Entries Tagged 'review' ↓

Once Upon A Time: Six-year-old Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), one of the injured patients in a Los Angeles hospital circa 1920, wanders the limey and creamy walls looking for something to help pass the time. She has a doughy and lovable face that is genuine, animated, and suggests a definite sharpness of thought. She comes across Roy Walker (Lee Pace), an American stuntman working in the Hollywood “flickers”, who is now being treated for his paralyzed legs from an occupational hazard. He is welcoming and befriends the little Romanian girl. Her presence distracts him from an inky cloud of depression.

Their bond grows when he tells her an epic story that is silly yet strong, perplexing yet straight-forward, fantastical yet damned. Her own imagination manifests, reinterprets, and even edits his words into a hodgepodge of visually radical planes, structures, and characters. A whole new universe takes us away from the confines of the hospital and into a land of eye candy.

The Fall is not the best film of the year, but it is one of the most special. While watching it, I realized that I have never seen this movie before. What I mean is that most of the movies I’ve seen are a variation on other films I have seen. Out of the cookie-cutter machine a la Edward Scissorhands, a strange butterfly-shaped cookie has escaped the line: The Fall is a genuine original. What a fresh breeze it is to have a filmmaker throw out that unwritten book that rules out exploration and approaches deemed too strange and melodramatic for mainstream expectations. Here is a work by an artist who exercises his liberties selfishly in the best sense of the word, but not without purpose.

I did, however, come up with a few films that vaguely resemble its surface. One is Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride (1987) where a guardian entertains a sick child in bed with a fantasy story. The exotic, foreign and colorfully vibrant environments of The Fall reminded me of the Arabian fantasy The Thief of Baghdad (1940), an Alexander Korda production. The most recent one is Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), one of the very best films of this decade, resembling The Fall in spirit but not emotionally. The Guillermo del Toro masterpiece (the adult equivalent) has different motives than The Fall (the child equivalent) and should not be felt the same way. Ophelia comes to conclusions about human nature that Alexandria is too young to even conceive.

For seventeen years, Tarsem traveled the world playing location scout for his dream film - a seed growing inside his mind. In that time he worked with great success as a director of music videos and commercials for large conglomerates, earning millions of dollars for his visionary talents. Many directors in advertising would often muse that they would personally finance their own feature film (always a would-be masterpiece) until time caught up to snuff that claim from becoming a reality. Not Tarsem. After losing his long-time girlfriend and potential family, he turned his savings into making art. A movie will substitute a child for now. David Fincher (Zodiac, 2007), one of the film’s producers and no stranger to advertising, told Tarsem “You happen to be the fool that has done it”.

A year after appearing at the Telluride Film Festival back in 2006, every distributor was too timid to pick it up. It was Roy Andersson’s Songs From The Second Floor (2002) all over again.  When released (more like saved) by amigos Fincher and music video-turned-wunderbar filmmaker Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, 1999), The Fall was granted a limited theatrical release last Spring. Living in Vancouver wasn’t much fun where no screening of The Fall was held. I know people who were looking forward to it and are still traumatized by the experience of Tarsem Withdrawal.

The make-believe story involves a band of unique men who each have just cause to seek out and destroy the near-omnipresent villain Governor Odious (Daniel Caltagirone). Our heroes include The Masked Bandit who leads The Indian (Jeetu Merma - perceived by Alexandria that he is from India in place of Roy’s Native American), Otta Benga (Marcus Wesley) the Ex-Slave from Africa whose expertise is archery, Luigi the Italian Explosives Expert (Robin Smith - who reminds me of the ruler of the Moulin Rogue! played by Jim Broadbent), and would-be evolution theorist Charles Darwin (Leo Bill) and his pet monkey Wallace. There is snide play with the characters for those familiar with the rival-collaboration between Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace.

Throughout the told story, the characters are loosely perceived as looking like people Alexandria has seen before. The ominous henchmen are in a guise similar to the darkly glad X-Ray engineers who roam the hospital corridors. The Masked Bandit is originally played by Alexandria’s father (Emil Hostina) who is gap-toothed (Fun Fact: In Chaucer’s time, a woman with a gap-tooth possessed a sexy attribute.) until she informs Roy her dad is dead. For the duration of the story, the role of The Masked Bandit is played by Roy. Governor Odious, when revealed later, stands in as a rival of Roy’s, an otherwise humane man, whose depravity is greatly exaggerated.

Back in reality, about midway into the movie, it becomes clear that Roy’s cliffhangers are motivated by his need to persuade Alexandria to fetch him enough medicine to commit suicide with. Not only is Roy a handicap, he is trapped in the private hell of being deliriously in love with a woman who has given her heart to another man. Roy’s bouts of depression and utter pessimism first occasionally and then ultimately influence his fantasy world into darkness. There is a funny-sad scene where Roy is cobbling down Morphine pills, while Alexandria innocently picks up those he dropped so he can consume them.

