Archive for June, 2009
457 – Changeling
Posted by frothy in Changeling on June 29, 2009
A little boy is taken from his home in 1928. His mom enlists the LAPD to find him, and five months later they come up with a lost child. The mother quicky grasps that the kid isn’t her missing son, but the LAPD will have none of it. Outraged, Christine Collins takes on the entire police department in an effort to get them to look for her son, much to the detriment of her own welfare.
Oh, the arrogant LAPD! They foist a boy, obviously the wrong child, on poor Mrs. Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) and practically force her to shower affection on the kid. Then they wash their hands of the matter, even when Collins protests that the kid’s not hers. This attitude gets her thrown into a women’s sanitarium, because you just didn’t talk back to the LAPD in 1928, especially if you were a woman. Especially if you were a single woman who was pointing out a huge mistake on the part of the LAPD.
Luckily, Christine has a powerful ally, the Reverend Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), who broadcasts a weekly sermon excoriating the police for corruptioin and other misdeeds. Briegleb is instrumental in winning Christine’s release, but the battle’s only just begun: the cops are still crooked, and she is still without her son.
Concurrent to Christine’s problems, we also follow the story of the real kidnapper and of the upper management of the LAPD. What begins as a slight coverup on the part of the all-powerful police in order to placate a testy public and press turns into a disaster, all because Christine Collins wouldn’t give up.
The movie is never lacking for emotional realism. First of all, you completely empathize with Christine Collins, a woman who refuses to be a victim. Her goal isn’t to bring the police department down, and it’s not even to exact some kind of vengeance (which might just be a way for her to get over her son’s kidnapping). Her goal is simply to get her son back.
Angelina Jolie plays Christine Collins and is, in a word, outstanding, and she earned a Oscar nomination for this movie. Jolie’s Collins is not homely – you can’t completely lose that beauty, even if you’re playing a somewhat dowdy 1920s mom – but her looks don’t get her anywhere in this movie. To tell the truth, her looks are never even mentioned, not even in a snide comment by the cops (“Just sit over here, cutie, while we men take care of things”). When Collins comes home to find her son’s gone, we feel the anguish she feels. It doesn’t feel forced, and we don’t feel manipulated, and that’s at least because of Jolie herself.
One odd little complaint, though – why is everything so dark? Was the sun dimmer in 1928? Even in broad daylight, everyone seems to be half in shadows, which made me squint most of the time, thus giving me a headache. Was director Clint Eastwood trying for some kind of period moodiness? It’s not needed for most of the scenes, although the mental hospital should, by definition, be poorly lit.
As Christine Collins tenaciously clings to the idea that her son may still be alive, the movie also grabs a hold of your heartstrings and never lets go. But neither does Eastwood try to manipulate us toward an inevitable conclusion; he doesn’t pluck those heartstrings so much as gently caress them, ambiguously leading us in multiple directions. Collins’ predicament feels terrifyingly real: the aching loss of her only child and her own violent incarceration in a sadistic “hospital.” Changeling is frightening not only because of the blistering account of evil cops and doctors but also, and most hauntingly, because of the horrible anguish and despair Collins feels as she fights the system while maintaining her resolute belief that her boy will be found.
***1/2
456 – Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Posted by frothy in Transformers: Rise of the Fallen on June 27, 2009
This cacophonous sequel to the 2007 blockbuster is a relentlessly incomprehensible mess. Alleged director Michael Bay, a firm believer in the throw-everything-at-the-wall theory of filmmaking, manages to overwhelm the senses with a teeth-rattling soundtrack and a blistering, epilepsy-inducing barrage of metallic imagery. Oh, there’s a story in there, something about preventing an evil robot from destroying the sun, but it’s almost completely irrelevant.
Since the movie is a direct follow up to the last Transformers film, some background is necessary. Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBoeuf) is preparing to go to college, away from his new sweetheart Mikaela (Megan Fox) and his new alien robot best friend, Bumblebee. Meanwhile, Optimus Prime (a good robot) is helping the world’s armies take on stray Decepticons (bad robots), who are trying to revive their old leader Megatron, find Sam, and aid another bad robot named The Fallen (see what they did there?).
