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Review
It was the movies that killed John Dillinger -- Gangster No. 1 until he was gunned down outside a Chicago theater after taking in the pictures one hot night in 1934 -- and it was the movies that brought him back to life. More than once. But this time it's different. This time Michael Mann is in charge.
Win, lose or draw, Mann, director of "Heat," "Ali," "The Insider" and the current "Public Enemies," is inescapably one of the masters of modern American cinema. He's a restless soul, a striver, pushing his work toward dramatic intensity and the recapturing and recasting of reality.
Mann often wants to do traditional films but do them differently, do them better, enabling the audience to feel both the newness and the tradition. With "Public Enemies," he has made an impressive film of great formal skill, one that inescapably has a brooding dark-night-of-the-soul quality about it.
Simultaneously an art film and a crime film, Mann's latest work (he shares screenplay credit with Ronan Bennett and Ann Biderman) may not give you a ton to hang on to emotionally, but the beauty and skill of the filmmaking keep you tightly in its grasp.
"Public Enemies' " title, though taken from Bryan Burrough’s history of Depression era crime, offers uncanny -- and deceptive -- echoes of one of the iconic gangster films of the period, William Wellman's "The Public Enemy," which starred an incandescent James Cagney as a hooligan so hard-boiled he shocked American by squeezing a grapefruit into girlfriend Mae Clarke's face.
But if Cagney is all exuberant, anarchic energy, Johnny Depp’s Dillinger is just the opposite. There is a formal, almost existential quality about his fatalistic portrayal of the scourge of the Midwest, more "Le Samourai" than "White Heat," more Alain Delon cool than Cagney hot.
It's almost as if Depp, who lives in France, and his French costar Marion Cotillard have unconsciously collaborated with Mann to channel the spirit of the classic French gangster director Jean-Pierre Melville into these decidedly American proceedings.
A restrained performance like that only succeeds when it's given by an actor as intrinsically charismatic as Depp. His Dillinger can be as ruthless as the next guy and handy with a submachine gun when his bank robbery spree demands it, but what we end up admiring are his nerve, his style, his long gabardine overcoats (reminiscent of the long dusters worn by those other Midwestern movie outlaws, the James gang) and his hip, round sunglasses. This is star power acting with magnetism to spare.
The story Mann and company set out to tell is in part the traditional one of the doomed love of outsiders on the run and in part a newer, more socially aware interpretation of gangsterdom, the story of lone criminal wolves, in Mann's words, "being pressed on both sides by twin evolutionary forces -- on the one hand J. Edgar Hoover inventing the FBI, and on the other, organized crime evolving rapidly into a kind of corporate capitalism." We're a long way from "The Untouchables" here.
"Public Enemies" opens with one of the standards of the crime genre, the prison escape, with Dillinger, just released after nine years inside, returning to break his gang out of the Indiana State Penitentiary. It didn't happen quite that way, but that matters less than the vivid style in which masterful cinematographer Dante Spinotti has shot it.
Spinotti, working with Mann for the fifth time, combines intense close-ups with a polished, energetic style of shooting action that brings a fluidity to the film's bank robbery sequences. Spinotti's use of digital equipment, which creates, he says, "the ability to see into shadows," makes possible one of the films several rat-a-tat set pieces, a nighttime shootout with the FBI at the Little Bohemia lodge in northern Wisconsin.
Once he and this entourage are out of prison, Dillinger heads to the big city of Chicago, where he meets the beautiful Billie Frechette (Cotillard), a hat-check girl with a bit of a chip on her shoulder. She is dubious of his attentions at first, but when he tells her he has a weakness for "baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars, whiskey and you," she is hooked.
Though even his criminal pals tell him that what they're doing won't last, Dillinger says he's too smart for the opposition. He reckons without the more modern and scientific nature of the other side, led by the FBI's fussy, obsessive J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) and his man on the ground in the Midwest, Melvin Purvis.
Efficiently played by Christian Bale, Purvis is an icy and implacable nemesis who keeps after Dillinger with the help of handpicked Texas lawmen like Charles Winstead (Mann veteran Stephen Lang at his best). Purvis may have doubts about Hoover's methods, but he knows he has time on his side, even if Dillinger does not.
Though any number of name actors, including Lili Taylor as a confident sheriff and Giovanni Ribisi as gangster Alvin Karpis, make appearances, what's unusual about "Public Enemies" is Mann's determination not to have any face be an ordinary one.
A full 15 people (led by Avy Kaufman and Bonnie Timmerman) are credited with casting work on the film, and every face that appears on screen, from the members of Purvis' Chicago FBI squad to youthful junior G-men, are clearly hand-picked for individuality and impact.
Mann's attention to nominally small things, his insistence that every detail be authentic, including the clothes (Colleen Atwood is the costume designer) and the often historic locations (Nathan Crowley is production designer), lend a sense of rightness to the entire endeavor.
Just as potent, as always with Mann, is the eclectic musical landscape, which here includes, in addition to Elliot Goldenthal's score, Billie Holiday doing "Am I Blue," Diana Krall singing "Bye Bye Blackbird," blues by Blind Willie Johnson and Otis Taylor, and the Smithsonian Folkways recording of "Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah" sung by a group of Old Regular Baptists. Not your ordinary tunes.
One of the interesting side effects of this exceptional care is to make "Public Enemies" so real it seems to transcend its period and exist out of time. Though the Depression was a major factor in Dillinger's career, we don't see or feel it all that much. What we get instead is the sense of a man whose name has lasted until now for a reason and, if the movies have anything to say about it, will last longer still.
Review
KIDS will love the cute, exciting "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," the third installment of an animated franchise that shows no sign of fatigue in its first 3-D outing (in some theaters, at least).
Their parents will no doubt be amused by the idea that this time, dinosaurs coexist with woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers -- at least in a subterranean world that seems immune to the global warming that thawed the last installment, "Ice Age: The Meltdown."
There is much more of an emphasis on action in this nicely crafted, fast-paced sequel, which at its best shares the antic qualities of classic Warner Bros. cartoons.
Ray Romano returns as the voice of the neurotic woolly mammoth Manny, with Queen Latifah as his now-pregnant wife -- and Denis Leary as his pal, the saber-toothed Diego, who is feeling left out by the impending blessed event.
The plot is set into motion when the wacky sloth Sid (John Leguizamo) finds some dinosaur eggs and -- very amusingly -- decides to hatch them himself.
Of course, this is not a great idea, and leads to the others having to rescue poor Sid from a pack of dinosaurs.
The major new character is a one-eyed (and quite demented), swashbuckling weasel named Buck buckling weasel named Buck (voiced by a very funny Simon Pegg) who seems to owe a lot to Johnny Depp's Capt. Jack Sparrow in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies.
There's less dialogue than in the previous episodes, with much screen time devoted to interludes featuring the mischievous and hyper squirrel Scrat, who finds love with another member of his species.
Blue Sky Studios -- responsible for the delightful "Horton Hears a Who!" as well as the "Ice Age" movies -- may not turn out masterpieces like Pixar's "Up." But they've been consistently making toons superior to the much-hyped DreamWorks Animation, which relies too heavily on celebrity voices and cultural references.
Director Carlos Saldanha, encoring from "Ice Age: The Meltdown," keeps things moving at a rapid clip and uses 3-D far more imaginatively and effectively than in DWA's "Monsters vs. Aliens."
"Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" makes especially clever use of music, including several variations on the Lou Rawls classic "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine."
Even Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally)" turns up.
Review
Introducing her new romantic comedy at the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival, writer/director/star Nia Vardalos warned attending critics who had "come here to dump all over it" to "put a cork in it." Alas! Corks must pop for a glorified sitcom as transcendently inept and self-regarding as I Hate Valentine's Day. Slim, trim, and far too old to be simpering like a demented kitten, Vardalos affects a bizarrely self-conscious runway lope through this naked attempt to repeat the box-office moxie of her big, fat Greek wedding. Trading Toula for Genevieve, Vardalos is now an apparently fancy-free Manhattan florist who sets a five-date limit on all potential relationships until she meets a shy restaurateur (John Corbett, again) with permanence written all over his handsome mug. Flanked by the usual gay stooges (Stephen Guarino and Amir Arison) gamely cracking wise and an ensemble of sidekicks (among them Rachel Dratch, Jay O. Sanders, and Gary Wilmes) more gifted than she, Vardalos stalks from one dreary set piece to the next (pretentious art shows, dire karaoke—that sort of thing), wearing an expression of petrified vivacity occasionally softened by, here it comes, the childhood wounds that have rendered Genevieve so scared of commitment. Vardalos calls her film "the ultimate indie experiment," and if that's what is meant by ham-fisted pacing, writing, and acting, this is as ultimate and as indie as it gets.