Vivid and luridly odd costume design by Eiko Ishioka (Mishima, 1985) marks her second distinguishable collaboration with Tarsem after The Cell (2000). The fantasy sequences were shot in over two dozen counties in South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Tarsem and cinematographer Colin Watkinson realize phenomenal visuals with wise framing and subtle dissolves placed creatively in strange architecture and landscapes. There is so little in the way of computer rendering that what looks gorgeous beyond reason is actually just photographed. The Voodoo of Location, a philosophy by German maverick Werner Herzog, is played out fruitfully as opposed to the tiresome green screen approach.

The Fall demonstrates my philosophy of The Authenticity of Light (trademark), a means of achieving visuals effects by hand and controlling real light while filming. The reality of the shot is grounded; manipulated before the camera and not after. The use of CGI, a reworking of pixels that carries no weight subconsciously, is an exercise of The Inauthenticity of Light (trademark). It is more exhilarating to realize an image that carries weight and is actually tactile in the real world. A stone is more valuable than a dream.

Tarsem and his composer Krishna Levy get great mileage out of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, II. Allegretto. This instrumental score hasn’t been used so effectively since its placement over the near-devastating finale of Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible (2002). It can also be heard over the scene in Stephen Herek’s Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995) where Mr. Holland (Richard Dreyfuss) lectures his class about Beethoven continuing to compose masterfully despite the loss of hearing. Meanwhile Mr. Holland can’t help but tearfully contemplate the loss of his own newborn son being deaf: “Well, Beethoven wasn’t born deaf”.

That music introduces and bookends The Fall beginning with a lusciously photographed sequence in black-and-white depicting the horrific aftermath of a stunt turned tragic. The compositions, its heightened values, and dreamy slow-motion capturing a rescue on train tracks suspended high over a body of water. The steam-engine train blows a long puff of bright white smoke against the warm gray sky like a man-made cloud. The last sequence is a montage of death-defying stunts accumulated from silent pictures starring Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd whom Alexandria figures must be Roy doing all that work.

The Fall is one of those rare films that doesn’t come to you, but you must come to it. It doesn’t fulfill the conventional needs we usually come to expect from a feature film. It comes bearing gifts you might not have prepared for. Remember that trailer for Julie Taymor’s Across The Universe that promised us “the most original, exhilerating, spectacular, groundbreaking motion picture of the year!” The Fall, for the most part, actually capitalizes on that promise this year. Most people will turn away from it, the same who demand more originality in film and are shocked when they see something like The Fall. This one isn’t for everybody and that’s more reason to treasure it.

Bottom Line: Your $10 would be better spent on a few gallons of gas for YOUR car.

Death Race is a pretty ambitious undertaking, Paul W.S. Anderson not only has to attempt to recreate the feel of the original movie, but he has to prove that his imagining of the film is superior. While he recreated the gritty feel of the movies from the 70’s fairly accurately, nothing was done to prove the superiority of his film. Starting in the beginning with the opening words (a totally unnecessary attempt at explaining the setting and story to us) to the consistantly horrid dialogue, all Mr. Anderson proved was his ineptitude in writing scripts. The back story provided in the beginning of the movie (and later repeated in flashbacks) should have only been introduced in short flashbacks, instead of taking up almost 15 minutes of the movie.

The acting in this film is far from good, Joan Allen is shown as the stereotypical power hungry woman, and her dialogue is full of prosaic statements. The rest of the supporting cast is mediocre at best. As the main character, Jason Statham provides a nice breath of fresh air to this film, but it is not enough to salvage it.

The cinematography in this film is nothing special. At times it comes across as a little too dark, a problem that could have easily been rectified.

The one thing done right in this film is the action, it is brutal and relentless. As long as you ignore the claim that 35 gallon gas tank would take a several ton Mustang around a 4-5 mile course several times, it doesn’t dissapoint. The action is so severe that there is a nice little disclaimer at the end of the film.

Death Race isn’t going to win any awards (Razzie?) but if you are looking for a mindless action film, you may enjoy it when it comes out on DVD (as long as you mute it). One (more) plus about this film is that it would make one hell of a video game.

Cut to the Chase: Perfectly balanced.

Watching a great movie that clicks in all of the right places assures me that there is harmony in the universe. It is like marveling at a perfectly symmetrical design like the Eiffel Tower or a spider web. Life is really random chaos with no point. It is a relief that our human intellect stubbornly seeks and finds safety, reason and occasional serendipity in the face of an abyss. Without a sound mind, sanity is lost. To perform well, the struggle between genius and madness is universal. The endeavor of Philippe Petit is one of the most memorable.

