389 - The Savages

May 15, 2008 – 11:21 am

Although it features two galvanizing performances, by Laura Linney and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, The Savages is a little too despairing and bleak, wallowing in a murky sea of negativity and even stooping to manipulate the bejeezus out of its audience near the end. It’s difficult to watch, sort of like 1998’s Affliction only without the grizzled crankiness of Nick Nolte to soften the grim viewpoint.

Wendy Savage (Linney) is 39 years old and works various temp jobs as she struggles to gain footing as a playwright; older brother Jon (Hoffman) is a philosophy professor. Neither has been close to their father in many years, so when Wendy gets a call from the Arizona desert that Lenny (Philip Bosco) has been smearing his own feces onto walls, they have to hustle out west. Where, of course, they find out that Dear Old Dad’s longtime girlfriend has just keeled over, leaving him homeless.

If you’re at that age where you’ve figured out that your parents aren’t gonna live forever, the next reel of the movie is both poignant and grueling, although it’s also a bit vicious and unsettling. Wendy and Jon have to find a place for Lenny to live, and he’s obviously showing early signs of dementia. One of their escapades involves a transcontinental flight, just Wendy and Lenny. Hilarity ensues, just the wry, perhaps-familiar kind. Lenny drifts in and out of reality, sometimes conflating his life with those of movie characters. Sometimes he thinks he’s in a hotel, and sometimes he doesn’t recognize his kids. Oh, and the siblings! There’s a tiny bit of resentment and bitterness there, you see. Jon is successful; Wendy is not. Wendy has feelings of inadequacy around her brother, and both of them were (verbally) abused and then abandoned by their father long ago. So there’s a strong undercurrent of raging subtext in this journey into hopelessness.

So the story isn’t so much about the two grown-up kids dealing with the incapacitation of their father as it is about sibling rivalry and dealing with long-forgotten slights and neuroses they didn’t realize they had. Adding to the complexities is an affair that Wendy is having with a married man (she even gets to trot out the “I’m not married, but my boyfriend is” witticism). Then there’s a cloying bit about an old dog, and a feisty cat … and let’s just say that the most exciting part is when Lenny’s smearing feces on the wall in the first scenes of the movie.

Nothing against either Linney (who was nominated for an Oscar here) or Hoffman, because they both gave more to the picture than it gave to them. Without their effort here, the movie would have been even muddier and depressing. But unless it strikes you in the right mood - perhaps introspective, perhaps schadenfreude - you could find yourself weighed with self-doubt and self-pity, grasping at threads of your life that you thought had long vanished.

**

388 - Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

May 6, 2008 – 9:20 am

A while ago, I had a slightly different grading system for movies. The lowest possible rating, you see, was BOMB. As in, it’s explosively awful. I changed that because it was a direct ripoff of Leonard Maltin’s system. So now the worst rating a movie can get is simply one star (*).

Movies like the Harold and Kumar sequel, though, make me wish I had the old BOMB system again. The movie isn’t just juvenile, uncreative, and pathetic; it’s sort of a clinic on how to suck as a movie. It’s extremely predictable, which would be fine if the jokes and raunch were any interesting. It’s also viciously mean spirited - and not in the broad, over-the-top blunt (no pun intended) humor of the 2004 original, either. Back then, everything that the titular duo did was wrapped in a drug-induced haze, and that justified the lowbrow comedy. Hey, it’s funny because they’re stoned, man! Get it?

But not so with this one. Sure, drug use figures prominently into the plot, but there aren’t nearly enough drug scenes to save the movie. Harold and Kumar do things that can be obliquely traced to drug use, you see, but most of their problems come from their unimpaired decision making, and that makes for a dull, pointless film.

Originally, this was titled “Harold and Kumar Go to Amsterdam,” but eventually the filmmakers figured out that our buds (no pun intended, I swear) don’t actually make it to Amsterdam. As the trailer showed, they’re mistaken for terraists and are deposited in Guantanamo Bay. Well, the prison, not the actual bay. And then, as you might have been able to predict, they escape. Wild shenanigans follow, including a visit to a “bottomless” party (which was clever), a run in with nonstereotypical denizens in Alabama (not bad), an encounter with a stereotypical inbred hillbilly couple (including that “Hemi” guy from those old Dodge commercials), and a mixup with a Klan gathering. The latter was funny back when Chevy Chase did it in Fletch Lives, and no so much now.