Review
Part of “My Sister’s Keeper” takes place in a courtroom, and the convoluted plot can be a trial in itself. Yet the essence of the story, a fictional projection of medical possibility, is anything but legalistic. For all its awkward structure, the film is heartfelt and deeply affecting.
The plaintiff, 11-year-old Anna, is played endearingly by Abigail Breslin. Anna grabs our attention in the prologue when she announces, “I’m a designer baby. I was made in a dish to be spare parts for Kate.” Her older sister Kate, that is, who suffers from leukemia; she’s played, beautifully, by Sofia Vassilieva. Almost from birth Anna has been an involuntary donor of blood, bone marrow and other substances that Kate needs to survive. Now, faced with a kidney transplant, Anna wants to put a stop to her painful servitude, so she sues for medical emancipation from her parents, Sara and Brian (two more fine performances by Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric.) The excellent cast includes Alec Baldwin as Anna’s lawyer, Heather Wahlquist as her aunt, Thomas Dekker as Kate’s boyfriend and Joan Cusack as a sternly compassionate judge.
Nick Cassavetes directed from his and Jeremy Leven’s adaptation of the Jodi Picoult novel. The book had its own structural problems, plus an ending that was problematic to say the least. If the back-and-forth time line remains tangled, the ending is now more honest, though anguishingly so. Honesty and intelligence suffuse the production, which is equally eloquent about the toll that grave illness can take on a family and the role that love can play in healing it. The superb cinematographer Caleb Deschanel has contributed images of great warmth, though also unsparing ones when they’re appropriate. “My Sister’s Keeper” may seem unusually serious for summer entertainment, but any season is the right one for a good film.
Review
Michelle Pfeiffer has a career triumph in "Chéri" playing an aging courtesan. Aging has never looked so good. At 49, her Lea de Lonval realizes that her glory days, along with the waning hours of La Belle Époque, are over, and so, for sport, she decides to take up with a 25-year-old dandyish Adonis named Chéri (Rupert Friend). She plans to teach him a few things before sending him on his way. What she doesn't count on is that they will fall in love with each other.
Directed by Stephen Frears, written by Christopher Hampton, and based on two celebrated novels by Colette – "Chéri" (1920) and "The Last of Chéri" (1926) – "Chéri" is being promoted as a frisky comedy. It's a great deal more melancholy than that, though. Frears summed up Lea in an interview where he stated that "she's unnerving, as though being that beautiful contains its own tragic quality." The tragedy lies in what is being taken away. For a courtesan, whose face and figure are her fortune, the diminishment of beauty is especially burdensome. But Lea's masklike radiance in this film transcends youthful allure. She's more mysteriously beautiful than ever. This is what Frears was aiming for – the incandescence of the tragic – and it is what Pfeiffer so movingly conveys.
Because she started out in the movies as glorified eye candy – she had the standard surfer chick look – it took a while for Pfeiffer to become recognized for the great actress that she is. In "The Fabulous Baker Boys," "The Age of Innocence," "The Russia House," and many other films, she has a force and a frailty that astonish. (I've always wished she could play a Chekhov heroine.) In "Chéri," as in "The Age of Innocence," she can move right into a plush period piece and give it a present-tense vitality.
It would have been easy in "Chéri" for Pfeiffer to play Lea as a weepy victim, but she understands that Lea has her pride. Pfeiffer's performance is all about what lies beneath Lea's pride. She is savvy enough to have lived extremely well off the ministrations of wealthy men, but, to her amazement and fascination, Lea for the first time finds herself in love. It's not just that Chéri brings her back to her youth. He also reminds her of what has been lost. When he leaves her for an arranged marriage, and then returns to her, she says to him, "You came back and found an old woman," and she is not simply fishing for a compliment. She means it. Lea has achieved success in life by being brutally practical. Even in love, she cannot submit to false delusions.
Frears creates a buzzing, cackling universe of old-time courtesans, including Chéri's mother, Charlotte Peloux (Kathy Bates), once Lea's rival, still an adversary. Bombastic, devious, her dark, sprawling home chockablock with vulgar gewgaws, Charlotte is everything Lea is not. (Charlotte spins her years by reporting that "saggy flesh holds perfume better.") Lea not only wants to rescue herself, she also wants to rescue Chéri from the clutches of such a woman. The airiness of Lea's Art Nouveau house, with its soft pastel colorations, is a blissful respite for him.
Frears and Hampton previously collaborated on "Dangerous Liaisons," which also starred Pfeiffer and to which this film no doubt will be compared. But the gamesmanship in "Chéri" is far more nuanced. The only thing at stake, ultimately, is the human heart. The film might have been even better if Rupert Friend were a stronger counterweight to Pfeiffer. He has a tendency to let his looks do his acting for him. But as Chéri, he presents the right ripe image, and, in any event, Lea's passion for him is not intended to be entirely rational.
How could it be? She muses at one point that she was born decades too early for him, but if they had met up at the same age, their liaison would have been dimensionless. Lea's sweet sorrow, not to mention Chéri's, is inextricable from their disparate years. Plenty of terrible movies know how to work your tear ducts. Here's a weepie that, in Pfeiffer's performance, touches you on the highest levels. Grade: A (Rated R for some sexual content and brief drug use.)
Review
TORONTO -- Two decades after it happened, the horrible story of the stoning of a young married woman in a small Iranian village, on the basis of her husband's patently trumped-up charges of adultery, has finally been told, and told powerfully (and with excellent production values), on the big screen.
Originally described in 1990 in a book by a French-Iranian journalist named Freidoune Sahejam, this stunning adaptation is the work of first-time director Cyrus Nowrasteh, an American-born graduate of the USC film school, who knows what film technique is all about.
Adventurous indie distributors should definitely give this film a look, especially those with an interest in human-rights or women's issues. It would also be a natural for film festivals around the world and should do extremely well in the ancillary market, especially with sales to colleges.
Iran officially denies that stoning takes place there, but independent evidence indicates otherwise. In any case, one problem the film might encounter is that in the present environment it could certainly be construed as an anti-Islamic work, since virtually everyone in the film (certainly all the males) are presented as villains.
The story is related as a flashback told to the French journalist, the day after the event took place, by Zahra, Soraya's close friend. The latter is played by the excellent and well-known Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, who was nominated for an Oscar in 2004 for her work in "The House of Sand and Fog."
Soraya's husband Ali wants to divorce her to marry a tempting pre-teen girl who's been offered to him, but Soraya refuses to agree until she can earn enough money to support her and her two sons. Ali gets impatient, however, and blackmails the local ayatollah (a former hatchet-man for the Shah) into helping him. Soraya's uneducated employer Hashem is easily intimidated into testifying that she had "slept in his bed," and the wishy-washy mayor goes along with the obviously phony charges.
The film itself is presented with the stateliness and inevitability of Greek tragedy, and the nobility with which Soraya accepts her fate is reminiscent of the grandest of Italian operas. It's obviously meant as a fable, a cautionary tale, and can't be judged by the usual criteria of realism, especially the pure villains like her husband Ali.
Given the title of the film, we all know exactly what is going to happen, and the film's strategy is to slowly draw out the horrifying details: the gathering of the stones; her burial standing up, as far up her waist; the forcing of her two sons to abjure her and throw stones themselves; and of course the chilling spectacle of the blood lust of the mob.
The editing is a bit overdone at times (especially when the cuts are amateurish and unnecessary), as is the occasionally melodramatic music track, though the ambient sounds on the soundtrack are brilliantly done. In any case, it's a powerful, shocking piece, and the denunciation of a system in which an accused woman has to prove her own innocence (while in the case of a man, his guilt has to be proven by others), is strong and clear and unforgettable.
Review
The Iraq war has been dramatized on film many times, and those films have been ignored just as many times by theatre audiences. But Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” is the most skillful and emotionally involving picture yet made about the conflict. The film, from a script by Mark Boal, has a new subject: the heroism of the men who defuse improvised explosive devices, sloppily made but lethal bombs planted under a bag or a pile of garbage or just beneath the dirt of a Baghdad street. Bigelow stages one prolonged and sinister shoot-out in the desert, but the movie couldn’t be called a combat film, nor is it political, except by implication—a mutual distrust between American occupiers and Iraqi citizens is there in every scene. The specialized nature of the subject is part of what makes it so powerful, and perhaps American audiences worn out by the mixed emotions of frustration and repugnance inspired by the war can enjoy this film without ambivalence or guilt. “The Hurt Locker” narrows the war to the existential confrontation of man and deadly threat.
Over and over, Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), following a tip-off, walks to a bomb site in a heavy protective suit and tries to figure out how to pull apart clumsily tangled wires and flimsy triggering devices. We’ve seen James’s predecessor die on the job: a man watching him from a nearby store detonated a bomb with a cell phone. As James goes in, slowly, under a hot sun, treading like a spaceman through trash-filled streets, people gather in doorways or look out windows. Which of them is hostile, which friendly, which merely curious? The two other members of James’s team, the frightened young Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) and the wary, experienced Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), cover James, screaming at anyone who moves. The two men feel entirely vulnerable; they both admire and detest James, who pulls them into situations they would rather leave to someone else.