The documentary Man On Wire recounts a French tightrope walker’s obsession to tread while suspended between the void of the World Trade Center Towers 1,368 feet from the ground. That’s the height of 228 six-foot men. Having trained for most of his life to perform this feat, he masterminded a plot with an adventurous team of experts and thrill-seekers to infiltrate the towers’ rooftops to get the wire across them. The illegal operation was as dangerous and complex as a robbing a heavy-guarded infrastructure like in Jules Dassin’s Rififi (1954) or, if you haven’t seen that one, Steven Soderbergh’s 2001 remake of Ocean’s Eleven. My only complaint about the break-in was that they didn’t pack a video camera to film the spectacle from such an awesome perspective view.

The scenes of the controversial incursion are narrated by the present interviewees while documented footage and dramatically staged footage bring us intimately to experience it. The black-and-white footage (always timeless) is integrated so well that documentary and the fictional realization becomes seamless. The director James Marsh has made an exceptional thriller and a visual poem about great dreamers whose vision threaten to capsize them unless they rise to act upon their desires.

This is a superb follow-up to Marsh’s 2006 directorial debut titled The King, a chilling docudrama about an estranged son (Gael García Bernal) who goes to depraved lengths to integrate himself into the new family of his born-again father (William Hurt - “How does that feel?”). The King was between Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ Little Miss Sunshine and John Hillcoat’s The Proposition on my top ten list of 2006. This year, Marsh is neck-to-neck with magician-like Errol Morris who too has made another invaluable documentary called Standard Operating Procedure.

Philippe Petit is a charismatic and animated character in his own right. “I have this childlike rebellion against those who say that I can’t do something, which is something that I felt very early in my life. I have more wisdom now than I did at the time, but when most of the world tells you that you cannot do something, what an incentive to prove them wrong.” Before this daunting venture, he had walked between Notre Dame where one shot looks like he is floating in the sky.

One of Petit’s memories and certainly the most loveliest involves Annie Allix, his then-girlfriend: They both walk a wire suspended a few feet from his backyard together; relying on one another to gracefully cross this delicate bridge suspended in the midair. The romantic in me was immensely moved by the sight. Allix then mused, “We both look like we’re plotting our next mischief”.

Reflecting on Petit’s stunt above the World Trade Center, no mention in the film is made about the infamous tragedy that took place twenty-seven years after the fact. There is footage early in the film that depicts the building of the World Trade Center which looks hauntingly like Ground Zero today. What an irony, considering the still-troubled political climate a few years ago in New York (re: Freedom Fries) that in the early 1970s; New Yorkers looked agape and in wonder at a Frenchman’s daring.

The other star of this film is the composer Michael Nyman (The Piano, 1993), one of most exceptional and prolific in the past few decades. He is so distinctive that Hollywood studios unwisely dilute his work or stay away from him altogether. Thankfully his collaboration with such cinema rebels like Peter Greenaway, Jane Champion, and Michael Winterbottom have contributed richly to celluloid.

His score for Man On Wire is an accumulation of reworked film scores he has done. Nyman loyalists will recognize segments from “Chasing Sheep Is Best Left To Shepards” (The Draughtsman’s Contract, 1982), “Sheep and Tides” (Drowning By Numbers, 1988), “Time Lapse” (A Zed and Two Noughts, 1985), and “Stroking, Synchronizing” (Water Dances, 1985). The last time I heard Nyman tracks incorporated in a motion picture was two years ago. The film in question was Michael Winterbottom’s Tristram Shanty: A Cock and Bull Story (2006), which also made my top ten list that year.

What an inspiration to play Nyman’s “Memorial” from Peter Greenaway’s masterpiece The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, And Her Lover over Petite’s highest walk. How fitting that it was Nyman’s music that Petite actually practiced his wire act in his backyard to. I often listen to Nyman’s jazzy scores when I illustrate. Nyman’s Baroque-affected work is so locomotive and minacious that it stirs up the most mishandled of hearts. “(Nyman) has one foot in the 1600s and the other in contemporary times”. You can never go wrong overlaying a Nyman piece over your own movie (I should know!). Nyman has recently held an exhibition of his photography work and influences called Sublime with the assistance of the design firm Volumina.

On August 7, 1974, Petite realized his dream and conquered the Twin Towers. His stunt was split between potential suicide and artistic liberation. Petite claims he was at peace with the thought of dying that day should he have slipped. His actions suggest that a life lived without the realization of one’s most radical aspirations is a moot one. We only get one trip around so we might as well put aside trivial safety measures and make the best of it.