And of course there’s the obligatory appearance by Neil Patrick Harris as himself. His was a huge boon to the original movie, and he’s back, fortuitously showing up to save the lads from the Klansmen. And that’s about the only time that the movie has any spark at all; Harris wolfs down mushrooms while driving to a whorehouse, and at one point he sees a unicorn. It’s the exact kind of trippy awesomeness that helped make the original movie a cult hit, and there’s so little of it here.

Aside from that, the movie’s pedestrian. Kumar wants to get to Texas and, in a staple of generic teen comedies, break up the wedding of his ex-girlfriend to the world’s biggest douchebag - no offense to you other douchebags out there. Adding a complication we would NEVER have forseen, he’s also the One Guy who can get Harold and Kumar out of the mess they’re in. And Harold wants to get to Amsterdam (eventually) to meet up with the girl he met at the end of the first movie (she’s there on business; won’t she be surprised? If so, it would be the only surprise in the movie.)

At its heart, the movie’s problem is that Kal Penn and John Cho don’t have nearly the degree of on-screen chemistry that they had in the first movie, for whatever reason. The two kids from Superbad covered similar ground, and they were infinitely more believable and funnier. Harold and Kumar are bitter jerks to each other at various points in the story, and it’s not the wild exaggerated-for-comic-effect kind of bitterness, either, which makes it a little uncomfortable to watch at times. Quite a disappointment.

Constipating the humor even further was a howlingly awful performance by Rob Corddry as some deputy Homeland Security canker sore who’s out to get Harold and Kumar. There’s broad performance, and there’s one-note. Corddry can be funny with a good script to follow, but if the writing’s terrible, so is he. What should have been hyperbolically funny was instead discomfiting and annoying, huge debits for such a big role.

I want my $10 back, to paraphrase the delivery boy in Better Off Dead. Harold and Kumar Escape from Gunatanamo Bay is a rip off, best enjoyed (if that) at home, ironically, with many friends who pay you to see it. Which would be illegal, I think, so don’t do it.

*

387 - The Golden Compass

May 4, 2008 – 10:52 am

Although it didn’t do particularly well in U.S. theaters, thus imperiling sequels, I found The Golden Compass to be highly entertaining and imaginative; it represents all the reasons I watch movies in the first place. It’s fast paced, managing to pack in hundreds of pages of narrative into about 110 minutes of movie. On the downside, the movie ends a bit earlier than perhaps it should have (i.e., not at the same point as the end of the book on which it’s based), leaving the viewer wanting more.

The movie (based on the Phillip Pullman book) is set in a sort of alternative universe, one in which humans’ souls exist outside their bodies, manifest as animals. Before adulthood, these souls, called daemons, can take any number of forms (kitty cat, ferret, tiger, bug, bird), but once the human experiences Changes in the Body, the daemon settles into one form. Also, although the time and place seem to be comparative with 18th century Britain, there are technological advances that would seem out of place in our universe, such as jet-fueled zeppelins and flying boats and whatnot.

Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) is a young girl attending a private school within the prestigious Jordan College. She’s an impish mischief maker, but she also has some nobility within her, earning an unspoken respect from her peers. At any rate, Lyra, through her uncle Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) learns of the existence of Dust, a particular matter that her uncle believes helps determine the psychological makeup of all humans, by way of their daemons. Ah, but this goes against the teachings of the church, aka the Magisterium, which states that all rights and will derive from the Authority, aka God. (Yes, this is an antireligion book.)

Asriel heads north to research Dust further; Lyra’s left behind but soon finds a new ally: Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), a “friend” of the college, who is also heading north and wishes Lyra to accompany her. But is Mrs. Coulter as perfectly awesome as she seems?

Lyra’s not completely without resources, though. The Master of Jordan gave her an alethiometer, a curious device that allows the holder to learn Truth about something, provided he or she can read it correctly. This would be the Golden Compass of the title; it’s not really a compass, although it’s kind of goldish. At any rate, there are only a handful of these things left in the world, and very, very few people possess the skills to interpret their symbol combinations. It’s the sort of thing that takes decades for people to master, so of course Lyra learns she has the innate ability to read the alethiometer. Meanwhile, kids are disappearing; the rumor is that they are being taken to the north country, up where the armored (yes, really) bears live. Lyra encounters bears and witches and gypsy pirates (known as gyptians) and a cowboy named Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliott).

And so ends my verbose plot description. So you can see how much plot’s being thrown in there, but here’s the cool thing - it all flows very smoothly; you don’t have to stop and wonder why people are doing what they’re doing, why these two are fighting, and so on. The exposition, so crucial to the story, is gently eased in; you hardly even know it’s there. Which is great, because who wants a movie that gets all thinky on you?

