of what some would consider “exploitation” films — meaning low-budget films filled with a ton of sex and violence.  Written and directed by Mark Hartley, Not Quite Hollywood delves into the development and spread in popularity of these films and filmmakers.  The documentary is divided into sections focusing on different types of these Ozploitation films — the sex-comedies, the horror films, etc. — while also spotlighting many of the directors, actors, and actresses who worked on these films.

Sometimes you watch a documentary and it’s clear that, while the film is interesting, it’s pieced together from interviews with just a few subjects.  Not this film.  There are literally HUNDREDS of people who have been interviewed for this film.  It’s clear that Mr. Hartley and his team did an extraordinary amount of work to track down so many of the people with stories to tell about the making of these Australian films.  No stone was left un-turned.  It’s impressive, and at times a bit overwhelming!  The film is edited at an extraordinarily rapid clip — with quick interview snippets running one after the other, often-times running over (or sharing a split-screen with) clips from the many films being discussed.  I can’t remember ever seeing a documentary that unfolds at such an energetic pace.  The result is a film that feels as crazy, unhinged, and FUN as the films being discussed!

And boy, there are some crazy films being discussed.  Other than the Mad Max films, I haven’t seen a single one of the many, many films spotlighted in Not Quite Hollywood.  On the one hand, watching this documentary makes me want to track some of these films down!  On the other hand, it’s a tremendous amount of fun watching this only-the-best-bits summations of all of these wacky films, and I’m not sure they’d be quite as much fun at full-length.  As with the interviews, Mr. Hartley and his team have assembled an extraordinarily vast collection of clips from all sorts of these crazy-looking Australian films.  I should warn you: there’s a LOT of nudity in these clips, and also a lot of crazy, bloody scenes of horror.  But it all seems so silly and good-natured (yes, even the horror has such a childish spatterific “top… [continued]

It’s been a while since I’ve chimed in with my thoughts on the recent direct-to-DVD DC Universe animated films!  Here are my thoughts on the last three releases:

Superman/Batman: Apocalypse – Coming hot off the heels of what I consider to be the strongest film in this series so far, the grim and intense Batman: Under the Red Hood (read my review here) comes this, by far the worst film so far.  This one is pretty much a total, unwatchable catastrophe.  Despite what the title and cover art might have you believe, this isn’t a story about Darkseid (one of the best Superman villains) at all.  It’s really the latest version of the Supergirl story (adapted from Jeph Loeb and Michael Turner’s story which did not interest me when it was published and still does not interest me now).  Now don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against Supergirl!  I loved the character on Bruce Timm’s animated Superman and Justice League shows.  But this desperate-to-be-hip reinterpretation has always smacked of desperation to me, and shoe-horning in Darkseid and his minions just robs those great characters of the focus they deserve.  Darkseid and the New Gods mythos were presented with far greater success in the afore-mentioned Superman and Justice League animated series.  This is just a sub-par retread of ground that has already been covered.  Skip this one at all costs, gang.

Superman/Shazam!  The Return of Black Adam — In addition to re-presenting the three DC Universe universe shorts that appeared on the three prior DVDs (with commentary tracks that are interesting but really should have been included on the original releases), this DVD collection includes the new Superman/Shazam short.  I say “short,” but it’s a good deal lengthier than the previous three shorts.  At almost 25 minutes, this is much more the length of an episode of one of the DC animated series.  And, indeed, this short feels just exactly like we’re watching a long-lost episode of one of those Bruce Timm DC Universe animated series.  That’s both good and bad.  It’s good in that the quality of the story-telling and the animation is high.  I find origin stories to be a little tiring, but I like this version of the Shazam/Captain Marvel mythos and I thought everything was presented in an effectively succinct, to-the-point way.  But it’s bad in that this felt pretty much like just another episode.  There wasn’t anything that jaw-dropping to see, and the story never reached anything near the apocalyptic heights glimpsed in the DVD’s terrific cover painting.  Also, as with the Darkseid stuff in the previous DVD, I felt that all of this had been done before, and better, in the old animated… [continued]

I have fond memories of watching The Natural with my father as a kid, but it’s been quite a number of years since I’d seen it last.  When I saw a blu-ray of the film on-sale at Amazon for just a few bucks, I snatched it up.  What fun it was to revisit this fine film!

In Barry Levinson’s 1984 ode to baseball and Americana, Robert Redford plays Roy Hobbs.  As a young man he is clearly gifted with amazing skills at the game of baseball, and there doesn’t seem to be anything that can stand in his way to become the best ball-player to ever play the game.  But one moral mis-step cuts his dreams short.  Roy gets a second chance sixteen years later, when as a middle-aged rookie he comes back to the majors to help a losing ball-club on it’s quest for the pennant.

There’s a dramatic through-line to the film, of course, but The Natural really is a fairy-tale.  That had always been by recollection of the film, but I was still surprised, re-watching it now, just how prominent those fairy-tale aspects of the film are.  Watching the film, you might notice that the dangerous females all wear black, while the honest, noble heroine wears white.  But it cuts deeper than that.  The film is, at essence, a morality play.  It’s clear that we’re meant to understand that young Roy Hobbs is struck down by the woman in black not out of some random chance, but because he chose to break faith with his girlfriend back home (Glenn Close).  Then, later in the film, during his come-back season, when he takes up with the duplicitous Memo (Kim Basinger), his seeming invincibility at the plate suddenly ends.  In the world of The Natural, only the morally true can succeed.

I found this puzzling as a kid (I didn’t really understand why one moment Roy Hobbs could hit nothing but home runs, while the next he was striking out, and I was totally befuddled by the motivations of the woman in black), while now as an adult I find it to be endearingly sweet.  Such a simplistic, moral story could collapse into silliness, but the film is carried along by strong direction by Barry Levinson and some great performances by a high-wattage cast.

At the top, of course, is Robert Redford as Roy Hobbs.  Other than Christopher Reeves’ performance as Superman in the late seventies and early eighties, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with such a striking representation of truth, justice, and the American way.  The performance works because Mr. Redford — as did Mr. Reeves — plays the role with such straight-faced honesty and enthusiasm, with… [continued]

I’m here at last with the long-delayed final installment of my Spielberg in the Aughts series with a look at Mr. Spielberg’s 2005 film, Munich. This was pretty much the only Spielberg film from the last decade-and-a-half that I’d unabashedly loved when I first saw it in theatres, and I’m pleased that I found the film to be just as strong when re-watching it last month.

In September, 1972, eleven Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich were held hostage and eventually murdered by members of Black September, a Palestinian terrorist group.  Following those terrible events, the film postulates that an Israeli Mossad agent named Avner (Eric Bana) is asked to lead a small, secret group of Israeli agents assigned to hunt down and assassinate the men who the Israelis hold responsible for the Black September plot.

I think that Munich is one of, if not the most, mature and emotionally devastating films that Steven Spielberg has ever made.  There’s no question that Mr. Spielberg is one of our preeminent masters of the pop crowd-pleasing adventure film, and he’s also shown great skill at tackling more serious topics in films like Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, and more.  In all of those films, though, the lines between good and evil were very clearly drawn.  What fascinates me about Munich, and what gives the film a power equal to if not surpassing those films I just named, is that this story is all about shades of gray.  There are no clearly defined heroes or villains in this film, and while one might enter the film with pre-established sympathies for either the Israeli or the Palestinian side in these events, the film wisely avoids painting either side as entirely heroic or entirely villainous.

As Avner and his team set about tracking down and killing their assigned targets, we see not only how Avner and his men (who each begin the assignment with varying degrees of idealism and toughness) begin to feel the mental and moral effects of their bloody work, but also how their actions — however justified they (and some audience members) might feel them to be — serve to extend the cycle of violence.  When Avner’s team kills a target, it’s not long before another terrorist group strikes back against Israeli targets, and so on and so forth.

Note that the film’s making a point about how violence serves only to beget violence is a subtly — but critically — different message than saying that the actions of this Israeli team are entirely without justification.  I don’t think the film gives that message at all.  I remember reading some criticisms of this film, from Jewish perspectives, that took… [continued]

After watching Noah Baumbach’s film Greenberg last month (click here for my review), I thought it’d be fun to re-watch the first film of his that I ever saw: 2005′s The Squid and the Whale.

I’m not sure what prompted me to rent this film 4-5 years ago.  Possibly the great, intriguing title, or maybe the DVD’s well-designed cover art.  Whatever it was, I remember really being impressed with the power of this funny, sad story.  I was excited to see it again last week!

The Squid and the Whale is set in Brooklyn in the 1980′s.  Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline play Walt and Frank Berkman, two boys whose parents, played by Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney, are going through a divorce.  It’s a coming-of-age story, as the two boys struggle to deal with the dissolution of their once-stable family-unit.  Needless to say, the process is difficult on them both, though the two boys react in entirely different ways.

I can imagine that description of the film’s being about a painful divorce makes it sound like it would be a real slog to get through, but the story of the film (which Mr. Baumbach both wrote and directed) is told with a very light tough.  There are some scenes that are difficult and hard to watch, no mistake, but for the most part the film is rather a good deal of fun.  Throughout the story, Mr. Baumbach maintains a great deal of affection for all of the characters (even when they behave badly), and he’s able to mine a great deal of humor from their quirks and antics.  At certain moments, the film is very funny.

Jesse Eisenberg is excellent as Walt Berkman.  This is a fully-formed performance, and one can easily see why he went on to such high-profile roles in the past few years (in films like Zombieland and The Social Network).  Equally impressive is Owen Kline as his younger brother, Frank.  According to imdb, Owen has only appeared in one short film in the years since The Squid and the Whale, and that’s too bad because he’s really terrific in this film, honest and natural.

But in my mind it’s Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney who make the strongest impact.  Both of those incredibly talented actors have put in impressive performances in a number of great films, but it’s their roles here that always stick out in my mind as among their most memorable.  Jeff Daniels’ character, Bernard, is quite a prick — arrogant about his literary knowledge and jealous and threatened when his wife gets her first taste of success.  But his struggles are so wonderfully human that I never turned on him. … [continued]

It is absolutely unbelievable to me that it has been nearly FIFTY YEARS since the release of the first James Bond film, Dr. No, back in 1962.

(I don’t think the 1954 television version of Casino Royale counts.)

Let me say right at the outset that I am an enormous James Bond fan.  My enthusiasm for the film series began when I was in college.  After a bunch of my friends and I went to see Goldeneye in theatres, and enjoyed the heck out of it, we decided to go back and start re-watching all of the earlier films.  Over the next several years, a group of us became quite fanatical about the Bond films, watching and re-watching them all the time (often — I will admit, gentle reader — in various stages of intoxication).

But time passes, and I realized the other day that, while I’ve watched the two Daniel Craig Bond films several times, it had been quite a number of years since I’d seen most of the earlier films.  So I’ve decided to go back to the beginning, and re-watch the series in order.  I’m not going to rush things.  I’m not commiting to watching a film a week or anything like that.  Like a fine bottle of 1953 Dom Perignon (which is probably a lot harder to come by today that it was when James expressed his preference for it back in 1962), this is a series that should be savored!

The film: What a pleasure it was to re-watch Dr. No.  It’s astonishing to me how well-made the film is.  Despite its age, I think it holds up remarkably well.  It’s a taut action thriller, one that takes its time to develop the story without ever losing any of the fun or the tension.  Dr. No is a much smarter film than much of what passes for action movies these days.  But it’s also very fast-paced, keeping the film interesting to a modern audience.  (A number of participants on the wonderful commentary track on the DVD comment on the groundbreaking nature of Dr. No‘s editing.  It might not seem fast-paced to us today, but the filmmakers took great pains to cut the film in a manner that would keep the story zipping along.  I think that’s a big reason why the film still works so well today.)

Dr. No was made on a tiny budget, but you’d never know it.  I continually find myself amazed by the broad canvas of the film — it takes place in countless different locations and sets, and everything looks convincingly real to my eyes.  I’ll discuss this further later in my review, but the impressive set design is but one way… [continued]

In August of 2000, director Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Twelve Monkeys) began work on his film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, an adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’ famous novel The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, starring Johnny Depp, Vanessa Paradis and Jean Rochefort.

You don’t recognize the name of that movie?  You don’t remember ever seeing it in theatres?  You’re having trouble finding it on Netflix?

That’s because the film does not exist.  Despite years of preparation by Mr. Gilliam, months of pre-production (in which sets were constructed, props were created, costumes were made), and several days of actual shooting on the film with the main cast, an accumulation of catastrophes resulted in production being suspended, and ultimately halted indefinitely.  Despite all the work that had been done and the money that had been spent and the film footage already in the can, the movie was never finished.

Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe thought that they were filming a behind-the-scenes featurette for the eventual DVD release of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.  When the project fell apart, they decided to edit together the footage that they had shot to create a look at a movie that almost was but wasn’t.  The result is Lost in La Mancha.

For anyone interested in film, this documentary is a must-see.  It’s a fascinating case-study of the fiendish complexity of mounting a film production and the many, many things that can go wrong, thus sending a project undertaken with the best of intentions by all parties involved hurtling screamingly off the rails.

I wish I could say it’s shocking to me that acclaimed director Terry Gilliam has had so much trouble, over the years, finding funding and support for many of his projects.  Sadly it’s not shocking at all.  But it does remain bitterly disappointing.  Mr. Gilliam is one of the finest directors working today — a true film visionary in every sense of the world.  I might not love all of his films (they’re all so idiosyncratic and weird that some appeal to me far more than others), but all of them are clearly the work of a master craftsmen.  And yet, while most of Mr. Gilliam’s films probably possess behind-the-scenes stories of debates and battles over budgets and content and many other aspects of the making of the films, at least at the end of the day those movies exist!

It’s pretty sad that, despite literally years of working on his Don Quixote movie (at one point in pre-production, Mr. Gilliam comments with a smile that he’s been on the project for about a decade) that was, in many ways, a passion project for him, this talented director was… [continued]

Although I’m a huge fan of Wes Anderson, somehow I had only seen Rushmore – the film that broke him through to a larger audience — one single time.  I saw it on VHS back in 1999 or 2000.  I didn’t know a thing about Wes Anderson at the time, I just knew it was a Bill Murray comedy that had been well-reviewed when it came out.  But since my idea of a great Bill Murray comedy was something like Ghostbusters or Groundhog Day, I was totally unprepared for Rushmore.  I didn’t like it at all.

Thinking back on it, I think the problem was that I was expecting a totally different kind of movie.  I didn’t know quite what to make of Mr. Anderson’s little film.  It was a much more somber, sad film than anything I would readily describe as a “comedy.”  I do remember laughing at a few points — particularly the mid-movie montage in which Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman’s characters try to destroy one another — but those moments were few and far between.  It also probably didn’t help that I was watching the movie on a tiny little TV screen, late at night when I was exhausted.

For years now I’ve been thinking that I really should go back and revisit Rushmore.  It’s GOT to be a better film than I remember it being, I thought!  After watching Wes Anderson’s first film, Bottle Rocket, last year (click here for my review), I was all set to re-watch Rushmore.  But somehow, months passed, and I never got to it.

But last month, finally, I did!

As I expected, I thought much, much more highly of Rushmore this time.  I still think that The Royal Tenenbaums is far and away Wes Anderson’s greatest film (though The Fantastic Mr Fox certainly would give it a run for its money — click here for my review of that film), but I quite enjoyed Rushmore, and I can see why it was such a critical darling upon its release in 1998.

Jason Schwartzman turns in a star-making performance as the Max Fischer — an overachiever who has founded countless school clubs and written and directed a series incredibly elaborate plays but who, nevertheless, is in danger of flunking out of Rushmore Academy.  Max strikes up a friendship with Herman Blume (Bill Murray) a rich local businessman who finds that he likes the eccentric Max far more than his own “popular” sons.  The two men are both lost and lonely, and they’re able to find deep common ground between them, despite their age difference.  That is, until they both fall in love with the same woman: a teacher… [continued]

Last spring I wrote about OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies, a French parody of the Sean Connery era James Bond films.  I really liked the movie — I thought it was a spot-on Bond parody and very, very silly — and so I was very excited to watch the 2009 sequel: Rio Ne Repond Plus.  (The English subtitle is Lost in Rio.)

Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath, French secret service agent code-named OSS 117, is assigned a new case: to track down and pay-off an ex-Nazi, Professor von Zimmel,  who has a list of French collaborators from WWII.  Hubert is quickly intercepted by a group of Mossad agents, who want von Zimmel captured and brought back to Israel for trial.  So Hubert reluctantly teams up with Israeli colonel Dolores Kulechov.  They decide to locate von Zimmel by using his son, but quickly find themselves beset by double-agents, masked wrestler/hit-men, groovy hippies, and a lot of Nazis.

Once again, Jean Dujardin plays Hubert.  The over-the-top Francophonic Hubert is arrogant, racist, and misogynistic.  But in an endearing way!  Well, fairly endearing.  Lost in Rio pushes the humor of the series even further outside the bounds of political correctness than the last installment did.  For the most part, the boundary-pushing humor works, because Mr. Dujardin imbues Hubert with such happy cluelessness that he’s hard to dislike.  And the film is pretty clear that it is Hubert himself who is the buffoon, and the subject of our laughter.

The key to this is for the film to ensure that Hubert, rather than any of the people he mocks or puts down, is the primary idiot in every scene.  He can laugh about how useless his female partner is, but since we can clearly see her being extraordinarily brave and heroic, we know that the joke is on Hubert.  The only major mis-step of the film, for me, was the running subplot about the various Chinese hit-men chasing after Hubert all being hard to understand.  Hubert’s jokes about their accents are a little less funny because the actors portraying the hit-men DO all speak in a sort of silly accent.  The film wants us to laugh a little at the Chinese hit-men, not just at Hubert himself, and I think that’s a mistake.

But over-all, the film is extremely funny.  There’s a lot of pleasure to be had from the continued tweaking of Bond-era styles, from Hubert’s wardrobe — which includes a tiny blue Goldfinger-esque terry cloth robe — to the insanely over-the-top use of split-screens in certain sequences.  Some of the humor is very low-brow physical, while some is clever word-play.  (There’s an Au Revoir, Les Enfants joke that really tickled my funny bone.)… [continued]

In The Killer Inside Me, Michael Winterbottom’s adaptation of the novel by Jim Thompson, Casey Affleck stars as Texas sheriff’s deputy Lou Ford.  At first, he seems like the good-natured heroic main character of the film.  ”Around here, if you’re not a man and a gentleman, you’re nothing,” Lou intones in a monologue that opens the film.  My initial reaction was that Lou was describing the way he tries to live his life — the importance of striving to be a gentleman.  The reality, as we quickly learn, is much darker.  Lou is certainly not a gentleman and barely even a human being.  His statement reflects his cold, blunt knowledge of that fact.

The Killer Inside Me is worth watching purely for the phenomenal lead performance of Casey Affleck.  I am continually amazed by Mr. Affleck’s insistence on taking on challenging, outside-of-the-mainstream roles, and also for his extraordinary versatility as an actor.  He can play straight comedy in the Ocean’s Eleven films, a heroic but conflicted lead character in Gone Baby Gone, and then the most horrible type of evil in this film.  It’s an extraordinary range for an actor to display, and with each film Mr. Affleck seems to get better and better.  In The Killer Inside Me, one can’t help but be captivated as Mr. Affleck reveals layer upon deeper layer of the cruel, horrible individual who Lou Ford really us.  It’s a raw, electrifying performance, and one from which you really can’t look away.

The rest of the film is a little more difficult to praise.  The film is outrageously violent, and there are several extremely gruesome and graphic depictions of Lou Ford’s violence towards women that verge on the nauseating.  I don’t have a strong stomach for violence in films, I will readily admit, and this film really pushed me to my limits.  It’s not that there is constant violence throughout the film — it’s more that there are several instances of intense, terrible violence.  In particular, one female character meets a shocking demise about of a third of the way into the film.  It’s a stunning moment — not only because I had expected that character to stick around for the rest of the film, but also because of the extraordinarily painful, extended, right-on-camera depiction of her death.  It’s really rough stuff.  I don’t think the violence is necessarily gratuitous — I do understand what Mr. Winterbottom was intending to accomplish — but it’s so tough to watch that in many ways those moments pull me right out of the story I’m watching unfold.

Though what really cripples the film, for me, is the loony left-turn that the narrative takes in the final ten-or-so minutes.… [continued]

While I try not to let a filmmaker’s personal life interfere with my enjoyment of their work, I must admit that I didn’t exactly feel a burning desire to rush out and see the latest Roman Polanski film, 2010′s The Ghost Writer. However, while Mr. Polanski’s somewhat sordid past did give me pause, I must of course acknowledge his tremendous skills as a filmmaker.  So, in that respect, his involvement in The Ghost Writer also piqued my interest in the film.  I wondered what sort of spin Mr. Polanski had brought to a story that looked, on the surface, like a pretty run-of-the-mill thriller.  This push-pull on my interest resulted in my passing on the film in theatres, but adding it to my Netflix queue once it came out on DVD.

(And that, my friends, is a little extra free-of-charge insight into how my brain works!)

In the film, Ewan McGregor plays the titular ghost writer.  (Interestingly enough, his character’s actual name is never given.)  He’s a professional author, hired to help famous people complete their memoirs/autobiographies/etc.  The ghost writer’s services are called into play, at the start of the film, to help beleaguered British politician Adam Lang.  Mr. Lang, once the British Prime Minister, is now under fire for allegedly allowing suspected terrorists to be tortured while he was the PM.  That, plus the untimely death of his last ghost writer, has put a wrinkle in the progress of his upcoming book.  With the political scandal reaching fever pitch, the book’s publisher is desperate to get the book completed and on the shelves in great haste, and so Ewan McGregor’s character is dispatched to the Lang compound to begin work immediately.

Except, no surprise, things quickly become very complicated for the ghost.  He finds himself faced with Mr. Lang, a politician under siege, who seems extraordinarily affable at times and yet reluctant to open up about himself or his past; Lang’s wife Ruth (Olivia Williams), who seems sympathetic but also extremely tightly-wound; and a growing mystery about Adam Lang’s past and what may or may not have happened to his ghost writer predecessor.

Pierce Brosnan was widely-praised for his performance as Adam Lang, and rightly so.  He brings all the charisma and bluster of a great politician to the fore, while also hinting at a dangerous edge that just might lie right below the surface.  He constantly keeps the audience guessing as to whether he’s a noble politician beset by pernicious enemies, or whether Adam Lang is in fact a much more sinister character.  Speaking of keeping the audience guessing, so too does the wonderful Olivia Williams (Dollhouse, Rushmore) as his wife Ruth.  She is wonderfully creepy in her… [continued]

… [continued]

Yesterday I began listing my Top 10 DVDs/Blu-Rays of 2010.  Here’s the rest of my list!

5. Batman: Under the Red Hood — Bruce Timm’s Batman: The Animated Series knocked me for a loop when I first saw it back in the ’90s, and I’ve been a huge fan of his many DC Universe animated projects in the years since.  The recent series of animated DVDs that he’s been masterminding have been a bit hit-or-miss, but this film (adapting a storyline from the Batman comics written by Judd Winick) is really tremendous.  The story has a GREAT hook: Batman’s life is uprooted when he discovers that the new crime-lord in Gotham City just might be his former partner, Robin.  What unfolds is a surprisingly dark, surprisingly violent tale.  Whenever Mr. Timm returns to Batman, I’m a happy camper, but this grim little film really grabbed me.  I think it’s a particularly great depiction of the Dark Knight Detective.  A superlative voice cast (including Bruce Greenwood, Neal Patrick Harris, Jensen Ackles, Jason Isaacs, and Futurama’s John Di Maggio) is just the icing on the cake.  (Click here for my original review.)

4. Family Guy: It’s a Trap! – The folks at Family Guy conclude their trilogy of extended episodes parodying the three original Star Wars films with this warped version of Return of the Jedi. The animation is absolutely gorgeous (it’s shocking that I would write that about an episode of Family Guy, but believe me, it’s true.  These artists have painstakingly recreated shot after shot from Return of the Jedi. Their version of the Battle for the Second Death Star is astounding).  The jokes are very funny.  (I was particularly taken with their depiction of the speeder-bike chase sequence, but on tricycles.)  It’s Family Guy Star Wars.  What more could I ask for?  (Click here for my original review.)

3. Grindhouse (Blu-Ray) – I was very afraid that this would never see the light of day, but at last one can now own the original theatrical version of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s double-feature, complete with all of the fake trailers.  I love the extended versions of the two films that were released on DVD a few years back, but I’ve been aching to be able to experience what I saw (and so loved) in theatres back in 2007.  Ignore the nay-sayers — this film is genius, and it is phenomenally entertaining viewing.  It’s not for everyone (there’s a lot of sex and violence), but damn do I think it’s a lot of fun.

2. Apocalypse Now: Full Disclosure (Blu-Ray) – Apocalypse Now is one of my favorite films.  I didn’t quite understand it the first time I saw it, but… [continued]

Earlier this week I posted my list of my Top 10 Movies of 2010!  (Click here for part one and here for part two.)  Here now is my list of my Top 10 DVDs/Blu-Rays of 2010:

First, the DVDs that might have made this list had I had the time to watch them.  My to-watch DVD shelf has been getting a bit backed-up lately.  As a result, there are several DVDs and DVD sets that I am really excited about, but that I haven’t had a chance to watch.  These include: The Red Riding Trilogy, the new edition of The Bridge on the River Kwai, the Criterion Collection edition of Guillermo del Toro’s film Cronos, the Criterion Collection edition of The Thin Red Line, and Parks and Recreation Season 2 (which I watched when it aired but I’m eager to revisit!).  OK, now on to my list:

10. Scott Pilgrim vs the World (Blu-Ray) – This was my favorite film of 2010, and the Blu-Ray release rocked pretty hard as well.  First of all, it’s an absolutely GORGEOUS presentation of the film.  Second, the DVD is totally awash in incredible special features.  I’m a nut for DVD special features, but this disc tested even my endurance (in the best possible way).  There’s a phenomenal, in-depth making-of documentary, but there are also a ton of deleted and extended scenes, bloopers, featurettes spotlighting the film’s music, visual effects, casting, fight-training, pre-production, and so-much more.  It’s a magnificent presentation of a magnificent film.  (Click here for my original review of the film.)

9. Clerks (Blu-Ray) — This is a great film and it looks great on Blu-Ray, but the reason it’s on this list is because this disc includes the 2004 documentary film Oh, What a Lovely Tea Party.  I’ve been reading about this documentary for years, but it’s never been released on any home-video format, until now.  It’s a funny and fascinating fly-on-the-wall look at the making of Kevin Smith’s film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.  Now, you might be asking yourself, what is a documentary about Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back doing on the Blu-Ray of Clerks? Well, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, which is why this disc is in the bottom half of my top ten list, rather than the top half.

8. The Pacific (Blu-Ray) — This was a gift from my brother and his wife, and what a gift!  I consider Band of Brothers to be one of the finest television series ever created, so obviously I was eagerly anticipating Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg’s take on the war in the Pacific.  In many ways, this is a much more intimate story than… [continued]

In Lisa Cholodenko’s film The Kids Are All Right, we meet Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore), a loving lesbian couple who have been raising two kids together: Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson).  Their lives aren’t perfect, but over-all it’s a stable, happy family unit.  But when Laser convinces Joni to help him find their biological father (though Nic gave birth to Joni and Jules gave birth to Laser, they share the same sperm donor), the foundations of the family are shaken.

I was really quite taken with this film.  I think it’s an interesting story filled with complex, human characters, and all of the lead actors give terrific performances.  I was ultimately dissatisfied with where the narrative wound up (more on that later), which lessens the film’s total impact slightly for me, but it’s still a very solid, enjoyable, aimed-at-adults movie.

I’ve been complaining a lot recently about films with one-dimensional characters.  I don’t mind films having heroes and villains, and likable and unlikable characters.  I simply tend to prefer films where the characters aren’t completely black and white.  (Ex. This father is a TOTAL JERK with no redeeming qualities.)  So major props to writer/director Ms. Cholodenko and co-writer Stuart Blumberg for crafting a story filled with truly human characters.  No one in The Kids Are All Right is a total saint.  The characters have positive qualities and some negative ones as well.  Likable characters make some bad decisions.  It’s thrillingly refreshing.

This top-notch material is elevated by a wonderful cast.  Annette Bening and Julianne Moore are both phenomenal as Nic and Jules.  These characters felt completely REAL to me, and their relationship felt equally honest.  It’s sweet and messy and complicated and feels really true.  I like that we get to see the two sharing some tender moments, as well as the times when they seem completely distant from one another.

Equally wonderful are the two kids.  Mia Wasikowska was one of the few good things in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (read my review here), and it’s delightful to see her looking and acting like a real human being without all of that accompanying Tim Burton weirdness.  Ms. Wasikowska is able to bring to life Joni’s innocence, as well as to her growing temptation to leave her childhood behind and step into the trappings of an adult.  Josh Hutcherson is also strong as her brother Laser (pronounced Lazer).  He’s already begun to push at the boundaries of conformity and acceptable behavior, but Mr. Hutcherson keeps reminding us of Laser’s good-natured side as well (a product, one can assume, of the strong upbringing he’s received from his two moms).

Then there is Paul (Mark Ruffalo).… [continued]

Back in June I posted a trailer for Rob Reiner’s new film, Flipped, and I wondered if, at last, Rob Reiner (the mastermind behind This is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, and A Few Good Men) had broken his long dry streak and finally directed a good new film. Unfortunately Flipped was only in theatres for about five seconds, so I never got to see it — but I was happy to have a chance to catch it on DVD.

And I am happy to report that the film represents a strong return to form for Mr. Reiner!

Adapted from the book by Wendelin Van Draanen, Flipped tells the story of Bryce Loski and Juli Baker.  When Bryce is seven, his family moves into the house across the street from Juli’s.  She immediately develops a crush on him, while he finds her attentions to be annoying in the extreme.  By the eight grade, though, Bryce finally begins to see what’s so special about Juli… at the same time as she starts to think that maybe Bryce isn’t the amazing kid she always thought he was.

While I wouldn’t argue that Flipped is of a level with the amazing films listed above that Mr. Reiner directed earlier in his career, it’s a really fun, sweet film that I quite enjoyed.  Mr. Reiner has always had the ability to craft what one might call “family” films that avoid the simplicity and schmaltz so prevalent in “all-ages” types of films, and that skill is on fine display here.  Flipped isn’t edgy, it isn’t groundbreaking, but it’s an extremely well-crafted little story that I found to be really endearing.

The film employs a device (which, I gather, was a main hook of the original book) of continually switching back and forth between Bryce’s & Juli’s perspectives.  We see event unfold narrated by Bryce, and then the film cuts back and we see the same events from Juli’s perspective.  As the film began I wondered if that device wouldn’t get tedious, but in Mr. Reiner’s skilled hands nothing of the sort happens.  He knows exactly how to cut the footage so that he shows us just enough, on the second run-through, of what we need to know without boring the audience by replaying every single second, and the narrative is so-cleverly crafted that our second viewing of the events always shows us something we hadn’t learned before.  (With one notable exception.  Towards the end of the film there’s a scene in which Bryce is talking to a friend about Juli in the library, and although we don’t see her at the time, I found… [continued]

I’m always intrigued by the idea of world-building in film.  Whether we’re talking about fantasy worlds a long time ago and far, far away, or the depiction of distinct real-life settings or time-periods, when I watch a movie I love to be immersed in a fully-realized universe in which the story takes place.  In some movies, the setting is barely mentioned and basically irrelevant to the story.  In others, the setting becomes almost a key character in the story, and the filmmakers expend great time and skill in bringing that particular universe of the story to vibrant life.

Winter’s Bone, directed by Debra Granik and written by Ms. Granik and Anne Rosellini (adapting the novel by Daniel Woodrell), definitely falls into the latter category.  The story is set in the Ozarks, a rural area of Missouri.  I have no idea if the world of the Ozarks as depicted in this film bears any connection to real life (I assume that it does, but I certainly can’t verify that myself), but whether it does or not, I have found it difficult to shake the picture of this downtrodden community that Ms. Granik has created in her film.

Winter’s Bone focuses on Ree (Jennifer Lawrence), a 17 year-old girl who has assumed the role of caretaker for her family (a sick mother and two younger siblings) in the absence of her father, a meth cooker who has vanished — either dead or on the run for the law.  Though she harbors a dream of joining the army and leaving her home behind, when we first meet Ree she seems to have settled impressively well into her role as head of the family.  She exhibits great responsibility and maturity in taking care of everything that needs to be done, without complaint, and she gives enormous amounts of care to her mom and siblings.  But her precariously-balanced existence is thrown into grave jeopardy when the local Sheriff (Garret Dillahunt) informs her that her missing father (Jessup) had put up their house and all their possessions as bond. If he doesn’t show up to his court date, Ree and her family will lose everything.  With her back up against the wall, Ree begins trying to locate her father by making inquiry with her neighbors — most of whom seem to be related to her in some way, and most of whom seem to be involved in the same criminal activities that her father was.  They are proudly defiant of the law and as such refuse to help Ree track down her father.  With the clock ticking, the young girl feels her options waning.

I’ve read reviews of this film that describe it as depicting the… [continued]

If there was any doubt in your mind that Emma Stone is a bona fide movie star, that should be erased by Easy A.  She’s clearly a vibrant, intelligent, beautiful young woman, and she’s very engagingly watchable.  She has no trouble carrying this film on her young shoulders.

Unfortunately, other than watching Ms. Stone dig her teeth into her first starring role, I found precious little to enjoy in this movie.

The biggest problem is that, as talented as Ms. Stone clearly is, she’s just way too vibrant, intelligent, and beautiful a young woman to be believable as the totally unnoticed zero that she claims she is in the film’s opening monologue.  Much of the plot of the film depends on our accepting Olive (Emma Stone’s character) as a lonely looser, but nothing in her scenes on-screen leads me to buy that reality!  The problem is not contained just with Ms. Stone.  As the film progresses, we get to meet the young man who’s the real object of her affection: the boy she nicknames “Woodchuck Todd” (Penn Badgley).  I guess he’s also supposed to be something of an oddball, since he doesn’t seem to hang out with the “in” crowd kids, and he’s apparently the school’s mascot (a woodchuck, hence the nickname).  Except that when we see him without his shirt (which is often), Mr. Badgley is clearly an extraordinarily handsome, well-built fellow who looks more like the football team’s star quarterback than the goofy team mascot.  As with Ms. Stone, he’s entertaining, but I just don’t buy him in the role.

