Film Freak Central

Child's Play (1988) [Chucky's 20th Birthday Edition] - DVD|Blu-ray Disc + Chucky: The Killer DVD Collection

CHILD'S PLAY
***/****
DVD - Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
BD - Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif
screenplay by Don Mancini and John Lafia and Tom Holland
directed by Tom Holland

CHILD'S PLAY 2 (1990)
**/**** Image C+ Sound A-
starring Alex Vincent, Jenny Agutter, Gerrit Graham, Brad Dourif
screenplay by Don Mancini
directed by John Lafia

CHILD'S PLAY 3 (1991)
*/**** Image B- Sound A-
starring Justin Whalin, Perrey Reeves, Jeremy Sylvers, Brad Dourif
screenplay by Don Mancini
directed by Jack Bender

BRIDE OF CHUCKY (1998)
**/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Katherine Heigl, Nick Stabile
screenplay by Don Mancini
directed by Ronny Yu

SEED OF CHUCKY (2004)
*/**** Image A- Sound B Extras C-
starring Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Billy Boyd, Redman
written and directed by Don Mancini

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Twenty years and four sequels later, it's obviously pointless to try to conceal that Child's Play is about a serial killer (Brad Dourif) who transfers his soul into an innocuous doll, but watching it today--more than a decade after it thoroughly traumatized me as an impressionable preteen--I was surprised to learn that the film itself didn't do much to hide that fact from the start. Oh, sure, when you first approach Child's Play, you're ostensibly supposed to wonder whether little Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) is responsible for the murders peppered throughout, despite his loud protestations that Chucky did it. But no, it never really tries to pretend that these horrible acts are being committed by anyone other than that godawful doll. In taking that perspective, Child's Play preys upon the irrational fears we all harbour--that sting of dread we get at the sight of an unintentionally unsettling toy, immediately wished away by safe, immutable reason: that's impossible--a doll can't hurt you.

The Future is Now: FFC Interviews Miranda July|The Future (2011)

Miranda July reflects on The Future

THE FUTURE ***/****

starring Hamish Linklater, Miranda July, David Warshofsky, Isabella Acres written and directed by Miranda July

In The Future, writer/director/star Miranda July indulges in the same wayward malaise of her previous film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, but, somewhat ironically, the focus on the uncertainty of "what comes next" makes this one seem a lot less scattershot. Dance teacher Sophie (July) and tech-support guy Jason (Hamish Linklater) have rescued a sickly cat from the wild and sent him to an animal shelter, and they've got a month until they can reclaim him. However, the cat will require 'round-the-clock care from them to stay alive, so they conclude that this is their last "free" month before years-long responsibilities squander their potential, and they quit their jobs in a bid to become more "spontaneous." Jason goes door-to-door selling trees for an environmental program and Sophie decides to film "thirty dances over thirty days" for a short-track to YouTube stardom. But neither one is prepared for the apathy and self-loathing that greets their cutesy little endeavours, and as they spin their wheels, they gravitate towards people who appear to "really have their shit together": Sophie becomes attracted to a single father with a small business (David Warshofsky), while Jason regularly visits an old man (Joe Putterlik) who once sold him a used hairdryer. What's important is that July quickly establishes that these behaviours are not a matter of self-improvement or jealousy--it's just a hell of a lot easier to stare at the lives of others and marvel at how organized they look from the outside. In other words, Sophie and Jason take no real "action" of their own accord; everything they do is just another bit of slacktivism to avoid the responsibilities for which they're supposedly preparing. Her self-esteem takes a hit as she views other women's "dancing" videos, so she cancels her Internet and calls it a great opportunity to focus. July makes this sheltered worldview all the more fascinating by introducing an element of surrealism--soon, her characters' paradoxical desires to move forward and stand still give them to power to bend the universe to their will, as an imminent break-up is stalled by the literal stoppage of time. (And yet, time still manages to march on.) The self-conscious obviousness of its metaphors give The Future a strong grounding in reality, rendering even July's silliest notions--such as a series of helium-inflected monologues from the cat himself (the only neglected "victim" in this scenario), waiting for his loving masters to return--deeply affecting.-IP

August 7, 2011|Miranda July is very much like the characters she plays, and they are very much like her: she stares at you with wide, intense eyes, and her responses trail off once she realizes that she's revealed all she wants to about a given subject. She's in town to promote her second feature film, The Future, for the Boston Independent Film Festival, and we both seem a little eager to discover if indeed this sophomore effort can be discussed at length. Over the course of our conversation, we shared a couple of awkward laughs--in mutual recognition, I think, of the inherent absurdity of this meeting; we had been tasked to interpret and explain an intentionally abstract piece dealing with moving on and growing older, about which the creator must refuse a "full" explanation. Still, though July insists on keeping some things secret, she comes across as utterly sincere--so much so that I felt a pang of remorse when I realized that I had unintentionally lied to her by not attending the festival's screening of The Future like I said I would. Several days later, given another interview opportunity for a different film, I made it a point to ask her husband Mike Mills to apologize on my behalf.

Bellflower (2011) + The Change-Up (2011)|Bellflower - Blu-ray Disc + DVD

BELLFLOWER
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Evan Glodell, Jessie Wiseman, Taylor Dawson, Rebekah Brandes
written and directed by Evan Glodell

THE CHANGE-UP
½*/****
starring Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds, Leslie Mann, Olivia Wilde
screenplay by Jon Lucas & Scott Moore
directed by David Dobkin

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Bellflower earns the right to its melodrama by asking what you have to live for and, more importantly, what you're willing to do to keep your life uncomplicated. Woodrow (writer-director Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Taylor Dawson) don't seem to have much of a life beyond hanging out with their friends and drinking too much--but their minds were suitably "warped" by a second-generation VHS tape of Mad Max. Now they spend their days constructing flamethrowers and muscle cars destined to fit right in with that film's end-of-the-world milieu. Woodrow hooks up with a young woman named Milly (Jessie Wiseman), and as the relationship blossoms (and breaks down), Glodell takes the opportunity to explore the unfathomable guilt and anger that drove George Miller's original road warrior--as well as what Glodell's own heroes have failed to understand about his journey. When we first meet him, Woodrow doesn't know too much about guilt or anger, so his coping mechanisms are extremely fractured. Confrontations with others are typically brief, sometimes without logical end, and the director intentionally tones down most of the violence so that his characters can wallow in passive-aggressive detachment. Sometimes the violent images are chopped out entirely, only to be saved for later in the movie, where they may or may not have been mentally re-edited by Woodrow to conform to a more favorable outcome. That's the thing about the apocalypse: it never goes quite the way you want.

Arthur (2011) - Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

*½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C-
starring Russell Brand, Helen Mirren, Greta Gerwig, Jennifer Garner
screenplay by Peter Baynham, based on the film Arthur written and directed by Steve Gordon
directed by Jason Winer

by Ian Pugh Boy, that Russell Brand sure does talk a lot, doesn't he? Jason Winer's modernization of Steve Gordon's 1981 comedy Arthur serves as your latest reminder that Brand is turning his long-winded rambling into a full-blown comic empire--and it's a good thing it makes that point perfectly clear, because otherwise I can't think of any reason why this remake exists. Brand's slurring motormouth is on full display here, and he's such a suffocating presence that Arthur Bach's now-famous inebriety hardly plays a role. Who needs booze when you've got an immature dude who just won't shut up? Of course, the character is still nominally an alcoholic--and the film attempts to "fix" that problem in precisely the wrong way. Fearing it will be seen as an implicit endorsement of excessive drinking, Arthur launches into an overwritten screed about the attendant dangers of same, somehow assuming that Gordon's original didn't comprehend the seriousness of its own premise. Between that mistaken belief and its broad, bland humour, the picture might be more accurately considered a remake of the notorious Arthur 2: On the Rocks.

