Let's All Go To The Lobby--With Steve!

Five Star Film/TV 2000-2009

2009-12-21T18:47:00.000-08:00

9/11 (2002)
American Pie 2 (2001)
The Animatrix (2003)
Band of Brothers (2001)
Batman Begins (2005)
Battlestar Galactica, Seasons 2-3 (2005-2006)
Before Sunset (2004)
The Best of Youth (2003)
Children of Men (2006)
Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (2006)
Donnie Darko (2001)
Finding Nemo (2003)
The Gleaners and I (2000)
Hot Fuzz (2007)
How I Met Your Mother, Seasons 1-2 (2005-2006)
The Incredibles (2004)
Into the Wild (2007)
Lagaan (2001)
Lake of Fire (2006)
Land of the Dead (2005)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: Extended Edition (2002)
Man on the Train (2002)
May (2003)
Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)
Minority Report (2002)
Monsters, Inc. (2001)
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Mutual Appreciation (2005)
The Office (US), Seasons 2-4 (2005-2007)
The Office (UK), Series 1-2 (2001-2002)
The Office Special (2001)
Planet Earth (2007)
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
Ratatouille (2007)
Rescue Dawn (2006)
Rivers and Tides (2003)
Six Feet Under, Season 1 (2001)
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
The Sopranos, Seasons 1, 3, 4, 6 Part 2 (1999-2007)
To Be and To Have (2002)
United 93 (2006)
Wall-E (2008)
Wendy and Lucy (2008)
When the Levees Broke (2006)
The Wire, Seasons 1-4 (2003-2005)
Wordplay (2006)
X2 (2003)
Yi Yi (2000)
You Can Count on Me (2000)

A Clip From "Student Confidential"

2009-08-05T12:16:00.000-07:00

This clip is unintentionally Lynchian. If you're not the man himself, it's quite hard to be intentionally Lynchian.

Gymkata (1985)--2/5

2009-08-04T18:33:00.000-07:00

Early in "Gymkata," Olympic gymnast Kurt Thomas takes out some foes by swinging on a pole and kicking them in the face. This sequence bodes well for the film, promising to deliver on the ridiculous premise of kicking butt using tumbling skills.

Sadly, "Gymkata" is more interested in generic karate moves than in anything original. Even when it does later try something new, as in a "pommel horse" fight scene, the filmmaking is just inept enough to mar the enjoyment. As with the pole, the city has a statue that just happens to work as a pommel horse. I can buy that in a film called "Gymkata;" it's like a carefully constructed "Tomb Raider" level. However, the villains surround Thomas and allow themselves to be kicked in the face in one at a time. Extras swinging halfheartedly in the background are more interesting than what we're supposed to watch.

After recently watching a few "MST3K" films, I'll say that the MacGyver-haired Thomas has screen presence, even though he's not a good actor. Since he's been cast for his maneuverability, this works in his favor. Think of him as a Jackie Chan type of actor; he admirably gets from one fight scene to the next.

(500) Days Of Summer (2009)--3/5

2009-07-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

The title of this film is not as fun to type as "Laserblast." (That was the last "Laserblast" mention, I swear.)

Perennial Manic Pixie Dream Girl Zooey Deschanel meets her match in "(500) Days of Summer." Summer (Deschanel) dresses like she's in The Decemberists. Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) dresses like he's Chip Kidd. He's a greeting card writer (snort) and a wannabe architect (double snort). They pretty much have to like each other.

I'm often annoyed in ostensibly romantic movies by characters who are seen talking while the soundtrack drowns them out. In order for me to buy an onscreen couple, I have to believe they can hold a conversation. (Richard Linklater has made two successful films, "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset," based on this thought alone.) "(500) Days of Summer" has two such scenes, probably scored to Regina Spektor or Ingrid Michaelson or some similar singer. I was annoyed on principle while watching the film, but I think they actually make a point. Tom can't see through his infatuation of Summer based completely on her taste in pop culture. They really don't have anything to talk about.

"(500) Days of Summer" has a gimmick. They all do. This one's not bad. Each of the 500 days of their relationship is numbered. The film is free to jump back and forth in time to underline an idea, to confuse, to generally be different. For the most part, "(500) Days of Summer" follows a linear path, with minimal digressions. It could be a lot more complicated and, as a result, more insightful. Why create this innovative conceit if you don't have the nerve to take it as far as it can go?

"Mystery Science Theater 3000: Laserblast" (1996/1978)--3/5, 1/5

2009-07-28T19:23:00.000-07:00

"Mystery Science Theater 3000" is the brilliant show that lets you do two things at once. Each installment is an episode and a movie. Granted, they're not movies you'd ever want to see without Mike (or Joel) and the robots. And some would say many of them are still not worth watching.

Usually, the worse the movie on MST3K, the better the banter. "This Island Earth," the film viewed in the MST3K movie, proved too watchable. The commentary came across as slightly distracting.

"Laserblast" is typical of the most inept, pathetic movies served up by the show. Filmed by a one-time director, it has about ten minutes of actual laserblasting by its detestable main character. Also typical of terrible lost films, "Laserblast" is filled with shots of people getting into and out of cars, hanging out aimlessly, and generally not concerning themselves with the plot. One of the robots comments that the entire film seems to consist of second-unit footage.

This may connect to why the worst movies make the best shows. Competent genre movies are more tightly edited, leaving less room for the peanut gallery.

Is the episode funny? Sporadically, especially when the guys get into a groove. Their mockery of the cop who looks exactly like Hank Williams Jr. has its own arc. At first, he's real excited about Getting Ready For Some Football! Later, he's disappointed that people aren't ready for some football. They also have some fun with the overt transgressions of the filmmakers, pointing out the crew's reflection, the camera mount on an external shot of a van, and the misspelling of Roddy McDowall's name in the credits.

"Laserblast." I just like typing that.

The Girl Next Door (2007)--1/5

2009-07-27T18:41:00.000-07:00

Call for Unique "Hollywood" Opportunity!

Date: 2009-07-27, 9:27PM EDT

Attention all residents of [insert small-town name here]

I am making a big Hollywood movie, "The Girl Next Door," in the town of [insert small-town name here]. If you live here and have a fifties car you would like to see in a movie, please contact me!! Also, if you have any old clothes or props, that would be good. And if you know of any songs from the fifties that have fallen into the public domain or can be gotten for cheap, please let me know.

Can you act? Have you ever tried to act? Just want to be on film? We have some pretty intense dramatic roles. You'll do great!!

If you are a minor, please get permission to be in scenes involving graphic torture and nudity. I'm sure it'll be OK!

Location: [insert small-town name here]

it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

The Brothers Bloom (2008)--3/5

2009-07-26T11:20:00.000-07:00

"The Brothers Bloom" takes place down the street from Wes Anderson's world of oversaturated quirk. Penelope (Rachel Weisz) collects hobbies the way Max Fischer heads school extracurriculars.

"The Brothers Bloom" is yet another heist movie in which the con-men are doing "one last job" so they can "get out."

That's two strikes.

The film eventually comes into focus. It's still got kids in suits, slow motion to Cat Stevens, and a smug literary preciousness. All of that is ancillary to the plot; it's not the whole point.

The heist aspect of "The Brothers Bloom" mostly delivers. It's one of those movies, like "eXistenZ," that appears to be misstepping as it moves forward. The legitimately twisty ending needs to be digested and applied to the rest of the film in order for the whole to work. The laughably predictable double-crosses of the rest of the film aren't sloppy after all.

Decasia (2002)--3/5

2009-07-23T18:32:00.000-07:00

The striking "Decasia" would look amazing projected behind a local band at Carabar. The real draw here is Michael Gordon's symphony of the same name, created in tandem with the visuals. It starts out with a provocative grinding and pitch-shifting, settles comfortably into a Philip Glass-esque staccato, before wowing with an extended post-rock freakout. That initial grinding sound comes from rusted brake drums as percussion instruments. In every way, they're a perfect choice for "Decasia"--found, decaying objects contributing to an otherworldly ambience.

"Decasia," as I learned after I watched it, is trying to examine recorded life as the film it's on disintegrates. It's a spooky idea, borne out in the mostly pre-1935 found footage on display. People long-dead exist tenuously on rotting celluloid piled in dingy storerooms.

Much of the film is over-decayed by the director Bill Morrison. For some reason, I'm okay with splicing and overlaying *found* cracked, melted, or otherwise decrepit film on the already declining images. Morrison often takes it too far, pixellating and reversing the film with a computer. The less-authentic decay is disrespectful to the films' subjects and it prevents the art from making a solid statement.

"Decasia" would also work well on a wall of the Wexner Center, seen in short bursts by passers-by.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

2009-07-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

From the blogs:

"Wow, this is another ambitious Thursday crossword...Nicely done, Gary and Stephen Kennedy!"--Jim Horne, Wordplay.

"Haven't disliked a puzzle this much in a while."--Rex Parker.

From the comments:

"I actually read it the first time thinking Rex was trying some crazy meta experiment to see how many commenters would agree with a clearly incorrect opinion... :)"--Dan, on Rex's Blog.

"The puzzle of the year, so far."--twoberry, on Wordplay.

The Abyss (1989)--3/5

2009-07-19T19:37:00.000-07:00

I don't remember watching the whole film through. But prior to today, I had apparently seen every minute of James Cameron's "The Abyss." It can be watched in portions and out of sequence with little reduction in quality. As always, the film is a model of complicated shots and seamless, awesome effects. There's just so damn much of it.

Each plot in "The Abyss" contains a smaller, mostly unrelated plot. The insane Navy Seal strand wraps up tidily, leading to Brigman's (Ed Harris) heroic descent in the abyss, leading to the final appearance of the No Nuke aliens. (Peace? Yeah, right. Cameron would be out of a job.) James Cameron seems to have been afraid he'd never make another film after "The Abyss."

Knowing (2009)--3/5

2009-07-18T12:25:00.000-07:00

Spoilers:

"Knowing" writes itself into a corner. Will "everyone else" perish as predicted by the whispering Spike-from-Buffy look-alikes? (And "Nightbreed" had the Angel look-alike last month!) Or will John (Nicolas Cage) be saved by a deus ex machina, as happens in these kinds of films?

To its credit, "Knowing" ends up splitting the difference. And it isn't one of "these kinds of films," since nobody's yet combined "National Treasure" with hard sci-fi. Billions die, as you probably know from watching any of the trailers. This figure includes the two leads. Yet a small portion of humanity is whisked away to start anew. The aliens, or whatever they are, that allow the survival of the species suggest a benevolent invention of Arthur C. Clarke. The beings pulling the strings in the "2001" or "Rama" series meddle in the affairs of humanity only when absolutely necessary.

Their salvation comes as a semi-surprise. Throughout the film, they needlessly approach the "chosen" people and do nothing. Even though they don't need to, they behave like The Strangers from "Dark City," another Alex Proyas film. A late reveal of these guys would be more powerful. (Or more laughable, depending on how you feel about the rest.)

John jumps through Dan Brown-inspired (what isn't these days?) hoops to get to the end. The secret code in this one is particularly absurd. A block of numbers, sealed in a pathetic time capsule* for fifty years, predicts every major tragedy of the future. At the time it's unearthed, three have yet to occur. John figures out the code correctly. Then, CalvinBall-style, he decides that the last event will follow a different rule. And he's right!

*It only contains children's drawings.

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (2009)--3/5

2009-07-18T06:22:00.000-07:00

This one's the randiest Harry Potter film yet; the most common gerund in the script is "snogging." It's also the scariest. If naked underwater death zombies don't push the rating past a "PG," nothing will, it seems.

"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" takes an agonizing amount of time to move past the snogging and just get on with it. "The Hot Goblet," two films ago, established Ron and Hermione's sexual tension in a charming eighties movie prom milieu. They--and Harry and Ginny--can just be together, alright? There's this guy, you know, Voldemort? Trying to destroy the world? Guys? (They're too busy snogging.)

The last, I don't know, forty-five minutes of "Half-Blood Prince"--from the moment Harry drinks the luck potion to the end--are as sustained, propulsive, and exciting as these films get. Harry and Dumbledore finally get some long-overdue male bonding time. Too bad it involves poisoned potion, not butter beer, drinking.

Let me air one Huge, Nerdy Complaint (it ties in to the weaknesses of the film, I promise): The Death Eaters use the Vanishing Cabinet to sneak into Hogwarts, where they--blow up Hagrid's unoccupied house. Wow, I seem to remember, from the book, that Snape and Harry's showdown takes place against the background of all-out war on Hogwarts' grounds. Maybe the sixth, seventh, and eight appearance of Lavender sighing in the background could have been excised to allow for a more faithful fight.

If you look at it from the perspective of someone who hasn't read the books, this change would still confuse. The Death Eaters go to all that trouble just to watch Snape from the sidelines and then run off. They'll be back for the next money-maker.

The Getaway (1972)--3/5

2009-07-16T14:05:00.001-07:00

Peckinpah's bloody violence, so innovative in its time, has become commonplace. We have to look a bit harder at the director's work to see what, if anything, makes him so well-regarded.

Besides, he seems to have been at the right place at the right time. The late-sixties dissolution of the Hayes Code allowed macho directors to include the "adult elements" they'd been wanting for years. Just look at "Topaz," one of Hitchcock's final films. He'd been pushing and skirting the Code for years. With an MPAA rating, he was free to include a graphic, sexualized murder scene. (It's like the "Psycho" shower scene without any edits.)

Looking past the violence in "The Getaway" reveals--not as much as you'd think. The strongest element is the casting, including a wizened Slim Pickens and Al "I'm gonna speak Italian to Mike" Lettieri.