The rest of the actors supposedly playing high school kids all look equally too old and too good-looking to really be high school kids.  Look, maybe I’m spoiled by my devotion to Judd Apatow’s Freaks and Greeks, a show where the high school kids ALL ACTUALLY LOOKED LIKE HIGH SCHOOL KIDS!!  Easy A certainly isn’t the first movie or TV show to cast older, more impossibly beautiful people in the role of high school kids.  But it seems particularly egregious here.  (It doesn’t help, by the way, that the film features Joan Jett’s song “Bad Reputation” on the soundtrack at a key moment.  I can’t help but compare your movie to the brilliant Freaks and Geeks when you ACTUALLY USE FREAKS AND GEEKS’ THEME SONG IN YOUR FILM!!  Sheesh!!)

But while I didn’t believe Emma Stone to be a lonely, unseen kid, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t really enjoy watching her in the role.  She truly is a lot of fun, and when the movie works it works because of her charisma.  She effortlessly takes on the lead role.

I also really enjoyed the scenes with Olive’s… [continued]

Despicable Me seemed like a movie that I’d really dig.  It’s an animated film about dueling super-villains, which is a great hook, and it features a spectacular voice cast: Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig, Jack McBrayer, Danny McBride, and more.

Boy, what a disappointment!

First of all, despite what the trailers indicated, the film isn’t about dueling super-villains at all.  Jason Segel’s character Vector, who is presented in the trailer and in the opening scenes of the film as a rival for Steve Carell’s villain Gru, hardly factors into the story at all until the very end.  Instead, the plot of the film really focuses on Gru’s adopting three cute little girls (as part of one of his dastardly plans), but instead of manipulating them he grows fond of the girls and discovers that he can be a great dad.

Blech!

Boy oh boy, this film failed on pretty much every level for me.  It’s more interested in cutesy-moments (whether featuring the three oh-so-cute little girls or the oh-so-adorable little yellow “minions” that work for Gru) than actual jokes.  There are a few funny moments, but they’re few and far between.

The plot, as it were, is very thin.  The idea that Gru could adopt those three girls is more ludicrous than any of the super-villain hi-jinks in the film.  There are a few perfunctory scenes with the girls in their orphanage, run by a cruel woman named Miss Hattie (Kristen Wiig), which are clearly only in the film to minimize the horror of the idea of this bizarre man being allowed to adopt three innocent little girls.  (“Hey, at least he’s not as bad as SHE is,” we’re supposed to think!)  Then the film attempts to mine some drama from Vector kidnapping the girls at the end, but there’s no tension because he’s clearly no match for Gru.  After the opening scenes, the film has tried to mine laughs from Vector being presented as a total doofus.

The film doesn’t even really bother to explore the premise that it sets up — a world where there are apparently no super-heroes and super-villains are allowed to operate with impunity.  Where are the heroes?  How does society react to the free reign these villains apparently have?  Are there other villains out there besides Gru and Vector?  How did Gru create his minions?  I could go on and on.  Compare this to the fully-relized universe created in Pixar’s super-hero film, The Incredibles.  Not only did that movie feature three-dimensional characters and a compelling story-line, but it also managed to really explore the world being presented.  We learned about the effect that the heroes had… [continued]

It’s very possible that John Cazale has the greatest batting average of any actor in history.  He only appeared in five films, but they were, in order: The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter. It’s an amazing streak of five phenomenal performances in five phenomenal films, although that only emphasizes the tragedy of Mr. Cazale’s death at the incredibly young age of 42.

Anyone in the cult of The Godfather, like me, already knows the name John Cazale.  He, of course, plays the sweet but hapless Fredo, brother of Michael (Al Pacino) and Sonny (James Caan).  Although not one of the big-star names in the film (like the afore-mentioned Mr. Pacino and Mr. Caan, along, of course, with Marlon Brando and Robert Duvall), Mr. Cazale’s work as Fredo is absolutely amazing.  He creates, in Fredo, a role of enormous depth and sophistication.  Fredo is a character who is, on the one hand, all surface — he’s unable to hide his thoughts and feelings the way his brother Michael can — though Mr. Cazale brings enormous soul to the character and shows us deep layers of emotion and feelings behind his amazingly expressive eyes.

Those eyes are often commented upon by those who loved and admired Mr. Cazale in the documentary I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale, directed by Richard Shephard.  The film is aimed at introducing movie fans to this incredibly talented, yet sadly somewhat forgotten, actor.

Even at the time, Mr. Cazale’s talents were often overlooked.  The film points out that, while the five films he starred in were nominated for a total of 44 Academy Awards (quite a haul!), Mr. Cazale himself was never nominated.  And in a sad scene early in the documentary, we see pedestrians in New York City asked to identify Mr. Cazale from a picture of him as Fredo from The Godfather. While many are able to recall the name of his character, not one knew Mr. Cazale’s name.  (I always wonder if scenes like these in films aren’t the result of judicious editing to make the point that the filmmakers want, but in this case I have no doubt that most people have never heard John Cazale’s name.)

The film spends a few minutes giving us some insight into Mr. Cazale’s background and childhood, but for the most part it focuses on his work in his five films.  A plethora of actors and directors — including Francis Ford Coppola (who directed Mr. Cazale in the first three films in which he appeared), Sidney Lumet (who directed him in his fourth film, Dog Day Afternoon), Meryl Streep, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman, Robert De Niro,… [continued]

In the film Cyrus, written and directed by Jay & Mark Duplass, John C. Reilly stars a John, a pretty pathetic fellow whose self-confidence is not improved by the news that his ex-wife, Jamie (Catherine Keener), is about to re-marry.  Jamie convinces John to join her and her fiancee at a friend’s party.  To John’s great surprise, he actually winds up hitting it off with a beautiful woman named Molly (Marisa Tomei).  They go on a couple of dates, all of which go very well.  Molly seems wonderful.  But when he notices that Molly never seems willing to spend a whole night at his place, John begins to wonder if she’s married, or if she’s hiding some other secret from him.  When he follows her home one day, he discovers what that secret is: her 21-year-old son, Cyrus.  Molly has raised Cyrus by herself, and neither has ever been able to separate from the other.  He still lives with her, but that’s the least of it!  To call their relationship co-dependant would be a dramatic understatement, and John is forced to wonder whether he can ever fit into the life that those two have created for each other.

I’d read some rave reviews about Cyrus when it played at festivals earlier this year.  Even though it’s release to theatres fizzled this past summer, I was eager to watch it on DVD.  I’d read that this was a black comedy, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the weirdness on display in this film!!  It certainly goes to some places I did not expect.  There’s a lot that I enjoyed about the film, though I can’t really say that it all worked for me.

The biggest problem with the movie, for me, was the first twenty-or-so minutes before we meet Cyrus.  The film takes this time to establish John as a character.  I understand that we need to learn that he’s lonely and odd, because we need to understand why he doesn’t head for the hills at the first whiff of weirdness between Molly & Cyrus.  The filmmakers need to show us that John is a man pretty desperate for love and companionship, and that is what causes him to stick things out and try to fight for Molly’s affections.  But, boy, I think the Duplass brothers went WAY too far over the top in presenting John as such an extraordinarily pathetic loser in those opening scenes.  Those sequences are just PAINFUL to watch — I didn’t find any humor in those scenes, they just made me squirm.

The film comes to life, though once we meet Cyrus.  Jonah Hill has come a long way since the first movie he appeared in… [continued]

Before I finalize my Best of 2010 lists (which will be coming in a few weeks), I’ve been trying to catch up on some of the movies/TV shows/comics/etc. that I’d missed during the past very busy twelve months.  One of the films that I was bummed to have never gotten to was the recent documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.  I was able to watch the film on DVD, and it is fantastic.  (I have a feeling this might have just bumped another film off of my Best Movies of 2010 list!  We’ll see…)

Directed by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, the film follows a year in the life of the 77 year-old working comedian.  For so many people these days, Joan Rivers is basically a joke — a nasty woman criticizing people on the red carpet line while herself looking pretty hideously plastic as a result of inordinate amounts of plastic surgery.  Being a big comedy fan — and, in particular, stand-up comedy — I’m actually fairly familiar with her early work, when she was a pretty sharp, hysterical comic.  But I still had the same perception of her, these days, as most.  I had respect for the comedian she’d been, but that only made it more painful these days to see her hocking gawdy items on QVC.

But after watching Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, it’s clear that I didn’t know Joan Rivers at all.  The film does an incredible job at humanizing Ms. Rivers.  Not by glossing over her faults — no, the film pulls no punches when it comes to moments when she doesn’t appear in the best of light.  But in many respects this warts-and-all presentation of Joan Rivers forces audiences to look at her and her work in a new light, and to reconsider our caricaturish perceptions of her.

Most importantly, the film emphasizes what a vibrant, FUNNY comic she still is.  The film contains some terrific clips from her glory-days on the stand-up circuit and, of course, some of her appearances on The Tonight Show, but it also contains generous clips from many of Ms. Rivers’ current stand-up gigs, and she is a RIOT.  Crude, unflinching, and hysterical.  (After the film was over, my wife Steph and I turned to each other and said, “boy, it’d be fun to go see her perform live!”)  I was totally unprepared to laugh at any Joan Rivers material post 1980.

The year chronicled by the film (2008-09) was a fascinating year for Ms. Rivers, containing many low points (her disappointment at the criticisms leveled at her play after performances in London; her decision to part company with her long-time manager) and high points (winning… [continued]

Before seeing the new, big-budgeted sequel Tron: Legacy, being released this week by the Walt Disney Company, I decided that I really needed to go back and watch the 1982 original.

That proved a little more difficult than I had anticipated!  I’d assumed that Disney would cash in on the building excitement by releasing a snazzy new DVD/blu-ray edition of the film in advance of Tron: Legacy‘s release, but that didn’t happen.  (There’s speculation that Disney was afraid that people would watch the dated 1982 Tron and get turned off on the idea of seeing the new film.)  Either way, the decade-old previous DVD edition is out-of-print and apparently fiendishly hard to get a hold of.  Thank heaven for my phenomenal local video store, the Video Underground.  They had a copy of Tron, and though it took me a few visits until it was finally in, I was ultimately able to rent the film.

I’ve seen Tron a few times before, but it had been quite a while since my last viewing, so I was excited to give it a whirl.

Jeff Bridges (yes, that Jeff Bridges) stars as Flynn, a brilliant but sort of slackerish computer programmer who has recently been fired from Encom, a large computer company.  Flynn has been trying to hack into Encom’s computer systems, in an attempt to prove that the new head of the company, Ed Dillinger (David Warner), stole his work as part of his rise to power.  Unbeknownst to Flynn and the rest of the world (but, as Mel Brooks would say, knownst to us), in taking over the company, Dillinger has allowed an emergingly-sentient computer program, the Master Control Program, to take control of all of the company’s systems and begin a process of taking over other powerful computer systems across the globe.  Meanwhile, Flynn’s ex-girlfriend Lora (Cindy Morgan), and her new boyfriend Alan (Bruce Boxleitner), both of whom still work for Encom, learn that Dillinger has discovered Flynn’s hacking attempts, and they try to warn Flynn to stop what he’s doing.  But Flynn convinces them that Dillinger needs to be stopped, so the three of them break into Encom in an attempt to find the evidence Flynn needs to bring Dillinger down.

All of that is really just set-up for when the Master Control Program zaps Flynn with a laser and digitizes him, sending his conscience into the mainframe of the system itself.  There Flynn learns that, inside the world of the computers he has spent his days and nights programming, exists an entire universe of life.  Programs that he and others have written as lines of data exist here as individuals, trying their best to live their… [continued]

In 2005 Steven Spielberg returned to sci-fi with his version of H. G. Wells’ famous story from 1898, War of the Worlds.

Not surprisingly, rather than being a period piece, Mr. Spielberg set his adaptation in the present day.  Tom Cruise reunited with Spielberg to star as Ray Ferrier, an affable but cocky guy separated from his wife (played by the beautiful Miranda Otto, who played Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings).  When she and her new husband go away for the weekend, Ray has to look after their two children: Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and Rachel (Dakota Fanning).  Despite his efforts, he finds that he has trouble connecting to either one of his kids.  Then aliens attack.

Mr. Spielberg, along with writers Josh Friedman and David Koepp, have chosen to take us through the story of an alien apocalypse through the eyes of these three “every-person” characters.  We witness the horrific events of the invasion through their eyes, as they struggle to survive.  While that’s not exactly a ground-breaking choice, I think it’s an effective way to structure the film.  We don’t have a sense, until the very end, of what exactly is happening — who the invaders are, what they want, or what the governments of the world are doing to fight back — and that only adds to the tension and terror of the film.  Ray and his kids are swept up in cataclysmic phenomena, and so are we as the audience.

There are some extraordinary visual effects sequences in War of the Worlds.  This big-budget sci-fi film was clearly made by a director who is a master of his craft, ably assisted by a huge assortment of talented artists, designers, and visual effects wizards.  Ray’s initial encounter with a tripod — and his frantic flight away from it while the monstrosity tears across city blocks and vaporizes other terrified civilians — is a tour de force sequence that make clear that Spielberg & co. meant business with this story.  The tripods’ attack on the ferry, the battle on the hilltop towards the end of the film… these are extarordinarily well-realized sequences, dark and violent and intense.

I love that, in many respects, Steven Spielberg chose to make a much grimmer film than is his usual practice.  There’s not a lot of fun to be had in War of the Worlds, nor are there many rah-rah crowd-cheering action moments (of the type found in, say, Independence Day).

But somehow, War of the Worlds still leaves me a bit cold.  I can’t say it’s a movie that I can get too excited about.  Is the problem that the film is TOO grim?  Or is perhaps the problem that… [continued]

The fifth and final film in my EZ Viewing movie marathon is Airplane! (Click here to read about film one: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), here to read about film two: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, here to read about film three: Tropic Thunder, and here to read about film four: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.)

The spoof film from which all other spoof-films pay homage (and to which they all pale in comparison).  I find this film just as uproariously funny today as when I first saw it as a kid (though perhaps for different reasons).  Every single inch of this film is funny.  There are jokes piled upon jokes piled upon jokes.  (A few years ago I was able to see Airplane! on the big screen at a midnight showing at a local Boston theatre, and for the first time I could read some of the titles on the magazines in the airport newsstand.  All were funny, of course!)

Loosely based on the 1957 film Zero Hour (which one of the filmmakers once referred to as “the serious version of Airplane!”), the film was written by Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker.  They would go on to write and direct many other funny movies, but I don’t think any of their later efforts ever topped Airplane!.

The cast is amazing.  David Zucker commented that “the trick was to cast actors like Robert Stack, Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, and Lloyd Bridges.  These were people, who up to that time, had never done comedy. We thought they were much funnier than the comedians of that time were.”  He was right — how funny are those four men in this movie???  They’re all pretty much perfect.  The film is filled with cameos.  Many of those faces aren’t that familiar to audiences today, but I don’t think anyone will ever forget Barbara Billingsley (from Leave it to Beaver) as the jive-speaking passenger.   In his original review of the film, Roger Ebert helpfully listed many of the film’s small roles and the films that their inclusion were parodying: “The movie exploits the previous films for all they’re worth. The passenger list includes a little old lady (like Helen Hayes in Airport), a guitar-playing nun (like Helen Reddy in Airport 1975), and even a critically ill little girl who’s being flown to an emergency operation (Linda Blair played the role in Airport 1975).”

And, of course, there’s Robert Hayes and Julie Hagerty in the lead roles.  They have to do a lot of heavy lifting in order to keep what little story the film has moving forward through all the gags and digressions, and they… [continued]

The fourth feature in my EZ Viewing movie marathon is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog!  (Click here to read about film one: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), here to read about film two: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and here to read about film three: Tropic Thunder.)

This is one of my very favorite things ever.  It’s a super-villain musical!!  (Click here to read my original review.)

Only 45 minutes long (the series was originally created as three 15-minute-long internet shorts), Neil Patrick Harris (TV’s Doogie Howser, M.D. – and also now a lead on How I Met Your Mother) stars as the titular Dr. Horrible.  He’s a fairly pathetic loser, desperate to be taken seriously and accepted into the Evil League of Evil.  Unfortunately, his schemes keep getting foiled by the heroic and handsome Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion – Mal from Firefly).  In his personal life, the good doctor has an enormous crush on the pretty girl-next-door, Penny (Felicia Day) who he keeps bumping into at the Laundromat.  Will he ever be able to defeat Captain Hammer and speak to Penny???

The ridiculously-talented Joss Whedon created and Wrote Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog along with his brothers Jed and and Zack Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen during the WGA strike.  Mr. Whedon told NY Magazine: “I was in meetings with companies to make deals to create stuff for the Internet, in a cheaper fashion — but still on a grander scale than Dr. Horrible — but nothing was going. Nothing was going! So I did something I should’ve done a long time before — I took matters into my own hands.”

He elaborated to TV Guide’s Matt Roush: “”I was really sick of not doing things. I’d been writing movies nobody was making. I got tired of that. And even though I had this series (Fox’s Dollhouse) coming up, we were on strike—and well, I thought we were going to hold out a little bit longer—but it just felt right.”

Whedon funded the project himself.  He commented: “Freedom is glorious… The fact is, I’ve had very good relationships with studios, and I’ve worked with a lot of smart executives. But there is a difference when you can just go ahead and do something.” As a web show, there were fewer constraints imposed on the project, and Whedon had the “freedom to just let the dictates of the story say how long it’s gonna be. We didn’t have to cram everything in–there is a lot in there–but we put in the amount of story that we wanted to and let the time work around that. We aimed for thirty minutes, we came out… [continued]

The third film in my EZ Viewing movie marathon is Tropic Thunder! (Click here to read about film one: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), and here to read about film two: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.)

Tropic Thunder knocked my socks off when I first saw it!  (Click here for my original review.)  It’s so fearless and so, so funny, right from the first frame to the very last.

Ben Stiller (who also co-wrote and directed the film) stars as Tugg Speedman.  Though he was once a hugely successful action-movie star, Tugg’s recent effort at more serious fare (“Simple Jack”) was met with disdain, so he decides to appear in the war film Tropic Thunder.  The film (within the film) is an adaptation of the Vietnam experiences of the hook-handed veteran John “Four-Leaf” Tayback.  Along with Tugg, the film stars the method actor Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), the comedian Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), and the rapper Alpha Chino (Brandon T. Jackson).  This pampered assemblage of prima-donnas has trouble getting anything done, so the frustrated director (Steve Coogan) decides to drop his actors in the middle of the jungle, in an attempt to capture some “real” drama.  Chaos ensues.

The cast is stupendous.  The stand-out, of course, is Robert Downey Jr., portraying “a dude pretending to be a dude disguised as some other dude.”  He came in for some criticism when the film was released, not only for his performance as a white actor pretending to be a black man, but also for the “full retard” speech he gives to Ben Stiller’s character.  But I think that Downey Jr. is pure genius in the role – and that speech happens to be screamingly funny.  The point of his performance – and, indeed, the point of the entire film – is to skewer how seriously actors take themselves.  (It’s funny – not long after seeing this film for the first time, I found myself re-watching the amazing WWII mini-series Band of Brothers.  It’s an astonishing mini-series.  When I finished, I watched some of the special features – but after having seen Tropic Thunder, I could not take at all seriously any of the actors patting themselves on the back for how much the conditions of the shoot really rivaled the experience of really being in combat!!)

But the rest of the ensemble is also phenomenal.  Stiller is great in the lead role – he’s just likable enough that you sort of root for him, even though he’s a total loony-tune.  (LOVE that he likes to watch Classic Star Trek on his ipod, though!!)  Jack Black is perfectly cast as Portnoy, and Jackson is absolutely… [continued]

The second film in my EZ Viewing movie marathon is Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country!

I respect J.J. Abrams for what he accomplished with his Star Trek reboot.  (Click here for my review.)  I enjoyed the flick, and am thrilled that Trek is exciting and “cool” again.  But THIS — Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country — is my kind of Star Trek: dark, sophisticated, and adult.  This vies with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan for the position of my favorite Star Trek film, depending on my mood.

An ecological disaster on the Klingon homeworld leads them to make the first gesture of peace towards the United Federation of Planets, their bitter enemies for so many decades.  Captain Kirk and the Enterprise are sent to escort the Klingon chancellor to a peace conference on Earth, but a brutal assassination sends the two galactic super-powers once again hurtling towards war.

Star Trek VI is a serious, dark film.  Yes, there is some action/adventure to be had, but for the most part it’s a rather somber film.  The film is brave in presenting our hero, Captain Kirk, in a pretty unsympathetic light: Kirk is still filled with anger at the death of his son at the hands of the Klingons (in Star Trek III), and is shown to be remarkably cold and callous at the prospect of the terrible fate about to befall their empire.  “Let them die,” he quietly tells a shocked (and disappointed) Spock, early in the film.  I love this portrayal of Kirk – it’s a very human depiction of this heroic character, and it gives Kirk a real journey to go on over the course of the film that has nothing to do with warping across the galaxy.  It’s a potent, emotional core to the film.

Trek VI has an incredibly smart, literate script.  The film is filled with references to literature and history.  Some of those are obvious (such as the Shakespeare-spouting Klingon villain, General Chang) while others are much more subtle.  (One of my favorite moments is when, during Kirk and McCoy’s trial on the Klingon homeworld, General Chang angrily shouts at them “Don’t wait for the translation!  Answer me now!”  This, of course, is a nod to Adlai Stevenson’s speech to the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis.)  Even the film’s title, I probably don’t need to point out to you, is a reference to a famous line in Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” speech.  The film’s central story – the prospect of peace between long-time enemy super-powers, and what that means for the “Cold Warriors” so used to hating their enemies – was inspired by the real-world… [continued]

After watching Time After Time, the 1979 film in which H.G. Welles matches wits with Jack the Ripper (read my review here), I decided to move on to another film in which a towering literary figure confronts Jack the Ripper.  I’m speaking of Murder by Decree, which interestingly enough was also released in 1979.  In this case, the hero is not H.G. Welles (real-life author of fiction) but rather (famous fictional creation) Sherlock Holmes.

Whereas Time After Time had a decidedly tongue-in-cheek tone, Murder By Decree is deadly serious.  As a result, I think the film has aged far better than did Time After Time.  I know I certainly found it to be far more engaging.

It helps that the film stars Christopher Plummer — one of the finest actors of this generation — in the lead role of Sherlock Holmes.  Mr. Plummer is positively spectacular.  He brings tremendous intelligence and dignity to the role of Holmes.  But he also brings a lot of humor and easy humanity to the character.  Plummer’s Holmes is a relaxed figure, confident in his abilities without becoming arrogant, and without losing any of his joie de vivre.  We can see that this Holmes truly enjoys life, whether he’s being challenged by a tough case or just teasing his partner Watson about the way he eats his peas.  Speaking of Watson, James Mason is equally wonderful in that supporting role.  This Watson is no bumbling idiot.  While he might be no match, intellectually, for Holmes, Mason’s Watson clearly is able to hold his own in the partnership.  The two old men (and it’s interesting to see the characters both presented as such almost elderly gentlemen, particularly after the recent successful film version with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law — read my review here) have a tight bond and an easy friendship.  I’m sorry that this film is the two actors’ only pairing in these roles!  I would have loved to have seen Plummer and Mason continue as these characters for a series of films.

In this Holmes pastiche, a group of frightened merchants beg Holmes to investigate the series of brutal murders that have been happening in the Whitechapel district of London.  For some reason the police, usually eager to partner with the intelligent investigator, have been reluctant to involve Holmes in the cases.  But as the murders continue, Holmes quickly becomes wrapped up in the quest to stop the man nicknamed Jack the Ripper.

Murder By Decree has a very literate, intelligent script.  I am not an expert in the Jack the Ripper murders, but I was impressed by the degree to which the filmmakers stuck to the historical record in… [continued]

For years, Star Trek fans spoke of the odd-numbered curse that afflicted the Trek movies.  The odd-numbered films (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and Star Trek V: The Voyage Home) seemed markedly inferior to the even-numbered ones (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country).  True Trek fans, though, knew that there was nothing supernatural at play.  The simple fact is that the even-numbered Trek films were of a higher quality because those were the three Trek films that benefitted from the involvement of Nicholas Meyer.

This talented filmmaker wrote and directed Star Trek II and Star Trek VI (the two darkest and most adult entries in the franchise) and was heavily involved with scripting Star Trek IV (by far the most commercially successful film in the saga until J.J. Abrams’ recent Trek reboot).  The commentary on the DVD of Star Trek IV reveals that Mr. Meyer basically wrote every scene of the film that takes place back in 1986 (while Harve Bennett scripted the opening and closing scenes set in the 23rd century).  Basically, this means that Nicholas Meyer wrote the bulk of the film!  (Mr. Meyer states in the DVD features that the first line of his part of the movie is Spock’s wonderfully deadpan comment that “judging by the pollution content in the atmosphere, we have arrived in the latter half of the 20th century.”  Such a good line!)

As an enormous fan of Mr. Meyer’s work in the Star Trek universe, I have long wanted to check out his 1979 film, Time After Time.  For years I’ve been hearing about this film that Mr. Meyer directed, featuring H.G. Welles travelling through time to combat Jack the Ripper.  (Though somehow in my head I had gotten the idea — which has been my impression for YEARS now! — that it was Sherlock Holmes traveling through time, not Welles… go figure…)  But, while well-received at the time, Time After Time is a pretty forgotten film these days, and my personal “must-watch” list of movies is pretty long, so it took me until last month to get to see the film.

I know this film has some fervent fans, but I can’t really say that it’s an undiscovered treasure.  Time After Time was clearly made with a lot of love and care, and there certainly is a lot to enjoy in the film, but over-all I must say that it hasn’t aged terribly well.

In 1893 London, H.G. Welles (Malcolm McDowell) unveils his newest creation to his stunned dinner companions: a time machine.  Welles intends to travel into the future to investigate what… [continued]

I’m a big, big fan of Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  That film really took me by surprise — it’s a very, very funny film, but also one that is remarkably endearing.

The breakout star of the film was, of course, Russell Brand’s rock star Aldous Snow.  Snow was a delirously lunatic creation — a jovial, high-life-living, self-absorbed maniac of a musician who stole every scene of the movie that he was in.  Many of those scenes co-stared Jonah Hill, who had a small role as a hapless waiter who idolized Aldous.

Get Him to the Greek is a feature-length attempt to recapture the energy of Mr. Brand and Mr. Hill’s interactions in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  Russell Brand repises his role of Aldous Snow, while Mr. Hill portrays a new character: Aaron Green, a young music executive.  Aaron has come up with an idea for Pinnacle Records, the company at which he works: in an attempt to revitalize Aldous Snow’s career, and their flagging record sales, they’ll schedule a concert at the Greek Theater in LA on the ten-year anniversary of Aldous’ previous triumphant performance at that venue.  All that Aaron needs to do is to ensure that the hard-living musician arrives at the theater on time to perform.

It’s a familiar set-up, and one can see the road-map for the film’s story a mile away.  Clearly, Aaron is going to have a lot of frustrating moments trying to keep Aldous en route to the theater, and one can also reasonably expect the straight-laced Aaron to be tempted and perhaps at first overwhelmed by the singer’s partying lifestyle.  Perhaps Aldous might also learn some lessons in responsibility from Aaron.

And that, in a nutshell, is the movie.  So don’t expect Get Him to the Greek to turn any comedy film tropes on their ear.  Nevertheless, I was quite taken by the film’s relentlessly entertaining nature.  Director and co-writer Nicholas Stoller has assembled some amazing comedic performers, and he pretty much lets them all cut loose and bounce off of one another for the duration of the film.  There are plenty of scenes that seem to go one for longer than they should, and plenty of scenes that don’t really serve much of a purpose in the film’s story.  But I didn’t mind terribly, because it’s a lot of fun watching these characters interact with one another, and I enjoyed the time we got to spend in their world.

Brand and Hill are reliably hilarious.  For me the biggest surprise was Rose Byrne, who knocks it out of the park as Aldous’ former musical partner and lover Jackie Q, who is now living with Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich (who ahas a very funny small… [continued]

You might have thought that Tom Hanks had a crazy accent in Catch Me If You Can, but that was merely a prelude to the ludicrously silly sort-of-Slovic voice that Mr. Hanks puts on for his role as Viktor Novorski in Steven Spielberg’s 2004 film, The Terminal.

Viktor Navorski (Tom Hanks) has just arrived to New York City from the Eastern European country of Madeupistan.  Er, excuse me, Krakozia.  Unfortunately, his country undergoes a military coup while Navorski is in the air.  By the time he arrives in New York City, all relations between the United States and Krakozia have been severed, and due to a variety of legal permutations, Mr. Navorski is unable to enter the U.S. but is similarly unable to return to Krakozia.  In short, he finds himself stuck, indefinitely, in the airport.

Let the comic hijinks commence!

I commented in my review of Catch Me If You Can on my feeling, when I first saw the film back in 2002, that it was a surprisingly slight film for Mr. Spielberg to make.  That probably caused me to dismiss the film a little too quickly at the time.  Well, if Catch Me If You Can is slight, then The Terminal is practically nonexistent.

That sounds harsh, which isn’t my intention.  There’s certainly some fun to be had in The Terminal. It’s just that while Catch Me If You Can was a light, fun film, it did have a pretty dramatic emotional core.  The Terminal sort-of shoots for that as well, but there’s just not much there.  What’s left is a fun, frothy film, but one without a whole heck of a lot to say.

(My wife thought that Viktor’s predicament — in which he is forced to go to some extreme lengths in order to adapt to survive the stranded situation in which he finds himself — reminded her of Mr. Hanks’ role in Cast Away.  I’d never thought of The Terminal in that way, but she’s right!  The difference, of course, is that The Terminal doesn’t have any of the dramatic underpinnings of Cast Away.  That’s putting it mildly!)

The Terminal has a fairly episodic structure.  Through a variety of vignettes, we see Viktor adapt to his crazy situation and somehow make for himself a remarkably pleasant life living in the airport.  He gradually bonds with several of the other off-beat but kind airport employees — played by Chi McBride (Boston Public), Diego Luna (Y tu mama tambien, Milk), Gupta Rajan (just as entertaining here as he was in The Royal Tenenbaums), and a pre-Star Trek Zoe Saldana (and, by the way, it’s a riot to see Ms. Saldana play a Star Trek fan in this film,… [continued]

Andy Richter has headlined two terrific but quickly-cancelled TV series.  A few years after the demise of Andy Richter Controls the Universe (which was cancelled after FOX aired 14 of the 19 episodes produced), Mr. Richter stepped into the lead of Andy Barker, P.I. on NBC.  The peacock network cancelled that show after a mere six episodes.

After waiting years for both series to see the light of day on DVD, I was overjoyed when both Andy Richter Controls the Universe AND Andy Barker, P.I. were released in complete series sets late last year!  (Click here to read my recent review of the DVD set of Andy Richter Controls the Universe.)

Andy Barker, played by Mr. Richter, is a mild-mannered accountant who has just opened up his own office on the second floor of a small mid-western strip-mall.  What Andy doesn’t realize is that the previous tenant of that office space was a private eye.  When a mysterious damsel arrives at his office door, seeking help finding her husband (she thinks the office still belongs to that of an investigator), Andy finds himself drawn into the world of crime.  No one is more surprised than he to discover that he actually enjoys working as a private eye, and that he’s pretty good at it as well!  Thus begins his career as the world’s first accountant/P.I.

I found Andy Richter to be just as engaging and entertaining a series lead here as he was in Andy Richter Controls the Universe.  Andy Barker is far less zany than the character of Andy Richter was — while much of the comedy in Andy Richter Controls the Universe was mined from the crazy imagination of the character Andy Richter, the joke in Andy Barker, P.I. is just how honestly wholesome and white-bread Andy Barker is.  This could be a really boring character, but the actor Andy (Richter) imbues the character Andy (Barker) with an enormous amount of heart and likability.  Plus, Mr. Richter has just enough of a gleam in his eye that we can tell that his Andy Barker isn’t just an average boring accountant (no offense to any accountants out there!) — something that is highlighted by just how much fun Andy Barker is clearly having when he dips his toes into the world of criminal investigations.

Andy Barker, P.I. has just as wonderful an ensemble of actors as did Andy Richter Controls the Universe.  If anything, this show displays an even greater assemblage of talents!  The late, great Harve Presnell played Lew Staziak, the private eye into whose office Andy has moved.  In the pilot, I thought this character was a one-off portrayal (as Andy tracks him down to get some help on his first “case”). … [continued]

When I began this project of rewatching the last decade-and-a-half’s worth of films directed by Steven Spielberg, I was hoping that I’d discover (or rediscover) some great films that I had perhaps dismissed too easily when I originally saw them in theatres.  I wondered if watching the films now, years later and separated from the hype and expectations that came with their original theatrical releases, would allow me to appreciate them more and perhaps cause me to re-evaluate my original opinions.

So far, though, that hasn’t happened.  I’ve enjoyed (for the most part), re-watching The Lost World, Amistad, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and Minority Report, but for all four films my opinions have remained almost exactly what they were when I first saw them.  (In a nutshell: mediocre, good, horrible, mediocre.)  But then, this week, I arrived at Catch Me If You Can.  I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed this flick!

Based on the autobiography of Frank Abergnale, Jr. (and co-written by Stan Redding), Catch Me If You Can tells the story of Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio), a young man who, for years, successfully conned people into thinking he was an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer, and who forged millions of dollars worth of checks.