The Boss of It All: FFC Interviews Seth Gordon

Seth Gordon's playing with a lot more than quarters these days

July 10, 2011|I was grateful for the opportunity to moderate a Q&A with director Seth Gordon at a Boston-area screening of his latest film, Horrible Bosses, which has proven to be something of an oasis in an otherwise lousy summer for movies. Gordon's eclectic career made him a fascinating character to research: after studying architecture at Yale, he found himself at a teaching job in Kenya that ignited an interest in filmmaking. Our Q&A was a fairly animated twenty minutes; asked to lob trivia questions at the audience for a poster giveaway, his first was, "What was the name of Michael Knight's car?" In our one-on-one discussion at the Ritz-Carlton the following morning, he dialled it down a little, exuding an "aw shucks" modesty that seemed to reveal a greater desire to listen than to talk. He tells me outright that he owes the relatively smooth production of Horrible Bosses to the success of The Hangover (another Warner Bros. release), though as our discussion took a thematic turn, I sensed some reluctance to commiserate with my assertions about how his latest trumps the "other comedies" of its ilk.

Horrible Bosses (2011)

***½/****
starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Jamie Foxx
screenplay by Michael Markowitz and John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein
directed by Seth Gordon

by Ian Pugh A straight-white-male fantasy of the most ridiculous order, Horrible Bosses begins with a trio of working shmoes who are, ironically, comfortable enough to go drinking every night and bemoan how their bosses are making their lives a living hell. Office jockey Nick (Jason Bateman, in his best performance in ages) has been passed up for a promotion by the sadistic Harken (Kevin Spacey); dental assistant Dale (Charlie Day) works under constant sexual harassment from Julia Harris, DDS (Jennifer Aniston, hilarious for a change); and chemical-plant employee Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) is suddenly thrust into the dominion of middle-aged frat boy Bobby Pellit (Colin Farrell, perfection). They can't just quit their jobs because the economy's in the toilet, so the only sane solution is for them to band together and kill their employers. The joke that propels the film is that their poorly-conceived plans amount to little more than one of those online "kill your boss" simulators, and Horrible Bosses occasionally seems to acknowledge its plot as a grossly oversimplified game. A recon mission yields no intel that would be useful to these would-be hitmen, while Kurt puts Pellit's toothbrush up his ass and Dale plays "Angry Birds" on his iPhone to work off an accidental coke binge.

Unknown (2011) - Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

***/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras D
starring Liam Neeson, Diane Kruger, January Jones, Frank Langella
screenplay by Oliver Butcher & Stephen Cornwell, based on the novel Out of My Head by Didier van Cauwelaert
directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

by Ian Pugh Knight and Day, Salt, and The Tourist failed as '60s spy throwbacks because they constantly reassured you that everything would be all right; if there was something about their various intrigues we didn't quite understand (or weren't supposed to know before some big third-act twist), we could rest assured that someone was pulling the strings to keep the world from falling apart. Unknown finally removes that safety net, and from there it approaches the fear and uncertainty that so fascinated Alfred Hitchcock and Terence Young about the Cold War--this sinking feeling that whatever conspiracies may be driving the plot, there will never be a way to extricate yourself from their tangled webs. True, Unknown's primary attraction is the dissection of identity, and it's simply incapable of stunning you in the same way that the Bourne trilogy stunned you with its own methodical examinations of the self. (If the picture feels derivative of that series, that's because it is.) But at the end, you're left feeling uncomfortable, because you just know you haven't uncovered all its secrets yet.

Cars 2 (2011)

*½/****
screenplay by Ben Queen
directed by John Lasseter

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Trading the '50s Americana of the original for '60s British adventure, Cars 2 seems, for a moment there, like it might actually work. The inhumanity that Walter Chaw correctly attributed to Cars scores a few subversive points in this sequel, filled as it is with complicated stunts that are, amusingly, impossible for automobiles to perform. (Even sillier: all of the anthropomorphic spy cars are retrofitted with Gatling guns and assault rifles.) But all is lost as tow-truck hick Mater (voice of Larry the Cable Guy) takes centre-stage in a convoluted espionage scheme, meaning that Cars 2 stoops to the same mistaken-identity spy parody that children's movies have beaten into the ground since 1966's The Man Called Flintstone. The subversion runs completely dry after the pre-title sequence, as our resident Connery (?) Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) jumps and shoots his way across oil derricks, only to hand over the reins to the blander heroes of the previous film. So the same old car jokes prevail as Pixar keeps shovelling coal onto a dead fire. Find one more extraneous character in Finn's liaison Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer), whose primary function is to prove that Bondian double-entendres don't have much impact when everyone's name is a double-entendre.

Hall Pass (2011) [Enlarged Edition] - Blu-ray Disc

***/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras C-
starring Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis, Jenna Fischer, Christina Applegate
screenplay by Pete Jones & Peter Farrelly and Kevin Barnett & Bobby Farrelly
directed by Peter Farrelly & Bobby Farrelly

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Rick Mills (Owen Wilson) is in real estate and Fred Searing (Jason Sudeikis) sells life insurance--and yet these guys treat their own marriages, indeed their own lives, as an epic burden, so where do they get off trying to sell us peace-of-mind? Their leering obsession with sex has become all-consuming of late, prompting their wives (Maggie (Jenna Fischer) and Grace (Christina Applegate)) to grant them a hall pass: a "week off from marriage" in which they have the freedom to do whatever they want with the opposite sex without fear of recrimination. The Farrelly Brothers' Hall Pass tells a fairly conventional story about men and women who very slowly come to recognize just how much they love their significant others. But one thing it doesn't fully reconcile is this impulse that finds the movie's middle-aged male characters blinking madly at attractive women, taking "mental photographs for [their] spank bank"--because even once they've learned their lessons and shouted them from the rooftops, they're still taking those mental photographs. Beneath a thin veneer of sex jokes, the movie is about the denial and suppression of regret that occurs in the quest for long-term happiness.

Subjectivity: FFC Interviews Mike Mills

Starting fresh with the director of BEGINNERS

June 19, 2011|All of Mike Mills's films--narratives, documentaries, and music videos alike--share a common theme of perspective: how the individual views others, how others view the individual, and the projections that exist on both sides. Although I was somewhat skeptical of its indie quirk, Mills's Beginners left me thinking about the people in my life, past and present; I was genuinely affected by its interpersonal dynamics. As it happens, a major fulcrum of Mills's work is that he creates a dialogue not only between the artist and the masses--he also strives to forge a bond with the individual. After several days of combing through his filmography in preparation for the interview below, I finally discovered that Mills had been keeping a video diary on the official website for Beginners chronicling the sights he's seen and the people he's met on the movie's press tour. It hardly came as a surprise.

Midnight in Paris (2011)

****/****
starring Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Carla Bruni, Marion Cotillard
written and directed by Woody Allen

by Ian Pugh Midnight in Paris begins with a Manhattan-esque montage of the titular city, and after so many consecutive duds, Woody Allen has finally rediscovered (and relocated) the vital essence that traces back to his very best films. Don't mistake his latest for a nostalgic throwback, though--in fact, it's something of an essay on the dangerous intoxication of nostalgic throwbacks. Take it, too, as fair indication that Allen has shared our frustrations with his recent output and knew that the only way to get out of his rut was to confront the spectre of his earlier work. While he probably hates himself for it, it was bound to happen sooner or later: The pull of the past is simply too great to resist. Here, Manhattan becomes Paris, Paris becomes Manhattan, and we're left to wonder what, exactly, that's supposed to mean in the long run. Allen projects himself onto a younger avatar, who in turn projects himself onto the artists who came before him, who in turn have their own projections to deal with. As usual, Allen stops the action cold to explain his theses in a brief monologue, but for the first time in a long time, it feels necessary. It feels like legitimate self-criticism.