In the past, Kathryn Bigelow, now fifty-seven, has outdone the macho movie boys at their own game. In her “Blue Steel” (1989), as Jamie Lee Curtis, playing a cop, geared up for a day’s work, Bigelow focussed on her revolver, her leather holster, and her shoes, in gleaming closeup. The sequence hovered somewhere between fetish and parody. Bigelow went into the ocean with Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves in the surfer-crime movie “Point Break” (1991), and brought off scenes of languorously slo-mo destruction in the cultish sci-fi crime movie “Strange Days” (1995). By the mid-nineties, I had her figured as a violence junkie with a strong tendency to stylize everything into stunning images that didn’t always mean much. As a filmmaker, Bigelow is still obsessed with violence, but she’s become a master at staging it. In “The Hurt Locker,” there are no wasted shots or merely beautiful images. As Eldridge and Sanborn jerk their guns this way and that at a bomb scene, Bigelow, working with the great cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, jerks the camera around, too. She wants us to be there, to feel the danger, the mystery.
This kind of immediacy is commonplace in action filmmaking, but, unlike so many directors today, who jam together crashes, explosions, and people sailing through the air in nonsensical montages of fantasy movement, Bigelow keeps the space tight and coherent. No matter how many times she cuts away, you know exactly where James is in relation to a bomb—whether he’s in the kill zone or far enough away to be safe. (You can’t break up the integrity of space when space is the subject of your movie.) And Bigelow prolongs the moment, stretching out our anxiety almost to the point at which it becomes pain. “The Hurt Locker” is quite a feat: in this period of antic fragmentation, Bigelow has restored the wholeness of time and space as essentials for action. Occasionally, a plaintive reader writes me a note after I’ve panned some violent fantasy movie and says something like “Some of us like explosions. Ease up.” Well, I like these explosions, because I believe in them. Realism has its thrills, too.
The insistence on plainness, the absence of stylization, carries over to the performances as well. Jeremy Renner has played the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and many minor roles in action movies. He has a round face, with a beautiful smile that he mostly keeps hidden, and a strong but unglamorous body. Bigelow’s idea in casting him, I think, was to make her star a competent but physically ordinary American serviceman whose greatest gifts are within. William James, it turns out, is implacably heroic. He never steps away from danger. You might say that he’s drawn to it and needs it, but he never makes a fuss about what he’s doing. His charisma consists of having no obvious charisma except phenomenal concentration and guts. And since he knows, handling bombs, when to be cautious and when not to be, he can be hair-raisingly casual, tossing aside a disabled device as if it were an empty juice carton. At one point, he shucks his headset, too, and Sanborn, who needs to stay in touch with what James is doing, is so enraged that he slugs him. In the nineteen-fifties, Aldo Ray played men like William James—war lovers, completely at home on the battlefield but hapless in the normal relations of life. (When James and his partners relax and get drunk, the only way they can show their affection is to punch one another in the stomach.) But Ray’s military men were unreachable, stone-cold killers, while James has strong emotions, which he keeps pent up.
Review
Jennifer Lynch's morbid thriller "Surveillance" begins with masked intruders killing people and the slaughter never stops. It's been 15 years since David Lynch's daughter gave the world "Boxing Helena," but she hasn't lost her interest in minds that are seriously demented.
Somewhere in the desert, two flamboyantly reckless killers are leaving a trail of death including that of a local police officer. His colleagues are not best pleased when two assured FBI agents show up to interview three witnesses to the most recent carnage.
With a high splatter quotient and many scenes of deviant humiliation, the film will have its fans even if the eventual twist hardly comes as a surprise and probably isn't meant to. "Surveillance" will please the B-movie crowd in theaters and on into the ancillaries.
Police Captain Billings (Michael Ironside) and his men are not happy at all when FBI Agents Elizabeth Anderson (Julia Ormond) and Sam Hallaway (Bill Pullman) arrive to take over a case they are keen to solve. It doesn't help that for all their professionalism the two feds appear to be very tightly wound.
Hallaway separates the three witnesses -- a female druggie (Pell James), a little girl (Ryan Simpkins) and a wounded police officer (co-scripter and producer Kent Harper) -- and watches them via camera as they relate the horrific incident on a deserted road in which five people were slain.
Each has a different take on what transpired but the agents have reason to believe which ones are lying as the story unfolds in flashbacks.
The film looks great with cinematographer Peter Wunstorf using different stock and inventive angles to good effect while Todd Bryanton's score helps maintain a constant undercurrent of dread. Lynch fills the screen with elements that some viewers of the film will want to go back to watch more than once, although not this one.
Review
Bottom Line: Crash, bang, wallop as the machines sweep in for another cataclysm.
LONDON -- Designed to give devoted fans of the 2007 "Transformers," which grossed more than $700 million worldwide, more of the same, Michael Bay's sequel "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a nonstop whirl of flying, battling and crashing machinery.
Characters and comedy are in short supply in a plot that's basically an Indiana Jones-style search for a buried treasure, in this case a 1,000-year-old matrix that will give life back to Optimus Prime, one of the alien robots who is on the side of humans in their fight against the evil Decepticons who are out to destroy them.
With Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox back as the leads and massive battles involving ships, planes, tanks, rockets and industrial level shape-changing machines, the film will make another huge dent in the global boxoffice.
With its intelligence at the level of the simple-minded, however, the film is not likely to attract moviegoers who seek something more than a screen filled with kaleidoscopes of colored metal. Fan boys will no doubt love it, but for the uninitiated it's loud, tedious and, at 147 minutes, way too long.
LaBeouf's nerdy character Sam is off to college in this one. He barely has time to meet his new roommates before the war games begin. Fox's hot-chick car mechanic Mikaela has come to visit, and the two are soon off on the international hunt for the missing matrix.
Sam's nitwit parents (Kevin Dunn, Julie White) are on holiday in Europe. They also get involved along with college fellow Leo (Ramon Rodriguez) and eventually Simmons (John Turturro), a former agent who now works at his mother's butcher shop. Rainn Wilson is wasted in one scene as a snarky professor.
Tyrese Gibson and Josh Duhamel return as stalwart soldiers, and there's the expected army of cars, trucks, assorted vehicles and mechanical implements that can become nasty metallic beasts in a flash. The long climax takes place in the Egyptian desert with ancient secrets to be found inside the pyramids with explosions going off all around.
Bay's team of four editors stitch together smashing but meaningless images, though it's as difficult to make out which machine is which as it is to tell what anyone is saying. The noise level -- not helped by Steve Jablonsky's relentless score -- is super-intense and everyone yells lines at high speed. Because nothing they're saying makes any sense, it's hardly important.
LaBeouf gets little chance to show what charm he might have. Meanwhile, Fox has little to do except look great in a tank top and tight jeans while running in slow motion through flying sand.
Review
“Comedy,” Jerry Lewis or some other professional wisenheimer once said, “is a man in trouble.” In Harold Ramis’s “Year One,” a thoroughly, sometimes gaggingly broad and sly conceptual laugh-in laced-with-jokes — about God, poop, circumcision, female underarm hair and the state of Israel — comedy is two men dressed in animal skins and neck deep in shtick. Set in what looks like a succession of B-movie studio sets, the film brings to mind a Hope and Crosby road movie, though only if Bob and Bing, after studying the Bible as children and reading Nietzsche as adults, were grappling with issues of faith.
Filling Hope and Crosby’s clown shoes nicely in “Year One” are Jack Black and Michael Cera as Paleolithic tribesmen. Zed (Mr. Black) is an inept hunter with a wayward spear while Oh (Mr. Cera) is a gentle gatherer who murmurs sweet nothings to his berries. After Zed is banished by the tribe for his blunders, the two hit a surrealistic road that takes them from the forest to the desert with stops along the prehistory and history continuum. Before they depart, however, Zed bites into a golden apple he plucks from the forbidden tree of knowledge, a defiant act that awakens his mind. “Everything is weird,” he declares with philosophical purity. Not long after he is down on his hands and knees sampling human scat.
Everything is indeed weird in Mr. Ramis’s highbrow slapstick, in which theological questions are smuggled in between silly bits about excrement and body hair. Much as Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner did with the 2,000 Year Old Man, Mr. Ramis, who wrote the screenplay with Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, is playing with history, or rather with the serious stories familiar from religious instruction and Hollywood epics. “Is it true that you were at the scene of the Crucifixion some 2,000 years ago?” Mr. Reiner asks the 2,000 Year Old Man. “Oh, boy! I knew Christ,” Mr. Brooks replies. “Thin lad. Always wore sandals. Hung around with 12 other guys. They came in the store, no one ever bought anything. Once they asked for water.”
