Directed by: David Yates Written by: Steve Kloves Full credits at IMDb
...And the Half-Blood Prince? More like And the Hot-Blooded Teens. The latest installment of the sorcerer septology-turned-octology is packed with disgruntled exes, jilted lovers and bourgeoning couples: hormonal wiz-kids playing out their soap operas with the help of spells, potions and come-hither stares. In the very first scene, Potter (Daniel "We've All Seen Your Dingle Now" Radcliffe) picks up his waitress in a café. It's standard Y.A. school-corridor romance, but a lot of the Potter franchise is derivative; this entry nods to no less than Batman, Superman II, Vertigo, The Wizard of Oz, Narnia, The New Testament, The Lord of the Rings and The Legend of Zelda. The new Potter is familiar, predictable — by mid-film, you could make a quick checklist of the dangling plot points that'll need to be cleared up before we're excused — but all archetypal fantasies are basically the same. That's what makes them popular. What makes this film actually good, though, is its despairing tone...
Directed by: Max Färberböck Written by: Max Färberböck & Catharina Schuchmann Full credits at IMDb
WWII is a cliché. So when a producer declares that his film exposes the "last taboo" of that global conflict — the systematic rape of Berliner frauen by the occupying Soviet army — it sounds too good to be true. Will we finally see something fresh? Around the mid-way point, an uncharacteristic moral complexity does emerge from the dully titled A Woman in Berlin (Eine Frau in Berlin), in which we kind of like the sexual aggressors and the women do, too. But director Färberböck is so insecure about this kind of ambiguity that he spoon-feeds us, mawkishly and insincerely, what leads up to it: there's the lazy and pervasive voice-overs (ostensibly a tribute to the anonymously authored, best-selling source material); the swelling strings; a disembodied young girl's creepy, slapback-soaked singing (did I wander into Orphan by mistake?); the ruthless close-up of a filthy, sweaty Russian's face as he spits on our protagonist — get it? Rape is degrading? The last taboo of WWII isn't any single unexplored story. It's a film that eschews the hackneyed tropes applied to every other movie that touches it.
Directed by: Akira Kurosawa Written by: Akira Kurosawa & Masato Ide Full credits from IMDb
The famous final 90 seconds of Kagemusha, the sweeping rifles-and-samurais saga that marked the start of Kurosawa's late career mini-comeback, are as astounding as you may have heard. The camera surveys, in quick snapshots, a ravaged battlefield in combat's aftermath: dazed soldiers, bathed in blood-red paint, stumble through the decimation while injured horses flail like fish out of water. It's an enormously scaled tragic finale — with a vague anti-war suggestion about where our leaders' arrogance leads, maybe? — that affirms Kurosawa's standing as an Old Master; and it's desperately needed proof to refute the messy 10,000 seconds that come before, which call into question the director's reputation. Kurosawa once famously remarked, "In all my films, there's three or maybe four minutes of real cinema." Though an obvious, self-deprecating exaggeration, the observation comes close to describing Kagemusha.
Directed by: Larry Charles Written by: Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Dan Mazer and Jeff Schaffer Full credits from IMDb
Brüno pleasantly surprised me: because it’s from Sacha Baron “Borat” Cohen, who a few years ago taught us all about American racism (thanks!), I assumed this film would teach us a lesson about how homophobic we are. And there’s plenty of that in there (sometimes unfairly; I might be a bit put off, too, if a nude Brüno kept trying to sneak into my tent in the middle of the night, as he does to a few unsuspecting Arkansas hunters). But there’s another, far more interesting subtext running through the film: the American obsession with those ever-elusive 15 minutes. “Brüno burlesques homophobia the way Borat did anti-semitism,” Papa Hoberman writes in his review, but it's “more of a comment on celebrity culture than the love (or hate) that dare not speak its name.” After all, Bruno, a disgraced Austrian fashion reporter, travels from Vienna to L.A. not for the sunshine and organic vegetables but for the chance at stardom. Bruno, really, works as a parodic primer on How to Become a Celebrity, mocking A- through D-listers, as well as those who aren’t even on a list: bring peace to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by writing songs; contribute to Save Darfur causes when you can’t even pronounce Darfur; dish on a talk show (using celebrity ultrasounds, Brüno plays a game called “Keep It or Abort It”); film a pilot; make a sex tape—with Rep. Ron Paul!; appear on a talk show with your black “gayby”.