Hesher (2011) + Everything Must Go (2011)

HESHER
***½/****
starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Devin Brochu, Rainn Wilson, Natalie Portman
screenplay by Spencer Susser & David Michôd
directed by Spencer Susser

EVERYTHING MUST GO
*½/****
starring Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, Michael Peña, Laura Dern
screenplay by Dan Rush, based on the story "Why Don't You Dance?" by Raymond Carver
directed by Dan Rush

by Ian Pugh You could say that Spencer Susser's Hesher is about the desperate search for philosophical guidance during times of grief and how it can come from the unlikeliest of places...but that's the easy-to-digest version. The eponymous longhaired, frequently-shirtless metalhead makes for an intentionally obvious allegory; less obvious is Hesher's message that Christ was probably nothing like the Fonz. Troubled young lad T.J. (Devin Brochu) is still reeling from his mother's death, and during one of his frequent temper tantrums, he runs afoul of Hesher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who responds by moving into T.J.'s house uninvited. Hesher's a profane slob prone to bouts of unprovoked violence, but Dad (Rainn Wilson) is too depressed to care and wacky old Grandma (Piper Laurie) takes Hesher in senile stride. So, T.J. is forced to live with this new houseguest under threat of a "skullfucking." Admittedly, the picture boils down to a series of wacky vignettes (in which Hesher hounds T.J. and fucks up his life accordingly), though anyone looking for a genuine moral centre is bound to be disappointed. While Hesher inevitably teaches the characters about the virtues of moving on, the very fact of Hesher himself throws doubt on the intentionality of his lessons. Offering advice in the form of vulgar, half-assed metaphors, he is perhaps best described as an out-of-control golem conjured by an adolescent's directionless rage.

A Very Civil Dialogue: FFC Interviews Tom Shadyac

May 1, 2011|"Ian, my brother." A casual greeting turned into an awkward embrace, and I realized then that all the time I had spent researching director Tom Shadyac's career wasn't going to play much of a role in the ensuing conversation. Shadyac was in town to discuss I Am, his self-conscious, documentary break from light family fare--which, he hopes, will change a few minds about the essential nature of humanity. (If he doesn't consider the days of Ace Ventura, The Nutty Professor, and Bruce Almighty to be behind him, this was not, I correctly surmised, the publicity tour on which to discuss it.) When we sat down to talk, I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about I Am. The director sensed my skepticism from the very beginning, and he didn't try to convert me in any traditional sense of the word. He just wanted to hash out our respective feelings on the film and have a decent conversation about them. I sort of wish that his vibrant personality shone through in I Am as well as it did in person; his statements here were delivered like an interesting university lecture, whereas the movie feels a bit more hectoring in its approach. And, yes, he followed through with a second hug at the end of the interview.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011) + I Am (2011)

CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS
****/****
directed by Werner Herzog

I AM
**/****
directed by Tom Shadyac

by Ian Pugh The introduction to Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams is unforgettably right. Ever the inquisitive narrator, Herzog tells us that, upon its rediscovery in the mid-'90s, France's Chauvet Cave did not appear to be of unique significance, "other than being particularly beautiful." But, say they hadn't found the prehistoric cave paintings within (the oldest on record, with some dating back 32,000 years)--would that 'particular beauty' have been enough to inspire Herzog? What is it about this specific cave that made it, and makes it, such a hotbed for creativity? So begins anew our search for mankind's place in the universe and, moreover, a human imprint on nature, even where one isn't readily apparent. The skeletons contained in the cave (all animal bones, none human) beg further questions to that end. Was this an altar, perhaps? A refuge for ritual sacrifices?

Water for Elephants (2011)

*½/****
starring Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson, Christoph Waltz, Hal Holbrook
screenplay by Richard LaGravenese, based on the book by Sara Gruen
directed by Francis Lawrence

by Ian Pugh Genre hack Francis Lawrence moves into Twilight territory with the trashy forbidden-romance flick Water for Elephants, in which the opposing forces contriving to keep our lovers apart prove to be minor obstacles at best. Despite its circus setting, this is a thoroughly familiar and perfunctorily-told tale. Feel free to blame Lawrence's typically meat-and-potatoes direction. Go ahead and blame screenwriter Richard LaGravenese for an adaptation that, on the surface, leaves no room for complexity or ambiguity. And, sure, blame Robert Pattinson for his infallibly bland delivery. Maybe hold off on blaming Witherspoon, whose charms seem diluted by the woodenness of onscreen beau Pattinson. Just, whatever you do, don't blame poor Christoph Waltz, who brings his "A" game to this sorry affair and is rewarded with one of the most patently ridiculous send-offs ever bestowed upon a character actor. You thought Inglourious Basterds was brutal? Man, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Real Questions: FFC Interviews James Gunn

April 3, 2011|James Gunn has spent most of his career rewriting icons of decades past (Tromeo and Juliet, Dawn of the Dead, the big-screen Scooby-Doo pictures), and while I share many of my editor's misgivings about Gunn's latest post-modern exercise, Super, I was looking forward to interviewing him when his PA tour came around to Boston. Gunn had fifteen years on me, but it seemed apparent that our genre obsessions had sprung from similar sources. (Fresh out of college, I relished in the insanity of Gunn's then-recent Slither.) Still, despite our common lexicon, it took us a few minutes to get a bead on each other. "Just don't be like that last guy," Gunn told me with a laugh as I turned on my tape recorder. "He had two recording devices. He turned off the first one, and then I said some stuff that I shouldn't have said, and the thing was still recording. And I'm like, 'oh, fuck'--'cause he got me to say exactly what he was trying to get me to say."

Limitless (2011)

**½/****
starring Bradley Cooper, Abbie Cornish, Andrew Howard, Robert De Niro
screenplay by Leslie Dixon, based on the novel The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn
directed by Neil Burger

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Its plot follows a drably straight line and its Joe Gillis narration is tiresome; the most original idea that Limitless has is that, hey, maybe drug abuse isn't such a bad thing after all. That snarky notion extends past the actual narrative into the presentation itself. Whether that's enough to sustain your interest is, ultimately, up to you. Eddie (Bradley Cooper) is a down-and-out novelist when his ex-brother-in-law Vernon (Johnny Whitworth) introduces him to NZT, a miracle pill that increases his creative and intellectual prowess to the nth degree. With a wealth of suppressed knowledge suddenly at his disposal, Eddie is overcome with, yes, limitless ambition: he completes his long-stalled novel in four days and goes on to learn new skills, talents, and languages in the blink of an eye. As the drug's power only increases with time and dosage and won't let him stand still, he applies his newfound intelligence to the stock market (leading to an encounter with a corporate big shot (one of Robert De Niro's trademark extended cameos)) and plans to further increase his wealth with money borrowed from the mob (leading to an encounter with a lowlife thug (Andrew Howard)). Then come the unexpected side effects--such as the random murders and hired goons who seem to follow him everywhere. If Limitless isn't about the horrors of drug addiction, then what is it about? How the attempt to "enhance" one's own identity removes that identity completely, perhaps? Maybe the overconfidence that attends brilliance? No on both counts, but it's a wild ride while it lasts. And that, in itself, is sort of the point.

Hereafter (2010) - Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
starring Matt Damon, Cécile De France, Jay Mohr, Bryce Dallas Howard
screenplay by Peter Morgan
directed by Clint Eastwood

by Ian Pugh It's an age-old problem: how do you make a movie (or write a book, or stage a play) about the broad and ultimately philosophical subject of death? Not like this, that's for sure. Looking and feeling like it was shot from inside an aquarium, Clint Eastwood's Hereafter is a failure of staggering proportions. Three stories intertwine to form a bland whole: George (Matt Damon) is an honest-to-gosh psychic who's trying and failing to stay out of the racket; Marie (Cécile De France) is a French TV presenter who recalls visions of the afterlife after being caught in the Indian Ocean tsunami; and Marcus (Frankie McLaren) is a young lad who seeks answers when his twin brother dies in a traffic accident. Rest assured their paths will cross in profoundly obvious ways as they wrap their heads around the very concept of death and what comes next. I'm certainly not the first person to compare Hereafter to Babel, but Eastwood offers little alternative. Hereafter approaches the various perceptions of death in the same way that Alejandro González Iñárritu approached "life," and the end result is equally bloated and condescending.