If Harry Potter and Narnia aren’t your cup of tea, you’ll dislike this movie, but for me it a great feel-good movie. First, you’re able to identify with Lyra, even if you’re NOT a twelve-year-old girl. Second, the movie is wholly creative and inventive, creating an alternately beautiful and terrifying world that seems as real as our own. And third, the movie is exceptionally well cast, particularly Ian McKellen as Iorek Byrnison and Eva Green as Seraphina Pekkala. Oh, and Kidman and Craig are equal to the task.

It’s not known at this point whether a sequel (The Subtle Knife is the second book) will be made, owing to a perceived lack of interest at the box office, but if there’s any flaw in the movie it’s in the ending. Now, I’m certainly not going to spoil the ending here, but I will point out that the movie ends at a different point than the first book ends, and it’s not necessarily a good stopping point. Apparently the makers of the movie needed a “happy” ending; the book’s ending is a bit more downbeat. Hopeful, perhaps, but definitely not a crowd pleaser. Still, the movie ended abruptly for me, since I’d read the books, and I was left feeling a little unsatisfied (and dissatisfied).

***

386 - Michael Clayton

May 3, 2008 – 12:33 pm

Michael Clayton, despite wonderful, sincere performances by George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, and Tom Wilkinson, is alternately confusing and overwrought, and once the bells and whistles of the extraneous plot devices are stripped it’s no better or worse than a standard John Grisham adaptation. There, a nice run-on sentence to start things off. And a sentence fragment.

Michael (Clooney) is a high-powered law firm’s fixer, i.e, the guy who solves the myriad problems that the firm’s clients and partners encounter on a daily basis. He knows people who know people, see? He’s got people to make your issues go away. Clayton’s sent by his boss Marty (Sydney Pollack) to Milwaukee, where Arthur Edens (Wilkinson) has just freaked out. Arthur has been working on a huge case for sixteen years, one involving a class-action suit against a weed-killer manufacturer. (Arthur’s on the defendent’s side.) In the middle of a deposition being given by one of the victims, Arthur suddenly begins ranting and stripping naked. He’s cracked from the pressure, you see, the pressure of defending a huge company whose product has killed over 400 people. Allegedly.

Now, knowing this little, you can make a good guess as to how this plays out. Michael is there to prop Arthur up, make him just presentable enough to placate the company their firm is representing (Unorth). But Arthur will have none of that, and he goes rogue. I bet you can predict that at some point Michael Clayton will figure out that Arthur’s NOT crazy, even with a manic-depressive history, that the evil conglomerate manufacturer really IS killing people. It’s not a great leap of faith to come to this conclusion.

Meanwhile, Michael has other troubles. He’s trying to buy back the restaurant he and his brother used to own, and he’s coming up short. He has partial custody of his young son, and although his ex isn’t the steretypical screaming harpy you see in most movies, she’s not falling over herself to help Michael out. Oh, and his other brother is a very slowly recovering alkie and druggie. So there are home issues. All this while Michael has to run around putting out fires.

I always enjoy watching George Clooney act. He’s sympathetic while not seeming to be a victim; he seems real and genuine, but not a superhero or righteous crusader. He continues to seem like a guy you wouldn’t mind hanging with, or being the godfather to your kids, or maybe serving frappucinos at Starbucks. You know, a reg’lar fella. No fault, really, with his work here, for which he was nominated for an Oscar. He’s overworked and completely consumed by stress and anxiety, which happens to a lot of us. With Michael, though, he can’t throw himself into one thing (e.g., family) to deal with the stress of another (e.g., work), because each offers plenty o’ stress.

By contrast, Swinton (who won Best Supporting Actress) give a much less-nuanced performance, what little we get to see of it. She plays the lead counsel of the Big Evil Company, and I figured we’d see her being all conflicted and stuff. There was some ethical conflict there, yes, but not nearly enough. Her Karen Crowder isn’t very well developed at all, and she doesn’t really even seem like a decent (i.e., decisive) lawyer. Karen’s unsure about everything, and although that may have been meant to illustrate to us how she’s terminally conflicted defending an evil company or something, it certainly didn’t come across that way. Still, I’ll blame these shortcomings nore on the script than on the acting, which wasn’t bad.