"The Getaway" has all the McQueen/Peckinpah signposts: a jail, a robbery, car chases, seedy hotel rooms, and small-town shootouts. Unique to this film are a dinner scene on the San Antonio River Walk and a scramble inside of a garbage truck. But that's about it. Nothing is elevated past simple-minded entertainment.

I admire the chase scene in which McQueen is behind the wheel of a real boat of a car, sliding through traffic and eventually through a front porch. Peckinpah makes no effort at making McQueen look cool. The car is handling as it probably would in the situation. Totally Natural Connection: Like the car, this Steve McQueen flick is a bit pedestrian.

Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li (2009)--1/5

2009-07-13T16:13:00.000-07:00

Overheard from Andrew and Steve while watching "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li:"

"Ever since you watched that six-hour silent piece of crap [The Birth of a Nation], I've always been impressed by your bad movie-endurance"

"Does this have Jean-Claude Van Damme?"

"No. They made a second one."

"Audiences were clamoring for another."

"What's up with that guy's wig? It's like a Thomas Jefferson wig!"

"Where's Dhalsim?"

"Where's Guile?"

"Where's Blanka?"

"His name's Gen? Is he actually Ken?"

"Chris Klein is by far the best actor in this movie. It's like he's channeling Steven Seagal."

"When are they going to fight?"

"This is terrible."

The Thomas Jefferson wig.

Fanboys (2008)--2/5

2009-07-12T19:12:00.000-07:00

The makers of "Fanboys" really wanted George Lucas to show up. He doesn't, and it's one of the few smart film-related choices he's made since 1983. Somehow they did trick Billy Dee Williams, Carrie Fisher, Ray Park (Darth Maul), and William Shatner into making appearances.

"Fanboys" is an amiable, unfunny road trip movie by, for, and about huge nerds. They drive in a panel van to Skywalker Ranch to steal a print of "Episode I" so their friend can see it before he dies in a few months. It's not a very good idea; I don't think there were any prints of "Episode I" until a few days before the movie was actually released.

The only time the movie rises from embarrassing to mildly amusing is when it finds a novel pop-culture IP to mock. Like "Six Days, Seven Nights!" I don't think I've seen any jokes recently about that turkey. Later, guards at the Ranch dress and talk like the police in "THX 1138." That's very cool and may be even nerdier than "Star Wars" references.

"Fanboys" takes place in 1998, so it has the greatest hits of the era, like "Lump," "In The Meantime," "Tubthumping," and "Whoomp! There It Is!" I have no judgment on that--just putting it out there.

White Dog (1981)--3/5

2009-07-11T21:37:00.000-07:00

Samuel Fuller's "White Dog" is best described using words from the Waffle House menu.

Scattered on the screen. The messages of "White Dog" are all over the place. He's a snow-white German Shepherd who's been trained by a racist to attack African-Americans with no provocation. This part's easy: racism is learned. There's also: racism is only black or white--like a dog's vision, racism can be cured, no cost is too great for this cure, and a few others.

Covered with stage blood. The White Dog kills two men and attacks more in the film. Luckily, "White Dog" was made right at the dawn of realistic blood on color film. You won't find any seventies orange paint blood ("Billy Jack," "Dawn of the Dead") on the dog's fur.

Diced in the editing room. No puppets or animatronics are ever used in place of the White Dog. Because of this, attack scenes are heavily edited to hide inconsistencies in his level of rage. The White Dog will be seen snarling in a tight shot, then jumping from behind, then raising his eyes menacingly. It's a little silly, but at least it's always an actual dog, not phony effects.

Topped by a younger generation. With it's conservative runtime, simple genre trappings, and reach beyond cheap thrills, Fuller here has been inspired by the contemporary works of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg. They do it better.

Smothered by the score. Composer Ennio Morricone further degrades his legacy with the score for "White Dog," though it's still not as "Once Upon A Time In America." *shudder*

Peppered with cool actors. Burl Ives appears in a role that could've been written for Orson Welles. Paul Winfield is the trainer who deprograms the White Dog. And Dick Miller (Gremlins) appears briefly as another animal trainer.

Capped by a confusing ending that only further muddles the subtext. After being "cured," the White Dog attacks white man Carruthers (Ives). Is the point of the film now that we all have to hate something?

AVQ&A: First Jobs And Pop-Culture Memories

2009-07-10T12:37:00.000-07:00

Taken from The Onion AV Club's weekly feature.

What was your first job, and what film/book/song/etc. do you most associate with it?

During my last year of high school, I worked weekends for a few months at Ben Franklin on Lexington Avenue. I was scheduled by myself at the register with about ten minutes of training during the Christmas season. The soundtrack to my cluelessness was a repetitive stream of piped-in lite rock. The song that got to me the most--and that seemed to be played once or more an hour--was "Constant Craving" by K.D. Lang. (I refuse to type her name in an affected lowercase.) Lang's caterwauling could cut through any conversation or cash register ring. I would fear the end of other songs because "Constant Craving" could be coming up next.

In Mansfield, Y105 was (still is?) the only radio station that could be received in the School Specialty warehouse in which I worked for four summers. (Technically my second job, but the first I worked regularly.) Y105 played Smash Mouth's "All Star" about thirty times a day for three consecutive years. I have never voluntarily listened to this song, yet I know every whistle, every grunt from the lead singer, every line of the wordy chorus. I actually don't hate this song anymore. It would always liven up the line; my fellow seasonal employess would sometimes sing or dance along while working.

Two Lovers (2008)--4/5

2009-07-09T14:07:00.000-07:00

Two virtuosic action scenes--car chase and apartment shootout--in James Gray's previous film, "We Own the Night," are high points in an otherwise blasé crime drama. "Two Lovers" is somehow more inventive than those scenes--and this is throughout, showcasing Gray's mastery of spatial and human relationships. It's like a vintage de Palma film with characters that are more than just directorial pawns.

Part of this is due to a de-bearded, sort-of-sane Joaquin Phoenix as Leonard. He's living in his parents' Brighton Beach apartment after a few too many setbacks. On a busy day, he tries to kill himself by jumping into the bay and, back at home, meets the beautiful Sandra (Vinessa Shaw). Her father has an interest in the family business and she's noticed Leonard before. A short time later, he discovers a neighbor, Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), who may be even more messed up than he is. Of course, he's instantly obsessed with her.

Sandra is a bit of a cipher. I hope she isn't actually as pure as the glimpses we get of her imply. But she has to be portrayed this way as a counterpoint to Michelle. Leonard and Michelle together--that's just too much crazy. In Leonard's lowest moment, he's saved from a successful suicide by remembering Sandra's kindness.

Short-term audience pleasure in "Two Lovers" is dispassionately crushed. Leonard is cocky and insensitive--the average guy, right? He calls Sandra only when he's feeling rejected by Michelle. In turn, Michelle is infatuated with a married creep (Elias Koteas). "Two Lovers" is not romantic, but it is captivating. And claustrophobic. Even though Leonard makes the "right" choice, it's still clear that he's deeply troubled.

Updike Postcards

2009-07-08T17:18:00.000-07:00

From the new blog "Updike Postcards," created by my parents:

"John Updike, who died in January 2009, was known for his prompt and kind postcards in response to mail from friends and strangers alike. This site is devoted to displaying Updike's postcards, and invites submissions. Send JPEGs of both sides to chernclass@aol.com."

Spy Magazine Presents: Separated At Birth?

2009-07-08T17:12:00.000-07:00

Samuel L. Jackson making a funny face while drinking Sprite in "Pulp Fiction"...

and Falkor the Luckdragon from "The Neverending Story?"

Baghead (2008)--2/5

2009-07-05T07:32:00.000-07:00

"Baghead" would be like "Scream" if the characters knew anything about horror films. That's OK; they don't know much about anything because they're mumblecore players--those shiftless, whiny do-nothings from countless other sub-$1,000 films. As I may have said before, these actors (including mumblecore's starlet (mostly because she's often clothes-less) Greta Gerwig) are acceptable in stories about hipsters hooking up in crummy Williamsburg apartments. "Baghead" asks them to do too much. It's a semi-sly--and semi-stupid--dig at their infirmities.

Two guys and two girls travel to a remote cabin to try to make a movie. They've been inspired by an awful looking cheapie and think they can do better. It's a struggle to even think of a premise for a film. They mostly drink and try to have sex with each other, eventually hitting on a simple horror story of a killer with a bag on his head. Before they've even filmed anything, they're menaced by a fifth person with a bag on his head. In "Scream" fashion, of course, it's a while before we see all four of them at the same time with the real Baghead.

Their phones don't work and their only ride out has been sabotaged. They decide to walk the eleven miles to the road in the middle of the day and without food or drink. Again, "Baghead" is playing on how pathetic my generation appears to be, according to movies like "Mutual Appreciation" and "Hannah Takes the Stairs." The meta-critiques within "Baghead" can inevitably be used on the film as a whole--lazy, rushed, stretched painfully thin, etc.

Teachers (1984)--2/5

2009-07-03T21:43:00.000-07:00

"Teachers," filmed mostly at the stately old Central High School (now part of COSI) in Columbus, is a disappointing stew of hot-button issues. Mr. Jurel (Nick Nolte) and the other teachers carry an unearned self-importance. With all the things going on at their school, it's amazing that they even keep faith in humanity, much less any reverent ideals.

An ex-student is suing the school because he can't read or write. A crazy student (the inimitable Crispin Glover) bites a teacher, steals his car, and is later shot in the hallway by the police. A shy student (Laura Dern) is impregnated by the gym teacher and driven to the abortion clinic by Nolte. These are just a few of the incidents that, by themselves, would be enough for a single film.

One moment "Teachers" feels like a slightly more mature John Hughes film, the next it's an idealistic-teacher-inspires-inner-city-youth film a la "Dangerous Minds" and countless others. Whatever it tries, "Teachers" comes off as half-assed. The jokes are barely presented and the kids are white-bread with a few ringers.

What good films have been made in Columbus? The Michael Douglas thread of "Traffic" has a few shots of the Statehouse. Too bad it's the weakest link in the film. (Benicio Del Toro's story should've been feature-length.) "Little Man Tate" has some cool stuff from the early days of the Wexner Center, but is otherwise undistinguished. "Brubaker" has a decent reputation; I haven't seen it.

Amblin' (1968)--3/5 & Xenogenesis (1978)--3/5

2009-06-29T19:14:00.001-07:00

Think about the contexts of "Amblin'" and "Xenogenesis." Steven Spielberg and James Cameron, respectively, are hungry young filmmakers, scrambling for any opportunity to put a vision onto film. They had no idea that people would be picking these films apart thirty or forty years later, finding the seeds of later wild success.

It's easier to see Cameron's narrow obsessions in "Xenogenesis." To stretch his budget, he posits the short as a small chapter in a world-spanning space saga. Cheesy paintings describe other installments. Cameron would do the same with "The Terminator." The series may seem completely played out now, but it's been feeding off of the expansive back story of the first (independent and Hail Mary) film for twenty-five years. The short sequences of Kyle Reese in the Future War are exciting and colored beyond the edges of the film.

"Xenogenesis" has simple sci-fi beats for Cameron to drape his mastery of stop-motion and film-layering. The heroic Raj is out on a mission "to deliver humanity from the final cataclysm" when he encounters a giant cleaning droid. This droid has the same treads and proportions as the Hunter-Killers from the Terminator series. Just as he's about to get "swept away" by the droid, his partner appears in a spidery walking machine. She fights the droid in a scene that would later be refurbished as the climax of Cameron's masterpiece, "Aliens."

Even at this early stage, Cameron is a master at creating insane special effects using any budget or technique. Each shot in "Xenogenesis" works towards a functioning, other world. This is not an easy thing to do when a close-up on an actual set cuts to a wide shot of an immense room cuts to a stop-motion shot of two robots battling cuts to...

You can watch "Xenogenesis" online.

Steven Spielberg's twenty-five minute "Amblin'" doesn't point as succinctly to the director's future. He's been a little harder to pin down than Cameron. But he's still distinctly himself. "Spielbergian" is heard almost as much as "Lynchian." Maybe what "Amblin'" does illustrate is Spielberg's skill of shorthand characterization and his subtle experimentation.

"Amblin'" has a simple story of two hippie drifters, one good-looking guy and one good-looking girl. It's mostly silent, with a soundtrack suggesting an AM Gold version of Fairport Convention with less singing. In other words, it's kind of icky. The film becomes a clever interplay between emotive personalities, not unlike a modern Pixar short.

Perhaps atoning for the threadbare nature of his story, Spielberg uses some overt techniques to keep attentions from waning. In a long shot, the young man is seen slightly distorted as he runs towards the camera. It zooms out, revealing the reflection of a car's rear-view mirror. Not necessary, but kind of fun. Later (or is it before, I forget), the two drifters smoke weed in a large drainpipe. They're seen in a striking silhouette, evoking "E.T.'s" classic shot of bikers in the moon. (This shot has been combined with the word "Amblin" as Spielberg's production logo.)

"Amblin'" ends with a prescient idea. The girl looks in the guy's guitar case as he swims in the beach. Finding a nice shirt and tie, she realizes that he's appropriated the hippie lifestyle as a fashion choice. He's just another future automaton, working for the man. I leave you to decide to whom Spielberg relates more.

"Weeds: Season Four" (2008)--2/5

2009-06-29T15:52:00.000-07:00

Questions for "Weeds: Season Four:"

Why is Nancy trained to mule drugs over the border when the tunnel to the maternity store has been in progress for months or years?

Are "Weeds" writers "Friday Night Lights" fans? If so, they could maybe get away with calling the teenager-sleeps-with-precocious-neighbor-kids'-mom subplot an homage and not a total rip-off.

Why is Andy stuck at the border once Nancy drives away? It seems to take minutes to travel from the American store to the Mexican mechanic. And even if the border is far away from their home, he could walk a few miles and then call a cab. (Yes, even while stoned.)