In “Year One” Zed and Oh keep up a similarly nonsensical running conversation during their travels, which take them first to a meadow where they meet two pastoral types, one of whom has a really bad attitude. That would be Cain (David Cross), who’s soon brutally whaling on his brother, Abel (Paul Rudd). (“You want some of that?”) Er, spoiler alert! Cain kills Abel, beating him to death with a rock. Mr. Ramis stages the murder with so many (off-screen) blows that the scene rapidly morphs from funny to queasily humorous to just plain unpleasant before rebounding to the uneasily comic. Mr. Ramis likes to push humor to its tasteless edge, but the violence here feels almost personal, as if he were wielding that rock.
In some ways that’s precisely what he’s doing in “Year One,” which, as Zed and Oh amble through different historical periods and Bible stories, takes knowing and often profane swats at the sacred. Cain proves to be a real pest (a nice observation on the persistence of evil), and things go from bad to worse. Zed and Oh are sold into slavery and marched across the desert by Romans with British accents. They escape, only to inadvertently persuade Abraham (Hank Azaria wearing a long glued-on beard) not to slay Isaac (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Jokes about snipped foreskins and the Holy Land’s borders ensue, as does a trip to Sodom, leading to an assortment of predictable, if unprintable, puns and yuks.
In his 1981 satire “The History of the World, Part I,” Mr. Brooks revisits the past, starting with the dawn of hirsute man and ending with the French Revolution, tossing in some religious broadsides along the way. Mr. Ramis, by contrast, fashions a seamless narrative from Zed and Oh’s adventures, jettisoning the usual time frames associated with these foundation stories to create something of an ahistorical collage. In this film Stone Age man walks alongside Roman centurions and heroes and villains from the Old Testament, which suggests that when Mr. Ramis hasn’t been listening to old comedy routines he’s been boning up on the debate about evolution versus creationism. Riffing on the movie’s title: in the beginning there were multiple beginnings, each good for lots of laughs.
For the most part those laughs are generous, tasteless, groaningly goofy and irresistible, though I wish the filmmakers had resisted the temptation to sacrifice, for an unnecessary gag, a Sodomite priest (Oliver Platt) who had taken a liking to Oh. By that point the film has run out of steam, having mined various B-movie clichés (the kind in which prehistoric women wear eyeliner) and even taken a time out for a discourse on God. I would like to think that the final scene, which finds Mr. Ramis playing Noah and sending Zed and Oh off with female mates, was a lazy afterthought, simply an admission of how the past was written. Here’s hoping that in “Year Two” the Stone Age finally gives way to Stonewall.
“Year One” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Violent sacrifices and excremental snacks.
Review
How are the elements of the charming,
traditional romantic comedy The Proposal like the checklist of a charming, traditional bride? Let me count the ways...
Something old: The story of a haughty woman and an exasperated man who hate each other — until they realize they love each other — is proudly square, in the tradition of rom-coms from the 1940s and '50s. Or is it straight out of Shakespeare's 1590s? Sandra Bullock is the shrew, Margaret, a pitiless, high-powered New York book editor first seen multitasking in the midst of her aerobic workout (thus you know she needs to get...loved). Ryan Reynolds is Andrew, her put-upon foil of an executive assistant, a younger man who accepts abuse as a media-industry hazing ritual. And there the two would remain, locked in mutual disdain, except for Margaret's fatal flaw — she's Canadian. (So is X-Men's Wolverine; I thought our neighbors to the north were supposed to be nice.) Margaret, with her visa expired, faces deportation and makes the snap
executive decision to marry Andrew in a green-card wedding. It's an offer the underling can't refuse if he wants to keep his job. (A sexual-harassment lawsuit would ruin the movie's mood.) Okay, he says. But first comes a visit to the groom-to-be's family in Alaska. Amusing complications ensue.
Something new: The chemical energy between Bullock and Reynolds is fresh and irresistible. In her mid-40s, Bullock has finessed her dewy America's Sweetheart comedy skills to a mature, pearly texture; she's lovable both as an uptight careerist in a pencil skirt and stilettos, and as a lonely lady in a flapping plaid bathrobe. Reynolds, meanwhile, is just refining his dry comedy thing, learning to get the most from his deceptive cute-face looks. Who knew these two would, hmmm, complete each other? Working together, both are surer and more disciplined in delivering their comedy goods.
Something borrowed: The boisterous family dynamics. The eccentric supporting players (none more extreme than Oscar Nuñez from The Office). The snappy screwball
dialogue in Pete Chiarelli's script. And the way Anne Fletcher directs like a camp counselor wrangling bunkmates...it's all been seen before. For a reason. These elements work.
Something blue: As the wise and saucy matriarch of the family, the divine 87-year-old Betty White has fun as one hot grandma — and inspires her younger stars to say ''I do,'' too.
Review
Of the many Woody Allen surrogates past—some skilled, others considerably less so—Larry David, the professional curmudgeon behind Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, may be the most philosophically harmonious. Allen and David express their obsessions and neuroses differently—Allen is more nervous and retiring, while David tramples brazenly over social norms—but their misanthropy forms a heavenly chorus during the best moments of Whatever Works, an otherwise wobbly odd-couple comedy. Dusting off an ancient script intended for Zero Mostel three decades ago, Allen tweaks the material enough to supply David with bilious rants about the stupidity and meaninglessness of man and the universe, but not enough to bridge the modern world with dated, All In The Family-style comic stereotyping.
Hobbled by a limp incurred after a failed suicide attempt—jumping from his apartment window, he hit a canopy on the way down—David lives in a shabby basement apartment and spends his days teaching chess to unpromising child prodigies and bloviating about humanity’s shortcomings to anyone who will listen. But like a lot of stock codgers, David has a heart of gold, which shines through when he takes in Evan Rachel Wood, a naïve teenage runaway from deepest Mississippi. Wood proves a malleable hunk of clay for David to shape with his “wisdom,” thanks to her need for a father figure and her willingness to absorb his abuses. Eventually, the two enter into a weirdly platonic marriage—a late reference to Viagra is, mercifully, the only evidence of anything physical—but the arrival of Wood’s conservative, hyper-religious mother (Patricia Clarkson) throws a wrench in the works.
Though Clarkson acquits herself reasonably well in a terribly conceived role, her entrance interrupts David’s hilariously twisted mentorship of Wood and sends the movie careening in a far less promising direction. For a good 40 minutes or so, David all but disappears from the action, leaving the Southern hayseeds alone to undergo an unlikely transformation from Bible-thumpers to bohemians. Whenever the focus falls back on David—sometimes talking straight to the audience in an extremely effective breach of the fourth wall—Whatever Works gives effective voice to Allen’s jaundiced philosophy of life: In a world without order, justice, or any belief systems that are uncorrupted or rational, you do what makes you happy. Then you die.
Review
I'm not generally in the habit of praising movies for being good for you, but Food, Inc. is more than just a terrific documentary — it's an important movie, one that nourishes your knowledge of how the world works. Or, in this case, has started not to work. The director, Robert Kenner, features and builds on the muckraking testimony of Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) to create an essential, disturbing portrait of how the food we eat in America has become a deceptively prefab, even hazardous industrial product.
Kenner doesn't rant. He connects the dots — from the huge, aggressively lobbied government subsidies for corn to the transformation of farms into factories of mass-produced, corn-fed cattle, which are then slaughtered and ground into ''hamburger meat filler,'' which is cleansed with ammonia, all so that we can buy a double cheeseburger for 99 cents. Food, Inc. shows how the use of high-fructose corn syrup in almost every supermarket product is part of the same system that masses chickens in concentration-camp coops, where they're bred for their oversize, flavorless white meat (and you thought breast enhancement was just popular for humans). It all traces back to the assembly-line techniques pioneered by the fast-food industry, which were then adopted everywhere else. A big-picture vision of conglomerate duplicity and control, Food, Inc. is hard to shake, because days after you've seen it, you may find yourself eating something — a cookie, a piece of poultry, cereal out of the box, a perfectly round waxen tomato — and you'll realize that you have virtually no idea what it actually is.
Review
n Dead Snow, a group of Norwegian medical students — pals on an Easter vacation — bunk together in a mountain cabin, ready for fun involving skiing, beer drinking, and sex. What they get is an invasion of WWII-era Nazi zombies who haunt the hills. (The undead bastards are gluttons for dining on guts.) Cheery, silly, splattery, and respectful of its elders (and betters, particularly Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead), this bloody/cheesy subtitled Scandinavian lark is written and directed
by Tommy Wirkola, who has a nice touch with severed limbs.
