Month: February 2014

Omar’s got a problem: how to balance staying the good street soldier in the West Bank Palestinian liberation movement while remaining on course to settle down with the sister of his comrade-in-arms. We are introduced to Omar (Adam Bakri) as he scales a wall more than 20 feet high in the Occupied Territories in order to pull off a routine visit to his beloved. Shots soon ring out, reminding us of the level of precariousness that everyday interactions entail in these parts. Ratchet up the danger when Omar and two fellow Palestinian freedom fighters (or terrorists, depending on your point of view) are militant defenders of their perceived injustices, and we’ve got a potential powder-keg of a film.

Omar’s love interest, Nadja (Leem Lubany), reminds one of an Arab version of a character straight out of Little House On The Prairie or The Patty Duke Show. Omar is as nice to her as he is nasty to anyone who gets in his way. His better self served by such a contrasting romantic energy, it’s no wonder he strives to undo himself from political and legal entanglements as best he can without losing face. End the occupation but begin a life anew. Problem is, loyalties in this particular world engender a fluidity all their own. The Israeli police, as avid toward their goals as Omar and his pals are to theirs. know how to manipulate and maneuver their power to divide and conquer. When Omar decides to pretend to co-operate in order to be released from prison, it becomes a game of who’s conning who.

Directed by Hany Abu-Assad Omar was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Academy Award. Although this Oscar category may be an arcane, logic-defying process where near-universally acclaimed films like The Past and Blue Is The Warmest Color go ignored, Omar deserves the recognition. It strives to marry a
>> riveting action yarn with a damn compelling character study and mostly succeeds. In a perfect world where foreign language films would stand a shot at snagging acting nominations, Walter F. Zuaiter, as an Israeli police agent who speaks perfect Arabic, would also be recognized. In a great scene where he takes a phone call in Hebrew only to get berated by a henpecking wife, we are left guessing whether Omar, who is within earshot, is being conned by a fake phone call.

The film at first glance seems like it may suffer from one too many twists. It forces you to go deeper and realize the twists perfectly set up the film’s dramatic fadeout finale, which not only works on a symbolic level but seems an inevitable outcome. This movie doesn’t play around. The performances by the cast of mostly non-professional actors sizzle. Omar’s customs, sharply portrayed, both enrich his character and stymie his growth. The two sides almost appear to be reaching an understanding, then quickly default into the status quo. An impossible situation remains exactly that.

4 Middle East Maneuvers and Mayhem (out of 5)

Luc Besson, the most provocative of guilty pleasures when he’s on his game, wrote 3 Days To Kill’s story, co-wrote its screenplay, and produced. The film’s campy violence marks a return to form for Besson while it also heralds a continuation of a renaissance in the acting career of Kevin Costner begun with the TV series Hatfields and McCoys. This equal-parts preposterous and impressive new film may not exactly be Besson’s La Femme Nikita or Costner’s Bull Durham, but as entertainment for this winter doldrums period goes, it’s not shabby.

Secure within its framework of cartoonish action film, 3 Days To Kill pours it on heavy. Just when it seems to get into trouble with yet another cliche or still another manipulation, the savvy delivery of its schmaltz spoofs its own conformity, acknowledges its own buffoonery. No overkill is too over the top here. Waiting for things to get more ridiculous? It’s just around the corner. As you get ready to roll your eyes, your raised eyebrows prevent it.

Costner, often too sick to stay on his feet, keeps mowing down villains. The trailer says he’s a spy. Don’t let that fool you. He’s Ethan Renner, a dying CIA assassin whose unknowing and unforgiving estranged teenage daughter, Zooey, sets his ringtone announcing her calls to the “I Don’t Care” chorus from Icona Pop’s “I Love It.” Violence-interruptus becomes a running theme, as Costner pauses to talk to Zooey (Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit) while in mid-torture of an informant or when approaching the hideaway of his target, The Wolf, a nasty terrorist.

Like the best action movie heroes Ethan stays so calm that, like his ringtone, he really doesn’t care either. He seems downright bored right up until he puts a villain’s head in a hot waffle maker, rips a guy’s body hair off with duct tape, or plants a bullet into the foot of a security guard who won’t let him into a nightclub to check on his daughter’s safety. He’s got three months to live after a tough medical diagnosis and promises his estranged wife (Connie Neilsen) he’ll quit working in order to spend his remaining time with his daughter. Then he gets lured back into killing by foxy young agent Vivi Delay (Amber Heard, complete with stiletto heels and long eyelashes) who draws him with an “experimental cancer therapy,” which she herself injects into him with a foot-long needle. There are illogical gun battles, exaggerated jokes about “albinos,” mindless send-ups of the French, riding lessons on Montmartre, and a silly family of Sudanese squatters inhabiting Ethan’s long-vacant Paris apartment. You may find it all dull and ludicrous for all I know. Myself, I mostly laughed my ass off.

3.0 Dances With The Wolf (out of 5)

Like Father, Like Son tells how two families deal with the bombshell revelation that their six-year-old sons were switched at birth. Director Hirokazo Kore-da, whose marvelous ouevre continues its focus on children facing unusual predicaments, leads us through an impossibly heartwrenching situation without a touch of melodrama. Some of this is a wry mirror held up to the class contrast between the two families. But you get an impression that both families have, in their different ways of expressing it, an underlying compassion for doing the right thing. That is, of course, once they first tackle the enormous hurdle of determining how to proceed.

There is the temptation to toss aside beginning anew with a relative stranger and cling to the child that has become part of your very soul after six years. The sensitive Midori (Machiko Ono) feels this dilemma and a further one, of guilt. “Why didn’t I see it?” she asks herself. Her son Keita (Keita Ninomiya) will soon be shuffled to play dates with his real parents, the Saikis. Their son, Ryusei (Shogun Hwang) has two siblings and is part of tight-knit, loose and fun loving blue collar family. They actually bathe together and seem to have a lot of laughs.