Mr. Spielberg skillfully strikes a deft balance with the tone of the film.  There are some great moments of humor to be found in the tale (I particularly loved Hanratty’s knock-knock joke), and over-all the film has a fun, light tone.  And yet, at its core, Catch Me If You Can is really a profoundly sad story.  To me, the relationship between Frank and his father, Frank Sr. (Christopher Walken) is the back-bone of the film, and it is heartbreaking.  In Frank Jr. we see a young man who, for all of his experiences, is still basically a child, looking for his father’s approval and desperately hoping to find a way to return his life to his idealized vision of how things used to be — with him, his father, and his mother all living happily together in a nice suburban house.  Frank Sr., meanwhile, has seen his business slowly fail (in the film we see him continually dogged by the IRS, and one assumes, despite Frank Sr.’s repeated claims, that this is not without good reason) and his wife leave him, but he is too proud to admit when he needs help and too angry at the government (and the society that allowed him to fail) to push his son to stop the increasingly elaborate con that he’s spinning.

Mr. Walken’s unique line-delivery can make him a ripe subject for parody.  For me, his one scene in Pulp Fiction has forever defined Mr. Walken in my mind… [continued]

One of the many, many great TV shows that aired briefly on FOX before being cancelled well-before-its-time was Andy Richter Controls the Universe.  This short-lived show, which aired in 2002-03, was Andy Richter’s first TV series effort after leaving The Late Show with Conan O’Brien.

I loved this show when it originally aired, and I’ve been hoping for years now that the show would someday get released on DVD.  That day has finally arrived!  Readers of this site might recall that I gave the complete series DVD set of Andy Richter Controls the Universe a brief mention in my list of the Best DVDs of 2009.  I purchased this set at the end of 2009 and hadn’t had a chance to watch it yet when I wrote my Best of 2009 list, so I didn’t feel like I could include it, but I did want to make mention of how extraordinarily pleased I was that this set had finally been released.

Once the summer ended, I had a chance to, at last, make my way through this DVD set.  All nineteen episodes of the series have been included — including, to my surprise and pleasure, five installments that FOX never aired.  (Four of which are really, really funny.)

While some of the series’ playful story-telling techniques — such as the quick-edits, the voice-overs, and the regular shifts into fantasy sequences — don’t quite have the innovative quality that they had back in 2002, I’m pleased to report that Andy Richter Controls the Universe has aged very well.  I found the show just as funny and enjoyable as I had remembered.

Andy Richter is a terrific comedic lead.  His fearlessness that was so often utilized to comedic effect on The Late Show (this is the man, after all, who once famously wandered naked onto the set of The Today Show) is well-suited to this show’s flights of fancy.  A lot of laughs are mined from the crazy things we see Andy doing in his mind’s eye, whether that be arriving to work dressed only in women’s lingerie or diving out his office window or prancing about in a suit made from shredded documents.  Andy is able to come across as a fairly normal “everyman,” while still maintaining his comedic edge.  He’s also lovable enough to make the audience want to watch his adventures every week.

Mr. Richter is surrounded by a strong ensemble.  James Patrick Stuart plays Andy’s best friend Kieth, a man so good looking that life has been incredibly easy for him.  In unskilled hands, this could have been a really annoying character, but Mr. Stuart brings a surprising amount of sweetness to the role — he makes… [continued]

There’s no question in my mind that Christopher Nolan is one of the best directors working today.  There’s only one of his films that I haven’t seen (his first — Following — and I do hope to remedy that situation soon), and I have thoroughly enjoyed every other movie he’s made.  His worst film is probably Batman Begins, and I think that’s a pretty damn good film!

Contrary to my previous statement, my sense is that the general consensus about Mr. Nolan is that Insomnia, his follow-up to Memento, is his weakest film.  But I remember enjoying Insomnia back in 2002, and I really loved it when watching it again on blu-ray last week.

Insomnia is a remake of a 1997 Swedish film of the same name starring Stellan Skarsgard and directed by Eric Skjoldbjaerg.  I’ve never seen the original Insomnia, though I understand that it’s pretty well thought of.  I realize that, had I seen it, it’s possible that I might be as dubious of a remake as I am of the recently-released re-do of Let The Right One In (the new American version is titled simply Let Me In).  But having not seen the original, I am free to judge Mr. Nolan’s version exclusively by its own merits — and it’s quite excellent.

Al Pacino plays beleaguered L.A. homicide detective Will Dormer.  The L.A. police department has been rocked by allegations of misconduct, and Dormer believes that the I.A. investigators are ultimately after him.  In the midst of that, Dormer and his partner Hap (Martin Donovan) are dispatched to a tiny Alaskan town to investigate the murder of a teen-aged girl.  Heading up the local investigation is a young, well-meaning cop named Elie Burr (Hilary Swank).  She clearly worships Detective Dormer, and he seems to appreciate her enthusiasm.  But the case is a difficult one, and Detective Dormer soon finds himself stymied by his main suspect, a local author named Walter Finch (Robin Williams).  As the film progresses, Dormer gradually unravels, his struggles with the case exacerbated by his persistent insomnia (caused perhaps by the fact that, because of how far North as the Alaskan town is, the sun never sets during this season – or, perhaps by Dormer’s growing guilt over the mistakes of his past and a terrible event that happens soon after arriving in Alaska).

This was a high-profile role for Hilary Swank, coming as it did not long after her Academy Award-winning role in Boys Don’t Cry (1999).  Ms. Swank is solid if unspectacular in the film.  The real superstars of Insomnia are Al Pacino and Robin Williams.

Though unquestionably one of the greatest actors of our time, I’ve often felt that in the last decade or so Mr. Pacino (not… [continued]

When I first saw Steven Spielberg’s film  Minority Report in theatres back in 2002 (the only time I’d seen the film until I watched it again on DVD last week), I remember it becoming startlingly clear to me that the man has trouble with the endings of his films.

I recognize that the present-day epilogues to Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan are overloaded with schmaltz and are completely unnecessary to the story, but I’ve never been bothered by those endings (the way others have been, most famously William Goldman, who eviscerated Saving Private Ryan in his famous review).  I was so emotionally engaged with the stories and characters in both of those films that I was not bothered with their endings (even though the logical part of my brain did realize that Mr. Spielberg was laying the emotion on a bit thickly).  But as I wrote last week, I thought the final 25 minutes of A.I. were abominable and possibly the worst 25 minutes Steven Spielberg had ever put to film.  The ending of Minority Report isn’t quite at that level of jaw-dropping terribleness, but I think the first hour and 45 minutes of the film are a very solid, dark sci-fi thriller that is completely undone by the last 35 minutes or so.

At first, Minority Report kept me very engaged.  It’s easy and popular to hate on Tom Cruise these days, but I think he’s a far better actor than he gets credit for, and he’s an engaging lead here.  Mr. Cruise plays the generically-named Tom Anderton, the top-cop at the new Pre-Crime division that has been set up in Washington, DC.  Using three “pre-cogs” (psychics kept under sedation), the Pre-Crime team are able to intercept murders before they happen.  After six years of operation, in which the team has virtually eliminated homicides in DC, a national referendum has been set to determine whether Pre-Crime divisions will be set up in other cities across the U.S.  In advance of this, John and his team are under investigation by Federal Agent Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell).  Everything goes to hell when the psychics predict that John himself is about to commit a homicide.  He goes on the run, determined to prove his innocence, but finds himself setting in motion events that might undermine the legitimacy of the entire Pre-Crime unit.

For that first hour and 45 minutes, Minority Report is a solid, gritty little film.  It goes to some surprisingly grim places.  There’s an early scene in which we learn that apparent super-cop John Anderton is actually a rather broken man.  With the rain falling outside, John sits in the dark in his cluttered apartment, watching holographic projections of… [continued]

After re-watching Jurassic Park (click here for my review) and The Lost World (click here for my review) last month (as part of my look back at the last decade-and-a-half’s worth of films directed by Steven Spielberg) I figured, what the heck, why not take another look at Jurassic Park III (executive produced by Mr. Spielberg and directed by Joe Johnston).

While not as bad as I’d remembered, like The Lost World this third Jurassic Park film is a pale reflection of the first one.

In some respects, I think I like Jurassic Park III better than the second installment.  Whereas The Lost World was slow and rambling — with a story that was all over the place — Jurassic Park III has a much leaner, meaner narrative: a group of people crash on the island and must find a way to survive long enough to reach the coast where rescue hopefully awaits.  That’s a simple hook, and I think it serves the film well.  The story gets going quickly, and from there moves right along like gangbusters straight through to the end.  There’s an intensity and sense of danger that I felt the second film was completely missing.

There are also some terrific action set-pieces.  Here is where Joe Johnston’s background in the world of visual effects serves him well.  We finally get to see some Pterodactyls (teased by the first two films), and they’re worth the wait — the whole sequence in the Pterodactyl cage is a tense, exciting adventure.  I also love the Spinosaur/T-Rex fight early in the film (shades of the King Kong/T-Rex fight, I felt, but that amused me rather than annoying me), as well as the Spinosaur attack on the river, in the rain, that takes place late in the film.

Whereas The Lost World chose — mistakenly, I think — to focus entirely on Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm, this third film wisely returns the focus to Sam Neill as Dr. Alan Grant.  I love Mr. Neill in this role, and it’s great to see him back front-and-center in this film.

Unfortunately, despite those strengths, there’s also quite a lot of weaknesses to Jurassic Park III, things that keep the film squarely mediocre in my mind.

First of all, other than Sam Neill, I think the film’s ensemble is pretty weak.  One of the key components to the first film’s success was how many great characters there were in the piece — and the great actors chosen to portray them.  But like The Lost World, while the lead character in Jurassic Park III is interesting and sympathetic, the rest of the ensemble is flat.  I love William H. Macy, but he… [continued]

Now that we’ve arrived at 2001′s A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, I can finally start calling this series looking back at the recent films of Steven Spielberg by the original title I’d thought up: “Spielberg in the Aughts.”  (My first thought, last month, was that I’d look back at the last decade of Mr. Spielberg’s films, none of which I’d ever revisited after seeing them in theatres — but then I realized there were several of his films from the ’90s that I wanted to revisit, too, while I was at it!  Click here for my review of Jurassic Park, here for my review of The Lost World, and here for my review of Amistad.) 

I hated A.I.: Artificial Intelligence when I saw it in theatres.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I thought the first three-fourths of the movie — right up to the point when Haley Joel Osment’s David finds himself trapped underwater staring at the Blue Fairy but unable to reach her — was a solid if somewhat dour sci-fi film.  But then the movie kept going.  I felt those last 25 minutes-or-so were the worst 25 minutes that Steven Spielberg had ever committed to film.  Those 25 minutes were so bad that, for me, they entirely destroyed the film.

So what did I think, a decade later?

Well, after nearly ten years of having the thought in my head that the final 25 minutes of A.I. were the worst 25 minutes of film that Steven Spielberg had ever shot, those 25 minutes had been quite built up in my mind, so not surprisingly they didn’t quite live up to the heights of awfulness that I had remembered.  Also, after having seen the entirety of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I can no longer state with certainty that the end of A.I. represents the worst 25 minutes that Steven Spielberg has ever put on film. 

But I will say that I still thought the ending was entirely awful on almost every level.

The basic plot of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence was developed, over many years, by Stanley Kubrick.  As the story goes, Mr. Kubrick worked on the film for years — and often discussed the project with his friend Steven Spielberg — but for a variety of reasons never actually made the movie.  Following his death, Mr. Spielberg got involved with the project in an attempt to realize this unfinished work that Mr. Kubrick had begun.

As a movie-fan back in 2001, I was ecstatic that Steven Spielberg (the man who made E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind) was returning, at long-last, to sci-fi.  I was intrigued to see Mr. Spielberg bring the extraordinary visual expertise and… [continued]

After re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird last month, I couldn’t resist re-watching the famous film adaptation from 1962 starring Gregory Peck.  I’d seen the film before, many years ago, but I hardly remembered it.  After having devoured Harper Lee’s magnificent novel, reminding myself in the process of what an amazing achievement in literature it is, I was eager to take another look at the film.

Sadly, whereas re-reading To Kill a Mockingbird only elevated it further in my mind, I found myself fairly disappointed by the film version.

It’s a fairly faithful adaptation.  Almost all of the key characters and scenes from the novel are present in the film.  Events are slightly re-organized, and the time-frame is condensed (the film takes place over a single year, from one summer to the next, while the novel is spread out over two years and three summers), but nothing major is left out.  Yet the whole thing seems sort of flat and lifeless.  The familiar scenes are all there, but they’re drained of much of the emotional context that I felt in the book.

Where the film really fell down, for me, was in the performances of the kids.  Frankly, I just didn’t care for any of the three child actors chosen to play Scout, Jem, and Dill.  I have written often on this blog that I think the failure or success of child actors rests on how they are handled by the director, so I don’t just fault the kids.  I also acknowledge that standards and styles of performance were quite different in the 1960′s than they are today.  One can’t expect to see the type of viscerally honest performance by a child actor such as Max Records as Max in Spike Jonze’s recent adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are (click here for my review of that amazing film) in a movie from that era.  But whatever the reason, I just didn’t feel the performances of the three kids.  It felt like three kids acting out scenes from To Kill a Mockingbird, rather than my believing that I’m watching three real characters interact.

Where the film didn’t disappoint me, though, was in Gregory Peck’s performance as Atticus Finch.  Although he’s been in a number of other famous, well-made films, Mr. Peck has become indelibly linked with Atticus, and after thirty seconds on screen one can see why.  Mr. Peck is perfectly cast.  With his deep voice and large frame, Mr. Peck is powerfully believable both as an erudite lawyer as well as the town’s best sharp-shooter, and he embodies all the wiseness and kindness of an ideal father figure.  While I felt that the kids (and several other performers in the film)… [continued]

My revisitation of the last decade-and-a-half of the films of Steven Spielberg continues!  I’ve already looked at Jurassic Park and The Lost World, which brings me now to 1997′s Amistad.

In an attempt to recapture the magic of 1993 (in which he released two films in a single year, the dramatic historical film Schindler’s List as well as the crowd-pleasing action spectacle Jurassic Park), in 1997 Mr. Spielberg released both the Jurassic Park sequel The Lost World as well as the historical epic Amistad. 

In 1839 a group of African slaves broke free aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad and killed most of the crew.  When they were intercepted by an American naval vessel, the slaves were imprisoned and brought to trial.  A group of abolitionists became aware of the case, and hired a young, inexperienced lawyer named Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey) to take the case.  Mr. Baldwin was forced to retry the case multiple times, as the politics of a nation heading towards Civil War bestowed upon this small case an enormous weight in the potential fate of the nation.  Ultimately, the case was brought before the U.S. Supreme Court, where former president John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins) assisted Mr. Baldwin in arguing for the release of the Amistad slaves.

As is often the case, Mr. Spielberg assembled a talented group of actors to embody the characters in the film.  Mr. McConaughey does a fine job as the jovial, slightly naive lawyer Baldwin.  The role doesn’t feel like much of a stretch for him (particularly after playing a lawyer the year before as the lead in 1996′s A Time to Kill), but he reins in some of his more over-the-top mannersisms which allows him to fit well into this historical drama.  Fresh off of The Lost Word, Pete Postlewaite pops up again as an equally unlikable fellow — this time, he’s the lawyer assigned to prosecute the Amistad case.  Stellan Skarsgard and Morgan Freeman play the abolitionists who are drawn to help the Amistad slaves.  Though neither has much to do in the film, both make the most of their small parts.  Other familiar, talented members of the cast include Nigel Hawthorne as President Martin van Buren, David Paymer (The Larry Sanders Show, State and Main) as Secretary Forsythe, Xander Berkeley (24) as the presidential advisor Hammond, Anna Paquin (X-Men, True Blood) as Queen Isabella, and I was pleasantly surprised that I had forgotten that Chiwetel Ejiofor (Serenity, Spartan) has a fairly substantial role as the translator who assists Mr. Baldwin in communicating with the Amistad slaves.

But the two standouts of Amistad are Djimon Hounsou as Cinque, the young man who who leads the Amistad revolt and as such becomes… [continued]

Last week I began my look back at the last decade-and-a-half of Steven Spielberg films with Jurassic Park.  Now my project to revisit all of the films that Mr. Spielberg has made since 1993 — films that, with the exception of Saving Private Ryan, I have only seen once — continues with Mr. Spielberg’s 1997 Jurassic Park sequel, The Lost World.  (I’ll be calling this series Spielberg in the Aughts, but I can’t really use that title for a film made in 1997…!)

I remember being very disappointed with this film when I saw it back in 1997.  It was the first time I had gone to see a Steven Spielberg film in theatres and come out disappointed.  (But not the last…)  So when I watched this film on DVD, I was curious to see if I liked it any more now, so many years later and divorced from all the hype of the time.

In a word: no.

I will say that The Lost World looks great.  Mr. Spielberg and his frequent collaborator, genius-level cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, have darkened their palette this time out.  Whereas the first Jurassic Park was quite bright for much of it’s run-time, The Lost World has a much more shadowy look to it, and that is effective at adding a layer of spookiness and mystery to the proceedings.  The dinosaur CGI effects still look pretty great.  One of the few scenes that takes place in bright daylight is the introduction to Pete Postlewaite’s great white hunter Roland Dembo and his team, as they attempt to capture a number of dinosaurs in the midst of a high-speed run across a plain.  There are no shadows in which to hide dodgy effects, but none are needed — ILM’s CGI creatures (combined with some top-notch work from Stan Winston’s animatronic workshop) look fabulous.

But that’s pretty much the only good thing I can say about The Lost World.  I found the story to be a mess, and the characters flat and uninvolving.  From the get-go, The Lost World was operating at a disadvantage to its predecessor, Jurassic Park, because its source material was much weaker.

I still remember being blown away when I first read Michael Crichton’s novel, Jurassic Park (well-before the movie came out), and I was so excited when the news broke that he was working on a sequel book.  But I was underwhelmed by The Lost World when the novel was released.  It just didn’t seem anywhere near as interesting as the first.  Wisely, Mr. Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp chose to jettison much of the source material — but what they came up with in its place wasn’t much better.

Right from the beginning… [continued]

I once considered Tim Burton one of my very favorite directors, but recent years have changed that somewhat for me.  I still think he’s an extraordinary talent who has given us some incredible films, but since 1999′s Sleepy Hollow, in my opinion Mr. Burton has directed two mediocre films (Big Fish and Sweeney Todd) and two absolutely terrible films (Planet of the Apes and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).

When I first heard that Mr. Burton would be directing an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland, I thought at first that that was an inspired idea — that the weirdness of Alice in Wonderland would be a great match for Mr. Burton’s bizarre sensibilities.  But when I started seeing trailers for the film, I thought it looked terrible.  The glimpses I got of Johnny Depp’s totally wacky portrayal of the Mad Hatter didn’t interest me, the design of the film looked garish, and it seemed to me that the dark terror of Sleepy Hollow had been replaced by lowest-common-denominator all-ages pap.  For the first time that I could ever remember, here was a new Tim Burton film that I was not interested in seeing.  Once I started to read the poor reviews (and, in particular, the on-line eviscerations of the 3-D conversion), I decided to pass on seeing the film in theatres.

But, you know, it’s a new Tim Burton movie!  Even though it didn’t look like a film I would enjoy, I do admit to remaining sort of curious to see what Mr. Burton had come up with.  Was the film really as bad as it looked to me in the trailers, and as I’d read?  When I saw the film in the “new releases” section of my local video store, I decided to rent it so I could see for myself.

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is not a total catastrophe.  There are some bits and pieces of the film that I liked.  But as you could probably tell from my recent cartoons, I found the whole thing to be exceedingly mediocre, and quite a disappointment coming from the talented Tim Burton.

The film started off well.  I quite liked Mia Wasikowska’s performance as Alice.  She’s certainly quirky enough to feel right at home as the lead in a Tim Burton film, but her Alice also felt recognizably vulnerable and human.  Her trip down the rabbit-hole and entrance into Wonderland was sufficiently weird and spooky, and I quite liked the build-up of hints that this wasn’t Alice’s first trip to Wonderland.  That was a surprising choice on Mr. Burton’s part (and that of screenwriter Linda Woolverton), but I really dug it.  I liked the sense of history and mystory that gave the… [continued]

1993 was a banner year for Steven Spielberg.  That year saw the release of two films that he directed: Schindler’s List and Jurassic Park.  Both were phenomenally good, though two more different films I can scarcely imagine.  To my younger self, those dual accomplishments in 1993 embedded Steven Spielberg in my mind as a director at the top of his game who could pretty much do no wrong.  If he could succeed at making both a potent, emotional historical drama, as well as a nail-biting sci-fi action spectacle, then the man could do anything.

I remember very clearly when I first saw Jurassic Park on the big screen.  It scared the hell out of me!  That seems sort of silly now, but I wasn’t prepared at the time for how intense a film it was.  Seeing it projected on the big screen, I was totally blown away by the visual effects, and also by the incredible sound.  Jurassic Park is one of the first films that really made me think about the sound design.  I think it was the incredible sound-scape that contributed to the intensity of the film as much as the amazing imagery.

Watching Jurassic Park, today, on DVD, the film doesn’t have anywhere near that intensity.  It does, however, hold up rather well.  The CGI effects that were so ground-breaking at the time still look great.  That’s a pretty amazing achievement — I’m sure you don’t have to think too hard to come up with a lengthy list of films whose visual effects were groundbreaking at the time but are pretty laughable today — and it’s a testament to the quality work done by all the artists involved with the film.  It’s pretty amazing to me how well-made the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park are.  There wasn’t a single shot that jumped out at me as being silly or fake-looking.  This is important in allowing the film to retain its effectiveness, even almost twenty years later.  It’s critical that the dinosaurs work as believable creatures — otherwise I think you’d be plucked right out of the story.

But the reason why Jurassic Park still works today isn’t just about the dinosaurs — it’s also about how carefully and successfully Mr. Spielberg (and screenwriters David Koepp and Michael Crichton, adapting Mr. Crichton’s novel) establish a believable, interesting ensemble of characters to hang the story around.  It takes almost a full hour of the film before the dino-mayhem really begins.  That time is well-used, as we get to know and care about the folks who are about to be terrorized.

Sam Neillhas never been better than as Dr. Alan Grant, the paleontologist hero of the film.  He’s ornery but not in an… [continued]

I saw a lot of movies in 2009, but one of the films that I missed was An Education.  I’ve been meaning to remedy that for a while, ever since the film was released on DVD, and I finally had a chance to watch it earlier this month.  It’s a great film, which I thoroughly enjoyed right up until the final 3-4 minutes.  (I’ll get to that in a minute.)

Carey Mulligan plays Jenny, a sixteen year-old girl who lives with her parents outside of London in the 1960′s.  She is studying hard at an all-girls school in the hopes of being accepted to Oxford the following year.  One rainy day, while walking home from school, she meets David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard), a charming, wealthy man who is a great deal older than she.  Jenny is impressed by his lifestyle, and his interest in and knowledge of art and music.  David’s charm seduces Jenny’s parents (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour) almost as much as it does Jenny — her mother and father are so excited at the prospect of their daughter marrying such a well-off, intelligent and cultured fellow that they allow themselves to be blinded to the potential downsides of the relationship.

An Education is a fairly small-scale, intimate character study (that’s a compliment, not a criticism), and as such it is carried on the strength of its ensemble cast.  (Though a strong script from the great Nick Hornby helps too!)  That the actors assembled are SO strong is probably why the film was met with such acclaim upon its release last year.  Carey Mulligan knocks it out of the park in her first major leading role.  She brings a fierce intelligence as well as a believable vulnerability to the role of Jenny, a young woman on the verge of a larger education about life than she was expecting.  Peter Sarsgaard is equally compelling as David.  Anyone who’s ever seen a movie before can probably surmise that there’s more to this seemingly charming man than meets the eye, but Mr. Sarsgaard’s compelling performance makes one understand why Jenny (and her parents) can fall for him.

Speaking of Jenny’s parents, Alfred Molina is stupendous as her father.  As with all the actors in the ensemble, he avoids cliche or over-simplification in his performance.  He’s a comic stick-in-the-mud at many points in the film, particularly in the early-going (complaining about listening to Jenny’s practicing her cello, or protesting that he doesn’t want to drive so far to hear a concert), but he also clearly cares for his daughter and is concerned for her well-being.  As his wife, Cara Seymour has the far-less showy role, but she also brings great strength (and… [continued]

I was extraordinarily taken with Adaptation when I first saw it in theatres back in 2002, but I hadn’t seen it since.  I had been waiting for there to be a follow-up to the initial bare-bones DVD with nary a single special feature (save the film’s theatrical trailer) — if ever there was a film that left me desperate for a behind-the-scenes peek at just how the film came to be, it’s this one — but no special edition DVD ever arrived.  Shame!  Still, when I saw the disc in the five dollar bin at Newbury Comics a few months ago, I couldn’t resist.

Adaptation centers on screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s struggles with adapting Susan Orlean’s novel, The Orchid Thief.  How can he possibly make a movie out of the plot-free novel about flowers, without selling out by employing tired Hollywood cliches of action sequences and characters falling in love and learning important life lessons?

The above two-sentence summary really fails to do the film’s weird, complex, sprawling narrative justice.  The film swims deliriously in-and-out of real life events.  Adaptation is of course written by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who really was hired to adapt The Orchid Thief only to find himself totally stymied in his attempts, and he did decide to write himself into his screenplay (Adaptation is the film that resulted), as does the Charlie in Adaptation.  Still with me?  And yet much of Adaptation is pure fiction — Charlie Kaufman doesn’t really have a twin brother Donald (despite Donald’s name being listed in the film’s credits, a clever touch), and of course none of the insanity at the end of the film with Susan Orleans and her subject Laroche (in which drugs and murder come into play) has any basis in reality.

I can only laugh and wonder what the real Susan Orleans thought of this sort-of adaptation of her novel, or of her depiction in the film.  Former executive Valerie Thomas (played in the film by Tilda Swinton), told Variety: “I’m 10 pages in, and suddenly realize, ‘Oh my God, I’m in this.”  That Variety article goes on to comment that Ms. Thomas got off easy in the film, though perhaps they’re forgetting the scene in which Charlie masturbates to the thought of her having sex with him.

Nicolas Cage turns in one of his finest performances ever (well, two of his finest performances ever, actually), in the dual role of Charlie Kaufman and his twin brother Donald.  It is astonishing to me how completely Mr. Cage is able to create and inhabit two entirely different characters despite their identical features.  Cage’s Charlie is depressed, anxious, and self-loathing, whereas Donald is happy, outgoing, and eager to please.… [continued]

And so at last my little tour through the early films of Albert Brooks  concludes.  (Feel free to check out my reviews of Real Life (1979), Modern Romance (1981), and Lost in America (1985).)  Defending Your Life is probably the Albert Brooks movie that I’ve seen the most — but still, it had been many years since my last viewing, so it was great fun to take another look at the film.

In a brisk opening (a model of efficient story-telling), we’re introduced to Daniel Miller, a mid-level executive who, although he seems to be doing well enough at work that he’s able to buy himself an expensive car to celebrate his birthday, seems to live a fairly lonely life.  While taking his new car out for a spin, Daniel gets distracted and winds up driving directly into a bus.  When he next opens his eyes, he’s in Judgment City, and the movie is off.

Judgment City isn’t heaven or hell, as it’s explained to Daniel — it’s a way-station in which the recently dead are judged to see if they’re ready to move on to the next stage of their existence, or if their souls need to be sent back down to Earth for another go.  Everyone has an opportunity to defend their life in a courtroom-like setting (though Daniel is repeatedly told that it’s not really a trial) before the final decision is made.

The tag-line of Defending Your Life is “the first true story of what happens after you die.”  One of my friends is fond of saying that he fervently hopes that that is true.  There is something appealing, I must agree, to the notion that we’ll all have an opportunity to defend our lives — the actions we took, the choices we made — in the afterlife.  Though he and I aren’t quite sure we agree with Mr. Brooks’ depiction, in this film, that whether one has overcome one’s fear is really the most important question on which one’s life should be judged.  It’s an interesting perspective, and it certainly provides for some fine drama in this film, but I tend to think that there are other, better ways in which one’s merit could be evaluated.  I’m sure there are some quite fearless people out there who are also complete jerks!

It’s a credit to Mr. Brooks’ ambitions that he has created a comedic film that can also prompt such serious questions and thought.  Defending Your Life is certainly a comedic film, though as always Mr. Brooks isn’t afraid to  let several minutes pass without any big punchlines.

The best source of laughs in the film is probably Rip Torn, wonderfully cast as Daniel’s defender,… [continued]

Back in May, after watching Albert Brooks’ 1985 film Lost in America, I wrote that I planned on re-watching his 1991 film Defending Your Life the next week.  Well, time got away from me, and I do still hope to find the time to re-watch that great film soon.  But a few weeks ago, when the mood struck me to again sample an Albert Brooks film, I decided instead to hunt down the last remaining film by Mr. Books that I hadn’t yet seen: Real Life, from 1979.

After having written, directed, and starred in several short films for Saturday Night Live during its early years, Mr. Brooks moved to the big screen with his debut film, Real Life.  He plays film director Albert Brooks (not for the last time), who, in the film, has seized upon an amazing idea: the subject of his next movie will be real life.  Rather than filming a movie with fake characters portrayed by actors and actresses acting out a fake story, he will choose one average American family and film their lives for a year.  Out of that footage he’ll be able to craft a movie more exciting and dramatic than any other motion picture, and it will have something that none of them do: it will be REAL.

Needless to say, Brooks’ “perfect” American family soon turns out to be anything but, and the family’s struggles to maintain their normal lives in the face of constant monitoring by film cameras — not to mention Mr. Brooks’ difficulties at avoiding any interference in their lives — lead to things quickly dissolving into chaos.

I always thought that Albert Brooks was a little bit ahead of his time, but this 1979 film is remarkably prescient in predicting today’s American fascination with “reality TV.”  In Real Life, Mr. Brooks was able to portray both the seduction of being constantly on display before others, as well as the inherent horror of such a situation.  He was also able to predict, with pinpoint accuracy, the way the act of filming someone’s actions will, without fail, cause subtle (or gross) alterations in that individual’s behavior.  (Call it the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Reality Television.)

Amongst the cast, the standout is Charles Grodin.  Mr. Grodin is at the top of his game as Warren Yeager, the beleaguered patriarch of Mr. Brooks’ perfect family.  Grodin is able to be sympathetic and rather pitiable all at the same time.

As with most Albert Brooks films, Real Life is a riot.  The sequence in which veterinarian Warren Yeager attempts to save an injured horse is a knock-out.  But, also as with most Albert Brooks films, there’s also an element of American… [continued]

A Few Good Men is one of those movies that I saw countless times in the nineties, to the point that I knew the film so well that it bored me. But then I stopped watching it, and when I decided to pop the film into my DVD player earlier this month, it had been many years since I’d last seen it.

While there are a few moments that haven’t aged well, overall I found A Few Good Men to still be a powerhouse of a film – just phenomenally entertaining.

This film is part of Rob Reiner’s astounding run of films – This is Spinal Tap (1984), The Sure Thing (1985), Stand By Me (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), When Harry Met Sally (1989). Has any other director had such a run of such phenomenal films, one after another? And what’s really astounding is how different they all are from one another – different genres, different styles. It’s unbelievable how good all of those films are (and how well they all hold up to this day).

Take a director at the top of his game, and mix him with a screenplay by the brilliant Aaron Sorkin (adapting his own play), and you have a recipe for an amazing film. As with much of the work of Mr. Reiner and Mr. Sorkin, the story has a strong dramatic core – but it is also filled with a lot of humor.

It’s fun to watch this movie now and to see just how young Tom Cruise and Demi Moore are in this film. Cruise is just great – you can see his star-power shining through, bright and strong, in his protrayal of hot-shot young lawyer Daniel Kaffee. Moore is a little flatter, but still does well in the role of the stiff Lt. Cdr. Joe Galloway. I think this is one of her best performances. I feel the same way about Kevin Bacon. I tend to think that he’s a much better actor than Demi Moore, and there are certainly plenty of other films in which I’ve really enjoyed his performance. But still, I would argue that his role in A Few Good Men is one of his very best. I love the way he plays his relationship with Cruise’s Kaffee. There’s deep friendship, but also some rivalry and antagonism, between the two young men. In the hands of less-skilled actors, the relationship could have so easily tipped over to one side or the other – but Cruise and Bacon walk that fine line perfectly. I find their characters’ interplay to be endlessly fascinating, and one of the secret treasures of this film.

The great… [continued]

I can’t believe it took me this long to get to the 2008 HBO miniseries John Adams!

This seven-episode miniseries introduces us to John Adams as a prominent lawyer in Boston, defending the British soldiers who shot and killed several Americans in the so-called “Boston Massacre.”  Throughout the rest of the series, we follow John Adams’ long and eventful life through the American Revolution and the fifty years of American history that follow.

This miniseries is a monumental achievement.  Each episode is truly a mini motion picture.  (And not so “mini” at that — most episodes run WELL over an hour in length.)  The production design, the costumes, the sets, and the visual effects that filled in the environment beyond the sets all combine to create an astonishing recreation of pre-and-post-Revolutionary America.

I happen to be fascinated by the American Revolution, ever since taking a class back at Brown with the scholar Gordon Wood (author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, as well as one of the writers quoted by young Will Hunting in the “how about ‘dem apples” scene of Good Will Hunting), and I really enjoyed seeing that period of history brought to such vivid life.  Based on the book John Adams by David McCullough (another extraordinary writer and historian), the miniseries is filled to overflowing with fascinating historical details both large (for instance, I had no idea that Mr. Adams spent so much time abroad, working to garner international support for the fledgling nation during its revolutionary conflict with Britain) and small (I was intrigued to observe the changing fashion in wigs of American intellectuals and politicians).