Review
Depending on what you think of "Cars," Pixar makes it either 9½ out of 10 or 10 for 10 with "Up," a captivating odd-couple adventure that becomes funnier and more exciting as it flies along. Tale of an unlikely journey to uncharted geographic and emotional territory by an old codger and a young explorer could easily have been cloying, but instead proves disarming in its deep reserves of narrative imagination and surprise, as well as its poignant thematic balance of dreams deferred and dreams fulfilled. Lack of overtly fantastical elements might endow "Up" with a somewhat lower initial must-see factor than some summer releases. But like all of Pixar's features, this one will enjoy a rewardingly long ride in all venues and formats. Pete Docter's picture has the privilege of being the first animated film to open the Cannes Film Festival, on May 13.
The two leading men are 78 and 8 years old, and the age range of those who will appreciate the picture is even a bit wider than that. Like previous classic films about escape from the mundane, from "The Wizard of Oz" to "Wall-E" and many in between, "Up" is universal in its appeal. At the same time, it may be the most subtle Pixar production to date in its use of color schemes, shapes, proportions, scale, contrast and balance, factors highlighted by the application of 3-D, which will be available at many initial engagements.
The ghost of Chaplin hovered over "Wall-E," and although "Up" is a more talkative film, it also delves back into earlier eras for inspiration. The first thing on view is a mock '30s-style black-and-white Movietone newsreel documenting the exploits of maverick explorer Charles Muntz, who heads back to South America to redeem himself after a giant bird skeleton he presents in the U.S. is denounced as a fraud.
Not long after comes an exquisite interlude that, in less than five minutes, encapsulates the life-long love affair between Carl Fredericksen and his wife Ellie in a manner worthy of even the most poetic of silent-film directors. The two were brought together by their mutual enthusiasm for Muntz, and it remained Ellie's lifelong dream to emulate the adventurer and travel to Paradise Falls in South America.
But life has other plans, and Ellie must settle for a happy life with balloon-seller Carl (voiced by Ed Asner). When she dies, she leaves behind a scrapbook as well as a very grumpy widower, who retreats into self-enforced exile. With heavy-rimmed black glasses, thick white hair and eyebrows, bulbous nose, square jaw and a scrunched body that looks like it's been through a compactor, old Carl resembles a cross between Spencer Tracy and Walter Matthau at the ends of their careers. He wants no company, content to live out his days in the house he shared with Ellie, which becomes surrounded by giant construction projects.
Finally faced with eviction, Carl concocts a plan. In a surprising and brilliantly visual sequence, thousands of colored balloons hatch from behind the house, prying it from its foundation and carrying it skyward; Carl intends to fly it to South America, fulfilling Ellie's dream.
However, he's got an unplanned passenger in the form of Russell (Jordan Nagai), a roly-poly, eager-beaver Junior Wilderness Explorer who's previously tried to enlist the old goat's help to win him a badge. The trip goes uneventfully — no time wasted on navigational challenges — the better to quickly achieve the destination. The arrival is stunningly portrayed, with thick fog clearing to reveal bizarre rock formations atop a mesa adjacent to the falls (designs were inspired by Angel Falls, the world's highest, and the actual tepui mountains around the juncture of Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana — the location of Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World"). Carl and Russell quickly come upon the very sort of rare bird Muntz went back to find decades before, a brilliantly plumed, gawky 13-footer they name Kevin.
Kevin's antics throughout are so humorous and beautifully animated they would be at home in a "Looney Tunes" highlights reel, as would a breed of attack dogs commanded by Muntz himself (Christopher Plummer), who sends the canines in search of the elusive bird.
At just 89 minutes, "Up" is unusually short for a Pixar film, and the action climax comes on rapidly. One setpiece features the two old-timers, Carl and the swashbuckling Muntz, going mano a mano aboard the latter's spectacular, zeppelin-like flying ship, and numerous vertigo-producing shots show characters clinging for dear life.
Although the cliffhanger effects are augmented by 3-D projection, never do Docter ("Monsters, Inc.") and co-director Bob Peterson shove anything in the viewer's face just because of its 3-D potential. In fact, the film's overall loveliness presents a conceivable argument in favor of seeing it in 2-D: Even with the strongest possible projector bulbs, the 3-D glasses reduce the image's brightness by 20%. At the very least, the incentive for seeing "Up" in 3-D would seem less powerful than it is for other films.
Despite the sheer volume of incident and action required of any film that includes young kids as a major portion of its target audience, "Up" is an exceptionally refined picture; unlike so many animated films, it's not all about sensory bombardment and volume. As Pixar's process is increasingly analyzed, the more one appreciates the care that goes into the writing. The underlying carpentry here is so strong, it seems it would be hard to go too far wrong in the execution.
Unsurprisingly, no one puts a foot wrong here. Vocal performances, most importantly from Asner, Plummer and nonpro Nagai, exude a warm enthusiasm, and tech specifications could not be better. Michael Giacchino's full-bodied, traditional score is superlative, developing beautiful themes as it sweeps the action along on emotional waves.
Camera (Technicolor and Deluxe prints, 3-D), Patrick Lin; lighting, Jean-Claude Kalache; editor, Kevin Nolting; music, Michael Giacchino; production designer, Ricky Nierva; story supervisor, Ronnie Del Carmen; supervising technical director, Steve May; supervising animator, Scott Clark; sound designer (Dolby Digital/SDDS/DTS), Tom Myers; supervising sound editors, Michael Silvers, Myers; re-recording mixers, Michael Semanick, Myers; associate producer, Denise Ream; casting, Kevin Reher, Natalie Lyon. Reviewed at Disney Studios, Burbank, May 6, 2009. (In Cannes Film Festival — opener.) MPAA Rating: PG. Running time: 89 MIN.
Description
If a one-eyed gypsy with very bad teeth asks you for anything, and really, I cannot emphasize this enough, say yes. Don't waver, don't bargain; anything short of yes could put you on a fast track to damnation as surely as a broken mirror will bring you seven years of bad luck.
Look at what happens to Christine, a very good egg boiled to perfection by circumstance and a lot of good work by Alison Lohman. One bad decision and suddenly director Sam Raimi throws her under the bus of his terrific new horror film, "Drag Me to Hell."
If you've been worried that Raimi's decade spent spinning the "Spider-Man" web might have caused him to go soft, well stop. The director who gave us the "Evil Dead" trilogy is back with a vengeance that rivals the one-eyed gypsy I warned you about.
With that fire in his belly, Raimi's "Drag Me to Hell" does everything we want a horror film to do: It is fearsomely scary, wickedly funny and diabolically gross, three stomach-churning states that argue for taking a pass on the $10 box of popcorn. Which also makes the movie an excellent economic investment in these tough times.
I mention the economy because Raimi has made it an issue at the heart of "Drag Me to Hell," in the spirit of campy cultural commentary that good horror can do so well. The director and his brother Ivan began the script 10 years ago before Peter Parker's many tribulations in Spidey tights sidelined it. If the Raimis really are as prescient as "Drag Me" would suggest, I'd like to put in a good word for them to be added to the Obama economic recovery team.
You see, Christine is a lending agent at a bank and ambition has made her desperate for a promotion. The gypsy is old Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver), who just wants a little of the candy on Christine's desk and another extension on her home loan. Sounds reasonable to me. And it did to Christine too until her boss (David Paymer) hints that if she is serious about that promotion . . .
So good, decent Christine goes against her better judgment and denies Mrs. Ganush's request. Bad choice, Christine. Before she can begin what will be a long string of "I'm sorrys," that become "How dare yous," there's a curse on her head and the nightmare begins. Not too many scenes later you may find yourself wondering if the title was meant to refer to Christine or the rest of us.
Against all the craziness that any decent ghost story conjures up, there has to be the rational voice. In "Drag Me," it comes from the Mac guy, Justin Long, who I'm sure will one day have a role that will turn his Apple ad stint into nothing more than a footnote, but this won't be it.
As the very proper professor Clay Dalton, Long is torn between what he knows is reality and his increasingly delusional girlfriend's belief that she's got just a few days to fend off the devil who's nipping at her heels. Clay doesn't have what it takes to fight off demons anyway, assuming he even believed in them, but he's a good boyfriend, willing to humor Christine even when he thinks she's completely lost her mind.
In Mrs. Ganush, Raimi and Raver have created a horrific otherworldly fiend that can hold her own against the best of the Freddy Kruegers of the world. This is one woman who can roar (still, I do worry that given the slimy dentures, projectile vomiting and that really bad temper, Raver won't be doing lunch in town any time soon). Other evil forces are churned up by that angry curse and rise too; the particularly deadly dark spirit called Lamia is the one to worry about.
Though the film has echoes of Raimi's earlier and much loved "Evil Dead" series -- especially what he does with mischief-making, chill-inducing wind -- "Drag Me to Hell" should not be dismissed as yet another horror flick just for teens. The filmmakers have given us a 10-story winding staircase of psychological tension that is making very small circles near the end. Though Christine is technically the one doing the climbing, it's nearly impossible not to feel like she's dragging us right along with her, which is after all the point.