Most of the scenes involve Sam (and Mikaela, and others in their posse) running from place to place, getting shot at by apparently the slowest giant robots in the universe. But not like in films like National Treasure or Angels and Demons, where a mystery was being solved and the protagonist was running from place to place because time was almost up for them to solve said mystery. More like running around just so that more robot battle scenes could be included. I mean, it doesn’t really have to have a point, right?
One big problem is that the robots are sort of hard to distinguish from one another. Some are pretty easy, like Optimus Prime (he’s blue and red) and Bumblebee (he’s yellow), and the Twins Mudflap and Skids, or even The Fallen, who has an elongated faceplate. There are gray-metal robots who are Decepticons (colorless = evil?), but then there are some who are Autobots. Add to this confusion the fact that the fight scenes move at a breakneck pace, so even if you can tell who’s fighting whom, you really can’t tell what specifically is being done.
The movie is also about an hour too long (it’s two and a half hours total). There are too many battle scenes anyway, and there are too many characters to keep track of. Slice it down to a manageable running time and chop out some secondary characters – keep the battles to just the most obvious players – and maybe there would be a coherent, cohesive movie. But Michael Bay directed this, and he’s known for doing the opposite of what a good filmmaker would do.
As for the acting… well, I don’t want to be negative. I’m kidding, of course I do. Being negative is easier than being positive. But it’s double-plus easier for a film like this, because it’s so cliched and so overwrought. The acting is subpar; everyone hams it up, probably because they don’t want to be overshadowed by robots. (They are anyway.)
LaBoeuf is not a good actor, never has been. He’s not a good action-movie type, frankly; you don’t look at him and see hero, you see nincompoop. He doesn’t inspire so much as react. This was never more evident than in the latest Indiana Jones movie, when sixtysomething Harrison Ford – not a great actor, but an appealing one – was far more convincing than LaBoeuf. You’re supposed to look at LaBoeuf and think he’s a guy next door, and instead you look at him and think he’s a self-aggrandizing little twit. Or maybe that’s just me.
Megan Fox is in this movie basically to look pretty – check out, as I did, the endless pans over her young, lithe body, and you know exactly who’s in the intended audience. (Note: It’s not sixty-year-old women.) The appropriately named Fox is all pouty lips and gleaming teeth, and she’s likeable enough, but she’s given little to do other than dote on LaBoeuf awkwardly.
As for the rest of the cast, it’s a clash of acting styles. John Turturro returns as Agent Simmons, and he’s wackier than ever; Ramon Rodriguez plays Sam’s new college roommate, web entrepreneur Leo, and he’s deranged and a wuss. Sam’s parents are played by Kevin Dunn and Julie White, who shamelessly mug – White’s character in particular is needlessly loony. She was probably supposed to be comic relief, but she comes off as annoying.
This isn’t a great thrill ride, as the previews might lead you to believe. It’s not even a Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. It’s more like the It’s a Small World ride, a ride that ceaselessly repeats the same refrain just to irritate the pants off you, figuratively speaking, resulting in a desperate wish for it all to be over.
**
These Three: three too many
Posted by frothy in These Three (1936) on June 16, 2009
Not a fan. These Three is a movie about how gossip can ruin lives, but its moral message is muddled by overacting and shrieking children. It’s just a dated relic of a time when kids were automatically believed – why, they could never fib! – without any evidence and when a woman could be thrown into a car and driven away by her boyfriend, all for laughs. How far we’ve come.
Martha (Miriam Hopkins) and Karen (Merle Oberon) are two young ladies who open a private school for girls. Their neighbor is Dr. Cardin (Joel McCrea), who quickly falls for Karen. At the same time, Martha falls for the doctor as well, although she keeps this fact to herself.