Battle: Los Angeles (2011)

½*/****
starring Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Ramon Rodriguez, Michael Peña
screenplay by Christopher Bertolini
directed by Jonathan Liebesman

by Ian Pugh The action sequences in Battle: Los Angeles operate on a clockwork schedule. A group of Marines traverses the title city in search of civilians and/or shelter. Suddenly, aliens! The camera shakes for five minutes. The Marines find a safehouse and plan their next move. Suddenly, aliens! Lather, rinse, repeat. But, you will ask, what happened while the camera was shaking? How did they escape? And, as one character inevitably puts it, "What is that thing?" Fair questions, all. I'm pretty sure I caught a glimpse of a rocket launcher built like that BigDog robot, though I can't be 100% certain. There's actually a specific moment where you give up trying to distinguish one thing from another. At the beginning of this adventure, we're told that the Marines have a mere three hours to recover their civilians before the military blows up Santa Monica. Time finally runs out with some folks holed up in a random liquor store, and your first impulse is to question why the movie would leave its final countdown to an analog clock on the wall--but then you realize that you have no idea who these people are, how they got there, who died in the interim, or whether this is a liquor store at all. (Maybe it's somebody's wine cellar? I think I saw wine bottles.) It's not an interpretation of wartime chaos, it's just plain incomprehensible.

Passing Through: FFC Interviews the Farrelly Brothers

February 27, 2011|Having conducted my usual round of research (re-watching the movies, poring over the DVD commentaries and other making-of material), the Farrelly brothers were pretty much how I expected them to be when I interviewed them at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston: older brother Peter is very talkative and up for an impromptu debate, while Bobby is content to hang back and drop the occasional pearl of wisdom into the conversation. Of course, research only prepares you for so much. Their career-defining gross-out sight gags have never been my cup of tea, but just about every one of their films (including their latest, Hall Pass) is driven by an unmistakable--perhaps surprising--humanity. Still, it wasn't until our discussion heated up that I truly began to appreciate the source of that humanity. The Farrellys seemed a little surprised that anyone would bring it up, but their innate kindness shined through as we talked about their approach to making movies. (I feel somewhat privileged, actually, to have witnessed it firsthand.) It's obvious that they've spent their joint career striving to promote an egalitarianism in Hollywood--not just with their all-inclusive casting decisions, but also with their embrace of the test-screening process as a barometer of artistic success.

Due Date (2010) + Megamind (2010)|Due Date - Blu-ray Disc

DUE DATE
***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras C-
starring Robert Downey Jr., Zach Galifianakis, Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan
screenplay by Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland and Adam Sztykiel & Todd Phillips
directed by Todd Phillips

MEGAMIND
**/****
screenplay by Alan J. Schoolcraft & Brent Simons
directed by Tom McGrath

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr.) is eager to fly out of Atlanta back to Los Angeles to witness the birth of his child, but a chance encounter with wannabe actor/lone weirdo Ethan Tremblay (Zach Galifianakis) lands the pair on a no-fly list and leaves Peter without his luggage or his wallet. With no alternatives, Peter becomes Ethan's unwilling passenger--taking a seat alongside a small dog and the ashes of Ethan's late father--on a road trip west. There appears to be a general consensus that the premise of Todd Phillips's Due Date too closely resembles that of John Hughes's Planes, Trains & Automobiles, but there's a vital difference in that Due Date's lead characters are legitimately crazy. The exasperated straight man is re-imagined as a sneering jerk full of jealousy and rage (Downey Jr. maintains a cold, sweaty stare throughout), while the lovable klutz is a dangerously irresponsible lout. Roger Ebert once wrote that the Hughes film was about "empathy [and] knowing what the other guy feels." So it is; by virtue of its characters, Due Date bypasses empathy altogether, yet it still talks about treating other people with a modicum of compassion. Phillips has finally made a naughty comedy that contemplates the consequences of its actions. Here's a movie in which a father-to-be grows so frustrated with an annoying boy that he socks him in the stomach, then unknowingly mocks a disabled veteran (Danny McBride) and gets his ass kicked for it.

Gnomeo & Juliet (2011) + Cedar Rapids (2011)

GNOMEO & JULIET
**/****
screenplay by Kelly Asbury & Mark Burton & Kevin Cecil & Emily Cook & Kathy Greenberg & Andy Riley & Steve Hamilton Shaw, based on an original screenplay by John R. Smith & Rob Sprackling
directed by Kelly Asbury

CEDAR RAPIDS
**½/****
starring Ed Helms, John C. Reilly, Anne Heche, Sigourney Weaver
screenplay by Phil Johnston
directed by Miguel Arteta

by Ian Pugh Gnomeo & Juliet is pretty much exactly the movie you'd expect from one of the directors of Shrek 2. On the bright side, it's also a little bit more. In this latest iteration of Shakespeare's timeless classic, Montague and Capulet are a couple of pensioners living on Verona Drive whose lawn gnomes spring to life every now and then to wage war on each other. The lad and lass of the title (voiced by James McAvoy and Emily Blunt) meet from opposite sides and fall in love, and so on and so forth. As you may have already guessed, Gnomeo & Juliet makes room for its cutesy puns and pop-culture references by robbing "Romeo & Juliet"'s premise of all emotional heft: the warring tribes have no sense of familial bond, which renders the central romance completely weightless; and it's all performed with an absolute minimum amount of bloodshed, culminating in, yes, a happy ending. It's tempting to cry anti-intellectualism until one considers the film's predominantly British cast--after all, hasn't British culture earned the right to make self-deprecating jokes about Shakespeare's influence? (It just feels right knowing that Michael Caine and Maggie Smith are leading the charge in this gnome war--though Jason Statham voicing an angry, Napoleonic Tybalt sounds more subversive than it actually plays.) In fact, the film's generally cavalier attitude towards "unassailable" literature gives the impression that it was trying to piss someone off, what with most of the loathing and introspection replaced by the requisite noisy action sequences.

The Mechanic (2011)

**½/****
starring Jason Statham, Ben Foster, Tony Goldwyn, Donald Sutherland
screenplay by Richard Wenk and Lewis John Carlino
directed by Simon West

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT FOR BOTH THIS FILM AND THE ORIGINAL THE MECHANIC. Michael Winner's The Mechanic (1972) is nominally an action film, but it gets its point across with moments of extraordinary discomfort. As its primary attraction, it features Charles Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent as contract killers with literally nothing to do, bored to tears as they stand around waiting for people to die. It's a weird and disturbing scenario, but with modern box-office expectations being what they are, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that it's been effortlessly transformed into an average Jason Statham vehicle. The particulars remain the same: Hitman Arthur Bishop (Statham) is forced to kill his mentor, Harry (Donald Sutherland), under a contract from his employer (Tony Goldwyn); perhaps feeling a pang of guilt, he takes Harry's wayward son Steve (Ben Foster) under his wing to teach him about the rules and tools of his trade. But it's all presented in a much sillier light. There's no other way to put it. When one of our assassins is instructed to poison his quarry, the characters (and the movie) deem this plan much too boring, and the whole ordeal ends in a gory brawl in which both parties stab each other with whatever they can get their hands on. It's ridiculously over-the-top, sure, and although that's to its credit, there are still too many moments where the viewer is left wanting something more substantial.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) + Secretariat (2010) - Blu-ray Discs + Conviction (2010)

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER
**/**** Image A Sound B
starring Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Gemma Jones
written and directed by Woody Allen

SECRETARIAT
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Diane Lane, John Malkovich, Dylan Walsh, Scott Glenn
screenplay by Mike Rich, suggested by the book Secretariat: The Making of a Champion by William Nack
directed by Randall Wallace

CONVICTION
**/****
starring Hilary Swank, Sam Rockwell, Minnie Driver, Juliette Lewis
screenplay by Pamela Gray
directed by Tony Goldwyn

by Ian Pugh You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger represents the apotheosis of what shall now be called the New Woody Allen Average--those perfectly competent nothing movies that never rate more than two, two-and-a-half stars. I say that without a hint of sarcasm, and I say that as someone who considers Allen's work a primary influence--and as the guy who regularly defends Scoop. But I have to be honest: the New Woody Allen Average has become so predictably mediocre that I just can't take it anymore. The director's latest surrogate is another novelist, Roy (Josh Brolin), who's struggling to complete his latest book. It's putting a strain on his marriage to Sally (Naomi Watts), so he looks into the window of his pretty next-door neighbour (Freida Pinto) for romantic respite. Sally, an art curator, feels the same pressure, and casually drifts closer to her boss, Greg (Antonio Banderas). Sally's father Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) has left his wife for a prostitute (Lucy Punch), while his ex, Helena (Gemma Jones), retreats to spirituality, consulting a medium to find out where she stands in the great cosmic plan. It's a matter of "what you want" versus "what you take" in a race to see which floundering/philandering idiot can make the most tragic mistakes in the span of 90 minutes. Is it any different from Vicky Cristina Barcelona? When you break it down to its most basic components...no, not really.