Bookending with Clooney in terms of awesome performances was Wilkinson as Arthur Edens, a man who has finally decided to do the right thing after only sixteen years. Bitter, but only at himself, Arthur spends a good portion of the movie trying to figure out what to do - confront UNorth, confront his bosses, run away, kill himself, and so on. Arthur is passionate in finally acknowledging his complicity, and Wilkinson offers more emotion in his stubborn off-his-meds behavior than in the prim, stiff am-I-good-enough doubtings of Karen. Wilkinson, like Clooney, was nominated for an Oscar but didn’t win. Wilkinson makes you give a rat’s ass about the story a lot more than Swinton does, and that’s the key difference here.

In all, Michael Clayton is slight entertainment, but it’s basically just a typical big-bad-corporation legal “thriller” that manages to not be terribly thrilling. The one thing it has going for it, other than the excellent acting, is that some of the events in the movie are not told sequentially. This is good and bad; good that it helps fill in gaps later, bad that those gaps had to be filled in.

**1/2



385 - American Gangster

April 28, 2008 – 5:17 pm

When you hear the term American Gangster, you think of 1930s Chicago, with Baby Face Nelson and Al Capone running guns and liquor. But this American Gangster ain’t your granddad’s gangster; here, the setting is Harlem in the 1970s, and the main man is Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), a former wiseguy driver, of all things, a man who figures out that the best way to sell heroin to the willing naifs of the Big Apple is to go straight to the source. Business 101, lads.

Lucas’ typical tale of rising from modest origins to the top of the proverbial world dovetails with the fall and rise of one Richie ROberts (Russell Crowe), a cop who once (in)famously returned a million dollars in unmarked bills he found in the trunk of a car. The money had dirty cops written all over it, see, so now Roberts is a bit of a pariah within the NYPD. Enter a new presidential task force on narcotics, which apparently are overtaking the country.
Roberts and his crew need big busts (save your jokes) in order to justify their existence, and luckily enough they stumble upon a new brand of heroin called Blue Magic that is literally all over the streets of New York. And guess who’s responsible all that dope? Good job, you guessed Frank Lucas. Frank’s gotten it in his head that paying someone to buy it from someone in Southeast Asia - at the height of the Vietnam War, mind you - is just bad business, so he hops a plane, scopes out the area, makes a deal, and is home in time for supper. Oh, and he also manages to romance and marry a former Miss Puerto Rico. Helluva guy, that Frank Lucas.

Meanwhile, Roberts’ own life is in the crapper; his wife (Carla Gugino) is divorcing him and wants to take their young son to Las Vegas (!); he’s contesting the divorce because he doesn’t want to lose his kid. Plus, he drives a total POS car, can barely afford to dress himself, his fellow cops think he’s corrupt, and he gets no respect because he’s a Jersey cop. Jersey people in general get no respect, but the cops are lower on the totem pole than most.

If you remember the trailer for this movie, you might have the sense that Lucas and Roberts team up at some point, like a dynamic crime-fighting duo in which one of them is a murdering thug and the other’s a drug lord. I kid, I kid. Anyway, maybe that trailer was accurate, and maybe it was not. But regardless, the movie feels sort of predictable; you just know that at some point these separate tales of Good and Evil will intertwine. I mean, you just know it. There will be guns and booze, and someone will almost get kicked off the force, and someone will gun down a competitor drug lord, and in the end they’ll join hands and beat up everyone who stands in their way, or something.

The movie’s pretty predictable, is what I’m saying, and what’s more, it’s a long, long movie (more than two and a half hours). If it weren’t for powerful performances by Washington and especially Crowe, there would be almost nothing to this bloated, dull “gangster” carcass. Good period piece, though; the cars and fashions look as horrible as you might remember them looking. Always good to see wacky porkchop sideburns, too. Where’s Huggy Bear?

Side benefit: crotchety old Ruby Dee, as Frank’s mom. She’s onery! She’s cantankerous! She slaps Frank! About all of Mama Lucas’s scenes are contained in that trailer; Dee can’t be on screen for more than ten minutes, and yet she notched an Oscar nomination. She’s wonderful, definitely, but she’s barely in the movie.

**1/2

Where the heck have these posts been? Watching The Stepford Wives.

April 28, 2008 – 10:48 am

After a very long hiatus, here’s a post! Look at it! Gaze upon its splendor and ruminate over its sudden appearance, not to mention its sudden disappearance.

Where have these posts been, you ask? I moved. I mean physically, and not just from the computer to the fridge. No, I packed up everything and moved into a house. Now, you wouldn’t think that alone would halt movie reviews, but the problem was that I didn’t have the time - or inclination, to be fair - to sit down and watch a movie. Took me some time to get things set up at home, but in addition to that I had a zillion little things to worry about.