There are all manner of grisly things that Christine must deal with before it is finished, but it's really grisly-lite, nothing like the torture-porn of the "Hostel" series or the bodies-on-meat-hooks style of sadomasochism you find in "Hellraiser."
When Raimi says Lohman is in virtually every scene except the opening historical note, he's not exaggerating. In broad strokes, because you should experience the fear and loathing of the specifics for yourself, she must decide exactly how far she is willing to go to stay alive. There is one point that risks having sympathy turn to antipathy, and I'm betting that a contingent of the audience won't be able to get past it, but Lohman, with her strange blend of apple pie sweetness and business school pragmatism, is the right one for the job, making sure most of us stay on Christine's side.
From the stuff that is driven into and through bodies to the stuff that comes out of them and all the other strange things that go bump in the night, the look of the film is a studied balance between over-the-top camp and believable enough moments that, taken together, might give you a few sleepless nights. A certain grave-site scene demonstrates both nicely, so a special shout-out to the vast teams that handled the stunts, the effects, the makeup and the rest of it.
Horror might not be your thing, but if you can push through the fear, stomach the gross and just let yourself go with it, the payoff is experiencing a filmmaker totally in his element. Raimi is having the time of his life -- he knows exactly what he's doing with every scene and every scream. He's confident, he's smiling. If he has us squirming in our seats, then so much the better.
Review
Most of the events in Yojiro Takita’s “Departures” flow from a comical misunderstanding. After a Tokyo orchestra is disbanded, an earnest young cellist, Daigo, seeks a new line of work in the provinces, spots a help-wanted ad for a company that deals in departures and assumes it to be some sort of travel agency. In fact, the company is a one-man operation that deals in encoffination—the ceremonial preparation of corpses for cremation—and the owner wants to hire an assistant. Still, Daigo’s assumption isn’t completely off the mark. The job takes him and his wife, Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) on a guided tour to the far country of death and dying, with frequent stops for beguiling comedy along the road.
Here’s to humor in all its manifestations, whether as the glint in the jaundiced eye of a horror flick or as the indispensable leavening of this gorgeous drama, which won an Oscar earlier this year as the best foreign language film of 2008. Daigo is, at the outset, a chronic screw-up who can’t bring himself to tell his wife what he does in his new position, can’t even get a grip on a cake of soap in a public bath. (He’s there to expunge the chemical smell of his trade.) Slowly, though, in a film that’s mostly slow-paced, the self-doubting boy comes into manhood under the tutelage of his boss, a consummate professional who can advertise his services with a huckster’s flair, yet consider them with a philosopher’s gravity. (He’s played by the wonderfully taciturn Tsutomu Yamazaki, who was the trucker, Goro, in “Tampopo.”)
Occasionally the story turns manipulative, or self-conscious: I could have done without the hero playing his cello in picturesque fields near snow-capped mountains, though his musical yearnings perfectly complement the movie’s main theme of spiritual growth. (Joe Hisaishi did the splendid score.) But the rituals that Daigo learns to perform are literally spellbinding. While the family and friends of the deceased watch silently, the encoffiner uses elaborate gestures that might be those of a magician or a sommelier to wash and dress the body, yet does it all with exquisite tenderness. In one of the movie’s most beautiful moments, Mika comes to understand Daigo’s quiet professionalism, and to love the soulful man her young husband has become. But beautiful moments abound. In “Departures,” the contemplation of death prepares the way for an appreciation of life.
Review
Since "Angels & Demons" depends on a split-second schedule and a ticking time bomb that could destroy the Vatican, it's a little distracting when the Camerlengo, a priest entrusted with the pope's duties between papacies, breaks into the locked enclave of the College of Cardinals and lectures them on centuries of church history.
These men, many of them elderly, may face death in minutes, which the Camerlengo knows. The Commander of the Swiss Guard thinks he can evacuate the Vatican and the hundreds of thousands of faithful waiting in St. Peter's Square in 15 minutes before an explosion vaporizes "a big chunk of Rome," but frankly we in the audience think a lot of monsignors back home are going to receive promotions real soon.
Since very few plot details in the film are remotely plausible, including its desperate chase across Rome, the history lesson is excusable. Having been told about the long war between the church and the Illuminati, and religion and science, we are grateful for the briefing, even if the cardinals already know most of the history. This kind of film requires us to be very forgiving, and if we are, it promises to entertain. "Angels & Demons" succeeds.
It's based on a novel that came before The DaVinci Code in Dan Brown's oeuvre, but is set afterward. Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is back at Harvard when
he is summoned from a swimming pool by an emissary from the Vatican and flown to Rome to face a crisis. Earlier, we learned, a rare, sealed vial of anti-matter was stolen from the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, and a note taking credit comes from the Illuminati, a secret society that has long hated the Catholic Church because of the days when it persecuted Galileo and other scientists.
A "popular and progressive" pope has just died. The cardinals have been summoned to elect his successor. Four of them, the preferati, the favorites to be next pope, have been kidnapped. They will be executed in succession at 8, 9, 10 and 11 p.m., until the battery on the anti-matter vial runs out of juice at midnight and the faithful will see more than a puff of white smoke above the Vatican. I don't recall if the Illuminati had any demands. Maybe it just wants revenge.
In that case, why hide the vial at the end of a trail that can only be followed by clues discovered or intuited by Professor Langdon? Why not just blow up the place? What is the purpose of the scavenger hunt? Has it all been laboriously constructed as a test of Langdon's awesome knowledge? Are the Illuminati trying to get even after Langdon foiled Opus Dei, another secret society, in "The DaVinci Code"?
I don't know, and, reader, there is no time to care. Langdon uses his knowledge of Illuminati symbols to follow the trail though four Rome churches. He has uncanny luck. He spots and correctly identifies every clue, even though they're very well-hidden. Just as well, because one dungeon overlooked or one statue pointing the wrong way, and he loses. For his companion, Langdon has the beautiful and brilliant Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) from CERN. Her father was murdered in the anti-matter theft. Her purpose is (a) to explain that the battery will indeed run down, (b) request her father's secret journals from Geneva, although they are never read, and (c) run along everywhere with Tom Hanks, to provide him with urgent conversation.
Meanwhile, there is intrigue within the Vatican and lots of red herrings among all the red hats. The young Camerlengo (Ewan McGregor), the adopted son of the late pontiff, joins the professor's desperate quest, as does the commander (Stellan Skarsgard) of the pope's protectors, the Swiss Guard. Inside the conclave, Cardinal Strauss (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is in charge of the election. Because of his sinister mien (I love the phrase sinister mien), German accent and absolutist views on church tradition, he seems set up to be a suspect, since the progressive pope's death may have been an inside job. (I forgot to mention that there has also been time to exhume the pontiff's remains and discover evidence of poisoning.)
All of this happens at breakneck speed, with little subtlety, but with fabulous production values. The interiors of the Sistine Chapel, the Pantheon, churches, tombs and crypts are rendered dramatically, the College of Cardinals looks both (a) very impressive, and (b) like a collection of elderly extras from Cinecitta.
The film by no means tilts the conflict between science and religion one way or the other. The professor is not religious, indeed seems agnostic, but the church, however, is not portrayed as anti-science. Galileo would be happy that there is now a Vatican Observatory. If the Illuminati are indeed scientists, they would better employ themselves not avenging ancient deeds, but attacking modern fundamentalist cults.
The professor has a fascinating exchange with the Camerlengo, who asks him if he believes in God. He believes, he says, that the existence is God is beyond his mind to determine. "And your heart?" asks the priest. "My heart is not worthy." Agnostics and believers can both find something to agree with there; director Ron Howard does an even-handed job of balancing the scales.
So good, indeed, that even after Howard accused the church of refusing him access to Vatican locations, and although the dependable William Donohue of the Catholic League has attacked his film, "Angels & Demons" received a favorable review from the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, which wrote it is a "harmless entertainment which hardly affects the genius and mystery of Christianity."
And come on, Ron: Would you expect the church to let you shoot a Dan Brown thriller in the Sistine Chapel? Get real.
Review
The jaunty, energetic first 10 minutes of ” The Brothers Bloom” are easily the best first 10 minutes of any film I’ve seen this year. And while the succeeding hour and 43 minutes doesn’t hold up to the movie’s opening scenes, the whole endeavor is still an awfully good time.
Writer/director Rian Johnson pitched “Brothers” after the surprise success of his freshman effort, “Brick,” which was the cinematic equivalent of rapidly downing 25 espresso shots. With “Brothers,” Johnson has eased back considerably, combining his trademark energetic patter with moments of genuine pathos. He has ample help from the Dream Cast, which includes Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody as the titular brothers and Rachel Weisz as the putative love interest-slash-mark. Weisz and Johnson, among others, will be on the red carpet tonight for the opener of the Chicago International Film Festival, which runs through Oct. 29.