I connected with Petite’s romanticism and his need to dream boldly. I was cheered by the extreme measures and unapologetic grand gestures he made to realize the unthinkable. To walk across the clouds. Take a moment and ask yourself if you would actually like to perform a similar feat? Having gone up the Empire State Building to scream out loud from the top of the world over the exquisite yearning to truly live. It was a minor gesture in the same vein. I was in complete sympathy with Petit when he accepted an invitation by a slender brunette to make love to her after having achieved his death-defying stunt. What can I say? Petit and I are French.

Man On Wire is currently in limited release.

Adolescence is a trial no matter what gender one is. The confliction can be so crippling that it damages and ultimately defines one as an adult. There have been many films, some good, about experiencing teenage angst and the need to break free or remain grounded. Either way can produce regret later in life. This film XXY has treaded new ground by presenting a teenager whose entire identity, both internally and anatomically, is unusual to a majority of people. Funnily enough, uniqueness of this case makes the experience all the more universal. The teenager is named Alex and is fifteen years old. Alex has a choice this summer that boggles one’s mind toward fantasy. The choice is whether Alex should resume the rest of life as male or female.

Alex is a hermaphrodite. Alex looks like a teenage girl but possesses the make-up of a boy that he/she has deluded with pills of estrogen. Alex is cared for by her parents Kraken (brilliantly by Ricardo Darín) and Suli (Valeria Bertuccelli) who live, for their child’s sake, in a wooden turquoise cabin near the seaside in Uruguay after having moved from Argentina. Her father works as an oceanographer who possesses a protectiveness, even for the wounded sea turtles he studies. The key for observing this challenging and brave film is by possessing the empathy that Kraken has. He is quiet, smart, unobtrusive, and lashes out only when someone endangers his child. Rarely has a father been portrayed on film with such loveliness.

There is an astonishing sequence late at night where Kraken seeks out a frank older man who presents pictures of himself as a child — pictures of girl! Kraken listens calmly and curiously to the difficult experiences of this struggling hermaphrodite. He is so involved with understanding his “daughter” that he is simply removed from prejudice: “Making her afraid of her body is the worst thing you can do to a child”. This character was so easy for me to gravitate towards.

Inés Efron portrays Alex with much bravado and vulnerability. She instinctively performs her character’s struggle with tendencies ruled by her intersex. Alex’s struggle is made more difficult by the arrival of Ramiro (Germán Palacios), his wife Erica (Carolina Pelleritti), and their teenage son Álvaro (Martín Piroyansky). Ramiro is a surgeon who has been invited over, whether Kraken ad Suli decide to inform him at all, to perform corrective sex surgery in secret. Álvaro and Alex form a fragile friendship as their lazy days on beach pass creepily by. The dialogue between the two teenagers is startlingly frank:

Alex: “I’ve never fucked anyone. Want to now?”

Álvaro: “With who?”

Alex: “With me.”

Álvaro: “You’re too young.”

Alex: “I’m only fifteen.”

Eventually there is a confrontation midway into the film where Álvaro and Alex are caught up in one another’s sexual crisis. They are compelled by their need to connect with each other as well as their own confused and highly guarded urges. For anyone who felt uneasy watching the emotionally mature Brokeback Mountain (2006), will probably suffer a Scanners moment when they witness how the tables turn in an act of mounting. The tone of the picture achieves the right balance of sentimentality and a hardened sense of reality. The characters are well rounded and respond realistically to their circumstances. They remain true to their human nature. Rawness is ubiquitous. The nakedness of the performers both emotionally and viscerally approaches the tact of Cathrine Breillat’s brilliant Fat Girl (2001).

Natasha Braier’s desaturated cinematography and its conscious color palette throughout the film is very effective. The picture ranges from black shadows and rich sepia hues at night to the daylight’s gray roads, near white sand, harsh blue sky with occasional splashes of green foliage. The main titles takes place underwater where strange alien-like creatures pulsate and blow bubbles amongst the web-like reefs. The intimidating tone of the film is more creepy than most of the generic suspense thrillers that came out this year. The music by Andrés Goldstein and Daniel Tarrab compliments by being subtly somber.

This film, winner of the Critics Week Grand Prize at Cannes 2007, marks the directorial debut of Lucía Puenzo, daughter of Luis Puenzo (Oscar nominee The Official History, 1986). She adapted her screenplay from the short story Cinismo by Sergio Bizzio. After much writing for TV and feature films, Puenzo arrives fully formed as a talented and visceral storyteller. How the characters deal with the aftermaths and revelations of their actions are executed without negligence while maintaining some ambiguity that they are reasonably unable to capture at that age. Somehow, Puenzo’s film bares resemblance to Kimberly Peirce’s searing Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and achieving a niche of its own. This is one of the best movies of the year.

