Lessons of Darkness

Link Quickie

2008-08-18T14:24:09-04:00

I've been so busy finishing up reviews for this blog - including my latest ones, found below, for Hamlet 2, Rogue and Sukiyaki Western Django - that I haven't had time to do a link round-up. Until now, that is.

Now Playing:
Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Slant magazine)
Mirrors (Slant magazine)
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (Slant magazine)
Fly Me to the Moon (Slant magazine)

Coming Soon:
The Rocker (Slant magazine)

Sukiyaki Western Django (2008): B+

2008-08-18T14:14:17-04:00

Takeshi Miike takes cinematic homage to its absurd extreme with Sukiyaki Western Django, a tribute to Spaghetti Westerns – and, specifically, Sergio Corbucci’s seminal 1966 Django – that boils the genre down to its base phrases, scenarios and iconography. In this typically gonzo Miike creation, the situation is archetypal (a mysterious cowboy arrives in a desolate town and pits two warring factions against each other), the cast is largely comprised of Japanese actors speaking in stilted, often unintelligible English, and the camerawork is a mixture of Sergio Leone gorgeousness and bonkers hyper-realism. These are elements that don’t so much cohere into some sort of satisfying whole as simply assault the screen with the wild, anything-goes exuberance of a Looney Tunes cartoon, a style that’s deliberately recalled by a few choice sound cues and bits of physical comedy. Given its crazed, reverential remodeling of film history, it’s fitting that Sukiyaki Western Django features Quentin Tarantino in a (surprisingly amusing) cameo. Unlike the Pulp Fiction auteur, however, Miike’s homage is devoid of pretention and teeming with insanity, and though his central joke – Japanese actors struggling to articulate clichés like “hold your horses” and “a day late and a dollar short” – quickly wears thin, the director finds genuine beauty in the bizarre sight of a bloody infant emerging from the unfolding petals of a rose, and delivers visceral thrills in a series of slam-bang skirmishes and a sensuously mournful dance sequence by a woman irrevocably wounded by tragedy. Almost completely unconcerned with narrative, the film thrives on the strength of the director’s out-there impulses and proficiently crazy craftsmanship (such as with a digitized cinematographic zoom of a man leaping out a window onto his horse), making it a tribute not only to the Westerns Miike clearly adores but also to the euphoria of unfettered cinematic creativity.

Rogue (2007): B+

2008-08-18T14:09:25-04:00

Despite having one of the decade’s finest horror films (Wolf Creek) on his résumé, Greg Mclean couldn’t nab his sophomore effort Rogue a full theatrical release. Given the assortment of crap made by nobody hacks crowding multiplexes each week, that alone is something of a travesty, though making matters even worse is the fact that his killer-crocodile thriller is taut, thoughtful and inventive. As in Wolf Creek, Mclean charts a group of people (mostly tourists, led by Radha Mitchell’s local guide) venturing foolishly into the wilds of the Australian Outback and being forced to confront a monster – in this case, a literal one in the form of a giant crocodile that doesn’t take kindly to territorial intruders. If his previous story served as a condemnation of such blasé globetrotting, the director’s latest is more of a cautionary tale in which human compassion and altruism ultimately turn out to be serviceable weapons against natural threats, with Mclean – such as in a somber shot of a tour boat passenger surreptitiously spreading his wife’s ashes in the water – once again casting his characters as empathetic individuals rather than simply doomed stick figures. Rogue may keep its creature hidden for large stretches in order to generate tension through omnipresent suggestion, but its expertly orchestrated set pieces don’t skimp on the killer-croc goods, providing enough glimpses of the beast feasting on terrified humans to deliver requisite horror-premise payoffs. Mclean’s tight scripting rarely relies on stupid behavior to elicit scares and refuses to one-dimensionally condemn its characters for less-than-noble reactions to trauma, exhibiting shrewd, nonjudgmental consideration for the strains its stranded travelers are under. All the while, his evocative widescreen cinematography of the Australian landscape – part Terrance Malick-entrancing, part John Carpenter-creepy – lends the action a sense of encompassing ominousness, and in its reverence for the natural world, proves in tune with the director’s own respect for his characters, his B-movie genre, and his audience.