Why is it so horrible that Nancy traverses the tunnel? It's not like she isn't going to find out what's happening: an armed Mexican guards the delivery of giant bricks of weed all day and night.

Where exactly is this tunnel? It only descends a few feet into the earth, yet it doesn't run through any storm sewers or gas pipes.

Why is Esteban so concerned with hiding his true identity to Nancy once she's seen his face? He's the mayor of Tijuana, a fact that is discovered with, ummm, no effort.

Cool--more Wacky Packages!

Confessions Of A Shopaholic (2009)--1/5

2009-06-29T15:39:00.001-07:00

In this despicable husk of a movie, a superficial idiot (Isla Fisher) buys couture that Brüno wouldn't touch to the soundtrack of early-nineties club hits and her own Muffy Mouse voiceover. She writes barely incoherent columns comparing fashion with finances. Inexplicably, especially considering the states of the magazine, fashion, and money industries, she's a hit. Laura tells me there's a scene in "Confessions of a Shopaholic" in which the Dude (Hugh Dancy) opines on how intelligent she is. (I was on the phone for a good chunk of the film.) This is a disconnect akin to everyone saying how beautiful Maggie Gyllenhall is in "The Dark Knight." Or, if you're offended by that, it's like everyone saying how much Hilary Swank looks like Mia Kirshner in "The Black Dahlia." No matter how many times you tell the audience, it still isn't gonna be true. (I guess I'm a superficial idiot, too.)

El Norte (1983)--3/5

2009-06-28T13:51:00.000-07:00

"El Norte" hinges on a single quick cut that comes seconds before the end. Enrique (David Villalpando) daydreams while digging a ditch with other day laborers. The spinning of the concrete drum turns into the spinning water wheel of his Guatemalan village. He's travelled 3,000 miles with his sister Rose (Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez), from Guatemala to LA. They had little in a land of little. Now they have little in a land of plenty.

"El Norte" could be the tale of Enrique or any one of his coworkers. It could take place in 1983 or now. Every faceless immigrant, hired or discarded without much thought, has their own story. Enrique and Rosa's may be one of the more tragic stories, but it's still unfortunately typical.

Director Gregory Nava takes a mostly matter-of-fact approach to the journey. This is a good thing, since "action" sequences, such as the sewer pipe rat attack, are incompetently filmed. The rat scene goes on and on while sequencing metronomically through the same three shots of fake-looking creatures.

Enrique and Rosa make it to el Norte. Enrique even lucks into a decent job waiting tables. Any success they have, though, is untenable. They don't even have to make mistakes. For Enrique, it's an anonymous call made to immigration. For Rosa, it's a refusal to go to the hospital for fear of deportation. "El Norte" is a sobering rebuttal to people's aspirations.

A Cool Michael Jackson-Related YouTube Video

2009-06-26T17:32:00.000-07:00

Valkyrie (2008)--4/5

2009-06-24T19:39:00.001-07:00

"Valkyrie" is like "Titanic." We know how it's going to end. This doesn't make the ride any less entertaining. Or frustrating. I got so caught up in "Valkyrie" that I secretly hoped it would turn into a Harry Turtledove-style alternate history. Would Colonel Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) succeed in killing Hitler?

Stauffenberg is a man with many demons. His misgivings about Nazi policies are concretized after an Allied strafing in Tunisia. He loses his right hand, two fingers on his left hand, and his left eye. These perceived weaknesses only drive him harder into the resistance.

For a Brian Singer-directed Tom Cruise vehicle, "Valkyrie" is surprisingly heavy. Cruise gives one of his most complete performances. He's rarely slowed by his injuries. The few moments he even stops to ponder them--like when, sans eyepatch, he looks at himself in the mirror--are moving.

The moments I find overly dramatic and scripted in "Valkyrie" are faithful to actual events. Major General Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh) has some particularly purple lines about "doing the right thing." Many quotes of this type are directly attributed to the man. In the final scene, Lieutenant Haeften (Jamie Parker) runs into the path of the executioners' bullets, something he really did.

"Valkyrie" also stars Eddie Izzard--that's smart casting.

Workingman's Death (2005)--4/5

2009-06-23T17:19:00.000-07:00

Or, "People Really Live This Way."

It starts with a lone man digging for coal on a Ukrainian hill. Not a job anyone would want, but not the worst thing one could do. Soon after, a group of men discuss their job. They're in good spirits, despite the fact that they appear to be permanently tattooed from coal dust.

Suddenly, we're in an two-foot crevice with the men. Unable to stand for hours at a time, they hammer at fissures in the ceiling, causing small cave-ins. At the end of the day, they drag out a paltry haul. This is the first of five hellish jobs documented by Michael Glawogger in "Workingman's Death."

Things get worse. The second segment follows Indonesian sulfur miners climbing to the base of a mountain. They slam a long pole into the smoking ground and fill a contraption made of two baskets connected by a cane. This is the easy part. They then climb up the mountain for the rest of the day, carrying their two hundred pound loads. Tourists snap their pictures as they rush by.

Glawogger offers no narration and the jobs are illustrated as an aggregate of unembellished long shots. He still manages to find something like a lyrical beauty in the muck.

Glawogger visits an open Nigerian slaughtering pit, certainly one of the most Godforsaken places on the planet. After the cries of stuck goats and cows, the Pakistani oil-rig salvage yard is something of a reprieve.

The International (2009)--2/5

2009-06-22T15:38:00.000-07:00

"The International" flits from Milan to NYC to Luxembourg to Istanbul for no good reason. It makes the mistake of thinking a MacGuffin is more important than the shenanigans created around it. In this case, the MacGuffin is a lazy conspiracy involving an international bank buying and selling arms. They want war-torn countries to have lots of debt with their bank. Jeez, remember the day when shady cabals wanted to destroy the sun?

The few scenes of shenanigans are also slackly conceived. The bank will stop at nothing, leading to a by-the-numbers shootout between Clive Owen and about two hundred bad guys that destroys the Guggenheim Museum. As a pointless desecration, this is up there with Rome letting the makers of "Jumper" film a noxious action sequence inside the Colosseum.

Super Troopers - Shenanigans

Friday The 13th (2009)--2/5

2009-06-21T16:20:00.000-07:00

The title of this movie means nothing. "Friday the 13th" isn't a remake of the first film. Jason, not his mother, is the killer for ninety-five percent of the film. It truthfully is "Friday the 13th: Part XII." (If "Freddy Vs. Jason" counts.)

Normally, any description of character motivation in a "Friday the 13th" film would be beside the point. All you need to know is that some kids go into the woods and are creatively hacked to death. One (or two?) make it through to the end. This latest "Friday the 13th" has a slightly interesting twist in the person of Whitney (Amanda Righetti). In a long preface, she's captured by Jason, who sees her as his dead mother. Six weeks later, Clay (Jared Padalecki, who's been spending his time pumping iron since "Gilmore Girls" went off the air) is investigating her disappearance. You can tell he's a "rebel," or whatever, from his vintage motorcycle.

Whitney and Clay's escape through Jason's surprisingly well-engineered underground complex is a rare scary scene. Horror filmmakers take note: we care about the characters.

Pretty In Pink (1986) & Some Kind Of Wonderful (1987)

2009-06-20T10:11:00.000-07:00

One night in "He's Just Not That Into You," Ginnifer Goodwin watches "Some Kind of Wonderful." The next day, she corners her coworker. "I'm Keith and he's Watts." "But Watts is a girl in that movie." (These aren't direct quotes, but you get the idea.) Why can't they just talk about "Pretty In Pink," which has the same plot, but with reversed genders? This is nothing new; everyone who's seen both "Some Kind of Wonderful" and "Pretty In Pink" knows the similarities. I'm bringing it up as an introduction to a showdown of the two films.

Andie (Molly Ringwald) vs. Keith (Eric Stoltz)

Advantage: Keith (Some Kind of Wonderful)

Andie is defined as a poor semi-outcast in "Pretty In Pink," yet she owns a refurbished classic car, her own phone line, and an answering machine--in the eighties. Keith works after school at a service station. (Nobody else seems to work there.) He also has a passion for art. Oil and paint are often artistically smudged on his face and clothes. He's still more authentically from "the wrong side of the tracks" than Andie.

Duckie (Jon Cryer) vs. Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson)

Advantage: Watts (Some Kind of Wonderful)

Duckie is pretty cool and we do feel bad for him. But he's a high school friend more like Ricky from "My So-Called Life," except not gay. Well, maybe a little gay. The point is, he's never truly in the running for Andie's love. Watts, on the other hand, is hot, stylish, funny, bad-ass. Her smooching scene with Keith is the highlight of the film. If Keith doesn't end up with her, there's no justice in the John Hughesiverse.

Blane (Andrew McCarthy) vs. Amanda (Lea Thompson)

Advantage: Neither

Blane and Amanda are both blander than Kashi cereal. As I type, I'm forgetting that Amanda even existed in the film. This category, then, tips toward "Some Kind of Wonderful" because Keith realizes the truth and runs down the street to Watts.

Winner: Some Kind of Wonderful. Sorry, Molly Ringwald fans.

For the record: Pretty in Pink--2/5 & Some Kind of Wonderful--3/5

Tell No One (2006)--1/5

2009-06-19T13:05:00.000-07:00

Laura (before): Well, I hate Harlan Coben books and I hate French movies.* Let's watch it!

Harlan Coben pens yearly variations on the same sub-Dean Koontz theme. A normal person is confronted with some left-field revelations from the past. Tugging at the strands revs up the tension and mystery. A lengthy explanation towards the end make no logical sense while attempting to clear up events of the book.

In "Tell No One," Alexandre Beck (François Cluzet) is sent an email linking to a security camera's feed. His wife, dead for eight years, is seen staring mournfully into the camera. It's a neat germ for a Hitchcockian story. Everything after this cannot be called "Hitchcockian."

Writer/director Guillame Canet tries for maybe an hour to transcend Coben's asinine story. A long chase scene, including a stretch across a busy highway, is at least watchable.

André Dussollier is the unfortunate actor charged with reading the endless lines of explanatory dialogue. The scene goes on for at least twenty minutes. Then, after a pause, an additional five minutes explains the twenty minutes.

Laura (after): It should be called "Tell No One...To Watch This Movie."

*She doesn't really hate all French movies, though we have seen some wretched ones together. "Cache" comes to mind.

Open Hearts (2002)--3/5

2009-06-18T11:25:00.000-07:00

What a terrible title for this otherwise acceptable film.

"Open Hearts" is filmed in the minmalist Danish "Dogme 95" style, with at least one bothersome exception. Cecilie (Sonja Richter) walks through town wearing headphones and listening to an annoying dentist's office song (think: the song "Dreams" from "Magnolia," but more insipid). The song follows the action through several cuts, indicating that it was recorded separately and added in post. Rule 2 of "Dogme" states, "The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa."

I guess I don't really care--I just don't think the song fits the character. The Dogme 95 regulations can be more trouble than they're worth. As something to aim for, they can help cut out waste in a film. Conversely, I'm often more fascinated by how a film has been made with the limitations than with the story.

"Open Hearts" finds the right balance. The most striking thing provided by Dogme 95 is an awareness of the time of day. Lighting has to be natural or already available on location. As a result, many scenes are lit by tall, clear windows. The actors have a luminous look that feeds their naturalistic acting.

Mads Mikkelson, the great villain from "Casino Royale" and great humanist from "After the Wedding," here portrays a third distinct character: slimy adulterer. It's almost a shame that "Open Hearts" ends up circling around him, since the other characters aren't as pathetic.

Miracle At St. Anna (2008)--3/5

2009-06-16T13:07:00.000-07:00

The World War II actioner can defeat an auteur, but it's still a rite of passage. Steven Spielberg succeeded with "Saving Private Ryan," but he's been making WWII pictures of a sort throughout his career. John Woo tried to dampen his more delirious impulses with "Windtalkers," embalming the action. Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" has yet to be seen outside of Cannes, but it looks to be "Kill Bill: Poland." Take that as you will.

Spike Lee's "Miracle At St. Anna" is an enhancement of the director's strengths and weaknesses. Two battles bookend the film--the first sprawling and the last in close quarters. Lee is out of his element on the first battlefield. We don't know any of the characters yet and Lee is obsessed with cutting to a Nazi studio broadcasting propaganda to the Buffalo Soldiers.

The later fight, in the serpentine streets of a small Italian town, quiets earlier criticism. A lot of things are improved; I wonder if it was filmed late in the shoot, after Spike Lee found a new vocabulary.

The story gets away from Lee at times. He wants to comment on too much, leading to long scenes away from the four soldiers: Stamps, Cummings, Negron, and Train.

It's in the fears and prejudices of these black soldiers that Lee finds his muse. A flashback in the center of "Miracle At St. Anna" is the film's Rosetta Stone. The soldiers, proud to be in uniform and serving the country, are turned away at gunpoint from a Southern eatery. The owner will serve Nazi POW's but not African-American soldiers. Throughout the film, they wonder what exactly they're fighting for. "Miracle at St. Anna" answers them once in a while.

Does Woody Allen have a WWII film?

Surfwise (2007)--3/5

2009-06-15T16:55:00.000-07:00

Annette and Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz have nine children. Eight boys and one girl. For their entire childhoods, they traveled from one coast to the other in a half-sized RV.

Eleven people. In an RV. His children are a little bitter today, what with their lack of education. They sure can surf, though. The Stanford-educated Doc believes that surfing is the cornerstone of human health and education.

"Surfwise" is amusing because it's a ninety-minute documentary about eleven people. The Paskowitz kids are labeled "#1," "#2," and so on. None of them get much screen time, which is a shame, since they all seem interesting. Maybe that's a strength of the film; intriguing facts seem more so because they briefly tantalize.