Keep reading my discussion with Benjamin Sutton at The L Magazine
Directed by: Michael Mann Written by: Ronan Bennett, Michael Mann & Ann Biderman Full credits from IMDb
Public Enemies, Mann’s quasi-artful account of John Dillinger’s final years, opens with an image of prisoners parading in unison; it’s introduction by contrast: this film is a nostalgic, graytone ode to the last men who marched out of lockstep—Depression-era gangsters. Mann’s film captures the twilight of the outlaw era, the fading romance, the melancholy; the idealized bank robber gives way to the crassness of organized crime and gambling rings; and as the allure and the grandeur of the gangster fades away, it’s replaced by the apotheosis of the more modest lawman (here, Christian Bale, who once again assumes the role of the vigilante who tortures for the greater good). Sigh.
In its chronicling of a thief’s last years, the movie bears a conspicuous conceptual resemblance to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, though it’s the Hollywood-slick version. Andrew Dominik’s film opens with a robbery and spends the rest of its reels tossing and turning in existential conflict; Mann packs in action from credits to credits. That’s not to say that Public Enemies is artless; action sequences are often Mann’s saving grace. (See: Miami Vice.) And there’s a certain lyricism in Mann’s HD camera, the movie’s most impressive feature, especially the way it often clings to the performers’ faces in close-up, as in Dillinger’s stunningly shot death flop. There’s also a marvelous scene near the end in which Dillinger wanders in to the detective bureau’s Dillinger Squad office, surveying the photographs and newspaper clippings as though a ghost visiting his very own museum, as well as a touching sequence in which Johnny Depp, as the other John D., reacts to Clark Gable’s poignant portrayal of a gangster in Manhattan Melodrama, our hero's last picture show. (The aptness of several moments from that film to the drama we’re watching is a serendipitous delight, and the filmmakers make the most of it.) But for all the graceful touches, the movie is at heart your typical gangster movie, a succession of bank robberies, jailbreaks, and shootouts starring press-charming crooks, sultry molls and temperamental cops. You’ve seen it before, but may as well see it again, given the sturdiness of the storytelling—and how handsome it looks. Grade: B
Directed by: Sam Mendes Written by: Dave Eggers & Vendela Vida Full credits at IMDb
The cast of the American Office generally spends its summer vacation starring in movies ranging from the not very good (Leatherheads) to the terrible (The Rocker). But this summer John Krasinski plays it safe by starring in Jim and Pam: The Movie, also known as Away We Go. (SNL-vet Maya Rudolph, eschewing the broad comedienne persona she has cultivated, temporarily replaces Jenna Fischer.)
He and Rudolph are the best, nay only good thing about the movie, which otherwise boasts a pseudo-prestigious pedigree at every level. First, Mendes, who continues his plummet in cultural value: a decade ago, he was a promising young movie director with a Best Picture under his belt; now, his films are of no more interest than Ron Howard’s. Away We Go, however, is probably his best work in quite a while, which may have something to do with its release date; not coming out in Oscar-baiting autumn, unlike last year’s passionless and preening Revolutionary Road, it makes no grand gestures toward an Oscar. For Mendes, this is a modest picture, which isn’t to say that his faults aren’t still on full display, particularly the telegraphing use of music; while the lo-fi Nick Drakery on the soundtrack isn’t as offensive as last year’s tinkling Thomas Newman score, the music is still unnecessarily intrusive. And lazy: there’s no need to create credible emotions when the score, and a little bit of montage (ugh!), will fashion the next best thing without any of the hard work. (Faith in music and skepticism toward the power of the image is a problem for many moviedirectors whose first home, like Mendes, is the stage.)