Hamlet 2 (2008): C

2008-08-18T14:02:50-04:00

Boasting a title more amusing than anything contained in its 90 minutes, Hamlet 2 concerns a failed actor-turned-high school drama teacher in Tucson, Arizona who, in order to save the school’s theater program, stages the titular story. The doofus in question is Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan), an untalented moron obsessed with inspirational-classroom movies whose obliviousness to his own stupidity recalls that of The Office’s Michael Smith, and whose self-penned sequel to the Shakespeare classic confuses and rankles the community. Coogan is given free reign to indulge in improvisatory buffoonery, and his pratfalling and verbal stupidity might have been brilliantly funny had Andrew Fleming’s film (co-scripted by South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut scribe Pam Brady) found a way to suitably lay the groundwork for its premise. Instead, however, there’s a persistent sense that the title (and accompanying concept) is meant to carry the bulk of the comedic load, that every awkward, profane stab at humor (including those by supporting players Catherine Keener, David Arquette, and Amy Poehler) is supposed to be hilarious simply because, you know, the movie is called Hamlet 2! Given the wealth of inane silliness offered up, it’s inevitable that an occasional riff hits its mark. Yet despite Coogan’s enthusiasm, the whole thing feels undercooked to the point of being raw, such that when the climactic performance of Marschz’s play features a Grease-ish musical number called “Rock Me Sexy Jesus” – replete with Marschz as Jesus as Fonzie – the sequence’s insane randomness is disastrously undercut by the film’s failure to recognize that randomness only works if there’s first some firmly established context (here, that would have been the play’s larger narrative) for it to be juxtaposed against.

Corporate Power

2008-08-14T14:59:04-04:00

My latest feature for IFC News should be right up the alley of those Americans frightened to death of Wal-Mart and Starbucks. It's a list of cinema's ten most powerful corporations, and can be found via the stunningly efficient link below.

Ten Disturbingly Powerful Fictional Film Corporations (IFC News)

Pineapple Express (2008): B

2008-08-12T11:54:44-04:00

Endeavoring to be a buddy-action comedy, a good-natured deconstruction of buddy-action comedies, and the ultimate stoner flick, Pineapple Express is likeable but nonetheless more skunkweed than kind bud. Judd Apatow’s latest production closely hews to Superbad’s “bromance” template, charting the pseudo-romantic friendship that develops between pothead process server Dale (Seth Rogen) and his drug dealer Saul (James Franco) after Dale witnesses Saul’s supplier Ted (Gary Cole) commit murder and the two wind up on the run from Ted’s hitmen. The duo’s burgeoning kinship (as well as that of their would-be assassins) is meant to play up the latent homoeroticism of their macho genre forbearers, but the gag soon goes cold, bottoming out during a last-act bit in which their attempts to escape bondage involves simulated sexual acts. Some ‘70s-Undertow affectations are the only overt indications that the proceedings have been directed by David Gordon Green (George Washington), as most of the film simply conforms to Apatow’s increasingly monotonous formula, which includes man-children stuck in the ‘80s, guys feeling mushy for other guys, amusing peripheral kooks (in this case, Danny McBride’s Red) and preposterous hetero romances, here supplied by Dale’s relationship with an 18-year-old beauty (Amber Heard). Mining male camaraderie for both laughs and pathos via a buddy film makes sense, but the more Dale and Saul’s rapport becomes overly sentimental, the more it seems like a phony, self-conscious conceit rather than an endearing, natural outgrowth of the narrative. Climaxing in a painfully prolonged shootout that doesn’t tweak genre conventions as much as drearily replicate them, Pineapple Express never makes more than a surface impression, albeit a fitfully amusing one, highlighted by a rollicking car chase in which Dale and Saul’s behavioral frame of reference is action cinema, and an early conversation that features Franco brilliantly nailing the glazed I’m-talking-to-you-even-as-my-mind-drifts-into-another-universe post-toke stupor.

LOL (2006): B

2008-08-10T22:44:43-04:00

Charting the deleterious effect of technology on human relations, Joe Swanberg’s LOL follows three twentysomething males whose obsession with being online or on a cell phone proves problematic for their romantic prospects. That devices designed to foster greater (and easier) communication have, in many respects, had the opposite effect is not a particularly novel notion, and one that Swanberg’s indie repeats ad nauseam through a narrative (used here in the loosest sense of the term) in which his emotionally detached protagonists Tim (Swanberg), Chris (C. Mason Wells) and Alex (Kevin Bewersdorf) botch chances at love by fixating on their gadgets. The repetitiveness of the writer/director’s story – in which each segment reinforces the same idea – eventually becomes wearisome, yet he captures relatable 21st-century truths in small, excruciating moments, such as an opening montage of blank male faces staring at internet porn and Alex’s pathetic scramble to find a computer power cable while a ready-and-waiting girl (who’s already driven him to St. Louis and let him stay at her parents house) sits disappointedly in an adjacent room. More affecting still, though, is LOL’s Alex-produced audio-video segments in which random vocal sounds made by a variety of people are edited into abstract mini-musical numbers that express how technological dependence leads to fractured communication breakdown.