The teachers have a trouble student named Mary who’s always getting into trouble (not 21st century trouble, more like being late to class and lying about it trouble). Mary is determined to strike back at her teachers for getting on her case and punishing her, so she gets her grandmother – a huge benefactor for the school – to believe a lie she had “overheard,” that Martha and Dr. Cardin had a thing going on. This is based partly on the fact that the good doctor had come over to visit Karen and fell asleep in Martha’s room while waiting for Karen to come home. Today, we wouldn’t even blink at that.
At any rate, it’s enough of an impropriety to cause the grandmother to pull her rotten little kid out of the school, and the other parents quickly follow suit, thus damning the school to ruination. The teachers strike back, but by then I was bored.
No, just kidding, I did watch the entire movie, because I’m ethically obligated to do so. But although the movie’s never as terrible as the first ten minutes or so – when you want to throw the whole lot of them out a third-story window – it’s really never all that good, either. It goes careening to a climax that satisfying only in that it ends the movie.
The movie is based on a play by Lillian Hellman called The Children’s Hour that contained lesbianism as a subtheme to gossip, but the studio wouldn’t dare let a movie talk about homosexuality in 1936, so we got a love triangle instead. This makes me think, though, that These Three could be remade rather intelligently now, as long as Hollywood could be trusted to deal with the issues with some subtlety.
**
455 – The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009)
Posted by frothy in Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (2009) on June 14, 2009
I was surprised to find this remake of the 1974 thriller was actually pretty good. I thought that, because it was a remake by an explosion-happy director (Tony Scott) and starred ultraham John Travolta, it couldn’t possibly be all that interesting. Maybe a mild diversion, but those are a dime a dozen during the summer. But hey, big shock! It’s actually pretty tense, with just enough twistiness to fascinate without seeming implausible.
Of course, the biggest reason the movie succeeds is Denzel Washington. Washington plays a disgraced (investigation pending) transit executive who’s currently slumming as the control chief. On his shift, naturally, a 1:23 train out of Pelham (New York City) suddenly stops in the middle of its run, and a hijacker demands $10 million to be delivered in exactly one hour, or passengers start dying unnaturally.
What makes this a little more than your typical cat-and-mouse game is the undercurrent of what’s gotten Washington character into hot water, as well as Travolta’s character’s actual motives. After all, he’s just grabbed a subway full of hostages, but obviously he can’t just ride the car to Cuba, or something. He has to have an escape plan.
Washington and Travolta play off each other very nicely, with Washington’s flawless portrayal of a flawed man far more convincing than Travolta’s garden-variety unhinged wacko. Essentially, Washington was good enough to counterbalance Travolta’s overacting. (Is he crazy, or is he just cleverly acting crazy? Who cares?) Washington’s Walter Garber is unsure of himself, an actual Everyman thrust into a madman’s master plan. It’s roles like these that separate Washington from people like, say, Tom Cruise, guys who can play really only one character, the Man Who Knows Everything. Walter Garber not only isn’t a “seize the day” kind of person, he shies away from confrontations he knows he can’t win.
Also worth noting are John Turturro (as a hostage negotiator displaced by Washington, since Travolta won’t talk to anyone else) and James Gandolfini (as Hizzoner, finally playing a mayor who’s not a complete nitwit). Gone is the whimsical naming convention from the first, in which Robert Shaw named his comrades after colors, which was swiped by Quentin Tarantino for Reservoir Dogs. There are some changes from the original, true, but they don’t seem contrived; for example, Walter Matthau was a transit cop in the 1974 version, not some under-investigation suit.
The action is tense throughout, especially since you assume that the hijackers are going to have to murder someone at some point (otherwise, why have a deadline?) Somehow, the movie manages to be gripping and realistic without being over the top. There are some minor bouts of nonsense (did we really need to know that Garber needed to bring home a gallon of milk?), and maybe in the final 20 minutes or so it’s a little by the numbers in its approach to action, but overall it’s not bad at all. It’s certainly a lot better than I’d expect a John Travolta movie to be, but maybe that’s because he’s the bad guy here, and they’re practically expected to be over the top.