But that’s not your problem, is it? So finally, we’re back. We meaning me and me alone, although the dog nods approvingly from time to time.

This past weekend, I had the chance to check out two films on DVD. Here are my thoughts on one, with the second getting its own post.

The Stepford Wives (1975)

Some of you might recall this creepy midseventies thriller about a couple (Peter Masterson and Katherine Ross) who ditch their busy New York City lives for the placid upstate New Yawk burg of Stepford. (Sure, there was a remake in 2004 with Matthew Broderick and Nicole Kidman - a completely believable couple! - but let’s pretend it never happened.)

But things aren’t as they seem in Stepford. For one thing, the men run everything. Okay, that’s pretty aboveboard and not unusual for 1975, either. The menfolk have their own social club, the Men’s Association, while the womenfolk are blissfully happy homemakers, raising their 2.5 kids in their idyllic homes. But it’s not just the male-dominated atmosphere that bothers Joanna Eberhard, it’s that the women accept it with unprecedented glee; they seem straight out of a cheesy 1950s sitcom than actual women to the more citified Joanna.

Joanna soon finds she’s not the only one skeptical about everyone’s happiness; another recent Stepford arrival, Bobbie (Paula Prentiss), the stereotypical wacky, free-spirited friend, also believes something’s amiss. Bobbie and Joanna put on their thinking caps and sleuth around to figure out what’s up, beginning with starting a ladies’ club to complement the men’s club. Their efforts are for naught, though, because the women in Stepford are more concerned with the welfare of their husbands than of themselves.

Notable in this movie are the vintage fashions and cars, as well as future coffee spokesman Patrick Neal as a former Disney employee. He looks menacing, so you know right away he’s up to no good. This sort of spoils things for you later on.

What wins you over is the appealing performance by Ross as the protagonist. Ross was always a lovely lady, and in her younger days she was positively cherubic in appearance - meaning that she looked very innocent, trusting, and trustable. That appearance here beguiles a more inquisitive young lady - and man, could she ever fill out a pair of jeans.

The ending’s not as pat as you might expect. I haven’t seen the remake, but my guess would be that its ending is a little tighter and easier to guess.

***

Paul Scofield, 1922-2008

March 20, 2008 – 11:01 am

Paul Scofield is probably best known by American audiences for his portrayal of the high-minded counselor Sir Thomas More in the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons. But as a classically trained Shakespearean actor, Scofield made his mark on the stage, particularly in London’s legendary West End productions. Scofield died on Wednesday from leukemia at age 86.

Here are some of his most memorable film roles:

1. The Train (1965). Burt Lancaster plays a Resistance fighter in WWII out to stop Scofield’s German colonel, who’s in charge of transporting looted Parisian treasures by way of the titular train. John Frankenheimer directed this outstanding, four-star thriller, a battle of wills and cunning.

2. A Man for All Seasons (1966). And speaking of wills… As More, Scofield is commanding, winning a Best Actor Oscar for his work. More is conflicted but principled, willing to suffer amazing consequences in order to do what he feels is right. Which, in this case, was to not give his assent to his king’s wish to divorce his wife and marry a younger one. (More’s assent wasn’t needed, legally, but King Henry demanded it anyway.) 

3. Henry V (1989). In one of his many forays into Shakespearean celluloid, Scofield played the king of France, another commanding role to which the legend was wonderfully suited. Great casting choice by director/star Kenneth Branaugh; this is a must-see for fans of the playwright. The pinnacle of nouveau Shakespeare films, following in the deep footsteps of Olivier.

4. Hamlet (1990). And speaking of Bill, this version of his most debated play stars Mel Gibson as the confused prince. Scofield shows up in a small - but quite pivotal - role as the ghost of Hamlet’s father, and he lends the movie a lot of gravitas.

5. Quiz Show (1994). As the father of Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes, in a star-making performance), Scofield notched his second Oscar nomination, although he lost to Martin Landau (Ed Wood). Again, a smaller role, but very important, as Charles was wholly influenced by his father’s celebrity as a poet, and he wanted very much to live up to that standard while making his own mark.

Tropic Thunder trailer

March 19, 2008 – 10:15 pm

Tropic Thunder, due out on August 15, is an action movie about actors who usually appear in action movie who wind up on an island thinking they’re going to make an action movie only to find themselves in Real Danger. They they have to gather their courage and their wits, find their center, and bust heads just to survive.

Starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr. (as a white man made up to resemble a black man), the movie looks pretty cool - at least from this far-off vantage point. When we actually get to see it in August, we might think it’s pretty lame, but from here, it looks interesting. An attention grabber. In fact, it not so much grabs your attention as abducts it, throws it into a burlap sack, and tosses it into a swift-moving river. A river that happens to be in this movie.

Plus, it’s got Nick Nolte, and surprisingly, he’s grizzled. Oh, and this is the movie Owen Wilson was going to do before he went a little crazy and tried to kill himself. Supposedly.

Anyway, here’s the trailer for it.

Twelve rejected Bond girl names

March 18, 2008 – 1:23 pm

(Okay, not really.)

Woot gives ‘em to us! There’s no added text, so I’ll post them all here as well.

  1. Deb L’Entendre
  2. Penny Tration
  3. Jennifer Goodpersonality
  4. Olga Sm
  5. Heidi Waite-Proportionate
  6. Callie Pygious
  7. Lois El-Festeem
  8. Connie Lingus
  9. Erma Frodite
  10. Mena Pausal
  11. Sue Spiciouslymasculine
  12. Rita Q. LeSexpun

384 - Horton Hears a Who!

March 18, 2008 – 12:12 pm

Oh, thank goodness, the third time IS the charm. Finally, finally, and finally, Hollywood gives us a movie that actually and perfectly embodies the spirit of Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss. Criminey crickets! Horton Hears a Who! is wholly imaginative fun that feels like it’s channeling the good doctor’s playful exuberance and ingenious creativity with every syllable and splotch of animation.

The biggest difference between this movie and the recent adaptations of Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas is that Horton Hears a Who! was created using CGI animation, not live action, not adults in goofy costumery. And that permits directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino to, well, animate a Dr. Seuss book. Part of the charm of Seuss’s books was their otherworldly atmosphere, with just a touch of reality thrown in so kids could identify with the characters and underlying themes. And it makes such a wonderful difference! When you throw actors into suits, you take away both the personality of the actor and the appeal of the Seussiverse, if you will. What you’re left with is an overproduced, unpleasant mess that tries desperately to be relevant and interesting and fails miserably at both.

Anyway, back to this movie. Horton (voiced by Jim Carrey) is an elephant in a world sort of like ours, but not really (as evidenced by the myriad odd creatures inhabiting Horton’s jungle). Now, if you’ve read the books you know that Horton’s a bit of what we’d call a free spirit. He has a short attention span, and he’s always so hap-hap-happy. The kids in the jungle (er, animal kids) look up to him, sort of as a big plaything (since Horton’s an adult, supposedly), and he in turn tries to teach them about the jungle and its mysteries and dangers.

Well, one day Horton spots a stray clover floating by on a breeze, and he hears what he believes is a cry for help. Oh, but it’s not the clover, it’s a speck ON the clover. And way down within the heart of that speck, there’s a whole ‘nother world, the land of Whoville. Populated by the Whos, of course. And it seems that when the flower became detached from its root, strange things had been afoot in  the land of the Whos, like strange cloud formations and odd weather patterns.

The mayor of Whoville (voiced by Steve Carell) is a bit of a screw up, a patsy, a boob (in the words of the town’s head councilman, voiced by Dan Fogler of Knocked Up); he’s in his position to look nice and smile wide. The Mayor has 96 daughters - and one son! - and a lovely wife, and between spending time with them and planning for the Whocentennial, he’s worrying about the signs of impending doom he keeps seeing.

And then Horton says hello, and those signs become reality. And it’s up to Horton to find a safe place for the speck to sit, so that the Whoniverse (see what I did there?) can survive in peace, as it has for centuries. But there’s a problem - the other denizens of the jungle, led by Kangaroo (voiced by Carol Burnett, who’s apparently alive and well), who believes the speck represents imagination, which she doesn’t want the jungle kidlets to have - because then they’ll be questioning authority, and we can’t have that! (Seuss was quite the subversive.) So Horton races to get the speck to shelter while fending off attacks from monkeys and vultures and whatnot.

Carrey is awesome as the childlike Horton, a kind-hearted, if perhaps a bit naive, pachyderm who truly believes in what he cannot see (i.e., the Whos), because he can be wild and spastic and hilarious. I mean, after all, it is a cartoon; characters should be outlandish, not subtlely shaded. Carrey’s riffing (and ad-libbing, I bet) will remind you of Robin Williams or Eddie Murphy in their signature animated roles - untethered joy and comedy. Steve Carrell is aces as the beleagured mayor who does believe in Horton’s existence, even if no one else does; he has sort of an easygoing flustered personality about him that is the counterbalancing adult to Horton’s whimsy.