Barney's Version (2010) + No Strings Attached (2011)

BARNEY'S VERSION
***/****
starring Paul Giamatti, Rosamund Pike, Minnie Driver, Dustin Hoffman
screenplay by Michael Konyves, based on the novel by Mordecai Richler
directed by Richard J. Lewis

NO STRINGS ATTACHED
**/****
starring Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Cary Elwes, Kevin Kline
screenplay by Elizabeth Meriwether
directed by Ivan Reitman

by Ian Pugh It's easier to accept Barney's Version once you realize it doesn't have much to say. Little more than a series of vignettes, the film surveys in piecemeal fashion the life of one Barney Panofsky (Paul Giamatti), a Jewish artist who endured three tumultuous marriages (the wives are played by Rachel Lefevre, Minnie Driver, and Rosamund Pike) and the mysterious death of best friend Boogie (Scott Speedman, whom I initially mistook for Hugh Jackman) along the way to producing a popular soap opera. Giamatti doesn't do outstanding work here, but he's reliable in that familiar Giamatti way: perpetually locked in a state of concentration, trying to understand the subtext of whatever fortunes or misfortunes befall him. Seems like we're all trying to figure things out, doesn't it? The film doesn't know whether to focus on life as a comedy or as a drama, and for that reason alone, it feels incredibly disjointed. It should be. It's supposed to be.

Film Freak Central's Top 10 of 2010

The last year of the first ten or the first year of the next ten, 2010 finds the state of our motion pictures as an awkward, yearling thing, finding purchase in the aftermath of the fear and nihilism of the post-9/11 state in something as dark but perhaps now more purposeful than despairing. If the best films of the immediately-after are represented by stuff like No Country for Old Men and Synecdoche, NY, the best films of this liminal year are pilgrims in search of a (doomed) idea of perfection and the dreadful cost of its pursuit. Is that explanation in part for the rise of geek culture (The Social Network, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, It's Kind of a Funny Story, Kick-Ass), this gradual empowerment of the weaker position? While examinations of vengeance and solipsism continue to be tough themes to shake, they've begun taking the form of marginal uplift as opposed to mostly-undiluted nihilism.

The Other Guys (2010) [The Unrated Other Edition] - Blu-ray Disc

****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Dwayne Johnson
screenplay by Adam McKay & Chris Henchy
directed by Adam McKay

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Think about what sort of film would place Will Ferrell's schlubby physique and vacant grin against Mark Wahlberg's sharp, furrowed brow. More than just comically mismatched, these two actors belong in different movies, different genres...on different planets, even. They share something resembling a love-hate "chemistry," but from the get-go the pairing feels off--different. Eventually you figure out that The Other Guys is the kind of movie that thrives on bizarre contradictions--the kind of movie where gun-toting heroes are sent to end corporate malfeasance, where their vehicles of choice are a Prius and a Gran Torino that runs on "100% vegetable oil," where they loudly defend not the awesomeness of Star Wars but its scientific accuracy.¹ A quintessentially American response to the quintessentially British Hot Fuzz, Adam McKay's The Other Guys is the funniest, most delirious comedy I've seen in a long while, and it matches and exceeds the sharp cultural satire of McKay's Talladega Nights in tackling not so much the conventions of the buddy-cop genre as the childish drama that attends them.

The Tourist (2010)

**/****
starring Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Paul Bettany, Timothy Dalton
screenplay by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck and Christopher McQuarrie and Julian Fellowes
directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

by Ian Pugh The loss of Bond 23 to MGM's umpteenth bankruptcy drama was just one of the many disappointments in the cinematic year that was--but an even bitterer pill arrived in the films that took 007's place. With neither Daniel Craig nor Matt Damon to keep a perpetually-ailing genre on its feet, 2010's triumvirate of identical spy thrillers (Knight and Day, Salt, now The Tourist) represents a return to the cozy arms of irrelevance. Sexpot secret agent Elise Ward ("Salt" herself, Angelina Jolie) leads her superiors on a wild goose chase through Venice in search of American math teacher Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp), whom they believe to be her mysterious fugitive beau, Alexander Pearce. Unfortunately, this little game also garners the attention of a gangster (Steven Berkoff) to whom Pearce is rather severely indebted. The Tourist is not a daring picture by any means. The most unconventional thing about it, other than the casting of Depp, is the oddity of hiring Timothy Dalton to play a version of "M" when this is so clearly a Roger Moore movie: a romantic trip across Italy in a white tuxedo, peppered with stunts that border on slapstick.

Disney's A Christmas Carol (2009) [Blu-ray + DVD] + The Fourth Kind (2009)

DISNEY'S A CHRISTMAS CAROL
**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Robert Zemeckis, based on the novel by Charles Dickens
directed by Robert Zemeckis

THE FOURTH KIND
ZERO STARS/****
starring Milla Jovovich, Will Patton, Corey Johnson, Elias Koteas
written and directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi

by Ian Pugh If Robert Zemeckis hasn't quite left the Uncanny Valley behind, at the very least, the heart missing from his latest effort--what seems like the trillionth retelling of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, and the billionth animated one--correlates directly to its absence of personality, rather than to an absence of humanity. A backhanded compliment, to be sure, but the character designs finally resemble something closer to artistic interpretation than to a failed attempt at replicating human beings exactly as they are, with Marley (Gary Oldman) and Scrooge (Jim Carrey), for example, rendered almost expressionistically to evoke rotten apples and hunched skeletons. From that standpoint, the actors' sudden bursts of acrobatic grace, no longer so incongruous, capture some of computer-animated cinema's wonder, the kind at which Zemeckis has grasped since The Polar Express--a true example of bringing the impossible to life. The only problem is that Zemeckis's own script isn't worth more than a shrug, and the film relies too much on its visuals to carry the extra weight.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) + Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2009)

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS
**/****
starring Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf, Josh Brolin, Frank Langella
screenplay by Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff
directed by Oliver Stone

LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE
*½/****
screenplay by John Orloff and Emil Stern, based on the novel Guardians of Ga'Hoole by Kathryn Lasky
directed by Zack Snyder

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Oliver Stone has a penchant for writing himself into living history, and normally, it's quite fascinating. By making movies about historical events whose ramifications have not yet fully materialized, he engages in a battle of wits with the unfamiliar. He tries to understand what's unfolding at this very moment, constantly on the lookout for something resembling closure. From that perspective, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (hereafter Wall Street 2) suffers from Stone's familiarity with the subject. Having already made a movie about the chaos of the free market, he knows exactly what he wants to say from the outset. Our boy Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) spent the Clinton years behind bars, leaving his personal life in shambles. Beloved son Rudy has died of a drug overdose, and hitherto-unmentioned daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan) is--irony of ironies!--a lefty blogger who won't have anything to do with him. Enter her fiancé, Jake Moore (professional protégé Shia LaBeouf, who's convincing enough; and the character's name is More, get it?), an ambitious green-energy investor who wants to learn a few moves from a living legend. As fate would have it, the two men share a mutual enemy in Bretton James (Josh Brolin), the slimy businessman who sent Gekko to the slammer and spread a few market rumours that prompted Jake's mentor/father figure (Frank Langella) to commit suicide. Gekko sees the chance to rekindle his relationship with Winnie, while Jake wants to make a mint founded on revenge. Alliances are forged, tricks are played, trust is abused, and, above all, greed continues to rule the day. When the bottom falls out, you'd best be prepared for a lot of hand-wringing in the executive boardroom--but hell, you know there are more important things floating around here, right? Winnie announces her pregnancy on the very same day that the 2008 economy does its final nosedive. Where do you think Wall Street 2 is going to end up?

