Month: May 2011

It’s easy to picture the disgraced-in-real-life Mel Gibson as Walter Black, a wacky-as-a-dodo toy executive who devises an obsessive practice of speaking through a hand puppet beaver in order to keep his demons at bay. What’s harder to stomach is this fitful, often unctuous execution of a not half bad idea. Read more →

A movie the likes of Incendies serves as an utter example of film’s occasional power to give the viewer goosebumps of bittersweet joy on the way out of the theater. French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve has crafted a brilliant saga about a Middle Eastern-born woman’s heroic response to privation and adversity, amidst a civil war reminiscent of Lebanon’s in the 1980s. As draining as it is perceptive, the film’s stunning finale is operatic on a scale rarely experienced.

Nominated for this year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, Incendies (translation: Scorched) leans on the devastating performance of Lubna Azabal as Nawal, who in the film’s opening has died and left her Canadian twin daughter and son two mysterious letters. They instruct Jeanne and Simon to find both the father they have never met, and a half-brother they didn’t know existed. Simon balks and wishes no part of going back to their Arab homeland to sort things out. Jeanne embarks on a captivating journey she, and this movie’s audience, will never forget.

Via flashbacks we learn Nawal was born Christian and fell in love with a Muslim with whom, to disastrous consequences, she had a baby son, a child she was regrettably forced to give up. She spends many years in a courageous quest to reunite herself with the child while growing tensions between the Muslims and Christians create a seemingly impossible barrier for her. As cool as a Navy Seal, this remarkable woman repeatedly outstares unsurmountable risk after unsurmountable risk. Based on a play by Wajdi Mouawad, Villeneuve’s film allows the audience to stay a step ahead of Jeanne and Simon’s discoveries while maintainng a tight-as-a-knot sense of suspense.

Nawal’s valor is demonstrated in the Middle East with stirring visual imagery (a scene of Christian soldiers attacking a bus she’s a passenger on is one of the most mind-blowing scenes in many a year). It then extends beyond the grave when she lovingly hands her children knowledge that, while disturbingly overpowering, gives them the peace of spirit only the truth can provide. Tragedies fueled by hatred and war, while truly and sorrowfully limitless in ways often unimaginable, can only be overcome by love and a relentless resistance to resignation.

Not a casual 10 out of 10. A Classic.

Will Farrell has played his share of low comedy nincompoops but in Everything Must Go, set on a front lawn with a recliner chair next to all his worldly possessions, he’s both serious and a serious bore.

He plays Nick Halsey, devoid of depth and a recurring drunk. The film supposes you’d fall off the wagon, too if you lost your job and got simultaneously locked out of your house by your offscreen wife. Determined not to let it bother him any further, Nick decides to sleep on the recliner under the Arizona stars.

After running out of beer money (the wife messed up the credit cards, too) a far too precious, industrious, chubby neighborhood kid on a bike shows up and goads him into putting his motley junk spread all over the lawn up for sale on a no-end-in-sight yard sale. The kid (Christopher Jordan Wallace) is an equally annoying preteen version of the 7- or 8- year old girl in the TV commercial whose Dad starts her on a lemonade stand only to see her sprout up like a Mark Zuckerberg who eventually has her handlers screen her Dad with an “is he expecting you?”

Things go on, Nick cracks open a lot of PBR beer cans while not failing to attract to the house his AA-sponsor and cop (Michael Pena), a conveniently alone younger woman (a good Rebecca Hall) just moved in across the street, more cops, and crazed neighbors (including stud character actor Shea Wigham) that Nick eventually spies on.

Often ridiculous, Nick shaves in the backyard, catches a rinse in his poolside shower, drinks more Pabst, pisses in the pool, and manages to get off the recliner long enough to tell off and scare away Rebecca Hall. Looking through his high school year book, he”s encouraged by a positive note from an acquaintance (Laura Dern) who still lives in town. Off he goes to ring her doorbell. Needles to say their ensuing conversation, like this film, doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.

Director Dan Rush is a veteran commercials maker. Here his untidy and trifling product placement feels mostly tiring.

4 recliners out of 10

How We Rate Our Movies:

Kristen Wiig may not immediately bring to mind Lucille Ball but by the end of the spunky, insightful Bridesmaids, there’s the realization she’s a major comedic film talent who has hit her stride. The Saturday Night Live vet plays an engaging down-on-her-luck but indomitable failed bakery retailer, Annie, who learns her best friend Lillian (SNL co-star Maya Rudolph) is getting married.

Now Annie isn’t just broke, she’s low on self-esteem, a state compounded by the way a funny-in-his-haughtiness John Hamm treats her in their no-strings-attached physical hookups. Her sensitive yet hilarious reactions lead her to pow wows with Lillian. It’s all about to change though. Not so much from the entrance into the picture of the groom, but the ramming into the scene of the groom’s boss’s wife Helen (Rose Byrne), an instant nemesis to Annie on the maid-of-honor front. Helen is perfectly dressed and silly wealthy, and you get the idea she always has her way pretty effortlessly. Her undermining seems almost subconscious.