The movie’s basically a metaphor for love, frankly. Kangaroo says she does not believe in anything she cannot see or touch, and it’s evident that she lives on the fear of the other animals, not on their love. She doesn’t even appear to love her own son; she thinks of herself more of a caregiver than a mother. Kids should always mind their parents, no matter how dumb their requests and actions are. So Kangaroo does not believe in the Whos, because she cannot see them, just as she does not believe in love. But of course, since this is an animated movie, all does turn out okay in the end, with Lessons Learned.

***

A Mighty Wind blows fair

March 17, 2008 – 11:13 pm

In A Mighty Wind, Christopher Guest does for folk music that he’s also done for small-town theater, dog shows, and moviemaking, that is, mock the hell out of the subject while also embracing it wholeheartedly. And that’s both the plus and the minus of this movie; it’s so dead on that the parody aspect is almost overwhelmed by the realism and subtle digs at various subsets of the folk-music universe.

It’s the present day, and longtime folkie impresario Irving Steinbloom has just died. To honor his memory, his son Jonathan (Bob Balaban) asks three of his dad’s old acts to reunite one last time for a bravura, pull-out-all-the-stops performance at the (fictional) Town Hall in New York City. True, one of the acts, the New Main Street Singers, plays mostly at amusement parks beneath roller coasters and another, The Folksmen, has been disbanded for years. And then there’s the third act, the legendary duo Mitch and Mickey, which underwent a precipitous breakup of its own when the performers got a little too close to each other for the other’s comfort.

The New Main Street Singers, led by Terry Bohner (John Michael Higgins), are a neuftet that dresses in a blue-and-white uniform, sort of like a high school marching band mated with bakers. Their squeaky-clean harmonies will remind you of the Osmonds, too; like the real Osmonds, the Singers began as an extended family rooted in love for each other and the Good Book. But as the years progressed and folk music wafted away from the public’s consciousness, the Singers took on a more diverse look. So diverse, in fact, that Terry and his wife Laurie (Jane Lynch) reveal a pretty dark secret - they’re witches, and they believe in a god of color, or something. Wacky stuff.

Then we have The Folksmen - Mark Shubb (Harry Shearer), Jerry Palter (Michael McKean), and Alan Barrows (Guest himself), a down-home, folk-rooted combo that eschews the trappings of the Singers for a more streamlined approach. And at one-third the size of the bulky group, they’re also aerodynamic. And great chemistry abounds; on the way to the venue, Jerry asks Alan if he has a map. “Yes, I have a map, but not in the car.” “So you were planning on studying it later, academically or something?”

Finally, there’s Mitch and Mickey. Back in the late sixties, they were THE face of folk rock, but times have changed. Mickey’s settled down; she’s married to Leonard, who’s in the “bladder management industry.” Poor Mitch, on the other hand, has never recovered from the devastating breakup; he went more than a little crazy. Okay, he had a complete nervous breakdown and was remanded to a sanitarium for a while, but he’s okay now! Sort of. Mitch is shaky and wobbly and looks like he’s been hit in the head too often. He’s not even sure he’s up to performing, but Jonathan talks him into it. Mitch and Mickey, who go on last, are really the keystone of the entire night, as they were Steinbloom’s most popular act. And one song they do, called “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow,” was always especially poignant, back when they were in love with each other. At one point near the end of the song, they pause and smooch. Would they do so again, 35 years later?

What makes this movie work is the unerring chracterizations of Guest’s stock company, particularly Levy and O’Hara, who are so incredibly good in this film that they deserve extra-special mention. Levy, who cowrote with Guest, is mesmerizing and endearing as the fragile Mitch, and O’Hara is absolutely unforgettable. Somewhere, someone has compiled a list of the greatest actresses never to have been nominated for an Academy Award, and it would be a grave injustice if O’Hara were not on that list. For some odd reason, she gets better as she ages; those old days of working on SCTV with Levy seem like centuries ago.

What might not make this movie work is the light shadings that delineate where this is satire and where it is realism. If you’re not a folkie and not up on Guest’s comedy, the humor here might elude you, it’s so subtle. But don’t mistake subtlety with invisibility; some scenes are laugh-out-loud funny, and others are touching, very touching.