Conversely, Keita’s dad, Ryota (Masahor Fukyama) is a no-nonsense, far more authoritative father. He could stand to be more loving with his only-child son, and Like Father, Like Son will present him with an ample chance to do so. As usual Kore-da is incredible with his children actors, similar to his films Nobody Knows, where two kids separated by divorce seek to reunite, and Nobody Knows, where four kids live on their own without a parent or guardian.

Like Father, Like Son presents a bewildering struggle. On the one hand, one’s loved ones remain precisely that regardless of genes. On the other hand, recognizing the necessity of letting go, and adhering to custom and law. At one point Midori wonders, “Is there a manual for this situation?” Of course there isn’t, but Kore-da approaches the devastatingly difficult with a tender, knowing eye that cuts to the core of the dilemma

4.5 Switched At Births With Kites and Communal Baths (out of 5)

Like a Saturday Night Live skit spun out of control and barely keeping itself together, this impossibly imbecilic film somehow prevails to its end shot, stellar cast in tow. Since A Winter’ s Tale professes to be a serious film, this is something of a feat.

Russell Crowe, Colin Farrell, Jennifer Connelly, Will Smith and William Hurt don’t exactly wink their way through a morass of a muddled script, but if you look closely enough, you might perceive a puffy and glowering Crowe slyly acknowledging he has no idea what the hell is happening here. His evil character, spanning a century of chasing his protege-gone-rogue Farrell, holds court a couple of times with a nondescript Will Smith as none other than Lucifer himself (is there anything duller than a dull devil?)

Farrell, a mere mortal, has no business finding himself suddenly in present-day New York not aged whatsoever after a bad time of it back in 1915. Despite a serious case of amnesia, he somehow finds his way to Eva Marie Saint in 2014, after encountering her as a young girl in 1915. The film makes no attempt to account for its bad math, since that would make her around 110 years old. The talented Saint, who is 89 and old enough to have starred in the 1954 classic On The Waterfront, doesn’t look a day over 80.

Would that a math error were A Winter’s Tale’s biggest problem. A movie that promotes romance, second chances, and miracles, could hardly be more staid, nonsensical, and arbitrary. This is somewhat surprising coming from veteran screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman, who has A Beautiful Mind among his credits. Based on a fairly highly regarded 1983 novel by Mark Helprin, the film might very well sufffer from Cloud Atlas Syndrome: the novel that’s impossible to adapt to film that sorrily gets filmed anyway.

Some films have sticky points and some are just plain stuck. A super-serious yet lackadaisical William Hurt guards his eager yet consumptive daughter (a requisitely beautiful Jessica Brown Findlay of Downton Abbey fame) like a hawk, yet sneaks in a lame joke that tries to rhyme filet with claret. A white horse keeps appearing and it’s not because The Ringling Brothers Circus is in town. The horse is just called “Horse” by the unimaginative Farrell. This gives a proper indication of Farrell’s character’s depth through through the rest of the film. It’s a shame “Horse” also flies at will, which prolongs the movie since Crowe has Farrell cornered numerous times, only to have “Horse” fly him to safety. I felt equally stymied in my seat at the screening with no metaphorical white horse available to get me out of this film any sooner than its laborious two hours-and-nine minutes running time.

1.5 Cupid’ s Bad Joke of a Valentines Day Film (out of 5)

A deceitfully overwrought premise, bargain-basement plot, and paint-by-numbers characters add up to a Valentine’s Day film disaster. The lipstick on this donkey is provided by a bunch of photogenic, fairly talented actors. Yet even Brando and Hepburn couldn’t do much with this concoction that seems like it was stillborn in a Five and Under store.

Jason (Zac Ephron), Daniel (Miles Teller) and Mikey (Michael B Jordan) are three self-appointed studs who vow to “stay single” and not indulge their “rosters” of hookup partners with more than twice a week conjugal visits. “Dating”–who needs it? Jason points out there also comes a time, usually right after coitus, when a gal will begin a conversation with “So…” as in “so where is this going?” and at that time, continues Jason, it’s time to call it off and head for the hills.

Things get testy when Jason meets Ellie (Imogen Potts) and Daniel grows fonder and fonder of his sex-pal Chelsea (Mackenzie Davis). So they sneak their increasingly relationship-oriented behavior from each other, as does Mikey, who sneaks trysts with his estranged wife. The comedy lies in their trying to hide all this commitment stuff from each other. Got that?

Since it’s obviously not enough to hold together a film, we’re also inundated with numerous “hooker” jokes, smelly bathroom barbs, our dudes bursting in on each other while having sex, a stolen key to Grammercy Park, and a sight gag involving an incongruous sex toy. Then, in the spirit of meticulously avoiding an appearance of a relationship with Ellie, Jason decides to skip her dad’s funeral because it would clearly spell “girlfriend.” This creates the need for a crybaby scene of rapprochement, one of any in the film, none believable in the slightest, all of them offensive to intelligence. The girls here forgive at the drop of a hat for no apparent reason. Further annoying is all the smutty verbal references are accompanied by curiously chaste sex scenes. Better hold up on any nudity or people may get the wrong idea, director Tom Gormican seems to be saying.

Teller, in between a fine performance in The Spectacular Now, and another in the forthcoming Sundance winner, Whiplash, seems to be overqualified here. Nonetheless, he seems to be enjoying himself playing opposite the intriguing Davis, who demonstrates a vivid screen presence. What do I make of the cast seeming to have so much fun?…So?

2.0 Hookups Gone Haywire (out of 5)