Cut to the Chase: It ain’t happening.

How god-awful does M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller The Happening get? Marky Mark Walhberg actually talks to a house plant. I wish I was making this up. Now I realize Shyamalan’s intention for the scene and the film in whole - mankind has pushed Mother Nature too far and the planet uses mind manipulation to destroy its human inhabitants. A near-glib premise that holds enough weight to make a decent Twilight Zone episode circa 1950s, maybe even a successful M. Night Shyamalan feature. It could have worked had Shyamalan made wiser choices that don’t fall with a clunk like the one where Walhberg talks to a house plant.

The greatest failure on Shyamalan’s part is that he has stopped respecting the audience’s intelligence. Everything is spelled out in such agonizing exposition. Even the character’s motives are clumsily explained: “I don’t like to show my feelings too!” The talking points by key characters and news anchors going on about the environment’s biting cause have the subtlety of a running drill against the skull. It is very aggravating to watch a movie that has exchanged much needed ambiguity, menace, atmosphere and compelling characterizations for the said exposition — even more so from a filmmaker who has proved himself a smart and skillful one more than once.

The premise is a compelling one: people, for some airy reason, are subject to possession and committing suicide. Scenes of the mass population being driven to inventively kill themselves are disturbing for the tact strategy that goes into their execution. The blood letting is sparing, and kept to a minimum to maintain its effectiveness without going into overkill. Construction workers fall from a high rise with balletic grace before making sickening thuds. Much ado has been made about this being Shyamalan’s first R-rated feature, though anyone expecting to witness a holocaust will be attending a small-scale spectacle of human annihilation.

One scene sorely in need of inclusion takes place in a souped-up cineplex theater bursting with inconsiderate, loud-mouthed, cellphone-blaring teenagers like the ones I was watching The Happening with. This would be followed by them going into a trance and start simultaneously choking to death on their blueberries, laser pens and stinky nachos. That would have been appreciated.

There is anger simmering in Shyamalan’s vision; a billboard advertisement reads “You deserve this!”, however he is not angry enough. Some deaths just don’t have enough impact; through his aloof camera lens (though it’s supposed to be Elliot’s POV, and ours by proxy), we see one man calmly lie down in front of an approaching giant lawnmower. For Shyamalan’s ‘message’ to work, it would be better had the whole group lined up for the human thresher. There are many more opportunities throughout the film that could have been more dire and immediate. Unfortunately, the film’s no-pulled-punches approach fizzles away along with the suspense. The story as well as its characters lack the urgency and drive to escape a phenomenon that is also recognized as unknown: what exactly are these people running from? Landscape shots of overcast trees bending by the wind, to my dismay, just don’t inspire dread.

Immediacy is key for a plot deprived suspense thriller. Our heroes seem to be in a daze themselves; the dialogue is very labored. Desperate to survive, Julian, a high school teacher played by John Leguizamo (Summer of Sam, 1999) at one point takes his sweet time saying goodbye to his friends also on the run, leaving his daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez) in their care, in order to hitch a ride back to save his wife. The driver, being his ride, waits very patiently to the point of parody as Julian yammers on and on about his situation until you just want to run him over with a thresher yourself.

No plot? We should be so lucky if that were the case here. It’s worse due to being episodic and contrived. For heroes, we’re stuck with a high school science teacher Elliot (Mark Wahlberg - “It says Dirk Diggler!”) and his shaken wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel - All the Real Girls, 2003) whose marriage is ebbing. These characters are so bland that I fear Shyamalan has confused the everyman to be synonymous with triteness. Wahlberg’s hero comes across as befuddled and disengaged much of the time, as when he crash landed in Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes (2001).

It is with a heavy heart that I recognize that Deschanel, one of our generation’s loveliest and most gifted actresses, has delivered an awkward and unappealing performance. This alone should sentence Shyamalan to 500 hours of community service for his shoddy direction. Deschanel’s mesmerizing gray-blue saucer eyes (“One day, you’ll be cool.”) are exploited so ceaselessly here to dredge up Steven Spielberg’s patented wide-eyed-awe moments.

Usually an apocalyptic scenario can make the private lives of the characters seem so trivial. It is unfortunate when the character’s lives actually are trivial. Alma’s greatest sin was that she had dessert with a male co-worker and lied to her husband about it. Whoa! It is always best for filmmakers to ask themselves if the major disaster was taken out of the story, would the character’s personal subplots make a compelling movie on their own? It is a question I wish more blockbuster filmmakers asked themselves.

