By Willie Krischke – July 2, 2009
While there have been a plethora of must-see documentaries about the war in Iraq, worthwhile dramas have been few and far between. (In fact, two of the best, “Stop-Loss” and “In the Valley of Elah,” weren’t actually about the war, but about the after-effects of the war on soldiers’ lives.) Now comes Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,” which may be the first essential war movie to come out of this mess we’re in. And it succeeds because it doesn’t really bother with “this mess we’re in” it dives wholeheartedly into the realities, the textures, the detritus as well as the fortitude, quiet heroism, and everyday struggle of war. The soldiers in “The Hurt Locker” don’t have time or energy to pontificate about the virtues of spreading liberty in the desert, or to feel conflicted about the apparent absence of WMDs or potential length of engagement. They are too busy staying alive.
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Posted in All Reviews, In Theaters.
Tagged with Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, David Morse, Guy Pearce, Jeremy Renner, Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Ralph Fiennes.
Two Lovers - Romantic comedy fare played for drama and tension, not for laughs, works surprisingly well. Also, Joaquin Phoenix’s final movie before he announced his “retirement.” Click for full review.
Tokyo! - Omnibus project with shorts from Brit Michel Gondry, Frenchman Leos Carax, and Korean Joon-Ho Bong riffing on the titular Japanese city. Click (or page down) for the review.
Dark Streets - A big flick full of song and dance numbers that sometimes forgets that it needs to be a movie, as well.
12 Rounds – Wrestling superstar John Cena shows that acting isn’t any harder than wrestling. As long as you’re acting in B-movie trash about good cops and psycho-killer masterminds out for revenge.
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li - Looks like this is so bad, so terribly awful, so utterly inept that it might venture into so-bad-it’s-good territory. Now there’s an achievement.
Posted in On DVD, The Movie Blog.
Rating: 
Lately omnibus projects about cities have been popular, first with ”Paris Je T’Aime,” then “New York, I Love You,” and now “Tokyo!” all of which consist of shorts by various directors, somehow related to the city in question. I think the idea is to evoke the spirit of the city, to capture something of its textures and rhythms. Naturally some of the shorts work better than others, and attempting to view the whole thing as one piece is an exercise in futility. Still, going to the theater and seeing a series of twenty minute films instead of one long, exhausting tortured plot can be refreshing.
“Tokyo!” starts with a piece from Michel Gondry, famous for his exuberant visual style in films like “Be Kind Rewind” and “The Science of Sleep” heads up the first project, about a young couple struggling to find their way in the big city. They stay in the ridiculously tiny apartment of a friend while he screens odd movies at a porn theater; and works part-time wrapping packages. She tries to find what she’s supposed to be doing there. Gondry’s entry takes a bizarre turn at the end, but to understand it, just remember this: furniture is useful and doesn’t have to pay rent.
Leos Carax, whose last film was 1999’s “Pola X,” directs the second segment, and it’s a real drag. A red-bearded, long-gaited, green-suited “creature” comes up out of the sewer to wreak mischief upon the city, culminating in some grenade throwing that gets labeled as terrorist activity. Most of the film concerns his trial; a french lawyer flies in and speaks to him in their own special language, and the Tokyo court tries to understand why he does what he does. Who cares? He’s a madman. The tired cliches roll on, until he doesn’t die at his execution. And we sigh with relief as the credits roll, finally.
Korean Joon-Ho Bong, who got a lot of attention for “The Host” last year, helms the third short, which is the best of the set. Showing incredible restraint after the extravagances of “The Host,” he gives us the quiet story of a shut-in, who is drawn out of his seclusion by a sickly pizza delivery girl, only to discover that the whole world has become shut in. This segment proceeds with quiet grace and simple beauty, along with immaculate attention to detail and tone.
“Tokyo!” offers us three distinct films, each directed by an outsider. I’m not sure the projects really capture anything of Tokyo; they seem more linked by their fantastic/surreal subject matter and tone than by the city where they take place. Or maybe that’s the character of Tokyo. I’ve never been.
Posted in All Reviews, On DVD.
Tagged with Ayako Fujitani, Ayumi Ito, Denis Lavant, Jean-Francois Balmer, Joon-Ho Bong, Leos Carax, Michel Gondry, Nao Omori, Teruyuki Kagawa, Yu Aoi.