I'm Still Here (2010)

****/****
starring Joaquin Phoenix, Antony Langdon, Casey Affleck, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs
screenplay by Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix
directed by Casey Affleck 

by Ian Pugh It's far too easy to believe that Casey Affleck's I'm Still Here hinges on whether or not its subject has perpetrated a hoax. Joaquin Phoenix grows a lunatic's beard, declares he's quitting acting, and starts planning a hip-hop career? Surely, he can't be serious. But here's how it ends, kids: yes, I guess you could call it a "put-on" in the strictest sense of the word--yet at the same time, he is deadly serious. What needs to be understood about Phoenix, and this film, is that there was a kernel of truth to everything the man mumbled through that maniacal persona. I do believe that Phoenix is tired of acting (or, at least, tired of stardom), and, for his farewell performance, he's blurred the line between actor and role so completely as to obliterate all our preconceived notions of who he is and what he is supposed to represent. The false Phoenix--the bedraggled, abusive prophet spouting non sequiturs--is, for all intents and purposes, the "real" Phoenix, the iconic artist who pulls a disappearing act by forcing the art and the iconography to consume his entire being. You can't call I'm Still Here a mockumentary, exactly, because, inside and outside of the "act," that is precisely what happened. And what came out of it is a harrowing thought exercise about artistic failure and the baggage of celebrity.

Salt (2010)

**/****
starring Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Olbrychski
screenplay by Kurt Wimmer
directed by Phillip Noyce

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. The question that drives the marketing campaign for Phillip Noyce's Salt--namely, "Who is Salt?"--is ultimately the very least of the picture's mysteries, so there's no point in trying to keep a lid on it. Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is an assassin born and bred in the former Soviet Union, planted in the CIA as a sleeper agent until she's activated and sent to kill the current President of Russia. Nothing too earth-shattering, right? That juicy tidbit pales in comparison to the movie's other poorly-kept secret: Salt is, figuratively and more or less literally, the misbegotten offspring of From Russia With Love. Her father, as seen in flashback, bears a strong resemblance to Robert Shaw's Red Grant; her boss (Daniel Olbrychski) carries a knife concealed in the sole of his shoe; and, get this, ex-Soviet radicals hoping to instigate a war with the West are masterminding the whole plot! Patched together from vintage materials, the entire movie is an attempt to merge the popular fears of the 20^th century with the hyperactive action-flick sensibilities of the 21^st. Caught in an uncomfortable wedge between Bourne and Bond, Salt ends up as a slightly-higher-octane version of Knight and Day. An awful lot of stuff appears to be happening in the film, what with Salt repeatedly, breathlessly chased through various metropolitan areas by her CIA cronies Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Winter (Liev Schreiber)...but good luck trying to care.

Despicable Me (2010)

*½/****
screenplay by Ken Daurio & Cinco Paul
directed by Pierre Coffin & Chris Renaud

by Ian Pugh It only takes a cursory glance at its cast of characters and the people embodying them to see the kind of trendy thinking that sank Despicable Me. The movie presents us with the headmistress of an orphanage clearly modeled after Edie McClurg--but rather than hire McClurg herself to voice the role, they got the Kristen Wiig, who hits her one, monotonous note over and over again. The antagonist proper is a bespectacled, bowl-cut pervert in an orange jumpsuit--but rather than have Eddie Deezen play him in full-blown Mandark mode, they got Jason Segel to shout a couple of dick jokes to the rafters. Finally, in the centre ring is Steve Carell, performing with a bizarre accent lodged somewhere between Boris Badenov and Ivan Drago. While Carell does an admirable job for what he's given, he's a little too dry to be a successful voice actor--you can't help but think that someone like Billy West or Tom Kenny would have done something truly great with the role.

Knight and Day (2010) + Grown Ups (2010)

KNIGHT AND DAY
**/****
starring Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Paul Dano, Peter Sarsgaard
screenplay by Patrick O'Neill
directed by James Mangold

GROWN UPS
½*/****
starring Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider
screenplay by Adam Sandler & Fred Wolf
directed by Dennis Dugan

by Ian Pugh Knight and Day isn't really a movie so much as an amateur screenwriting exercise: the cardinal rule is maintaining momentum, and if that momentum should come at the ironic price of interest or excitement then so be it. It's true that lots of things happen in this movie--lots of car chases and stunts and rapid-fire dialogue and whiplash changes in scenery--and director James Mangold even has the decency to sometimes hold a shot for more than five seconds. But despite this flurry of activity, you never actually watch or experience the picture--you observe it, like an ant farm or a goldfish bowl, looking for some magical insight that simply isn't there. Knight and Day is cute, fluffy, feather-light, and utterly, instantly forgettable. Let's just cut to the chase and say that, should Tom Cruise ever propel himself back into the public consciousness, this ain't gonna be the way he does it.

Futuramarama

FUTURAMA: BENDER'S BIG SCORE (2007)
***½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
screenplay by Ken Keeler
directed by Dwayne Carey-Hill

FUTURAMA: THE BEAST WITH A BILLION BACKS (2008)
**/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
screenplay by Eric Kaplan
directed by Peter Avanzino

FUTURAMA: BENDER'S GAME (2008)
*½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
screenplay by Eric Horsted (parts one and two), Michael Rowe & Eric Kaplan (part three), David X. Cohen & Patric M. Verrone (part four)
directed by Dwayne Carey-Hill

FUTURAMA: INTO THE WILD GREEN YONDER (2009)
*/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras C
screenplay by Ken Keeler
directed by Peter Avanzino

by Ian Pugh While Matt Groening with "The Simpsons" had an incalculable effect on how I perceived movies, television, and just about everything else in life, truth be told I probably love his "Futurama" more. What can I say other than that it came at the right time in my life--it was my "Star Trek", my "Buffy", my "Doctor Who": the first sci-fi property to capture my heart, and the avatar into which I poured all my nerdy obsessions. I appreciated its ability to strike a perfect balance of comedy and characterization that legitimized its silliest scenarios. Who would have guessed that the search for a long-lost seven-leaf clover could turn into a touching tribute to brotherly love? Subplots often wore thin and jokes fell flat, but looking back, there isn't a single half-hour in its initial 72-episode run that can be considered an outright failure. Unfortunately, the show never got a chance to shine, placed at a ridiculous timeslot on Fox--Sunday at 7PM, where it was certain to be either pre-empted or overshadowed by Sunday Night Football (jocks vs. nerds!)--and thus doomed to an inevitably short life. The final episode of the fourth season promised that "Futurama" would "see you on some other channel," but the initial salvation came from Fox's home-entertainment division: The producers were offered the chance to do a direct-to-video movie, which was eventually negotiated up to four movies, made and released over a span of three years. Of course, the success of these paved the way for a sixth season due to air on Comedy Central beginning this week, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

How I Did It: FFC Interviews Vincenzo Natali

With Splice, director Vincenzo Natali's career comes alive. ALIVE!

June 6, 2010|I had been invited to interview Vincenzo Natali, and although I immediately acquainted myself with his previous work, nothing could prepare me for the film he was coming to Boston to promote. Indeed, anyone who's seen the trailers for Natali's latest, the Frankenstein-ian family drama Splice, is certain to be surprised by what the final product has in store. You didn't see that one comin', did ya? I know I didn't.

Splice (2010)

***/****
starring Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chanéac, David Hewlett
screenplay by Vincenzo Natali & Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor
directed by Vincenzo Natali

by Ian Pugh Vincenzo Natali's Splice unavoidably lives in the shadow of countless sci-fi/horror properties that came before it--stories that have already taught us, as Splice teaches us, that tragedies occur when Man dabbles in God's domain. But dismiss the film as cliché at your own peril. While it provides numerous shocks to the system, the traumas themselves take a backseat to the horror of their implications and, moreover, what those tragedies say about the risks and ambitions of daily life. Indeed, while the movie consciously seeks to fashion a cautionary tale out of the stock phrase "What's the worst that could happen?," its ultimate goal is to tell that tale as a domestic drama.