The sprawling cast is top-drawer.  The series is headlined by several “big name” actors who are, to no one’s surprise, quite terrific — but the cast is also filled out by some very talented lesser-known faces.  The series rests, of course, on the performances of Paul Giamatti as John Adams and Laura Linney as Abigail Adams.  The two are absolutely wonderful, capturing the fierce intelligence and stubbornness of both Adamses, as well as the tender love that they shared throughout their lives.  I wasn’t expecting this miniseries to present a portrait of such a strong marriage, but that is a strong through-line to the story.  David Morse creates an exceptional George Washington (ably assisted by some terrific hair and make-up).  Morse’s Washington might be the most idealized character in the piece, but this ideal come to life is so much fun to watch that I have no complaints.

The biggest surprise of the miniseries, for me, was the quiet, underplayed performance of Stephen Dillane as Thomas Jefferson.  I can’t speak to the historical accurateness of… [continued]

During the production of the final season of Battlestar Galactica, word broke that show-runner Ronald D. Moore was developing a two-hour pilot to a new sci-fi TV series for Fox called Virtuality.  This was exciting news.  Mr. Moore is an extraordinary writer, and I’ve been a fan of his ever since noticing that I always liked the episodes he wrote for Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine better than any of the others.  Then came Battlestar Galactica, a series which — despite the problems I have with its final season — stands definitively as one of the best dramas of recent memory (and certainly one of the finest sci-fi series ever made).  With BSG winding down, I was very pleased to hear that Mr. Moore was developing a new series (in addition to the Battlestar prequel Caprica, which was in the works at around the same time.)

But then, sadly, Virtuality went nowhere.  The pilot was produced, but Fox decided not to go forward with a series.  The pilot was aired once last summer, and that was that.

Recently, a DVD of that pilot episode was released, and having seen it I now have one more reason to hate the Fox network.  Seriously, Fox has created and then cancelled so many great shows that it’s crazy (Arrested Development, Firefly, The Tick, Futurama, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Undeclared, I could go on and on…).

Virtuality introduces the story of the twelve men and women who crew the experimental space-ship Phaeton.  It’s the near future, and the Phaeton has been launched on a ten-year journey to explore a nearby star-system, Eridani.  Shortly after launch, the mission turns from one of exploration into something much more critical, as environmental catastrophes begin wracking Earth.  The mission to Eridani now represents the best hope for the survival of the human race.  Complicating matters somewhat is that the conglomerate funding the mission is paying for the massive undertaking by recording all of the footage of the mission — and the going-on of the Phaeton‘s crew — and presenting that footage as a reality show to viewers back on Earth.  The pressure of having cameras constantly monitoring their every move adds, as you can imagine, to the tension level of the crew.

To combat that, the Phaeton comes equipped with extraordinarily sophisticated virtual reality systems for the crew.  On their off-duty time, crew-members can put on a VR visor and enter a completely three-dimensional and life-like computer-created environment.  (Star Trek fans recognize the familiar concept of the Holodeck.)  However, even this recreational device soon becomes problematic for the Phaeton crew, as one by one the crew-members discover that a mysterious man… [continued]

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is a French film that lovingly parodies the 1960′s Sean Connery era James Bond films.  It got very little play here in the U.S., but if you’re a fan of the Connery Bond films then this movie is not to be missed.

OSS 117 actually began as a serious series of spy novels and films in the 1950′s (predating Ian Fleming’s secret agent by several years).  However, Cairo, Nest of Spies is anything but serious.  Now, this film isn’t total insane lunacy like the Austin Powers films.  Rather, this film represents a gentler form of parody.  In many respects, the filmmakers have lovingly recreated the world of 1960′s James Bond — through the sets, the costumes, the colors, the score, etc.  But when it comes to the story, everything is nudged several directions towards the silly.

Jean Dujardin stars as the titular OSS 117, Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath.  He’s a well-dressed, highly-trained secret agent, able of besting a skilled foe in hand-to-hand combat and wooing any lovely lady he sets his sights on.  Sound familiar?  But he’s also rather dim, ludicrously devoted to France’s president, and totally condescending to any culture and religion that is not French.  Dujardin is a riot, and the film succeeds primarily because he’s able to walk the tightrope between being an imbecile, but a lovable one.  He’s able to handle witty reparte as well as broad physical humor (the pose he strikes any time he fires his weapon made me laugh every time).

It can be challenging for a comedic film to work even when watched with subtitles, but despite that I still found Cairo, Nest of Spies to be very, very funny.  I’m sure there were a few jokes that would have worked better if I spoke fluent French, but not many.  It helps that many of the film’s best gags are visual ones.  My favorite moment: a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it gag about OSS 117′s bed-hair when he wakes up in his suite about mid-way through the film. (Though I will comment that I was disappointed that there were several spelling mistakes in the subtitles.  That’s unfortunately amateurish.)

This is an obscure film, but for a Bond nut like myself I am so glad to have seen it.  To any fellow Bond-fanatics out there, I highly recommend you track this down.  (And luckily, a sequel has already been made — OSS 117: Lost in Rio.  It hasn’t been released yet here in the States, but I eagerly await its arrival…)

I’m behind the eight-ball on this one, I know.  Movie-related web-sites across the web have been showering praise on this small-budget Swedish vampire film for the past two years, but I only recently got around to seeing it.  It’s just as terrific as I’d heard.

Oskar is a twelve-year old boy whose parents are separated.  He doesn’t seem to have any friends, at least not any that we see, and he’s terribly bullied by a trio of boys from school.  Oskar likes to hang-out by himself in the courtyard of the building where he lives with his mother.  One night, he meets a girl, Eli, who has just moved into the building.  The two form a gentle friendship.  Of course, once we see Eli’s father/guardian Hakan murder a man in the woods and drain him of his blood, it’s clear that Eli hides a terrible secret.

That plot could easily describe a film that played into a whole lot of dumb, horror-movie cliches, but I was delighted that nothing could be further from the truth.  Director Tomas Alfredson, working from a screenplay by John Ajvide Lindqvist (adapting his own novel) has crafted a surprisingly gentle, tender film that is at once sweet and chilling.  Let the Right One In unfolds through a series of small, quiet scenes.  It’s a very still movie (though that stillness is punctuated by a few moments of intense violence).  The way the camera lingers on the frozen, snow-covered landscape reminds me in some ways of the Coen Brothers’ Fargo, and also in the way the M. Night Shyamalan was unafraid, in his early films (like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable) to let a quiet long shot tell the story.

All of this would be irrelevant were not the film’s two leads, Kare Hedebrant as Oskar, and Lina Leandersson as Eli, so spectacularly good.  There is no over-acting to be found in this film.  Both Hedebrant and Leandersson are able to express a world of character through their small, underplayed facial expressions, often without speaking a word.  (Or when, as is often the case in real life, the words they are speaking fail to convey what’s really going on in their hearts and minds.)  Whenever I see great performances by child actors, I always credit the director as much as the actors themselves, and so kudos to Mr. Alfredson for drawing such restrained, naturalistic performers out of his stars.

I am not a big horror fan, but Let The Right One In quickly won me over.  I’m so glad to have finally given it a shot.  It’s hard to believe that one could describe a vampire movie as tender, but this one is.  I must also… [continued]

After re-watching Albert Brooks’ film Modern Romance a few weeks ago (read my review here), I decided the time had come to revisit some of his other films.  I started by tracking down Lost in America, his 1985 film that, somehow, I had never seen.

Mr. Brooks (who also directed and co-wrote the film, with Monica Johnson) stars as David Howard.  After failing to get a promotion at work — one that he’d been working towards for years — he tells off his boss in spectacular fashion (the explosion is just as much fun as you might think) and gets fired.  So he convinces his wife Linda, played by Julie Hagerty (Elaine Dickinson from Airplane!) to quit her boring job as well.  They sell their house, liquidate their stocks, buy a Winnebago and set out to roam America and find themselves.  Unfortunately, their first stop is in Las Vegas and, after only one night, they’ve lost all their money.  Left with only $800 to their name, David and Linda have to try to find jobs in the small, midwestern town in which they find themselves.

In my humble opinion, Albert Brooks wrote and directed far too few films.  So it was a great delight to get to discover, for the first time, an Albert Brooks film that I’d never seen.  Lost in America certainly isn’t my favorite Brooks film (that would be Modern Romance), but there’s a lot to appreciate here.  There’s a lot of comedy today that wrings laughs from awkward, painful moments (the original British The Office comes to mind), but Mr. Brooks was pushing those boundaries thirty years ago.  For a “comedy,” there’s a lot of real, human moments to be found in Lost in America (and in all his films, really!).

It’s clear from the film’s opening scene — a slow, slow pan through David & Linda’s home, while a Larry King interview with film critic Rex Reed plays on an out-of-sight radio — that we’re in the hands of a filmmaker with great skill.  It’s a very meta choice to start one’s film with a lengthy monologue from Rex Reed talking about films, and it indicates that Mr. Brooks was after more than just a few yuks.  Lost in America tells the story two people who both find themselves trapped in their lives — trapped by their go-nowhere jobs, by the expectations that they put upon themselves about what they “should” be doing, about the house they “should” be living in, and so forth.  It’s a situation in which, one presumes, many middle-class folk find themselves in at one point or another in their lives.  There’s a strong aspect of “wish-fulfillment” in the plan that… [continued]

It’s funny — although I acknowledge that Peter Bogdanovich is a significant, influential director, I must admit with some embarrassment that I’ve seen very few of his films.  Many of his ground-breaking films from the ’70s remain, as-yet-unseen, on my lengthy “to-watch” list: The Last Picture Show, What’s Up Doc?, Paper Moon, etc.  I actually know Mr. Bogdanovich more as a knowledgeable film historian (his audio commentary on the DVD of Citizen Kane, for example, is magnificent and enlightening) than I do as a director.

But I’m a big fan of a film that he made in 2001, The Cat’s Meow.  The film is based on Hollywood whispers (“the whisper told most often”) about the events of a fateful boat cruise hosted by legendary media mogul William Randolph Hearst in 1924 that (might have) resulted in the untimely death of director Thomas Ince.

As the film tells the tale, W.R. Hearst invited an assemblage of show-biz folks (and a few gossip-writers) to join him on a yacht cruise in celebration of Mr. Innes’ birthday.  One of the guests was Charlie Chaplin (played by comedian Eddie Izzard), who may or may not have been involved at the time with Hearst’s very young starlet wife, Marion Davies (played by Kirsten Dunst).  (Of course, Hearst’s relationship with Marion Davies was most famously depicted — not in a positive light — in Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, which resulted in Hearst’s attempts to block that film’s release.)  Though the weekend was supposed to be a fun getaway, it seems that almost every guest on Hearst’s yacht arrived with their own agenda.  The fun of the film is in watching these powerful Hollywood personalities bounce off one another, as each guests’s true ambitions bubble just below the surface.

There’s a lot of humor to be found in the film, although it shouldn’t be mistaken for a farce.  The Cat’s Meow is actually a pretty sad story — this boat cruise did not have a happy ending for many of its guests.

Mr. Bogdanovich assembled an interesting mix of actors for the film.  I really enjoyed Eddie Izzard’s performance as Chaplin.  He doesn’t really look like Chaplin, but still, the casting is inspired.  Izzard really nails the charisma of Chaplin, without falling into mimicry.  It seems to me that Kirsten Dunst isn’t that well thought of as a serious actress, but I thought she was terrific here as Davies.  Unlike Mr. Izzard, she really does look the part — and she brought a surprising amount of soul to the performance.  (You’ll have a lot more empathy for Marion Davies when watching The Cat’s Meow than when watching Citizen Kane!)  Edward Herrmann (whom my wife was excited to… [continued]

As with Death at a Funeral (which I reviewed last month), The TV Set is a film that I’ve been wanting to see ever since it was released.  It was one of those films that sounded really interesting to me, and was very well-reviewed, but I just never got around to catching it.  I keep a little notebook with a long LOOONG list of all the movies that I want to see someday.  Any time I read about a film that sounds interesting, I add it to the list.  I’ve been very busy lately, but I’m really happy that I’ve been able to cross some great films off of that to-watch list lately, thanks to Netflix!

The TV Set stars David Duchovny as Mike Klein, a TV writer.  Mike has written and sold a script for a new TV pilot called The Wexley Chronicles, and over the course of the film we follow the process of casting and filming the pilot from Mike’s well-liked script.

I am a big fan of television, and as a result, The TV Set is difficult to watch at times.  That’s because this film dissects, with surgical precision, why so much television is so terrible.  Written and directed by Jake Kasdan (Orange County, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story) and produced by Judd Apatow, the film is based on Apatow and Kasdan’s experiences making the brilliant-but-quickly-cancelled TV series Freaks and Geeks.  Over the course of the film we, along with poor Mike, watch with horror as the network takes his script — which they liked because of its originality — and, through a thousand small compromises that they force Mike to make, set about to eliminate all of the project’s uniqueness in order to create something that will offend no-one and appeal to the widest audience possible.  The process is summed up in an awkward confrontation between Mike and the network head-honcho Lenny (Sigourney Weaver), in which she tells him flat-out: “originality scares me.”

The cast is superb.  Duchovny is perfect as the talented but also sort of sad-sack Mike.  We can see, in his eyes, the quiet desperation with which Mike is trying to hold on to his vision for the project, and the anguish that each little compromise causes him.  Sigourney Weaver kills as the tough, take-no-prisoners Network boss Lenny.  She is a riot, and to describe Lenny as a formidable presence would be a grand understatement.  Ioan Gruffudd (Horatio Hornblower from USA’s series, and perfectly cast but then stranded by the execrable Fantastic Four movies) plays Lenny’s right-hand man Richard, brought over from England to head up the network’s TV development.  Whereas Lenny only cares about the bottom line (making money),… [continued]

Drew McWeeny (who has a terrific blog over at Hitfix.com) has a series called “The Basics,” in which he writes about a film that he considers one of the “essentials” — a film that anyone who takes film seriously should see — and then another, younger writer, William Goss, writes a response.  To read more about this series, click here and then here.  Recently he and Mr. Goss invited other writers to get involved in their film conversations.  Since the last film under discussion was Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979), I was really excited to chime in.  (Here’s Mr. McWeeny’s piece about Manhattan.  Here’s what Mr. Goss wrote, and here’s what I had to say.)

Now Mr. McWeeny is writing about Albert Brooks’ 1981 film Modern Romance. What a terrific choice!  It had been a few years since I had last seen the film, so I was happy to have an excuse to pull it off my DVD shelf and give it a viewing.

The great Albert Brooks (who also directed and co-wrote the film) plays Robert Cole, one one the most neurotically messed-up characters I’ve ever seen captured on film.  As the movie opens, Robert breaks up with his girlfriend Mary (Kathryn Harrold, who I always think of as Francine from The Larry Sanders Show).  From her reaction it is clear that this has happened before, and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by saying that this opening-scene break-up doesn’t exactly break that cycle.

Modern Romance is very leisurely paced, with long scenes that aren’t in a rush to get to the punchline.  But don’t let that lead you to think that the film isn’t funny.  Quite the contrary, it is hysterical.  This is one of the most quotable comedies that I know.  It might be my favorite Albert Brooks movie, and that’s mostly because of the script’s tremendous wit.

In his review, Mr. McWeeny comments that he loves the way that Mr. Brooks isn’t afraid to digress in the film.  That pretty well sums up one of the strongest aspects, in my opinion, of Modern Romance.  My very favorite moments in the film are the ones that have nothing at all to do with Robert’s on-again off-again cycle with Mary.  I’m talking about the glimpses at Robert’s job as a film editor, working on a lousy-looking science-fiction picture.  That the film takes ten minutes to present us with a scene that’s all about how editing works (as Robert makes an edit to the sci-fi film that he feels strengthens the suspense of a scene) is just wonderful to me.  It helps, of course, that the greatly-missed Bruno Kirby (When Harry Met Sally, The Godfather Part II) and James… [continued]

The new documentary Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story tells two interwoven stories: one is an overview of British comedian Eddie Izzard’s life-story, while the other is a more detailed look at the process by which, in 2003, he crafted an entirely new stand-up routine (that would eventually become his world-wide Sexie tour) from scratch.

While fun and interesting, Believe is more the sort of thing that one might expect to see as a special feature on one of Mr. Izzard’s DVDs, as opposed to a documentary feature that stands on its own.  This isn’t really a warts-and-all sort of presentation — Mr. Izzard is presented in an almost uniformly positive light.  Although perhaps that was not the intention of the filmmakers, in the end the film functions more as a promotional piece for Mr. Izzard than it does as a true documentary.

Which is not to say that it’s not a worthwhile promotional piece!  I enjoyed the look at Mr. Izzard’s life — particularly his grueling efforts at creating a name for himself as a performer and, eventually, a stand-up comedian.  It’s an astonishing tale, frankly, of Mr. Izzard’s stubborn persistence in the face of overwhelming odds, and through an impressive array of recovered footage (of Mr. Izzard’s years performing on the street, as well as a number of his early days working the stand-up circuit) it is fascinating to see him slowly develop his comedic style and rock-star glam persona.  (It’s a hoot to watch his early break-out performance of the “wolves” sketch in plain men’s slacks and a garish baggy shift.)  These are the best aspects of the film.  When Mr. Izzard returns to his childhood home and gets teary-eyed reminiscing about his mother, I must confess that I checked out.

In the other half of the film, we see Mr. Izzard travel from gig to gig in small venues across England as he struggles to develop all-new material for his 2003 show (having committed to use NONE of his old jokes) before the launch of his scheduled world tour.  This part of the film is also wonderfully filled with actual footage (rather than talking-head reminisces).  Apparently Mr. Izzard had all of his workshop gigs recorded, and it’s neat to watch him struggle and stammer his way through those early gigs, slowly beating his material into a polished shape.

A similar story was told in the terrific documentary, Comedian, which chronicled Jerry Seinfeld’s efforts to create an entirely new act in the year after the end of his show (and his subsequent commitment to retire all of his old material).  Comedian is a much more polished film, and I think did a better job of showing how a… [continued]

I’ve been wanting to see Death at a Funeral ever since it was first released (back in 2007), so it’s a funny coincidence that it arrived in my home (via Netflix) the same week that the American remake (featuring a predominantly African-American cast) opened in theatres.

The remake has gotten some decent reviews, but trust me, friends — after watching the phenomenal original version you’ll have absolutely no interest in any other take on this material.

Directed by the great Frank Oz (the voice of Miss Piggy & Yoda and the director of films including Little Shop of Horrors, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, In & Out, and Bowfinger), Death at a Funeral features a mostly British cast.  Matthew Macfadyen (MI5, Pride & Prejudice, Frost/Nixon) plays Daniel, who is attempting to arrange the funeral for his father.  Friends and family are gathering for what is supposed to be a quiet, dignified funeral service at Daniel’s parents’ home.  Of course, you can be assured that an escalating series of lunacy quickly unfolds.  Death at a Funeral is a classic farce, and there’s great joy in watching the filmmakers carefully set up all of the dominoes, in the first 30-45 minutes of the film, that they will spend the rest of the movie knocking over to hilarious effect.

This film is a RIOT.  Mr. Macfadyen is great as the straight man trying desperately to hold things together.  He’s surrounded by a terrific ensemble, including Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent) as an old friend of Daniel’s father with a big secret; Andy Nymen & Ewam Bremner as two of Daniel’s fairly hapless friends; Keeley Hawes as Daniel’s wife Jane (and, seeing as she played Zoe Reynolds in MI5, it’s great fun seeing her paired again with Mr. Macfadyen); Rupert Graves as Daniel’s more-successful writer brother Robert; and many more talented actors & comedians.  But the film belongs to Alan Tudyk (Wash from Firefly) who plays Simon, the nervous fiancee of Martha (Daisy Donovan), Daniel’s cousin.  At the start of the film, Daisy gives Simon what she thinks is a Valium to calm him down.  Of course, the pill isn’t a Valium at all, but a much, er, stronger concoction.  Now, that might sound like a hackneyed comedy set-up, and maybe it is.  But you’re really not prepared for the insanity that Mr. Tudyk unleashes in the film once the drugs that Simon has taken take effect.  This is  one of the great comedic performances of all time, and one of the primary reasons that I’m recommending this film so strongly.

I don’t really understand why Hollywood has chosen to remake an English-language film that was released in the U.S. only three years ago.  And, you… [continued]

One of my earliest posts on this blog was a look back through the films of David Mamet.  One of the films I wasn’t able to review at the time was Homicide, because it was shockingly unavailable on DVD.  Late last year, though, the fine folks at the Criterion Collection thankfully stepped in to remedy that situation, releasing Homicide in a lovely new DVD set (which made my list of the Top 10 DVDs of 2009).

Joe Mantegna plays Jewish homicide detective Bobby Gold.  When the FBI screws up the manhunt for a suspect, Randolph (Ving Rhames), in whose case Bobby was originally involved, Bobby and his partner Tim Sullivan (William H. Macy) are tasked with finding the missing man.  But on the way to a key meeting in the investigation, Bobby stops to help two young beat cops who have found the body of a murdered woman in a convenience store.  It turns out that the elderly Jewish woman had owned the store in the tough neighborhood for decades, and the local kids think she was murdered because of rumors that she kept a fortune hidden in her basement.  When Bobby finds himself assigned to this new murder case, he is is frustrated by what he sees as a distraction from his priority: the pursuit of Randolph.  But quickly the case begins to get under his skin and leads Bobby to confront long-buried questions about his own Jewish identity.

Written and directed by David Mamet, Homicide stars many Mamet regulars (Mantegna and Macy, along with Ricky Jay, Rebecca Pidgeon, and many other familiar faces) and features his distinct, fast-paced, rough and tumble dialogue and a twisty-turny plot in which the story that you think is unfolding in the film’s opening minutes turns out to be merely a feint, as Mamet has other intentions with his tale.

For, despite its title, Homicide really isn’t a police procedural at all.  Yes, Bobby’s investigation into the murder of the elderly Mrs. Klein is the backbone of the story, but that’s not really what the film is about.  Rather, Homicide is a story about identity.  Over the course of the film, Bobby Gold is forced to address deep-rooted questions about how he defines himself.

According to The 50 Greatest Jewish Movies, by Kathryn Bernheimer (published by Birch Lane Press, 1998): “Mamet, who admits he has always felt like an outsider and acknowledges a great longing to belong, has said the story was inspired by his experience as an American Jew growing up not feeling sufficiently Jewish or American.  Like many of his previous films, Homicide deals with what Mamet calls ‘problems of reconciliation and self-worth’.”

When we first meet Bobby Gold, there’s… [continued]

I well remember my reaction upon watching Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time, many years ago.  The star-child appeared, and the end credits rolled, and I turned to my brother and started laughing.  ”What the heck was THAT???”  I had no idea what to make of any of the ponderous weirdness that I had just seen, and I wondered what exactly I had missed.

But even during that first viewing it was clear that there was something special about 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it’s a film that stayed with me.  I found myself driven to revisit the film (several times, in fact, over the years), and to read the novel by Arthur C. Clarke (which, interestingly, was written concurrently with the production of the film).  I can think of few other films about which my opinion has so dramatically changed based on subsequent viewings.  Each time I watched 2001 I found myself enjoying it more and more.  As I peeled back the layers of the onion of the film, to use a familiar but handy analogy, what was once perplexing obtained profound meaning.

It is a challenge to provide a summary of 2001.  If you’ve seen the film, no summary is necessary, and if you haven’t, I’d hate to spoil anything.  I can tell you that the film is divided into several distinct sections.  The movie opens in primordial times (“the dawn of man”) and then jumps forward to the year 2001, when a strange object is discovered on the surface of the moon.  That discovery leads (for reasons I’ll not detail here) to an expedition towards Jupiter.  The experimental space-ship Discovery is crewed by Frank Poole and Dave Bowman, and the computer HAL 9000.  Things go awry.  The final segment of the film is the most perplexing, and the reason for the film’s tag-line “the ultimate trip.”

Right from its opening scenes, it is clear that 2001: A Space Odyssey is a science-fiction film unlike most other science-fiction films.  This is a cerebral undertaking, one that is concerned with posing some BIG QUESTIONS for the audience.  The film spans the entire history of human-kind — that should give you a good idea of Mr. Kubrick & Mr. Clarke’s ambitions!!

In terms of “plot,” there’s not too much that actually happens in 2001.  This, I think (along with the ending, which we’ll get to in a few moments) is one of the chief reasons that this film might not work for many casual viewers.  To say that the movie is leasurely paced would be an enormous understatement.  Events unfold very slowly, and the movie is filled with stately, long shots in which Mr. Kubrick’s camera moves… [continued]

I consider Shaun of the Dead to be a near-flawless work of comedic genius.  I’m not a fan of Zombie movies, but that didn’t stop me from falling head-over-heels in love with the bizarre, comedic creation of Simon Pegg & Edgar Wright.  Shaun of the Dead lead me to seek out Pegg & Wright’s first collaboration: the 14-episode British TV series Spaced.  (Read my review here.)  Somehow, though, I had completely missed Pegg & Wright’s 2007 release: the feature film Hot Fuzz.  Oh, I knew of Hot Fuzz, and I had wanted to see it for some time.  I just hadn’t gotten around to it until now.

In Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg plays the tough, no-nonsense London cop Nicholas Angel.  He takes his job extraordinarily seriously, and he’s extraordinarily good at what he does.  So good, in fact, that the rest of the London police department hates him, and so they arrange to have him transferred out of London and to the sleepy little British town of Sanford.  Poor Angel doesn’t know quite what to do with himself in his bucolic, crime-free new home.

As was the case in Shaun of the Dead and Spaced, Pegg’s character is paired up with Nick Frost.  Mr. Frost plays Danny Butterman, the bumbling but well-meaning police officer with whom Angel is partnered in Sanford.  But while Pegg & Frost’s characters were, in their two prior collaborations, presented as life-long best-mates, here in Hot Fuzz the two take an immediate dislike to one another.  Well, Angel takes an immediate dislike to Butterman.  Butterman, though, idolizes Angel, who he looks up to as a “big city” tough-guy cop like he knows from the movies.  It’s a great pleasure to watch Pegg and Frost paired up yet again.  The two have a terrific chemistry, and they just dominate any scenes that they’re in together.  It’s fun to see them play characters who have, at first, a more antagonistic relationship towards one another.

Hot Fuzz is a very funny film.  Pegg and Frost are extraordinary natural comedians, and the film is filled with a number of other top-notch comedic actors.  There’s a great bit of business early on in the film in which we meet Angel’s supervisors in the London police department, played by Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, and Steve Coogan.  Jim Broadbent is a lot of fun as the jolly inspector Frank Butterman, Danny’s father and the head of the police department in Sanford.  But my favorite performance belongs to former James Bond Timothy Dalton, who is absolutely hilarious as the dashingly good-looking, possibly sinister Sanford super-market owner.  What perfect casting, and Dalton absolutely knocks the role right out of the park.

Where Hot Fuzz… [continued]

After months and months of reading praise for Kathryn Bigelow’s film The Hurt Locker, I finally was able to see the film on DVD.  (Once again, thank you Netflix!)  I am extremely pleased to report that, for me, the film lived up to its hype.

In the bravura opening sequence, we meet Delta Company, an elite unit of the U.S. Army serving in Iraq.  Delta Company consists of the men who get called in to disarm and/or detonate I.E.D.s (Improvised Explosive Devices) and all manner of other sorts of explosives before they can kill any U.S. servicemen/woman or others.  The tense, harrowing first few minutes of the film tell us everything we need to know about the incredible bravery and ability of the men of Delta Company who we’ll be following through the film, the excruciatingly difficult task that they are called upon to deal with every single day, and the high fatality rates of their assignments.

The Hurt Locker focuses on three men in Delta Company.  Anthony Mackie plays Sgt. JT Sanborn — a tough, by-the book officer of great professionalism.  Brian Geraghty plays Specialist Owen Eldridge, the youngest member of the team.  Eldridge struggles with the weight of the life-and-death assignments that he must take on every day, but we never see those concerns affect his performance in the field.  Then there is Staff Sgt. William James, played by Jeremy Renner in a phenomenal, star-making performance.  SSG James is assigned to head up Delta Company after the death of their previous field leader.  James is an extraordinarily talented officer, but we quickly learn that he is not one for by-the-book procedures.  This brings him into conflict with Sgt. Sanborn, who judges James to be reckless and dangerous.  Young Eldridge finds himself caught somewhat in the middle.

That could be the plot of a great movie, but The Hurt Locker isn’t really a drama about conflict within a military unit.  Though we see evidence of that conflict that I have just described over the course of the story, The Hurt Locker isn’t concerned with typical Hollywood war-movie character arcs or story-lines.  Rather, director Kathryn Bigelow has created a film whose main purpose, it seems to me, is to put the viewer right in the middle of the intense, every-moment-could-be-your-last job that these men serving in Iraq have been given.  Through careful direction, tight editing, and above all stupendous acting, The Hurt Locker consists of one nail-biting sequence after another.

The film is episodic in nature.  In less capable hands this could be a weakness, undermining the narrative thrust that a successful film needs to achieve.  But under the sure guidance of Ms. Bigelow, the episodic structure of the film… [continued]

Though 2009 is well in the past, I’m still trying to find time to watch those 2009 films that I missed (some of which I listed when writing my Best Films of 2009 list).  At the top of my I-really-wanted-to-see-it-but-never-did list from 2009 was Duncan Jones’ little sci-fi film, Moon.

When I say “little,” I am referring only to the budget (5 million dollars).  Because in no other way is Moon a “little” film.  No, Moon is a phenomenal achievement, and it surely would have made my Best Films of the Year list had I seen it in time.

It’s the near future, and the great Sam Rockwell (Galaxy Quest, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Frost/Nixon) plays Sam Bell, working alone in a small helium-3 mining station on the moon.  His only companion is the station’s computer, Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey, perfectly cast).  Sam is nearing the end of his three-year contract and is anticipating his return to Earth and to his family.  Of course, it’s not going to be that simple.

I’ve barely said anything about the film’s story, but I really think that’s for the best.  This is a film best appreciated going in cold, without knowing any of the plot twists.  Suffice it to say, when a distracted Sam crashes one of the station’s small rovers, he unwittingly sets into motion a chain of events that leads to things quickly going more and more awry in his once-efficient little moon station.

Moon is an acting tour-de-force for Sam Rockwell.  With the exception of a few other people glimpsed briefly on computer monitors, Sam is the only character on screen for the entire film.  But he dominates the screen so thoroughly that I didn’t even really consider that fact until well after the film had ended.  Mr. Rockwell has always been known for bringing a particularly idiosyncratic brand of humanity to the flawed array of characters he has portrayed on screen, and his Sam Bell in this film is a spectacular example.  Once the plot gets going, Sam’s ordered life starts to fall down around his ears, and the way Mr. Rockwell brings to life his increasing desperation, and also his surprising inner reservoirs of strength, is wonderful.  Shame on the Academy for not nominating this spectacular acting performance!!

Writer/director Duncan Jones jokes in the DVD’s special features that the most recent example of an “indie” sci-fi movie that he can think of is Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, which was made for around 50 million dollars. Moon was made for 5 million.  To say that my jaw was on the floor when I learned that this movie was made for such a miniscule budget would be an… [continued]

After watching Michael Moore’s latest (and last?) film, Capitalism: A Love Story (read my review here), I started thinking about his previous movies. Despite my enjoyment of his work, I realized that I’d never actually seen his very first film: Roger & Me.

Hello, Netflix!

Released in 1989 (though Mr. Moore was working on the film for several years prior to that), Roger & Me is an unflinching look at the devastating effect that the shutdown of several General Motors factories (eventually resulting in the firing of approx. 80,000 workers) had on Moore’s home-town of Flint, Michigan.

As Mr. Moore admits on the DVD’s commentary track, he not only had never made a movie before Roger & Me, but he knew very little about what went into making movies. But he (and a small team of partners) taught themselves everything they needed to know (about filming, sound, editing, etc.) over the course of assembling their film. This gives Roger & Me a raw, unpolished, feel which, to my mind, wound up working in Mr. Moore’s favor in enhancing the film’s effectiveness. This isn’t a slick-looking documentary. This feels like a film put together by a bunch of average folks, trying to address a situation that they felt passionately about.  That passion is another key to the film’s strength.

Right from the beginning, Mr. Moore is a major (perhaps THE major) character in his film. Roger & Me opens with a montage of Mr. Moore’s home-movies, as he introduces himself in voice-over and describes his early years growing up in Flint. Mr. Moore’s on-screen involvement in his films has by now grown tiresome to some, but here his presence helps ground the film as a whole. Moore grew up in Flint, his father (and, it turns out, many other members of his extended family) worked for GM. At one point in the film, following a sheriff’s deputy evicting people from their homes who couldn’t pay their rent after having been laid off by GM, Moore discovers that one of the young men being evicted is someone he went to high school with. This is a personal story for Mr. Moore, about HIS community, and his anger and frustration at the way GM abandoned Flint underline every frame of the film.  This lends the over-all film a gravity that a more polished but less-personal film would have lacked, I think.

As always, it can be hard to separate a discussion of one of Mr. Moore’s films from a discussion of his politics. The central question of what sort of responsibility a corporation has to its employees (and the communities in which the corporation grew… [continued]

I’ve been reading Drew McWeeny’s writings about film for, oh, probably a decade now.  I first found his work when he wrote for Aintitcoolnews.com, though these days he has a terrific blog over at Hitfix.com.  The dude has some sharp opinions, and while I’m not always in agreement with him, I can always count on his pieces being interesting & insightful, to say the least.  I’m a big fan.  Drew recently started a series called “The Basics,” in which he writes about a film that he considers one of the “essentials” — a film that anyone who takes film seriously should see — and then another, younger writer, William Goss, writes a response.  To read more about this series, click here and then here.

With their latest installment, Drew opened the door for others to chime in with their opinion.  Since the film in question is Woody Allen’s 1979 film Manhattan, I jumped at the chance to share my two cents!

I am an enormous Woody Allen fan.  I have seen every one of his films (with one exception, Interiors, a situation that I’m sure I’ll remedy someday, but I must confess to not being in any rush), and many of them I have seen too many times to count.  But while I recognize that Manhattan is one of Woody’s most well thought-of films, I’ve actually only seen it one time, about 15 years ago.  I remember enjoying it, but I didn’t think it was of the level with what I would consider to be Mr. Allen’s masterpieces, films like Annie Hall, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Bananas, etc.  (It probably didn’t help that I watched Manhattan less than a month after first seeing Annie Hall, a film that absolutely blew me away and that remains easily one of my top ten favorite films of all time.)