“Bride of Frankenstein,” while technically a sequel, bears so little resemblance to the first Frankenstein movie that it almost belongs in a different genre. While “Frankenstein” was chilling, sombre, scary, and only funny by accident, “Bride” is both campy and humorous, philosophical and sentimental, daring and shocking and bizarre. And not really scary at all. Director James Whale resisted making a sequel, and when the money got to be too much to resist, he insisted on complete creative control, which he got, and then proceeded to throw the kitchen sink at the screen. If the theme of the original movie was “when man tinkers with the source of life, terrible things result” the theme of the second must be considered “when man tinkers with the source of life, just about any crazy thing is bound to happen.” It’s amazing that “Bride” works as a film at all; it’s a miracle that it works as well as it does. It veers from comedy to horror to melancholy and back again in the blink of an eye, introduces absolutely unbelievable but entertaining characters at every turn, and is a real hoot to watch. And underneath all that run powerful themes of loneliness and alienation. Which is why it’s often considered one of the best horror films ever created, despite its complete lack of anything even remotely frightening.
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Posted in All Reviews, The Classic Movie Series, The Movie Blog.
Tagged with Boris Karloff, Bride of Frankenstien, Classic Movies, Colin Clive, Dwight Frye, Elsa Lanchester, Film Reviews, James Whale, Una O'Connor.
When I was in high school, we had to take standardized writing tests. (It’s hard to standardize writing, but standardized tests are what school’s about, right?) There were lots of categories – persuasive, biographical, etc. If you were lucky, you got “imaginative.” And you were given a setup – an unopened letter, a 30 year journey, a dying word – and asked to write the story that explains it. I totally failed this test.
Credit the writers of “The Hangover” — Jon Lucas & Scott Moore – with creating the granddaddy of all setups. Four guys travel to Vegas for a bachelor party. Three of them wake up the next morning. There’s a tiger in the bathroom, a chicken under the piano, and a baby in the closet. One of the guys is missing a tooth. None of them can remember a thing. Furthermore, a few things are missing: a mattress, and the guy who was sleeping on it. The groom.
Oh, the stories that could unfold from such a setup. I guarantee you could give it to a hundred different writers, and get vastly, wildly different stories back from them. About half of those stories would be really good, and a handful might be brilliant. Sadly, the story Lucas & Moore wrote isn’t brilliant. It’s pretty good, but still, a bit disappointing.
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Posted in The Movie Blog.
Tagged with bradley cooper, ed helms, heather graham, jeffrey tambor, jon lucas, justin bartha, ken jeong, Mike Tyson, sasha barrese, scott moore, todd phillips, zach galifianakis.
Waltz With Bashir Rating:
#17 on my list of “Best Movies of 2008″ is this strange, haunting tale of an Israeli soldier trying to remember his part in a massacre that took place 30 years ago. Definitely worth your time. Click the pic to read the review.
Inkheart Rating:
Pretty decent little kid’s story that has an inordinate, and totally charming, love for books. Click the pick (or page down a little) to read the review.
Phoebe in Wonderland - Wish I’d had time to get to this quirky indie pick about a child who deals with her own social disorder through an elementary school theater production. Sounds interesting.
Confessions of a Shopaholic - Screwball comedy/chick flick/Bruckheimer produced slab of mass audience annoyance/entertainment might be right for you if you’re in the right mood. I think I was last in that mood in 1994.
Pink Panther 2 - You know what the world really needs? A crappy remake of a crappy movie. Is Steve Martin living in his own private universe these days? (Does Eddie Murphy occasionally visit from his?)
Bob Funk - Can perky young office assistant Rachel Leigh Cook pull Bob out of his funk? Is any of this funny, or interesting? At all?
Posted in The Movie Blog.
Rating:
“Inkheart” get away with a lot, or gets many flaws forgiven, because a) it’s a kid’s story, and b) it flaunts an extravagant love of books. Not just stories, which you can get in movies just fine, but books. The act of reading, the smell of old pages, the thrill of finding a book you lost years ago in an musty old bookstore. “Inkheart” is so in love with the wonder and magic of words on a page, it sometimes forgets it’s a movie. Which is forgiveable.
It also gets away with a lot because it’s a pretty good, rollicking story. There’s more going on here, in terms of plot and character, than in three run-of-the-mill Disney movies. Brendan Fraser is the father of tweenish Eliza Bennett, and they both possess a strange talent: when they read books aloud, the characters come alive. Literally. But this is no Adam Sandler toss-off; whenever a character appears from the pages of the book, someone gets sucked into the book. This is how Fraser lost his wife, and now he’s on a quiet quest to find her.
Trouble is, the book that swallowed her (titled “Inkheart, thus the title of the movie) isn’t very popular, and finding copies of it is made especially hard because one of the characters he read out (the wonderfully slimy Andy Serkis) is also hunting the books, and burning them. He doesn’t want to go back. In fact, he wants to use Fraser’s power to take over this world. He’s already got a castle, and a bunch of henchman, and whole stable full of minotaurs and flying monkeys.