Abandoned and unloved as children, Stephen Bloom and his younger brother bounce from town to town, and foster home to foster home, perfecting card tricks and dreaming up ways to separate their classmates from their allowances. As the boys drift, they each hone a Big Dream. Stephen, brains and brawn of the operation, fantasizes about the Ultimate Con, while his angst-filled brother’s deepest desire is more elemental: to Truly Know Himself beyond the confines of Stephen’s meticulous schemes.
Twenty-five years later, the brothers have matured into world-class confidence men, with a global network of accomplices, co-conspirators and, naturally, enemies. Shadowed by The Curator (Robbie Coltrane, channeling Peter Sellers) and accompanied by Bang Bang, a laconic pyrotechnician (“Babel’s” Rinko Kikuchi), they travel the world in search of great marks. When the game is up, they throw super-awesome post-con wrap parties.
One day, the brothers meet Penelope (Weisz), and from the carefully orchestrated moment she drives her canary-yellow Lamborghini into Brody’s bicycle, their cons take on new meaning. (I’ll abandon the synopsis here for fear of undermining anyone’s enjoyment of the movie’s who’s-conning-whom plot twists.
Ruffalo reportedly had to be convinced he was the right actor for the role of Stephen Bloom, which requires a Clooney-esque rakishness—not something we generally get from the low-key Ruffalo. He needn’t have worried; his performance is great fun to watch. Brody, who might as well put a trademark on his Super Soulful Gaze (used to great effect on Weisz’s Penelope), plays the younger Bloom as a watchful follower slowly coming into himself. And Weisz—much like her compatriot Kate Winslet—combines a luminous screen presence with a muscular, confident acting style.
Johnson, whose light hand belies his unusual attention to comic detail, deserves kudos for delivering a genuinely funny, sharply observed, emotionally resonant crime caper—one that lapses only occasionally into preciousness. His characters, despite their eccentric lives, wrestle with the same mundane questions that keep the rest of us up at night: Whom can I trust? What does love mean? How much C-4 explosive does it take to blow up an entire castle?
Johnson cites “The Sting” and “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” as influences on his film, but he may owe a much greater debt to Wes Anderson: “Brothers’ ” blend of quirky realism and fantastical touches is highly reminiscent of “The Royal Tenenbaums” and, to a lesser extent, “The Darjeeling Express.”
In either case, of course, “Brothers Bloom” is in very good company.
Review
Sometimes casting has everything to do with a movie. In the usual course of events, a high-powered company sales executive wouldn't have much to do with Mike, the hapless loser who works and lives at the Arizona motel where she plans to spend one night. But cast Steve Zahn as the loser, and it becomes thinkable.
In "Management," the sales rep is Sue (Jennifer Aniston), who is upward-bound, successful, sharply dressed and reduced to spending her evenings in remote motels, playing games on her laptop. Sue is every woman he ever wanted but has never had, which is easy, because he wants all women and has never had any. Mike is a nice guy, often stoned, under the thumb of his parents who own the motel. He looks at her with the lovestruck eyes of a wet puppy.
Why and how they end up in the laundry room doing the rumpy-pumpy on a dryer is something "Management" takes for granted. Sometimes, apparently, high-powered Manhattan career women swoon in the presence of a guy who looks like he should be pumping their gas. His courtship technique is cute: He checks her in, carries her bags, brings her flowers, knocks again with the "customary" house bottle of champagne, uncorks it, gets two plastic-wrapped glasses from the bathroom and struggles to say several coherent words in a row.
We can more or less predict where all of this will lead. Mike is obviously the fish out of water, so he must travel to New York to dramatize his unsuitability. Then Sue must travel to Washington, where she sees Jango (Woody Harrelson), who is a former punk rocker who has become a yogurt millionaire (for Harrelson, this is typecasting). Then Mike must follow her there.
He's not a stalker, you understand. He only wants to lick her hand, curl up at her feet and be thrown a Milk-Bone when he's been a good boy. It is Aniston's task to make us believe Sue might be won over by this task and because she succeeds, "Management" works as a sweet rom-com with some fairly big laughs.
What's nice is to see Zahn playing a guy who's not the dimmest bulb in the chandelier. For some reason, he's often typecast as a stoner dimwit, maybe because he was so good at playing such roles early in his career. Here he's smart enough, just extremely socially challenged. Watch Aniston play off him with her pert intelligence; she could demolish him, but is touched by his lack of defenses.
Fred Ward has a good role here as Mike's father, a perfectionist stuck with a slacker as an heir. Eventually he, too, is touched. That only leaves one question, which first time writer-director Stephen Belber wisely doesn't mine for a subplot: Why did Sue's office travel manager book her into this motel?
Review
Odd Horten (Bard Owe) knows who he is and what he does. He's a driver for the train, and has spent so many years on the same route that he knows it instinctively; he has his work, he has his life. But in Bent Hamer's O' Horten, which played in the Un Certain Regard selection this year at Cannes (and has since been picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics), Horten has to face the fact that his life, as he knows it, is changing; he's hit retirement age, and he simply has no clue what to do next.
Hamer's earlier films had a finely-tuned capacity for observation, perhaps best demonstrated in Eggs (1995) and Kitchen Stories (2003); Hamer's English-language debut, Factotum (2005), took the boozy, woozy prose of Charles Bukowski and put a little air and space in it, turning the alcohol-fueled anger of Bukowski's words which, on the page, hit like a shot of cheap whiskey and turning them into something smoother and finer with the smooth burn of regret going down. In O'Horten, Hamer's back in Norway, and still crafting careful, considered portraits of day to day life, but ones which nonetheless have a deadpan comedy to them, a careful and humane sense of the absurd.
Much like fellow Scandanavian Aki Kaurismaki, Hamer's got a perfectly straight-faced, slow-burn comedic sensibility; unlike Kaurismaki, Hamer keeps things real. When Horten's farewell dinner concludes in a salute from his fellow engineers -- complete with "Choo-Choo" noises and arm motions -- we're smiling, not sneering, because it's as sincere as it is silly. And later, as Horten goes out into the Norwegian night to walk about -- for lack of anything better to do -- his adventures and encounters are funny and warm and human and possible, which makes them all the more funny.
Hamer also has a secret weapon in his leading man; Owe has a warm demeanor; you can tell he smiles easily just looking at him, but he also has a capacity for double-takes so meticulously executed you suspect he has some external mechanism, calibrated in thousandths of a millimeter, controlling his eyebrows. Odd Horten is courtly; he's polite; he's a gentleman. He's also a little sad, and a little lost. In other words, like we are a lot of the time. And Owe makes us believe in him, through a combination of silent-comedy styled timing and physical execution coupled with understated line readings where you can hear the play of many emotions in just a few syllables.
Much of O'Horten feels universal -- regrets, embarrassments, coincidences, unexpected pleasures -- but it also feels very Norwegian; it's wintertime, and we get a sense of Oslo's public spaces and private places. O'Horten doesn't have much of a plot, but then again, if you asked most people for the three-act structure of the day they're having (or the life they're living) I doubt they'd give you much of an answer. O'Horten is a smaller film, a slice of life, but it's so well-done -- so generous and smart and funny and sympathetic -- that it completely wins you over
Summary
The film tells the story of Senn (Justin Long) and Mala (Evan Rachel Wood), two rebellious alien teens living on the beautiful planet Terra, a place that promotes peace and tolerance, having long ago rejected war and weapons of mass destruction. But when Terra is invaded by human beings fleeing a civil war and environmental catastrophe, the planet is plunged into chaos. During the upheaval, Mala befriends an injured human pilot (Luke Wilson) and each learns the two races are not so different from one another. Together they must face the terrifying realization that in a world of limited resources, only one of the races is likely to survive.
Summary
Celebrity photographer Connor Mead loves freedom, fun and women...in that order. A committed bachelor who thinks nothing of breaking up with multiple women on a conference call, Connor's mockery of romance proves a real buzz-kill for his kid brother, Paul, and a houseful of well wishers on the eve of Paul's wedding. Just when it looks like Connor may single-handedly ruin the wedding, he is visited by the ghosts of his former jilted girlfriends, who take him on a revealing and hilarious odyssey through his failed relationships--past, present and future. Together they attempt to find out what turned Connor into such an insensitive jerk and whether there is still hope for him to find true love...or if he really is the lost cause everyone thinks he is.
IMDB RANK = Not ranked yet
Summary
A mysterious loner attempts to successfully complete his criminal mission while operating outside of the law in contemporary Spain. His objectives shrouded in secrecy, the untrusting lone wolf (Isaach de Bankolé) sets out on his latest assignment knowing that the law is never too far behind. Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, and Gael García Bernal co-star in a crime drama from acclaimed indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (Mystery Train, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai)
Summary
Derek Charles (Idris Elba), a successful asset manager who has just received a huge promotion, is blissfully happy in his career and in his marriage to the beautiful Sharon (Beyonce Knowles). But when Lisa (Ali Larter), a temp worker, starts stalking Derek, all the things he's worked so hard for are placed in jeopardy.