So, prompted by this “The Basics” series, I was excited to go back and re-watch Manhattan.  Would my opinion of the film change?

Filmed in gloriously beautiful black and white, Manhattan follows several good-natured but lost urbanites as they try to find some measure of love and happiness.  Woody Allen plays Isaac, a television comedy writer unhappy with his job who dreams of writing a novel.  When we meet Isaac, he’s involved with a much, much younger woman: the 17 year-old Tracy (Mariel Hemingway).  Meanwhile, his married best friend Yale (Michael Murphy) is having an affair with Mary (Diane Keaton).  While Isaac and Mary strongly dislike one another when they first meet (at an awkward encounter in a museum), they gradually strike up a friendship and ultimately start seeing each other.

None of the elements of that plot… [continued]

I thoroughly enjoyed Robert Zemeskis’ Contact when it was first released in 1997.  For years now, it’s been a movie that I’ve been eager to add to my DVD collection, but I was holding off for a better special edition than the bare-bones DVD release from ’97.  It’s been a long wait, but when Contact was finally re-released on disc in a jazzed-up new edition — and on blu-ray, no less — I eagerly snatched it up.

Based on Carl Sagan’s novel, Contact tells the story of Ellie, a young girl whose interest in science and astronomy are fanned by her father.  Through much of the early parts of the film, we follow Ellie’s development as a scientist and her growing fascination with the search for signs of extra-terrestrial life.  It’s a search that increasingly comes to seem like a fool’s errand as, over the years, all of the sources of funding for that research dry up.  If that was the end of the story, of course, there wouldn’t be much of a movie.  Needless top say, Ellie and her team do eventually discover a signal that appears to be extra-terrestrial in origin, and their quest to unlock its meaning leads Ellie on an astounding journey and brings mankind to an incredible turning point.

I’ll stop my summary there, even though I have really only covered the first thirty-or-so minutes of the film.  For me, the most compelling aspect of Contact is watching the story unfold and gradually become bigger and bigger.  I still remember my pleasure in seeing the film for the first time and thinking to myself, with great delight, “just how far are they going to take this??”  Even having seen the film and knowing what’s coming coming, I still find the story to be terrifically engaging.

I am an enormous sci-fi fan.  Sadly, the vast majority of sci-fi films seem to revolve around menacing aliens and action-adventure hi-jinks.  Now, I’m all for a good action movie, and there have certainly been plenty of action/adventure sci-fi films that I have thoroughly enjoyed.  But I love that Contact is a much more cerebral story, one in which the science of the tale is just as important as the narrative’s twists and turns.  It’s also a story that is centered by the character of Ellie’s emotional journey, and that is what gives the film its power.

Jodie Foster is quite compelling as Dr. Ellie Arroway.  She brings a fierce commitment and intensity to the role.  Foster is an actor who always seems to be thinking — you can see it in her eyes — and that is key for her performance as this brilliant and driven woman.  I love… [continued]

Burt and Verona (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) are expecting their first child.  When they learn that Burt’s parents are moving away, they realize that they have nothing tying them to Denver any longer.  (Verona’s parents have passed away.)  So Burt & Verona decide to travel around the country, visiting various friends and family-members in an attempt to find a new place to live that they think will be a good place to raise their baby.  What at first seems like a fun adventure turns dispiriting rapidly as they discover that everyone they visit has fairly crazy ideas about parenting.

Written by Dave Eggers (author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) & his wife Vendela Vida and directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, The Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road), Away We Go is a quirky film filled with quirky characters.  Your tolerance for that approach to creating characters will determine how annoying you find this to be as the movie progresses.  The characters are, for the most part, painted in pretty broad, caricature-esque strokes.  They are funny and painful and sad, but not all that deep.  I really enjoyed the individual performances of the actors playing the various folks who Burt & Verona visit  – Allison Janney, Jim Gaffigan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Josh Hamilton, Chris Messina, and Melanie Lynskey (who, by the way, had a heck of a year in 2009 with this film along with her roles in The Informant! and Up in the Air) — so much that this trend didn’t really bother me too much until I sat back and thought about the film afterwards.

In my review of Woody Allen’s 2009 film, Whatever Works, I described my frustration at the enormous condescension that Mr. Allen’s screenplay seemed to be showing towards every character in the film with the exception of the Woody Allen stand-in character played by Larry David.  I felt the same sort of condescension here.  Burt and Verona are presented as the only sane characters in an entirely insane world.  Burt’s parents (played by Catherine O’Hara & Jeff Daniels) might be hysterical (I’d like to see a whole movie about these two!), but they and are jaw-droppingly self-centered and, shockingly, have no apparent interest in their grandchild-on-the-way.  Verona’s friend Lily (Janney) is crass and her husband (Gaffigan) is a buffoon.  Burt’s cousin LN (that’s not a typo) and her husband Roderick are bizarre hippie-intellectuals who have sex in the same bed where their children sleep and breastfeed other people’s babies.  Burt & Verona’s friends Tom & Munch are by far the most normal of the bunch, but even they have their problems (which I won’t spoil here).  I understand the point that Eggers… [continued]

Before seeing his latest film, The Lovely Bones, I thought it fitting to seek out a gaping hole in my Peter Jackson viewing filmography: his 1994 film, Heavenly Creatures.  I’ve been hearing/reading about this film since the lengthy pre-release build-up to The Fellowship of the Ring.  (By the way: Wow!  It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a decade since Fellowship, which was released in 2001!!)  Heavenly Creatures seems to be rather well thought-of, and since the Lord of the Rings films have made me a life-long Pater Jackson fan, it seemed crazy that I had never seen this movie.  It’s a situation I was happy to remedy last month.

Heavenly Creatures tells the true-life story of the friendship between two young New Zealand girls in 1953/4.  Melanie Lynskey plays Pauline.  An artistic, shy introvert, she is friendless and miserable at the Catholic school which she attends.  Her world changes, though, when Juliet Hulme, played by Kate Winslet, arrives at her school.  Juliet is from a wealthy family, and her travels with (and without) her parents make her seem extraordinarily worldly to Pauline.  Like Pauline, she is artistic and bucks authority, but Juliet more outgoing and brazen.  The two bond almost instantly.  Deep friendships like these happen between schoolgirls all the time across the globe, with less tragic outcomes.  But here, the increasingly unhappy home lives of each of the girls pushes them to become more dependent upon one another’s company, and they begin to withdraw more and more deeply into their shared fantasies.  Feeding off one another, those escapist fantasies soon take a terrible turn.

Heavenly Creatures is the first screen role of both Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet.  It’s no surprise that this proved to be a star-making turn for Ms. Winslet, as she displays terrific abilities and assurance for such a young actress (not to mention great beauty).  As for Ms. Lynskey, I was delighted to realize that this was her first screen role as well.  She’s nowhere near as well-known as Kate Winslet, but if you were an avid movie-goer in 2009 then I’d wager you’ve enjoyed her work.  (She had key roles in Away We Go, The Informant!, and Up in the Air.)

Heavenly Creatures is an interesting film.  I found it to be a bit hard to get into, at first.  There was something about the first 45 minutes that kept me, as a viewer, from being sucked in to the story.  I wasn’t sure if it was the script, the acting, or the directing, but everything seemed a bit “stagey” and over-wrought (filled with dramatic zooms and music that didn’t seem to quite fit the proceedings).  With a based-on-a-true-story like this one, I… [continued]

Sometimes I get DVDs and I watch them immediately, devouring the movie and the special features within 24 hours.  Sometimes I’ll get a DVD and, for one reason or another, it will sit on my shelf for months and months.  Such was the case with the Director’s Cut of Ridley Scott’s 2007 film, American Gangster.

I enjoyed American Gangster when I first saw it in theatres.  I didn’t love it the way I love some of Scott’s other films (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, and the vastly underrated Kingdom of Heaven), but I quite liked it, and when I saw that an extended version of the film was available on DVD in early 2008, I snapped it up.  I’ve really enjoyed the extended versions of several others of Ridley Scott’s films, most particularly the extended version of the afore-mentioned Kingdom of Heaven, which is a revelation in contrast to the theatrical release, so I was excited to see this new version of American Gangster.  But, for whatever reason, I just never got around to watching the DVD until recently.

American Gangster tells two parallel stories.  One half of the film is about Frank Lucas, played by Denzel Washington.  The movie opens with the death of Frank’s mentor, the powerful Harlem drug-dealer Bumpy Johnson.  Frank marshals his keen intellect and all that he learned from Bumpy in order to take control of the Harlem drug scene.  His boldest move was to travel to Southeast Asia in order to purchase heroin straight from the source, enabling him to bypass all the other crime-figure “middle managers” and sell a more powerful product at cheaper prices than his competition.  That coup, combined with his patience and his near-fanatical focus on avoiding the spotlight, enabled him to amass an extraordinary amount of power and money all while operating under the noses of what local law enforcement officials weren’t on the take.

Russell Crowe plays Richie Roberts, a New Jersey cop with a fierce sense of honesty.  In an infamous story depicted early in the film, he finds a million dollars in cash but turns it over to his superiors in the department rather than keeping it for himself.  In contrast to those qualities, his personal life is a disaster, and when the film opens his wife (the wonderful Carla Gugino) has decided to divorce him.  Richie eventually gets himself involved with (and becomes a key figure in leading) the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, where his investigative skills and a decent amount of luck puts him on the trail of Frank Lucas.

American Gangster is a film dancing on the edge of greatness.  Washington and Crowe both turn in powerhouse performances, and they’re both so engaging that… [continued]

Charlyne Yi (who you might recognize from Knocked Up) doesn’t really believe in the concept of falling in love.  She’s not sure such a thing as love truly exists — and if it does, she’s not sure it’s something that she’s capable of.  So she sets out with her friend, director Nicholas Jasenovec, to film a documentary about love.  The two travel across the U.S., interviewing all sorts of everyday people (along with the judge in a divorce court, an Elvis who marries folks in Vegas, Seth Rogen, and a few other not-quite-so-everyday folks) about their thoughts regarding true love.  Things get more complicated when, while filming the documentary, Yi meets Michael Cera at a friend’s party, and the two hit it off and begin dating (an awkward process captured on camera by the documentary crew).  Do her interviews with people — or her burgeoning relationship with Michael Cera — change Yi’s feelings about love?

If Yi’s happening to fall into a relationship with Michael Cera while at the same time filming a documentary about love seems like a wild coincidence to you, then you’d be right!  Because things aren’t quite what they seem.  The interviews that Yi conducts are absolutely real.  But the Nicholas Jasenovec that we see on-camera isn’t actually the Nicholas Jasenovec who directed this film — it’s an actor, Jake M. Johnson!  And while Michael Cera and Charlyne Yi did date, their courtship as we see it was staged for the camera.

What we’re left with is a rather bizarre hybrid film.  The movie is constantly bouncing back-and-forth from the real footage (the interview segments, which are like much more in-depth versions of all the couples we see telling their how-they-met stories from When Harry Met Sally) to the staged footage (of Yi and Cera, and of Yi and Johnson/Jasenovec).  What’s really intriguing is the way the film doesn’t hesitate to make clear to us that that footage is staged — or, at the very least, manipulated.  Almost every time that we might find ourselves drawn in to Yi & Cera’s story, the film draws our attention to the artificiality of those moments.  (In one scene, we see Yi and Cera playfully interacting on a beach, and then beginning to walk hand-in-hand down the shore-line.  It’s a tender moment… until we see Johnson/Jasenovec run into the frame wondering if perhaps they could do another take.  In another scene in Yi’s apartment, we see her first kiss with Cera… and then the camera pulls out to see a camera-man and a sound-guy perched on the next couch, recording the moment.)  Even the interview footage is played with, as we often cut away from the people telling their… [continued]

I read all the bad reviews when Woody Allen’s latest film was released this past summer.  But I was dubious.  Larry David starring in a Woody Allen film seemed like a genius idea, to me.  How could a combination of those two neurotic, grumpy Jewish comedians not yield something at least remotely interesting?

Well, go rent Whatever Works and find out.

Or better yet, trust me, DON’T.

Whatever Works is a catastrophe of epic proportions and one of the worst films I have seen in a long, long time.  After 30-40 minutes of the film had elapsed, I was already supremely bored, and only sheer force of will (and the hope — ultimately dashed — that maybe something funny was just around the corner) allowed me to finish the film.  It is certainly one of the worst Woody Allen films I have ever seen.  (Celebrity has always been, in my mind, Woody’s worst film — though now it has strong competition.)

Larry David plays Boris Yelnikoff (as Woody Allen a character name as you’ll ever find), a man described as a genius physicist but who we mainly see as an irritated complainer hanging out in his bathrobe in and around Grennich Village.  Unhappy in life and love and convinced (as so many Woody Allen protagonists are) that life is meaningless and that he is surrounded by an unending parade of idiots and incompetents, Boris spends much of the film vacillating between miserable and merely unhappy.

One night a beautiful homeless Southern girl, Melody (played by Evan Rachel Wood), follows Boris home.  Despite her stunning beauty, Boris is entirely uninterested in her (and indeed spends much of his time berating her for her stupidity).  He does, though, take some pity on her and allows her to stay with him in his apartment.  Then, in one of the most staggering and unconvincing plot twists I have ever seen in a movie (and I have seen a lot of movies with space aliens and time travel), Melody falls in love with Boris and the two get married.

The above paragraph summarizes the entire first half of the film, all of which seems to be nothing more then a lengthy set-up for what was, I supposed, intended to be a hilarious comedy of culture-shock when Melody’s mother (Patricia Clarkson) and, later, her father (Ed Begley Jr.) show up in New York looking for her.  While the movie does, briefly come to something-approaching-life for a few minutes following Ed Begley Jr.’s introduction into the film (at about the one hour mark), it’s far-too-little and far-too-late.

Woody Allen’s movies have often been characterized by some condescension to non-Manhattenites, but Whatever Works is overflowing with it, and… [continued]

I missed Coraline in theatres when it was released back in February of 2009, so I was thrilled to finally have a chance to watch this wonderful film on DVD last month.

Adapted from a novel by Neil Gaiman (a legend among comic-book fans for his beautiful series The Sandman), Coraline is the story of a precocious, lonely little girl named (you guessed it) Coraline.  She and her parents move into a new house, and the energetic and creative girl is soon left to her own devices as her parents busy themselves with their work and the business of setting up a new home.  Her parents are not the over-the-top hateful, neglectful sort that one sometimes finds in children’s fantasy films, but both seem overworked and overtired, and are unable to give Coraline the attention she craves.

Things seem to change for Coraline when she discovers a tiny secret door in her room that leaves her into a parallel world filled with happier doppelgangers of everyone in her life.  Her “other-mother” and “other-father” are cheerful and incredibly attentive to Coraline’s desires, cooking her enormous delicious meals and putting her to sleep in a beautifully decorated bedroom.  True, the buttons that these “other-folk” seem to have instead of eyes are weird, but so what?

You can probably guess that this idyllic other-world has a scary dark-side hidden not-too-far underneath all the wonder, and soon Coraline must use all of her wits to save herself and her family.

Coraline is a jaw-dropping, gorgeous wonder of stop-motion animation.  The fantasy tone with an undertone of great creepiness brings to mind Tim Burton’s exercises in this genre (The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride), but Coraline has a look and style all its own.  Co-writer and director Henry Selick and his talented team of artists and technicians have brought every tiny detail of this world to life, and they quickly prove as capable of capturing the loneliness of an empty, old house as they are at the fantastic merriment of a performance of circus mice in the other-world that beguiles Coraline (at least temporarily).  Each frame of this film is stuffed-to-overflowing with glorious eye-candy.  But I am happy to report that the “just how did they do that?” wonderment of this life-long animation fan quickly faded into the background as I stopped thinking about the technical aspects of the film and just found myself swept along in the ride.

The voice-cast acquits themselves well.  There are some famous names in the mix (Dakota Fanning voices Coraline, Teri Hatcher is her mother and John Hodgman is her father) but no one overshadows the material.  Each actor is a fine fit with his/her character.  In… [continued]

OK, we’re getting closer!

We’re now six films into DC Comics and Warner Bros.’ exciting new endeavor to launch high-quality direct-to-DVD animated films masterminded by Bruce Timm, one of the key creative forces behind the amazing Batman: The Animated Series from the 90′s.  In my review of the fourth film, Wonder Woman, I wrote that I enjoyed the effort but that I was disappointed that, to that point, the DVD series wasn’t turning out as I had hoped.  I wrote:

The original announcement had seemed to indicate that the series would focus more on adaptations of classic comic stories as opposed to this sort of one-off origin story that isn’t based on any specific source material.  This is the sort of thing that most of the live-action super-hero films do, creating a new story that is sort of a “melange” of various bits of story-lines and background from the many years of the character’s history.  It’s not what I was hoping for from these DVDs.  (To my dismay, the preview included on the Wonder Woman disc seems to indicate that the next DVD, a Green Lantern adventure, will be exactly this same type of not-based-on-anything-specific tale.)  Where is my epic animated adaptation of The Great Darkness Saga?  Or Batman: Year One?  Or Kingdom Come?  How cool would that be?

Other than my philosophical support of its premise, is Superman/Batman: Public Enemies actually any good?  Well, it definitely is, though like the rest of these new DVDs it does not match the heights of any of Bruce Timm’s animated DCU series (Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League, etc.).

The story is simple:  Lex Luthor has been elected President of the United States.  He uses the discovery of an enormous fragment of Kryptonite that is on-course to impact with Earth (to what would be sure to be devastating consequences for the planet) as an excuse to issue a warrant for Superman’s arrest.  Batman quickly gets involved, and the… [continued]

A little over a year ago, I wrote that I was excited to have begun watching the newly-released (and long-anticipated) DVDs of Spaced: The Complete Series.  Well, I can’t believe how long it took me a while to finally finish the set (despite there only being two seasons of seven episodes each, Steph and I decided to draw out our viewing to savor the enjoyment — we didn’t want the series to end!), but I’ve finally done so.

I am happy to report that the series is every bit as wonderful and weird as I’d been hearing for all these years!!

Spaced was a short-lived British TV show that had two seasons (or “series,” as they like to call them across the pond) of seven episodes each (with the first batch coming out in 1999 and the second in 2001).  It was written by and starred Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and now Scotty in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek) and Jessica Hynes, and was directed by Edgar Wright.

Simon and Jessica played Tim and Daisy, two mismatched North Londoners who pretend to be married in order to qualify for renting an affordable flat that they both had their eye on.  The series follows the misadventures of Tim and Daisy and their small and bizarre group of friends: the military-loving Mike, the delightfully daft Twist, the depressed conceptual artist Brian, and Tim and Daisy’s droll, alcoholic landlady Marsha.

What’s so wonderful about the series is the way that it doesn’t idealize the lives of these sort-of-lost (mostly) young people.  This isn’t Friends, where everyone is perky and lives in extraordinarily large and beautiful apartments.  Tim and Daisy are both unendingly lazy and unambitious, and their flat is endearingly small and believably cluttered.

But the series isn’t depressing — rather, it is a ridiculous amount of fun.  Though each character is filled with quirks, they all quickly become surprisingly lovable, and it is great fun watching them go through their little day-to-day adventures.  Also, the series is practically built around an ever-increasing number of rapid-fire references to (and parodies of) a wide variety of movies, TV shows, and all sorts of other aspects of sci-fi, comic books, and lots more geeky stuff.  The closest thing I could compare all of this silliness to is the fantasy sequences found in Scrubs — though the fantasies here are much more elegantly done and more intricately woven into the narrative.  It is great fun spotting all of the little winks and nods included in each episode.  (There’s even an homage-o-meter included as a special feature on the DVDs.)  Some of the references are a little dated (there are a lot of jokes… [continued]

As with Monday’s post, today’s blog contains SPOILERS for many plot twists of the spectacular Battlestar Galactica series, so be warned!  If you haven’t seen the series (or if you’re in the midst of watching it on DVD but haven’t made it to the end yet), then I hope you enjoy today’s hi-LARious Inglourious Basterds cartoon, and then c’mon back on Friday for my review of The Invention of Lying.

OK, all the rest of you BSG fans still with me?  Then let’s dive in.

Starting with the very first episode of the first season, “33,” each installment of BSG (for the first few years) began with the words (say ‘em with me now):

The Cylons were created by man.  They rebelled.  They evolved.  They look and feel human,  Some are programmed to think they are human.  There are many copies.  And they have a plan.

It was that last line, “and they have a plan,” that was the most intriguing to me — and, ultimately, the most frustrating.  Throughout the early episodes of the show we watched our heroes in the ragtag fleet attempting to flee their destroyed worlds, all the while being dogged by Cylon attack forces as well as various Cylon agents within the fleet.  The bold declaration that “they have a plan” implied that there was more going on than we knew — a larger, over-arching goal towards which the Cylons were working (beyond, apparently, the simple extermination of humanity).  The glimpses we got of the Cylons (mostly through the adventures of Helo, trapped with an Eight on “Cylon-Occupied Caprica”) furthered this notion.

But as the series progressed, and we began to spend more time with the Cylon characters and get to know their histories and the distinct personalities of the different models (and sometimes the differences between Cylons of the same model number), it started to seem that there was no larger plan to speak of.  By the time we got to the New Caprica arc (the high-point of the show, in my mind), it seemed that the Cylons were just as confused and uncertain as the humans.  This provided for fascinating storytelling and the bringing of commendable depth to the “villain” characters, but it also seemed to me to be in contradiction to the bold, declarative statement that “they have a plan.”

While I have complaints about the final season of the show (click here for my thoughts on the finale), one of the plot developments that I most enjoyed was the development of Cavill, played so menacingly by the great Dean Stockwell (Quantum Leap).  As the back-story of the Final Five Cylons was (confusingly) played out, we learned that it was Cavill… [continued]

I know some people who can’t stand to see a movie a second time — they think “been there, done that, I’d rather see something new.”  I certainly don’t have anything against seeing something new, but I’m also someone who loves seeing movies for a second time — and, if it’s a good movie, seeing it many more times after that!  (I’m the same way with books, comic books, etc. — I love re-reading stories that I enjoyed multiple times.)

I find that my feelings upon watching a film for a second time often vary wildly from the experience of seeing it originally.  I can absorb the film without all the baggage of hype, my anticipation, etc.  I can also more accurately judge the movie for what it is, rather than what I had hoped it would be or was expecting it would be.

During September I had a chance to take a second look at three films that I really enjoyed during last year’s Oscar rush of films (in late December 2008).  Did my feelings about them change, for better or for worse, upon a second viewing?  Read on!

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — read my original review here.  Benjamin Button was one of my very favorite movies from last year (it ranked as no. 6 on my list of my favorite films from 2008) and, if anything, I was even more in awe of it the second time around.  The film is magnificent.  It is one of those special collaborations where every single element works just perfectly, from the gorgeous sets and costumes, to the jaw-dropping visual effects (that create fully-realized environments from France to Russia to a tug-boat in the middle of the Pacific, not to mention the completely convincing creation and de-aging of Benjamin Button himself that is as wonderful a combination of makeup, prosthetics, and incredible CGI as I have ever seen), to the wonderful performances by Brad Pitt (who proves in every film he’s in why he is so deserving of his movie-star fame), Cate Blanchett, and a wonderful array of other talented actors.  Director David Fincher (Fight Club, Zodiac) knows how to incorporate cutting-edge visual effects into a film without ever letting those effects overpower the film, and he knows how to tell a deeply emotional tale without ever veering into schmaltz.  As I said: magnificent.  (I also had the fun of watching this film on Blu-Ray, and let me say that my jaw was on the floor at the clarity of the images, the colors, everything.  As the enclosed booklet notes, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was created in the digital realm without ever being output to… [continued]

I saw a lot of films in 2008 — but, of course, there were many that I wanted to see but just didn’t get to.  (I listed several when I compiled my list of the Best Movies of 2008.)  Of the films that I missed, the one I was most bummed about was Waltz With Bashir.

For almost a year now I’ve been hearing and reading about what a success this film is.  Well, last month I finally had an opportunity to watch Ari Folman’s magnificent “animated documentary” (as he refers to the film on the DVD’s special features).  It is a beautiful, haunting, truly unique film.

A meeting at a bar with one of his former comrades from the Israeli army prompts Mr. Folman to realize that he has no memories of his time fighting in the Lebanon War of 1982.  Despite that lack of concrete memories, he finds himself increasingly haunted by a bizarre image that he dreams about — of him, and several other Israeli soldiers, emerging naked from the water, watching flares illuminate a deserted Lebanese city block.  Trying to determine the meaning of that image, and to sort out exactly where he was and what he did during the war, Mr. Folman travels around Israel, and beyond, meeting up with several surviving comrades from the war and listening to their stories.

The film is structured around these interviews/conversations.  (These are almost all real interviews with real people, who voice themselves — with just two exceptions, according to the DVD features — in the film.)  Why then, you might be wondering, is the project animated?  Why didn’t Mr. Folman simply film and then edit together these interviews the way most documentarians do?  Within the answer to that question lies the film’s surprising power.  Folman and his team use animation as a way to recreate, before our eyes, what the interview subjects are describing, whether that be their best recollection of events that they lived through, or the dreams that they’ve had in the years since.

While certainly there is an attempt, on Mr. Folman’s part, to educate himself (and his audience) about the events of the Lebanese War — and, specifically, the massacre of Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Lebanese Phalangist fighters — there is so much more going on in this film than just a recreation of those events.  Waltz With Bashir represents a soldier’s attempt to come to grips with actions that he might have taken — or allowed others to take — or even just witnessed — during war-time.  As such, this could be a film about almost any conflict.  Yes, over the course of the film,… [continued]

My wife borrowed the French movie Diabolique from her step-father, but after reading the description on the back of the case, which described the film as “an acknowledged influence on Psycho,” she decided that it would probably be too scary to watch.  I, however, had never seen the film, and was intrigued enough by what I’d heard about it to give the DVD a spin.

Diabolique (which is apparently the film’s title in the U.S., although the title card of the film itself reads Les Diabolioques — “The Devils”) was made in 1954 by acclaimed French director Henri-Georges Clouzot.  The film is in black-and-white, and is in French (with English subtitles).

Christina and Nicole are an unlikely pair.  Christina is married to the cruel Michel Delasalle, who runs a fairly shoddy boarding school for boys.  Nicole is one of the teachers, and is also Michel’s mistress.  Christina and Nicole have bonded over their mutual hatred of Michel, who is vicious in his treatment of them both.  Ultimately, the two women hatch a plan to escape their troubles by murdering Michel.  While being sure to carefully cover their tracks, they carry out the grisly deed and dump Michel’s body in the school’s swimming pool.  Their hope is that Michel’s corpse will soon be found, and people will assume that he committed suicide.  But when the pool is drained soon after by the school’s groundskeeper, the body is gone.

Part of the charm, for me, in watching older movies often has to do with the leisurely pace at which they unfold, and Diabolique is no different.  The film takes its time, introducing the small group of teachers at Mr. Delasalle’s sad little school, and allowing us to see exactly why Christina and Nicole feel that murder is their only escape from their current situations.  But the pacing of the film is also, to me, its greatest flaw.  The real fun of the film doesn’t start until the pool is emptied and the two women realize that Michel’s body has vanished.  The mystery of just-what-is-going-on, and the two women’s descent into fearful paranoia as they grow convinced that somehow Michel is not actually dead, is the real heart of the film.  But it takes quite a long time (over an hour) to get to that point — a little too long, for my tastes.

That being said, I quite enjoyed the film.  It’s a pretty grim little tale, filled with characters who are either cruel or hopeless or both.  The actors are all fairly naturalistic — there’s none of the stilted “Hollywood-speak” that one can find sometimes in older films.  The photography is also very well done — the black-and-white imagery is quite… [continued]

I walked into Wes Anderson’s film The Royal Tenenbaums totally unprepared for the idiosyncratic work of genius I was about to see.  I had seen Rushmore on video a year or so earlier, but I’d gone in expecting a goofy Bill Murray comedy and so didn’t quite know what to make of the film I actually saw.  While Rushmore had gotten a lot of acclaim upon its release, the film didn’t exactly blow my skirt up (to borrow one of my favorite lines from True Lies).  But I’ll watch Gene Hackman in almost anything, and the rest of the ensemble cast of Tenenbaums looked intriguing, so I decided to check out the film when it came out in theatres.  I was absolutely blown away by what I saw: the film was emotional and very, very funny, but even more than that, every frame seemed to be absolutely unique, unlike any other film I’d ever seen before.  This was the work of an accomplished, singular filmmaker.

The Royal Tenenbaums remains my favorite film by Wes Anderson, but I’ve also quite enjoyed The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (a much-underrated film that I have really grown to like upon repeat viewings) and The Darjeeling Limited.  Despite my appreciation of those films, though, I had never sought out Mr. Anderson’s first film: Bottle Rocket.  There’s no particular reason for that — I wasn’t avoiding seeing it — it’s just a film that I never got around to watching.  But when the Criterion Collection (always known for their high-quality presentations of notable films) released Bottle Rocket on DVD last spring, I knew I had to take the plunge.

Bottle Rocket focuses primarily on the friendship between three young men: Anthony (Luke Wilson), Dignan (Owen Wilson), and Bob (Robert Musgrave).  The three guys — Dignan in particular — harbor aspirations of becoming master criminals.  When we meet them at the start of the film, though, they’re pretty hapless.

Bottle Rocket isn’t strong on plot, exactly.  That’s not to say that nothing happens in the film — quite a lot happens, actually.  But there isn’t really a strong dramatic through-line to the events — the movie feels more like a series of vignettes.  That hurts the pacing of the film somewhat, but adds to the naturalism of the story.  These three friends aren’t typical movie-heroes caught up in BIG DRAMATIC events.  They’re just sort-of hapless schmoes trying their best to figure out their own lives and find their way in the world.  And therein lies the movie’s charm.

The two Wilson brothers and Robert Musgrave all turn in strong performances — especially Owen Wilson, whose character of Dignan is a truly unique creation.  The great James… [continued]

Even before Watchmen was released in theatres, director Zach Snyder made clear, in interviews, that we’d be seeing his longer Director’s Cut released on DVD/Blu-Ray before too terribly long.  

Well, Watchmen: The Director’s Cut is indeed now available for all to see, and I am happy to report that it’s quite excellent.

This Director’s Cut isn’t a total reinvention of the film.  The film unfolds as it did in its theatrical form.  There are no revelatory story-lines or spectacular action sequences added back in.  This Director’s Cut isn’t going to change anyone’s mind about Mr. Snyder’s adaptation of the comic book masterpiece by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.  If the film didn’t grab you in the theatres (and if you’re reading this while thinking to yourself, “twenty-four extra minutes added on to a film that was already two and a half hours??  No thanks!!”) then nothing I’m going to write here will cause you to think any differently.  But if you were as taken with the theatrical version as I was (check out my original review here), then this new extended version is a delight.

As I wrote above, the film hasn’t been dramatically re-edited (the way, for example, the first half-hour of The Fellowship of the Ring was entirely re-worked in Peter Jackson’s magnificent extended edition), and there’s no “Wow!  What a cool sequence that they’ve restored to the film!” moment (such as the astounding revised ending of James Cameron’s Director’s Cut of The Abyss).  No, what has been added back into the film are a lot of little moments, little bits of texture to the story from the original comic book.  Scenes now start a few moments earlier, or end a few moments later.  Many of the characters now get a few extra moments.  Bits of background detail are added.  These accumulate to result in a film that is a bit more leisurely paced than the theatrical version, but where the world of the story has been a little more fleshed out.  

One of the very first changes is also the most perplexing one, and really the only change I objected to.  There’s a little button added on to the scene where Rorschach investigates the Comedian’s apartment, after his murder.  Now, as Rorschach is leaving, a cop finds him in the apartment, and tries to shoot him.  For some reason, the bullets don’t seem to connect with Rorschach, and when the cop looks back at him, he is gone.  Whereas most of the rest of the additions in this new cut result in the re-incorporation of small moments or details from the original graphic novel, this addition is a complete invention of the filmmakers, and… [continued]

Last month I wrote about discovering and really enjoying, in college, some films from what I consider to be Steven Spielberg’s “middle period,” in which he began moving from the crowd-pleasing adventure films that he did so well (epitomized by Raiders of the Lost Ark) to more serious dramatic material (Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, etc.)  Rewatching The Color Purple for the first time in a decade, I found that there was still a lot to enjoy, though in some ways I felt the film was a bit simplistic.  (Click here for my full review.)

But I found myself quite mesmerized by Empire of the Sun when I re-watched it last month (also for the first time in about ten years).  This is a dramatically under-rated movie, and a strong piece of Mr. Spielberg’s over-all filmography.

Young Jim Graham is a spoiled British schoolboy, living with his parents in great luxury in Shanghai in 1941.  When the Japanese invade, he is separated from his parents in the chaotic evacuation of British citizens and is left to his own devices to try to survive in the dangerous war-time world.

Whereas I found The Color Purple to have a bit too much schmaltz, Empire of the Sun is surprisingly tough in its depiction of Jim’s four-year ordeal in war-torn China.  Although the film centers on a young boy (as do many of Spielberg’s films — see ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, AI: Artificial Intelligence, etc.), this is — for the most part — a tough, honest film.  There are moments of Spielbergian romanticization — mostly having to do with Jim’s fascination with airplanes — but I found those to be moving scenes that furthered my emotional connection with the story being told, rather than distracting me from the reality of Jim’s situation.

That’s a tough balance to find — but when he’s at the top of his game, no one is better at finding that balance than Steven Spielberg.  And he does fine work here.  There are long stretches of the film without any dialogue, propelled by the gorgeous and haunting imagery (and a lush but not overly intrusive score by John Williams).  When there is dialogue, it’s tight, well-written stuff penned by Tom Stpppard (Brazil, Shakespeare in Love).