For example, two of the sons (#5 and #7? I have no idea) were in a band in the late nineties that had a hit song. They were The Flys and the song was "Got You (Where I Want You)." Wait a second, these Bohemian surfers cracked the Top 40? Other careers taken up by the family: comic book/surf logo illustrator, model, surfing champion, screenwriter, stuntman...

Revolutionary Road (2008)--3/5

2009-06-14T16:28:00.000-07:00

Leonardo DiCaprio is a perfect casting choice as Frank Wheeler, arrested man-child of "Revolutionary Road." He looks like he's grown two years to Kate Winslet's actual ten in the years since "Titanic." (And Kathy Bates is in this one as well.) Leo is thirty-four. Frank turns thirty in the movie and it's still hard to believe.

Central to "Revolutionary Road" is the idea of being trapped--in the suburbs, in a family, in a job, in the fifties. No solution is better than another. April Wheeler (Winslet) wants the family to emigrate to Paris. Frank goes along with the plan because he hates his job. But does he hate it enough to turn down a healthy raise to do the same bullshit? When telling their friends, they might as well be saying they're traveling to Titan without spacesuits. "How will you make money?" "Your wife will support you?"

Once this central conflict is finally resolved, the air goes out of "Revolutionary Road" a bit. Conflicts are mundane without the dynamic tension of whether they'll affect Frank and April's plans. Though for the most part, "Revolutionary Road" is cannily melodramatic and may strike close to home for a lot of people.

This Japanese poster makes "Revolutionary Road" look like a Beverly Lewis novel.

[Beavis laugh]

AVQ&A: Pop-Culture Relic Quotes

2009-06-13T22:41:00.000-07:00

Taken from The Onion AV Club's weekly feature.

"What bit of pop-cultural ephemera still sticks in your own personal quote machine that few people get?"

I immediately thought of the commercial for crappy-looking board game "Splat." A claymation bug with an exasperated New Yorker accent, gets smushed by a giant hand. "I hate when that happens," he says. "But we love it!," responds a roomful of excited children.

For the last nineteen years, whenever someone has said "I hate when that happens" or one out of every ten times I've done something dumb, these lines have run through my head. Often, I'll say them out loud.

Until yesterday, I had forgotten the name of the game and the commercial's jingle. Thanks to Jo Pulcini's incredible Google skills, it's all come back to me now. If you ever watched the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Super Mario Bros. Super Show" block on WUAB Channel 43 Kids' Club, you've already seen this ad twelve thousand times.

Martyrs (2008)--2/5

2009-06-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

Don't watch this movie. "Martyrs" is a nasty French horror flick that, in measured pain and suffering, outruns "Hostel" by a few hundred kilometres.

Fifteen years after escaping a bizarre captivity, Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) is convinced that she has found, in a random newspaper photo, the couple responsible. They have two kids and live what appears to be a normal suburban life. Anna (Morjana Alaoui), Lucie's friend from the group home, is not convinced. The photo is blurry and Lucie's memory may not be reliable. Nevertheless, Anna is an accomplice. She arrives after Lucie to find the family killed. Lucie takes her own life soon after. This happens in the first, um, thirty minutes of "Martyrs." Anna, the new focus of the film, discovers a hidden metal stairway in the house, behind a cupboard.

The rapid, yet logical, twists of "Martyrs" give the film an authentic creepiness. Anna's journey down the stairs, what she finds there? One of the scariest scenes I've ever watched. I'll give "Martyrs" that much.

Those who made "Martyrs" can probably tell you why their film is more worthwhile than other extreme horror films. How the violence is meta or existential. This is most apparent in the third act of the film. It's an austere series of transcendentally painful blackout scenes that somehow combines Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc," "2001: A Space Odyssey," and Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle." All good things, for sure. What are they doing in this movie? The DNA of "Martyrs" is always going to be sick--a murdered family, a man beating a woman unconscious, and worse. In a movie like this, you can't take this stuff seriously.

(I couldn't find any suitable pictures from "Martyrs.")

He's Just Not That Into You (2009)--3/5

2009-06-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

I'm being a little generous here. "He's Just Not That Into You" is a romantic comedy based on a non-fiction book based on a line (lines? a whole episode?) from "Sex and the City." Additionally, it's a film in the five-plots-are-better-than-one style of "Love Actually." Yikes.

Alex's (Justin Long) dialogue seems to be taken verbatim from the book. He exists only to explain to Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin) why men aren't into her. Big surprise: he falls for her. Non-sarcastic surprise: it's kind of sweet.

In wrapping up all but one of its stories with a happy couple, "He's Just Not That Into You" may be a pleasant, inoffensive experience, but it argues against the book's logic. Gigi is told that she's the "exception" when earlier in the movie her friends assure her that there are no exceptions. That friend of a friend who got a call weeks later from a guy? That never happened. Except it does for Gigi. And the guy who's just not that into you because he won't marry you (Ben Affleck, of course)? Just give him time and make him miserable--he'll cave.

Jon & Kate

2009-06-10T18:08:00.000-07:00

Can Troy Patterson's Slate article be the final word on these guys?

"She is a moaning 34-year-old harpy with highlights as wide as mountain-bike tires sporting an asymmetrical haircut suggestive of a wounded stork. He is a sullen 32-year-old layabout whose skate-punk sideburns and gelled forelocks signal boring bad news."

Terminator Salvation (2009)--2/5

2009-06-10T09:21:00.000-07:00

John Connor has been saved now in four features, one television series, and one 3D "experience." I ask: why is John Connor so great? He's like the baby in a "Roger Rabbit" short--leave him alone for a nanosecond and he's falling twelve stories to his death. He's never done anything particularly amazing for the resistance. The only reason John even succeeds at blowing up one (of many; there will be sequels) Skynet base in "Terminator: Salvation" is because he's trying to save Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), the teenager who grows up to travel back in time to be his father in the eighties.

The resistance fighters have a choice of who lives at the end of the film: John Connor, accident-prone mortal and possible future leader; or Marcus Wright, nearly indestructible half-Terminator, half-human who's working against his creators. Marcus has already proven that a "Terminator" movie can be carried without Connor; he steals the show by starring in the substantial action scenes.

Each "Terminator" film has a twist that calls into question the original cause of events. As mentioned, Kyle Reese fathers John Connor. Later, Skynet is created using the smushed T-800 from the first film and Judgment Day ends the third film, despite everyone's best efforts to stop it. Removing John Connor from this infinite loop would be a much needed restart to the creaky series. And it would support the series cockeyed approach to fate.

After the repeat of Arnold's *good* T2 Terminator in T3, it's nice to see him back as the mute villain. Never mind that his digitally-created face is quickly burned away because of the cost of the computer effects involved.

"Terminator Salvation" has some other issues. Star (one-named actor Jadagrace) is a little girl following Reese who, despite being mute, is still more annoying than Jar-Jar Binks. She exists in the film only to dispense the exact item that's needed (Band-Aid, flare, detonator) at a given time. These reveals are played for laughs. I just want to yell at the screen like Gordon Ramsay: "Useless!"

Also, "Salvation" is finally a Terminator film set in the future, something that's been hinted about throughout the series. I know it's a callback to the history of the series, but couldn't the writers think of a climactic setting more original than yet another steel-smelting plant?

Nightbreed (1990)--2/5

2009-06-09T11:44:00.000-07:00

While watching "Nightbreed," I kept thinking of how I was going to describe protagonist Aaron Boone (Craig Sheffer). This is what I came up with: He looks like the Buffyverse's Angel, if Angel were a bully in a John Cusack movie. As you can see, it was hard to pay attention to this film, Clive Barker's followup to "Hellraiser."

The Nightbreed creatures themselves, hatched from Barker's fertile mind and fashioned with a craftsmanship little-seen in today's digital effects-heavy films, are uniformly intriguing. And "The Scarecrow Movie Guide" claims that they all have deep backstories. But "Nightbreed" is the worst kind of fantasy: the heroes are given little to do but tag-team wrestle against an encroaching army of rednecks. (That's probably not "the worst kind of fantasy;" I like how the hyperbole sounds.)

David Cronenberg takes a rare bow in front of the camera in "Nightbreed" as Boone's unhinged psychologist. He made me wish I had watched one of his films instead.

Boone...

...and Angel.

Drag Me To Hell (2009)--3/5

2009-06-08T13:19:00.000-07:00

Did Sam Raimi really have to make three "Spider-Man" tent poles before he was allowed to make a new "Sam Raimi" movie? That doesn't seem right, especially in the case of the "Batman Forever"-emulating third installment.

Savor "Drag Me To Hell" now, since it's going to be another ten years--and another twelve subpar Marvel villains--before something similar comes along. Raimi's seasick approach to comic horror has no peer. "Drag Me To Hell," with the increasingly insane plagues set upon heroine Christine (Alison Lohman), is a spiritual successor to Raimi's classic "Evil Dead" cycle. The trials come about because Christine has the bad luck to get between an elderly Gypsy woman (familiar television actor Lorna Raver) and her home loan.

Whether it's a slog in a muddy grave or an epic battle in a compact car, Lohman is game for everything she's asked to do. She doesn't have quite the impeccable timing of "Evil Dead" star Bruce Campbell, but very few people do.

Playing a college professor, Justin Long's office is festooned with Apple products. Hilarious.

Defiance (2008)--2/5

2009-06-07T16:17:00.000-07:00

Edward Zwick ("Glory," "The Last Samurai") brings his lifelike diorama style now to the Holocaust. Specifically, "Defiance" tells the little-known story of Belorussian Jews surviving in the unforgiving forest. "Defiance" quickly draws a line between brothers Tuvia (Daniel Craig) and Zus (Liev Schreiber). Tuvia, the eventual leader of the forest camp, is a stoic pacifist, while Zus believes in striking from the jungle as often and as viciously as possible.

In their situation, either approach is pretty much doomed. Stealing food alerts the Nazis to their presence and staying put leads to faster starvation. Since "Defiance" is billed as an exciting action movie, Zus's disposition easily wins out. Tuvia and company shoot their way out of the forest and then on to the next camp. Along the way, they're miraculously helped by Zus, who happens to be moving by at the right time.

Events are dangerously compressed in "Defiance." They're linked in a series that allows glimpses of true miserable destitution before whipping back to a more conventional world at war. The actors--including the leads--have been given one-phrase directions (stoic pacifist, wise teacher, rash whippersnapper, girl who looks like a runway model) and left for dead in front of the camera.

Shogun Assassin (1980)--3/5

2009-06-07T16:12:00.000-07:00

It’s not difficult to imagine Quentin Tarantino watching “Shogun Assassin” for the twentieth time in preparation for filming “Kill Bill.” Almost every inventive evisceration or bloodletting in his movie has its genesis—or at least ultimate iteration—in Kenji Misumi and Robert Houston’s efficient original.

A little explanation is necessary: In 1980, Houston combined two Japanese films based on the long-lived “Lone Wolf and Cub” manga to make “Shogun Assassin.” Eleven minutes were culled from “Sword of Vengeance” and seventy from “Baby Cart at the River Styx” (what a title!). I wish I’d known this before watching “Shogun Assassin,” since the original films are available on DVD.

The basic setup has Ogami Ittō displeasing his paranoid master, the Shogun. Forever on the run, Ittō, now a “Lone Wolf,” encounters assassins at every crossroads, in every town, and on every boat. The story is episodic, without much to look forward to. The appeal lies in how Ittō uses the environment, his son, and his Swiss Army arsenal to dispatch the bad guys.

See, when Lone Wolf kills, he does it with style. And more often than not, Daiguro, his toddler son, is his accomplice. Lone Wolf’s duel with the Shogun’s own son sets the tone for what follows. As they run toward each other, Ittō bows at the last second, revealing Daiguro and his reflective crown. The blinded foe is easily decapitated. Spraying blood, the corpse drops in a striking, faked slow motion. (Ittō stands frozen in action during the shot.) Tarantino wishes he could be that cool.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009)--2/5

2009-06-04T11:25:00.000-07:00

A Segway is not as inherently funny as "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" thinks it is. "Arrested Development" got some laughs out of brother Gob's Segway, but that was more from the character's assumed superiority while riding it. Paul Blart isn't a funny guy; he's a comedic straight man without a partner.

It's no surprise that "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" finds short-lived success in the first major scene without Segway-riding. Blart accidentally drinks at an after-hours mall-worker party. He spouts increasingly obnoxious non-sequiters before jumping through a window. It says something for the rest of this unholy "Home Alone"/"Dawn of the Dead" hybrid that this is the winning scene.

Taken (2009)--1/5

2009-06-03T10:20:00.000-07:00

Bryan Mills' (Liam Neeson) daughter Kim and her friend Amanda are kidnapped shortly after arriving in Paris. In the alternate universe of "Taken," this is commonplace. American girls are kidnapped and sold into slavery everyday; the news media is not interested in something so boring. Mills has no faith in the police and immediately flies to Europe to kick some Albanian butt. In doing so, he seals the fate of Amanda, killed by an overdose and quickly forgotten. But he does find his daughter! And he kills, tortures, or mutilates enough Albanian- and Arabic-speaking rent-a-baddies to satisfy those who think Jack Bauer is a model of restraint.

We know Mills is a retired butt-kicker from his friends' painful expository dialogue. We also find out that he's worried his daughter will be abducted in Europe. It's a good thing the exact thing he's completely prepared for happens!

The Cartoonist: Jeff Smith, Bone, and the Changing Face of Comics (2009)--3/5

2009-06-01T17:09:00.000-07:00

When a "Bone" movie is finally made, "The Cartoonist" will be a welcome extra on the bonus disc. (This is, of course, if DVD's still exist that far in the future.) Mostly filmed during Jeff Smith's victory lap through the Wexner Center last year, the film concisely relates the genesis of "Bone." At the unbelievable age of five, Smith first conceived of the Bone archetype while doodling. Later inspired by Walt Kelly, Sparky Schultz, and the collection of Ohio State's Cartoon Research Library, he contributed daily strips to The Lantern.