***
Walkabout – jaw-dropping visuals on macro and micro levels (plus strong story)
Posted by frothy in Walkabout (1971) on June 14, 2009
Walkabout is a visually captivating story about two children who wander the Australian outback in an effort to get back home, encountering an Aborigine who aids them along the way. Brilliantly shot by director Nicholas Roeg, the movie is less about the kids’ journey as it is about life, death, cultural differences, murder, and incest. So it’s not quite a movie for all ages.
Things start off with a jolt. A businessman drives his two kids into the middle of nowhere, under the auspices of a family picnic. As the daughter sets the blanket up and the small son plays with his toys, the man takes out a gun and begins shooting at them both. As the children flee, he douses the car with gasoline and sets it on fire, then shoots himself dead.
The daughter (the beautiful Jenny Agutter, who’s terrific here) hides this from the boy as they escape across the desert wilderness. They have only a few things from the picnic, including a transistor radio and a tin of fruit. The girl (a young woman, really) keeps her brother’s spirits up while they traverse the harsh isolation of the Outback. Along the way, they encounter a teenage Aborigine (David Gulpilil) who is on his traditional rite-of-passage walkabout. Although the Aborigine and the two white children do not speak the same verbal language, the small boy is able to communicate such things as “water,” and the young native helpfully shows the newcomers how to find water from the ground.
Nicholas Roeg was a well-respected cinematographer with only one directing gig under his belt at the time (Performance, starring Mick Jagger), but his inexperience as a director is not in the least bit apparent, and his years of camerwork certainly is. Australia is portrayed not only with sweeping vistas but also with arresting closeups of nature in action, serving as bit of a commentary on life and death as well as a travelogue for Australia itself. Wallabyes, wombats, ants, maggots, all creatures great and small.
But this isn’t a family movie along the same lines as Homeward Bound – fish out of water trying to get back home – it’s really a movie about relationships. The two white children have to trust their new friend, for they are out of their own element and do not really know if he is helping them out of altruism or something more sinister. Conversely, the Aborigine might not be sure about his guests’ intentions, either, as he has personally witnessed white hunters slaughtering oxen for no compelling reason.
Aside from the trust angle, there’s also the relationship between the siblings. At the outset of the film, the two children – much apart in age; the girl is more or less the age of an adult, whereas the boy is in single digits – have sort of a mother-son dynamic going, but this changes somewhat over the course of the movie. The change is subtle and fascinating, and it’s only during the epilogue that you realize its extent.
***1/2
Hello! Sex and violence and porno!
Posted by frothy in Housekeeping on June 12, 2009
Hello, Twitterers! It’s come to my attention that some of you have arrived here from Twitland, or whatever it’s called. I kid, I know you’re Tweeting, or something. Can I call you all Twits? What, that joke’s been done? Never mind, then.
I’m always a few years behind the times, which is why I don’t have a Twitter account yet. I’m no lemming! I say that while posting on my blog and while maintaining a Facebook page and a LiveJournal and, oh yeah, a MySpace, although I argue that I am not maintaining the latter at all, so there.
So, welcome! Do you know why you’re here? Well, you’re here because you can’t resist clicking links. But let me tell you what you can find here.
There are over 450 full-length movie reviews. There’s a long list of them on the lower right of the main page.
There are also many shorter reviews of older films – they, too, are listed to the right.
We also have occasional news and fun stuff, such as Toy Story 3 announcements and the top shower scenes of all time. So there’s a lot of things to wet your whistle, which is a saying from back in the days before the Internet, when we all used Morse Code (— -.- …!!!!! LOLZ) to communicate.
My recommendation? Begin with a random page and read everything. In fact, if you go to the by-month archive (also in the right column) and select February 1998, you’ll see one post – a movie-by-movie list of all 450+ reviews. Many are linked.
Notify, brother!
Posted by frothy in Housekeeping on June 8, 2009
Hi. We got a new thing going on here at FR Central. If you drop a comment on a post here, you can elect to get emailed if someone – probably me, who else is gonna do it – replies to your comment. Or at least replies to the same post as you.
Go on, try it. You’ll like it. All the cool kids are doing it, but they’re not as awesome as you, ya big lug. You just click the little box when you make your post.