No End in Sight (2007): B+

2008-08-10T22:40:05-04:00

Charles Ferguson’s concise, efficient No End in Sight begins inauspiciously, detailing the build-up to the Iraq War with a swift intro marked by somewhat dubious implications and cause-effects arguments. After this initial stumble, however, his documentary proves a thorough, level-headed examination of the Bush administration’s failure to properly prepare for, and execute, the war itself, offering up interviews with the campaign’s architects, military officials, and administration members (current and former) that lay out the various missteps that have so far made lasting success elusive. No End in Sight convincingly contends that an insufficient number of troops was the war’s most disastrous early failing, since it frustrated attempts to provide basic utilities as well as security for both civilians and landmarks such as the national museum, which was pillaged due to our limited forces (and indifference). When coupled with a lack of on-the-ground infrastructure to run and manage the campaign – American officers spent extended time simply scrounging around for desks, paper and working phones – the U.S.’ inadequate troop levels prevented the army from establishing a level of control that might have helped cut off some of the insurgency before it got started. Ferguson’s aesthetically unadventurous doc plays like a social studies lecture, and as such, its just-the-facts approach can be a tad stultifying. Yet as a thorough account of the strategic mistakes made by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld during the war’s first years, it’s nonetheless riveting.

Back to Reality

2008-08-01T10:37:17-04:00

Remember when this year's summer movie season suddenly, surprisingly featured a raft of intelligent, exciting films? Well, that time has now past, as this week's main release - The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - is typical summer crapola.

I'm off to the beach next week, so updates around here will be sparse. But upon my return, keep an eye out for reviews of Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, Hamlet 2 and - surely most anticipated of all by serious film connoisseurs - The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2.

Now:
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Slant magazine)
In Search of a Midnight Kiss (Slant magazine)
America the Beautiful (Cinematical)

Later:
Hell Ride (Slant magazine)
What We Do Is Secret (Slant magazine)

Two-Step

2008-07-25T09:40:10-04:00

Not counting my thoughts on The X-Files: I Want to Believe (posted below), I've only got two new published reviews for this Friday. And both films are well-worth the time of any moviegoers suffering from The Dark Knight fatigue.

Now Playing:
Step Brothers (Slant magazine)
Man on Wire (Cinematical)

UPDATE:
The Order of Myths (Cinematical)

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008): C

2008-07-24T15:59:35-04:00

The title of The X-Files: I Want to Believe is apt, articulating its story’s (and the cult TV show’s) principal theme with a thudding literalism indicative of its graceless, overtly-state-everything script. Ten years after their last big-screen outing, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) live together and have left the FBI, she to pursue a career as a medical doctor and he because of a nasty dispute with the government bureau to which he’d dedicated his life. The case of a missing FBI agent prompts Scully to convince a bearded Mulder to lend a hand (and shave), which he does after learning that the feds are enlisting the help of a pedophilic Catholic priest (Billy Connelly, sporting crazy-coot white hair) who claims to be receiving psychic visions about the disappearance. Duchovny and Anderson comfortably slip back into their trademark roles, and their rapport, always fraught with sexual tension, is now also colored by a melancholic realization that they may never wholly escape their troubled pasts. Meanwhile, writer/director/series creator Chris Carter systematically provides breadcrumb clues about his mystery, which involve severed limbs, packs of strange dogs, and stem cell research. Unfortunately, his reasonably firm grasp of thriller mechanics can’t enliven a tale that amounts to simply a mundane, overlong one of the show’s stand-alone, mythology-free episodes. I Want to Believe’s lack of anxious chills, however, is less troublesome than the narrative’s pile-up of neat-and-tidy parallels – Scully’s crisis of faith regarding a sick boy at a Catholic hospital is so impeccably harmonized with the primary plot’s concerns, it’s embarrassing – convenient twists and turns, and devotion to confronting its central preoccupation with belief (in oneself, God, science) via banal exposition. “Don’t give up!” is ultimately revealed to be the film’s mantra, though given the contrivances and clunky speeches that abound, it resonates less as a statement about the need to keep the faith than as Carter’s plea to fans whose reward for a decade of patience is merely this forgettable mediocrity.