“Inkheart” moves quick and doesn’t stop to explain much, perhaps because there’s no explanation. (One wonders, for instance why Fraser doesn’t get ahold of a Tom Clancy and put an end to Serkis once and for all.) A fire juggler (Paul Bettany,) a crazy bibliophile aunt (Helen Mirren) Farid from Arabian Nights (Rafi Gavron) and Inkheart’s author (Jim Broadbent) all get involved, until what we have, mostly, is a giant tangle of characters in trouble or on the run. But “Inkheart” builds to a satisfyingly exciting and creative conclusion, the kind that involves truly scary monsters and little girls with the power to stop them. It’s a lot of fun, pretty creative, and really in love with books. What more can you ask for?
Posted in All Reviews, On DVD.
Tagged with Andy Serkis, Brendan Fraser, Cornelia Funke, Eliza Bennet, Helen Mirren, Iain Softley, Paul Bettany, Rafi Gavron, Sienna Guillory.
Rating:
”Summer Hours” tries really hard to be better, but just can’t seem to help being another European arthouse flick about nothing.
It has some nice moments. A grown family gathers at their mother’s place, a beautiful French villa absolutely chocked with valuable art pieces. She was the caretaker, and possibly the mistress, of an important French painter. They barely remember him, but they remember the garden, the swimming hole, the dinners and parties and warm summer nights.
The mother dies, and now the grown children (Charles Berling, Jeramie Renier, and Juliette Binoche, who can’t seem to stop making artsy flicks about nothing — see last year’s “The Flight of the Red Balloon–) must decide what to do with the estate and the wonderful treasures it holds. For moments, though they are scattered, “Summer Hours” feels like Anton Chekov’s immortal play, “The Cherry Orchard” — the sadness, the beauty, the nostalgia — but for some unfathomable reason, it repeatedly gets bogged down in mundane details about estate taxes, and auction houses, and museum curators. In addition, it gets way too caught up in what can only be called art history porn – salivating over the pieces in the house, this vase found in a closet by so-and-so, who only made so many, that mid-period sketch by thus-and-such, marking his transition from blah blah blah….
None of this matters to me, though I’m not a complete ignoramus about French art and artists. None of the tax and inheritance stuff matters to me either. What matters is the family, they way they change, negotiate the change, and both preserve and abandon their history. I would guess about 20 minutes of “Summer Hours” is devoted to what matters. A pity.
Posted in All Reviews, In Theaters.
Tagged with Charles Berling, Edith Scob, Jeramie Renier, Juliette Binoche, Olivier Assayas.
Thank God for Sam Raimi. In an era when most, if not all, scary movies are sadistic, nihilistic, disturbing and shocking, Raimi reminds us that there is another way. A better, healthier, more enjoyable way to be terrified, grossed out, and entertained. Bless you, Mr. Raimi.
Remember when you were a kid and you’d go to the amusement park, and there’d be that scary ride, the one with things that jump out of you and eerie sounds coming out of the corners? You knew it was all fake, and after the first time, you even knew where the scary bits were. But you went through it again anyway, and again, because it was fun.
Or remember the camping trips when you’d sit around the campfire and tell ghost stories, trying to get a startle and a giggle out of each other? The stories weren’t really scary, but they were fun to tell anyway. And nobody had nightmares that night in the tents. It was all good fun.
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Posted in The Movie Blog.
Tagged with Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Sam Raimi.
Friday the 13th - 
From Roger Ebert: “So far in the series, he has been drowned, sliced by a machete in the shoulder, hit with an ax in the head, supposedly cremated, aped by a copycat killer, buried, resurrected with a lightning bolt, chained to a boulder and thrown in the lake again, resurrected by telekinesis, drowned again, resurrected by an underwater electrical surge, melted by toxic waste, killed by the FBI, resurrected through the possession of another body, returned to his own body, thrown into hell, used for research, frozen cryogenically, thawed, blown into space, freed to continue his murder spree on Earth 2, returned to the present, faced off against Freddy Krueger of “Nightmare on Elm Street,” drowned again with him, and made to emerge from Crystal Lake with Freddy’s head, which winks.” What could possibly be next? And who could possibly care?
Cherry Blossoms - Rating: Click to see review.
Morning Light - A Disney documentary. (For real? Is Yogi Bear in it? Wait…) Encouraging and uplifiting story about teenagers in a sailboat race.
Madea Goes to Jail - I’ve yet to see any of Tyler Perry’s stuff, most of which stars Perry as Madea, an opinionated old woman. I guess my ignorance says something about my race and class. I don’t think watching this movie would change the fact that I am, indeed, a white boy.
What Goes Up - Hilary Duff sings, dances, does TV and even designs clothes. And makes movies. But does she do any of it well? This feature, about a dead teacher the kids idolized and the visiting reporter they choose to take his place, suggests no.
Posted in The Movie Blog.