454 – Lovely by Surprise
Posted by frothy in Lovely by Surprise on June 7, 2009
In this stunning, offbeat film, an aspiring novelist tries to kill off her protagonist – on the advice of her ex-lover/professor – with real-world repercussions. Meanwhile, an unstable car salesman tries to cope with the death of his wife and the subsequent silent treatment of his young daughter. The two storylines dovetail in and out of each other’s orbit nicely, with the result a movie that’s at turns joyous and devastating.
Marian (Carrie Preston) has written a book that has little plot and no conflict, so her mentor (Austin Pendleton) suggests she create some by killing off a main character. But doing this triggers a whole mess of complications, not the least of which is that the character somehow cheats death and winds up in the same world as Marian, albeit wandering around in his tighty whities. Bob the car salesman (Reg Rogers) is gamely trying to keep his act together, as well as his job, while also trying to connect with his daughter Mimi (Lena Lamer), who has not spoken since her mother died.
Going into the plot in any more detail might give away key points that are best savored as they occur, so I’ll stop right there. Let’s talk about the cast. Preston is outstanding as the novice writer, desperately trying to write herself out of a corner. She wants very badly to succeed, but she’s hesitant about such an extreme solution. I thought Preston showed just the right combination of spunk, cleverness, and vulnerability. Her equal is Rogers as the not-all-there Bob. Rogers is so good, you’re not sure if he’s intentionally trying to be strange or is simply overacting. It’s the former – Bob’s own vulnerability is masked by a veneer of unfounded optimism, and his boss (Richard Masur), who’s given Bob many chances to succeed, is nearing the end of his rope. Bob’s problem is that he’s just not a conventional salesman; instead of selling cars, Bob tells his customers to go home and spend time with their families. He’s sort of an existential salesman, if anything, and Rogers is commanding and believable in a difficult role.
Oh, but that ain’t all. The supposed-to-be-killed-off protagonist, Humkin (Michael Chernus) is a man-child who has lived (in the unfinished book) with his arrested-development brother for years on a landlocked boat, subsisting on milk and cereal and speaking in curiously appealing, innocent speech. Humkin somehow makes it to the real world, where his affable personality serves him quite well. Again, just what Humkin does in the so-called real world isn’t something that should be revealed here. But the point is that Chernus is a sheer, buoyant delight in what’s an award-caliber performance.
Lovely by Surprise is really a sweet film, but it can be tough to watch at times. It can’t really be pigeonholed as a comedy or a drama, although there are some laugh-out-loud moments. The brilliant characterizations (by writer-director Kirt Gunn), fully realized by a capable cast, elevate this from a mere slice-of-life art-house film to a solid, heart-breaking masterpiece.
***1/2
453 – Drag Me to Hell
Posted by frothy in Drag Me to Hell on June 7, 2009
A put-upon loan officer (Alison Lohman) denies a mortgage extension to an old woman, who subsequently puts a horrific curse on her that damns the soul to, well, hell. Sam Raimi’s horror tale is very stylish, as expected, although it lags during the quieter moments, particularly when Justin Long (as Lohman’s boyfriend) is around.
Christine Brown (Lohman) is trying to get promoted to assistant bank manager by her officious boss (played by David Paymer), who favors Christine’s brown-nosing coworker Stu. One fine day, a woman (Lorna Raver) pleads with Christine for help with her mortgage; knowing her boss wouldn’t want her to grant another extension, Christine denies the woman, thus incurring her wrath. Said wrath includes a brutal attack in an underground parking garage (nothing good ever happens there in movies, you know), as well as at Christine’s house.
Watching this movie demands a certain amount of disbelief suspension, more so even for your typical horror movie. At one point, the old woman puts her fist through Christine’s mouth, with no repercussions. Another time, Christine actually hurls an office supply into the woman’s eyeball. Again, no real damage. In fact, after that first physical encounter in the parking garage, both women probably should have died three or four times.