Spielberg is well known — and rightfully so — for his skill in getting strong performances from his child actors, and Empire of the Sun is a stand-out in that department.  Jim is played by a young Christain Bale (who’s been having quite a moment, playing Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins & the Dark Knight as well as a variety of other high-profile roles in films such as The Prestige, Terminator: Salvation, and Public… [continued]

In one of my very first posts for this site, I mentioned that I’d really enjoyed Cloverfield when I saw it on the big screen, but I wondered how it would hold up to a second viewing (especially on a TV screen as opposed to on an enormous movie theatre screen).

I was eager to find out, so I scooped up Cloverfield on DVD when it came out, about a year ago.  But, for some reason, that DVD sat on my shelf, unwatched.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe other films just caught my attention.  Maybe I didn’t want to discover that the film didn’t work on a second viewing.

But a few weeks ago I finally decided to pop in that DVD.  And you know what?  I am pleased to report that I enjoyed the film just as much as I did the first time I saw it!

The first 10-15 minutes of the film could be the start of any type of urban dramedy.  A group of friends gather in an NYC loft to throw a good-bye party for one of their friends, Rob (Michael Stahl-David), who is leaving town for a new job in Japan.  Through some fun banter we begin to get a sense of the dynamic between the group of friends, and learn hints at a romance that went wrong between Rob and Beth (Odette Yustman).  Then the power cuts out, they see a huge explosion across the city skyline, and the party-goers rush out of the building in a panic only to see the severed head of the Statue of Liberty smash into the street.

Then, you know, things get worse from there.

The conceit of the film is that one of the friends, Hud (T.J. Miller), who was filming the good-bye party as a favor, winds up capturing on his digital video camera the entire nightmarish scenario that follows.  The entire movie is seen from the point of view of his camera.  This is an enormous conceit, to be sure, and certainly there are a few times in the film where you might find yourself wondering, “I can’t believe he still has the camera on!”  But I think the filmmakers do a pretty credible job at maintaining credibility to this idea throughout the film.  (And, interestingly enough, while on my first viewing I did find myself evaluating, from scene to scene, whether I could really believe that Hud would have been able to capture what I was seeing, on this second viewing I didn’t think about that at all.  I totally accepted the scenario.)

I have to praise the filmmakers, camera-men, editors, etc., for the skill with which the shots were created and… [continued]

When I purchased a Blu-Ray player last year, I promised myself that I wouldn’t go out and re-purchase all the great movies that I own on DVD when they’re released on Blu-Ray.  This has been an easy promise to keep, mostly because DVDs played in my Blu-Ray player look FANTASTIC.

But when I read about the new restoration being done to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (one of my absolute favorite films — just take a look back at Wednesday’s post if you don’t believe me) for it’s release on Blu-Ray, I had to take the plunge.

I must admit, somewhat sheepishly, that this is actually the THIRD time I have bought a copy of Star Trek II.  I held off on buying the original bare-bones DVD release from 2000, preferring instead to buy the two-disc “Special Collector’s Edition” when it was released in 2002.  Unfortunately, while I enjoyed all the special features on that DVD, the version of the film included was a new Director’s Cut.  It was neat to see some additional scenes (which I hadn’t seen for years and years, ever since catching an extended TV version of the film in a hotel room once as a kid), but many of the additions were clunky and disruptive to the pitch-perfect pace of the theatrical film.  So of course I went out and picked up a copy of that first bare-bones DVD, so I could have the theatrical version to watch.

So what did I think of this new version?  Was it worth paying to own The Wrath of Khan for a third time?

Absolutely.  The movie looks FANTASTIC on Blu-Ray.  The colors are bright and vibrant (check out the main viewscreen graphics during the opening Kobayashi Maru sequence, for example), and the dark backgrounds and shadows in many of the scenes (this is a DARK movie!) are deep and rich.  The sound is terrific — the dialogue is all crystal-clear, and James Horner’s magnificent scores (one of the best movie scores EVER) is given a lot of weight and heft.

I am not an expert in things like film grain or other aspects of the restoration of old movies, but let me give you one example that, for me, highlights the excellent work done to clean up this film for its Blu-Ray release.  In every home video release of Star Trek II that I have ever seen (including both DVDs that I own), there has always been some distracting dirt or grain or something over the scene of the Enterprise leaving drydock.  There’s one shot in particular — a view of the Enterprise from behind, in which the Big E’s nacelle fills most of… [continued]

I’m a big Star Trek fan.

OK, that’s probably an enormous understatement.

There has been a LOT of Trek released over the years, and while there have been some missteps (I’m looking at you, Star Trek: Nemesis), there is so much of it that I love so dearly.  The antics and new, big ideas of the original series.  The space-opera writ large of the six original Trek movies.  The serious and cerebral Star Trek: The Next Generation (which is the series I grew up on).  The dense, dark, and sophisticated Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (especially seasons 4-7).  I can even find some things to enjoy in Star Trek: Enterprise (particularly in the final two seasons).

But for me, when I think of Star Trek, I think of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  This is the pinnacle of what Star Trek can and should be.  This is the masterpiece that I keep hoping will someday be re-captured by a new Trek adventure.  (J.J. Abrams’ new film came the closest any new Trek has come in almost 20 years, but his film is still but a shadow of Khan.)

Is there anyone reading this who doesn’t know the plot?  In the Original Series episode “Space Seed,” Captain James T. Kirk accidentally revived the charismatic megalomaniac, Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban), and 70 of his followers, all genetically enhanced supermen who had conquered a quarter of planet Earth centuries ago during the 1990s and then put themselves into cryogenic freeze when their empire fell. Khan tried to seize the Enterprise in an attempt to restore his empire, and when he failed, Kirk marooned him and his crew on the deserted planet Ceti Alpha VI.  Now, 15 years later, Khan and what’s left of his people manage to capture another ship (the ill-fated U.S.S. Reliant) and attempt to take lethal revenge on the now Admiral Kirk.

Why it’s great: Allow me to quote liberally from the sadly-now-defunct web-site dvdjournal.com’s review of Star Trek II on DVD: “Thank the heavens for The Wrath of Khan, which saved Star Trek from itself. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was an artistic and dramatic failure. Nonetheless, the box office tallies were strong, so Paramount gambled on the notion that another film could amortize the first’s enormous cost overruns and prove that the studio really did have a cash cow on its hands. After all, in show business a movie doesn’t have to be good as long as it’s profitable. But lo and behold, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was good. Really, really good. Twenty years, seven movies, and four franchise TV series later, reasoned consensus still regards it as… [continued]

Earlier this year I wrote about The Phantom Edit of Star Wars: Episode I.  Michael Nichols was a fan of Star Wars who, like sane people world-wide, was tremendously disappointed with Episode I when it was released in 1999.  While the rest of us just whined to our friends, Mr. Nichols set out to see if some thoughtful re-editing of the material could shape a more successful film out of Episode I’s lengthy, bloated run-time.  As I discussed at length in my review, in my opinion Mr. Nichols succeeded wildly.  On the one hand, the film is still Episode I, and there’s only so much one can do with that story that, really didn’t need to be told.  On the other hand, by skillfully tightening up scenes, removing large swaths of dull and useless exposition, and cutting down much of the juvenile humor, Nichols was able to craft a much more dynamic narrative from the film.

When I read that he had also taken a pass at Episode II, I was ecstatic.  I was able to get my hands on his fan-edit last month, and as with his Phantom Edit of Episode I, I enjoyed it thoroughly!

Once again, Mr. Nichols demonstrates how a small trim (by removing just one line of dialogue) can really change the feeling of a scene for the better.  Let me give two examples.  In the opening sequence, after Amidala lands her ship on Coruscant, her bodyguard Captain Typho jogs up to her and says “We made it.  I guess I was wrong, there was no danger after all.”  Then, of course, Amidala’s ship explodes.  Typho’s dumb line takes all the air out of the scene — instead of it being a SHOCK when Amidala’s ship is destroyed, the audience is primed for something bad to happen by Typho’s ridiculous declaration.  So Nichols just snips out Typho’s line.  The queen lands her ship, steps onto the platform, and then BOOM.  Much more exciting moment.  Example number two takes place soon after, when Amidala enters Chancellor Palpatine’s office.  Yoda gives her a creepy greeting: “Seeing you alive brings warm feelings to my heart.”  OK, ew.  That bizarre line slams that scene to a halt, in my mind, as the audience tries to not think about what else of Yoda’s is warmed by seeing Natalie Portman.  So Nichols eliminates the line.  Amidala enters, and gets right down to business.  Much better.

As in his cut of Episode I, Nichols also removes most of the more juvenile and dumbed-down elements of the story.  Do you remember, with pain, all of the ridiculousness of C-3PO getting his head placed on the body of a battle droid, and then spouting… [continued]

The Color Purple, released in 1985, finds director Steven Spielberg at an interesting point in his career.  After having directed the first two Indiana Jones films as well at E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial in the early eighties, Spielberg apparently had a desire to move towards more weighty, dramatic material.  But his “serious” films of the late eighties (The Color Purple, along with Empire of the Sun and Always) didn’t meet with an enormous amount of critical acclaim (compared to his successes in the nineties with films such as Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan).  But, in college, I decided I wanted to take a look at those “middle period” Spielberg films, and I was quite pleasantly surprised by their quality.  It’s been a while since I’ve last seen those films, though, so when I spotted The Color Purple and Empire of the Sun in the discount DVD bin at my local Newbury Comics, I snatched them both up.

I haven’t had a chance to get to Empire of the Sun yet, but my wife and I watched The Color Purple last month.  It wasn’t quite as good as I had remembered it, but I still think it’s a better film than people tend to think.

Adapted from the novel by Alice Walker, The Color Purple tells the life story of an African American woman, Celie.  Growing up in turn-of-the-century Georgia, the poor girl struggles through hardship after hardship.  She is raped by her father as a young girl, and gives birth to two children who he takes from her.  She is married off to a cruel local farmer (Danny Glover), who beats her and forcibly separates her from her beloved sister, Nettie.  Later in life she forms an unexpected friendship with her husband’s mistress, the vivacious singer Shug Avery (Margaret Avery), who sets Celie on a path towards finally coming out of her shell and finding some happiness for herself.

The Color Purple is notable for some terrific performances from some well-known actors who, looking back on the film now, are unbelievably young here.  Whoopie Goldberg, in one of her very first screen appearances, plays Celie, and she is fantastic — soulful and full of life, even though she has very little dialogue in the film.  Whoopie is a talented comedian, but I have found that I’ve always preferred her in straight dramatic roles, and this is no exception.  Danny Glover doesn’t often play the “bad guy” in films, but he does a great job here as the monstrous Albert.  He cuts quite a menacing figure.  Oprah Winfrey appears, also in one of her first screen appearances, as the vivacious and strong-willed Sofia.  Her performance is a little over the top, but… [continued]

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is one of the few films from the past several years that Judd Apatow has had a hand in (he co-wrote the film and was one of its producers), that, despite his involvement, did not receive a lot of love from audiences upon its release.  My own recollection of seeing it in theatres was that it was sort of funny but not fantastic.  However, upon a second viewing on DVD last month, I must say that I have fallen head-over-heels in love with this film!

Walk Hard is, first and foremost, an evisceration of a very specific type of film: the Oscar-bait musical bio-pic (like Ray, Walk the Line, etc.).  In scene after scene after scene, the film mercilessly sends-up every single ridiculous cliche of those types of movies.  

We meet young Dewey growing up in a ramshackle farm down South, enjoying an idyllic life.  But a day of fun with his brother (“ain’t nothing horrible gonna happen today!” the doomed tyke promises) ends in tragedy after a machete-fighting accident.  Out of that grief, Dewey discovers his musical ability, playing the blues (“I got the blues… cut my brother in half…”).  A few years later, a nervous Dewey performs at a High School concert.  (Starting here, Dewey is played by John C. Reilly, despite the fact that the character is only 14 in this scene.  As Apatow and Director/co-writer Jake Kasdan note in their DVD commentary, they were interested in poking fun at  ”just how young the lead actor THINKS he can play” in these sorts of movies.)   Despite the innocuousness of the pop ballad Dewey performs (entitled “Take My Hand”), the concert erupts into a frenzy of sexualized dancing (as, you know, Rock and Roll is wont to cause).  After being condemned by the local priest (“You think we don’t know what you’re talking about when you say take my hand?!”) and his father (“The wrong kid died!”), Dewey decides to leave home and set out on a musical career.

What follows reads like a crazy check-list of the types of scenes one could expect in these sorts of films, charting our hero’s rise and fall and eventual redemption.  Dewey gets an opportunity to perform his music for a disinterested record company executive (played brilliantly by John Michael Higgins, who proclaims: “You have failed conclusively!  There is nothing that you can do, here in this room, to turn that around!”) but, of course, once Dewey plays one of his own songs (the titular “Walk Hard”), the executive is blown away, as are his Hassidic Jewish backers (Harold Ramis — yes, Harold Ramis — Phil Rosenthal, and Martin Starr in delightfully over-the-top Hassidic get-up… [continued]

One of my earliest posts for this blog last year was a list of a bunch of DVDs on my “to-watch” shelf that I hoped to get to some time in the near future.  One item on that list was the first set of DVDs collecting The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones.

Well, it took me quite a while, but I am pleased to report that almost a year later I have made my way through that DVD set!  (It’s the first of three sets that collect the entire run of the series.)

The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones was a TV series that ran, somewhat sporadically, from 1992-1996.  Alternating episodes would follow the adventures of 10 year-old Indy (played by Corey Carrier), and teen-aged Indy (played by Sean Patrick Flanery).  In each episode, Indy would find himself in adventures in varying parts of the globe, each time running into many real-life historical figures, Forest Gump style.  ABC cancelled the series after its second season in 1993, but the USA network picked it up and aired a number of new episodes in two-hour mini-movie formats until 1996.

For the 1999 release of the series on VHS, the entire series was re-edited chronologically, with each episode paired with the next one in sequence to form a two-hour mini-movie (similar to the way the episodes were aired on USA).  In so doing, all of the framing device scenes with a very Old Indy (93 year-old Indy was played by George Hall) that used to start and end each episode were completely removed.  These are the versions that have been released on DVD.  Also in 1999, Lucas, ever one to re-name his work (Star Wars eventually becomes Episode IV: A New Hope; Raiders of the Lost Ark eventually becomes Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark), at this point also changed the name of the series from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles to The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones.  (And thank heaven for wikipedia for that little tidbit.  Writing this whole review I kept writing The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, but I could see that the title on the DVDs was The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones.  I had no idea why I kept getting the title wrong!  Well, it’s because I always knew this show as The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles! Sheesh!)

(By the way, here’s another amusing tidbit.  Does anyone but me remember how, when this series was released on VHS in 1999 in the form of 22 mini-movies, each labeled “chapter 1″ through “chapter 22,” Lucas also re-released the Indy movie trilogy, labeling the movies “chapter 23″ through” chapter 25″??  This got me so worked up at the… [continued]

As with Charlie Wilson’s War (which I wrote about on Wednesday), The Departed is a movie whose DVD has been sitting on my shelf for a while now, waiting for me to revisit it (after really enjoying my first viewing when I saw it in theatres).  I am pleased to say I enjoyed the film during its second viewing as much as I did during its first.

The Departed is a sprawling film that focuses on two young men who are, in many ways, the mirror opposites of one another.  Leonardo DiCaprio plays Billy Costigan, a state cop assigned to infiltrate the mob run by Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), while Matt Damon plays Colin Sullivan, one of Costello’s men who is assigned to infiltrate the state police.  The film deftly follows their two stories, as each one works to make a name for himself in his new world, all the while scrambling to stay one step ahead of discovery.  William Monahan’s script is taut and smart, giving DiCaprio and Damon plenty of great character material to work with, while also fashioning a throughly entertaining, twisty narrative.  (I am becoming an enormous fan of Mr. Monahan’s writing, by the way.  In addition to his work in The Departed, I thoroughly enjoyed his script for Ridley Scott’s criminally-underrated Kingdom of Heaven.)

As good as Damon and DiCaprio are, though, they almost have the movie stolen right out from under them by Alec Baldwin and Mark Wahlberg, who are both absolutely magnificent playing two gleefully profane Boston detectives.  Martin Sheen is a great father figure as Police Captain Queenan, and Jack Nicholson — well, he’s Jack!  Completely over-the-top but somehow still believable as the dangerous Costello.

Having lived in both Providence and Boston, I really enjoyed the film’s focus on the distinct flavors of those two great cities.  I love movies that dig into a particular subculture, whether that’s a documentary such as Spellbound or Wordplay, or a movie like Adventureland (which I reviewed here) that captures the life of kids working a summer job at an amusement park.  So it’s no great surprise that I was tickled by The Departed‘s focus on life in Providence and Boston, two cities that are both quite different than, say, New York.  Now, I can’t really vouch for the veracity of the depiction of the crime families of those two towns, but I can say that I think Mr. Scorsese and his collaborators really captured the unique FEEL of those two cities.  

This is a big story being told, taking place over many years and with a lot of characters and a lot of narrative twists and turns.  It is all held together… [continued]

Picked this up off the DVD shelf recently, and I must say I enjoyed it as thoroughly as I did when I saw it in theatres last year.  In his review of the film for the New York Times, A.O. Scott described Charlie Wilson’s War as “more of a hoot than any picture dealing with the bloody, protracted fight between the Soviet Army and the Afghan mujahedeen has any right to be.”  I must say that I entirely agree!

Tom Hanks plays Charlie Wilson, a representative from Texas’ Second Congressional District to the U.S. House of Representatives.  Hanks imbues this good ol’ boy with an inordinate amount of charm, whether he’s flirting with women in a hot-tub or debating the intricacies of Constitutional law with a constituent.  Charlie quickly finds common purpose with short-fused, take-no-nonsense C.I.A. operative Gust Avrakotos, played with great vigor by Philip Seymour Hoffman.  (His opening scene, in which he viciously tells off his boss at the C.I.A., is an absolute riot.)  Hoffman’s Gust is the polar opposite of Charlie — ornery, blunt, and poorly-dressed.  But the two find a strange sort of kinship in their realization of the importance of defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan.

While Hanks and Hoffman get most of the fun (and most of the film’s best lines), the supporting cast is superb as well.  Julia Roberts is beautiful and imposing as the wealthy Joanne Herring; Amy Adams is sassy and smart as Charlie’s assistant Bonnie Bach (though I do wish she had a bit more to do in the film); and I don’t want to forget the delightful Ned Beatty (forever known to my generation as Lex Luthor’s oafish henchman Otis from the Richard Donner Superman movies).

But the real stars of the film are writer Aaron Sorkin and director Mike Nichols.  These two gentlemen know comedy, and they know drama, and they know how to combine the two.  Sorkin’s script is filled with memorable lines (my favorite being Charlie’s response to Joanne’s question as to why Congress is saying one thing and doing nothing: “tradition, mostly”) and the rat-tat-tat dialogue exchanges that he is famous for, but not in a way that overwhelms the story being told.  And Nichols’ direction gives the film a light, enjoyable tone, while not shying away from some difficult questions that any look at the U.S.’s actions during this period must lead to.  This is a film with a clear point to make about today’s political realities, but the filmmakers are confident enough not to hit you over the head with it.  Most importantly, Nichols and the skilled actors with whom he is working are able to create fully-realized characters to populate the film, not… [continued]

Hamlet 2 tells the story of frustrated actor-turned-high school drama teacher Dana Marschz (a nearly-unpronounceable last name, for which I was eager to learn the correct spelling by watching the film’s end credits) played by Steve Coogan (so funny this past summer in Tropic Thunder).  Dana is not-dissimilar to Christopher Guest’s Corky St. Clair (from the terrific film Waiting For Guffman) although rather more pathetic (and more prone to accidentally flashing his genitals).  Even in teaching, Dana is struggling to find success.  He only has two loyal students, and the school plays that he supervises (such as a recent stage version of Erin Brockovich) are continually savaged by the school paper’s young drama critic.

Things go from bad to worse when the school decides to cut most of its electives, filling Dana’s drama class with an unruly mob of kids who have no desire to be there.  But Dana is inspired to write a new play — a musical sequel to Hamlet that will correct that play’s downer ending — and sets out to get all of his kids involved.  What follows is a sort-of-insane mish-mash of inspiring-teacher movies (Dead Poets Society, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Dangerous Minds) with kids-coming-together-to-create-a-musical films.

The movie is all over the place.  It’s at its best when it allows Mr. Coogan to depict his slow-burn desperation to connect with the kids in his class.  There are also a number of amusing digressions, such as Dana’s encounter with Elisabeth Shue (playing herself), who has decided to give up acting in favor of life as a nurse; explorations of his home-life with his bitter wife Brie (the very funny Catherine Keener) and their new tenant Gary (David Arquette, who is hysterical in his nearly-silent role); and the appearance of civil liberties lawyer Cricket Feldstein (a fast-talking Amy Poehler).

There are also some stretches of the movie that don’t quite work, and a lot of jokes that are weird but not necessarily all that funny.  More problematically, there were times when, even in a ridiculous movie like this, I wished the characters had been fleshed out a little bit more.  There wasn’t that much depth given to most of the new students in Dana’s class, and I didn’t really believe that they would ever willingly decide to participate in Dana’s play.  That’s a key transition that the film needs to make, both for the plot and for all the character story-lines, and the fact that I don’t think it worked hurt the film for me.

But in the end, a film called Hamlet 2 lives or dies on the ultimate performance of the titular play itself — and let me tell you, those moments are gold.  You’ll be… [continued]

Writer/director Guy Ritchie’s films Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch rank among my favorite movies.  Both are incredibly clever, unique movies characterized by hysterical rat-a-tat dialogue and complex, interweaving plots filled to the brim with bizarre, violent, charismatic characters (most of whom are rather shady in nature).  And yet, despite my love for those two movies, it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen a Guy Ritchie film.  Swept Away (2002), starring his then-wife Madonna, didn’t interest me, and the critical drubbing it received didn’t inspire me to rush out and see it.  I was interested in seeing Revolver (2005), but I missed in in theatres, and the negative reviews that that film also received have contributed to my always choosing other movies to rent when visiting the video store.  But I was very pleased to recently have a chance to watch RocknRolla (released last year, in 2008).

RocknRolla has an incredibly complex plot that I’m not even going to begin to try to explain.  I’ll just tell you that it follows the intersecting lives and capers of figures at a variety of levels in the London underworld, from minor thieves like One Two (Gerard Butler, from 300), Mumbles (Idris Elba from The Wire), and Handsome Bob (Tom Hardy, much more entertaining here than he was in Star Trek: Nemesis), boss Lenny (Tom Wilkinson, from Batman Begins, Michael Clayton, In the Bedroom, and a lot of other great films) and his loyal right-hand man Archie (played by Mark Strong, who I’d never believe, if not for imdb, is the same actor who played Jordanian intelligence official Hani Salaam in Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies), rock star Johnny Quid (Toby Kebbell), music promoters Roman (Jeremy Piven) and Mickey (Ludacris), foreign mobster Uri (Karel Roden) and his accountant Stella (Thandie Newton) and many, many other characters.

As with Lock, Stock and Snatch, the fun of the movie comes from listening to the terrific, joke-a-minute dialogue, and watching the talented ensemble of actors bringing all of their wonderful characters, each of whom could have a movie all their own, to life.

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel that RocknRolla hung together as a complete film as well as those other two movies did.  As much as I enjoyed the enormous ensemble, I felt at times that there were too many characters, with too much going on.  RocknRolla doesn’t really have a main character, and I think that is the crux of the problem.  The closest thing would be Gerard Butler as One Two, and Butler is really terrific as the charismatic but slightly dim criminal.  But his character drops out of the movie for long stretches of time, and has almost no role to play whatsoever in… [continued]

In 2006, documentary film-maker Nanette Burstein and her team followed several teenagers through the course of their Senior Year of High School in Warsaw, Indiana.  While a number of students applied to participate, the final film focuses on five kids, who seem to fit into typical Breakfast-Club style stereotypes.  (”I grew up watching John Hughes movies, and the inspiration I had for this movie was to find these fictional teen narratives in real life,” Burstein said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.)

There is The Jock: Colin Clemens, the star of Warsaw High’s basketball team who is hoping to receive a basketball scholarship and afraid that, without the money to pay for college, he’ll have to enter the Army if he doesn’t receive one.  There is The Princess: Megan Krizmanich, a pretty, popular girl who is at the head of the pack of the social life at Warsaw High.  There is The Geek: Jake Tusing, a nerd with bad acne and a bad haircut, who loves video-games and is desperately looking to get a girlfriend.  There is The Heartthrob: Mitch Reinholt, who is popular and good-looking; he’s friends with Megan and plays on the basketball team with Colin.  Finally there is The Rebel: Hannah Bailey, who dreams of being an artist and a film-maker, who plays in a band and openly despises life in Warsaw and hopes to move out to California after graduation.

What is most fascinating about American Teen (and what prompted a flurry of articles upon the film’s release last year), are the questions it raises about the degree to which the kids do or don’t perform for the cameras that they must know are recording them, and what that says about the lives of teenagers today in the world of facebook, myspace, youtube,  and reality television.  There are a number of times during the film when you can see clearly that the kids are wearing microphones.  And yet, they seem to behave as if they are entirely unaware that the cameras are observing them.  I have no doubt the kids were coached about not looking into the cameras, but there are moments in the film when we see the cameras capture very intimate moments (an almost-hookup, a breakup, etc.) as well as moments of  teenage cruelty (such as Megan and her friends planning and executing a vicious prank).  This of course raises the question of whether the kids altered their behavior for the cameras.  On the one hand, it seemed that they didn’t — that the cameras quickly became a ubiquitous part of their lives, and that they carried on behaving the way they ordinarily would.  As the New York Times observed (in the… [continued]

Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) is a sex-addict who works at Colonial Dunsboro, an 18th-century re-enactment village.  He’s also a con-man whose routine is to pretend he is choking in a restaurant and then befriend the person who rescues him, ultimately hitting that unsuspecting “hero” up for a handout.  Oh yes, and after reading the diaries of his dying mother, he begins to suspect that he might be a clone of Jesus Christ.  Or, at least, a half-clone.

What a marvelously bizarre movie!!

At this point I’ve become convinced that I will watch Sam Rockwell in anything.  I first noticed him in Galaxy Quest, and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind has become one of my favorite movies.  He’s even great is smallish supporting roles, as he was in Frost/Nixon.  The energetic way in which Rockwell embodies Victor gives this film its life.  Adapted from a novel by Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club), the movie could very easily have become a dour, joyless affair.  But Rockwell’s Victor is just so entertaining to watch, even when he is being a total jackass, that he carries the viewer without any complaint through some of the movie’s rougher patches.  

The supporting cast is equally phenomenal.  Brad William Henke (currently wondering what lies in the shadow of the statue on Lost) is hysterical as Victor’s somewhat dim friend Denny.  Anjelica Houston’s performance here reminds me of the similarly mysterious and flawed mother figure that she played in The Darjeeling Limited the year before, but that’s not a criticism.  She’s especially compelling in the flashback scenes, where we see how her particular brand of craziness sent Victor down the road to becoming the screwed-up fellow he is when we meet him.  Gillian Jacobs breathes a lot of heart and soul into her small role as Beth/”Cherry Daquiri.”  She is also, I might add, stunningly beautiful.  Speaking of beautiful, I found myself completely smitten (as is Victor) by Kelly MacDonald (Gosford Park, No Country for Old Men) as Paige Marshall, who Victor meets at the private hospital where his mother is being treated.  I can really believe that she is the individual who can shake Victor out of the terrible rut that his life has become.  

Choke deals quite frankly with sex and a lot of sexual situations.  In some indie movies I find that frankness to be a bit uncomfortable, but here the subject matter is treated with just enough of a touch of humor that I went along quite eagerly for the ride.  There’s a lot of weirdness to be found in Choke, and Victor’s habit of imagining the people he’s interacting with naked is just one small part of this!  As with The Wackness (which I reviewed [continued]

I saw this terrific movie on DVD last month, during the same week that I saw the lovely new film Adventureland (read my full review here), and although the settings are extremely different, I was struck by the similarities between the two films.  Both are “period pieces” set a few years back, and both tell coming-of-age stories, set over the course of a particularly transformative summer.

The Wackness takes place in New York City during the summer of 1994.  Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) has just graduated high school and is spending the summer hanging around the city and making money selling pot.  When we first meet him he’s in the office of Dr. Jeffrey Squires (Ben Kingsley), who is Luke’s psychiatrist and also one of his best clients.  At a post-graduation party, Luke reconnects with Dr. Squires’ daughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby), one of his class-mates but someone with whom he has had little interaction (because, as Luke puts it later in the film, she is “mad out of [his] league”).  

The hip-hop music and lingo of 1994 are an enormous part of the film, something which writer/director Jonathan Levine has recreated with great care.  I can’t vouch for his accuracy, but the music and the unique, specific “street-talk” really give the film a vibrant pulse and a distinct feel.

Over the course of the summer, Lucas has to grow up in many ways — he is faced with the ups and downs of his first real relationship and his exposure to the failings and imperfections of the adults around him.  Dr. Squires goes through similar emotional turmoil.  He sees in Luke many of the opportunities that he feels he has missed in life, and he has to face up to the sad, empty shell that his marriage (to his wife Kristen, played quietly by Famke Janssen) has become.  That description of a troubled adult and a troubled youth learning from one another and changing for the better sounds terribly cliche (I’ve seen Good Will Hunting and a hundred similar movies, as I’m sure have you), but The Wackness manages to deftly steer clear of predictable developments and movie-happy “I’ve grown and learned a lesson” endings.  It is also surprisingly funny.

Credit goes not only to writer/director Levine but also to his terrific cast.  Josh Peck is quite compelling as Luke Shapiro.  He makes the role his own, bringing life to Luke and embodying him with specific quirks and characteristics that make him a pretty unique movie young-adult lead.  Sir Ben Kingsley, under a terrifically ridiculous mop of hair, is similarly magnificent as the bizarre Dr. Squires.  His friendship with Luke is the beating heart of the film, and… [continued]

In March, 1977, filmmaker Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown) was arrested and charged with raping a 13 year-old girl at the home of his friend, Jack Nicholson (who was out of town at the time).  Polanski eventually agreed to a plea bargain and pled guilty to one felony count of illegal sex with a 13 yea-old girl.  In early 1978, before a sentence could be imposed, Polanski fled the country, never to return.

The above three sentences about sums up what I knew about this famous case.  (In all honesty, I probably didn’t even know quite that much before watching this film!)  What is most fascinating about the recent documentary by Marina Zenovich, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, is that the issue the film focuses on isn’t the act that Polanski committed, but rather on what happened afterwards.  

What actually occurred at Jack Nicholson’s house isn’t the subject of much debate, apparently.  There is a little bit of a “he said, she said” back-and-forth at the start of the film, as Zenovich compares and contrasts Polanski’s version of the story with that of the girl (Samantha Geimer).  There are a few important details on which they differ.  But Polanski does not deny having sex with the girl, nor does she seem to suggest that he forced himself on her.  The film does not spend a lot of time trying to defend Mr. Polanski’s actions, and rightly so.  Whether the sex was consentual or not, Polanski’s actions in sleeping with a 13 year-old girl were abhorrent.  

No, the focus of the film is on the even more shocking events that transpired after Polanski was arrested.  Ms. Zenovich lays out, in great detail, the ways in which the escalating chaos of the media circus and the publicity-hungry judge assigned to the case waylaid any attempt at justice.  Through a lively mix of fascinating archival footage from a whole host of sources and a wonderful array of insightful new interviews that Ms. Zenovich conducted with almost every single key figure in the case, including Samantha Geimer herself, viewers are walked through the stunningly tortured legal process as the case unfolded.  

The most fascinating elements of the film are the new interviews with Polanski’s lawyer, Douglas Dalton, and the Assistant D.A. who lead the case for the prosecution, Roger Gunson.  Both men come across as remarkably intelligent, honest men, and both are very candid in their interviews.  One might expect a film like this to demonize one side or the other, falling back on easy caricatures such as a depiction of Polanski the sadist defended by his showboating lawyer… or the stiff-laced DA blinded by self-righteousness.  But Zenovich resists any such… [continued]

It is 58 years “before the fall.”  Life on the twelve colonies is peaceful and prosperous — especially on Caprica.  And yet, amongst the elite of society, there is decadence and decay.  The new direct-to-DVD movie Caprica focuses on the patriarchs of two families.  Daniel Greystone (Eric Stoltz) is a wealthy inventor — part Bill Gates, part Steve Jobs — who seems to have everything he wants in life.  But his artificial intelligence project is at a stand-still, and he’s in danger of losing his military contract to a rival company.  Joseph Adama (Esai Morales) is a lawyer, struggling to balance his desire to find his own way in life with his obligations to the crime family that helped pay for his education.  A terrible tragedy that involves both Daniel and Joseph’s daughters brings the two of them together and sets in motion events that will eventually lead to the creation of the Cylons… and 58 years later, the near-annihilation of the human race.

This Caprica direct-to-DVD project is something of a weird entity.  As the pilot for a TV show that we won’t get to see until 2010, Caprica isn’t a complete movie in and of itself — it’s more of a tease for what we’ll eventually get to see next year.

Despite whatever complaints I have with Battlestar Galactica‘s final run of episodes (and you can read my thoughts in more detail here), there certainly was a tremendous high of excitement and anticipation just a few months ago as the final hours of BSG were broadcast.  I wonder if Ron Moore and the makers of Caprica wouldn’t have been wiser to hold off on showing their pilot until next year, to let the memory of BSG fade and to build more anticipation for new stories within that universe.  As it is, it’s very difficult not to compare Caprica to that intense final run of episodes of BSG, and I think Caprica pales in comparison.

For better or for worse, Caprica is an entirely different type of show than BSG.  Whereas Galactica was intense and action-packed, Caprica is much colder, much more leisurely paced.  There’s one explosion (and it’s a doozy — one of the most dramatic moments of the pilot), but other than that Caprica‘s focus is not on action-adventure but on drama.  Now, that’s not a bad thing, necessarily.  You can have very compelling television without space-ship battles… and if Caprica had set out to be just like BSG, it would probably would have wound up being derivative and lame.