Before beginning the epic "Bone" comics, Smith had a day job as a founder of Character Builders, a Columbus-based animation studio. In its most novel sequence, "The Cartoonist" unearths some primitive, little-seen commercials for White Castle, Time-Warner Cable, and other, smaller, companies.

The history of "Bone" has been told and told again. Smith has been asked the same questions so many times that he has a bank of sound bites--like the one about the childhood desire for a thousand-page Uncle Scrooge omnibus. Still, it's nice to have a feature companion to the Wexner Center's exhibit.

Emmanuelle (1974)--1/5

2009-06-01T10:50:00.000-07:00

I've run into a problem, writing about everything I watch: I have to reveal that I Netflixed the infamous soft-core Eurotrash "Emmanuelle." It has a plot just as forced and banal as a standard porno, with an bonus layer of art-theater self-importance. (And without the porno--"love" scenes are shown not at all or through gauzy curtains! Just sayin'.)

Emmanuelle (Sylvia Kristel) couples with every attractive man or woman she meets (i.e. everyone she meets) and her clothing is less than optional. You can tell the filmmakers are trying to posit her stature as a daring feminist, throwing off the shackles of a patriarchal society. Like when she impulsively travels into the Thailand wilderness to consummate a passionate lesbian affair, leaving her husband to wallow in a dirty Bangkok stripclub. Eh, sorry. It's an impossible dream, this deeper meaning--leering men and a generally voyeuristic directorial style make sure of this.

"Emmanuelle" has more to answer to than just itself. Since it was a smash upon initial release, it's seen as a template for all successive soft-focus late night skin flicks. Zalman King and the creators of Skinemax have "Emmanuelle" to thank for their careers.

Thanks a lot.

I.O.U.S.A. (2008)--2/5

2009-05-30T12:02:00.001-07:00

Patrick Creadon, the director of "Wordplay," shifts into low gear with "I.O.U.S.A.," a soporific exposé of our country's financial woes. The film readily admits that this is a topic that doesn't get enough press--a local story on an important? town hall meeting is bumped from the newscast for the usual treacle. And Robert Bixby, the perennially ruffled executive director of the non-partisan Concord Coalition, admits that his message is "unsexy."

"I.O.U.S.A." tries to sex up both complicated and obvious axioms with fancy animated pie charts and bar graphs. They all--shockingly!--predict a dire future for the country. (The future we're living in, as the film was made in 2007/2008.) Every five minutes, it's like the irritating part in "An Inconvenient Truth" in which Al Gore rides an industrial lift in order to illustrate his point.

Reductionism is often a fault of movies, but "I.O.U.S.A." fails because it doesn't do it enough. Creadon crams too many concepts into a slim runtime. I'm not asking for him to dumb down the material, but rather to keep only the biggest ideas or to slow down complex narration. (Okay, maybe I am asking him to dumb it down.) "I.O.U.S.A." tries and fails to be a populist reference on the economy.

Partly Cloudy (2009)--5/5

2009-05-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

The short "Partly Cloudy" screens before "Up" and after the "Toy Story 3" teaser. This enhancement of the baby-bearing stork legend is almost impossibly adorable. In this version, clouds are the creators and storks are the delivery-birds. Kittens, puppies, and babies are the primary output of clouds. But someone's gotta make less-desirable infants. An outcast cloud seems to be the only volunteer; he produces a baby alligator, porcupine, and head-butting ram. They're every bit as vibrant and singular as the "cuter" babies. And they come with the additional thrill of their danger to the cloud's stork.

"Partly Cloudy" is funny and tactile. It's told as a silent film; stork and cloud talk only in mumbling gesture-speak. With a well-earned story arc, it's the best Pixar short yet.

Up (2009)--3/5

2009-05-30T06:20:00.000-07:00

"Up" is Pixar's "The Emperor's New Groove." This may sound like a dismissal, but I really like "The Emperor's New Groove." It's a loopy, inventive lark, free from ponderous expectations of being the latest "important" Disney film.

"Up" is a similarly freewheeling adventure. With a few dozen bushels of helium balloons, Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner, whose full name appears in crosswords more than you'd think) steers his airborne house to the Amazon Basin. Russell, a very round and earnest kid, accidentally stows away on the flight. "Up" has a lot of fun with the setup and with what Carl and Russell find when they arrive.

Initially, the meet a Rain-Blo-colored female bird that Russell names Kevin. Kevin has the temperament of a few different kinds of birds--ostrich, flamingo, chicken, turkey--combined with the physical genius of Donald O'Connor. She's an utterly original creation. Kevin and Dug, a talking dog, get the biggest reaction from the audience.

An ostensibly tear-jerking preface opens "Up" in the wrong direction. Carl's mostly silent life-story is a carbon-copy of similar, more effective sequences in earlier Pixar movies. I'm thinking of Jessie's abandonment in "Toy Story 2," the look back at Radiator Springs's heyday in "Cars," and even the first two acts of "Wall•E." Carl's old age, so forcefully introduced, is regularly contradicted: he can't walk down stairs, but he can hike over a mountain for days while dragging a floating house? Maybe writer-director Pete Docter feels a Pixar movie can't be simply fun. The brand demands pathos, no matter how corny.

In trash like "My Bloody Valentine," 3-D is an excuse to thrust stuff at the audience as often as possible. Pixar has wisely made a solid movie first and then thought about 3-D. Pete Docter, the director of "Up," says, "We’re showing you a story, and the 3D should be in support of that, not the opposite."

After the initial excitement, the 3-D in "Up" is forgotten. During the film, I kept pushing my Carl Fredricksen-style 3-D glasses down in order to see the actual film. Through the glasses, it's as if "Up" has been projected through a glass of rainwater. It's a tragedy for a film this vibrantly illustrated. Of course, I had to make do with the glasses; watching without them may be brighter, but it's also blurrier.

Shocking 3-D is annoying and subtle 3-D is unnoticeable. Conclusion? 3-D is a joke. It's not the future of movies. Here's hoping the fad dies out faster than Hollywood thinks it will.

My Bloody Valentine (2009)--1/5

2009-05-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

Is there a wrong way to watch a movie this bad? I ask because "My Bloody Valentine" is supposed to be seen in a theater in 3-D. The screen is constantly thrust at by phallic and otherwise distracting objects--a pickaxe, a tree branch, super exciting newspaper headlines!

Never mind the amateur acting, degrading female roles, and complete lack of reason for existing (because of the sort-of-recommendable original). It's the 3-D "improvements" that ultimately bring "My Bloody Valentine" down.

During a bar fight, a random thug punches at a mirror. Cut to the inside of the mirror shattering, followed by an excessive pause to the action to really sell the gimmick. At a rate of one 3-D money shot for every scene, the pace of "My Bloody Valentine" is undermined at every opportunity. 3-D glasses can't help this problem.

I don't know if this is to aid the 3-D, but "My Bloody Valentine" looks like it was filmed on video. Not digital video. Just video. Movement is blurry and colors are washed out. The cheap special effects are perhaps integrated more easily in this lo-fi environment.

Religulous (2008)--2/5

2009-05-27T19:52:00.000-07:00

“Religulous” is evidence that Bill Maher’s smugness can’t carry a whole film. He has a better argument than Ben Stein’s intelligent design-propping “Expelled,” but their films could have been made by the same director. Each uses a distracting style of intercutting inexpensive or public domain clips to emphasize a point. So, for example, when Maher questions a Creationist Museum employee about dinosaurs living alongside people, a “Flintstones” clip amusingly (but not really) appears.

Maybe all the clips are in “Religulous” to obfuscate the fact that there’s not much going on in the film. Maher goes to some randomly selected religious centers, interrogates people with a raised eyebrow, and gets driven back to a hotel, thoroughly trashing them during the ride.

“Religulous” is concerned more with itself than it is about making any convincing refutation of religion. How else to explain the interview with a pot smoking Dutchman? He can’t even answer one question because he’s so baked. The only event of substance that occurs during this interview is that his hair (maybe) briefly catches on fire. His connection to religion is unclear.

The easy way to make these extreme religious people out as the nuts they are is to smartly debate them. Then, build the interviews into some kind of point. Maher is instead too concerned with cracking jokes and catching Biblical literalists in logical fallacies. “Religulous” is not a productive argument and watching it is not a productive use of 101 minutes.

Albuquerque, NM

2009-05-26T17:54:00.000-07:00

New Mexican "Fez-Wearing" ducks, UNM Duck Pond.

My parents lived in this house before I was born!

This turquoise Beetle seems quintessentially New Mexican.

Mauger Estate B&B

Sandia Peak tramway.

Laura drinks the Doogie Mojito at Sandiago's. It's named after local celebrity--and personal favorite--Neil Patrick Harris.

Star Trek

2009-05-25T19:56:00.000-07:00

In the latest "Star Trek" film, I totally wanted Old Spock to greet Young Kirk like the Abominable Snowman from "Monsters, Inc.":

Some Sort Of Canyon, AZ

2009-05-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

South Rim.

Hopi House, South Rim

Laura and Leslie near the Supai Tunnel, North Rim.

Yavapai Point, South Rim.

South Rim, once again.

Laura and Emily B. In Scottsdale, AZ

2009-05-22T23:25:00.000-07:00

Emily used to live in Columbus.

Saguaro National Park, AZ

2009-05-22T23:16:00.000-07:00

Laura and javelina "piggy" banks at the Desert Museum.

Laura's favorite flora, the "fuzzball plant." (It's actually a creosote bush.)

In front of the park's namesake.

More saguaros.

A scorpion at our campsite!

Guadalupe Mountains National Park, TX

2009-05-21T00:49:00.001-07:00

Some mountains.

Some more mountains.

Our campsite.

From A Few Days Ago

2009-05-18T21:59:00.000-07:00

Laura's friend Josie and her husband Brendan in Greenville, TX. Laura realized our route would take us a few miles past their house.

The Only Two Pictures I Took In San Antonio

2009-05-18T20:54:00.000-07:00

(It was pouring rain all day.)

Laura in front of The Alamo.

The same building.

Some Austin, Texas Cell Phone Pictures

2009-05-15T21:30:00.000-07:00

Steve outside the Texas State Capitol

Laura in an AT&T wireless commercial. (Check out the background.)

Texas Memorial Stadium. Cue the "Friday Night Lights" theme.

Pennsylvania's Amusement Parks, Part II: Hersheypark

2009-05-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

Hershey's Chocolate World is a smartly-designed adjunct to Hersheypark. Visitors can ride--for free--a "Chocolate Tour." I remember that one portion of this ride took visitors through the chocolate-making process. The temperature rose slightly and we were bathed with the smell of cocoa and roasted nuts. On the ramp out of the ride, a Hershey employee handed each of us a few Hershey's Kisses. The ramp ended at a food-court-sized Hershey's boutique. Like I said, smart design.

Another thing about the ride: it had an It's A Small World-style song sung by multi-cultural chocolate lovers and displayed on skewed TV screens. The lyrics went something like, "Hershey's chocolate, Hershey's chocolate, it's a Hershey's chocolate world." Repeat. I imagine a trip to Hershey's Chocolate World by a "Simpsons" writer inspired the Duff Gardens episode, "Selma's Choice." (Or it could have been a trip to Busch Gardens.)

One candy stood out from the usuals on display in the food court: Desert Bar. This was shortly after Desert Storm; at the time, people didn't associate the (camel-emblazoned, clearly Middle-Eastern) "desert" advertised on the package with "quagmire." The Desert Bar was designed to be an unmeltable--or at least less-meltable--chocolate bar. Aside from the clever play on words, Desert Bar failed to impress. Mom describes it as tasting like a regular chocolate bar that was melted and then reformed. I can find no picture online, so this candy must never have made it past Hershey, PA.

(Wikipedia has some info on the myterious Desert Bar. They were originally shipped to troops in the Persian Gulf. "Since the war ended before Hershey's stores of the experimental bar were shipped, the remainder of the production run was packaged in a "desert camo" wrapper and was dubbed the Desert Bar. It proved a brief novelty but Hershey declined to make more after supplies ran out.")

Continuing a tradition of what could be called April Fools' Day Parenting,* the family meandered over to the entrance of Hersheypark, the beckoning, chocolate-themed paradise. Willy Wonka's factory itself, right? We then turned around, walked back to the car, and drove back home to Ohio.

(I should add that we were only stopping in the midst of an eight-hour drive back from Shillington, PA. There was no way we could have stayed longer.)

*There's a similar Cedar Point story.

This Week And Next

2009-05-12T13:43:00.001-07:00

I'll be out of town through Memorial Day.

More importantly, I won't be watching any movies. Sad.

I'll try to post some pictures.

Like this one--of Wilbur, Laura's hedgehog:

Quarantine (2008)--3/5

2009-05-12T10:10:00.000-07:00

Ten years after “The Blair Witch Project,” “Quarantine” finally gets one-camera horror right. It has a few distracting moments of “Why is that guy still filming?” But all is forgiven in the final disturbing scene, in which night vision becomes the only way to see.

Documentary-style films and shows have created a new breed of actor/camera operator. Harris, if he indeed lenses the entire film,* has to act (scared, most of the time), carry a camera, be aware of all actor and special effect blocking, and get the coverage (in sometimes minutes-long shots). The aplomb with which he accomplishes all of these feats just adds to the creepy ambience.