Hype, Justified

2008-07-17T07:38:03-04:00

Though I stand by my original criticisms, I've grown increasingly fond of Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins. His immensely anticipated follow-up, The Dark Knight, needs no such qualifications. It's flat-out great, and - let me also note - worth catching in IMAX, if at all possible.

Friday:
The Dark Knight (Slant magazine)
Felon (Slant magazine)
Transsiberian (Slant magazine)
Mad Detective (Slant magazine)
A Man Named Pearl (Slant magazine)
Take (Slant magazine)
The Doorman (Cinematical)

Pre-Knight Roundup

2008-07-14T10:53:33-04:00

The Dark Knight screens tomorrow, so that review won't be up until later this week. In the meantime, though, I've got this somewhat belated batch. Enjoy.

Now:
Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008) (Slant magazine)
The Exiles (Slant magazine)
Diminished Capacity (Slant magazine)
Harold (Slant magazine)

Later:
Red (Slant magazine)
Year of the Fish (Slant magazine)

Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008): A-

2008-07-01T22:44:20-04:00

Fathers figure prominently in Hellboy II: The Golden Army – their sins, their legacies, and the responsibility that comes from turning into one. In this superlative sequel from Guillermo Del Toro, a cloud of parental duty hovers over Hellboy (Ron Perlman), who – having lost surrogate dad Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm (John Hurt) in the 2004 original – grapples with issues of commitment, allegiance and sacrifice while oblivious to the fact that firestarter girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair) is pregnant. Maturation, though, isn’t quite what Del Toro is after for his horned protagonist in this rollicking, affecting comic book adaptation, as he continues to be the same crass, sarcastic and cantankerous secret government agent of his prior outing. That badass attitude, perfectly in tune with his muscular red-skinned physique, remains grafted to a surprisingly tender heart, with the hero still struggling to prove – to both himself and to the public from which his boss (Jeffrey Tambor) wants him hidden – that he’s more man than demon. His of-two-worlds nature becomes an especially pressing concern once ancient exiled Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) shatters his paterfamilias’ truce with the humans and pursues the key to the unstoppable Golden Army in order to incite war against mankind, a battle in which Hellboy, Liz, and psychic Abe Sapien (Doug Jones) – all supernatural creatures employed by mortal men – find themselves mired.

Del Toro’s baroquely bizarre imaginativeness has never been more mesmerizing than in Hellboy II, its cornucopia of extraordinary creatures (some beautifully melding flesh with metal) seemingly stolen from children’s nightmares, and its preponderance of metal gears intrinsically linked to the saga’s fascination with fate and free will. Tableaus of gorgeously disgusting majesty abound, such as one involving an angel of death whose eyes are situated in its wings, as well as two movies-worth of breathtaking action sequences, each notable for their distinctiveness, propulsive energy, and coherent visual dexterity, this last quality particularly present in Hellboy’s throwdown with the titular battalion. There’s a proficiency to each of the film’s set pieces – including Hellboy fighting a towering forest god while protectively cradling an infant – but, as importantly, a poignant center to the often-frenzied mayhem. Embodied by Perlman with a blustery gruffness that masks a sensitive soul, the rebellious Hellboy is a fountain of hilariously acerbic wisecracks. For all the humor, however, Del Toro consistently focuses his narrative on the crimson giant’s earnest, anguished desire to fit in, a yearning that stems from a conception of himself – formed during a childhood of watching Howdy Doody and clutching shiny toy six-shooters in bed – as fundamentally human.