I remember when Star Trek: The Next Generation launched back in 1987.  In its first few seasons, the writers (for the most part) bent over backwards to avoid bringing back characters… [continued]

I really enjoyed his two Hellboy films, but it was the beautiful, wonderful Pan’s Labyrinth that made me a fan of Guillermo del Toro for life.

Since I think so highly of his recent films, I decided it was high time that I sought out some of his older works.  Which lead me to The Devil’s Backbone, del Toro’s Spanish-language film from 2001.

As was Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone is set during the Spanish Civil War.  As the movie opens, a twelve-year-old orphan named Carlos is left at an orphanage in the middle of nowhere.  As Carlos struggles to settle in to his new home and find his place amongst the boys there (some of whom are friendly, and some of whom are cruel) and the stern adults (all of whom have their own stories and their own problems), he discovers what he believes to be “the one who sighs,” the ghost of a missing boy named Santi.  As the Spanish Civil War lurches towards its conclusion, the plight of everyone at the orphanage becomes more dire, and the terrible secrets of what happened to Santi at last come to light.

Del Toro is a master at combining emotional, character-driven stories with a touch of the fantastic.  Pan’s Labyrinth might be his masterpiece in this area (so far), but The Devil’s Backbone gives that film quite a run for its money.  Right from it’s opening moments it is gripping and genuinely creepy.  This isn’t a film that is all about special effects or big “money shots” of monsters and creatures.  No, it’s a story about desperate people in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.  The supernatural element is almost secondary — which, to me, is what makes that supernatural element so effective when it enters the story.

As I watched this film it became clear to me that del Toro has quite a way with child actors.  Just as Ivana Baquero was so terrific as Ofelia in Pan’s Labyrinth, young Fernando Tielve is quite compelling here as Carlos.  So much of the film’s story rests on his shoulders, and he is just terrific. And he’s not alone.  There’s a large group of boys of varying ages at the orphanage, all of whom are very engaging.  The kids all feel real, and each boy has a distinct character and personality.  This is quite a feat.

I am not a fan of horror films, generally.  Scary, violent movies are a dime a dozen these days at one’s local cineplex.  But don’t dismiss The Devil’s Backbone because of all those other terrible films.  This is a terrific, engaging, unique story, and one that I can’t wait to watch again.

In the mean-time, I think I… [continued]

“Delirious, I saw that hell-bound ship’s black sails against the yellow Indies sky, and knew again the stench of powder, and men’s brains, and war.”

So begins the Tales of the Black Freighter, the famed “comic within a comic” from Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons.  It’s one of my favorite elements of the graphic novel, and also one of the most bizarre (which might be why I like it so much!).  Starting in the very first panel of Watchmen‘s third chapter, and then recurring periodically throughout the remainder of the story, the horrific narrative of this pirate comic (being read by a young boy hanging out by a street-corner news-stand) weaves in and out of the larger story being told.

In the Black Freighter story, we follow the ordeal of the lone survivor of a sailing ship that has been ambushed and destroyed by the pirates of the Black Freighter.  Fearing that the pirates’ next target is his home of Davidstown, where his wife and children live, the survivor (whose name is never given) goes to desperate efforts to make his way home before the Black Freighter arrives.  Needless to say, things don’t go well.

In my review of the Zack Snyder’s movie adaptation of Watchmen, I wrote how I found it hard to believe that I was actually watching a Watchmen movie.  Who’d have believed that this brilliant, violent, weird graphic novel had ever been made into a film — and, even more incredibly, one so faithfully translated from the source material??  Well, as much as I had doubted that a Watchmen movie would ever come to be, it was positively inconceivable to me that Tales of the Black Freighter would EVER be included in such an adaptation.  In bringing such a large and complex work as Watchmen to the screen, surely the first thing to be done would be to determine what elements could be jettisoned, and surely the Black Freighter digressions would be at the top of that list!

And, indeed, the version of Watchmen released to theatres last month did not, in fact, include the Tales of the Black Freighter.  But, bless their hearts, Snyder and his team did actually adapt the Tales of the Black Freighter.  In order to capture the “comic within a comic” and differentiate it from the rest of the movie, they made the savvy choice to create it using animation.  And so the twenty minute Tales of the Black Freighter short film came to be.  It was released to DVD this past week, and it will be edited back into the Watchmen movie for a super-duper special edition DVD to come.  

So how is it?  Pretty good!  The… [continued]

Two rather high-profile new direct-to-DVD animation projects have been released recently — but are they worth your time and hard-earned dollars?  Well read on, true believers!

Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder — And so, once again, we bid farewell to Futurama.  Matt Groening’s lunatic sci-fi series was brutally cancelled by Fox back in 2003 after only four seasons.  Luckily, after several long years of waiting, the series was resurrected for a series of four direct-to-DVD feature-length animated films, of which this is the last.  While these new movies haven’t quite reached the high-points of the series’ best episodes (I’m thinking about episodes such as The Farnsworth Parabox, Roswell That Ends Well, Love and Rocket, War is the H-Word, Amazon Women in the Mood, The Bird-bot of Ice-Catraz, The Problem with Popplers, or The Day the Earth Stood Stupid), they have been very, very good.  The strongest, in my opinion, was The Beast with a  Billion Backs, in which David Cross (Arrested Development, Mr. Show) plays the alien Yivo who attempts to mate with every creature in the universe, while the weakest was Bender’s Game (as I found the extended fantasy sequence in the middle of the film to be a bit dull).

Into the Wild Green Yonder contains all the crazy zaniness, wild side-stories, and obscure sci-fi references that I have come to expect from the series.  The plot is almost beside the point, but I will attempt a summation.  The story begins on Mars, where the construction of a new Mars Vegas is disrupted by a band of eco-feminists.  Pretty soon Fry has been declared the savior of the universe by a bunch of telepaths wearing aluminum foil hats, Bender arouses the wrath of the mobster Don-Bot for making out with his wife, Leela goes under-cover with the feminists, and it all builds to a massive space-ship battle in the middle of an intergalactic mini-golf course.

The DVD is very solid — the animation is GORGEOUS, as always.  The story, despite some digressions, works well as a movie.  There are very few lulls between big laughs.  As for the ending — well, the original Futurama series was cancelled without any time to produce a final episode, so with this being the final DVD (for now, at least — hope always springs eternal that these will have proven profitable enough for more to be on the way!), fans wondered if we’d get some sort of “finale” to the over-all story.  Well, I think they got things just right.  The last scene is just terrific, with some nice closure that doesn’t close the door on further adventures.  And the very last shot?  Perfection.

If this is the end of Futurama then… [continued]

Tropic Thunder was one of my favorite films of last year.  It made my Top 10 Movies of 2008 list, and you can click here to read my original review.

The two-disc special edition DVD is pretty snazzy.  It contains a pretty thorough series of featurettes that cover many of the aspects of creating the film (shaping the script, casting, the visual effects, etc.).  There is also an extended, director’s cut version of the film with a lot of new material added in.  (This is neat, although in my opinion this longer, slower version is inferior to the original theatrical cut.  That the theatrical version is not included on this DVD is disappointing.)

But let’s not focus on the negatives.  The highlight of the DVD, and the thing that I want to bring to your attention, is a special feature called Rain of Madness.

Some background: As you all probably know, Tropic Thunder is a parody of a number of different war films, including Francis Ford Coppola’s sprawling Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now.  Quite a lot of the imagery in Tropic Thunder is clearly inspired by that film, specifically the helicopter attack opening sequence.

Several years after Apocalypse Now was released, Coppola’s wife Eleanor was involved in the creation of a documentary about the making of that film called Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse.  It chronicled the numerous and mounting problems that beset Coppola during the production of Apocalypse Now – problems that lead to his, basically, falling apart.

Seeing as Tropic Thunder is a parody of Apocalypse Now, Ben Stiller and his company had the inspired idea to create a “behind the scenes” look at the making of Tropic Thunder (that is, the fictional Tropic Thunder film within the film) that is itself a parody of Hearts of Darkness. You with me?  The result is this brilliant little DVD special feature entitled Rain of Madness. It features a TON of new footage that focuses on director Damien Cockburn (played by Steve Coogan)’s descent into madness during the trying first few, um, day of filming Tropic Thunder.  There is a lot of hysterical new material included (scenes shot specifically for this fake documentary) including a series of Cockburn’s passive-aggressive battles with star Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), and Kirk Lazarus as Sgt. Osiris (Robert Downey Jr.) coming down with P.P.S.T. (Post Platoon Stress Disorder) and melting down completely during a visit with the real Osiris’ family.

But the parody goes even further.  The faux documentary is narrated by a fake pretentious German documentarian named Jan Jurgen, a biting satire of Warner Herzog.  Have any of you ever seen Grizzly Man?  It’s a documentary about the grizzly bear activist… [continued]

It’s been a busy month here, but that hasn’t stopped me from checking out a bunch of DVDs recently, new and old:

The Conversation — Released in 1974, this masterpiece was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola between The Godfather and The Godfather Part II.  Gene Hackman stars as twitchy, secretive surveillance specialist Harry Caul, whose life is up-ended by a seemingly-innocuous conversation that he is hired to record.  Confidently directed by Coppola at the height of his abilities, the film is a perfect study of a slow burn as we watch Hackman’s character gradually fall to pieces.  This is Hackman’s film, without question, but it’s also fun to see the great John Cazale (Fredo in The Godfather) and an incredibly young Harrison Ford in supporting roles.  The film is also notable for the contributions of master editor Walter Murch (American Graffiti, Apocalypse Now) who created an incredible sound-scape that plays with sound and dialogue in some incredibly inventive ways.  The bravura opening sequence, in which Caul and his team records the titular conversation, is staggering — like Caul, we attempt to follow the couple and their conversation, but keep getting distracted by people talking, music playing, and a myriad of other background noises, with the conversation itself flittering in and out of our perception.  It’s really quite astonishing.  Everybody loves The Godfather these days, but I feel that The Conversation is a film that has fallen out of the popular consciousness.  Do yourself a favor and help remedy that by checking out this brilliant film!

Band of Brothers — Speaking of masterpieces, there is this 2001 HBO miniseries executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.  Adapted from the book by Stephen Ambrose, the series follows the men of Easy Company (of the US Army 101st Airborne Division) from their training in 1942 through to the end of the second world war.  I have watched this series through four times now since it was released, and each time I watch it I am just as over-come by the power of the story of these extraordinary heroes.  The production quality of this mini-series is unbelievable — each episode is really its own mini-movie.  The vistas are stunningly beautiful, and the action is gut-wrenchingly intense.  There are few movies. let alone TV shows, that are able to stage combat sequences with as much ferocity.  Over the ten episodes we follow and grow to love an enormous ensemble of characters: Damian Lewis as Richard Winters, Ron Livingston as Lewis Nixon, Donnie Wahlberg as Carwood Lipton, Scott Grimes as Donald Malarkey, Michael Cudlitz as “Bull” Randleman, James Madio as Frank Perconte, Neal McDonough as “Buck” Compton, Frank John Hughes as “Wild Bill”… [continued]

In case you haven’t figured this out by now, I am an enormous Star Trek fan.  But I have lamented before on this site that, for a number of years now, there haven’t been any new Star Trek TV shows or movies to entertain me.  (And frankly, I wasn’t that wild about the last two Trek movies OR the last two Trek TV series, so it’s been even LONGER since I was able to enjoy any consistently GREAT official, live-action Trek.)  However, I have been really digging Pocket Books’ recent Star Trek novel releases (just recently I reviewed the spectacular trilogy Star Trek: Destiny)… and there has been some UN-official Trek product out there to enjoy, as well, like the terrific fan series Star Trek: Phase II (which I discussed here, and I reviewed its most recent episode, “Blood and Fire” Pt. I, here).  

Today I’d like to discuss another notable Star Trek fan production, albeit one with a pretty remarkable pedigree — Star Trek: Of Gods and Men.

Inspired by the success and near-professional quality of Star Trek: Phase 2, director Tim Russ (who played Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager) and his team have assembled a group of film professionals to produce this feature-length project (which was originally released on-line in three 30-minute installments).  In front of the camera, Star Trek: Of Gods and Men stars a rather remarkable assemblage of former Star Trek actors: Walter Koenig (Pavel Chekov), Nichelle Nichols (Uhura), Alan Ruck (Captain John Harriman of the Enterprise B from Star Trek: Generations), Grace Lee Whitney (Janice Rand), J.G. Hertzler (Martok from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Garrett Wang (Ensign Kim from Star Trek: Voyager), Ethan Phillips (Neelix from Star Trek: Voyager), Cirroc Lofton (Jake Sisko from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Chase Masterson (Leeta from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), and many others.  

A number of the above actors (like Koenig, Nichols, and Ruck) reprise their roles from the shows, while others play entirely new characters (Hertzler, Wang, Lofton, Masterson, etc.).  Either way, one of the great joys of this film is getting to see this terrific group of actors again on screen, interacting with one another and a lot of other familiar faces from the different Trek series.  Special props to actor Gary Graham, who has played a variety of roles on the different Trek series (most notably Vulcan Ambassador Soval on Enterprise) for his dynamic turn as Chekov’s partner Ragnar — it’s a small role, but it’s one of the most compelling performances of the film.

But without question the stars of the film are Koenig, Nichols, and Ruck, and they acquit themselves very well.   All three are fine actors, and as the leads they get a… [continued]

… [continued]

My brother Dave had the great idea, recently, to start a Double Feature Club.  This is a movie-version of a book club, in which a group of friends will gather, approximately once a month, to enjoy a Double Feature on a certain theme.

Dave hosted the first installment last week — two movies starring Jeff Bridges: Arlington Road and The Big Lebowski.

Arlington Road (1999) — Jeff Bridges plays Michael Faraday (no connection to the time-traveling Daniel Faraday on Lost), a widowed college history professor who teaches courses on terrorism in America.  He becomes friends with new neighbors, Oliver and Cheryl Lang (Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack).  However, he grows increasingly suspicious of Oliver, and when he begins looking into Oliver’s background he becomes convinced that Oliver is plotting a terrorist act on American soil.

Arlington Road is a nice taught thriller that has a dynamite twist ending.  It really stunned me when I first saw it in theatres back in ’99.  Because movies like these, with twist endings, tend to lose something upon repeat viewings… and also because the film is, frankly, quite a downer, I’d never re-watched it in the years since.  I was very curious, now, to see how the film held up.  

No surprise, it loses a lot of its power once you know the ending.  However, there is still fun to be had in watching the film through while knowing the end, and seeing how that knowledge colors scenes that you’d previously thought of differently.  The plot holds up pretty well to scrutiny.  In a post 9-11 world, this story about the fear of terrorism, and possibility of hidden dangers even among our suburban neighbors, has a lot of extra weight.  The film is completely colored by that now, but I don’t think that’s altogether a bad thing.

The main joy of the film is watching Bridges slowly unravel as Faraday becomes more and more obsessed with his neighbors.  Robbins and Cusack are also a blast, alternately playing friendly & gregarious and very, very creepy.  

The Big Lebowski (1998) — Jeff Bridges is Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, a stoned LA lay-about who gets mixed up in a Chandler-esque tale of intrigue and mistaken identity.  I’d loved this film back in college, but it had been years since I’d seen it last.  As with Arlington Road, I was eager to see how well this film held up.  

Well, I am pleased to say that it remains ferociously entertaining.  Bridges is just terrific as The Dude, conveying an eminently likable slacker/stoner without laying on the shtick too thickly.  As always in a film by the Coen Brothers, our lead is surrounded by an ensemble of… [continued]

OK, here we are with my final “Best-of” list, the Top 10 DVDs of 2008!  To be included on this list, the DVD in question had to contain a high-quality TV show, movie, or special and also a great presentation on DVD, with lots of cool special features.  Behold my list:

10.  Mystery Science Theatre 3000:  20th Anniversary Edition — I adore this show, and this 20th anniversary celebration of its existence just rocked.  On this set, the gang haves fun with four great/terrible films: First Spaceship on Venus (1960), Laserblast (1978), Werewolf (1996) and Future War (1997).  Even better is the inclusion of an in-depth 3-part documentary on the making of the show, from its creation through to its end.  The icing on the cake was the neat tin case that included fun stuff like a little model of Crowe T. Robot, which now sits proudly on my desk.

9.  John, Paul, Tom & Ringo: The Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder — This DVD contains three lengthy, rare interviews that Tom Synder conducted with Paul McCartney (in 1979), Ringo Starr (in 1981), and John Lennon (in 1975).  The Lennon interview is the last televised interview that John gave before his death.  Snyder is an engaging interviewer, and these lengthy conversations with 3 of the 4 Beatles are a real find.  

8.  The Office: The Complete Fourth Season and 30 Rock: The Complete Second Season — Complete season sets of these two NBC shows at the top of their game were released in ’08, I can’t tell you how many hours of enjoyment I got out of these DVDs.  In the fourth season of The Office, Ryan the temp is promoted, moves to New York City, and falls to pieces; Andy begins dating Angela; Stanley finally loses it with Michael (“did I stutter?”), Michael is deposed in Jan’s case against Dunder Mifflin; the gang creates an ad to run on local television and participates in Michael’s “fun run” towards a cure for rabies; Toby finally leaves for Costa Rica; and of course Michael and Jan invite Jim and Pam over for a dinner party.  Over on 30 Rock, Jack launches a new reality series called  MILF Island; Tracy and Jenna feud over Liz’s attentions; Liz adopts a hippie writer (played by Carrie Fisher) as her mentor; Devon Banks (Arrested Development‘s Will Arnett) feuds with Jack over the top spot at GE; Jerry Seinfeld discovers Jack’s plan to digitally insert him into all of NBC’s new fall shows; Jack falls in love with a Democratic Congresswoman from Vermont (Edie Falco); and while Liz Lemon faces a pregnancy scare, Jack takes a job working in the Bush… [continued]

I cannot believe this has been in existence since the summer and I only just saw it a few days ago!!!

What am I talking about?  It’s the incomparable Joss Whedon’s 3-part web-series Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which has just been released on DVD.  

Some back-story: Conceived during the writers strike, Joss Whedon (Firefly, Serenity, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), along with a gaggle of his friends, created a 3-part web series (each installment totaling approx. 15 minutes in length) that was released, for free, on the web this past summer.  It was quite a success, crashing various web-servers and garnering a lot of acclaim in the mainstream media.  

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a super-villain musical.  Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother) turns in quite possibly the best performance of his career (certainly the best performance of his that I’ve ever seen) as the titular sad-sack super-villain, Dr. Horrible.  His nemesis: the handsome and super-strong hero Captain Hammer, played by Nathan Fillion (Captain Tightpants himself — Mal Reynolds from Firefly and Serenity).  In addition to their repeated conflicts over all of Dr. Horrible’s nefarious schemes (undertaken in an attempt to join the League of Evil), the two quickly fall for the same girl:  the beguiling Penny, played by Felicia Day.  And did I mention this was a musical?

All of the actors (the three leads and a variety of other talented folk) all turn in magnificent performances, but Neil Patrick Harris’ Dr. Horrible is one of the great creations of recent memory.  The story opens with a lengthy monologue straight into camera by Harris, delivered without cuts — this is our introduction to his video blog.  The sequence is astounding — a magical combination of a talented actor and a sharp, hilarious script by Whedon.  If you’re not hooked by its end, then I really don’t think we have anything in common.

Great actors and a hysterical, poignant script — that would be enough, no?  But I was blown away by the quality of the songs.  There are 14 songs in total, and they are really astounding.  Judging music is not my forte, but I found all of the songs to be catchy, witty, and well incorporated into the overall story.  I was humming quite a few of them after my first viewing.

Although I am astounded that I let something of such high quality go un-watched by me for so many months, I don’t regret too strongly holding out for the DVD release.  That’s because in addition to a high-quality image and some terrific special features (an in-depth “making-of” and a fun, insightful commentary) there is a also… [continued]

I first saw this terrific German film a number of years ago, and for quite some time now I’d been eager to check it out again.  The copious amount of snow that fell this past weekend was as good a reason as any!

Released in 1999, the story of Run Lola Run is pretty simple:  Lola (Franka Potente) is a young woman who has 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 Deutschmarks, or something very bad will happen to her boyfriend Manni.  Through some great camerawork and a little visual trickery, we follow Lola as she makes a mad dash through the city streets in an effort to some-how, some-way, come up with the money.  

This is a film with a lot on its mind — particularly some deep questions about chance, fate, and destiny.  But with the exception of a bit of a pompous voice-over in the opening minutes, the film chooses to explore those issues through what is pretty much non-stop, pulse-pounding action.  As noted above, the camera-work is very sharp, getting the viewer viscerally involved in Lola’s run through the city without making one too nauseous, Blair Witch style.  The pulsing soundtrack helps, too, as do the occasional switches into frenetic animation.  The film is very well-edited, as all of the above is somehow mixed together into an energetic yet easy-to-follow whole.  Coming in at a lean 81 minutes, there’s not a moment of fat to be found here.  (In terms of pace,the short Run Lola Run is sort of the polar opposite if Once Upon a Time in America, which I reviewed yesterday!)  

The way the film plays with time is fascinating.  I won’t spoil any surprises, but there are some clever twists in the way the tale unfolds.  I also really love the fast-paced “and then” montages, in which the film will occasionally pause to show us, in a quick series of shots, the differing ways in which the lives of several of the people who Lola encounters might unfold, based on the vagaries of chance.  As I wrote above, this film has a lot on its mind.

All of this would fall down, of course, were Franka Potente not so compellingly winning as Lola.  Clever and resourceful, yet right on the edge of total desperation, this is a star-making role.  Potente has gone on to appear in the Bourne movies and The Shield, but I don’t know if she’s ever been better than she is here.

One final note:  Be sure to watch this film in the original German with subtitles, as opposed to the dreadful English over-dub!  You’ll thank me, believe me.

I love trolling the discount bins at Newbury Comics and other stores that sell DVDs, because you never know what sort of fun treasures you’ll find for very little money.

Case in point:  I recently came across Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America.  I had heard of this film but had never seen it, so I looked the DVD over.  An over three-hour gangster epic, starring Robert DeNiro and James Woods?  Sign me up!

Originally released in 1984, Leone’s sprawling tale covers about 50 years in the lives of a group of Jewish friends, from their days growing up on the streets on the Lower East Side, to their rise through the ranks of the New York City underworld to, of course, the eventual tragedies that usually end these sorts of crime stories.  The film was received poorly upon its release in the States, probably because the studio took Leone’s lengthy epic and severely truncated it — not only cutting out enormous swaths of footage but also removing Leone’s intricate narrative structure of flashbacks within flashbacks, and instead presenting the film linearly.  This DVD presents a restored version of Leone’s 229 minute cut (although the disc’s special features refer to extensive additional footage that Leone considered “essential” and yet was not included in this version).

Although he might portray the least convincing on-screen Jew since Elijah Wood in Everything is Illuminated (although that’s not a knock against Wood’s powerful performance in that vastly underrated movie!), Robert DeNiro creates a fascinating character in his portrayal of the man nicknamed Noodles.  Throughout his life, Noodles struggles to balance his sharp intelligence with his more violent impulses, and his ambition with his limited worldview.  Time after time, most of Noodles’ choices are defined in association with, and sometimes in contrast to, his close friend Max, played by James Woods.  From their very first meeting as kids, the two share a tight bond as well as a fierce rivalry, and much of the power of Once Upon a Time in America comes from the examination  of their relationship over the course of their lives.  

Just as New York City was a major character in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (about which I wrote yesterday) so too is the essence of New York  an important element in the tone of this film.  The gorgeous sets and locations, combined with Leone’s direction, create a compelling picture of old New York.  The film’s title puts one in the mind of a fairy tale, and perhaps this film’s picture of life in the Lower East Side has equal footing in both reality and fantasy.  (Having not lived there during the time-period of the… [continued]

My father recommended this film to me, years ago, and from the first time I watched it I knew right away that he was right on the money in declaring it to be a masterful work.

Made in 1974, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three stars Walter Matthau as New York City transit chief Lt. Garber, called upon to deal with the unprecedented hijkacking of a subway train (the titular Pelham One Two Three).  Robert Shaw leads the armed men who have perpetrated the heist and seem to have planned for every possible eventuality.  What follows is one of the great cinematic battle of wits, as Matthau’s Lt. Garber struggles to figure out just what the criminals’ goals are and how he can prevent what seems to be a perfectly planned crime.

There are a number of movies in which New York City figures in, almost as a main character, and The Taking of Pelham One Two is certainly one of the most notable.  In so many little ways, the film captures the feel and personality of the city.  It is a magical combination of the actors (both the large number of people with speaking parts as well as all the background players), the dialogue (and the accents with which the dialogue is spoken!), and the sets… along with that special something about the personality of 1970′s film stock that puts us right into the middle of the beating heart of New York.  Personality is a good word, because it is precisely by setting of this heist story in the specific locale of the New York City subway system that the movie gains its distinct personality.  I didn’t live in the city in the 1970′s, but after spending two hours with this movie I feel like I did.

Of course, it also doesn’t hurt that the film’s star is Walter Matthau.  His Lt. Garber is the quintessential New Yorker — world-weary and bedraggled, yet possessing of an incredible stubbornness that just won’t permit him to allow Robert Shaw to get the best of him.  Matthau is phenomenally compelling — a flawed man (he is shockingly rude and condescending to a group of Japanese visitors early in the film, and there is also an amusingly awkward encounter with an African American Police Inspector) and yet extraordinarily likable.  Equally compelling is Robert Shaw as Matthau’s opponent (referred to only as Mr. Blue). Mr. Blue is intense, intelligent, and very dangerous.  Watching his plan unfold step by step, the audience races along with Lt. Garber in trying to figure out how all the pieces fit together.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three  isn’t a terribly well-known film from the ’70s, but it’s… [continued]

One of the first full-season-of-a-TV-show DVD sets that I ever purchased was Season 1 of The Larry Sanders Show, released back in 2003.

After having risen to prominence as a stand-up comedian in the 1970′s & 80’s, Garry Shandling became a fixture of late-night television as a regular guest host for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.  In 1985 he created It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, which ran on Showtime through 1990.  (I have heard that It’s Garry Shandling’s Show is a magnificently bizarre, surreal adventure in television, although I have never seen a minute of it.  I live in hope of an eventual DVD release!) 

In 1992 Shandling created The Larry Sanders Show for HBO.  Sanders was a sharp satire of the world of late-night comedy which Shandling knew so well, and was notable for including various celebrities (actors, comedians, and musicians) in each episode, poking great amounts of fun at their public personas.  The show was also notable for its look, which mixed footage shot on video (the segments of the show which chronicled Larry Sanders’ late-night talk-show) with footage shot on film.  Nothing like this had ever been done for television before.

The comedy is powerful and brutal, and revels in awkward moments and painful situations.  (In this way it can be seen as a direct forerunner of the original British version of The Office.)  And yet, the beauty of the show is that you can’t help but fall in love with the show’s central trio: the neurotic Larry Sanders, the clue-less and self-absorbed side-kick Hank, and the fiercely loyal and astonishingly profane Artie, the show’s producer.  A great number of talented comedians and actors also did great work in supporting roles: Janeane Garofalo, Penny Johnson (Sherry Palmer on 24 and Kassidy Yates on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Jeremy Piven (Entourage), Mary Lynn Rajskub (Chloe on 24), Sarah Silverman, Bob Odenkirk, Scott Thompson, Wallace Langham, and many many others. 

I discovered The Larry Sanders Show fairly late in its run.  My parents taped many of the episodes of the last few seasons for me when I was away at college.  So I was thrilled when Season 1 was released, as I finally had a chance to watch the earlier episodes that I had never seen.  I quickly devoured the 13 episodes on the set, and waited patiently for the release of season 2.

And waited.

And waited.

No other season of The Larry Sanders Show has ever been released on DVD.  The information I have been able to find on-line seems to indicate that there is an issue with the exorbitant cost of licensing all the… [continued]

Among my very favorite DVD sets are Peter Jackson’s extended versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Being a fanatical LOTR fan, it is a delight to have longer versions of the films that incorporate action, character moments, and lots of other fun details drawn from the books.  The LOTR extended DVDs also boast some of the most comprehensive and enjoyable extras I have ever seen – detailed, feature-length documentaries that cover every aspect of the making of the films, from the casting to the production to the music to the editing to the guys who made the chain mail for all the elvish armor.  Just fantastic stuff, and it gives us a wonderful peek into the experiences of all the talented craftsmen and women who toiled on the LOTR films for over half a decade.

Because of that, and because I enjoyed Peter Jackson’s King Kong more than most, when the extended DVD set of King Kong was released over two years ago (in November, 2006), I of course picked it up right away.  However, for some reason, it subsequently sat unopened on my DVD shelf.  I’m not sure why that is.  Maybe it’s because the thought that a longer version of Kong was rather daunting?  As I wrote above, I really loved Jackson’s remake of Kong, but even I must admit that the film (clocking in at 187 minutes) was longer than it needed to be.  Even from the comfort of my own couch, the idea of pressing play on the 201 minute version was, I suppose, not something I was in a terrible hurry to do.

But I did finally sit down to watch the extended version of King Kong this weekend, and let me say I was delighted.  Unlike the Lord of the Rings extended editions, this is not a complete re-working of the film.  The changes are actually rather minimal, mostly consisting of a couple of additional hideous encounters on Skull Island.  If you didn’t like King Kong in its theatrical form, this new version isn’t going to change your mind.  But for me, watching Kong I right away remembered every reason why I had enjoyed the film so much when I saw it in theatres.

Anyone who knows anything about this Kong remake knows that it was Peter Jackson’s dream since he was 9 years old, and that love pores off of every frame of this film.  The movie is a fantasy, a fairy-tale of the best kind, and the terrific score and the sumptuous visuals right away sucked me in to the world of 1933 New York and the story being told. 

There is… [continued]

I first saw Citizen Kane in college, during a fantastic class called Film Architecture (one of the best classes I had in college).  I’ve seen it several times since then, and while I wouldn’t list Kane as my favorite film of all time, I certainly understand why many consider it to be the greatest film ever made.  It is a magnificent piece of work, and seeing Kane instantly made me an enormous fan of Orson Welles.  Last month I had the great pleasure to watch two Welles films on DVD, and I can’t recommend them highly enough.

Touch of Evil — Made in 1958, Touch of Evil was written and directed by Welles, and he has a major role as police Captain Hank Quinlan.  In the opening moments of the film, a man places a bomb in a car driving across the Mexican border into the United States.  When the bomb goes off on the U.S. side of the border, high-ranking Mexican narcotics official Ramon Miguel “Mike” Vargas (played by, believe it or not, Charlton Heston) and his young American wife (Janet Leigh) quickly get swept up in the investigation and a tangled web of dirty cops, drug dealers, and a lot of other nastiness.

Visually and technically, the film is a masterpiece.  The dynamic camerawork is astonishingly inventive for a film made 50 years ago.  The movie opens with one of the most famous shots in film history, a long tracking shot (3 minutes and 33 seconds) that starts with a bomb being placed in the trunk of a car and then follows the car’s slow drive down streets and across the border, paralleling Heston & Leigh’s walk across the border.  The camera constantly pulls in and out to follow both the car and the couple, making sure the viewer can follow exactly where they are in relation to one another, and charting their progress through a Mexican border-town and across the border.  The soundwork here is also magnificent, as we hear an interwoven stream of sound with the levels shifting from moment to moment, allowing us to catch snippets of music from the street, the car’s radio, and Heston and Leigh’s conversation as well as their interactions with various others such as a border guard they pass.  

Although that opening shot is the most famous, there is an even longer, more impressive uninterrupted sequence in the middle of the film, in which Welles is interrogating a young Mexican suspect.  Over the course of this shot we witness a lengthy interrogation, with characters moving around the house and coming in and out of various rooms.  The drama is so good that you might not realize the stunning camera work,… [continued]

In the weeks before Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk opened this summer, there were a lot of stories on-line and in various entertainment magazines about a dispute over the editing of the film between Marvel and star Edward Norton (who played Bruce Banner).  As the tale was told, Norton was fighting for a longer cut of the film that would include more character development, while Marvel wanted a leaner, more action-packed version.  

Ultimately, it seems that the latter is what was released to theatres.  And while I found the film to be fairly enjoyable, it certainly didn’t blow my skirt up the way Iron Man had the month before.  I also found it to be inferior to Ang Lee’s weirder, more cerebral 2003 movie The Hulk.  

But I was intrigued to read that the DVD of the new Incredible Hulk movie would include a significant number of deleted scenes (almost 45 minutes worth).  That’s not the same as having an extended cut of the film to judge, but I was still very curious to check out all of that additional footage to see if I felt those scenes’ inclusion would have strengthened the film.

Well (and I’m not sure if this is good or bad), with just a few exceptions I must report that they would not have.  What we have here is a fascinating study in film-editing.  There isn’t one scene, amongst the deleted footage, that is a complete “thank god they cut that” clunker.  Everything is good, and interesting.  There’s an opening opening to the film in which Bruce Banner tries (unsuccessfully) to kill himself; scenes that show us more of the life Bruce made for himself on the run in Brazil, including how he created the science set-up in his apartment; several additional scenes with Betty’s new boyfriend Leonard (whose presence on-screen suffered the most in the theatrical cut); several scenes with General Ross which shed some more light on why he was so focused on capturing Banner, etc. etc.  It’s all decent stuff.  

Probably the best scene is a monologue by Ross, in which he describes his awe at having seen a glimpse of god (in his encounters with the Hulk), and he compares himself to those great men throughout history who have dared to grasp such power for the good of mankind.  It’s a great moment of acting, and it makes his character a bit less of an evil-for-no-reason villain, while also making him even scarier as we glimpse his passionate dedication to the cause.