***

383 - 30 Days of Night

March 17, 2008 – 11:28 am

30 Days of Night is a standard vampires-attacking-a-remote-town movie with the gimmick of the far-northern Alaskan setting that provides the condition of the title. See, because vampires can’t exist in direct sunlight - bet you didn’t know that - so thirty consecutive days without sunlight would be like heaven to them. But that’s about it as far as originality for this by-the-numbers gorefest, although the thick arched eyebrows of Josh Hartnett provide some measure of entertainment.

Barrow, Alaska is the northernmost point in the United States, and as previously noted in Insomnia, that area of the world is plunged into darkness for an entire month of every year. This is useful for the purposes of the story here, because it provides an deadline for the denouement - the vampires have to be out of there before the sun rises again. So our intrepid hero and his motley gang of scruffy, bundled-up citizens have a full month to deal with their vampire infestation.

Sheriff Eben Oleson (Hartnett) is the small-town Johnny Law whom everyone knows and likes, although he keeps his feelings close inside, as most squinty-eyed, jut-jawed heroes do. On the last day of actual sunlight, he’s busy making sure everyone’s doing okay and is prepared for the coming darkness. Then he runs into a weird man known only as The Stranger (Ben Foster) who obliquely warns everyone that “they” are coming that evening, when night falls. Who are they? Superstrong vampires, that’s who, and don’t think they’ll stop until they consume every last drop of your blood, or turn you into one of them. (The last part didn’t make a lot of sense to me - why create someone who’ll just be competition for food?)

No hero is complete without some love interest, so we get Stella (Melissa George), Eben’s ex-wife. They’re attempting a separation, but naturally Stella - through hopelessly contrived events - is unable to depart the town before the last plane leaves. (How come no flights can arrive or depart the airport when it’s dark out? The town has electricity. Maybe they can, but the plot wouldn’t permit it.) So she and Eben are stuck together, arguing over who gets to save the town. Seriously. On more than one occasion, Stella says, “I’m coming with you!” - no way she’s gonna let him do it alone! - and most of the time Eben overrules her, but not always, because he’s a Thoughtful Hero as well.

And to underscore Eben’s emotional ties to the community, we’re also introduced to his kid brother Jake, who looks to be young enough to be Eben’s son. True to the genre, Jake desperately seeks the approval of his successful (to a point) older brother, and he tries to save the town as well. But no, he’s not old enough, and Eben is responsible for him, and darned if some kid’s gonna be the hero instead of him! So there’s that.

The movie leans rather heavily on its setting to move the plot along; the special effects are rather ho-hum, and the acting is weak. And it’s not that Hartnett can’t act - he’s actually developing into quite the fine thesp - but here he’s just sort of drifting along like a windblown snowpile. George is cute and perky and occasionally serious, but she too isn’t quite up to the task. And that’s perfectly okay if your leading man is charismatic or if the special effects wow the audience so much that they don’t notice the wooden performances, but here that’s not the case. You wind up turning your eyes to the gore that you’d expect to see in a vampire movie, but the gore isn’t even especially interesting or vicious. Some scenes are disturbing, though; turns out the only way to kill a vampire is by beheading it, as guns apparently have little effect on them. Which doesn’t stop at least one suicidal maniac from shotgunning several bloodsuckers in order to give his fellow humans some cover.

Bottom line: Good, interesting concept, dreary execution. The movie’s based on a series of graphic novels, and my assumption is that the novels themselves had more character and pizzazz on the page than this movie does on the screen.

**

Hot womenfolk from 80s movies

March 16, 2008 – 3:54 pm

In this, the month of our bracketizing and whatnot, The Ghosts of Wayne Fontes has a bracket challenge devoted solely to the big-haired women of our favorite (and not-so-favorite) films of the 80s.

Note: This is not exactly a PC blog, so consider yourself forewarned. I mean, it’s not as if the women here are going to be judged on their intelligence or homemaking ability, you see.

Best part? You get to vote yourself. I myself am pulling for Bill’s mom to score an upset over Phoebe Cates!

When Irish eyes are drinking

March 16, 2008 – 12:29 am

The good folks at Rotten Tomatoes have compiled a handy list of the top 10 Irish movies.

So grab your green beer and yer shilelagh, because you never know when you’ll find a leprechaun under a bridge, or something, kvetching about his Lucky Charms.

Or, alternatively, you could pretend Monday is Be Mean to Snakes Day.

The best space movies of alla time

March 14, 2008 – 6:55 pm

According to SPACE.com, of course.

Personally, I wouldn’t put stock in this, since it includes such luminous films as Pluto Nash and Alien 3. Sheesh and crackers!