The pain of outsiderdom and corresponding need for companionship course through Hellboy II’s heroes and villains, with Del Toro bestowing considerate complexity upon Prince Nuada by positioning him as a would-be destroyer driven by desperate self-preservation impulses. Empathy runs deep for these characters, providing the narrative with a sentimental spine that gives meaning and value to their rollercoaster-ride predicaments. Even more than in his much-heralded Pan’s Labyrinth, Del Toro wields outsized, seamless CG-animated fantasy to amplify internal turmoil, staging hectic, frenzied showstoppers that are emboldened by emotional and relationship dynamics. While the gaunt, acrobatic Nuada too closely resembles Blade II’s baddie (both portrayed by Goss), the director otherwise laces his mythic tale with shrewd cinematic allusions, be they an overt clip from Bride of Frankenstein (“We belong dead!”) or a sly, strange nod to Total Recall-via-Kindergarten Cop (a kid attached to a mutant adult’s torso states “I’m not a baby, I’m a tumor”). Yet abundant references aside, Hellboy II is about a man, a woman, and their attempts to achieve normalcy despite social alienation, identity confusion, and constantly intruding chaos, a story intensely rooted in that most essential of feelings – love – and the mad, selfish, destructive things people will do to both attain and retain it. Thrilling and touching in equal measure, it’s on the short list of great superhero films.

WALL·E (2008): A-

2008-07-01T22:21:02-04:00

WALL·E is Pixar’s most overtly political film, but more impressive than its ecologically minded message is its modestly profound portrait of loneliness, obligation and the desire for reciprocated affection. On an abandoned future Earth – its skyscrapers standing alongside towers of garbage, its horizon mucked up by endless fast food billboards, and its dusty atmosphere cluttered by defunct satellite detritus – the clean-up job has been left to a series of small trash compactor robots, of which there remains only one operating model. His name is WALL·E, a 700-year-old invention that rolls about deserted streets performing his preprogrammed duty with his lone friend, a small bug, and collecting interesting debris from the society that long since abandoned its birthplace. In his home/shop, WALL·E repairs himself with spare parts from fellow ‘bots, organizes his stash of knickknacks, and watches Hello Dolly, dancing in time with the movie’s stars and pining, sorrowfully, for another sentient creature to romantically hold his hand. He’s an artificial mechanism with a beating heart, his bond to humanity and its world evidenced by his construction – he recycles man’s garbage by physically inserting it into his chest cavity – his nightly habit of rocking himself to sleep, and his droopy, soulful eyes.

WALL·E’s solitary existence is forever shattered by the appearance of Eve, a sleek white female robot with an iPod exterior – a nod, along with WALL·E’s “on” chime, to Apple – and a no-nonsense attitude backed up by a massive gun blaster. In its initial half-hour, encompassing WALL·E’s day-to-day routine and his life-changing encounter with Eve, Andrew Stanton’s film proves to be a largely silent affair marked by the type of graceful, expressive visual storytelling that hasn’t been seen in a children’s film since the days of Snow White. It’s a daring gambit in this age of bigger-faster-louder family entertainment, and though this approach will likely challenge very young viewers, WALL·E’s opening passages boast a warm, delicate artistry that’s simply masterful. Stanton’s gorgeously animated directorial follow-up to Finding Nemo compassionately and powerfully establishes its pint-sized protagonist’s circumstances and emotional longing, such that when the automaton braves a fierce lightening storm to hold an umbrella over an immobilized Eve – who enters a state of suspended shutdown after receiving, from WALL·E, a rare valuable living plant growing in a dingy shoe filled with soil – the film achieves a stunning measure of poignancy.

WALL·E is a receptacle and guardian of human history, a being who understands – despite its glaring failings – modern civilization’s unique beauty. And via his subsequent adventure aboard the intergalactic cruise ship The Axiom upon which people now reside, he also becomes its hero. In space, people have been reduced to fat, slothful idiots who are shuttled to and fro in hoverchairs (replete with projection screens used for communication and entertainment purposes) by computers designed by Earth’s big business-cum-government Buy-N-Large. Pointing the finger for man’s devolution at submission and obedience to corporate interests, and censuring our environmental neglect, WALL·E is stingingly critical. Its political consciousness, however, never morphs into a sermon, its argument in favor of individuality, of possessing a larger awareness about the world in which one resides, always intrinsically grafted to WALL·E’s relatable yearning for companionship. Requirements to provide last-act good-vs.-evil action set pieces – which come equipped with amusing 2001 allusions – are respectfully carried out. Yet this animated marvel is most epic when operating on a small, personal scale, ultimately earning its esteemed place in the Pixar canon not only through top-notch CG, expertly orchestrated chase sequences, and provocative pro-green viewpoints, but also through its depiction of love’s capacity for making us more than what we might otherwise be.