And yet, none of these scenes really would have added much of anything to the movie as a whole.  Is it sort of neat to see how Bruce… [continued]

I’ve seen some very funny movies in the theatres lately, but let me tell you about the two best pieces of entertainment that I’ve seen this week:

Sold Out: A Threevening With Kevin Smith — Back in 2002, film-maker Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, etc…) released a two-DVD compilation of the best moments of five lengthy Q & A sessions he had held at various college campuses.  This little slice of comic genius was called An Evening With Kevin Smith.  It is a raucous, profane, and relentlessly entertaining four hours spent learning FAR more than you probably ever wanted to know about Kevin Smith’s life, career, show-biz interactions, and sexual habits.  The kids ask Smith questions on all sorts of topics, and he answers with surprising honesty and brilliant humor.  The man is a spectacular story-teller.  There are so many gems to be found on this DVD set (one of the most-watched in my large DVD collection), but my two favorites concern Smith’s experiences filming documentary footage for Prince (“Chaka mad?  Chaka real mad!”), and his lengthy tale of the year he spent, in the late 90′s, working on a Superman movie script for Warner Brothers.  In addition to being one of the funniest stories I have ever heard (as Smith goes into painful, hilarious detail of the ins and outs of trying to get the relaunch made in crazy Hollywoodland), that tale also serves to explain (to me, at least) why so many big-budget Hollywood movies wind up being so awful.  Oh, and the epilogue to the story, about Smith’s public fight with Tim Burton, is a classic as well.  Oh, OK, and I must also mention the tale of Smith’s first hook-up with the woman who would become his wife.  This story might sound innocuous, but it has to be heard to be believed.  (Remember what I wrote before about Smith’s honesty?  Let’s just say that it is on full display here.)

In 2006, Smith released An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder.  While bearing a phenomenal title, this set contained footage from just two Q & A shows, and as a result it was a bit weaker.  (There was less material to draw from.)  However, that’s not to say that there’s not a lot of fun to be had.  The discussion of Jason Mewes’ “half-half-whole” technique (which I will not explain any further here) in particular is a winner, and left me anticipating the hopeful future release of a third DVD set.

Which brings us to Threevening.  This double-DVD contains footage from just one show, but it’s a doozy: Kevin Smith’s celebration of his 37th birthday with an almost five-hour Q & A… [continued]

As I’ve mentioned once or twice in recent posts, over the past few weeks I’ve been making my way through a whole slew of films by one of the best writers working in the film industry today: David Mamet.  Mamet’s works are always known for their intricate plots — many of his films revolve around some sort of con.  He is also known for the distinct style of his dialogue — a fast-paced back-and-forth, rat-a-tat rhythm that, in the hands of a talented actor, is pure gold.

After purchasing Redbelt on DVD, I decided to go back and revisit several earlier Mamet works.  This is in no way a complete trip through Mamet’s work.  In fact, let me first start by telling you a bit about two films which I didn’t re-watch this past month.  Not because I didn’t care for them — quite the opposite.  These are two of my favorite films, and they’ve been in my DVD collection for years.

Glengarry Glenn Ross (1992) — Unlike all the other movies that I’m about to list, this film was written by Mamet but directed by someone else: James Foley.  But like all the Mamet-directed films, the appeal is not due to the directing.  Its the acting, and the beautiful, beautiful words.  (Can you believe I’ve just described as beautiful the incredibly curse-laden dialogue in this film??)  Take a gander at this cast:  Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin, and let’s not forget Alec Baldwin.  Baldwin is in only one scene, but he gives possibly the greatest movie monologue of all time.  There are more memorable lines in his one scene than there are in most entire films.  (One of my favorites: “Only one thing counts in this world: get them to sign on the line that is dotted.”  And, of course, there’s the title of this piece.)  The film follows one night and one morning in the lives of a group of real-estate con men.  Many have described it as a modern Death of a Salesman, and I’m not one to disagree.  Jack Lemmon’s sad-sack Shelley “the machine” Levine is such an iconic character he’s even been written into The Simpsons (as the hapless loser Gil).  Al Pacino is the man that Shelley was twenty years ago — a young, slick salesman at the top of his game.  (“You ever take a dump made you feel like you’d just slept for twelve hours?”)  Ed Harris is the angry and profane Dave Moss.  (“What is this, courtesy class?”)  Alan Arkin is the quietly despairing George Aaronow.  (Are we just talking about this or are we talking about this?”)  And Kevin Spacey is the man in charge… [continued]

Here are some of the DVDs that have been spinning recently in the Edelglass abode:

Recount — This HBO film chronicles the tumultuous 36 days that followed the contested 2000 Presidential election.  The cast is stupendous across the board:  Kevin Spacey plays Ron Klain, Bob Balaban is Ben Ginsberg, Ed Begley Jr. is David Boies, Laura Dern is Katherine Harris, John Hurt is Warren Christopher, Dennis Leary is Michael Whouley, Tom Wilkinson is James Baker, and Mitch Pileggi (A.D. Skinner!!) is Bill Daley.  For those of you out there who followed every minute of this political morass, most of those names are probably very familiar to you.  I’ll also add that Derek Cecil (Push, Nevada) plays Democratic lawyer and my former camp counselor, Jeremy Bash.  Although the film is at times heartbreaking to watch for a Democrat like myself, it is a terrifically well-told tale.  There’s a lot of very detailed information covered in its under two hour run-time, but the film never becomes a boring talking-heads history class.  Its dramatic and extraordinarily well-paced, bouncing back and forth between the Democratic and Republican camps trying to bring home the election for their candidate.  

The Band’s Visit — An Egyptian band (the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra) arrives in Israel to play at a cultural event, but find themselves stranded in the tiny Israeli town of Petach Tikvah.  Stuck there for the night, the film follows the different members of the band as they interact (or don’t interact) with the local Jews, and vice versa.  This is a quiet film.  There is no great action — nor is there loud conflict or histrionics.  Instead, its a small, personal story about a group of Egyptians and a group of Israelis, each with their own problems and demons, and their efforts to find common ground for one lonely night.  Nobody LEARNS A BIG LESSON or FALLS MADLY IN LOVE and I respect the film for that.  This is a movie about ordinary people leading ordinary lives.  Occasionally it might be a little TOO slow for some tastes, but its worth a viewing.

The Good German — My wife Steph recently read the book (by Joseph Kanon), so we decided to check out the film.  I’d wanted to see the movie when it came out in 2007, but never got to it, so I was excited to give it a try.  Unfortunately, it was a disappointment.  The film boasts a top-notch cast that includes George Clooney, Tobey Maguire, and Cate Blanchett, but I never engaged with the story being told.  Part of the reason for that may be that the film has been molded to the style of a 1940′s film like Casablanca —… [continued]

I love movies, and I love watching movies on DVD in the comfort of my own home.  Here are some of the great DVDs I’ve watched recently:

Heist and State and Main — I’m in the midst of a sort of David Mamet retrospective, tearing through a number of his earlier works, many of which I haven’t seen in years!  I’ll be writing a more detailed piece about my journey into Mamet-world in a few weeks, so keep your eyes open for that.  Next up, I’ll be watching Spartan (which I’ve only seen once and am eager to revisit) and The Spanish Prisoner (possibly my favorite Mamet film after the incomparable Glengarry Glenn Ross.  ”Will you go to lunch?!!”)

Wonder Boys — What a masterpiece.  Having just completed the summer of Robert Downey Jr. (in Iron Man and Tropic Thunder), it was a lot of fun to re-watch his magnificent turn in this film.  Tobey Maquire is also great, as a talented but rather messed-up youngster.  (Its sort of bizarre to watch Maguire and Downey Jr. in this film, having seen them together in one of the fake trailers that preceded Tropic Thunder.  If you’ve seen it, you know exactly which one I mean!)  The always terrific Frances McDormand is quietly touching as the university chancellor torn between two men.  But this film belongs to Michael Douglas.  He plays college professor Grady Tripp, a man who once wrote an extraordinarily successful first novel and has seen his life slowly crumble as he has struggled, over many many years, to write a follow-up.  Wonder Boys is a coming-of-age story — for Maguire’s character, and also for Douglas’ Grady.  Its a rare movie that can balance deep laughs and powerful poignancy, and Wonder Boys just nails it.  I give director Curtis Hanson a lot of credit for that, as well as Steve Kloves for the sharp screenplay.  This movie sits next to Igby Goes Down on my DVD shelf.  The two films have a lot of similarities, both in terms of tone as well as the themes explored.  If you’ve seen and enjoyed Wonder Boys but have never seen Igby, I encourage you to check it out.

City Slickers — Boy, I haven’t seen this movie in YEARS!  I remember going to see the sequel, The Legend of Curly’s Gold, in theatres when it came out and being so disappointed that I don’t think I ever watched the original again.  The film is a bit dated — its not quite as timeless as When Harry Met Sally — but it was a lot of fun to return to Billy Crystal’s little ode to suburban men looking to find themselves.  Some of the… [continued]

Most of the sci-fi franchises that I grew up loving haven’t been doing too hot this past decade.  The lame AvP movies.  The disappointing Star Wars prequels.  And there hasn’t been any truly great Star Trek around since Deep Space Nine (by far the best series of the franchise) went off the air back in 1999.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached The Sarah Connor Chronicles.  I caught a bunch of the episodes last spring, and this week watched (in pretty short order), all nine episodes now available on DVD.  My reaction?  Well….sort of middle-of-the-road.  Actually, I feel about this series almost exactly the same way that I felt about the third, James Cameron-free Terminator film: there’s a lot to enjoy, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d feared, although its still a long way from the brilliance of the first two films.

The series starts off with a bang, with a cool apocalyptic vision of what will happen if Sarah and John fail to stop all the robots — nuclear armageddon, with a metallic Terminator robot, wreathed in flames, choking the life out of Sarah after having just shot John.  Of course, its just a dream — but its a pretty great way to kick off the series.  Not only does the sequence clearly remind the audience of what the stakes are, but its also a chance for the show to showcase some pretty snazzy effects.  I was rather impressed with the visuals throughout the first season — there’s a lot of great action stunt work (car chases, Terminator battles, etc.), and the show is able to show the fully robotic Terminators (as opposed to the ones clothed in flesh that can be played by an actor without special effects) a lot more often, and more convincingly, than I’d expected.  (I have no way of knowing, but I wonder if the show’s effects artists haven’t been able to capitalize on the groundbreaking work in this area done by the folks over at Battlestar Galactica.  They’ve been able to beautifully incorporate the full metal “toasters” into their live action shots for years now.)

Unfortunately, after the kick-off, things slowed down for the next several episodes.  We spend time with a computer programmer Andy Goode, whose chess-playing computer nicknamed “the Turk” may or may not be a first step on the road to Skynet…and with John and Cameron (his female Terminator protector, played by Summer Glau from Firefly) in school…and none of that really held my interest.  While there was some interesting serialization beginning to happen (Andy and the Turk’s storyline played out over several episodes, for example), there was also a paint-by numbers “adventure of the week”… [continued]

There’s a weird phenomenon that affects me sometimes (and I know I’m not alone in this) where I so fall in love with a story, or a group of characters, that I will watch those characters even in something really really bad.

I know Star Trek V is a terrible movie.  Terrible.  The story is weak (A search for God?  Spock suddenly has a half-brother?), the special effects are terrible (the ending really suffers…and compare the Bird of Prey shots with the much superior effects in Star Trek III made several years earlier), and the beloved characters are treated very poorly (Uhura’s “fan dance,” Scotty knocking himself out in an Enterprise corridor, navigators Checkov and Sulu getting lost in the woods, and, oh yeah, Kirk, Spock, and Bones singing “row, row, row your boat”).  And yet I so love those characters, that every now and then I’ll watch Star Trek V, somehow hoping that this time I’ll find something I sort of like about it.

This is also what happens with me and Episode I.  I’ve probably seen the movie 6 or 7 times now.  (About every 2 or 3 years I’ll make my way through all the Star Wars movies, usually in the order they were made:  Episodes IV-VI, and then I-III.)  And always I sort of hope that maybe this time I’ll be able to focus on the positives about Star Wars: Episode I.  The visuals are, mostly, pretty sweet.  I like Watto.  Darth Maul is cool.  The climactic three-way lightsaber battle is pretty dynamite.

But its hard to get over just how boring the movie is.  For a movie called Star WARS, there’s not a heck of a lot of action to be had.  Just a lot of talking.  There’s a terrific assemblage of actors – a far stronger ensemble, I would argue, than in the OT.  Ewan McGreggor.  Qui-Gon Jin.  Natalie Portman.  Terrence Stamp.  Ian McDiarmid.  These are fine actors, and they are WASTED.  And that’s what’s most frustrating to me about Episode I (and, frankly, the entire prequel trilogy). It just seems like such a wasted opportunity.  I wanted to see more of the Jedi in their prime – kicking ass and taking names.  I wanted to learn more about the Sith.  (In one of Darth Maul’s few lines of dialogue, he speaks of having his revenge against the Jedi.  Revenge for what?  What happened between the Jedi and the Sith thousands of years ago?  How did the Sith now return?)  Most of all, I just wanted another fun, exciting chapter in the space adventure series that I grew up loving.

And it still sort of bums me out that that’s… [continued]

So.  Sigh.  The Star Wars Prequels.

Its interesting to me to look back now, some years distant, on Episodes I-III.

For someone like myself who grew up with the Original Trilogy but who has no memory of seeing those films released, it was an incredible thing to be able to experience the release of three new Star Wars films.  At the time, of course, the tremendous excitement of the build-up was also accompanied by the crushing disappointment of actually seeing the films.  Especially Episode I.  I don’t think I’ve ever been more disappointed sitting in a movie theatre.  Going in, it really never occurred to me that the film would be bad.  That notion just never crossed my mind.  And yet, only 5 minutes in, when suddenly those Japanese-sounding Trade Federation aliens in very fake-looking rubber masks came on screen, I have a distinct memory of starting to shift uncomfortably in my seat.  Then Qui-Gon and Ob-wan find themselves on Naboo, and they meet Jar-Jar…and then they go to the city of Jar-Jars…and then they travel through the planet’s core which is filled not with molten lava but with water…and then they’re attacked by a fish but a bigger fish eats that fish and Qui-Gon says “there’s always a bigger fish” and then two minutes later the exact same thing happens and oh my god we’re only 25 minutes into this movie and it is BRUTAL.

But, watching that film for the first time, I was still filled with hope that, OK, the introduction is slow, but maybe Lucas was thinking about the saga as a 12-hour, 6-movie saga, and so the opening of a 12-hour saga would be a little longer than the opening of a 2-hour movie, so I should relax and be patient.  No, I didn’t give up all hope until about an hour and a half into the movie, when our motley band of heroes visited Coruscant.  Finally, FINALLY we were getting to see Jedi in their prime – and not just ANY Jedi, but the Jedi Council.  And what happens?  They sit and talk.  And they are not just boring, but they are stupid.  I don’t mean stupid as in, “its silly to take grown men wearing lightsabers who talk about vergences in the Force seriously” kind of stupid.  No, I mean stupid as in I have been totally emotionally involved in the world of Star Wars and Jedi since I was a kid and here we finally meet the greatest of the great of the Jedi and they are so colossally stupid and inept that, after Qui-Gon reveals to them that he’s discovered the existence of the first known evil Sith… [continued]

First of all, sorry for no new cartoon today! Slight technical difficulties. I’ll be posting it tomorrow — a rare Friday post!

But as Bill Cosby says (in the greatest stand-up performance ever committed to film, Bill Cosby Himself), that’s not what I came here to talk to you about.

So the other week I re-watched The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Aside from having a title that makes Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull appear to be the very embodiment of brevity, I was never a big fan of the huge Narnia film. If the magnificent Lord of The Rings trilogy had never been made, I think I might think higher of the film…but coming after those films, to me the first Narnia picture was just a pale reflection. There was some fun to be had, for sure, but for the most part I found it way too simplistic and made-for-kids. That’s not a bad thing, just means it didn’t really appeal to me.

But with the sequel out in theatres, and getting pretty decent reviews, I figured it’d be worthwhile to re-watch the 1st one. I have the type of personality that pretty much demands that I rewatch the 1st movie before seeing the sequel, so that its fresh in my mind (even though I’m quite sure comprehension of the sequel does NOT hinge upon a recent viewing of the first one!). I also wondered if my feelings about the first film would change upon a repeat viewing.

Well, they didn’t really.

But what I found myself thinking about as I re-watched The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, were all sorts of questions I had about the world of Narnia that the film presented.

What exactly is the back-story? How did Aslan ever lose control over Narnia? Where did he vanish to for a hundred years? How was the White Witch able to shroud Narnia in a perpetual winter, and what exactly happened during the course of the movie that caused her winter to fail?

Why did Aslan choose this moment to return?

What exactly was the deal behind the prophecy about the four Pevensie children? Who gave that prophecy? Why exactly were those 4 kids necessary for Aslan to defeat the Witch? Why couldn’t Narnia be free until they arrived?

How did the magical Wardrobe come to be in the posession of the Professor? The film seemed to imply that he’d been to Narnia before, or at least that he knew of it. What was his connection to Narnia? Did he somehow stop being able to enter Narnia once… [continued]

I have been (and always shall be) a die-hard Star Trek Fan. But this past decade has been a rough time to be a Star Trek Fan. The last two Star Trek TV series have been terrible (Star Trek: Voyager) and mediocre (Star Trek: Enterprise). The last two Star Trek movies have been mediocre (1998′s Star Trek: Insurrection) and terrible (2002′s Star Trek: Nemesis). There is a new hope (ahem) on the horizon with J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek

relaunch scheduled for next summer, but that’s a long ways away.

These days Star Trek seems to be, in many ways, dead dead dead. My
sci-fi passions are fueled by other shows like the amazing Battlestar Galactica and the late lamented Firefly. But this past weekend, while working on a variety of illustration projects, I popped my DVD set of Star Trek: The Next Generation season 3 into my player. And while drawing and painting away, I proceeded to tear through the entire season. What a magnificent season of science-fiction, and of television period. My goodness I had forgotten.

These episodes originally aired in 1989-90. This was a groundbreaking season for Next Gen. For the first two years, the show had struggled to find its footing. It was popular, but the quality of the episodes were wildly uneven. The writing staff went through constant upheavals. But in Season 3, a talented writer named Michael Piller took over as the show-runner, and proceded to do two important things. One, he re-focused the show on the CHARACTERS. Two, he brought on board a number of incredibly talented writers who would proceed to guide the Star Trek franchise for many successful years to come. These include Ronald D. Moore (who, post-Trek, would go on to create and run the new Battlestar Galactica), Rene Echevarria (The 4400), Jeri Taylor, Brannon Bragga, and many others.

What’s incredible about Next Gen‘s season 3, looking back on it, is just how well it holds up today (as opposed to, say, season 1, which today I find to be pretty much unwatchable). Here are just a sampling of the greatness of this season:

Yesterday’s Enterprise — The Enterprise C travels to the future and accidentally changes history, creating a tme-line where the Federation and the Klingons are locked in bitter, unending war. And Tasha Yar dies again. Time travel has become a much over-used TV sci-fi device, but this dark tale is one of the best.

The Offspring — The android Data takes it upon himself to create a child. Haunting and poignant, its a classic.

Deja Q — The omnipotent Q loses his powers and becomes mortal. What starts out as… [continued]

As an addendum to my list of my five favorite super-hero movies posted at the start of this week, here are three super-hero movies that I consider to be tremendously under-rated:

Superman Returns — I just don’t understand the almost universal apathy or even dislike towards Bryan Singer’s Superman relaunch. I love that this film has a somber, melancholy feel to it. I love that the story creates complicated character conflicts (the Clark-Lois-Superman-Richard love tangle) that aren’t easily resolved by the end of the film. (I was SHOCKED that Richard lived through the movie — and I really respect the filmmakers for not killing him off, thus providing an easy way for Lois and Clark/Superman to get back together.) I also love reverence the filmmakers showed for Richard Donner’s Superman movie — it really tickles me all the times the movie refers to Donner’s films, both visually (the design of the Fortress of Solitude, the use of Brando as Jor-El), and in the echoing of lines of dialogue in the script (such as Superman’s “statistically speaking, its still the safest way to travel,” and the reprise of Jor-El’s message to his son: “You will make my strength your own. You will see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father and the father… the son.”) The film has weaknesses — there’s not enough action, and Lex Luthor’s plot is pretty stupid. But watch again the plane crash sequence in which Superman reveals his return to the world, and tell me that’s not a magnificent moment of pop-fantasy magic. I’d love to get a sequel to this film to see where Singer takes the story from here, so I hope Warner gets around to making one.

Daredevil – Here’s another movie that I seem to be the only one who likes. As with Superman Returns, there are weaknesses to this film, like some embarassingly dodgy CGI effects. But there’s so much that I enjoy about this movie. I love how down-beat it is. I love how the filmmakers differentiate Daredevil from a more selflessly heroic character like Spider-Man. (This is epitomized by the scene on the rooftop between Matt Murdock/Daredevil and Elektra, in which he hears someone in trouble — but when Elektra asks him to stay with her, he does. Peter Parker would never make that choice — and I love that.) Speaking of Murdock/Daredevil, I know that its a popular sport to make fun of Ben Affleck, but I actually find him to be extremely watchable as Matt Murdock. And the rest of the cast is strong as well — Michael Clarke Duncan, Joe Pantoliano, Jennifer Garner,… [continued]

May 27th, 2008

I love comic books. And that means that I grew up with a great love of super-hero stories. These days its true that many of my favorite comic books have little to do with super-heroes (looking through my “to-read” pile I see titles like David Lapham’s Young Liars, Stephen King’s The Dark Tower adaptation, Jeff Smith’s new boot RASL, Mike Mignola’s BPRD and Abe Sapien, Ed Brubaker’s Criminal, Brian Azzarello & Eduardo Risso’s 100 Bullets, to name just a few.) But there is still something about a great super-hero yarn that really excites me. (For instance, I’ve been reading and throughly enjoying Ed Brubaker’s run on Daredevil, Brian Michael Bendis’ work on Avengers and Secret Invasion, and Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men.)

That love of a good super-hero tale extends to movies. While working on these new Iron Man cartoons, and thinking about the movies still ahead this summer (Hellboy II, The Dark Knight, and The Incredible Hulk), I’ve been thinking about what makes a great super-hero movie.

Here are my five favorite super-hero movies of all time:

5. Unbreakable — Back when I loved M. Night Shyamalan, he made this fantastic little tale about a man (Bruce Willis) who discovers that he cannot be injured. There are no costumes, no witticisms, none of the silly trappings that have come to be associated with super-heroes and super-hero movies. Just a compelling story with some terrific under-played acting from a great cast (Bruce Willis has never been better than he is here as the sad, empty man who discovers that he is different), and some really interesting scene composition, shot set-ups, and editing choices from director Shyamalan.

4. Hellboy — Adapted from a series of mini-series written and gorgeously illustrated by Mike Mignola, Hellboy follows the adventures of a paranormal investigator who is actually a demon from Hell himself. Who loves pancakes. The comic is a wonderfully bizarre, textured mix of fairy tales, folklore and some good old-fashioned monster-fighting action. The film, directed by Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, and the man tapped to direct the upcoming two films based on The Hobbit) is a remarkable realization of Mignola’s comic. The splendid, consistently under-rated Ron Perlman is brilliant as Hellboy, bringing enormous depth and warmth to the character despite all the red rubber makeup.

3. Spider-Man 2 — Like Hellboy, Spider-Man 2 is another film whose greatest strength is the way it is able to distill the essence of a beloved (albeit much more widely-known) comic book character into a compelling film all its own. Tobey Maguire was born to play the stiff, dorky Peter Parker who one day discovers that… [continued]

I love DVDs.   Love ‘em.   I love the great resolution and the surround sound.   I love watching all the behind-the-scenes special features and listening to the commentaries (which I often play while drawing Motion Pictures, among other projects).   I love getting to enjoy great TV shows in complete-season sets.   I love how I can re-watch, ad infinitum, the successful movies and shows that I love along with so many great selections that are a lot more obscure (I’m thinking about you, my live action The Tick complete series set…).

Yeah, I love DVDs.

And just as I find that I always have a pretty significant “to read” stack of books on my shelf as well as comics on my desk, I always seem to have a nice large stack of DVDs in my “to watch” pile.   Here are some of the DVDs I’m looking forward to enjoying in the coming weeks/months (if I ever get some free time!!):

Walk Hard: Extended Edition – Not exactly a home run from the Apatow factory, I did nonetheless very much enjoy this flick.   It’s worth it for the Beatles scene alone.   Apatow DVDs (Freaks and Geaks and Undeclared, as well as The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up and Superbad) have a habit of being pretty spectacular, crammed full of alternate takes, deleted scenes, and other fun stuff.   I’m hoping this one is too.

Cloverfield – I loved this in theatres…I’m eager to see if it holds up to a repeat viewing.

Juno – ditto.

Bee Movie – I missed this one in theatres.   Nothing that I saw or read about it made it jump out to me as a “must see,” but I’m an enormous Seinfeld fan so I’m looking forward to giving this a viewing.

John, Paul, Tom & Ringo – A series of lengthy interviews with 3 of the 4 Beatles which Tom Snyder conducted on various episodes of his talk show The Tomorrow Show in the late seventies and early eighties.   This includes John Lennon’s last televised interview, from 4/25/75.   I have never seen any of these episodes, so I’m very eager to check out this DVD collection.

Young Indiana Jones – Lucasfilm has released three enormous collections over the past year that collect the entire run of this show.   I have the first one.   I actually watched about half of it a few months ago.   The episodes I saw were the ones with the young, 10-12 year-old Indy.   They were rather hit-and-miss…I admired the concept of using the Young Indy character to educate the viewer about all sorts of different people… [continued]

I watched Alien Vs Predator: Requiem this weekend on DVD.   Sigh.   Has there ever been a franchise that started off as incredible, and then became so abysmal, as the Alien and Predator series?

(A certain series about a family named Skywalker does come to mind, although I consider the prequels to be apocryphal thus allowing the Original Trilogy to maintain its luster in my mind…)

The first Alien was a ground-breaking work.   H.R. Giger’s creature design was a marvel of originality – truly unlike anything that had ever been seen before.   The script was smart, the cast was terrific, and director Ridley Scott created a compelling, fully-realized world for his characters to inhabit.   The “look” of Alien is imitated almost as much as Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner. The visual effects hold up and the film remains a white-knuckle suspense roller-coaster even today – a pretty stunning feat for a movie made in 1979.

The sequel, Aliens, was directed by another visionary – James Cameron. He wisely avoided creating a simple retread of the first movie.   Instead, he made a balls-to-the-wall action movie that is intense, exciting, and scary from the first scene to the last.   But what makes the action work is the great screenplay and attention to character development.   Cameron, aided by a terrific ensemble of actors (Sigourney Weaver, Paul Reiser, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, and a star-making performance from Bill Paxton – “maybe you haven’t been keeping up on current events but we just got our asses kicked, man!”) created a group of distinct, interesting characters that are enormous fun to watch.   These characters aren’t stereotypes – they all (at least, the ones who survive – and even many of the ones who don’t) grow and change as the film moves forward.   The relationship between Ripley and the little girl Newt is the heart of the movie.   When bad things start to happen (and they do), this makes all the action that much more gripping.   And the action and (pre-CGI) visual effects are spectacular.

Then there’s Predator. Gone With The Wind this ain’t, but it is a staggeringly entertaining action film.   As with Alien and Aliens, part of the magic of this film is the way the combination of script, director, and actors creates a group of characters that are extraordinarily watchable.   That’s the key to a good they’re-gonna-die-one-by-one sort of movie – the viewer really needs to invest in the ensemble of characters.   And what an ensemble we have here:   Arnold Schwarzenegger at his ripped-bicep monosyllabic best; Carl Weathers at HIS ripped-bicep monosyllabic best; Bill Duke and his… [continued]

I don’t think I’m the only child of the eighties who was deeply affected by Transformers: The Movie.

I’m not talking about the Michael Bay CGI effects-O-rama, but the animated spin-off of the Transformers TV show that hit the big screen in 1986.

I actually never saw Transformers: The Movie in theatres.   I took notice of it when two things happened:   1) I started seeing ads for a lot of new Transformers toys, and 2) suddenly the Transformers TV show started featuring a lot of new robots.   (The second season of the show took place after the movie, and featured all the new characters introduced in the film.)

But I do remember when I finally saw Transformers: The Movie on video. I was blown away by the incredible animation (worlds better than the show), the violence (the whole first 40 minutes are one long extended battle sequence – and suddenly the laser blasts that each of the robots fired actually did damage!), and the rather merciless way in which all of the beloved characters from the show are wiped out – including, most notoriously, Optimus Prime himself.   I didn’t weep – but boy was I stunned!

Looking back on the movie today, there’s a lot that doesn’t hold up.   I recognize how the story points (killing off the old characters and introducing lots of new ones) were driven by the need to sell new toys.   The animation – so spectacular to me as a kid – looks a bit dodgy to older eyes.   The second half of the movie is rather boring.   (And what the heck is up with the Weird Al song that all the characters suddenly start dancing to on the planet of junk???)

But I still have a lot of affection for Transformers: The Movie. For whatever reason I still really love those characters, and the writers/animators/etc. were able to wring a lot of gravitas out of the way those characters were put through hell and back in the midst of what was, in the end, a 90-minute toy commercial.   I had a lot of fun seeing Michael Bay’s Transformers movie in the theatre for the 1st time last summer.   But I think that movie would have a much longer shelf life if it had half as much emotion as Transformers: The Movie from 1986.

Here are five more DVDs (continuing my list from yesterday) that I loved loved loved this winter, when the pleasant caress of new TV shows had been denied me:

VI.   Eastern Promises — I have seen this movie 3 times now since it came out last year, and I enjoy it more every time.  (And I liked it quite a lot the FIRST time I saw it!)  Viggo Mortensen gives an amazing you-just-can’t-look-away performance as the deadly Russian Nikolai, whose path crosses with a midwife named Anna (Naomi Watts).  And let’s not forget the amazing Armin Mueller-Stahl, who is as amazing as he always is.  (I must admit, though, that I’m such a geek that whenever he’s on screen, in this or any other movie, I always hear him in the back of my head saying: “not even zey…can stop ze future.”  X-Philes know what I’m talking about…)

VII.  House of Games: The Criterion Collection – A terrific new DVD of the first film that David Mamet directed (from his own script).  I’m a big Mamet fan.  There are some flaws in the story, sure…and I’ve never been, as a viewer, quite fooled by the central con of this flick.  But the simple joys of watching the great performers (Joe Mantegna, Rickey Jay, the late great J.T. Walsh, among others) mouth Mamet’s rat-tat-tat tough-guy dialogue is more than enough for me.

VIII.  Volver – Pretty surprising for a sci-fi nut like myself, but I found myself completely swept up by Pedro Almodovar’s story about the intersecting lives of various women in Madrid.  Penelope Cruz is spectacular.

IX.  The Best of the Dick Cavett Show: Stand-Up Comedians – This DVD set contains several notable episodes from the great Dick Cavett’s 1970’s talk-show, in which he engages guests in fascinating hour or hour-and-a-half long (really!!) conversations about their lives and work.  This set focuses on his interviews with stand-up comedians such as Woody Allen, Groucho Marx, Bill Cosby, Bob Hope, Carol Burnett, and many others.  I love the Daily Show and all of today’s late-night talk shows, but after watching these incredibly in-depth interviews its hard to take any of today’s five-minutes-then-you’re out “interviews” seriously.  This is the way it should be done.  If you have any interest whatsoever in stand up comedy, you need to track down these DVDs.

X.  The Wire – My sister got me the 1st season set for my birthday earlier in the year – and my wife and I promptly devoured the entire 5 seasons of the show.  Truly one of the greatest TV shows ever made.  I’ll discuss this in greater depth at a later date, but for now, let me just say… [continued]

I’m a bit of a TV nut.  So, like so many of you, I had to go through a bit of an adjustment this winter without any new installments of Lost, The Office, and all my other TV pals.

How did I survive?  DVDs, my friends.  God bless ‘em.

Here’s just a sampling of the Digital Video Devicey goodness that I enjoyed over the past few months:

I.  Futurama: Bender’s Big Score – There aren’t a lot of shows (only Firefly and Arrested Development come to mind) whose cancellation burned me more than that of Futurama.  My goodness I loved this show. I still remember the moment when I first understood that this Matt Groening creation was a thing of awesome beauty and genius.  It was season two’s episode “I Second That Emotion,” (that’s the one where the Professor installs an empathy chip in Bender), in which it was revealed that the colony of underground mutants (long story) worshipped an unexploded nuclear bomb but, as one of the mutants commented, “its really just a Christmas and Easter” thing.  Any show that makes Beneath the Planet of the Apes jokes (that’s where the whole mutants-worshipping-an-unexploded-nuclear-bomb thing comes from) without care as to the tiny amount of viewers who would actually get that joke is a show that guaranteed itself my viewership until the end of time.  Anyways, this DVD movie was the 1st of 4 DVDs rescuing the show from oblivion.  It’s the bees’ knees, baby.

II.  Battlestar Galactica: Razor – Another direct-to-DVD continuation of a brilliant TV show.  If you’re not watching Sci-Fi’s stunningly amazing reinvention of BSG, then I have only pity in my heart for you.  This installment was, no surprise, gripping and surprising…in particular, the multi-layered structure of flashbacks-within-flashbacks was super-cool.  And we got to see a young William “Husker” Adama battling “toasters” in the First Cylon War!

III.  Zodiac – I totally missed this David Fincher film, about the real-life Zodiac murders of the 60’s & 70’s, when it was in theatres…and I don’t know quite what prompted me to pick it up on DVD.  But I found this film to be completely gripping.  A terrific cast,  including Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Junior, and many many other familiar faces really kept things moving.  And the beautiful set design & costuming combined with some really beautiful but extraordinarily subtle visual effects work brought San Francisco through the years to gorgeous visual life.

IV.  Igby Goes Down – Check out this cast:  Kieran Culkin, Clare Danes, Jeff Goldblum, Amanda Peet, Ryan Phillipe, Bill Pullman, and Susan Sarandon.  Find it.  Watch it.  You won’t regret it.

More DVDS I watched and loved this winter coming tomorrow!