I would like to single out one out of several dozens flawed moments in this film: Our heroes have taken refuge with Mrs. Jones, the reliable stock crazy old woman who lives on a farm, played by Betty Buckley (the doomed gym teacher from Carrie, 1976). Over dinner, Elliot and Alma witness Mrs. Jones violently smacking Jess’ hand as she innocently reaches for a cookie. Shyamalan gives the Mrs. Jones, Elliot and Alma suitable close-up reaction shots. Everyone except Jess, the one who got hit. That is downright incompetent filmmaking. A dramatic moment is lost where Jess could have looked up to her guardians in hurt bewilderment, silently begging them to say something. The adults, conflicted by their need to appease Mrs. Jones for shelter, should have been shamed for doing nothing.

The Alma character is so clueless about her dire situation that it becomes downright insulting. She makes a desperate, however romantic gesture very late in the film that is needless and isn’t earned; considering that their sheltering holds out some hope. Worse still, she jeopardizes the life of Jess, a little girl in her care, as though the whole venture for survival was meaningless. This is where Shyamalan’s attempt at emotional manipulation is most flawed and transparent. Director Frank Darabont was more successful with a similar scenario last year with The Mist (2007), while even having the nerve to end on an inescapable and devastating note.

Shyamalan has painted himself in a corner with this premise. The appropriate conclusion should be grim and uncompromised. Technically, everybody should have died, but the final moments come across as a cop out. Just like James Wong’s Final Destination followed by the atrocious David R. Ellis sequel, but that’s an essay for another day.

There is no excuse for M. Night Shyamalan to miss the mark so many times here. After all, some of his previous features prove that he is a natural filmmaker. One of his more admirable qualities is that his films are quiet and introspective. His best work gives substantive weight to material usually regulated to the B-Movie gallows. Admittedly, I have not seen his previous two features The Village (2004) and Lady in the Water (2006) so it was quite a shock to see how far gone Shyamalan has gotten.

I thoroughly appreciated his thoughtfully chilly The Sixth Sense (1999). Unbreakable (2000) is high up on my Top Ten Superhero-Movies List. Signs (2002), his most successful feature, is the closest to form The Happening is trying to emulate. Comparing the two, The Happening pales considerably. Even the comic relief of the Mel Gibson character (“Paddy wagon!”) works while a similar kind for the Walhberg character (“I’m still talking to it”) doesn’t.

Especially familiar but lacking is the main title sequence against the superior one of Signs. Watch it here. This title sequence is a small masterpiece in of itself. I am dumbfounded that the James Newton Howard score here isn’t as heralded with such giants as Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho and John William’s Jaws. It is one of the most distinct and memorable scores that has stayed with me.

There are a few compelling moments spread out thinly in The Happening. One effective sight involving ladders, rope, and trees is marred by a loud sting sound effect Shyamalan uses cheaply instead of letting the visual get under the skin. I wasn’t bothered by the lack of plot, but by the lack of atmosphere and thoughtfulness usually associated with Shyamalan’s work. Uninspired characters jeopardize a film that dwindles toward an equally uninspired climax. As is, the only person who could dig this movie is  Poison Ivy from Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin (1997 - awful, awful movie). I hope Shyamalan is humbled and returns true to form next time.

This poster reminds me of the visual used for Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich TV spot: it’s third out of four. Fun Fact: The gravely baritoned voice over in that spot belongs to Roscoe Lee Browne (1925 - 2007) who also narrated over the Babe movies.

After the subversive punch that was David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), a new adaptation of the Chuck Palahniuk novel Choke is coming to theaters this Fall. First time writer-director of Choke, winner of the Sundance Special Jury Price, is character actor Clark Gregg from David Mamet’s Spartan (2004), and the wonderful Nicole Holofcener comedy-drama Lovely and Amazing (2001), which stars Brenda Blethyn, Catherine Keener and love-goddess Emily Mortimer.

Choke, a very dark comedy this side of Neil Labute’s In The Company of Men (1997) stars Sam Rockwell (Joshua, 2007) as a dysfunctional sex addict trying to find his place in the world and in his mother’s physician (Kelly Macdonald - Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, 2006). Anjelica Huston (The Darjeeling Limited, 2007) plays mom who must be so proud! I hope this angry satire takes aim at all the right targets…and hits hard.

Hit the trailer right here.

Mr. Palahniuk hits a twofer this year with Paramount Vantage produced adaptation to LULLABY. Turn up your speakers for this spectacularly eerie trailer.

Just play it by ear.

Now if the producers had any real cojones, this would be the only official trailer for the film. I don’t know about you, but after seeing just this teaser, I’d race to see this one! It opens this November.