Angela (Jennifer Carpenter, the sister on “Dexter”) tells Scott (Steve Harris) a few too many times that he has to keep filming. In “Cloverfield” and “Diary of the Dead,” this kind of line—“People are gonna want to know…how it all went down”—justifies some pretty detached behavior. The kids in these films should, after about five minutes of action, throw down their cameras and run like hell. The camera also excuses characters’ lack of involvement. Zombie-victims in “Diary” entreat the cameraman to quit filming and help them. (This would work as a muddled societal allegory, of the distance between documenter and subject, if the acting weren’t so bad.)

Angela’s entreaties in “Quarantine” are unnecessary; Scott works for the news and the footage is clearly worth getting. Plus, he gets into the action whenever possible, queasily smashing an “infected” with the camera’s lens or dropping it while in a melee.

“Quarantine” wisely limits itself to an enclosed apartment building that gives the film a tangible sense of place. During a brief pause, the building’s super rattles off each apartment and its tenants, including the guy in the attic who hasn’t been seen “in months.” This on-the-fly map/checklist grounds the action and opens up the possibilities for tension. Without it, Angela and Scott’s last stand up the stairs would be just screams, scares, and whip pans.

*I hear that he doesn’t do much of the filming. This may negate the rest of the paragraph.

Baby Hedgohog Chaser...

2009-05-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

...for the last post.

Dear Zachary: A Letter To A Son About His Father (2008)--4/5

2009-05-11T08:01:00.000-07:00

About an hour into "Dear Zachary," the film could very well cut to black and stay there for the remaining runtime. The director, Kurt Kuenne, despairs at events.

Usually, unforeseen happenings are what make successful documentaries. Steve James had no idea his three-week commitment to "Hoop Dreams" would uncover enough pathos to warrant an eight-year journey. "Dear Zachary" isn't like this. Kuenne's concept is sunk, his title doesn't make sense, there's no fucking point.

I make it sound as if "Dear Zachary" is about Kuenne. It is when it has to be, but it starts out as a eulogy for his good (best?) friend Andrew Bagby.* Kuenne's extensive adolescent filmography features the charismatic Bagby. He easily finds scores of friends from Bagby's life to discuss him on camera.

Andrew was murdered in 2001 by ex-girlfriend Shirley Turner. Extant footage of their relationship shows her as crude, demanding, and retroactively psychotic. She fled to Newfoundland, where she was supported by a sinuous extradition court and appeals process. And, oh yeah, she announced--at a press conference, no kidding--that she was pregnant with Andrew's son, Zachary.

At the time of filming, Andrew's parents must share custody of Zachary with Turner, murderer out on bail. Kate and David show an unparallelled fortitude, moving to Newfoundland and having to interact with Turner daily. Kuenne tailors his documentary to Zachary, forming a collage of his friends' memories of his late father.

And then...the idea of a "spoiler" seems insignificant for "Dear Zachary." But just think of the worst thing that could happen. This film works outside of any labels--true crime, documentary, remembrance, incrimination. It's touched by pure evil.

*Andrew is a generous, gregarious personality who would probably be called "best friend" by a few dozen guys.

Last Chance Harvey (2008)--2/5

2009-05-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

The audience "Last Chance Harvey" is courting has seen this before in countless romantic comedies. What could have been "Before Sunrise" for the older set--an intelligent look at a relationship through conversation--is instead a movie about logistics. Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson are still world-class actors. Nobody needs to see them in a trying-on-dresses montage set to upbeat music.

Needing to meet the minimum movie-length of ninety minutes, writer-director Joel Hopkins adds a subplot involving Kate's (Thompson) mother. She suspiciously watches her new neighbor using his smokehouse, thinking he's dispatching murder victims. But he's actually smoking large hams. Yes, he's using the smokehouse for its original purpose. Mystery solved.

Permanent Vacation (1980)--1/5

2009-05-10T09:36:00.000-07:00

"Permanent Vacation" is not quite awful, but still not worth seeing. With shots as long as those in "Stranger Than Paradise" and existential musings more scattered than those in "Ghost Dog," it's for Jarmusch completists only. It follows the aimless Allie Parker through a sometimes-Lynchian, gamelan-scored NYC. Many of the people he encounters can't even be bothered to hold a conversation; instead they writhe on the ground or stare blankly. Jim Jarmusch's concepts can--and generally do--support a watchable film. "Permanent Vacation" is an immature art student's bid at profundity.

Star Trek (2009)--3/5

2009-05-09T07:16:00.000-07:00

Using an inorganic screenwriting method, the plot of "Star Trek" is derived from a fear of angering fans. The results are awfully silly.

"As silly as saving the whales, Mr. Peabody?"*

"Quiet, you."

Romulan-with-a-grudge Nero travels in time through a black hole to the moment of James Kirk's birth. By killing Kirk's father, Nero creates a parallel universe. Without paternal guidance, Kirk grows up as a felonious delinquent. Depending on how nerdy you are, you recognize that this is so wrong. But don't fear: everything from the previous shows and movies plus everything from this movie is canon.

Okay, that's one function of "Star Trek." The other should have been to tell a coherent story that's not reliant on humorless gimmicks and plot holes. J.J. Abrams, working with screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, has brought a lot of good into "Star Trek." The action has a looser, poetic style than in the previous films; advances in computer effects, combined with the influence of Bourne and Bond, are responsible. The young actors channel the originals with enough warranted changes, based on their slightly different origins. They're unfortunately ill-served by busy plotting wrapped up in its own mythology.

Individual moments are among the most thrilling in the series. What Kirk's pursuit on the ice planet lacks in originality, it makes up in honest terror. And the destruction of a major planet signifies Abrams' intentions to leave nothing untouchable. With a series as ancient as "Star Trek," an age worn in the lines of Leonard Nimoy's face, a film that even tries something new is worth a look.

*In "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home."

Frost/Nixon (2008)--2/5

2009-05-08T06:08:00.001-07:00

Michael Sheen looks and sounds nothing like Richard Nixon. It's a good thing he plays reporter David Frost in Ron Howard's "Frost/Nixon."

Frank Langella looks and sounds nothing like Richard Nixon. He does play Nixon in "Frost/Nixon." Didn't anybody notice this while filming the movie? Oliver Platt, as one of Frost's "cornermen," does a better impression of Nixon during their prep.

"Frost/Nixon" is based on (a play based on) a series of famous interviews. In a short feature on the DVD, Ron Howard extolls the fidelity of the film while comparison shots of interview and movie are played. Real Nixon is tired and contrite while Langella Nixon devours the kitschy seventies scenery, goosing lines and drawing out pauses for cheap dramatic effect.

The final interview scene is the reason "Frost/Nixon" exists. The rest is a blurry preamble: research montages; exposition told, then shown, then told again; and news reports. The ready-made arc of the original interviews has been pulled apart, burnished using Ron Howard's aggressively middlebrow MO, and bolted back together as an "improvement" on the real thing.

Shoulda gotten this guy.

Arbitrary Double Features

2009-05-07T08:56:00.000-07:00

I saw these odd combinations only because they were playing at the Lennox theater on the same day. In rough chronological order:

The Legend of Drunken Master/Best In Show--I think we originally wanted to see just "Best In Show," which was sold out. Some of the group decided to see a painful double feature of "Little Nicky" and "Best In Show." (Painful only because of the first movie, of course.)

Monsters, Inc./The One--I saw these films with my old roommate John "Mike" Holmes. "Monsters, Inc." had "Episode II" and "Finding Nemo" teasers.

Hulk/The Italian Job--I needed something to cleanse the palate after the excruciating "Hulk."

Drumline/Die Another Day--We packed a lunch.

Femme Fatale/Punch-Drunk Love--Kickass films, both.

28 Days Later/Finding Nemo--Jarring, to say the least. This was the second screening of "Nemo" for me/first for roommate Kellie.

Million Dollar Baby/Assault on Precinct 13--Both complete duds. I walked out of the latter after about an hour.

Jay and I have tickets from the old Mansfield Cinemark 10 theater (now the dollar theater) for "Rugrats: The Movie." We stayed only for the "Episode I" teaser trailer (NERD!) and then walked across the hall to see "Antz."

The subsequent full trailer for "Episode I" is the only reason I've seen the entirety of "Wing Commander."

I'm glad those "Star Wars" prequels were worth the wait!

Jet Li, upon finding out I didn't pay to see "The One."

Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman (2005)--3/5

2009-05-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

Upon hearing that a rival hangman has completed a job in fourteen seconds, Albert Pierrpoint (Timothy Spall) vows to beat the mark. His next hanging clocks in at seven-and-a-half seconds. This brings up a few questions:

1) At what time do you start timing? The stop time is obvious, but not the start.

2) Is there some sort of adjudicating committee that keeps track of hanging time around the country? If so, they should really get some rules written down so people aren't cheating on their start times.

To Pierrepoint, a quick hanging is a "humane" hanging. He has no interest in criminals' crimes or stories. By the time Pierrepoint encounters them, they've been through what he thinks of as an infallible process. The only thing left is to get the job done as a professional courtesy.

Timothy Spall has made a career out of pathetic, hangdog characters. In "Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman," his skills are used to create a man of strong convictions, but one who is out of step with society. His reactions to growing protests are to hide in his house and stutter rebuttals. He can't understand why anyone would take much interest in his work, much less pubicly condemn him for it.

Of course something must pierce Pierrepoint's repose at the gallows. Will it be the young lady, the thirteen Nazi men and women in the same day, or his old drinking buddy, charged with killing a lover in cold blood? Hmm, I wonder...

The Wicker Man

2009-05-06T09:20:00.000-07:00

Here's a YouTube classic: the best scenes from Neil LaBute's remake of "The Wicker Man." It's further evidence of his inability to make a film that isn't unintentionally hilarious. See also: that last post on "Lakeview Terrace."

Lakeview Terrace (2008)--2/5

2009-05-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

Any attempts at behavior justification detract from the minor trashy thrills to be had in “Lakeview Terrace.” It’s another “yuppies in terror” film, this time with a racial twist as reason for its existence.

Michael Keaton terrorized Matthew Modine and Melanie Griffith in “ Pacific Heights .” Same thing with Ray Liotta, Madeleine Stowe, and Kurt Russell in “Unlawful Entry.” Now “Lakeview Terrace” has strong-willed cop Samuel L. Jackson as interracial couple Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington’s Worst. Neighbor. Ever.

Abel Turner (Jackson) has a magical house. No matter what window he looks out of, he’s able to see his neighbors doing something that annoys him. Upon seeing them in their pool in flagrante delicto (am I using this correctly?), he widens his eyeballs in rage. Jackson must have practiced this acting maneuver in front of a mirror for about twenty seconds while reading other awful scripts; he uses it to signify lots of things in “Lakeview Terrace.” But mostly rage.

Abel’s wife died three years before the movie takes place—in a car wreck with her white boss. His daughter is beginning to show signs of rebellion. Somehow, these factors are supposed to contribute to his actions. In truth, he’s simply--and with the eye widening, unnervingly--psychotic. Any other explanation is a waste of time. Fast forward to the yelling and violence and noise.

More on Shedd's Spread Country Crock

2009-05-05T11:36:00.000-07:00

As a kid, during "General Hospital" breaks, the Country Crock ads--those ones with disembodied hands fetishizing the product--drove me crazy. I desperately needed to see the people who were talking.

Clevelander Jack Riley is the longtime voice of the man in the Country Crock commercials. You may recognize him as the voice of Stu Pickles on "Rugrats" or as the funny guy who traded off with Fred Willard on "The Tonight Show" in a series of satellite interviews. He also has a brief role in "Boogie Nights" as (I forget if it's) Amber Waves' or her ex-husband's lawyer.

I made these connection a few years ago--I happened to be listening to the radio as he sat in the broadcast booth for a few innings of a mid-season Tribe game. I bet it's the only time Tom Hamilton talked about "Boogie Nights" on the air!

The Seventh Continent (1989)--3/5

2009-05-05T07:58:00.000-07:00

"The Seventh Continent" has no intention of explaining itself. In building tension, director Michael Haneke gives us the life of a middle-class Austrian family for two days, one in 1987 and one in 1988. Haneke is nothing if not thorough with his concept; he conveys boredom and resignation in a family is by filming boring scenes of resigned characters.

It's more than just this, though. "The Seventh Continent" is ascetically planned and is storyboarded as rigorously as a Coen Bros. film. For nearly ten minutes, the family is rarely seen in their scenes. A moving hand or a face distorted through glass, for example, are the only evidence of life. It's the world's dourest Shedd's Spread Country Crock commercial.

Upon closer examination, every scene hides an unsettling joke beneath the domesticity. It could be something as little as the mother's extra spoonful of sugar in her daughter's cereal or as forboding as the violent slaps of a car wash's brush.

The climax of "The Seventh Continent" is absolutely stacked with memorable images. From the beginning of his career, Haneke, director of the audience-baiting "Funny Games," set out to provoke a response. Here, a two- to three-minute shot finds the family ripping in half tens of thousands of schillings and flushing them down the toilet. This and the other alien acts of destruction--systematically ripping up books and shirts, sledgehammering furniture and mirrors--end up being more shocking than the logical endpoint. Haneke has an inkling of his audience's potential thoughtcrimes and is happy to meet it more than halfway.

My Own Private Idaho (1991)--3/5

2009-05-04T07:47:00.000-07:00

Critics who admire Keanu Reeves as more than just Neo and Ted (from Bill & Ted) must have "My Own Private Idaho" in mind. Scott (Reeves) starts as a drifting hustler, ends as a charming society man, and has an interlude as "Henry IV's" Prince Hal, complete with Falstaff, here named Bob.

As a testament to the quality of Shakespeare and of Gus Van Sant, the old and the new complement each other. Mike, his father (the Mayor of Portland), and Bob speak in verse for a long stretch of "My Own Private Idaho." It never detracts from Van Sant's recreation of a homeless Portland society.