As I mentioned, the movie lags whenever there’s no true horror going on, as if Raimi wasn’t quite sure what to do with all of his secondary characters. Lohman has good chemistry with Long, but that’s about the only positive: Long himself is wooden, a lightweight even by horror-movie standards, so although the two actors seem to connect, their scenes together seem flat, almost forced. And that’s not all of it, either. There’s an (understandably) awkward dinner with Long’s parents, a high-minded, upper-crust family, that doesn’t resonate as much as if ought to. You pay more attention to Long’s jerkish parents (particularly his snotty mother) than to Lohman’s curse-related issues.
It’s important to note, though, that the horror scenes are unbelievably scary. The film opens with an electric scene in which a young boy is literally dragged to the bowels of hell before his parents’ eyes, all because he swiped a gypsy woman’s necklace. And every action scene thereafter is powerful, gross, stylish stuff. (In fact, for a PG-13 movie, the scenes are very intense – I think standards have changed just a tad over the past couple of decades.)
Bottom line: It’s a good-looking horror movie with many genuinely terrifying moments that are offset only slightly by Justin Long’s annoying performance and character interactions that lag and seem out of place.
***
452 – Land of the Lost
Posted by frothy in Land of the Lost on June 6, 2009
Brad Silberling’s Land of the Lost remake lacks both a heart and a brain, with jokes that fall flat almost as soon as they’re uttered, acting that seems ridiculous and out of place, and a schizophrenic personality that veers from 50s monster movie to broad comedy to sci-fi to Edward D. Wood, Jr.
The story is that crackpot scientist Rick Marshall (Will Ferrell) has invented an apparatus that will allow him to travel to parallel dimensions. When he and a comely Cambridge lass named Holly (Anna Friel) test the device, they’re sucked into a vortex (along with a survivalist tour guide, played by Danny McBride of Tropic Thunder) that deposits them into the titular land, which is populated by motels, gas stations, knick knacks, dinosaurs, ape people, and lizard people.
The trio can’t get back to their own time and place without locating the now-missing device, and they run into an ally in Cha-Ka (Jorma Taccone of Saturday Night Live) as well as the nefarious Sleestaks, lizard-like creatures with multiple sets of teeth and nasty dispositions.
It’s tough to know where to begin with this one. The TV series was admittedly awful; it’s interesting now only in the so-bad-it’s-good sense, but the movie does not fully embrace the hoakiness of the series, which might have worked. (That is, if this was a knowing self-parody along the lines of The Brady Bunch Movie.) But neither is it an all-out comedic take on the serious-minded sci-fi show, which also might have worked, given the comic pedigree of Will Ferrell. So by not committing fully to either venue of entertainment, the movie fails twice.
The laughs aren’t just scattered, they’re almost completely absent. Ferrell, who has excellent comic timing and can be genuinely funny (see him on Funny or Die) is really bad here, as if he himself doesn’t fully believe in the movie. As a result, Ferrell’s performance looks awkward and completely controlled. This is a man who can play slapstick (Old School) and serious (Stranger than Fiction), and here he’s sort of caught in the middle. He’s not helped by McBride, who was so good in Tropic Thunder, mostly because the writers (Chris Henchy and Dennis McNicholas) weren’t sure if his Will should be intelligent or just some doofus. That sort of inconsistency is to expected in movies in which there are many writers, but not only two.
Rounding out the trio is Friel, who’s improbably gorgeous – why is she interested in Will Ferrell? Yes, of course they’re a potential romance – and an obvious ripoff of Rachel Weisz in the Mummy movies. She’s prettier than Rick Marshall, she’s smarter than Rick Marshall, and naturally here she’s deferential to the wisdom of Rick Marshall as well, unlike Weisz’s strong Evvie. It’s clear she’s in this picture as cheesecake; witness the early scene in which she rips off her pants (leaving herself in short shorts) in order to, I don’t even remember. See what I mean? Or the numerous times when characters grope her.
Land of the Lost isn’t silly fun, escapist entertainment that’s just meant to be, not mean anything. It’s sort of like Journey to the Center of the Earth if it were made without an adventuring lad like Brendan Fraser. Will Ferrell, funny as he is, has no business being in this movie at all.
*1/2
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