The film functions best in the small dialogue scenes between Krasinski and Rudolph; they star as a long-together couple, bourgeois, college-educated yuppies unconvincingly pitched as rural peasants. Expecting their first child (maybe Rudolph wouldn’t look so big if she might think about cutting down on the desserts…and also, possibly, sex with men), they traverse North America—it’s a road movie with more planes and trains than cars—visiting their friends and family and looking for a place to plant their roots. Despite the pat insights and clichéd conflicts that usually follow, Away We Go is a pleasure when the leads assess their condition, make cute with each other and whisper their fears about going all Richard Yates on each other—as long as Mendes isn’t drowning them out with music. Krasinski, still just playing Jim despite an academic’s beard and glasses, is so damn cute he’s impossible not to adore.
Though it’s tempting to try, since he’s in the middle of a dreadful script by literary power couple Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida. The film, while vaguely Four Christmases-like, is set up like a rambling Rear Window, in which the heroes confront various possible permutations of what their lives as a married couple could be like. But the situations Eggers and Vida conceive are horribly contrived, even cruel: the clueless liberal parents (Catherine O’Hara and Jeff Daniels) who can’t even pronounce “indigenous”; the New Age cousin (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who scoffs at the idea of strollers and begins sentences with “in the seahorse community…”; the adopted-parent friends whose attempts at childbirth lead to miscarriage. (What is with Mendes and miscarriage?) These aren’t real characters but crude American caricatures, set up like straw men not for the purpose of making points of logic, but for making jokes. (Yes, Krasinski will eventually take that child and push him in a stroller.) All of the actors, particularly the leads, give heartfelt performances, but they can’t quite fight their way out of the dreck in which they’ve been imprisoned. In other words, it’s classic Mendes. Grade: B-
Directed by: Carlos Saldanha & Mike Thurmeier Written by: Yoni Brenner Full credits at IMDb
So: worst episode of Everybody Loves Raymond ever? (Which is really saying something!) Except unlike that show, the family here...is made up of more than just suburban whites; but Ice Age 3’s multiculturalism seems shallow, an ostensible celebration of diversity, classic pseudo-liberalism, meant to secrete its embedded conservatism. Yeah, yeah, its “herd” is made up of many different types of animals, and its main married couple is multiracial. (Romano and Latifah would make the best real life celebrity couple.) I suppose it’s nice that Ice Age 3 aims to teach children to accept friends and makeshift-family members of all shapes, sizes and species—even Sid the Sloth, who, mid-film, adopts a few baby dinosaurs, and takes to referring to himself as a “she,” as their “mommy”. Even pan-sexuals can be a part of our families.
But they can’t raise their own families. The film’s point seems to be that it takes a mommy and daddy to raise properly a baby, as the Latifah-Romanos are pitched as the movie’s true parental figures; Sid, as the failure. Or at least that it takes a dinosaur mommy to raise dinosaur babies. (But not necessarily a dinosaur daddy, as the dino-mommy spends the film on the run from the presumable father: a savage, a batterer.) So, is Sid meant to represent the adoptive parent? The homosexual? The single father? Or what?
But that’s all small potatoes when it comes to Ice Age’s real agenda: Drill, baby, drill!
Keep reading my discussion with Benjamin Sutton at The L Magazine
...And the Half-Blood Prince? More like And the Hot-Blooded Teens. The latest installment of the sorcerer septology-turned-octology is packed with disgruntled exes, jilted lovers and bourgeoning couples: hormonal wiz-kids playing out their soap operas with the help of spells, potions and come-hither stares. In the very first scene, Potter (Daniel "We've All Seen Your Dingle Now" Radcliffe) picks up his waitress in a café. It's standard Y.A. school-corridor romance, but a lot of the Potter franchise is derivative; this entry nods to no less than Batman, Superman II, Vertigo, The Wizard of Oz, Narnia, The New Testament, The Lord of the Rings and The Legend of Zelda. The new Potter is familiar, predictable — by mid-film, you could make a quick checklist of the dangling plot points that'll need to be cleared up before we're excused — but all archetypal fantasies are basically the same. That's what makes them popular. What makes this film actually good, though, is its despairing tone...