The combination of flamboyant theatricality and the run-down fringes of a city is reminiscent of Terry Gilliam. Interesting: Gilliam's "The Fisher King" came out one month before "My Own Private Idaho."

Portland is one of four wildly divergent settings in "My Own Private Idaho." Seattle, where Scott and Mikey (River Phoenix) start out, would be similar, but it's scenes aren't played in Shakesperean verse. In Idaho, Van Sant fashions the "purple mountains" and "amber waves of grain" of the film's pedal steel guitar soundtrack as literally as possible. It serves as a humanizing respite for the kids. And Rome has a little bit of both--fast city and slow country.

Mikey often wonders how he got where he is, like when he wakes up at the base of Portland's Elk Fountain. In another film, his daze would be due to drug use. Because he's a narcoleptic, the idiosyncracies are humanizing and tragic.

Waterworld (1995)--3/5

2009-05-02T08:29:00.000-07:00

I’ve seen a lot of movies worse than “Waterworld.” So why’d it take fourteen years for me to get around to it? By the time the film was released, it had been a well-documented exercise in hubristic money-burning. Any supposed slight—especially those regarding Kevin Costner’s balding, begilled, and misogynist character Mariner—became magnified in the public eye. “Waterworld” still stands tall as one of the great Hollywood flops.

Seen independently of its production travails, “Waterworld” is a simple, well-meaning, post-apocalyptic action piece. In an attempt to distinguish “Waterworld” from the oft-plundered “Mad Max” series, the filmmakers bring (perhaps too-) detailed logic to the world. Mariner’s home base, a lovely trimaran boat, transforms with the manipulation of gears and ropes. Its destruction is the greatest tragedy in the film.

Careful, too much logical thought about “Waterworld” leads to madness. How long ago did the icecaps melt? Someone says hundreds of years ago. That can’t be true because Helen (Jeanne Tripplehorn) is unaware of cities—or any other swath of dry land. And Mariner has inherited gills and webbed toes. But it must be true because the Dennis Hopper-led “smokers” have unspoiled cigarette packs, poorly camouflaged wave runners, and a plane. See what I mean?

As perhaps the primary agent of its downfall, the difficult ocean location shooting is what ultimately distinguishes “Waterworld.” Despite the problems—storms, equipment malfunctions, ego-transport—the film has an endless horizon. In contrast, a scene in which Mariner swims to the ocean floor with Helen looks exactly like what it is: models, tank-shots, and poor special effects to tie them together—essentially, what I thought the whole film would look like.

The Reader (2008)--1/5

2009-05-01T07:43:00.001-07:00

(Spoilers)

Ralph Fiennes has a thankless role in "The Reader." It seems that all day, every day, Michael (Fiennes) is paralyzed with vivid memories of Hanna (Kate Winslet). She's naked, she's running a symbolically cleansing bath, she's naked again, then she's old (with typically bad makeup), and then she's dead. Kate Winslet has a thankless role, too--everyone does--because "The Reader" is a laughable bore.

During Hanna's trial, the stigma of illiteracy competes with the "stigma" of Nazism. Steps are made to excuse the bizarre juxtaposition, as when Hanna takes most of the blame for her actions and those of her fellow SS guards. It's still inexcusably nearsighted.

Like Hanna, every main player is shouldered with the burden of his/her respective society--a sure sign of a movie's overblown sense of importance.

We're asked to buy the fact that Michael happens to be in a law school seminar that attends Hanna's trial. That the trial hinges on a single written piece of evidence. That Hanna refuses to admit her illiteracy, even though it means life in prison instead of four years in prison. And, most unbelievably, that nobody in contact with Hanna has noticed that she can't even read a menu or write her own name. Thanks to the string-pulling score and Winslet's overacting, this fact is conveyed in the first few seconds of the first dramatic reading scene.

Screaming Masterpiece (2005)--3/5

2009-04-30T10:55:00.000-07:00

"Screaming Masterpiece" showcases bands and singers from Iceland. Many of them include Björk or are Björk herself. With shots of endless crags and frozen rivers, the film makes the not-so-new point that Icelandic music is cold, glacial, and eerie.

Sigur Rós is the most famous--and best--synthesizer of traditional and modern Icelandic music. The mournful chanting of the country's Head Pagan(!), Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, segues easily into their epic sound.

At a performance duplicated in the Sigur Rós concert film "Heima," the band plays with Hilmarsson. Artist Andy Goldsworthy would be proud of the stone marimbas created for the performance. Flat stones are collected and hit with a mallet to determine their sound. After a few octaves worth of stones are found, they're lashed to a resonating frame. This instrument, derived almost completely from nature, is wonderfully complex. ("Heima" has more on its creation than "Screaming Masterpiece;" I never wrote about that film.)

Ventures past the core "Icelandic" sound elude "Screaming Masterpiece." Attempts at punk, metal, and rap sound like third-generation xeroxes of better bands. There's a reason Sigur Rós, Björk, and múm are the most famous bands from Iceland--they sound like nothing else.

A stone marimba, from the Sigur Rós site.

Notorious (2009)--4/5

2009-04-29T08:35:00.001-07:00

This is the second-best movie with the title "Notorious."

Chris Wallace's eyeblink rise and fall tragically serve the biopic format well. Wallace aka Biggie Smalls aka The Notorious B.I.G. broke in 1994 with "Ready to Die" and was murdered in 1997, sixteen days before the release of "Life After Death." He can credibly be played by the same actor (Jamal Woolard) without a suspension of disbelief. Events from his life during these years are uniformly interesting and they easily stack into a complex arc.

Biggie always had the talent, rhyming to himself and to his friends. It took Puff Daddy's (Derek Luke) compromising genius to make him a sensation beyond Bed-Stuy. Puffy strongly encouraged Biggie to soften his image and rap against the early eighties song "Juicy Fruit." The resulting single, "Juicy," became his first hit. (It was also one of the first of many "Remember how great the past was?" hip-hop tracks.)

Despite his prophetic album titles, Biggie tried to stay above the deadly West Coast/East Coast rivalry. Having said that, he and Puffy are portrayed as a bit too angelic in "Notorious;" the excitement ultimately helped sell albums for both camps.

According to the film, the blame for the rivalry lies with Tupac, Suge Knight, and the media. Tupac, the scared aggressor, believed the hype about former friend Biggie, especially after a violent mugging with suspicious connections. Suge, ruthless and quick to violence, pulled the strings. The news, quick to the sexy rap-shooting angle, only brought more attention.

The shootings--the mugging and the murders of Pac and Biggie--are still a complete mystery. "Notorious" wisely skips any speculation, reenforcing the senselessness.

The Uninvited (2009)--2/5

2009-04-29T07:49:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the spoilers and the exclamation points:

1) It was all a dream!

2) Every strange thing that's happening to me can be conveniently explained by the fact that I'm totally crazy!

3) Someone I thought was alive has been dead the whole time!

One of these cliches is usually enough to derail a horror flick. "The Uninvited" uses all three, sometimes in concert. The acrobatics fail to make the film scary or even noisy.

Anna's (Emily Browning--Violet from the "Lemony Snicket" film) insanity can't retroactively correct the pace of "The Uninvited." Convinced that her new aunt (Elizabeth Banks, for real) is homicidal, Anna discusses what to do with her sister and a local boy. For the first hour of the already short film, these conversations abruptly end with promises to meet or investigate later. Why not just continue the conversation now? Crazy!

What Would Jesus Buy? (2007)--2/5

2009-04-27T09:45:00.000-07:00

With his name in the credits as a "presenter" of "What Would Jesus Buy?," Morgan Spurlock is to gimmicky documentaries with a conscience as Quentin Tarantino is to neo-grindhouse movies. The film is a scattershot screed against--what, exactly? It's hard to tell. Tucked between scenes of Reverend Billy's revivalist-inspired anti-shopping sermons are chestnuts from other recent documentaries.

1) Wal-Mart is evil and it's destroying small-town America. That's from "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price."

2) Credit cards lead to endless individual debt. "Maxed Out" already took on credit card companies.

3) Products are made in sweatshops. Michael Moore confronted Nike and other corporations, in "The Big One."

Reverend Billy is onto something by focusing on ugly Christmas shopping hysteria. Sickening shots of near-riotous after-Thanksgiving sales illustrate his point. "What Would Jesus Buy?" should have stuck with this theme.

The Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir confuses more than it raises legitimate questions. Most people think the choir is from a real church. Those that investigate are puzzled by the message--shouldn't it be the "Shop Less Gospel Choir"?--and frightened by the messenger.

The Passion of Anna (1969)--4/5

2009-04-27T09:22:00.001-07:00

Ingmar Bergman interrupts "The Passion of Anna" four times with "interviews" of his actors. In the first and most shocking instance, Max von Sydow remarks on the difficulty of playing Andreas, a man with very little outward emotion. This technique--downright Godardian in its destruction of conventional filmic escapism--is way out of the ordinary for Bergman.

Andreas is a divorcee living in solitude on a small Swedish island. He meets Anna (Liv Ullmann) via two married friends. In typical Bergman fashion, they all have tragic inner and outer lives. "The Passion of Anna" is punctuated by trysting, violent emotional explosions, and existential musing.

Von Sydow's interview, and one each with Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, and Erland Josephson, segment "The Passion of Anna." Each interview is increasingly "scripted." That is, each one may be the thoughts of the actor on their character. But these thoughts are dense, metaphorical, and delivered free of extemporaneous pauses and hiccups. In these moments, the audience is aware of the artificiality of the film's content. It's also aware of Bergman's control over an entire world--the narrative, the characters, even the actor's interpretations of the characters.

Chess probably isn't the best idea, guys.

The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)--4/5

2009-04-24T07:18:00.000-07:00

I had the Keanu Reeves remake sitting on my shelf well past the due date, taunting me. At about the third or fourth dismissal, I actually opened the case to find the original film inside, on a second disc. "The Day The Earth Stood Still" is one of the few sci-fi films from the fifties that is worth watching today in a non-campy mood. ("The Forbidden Planet" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" are also on this list.)

Klaatu, the alien Jesus, is just as much a reaction to nuclear war as "Godzilla." That film's pained destruction is replaced by the competing hubris and humility of post-war America.

Klaatu's flying saucer settles in a public park in the center of Washington D.C. As an interstellar diplomat in a Hollywood film, where else would he land? Testaments to U.S. importance, like the Washington Monument and the Capitol, are visible in the foreground of Klaatu's touchdown. They're meaningless in the face of Gort, an unstoppable robocop capable of destroying planets. It's implied more than a few times that humans have been of no galactic consequence until now.

Trailers for the remake show mass destruction of a stadium, a semi truck, and other man-made things. Not knowing the context, I can only speculate, but it seems as if this misses the point by a few parsecs. "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is a powerful anti-war film, memorable for its lack of unnecessary violence. Gort is terrifying despite only using a small percentage of his full power. He vaporizes weapons and later--after Earthlings have shot Klaatu for the second time!--two soldiers. Thrilling as the 1951 special effects are, "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is still watched for its pacifism and indictment of humanity.

RocknRolla (2008)--3/5

2009-04-24T06:26:00.000-07:00

Guy Ritchie exhibits an incremental maturation in his latest, “RocknRolla.” Ritchie made a stylistic first impression with “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,”* successfully returned to the well with “Snatch,” and seemed to fade away after the “Swept Away” fiasco.

Like those first two films, “RocknRolla” follows a few too many MacGuffins through serpentine criminal activities. Also, many of the characters have “whimsical” nicknames. One-Two (Gerard Butler) and Mumbles (Idris Elba) stick up Uri’s accountants. Uri (Karel Roden) owes Lenny (Tom Wilkinson), who’s also owed by One-Two and Mumbles. A valuable and never-seen-from-the-front painting, originally borrowed by Lenny, travels a similarly convoluted path.

The second of two ostentatious stickups has a blithe framing device. A severely beaten One-Two limps into a restaurant to pay off his “finder’s fee.” He has to ask, “Don’t you want to know what happened?” Before we even see one second of it, the chase is entertaining. It involves superhuman Russian warriors, multiple car crashes, a sporting goods store, and an increasingly pathetic chase on train tracks. And it manages to somehow be longer and goofier than expected.

For all the macho posturing and plot calisthenics, “Rocknrolla” manages to sneak in some grounded characterization. This time around, the individual crooks are more than just funny nicknames. At the center of everything is Archie (Mark Strong), narrator of the film and right-hand man to Lenny. Andy Garcia-lookalike Strong doesn’t play Archie to the cheap seats. Instead, he slowly burns brighter, a secret voice of relative sanity and wisdom. Lenny’s comeuppance at the hands of Archie is surprisingly cathartic.

*I prefer the Italian title to the film, “Lock and Stock.”

Role Models (2008)--3/5

2009-04-22T08:09:00.000-07:00

"Role Models" fails to maintain the anarchy of its opening act. One-note situations and people are hysterical at first, less so the more they're around. Ronnie (Bobb'e J. Thomson) is a little kid with a foul mouth. Gayle (Jane Lynch) has an embarrassingly-recreated past life. Laire is a Darkon-inspired LARPG with insanely dedicated players. Writer/director David Wain refuses to build on these initially amusing foundations. Luckily, "Role Models" has a lot of stuff to introduce.

More importantly, MTV's The State is actually coming to DVD on July 14, 2009! Many of the actors from The State have been recently successful. "Role Models" is written by two and stars four of them. "Reno 911!" features three in the regular cast. Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon are successful screenwriters, having penned "Herbie: Fully Loaded," "The Pacifier," and "Taxi."

Okay, forget that last one.

Now I'm holding out for the DVD release of "You Wrote It, You Watch It."

The Spirit (2008)--2/5

2009-04-21T07:17:00.000-07:00

Is that David Straithairn overacting? Why would he have such a small part? Oh, it's just Frank Miller, writer/director/questionable auteur.