I finally watched it and I’d like to tell all the people that told me that it was a waste of time that they were wrong. Dead wrong.

I really enjoyed the movie simply because it seemed, well… real. The story, the characters, the setting, etc. All of it really jumped off the screen and hit you like it was some adaptation of a true life story. Apart from the brand heritage which Rocky Balboa has for anyone who grew up during the 70’s and 80’s. Rocky is a Legend, and Stallone really did a good job of bringing the franchise back for one last go… the same as the protagonist.

Normally, what you’ll find with the last-shot-at-it type movies is that they fall flat and don’t ring true to the originals… This one really does, paying homage to it’s glorious past and still being true to modern cinema.

I grew up with Rocky… I remember shouting at the TV every single time he was in the ring, no matter how many re-runs of it I saw. I have written something similar about Why I Like Rambo on my personal blog, and I think the same goes here. The movie does not seem strewn together in order to make a little money off the side off of a dying franchise, but it has heart… real heart. The emotions which the movie invokes on so many different occasions is incredible. The only reason I can think that so many people don’t get it and hate it (and this goes for most movies) is because they sit “outside” the movie and try and judge it critically instead of sitting there, getting involved in the movie and seeing if you really enjoy it or it irritates you.

So that’s it from me. What do you think about Stallone’s foray into making the last sequels in the Rocky and Rambo franchises? And did you enjoy them?

Cut to the chase: A pointless and watered down Indy flick

The 3 previous Indiana Jones movies were big hits in the ’80s and who didn’t love them? Raiders Of The Lost Ark is still an action film masterpiece almost 30 years later. Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade ended that trilogy and seemed to close the door on the Indy stories as he triumphantly rode off into the sunset after defeating the Nazis for the last time. One has to wonder then why make a fourth Indiana Jones movie almost 20 years after that seemingly final chapter? You would hope that it’s to relive the high entertainment and quality of the first films and get back the thrill you had in the theaters when experiencing them. But sometimes there are just some things that should be left in the past. Continue reading →

Funny. Moulin Rogue! (2001) is playing in the background and lo and behold the first trailer for the new film by Baz Luhrmann after seven years is right HERE!

It looks like a cross between Tarsem’s The Fall (2008) and the Nicolas Roeg masterpiece Walkabout (1971- “Just about the most different movie you’ll ever see.”) Throw in some sensational romance with Hugh Jackman (The Prestige, 2006 - currently at #88 in the IMDB) and Nicole Kidman (Dead Calm, 1989), add operatic music, shake it up, and I’m there!

“We should be lovers!”

“We can’t do that…”

Whoops…got carried away. AUSTRALIA opens November 14th.

Watching the movie theater screen compress vertically before Standard Operating Procedure began, my heart quickened: this is the first time one of my top three documentary filmmakers has shot a film with an anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio. S.O.P. follows the best examples of documented journalism from last year from Charles Ferguson’s No End In Sight to Tony Kaye’s Lake of Fire. The film has also won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Detective-Director Errol Morris (Gates of Heaven, 1978 and Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leutcher Jr., 1999) examines the shocking exposé of the Abu Ghraib torture-photography scandal with a dogged determination to simply analyze and discover the limited truth of the photos themselves. By taking the photographs, former MP Ken Davis figures that “(the soldiers) weren’t trying to hide anything”. G.I. Javal Davis reasons that “if you consider yourself dead, you can do all the shit you have to”.

The interviewed subjects, photographed harmoniously by Robert Chappell, are young American soldiers, underlings dominated by a handful of superiors in the Army division. The most photographs taken (as well as staged) were by Sergeant Charles Graner who was not allowed to participate in the interviews while being serving his sentence. Described, sometimes in awe, by others in his unit, Graner, seen in odd photos and video clips, comes across as a depraved and vile bully. So manipulative was Graner that he directed his impregnated girlfriend G.I. Lynndie England, who in interviews is surprisingly articulate and even empathetic, to pose with the abused imprisoned men in photos that sealed her infamy. Lynndie’s situation reminds me of an episode from Morris’ short-lived First Person series (2000) about Sondra London, a woman deeply in love with a serial killer. Despite the NO PHOTOGRAPHY signs, the presence of cameras instigated the acts of human degradation: why leash a man if it wasn’t a photo opportunity?

Many of the grotesque scenarios such as the human pyramid, the leashed man, and Gilligan (nicknamed by Graner) standing on the box with electric wire attached to his fingers came to be are testified, debunked and measured by evidence. Specialist Sabrina Harmen, one of the photographers, explains that the wires connected to Gilligan were not connected to electricity. Gilligan was told otherwise as a psychological means of depriving the man sleep. The motive for Sabrina’s picture-taking is explained away as the gathering of damning proof: “No one would believe the shit that goes on here”. Sabrina, at one point, contradicts herself when she recalled, “(getting) to laugh and throw corn at (the prisoners). We (didn’t) hit them, that’s a plus.”