Description
Small-town boy Shawn MacArthur (Channing Tatum) has come to New York City with nothing. Barely earning a living selling counterfeit goods on the streets, his luck changes when scam artist Harvey Boarden (Terrence Howard) sees that he has a natural talent for street fighting. When Harvey offers Shawn help at making the real cash, the two form an uneasy partnership.
Description
In "The Soloist," an emotionally soaring drama about the redemptive power of music, journalist Steve Lopez (Oscar nominee Robert Downey Jr.) discovers Nathaniel Anthony Ayers (Oscar winner Jamie Foxx), a former classical music prodigy, playing his violin on the streets of L.A. As Lopez endeavors to help the homeless man find his way back, a unique friendship is formed, one that transforms both their lives. "The Soloist" is directed by Joe Wright (Golden Globe winner for Best Drama and Oscar nominee for Best Picture "Atonement").
Description
In the year 2707, war rages between earth’s four giant corporations as they battle over the planet's dwindling resources. In an era marked by warfare and social regression, the earth is on the verge of ruin, destruction is everywhere; battles explode on every ravaged continent. Amidst heavy combat, an errant shell shatters an ancient buried seal releasing a horrific mutant army from its eternal prison deep within the earth. As the mutant scourge threatens human extinction, a single squad of soldiers descends into the earth to fulfill the ages-old prophesy of the "Mutant Chronicles" and save mankind.
Description
A collection of Bret Easton Ellis' short stories are adapted for the screen by Ellis and Nicholas Jarecki and helmed by Gregor Jordan in The Informers, a Senator Entertainment ensemble film featuring Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, and Winona Ryder. The film observes the goings-on during a week in Los Angeles in 1983, with many intersecting characters including a kidnapper, movie executives, rock stars, and other freewheeling, morally loose individuals. Austin Nichols, Jon Foster, and Amber Heard co-star.
IMDB RANK = Not ranked yet
Description
A pair of professional divers are hired to find Columbus' hidden treasure.
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IMDB RANK = 8/10
Description
As the former assistant manager of Mike Tyson I was shocked at the lies and fabrications Mike told in this movie. I was asked to screen this documentary by ESPN which owns the rights to most of the various Tyson fight videos used in the movie. I was more interested in what Mike had to say. The lies he told were: 1. He was always an addict 2. He was always an alcoholic 3. He always had demons 4. Managers Jacobs and Cayton signed him when he was underage 5. Managers Jacobs and Cayton were slave masters It is obvious that Mike's new manager, Harlan Werner, is just as devious as Robin Givens, Don King and Shelly Finkel, the people responsible for Mike going from being the world's most popular athlete (1987 European AP poll) to the bum of the century. In this film Mike completely ignores the period, 1985-1988. when he was a super hero with original managers Bill Cayton and Jim Jacobs. During that time he was the darling of corporate America as evidenced by his being hired to do network TV commercials for Pepsi Cola, Nintendo Video and Kodak Film. Not enough - he was hired by the New York City Police Department, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration to do PSA's. The Police and FBI do not usually hire people to act as role models who are addicts or who have demons. (Please see link below for photos of these campaigns)
In this film Mike, when asked about Robin Givens, simply said he was too young to get married. He must have forgotten that he has already gone on record that she got him to marry him by saying she was pregnant when she never was.
Mike was interviewed by the New York Times before he went to Cannes for the debut of the movie. In the interview he told lie after lie about his life. Here is a link to the article: www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/movies/11aran.html Here is the link to the letter I wrote to the Times that was printed: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/arts/01alsmail-MIKETYSON_LETTERS.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss Two years ago, when I first learned that this movie was to be made I warned Tyson's manager Harlen Werner, director James Toback, as well as the producer of the film, Jeffrey Berg, that Mike would lie to protect himself from looking like a buffoon. I gave them specific details of what should be done to bring Mike back into the public eye in a very positive way. These details were: 1. Dump all the bums that surround Mike and replace them with an old friend of Mike's who recently retired from the FBI 2. Get rid of the insane facial tattoo - no questions asked. 3. Have the FBI friend pull some strings to get Mike to Iraq to do exhibitions for the troops for a period of 6 months. Exhibitions to include the opportunity for every man stationed there to get one minute in the ring with Tyson for fun. 4. After six months bring Mike back to the United States and begin doing fund raising exhibitions for Police Departments and Fire Departments. Mike's manager Harlen Werner ignored me completely. The reason - none of my suggestions would put money in Werner's pocket. And that is his only objective. My entire correspondence with Werner, director James Toback, the film's producers, as well as documents and photos proving Mike's huge hero status with Cayton and Jacobs may be found at this website: http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/news/archives/00004333.htm Steve Lott Mike Tyson Assistant Manager 1985-1988
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IMDB RANK = 6/10
Description
Sam Reed can travel back in time, and makes his living helping to identify killers to the police. The problem is that if changes anything, deliberately or accidentally, the "butterfly effect" causes history to change. When he returns to the present, things are often completely different and he has no clear memory of what happened in his new history.
His troubles begin when he "breaks the rules" by trying to help the sister of his murdered girlfriend find out who the murderer was, and ends up changing his own history. Every attempt he makes to fix the problems that occur create even worse problems, and each trip scrambles his memory even further and puts him in an even worse situation than before.
Can he solve the mystery before he loses his mind?
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IMDB RANK = 5.8/10
Description
Mysterious cell phone messages promise a young American engineer untold wealth--then make him the target of a deadly international plot. Dangerous security operatives chase the engineer across the globe, while a powerful government official pursues a mysterious agenda that threatens the stability of the entire world
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IMDB RANK = 7.0
Description
At the Forest Ridge Mall, head of security Ronnie Barnhardt patrols his jurisdiction with an iron fist, combating skateboarders, shoplifters and the occasional unruly customer while dreaming of the day when he can swap his flashlight for a badge and a gun. His delusions of grandeur are put to the test when the mall is struck by a flasher. Driven to protect and serve the mall and its patrons, Ronnie seizes the opportunity to showcase his under appreciated law enforcement talents on a grand scale, hoping his solution of this crime will earn a coveted spot at the police academy and the heart of his elusive dream girl Brandi, the hot make-up counter clerk who won't give him the time of day. But his single-minded pursuit of glory launches a turf war with the equally competitive Detective Harrison of the Conway Police, and Ronnie is confronted with the challenge of not only catching the flasher, but getting him before the real cops do.
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IMDB RANK = 3.5
Description
Miley Stewart has always had the best of both worlds. She always got what she wanted. After having a shoe fight with Tyra Banks, her dad decides to take her where she never thought she would be taken to: Tennessee. He gives her the chance to be Hannah Montana for awhile and to learn what family is all about. While there, she meets a new love interest and makes a decision that will change her life forever. Does she want to be Hannah Montana anymore?
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IMDB RANK = 8.6
Description
The story of Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who is about to experience the biggest day of his life. With the whole nation watching, he is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India's "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" But when the show breaks for the night, police arrest him on suspicion of cheating; how could a street kid know so much? Desperate to prove his innocence, Jamal tells the story of his life in the slum where he and his brother grew up, of their adventures together on the road, of vicious encounters with local gangs, and of Latika, the girl he loved and lost. Each chapter of his story reveals the key to the answer to one of the game show's questions. Each chapter of Jamal's increasingly layered story reveals where he learned the answers to the show's seemingly impossible quizzes. But one question remains a mystery: what is this young man with no apparent desire for riches really doing on the game show? When the new day dawns and Jamal returns to answer the final question, the Inspector and sixty million viewers are about to find out. At the heart of its storytelling lies the question of how anyone comes to know the things they know about life and love.
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IMDB RANK = 8.0
Description
In a gritty and alternate 1985 the glory days of costumed vigilantes have been brought to a close by a government crackdown, but after one of the masked veterans is brutally murdered an investigation into the killer is initiated. The reunited heroes set out to prevent their own destruction, but in doing so discover a deeper and far more diabolical plot. Written by evan murphy
"Watchmen" is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the "Doomsday Clock" - which charts the USA's tension with the Soviet Union - is permanently set at five minutes to midnight. When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the washed up but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. As he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion - a ragtag group of retired superheroes, only one of whom has true powers - Rorschach glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future. Their mission is to watch over humanity... but who is watching the Watchmen?" Written by T-Hen
A group of heroes, forced into retirement a decade before are called together once again to investigate the murder of one of their own. What they discover an age-old conspiracy to change the balance of power in a world not different from our own. Written by Kent Sanderson
Watchmen is a story set in an alternative 1985, where the world is ticking closer to the brink of nuclear war, and a plot to eliminate a band of ex-crime fighters is instigated, but why? and by whom? It is up to two of those ex-crime fighters to investigate the plot that seems to go beyond the unthinkable. Written by Ruckwood
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