And since we’re talking Judd Apatow here (he produced) there are enough coarse and callous jokes and send-ups to keep things moving briskly, or occasionally holding them back. That one involves a scatalogical food poisoning episode ending with Lillian in a borrowed wedding dress squatted in the middle of the street while its shopkeeper owner looks on in horror is de regueur Apatow.

More colorful characters ensue. Melissa McCarthy as a junk-yard-dog, take- no-prisoners sergeant of arms among the bridesmaids. Chris Dowd as a nice-guy, witty Irish cop whose affection for her Annie barely seems to notice. An odd-as-hell brother and sister landlord/roomates to alienate Annie further.

What sets apart Wiig’s (who also co-wrote) and director Paul Feig’s film is the way it cleverly demonstrates both the necessity and the durability of female friendship while showcasing Wiig’s tour de force talent right down to her low-key, subtle facial movements.

So Bridesmaids is truly funny, yet what’s trailblazing here isn’t so much the chick-flick-goes-gross-out as the reinvented feminist comedy arrives wearing a brutish mask of street cred.

7.5 tiaras out of 10

Kristen Wiig may not immediately bring to mind Lucille Ball but by the end of the spunky, insightful Bridesmaids, there’s the realization she’s a major comedic film talent who has hit her stride. The Saturday Night Live vet plays an engaging down-on-her-luck but indomitable failed bakery retailer, Annie, who learns her best friend Lillian (SNL co-star Maya Rudolph) is getting married.

Now Annie isn’t just broke, she’s low on self-esteem, a state compounded by the way a funny-in-his-haughtiness John Hamm treats her in their no-strings-attached physical hookups. Her sensitive yet hilarious reactions lead her to pow wows with Lillian. It’s all about to change though. Not so much from the entrance into the picture of the groom, but the ramming into the scene of the groom’s boss’s wife Helen (Rose Byrne), an instant nemesis to Annie on the maid-of-honor front. Helen is perfectly dressed and silly wealthy, and you get the idea she always has her way pretty effortlessly. Her undermining seems almost subconscious.

And since we’re talking Judd Apatow here (he produced) there are enough coarse and callous jokes and send-ups to keep things moving briskly, or occasionally holding them back. That one involves a scatalogical food poisoning episode ending with Lillian in a borrowed wedding dress squatted in the middle of the street while its shopkeeper owner looks on in horror is de regueur Apatow.

More colorful characters ensue. Melissa McCarthy as a junk-yard-dog, take- no-prisoners sergeant of arms among the bridesmaids. Chris Dowd as a nice-guy, witty Irish cop whose affection for her Annie barely seems to notice. An odd-as-hell brother and sister landlord/roomates to alienate Annie further.

What sets apart Wiig’s (who also co-wrote) and director Paul Feig’s film is the way it cleverly demonstrates both the necessity and the durability of female friendship while showcasing Wiig’s tour de force talent right down to her low-key, subtle facial movements.

So Bridesmaids is truly funny, yet what’s trailblazing here isn’t so much the chick-flick-goes-gross-out as the reinvented feminist comedy arrives wearing a brutish mask of street cred.

7.5 tiaras out of 10

In the final scene of Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog’s 3D homage to the recently discovered French Cauvet Caves, the film switches gears. Pristine Paleolithic cave paintings give way to a scene of radioactive mutant albino crocodiles about to get loose and head over to Chauvet.

Lunacy from a headstrong director? Hardly. Merely the latest masterwork from the unique eye of a filmmaker talented enough to make the crocodile scene feel anything but incongruous as we realize the fraility of our human need to preserve and classify.

Herzog has hauled a steamboat over a mountain (Fitzcarraldo), gone to Antarctica to make a documentary about it’s outsider resident scientists (Encounters at the End of the World), and refashioned a controversial film as a funny, irreverent noir thriller (Bad Lieutenant).

In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, channeling his archaeologist grandfather, he goes into the Chauvet Caves, discovered in 1994 after being sealed off for thousands of years by moving rock formations. Braving the cave’s toxic gases and operating on a narrow gangplank with cameras limited to what could be carried in by hand, he presents both another eerie environment, and fascinating and dedicated if eccentric scientists. In a dramatic scene demonstrating the stillness of the cave, the film explodes with the sound of it’s human visitors actually able to hear their own heartbeat.

One of the paintings, the Panel of the Horses, demonstrates the intelligence of its makers some 20,000 years ago. Herzog, stunned by how the viewer’s own shadow actually becomes an apparently intentional part of the image, references the famous scene of Fred Astaire dancing with his own shadow in Swing Time. When the shadow goes off in a separate way, Astaire follows the shadow.

Paintings of horses, of lions, of a half-woman, half bison; Confrontal Rhinoceros, males fighting, a male and a female about to mate–the Chauvet Caves, closed to tourists, and severely restricted to scientists, now has a wonderful filmed record. Let the radioactive, mutant albino crocodiles try to alter THAT.