Shrek Forever After (2010)

*/****
screenplay by Josh Klausner & Darren Lemke
directed by Mike Mitchell

by Ian Pugh Because Shrek the Third tied things up pretty conclusively, what they're probably going to tell you is that Shrek Forever After (hereafter Shrek 4) is more of an epilogue than a sequel. What they won't tell you is that this "epilogue," co-written by the screenwriter of Date Night, is more of a toy than a feature film. But your money's just as green as it ever was. Now settled into a monotonous family life, Shrek (voice of Mike Myers) strikes a deal with Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrn) for the chance to live one more day as a bachelor/terrifying ogre. Unfortunately, said deal transports Shrek into an alternate reality in which he never rescued Fiona (Cameron Diaz) from the dragon's lair, freeing Rumpelstiltskin to conquer the kingdom of Far Far Away. And despite much talk of being grateful for what you have, that's all there is to it, really. Sure, it's better than Shrek the Third, but lots of things are better than Shrek the Third--and even then, Shrek 4 is only an improvement in the sense that it isn't obsessed with scatological humour...and that it doesn't leave an especially terrible aftertaste. It doesn't leave the slightest impression at all, in fact. It's not merely a product, it wants you to see it as a product: It's a Wonderful Life as told by Mr. Potter. Oh, and it's in 3-D. I mean, of course it is.

Edge of Darkness (2010) + When in Rome (2010)|Edge of Darkness - Blu-ray Disc

EDGE OF DARKNESS
***½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Mel Gibson, Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, Bojana Novakovic
screenplay by William Monahan and Andrew Bovell, based on the television series by Troy Kennedy Martin
directed by Martin Campbell

WHEN IN ROME
*/****
starring Kristen Bell, Josh Duhamel, Will Arnett, Anjelica Huston
screenplay by David Diamond & David Weissman
directed by Mark Steven Johnson

by Ian Pugh Allegedly a radical departure from the BBC miniseries upon which it's based, Martin Campbell's Edge of Darkness works because there's nothing typical about it. Boston PD detective Tom Craven (Mel Gibson) naturally blames himself when his daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) is gunned down by a masked man with a shotgun, but his private inquiry into the matter reveals that Emma herself was the more likely target: it had something to do with her job at a nuclear R&D lab run by sadistic creepshow Jack Bennett (an almost-ridiculously slimy Danny Huston). The trick to Tom's subsequent trip down the rabbit hole is that he never stops blaming himself, even once his quest is validated by the trail of bodies left by both him and the mysterious conspirators pulling the strings. This is Gibson's first starring role in eight years following a lengthy trek through Crazytown, and he might be the only actor who could have pulled it off so flawlessly--simply because there's always been something slightly terrified about his specific brand of martyrdom, something that points to it all being painfully unnecessary.

The Losers (2010) + The Back-up Plan (2010)

THE LOSERS
*½/****
starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoë Saldana, Chris Evans, Jason Patric
screenplay by Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt, based on the comic book series by Andy Diggle and Jock
directed by Sylvain White

THE BACK-UP PLAN
½*/****
starring Jennifer Lopez, Alex O'Loughlin, Eric Christian Olsen, Linda Lavin
screenplay by Kate Angelo
directed by Alan Poul

by Ian Pugh We've got a long summer ahead of us, full of remakes and spoofs straight out of the '80s, and The Losers celebrates its imminent arrival by taking a dump on the action flicks of the era. Blinkered hostility is as much a mood-killer as uncritical nostalgia, and The Losers never misses an opportunity to remind you that its characters have one-note personalities defined by terse nicknames. The film begins, as it must, in the Bolivian jungle, where the titular team of U.S. soldiers (led by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is forced to go underground after an errant missile--intended for them--kills twenty-five Bolivian children they'd just saved from an evil drug lord. At first glance, that opening raid points to a toned-down Predator reference, but it's really just a paint-by-numbers scenario meant to demonstrate how pretty much everything from that decade is stilted, corny, and hopelessly dated. So it goes for the rest of the film--how else to explain a brief chase sequence set to "Don't Stop Believin'"? It's not merely junk, it's self-conscious, wilfully-misinterpretive junk.

Green Zone (2010)

**/****
starring Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Brendan Gleeson, Jason Isaacs
screenplay by Brian Helgeland, based on the book by Rajit Chandrasekaran
directed by Paul Greengrass

by Ian Pugh Sucks for Green Zone that it's being released the weekend after The Hurt Locker won the Oscar for Best Picture, which only makes the former look that much more antiquated. Paul Greengrass can still stick a couple of actors in front of a computer and perform those "shaky-cam" action sequences with the technical proficiency we've come to expect from him, but as proficiency is the only thing he has going for him this time around, it appears the director has finally run out of new tricks. Green Zone feels like a self-conscious relic of the previous decade and there's nothing to convince us of otherwise, particularly because it applies tired aesthetics to an impotent tirade about the American invasion of Iraq. At its best, the picture suggests an extraneous coda to the Greengrass-completed Bourne trilogy, without the benefit of its mystery, its forward momentum, or its looming implications. It immediately, unwisely lays everything out on the table for you--The Bourne Ultimatum without any damned ultimatum. The film Green Zone reminds of most, however, is former Greengrass collaborator Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton: it's so consumed with stating the obvious about corruption in the system that it fails to recognize this is hardly a newsflash. While Greengrass and Gilroy are smart guys, I'm starting to wonder if they can only work miracles together.

The Spider Woman|The Voice of Terror [Sherlock Holmes Double Feature] - DVD

Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942)
***½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Evelyn Ankers, Reginald Denny
screenplay by Lynn Riggs & John Bright, based upon the story "His Last Bow" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
directed by John Rawlins

THE SPIDER WOMAN (1944)
**/**** Image B- Sound B-
starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Gale Sondergaard, Dennis Hoey
screenplay by Bertram Millhauser, based on a story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
directed by Roy William Neill

by Ian Pugh My introduction to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes came courtesy of MPI's recent double-feature DVD, and as introductions go, one could certainly do worse. Plucking the detective from Fox's Victorian backdrop and throwing him unceremoniously into World War II, Universal's take on the Holmes series comes across as hell-bent on forging its own continuity and, moreover, its own sense of context. The first entry in this new cycle, Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, begins with a title card explaining why the film makes such a dramatic departure from the previous two:

Dear John (2010)

ZERO STARS/****
starring Channing Tatum, Amanda Seyfried, Henry Thomas, Richard Jenkins
screenplay by Jamie Linden, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks
directed by Lasse Hallström

by Ian Pugh Movies based on Nicholas Sparks novels--sentimental drivel, functionally identical--usually just bounce off my chest, but we all have our limits. Once more into the breach as Princess Prettygirl (Seyfried) falls head over heels for Johnny Bluecollar (Tatum) in a spectacularly awful Harlequin romance that juggles metaphors about coins and the size of the moon while boasting only the vaguest understanding of the English language. Dear John is little more than a rehash of The Notebook, a movie I found tedious but, again, ultimately innocuous. Yet there's a mysterious "x" factor at work in this one that attacked some vital nerve and reduced my brain to petroleum jelly. Could be that Lasse Hallström finally found the perfect vessels for the source author: Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum--actors, both, whose deadwood talents fail to stretch past sheer bewilderment. (I kind of hate Ryan Gosling as an actor, but he undoubtedly elevated The Notebook.) There's a point very early on where Seyfried remarks, "Wow, you made a fire," as her future beau demonstrates his ability to jumpstart a little kindling--and the complete lack of sarcasm (or really any emotion) in her voice led me to wonder if Tatum was going to club her over the head and drag her back to his cave. It's not an unreasonable conclusion: most of these movies forge conflict out of the idea that women are property, and Dear John is no different.