"The Spirit" has been hijacked by Miller and in turn hijacked by Hollywood. Creator Will Eisner's original vision is awfully hard to discern. Miller needs an R rating to explore his version of Central City. With a PG-13 rating, "The Spirit" lives in an uncomfortable valley between the base noir fetishism of "Sin City" and the campiness of Adam West's "Batman." Corny asides from The Spirit (Gabriel Who?) share the screen with a belly-dancing torturer (Paz Vega) and a Nazi-uniformed villain (Samuel L. Jackson). Okay, now that I've written them down: those are just bad ideas, no matter what the rating.

All his illustrations may look like pulverized Superman, but on film Frank Miller is still an expert visual stylist. He's helped in part by the trailblazing effects work of "Sin City" director Robert Rodriguez. The studio-mandated pulled-punches occasionally contribute to the fun in the form of silhouettes--think The Spirit viciously beating a thug in an alley or Sand Saref's victim in the foreground of a shot.

As in "Sin City," Miller shows his love of Chuck Taylors; The Spirit's soles are the brightest objects in the film. "The Spirit" gets an extra star for this.

Frank Miller's pulverized Superman.

The Spirit's shoes.

Bedtime Stories (2008)--2/5

2009-04-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

With "Bedtime Stories," Adam Sandler has now entered the "Jumanji" phase of his career. It's a lazy, crassly designed Disney film. The stories within are broad, barely diverting genre sketches featuring, say, Sandler's evil boss as an evil space emperor or an evil medieval king. They're all the same; the only thing that changes is the obvious window-dressing.

Yes, "Bedtime Stories" needs to be tidy in order to serve the Triumphing Underdog plot, but there's not even a hint of the wonder and surprise of something like "The Fall." Or "Labyrinth," or "Return to Oz," or most other movies about kids' imaginations.

Russell Brand tries and fails to rise above the middlebrow-ness. This suggests the First Law of Russell Brand: The more groomed his hair, the less entertaining he is.

Normal Russell Brand.

"Bedtime Stories" Russell Brand.

Pennsylvania's Amusement Parks, Part I: Idlewild

2009-04-18T10:59:00.001-07:00

"Adventureland" was filmed at Kennywood, an actual amusement park in Pittsburgh, PA. By all accounts, Kennywood is nothing like the run-down, pathetic Adventureland. To find the real Adventureland, just drive east into the mountains until you reach Ligonier, PA, home to Idlewild Park. In the summer of 1994, during an already memorable vacation, I spent a surreal day at Idlewild Park.

I remember the exact date of the trip--September 9, 1994--because we spent the weekend catching local news updates on Flight 427, a plane that had crashed outside of Pittsburgh.

My sister came to Idlewild Park to compete in a Scottish dance tournament. The highly-regulated competition consists of rows of girls dancing over swords to the shrill squawking of The Only Song You Ever Hear On A Bagpipe That's Not Amazing Grace.

I have no memory of watching Sylvia compete, although I'm sure I did. I was more interested in the other eighty percent of the park, completely unstaffed and unmonitored. GK and I* wandered away from the dancing and spent the better part of the day exploring a creepy abandoned amusement park. Edit: It was only closed for the season.

We crossed a river on a train bridge, the tracks disappearing into the forest beyond. As we ventured in, hidden architecture appeared through the trees. We stared at the first structure for a bit before realizing it was the Museum-Go-Round, home of Lady Elaine Fairchilde of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Aha, the trolley rode on these tracks! They passed oversized versions of each landmark from the Land of Make Believe. It felt like a daylit haunted carnival, what with the stillness in the woods and the empty, false facades of the buildings. It may actually be more frightening when the puppets are out in force:

Later, we stumbled upon Confusion Hill--it had no doors or locks to keep people out. Confusion Hill was a decrepit fun-house ride working exactly as it did--minus the bad actors--on normal business days. It was a series of rooms with slanted floors, skewed perspectives, and other optical illusions to "confuse" people. Embedding is disabled on this YouTube video, but you can see Confusion Hill's shenanigans. GK and I even rolled coins down the table in the video. We tried to get Mom to go into the house, but she took one look and immediately became nauseous.

Another look at Confusion Hill, which apparently still exists:

That weekend, we also visited Fallingwater. Western Pennsylvania always reminds me of uniquely designed buildings beckoning in the forest.

*And Scoob and Scrappy.

Stardust Memories (1980)--2/5

2009-04-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

Heading off criticism, Woody Allen has a critic call his films "self-indulgent" in the first five minutes of "Stardust Memories." Sorry--the critic is talking about Sandy Bates's films. Not Allen's. Got it? Bates does have supporters. Die-hard fans--extras rejected from "8 1/2" for looking too freakish--attend a Bates film festival and idiotically praise him. The knee-jerk reaction is to agree with the critic and dismiss the film as another failed, yet beautifully photographed, Woody Allen ego-trip.

Sounds like a good idea.

Dave Navarro has the same tasteless wallpaper in his "crib." (Source: MTV Cribs)

Yes Man (2008)--3/5

2009-04-16T08:39:00.000-07:00

Superficially, "Yes Man" is no different from most other Jim Carrey movies. He radically changes his behavior, leading to wacky situations, a girlfriend, eventual comeuppance, and a crowd-pleasing resolution. "Yes Man" has two key differences: 1) Carl (Carrey) is a genuinely good person from start to finish and 2) His behavior changes are self-imposed.

In the crass "Liar Liar," Carrey plays a man forced to tell the truth through a son's successful birthday wish. "Bruce Almighty" gives Carrey no less than the powers of God. In "Yes Man," Carrey is starts out as simply painfully introverted, thanks to a crushing divorce. In a few eye-rolling moments, he even lies to his friends, signaling a carbon-copy of "Liar Liar" that thanfully never materializes. He attends Terence Stamp's motivational seminar and decides, with the help of a public semi-humiliation, to agree to everything. No supernatural forces are preventing him from saying no.

"Yes Man" is still a calculated Carrey vehicle. Until some illogical later conflicts, it has a little more fun than usual. Rhys Darby, so funny as Flight of the Conchords' manager on the HBO series, plays Carrey's nerdy, David Brent-emulating boss. He's constantly throwing elaborate parties, including two based on Warner Bros. properties ("Harry Potter" and "300"). In spite of the forced synergy, the costumes liven up "Yes Man."

Zooey Deschanel performs in a band, Munchausen By Proxy, that has just as many die-hard fans as it should (six or seven). The real band Von Iva performs organically with Deschanel as Munchausen. The details of "Yes Man" are remembered long after the plot has faded.

Towelhead (2007)--1/5

2009-04-15T14:32:00.000-07:00

Alan Ball really should stick with TV. With “Towelhead,” the “Six Feet Under” creator fumbles badly in rehashing the Academy Award®-winning hyperactivity of neighbors in “American Beauty.” “Beauty,” as you’ll recall, had the closeted, murderous, right-wing Marine. “Towelhead” ups the ante by presenting a racist, pedophilic, right-wing Reservist. Also, since everything in the film comes in twos, it has a womanizing and abusive Lebanese father. Whew.

“Towelhead” only ever advances via smarmy sexual and scatological happenings. Involving Jasira (Summer Bishil), a thirteen-year-old girl. Events that have little impact the first time, other than a general embarrassment for the actors involved, are often repeated. The somewhat novel scene in which the heroic middle neighbor refutes Jasira’s father in Arabic is copy/pasted beat-for-beat later in the film.

At the whim of Alan Ball, Travis (Aaron Eckhart), the Reservist, makes some idiotic decisions. He’s constantly in scenes with Jasira in, for example, a living room, a restaurant, or his front yard. For Jasira’s sake, this is a good thing; the saintly neighbor sees the two of them and becomes suspicious. A criminal of some intelligence would go to greater lengths to not get caught. It’s like Ball got a certain artistic staging of scenes in his head and never stopped to think.

“Towelhead” is supposed to be some sort of meditation on prejudice and American race relations. The sensationalized, phony acts on screen negate any sort of message.

Adventureland (2009)--4/5

2009-04-15T08:24:00.000-07:00

The trailers for "Adventureland" are advertising it as an eighties teen workplace/sex comedy. "Adventureland" is so much more. It's not even a teen movie, although the characters revert to their younger selves at times. To save money for grad school, Oberlin grad James (Jesse Eisenberg) is reduced to working with other helpless peers at the Pittsburgh-area amusement park.

"Adventureland" has a near-perfect ratio of good jokes to attempted jokes. Martin Starr, essentially maturing his "Freaks and Geeks" role, delivers some of the best lines, like, "We are doing the work of pathetic, lazy morons" and "Forty percent of these goldfish are dead." Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, and Matt Bush are reliably funny, as well.

"Adventureland" towers over brethren like "Wet Hot American Summer" by working just as well as an obsessively-soundtracked romance. It's like a lost John Cusack movie (minus John Cusack), bridging the gap between high school ("Say Anything...") and midlife crisis ("High Fidelity"). Eighties music really is the perfect focal point for this kind of movie. James and Em (Kristen Stewart) listen to The Replacements in a car while the park's resident sexpots dance to the twentieth daily playing of "Rock Me Amadeus." Everyone agrees that Lou Reed is the coolest. Some actually listen to him.

In "Adventureland," nights are parties with people you don't really think you like. Days are blurred hangovers at work. In spite of his clear, often stridently wielded, intelligence, James falls into trouble in the style of The Smashing Pumpkins' "1979" video.* At his lowest moments, he clings to the promise of three months from now.

*I'm thinking of the chase in the park ("Adventureland") as compared to the convenience store scene ("1979").

smashing pumpkins - 1979 - smashing pumpkins

Train Man (Densha Otoko) (2005)--3/5

2009-04-14T07:51:00.000-07:00

"Train Man" has fun saturating an ephemeral fairy-tale with nerdy details. Text messages and chat room posts fill the portions of the frame not already given to Train_man's Darth Vader statues and Gundam models.

Small compartments--Train_man's bedroom and office, train cars and stations--are manifestations of the online and fictional worlds to which the hero escapes. For some reason, Train_man has a loyal group of online followers. He's like lonelygirl15, except he's not hot, an actor, or on YouTube. Again, I'm not sure of the appeal.

It first appears that Train_man (Takayuki Yamada) is a geek (or is he a nerd?) in the "She's the One" mold; a makeover will solve all of his problems. After successfully inviting his crush to dinner, he buys contacts, a haircut, and fashionable clothes. Yet he can't buy confidence. In Hermes' (Miki Nakatami) presence, and without greasy bangs to hide behind, Train_man is a nervous, stuttering buffoon. The "moment of truth" scene--lit by the neon of Akihabara Electric Town, of course--finds a comfortable balance. Train_man loses his contacts and fancy shirt, but finds Hermes and the right words.

(Hermes real name is never spoken. She's named after the expensive Hermès tea set she buys Train_man as a thank-you gift.)

This is mildly amusing at about the :50 mark.

Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008)--2/5

2009-04-13T07:12:00.000-07:00

As much as Capcom would like to believe, the strength of the "Resident Evil" series is not its story. With a few exceptions,* the games' brief cut-scenes are mediocre-to-painfully mediocre connections between the interactivity.

"Resident Evil: Degeneration" is like a movie of strung-together cut-scenes. They deliver hammy exposition and set up action sequences. Instead of cutting to a few hours of gameplay, the film labors to deliver uninspired, poorly animated noise. A bizarre, too-long shot of a stationary truck, while two characters converse, hints at a budget crisis in this already low-budget production.

The whole thing is not worth the energy--"Degeneration" is a rehash of the eleven-year-old "Resident Evil 2." Leon and Claire must battle the same campy G-Virus mutation in an industrial setting. WilPharma in Harvardville has replaced Umbrella Corporation in Raccoon City; only the names have changed. (If nothing else, the "Resident Evil" series is an insightful look at Japan's conception of the U.S.)

"Resident Evil: Degeneration" is the canonical film fans have been asking for. The next one better have Milla Jovovich.

*"Code: Veronica's" John Woo-esque opening scene being an exception. (Watch starting at 2:10.)

Look into my dead, vacant eyes.

Bottle Shock (2008)--2/5

2009-04-10T06:42:00.000-07:00

All the hype over the new wave of 3D movies undersells the power of normal 2D movies. Every movie is already its own world to be lost in. They’ve been around—unchanged visually, more or less—for 100+ years.

(Uh oh. This preface for a mediocre film?)

When it works, “Bottle Shock” is a reminder of film’s power to make almost anything interesting to anyone else. The love for wine in this film—by the characters, the filmmakers, and the world—is palpable.

“Eat Drink Man Woman” has its tastes. “Perfume” has its scents. “Bottle Shock” successfully combines the two. The wine tasters’ snobbish, reverent comments and their idiosyncratic ways of inhaling and inspecting every sip convey a devoted culture. You can almost taste it.

I don’t even like wine.

Although based on a true story, only a few moments of “Bottle Shock” can be verified. In 1976, a British vintner traveled to California to choose wines for a blind taste-test in France. To everyone’s surprise (then, not to viewers of the film) the favorite chardonnay came from the Chateau MonteLena—an American winery. A bottle of the chardonnay, along with the American red wine that also won—is displayed in The Smithsonian.

The film’s added elements contrast adversely with the easygoing nature of wine culture. Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman), owner of the Chateau, irrationally acts like a butthead just to spice up the already interesting story.

And then there’s Sam (Rachael Taylor), the intern. She’s easy on the eyes—a sudsy “thresher washing” scene makes this abundantly clear. But she serves no purpose in this film. Scenes with Sam involve fighting, flashing, a love triangle, auto repair, and other things that don’t matter. “Bottle Shock” should be about wine, and little else.