8.5 Herzogs out of 10

In the final scene of Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog’s 3D homage to the recently discovered French Cauvet Caves, the film switches gears. Pristine Paleolithic cave paintings give way to a scene of radioactive mutant albino crocodiles about to get loose and head over to Chauvet.

Lunacy from a headstrong director? Hardly. Merely the latest masterwork from the unique eye of a filmmaker talented enough to make the crocodile scene feel anything but incongruous as we realize the fraility of our human need to preserve and classify.

Herzog has hauled a steamboat over a mountain (Fitzcarraldo), gone to Antarctica to make a documentary about it’s outsider resident scientists (Encounters at the End of the World), and refashioned a controversial film as a funny, irreverent noir thriller (Bad Lieutenant).

In Cave of Forgotten Dreams, channeling his archaeologist grandfather, he goes into the Chauvet Caves, discovered in 1994 after being sealed off for thousands of years by moving rock formations. Braving the cave’s toxic gases and operating on a narrow gangplank with cameras limited to what could be carried in by hand, he presents both another eerie environment, and fascinating and dedicated if eccentric scientists. In a dramatic scene demonstrating the stillness of the cave, the film explodes with the sound of it’s human visitors actually able to hear their own heartbeat.

One of the paintings, the Panel of the Horses, demonstrates the intelligence of its makers some 20,000 years ago. Herzog, stunned by how the viewer’s own shadow actually becomes an apparently intentional part of the image, references the famous scene of Fred Astaire dancing with his own shadow in Swing Time. When the shadow goes off in a separate way, Astaire follows the shadow.

Paintings of horses, of lions, of a half-woman, half bison; Confrontal Rhinoceros, males fighting, a male and a female about to mate–the Chauvet Caves, closed to tourists, and severely restricted to scientists, now has a wonderful filmed record. Let the radioactive, mutant albino crocodiles try to alter THAT.

8.5 Herzogs out of 10

Every once in awhile a film grabs you viscerally, shakes you, has you on the remotest edge of your seat nearly at the jump.

First-time Italian director, Giuseppe Captondi, knows what he’s doing craftsmanship-wise in the sparkling Double Hour. He mixes robust character
development with Hitchcockian suspense elements and not a little horror genre sprinklings. He also uses a device (spoiler alert!), which will leave you either further impressed, or, er, cheated. I’ll allude to it rather than reveal it since we’re basically talking The Sixth Sense or The Crying Game level of surprise conceit here. And while the film’s first-half works nearly flawlessly and it’s second-half kicks interpretative complexities up a notch, I thought the pull-the-wool-over-your-eyes “stunt” anything but a laborious trick.

The Double Hour has an exceptional depth–of perception, of psychology, of thrilling suspense–only rarely achieved by filmmakers who’ve been doing this a lot longer tha Captondi. That it does so cinematically wiith an economy of traditional exposition, is a further feather in its cap.

Plotwise, suffice it to say, this is about an intriguing immigrant chambermaid (Ksenia Rappoport) and a charismatic security guard and former cop (Filippo Timi), who meet in a speed dating event. Anymore plot you’re better off not knowing. Both actors won Best of Venice Film Festival Awards. Their performances are splendid. There will only be justice when a film like this can make a dent in American mulitplexes … Oh, wait: There’s the inevitable, likely-to-be-lame Americanized version awaiting production. Skip this film for that and you’re a sap.

9 suspenses out of 10

Every once in awhile a film grabs you viscerally, shakes you, has you on the remotest edge of your seat nearly at the jump.

First-time Italian director, Giuseppe Captondi, knows what he’s doing craftsmanship-wise in the sparkling Double Hour. He mixes robust character
development with Hitchcockian suspense elements and not a little horror genre sprinklings. He also uses a device (spoiler alert!), which will leave you either further impressed, or, er, cheated. I’ll allude to it rather than reveal it since we’re basically talking The Sixth Sense or The Crying Game level of surprise conceit here. And while the film’s first-half works nearly flawlessly and it’s second-half kicks interpretative complexities up a notch, I thought the pull-the-wool-over-your-eyes “stunt” anything but a laborious trick.

The Double Hour has an exceptional depth–of perception, of psychology, of thrilling suspense–only rarely achieved by filmmakers who’ve been doing this a lot longer tha Captondi. That it does so cinematically wiith an economy of traditional exposition, is a further feather in its cap.

Plotwise, suffice it to say, this is about an intriguing immigrant chambermaid (Ksenia Rappoport) and a charismatic security guard and former cop (Filippo Timi), who meet in a speed dating event. Anymore plot you’re better off not knowing. Both actors won Best of Venice Film Festival Awards. Their performances are splendid. There will only be justice when a film like this can make a dent in American mulitplexes … Oh, wait: There’s the inevitable, likely-to-be-lame Americanized version awaiting production. Skip this film for that and you’re a sap.

9 suspenses out of 10