This Is It (2009) - Blu-ray Disc

**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B-
directed by Kenny Ortega

by Ian Pugh Cobbled together from the rehearsals for Michael Jackson's planned fifty-show tour, the almost-concert film This Is It is intended to provide a simulacrum of the man's "vision" before his untimely death. However, its primary attraction may very well be the rumble you feel from the unforgettable basslines of "Smooth Criminal" and "Beat It" when played in a movie theatre. It proves an experience unto itself, as does watching Jackson perform his greatest hits with impossible elegance--but the picture stumbles whenever it slows things down to hold a love-in for Jacko, which is pretty often. This Is It gets itself into trouble off the bat, with the unending praise from the singer's tearfully grateful dancers (pre-audition/pre-mortem) giving way to a screen bathed in white light and a choir of angels; the whole affair is so beatific that it crosses the line from loving eulogy to revival tent. It's a feeling the film never quite shakes.

Surrogates (2009) - Blu-ray Disc

**/**** Image C+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, Ving Rhames
screenplay by John Brancato & Michael Ferris, based on the graphic novel by Robert Vendetti and Brett Weldele
directed by Jonathan Mostow

by Ian Pugh Fittingly, Surrogates is a patchwork substitute for any number of recent films that informed it. (All things considered, the '05-'06 comic series from which the movie spawned may be the least of its sources.) Just look at its pedigree. Given that it's about the schism between mortal man and unstoppable machine, it's the second Terminator film for both director Jonathan Mostow (after Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) and star Bruce Willis (after Live Free or Die Hard), the third for screenwriters Michael Ferris and John Brancato (after T3 and Terminator Salvation), and perhaps the six-thousandth for 2009 alone--the latest in a long line of pictures that put the human soul behind the wheel of an automaton. Willis's Tom Greer is prescribed the usual problems--dead son, distant wife (Rosamund Pike)--of a rough-and-tumble movie cop, and from there, Surrogates cribs WALL·E's missive about the dangers of excessive comfort and The Dark Knight's casual nihilism in exploring the weakness of flesh-and-blood. Almost exclusively cobbled together from recent trends in American cinema, there's no denying its overfamiliarity--every twist and turn the movie has to offer is obvious at least forty-five minutes in advance. But as potentially the last straight action flick of the decade, Surrogates' derivative nature manages the improbable: it compacts the zeitgeist into a neat little package.

The Book of Eli (2010)

*/****
starring Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Michael Gambon
screenplay by Gary Whitta
directed by The Hughes Brothers

by Ian Pugh Let's start things off by lifting the veil of mystery surrounding the titular book and thus reveal the transparent secret upon which the film hangs its interminable first act. It's the freakin' Bible, all right? You're going to realize it from the very moment the all-important book is introduced, but you're expected to play along because The Book of Eli is deep, and everything about this film--including its simpering attempt to transcend genre--labours to play up that depth. It isn't exciting, it isn't transcendent, and it sure as hell ain't deep. This little sucker is meant as a western, its post-apocalyptic setting serving as mere window dressing for dialogue about The Time Before and The Flash and The War and how humanity's lust for excess got them into that mess. (George Miller was able to squeeze more eloquence from the idea by throwing a bunch of big rigs into a squabble over gasoline; he reserved all that pithy dialogue for his feral children.) Worse than that, however, is that the plot has been cobbled together from practically every western made prior to Unforgiven (it's closest to Eastwood's own cliché-ridden, quasi-spiritual Pale Rider, if you're starved for a direct analogy), with knowledge and religion standing in for the encroaching railroad. If that doesn't sound like the most bountiful wellspring of ideas, well, the script would appear to agree with you. "It's not just a book, it's a weapon," the diabolical Carnegie (Gary Oldman) growls upon recognizing his long-sought-after prize. Alas, The Book of Eli spends the rest of its two hours trying to find new ways to reiterate this--and the more it repeats itself, the farther it strays from that point.

Daybreakers (2010)

**/****
starring Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Claudia Carvan, Sam Neill
written and directed by The Spierig Brothers

by Ian Pugh The Spierig Brothers' Daybreakers is a juicy genre exercise waiting to happen, and maybe it would have happened if the film weren't tangled up in hamfisted allegory. What sets this vampire flick apart is not its high-pitched screed against capitalism (the system's fulla bloodsuckers, I tells ya!), but the fact that its staked vampires explode into a bloody mess. Its most beautiful sights are certainly not rooted in the dawning of a new day, but in Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe spontaneously bursting into flames for one reason or another. This is not what you'd call a dry film, yet I can't help thinking that a little more ichor would have been for the better. Funny how that works, actually: the Spierigs' last film, Undead, was a splatterfest in desperate need of a point; here, they finally have a point, and all you want to see is the next exploding vampire. (Where the two pictures are most alike is that they're both shot through a series of increasingly-obnoxious pastel filters.) It'll take another film to determine whether the Brothers have anything worthwhile to say, but the lingering suspicion is that they simply lack the creative instincts of their beloved Sam Raimi--that vital ability to discern the profound from the fatuous.

Film Freak Central's Top 10 of 2009

The last year of any decade usually a watershed year, we come to the end of 2009 with a bounty of riches. A year that just a couple of months ago I feared wouldn't yield ten films from which to choose has, through a flurry of screeners and late-season additions, convinced me of its cinematic legitimacy. Find in the top ten three war films, five films about the state and politics of the modern family, one about a poet, and one about a cop. Discover that each of the first ten has a direct corollary in the next ten (suggesting that there's a good bit of synchronicity in 2009), and that although women directors remain a novelty, three penetrate the top ten for the first time in my decade of lists. Other threads include a continuation of the last two years' feelings of disconnection and entropy indulged, the notion that institutions of right are the ones perpetrating the bulk of atrocity, and investigations into the self that mainly fulfill Nietzsche's maxim of abysses looking into the lookers. It's a summary list, in a way, of the '00s.

Extract (2009) - Blu-ray Disc

½*/**** Image B- Sound B Extras D+
starring Jason Bateman, Mila Kunis, Kristen Wiig, Ben Affleck
written and directed by Mike Judge

by Ian Pugh It's fitting that Mike Judge's latest film, a pale imitation of a past success that endeavours to capture its essence with a bare minimum of the same charm and profundity, should be titled Extract. Perhaps it's not entirely fair to say that Judge's Office Space achieved cult status for its portrayal of nine-to-five banality even though it's actually about a wayward asshole who used that banality as an excuse to become a lazy, belligerent thief. Nevertheless, with Extract, Judge essentially confirms he thinks you liked Office Space for its company setting--and now, ten years later, he responds in kind. Work is hell in Judge's world, and hell is other people. Although Judge is at his best when he's telling you what you don't want to hear--that teenagers are capable of some pretty vile things, that the presence of a work ethic might override your distaste for the work itself, that anti-intellectualism is going to be the death of American culture--at the precise moment you don't want to hear it, in Extract he says nothing provocative beyond the occasional attempt at sucker-punching the viewer with politically-incorrect comedy that stopped being subversive around a decade ago. (Coincidence?) It's impossible to say where the shock or amusement is supposed to come from at the sight of Ben Affleck (another remnant of the P.C. '90s and its reactionary counterculture), gussied up to look like Arlo Guthrie as he curses, deals drugs, and smokes out of ridiculous bongs.

The Princess and the Frog (2009)

*½/****
screenplay by Ron Clements & John Musker & Rob Edwards
directed by Ron Clements & John Musker

by Ian Pugh Disney has resurrected its traditional (i.e., 2-D) animation department only to plunder plots and themes from its own vault, but because we're all familiar with what Disney represents in this day and age, we're meant to accept it with a wink and a nod. This is the same old Cinderella trope located firmly within the "Family Guy" generation, the film's hip acknowledgment of genre conventions (the absurdity of talking animals, the modern irrelevance of royalty) nevertheless failing to capitalize on that newfound consciousness in any meaningful way. So while it offers the reasonable assertion that the importance of love and family shouldn't be lost in the pursuit of a dream, it still ends with a message of no-happiness-without-marriage straight outta the 16^th century. And whatever PR folderol you've read about The Princess and the Frog representing the company's "first black princess," be aware that Bold Leaps Forward are hardly the priority here, the common but wholly-valid criticism being that the characters spend more screentime as frogs than as people.