These kids fresh out of high school were ordered by decorated superiors to follow remorseless commands that included, “You are not to release anybody”. Fathers, sons, and nephews were abducted, mostly on false charges, in the Abu Ghraib prison where the cell block population (6000) had overrun maximum capacity.

Morris uses highly elaborate dramatizations that emphasis the journalistic inquiries visually. Going the extra mile, he employs nightmarish production designs by Steve Hardie inside the prisons with ever changing harsh lighting and lens filters, saturated colors, dutch angles, and thoughtfully-composed cinematography by wunderkind Richard Robertson (Natural Born Killers, 1994 and The Aviator, 2004). Some critics (I’m looking at you, Michael Philips) have complained that these stylistic choices detract from the grounded journalistic intent. I found the surrealistic depictions do not distract, but enhance the emotional reality of the Abu Ghraib horrors more deeply. The imaginations of viewers are more lucid and strange than images that depict reality unfiltered. Morris contrasts the central-aligned photographs with blown-up and moving interpretations of the events to arrest the subject matter more vividly.

The hell of Abu Ghraib is shown with close-ups of rats, snarling dogs with sharp teeth, walls and floors awash in blood scraped out of hands and knees, nightmarish large bags for prisoner’s heads, a bouncing Nerf football, and ants so large Sabrina claims, “(they’ll) carry the family dog away and give you the finger”. Images are hard to forget such as a dirty puddle that reflects upside-down a beaten, masked Iraqi prisoner cowering as a large military steps and lifts off the liquid menacingly. The video made of the naked Iraqi prisoners being positioned as the human pyramid is presented through a hazy vertical slit of darkness as though we were peering through a keyhole.

The only attacks made to the commanders in higher office who designed the means of torture are the accounting for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s slipshod inspection of Abu Ghraib. The fact that the U.S. soldiers involved in the debacle get reprimanded and the powers that be go unpunished. There’s a subtler jab when a recreation of Saddam Hussein’s fingerprint are recorded; seen slightly out of focus is hanging the infamous portrait of Ghoul W. Bush grinning dumbly. Morris’s The Fog of War (his long overdue Oscar win in 2003) slyly juxtaposed Robert Strange McNamara’s account for the unnecessary and brutal war in Vietnam with the unspoken one taking place in Iraq now.

Over his career, Morris has tapped into some of the most influential composers of the last few decades. Having worked with Philip Glass on numerous occasions, Morris has remarked that Glass does “existential dread better than anyone”. Caleb Sampson, who collaborated brilliantly with Morris until he tragically took his life, composed some exhilarating tracks that were simultaneously enthusiastic and laced with despaired. S.O.P. marks Morris’ first collaboration with Danny Elfman whose contribution to defining the term Burtonesque is without parallel. After venturing in the experimental and classical music venue with his opera Serenada Schizophrana, Elfman has grown aesthetically as a musician. His score, like all of Morris’ films, is cold, sad, and somewhat celebratory. Most of all, it is chilling.

Errol Morris has written at length about the nature of photographic truth in essays for The New York Times. The objective is to reason with what a photograph depicts and ignore what can only be assume exists outside the frame, which is unknown. During the testimonies, Morris allows us to hear his inquiries sparsely. Specialist Megan Ambuhl, who is now married to Graner after he sold-out Lynddie like Ivan Nagy to Heidi Fleiss, describes her following of the torture methods meant to soften prisoners before interrogation such as sleep deprivation, vocal humiliation in the showers, and burning with cigarettes, Morris then asks sincerely, “did any of this seem weird?”

Heroism is hard to muster whether in its in a foreign war zone or trapped in an enclosed space with corrupt comrades upon whom you depend for survival. MP Jeremy Sivits, a self-described “nice guy” who was cornered by Graner to take the human pyramid photo and did so because “(he didn’t) want to get people angry at (him).” Sivits was one of many soldiers who served time in prison for the debacle. Many note-worthy details in photos publicly seen and unseen before S.O.P. premiered include the following text written with a black marker on a naked prisoner’s thigh: “I AM A RAPEIST.” Watching the film made me recount a fact that is as enraging as it is not sensational: Had the Bush Administration not coerced the US into occupying Iraq, none of this would have happened.

UPDATE (May 15, 2008):

George W. Bush just said in an interview with Politico writer Mike Allen:

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

The psychopath in office should have also appeased the Iraqi victims with his pathetic sacrifice.